Are you familiar with the sweater curse? If you are a knitter you are. Another version of the proverbial curse is to attribute the same to family members or friends. You spend hours and hours — weeks, even months of your time knitting some article of clothing or an item that you hope they will enjoy and will offer them a piece of your heart, and it gets relegated to a back closet somewhere or worse, treated with disregard: on the floor, the dog chews on it, you get the idea.

I would like to propose a version of the sweater curse as it applies to organic produce. As a gardener, you spend hours and hours preparing the soil, agonizing over organic, heirloom seeds. Start those seeds indoors, baby them along, harden them off and finally plant them in your carefully tilled garden. Then they are tended: protected from hail and varmints, heat and cold,  and bugs meticulously hand-picked and disposed of. Weeds kept at bay with a hoe — back breaking work, but worth it for the result of wholesome, organic sustenance for your table.

Then comes preservation! Picking, shelling, chopping, pitting, preparing, mixing. Jars to sterilize, boiling pots of water to heat in the thick of summer. The canning, the checking of lids. All in the name of quality organic sustenance for your family.

Eggs! What of organic eggs? The maintenance of the flock, the cleaning of the coop. The feeding, the watering, the doctoring when needed. All for those organic wonders to place in a cardboard carton.

I admit, when I hand over a basket of produce, a jar of jam, a carton of eggs, it is difficult to let go.  This is so much more than mere groceries — it is true sustenance, obtained by many hours of planning and laboring. I am hopeful that the recipient will realize what a gift from the heart it truly is. I know when I am the lucky recipient of such — I take it for what I hope it is worth. I am grateful — excited — wanting to be worthy of such a treat.

To me, the best I can do is to return the favor, in kind. Some of my own produce that has made it this year, a carton of eggs, a few jars of wild raspberry jam. Or even, perhaps, a hand-knitted hat or mittens in preparation for the colder months to come.

*Image by Swedish Folk Artist Elsa Beskow.

This is my brother’s dog. This is my husband, rated #1 heavyweight wrestler in the WAC for the Wyoming Cowboys “back in the day”. He was the number one rated heavyweight wrestler, slated to go to the olympics instead of Rulon Gardner who did go and take gold– except my poor husband got sick and was in the hospital during the big wrestling show-down. He coulda been a contenda! Except he got sick and now is reduced to wrestling with my brother’s dog.

Side note — one reason my husband and I ended up married is because I had a small moment of being nice to someone, and even though we barely knew each other I brought him chocolate chip cookies while he was sick in the hospital. That clinched it for him.

Here is me, sitting and knitting in my brother’s only piece of furniture — the camping chair*** — while the crazy dog is looking for something new to chew up.

So yeah. This dog of my brother’s. I felt sorry for him so decided to take the big dofus running with me. The dog, not my brother. So we are running along and all of a sudden I am tripping over his big yellow feet and falling, not running. I don’t even realize what is happening until I am sliding across the pavement on my face.

I can tell you I really look like a princess now. Big ole black eye. Road rash all down my left side and my leg is positively purple.

And the dog? He had a great time licking my face and wagging his tail while I was laying there deciding if something was broken.

So tell me I am crazy as I have agreed to keep the dog for my brother while he is getting settled. As long as he doesn’t kill chickens and our own dog, Lena a.k.a. Devil Dog, a.k.a. LenaHalloweena doesn’t kill him.

*** the camping chair was my favorite place at my brothers. I just parked it in front of the fireplace, set myself up with hot chocolate and my knitting and sat on my butt for a solid week. It was nice!

This homeschooling thing has been doing some weird things to our schedule. For example: for all the rhetoric you hear about the demise of the family dinner table, and I am inclined to agree, we have found that we each like to have our own space for dinner. Truth be told, I am not a big dinner eater. I don’t sleep well with a blob of food in my stomach. Lately dinners have been largely vegetable based: stirfry or soup or a simple salad. I will usually add some buffalo — be it a steak or meatballs for Mark, but I am content with my vegetable plate. Last night I ate a giant plate of steamed carrots from the garden. And I mean a GIANT plate. That was all I had. And they were gooood!

So instead of the family dinner, we have more or less begun to congregate as a family at breakfast time.

Lucky for us, our lifestyle allows for a large breakfast. We loll about the breakfast table as a family, talking about our plans for the day: organizing who is going what, where and when. Bean always has some story to tell, and Lula makes it a point to dance in ballerina twirls from the breakfast bar to the table and back again.

I started to feel guilty tonight as I sit in front of the computer with a salad, Mark is hanging out in the kitchen with a giant bowl of meatballs and rice and the twins are watching a DVD of Grease. But then I realized, we have been on top of each other all day. It’s kind of nice to have this little bit of alone time.

I have a batch of Cranberry-Pumpkin rolls in the bread machine this evening. I’ll leave the dough to rise in the fridge overnight so I can pop them into the oven in the morning. Omelets made with fresh eggs with ham and a green pepper from the farmer’s market.

As Mark leaves the house early, and it is still dark, we will have breakfast by candlelight and ease ourselves into our day. To me, that is a family meal.

There is nothing the twins haven’t had a chance to tell me about today. And if they remember something I absolutely need to know, we’ll all be around the breakfast table tomorrow.

**Image of a painting by Carl Larsson, the quintessential Swedish Artist painting the quintessential Swedish kitchen. I am not sure what this particular work is called. I had to put away my Carl Larsson prints after my dad died. But I took them out again. I’m glad I did. I missed them.

One thing we like to do around here is bake bread. I have modified a recipe so that I can easily pour the ingredients into my bread machine, put on the dough setting and then shape and bake in the traditional way. Last night I made garlic rolls for sloppy joes. The basic recipe is this:

1 1/4 water

1t. salt

2T. olive oil

1fresh egg

a generous dollop of honey

1 cup oats

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

2t. yeast

Put all in bread machine in that order and start dough cycle. Once the dough cycle is complete, take out of the machine and roll out into a long rectangle. Sprinkle liberally with dried, minced garlic and press into the dough.

Roll up jelly roll-style and cut 1 1/2 circles with a kitchen shears.

Place on baking sheet and let rise in a warm/moist place until double.

Brush with beaten egg and top with more garlic, sea salt & sesame seeds. Bake @ 350 for 20 minutes.

Then go paint a watercolor picture of the finished product for your blog!