I spent time yesterday trying to think about how to say something along the lines of for however many big, important things matter there are also so many small and seemingly unimportant things that occupy our days. I wanted to say that those things matter, too, if differently. One thing the blogosphere does, and I think it’s at times quite brilliant, is to amplify the small things. Focus on small things can even slow us down.
I finally “got” that frame last night when I discovered my young, gourmet teen with nose in a new book I’d received over the holidays on canning. It’s a gorgeous book for one thing. He looked up to tell me: “Did you know green apples help when you make apple butter? More pectin. Did you know cranberries also have lots of pectin?” No, I did not know that. Good to know, since I plan to make apple butter this year.
Here’s another thing I learned this week: you can wrap your cheese in cloth sandwich wraps. This via Abbey of Abbey Goes Design Scouting, a blog I frequent. I will get a bunch of these for this purpose, because our wrapping skills are not uniform in this kitchen. It could be a game changer for the longevity of our cheese.
I’m not invested enough in “stuff” to spend too much energy on that. I did see a new, digital Polaroid camera that lets you take old-school spit-out-the-mouth snaps sans editing and instantly (pun intended) I put that on my covet list. This family loves Polaroids.
And the yarn-bombed red elephant at the Carle Museum gave me a big smile.
So did my nephews. Toddler Ian rode (twice, it turned out) in our car and called it the “mini-von.” We will never, ever say van again.
