Pot Luck

After the bread challenge and trying to start this neighborhood group, I suddenly realized it was time to do something that I am so very comfortable doing: having a party.

Now, when I say I'm comfortable having a party, this might give you the wrong impression. Here is the kind of party I love to give, and have since forever. Invite a bunch of people over (one might even say...too many people), ask everyone to bring something to eat, stress the fact that it's very casual, and try to set everyone's expectations very low. The key is that everyone I invite is really nice, and I have to make a point to keep the preparations simple, simple, simple. 

Then people arrive, and the party has itself while I float around in a succession of half-finished interrupted conversations. And here's what always happens. It happened in Austin when I was single. And it happened the other day with neighborhood families: everyone is really pleased and friendly and wants to get to know each other, and they eat and chat and figure out who they know in common, and have  a great time. 

And I know everyone, at least a little, and like everyone, and don't really get to talk to anyone, but I just bask in the warm glow of a developing network of friends. 

Decluttering my kitchen

I started reading a book called Simplicity Parenting that, according to the Website,

offers a simple, orderly, and effective pathway to simplify four realms at home, which reduces stress on children and their parents, and allows room for connection, creativity, and relaxation.
These four realms for simplifying are:
Environment: De-cluttering too much stuff at home.
Rhythm: Increasing predictability by introducing rhythmic moments for connection and calm.
Scheduling: Soothing violent schedules brings moments for Being into all the Doing.
Unplugging: Reducing the influence of adult concerns, media and consumerism on children and families to increase resilience, social and emotional intelligence.

 In the book he talks about how having too many choices, for example, having a roomful of toys, causes stress for kids, and I think that is really true for me, too. (See my posts on clothing.) Our kitchen was "organized" quickly when we moved in (I was pregnant at the time, and just needed to get it all unpacked) and then re-organized along with way in response to the arrival of new gadgets and changing babyproofing requirements. I finally started to feel too much pressure from all the stuff in the kitchen, and today I went through and got stuff out. Some I will get rid of and some I will keep in the storage room downstairs, but at least I got out all the stuff that is clogging up my drawers and cabinets that I don't use, don't like, feel guilty about, etc. And now, just like with the clothes, I feel more like I know what I have and what I need that I don't have (very little, as it turns out). I happened to be in Bed, Bath, and Beyond today, and it was just like with clothes. I was more able to look at things and think, "Yeah, I don't need that." And I'll tell you, it feels great. I am ready to do it in every room in the house!

Crazy Idea?: February Bread Challenge

In The Happiness Project, the Gretchen Rubin occasionally gives herself a challenge, such as the Week of Extreme Nice. Here is her explanation:

What is “Extreme Nice”? It’s an extreme sport like bungee jumping or skydiving—pushing the envelope, exerting myself beyond my ordinary efforts, finding new depths in myself to meet the hardest challenges. And I can do it in my own home.

So this week I intend to be utterly nice to [my husband]. No criticism. No pestering. No bickering. Jumping up to do whatever he asks me to do, responding enthusiastically to his every suggestion.

Maybe I need a challenge like this? According to GR, being happier requires you to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. I have grown in many ways since becoming a mom 5 1/2 years ago, but these ways were largely chosen for me and out of necessity, by this or that Parenting Challenge. Now I finally feel like I can attempt a little growth for myself. I have a few areas of my life in mind that could use some attention, and this challenge would address a couple of them. Here's my idea: make bread every day for a month.

In order to get really good at something, in order to become an expert, you need to do it A LOT. Like, for 10,000 hours. I'm not proposing spending 20 hours/week for 10 years making bread. I don't need to do it that well. But it's certainly something I'd like to get better at, and I think a lot of baking for a few weeks would take me to the next level.

Gretchen Rubin also says that it's easier to do something EVERY DAY than to do it every other day or every few days. I have definitely noticed this with exercise. And with this blog.

But that would result in a lot of bread, especially considering that I am currently working on ways to increase efficiency by baking more than one loaf at a time and freezing the extra. Even though we have a pretty big freezer, 1 or 2 loaves a day for 29 days--or 21 days if I do only week days--or 25 days if I were to only take one day a week off--that would be a lot of bread. So there's another component to the Bread Challenge.

A friend from Cleveland, Emily, has been making pies (a. lot. of. pies.) since last summer, and blogging about it at her blog, Pie Eyed. A couple of months ago, she started giving away pie once a week to someone she encountered in her daily life who brightened her day: the oil-change guy; the lady at the convenience store; the guy who works as Subway. She calls it Pie It Forward. Maybe I could give away fresh-baked bread?

We have only lived in this area for 4 years, and the first couple I was either pregnant or taking care of a baby, and I don't tend to learn new areas very well, and I am not always one to jump in and meet someone new because I do a lot of second-guessing myself, and I always want to find ways to help the community but it can be a project to figure out where, say, Ronald McDonald House is and do they take used toys, or do they have a rule against it, etc.

So I think this would

1. Get me out in the community, meeting neighbors on our street as well as learning where a place like the Ronald McDonald House is;
2. Give me a chance to do something nice for other people, which will hopefully lift their spirits as well as my own;
3. Give me a chance to thank people who have helped me out in the past, like the Bunny Foster Home Lady who gave me a bucket of bunny poop for my garden and who works really hard helping bunnies find homes--gratitude is an important way to help you appreciate the Abundance in your life;
4. Get me chatting and connecting with new people--who knows? I may even make a friend, which would help me feel more Abundance; and
5. Help me to share what I have, which I believe is a big way to feel Abundance.

I don't know if or how I'm going to do it. If I do it, I will definitely post about it on my blog. I will leave you now with a quote I found on the Internet yesterday that probably doesn't really apply, but here it is anyway:

"Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."  -- Nikolai Berdyaev

Bread

The wonder of taking flour, yeast, salt, and water and turning it into a beautiful, good-smelling, delicious, and nourishing loaf of bread is some kind of magic.

And I know that it seems like it will be hard and take a long time and could not possibly be worth the trouble. But I am a bread evangelist, a term I heard from my friend Jennifer, who is also a bread evangelist, and I am here to tell you that it is definitely worth doing. (Here is where I try really hard to convince you to try making bread, but with a modified recipe for sandwich bread, made a easy as I could possibly make it.) This recipe has no kneading or water-temperature-checking. The amount of time you will actually spend fiddling with the bread is maybe 15 minutes, spread out over 20 hours. And the bread you make will drive you mad with desire, and your guests will talk about it with longing long after they have gone home.

This is the recipe I currently follow to make a rustic boule:
No-Knead Bread: So Easy a Four-Year-Old Can Make It

Here is the original Mark Bittman recipe that the above is closely based on, but I think the above one is easier to follow.

And here is the video of Jim Lahey showing Mark Bittman how to do it.

Now. Go forth and bake bread!

The roots of my interest in Plenty

The first quote I remember reading that touched on this is from Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions: "...I wanted Sam to grow up with the sense that it's safe to fall, that there's enough of the important stuff in the world for him, including Band-Aids. I still secretly worry that there isn't enough love, or money, or acclaim, and I have to do all I can to make sure I get my fair share." I think a lot of people feel this way. That life is a zero-sum game in which something good happening to someone else means less good for me. This obviously does not lead to a feeling of Abundance.

I had an impression, in brushes with Europe and Europeans, that there was often a feeling of plenty growing out of small amounts of things: simple jewelry; small jars of preserved fruit.

I had a friend and roommate who seemed to cultivate a feeling of plenty in our house on the one day a week when she wasn't working her two jobs. She would shop and then cook a big meal on that one day, and even though it seems like much of it wouldn't get eaten, there was a feeling of abundance. There was also something about her kitchen, how it was designed and decorated, the appliances and utensils, in addition to the food, that reminded me of Under the Tuscan Sun, another example of European feelings of Abundance.

When I first started talking about getting an apartment with my then-future-husband, I was overcome by this idea that we would be able to finally live like grownups (I was 30 at the time), and I remember saying, thinking of the refrigerator, "We'll have juice in our house." I said it over and over, with different inflection, marveling at the possibilities and implications. Juice. In our house. Which is funny, because I don't usually drink juice because I think it is too sugary. The phrase is still powerful for me, even though I still don't quite understand why.

And lately, when I'm thinking about cooking for my husband and two kids, and am grasping for a model of family culinary abundance, I often think of the mother of a friend from elementary school. As I remember, a very dedicated stay-at-home mom with four sons. I remember hearing his friends talk about all the food there always was at their house. At this point, I have no idea how much detail was provided and how much I have filled in, but in my mind, on any given day, there is a big table with platters of spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, pots of soup, trays of lasagne, desserts, etc. Plenty for four athletic sons and any friends who might stop by. I spend a lot of time imagining this, and trying to work out the details and logistics of this kind of cooking.

Good But Not Perfect Home Baked Bread on Church Avenue Chomp

Here is a guest post I did for my great friend Meredith's blog last spring. It was the wrong time of year for bread, and it didn't inspire many comments, except for my cousin, who pretty much refuted the idea that it would work (the recipe she had used was, in fact, a different, but very similar, one). BUT, when I first started to write it, it seemed like it was going to be about how to get a feeling of Plenty in your life. Plus, it was a chance for me to think about just doing something, not waiting for the perfect time and the perfect bread, but just starting. Good bread that gets made is a helluva lot more tasty than perfect bread that never gets made.
Guest Post: Good But Not Perfect Home Baked Bread on Church Avenue Chomp