When we got off the plane on Grand Cayman, we were greeted at Customs by lines of white people, wearing beachy clothes and smelling of laundry detergent and sunblock. Lots of families. At least one person in each family group had a shirt touting a destination from a previous vacation. These were professional tourists. The kind that go on vacation to the Caribbean.
I go on vacation in the Caribbean, too. But I’ve never done it as a stranger. Our many trips to Trinidad and Tobago have been met with family at the other end, and our trip to the Cayman Islands was no different.
Since the Chaplain’s friend had arranged our accommodations, we didn’t know the address of the place where we’d be staying – something you need to provide at Customs. The Customs Officer called the Chaplain’s friend on his cell to find out the address, while we waited at the counter, hoping the friend would answer a call from an unknown number.
Anyone who’s ever made a pie knows they sure don’t come from nowhere. The labor involved is why it’s been over a year since I made one. But the fact that the pies in this book remained anonymous when it mattered is a big part of its charm.
If you make any of your meals at home, or have gotten at sucked into the urban homesteading movement (backyard chickens, gardening, or composting?), you may have found yourself making something extraordinarily time-consuming from scratch and wondering if it was worth it. I know I have.
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn’t Cook from Scratch, by Jennifer Reese of tipsybaker.com is part cookbook, part journal, and although I hate both of these words, utterly delightful.
Something magical happened today. I slept in. When I got up, the Chaplain left with the five middle kids for the strawberry fields. Our oldest was already at school taking a test, and I was left with the baby.
The baby and I read a story over and over (Tickle, Tickle, by Helen Oxenbury), then he described the pictures to me. (He pointed to one baby’s butt and said the longest string of intelligible words I’ve ever heard from him: “Poop diaper yuck sorry.”) After storytime, he played happily by himself and stayed out of trouble so I could sew.
When the truck pulled in later in the morning and everyone poured out of it, arms full of clementine boxes brimming with strawberries, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to set aside my sewing to start jam.
It turns out I didn’t have to.
When I was a young mom (I mean, when I had only three kids), One took an Aikido class. He was in first grade, and he hated it.
Through that class, we met and got to know a group of unschoolers. I was new to the homeschool community at that time and hadn’t really found where we fit.
I knew we didn’t fit with the unschoolers. Some of their life choices made my hair stand on end. Maybe it’s because they weren’t doing unschooling right, but their kids were poor readers. The families seemed to live lives of chaos where they didn’t potty train or wean until the kids were uncomfortably big, and there were no rules.
I sat next to one of the other moms as we watched our kids in the class. I mentioned we’d been making strawberry jam at our house. She looked over with interest and asked me about the recipe we used. It’s pretty easy to remember, and I related it to her.
