"On my thirty fourth birthday, my true love gave to me: a chainsaw for felling trees."
Happy birthday, Alex! Thanks for being the best husband and father. Be safe with your new toy - we don't want any more lumberjack injuries.
Mr. Shrapnel No More
Remember this incident? The one where Alex effectively shot himself in the leg with shrapnel from an axe?
It healed in place as the orthopedic doctor suggested, but only for nine months.
In February, Alex's thigh started hurting again. The pain was bearable for a few weeks but the inflamed feeling grew, especially when he exercised. The doc finally recommended surgical removal.
This morning, in a 90 minute procedure, a surgical team did just that. Apparently the thin foreign body was elusive and the resulting incision required eight staples to close. Alex is Mr. Shrapnel no more.
He kept the literal thorn in his side. Any ideas what he should do with it?
Division of Labor
Our household is a productive one. We are constantly making and doing and accumulating stuff.
Our DIY activities are made possible by family chores using a variety of talents and tolerances. Alex generally handles anything involving the prospect of danger while I cover the gentler arts. I can tolerate messy things much more than Alex while he has the advantage of brute force.
We don't limit ourselves to certain categories, but after 11 years of marriage and 10 years of home ownership, we have fallen into these chore patterns:
HIS (Alex):
- Building beds and hauling dirt
- Cooking meat
- Chopping wood
- Baking sandwich bread
- Machine washing and drying laundry
- Starting Home repairs
- Night time & early morning kid and dog care
- Consuming goods
- Earning income
- Using loud tools (like the hissing, startling compressor-powered finish nailer above)
- Taking risks
HERS (Rachel):
- Sowing seeds and weeding
- Insisting on vegetables
- Cleaning up ashes
- All other baking
- Hanging out laundry
- Spackling, painting, and finishing home repairs
- All gross (puke, poop, etc.) kid/dog care
- Purchasing goods
- Paying bills, filing taxes, following a budget
- Taking a much longer time to use a hand tool
- Making careful plans
Well-matched skills are a hallmark of a strong marriage. But that's not to say that all chores go smoothly. Alex and I are opinionated folk and when our opinions differ (about who will do something, or how we will do it together) we can argue like champs. We eventually come to a decision and get the work done.
For the most part, Alex and I share a basic motivation - to enjoy a simple, delicious life - and split the tasks needed to reach our goals in an equitable way.
How do you share labor among the members of your family?
11 Years
Today Alex and I celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary. Eleven years!!
It is hard to limit the list, but here are 11 things I love about being married to Alex:
1) He knows me and loves me for myself.
2) Better than just knowing, Alex indulges me with simple things, like the last bite of ice cream or serving me a nightcap.
3) Alex exudes such confidence that I am able to feel more confident in my self.
4) He makes me laugh, even when I am laughing at how his bad puns remind me of his father.
5) Alex is tall and retrieves things from high places for me. I would never have looked specifically for this quality in a mate but boy is it handy.
6) He likes to garden, cook, and eat like I do.
7) He likes to play with fire and sharp stuff, which I don't like to do but sometimes need to be done.
8 ) Alex is a fantastic parenting partner.
9) He's also great about helping to take care of all the other creatures in the house - dogs, fish, chickens, squirrels.
10) He shares my do-it-yourself mentality and the plumbing/carpentry/cleaning/cooking/crafting tasks borne from such a state of mind. He doesn't even mind when I slow things down by taking pictures for this blog.
11) We continue to grow and learn new things about each other. Just last month he revealed that his nickname was 'bug man' in elementary school.
Happy Anniversary, love!
Last year I shared the story of our romance. Alex contributed his version too. Part of my gift to Alex was scanning our photograph prints (we were married before digital!) into a Flickr set.
Modern Mistletoe: Meat, Marriage, & Duck Prosciutto Pizza {Charcutepalooza}
I recently mentioned on twitter that having the first meat of the season hanging in the basement made me feel like our house was a home again. Someone (who are you? I can't find the tweet now!) replied "It's modern mistletoe!"
That got me to thinking about how meat curing is a tasty metaphor for my nearly-eleven-year-long marriage to Alex.
Curing meat takes time and attention from both parties in our house. We help each other to procure the ingredients, turn the meat in cure, and check it as it dries.
Some couples like to have independent hobbies but we like being in each other's business. Even before I ate meat, I assisted Alex with charcuterie because it's a fascinating hobby.
Meat curing and marriage benefit from a healthy dose of humor. Much of making bacon (or duck prosciutto in this case) is icky work - there's raw meat, mildly-toxic salt, and the possibility of insects being attracted to the drying meat. The cure for the gross parts of curing is to laugh. We make jokes (sausage is especially good for word play), gently tease, and sometimes try to drip meat juice on a spouse during a photo shoot. It's all good fun.
When meat is done curing, we cook up creative dishes together. In the case of the duck prosciutto, we added it to homemade pizza. Alex made the dough and I popped open a jar of my home-canned tomato sauce. We added a pile of arugula and mozzarella before topping the 'za with thin prosciutto slices and a grate of Parmesan.
Alex and I enjoyed the pizza with a glass of wine and candle on the table in the company of our daughter Lil (who also served as the photographer for the three portraits above). We savored the from-scratch food we made together.
Curing meat challenges us to work together, listen to each other, and enjoy the finer things in life. Meat IS our modern mistletoe, the object under which we find love.
[print_this]
Duck Prosciutto Pizza Makes: 1 12-inch pizza Time: 2 hours dough, 20 minutes assembly, 7-10 minutes cooking
1/4 recipe homemade pizza dough 1/4 cup tomato sauce 3 ounces fresh arugula 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 2 ounces duck prosciutto, sliced as thinly as possible 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1. Heat oven to 450 degrees F with a baking stone on center rack. 2. Make a thin circle from the dough and place on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel or back of a cookie sheet. 3. Top pizza with a bit of tomato sauce, then arugula and mozzarella cheese. 4. Arrange duck prosciutto and top with Parmesan. 5. Transfer pizza to the baking stone. 6. Bake for 7-10 minutes until cheese is melted and slightly brown. Remove from oven, let rest 1-2 minutes, cut, and serve.
[/print_this]
This post is a part of the year-long Charcutepalooza challenge. Read below for our other meat-curing adventures and reflections.
Waste Not, Want Not Squirrel Rillettes English Pork Pie Photojournal Almost All-Ohio Mouselline How to Make Hot Dogs Like a Girl Mint Lamb Sausage Inspired by Jorgensen Farms Taco Truck Chorizo Sopito Red’s Canadian Bacon or Why I Had to Kill a Pig To Eat Meat Again The Story of the Rachel Salt Cure Old and New Cider Syrup Bacon
Last Night's Dinner {Wordless Wednesday}
I ate spaghetti with steamed garden dragon tongue beans, olive oil, pepper, chili flakes, and Parmesean cheese for dinner.
I miss Alex who is in California on business. He is the reason we eat things other than pasta.
Fathers
I am surrounded by fantastic fathers. These inspiring, caring men enrich the lives of Lil and I:
l to r - Mitch, my dad; Mike, my uncle; Tom, Alex's dad, click to enlarge
My dad, Mitch, is patient and funny. He encouraged his four girls to be strong curious women, enduring the resulting loud and confusing dinner conversations. I clearly picked up Dad's love for the outdoors, good food and strong drink. Speaking of eats, allow me to add home cook extraordinaire Uncle Mike to this list. While not a biological father, Mike opens his heart and home my cousins and myself with as much generosity and kindness as a father would. He's a fun-loving man, always creating something, always ready for an adventure.
Tom, Alex's father, inspires me to think and question. He has been a father figure in my life as long as I can remember. I admire that he is a life long learner, fearless traveler, and hard-working artist. Most of all I thank Tom for his part in raising his son, my partner.
Because of the men I grew up with, I expected that Alex would be an engaged dad. He is. Alex includes Lil in his interests, patiently answers her questions about history and language, and is a great friend to her friends. He is a curious cook, keeping us in bread and sausage, and always pushing us to try new things.
I am painfully aware that many, if not most, women never experience such strong and loving fathers. I am thankful for Dad, Uncle Mike, Tom, and Alex every day, but especially this day. Happy Father's Day, y'all!
Are You 21?
Today's guest post comes from the man of the homestead, Alex. This isn't a sexist classification, it's the truth: Alex lives with two female humans, two female dogs, and four female hens. He's the only guy around to take on demanding issues like horse racing and distillery websites.
Apparently there is a race-inside-the-race held prior to the running of the Kentucky Derby. It is called the “Turf Classic” and is on grass inside the main dirt race course at Churchill Downs. I was excited to see this event sponsored by Woodford Reserve, one of my favorite bourbon distilleries. In fact, Rachel and I visited there last year on our trip to Bourbon country.
So, I decided to hop over to their website to see if they had any interesting Derby information. Upon arriving at their front page, I was confronted by the ubiquitous “must enter age” to view this website. The rationale they give is that alcohol should be responsibly enjoyed by those of a legal age.
Now I can understand wanting people to drink responsibly, I can even understand the desire to see age limits enforced (although I could write for hours on the stupidity of liquor laws in our country). However, what is the point of restricting access to a website?
I mean, I can’t get drunk from accessing a website, can I? Believe me, I would be exceeding AT&T’s bandwidth caps if this were the case. I can’t order liquor for delivery from their website. I don’t think there is anything I can do on their website that is legally restricted for those under the age of 21.
It seems to me that the main purpose of this exercise is to promote an image of corporate responsibility on the part of liquor companies. This is all well and good, but what is to keep a minor from entering a false birth date? For myself, I usually claim to be a 108 year old male from Afghanistan when asked upon entry. And what will actually happen if the underage gain illicit entry to one of these websites? Not a damn thing.
The image of corporate responsibility cultivated costs a liquor company almost nothing and only serves to piss off their customers. If these companies really cared about alcohol abuse among the younger generation there are lots of concrete actions they could take. However, to actually do good in these areas of social concern costs money. By putting up an age restriction on a website, a company has spent nothing, but taken “real action.” It’s the best of both worlds for the corporation concerned.
Now I realize I may be coming off as some sort of a teetotaler. Nothing could be further from the truth as I enjoy my alcohol immensely. I would simply like to see companies think about what they are doing, and if they really want to support a cause, do so in a truly meaningful way.