Soccer Mom.

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I really don’t like soccer. Don’t really care for most team sports, actually, with soccer and volleyball being at the top of the list. When it comes right down to it, I just don’t like games. Call me curmudgeonly. I come from a serious sports playing game playing family, so I feel like I can say, I’ve played them and they don’t do much for me.

Pat, on the other hand, is a big soccer fan. And couldn’t wait for Edie to play. Myself? I dreaded it. So did not want to be a soccer mom, nor did I really want to have to be around any. I don’t like competition on any level, but if I’m forced to compete……well, watch out. I’m going to win. Period.

I realize that in order for my daughter to come to the conclusion she doesn’t like playing team sports, she has to try them out first. I was really hoping I could push her into basketball – I do like basketball and as she’s tall, I thought if we harness this, this is how we pay for college, right? (Always looking ahead I am….). Daddy, however, was really looking forward to those Saturday morning soccer matches. So, I swallowed my distaste and signed her up.

Her first experience was pretty lousy. It took us another 2 years to coax her back out onto the field. I told her, she can’t say she doesn’t like it until she had more of an experience. So, we tried again. Another really horrible experience with the coach, but at least this time, she was able to see she liked playing the game and so agreed to give it one more chance. Because she’s tall for her age, I made the executive decision to ‘play her up’ to the U-10 level, even though she had another season at U-8. Here at U-8, they play half field and they don’t keep score. U-10, they play the entire field and keep score. I knew it could be a challenge at the start of the season, but I really thought she was up for it. And besides, there were kindergartners on some of the U-8 teams, there were some tiny little girls out there that really only came up to Edie’s knees, that she just kept running over and taking out without realizing or meaning to. She really needed to play with kids her own size. And she would be forced to develop skills quickly. Then, she could see if she liked it or not.

When I signed her up, I requested a parent coach. (Part of the problem with her first two experiences had been with the coaches. High school and college kids as coaches just aren’t as invested, nor do they really understand the kids, you know?). We got her team assignment and she had a parent coach. Two of them actually. We were thrilled. The team was primarily made up with girls from a school across town, but we knew one of them because she had just transferred out of Edie’s school when her folks moved. So, we know someone! The only downside was practice was at their school, Fridays at 5.

This was a clear violation of my happy hour enjoyment. Not only is motherhood making me a better person despite my objections, but this now it’s interfering with my drinking. I grumbled loudly to anyone who would listen. Posted it on facebook. Pat agreed to take her to practice, all the while slightly scolding me for being so petty and self centered. Of course I ignored him and one fine spring day, he came home from work early and realized it was the perfect kind of day that just demands a beer to be sipped on. Only guess who had to drive someone to soccer practice? I’m pretty sure he now understood my whining. Friday practice at 5 really is asking alot of us.

He came home from that first practice pretty jazzed. The coaches seemed pretty laid back, the parents were all friendly. (Another part of our poor experiences was being on teams where we didn’t know any parents and none of them bothered to speak to us. All season. Go team!) . We had finally landed on a soccer team.

That whole spring season, our girls played their hearts out. They were all playing up for the first time, so there was a group learning curve. They went all season without scoring one goal. Forget winning and losing, we were just trying to hold our own on the field. The beauty of it is though, it didn’t bother them. That season was a huge lesson in the old “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” saying. They loved playing. At one point, Edie said to us, “I just don’t understand why they insist on keeping score.” It really didn’t matter to them that they didn’t win a game, or even score a goal. They just got out there and tried.

Everyone came back together for the fall season. We had some girls drop off and some new ones join. Our goal at the start of the season was to score a goal. One goal. Which we did minutes into our first game of the season. We were ecstatic. We may have actually been some of the most obnoxious parents on the sidelines when we scored this season. Sitting an entire season without a goal will do that to you.

Not only did we score goals, we won games. Sure, we lost a few too, but we really made some progress. One of the parents suggested we try the Frostbite Tournament at the end of the season. So, this weekend, despite snow and temps not creeping out of the 30’s, we spent the weekend sitting by the soccer field, cheering our girls on.

We set up right by the side of the field, smack dab in the middle Saturday morning and stayed there. I realized later we monopolized the best seats most of the day. Oh well. We lost our first game and while we were waiting around for our next one, we had snacks galore for the girls. We marched them up to the snack bar and bought them all hot chocolate. While we were waiting for that, one of the girls lost a tooth and that became a team event. Right there, in front of the snack bar. By the time their second game rolled around, they were ready. They won that one, with a score of 6-1. They looked fantastic. They definitely were playing as a team and it was great to watch, especially knowing how far they’ve come.

Those 6 goals were enough to give our girls a third seed in the next day’s games. There were only 7 teams, but still, our girls? Third? After an entire season of no goals? There was much joy and merriment and celebrating.

We lost our game Sunday morning, we were all wiped out from celebrating together the night before I think. It was cold, we were whiny. And that was just the parents. The girls played like they were cold and tired too. After the game, we took the girls out for lunch and the parents had beers. We started planning next season and talking about when we need to play up to the next level. I realized I’ve become a soccer mom. As a friend pointed out to me, I’m just being a good mother and supporting my daughter. True. And I like her team. Turns out I’ve known half the parents some way or another for years. None of us take the game too seriously. As we were at the tournament this weekend, we noticed some of those parents are really into the game. We pay attention, but get distracted by our own conversations. And if they don’t win, no biggie. Life goes on.

Edie really loves playing soccer. I tried to get her to play basketball this winter – some of the girls on her soccer team are playing and I thought it’d be great for her to play with them on some other sports. Then her father mentioned he got an email about indoor soccer this winter. Of course that’s what she wants to do. We signed her up to play with one of her neighborhood girlfriends. They are doing a little skills academy that hopefully will make her a better player come next spring. (Not that she’s not a good player, she’s just polishing those skills.) I was looking forward to getting my Friday nights back, but clearly the universe had other plans. We had our choice between Sunday mornings out at Western Albemarle or Friday nights at 6 in town. Guess which one we went for?

Sigh. Not only am I having to feign an interest in soccer, I’m having to give up my Friday happy hours. Sometimes this motherhood business really is for the birds. In the grand scheme of things, I know this is a blip. Eventually she’ll move on, my luck to one of the travel teams where my entire weekend is taken up with traveling for soccer.

If that’s what makes her happy though, so be it. Being a soccer mom isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Turns out I’m not required to drive a mini-van, so I guess I can do this. A good team has made all the difference in the world, for all of us.

Thinking Ahead.

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Last August, when it was so hot and dry, but yet the pole beans were doing fabulously production wise, I spent alot of time canning. And harvesting seeds. Yes, I was putting things away for next summer’s garden as well as for the coming winter months. While I was at it, I was thinking about Christmas gifts.

I hate the consumerism of the season. Hate buying a bunch of stuff. Hate receiving it too actually. The year I got a new crock pot for Christmas I was ecstatic, because I love getting everyday things I can use. Part of me feels old and boring with this, but I suppose that’s what happens when you are married with kids at a certain age. I got alot of handmade gifts growing up. My Aunt Loretta gave me the most wonderful handmade gifts. I still have alot of them, like the paper bead necklace, the ornaments she made me, the story she wrote for me and best of all, the recipe for the cherry cheesecake she would make me some years. She would bake gifts for everyone – there would be a pie or cake for every member of the household. I’m still in awe of the amount of baking that woman could pull off at Christmas every year. I aspire to bake like her, but even the years I do 25 dozen cookies and 3 cakes, I’m not sure I come close. That woman baked.

In that tradition, I give handmade gifts. I used to sew everything, some years I still do alot of sewing, but I have come to figure out things I can work on all year long. Which makes me feel slightly uptight and way too on top of things, but right about now, when I’m starting to get overwhelmed thinking about everything that has to happen between now and the big day……..I really start loving myself. Sort of like the years I get Pat’s January Birthday peach pie in the freezer in August, so after all that holiday and Edie birthday baking, I can pull something out of the freezer and have it be homemade and good. And last year, when I was out flat recovering from surgery, I was giddy to discover a stash of things I had already knit for Pat & Edie throughout the year, so they still got a hand-made mommy gift. I know I wasn’t that good this year (admittedly, I’ve been working on the same pair of fingerless gloves since last winter’s swim lessons), but I do have some good garden treats ready to go. If I learned anything from last Christmas, it was that my little bit of planning ahead is a very good thing.

It was good.

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Fried Sage Leaves, with goat cheese and Sea Salt.


Pickled Watermelon Rind. Crunchy and slightly sweet, with a nice savory undertone, no doubt the work of the cloves, ginger and cardamon. Definitely worth the effort and the wait. I will be making them again.


The loaded table. Turkey and all the trimmings. Many of which got sent home in a second cooler purchased just for us to bring it all home in. Our freezer is officially stocked for weeks to come….

And my dessert contributions. The pecan pie was declared perfect looking as it came out of the oven Wednesday night. The pumpkin pie came from the volunteer pumpkin from our garden. Both were quite tasty if I do say so myself.
And now to gear up for the next round…..

Sick Day.

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Miss Thing has a cold and couldn’t quite bring herself to get out of bed, so I caved and let her stay home from school today. When she finally managed to get up, she kept herself busy working on her Ancient Greece project and I got some sewing projects caught up. You know, the ones that are so simple that just sit there for months on end? Like sewing a new button on Pat’s brown cords. Fixing the trim on that doll dress that been sitting there for ages. Finally fixing Edie’s stash of ‘big hankies’. And Mo’s skirt. I’ve had the last 5 days off work now and I swore I was going to start making Christmas presents. Laundry is almost caught up, I have started washing windows in my house (A serious procrastination move), the house, including both bathrooms, is relatively clean and I even scrubbed out the dishwasher this weekend. And, as of today, I have gotten the biggest pile blocking my way to starting holiday presents out of there.

So maybe when we get back this weekend, I’ll start on Christmas presents…. unless of course I think of something else that I need to do, like clean the chimney. No, that’s too crazy and ambitious even for me.

About Orange.

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My living room is painted orange. Sherwin Williams ‘Exciting Orange’ to be precise. When we bought this house 11 years ago last June, it had been a rental for some time, which meant every room but one was painted white. And white did not work in the small living room, which is also how you enter the house. It also gets very little natural light as we have alot of old trees around the house and that room faces north. We lived here for 4 years before we found the right color, and honestly? Inspiration came after a pitcher of watermelon margaritas one afternoon.

When the painters did the swatch on the wall and left for the day, Pat took a look and questioned the choice. That man has never questioned any of my design choices for our house. I run everything by him and he approves without question. He did the same here, until….

I’ll admit. I was nervous about painting the first room you see when you enter our house orange. People thought it was my devotion to either Virginia football or Auburn football, because the adjacent hallway is a dark blue. (And neither shade is the proper PMS color for either school. Because I just happen to know these things.) No, I just wanted something that would grab the tiny bit of light that is in here and throw it around. I wanted it to flow with the spaces it opened up to, both upstairs and down. And I needed something to go with the purple velvet sofa I’d already acquired. I made a rash, gut decision over a pitcher of margs, and by golly, I was going to stick to it.

It turned out okay. So okay, that when people notice the color, they comment. Extensively.

I don’t think about it much. I carry an orange leather purse, that admittedly, is over the top, as it’s oversized and has what can only be described as fish scales on it. It’s fabulous and I never fail to get a comment on how great my purse is. A dear friend brought me back an orange cashmere scarf from Italy that I wear quite a bit. I love it more than most of the scarves I’ve knit for myself. I noticed I have a tendency to wear two scarves so that I can wear my orange one on top when I go out. A lady stopped me at Kmart the other day to tell me how good I looked in that scarf. She went on for a few minutes how orange really is my color.

When Edie was a toddler, she went through a phase where not only was orange her favorite color, she would only wear orange socks. I finally found them at Old Navy, in the little boys section, and I grabbed every pair in her size. She refused to wear shoes if she couldn’t have her orange socks. Had to be orange. It got to be a problem in January.

I’ve never really thought about how much I do love the color orange until recently. I’ve heard a friend describe me by my orange living room and wondered why that was a big deal. A mom friend came in yesterday to pick her daughter up from a playdate and even though she’s been here dozens of times before, even sat and drank wine with me in my orange living room, never noticed the color before and just went on about how great it was.

I noticed the other day as I took Edie to the bus stop that alot of the neighborhood trees were orange. Combined with the glow of the morning sun, the whole world seemed orange. I love orange, I feel it’s slightly underrated as a color. It’s cheerful, it’s original. My living room is the only room that doesn’t feel cold with those darn energy efficient CFI’s in my lamps, because orange can overcome anything.

Maybe that’s why my orange living room makes such an impression. It’s just proof of my originality.
Although if you ask, purple is still my favorite color. But orange is a very close second….

Garden Notes Upon the End of the Season.

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I had every intention of ripping out the dead garden yesterday, as we got our first hard freeze on Tuesday, but after spending the morning teaching my friend Rebecca to knit and playing with her sweet twin baby girls and not sleeping well the night before, I decided a nap was a better idea. And then I got caught up doing stuff around the house, like putting laundry away and cleaning bathrooms, even though I swear, didn’t I just clean them both? How does a room that you’re supposed to get clean in get so dirty so fast??!?!
Anyway, Pat got home from work on the early side, and Edie was at soccer practice and then going to dinner with friends (That girl really does have her own, very busy social schedule), so we decided we should take advantage of the afternoon and walk up to McGrady’s and have pitchers and nachos. You know, the same thing we do every time we get a few kid free hours together. As we headed out, I took the opportunity to survey the grounds. I saw this:
New growth on the lilac. I have long wanted a lilac, just as I want rose bushes. Our property gets light, in certain spots. Mostly, by the side of the road. The best spot is reserved for my vegetable garden. The rest is sort of hit and miss and always getting rearranged. I planted that lilac a few years ago in what I thought would be a good spot, but it didn’t do much. At one point, I thought I’d killed it. I moved it this spring into what I thought would be a better spot, and then, after both freakishly weird microbursts this spring that brought down about half the trees in the ‘hood, and definitely a few around it, it did seem to be happier. I watered it daily for months, carrying a bucket out there every day. And yesterday, as we headed out, I saw it had new growth. Yay.

Out the back door, I noticed a spot of green in the middle of where I know I’ve planted nothing, Pat has worked hard to cut back, rip out and cover with mulch. I realized I must have thrown some big garden clippings down there at some point, because it looked suspiciously like arugula:

Indeed, upon closer inspection it was! How flipping cool is that? Perfect to cook with or make into pesto. I love volunteer gardens. I love that it sprung up somewhere previously unclaimed. Perhaps that’s where I start digging a new bed next?

And then Pat pointed out that it might be time to rip out the vegetable garden, which I assured him that it was on my agenda for the weekend. (Never mind that I had Thursday off because it was Veteran’s day and Friday off because that’s always my day off and both days, I was home alone until he got home from work about 5 each day, because Edie went home with friends after school both days and yet, had managed to not accomplish that.).

So, this morning after soccer, I went out there.

Definitely time. Oh, my beautiful, bountiful garden….ripping you out every fall is the cruelest part of a season I already don’t like.

I realized I hadn’t checked my radishes lately. They were ginormous.

And deformed. They will probably taste very woody, but hey, we’ll try them anyway. I also pulled all my carrots out, the last of the beans, pulled every tomato off the vine, the last of the squash and peppers and bonus, I found one small golden cherry tomatillo that I’ve already cut up to harvest the seeds to bolster what I already harvested this year. All told, here’s the harvest:


Not too shabby. It must be close to 10 pounds of those stupid roma grape tomatoes I planted by mistake. Oh well, I’ll do something fun with them, even if they are little. Probably chutney. Most of them are green, so that’s probably my best bet. I’ll wrap some up in newspaper for us to have homegrown tomatoes for a little bit longer. Two nice sized crossbred butternut squash – I had a volunteer pumpkin, volunteer gourds and a volunteer butternut squash plant pop up. The gourds turned out okay, I got one pumpkin and then a slew of butternut squash that are pumpkin shaped on the outside with the butternut skin and coloring. And I must have forgotten to thin the carrots last spring, because there are mostly small ones. When they say those miniature carrots you buy at the grocery store don’t grow in nature, they lie, because I grow them quite well thank you very much. Sadly, only one row of carrots made it this year and I didn’t realize it until today. I plant my carrots inbetween my tomato plants. I read somewhere they make good companion plants and they really do. Since my garden is small, I like to utilize it as much as possible and plant everything on top of each other. I have a 9′ x 25′ plot and by the time I’m done cramming, you just cannot walk through it anymore, you can only access it from the sides by July. Once the tomatoes start spreading out, I don’t bother with the carrots until I rip out the entire garden and see how they did this year. I still have a decent enough crop to cook, puree and freeze for Edie’s birthday carrot cake. And that’s really all I expect out of my carrot crop. Anything else is just excessively delightful.


And there it is. My garden. *sigh*. I do have some baby greens in there, but everything else is done for the season.
A few notes and ideas for next year. The way the volunteer wandering squash plants grew, they did pretty well, without too much crowding other things out. I need to remember that and plant it that way on purpose next year. I need to be a bit more careful about reading the tags on the plants I buy, so I don’t end up with a billion roma grapes next year. And I need to remember to thin the carrots. The zinnias in the bed in front of the living room window attracted hummingbirds and butterflies galore all summer long. It was so nice to look out the window from this computer desk to see. It was an experiment that we decided last August was a permanent fix.
I still need to plant the yellow cone flowers I got last weekend from Mollie, so I still have some digging to do. And I should plant some bulbs…. a maybe a handful more lettuce seeds to pop up next February and March. And then, we’ll call it a season.

Best Holiday Ever?

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So, we headed east to Urbanna for the Oyster Festival this weekend. I call it the love child of SEC football and Mardi Gras, but way more family friendly. Urbanna is a tiny town of about 500 folks or so that plays host to this festival that has an attendence of about 50,000. There are RV’s everywhere you look. And parades, daily. And booth upon booth of just about every fried food you can imagine. Fried Ho-ho’s. Fried Pecan Pie. The Seafood Fritter, which is the size of a plate, with all manner of seafood in it. The air is heavy with the scent of french-fried-corndogs-funnelcake-fried goodness. I’m pretty sure my arteries hardened just walking around this weekend. Someone said they saw a sign for deep fried butter. Serious fried food.

Friday night, all roads into town close at 6 pm for the Firetruck Parade. This parade consists of 60 firetrucks from all over the state of Virginia – although there was one from Maryland this year. Last year, we timed how long we could hear the parade before we could actually see it – about an hour. And then it was another 20 minutes until we actually saw the trucks and not just the lights.
This year, they reversed the parade route, so as soon as we heard it, we had to trot out to see it. It was nicer being on the front end, it moved faster and so therefore was easier with the kiddos.

We stay with dear friends who live in town. They both work at the school and Smiley raises oysters – so all weekend long, we just eat his oysters. As well as all the fried food you can imagine, not to mention some fabulous things we have all cooked up. Saturday morning, we set out to walk the town, see the sights and get something to eat. Crab bisque from the ladies at the church on Main Street, along with a ham biscuit for your pocket is a must. As a devotee of funnel cake, that’s a must for me as well.

The roads into town are closed again all day Saturday, with the big parade starting up at 2. Shriner’s from all over the state, local marching bands, Miss Oysterfest, Little Miss Spat and their courts are all featured. Our friends live right off the parade route, so once again, we have a great spot for viewing and then head back to the house to start up some dinner. The festival ends about 8 or so I believe – and then , just like Mardi Gras, clean up begins. Into the night you can hear the sounds of dump trucks and street sweepers and when you walk around town Sunday morning, you can only see small remnants of what happened the day before. The air no longer smells of fried food.
The best part though, is the friends.
It’s a certain group of friends that gather for this and sometimes this is the only time all year we see each other. The kids get along wonderfully and really are like cousins. Edie is 3 years older than the closest one to her in age, but she is dream child, so, so far, we’ve been okay. She’s really awesome with the younger ones. The first year Owen realized Edie was one of them, but could read to him was pretty magical and since then, he’s been in awe of her. They all are actually. This year it was pointed out to me that she’s becoming a ‘tween’. I’m not sure I’m ready for this development, although, I have noticed us heading towards that, but since I’m around her every day, I haven’t been as quick to acknowledge it. Mollie however, who first met Edie when she was barely 24 hours old and hadn’t seen her since July, noticed it Friday night, in a loud shocked pronouncement. Everyone else still has a while before their kids move into this stage, but, with the first baby moving into it, it’s now inevitable for all of them.
Oysterfest is how we mark the year- it’s just after Halloween, but before the ‘real’ holidays we spend with family. Someone remarked this might be the best holiday all year and I can’t agree more. We spend it with the friends who are the family we’d choose if we could. We really are an assortment of kindred spirits and we are all completely comfortable being around each other just doing nothing. We have little traditions we carry on every year – most notably, Saturday Afternoon Women’s Wine, Sunday Planting Ceremony, among others. We spend days planning and everyone brings all sorts of goodies to share – and a good deal of it has been raised, shot, canned, baked ourselves or by someone we knew, from the moonshine we drank to the goose on Saturday afternoon, the sausage Sunday morning to the oysters all weekend long. This year when we said goodbye, the boys had already set a date for our next get together, so us gals didn’t have to wait all year to see each other again. Because truth be told, our husbands manage to get out and visit each other, take fishing trips, but it’s rare I get to see any of the wives. I can’t wait.
Now to just make it through the holidays….

Obnoxiously productive.

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I do realize that my sense of productivity is a bit higher than most, but still, not anywhere near some folks. I like to call myself the underachiever of the overachievers. I can spend an entire weekend curled up with a book, but yet still find myself doing things like baking loaves of bread because that’s not really being productive and wouldn’t some nice hot fresh bread be good while I’m curled up reading? But I still don’t get near as many things done as I’d like to. Or really probably could….

Today, however, is one of those days where I’m totally amazed with myself. I didn’t even realize until I was halfway through the process that I was baking 2 cakes at once. I mean, I had a gameplan, but then all of a sudden it hit me that I was being obnoxiously productive.

Cake one is to take with us this weekend to Oysterfest. It’s super easy and the only cake I make with a box mix. Counting the steps on the back of the box, it has 5 steps. Seriously. Use a box mix of white cake. Follow the instructions, but pour the batter into the biggest, shallowest pan you have (like a rimmed cookie sheet or a jelly roll pan). Bake until done, about 20 minutes. Immediately dump a jar of peanut butter on top. Let it sit at least 10 minutes, until soft enough to spread over the entire cake. Then, sprinkle a bag of chocolate chips on top. Let them get soft and spread. Voila. It tastes like the old Tastykake’s Kandy Kake treat. Perfect to take to big parties.

The second cake is a flourless chocolate torte. I discovered it a few years ago in my Green & Black’s Chocolate Cookbook. I wanted a quick & easy cake for Betty’s birthday and this one had exactly 5 steps. And I discovered I can skip one – grinding almonds – because I use cocoa powder instead. Butter, sugar, chocolate, eggs, a pinch of sugar & a pinch of cocoa powder. Seriously gooey good.

That cake is for the Caregiver’s Appreciation Day at JABA, my employer, on Saturday. I was asked to make a dessert for it and figured I’d make something really yummy, as being a caregiver to a family member dealing with a long term or degenerative disease isn’t easy and doesn’t always come with alot of thanks. A gooey chocolate cake is really a small token of my respect.

All in all, making both cakes took less than a hour. Leaving me plenty of time to do laundry, pack and heat up some leftovers. Because after baking 2 cakes, I’m definitely not cooking dinner. That’s just a little too productive for me.

Halloween traditions.

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A few years ago, a neighborhood friend called me and asked if I would help her revive an old tradition of a potluck gathering at the park on Halloween before trick or treating. It started out as something the kids could do between school and trick or treat time, let them see each other’s costumes and maybe get something besides sugar into them. As her kids got older, I seemed to take over. Which really isn’t that much of a stretch really, seeing how I live across the street from the park and use any excuse to throw a party, anywhere.
Over the years, as one group of kids grew up and over the party at the park, a new group of kids have arrived. This year’s party had a small handful of the old guard there, but a slew of new little kids that had moved into the neighborhood. From a neighbor, I had been handed contact information for someone that wanted to help with the party this year, someone who is ready and willing to take over the party when I’m ready to hand it off. It’s definitely sort of bittersweet to watch it transition. We still have a few years left and I know Edie takes great pleasure in the fact that HER mom is in charge of the party at the park every year, but there is really something sweet about seeing the new little ones and watching their parents form bonds. Some of my best friends are the other mothers in this neighborhood, and our entire relationship is based on taking our kids to that park every afternoon. I love finding out a new family is there because they saw my flier hanging up somewhere in the neighborhood. How flipping cool is that? Alot of the parents didn’t show up in costume and when they saw me in my fabulous witch hat, a few made comments about ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was part of the tradition’.
That’s the thing about traditions, we can hand them down, but they are yours to do with what you want. Sure, I’d love to see someone else drag out their grandmother’s punch bowl and use it at that thing every year (although I’m pretty sure I’d be willing to continue doing that one myself for quite some time), but it’s not mandatory. Neither are adult costumes. Or as many kinds of mac & cheese as you can imagine. Has anyone else noticed that mac & cheese seems to be the universal kid favorite pot luck dish? Although it was good to see the tray of hot dogs being served up. I may have a reputation of being a serious foodie, of demanding to know where most of my food comes from, but, I do break that for a hot dog. So contradictory, I know. Well, I am nothing but a walking contradiction.
After getting some food in the kids and the sun starts going down, we all head out to hit the trick or treat trail. After countless years with her friend Nick, Edie ended the night with a pack of her neighborhood girl friends instead. She’s still not sure how she feels about that change -she’s pretty sure she would have ended up with more candy had she been with Nick, but she still has more than she’ll ever eat. She’s already lost interest in it….and hasn’t noticed that we’ve eaten all the butterfingers already….although she finally found someone to trade that bag of pretzels to. So maybe mixing things up is good, yes?
I’m still dressing a witch next year though. That’s one tradition I like not having to put too much thought into every year.

Bea’s Pie

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Dear Bea,
I promised you that when I got around to making myself an apple pie, I’d do a tutorial for you. Here it is. Just for you.

That is my pastry blender. It is essential for making a crust by hand.

Cut your shortening into your flour with that thing until it looks like this:


Fine crumbs. It took me years to figure that out. (That’s what biscuit dough is supposed to look like as well by the way. Amazing how learning one small trick makes all your cooking that much better, isn’t it?)

When it looks like that, add the water until it forms a nice dough, but not too sticky. Then, you move on to rolling it out.


Admittedly, I am not the best roller. I tend to get Edie to do it for me, but lately she’s been making me do it myself. I’ve learned that it doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as the crust is uniform in thickness and big enough to cover the bottom of the pan. You can sort of fudge it from there.

And then, dump your apples on top. I put extra apples in my pie because that’s the way I like it. Cover with the top crust, poke a few holes in the thing and bake. Since my crusts never quite perfectly fit over the top of it, I don’t bother too hard with sealing edges, which means putting a cookie sheet under the pie in the oven. Otherwise, you will smell burning apple pie for weeks on end when you turn the oven on.

And done. Serve hot or cold, plain, or with ice cream or yogurt. It’s quite suitable for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And I have a few in the freezer for you to taste when you visit in December. We can’t wait. Maybe we can get Edie to teach us how to roll out sugar cookies. She’s wicked good at those.
Till then….
xo