The Pantry Challenge

I was raised in a small town about 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. Those nearest grocery stores (one in either direction) are not exactly gigantic. There are 3 or 4 aisles, and they’re short on produce (which is expensive to get there and which has fewer people to eat through it). My father was retired military, so we had base privileges. Once a month my folks would make the long trip to the nearest military commissary and we’d load up on everything you needed for a month – chicken thighs, cereal, pasta, milk. We might add one or two things when we went to town, but in general that food that we got once a month was the food that we had for the month. When I was born, it was much harder to get groceries (I was born in a tiny village in the heart of Africa). My mom tells stories about how they had one Coke a week, and treasured it.

The nearest grocery store.

I live in the halo of one of the great cities of the world. It’s about a quarter mile to a grocery store with 16 aisles and vats of produce. (Which, ironically to me, isn’t considered a “nice” grocery store – there are much bigger ones within a 10 mile drive.) Even that convenience isn’t convenient enough for me. I get my groceries delivered once a week from Peapod. I’m pretty methodical about how I go about shopping for it. Any staples that are used are written on a list on the ‘fridge. Then I go through recipe books and pick 3 – 4 recipes I plan for the week, and add any special ingredients I need for those recipes. I also have a list of standard items I buy every week. (Which might be why we currently have about 20 bags of pretzels.) For about half the year I’m signed up to a farm share where vast amounts of fresh produce enter the house every single week. Finally, if I’m missing something or need inspiration, there’s a Farmer’s Market once a week, two blocks away. Oh, and we eat out a lot.

My current life is about as far from the food desert I grew up in as you can get.

The nicest of the nearby grocery stores where I live now – just the produce section

This great bounty is a great privilege – and one I recognize as such in part because I know what it’s like to live somewhere where it’s NOT easy to get healthy, tasty food. But I find that this abundance leaves me with a few problems. Most obviously, it leaves me with an abundance of self. It’s amazing how little food it takes to eat 2000 calories in this environment. That is, perhaps, a story for another day.

A week's worth of farm share fun
A week’s worth of farm share fun

The second problem is that my sons are not exposed to the appreciation of having healthy and abundant food that I got. It’s wonderful to be able to provide my sons for everything. But while I (mostly) know what to do if that food budget gets slashed and pennies need to be pinched, my sons would have no clue. Which costs more, lasagna or split pea soup? How do you get enough protein if you can’t afford the best cuts of meat? How do you make the recipe serve the ingredients, instead of the ingredients the recipe? What is it like to budget and made trade-offs in your food allowance? These are life skills that I hope my children don’t need, but that I’d like them to know exist in case they ever DO need them.

The third problem is that the cupboards are wastefully overflowing. There are ribeye steaks in the freezer from a farm share, which I’ve just never found the right time to cook. There are cases of pasta and beans in the basement. There are boxes of cake mix and bags of rice kicking around the corners of the pantry. I find it easier to just order a new thing than to check and see if I already have it.

So I’ve hatched a plan to tackle problems 2 & 3. My plan is to not buy any food for the month of June.

My pantry overfloweth. Not pictured: several other cupboards.
My pantry overfloweth. Not pictured: several other cupboards.

Between our two camping trips (Memorial Day & 4th of July), I’m giving us a budget of $50 a week for ALL our food purchases. So that’s one pizza order, plus some milk and eggs. Or maybe that’s one brunch at a local diner. Or we could buy ingredients to round out the supplies in the pantry we’re working our way through. According to a Gallup poll, 8% of Americans have $50 a week or less to spend on groceries. I’m guessing many of those folks don’t also have pantries brimming to overflowing with supplies, and a farm share to kick in produce halfway through the month. (And heck, an excellent book on foraging!)

I even just cleaned out this fridge!
I even just cleaned out this fridge!

I’m hoping this will do several things. First, I plan on working through this with the kids, so they can understand making trade-offs of convenience, tastiness, nutrition and better appreciate how lucky we are to usually get all three. Second, I’m hoping it makes ME less lazy about honoring the resources I have, and using them more efficiently and less wastefully. I feel like wasting food is being ungrateful for what I’ve been given.

Then, once we’ve all come to appreciate what we have more, I’d like to take some steps to make sure everyone has enough food to eat. Assuming my math is right here, and assuming we can stick to this plan (a big assumption), we’ll save well over $400 in groceries in the month of June. (And that doesn’t count how much we’ll save by not eating out!) I’d like to give that savings to The Greater Boston Food Bank which does an amazing job of getting food to those friends and neighbors who need it.

Downstairs freezer. Those cardboard boxes at the top are completely filled with meat - ground turkey, chicken breasts, pork tenderloin, and some random cuts of meat from a meat share last year
Downstairs freezer. Those cardboard boxes at the top are completely filled with meat – ground turkey, chicken breasts, pork tenderloin, and some random cuts of meat from a meat share last year

So…. let’s see how this goes? I’ll be posting updates in a Google+ Collection for those who want to follow along. If any one else is inspired to try something similar, I’d love to hear about it!

Charlestown End – The Old Burying Ground

Jacob Gould's Grave
Jacob Gould’s Grave

The Old Burying Ground in Stoneham was opened to visitors today. For years it’s been opened on Halloween weekend – at the exact same time as the town trick or treating. So I haven’t been able to go. But I’ve been falling in with the historical crowd lately, and they realized that we parents love history as much as our kids love candy and were awesome to set up this great second session this year.

Familiar faces
Familiar faces

My trip to the Burying Ground this last Halloween kicked off an extremely fun month for me. I was doing Nanowrimo with a friend. I saw this amazing tombstone with its rich old story of Jacob Gould “barbarously murdered by ruffians in his own dwelling” and I looked it up on Google. Google books led me to more of the story in Silas Dean’s gossipy 1843 history of Stoneham (which is right there an argument on how awesome the internet can be!) and I went down a monthlong rabbit hole of local history and lore while I wrote a werewolf book about the strange misadventures. I had an absolute blast, although I sadly have not finished the book.

I did learn what they found when they opened the three crypts. New life goal: be there when they open one of the three crypts.

Rare to get a government tombstone for a nurse
Rare to get a government tombstone for a nurse

They had three reenactors there, all of whom were excellent. One played the role of a Civil War nurse (who apparently had to be older than 30, of high moral standing, and rather plain). She told the story of how Hannah was buried in sight of the house she’d grown up with, across the alley on Oriental Avenue. And I stood there, in ground set aside at the turn of the 19th century where were buried Revolutionary War heroes, slaves, native Americans and pilgrim-folk and I thought about what it is to be at home.

He could have seen Shakespeare's plays as a young man.
He could have seen Shakespeare’s plays as a young man.

Many of the people lying there were not Stoneham born. They came from England, Wales, Africa… or as far as from Maine or Connecticut. They came to a frontier town, or a sleepy bywater. They came to a new place and built a place for themselves there. When they died they consigned their remembrances to the uneven soils of this burying ground. Hundreds of years later, we walk by twice a year to greet them. And where they were strangers to me last October, as May came I greeted them instead as friends.

Mt. Rainier
Mt. Rainier

My heart has long lain in the rugged stark mountains of the West. It’s a land that feels as though history lies lightly upon it. The stories of the people who first lived there have never been told to me. The stories of my people are short – the town I grew up in is just over 100 years old. There are residents who remember the first people there. But for most of my life, I’ve been FROM Washington.

I think that may begin to be changing. I’ve lived in New England 20 years. Sixteen of those have been in Massachusetts, and eight of THOSE in Stoneham. How can I turn my back on Deacon Silas Dean, Jacob and Polly Gould, Benjamin Gerry, Elizur Wright, Parker G. Webber and the cast of folks – brave, strong, moral, funny and complicated who have also moved here from elsewhere, and made it their home? Fortunately, the question of home is not one you have to put exactly one answer to on a form. We may come from many places. But as I learn more here, meet more friends, run into more people at the store, and walk even the graveyards with familiarity, I find myself more and more at home.

This creepy cherub is totally judging me.
This creepy cherub is totally judging me.

Enjoy all my pictures from the day at the graveyard!

Megablogging: the State of the Blog

8:20 pm – Sunday night. I’m completely exhausted. Wiped out is an understatement. I got up at an hour that begins with a “6” (after having gone to bed at an hour that beings with a 1… even if you’re on a 24 hour clock) in order to do the Walk for Hunger. Generally I’d rather walk against hunger, but I figured this was the year I’d finally join the faithful footsoldiers at my church. I thought a 10 mile walk would be no problem. Heck, I did 6.5 miles on Wednesday without feeling anything more than I’d had a good walk. I didn’t reckon how much harder it would be to do it all at once, in a huge lugubrious pack of people, on asphalt, in cold 50 degree winds in the overcast. I won’t pretend otherwise – the 11.5 miles I did this morning kicked my butt.

So by the time kid-bedtime rolled around, my lack of bloggedness was a weight on my shoulders. I mean, I know I don’t get paid for this. I know it’s not really that important. But I have made a commitment to 11 am on Mondays and by gum I try really hard to keep it.

I haven't done so badly in keeping my commitment
I haven’t done so badly in keeping my commitment

Anyway, so I was brushing my teeth and thinking about what kind of blog post I should do today. My posts fall into one of about four genres. I was trying to figure out which one I had both a topic and energy for. Here are the general genres:

1) The autobiographical update
This is the easiest one to write. Sometimes when I’m really tired this is just a list of all the random post-its I stick in my head with with a note saying “possible blog post”. It’s more or less a collection of extended Facebook updates about my life. If I had to guess, I’d guess this kind of post is interesting to my mother and the nice lady from Minnesota who reads everything I write. And frankly, I’m not so sure about my mom. But this kind of post does serve a useful purpose. This blog is my journal. I could never prioritize a journal written for an unknown audience the way I prioritize my conversations with you. (In fact many of my old paper journals go on for pages pondering on what possible audience would ever be interested in reading about my deepest thoughts. Given that they’re adolescent drivel, this was a good question to be asking.) I deeply value capturing the meaningful moments and stories of my life. I preserve precious memories here. But I recognize that these posts are not riveting, and usually try to work harder to make the same information into a better written post.

2) Stuff I’ve learned
These sorts of posts are hard to write, but worthwhile for me. I usually pull together some sort of research I’ve been doing into the equivalent of a report. In the last two or three years, these have been almost entirely focused on Stoneham, my adoptive home town. As I’ve gotten a clue about the situation here, I’ve discovered how hard it is to develop an informed opinion without knowing people, and I’ve tried to share what information I’ve unearthed in a more public environment. I much prefer talking about the wolf attacks or the latest awesome thing I read in Silas Dean’s history than to wade into politics, but the political information is probably rather more useful.

3) The Perspective Piece
This is probably the kind of writing I consider to be the core of my blog. I take a moment in my life – really, I try to take the things I’ve been thinking about – and go in depth on them. This is where parenting, mortality, faith, why I can’t listen to NPR anymore, and how I feel about hiking all come out. I use the occasions of my life to talk about what that living means to me. At its best, I have a chance to work through the difficult thoughts. I actually find it really hard when the concepts I’m working through are things I can’t share with you – like a relationship that needs hard thinking, or anything about work. I have never talked much about work here, not because it’s not important to me but because I think discretion is the better part of wisdom for a hobbyist blogger. Looking at my recent posts, I’m not actually sure I do this kind of post as much as I think I do.

4) Big Concepts
These are the posts I aspire to; the ones I secretly hope will go viral. (Hint: they haven’t. I’ve only had one post go viral in the 13+ years I’ve been blogging, and that was about a tv show, which is ironic given how little tv I watch.) These are the posts where I feel like I’m really saying something meaningful. I hope to contribute a small voice to the great conversation across generations of writers about what it means to be a human. I don’t write very many of these, and they rarely get a lot of comments.

My tooth-brushing self, cycling through these known tropes, wondered which one you wanted to read, and whether you’d be annoyed at yet another autobiographical list of “stuff that happened” a la option 1. I thought “Hey, WordPress has a poll function! I could just, you know ask them. All I’d have to do is spend about 1000 words explaining the tropes to them, and then, well, I’d have my post!”

So, beloved friends, which is your favorite kind of MTP post?

Next up on the project docket: Attic Renovation

In some lights it looks much pinker
In some lights it looks much pinker

The Parker G. Webber house is my home, and I love it. When we bought it in 2007, it had been on the market for over 100 days. There were a lot of good reasons for this. Every room had different wood paneling, and every ceiling had a different paneled drop ceiling. The kitchen was old. There are only 1.5 baths, and the .5 bath has the stairs to the basement it in. There was shag carpet. Best of all, the house was (and is) painted pink. But I fell in love at first sight, paneling and all. We have been chipping away on projects to improve the house ever since. We updated the flooring in the kitchen. We totally redid Thane’s room. We put in a fantastic roof, including all the wood underlying it. We attempted to fix the rotting window frames with paint (and failed). We mostly redid the full bath (except for the tub). We completely redid the dining room. We put a fan in the damp basement. We painted nearly every wall in the entire house. We have left it pink, however.

Oh so shag. And paneling.
Oh so shag. And paneling.

Most of these projects were small in capital (except the roof) and larger in labor. But as the kids get older, we’re finally ready to tackle the biggest of the projects on our extensive Google Keep list of desired projects. We’re ready to turn the partially finished attic into a full master suite.

My to-be walk in closet
My to-be walk in closet

Right now, the attic is a kind of no-man’s land. When we originally bought the house, you still needed a dedicated office for your desktop computing needs. Adam and I also both had hobbies that required desk space… and no access for toddlers. He made terrain and painted miniatures. I stamped cards. The “bonus” room of the attic was perfect for hosting all these activities, while protecting them from the depredations of people who put everything they saw into their mouths. There was also an (unheated) guest room that hosted my mother-in-law or other folks when they came to visit, although there was general complaining about the number of stairs and lack of bathroom on the same floor.

The attic as office space
The attic as office space

But as time went on, and we got laptops and didn’t want to be isolated from our family, the attic fell into disuse. A week or two might go by without going up there. That’s kind of a sad waste of space. It has been much better used lately, since it’s become the home of my brother, but with his new job (yay for him!) he’s getting ready to move out. So we’ll be able to tackle the project as planned.

We dipped our toes into the project plan. We talked to a few contractors. We hired an architect (and dear friend – awfully convenient) to do some designs for us. I created a Pinterest account to keep track of design ideas. Our architect came up with a brilliant plan for the attic. The office becomes our bedroom. We’ll lift up the low ceiling to give it more height. (It’s a joyfully familiar feeling as we talked about the original builder’s choices and wondered just what Parker did for the unusual roofline.) The unfinished attic space will become an extremely spacious walk in closet (now that the bats have been evicted). The weird 1/4 bathroom (just a sink) will be closed off.

The 1/4 bath was primarily used for beverage preparation
The 1/4 bath was primarily used for beverage preparation

The guest room will become a lovely bathroom. This may be the part I’m most excited about. Our initial thought is to do mostly white tile, white wainscot partway up the walls, white wainscot vanity and a deep saturated blue paint above the wainscot. We will (hopefully) have a nice deep clawfoot tub for soaking. And the closed off weird partial bath will become a glorious closed off shower with steam-sauna. (If the budget allows.) We may never leave the attic again.

So anyway, chances are good that’ll take up a goodly number of my thought-cycles over the coming months. If anyone has a great general contractor on tap, I’d love to get recommendations. I’ll be sure to give updates – please let me know if they cross the line into incredibly annoying!

Bathroom inspiration (obviously not an exact plan)
Bathroom inspiration (obviously not an exact plan)

Mud season in Quebec City

You scream...
You scream…

I’m old enough to have nearly 20 year old friendships… that started in college. Ouch. One of these friends is a true globe-trotter. Spending time together feels a bit like waiting for our orbits to align long enough to get a chance to sit down and share time with each other. He’s ended up in Quebec City for a while, so we decided to take advantage of a few days around April vacation week to drive back up to winter and visit him and his lovely family!

We’re having a delightful time! We’ve rented this loft in the trendy part of the city (which was only slightly more expensive than a hotel room would’ve been). We’ve shared some excellent meals together, and spent much of today navigating mud and seeing the glorious views in this historic city, while enjoying what rumor has it is the first really nice day of spring up here.

The boys are becoming a real delight to travel with. I don’t worry too much about where they are. They’re flexible and fun and insightful. They can read over breakfast with their parents. They’re both really good with the younger kids – it was super sweet to watch Thane playing with a charming 1 year old girl.

A trip where you get to reconnect with the dearest of friends and enjoy your family in the warm sunshine… ah bliss!

Red Sox: In good times and in bad

So….. I didn’t make it to the “Write a blog post” portion of my weekend this weekend. Apologies. Instead, on this snowy opening day of baseball season, I’m offering a reprise of my love of the sport!

bflynn's avatarMy Truant Pen

Red Sox fan - Fenway 2009 Red Sox fan – Fenway 2009

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a baseball season that made me so passionately excited about football as this 2012 Red Sox season. I’ve been a baseball fan since 1995 – a respectable time now. I started as a Mariners fan and – without dropping my hope for the Ms to do well while bowing to the realities of being 3 time zones away – I’ve become an ardent Red Sox fan.

I’m definitely not alone in having come to Red Sox fandom in the last decade. I attended my first game at Fenway in 2000. 2001, for reasons that will be instantly understandable to those of you who live in the Northwest of follow baseball closely, I lived tied to the MLB broadcasts on my computer – up until late at night. After that, though, I started following the Sox. I lived through…

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Easter Weekend updates

This weekend felt like the first time in WEEKS we’ve all been together. (I know it’s not true. It feels true.) I went to Seattle, then I went to California for nine long days. Then I went to Madrid. Then Adam went to Seattle. The busy times are tailing off, but not over. We have another weekend of apartness coming up. I have a customer coming onsite (which is very time consuming, if not as bad as traveling). But the light at the end of the tunnel is growing.

Learning to speak in math sentences
Learning to speak in math sentences

Big news this weekend came from the Russian Math department. Thane has shown a great passion for math, over several months. He LOVES to get a new concept and will go on at length about how much he loves math. The other day he calculated a fraction faster than either Unka Matt or I could. But he’s not so much into doing worksheets at school of the various concepts… so how to support him? It turns out there’s an advanced school about five miles from our house. (Maybe less.) I took Thane in for an evaluation on Thursday. The principal was very impressed with his acuity, and welcomed him into the advanced class with no prior tutoring needed. She’d like to see him in the competition team this summer, which sounds super fun, except for now I’m afraid that I’m becoming “that parent”. I just want to be the “that parent” who supports their child’s interests, not the one who demands genius ahead of joy. So we’ll give that a shot for a few weeks, and then decide about the summer.

Lined up and waiting to go hunt!
Lined up and waiting to go hunt!

Saturday was just lazy and lovely. It started with the annual neighbor egg hunt. (The moms had stuffed the eggs the night before.) The kids crawled all over the hill and the grownups clutched our coffee. Grey has grown two inches this year. (I last measured him on his birthday.) I watched the “big boys” (ten year olds), mine with the white and blue-checked Easter basket I bought him when he was born, and wondered how many years we have left of Easter Egg hunts. I tried to enjoy it extra, just in case.

Grey, reclining with eggs and loot
Grey, reclining with eggs and loot

In the afternoon, we went for a leisurely hike around the Winchester reservoir. I brought the foraging book with me for the first attempt of the year. It’s still very early for even the early early spring stuff. I thought I might see some wild garlic or ramps. We saw neither on our trip, but we did find a huge patch of wintergreen. We’d seen something earlier that I THOUGHT was wintergreen, but it didn’t have the identifying minty smell so we passed it by. My caution was vindicated because it wasn’t wintergreen, this stuff was! We carefully harvested a very small amount of a very large patch. Of course, I hate mint and it sounds like the most useful thing to do with wintergreen is infuse alcohol so… well… it was fun to gather. I have it soaking in water to see if we can make a weak sort of infusion. If I’d gathered more I could’ve made a jelly, but I didn’t.

Bridge building
Bridge building

The Easter celebrations in our church were good ones. We are still a little raw from loss, I think. This was our third pastor in as many Easters. But there were pancakes and music and children and cries of Alleluia! We had a superb dinner with friends afterwards, which was oh so good in both food and company. I learned a lot about Danish wedding customs!

How was your weekend? Did you enjoy the pascal celebrations?

I have pictures of the weekend which you can see here! If you’re particularly strong of stomach, I recommend the video of Grey reciting his “poem” with the classic refrain “I shall not pee. I shall not pee.”