Kicking it up a notch.

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I like to bake. 
I bake cakes like that three layer chocolate on chocolate goodness pictured above on regular occasion for family and friend’s birthdays. They all encourage me to sell these creations and while I have here & there, I feel like my presentation skills are slightly lacking.
Remember this from a few weeks ago?  That’s me playing around with piping.
I prefer to think of it as modernist abstract.
So my answer to this small problem was to assist in a baking class at the Charlottesville Cooking School this past weekend.  I figured I might learn a trick or two about baking and I would hopefully learn a little something about how to make my cakes and cupcakes look better.
The baking class in question was taught by Rachel Willis. Click on her name and you will go to her website to see her cakes.  They are amazing.  She is an artist.  She is also a fantastic teacher. 
I can also tell you her cakes taste as good as they look.  Maybe better.
It was a two day class, with Day One being for the making of the cakes, frosting and some of the fillings with Day Two was set aside to put them all together.  While I learned a few new things Day One, what I learned primarily is that I know far more about baking than I realized or give myself credit for.  I have learned by just doing: by reading recipes and following them to the letter.  Even if they don’t always look good, they usually taste good. Because recipes don’t tell you the finer points of how to make icing pretty when you put it on. This is why I signed on for the class, to kick it up a notch, and make my cakes look as good as they taste.
So, Day One, was a bit of a cake walk.  (Slight pun intended.)
Day Two however, was a whole other ball game.

I learned how to slice a cake.
You can use this trick to make a cake’s top surface level and you can use it to turn one layer into two.

I learned how to structurally build a cake so that when I stacked layers, they would stay sturdy.
(Hint: Pipe some buttercream frosting around the edges to keep the filling in place.) 
I learned I held my piping bag the wrong way.  I learned I don’t let the air out when I first fill it, so when I go to decorate the cake in question, it looks like that cupcake up there.  (Like doo-doo.)
I learned so many things I was doing wrong and how easy it is to fix them.
I learned you can practice with the same frosting over and over, on an upside cake pan. 
I see that happening in my future.

I learned how to make my cakes look like that. 
Smooth.
It’s really not much more than a flick of the wrist and how you hold your tools.
I learned what a crumb coat is and why you do it.  I learned that I need to allow myself more time in assembling my cakes, that this is key in making them stay together better, as well as the final appearance. 
Two basic cake recipes, a classic vanilla butter cake and a dark chocolate sour cream cake, were given out, along with a buttercream recipe and two different fillings – a whipped triple cream and a chocolate ganache. We learned variations on those – like a mocha buttercream, a white chocolate ganache and so on. Everyone got to ‘design’ themselves a cake using those basic guidelines.

 

I think they did some fantastic looking cakes, didn’t they?

I learned my favorite chocolate buttercream frosting is actually a Swiss style buttercream.
I learned the differences in all the buttercream frosting styles actually, as well as flour and cocoa types.
Oh yeah, I learned there are different buttercream frosting styles.  Although this, I had a small clue about, having so many different frosting recipes in my little collection of cookbooks.

Everyone took home a four layer masterpiece they had spent the weekend creating.
It was such a fun class, with a great group of ladies.  I enjoyed spending my weekend with them.
  I got to enjoy a slice of Rachel’s that she shared with the class,  but as assistant, I didn’t make a cake and I didn’t take one home, which was more than fine with me.  Given all the cake we’ve been eating around here lately with all the birthdays coming just after the holidays, I’m developing a muffin top.  I am holding fast to my pledge to not bake a cake for at least a month, although I am dying to try out my new skills.  But, until I get serious about working out again, lose that muffin top and fit into my jeans, I’m not baking a cake.  It’s one thing to be my age, quite another to look it.
I just won’t have it. 
I’m proud to say I hit the gym hard today.
Nothing like cake to motivate.
I came home from this class completely jazzed Sunday night.  I had every intention of blogging about it yesterday, but then I stumbled upon that estate sale.  I’m still sort of floating on that little high – I spent last night reading some of my new cookbooks.  That Southern Living Heritage series is a treasure.  Today, in between cooking dinner & laundry & working out & running to the grocery store & doing the after school club pickup & blogging & uploading pictures from the class to the cooking school’s Facebook page, I managed to clear a spot for the series on my dining room hutch, while the rest found a home in my cabinet. Which, by the way, is officially chock full, until I figure out a new home for either the stand mixer or a few of those cookbooks.   Some creative problem solving is most certainly needed, whatever the answer is, because none of them are going anywhere for a while.

Treasures and Kindred Spirits.

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So, I was all set to tell you about the absolutely wonderful baking class I assisted with at the cooking school this weekend, but on my way home this morning, I stumbled upon the most fantastic estate sale I’ve been to in a long time.  So, the baking class recap will just have to wait until tomorrow.

We had borrowed some tables and chairs from the Parks & Rec department for bingo night at school last Friday that needed to be returned this morning, to their storage shed over by CHS.  Along the way, I saw a sign for an estate sale.  On my way home from dropping them off, I popped in, just to see what I could find.  I noticed as I walked in, this was the last day, so everything was half off.

Sweet. 

As I walked into the garage, I couldn’t help but notice all sorts of good kitchen gadgets.  Although picked over, I could tell, there was a cook that lived here.  I hoped that not everything was picked over, that I could find a few useful things for myself.

And then I walked into the kitchen.  I saw a shelf of cookbooks that looked seemingly untouched.  I started rifling through them, then, suddenly became aware that there were at least 4 other bookshelves next to me, all FULL of cookbooks.  I stepped back and realized the breakfast nook off the kitchen had even more.  There were cookbooks EVERYWHERE.  There were complete sets of cookbooks – Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Time Life, Betty Crocker, McCalls, Southern Living, I could go on and on.  There were vintage cookbooks, there were new cookbooks, there were shelves upon shelves of what I call those church cookbooks – you know the ones that churches and ladies groups put together and sell as a fundraiser?  She had a whole collection of them.  I noticed many of her cookbooks were noted as to who had given them to her and when.  She had handwritten notes in them, she had recipes she’s written down, shoved in them, she had cards taped to the inside covers.  I realized I was standing in the kitchen of a woman who’s cookbook ownership style was very similar to my own.  Not only that, I realized that she had some of the same cooking interests and cookbook collecting habits as myself – with a heavy emphasis on southern style cooking as well as those church collections.
The first cookbook I grabbed was a rather beaten up one.

That I realized was an old, beloved copy of The Joy of Cooking.

A 1943 edition as a matter of fact.

Shoved full of recipes and notes and stains.

This newspaper clipping was in the front of the book.
  I like to imagine she cut it out because of the picture it painted.
Isn’t it lovely?

This was glued to the inside front cover. I think she covered the book in a wallpaper scrap and that appears to be a label from a product she wanted to remember.  This is something I do – shove labels I want to remember into cookbooks.  Hers was glued in, on top of the book cover edges.
The inside covers and all blank pages on the inside of her Joy of Cooking were filled with handwritten recipes.  Some are water damaged, but they are a treasure.
I realized as I looked that she had multiple copies of cookbooks – I found two Joy of Cookings, but went with the beat-up copy.  I have a newer version myself and what I really wanted were her notes.
So now I have two Joy of Cookings myself.  Which will fit in splendidly with all my Betty Crockers cookbooks.  (I have two an early 1950’s and a late 1980’s, plus the Cooky cookbook from the mid-sixties).

Amazingly, I held myself to two of the church collection cookbooks.  The one on the right is from First Presbyterian Church, here in Charlottesville, circa 1966.  The other is from a group called the Proud Land Rose Society and it’s the “Bicentennial Issue”, 1976. 
She had shelves upon shelves of these.  She had multiple copies of some of them.  I couldn’t help but notice, we had some of the same, from different areas of the state.  She had them from up and down the east coast.  I collect these as well, but I narrowed it down to these two, because one was from Charlottesville and the other one fascinated me. 
It had pages I had never seen before in these books. Serious menu planning.

Baking hints and food measures.
Gardening charts!

And then I found this.  Good Housekeeping, 1949.  Also full of bookmarks and notes. 

This one being my favorite.  An old Sweet & Low packet to mark the Indian Shrimp Curry recipe, with notes.  Yes, I will be making this and soon.
A canning cookbook.  Always good to have more of those, especially ones with pickles, jams & jelly recipes.

This is a classic.  I first learned about Edna Lewis from my dear friend Leni.  I’m not sure the previous owner used this, as it’s in mint condition, but I’m tickled to now have a copy in my collection. Edna Lewis was the granddaughter of a slave, and this cookbook is considered a classic in Southern Cooking.  Edna Lewis was sometimes referred to as the Julia Child of southern cooking. 

For years, I have collected piecemeal, books from a collection put out in the mid-1980’s from Southern Living, called the “Southern Heritage Collection”. 
Today I discovered the missing books in my collection.
I snatched them all up, as well as the index.
She had two sets of these. TWO!

I have loved the ones I’ve had, so to complete the collection has me beyond tickled.
I got my first one, “Vegetables”, at a yard sale when we still lived in Birmingham.  They are full of old Southern recipes, with illustrations and pictures from the late 19th and early 20th century.  They are gems. And I now have the complete set, which includes, but is not limited to:
Bread
Breakfast and Brunch
Cakes
Celebrations
Just Desserts
Gift Receipts
Pies and Pastry
Socials and Soirees
Soups and Stews
Sporting Scenes
Oh the possibilities in there!

And then I found this, right next to that collection.  
The inside cover.

The note on the inside of the card. More than a few of her cookbooks had similar inscriptions. 
I love that she kept track of her cookbooks this way.  I want to start doing this to my cookbooks.
This particular cookbook was written by Eugene Walter.  The most charming man you probably have never heard of.  I read this review of his oral history, Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Tale of Life on This Planet and thought it looked interesting.  I wrote it on a running list of books I wanted to remember to read, only to have my dear husband buy it for me one Christmas.  Go read it. 
Allison currently has my copy, otherwise I’d lend it to you. It really is mandatory reading if you are going to know me.  I’m quite sure Eugene and I would have been kindred spirits, had I ever been lucky enough to meet his acquaintance.
I have been looking for my own copy of this cookbook for years now.  I’ve borrowed it from the library, so I’ve read it, but to now own it?  Happy happy.
She actually owned the entire series, but at that point, I felt I’d picked up enough cookbooks.  As it is, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going to store all these.  But this one I had to have. 
As I was walking out, I stumbled upon one last treasure, that they just gave to me, for free.

A binder of recipes, labeled as to the contents on the spine.
I found another binder with meats and casseroles and so on, and decided to leave that one.
This one, with desserts and cakes and breads suited me just fine, thank you very much.

Table of contents.
Menus – she has a spot for menus.  In there, she had menus of Thanksgivings past.  I have thought about organizing my menus of Holiday Dinners past and now I shall.

Inside, she had an assortment of recipes, all taped or glued down to looseleaf paper.

She had little headlines and sayings cut out and glued down too.

These two gems were covered by a sheet protector. Stapled to the Dark Fruitcake recipe is a note signed Mother.  It was written on a Tuesday and her mother wrote she had included some tips in the recipe so it should turn ‘just as well for you as it does for me’.  She closes saying she’s not going to the club party tonight- ‘it’s too bad for me to go out.’ In pencil, just under the ‘Tues. nite’ written in the upper right hand corner is ’66, marking the year.
Anne Thomas gave this recipe to her in 1963. It’s noted by hand in the corner.

This recipe, for green sauce, is written partly in German, with English translation.   
It looks like a Green Goddess recipe.
She had decorated some of the tab pages of the binder with images cut out of magazines and the like.  It reminds me of notebooks I made myself in high school and college, dedicated to fashion clippings.
Pictured above are the dessert and cake cover pages. 

Mother Carter gave her this Cranberry Salad recipe in 1958.
I’m guessing that was her mother-in-law.

And then there was this.  Tomato Aspic.  With multiple exclamation points on either side of EX, which I gathered was her way of saying a recipe was good, as it is on many recipes throughout her cookbooks, especially ones with stained pages and other notes. Stained pages are a dead giveaway a recipe has been tried and probably well liked.  I have never, ever been inclined to try any recipe for tomato aspic, but in going through her cookbooks today, I find myself wanting to try this.  Perhaps I shall.
Flipping through these cookbooks, I found all sorts of notes, both cooking and gardening.  As I walked through the rest of her house, I realized not only did she collect cookbooks, she was an avid knitter as well as a gardener. She was a big reader and must have been well traveled, as there were many travel books and books on other countries.  There was a number of history books too – honestly, I probably could have filled my truck up with all the books I saw in that house that I wanted to bring home. Her record collection was simply amazing.  In so many ways, I felt that I was in the home of a kindred spirit.  I’m sad our paths didn’t cross sooner, but I do feel like I was meant to stumble upon that sale today.  The only other thing I bought was a new watch – the battery in mine died a few months back and the watch is too beat up to put yet another battery into.  My new watch is a Seiko – that I got for a whopping $2.50.  I’ve wanted one of those for a long time, never thinking I could actually score one second hand for such a great price. All in all, I ended up paying about 25% of what everything had originally been marked for, which ended up being less than $25.  That’s right.  23 cookbooks and a watch, for $24. 
I spent a little bit of time looking through the knitting and gardening things, but honestly, I was so jazzed about the cookbooks, I couldn’t quite focus.  And I’m quite content with my current knitting and gardening libraries.  This was the third day of the sale – the knitting supplies had been well picked over and I don’t want to add to the stash.  (That was part of the deal with Pat when I started knitting, that I would NOT have a stash for that, as my sewing stash is uhm, sizable to say the least.).  As for the vinyl records, I know I walked away from some gems, but at that point, I was in line, ready to go and well, as much as we love music, we have been moving away from vinyl.  Most of our library is digital these days and I’m quite okay with that.  I’ve even moved to e-books, having gotten a Kindle for Christmas.  I can’t go to e-cook books though.  I need to be able to spill and to note in my cookbooks.  I need pictures.  I need to flip back and forth between pages.  I need to stack about 3 or 4 of them and cross reference similar recipes while I’m cooking, so that I can write my own recipe when I’m done. Most of all, I like using all random manner of items as bookmarks in my cookbooks and today I learned I’m not the only cook who feels that way.
What an absolute score.

Happy Sights.

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Things in my back yard that are currently making me happy:
My purple Hellebore.
It’s going to be gangbusters this year.
It was really hard to get a shot of all the blooms in a close up.  
I’m just not up to the task.
It took 3 years for it to bloom after I planted it.  I was close to digging it up and moving it.
Which probably would have been the kiss of death.
So glad I found some patience for it.
Patience is one of those over-rated virtues that I don’t really have.

My ‘neighbor’ hellebore is putting out some blooms too.
I got it at a neighborhood plant swap hosted by The Barns down the street.  
I love walking through my garden and seeing all the plants from friends and family.
When they shoot up out of the ground and then bloom, it’s like a little ‘hello’.
Yesterday afternoon, I looked out my back door and saw the empty red recycling bins going up the hill on Rose Hill.  As I walked up the road yesterday, the trend of red recycling bins continued up around the bend.
As we have green ones, I know it’s not a uniform thing, and maybe they are out there every Thursday and I just now noticed.  Either way, something about it made me really happy.  At one point the sun seemed to make them all glow – little spots of glowing color in the otherwise drab winter landscape on a spring like day.

"No" feels so good.

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The new principal at my daughter’s school is putting together a committee of parents to work in the gardens there.  There will also be a vegetable garden, and yes, it is going to be worked into curriculum.  I am so freaking excited I don’t know where to begin.  Except that I’m not in charge.  That’s right, when the question was asked who wanted to head up the vegetable garden committee, for once I didn’t volunteer.
This is huge for me.

I love gardens.  Digging a new hole is my favorite form of therapy.  Teaching kids how to garden, so that they can learn how much better it is to eat fresh, healthy food, how easy it is for them to be able to do so?  So part of my goal of overhauling our entire food system.  I have a tendency to stand up and take charge when no one else does.  But not this time.  My main reason is really that my daughter moves up the upper elementary school after June and I feel this project needs a parent that’s more invested in the long term than myself. There are other reasons, like, a need to really focus more on my fledgling business and my own garden.  There are other parents that have the same ideas I have, so it really was sort of easy to let go.
I’ve had a few people tell me how I should be in charge of this committee.  I know, it seems like a good fit, but at the same time, it’s not.  I’m happy to help out, but let someone else take charge.  It might not seem like it, but I don’t always like being in charge.  I might be good at it, I might do it quite a bit, but that doesn’t mean I like it.  It’s far easier to say “Yes” to something and find a way to juggle it in than to say “No”, but man, saying “No” is really empowering. 

The Sisterhood of the Bromance and other adventures from our weekend.

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My husband is cute, smart, witty, loves the great outdoors,and really is one of those people that when other people meet him, they fall madly in love with him on the spot, myself included.  He has some very special friendships with other males that definitely fall into the ‘bromance’ category.  He has one friend in particular, that the friendship is extended to a circle of male friends.  The love between them is strong.  So strong, that our families get together several times a year.  Thankfully, their wives and kids are equally kick-ass, so much so that when we get together we call it ‘cousins weekends’.  I’ve realized recently, that we are a sisterhood in our own right.  I’ve named us “The Sisterhood of the Bromance” and we all agree, it’s fitting.  I might not be friends with them if it weren’t for our husbands, but thanks to our husbands, I have gotten to know these women, whom I adore.  Who else understands that PTO events sometimes require a flask?  They do.
The last weekend in January is one of those weekends each year that is set aside for a ‘cousins weekend’.  Last year, I went ahead and told everyone that I was going to steer it this year, because it was going to be Pat’s 40th birthday, and we were going to have a fest.  We rented Dunlodge, a PATC ‘cabin’, that is tucked away behind UVa.  It is an amazing house.  It was the perfect venue.  I wanted there to be enough room for the brotherhood for the weekend, plus we wanted to be able to invite a few of our local Cville friends for a small celebration one evening.
I had in my mind I had to plan not just the party, but the entire weekend.  I had gotten some emails and phone calls from the sisterhood, asking about details and I told them all, let me get through Edie’s birthday….so day between their actual birthdays, I got an email out.  I’m not sure why I was so worried and felt I had so much to do, because not only did the girls respond quickly with what booze and food they were bringing, I realized that our style of potlucking it and pulling together whatever we have on hand works beautifully.  Our husbands all manage to wing it and we have found ourselves equally adept, maybe even more so.   Mollie has often told us we are the family they choose to have and I feel the same way.  It extends to the kids, too. 
Between the sisterhood and the extended bromance, the weekend was absolutely spectacular.  The weather was wonderful, the house amazing, everyone showed up determined to throw something in to Pat’s party.   I decided we needed 3 cakes to properly celebrate, why, I’m not sure.  Friday, at our house, as there was epic  failure of a pound cake, Rieman just so happened to call and assured me, she would fix it with frosting when she arrived.  Thankfully, Mollie & family just happened to pull in and further pulled me off the ledge of baking fail.  Saturday brought cake failure number two, when I realized I put way more rum into the pineapple upside down cake than was called for. It tasted heavily of Capt. Morgan’s, but hey, there are worse things than too much rum in the cake.  I think the hot fudge chocolate pudding cake may have gotten a tad overbaked, but it was still okay and at that point, the chocolate martinis Rieman was pouring made it all much better.  I seriously could not have pulled off this party for Pat without any of them.  The highpoint of every weekend that we get together with them is our Saturday afternoons in the kitchen, were we ladies retreat with drinks and pull dinner together.  This weekend was no different, only this time there was cake involved.  The boys & kids wandered in & out and all of them commented on what a good feeling was coming from the kitchen.  Indeed.
Outside, the men cleaned the patios, built a fire in the firepit and built a fort for the kids.  We declared Nick a member of the sisterhood, because he called last week, offering to bring his soup pot and make brunswick stew for Saturday dinner.  Bringing your own cookware is one of the things the sisterhood does.  The first time I met Nick, he helped me can peaches.  Sisterhood candidate indeed. 
Blogger wouldn’t let me load pictures in the order I wanted, but here are the highlights of the weekend, in no particular order.




PJ time, singing Happy Birthday. I think cake tastes better in your pj’s anyway, doesn’t it?

Pound Cake Fail. 
After baking it for the correct time and pulling it out, letting it cool, I dumped it out, which is when I discovered the middle was still raw.  In trying to put it back in the pan, it fell apart.  I dumped the raw batter on top, rebaked it.  When I pulled it out and dumped it again, it fell apart, again.  At least it was cooked this time though.

Failed pound cake fixed with whipped cream.

Dunlodge. Cville peeps, check it out next time you need to put up a bunch of out of towners.  It’s fabulous, in a great spot, just behind UVa, near STAB. 

Pineapple upside down Capt. Morgans cake.

The men, cleaning the patio in front of the guest cottage and building a fire in the outdoor pit.

Nick’s contribution, 15 gallons of brunswick stew in the turkey cooker.

The Fort.

The fort under construction.

All the kiddies in the fort – with Edie, the oldest, feeding popcorn to Teal, the youngest.

Back view of the fort.  Seriously cool, isn’t it?

Eric brought cheese, sausage & crackers. 
We found a tray, added some apples and I cracked open a jar of bacon jam.
Yum.

Poundcake after I doused it with blueberries & strawberries I picked last summer and froze.
Ryan made a fabulous sauce to go with it, from the juice left in the bowl after the berries defrosted.  So good, we had it for breakfast the next morning.

Cousins pile. 
Edie, 10.
Abigail, 6.5.
Gus, 6.
Owen, 4.
Teddy, 3.

Action shot of cousins pile.
Nick’s brunswick stew. So tasty.

One of Rieman’s martinis.  Not sure if it was the chocolate or the pama one.  They were both good.
And I no longer cared about cake fail after them.
The hot fudge pudding cake covered in sprinkles that resembled a peace sign.  At least, we all thought so. 
Thanks everyone that came out, that pitched in and made it so awesome.  It was definitely one of those worlds colliding evenings, where our everyday neighborhood world got to spend quality time with our cousins world.  There were oysters, there was guitar playing, banjo picking,  there was good bourbon being passed around and just lots of good fun.  Everyone said how brilliant it was to have the party at another location in town,  seeing how our house is too small to really have any sort of party at during the winter. I received a number of compliments, but honestly, all I did was line up a house and then threw it up to everyone we invited. I couldn’t have planned a party that good, because you just can’t plan fun.  Fun happens.
And my dear husband is one of those people who just happens to have fun with everything. I am lucky to have him. 

My Irish Father’s Authentic Italian Grandmother "Gravy".

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Most of my family’s secret recipes are actually from the back of the box one of the ingredients came in.  Sure, at one point in time, they may have been written down by someone and are then more easily passable as a ‘family recipe’, but by and large, most of them came from helpful recipe suggestions on the box.  One exception to this is my father’s spaghetti sauce. The story goes that home sick from work one day, he found himself watching a talk show on tv, with Frankie Avalon, who gave out his mother’s recipe for meat sauce.  My father decided it sounded easy enough, and authentic Italian food fan that he was, decided to give it a whirl.  It became a family favorite.
Edie requested it for her birthday – I think her main motivator was all the meat involved, although she also loved telling everyone that I was making what she calls “Granddad Bob’s Spaghetti Sauce” and I got that for her, it was a connection to a grandfather she will never meet. 
I don’t really begin to know how to approach the subject of my father with her.  He passed away long before she was born.  For years after his death, there was no speaking of him within my family.  I have a tendency to block unpleasant memories, of which there were many, but in not being able to properly mourn him out loud, I’m afraid many of my good memories were lost too.  I don’t have too many people I can talk to and share the good memories with.  As Edie gets older, I realize she wants to hear them, I know she needs to hear them.  The subject of my family is so loaded.  She can’t quite wrap her head around why we don’t talk to my mother and my siblings  and I don’t expect her to ever fully understand it.  It’s not something most people understand – even I, who have lived through it, wonder if I made it all up.  Pat assures me, I haven’t. 
So, my father.  His father was a coal miner’s son from a holler in West Virginia, who joined the Navy during World War II. He got stationed off the coast of Boston and met my grandmother, who’s parents were off the boat from Ireland.  They met, got married and had my father.  After the war, they moved back to the holler, where my father’s younger brother was born on the kitchen table.  (My father never failed to mention this fact about his brother.) After a mine cave-in, where my grandfather was gravely injured, they packed up and moved to Baltimore, where a job in a factory was far more appealing than the coal mines.  My father used to tell us to never forget our ‘hillbilly roots’ as he called them, taking us to visit his aunts, uncles and cousins in the holler, but also making sure we lived a life much different.  My parents went to grade school together, at the Catholic school behind the house my mother’s parents would own by the time I came along.  I think they were in the same first grade class, but my father got “hung up in 10th grade” as he put it.  I never got the full story on exactly what that meant, but I know he was just a few months younger than my mother and graduated high school a full two years after she did.   He managed to work his way up to what I think was middle management in a fairly big internationally known corporation by the time he passed away, without the benefit of a college degree, something probably unheard of in this day and age.  He was also in the National Guard, and there worked his way up to company commander of a special forces unit.  He had his 25 years in and was set to retire as a colonel when he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 44.  He was the one that made me start volunteering at the local hospital when I was 14, get a job when I turned 16, and insisted that at least half of all my babysitting money go into a savings account.  He was a sucker for buying me things I wanted – I learned early on that if I could get him to go shopping with me, he’d buy it for me.  He dreamed of  being a ‘gentleman farmer’ and for a time when I was young, we lived on a farm, where he tried out the dream.  I have fond memories of those adventures (and adventures they were).  He would try just about anything once, he loved a good prank and was all about throwing the plan out the window and doing things spur of the moment.  He made me watch “Gone with the Wind” because he felt it was one of the greatest movies ever made.  He also thought that about “The Longest Day” and “Animal House”.  John Wayne was the last great movie star according to my father.  I remember him telling me exactly why he voted for John Anderson in the 1980 election, although I don’t remember the reasons anymore.  He loved this country.  To this day, I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone more patriotic than my father.  Our quality time together every day was watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite.  When Dan Rather took over, we switched to another network, because he just didn’t trust him.  On weekends when we would watch tv, he made a game out of guessing the prices of what is now those “Seen on TV” ads.  Remember how they’d show you all the stuff you’d get if you would only order now, but would put off giving the price until the very end? (“But that’s not all, if you order now, we’ll throw in this free set of Ginsu knives!”) He made a game of that – What would the price be?  What else were they going to throw in?  He loved to go to Kmart and just hang out for those blue light specials.  If you went there with him and lost him, all you had to do was wait for the next “Attention Kmart shoppers, there is a blue light special in Aisle 6” and you could go find him.  He picked up a Weber grill, off season, for a song on one of those, another time, it was accessories to go with his grill.  The night he brought the grill home, it snowed.  He grilled out anyway.  He would spend his lunch hour walking to the thrift stores downtown, finding treasures.  We had one phone, an old rotary phone, on the wall, in the kitchen.  If he was home, he was the one to answer it.  Rare was the standard “Hello”.  He had a sense of humor, so often the phone would be answered in some way that if you didn’t know it was our house, there would be a hang up. If you called back, you got the exact same greeting.   “City Morgue, you stab ’em, we slab ’em” was a favorite,  “City Zoo, Monkey House” was another.  There were quite a few.   He expected our friends to talk to him, if they didn’t, then they couldn’t talk to us.  God forbid a boy should call, because they would be detained for a good 10 minutes before my father would hand the phone off.  I recall one boy coming to pick me up for a date one evening and when my father answered the door, he realized he had grown up with the boy’s uncles and slammed the door in his face, saying no daughter of his was going out with someone from that family.  Somehow, the boy managed to knock again, my father opened the door and told him he could take me out, but he was to have me home by dark. 
And he did too.
A few years ago, I happened upon an article in Cook’s Illustrated about the perfect spaghetti sauce, what  Italian Americans call “gravy”.  I recognized my father’s sauce.  My hillbilly, Irish father, who learned how to make this sauce from a tv show.  Which is funny, because a good bit of how I learned to cook was from watching shows on tv.  I have alot of my father in me, as does my daughter.  She has his weird ‘duck feet’, where her second and third toes are fused together a little higher than the rest of us.  She has his sense of humor, definitely. And just like him, she walks around singing “cha cha cha”, tacking it on to just about every song and saying you can imagine.  It’s amazing what comes through in our DNA. 
The sauce – it’s heavy on the meat, and I don’t really care much for meat to be honest.  I don’t like touching it when it’s raw, I don’t like the texture and most of the time, I don’t like the flavor.   Somehow, I ended up with a daughter who is a self described ‘meatatarian’, who thinks that vegetarians are crazy.  Vegans?  Whoa.  That’s just….wrong. 
I like to throw some veggies in just for kicks – she claims that tomatoes are vegetables enough, but knowing how she loves carrots, I get away with adding them. Mushrooms, she’s realized I adore and put in everything, so she’s just going to have to learn to eat around them until she can fend for herself. I cook the pork and sausage in another pan, to cut down on some of the fat.  Pat & Edie tell me I’m cutting out some of the flavor by taking out some of the fat, but frankly, I don’t care.  I have put my father’s recipe first, with my substitutions and additions after.
In large pot, place olive oil to cover the bottom of pan.  Bring up to temperature and add minced garlic, and country style pork ribs.  Brown ribs on both sides.  Add 3 large cans of tomato sauce and bring to a slight boil. Cut Italian sausage into bite size pieces and add to mixture.  Add prepared meat balls, a few teaspoons of basil, oregano & Parmesan cheese.  Bring to a slight boil and cook on low heat for several hours. I like for the pork to be falling off the bones when I serve it. I seem to recall he used at least a pound each of the ribs & sausage.
Meatballs – Equal parts ground pork, veal & beef, sometimes known as ‘meatleaf blend’.  Add one egg, a tablespoon of parsley, Italian bread crumbs and salt & pepper to taste.  Roll into balls, about 1 inch in diameter and roll in Italian breadcrumbs.
My version – I throw in onions, carrots & bell peppers with the garlic.  After they soften, I add mushrooms and some wine.  When those are cooked, I add the tomatoes and the prebrowned pork & sausage. I use chopped tomatoes I can from the garden and I find I usually add an extra jar. I add a 1/2 cup of pesto instead of basil and after bringing to a boil with the addition of the meatballs, I add a 6 oz can of tomato paste.  Oh, and the meatballs – it’s hard to find ground veal, so I skip that.  I used fresh sausage my last go round. 
I remember my father swearing that if you wanted a good dinner on Saturday, you started this sauce on Thursday.  I concur – always start it a day ahead of time, as it really improves with age. It freezes well and will feed an army for days.  I think I got 12 servings out of the last pot I made.
Serve with pasta, garlic bread and a nice salad. 
My meatatarian, so happy with her birthday dinner.

Sprinkles optional.

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The ice on the trees at the park this weekend was just gorgeous.  It made the grey seem sort of magical.
It also was quite conducive to curling up, cooking yummy things for my birthday honeys and on Sunday, when all the celebrating was done, to stay in our jammies all day, reading the New York Times and watching tv. Over the course of 4 days, I made 2 dozen cream filled chocolate cupcakes, 2 dozen carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (made from the organic, heirloom carrots we planted last spring), a batch of tapioca pudding and one half dozen cheesecake cupcakes with a raspberry sauce.  I spent two days making my dad’s spaghetti sauce recipe, which is actually a very authentic Italian gravy.  And yes, per Edie’s very special request, I included all the meat the recipe calls for (usually I omit most of it, mostly because I’m not a big fan of meat other than bacon).  She was quite pleased.  For Pat’s birthday dinner, I tried a new recipe from a friend for a lamb risotto that’s made in the crock pot with barley.  It also called for arugula, which I always seem to have a small row of in the garden,  regardless of season, so I grabbed some of that and threw it in.  I, who don’t like lamb, liked this dish very much.  Those who like lamb (the other people that live in my house) weren’t as wild about it.  Oh well.  Can’t win them all.  I also managed to whip up a new shirt for Edie for her birthday.  It’s a tunic, made out of plaid flannel I picked up at the SPCA store.   She loved it, wore it to school and the boys complimented her on it, which lead to her coming home and telling me about, wondering why boys like plaid flannel.  So I played her some Nirvana videos on you tube, to show her exactly how cool plaid flannel is.  I’m not sure she was impressed.  She watched the Pearl Jam movie with us a few months back and was pretty taken aback at the time about the hair(!) and the clothes (!) that her father and I so fondly remembered.  Some days I wonder how I got a child so uptight.  (She calls herself that.  Admitting is the first step to getting over the problem, yes?)
You’d think that after all that cooking, I’d be steering clear of it for a few days.  Well, sort of.  This morning I assisted with a kid’s baking class at  The Charlottesville Cooking School, dragging Edie along so she wouldn’t spend 2 days in a row, in her pj’s watching tv (like she did last weekend, also a three day weekend).  They made coconut macaroons, chocolate dipped oatmeal cookies and carrot muffins, with cream cheese frosting.  Can you tell which muffin was decorated by a third grader and which one was decorated by me?

Which is why I have signed myself up for the weekend long cake class at the cooking school the first weekend of February.  I think it’s time my cupcakes looked as good as they taste.
(Hint, I didn’t use sprinkles.)

Courage

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Courage is being
brave.  Courage is
facing your fears.
Courage is being confident
in yourself.
Edie recently wrote this right before bedtime one night.  I found it on the nightstand the next morning.  She shrugged it off as something she was supposed to write for school. 
I am biased, but I think it’s one of the most beautiful, truest things ever written.
I am posting it here in honor of her 10th birthday.  Motherhood is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life and one of the most rewarding.  Every time I read this, I realized we’ve done something right with her.

I am THAT mom.

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When Edie started preschool, I was just coming out of the mindset that I needed to use my college degree in the field in which I had studied and trained, aka, career mom.  And honestly, as much as I loved being home with her all day, I was really looking forward to those few hours a week where I got to drop her off with someone else and go do my own thing.  I didn’t even bother looking at any preschool that used the word co-op.  I wanted to write a check, drop her off and call it a day.

So, when she started kindergarten, I was slightly taken aback as Pat pointed to all the sign up sheets her teacher had laid out for volunteer opportunities. 

“Which ones do you want to sign up for?”

I’m pretty sure I just gave him a confused look.  I had just gotten myself a career type job again and was looking forward to getting back on that path.  In my mind, that did not leave time for volunteering at school.  Wasn’t that what supermoms did?  I was not one of those.

“Uhm, I’m not that kind of parent.”

“We are that kind of parent.”

Somehow, I ended up signing up to read to her class every now and again, although when his schedule would allow, I sent Pat in, since you, ‘we’ were that kind parenting team.

At the end of the year, her teacher asked me if I would help out with the class picnic.  Sure thing.  When I got to school that day, I realized I was in charge of the whole shebang, along with another mom that had been nominated.

When Edie started first grade, she also wanted to be a girl scout.  I had just spent the better part of a year going around with the local council who couldn’t tell me where a troop was that my daughter could join, so finally, sucker that I am, I started one.  This also emboldened me to try my hand at organizing some class parties. 

I might be what people call ‘crafty’, as in, I like to make things.  Sewing and knitting on my own does in no way give me any sort of talent for organizing 15+ children in any sort of crafty activity.  Not only that, I have dream child.  Seriously.  I don’t say this to brag, I say this because she has lulled me into thinking that any sort of craft I come up with from any website or that is suggested by the girl scouts that she is capable of doing with me, that any child her age can do.  Nothing is farther from the truth.  She has a much longer attention span than kids her age.  She also is a big rule follower (she so does not that get that from me), and at the age of 6 was a better colorer than myself. She’s been rolling out my pie crusts and sugar cookies since she was 2.  I should have seen the red flag that was her printing out her own Martha activities, but I thought all 6 year old girls that were left a little unsupervised for too long did that.  I learned the hard way my kid is not like the others.  Turns out I really stink at creating activities for kids that aren’t mine. 

Somehow, despite organizing a few slightly disastrous events, her teacher that year approached me about organizing the class picnic for the entire grade.  So, first grade, I put together the class picnic too.  Somehow this has evolved into me now just telling the team of teachers at her grade level that I will do the end of the year picnic.  Other parents in the class have told me they expect this.  Far from me to let them down.  This is also my excuse for not volunteering at so many other events.  Or, it has been. Thankfully, that mom that was nominated to help me that first year always steps forward to be my right hand gal at every event I foolishly take on.

Last year, Edie had a teacher who, how shall we say this politely?  Really needed help from parents in her classroom.  I may have taken over an event or two, although to be honest, it didn’t dawn on me until today that I actually did that.  I know I wasn’t the only parent to take over an event, so I suppose that’s why I didn’t think much of it.

This year, when Edie’s teacher asked for parents to volunteer, I said I was available.  (We are those parents you know.)  Great, could I come in every Thursday and help with math?  Math is not my strong point, in fact, daily I’m pretty sure that every math teacher I ever had, not to mention my high school guidance counselor is laughing at me, for I insisted to them all that I did NOT need math later in life.  Ahem.  Turns out it’s on the quiz EVERY DAY.  That geometry I hated?  Slightly essential for interior design, especially when floor and wall coverings are in measured and ordered in things like square feet.  And things like, altering recipes and knitting patterns also require math.  D’oh!  But, her teacher assured me, I’d be working with students that needed help with basics and I would be fine.  I have trouble with basics too really, I never did memorize my multiplication tables, something I’ve never admitted. Still, her teacher assured me I could do this.  (The jury is still out on that one.)

A few weeks before Christmas, I got a phone call on a Saturday morning from a mom friend, who has a child in Edie’s class.  What did I know about the Christmas party the teacher was planning?  Had anyone responded to his flyer about the Christmas party?  Wouldn’t I just step in and handle it? “It’s what you do Becky”. 

See? Still in complete denial that I am THAT mom.

A few weeks ago, I was in for my regular Thursday afternoon with Edie’s class.  The new wellness policy of Charlottesville City schools calls for no more than once a month birthday celebrations and her teacher told me they were going to enforce it, starting now.  I asked how he wanted to go about it, since Edie did have a birthday this month and I couldn’t help but notice he had a few other students with birthdays this month and would it be helpful if I contacted the other parents and organized for him?  Of course he went for it, and somehow in my organizing it, I realized I set the date to be Edie’s actual birthday.  To be fair, it’s Thursday, when they have ‘flex time’ and I know they have a little time for it.  But yes, the date may have swayed me. 

And so suddenly, I realize, I am THAT mom.  I am coming to terms with this.  I’m not entirely sure how I got here, although in writing this, I see the trail.  I’ve evolved into it, over time. 

I’ve always thought I’m different from the other moms, certainly different from what I called the ‘supermoms’.  I wear my pj’s to the bus stop on a daily basis.  The kids actually ask what’s up if I’m not in my pj’s.  I’ve even worn my fluffy pink robe out to wave the bus down, as Edie was running late and I didn’t want her to miss it. Actually, I’ll wear my pj’s to Reid’s market to pick up something before noon on a weekend morning if you really want to know the truth.  I’m known to pregame evening events at school -not saying which ones, but sometimes, a drink beforehand is the only way to get through them.  I never fail to humiliate my child by my get-ups I work in the yard in- the more embarrassing the ensemble for her, the more of her friend’s parents that drive by, or worse, stop to chat. Yesterday, the first grader across the street stopped as she was getting off the bus and asked me “What are you wearing?”.  (My overalls). She so did not approve.    I kinda let my opinions fly and I don’t always care if someone is offended.  I don’t carry a cell phone on a regular basis and the one I do have, less than 10 people in the entire universe know the number.  That does not include me.  I have no idea what my cell number is.  Seriously.  I suck at kid’s crafts.  I hate games, so I avoid organizing them at all costs. My idea of a party is to just serve alcohol and call it a day.  I have exactly 11 more years before I can pull this off with my daughter’s birthday parties.  I have potty mouth and forget to censor myself in front of kids sometimes, which then leads me to say, “Earmuffs” only to realize that it’s not appropriate for kids to have seen “Old School” and so therefore, really have no idea what I’m talking about.  And then there is the fact that I talk to kids as if they are grown ups.  I’ve been known to say, not only to my own kid, but members of my girl scout troop “I’m really just not in the mood to deal with what you are doing right now, so can you not do that?  Great, thanks.” in a somewhat firm, but sarcastic tone.   I find they generally respond to that well.  I am all for bagging a girl scout meeting plan and having the girls run and play while the moms chat, preferably over a bottle of wine, or three.   When you pick your child up from a playdate at my house, chances are, I have a glass of wine in my hand and offer you one.   (There may be a theme there.)  When your kid has a sleepover at my house, there’s a good chance I’m in bed before they are and when I get up, they have usually turned on the tv.  I will feed them breakfast in bed because I don’t want to interrupt their movie and they generally have agreed to waiting for me to have at least one cup of coffee before I even go near any other part of the kitchen and then I will make it up to them by making something like, bacon or sausage and chocolate waffles.  I don’t this as spoiling, I see it as a trade-off. 

Really, all the supermom type things I do, like the girl scout troop, like organizing class parties, I do because Edie wants these things to happen and if I can’t get someone else to do it, then I will do them.  Somewhere along the way, I came to the realization that raising a good person was way more important and had a much bigger lasting impact than a career.  So while I always made sure I made time for my kid, when I stepped firmly off career track and decided that I was a mom first and foremost, I really felt okay about making things happen that she really wanted.   I know that it’s a fleeting thing, this view she has of me, where I am incredibly capable and can fix just about everything.  It’s a horrible thing to realize your parents are human, probably far worse for us parents.  The things I have done, simply because she thought I could – it has stretched me beyond my wildest limits, and yet, I really have been able to accomplish the things she thinks I can.  She has far more confidence in me than I do myself, so sometimes when I should say no, I say yes, because what’s the worst that could happen?  I fail and my child finds out I’m human.  She’s bound to figure that out pretty soon anyway.  By saying yes, I’m just holding that day at bay.