Kortney Garrison

Homeschooling With Ease

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baja-style pickled carrots

26 June 2014 by Kortney

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do you eat pickled carrots at your place?  i’d wager that if you grew up living just minutes from the border you just might!  they are simple and oh so satisfying to make.  here’s the process:

wash and peel carrots–how many?  i usually do around 8 for a quart jar.

cut 1-2 jalapenos in half longways–seeds out or in? depends on how hot you want your carrots

put carrots + peppers in a pan; cover with vinegar + water–use a 1:1 ratio, 1 c water : 1 c apple cider vinegar. it usually takes a cup and a half of each to get my carrots covered.

bring to a boil; reduce heat to simmer; cook carrots until just beginning to get tender–not too much!  you want a little bite.

remove from heat + place in glass jar. cover and let marinate 24 hours.

then your carrots are ready to eat.  they will last in the fridge for a long time.  but you’ll eat them up soon enough!  they are the perfect addition to basic brined beans + rice, nachos, or anytime you want to add a little color, a little heat, a little crunch to your plate.  enjoy!

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first light, first bird, first book of the season

25 June 2014 by Kortney

up early this morning even thought Jojo had a pretty hard night.  up early courtesy of the scrub jays who live in the front yard and the crows who live in the back yard.  the scrub jays were being noisy neighbors; they were upset about something.  this wasn’t their normal reep-reep.  it was more like they were the peasants in Monty Python and The Holy Grail crying out, “She’s a witch.”  so i had to get up to see what was making them so angry.

i went out the front door because it’s a little quieter, hoping to keep the sleeping house sleeping for a little while longer.  one of the jays met me at the door.  then the bird led me just like Joseph does–he gave his distressed call, then hopped a few feet away and gave it again.  i followed and he led me straight to the witch!  a fluffy calico cat who we’ve seen in the yard before.  she left as soon as i arrived, and everyone quieted down.  i went and got a handful of peanuts to put out for all the jays’ trouble.

Urban Bestiary Cover

i just received the most wonderful gift in the mail this week!  Lyanda Lynn Haupt sent me a copy of her new book called The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild in honor of Joseph’s birth!  i’ve talked plenty about Lyanda and her work as a naturalist here (writing about the book reading where i first met her and her family’s journal keeping).  she has influenced me and taught me so much about this green world.  she has enlivened and enlarged my sense of myself as a mother, a writer, a scientist.  as you can see the book has a wonderful illustrated cover. there are line drawings throughout, and such treasures within.

i started reading as soon as i had book in hand.  but i have a feeling it might take me a while to get through the book.  just a few pages in and i had learned just enough about tracking and reading animal signs that i wanted to tell the children about it.  a casual reading, a casual conversation, and an afternoon in the backyard yielded feathers, scratches on the juniper bark, half-eaten walnuts, and most curious of all muddy tracks on the fence.  did they belong to a cat or a racoon?  only four toes, so i think it might have been the same very scary calico i met this morning!

in the book Lyanda writes that it’s just a small shift in attention (and maybe intention too?) can bring us closer to the wild that lives all around us. even here at our place on a regular urban lot on a pretty busy street in the middle of the city.  we’re keeping our eyes + ears open!

 

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sabbath rest

22 June 2014 by Kortney

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If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6.3o-34

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GWS :: thirty-nine

18 June 2014 by Kortney

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Whenever the kids are working at something that requires my presence to answer an occasional question or simply to provide moral support, I have to have something to keep MY hands busy so I stay out of their work except when they need or want me.  Sometimes this can be accomplished while I am doing kitchen work, if the project lends itself to the kitchen floor or table.  But I must be doing something that tolerates frequent interruptions or I will end up getting more frustrated instead of less.

–Madalene Murphy writing in Growing Without Schooling

Issue #40 archived here.

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