I have the day off and was just now searching for seasonal cookie recipes when I found something else, my great grandmother's sweet pickle recipe. Mom remembered being sent to fish cupfuls of them out of a big barrel in her grandmother's basement. Dommy lived a very long time but in my memory was too frail to put food by. Fortunately Mom followed ( Read more... )

Happy Halloween. Here are some sweet recipes for your recipe pumpkin.

Beets are one of my favourite vegetables, but I always just boil, peel, slice and serve with butter and a few sweet spices. Kind of boring, and it is not a meal unto itself. I was going to attempt borscht, but the recipes generally call for cooking and then shredding the ( Read more... )

Brenna is down for a few days. Last night at dusk we went for a long, brisk walk up the Eramosa River. This afternoon we made nine quarts of dill pickles, then carried the camp stove, hamburgers and condiments down to the little yard behind the building and had a picnic. She has inherited my great fondness for fresh, ripe peaches.

I had cucumbers that also needed to be turned into pickles. I'm running way behind, but there's no schedule. Eventually I'll get out of here, pick up Danny and head to the cottage this evening, where my anxiety will inevitably evaporate. We'll be out of internet contact until next Friday, although I might post by phone sometime. Enjoy your week, ( Read more... )

We were to have a party at the Book Shelf for OOTS volunteers last night. My revelation about the Bible had galvanized my work on the novel, inspiring me to write. I went downtown an hour early, bought a pint of cider and worked in the Green Room until my friends arrived.

We hung out together for three hours. I'm especially fond of Denise and Mat, ( Read more... )

We talk about time management as if it could be managed. Really we can only manage ourselves. Time does what it wants, always the same thing: an inexorable drama drawing us into vortices of life, love and death. Moons and planets revolve. Great lights flicker. People respond like automatons, repeating the same movements over and over. Or they break ( Read more... )