Little House on the Fairy Hill

New Year’s Abundance

New Year’s Abundance

3 days into my just-before-Christmas bout with the flu, I woke up with something resembling inner peace.

I hadn’t slept much – being able to breathe out of both sides of my nose is typically a component of sleep for me – but I was ok. It’s not that I was completely ready for Christmas, quite the contrary. I had tons of presents left to wrap, and we hadn’t even really decorated.

It also wasn’t that we were financially in great shape. Renovation has stretched our finances so tightly that even small-dollar purchases have to be considered. I mean we knew this was going to happen, but it’s still pretty scary.

It was something else. A change of mindset, a reminder that I needed to have some real gratitude for where we are.

When I bought Sithean, I was in my early 40s, recently separated, with 2 little kids, and we were moving 1500 miles to return home to Massachusetts.

I fell in love with this place. It was small, on an acre and a quarter, and in need of updating for almost everything.

I didn’t care. Set back from the road, and looking like a fairy tale house, It had a climbing tree in the back yard, space for a playset and a garden, and it was next to Greenbelt land, only separated by a stone wall and an access road for the town’s water tower. The kids were small – 4 and 6 going on 7 – and it was just us.

It stretched our finances to the bone just to be here, and there were more than a few times where there was more month than money. Sensible, this was not. But it was home.

Still, as the kids got older, and we added Eli, a dog, chickens and a bunny named Marshmallow, it became clear that while we loved this place, love was not enough. It was poorly insulated and the the heating system was old and kept some rooms too warm while others were freezing in the winter.

We were crammed in, despite getting rid of things as much as possible there was just no closets and no room to put anything. My daughter’s room literally had no closet, just an improvised clothes-hanging system. And the house was not suited to aging in place – if something happened that limited our mobility, we would have to leave.

We replaced the roof after a tree fell on the house. We replaced the pipe stack, the appliances, and painted and worked to make it cozy, but the house was chopped up, not working, and every fall the field mice just moved right into the holes in the foundation walls, despite spending literally thousands of dollars to deal with them. My office space was 3.5 feet across, and I couldn’t have a keyboard, a breakfast plate and a mug on the desk at the same time without something falling.

At a point a few years ago, we admitted that despite our love for this place we were completely stressed out trying to make it work, freshened up the house and tried to sell, but anything that worked for us was out of our budget and we hated even the idea of leaving. But every quote we got for renovation and an addition was also out of our means.

Finally when I closed down the business line for my prior job last year I was incentivized to stay on, and we were able to pull together the deposits we needed, and borrow the rest.

We still weren’t able to do everything, but here’s what we chose to do.

Replace the on-the-edge-of-failing heating system, and add cooling
Replace all the windows in the existing and new house, preserving the old hand-blown ones for future stained glass projects
Insulate, insulate, insulate
Renovate the kitchen completely
Renovate the upstairs bathroom, one of 2 in the house
Add a great room off the back of the kitchen with sliding glass across a span of it so that we could look outside. One of my greatest enjoyments when I lived in Florida was that sense of outdoors and indoors merging, and I wanted that here
Added an in-law suite with its own full bath with a curbless shower, entrance and closet – between our kids, extended family – we have space for those who need it or single-floor living for us as we age. For now, it’s intended to be my daughter’s room
Added a master bedroom with it’s own bathroom and closets – we’re crammed into what was once the dining room and it isn’t working
Added an office for me
Added a powder room and a mud room, allowing us to move the laundry to the first floor and out of the basement, helpful for aging in place
Full paint of all but one of the the addition rooms, the existing hallways, and the exterior of the house.
Replace the crumbling end of the driveway
Added a soapstone woodstove to the new great room to supplement our new heating system
Replaced the porch decking with no-maintenance TimberTech and added 3 wet-rated ceiling fans to the now extended porch so that we can sit out there in the heat with some relief. I love our porch quite a lot in the warm weather but it gets meltingly hot quickly

This isn’t everything by a long shot. We’ll do all the patching and painting of the existing spaces, add a patio and walkways and pull out the soon-to-be-defunct baseboard heating in the front of the house over time. We’ll also do all the landscaping and paint my daughter’s new room as well as all built-ins – we couldn’t afford to add any during construction. We didn’t manage to add wood storage either, something we both regret but is easily remedied.

And we did manage to add some quality of life items and luxuries. In almost all of the new spaces we’ll have ceiling fans, which are long term investments in frugal cooling. While we couldn’t afford a fancy gas wall fireplace in the master bedroom, we did find a 5’ long electric fireplace – basically a very long heater – for about $200 and built a space for it.

In order to manage what we have, we’ve once again stretched our finances to the edge and between that, life that is busy beyond belief, and construction delays, I’ve been a ball of stress for months now.

But I woke up, even though I felt like complete garbage, somewhat less stressed. It was Christmas week. We are blessed with warmth (as long as no one spends too much time in the uninsulated addition shell) plenty of food, a loving family, and generally, our health, except this flu that ran through the house.

Fast forward to the first day of the new year. While the stress returned, it didn’t linger. We had an amazing Christmas in one of the new spaces in the house after our site foreman/lead carpenter Ryan took it upon himself to seal off what will be our bedroom with zipper walls, hang heaters and add lights that we are fairly sure he bought himself. Magic exists, and so do Santa’s elves. I’ve met one, and he’s a carpenter by trade.

Last week I ordered toiletries to keep us for a while, and we got a half of a cord of firewood delivered. Wood heating is an integral part of our plan for surviving the last few weeks until insulation and interior walls are up in the house with our existing wood stove in the living room, and then soon enough in the new space, our gorgeous, bought-the-floor-model-at-a-huge-discount-on-tax-free-weekend soapstone woodstove will go in, and supplement heating the new addition for years to come

This should keep us in wood until sometime next winter.

January is our Uber Frugal Month, where we eat down the pantry and freezers, and I expect to keep that going well into the spring. We’ll also eat healthier after the indulgences of the holiday season, and while I won’t have a completely dry January, it will be just a wee bit damp. When the weather is good we’ll start mowing down the raspberry canes and the trench bed and maybe even start a few seeds.

But today it’s snowing, we have everything we need, and no one has to do anything in particular. New years day is, and should be a day of rest, although I will at least get a run in.

Every day I just remind myself to breathe. This is the home stretch of the worst of it, financially and otherwise. While our budget will be so tight it squeaks for some time to come, we’ll also have immense quality of life.
My word for the year is Abundance, and I feel that life is just that right now. Each Christmas is better than the last. Our kids just get more amazing. We’re blessed in so many ways. And I believe 2026 will bring all the joy, love and growth we need.

Happy New Year to you and yours.

Cooking and Housekeeping In a Construction Zone

It helps if you trick yourself into thinking you are camping, I’m not gonna lie.

We are trickling into our 12th week with no kitchen, our 13th week of construction, which is long enough that when we borrowed a friend’s house in New Hampshire for a weekend in back in October, I brought all the supplies to make meatballs because I was just so excited at the idea of a sink, a stove and counter space, all in the same place.

Luxury.

Going into this process, we were told we would be 10-12 weeks without a kitchen. In reality, it’s going to be about 20 weeks all in. Straight through the holidays, which is heartbreaking to me. But here we are, and the only way out is through.

The framing is done, the roof is on, and while it is still a shell of a house on the back with zipper walls to keep the front living quarters warm, we are making so much progress.

The construction, excited though we are, is moving along but also is definitely grinding a little on us. For weeks now the driveway and surrounds to the house have just been mud, mud mud.

And we’ve been writing checks, a lot of checks. It’s pretty overwhelming.

Everything everywhere all at once, that’s what this is. Still, we chose this, and we knew that we were going to be walking a line financially to get all of this done.

With some more time to go before chaos of the house being pulled apart ends,and the house starts to be slowly put back together, we’re in it for the long haul because at this point, there’s nothing we can do about it.

We’re trying to just breathe through it every day.

One thing we haven’t done much of is eat out, or switch to paper plates. So far our system of washing things in the bathroom sink and cooking in is working pretty well. While we packed up our crock pot, and it’s pretty good and buried in our storage space, I found an early Black Friday deal at Kohl’s for $17 for a 5 quart crock pot, which is coming in handy as it starts to get colder. While I hate to spend money for a thing we already have, it’s worth it if it means we get through this part without a ton of take out.

My husband has been carrying most of the load of cooking during the week, and I do much of the meal planning and weekend cooking, We’ve’ve been eating pretty well. A lot of one pan meals or food on the grill, of course, and certainly there are some things that are easier than others to do, but so far, so good.

Like Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon – this is a household favorite, and while beef prices are omg high, it makes quite a few meals, and we can freeze a portion or two for later. It’s a cozy treat, and I’ll slice, saute and freeze the leftover mushrooms for a later meal. We had that about 2 weeks ago and it was delicious.

We’ve been trying to carve back on our grocery spending, but it is hard when we’re having to flex our plans for so long.

My sister brought us tons of potatoes, onions, spaghetti and butternut squash and sweet potatoes from upstate NY, so we are incorporating those into our meals. Every now and again I stock up at Costco as well, and add to that the regular grocery shops, our winter share – there’s 2 more distributions – and our meat share, and we’re doing pretty great.

Here’s what we have to cook with right now:

A 2 burner hot plate loaned by a friend. This is a great tool that we use on the daily
A small older microwave that we’re hoping doesn’t die before we get a kitchen back
Grill with a single burner, so if we need something to cook faster or hotter than the hot plate we use that. Downside – on the porch, and it’s November in New England
A rice cooker – this thing is 20 years old, sees use multiple times a week and has for years, and is just absolutely the best kitchen tool. We buy rice in 15-lb bags and eat through it several times a year.
An Ooni pizza oven, a gift to Eli some years ago. While it’s a bit of setup and work, the option to have homemade pizza is lovely.
The coffee pot, without which we would not function.
An electric tea kettle. We love it and use it constantly.
An instant pot. Ours died 2 weeks after our kitchen was demolished and my neighbor gifted us hers for free.
A crock pot – we accidentally packed ours up and can’t find it in storage, so we replaced it with a $17 5-quart version last week

So look, we’re not short of options. While it’s not ideal to be prepping in the living room and washing plates in the bathroom sink, we’re eating pretty well and everything is staying pretty clean. I mean, we’re in a construction zone, so the floors outside of our living spaces, ugh, but otherwise we’re in good shape. I vacuum every day, we try to wipe down surfaces and the 1 sink all the time, and every couple weeks the bathroom gets deep cleaned. The floors get wiped down a lot as well, but keeping them clean is the hardest part. I took some pictures of the living room/pantry/prep area/dining area as well as the bathroom to help show what we’re doing.

So what are we eating this week in our little construction zone?

Use up: Grapes, Tomatoes, Cucumber, Cabbage, leftovers

Sunday: Skillet Ravioli Lasagna & Fattoush Salad

Monday: Our busiest day, Eli Cooks
Tuesday: TBD, just us

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Sausage and Potato Soup (it calls for kale but we’re out so I’ll add spinach at the end)

Thursday: Rachael Travels, Eli Cooks
Friday: Rachael brings home dinner from NYC’s Chinatown – Mei Lei Wah’s famous Pineapple Pork Buns and some other good stuff. I’ll also bring home some bagels.
Saturday: The forecast says some weather is coming, so of course, soup. Probably chicken tortilla soup in the crock pot – everyone likes it, and add some rice and croutons and it’s a comforting and delicious meal for a cold night
Sunday: Eli CooksMonday: Chili and Eli’s Corn Bread

Reimagining Sithean Part 2 – Transformation

It’s a quiet Sunday morning in the back half of October, the beginning of week 6 of construction. Other than a couple of quiet weekends our life has been moving at double-time for months now, and we really don’t stop until November. This weekend has been errand-heavy, and today we’ve got to get the house tidier in between commitments. The fair is over in our town, and the weather is starting to get chillier at night.

The back half of the house has been gutted for over a month, the vast majority of the excavation is done, and part of the foundation walls are up. We’re about 2 weeks away from new windows and replacement of our current furnace with a new hydro heating/cooling system. Our existing windows, the ones with the handblown mullions, will be saved aside and likely turned into stained glass over the next several years.

Our living room is kitchen, dining room, pantry and living room combined, and we have one functioning sink and shower for the whole house. When they gutted the upstairs bathroom they left us the toilet so we have that at least. Eli’s studio and our bedroom are filled with clutter and clothes, because there’s not enough places to put things.

I don’t like clutter, so it’s a lot sometimes, but we’re dealing with it.

The kids rooms are generally intact, and the zipper walls keep out most of the dust on our side of the house, at least for now. While it’s weird, it’s surprisingly not awful. An inconvenience, rather than a problem, living in a construction zone.

And it’s fascinating to watch the transformation up close. We have an amazing team, too. Our excavator, Jacob, who is magically turning a dirt pile into a house shape. Our lead carpenter, Ryan who keeps everything moving. Colin, who patiently explains the construction as it happens. The foundation guys, whose names we don’t know because they are quiet and refuse our efforts to bring them cold drinks, walking atop 9 foot tall foundation forms like they are stilts. Alan, the master plumber and Dana, his assistant. We get the sense that they are as committed to this project as we are.

Artisans, all of them. I have endless respect for people who can build things, can take a drawing and turn it into reality. It’s one of the things that drew me to Eli.

Throughout the process, the folks who have worked with us to painstakingly make every choice have been wonderful, from the supply folks who took us through faucets and shower heads, and then found less-expensive versions when necessary, to the flooring folks who pressured us not at all and instead showed us flooring that we immediately fell in love with. We have been so blessed to really like these folks, and we can’t wait to invite them all back when we’re finished so they can see what their hard work has wrought.

So far we’ve had over $19k in extra infrastructure costs, from burial of the propane tank to having to move a water line and pour one wall of the foundation higher than planned. I’m guessing there’s a little more out there – none of it the ‘fun’ stuff, but all of it things that will make the house what it needs to be.

The unknowns financially scare us, but we’re rolling with them one at a time, and rolling with this whole crazy ride one day at a time. There’s nothing else we can do – the kitchen is gutted, the things for the house are ordered, there’s a giant pit in our backyard – this is happening, and we’ll figure it out. Every time I get freaked out I remind myself that we have a 100% success rate of figuring it out in our lives so far. That’s not bad.

We are renting 2 storage spaces for all the things, but we’re hoping to consolidate to 1 by mid-December when the stove gets moved to our kitchen. Very early on we made the decision to have everything we needed to buy – light fixtures, cabinet handles, fittings – in storage and staged so that when the time came to install there was no mad rush to stores. By and large, we’ve done that, with just one light fixture, chosen but left to buy, as we are cash flowing our purchases.

Similarly, we’re almost done picking paint colors, several months in advance. In most cases we’ve gone with soft creams, but with bursts of color – deep green with dark grey trim and a slightly lighter green ceiling in the hallway and mudroom, my office ceiling will be Benjamin Moore’s Tapestry Gold, a rich yellow that reminds me of autumn leaves, paired with softer walls in Benjamin Moore’s Rich Cream. The kitchen cabinets are Farrow and Ball’s Down Pipe, a dark grey that has both green and blue undertones.

And we’ve bought richly colored wallpapers for the powder room, the upstairs hall bathroom and the master bath. A particularly fun find for the upstairs hallway was Mind the Gap’s The Station View wallpaper, which makes me delighted every time I think about it. Another fun find was Claret & Key, wallpaper in which you get to pick the ‘season’ color scheme – there are 4 for every pattern, and then the background color, of which there are over 35.

The only room we truly had design help with was the kitchen, so we’ve been mentally putting all our choices together, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

We’re cooking in 99% of the time, between instant pot, air fryer, grill, and hot plate. The crock pot got packed in the mad dash to get the kitchen emptied when it was demolished a week ahead of schedule, so we’ll probably not see that until we move back in. We’ve spent more on groceries than I had originally planned to, but I think we’ll see that temper itself shortly.

While dinners are not frequently fancy, they occasionally are. Eli has taken our camp cooking situation as a challenge and has turned out some truly amazing meals. The salsa, salsa verde, jam and various and assorted items we preserved in the freezer, like pesto, peaches, shredded zucchini and raspberries this summer are coming in handy.

The other night I came home from a work trip to homemade black bean soup and cornbread cooked on the grill. Last night we cooked some hamburger with onion combined that with pumpkin ravioli, pesto, toasted almonds and parmesan.

We’re hardly suffering.

These are the golden hours, watching the home we dreamed about be created. Every piece and part, every color, every fitting will have been chosen by us. While it’s not our hands doing most of the building, it’s our creation – from my inspiration to build out in an L-shape, to Eli manifesting that in a 3-D model, the changes we worked through of that model due to budget constraints – everything in this house will be made for us. That’s an astounding thought, and sometimes to me, it feels like too much – that I’m too fortunate, that no one should be this lucky.

I remember our first day here, after days of traveling – both filled with adventure and exhaustion. My Mom took the trip with us, and I will be grateful for her presence for the rest of my days.

That first morning, the kids found their way straight to – and we named – Oona, the eminently climbable mother-tree in the backyard before even eating breakfast. My son’s melt down when the promised playset arrived in pieces and boxes in the pouring rain because I couldn’t build it right then and there, and them pulling up their chairs and watching their father put it together, because we both agreed despite our divorce that our childen needed home. I remember watching the magical landscape change, and that June watching flowers drift across the driveway from the Honey Locust that is our fairy tree, home to the fairies that Sithean, The Fairy Hill, is named for. Eli’s first visits, and eventually permanent arrival, our missing piece.

It hasn’t all been delightful – a 70 foot pine tree fell on the house our first autumn here, I lost a job, we lost people we love, and animals we love. We’ve had financial challenges, mental health challenges, all of it, but we’ve come out the other side, every time.

And life is changing now. The kids are growing up, life is busier and more complicated. Never again will they crawl across the snow after a storm, pretending to be foxes. We are slowly packing away their childhoods while we pack away the house for the renovations. It’s a little sad at times, but also delightful to watch them grow up.

But it’s still magic. I feel like my life has been an endless series of transformations, and here we are in another chrysalis of change. And my children will carry the magic of this place with them always, no matter how they evolve.

I can’t wait to see what’s next.

An Autumn to Remember

The weather is still warm, but we’ve started to roll into Autumn. The leaves are turning, and lovely, and the nights are cooler. The transformation of the trees never ceases to amaze me.

So too is Sithean transforming. We are heading into our 3rd week of renovation, with about 27 or so weeks to go – to date only demolition and a lot of time with our truly lovely work crew.

Our living room has become our pantry, kitchen and living room. The porch, intact for now, holds our grill, which is used almost nonstop these days, especially the burner on the side – we have a hot plate, but if we really need to cook something stovetop style, that’s our best bet. The good news is that we have a lot of appliances – our rice cooker and instant pot, already in heavy rotation with a kitchen, now are used nearly daily without.

It’s like camping. The downstairs bathroom, the only one that will not be renovated, is the sink for all things water.

And we’re still packing things up. This weekend it was the hall closet – the new flooring will go into it, so it has to be emptied- as well as our son’s closet and bedroom, which we are simultaneously working on as he has begun to seriously outgrow his bunk bed.

Yesterday I grocery shopped at Hmart, Costco and Whole Foods, because this Friday starts off the fair in our town, and other than getting milk or a few things here and there, we’re basically locked in through mid-month. We have been dedicatedly eating down the pantry and freezers, but that had to slow so that we can plan on a couple of weekends with limited access beyond our home.

We love the fair, and that family gathers with us for opening night, it’s truly an event for us. This year our home is not really conducive to family gatherings, but by next year it will be. Other than a few paint colors left to pick and a single light fixture left to purchase, there’s not much left to choose – at this point, we are just in a waiting game to see what it looks like in real life. While the decision fatigue has been sometimes real, and at times construction planning was a second full time job, that work is almost done.

We are still packing things up and moving them around, but that too, should be done in a few weeks. Which is not to say that when we wrap that up it won’t be the end of a long, exhausting marathon, but we have to empty and clean these spaces anyway. And of course, once we’re done there will be more cleaning and moving things around and moving them back in, but that’s ok. One day at a time right now.

In general, it’s not terrible. Cluttered and dusty? Sure. But we have a small table set up in the living room we can eat at, and our meals are good so far. We like camping, and this is like that.

Last night I cobbled together a pound of chicken, sauteed onions, garlic and poblano peppers, a pint of salsa verde, a cup of chicken broth and some seasonings and put them in the instant pot for 20 minutes, then added a little parmesan, mexican cheese, and cream cheese to make a variation on Chicken Chili Verde, and it was downright delicious. Tonight I’ll make Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon.

Our kitchen limitations are causing us to be more intentional, but we’re still eating off of regular plates and using cloth napkins. At the end our budget will be very tight, but that’s nothing new either. And we’ll have a lot of finish work to do ourselves, but that’s ok.

And in the meantime we still have an abundance of raspberries to pick in the backyard, 3 more weeks of our summer CSA, and the simple pleasures of home – there is really something satisfying about curling up on the couch after a long day of paid work or house things and eating a delicious meal that we magicked out of our temporary kitchen.

So what are we eating this week through this long race?

Sunday: Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon & salad

Monday: Eli will make grilled chicken pita pockets, broccoli from our CSA

Tuesday: It’s just Eli and I on Tuesdays, so we make simple things in bowls. We have some wax beans to eat from our CSA, so we’ll make those our veggies.

Wednesday: Tortellini, spinach and chicken soup made with the roaster chicken I bought at Costco.

Thursday: Burgers, tater tots and broccoli

Friday: Pizza with Family

Saturday: Chicken soup with rice

Maybe by week 20 we’ll be completely over this, but for now, life feels pretty good.

The First of the Sunflowers

It’s August. While everything is still green and lovely, the prolonged stretches between rains mean that slowly that is changing although we did get a soaking, all-day rain a couple of days ago.

Last week we brought home eggplants and tomatoes from our farm share, along with the greens that have been so prevalent until now. We are officially moving into late summer.
We also brought home 5 gorgeous sunflowers picked by my lovely daughter. I love sunflowers – they are so magical.

We are having waves of heat interspersed with cooler days, with temperature swings of 50s and low 60s overnight to ramping up to the mid-90s occasionally. It’s been an odd summer, but aren’t they all now? One day it was so hot we could barely move, the next I had to change into sweatpants because it was downright chilly.

As weird as it is, we’re enjoying it.

We’re enjoying summer food, too – last Friday night it was too hot to cook so we made a salad and a charcuterie board. Detailed meal plans that make sure we have hot, home-cooked food during the school year begin to degrade at the beginning of summer, and by this point in time we are full-on winging it. The kids can spend extended days at their Dad’s, mealtimes become focused around when they woke up. For my daughter, now 16, this is likely her last summer of idleness before jobs and college prep consume her time. She’s bored now, actually, so that may come sooner than later.

The world seems to be descending into a kind of darkness we haven’t seen in a long time – Gazans are literally starving, the world’s efforts to make a whole people disappear. The war in Ukraine lingers with uncertain (or possibly terribly certain) outcomes ahead, and our own country has built a secret police that takes people away in broad daylight from their homes, cars and gardens. Cuts to food programs have a horribleness I can’t understand – in the wealthiest country in the world, in the wealthiest point in history, it’s shameful.

It has oddly reversed roles for Eli and I – normally I’m the political one but the more things worse, the more he monitors, his protection instincts firing on all cylinders, while I want to close in the walls of our sanctuary here at Sithean, just to keep us all safe. Which, of course, I can’t, that requires engagement.

And I do delight in our sanctuary while I worry. Sitting on the porch watching dragonflies and bees just doing their thing is one of my favorite weekend afternoon activities.

We’re just a couple weeks away from breaking ground in our endless efforts to make our dreams and reality the same for this place. It’s happening, and it’s going to be amazing. But a lot of stress to get there, for sure. Once we break ground, we’re off to 30-week odyssey that includes about 10 or 12 of those weeks without a kitchen. So we’re eating down the pantry and freezers as quickly as I can, as we have about 8 weeks left until we convert to grill, instant pot, rice cooker, air fryer and crockpot. I’m content we’ll figure it all out.

Mostly. I am stressed about it too, but the only way out is through.

Last week we added a second storage space down the road – we think we’ll need 3 by the time this is all said and done, but one thing at a time.. We’re just about done picking everything other than paint colors, with my daughter’s bathroom still the one room that’s forming up. If all goes well, we’ll close and pull the permits this coming week, and start in mid-August.

Our weekends are buried in preparation, planning, sketching every room and every floor. It’s very much fun and also mentally tiring, but in the end our art project of a home will come to life. And we’re ready, after all the long years of hoping, planning and thinking, it’s here.

Last weekend we finally took a day off and rested from the house planning We took the kids to the movies. It’s some of the last expensive fun we’ll have for a while.

And as we eat down the pantry and the freezers, I imagine meals will get more creative, but that will be fun.

So what are we eating this week?

Use up: lettuce, mangoes, peaches, cucumbers

Monday: Dinner out, a small celebration

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, so we made Jose Pizarro’s zucchini gazpacho – pretty good, I added ½ an onion. Liked it, probably won’t make it again. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/jul/08/courgette-almond-gazpacho-recipe-jose-pizarro

Wednesday: Garlic chicken, rice pilaf, salad

Thursday: Chicken Kebabs, rice, roasted broccoli

Friday: Just E and I, so bowl food

Saturday: Just E and I, tbd
Sunday: E’s enchiladas, refried beans, salad, mango and regular salsa

Monday: Chili & macaroni salad

I expect it to be a delicious week, busy in preparation, but also one of the last few of quiet before the transformation begins. Happy August!

Reimagining Sithean Part 1: The Economics

Mama Turkey Protecting Her Babies Outside Our Kitchen Window – June 2025

Many of you know I work in the mortgage industry, but I don’t really get involved with the originations side. That said, I have been a customer multiple times, but never in this way.

In order to renovate and add on to Sithean, we had to borrow money. A good bit actually. And to do that, after evaluating all of the options, we went for a construction loan. Heartbreakingly, we are giving up our 2.25% mortgage that was almost halfway paid off to do it, but it’s worth it in the long haul.

Sithean as it exists today is 1794 square feet, but very chopped up, with few closets, old windows, and very little, if any, insulation. It’s been moved twice, so there are old cut off chimneys in the basement, half of which is dirt and bedrock – one thing about Massachusetts, rocks are inevitable, and large shelves of stone part of the challenge to digging basements.

We’ve been putting money into the house since I moved in, and more since Eli joined us in 2019, but it quickly became clear that we were dropping pebbles in a Grand Canyon of needs. And as our family grew and the kids got older, we needed space, and if we intend to age in place, which we do, the existing configuration made that highly impractical, if not impossible. And we have nowhere for guests, children who rebound home, or any other scenario I see as reasonably likely in the future.

We spent years, and lots of money with a local architect and just never got to a point where we had a design that worked. We parted ways, frustrated, poorer, but much wiser and took from it the lesson that we needed to be better advocates for ourselves out of the gate, and we have. We had ceded control to the ‘experts’ but the experts aren’t us, and they don’t have to live here.

So that’s lesson #1, and if you ever do decide to renovate, make sure that you don’t get your needs lost in anyone else’s ideas.

We were so at a loss on where to go next after that we even put the house on the market after that, but circumstances and love of this place overrode the idea of leaving, and so here we have stayed. We belong here, that’s clear to us. But renovating and adding on continued to elude us because of the cost. No matter how hard we saved up, escalating costs for renovations and high interest rates outpaced us.

Finally we hit a point where renovating has become a real possibility. It’s going to cost far more than we ever dreamed, and we’ll still have some finish work to do ourselves – more on those projects later – but in the end we’ll have a home with space, storage, modern heating and cooling, the kitchen we’ve been designing for years, and a wall of doors to the backyard from our new Great Room.

We’ve finalized the budget with our builder, put deposits down with them and the kitchen cabinetry people, and started holding slabs of stone for countertops. It took a while to get to a budget that was manageable for us and got us most of the things we prioritized, so long that we lost a rate lock with the bank. But this time, getting it right is our priority, and figuring out a way to do it is job one.

One thing that shocked even us was the sheer amount of money, in cash, that is required of you in a construction loan. Plan for all the initial deposits to be you, to have a 10% reserve (although equity is sometimes permissible) of the full cost of construction, that every light fixture and piece of cabinet hardware was us we knew, but not so many other of the costs – if we wanted something we found on Etsy, our kitchen backsplash for example – it was on us. All the appliances. And so on.

Even with borrowing most of the money, our table stakes will end up being well into 6 figures.

And, I reiterate, we are borrowing most of the cost to boot.

Somewhere along the line the construction and renovation business has become a high net worth game, and the average homeowner is locked out of anything over and above either a % of their equity, or smaller dollar home repair loans, or signing on to a builder special.

Which I find interesting, because the median age of the US housing inventory is 40 years old, with half of the homes being built before 1980, and 35% built before 1970. The average age of a US home is between 42 and 51 years old, according to Statista, a statistics gathering site.

That means the houses are old, and in need of upgrades, serious ones.

And I’m not talking about marble bathtubs. I’m talking about heating, cooling, insulating, sealing out rodents, and ensuring that roofs and stoves and other items are up to code, of which we have learned, is based on 2015 standards, so it’s already 10 years old.

But who can afford to do something like what we are? Not a lot of people. And who can afford even to bring their house up to standard? Even less. It’s hard to tell how many people are considered ‘cost-burdened’ by their mortgage, but the statistics say it’s a lot, and here’s what I observe anecdotally in my area. Since 2020, a conservative estimate says that housing prices in Essex County, MA where I live have risen over 42%. That means a house that was $400k in 2020 is now $568k. But in practice, at least in my area, it’s quite a bit more than that. Our home alone has increased in value by a whopping 60%.

I would not be shocked to learn that a huge chunk of Massachusetts homeowners under the age of 50 would be considered house poor. Overall in the US, it’s estimated that 27.4% of homeowners are cost-burdened but in April of this year the data suggested well over 34% of Massachusetts homeowners are cost-burdened. That’s over ⅓ of every household in the state I live in that has an overwhelming mortgage or rent payment.

So back to the aging home inventory – if you can’t afford to tap your home equity because of the payments, assuming you didn’t buy near the height of the market and really have any equity at all, and you don’t have the cash that is required to start a construction loan…you can’t do much.

Add to that for those of us who already owned our homes the increased value has given us a great deal of equity, but the corresponding rises in taxes has done a fair bit to offset that on a monthly basis. Insurance rates are higher too, relating to both value and the volume of natural disasters that are occuring on an annual basis. Just in our own situation, since I refinanced in 2021, my monthly escrow payments have driven my house payment up over $1000 per month without making a single capital improvement.

No, that’s not a joke.

Add all those things together, and you start to notice things – even amongst the pristinely maintained houses of upper middle class and wealthier communities, you start to see things like houses that need a paint job, or roofs that have a lot of wear, or fence sections that need to be replaced just sitting empty or leaning over or drooping porches. You still see renovations and builds, but you also start to see that cars are just a little older than they used to be too.

Because all that extra tax, insurance and inflation money comes from somewhere. And even amongst the well-heeled, the weeds are starting to show. Don’t get me started on what that means for everyone else while we’re hacking away at the limited social safety net that exists here in the US.

So the economics of the housing market – especially for an armchair economist like myself are pretty fascinating, and it really is the rise in overall wealth that is keeping a lot of things moving, which is kind of worrisome in itself. Because that too, raises the price, and the bar for the rest of us.

For example, our builder, who is pretty chill, initially told us that we should plan on $90k per bathroom.

Hard no.

But what that comment tells us in simple terms is that those who are building are spending that kind of cash. Those numbers don’t just come out of nowhere. And I would guess that the sheer amount of money required just to come to the table deters quite a lot of people.
Not enough for the system to change yet though.

It is fascinating, and I’m going to keep coming back to the economics of this. Because I think we’re teetering on the edge of something breaking pretty hard. Which makes it intimidating to take this on, but we’ve waited and waited and saved and planned and it’s just time. So we’re taking deep breaths and taking the plunge.

Somewhere around late April of next year, the vast majority of the work should be done. And in some cases, our work will be just beginning.

A Hazy Shade of the Future

It’s lovely here, all green and lush with everything in bloom. Which is due to the near-endless rain this spring. Actually it’s raining again as I write this, I think the 13th Saturday in a row. And it’s only just started warming up – it has been cold too. But summer is starting to roll in despite itself, and maybe that means that the chill is waning.

Sithean in the spring is a wonder to behold. Everything seems to bloom all at once, and stark and mud becomes pink and white and flowering and it’s hard to believe that anything will go wrong.

I mean, as long as I don’t read any news.

I’ve been gone a while, not because I lost interest in blogging but because I’ve just had so much going on in real life there’s been no time or room to write. I’ve been doing my best just to stay afloat, to keep the house clean, groceries bought, food cooked, laundry done, and kids where they need to be. Some of that is burnout. I’ve never been so tired in my life other than when my kids were sleepless babies, but this time the tired was me unable to think one more thought, remember what I was trying to accomplish, or figure out what I was supposed to make for dinner.

On that last, a combination of instant pot, helpful husband who makes great meals and a lot fewer ‘recipe’ meals and a lot more of ‘here’s these things I put in a pot that are cooked’ meals. Generally these were things i wouldn’t advertise on my blog as being meals, per se, but it’s normal mom stuff. A carb, a protein, a sauce or thing to hold it together, some vegetables.

No one starved although my son did grow so, so tall and is still growing.

But as the garden springs back to life, so do I. Or at least, I’m trying, the burnout seems to be waning, although it’s not completely gone. I’m still not totally on point yet, but I’m going to fake it til I make it.

After nearly 9 months of winding down a business line, which was both an experience I wouldn’t trade and really, really challenging and emotionally exhausting, I finally was able to start a new job, a new thing, and be back to building things.

We are all healthy, and we are finally moving forward with our renovation and addition – we’re still in the planning stage, but we think we’ll be able to break ground in late July. It’s likely over the next year that this blog focuses more on our renovation and addition, because that will be the thing that will take up all of our time and money.

So, so much more money than I had hoped, but we finally aren’t waiting any more, just rolling the dice. It’s a terrifying leap off of a cliff, but I also think it’s more than time. While we’re not getting everything we wanted, we are getting most of it, and it’s exciting. Also exhausting to look at infinity variations of design, but that’s exciting too, make no mistake.

It’s been an eventful 6 months, and it looks to be a more eventful 2025 and 2026, but that’s ok. May specifically gets filled with kid activities, shows and performances, and lots of end-of-year related items. Early summer, where we are now, with everyone having finished school yesterday, and me being surprisingly emotional as my son graduated from elementary school and I realized that chapter of our lives was done. The next few weeks are filled with chilling out, camp and this year, for my daughter her first overseas trip sans parents with a leadership organization for 10 days. We’re nervous, it’s coming fast, but we’re excited for her too.

And we’re excited for us.

November Stockpile

About 5 minutes after I published my last post, our schedule changed. I had managed to prep the refried beans and made some hard boiled eggs, but I didn’t get to the cookies, and we punted on the Onion Pakoda, as badly as I wanted them, because we ran out of steam, substituting some samosa from the freezer instead.

And then the kids schedule changed around as well as their Dad had to delay time with them. The good news is that we were able to shift our plans and still cook in. Well. One night we caved and bought pizza dough and cheese because we had no plan whatsoever, but we managed otherwise.

I wrote last time about spending an astounding amount on food this month. Every November, our food spending skyrockets. My total for the last post was $805, but if I subtract the non-food items, it was more like $645. But then it went a higher still. Our Walden Local Meat share was delivered, we project to spend about $18 on milk for the rest of the month (a little over a gallon a week is what we use most of the time), we’ll need a few more groceries – and then there’s the Thanksgiving cheese.

All in, our current tab was $939, and I expect to close the month out over $1500.

Zoinks. Not going to lie, that gives me the shakes.

But. Reasons.

First – a disclaimer. We are blessed as heck and able to invest in our bellies, not everyone is. My endless gratitude for our ability to stock up every November.

Second – a disclaimer. This is food we will eat for quite some time, not just this month. But the deals are now, so into the pantry and freezer it goes.

Also, this includes some more expensive event food. I’m on for a bunch of items for a 30+ person Thanksgiving dinner. And at this time next week, we’ll have every piece of our Christmas dinner other than greens and potatoes. Turkey, cranberries, stuffing, you name it – in the cabinets or the freezer, because we are having a turkey dinner, and the time to buy that stuff is now.

I do not shop like this all the time.

For the first 3 months of each year Eli and I cut back pretty hard – pantry eat down, and only buying what we need for the week. I expect my grocery bill for January-March, including our meat share, to run $1800 or less for the 3 months, or an average of $600/month, loaded towards the back. I will caveat that by saying we may pre-pay for our Walden Local share this year, which affords us a discount overall, which would be $1800 up front. That’s a full year, and it would reduce our meat bill by over $600 for the year.

Third – a disclaimer. I didn’t do a great job of tracking our costs or using things up in 2024. We started 2024 with Eli gravely ill, me juggling work, kids, house and animals and we ended it with me juggling the equivalent of 2.5 full time jobs as the division I work in got sold, and I have been overseeing the transition, a 537-person team, and my day job. Add to that our house and 2 busy kids, family, friends, the fact that both our refrigerator in the house and the one in the garage died this year and had to be replaced, and I feel lucky this year to have a handle on anything.

Despite that, we’ve done better this year on food management than in several of the past years.

In 2025, I’m going to track my food costs by category rather than overall to see if that helps get our costs down. We’ll have a few savings, in that it’s our neighbor’s turn to pay for the summer CSA ($675 annually spread over 2 families and 20 weeks, which works out to $16.88 per family per week for tons of produce and flowers). For example, I put the dog’s food and treats in our grocery budget right now, but not chicken feed or bunny food and treats. So I’ll carve that out.

I also want to know what we really spend and use.

We have reason to believe that we’ll finally be renovating in 2025, which we’ve postponed for 4 years because of a) a pandemic b) a monstrous tax bill from closing down my business that blew a hole in all of our plans for almost 2 years and c) some real job instability on my part and that meant I would much rather postpone than be in a bad financial position.

That means that we’ll need to eat down literally everything in the house, something that makes my ‘a stocked pantry is an emergency fund you can eat‘ wiring get a little anxious. So planning our grocery bill for next year is a little wonky in that I know we’ll spend less, I’m just not sure exactly how it’s going to play out. I literally hate running out of food, but I’m going to have to learn to live with it.

Oddly, eating things down initially puts more stuff in the freezer than it takes out. An example is those refried beans I made last week. While it did get rid of 2 mason jars of dried beans on the counter and give me 5+ meals worth of refried beans, it added them to the freezer, which got much more full as a result. Similarly, I periodically batch roast, skin and freeze acorn and butternut squashes so they don’t go bad, but that too is freezer space.

So, with all that said, why November for a stockpile?
1. Our winter share typically has 4 pickups starting in November and the volumes are pretty high for veggies. Some of the items last until early spring. Also, while this year we got our farm stock up in late September, most years we go around now. So we are inundated with winter veggies such as squashes, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots and onions.
2. Food prices are often rock bottom for the holidays. This is the time to buy sugar, flour, and other baking ingredients. I buy stuffing mix and other Christmas turkey dinner accompaniments now, because the discount won’t be as good in December when I need these things.
3. I’m a squirrel. There’s something about November that makes me want to tuck food into cabinets like nobody’s business

So we go into the winter like the pioneers of old, with a larder stocked with all the things, and then eat it down. Unlike them, if I run out of wine or coffee, or II lack something, I can go get it. I live in the country but there’s really good sushi about 1.5 miles away. Deprived, we are not.

But then it’s time to eat it all, and eating things down through the winter feels good. I delight in it, actually. It’s fun to work our way through that 50-lb bag of onions. It’s fun to meal plan starting with ‘Ok, so what do we have?‘. It’s marvelous to pull pesto out of the freezer to top our homemade pizza, and smell summer, knowing it will come again.

Some people shop and cook weekly and that really works for them, or even shopping and cooking more often. Others cook once and eat all week. We’ve tried both methods, and neither works really well for us – we just are always on the move, and because of that, having a very stocked house helps.

As the day wound down, I had prepped bulgogi for the freezer, made a double batch of turkey meatballs for Monday’s, our Sunday dinner, and taken the mushrooms I didn’t use and sliced and sauteed them. Once that was done I popped them in the freezer for later use.

A note about those sauteed mushrooms. I used to never use up mushrooms fast enough and ended up composting one too many of them. Then I started buying frozen sauteed mushrooms because I didn’t want to waste any fresh ones, but there are some recipes that previously frozen or dried mushrooms won’t work for. Then one day I was looking at some unused mushrooms and had an aha moment. Now this is how I deal with excess mushrooms.

So what are we eating this week?

Use up: cantaloupe, strawberries, beets, a random rutabaga I have, salad veggies
Lunches: LEFTOVERS, baby. All the way.

Sunday: Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, a house favorite, warm naan, and salad with lettuce that miraculously came with our winter share. I almost left out the potatoes, but at the last minute I remembered. Whoops.

Note how I cleverly crammed the potatoes in the over-full pot.

Monday: Spaghetti and turkey meatballs, homemade bread, roasted broccoli

Tuesday: Kids are with their Dad, Eli and I have what we affectionately refer to as Bowl Food, usually a piece of salmon over a salad, or couscous, or cauliflower rice with some veggies mixed in. I love, love bowl food.

Wednesday: We have a lot of Thanksgiving food prep, so Eli will cook something simple. Could be as simple as Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken and rice, we’ll see.

Thursday: Thanksgiving. ALL the foods. All of them.

Friday: Recovery from all the foods, the kids are with Dad and Eli and I often go out on a date rather than cook. Possibly my pants still fit me, possibly not.

Saturday: Roasted beets and maybe bowl food again. Or soup.

Sunday: Chicken Souvlaki Bowls and probably I’ll start baking cookies. I bake a lot of cookies in December.

And then it will be Monday again. And so it goes.

Autumn Chill

The growing season is over. Last week I pulled out the last few tomatoes that could ripen on the window sill and prepared for the coming frost. It’s hard to believe I grew tomatoes into November.

After some unseasonable warmth, the cold is finally settling in. Jackets are coming out, cozy boots are being worn, electric blankets are back on beds, and tea and hot cocoa are supplementing mornings and evenings, along with the usual coffee for Eli and I. It finally rained this morning, which was a relief. We are in deep drought, and brush fires are running rampant through the area.

Veteran’s Day weekend was extended by an extra day off for me, which I spent taking care of some appointments – I was long overdue for an eye exam and a few other things, and braving Costco and other stores to do a stock up shop. We really, really needed to stock up.

Almost $805 later across 3 stores (ouch) we had almost everything we could possibly want or need, plus full freezers and cabinets. Add to that our winter share, and the bulk vegetables my Brother in Law had brought from upstate NY, and we simply won’t need to shop much until we get close to the holidays. Except for Thanksgiving cheese, but that’s in it’s own budget. Other than milk and fruit, we are set for a while. Like squirrels with their acorns, we’ve stockpiled for the coming winter.

And that’s fine because I’m tired, and while I do enjoy grocery shopping (other than Costco – too crowded and stressful) I don’t have much spare time for it. I much prefer to shop from my house. And we all want to cook and eat all the things, so a very deep and rich set of options from the freezersand pantry cabinets suits us here. The only thing we have to manage is food waste. It happens – like when our fridge died last month – but we’re getting better all the time at using things up. Years ago I wrote about Managing Food Waste and we still do most of the things – there’s only 1 bunny left now, Marshmallow and he’s old and persnickity and really only wants to eat kale and his treats, so we humor him. The chickens are getting older, but still great about scraps, and Teddy the dog does get some occasional leftovers. We also still compost as much as possible.

So what did I spend $805 on?

Food: The bigger expenses were chicken, salmon, shrimp and olive oil. I hadn’t bought shrimp in a long time, but I do like to have some frozen for a quick meal. All the meats get frozen and we eat multiple meals from them. These 4 items were nearly $120 of my expenditures. Assume 25-ish meals from the proteins at least.

I also bought a 12-lb bag of flour, replaced some pricier items that we lost when the fridge died (fish sauce, coconut aminos, etc) that I tend to keep on hand and use fairly frequently. Our snack box was getting a little thin on selection, so I spent about $50 on snacks that should last us a couple of months. That’s a lot, but includes beef jerky and some things that tend to be a little more expensive, like mini RX bars.

I bought cucumbers, and greens for some salads, since 3 of 4 of us love salad. Lots of avocados and broccoli, since we’ll use them up. Kiwi fruit and raspberries to keep us in fruit – the kids love it. We also already had a cantaloupe, so we’ll eat that up as well. I didn’t yet any tomatoes since we had the last few from the garden. I’ll have to buy some the next time I shop. Green, yellow and red peppers for various meals and because cutting them up with some hummus is a family favorite.

I got bagels, tortillas and sandwich bread for the freezer, sweet potato crackers, lots of yogurts, a large block of cheddar cheese, more sliced provolone, sub rolls, and a pound of pastrami that we stuck in the freezer and make into hot pastrami sandwiches soon. I also got some more Parmesan cheese, since we use a lot of it. Couscous and chicken broth for the pantry.

I also bought a 4-lb bag of frozen peas. Those who know me know they are one of my less-favorite veggies, but we use them often in things like shepherds pie and Indian food. That bag should last us quite a long time.

I bought bake and eat pretzels with dipping sauce, ham for sandwiches (in the freezer for now), butter, also for the freezer- since I bake all December, it’s better just to have it on hand, 4 lbs of coffee (at $30 for the 4 lbs, it’s a deal) and a few other items.

Non-food: Lighters for candles and the wood stove, Advil, soap, conditioner, thermal liners for the kids for winter/skiing, socks and a couple of holiday gifts.

Our next non-small grocery shop will be in mid-December when we go to the Korean and Indian grocery stores for a stock up there. In the interim, we’ll need things like fruit, scallions, greens and milk.

So how am I managing all this food? Very carefully. Today I’ll blanch and freeze a chunk of the broccoli for later meals. I’m making chocolate chip cookies for the week and an Indian meal that should produce lots of leftovers for lunches for the week. We’ll have salads mostly until we run out of that, and stir fry, since I need to eat up some Bok Choy from our winter share.

I’m also doing some other prep, like hard boiled eggs. My goal is quick and healthy snacks and food for the week.

I have lots of winter veggies to use up – sweet potatoes, one cauliflower, squashes, onions, beets and a few potatoes from our giant bag left, but those are almost all gone now. I also have a cabbage that I’m either turning into pickled red cabbage, or going to roast in curry.

Here’s what we’re eating this week:

Saturday: Creamy Green Chili Tortilla Soup, which used up the last few fresh poblano peppers from our summer farm share – I have more frozen that I picked – popovers, and this salad with some substitutions – I used pumpkin seeds instead of walnuts, skipped the persimmons since I didn’t have any, used goat cheese instead of blue cheese, and added cucumbers and the last of our cherry tomatoes from the garden. It was delicious.

Sunday: My daughter and my husband were doing a volunteer activity in the evening, so my son and I went to Salem MA to do some holiday shopping and eat dinner out. We were home by 5:45 pm because we’re both homebodies and he went off to game and I watched some TV with a glass of wine.

I put some dried kidney beans to soak in water so I could make a batch of Haphazard Homemaker’s Refried Beans, which is such a great and simple recipe. Once made, I freeze them in side dish sized batches for future use.

Monday: Holiday for me and the kids. Preeti’s Dal, Butter Chicken, rice with peas, and Eli helps me make Onion Pakoda. Few substitutions in that last – I use canned green chilis, and dried cilantro since I don’t have any fresh. I will roast some broccoli for something green on the side.

I also plan to make chocolate chip cookies for the week. I haven’t yet started making holiday cookies, but that will start up soon.

Tuesday: I have dinner plans, Eli was working, so I will prep him some leftovers with a nice dessert

Wednesday: Using 1/3 of the dozen rolls I bought (froze half, kept 1 out for a sandwich for my son, used the rest for meals) to make hot pastrami sandwiches with sauteed onions, provolone cheese and whatever else people want on them, along with Fattoush and some roasted broccoli.

A note on the Fattoush – hands down a house favorite, I learned to make it after getting hooked on it during my work travels. The sumac is fairly cheap and it lasts a long time. We probably make this salad weekly, and I often roast slivered almonds on top.

Thursday: My daughter has her riding lesson and then went to her Dad’s, so it was just my son and Eli and I. Crusted salmon over couscous. Ours will have some garlic scape pesto over it from the freezer, my son’s will not.

Friday: The kids are with their Dad, so Eli and I will have either Butternut squash soup or stuffed spaghetti squash boats.

Saturday: The kids have an art museum outing during the day, and will eat lunch out. If anyone needs dinner afterwards, I’ll make homemade meatball subs with some of the frozen sub rolls.

Sunday: Beef Ramen with Bok Choy added, and homemade potstickers, in order to use some of the Napa cabbage from our farm share.

I hope you all stay warm and cozy this November.

Crickets

Somehow, summer is ending.

In just a few days the kids go back to school. This weekend was busy with trying to sort through the last of the supplies needed, washing new clothes, and dealing with the endless abundance of late-summer produce.

Our summer was busy with trips and house guests, with sleep away camp and time with grandparents in Maine, and some home improvements.

This year, the garden was more neglect than anything, but we still planted – tomatoes and peppers from my Moms, and a few things I started. I’ve managed to keep a geranium and a poinsettia alive for almost 2 years, so they join the key lime tree and the hydrangeas outside for the summer. I’ve also been planting perennials as much as possible – this year adding more tulips, a butterfly bush, a wildflower garden that is mostly Black Eyed Susans, and a gorgeous purple delphinium in the front yard.

My tomatoes here at Sithean are loaded with green fruit, and hopefully they will all ripen quickly and then I will can them for sauce. Butternut squashes are growing rapidly, and the grapes growing on the vines next door are just about ready to be turned into jam. The raspberry canes are laden with ripening fruit, and I even have one small Key Lime growing on my lime tree. The weather is glorious with warm days and cool nights.

The late summer sounds of crickets fills the yard at night, and that, plus cooler nights is how I measure the waning of summer. I’ve been a bit of crickets this summer too – so much has happened and it was all I could do to keep up. The kids are growing up so fast, and there is more independence and being apart, but also so, so much to do. And our lives are evolving rapidly, all of us.

Eli is prepping for his trip to LA, just a couple of weeks out now. And I am going through a transition at work and not sure where that will lead. But in general, all is well. My Birthday came and went, with the porch redone as my gift, including an inexpensive but very comfortable couch, so that I can sit outside and sip my coffee in the sunshine, and even when it’s pouring rain. Every time I look at it I’m delighted again – one thing I have missed since my days in Florida is the combination of indoor/outdoor space that is so standard there. This is our first step towards that.

This past week was the 12th of 20 in our farm share, and we’re starting to drown in produce, which is a simultaneously overwhelming and joyful feeling. When so many go without, to have plenty enough to share is a huge blessing.

Eli and I had a quiet Saturday – we walked the dog in some local Greenbelt land, I napped, he tended the chickens and worked. The peace was lovely. Because there is so much produce, I planned a meal – several really – around that. First, I made Panzanella since we had some bread that was going stale. And we have a lot of cucumbers, so I chopped one and threw it in. It’s really delicious, great for using up leftover bread and excess tomatoes, and my favorite part of it is that when I took the picture and titled it in the folder for this post, autocorrect turned it into ‘Pam Smells’.

I hope you enjoy Pam Smells as much as we do.

Then I made my friend Preeti’s Dal. Our friends came from Michigan to visit us recently and are assisting me in becoming more confident in making Indian food, which I love. Dal is cheap and healthy and incredibly delicious. This Dal is a combination of Chana (split dried chick peas) and Masoor (red lentils). It’s so simple, very healthy, and really delicious.

Preeti Naik’s Instant Pot Dal

You will need:
1 tomato, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
Either 1 tbsp of chopped ginger and garlic, or one large tablespoon of ginger garlic paste
1 tsp Mustard Seed
1.5 tsp Ground Cumin
1/2 tsp Tumeric
4 cups water
1 cup Masoor Dal (red lentils)
1/4 cups Chana Dal (split dry chick peas)

Using a colander, rinse the Dal until the water runs clear. Lentils tend to have a soapy coating on them, and they will taste much better if you rinse them.

Using the saute function and either ghee or neutral oil, saute the onion and tomato until soft. Add the ginger and garlic, and the spices and saute for another minute.

Add the Dal and water to the instant pot and set on Manual to 20 minutes. Once the pot is done, let it self-release the pressure for another 20 minutes, then vent. Salt to taste and eat.

Add the Dal and water to the instant pot and set on Manual to 20 minutes. Once the pot is done, let it self-release the pressure for another 20 minutes, then vent. Salt to taste and eat.

Then I made crispy tofu bites, which is one of my favorites, but I will say that I have needed 1.5 times the coating mixture for a full block of tofu. I also cut mine smaller.

We ate our all-vegan meal without noticing it was. This is the thing about good food – labeling it is critical for those on diets, labeling something as vegan for omnivores sometimes makes it sound less good, and I’m not sure why that is, so I just don’t label it unless I have someone around whose diet I’m trying to accomodate. Eli and I trying to eat less meat, and eat less generally, and this meal was simple, healthy, varied and delicious. It used up garden produce, essential at this point in the summer.

So what are we eating this week?
Sunday: comfort food, despite the heat – Ravioli Lasagna, zucchini cheddar biscuits, Fattoush. I sub the radishes, which I rarely have for whatever is in the fridge and add toasted almonds and dried cranberries for extra flavor.
Monday: Rosemary Ranch Chicken (I never bother with kebabs, just slice the chicken breasts lengthwise into tenders), grilled baby potatoes, broccoli
Tuesday: The kids are with their Dad, Eli and I will eat what we affectionately call ‘bowl food’ – a protein over cauliflower rice or couscous with some veggies.
Wednesday and Thursday: I’m traveling so Eli will feed the kids.
Friday: We’re in for cooler weather rolling into Labor Day weekend so we’ll make homemade oven pizza with customizable toppings for everyone.
Saturday: Potato soup, homemade bread, zucchini fritters
Sunday: Back to the warm weather, if the forecast is correct. Gazpacho, BBQ chicken leg quarters, beet salad, butter noodles
Monday, Labor Day: Of course we’ll grill! Burgers and chicken wings, potato salad, some kind of salad