An American Tradition

Okay! Now that we've all spent the last three days eating, drinking, and generally celebrating Our Great Country with wild revelry, it's time for us to continue the celebrations with yet another great American tradition: The family roadtrip.

That's right. Going Country is going on a roadtrip. A., Cubby, and I will be hitting the road tomorrow for Illinois, where my cousin is having a very large reception on Friday to celebrate her wedding. The wedding actually occurred in Mexico a couple of months ago, but they're having this reception for all the people (hi!) who couldn't make it to Mexico. My dad rented a house on a lake in Wisconsin where all of my immediate family will be staying. It's going to be a party.

But first we have to get there.

Today I will be spending my day gathering the various accoutrements belonging to the child, as well as all the food we're bringing in the car in coolers, plus clothes and the jars of jam for my family and toys and water shoes and those chunks of wood we're bringing for my dad to bring home . . . Well. It's going to be a busy day.

We're planning on leaving at 4 a.m. tomorrow. The idea being that we can just take a sleeping Cubby out of his crib, put him in his carseat, and make it a few hours down the road before he actually wakes up. Of course, this may end up being like the time we took him on a late-night plane ride hoping he would sleep and then he, uh, didn't. But at least with the car we can stop and get out and let him run around. To that end, we've planned a route that does not involve much freeway driving, so we can pretty much just pull over whenever the need arises.

But still. We're talking about 15 hours in a car with a child who rarely spends more than half an hour in his carseat. It will be an interesting experiment. Cubby often pleasantly surprises me when it comes to untested situations, however. I guess if you expect the worst, then anything else is just a bonus.

No matter how those two and a half days on the road go down, we will eventually make it to Wisconsin, where we will sit on a different lakeshore and play with my niece and eat, drink, and be merry once again.

I will probably not be taking any time from the merry-making to spew my usual drivel here. Certainly not while we're on the road. If my parents bring their laptop and this house we're staying in has Internet access, I'll probably send a shout-out from Wisconsin. But I'm not going to make a great effort to do so. Just so you know.

So send all your positive vibes to the Family Blackrock as we embark on our voyage. And stay tuned for the undoubtedly hilarious stories that will result.

Hasta luego, poppets.

Celebrating

Saturday night, we had a bonfire on our beach with a few friends and a few fireworks someone brought.

Last night, our next-door neighbors had a much bigger bonfire on their beach with many more friends, an impressive array of food, a table fully stocked with every imaginable liquor, beer, or wine (plus some seriously kick-ass made from scratch margaritas--YUM), and a LOT of fireworks.

It was pretty bad-ass. They even had glow sticks. Our neighbors throw a good party. And I very much enjoyed attending a party in which the travel to the party did not involve strapping Cubby into a carseat and driving anywhere. Walking down the driveway and down the lakeshore about fifty yards is the way to go.

Today we have yet another soiree to attend. There will be more food. More alcohol. More fire. What better way to celebrate the good ole fun-lovin' U.S.A. than with three days of excess? Seems about right to me.

Happy Independence Day, duckies! Go have some fun and blow some shit up. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Feats of Strength

Telling you that A. is really strong is like telling you that Cubby is really cute, or that I really like potatoes. Understatement. That's what calling A. "really strong" is.

He's not a small man anyway, but his strength relative to his size is really phenomenal. Phenomenal in the literal sense, in that he's something of a phenomenon when it comes to lifting heavy things. Not weights on a bar, although he can do that, too. No, his incredible strength gets used with some frequency at Blackrock for practical applications like lifting the lawn tractor so I can put jack stands under it or lifting the washing machine so the dogs can kill a woodchuck.

Or this.

No one should be able to lift that stone like that. That thing weighs probably 350 pounds. But that was the stone that A. wanted for the end cap on the foundation wall. I couldn't even budge one side of it. So he lifted it into place by himself. It was, as the MiL remarked, impossible. But somehow A. made it possible.

He's a useful sort of man to have around. I think we'll keep him.

Fine, You're All Really Smart

Yes, they were salt cellars. As almost all of you knew, apparently with no confusion whatsoever. I guess my knowledge of antiques was sub-standard before living here, because I didn't know what they were.

In fact, that big salt cellar used to be just sitting on a windowsill as decoration. I had no idea it was for salt until the MiL took it down, washed it, and filled it with salt for the kitchen table. That's the one that sits at the table for communal salting at dinner or whatever. The smaller ones are the ones we use for dinner parties. Every person gets his or her own, which means there's none of that irritating jockeying for salt.

I especially hate when I'm at a big table of twelve people or something and I really want the salt but it's on the other side of the table and I don't want to interrupt conversation to ask everyone at the table to pass the salt all the way around to me. Individual salt cellars are so much better.

Salt cellars work much better than salt shakers at Blackrock. It's just too damp here, and the salt inevitably clumps and refuses to shake out. Even with rice in it. Salt cellars are the way to go.

Okay! Enough with all the formal stuff. Back to your holiday weekend and your barbecues and beer or whatever that almost certainly will not include cut-glass salt cellars.

Happy holiday Saturday, duckies!

Let's Play a Game!

Blackrock is, as I have mentioned before, an old house. It was built around 1864 and A.'s great-great-great uncle* (I think that many greats--anyway he's referred to always as Uncle Doctor because, uh, he was a doctor) bought it around 1890. So what we have here is over 100 years of continuous family occupation. What this means is a continuous accumulation of family furniture, papers, and other things that just . . . stay in the house.

One of Cubby's favorite things to play with is this umbrella stand that holds a bunch of random canes. Canes as in the kind of thing old men lean on and use to thump smart-mouthed children on the head, that is. I never paid much attention to these canes before, except to notice that many of them have very fancy heads on them. One is horn--like an antler, I think--one is ivory with a silver band, and one is gold. The gold one, which is Cubby's favorite, is inscribed with "Presented by ---to---" with the initials of Uncle Doctor's wife as the presenter and Uncle Doctor as the presentee. The other side is inscribed with a date of September 18, 1880.

What? Doesn't YOUR toddler play with a 131-year-old gold-headed walking stick?

ANYWAY.

The point is that Blackrock is full of things like this. Old things, and probably pretty valuable things. But I don't really want to know the monetary value, because we still use all this stuff. If I knew what it was all actually worth, I'd be a nervous wreck all the time. And really, what good are antiques that you can't use? You may as well just live in a museum.

Which brings us to our game!

Here is a photo of a collection of items that we use all the time. They were once common, but I had never encountered them before moving to Blackrock. Despite the size difference, they all serve the same purpose. And I think the big one and its contents will probably give it away, but let's play anyway.

So, duckies! What are these objects and what are they used for?

Tune in tomorrow for the answer! And some more mindless chatter. That is what you come for, right?

Playing Dress-up with Lettuce

At this very moment, I have an enormous bag of lettuce in the refrigerator. One of those plastic grocery store bags stuffed totally full with washed and spun-dry lettuce from the garden. This is the time of year when we eat salad almost every night. Although, "salad" sounds kind of fancy for what it actually is that I usually end up putting on the table, which is more often than not just the lettuce. I don't even add any other vegetables to it this time of year. Lazy. I've even gotten awfully lazy with my salad dressing.

I used to make salad dressing by putting olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little sugar in a screw-top jar, then shaking it violently until it was emulsified. If I was feeling fancy, I'd add a little Dijon mustard. But lately, I've just been shaking the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper right over the lettuce and mixing. It's fine this way, but can get a little boring when you eat lettuce as much as we do this time of year.

Which is why I was so psyched to see this post. Ann used to comment here a lot, but she seems to have disappeared from the Internet. Before she did, though, I saw the post she did about making ranch dressing. I love ranch dressing, and used to buy it sometimes. It was a nice break from the vinaigrettes that are standard at our house.

Like Ann, I always considered making ranch dressing, but was put off by any chopping of onions or whatnot. I mean, I can't even be bothered to grate a carrot into my salads these days, you think I'm going to a lot of effort for the dressing? No.

But I tried Ann's method, which involves mixing mayonnaise and buttermilk (or yogurt) into a consistency you like, then adding dry dill, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper until it tastes good. And you know what? It TOTALLY tastes like ranch dressing. I don't know why I was so surprised, but I was. And I've made it a lot this lettuce season already.

Some people might get all chuffy about the herbs being powders instead of fresh or the mayonnaise being store-bought. Those people are welcome to chop and mix and make "real" ranch dressing. I'm going to stick to this easy, maybe-somewhat-cheating method that's still a hell of a lot better than Hidden Valley.

Oh, and also? This ranch dressing is dangerous if you have tortilla chips around. Dip them in the dressing and you have a way better version of Cool Ranch Doritos. You've been warned.

The Beginning

Last night marked the official beginning of Canning Season 2011. It kicked off with mulberry juice, of course. As it always does. Irritatingly, I found when I pulled all the jars of juice out of the refrigerator that I only had five quarts, instead of the six I thought I had. When I had added the sugar, I ended up with a little less than five and a half quarts. So I only canned five.

I hate firing up the pressure canner for less than a full canner load. But I had already psyched myself up to do it (totally requires prior psyching, yes), so I went ahead. These are the first five of what will eventually be over 200 jars of food, assuming all produces as it should and I don't just go stark raving mad around September.

I have a history, you know.

ANYWAY.

It occurred to me that while I have shown you what the shelves in the Pit of Despair look like at the end of the canning season, I have never shown you what they look like at the end of eating season.

Perhaps you are thinking that would just look like a bunch of shelves full of empty jars? Well . . . yes. That is correct. But still, have some pictures. Pictures make everything more fun.

See? We're having fun now!

WOAH. The fun! It never stops!

What you see in the first (fun!) picture is four quarts of tomatoes, two pints of salsa, one pint of tomato juice, two pints of pickled jalapenos, and the green tomato chutney that's supposed to age a year before eating. That's it. Oh, and the elderflower champagne from this year.

The second (even more fun!) photo only has what's left of the jams and jellies, which mostly includes a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT of Seville orange marmalade. The MiL is pretty much the only one who eats it, so it goes slowly. There are also some dill pickles I canned a couple of years ago and then never used because they got all soft in the canning. I like my pickles crunchy. Any ideas on what to do with limp pickles? (Don't be gross now; I'm really only talking about ACTUAL pickles.)

Someone once asked me after seeing the photos of all the jars of food in the cellar if we would actually eat all that stuff. I think you can see that the answer to that is yes. We're good eaters. It's a point of pride, really.

So now I just have to re-fill all those shelves. Luckily, I have 27 tomato plants to help me. Bring on the tomatoes! The shelves are ready.