Jammin'

We have two freezers in the garage, and between them there are 93 gallon-sized zipper bags of blackberries waiting for me to make jam.

Which is crazy, because I totally can't believe I picked that many berries last summer.

"You didn't.  I did.  You hate picking berries."

I know.  Which is why I thought it was crazy.

There's always other things to do, though, besides make jam.

Like......wipe down the walls and stuff.  I've got a lot to do, you know.  I can't be makin' jam everyday.

"You haven't made jam in eight months."

Yeeeaaah....and you're welcome for changing out all the colored bulbs on the Christmas lights that are still on the deck to white.  It's going to look really festive this summer when it's finally warm enough to go out there again. 

"We should make jam today."

"I can't.  It's Sunday."

"So?"

"Soooo.....I can't do it when the kids are here.  It's too hot.  What if it splashes them?"

"They're downstairs in the Wonderland of Toys.  They'll be fine."

"Well, isn't there that golf thing on TV?"

"Yeah, we can have that on."

"No.  I can't.  It's too distracting.  The jam is really hot and I need quiet to concentrate.  I should probably just make it when I'm alone."

"I think you'll be fine."

He never takes my all-consuming requirement to be alone in the absolute silence seriously.

So, he brought up 147 bags of frozen blackberries and laid them out on the counter to thaw.

"Ohhhhh no.  You know what?  I only have two boxes of pectin.  This is going to take at least three.  Too baaaaad."

He handed me $10 and said, "You going over to the store to get colored pencils and markers for school, anyway, right?

Problem solving freak.

When the man wants jam....I am.  Tellin'.  You.

Project 52 ~ Week 9 {Trinkets & Treasures}

Growing up my mother always wanted me to help her in the kitchen, which, I felt, was a gross and disgusting under use of my talents as a sullen teenager.  She would ask me to do things.  Grate this.  Stir that around.  I would run in the other direction as soon as she came to take the spoon from my hand. I still loved eating the food.  I just was colossally uninterested in it's preparation.

Early on in our relationship, Prince Charming he told me that he wanted a wife who did what his mom did.  I told him that I did not go to college for 6 years to cook dinner and drive carpool.  

Funny what love does to you.  Or me, at least.

When he asked me to move in with him, I floated up, did a Thomas flair right into a triple axel salchow and stuck a perfect landing on Gloria Steinem, who very politely, told me to pull it together, be a man, and stop acting like such a freakin' girl. 

Love, man.  It messes with your head.

The first night that his kitchen became mine I was desperate to impress him.  Really show him that he hadn't made a mistake in choosing me.  I wanted him to know that I could create a comforting, delicious meal that warmed his insides and melted him into a gooey pile of little, velvet box.

I made Chicken Tortellini Soup.  It came in a plastic pouch from the deli department at Safeway and was exactly like the soup I'd eaten in the dining hall in college.

"Are you sure you don't want to stir it?" he asked, looking warily over my shoulder.

"No.  It doesn't say that on the package.  It just needs to cook."

That was the night learned that If you can read, you can cook is only meant to sell cookbooks.

Our lovely first meal as a cohabitating couple burned.  So so badly.  

When my son was born I decided that I wanted him to have the same kind of wonderful, home cooked, from scratch type of meals that I grew up eating around my mother's kitchen table.  Food that made our house a home that he would grow up loving.  Food that would make him one day look at his beloved wife and torture her with the same phrase that my beloved tortures me with now:

You know, my mom used to make....

So, I turned to the best chef I've ever known for help, and she was still in the kitchen, spoon in hand, right where I left her.

She's become my mentor, my professor, my master, as I slowly, but ever so surely learn how to craft a pile of ingredients into a meal that my family asks for more of.

If nothing else, she taught me three things:

1. The best ingredients make the best dishes.  If it's not good going in, it won't be good coming out.
2. Having the right tool for the job makes all the difference.
3. Cooking can be a little of this and a little of that, but baking is an exact formula.

And one more that isn't necessarily a rule, but has saved my runny cheese fondue, thickened my marsala, and made all of my sauces divine~

Rue...what it is and how to make it.

The more I cook, and read cookbooks, and watch cooking shows, the more I've come to appreciate the phenomenal effort that my mother made in cooking for us when we were kids.  These old handwritten recipe cards are like a pathway back to my childhood.  Back to my mother's kitchen, when she and her grandmother stood making Christmas bread and pancakes and Thanksgiving turkey.

The loopy penmanship and scrawled ingredient lists are an immediate connection to those we've loved our whole lives and who we know loved us because they cooked for us.    

 

Project 52 ~ Week 8 {Adventure}

Okay....here's the problem.

I love taking the pictures.  And I love writing about the pictures.

But, sometimes there is nothing to write about.  It's just the picture.

Sometimes there is no story.

And now, enough people are telling me that they enjoy reading the stories, that I'm feeling kind of pressured to keep it up.  Even when there is no story. 

So, I'm sorry.  No story on this one.

No.  There isn't one. 

Look...Hate to break it to ya', but not everything....

Fine. 

Once upon a time a little girl put on her bathing suit and went to the pool and her mom made her stop on the steps when she was getting in so she could take a picture of the swirly curls on her shoulder.  The end.

Happy now?....

Well, I'm pretty sure I said there wasn't a story.

This is for my photo group.  We're not a bunch of writers, you know....

Learn to accept what's given to you.  Why do you have to be so demanding all the time?

Just step off, George!

I'm sorry.  You didn't deserve that.  You've always been really sweet to me, and I appreciate that.

I'm just feeling a lot of pressure.  To be funny or something.

And I'm not feeling funny.  My coffee pot leaked all over my counter this morning, so I had to wait an extra 7 minutes to have a cup, and it's kind of gone to my head. 

I love you for understanding.  That's why we're such good friends.

Dream Sequence

The house is still, bathing in wilted sunshine that's filtering though the gauzy windows.  We stand together.  Fingers intertwined.

I know what is coming and I wait.  I've felt it before.  Seen it snake through the floorboards and infect the cracks in the walls.

I know it is coming and I wait.

Branches scratch the windows as the perfume breeze begins to blow.  The sickly sweet scent picks up the leaves outside and I see them swirling outside the panes. 

The door creaks with the dragon wind pushing through it.  I hold tight to the hand in mine.  It won't get me this time.

But I know it will.

The flurry outside begins to howl.  It breaches the unguarded doorway with force and begins its familiar dance through our house.  I watch as the outside comes twirling in across the floor, encircling our feet.  My hair coils around my face and my eyes stay close on the path this vile wind is taking, once again trying to upend what's mine.

It picks up strength and speed.  I stand strong, but I can't hold on without his help.  He's not letting go, yet I am slipping farther and farther away until I am swept across the room, crashing into a lamp, then a table, then the floor.  I see him still standing there, quietly, the dark gusts engulfing him from around the corner far away.  I need to get back to him.  I need to feel his hand in mine again.  I won't let him go.

I stand, feeling shards of broken glass and wood pierce my hands as I balance myself up from the floor.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks me.

I try to answer.  I'm not! I'm not!, but my exclamation is a mere whisper against the noise I've created in my mind.

"It doesn't need to be here.   Why are you bringing this in?"

I don't know. 

"Have I broken it?" I ask.

"No," he says.  "Just get rid of it."

I know what to do.  My steps are sure against the whirlpool of ill temper being waged in our home.

He holds his hand to me and I feel it once again in mine.  I reach out and slam the door.  It pushes quickly from my hand, crashing against the jam.  I bolt it shut.

The wind is quiet.  I hear it slowing down and moving away, back from where it came.

It will return again.  That is certain.

Next time will be different.  Next time I will have power.  I will resist the demons in my mind and we will not break.

When the sun drips through the windows, our fingers are once again intertwined and we are, as we should be, at peace.

I {Heart} You. End Of Story.

I remember when Valentine's Day meant everything.

What he thought.  How he felt.  What flowers he would pick out.  How he would sign his name.

Forever waiting for that little velvet box.

This morning, our 18th Valentine's Day together, we met for a kiss in the dark, morning hallway.

"I still love you."

"I still love you, too."

Then, a flirty glance at him over my shoulder as I walked away. 

"Don't forget it's garbage day."

"Right.  I'm on it."

Valentine's Day used to mean everything.  Now, it's just an excuse for a nice steak and a good bottle of wine.

That's what happens when your life becomes Valentine's Day.

As always,
I'm lovin' you.

Saucy

One of the things my beloved really loves to do with me is cook.

You totally thought that sentence was going another way, didn't you?  I know.  I did too when I first thought it.

He loves to be in the kitchen together, which is actually really sad for him because I rarely let him in the kitchen.

He tends to be one of those controlling, over my shoulder, "You sure you know what you're doing?" types of cooking partners.

And it sort of pisses me off, but in a quiet, passive aggressive kind of way.  Most often I turn into a psycho Ghostbusters demon floating four feet above the stove, growling

"You want a piece of this?"

and then I shove a hot spoon in his mouth.  Backs him right up.

We haven't been together over the stove since right after Thanksgiving when we spent all day making 47 gallons of stock from the leftover turkey carcass.

A couple of weeks ago he came home with 153 cans of diced tomatoes.

"You know.....I don't know...If you feel like making sauce or something."

So, I put them on the shelf in the garage and waited for my Pizan inspiration to hit me.  Good sauce takes all day and I have to be in the mood.

Then he brought home a three pound wedge of parmesan.

"Look at the rind!  I thought it would be great for the sauce!"

It was.  It was a beautiful rind.  I cut it off and put in a plastic baggie in the fridge, then ate the rest of the wedge for lunch.

He kept asking me about it.

"Sooooooo.....what do you think?  Sauce?'

And then my mother made sauce and it became abundantly clear that I hadn't broadcast any new episodes from Mama Lisa's Kitchen in a while,

and he said,

"Okay...tomorrow.  We're making sauce."

He was very excited.  He prepped all the fresh ingredients,

and set our pots side by side, like they were holding hands,

and I showed him how to make sauce.

It took all day, and we ended up with two gallons of sauce.  He was happy.

And full.

And for the record, the only person I've ever heard call sauce gravy is Tony Soprano. 

There's regular tomato sauce and there's meat sauce.

You can get fancy and call it Marinara or Bolognese.

You can forget what you're doing and write "Meet Sauce" on the container.

You can pour in a bottle of wine and make it drunk sauce.

Just don't call it gravy.  It's dumb.

Buon Salute!

It's All About The LOVE

You know when you hear the new theme for the week and you think

"Yes!  I can totally get on board with that!"

because the last few weeks have really just been Mach 2 with your hair on fire and it's all you can do to try and twist your documentary project into the themes, and it's not feeling super great,

but, now things have slowed down and you actually have time to craft a vision and see it through,

and you come up with a Love idea and you enlist the help of your kids,

and they're all,

"But, Mooommmm, we've been at school for 3 hours and it's a half day and my nose is stuffy and I'm starving and I have to go to the bathroom,"

so you promise that they can install their new video game on your computer if they just help you with one shot...

...except that they're totally not into it at all, and someone can't get their fingers to go straight

and you get fantastically frustrated and start barking things like,

"Get that hand up there!  Straight!  It has to be straight!  No....closer.  I can't see that letter.  It's supposed to be a word!....Alright hold it right there.  Now....pretend you love each other,"

and it turns out nothing like you thought it would, but now you're too disheartened to do anything else and all you want to do is heat up leftover coffee since it's too early in the day for leftover wine,

and really, there is none,

because whoever heard of leftover wine,

and you try to come up with some clever way to convince everyone else that this picture works...

You know when that happens?

Yeah.....I can relate.

A Conversation Among Photogs....

So, my dad says to me,

"Why did you bring your big lens?"

And I said,

"Because I need the 2.8.  I need the light."

And he said,

"Why don't you just use the flash?"

And after I stopped retching and gagging and writhing on the floor I said,

"I don't particularly enjoy flash light.  It kind of sicks me out."

And he said,

"Yeah, but your 2.8 is a 70-200mm.  You don't need that in here."

And I said,

"I know, but it's what I have that lets in the light.  My new dream lens is a 50mm, 1.4."

And he said,

"I think I have that."

And I said,

"You have that!"

And he said,

"Yeah....I think I do.  A 50 1.4, right?"

And with my jaw on the floor I said,

"Uuu haa a hihy wun don hur!?!"

which, if my jaw wasn't on the floor, would loosely translate to

"YOU HAVE A 50, 1.4 AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW FOR SURE IF YOU ACTUALLY HAVE IT!?!  ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME!!!"

Then he went and got it out from under the pile of t-shirts and computer manuals and DVDs on the great literary masters that he keeps on his office bookshelves and he brought it down to me.

"Is this what you're talking about?"

And I fainted.

And he said,

"I never use it.  It's too bright, and it's got no depth of field."

And I swooned.

And he said,

"Here try it if you want."

So I did.

Love Love,