Sagas of my blender

I have a blender -- a beautiful Cuisinart model in black rubber and stainless steel that matches the food processor, dishwasher and other appliances. I look at my blender from time to time, and feel asssured. Finally, I have arrived at a place in my life where I can have an expensive toy in my kitchen. It's a luxury, a real power toy. I don't play with it often, but when I do, it delivers velvety soups and creamy dresssings that no other food processor or blender can match.

I'm fairly possesive about my blender. I really don't like other people to touch it, but sometimes I try to play nicely and let them have a go. Christmas day for instance. ARG was home, and having announced some time ago that she had never tasted lobster, it seemed to be the perfect special occasion to make lobster bisque. It also seemed to be a friendly Mummy kind of thing to do to let my girl play with the blender. I did say, "don't put too much of that bisque in at once", but no sooner were the words out of my mouth than bloop, the lid blew off and boiling soup rained down over the counter top. Her Daddy rushed to save her from the nasty machine and bad mother, but not having been allowed to play with the power toy himself, unscrewed the base and let the remains of the bisque flow out over the counter and on to the floor where the dog's tongue was waiting.

This weekend I gave my man a second chance with the blender. He was lurking in the kitchen, waiting for dinner to make itself. Again, it seemed a friendly thing to do to let him have control of the machine. I set him making the Duma dressing from Get it Ripe. It requires chopping an onion and throwing it into the blender along with oil, vinegar, nutritional yeast and some herbs, a real macho kind of recipe. HG complained that the blender was leaving lumps, and it sounded a bit rough at high speed, but I didn't think much about it until we sat down to eat the salad. A few mouthfuls in I found myself chewing on a hard lump. It had a bit of give, but refused to break down as I chewed on. Fishing it out of my mouth I found a small flat piece of grey silicone. Somehow, HG had managed to blend the gasket that fits between the blades and the glass jug. How can the gasket have ended up inside the glass jug? HG has a theory that the blender pulled it in because the jug wasn't screwed together tightly. I have my own theories on the matter, starting with no-one understands the sheer power and beauty of my blender.

Stories from my grown-up life

Somehow I imagined that one day I would grow up. I used to look at women who were the same age I am today, or even younger, and imagine that I too would somehow be transformed into a sophisticated competent career women, elegantly dressed, balancing home and work without a ruffle of my carefully lacquered hair.

I thought it would happen without any effort on my part. At some point I would just realize that I had arrived and taken my place in the world of grown ups. Half a century later and I still don't know what that means. Somehow I have become a wife, a mother, a career woman (whatever that means) without ever having grown up. I joke about what I might do with my life when I do finally grow up.

Dom and Amy both talk about feeling grown up when they have had to take responsibility for other peoples lives, even though that meant putting themselves in a place of opposition with their peers. But both of them want to retain that feeling of freedom and exploration, that seems an antithesis to being a 'grown-up".

We said farewell to my research fellow at the end of August, who claimed she was moving on to her grown up life. Good luck with that Allison. Let me know when you've figured out what that is; bottle it and send me some to sprinkle on my muesli.

People or places

It is said that cats are attached to place whereas dogs are attached to people. When we moved from the UK to Canada we sent our two cats on ahead, a couple of weeks before our arrival date. HGs brother picked them up from the airport and looked after them until we arrived. The older cat seemed to cope fine and was not at all bothered at having moved to a new place. The younger cat, Elmo, seemed to be quite depressed and apparently stayed under the bed in the basement until we arrived. Once he had seen the kids again he took on a new lease of life and started running about my brother-in-laws house as though he owned the place.

This past two weeks have seen quite an upheaval at home. First DAG moved out, then ARG returned from Europe, spent a few days with us and left again to return home to Montreal. Both the dog and one of the cats have been quite confused. The dog is clearly looking for DAG or ARG and keeps checking the car or the moving van for them. More unusually, to my mind, is the behaviour of the grey cat. She is refusing to spend time on the main level of the house and keeps wanting to be in the basement (which used to be ARGs room when she lived at home), or in DAGs old bedroom. Often I just find her crying in the downstairs entrance hall.

ARG moved out two years ago, long enough for this house not to be her home anymore, but DAG has only just made the move. I guess we each adjust to change in people and places in different ways. DAG surprised me by appearing to be much more rooted to place than I had expected. ARG on the other hand went back packing in Europe for the summer, but seemed to have had the best time enjoying people, rather than the places that she visited.

Over the years I have been in Canada, I have really missed my friends and family back in the UK. But yet I feel strangely rooted to this place. Leaving Canada, especially in the winter I miss the trees and the snow and only feel at ease when I'm back home to my pine forest.

we are thriving

For my birthday this year ARG gave me a book called about the Thrive Diet. Its a vegan diet developed by a triathalon specialist. The book wasn't a revelation to me, or anything like that. Instead it took me back to when I was ARGs age, just finished a BSc in Physiology and moving on to live in a series of rented dives while studying further. It was those hippyish years when we are all into making our own bread, sprouting lentils, scrounging windfall apples and tomatoes left over from field trials.

The Thrive Diet book took me back to those years of hempseeds and cheesecloth. I particularly remembered our home made lasgne drying on a clothes rack where it was nibbled by cats (and possibly vermin too). Over the past few weeks I've had enormous fun getting back into growing sprouts in glass jars and making a variety of recipes included in the book.

I've not become a convert to veganism overnight, but I have to say that I've not got such a kick over playing with food for a long time.

Married for 50 years

A couple of weeks ago we drove to Brechin, Ontario to celebrate B&As 50th wedding anniversary. Congratulations to B&A, but congratulations too to each of their six kids who arranged the celebrations. There was a church service to reconfirm their vows. All the music, lessons, prayers were by the children and grandchildren. Then there was a party at the legion, with speeches from the eldest son, S, their best man and many of the family members -- this is a family that loves the stage. HG and I had seen the "first draft" of the powerpoint slide & music presentation that the younger siblings had created from old family photographs when we visited N in March. There were few dry eyes in the house. I don't cope with crowds very well, so I hid myself in the back and did face painting for the kids.

50 years though, its really a lifetime. HG and I passed our silver milestone this year, only half of B&As achievement but still it seems an impressive length of time. I'm proud of us, that we have stuck together through rough times, and good times -- here's to you HG, here's to us.

Luma

I'm so far behind in writing on my blog. In my mind I would up date this every few days. It already seems weeks since we visited ARGs friend MDL and her new baby Luma. By now they will have flown back to Peru, to MLDs husband and their new life as a family.

I was happy to have found Fair Trade peruvian cotton, in order to make a little hoodie for Luma. It came out larger than I had expected, but she should be able to wear it by the time she is about a year old. However, I find these days that I'm quite bad at estimating sizes for babies. I knit a sweater to fit a 6-12month old (the size I usually pick when I'm knitting for a new baby), only to visit at 3months and find that it just fit perfectly. I'm convinced that babies are larger these days, or that my old UK patterns do not provide suitable age-size matches for North Americans.

Living in the garden

June 30th, the day before Canada day. If I was a Canadian gardener, the front yard would be ablaze with red geraniums and white shasta daisies. Actually, despite the soggy weather, the front garden is attempting a vague nod to July 1st. That's at street level, where the tubs are full of geraniums and white spider flowers. Further back, the enchantment lilies are an orange sunburst and with the blue campanula, there seems to be a Dutch theme going on. Where did that come from? No connection to us, but I love the opposition of orange and blue.

The lilies have been in the garden for years. So long that I don't remember buying them. But they are a stalwart of the front yard. I look forward to their return every year, and, based on the comments I get from the neighbourly dog walkers, so do many other people who take their morning stroll down our street.

They are such an outrageous colour, (the lilies, not the dog walkers), I often think that they don't really belong in our rock terraces. However, I wouldn't want to be without them. We had a pot of them in the front garden in the UK, and before that they were the one flower that I had to have in my wedding bouquet, and before that they were the first flowers that HG bought for me one dreamy day on Queens Street in Leicester.

This year its been so wet that the slugs and other nasties have taken over the garden. I was horrified to find fornicating red beetles followed by black sludgey beings chewing up the leaves of my precious lilies. I was so upset, and resorted to wiping down the leaves with soapy water for several days running. Fortunately it seems to have paid off. the lilies are shouting as loudly as ever in vibrant orange -- Happy Canada Day.