Month: April 2012

Sunday Funday.

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 Despite the fact that the annual Dogwood Festival Carnival has been going on for over two weeks within walking distance of our house, we’ve yet to take advantage of it.  Sunday was the last day of the carnival, it was armband day (meaning for a flat rate the kids could ride all the rides to their heart’s content all day long), the weather was cooperating and we finally had to time to head over there.

Edie went with her bff Sophia.  Sophia’s sister and her bff tagged along as well.  The four girls walked arm in arm, chatting about very important things the whole way over.
As soon as I got the girls their armbands, I made a bee line for the funnel cake stand.  I love funnel cake.  I have been known to walk over to the Dogwood Carnival JUST to get funnel cake.  So when I saw this sign:

I was absolutely crushed and bitterly disappointed. 
Seriously.  NO FUNNEL CAKE?!?!?!?
At least there were corn dogs.

And Edie made due with a caramel apple, but I felt that was way too healthy.  I know I complained to absolutely everyone I saw.  I complained the entire walk home.  I came home and complained on Facebook about the lack of funnel cake.  I am still bummed about this.
Their fryers were busted.  It had been that way all weekend.  I found this out when I complained to the people working the corn dog stand.  They didn’t understand why it wasn’t fixed either.  I heard plenty of other people walking past the closed funnel cake stand complaining, so I was in good company.
As we walked home and I complained about the lack of funnel cake for the 90th time to my daughter, she thanked me for taking her & her friends anyway.  I assured her, their happy faces as they rode every ride multiple times came very close to making up for the lack of funnel cake. 

Really, they did.

I knew better. I did.

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The recipe said to use one cake pan.  I wondered about that.  As I poured the batter into the pan and saw how full the pan was, I wondered again.  I went ahead and followed the recipe, and not my instincts.
I should have followed my instincts.
Had my pan had taller sides, it probably would have been okay.  Instead, it spilled out over the top of the pan and onto my oven.  Nothing like the smell of burning cake wafting through the house late at night.

When I dumped it out of the pan, it started falling apart.  I was upset, but decided to sleep on it and see in the morning if I could salvage it or if I should start all over.
I’m comfortable improvising in the kitchen, but not when it comes to baking.  Baking is chemistry.  And chemistry? Not my bag.  I ended up getting exempted from chemistry lab in high school because of my ability to set things on fire and blow things up without being able to explain how I just did that.  My love of profanities didn’t help the situation either.  When you come close to setting your chemistry lab partner on fire, it’s best to not say “oh shit” and then burst into uncontrolled giggles apparently.  (The same can be said for cutting your family’s hair.  Whoops is also not a good word to use in these situations.)
My instinct told me to use two pans and I should have listened.  From here on out, I will be better about listening to that voice.  I even noted in the cookbook to use two pans next time.  Chemistry and altering recipes might not be my thing, but I can tell when to use a different pan than called for.  I have successfully made cupcakes from a cake recipe before, so I really should have known better.
I decided to try putting the cake together with filling and frosting.  This was the first layer cake I’d attempted since the cake class I’d assisted with in February and I felt confident enough in the skills I’d picked up there to try it. 
The recipe I was following was Chocolate Blackout Cake from Wayne Harley Brachman’s Retro Desserts cookbook.  I love this cookbook.  The lemon square recipe in this is my go-to.  The cream filled chocolate cupcake recipe?  One of my standards.  So I trust this cookbook.  I think I just forgot that pastry chefs tend to have better equipment than us home chefs and their cake pans are taller. It made a difference here.

I learned in my cake class a good way to keep the filling contained between your cake layers is to pipe a row of frosting around the edge.  This cake was being frosted in a ganache frosting.  I wasn’t sure how this would work as my edging, so after some brainstorming, I made a chocolate whipped cream and used that to keep the pudding filling in place.  It also gave me a good chance to practice using my pastry bag.  I still need practice.
Turns out the whipped cream came in handy.  After I got the cake together and frosted, it was most definitely what you would call ‘wonky’.  One side had a huge divot where the cake had fallen apart and I wasn’t able to patch it with frosting.  Buttercream is much more forgiving than ganache when you have a cake that has structural issues.  The recipe called for toasting cake crumbs and using them to coat the cake.  I have tried toasting the cake crumbs in making this cake before and didn’t care for it.  I just let the cake crumbs sit out over night and after a skim coat of whipped cream, I coated it in crumbs.
The birthday boy’s request was for ‘chocolate, chocolate, chocolate and maybe some fruit’.  With that in mind, I cut some strawberries in half and used the very last of the chocolate whipped cream to ‘glue’ them to the sides of the cake.  A little time in the refrigerator to firm everything up and voila, chocolate chocolate chocolate cake with some fruit.

The finished product was tasty.  I doubled the ganache frosting and used a full batch of the pudding.  Next time I might try a double batch of pudding, as I like a nice thick filling between my cake layers.  (The recipe in the cookbook calls for 1/2 batch.  Definitely not enough.) Despite the structural issues, the cake itself was just right – not too dry, not too moist.  It could have used more pudding as filling  but everyone seemed to like it just fine the way it was.  Thankfully, thirteen year old boys are much easier to please than forty-something amateur pastry chefs.  Although I do get a kick out of hearing them talk about how I’m going to make the next birthday boy an even better cake than this one.  That’s my kind of trash talk.

A Rock.

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A notice came home in the “Thursday Folder” that someone’s mother, who works at a local bank, would be coming in to talk to the kids about saving money the next week.  Attached was an entry for a kid’s contest the bank is currently running.  Across the top was “I’m saving for ______________.”  There was a cartoon pig to be colored in for their entry into the contest to win one of a few savings bonds with the bank.  The children were asked to have this filled in for her talk on Tuesday.

Monday over dinner, I reminded Edie she needed to do her ‘homework’ for tomorrow’s talk. 
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, you have to.  Everyone will have theirs.”
“I don’t want to.”
“At least say what you want to save for.  You don’t have to make it fancy.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t need her to talk to me about saving my money.  I already have a savings account and I have even more money in my piggy bank.  I don’t know what I want to save it for, I just do.  Every year she comes in and talks about money and it’s always the same and I know it already.”
“Well, according to this letter, she’s going to go around the room and ask each one of you what you are saving for, so you need to say something.  Say anything.  Say ‘a Wii’.”
“I don’t want a Wii.”
“Then say ‘a new bike’.”
“I don’t want to save for a new bike.”
“Then say ‘a rock’. Say anything.  And then you can be entered in the contest.”
“I don’t want to be in the contest.”

She came home from school the next day.
“Well, what did you say you were saving for?”
“A rock.”
“Really.  Did you color the picture in?”
“No.  She kept trying to take my picture and I kept telling her I wasn’t finished.  Finally, I told her I just didn’t want to be in the contest.  And I don’t think she liked my answer.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, everyone laughed, except her.  I don’t think she got it.  I told her ‘a rock’ could be jewelry, it could be a nice cabin on top of a mountain by a stream, it could be a bunch of different things, but she didn’t get it.  Also, another boy in my class came up to me and told me he couldn’t think of something good to save for either, so he said a puppy, but he thinks my answer was better.”
“I saw that your class was on the news for this.  Was the camera crew there when you gave your answer?”
“Oh yeah.  They laughed too.  Everyone laughed but Mrs. G.  I don’t think she liked my answer.”
And with that she shrugged her shoulders and was done with the topic.

That’s my gal.  She’s saving for a rock.

Running Past.

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We woke up Saturday morning to the sounds of a race being run in the street past our house.  I later realized when Saturday became the longest day I’ve had in a while, that there was a certain message from the greater universe in that.

The phrase that best describes the end of last week into the weekend is ‘everything at once’.  Seriously.  Starting Thursday afternoon, I found myself having to be in two and three places at once.  I know from having spent the better part of almost the last 20 years with a man who is an environmentalist that this is his busy time of year.  It’s this point every year that we become ships passing in the night, communicating by post-it notes on the counter and emails.  I go to bed before he comes home some nights, he’s gone before I get up and the only way I know for sure that he actually came home is when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, he was beside me in bed.  Also, he might sometimes leave a fresh pot of coffee on.

Friday night, we made a little time for a date night.  Sharon Van Etten was playing down at the Jefferson and as she was on the everyday rotation there for a bit with my better half, who, by the way, puts almost no one on the everyday rotation, it was definitely a must-do.  It was a lovely show and didn’t run too late, although Pat & I, being the music geeks that we are, even when we know we have to get up and be productive first thing in the am, can’t just come home from a show and go to bed.  Oh no, we have to talk about it and listen to more music and maybe have another beer into the wee hours. 

I had gotten an email from my hairdresser last week, telling me she had a spot for me on Saturday morning.  She stopped being a hairdresser full time a few years ago, but she still is kind enough to do the hair of those of us who couldn’t find someone else we trusted enough with the task.  I will go months on end without a haircut and then frantically decide I need one immediately.  Over the years, she has figured out almost precisely when this is about to happen and will call or email me to say, I’ll see you this day at this time.  I love this about her, almost as much as I love how freaking fabulous she is with my hair.  Even when I haven’t had a trim in months people tell me what a great hair cut I have.   She knows how to cut my hair so that I don’t need a trim every 6 weeks, something else to love about her.

I have taken Edie for exactly one haircut in her entire life.  I trim her hair myself, because really, it’s not that hard, I cannot take her to one of those el cheapo places that I know will ruin her hair as they did mine growing up and I’m not springing for a haircut I can give myself. (I am THAT cheap.) This is what I’ve told myself for years.  Last summer, I trimmed her hair and I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I butchered it.  Really.  One of my neighbors got an eyeful of it and immediately asked ‘was there wine involved?’  No, there was not.  Our then 13 year old babysitter looked at Edie and said, “I can fix this for you” and that is how a 13 year old became my daughter’s new stylist.    She had not had a cut since and her ends were getting horrific.  She refused to let me trim it and so I would mention maybe I’d take her for a cut.  Maybe we could just go to one of those hair places….and I’d trail off.  That kid held her ground.  She told me for months that I should just take her to my gal.  She’d throw in little comments like ‘Oh, you’d take me to one of those places at the mall?  That means you’d have to go to the mall.  You’d do that?’ because she knows that in addition to being cheap, I just cannot bring myself to go to the mall.  Last time we were there, we were totally accosted by one of those perfume people and neither one of us has yet to recover.

So, when Boop emailed me last week, I asked if she could fit us both in. I waited until Friday night to share this with Edie, mostly so that she wouldn’t gloat too much.  Boop could indeed fit us both in, so we headed downtown early Saturday morning to get our hair done.

We hit the farmer’s market while we were downtown, headed home for quick change to soccer gear, grabbed a sandwich, then we headed out to soccer.  Her soccer game was west of town and Pat just happened to be working a festival just 10 minutes west of where we were, so as we left the game, she asked if we could go visit Daddy.  He was scheduled to not just work this festival, but attend a dinner that evening, then work another festival the next day, Sunday.  And he’s got to work the next few weekends, so any face time we can grab with him this time of year, we take.  I had every intention of making it back for the upcoming elementary school garden festival committee meeting later that afternoon, but I had forgotten the festival he was working was also a wine festival.  Fly fishing AND wine tasting?  That is something for everyone in this family.  There were only a handful of wineries there, but most of them were new to me, so I had to check them out.  Meanwhile, Pat had to boogie off to a talk on the Jackson River Lawsuit, where he presented a check on behalf of his employer to the defendant to help with the now $80,000 legal fees he’s racked up in trying to keep Virginia’s rivers open for public use.  It was interesting to hear about the case from some of the other interested parties, including Beau Beasley, a most entertaining fly fishing writer.  We somehow ended up staying for the festival’s foundation dinner at the nearby country club that evening.  Prime rib dinner I don’t have to cook or clean up and there was chocolate cake for dessert?  Twist my arm. It was a lovely evening, but driving home at 9:30 that night, I realized I had been on GO since I had awoken to the sounds of a race early that morning.  Needless to say, when we woke up to cold, gray and rainy yesterday, along with the news that the Earth Day Festival Pat was supposed to work that day cancelled, we joyfully all stayed in our PJ’s, read and watched movies all day long.  It was glorious.  We introduced Edie to “Gone with the Wind”.  Apparently some of her classmates have seen it and some thought it over hyped and not nearly as good as “Mama Mia”.  She expressed an interest in seeing it and since it is one of my all time faves, I jumped at the chance to watch it with her.  She liked it, although she thought it was too sad in parts (welcome to Southern Gothic my dear, my absolute favorite genre) and she thought the ending left you hanging.  We told her that was the classic problem with GWTW, does she ever get him back?

Today was another cold, rainy day, but I already know this week is going to be a repeat of last week, so there was no more glorious curling up in PJ’s like yesterday.  I have successfully knocked out most of my to-do list in a wild burst of productivity and put off the fun stuff until last.  I have a birthday cake to make for a dear boy who is turning 13 this week.  He requested chocolate, chocolate, chocolate and maybe some fruit, so I need to go figure out exactly what cake I’m making him.  I need to figure out what my Girl Scouts are doing this week, as the meeting I had planned was panned by the girl in my house.  (I may just ignore that and take my chances, which I know, can end in disaster.).  I swapped some bee balm for raspberry bushes so they, as well as the rest of the veggies for the garden need to get in the ground.  (Today’s 40 degree temps definitely made me happy I’ve waited until the right time to plant, despite the unseasonably warm temps.).  There’s end of the school year things piling up, like camp applications (We got confirmation today she’s off for another 3 weeks at Camp Lachlan!!), class picnics to plan and last night the evening news reminded me to purchase pool passes.  Ah, summer, I can hardly wait!  Not that I want to rush the season though – as it is spring is running past me!  How is it the end of April already?

Patience pays off.

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The butterfly bush is showing signs of life. 

I hacked it back and left it alone for a bit.  I looked at it the other day and saw little green nubs.  They are small, but they are there.

I have not completely killed it yet.  Yay!

Meanwhile, the fig has new growth too.  Happy, Happy fig.

The front shady bed is all abloom as well. 
From left to right, wild geraniums, may apples, trillium and lillies of the valley.
Lillies of the valley are the best smelling flower ever.  Not only were they in my bouquet when we got married, I wore a crown made of them and hellebore.  (Perhaps why both are in my garden today?).  The entire front yard has such a nice smell right now, especially the front porch, adjacent to that bed.  That bed has taken years to fill in. There really was not a coherent plan to it, we just kept dumping shade loving plants and I kept hoping the lillies would fill in, which they finally did, after I don’t know how many years. 
Gardening takes such patience. 
I think patience is one of those over-rated virtues.  I don’t have patience, but gardening requires it.
I think gardening is in cahoots with motherhood to make me a better person.

The latest of the pink trees on the corner is blooming. 
It’s a horse chestnut buckeye tree Pat planted a few years back to replace a rather large, dead evergreen tree.  It’s not quite big enough to be as glorious as the magnolia or the dogwood, but it will get there.
Again, patience.

And it’s pink.  How much do I love that he willingly picked another pink tree for the corner?
These blooms have a touch of yellow.  They are quite lovely.  I’m sure I will be spending more time standing at that tree in the next few days, staring at it, trying to capture just the right shot of those blooms.

The oakleaf hydrangeas are showing buds too.  We have two of them, both planted two summers ago and this is the first bloom for both. 
This one was literally a stem and two tiny leaves when I plopped it in the dirt.  Nothing like a little compost, love and patience to make a plant grow.

My rose bush has buds on it as well. 
That plant was a house warming gift, 13 years ago.  It has gotten moved more than anything else in my garden.  Other people rearrange their furniture, I rearrange my yard.  I put the rose bush in the ground, the trees near it grow bigger, it stops doing anything, I move it.  Repeat.  The last move, two years ago, I put it in a location where we do not intend to plant any more trees, it is a dedicated sunny spot.  And finally, two years later, the rose bush has realized I mean it and has a few buds.  I’m so excited.  The flowers from this plant are incredibly fragrant.  It’s just outside the living room window, so I’m hoping it makes the house smell sweet.

We have a neighborhood fox.  It had some sort of altercation with a cat in our back yard the other night at 3:45 am and howled for a good half hour after that.  It woke up every dog in the neighborhood who then all had to bark. So much for sleep that night.  Yesterday, I turned around and out of the corner of my eye, saw out the back door, the fox, hanging out in the back yard by one of the canoes.  It’s big.  I later happened to notice there was fresh scat (what those naturalist types call animal poop) right there in the middle of our front entrance.  After a family viewing and discussion, Pat, who knows about these things, said that yes, it was most likely that of a fox. I do have some close ups of it, but really, do you want to see up close shots of fresh fox poop?  Clearly this creature is circling our house and making itself at home. Suddenly, I’m a little worried about the arrival of the chickens.  Does the fox know we are getting chickens and is making himself(herself) comfortable in our yards in anticipation?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
It’s really all about being patient.

All about me.

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I read about Send Something Good over at Gastronomical Sovereignty and since it sounded fun and I end up getting a present out of it (okay, a package.  All for ME!), I thought, why not?  Today is a link up where all the bloggers involved are introducing themselves.  Welcome to my all about me post.
I’m a forty-something mother who despite my extreme dislike of soccer, has become a soccer mom. Don’t tell my daughter.  I have a very handsome hubby that I met when I fell off the roof of my garage at a party in college.  He is a Riverkeeper, which when I try to explain to people what that is, I just call him the old man of the river.  He monitors and advocates for the river.  I don’t really talk about being eco-friendly a whole lot on my blog because I prefer to just walk the walk rather than talk about it.  I also like to say that Environment Non-profit isn’t just a job, it’s a life style.  Together we have one completely amazing 10 year old daughter.  She is the most responsible, punctual member of our family.  She thinks that cleaning bathrooms and making beds are fun.  I’m really not sure where she got this from.  She also watches Martha Stewart and Julia Child and then comes up with these insane craft projects.  I know exactly where that came from.
I love thrifting.  Just about everything in our house we have gotten second hand.  It’s the thrill of the hunt as well as I am just that cheap.  I prefer old things.  Among the vintage things I like to collect and use are tablecloths, napkins, aprons and cookbooks.  You might notice a theme there.
I love to cook.  I will rant about the state of our food system, which I think needs to be completely overhauled.  There are changes that need to happen at the top, but we need a good grassroots effort to help make this happen.  To this end, I am involved in local food issues where we live, I am on the vegetable garden committee at my daughter’s school and have committed to starting up a garden at the school she will attend next year as she moves up the upper elementary school. At the same time,  I also have a fondness for food that really isn’t food, like Twizzlers and BBQ corn nuts.  I think that fresh cotton candy and a perfectly roasted marshmallow are a certain happiness that can only come from sugar melting on your tongue.  Everything in moderation, including moderation.  I keep exactly one processed food in my pantry and that is Kraft mac & cheese.  We don’t eat it alot, but man there are times when that is the bomb.   
I love to bake.  I show up at friend’s houses and immediately start baking in their kitchen.  I love chocolate cake and will make you the best chocolate cake you have ever had.  I am the sort of person who will make a cake that takes 2 days to complete.  It is so worth it.  It’s that good.  And this is from a girl who used to never make a recipe that was longer than a paragraph.  My husband dared me, I never stand down a dare, and the rest is history.  He also bought me a stand mixer on the condition that I use it at least once a month. 
I love to garden.  Digging holes in the ground is my ultimate happy.  My love of gardening and cooking are somewhat related, as I’ve had a garden so that I can have my own tomatoes most of my life.  I even attempted a tomato patch in college.  Somewhere along the way I learned to can, so I do a good bit of that.  I even teach canning classes. My jams and jellies don’t always turn out, I prefer to just make fruit butters in the crock pot, but I might try jams again this summer, since you know, I am a canning instructor.  I love to pickle things.  I will pickle anything and everything, including radishes, green beans, okra and watermelon rind.  I like to try things just to see if I can do them, which explains all the pickles.  We grow all kinds of native flowers, flowers I just really like, vegetables, fruits like strawberries and blueberries as well as a few fruit trees (cherry and peach).  We have squirrels that think all of this is grown for them and some years they win.  They will hop up on my kitchen screen door and yell at me.  I am trying to convince my daughter, who learned to shoot and liked it at camp last summer that if she wants to move up to moving targets as she claims, then she should start on our squirrels and I’ll get her a gun just for that.  She just rolls her eyes at me and says shooting squirrels is not the same as shooting skeet.  She truly is a little lady.
I love to read.  My husband is pretty convinced we’re going to die in a crushing avalanche of shoes and books.  He tries to keep me on a no-net gain of both of those and so far is only successful on the shoe part.  He says I get a certain glow when I buy a new pair of shoes.  Also, if I have the mini-me with me, she will rat me out if I made a shoe purchase around her.  I’ve been known to keep a new pair of shoes in the box, hidden in the closet and he STILL can tell I bought a new pair.  But books, I have books on everything. We are big do-it-yourself-ers, so we have books on that.  I have quite the cookbook collection.    Novels out the wazoo.  I love British Chick Lit, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louisa May Alcott, Anne of Green Gables, John Steinbeck and more, but I have never read the Twilight series.  I just refuse to.  I read the Anne Rice vampire books.  One vampire series is enough.  Pat got me a kindle for Christmas, hoping that this would mean maybe I’d get rid of some books.  HA!
I am often called ‘crafty’ because I sew and knit.    I am fascinated by quilting and the mini-me thinks this needs to be ‘our’ new thing, but honestly, I have enough trouble finishing any project besides dinner in a timely fashion – a quilt will take me freaking forever.  I have been working on a sweater for my husband for over a year.  Most of my knitting gets done on roadtrips, at soccer practice and watching tv.  College football & basketball season are prime knitting times.  I have a hard time sitting still, I definitely have a hard time sitting and doing nothing, so knitting fixes that for me.  Also, you can drink and knit much easier than you do anything else while drinking.  I like being productive, even if I have just sat on my rear and watched college football all day long.  Knitting gives me something to show for that.
At one point, I ended up with a monthly wine column for a lovely local publication that is no longer.  I will sometimes write about wine on here (some of my regular readers are still waiting on my post about Riesling and it’s coming, I just have a wee bit more research to do…).  Despite this, I still claim to not know a whole lot about wine.  But I like it.
My living room is painted orange and contains a purple velvet sofa with leopard print throw pillows.  I mention this because every time someone new comes to our house, they walk in and stop to take it all in.  I love color, even though I tend to wear black as much as possible.  (It’s very slimming and forgiving of how much food I spill on myself.  I don’t eat a meal that I don’t wear.)   Those also happen to be my favorite colors – purple, orange and leopard print.
When I’m not babbling on here, digging up my yard, volunteering at school, running my girl scout troop or any of the other things that keep me running all day long, I have a small home-based business I started last year, where I provide home-cooked-meals-to-go for busy working people.  It’s slowly growing by word of mouth, which keeps the growth manageable.  I cook the way I cook for my own family, because I do feed my family the same thing – there is an emphasis on local, organic, whole grain & primarily vegetarian.  We don’t eat alot of meat because I don’t like to touch it when it’s raw. What meat we do eat, we normally tend to be a on first name basis with, because we have a number of friends that raise livestock. The pig that is on my header is currently in my freezer.
And that is probably much more than you’ve ever wanted to know about me.  I tend to blog about all of the above, as well as how much I avoid cleaning my house.  Two bathrooms seemed like a good idea at the time, but having two bathrooms means you have to clean two bathrooms.  Ugh.
Here are the rest of the bloggers.  Go check some out and see if you can’t find some fun new blogs to follow.

Asian Fish Soup for a blogging event!

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A few weeks ago, while looking for interesting new ideas for cooking dinner I stumbled across The Spanish Wok and her lovely Soup Kitchen event.  Soup recipes?  Oh yes please.  I love soup.  It’s the perfect one pot meal.  And one pot meals are what I’m all about.
This month’s soup theme is Chinese.  One of my absolute favorite ethnic foods, right up there with Mexican, Italian, Indian, Thai and Greek.  Clearly, I’m not very discriminating about these things.  I am sort of ashamed to say however, that I have only recently discovered the nearby Asian food market and am now wondering where have I been my entire life?  Just the variety of rice noodles makes the trip worth it, although the curry and soy sauce selections are pretty sweet as well.
My Chinese soup, for lack of a better name is ‘Asian Fish Soup’.  I’m creative in the kitchen, not always with names.  It’s relatively simple and very easy to throw together.  Normally, I cook by eyeballing quantities.   I know this can be frustrating to people who can’t look at a hunk of ginger and know how much is enough.  So, as I made this soup this go-round, I took note of how much of each ingredient I used, with the exception of  salt, which I have learned to throw in a pinch or two at each step along the way.
Asian Fish Soup
4 scallions, chopped. Reserve some of the green tops for garnish
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch ginger, grated
2 carrots, julienned
Salt or soy sauce or both
1/2 pound shitake mushrooms, sliced
a few heads of baby bok choy, chopped, separating the stems from the greens
Broth, chicken or vegetable
white fish fillets, chopped into bite size pieces. (I used 2 fillets)
Rice Noodles

Heat sesame oil. Saute scallion bottoms, garlic & ginger for about a minute before adding carrots. Saute another minute or so, then add bok choy stems and some salt (or soy sauce). Saute until the stems start to soften and add mushrooms and more salt. When the mushrooms have started to release their juices, add broth (anywhere from 6-10 cups, depending on how thin you want your soup), salt and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 5-10 minutes, then add the green leaves of the bok choy. Simmer until they wilt, then add the fish until cooked. (About another 5 minutes).

Following the directions on the package, cook the rice noodles until done. I will often toss them with a bit of oil, either sesame or peanut, to keep them from sticking together until serving.

To serve, place noodles in bowl, ladle soup over them, sprinkle with reserved green tops. 
Serves 6-8

Other tasty additions to this soup would be some chopped water chestnuts, tofu, shrimp.

Spring Break, 1992 Style.

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Friday afternoon I posted on Facebook I was getting ready to head out to spend a weekend with a certain group of girlfriends from college.  One of our mutual friends commented that it was “1992 all over again”. Good call Todd, because that probably was the last time all of us were in the same room together and surprisingly enough (or not), not a whole heck of a lot has not changed when we all get together.  We drink slightly excessively, we use language that would offend the saltiest sailor, we really do not behave well in public and that’s on a good day.
I have not laughed that hard in I don’t know how long.  It’s Monday morning and my sides still hurt from laughing.  I laughed until I cried so many times I ran out of tears.  I laughed most of the way home just thinking about how much fun we had had.

While there is a notebook of notable sayings from the weekend, the most used phrase was definitely
 “You are such a fucking bitch.”
Yep, not much has changed.   

 

When I say we really don’t know how to behave in public, we really don’t.  No one was safe.  
Definitely not men wearing clam shell bras and tiaras.
Sheilah lives in Virginia Beach with her family, so we descended upon them for the weekend.  Sheilah packed up the fam and sent them to a hotel, while we got to keep the house. 
It was evident within minutes of us all being in the same room how little some things have changed.  Or why her family got the hotel room and we took over the house.  No way were we all sleeping in the same room together.   I was told even though I am currently wearing the ‘costume’ of  PTO-Soccer mom type, I’m still Becky.  I still will jump out of the car to go ask the guy outside of the T-shirt shop if they will make us custom T-shirts because I couldn’t get his attention by yelling at him from across the street, then, as my friends take off without me, run down the middle of the street chasing the car.  I also still apparently dress pretty much the same way I did back in 1992 (black t-shirt, demin skirt, cowboy boots), I still manage to inexplicably lose my underwear in really bizarre ways (I’m not alone in this with these ladies though),  still use my bra to store items instead of a pocket and no one is at all surprised I’m not a good housekeeper.  We throw beer at people,  we may have left a bigger trail of sand than a pack of 4 year olds (Somehow it’s all over the interior of my car too. I really thought I dumped all the sand out in Sheilah’s front hall.) and plenty of other things that I will be polite about and leave off the internet (because it does get worse.)
We do drink better wine these days, out of glasses.  Some of us may have wattles and the wattle status was established.  We quit smoking cigarettes.  We are all starting to experience ‘women of a certain age’ things, like our hot & cold being a bit off.  I learned how to cook.

College was really the first time I felt like I fit in somewhere.  Being around these girls all weekend I kept remembering why that was.   The rest of them were all former roommates  – I was the only non-roomie, but as Sheilah said, I was a ‘lifemate’ and a package deal with Andrea.  As you get older and are expected to behave a certain way, it’s hard to find friends you can really let it all hang out with (although I don’t always let that stop me).  Honestly, I can’t remember how I met Andrea and I can’t remember exactly when we became inseparable.  I remember spring of my first year at Auburn, standing over a keg at a party at her brother’s house calling each other names, not the first time we met, but that may have been when she became my standing Saturday night date, in my uniform of black, demin and boots.  I met Candy that summer, when she lived next door to Michael, Sheilah when she started hanging out on my front porch the next spring and Clara when she showed up at my front door that spring (or was it summer) and told me I was going to move into the house she was currently living in, with Toni as my roommate.  To this day, whenever Clarabelle shows up in my life and tells me what to do, I listen.  And I don’t listen to anyone. 
In addition to none of us really ever giving a crap what other people thought of us, not taking no for an answer, foul mouths and a small leaning towards dressing like bag ladies (okay, that one might just be limited to me & Andrea), I was so happy to discover that most of us (not Candy) still share the trait to absolutely butcher the English language in the most honest way. I had forgotten this about them. They really and truly are my people.  We are most certainly not going to let another 20 years go by before we are all in the same room again.
I showed up Friday and baked a cake.  Not sure why, I just thought we’d need a little something sweet.
Maybe it was to prove that yes, I really do know how to cook these days. Anyway, at some point Friday night, this cake was renamed “Sex Cake”.  (We really are inappropriate.)
I promised I’d share the recipe, so here it is. It’s based on a recipe from Green & Black’s Unwrapped cookbook. 
Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake
1 tablespoon ground almonds (or sugar or cocoa), with extra for dusting the pan.
Three 3 1/2 ounce chocolate bars
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup (1 1/4 sticks) salted butter
pinch of sea salt
5 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350.  Butter a 8 or 9 inch springform cake pan (Or tart pan with removable bottom) and dust with the ground almonds (or cocoa or sugar).  Melt the chocolate, sugar, butter & salt in the top of a double boiler.  Beat the eggs with the almonds and fold into the chocolate mixture.  The batter will thicken after a few minutes.  Pour the cake into the pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. 
Remove the sides of the pan and leave the cake to cool.  You can sift confectioner’s sugar or cocoa over it before serving, or not.
Note – I tend to end up using three 4 ounce chocolate bars, which is an ounce and a half more chocolate than what is called for and I generally skip the almonds.  It doesn’t make that much of a difference in the end result to be honest. 
Thank you for such a kick-ass weekend girls.

Current Happy Things.

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  • Yard art from an old neighbor that keeps popping up in new places.  I think among the ferns under the magnolia is the best spot yet.
  • Finding out that she was the one that moved the yard art.  And then took a picture to capture the moment.
  • The chicken statue peeking out from the may apples and lily of the valley bed. 
  • All those foot shots, with the close up on the toes and the pedi she got from Ryan’s Brooke last month. (and clearly, it’s time for a new one.)
  • She’s got my dad’s weird duck toes.
  • Her feet don’t look like little baby feet anymore.  That just happened.
  • Garden Gnome.
  • That I found all these pictures Edie shot on her camera uploaded onto my computer.  They are freaking cool.
  • That she still takes so many pictures of her feet.  They have been well documented since she learned to use my camera at the age of 4.
  • That I am ditching them this weekend to go hang out with my college girlfriends.

My Sweet Easter Gal.

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People say I’m crafty and creative, but the true creative soul in our house is the wee one. Ever since that spring break where I let her have a little too much unsupervised TV time and she watched Martha Stewart decorate Easter Eggs, she hasn’t been content to just ‘color’ eggs.  Oh no.  There was the year she made the drying rack, just like Martha’s of course, out of foamcore and straight pins.  She made it entirely herself, all I had to do was contribute the materials.
Every year, she starts collecting ideas for how she’s going to decorate eggs this go round.  This year she broke out the box of crayons and got festive with it.  Among the highlights:
A flower.

Polka-dots.

This crazy cool graphic doodle one.

I don’t know how she got this one to have the spider web look (before the shell cracked), but this one was wicked cool. 

As you can see, the fancy drying rack did not get broken out this year. I may have disassembled it in order to get my straight pins back to sew something and never did put it back together. Thankfully, she was able to make due.
I’m pretty sure this is the last year she will believe in the Easter Bunny.  Frankly, outlasting her at bedtime so that we can get all the treats put out is hard as all get out, so I think I’m ready for this, sad as it may be.  The nun I had in fourth grade was the one that spilled the beans for me on Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, so I’m curious as to how she’s going to give up this belief of hers.  A few weeks ago she asked if I believed in Santa and while I answered affirmatively, I wonder what’s going on in her mind on that topic. I’m afraid if I dig too much, she might lose that faith and I don’t want to be the one responsible for it.  The memory of that nun telling us that only spoiled rotten brats believed in those silly fairy tale things like Santa Claus haunts me to this day.  From a parent’s point of view these days, I see her as an even more bitter person than I did in the fourth grade, because frankly, the longer my child believes and stays just a wee bit young is a wonderful thing in today’s day and age.
Edie has a number of big changes coming up on the horizon – not only does she move from her sweet little elementary school to the bigger upper elementary school up the street (along with every other current 4th grader in the city), her bf who lives just down the street is moving to another country.  She’s frequently out of sorts about all this, as you can imagine.  Sometimes she just wants these changes over and done with, so she can stop waiting for them.  Sometimes she just wants to stop time and always live in this exact moment and I can’t say I blame her for that either.  Her planned sleepover with her friend the beginning of spring break fell through and she cried herself to sleep the first few nights of spring break because of it.  I think I’m getting used to her little outbursts about all this and thankfully, she’s getting better about being able to notice it’s anxiety about all the big changes coming up that cause these outbursts. Throw in the fact that she’s a 10 year old girl and all over the place and well, we have our hands full with her right now.   One minute she wants to dye her Easter Eggs all by herself and the next, she wants me there to watch her do it.  Like her belief in the Bunny and Mr. Claus, I’m embracing it for all it’s worth, because I know, this moment is fleeting.