The morning finally brought the warm sunshine we’d been longing for all week.
Of course the first thing most of us did was bring our laundry out and wash it in buckets, getting it to a state of Kent Island cleanliness (not to be confused with actual cleanliness).
When I was satisfied with the amount of dirt that had been transferred from my belongings to the bucket of soapy water I hung them on the line and returned to the kitchen.
I had a euphoric 15 minutes of kneading sourdough with my toes in a snowy drift of flour listening to the Grateful Dead. What decade is it?
When the dough was ready to ferment, I took the hand cart and a couple of fish feed bins down to the muddiest part of the path. I quickly filled the bins with my shovel but found it was impossible for me to lift the full buckets (which weighed at least as much as I do).
I dragged the bins to the edge of the path so as not to disrupt the flow of traffic and brought the cart, empty, back up the hill, where I found Emily.
She agreed to help me and we found that the two of us could easily lift the bins, though getting the full cart out of the mud was no small task. We succeeded with a few extra shoves though. Womanpower!
Once we had the mud where we wanted it we began building the foundation, which is just like a bigger version of a mudpie or a sandcastle, except that it gives you bread instead of being washed away with the tide.
Aidan and Christine stopped by to join the fun and we finished quickly, at which point Sara announced that she needed a break from being in the lab and teamed up with Emily to collect small rocks to fill in the cracks in what will be the floor of our oven (also made of beach rocks because we have no bricks-here’s hoping none of them explodes!)
We ladies did pilates in the sunshine, accompanied by more 80s tunes from Colin’s laptop (he was painting the trim with Haley).
Lunch was an amazing mélange of leftovers which Janet, as if by magic, transformed into delicious fried rice.
Elisabeth and I enjoyed one of our now-routine fern showers before we started preparing dinner.
She made coffee bars from Cooking Down East, which Marjorie Standish describes as “very popular”- as well they should be.
We had the surprising discovery that the squashes we had were not butternut, but spaghetti. The only cooking instructions available were for a microwave, so we did not know how to cook this squash. We did it anyway.
This, I find, is the best way to approach life’s difficulties: when you don’t know how to do something, you can usually do it anyway.
We also roasted the seeds, which were delicious.
When dessert was out of the oven, bread went in (or was it the other way around?). Either way, I burned my hand on the cast iron dutch ovens I bake the bread in and now have quite a magnificent blister to show for it.
The rest of our meal was thankfully simple, considering I couldn’t touch anything hot with my left hand.
The pork and tofu (with garam masala) needed only to cook in the oven.
Elisabeth patiently did dishes in hot water and devotedly checked internal meat temperatures for me.
Since the weather was so magnificent, we ate dinner outside (for the first time all season- it’s been an unusually foggy year) and spent the rest of the evening outdoors as well. There was another Frisbee tossing session and we caught the sunset from the dock as a group.
The lower lab crew spent the night sleeping there as well, but after stargazing in the yard a while, the rest of us went to sleep indoors.
Summer was on Kent Island, if only for a day.
Of course the first thing most of us did was bring our laundry out and wash it in buckets, getting it to a state of Kent Island cleanliness (not to be confused with actual cleanliness).
When I was satisfied with the amount of dirt that had been transferred from my belongings to the bucket of soapy water I hung them on the line and returned to the kitchen.
I had a euphoric 15 minutes of kneading sourdough with my toes in a snowy drift of flour listening to the Grateful Dead. What decade is it?
When the dough was ready to ferment, I took the hand cart and a couple of fish feed bins down to the muddiest part of the path. I quickly filled the bins with my shovel but found it was impossible for me to lift the full buckets (which weighed at least as much as I do).
I dragged the bins to the edge of the path so as not to disrupt the flow of traffic and brought the cart, empty, back up the hill, where I found Emily.
She agreed to help me and we found that the two of us could easily lift the bins, though getting the full cart out of the mud was no small task. We succeeded with a few extra shoves though. Womanpower!
Once we had the mud where we wanted it we began building the foundation, which is just like a bigger version of a mudpie or a sandcastle, except that it gives you bread instead of being washed away with the tide.
Aidan and Christine stopped by to join the fun and we finished quickly, at which point Sara announced that she needed a break from being in the lab and teamed up with Emily to collect small rocks to fill in the cracks in what will be the floor of our oven (also made of beach rocks because we have no bricks-here’s hoping none of them explodes!)
We ladies did pilates in the sunshine, accompanied by more 80s tunes from Colin’s laptop (he was painting the trim with Haley).
Lunch was an amazing mélange of leftovers which Janet, as if by magic, transformed into delicious fried rice.
Elisabeth and I enjoyed one of our now-routine fern showers before we started preparing dinner.
She made coffee bars from Cooking Down East, which Marjorie Standish describes as “very popular”- as well they should be.
We had the surprising discovery that the squashes we had were not butternut, but spaghetti. The only cooking instructions available were for a microwave, so we did not know how to cook this squash. We did it anyway.
This, I find, is the best way to approach life’s difficulties: when you don’t know how to do something, you can usually do it anyway.
We also roasted the seeds, which were delicious.
When dessert was out of the oven, bread went in (or was it the other way around?). Either way, I burned my hand on the cast iron dutch ovens I bake the bread in and now have quite a magnificent blister to show for it.
The rest of our meal was thankfully simple, considering I couldn’t touch anything hot with my left hand.
The pork and tofu (with garam masala) needed only to cook in the oven.
Elisabeth patiently did dishes in hot water and devotedly checked internal meat temperatures for me.
Since the weather was so magnificent, we ate dinner outside (for the first time all season- it’s been an unusually foggy year) and spent the rest of the evening outdoors as well. There was another Frisbee tossing session and we caught the sunset from the dock as a group.
The lower lab crew spent the night sleeping there as well, but after stargazing in the yard a while, the rest of us went to sleep indoors.
Summer was on Kent Island, if only for a day.
RSS Feed