Peg Kerr's Journal

I got an email from LiveJournal noting that April 27, 2022 is the 20th anniversary of my setting up my LiveJournal.

So I've been thinking about this, and about what starting to blog on LiveJournal and later Dreamwidth opened up in my life.

As I had noted in my very first entry, I had kept a daily personal journal for 25 years at the time I started my LiveJournal. So I was very familiar with the process of writing about my life.

What was different and what proved to be almost seductive was that for the first time in 25 years, I got reactions to what I was writing.

I wrote about my family, about parenting, about my fandom obsessions, about writing, about my struggle to cook for my family. I wrote about politics. I wrote about all our family rituals (May Day, 12th Night, etc.). I wrote about my karate journey, from white belt to black belt. I wrote about depression. I wrote about whatever I was thinking about. Eventually, I wrote about Rob's illness and death.

Twenty years ago was a more innocent age, and I would probably make different decisions about how frankly I spoke about things if I had known then what I know now when starting to write. But for the most point, opening my life in this way has been a blessing, and I have made so many remarkable friendships. Online friendships ARE real ones.

The background of the collage includes text from my very first entry, and the color green is the green I used in all the icons I created. Otherwise, it shows various things that have cropped up in my journal over the years. I certainly didn't have room to include them all. I think I may create a separate Soulcollage card for "Blogger." Edited to add: And I have done so, here.

Blogging



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

When I had moved out in my twenties, I needed a kitchen table. My Mom and Dad brought one to me at my apartment. I still remember them carrying it across that long parking lot on a hot summer's day. I'm not quite sure where they got it. Used, maybe, or perhaps from a relative. It was painted an ugly shade of thick brown paint.(Edited to add: Rob remembers that there was a thick coat of dark green OVER the dark brown.)

I spent weeks stripping and sanding that table down to the bare wood, working in the outdoor patio behind Rob's apartment (this was before we were married). It took so long because I had to dig into the crevices in the legs with the edge of a nail file to chase every last bit of brown paint out in the detailing of the lathe-turned grooves. You can still see tiny bits of the paint, like shadows, proof that I was not an expert used furniture refinisher by any means. I don't remember what the wood was, but I stained it a red maple color and covered it with a protective gloss. I remember how vexed I was by a stray hair that floated in on a breeze and caught in the gloss and affixed itself there, like an insect caught in amber.

We moved it to our first apartment together, and it became our first table. When we moved again, to our house where the girls were born, the table was put in the dining room. Rather too humble, aesthetically, for the space, but it fit perfectly, and when we covered it with a cloth, and put the best dishes on it, it suited us well. Two leaves could be pulled out from the ends to add length whenever we had guests.

Over the years, of course, there were scars. Delia the toddler banged her spoon incessantly, and so there is a patina of half-moon shaped scars on her side of the table. (We always sat at the same places.) Once, someone put a candlestick on the table, and some liquid spilled and soaked the felt cushion underneath, leaving a stain which marked the varnish. There is the smear of nail polish where Delia was experimenting, and I couldn't rub it off. I didn't want to try anything stronger that would take off the finish. I'll admit I wasn't always scrupulously quick about wiping away everyday stains.

It's used, battered, and hardly an heirloom. But we loved that table. We grew our family around it, and told our jokes, and traded our bon mots and cracked each other up. We had raging arguments, often about whether onions must be eaten or not. Fiona banged the back of her head against the back of her chair 1,346,234 times and never never remembered not to do it the next night. We ate our Christmas breakfasts and celebrated twelfth night there. We brought various hopeful Boys to join us. Fiona perfected her pterodactyl mating call there. We held hands around it and blessed our meals, and cried and screamed and raged and loved each other there.

We didn't have a hearth, so we used a table instead.

My mom is moving from the apartment she shared with Dad to a smaller senior complex. She had to downsize, and so she offered us her dining room table, the one I grew up with. It, too, has a rich family history, and many happy memories. It is bigger than ours: we will have to take leaves out and put the ends down, and we can't sit in the same configuration, because you can't put your feet under the drop leaf ends.

But. It, too, is the family table with a lot of lovely memories, and I hated to see it go to some strangers. Yes, we will take it, I said, and when the girls leave home, Rob and I can take all the leaves out, drop the sides, and it will work as a long narrow table for just the two of us. And then one of the girls can take our table when they leave to set up their own household.

Mom is going to be using the old oak table she had in her kitchen, the one she received from her mother-in-law (yet another generation's worth of memories).

So I have taken the legs off our table...



We will have to do our Valentine boxes breakfast Japanese-style, on the floor, tomorrow morning,



and then hustle it into the basement, so the dining room is clear when the truck brings Mom's old dining room table to our house.

And our old table will wait, patiently, in the basement, until either Fiona or Delia move out, painstakingly reassemble it, and gather friends and a new family around it to make a new generation of memories.

I tried this, and it was really surprisingly good: Vegan Fudge, made with no sugar, butter or milk. The secret? Black beans.

Naturally, no one else in my family will eat it. All the more for me, bwahahaha.

"Would you like to take some of the carrot ginger soup I made last night for lunch today?"

Delia shook her head vigorously no.

I sighed. "Won't you at least try it?"

She ducked her head down like a turtle and said so earnestly that I had to laugh. "I respect it."

"But I don't like ginger."

Ladies and gentlemen, take a moment to place your hands over your hearts, please. I have done it. The impossible dream, the goal I've pursued tirelessly for years, despite scorn, derision, humiliating failures and countless setbacks.

I have actually found a way to serve kale that my family liked. Delia tried a chip and said in a tone of vast surprise, "That tastes GOOD!" She even took the leftovers for lunch today.

My child. Took kale to school for lunch.

It must be a sign of the apocalpse.

These are amazingly easy and guilt free. Highly recommended.



(Tip: I've seen other recipes that have suggested adding a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar along with the oil. May try that next).

Me (the woman who never learns): "Fiona, are you actually picking out every single bit of red pepper in that spaghetti sauce?"

Fiona (the indignant, self-righteous teenager): "No!"

Rob (the snickering onlooker): "Just all the ones she can find."

From Easy Vegetarian Dinners

Start to finish: 30 minutes. Serves 4-6

nonstick cooking spray
1 small onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic
1 small fennel bulb, trimmed, cored and thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
12 ounces acorn, butternut or turban squash, seeded, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch chunks (about 2 cups)
8 oz. Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved (about 2 cups)
1 14-oz can vegetable broth
1/3 cup dry white wine or apple juice (I used hard cider)
2 TB snipped fresh sage or 1 tsp dried sage, crushed
1 TB snipped fresh rosemary or 1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1 medium tart apple, cored and coarsely chopped (about 1 cup) OR 6 dried apricots, quartered
1 15-oz can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 TB sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar
1 TB honey
salt
ground black pepper

Lightly coat an unheated 4-quart Dutch Oven with nonstick cooking spray. Preheat Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and garlic to Dutch oven; cook and stir for 5 minutes. Add fennel, squash, Brussels sprouts, broth, wine or apple juice, sage and rosemary. Bring to boiling, reduce heat. Cover and simmer for about 8 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Add apple or apricots. Cover and cook about 3 minutes more or just until sprouts are tender. Add beans, vinegar, and honey; heat through. Season to taste with pepper and salt.

To serve, ladle into bowls.

Per serving: 201 calories, 1 g total fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 690 mg sodium, 44 g carbohydrates, 11 g protein

I am so fed up with trying to feed my family.

Fiona left for a meeting at the library, eating a plain white bagel before she left. Yes, this is what Fiona eats; white pasta, white bagels, buttermilk waffles. That would be all she would eat, if the universe was ordered to her specifications.

For the rest of us, I suggested chicken waldorf. No, Delia will not eat chicken.

I suggested vegetarian chili over potatoes. No, we are all out of Amy's vegetarian chili.

Rob suggested the little 4 oz. steaks we have in the freezer. No, Delia will not eat steak.

I suggested ham and cheese over potatoes. No, Delia will not eat ham.

At this point, I just want to throw in the frickin' towel and say, "screw you, I'm going out to buy my own dinner. Find some way to feed yourself, because I won't."

Except that I can't afford to eat out.

No, I am absolutely positively not asking for advice. Any attempt at advice will be met with the business end of a howitzer. I am just venting. You have been warned.

I hope that nmalfoy won't mind if I hot-link to one of her icons:



edited to add: Aaaaaand that's another frickin' pizza in the frickin' oven. What, that's like nine or so in the last month?

Well, Delia has said that she wanted to try more foods with different grains. So I thought maybe she'd go for it, since it had rye flour. Unfortunately, no. Delia proved surprisingly reluctant to actually help me make it, and then the whole family turned their noses up at what was put on their plates. I couldn't believe it. I mean, how many times do I have to try to come up with something new and interesting?

Maybe I had the proportions wrong or something. I knew I should have stopped and picked up the cloves since I was out. I certainly used enough sugar.

I mean, really. What's not to like?

Report to the Timbale Quality Testing Team:

Delia reports that she sorta kinda likes quinoa. The texture was acceptable. It tasted okay. It looked okay. It smelled okay.

Does this mean that she ate the three timbales I gave her for dinner? Hah, foolish friends list, of course it does not. One was disemboweled into bits on her plate, and the other two were banished back to the refrigerator. The problem? It was the dried apricots I had minced VERY finely and mixed with the quinoa. "So dissect it," I said. "Eat the quinoa and leave the apricot bits on your plate."

Alas, the sad fact remained that parts of dried apricot had TOUCHED the surface of the quinoa. Quel horror! This was enough to render the entire timbale Taboo and Unacceptable and therefore Destined Only for Banishment To The Garbage.

All the rest of the timbales in this batch are mine.

Delia suggested hopefully that perhaps a future timbale, mixed with, say, cheese instead of the Dreadful Apricot, might be acceptable.

However, I have been led by the nose down this primrose path before of "Well, I might eat it if you'd only . . . " before and I remain deeply skeptical.

I remain,
your ob'dt servant,

(Ms.) Peg Kerr
Chief Cook and
Director, Timbale Testing Team