sweet subway story

This is a super-lovely NYT illustrated story about the author’s children, who love the New York City subway.

The illustration above goes with the line

Arthur spends hours studying the subway map. He laughs at his mother when she suggests taking the B on a weekend. The only questions he has are about the pronunciation of some station names.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I wrote a blurb about what we’ve been doing with the kids in the kitchen for the camp newsletter–that’s what this is. The peanut butter has been fabulous and each jar is slightly different. I have them lined up in a gradient from darkest to lightest. Our pyramid of jars of homemade jam is growing too. It’s funny to me that I’ve never made jam before, and now I make it every day. That’s the point though, this learning-by-doing and teaching-by doing.

Anyhow, here’s what the parents know.

Update from the Mitbach.
Dory Kornfeld. Rosh Mitbach 2008

Every kid at Na’aleh this session has made peanut butter. Each kvutzah has rotated through the mitbach (kitchen) and as a group shelled and roasted peanuts, salted them slightly, ground them in the food processor, and spooned it into a mason jar.

Most kids like peanut butter, but not very many of them had thought about what the sweet substance is really made of. While taking turns stirring and grinding, we compared the ingredients in the Price Chopper brand peanut butter (some dextrose, some fully hydrogenated soybean oil) with the ingredients in what what we were making (just plain peanuts). We discussed the various reasons that all these things would be added to peanut butter: for taste, consistency, shelf life, to make it cheaper, and came to the collective conclusion that our homemade batches were far superior than the stuff from the grocery store.

Now we’re in the next set of rotations and this time around we’re making jam. As we mash and boil strawberries with lemon juice and sugar, we’ve been talking about local food, eating things in season, the weird world of corn farming subsidies and high-fructose corn syrup, and whether the higher price of organic produce is worth it.

It’s been really exciting to have the chanachim (campers) in the mitbach. We’re making the kitchen a really active and integral part of machaneh this summer, and through the Mitbach Sadna (workshop) I’ve been able to meet every kid and have them meet me, and everyone at machaneh has been able to learn about and get more involved in what goes into their mouths to power them through our busy days at Na’aleh.

New York state is the ice cream capital of my life

This is Andy, at Voss’, in Utica NY, where we stopped for milkshakes when driving to Connecticut to visit Anna back in May. Overhearing conversations while standing in line, we gathered that it was one of the first few days Voss’ was open; everyone was really excited about their summertime milkshake fix, and there was one girl who squealing because of how pleased she was to be bringing a friend to Voss’ for the very first time. We kept quiet and didn’t let on that it was our first time there too.

And then, a month and a half later, I show up here, in the Sidney/Bainbridge/Unadilla area (the Tritowns) and realize that there are these magical ice cream stands EVERYWHERE up and down the minor highways. The closest is the Sidney Tastee Treat:
which doesn’t have as good cheesecake ice cream at the stand we stopped at in Norwich (on the way to see fourth of july fireworks), but is close and now I feel that lovely sense of ownership that one develops for things they can’t possibly own.

Like route 17. I really feel like that’s my highway.

the deeds were done and done again as my life is done…

I’ve been keeping a list on my arm of things to order, and right now it says:

• Watermelon
• Sugar cereal

Which makes me think of this:

Excitement, advenutre

Lord knows why, but I wandered into Urban Outfitters today. I spun around in a daze for about 8 minutes, then left, really excited that I’m going to camp on Friday. The next two months will be spent making giant pots of chili, wearing an apron, teaching kids about sourdough, and hanging out in the woods where my phone doesn’t work. Things are gonna be good.

If you have any suggestions about what I should do with the campers (I’m in charge of food-based education stuff), I’d love to know. Right now my notebooks are full of lists that include growing sprouts, making jam, baking bread, talking about the whole local/organic/etc debate, planting an herb garden, pickling eggs, having a Kraft Dinner vs Real Mac’n'Cheese cook-off, making ritz cracker “apple” pie…

the reading life

I think that Annie Dillard is the exact literary opposite of David Foster Wallace. Short deliberate sentences, short chapters. Lots of divisions, of ideas and thoughts. Reading Annie Dillard, I’m finding it hard to put the book down, desiring to read one more paragraph or section or oh look the next chapter is only 6 pages. I think that if The Writing Life was a thousand pages and Infinite Jest was merely 150, The Writing Life would still be shorter.

crafty problem solving

There’s been this stain on my favourite sweatshirt for some time now, and I finally got around to fixing it–by appliqué-ing leaves over it and adding a few others to make it work.

After it was done, though, I realized that this sweatshirt now looks just like my favourite bag:

I have a new appliqué-heavy project that I’m working on now, but it’s best kept a secret for a bit.

New Bicycles

Just like Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle, but more exciting: When Obama Wins!

springtime resolution

Dear World,

Let it be known that I will finish reading Infinite Jest by the end of the summer.

Sincerely,
Dory

ps. I have a large box of book that I don’t feel like I need to take to New York with me. If you want anything, from contemporary fiction to gradschool books about Canadian identity to kids books with nice pictures that will be fun to collage, let me know and you can come help yourself!

Things I have given to people (lately)

Moving means giving things away!

(click to make bigger)

Making Headlines

It totally drives me crazy when journalists–in print and on the radio–say that person/thing/event “made headlines.” As if they, the media, have nothing to do with what “makes headlines” and becomes part of the discourse.

Maybe they’re just giving a lot of respect to the late-night copy editors who actually make the headlines.

november 4

It’s morning, I’m baking bread and listening to the CBC. It occurs to me that I will be living in America on November 4th, when as Martina Fitzgerald, the radio-lady, says “Americans will vote for a new president.”

When I was in New York last month, the election excitement was palpable, with Obama buttons and t-shirts that felt like real enthusiasm, not just kitsch. And it’s displayed on real humans, not the internet or the Globe and Mail. So it will be even more thrilling to be in the country during actual elections. I won’t get to vote then–maybe I can volunteer to drive little old ladies to polling stations. Do they even do that in America?

scones

So the apple-ginger scones that I made up, in my head and in my kitchen, turned out awesome. I gave up on following the recipe I found in one of my cookbooks about halfway through, because I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I just threw in yogurt and regular milk and some other stuff and they’re really spongy lumpy baked goods.

And then I left the kitchen one big mess because my housemate is away until tuesday and it’s fun to have a few days of solitude and disarray. I will tidy before he returns.

Following Instructions

I’m looking up scone recipes on the internet this morning, and they all suck. They all say things like “2 cups of bisquick” (bisquick? seriously? if was into using premade stuff I wouldn’t be looking up recipes!) or “spray pan with non-stick cooking spray” (that stuff is scary and gross!). Maybe it’s my own cooking up-bringing, raising myself on vegan cookbooks that all say things like “your choice of sweetener” to accommodate all the folks who don’t eat sugar/honey/agave nectar/whatever, but I want these recipes to say things like “do what you need to do to prevent these from sticking to the pan.”

If these recipes were in cookbooks, there’d be a whole intro section on nonstickage (or on sweeteners, or about substitutions, or whatever), and the recipes can refer you back to the what-cooking-is-all-about pages. But with the dumb internet, recipes are not part of a collection of anything, they’re one-offs. They’re hit singles with no album.

This makes me sort of sad–I feel like all these awesome skills, like the ability to curate or edit or collect or compile are slipping away. We get things totally disjointed and discrete.

I know that there are plenty of people curating all the stuff that’s on the internet–that’s what all those lovely blogs like CRAFT or Swissmiss or Kottke do. And I like them, but sometimes the endlessness of them feels tiresome. ESPECIALLY with the CRAFT blog–if anyone does anything crafty on the internet, it gets reposted there. And just as a link. It’s pointing: “look at this!” “look at that!” and most of it sucks. I know I shouldn’t get all righteous about something that is so clearly a promotional marketing tool for an overpriced magazine ($15 an issue!), but somehow it’s positioned itself at the head of the internet craft world.

Now I’m actually going to go make some scones.

I thought you said maple leaves

I found this on the internet, at the Ontario Road Maps site–it’s perfect, but not mine. I do, however, have a growing little collection of things with the Canadian centennial logo: a few different mugs, a plate (now broken), a silk scarf, a framed plaque of all the Prime Ministers of Canada from the start until 1967. I have half a mind to figure out how to make a pieced quilt of the emblem. I’m really pleased that centennial scarves are available for purchase at The Souvenir Shop.

Moving to America in the fall is a daunting thought! I am charmed by this sort of Canadian iconography, and I will miss the serendipity of finding ashtrays at value village with this, or the old Ontario logo, on it. I will miss the batting about of words and phrases like “Canada Council” or “Crown corporation.” I am sure that hearing these words every now and then will be like the smell of your house when you return home from vacation.

Not to make any sort of claims to understand the elusiveness of Canadian identity, but to belong to anything is to know the language and the jargon so well that you don’t think of it as specific to your place in the world. And when you are somewhere using words that other people don’t, you notice–whether it’s accidentally using grad-school words (like “discourse analysis”) around your grandmother, saying “pants” when you mean “trousers” in the UK, or longing for the national research council official time signal to blast through the radio.

I just keep saying “after the festival”

And I’ll say it again now: I am going to be be very very happy when the TDF is over. It will mean:

• Three days left of Hot Docs to see films
• A return to newspaper reading and library book borrowing
• The making of things for the Spring Thing Trunk Show (I have already obtained a suitcase, so that part’s done)
• Spring Cleaning! And purging, and organizing
• We can hang out. You and I
• Time to do work on brochures and flyers I haven’t had time for
• Time to finally do things that are on my list, like visit People’s Diner on the corner:

photo courtesy of Squiddity

An overabundance of green triangles

It was winter just a few minutes ago, so it seemed, and then the opening of knee-sock season coincided with the closing of knee-sock season and now the sun is out and my legs are bare. I made a new skirt, out of the same material as th bodum cozy and the kleenex-box cover

and my moleskine pen-holder. Now I feel like I ought to make a short film that involves these 4 matching items. Something Michel Gondry-esque, with some stop-motion, things melting into each other, and maybe a knitted sequence.

The books on our coffee table

First quilt on the right and straight on ’til morning…

After 10 weeks and then some of my quilt class with Johanna Masko at The Workroom the quilt, my quilt, my first REAL quilt is finally done!

Here is is on the couch:

and on the balcony, in that spot where the hammock used to be:

The only other quilted thing I’ve made has been the Go board, which, now that I’ve made this one according the “rules” (or I guess, techniques that build on the wisdom of others), feels like such a misfit item.

Spring Thing Trunk Show

On May 4th, I will be participating in the Trunk Show, put on by City of Craft and The Workroom. It’s a craft fair, but everyone’s display will be set up in a suitcase.

Here is the flyer with all the important information: