Jennifer @Home

Autumn means dessert!

I exuberantly purchased a large quantity of delicious, tiny Seckel pears only to find that no one else in my house wanted to eat them.  In a last ditch effort to make use of these wonderful fruits, I tried to recreate the pear-custard tarts I encountered in the pastry shops and bakeries of Brussels, with a little southern twist. Pears halved and cored fill the crust.  To this, added a small custard, southern style (one egg and enough milk to fill an 8 oz. coffee mug, just a little brown sugar and a sprinkle of nutmeg), poured this over and around the pears, then baked for about 50 minutes.  Adults said yum!  Kids found it a little too full of pears.  ("That's why it's called pear tart," I said.)

 Eve is becoming quite the cook herself, and loves to bake milk-free blondies.  We start with Ghirardelli chocolate chip cookie mix, mixed with butter and egg according to the directions.  To this we add two cups of oats (quick cooking) and a splash of almond extract, and press into a greased cookie sheet.  After 20 minutes in the oven these come out crispy and delicious (and none of that messy dropped cookie madness that is so much fun in theory, but which we really don't have time for on a weeknight.) Everyone ate dinner really quickly tonight!

We have wonderful chilly weather lately, but haven't yet turned on the heat.  There's something wonderful about the oven-warmed kitchen and the smell of things baking.  Such a nice change after the heat of summer.  Welcome, Fall!

First toffee of the season

It must be Advent --

The house smells like warm buttery yum, as I've just finished making the first batch of toffee.  This one is designated for a couple of upcoming holiday parties, and a little something for my BSC workstudies.

Today was a busy one, with make-up choir rehearsal all morning (make-up from missing the one before Thanksgiving, because of the hospital stay), and Ollie's birthday party this afternoon (WAY fun, now Isaac wants a party at Storyville Station too!), followed by the obligatory run to the store(s) on the way home. 

This year, rather than think of more elaborate teacher and workstudy and coworker and friend holiday happies, only to back down at the last minute to a just-toffee-because-it's-all-I-had-time-to-do (and feel bad about it for some reason), I decided just to go whole-hog with the toffee.  Isaac helped me find butter and chocolate in bulk at Sam's today, and this year I'm going to try not feeling apologetic.

Eve has been so thoroughly inculcated with the term "hoho-head" (Marc's affectionate term for a plastic santa nightlight that the kids really love) that she now shouts "HO HO HEAD!!" every time she sees a santa or someone in a santa hat, which is really often, lately.

And speaking of ho-ho-head, I have to confess my own squeamishness over the many santa-heads I've already seen this season.  You know the ones I mean -- santa's head, but no body. 

Ok, so I'm a visual literalist -- I don't know how these heads come across to other people, but my own eyes/brain/mind don't automatically supply the body.  So the effect is something like John the Baptist after his encounter with Herod's henchmen.  Creepy!

Just look at this poor fellow's expression -- he's so hapless and confused without the rest of him!  He's not mobile, can't open a book or get himself a beer or anything...

 

Some years ago, Isaac became enamored of a very cheap santa liquid-soap dispenser, so I bought it for him what was I thinking? The visual literalisim kicked in again, and suddenly we were washing our hands with liquefied santa brains.  It's really very disturbing.

Ho ho ho!  What am I doing in a chimney?  Why can't I remember my own name?

But what you really need to see is the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities.  My favorite thus far might be the clock (although it's hard to choose -- yes, the base of a cuckoo clock would be a really challenging place to give birth.)  And if you get tired of that, Angels We Have Heard are High is another way to laugh really hard, which helps with the pre-holiday madness.

Mmmm... smells like peppermint!

Having seen everyone through various minor winter illnesses at our house, I did the long-promised project with Isaac, making bath fizzies with peppermint essential oil... yummmm.

We both love the frogs and geckos.  They're nice and large (soap-size -- 4 to 5 oz.) and fizzle nicely in the tub.  Kids come out minty fresh without the winter itchies (avocado oil goes in the fizzies to moisturize.)

This has been a pretty quiet month on the crafting front.  I've placed an order for some Amy Butler fabrics which are absolutely beautiful and for which I have a few project ideas.

My writing is going quite well (music history stuff) and boy will I be glad to finish isn't leaving me any that much time for the handcrafts I love to do. 

So let me introduce ~~Free Theory~~:  free time and free energy come in waves, and occasionally there are beautiful, magical convergences of the two.  Like when you can see both Jupiter and Saturn at the same time.  I'm looking forward to trying out a few new batik ideas at the next convergence.

In other news, it snowed this month!   Those of you in northern climes may find this amusing, but here's the BIG EXCITEMENT photo.  If you (click the photo to enlarge and then) squint, you can see snowflakes in Isaac's hair:

Oh, another thought on Free Theory.  I decided to be rigidly controlling but its-for-your-own-good super mommy for a couple of weeks this month and imposed a regime of only-natural snacks and no extremely limited TV.  Which meant that the afternoons were full of endless games of Monopoly, LOTR Monopoly (yes, it exists), Candy Land, Carcasonne (a fantastically fun game that medievalist-me loves too).  And then I got real about my writing again, and then TV started again, so we're now just trying to strike a happy medium.  If I can get an hour of writing in the morning (during Eve's nap and Isaac's school) and another hour or two in the afteroon (this is where Isaac and TV come together... mea culpa) then I've had a good day.  And then there's STILL time for those games. 

Really, I'm such a lucky woman.  I am extremely fortunate to have the kind of (part-time) job that employs my professional training yet lets me be home with my kids while they're small (I know what a huge luxury this is), a flexible degree program that will see me finishing my PhD right around the time Isaac starts all-day school and Eve could start preschool (in other words, perfect timing for me to make a move to full-time work), time to play games and read stories, time to plant seeds, and --occasionally-- time to make very pretty things from silk and wax and essential oils and paper and what-have-you.

Now I wonder if all the above sounds rather narcissistic --- the point is, there are times that I feel kind of strange about the time I spend working on my degree not knowing exactly what the professional opportunities will or won't be when the time comes... and at other times I feel a bit sad over how thickly scheduled so much of my time is.  It's hard to find time to rejuvenate, to think about the big picture.  And that's when I remind myself how lucky I really am.

It's a good life. 

An extremely good life.

P.S.  Isaac, who wishes he had his own blog, wanted me to show you this:  he recently made a robot from materials in our recycling bin.  He had SO MUCH FUN making it.  Its name is Q-twothousand-Z-eight.