Recovered Memories

Last night, Kim and Pat came down to join us for dinner in Cherry Hill (Hi Kim!  Hi Pat!).  Kim went to my high school for her senior year.  We had overlapping groups of friends and were in chorus and theater together.  We were friendly, but didn't know one another's phone numbers.  At the 20 year reunion, we hung out together and had a blast.  So we've kept in touch via e-mail.  They live about a half an hour from Steve's folks, so we planned meeting for dinner.  Steve's sister her husband (Hi Ellen!  Hi Bob! [drink!]) were here, so we all went out.

Had a great time, drank margaritas (there's supposed to be an H in there somewhere, isn't there?) and ate good Mexican food.  Came back to the house and they stayed until midnight.  Everyone loved them. Steve suggested we move to NJ.  Not bloody likely.  Anyway.  So Kim and I fell to talking about the chorus trip to Disney, as you do.  I'm no longer certain we actually went at the same time.  Remember when the bus broke down and we sang "Where shall I hoe today?" by the side of the road with Eddie Cohee?  Um...no.  Eddie Cohee was there?  The bus broke down?  Seems like if I'd had to sing something called "Where shall I hoe today?" it would be burned into my brain, but no, nothing.  I bring up the production of Tom Jones we were in, "And Barbara and Mimi had made up this song to the tune of 'We're not Gonna Take It' about some kind of costuming problem"  They did?  "Yeah, we all sang it all the time."  nuthin'.  The snapshot nature of memory is just so funny.  Some of these things are just so CLEAR that surely everyone involved remembers it as well as you.  And then someone else's clear memory is totally a blank to you.   Luckily, we were united in our hatred of that bitch, Terri Polo.

Ask the Expert

So we're driving up the highway, headed for New Jersey, listening to The Story of the World (as read by Jim Weiss).  He's telling us about how the Nile flooded every year and what that meant for ancient peoples and Lily pipes up, "Mommy?  What's d'Nile?"

"It's just a river in Egypt honey.  And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, pretend you didn't hear them."

Bread for the lazy AND the OCD

Back in December, the NYT ran a recipe for "no-knead" bread.  Imaginary Barbara posted it on my Positive Discipline board and the imaginaries have been all aflutter making it and posting photos (you don't photograph YOUR bread?  Hmmm)  It's crazy easy.   You basically just slap the ingredients in a bowl, stir, and ignore it for 14 hours.  Then you slap it around once or twice and ignore it for 2 more hours (We could call that the "Ike Turner Method").  Then bake.  And oh MAN, the crust on this thing.  Now, if you go for softy crust, you will not enjoy this bread.  And you do not deserve it.  But if you like a thick, crisp crust, you're in luck.  And if you really love homemade bread but are so skeeved by getting dough under your fingernails and in the cracks of your hands and then having to wash them and have wet hands (ew) (and not naming any names.  Like mine) then you will be a happy baker as well.  I mean, just LOOK at this bread!  Here's half white, half whole wheat:
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Here's all white (all white is all RIGHT!  does anything smell as good as white bread in the oven?):



And the 1/3 white, 2/3 7grain/cornmeal mix.  It tastes a lot like the rye bread I used to get in Germany:



The crumb on the first two tends to be a little...gummier than I'd like.  Not enough to be off-putting, but not quite 100% perfect, either.  the rye had a firm, cornbreadier texture.  The crust on the rye is a bit bitter, that may be burned cornmeal?  No idea.  But the bread is great.  The bean pot I cooked it in was a mistake, though.  It stuck terribly and the whole bottom pulled off.  The cast iron dutch oven was a dream, though.

And if you have parmesan butter on hand...well, let's just say I'll be shopping in the husky department pretty soon.

Safe to come out?

In sort of a reverse-groundhog move, I decided to hibernate until winter came back.  Frankly the balmy days and my roses blooming was beginning to wig me out a little.  Two days ago, I walked out of my house with Lily and said, "Hey, it smells like snow!"  Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, big, wet flakes started falling.  Lily was beside herself.  "SNOW! SNOW!"  No amount of my saying, "It isn't going to last" could dampen her happiness--or avert her despair when it stopped about 10 min. later.  But at least the temps are a bit more seasonal, so we have hope.

We had to have one of our foster hamsters euthanized this week.  Poor little Eclair had a rectal prolapse.  I went to check on her and she appeared to be crapping out her organs.  And she was!  Hooray!  So the head of the foster group took her to the emergency vet (because it was, of course, at night.  Hamsters got the memo about only getting really sick at night).  I was worried that we had done something or missed something that caused this, but Angela assured me that hamsters are so inbred that random crap happens and they're just really fragile.  "Yeah, a couple of years ago," she said, "Michelle had one get a prolapsed eyeball. It just popped right out."  I went home and had a talk with all the rodents.  "I hear tell that some of you like to just lose an eyeball on occasion.  I want to make it clear that that is not acceptable behavior in my home.  Got it?"

Oh, and this is for Tash: Pb&J; a Luna bar; apple and peanut butter; fried egg and cheese; nothing; cheese and crackers; pizza; leftover soup.

I'm in SO much trouble

Lily.  She will totally kick my butt one day.  At the Y, while Julianna was in dance class, I was helping Ben with his homework.  I looked up to check on Lily and saw that she was sitting on a couch, with 3 older girls at her feet, commanding them to do dog tricks and such.  Other moms were looking on in wonder, and cutting me "Good luck with that" looks.  Earlier today, I'd been working in the school library when Lily showed up, with a classroom volunteer trailing her.  She'd gotten annoyed at some other kid and then refused to clean up the playdoh.  Apparently just marched out.  oy.  Her teacher said, "Well THAT was a new side to Lily."  I said, "Welcome to my life."

She told me this the other day, "The very first dream I ever had, I had a leaf boyfriend.  He was very nice and kind and I loved him.  He also had a horse, and he let me ride it sometimes.  We were about to move to a new house, but then he told me he had to go back home.  I begged and pleaded (yes she said that) him to stay, but he just said 'sorry' and he left."  It all just came out so fully formed and lyrical.  It was surreal.  She said she had the dream when she was one.  I've never heard her even use the word boyfriend before.

A public health notice

I forgot to mention that my Target clearance spree also involved several bags of various kinds of Hershey's kisses.  I thought I should let you all in on some important facts regarding such things:

1--When you buy deeply discounted candy, the calories within said candy go down in correspondence to the savings.  Example: Candy purchased at 75% off has a 75% reduction in calories.  Eat up!

2--Any candy containing peanut butter is a healthy meal.

In other news...Lily got miffed at us last night at dinner because we wouldn't let her stuff all of the mozzarella balls into her hands so that no one else could have any (I know, I'm totally Joan Crawford, right?).  So she stormed off for a good scream and cry and then began spitefully rearranging the furniture.  How Virgos Express Anger.  Oh yeah?  Well, I'm going to totally screw up your Feng Shui!  So there!

Oh thank heaven.

The kids are back in school.  Phew.  I thought I would have to have Lily extracted from my rear with forceps.  She needs constant attention, good or bad.  If she wasn't following hot on my heels, she was needling Julianna or Ben in order to get a good reaction out of them.  And by "good" I mean shrieking, crying, and flailing.  Ben usually gets straight to the full-on freak out, but Lily enjoys the build up with Julianna.  "Lily, stop it."  "Cut it OUT, Lily."  "LILY CUT IT OUT!"  "AUUGGGHH! (slap)"  "Moooooom!  Julianna hit me!"  only once?  She showed restraint.

Yesterday, New Years day, I stayed in my jammies until 3.  At that point, I took a nap until 4:30.  Then I showered and put on clean jammies.  Never leaving the house becomes more appealing the longer I do it.  When I become a Super Villain, I'm going to be The White Recluse.

Another kick-ass dinner from me, I must say.  I sauteed wild mushrooms in butter with minced onions and garlic. I added thyme and fennel and salt.  Then I put in white wine, let it reduce, added broth and then a bit of cream.  Served it on capellini.  Even Steve, who was not a mushroom lover, declared it delicious.  I've been trying to duplicate a dish I had 15 years ago in a restaurant in our town in Germany and I think I've finally hit it.  Or it's been so long that I dont' remember anymore anyway.  Regardless, yum.

After I dropped the kids off (yay!) I went to Target to hit the post-Christmas clearance.  I'll just say that if you ever pay full price for those stick-on bows, you're a doofus b/c every year they have enormous quantities of them, even by the 90% off days.  Doofus.  I don't use them at all, so I'm spared my own scorn.  I did snag silver wrapping paper (great for Hanukkah gifts), festive stripey tape, some silver garlandy things for draping the mantle, and 4 enormous blue galvanized buckets.  They were only 3 dollars!  As I loaded them into my cart, I could hear Steve asking what on earth I was going to do with them.  I plan to point to them and say, "They were only 3 dollars!"  Isn't that enough, really?