a photo tour

I usually post new pictures on facebook, often with little (sometimes amusing!) captions....but since I am struggling for a blog post topic, and hate to disappoint readers who are thirsty for an update (welcome to the club, Barbie!), I thought I'd give a little tour of my recent days, with photo exhibits.

Exhibit A: My Fridge
I opened my fridge yesterday, and it just looked so bountiful and pleasing that I had to take a picture. Here are some things you can see: 1) large plastic container of pureed strawberries from last year's picking expedition, thawing out to be made into jam (more on that later); 2) a big container of MJP-style potato salad for our Memorial Day cookout with my dad, Jenny, and Peter; 3) bread & butter pickles from Trader Joe's, best served on my favorite sandwich - ham, cheddar, spicy dijon mustard, pickles, on TJ's Tuscan Pane, toasted panini-style; 4) organic brown eggs from Margit & Marianne's CSA; and 5) fresh cilantro and a cantaloupe from the new Asian produce stand at the corner of Philadelphia Pike and Beeson Ave (amazingly cheap, totally non-organic produce).

Exhibit B: Strawberry Picking at Filasky's Produce
On Sunday, Lucy, Lindsay, Max and I headed down to Middletown, past every big box store and chain restaurant you can think of (Starbucks? check. Home Depot? check. Wal-Mart? check. Buffalo Wild Wings? mais bien sur.) until we reached the bucolic farmlands of Filasky's Produce. In about 45 minutes, we had each picked close to five pounds of sweet, juicy strawberries. If you've never done it, you really should. It's easy to do, and really becomes quite compelling - can you find THE perfect strawberry? After filling our buckets, which were deceptively roomy (5 lbs of strawberries is a lot), we headed to the produce stand to pay, and to buy the kids ice cream (it was almost 10 AM after all), and then headed back up north for Pajama Brunch at Buckley's. My blueberry pancakes were terrible, but everything else was good, and it was nice to hang out with the Lowry-Lebberns, an all-too-rare occurrence. I went home and set to work on berry preparation, while Richard kindly offered to go on a hunt for canning jars. You'll remember that in Exhibit A above, I referenced last year's berries.....So last year, I picked many pounds of strawberries in NJ, brought them home, cleaned them, pureed them, planning excitedly for fresh jam - while Richard went out looking for jars. Couldn't find them anywhere. Berries went into the freezer, where they have waited patiently for a year to be turned into delicious jammy goodness. So in some ways, canning jars are to Richard what Moby Dick was to Captain Ahab. And his quest this year was epic: SuperFresh, Happy Harry's, Dollar Store, Home Depot, KMart, Rite Aid, Christmas Tree Shop, and finally, Michael's, where you can buy Ball jars in the Wedding aisle (duh). Thanks to Richard, both this year's berries and last are now jam.

Exhibit C: LARPing in Clark Park
I don't know if you know this, but Richard is a bit of a geek. You know, he loves sci fi, played dungeons and dragons as a kid, reads comic books. And I know Geek is the New Cool, but still, some of geekdom is hard for me. Case in point: LARPing (translation for the uninitiated: Live Action Role Playing). This is where a group of people get together in public, often in costume, and act out battles with foam swords, often using various "magic" spells (have you seen the movie "Role Models"? That's LARPing.). On Saturday, we were in Clark Park with Margit and Marianne, enjoying a delicious ice cream cone from the Mister Softee truck, watching a very diverse group of people (black, white, asian, little kids, teenagers, adults, and even a couple of girls!) playing Capture the Flag, with foam swords. Lucy was entranced, and really wanted to play, but wasn't sure how. We watched for awhile, and it seemed like there were two teams, Headbands and No Headbands (we were very thankful it was not Shirts and Skins) who were each guarding a flag at a tree on opposite sides of the park. It looked like if you hit someone from the opposite team with your foam sword, they had to sit out for awhile, and could then rejoin the game after visiting their home tree. (I am sure there were many more intricacies that we were unable to ascertain just by watching from a bench.) Lucy kept saying she wanted to play, and we told her she could - she just needed to go grab a sword and start whacking people. Richard finally offered to walk her over to pick up a sword, and while he had it in his hand getting ready to offer it to Lucy, someone from the Headbands team instantly descended on him and gave him a whack. Margit, Marianne, and I almost died laughing. Richard and Lucy sparred for awhile, and then she joined the game and had a great time. (At one point, some of the game leaders called for a "Reality Check", which basically meant that the game stopped for a minute because something out of the ordinary had happened. Turned out someone was vomiting.) I just wish that the whole time Lucy was playing and having fun, I wasn't worried that she would turn into a weird kid whose only friends were people who LARPed. I insisted on calling it Capture the Flag with Foam Swords. I am a bad person.

Exhibit D: The Chickens Come for a Visit
Last weekend, Richard bought a nice pork roast at Trader Joe's that was really too big for the three of us, so we invited Andrew, Margit and Marianne over for dinner. Before we knew it, the guest list had grown to include roommates and boyfriends (which necessitated an additional pork purchase), and then there were some jokes about bringing all the dogs, and then, to Andrew, "Why don't you bring the chickens too?" So he did. In Andrew's West Philadelphia apartment that he shares with his very tolerant roommate Farris, Andrew is raising not only 1 dog, 3 stray cats (and a current litter of 4 kittens), 1 very mean turtle, and 1 stray adult chicken (Annie), but also 4 (or is it 5?) baby chicks (don't worry - the chicken coop is almost done!). The chicks came for a visit, and were delightful guests. As were all of the siblings, partners, and roommates - we love them all!