Have moved to blogger, where I've started what I'll call an urban home economics project: Rowhouse livin'.

Hey, everybody, it's votin' time tomorrow. Polls are open 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Google says they can find your polling place for you if you've forgotten. (You don't have to show ID to vote in Pennsylvania, unless it is your first time voting at this particular polling place. But the threshold documentation requirement is pretty lowHere's my ( Read more... )

Twelve hundred miles and ten days later, I'm back in town after tooling around Atlantic Canada. Pix and something of a travelogue once I get laundry done and find a data cable to connect this camera we used to my computer ( Read more... )

. . . jam!

Ingredients:

• about 4 dry pints whole blueberries
  
• 4 cups sugar, divided
  
• 1 package powdered pectin
  
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Method:Crush the blueberries (e.g., with a potato masher) a handful at a time. Measure out 4 cups of crushed berries ( Read more... )

• Last night Eleanor put herself to bed, as she's been doing lately, without informing me or needing to be told to turn her light off. (It's summer, after all.) I knocked and went into her room a moment after I'd heard her shut her door -- otherwise I make her keep it open for air circulation -- and said, "What? You don't need any huggy-huggy-kissy ( Read more... )

Ingredients:

• 1 dry quart (about 2 pounds) boiling potatoes
  
• 2 or 3 eggs
  
• 1/2 cup white vinegar or liquid from a jar of sweet pickles
  
• 1 small red onion, diced
  
• 2 ribs celery, diced, or an equivalent quantity of diced green (sweet) bell pepper
  
• salt and pepper to taste
  
• 1/2 tsp each mustard seed and celery seed, if using vinegar instead of pickling ( Read more... )

I would complain about the black fabric paint spilled onto the carpet, or the slightly charred meringue on the baked Alaska, but really Eleanor's birthday party yesterday, postponed from last month, was a lot of fun.

I've ordered a pressure canner. It's a 21 1/2-quart All-American brand pressure canner/cooker, and it should arrive early next week.

Got tomatoes?

We've been raising Eleanor as an ovo-lacto vegetarian, though in the past few years we've been giving her fish every once in a while for the protein fix and some flexibility with mealtimes. But at school, Eleanor and some of her classmates arrive early enough to get some kind of breakfast at the cafeteria. Some kids get tatertots, others get ( Read more... )

Was flipping thru the Consumerist blog today and thought, gee, that kid sure does look familiar!