Collections

When I was younger, I had a large box of postcards from all over. Some were sent to me, and others were postcards that I picked up along the road. I have slowly used them to mail love letters and notes of endearment, or just to say hi to friends not seen in too long. 


I guess you could say it was a collection. I don't collect a lot of things. Not counting things I need for my pastry work, like cookie cutters and other kitchen tools, I really only have a couple. I have an amount of scarves that some might say was excessive. I don't have a lot of shoes or jewelry or art. I do however love to collect unique glasses. I only ever buy one of each, even when there is a whole set. Joe has tried unsuccessfully to help me get rid of them, but I finally convinced him that "wouldn't it be so much better if someday we could have a large gathering and assign everyone in attendance a special glass to call their own for the evening?" So I have collected more. This week I found not one, not two, but three! new-to-me glasses that were all special in their own way. Yay!

I can also admit to collecting recipes and things that I can check off of some imagined list as having done to feed myself, both literally speaking and in a more philosophical sense. 

This is our car, full of boxes. The boxes are full of beef.

Like last week, when we brought home a whole beef to split 4 ways with friends; and how I made mayonnaise from scratch; or when I played Iron Chef with our diets for the week, cooking with only about 20 ingredients as part of a strict elimination diet to help my stepsons rid themselves of food allergies. 


It was a good week for collecting food memories. And so was Sunday, when we celebrated making it through a whole week of said elimination diet. To be fair, we celebrated after those very same stepsons went to their mom's house for the week. I made burgers from some of the ground beef that came as part of our share of the beef. 

They had all the proper summer burger fixings. Spicy pickles, bright green lettuce and the aforementioned mayo. Crisp red onions, juicy red tomatoes, and even a healthy slather of BBQ sauce. 

The best part of all of this, as if it could even get any better, is that everything was homemade or homegrown, not counting the beef itself or the buns. The buns were my only downfall. I baked so much this week that I could not bring myself to make them from scratch, though I think it would have been amazing if I had somehow found the energy to do so. 

And I got to collect a little kernel of knowledge from last night's dinner: it's true what they say. It really does taste so much better when you grow it and make it yourself. I collected a memory of the three of us, Joe and Lilli and me, sitting on the deck, eating the best burgers we've ever eaten, as a family. In the sun, with the laundry drying behind us and the soft cackle of our crazy flock of chickens below us. 

Last week was rough for me, and trying to make the best of it wasn't always a success. But last night, I felt better than I felt in a while. I didn't even care that the camera battery was dead forcing me to take most of the pictures of dinner with my phone while the battery charged up for dessert. 

It was just nice to remember that collecting the little things is what counts the most.