HotWaterBath is on vacation! We'll be returning shortly after the New Year, so check back for our all new 2004 adventures.


However you observe the passing of the year, have fun and be safe.

I awoke this morning a bit after five and decided to come downstairs and get some work done (does blogging count?). At my desk I can see that my husband was up sometime during the night doing tax preparation and some filing. Looks like we're starting to become a 24-hour operation (Like Wawa?). We're limited somewhat in what we can do during bouts of insomnia - since our house is little dish washing or painting the bath (both of which need to be done) would wake everyone else up - but as long as we have functioning computer equipment looks like we can be productive whenever the mood/need strikes, within reason.


Pre-school is closed today so my son is having what he calls a "Mommy-Daddy Day". Whenever he finds out that a Mommy-Daddy Day is on the calendar, whether through weekend, holiday or vacation, he does this little happy dance which makes me feel bad about the whole day care/pre-school thing. Then again, whenever we pick him up from school he insists, "I need to stay here. Go away and come back later." I guess I shouldn't feel too horribly. We're having Mommy-Daddy Days right up until January 5 so it's a nice little break for him and some good family time for all of us. My husband is on break, too, which helps since that means his schedule is more flexible than usual - nice, since one of my major clients seems to enjoy having everything hit the fan around Christmas. This year is no exception.


Tonight's dinner will be our traditional Chinese or Indian food (no decision made on this, yet), followed by peppermint ice cream (not homemade - although I should look into that) and chocolate cookies (definitely homemade) at home. My parents started this tradition when I was a girl and Santa had the job of decorating our Christmas tree. They wanted to be sure that everything was ready for him to get a good start right after bedtime and so our Christmas Eve feast was outsourced to minimize fuss and cleaning. Even though we eventually began decorating as a family, the dinner out stuck and my sisters also do it to this day. Our late day calls to each other will go like this:


-"Where are you guys?"


-"Oh, Golden Dragon/Maharaja/Bamboo House/Pratip's."


-"Yum! Have a dumpling/golub jamon/spicy cabbage/mango lassi for me! Merry Christmas! Talk to you tomorrow!"


These calls will go on until everyone knows where everyone else is and what they're eating. This is the kind of menu-related diligence helped create the HotWaterBath you know today. In my family, it's not enough to say, "Merry Christmas," you must also know what the recipient of your wishes is eating while you say it.


So, should you celebrate Christmas in your house, Merry Christmas. What are you eating?

I am entering that phase of pregnancy where I am just very little else but pregnant. For me, this stage mirrors early pregnancy in that I want to sleep all the time, I am desparately hungry but eating is unpleasant (at best) and I'm a little flummoxed as to what my body is up to. However, I am also really, really nesty. Laundry is taking on a significance that I cannot explain easily - if I don't get those whites done today, though, it'll be a pretty bad thing. I've also reorganized our bookshelves and am expecting to handle the spice cupboard later this evening and do something about the drawer paper in my dresser - it's three years old, for goodness sake! (I'll give you three guesses what happened three years ago - yep, it'd be the last time I nested.)


There is, of course, a definite upside to all this activity. My office here at home is finally getting to usability (I've been working at my dining room table for six months now, causing a great deal of mess and upheaval) and it's been a while since the kitchen floor was so clean. The downside is that no one else in my house thinks that anything on my to-do list is all that critical and, to be fair, they're probably right. Anything that's gone undone for six months probably doesn't really have to be finished at this minute. So I'm simultaneously exhausting, amusing and annoying both myself and everyone I live with.


Gotta run, lots more to do and daylight is burning away. There's chili to get into the freezer, gingerbread cookies to ice, and books to get to the library for the New Year Book sale. Busy, busy, busy.

The menu for Christmas dinner has finally been set. Usually I have this handled well before the holiday, but we weren't sure if we would be having guests or not so I decided to hold off pending settlement of that issue, since the potential guests consisted of a Hindu vegetarian family and two Muslim bachelors, which would have required a significant departure from our usual roast (either beef or pork). As it turns out, it'll just be the three of us so I'm going ahead with the roast (beef this year) and a selection of our roster of festive side dishes. We're having:


- Roast beef with gravy


- Potato dumplings ("little hooves" - a recipe from a Polish friend)


- Jalapeño creamed spinach (a la Laurie Colwin, who I think took it from someone else)


- Roasted carrots and beets


- Relishes (homemade pickled greenbeans and mushrooms, with the addition of roasted peppers and some nice olives)


- For dessert, a chocolate cake with chesnut filling and marzipan fruits atop the icing.




Such is the Christmas menu of a Polish-Anglo-American family.




The "little hooves" thing is turning into a tradition. I don't usually bother with mashed potatoes, but instead will serve pierogie which, after all, often have mashed spuds in them and are much less of a bother and mess to make. Plus, they taste great with gravy. The last couple years, though, I've turned to this other variation and find that, although they are a bit more trouble than the pierogie, they have the benefit of being somewhat more impressive and a better foil for all the other rich food that's on the table. To make them enough for about six people, make several cups of mashed potatoes (note: it's A-O-K to use "potato buds" for this - trust me - but not the granular kind of instant mashed. Homemade is good, too, if you're inclined and it's not too lumpy). Add to this an egg and enough potato starch (I use Manischevtiz) to make a tender, but firm dough. Roll handfulls of dough out into long snakes about an inch in diameter and cut out the hooves on the diagonal, each about two inches in length. Plop the hooves into a large pot of salted, boiling water a few at a time and them them cook until they rise to the surface (they're kind of like ravioli or gnocchi in this regard). Serve warm with gravy or some other kind of sauce.

I'm in the midst of a conflict with my mother-in-law. No, this is not a story about that age old story of two generations of women fighting to be dominant in a man's heart and thoughts. I'm actually having the same battle with my own mother. It's strange to me that these two women, who actually don't care for each other very much, could each be pushing my buttons in exactly the same way. They both want me to nag my husband more. I'm refusing and my refusal is causing much angst.


My mother-in-law isn't happy with the amount of time or energy my husband expends on maintaining connections with her extended family. He doesn't call, doesn't write, doesn't visit (the ancestral home is nearly 1,000 miles away) and this royally pisses her off. Now, this is not to say that he doesn't pay attention to her, because he does - he always remembers her birthday and Mother's Day, calls on major (and minor) holidays and faithfully visits her several times per year. It's that he doesn't keep in good touch with his cousins, great-aunts, third cousins twice removed, and so on that annoys her. So what does she do? Well, 35 years of nagging him to do her bidding in this regard haven't helped, so now she nags me. She's decided that it's either my job to maintain these connections (to people I don't know well or haven't even met) or join her in nagging him to do it.


My mom, on the other hand, isn't happy that my husband isn't a neat-nick, as she is. In the 13 years that she has known him, she's nagged him to be better at noticing disorder and being more tidy. Since it hasn't helped she's decided that it's my job to nag him to do it. The thing is, he'll clean something if I ask him to do it - he won't notice it needs cleaning on his own, but he'll definitely respond if asked. Not good enough, in mom's book.


So now, I have two women nagging me to nag him. I simply will not do it. I believe that when you marry someone, you marry all the good and all the bad (really icky stuff like violence, addiction or philandering not included, of course) and it's really not fair after 8 years of being married to suddenly start turning on the heat about stuff you knew about when you agreed to get married in the first place. I knew that he isn't super clannish despite being faithful and steadfast to a fault when it comes to immediate and nuclear family and that he isn't the type to clean the miniblinds just because it's been six weeks.


So why on earth would I put that kind of pressure on my marriage by suddenly deciding that these traits aren't acceptable when for 8 years they've been, if not awesome, then liveable? Plus, if their nagging isn't changing the scene, why would I believe that any nagging that I'd do would somehow hold the key to changing these behaviors? I guess I should be flattered that they think I hold such sway over anyone. I still think nagging is a sick, sick habit and not one that's been known to produce much besides anger, frustration and resentment.


So here I am, being nagged and becoming angrier, more frustrated and more resentful by the conversation. How strange is it to be nagged to nag? And how sad that, since the original nagging has been so ineffectual that I'm being seen as fresh troops for the war? This is, however, a war in which I absolutely will not be engaging.

My friend Rob hunts deer and is very good at it. I can only think of one year in the 15 that I've known him that he hasn't bagged at least one (depending upon whether or not extra tags are available). This is the meat that feeds his family - they pretty much use every part of the animal and, if you eat meat at their house, you can be sure that it's deer. Some years hunting season rolls around and last year's venison hasn't been depleted from his freezer so he and his wife gift us with 20 or 30 lbs. This was one of those years. (One year, Rob's wife Jennifer went ocean fishing with some colleagues and, despite never having fished before, managed to catch several bluefish. Since they don't love fish, she gave me the cleaned, wrapped and frozen fillets. These are seriously good people to know. In the past I've tried to return these favors with home grown produce - Jen loves a good tomato sandwich - but now we live too far away for that.)


So tonight's dinner will be venison steaks that are currently marinating in a mixture of dry white table wine and chicken broth, with some onions and garlic minced in. They'll be pan fried (sort of like a Swiss steak, I guess) and served with something kind of risotto-esque (love that creaminess on cold rainy nights) and probably some roasted carrots and beets. How's that for a nice winter's meal?


I'm still working on the gingerbread house pics. We used to have a really great Kodak digital camera, but we didn't treat it carefully and the pictures started coming out blurry. But it was very easy to use - downloading was a snap into our HP Photosmart printer - and now I really miss it. Our current camera is a Fuji that, while it has some cool features like the ability to take short "movies", is a pain in the butt. Nothing's intuitive or simple and it cost quite a bit more than the late, lamented Kodak. I guess this is what we get for not handling our belongings with care - spending more money for a more irritating product. So I'm working on it.

I'll have a picture of the gingerbread house up soon. To alleviate what I'm sure is your overwhelming curiousity, I'll say this for now: it looks as if I gave a three year old access to frosting and candy. No structural engineer would ever sanction the building itself, but it's sweet, colorful and charming and the boy is wonderfully proud of his achievement. Good enough for me.


Last night's advent dinner was kind of a cheater: stromboli and cheese fries from the local pizza place. It was fabulous! We're trying not to eat out as much in order to 1) save money and 2) save money, but sometimes you just really want a stromboli, you know. My mom makes a great one, but she's 500 miles away which seemed a little much for a Sunday evening's drive to dinner. I'm going to have to get her recipe, 'cause now I think I'm developing a stromboli thing. What's not to love - cheese, pepperoni, veggies, and sauce all wrapped up in a bread envelope. Oh man...might have to have another one for lunch tomorrow.


Dinner tonight is a roasted chicken stuffed with preserved lemons and garlic. I wish I could transmit how amazing this smells to you (coming soon to a kitchen PC near you: the Smeller-Net, by Al Gore). It has got to be one of the most amazing scents in the world. Anyway, it came about because I was poking around the basement and saw a box that hadn't been opened from our move back in March. Inside were three pints of applesauce, two quarts of the lemons and some mango jam. Yay! I felt like I had won the lottery. Don't know how these got mis-packed in the first place or mis-laid in the basement in the second, but who cares, really? So I ran right out to buy myself a chicken to roast. To go with: a potato gratin (another thing I'm big on these days) and crusted carrots.


My mom taught me about crusted carrots - they are a great side dish because they retain a carrot's natural sweetness, but make it also richer (and they taste great sprinkled with the lemony-garlicky cooking juices from the chicken). Plus, they're super easy to make - much more so than a pudding or even glazing. To make them, peel and julienne however many carrots you want. Dip them into a raw egg that has been lightly beaten and then in seasoned flour (I season with salt and pepper, and usually an herb or two: finely chopped rosemary is great, as is thyme). Place into a buttered or sprayed shallow baking dish and dot with butter. Cook at oh, say, 350 or so for about half an hour, until the carrots are heated through and the flour mixture is golden. Some of the coating will fall off, revealing the deep orange underneath.


Newsflash: I have just been alerted that we have lost our mailbox to what looks like a game of mailbox baseball. Looks like another trip to Lowes is in the offing.

We're expecting another snow and ice storm here in Cville. As someone who grew up near the Canadian border outside of Buffalo, this amuses me. Yes, you have to take the ice seriously and, yes, it's not good to drive in this kind of weather if you don't have the skills to do it. But seriously, folks, is it really necessary to clean the Kroger out of bottled water and toilet paper every time the flakes fly? My husband and son ran a quick errand to Lowes, which is right next door to a Kroger and thought he might pick up some soda while he was in the neighborhood (I'd also asked him to get some Christmas scratch off lottery tickets for stocking stuffers, if he could). Couldn't get near the place - he said it was total panic. Granted, we are south of the Mason-Dixon line but this seems like a little bit of an over-reaction, even for sort-of southerners.


Granted, this is all through the prism of my upbringing. Come mid-October, many Buffalonians outfit their cars with extra blankets, gloves, and hats, along with granola bars, dehydrated fruit or some similar long-keeping snack. After the Blizzard of '77 (immortalized in the book "White Death" by Erno Rossi), killed more than two dozen people - primarily stranded drivers - and caused a week's worth of utter disruption and mayhem, most of the population of Western New York "got religion" and began taking storm prep seriously so there are very seldom panics on the order of what we're seeing here. And, I should point out, that despite Buffalo's very poor reputation weather-wise, there's a reason that these kind of events live on in everyone's memory - they're just not that common. So there.


Here in our house, we're ready to go. We've always got water and canned goods and took a delivery of firewood just last week. There's plenty of animal food and the candles and matches are always at the ready. My big worry at the moment is that my husband and I both have big things we absolutely have to get done tomorrow (me a deadline, him a final exam) and it looks like pre-school will be cancelled. So we're in active negotiation mode to see how we're going to get all our studying and working done, while not shortchanging the boy.


For my part, I'm going to introduce the child to the joys of making a ginger-bread house. I cheated a bit this year and got a pre-fab kit (but one of the nice ones, in a tin with lots of candy). I have a lovely gingerbread house mold but I figured that making one with a three year old required some more immediate gratification. So after breakfast (waffles left over from yesterday spread with some homemade pumpkin butter) we're going to get to work. Watch this space for photos of what I'm sure will be an interesting, if not ready for Martha, result.

As I type this, there are two deer on my front porch (less than 20 feet away from me) nibbling at the remains of my planters. Beautiful, majestic and seemingly not that bright to be so close to a human. Still, kind of cool.

We had an earthquake yesterday afternoon - 4.5 on the richter scale. It was a little strange, to say the least. I'm not at all used to these sorts of things and for a second or two I couldn't figure out what was up. Thought perhaps it was my heater blowing up or maybe a small plane came down somewhere nearby. Once I did figure out what was going on I couldn't remember what one is supposed to do. Head down to the basement? No, that's a tornado. Put gloves and granola bars in the car? No, that's in case of a blizzard. Wait, wait, I know! Stand in a doorway. Of course, by the time I worked through all of this, the whole thing was over.


I'm feeling a little fluish today, which has me a bit alarmed. I'm not really afraid of the flu itself, it's just that I can ill afford the distraction and potential downtime at the moment. Between the holidays, work committments and trying to get ready for the baby I simply do not have the time at the moment for anything resembling illness. Although I am pregnant I did not receive a flu shot - not out of laziness or cheapness, just because there wasn't any room in the schedule for schlepping to my primary care physician's office. Not every gamble pays off, as we know, so my number might be up. We'll see.


The Christmas tree is decorated and looks lovely, as usual. This is the first year our son has been able to help and what he lacked in ability he more than made up in enthusiasm. He chose a couple of low lying branches and festooned them with dozens of ornaments apiece. I have since gone around and redistributed, filling in blank spots left by the misallocation of decorations. The only thing we're missing is a garland. We use a red wooden bead garland but don't have enough to cover this tree properly. Since I don't want it to look half-assed I haven't put it on yet at all.


Of course, I've been looking to buy more, but haven't been able to find any that is not made in China. As a general guideline, we try not to buy Chinese-made products because we object to (among other things), forced labor and human rights lapses. (Yes, we realize that poor manufacturing conditions exist in other countries.) We are particularly concerned about Christmas related items made in China since, although Chinese citizens are technically guaranteed freedom of religion as stated in their constitution, the reality is somewhat different. Chinese Christians are not generally able to celebrate Christmas freely and/or openly and, for that reason, I cannot in good conscience buy Christmas merchandise made there. Of course, Chinese Jews and Muslims face similar challenges and I would eye any product designed to serve a religious purpose with suspicion.


And don't even get me started about children working in factories to make toys destined for the playrooms of Western kids. I took my son to buy some toys for our local Toy Lift and had a bear of a time finding things to buy. The boy wanted to buy baby dolls, kitchen toys, race cars and more, but everything was made in China. So we ended up buying several boxes each of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders and lots of Legos. Not quite the variety I would have liked, but at least I'm reasonably confident of the manufacturing conditions. Time to do some research into manufacturers who share my values on this subject - the biggies just aren't cutting it any more.

Gwyneth Paltrow is copying me again. I cut my hair, she cuts her hair. I grow my hair, she grows her hair. I get pregnant, she gets pregnant. It's a shame when such a lovely, talented woman needs to find fulfillment in dogging the every step of someone she doesn't even know (is she stalking me?). Let's feel sorry for her rather than angry, though, o.k.? I mean her latest film opened to mixed reviews so maybe she's finding meaning wherever she can - even in the life of a 30-something working mom in central Virginia.


In other news, our house is a mess (again, still, always). In addition to the three Sunday papers we take cluttering up the living room, there are a bunch of boxes labeled "Xmas Tree" strewn about and what seems like dozens of cups, glasses and other dishes. Are there really only three people living here? I'm reminded of that children's story The Borrowers where tiny people live in the floorboards and life off of the detritus of the "regular" people who live in the house. Except that, if I had Borrowers living here with me, I doubt they'd be the ones using 16 oz. cups and littering them everywhere. The tree has been decorated (with the enthusiastic, if not accomplished, assistance of my three year old) and so at least the boxes can go away tonight. I still have to do something about the kitchen, though. Cookie mania is ongoing, but I'm finding I just can't live with the baking stuff out, as I thought I could. It seemed like it would save time, but it's just making me nuts.


Tonight is the second Sunday in Advent. In a few minutes we will sit down to a dinner of herb bread and potage a la bonne femme and light two of the purple candles on our wreath, the one from last week and a new one tonight. If you'd like to join us, here's the soup recipe - highly recommended for cold winter nights when the sun has long disappeared and you have lots of more interesting things do to other than making a super-involved dinner:


Bring 6 cups of broth or water to a boil (I've used veggie broth, chicken broth - both homemade and commercial, or even water). Add three cut up potatoes, two cut up carrots (all scrubbed but unpeeled), some peppercorns and about a teaspoon of salt. Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are soft. Add a couple ribs of celery, cut up (add in some of the cut up celery leaf, too!) and about two cups of shredded cabbage, along with some thyme or rosemary (all scrunched up). Cook until the cabbage is translucent and soft. Remove from heat and puree the soup - either by removing the veggies into a processor or blender or by using a rotary egg beater right in the pot. Adjust seasonings and serve with plain yogurt and shredded cheese if desired.

I am very happy to report that I have (finally) had a successful cookie baking day. Late last night I produced another four dozen chocolate chip, followed this morning by four dozen snickerdoodles (more about these below), two dozen holly cookies and two-and-a-half dozen peanut butter blossoms (you know, the PB cookies with hersey kisses in them). Later tonight, energy level and Christmas tree status willing, I'll make some anise pizzelles and some chocolate pizzelles.


Regarding those snickerdoodles. I went out this afternoon briefly to pick up some needed baking supplied (cinnamon red hots, cake flour, molasses, etc.) and returned to find that my four dozen snickerdoodles had been reduced to 2 and a half dozen. Hmm...what happened? Well, I left the cookie burgler unsupervised, that's what. The boy wonder had been napping the entire time, so the blame was pretty easy to place. The confrontation went something like this:


Me: Sweetie, can you not eat so many of one kind of cookie at a time? I'm trying to make up assortments for gifts.


Cookie Burgler: I haven't had that many.


Me: Dearest, there's nearly two dozen snickerdoodles gone.


Cookie Burgler (all indignant): I have not eaten that many cookies.


Me (leading him to the cooling rack): There were four dozen here when I left. There are now slightly over two dozen and you were the only one here to eat them.


Cookie Burgler: Oh. Sorry.


Tomorrow, if all goes well I'll make cut outs (two kinds), chocolate crinkles and gingerbread angels - I don't have a gingerbread man cookie cutter (how is this possible? I have hundreds of cookie cutters, it's true, but no gingerbread man.)

It seems somehow strange to note in a blog called Hot Water Bath that I've put my canning kettle away for a bit. Because I prefer to can in season, there's not much that can be done right now where I live. Sure, I could make more chocolate sauce, but how much does one house really need? Now that gardeniera and cranberry chutney are done, I'd rather focus my attention to other, holiday-related culinary pursuits. I am planning, though, one last pre-baby canning spree of marmalade. I think that it will be a good thing to have around as we approach Easter (what? Easter already? are you out of your ever-lovin' mind? - marsha's subconscious) for cookies and cakes and such. Since I'm unlikely to really want to do it after the baby's here, I figure the post-Christmas lull is an excellent time. Other than that, I think we may be canning-free until late spring.


Speaking of lulls, we've hit one in the great Christmas cookie plan. Although I did make snickerdoodle dough yesterday I didn't actually get to bake it. In addition to the two-day hiatus caused by the need to get staples placed into my son's head, I've had a spectacular failure in the process of making tea cakes that I'm still in the process of cleaning up. I attribute this to one, some or all of the following:

1. my oven temperature is both uneven and unstable and requires constant fiddling to keep it at a sort-of correct temperature for any given recipe (for cooking, this isn't a problem but for baking it's another matter entirely)
2. I didn't follow the recipe correctly
3. the recipe is crap (Actually, this is one of Rose's recipes from the Rose's Christmas Cookies discussed a few days ago. In the series of Amazon reviews for the book two separate reviewers noted problems with this recipe so, to be fair, I may have somehow influenced it to fail because I expected it to fail, know what I mean?)
4. tea cakes are a pain under the best of circumstances and I've been sort of distracted lately anyway
5. my butter was too soft

I should finish the clean up today and will commence with the snickerdoodles. Plus, it's taken me so long to get moving with this business that the chocolate chip cookies are almost gone, so I'll make more of those as well. Then I should be back on track. Of course, this depends on today's wakefullness quotient. It's now nearly 4:30 a.m. and I've been away since 1:30. At some point I'm going to have to go back to bed and try to catch some Zs so I can be somewhat approaching functional today. It helps that I've used this time to get some of the day's actual pay-the-bills work done so I won't be quite so behind once the business day starts.


Finally, if you think of it, please send exam-success-and-confidence vibes to my husband. He has a major, change-the-course-of-your-life exam today and we're both just out of our minds about it. He knows the material, he just needs to know he knows it.

Many thanks for all the good wishes for my son. We're pretty much back to normal now - he's in school today and proudly showing off where the doctor fixed the "hole" in his head. I gingerly washed his hair this morning and he scarcely flinched, so it seems that he's recovering better than I.


From what I can understand, the injury was the result of normal playground roughhousing. The school as responded beautifully, holding an "assembly" of the 3- and 4-year olds letting them know that my son was going to be o.k. and that his parents and doctors were taking care of him. They then led a discussion of playground safety and rules, talking about how the playground is for fun and, if everyone follows the rules, then accidents like this don't need to happen. Apparently, many of the kids were understandably scared and crying, after seeing the blood and tears and then the arrival of the rescue squad. By the time we returned to school this morning, everyone was fine and happily showing off their own scars and owies.


So I'm back to my routine of avoiding work and bemoaning the state of the house. I made up a comprehensive to-do list this morning and am proud to report that I've already (already? it's nearly 10:30 for goodness sake!) crossed a couple things off. I really, really need to get myself together and have vowed to shake off this malaise. I owe it to myself, my family, and my employer to get my game back. And we start today with a technique I use successfully with my son. Mary Poppins called it a spoon full of sugar, but I prefer the more straightforward "bribery".


First up after blogging, a quick audit write-up followed by two necessary phone calls. As a reward, I'll then mix up some snickerdoodle dough. After this afternoon's conference call and a longer audit, I'll get to actually bake the cookies.


Oh man, I'm treating myself like a three year old. Without the nap, that is (although, come to think of it, not a bad idea).

This morning, just after posting my Christmas cookie status, I got a call that threatened to stop my heart. The call that every parent dreads. There's been an accident, the ambulance is on the way. Blood, ooze, crying baby.


I swear I flew out of the house - if it hadn't been for every red light along the way (my guardian angel trying to keep up?) I probably would have hit 100 m.p.h. getting to the school to be able to be in the emergency van as it pulled away. Despite keeping to a more legal (and safe) speed limit, I did make it and was able to accompany my little boy to Martha Jefferson Hospital. By the time we got there, he was feeling more alert and, helped along by the little stuffed dog the rescue crew gave him, started talking a bit and regained some color, losing the palid gray that frightened me terribly during the ride.


The upshot: a switch of hospitals (to the UVA Medical Center which has a pediatric ER), three staples, three nurses, two triage desks, four nursing students, two residents, one pediatric supervising surgeon, and eight hours later, my boy is home and resting comfortably. I am one wound up, tired, wired, slightly scarred mama.


But my baby will be fine. Thank God.

The end of the long Thanksgiving weekend finds me overwhelmed by work (what better way to avoid it than by blogging?) and wondering how fast I can get myself back into the kitchen to continue baking. I am sort of behind the eight-ball work-wise and my reaction to it is puzzling me. I never used to be the kind of person who would avoid a deadline - time was I was a take-a-deep-breath-and-jump kind of girl and there wasn't a to-do list east of the Mississippi that I couldn't tame. Now, I just want to take a nap or maybe even clean out my sock drawer. Or, even more fun, make some Christmas cookies.


I did end up making chocolate chip and thumbprints, but never quite got around to the tea cakes. Hopefully I'll get these done today. Growing up all of our cookie baking was done out of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book. These days I'm baking from Rose Levy Berenbaum's modern day classic Rose's Christmas Cookies which, although beautiful and well-written is not as comprehensive as I would have liked. Had Rose consulted me, there would be chocolate crinkle and pizelle recipes, as well as snickerdoodles and cut outs (all of which are present in the Betty Crocker book). Also, I think I would have left out the gingerbread Notre Dame. I mean, it's gorgeous and all, but who needs the pressure? Still and all, it's a wonderful resource and I recommend it to anyone who lives with a cookie monster (as I do, along with a cookie monster-in-training).


I haven't yet made up a comprehensive list of cookie baking goals yet, but here's the start of one:

• chocolate chip
• thumbprint
• tea cakes
• chocolate crinkles
• holly cookies
• gingerbread people
• snickerdoodles
• pizelles
• sugar cut outs
• shortbread

Now, anyone free to come help with the dishes?