This girl knows how to have FUN!

Brian took the kids camping this weekend so I could have some writing time. I'm trying to finish up a personal essay piece about canoeing and relationships for the Community Observer and haven't been able to finish a paragraph before a small person interrupts me with a request for a beverage. I am beginning to think there is something wrong with my kids in their perpetual need for beverages.

But this weekend, I am free from my tot-tail (as opposed to cock-tail) waitress role and can sit at the computer until my butt gets numb.

Of course, one can not write the entire 48 hours the kids are gone so some diversions are necessary. And I'll tell you folks, I know how to have fun!

I decided to clean and wax the floors.

Before you mark me up as an obsessive compulsive, let me explain that the floors in this house have not really been cleaned or waxed in the 7 years I have lived in this house and I strongly suspect that they weren't treated very well in the 8 years prior to my appearance after my husband bought the house. These old oak floors have seen a lot of traffic in the almost 100 years they have been down and we certainly haven't treated them with the respect they deserve.

Now that I have established the floors' needs and our neglect I'll take on the question "why this weekend?" When liberated from ones children, couldn't I come up with something a little more, well, fun? Go to a movie? Invite some childless friends over and relish the feel of an uninterrupted conversation?

Those things sound nice, but getting down on my hands and knees and cleaning and rubbing wax into the floors then buffing them to a shine fulfills some other need in my psyche.

I remember reading a forward to one of Jeanette Winterson's books in which she declared that in order to write, one must get rid of all dingy underwear. Despite being in an impoverished-artist state, she threw away all her graying underwear and went out and bought bright colored underpants. When she washed them out in the sink and hung them to dry around the apartment, she felt like she was accompanied by a flock of energizing parrots. And she felt the words pour forth.

That's kind of how I feel about the floors. No one else is going to know the charge you get by wearing hot pink undies when you are sitting down writing. No one will notice that my kitchen floor now shines for the first time in my residency. But I know and this sense of external brightness and order makes me feel like I can create clean, organized prose. So bye bye muddled mess of words and hello cleaned, waxed, and buffed paragraphs!

Oh, and I gotta tell you, it is actually pretty fun to wax a floor at 11:30 PM with a big glass of red wine and Bob Marley blasting on the stereo.

Delicate reading

We just got back from a week of canoeing and camping at Isle Royale and while up there in the boonies, I read a lovely, delicate little book, The Final Solution: A Story of Detection, by Michael Chabon.

The book is only about 130 pages long (and was published in the Paris Review before coming out as a book) but Chabon reveals characters in the most minimal and effective fashion. What comes to mind is a watercolor with just a few brushstrokes capturing an image so effectively, yet in this case it is Chabon using just the right sentence to capture a character.

The plot isn't really significant (set in WWII, a mute boy, a parrot who squawks numbers that may be German codes or something else, an old detective who, though never named, is clearly a retired Sherlock Holmes) though the story is fine. This time it was the beautifully crafted writing that kept me entranced.

I've read and enjoyed a number of Chabon's books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Summerland, Wonder Boys, Mysteries of Pittsburgh) and there are small things in this book that are similar, most of all the underlying good humor and tolerance of human frailty. But when I think of the chunk of a book that is Wonder Boys (a good chunk mind you, one of those stories that you are glad goes on and on and on) and compare it to the style of this book I am blown away by Chabon's versatility. Also, this one is set in England and his British-isms are "spot on." Brian read the book after me and thought the author was English.

My favorite part of the book was chapter 10 which was told from the point of view of the parrot, Bruno. This might seem silly in some author's hands, but it was rendered so beautifully that I have gone back and re-read it three times already. Here's a sample to tempt you:

"The alphabet song swelled and billowed, distending Bruno's breast. As was true with all of his kind there was a raw place somewhere, inside him, that singing pressed against in a way that felt very good. If he sang the alphabet song for the man, the rawness would diminish. If he sang the train song, which had lingered far longer and more vividly in his mind than any of the thousand other songs he could sing, for reasons unclear even to him but having to do with sadness, with the sadness of his captivity, of his wanderings, of his finding the boy, of the rolling trains, of the boy's mama and papa and the mad silence that had come over the boy when he was banished from them, then the rawness would be soothed. It was bliss to sing the train song."

The only bummer with bringing this book was that I finished it in a day or two and was left with 4 more days in the woods to fill without sufficient fiction. Aaaagh! How could I make such an error! I foolishly thought that because we were camping and canoeing with the kids I wouldn't have much time to read, but I forgot that I routinely get up at least an hour before anyone else in my family and fire up the camp stove to make coffee and read.

So I re-read this book, then moved on to a book Brian bought for the kids, a mediocre sort of Laura Ingalls Wilder story set on Isle Royale called Charlotte Avery on Isle Royale. I started getting pretty itchy and restless without fiction and was reading and trying to memorize the tree and wildflower and bird guides we brought. But like Bruno's raw place that singing fills, I have a raw place that needs constant applications of fiction otherwise the pain of boredom becomes quite acute. I think it is a need for regular escape from reality; no matter how pleasant my reality may be (and it was pretty damn beautiful up there) I still need a break from it and without fiction, I feel trapped in reality and start pacing my cage.

I reached my limit the day before we were scheduled to leave and arranged for our paddle that day to take us back to the relative civilization of Snug Harbor where the Lodge is located (and I wanted to reward the kids for good behavior with a popsicle) and found a book on their shelves of lendables to tide me over. I got lucky. Most of the books on the shelf were pretty trashy, but hidden among them was a lovely Clyde Edgerton novel, Lunch at the Piccadilly. I really enjoyed his novel, The Floatplane Notebooks which I read a number of years ago, but hadn't read anything else of his since then. The jacket blurb on Lunch at the Piccadilly was horrible and made it sound cute and saccharine and Driving Miss Daisy-like. But thankfully it was none of those things. Instead it was another book full of sympathy for human flaws, a kind book with kind people who aren't simplified merely because they aren't bad. The book is set in North Carolina and while some of the characters have their eccentricities, they never deteriorate into the Fanny Flagg territory of becoming cliche.

I'm glad to be back to a home with a hot shower and a refrigerator, but most of all, I'm glad to be back to my shelves groaning under the weight of good things to read.

Technique

I had a birthday recently and my dear family gratified my gluttony with these gifts:
That's an Easysprout, new Braun blender, and a mozzarella cheese making kit! Yes, these were all gifts I requested. The blender I already knew how to use, but damn this one works better than my old Osterizer that would choke on just about anything more firm than a banana. I've been making the kids mango pineapple popsicles that are a breeze to whip up with this thing (take frozen mango, frozen pineapple, add a little juice of your choice and then blend 'till slushy. Pour in popsicle molds and freeze.)

When it came to the Easysprout, the name really says it all. Take 1.5 T of which ever seed mix you want (the sprouter came with these packets of seeds bought from the Sproutpeople) and put them in the container.

Rinse and drain the seeds every day and Ta da! on day 5 you have a container that looks like this.

Which means that you can have my favorite breakfast which looks like this:

That's a bagel, cream cheese, cayenne pepper, black pepper and spicy sprouts. Best washed down with strong black coffee.

I know, you can use a mason jar and damp paper towels to sprout seeds, but this system is so much less messy and has better air circulation. For ease of use, it is worth it.

Not everyone is as fond of sprouts as I am. I figure it is the residue of being raised in Ann Arbor back when the hippie culture was still pretty prominent (anyone else out there have fond memories of the Sun Bakery? Sigh.) Sort of like gefilte fish, you may need to be weaned on it to truly enjoy it. I love sprouts and it is really hard to find decent, fresh sprouts even at the natural food stores. And if you find them before they are slimy or dried out, they usually cost somewhere in the realm of $3.50 per container.

So my sprouting technique is just fine.

I can't say the same for my cheese making skills.

I attempted my first batch of fresh mozzarella on Sunday and the result was eeeeeeh. I read the instructions, but didn't watch the video that is available on the web site (next time, I'll follow those instructions rather than the pretty lousy written ones that came with the kit). Mine didn't take 30 minutes, more like 120 minutes.

I started with the milk, citric acid and rennet:
drained off some of the whey (which was a pain in the ass and which I'm pretty sure I did wrong since draining it took the bulk of my time)
and then heated and drained it until it came together in a ball
then added some salt and kneaded the ball (which hurt--the curds have to get to at least 135 degrees in order to stretch and that temperature is not comfortable for hand immersion.)

Finally, after much sweat (literally), I had this small ball of cheese floating in water:
It looked the way fresh mozzarella is supposed to look, but when we cut into it to taste, it did not taste like the lovely creamy stuff I've bought on Saturdays at Morgan and York. Instead, it tasted a lot like raw bread dough... It was ok for putting on grilled pizza, but really nothing to write home about (or to justify the effort).
After two hours of kneading hot cheese curds, I needed a gin and tonic in a pint glass...

I need to work on my mozzarella technique. Luckily the kit makes up to thirty batches of the stuff, so hopefully sometime before batch 30 I will get the hang of it.

The mouthpiece of the neighborhood

My kids drive me crazy on a regular basis. Some times they drive me to this combo
at a time that is not considered Cocktail Hour (but as my friend Jen says, it is 5 o'clock somewhere...)

But other times it is so fantastic to have a kid that you just have to celebrate by making a Lemon Sour Cream Thomas Cake:
The most recent incident of fabulousness involves my son's lack of inhibition. True, lack of inhibition can cause some embarrassing moments, but it can be useful if channeled properly. This summer we have subletters living in a house that backs up to our yard. Previously there was a lovely Australian woman who rented the place and regularly fostered greyhounds for the Greyhound rescue group. The greyhounds would poke their long noses and narrow heads through the gaps in the fence and look at us a lot. But it was kind of fun being watched by silent, pointy headed dogs. Sadly, the dog-fostering woman moved to Saline.

Now among the occupants next door is a really, really horrible drummer. When he first moved in, practice sessions with his equally horrible band would begin at 9 pm. Within the acoustic vicinity of his house must be about 10 kids under 10 years old, most of whom should have been in bed at that time. After a number of requests by the neighbors/calls to the cops when the "practice sessions" turned into parties and the windows in our house were rattling with the noise at 1 am, the band has decided to practice during the day. While this has improved evening life on our block, playing in the yard in the daytime is now an exercise in noise tolerance if it coincides with band practice.

The drums are bad, the guitar is often out of tune (when there is actually a tune) and the singing sounds like cats being murdered.

My son has never been a fan of loud noises and the fact that the noise from next door is messing with his enjoyment of the backyard fort that his Dad built this spring has resulted in some fantastically uninhibited behavior. He climbs up on the fort and shouts at the top of his lungs "Stop that horrible noise! You are hurting my ears!"

I know I should tell him he is being rude. But instead I just run in the house and snicker and pretend that I don't sanction such behavior.

You wouldn't think that criticism from a 5 year old would make an impression on "musicians" with such crude taste in "music," but hey, I guess that even a wreck of a band wants an appreciative audience. Usually about 5 minutes after Ian starts shouting for them to stop, they actually will. And if that isn't a good reason to bake a cake I don't know what is!

This is a fantastic cake, as well it should be with two whole sticks of butter and a cup of sour cream. The lemon flavor is prominent even though it is supplied only by some zest, no juice at all. It could have a lemon glaze if you want to make the effort, but the whole cake with no frosting and just a little powdered sugar disappeared in about an hour when we had some kids over to play last week.

If you aren't the proud owner of a Thomas cake pan, you could make this in a bundt pan.

Lemon Sour Cream Cake Worthy of Celebration

• 2 C flour
  
• 2 t baking powder
• 1 t salt
• 1 C butter, room temperature
• 2 C granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• grated zest of 1 large lemon
• 1 C sour cream
• powdered sugar (about 1 T)
  

Preheat oven to 325. Butter and flour your pan.

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and granulated sugar at high speed until mixture is very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

Beat in eggs, one at a time, making sure to scrape down bowl frequently. Blend in lemon zest.

Add flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with sour cream, adding each in 3 additions. Scrape sides of bowl frequently.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 55-65 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, the turn out onto plate or platter. Sift powdered sugar over the top.

My new hero

I have a new author hero: Frances Hardinge. Her first novel, Fly by Night is so fantastic I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around all the facets of wonderfulness (when I get blown away by someone else's writing, my own writing deteriorates to utter blather. And don't even ask me to talk about the admiration I feel: I once inflicted Ron Hansen, who wrote the excellent novel Mariette in Ecstasy, with my idiotic enthusiasm after he gave a reading and after politely signing my book, the man backed away in fear of the manic reader in front of him.)

I discovered this book through A Fuse #8 Production's review and her designation of this title as her favorite book of the year. It is categorized as both youth fiction and fantasy by my library, but it rises above any attempts at categorization. Yes, there is a young heroine central character and yes, it takes place in an alternate world that resembles 18th C England. But there is so much subtle word play and intelligent discussion of politics, power and religion, that the book appeals to readers of all ages--sort of like the way kids and parents can watch The Simpsons together and laugh at things for different reasons.

Fly by Night also is a wonderful affirmation for anyone who actively hungers for words--I get really squirrelly and restless when I don't have a good book to read. Brian sometimes comes home and finds me pacing the house waiting to dump the kids on him so I can head to the library or bookshop to get some relief! Well, the main character feels the same way. When contemplating her own life and future she decides "I don't want a happy ending, I want more story" which is a sentiment that I have felt at the end of many books. The last page of this book has a simply beautiful description of the seduction of a good story.

I really don't think I can control my blather at this point so I heartily suggest that you head over and read her much more coherent review. And after that you should go buy the book.

Yes Sir!

Sometimes Mama just has to follow orders.

Yesterday was Ian's in-school birthday celebration (kids with Summer birthdays get assigned a day) and I was fully prepared to make him our standard Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes with a number "6" stenciled on the top in powdered sugar: delicious cake, nice minimalist presentation, easy clean up with no frosting all over the faces of small consumers.

But I was quickly corrected and given my orders by the taller of my little dictators who felt so strongly about the appropriate decoration for a birthday cupcake that he asked for colored pencils and (this from a kid who hates art class) he drew what the cupcake should look like.

And so I had to bury these little beauties:

Under this crap:

To get these horrific-to-my-eyes-utter-bliss-to-an-almost-6-year-old:

You may notice that I was a little skimpy with the sweetened Crisco/canned frosting (yes, I offered to make homemade butter cream and yes, I was firmly rejected). Small victory.

The one heartening thing to which I am clinging right now is that Ian still isn't hung up on gender roles and specifically asked for pink numbers on the top.

Summer Reading

It is pretty clear that Summer and the resulting mellowness of brain is here because I am utterly charmed by this series of mystery books:

I'm sure I'd like these in the wintertime too, but they really are the perfect Summer read--lovely characters, episodic writing (so you can put it down, rescue the kid who is dangling precipitously from the climbing wall your husband built in the back yard, and get back into the story without any necessary re-reading), and yet not fluff. There are numerous meditations on significant issues, from morality, to economics, to AIDS. And though it may sound foolish, I feel like I'm getting to know Botswana from the perspective of the three main characters. Mma Ramotswe's pride and love of her country is utterly convincing and is a refreshing break from the usual "superiority" of the West perspective in which I usually encounter any writing about Africa.

Here's a sample of the extremely gentle humor in favorite paragraph from The Full Cupboard of Life, number 5 in the series:

Mma Makutsi, sitting at her desk, looked down at her shoes, as she often did in moments of crisis; her shoes, always her allies, but now so unhelpfully mute, as if to convey: don't look at us, we said nothing. You were the one, Boss. (In her mind, her shoes always addressed her as Boss, as the apprentices addressed Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. This was right for shoes, which should know their place.)

Isn't that a lovely little interlude that shows how many of us look to inanimate objects to support our decision making processes and lend us emotional support? My toaster has the ability to calm me down when I'm having a lousy day--after putting in a piece of bread, I know that I have to stop and pause for a short period, just breathe a little while a mundane piece of bread is being transformed into the culinary glory of a good piece of toast. I swear, the support I've received from my toaster is not one to disregard and it is nice to know that Mma Makutsi's shoes serve a similar purpose for her.

I'm enjoying this mystery series much more than the contemporary "literature" novels I've recently read, among them:

Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad and

Maile Meloy's A Family Daughter.

I'm a bit surprised at my lukewarm response to the Atwood since her project with the book is something I normally love--retelling a familiar tale from a different perspective. In this case, she tells the story of Odysseus from Penelope's view of the wife left behind and the story is told with Atwood's trademark acidic wit. This Penelope is no sweet, obedient, loyal wife, but a keen thinker who has to strategize in order to survive. And I think Atwood's project is generally successful, but for once, I found the harsh humor a bit tiring; I wish there had been more moments of vulnerability, like the ones that briefly appear between Penelope and her maids who she enlists as her spies but which are hung by Odysseus when he returns as co-conspirators with the suitors. Her guilt and tenderness towards the maids is compelling reading, but keeps being buried under the next round of caustic commentary.

Maile Meloy's new novel is a follow up with a twist to her first novel Liars and Saints. In this novel, the main character is Abby who, in a sort of book-within-a-book reference, turns out to be the "author" of Liars and Saints; that is to say, we are to read A Family Daughter as the "truth" of the family events behind those told in Liars and Saints. I thought this was clever at first, but after a while the concept lost its novelty. By the end of the book there were too many characters packed in to keep track of (I kept forgetting the names of Abby's cousins which makes you wonder exactly what purpose they fill in the story other than adding bulk to the clan) and some of the characters had taken on charicature-like qualities. I found myself skimming the passages that were about Clarissa (Abby's mother) because they were so predictable and trite. Ultimately, I thought the book started out well but lost steam and petered out to something I was relieved to have finished, rather than regretful that it had ended.

So I'm off to the library in the next day or so to pick up In the Company of Cheerful Ladies and to continue my friendship with Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, my new summer pals.

Avoiding the 5 PM brain drain

Last week was a particularly bad week when it came to dinner time. Every evening around 5 PM I'd realize that I had no idea what to make for dinner. By 5 PM my brain is fried--numerous keepers of little people refer to the hours from 4:30-6:30 as "the witching hours" for good reason. When trying to ascertain what is in the refrigerator, I usually have to pry my 3 year old off of where she has wrapped herself around my leg and wack the 5 year old's hands away from the chocolate milk syrup for which he is lunging. And then frustration and low blood sugar levels lead to meals that are a hodgepodge of whatever I see first and can assemble or reheat with very little thought (at best).

So this week I am taking inventory--figuring out what is in that big white appliance, digging through the freezer to find out what I've stashed away in one of my hoarding phases and coming up with a list of dinners I could make. Then I can add any esoteric ingredients to the shopping list for the week and not be left swearing up a storm when one key element to a recipe is missing.

Being a person who sometimes gives herself a break, I do not see the following list as a "commitment" to make that dinner; instead the list acts as a defibrillator for my brain when it is flat lining.

This week's possibilities include:

Red Seasonal Salad
Pork loin cooked in milk, kale, sweet potatoes
Red lentil soup, salad, beef kofte with yogurt garlic sauce, pita
Chicken curry with potatoes, raita, rice, mango lassi

and should this week turn out to be more hellacious than I anticipate there's always the back up (a.k.a. Mama's Best Friend):
$5 pizza

Good as a side dish

Last night I made a dent in the arugula pile (only a dent despite using about 10 cups of the stuff) with this recipe:
Tagliatelle with Creme Fraiche and Arugula, except I used the slightly wider Pappardelle noodle.

According to the little clipping that I found in my Savory folder, the recipe came from the famous London restaurant, The River Cafe. Right now, any recipe that calls for 10 cups of arugula gets my attention and the result? It was OK.

I think my subdued reaction to the dish came from the way I served it, as a main course--Brian and I each had a heaping plate of the noodles and also each had a whole steamed and chilled globe artichoke with garlic vinaigrette for dipping. I can imagine this being a wonderful side dish with, say, a grilled steak. The sour and bitter notes would be a great complement to the richness of a good meaty dish, but as a main course the flavors felt out of balance and I'm saying this from the perspective of one who loves sour and bitter foods.

The recipe calls for both creme fraiche and a hell of a lot of lemon juice and I thought it took the sour note too far. I'd cut the juice back from 1/2 C to 1/3 C. And after tasting the finished dish and feeling it lacked something, I stirred in a squashed clove of garlic which definitely boosted up the flavor factor and gave the dish a little depth.

So if you are looking for a pasta side for a meaty meal, I can recommend this (slightly altered) recipe:

Pappardelle with Creme Fraiche and Arugula
adapted from The River Cafe recipe, printed in some food magazine in the last year or so
Serves 6 as a side dish

1 cup creme fraiche (1 cup heavy cream with 1 T buttermilk stirred in, left out in a warm place overnight)
2 T finely grated fresh lemon zest (use your microplane grater here)
1/3 C fresh lemon juice
1 clove of garlic, chopped or pressed to a paste
12 oz dried egg Pappardelle (Trader Joe's makes a good kind)
10 cups loosely packed, coarsely chopped arugula
2 1/2 Cups of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (again, use the microplane grater)
salt and coarse black pepper

1. Stir together creme fraiche, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic and 1 C of grated cheese.
2. Cook Pappardelle in a big pot of salted water until al dente.
3. Drain pasta and dump into a big bowl. Stir in arugula so that it has a chance to wilt a little. Stir in the creme fraiche mixture. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
   
4. Top each serving with a generous amount of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve as a side dish.
   

Salad days

The arugula and lettuce in my garden have been cooperating nicely/growing at an insane rate and we are up to our ears in fresh leafy greens, far too many greens to be consumed with a nightly side salad (the spinach, however, has been uncooperative. Most of the seeds didn't germinate.)

The record breaking heat this past weekend gave us the perfect excuse to usher in Salad Days. I have mentioned before that I am a great fan of the main course salad, the kind of salad you find in France listed as a Salade Compose. Top some great vegetables with a protein source and a good dressing and you have my definition of bliss-on-a-plate. Yes, I often crave this more than chocolate.

Last week I made a version of a Nicoise salad--lots of greens, cucumber, hard boiled egg, olives, radishes and blanched green beans topped by a grilled piece of albacore tuna then drizzled with a garlic red wine vinaigrette. And Monday we had (pictured above) a Vietnamese style salad with fresh mango, grilled chicken, thin rice noodles, peanuts, mint, cilantro, vidallia onion and blanched green beans topping the greens/radishes/cucumber pile; the dressing was a nuoc cham sort of concoction (I didn't have quite enough lime juice so I added a splash of rice wine vinegar).

The nicest thing about these salads is the flexibility--the Nicoise lacked potatoes and tomatoes (no potatoes in the house, no worthy tomatoes available yet). The Vietnamese salad lacked fresh basil and shallots and the mango probably shouldn't have been there. Some asparagus or sugar snap peas would have been terrific in either salad. Roasted beets would have been great to add to the Nicoise. But it didn't matter because these salads cry out for improvisation.

My next attempt to deal with the onslaught of arugula (I picked another entire shopping bag full of the stuff yesterday--yikes!) comes tonight. I have a recipe for tagliatelle with creme fraiche and arugula that looks to be a good way to use a sizeable quantity of arugula without having to eat a salad as big as a pony. Report on the success (or failure) of said dish will be coming soon.