Birth Circle

The first meeting of the Birth Circle - Lancaster County is set for Tuesday night from 7-9 PM at James Street Mennonite Church. I have a couple of ladies who have said they will be there for sure, and I hope there will be more. I'm hoping for about 10 or 12 ladies. Fewer than that would mean there wasn't much interest and I'd feel like keeping us going would be an uphill battle. More than that, and we won't have enough space. I also think more than 15 or so people would make a conversation difficult.
So what are we going to do?
I am planning to meet a lot of similarly-minded mamas in this area and hope that we can get some organizational stuff done. We'll need to decide on leadership and how we would like meetings to be run and stuff like that. But I also hope that this first meeting will have at least some birth talk! So, how do I get that started? I have yet to decide on how to get a bunch of strangers to talk about birth. I am thinking of having a list of questions to pose as jumping off points for discussions. Now I just have to come up with those questions. If you have any suggestions, do send them my way.
I'll let you all know how the first meeting goes and update you on the questions I come up with if I think of anything good.

Fennel Soup

Okay, it doesn't look like much, but you get a picture anyway. It was really tasty. We have added another food - potatoes, and Owen and I seem to tolerate them just fine. This soup was especially satisfactory for someone who's been hankerin' for some creamy goodness. It would have been even better with some real cream, but for now, that creamy texture will tie me over. This is based on a recipe from Nourishing Traditions, but as you all know, I only take recipes as suggestions. Here's what I did:

Fennel Soup
1 bulb of fennel, washed and chopped
2 yellow onions, chopped
4 T. ghee (or butter)
1 t. fennel seeds
3 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 quarts of stock
1/2 t. pepper
salt to taste

Bring to a boil and cook ~3o minutes until all vegetables are tender. Blend soup, and salt to taste. Serve hot. Makes ~5 servings.

Quiet Block

This is a quiet block I made for Electra, um, almost 10 years ago. I've also seen them called busy blocks - pleasing because of the alliteration. They keep a baby busy and quiet, at least for a little while. This one has a zippered pea pod with 3 peas - the yellow one is a nod to Mendel,

. . . a flower pot pocket with a couple of flowers to plant, a shoe with a string to tie - or rather untie,

a lion with a tail to (un)braid, a squirrel with an acorn that hooks on his paw, the tree, or in his hole,
and a cowboy with velcro-ed chaps, a buttoned vest, and and lost hat that snaps on.After Electra was too big for it, it was passed through Roman and Keiko and now to Owen. I really enjoyed making it one summer during college, but like most things I make, you couldn't pay me enough to make one. I've had requests and offers, and I made another one a few years later. As a gift. It takes a lot of creative energy and a fair amount of time to make things by hand. I like to make quilts or blankets for new babies, but I just couldn't bring myself to sell them. If I charged enough to make it worth my time, effort, and materials, no one would buy them, and if I didn't charge enough to cover those, I'd resent it.
So back on topic, Carolyn wanted to know about sewing. Most of the sewing I do is much more utilitarian - PJs for Owen, diaper covers, curtains, mending. For the last 10 years, most of my sewing has been on a great Dial N Sew that Sharon gave me when I was making the dresses for my bridesmaids. It belonged to her grandmother and has been an awesome machine. I really appreciate what a great gift it was every time I use it. It is strong and can sew through anything, but it also does nicely on finer fabrics for delicate projects. It has a variety of single-color embroidery stitches you can do too.
If I were needing to buy a machine to do basic home sewing, I'd look into a good, older (1960's or 1970's) used machine from a sewing machine repair shop. They often sell them all oiled, adjusted, and ready to go. I like computers for writing blogs but not for sewing. All the computerized ones I've looked at are outside my budget and don't seem sturdy. The home sewing machines from 40 years ago were made of steal - for real - not plastic, and you can often find them well under $150, sometimes under $100. I would highly recommend the Dial N Sew's but there are lots of others, so just ask the folks at the shop. Another bonus for buying one at a shop is that they can do your servicing (should be yearly, but I'm looooooong overdue) and any repairs. Look for one that has forward and reverse stitching, a zig zag stitch, and if you're adventurous, some embroidery stitches. I like mine in a cabinet of its own. It is more ergonomic than setting on a table, and your entire work surface is level. Another personal preference of mine is a foot pedal rather than a knee "pedal" (not sure what it's called). The machine I use had the pedal mounted for knee use, but I just unscrewed it from the cabinet, put it on the floor, and have never looked back.*



*This entire post has been written using only my left hand!

Pertendin'

Owen has been doing a lot of "pertendin'" lately. Friday I lost him for a few minutes and found him up on the bed in the spare room feeding a doll his snack of pears and talking to her about some very important matter. If rule #1 is Let sleeping babies sleep, then surely rule #2 is Don't disturb a content child. I checked back in a few minutes later, and Owen informed me that the doll had "poopie diapah, needs a fresh one." So, of course, I obliged him with a diaper cover and a clean, dry diaper of his own and helped get her suited appropriately. The diaper hadn't been on her 3 seconds before he announced that it was now wet. Playing along with the game, I took it off, pretended it was now a new fresh one, and put it back on.
Nope, that wouldn't do. She needed a real, fresh one. So off he ran and came back with another fresh one and a sposie too. We decided to use the cloth since sposies are only for night time around here. She had quite a few changes in the course of only 10 minutes, but the game finally wound itself out. Thank goodness; I can't keep up with that much laundry!

Saturday morning he had a good time making pea soup for the same doll and a purple bear in his kitchen using the 2" peas from a quiet block I made for Electra. After he was finished cooking it, we were all cautioned to let the soup cool because it was too hot to eat; it was "steamin'." The pears and the pea soup were the doll's introduction to solids, I was glad they seemed to agree with her as she is now wearing diapers that need changing.

Home Brewing and Wine Making

We started our first batch of wine in January. It's a Chianti.
Last weekend, Tracy visited and we started another batch of beer - an Oktoberfest.
While wine takes about 6 weeks to get to the bottling stage, beer is much quicker. They were both ready to be bottled this weekend.
Friday night we bottled 47 bottles of beer. They should be ready (for Abram - I'm still not doing wheat) to drink in about a month.
Saturday night, we bottled 31 bottles of wine which should be ready in a month or two. I really liked this - even more than the beer. Seeing all the lovely colors of bottles (saved by us and from Freecycle) and shapes of bottles filled and corked gave me the same fuzzy feeling that seeing a shelf full of home-canned garden colors does.
I also liked using the corker. It's a lot easier than using the beer capper.
Our next adventure in this arena will be to do an all grain (no extract) kit of beer.

Buttons

One of Owen's favorite non-toys is the jar of buttons. He likes to get it down and run his fingers through them, scoop them, sort them, scatter them, pick them up again, and talk about them. Tuesday when we had them out, he picked up a flag-shaped button, sorted through the pile to find its match, and said, "two flags." He looked for a "nuder," but there wasn't one. Lately he has enjoyed using some disposable cups to sort them and "dump" them. This seems to be an activity that he never gets tired of; I am always the one to end the button session when we have to move on to make dinner or head away on an outing. It's a very mommy-intensive activity as he still has a proclivity to putting things in his mouth if the notion strikes him.

Compost

Yup, you're seeing right; that's my compost - egg shells, lettuce scraps, cilantro stems, lemon peels . . . Why am I showing you my refuse?
I just can't stand to throw away such wonderful scraps. We composted when I was growing up, and I continued once I was running my own kitchen. We have moved so often, that I have rarely had much of a chance to reap my own compost harvest (since I do cold compost). When we had chickens in Virginia, many of our scraps went to them, and they rewarded us with wild chicken antics to laugh at and wonderful eggs to eat. Last year, I had a rather yucky mess trying to figure out more on a hot compost in a closed container. Um, not going there again any time soon.
Moving into an apartment with NO green space upped the challenge, but I just can't put my fruit and veggie scraps and eggs shells into the trash - what a waste. So, I asked two of our favorite farmers at the market if they would like them. Who could refuse mostly local and/or organic scraps? I already knew they used compost - that's one of the reasons we like them so much. I save the scraps in gallon-sized water jugs, take them with us when we go to market, and drop them off at the farmers' van on our way inside.
So, what are you doing with your compostables? Even if you don't want to compost yourself or, like me, can't, I'm sure there is someone who'd love to add your scraps to their heap. I had two friends offer to take it off my hands after I told them about my solution. Hmm. . . maybe I'll have to start a rotation of where I drop off my compost. Nah. This is just too easy for me; I think I'll stick with it.