la femme follette

out, lamb

The bulb show has started in earnest.  It is like they are all clamoring to get in the photo.  Me, too!  Me!  Me!  There are holes in the display where my perennials are, but this year, I am thinking if I take detailed photographs, then I will have a better site map in the fall when I fill in.  It is not as if I grow any perennial that will be put off by a little incidental root-pruning. 

I love hyacinths.  I wrote about it last year.  These seem a wee bit early this year.

I do not even know what these are.  This year, 5 people have asked me, not including the 3 who live with me.  "What is the little blue flower?"  and I say, "I don't know."  I know I planted them; I planted everything here, this was a lawn when we bought the house.  I kind of remember ordering them, too.  What are they?  Maybe next year I will know.  They are like a sweet, late, and blue snowdrop.  But there is no such thing, is there? 

Next are tulips.  Then it is time for my boy's birthday.  And another swell Aries fella I know.   

1969

Happy birthday to my pal Alex.  I did not knit you a pair of socks, but neither have you ever broken the law to get an infrared eyeful of my slumbering girlishness, so you know how it goes.  Besides, I know my strengths.

At last, this is the account of Pigs in a Twinkie. 

Many months and months ago, I gave Algren a book called The Twinkies Cookbook.  There I was, minding my business in a store, and I saw it.  One exchange of text messaging later ("am holding something called The Twinkies Cookbook, you want?"  "YES") and it was on its way.  I read it before I chucked it in the mails, knowing the email would come, and it did.  It read:

From: Algren
Date: Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 3:22 PM
To: Femme

Chapter Nine, Twinkies And Meat.

thank you.

In the ninth Chapter, there was a ridiculously appealing abomination of a recipe -- Pigs in a Twinkie.  It went like this:

Serves 6.

6 pork sausage links
6 Twinkies
Maple syrup, for serving

Thinly slice one end off each Twinkie. Stuff a cooked sausage into each Twinkie. Place the Twinkies in a shallow baking dish and bake [at 350 F] for 10 minutes, or until the Twinkies are warm. Serve warm, with syrup.

The first thing that I spied in need of tweaking about that recipe is the allegation that it would serve 6 as written.  How could it serve 6?  Who could eat just one?  (I would eat none, because of my allergies, obviously, but outside of my condition, I would probably eat 3, I think.  More if with child, fewer if hungover.)

Then Algren came for Christmas.  This was easy now.  In fact, this could not be avoided.  I cannot remember if it was a surprise or not, that Mari and I were up to Pigs in Twinkies.  Oh, yes, Mari, the silent partner in all things perversely foody.  He is a man who recently refused to eat a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top, but he was game enough to trick a girl raised in the culinary Eden of Chicago to marry him, so there is that.  I'm not some choose-your-own adventure eater, however.  I am squeamish.  Tentacles, no.  Pigs in Twinkies, I can handle that.  Chicago.

While Mari and I were at the grocery store, shopping for the Christmas table, we could not find any Twinkies.  This started with the fact that I had never bought a box of Twinkies in my life and was not even certain where in the store they would be.  Mari poked around, we got restless, and then on an endcap display we stumbled over the regional answer to the Twinkie, the Tastykake Krimpet, made just across the river from us, a cake with an expiration date.

I was taken in by the Jelly Krimpets for this recipe.  It seemed like the way to go -- breakfast sausage (which I also could not find in the damn store), jelly, krimpet ... yum -- and Mari agreed to the experiment, but insisted on going out to find Twinkies before the event.   Fine.

So, December 26th came and we were all three prowling around with coffee and tea and oj while the kids ate oatmeal and then I remembered I was the one who was supposed to be making this.  For breakfast.  Because we roll like that.  Oh, yeah.

Shortly after Algren got the cookbook, we were on the phone discussing the Freudian implications of stuffing link sausages into a cream-filled cake.  I was trying to insist that it was not so terrible, that maybe there were ways around it, like if one were to slice the little snack cake open and then fit the sausage link inside, but the more I talked about it the smuttier it got and I finally dissolved into giggles while Algren stood on his usual ground and said, "See?!?" 

He was right.  I threw everyone out while I was stuffing the cakes (!!) because it was smutty.  Even as I tried to adopt the ultra-ironic kind of "har-har, look how Freudian this is!" it just did not work.  It was kind of troubling, this stuffing, because you have to hold the Twinkie in one hand, and in the other the sausage link and then there has to be this delicate kind of wriggling effort.  I just made everyone leave because I was blushing too much.  Then when I found out the Jelly Krimpets were too small to take the whole sausage, OH GOD.  So, I had to cut the links in half.  So, you know, they could take it.

The Twinkie is a size queen and I had no problems getting her all ready to go.

 

(I buttered the pan because we were a room full of midwesterners and there is no such thing as too much butter.  Other people should use parchment.)

It was really, ridiculously filthy, the whole thing with the violating the snack cakes.  I mean, a person can try, and let me know how it goes.  Maybe they are not so suggestible and delicate as I.  In the end, some of them are mangled, you can see.  By the time I became the velvet-glove of Twinkie-stuffing, it was all over.

Again, I did not eat these, I cannot.  But Mari was very outspoken in reporting the sausage-stuffed Jelly Krimpets to be the clear winner.  The cake was toastier, he said.  Also, the smaller size of the cake made for a better meat/cake ratio in the mouth, even with the halved link. 

But the Jelly Krimpets did not give me the satifying money shot I got from the Twinkies.  Dirty! 

Happy Birthday, Alex.  Get your cholesterol checked. 

transition

Garçon's new guitar came late this afternoon.  His first guitar was a silly little thing I picked up on a whim, a kid-sized piece, something nicer than a toy, perfect to see if he would take an interest.  So it seems that in the last six months, he has spent quite a lot of time being interested.  His instructor told me we should grade him up to something in a 3/4 size.  Sure thing.  I ordered Fender's Squier MC-1 Classical.

It is so pretty.  I can barely breathe around it.  The rosette kills me.  Never fly on a small aircraft, my baby. 

entrapment, entreaty, entrechat, entropy

I finally finished "the baby's" birthday legwarmers.  The "baby" who will be 7 years old this week.  Mari corrects me when I call her this, but for Garçon & I, she will always be the baby.  When she is not with us, we call her this, as in "It's almost time to go get the baby from her ballet class, so let's hurry."  This of course begs the question of who it was doing the babying of her and when.

I do not even have time to be emotional about her being seven (7!), for I am totally lost in a wave of homesickness I did not see coming.  Kowalski and I were talking about his socks and he reported them to be super, etc, but still quite warm and so past the season.  I countered that it was 36 degrees only there and he said, "Yes.  But you know people are in shorts."

I said nothing for a long time, and then he asked me, cautiously, quietly, "Have you forgotten this?"  I admitted I had -- 40 degrees back home is warm -- and burst not into tears, but some pretty heavy-duty sniffling.  Add to this that my baby is still -- in late March and in the same 40-degree temperatures -- wanting to cozy herself in wool and mohair practically up to her heiney, plus that when we asked both children if they would want to go to Chicago for summer vacation this year, they pronounced it unacceptable as a destination (no ocean, no mountains) and here it all is still days later, the relentlessness of displacement.  I find as I go on that it is of course impossible to imagine how it feel to lose a thing that I always just took for granted, but also every time I am surprised by how painful it is to realize an absence when it comes.  Anyhow.   

These legwarmers are the improvement upon the last.  At that time, Fillette expressed wanting for a pair of legwarmers to wear in the weather, saying nothing about ballet.  As soon as I made them, she wanted to wear them everywhere, including ballet class, which was fine with me but for that the girls are not allowed to wear them the whole class (just during warm-up) and so when she removed them, her palest-pink, regulation tights were covered in black mohair lint.  I have issues and could not let this go on.  Additionally, she subsequently expressed a secret wish for a pair that was thigh-high, "Like the big girls wear."  Done and done.

Just as the last, these are from the pattern in Hoverson Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book using Araucania Nature Wool and Madil Kid Seta, both from stash.  Again, they are in the 2- to 4-hour chapter and each one took me 6 hours (three movies per leg!), and I did not even knit these as long as the pattern is written!  These are 20 inches long, which is one movie short of her project's length as published, but just the right size for our baby ballerina.  Birthday knitting soldiers on.  There are too many spring birthdays for all this knitting.  My hands are tired!  I will try to get a work-in-progress photo of the next. 

apostates, apostles

I am a big fan of hiding things right in plain view.  It is diabolical.

Because the children are accustomed to my nefarious ways, it only took them an hour of flitting back & forth to notice.  Now they are hopped up on fine swiss chocolatier's bunnies.  I am sure they would be terribly excited about Easter, if only we would have Easter, since it is so near and around their birthdays.  I can recall being pregnant with both of them and being very nervous that I would have a child born on the Easter Sunday and then of course feel obliged to name him or her Pascal/e.  It was really, terrifyingly close with Garçon.  But, phew, and now they just have a couple of regular & biblical high-minded, pretty-in-the-mouth names.      

A couple of years ago, a Playground Mom was getting really welcoming and inviting and almost-bossy about her church's congregation and my family.  I held her very politely at arm's length -- although truthfully I was horrified, who the fuck hounds people about religion? -- and even once informed her rather gaily that I could never never attend the church of my former-faith's most naughty heretic.  As Easter approached, she became more and more of a pain in my ass, until finally I asked her if her church had snakes. 

What?,  she said.  Snakes, I said.  "Does your church have snakes?  Because I already have a religion I don't really totally buy, and you know it is pretty much more aesthetically pleasing than any other on the regular, but if you had snakes in yours ... well, a snake church would be something." 

Yeah, so she refuses to talk to me still.  Good.  I have enough problems with Fillette trying to drag me into the Mass every Sunday without some stranger trying to get me to swallow Calvin.  Fillette asked to go to Mass last Sunday and despite my policy on saying yes to religion, I had to refuse.  Palm Sunday is not a good day to be a visitor.  It occurs to me belatedly that I should have taken her to take in some pretty intense Maundy Thursday glory, but Garçon would have been surly, since Jesus is not his best friend.  Although thinking about it still ... probably he would have been into the footwashing excitement.  Next year. 

flowers

As I was going deaf, I was part of the time stoned on percocet while Mari had the children out of the house so that I could be horribly ill in peace.  On the third day of opiates, when I could not sleep all day any more, I spent the afternoon trawling eBay to add to our casual ironstone luncheon settings.  It is time for a party, for god's sake.  I bought 6 bread plates and 8 dinner plates in 3 patterns to fill out what we have in an already-varied & rowdy floral arrangement.  I like flowers.   

I do not like things to be matchy.  I like assemblages to reflect the casual ramshackle serendipity of a purchaser who likes what she likes and gets what she loves.  In fact, before I married Mari, I was evaluating his fitness as decorating-mate (this is an important thing! many couples fight about!  we do not!) and home-companion so I said to him v suspiciously, "Do you like things to be all matchy??"  He did not.  He said, "It looks like a hotel."  My guy. 

It has rarely happened that when I get it all into my house, it does not go.  When it has happened, it is because I froze and refused to follow my instincts.  This is how we have a pair of awful pitchers I got at the Crate & Barrel, years ago from the flagship store on Michigan Ave when we were first married.  They are these awful clear-glass things, and I am now afraid to get rid of them solely because they have not in all our moves nor all our use sustained any damage at all so they have become some accidental talisman, though for what I am not certain.

The napkins are for the children, who have become enamored of using cloth.  Garçon still mostly uses the cloth he is wearing upon his sleeve, but Fillette will take a napkin from the sideboard at breakfast, keep it all day, then after dinner take it up to the laundry when she goes for her bath.  I do not know how I got one child who is so good and one who is so naughty.  I would have been happy to have 2 just each in the middle.  Because pathological goodness is its own problem.  Especially in the little girls.

salty dog

Happy birthday to Kowalski, who fell for me very the minute I proclaimed him to be trouble, and for each of us, these were brilliant instantaneous assessments.  In spite of my tremendous opposition to any involvement, he was the very study of perseverance and glacial pressure.  I would eventually realize that I did not want to live in a world where the candid ex-con sailor from the north woods could not get the sulky co-ed from the louche city to the south and so I relented. 

You are a vast landscape of simplicity that is stark without being stupid or dull, and your love for me has always been something current, open, and eternal.  There have been no seasons, and very little weather, just the same unceasing devotion in perpetuity.  I am unfathomably grateful for your friendship, more than ever in these last three years.  The ways in which you have loved your sisters and sisters-in-law while they raised small children have left you with immeasurable third-party expertise.  I know that I protest and cringe, because it is like a light that is blinding, or has the incursion of an x-ray, or the scorching constancy of a ring of fire, but after all these years of simply relenting, I have finally stopped resisting.  It is maybe the finest present for which you have ever hoped, 15 years too late. 

I made you another pair of socks to make up.  You did not even have to ask.  Happy birthday.

The socks are, as the last,  from the Eesti Trail Hiking Socks Pattern in Interweave's Favorite Socks book.  I used 4 balls of Elann's private-label yarn called Incense, a worsted-weight wool, silk & bamboo blend, in color #03, Birch Bark.  The socks are about 10 inches tall* and considerably lighter than the last pair, weighing in at just about 3 ounces each.  Even back home it has warmed up too much for handspun merino to be a guy's only handknit sock.  The reinforcing thread for heels and toes is a silk thread in a matchy-ish color I got at the JoAnn while being harassed by the children to hurry.  I used the magic loop method to knit these socks and the whole affair was less slidy off the needles.  I wanted to keep these, too, and I think the next pair of socks will be for me, as soon as I get out of the birthday knitting mines.

*I accidentally made one sock about 10.75 tall due to the slick knitting excitement of an Addi circular in the magic loop.

bling

For us, daffodils mean that Fillette's birthday is just days away.  My birthday flower is a peony, just as ephemeral and glorious as the spring-bulb lineup's bloom.   I always feel a little happier whenever I have peonies near.  Between the heralding of spring plus birthday, Fillette is just! over! the! top!! to see daffodils each year, and it was under her direction that I was lying on the pavement in front of our house, photographing our first two blooms.

Spring in our neighborhood also means that everyone comes out to the playground to be seen-scene.  The children are all taller than we remember and they have different teeth or can run instead of toddle or talk instead of point or have shiny, 2-wheeled bikes out for the first time or are -- in a change from last year -- sitting the tiniest bit sulkily at the edge of the playground wall, wanting to feel too old for all this until it seems there is a Game and it needs Organization from a Girl or Boy who is Obviously Mature Enough to Explain the Rules and Referee so then they forget about how cool they wanted to be before.  All the adults take our seats around the perimeter and ask one another, How was your winter?, and so today, finally, it feels like a new year. 

rail

Another month, another trip to Lancaster. I am convinced that last month's trip with its grueling-for-the-driver day-trip round-trip aspect is the reason I went so horribly, deaf-making ill.  This time, we took the train.  By train, it is for us 2 trains, but I sat and knitted and Fillette and Garçon read Ramona the Pest and looked out the window, respectively.  I let the two of them go all the way to the café car by themselves.

There has been recently a lot of practice, a lot of tentative step-making with regards to a lot of practical independence.  We let them sit apart from us in open-seating restaurants or cafés lately, they are allowed to sit in the waiting room and read books while I get my teeth cleaned.  I will finish my conversation with an acquaintance in a cute boutique and send Garçon ahead, up the same side of the street by himself, to retrieve his sister when her ballet class is done.  There are not a lot of opportunities for children to practice being by themselves in our hysterical new world, but we try to let them flutter along a bit when we can.

I love the Lancaster train station so much in this kind of swooning way that, looking at this photo, doesn't really make any sense.  Great symmetry, parallel lines, sure, but I grew up in Chicago.  Mies van der Rohe isn't really anywhere in this functional little corridor.  Part of it is that I was charmed the first time by its compact utility.  This is pretty much the whole station.  The other thing I realize is that train stations are such busy places that one never gets to see if they are lovely or what behind the announcements and the thrall and the bodies everywhere. 

Also, it occurs to me that being from a place with its own culture, such as I am, that I am satisfied when sites synchronize with the culture where they are located.  Here this train station is in Lancaster, PA:  it is plain, gets the job done, and quite still.  It just feels really tidy and fulfilling to me.  Those trash receptacles, however, are freaking hideous.          

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For my pal Jen, nine hours north, who presumably got a late-nite 5:15 sunset tonight, look what I found while sulking around the garden.

I vowed to put the garden to bed properly last fall, but then Fillette was reading some horseshit in My Big Backyard or Ranger Rick or somewhere about wintering caterpillars and other animals' harbor in the dead stalks and I had already been assiduous about black spot cleanup, so I left it and now it bothers me, but the worms! are! safe!

For Marsha and Lisa, that little bread guy was just a gluten-free okonomiyaki with shredded boiled potatoes thrown in the batter.  Kind of a colcannon okonomiyaki, really, I guess.