Going Greener

"Mom. Why don't they know how to weigh and label their jars when they buy stuff?"

"It's something you have to learn. I had to ask Christina how to buy olive oil in bulk. If you've never done it before, it's intimidating."

This time last year, I was on a "transfer everything to glass and quit using plastic" kick.

Spoiler alert: Quitting plastic is really hard to do.

When I started really paying attention to how much plastic is used in packaging, I was astounded. If you haven't done this already, just go to any grocery store and try to find something packaged without it—plastic cups, jugs, sleeves inside of plastic bags or cardboard boxes, resealable zippy bags. It's everywhere. One could make a full-time occupation out of simply avoiding plastic and still come up short.

Even though we may never get to "zero plastic" in our house, there is every reason to try to do better. This time last year, I started asking people lots of questions about how they avoid plastic. I started with Wyatt's pediatrician, because she was the one who presented me with the friendly challenge of getting plastic out of our kitchen. She said she's a big fan of glass jars for freezing, glass storage containers for leftovers, and reusable abeego beeswax wraps. I next canvassed friends on Facebook. I got more votes for glass jars, glass storage containers, and abeego wraps. I also got suggestions to use tea towels in refrigerator crisper drawers (instead of plastic bags), and Fresh Paper, which is amazing for prolonging the life of fruits and vegetables.

I also pretty quickly realized that I should buy in bulk, refilling glass jars instead of buying new (plastic) packages of food. So we ventured into Rainbow Grocery. On one of Wyatt's and my first trips there, I saw a very organized-looking woman with a bag of labeled jars that she had brought to the store to refill. We happened to walk out of the store at the same time, and I complimented her on how she had the whole process down perfectly.  She smiled and explained she had been buying in bulk for awhile, and she generously pointed out that it's a process, so I shouldn't expect to get into the rhythm of it right away. She explained that she keeps jars labeled with tare weights (more on that later), what goes in the jar (like, "Rice"), and the store code (the bulk number on the bin), so her shopping process is more streamlined. I asked her whether she waits to run out of stuff before she buys more (because heaven forbid cutting things that close). She explained that for some products, she has a couple of jars, that way she doesn't have to wait until she runs out before she refills one of the jars. And she said that when a jar is empty, she just puts it in her (reusable) shopping bag so she doesn't have to remember what needs to be refilled. So smart! With this role model's excellent suggestions in mind, I went home and dug out all my Bed Bath & Beyond coupons so that I could buy some storage jars.

Over the next week, I began a pantry overhaul, reorganizing dry goods into storage jars and making labels. During that process, I noticed that we had a mountain of those thin plastic bags you can get from the roll at the market to hold fruits and vegetables. Clearly we needed a new plan for our produce bags. So I bought reusable net bags from Simple Ecology. The bags are GOTS certified and made from "green" cotton. We have used the bags consistently for the past year, and they're great. When they start to look a little grungy, I put them through a cold water wash cycle and hang them to dry.

With food-plastic more under control, I moved onto personal care and home cleaning products. We can't really be trusted with glass in the shower, or with glass spray bottles of cleaners, but there was no reason to be recycling so many plastic bottles if we could just refill them. I began going to Green 11 to refill our lotions, soaps, and cleansers.

Compared to last year, we're using much less plastic, and we're comfortable with our bulk-and-refill-buying approach. More than that, I must have looked like I had it together at the store last week because I found myself in the bulk section of Rainbow answering questions about tare weights.

If you know about bulk buying and tare weights, the following is old news. If you don't, though, check it out. Buying in bulk is cheaper than buying the same item pre-packaged, but the tare weight (the weight of your empty container) is critical to that calculation. Let's say I'm buying raisins, and I've scooped them from the bulk bin into the clean, empty jar I brought with me to the store. When I get to the check-out line, the checker will weigh my jar of raisins to determine how much I owe. The way to avoid paying for the weight of jar is by knowing the "tare weight," or the weight of the empty container. So, before I fill my jar, I weigh the jar and the lid together, and write down that weight, measured in pounds, on a label I stick to the jar. When I get to the check-out counter, the checker can subtract the weight of the packaging (tare weight) from the total weight of the raisins and the jar (gross weight), get the net weight of just the raisins. That way, I only pay for the raisins.

I also pay attention to tare weights of the Simple Ecology bags. The weight, in ounces, is printed on the tag of each of the bags. But as I learned the first time I used the bags, that number is not very helpful for checkers where I live. It seems that check-out systems allow checkers to remove tare weights when the weights are in fractions of a pound, not ounces. When I asked a checker to remove 1.3 ounces from the weight of a bag of apples I was buying, her eyes crossed, and she took a beat. She then she poured the apples onto the scale by the conveyor belt to weigh them without the net bag, and then re-bagged the apples. As the check-out line grew longer and longer behind me, I started to imagine my future shopping visits and the checkers' impending dread as they watched me approach with my bags. My face turned pink with embarrassment just thinking about it.*

There is an easy fix, though. The checkers at stores near me (or maybe all stores in the U.S.?) need to know how much the bags weigh in pounds, so I did the conversion for them. Just multiply the weight of the bag in ounces by the conversion factor (.0625), to get the weight of the bag in pounds. Or, stated another way, where the weight of the bag is 1.3 oz: 1.3 oz x 1 lb / 16 oz = 0.08 lb. And that's the tare weight.

I wrote the tare weight of each bag on its tag with permanent marker, so now I can point the checkers to that number, and they can make the weight adjustment easily. Half the time, the checkers remark that the bags are great and ask me where I got them. With any luck, that means I am only being a little bit annoying with my "do-gooding."

*Marc pointed out to me that the weight of the bags is really very small, so I shouldn't think too much about it. But this was around the time that Whole Foods' weights and measures were being investigated, again, and I was feeling indignant about paying any more than the price of the actual amount of goods I purchased there (or anywhere else).

Balance

As a society, we talk a lot about balance. We're looking for personal balance, striving to maintain work-life balance, trying to eat balanced meals, and on and on. The photos that seem to go with "balance" are either of serene, willowy women, dressed in all white, with straight-but-bouncy hair or stones balanced precariously on one another.

Maybe balance comes easily if you're willowy and can wear white serenely while you find the balance points of oddly-shaped stones. I wouldn't know. For me, balance requires constant adjustments, some of which are really challenging to make. Recently, I wondered if I could just take a longer view and assess balance over a couple of months, rather than daily or even weekly. You know, ease-up a little bit on the routine, spend more time on certain things (writing), less on others (cooking and exercise), maybe it would all average out. Guess what? It doesn't. Just ask my too-tight dress and snapped-at husband.

So three weeks ago, I made some changes, re-established a routine, quit skipping lunch half the days of the week, and lo, life is better and my clothes are looser. On the rare days I actually manage to check-off all seven things that "optimize brain matter and create well-being" (focus time, play time, connecting time, physical time, time in, down time, and sleep time) on The Healthy Mind Platter (along with eating the ten cups of vegetables I should), I feel amazing. Most other days, I know I am doing better than I was three weeks ago, so that's okay, too.

But then there are days like Sunday, which was Mother's Day, when everything goes gloriously out of whack. Like lots of women, I have my own misgivings about the holiday, but they all took a back seat to Wyatt's excitement on Sunday morning. Marc and he made breakfast, and I wasn't allowed out of bed until it was ready. And Wyatt might have exploded if he had to wait even one more second to give me the presents he had made at school: a silk scarf he had painted into a rainbow ("Look! I made that lime green!") and then ironed, and a drawing of flowers in the sun. Also, I drank at least a half a bottle of pink champagne with take-out for dinner. It was a relaxing end to a fun day visiting the newly renovated and expanded SF MOMA.

Most of the balance I experienced on Sunday was in the form of incredible artwork and architecture. And if I'm honest, I would have really enjoyed being able to linger in ANY gallery for longer than about 90 seconds. But at the same time, it was wonderful to see how Wyatt has begun to appreciate and interact with art. The last time we were at the museum was just before it closed in 2013. And no surprise, our little builder is far more interested in sculpture these days than paintings, and he's way more intrigued by modern art than the more classical works we saw at the De Young the other week.

Even though we hustled through the seven floors of the museum, I was able to get a few photos. The stranger who happened to walk into my photo of Richard Serra's "Sequence" helps to show the scale of the work. We walked through "Sequence" many times and I cannot wait to do it again. Wyatt was perplexed by "Nonsite" (aka The Pile of Dirt), and it was a great way to start talking about what makes something art. I'm a huge sucker for typeface and gradients, so "Fools" also made it into this set. I want to go back and camp out in the Ellsworth Kelly galleries, among other spots.

Wyatt and I almost went back to the museum on Monday. But because balance will be mine (whether I want it or not), Wyatt basically collapsed in an exhausted heap after school. There was no getting him out the door in time (or at all) to make our ticket time.

Curiosity, Nature, and Knitting

Last week didn't feel like a series of days for me. It felt like a bunch of fragments that never seemed to add up to anything useful. All fits and starts, with ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, and by Wednesday, I finally accepted that it was probably going to be one of those weeks where I'd get nothing real accomplished.

But I was wrong! First of all, I got some reading done.

Since October 2015, I have read exactly two books. Abysmal, I know. I used to read all the time, and now? Knitting fills my eyes while podcasts fill my ears. I know, I know—audio books!—but I have yet to warm to them.

The book I started in October and finished last week was Proof: The Science of Booze, by Adam Rogers. Don't let my many months of reading it fool you—it was an absolutely terrific read. I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in alcoholic beverages or science.

The second book I read, I started on Thursday, neglected it over the weekend, and finished it on Monday. I could not stop reading it (and reporting the most interesting parts to Wyatt and Marc). The book is Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness, by Nathanael Johnson. I heard about it on one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible.

This is a book I wish I could have read during the years when I was walking around with baby (and later, toddler) Wyatt. Back then, I had a child who loathed his car seat and his stroller. His screaming was ear-splitting, and heartbreakingly frustrating. No loving words, kind pats or white-noise app on my phone could soothe him. As a result, I drove sparingly and spent hours walking with him in one baby carrier or another all around the neighborhood. As Wyatt became more aware of his surroundings, he'd start to point at things he noticed. "Tree!" I'd say. Or "Flower!" depending on where it looked like his chubby finger was directed. And as he grew older, he would hear a bird chirping and sign, "Bird." So I'd say "Bird!" But as the months rolled by and our urban nature walks continued, I became acutely aware of how few types of trees, plants, or birds I could identify. I went so far as to research whether there were urban nature walks where someone would identify things for you while you strolled, so I could learn. Sadly, all walks I found directly competed with nap time, so I never went, and I didn't pursue my curiosity further.

Nathanael Johnson, on the other hand, took a very similar experience with his daughter and turned it into a way of appreciating the "Urban Wilderness." He followed his curiosity, studying the "boring" or even "disgusting" plants and creatures we find everywhere in our urban landscapes. Then he wrote about them so engagingly and informatively that I finished his entire book in just two sittings.

I think this book grabbed my attention because, in addition to my early urban nature walks with Wyatt and our ongoing fascination with bugs, slugs, and plants, I sometimes feel torn between city life and what I imagine country life must be like (thanks, Instagram!) I struggle with the whole "Be Here. Now." thing in our busy, tech-driven city. As it turns out, there doesn't need to be a struggle, you just have to start actually seeing things. Thanks to a narrative that's as informative and persuasive as it is funny, I followed Johnson on his own journey of learning about turkey vultures, snails, squirrels, ginkgo trees, crows, and more. As I saw how we can connect with the natural world, I felt more compelled than ever to start exploring. Cities (with green spaces) are teeming with nature, and believing that I have to go out to the wilderness to experience nature is just silly.

As Johnson wrote on pages 63-64,

We see what we expect to, what we have a name for, what pops immediately into our heads. But confirmation of the expected is boring, and false. Life only becomes interesting when you watch it closely enough to see something surprising, and with that surprise come a little closer to the real thing. That, I suppose, is the point of this book: to allow people to see past their expectations. When actual seeing pierces the skin of habituation, if only for a moment, it permits a bit of wonder to bleed through.

Marc, Wyatt and I have decided to follow Johnson's helpful and remarkably practical recommendations for becoming "Neighborhood Naturalists."  We have binoculars and can easily find a magnifying glass. It will be fun to keep a journal and identify one species a month. And Wyatt already determined in preschool the rampant weed he loves to eat (sour grass), so he's ahead of us in that regard.

But I didn't only get reading done this week! I also had the most amazing Saturday at Kira K Design's knitting retreat at the Marconi Conference Center. I received the most inspiring introduction to Fair Isle knitting from Janine Bajus (The Feral Knitter, and photos of some of her amazing designs appear below), learned all about pattern adjustment from Kira, and connected with some other truly wonderful entrepreneurs, including Sunni Scrivner, who owns the the shop Yarn, in Eureka, and designs her own patterns, Maria Isabel, who owns A Needle Runs Through It and makes terrific project bags, and Brooke Sinnes, the woman behind Sincere Sheep and the yarns I love so much. The setting was beautiful, and the company was the best.

More than that, nature was everywhere! including in our classroom, when a terrified-looking hummingbird found itself in the track lighting and could not determine a way out. Luckily for the bird, one of my classmates had handled similar situations before and carefully carried it out of the classroom after it collapsed and fell to the floor. Seemingly no worse for the wear, it buzzed off after catching its breath while perched on a flowering bush (the name of which I of course do not know...yet).

Birthday Cake!

"I don't want to have my school birthday tomorrow. I'm not going."

"Oh dear. That's really too bad. BECAUSE I'M BAKING TWO CAKES FOR IT TONIGHT AND DAD AND I ARE GOING."

As you may know, Wyatt turned FIVE this week. And on Sunday evening, he announced his non-attendance at school on Monday just as Marc whisked him, freshly showered, off to bed after a truly epic weekend of fun (and an equally epic melt-down at the end of it all). And, to be honest, two hours later, between baking the first and second cake, I marched down the hall to announce (again) to Marc, "I HATE BAKING." Wyatt and I probably both meant to declare instead, "I'M EXHAUSTED."

Part of turning five in Wyatt's kindergarten is having a little celebration in the classroom: A birthday circle, with cake. There are two children's birthdays this week, so that's why we needed two cakes. Wyatt's class has celebrated most of the children's birthdays already. The tradition (as I understand it) is that the family of the birthday child provides the ingredients that a teacher then bakes into a birthday cake. I've seen the cakes—glorious looking bundt cakes topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and surrounded by a crown of fresh fruit or flowers. Because Wyatt is gluten-free, he can't have the school birthday cakes, so I bake gluten-free cupcakes that the teachers keep in the freezer for him and defrost as needed. Wyatt doesn't mind missing-out on the birthday cake. The cupcakes I bake for him are really good, and the fact that most baked goods are "gluten" instead of "gluten-free" is something he's used to.

But let's be honest. There's something special about being able to share a cake with all your friends on your birthday. In Wyatt's class, there are a couple of children who are gluten-free, and one child who is also dairy-free. So far, it hasn't been possible for the whole class to share a cake. Or two cakes, for that matter.

I figured it was time to find a cake recipe that everyone in his class could enjoy. Over the last two weeks, I have baked (and shared) a BUNCH of yellow 6-cup sized bundt cakes. I'm no baker (never mind a cake baker, as evidenced by the fact that I borrowed cake pans for this project), but thanks to a little knowledge from my Science & Cooking class and some careful troubleshooting, I have arrived at a delicious cake recipe that is gluten-free, dairy-free, and comes out of a bundt pan with absolutely no difficulty. The structure of the cake is very good and the crumb seems just right. This cake is a winner.

How much of a winner, you ask? Well, Wyatt told me when I picked him up from school, "Mom! We fooled the other gluten-free kids! They said to the teachers, 'Why did you give me cake? I can't have cake.' But they could! They were SO HAPPY and ate it all up. We even got seconds! Let's fool them again next year." My heart melts a little every time I think about how "we fooled them," and I feel a twinge of regret for all the times I declared, dripping spatula raised high in the air, "I HATE BAKING." An appreciative audience is one of the best reasons I can think of to bake a cake (or two).

Like most delicious birthday cakes, there's nothing health-food-like about this one. Also, because there aren't any children with nut or egg sensitivities in Wyatt's class, I only solved for gluten and dairy in this recipe. If anyone else wants to take on the challenge of further substitutions, please share in the comments the changes you make and how the cake turned out.

I developed my recipe based on the recipe for Yellow Cake in Gluten-Free Girl American Classics Reinvented and the recipe for Yellow Layer Cake in America's Test Kitchen's How Can It Be Gluten Free. I love both of these cookbooks. But having made both of these cake recipes in the past, I felt that that neither recipe would give me the exact cake I wanted (and both recipes include sour cream, anyway). So I did a little research about non-dairy sour cream alternatives, drew on the aspects I liked best about each cake recipe, tinkered with ingredients, and eventually, I got the cake I wanted.

As is the case with most "alternative baking" recipes, there are a few steps you need to take before actually baking the cake, so I'll lay those out first.

Make your Gluten-Free Flour Blend: I like Gluten Free Girl's blend, and that's what I used. You'll need 400 grams of millet flour, 300 grams of sweet rice flour, and 300 grams of potato starch. Combine all three ingredients in a large bowl and then whisk until well-blended. If you prefer, you can buy the blend, already mixed, here.

Make your Baking Goop: I had a terrible problem with my cakes sticking, and many good store-bought baking sprays include flour, which isn't an option when baking gluten-free. But this mixture works like a charm. Take equal volumes (I used 1/4 cup) of your gluten-free flour blend, a neutral-flavored oil, and shortening. Blend them (in a blender or with a whisk) until smooth. Store the mixture in a jar with a lid and refrigerate it when not in use to avoid separation. Before you bake, take the jar out of the refrigerator so that it can warm up a bit. Dip a pastry brush into the mixture and paint the goop evenly and thoroughly over the pan to prepare it before baking.

Make your Cashew Sour Cream: I mostly followed the recipe from Oh She Glows, but I used less water. Here is my slight adaptation of the recipe, which yields just under 2 cups of Cashew Sour Cream:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups (225 g) raw cashews, soaked
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• Scant 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Directions:

1. Put the cashews in a bowl and cover them with boiling water. Soak for 1 hour, and then drain.
2. Place the drained cashews in a high-speed blender (I used a Vitamix).
3. Add the fresh lemon juice, vinegar, water, and salt. Blend the mixture on high speed until it is incredibly smooth. 
4. Store the "cream" in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. It will probably thicken a bit once it has chilled. You can store it in the refrigerator for about a week or freeze it for longer storage. I portion it in silicone ice cube trays before freezing.

... and then it's CAKE BAKING TIME! I used a 6-cup bundt pan (and to avoid over-filling the pan, I made a few cupcakes with the extra batter that didn't fit), but you could use another pan if you like. I prefer to weigh my ingredients when I bake because it is so much more accurate and yields the best results. But I have included rough volume measurements, in case you don't have access to a baking scale.

Gluten-Free, Dairy Free Yellow Birthday Cake

(click here for a printable version)

Ingredients:

• 100g coconut oil, melted (just under 1/2 cup)
• 311g Flour Blend (about 2 1/4 cups)
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 large eggs, room temperature, separated
• a pinch of cream of tartar
• 198g granulated sugar (about 1 cup)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 163g cashew sour cream (about 2/3 cup)

Directions:

1. Place your baking rack in the middle position in your oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. With a pastry brush, paint your Baking Goop all over the inside of the pan(s) you will use. Brush a thin layer of goop thoroughly and evenly over the entire baking surface of the pan(s).
2. In a small or medium-sized bowl, whisk flour blend, baking powder, salt, and baking soda until combined.
3. Fit your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whip the egg whites and cream of tartar on medium-low speed until the mixture is foamy. It will take about a minute. Then, increase the speed to medium-high and whip the whites into billowy clouds for another minute. With the mixer running, gradually add half of the sugar and keep whipping the mixture until the whites make stiff, glossy peaks. It will take another two or three minutes. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
4. Return your now empty mixer bowl to the stand mixer. Add the egg yolks and vanilla, and whip them for about 30 seconds on medium speed (until they are well-blended). With the mixer running, gradually add the rest of the sugar, and then increase the mixer speed to high. Keep whipping the mixture for another two minutes or so, until it becomes very thick and pale yellow. Reduce the mixer speed to medium, add the coconut oil, and then the cashew sour cream. Whip for another 30 seconds or so. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the flour blend mixture. Mix until thoroughly combined (about a minute), scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.
5. Using a rubber spatula, stir one-third of the whipped egg whites into the batter you just made. Then, gently fold in the rest of the whites and keep folding the batter until you can't see any more white streaks in the batter.
6. Pour the batter into your prepared pan(s), leaving at least 1 1/2 inches of space at the top of the pan. Rap the pan(s) sharply on the counter (to dislodge any bubbles that may have gotten trapped), and bake them. Rotate the pan 180 degrees half-way through baking time, and test for doneness by inserting a toothpick. Once the toothpick comes out clean, the cake is done.  In my oven, the 6-cup bundt cake takes about 40 minutes. Cupcakes take about 25 minutes.
7. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes in the pan, and then turn it onto a plate or platter. Let it cool completely before slicing and eating.

Gorgonzola Cheese

We are still working our way through David Asher's book, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. I love this project and the cheeses we have made!

A couple of weeks ago, we made some space in the cheese cave (by eating some delicious cheese, of course) and Wyatt and I started working on our first Gorgonzola style cheese. For this project, rather than taking still photographs, I videoed the process. I shot everything on my iPhone, using my GorillaPod tripod. If you watch the video, you'll notice a bunch of first time filmmaker mistakes, especially if you really know what you're doing with a video camera (or iMovie, for that matter). But the video also shows how Wyatt and I work together in the kitchen, and we do pretty well.

I was curious what it would be like to watch us, and I wondered if I would be able to put together anything decent from the footage I got. Our first day of cheesemaking took about 3.5 hours, and we worked on the cheese off and on for a week after that. But the entire video is only about 15 minutes long—not bad if you want a relatively quick look at what it is like to make cheese at home with an almost 5-year old.

With that, I give you my Gorgonzola video. Enjoy!

Springtime

Spring break staycation was solid, but it has left me feeling scattered and more unfocused than usual. I can't even conjure a metaphor or an alliterative trill to help guide this blog post. Last night, I wondered whether this ambivalence and feeling of "blaaaaahhhhhhhh!" was a sign I should skip writing a blog entry this week. In fact, as I entered the sixth hour of editing my knitting pattern,* I thought, "I don't even know why I'm putting up a post every week. Who cares?"

But I found out today when I dropped Wyatt off at school that word of this blog is spreading, and that bit of news made me happy. A teacher I know but to whom I have never mentioned the blog stopped me to say she was loving reading it and that she thought I was a "powerhouse." I was totally taken aback by her compliment, and I probably made a weirdly unflattering face when I remarked that frankly, I didn't feel that powerful, but thank you so much for reading because it has been great to be writing again.

And it IS great to be writing again. So here I am, showing up this week, with what may be my most scattered blog post to date.

Spring is definitely here, and springtime means birthdays in our house. We're about two weeks away from Wyatt's fifth birthday, and he is already so excited that he brings up "turning five" every day. I asked him yesterday what aspect of turning five he is most excited about, and after, "Presents!" he said, "Just being five. All my friends are five already..." and then he proceeded to name almost all of the children in his class. For all this excitement, though, he remains very clear that he doesn't want to have a birthday party outside of the little celebration they will have in his classroom. Maybe one year he will want one, or maybe not. But as long as he doesn't want one, we look at his "no party" request as a birthday wish that is extraordinarily easy to grant.

I still can't believe this kid will be five. When he was six months old or so, I remember reading the Muni sign that said that children under five ride for free, and thinking, five is SO FAR AWAY. As dumb (or morbid) as it sounds, in that moment, I was pretty sure we'd never have to buy a muni ticket for him. But we're practically there. We have come so far in the last five years. Last week was full of great examples of how Wyatt's brand of "almost five" is pretty fantastic: Strong hiking legs, boundless curiosity, deep appreciation of beauty, new love for spicy food, a willingness to be flexible, and a real need to learn and grow. Here's how our week played out.

On Monday, we went to Rainbow Grocery and then spent the entire afternoon making Gorgonzola cheese (I'm still working on a post about that), kimchi (still very mild but now with a little spice), and testing recipes for Samin Nosrat's new cookbook.

Tuesday, on my friend Rose Hagan's recommendation, we went to the Annie Leibovitz's exhibit. Women: New Portraits is terrific, we enjoyed everything we saw, and I could have easily spent much longer there had I gone by myself. After the exhibit, we took a hike through Crissy Field to visit the Warming Hut and to check out the wildlife that decided to say hello. After a quick stop at home for lunch, Wyatt had his swimming lesson.

On Wednesday, Marc took the day off and we spent the day in the Inner Richmond. We began at the de Young Museum to see the Bouquets to Art and Oscar de la Renta exhibits. Both were stunning, of course. As a "bonus," there was a medical emergency in the Oscar de la Renta exhibit, and we had a terrific view of the paramedics' work. We had planned to eat lunch at the museum, but the line for the cafe was into the lobby by 11:30 am, so we headed down the street to Nopalito. On the way, we discussed at length how much Wyatt wants to ride on the adjustable chair in the ambulance and how lucky we were there was "a medical" while we were at the museum. At Nopalito, Wyatt ate two bowls of spicy chickpeas and drank about two quarts of water, and we all had Totopos con Chile and Tacos de Pescado al Pastor for lunch. After lunch, we stopped by a Buddhist temple because we were feeling curious, visited Green Apple Books on Clement, and got ice cream at Toy Boat Dessert Cafe.

Thursday, I took Wyatt shoe shopping at Nordstrom. He got new shoes and opted for a pink balloon to go with them. We ate a picnic lunch outside the mall, and then on our way to do some errands in the Mission, Wyatt lost his very lovely balloon out of the car window on Valencia Street around 18th. There may have never been a sadder sounding boy in the Mission than Wyatt on Thursday afternoon.

Friday, we stayed home, Wyatt did a lot of building with his Legos and MagnaTiles, and we prepared for shoelace tying lessons. I got out two dark nail polish colors. On Wyatt's left index fingernail, I painted the face of a mole in dark red. On his right thumbnail, I painted a bunny silhouette in bright blue. I did the same on my nails so we could work side by side. We were ready: First, you make the beginning knot; then, there is the tree, right by Mole's hole; Bunny comes out of his hole and runs around the tree, sees mole, and shoves him back into his hole. Then Mole and Bunny run away from each other.** We tried tying shoe laces several times during the day, and Wyatt declared every time, whining and crying in frustration, "This is SO BORING. I never, ever want to be able to tie my shoes!"

I chalked his hyperbole up to shoelace tying being astonishingly difficult and how, after hanging out with me for the whole week, it was probably time for a break from spring break. I figured we would practice again on Saturday. But on Saturday, he didn't want to even try. I started to think about contingency plans for school footwear. Maybe it would rain and he could wear boots. But on Sunday morning, as we were about to head out the door, he grabbed his new sneakers, plopped down on the floor, and eagerly jammed his right foot into his shoe. He took a lace in each hand and said, "First, I make the pretzel head..." and then, as he started to make the first loop, said, "I forget--where does mole go again?" So I told him, and he proceeded to tie the bow all by himself. He almost got his second shoelace tied in a bow as well. Bursting with pride in his accomplishment, we both rode our kick scooters to pick up some items from the grocery store for lunch and some flowers from the florist for Wyatt to take to school on Monday. I carried the flowers in my backpack, and Wyatt carried everything else in his.

For lunch, we made something new to us: Onigirazu. I had stumbled on a link for the recipe I used after reading a piece in Lucky Peach about Onigiri (which I also want to try making, but haven't yet). The recipe for Onigirazu, true to it's word, took only 30 minutes to make, and the results were outstanding. It's basically a sandwich of seaweed, rice, and filling (in this case, egg, ham, cheese, and wasabi mayonnaise). In the time it took the rice to cook, I had set up the area for assembling the "sandwiches," cooked the omelet and prepared the wasabi mayonnaise. I went light on the wasabi, but I needn't have. All three of us could have handled the flavor at full-spice level. We will definitely be revisiting this recipe. I almost made it for lunch again today. Maybe tomorrow when I'm less scattered. Ha!

*There's no better (or humbling) way I can think of to learn something new than by doing the absolute best job you know how, and then handing it off to a professional to correct it and offer constructive criticism. Thanks to my technical editor's guidance, I've revamped the structure of this particular written pattern twice. I am stumbling into more lessons, rules, approaches, and issues than I ever thought possible. It's amazing.

**How great is this Mole-Bunny story for shoelace tying? It's courtesy of my friend Sarah.

Timbuk2 and Tacos

Our factory tour-themed week of spring break concluded on Friday when Wyatt and I went on the Timbuk2 factory tour. The tour is offered the first Friday of every month, so if you weren't there on April 1, there will be plenty of other opportunities. You can reserve your free tickets to the tour on their website.

Our group of about 20 or so visitors (honestly, I didn't count) began the tour in the Timbuk2 shop on Shotwell Street, where our energetic and knowledgeable tour guides gave us a brief history of the company. We then followed our guides next door, into their offices, to see some bag designs that will be available for purchase later in the year. We peeked into the lunch room, saw April Fools prank bags from previous years, and had the opportunity to admire peoples' workstations. Wyatt also found the foosball table. Our third stop was the factory itself, where we saw several expert sewists stitching bags together. We learned, among other things, that Timbuk2 follows the Toyota model of production, every sewist can perform every sewing task necessary to making any of the bags, and it takes just 18 minutes to make a classic Timbuk2 messenger bag. The San Francisco factory is just one of the factories where Timbuk2 manufactures its products. The other factories are located in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Our final stop on the tour was the second floor of the offices, where we spoke to a designer who showed us her process for designing bags for manufacture, and we got a sneak peek at designs that won't be released for a year or more.

If our tour guides' goals were to give us an understanding of Timbuk2's corporate culture and a serious case of bag envy, they largely succeeded. It seems like Timbuk2's employees are mostly young, fun loving, work-hard-play-hard types who are devoted cyclists and self-described "bag-geeks." And some of the bags I saw that will be coming out in the next year (or more) are more fashion forward than Timbuk2's traditional backpacks and messenger bags.

Wyatt loved the shop, trying out the buckles on the bags, and he even found a couple of bags he really loved. But as far as the tour went, he said, "It was okaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy, but all they did was show us bags. And talk about bags. I couldn't see much what was going on, and they didn't show us any big machines. I liked the sewing machines, but we spent hardly any time in there. And they didn't give us any of the pieces they sew together."

He proceeded to rank his factory tours, so far, as follows:

1. McRoskey Mattress Company

2. Anchor Steam Brewery

3. Timbuk2

He gave this ranking before he received the "thank you for touring" postcard from McRoskey. McRoskey may have secured their #1 ranking for awhile with that one piece of mail.

But the Timbuk2 tour was definitely fun, and it got us within easy walking distance of what Wyatt declared to be "The Best Tacos In Town" from El Gallo Giro, a taco truck that parks on Treat at 23rd Street. The carnitas tacos were the best I have had in ages, and lunch cost a total of only $8.

And guess what? There's still an ENTIRE WEEK LEFT OF SPRING BREAK. And I'm out of tours. So the current plan for the coming week is to start another cheese (a gorgonzola style, this time), visit a museum, maybe spend some time exploring neighborhoods we rarely visit, and probably eat more tacos from El Gallo Giro.

Spring Break: Factory Tour Edition

We've just begun a two-week spring break staycation, and I've rarely been so grateful to live in such an interesting city.

Wyatt is keenly interested in learning how stuff gets made. And he is even more interested in a manufacturing process if it requires lots of heavy machinery and many delivery trucks with forklifts. We spend so much time talking about (and speculating about) how stuff gets made that I recently started toying with the idea of taking him on some factory tours. 

To be honest though, when the idea of factory tours occurred to me, I was probably thinking about how much I love factory tours and hoping Wyatt was old enough to (1) behave and (2) learn something. I guessed that he was, and I tested my guess during February break when we took our first tour. We started with a beer factory, Anchor Steam Brewery. After years of driving past it and speculating about what it must be like inside, I figured, why not find out? Wyatt was overjoyed when I told him we were going to the brewery, and once there, he was totally perplexed as to why there weren't any other kids on the tour. I'm pretty sure that we were the only people in the group who were more interested in the tour of the facility than the extremely generous beer tasting at the end.

Since that successful factory tour, I've been researching and contacting San Francisco manufacturing companies to see if Wyatt and I can come and see how they do their work. I have yet to find a chocolate factory that will have us, and an electric motorcycle company declined my request because of their production schedule, but disappointments aside, how lucky are we that our first week of break is bookended by a tour of McRoskey Mattress Company on Monday, and Timbuk2 on Friday? Just based on the McRoskey tour, we are incredibly lucky.

The McRoskey tour was fabulous. We were six people (three adults, two kindergarteners and one teenager) on the tour, and we followed McRoskey's entire process of building a mattress, from the bolts of fabric, spools of wire, metal fittings, and what looked like bales of cotton, to the end product: a handcrafted mattress that got tufted as we watched. We also saw how the box springs are made. Our guide, Robin, was incredibly knowledgeable and kept everyone's interest. Possibly even more impressive were the workers and craftspeople we saw creating these beautiful mattresses—every single person was simultaneously focused on their work and incredibly welcoming.

First we saw the sewing room, then we headed to watch spring-making and spring-fastening. We saw the cotton, wool, and other layers that go into the mattress and watched it get sewn together. We watched them build box springs. And then we watched as different people made two huge tufting machines do their magic.

Wyatt and I drafted his "Thank You For The Tour" note this afternoon. He worked on the card at his little project board, next to his haul of many of the mattress manufacturing treasures that Robin had given him. Among other things, he asked me to write, "I think that if I worked at your mattress factory, I would want to be the person who folds and weighs the fluffy cotton . . . I liked how . . . you asked everyone if they were available to show us how all the machines worked."

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who loves factory tours.

Adventures in Natural Egg Dyeing

"Mom. My teacher told me you can make egg dye with all kinds of things. Like beets, parsley and red cabbage."

"Yes! We did that the first year I dyed eggs with you. Do you remember?"

"No."

"You were pretty little. We can do that again this year if you want. It would be fun. We'd make the dyes, arrange the eggs in the dye, and they could sit overnight in the egg dye."

"That's okay. I'm good. Can you just buy the package instead?"

This conversation happened on Sunday morning, even before any of us had really committed to getting out of our pajamas. My answer was, of course, a resounding, "YES." I could absolutely buy the package of dye, if only to celebrate the moment when my child basically requested that for once, we not do something the hard way.

Yellow onion skin produced the orange, beets made magenta, and blueberries the variegated purple. On the end, one faintly green egg was from parsley, and the pale yellowish one was from cumin.

We dyed eggs every year when I was a kid, with double doses of PAAS tablets, probably so the color would get darker faster. I hardly ever dyed Easter eggs as an adult, and for Wyatt's first two Easters, I didn't dye any eggs as a parent, either. Our first attempt at egg dyeing was in 2013. And when I say "our" I mean "my." That year, I decided I would attempt using natural dyes, and I Googled my way to whatever "recipes" I could find. Because the instructions I found were so imprecise and apparently untested (otherwise known as "terrible recipes" or "ideas! for egg dyeing! with stuff you can find in your house!"), the process was time-consuming, a little smelly (don't try to dye with cumin) and somewhat aggravating.

Accordingly, in 2014, I bought a natural dye kit so I could compare our results with my experience the previous year, and so that Wyatt could participate without having to wait hours to get colored eggs. The results were fast—we got color within minutes rather than hours. And the colors were bright, too. It was a fun project to do with a toddler. So I bought the same kit in 2015, and it looks like we'll be revisiting it again this year.

Before this morning's egg dyeing conversation, I had toyed with trying the homemade natural dyes again. Since February, I have been mostly remembering to keep the skins from yellow onions I use for cooking. Of the dyestuffs we tried in 2013, onion skins, beets, and frozen blueberries were our winners. (The losers were cumin, parsley and red wine.) And while it sounds like we're committed to going the kit route again this year, I read a great tutorial just this morning on homemade natural egg dyes. Unlike all the "recipes" I read in 2013, this author notes that the eggs have to sit in the color at least overnight to gain a deep hue on their shells. And she used hibiscus powder! If I run across any of that, I think we may try at least hibiscus-dyed eggs along with our kit.

The explanation in the tutorial of how to make flower silhouette prints on the eggs is also excellent. If you've already got pressed, dried flowers for this project, more power to you. We don't. We did, however, use a a similar approach last year, after gathering fresh leaves from our garden, and we got some pretty prints on our eggs. Flat leaf parlsey worked well. Place the leaves on the egg before dyeing and secure with pantyhose tied around the egg, then add the egg-in-hosiery to the dye. Remove the egg when you reach your desired color, and then carefully remove the pantyhose and leaves. You can also make fun designs by using different thicknesses of rubber bands, wrapped different ways around the eggs before dyeing.

Last year, our first challenge for egg dyeing was finding pasture-raised eggs that were white. We never found any, and I ended up buying pasture-raised duck eggs instead. Looking at the photos from the tutorial, though, I wonder if we might do fine with eggs that aren't white. Eggshell color may be our experiment for this year.

The other important question with egg dyeing is of course, "How long do you boil your eggs?" It's a critical question to answer if you like to eat the eggs you color. For the last few years, we have been making Easter Egg Salad with our colored eggs.

I love to eat eggs all kinds of ways, and I like them cooked perfectly. Overcooked hard boiled eggs don't cut it for me. In fact, I think being able to make great hard boiled eggs is an excellent reason to own a circulator. But if you, like me, don't have a circulator, here is a recipe that will get you very close to perfection.

Do you have egg dyeing tips, tricks or stories? Please share them in the comments.

Instagram Saved Our Cheese

"Mom! I LOVE that red thread! And the little face smiling sideways. Good job."

The Internet was so good to me last week. As you know, we are in the midst of spring cleaning at our house. We've got until Easter to get it done, and to be honest, the verve we initially brought to this project is basically gone. Don't get me wrong—we haven't given up on the plan, but we also don't make progress every day anymore. This scenario is obviously not ideal, but why be dogmatic about the "every day" part of it if we're still moving forward? Rationalizations aside, we actually made huge progress this weekend when we bundled and donated six big bags of items.

The process of clearing out closets brings me face to face with items we love but haven't worn because they need help in some way. I found a favorite jacket of mine (with a stuck zipper), a couple of sweaters (that have been worn thin in spots), a skirt (that's still about six inches too long for me), and a few of Wyatt's pants that have holes in the knees. My stack of mending is pretty tall right now, and my skills are not yet equal to the task. Imagine my delight to find that in 2014, The Guardian published some incredibly helpful "How-To's" in a series called "How to Mend." I've pinned them all so I can consult them as needed.

As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, my "visible mending" techniques can use some improvement, but I'm happy to be figuring it out as I go along. You can see my first attempt at knee patches on the left. The jeans were hand-me-downs to Wyatt, and there was nothing to lose by practicing on them with my sewing machine. He wears the jeans all the time now. On the right, you can see the intentionally crooked smiley face I embroidered by hand this weekend to mend two holes (one of which is now an eye, and the other of which is the nose). My next job is to find a replacement zipper and figure out how to use the zipper foot on my sewing machine. Thank goodness for YouTube tutorials.

And oh-my-stars, thank goodness for Instagram. Last Thursday, I posted a photo of the Valençay cheeses that have been aging in our refrigerator. I had noticed that they were developing weird little spots of mold, and I thought I might have to compost them. When I posted the photo, I used a bunch of hashtags and tagged a couple of experts, including Louella Hill, whose cheesemaking book I own, to see what they thought was going on.

Louella Hill responded! My cheeses are fine, she said. I could remove the mold, or not. The wild blue "invaders" weren't really a problem, and the cheeses should just keep aging for another week or maybe three. Louella even answered my follow-up question about where to look for more information about cheese mold (Ben Wolfe and Rachel Dutton, in case you're curious, and haven't yet followed me on Instagram). I removed the mold spots (they slipped right off the ash, interestingly enough) and things now look to be back to normal in the cave.

I keep remembering how much more difficult it used to be, when we weren't so well-connected, to try something new and troubleshoot when things went wrong. It's kind of unbelievable that we can now get practically real-time, helpful feedback from people we don't know in real life. I realize there are huge downsides to social media. And I know that some people write horrible things to others online thanks to the anonymity the Internet affords. But when Instagram saves our cheese, and the Internet rescues my favorite jacket, it's only right to notice the good that's out there.

Let Your Curiosity Transform You

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I dedicated the month of February to drafting my first ever knitting patterns. Now that I'm on the other side of my first draft, I can say that the pattern writing and accompanying hand-cramping deadline-knitting were challenging. The whole affair actually reminded me a little bit of my first legal writing assignments. Once again, I was struggling to write a piece that made sense, on a deadline, while employing unfamiliar citation formats. I had forgotten how difficult it is to drop into an industry, grab an opinionated reader's attention, show them an irresistible point-of-view, and then take them through a logical process, step-by-step, using concise and perfectly clear directions. It's really hard. I stayed up way too late every night, cut corners on pretty much every other aspect of my life, and I began seriously to doubt myself. (Can you spot the hard-boiled perfectionist who has committed herself to trying something new?)

Halfway through writing my second pattern, it dawned on me that I had probably taken on too much. I recalled the time in high school French class when we were assigned to write a journal entry with the story of our day. I attempted to write the actual story of my real day, with all the things I had done, along with my thoughts and feelings. You know, like an actual journal entry. I used my English-French dictionary for so many words, and I thought I had done a remarkable and insightful job on the assignment. But I hadn't. My teacher returned the assignment to me full of red ink corrections, genuinely quizzical question marks, and a gentle suggestion that next time, I keep things simple and report what time I woke up, what I ate, and when I went to bed.

If I had actually absorbed that lesson from Madame (whose last name I have now forgotten), I would have first attempted to design an interminably boring scarf or a detestably predictable shawl (that I could neither pin, tie, nor drape without looking absolutely ridiculous). But I didn't. Apparently, I remain as over-confident as ever in certain of my abilities. On March 1, I gave my kind, generous, and ridiculously capable technical editor my patterns. I await her proverbial red ink and promised constructive criticism. Part of me wants the patterns to be perfect, and most of me knows that under the veneer of my fine organizational structure and carefully chosen font, they are a hot mess. Whatever. I cannot wait to learn from my next draft.

Let your curiosity transform you, I say! The magical looking photo collage at the top of this post is my first visual representation of the spirit behind String & Twig (you can see additional related photos, as well as the sources of the photos I selected, on my Pinterest board). It dawned on me just this past week that this process of learning and growing is what my blog is all about. My posts are about how we indulge our curiosity by trying new things, seeing what works, and what doesn't. And every time we try something, there's some kind of transformation, like milk into cheese, seeds into plants, or me into whatever comes next (unwanted ecologies and all). We're all changing in big or small ways every day, regardless of whether we want to or not. Why not evolve in ways that satisfy our intellectual curiosity?

And at the same time, how about working to cultivate curiosity in the more ho-hum aspects of life, like cooking for example? On a very basic level, if we're doing our best, we're transforming ingredients into a meal (or more) every day. And there is so much eating that happens every day. Three meals! Every day. It's hard to get or stay curious about cooking, especially, as I noticed this past month, when you have some shiny, new, more interesting thing going on. I found myself becoming keenly interested in staying out of the kitchen. But because fasting wasn't an option, I focused on decent food I could assemble and cook quickly, as well as food I could basically ignore once I had applied a heat source.

My solution to dinner in a pinch became Weirdly Addictive Tortilla Pizza. We have eaten it every Saturday evening since I learned about it. We use the fancier handmade corn tortillas, and they have been fabulous as pizza "crusts." Another ridiculously easy and shockingly popular dinner solution at our house is a Baked Potato Bar, and it now also appears almost weekly. Confession: I didn't know how to make a good, oven-baked potato until recently. But now I use this very easy recipe and the potatoes turn out beautifully every time. Top your crunchy, fluffy, perfect potatoes with sautéed leeks, butter or olive oil, sour cream, bacon, herbs, whatever other odd ends of previous dinners you have in your refrigerator, salt and pepper, and enjoy. Aside from scrambled eggs and kimchi atop rice from my 1990s rice cooker (which I also hauled out this month), the Baked Potato Bar is the most straightforward weeknight dinner I have ever encountered. Even better, everyone is always excited about it.

If you do have some extra time or oomph for the kitchen, though, I have to point out that blood orange season is coming to a close. I've been grabbing them while I can. If you have eaten more than your share and are looking for a new preparation (but aren't up for spending the small fortune required to make a batch of blood orange sorbet), try a blood orange curd sundae or this lovely riff on the Dominican Morir Soñado.

We made the blood orange curd for dessert with homemade vanilla ice cream and whipped cream when my cousin, my favorite author of books about pirates and teacher of fourth and fifth graders in Atlanta, visited a few weeks ago.

As for the Morir Soñados, Marc, Wyatt and I enjoyed our beautiful pink drinks in martini glasses during one recent kid-friendly Saturday evening cocktail hour. See the tortilla pizza? I wasn't kidding. Every Saturday. Make some yourself and be sure to be messy enough with the cheese at the edge so that you get some of those crunchy bits, too.

Homemade Yogurt

I am astounded by the number of types of yogurt for sale at the market. There are all kinds, Icelandic, Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, flavored and unflavored; but I have tried very few of them. Ever since I started making yogurt almost four years ago, I shop for milk instead. I've settled on Saint Benoit, organic Jersey whole milk, which makes a lovely yogurt with great texture and flavor. 

If you're interested in reading about (or listening to a story about) the process behind commercial yogurt making, NPR did a piece on it in 2015. Homemade yogurt is different from commercial yogurt. When you make yogurt at home, you can achieve a tastier and much more active product than what you buy at the store.

My basic process for making yogurt has always been to heat two quarts of milk to about 185 degrees Fahrenheit, cool the milk to about 117 degrees, mix in three tablespoons of yogurt from my previous batch (the first time I made it, I used Saint Benoit plain yogurt that I had purchased--amazingly, the culture was so strong that I haven't ever had to buy another starter) and then pour the mixture into a container with a lid. I wrap the container in dish towels, turn on the light in the oven, and incubate the yogurt in the oven overnight.

I have had a few yogurt mishaps. It seems like they mostly happened when I tried to incubate yogurt during the day. Two or three times, I turned the oven on, and about 15 minutes later, I wondered why the kitchen smelled like someone had been ironing. And then there was the time when I forgot about the yogurt, turned the oven on to 425 degrees, eventually smelled scorching cotton, and I freaked out. I moved way too hastily, slopping almost all of the yogurt out of the covered casserole dish and onto the inside of the oven and oven door, and all over the floor. The yogurt dripped everywhere, including between the panes of the oven door window, where I couldn't clean. I had to call our favorite appliance repair shop, Otto's Appliance Service, because I couldn't dismantle the door myself. As Otto remarked to me good naturedly, once he had the door on the floor and in pieces, "You could have bought a lot of yogurt for this service call." He wasn't wrong.

Since that incident, I bought a big Fido jar that seals nicely, and I have gotten much better about remembering when the yogurt is in the oven. For the last couple of years, I have had my yogurt process dialed-in. 

But recently, when it was time to make more yogurt, I remembered that David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking includes a section on making yogurt. Earlier, I had breezed by that chapter because I was already making yogurt. This time, I read it. David insists that the person making the yogurt must pay attention to the milk during the entire heating and cooling process. That means 30-60 minutes of constant stirring of the milk at 185 degrees, and constant stirring during the cooling period, as well. I groaned inwardly at the thought of stirring milk for over an hour. My approach had always been to reach the target temperature as quickly as I could without scorching the milk, then leave the milk to cool down on its own, checking the temperature every 15 or 20 minutes. Sure I'd get a skin on the milk, but whatever. Right? I wondered what a difference an hour or more of active time on yogurt would make.

The first night I tried David's technique, I explained to Marc what I was doing. Marc shook his head and said, "Why would you do this to yourself?" Good question. But my bigger concern was that we'd prefer this more time-intensive yogurt.

I was right to worry. David's approach to making yogurt* results in a far superior product. The texture is creamier, the flavor is well-balanced, and less whey seems to separate from the yogurt once it has been in the refrigerator for a few days. In fact, the yogurt tastes so much better than the yogurt I used to make that I have gotten in the habit of saving some favorite podcasts for while I stand and stir for over an hour every two weeks or so.

Yogurt making is not an activity that I can do with Wyatt at this point. After a couple of minutes of stirring, like any reasonable person, he's ready for both of us to move on to something more exciting. He does, however, love to "wake the yogurt up" when it's done culturing by opening the oven door, removing the kitchen towels and pulling the giant jar out so he can eat fresh yogurt for breakfast.

Am I being ridiculous to spend so much time making yogurt? Maybe. Or maybe not. It's really good yogurt. And in my defense (if I need one) I'll note that even I have limits. I have consciously decided not to try cooking the milk for more than 30 minutes. The range David suggests is 30-60 minutes of stirring at 185 degrees, and the longer the milk cooks, the thicker the yogurt will be. Because there is a pretty good chance we will love the longer-stirred yogurt even more, I'm not going there. 

My Yogurt Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 liters (or 2 quarts) of milk
• 3 tablespoons of yogurt starter

Equipment

• A large pot, spoon or spatula, thermometer, glass jar(s) with lid(s), towels, oven or warm place for incubation.

Method:

• Take 3 tablespoons of your yogurt starter out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter so it can come to room temperature.
• Turn on the oven light.
• Heat two liters of milk over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it reaches 185 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Set a timer for 30 minutes, start stirring, and don't stop stirring. Keep checking that the temperature of the milk is 185 degrees. Raise or lower the heat of the burner as needed to maintain 185 degrees.
• After 30 minutes, remove the pot of milk from the heat and keep stirring. Check the temperature occasionally and when it hits 117 degrees or so, stir in the 3 tablespoons of yogurt.
• Pour the milk and yogurt mixture into the jar(s) you will be using to ferment the yogurt. Close the containers and wrap kitchen towels around them to keep them warm. Place the jars in a warm spot (like an oven that is off but has the light on). I usually let the yogurt ferment for 10 hours or so.
• Wake your yogurt up in the morning, just in time for breakfast.

*David makes his yogurt with kefir culture. I'm happy with our yogurt culture, so I haven't switched to making kefir based yogurt.

Spring Cleaning

"Mom. We have cleaned out all of the kitchen. So what will we clean out today?"

"The dining room is next."

"Maybe we should first have a cup of tea."

This conversation happened about a week into our 40 days of cleaning out our house. Was Wyatt starting to feel like it might never end? Or is that just how I feel about it? Either way, this is the third year of our annual clearing out, or as some people call it, purging. We started this practice in 2014 after I read a friend's Facebook post about the "40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge." The idea is that for the 40 days of lent, you get rid of one large lawn and leaf-sized garbage bag of stuff. I interpreted "get rid of" as meaning you throw it out, recycle, donate or sell the stuff, but the stuff doesn't actually have to leave your house every day. It can sit in the bags until you're ready to take it wherever it needs to go, but all of it has to be gone by Easter. That first year, we cleared out over four hundred of pounds of stuff, including lots of old books and magazines (I promise, we aren't hoarders—that stuff is just heavy), furniture we never used, old clothes, as well as standard clutter. I was so impressed/horrified by what we discarded that I kept a photo of a receipt for what we brought to Recology. When Easter came, I felt ridiculously virtuous for all we had accomplished, and I gleeflully shredded our progress chart detailing the areas we had cleared. I thought to myself, "Well! We won't have to do THAT again for a long time."

I was wrong, wrong, wrong. We are not Marie Kondo, and as hard as we try to keep things to a minimum, clutter happens and stuff finds its way into our house. Also, after that first massive clear out in 2014, I noticed the following spring that we hadn't touched some of the things we had decided to keep. So, when Ash Wednesday rolled around again, we started again. I let go of the one-giant-bag-per-day requirement, though, and just addressed one area of the house every day. If there was more time, I handled a bigger area. If there was hardly any time, I dealt with a drawer. And we got rid of probably about half as much stuff as we did the year before. Because two years amounts to a tradition, we're at it again this year, in the same way we approached the process in 2015.

We are not a religious family. But the period of lent really is perfect for taking stock of what we have versus what we need or want, and engaging in the giant, unenviable task of clearing things out. As a child, I was taught that lent was a time for reflection, and a time to give up something (like sweets), take on a charitable responsibility, or maybe be just a bit nicer to my little brother. Because "never" is not a reasonable option, I can't think of a better time than lent for clearing out stuff. With lent, you get a definitive start date, end date, and a good, long 40 days to complete the project.

But it's not an easy project. Marc and I have had more than a few grumbly words with each other about the whole process. We did the easy stuff two years ago. This year, we are moving through the entire house, area by area, looking at every item critically. If the stuff is mine, I ask myself a smattering of questions that help me to decide whether to keep an item: "Do I need it?" "Do I want it?" "Does it spark joy?" If the answer is yes to any of those, I keep the item. If the answer is no to all of those, it's out. If the answer is "no" to only one or two of the questions, sometimes I'll keep the item, and sometimes I'll toss it. And if the stuff is Marc's, he gets to decide what to do with it. The best part, though, is when I cross-examine Marc or he cross-examines me about a decision to keep an item. Like I said, this project isn't easy.

One of the reasons I hate this annual clear out is because it makes me face how my life has changed and how little progress I have made in reconciling myself to those changes. For example, I have innumerable pairs of fun and fancy shoes that I never, ever wear anymore, as well as lots of blank canvases and tubes of paint I haven't touched since 2011. And then there are well-crafted items I can't use but feel a bizarre responsibility to somehow repurpose, like ill-fitting hand knits and outdated cashmere sweaters from my grandmothers. I think it may be finally time to move on from some of this stuff.

A heartening aspect of this clearing out, though, is how Wyatt is taking to the process. For his stuff, he and I walk through his toys and books, one by one, and sometimes, he finds things he doesn't need or want anymore, which is great. He's also there as I clear out my own stuff. He loves discovering items he has never seen, and he's delighted that Marc and I are having to make decisions about what to keep. Lately, Wyatt has been going into my closet (which I have yet to address this year) to pull something out, like a handbag he has never seen me use. He'll ask, "Is this on your list to go out?" Sometimes, he asks because he hopes I'll keep it, and sometimes he asks because he sees no reason for me to have it.  Either way, it's wonderful to see that he has enthusiasm for a task I loathe so much, and that he's thinking critically about what we have, what we need, and what we don't.

Mystery Garden

"Mom. We HAVE to put stakes or bamboo sticks or SOMETHING in there for the peas to climb."

Just before Christmas, Wyatt and I sowed six planters of different kinds of cool weather vegetable seeds. In some planters, we even planted two kinds of seeds. When we were done, Wyatt informed me we HAD to label the planters RIGHT THEN. But I didn't want to get out the label maker with him (because for every label I make, he insists on two for himself) and I couldn't find the masking tape. Then it rained for awhile, so I put him off some more because the labels wouldn't stick to the pots. And then we both forgot about labels until mid-January when we went outside to empty the saucers under the planters. Surprise! Everything had sprouted except the peas, the only planter and seed combination we remembered.

Our little mystery garden practically pleads for me to be a better planner and organizer. The saying, "A stitch in time saves nine," also occurred to me, finger waggle and all. But rather than considering how I could become someone who does things like this right the first time, I'm thinking about the possibility that I can just learn to be more free with the label tape.

Over the last few weeks, some of our mystery seedlings have begun to reveal their identities. The radishes are obvious—fast growing and decidedly radish-like by now. The peas finally sprouted and are growing taller and taller. Just yesterday, I provided a tomato cage to satisfy their grabby little tendrils. I also noticed the beginning of feathery leaves on what might be a carrot, but because everything else in that pot looks decidedly not carrot-like, I still can't reach a conclusion about those seedlings. The rest of the planters remain a total mystery.

In an attempt to get some yield from all of the mystery plants, I read the backs of all the open seed packets for thinning recommendations. But because I can't say with certainty which packets of seeds we used for planting and which we didn't, or where they are, I simply attempted to average what most of the packets advised and applied that rule to all of the mystery seedlings. I like to think that if we were relying on me to grow the vegetables we'd eat this year, I would have handled seed sowing very differently and set us up for better results.

Details are obviously important. And as much as I like to think I can keep all the details about everything straight in my head, I have now proven to myself (once again) that I can't. Luckily for all of us, though, I wrote down the date we wrapped our Camembert-style cheese to age in the refrigerator. We have been counting down the days until taste test day, otherwise known as this past Wednesday. Our cheese was delicious, and there was no question that we created a Camembert. The flavor and texture were unmistakable. We also started another batch of chèvre that we will age, hopefully without the unwanted ecologies from our last batch. Wyatt took to heart David Asher's suggestion to taste our cheese before we age it. He slurped up almost an entire bowl of fresh chèvre curd.

As of today, we have officially run out of space in the refrigerator in which to age cheese. We are aging our blues, a second batch of Saint Marcellin, and I have just nestled in a second cave to house the chèvre cheeses.

I suppose this refrigerator real estate limitation is for the best, though, because although we want to make all the cheese now, I need to focus for the next couple of weeks on the details of my knitting patterns. Believe it or not, I think I have found a tech editor, and that means I've got a deadline!

Reinvention

Last week, I chatted with a husband and wife, parents of one of Wyatt's classmates, at a cocktail party. They were incredibly friendly and unassuming, but a few minutes into our conversation, the woman asked the question I've come to dread the most in social situations. She asked, "And what do you do?"

When I'm asked, "What do you do?" I often want to shout in response, "EVERYTHING AND NOTHING!" But because that kind of response would be rude, I usually look away, maybe down at my feet, mumble something about what I used to do and what I used to be, and then trail off about how I'm now a stay-at-home mom.

I'm not ashamed of my current occupation, but I am not at ease with it, either. When I was younger, I was adamant that I would never, ever be a stay-at-home mom. I remained firm in my resolve until shortly after Wyatt was born. When I stepped away from the legal profession, I had absolutely no plan for what I would do next. It has been almost five years since I quit my job, and I have yet to figure out my next move. I feel like I have never been busier day-to-day, or less productive (or less important) in the eyes of society. And while it felt liberating to shed my "lawyer" title, being a "stay-at-home-mom" sometimes makes me fear that I am betraying the feminist movement simply by breathing air.

But my cocktail party friend wasn't asking big questions when she asked what I do. She was just trying to find out about me. As I began to mumble my response to her question, I felt myself look down at my shoes. In that moment, though, I suddenly noticed my feet and felt how firmly they were planted on the floor. Feeling unusually calm and secure, I looked up at her again, and just as, "I practiced law for awhile, in Los Angeles and here in San Francisco, but I don't do that anymore," was out of my mouth, I heard myself add, "and if I were being fancy, I'd tell you that right now, I'm in a 'period of reinvention.'" To my amazement, she and her husband laughed appreciatively and said they might have to borrow that phrase sometime. We went on to have a lovely conversation. And yes, I talked a bit about making cheese and knitting.

Reinvention is proving to be pretty challenging for me. Exploring things is fun when it goes well and disappointing when it doesn't. Take this week in cheese, for example. Thanks to David Asher's email consult, I learned that our aging goat cheese had taken a wrong turn. I had initially emailed him not thinking anything was really wrong with our cheese. I was just curious how I could dry out the cheeses because they were sticky. But they shouldn't have been sticky, and by our third email exchange or so, he had seen a photo of our cheeses. David's diagnoisis: Unwanted ecologies.* The cheeses are now in the compost. But because we can all learn from failures, here are photos of our failed cheese:

And before you decide I'm crazy for ever thinking we could eat these, I want you to know that they look worse in these photos than when I first emailed David. I'm not sure what went wrong with this batch, but it smelled about as good as it looks.

One nugget of advice that David offered in our email exchange was that we should always taste our cheeses fresh before we put them to age. We have now tried enough batches of cheese to have an opinion of what tastes great, so we will keep up this practice, now with more educated palates.

At the same time our cheese was falling prey to unwanted ecologies, I completed knitting a trio of children's accessories I designed in Sincere Sheep's Vitamin C color of Shepherdess yarn. I started with a pair of convertible gloves, moved on to a reversible cowl and finished a coordinating hat the other night. All three designs have already been through at least two iterations each at this point because Wyatt is so clear on how he wants his accessories to fit. He loathes floppy cuffs on gloves or mittens, for example. In the coming days, I'm planning to take some photos, figure out how to write the patterns, actually write the patterns, find someone who can act as a technical editor for my patterns, and figure out how to open a shop on Ravelry. I'm curious whether I'll enjoy this process and whether anyone will respond to my virtual cry of, "Patterns for sale!" in the ridiculously saturated marketplace of knitting designs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've always felt like I'm winning at life when I find the marvelous things and unique details I can bring to what I do. Whether I'm an expert or a novice, and whether the result is amazing or absolutely stinks (even literally, sometimes), I want to feel grateful to be doing my work and learning from it, instead of focusing on how long it's taking and how imperfectly it's turning out. That perspective shift is going to take some practice.

*Who knew there was such a non-judgmental way of saying your cheese is bad?

The Meaning of Life

One evening after work, over a decade ago, I shared an elevator with a former boss of mine down to the parking garage of our Los Angeles law office. I have no memory of what we were discussing in the elevator, but I will always remember that whatever it was prompted him to ask me once the doors opened, "Do you want to know the meaning of life?" I remember looking at him sort of sideways, equal parts dubious and curious, and saying, "Of course I want to know the meaning of life. What is it?" He said, "It's relationships." I remember falling silent, thinking to myself that the answer did not sound profound enough, and then wondering if he might be right.

All these years later, I'm pretty sure he was right. It seems like the best things in life come out of relationships we build and connections we make with other people. For example, this weekend alone, thanks to fantastic friends and acquaintances, we enjoyed a parade, a farm visit, a cheese party, and a food swap.

On Saturday morning, Wyatt, Marc and I attended the Chinese New Year mini-parade. It's the greatest, most low-key, kid-friendly Chinese New Year celebration in San Francisco, and it seems like hardly anyone has heard of it. I only know about it because my friend, Raejean, took me to it one year to teach me photography basics. She and I had the best time, and I got some good photos, too. Raejean moved away several years ago, but thanks to her, we now take Wyatt, who is already looking forward to next year's parade.

And then there was Sunday.

A couple of months ago, I was listening to the Local Mouthful podcast, and the hosts were discussing the magic of Food Swaps. Intrigued, I looked online to see if we had one in San Francisco. When I found one, I asked to be added to the mailing list. The date of the swap has been on my calendar for a few weeks. But the event wasn't until the afternoon, so there was time for some fun in the morning. Some cheesemaking, perhaps! Darcie and I decided to make a surface ripened blue cheese (like we had learned in our workshop). I invited another friend who is interested in learning to make cheese, and her daughter, one of Wyatt's friends from kindergarten, to join the fun. Darcie's wife, Lauren, planned to join us, too. Even though it seems impossible, our day got even better when Darcie texted me that she had made a goat milk connection. Could Wyatt and I meet her and Lauren at 8:00 a.m. in Oakland to milk some goats? The answer was a resounding, "YES."

We got up early on Sunday and were on time to the urban farm where we met the farmer, his chickens, and his goats. The farmer milked the goats, I gave milking a try, and then we all enjoyed a goat's milk tasting before we took our fresh milk back to San Francisco to make some cheese.

When we got back to our house, our cheesemaking party began. We made a surface-ripened blue camembert style cheese from cow's milk and also some blue goat's milk cheeses, using the blue mold that I cultivated on our homemade sourdough bread. We also started a batch of fresh chèvre, because who wants to wait a month or more before tasting any of the cheese? When we were done straining the curds from our blue cheeses, we made a fast ricotta out of a mix of the whey of both types of milk. We also enjoyed a delightful array of amazing snacks, pretty much all day long.

When cheesemaking was over, Marc, Wyatt and I pulled together the ten eight-ounce jars of organic cultured cream cheese that I had made to trade at the food swap, along with the rice salad I had made for the potluck (I substituted sunflower and pumpkin seeds for the pine nuts in the recipe).  We headed over to Sports Basement on Bryant Street, and we proceeded to set up our cheese shop. While we were swapping food, we met an entire room of delightful makers and tasted their delicious wares. I also got to meet a friend I had only previously known on Instagram!

We "sold" all our cheese, including our sample jar! Obviously, our entry was a huge hit and it was fun to hear people marvel at how they had only ever eaten store-bought cream cheese, and how different (and better) fresh tasted. In exchange for our cheese, we got plum butter with grand marnier, apricot jam, peppermint creams, vegan lox, carrot ginger miso dressing, garlic confit, pickles, apple ketchup, baba ganoush, and some handmade soaps.

Regardless of whether you want to make cream cheese to trade, share, or keep for yourself, it's very easy to do, as long as you're willing to maintain a kefir grain cheese pet. (They're really not that much trouble. I promise.) I found the basic cream cheese recipe in David Asher's book, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, and I tweaked it only slightly by replacing some of the cream with whole milk.

Fresh Cultured Cream Cheese (makes about 12 ounces)

Equipment:

• Clean, fine cheese cloth or butter muslin (NOT the loose stuff you can get at the grocery store)
• Fine mesh strainer (for straining kefir)
• Quart jar or other similar vessel
• Pot or bowl for catching whey
• Colander

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of fresh, heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized)
• 1 cup of fresh whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized, and preferably not homogenized)
• 1 teaspoon (or so) of kefir grains OR about 2 tablespoons of homemade kefir
• Kosher salt

Directions:

Mix the cream and milk together with the kefir grains or prepared, strained kefir in a quart jar. Loosely screw on the lid of the jar. Let the jar sit for about 24 hours at room temperature. You're basically making crème fraîche, so keep an eye on when the mixture has thickened to that consistency.

Once the cream and milk mixture has thickened, strain out the kefir grains (if you used them) and place them in fresh milk. (If you used prepared kefir, there's no need to strain anything.)

Spread the cheese cloth evenly over a colander that you have placed over a pot or bowl and pour the thickened cream and milk mixture into cheese cloth. Knot the cheese cloth at the top and hang it from somewhere in your kitchen with a pot or bowl below to catch the whey. I hung the knotted cheese cloth from a wooden spoon that I placed across the top of a tall pot. Let hang for about 8 hours at room temperature, or until you have the consistency of cream cheese that you prefer. Add kosher salt to taste. Store in a covered container in the refrigerator. You may notice that after your cream cheese has sat in the refrigerator for a day or more that it becomes slightly effervescent. That's totally normal.

(Thanks to Darcie and Lauren for sharing their photos for publication here. Once again, friends make everything better. Even blog posts.)

Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

"Mom. Why couldn't I try any of the cheese snacks after your class?"

"Well, the snacks were in the classroom, and the only way you'd have been able to try the snacks is if you had been willing to come into the classroom, and you weren't. That's fine, of course—you didn't have to go in. But the snacks weren't coming out."

"Oh. Right. I wish I had felt like going in."

"Yeah, I know. Maybe another time."

"Yeah, maybe."

Just the other week, David Asher was in the Bay Area, and I got to meet him not once, but twice! The first time was at his Wednesday evening book signing at Omnivore Books. I couldn't have been more pleased with his Monty Python-inspired inscription in our copy of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking.

The book signing also included a kefir and cultured butter demonstration, and David offered everyone who attended the opportunity to take home their very own pet for making cheese: a grain of kefir culture. It was pretty terrific to meet David and his lovely partner, Kathryn, in person and get hugs from them across the demonstration table.

The second time I met David was several days later, on Sunday, at his Alpine and Blue Cheese workshop hosted by Pollinate Farm & Garden in Oakland. Originally, I had planned to head to Oakland without Marc or Wyatt and simply attend the three-hour class with our friend, Darcie. But that plan changed on the evening of the book signing when I unfortunately let slip to Wyatt that I was going to meet David and get our book signed. The poor boy started to cry because, as he said, "It's not FAIR that YOU get to go and I have to stay HOME!" I immediately made a quick (and clunky) course correction: I lied. I told him I had gotten confused and I actually had to go to a meeting for school that night, but we could probably meet David later in the week when I had my class. Wyatt calmed down right away and agreed that plan would be fine.

In light of Wyatt's keen interest and my lie, it seemed only right to do my best to give him the chance to meet David over the weekend. Accordingly, Marc and I planned that we would all spend Sunday in Oakland.

Before leaving for Oakland on Sunday morning, I asked Wyatt what he thought would be a good present to give David. I pointed out that he had written the book that taught us how to make cheese and had been away from his home for a long time. Wyatt responded immediately that we should bring him some of our cheese, and we should also bring him crackers so he would "have something to put his cheese on." Wyatt also suggested that we bring him some sauerkraut because, "I think it is so fun visiting places, but I miss eating sauerkraut when I'm gone."*

We met Darcie for brunch, and then all of us then headed over to Dimond Recreation Center. The plan was that Marc and Wyatt would hang out while Darcie and I attended class there. They would come back for me after class, and then Wyatt could meet David.

Darcie and I were early for class, so we got front row, center seats in a class of about ten students. Overall, the class was great. The only disappointing part was that the stove at the facility was broken, and because only one hot plate was available, we were only able to make blue cheese, not Alpine and blue as planned. But David was terrific. He spoke at length and in approachable detail about how and why he discovered and taught himself how to make cheese naturally, kefir, kefir culture, maintaining kefir grains, the importance of rennet and choosing a rennet source, cultivating Penicillium roqueforti, and making blue cheese. I truly admire David's educational approach. He presented a variety of often controversial topics, including the use of animal rennet, the importance of quality dairy products from well-treated animals, freeze-dried cheese cultures, and the value of raw milk, in a way that was never preachy or confrontational. He explained which products he uses and why, and he encouraged everyone to engage in their own conscious evaluation to decide how to proceed with their own cheesemaking. And just like at the book signing, he offered to anyone who was interested their very own kefir grain to take home.

And guess what? The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is really the only resource you need to make amazing cheese. There weren't any "secrets" that came out during class that aren't in the book. Moreover, the photos and descriptions are terrific representations of what you need to achieve at every step of the cheesemaking process. So while I would highly recommend attending any of David's workshops to meet him, experience how he teaches and meet like-minded cheesemakers in your community, you don't need to attend a class to get great results. Just buy the book and follow the instructions.

That said, I did take the following notes in class:

• Milk that is getting old and has already started fermenting will give you cheese with big balloons of gas in the curd. (So now that mystery is solved.)
• You can use a double-boiler to help keep milk the right temperature while you're allowing the curd to set.
• When you pour in rennet, just give the pot a quick stir. You can't really over-mix the kefir culture into the milk, but you can over-mix rennet.
• To dry kefir grains to store them, you can wrap them in a towel and leave them at room temperature. You should flip them every day so they don't stick to the towel. In three to four days, they will be dry, and you can store the grains. When you put them in milk again, they will re-animate and start producing kefir.
• When you drain your cheese on a stainless baking rack, be sure to put them first on a bamboo sushi rolling mat so that you avoid any rust on your cheese.
• You can age your cheeses in the refrigerator if you can't find a space that is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If you age the cheeses in the refrigerator, it will take 30% longer.
• You can make the recipes in the book that call for 5 gallons of milk with 2 gallons. The cheeses will be smaller, so they will not be able to age as long. As a result, the smaller cheeses won't be as amazing as if you had made the full recipe, but they will still be great.
• If you use a plastic bin for your cheese aging cave, it doesn't have to be exactly at 90% humidity. Just wipe down any water droplets that accumulate on the inside surfaces of the box every day or two, and the humidity should be fine.

That Sunday turned out to be awfully rainy—far too rainy for Marc and Wyatt to spend over three hours outdoors at the playground. So as Marc later told me, he asked Siri what fun things there were for kids in Oakland on rainy days. Siri suggested the Chabot Space and Science Center, so they went there. I'm still hearing new details about their adventure, so it must have been a truly splendid afternoon. But by the time they returned to pick me up after class, Wyatt was crying. He had tripped near a puddle on the way into the recreation center, fallen and scraped his finger. We washed the cut, but even after a few minutes, he just couldn't pull himself together. He flatly refused to go into the classroom. David, gracious as ever, came out into the hallway to meet Wyatt who proceeded to hide behind Marc's legs. Marc then lifted him up, and Wyatt buried his face deep into Marc's neck.**

All of us grown-ups took Wyatt's emotional short circuit in stride. After chatting for a couple of minutes, I gave David his gift bag. He immediately opened the cheese, took a long, appreciative sniff, and exclaimed, "And look! It's so gooey!" He also remarked that just that morning he had run out of sauerkraut—how wonderful that he now had some more.

Even though Wyatt hid during this entire exchange, he made it clear to me later that he had listened to every word. He was beyond delighted that David appreciated the presents. And he is still lamenting having missed out on the snacks after class.

*Crazy, I know. But I swear it's true.

**What can I say, other than that the dear child must have been starstruck.

Waking Up

"Mom. I don't like it when you put my rain pants on top of my lunch bag in my backpack...We go outside to play before lunch, but we have snack before that. When I take my placemat and napkin out for snack, I have to pull out my rain pants, and I don't like having to do that."

It is really remarkable to watch a very young person become more autonomous, thoughtful, and engaged in the day-to-day rhythms of life. When Wyatt told me about the rain pants, we were hurrying to get out the door for school. Fortunately, his comment caught me so off guard that I stopped for a moment and thought before responding. "Oh," I said after a beat, "I didn't know. I thought I was helping by putting them on top. Let's move the pants to the bottom so it's better organized for you." My reward for that moment of parental awareness was Wyatt's pleased expression of satisfaction as he helped me repack his bag.

Even though I know there's a lot more to it, I often feel like my "conscious parenting" amounts to whether I'm able to timely and lovingly manage the rhythm of our days. Some days are better than others. When I shout in exasperation, "I SAID HURRY UP! WE ARE SO LATE!" I know it helps no one, and yet, I still do it more often than I'd like. Things also run less smoothly when Marc is out of town. This past week was no exception. One day I overslept, by a lot. Another day, I noticed Wyatt's jacket was missing just as it was time to leave for school. The futile, frantic hunt around the house for the jacket resulted in our forgetting the broccoli we were supposed to bring for soup day. But thanks to a swiftness and focus I have never before witnessed in my child, we were on time for school the day I overslept. And thanks to his gracious teacher, we were immediately forgiven for forgetting our soup day vegetable. As she said, "The broccoli probably just wanted to stay home."

Maybe another way to describe the new autonomy I'm witnessing is to say that I'm watching Wyatt wake up to the world. Just this week, we have had conversations about life, death, peoples' battles with cancer vs. knights' battles with dragons, artistic expression, freedom, fairness, differences, and equality. These are the topics that arise when David Bowie dies of cancer and we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day within the same week.

After I told Wyatt that school would be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he did not give me his usual, "Yay! Three-day weekend!" cheer. Instead, he asked, "Why is there a holiday? Who is Martin Luther King Jr.?" I gave him a (hopefully) age-appropriate explanation about Dr. King's importance to the Civil Rights Movement and how Dr. King dedicated his life to achieving freedom and equality through nonviolence. Wyatt's question then became, "How will we celebrate Dr. King?" I wasn't sure.

I started researching children's books on Dr. King (this list and this list were helpful).  I decided to order A Sweet Smell of Roses, which presents the leadership of Dr. King through the eyes of children. In the story, two elementary school-aged sisters sneak out of their home early one morning to join Dr. King on a march. The children experience community with their fellow marchers, and they experience hate from white bystanders who tell them they do not deserve to be treated equally. The illustrations are strikingly beautiful and full of emotion, and the words of the story are easy to understand and wonderfully lyrical. The story ends when the girls return home to their (understandably) worried mother who hugs them and lets them tell her all about the march.

The day the book arrived, Wyatt snatched it out of the box, snuggled next to me on the sofa and insisted that we read it over and over again. We discussed the pictures, including the races of the people in the pictures, and the story. He announced, "This is a great book. I love it except for that page where those people are mean and say that Dr. King and the other people aren't equal. That's REALLY not good."

In addition to books, I researched service projects and marches that we could join on the holiday itself. But none of the activities I found seemed exactly right for a child who's still shy of five years old. In the end, we opted to spend the morning working to beautify our community by picking up trash. Because activities with kids are so often improved by accessories (and because trash is gross), I wore disposable gloves and Wyatt wore disposable mitts.  I mostly carried the big trash bag, because as Wyatt said, if he carried it, it would drag on the ground. While we walked through our neighborhood and into the next, we picked up everything we found--from cigarette butts and candy wrappers, to yogurt containers and coffee cups, to clumps of paper towels and cardboard cartons. We also said hello to everyone we passed, none of whom we knew. Three people thanked us for cleaning up, and with each "thank you," Wyatt stood a little taller. One of the people who thanked us was a shopkeeper who came out to give us drinks and new disposable gloves because, as he said, he saw how hard we were working.

At the end of our walk, about a block from home, Wyatt looked at the bag of trash we had accumulated and said, "Mom! That bag must be so heavy for you! Let me carry it." At that moment, we were within earshot of a couple of construction workers. Wyatt's comment was just too much for them to handle with a straight face. They tried to stifle giggles, said a few words in Spanish to each other and went on to commend Wyatt's efforts loudly in English, "Look! Such a strong, strong boy!"

Fueled by those compliments, Wyatt walked with the trash bag over his shoulder for about a half a block before giving the bag back to me. As we stuffed the bag into a trash can, I told Wyatt how happy I was with our good work. I felt satisfied that, in our own little way, we had contributed to creating a Beloved Community, thereby honoring a great man who dedicated his life to achieving freedom and equality.

Camembert

"This cheese doesn't smell like much...I want to wrap this cheese MYSELF. STOP HELPING ME. How much longer until we can eat this?"

When Wyatt was a baby, there was a flurry of discussion around how French parents raise their children. Most of it stemmed from Pamela Druckerman's book, Bringing Up Bébé, which I found thoroughly enjoyable. The book reviews, articles, and interviews surrounding Bringing Up Bébé often focused on how well French children eat, even in daycare. Without exception, it seemed tiny children ate multi-course lunches created from a wide variety of fresh ingredients. The children sat for the whole meal, used a knife and fork and drank politely from a glass that was made of actual, breakable glass. The whole scene sounded so perfect that it made me want to trade-in our cultural food identity. I did not want to raise a notoriously picky eater who behaved atrociously at the table. I wanted to raise a child who was, broadly speaking, French about food. I realized I stood very little chance of ever pulling this off, considering I'm an American who has eaten innumerable sad desk lunches and has experienced French food life only while on vacation. And yet, likely because I'm an American, I figured there was no harm in taking a whack at it. We were already on the fringe of standard American food life, after all. For example, before Wyatt started eating solid food, our pediatrician suggested that a great first food would be beef stew. I remember blinking a couple of times and asking, "Really?" before accepting the challenge. After that appointment, I found a great butcher, made my first beef stew, and then I puréed most of it for baby Wyatt.

Beef stew aside, I felt I needed to improve my cooking range and abilities. I started looking at what French kids eat, and I realized I didn't know what half of it was, never mind how to cook it. I read Karen Le Billion's posts of school lunches in France, and as I translated them and looked up recipes, I began to feel daunted: Variety! Balance! Sauces! Cheeses! It seemed like a lot, and at the time, I had a somewhat limited cooking repertoire. But it all began to make sense for me when Wyatt was 18 months old and Marc bought me Wini Moranville's La Bonne Femme Cookbook for my birthday. La Bonne Femme remains one of my favorite cookbooks. The recipes are straightforward, easy to prepare, and great to eat. The flavors Wini Moranville highlights make for truly delicious meals with just enough flair to make me feel a little bit fancy without extra work. Thanks to this book, I finally learned to cook meats with pan sauces, and I began to appreciate really simple salads. In a short time, I was applying what I had learned from the recipes to make widely varied lunches for Wyatt and me. I'd prep the ingredients in the morning while he was eating breakfast, and then I'd cook our lunch in under 30 minutes starting around 11:30. Chicken Calvados was one of our favorites, and all of her simple salads, including grated carrot salad and celeri remoulade, were in heavy rotation. 

I took our lunchtime cheese course pretty seriously, too. I did my best to choose small pieces of different kinds of cheese at the cheese counter so that we'd have a wide variety over any given week or two. One of Wyatt's favorites from the beginning was brie, Fromager d'Affinois, to be exact. It's still one of his favorites, and brie is the cheese he has been most excited to make since we started working from The Art of Natural Cheesemaking.

Much to Wyatt's disappointment, we couldn't start a brie (or Camembert-style) cheese for awhile because it has been simply too warm for us to age it in the garage. We did, however, start a recipe about a month ago.

We opted for two smaller cheeses, Camembert-style, over a larger brie. Our Camembert started out very much like the feta and mozzarella we made. We began with a gallon of raw cow's milk. We heated it to baby-bottle warm, and then we added kefir culture and rennet. We kept the milk warm while the curd set. Once we had achieved a clean break in the curd, I sliced the curd into cubes and we stirred the pot occasionally while allowing the curds to firm up a bit more. When the curds were the consistency of a well-poached egg, we poured the whey off and reserved some for a washing brine. We then carefully strained the curds by hand into our cheese forms on our makeshift draining table. The cheeses drained for about a day, and once they were firm, we salted them. We let the formed cheeses dry for another day or so, and then we put them in the cheese cave.*

During the first week of aging, we wiped down the rinds of the cheeses every other day with a cheese cloth dipped in the washing brine we had prepared from the reserved whey.

Initially, we had no place in the garage that was cool enough (50 degrees) to keep the cheese cave. I emailed David Asher, curious if close to 60 degrees would be acceptable. He suggested that we try the refrigerator instead. So the cheese lived in its cave in the refrigerator for the first week. After that, the weather cooled a bit more, and I located a spot in our garage that was consistently about 50 degrees, so I moved the cave there.

The next challenge became how to maintain 90% humidity inside the cave. It was easy for the first week in the refrigerator when the humidity was low. I just added a bit of clean sponge that I had dampened with water in order to raise the humidity in the cave. But once the cave was in the garage, the temperature was warmer and the humidity stayed stubbornly at 99%. Even worse, one of the cheese rounds wasn't getting the puffy white mold on it. It was staying yellow and a little sticky, which wasn't good. I swapped out the cheese aging mat for a dry one, and I added some silica gel packets to the perimeter of the cave. Those adjustments resulted in no appreciable change. Wyatt and I then tried making our own packets of calcium chloride, otherwise known as pickle crisp, to place at opposite ends of the cave. The first packets we made worked almost too well, and the humidity dipped to 80%. We remade the packets with fewer granules, and that seemed to work better. Regardless, I continued to monitor the humidity levels in the cave daily because the whole process of adjustments had been so incredibly imprecise.

This weekend, it was time to wrap our cheese in cheese wrapping paper so it can continue its aging process for another month in the refrigerator. The rounds are now tucked safely in the back of the cheese drawer. And tomorrow, Wyatt and I are planning to make Chicken Calvados for dinner, for old time's sake.

*Our cheese cave is almost embarrassingly basic. I bought a shoe box sized plastic box with a lid at our little, local hardware store, and that's the cave. I place a bamboo aging mat on the bottom of the box, and I use an inexpensive hygrometer that I picked up in the garden center of a large hardware store. Because we had a mouse problem in our garage several months ago, I put the shoe box sized box into a slightly larger box with a locking lid.

Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking's Mason Jar Saint Marcellin

"Mom. These soft mold wrinkles are just so beautiful! This is definitely the most beautiful cheese we have made."

I love Wyatt's perspective on mold. Some mold really is stunning. But to be honest, before I got into fermenting, I held my nose and flung into the compost bin whatever I found decomposing in the back of the crisper. These days, though, we spend a lot of time examining mold. Sometimes, food spoils in spectacular fashion, like when it grows "cat's hair mold." And other times, when we manage to harness the microbes we want, we get beautiful cheese.

I haven't written about cheese in awhile, but we have been working steadily behind the scenes. Over a month ago (on November 21, actually) we started making Mason Jar Saint Marcellin. Saint Marcellin cheese is from Lyon, France, and is traditionally made in little clay pots. It is a rare aged lactic cheese made with cow's milk. In The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, David Asher explains how to make Saint Marcellin in shorty mason jars. The jar itself provides the ideal aging environment for the cheese, so you don't need a cheese cave. Mason Jar Saint Marcellin seemed like the perfect cheese for us to try while we waited for the weather to cool off enough to set up our cheese cave in the garage.

Saint Marcellin starts out like the feta and chèvre we have made, except for the obvious difference that it uses cow's milk instead of goat's. We took a gallon of raw cow's milk, heated it to baby-bottle warm, and added active kefir and rennet. We fermented it until Geotrichum candidum bloomed, and then we drained the curds. After a day of draining, we added salt, and then we let the curds drain for two more days.

Once the curds had drained, it was time to pack them into jars. We sealed the jars loosely. On November 27, we placed the jars in our garage, where the temperature was about 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit. We opened and checked on the cheese daily. In ten days, we had an impressive coat of Geotrichum candidum on the surface of all the cheeses.

On December 7, we closed the jars tightly and stacked them in the refrigerator.

We check on them twice a week, wipe off any moisture on the lids, and place them back in the refrigerator.

Because the cheese should be ready in in four to eight weeks from December 7, and my parents were visiting over New Year's, we tried one of the jars on New Year's Day. Here's a photo of our cheese board:

In the back row, from left to right, we had: Dunbarton Blue, our very own Mason Jar Saint Marcellin, Fat Bottom Girl, and a lovely California Crottin. In the front row, from left to right, we had: our own homemade creamy feta, Jeff's Select Gouda, and Monte Enebro. We ate our cheese with homemade gluten-free sourdough bread, black eyed pea soup (with Super Lucky 2016 black eyed peas from Rancho Gordo), and Ethiopian-style collard greens.

The Saint Marcellin was still a little young, but it was already incredible. The top quarter inch or so of cheese had gone, as Wyatt said, "liquidy," and the rest of the cheese had begun to soften but still retained a sort of puffy, slightly granular texture. The "liquidy" section was the most delicious part--creamy like a ripe brie but with a bright, slightly sharp flavor. The rind was so thin and delicate, it was practically nonexistent. We ate the entire jar that evening. As the aging process continues, more and more of the cheese will liquify like the top layer of the jar we already enjoyed. We plan to let the remaining four jars of cheese age for another several weeks in the refrigerator, fully confident that the cheese will be worth the wait.

Meanwhile, we also have two separate cheese caves going in the garage. One is for Camembert that started aging on December 12, and one is for Crottins and Valençay cheeses. That one went into service yesterday.

And because you will never guess what we did with the last slice of sourdough bread from dinner on New Year's Day, I will tell you. We have inoculated it with a pea-sized piece of Cowgirl Creamery Rogue River Blue Cheese so we can grow our own Penicillium roqueforti mold and make our own blue cheese sometime soon.