MamaPie

Good Food to Eat and Great Waldorf Blog

So here I am, as promised, with some recommendations, and no great insights to share. Just a regular mama struggling to wake up on Monday morning.

• I'm always trying to get more Omega-3's into our diet and I re-discovered the "salmon guy" at the Hillsdale Farmer's Market yesterday. He has several varieties of vacuum sealed smoked salmon. After Ruby eagerly devoured a few samples, we bought the maple smoked version. It got mixed reviews at dinner, with Ruby and I clearly loving it, Andrew being a little more lukewarm and Ezra not liking it. My family's divided opinions notwithstanding, I think it is totally delicious and really easy to eat (unlike cooking salmon, which, at least for me, tends to be hit or miss and a little stressful). We had it with Fressen bread, carrots and a little leftover pasta.
• I love Carrie's blog: she is a really sensible and clear teacher of Waldorf parenting, homeschooling and education. She advocates parents doing their work, not just creating a house full of playsilks and wooden toys. She also is great about continually reminding readers that the beautiful photos they see on many Waldorf family blogs are not the reality of how day-to-day life works for the great majority of us. I always appreciate blogs that keep it real.

Ruby and I are off to parent-child class soon. In the keeping it real mode: I hope he doesn't pinch, scratch or pull the hair of the other sweet Waldorf children.

I'm Back!

So, I've been having a bit of a blog identity crisis, which is why I haven't been writing much. I have these every once in a while, it seems. The nature of this one is that it feels like there is just so much our there (here?) in blogland, that I feel ambivalent about adding to it: I think, "who needs one more blog talking about recipes or crafts?" For me, at least, the lists of things I want to cook and things I want to make grow every time I go through my blogroll, and I often think, I should just stop reading and start, you know, doing: cooking, crafting, gardening, whatever.

So, I don't want to be a blog that just adds to to-do lists, or makes anyone feel like they're not doing enough, which is something else I sometimes feel when I read certain blogs. There's a fine line, for me, between being inspired and being overwhelmed. I also don't want to just provides lists of links, because there are certainly enough places to find links to more and more things to read on the internet.

I feel like my posts where I write about and reflect upon life and parenthood have value to me and, hopefully to you, too, but finding the time and inspiration to craft those kinds of posts is hard. If I limited myself to those kind of posts then I'd have the kind of blog where I post, maybe, every month or so. And I kind of don't want to post so infrequently.

So, I'm thinking about it. One idea I had was to intersperse my reflective posts with concrete, informational posts about places to go, things to do and services to use in Portland. I've always loved to explore and discover whichever city I'm living in and I think I have a knack for this kind of "treasure hunting." So I'm envisioning my own little mash-up of Portland Picks (but written by someone who has kids, is more earthy and is less focussed of Lake Oswego and NW), Angie's List (without a membership fee and...whatever else Angie's List is, I've never actually read it) and yelp.

When I went out with some friends to celebrate my birthday a few weeks ago, my friend Andrea described the group of us as, "urban hippies discussing Botox," which kind of nails the demographic I represent.

So, stay tuned for a mix of the old: reflective posts and, always, children's book recommendations, a little of the perhaps self-indulgent: I do use this blog as a virtual "baby book" and like to sometimes post cute photos and brag on my boys and the new: urban hippy who is not above discussing Botox or frownies recommends her favorite place to get an organic chocolate chip cookie*.

* Compote on Clinton Street - try the breakfast cookie.