Hi guys! For some reason the new column is posting on the home page this week. But you can find it here, where you will see many frightening things there. The specter of tooth decay! A wild beast! Roasted cauliflower! But you won't see this. Birdy's Charlotte in her Halloween bunny costume. Enjoy the rest of your week. And don't make me tape a paper carrot to your face.

Oh, you are lovely. You are. Thank you for your kindness, and for offering me the comfort of being known. How sweet that is. It is indeed a sad and reflective time.

Which may explain the French fries over at family.com. For some people, comfort food is oatmeal and scrambled eggs. For others, it is salty grease. Hello!

And meanwhile--the crackers! Who knew? I read other people's food blogs, and it's all, "These look great!" And "Thanks for another super-duper recipe!" But if you think that for one second I would trade your frank crankiness, merciless teasing, or grumpy skepticism, then you really don't know me. I do love you. (Not that I don't love you when you're appreciative too, of course!)

xo

[Edited to add: That's a sad Birdy after she did her own crown tattoo and didn't realize she was putting it in her hair. I just thought that picture so perfectly conveyed the way I feel sometimes.]

We have a cord of wood waiting in the driveway. We will stack it and then we will burn it. Every year, at this moment, the wood strikes me as a metaphor, even though it just is what it is. "It's like a cord of wood in your driveway," I say to Michael, metaphorically, and he laughs. It's work and it's warmth and it's the season changing. It's wood in the driveway.

A childhood friend died suddenly--a person who was vital in every sense of the word: he was healthy, a community activist, the father of a 6-year-old and a 1-month-old, a husband, son, brother, friend, wildly beloved by everyone who knew him. I had the opportunity to grieve with old friends, to be inspired, to let gratitude and sadness and fear wash over me in alternating waves. I wish I'd understood better that knowing him was the opportunity of a lifetime. I wish that loss were not so firmly barnacled to love. I wish that time would pass more slowly. I wish, I wish, I wish. But I want for nothing.

I am at it again, this heartbreak of mine. And now there's this kitten in the mix. "He's getting so big!" I said last night, with tears in my eyes, and Michael kissed me.

There he is. With his brother Ben, who turns ten on Friday. What the?

Meanwhile, there are recipes up at family.com: The Soup of 1000 Vegetables, which offers some of my old-school self-flagellating melancholy along with a really good pot of soup. Hurray! And Homemade Fancy Crackers. Yes, it's crazy to make your own crackers, but you'll never go back.

Sending love to you, here from this cold and golden world.

Menace to (Clothespin) Society

Dear ones!

Please do visit over at family.com, where there are a couple of useful recipes. One for my dad's spaghetti sauce, which is out of this world, and the other for granola bars, which solves the problem of making granola into a portable substance.

Also, and I know this is bribery of the most grotesque sort: both columns offer actual, clear photographs of the baby featured below.

And by below, I mean here, in these photographs of the clothespin dolls sent to Ben and Birdy by Erin K., a stranger! A stranger who is a reader and feels like a friends. Erin, thank you. A million times, thank you. They are even more lovely in person, but I present you with:


The Woodland Gnome, A Casual Person, The Mermaid Ballet Girl, and Rapunzel. As Birdy has named them. They are perfectly beautiful and cherished by our entire family. Even that whiskery shadow back there.

Or maybe *especially* that whiskery shadow. Look out, Rapunzel! This is not the rescue you've been dreaming of!


Oh dear.

Bartering, Peach Jam, Conjoined Twins

Ask and ye shall receive! Herewith, over at family.com, the peach jam recipe. Even Michael makes this jam. Even Michael. Michael who, when we lived in a vegetarian co-op, would, on his night to cook, put out gallons of milk and boxes of Life cereal. That Michael. (Now, you're thinking to yourself, is that a good way to positively reinforce Michael's challenging of himself in the kitchen? Michael's making of peach jam? By shaming him publicly? No. No it is not.)

And the deodorant recipe is Angry Chicken's, here. (It really works. And I recommend following her advice of going in on the ingredients with a friend or two. Assuming you have friends you can approach with such a request: "Hey, you seem kind of stinky and broke. Want to start making homemade deodorant with me?" We made an evening of it, complete with bottles of wine and shea butter.)

And homemade bikini wax is here. Easy and, as my kids noted, delicious! All I'm saying is: let it cool, okay? Let it coooool. That $25 dollars you saved isn't going to go very far at the ER when you're getting your groin burn treated.

And my Brain, Child piece is here. (Hey, thanks for asking! Sorry so strange!)

And Krishna from last week's comments: wow, it gets so much easier to do things. I used to imagine going to my grave having only eaten miniature Snickers bars since giving birth to Ben in 1999. When I showed up a party recently with homemade crackers, our friend Lee said, "Catherine, I think you need to have another baby. You've obviously got too much time on your hands." Sigh.

And my bartering request: I got an offer to trade pickles and jam for sex toys and lingerie. Life is good.

A quick note from Ma Ingalls before the long winter sets in

Hello, hello! It has been so long, and so much has changed, hasn't it? The little ones are at school, the afternoons are bright, sleep is breezy and cool, the trees are painting each other overnight. (Hello, inadvertent rhyme scheme!)

I have made tabouli
and chocolate zucchini cupcakes
and two late summer dips.

And you--you have been to Echo Lake and Petit Lac Echo. You've worn your undies on the beach and explored the foresty corners of your yard. You've been obsessed with Pippi Longstocking and you've started started school and you've started homeschooling and you've given your children shot glasses as little cups to drink out of (which I would never do). You've made roasted tomato sauce that came out great, and some that came out weird (girlinaboyhouse Nicole, maybe it turned orange from air getting blended into it???). You've been home and away and delighted and exhausted and now--well, now it's now. And you're here.

And meanwhile, I was pickling beans


and jalapenos

and carrots

and pickles


and also I was making peach jam and wild grape jam and autumn olive jam, and also dill sandwich slices and pear fruit leather and bread and butter pickles and underarm deodorant and also there in the front, that little jar of brown something?


Bikini wax. Homemade bikini wax.

I have become the DIY equivalent of the lady with the all the cats who loves all her cats so, so much, even though she doesn't understand how it is that her one kitten turned into all these many many cats and the cat hair and the cat food smell and the gravelly litter underfoot everywhere. What has happened, and how?

They will find us and we will be buried under mason jars and mason jar lids and pickled sneakers and homemade Tampax and I will still have this goofy smile on my face and I will send them away with a jar of jam.

"It's like money in the bank!" I keep saying to Michael, gesturing at my rows and rows of jars, and he smiles at me strangely and says, "It is a little bit like money in the bank." Ah. Yes. I see. In fact, canning instead of working is really nothing at all like money in the bank. It's almost the opposite of money in the bank. If only I lived in a bartering economy. Sigh.

Dwindle

I am not sure how it's been so long since I updated here. Just as I am not sure how it is that when you try to buy your kid a new swimsuit, they laugh like summer already ended fifty years ago and why don't you just buy some nice back-to-school items and keep your mouth shut. Time passes strangely, and is hurried along in various ways, and I just want it to be summer forever and ever and not have that 80's MTV Don Henley "Boys of Summer" song moving its melancholy tune through my head all the time. Alas.

First things first: I posted some camping recipes, here. Because Charlotte wanted them. But honestly? I tried to make them user-friendly even for the non-campers out there. And then I posted this grilled chicken, which, truth be told, is one of my ten best-ever recipes, and is one I've actually been looking forward to posting since I started this column. It is so, so good. And finally, today, I posted a great and super-easy tomato sauce. Which Ben ate for breakfast.

We've been working, reading, playing, bickering, eating, drinking, and lounging around the window air conditioning unit. The kids have each celebrated their "Special Day" which is a long-standing summer tradition. You get one day to do whatever you like, but with a couple of ground rules: only one thing that costs money, and just the family all day. I swear it is a huge case of spin, because we end up doing stuff we would have done anyway (play board games, rent Jungle Book, go to the park, make pancakes and popcorn), but somehow it all just seems incredibly fun and thrilling when it's your *Special Day*.


What are you doing that's special? (Besides looking at my butt in that picture.)