tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43635783602927637172011-11-27T15:16:20.579-08:00or . . . how to live, love and eat in the wilds of Maine. A User's Guide (may be applied to the wilds of your choice)Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.comBlogger301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-74054853153252846932008-07-24T11:09:00.000-07:002008-07-24T11:19:25.070-07:00

Our garden: squash, zucchini, peas, spinach, watermelon, cucumber,basil, sunflowers, dill. Such yummy satisfaction and anticipation.Our beaches: hot sun, hazy mist, white sand, pebbles, sand dollars, sea gulls, green ocean, calm bays, wild surf.Our lake: grassy knoll, warmer waters, babies splashing everywhere! swimming to the bouy and back while littles ones call Mamma! Mamma! floating on my

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-70760970053064661142008-05-11T16:33:00.000-07:002008-05-11T17:34:16.148-07:00

As the wife of a chef, I know better than to expect a lot of special treatment on Mother's Day, one of the busiest days of his whole year at the restaurant. Living in Maine, Mother's Day coincides with the season kick-off. Tourist season, that is. So not only is it a huge day for restaurants it is also, often, the start of the summer opening hours. For us, that means we'll see a lot less of our

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-63496245471247065732008-05-04T08:01:00.000-07:002008-05-04T09:17:08.248-07:00

Maybe it is just me, maybe I am jaded, but when did it become surprising that politicians curve the truth to fit their needs and when did that become something other than politics? Me, I am honest all the time and have lost friends over it. I'd be an awful politician because not only can I not please all of the people all of the time, I can not even please some of the people most of the time.

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-82278333012246371832008-04-27T16:04:00.000-07:002008-04-27T17:28:34.603-07:00

What a day. This morning the kiddos and I set out for a day of shopping at our favorite box store and our least favorite box store. I won't use any names here, let's see if you can guess. The favorite: wide aisles, designer names, flattering lighting, nifty television advertisements that make shopping there seem fun and, even, hip. The least favorite: Horrible lighting, dirty carts, aisles

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-35782218074520434512008-04-24T19:17:00.000-07:002008-04-24T19:59:18.162-07:00

If only I was as hot as I think I am. In my mind, I'm a pretty smokin' babe. Somewhere between Sharon Stone (the intensity of her stare) and that chick from Bridget Jones' Diary (the way she exudes sensuality with her pouty 'good girl' look). Periodically, however, I catch a sight of myself in the looking glass and think, that's not what I look like. I mean, I am well presented. I look good. I

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-16589639618116314222008-04-17T17:49:00.000-07:002008-04-17T18:36:27.765-07:00

My mom did my laundry until I was 18 and she only stopped because I moved out of the house. I was one of those kids at school who didn't know how to use the laundry machines on campus. Or off campus. Or anywhere. Luckily I got a boyfriend quick and in a hurry who could a)teach me how to do laundry and b) just do it for me anyway.Years passed. I learned laundry. How to separate it, wash it, pull

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-78478672161864785652008-04-11T11:04:00.000-07:002008-04-11T11:31:34.417-07:00

Well this stay at home mom has been working quite a lot recently. I mentioned once, in a blog about increasing the income line of my budget, that I had put my own sign out front. That sign says Tax Preparer and these past few weeks I've been cranking out tax returns like there is no tomorrow. And soon enough, there won't be a tomorrow because the tax deadline is looming large. What a relief

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-31537716124996920112008-03-29T18:19:00.000-07:002008-03-29T18:23:28.917-07:00

SO I just realized that I am the couch and the couch is me. Yesterday I wrote how our couch is tired and old but too good to throw away. That's an analogy for me! I am tired and old. The kids are beating on me every day, I'm getting frayed around the edges. I've been peed on. But my husband still likes to climb on every now and again. I bring everyone in the house comfort. The dog sleeps in

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-58059956111804105542008-03-28T18:36:00.000-07:002008-03-29T18:41:41.355-07:00

Potty Training. Again. What a drag. The first time I was really ready for it, ready for the moment my son would start to use the potty. Eager, definitely thinking about it on a regular basis and talking about it periodically. Not so for #2 (har har). As baby girl starts to show interest in things peculiar to the facilities we must take her cue. But what a drag. Tonight I was a detective. I

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-31825380905026164932008-03-23T05:45:00.000-07:002008-03-23T07:13:50.150-07:00

Signs that spring has sprung here in Maine aren't always obvious, well, at least not if you are looking for things like warmer weather and blooming flowers. Indeed, we may be getting another snow storm on Monday. Luckily, though, spring snow isn't lasting (knock on wood.). Still, there are some sure signs of Spring and I've listed 5 of them here:1. Spring Fashions -- Despite the frigid temps,

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-84365115415499381772008-03-15T18:50:00.001-07:002008-03-15T19:18:57.579-07:00

It wasn't until I had kids for awhile before I realized I was doing things I once said I'd never do before. It is so easy to look at another family and think, oh, we'll never be like that, before you really are like that. When I was pregnant with our son, friends of my husband came to visit with their two small children, I believe they were 2 and 4 years old. At that time, we lived in a tiny

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-60913668215468855742008-03-09T06:01:00.000-07:002008-03-12T17:34:29.832-07:00

How to cook, how to cook. Quite a conundrum for some. I'm here to set the record straight - cooking is easy! I've decided to make a new blog about it - check out my new site, SimpleSoup. I remember how challenging and intimidating cooking was before I had my epiphany so I've decided to put together my recipes as well as techniques for preparing them together in this new page. In addition to being

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-89823781567777482942008-03-05T14:01:00.000-08:002008-03-05T15:57:57.775-08:00

Imagine a letter size sheet of paper, 8 and a half by 11, folded in half lengthwise. That's what's happened to my posture. My shoulder blades are slowly working their way towards each other, they're going to meet in the middle. Soon, I think. Here's what I have that the paper doesn't. A great hunch developing behind my neck, at the top of my spine. I'm folding in half. I'm not thin like a piece

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-57861886123059970772008-03-01T05:54:00.000-08:002008-03-01T06:34:03.109-08:00

Travelling with small children . . . ah, the family vacation. Such fond memories from my childhood. Our family took an annual car trip from New Jersey to Florida to see the grandparents. I recall hilarious exchanges with my brother in the back-back of our Volare station wagon as we barrelled down I-95. Travel was simpler then. Billboards didn't contain smutty ads and we were free to roam

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-49718228784221241472008-02-24T17:29:00.001-08:002008-02-24T19:43:16.449-08:00

I set out to write this piece with good debt personified as a white night, galloping across some highlands, like I’ve only read about in 19th century English romances, covered with wild flowers of gold and red and soft yellow, dancing in a May breeze, set against a back drop of the most brilliant, azure sky. And bad debt, of course, would be a black night with red glowing eyes, riding through

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-44258390105628321152008-02-22T05:27:00.000-08:002008-02-22T05:57:04.690-08:00

oooooooh, yeah, that's it, just like that, rub my sinus cavities, rub them real good. Ahem. Yep, that's about the size of it, that's a hot and steamy date for us. Sitting together in a steam shower, suffering with swollen and inflamed sinuses, hoping we stumble onto that sinus pressure point of lore, the one that magically triggers a great sinus flood. Where is it? We need to find it! We

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-72139646808954232792008-02-20T05:44:00.000-08:002008-02-20T06:18:29.830-08:00

If there was a bottle of fear in the grocery store, would you buy it and feed it to your family? That was the thought in my mind yesterday morning as I by-passed the meat department at our grocery store. If you somehow missed the shocking footage from the beef processing plant out in California this past week, lucky you! It made its way into our cable-free, Fox-free home via the Newshour on

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-12840435670675092712008-02-18T07:13:00.000-08:002008-02-18T09:51:14.311-08:00

Besides not having a Primary Election, there are a lot of things that just don't seem to be done in Maine - for the greater good of us all, I should add. For instance, we don't look twice at a blue tarped house, we don't consider 8am "very early," we don't need traffic lights because we drive courteously and we don't engage in Competitive Parenting.Competitive Parenting is the practice of

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-63972190525843918122008-02-14T12:23:00.001-08:002008-02-14T12:45:30.143-08:00

What a concept: 100 people or so gather in the local gym and then literally divide up by candidate and organize themselves enough to count heads. If you are from a caucusing state you might think it old hat, but me, I'm from Jersey and we have a primary there. Before this year I never picked a party, I always liked to maintain that I was independent, middle of the road, a free wheeling social

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-13724143350304678712008-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:002008-02-09T10:33:44.827-08:00

If you've read my earlier posts, you will know I have an awesome and amazing budget spreadsheet. It is a tool I use practically every day (practically in both the sense that it's just about every day and the use of the budget is very practical). In a nutshell, you budget out your whole year on a weekly basis and each week has a bottom line which should match the amount left in your checking

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-29251674012548196912008-02-05T20:10:00.000-08:002008-02-08T08:51:18.228-08:00

You need to know bad to know good, right? Live the ying from time to time to get the yang. Just so, you must see the negative space of an image in order to see the image itself, the positive space. The image wouldn't exist without acknowledging the space surrounding it, that so-called negative space. Living in a family is a positive place. So then the negative space surrounding that family is

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-71477445513209000502008-02-02T07:22:00.000-08:002008-02-02T07:51:52.755-08:00

Here's a neat sign that things are going well in your household -- recently a friend of mine was watching my kids whilst a group of our brawny husbands, with me as supervisor, of course, picked up a free piano. Now, Baby wears cloth diapers and typically when in the care of others I don't impose our healthy diapering on them, but this particular friend is a cloth diaperer herself and she took

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-84759054219367302862008-01-31T10:29:00.000-08:002008-01-31T11:18:43.266-08:00

If you've ever lived paycheck to paycheck you know how stifling that can feel. The paychecks are often spent before they come in and then another week or two weeks or 15 days go by in anticipation of that next check. It is an awful and uneasy feeling - what if something goes wrong and the check is late or the wrong amount or *gulp* doesn't come at all?Well, many a stay at home mom/dad/whomever

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-23121789400631878432008-01-30T05:05:00.000-08:002008-01-30T05:46:49.969-08:00

Love and marriage: two peas in a pod, like white on rice, tea for two, you for me, tra la la la la laa. They just go together, right? Maybe not always. Recently I received an e-mail request for stories from people who knew they were making a mistake as they walked down the aisle but went ahead with it anyway. These stories are for a book some friend of a friend is putting together. A book about

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-24233579121333715902008-01-28T06:22:00.000-08:002008-01-28T12:32:00.449-08:00

It's that simple. Everything else is just extra. OK, OK, there is a little more to cooking than just taking raw food and applying heat to it. But that was the thought that changed my approach to the kitchen. The first "real meal" I made was a chicken in the oven of my little apartment in 83rd street on Manhattan's far east side. With great bravery I took a whole chicken, put salt and pepper on it

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-18497824128758141602008-01-27T05:54:00.000-08:002008-01-28T12:32:53.688-08:00

Lately my mind and activities have been all awhirl with one theme - budget, budget, budget. Money, money, money. I fed my family for two weeks on what was in the pantry already plus a whopping $11.84 worth of white gold, aka: milk. In thinking about running my household effectively and efficiently I have also realized the importance of running it well. You know, with the ability to partake in

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-15264513940758500912008-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:002008-01-28T12:33:29.167-08:00

This has been Survival Week for our family - an idea I picked up in one of the women's magazines I peruse while waiting online at the grocery store. Since I am too tight to buy them I like to pick the longest check out line, ignore my kids for 5 minutes and read through the catchiest headlines. I saw one promising thousands of dollars worth of grocery savings and picked it up. Among the many tips

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-13611278434746123782008-01-22T08:35:00.000-08:002008-01-28T12:34:30.913-08:00

Two years ago I created a budget spreadsheet that I reconcile to my checking account on a weekly basis. We get paid weekly so the spreadhseet is set up with a column for each week of the year. It is really simple - it is the weeks income less the weeks expenses = amount in checking account (hopefully plus) which is then added to the income of the next week from which you take the expenses of that

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-31795665193824232332007-09-09T05:12:00.000-07:002007-09-09T05:12:32.484-07:00

A Ration of Soma: Mantis 1 : Humming Bird 0

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4363578360292763717.post-28389894616082110462007-09-08T17:25:00.000-07:002007-09-08T17:42:39.550-07:00

As I understand it, to be "from away" is as simple as it sounds to any Mainer - you are not a native of Maine. I thought my daughter who was born here would be considered a Mainer but a nurse in the maternity ward corrected me on that one. She said, "Just cause a cat has her kittens in an oven don't make 'em bisquits." I said, "hahah, oh." I've since learned that to be considered a true

Kim Anderssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11004865109435929729noreply@blogger.com0