1. Summer has been busy, and we've had fewer cooking lessons, which has led me to a neat trick for getting kids to make food: put them absolutely in charge of something. I taught my oldest son Jonah how to make simple, no-knead bread and boom, he's bread man. In actuality he has yet to produce a single loaf on his own; he has a demanding summer job and, well, it's a little hot for baking, but if anybody in this family is going to make bread it will be Jonah. He owns bread.
Henry owns popsicles. I bought cheap rocket ship molds and handed them over. "I don't care what's in them," I told him, "just make sure we have a few popsicles in the freezer at all times."
It's been amazing. He's made orange/pomegranate/lemon juice popsicles, camomille tea with honey popsicles, root beer popsicles. He shows no signs of slowing.
2. It there any more perfect summer song than That Summer Feeling by Jonathan Richman? (Do you long for her or for the way you were?)
3. When did summer stop being stretched out, lazy, sweet, and become accelerated, jam-packed, intense? Out of my last eight summers, I have moved five times. Summers that didn't involve a move saw me starting a new job, leaving an old job, finishing grad school. Some years it was everything, all at once.
So here I am again, collecting boxes, raising dust, purging possessions. What do I even have anymore to rid myself of?
Thoreau: Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped.
And here I am again, haunted by that summer feeling, longing for a day of loafing; the cool of the pond, the smell of the lawn. It looks like this year won't bring much loafing, but next year will be different. Next year, with God as my witness, I will reclaim summer. This year, I will at least have a creamsicle.
Coconut Milk Creamsicles
Makes six rockets
2/3 cup canned, full-fat coconut milk
1 1/4 cup orange juice (no pulp, unless you're into that kind of thing)
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Whisk ingredients together, pour into popsicle molds and freeze.
