nostalgia

people always ask me what life was like for me as a kid.  i'm not sure if this is a question that a lot of people get, but i guess when you grow up the way i did, folks get curious.  it's not every day that people run in to somebody who has twelve adopted brothers and sisters, who was homeschooled from kindergarten though twelfth grade, and who was actually adopted herself.  my family is huge, boisterous, and in your face, and how we all survived til adulthood (or mostly adulthood- my youngest sister is eleven.  that makes her nineteen years younger than me.  yeah, we're pretty weird all right.) is a mystery even to us.  my mom also tells me that when she dies, i can write a book as payback for my childhood.  so, to both embarrass her (cause it's a bitch, right?) and satisfy some other nosey parker's curiousity, i shall now occasionally write vignettes of my childhood right here.  i think it will be theraputic for me, if nothing else, and most likely cheaper than therapy...

we didn't have summer vacation at my house.  we had summer, of course.  but where other people had time off from school, days to sleep in and be lazy, and camp, my family had... work.  see, that's the problem with being homeschooled.  even in the summer, you can't flippin' leave.  (this was also the case with snow days.  school's not closed if you live at school.  it's a miracle i still talk to my mother.)  my siblings and i would wait and wait and wait for memorial day, hoping against wild hope that this year- this year would be the year that we'd get to relax, maybe go on vacation or to waterworld- something normal and fun.  and every year we would be dissappointed. 

we'd usually get a day or two where my dad wouldn't wake us up yelling "up and at em!" at seven am (followed by a quick ripping off of the covers) to lull us into a false sense of security.  and then, after a day or two of relative leasure, my mom would come up with this summer's work project.  she'd always announce it with happiness (or maybe glee) at the lunch table.  one memorable summer's work was "we're going to break up the old cement basketball slab, save all the pieces, and use them to build a patio on the second terrace of our back yard!  which reminds me.  we're also going to build a terrace!"  (i do wish i was kidding about this, by the way.)  this was usually met with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm- which is to say, none at all, accompanied by frantic phone calls to relatives for temporary custody.  and when my mom would say things like "we're all going to work on this for a couple of hours every day, and i'm sure it will be done really fast!"  we all knew that what she really meant was "you guys are going to be getting up at six thirty and working for at least six hours every day while i supervise.  the girls will get your meals.  you won't be getting paid at all or have any reward whatsoever except living in my house, but i will count your work as p.e. credit!  won't that be nice!"  it was not nice, by the way.  (notice the volunteering of "the girls" in the food prep.  i am nine years older than my next sister in line, so what my mom really meant was "S will get your meals."  i learned to cook for an army by the age of 15.  cause have you ever seen how much nine boys will eat after a morning's labor?  i got a summer job pretty quick, i can tell you.) 

it always looked odd, too.  my parents live in a pretty nice area of our fair city, and they (because this needs to be said in my family) are anglo.  my siblings, on the other hand?  are not.  now, just imagine being a hapless stranger driving through out neighborhood at random.  my brothers are all in my parent's very nice front yard, dismally swinging shovels and pickaxes in their white tank tops and dirty shorts, all while looking like they would give anything to escape.  what do you think you might believe was going on there?  yup.  they look like a chain gang.  ahhh, forced labor.  we never really did get a whole lot of people driving down our street more than once, come to think of it. 

we weren't allowed to leave the house until our allotted work was done for the day, and even then it was often a struggle.  my mom is a great checker of your work, and she's also a perfectionist, so we often ended up doing the same bit of a job over and over til it was entirely correct.  (she counted this as "life skills" credit.)  this was every summer of my childhood- at least until i got a paying job.  my family has always been about everybody making their own money, and they didn't stop me when i got that first job at the movie theater.  (for which i also got free movies.  it's a pretty cushy deal when you're sixteen.)  i think i might have been the only person there who thought of their job as an escape from work.  i'm completey grown now, and out of the house, but my youngest siblings are still in the work gang, digging dirt and moving cement all summer.  when i visit and see their misery, all i can tell them is "get a job!  it's the only way...."  cause the words "summer vacation" still don't mean a thing.  actually, come to think of it, they might mean "free landscaping".  or "those kids as sure as certain not getting into trouble on my watch!"  (yeah right.)  but they certainly don't mean "freedom" or "fun".  at least not in my house. 

september is for soup

hi there!  how was your labor day?  hopefully awesome and filled with the kind of wonder that only the holiday at the end of summer can bring.  i've never really been sure of what labor day celebrates, unless it's some unspoken homage to the god of grills or something.  if you lived in my mom's house, though, it was meant for labor.  she'd make us get up at six in the morning and build something, or clean something, or move stuff around.  (my mom is a furniture hoarder, and is constantly having to rearrange her house to make room for another couple of couches or a dresser.  she has dressers in the living room.  i am sadly not kidding.)  i, as the oldest and the only person who had any ability to cook, would have to make lunch and dinner for my millions of brothers who would be hungry, hot, and cranky from the forced, well... labor.  this was the story of every labor day of my childhood.  in fact, i was often the only cook in my house, and had to perfect the "quick food for a crapton of people" recipes that save my butt in the kitchen to this day.  my mom wouldn't let me leave the house until i had something for dinner going, which was my chore for four nights a week.  the other nights were pizza night, lasagna sunday, and leftovers. (these nights, by the way?  never change.  and the lasagna is the frozen kind that comes from sam's.  i never can make it to sunday without the nostalgic smell of the many times my mom forgot to take the carboard off the lasagna before cooking it coming flooding back to my nostrils...)

anyway, i learned very quickly that one of the best and cheapest (why cheap?  oh, cause i had to make the food budget lists for the family too.  i don't think this qualifies as child abuse, but i'm not completely sure on that.) ways to feed the fam was to make soup.  one pot meals are always the way to go, as you can cram a whole heck of a lot of stuff into one pot, set it cooking, and then flee the scene while you still have permission to use your dad's car.  i've gotten pretty expert at soups of all kinds, and make them whenever an occasion calls for it.  my chef husband even steals my recipes for the restaurant sometimes, and that's pretty much the biggest "i love you- and your food" i ever get from that guy.  labor day, for me as an adult, means the beginning of soup season and my favorite time of year to actually get up and cook something.

my new favorite soup, since the discovery that wheat makes me seven different kinds of sick, is lentil.  there's a bunch of folks who just made that "yukky" face that's sometimes seen on poison bottles when i said that, but trust me.  it's good.  it's also vegetarian- in fact, it's vegan and is completely non-processed in terms of ingredients and you can get almost all the stuff for it at your local farmer's market, if you're so inclined.  i pretty much get all the ingredients at walmart, but i am a poor librarian.  do whatever your conscience tells you is right, luke.  so here's the recipe of the day: gluten free, vegan lentil soup.  the ingredients might seems a little weird, but it's the best stuff ever with some cheese (not vegan then, i guess) on top and some rice crackers or a sandwich.  yum.  i love september.

Lentil Soup

sautee up one diced onion and four cups sliced carrots in olive oil til they are nice and tender
add in two cans of rotel tomatoes and chilis, undrained (or some diced up tomatoes and green chilis from the market, if you wanna)
put in six-eight cups of water and veggie boullion, or veggie broth, or even chicken broth if you don't care about that
rough chop a big bunch of spinach and put that in the pot too
add in 1 and 1/2 cup of green lentils
season with salt and pepper
add the juice and zest of two lemons
simmer for 45 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

serve with cheddar cheese on top, if you're eating cow products, and put in some lovely almond crackers or a sandwich of some kind.  perfect for those days in september that have a little nip to them.