WordSmithtress
Bio
Stories (14/0)
Ode to Rice
My love for salt oil rice cannot be underestimated. In fact, I'm eating some right now as a mid-morning snack with some toasted pecans. I'll eat it again at lunch, with sautéed greens and farm-fresh eggs. And if I'm lucky enough to have anything left over, it might very well end up as a late-night snack, studded with seaweed flakes and sesame seeds.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Feast
Missing the Mark: Adventures in Leaving Homeschooling
Lockers slamming, a sea of backpacks and unfamiliar faces rushing through packed halls, and the overwhelming anxiety of not knowing where D wing was located...if ever there was a fish out of water, it's a homeschooler jumping headfirst into the shark-infested waters of middle school.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Confessions
Stripping with Scissors
Confession: I’ve been stripping for about eight years. Stripping down furniture, to be precise. It’s funny; before I dove into the singular joy and challenge of upholstery, I thought strip as a verb was the sort of thing one definitely did WITHOUT children around. (And to be fair, the tack-pulling IS better left to adults!) But as they learn their warp from their weft, their bias from their grain, their tacks from their nailheads, my kids and I are learning more than a fun skill. We’re learning about recycling and reuse, about how to care for the environment, both the household one and the one whose air we all share. With each project we do together, we gain a sense of achievement, of ownership, and a knowledge that we’re capable to create and recreate almost anything our minds can imagine.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Humans
Found (by) Family: The Grafted Family Tree
Dear Mima and Mãe Tete, You’re the unexpected branches grafted into my family tree. Or maybe I’m the new one in yours. Either way, what's true is that even though we didn't start out as family, we ended up there. We don’t need DNA tests or marriage certificates to prove these bonds. Geneticists and genealogists may disagree, but in my mind, we’re forever family.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Families
Take a break, y'all.
Happy birthday, Geminis! As you enter your birthday season, it’s a great time to take stock, to slow down before the wild ride that is the rest of the year. As someone living under a mutable, changeable sign, switching things up shouldn't feel too difficult. You're all about novelty. You are the end of spring and the beginning of summer, a time when all that’s been growing in secret bursts out and flowers.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Futurism
Gado-Gado Inspiration Bowl
I discovered gado-gado in a dog-eared copy of The Moosewood Cookbook I picked up in college. Although it’s an unapologetically vegetarian cookbook, when I bought it, I was decidedly NOT. I had grown up in a household that consumed something like five hundred pounds of potatoes a year and had an entire chest freezer devoted to meat. Vegetables other than potatoes appeared as garnishes to the real stars of the plate: meat, meat, more meat, and potatoes. Salads consisted of shredded carrots and iceberg lettuce that was starting to brown. When I got to college, I tried to live off of boxed cereal and pizza for a long time. Not ideal.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Feast
- Top Story - May 2021
One-Bowl Rhubarb CrispTop Story - May 2021
Growing up in the rural Midwest, my family grew a lot of vegetables. Our garden, neat rows that easily spanned a quarter-acre, grew everything from tomatoes and potatoes to trellised grapes and row upon row of the sweetest corn imaginable. It was a lot of work, and as a kid, I’m not sure I appreciated many of the things my mother lovingly grew (and we begrudgingly weeded and harvested!).
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Feast
Making an Entrance
A white crinoline at Goodwill hangs lonesome in my closet, its satin and mesh cascading down from the hanger to puddle on the carpet. It's lonely because although I am a collector of extremely long dresses and maxi skirts, there is still nothing in my closet that requires the assistance of a crinoline.
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Styled
The Girl, The Penguin, and the Stranger
Coral set her bags down on the worn, salty gray planks of the fishing pier. Ships were docked up and down its length, but none of them looked like a ferry. She cursed her guidebook and the eagerness with which she’d made plans for this solo trip. This isn’t like you, she told herself. You aren’t adventurous. You aren’t the kind of woman who travels alone. You barely speak the language. Why go somewhere remote in a foreign country? What were you thinking?
By WordSmithtress3 years ago in Humans