apple prep, and habit layering

This post is kind-of about canning applesauce, but it's really about how amazing it is to learn, practice, and then (almost) take for granted those new skills.   I described this to some friends as "layering habits" -- we can make pretty big changes in our lives by making small changes, adapting to those, then making more changes, adapting to those, etc.  (Actually, on reflection, maybe this is more about layering skills or routines than habits . . . ??? . . . eh, I'll stick with my original term for now).

Here's the most recent "habit layer".  For a couple of years now, my running buddy has picked up apples from a local farmer for me.  She does this while she's already in the car (she's a pediatric therapist, so her job involves a lot of driving around to visit kids), and she picks up apples when she's driving by this particular farmer anyway.  So, score for inexpensive, locally grown food and for efficient use of both our time, not to mention using our social capital well.  The new layer this year:  I gave her sturdy shopping bags to throw in her car, so I didn't get a new pair of giant plastic bags.  Bonus: the shopping bags were easier for her to carry than the "disposable" plastic bags would have been!

my apples in giant reusable shopping bags 
(bags courtesy of my step-daughters, who shop)

It's not like having two fewer plastic bags in the world is a huge environmental win; but that's kind of my point.  Going even more trash-less than before is not hard to do, because I've already got the underlying friend-gets-apples-from-farmer structure in place.  

This whole layering-habits concept struck me rather forcibly the other day as I was in the midst of canning all these apples.  One moment I was chopping up apples, feeling that comfortable groove of a familiar routine, and the next moment I looked around and realized that the "familiar routine" had been a completely alien experience for me two decades ago.  How did I get from there to here?  

Just look at all the stuff on the table where I was chopping apples: it's a collage of how much I'd experimented and adapted over the years.  For example, the cutting board and knife in the picture below seem pretty self-explanatory, but I'd tried all sorts of methods for chopping apples, including an incredibly amusing peeler/corer machine that makes apple swirls (almost like an apple slinky).  

My apple prep area, with many prep-py things all around

Also on the table:  

• the scraps get shunted off to a flat sheet, which collects them until the sheet's full, at which point I pick up the sheet and funnel the scraps into a big glass jar, which I use for creating vinegar. 
• a bunch of instant pot liners, because I've found that steaming the apple slices for 1 minute works really well for prepping them, and instant pots don't need babysitting or stirring like apples on the stove do.  
• boxes of jars, and boxes of lids, and a coat-hanger full of rings, ready to be put to use.  

Speaking of instant pots, for Applesauce Day I set up three of them in various different places in the house.  (If they're all together, they'll trip a circuit breaker).  I don't use the stove itself for canning anymore!  I do use the oven for keeping extra jars warm and for (bonus!) simultaneously keeping the jars out of the way, off of precious counter space.

The instant pot steams the apples;
a tray of jars is ready go into the 200-degree oven 

And here's another of my new best friends: the electric water bath canner.  It holds only 7 quarts---4 fewer than my former stove-top canner, but it makes up for its smaller size by being super, super easy to use.  

The electric water bath canner sits next to the sink,
where our coffee pot and water kettle normally go.

And another of my favorite tricks I've picked up and folded into the routine: using a trunk on wheels as a makeshift cart to ferry the processed jars from the kitchen to the table where they'll sit and cool.

Finished jars enjoying their choo-choo ride
to the large table in our living room

All this canning seemed to take a long time . . . but when I got to the end, I realized it's less than 10 minutes per quart of applesauce.  That's a decent time investment, I figure -- especially when, in the depths of winter, a friend gets into a rough spot and I can bring over a quart of applesauce I made myself.  That's priceless.   Figuring out that last little bit -- that a jar of applesauce is a welcome and much-appreciated way to connect with others -- is probably the loveliest layer of these habit/routines/traditions that I've built up.  

Tech things I've recently discovered

My paper punch is adjustable

I have owned my three-hole paper punch for, I dunno, at least a quarter century.   I recently started using a very old (translation: scrounged) small-ish 3-ring notebook for planning purposes, where the rings are 7 inches apart.  I like it so much that I actually started searching for a new paper-punch that would match the book, so I could make my own pages more easily.  

My standard 3-hole paper punch,
which I use for standard 8.5"x11" paper.

But then some of my friends in our Registrar's office told me that their punch was adjustable, so on a whim, I checked mine, and behold!, the punches are adjustable on mine, too! A simple flathead screwdriver allows me to loosen or tighten them in a new position. How about that!  No need to buy/scrounge something new.

There are even marks (very faint, but readable under strong light)
that help to line the punches up in the right place. 

My old sewing machine has a button-hole attachment

About a year or so ago, I bought a fancy new sewing machine that does fancy stitches (letters! words! ivy!)  It's actually more finicky than the machine I got maybe 40 years ago, so mostly I still use the old machine anyway.  At any rate, one day I decided to use my new machine's fancy button-hole attachment, but the attachment didn't fit up properly . . . and then I realized it was actually the attachment for my old machine, an attachment I hadn't even realized I'd had!  Too cool.

Command K to add links

When I was associate dean-ing, I spent a LOT of time creating memos or documents that had links to other documents or memos.   When I learned that command-K was a shortcut to create a hyperlink for some text in a document (just like command-C is a shortcut for copying, or command-I is a shortcut for italics), it was a moment of great happiness and awe for me.  Adding links this way still makes me smile.  Sometimes, if you do something the "hard" way for a long time and then discover a cute timesaver, you appreciate the newfound technique all the more.  

My Cuisinart blades have alignment icons

To set up my food processor, I choose a blade that I want to use, put it on a handle that has a tube at one end, and then I put the tube onto a stick on the base.  (I'm sure there are more technical terms than "tube" or "stick").  The stick on the base isn't circular; it's more like a moon just past half-full.  

The top of stick (shaft?) on the base is half-moon shaped.

For pretty much all the time I've owned this (again, decades), I've just spun the tube around a bunch of times on the stick until the tube and stick would finally align and slip into place.  So I was gobsmacked when I realized, just last year, that each blade has a half-moon-ish symbol in the middle that helps align the blade/handle with the stick right away.  Admittedly, the symbol is very faint, but how the heck did I not see this for decade upon decade?!?  

Look: do you see that faint half-moon shape?  

Car fuel gauges have an arrow/triangle

. . .  to show which side the fuel tank is on.  Now you tell me.

Update, October into November

 Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  We very happily celebrated Halloween in various ways this week.  Check us out!  

• OfSnough time-traveled back to his childhood (Kongo!) with his sister (a bear??); 
• Kinderling and family did theme dressing ("somehow, we tied it together. One more year of coordinating!! . . . Bchild wanted to be a police officer, so David is the robber and Achild is wondering woman and I'm poison ivy. Cchild is my ivy plant loooool "); 
• Inking took the day off of work to be ready as Ursula for her 535 (really! she counted) trick-or-treaters;
• Gosling's dogs were the best dressed on the block ("The dogs will add their bit, a fly, a lion,'and a superhero");
• Prewash rocked her cow costume; I offered kids pencils for themselves and cheerios to feed the dog, and so people and beasts alike had fun.

What about me?  I dressed as a cow, naturally, and loaned my second cow costume to a friend who was glad to accompany her animal-costumed son in thematic style. 

I don't know if/what Gosling dressed as, but I do know that the Covid Fairy has come to the end of her visit.  

"Negative!"

Nelson is doing well; he's involved in a new job-training program, similar to one he'd been involved in here in Enoughsville.  He's very much looking forward to the basketball season starting up again, too.  And per Nelson's request I'll share two pics from the "Little Farm Library", which has been active this week.

So many cows taken, all that's left is a leaf and 
a small sheet of halloween stickers.

Contributions arrive: a cow bracelet, one of the beanbags I made,
and a cow that arrived with a note saying
"[heart] I finally made it home -- moo moo! -- just love me [heart]"

I've loved all the different places that my research is taking me this week.  In addition to the two projects I'm doing with my two research students and an engineering-related project I'm working on with another colleague, I'm also doing loads and loads of reading to understand the background for a book I'm working on.  That last takes me in a bunch of wild directions: right now, for example, I'm reading a book on Indian film, which takes me into fascinating non-math detours of history and religion and colonialism, as well into the tidbits of geometry that I'll actually get to use as threads to weave a more colorful and rich tapestry for my own work.  

I also love how different parts of my life swirl into others.  I've always resisted the metaphor of "balancing" personal and professional, and instead tried to sustain a kind of integration.  Saturday, I went into the office to meet with a pair of former students.  We talked about math for a while, but when I said I had to go home to work on canning applesauce for the second time this fall, they had so many questions about what that meant and how that happened, that I invited them to come over and help -- and they enthusiastically accepted. So I had two former students and also OfSnough's former-army-buddy-turned-monk, Cliff, helping me chop apples, and canning went soooo  quickly and smoothly; I have 18 more quarts of applesauce put up (really, down, because they're in the basement).  I love that blurring of boundaries, I have to say.  Also, when Cliff teased me for being a bit like Tom Sawyer getting his friend to pay him for the privilege of doing his chores, I readily accepted the charge!

Different uniforms. 
(OfSnough is dressed to participate in our city's Honor Guard,
which presents flags to family members at funerals of veterans).

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

My morning commute: roofers on the roof

 The trees are still amazing this time of year, but what has me even more in awe is this house of many angles, with people tucked into the nooks and crannies of the roof.

The ladders and the fire escapes add even more angles.  I love seeing this as I walk by, with the rising sun illuminating the tips of the roof and (I'm guessing) warming the roofers on these chilly mornings!

Cow cookie cutter Pumpkins

Kids and mallets, mallets and kids. What a combo!  I still remember well the time I walked into the backyard to find Jason with a pile of metal and wood at his feet; he explained he'd been "fixing" his bike with the mallet.  Neither the bike nor the mallet survived that fix, as you might have expected.  Still, no children were harmed in that particular mallet adventure.

And that's kind of one of the nice things about mallets, that they "whack" things softly.  When my latest eight-year-old friend told me that he and his mom would using mallets and cookie cutters to carve pumpkins, I immediately saw the appeal.

In fact, I stopped at a market to get a pumpkin for myself, and pulled out some of my fave cookie cutter shapes (indeed, some of my only cookie cutter shapes) and did some whacking.

The verdict?  I have to say, it was highly satisfying -- it's a fun way to carve.  I do think it's something I'd trust to children or other human beings who might not be ready for sharp knives.  Aesthetically, it came out much more clean and decipherable than my usual attempts; I'm an enthusiastic, but not particularly elegant, pumpkin carver.

Those are the plusses.  A minus is that my particular pumpkin seems to be rather thick skinned (perhaps many pumpkins are fleshy that way).  So the cookie cutter couldn't make it all the way through the pumpkin into the hollow middle, and I ended up using a knife anyway to cut things within the cookie cutter, releasing a bit of pumpkin pressure.  Also, my star cookie cutter apparently was designed for pressing gently into soft cookie dough and not for pounding gleefully into hard gourds, and it required some post-pumpkin bending and clamping with my pliers.  (It survived the mallet more successfully than Jason's poor bike derailleur did). 

But back to the plusses: did I mention that the carving came out well?  It did!  I have a pumpkin with star eyes and a cow smile.

It goes well on my porch with all of my cows, some of which are currently dressed as ghosts or witches.

The chalkboard on the left asks,
"Do cows say 'boo' or 'moo'?"

I'm looking forward to the trick-or-treaters coming by; I'm giving out themed pencils, as I usually do, and having a jar of dog kibble that the kids can feed to Prewash.  

And, I'll be on the lookout for mallet-bearing bike fixers.  Happy halloween! 

Tall tales update

Life continues to be rich and tall -- er, I mean rich and full -- here in Enoughsville.  The weather did a winter peekaboo thing this week, with the wind biting into me and numbing all my skin as I rode to the soup kitchen on Tuesday morning, but then warming up so much we opened up the house to let in balmy breezes by the end of the week.  Like, winter peekaboo!  Now it's spring!  Wait, Sunday brought winter back!  

My offspring have done a bunch of traveling, some of them sending the kind of photos that will explain why I could make the tall/full substitution above.

Gosling and Sizzling:  Hi from CN tower yesterday.

Lindsey and mike's Wedding yesterday!

On this trip, Gosling and Colin observed the new family tradition of getting visits from the traveling Covid Fairy, alas.

Went to Canada and all we got was a fun wedding and COVID jkjkjk but we wanted to have a little fun with it.

And where did you go, Inkling?

Inkling:  Sheep and wool festival!!

Sign says: "We are rams. 
If I am letting you pet me, my name is Mr. Silly. 
If I am not, my name is Lucifer. "

I ask:  " Hey, rumors have it you finished your Rhinebeck sweater on time. Photos?"

I finished it around 11pm Friday night,. . .

. . .  then wore it on Saturday

And Kindering and fam, where did you all go, and did it happen to have a tall building you could show me?

Kinderling:  We went to Michigan. Attached is a photo of a lighthouse in lake Michigan :) It's so pretty here!

We are coming back from MI!

Thankful for airports that have play areas!

My guy, without photos to show it, went to our Capitol Building (with nearby tall Washington monument).  He went with a group that was seeking support for Ukraine.  Our Congresspeople sincerely and emphatically reassured the group that they were very much devoted to such support, but then wandered through the underground tunnels to the chambers where they voted for a speaker of the house who opposes such support.  So, alas.

Nelson didn't send photos, but he's happy with how things are working out with his new home.  His good friend Brandon (whose picture I'm going to get soon, right? right?) might help him get a job shoveling snow.  I've heard that snow is a thing that piles up into tall piles and towers a bunch in Minneapolis, so that would be a job with a lot of possibilities!

Me?  I didn't do towers or travel.  I did do a bunch of really fun math research.

The math research I'm doing with my students
is going really well.
I love these chalkboards, which were installed here by my friend.

And also, because sabbatical life is truly amazing, I did a bunch of other cool things:

making a cow smiley pumpkin,
math careers conference,
collecting chestnuts and playing in the grass with the dog,
canning applesauce,
dressing as cows for "dynamic duo day",
reconnecting with former students and adorable kiddos,

and more.  Life is good.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous. 

Dynamic Cow Duo

Two years ago, Gina [not her real name] emailed me, saying she knew this was an odd question to ask out of the blue, but that she'd heard rumors . . . might I own a cow costume that she could borrow?  I was the Associate Dean of the Faculty at the time, dealing with many weighty and fraught questions, so you can appreciate how very much I loved getting an email with this kind of a light-hearted question.   I was even more delighted to be able to respond, "No: I have two cow costumes!!"

Fast forward to this year; my college has a "Spirit Week" (that is largely ignored/unobserved, even by me, I admit).  One of the week's events, however, is to buddy up with a friend and dress as your favorite dynamic duo.  

So I emailed Gina:  

Next Thursday, would you like to be a dynamic cow duo with me?  Maybe not all day, but at least long enough for a photo we could post to instagram . . . ?

And hence:

Dynamic Cow Duo.  Voila.

And to continue the love, Gina's son is dressing as an animal for Halloween; she's keeping the costume I loaned her for another week so that they can go animaling together on the big day.  Udderly fantastic.