I’m in a mood

Wow, inter­est­ing how much spam the title “Home­school­ing Myself” attracted.  That may have been a record.

This week­end, I went over to a friend’s house and four of us did a lot of can­ning.  We made pick­les, pick­led eggs, and pick­led beets.  I haven’t tried the last two, but I’m try­ing to keep an open mind.  In the­ory, I should love pick­led eggs, at least.  I love eggs and every­thing that went into them.  I’m still scared, though!  We also made some jam.  We had to impro­vise, because we didn’t quite have enough berries.  We rounded the fruit table out with some grapes.  The jam appears to be a loose set, but that only makes it more ver­sa­tile, right?  It can be either jam or syrup this way.

Aren’t they pretty?

I’m very glad I went.  When I orig­i­nally got the email, I almost declined, sim­ply because I’m tend­ing to be reclu­sive right now.  Pry­ing myself out of the house gen­er­ally ends up to be a good idea, but when social set­tings are involved,  I worry that I’ll make peo­ple uncom­fort­able if the sub­ject gets too per­sonal.  But these friends have been very under­stand­ing and treat­ing me like I’m still a nor­mal per­son, not a con­ta­gious leper.  They talk to me, and ask how I’m doing in a way that tells me I can talk if I need to, or not.  Also, this type of adven­ture in kitchen sci­ence are my type of domesticity.

Try­ing new foods is always fun.  I told the girls that I drew the line at pick­led pigs’ feet, though.  Those things smell rank.  I am really a very finicky eater, so it took a long time for me to become adven­tur­ous.  I used to be the kid who took Burger King into the Chi­nese restau­rant because even the com­pro­mise food — tem­pura chicken — yicked me.  Now in my wise old age, I’ve learned that the more new things I try, the more I dis­cover I like.  It’s eas­ier to avoid the com­mon food that dis­gusts me if there’s some alter­na­tive I can find.

Learn­ing how to do some­thing from scratch is some­thing I put a high value on, too.  Soap is next on my list of things to learn.  Yes, often I’ll learn how to do some­thing, and decide it’s too much trou­ble to do on my own.  Tor­tillas are a good exam­ple of that.  I have friends who swear tor­tillas are easy, but I’ll save myself the 6 hours of rise time and spend $1.50 at the store.  No mat­ter what, it’s still worth the learn­ing. I mean, the apoc­a­lypse is right around the cor­ner! Any­one with any brains knows the fate of the world is in the hands of the Mayan cal­en­dar, after all.  And I’ll be the mer­chant who is able to pro­vide paper, yogurt, crack­ers, body lotion, and scarves to the poor souls that survive.