What's Fresh Now: Tomatoes

We are having the most heavenly growing season out here in NYC. Last week I showed up at my CSA pickup and was handed a 20 lb. box of tomatoes, which over the weekend turned into sauce. I then canned this sauce, because there was no way I was going to fit 6 quarts in the freezer.

The tricky part was that I don't have a canner--a big deep pot fitted with a wire rack so that the jars don't jostle and break as they're boiling--so I devised one out of my brew kettle and an old rubber bathmat that I scrubbed with bleach first. I actually wouldn't recommend any of this, because even when I'm not using bootleg equipment I worry about getting sloppy and flirting with death. Anyhow, I've decided to invest in a dedicated canner what with apple season just kicking in.

Th'usband rolled his eyes a little at this news given that this project took the better part of my weekend and saw me verging on a panic attack until he helped me figure out how I was going to get the finished jars out of the canner; if I was doing it to spare the cost of 6 industrially produced quarts of sauce, clearly I had lost my mind.

Fortunately for me, th'usband is himself a re-enactor, and understands that this kind of doing has its own satisfaction, and that even when I'm reaching into the boiling water wearing silicone oven mitts, what I'm really doing is a flawed but earnest impression of my grandmother, or yours, ca. 1940. I'm sure that they never saw a day coming when sewing, knitting, canning and suchlike would amount to costly acts of indulgence rather than necessary acts of thrift.

First I peeled the tomatoes (with an extra set of hands lent by J.) by immersing them in near-boiling water for about a minute, then transferring them into a waiting bowl of ice water. This made the skins crack and slip off like gloves.

Prior to canning, the jars and lids get sterilized in boiling water. I took this photo before turning on the gas so that you could appreciate the bathmat action.

I quartered the peeled tomatoes and used my thumbs (can you tell by looking at my pristine hands?) to open and empty the big pockets of seeds, then chopped them roughly. These were perfectly ripe and red to the core and required very little trimming.

So here's the drill: using sterilized equipment, you ladle the sauce into the jars, leaving about 1/2 inch for expansion. Then you put on the lids, screwing the rings down tight so that the sauce doesn't ooze out when you carefully lower the jars into boiling water. You let them boil for 10 minutes, long enough to get the sauce inside the jars boiling again to kill off any pathogens that might have sneaked in there. Heated stuff expands, so when you pull the jars out of the water at the end of the processing time, they look full to the brim; a few minutes later, though, you'll hear a noise as the contents cool and contract, drawing the lid down to make a tight seal. The rings will seem loose at this point, and you can certainly screw them down--but really, nothing's going in or out of that jar until the day you slide a knife blade or file under that metal lid to release the pressure.

The only problem with canning is that the finished jars are almost too pretty to open.

Ask the Huisvrouw: DIY calcium intake boost

Dear Huisvrouw,

I've been reading your blog for a while now. I love the mix you have going on here--crafty stuff like writing and knitting, culture and the arts, and especially all your fantastic food content.

The question I'm writing to you about today has to do with that last, food, and I'm afraid it's a two-parter. It's recently come to my attention that I really need to increase my intake of calcium. Per my doctor's recommendation, I'm taking some very sciency, organic supplement, but she's been really stern with me about needing to incorporate more calcium-rich foods into my regular diet. So, part one of my question is, what should I be eating?

Part two: Here's the deal: I have a partner and a cat, but no kids, yet. I'm in my early thirties, and of modest, modest means. And I'm a bit of a food moron. I'm an awesome waitress, but my back-of-house knowledge set and self-efficacy is nill. I do, however, reallllllllly want to learn. I'm passionate about living healthier for myself and for my partner and the kids we might get lucky enough to have someday. So, and dumb it down for me, Huisvrouw, how do I eat the calcium-rich foods, once I get them home from the store?

Signed,

Waitress Lost in the Kitchen

Dear WLitK,

I'm so flattered you asked. I've had calcium-boosting behavior drilled into me since birth, almost, given how many risk factors for osteoporosis (the brittle bone end game for insufficient calcium intake) I happen to embody: I'm female, white, thin, and have a family history of low bone density (dad, not mom). But I enjoyed doing a little research on the subject, primarily at the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the totally excellent, interactive, customizable new government food pyramid site (It's so nice to feel positively about something the feds have done in the past 5 years).

Let's talk first about the role of calcium in the body and what's behind your doctor's concern.

Calcium is an important structural component of healthy bones and teeth. In addition, calcium ions play a messenger role in all kinds of other cellular business, from the firing of muscles to the firing of synapses. A small amount is also excreted each day, mainly through the kidneys, and when women are breastfeeding, they secrete enough to meet the considerable needs of the little bone-growing machines that depend on them. If there doesn't happen to be enough calcium in circulation at the time that it is needed, your bones dispense it like an ATM. It just gets harder and harder to make compensatory deposits once bone growth has ended, so over time the bones can get porous and weak. A person with osteoporosis not only might fall down and break a hip, but she might spontaneously break a hip and fall down.

Women suffer from osteoporosis at higher rates than do men (20% of white and Asian women over the age of 50, vs. 7% of the corresponding demographic of men; for non-Hispanic blacks, 5% of women vs. 4% of men; and for Hispanics, 10% of women vs. 3% of men) not only because of the potential breastfeeding component, but because we generally have smaller, finer bones, which are the effective equivalents of smaller starting bank accounts. (The same thing goes for us skinny folks.) Also, estrogen levels drop precipitously with menopause, while testosterone production in men declines more gradually, and it turns out that these sex hormones help the body to retain calcium. It is possible for women to lose 20% of their bone mass in the first 5-7 years after menopause.

Smoking further leeches calcium out of your bones at whatever age you do it, as does an inactive lifestyle. On the positive side of the equation, stretching and weight-bearing exercise helps to build bone strength, as does an ample supply of vitamin D, which has to be present for bones to absorb and store calcium. Your skin actually makes vitamin D out of sunlight (which might have something to do with why pale whiteys like me who have to stay out of strong sun are at greater risk for osteoporosis than people of color are), so more and more doctors are starting to recommend that we allow ourselves 10-15 minutes of sunscreen-free exposure to the sun 3 or 4 times a week.

Now I know that you didn't really ask me for a whole science lesson, but I always find it easier to figure out the kinds of changes I'm willing and able to make when I also know the hows and whys involved. If you look in the paragraphs above, you can already see a number of things you can do to make maximum use of the calcium you're already taking in: stretch, exercise, spend a little time outside each day, and try to give up cigarettes if you smoke. The next step is to consider what kinds of foods you can eat to average about 1000 mg of dietary calcium a day.

We'll start with the easy stuff: dairy products. Everyone knows that milk has a lot of calcium, and now you know why; nature intended that milk for calves, which also need to build bone as they grow. One cup of milk provides about 300 mg, or 30% of your recommended daily allowance. You can get the equivalent amount of calcium from 1 1/2 ounces of hard cheese, 1/3 c. shredded cheese, 1/2 c. ricotta cheese, or 2 c. cottage cheese; or you could enjoy a single 8-ounce serving of yogurt. And here's another sneaky thing: there are about 52 mg of calcium per tablespoon of nonfat powdered milk, and you can add it into homemade baked goods at the rate of 2T per cup of flour.

But what about the majority of the world's population that is more or less lactose intolerant? (As a group, only Northern European peoples seem to retain the ability to digest milk after childhood.) And what about a balanced diet? Well, consider these other options:

Fish (especially whole or canned ocean fish with bones): A 3-oz serving of salmon, which realistically speaking is about half of an entree-sized portion, contains 180 mg of calcium. The same 3-oz. serving of trout has 146; sardines, 325 mg; ocean perch, 116; and even shrimp have 102.

Pretty much any fruit or vegetable you pick up contains 40-60 mg of calcium. The real heavy lifters, though, are dark green veggies. Consider how much calcium there is in one cup of each of these foods, and load up your plate: Spinach, 291 mg; collard greens, 266 mg; turnip greens, 246 mg; okra, 176 mg; broccoli, 188 mg; bok choi, 158 mg; okra, 176 mg; rhubarb, 348 mg.

Beans: A lot of the sources I consulted specified dried or canned beans; I doubt the preparation method has anything to do with calcium content. More likely this is just a reflection on our overall impatience with foods that take a long time to cook. At any rate, you should feel free to crack open a nice convenient, easy can now and again--just make sure it didn't come from China, and it's not on the current botulism recall list. One cup white beans, 192 mg; cowpeas, 212 mg; kidney beans, 80 mg; refried beans, 90 mg.

Soybeans are beans too, you know: 1 cup edamame provides 176 mg calcium, and there's also good calcium in soy derivatives: 3 oz. tofu, 150 mg; tempeh, 82 mg.

Miscellaneous: Nuts (1/4 c. almonds, 89 mg); Blackstrap molasses (1 T, 172 mg); and a few other things you can look up yourself at the sources I cited above. (If I could sneak in one more plug for the MyPyramid site, it would be that you can use the Tracker function to get both a broad view of the quality of your diet over time, and the specific nutritional content of almost any food you can think of.)

Whew. This is getting really long, so I'm just going to wind it up with a baker's dozen or so of calcium-rich meals or snack ideas to get you going.

1. Spinach lasagna, made with tons of spinach, ricotta, and mozzarella cheese; you can really get a lot of servings out of a pan of lasagna, so this is a good, cheap meal
   
2. Salmon steaks with something dark green on the side; season the fish with salt, pepper, and a little dill if you want to get fancy, then stick it under the broiler for about 5 minutes
   
3. Raw broccoli dipped in a yogurt-based dip; add some instant onion soup mix to plain yogurt for an easy savory dip, or make a sweetened yogurt dip for fruit, which is always good, too
   
4. Stir fry with bok choi and tofu; there's a Dutch saying (or maybe something that I just always have said) that is central to my stir fry logic--hoe kleurrijker hoe gezonder. The more colorful, the healthier it is. Saute a bunch of seasonal veggies on high heat, starting with the hardest vegetables and working your way down to the tender ones. Just make sure you've got one or more dark green things in there
   
5. Plain yogurt on your baked potato (similar effect and much more calcium than sour cream)
6. Molasses cookies, made from scratch with blackstrap molasses and powdered milk sifted into the flour
7. Fruit parfaits made by layering yogurt, almond granola, and fresh fruit
8. Keep almonds and cheese around for grab-it-and-go snacks
   
9. Spinach salad
10. Steamed soy beans with coarse salt, aka edamame; you can buy these frozen and then all you have to do is heat them up, sprinkle salt on them, and sit back and look fabulously cosmopolitan
    
11. Soul food! Say yes to collard greens and baked beans, okra, and (yep) sneak some powdered milk into the flour you use to batter the chicken and/or green tomatoes
    
12. Haute bourgeois tapas with sardines, garlicky white beans, and a wedge of Manchego cheese; considering that you can get the beans canned and just jazz them up a minute with some garlic and whatever fresh herbs are plentiful in the moment, this is remarkably easy, and with the possible exception of the cheese, pretty cheap. Actually almost anything, even the fancy looking stuff, is cheap if you are willing to do all or part of the preparation
    
13. Caesar salad with fresh dressing: go heavy on the anchovies and parmesan cheese
    
14. Rhubarb cobbler with ice cream
    

in which she reasserts the enjoyment of naming

We took the Circle Line today. The loop around Manhattan took 3 hours, and our guide had very little to say about the Bronx, for instance, so parts of it got a little boring. But it is good, I think, or at least good for me, to cultivate a sense of being new to these parts, of wonder at wherever I happen to be.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Recently I passed my 4-year anniversary of becoming an ex-expat*. I have basically lived my adult life in 4-year chapters, so what this means to me looking out across the open sky of year 5 is that I have no idea how to proceed. In the past, I've staved off boredom by up & moving to a far-off land where I would proceed to expend my very last breath trying not to be an outsider, which I interminably was.

Still, I remember laughing once at a breathless someone who imagined my life to be incredibly exotic. I laughed because most of the time my life was a bag of papers that had to be graded by Monday. It was not exotic, I protested, not at all, but while that was true, it was also true that the littlest things that surrounded me all had different, new-to-me names, names that I was prone to repeat and savor in my mouth**. It simply was not possible for me not to pay attention.

New York is like that for a lot of people, I know, th'usband included. Everything that happens here is a bit more laden and/or fraught with meaning by sheer virtue of it having happened in New York. In subsequent retellings, the stage directions always specify the neighborhood(s) involved. There are accents and pushcarts and zany bystanders and local color. Everything is lit with heartbreakingly New Yorky light.

*Attempting to appear Interesting, I suppose, I commented to someone I've never met that I am an ex-expat. I said this because I'd been thinking about all of this, and feeling a bit beige, and because my earlier admission that I was an ex-poet had generated excitement and inspired a whole new del.icio.us category. It inspired; with it, I'd carved out a whole new plane of existence for myself. For a second there it was almost like up & moving. But this ex-expat business, while kindly received, turned out to be a statement of the obvious. "of course poets are ex-pats so an ex-poet would almost have to be an ex-expat," sed ryan.

Ouch. He's right, of course. An ex-pat is always finding out the word for something for the first time and cannot afford lapses of attention. At first it is about understanding and being understood and being able to participate in serious conversations without sounding like a six-year-old. Later it is about the pleasure of those words in your mouth, and that is poetry. **Gertrude Stein put it this way:

What is poetry.
Poetry has to do with vocabulary just as prose has not....
And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary entirely based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun.
Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is....
I have said that a noun is a name of anything by definition that is what it is and a name of anything is not interesting because once you know its name the enjoyment of naming it is over and therefore in writing prose names that is nouns are completely uninteresting. But and that is a thing to be remembered you can love a name and if you love a name then saying that name any number of times only makes you love it more, more violently more persistently more tormentedly. Anybody knows how anybody calls out the name of anybody one loves. And so that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose. Yes any of you can know that. (From "Poetry and Grammar," one of Stein's 1934 Lectures in America)

Look, all that happened today is that we took the Circle Line and I took about fifty pictures, and when we got off and we were walking towards our car on 46th St., a guy spotted the camera around my neck and asked if we needed a cab. And although my immediate response was to get all I'm-from-Brooklyn on him (because I am still always all about expending hasta el ultimo aliento trying not to be an outsider), in the seconds that followed I realized that it was a good thing to be taken as a tourist. If my project for year 5 is to learn how not to up & move it behooves me not to make myself too much at home. I need to look up from the sidewalk in front of me, ask people for the words for things, hear the accents, linger in the New Yorky light. I need to carry a camera and pay attention. That's all I'm saying.

aw shucks

A friend/coworker just phoned me up and told me she'd thought of me this weekend because she'd seen Michelle Shocked play and she reminded her of me. "I don't know how you sing," she said, "but she's tall and thin and political and funny and eclectic and. . . ." In fact, one of the few songs I know on the guitar is "The Ballad of Patch Eye and Meg" from the Texas Campfire Tapes, an album I first heard when I was living in Louisiana a LONG time ago; last I caught sight of her, Sister Shocked had become a born-again Christian ("yeah, a lefty born again Christian!" my friend interjected) and was playing a few nights with gospel back up in one of her old punk hangouts in Amsterdam.

I am so insanely flattered that I had to go and brag about it here, and I swear, as soon as I finish the work I've got cut out for me today, I'm going to tune my guitar.

Chicks Brew, Too

Several weeks back, I received a 52-lb. package from BrewUnc#1, containing almost 20 years of back issues of Zymurgy, the official magazine of the American Homebrewer's Association. One of Zymurgy's editors is Charlie Papazian, who founded the group and authored its Bible, and is pictured holding the plaque (to the left) and hanging out with Kathy Ireland (above). Admittedly, all of the pictures here came from the same 1988 issue, but brewing remains a demographic that gives facial hair a bad name (& I even like facial hair!). I wound up throwing out about half of the issues after discovering that a complete article cycle is about 8 years long and that the older issues are b&w and way too fascinated that Chicks Brew, Too. The Kathy Ireland cover story killed me, though, so I kept that one: just imagine how many mustaches twitched to learn that Kathy was 'a beer enthusiast with the same fantasies that inspire most brewers.' (Did you know about her line of home furnishings, btw? Me neither.)

Anyhow, I've got a lot of reading to do, and just in time: the last of my pre-packaged kits is in the fermenter and I'm fixing to move to the level of (other people's) recipes next. I'm browsing for a creamy, chocolaty Porter for th'husband, and a frisky Saison for me. Any suggestions?

Beet wine and better days

By all measures, April has been a really unproductive month. Just took a walk with the husband and all we could say for ourselves was that May is coming. With any luck we're through with the chills, the monsoons, the constant cloud cover shrouding our spring. With any gumption I'll shake the tangles out of my head regardless.

I was born 2 months shy of my mother's 30th birthday, so when I'm really in the mood to give myself what for, I compare whatever it is that I'm failing to accomplish with what her daily duties were like--or in an even more extreme mood, those of my grandmother--when she was my age. I grasp the obvious stuff right away--like the fact that I've never had to potty train a toddler, let alone do so in an outhouse in Minnesota in the winter, or follow it up by warming water on the stove for a succession of baths--but a letter from my friend who's still waiting for her mohair straightjacket this past week really gave me insight into how even in the kitchen, where I'm pretty proficient, I can't begin to match what previous generations of women considered routine. M had been out at the farm visiting her elderly mother-in-law, and came across an old recipe box. In it was a recipe that she thought (in the spirit of this blog) I needed for beet wine (& it is true that I was drowning in beets from our weekly CSA farm shares last summer) that goes like this:

5 lbs. beets
3 lbs. sugar
1 lemon sliced
1 orange sliced
1 lb. raisins
1 yeast cake

Cover beets with water and boil until done. Take out beets and add just enough clear water to make a gallon. Put in jar and add sugar, lemon, orange, raisins and yeast. Let stand 28 days. Stir every day. Strain and let stand 4 or 5 more days to settle. Put in jugs or wine bottles.

The real kicker, though, was the list she turned up on another recipe card of what this woman canned as a young bride in 1940. My friend's note puts it mildly: "It makes me tired just to read the list...and she didn't have electricity & the water was hand pumped." In a later conversation she told me that the carrot pickles had apparently been made from the little skinny ones pulled out when thinning the rows, so that truly nothing was wasted. It's a list I'll keep on my desk and read daily in May, if I have to. Onward!

1940 canned:
Beans 25 Qts.
Carrot pickles 8 pts.
Beet pickles 10 pts. 2Qts.
Peas & Carrots 4 pts.
Bean pickles 1 Qt. 2 pts.
Strawberries 20 Qts.
Cherries 10 Qts.
Apricots 12 Qts.
Sauerkraut 5 Gallons
Mixed veg. 12 pts.
Rhubarb 24 Qts.
Strawberry jam 10 jars

the most feminine of beverages

From a NYTimes obituary, Feb. 2007:

Mr. Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put forward as the world's oldest beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 B.C.

In it a Mesopotamian stone tablet depicted a headless woman with enormous breasts holding goblets of beer in each hand. The tagline, at least in his interpretation, was: ''Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.''

Mr. Eames, who followed the golden liquid to 44 countries, often told about his perilous trek high in the Andes in pursuit of an ancient brew made from strawberries the size of baseballs. Or about Aztecs forbidding drunkenness except among those 52 years of age or older. Or about accounts that said Norse ale was served with garlic to ward off evil.

Mr. Eames's favorite and perhaps most startling message was that beer is the most feminine of beverages. He said that in almost all ancient societies beer was considered a gift from a goddess, never a male god. Most often, women began the brewing process by chewing grains and spitting them into a pot to form a fermentable mass.

Ah, the resourcefulness of women! I heard from S. this morning that when she was in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea she'd repurposed government-issued condoms from the medical kit as fermenting vessels for 'wine made out of anything growing from the ground.' When pressed she admitted that they'd exploded (like beer bottles do if you get a little crazy with the priming sugar) for lack of a little hole poked in their tops.

I'm going to stick to kit beers until I get the hang of this. Batch #2 is an IPA. Historically, India Pale Ales were stronger to allow fermentation to continue at sea, with lots of hops to prevent spoilage. After bringing the malt extract and the grains to the boil, I pulled out the muslin bag of sodden English barley and tossed in two kinds of bittering hops. Later came a plug of fuggle hops, first propegated by one Richard Fuggle and known for their soft, resiny, aniseedy, almost tropical notes.

This time I was all set to go and easily strained the wort into the fermenting bucket using my knees to grip the pot, leaving my hands free to hold and swivel the strainer (actually, a splash guard for frying--gotta think about upgrading some of my equipment) so that it wouldn't clog. There's a lot of sediment involved, mainly boiled, greenish-brownish hops that look like wet henna and smell about as bad. (Open up a beer and boil it for yourself to get a sense of how wrong this is. Now imagine that there's a whole lot of plant matter in there that hasn't been strained out yet.)

Fermentation kicked in about 5 hours later; that was about 5 days ago, and in keeping with option #2: finishing hops: dry hopping step described in the kit instructions, I've just put in a muslin bag--you betcha, I sanitized it!--containing a second fuggle plug. Dry hopping, as opposed to adding the finishing hops to the boil about 2 minutes before the pot comes off the stove, apparently produces the aggressively hoppy aroma associated with the best IPAs. Now that I think of it, I think the directions said they were supposed to spend 4 or 5 days in the brew at the start of the primary fermentation, not the secondary fermentation as I've just done. But I'm much calmer following the whole Batch #1 crisis. How bad can it be?

And now, a moment for some tangential ranting

When I began culinary school I got a great gig writing recipes and articles about cooking for people enrolled in grocery store loyalty programs around the country. I still do food writing and recently, my friend S. put me on to a daily news digest specifically covering the grocery industry. That's where I found this post:

A while back you had an article about female bosses and sexism in the workplace. You mentioned a party invitation from your daughter’s middle school, where the girls’ (pink) invitation was for a Sweet Dreams Pajama Party and the boys’ (brown) invitation was for a Poker Party. Obvious gender stereotyping.

My daughter is a high school junior. The other day she received a brochure from the School of Engineering at a major Midwestern university. They are offering separate engineering-oriented summer camps for high school "guys" and "girls." The male version (green block print) was called was called "SURVIVOR: ENGINEERING OUTBACK (Guys-only Engineering Camp)." The female version (pink with curlicues) was called "Project Discovery (it’s a Girl thing)."

The Guys "complete an intensive engineering project including field work led by our professors". The Girls "attend hands-on lab sessions."

The Guys "explore engineering specialties hands-on" while the Girls "gain an understanding of what engineers do."

The Guys "see engineering in action on a mid-week field trip" while the Girls "tour engineering facilities with our faculty."

The Guys go "GPS geocaching, rock climbing, and other fun stuff" while the girls "develop problem-solving skills through team-building exercises."

The contact for the Guys’ Camp was the Director of Recruitment, while the contact for the Girls’ Camp was the Director of Diversity.

Guess which college my daughter crossed off her list!

OK, now here's where things get tangential, but this is a blog about creative endeavors written by a MidWestern girl (who can see 40 looming on the horizon but who actually just rejected the word 'woman' because it sounded uptight, maybe even discreditingly so), after all; please bear with me.

One of my nieces is also a high school junior. Until recently, she's wanted to be an engineer. Now she's not so sure. Likewise, a younger cousin showed tremendous capacity for engineering--her senior project was awarded a U.S. patent and she solved a thorny design problem on one of her first days at a German automotive company by very intuitively correcting a drawing so that a brake part 'looked right'--but quit and became a math teacher, in part because she didn't feel comfortable in a dominantly masculine work environment.

As for me, I've just spent a weekend visiting with a friend who I realized has played a very important role as a model for me over the years. She's half a generation ahead of me and is a teacher, as I was until 2003. She's also a sojourner, a risk-taker, a mother, an entrepreneur, and a tremendous believer in human potential.

My grandmother had to quit school at 14 to help out on the farm. My mother was the first in her family to attend college, and felt she could choose between being a nurse and a teacher. Me, I'm overeducated and underengaged. I taught for 12 years partly out of love and commitment to social justice, but partly because I didn't know what else I could do, and was afraid to find out. Now, four years into that discovery process, I am still my own biggest enemy. It's too easy for me to write off (or more critically, to not write of) my interests and talents as being inconsequential.

As a teacher, I hope that I helped some of my young students to appreciate their worth. I hope that whatever my nieces decide to pursue, they will know the pleasure of being crazily in love with their creative process. I am grateful for friends--and now my husband, too--who keep showing me how it's done and insisting that I do it, too. And to you, if you're still reading this. La la la.