This jar.

I have this thing for storing food in glass jars. I’m not sure why. Other glass jar people seem to have obvious and honorable reasons. My sister is health-conscious and cares for the earth better than anyone else I know. She buys in bulk online from fair-trade suppliers, and distributes smaller amounts into glass jars—coffee, coconut flour, garbanzo beans, dehydrated green beans that she has miraculously trained her toddler to enjoy. 

My pretty sister Rebecca singing at my brother Jeff's outdoor wedding last month.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and purged her kitchen of toxins. She stopped eating sugar and flour and started eating purely organic. She pitched all her plastic containers and switched to glass. Honestly, her pantry could be in a magazine. We visited her a couple weeks ago in her new house, where she had only lived for a couple weeks, and two of my kids toured the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards and exclaiming over how neat and organized it was. “Look, Mom!” (at the spice drawer). “Are we in heaven?” (about the cupboard with plates and bowls). “We should do this in our kitchen!”  

That's my mother-in-law Evelyn on the right, looking sweet and calm and collected, as always. We visited David's family in NC a couple weeks ago, and his parents treated everyone to delicious dinner at a Peruvian restaurant!

So I don’t know. Maybe I like glass jars because I want to be more health-conscious and earth-conscious like my sister Rebecca and more organized and Betty Crocker-ish like my mother-in-law Evelyn. In any case, the Mother Of All My Glass Jars is this one. 

This jar.

I think it held pickles in its former life. I first used it for flour. That was back when we lived at the end of a dead-end gravel road in the country and I used to bake bread. 

Then for a while I used it to store sugar. (Also during the gravel road, house in the country, excessive amounts of free time, baking days.)

From time to time, this jar holds coconut-almond granola. This is my favorite thing to see packed in the jar. This stuff is like a macaroon in a bowl.

For a while I kept dried beans in the jar, but that didn’t last long because when I need beans, I need them like, now, not in 13 hours. So the rarely used beans just monopolized valuable jar space.

When I had to stop eating gluten (*cue forlorn violin soundtrack), I hunted for baking alternatives and kept gluten-free flour in the jar.

Then for a couple years—the year we lived in Peru and the year after we got back and lived in a teeny tiny row house with a teeny tiny kitchen—the jar stayed packed away in storage.

These days the jar holds, as you can see in the photo, white rice. In our life B.K. (Before Kids) we ate rice maybe twice a month, white rice almost never. Now this entire jar of rice (about 7-8 pounds) might last about two weeks in our house. The kids adore white rice and they are used to eating it all the time. For breakfast they love arroz con huevo (rice with egg) or arroz con atun (rice with tunafish). They’ll eat arroz con palta (rice with avocado) anytime. Instructions: mash avocado, mix with rice, squeeze lime on top. I’m sure I could fix arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) for dinner every single night and no one would complain. We’ve been trying to convince them to take their lunch to school instead of eating the disgusting cafeteria food, but they aren’t really getting into the PB&J sandwich thing. But this morning, they all packed leftover chicken and rice into plastic containers and left happy as… well, happy as Peruvians with white rice!

Alfredo and Joseph at my brother Jeff's outdoor wedding last month. Running around like crazy men turned out to be a pretty good option to keep warm!

Most of us just huddled together and kept refilling our mugs with hot cider and coffee.

So I don’t particularly like the kids eating all that starch and empty carbs. But they’re missing Peru and going through immense changes, and the rice is comforting. (God knows my comfort foods of choice are far worse!) So for now it’s okay.

In the story of our life this jar is telling, this is the Rice Chapter.

It's also the Meeting Tons of New People Chapter...

Road trip! Breaking in the minivan.

Visiting some very special friends in Michigan. They scored serious cool points by having a convertible.

Thanks to our friend Gabrielle for treating the kids to their first rock climbing adventure.

Meeting Grandmom.

Meeting cousin Nori. The waitress at the Peruvian restaurant thought we had adopted five kids (she counted Nori!).

Meeting Uncle Stephen and Aunt Jessica.

Meeting PopPop.

A quick stop at Niagara Falls on our way to Chicago.