We had blueberry casserole for lunch. Any time we give a dish a pet name, it is True Love.

The given name is "Baked Oatmeal," from a not-too-too-long-ago issue of Martha Stewart's Whole Living. I was going through a stack of magazines from Martha Stewart, looking for the recipes I wanted to archive, suffering page-turner's fatigue, you know, and my eye was caught by a closing/serving instruction to drizzle on with melted butter. Wait, what again? Go back. Tell me now. Yes.
On the night I sliced all those potatoes, Fifille & Garçon were going through Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian book to find a suitable recipe for a pile of thinly-sliced potatoes. They were murmuring & reading and I heard Fille say to him, with a sad determination, "I could never be vegan." I suspect it is about the butter. I guess it could be about the cheese, but she has a cheese ceiling & no such thing exists for butter. We are proud of her & so are many of you, I know.
When we were back home, at the legendary and yet prosaic Lou Mitchell's, we told her she could totally manage to spread her 2 pieces of toast on with 3 little peel-off cups of butter. It was like a chug-a-lug contest. You can totally get all three on there, we encouraged her matter-of-factly.
She faltered for a minute when she realized the toast had been brushed with butter on the line. I helped her out, explaining that was different butter. "That was liquid butter, this is solid butter. It's different. Like ice in yr water." I mean, fuck, right? Seriously, come on! Anyhow, she lathered on her 3 cups and there was a lot of high-fiving. Just like a chug-a-lug contest. Yes. It was only an eighth-inch thick. Fuck, I've seen people eat 10 times the butter piled on 1/3 the real estate, just because it was called frosting.
OMG, butter. How great to have a functioning, athletic, 11-year-old girl who eats butter at appropriate times, who is afraid of no food. God is good. Last week she said to me, while we were in the car, this:
All the girls in ballet class think their legs are fat because they jiggle when they jeté.
First, let us all clasp hands + thank God I was not operating the vehicle. I was parked in the grocery-store parking lot. Also, her father was there, in the passenger seat, not goading me exactly, but fixing me with a look. A look that said, You're on again, baby. Knock 'em dead. But I was thinking, OMG, I'm so tired! It was just last week we sat around for a long time, the 4 of us, talking about the NYT cellulite story.
A long time ago, probably as many as four years ago, Fille saw a store-window advertisement for some Aveda product, the target of which was frizz. Because some idiot let her learn to read, she asked me later, yk, what is frizz? I told her it was a wide-ranging definition, but mostly it was marketing. I reminded her of what remains after she brushed her curls smooth for ballet's bun, how when she let it down after class, she did not care for the resonant bigness of it (having v.t. issues, Reader, bonne chance), and that is what is demonized as frizz.
What came of that conversation, though, how I concluded it, laid the cornerstone for the place where I will dwell during these years she is entering, she with her friends. I told her everyone feels bad about themselves sometimes. Everyone wakes up some day, everyone, and looks in the mirror & says, Omigod, it's me again! Even people who say, And omigosh with the perfect flawlessness, again! It is fleeting for the strongest people, who move along from there. But:
Any time you want to believe in a bad feeling about yourself, someone will be all too willing to help you, and they will take your money for something that they say will fix the problem the two of you have created. So you have to decide how you want to live.
We come back to that all the time -- constructs created by marketing, a culture holding fast to expectations no one can meet because people have bought into fantasy images, this kind of unquestioning devotion to unrealistic and unreachable standards. (Ophelia, breathe.)
It was heartbreaking and insane to read about women in their sixth decade of life who were embarrassed by cellulite. I mean, really? The one woman who hoped to one day wear a bathing suit? Even though Fifille was adorably puzzled & a little tart ("I mean, isn't she going to wear a dress at her wedding?"), I said to her, all grave & everything, "This is where a woman can end up after a lifetime of believing in made-up problems marketers say she has."
So then, God, it was super-heartbreaking to hear about these 9-to-11-year-olds talking about their fat legs. I swear to you, not one of these girls is fat, and they are not going to be fat. We see their parents, their grandparents, all the time in school. If we could grow them to their final statures today -- like super-speed -- they would all be between 5'8' and 5'10' and all wear a 4 or a 6, except 2 girls, one who projects shorter and proportionally more slender, and Fille, who is her father's child, you all know.
I asked Fille if her legs jiggled. She said, "Yes! I told them, Legs jiggle because you have skin and ... legs!" I asked her what they said.
"They said, 'Oh, Fille! You have the skinniest legs! You're so skinny!'" she told me. When she said those words, I placemarked the sentence by pressing my hand to Mari's forearm, and told him much later, That is what I meant when she was 5 and I said no daughter but the one I have with you would dance ballet on my watch.
I reminded her what I told her about the cellulite ladies, about being long toward the end of a road. I told her that at her age, they are all on the beginning of that road, yk? Choose how you want to live. Get your guns out.
Mari was less metaphysical, less bound-up in the deconstruction of patriarchy for sure. "Tell them," he said, "that they aren't fat; they jiggle because they are weak. Tell them to get strong."
Fille giggled righteously & said, "I know!" before I got involved, spluttering a little, telling her to tell no one that, and maybe if she does, definitely tell no one her dad said to say that. Good Lord.

It was a couple of weeks ago, we were talking while were on a walk, she & I. It was before the cellulite story, before the heart-restorative story of this little girl, which also took up a lot of time, talking as we always have about the falseness of photographic images -- how the reason that one never sees women or men who look like the women or men in magazines is not because they live on some special island somewhere, it is because they do not actually look anything like that, because the images are not real.
The topic of our discussion, as we walked, was the outgrowth of a pair of jeans she was wearing. They were already too short, and in my opinion, not enough room in the waist anymore. She was resisting the latter assessment, which I wanted to address.
"You do know, honey," I started, somewhat gingerly, "you will not just get taller, but you --" I faltered, not wanting to say will get wider. "You will grow in every direction."
"Yes," said she, confidently, excitedly, like a little girl who is still light enough to need to ride in a baby seat & wants desperately to pass that by.
But then she said, in a still-excited, but more matter-of-fact tone, declarative, even, "I will become curvaceous."
The word she used! The fact that she already knew this! That sentence, when she said it, blew away a whole raft of worries I had not even ever realized I had for her. Expecto Patronum! Yes. So that was good. This is a good life.
Blueberry Casserole
(adapted from Whole Living magazine)
Butter an 8x8-inch baking dish. Melt 3 tablespoons butter. Cool. In yr pre-heated oven (375F) toast 1.5c of almonds (I use pre-sliced ones, but you can do what you like, chopping later) & cool.
While you wait, mix 2c rolled oats with: 1/3c granulated sweetener; 1/2tsp salt; and 1tsp baking powder.
To the cooled butter, add one egg. Whisk. Add 2 cups milk + 2tsp vanilla. Mix & mix.
Add half of your almonds to your dry oat mixture. I have also always added 1/2c of almond meal, also, but you can skip that, I guess. Mix & mix there, too.
Pour about 2.5cups of frozen blueberries in the bottom of the baking pan (enough to cover it in a single layer, but x3). Cover the berries over with the dry oat mixture, pour the milk mixture over the whole thing. Scatter the remaining (chopped) almonds and another cup of blueberries on top. Bake for about 45 minutes. Or so. You'll get the hang of it.
I usually cut it into 6 pieces for breakfast, 8 for lunch. Serve with a couple of teaspoons of melted butter per portion & then have some maple syrup, too.
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