The Make It Do Project

Last year I attended Maggie Mason’s Camp Mighty, and part of the conference activities were to work on our life lists (aka bucket lists). One thing I had on there was “buy nothing for 1,2 or 3 months”. (I wasn’t able to commit to how long I needed to go without buying stuff.) Anyway, since November my thinking’s changed and I decided that 2012 would be a year of buying nothing for myself.

I’ve launched a site to document my year of “making do” with what I’ve got: Make It Do. You can follow my progress there as I try and I’ve also set up @makeitdo on Twitter. There’s also more information about how I envision this year actually going, and some guidelines, etc. Wish me luck!

(Alas this means I’ll be posting more online, I hope, but probably not a whole lot more here. Poor Megnut, you’re a beloved blog that deserves better than this!)

The Whale Period

Ollie's huge whale

Minna is the one who started the whole whale thing in our household. For some reason she just loves whales, and has since at least this past summer. But now both of them have taken to drawing whales. This is Ollie’s latest creation. He drew it, colored it in, and then cut it out. It’s probably 16″ wide and it’s stuck to the pantry cabinet in our kitchen. I love it. I think it’s my favorite art he’s done yet.

Sunday morning drawing

Whales

Scene: Ollie and Minna, sitting on living room floor, drawing.

Ollie: “That’s a really nice whale Minna!”

Minna: “Thanks! Ollie, nice whale too!”

Ollie: “Thank you Minna.”

Silence and drawing.

Minna: “That’s a big whale Ollie.”

Ollie: “It’s a sperm whale. All whales are big whales Minna. Except killer whales.”

More more more

Here's your latte from a stern barista

I am doing a lot of sewing. I am doing a lot of cooking. I am not doing enough photography but am trying to do more. I am going to post the photos here when I take them, like this one of Minna from this morning at the playground. I am not doing any writing but am trying to do more. I may enlist Siri’s help on that last one to see if I can dictate the writing in my head and get it posted here more easily.

Casserole of Late Fall Greens

I have a pile of recipes from the Greenmarket tucked in a corner of my bookshelf. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon one from 2009 at the same time my fridge was filled with kale and collard greens from my CSA. Since then I’ve been hoping for more kale every week at CSA pick-up. This casserole (I like to call it a kale gratin) is fantastic and so delicious. Better after a day in the fridge and re-heated, as the flavors meld. I won’t stop making this until the late fall greens stop!

Casserole of Late Fall Greens
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
Kosher salt and fresh black pepper
1 cup heavy cream
2 cloves of garlic, smashed and peeled
2 1/2 ounces of bacon (about 3 strips)
2 cups of cooked winter greens (spinach, swiss chard, kale, broccoli raab, etc.)
1/3 cup freshly grated hard cheese (cow’s or sheep’s milk would be best, I use Pecorino)
1. Prepare and cook the greens, removing any tough stems, and roughly chop. (To yield 2 cups cooked you will need 1 pound of spinach or broccoli raab, 1 3/4 pounds of swiss chard, or 1 1/4 pounds of kale.) Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil and cook until the greens are tender. Drain and squeeze to remove excess water.

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter a 4 cup shallow gratin dish. Toss together the breadcrumbs and 1 tablespoon of melted butter with a pinch of kosher salt and little ground pepper and set aside.

3. In a medium saucepan, bring the cream and garlic to a boil over medium-high heat and then turn down the heat and simmer vigorously until the cream is reduced to about 3/4 cup. Take the pan off the heat, remove and discard the garlic cloves. Let the cream cool slightly and then season with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

4. In a large skillet, cook the bacon until crisped and browned. Drain on a paper towel and remove almost all of the excess fat from the pan. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and return the pan to the heat. Add the cooked greens with 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring constantly for 1 minute. Evenly spread the warmed greens in the gratin dish.

5. Crumble the bacon over the greens. Sprinkle on the cheese. Pour the seasoned cream over the greens/bacon/cheese and top with the bread crumbs. Bake until brown and bubbly, about 25 minutes. Let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

From the 100-Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change, via NYC Greenmarket Recipe Series

Remembering Bodhi

On a day in early September, 1993 I drove to meet an orange kitten, the last of the litter, being given away in Cambridge, MA. I’d never seen such large ears on such a small little body. And as big as he grew, his ears were always oversized for his frame.

There was some debate about his name the first month he lived with us. I proposed “Pumpkin Bread,” unwilling to shorten to “Pumpkin” because that seemed generic. My housemates refused to call a cat “Pumpkin Bread.” Then it was “Mr. Darcy” when my British Lit class tackled “Pride & Prejudice.” That was a bit formal for such a rambunctious kitten who would bat my pencil as I tried to do my homework. Name enlightenment struck during my Asian Religions class. Maybe this kitten could help me find my own buddha nature. Bodhi it was.

It’s hard to reconcile the cat of the past few months with the memories of the early years. After one vet visit, I loaded him into the cat carrier with a cone around his neck. In the car there was a tremendous whirlwind of activity in the carrier, and when I got home I discovered he’d removed the cone. While in the carrier. I called the vet to ask if I should put it back on.

“Oh yes, please put it back on. You shouldn’t take it off yet,” said the vet’s receptionist.

“I didn’t take it off,” I explained, “He did. In his cat carrier on the way home.”

Silence.

“I don’t think you should try and put it back on him.”

Agreed.

In the early years, Bodhi spent time outside, getting into cat fights that left him with a torn ear, bringing me presents of little dead rabbits when we lived on the Cape. He was a “dog” cat then, coming when I called him, and following me wherever I went walking.
He moved to San Francisco with me before I had an apartment, living with my parents while I traveled for work as a consultant. When I eventually settled down, I brought him from Marin to my place in the Inner Sunset. He settled on the sofa as I called my landlord for permission to have a cat. She refused to give it to me, and respectful of authority at that time, I drove him back over the Golden Gate the next day.

A few months later my parents moved back east, and I had no choice but to bring Bodhi to my apartment. There was never any issue. I don’t know if my landlord ever found out, and “ask forgiveness, not permission” became my rule of thumb, at least as far as landlords and pets were concerned.

In May 2001, the day I was laid off from a dumb job I’d taken in financial desperation, Bodhi had some weird seizure. At the vet ER they diagnosed a heart murmur and heart disease. They said most likely he’d last six months to a year. At that time it was hard to imagine ten more years of adventures: a move to New York City, a sojourn in New Hampshire, a return to New York City and three different houses before his final home in the West Village.

Our first New York apartment was tiny, and Bodhi got fat from lack of exercise. But I’m not sure he realized it, and when some friends came to visit and sat on our sofa, Bodhi hopped up to join them, wedging himself between their laps, intent on being part of the conversation.

The arrival of two kids meant less attention from me, but more from them. As old as Bodhi got, he was always so patient with the kids, letting them lie on him like a pillow, putting up with their petting and pulling. Even this morning, purring as they played with him and Minna showed him her rain boots.

These last six months he’s lost so much weight, until the bones just poked through his fur, and you could feel his skull when you rubbed his ears. Often I’d pass him sleeping and sort of hope that maybe his chest wouldn’t rise as I watched. But it always did, slowly, as he slept and slept.

I struggled with whether it was time, and how to know for sure. But to know for sure would be in some ways to wait too long, to see his pain and suffering too clearly. He stopped using his box over a week ago, and that was something about which he was fastidious. The dog-cat who welcomed every visitor to our house now barely raised his head when someone entered the room.

The semester before I got Bodhi, I took the best class I’ve ever taken. We studied Buddhism, Deconstruction, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman. I read every word of “Leaves of Grass” again and again, and in times of great sorrow I always come back to it:

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward–nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I took Bodhi to the vet this afternoon. I petted and stroked him as they administered the injections. At the end, we were left alone. I thought of how lucky we both were: to have shared so much time together, to have been so loved. To leave this world without pain, surrounded by love, is about as lucky as one can get.


Bodhi 1993-2011

Sewing clothes for the kids

When I was young I did a fair amount of sewing, but never with patterns. For Christmas 2007 I received a sewing machine, and had visions of sewing all kinds of clothes for Ollie. Well that didn’t really happen, until now.

I sewed shorts for Minna!

These are the shorts I just made for Minna. I used this awesome tutorial for basic kids pants and just made them shorter. And the pattern was free! And you just print it out at home!

Oh sewing-interweb, I had no idea you existed in this way. My sewing machine pedal will be to the metal this summer, watch out for pants and shorts and skirts and dresses galore!