Hawaiian Delight

Here's an essay/book chapter that I'm submitting to my writer's group. Genevieve and Nana are the same person. I need to be more intentional about what I call her. It's only a draft. Only a draft on a blog, at that. Warning: it's long. But with any luck you'll get sucked in. Yummy recipe at the end, folks!

It was 1939, a good year to be in Honolulu. Europe was on the brink of war, but Hawaii seemed safe, thousands of miles removed. Pearl Harbor and the imposition of martial law in Hawaii were two years away and undreamed of. That year, Americans saw at least two Hollywood movies featuring Hawaii: Honolulu, which starred the ever-dancing Eleanor Powell in grass skirts, and Charlie Chan in Honolulu, one in a series of comic detective stories. For now, sun, water, “aloha’s” and lavish real flower leis greeted newcomers with the promise of escape.

For Genevieve and Nancy, my grandmother and mother, the notion of escape was elusive. They had recently moved to Honolulu from Seattle, as Nana had taken a job as secretary to the President of the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce. “He was a drunk,” she would say dismissively, “I had to write all the press releases myself.” Nancy was all Genevieve had on that faraway island. A story Nana told me several times was the day the eleven-year-old Nancy was swimming in the surf and playfully ducked her head under a wave. Genevieve, terrified that she couldn’t see her daughter, rushed into the water to save her.

I don’t know who was more embarrassed, Genevieve, who had to ride the trolley back to the apartment fully dressed and without a change of clothes, or Nancy, at her mother’s hovering. (“Mother! I know how to swim!”) Genevieve sat, dripping and uncomfortable on the hot trolley, her wet dress flattering a fine figure, her auburn hair dripping, shoes squeaking, her daughter sulking. At this moment Genevieve no doubt wondered, “What am I doing here?” as she remembered her parents in Queen Anne Hill, still living in the spacious house she grew up in. Their Protestant rectitude might have even appealed to her from that distance, sweetened by her attachment to Seattle. She must have missed the wild blackberry patch across the street, her home’s generous front porch and its view of Mt. Rainier, the soothing clatter of the Counterbalance, even the long walk up and down the hill to church with her family.

But here she was, a middle-aged office worker bringing up her only daughter alone. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She had been the Oregon State tennis champion in college, president of Alpha Gamma Delta, and the belle of the fraternities. In her senior year she had become engaged to the Oregon State men’s tennis champion, Ken. I’ve heard a couple of different reasons from Nana as to why they were engaged for years without marrying. One, that Ken had asthma and his doctor said he shouldn’t marry. Two, that Ken was saving money. Slowly.

Whatever the case, by the time the engagement had languished for seven years, Genevieve had taken a job in San Francisco, much to the chagrin of Ken and her parents. Her parents complained that her apartment building “smelled of garlic,” which in those days meant the presence not of gourmands but of immigrants. One day, Ken, having had enough, took the train down from Seattle to fetch her, perhaps with dreams of an imminent wedding in his head. We’ll never know, because Ken also had a surprise waiting for him—Nana had gotten engaged to another man.

Nana waited until the very long train trip was over to break off the engagement to Ken. How tedious the hours must have been, filled with strained conversation.

“How is your mother?”
"Fine, just fine.”
Long pause.
“Genevieve, are you all right? You seem distracted.”
“Oh, no, everything’s fine. I’m just tired is all.”

Nana always said about John, the new man, that he “swept her off her feet.” He had seen her at a dance and was drawn to her laughing eyes and shining auburn hair. So much so that he bragged to a friend, “I’m going to marry that woman!” It didn’t hurt that he was scion to a large fortune either. Nana returned to California after dispensing with the albatross Ken, and married John quickly in a private civil ceremony. The couple moved to a charming bungalow in Pasadena, the city where John already lived, and where he had grown up. Genevieve gave birth to Nancy ten months after the wedding in the spring of 1929, and the sweet domestic scene began to turn sour.

It turns out that John was not only rich, but rich, idle, and spoiled. And an alcoholic. Genevieve, not knowing a thing about alcoholism, couldn’t understand why John would be gone for days at a time, and then apologize profusely, or why one time he drove the car through the garage door. When my mother was only a toddler, Genevieve divorced him. She divorced him, a bold move for a woman in the 1930s. John’s mother Inez then offered to pay Genevieve $13,000 if she would give her Nancy. Genevieve’s fear that John’s mother would try to take Nancy may have rendered the “escape” to Hawaii more desperate than most tropical vacations.

“Back to Honolulu,” Nana thought, as she roused herself from her thoughts and disembarked from the trolley with Nancy. “What will befall us here?” she asked herself wearily. She gripped Nancy’s hand tightly.

Nancy was a tall skinny girl at this age, extremely shy, with dark braids down her back. Genevieve’s hawk-eyed protectiveness exacerbated Nancy’s low confidence and self-consciousness. But still, Nancy was a girl who knew what she wanted. And one day, playing in the sand and talking with a girl her age named Carol, Nancy picked out her next father and Genevieve’s true love.

“Where’s your mother?” asked Nancy of Carol, as they dug a moat around a lopsided castle. Genevieve, of course, was a few yards away, pretending to be engrossed in a novel.
“She’s not here. She lives in California. I’m visiting my father--they’re divorced,” she added under her breath, studiously plopping down a bucketful of sand to create a turret.
“My mother is divorced, too!” said Nancy loudly, breathlessly. Genevieve looked up from her novel.
A gentle-looking man came up to Carol. “Carol, honey, we’re going back to the hotel now. . . . Who’s your new friend?”
“This is Nancy Owsley. Her mother is divorced, too!”
“Oh,” he smiled, “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said politely in a mild Southern drawl, as he solemnly shook Nancy’s sandy hand. “I’m Colonel William Carne.” His warm brown eyes looked into hers and Nancy burst out, “My mother’s right over there. Don’t worry, she’s not really reading that book.”
“Mrs. Owsley, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” murmured Colonel Carne, decades later to be known to me as “Papa.”
"Colonel Carne? How do you do?” Genevieve replied, properly.

And so love began. They became engaged one day later, and married a week after that, and were not separated until Papa’s death in 1974. I was ten when I learned that he wasn’t my “real” grandfather. Nana always told me. “He was my one true love.”

A couple years after Papa’s death, Nana visited her brother Fred in Seattle, and flew to Hawaii with him and his wife to visit her relatives. At some point in their visit they were treated to a pineapple cake, which they marveled over. Nana took the recipe home with her. This cake is luscious, sweet and rich. Pineapple is one of the most sensuous fruits. Nana’s rustiest file box contains four or five handwritten copies of this recipe, perhaps for handing out to friends, who inevitably asked her for it. Ironically, this cake calls for canned pineapple, even though it is from Hawaii. But perhaps that is fitting, because pineapple isn’t even native to Hawaii; it was introduced by the Spaniards in 1813, and Hawaii is largely transplants and tourists, anyway. A place to escape to and return from. And the baking mix the recipe calls for? Because sometimes you need a shortcut to love.

The cake was a huge hit in our family. Nana, my mother and I each made it several times during my college years and shortly after. The recipe was forgotten for a long time, but right now the cake sits cooling on a baking rack on my counter, smelling rummy and rich, soaking up the sugary glaze. The cake has a new name now. It makes me think of the time, many years ago, when my mother introduced Nana to Papa, on the eve of war, on a small faraway island in the vast blue sea.

_______________________________________________________

True Love Pineapple Cake

1 20-oz. can crushed pineapple
2 cups baking mix (I use Bisquick)
1 cup sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
¾ cup sour cream

½ cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons rum

Glaze

¾ cup sugar
¼ cup melted butter
¼ cup pineapple juice

Beat until dissolved.

Drain pineapple well, saving syrup. Stir baking mix, flour, baking powder, and soda together. Beat together sugar and butter until light and creamy. Add sour cream and vanilla and mix.. Add eggs and beat one minute. Add dry ingredients and beat one minute. Mix in drained pineapple and rum. Turn into well-greased bundt pan and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and spoon half the glaze over it. Let stand 10 minutes. Turn out on serving plate and pour rest of glaze over.

The Last Gift

I have this scarf. Velvety rayon, its knit body is beginning to tear in a few places. Its wide stripes are an unlikely mix of deep rose, maroon, rich orange, and chocolate brown. It went well with my salon-created dark auburn hair. It now goes well with my naturally silver hair. And it always makes me feel warmer.

This scarf was a present from my mother on my fortieth birthday, the last gift I would ever receive from her. Which is why, when I left it on the coat hook in a restaurant on Saturday, I panicked. The young man who answered the phone was obliging, and said he would try to set it aside, but he also said we'd better get it soon or it would be bound to disappear. So John dropped by the next day and retrieved it for me. (Thank you, dear!)

Yesterday, March 19, was the seventh anniversary of my mother's death. We all went with my father to her gravesite in Valley Forge Park. Next to my mother lies my brother David. Will was screaming that he was cold, but we weren't ready to go. I said "How about wearing my scarf?" and he agreed. So there he was, this big long scarf around his neck, almost dragging on the ground and clashing fiercely with his red jacket. (Unlike Jack, Will loves to accessorize.) There we were, huddled against the March wind, my father and I with our own memories and thoughts, John doing his best to answer Jack and Will's questions, and telling them not to stand or jump on any gravestones. John took a picture of us as we smiled and leaned into each other.

As we walked back to the car, I said, "I can't believe it's been seven years." John agreed. But then he said, "And yet it was a lifetime ago." We looked at the boys, Jack reading the names of the dead out loud, Will prancing around, the scarf billowing and blowing. I pulled my collar tighter and rubbed Jack's cold hands together with mine. "We should come back some time when the weather is warm," laughed John. "We keep coming on March 19." We promise ourselves we will return in May to walk the towpaths of the Perkiomen Creek, to revel in the sun and seek respite in the dappled shade. Meanwhile, we seek shelter from the cold.

Can You Say "Galaktoboureko"?

Today I met my friend Deb at St. George's Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Not for a service, for lunch. Every Friday the Greek ladies cook up mousaka, stuffed grape leaves, spinach pie, baklava, kataifi, and the aforementioned galaktoboureko. It's a filo-based pastry with custard in it. We each had a hearty meal for $8.50 each, and even got to hear some Greek music on the CD player to boot. Like every old church hall, the atmosphere was that of faint desolation, which I don't mind. It reminds us that our time on earth is fleeting.

Then, on Deb's insistence, and because our time on earth is so fleeting, we had gelato at Capogiro Gelato Artisans, splitting a bowl with the following flavors: Blood Orange, Grapefruit Campari, Bitter Chocolate, and Pistachio. Stratospherically delicious. Then we ran for the train.

All this while John wrote some code and rewashed some of the bedding Will threw up on the other night. But he nevertheless listened graciouslyto my story of all the food I ate. Bless him for that. Now that I'm a food memoirist, eating is my calling. I like that.

In Like a Lion

We've been talking a lot lately about spring, and how March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. We're all eager to spend more time romping about outdoors. A couple of days ago, we arrived at school and Will disembarked from the van. Stepping into the sunshine, Will exulted, "It's a sheep!"

33 Things from Jack, and 18 More Things

I let Jack and Will fiddle around in their own Word documents, which I may regret someday. Will likes to use the numbered lists feature because he's going through a stage in which dates and all kinds of series fascinate him. Today Jack did a list, too, and here it is. The idiosyncratic numbering is because the second part of the list didn't convert too well and I don't feel like trying that hard to fix it . . . . and no, he wasn't ingesting high amounts of sugar near the end.

1. king Arthur

2. morgan le fay

3. queen

4. moon

5. mars

6. earth

7. Saturn

8. Pluto

9. sun

10. noodles

11. dandy

12. yankee doodle

13. rhode island

14. ohio

15. Indiana

16. new Hampshire

17. Vermont

18. California

19. Hawaii

20. texas

21. pensylvania

22. ilinois

23. Alaska

24. Oklahoma

25. navada

26. civil war

27. florida

28. utah

29. Wyoming

30. sushi

31. max

32. phillidalphia

33. steelers

1. eagles

2. cockroach

3. georgtown

4. Ghana

5. Madagascar

6. nambia

7. zambia

8. queen Elisabeth

9. mini wheats

10. hunny bunches

11. bunny

12. chipmunk

13. squirrel

14. espenyole

15. squirrel has big bread

16. girly

17. chipmunk is fat

18. happy egg yolk

bouket

FAQs about My Life, Me, and My Blog

1. No, this isn't turning into a "food blog," although Scrivener has moved me from his "academic" blogroll to the "parenting" blogroll. That relieves me of the pressure to use the words like lacuna, interpellate, invidious, and reify. Now I need to talk about my kids more! Geez.

2. We did decide to send Jack to the local public school. We have told all necessary parties, and feel really good about this decision. We live in a great school district, and are blessed to even have a choice. So many parents don't.

3. My writing group is getting more productive because we're getting to know each other better. They are encouraging me to write a real food memoir. I figure since I am fairly good at writing and cooking, and have all those handwritten recipes from Nana and my Mom, and don't have a "real" job, that it's a reasonable thing to do. I've read Julie & Julia, which I thought was good if rather bloggy. I love Ruth Reichl, and am just now reading her first book, Tender at the Bone. Personal essays with recipes scattered here and there. Next on my list is Laurie Colwin. I have already read John Thorne, who is the best contemporary food writer I have ever read. Of course I've read M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David from a few decades ago.

4. I'm considering using my real name for my blog, and focusing more on the book idea, in which case, hey, I guess it may become a food blog, oh, hell, I should stop worrying about these categories. I still love the name "Dream Kitchen," though, and actually the title would still work with what I'd like to do, to tie food in with the desires and dreams of my grandmother, mother, and me. Food becomes a way into writing about everything else.

Mocha Mystery Solved

Well, I made my grandmother's Mocha Mystery Cake, which I mentioned in my previous post. It was right dandy. You pour a cup of coffee on top, and it forms a sorry-looking looking puddle. This doesn't look promising. Then you slide it into the oven as you tell yourself to have a little faith. As the cake bakes, it rises and the puddle sinks down into the interior. Then at the end there's this lovely dark mocha pudding at the bottom of the cake. I recommend serving this still warm with vanilla ice cream. Another mystery cake from the 1950s is "Tomato Soup Mystery Cake." It has a can of cream of tomato soup in it, which is the mystery, and it says it right in the title, so what's the fun in that? This need for mystery in desserts has me stumped. Nevertheless, I soldier on.

Mocha Mystery Cake

3/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla


Topping
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 cup cold brewed coffee

Grease an 8 x 8 pan. Preheat oven to 350. Sift sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl. Melt chocolate and butter together, and add to dry ingredients. Mix until crumbly. Add milk and vanilla and stir until smooth. Scoop batter into pan.

Stir together brown and white sugars and cocoa for topping. Sprinkle on top of batter. Pour coffee over all.

Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes. Cut in squares after 10 minutes and turn each square upside down on serving plates.

Cooking with Nana: The 1950s

(This is another gesture towards a food memoir. I'm trying to figure out what I might say and what my voice will sound like.)

In my basement are six file boxes and three notebooks of my grandmother’s handwritten recipes. Yellowed, tattered, disorganized, repetitive. Yet I search for clues to what her life was, its secrets and revelations. Sometimes I find a favorite dish, like Gingerbread or Country Captain, and the recognition warms me. The rest must be extrapolated.

I’m up to the 1950s now. She and my grandfather (“Papa”) lived in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and he taught at Valley Forge Military Academy. Nana volunteered at the Neighborhood League Shop and socialized with the other faculty wives and Neighborhood Leaguers. She wore white gloves to the city, had a cleaning woman, and in general lived the genteel life of a Main Line lady. That is, a Main Line lady of the 1950s. Her moderate-size four-bedroom colonial, circa 1952, has in the late 1990s been renovated and added onto, enough so that the house is now three times bigger and completely unrecognizable. No doubt it has a huge kitchen that is rarely used for the kind of cooking my grandmother did: braided breads, baked beans from scratch, apple pan dowdy, meat loaf with beef she ground in her own grinder, and salads from Papa’s well-tended garden.

These recipes are contained in a black looseleaf notebook, in no apparent order. Two documents, stuffed inside the notebook with recipes on them, help me date this collection. One is a Christmas letter from the USMA (West Point) Class of 1925 to its individual members, dated 1953-1954. “From the Pentagon to Paree, Korea, Japan and Germany to all points north, south, east and west—wherever Uncle Sam’s best are stationed.” The other is a mimeographed page of recipes headed “Television Kitchen Recipes” by Florence P. Hanford. “Featured Every Wednesday in Color,” asserts the next line. The show could be seen at 2:00 PM on WRCV-TV, or Channel 3. On the side is a jaunty drawing of a cameraman focusing his huge camera on a plated ham, which has hands and legs and a cheerful face. Channel 3 started using those call letters in 1956, and the show’s time was 2:00 from 1958 to 1960. The first recipe on the Television Kitchen page is Sautéed Chicken with Potatoes. It calls for chicken, butter, flour, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, potatoes--fair enough--and then, distressingly, 1 ¼ cups of cranberry juice. In the early days of color TV, taste was easily sacrificed, I suppose.

Nana was also in her fifties, keeping pace with the century. I don’t know if her memory was starting to go, or it she was just taking precautions against recipe loss or destruction, but there are three identical recipes for Texas Hash in this book, two for Lemon Cake Pudding, two for Shrimp Creole and two for French Dressing. Certain ingredients dominate the main dishes, especially crabmeat, oysters, cheese, cream, and sausages. This was company food. The richness also dates the recipes, because Nana had a heart attack late in the decade and became one of the first Americans to follow a strict low-fat diet. I remember her making angel food cake for every single birthday. She disdained cheese, bacon, and rich desserts when I knew her, so it feels strange to read one brownie recipe’s exclamation, “Delicious!” Brownies with frosting. A recipe for five pounds of fudge deservedly ends the collection. Just reading it makes my teeth hurt. Nana must have been in a hurry when she was copying it, because most of the instructions are written in now-dead shorthand. The angel-food-cake Nana I knew would no doubt be pleased that I couldn’t read the code.

Some recipes do sound good, and I’ve flagged them for trying someday, like Pink Party Cake, Mocha Mystery Cake, the Texas Hash, and Chicken Cacciatore. Pink Party Cake includes crushed peppermint candy in the frosting, and Mocha Mystery Cake has a cup of coffee poured over it. Texas Hash must be important or it wouldn’t be written three times. And I remember eating Nana’s Chicken Cacciatore as a child.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the daughter of strict teetotaling parents would take a cocktail or two. Nana’s father and mother, Graham and Grace, would no doubt be shocked to find that she harbored this recipe for Whiskey Sours:

2 cups whiskey
5 to 6 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 8 lemons
Maraschino cherries

Mix first three ingredients, add ice, and shake in cocktail shaker or mason jar. Keep refrigerated to prevent dilution. Put a cherry in each glass. Makes 12 to 14 drinks.

Do you even know 12 to 14 people who drink whiskey sours? Grace and Graham didn’t, and I certainly don’t. I like to think of Nana pouring these drinks for the officers and their wives into her lead crystal lowball glasses, sneaking a sip and an extra cherry in the kitchen. I see her making sure to introduce people and say just the right thing, looking elegant in a pinched-waist silk dress down to her mid calves. She smiles graciously and moves demurely, her auburn hair shining, pearls gleaming. No one knows the hours she spent painstakingly assembling canapés, grinding meat, picking vegetables, and baking in the hot kitchen. In this moment, she is the hostess, cool and fresh. And perfect.

John Quincy Adams Fan Club

Jack's favorite U.S. president is John Quincy Adams, because he had a pet crocodile. And I like him because I think the middle initial "Q" is the best ever. I have a fondness for Lincoln because he was so gaunt and hollow-eyed and sad, but also for Taft because he was fat. I like Teddy Roosevelt because he was so rowdy people thought he was drunk. And Buchanan because he was a bachelor. And Carter because he lusted in his heart, Ford for falling down a lot, Washington for having wooden teeth, and Millard Fillmore for having a funny name.

________________________________________

Will thinks that if you put the phone down on a picture, and the person on the other end puts the phone up to their eye, that they can see the picture. Guess he is a couple of years ahead of his time.

Marrow, Real and Metaphorical

Well, I'm finally reading Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell. She's the young woman who decided to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. She blogged about it as she went, and turned it into a book. She was making the publicity rounds in the fall. I saw the book on the "New Books" shelf in my library, and remembered that I wanted to read it.

It's charming, really. I like her voice, personable and real. She lives in what she deprecatingly calls an "outer borough" of New York, in a "loft" apartment, with "loft" always in quotation marks. She makes all this labor-intensive food in a crappy little kitchen. Her husband is very understanding. They drink a lot of vodka and order Domino's bacon and jalapeno pizza if the dishes don't turn out so well.

It is a crazed mission. Yes, crazed is what you must be to murder three lobsters in your own kitchen, saw a bone to get out the pink jelly-like marrow, and engage in untold other carnivorous cruelties with what can only be called at best mediocre or in other cases entirely inadequate kitchenware. And aspic is best left in the dustbin of culinary history, to say nothing of oeufs en gelee, aspic with soft poached eggs chilled in it. If you disdain HOT runny eggs then, yeesh, Domino's it must be. I had an accidental-on-purpose 30 minutes to kill before picking the boys up at school last week, so I read the book in the Seven Stones coffee shop in Media (Fabulous coffee! Real mugs!). It was all just fine until I got to the part about the marrow:

"I clawed the stuff out bit by painful pink bit, until my knife was sunk into the leg bone up past the hilt. It made dreadful scraping noises--I felt like I could feel it in the center of my bones. A passing metaphor to explorers of the deep wilds of Africa does not seem out of place here--there was a definite Heart of Darkness quality to this. How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones? It's the center of the center of things. If marrow were a geological formation, it would be magma roiling under the earth's mantle. If it were a plant, it would be a delicate moss that grows only in the highest crags of Mount Everest, blooming with tiny white flowers for three days in the Nepalese spring. If it were a memory, it would be your first one, your most painful and repressed one, the one who made you who you are." (p. 75)

I thought to myself, "This girl can write and cook! And why am I sweating so much?" I read on:

"So there I was, scooping out the center of the center of things, thinking mostly that it was some nasty shit. Pink, as I think I've mentioned. Very wet. Not liquid, but not really solid, either--gluey clots of stuff that plopped down onto the cutting board."

I put the book down. Took a sip of coffee, which suddenly tasted awful. Took some deep breaths. I was sure I was going to either faint or vomit. Was I going into some kind of mild shock? I was still a bit weakened from the flu . . . . Would that girl in the corner call 911 if I fainted? Should I alert the staff of the way I was feeling? But I didn't even want to stand up. Thankfully, the feeling passed after I desparately tried to think of all things non-marrow-related for five minutes. I was reminded of the time I read Anthony Bourdain's The Raw and the Cooked while I was in bed with a bad back. You just know that when the words "extreme" and "food" go together, that omelettes and ice cream will give way to embryos and entrails, and not just the eating of them, but their gruesome preparation and, always, the term"delicacy" will be bandied about.

Anyway, marrow aside, Julie & Julia is a great read.

My latest culinary pursuit occurred yesterday, when I cooked Konigsberger Klopse for my Dad's birthday. That's German Meatballs. I used the meatloaf mix with pork, beef, and veal. What I really like is the lemon in them, and chopped anchovies. and little bits of chopped pickle in the gravy. Heh heh. Peculiar but good.

Also Nigella Lawson's Buttermilk Birthday Cake with vanilla frosting. It's from How to Be a Domestic Goddess. A wonderful rich white cake. I decorated it with blue frosting to indicate waves, Jack drew a surfer saying "Yo!" (Those Philly surfers!) and Will drew lava and blue and yellow squiggly somethings. There were seven candles instead of seventy-seven. With my dad's emphysema, he had to take a couple of breaths to blow out even that many. He is going to the Bahamas for five days on Wednesday, hence the water theme of the cake.

Enjoy the sunshine, Dad, live long, and suck the marrow out of life. I mean, it must taste good, right?

Surfacing

It's been a little over a week, and today I can thankfully say that no one in the house has a fever. Haven't been able to say that since Sat. Feb. 4. We had company that night and over the course of the evening I felt more and more achy and chilled. That night Will also started a fever. His flair for the dramatic is striking. He wanted to sleep with us, and as soon as lay down he started screaming "I'm dying! I'm dying!", and breathing loudly, using his vocal chords. We weren't terribly convinced that he was dying, but were getting pretty alarmed that he was halfway to hysteria. So I cradled him in my arms and saying "Rock-a-bye Baby" to him a couple of dozen times. Each time he got quieter, until he finally fell asleep. Then my 30-minute-project was to slowly sink down to a lying position, and shove him off me without his knowing. Mission accomplished.

Then on Sunday Jack developed a fever that turned into a lung infection. My fever/cold (the third cold in about 7 weeks) caused an asthma flareup, so now I'm on steroids, antibiotics, and new asthma meds. Jack was home all week, and Will was only home on Monday and Tuesday. I was kind of strung out by the time I finally went to the doctor on Friday, because it's hard taking care of even one cooperative child when you yourself are coughing endlessly and feeling extremely fatigued. (A special little extra was when we had to give Will an enema on Tuesday, whee.)

So this post is just to say we made it. And that I never want to see Shrek again. And that if tomorrow is a snow day I shall weep.

Comments work now

A couple readers told me that the comments didn't work on the Monopoly post. I think the problem was because I had written it in Word instead of using a Blogger draft. So my blog didn't know that the post existed, at some level. So I redid it, and something must have been done differently, because it's working.

So comment away.

Monopoly, a Fable

Once upon a time, in the southeastern part of a commonwealth called Pennsylvania, there lived a brown-eyed boy named Jack. He begged his mother and father for the game Monopoly. Lo, they finally found it for him at Target, and gave it to Jack for Christmas. Not Junior Monopoly, nay. Real Monopoly. The kind where you are supposed to figure out 10% of your net worth because if you don’t, you have to pay $200 in income tax. The kind that taketh hours and hours and hours to play. (Fie, archaic verb endings that sneaketh into this passage!)

Upon unwrapping the package and claiming the small horse-riding figure for his own, young Jack begged whoever was able to join him in a game. Young William, his brother, was able only to throw the money and move everyone’s pieces but his own. Father (racecar) proved more than able and quite willing. Father still had the board memorized from his own youth, and nuances of strategy, and the cost of every property, nay almost every damn detail. He had the habit of saying, for example “That will be $22,” upon Mother’s rolling the dice.” “Shuttest thou up,” she requested. “I want to discover everything myself!” But I digress.

Jack, as Mother and Father soon learned, liketh not to lose. Upon losing, tears would roll down his face and Mother, yea, thought her heart would break. Upon winning, Jack would shout, “Let’s play another game!!” Hence, many a game transpired, upon the kitchen table, the dining room table, the living room rug, and finally on the floor in the new sunroom.

One day, Jack and Mother started a game in the new sunroom. Jack announced, “I’m going to buy Broadway and Park Place.” In due time, he landed on Broadway and the deed was done. Mother, having hast another engagement, enlisted Father to take her place. In a Machiavellian move, Father bought Park Place. Four turns later, Jack began to sob, “I—WANTED—PARK—PLACE!” The crying ensued for, yea, an eternity. Mother, whose heart was making loud rending sounds, rejoined the game. “Will you sell me Park Place?” asked the young Jack, big brown eyes shining and hopeful. “Well . . . I guess so. But for $400!” She felt tough and demanding. Park Place was now Jack’s.

Turn upon turn ensued. In a twinkling, it seemed, he had three houses on Boardwalk and two on Park Place. Sweat broketh out on Mother’s forehead every time her little hat rounded the corner by “Go Straight to Jail.” Soon, she landeth on Boardwalk. She mortgaged her railroads, Marvin Gardens, and Atlantic Avenue in order to pay. Next time around she landeth on Park Place. She beginneth to feel, most viscerally, the error of her ways. She mortgageth all her properties. She selleth all her houses. Upon paying the requisite $1400, there was but $52 in her possession. Saith Father, I can’t believe you sold him Park Place! You should have charged him three times that amount!”

“I give up,” sayeth Mother breezily, “You win.” “No, no! Let’s keep playing.” Mother trieth again, “I’m going to wash the sunroom floor before before we put the furniture in, so we need to put the game away.” “No! Let’s just finish in another room! The game can last longer!”

Desirest thou a moral for this story? I can’t really think of one other than “If thou shouldst sell thy son Park Place for a song, he shall whip thine ass.”

Be Delicious

My friends Cathy and Dave included the following quote in their Christmas letter. It's from Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. "Bread is as spiritual as life gets. [The poet] Rumi wrote, 'Be a well-baked loaf.' Loaves are made to be eaten, to be buttered, and shared. Rumi is saying to be delicious and give life." I shared the quote in a Sunday school class recently and then got a copy of the book from the library. I have always liked Anne Lamott. The first I ever heard of her was on This American Life ("Music Lessons," 1998). I didn't catch her name, and never learned who she was until the segment was repeated. (You know she's a woman after my own heart when she writes, "On the day I die I want to have had dessert.")

Back to the bread. "Be delicious and give life." We don't think of ourselves being delicious, do we? It sounds too . . . sexual, too available. But I think of it as an innocent generosity, a willingness to fling good will outward, not knowing where it will land or if it will be returned. Lamott several times has mentioned that she "flirts" with old people at the grocery store or on the street. I know what she means, taking a risk to connect, even though you have nothing to gain. It's a way to be delicious.

In Sunday school class that day, someone mentioned that a person in a rice-based culture would have trouble with Jesus' statement, "I am the bread of life," and suggested that it be translated especially for whichever starch the particular culture is based on. "I am the tortilla of life," or "I am the rice cracker of life."

On another level, so many people don't even know what good bread tastes like, or think that baking it yourself must be very difficult, and not the simple but patient task it really is. The impoverished idea of "bread" as either something unattainable and labor-intensive OR something bland and factory-made, surely has deep spiritual consequences. At myYMCA the other day I overheard a lady in her 70's telling a woman in her 30's about her sourdough bread that she has made for thirty years. The older lady offered to give the younger one some starter and the recipe, but she said"I don't have time to wait for things like that." The exchange made me feel sad, as it was but one small refusal of a life-bestowing gift that could have multiplied itself for years to come, giving joy to countless other hungry humans and begging dogs under the table. She refused the call.

Here is my recipe for oat bread. I don't remember where I first got this recipe, but I've changed it so many times that it's really and truly mine now. I make it in the bread machine I've had for ten years. The boys eat this for lunch every day.

Lauren's Humble Everyday Oat Bread

Combine in bread machine:

3/4 cup oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups unbleached regular flour
1/4 cup powdered buttermilk
1 tablespoon yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
slightly less than 1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 cups water

Start machine. When it beeps to add extras, you can add 1/2 cup of flax seed meal, walnut meal, oat bran, millet, or some other grain. You can use molasses or maple syrup instead of honey. Or use all unbleached regular flour. Don't forget the yeast, for Pete's sake. I've done that twice. Share this bread and remember to be delicious!

Two Hotties Share a Birthday

James Denton, who plays Mike Delfino from Desparate Housewives, turns 43 today, as does my lovely husband John. John is willing to illegally download that very show so that I can TiVo Bleak House. Desparate Houswives or Bleak House? Desparate Houswives or Bleak House? Thanks to John, my brain doesn't have to explode after all.

Feel free to wish John a happy birthday in the comments section, dear readers.

The job and school situation continues to percolate, thanks to you all for your comments.

Schools and Jobs and Jobs at Schools

An actual blog entry.

My sense of humor is on vacation, happens every year in midwinter, sorry, dear readers. That's why no blog for a while. Feeling blah and fuzzy. Dear husband is illegally downloading The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for me, the lovable rascal, but it hasn't helped yet. I've told him that a long trip to a warm sunny place would work better, but does he listen? No, so just my sense of humor gets to go. Sheesh.

Anyway, I've been losing quite a bit of sleep this past week over a buncha stuff:

A teaching position has opened at a small college I worked at recently, which I would have a shot at. However, several years ago I got pretty badly mauled by the politics of academia, in what I feel was an abusive situation. And this isn't any better, just different patterns of abuse. In this situation I would be the person perpetually soothing injured egos, not the scapegoat. This college has no English majors. Very few students are even interested in liberal arts. Every year, it seems, the faculty endures a bruising labor dispute or some kind of battle that pits Division X against Division Y. The money is scant. No tenure. Whee!

Got that? OR I could teach English enrichment to a handful of gifted 7th and 8th graders. The principal of my sons' Montessori asked me last week if I wanted to do it. Also they are encouraging us to keep Jack there, and can offer reduced tuition. I went back to them and said that if Jack doesn't go to public school then I would need to work more, and would they let me do some grantwriting and PR work (the latter I already do for them on a freelance basis) on a salaried basis. She called the president of the board and will get back to me . . . . I have to say this job is much more appealing than the college job. Mainly because the people are actually nice. And they're professional. Plus, they know and love my children. It's close to my house. And they will pay me to read books and teach writing to kids who already love it.

We live in a town with a "blue ribbon" school district, and we're paying high tax bills for the privilege, so why would we send our kids to private school? Here's why I'm tempted: because Jack reads at a 3rd or 4th grade level now in kindergarten, and we're afraid he will be bored. At the school he goes to now, he could just keep going at the pace he is going now, which is completely his own initiative. My question for the Internet is: How horrible is it to be slightly bored in first and second grade? And my second question is: What happens if you blow college savings on private school?

And what's brown and sticky?

A stick.

Real Headline, or The Onion Headline?

Here is a headline from my very very local newspaper:

"Audience Will Sit in Lang Lobby to Watch Donizetti's Opera 'Elixir of Love,' Sung in English in a South Philly Setting"

It took up four lines. Wow. And moving the lobby of the Lang Performing Arts Center from Swarthmore College to South Philadelphia is no mean feat, either. Just shows what you can do with a huge endowment.

Dusting off the Ole Blog

Ahem. . . Testing, testing. Is this thing on?

It was a good Christmas, even though things did drift a bit off message. We try to teach our children rather earnestly about Jesus and gift-giving, about how we celebrate Jesus' birthday by giving gifts to each other. We say that Santa is a nice story but we EMPHASIZE Jesus. The result is that Jack fervently believes in Santa Claus and that Will is really into Hanukkah, happily singing songs about dreidels all throughout the house.

The interminable week between Christmas and New Year's was made less so by a trip to the Franklin Institute and roller skating. Jack and John liked the roller skating. My rented skates did not fit, and I felt creaky and insecure on them. Will slid around hopelessly and just wanted to look at the arcade games (we never actually give the boys money to play them). So Will and I sat around, very patiently I thought, while John and Jack went around and around and around and around and around and around the rink. I tried not to let Will see the game with the man getting shot in half with a machine gun and spurting gallons of blood in every direction. Did not completely work. Even if you touched the machine a murder happened on it. So I'd say "Let's watch Jack and Daddy skate to 'She's a Brick House,' which I remember from sophomore year! While that big shiny ball turns! (So it's come to this, has it?) Hey! Wanna go home?" John glides over and says gamely "I'm really getting the hang of this. I could skate for a while yet."

Will and Jack created much art over the vacation. Will has been making representational pictures for a couple of months now. Jack has just started making "comic books." He did a drawing last week that features a doctor wearing a pirate hat with a cross on it. The doctor has a thought balloon in which he remembers his past as a pirate. Also featured in this drawing are a radio, a civil war, and, according to Will, "A girl with a vagina." And all on an Office Depot 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of premium white copy paper, no less.

Experiment in Iambic Quadrameter

A Man with a Plan

By Jack, Mommy, and Will

There was a man
From Pakistan.
He had a plan
To go to Dan.

Dan had a dog
Who ate a frog
Who left his bog.
Poor Mateen was all agog. [Mateen is the name of the man from Pakistan.]

And now it's on the blog.

Nothing, A Poem (as dictated by Jack and Will)

(To be read in a most sombre tone of voice)

Make poopy puppet
Make eyeball puppet
Make nothing puppet
Make nothing ho puppet
Make boo-y puppet

I love nothing.

More Nigella than Martha

Remember how I said that when I was a child, I thought that Turkish delight must taste like butterscotch brownies, because otherwise why would Edmund want to eat so many of them in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Well, I had to go and make some yesterday. I hadn't made any in years because they never quite seemed right, but now I've tweaked the original Joy of Cooking recipe enough to satisfy me. I doubled their recipe and used a 9 x 13 pan, but used the same amount of salt, and unsalted butter. Also a bunch of toasted pecans.

I'm not into fussy little decorative sweets, so I'll think I'll make a batch of these and a batch of Joy of Cooking's brownies (with either instant espresso powder or almond extract for a little depth) for the obligatory "Christmas cookies" after church. I'll also make gingerbread men with the boys. No one ate them last year at church, so I expect we'll just leave them out for show and then eat them at home. The boys have so much fun hand-molding them. They do look turdlike, so I can understand why they are shunned. We'll do cutouts this year too.

Oh, yeah. Here's the recipe. I brought these to the writer's group last night to accessorize my hunger essay.

Lauren's "Not Turkish Delight" Butterscotch Brownies

Adapted from the original Joy of Cooking

Preheat oven to 350, or 325 if you use convection. Grease a 9-by-13-in. pan.

Melt in a saucepan:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)

Stir into it until well mixed:
2 cups packed brown sugar

Cool these ingredients slightly, transfer to a large bowl, then beat in well:
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Sift together:
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Stir sifted ingredients into butter mixture.

Add one to two cups chopped toasted pecans. You can toast them as soon as the oven is hot, for ten minutes on a cookie sheet.

Spoon dough into pan and bake for 25 minutes or maybe a little less. I do 23 minutes because I like them just cooked. Cut in about 20 mins, when they are still a little warm.

The Secret Habits of Presbyterians

In the car today, driving to school.

Jack (laughing, to Will): Something--something--Presbyterians--something! Ha, ha, ha!!

Me(disbelieving): Did you just say something about Presbyterians?

Jack (tentatively): Presbyterians dress up as devils.

Me: What? They what?

Jack: Dress up as devils.

Me: What makes you think so?

Jack: It's a joke. When we visited the Presbyterian church, people were dressed up. (We wear jeans at our church.)So I thought it would be funny to say they were dressed as devils. I can put that in my joke book. . . . Will didn't think it was funny.

Me: Well . . . it was a subtle joke.

Jack: What does that mean?

Me: It's a joke that needs a lot of explaining.

Jack: Yeah.

Death, Commas

. . . May I say something? It's about my writers group. My writers group happens to be associated with a major university in the city with Ivy League pretensions, except there seems to be no oversight or gatekeeping. Not to sound snooty or anything, but when I pay money for a babysitter, I really don't want to spend twenty minutes of my evening convincing a stubborn lady that her book on how to write a memoir should not have twenty-four chapters. Twelve would be better. And take out all the chapters on grammar. And organize the chapters. One very nice person was tactfully trying to tell this lady that her chapters were in no perceivable order. The lady kept defending herself. Finally I couldn't stand it any more, and I burst out with "You've got a chapter on death. Then a chapter on commas. Death, commas. Death, commas. Won't work!"

Should I start my own writers group? If any Philadelphia area writers are reading this, please tell me where you go for critiques of your writing. (I should probably save my pennies to attend the Creative Nonfiction Conference that is held at Towson U. every year in Baltimore. I went just before I had Jack, and it was incredible.) Or, if I started my own creative nonfiction writers group that meets in Delaware County, would you come?

Girl Seeks Food

Here's another essay I'm submitting to my writers group.

Girl Seeks Food

“You don’t feed that baby enough,” laughed the refrigerator repairman, commenting on my double-chinned pillowy body. Eight months old, bald and toothless, I was happy on formula and Gerber’s, not quite crawling the fat off yet. The common wisdom of the day, according to my mother and grandmother, was “Fat babies grow up to be fat adults.” For that reason I was denied second helpings for years and given skim milk, while my brothers got whole. Sweets were strictly limited.

I took this reasoning at face value for many years, but the prohibitions goaded me into committing what my mother called “sneaky” acts. When I was about six I developed a ritual of stealing four cookies at a time from the cookie jar. Even if I had just eaten a legitimate cookie, I would accomplish this mission when my mother left the room, almost always successfully. Here was my M.O.:
1. Take lid off cookie jar without clanking.
2. Swiftly and confidently remove four cookies. It always had to be four, I don’t know why.
3. Return lid to jar without clanking.
4. Take cookies to bedroom. Eat immediately.

Step 3 was by far the most challenging, because a cookie jar lid, in the days before anyone lined lids with sealing rings, was loudly condemning, unless I focused completely on the task at hand, and without haste. If it clanked anyway, even the least little bit, my mother could always hear it no matter where she was. “What are you doing?” she would holler. And I would always holler back, “Nothing.” Sometimes if I was just alone in the kitchen she’d ask me what I was doing, because she knew those cookies had a way of decreasing when I was around.

Cakes presented a different kind of challenge. I learned early on to not cut myself a piece, because my mother learned to remember the dessert’s roughly L-shaped configuration. The only thing to do was to cut all around the previously cut edges, hence leaving the same basic shape. I’d pursue this gradually, using a knife and eating slivers off it. That way, if I heard my mother’s footsteps I could nonchalantly shift to a default activity, like looking out the window or reading the comics.

Going out to eat with my grandmother was always a special treat, but not without its chastening moments. More than once she would embarrass me by proclaiming in a stage whisper at Stouffer’s, “This is a good restaurant. You know how I know? Because Jews eat here.” Of course I always wanted dessert, and she would let me get it but then shame me with a huge gasp when it was presented. “Are you going to eat all that?” Only in my teens did I gather the nerve to say “yes” and look her in the eye. On the other hand, whenever my grandmother was offered dessert she would say, “Just a teeny tiny sliver,” gasp when it was delivered, and say “I can’t possibly eat all that.”

Back at home, I carried the sneaky game too far one midsummer morning when I was seven. It was the day when we were to move out of state, and spend the night at my grandparents’s house. I was on the open-air side porch and I was just about to take a bite out of a Hershey bar I had unwrapped in the kitchen, whose wrappings I had no doubt hidden under less recent trash. Suddenly I heard my mother’s heels clicking along the walk. (Women of her age and class wore loud dressy shoes even on moving day.) My sundress had no pockets, so I stuffed the candy bar, improbably, in the side of my underpants.

Even more improbably, I promptly forgot about the candy bar, what with all the excitement of the day. Hours later I discovered it at my grandparents’ house, a gooey sludge in my underwear. I scrunched the underpants and their load in my suitcase, hoping they would go away. My mother found them almost immediately and asked me “Lauren, are you all right? What is this in your underpants?” Mortified, I said, “I’m fine . . . . but I really don’t want to say what it is. Is that okay?” Miraculously, my mother said “okay” and never brought it up again.

I like to remember that moment of grace, because in my memory there weren’t many of them. Even as a grown woman visiting my parents, I knew my mother was listening to the cupboard and refrigerator doors, to ascertain what I was getting. She would proclaim she was going to bed, only to pop up unexpectedly in the kitchen a half hour later because she “forgot something.” But I wasn’t the only person left hungry. My mother’s cooking was delicious, and I owe a large part of my cooking know-how from her, but she cooked scanty amounts. Every time I brought a boyfriend for dinner he had to eat another meal afterwards. My father would fix himself a sandwich right after he got home from work. My husband John and I would go out for a beer and appetizers two hours after a dinner at my parents’ house.

Now my mother and grandmother are dead, but I have six file boxes, three looseleaf notebooks, and one composition book full of their hand-copied recipes. One recipe card at a time, I decipher my grandmother’s loopy handwriting on the yellow-stained papers, and transcribe it. I sift through my mother’s recipes for Indian Pudding, Country Captain, Rhubarb Crisp, and, of course, cookies of one kind and another. Sometimes I encounter my own childish handwriting, in whatever color of ink I liked at the time. The project to record these recipes is daunting, but I will finish. Because I am still hungry.

Sting

This morning in the car, after the boys wailed bitterly about someone who didn't let someone have a turn, having to wear mittens, having to wear coats, having to go to school, and being reminded that it's a school day.

Jack: Mommy, do you like being a mother?

Me: (tensely) Yes. (suspiciously) Why?

Jack: Because sometimes it doesn't seem like you do.

Me: (determined not to take this personally like my mother used to be when I said stuff like that) I just don't like when my sons don't cooperate in the morning and act like it's a big surprise that they're going to school every day.

Jack: We don't go to school every day, just Monday to Friday! And not in the summer!

Me: (tensely again, while negotiating tricky turn) You know what I mean.

Jack: You want us to do what you want.

Me: Yes. Exactly.

Jack: (muttering) Like we're your slaves.

Me: (Nothing. I actually say nothing. Ta da. Turns on WXPN)

____________________________

Conversations with Jack

First, a note about the Inquirer's claim that Disney is sponsoring the Narnia sermon contest: I really don't think it's true, at least in a technical sense. The SermonCentral.com site has a big ole disclaimer at the bottom of the page. That pretty much takes away the peg I was hanging the "Kingdoms Collide" entry on, oh well. But there will be over 50 movie tie-in products, and then there is some kind of sweepstakes, so my claim about Aslan's response still stands.

_________________________

Here's a conversation Jack and I had the other day while the boys were changing out of their swimsuits at the Y.

Jack: Mommy, you know something really strange about the American Presidents?

Me: No, what?

Jack: They were all men.

Me: Yeah, what's with that? That is weird. And they're all white.

Jack: Hey, yeah!

Me: Maybe someday we'll have a woman president.

Jack: Or maybe a black woman president!


____________________________________

The other day, at breakfast:

Jack: Mommy, can boys marry boys?

Me: In some states they can.

Jack: Can they in Pennsylvania?

Me: No, but they can go to another state and do it.

Jack: That's what I'm going to do. Can I have more cereal?

________________________________

Following up later in the day (at the Y, changing out of swimsuits, again)


Me: Remember when you asked about boys marrying boys?

Jack: Yes.

Me: Well, when you're older, you will be attracted to either boys or girls. Probably you will want to marry a girl, but maybe not. It's like being left-handed or right-handed. You're born to like girls or boys. But you probably won't know for many years. I wouldn't worry about it yet. There's room in the world for all kinds of love.

Jack: Yeah. Like I love Alex (best friend). And I love you! And I love Daddy and Will!

Me: But that doesn't mean you want to marry us.

Jack: Yeah!

Will: Yeah! Group hug!

(Group hug, rather wet)

Kingdoms Collide

For decades I believed that I had read all the Narnia stories. After a rather disconcerting conversation with my husband last year, it turns out that I had merely read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe over and over and over. I must have been very young, because I remember trying to look in my grandparents' spare room closet for snow and a lamppost. The closet was behind the staircase, and so the back of it sloped upwards into . . . into where? It mystified me.

Another burning question raised by the book was, "What exactly is Turkish delight? And where can I find some?" When I did finally taste it at the end of a meal at a London restaurant, its rubbery texture and vaguely rosewater taste reminded me that Edmund's Turkish delight was enchanted by the White Witch, after all. Had it been me in her sled, I'd have asked the White Witch for butterscotch brownies. I knew deep inside that I could so easily have been the Edmund of the early chapters, seeking my own comfort over justice and truth.

Edmund's change of heart, though, is profound. Even as a young child I grasped some of the allegory's power. We can grow beyond our own narrow egos. The world that is we see is not necessarily all there is. Ordinary children may be granted the power to see through the lies of adults and to change the moral landscape. A friend of mine who is reading the movie tie-in version confessed that she "missed the God thing" in her childhood reading. But I said to her, "No, you didn't miss it. You just didn't label the good forces as 'God.'"

That's why it's good literature. The Narnia stories depict an epic struggle for justice and love over corruption and greed, beauty and peace over disharmony and destruction. The struggle takes generations. It is bloody. The struggle is guided and disciplined by Aslan, who isn't always there when you need him but gets cranky when you forget about him. In the end, Aslan and the forces of good triumph in a final hard-won battle.

Now there's Disney, who is sponsoring a contest in which preachers are asked to submit sermons that mention the Narnia movie. Disney will hold a drawing, and the winner gets, not Turkish Delight, but $1,000 and a trip to London.*

Aslan is not pleased.

________________________

*According to this article in the Dec. 4 Philadelphia Inquirer, "Walt Disney Pictures is so eager for churches to turn out audiences for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which opens Friday, that it's offering a free trip to London - and $1,000 cash - to the winner of its big promotional sermon contest." However, this site says it's sponsored by SermonCentral.com.

Coming Up for Air

Gulp. That felt good.

Things That Have Happened, in Chronological Order, Since my Last Post

1. Joint birthday party for Jack and Will

2. Arrival of inlaws from Indiana

3. Jack's actual birthday, with family celebration

4. Broken heating element in oven, the day before Thanksgiving

5. Heroic successful attempt by father-in-law to replace heating element in time for me to bake two pies that day

6. Thanksgiving at our house for nine people, with my grandmother's linens and silver. Everything cooked from scratch. Incredible stuffing and a bottle of mead made by my multitalented brother. And thanks to John the Brining Guy, various helpful family members and sporadically helpful boys.

7. My father's admission to a local hospital, for breathing problems, heart rate irregularity, and fever.

8. Surprise 50th birthday party one month ahead of time for my sister-in-law at a restaurant in Philly.

9. Will's actual birthday and family celebration.

10. My father's discharge from the hospital.

11. My locking my keys in the car at the hospital. (These last three were on the same day)

12. The departure of my inlaws, nine days after arrival.

During this time I didn't blog or write anything other than shopping lists and to-do lists. Didn't go to the gym. Mushy brain, flabby body. Must get to work.

How put together again sentences do you?

Of Pirates and Party Manners

We're having a pirate birthday party here tomorrow for Will and Jack. Their birthdays are a week apart, and we're trying to get as many joint parties in as we can. The boys and I looked online for pirate images to use in the invitations, but I remembered, after looking at various etchings and drawings of historical pirates, that pirates were not nice. They made people walk the plank. They (obviously) stole people's ships and money. Pirates really got theirs, though, when they were caught. Gosh!

I hastily steered the boys away from these grim images of piratry, but couldn't find very many happy pictures of real pirates, unless you count this one, which doesn't strike me as quite the right tone for a children's birthday party. Plus, the guy looks miserable. I thought of using web photos of real pirate maps for the invitations, but they seemed a bit esoteric.So we sent generic invitations, and then got your conventional sanitized party pirate pictures, on napkins, plates, tablecloth.

And the cake, you ask. I just made it this morning, Richard Sax's Fudgy Chocolate Layer Cake. from Classic Home Desserts. Instead of chocolate frosting I used a cream cheese frosting, changed a little from the one he lists for the Applesauce-Carrot Cake. All vanilla extract and no lemon zest. I love Richard Sax. Love him. A couple years ago I read in John Thorne's Simple Cooking Newsletter that he was dead. Richard Sax was dead even when I got the book, about nine years ago. I felt so sad, and also very disconcerted that all that time I thought he was alive. If you just read a little from the book, which has been reissued because it is so well researched and written in such a warm voice, you'll know what I mean. He lives in the book.

Then I had to go and make a pirate hat with that gross black frosting in a can. And a skull and crossbones from the slightly less disgusting can of white frosting. Then a bunch of "Easter sprinkles" around the sides for a lighter mood, more resurrection and less death.

Voila! The skull has a drunken lopsided smile and the edges of the black hat jut out oddly in a few places. As Jack just said to me, "It looks good for not being professional." Kind words, matey.

Better than Sex

I've hit the motherlode, dear readers. Nana's most special of all her half dozen recipe boxes, the rustiest one, the one with odd bits of paper and wrongly labelled sections. "Salads." No salads, here, sister! Only luscious desserts, such as "Better than Sex." Now I have heard of "Better than Sex" Cake, but this recipe, typed on the old black Smith-Corona on a small unevenly cut piece of paper, just says "Better than Sex" at the top. Is it the name of the dish or a description of it? This ambiguity leads me to wonder why my grandparents had separate bedrooms, and if it was really because Papa snored too loud, as was the party line. Not surprisingly, I don't remember this dessert at all, perhaps because Nana didn't want to tell us children what it was called.

It does sound sweet, silky, creamy, smooth. And . . . . greasy. Topped with Cool Whip, ooh la la. But guaranteed not to demand anything from you, give you an STD, or get you pregnant. And without further ado,

Better Than Sex

1 C flour
1 stick oleo (WW II rationing has been over a while; use butter)
1/2 C chopped pecans
1 C powdered sugar
8-oz. package cream cheese
tub of Cool Whip (I changed from Dream Whip, thanks Betty McB)
2 small packages lemon or chocolate instant pudding (depending on your orientation?)
2 1/2 C whole milk, COLD

Mix flour, oleo, and nuts. Press into bottom of 9 x 13 pan and and bake 15 minutes at 350. Cool.

Cream together powdered sugar and cream cheese to a frost-like consistency (I think she means "frosting") and spread over the cooled crust. Blend milk and pudding to an almost set consistency and pour over cream cheese mixture. Top with Cool Whip.

The Well-Intentioned Cook

I try to use fresh local ingredients whenever possible and don't eat or serve processed food, for the most part. I make my own bread, with a bread machine. Jack and Will's teachers comment on how good the bread looks! No single-serving packaged food in our house, no juice boxes. We aim for optimal health,living lightly on this earth, and good taste. Which reminds me that I need to make dinner. I haven't thought too much about it all day. But we have tomatoes, cheese, pasta, green peppers, garlic, olive oil, and so I think I'll manage come up with something.

Please check out Simply in Season, Cathy Hockman-Wert's food blog named after the cookbook she co-edited with Mary Beth Lind, published by Herald Press. The proceeds from the cookbook go to Mennonite Central Committee, an organization that helps the world. I tested one recipe in the book (Grilled Vegetable Salad) and my sister in law tested ten. Cathy has known my husband John for years. Besides being nonprofit, the book is lovely on its own. It's not a trendy foodie cookbook, no famous chefs involved. It is truly friendly to the home cook who is willing to be patient with her or his methods and foods, and who cares about healthful eating.

That said, I confess I have a bunch of greens, an eggplant, and a crowd of squashes in the downstairs fridge that are past the point of no return and sorely need to be evicted and composted. I keep vainly hoping for a resurrection.

Happy Birthday, Dream Kitchen

On Saturday my blog turned one year old. I'm thinking of a few ways to celebrate it:

-Write one of those 100 things about me memes
-Publish a couple of essays that haven't been published anywhere
-Take roll

I'll start with the last--Who reads my blog? Are you a new visitor or a regular? Figuratively raise your hand by leaving a comment. Insincere, empty, ironic, any comment will do, as long as it's from a real person. You could just say "present." Thank you kindly, dear readers.

The Existential Kindergartener

We have deep conversations on the way to school in the morning. This Pinteresque one from last Thursday:

Jack: What if there was nothing?

Lauren (stalling): I'm not sure what you're asking. No helmet AND the wrong side of the street. Idiot.

Jack: I mean no people, no air, no earth, no nothing.

Lauren (vaguely) Wow. That might be boring.(There's no way I'm letting you in, silver Mercedes.)

Will: No cars! No roads!

Jack: No, wait. It wouldn't be boring. Not if there wasn't anyone around to think it's boring.

Will: No food! No cats!

Lauren: Jack, good thinking. An excellent point. Move already, geezer in the blue Cadillac. If there were nothing, no one could call it nothing because we wouldn't be around to name anything. In a way it's already something even if it's called "nothing." How long has that gas indicator light been on?

Jack: God wouldn't even be there.

Lauren: Not if there was nothing. I'm glad there's not nothing.

Will: Can we go to the playground after school?

Lauren: If it's warm enough, we can. And stop kicking my seat.

Nana's "Where is that Biscuit Dough Recipe, Anyway?" Apple Pan Dowdy

Now I'm the keeper of my Nana's five recipe boxes and two recipe collections in notebooks. Nana was born in 1899 and died in 2002 so something sure gave her a lot of staying power. Whether it was the food she cooked, her zeal for propriety in all things, or her desire to see me happily married and a mother, I don't know. I sure made her wait a long time for the latter. She didn't seem to quite keep me straight with my mother by the time the boys were born, but my mother was dead by then, so whatever. It's all good.

What was I talking about? Apple pan dowdy. This recipe is typical of the many recipes I copied out the other day. It was written with a blue fountain pen in big, barely decipherable loopy script. When I find her biscuit recipe I'll publish it, but don't hold your breath. I'll probably make this with Deborah Madison's biscuit recipe. This apple pan dowdy recipe is actually from a composition book that probably dates from the early forties. Some of the entries are written in my mother's writing, a tightly controlled script that is much easier to read, written with the same kind of pen.

Answers to anticipated questions:

1. A quart is four cups.
2. A pudding dish is just a ceramic baking dish. A 1 1/2 to 2-qt. size would work.
3. I would guess this would take about 40 mins. Check at 30 mins. and if the top is too brown, cover with foil.

Nana's Apple Pan Dowdy

qt. apples, sliced
1 C light brown sugar
½ t cinnamon
1/8 t cloves
1/8 t nutmeg
4 T butter
½ C cider

Butter pudding dish and put in sliced apples. Spread sugar over apples and sprinkle spices over sugar. Dot top with butter. Add cider and cover with biscuit dough ¼ in thick. Score holes for steam to escape. Bake in moderate oven 350 degrees until apples are tender and crust is well browned.

Eyes That See

Months ago, I was assigned children's time for November 6 at church. I didn't know what I should do it on, and because the pastor was out of town for several days he couldn't answer my email. And there wasn't a worship leader for the service until Wednesday. Finally, the administrative assistant remembered the pastor had sent him the topic earlier: "Prayer can be a real part of caring for the community around us."

Right away, I knew that Will would teach the congregation a prayer he had learned at camp this summer. I have been very taken with the profundity and simplicity of this prayer, and Will prays it often before dinner:

May we have eyes that see, (hands uncover eyes)
Hearts that love, (hands crisscross over heart)
And hands that are ready to help.(hands spread outwards)

Right before the service it's our practice for the people involved in worship to pray briefly together just by the landing, and I happened to be holding Will's hand to take him in to church. (John and Jack were already there.) So I just brought Will in with me, we all held hands, and before the pastor could pray, Will just piped up with his entire prayer, confident and clear as a bell. "I think that says everything," laughed the pastor in wonder, and he dismissed us. The lump in my throat made it hard for me to speak.

When children's time came, Will was just as eager to teach everyone the prayer, and he spoke very close to the microphone. The children learned it, and then we all turned outward to the congregation to teach them.

We really needed to pray that prayer. It turns out it had been a hard week for several of our members, as a child abuse allegation had been made against the mother of a child in Jack's Sunday school class. The grandmother, who seems to be the backbone of the family, expressed her hurt that no one had called her first. She has struggled for decades to bring her children and grandchildren up to be good people. She has attended our church for 20 years, and regularly brings her famous macaroni and cheese to the potlucks. She stands up every week during sharing, in a great big wonderful flowered hat, to ask for prayer. And yet she believed now that some members in the church had shown racist attitudes toward her family. We listened to her anger and disappointment for as long as she had words, which seemed very long indeed. When she was done, hugs and tears.It was so hard.

Now I have learned that Will's camp prayer is based on a Unitarian-Universalist prayer that goes like this:

Mystery of Life, Source of All Being, we are thankful for the gifts of life and being, of love and connection. We are thankful for all the wonders of the world around us. We are thankful for each other and for all the members of our global family. May we have eyes that see, hearts that love and hands that are ready to serve in love and in kindness, with caring and with courage. Blessed Be.

AMEN

Quakers Can Be Kinky, Too.

From the New York Times today:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Quaker Maid Meats Inc. on Tuesday said it would voluntarily recall 94,400 pounds of frozen ground beef panties that may be contaminated with E. coli."

Contaminated or not, just try sitting through Meeting wearing these things.

Coincidence? I Think Not.

1. Three weeks ago, I finally went to the local bank to deposit some checks. But I couldn't. The bank manager was outside the door saying they had no electricity!

2. Two weeks ago, I finally took the encrusted crumb-filled minivan to the car wash, but it was closed. Because they were washing the car wash!

3. Today, I finally went to Barnes and Noble, which I don't even live particularly near, to start to use up the gift certificate my Dad gave me for my birthday. I was only going to get a cup of coffee. But they were having their hot water heater replaced at that moment, and had no coffee!

Prunes, Actually

Several weeks ago I made a Prune and Armagnac Gingerbread that was greatly enjoyed by all. I made it for a reunion with some friends I hadn't seen in years. Friends from my sordid conservative evangelical past, to tell you the truth, and I wasn't sure what had changed over the years with them, or what hadn't changed. As for myself, I have veered decidedly leftwards.

It such situations, it always helps to make a fabulous dessert. Especially in this case, since a fissure had developed late in the main course. We were eating by candlelight at my friend Annie's house, and were just finishing up some grilled salmon. Maryanne and Keith are the ones, out of everyone at the table, to have held onto a lot of their convictions, it turns out, not that anyone had been grilling them. Whenever John and I have to explain that we're Mennonite we have to go into a long set piece about how Mennonites don't all drive buggies, and so forth. Now that we go to a Mennonite church that was rejected from the local Mennonite conference for sanctioning gay/lesbian partnerships, we have even more explaining to do. In this case it was met with a truly surprised and baffled "Oh."

And then about 2.5 seconds of silence until Annie, ever the diplomat, suddenly expressed her delight that the candles weren't dripping. Onward and upward with the meal, and the spicy, sensuous dark gingerbread seemed to restore our good cheer. And perhaps the prunes will do some good yet.