Books!

While in Louisville for the CiRCE conference, my uncle took us to his favorite bookstore in town, Half Price Books, We pulled ourselves away after about two hours and too many books, even though we hadn't even browsed several of our favorite sections. The score I was most excited about was this from the clearance shelf:

We had just listened to Ken Myers' interview with Peter Reinhart from shortly after this book came out. A flawless hard cover copy for two bucks? Struan, here I come.

Recipe Organization

I recently reorganized all of my countless recipe clippings, sticking them in page protectors in binders.

I also culled a great, great many of them, only keeping those with ingredients I actually keep on hand and that have relatively simple preparations (good bye, Martha Stewart-23-step-recipes-within-recipes!).

Somehow I still have about half a dozen granola recipes, though. 

Simplifying

I'm always reading on blogs stuff that people try out once or twice and then want to tell you how awesomely life changing it is. Are they still doing it a month or two later? Who knows? They'll never tell.

I've been making our own laundry soap for about eight months, using the classic borax, washing soda, fels naptha recipe. It's worked just fine, but this week, I bought liquid laundry detergent again.


There are many things I'd like to DIY, more than I will ever have time to. It turns out that laundry soap is nowhere near the top of that list.

CiRCE 2012

Part of our summer travels this year included attending the Circe conference in Louisville (where we also got to visit with some much-loved extended family). I got the impression that a lot of people go to Circe for the discussions of the "big picture," and I certainly enjoyed those conversations as well. However - and I guess this is just my introvert self showing, as I spend too much time in my own head contemplating life, the universe, and everything as it is - I found myself most enjoying the more practical talks I attended, probably because I have a hard time getting down to implementation on my own. Two sessions I attended in particular renewed my Charlotte Mason enthusiasm.

Fall Creek Falls

The first was a talk by Dr. Paula Flint, founder of a school in Arlington, TX. Hearing Dr. Flint describe how Charlotte Mason methods have facilitated their full-inclusion model at her school was incredibly exciting and really affirmed my increasing conviction that CM methods could be the key to bringing a classical curriculum to the low-income population (which generally has quite varied academic needs) we hope to serve with our own school some day. I like so much about her school's mission statement:

"The mission of the Flint Academy is to provide an education in the classical tradition for all students regardless of their learning needs, integrated with a Christian worldview, having the Scriptures at the center, and presented in a family oriented, nurturing environment."

Rock Island State Park

The second session was Cindy Rollins' Morning Time talk. I need to renew my commitment to only listen to advice from homeschooling moms who have actually graduated a few kids! Their perspective is so much healthier than a lot of what I can/do waste my time reading on the interwebs. Cindy's talk inspired me to add a few more things to my not-preschool plans for the year. These plans have us starting in mid-August, and I hope to post some of them by then for some kind of accountability (more practically, I'm also sharing them with Bob). Also, I am totally stealing Cindy's line that "morning time is for when you are in prison and the rats are eating your toes."

What's been eating your garden?

Beet Greens Pesto

A while back, we had a family from our parish over for brunch, and I decided to make these baked egg-stuffed tomatoes. But I was also making marinated beets from the garden, and, having just read Tamar Adler, decided to use the beet tops to make the pesto for the tomatoes.

I also threw in the beet stems, which made the pesto kind of stringy - fortunately, this wasn't too noticeable in the tomatoes, which were pretty delicious. I did wind up with lots of leftover pesto, some of which went with pasta, where the stringiness was more apparent. Meh.

The rest I smeared on a steak prior to broiling. THAT was good.

Indigo Bunting

One advantage of our weedy front "herb garden" is the amazing birds it attracts. I spent way too much time trying, but this was the best picture I ever got of what apparently may be an Indigo Bunting.

Notice the lettuce gone to seed on the right

Vacation

I think you've gotten your vacation just right when you are as happy to come home as you were to leave.