Jenyfer Matthews

I went shopping for a few cleaning supplies to leave for the house cleaner who will come in while I’m away over the summer.

(click image to enlarge)

It wasn’t until I left that I took a look at the sales receipt:

Not only is my bath cleaner over-qualified for the job, I don’t think I’m worthy of my peanut butter either.

My son is a chip off the old block when it comes to his love of harvesting free wild food. I myself have the fondest memories of picking wild blackberries in North Carolina (or at least the product of the picking, between the heat and the thorns the berry-picking itself wasn’t much fun at all) and I have been known to grab big handfuls of basil growing along the curbs in our neighborhood in Cairo. When we are home in the summertime, I can hardly keep my son out of the woods so great is the lure of raspberries, blueberries, thimbleberries, and June berries. He will hike for miles and miles without complaint, munching his way along.

We were at our neighborhood club last week and my son was bored because none of his friends were around. We were planning to stay for a while so rather than listen to him whine, I suggested he go check out the trees at the back of the lawn to see if there were any “limes” growing. I’m calling them limes for lack of a better term – they aren’t really limes as I know them. Perhaps an ornamental version?

It was a good suggestion since it kept him occupied for a very long time, but little did I know what I was letting myself in for: the little man picked 6.2 pounds of limes!

My son was absolutely filthy by the time he was done (the last place you want to stand during a rain storm in Cairo is under a tree – they accumulate a huge amount of dust in between showers!) and he may rethink his enthusiasm next time as I made him carry the bag home.

The next morning he washed all the limes off and demanded we make juice. Since it was my idea in the first place, I could hardly refuse. What else were we going to do with them?

They didn’t look too bad when we cut them open so we got to work. Need I say that in spite of my son’s declaration that he wanted to make juice every day, he quickly grew bored with the whole process? We juiced every lime in that bag and all we got for our efforts were 1 1/4 cups of juice and a sore arm!

I added about 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 cups of water to make the juice. In the end it was…a bit strange. Not bad exactly, but not a roaring success. We did something similar last year and the children liked it more so I suspect I added more sugar last time. They aren’t so enthusiastic this year. I might like it better myself if I added a cup of gin to it.

Does this count as a new recipe for July? Nah…I didn’t think so!

The last time I worked at the library I picked up a couple of books on their discard shelves (these are books that may be actually from the library collection or could be donations that have not been adopted into the collection, lucky me) One of the books I picked up was Spook by Mary Roach.

Spook is non-fiction, but the premise sounded interesting: a skeptic uses science to prove or disprove an afterlife. In the course of the book the author visits India to talk to researchers into reincarnation, she examines the historical and modern day attempts to weigh the soul at the moment of death, she talks about mediums and ectoplasm, delves into a legal case involving a ghost and a will, and finally lets one scientist blast her with electromagnetic waves. Her conclusion? Inconclusive.

I loved this book not only because the topic was interesting, but because of the approach. Roach admits she approached the topic with skepticism but she also presented the information with a tremendous amount of humor. I intended to read this book when I was waiting around during tennis lessons but ended up wanting to read it at bedtime as well because I was enjoying it so much. In the end, I had to restrict my reading time to daylight hours however because I was laughing too hard to be able to relax enough to sleep. I haven’t laughed that hard at a book in ages. I giggled my way through tennis lessons instead.

The book may not have been adopted into the library’s collection, but it has certainly earned a spot on my own shelves.