I treated myself to an ice cream maker this holiday. I gift wrapped it and everything. ;) I'm not really into fancy kitchen gadgets but this one was totally worth it. It's SO worth it.
Back story: I freaked out when I tried to melt some freezer burnt ice cream a few months ago, and it sort of melted, but mostly it just sat there and got sticky and hard and stuck to my sink. What was in that? I guess it was some sort of preservative or gum but it turned me off commercial ice cream for a while. I myself could do without it, but the kiddos love ice cream, so. I got a simple little 1.5 quart ice cream maker that doesn't require salt or ice or anything, you just pop in the ingredients and half an hour later you have fresh ice cream.
We made cinnamon ice cream on Christmas and tried our hand at fresh strawberry ice cream. Ironically, the photo that is actually of the cream going into the ice cream maker got lost... but we have the prep photos and the grand result!
Oh the weather outside is frightful - but the kitchen windowsill still offers a nice little spot for growing herbs. :) It's not ideal by any means - not the best light there - but my motto for this new year is to bloom where I am planted. In this case, I'm taking a lesson from these little seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago. They're on their way to blooming - even if where I planted them was a little less than ideal. And all in all, it could be worse... they're better off than in the snowy garden visible from the window!
This was sent to my email box this morning via an online group I subscribe to; I do not know the author as it wasn't listed. I love rites to make my home just a bit cozier and more spiritual. I think part of being a homemaker is keeping the spiritual side of your home stable as well, not just swiping dust bunnies from under the couch and doing endless loads of laundry. So at any rate, when I got this in my email box I was very pleased. I think I will be trying this on the next Full Moon!
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Bread is a potent symbol of the hearth as the heart of the home. To bless your home, pack a basket with a loaf of bread, salt, spice, and wine and cover with a cloth. Identify the heart of your home and set up a small altar that includes your chalice and athame, rose quartz for affection, and a green candle. Place the basket on the altar. Create sacred space, calling in the guardian spirits. Unpack the basket and arrange the items on the altar. Present each item to the elements and the gods. For the bread say, "May this home always have nourishment. " Eat some bread. For the salt say, "May this home always have flavor." Put some salt in your chalice. For the spice say, "May this home always have spice to keep things lively." Put some spice in the chalice. For the wine say, "May this home always have something to celebrate." Present your chalice and athame to the elements and the gods. Slowly lower the blade into the chalice and say, "As the blade is to the God, so the chalice is to the Goddess, together they are one. Meld these blessings to hearth and home. So mote it be!" Close your circle and enjoy the bounty of your hearth.
Never, under any circumstances, leave a sealed gallon of milk on your counter overnight. I forgot to put it in the fridge after we went grocery shopping, and when I noticed it in the evening, I thought, "oh well, it's probably spoiled already, I don't want to risk it. I'll throw it out tomorrow with the other trash that's being picked up. What a waste." It didn't strike me as super-important to actually get it out of the house ASAP, though. Big mistake.
This morning I walk downstairs, suspiciously sniffing the air... what was that unfamiliar smell... did my husband buy some sort of odd cheese that I wasn't used to? And then I saw it. At first it didn't look too bad - it just looked as if the milk had separated, top to bottom, in the jar. Vague thoughts of, "oh yeah, that's how you make yoghurt or cheese or some other random dairy product" floated through my head. (I know *nothing* about the process!) But then I got curious as to exactly WHY it smelled so strong when everything was still inside the sealed jar.
I flipped on the kitchen light. Oh, ugh. Apparently the sour milk had semi-exploded everywhere... on the floor, on the things on the counter, into the drawers... My kitchen counters are typically pretty uncluttered, but the trash cans are in my miniature office corner, where I keep all our mail/home management things/camera/cookbook pile... all soaked. Well, the small blessing is that the milk stopped about a centimeter short of reaching my camera... so that wasn't harmed. But everything else, including bills, the children's library books, my purse... yup, all totally soaked. In completely foul smelling ew ew ew stuff.
NOT a good way to start off the morning. Grumble grumble.
This is another article from a Catholic perspective, yet one that I think contains wisdom that can be carried over anyone's home, regardless of the actual faith being practiced there. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Carlo Carretto, one of the leading spiritual writers of the past half-century, lived for more than a dozen years as a hermit in the Sahara desert. Alone, with only the Blessed Sacrament for company milking a goat for his food, and translating the bible into the local Bedouin language, he prayed for long hours by himself. Returning to Italy one day to visit his mother, he came to a startling realization: His mother, who for more than thirty years of her life had been so busy raising a family that she scarcely ever had a private minute for herself, was more contemplative than he was.
Carretto, though, was careful to draw the right lesson from this. What this taught was not that there was anything wrong with what he had been doing in living as a hermit. The lesson was rather that there was something wonderfully right about what his mother had been doing all these years as she lived the interrupted life amidst the noise and incessant demands of small children. He had been in a monastery, but so had she.
What is a monastery? A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart (period). It is also a place to learn the value of powerlessness and a place to learn that time is not ours, but God's.
Our home and our duties can, just like a monastery, teach us those things. John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism in these words: "But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you." What John suggests here is that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with the mild.
Although he was speaking about the vocation of monastic monks and nuns, who physically withdraw from the world, the principle is equally valid for those of us who cannot go off to monasteries and become monks and nuns. Certain vocations offer the same kind of opportunity for contemplation. They too provide a desert for reflection.
For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is definitely monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of power and social importance. And she feels it. Moreover her sustained contact with young children (the mildest of the mild) gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild, that is, to attune herself to the powerlessness rather than to the powerful.
Moreover, the demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the "monastic bell". All monasteries have a bell. Bernard, in writing his rules for monasticism, told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the particular activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately, stating that if they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. The idea in his mind was that when the bell called, it called you to the next task and you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it's time for that task and time isn't your time, it's God's time. For him, the monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your own agenda to God's agenda.
Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times during the day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it's time for that activity and time isn't her time, but God's time. The rest of us experience the monastic bell each morning when our alarm clock rings and we get out of bed and ready ourselves for the day, not because we want to, but because it's time.
The principles of monasticism are time-tested, saint-sanctioned, and altogether-trustworthy. But there are different kinds of monasteries, different ways of putting ourselves into harmony with the mild, and different kinds of monastic bells. Response to duty can monastic prayer, a needy hand can be a monastic bell, and working without status and power can constitute a withdrawal into a monastery where God can meet us. The domestic can be the monastic.
This article was reprinted from http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/ron/ron_14domesticmonastery.html .
I've completed my little project - sort of! There is still SO much work that has to be done on it, still hundreds of files to actually format and upload, and still whole sections that are not even close to up. I figure the entire project would take at least another... 3-4 months at a minimum. But nonetheless, the skeleton site is up at this point, and it's just DYING for user contribution! There are directories to browse and add to, articles and activities that need to be submitted, a lovely forum to contribute to... All in all, I'm pleased with the BEGINNING!
Won't you please visit it? Pretty please? And don't be too harsh - constructive criticism is appreciated, but give a girl some slack - I know it still needs a lot of work. ;)
