When working from home, weekends and weekdays can become blurred. But even in hectic times, I try to take two days a week off. It’s not always the actual weekend. Most weeks, thanks to the structure my husband’s office job provides, Saturday and Sunday tend to be the slow days of the week.

While the world was suffering through the hottest days on record, we’ve had rainstorms, thunderstorms, and a lot of gray clouds for the last few weeks. After endless weeks without rain, the plants are now getting soaked through. The little frogs exploring their new forest homes are definitely enjoying the wetter weathers.

On gray, rainy days, when the world outside invites me to stay inside my home, I cherish slow work around the house. I wake up around the same time every day without an alarm. That means, weekend mornings start early, too.

Just a few weeks ago, I reorganized this entire kitchen. I have donated and sold a lot more since, and thanks to a recall of the plastic storage containers, I got a chance to replace them with glass jars. Slowly, the kitchen is turning into a place I enjoy using. We’re getting close.

I usually start every morning by cleaning the kitchen, checking on my ferments. Every other day, there is a new batch of kefir, and every ten days or so, I brew new kombucha.

On Friday, we had gotten the good news that the allotment we had applied for was ours. We have a garden! Well, right now we have a mess of a land with a lot of potential. There will be endless amounts of work to do on this tiny piece of land. And I’m excited for all of it. Soon, I’ll take you for a tour of the new place, tell you all about my plans for the garden.

On Friday, I visited the garden to take some before photos for the contract, and to pick some fruit. Birds had eaten all the cherries but there were plenty of red and black currants everywhere. I also drove to a local farm for produce, so there were quite a few things waiting for me on Saturday morning.

Just a few months ago, the idea of spending hours in the kitchen sounded like punishment. Now, I intentionally make room to spend more time there.

I had trimmed the greens off the carrots and beets the day before to make sure they won’t dry out. If you leave the greens on, they continue to pull water out of the root.

Beet greens are another usual waste product that is way too delicious to discard. I had tried to use the greens before but not knowing what to do with them and if they’d be any good, has led to a few saved and later discarded leaves…

I noticed that I tend to throw away what I don’t understand yet. I get overwhelmed and procrastination sets in. I learned that any project I want to try needs a plan first. I need to know what to do and time to wrap my head around things.

This time, I was prepared. I’d watched some videos, read some recipes, and felt like I knew the gist. I trimmed the greens from the stems due to their different cooking time, and added them to a pan with some onion and the first two tiny beets from our balcony garden.

Some oil and spices, and they went into the air fryer we use instead of an oven.

While that baked, I used the time to make a pesto from the carrot greens. I usually eyeball pesto, so I never have a real recipe. Some greens, some nuts, some yest, some oil, sometimes garlic, sometimes lemon. Just taste it a few times throughout. It’ll come together.

I tend to not add enough oil on the first round, so I usually have to add more to the jar later.

Our grocer had beautiful small cucumbers, so I decided to finally ferment some cukes. This was another one I’ve been putting off, nervous that I’d be wasting cucumbers. I made some pickled cucumbers with brine from my pickled onions, but placed most into a large jar with a salt brine for fermentation. I won’t know if they work out for a few days.

After a head start for the stems, I added the leaves to the oven pan, and moved on to my berries. I removed every little berry from the stems before adding some honey.

A few hours later than usual, I started my bread to have a freshly baked loaf for Sunday. My breads haven’t been the best lately. I’m still trouble shooting the process to find out where I’m going wrong.

But even still, the bread is delicious and filling, both with the egg salad I made for my husband and the roasted beets and greens I made for myself. Worth every second of the process.

Slowness is creeping into every part of my day. I’m learning to take a moment to appreciate what I’m doing, to understand, to learn, to be.

So long, and thanks for reading.