Gender Bender at Preschool

Occasionally, I decide to polish my nails. Last week was one of those weeks, and Will begged to have his nails done, too.

Will: "I want red!"
Me: "I don't have red."
Will: What color is that?"
Me: "Teak rose."
Will: "I want teak rose!"
Jack asked, truly puzzled, "Why do you want to wear nail polish? Only girls wear that."
Will cried, "I want to! I want to!"
So I said, "Look, I'll give you a racing stripe on one nail." That will give him an acceptable explanation for the boys, should he need one.

So, that's what he's got, on his right index fingernail. Waiting for it to dry was more dramatic than one would think, with lots of "Oh, when will it be dry? It's not dry! Can I touch anything yet? What about now? Can I touch anything now?"

When asked later if anyone noticed his nail polish, Will replied that his friend Isaiah was "shocked."

What Could be Better Than Pancakes for Dinner?

Last night John had an accounting final. He stoked up for it by eating some blueberry pancakes that Will helped me make. After John left, the rest of us gobbled up the remaining ones. Pancakes are tricky. The heat on the griddle needs to be fairly high but not too high because you don't want raw insides. Inevitably the first pancake or two looks a little "special." But eventually I get it and they start looking browned and circular. I added a half cup of Trader Joe's frozen wild blueberries this time. We put pure maple syrup on them, which I suppose is decadent, but we do get it from a warehouse store, and don't use that much of it. Plus, life is short.

This recipe is my Nana's. She always made them in a low cast-iron griddle. I gave the griddle to my brother Dan because I couldn't use it on an electric range; it has a raised rim, so most of the pan doesn't touch the cooking surface. Her pancakes are the best, with their buttermilk tang. Will said, "I love Nana's pancakes! If she was alive, I would say '"I love your pancakes SO much.'"

Nana's Buttermilk Pancakes

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 2/3 cups buttermilk
4 tablespoons melted butter
2 eggs

Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Combine buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter in a smaller bowl and beat. Stir into dry ingredients, mixing enough to moisten.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto preheated, fairly hot pan or griddle (a drop of batter should sizzle). Flip over when small bubbles appear, and edges start to look dry.

Caitlin Flanagan on Reality TV

Caitlin Flanagan has been getting lots of press for her new book The Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife, about how mothers should stay home with their children. Not just that, but how they should joyfully keep house. Ms. Flanagan has been accused, for good reason, of hypocrisy. You see, she writes all day, while her children are in school. She has had domestic help, for years, including a full-time nanny when her twins were babies. But she still claims the right to be called a "stay-at-home mom." I guess because she is mostly at home, and a mom. Ms. Flanagan freely admits, right in the book, that she has never changed a sheet. Let me repeat that. She has never changed a sheet. Was she never a 22-year-old living in a railroad apartment, maidless and husbandless? Was she never a college student? Plainly, this statement is hyperbole, no? . . . . Okay, maybe not.

At any rate, I believe she is perfectly aware that her idealization of the 1950s housewife can only be sustained at a distance, either through a mist of nostalgia or through intellectualizing the concept of "The Housewife."Ms. Flanagan is begging for a reality check. So I say she gets her own TV show, American Housewife. In it, she lives in her own house, but all her domestic help have been relieved of their jobs temporarily so they can create the laugh track. See Caitlin scrub the toilets, rotate a mattress, wash the windows, scrub vomit from the carpet. Can she singlehandedly prevent entropy from conquering her universe? She must do all this while working under a non-negotiable deadline for an article for The New Yorker, cooking from scratch every day, helping the children with their homework, and "putting out" for her husband several times a week (as Stephen Colbert so delicately puts her insistence that wives need to be more available) .Oh, and Martha Stewart and Cheryl Mendelsohn are coming over for dinner in a week.

Then, Ms. Flanagan, I'd be glad to hear what you have to say.

Rhubarb Days

It just isn't spring without rhubarb. I make two or three rhubarb pies or crisps every year at this time. Last year I also made a rhubarb coffee cake. This year I made two pies, one to take to my friend Jane's for dinner and one just for us. I didn't have quite enough rhubarb so I threw in some strawberries and blueberries. I use the recipe from the old Joy of Cooking for fresh berry pie, simplify and cheat a little and add tapioca. This is it:

4 cups chopped rhubarb
1/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
juice of a lemon
2 tsp quick-cooking tapioca
two Pillsbury pie crusts (ha!)

Mix all this together gently with your hands (because I love to mix stuff with my hands!) until it all seems quite damp and well-mixed. Let it sit 15 minutes. Meantime, preheat oven to 450. Take out two Pillsbury pie crusts (ha!) and let them come to room temperature. Lay out the bottom crust and put filling in. Cut the other crust for the top into strips, and make a fake-out lattice crust by simply laying them on one way and then perpendicular to that. None of this business of actually weaving them. If you don't know what I mean, then just prick a bunch of holes in the crust and slap the thing on, smoothing out the sides or fluting them to make the crust look endearingly homemade. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes and then lower heat to 350 for 35-40 minutes.

There, you have one mighty fine rhubarb pie. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Looks lovely on a blue plate.

No Home in the World

Yesterday WHYY, our local public radio station, aired its morning call-in show, Radio Times, on the topic of homelessness. A man and a woman were being interviewed by the host, Marty Moss-Coane. They had both been drug addicts for years. By the grace of God and the perstistent intervention of relatives, they've been clean for a few years, and are now living on their own, and giving their time back to help the homeless.

While they talked, I scrubbed my kitchen floor. I thought about my brother David, who lost his life on the streets, despite all the advantages he started out with. Drugs and mental illness took over at several points, and homelessness struck three times. I've got to call in to that show, I thought. Where's a pencil? There was never a pencil to be found quite at the time Marty said the number, plus it was almost twelve, when the show would be over. She said, "We can take one more call. Here's Dan from Center Valley."

It was my other brother. He said, "I had a brother who went to college, trained for a career, and yet somehow ended up on the streets. When you see a homeless person, you have to realize that that person is someone's son or daughter, sister or brother, mom or dad." Later I emailed Dan to say how glad I was that he called in. He said, "I was on my way to Dad's when I called. I didn't expect to get through - just squeaked in under the wire! Needless to say, I needed a few minutes in the car to compose myself before I could go in to lunch, but I am so glad I got through."

Next time you are rushing down the street, whether it's to work, to lunch, or to run an errand, stop and say hello to the ones who live life on the margins. And--please--smile and look them in the eyes.

Five Things about the Gutter Guy

I've been planting and watering and weeding most maniacally and trying to get a bunch of other things done before summer. And the longer I go without blogging the longer I go without blogging. Thank you for stopping by, dear friends and pleasant acquaintances of the blogosphere. Would you care to sip a mug of warm milk with me? No? I drink it now every night before bed to discourage insomnia. Because I refused to fill my doctor's prescription for Ambien. Seeing as I already back the minivan into the fence as it is, think how badly I'd ruin both fence and van if I was sleeping. Ah. Warm milk isn't that bad. Really.

To answer Scrivener's question of two weeks ago (Where does the time go?), yes, we did go to the National Museum of the American Indian. It's a spectacular curving building surrounded by prairie grasses, very refreshing after all the manicured rectangles of lawn and monolithic Federal bureaucrotecture all around it. (Made up a new word!) They have food from native tribes in the cafeteria. The "Eye of the Storm" display and the surrounding exhibits about exploitation of Native American Tribes was heartbreaking and profound.

________________________________

We had our gutters cleaned yesterday, and the gutter guy cleaned up 70 or 80 lbs of debris thanks to the tall trees that ring our house. Here's what I learned this gutter guy in course of a short conversation:

1. His wife died of ovarian cancer three years ago. But he's not looking to marry again.

2.He has seven children in their twenties and thirties, who aren't allowed to ever move back in with him.

3.He's very religious (the REPENTT license plate is a clue), but he's not picky. He plays the field, attending Catholic Mass, Seventh Day Adventist churches, and black Baptist churches.

4. To him, the worst job is being a roofer.

5. He keeps a 90-pound pet lynx in his house, who eats 50 lbs. of raw meat a week.

OK, so maybe that's why the kids don't move back.

Walk See Eat

We're back. You know how the Hirschorn and the Lincoln Memorial may look only two inches apart from each other on the map? And you know how when you are actually walking it, you say "Geez, I should have worn more comfortable shoes?" Well, when you have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, you feel yourself to be a tiny speck on a nearly endless green plain. You realize that just finding a bathroom before a nasty accident occurs, and finding a hot dog stand before complete debilitating weakness sets in, are goals lofty enough for your family. We did succeed.

More respite was provided at the Hirschorn, blessed Hirschorn! We happened upon the Hiraki Sawa video project at the just the right moment. Because we were tired of walking in the sun, a few minutes sitting in a darkened room was just the thing for all of us. Slowly, the images themselves began to transfix us. Filmed in a bleak apartment, these black and white videos show shadows of camels parading around the circumference of a sink drain; airplanes flying dreamily through halls, taking off from and landing on tables; cups, saucers, and a cheese grater (Will's favorite) sprouting human legs and walking away. A half dozen or more teenagers were lounging on the floor of the tiny theater, adding their own layer of performance art. From what we could overhear, they had three more hours to kill before their bus picked them up, and they were glad to have found a carpeted dark place upon which to do whatever it is they do with cell phones. (If there was anything else they were doing, it was below my sight line.) About the show? "This is so weird."

That night we had dinner at Raku, "An Asian Diner" near Dupont Circle. I ate there once years ago with an old friend, and once with John before kids. I propose a name change to Raku, "An Asian Diner That Discourages Small Children from Ever Coming Here Again by Serving Their Ice Cream in Martini Glasses." Yes, the glass fell and shattered on the table because Jack didn't know to hold the stem and we forgot to tell him because we were too busy watching Will with his glass. And yes, he's OK and nobody got glass shards in their eyes. Previous to this little disaster, the boys were occupied for quite some time eating bowls of plain rice noodles with a little soy sauce, while we sipped huge cocktails and ate spicy seafood. I had a Mai Tai in a pint glass, if my memory serves me correctly, and John had a super spicy Bloody Mary. Most of the evening was truly pleasant. We're used to being high maintenance and loud and making people wonder when we'll leave. The waiter did bring out more ice cream for Jack. Not in a precarious, fragile vessel for serving trendy cocktails, a real honest-to-God bowl.

Off to Our Nation's Capital

Thanks to Sugar Mama for the excellent flower advice.

Tomorrow John, the boys and I are going to Washington to be tourists. I got a deal on Priceline for a four-star hotel on Lafayette Square. We're going to see the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of the American Indian, and roam around the Mall looking at monuments. Jack thinks we're going to the Spy Museum after hanging out at the hotel's fitness center. (Maybe we'll visit the White House after that megalomaniac is forced to resign and it resumes its status as a respectable institution. Wait, this isn't a political blog. Nothing to see here, folks.)

Jack and Will packed a bag this morning and this is what they plan to bring:

1. Will's nighttime companion: blue and white striped bunny (its name changes)

2. Jack's nighttime companions: a trumpet swan named "Swanny" and a multicolored pastel bunny named "Bunny" who may fall apart with the next washing

3. Magic Tree House research guide: The American Revolution (that makes sense)

4. Bailey School Kids: Hercules Doesn't Pull Teeth (I'm nixing this, it's a library book and the fines are mounting as we already can't find two of those mediocre Bailey School Kids books)

5. The Official Knock-Knock Joke Book (I let Jack buy this yesterday at the library book sale, which I am already regretting)

6.E. B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan (Jack has great literary taste--also goes with Swanny)

7. Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Her Father (I liked the original illustrations better with Ramona's hair sticking up)

8. Our cat Kato (No, wait, I guess he just now crawled in there)

9. Not a stitch of clothing. This promises to be a cold wet vacation with a few charges of child endangerment thrown in. I'd better set this situation right.

The State of the Garden

Thanks for all the emails from individual readers about "Hawaiian Delight." No one wanted to write an actual comment, for some reason. My husband wrote a comment but I deleted it for complicated reasons. That's OK, dear, right? If you want to critique my transitions, you can just come downstairs, no?

Dear readers, blogging has languished because I've making big plans for the garden. The best part so far has been paying someone else to clear out all the old leaves and branches. All gone in one day, and ready for mulch. This was much better than me fiddling with the chipper for weeks on end and creating a possible Fargo situation. (Fargo is to "chipper" as Psycho is to "shower." Sort of. Well, not really. Never mind.)

So far I've planted some "Asiatic" lily bulbs around the sundial in the back yard. I made a little circle around them with broken bits of slate from the patio, which made me feel terribly clever. I also have white and pink "Oriental" lilies, which are somehow different from "Asiatic," that I need to plant somewhere, and sedum. I also got seeds for planting in the "children's garden" in the back, sunflowers, nasturtiums, white "dahlia" zinnias, radishes (John thought they'd be successful), marigolds. I'm starting some multicolor morning glory seeds indoors soon to transplant by the fence in back.

Oops, I just remembered that my neighbor Hazel thinks morning glories are pesty invasive vines. She was none too pleased when our Evil Bamboo Thicket, eradicated two years ago via the local nursery's Bobcat, sent out a couple posthumous runners under the fence to her yard. My question for the Internet is: Am I ethically bound to ask her if I can plant morning glories by the fence? If so, then does that mean she is ethically bound to cut down the rest of her arborvitae that have had their top branches all cut off, and are standing there, limbless and tragic, looming darkly over the future home of the "children's garden" like giant tombstones?

We're having a huge load of mulch delivered on Monday. Maybe Hazel will be so pleased that we do give a rat's ass about the garden, after all, that she won't take offense at the morning glories. Hazel has a barking Pomeranian and an annoying bright movement-detector light that shines in our bedrooms. So we have morning glories, it's live and let live, right? As long as the morning glories don't poop in her yard or leave cigarette butts in her strawberry patch, I think we're cool.

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)

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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.

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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!


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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?

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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)