Of all places, this recipe came to us in a Smucker's cookbook we got at the local Bunny Trail. I was surprised to find something as "odd" as dandelion fritters, but even more shocked to find a full recipe for acorn pancakes. (We'll have to tackle those later. When we move to an oak forest.)
When your son says he wants to cook, you say YES no matter the recipe, and so we gave this one a whirl to make the most interesting after school snack of the week.
He ate the whole plate. 1 cup biscuit mix
1 cup milk
1 Tbl honey + More for dipping
Oil for frying
Fresh dandelion flowers with no stems/leaves- rinsed and dried.
1. Mix biscuit mix, milk, and honey in a large bowl.
2. Heat oil (about 1/2 inch) in a skillet until water sizzles when dropped in.
3. Batter the dandelion flowers a few at a time and drop them into the oil, flower side first.
4. Fry until golden brown, drain on paper towels.
5. Serve with honey or jam. (note: I didn't take off all of the green in these-- next time I will.)
"It's like a flower donut," he said. Brilliant.
Posted by Karrie at 9:05 AM 0 comments Labels: Nature, Recipes

To each his own: beer and Earth Day As it turned out

And I don’t understand any of it. Posted by Karrie at 9:33 AM 2 comments Labels: Columns

Earth day clean up and the world's best cleaner recipe

It's Earth Week and I'm proud to say we'll be knee deep in trash this week, weather permitting. Three community clean-ups on tap for my family and just a general reminder of how important good, clean nature is to us.
(Brace yourselves, readers. It's about this time every year I get a little nature crazy. There's a very good chance upcoming columns will be as much about wildlife as my wild life.)
But in honor of this step into the summer outdoor season, when the plants all come back to life, I wanted to quickly share one of my favorite recipes.
-For those who have used cleaner with bleach and stained their countertops (me)...
-For those who have watched their children spray cleanser backwards into their tiny faces (me)...
-For those who feel a strong sense of wholesomeness when it comes to things like soap and water (me)...
-And for those who go gaga over the smell of pure lavender and tea tree oil (also me)...
Make your own all-purpose cleaner
In a 16 ounce container, combine:
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tsp borax powder
1/4 cup dishsoap (nice eco friendly option, or Dr. Bronner's)
10-15 drops lavender or tea tree oil (I like lavender in the kitchen, tea tree in the bathroom)
Add HOT water. Shake/stir to combine.
DID YOU KNOW that the average spray head of a Windex bottle will fit on any old used plastic water or pop bottle? Makes this recipe pretty handy.
DID YOU KNOW that lavender and tea tree oil both have antibacterial properties? And that for regular household cleaners that you buy you need to let it sit for over one minute for the antibacterial stuff to work? (see above comment about me staining my countertops. oops.)
Make this. Use it. It makes me smile.
Posted by Karrie at 11:14 AM 1 comments Labels: Miscellaneous, Nature, Recipes

Shock and horror and bachelor gray

I had a sad epiphany the other day while scrubbing spoiled soy milk out of a recovered sippy cup. I realized that if I actually put forth the effort, I could spend my entire day either at the kitchen sink or the laundry room. As fast as I can wash dishes, my kids can dirty them faster, a constant cycle of plastic cups and snack bowls, princess silverware and full-sized plates that were apparently necessary for a single mini pretzel twist.

What food doesn’t end up in them ends up on them which takes me to my second treadmill position of household duty: the laundry. By far it is the chore I complain about the most, which is why after a week of buildup that filled every laundry basket we own, I pouted on the couch and whined instead of hauling it all to the washer.

And while I’m not so good at actually accomplishing the laundry, I’m quite good at whining so when my dear husband showed up with a giant heap of stinky clothes, I felt an internal smile coming on.

Doing the laundry is not something he normally does, and not because I don’t ask or because he protests. It’s just the system of housework we’ve figured out over the years. He straightens the garage, hauls the wood, and cleans the dogs. I complain about the laundry while I do the dishes until we run out of socks and finally break down and do it.

So when he began to take over my duty, I was a little shocked. (I also was a little worried I’d have to clean the garage, but that quickly passed.) After the shock passed, the horror set in. By horror, I’m referring to the way he went about doing the laundry.

For one, there was no such thing as separating by color. I bit my lip as I saw a white t-shirt still tucked inside a red sweatshirt go into the same load as a light blue dress shirt. I saw jeans and light colored shirts swarming with black socks. When he wasn’t looking I tried to save a few things, but was already imagining casualties of our casuals.

Also, the load sizes were so large we could have probably used a wheelbarrow to haul them into the laundry room.

But as the saying goes in marriage, never bite the hand that helps with the laundry and certainly never look a gifted load of freshly washed whites in the mouth. I knew that the right thing to do would be to let him finish the job he was so wonderfully kind to do while I toddled off to wash a few more thousand plastic cups.

Life was good for a while, pretty good indeed. We had broken the rules and he was kind enough to keep me from having to complain all day about un-wadding socks and turning shirts right-side out. He even changed a few loads in record time and I was impressed that even though he might have needed to refer to a color chart for separating, his load time was remarkable.

A few hours later, I peeked in to get a glimpse with my own eyes at what week’s worth of laundry looks like without having passed my hands. And there it was, a pile of unfolded clothes, some stained, some shrunken. All washed in hot water on a speed cycle and not dried quite enough so that for sure the pockets of our pants would be damp for days. Perfect.

That hand that helps with laundry should never be bitten, but it should also be shaken in congratulations. The whole ordeal really was a win-win situation for both of us—for me, I didn’t technically have to do the laundry. For him, he was banned from the duty ever again, which may have been his evil plan all along.

And so it goes, I tossed some shirts and re-laundered some pants. And while un-wadding socks I had another epiphany: I should start whining more about the dishes.

Posted by Karrie at 9:53 AM 0 comments History of a hugger

“What, no hug? I thought you hugged everyone,” said a friend of a friend one day, and of course I could do nothing else but to wrap my arms around this semi-stranger. Not because he asked me to, but because he was right. I do hug a lot of people.
It wasn’t always this way, though. Growing up I was the child who hugged her parents and grandparents every chance I got, but making physical contact with strangers was not something I did. It just didn’t feel right for some reason, as if I was as afraid of invading their personal space as I was of them invading mine.
Not only that, but it always seemed to be my luck that there would be an exchange of unpleasant cologne that would stick to me or, more likely, I’d leave a deodorant smudge on someone’s black shirt.
For those reasons and more, I avoided personal contact with non-family members for quite some time, and it wasn’t until I met one particular preschool teacher that my life as a hugger began.
Back when my first child left the nest and flew off to the land of cracker snacks and finger-painting, I did as most new mothers do. I panicked. And I cried. And I worried if my child rearing had been good enough that when I sent her away into someone else’s care, that that person wouldn’t think I was a total slacker mom.
Then I met the teacher, someone as wonderful at consoling weeping children as she is at consoling weeping mothers. She talked to me and looked into my eyes and put her hand on my shoulder as if to connect herself and send me positive vibes through her very touch.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t feel it with my very own arm.
Never have I felt so loved in the presence of a practical stranger. She made me feel OK the way a child feels when the kiss from a mother makes a boo-boo disappear. Magic, I tell you, magic.
From that day on I started to open my eyes to people in a whole new way. I tried to sense out the person who was having a rough time or was feeling a surge of emotion—either good or bad. And soon enough, I started touching arms and spreading love the best I could, just like that preschool teacher did for me.
Let me tell you, once you’ve gotten over the fear of hugging people, life changes.
You smile more, for one. You also feel a connection to a person that happens without words.
But there are, of course, rules for giving and getting a good hug.
First of all, one-armed hugs are the pits. They say, “you’re only worth 50% of my arms.” Secondly, the “dead fish” hug should never be practiced because it gives the hug-ee the impression that he or she isn’t worth exerting a single ounce of muscle flex, and that he or she probably is stinky. (This rule also applies to handshakes, which is a philosophy I’ll have to save for another day.) And finally, the “double pat” should also be a forbidden move. The “tap tap” on someone’s back tells that person that you don’t want to be hugged, and you’re just doing it to satisfy the other person, in which case I say you don’t know what you’re missing.
A good hug is a solid hug. It’s a firm squeeze that lingers just long enough to feel the other person’s warmth, to get a breeze of their natural perfume, to know that they really want to be there hugging you back. And for a brief moment during a good hug, two hearts will beat close together sharing some cosmic bit of connection that I may never understand.
There is actually a day designated for hugging. January 21st of each year is National Hugging Day. But for me and a certain preschool teacher who changed my life, I know the world needs it more than just one day a year.

Contact Karrie at email@example.com or read more at www.karriemcallister.com.
Posted by Karrie at 10:37 AM 0 comments Sunday, April 3, 2011

Pigeon Poo. Snack time just got a little better.
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