The house smells like chicken and beets

Auntie Skylar started a new blog about her latest project and that got me to thinking, "hey, I have one of those; I should dust it off and see how long it takes before I can prove I know how to use a semicolon correctly."

The Big News around here today is that David woke up from a bad dream to a Buzz Lightyear. The way Jaime tells it, he told her that he had a bad dream this morning and woke up and turned over and there was Buzz and he closed his eyes and opened them again and Buzz was still there. I am the one who put Buzz in bed with him. After years of keeping my finger securely in the hole of the dam holding back the Buzz Lightyear, I was finally overwhelmed by the forces of nature. It happened when the mother of David's bestest friend said that this friend wanted to give David his Buzz Lightyear. She is standing there with it in her hand and I didn't have whatever it might have taken to say, "No, he can keep it." Just the other night, David and I were eating ice cream on the front porch after sunset when he spotted a star. I taught him how to wish on a star and he wished for Buzz Lightyear. So this morning I put it in bed with him before I left for work.

He called me later at work and told me that he really liked the Buzz Lightyear. There was not a shread left in his voice of a little boy or toddler or anything. I was struck by how very grown up he sounded. I have been thinking a lot lately about how little he was when he was born and sighing.

This evening I made chicken stock and pickled beets and eggs. Actually I finished stock that I began several days ago and then ran out of time. I have been reading a couple of books about food and cooking, which inspired the stock: Nourishing Traditions (I'll omit the embarrasing subtitle) and Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. As a result of both of these, I have been doing a lot of experementing in the kitchen. I've made various things such as Kombucha, cream cheese and whey, Kim Chi, pickled carrots, five shortbread cookies, dumplings, pop-overs, fritters, and, this evening, stock and pickled beets. Not sure what I am going to do with the stock. Tomorrow is a fasting day, I am out of town Thursday through the weekend, and the Apostles' Fast begins Monday. So basically, I will not have the oportunity to do anything with it unil July. But the house smells nice, if you like beets.