Cabin Crafted

Tag: memories

  • Doing What I Love the Most

    An early start to a busy day, fueled by my super oatmeal with chia seed, walnuts and honey, I’m saving the eggs for the family visit and to send some home with our student family. Prep work for their visit requires a good house scrubbing as Son#1 shows signs of allergy to the pups. Beds which are left unmade to discourage stink bug hiding, must be given clean sheets, blankets and quilts. They are threatening us with accumulating snow on Wednesday or Thanksgiving, so wood must be stacked on the back stoop for the wood stove and the garage or front porch for the fireplace.
    While Mountaingdad still slumbered, bread was started. I had nearly forgotten what a pleasure it is to make bread. I used to make all of our bread but we have been buying artisan loaves at the Farmers’ Market for a while now, but it is up to $9/loaf and with five of us eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 4 1/2 days, it seemed much more economical to make it. Two loaves and a pan of rolls are in the works.

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    The kneading bowl was a Christmas gift from Mountaingdad, handmade in November 2006 of cherry wood by Glendon Royal. It was often used in the past and brought out of display for bread making today. There is too much dough in it to allow a good initial mix and rise, so another treasure was put back into use.

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    This enormous hand thrown pottery bowl was thrown by Rob Podd of the Poddery. It is one of my early pieces from them. We met them at a craft show as they were just getting started and with our purchase of a small dish were given an invitation to their first annual kiln opening to be held the weekend before Thanksgiving which falls on or near my birthday. It became a tradition to go for my birthday and let me pick out a piece of pottery as my gift. There are mugs, a honey pot, plates, bowls, pitchers, and casseroles added a piece at a time over the years, all treasured, used and loved. This piece isn’t dated. Later at the request of the opening guests they began dating each piece. The scramble to get a piece warm from the kiln was fun as folks leaned and shouted to be able to have first refusal on the next piece touched. I don’t know if they still hold the openings or not, we live too far away now for the annual visit and I have all the pottery I need. We only missed two openings, the year I was over due with our daughter and hubby dared not take me 2 hours from home and the hospital and the year they didn’t have it because Karen was due momentarily with one of their children.
    Such memories. The bread is rising for most of the day to make it light enough for the grandson’s tastes. Sandwiches, French toast, dinner rolls for Thanksgiving, I await drooling over the thought.
    It is time to get back to mopping, scrubbing, sweeping, bed making all while enjoying the bergamot and vanilla infused water in the tiny sauce size crock pot simmering and filling the house with delightful scents until the bread can fill the house with it’s enticing aroma.

  • Curmudgeon

    I was fortunate to have my paternal grandfather in my life until I was in my early 30’s.  When I was a teen and my great grandmother was in a geriatric ward for a couple of years, he would tell me tales of his young life.  He grew up in a railroad family and was known to “ride the rails.”  As a young man, he injured and lost one of his eyes with a pocket knife accident and had a glass eye. Though he had an interesting young life and was probably a bit of a bad boy, he was a gentle, hardworking man that owned his own business and raised two sons that both far exceeded his 8th grade education, both getting University degrees in engineering.  As an older man, he was a bit of a curmudgeon.

    I was the first grandchild and always felt a special bond with him.  As a young adult, I would go to the farmers’ market then take baskets of peas or butter beans to my grandparents home and my grandmom and I would shell them for dinner and for the freezer.  More than once, Pop as all of us grandkids called him would sit on the porch with us and would pick up a handful of beans and start shelling.  My grandmom would comment that she had never seen him do that before.

    I had a young kitten and once asked them if they would keep it for a week while I flew to Hawaii to met my husband on R & R.  They had no pets as Pop wasn’t fond of them, but indeed they did keep my kitten.  One of the things he disliked was having the cat rub around his legs as cats are prone to do.  It is strange that as I am aging, I don’t like a cat to rub on me and though we have two outdoor cats and two dogs, I don’t like them to lick me.

    Once I asked him if he had seen a comic in the paper and though he was reading the paper, he told me he didn’t read the comics.  I couldn’t believe that anyone didn’t read them, but other than the occasional one that my husband points out to me, I no longer read them, none of the good ones are in print anymore.

    When my first husband and I started having marital problems, it was obviously distressing to him.  After I divorced and met my current husband, the love of my life, my grandfather took him aside and informed Jim that if he ever hurt me, that he would have to answer to him.  As it turned out, when Pop had a heart attack at home and my grandmother called me to come to her, I was a city away at work.  Jim was close by and he hurried to their home to help my grandmom while the medics were there and until I could get there.

    Recently, I have thought of him many times, when an impatient driver behind us honked his horn at Jim, I was reminded of how Pop would continue to sit, roll down his window and point over the top of his car; as I fuss at the cat for rubbing against my legs on the porch or as one of the dogs tries to “kiss” me; when Jim points out a comic in the paper that he thought I would appreciate.  Perhaps, I too am becoming a curmudgeon.