My blue-eyed September girls both have birthdays this weekend so I’ll be trying to push back a tidal wave of tears as I hold these two extra tight. This photo was taken on their birthday three years ago and it feels like time is so unfair, stealing their days and their years from me right before my eyes.
Twelve and twenty.
What a privilege to be here.
What a privilege to do this.
In case you’ve been watching too much Honey Boo Boo Child and have missed all the super important goings on around here, I started an online book club and it officially begins today! We are reading classics in (mostly) chronological order and are starting with The Odyssey. I’ll be posting the rest of this years’ reading list soon but I’ve been agonizing over whether we should make it a 2 or 3 or 4 year reading list. If we make it just one year and then love it and want to keep reading, we’ll mess up our chronological order scheme. But who among us is ready to make a four year reading commitment? See my dilemma? I’ll continue to ponder it and would love your input in the comments section along with any books you think should definitely be the the short list of classics book club.
Here’s what I have so far for this year::
September—The Odyssey
October—Sophocles’ Antigone
November—-Plato’s Republic
December—-Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
January—-Virgil’s Aeneid
February—-Ovid’s Metamorphoses
March—Augustine’s City of God
April—-Beowulf
May—-Dante’s Divine Comedy
We’ll take a summer break and refuel for the next semester!
I’ve also started a forum on this blog to help us in our discussions so go on over there and register and you’ll be O-fficially signed up to read with us. I made a video for you because I am the queen of Dorkville wanted to give you some encouragement and reading tips. We will discuss the first 12 books of The Odyssey on Friday, Sept.14th and then the last 12 books on Friday, Sept. 28th. Most of you have started reading already, which is wonderful!, but it’s not too late to join us!
To correct myself in the video, xenia is spelled Xenia, not Zenia.
And sorry if I ramble. I don’t think video blogging is one of my spiritual gifts.
Hope you have a great holiday weekend:)))
It’s football time in Tennessee and I’m gonna make this soup very soon, in honor of all things fall and football! It’s one of my favorite fall soups so it thought it was time to re-share it. If I were stranded on a deserted island where it was perpetually fall (PLEASE!!) and could only eat one thing for the rest of my days, it’d be this soup. This is the CROWN JEWEL of my recipe stash. I hold nothing back. I GAVE ALL for Tennessee!
When I found out a few months ago that there was gonna be a certain photo shoot at my house this fall (more on that later!), I fully embraced my slightly curvier self. I was so proud that I seemed to have kicked vanity to the curb.
“They’ll just have to take me as I am.” Those were my exact words to myself.
But don’t worry, I’m a parent so I’m quite accustomed to eating my words. As the shoot drew painfully near, the fire breathing dragon of my vanity reared its ugly head.
So I tried to find a way to get on crack called my dear friend who had recently lost 12 pounds and 20 inches using an awesome system of nutritional supplements and begged her to meet me with a starter kit. 15 days and a nagging viral illness later, I’m desperately missing soup and bread. And coffee. And diet coke. And especially chocolate chip cookies. And butter. OH, how I miss butter. It’ll be a few more days until I can eat this yummy soup, but I hope you’ll make it and eat it with lots of bread and butter in my honor. Don’t email me, telling me how good it is until this weekend. I’m sick and slightly irritable. I was doing pretty darn good until I got this wicked virus and as I continue to recover, I’m much too weak to hear about your buttered bread and good rich soup:) Especially since I’ll be eating meat and salad and protein shakes for a few more days.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna tell you all about my program and how it’s worked for me as soon as I finish the initial challenge. I’m VERY impressed with it so far. And as a {former} physician and lover of health and food and exercise, I’m always in the market for a good boost to the system. Especially one that’s doable. Nevertheless, I miss Paula Dean. I’m a lover, not a dieter. And I MAY have cheated a time or two. But I am losing some stubborn inches and practicing the ever difficult task of depriving myself, which I could stand to do much more often. I’m ‘in my forties’ now and apparently that means I’m either gonna have to run 10 miles a day or occasionally tell myself no. The ‘no’ seems a little more reasonable but reasonable has never been my strong suit. Blasted metabolism.
The best motivation ever? I took a before photo. Heavens. to. Betsy. I DO NOT recommend the before photo under any circumstances but especially not with a high quality DSLR camera. Get a 3 year old to take it with a fuzzy camera phone while doing the Hokey Pokey. Trust me on this one. Knowing my luck, I’ll die before I have a chance to incinerate the memory card. Deleting is not a powerful enough option, dear friends.
Now for the recipe which is a repost from a couple years ago.
2 T butter and 2 T. olive oil
1 onion
1 large carrot
3 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
2 boxes of good chicken stock
1 can of pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie mix) the smaller sized can ~14 oz
3 c. cooked chicken or 3 c. diced potatoes for a vegetarian option (could also use frozen hash browns)
1/2 c barley
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ginger
1/4 t nutmeg
2-3 T honey
1-2 t. chipotles chopped very fine (it comes in a small can in the mexican section of the store and is packed in a heavy sauce)—it has a lot of heat so be cautious.
1 c. sour cream or greek yogurt
1/4 c. heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste
To begin, saute the veggies in the oil and butter until carrots are almost tender. Always salt as you go along and then adjust the salt at the end. Don’t wait til the very end to add salt or your dish will lack a depth of flavor. Add garlic after the veggies have cooked about 5 minutes.
Then add chicken stock, pumpkin, chicken, barley and all the spices. Cook at medium to high heat for about 45 minutes to an hour or until barley is tender. Turn heat down to simmer. Add sour cream or yogurt and whisk so that no lumps remain and then add cream. Taste and reseason. I had to add more honey to balance the heat of the chipotles but DON’T leave out the chipotles. The smokey flavor makes the soup. It just wouldn’t be the same without them! Enjoy!
Find more yummy food on my recipes page and download my free soups ebook here!!
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My new spiritual memoir All the Pretty Things was just released! You can find it here!
Because this well could be the most asked question in recent times, I thought it was high time I put all the paint colors in one post. Here’s the only glitch. I can’t remember the paint color of the girls’ vanity and I keep forgetting to call and ask my cabinet maker. I’ll do it, I promise. Also, for your viewing pleasure, I’ll include pictures of the rooms, along with the colors listed. It’s all because I love you and I’m so exhausted from my run with Caiti today that I’ve decided the rest of the day today must be dedicated to things I can do while lying face down on the floor sitting down.
The Living Room:: Wall Color–1:1 mix of hazy skies and abingdon putty, Built-ins—Abingdon Putty
The Kitchen:: Walls–1:1 mix of hazy skies and abingdon putty, cabinets—fieldstone and great barrington green, ceiling–sea salt
Full kitchen post with sources, here.
The Workroom:: Walls—Conch Shell Pink, Built-ins—Fieldstone
The Girls’ Room:: Wall–Sea Salt
Full Girls’ Room post here!
The Sultry Master::Walls–graphite
Full master bedroom post here!
There’s now a link to this post in the sidebar so it’ll be easy to access.
Hope your weekend is full and happy!
xoxo,
edie
Dear Lovies!
You are cordially invited to a very informal gathering/open house at my home next Friday, August 31st from 9-12. My friend Helga will be here with her new loot of Premier Jewelry and I’ll be whipping up some good coffee and snackies and will be happy to show you around the ole homestead, especially if you’ve yet to see it all rebuilt!
I hope you’ll come. I really do. When you decide whether or not if it’ll work with your schedule, shoot me a quick email so I’ll have enough cherry chocolate chip cookies for your pretty self. If you live within driving distance to hang out with us, send me an email proving to me that you’re not an ax murderer and I’ll give you the top secret code. I’m kinda prejudice against ax murderers but otherwise, I’m a lover.
Pretty much, head towards Bean Station and turn left. But if you’re OCD and like exact directions, I’m here to serve.
If you email about this, (ediewadsworth at mac dot com) make sure and put ‘open house’ as the subject and hopefully I won’t lose it the great black abyss which is my inbox.
Two other things you should know:
1) Ruth is in the house!!!! She is a blogger extraordinaire and her cute little picture is this month’s Woman’s Day. I’m so excited she’s here for a visit and her girls are so completely adorable.
2)My friend, Michele wrote THE MOST AWESOME post on The Odyssey. You’ve gotta read it. And I’ve been wanting the bust of Odysseus for-like-ever and she has it! I may have to invite myself to her house and steal it. She was even darling enough to say yes when I asked for her help with our online classics book club. I don’t know of anyone who loves books more than Michele, she is a beautiful book-loving friend, with such a contagious zest for life!
Hope you are at least giving the book a start. I’m still working on posting some reading tips. Be patient and just keep turning the page!
If you could only read one classic book and learn nearly all of life’s important lessons, it would be The Odyssey. It’s just that good. Homecoming is just that good:)))
The first time I ever had this salsa, I was in the North Woods on vacation and Mi-uss Vicki (as my Southern self calls her) brought this to the cabin for our snacking pleasures. I was smitten and determined to never let a summer go by without canning salsa up a storm. This year, I had some stellar help in the sweat shop. It was a virtual tomato fest all day long and we passed the time with Ralph Stanley the Clinch Mountain Boys and their banjos and fiddles. It was a toe-tapping good time. You can’t have my lovely help but I will share the recipe!
Don’t be scared off by the ‘canning’ part. You don’t need a big pressure cooker or canner for this recipe. Almost every jar seals just by the heat of the salsa and the one that doesn’t will be perfect for eating (soon) or sharing. Or putting in the fridge if you possibly have that much will power.
Put whole tomatoes in boiling H20 a few min; then peel off skin.
16c.chopped tomatoes
2c. green peppers
2c. onions
3 jalapeno peppers
6 garlic cloves/chopped
11/2 T. salt
1T. pepper
3T. chili powder
3T. sugar
1/2c. lemon juice
1/2c. vinegar
Simmer:30-40 min.
To thicken I put in 1 sm. Cans of tomato paste.
You can adjust the jalapeños for your own heat level. We made a hot version and used 5 peppers per batch!
Simmer 30-40 minutes.
Makes approx: 5 1/2 qts.
I can’t exactly remember how many tomatoes it takes to make a batch of this but it’s probably close to 16 med/large tomatoes.
If your jars are clean and warm/hot, the jars will seal without doing a water bath. My jars weren’t even warm and all sealed minus one, which was perfect for eating the fruits of our well-earned labor! If you’re a little more precise and OCD than me, than by all means you can boil them in jars to ensure sealing. They sometimes won’t seal until 12-24 hours later but if they don’t seal, make sure and eat or refrigerate!
Happy canning and hope your week is full of lots of homemade joy!
To find other recipes, visit my recipes page!
If you’re interested in joining our new classical book club, check out the new forum! We are reading The Odyssey for September!
