Bread For All, And Roses Too
Feb. 10th, 2019 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I worked on learning this song a little, today. I can find the melody notes on the banjo but have no idea how it ought to be arranged. The notion of instruments that play more than one note at once is still pretty new to me. I actually started singing to myself while Dude was out grocery shopping because the cat wouldn't stop yelling (she wanted me to sit down so she could sleep on me and I was too busy) and I figured I should yell back. Chita did not care for any of my selections. (I also sang The Green Linnet and The Bonnie Bunch Of Roses O, or as much of each as I could remember the words to. I don't sing as much lately as I used to; I don't get any singing done in the car and it's a shame, but I don't sound too rusty, now that I don't seem to have a cold anymore. But I'd like to learn Bread And Roses because it's pretty and topical, as laments for Buonaparte are not so much-- I mean, they're pretty, they're just not topical. If there was ever anyone so thoroughly undeserving of the beautiful songs written for him... might be a tie with Bonnie Charlie, now I think on it.)
I thought of it because I baked bread today-- I defaulted to Joy Demorra's recipe (bibliosphere on Tumblr, but her Patreon is a better archive since Tumblr keeps flagging the bread photos as sinful, and it's unlocked there), and she used to just call it Peasant bread but I see the title's gotten upgraded to Communist, now. I've no insight into which label suits it better but there's some novelty in using a mug to measure. I'm not the target audience for that, but my favorite recipe is the no-knead one (I hate getting my hands so sticky) but I wanted to make little boules and I don't have suitably-sized baking pans for that, so something kneaded and hand-shaped it was. For some reason it was horribly sticky, and I had to chip it off the cookie sheet at the end because it had adhered so much, and I think I used too little yeast so it didn't rise all that well, but it will suit to put the stew into, I'm sure. Probably wound up super dense but whatever.
I also have boeuf bourgignon in the Instant Pot, and I made biscuits to use up the last of the milk that was going sour, so I also defrosted some frozen strawberries and made Dude buy vanilla ice cream, so we'll have strawberry shortcake for dessert. I thought a proper Sunday dinner was called for, as we won't be celebrating Valentine's Day really.
(Well, we will probably, as we usually do, sitting at home together, but less festive than normal because Dude's going in for some very minor surgery the day after, but surgery nonetheless, so.)
I've had a headache since about noon, so that's annoying. It's the most minor headache anyone's ever had, but I'm a big wuss about headaches, so I'm grumpy. It's fine, I've been cooking and cleaning in the kitchen all day so it's not like I have to look at screens or things.
I wanted to do some sewing today and have done none, and won't do any if the headache doesn't ease.
I had a thought, that it might be fun to do big painted banners a la suffragette-era protests. Nicely quilted ones. Bread & Roses for sure, but also "DEEDS NOT WORDS". Taking suggestions for more. I think they'd make beautiful wall-hangings, especially if I did them up super retro with like, fabric cutout letters, and beautiful finishing, and fringe on the bottom, and such. (I suppose I could do a BLACK LIVES MATTER one in the same style because an unfortunate relic of the suffragette era is how fucking racist they all were, in that early movement, and it would be wise to just... head that off. Maybe I could do "my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit".) I don't know where these wall-hangings would even go, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, it'll take me decades to make them, so what the fuck ever.
I've also been dying for literally years to make one of those triangle-hangy-letter-banners? I made one that says "Welcome" that I gave my sister for a party at the farm, and I fucked it up so it's not reversible even though I went to great lengths to make it reversible-- the secret is, paint the letters the other way on the other side, but somehow I totally fucked that up. I want to make another one but I don't know what it should say. I might do another one for the farm that says something like Farmland Forever. But I'd quite like one for the yurt and I just don't know what it should say.
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Date: 2019-02-10 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 08:35 pm (UTC)I should go ahead and make a banner, then, it's a sign. oh gosh, I think i have some beige velvet remnants, and I'm currently seam-ripping a torn silk shirt in burgundy-red...
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Date: 2019-02-11 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 08:36 pm (UTC)i can't wait until it's strawberry season again.
i barely took advantage of gleaning the strawberries when they were right outside the yurt, but in my defense, the csa members were gleaning them, so.
never enough strawberries in my whole life.
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Date: 2019-02-12 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-12 10:25 pm (UTC)Strawberries are a challenge, mostly to keep the deer off. Last year Aaron used electric fence. I wonder if he's doing it again this year; the year before they had total crop failure. They're so hard to raise, and not really that economical, but it's such a big thing that the CSA customers love, and Aaron likes the challenge, sort of, so.
We had a bunch get damaged by careless harvesting, all in one go, and Annie quick quick froze bag after bag of them, and brought them over to Mom's house for Willa to eat for snacks, and she's been steadily and delightedly working her way through. I bet they're gone, by now. It's such a big deal to find them again.
But I let myself buy commercial frozen berries so I can have fruit with breakfast, and I underestimated how excited I would be about them.