Broken Yet Saved

Halfway through making my home made sour cream enriched waffled-eggs my 50 year old waffle iron broke. I carefully tilted the liquid egg batter into my small cast iron skillet and cooked them, covered so they fluffed up. I turn off the heat and the residual heat does most of the cooking. The egg is delicious on my home made sourdough.

Whenever I have a house guest I can't sleep due to the excitement. I stay up all night cooking and baking hoping to lure my guests awake so they will come down and join Lily and Sammy and me in the ice cold kitchen.

Lately Lily gets up with me and goes back to bed with Bill.

In a few minutes I will head out. Woonsocket is always up early. The post office starts up at three on weekdays. Diners open at 4 AM.

I am lucky, I love the silence of early morning but I don't mind taking a nap in my bat cave when the wearies come creeping after me.

This morning I am dreaming of making a beehive-oven in the vacant lot at the East School Street Rathbun Street intersection. Wouldn't that be cool? It would be a lot better than drug dealing and prostitution and piles of garbage and dead cars.

When we were kids we occasionally visited friends of my parents near Sturbridge Massachusetts in the fall and made home made apple cider from their apples growing in their orchard surrounded by free roaming dairy cows and . . . cow pies. We also made home made ice cream from fresh local cream. I wish the kids in my neighborhood could have these kind of sensory and immediate food and farm experiences.

When we first moved in to our house 17 years ago it was July, we made home made ice cream from the local cream from Wright's Dairy farm. The 6 year old girl next door came over to help as we churned the cream with ice and salt in the backyard. When she tasted the ice cream her eyes widened and she talked about it every time she saw me until she moved away a two years later. This is the kind of experience I wish to give all of the neighborhood kids with all sorts of foods -- and music! But that's another topic.