la femme follette

provisional

This is going to drive at least two of you right out of your minds, but I let Mr Fox feed me, like, all the time.  He presses food into my hand & I tuck in. 

Everyone is totally envious of Mr Fox, for one reason or another, except my actual husband -- the one who lives with me, etc.  Lillo interrupted me one day when I was ringing off with [this or that reason I had to go, pertaining to Mr Fox], saying, "Why doesn't this guy have a job?!?" 

Ahahaha!

Anyhow,  Mari & I were sauntering over to the playground Friday to catch up with our kids + Extra Girl when Mr Fox wheeled up alongside of us.  We three were talking while he pulled down a little spray of berries from the tree above us and handed them to me.

They are Juneberries.  Say what?  Also known as Saskatoon.  I made them verify this wasn't a trick, a hit job hired out by Mari (or anyone else, for that matter), and then made him eat three times the amount he had handed to me, scrutinizing him the whole while.

They are pretty tasty, reminding me of the "strawberries" in major mass-market ice cream.  Or something, idk.  Eating them gives me a sense-memory of Baskin Robbins Ice Cream "parlors," so if you happen upon them & have similar feelings well up inside you, whisper them to me, please.  Anyhow, I saw Mr Fox this morning & he was in fine fettle, so maybe I can sublimate my rhubarb thing into these growing-all-over berries. 

Fille & I are off to NYC tomorrow to get a little culture, returning home in time for Shavout. I do not anticipate any granola-girls' rooting-around, not least because NYC is killing people with its trees.  We went roller skating today & I feel lucky enough to be in one piece, and also, suddenly, I no longer perceive biking as the same certain peril I judged it to be this morning.  For one thing, no one says, "Oh, it's just like wearing a pair of skates!"  Guess what, there is a reason for that.

Please let me know if you forage anything extra-plus during this next couple of days, I will not hold it against you if  you only pluck it from the long buffet table. 

 

make and take tuesday

Memorial Day weekend is next!  You might be going somewhere & you might have to bring a thing!  I give you a traveling green salad.  Miracle!  It is also not hard.  Also, I think that we can make it right-side-up or upside-down, right?  Like rhubarb.  Yes. 

 

It hails from here, the idea.  We had two bunches of kale in our CSA share last week; Mr Fox was coming by for dinner, so I could not just lay out microwaved potatoes & frozen spinach.  I was not feeling like cooking the kale up using my usual recipe (sauteed; because it was 87F, I think),  when I remembered seeing this recipe.

I did not have squash, nor shallots, because it's May here, you know.  I used red onions and dates to substitute.  I felt like goddamn Louis Pasteur!  Seriously!  Then, to show off the top of my range, I used some hazelnut meal I had lying around, instead of fooling around chopping little weirdly-shaped nuts!  I did not add cheese, because by now I was test-driving and I wind up at a lot of potlucks where there are starving vegans, one of them v often my son.  

It was roundly received as a smashing success.  Then! It held until lunch the next day!  Get out of here!  Amazing.  It requires a bit more chewing than I like to allocate for a salad, but OK.   

Kale Salad with Roasted Dates & Red Onions

Whisk 1/4c lemon juice with 1/4c olive oil.  Preheat the oven to 400F.

Wash & dry a bunch of kale.  Set aside the thick part of the stems (don't get too into this distinction, ok?) and cut the leaves + remaining stems crosswise into 1-inch-wide strips.  Yr salad bowl (this is mine, to compare) should be full, with room left for assembly.  Toss with the dressing.   Set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Slice 3 red onions longitudinally at 1/2-inch intervals.  Toss with  a couple tablespoonsful olive oil, just to make them shiny; don't leave them in a pool of the stuff.  Put in the oven.  When they are soft and starting to brown, add 8-10 pitted dates, sliced into thirds, maybe.  Poke it around.  When the onions are browned, but not crispy (or maybe just a teeny bit crispy on the very edges), take them out.  Salt the whole thing.  Don't get carried away.

Toss the kale with 1/3c of hazelnut meal.  Toss & toss & toss.  When the dates & onions are cooled enough to handle, add them & toss, toss, toss.  Serve when you are ready, but try to give the fully-assembled salad a half-hour to meld.     

prescription: lobotomy

It is hardly ever -- as in almost never -- that I make a new dish which is not a dessert and both children receive it with enthusiasm.  One might gleefully review the dish and the other will say, "Well, I ate it because I'd rather not starve."  Or they both will express concerns about some strain of flavoring/texture and offer advice on its next execution.  But this, this they loved. 

You could make it, too. 

Beautiful people are all, yk, What is up with Garçon?  And I make a grimacing mouth noise and say I don't care.  Which is really the key, the not caring.  I was talking to a beautiful gal on a ship-to-shore call a week or so ago and she posited that she often wondered if she could "do it all again" with her kids, she wondered about what she might change.  I said, "I would send my children right into the arms of a professional caregiver and have a wonderful job. Good-bye!  Take what you can, give nothing back!" 

More or less.

I was not thinking in the front part of my brain about her wonderful job and hired assists when I said that, and then she laughed and said she'd thought about homeschooling and staying home.  I told her that was nonsense. 

But I thought more about the question, since the time we talked, and I think that what I do think is that if I could do it all over, I would focus less on the long-term with him -- because what in the bloody fuck do I care if he has meth teeth?  We have insurance!  Never brush! -- and more on just having a pleasant day every day.  Which was of course unthinkable when he digs his heels in about everything, but now I don't give a fuck what he does with his days.  Demands are as goes:  chore chart; positive fucking attitude.

It's funny because people often react as OMGHZ, chore chart!  Abusive, horrible, Cinderella!  Perhaps they are boiling their children in brat juice. 

The children's chore chart is just:

• make bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, wash up after breakfast. 
• fold household laundry (dishtowels, napkins, etc, which I have laundered) and put away.
•  practice musical instruments. 
• tidy up playroom and/or bedroom for a quick 15-minute pickup.  go around the house and find yr belongings you have left laying around in common areas and put them away. 
•  Help wash up after lunch and dinner. 
•  Shower, brush teeth, wipe down the sink, tub and mirror after yr ablutions.  Go to bed. 

Three times each week they are called upon to do their own laundry, one of those days weekly involves changing the sheets on their bed.  Once a week, I ask them to together climb around on the kitchen floor, each with a brush, and scrub it clean.  Our kitchen has less than 100 square feet of flooring, so whatever.

Maybe it seems like a lot, but they are here all day, with time, oodles of time.  So, it is all self-care, toward the mastery of which all children should be applying themselves, but especially those who are in their own home all the livelong day.

Anyhow, so as long as that is all taken care of by the end of each day, and no one hits me or thrown anything at me, or destroys my house, I'm fine with it.  He is free to play with string or whatever other analog pursuits he enjoys.  Whatever.  He can read and write better than most adults writing commentary on the internets; he can solve for x.  Good.  His long-term is not my problem, because his adulthood is not my concern.  It has been relaxing and removed the endless tension under which we all labored from the house.  Things have been remote for all that time, but it beats bared teeth on both sides. 

 

A few weeks ago, in the used bookstore, I saw a copy of the David Kiersey book about the Myers-Briggs/Jung temperament sorting.  I paused and remembered how we came across the book in high school, all of us testing and temperament-sorting, in our junior year, memorizing each others' types, chiding or lauding one another for being so SJ or rather NT, or whichever.    

Mari and I differ by one letter (J/P), the qualifying of information endemic to each causing a lot of confusion in our newlywed years.  The book -- picked up at the library because I spotted it and remembered it being a gas -- cleared that up quickly + permanently, to our great delight. 

After all that positive memory, I realized that maybe some of the issue with or son was one of native temperament this book could illuminate.  I mean, I am tired of him, but leave no stone unturned.  I administered the sorter thingy, during which time he surprised both of us with his immense capacity to be self-reflective.  Um, excuse me:  All of this child's letters are backwards from ours.  Who sent this changeling to us?

 

But that in no way explains everything and in the way that we leave no stone unturned, we took him for a new evaluation by a group of pediatricians he had never seen in this capacity.  Yk, the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory of Pediatrics, over the river.  I mean, you know, he has been evaluated long before this, at children's hospitals, with no outcome other than purple-faced people outraged that a child stonewalled them (I understand) or a different sort of pert appreciation of his sly refusals combined with his great appeal (am familiar with that, too).  Not to mention all the aborted therapies, which may or may not be his fault but in any case mystify me because what kind of social skills group expels a child for acting like Helen Keller?  I mean, did you want to only rehabilitate the easy children?  Unprofessional.  Like that stupid twat we wasted our money on this summer.  But OMG, listen to this.  Crazy in a new dimension.

 

We took him in for a regular, old, boilerplate psych evaluation.  It was billed as a Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation.  In August -- after everything with the running away, etc, the stupid twat, etc, destroying, there was a lot going on -- I made the appointment.  November was the first date, don't you know?  (Whatever.)  In the meantime, I crafted my new I Don't Give A Fuck method of childrearing (this child).  It has been peaceful here.  There has been talking.  Most of the time, expectations are met after one reminder, instead of 17.

We showed up, prepared for our 4-6 hour exertions, everyone mostly sunny, fine.  We filled out our parent questionnaires, had lunch with Garçon, sent him back, met with one of the purviewers and our completed forms.  We gave her a little history, way back to preschool, but mostly told her our concerns boiled down to [this], and the rest you know.  (Or don't, if you are a hideous, lumpen jackal of a voyeur.)

Things were winding down and Mari & I were sitting with Fille in the waiting area, wondering what we would do about dinner, when we were called back for the day's closure with the entire evaluating team.

"We absolutely agree with your concern and we think that he needs to be taken in to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation and possibly an admission.  You need to do it now," is what the lead psychologist told us.

Ok, so you already know (unless you are a hideous, lumpen jackal with her hands in her panties right now) that I wanted that to happen.  That during the summer I called around to hospitals to find out who could admit him.  He can keep it together pretty fine for a 4-6 hour evaluation:  he is a lovely child when you want nothing from him, but I thought that over time, things -- the kind of behaviors about which I raise my hands heavenward -- would become clearer to professionals. 

So, that part was fine with me, like, Thank God we could try for some answers.  But what was weird -- and it was Mari that intercepted this -- was the way she was so urgent -- You have to do it now.  Do it today.  Go here.  DO not stop at home, do not collect belongings nor $200.  Now.

Mari asked, "Did he threaten one of you?"  She said no.  So I asked what was it that came up in the eval that created such a immediate concern.  She was vague in her response.  You know, concerning things made her concerned.  And also, things beyond her ken, more in the field of psychiatry. 

I kind of shrugged, yk, because OK.  Mari had some more questions about remanding his son to an inpatient psychiatric facility and then I asked questions, most of which were procedural and about the facility. 

I specifically asked if they would have a bed.  Those words actually came out of my mouth.  "You want us to go here, but will they do the intake evaluation even if they do not have a bed, because if we are going right there, I want to be sure this is where we should go."

Go, go now.  Go.

Whatever.  We weren't doing anything anyhow.  You know, except eating dinner and planning for a long weekend of Nutcracker shenanigans.  So we went.  It was actually quite near our house, on the other end of the world from the Children's Hospital.  We were nervous, but OK.  I feel better about committing my child while I am not super-fucking pissed-off at him, because this way it is a hospitalization, not an imprisonment; assistance, not exile.  While we waited for the valet to take our car, I texted Mrs Israeli to let her know.

 

 

The hospital to which we were told to go, go now -- even after we expressed mild procedural concerns -- go, go now-- even after Mari expressed a wanting to know of a vague idea of some kind of hint about the DSM, some shred of information that might bear us aloft on this trip , even after I checked & double-checked that we did not need any paperwork from the one hospital to go to the next -- go, go now-- OMG, DO YOU KNOW THAT A. THE FACILITY DOES NOT PERFORM PEDIATRIC INTAKE EVALUATIONS and B. DOES NOT HAVE A BED FOR THIS CHILD IN THEIR PEDES WARD, EVEN IF THEY DID??????

And the admissions director was super-great, even as he was stupefied by who sent us here and why the hell without calling to make sure there was a bed and what the hell because anyone that answered the phone would have told anyone who called to make sure we could get in there that they do not do pediatric intake?

He asked us to wait, mostly so that he could figure out how & where to straighten this psychologist out, and also because why not?  He was most perturbed by the fact that we had no idea what her findings were that sent us to him.  I offered -- in an uncharacteristically diplomatic way -- that it seemed reasonable to me that she did not want to make a psychiatric diagnosis, as she was not a psychiatrist.  Mr Admissions Director scoffed.  I shrugged.  He took the appropriate numbers from us to investigate and invited us to sit in the reception area.

I spent the next few minutes asking Garçon how things went at the other hospital, during the eval.  He said he did some puzzles, did some math, nothing happened.  I took out the Parent Fact Sheet she gave us while she was telling us about the urgency of remanding him tonight.  I asked him if he said he was going to hurt himself, or any one, any of us?  He said he had not.  I asked him if he said anything delusional or talked about wanting to die or feeling dead?  He said he had not.  I gave him the Parent Fact Sheet, entitled, In A Crisis, with the homicidal/suicidal, delusional, depressed/anxious bullet points, and I said, "Honey, did you say anything that would make them think any of these things?"

He was like Beaver Cleaver.  "No, Mom.  Why would I say those things?"

Time went on, the sun set, finally Mari was on the phone with the psychologist.  She was telling him about how she has just -- since she got his beleaguered voice-mail message -- made arrangements (fool me twice, shame on Tallahassee) for us to go to a different facility, four towns over.  I saw what he was writing and said nothing.  He asked me, cupping the phone, if I had any questions for her.  I asked him if she told him what it was that had her so spun up about him.  He frowned & shrugged.  "Not really," is what he said.

I vowed to get an answer from her & held out my hand.  He said later he knew it was on when I stepped outside.  I asked her why on Earth we were there, when they can not service us, because of all the reasons they could not, when I specifically asked her questions, the accurate answers to which would have prevented this waste of my time.  She told me -- same as she had Mari -- that since Mari called her she made arrangements with this intake person at another psych facility, and I cut her off. 

"You need to tell me why it is you think he should be admitted and you need to be specific, because I am not driving all over tri-state, based on your vague concerns.  I gave you the courtesy earlier and now I am wasting my time, and you blew it."

I swear to God, sometime in the next two minutes, the words "Seeing as he is not at this time in crisis" came out of her mouth. 

What did you just say?

I mean, really?  Since we have been home, I asked Mari, did I hallucinate the part where she told us we had to go right away?  To have him evaluated right away?  He said, waving the Parent Fact Sheet at me, "It says In A Crisis right at the top of this!"

 

Man.  I swear to God.  I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba. 

"You are telling me he is not in a crisis, which is something we already knew, because we live with him, but knowing that, especially, we took you at yr word and believed that something dark was revealed which was truly awful and now I am out here, wasting my time, and we are all tired and my daughter is dancing in the goddamn Nutcracker in two weeks and Thanksgiving is in a few days and we should all be in bed and you think this is going to help our family thrive?  Are you serious?"

She tried to turn it around on the facility to which she sent us, and told me that she could not believe that they could not accommodate us.  I was so mad, it was like, yk, Incompetent Boob, please meet PMS. 

"They do not even have pediatric intake eval here.   Even if we'd had a psych eval done in your office before we set out -- they do not have a bed in their facility at this moment.  They are full.  And we are not having a crisis!"

I mean, it was like she prescribed prime rib and then sent us to an ice-cream parlor.  What the hell?  Then she started with a lot of bluster about this other facility and their policies and blur blur and mercifully, because God is so good, Mr Admissions Director came out to smoke a cigarette.  And I said, "Would you like to talk to him, Dr?"  and she said, "Yes, because I had information from -- " and I cut her off.

"Don't tell it to me, because I don't care about it.  Shhh, good-bye."

Then I gave him the phone.  They sorted it out, procedurally, and we are going to have Thanksgiving and The Nutcracker and then rendezvous with the psychiatric hospital.  We are going to do it civilized, with a packed bag and things to take, and pick some time where we can come visit a lot.  Garçon has never even spent one night away from us.  And then we will see.

There is so much more, but honestly, we still have telephones in this world.  

Remember back when I wrote that every fucking time we collide with one of these "experts" fucking it up, it is a galvanizing shot in our collective arm?  Yes.  So that is good.  People are prowling around the house, feeling a little quiet glimmer of camaraderie.  Good God.             

lost time is never found again

Weekends are busy: busy, busy, busy.  I am, in fact, using my extra hour to blog.

 

I remade that cobbler last week, it still wasn't any good.  Let us use the image to draw us into the history of this blog, if we could travel back in time, topically, for a bit.

 

I am afraid any rejoinding commentary on the Occupation will not be any good, either.  Frankly, they were a lot more compelling before they started to run afoul of the law.  I mean, here is the thing:  if they are not protesting anti-vagrancy laws, they should go the fuck home when asked.  It does not diminish their message to only protest from dawn to dusk.  In fact, as the weather changes it bolsters the presence insofar as it means everyone left their respective shelters to roll around in the streets.  The endless, mountain-man, 24-hour camping quality of it is childish and stupid and predicated by the tedious endlessness of Facebook's 24-hour exhibitionism.

I read somewhere -- I forget where now -- where a participant talking about being rousted from the city plaza in Oakland drew a parallel -- an homage, if you will -- to the Wisconsin protests and their endlessness.  But here is the thing:  Public and endless access on-demand to the Wisconsin Capitol Building is a right written into the Wisconsin State Constitution.  That is how that happened there.  That is why there was such righteous calling-out about the ejections and evacuations.  That is why the camping out on the grounds.

Is this sort of constitutional access granted to citizens of California, lingering around Oakland?  Perhaps.  It is certainly possible; the long arm of Wisconsin's law certainly attempted to abrupt the rights of its citizens during those dark days of winter.  I do not know about California, nor Tennessee, nor Georgia, I do not live there; but if I were protesting there, I would take a moment to investigate it and figure it out. 

Furthermore, whatever anyone's Constitutional accessibility may or may not be, there are some shocking procedural issues with this grouping.  In every pre-teargas account I read from the tear-gassed, every one said the police issued a warning akin to Leave now or you will get hurt. 

What that means -- allow me, please, given my long history alongside some of this country's fiercest law-enforcement personnel -- is tear gas and rubber bullets.  I mean, just like a blazing inferno and the red truck with the flashing lights means a big hose and splashing water.  It is procedural; it is not a judgment call.

Then!  I saw a photo, in the NYT last week -- speaking of my hometown -- of some dumb fucks in Chicago, refusing police orders to clear [wherever] and they were standing up!  Linking arms!  Ok, a bunch of someones did not pass their Rules for Radicals reading test!  For God's sake!  It is written in stone!  When you want to passively resist, when you want to peacefully protest,

(and that is what all the whining from Oakland was -- We were passive, we were peaceful, meow meow meow, blur blur blur!)

you lie the fuck down on the ground. 

It is Protesting 101.  Protests for Babies.  If you have a baby, you have seen this very protest!  The one where they fall the Earth and hold like a stone?  That one.  People lying on the ground can not be fired upon:  that is procedural, it is not a judgment call.  This is America, neither procedure nor judgment call will have tanks roll over you, no worries.  But, God!

 

So!  That is where I am at with the Occupation.  They need to figure out what they want and whose life they are going to throw a wrench in to get it.  Because I am pretty sure it was not the lives of all those people in Greenwich Village last week.  Also, there needs to be some kind of centralized administration for this effort, because -- as seen with the AK-47 issue in Atlanta and the rocks + sticks + breakage in Oakland -- at this time, in this way, anyone can say "Oh, yah!  We're totally with them, innit?"  They need something to say who is in and who is not.  I get it, "But Paperwork is a Mark of the Beast!" Yeah, yeah, yeah, grow up.

 

Or, go completely sideways.  Ok, I would be remiss if I did not get back to the smart input of adorable people, here:

 

Bettina said, "Yes, yes, yes."

 Which is very positive and I will tuck under my arm as carte blanche to go on.

Becky said, "I agree that OWS is not itself the change we want to see in the world, but I don't think the bare chested drum circle guys would say that it is either. I guess I am more optimistic about it, I think it is something. It's early days, but I don't think we should hold its inchoateness against it. I'm interested to see what develops, and I do think this could be the start of the true populist mobilization we've been wondering about/hoping for. Could be, hoping." 

Ok, I agree with you that the bare-chested drummer boys neither think this is the change they would like to see.  However, I think that the whole torque of this Occupation is that the group en masse wants something to be done, not that they would do something.  The most cogent criticism I have read about the Occupation centers around the fact of their entitlement; that they seem to feel as if their very presence should inspire reparations.  When that is coupled with the galling kind of procedural ignorance they feel free to have ... I exchanged about this very briefly at fewer than 140 characters with sweetiepie Charlie, and I had to stop, because I can not abide endless 140-character ranting in a stream, but let us think of, for example, the Greensboro lunch-counter sit-ins.  What did they want?  Lunch.  What did they get?  Nothing.  Why did they remain?  Implacably asking for lunch.  Did they roll out a mat and sleep there?  Of course not.  Were they bare-chested?  Holding musical instruments?  Stinky?  No, of course not:  it was lunchtime.  Did they risk real trouble and real injury?  Absolutely.  The stakes were high.  The messages were clear. 

Becky, let us roll your populist movement point over to piggyback onto my engagement of Marsha.

 

Marsha said, "I'm also interested in how this will play out. Not as optimistic, though, and a wee bit cynical about the current state of the matter. If someone can secure a donation of wild-caught salmon for the family dinner surely the tools and materials needed to winterize a few score homes amongst the at-risk would be a small matter, right? And actually demonstrate this "community action" about which we're hearing so much?"

Marsha, I do not know anything about wild-caught salmon.  Does this mean they are pescatarians?  Did the General Assembly approve this callous act of speciesism?  Oh, hahahaha.

Seriously, though.  You know, we have seen a lot of civil-rights-times photos this year.  It started at Toledo's Museum of Art, which had a bunch of photographs from the sanitation workers' strike and it kind of wrapped up most recently at the Library of Congress before a series of photographs from the March on Washington.  It was one of those things, yk, where you have seen an image over and over (the aerial imagery from the Mall on that day) and then all of a sudden, you put it in its real context, like a key in a lock.  It was staggering. 

What I got around to thinking, while I was standing there taking it all in, was about how Martin Luther King was a citizen-at-large -- I think this was during the debt-ceiling standoff and the attendant grumbling over Obama.  I was thinking of how during Obama's campaign, everyone was so excited and whatever and he speaks so well and will.i.am and whatever, and that is all fine and good, but Barack Obama is a politician.  His position as the President of the United States is compromised at best. 

How, I wondered, have we gotten here, where we are looking only to politicians to craft our rhetoric, to reflect our best back to us?  Where it feels like the vast majority of Americans deride the benefits of organized labor, of medical care for our own people, of taxing corporations and having industrial work inside our own borders ...

Obviously, the kind of organizational work taken on by King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Steven Biko, Nelson Mandela, etc, is hazardous.  But I think there is more to it.  I think that nowadays, Martin Luther King, Jr would be a blogger or have a show on teevee.  Then people would listen and be filled with endorphins of righteousness and then they would go to sleep.  So, it is fine with me that these kids are out in the streets, but they need to not be idiots about it.  Instead of rejecting Congressman John Lewis because he is a politician, they need to look back, further, and consider the road he walked to get there.  They need to think bigger-er.  Populist-er.  Smarter and harder.  Read a book about Dorothy Day, for a start.

 

Everly-delightful Anthony offers this, at great & edible length:

I think the problems of the US aren't so much not enough people doing good things, but ideological. And that they're ideological, they're also structural. (Actually that's a bit arse backwards Marxism but I digress).
One of the things OWP has done well is to identify the 1%. And it's not top hatted capitalists but a very specific group who a) in the balance don't seem to produce anything of net value (finance, private sector bureaucrats) b) have hoovered up practically all the growth in national wealth over the past 3 decades c) seem to also do very nicely out of the government thankyouverymuch. And it seems that most of the structural changes have been to advance the interests of this at the expense of the rest of the nation. They're not middle class and it's not trickling down anytime ever.
So yeah you really do need a New Deal because it had everything that fair (and successful) economies should have - investment in infrastructure and education, trust in government, belief in taxes, reasonable income distribution and beating the shit out of fascists. And if there's going to be consent, then you need to shift attitudes and for this you need propaganda and OWS seems to have occupied not only physical space but also media space.
Can they keep this up? I dunno. It's a tough call. Even science seems to have trouble getting itself heard these days. Could they be helping the homeless? Sure, a few of them probably do but how much more can they do than say a decent national mental health care system, support with housing, and employment for a skilled workforce?
As Morrisey said of Band Aid:
"The whole implication was to save these people in Ethiopia, but who were they asking to save them? Some 13-year-old girl in Wigan! People like Thatcher and the royals could solve the Ethiopian problem within ten seconds"

My OWS shopping list, a few of which they've done
- support and involve unions, they've go their faults but the 5 day working week didn't just fall out of the sky
- make the community a microcosm of the community you'd like. Is there democracy, are people listened to, are people helped and cared for, is there learning and discussion, is there tolerance?
- involve and communicate with the larger community. Leverage the smaller demographic of people who can hang out in square with the stories and the involvement of the wider community.
- ban drumming

 I do think we could use a new New Deal here in the U.S., sure, but we are not going to get it any time soon.  Never, not from these people, not now.  No one is going to systemically give anyone anything.  It is sad and bad, but it is not going to happen here.  Instead of running up against the system to win the right to sleep outside for a long, long time, the focus really needs to be about something bigger, like you wrote there, like I wrote then.  There are people who are willing to step into a paradigm shift.  Not bare-chested drummers, no.  Neither politicians.  But lots and lots of people -- let's call them the 90th through the 99th percentiles -- who are aware of the unfair distribution of resources and looking for a way to help build the bridge over that gap. 

So, could these aimless people in the parks galvanize themselves to think bigger?  Act literate?  Fill out paperwork?  File for 501(c)(3) status?  Bring a Doctors Without Borders kind of an operation to sit on the edge of our fruited plain?  Develop a program to apprentice the willing in a trade?  Phone-bank?  Fill a database?

People like to say, "Well, if you think [xyz], then you should take the initiative!  You should do it!"  Bollocks.  Volunteering, yes!  But do we have to do everything?  The whole thing?  I am not the one sitting on my thumbs in a park day after day. 

Like so very many of the 90-99%, I am really quite busy getting on with it.  But I will tell you this:  if Mr & Mrs Sloane got a call from the Occupy Wall Street Committee to Restore America's Awesomeness asking us to write a check for one of their programs, or come down to work a phone bank for 2 hours next Saturday, or canvas for a Saturday afternoon to raise awareness about the movement and what it was doing, not what it was yammering about -- you effing betcha.  Especially mounted against the backdrop of these dreary phone calls starting t0 roll in about the Obama re-election campaign.  A little outsidery, paradigm-shiftery, make-it-happeny, extra-commie energy would be welcome.  Exciting! 

 

The Nutcracker mines mean we eat a hands-off Cypriot dish called tava almost every weekend.  The weekends we are not eating kokkinisto.  In any case, Mari is swooning in the wake of the lamb-shoulder's return.

Omg, Nutcracker mines!  Omg, volunteering!  The Nutcracker BattleAxe accosted me last week, "Don't tell me you don't have time!" she said.  Then she went on in this long-suffering way about all the things she has in her life besides her martyred Nutcracker BattleAxe Volunteerism.  Fine, right, but no.  I waited till she was finished talking -- pre-emptively taking me to task! for a demand she had not yet articulated!-- and smiled sweetly at her.

"I would never say I don't have time.  I'll just tell you I don' t want to!"  It was chirpy and just-right.  In her stunned silence, I slipped away.  It was almost like the time Medusa had to look in the mirror.  Yes!  Gros bisous, mon choux!

      

metaspherical

I hate my calendar guy to be stuck on the previous month, so even though I have been suffering from Becky-itis, I forge ahead.  I thought about NaBloPoMo, for a sec, 'tis the season, but even if I use Alex as a model, meh.  It's funny, I did it last year because I thought I had such a great time when I did it three years ago, and then after about a week I remembered:  No, a great time was not had.  My earnest examination of the Jolie-Aniston conflict remains a low point in this blog, for me.  Also, now that Mari is working from home much of the time again, I mostly just want to lie around in my chonies listening to Wilco + The Beastie Boys, showing off my conjugal zeal.

 

I made panisse today, to go with our boring soup.  They are pretty.  They are also pretty easy, but people who can eat croutons and beignets and hot-water cornbread can live a full life without ever having these cross their lips.

Anyhow.

 

I was hard-cooking half of our last dozen eggs this afternoon, the beginnings of egg salad, thinking of sending a wry text-message to Fantastic Mr Fox about how since last we talked about my family's egg consumption (five days ago, when he was in a position to pick up some local food for me), we were down by three-and-a-half dozen!

(Four dozen eggs, he scoffed then.  Four?  then he laughed for real, plucking the $20 from my light grip.) 

But my handheld was in another room.  So, I was thinking of his forty-eight-egg amazement, while I frowned over the quality and capacity of the bubbles in the water -- is this a simmer or a boil here? -- and I noticed the price tag on the egg carton read $3.25. 

I remembered those eggs -- those particular eggs from that particular farm -- being $3 the last time I bought them, but I guessed I was wrong.  But I had instructed Mr Fox that I would like him to pick up 4 dozen of "the 3-dollar eggs."  And yet!  Lo, on my kitchen counter, the eggs that were on my mind!  Those are what he brought me!  Even though my instructions were flawed!  He stepped into the breach and bought the closest, most-likeliest item!  Then brought it back to me!  There was no confusion nor chaos! Nary a cellular-phone call about how no $3 eggs existed in the marketplace!  No empty-handed return with the mournful tale of the missing eggs!

I know for a fact there are four of you reading this who may be a little stroked-out in yr chairs right now at the very idea of such luxury.  I know!  He is like an electric boyfriend. 

Mari was going to ask him to go on a little neighborly outing to chainsaw up a fallen tree -- yk, for firewood -- the idea being we could share it between our households.  I was just in the middle of murmuring, Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you two to pass the time when I remembered something Algren said last week.

"Oh, that sounds like a fine way for you -- mmmphrrgl!  No!"  I threw out my hand to Mari, ready to grab his forearm if I needed to make him see my point.  "You can't do that!  I saw this years ago on an episode of Law & Order!" I clung to him a little, fretfully. 

"No accidents, honey!"

Seriously!  Didn't you see that episode?  You should tell me all about it because I only remember the germ of conflict in it.  They went rock-climbing?  You know?  Ahaha!

Omigod, speaking of Becky-itis's irate-message component:  No to all of you!  Mr Fox is a grownup!  He is my age!  If he were a child, I would never think he was foxy!  Does anyone know anyone anymore?

veronica wiped his face

I feel like I want to respond cogently to the comments of Becky & Marsha from yesterday's post, but really, you know?  I just want to write about my excellent life, which is also boring, but not to me.

There were cranberries in Wednesday's CSA chare.  Well, ok, but really?  I had them lined up for a baked good -- like Fish says, Baked goods: it's right in the name! -- but was not sure if they needed extra handling, so was stalling. 

Last night I picked up a copy of the Thanksgiving Living.  This morning, I was flipping through it after the gymgoing, dawdling in the super-quiet before the children awaken -- I love 5-a.m. gymgoing because it means I can get ready twice in peace + quiet --  and there it was: a magical recipe for Martha's Cranberry Clafoutis.  Yes.  Post-shower, alors!

 

The berries bob around so cutely.

It was a good clafoutis recipe.  A lot of them are too-too eggy, like I am eating a quiche (different dish!) or too-too cakey (zzZzZzzz).  This was just right down the optimal-custardy middle.  Great.

 

Mari was sad, because he doesn't like custard.  But people need to know that after I brought it to his conference-call side topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream,  his bowl was cleaned.  Then he told me about how he did not like custard, as if I give a fuck.  I told him this is why I have never knit him a pair of socks. 

This morning at the gym, it felt like I was dialing it in, but I am kind of sore already.  Great pâté, gotta motor.

blob

Of course, scarcely a day after I formed a concrete thought about feeling like I did not want to buy pumpkins, the Notorious Greengrocer had them in a great size 3/$10, and in the smaller, decorative size at 3/$5.  Then there were plants, also.  Houseplants, not seasonal, outdoor pot-tricks. 

 

I could scarcely contain myself at the thought of a 9-inch asparagus fern for $4, but I did, remembering all those asparagus ferns I fell for, hard, before they died.  I tried to tell myself this time would be different, that they would be ideally-located in a humid part of our house, with all the endless boiling, and all.  But good sense prevailed, so: pothos.  Whatever.  Unkillable, so fine by me.  I bought a couple more to take over to the sweet, dollhouse-living gals.   

 

This used to be where I had those two 3-tiered hanging baskets, the bottom tiers of which I have repurposed.  I initially installed them to hold, yk, onions & whatnot.  But it is bright enough in that spot that onions kept sprouting, so bright enough for a plant.  If I can get the watering right. 

Mr Fox keeps wanting to know if we will go with him to Occupy someone's Street, north or south, but I feel like, yk, no.  Hullo, Nutcracker?  But also, I am not interested in it.  I am not actually in the pursuit of a whole-whole lot of knowledge about it, but based on what I do know it seems as if it is a lot of wasted energy.  I am not even talking about the regrettable drumming.  All those people, milling around, full of presence, bearing the weight of who we all are and whatever we can each bring to something and ... they are hanging out in a park.

More than that, a lot of people are acting like this is a new kind of holding this space that exists at this time, that this is a wildly and freshly-inventive representation of the so-called 99%.  It is not.  (Omg, "Hooverville," is what Mr Fox softly interrupted to say to me when I was trying to articulate this earlier.  Gentle Reader, I was super-glad in that moment I only have sex with strangers.)  They seem to be lacking a lot of historical context, about a great many things -- all the sucking on Michael Moore's cock but the wholesale repudiation of Congressman Lewis?  But, ok, I am digressing. 

The thing of it is, it reminds me, in a lot of ways -- the volume of people, the willingness to submit to a gritty kind of existentialism, the current unemployment rate -- of the aggregated circumstances that led to the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps,  the National Youth Administration, Rural Electrification, the rest.  That period in American history produced things which endure, things that represent a chorus in time, a physical manifestation of the beautiful concert of humanity present in their overrated human microphone. 

I am not saying that there should be a demand for some kind of top-down New Deal offer put forth by Washington.  There will never be.  The quiet desperation of the masses is only half of the story of the New Deal.  If you know your U.S. history, you know the other part -- like a hand in a glove -- is that FDR essentially called a meeting with all of the nation's barons and said, "You get to choose how you part with your money: you can write a check now, or you can wait for someone to loot your shit later."  Billionaires must have been smarter then.  Perhaps they knew a lot of history.

What I am trying to say is that I wish that the Occupiers would find a way to reflect the values they claim to embody.  Yeah, yeah, I get it, they are not hanging out in a park!  They are living joyfully and interdependently in their tent cities with libraries and solar panels and potlucks and cell-phone stations and haircuts and whatever, but it just feels to me -- if this is really about social justice, and not just about being a 4-year revolutionary -- like it needs to be less insular.

It needs to think bigger-er:  teaching children how to read, repairing the broken shit in apartments in which are residing old people and the disabled, training the elderly how to use iPads, running a mobile hospital, something more tangible.  Something that allows others to be involved in other ways besides a physical presence in a public square somewhere -- by donating more goods or more services or more professional credentials or whatever .... even just cold, hard cash.  I hear Warren Buffett is dying to write a check to someone! 

I mean, people in wooden necklaces mumble this all the time so much that it has become a cliché, but it really fits here, that I wish they would be the change they want to see in the world.  Gil Scott-Heron wrote America's revolution will not be a melting pot, but a toilet bowl,  and it is kind of that bad right now.  But this show of protest just seems like so much meandering in a passive resistance, bottom-feeding off of the shitty, dominant culture everyone already knows we live in.  This is a mass of people with time & energy who are kind of letting go of the opportunity to show people what can really be taken on, when we take back what is ours, what is everyone's.  But, whatever.  I know, I have now bored you to death.  Yes. 

I hacked out an apple cobbler this morning.  It was OK.  If I make it again & it gets better, you will be the first to know.  Bisous.

part of you pours out

I like to think that I would never use all-caps, but I kind of wish I would in order to graphically represent all that is afoot here.

• Mum-smuggling!
• New-car-learning! 
• Nutcracker-rehearsing!
• Husband-alluring!
• Locust-leaf-vacuuming!
• Apple-wrangling! 

There are a lot of apples this year.  So many, that we are kind of avoiding each other in the neighborhood so that, yk, "Oh, Femme, thank you so much for bringing those deeply-discounted mums!  Would you like some ap--" 

As they turn toward me again, there is but a puff of smoke where I used to be standing, holding a flat of chrysanthemums.  It is like what people talk about with zucchini season, which was decidedly not the case this year, with the squash blight, which I think extends to winter squash, because pumpkins seem quite costly this year; more money than I want to pay for food we will not even eat.   

I was actually going to just have an overflowing fruit-bowl still-life, but when I approached it, I was taken in again by the little bird I picked up at Anthropologie.  No, the other one ... discount Anthropologie ... whatsit?  Mmmmmmm.  No.  Well, it's from there.

I love it, so much.  You put little 3-inch pillars in there & it throws the speckly light all around, you know.  I wanted one of the concept for a while, but never fancied the reality.  Then: it was a little blue bird right before me. 

I keep choosing that same blue color in pottery over and over, like it means a thing.  Blue.   Omg, I love that album.  It reminds me of 1994, all of it, always.  Omigod, holidays!  Look at how you are still here!  Go, shoo!  You make me feel too reverberative!     

  

If you want me I'll be in the bar.  Just this morning I told Fille an excellent story to make the point of how her bedroom bears an unflattering resemblance to my apartment in one particularly memorable morning after a night of intensely commemorative + place-marking blackout drinking -- end tables all askew, phone off the hook, sheets of paper scattered everywhere, the fridge wide open, a kitchen table lying on its side ... but contact lenses cleaned & firmly seated in their case; I was miraculously unbruised.

It is funny to me, how I could wake up not remembering anything, but -- even when I pieced it together later --will never forget each morning after, every plush, vacant interval of know-nothingness. 

Somehow, both children knew what blackout drinking was.  I questioned this & they both shrugged, then stated plaintively, "We read about it."  I refrained from saying, OK, but no, really how?!

Fille did want to know, last week, Why is there a Columbus Day if he was so evil and stuff?  Which I have never said, that he was evil & stuff, believing wholly as I explained to her: If you want to live in a town with a great salumeria and a bakery capable of torta ricotta, you have to let it go, let the Columbus flag fly.  Never mind there are a million other reasons to parade with pride.

 

Let them sort it out amongst themselves.  

 

I know, you're all Wait, is Alex guest-blogging?  No.

 

piece of cake

Mari replaced the oven thermostat this weekend, after which repair I was immediately inspired to apply myself to the task of replacing a major appliance.  In my head, mostly, but before -- when the oven was nonfunctioning -- I was unable to even consider such a step.  (I think -- based on a cursory pre-shop --  a major problem is going to be getting the appliance upgrade I want in white.)  

Then I was inspired to bake a cake. 

 

Actually, I had moved into cake's space already. 

There were the prettiest Italian plums at the market on Saturday, when I was on my way home with my Extra Girl.  I bought them, intending to cap the exciting-yet-easy company dinner with the David Tanis plum cake.  It is a nice, easy cake, it would offset the richness of the lamb, and be a staid, sober, non-sugary end to the day.  It is totally the cake you want yr child to have a big piece of before bedtime.  Also, it does not hold well, so better to have extra people to eat it more quickly.    

I totally had all this come together in my head and not once did I remember about the oven being broken.  Until we got home and I mentioned my plan to Mari.  If you can believe it, he did not instantly redirect himself to the repair!  I know. 

 

Today is rainy & chilly, with lots of barefootedness, desultory paperworking, obligatory catching up & relationship building with my favorite + best, taking phone calls from cranky people with mandolins, and leftover soup for lunch.  Today my oven works.  Good, because after the bestie catch-up (so great!) and halfway through the lunchtime mandolin encounter (so wtf?!), I needed a piece of cake.  It was too early for a gimlet. 

 

It will again be too early tomorrow morning, but I think this simple, high-protein cake works for breakfast, too.

Italian Plum Cake 
adapted from A Platter Full of Figs, etc by David Tanis

Melt 4tbsp butter.  Cut parchment to fit the bottom of a 10-inch, springform pan, and use more butter on all of that, too.  Turn the oven to 350. 

Slice a buncha regular Italian plums into thick slices.  His recipe calls for 2lbs, but I barely used 1/2lb.  (I used 11.)  If you don't know, you can just cut around the pit & push it out, like a knothole.  (I did not know that, once, apologies if you were born with the knowledge.) Set the slices aside.  

Put one cup whole, unskinned almonds in the food processor with 1/2 cup sugar (you know what I like:) rrrr-rrr-rrrr-rr-rrrr till finely ground.  It is going to be a lot of rrrr but keep pulsing & checking to make sure you are not making almond butter.  Add 1/3 cup flour (I used millet, because it is delicately-flavored and soft) and keep whirling until it is all whirled together.  Let it be.

In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs long enough to mix the whites + yolks.  Mix in 1/2 cup milk (I used "So Delicious" coconut today; I have used goat's in the past -- this is a love-the-milk-you're-with situation) until uniform.  Add  the 4tbsp melted butter.  Stir and stir.  Kind of sift over the almond mixture while whisking & forking & stirring to make a smooth batter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan.  Arrange the plums on top.  It turns out a pretty cake, so you will not waste yr time by trying to arrange them prettily. 

On the other hand, there is a pretty good chance you will break it on the dismount, so don't knock yrself out.  Bake for 40-45 minutes -- watch the edges to tell you when it is done.  And the toothpick-test, if that is yr thing. 

I forgot -- until I pulled this from the oven -- that the last time I made this cake I thought about next time pouring the batter over the fruit instead of placing the fruit atop.  Next time.      

bun

Ms Minty was in São Paulo a couple of weeks ago, and she let on about her exposure to pão de queijo, which, you know, yes.  I had this long talk with Sal, while I was using one of his two (!) blenders, about whether or not I had ever eaten these as a girl, like did I have some long history with them, because I "dated that Brazilian guy."

"No, I didn't," I corrected him.

"You did.  You went out with a Brazilian guy," he insisted.

"I did not.  I went out with 4 Colombians, a Costa Rican, and two guys from the Pyrenees, one French, one Spanish."  I was irritated, a little.  "Also, a guy from Buenos Aires I completely fucked over, ugh."

There was a long monologue of certainty, filled with error, intended to refresh my memory of the Brazilian suitor.  It was only irritating because I knew for a fact I was right.  I mean, it wasn't irritating because someone else was telling me about my romantic history.  No.

Just recently, Eve and I were remembering some event from our past and when the name of a guy who was a necessary part of it came up, I said to her, "I forgot all about him!  Omigod, did we have sex?"

"No," she said.  Then she reconsidered.  "Well, you know ... I don't think you went all the way."

"Wow, ummmmmm," I racked my brain.  "I dunno."  (Meanwhile, Mari: completely agog.)  "That guy's file is really smudged up.  I'll have to take yr word for it, Evie."

But the point is that the long, biographical testimonial to Proof of Brazilian Suitor drew to a close, finally, and I said, "No, that guy was Welsh."  Honestly.     

Anyhow, these cheesy tapioca buns are a great idea, even better if everyone is sodden-upon from museum-going in the Irene-beset nation's capitol.

 
 Stock photo, from my own food studio, lol.

 They are cute, aren't they?  Like Kogepan.

I used sheeps' milk feta, if you want to know. 

Anyhow.  Oh, hurricane!  Whatever!  My God!  Where to start?  How to pick a lede? 

We are not at home, obvsly, at the tail end of some great, quality, earthshakey visiting at Sal's.  Friday afternoon came and Sal was home from the office when the children & I returned from museum-going. 

"I think you should leave the children with me and take your husband to the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City.  They have a fabulous, Canceled-MLK-Dedication rate of $129!"

I demurred, Sal insisted, etc.  I resisted firmly and with finality on the grounds that I had every intention of seeing the Stella/Kandinsky exhibit at the Phillips Saturday morning, plus also I had no desire to pay for parking and after last time, I just wanted to ditch the car and walk hand-in-hand on my romantic getaway.  Sal made noises about a downtown hotel and I put the kibosh on him.  Then we all four went to meet up with Mari at the Hirshhorn for the Friday Sculpture Jam.

Saturday, we were half-lazing, half-headed out to duPont Circle, when Sal began again in the campaign of our Saturday to Sunday romantic getaway.  I allowed that it would be taken under consideration when we returned.  When we did return, I announced in my hyper-organized way that after a hot dinner, when people could think clearly, we would make some decisions. 

Right after dinner, Sal's roof started leaking.  Omg, quelle horreur!  Measures needed to be taken and it is a good thing that Sal was not home dealing with this crisis -- getting up on the roof, nailing and fussing in a driving rain, mopping and swabbing and relocating porous items -- with only my dumb kids for company.

After we got that sorted out -- and thank God Sal drank down the bottle of vodka soon thereafter, because I was feeling pretty susceptible -- we were pretty wired and wondering what else we would have to fare.  Not to mention fretting a little about our own house, faraway, sitting in the path of the storm.  We replaced our roof entirely 10 years ago.  We live at the top of a hill.  I was worried about a power outage and what of the chest freezer's wares.  (Everything is fine there.  And here!)

We tucked ourselves all in on the sofa sectional to watch National Treasure, and everyone wanted something high in carbohydrates to eat.  More buns!  With blueberry jam! was the most-repeated idea.

But we did not have more feta.  Also, I had already chucked the jam into Sal's freezer.  And while I had heard tapioca buns are interpreted in Korean food with no cheese, just sesame seeds, I was nervous to leave out the fatty binding of cheese in a pinch.

I mean, they would probably just turn out like a popover, right, sure but ... do you know what has cheesily-similar properties?  Chocolate.  Fatty, solid till it melts, etc.  I swapped it in, gram for gram. 

 

They were ok.  A little less puffy, but that could have just as easily been due to my distractability.

They reminded us of chocolate-glazed crullers.  We discussed this, the three of us, long into the night, mesmerized by the endless Irene coverage, listening for the pattering of water on our strategically-placed Mylar blanket-carpet; a first-alert system for the failure of the Great Hurricane Roof Hack. 

It was not the richness of a cruller, but the chewy, slightly-sticky texture and this slight reminder of  a cruller's egginess -- more similar to a churro.  I could have done a better job grating the chocolate, but I do not think I will repeat. 

 

The chewy, totally-unphotogenic, mochi-ness of the interior is the same as when it was cheesy.  But the sweetness of the chocolate is not enhanced by the bun and the bun is not brought forth the same as with the salty unctuousness of the cheese, but anyhow.  Maybe with a fattier, saltier chocolate? (Valrhona.)  Yes. 

If there were a recipe, I would totally dedicate it to secretly Santos.  xo         

gen 2:2

I just read an assertion somewhere, I can not remember where ... I guess it could have been in a crazypants comment section somewhere about one of those kooky Republican girls, but the assertion was that Catholics do not study Scripture, and I think it is probably a sign of early-onset dementia that I can not recall where I was reading, because I opened & shut my mouth like a carp for probably about 9 minutes.  I guess that depends on who schooled you. I mean fuck it, it would have made my reading load in high school a lot lighter, that is for g.d. sure.  But being from Chicago, as I have long known, is not like being Catholic much of anywhere else.  Except the rest of the west coast of Lake Michigan.

Anyhow.  For yr persual:

 

Lounging, squeezily.

 

 
 

Chard in the standard Eggplant Dish. (Excellent!)

 

 
 

Hairs cut!

 

 

 Relaxing, spa-backyard, pebble-walking!  For health!

Fille said a funny thing on Friday while I was getting her settled into the big pedicure chair -- long before she told me she thought Ballet Town's salon pedicures better (and I agree!).  The owner had already indulgently brought her a cup of water and turned on the chair's vibra-massaging function.  I was getting a magazine for her to read and, after rifling through the options, handed her a big, current issue of Bazaar.  "Here, this one has a lot of photos," I told her.

"Oh, good," she said.  "Because the worrrrds in all those magazines always are like [whining voice], Blah, blah, blah.  Why do I think I'm so ugly?  Blur, blur, blur." 

I am pretty sure that is 100% nurture.  I just want to keep her with us forever, even as we know she is too excellent to hoard. 

Hoard.  Good God, I watched an epi of Hoarders on Netflix-Insta yesterday and oh, man!  Heartbreak!  Squeamishness!  I hope people everywhere are finishing off a relaxing Sunday. If you have insiders' information on Monday, please do tell!  xox 

soleil. solanum.

After I secured all of August's eggplant, I worried about what I would do with it. 

 

 (Besides still-life photos, obvsly.)

I forgot, first of all, that our oven was on the fritz.  (Mari is going to replace the thermostat this weekend, but made me promise ("promise") that I would make The Choosing Our Next Oven Project my second-highest priority.)

Second, I misplaced the knowledge that I would never turn it on to do any kind of eggplant-cooking anyhow, because the A/C is on and that makes no sense.

So, obvsly -- and this was a 30-second thought process that happened on the way to the car after leaving the market with 6 or 7 pounds of eggplant -- I would throw them on the grill.

 

After that, I remembered it was way too hot to stand over a grill that has fire in it!

 

Thankfully, it cooled down enough yesterday that I could think about it.  Today it was even cooler + overcast and I was all set to take care of it.  I would put them on the grill, cover it, and then make baba ganoush.

After this monumental (& certainly deeply-interesting to everyone) decision, I found out we only had the tiniest skosh of tahini left in the can.  Uh-oh.  We are also down to our last head of garlic.  Whose house is this?  Oh, mine.  This is the house where I have been feeding the children hummous and Israeli salad for pretty much every meal for a couple of weeks.  Hm.

There may have been a little bit of pouting.

I remembered a dish I made a while ago, for a potluck's meze platter.  I looked around for the recipe but could not find it.  I know it is a recipe Claudia Roden put into the world in one of her books, and I am pretty sure (walnuts + Roden) it is Georgian in origin.  I did not want to make the exact dish, anyhow, but just use its broad strokes of eggplant, tahinilessness, the walnuts I always have in profusion, and also parsley.

The original dish I made was much more handsy, with slices of browned eggplant providing a foil for a smear of this walnut spread as anyone went along.  My children never feel as though they have been fed unless a knife + fork + shoveling-action are involved, so I scissored up the slices from the grill & tossed them with what was now more of a dressing. 

 

Later I realized I had three large eggplant from our CSA in the fridge from yesterday's pickup.  Oh.  I can do it again, though.  So can you.

Kind of an Eggplant Thing for You to Do Without Any Tahini or Much Garlic.
I would like to dedicate this recipe to Anthony Georgeff.

Slice the eggplants lengthwise at about a half-inch thickness.  Brush them with olive oil, if you want (I did not, because we are low on olive oil, too. Hummous! Yoooou!!), and grill until soft.  Flip once.  Or more, whichever.  Do not let them fall into the coals like I did! 

Scissor them into bite-sized strips with yr kitchen shears.  

( I used probably about 2lbs of eggplant.  The rest I left whole for a summertimey, less-cook variation of this dish, dressed with feta, yogurt, lemon juice, olive oil, chopped tomato, a drizzle of honey, minced garlic, chopped oregano, salt & pepper.)

Toss the eggplant pieces with a little red wine vinegar, like maybe 2 tablespoonsful.  Maybe sprinkle on a little salt.  Do your own thing.

Peel & give a little smoosh to a bunch of cloves of garlic.  Warm one tablespoonful of olive oil and throw in the garlic.  Poke it around and do not let it color.  So:  warmed-up oil, bunch of cloves of garlic, heated to the point of fragrance, no browning, no tanning.  Set aside.

Put two handsful of raw walnuts and one handful of parsley into yr food processor.  Rrr-rrr-rr-rrrr, you know, rrrrrrr.  Not too long because you do not actually want nut butter.  Think a kind of pesto-y thought.  

Add the garlic & the cooking oil, another splash of vinegar.  Whir & whir.  Maybe it needs more oil, maybe it needs more vinegar -- figure it out.  Salt it.  Dump it over the eggplant.  Toss.  Garnish with more finely-chopped parsley.  Serve it whenever you want, with whatever, wherever.  Do your own thing.

 

imposing. magnificent. grand.

My favorite part of letting the kids out by themselves is making the maps.  There is one for every occasion. 

 
 

Oh, August!  I know I say this every year, but I always feel like you should be the name for the month of October because August -- you tend not to be so august, in the main.  Or, as I read somewhere, years ago, "August is the Mississippi of the calendar."  Yes.

You do have eggplant in profusion.

 
 

August has January's shoulder-wheeling, grindstone thing, without the respite of early-darkness.  I was tidying up a weird trail of hair elastics + bobby pins today & realized that Fille does not have her dress-code leotard yet for the coming year.  Ballet is going to be a major headache this year -- rubber, meet the road.  Again.   Some more.--  but I will smile & act nice.  I spent some quality time with my face in my palms today envisioning the whole calendar and anyhow. 

Man, she starts en pointe this winter which -- in addition to being an extra hour of class every week -- is just like, No, no, honey, go ahead.  Wreck yr body, baby, we love you! There is a fuckload more about that, but not here.  Dooce did not go first in this way for naught.

Typing this I realize I have not yet forked over her fees for what is now next month's start date.  Mostly because summer session was Garçon and me slowing the car so she could roll out, like an assassin, and while I had good intentions (and blank checks in my Filofax), I forgot.  On the last day I was ... getting a pedicure?  No, haircut, but anyhow. 

I also keep forgetting that our oven is not working.  It is & it is not, although, honestly, it has been 100 degrees for much of the last couple of weeks, so when the fuck am I going to use it?  I made a batch of granola a week or so ago, and found out the thermostat is completely shot and th temperature only soars to 400F.  Oh, ok.

Mari tried to cajole me along and convince me the thermostat is a luxury, which ... I guess, in a way, sure.  400F is a good, solid temperature; I do not bake v much.  Part of me kind of feels like I did about the DIY BlackBerry repair last year, like, yk, Motherfuck it, all this planned obsolescence!  But also, I do not want to enter a Choose Your Own Next Major Appliance Adventure.  I just feel like, yk, we just got our countertops done and we got them done while I was all the while stanuchly resisting a full-on kitchen makeover!  And the thing is, even then, last fall, I wanted a new stove because I would like another burner and I would like some time-it on + off functionality, but I did not want it so much that I wanted to shop for + buy it. 

And now, more than ever, I really do not want to shop for one & buy one, because I do not feel like it and what if I make a rash choice and the one that I get is not the one that I want and then!  I am stuck with it!  All winter and for the next 10 or 12 of them, too?!? 

Now I just want to lie down.  But I am going to the gym instead.  My new gym thing is rowing and then the heavy bag.  iTrain.  Do you know about iTrain?  You should.  Now you do.  It is way better than a trainer because there is not any socializing.  I love Pilates Chick, plus also her work, but the weekly chitter-chatter every single week just wears me out.  We're on a break from her, too. 

À bientôt!       

chains, gang.

I do not have the heart to tell Fille that her eggplant might not come true.  She is so pleased to have acquired it at the plant swap in May, but she is a little lacking in the consistency of watering department.

 

You can see the backyard in the background there.  We had it done over in June.  Simple, plain.  I plan to get the container plants out on the gravel to soften it up & make it less like a prison yard. 

 

It will fit for now, though, because we are getting this: our big next step.  I mean, yk, we always used the straitjacket when he was younger, and of course there are the bed restraints we've used -- shut up, they are humane restraints, it's right in the name -- and then since he has been older, bigger, I say, yk, Hey, babe, just head outside & cool off.

But if he is going to be running away ... not cool.  Measures must be employed.  Plus, it is modular & built to specs, so we are having it built big enough to put the bicycles in at other times.  Excellent in every direction.  Yes.

À bientôt, j'espère!  xoxo

lemon melon

I know, I know.  But things are really busy & what I have time for is a late-July still-life. 

 
 

It reminds me of when the kids were babies -- they must have been one & three -- riding in the back seat, when Garçon sadly handed the watermelon paleta I had given him over to Fifille -- I can't eat this, Fifille, it has lemons in it.  There used to be little bits that burned brighter.

Alex & I were talking a couple of days ago -- so retro to each have the other's voice coming out of our texting device.  I told him I had to go back & write about this kid stuff, but that was like three weeks ago already.  We agreed that, ideally, blogging is just for going forward, man.  Like a shark.  Keep eating, keep moving.  I wish I were an octopus, instead.

Fille is reading Animal Farm, which I am pretty sure is going to take the same shape as Garçon's reading of Old Man & The Sea.  It will seem like a book about animals, chatting.  Like the Arthur show, but with backstabbing.

bowl of cherries

Sal called me from the office this morning, while I was dopily walking in circles, thinking of coffee.

"Don't you miss our fabulous Eva-Gabor hotel suite?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "But we have cherries so here's ok, too."

 

The cat is in "fake" heat again, the kind with real yowling all night and real tomcats trying to gain entry all day.  She is getting her ovarian remnant extracted tomorrow, if they can find it.  Then she will have to stay there a couple of days to get well with no jumping, or licking.  Or if she does lick herself open & exsanguinate, at least it does not have to be in my house where she dies, like Helmet Cat.  Also, that would be a third cat adopted by the Lord.  Fine by me. 

I mean, I like Gracie a lot (we have decided her name is exactly short for "graceful," if you could see her) but honestly, the scooping, the feeding, the caretaking.

Have you seen Oxo's Magically Contained bathroom series?  The plunger?  The toilet brush?  But the plunger, especially.  True love, because ick.  (Let us not now speak of how the plunger is on a platform above a brine of fetid runoff in there, though.  Shh, let me honeymoon.) 

Turtle Mountain's chocolate version of their aseptically-packaged So Delicious Coconut Milk is good, too.

Also, related to things to buy:  Mari asked me, exasperated, Why'd you buy an iPod docking station, exactly?  

I said no.  "No, no.  It is an alarm clock that goes all the way dark," is what I told him.

I never realized such a thing was in existence, until every Hyatt hosting us in the month of April had one, right in the room!  I have not had an alarm clock since ever because I am that girl from the Princess & The Pea, sleepwise.  I tried to find a model from any brand that was not a docking station and also maybe not $70 (because no way did I pay full price for it, yk).  Evidently darkness is not a feature desirable enough to promote, so if there are any fitting that description I could not know.

It has amazing AM radio reception and, hullo?  Baseball in the night?  It is more than anything of which I have ever dreamed. Plus, plus, plus, plus, ne plus ultra xox

compotable

The Israeli's procedure went fine, he neither died while under general anaethesia nor was he paralyzed by a slip of the knife, so ... you know.  It remains to be seen whether or not the procedure lives up to its promise and solves his shadowy ailment, plus there is still ample time for a deadly, antibiotic-resistant infection to set in, but!  For now everything is still and lovely.

The rhubarb compote also went fine.

 

I would give you a recipe, but there is not even a recipe.  Mix 2 pounds of rhubarb with 1 cup of sugar and a splash of lemon juice.  Cover and cook in a 350 oven till stewed soft.  Put it wherever you use your stewed fruits. 

I was thinking last night, while I ate it (plain), Not lemon juice -- brandy!  (Everyone from Wisconsin is saying right now, "Yes! Rhubarb and brandy! Yes!") 

Yes.

 

le weekend

This weekend was more roses, rose admiration. 

 

I said to Mari, when he got home, after not seeing him for 6 days, "Admire our roses."  This is the kind of jocular, pantomiming, schticky bullshit we love to play, because he knows I know he knows (plus, I know) that I actually have little to do with the blooming yield.  I water, and was prescient enough to plant in full sun. 

 

This summer, they are going on the much-heralded Rayford Reddell Rose Diet.  I am two months late with it, but this year's first show got me thinking:  If they look this great naturally ... how much better could they look if I tried?  Yes.  But Mari said to me, kind of excited & amazed, "Look how many buds there still are!"  Yes.  Exciting!  Smells so good. 

Saturday was a. Plant Exchange and b. Baseball Game, with a Big Lunch in-between.

 

Plant exchange was good, bringing a few love-in-a-mist divisions (or devil-in-the-bush for some of you & your outlook, you know who you are), a red columbine, one pink bleeding heart, one tiny startup of a lilac shrub, a strawberry plant (Fille's choice), an eggplant seedling (again), and 3 pink-flowering lilies of the valley. 

We came home from Acreage Town and Mari + Fille put together a compost tumbler while I made lunch.

 

Big Saturday Leisure Lunch is my favorite meal to make.  Grilled lamb chops, first lentil salad of the year, fried potatoes.

 

The lamb was from a butcher I had never used before because when I went to the covered market, my guy was folded up.  Gone!  Eh.  Mari said this lamb tasted fine, but I thought it tasted a little like reconstituted lamb.  Ugh, in the spring?  It should never.

Baseball game was lost, but had post-game fireworks over the river, which always win.  Fireworks are just as big & up-in-the-sky as they are in childhood.  They never change in their relative scale of Oh, wow.  Not many things can lay claim to such endurance in their sameness and magic.

 

Sunday we dropped the children off to their own activities and dragged ourselves quietly to a junior philanthropists' event.  We felt very no rest for the wicked and no good deed goes unpunished about it, at the same time.   There might have been a little sighing, and martyrlike acceptance, is what I am saying.  There was maybe a little beatific eye-rolling, as we may have seen His Holiness Pope John Paul II roll his eyes once or twice.  

Someone who organized a silent fundraising auction for an outfit dear to our hearts solicited a donation from us and we responded.  I guess the donation was generous ("What the hell kind of cheapskates do they usually call on?" was Mari's question.  Ditto.) and so we were warmly invited to the event alongside the auction.  Usually we demur the invites we get to this reception or that opening (unless it is a kids' thing or I get to use my eyelashes on, yk, amphibian conservationists), because I never understand who needs all this formalized gratitude in response to their charitable contribution.  Spend that money on the thing I donated to!

But this invitation was personally extended via a phone call from the director and I felt like saying no would be rude.  Plus, the event was not conjured to thank donors, it was the donors who provided the infrastructure for the event and its ticket-buying attendance.  Most of the donors, we found once there, were also ticket-purchasing attendees, so there was a weird, circle-jerking, hyper-clubby vibe.  It gave us this odd feeling of being there on charity.  Actually, no, no:  that was just me who felt like that.  Mari felt like he was a pillar of society who is always refusing invitations to celebrate his largesse. 

Anyhow.

When we rolled up to the event, I asked Mari to park around the back, away from the entrance, kind of by a tree.  How could he refuse?  Once there, I whipped out my lint roller and asked him to lint-roll all of the cat fur from my black jersey dress.  I had foolishly sat down on a dining -room chair to facilitate Fille putting on my necklace for me.  My Mothers' Day present necklace.  Remind me to get back to it; it's lovely -- freshwater pearls.   

Gracie's calico markings are deceiving. 

 
 

If I could prevail upon you to look at this photo yet again, you will see she is actually a white cat.

 

He rolled, and rolled.  So much white fur!  It took, like, 4 sheets of that lint-roller masking tape!  Then he gave himself a touch-up and pronounced us fur-free.  I told him, "That was so exciting!  It reminded me of, you know, back when we first met ... when you were my handler!  Remember?"

"We're not supposed to talk about that," he said, gruffly.  But it was in a gruffly perky sort of way.

It turned out to be fun, even the part where I had to wear high heels.   I mischeviously sidled around instigating fake bidding wars with people who obviously never shopped on eBay before and did not know that early bidding can drive up the price.  I drove one auction up so ridiculously high -- just me & this one gal who was determined her child should have the "Summer Leisure Basket" all full of, idk, a bunch of stuff I did not want for $205, so I was really nervous when I eked out that last, taunting bid minutes before the auction ended. 

It was with a lot of trepidation I walked to the table, and when I saw the clipboard was gone (they were to be collected by the winner), I wanted to fall to my knees in thanks.  Honestly, because I never would have heard the end of the ribbing from Mari.  She ponied up $210, about which Mari hilariously scoffed, "She only needed to bid $205.01!"  Ahahaha!   

It was a nice close to the weekend, a sophisticated, grownup outing with my husband, as we begin our 16th year of wedded bliss.  Nothing says Hello, Spring, like bare feet inside high-heeled shoes.  Unless it is lentil salad leftovers for a late supper. 

 

Lentil Salad, first of spring edition

Boil 2 cups lentils (love the lentil you're with; just not red) in 6 cups water with 2 bay leaves and a few cloves of garlic (do not bother to peel) for 15-18 minutes.  Poke them around now & then.  When tender, drain.  Rinse if you want, but I do not.  (Some recipe!)

While the lentils cook, whisk 1/4c lemon juice (bottled!  first of spring!) with 1/4c olive oil.  Dice one tennis-ball-sized red onion & throw it in.  Poke around.  Salt to taste.  Get the leaves & bulbs out of the lentils.  Pour it into the vinaigrette.  Add one bunch of chopped parsley.  Mix and mix.  Salt and grind fresh pepper to taste. 

Allez!   

c'est pas trop tôt

This is Mme Carrière's best year. 

 

We got her new growth up off of the ground in time, shaped her up with some judicious pruning, and now I just have to keep her summer poundage in check and we will cross our fingers for next year.  She is not even at peak bloom yet.  When I stand on my porch, the world smells incredible. 

Saturday was National Train Day.  It kind of stole the thunder from Mothers' Day in that I was extremely satisfied to get dressed and leave three ditherers behind me to take off without a backward glance (Your rations and provisions are not my problem.  Plans for lunch?  On yr own, right?) for my appointment at the eyebrow-threading salon. 

Brows threaded, idle wandering and an iced coffee commenced.  It was a gorgeous day.  After all that outside-nothing I came home to do pretty much nothing in my empty, silent house.  I accidentally to0k a 2-hour nap, after which indulgence I woke up and the house was still empty.  So favorite, so best.  When I woke up, I texted Mari to remind him it was also Free Comic Book Day.  They stayed out until bedtime.

There is no way to top that, certainly not with warmed-over pancakes and a glass of water served by a well-meaning 10-year-old girl who is not listening to what people are telling her about what they really want.

Yes, in true gift-rejecting mother style, on Sunday I covered my head with the blankets and groaned when Fille tried to establish my alertness for the purpose of serving the breakfast that I assured her over and over again in the days prior I did not want.  I do not want to eat while lying in the bed, I am sorry!  I will sometimes gratefully receive a bowl of oatmeal, but I can hover over that with a spoon in a prone position, truly slothful.  Once I have to prop myself up & use a knife and a fork?  That is the provenance of an invalid, or gouty old Liz Taylor.  Learn to make tea, little children!  Pay attention to what people are saying they do not want, when you want to give them something!  Mari is like this, he clearly gets it from his mother, is it nature?  Or nurture?  Well, I think we see.

After I rebuffed my only daughter, I proceeded to sleep out of sheer defiance until the unheard of hour of 11:46.  While I lazed across the bed, sleepy and a little sulky, Mari asked me what I was going to do with the day.  For all the fuss I made about getting away from my family on Sunday, I had not actually made any plans to do anything.  If I had, they would have commenced before noon.  Also, again, Saturday's idyll was just-right & pretty tough to follow.  I mean, that's a lot of pressure on a massage.  

Eve had called the week prior to see if  wanted to make plans with her, but it seemed like she was wearing her Frenemy Cape so I took a pass.  Jolie's mother lives right here in town, so I knew she was busy (they were at the sauna, it turns out).  Everyone else I know is so willing to let their kids crawl all over them in pre-fabbed homage, but their kids spend a lot of time with strangers, so I guess it probably feels reassuring.  But, you know, I am rocking this party eight days a week.  Getaway Mothers' Day is my thing.  Go away, little children!  It's right in the name!  Mine, not yours! 

I told Mari that I would go to the sauna if only I could bring myself to drive there in my bathrobe, like Tony Soprano.  Since that was ridiculous, I got up, put the children outside + locked the door, and made a whole pot of tea.  I continued wearing my bathrobe to watch the second disc of Ken Burns's Civil War documentary while I knitted.   

After a while I delegated a long list of garden chores. 

 
 

Eventually, I showered, got dressed, and came out to survey everyone's laboring.  Then, Mari and I sat on the steps and ate rhubarb crumble.

 

Rhubarb came in the CSA share last week, which was great.  Then two other CSA sharers did not want their rhubarb and so put theirs in the swap box.  I was extremely excited to exchange arugula and some young mustard greens for two pounds of rhubarb.  Not that I do not like those greens, but three pounds of rhubarb?  Come on!  Yes!

I put together a crumble while I was home alone on Saturday, which was especially nice because the feeding of the other meals was not down to me and the kitchen was already-cleaned by others.  I did not think much of it, honestly.  I felt like there was too much crumb.

 

When I took these interior photos (Rhubarb Crumble:  Beneath the Crumb), I was distressed and wondering how to compensate in the next encounter. 

 

I usually hack something out of rolled oats and some kind of a flour for a short dough, but I made this topping by riffing on an Elana Amsterdam recipe.  It uses almond flour and while it tasted fine, I felt for all of it there was, there was not enough floury soakerism happening; there was too much high-protein runoff of filling-juice.  I was already thinking of ways to regroup and happy I had enough rhubarb to try again.

 

My family disagreed with me, in words and deeds.  Also, begged me to come around to join their side.  I refused and I plan to re-engineer this week, mostly because Mari is away and the children do not have equal votes.  However, if you trust the judgment of three people who eat pretty much anything (although, it is worth mentioning there is not usually such rhapsody), alors!

Gluten-Free, High-Protein Rhubarb Crumble
adapted from Nigella Lawson's Rhubarb Crumble in Feast and also Elana Amsterdam's Peach + Blueberry Crumble in The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook.

For the filling, chop 1.5lbs rhubarb into 1/2-inch pieces.  On the stovetop, melt 2tbsp butter in a pan large enough to hold the rhubarb.  Toss with 1/4-cup sugar, 1tbsp vanilla, and 1tbsp tapioca starch (or potato starch, cornstarch, white flour, love the starch you're with).  Lawson says something weirdly lustful and anthropomorphic in her book like, "You're looking for glossy, pink gorgeousness."  Just make sure there are no lumps and get everything mixed up.  It will be a little gooey, don't be alarmed. 

Tip the filling into a 8ish-inch pan.  I use a cake pan; I do not have a pie plate deep enough.  At this point, you can put the whole thing on hold and chuck the pan into the fridge or even the freezer and come back to it later.

For the crumb, melt 5tbsp butter.  Add 3/4tsp salt and 1tbsp vanilla extract.  Mix.  Add 2c blanched almond flour. 

Here is where I report that Elana Amsterdam's recipes (and so this adaptation, too) use flour "milled" of blanched almonds.  It is really fine, fluffy, and really nice to work with.  A similar product can be had for this -- non-fluffy, non-textural -- use by whirring blanched almonds in the food processor until they are on the verge of nut butter.   

Mix & mix.  Roll the topping all crumbly across the filling's surface.  Cover with foil.  Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.  Remove foil and wait for topping to brown as desired.  It will take about 3-5 minutes. 

five senses

I am only posting a cameraphone photo for Alex, really.  1.  Because the instrumental/artisanal/pastoral scene reminded me of him and 2. Because his blog is the honest strand of fascinating cultural-technical voluptuousness  -- "I'm here, doing this.  Now I'm doing that.  Here's a photo.  All the while this was playing on my iPod, and I was awash in rumination. Lemme tell you about it," Alex says.  Then he shows you his lunch. It has a kind of infinite texture I love.  Sadly, it is a lush & rumpled bed of content-generation that has been watered down into furtive fingerfucking by the likes of FourSquare.

Also, mobile-blogging is by itself a nod to the advancement in communication Alex champions with neither squeamishness nor conflict.

Anyhow, I am waiting for Garçon to finish his guitar lesson, in the same space I sit every Tuesday at this time. It is only a half-hour lesson, and while I wean him into getting here himself on public transit, here I wait. 

 

There is a weird regularity to the crowd I had not expected -- the mailman, the UPS guy, the young woman who comes in between her classes to showcase her glittering wiles for the sweet dude who works in the shop.  Her hopefulness is palpable and I wonder what is up with his cluelessness.  On the other hand, she is going about it in the most passive way.  When I was that age, I was more into a gendering juxtaposition copped from the avian world.  "Great!  Now that you have noticed me & my plumage, we're going to get it on!  Yes!"  Why wait?  I suspect a case of Too Much FourSquare going on here. Maybe everywhere.

I was reading a book writing about reading Chekhov, this morning, thinking about Russia all along the Black Sea and then on my way out, I ran into my own mail carrier, who had a great haul -- 2 pair of jeans, the Nick Denton NY'er, and a new recording of studio time for the The Bros Kowalski, and their stringed-instrumental prowess.  I jammed the CD in our car's stereo to listen to while I drove over here, thinking of growing up all along my own freshwater sea, back there, back home. I was 35 years old before I realized the sight of a Great Lake from the ground rivaled any of Chicago's architectural triumphs reaching the sky. There are things we take for granted, when we have no scale against which to measure.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

 

 

 

To complete my Alex Vanguard Cook homage, here is what we had for lunch.  Kowalski pressed the recipe upon me (such as it is a recipe), but Jesus Christ, I am tired of writing about him.   

Kale & Potato Soup

 

Chop a bunch of kale, then steam to tenderness.

While you are doing that, saute 1 cup of chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of butter until golden.  Add a couple (or a few) cloves of minced garlic and saute for another minute or two.

Add 2 or 3 chopped potatoes and 2 cups of water.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until soft.

Add the steamed kale with 3 cups of water (or stock, if you prefer, I guess) and poke around.  Cover & simmer for another 20  minutes or so before coming at it with an immersion blender.  Rrr-rrr-rr-rrrrr-rr-rrrrrr, until it is as smooth as you like, but also somewhat uniform. Or, yk, soupy.

Salt & pepper to taste.  Add extra butter, or not.

 

I have to admit I was not excited about it.  I have been drinking all these green drinks that taste like blowing all the whaling fleets of Japan + Russia at once, and this was the same color + viscosity, but it was super-delicious!  Everyone loves it!         

jurgis

Jesus, I was flipping through The Jungle for poetry's sake and no one needs me to say so, but that old Upton Sinclair knew how to string a few words together.  Not like Steinbeck, though.  I re-read Of Mice & Men in June and it just blew me away all over again.  Just wow. 

This is all I am going to say about the Park 51 controversy, because it is all I can say until I get to going on & on, and there is a lot to go on & on about -- logistically, representationally, geographically, constitutionally, lots and lots -- but here is what I am going to write, having chewed off nine of my fingers: 

America already acted on these impulses, for three years, from 1942-1945, during which the U.S. government imprisoned American citizens here in America.  These Americans gave up their homes, their possessions, their livelihoods, and their liberties, all because the USA was attacked by those who looked like them.  Here we are, in America, more than 50 years later, and still there are people who are not ashamed to embrace this kind of hateful, bigoted conflation even now.  Like everything has happened in the history of this country for nothing.  It is appalling.

 

I have not taken many photographs of food this summer because I have not been cooking v much at all.  This is a staple salad I am squeezing in whenever I can get it together.  I cooked a large pot of chickpeas and portioned them in bags for the freezer and even though this recipe uses the stovetop, it is very briefly, so it is not too bad.

 

The original recipe from Bittman calls for arugula, but I use whatever hearty salad green I have on hand -- parsley, endive, escarole.  His greens-to-beans ratio is exactly inverse of mine, so obvsly that is open to experimentation.  His recipe also calls for cumin seed and ginger, which I usually have around, but I tend to leave things out when I do not have them.  (Love the one you're with!)  This week, we have dandelion greens, which are kind of tough, so I throw them in with the beans right away, instead of tossing them around later. 

Warm Chickpeas & Greens Salad
adapted from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

 Chop a couple of cloves of garlic, saute over medium heat in a large sautese until golden.  Add salt, ground cumin, and 3 or 4 cups of drained, cooked chickpeas.  If the chickpeas are not very soft, add a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of  their liquid and put the lid on.  (Now is when you might add the chopped dandelion greens or escarole, 2 or 3 loosely-packed cups)

After 8 or 10 minutes, test the chickpeas for mashability.  You want some of them to be a little mashed, for a binding texture in the salad.  Cook & stir until they are a nice balance between not too soft & not too wet.  Add 2 tablespoons of rice-wine vinegar and a generous teaspoon of honey.  Stir & stir. 

Toss beans (or beans + greens) with chopped greens -- again, about 2-3 cups -- and thinly-sliced red onion half-moons.  I find this requires more salt than I think it should need.   

rat-a-tat-tat

I was in the kitchen, assembling ratatouille and realized to my bones that August was well underway, as it must be, if I am making ratatouille.

 

I just threw everything in a 6-quart Roseville bowl any old way, eschewing my usual "approved" technique of layering the vegetables in very carefully with salt, olive oil, and basil leaves.  Also, I used Bermuda onions because that is what I had the most of to use up.  I threw it in the oven and have not stirred it since.

Mari appreciated a little while ago -- when I said to myself, Oh, the ratatouille, I should stir -- fuck it-- the way that I was "keeping it gangster."  Then we briefly entertained the idea of someone (not me) keeping a weblog that went through all of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but in a totally slutty way.

I say "not me," but the idea appeals.  We saw that Julie & Julia movie a couple of months ago.  I was extremely interested in the Meryl-Streep-as-Julia parts and always disappointed when it cut over to that whiny Julie who was so rude to her husband.  The editing between the stories was fantastic, though, it was really seamless, I thought.

Anyhow.  I spoke again with the Israeli's son again the other day and we made it to this:  It isn't that I miss [my brother], it's just that it's so boring without him to fight with.  Oh, ok.

The Israeli & I picked up on this during our part of the call, where I told him that I do not know how anyone can bear that kind of siblings' antagonism.  I have heard the stories from him & the Mrs -- slamming doors, wrestling, shouting, deprivations, aggressions both passive & overt -- it would drive me straight into the loony bin.

"Don't your kids fight?" he asked me.

"No, I don't tolerate it," I confessed to him.  I explained that I think that what happened here is that because I do not have siblings, there is a kind of low-level taunting, etc, that people (with siblings) accept as normal while parenting that I feel is aberrant.  We are a family -- I have hissed to children, very close to their faces with mine -- and that means we take care of each other. 

They bicker, they tire of each other and act out, they are short with each other, of course, they are children, but overall they are quite companionable and Mari & I feel very lucky.  We do what we have to in order to protect ourselves, but mostly, we take care of each other. 

Garçon had been scheduled for Friday to do some time-specific work for a neighbor, which he was unable to do, since I sent him to bed for a full & complete bedresting in the hopes of MRSA-infection's recovery.  Fille instead went to help the neighbor, and was paid $15 for her labors.

When she came home, she told me she wanted to give her brother $5 of the money, since he was supposed to have done the work & would have, if I had not put him to bed.  Plus, she wanted him to have it because he needed the money to replace the door he destroyed.  I was shocked, but not surprised, by her munificence.  That is how they roll. 

I have a moneymaking idea that I came up with after reading that magazine article about people behaving badly in their marriages, plus my long acquaintance with consignment-store money launderers.  I do not know if this is anywhere but the northeast corridor, but I know three consignment-store owners who get a sizable chunk of their inventory from women whose husbands -- this sentence is not being my friend, hang on.

Women whose husbands do not give them cash & insist they spend on house accounts or credit cards will buy things and then sell them in a consignment store to get the 50% or 40% (of the consignment lower price) they get in return when their items sell at the consignment store.  This is not exactly rampant, but it is not at all unusual.  There are plenty of $700, new-with-tags, 4T outfits from Burberry selling for $130 at our nearest children's consignment store.  It boggles the mind.  No one I asked knows what they are using the money for, but once I read that article, I could guess a little.  People!  What the hell?! 

I was telling Mari that I could get into the business of trading $100 in cash per $125 in quotidian gift cards -- Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's, TJ Maxx, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, wherever -- our whole household economy could be propped up on these transactions.  The best part about it is that because the money is not laundered to evade tax burdens nor to conceal illegal gains, it is totally legal.  Important!  I'm into it.  Little gaggles of faculty wives would part like the Red Sea at my approach.  It would be completely gangster.  Minnesota-gangster!

same as last summer, with no fucking bicycle fucking it up

 

avenger

Rhubarb is in season, you know. 

I had a perfectly adequate Mothers' Day weekend.  Again, with the ballet matinee -- as last year-- but knowing what to expect this year Mari & I colluded on a pre-emptively relaxing Saturday.  He took the children to National Train Day's festivities; I stayed home and enjoyed the peace and quiet of my own home. 

When Mari called sometime after the dinner hour to say they were on their way back, I bolted for a massage and a mani/pedi.  Also, shwarma.  This fortified me for all the dull, dullsville, painted-on-smile, de rigueur merrymaking of Sunday.  Breakfast in bed and the like.  I endure, honestly, is all I can say about that fuss.  All I want is for people to be a C-plus of good enough all the time. 

Mercury, the planet, is in retrograde.  This is some kind of astrological mumbo-jumbo I had never heard of before a few years ago and paid little attention to even so, until the day that I realized that every time I felt like I was having a whole month of PMS's moodiness and sulking and nasty, nasty retorts, I would hear that Mercury had been in retrograde the whole time.  My astrological sign is ruled by Mercury, which is something I knew already, so I wonder if that is why I turn evil when Mercury is in retrograde.  I mean, evil.  Like Cruella De Vil -- the world was such a wholesome place untillll -- honestly. 

Anyhow, there is a whole thing about that, today, for it had kind of escaped me (again), this Mercury thing, until this afternoon. After we finished up with our Iron Man 2 (dreadful, except for this necktie, which distracted me for the rest of the movie, which was an easy feat, since it was Not Good) matinee, I got caught up in an entire existential/social/internal-monologue negotiation, which kind of runs counter to my general outlook, and yet, is where I remain stalled.  For today. 

My neighbor's mother died, blahblahblah, and the thing I would do is to take food over to her house, especially because I know (from a different neighbor) that people are coming over to her house tonight.  I did not.  This is mostly because I knitted their baby a pair of booties a couple of years ago, and when I left the gift at the house in a box with a note (with her mother at the door), I never heard back from her.  Not an email, not a phone call, not a mention in the streets.  Not the words thank you.  So, I am disinclined to put myself out again at this moment.  But Jesus Christ, am I serious?  Honestly? 

A few months ago, someone was having some bad behavior around me and I was unpacking it for a friend.  I said to her (sullenly), It makes me not want to ever [do anything for anyone again].  And she said, sagely, "Do you want to live in a world where people do not [do things] for each other anymore?  Do you want to live in a world where you do not choose to give?"  Well, no.  I guessed.  Then I told her what I kept thinking today:  But why do I always have to have the good behavior?  (Whining!  WTF?!)

If a C-plus of good enough is all I want; does that bind me all the time to C-plussing it?  Even if other people are carrying a D-minus?  Or taking it pass/fail?  Even if I would rather just wreck the curve all the time with my straight-A's countenance?  It is not like me to be a scorekeeper about this stuff, but maybe it is time for me to learn.  At any rate, the astrologers' counsel is not to make any decisions about policymaking at this time, so I am just going to sit & wait.   

God almighty, I really just wanted to write about Iron Man 2.  (I thought it was dreadful; the first one was so ... good.)  The movie was only OK, the story was confounding, the pace was frenetic, there were too many characters, not much of a story, and the villain did not get hardly any development.  (Grammar, do not try to kiss me.)  That said, the comic-book nerdout stuff was pretty entertaining.

Halfway through the movie, at a critical moment, Mari leaned over and said, "Adamantium."  And I whispered back, "Um, vibranium!"  He insisted on adamantium and then I hissed, "No, adamantium is an alloy of vibranium," and poked him resolutely in the thigh with my index finger.  We may have to ask ourselves how such expertise on the Marvel metallurgical universe has been visited upon me while eluding him.  I have no answers to this question, either. 

Also, if you have been playing comic-book-movie attention:  there have been some crossover cameos in these movies, after the closing credits, and where is it all going?  And is it really going to go there without Wasp?  But forget about all of that, where in the hell do I buy this tie?

whatever

 

There is a long list of things I should be blogging about, but I feel like I do not have time and/or which to choose and also when I sit down, other things are so forward in my brain -- dreamy pals!  bitchy neighbors! -- and then I get into the fingertip-blurting zone and then, yk, zzZzZzz.  I was talking to my friend Charlie today and she said, "Blog a whole list!"  Smart.

• RentBoy.  If you have not been following the George Rekers RentBoy scandal, why the hell not?  Especially if you are one of these downer people who has been trying to follow me around and chat me up about the depressing Gulf oil spill & its [ insert the oil-spill-appropriate term for fallout].  The Homophobic Demagogue's European Vacation with a Foxy, South Beach, Gay Escort gets better every time you follow up, which is the polar opposite of oil spill story.  Stop trying to fill me in about oil spill, people.  Knowing all those details is anxiety-producing, I do not need it.  Stop telling me.  Let's talk about RentBoy.  It feels like Purim, really. 
  
   
  
• Iris.  My cat who is going to be entering her third decade this year, srsly. She is in good health, thank God, but she is noticeably declining.  If she were a little old lady, she would be at the point where she would just have a path between the bed to the window & the bath and she might forget to make her meals.  I sometimes forget not how long she has been with me, but how much she has spanned.  I was complaining about her crabby, old-lady, fussing demands recently, and Kowalski cut me off, That cat has always been like that.  Always.  What are you talking about?  I forgot that he knew her.  Please, Iris, just die in yr sleep.  Peacefully.   No rush, but she has had a long, good run, that one. 
• A couple of weeks ago, I borrowed The Accidental Billionaires from the library.  Then I started sewing and set it aside, during which time Mari read it.  When I went to recover it, he cautioned me not to read it, saying, "It's going to agitate you."  He went into the office today, so I figured I could read it and it would be my own bad luck to be alone + agitated if that were so.  I feel like it made me less ranty about Mark Zuckerberg overall, but man, o, man, I wish I had known that kid was a fucking hacker before I signed up for a website at which he is the overlord. 
  God!  Of course!  His whole schema ::slapping forehead:: is so hackers' code:  Information that is accessible is for taking & using, because if you cared about it, you should have protected it.  So 350 squillion-billion people are just giving him information with the kind of mistaken presumption that there is a social contract, but no:  he is a hacker.  Now you know, if you did not.  The real problem I was left with after reading the book -- and now my real problem with Facebook -- is this:  Is Facebook the only thing Zuckerberg is going to bring to the world now?  That's a fucking waste.  Too bad for us, because he seems pretty smart enough to program something important.  Whatever.
  
   
  
  
• Roses.  My Don Juan climber is out this year.  If you know me, or you have been reading this blog for a long time, you know how I have always been conflicted about it, but every year it lures me with bloom?  This year, it is not making the grade, so that's it.  Bye!  I am like that.  Next year -- after much + many calculations -- I am on order for a Gloire de Dijon, an apricot rose described over & over & everywhere as a rose people just love.  I already have one rose I just adore, so what if I had two?  I was in the living room on Tuesday, reading the NY'er and could smell Mme Alfred Carriére from her spot all the way outside; I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, really.
• I am getting a megaphone for parenting.  I am tired of projecting my voice three floors up and outside and over & over again.  Fuck it.  Megaphone.  They cost more than I would have thought, but I suppose I never actually thought about it.
• Health freakiness.  Some little girl in Fille's art class found out that she had never had a drink of soda and after calling her a liar for a little bit, apparently rested her case with "Your mom must be some kinda health freak!"  This has caused us no end of amusement, Mari & I, because of all the things to use as evidence in my health-freak indictment?  We feel like not letting a child drink what amounts to poison is really pretty zzZzzZzzz, as things go.  I mean, there are so many things I forbid, nutritionally, in their diets.  I feel like we do not even need to go so granular as high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, dyes, and trans-fats.  The fact that I frown upon any kind of flour is all anyone needs to brand me for the freaky.  Anyhow. 
• Almond Dream Vanilla Bites are something new for me to resist.  Honestly.  They are like a stick-free, ice-cream bar, and last week when it was so warm and I had to make the haul to Ballet Town?  I put some little "bites" in a paper cup and ate them on the way.  Great idea!  But sugar depresses the immune system and I have recently become much, much more vigilant about never, ever eating it because ... 
• I have been reading Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Lifeand I have to say, this idea that an immune system is constantly dealing with invaders and threats and whatever and one of those things one's own immune system can combat, given the right internal environment, is something so far-reaching-seeming as cells that wind up in cancer, well.  Yeah, sign me up for some of that health-freakiness.  Also, put down the freaking Almond Dream Vanilla Bites!
• Related to health-freaking, I have overheard a bunch of different children saying to their caregivers, recently, about this or that garbage food, "Why can't I eat it?  I'm not fat!"  Which is great, that they are not already on diets, but wtf is wrong with this thinking that health is only reflected by girth?  Whither the conflating?  I wanted to pull one snooty girl by her ponytail -- "The sweetener in that Oreo will turn your fucking liver to swiss cheese!  Why don't you have a glass of scotch instead, little girl?!"  I mean, seriously!  When I was trying to kill myself, I drank a fifth of Dewar's every day and smoked 2 packs of Camels, as a constitutional, and now it is easy to be a health freak, maybe because I have been on the other side and at that time, I was not half-assing it.  Maybe the answer to this question of why people would kill themselves with Hostess treats and Snickers is found somewhere in the space where Prufrock and Marlowe intersect with Thoreau. 
• Which reminds me, in closing, that I asked Fille today about one of her ballet school classmates who was hella dawdling yesterday, still putting up her hair long after class started.  "Does she like the class?"  I was conversational, casual, but I will admit that the reason I was asking was because Lara is a normal-sized girl -- tall and sturdy, will probably grow up to be an hourglass, sized an 8 or 10, feeling like a gigantic fatass, especially if she stays in ballet, where even at this age, a third of the tiny girls talk about how "fat" they are.  If Lara were my daughter, she would absolutely not be in mothereffing ballet, I promise that.  Anyhow, without getting into any of that with Fille, I was curious to see where the conversation might head.  Fille shook her head no, and then elaborated, "No, she doesn't, but hardly any of the girls do."  Whaaa-at?????  This class takes 180 minutes in the studio each week, plus a thousand & change in tuition, and hardly any of the girls want to be there?  This was crazy to me!  Where are their parents? What the hell? 

walk the line

 

Here we are, it is Lent, my most favorite time of the year.  The time during which I am allowed to take the time, am prescribed the time, to make a practice of trying out a way to be a better person, the person who I want to be. 

I had a sweet, lengthy, email exchange with my favorite + best, the Israeli, in advance of this decision about which privation of many I could choose.  There are -- despite my rather round reputation as an ascete -- numerous ways by which I could choose to restrict myself toward the goal of an expansion in my universal condition.  

We were getting on about how Catholicism holds forth that the entire human condition is detestable and repugnant, while in high-contrast, Judaism allows that the human condition exists, makes clear the ways in which a daily practice would avoid the worst of the bad behavior endemic to constitutional God-given frailty, and let's just all move on already.  There was a great deal more, but if anyone else were to ever care about so much ecumenical gabbling, he and I would never have each made the other into a fast, beloved friend all those years ago. 

Anyhow, after a careful survey of my parameters and venal behaviors, I decided to abstain from the frivolity and craven recklessness of late nights.  It is already killing me -- a little, between my pathological insomnia and also the steady-state productiveness of a day going from 6 or 7 a.m. clear round the clock to the next morning at 1 or 2 --  which is good because if it were not a small sacrifice, it would not appropriately represent a larger sacrifice, which is the point of the whole preparatory Lenten endeavor.  

More than that, however, is that the refusal of such all-night luxury will throw light upon the ways by which such indulgence prevents me from achieving goals greater in value to me.  This is what happened when I refused the flabby indolence of sweet talk.  I love the kind of insidious, pernicious vice that seems virtuous, and floats above reproach, for I am a particularly cowardly kind of lazy + vain.  Also, as stated before, I was brought up in, and severely schooled by, a Church that resists + loathes the very humanity of the human condition and rears us to be all sorely found wanting in the area of suffering + holy passion + willingness in martyrdom.  No laziness.  No whining.  When the blood runs down your arms, utter not a single cry.

After about a decade of yoga, I am almost recovered.  But I always wanted to reclaim these 40 days, and so for the past few years, I have. 

For Shrovetide, we did have pancakes, which is all my child knows about Lent, as previously discussed.  This year, I did have time to try out a timely Oatmeal Pancake recipe from the ebullient Molly at Orangette, and we are now crazy for the lovely, lovely pancakes.  So crazy, in fact, that I will not make them again until Lent ends because they are not appropriately dour. 

I understand that the Butternut-Tahini-Garbanzo Salad dish was borne along to the world by Molly-at-Orangette, also, although I came to it by way of the gal at Smitten Kitchen, and that is what we had for lunch today, as photographed above, and that is that.  Tidy!

5 things about January & a recipe

 
1.  We do not like turnips, but I have found a way to make them edible.  It is the same as my go-to carrot recipe.  Last week, while lifting the lid on a panful that would accompany a Saturday lunch, the children came in and demurred.  I had not expected they would eat them once served, so I shrugged, but also casually observed that people in Haiti would love to have them.  A half-hour later at the table, they ate them.  We have not known what to say to them!  Or if we should say anything.  I think this is one of those times, where my friend Fish says, "Good behavior is its own reward."   

2.  There was, at the consignment boutique in Ballet Town, a Chloé handbag -- the Paddington Satchel -- for about two-thirds of the original retail price and about half of the going "last-season" price it is selling for right now.  I held it and petted it a little, but I had no intention of buying a handbag at that price.  Except I keep dreaming about it.  Not a metaphor, no, I lie down and wake up having deeply considered it in the night.  I have not been back to the store since the first dream, but I do not even want it.  Except somewhere in the universe, I obviously do.  Maybe in a parallel life I spend that kind of money on handbags.

3.  My children went out yesterday when it was 18 degrees and a windchill temperature of 10 degrees, and they did so voluntarily, plus then when they came in to attend to an administrative detail at my behest, they nanced around at the door wanting to know if they could go back outside to play.  I am so proud of them.  Then today they did not let similar conditions deter them from going ice skating with Mari.  Obviously, their endless exposure to Prairie Home Companion is working. 

4.  I was supposed to have gone to NYC this weekend for an extended brand of R&R hijinks with Fat Sal, but then I was feeling unwell, with a reprise of the malady from which I have not recovered but for which I have neither relented, so I bailed.  I held out for a long time, dreaming of the 90-minute tui na massage + reflexology I had planned, but in the end, I realized that was silly and there are bodyworkers here.  I saw one late yesterday afternoon for reflexology only and her attentions were vigorous.  I was lying on the table, breathing deeply and talking myself out of crying "uncle" and the next thing I knew I was in that hazy, anaesthetized space between waking and dreaming, but I think it was because I was passed out from the pain of it.  I feel remedied, however.  No pain, no gain. 

5.  As far as I am concerned the accident thing is over.  No one was hurt, the car made it back from the body shop last week, and our insurance company is denying liability.  Crazy Moby Dick man is also now claiming that he was bodily injured in the 8mph collision between my (moving away from him) car and his (gigantic, fully-outfitted Ford F350 pickup), and if you are super-familiar with the laws of our universe, you can do that math and deduce that if he was at a top speed of 8mph and I was moving away from him at, say, 5 mph, that means that the speed at which we collided was practically nothing, but in the words of my husband, "Carpe diem, dude, whatever."  We are out our collision deductible, for now, but whatever, this way I am not even a little bit tempted to blow that sum on a Chloé handbag. 

Carrots with Garlic (adapted for turnips) 
from the sadly out-of-print Ronald Johnson book Simple Fare

Trim & peel 1lb carrots (or turnips, or radishes, or daikon, or parsnips, or rutabagas). Slice on the diagonal into 1/2-inch pieces.

To a 10-inch saute pan, add the vegetables, 2 cloves flattened & peeled garlic, 1 tablespoonful each of butter & olive oil, 2 bay leaves, and 2 tablespoonsful of water. Bring to a boil, cover pan, turn heat to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes.

Stir at it, every now & then. When done, the water will have cooked away, the vegetables will have started to brown, and they will be tender, but not soft. Remove the lid, turn up the heat, etc, as necessary to achieve this ideal as you wish. The recipe is really quite forgiving.

trente-trois bisous

So, it is just me, photographing vegetables, wearing Ugg boots inside the house on the cold stone floors.

 

While I was in NYC, I had dinner with an old friend in a long-overdue, jaggedly-executed catchup.  It was good, but I am a little jangly, plus am still feeling a little socially-hungover, plus am feeling really acutely the tension of the ropy, twisted boundary between marshalling resources and running someone's business down in the streets.

Uggs are really soft.  I spent the whole day in my nightgown and a cashmere cardigan, until it was time for ballet.  After we got home from ballet tonight I got into a hot bath to read cookbooks.  The children, apparently, put themselves to bed just fine and now I am back in my nightie and my cardigan.  (Yes, Mr Kowalksi:  knee-high surfers' shearling boots are the new over-the-knee socks.) 

Thank you to many people far & near for your stories and suggestions for the Pretty Neighbor situation.  I am planning to have coffee with her soon, as soon as I can focus on face-to-face social interchanging again, and I will share with her.  It was funny to have lunch with Charlie on Monday and I told her What Happened that I had seen with my own eyes and Charlie said, "Oh, she can't marry him!"  Wow.

That is another good example of marshalling forces v. telling people's business.    I tend to heed the right choices, but ... as with the always saying the thing that no one expects anyone to say, it requires me to choose shrewdly and remain fast.  The being open for the signal to the rightness of that place can kill me.  Well, it is hard, anyhow, waiting for feathers, looking out for bricks.  I wish a frumpy, old, ladies' magazine would give me a sign on the double. 

there is a lot inside my head

 
I always feel like food looks a lot different in our house.  I mean, a squash at my house looks the same as one at any other's.  I am great pals with a number of those poor, sugar-deprived children of the 70s.  My (s)mother was an outstanding cook who was ready to retire by the time I hit the tween years and so rather hastily shoved the all-from-scratch baton at me.  I never minded much, because she was always available to answer questions, and I never minded cooking dinner every night, which in retrospect is almost surely because there were only the two of us.

What makes our food here mostly distinct at this point -- way more of an influence than my purist origins -- is our combined allergies.  To start:  both children and I are allergic to soy; Fille and I are allergic to cow's milk; Garçon and I are allergic to wheat.  There is more, but I do not want to be boring, and just with those three ingredients, the entire market of packaged food has been wiped out for us.  I am endlessly grateful that I came to these challenges with 2 decades of experience cooking from ingredients found in nature. 

I will confess to disdaining milled grains of any kind, except for dessert, such that Fille categorizes pasta and cake together, i.e., when we go to a restaurant, she will often peruse the menu & say, "I think I want pasta, but maybe I would rather have cake," knowing that rare is the circumstance I will allow her to have both at one time.  All that said, if my children can eat it, I will probably let them, in moderation and right after whole food, which is my rather cheerfully Draconian rule & mantra:  Growing food first!  I am fully aware of the fact that all this great agrarian luxury is because the children & I are all together for 21 meals each week, because my job is in large part to feed my family. 

I actually think I used to be less focused on all of this for its own sake, but this whole-foods/hot-meal/growing-food paradigm has intensified in the three years since we assented to Fille's plan to dance ballet, given the sorcerous ease with which ballet conjures disordered eating from thin air.   Well, and she is only 8, so the time after our onset of ballet is almost equal to our time before, really.  She eats three meals and two snacks every day, with something more akin to 5 mini/maxi-meals on the days she has class.  There is a greater emphasis and dialogue on high-density nutrition and staying power regarding the food-in-general for her, but moreso about what she eats on those days. 

I pack a sandwich and a thermos of soup for her to have right after class and we give her time to eat it and restore her blood sugar to its former avant-ballet glory without rushing her, for after class, she is tired, and snappish, and hungry.  In this way, also, I do not have to rush home and get dinner right away before she has a meltdown. 

I do not think it is a good idea to feed pizza & a Coke to teenaged girls who dance five or six hours every day during a 20-minute break.  This is what I see pretty much every evening I am there, since the "big girls" are on their break when I come to pick up Fille.  I do not think it is the best choice to feed little girls coming from school & on their way to a 90-minute ballet class from a bag of Fig Newtons or Terra Chips and call it a snack.  Not because of my hard line against junk food, really, but because when the day comes that Ophelia needs to settle up and show her cards against the pernicious demons of diet & body image, I want so much for these girls to have a decent hand.

So, all of that.  All of that!  Already I am always thinking of all of that and incredibly wary and trying to keep it together and not pathologize junk food while always prioritizing healthful choices and also making a distinction between processed garbage and whole foods that are not ideal (Hostess vs home-baked) and also acknowledging that we live in a culture right now that is totally removed from the origins of food, even as they are obsessed with its recreational consumption.  Not to be all MeMe Roth about any of this, but the lady has some good points about the way we currently fetishize food.

But I keep it together and I have not yet been arrested (see: MeMe Roth) for knocking an ice cream out of anyone's hand.  Last week at ballet, before ballet, one of Fille's classmates was there with her mom, eating from a large clamshell of brownies.  OK!  Not my kid!  I don't care!  Also, maybe she had prime rib for a late lunch!  Not my business!  But then Arden was offering them all around to the other girls, that were sitting by her, which was also fine, because Fille had a peanut-butter apple and a banana already behind her.  But Fille was not sitting by Arden because she was sitting by me, getting her tiny pigtails tied before class.

I was sitting there, wondering what would happen if Fille got finished in time to be offered a brownie, if she would say yes, if she would say no, and if she said no, would Arden's mom think she said no just because I was sitting there (she would not, because I am notoriously shruggy about other people feeding them whatever, plus after growing food), and would she think it was some sort of damnation by proxy, and also, why did I have to be in the wild kingdom like this, when I should have fixed the child's hair when we were still at home, wow. 

I did not finish Fille's hair before Mila came out to collect them, so fine.  Crisis averted.  Mari can not understand why I get so wound up about everything at ballet and some of it is that I am totally anxious (which is a kind of a mental illness, you know), but the rest is Signals and Signs, Women in their Natural Habitat.  Honestly.  Like a couple of weeks ago, I asked if the Ballet PTO Chair knew what the theme was for the spring's auction, because if I was going to donate something handmade, the sooner the better, and she was all Mrs Snidely, "Wow, I don't even know what I'm doing next week."  I wanted to tell her to suck it, but settled for, And with four children?  Things must be so hectic for you, dear.

Jesus Christ Almighty.

I thought things would be OK with this year's crop of ballet moms.  We go twice a week, the girls are big enough, Fille & a couple of the girls get dropped off and then picked up at our leisure.  I feel like Fille's transition from the work required in her class back to her real life is easier when she can hunker down without us and get a grip.  Also, it makes my life less hectic to have more of a window between the back & forth, now that it is two times every week.  Anyhow, the result is that I hardly see any moms. 

But I talk to the girls.  I am that mom that knows the children's names and talks to them, at least the girls who have been in Fille's class for a couple of years now.  When I say, "Hi, Arden, how are you?"  and she startles like a deer in headlights, I say gently & pointedly, "I'm doing great, thank you, Mrs Follette, how are you?  Oh, I'm well, thanks, Arden!"  

If Louise comes in and I am fixing Fille's hair and her bun is kind of askew and her mother nowhere around, I ask her if she wants some help with it, and if she does, I will help.  Irene needed help with her hair Friday before Fille was ready for me to get to her hair, so I did.  She propped her gigantic bag next to me and it had a bunch of swim stuff in it.  So, since we were at ballet class, I asked about it. 

Well, Irene has a full slate of activities!  My gosh!  She is on the swim team and she does gymnastics and also, I happen to know that she goes to one of these hoity-toity private schools that has extra-curriculars in venture capitalism or whatever.  I am more of  a Pick One Thing & Bring Your A-Game kind of a parent, but those are my issues.  But realistically, your kid is not going to be a first-seat violinist on the weekends she is not performing as a prima ballerina during the years she is on sabbatical from neurosurgery.  Just saying. 

I like Irene and Louise a lot, because Irene also is from a French-speaking home, so I feel more comfortable about issuing imperatives to her, because the softness of the English-speaking mothering I am doing at ballet translates well.  Louise's mother is from elsewhere in the child-centered world, so Louise is not unaccustomed to availing herself of non-infantilizing indulgence offered by an outside adult.

So, Friday, when I was finished with Irene's hair, I started on Fille's.  Arden gave Irene a brownie, and Arden's mother counseled Irene not to eat the whole thing before class, but save half for later.  I had the whole on-the-inside peril over relations between women, class was called, and I left. 

When I came back to get Fille that evening, Irene was eating the brownie remainder and wearing a swimsuit in place of her leotard, under her skirt & cardigan.  Fille was about to set into her abbreviated snack -- we were going out to dinner in Ballet Town -- of a tangerine + a Larabar. 

Somehow it came up between the two girls that Irene had no snack besides her half-brownie.  Then she told Fille she was on her way to swim practice and would not have time for dinner.  "But you will have a snack on the way, n'est ce pas?" I asked.  Irene was waiting for her father to pick her up.  She said she probably would not. 

Now, I do not believe an 8-year-old's rendition of anything chapter & verse, but why would she lie?  Also, why would she not already have a snack in her bag for after her ballet class?  I have seen Fille sit after class to inhale an egg-salad sandwich and 18 ounces of bean soup in less than 15 minutes, and then declare herself still hungry for an evening meal.

But Irene is only 8, so I do not intend to assail her parents, nor think mean thoughts, nor talk shit about her in our physical world, or even in the virtual world, based on one fly-by interview with her.  But the fact is that I have noticed that fueling children at all takes a back seat to a lot of things -- behold all the tyrant toddlers who only need a snack to turn them sunshiny again -- particularly with little girls.  I pressed Fille's snack onto Irene after making sure she was physiologically & immunologically cleared for eating it, then peeled the tangerine for her, Frenchily admonishing her to sit down and eat all of it starting right away while she waited for her father.  

On this same day (why me, o, God, why?), I had to listen to one of the yarn store regulars talking to the Ballet-Town Yarn-Store Owner about how her 13-year-old was not along on the route of errands because she was at a Fitness Class because she had been "getting out-of-shape" and the girl's father was riding the mother about what a gigantic fatass the girl was becoming.  Never mind that I would like to see the father with my own eyes, ok,  then the mother said, right out loud, "He doesn't even know anything about any of this, really, what does he know?"  And all of this right in front of her other daughter, who is 10.  What in the hell is wrong with people?

eat drink read clean

Locust trees are pretty, but those glittery little leaves get stuck to everything and will be in your house, too.  Also, pods, wtf?

 
Becky at Suburban Matron (I know, it's all,God, Femme, you got to her weblog in an accident, trying to verify some urban legend you overheard at Pilates Chick's house!  She didn't sign your yearbook or anything!and I know, that is true, however, she has a weblog, which she updates and so there) has once again called the roll of honor to share opinions about eating, reading, watching, etc.  I'm in.

So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer is good on its advertised own, but also I successfully used it to make a dairy-free ganache, so times a million.

We saw Where The Wild Things Are and it is one of those things where when people talk about it, they reveal instead of report.  I thought the puppeteers and the set design people & the location scouts ruled the universe.  It is a gorgeous enterprise and well-scored, too.  Besides that?  zzZzZzz.  I think it is like if someone made a movie about the evening commute:  people who had not been commuters since 1978 would be spellbound by the exquisite rendering of its terror & tedium, blah, blah, blah.   The film would be engaging! & emo-roco!  For present-day evening commuters?  zzzzZzzz.  I spend all my days with one (1) 10-year-old boy, and one (1) 8-year-old girl.  Every word, every gesture in that movie was but a shred of my own tedium & terror.  zzzzZzzz.  James Gandolfini was excellent in an extended rendition of the time Tony Soprano asked Uncle June "Don't you love me?"

Everyone -- I mean, everyone -- I know is talking about Honeycrisp apples.  On Facebooks!  In emails!  Our tweets!  So, I bought some?  I think they taste just like asian pears, which is fine, but maybe no one ever knew.  They were a damn site cheaper, I will say that.

I finished reading Lorrie Moore's newest, longest novel A Gate At The Stairs.  It was like her biggest short story ever.  I liked it, but I am not too strict about things like plot and forward movement when I read fiction, which is what I have heard people are complaining about.  While I very much enjoyed it, it is not the kind of thing I would press upon other people.  Which I am used to, since the book I finished immediately before Moore's was PT-109: JFK in WWII.  Which is amusing in that when people ask "What's that you're reading?" & I say, "Book about PT-109," they get this look, like potato chips in their gums or pebbles in their shoes.  I know that ...  is that a recalled model number ... a secret operation ... a circus mission???  Then when I tell them, yk, "JFK's torpedo boat"  their relief bowls me over.

FlashForward is a fun show, fun enough to drag me back from a decade of naysaying this racket where a network doles out teevee 45 minutes per week.  So far during every episode, I have thought, "Ok, this is kind of unsustainable, this relationship with this show," and then they end on some high note that makes me wonder what the answer will be, so I will watch the next episode.  Which, when you think of it, is all teevee has to be:  the show that brings you back every week.  And the cast is pretty, every one.  I told the Israeli when I pressed it upon him that it reminded me of 24.  Concept, compelling casting, cinematic, and there is buzz.  

I have been listening to Antonio Carlos Jobim's Stone Flower and Andreas von Wangenheim playing Bach's cello suites transcribed for guitar.  It started out because Garçon's classical guitar lessons require exposure to more than, yk, strumming, but it is kind of impossible to feel harried with Bach playing on the radio, so it has stuck.

Amparo - Antonio Carlos Jobin,...

Although, it is a little weird because sometimes while making dinner or mopping, I feel like I am in some rambling indie movie, like I am The Truman Show, but I forgot about signing the papers or something.

Mopping=Casabella Eclipse.  I bought this because it was a light-duty damp-mopper that used actual soap & water in a world where Method's O-mop a. can hardly be found any more and b. feels too Mop 'N Glo dopey.  Save your money.  Save yourself.  (For regular-duty mopping, Casabella's regular mop cannot be beat.)  

It has to be three meals per week we are eating crustless tarte tatin.  Melt a half- or 3/4- stick of butter in a pan with a lid.  Slice up 4 or 6 apples and throw them in.  Cover.  After 10 minutes on medium heat, add 3 or 4 tbsps sugar.  Pay attention so they do not burn & when they look sugary & glazed (5 or 8 more minutes), put them on top of baked sweet potatoes or steel-cut oatmeal.

Speaking of steel-cut oatmeal.  I hear so many people tell me they love it (I spent some time pressing it into people a couple of winters back), but who has the time?  You do.  Assemble it the night before, in the pot.  Bring it to a boil.  Turn off the heat & cover.  In the morning, give it 10 minutes on medium-heat. 

The kids & I watched Ghostbusters last night, which I had last seen in 1991 in B-10 Commerce Hall.  Be advised, it is racy!  Among other things, Dan Akroyd gets a blow job from a ghost!  You're welcome!