hippy progress
not canned, jarred
I often claim to be some kind of a hippy homesteader type—at least, that's how we have it in our blog description thingy—so it's to me great shame to admit that, for the vast majority of my life, whenever I wanted to make something with beans I'd just open a can. It's horrible, I know. Even many months after reading An Everlasting Meal (mentioned previously) I couldn't manage to get going on dried beans. Part of the problem was one failed recipe a couple years ago; those black beans were so disgusting I couldn't face trying again for quite a while.
But now I wonder what the problem ever could have been, because as most of you probably could tell me, dried beans aren't any hard. They take a long time, sure, but almost no effort or attention at all; just like I always tell people about bread, only more so. I am now converted, and will be working solely with dried beans from here on out (with the possible exception of a few cans of chick peas for any sudden hummus cravings). One key to avoiding canned beans will be saving some cooked beans in the fridge at all times against the inevitable moment when Zion asks for "beans and rice and cheese and tortilla and sour cream to dip", which he does just like that because his requests lately are more often than not rote recitations. You can't imagine how many times we've heard "a little bit of warm apple juice and a lot of warm cold water warmed up in a bottle with a top." Really you can't. And yes, he does (this week) say "warm cold water".
Last week I made pot of chili with dried beans, and I also used some of the tomatoes we canned in the summer. It felt pretty good: our chili recipe, which used to result in four or five tin cans headed to the recycle bin, was made without producing any landfill waste at all. With the recent seed order I'm ready to go even bigger next year; just ask Leah how excited she is about having even more tomatoes to put up! And I don't know what sort of yield we'll get on dried beans, but we'll have Black Turtle and Vermont Cranberry growing, along with Kentucky Wonder pole beans which, I learned recently, can also be used dry as soup beans. Just the thing for when the poles are so tall you can't pick the beans at the top until you take the whole thing down in the fall!
All that is to say: while while we're still struggling (or in some cases not struggling) with other marks of hippy shame, I can now report that, if nothing else, at least I know how to soak beans.
Is my house my new body?
In college when I would meet a potential friend I would secretly sum her up by placing her on an attractiveness continuum. The important factor in my calculation was her closeness to or distance from my own weight-to-height-ratio. If someone was too thin or too tall I'd think: she'll never be friends with me.
So if I were to just meet you in 2001, it would be a compliment to hear me say: "I don't know if we can be friends; you're so skinny."
It's been a long time since I judged someone's potential friendship based on their BMI. Since growing up and having children I've learned a few things. One is that most women's weight is genetic, beyond their control, and has very little to do with any objective measure of success or sanity. Skinny women can be failed, crazy, and unpopular. And beyond that, failure, insanity and not fitting in don't carry the same punch as they did before I experienced all those things.
I get now that "You're so skinny" might not automatically be a compliment. I get now that it's a rather personal and rude thing to say.
This is not to imply that I'm so very enlightened. It's just that in the past ten years I seem to have switched hang-ups. Because the other day I told a friend something to the effect of, "I don't know if you can like me because you're house is so much cleaner than mine."
And my friend appropriately took me aside and said something like, "What's this bullshit about comparing houses, Leah? WTF?"
Indeed, what is this bullshit about? I may look so post-vanity with my no-makeup thing and my dreadlocks thing. But the truth just might be that MY HOUSE IS MY NEW BODY.
Come to think of it, my house is actually a pretty good proxy for my former body obsession. My houses is the size that it is, and I don't have much option of moving. I think people who live in nicer or cleaner houses must look down on me as lazy or insufficiently self-controlled. Maintaining my house in a condition I consider "acceptable" takes more effort than I am capable of.
Not to mention the fact that parts of my house are often dirty, smelly, or broken, and I don't want you to see those parts.
So yeah, just like that body that it took me so long to 'accept.'
Do you think this will be the rest of my life? Displacing my neuroses from one area to another in the vain belief that I'm getting cured? If so, I fear I'll always be worried about someone judging me, and the criteria will only get increasingly more bizarre.
I don't want to hold back closeness in relationships because someone sews more than I do, or because someone makes fancier baby food, or because someone's children are better behaved than mine. I want to make new friends without apologies for who I am.
I want to be a friend without a fear of divulging my lack of capability. I want to put a stop to this now.
So today I say this to the world: My house gets messy. It gets really really messy. I let Harvey take out all my cds and rearrange the liner notes. There is a box of legos in the hallway that doesn't seem to be going back into the attic. I vacuum and I don't know what happens next.
a regular day here
I could be doing this better, but no. This is just where I'm at right now. I hope you'll still be friends with me.