Oh, cruel world.

Sometimes you can be cruel when you mean to be kind. Sometimes, in the process of just doing the regular, expected things–going about your life, doing the things you have intended to do, walking right on by, going from one thing onto the next–you fail to give someone attention that they really need.

I have been going to a nursing home not too far from my grandma’s twice a week, to visit my great-uncle Doug (my late grandpa’s older brother), who is in there for rehab after a car accident. I have enjoyed getting to know Uncle Doug and his family, and have gotten to recognize a lot of the faces over there at the nursing home, both staff and residents.

One time when my sister Titi, along with Caleb and Deirdre and I, visited him, we brought a pie which Caleb had made for him. Titi remarked afterward on how bad she felt, seeing all the other nursing home residents, looking at us wistfully as we walked on by. We were obviously visiting someone; we were obviously bringing a pie to someone. But we weren’t visiting them or bringing a pie to them. The stark contrast could be seen in their eyes; someone else was getting visitors, while they just sat there in the same-ness, with no visitors and no pie.

I hadn’t even noticed that. When walking through the nursing home, my mind was always on visiting Uncle Doug. When Titi mentioned that, I made a mental note to try to remember that everyone else there was just as much of a real person as Uncle Doug. Of course I knew that, but I mean to let that knowledge perhaps affect the way I act.

This is easier said than done, as it does take going out of my “comfort zone”. As I continue to visit the nursing home, I’ve tried to make a point to smile and say hello to the nursing home residents out in the hallway if they catch my eye. Usually they are silent,  occasionally giving me a nod or a faint smile, but mostly just looking on silently and with a seeming resignation.

There’s this one guy that I’ve noticed several times. He always seems to wear a blue sweater, and I think he sometimes has oxygen hooked up to him. When I see him, he is usually very quiet, and looks sad, with downcast eyes. While a lot of the others are lined up against the wall in their wheelchairs, this gentleman often seems to be slowly wandering through the hallway in his wheelchair. One time when I walked down the hallway, he was in the way of traffic in his wheelchair, almost blocking the way. As I walked toward him, I gave him a little wave and said hi.

Though he had that sad, almost stupefied look, he noticed my wave, and he waved back. That was notable to me; it was like he was making a connection with me, whereas most of the other residents there seem to almost avoid my gaze–because of course, I am just another person whooshing on by to visit Someone Else.

Hello again, world.

Hello, again, world! It’s me. I’m here, and I haven’t forgotten how to do a blog post, all evidence to the contrary.

So much has happened since I last wrote. There are all kinds of things I would have liked to chronicle here, only to find myself too tired to write about it when the time came. The biggest change impacting my life has been that we have moved. It seems to have happened so fast, in one way! We were looking at houses even back in the spring, but at that point it still seemed like something very surreal. Sure, we were looking at houses . . . even getting very interested in one particular house, but it still didn’t seem like it actually ever would happen. Whenever I thought about the fact that we were almost definitely going to move, late at night in bed, I felt weirded out. I didn’t know what to think about it.

Slowly, I got used to the idea. At first it seemed like something so strange and so wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the reasons for moving, but all the ways in which I enjoyed the old property, and the regularity with which I went over to help a neighbor, made it feel so right to be there and so bizarre to think of moving.

It’s amazing to me what a full circle I’ve come, from not wanting to move, to being all settled into a new house, enjoying and appreciating it. At the same time, that’s saying it too simply. When I think back to how I felt before, there was a lot of confusion in it; I actually wasn’t sure if I wanted to move or not. It seemed exciting, something new. But there were so many memories attached to the old place–it was home. But I knew, if I got my supposed wish and we never moved, then I couldn’t complain about all the things that bothered me about the old house. I couldn’t complain that it felt so cramped, I couldn’t complain that we only had one bathroom for all dozen of us, I couldn’t complain that it was falling apart. I couldn’t complain that my room was so small, and there just never seemed to be enough room for anything. Because after all, I didn’t want to move, right?–and that was the trade-off.

Belated photos

I have several posts with lots of photos that I never posted. There’s one all the way back from the winter. There’s a series of photos from May, and there’s a bunch of photos I took up in the wood recently that I have been re-sizing for my blog. Now, which should I post? Should I post them in order, starting with the winter one even though it’s from so long ago?

I have to stop this habit of getting lots of photos ready for posting, but never posting them. I spend so much time JPG-Smartsaver-ing the photos, resizing them, increasing the contrast, and figuring out which ones to post and in which order. It all just takes so much time, and before I know it it’s months after when I’ve taken the photos, and I’ve never actually posted them.

Since something is better than nothing, here are a few photos from the spring/summertime bunch:

Okay, that was more than a “few”. Each of these photos belongs to a series of dozens of photos, and I have a hard time narrowing them down. There’s a lot of unique good ones out of each set. So, of course, I want to post them all, but that’s sooo many that it’s overwhelming.

Good Times

My friend JoHanna invited me to come over while most of the rest of her family were gone at a conference. I was excited about it, and had a good time. JoHanna is my friend Cassandra’s sister; Cassandra wasn’t there because she was one of the ones at the conference. Their youngest brother Micaiah is friends with Caleb, and he invited him to come over too.

When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to sleep over at a friend’s house, but it never happened; I have never slept over at anyone’s house but relatives, till now.

When we got there, JoHanna and I talked about garden stuff, and went out to see her garden–she’s growing a vegetable garden, and we both like to see things grow and produce. She probably enjoys it even more than I do, but sometimes I have tips to pass along which I heard from my dad, mom, or someone else with a green thumb.

After supper I worked on scrapbooking while she worked on a project of her own. I was surprised and happy to discover that we were both able to get stuff done, and talk at the same time. I have a hard time multi-tasking; also, I am always so wishy-washy that I have trouble figuring out how I’m going to do it. But this time, I was not plagued by indecision so badly. I felt like going, “WOO-HOO! I am finally scrapbooking the photos I’ve taken! Now that I’ve finally started again, I’m going to do ALL of the photos I ever took!!” Ha. (All 3,568,834,201…. of them )

Elizabeth, JoHanna’s younger sister who was also home, was in the same room the whole time, so we were a threesome. I played music from our music collection on my laptop on random shuffle, and both she and JoHanna seemed to appreciate the songs. “I never listen to music, really. Well, not very often,” Elizabeth said. “I like your music better than ours!”

She would remark on the songs sometimes–usually, “I like this one!” (and bobbing to it, or making a funny remark: one song started out dramatically, “In the Beginning….” and she quipped, “….was the End!”) but occasionally, “This doesn’t sound good…” or “Too slow and boring” (I agreed with her, in that case!) We have a pretty nice collection, because there are so many different people in our family who have bought so many different styles of music, that each song that plays is something uniquely different from the previous one.

There were some times we all had a good laugh together. There was an elusive bad smell in their (spotless) house, which we couldn’t figure out the source of. Was it perhaps a diaper in the bathroom? Nope. Was it the garbage in the kitchen? Nope. It seemed to be coming out from the floor. After much investigation, JoHanna was pretty sure it was coming from garbage in the garage.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop commenting on it–”That STINK! Oh, I don’t like that stink!”

I teased her, “Really? We all love stink!”

Pretty soon Elizabeth was making both herself and JoHanna laugh by how many times she’d impulsively exclaim about the smell. (which really didn’t seem that bad, to me.)

JoHanna said the smell didn’t seem to be coming from outside, but hey, we could send Caleb and Micaiah outside searching for it, in case!

Either Elizabeth or JoHanna said, “They’ll ask, ‘What did you do at the ____’s house?’ and they’ll reply, ‘Oh, we went searching for a stink!’” They both laughed.

Reflections on this suburbia dwelling

My aunt and uncle live in the suburbs, I guess you’d call it. The houses, even though they are different, look like cookie-cutter houses–each a slight variant of the next, but you feel sure that there’s an exact copy of it a little farther down. The houses are very close together, so instead of looking out at the varied landscape of lawn, fields, and trees forming the horizon as at home, I look out at houses neatly set side by side, each with a garage, each with their own little ornamental trees and shrubs. At home, I can see neighbors from our house. But here, your eye doesn’t even have to wander to look from one to the next; they’re all right there in a row.

It used to bother me to walk down the street here. All I could think of was how at home, there are things for your eyes to rest upon as you take a walk, whether it’s a walk down the street or up our hill–there are views, there are hills, there are fields and trees. Here, it felt there was no where to go–I felt penned in by the houses, houses, on every side, no matter where I went.

But now, though I still wouldn’t want to live here, it doesn’t bother me. I guess I’ve gotten a little more used to it. I kind of like the way the neighborhood is set on a hill; at home, we are in a valley (of sorts), so it makes an interesting change. I like living in a valley better, but for one thing it is interesting how there is seemingly more sky here; the horizon is much lower.

I spend most of my time inside, or out on the porch. I’ve gotten so used to my aunt and uncle’s house that it feels quite comfortable and familiar, and I’m doing my own usual things–my own projects, and the Internet is the same whether here or at home–that it’s almost a jolt sometimes to go outside and remember that there are people out here.

Of course, there are always people outside of my narrow four walls of existence. But it’s a much more immediate realization when you go outside and you actually see them. At home, I can hear the neighbors sometimes, but I don’t see them usually unless I take a walk. Over here, at regular intervals, someone will walk by on the street, passing by right in front of me. In the evening especially, kids will be outside, shooting basketballs or going up and down the street on their scooter or bike.

Dog-sitting again

I’m dog-sitting again for my aunt and uncle again. It’s funny, after the week when I was first dog-sitting, when I got home it felt as if I had never been gone. In some ways the week following, when I was home and doing something different each day, felt much longer than the week of dog-sitting where I did pretty much the same thing every day. Or maybe it didn’t feel longer; just longer than a week usually feels? Because when I had to leave to go dog-sitting again on Sunday, it felt like, “Was it really only a week ago since I was last dog-sitting? It seems like so much has happened since then.”

Yet now that I am back at my aunt and uncle’s dog-sitting, it feels like I never left. As I spend half an hour watering all my aunts grasses and bushes in the evening (she asked me to water them every day), I feel like I’ve been doing this every day for three weeks. As I let the dogs outside, then back inside, then back outside, it feels like this is a routine that has been going on for a long time.

I just think it’s so funny how my mind “erases” things so fast. When I got back into the rhythm of home life again–making supper, washing and drying a lot more dishes than I do when I’m over here and it’s just me, helping a neighbor, etc.–it seemed as if the whole week of dog-sitting hadn’t even existed. I think I do that a lot with other things in my life too. When you’re at certain phases in your life, it seems like no other stage in your life ever existed, and no new one ever will.

So what do I do with with all the time alone? Well, I bring a lot of projects to work on. And I don’t wind up doing hardly any of them! I could be so productive over here, if I’d just focus on working and do nothing else. Instead, I work on something for a while, then get restless and look for something to eat (not really because I’m hungry, but I just seem to do that when I’m feeling bored) and get on Facebook or something and see if there’s anything new. Then, I go back to working on something.

Pesto Calzones

Okay, here goes. Gotta write another post, before I fall into the habit of not posting again!

On Sunday, I made pesto calzones for supper with pesto still leftover from last year. I was kind of amazed there was still some left in the freezer–enough to make the calzones, and yet more after that–we have made so many batches of pesto lasagna over the past year, it seemed like surely we must have used it up! But then again, it seemed like I spent practically the whole summer last year both cutting and processing parsley, and cutting basil and turning it into pesto! This summer, I have only cut snippings of the basil once so far, and it was NOT two huge 13-qt bowls of cuttings like I’d often get in one day last year! Partly that is because I grew less of it this year–a lot less–and partly it’s because, although the basil plants are doing great, they have yet to turn into magnificent basil “trees”. (Lol. I exaggerate.) Probably they need more water; I haven’t watered them faithfully this year, as I did last year. I like to water things, but I just seem too busy lately to get around to it.

For anyone who doesn’t know what pesto is, it is basil, olive oil, pine nuts (but we always use walnuts instead), Parmesan cheese, and garlic, blended together to a paste in a food processor. Pesto lasagna is our family’s general favorite way to use pesto (if anyone wants the recipe, ask) as well as Fresh Tomato Pesto Pizza when the tomatoes come on. But it had been so long since we’d had Pesto Calzones (recipe at bottom of post), I wanted to make them for a change. When I was younger, it seemed such a special, “heavenly” meal–they were only ever made on birthdays, if someone requested them. We had a lot less pesto on hand back then, too.

Collin seconded the wish for Pesto Calzones rather than Pesto Lasagna, and since he’s going to be going back to college before I know it, I decided I had better hurry up and make them.

The first thing to do is to make the bread dough. I have made bread before, but I was unsure of myself. My older sister makes wonderful bread using starters she makes the day before, or several days before, and Evan often makes stupendous pizza crust or great rolls by just “making it up” as he goes along, throwing in some semolina flower or whatever he thinks would be good in it. He has a good instinct for it.

I asked Evan for tips on making the bread. He didn’t feel like elucidating on it, as it seemed quite simple to him, and he directed me to Titi. Titi said, “Well, I usually start the bread the day before. Evan more often makes bread the same day, so ask him.” Rather than asking him again, I walked away smiling to myself at how they both said to ask the other person.

About the only thing I know is, well, you put in flour, yeast, and water, knead it, let it sit, and knead it again. And really, that pretty much is all. Titi gave me some pointers–if you’re using a full 5-lb bag of flour, put in about 6 cups of water; yes, put in the water first; put in about a 1/2 TB of yeast, and 1 (or 2, I forget what she said) TB salt; no, you don’t have to wait for the yeast to dissolve in the water before you add the flour.

“How long do I knead it?” I asked.

“Till it feels right!” Evan replied, sounding frustrated that such a self-explanatory thing need be explained.

So I didn’t worry about it. I added more flour, because it was so sticky it was clinging to my hands in globs, making it hard to knead–I wound up having to add a lot more flour. (Not so much to make  it dry, but workable.) I kneaded it for a little while, let it sit for a half hour or so, and kneaded it again, putting it into a bowl greased with olive oil.

And then, the warm day and the yeast did the rest. Warm weather is great for rising bread! By the time I was ready to use it, it had doubled in size, I think.

The filling for the calzones is quite easy–just mix in some ricotta with the pesto. Our recipes for “Pesto Calzones, More” (we had to up the recipe, as the amount we made before was no longer enough) called for 3 cups of pesto and 3 lb of ricotta. That sounded like dubiously little pesto to me, so I added another 1 1/2 cups of it.

The recipe instructed to divide the dough in half, each half into 3 pieces, and each of the three pieces into six, or something like that, for a total of 36. That actually didn’t sound like very much to me, for our family full of grown and growing boys. However, as I began to cut the dough into the allotted sections and to roll out the individual calzones, I discovered even a smallish lump of dough made actually quite a large calzone! The recipe said to put about 1/4 cup of filling in each one, but that looked like a tiny amount, so I put in more like 1/2 cup or more. I was glad I had stretched the filling with extra pesto to make it go farther.

The recipe said to roll each one out so that the dough was about 1/8″ thick. Doing that for each one, made the whole thing take quite a while longer than it originally seemed it would. When two baking sheets were filled with 6 calzones each (they only barely fit–as I said, they were large calzones), I put them in the oven and worked filling up another two sheets. In the 20 minutes that it took for the first batch to be done, I still hadn’t finished making the next batch!

I was rolling them out as fast as I could. I had to keep re-sprinkling the table with flour so that the dough didn’t stick. But to tell you the truth, I was kind of enjoying myself! The calzones baking in the oven smelled really, really good. When they came out (I had to switch them around in the oven halfway through to prevent burning), they looked perfect–they had puffed up and were firm, golden brown on the bottom and lightly so on top.

Because I had been more generous with the filling than the recipe anticipated, and also because I had made a bit extra dough, I ran out of filling before the dough was gone–it only made 28, not 36 calzones. It was  fine, though. Everyone gobbled Pesto Calzones to their heart’s content, and there were even a few leftover! There would have been more leftover, if Caleb and Deirdre hadn’t eaten another after supper was over .

They came out very yummy. Besides the pesto, the bread part was really good.  A large part of what made the bread come out good, I do believe, was the very high temperature they were baked at (450!) and how thin it was rolled–it gave it a really good texture.

However, they always seem a bit lacking as a complete supper. Also, I am beginning to suspect that the sad truth is that I don’t like pesto as much as I used to… hehe. Although it tastes good, it doesn’t taste “heavenly” like I used to consider it! And I tire of it faster. It used to be the thought of tiring of pesto was alien–you mean there’s not enough pesto to go around, rather! But now, most definitely it does grow old on my palate. I, personally, think some batches of pesto come out better than others. While I was making them, I tasted the pesto from two bags, and it tasted better from one than the other.

Just as a side note, I made a salad with this meal with the second-planting of lettuce in my garden. I was amazed that, after the week in the 9o’s when I had been gone (one day it got up to 99!), the lettuce hadn’t bolted! Lettuce doesn’t like heat, and it tends to bolt if it’s in the 80′s for any length of time. With temperatures in the 90′s, I would have considered it a practically impossible that it wouldn’t bolt. (When lettuce “bolts”, it begins to tower up with smaller and smaller leaves, and tastes extremely bitter.) Is this the secret? – It was Forellenschluss (also called Freckles) Romaine lettuce! I remembered seeing on the seed packet that it is good at with-standing the heat, and that is why Titi selected it. Admittedly, it was starting to get a little stalky. But it definitely had not yet bolted, and it didn’t taste bitter. It did taste a bit more… grassy, or something, than lettuce does in the spring! I also had some Majestic Red lettuce in my garden, and that–even the ones that hadn’t bolted–did taste bitter.

Back to Pesto Calzones! Unfortunately, I didn’t get any picture of them. I wasn’t planning on posting the recipe or writing about it at the time. Here is the recipe, scaled down (I would have scaled it down more, but then I would have had to change the bread recipe too, which is a bother):

Pesto Calzones

Makes 24.

1 1/2 batch Speedy Gonzales Bread

2 cups pesto

2 lb ricotta

Make the dough. After mixing dough, place it in a bowl greased with olive oil and let rise.

While dough rises combine pesto and ricotta.

Punch dough down to deflate. Divide into 24 pieces by dividing into 4 pieces, then each piece into 6. Form each piece into a ball. Roll ball into circle about 1/8″ thick.

Place about 1/4 cup (I use more like 1/2 cup; it depends on the size of the calzone) filling onto one side of each circle. Bring the other side of the dough over the top of the filling, and seal the edges with water and the flat edge of a fork. Prick the top with a fork in a few spots and place on greased baking sheet.

Repeat with remaining dough balls. When you are about 3/4 done, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake them for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. Serve immediately.

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I’m not sure what bread recipe to put in here. The recipe says to use Speedy Gonzales bread, which we don’t usually make these days; as I described in my post, we just make bread in a bowl and knead by hand, and we use less yeast, I think. You don’t need as much yeast when the weather is warmer, by the way. Here’s the recipe for Speedy Gonzales bread, and then I’ll give the approximate recipe for how I made the bread… not tonight though. It is confusing me trying to figure out what proportions would go with the recipe I gave. I used a whole 5-lb bag of flour, which made enough dough for 28 large calzones, plus one small loaf of bread leftover. I need to figure out how much of everything you’d use to make less calzones.

Speedy Gonzales White Bread

14 1/2 oz bread flour

1/2 TB sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 envelope Rapid Rise yeast

1 cup hottest tap water

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 egg

1 tb sesame seeds (these last two ingredients aren’t needed unless you’re making it into loaves)

Put flour, sugar, salt and yeast in food processor bowl. Pulse 2-3 times to blend.

With machine running, pour hot water through feed tube slowly, till all is incorporated and dough forms a ball. Let process 40 sec.

Remove from work bowl. Place on flour dusted surface. Cover with greased plastic wrap and then a clean towel. Let rest 10 min.

Grease 2 8×4 loaf pans.

Punch down dough by kneading 1-2 times. Divide dough in half. Place each half in loaf pan. Cover with greased plastic wrap. Let rise in warm place, such as unheated oven, for 35-40 min. (till double).

Preheat oven to 425° (Remove bread from oven first.) While oven is heating, combine egg and salt. Brush on loaves, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

After allowing 10-15 min for oven to heat up, put bread in. Bake for 20 min at 425°. Then lower heat to 400° and bake 10-20 min. more.

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