Garden, 2013

I know. I haven't talked much about the garden here at all since last year. This is because we haven't done much with the garden. Why? There is no reason. None. Sure. We've been planning the attic renovation and, for the past four weeks, we've been busy carrying out that attic renovation. But last year, I couldn't get enough of the garden. We started our plants in February. By the time they were ready to go into the ground, the tomato plants were falling over and nearly 2 feet tall. This year? We didn't get going until the end of March, a whole month and a half later and the seedlings we ended up with? Well... I can't say yet that they made it.

I blame it all on the fact that winter stuck around late this year.

Over the Victoria Day long weekend, we finally turned our full attention to that patch of land. We needed a break from the house after last week's intense day in the dust and because of the neglect in the back yard, we had a lot of work to do.

All those weeds. Not to mention the planting. First things first, we took a trip to Home Depot nice and early Saturday morning to pick up all our plants. Admittedly, we went with very little plan. We knew we wanted tomatoes and peppers, but other than that, we went intent on seeing what was there and building a garden plan based on that.

We were home by 10, ready to get to work. So many weeds to pull! So much ground to work!

But, we finished. And now, our garden looks like this:

It seems less lush and green, I know, but now it's weed free and planted with a plethora of vegetables. Specifically:

• Tomatoes
• Green peppers
• White onions
• Spanish onions
• Chives
• Broccoli
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Parsnips
• Sugar snap peas
• Pole beans
• Butternut squash
• Cantaloupe
• Cucumber
• Watermelon.

Ambitious?

Definitely. 

Impossible? 

Well. Maybe. We'll see! That's part of the joy of gardening, finding out how much is too much, learning about each new plant that finds its way into the garden, and allowing for the possibility of failure and death. 

Did you spend some time in your garden this weekend? Spend time outside in the beautiful sunshine?

Chocolate Cream Cheese Crepes and Strawberries

This is a paid post, sponsored by Philadelphia Chocolate Cream Cheese, through my involvement with SheBlogs Media. 

However, all opinions in this post remain my own.

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I love cheesecake. So much so that, for our wedding, instead of your traditional fluffy wedding cake covered in fondant, we had three different flavours of cheesecake cupcakes, all made and lovingly decorated by my mom. Every special occasion, I go for the cheesecake - the New York style one, though a good no-bake cherry cheesecake is pretty delightful too. I've even made one or two, with decent success.

So, you would think I would be really excited when I started to see billboards of Philly chocolate cream cheese spread  popping up around town, right? After all, cream cheese and chocolate make a pretty awesome cheesecake. But, there's something about it on toast that doesn't seem right. Toast is crunchy, wheaty. Not quite right for the decadence of chocolate cheesecake.

And then I bought a tub. I experienced first hand the stroke of genius someone at Kraft had. Take cheesecake. Whip it up. Put it in a little tub.

But I'm going to suggest that it doesn't belong on toast. True, I haven't yet tried it on toast (maybe I'll save that for tomorrow morning), but there are for more majestic things this delicious chocolaty creamy decadence could go with. Baked into the middle of a breakfast muffin perhaps. Icing a cupcake. Mixed in to pancake batter. Or, on crepes. With strawberries.

Oh, these were so tasty. I'd even go so far as to say they were perfection. Perfectly chocolatey and perfectly sweet stuffed with just the right amount of strawberries and Philadelphia chocolate cream cheese.

This was, admittedly, my first time making real, authentic crepes. The Husband likes his pancakes thin, so whenever we have pancakes, I water down the batter just for him. But these were better than those. I used a tried and true recipe: the basic sweet crepe from the Joy of Cooking. The result was crepe-like, not anywhere close to a pancake. They were, bonus, way simpler than I expected them to be.

So, make these! Smear them with Philly, add some strawberries, roll it up and consume!

Sweet Crepes with Philadelphia Chocolate Cream Cheese and Strawberries
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

1 cup flour
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar

Philadelphia Chocolate Cream Cheese
strawberries, sliced

Whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for half an hour. This is the perfect amount of time to prep your toppings and clean up your kitchen a bit.

Spray a non-stick skillet with Pam or melt approximately 1 tsp of butter. Cook the crepes using about 1/4 cup of batter per crepe. The crepe is ready to be flipped when the middle of the crepe bubbles and the edges begin to look a little crispy.

I used a spatula to flip. If you're fancy, you might be able to flip it by tossing it in the air. That is beyond my capabilities. A spatula is just fine.

Cook on the second side until speckled golden brown.

Smear a bunch of chocolate Philly all over one side of the crepe. Add the strawberries in a line, preferably off-centred in the crepe for easy rolling. Roll, sprinkle with more strawberries, eat!

If you haven't tried it out yet, keep your eye out on Philly's Facebook page: I hear there's going to be a coupon on May 21st! On the facebook page, there are also details about a fun 'Breakfast in Bed' challenge you can participate in - a little social media arm-twisting to get someone special to serve you breakfast in bed!

Have you ever made crepes? Or are you more of a pancake person? Waffles, perhaps?

Have you tried the new Philly chocolate yet? Thoughts? Am I being unfair to the humble toast?

Warm blankets, Casseroles, and a Video

This week has been a difficult one. Last Tuesday, a Facebook friend posted a photo of a missing person's notice sitting on the dash of his truck with the caption, "Heading out of find my buddy today." We all know the end of the story now.

I am grieving with the community of the Ancaster CRC.

One: Warm Blankets

Since we've been messing around with the attic and, effectively, removing all the insulation we have, and, since the weather has been unpredictable and nasty, it's been kind of difficult to control the heat in our house. It's cold upstairs or boiling downstairs, no in between. 

This has me thinking about warm blankets, even though the weather is warming up. Warm blankets have me thinking about cool evenings sitting on the porch all wrapped up with a glass of wine or maybe a cup of tea. Those days are coming! In fact, they're here!

What I really want is one of these.

These blankets are made out of old saris. Shelley, the owner of dignify.ca, sent me a small sample of the blankets, and even in the little square format, I could tell they would be soft and cozy, perfect for cool spring nights.

Unfortunately, they're a little pricy for me right now. Instead, one of these days, I will get around to crocheting myself a good, full-sized afghan.

Two: Casseroles

Talk about comfort. Casseroles and I get along really well. I'm not exactly sure why, but I've come to realize that most of the meals I make involve more than one different kind of food all mixed together. Chicken, with potatoes, with veggies? Why wouldn't you put all of those things together in a casserole dish with some kind of gravy or white sauce and bake it for 25 minutes? 

Chicken and asparagus in a cream wine sauce

Three: This Video

Worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet.

 

This Dusty Bookshelf: Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska

Drunk Mom: A Memoir
Jowita Bydlowska

This book is going to mean a lot to some people.

In the year after her son was born, Jowita Bydlowska relapsed into intense alcoholism. Three years after her recovery, her son now four years old, she's published this novel, a reflection, a walk-through of that year and everything she and her small family went through. She paints a clear brutal picture of addiction and the grip in which it can hold you.

I have never struggled with addiction - unless playing endless rounds of Candy Crush before bed counts, but I think that's the farthest thing from what Bydlowska and others who struggle with substance abuse experience - and I've never been a mom, so in some ways, I don't believe I experienced the full impact of the subject matter Bydlowska chose to address. She's received some flack for it with the critics, those who believe her memoir is nothing but a self-promoting exposé that will do nothing but hurt her son in the long run. I can't agree. Even though I can't relate to what Bydlowska went through, even though I know very little about alcoholism and have never experienced its painful impact, I know others, women, mothers, even children of alcoholics, to whom this book will become important, a reminder of the human behind the addiction.

Oh, so human it was.

Bydlowska chooses to approach the subject purely from a personal perspective. She leaves out research and statistics. She doesn't go into depth on ways to get clean, or the scientific explanation of what goes on during withdrawal and detox. Every word she writes is personal, experiential, a memoir in its truest sense.

Memoir or, perhaps, blog. When I started the first few pages, the first few chapters, I told the Husband, "I don't think I can handle this." It wasn't because of that gritty opening scene that finds her in a public bathroom snorting the cocaine she found in one of the stalls. It was because of the voice Bydlowska chose to write in.

You know that blog style?

The one in which the blogger separates out each sentence into its own paragraph?

As if each were so important, they need space around them.

Emphasis.

Could you handle a whole book of it?

I thought I wasn't going to be able to. Honestly. Two chapters in, I was nearly ready to drop kick the book onto the lowest shelf on my bookcase, the one that collects all the dog hair. The story held me though, and I'm so glad it did, because I realized, halfway through, that style - while slightly annoying - contributed something to the reader's own sense of drunkenness. That space between each idea? I was familiar with it. It felt like I was tipsy, floating just outside of any situation, taking longer than normal to absorb the scene and form a thought. As I turned the last page of the book, that writing style, which I was dead-set against in the first two chapters, made the book for me.

Read this one. It's worth it.

(Full disclosure: I received my copy of Drunk Mom from Randomhouse Canada for review purposes. However, when I review a book for a publishing house, I am not required to give it a glowing review. All opinions in all of my reviews are exclusively my own and not influenced by any outside party.

Thanks for the copy Randomhouse! I truly appreciate it.)

Project Attic of Awesome Update: Let There Be Dust!

According to our schedule, by the end of Saturday, by the end of week 5 of this renovation, we should have accomplished the following:

• Reinforce the ceiling joists with floor joists
• Support the new floor joists with one ginormous beam
• Rerun the existing electrical 
• Support the ginormous beam with posts and rip down the living room wall. 

A little further explanation: in conjunction with this attic renovation, we planned to take a wall down on our main floor. Technically, our bungalow is a 2 bedroom, but, since we put a set of stairs in one of the bedrooms, it wasn't exactly useful space anymore. Logical solution? Rip down the wall and open it up to the living room. This was especially logical since we will still have a two bedroom house what with the beautiful attic suite we're going to end up with. 

The problem with all this is that the wall we wanted to rip down is, surprise, surprise, a supporting wall. You're not exactly supposed to rip down supporting walls. Good thing I married a structural engineer. Hence, all that reinforcing we have worked into our reno plans.

On Saturday, when we woke up, we had half the attic floor to reinforce, the beam to build and the wall to rip down. And, unlike previous weeks when we had help from family, it was just the Husband and I. Saturday morning, I told the Husband I didn't want to go to bed until that wall was down.

The start of our beam. In the end, it was five 2x8s wide.

We worked hard. I became deft with the drill, finding any and all tasks that needed to be done but didn't necessarily require the strength of my Husband's arms or the use of power tools that have blades.* I hammered and drilled, wedged fresh wood into place, and nailed joist hangers, one after another. At 2 pm, we started on the posts downstairs. At 3 pm, we took the sawz-all to the wall. 

We didn't finish cleaning up the dust until 10 pm. 

But! The wall is down, and the long hours and the hard work was all so worth it. As our space emerged from the dust, it became clear just how worth it the change was. We should have done this a year ago, attic or no attic, second floor or no second floor. Suddenly, our house feels like a proper sized home. It doesn't feel abnormally small anymore. Sure, it's still small, but it doesn't feel tiny, doesn't feel cramped. 

We're thrilled. 

(Despite the swirls of dust that are going to take weeks to eradicate.)

* I cannot and never will be one of those women who approaches power tools that could take your hand off with confidence. Blades make me anxious. That said, I did pick up the sawz-all a time or two during the day. Even that was a nerve-wracking experience. It may not be very liberated of me, but if the husband wants to run the power tools, he's welcome too. 

I can handle a drill well enough though.

Photo Friday Thank You

Dear friends,

I have been so very humbled and blessed by you. Yesterday, I posted on a topic that I've put a lot of thought into, a decision that has been crucial in shaping who I am. I often find these posts difficult to write, second guessing my words, worrying that the way I say something will be misunderstood. Even when I am confident in each word conveying my ideas with strength and clarity, I worry about the person that will disagree, that will walk away offended and hurt. I am terrified of that person confronting me and ripping apart the words in a way I never intended for them.

But yesterday? You didn't all agree with my decision. Some of you didn't agree with anything I said in my post, I'm sure. And yet, you shared yourself with me. Your own ideas. Your own viewpoints. Your own perspectives. I am so grateful.

I am grateful that we are willing to talk about things that don't have one clear answer. I am grateful that we can accept each other with openness. I am grateful that you were willing to share your worldview and that, by doing so, my own was so deeply enriched.

So, thank you, all of you.

Jeanette

Commemorating Three Years with Some Last Name Talk

Yesterday was our third wedding anniversary.

It was probably on our third date, maybe our fourth, that I told the then-boyfriend that I was planning on keeping my own last name whenever I got married. It was a deal breaker, I said, if he wasn't ok with that. Intense? Too soon? Maybe. But I'll be honest: I was looking for forever. 

I also told him that if he ever asked my dad for permission to ask me to marry him, a) my dad wouldn't give it because obviously the boyfriend had no idea who I was, and b) we wouldn't be getting married.

Eight months later, the boyfriend became the fiance without parental approval. We were both 22. What did we need parental approval for? 

At some point in the planning process, we had dinner with my grandmother: the then-fiance and I, my parents, and my dad's parents around the table. The topic of my last name came up. I don't know how. How doesn't matter. I confirmed what my parents already knew: I would be keeping my last name. This point had never been a topic of discussion. The then-fiance had known, right from the beginning of our relationship that I would not give up that counter-cultural decision. He knew that it was important to me.

Across the table from me, I could see my grandmother's face twisting. 

"Oh," she said. She has a very specific way of saying it, a way that oozes disapproval.

"Yes. My last name is important to me. It's who I've been for the past 22 years. It connects me to my parents, my brother and sister. Why should I have to give it up?"

"But that is disrespectful to your husband," she said. So direct. So black and white. 

I can't remember how I reacted. Did I laugh? Did I argue? The conversation moved on without me and never since have we acknowledged it. 

The issue of women's names is a contentious one. After all, you could do the 'feminist thing' and keep the last name you grew up with but, hey, you know, that's your dad's last name. If you're trying to escape the bonds of patriarchy, you better come up with something all on your own. Or, take your mom's name. Or your great-aunt's. But that name doesn't mean as much to you? Well, I guess your shit out of luck. You can't win.

In my social circles, the issue tends to hardly come up. I belong to the Christian Reformed Church, which is progressive in some areas and not progressive enough in others. Among my friends, it is a point of pride to take on their husband's names, as if becoming a Mrs. elevates your social status, as if finally being free of the stigma of single-hood* allows them to fully embrace adulthood. It's assumed that, at the end of a ceremony, you will be two people joined by one name. No other option is considered.

But why not? 

Biblically, people didn't even have last names. 

Don't get me wrong: I will never look down on someone for taking her husband's last name. Some of the time, I wonder myself if it might be nice to share that one name with the Husband. It's a choice for which there is no right answer except for the one that is right for you.

But, sometimes, I fall into wishing. Wishing that one of my friends might make the same choice I did. Wishing that my church could get my name right in the birthday list in the bulletin. Wishing we would stop getting mail for a woman that doesn't exist. Wishing that my grandmother would recognize how personal and important that decision is to me. 

I can tell you this: we have been married for three years and we haven't shared a name for any of it. We are no less a family, no less committed, no less respectful, no less ready to tackle the rest of our lives together.

Happy Anniversary to us!

Tell me, did you keep your last name, or, if you're not married, do you want to if you do get married? Did you put much thought into the decision? Have you run into resistance to it?

* Single-hood and the stigma is a whole 'nother topic, especially if you want to talk about single-hood and the church. But, I would probably be stepping way out of my league there.