1) In every relationship, no matter how much you might like or love someone, no matter how much regard you might have for that person, there is always something that you could do without. Something baffling, irritating and getting-you-to-the-end-of-your-roping. I have no idea what it is about me that does this to my husband because he doesn't talk of such things. He's a burier - covering the negative with so much emotional and intellecutal flotsam and jetsam that whatever it might be will likely never see the light of day.

I, on the other hand, am an obsessor and will give the irritant so much mental bandwidth that it builds and builds, swelling like a blowing-up balloon until POP! it finally bursts and covers everyone nearby with a fine coat of spit.

And so it is now with our clocks. We have Living Room Standard Time, two varieties of Kitchen Standard Time, Laptop Central Time (not to be confused with Desktop Central Time), Bedroom Standard Time and Basement Standard Time. This bothers me To. No. End. I have a deep need to know what time it is exactly. I suppose I'm very American in this regard, but there you are. My husband has an equally great need to know approximately, within three or four hours or so, what time it might be. Clearly this is not a deal breaker between us, as we have been together for almost 14 years now but I am reaching one of my bienniel outbursts on the subject. These are never pretty and my insistence on temporal consistency is not nearly as endearing to my husband as my tendency to drop a bit of dinner down the front of my shirt every night. (Aside: my dearest would like me to point out that part of the problem is that two of the computers in question have their own minds on the subject and resist attempts to reset them to something resembling accuracy. He is right, but that doesn't explain the remainder of the problem, now does it?)

2) The above picture notwithstanding, today (and many days before this) is a gray, cool, rainy, miserable mess. Again. Still. Always. I seem to spend a lot of time complaining about the weather (and, alas, never doing anything about it) so today I decided to try something new, at least for what is ostensibly mid-spring. We are having a pajama day, refusing to change into day clothes and casting about for a few remaining logs leftover from winter with which to have a fire. I am rereading Amanda Hesser's Cooking For Mr. Latte. Although I do not know Ms. Hesser, reading her book is comforting to me because it reminds me of cooking and eating for friends and, especially, the cooking I did for my husband when he was just a guy I was seeing. I haven't found any friends here in Charlottesville who like to shop, cook or eat the way I do. A fun outing for me is to walk around the farmer's market deciding what to buy and eat later that day. I like to buy a vegetable I've never seen before and figure something to do with it, or browse around a wine shop debating for an hour what bottles we should buy to go with dinner. So that's a part of my life that I miss, but reading this book kind of brings it back for me, or rather reminds me of what it's like to be with people who think about food and ingredients and have fun with it all. It's a nice book for a rainy and kind of lonely day.

3) It feels like a baking day to me. I have a pound of butter softening but do not yet know what I'll make. Maybe some cookies or a cake. Maybe cookies and a cake. I've been feeling brioche-y lately but it might be too late in the day to start something like that.

4) Warning: I am about to type what has to be the most obnoxious statement in the English language. Ready? The Boy Wonder has been accepted into our first choice kindergarten. Oh, for the love of God. Not sure if we're going to take them up on it yet, because we have a lot of issues surrounding buying-in to this whole business. Still, I'm a little proud (o.k., a lot) that they recognized his Ability to Engage in Dramatic Play and Creative Expression to be as wonderful as I know it is.

I have returned from producing the children for grandparental inspection in Buffalo. I am tired (it's a nine hour drive - about 475 miles or so - even when taking the speed limit along I-81 as more a helpful suggestion than mandate) and my fellow travelers are wired. It might be all the cherry licorice I tossed over the seat in an effort to keep them occupied or maybe it's just the entire day spent confined in their car seats but if the day keeps up the way it started I may have to look into padding the living room walls. A goodly supply of bubble wrap would keep them somewhat safe while I see to the distressing amount of laundry that needs attention.

The Boy Wonder and Entropy Girl are both decent enough on long car rides. We have a few toys that are available only in the car, which keeps them special and usually grants us two to three hours of happiness. After that, we break out the home toys and books and start singing songs. The only real disruption was that our satellite radio docking station (our car predates factory-equipped) broke and I had no NPR during the long stretches through the mountains and the kids had no Kids' Stuff. (An aside: when I was a girl my parents used to pack us all up and take two- to three-week car trips all over the country. For every trip my mom would put together little amusement bags to help keep us calm and busy during the driving stretches. One year the bags included Silly Putty - a huge hit with us girls. It was less popular with my Dad who faced picking melted putty off the velour seats after our trip to southern Florida. He still complains about "ruining his resale" as if a while Bonneville with laundau roof and powder blue interior had much resale value in the first place.)

I see that my comments are gone. Obtaining a new comments feature now added to the to-do list. I suppose I could use bloggers, but I hate using it on other peoples' blogs and I'd rather not spread what I see as kind of a hassle. Then again, it's not like I have a lot of time to evaluate the blogosphere's comment offerings.

Before I left last week I found an amazing price on tomatillas which I ground up and froze. With luck I'll be getting canning a couple pints of tomatilla salsa sometime this week. I should have a better idea of what the end of the week will hold tonight, after my husband meets with his students and puts together his own schedule of projects, papers and lab time.

A Not-So-Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Lime Chutney

On Saturday I had finally come around to squeezing the juice out of my key limes (more on this later) in preparation for salting and crushing. I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of the limes, a cutting board and a small bowl just making the first slice when I heard Bang! Smash! Boom! from the family room. Then silence. The screaming.

Rushing in, I saw Entropy Girl face down on the floor in front of the kids' play table, an up-ended bin nearby and a dozen or so toy airplanes strewn about. Without looking I picked her up, held her to my shoulder and began comforting her, patting her back and murmuring, "Oh, sweetie! That's it...get all the hurt out...mama's here." The crying abated and so you can imagine my surprise in looking down to see the front of my shirt covered in blood.

And that is how I came to spend Saturday evening-into-night in the ER rather than making chutney. Entropy Girl is fine. She bit her lip and the lip is, as they say, highly vascular (which explains the horror-movie gushing) and there is no permanent damage done despite the depth and breadth of the injury. Luckily, the cut did not cross the (new vocab for me here) "Vermilion Border" - where your lip ends and the regular skin begins. If it had, she certainly would have needed stitches but now will only require them if the wound reopens, which seems unlikely at this point.

My juiced limes now reside in the freezer pending another chutney window of opportunity.

In the interests of moving this chutney thing along, though, there are a few things that I feel I should share:

1. Some limes you will find marked on the package as having been coated with "vegetable or petroleum-based wax for freshness". Others are marked with one or the other. For obvious reasons, purchase the vegetable waxed (since we are eating the rind after all) and use one of those fruit and vegetable cleaners. I normally hate those cleaners but make an exception in this case and I'll even give a pass on the use of wax. Key Limes are very fragile and if I am going to be greedy enough to want to buy some as far north as I am then I have to make peace with its use. This opens up a host of other food-related issues that I have neither the knowledge nor time to explore adequately so we'll just have to leave it there.

2. Most chutneys use only the zest - the colorful part of the fruit's peel, discarding the bitter white pith. Key Limes, though, have a very thin peel so I just crush up the whole thing. I can't even imagine trying to use a zester on a fruit so little.

3. To prepare the limes, cut them in half and squeeze the juice out into a small bowl. Key Limes have a great many seeds, so be sure to remove them as well. The juice can be strained into an ice cube tray and the frozen cubes removed to a freezer bag for longer-term storage. This juice is a fun byproduct and may be used in drinks (alcoholic or non-), mixed with sugar to glaze an angel food cake, in a pie, and so on. I actually think that lime sugar cookies are among the most perfect confections going and there are few things more wonderful than lime sugar. You, no doubt, have your own preferences in this regard, which I'd love to hear. Hmmm...I wonder what key lime jelly would be like?!

Once the limes are juiced and seeded, marinate them in a couple tablespoons of salt (table or kosher is fine) overnight. If you can do this in a glass or glazed bowl so much the better. Then cut then into little strips or - if you're pressed for time - process them (but only if you've got a super powerful processor). Then you're ready for cooking.

Like the spiced lemons, chutney is a good project for a beginning canner because the ingredients and proportions are entirely up to personal taste. I use two pounds of the limes (prepared, they weigh somewhat less), a cup or so of mixed raisins, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, a couple tablespoons of regular old cider vinegar, a one-pound box of brown sugar, and some red pepper flakes. This all cooks down to an unlovely mass that is very, very delicious. And I make sure to taste liberally during cooking (the cook's prerogative). If it's too hot, a few more raisons. Too sweet? More pepper or vinegar or ginger (or all three). If you don't like raisins, then currents might be the ticket. Some people dispense with the flakes and add fresh pepper. Or might prefer a fancier vinegar or more ginger or less ginger or...really, whatever you like is fine. Feel free to play it fast and loose with the ingredients and the texture. With more pepper and vinegar it's kind of like Lime Pickle, with more sugar or - hey, why not some molasses? - it's more jam-like.

Once you're satisfied with the taste, pack into prepared jars (I use half pints) and process in a boiling hot water bath for 15 minutes. Cool on a folded tea towel and let cure for, say, 6 to 8 weeks before you even think of opening. This is delicious on a the cold leftovers of a roast, spread with cream cheese on a bagel, with peanut butter in a celery stick or just on a spoon directly out of the jar.

I've had a hard time getting into blogger to update in the last couple days and just now lost a long - and brilliant - post about "supporting our troops" as a function (or not) of supporting the war and which also included a short note on chutney.

Well, it's gone and I'm tired and we're just going to have to wait now. If I had any sense I'd write the posts in Word and then save them so I wouln't fret so about hitting the publish button but it's now clear that I have no sense and, at my advanced age, I'm unlikely to acquire any. So here we are without a decent post and me too frustrated to try again. I'm filling out and addressing shower invitations tonight so perhaps tomorrow I'll try again.

Tulip: Extreme Close-Up

Over all, we had a very nice weekend and are feeling the warm glow of accomplishment. We weeded, mulched (the county has a great free mulch program of which we have gratefully availed ourselves), trellised and more and even saw the first glimpses of what we're hoping will be a nice harvest of radishes, lettuce and snap peas. We laid grass seed on what had been a muddy pit in front of the house. I also pushed the season a bit and planted pots for the front steps and installed a few new creeping phlox around the front bed.



And the Boy Wonder tried climbing a tree.

Then there was the cooking, which nearly ruined everything. I can't remember the last time I had such a string of unqualified kitchen failures and I'm more than a little discouraged.

First there was the baklava. I started with this recipe but lost faith when I realized that the pan in the pictures was not the jelly roll pan specified in the recipe. Further, the money shot at the end seemingly shows a finished pan of something resembling a kind of albino variety, not the usual golden, honey-tinged (literally and figuratively) to which I am accustomed. So I checked out a few other recipes and, in a fit of hubris, decided to make up my own using the commonalities of ingredient and technique evidenced across the sample.

Phyllo and I have an uneasy relationship under the best of circumstances but now I wouldn't be surprised if it stopped speaking to me altogether. I used too much honey syrup and not enough phyllo, resulting an a doughy mess - not at all gooey in the good way, as baklava should be. We've eaten about a third of the pan, more in an effort not to waste rather than out of any real enthusiasm. Once nice thing I'm happy with and would likely do again - rather than use vanilla in the honey syrup as many of the recipes do, I substituted almond which blended very well with the honey and was a nice counterpoint to the more mundane walnut. Just another point in my long running campaign to put either almond or lime anywhere I think I might be able to get away with it.

I also made strawberry jam sauce. It was my own fault - everything was going beautifully until I became distracted and tried to overtask myself. Predictably with a product that relies on close attention to ratios, I made a mistake and then tried to overcorrect. Ah well. At least it's still delicious and strawberry season is just starting. I will have plenty of time to try again and, in the meantime, a little melon in strawberry coulis is not a terrible thing.

There were a few other, more minor, cooking disappointments. The yogurt didn't set up, the pizzelles aren't crisp and my omelets turned out to be more like Scrambed Eggs With Stuff In Them. As much as I believe that sometimes things just happen, that there isn't always some grand message or supreme guiding hand I'm pretty sure I'm seeing a lesson here. Step back. Take some time. Quit rushing so. Maybe if I hadn't walked away from the omelets or the jam they would have turned out differently. Then again, maybe not.

Hey, J...it's been a year now since you left us and I still can't quite keep from crying whenever I think too close about it. The Boy Wonder named one of his "sleepy toys" after you, telling me that maybe a "new" J. would help me miss you less. Sweet in the way that only a four year old can be, but I can't think of a thing that would stop me from missing you. Not even time, apparently.

I wrote that terrible priest a letter after your funeral, you know. I'm convinced he was more concerned about his tee time than you or the hundreds of people who came to say good-bye to you. I never got a response, but never really expected one, either. He probably didn't appreciate the "alternate" homily I included or the suggestion that he substitute it for the one he used. Well, that and the recommendation that he learn people's names before conducting their funerals. Just as a basic courtesy and all, right? What a tool.

I drank a toast to you last night, as we all promised to do evermore. It wasn't an Alabama Slammer, of course, because I had to drive home. Besides, Slammers were always your department and we're not ready to fill the position yet. So you have to settle for the cheap Chardonnay available at Baja Bean. I know, I know. I'll plan ahead better next year. Planning was your department, too.

We're not going to the beach this year. We went last year because you had made the point of organizing R.'s birthday celebration and we all wanted to be there for him. I couldn't bear the thought of going this year, though. I know you believed that ocean air and a good swim could cure just about anything but we never tested it against a broken heart, did we?

In this month's Vogue, Plum Sykes describes NYC night life queen Amy Sacco as having a "rigorous aesthetic." I like the sound of this and have decided that I, too, should enjoy a rigorous aesthetic. Starting now. Don't say you weren't warned.



Despite high winds that gave our landscape a rather Whomping Willow effect we had a lovely day. We took a little drive, starting with a quick trip to the Plow and Hearth outlet tent sale and ending with a tasting at Barboursville Vineyards. And, because I announced that I was disinclined to cook tonight (well, really to clean up from cooking but whatever) we had a lovely meal at our favorite Mexican place. There's nothing like a couple of enchiladas verdes, you know? With a lime iced tea they're probably just about one of the most perfect things you could ever eat.

Once Entropy Girl went to bed I set about going through today's coupons and sale circulars to figure out what I should buy this week and where I should buy it. Depressing. If I were given to "add water" rice mixes, frozen peanut butter sandwiches in doughy envelopes, and cheese snacks cut in ocean-themed shapes I'd "save" a good deal of money this week. But as I am in the market for a few onions, some barley, a decent blue cheese and rice milk it appears that I will be paying full freight.

I remember my home economics class back in the day (1983, to be exact) didn't use a textbook. Instead, every week we received a 8- or 10-page leaflet produced by a major packaged foods company that included a few coupons and "recipes" using the company's products. One such recipe I remember vividly instructed students to add a can of mixed vegetables to a prepared box of macaroni and cheese for a "healthy, attractive one-dish meal." You can imagine how I feel about this these days.

I understand that it's not really in packaged food companies' best interests for anyone to really learn how to cook. And I'm not talking about the kind of cooking that we do to impress, where we look up recipes on Epicurious for when some college friends are coming to dinner. No, I mean instead the kind of cooking one does every night for oneself and/or a family, where you broil a chop or two and serve with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli (and the chop doesn't come prebreaded/cooked and the mashed potatoes aren't generated from flakes or - worse - come already mashed in a zip closed poly bag). So I guess if, when you're growing up, the cook in your house makes lots of boxed rice mixes and augments them with pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and your school's cooking curriculum (assuming one is offered at all) offers the same, you're unlikely to be able to roast a chicken and boil up a pilaf of your own making. And so you buy...boxed rice mixes and pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and the cycle is complete and the companies are secure in the knowledge that you have none, not about everyday wholesome cooking, anyway.

Writing about this is difficult because of all the many social and economic issues that come along for the ride. I understand that most high schools have dropped cooking and shop classes to make room for ever more academic subjects. I have to wonder though, and this is from someone who enjoyed Moby Dick as much as the next person, if we wouldn't be better served as a nation in the long run if kids learned how to feed themselves and if doing so isn't more useful than any number of things I, at least, learned in high school. We may be living in a time when no child is to be left behind but I can't help but wonder what will happen when these kinds of life skills are completely extinct from our educational priorities. I fear that we may just be graduating class after class after class of future "cooks" who know nothing besides "Boil 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine with two cups of water and...".

And all the while our food pyramid gets revised again to account for less and less nutritional knowledge and the AMA rings its figurative hands about diabetes and heart disease. How much of this could we avoid if only we taught our 18 year olds how to broil a chicken breast and steam some broccoli, remembering to point out that doing so is often faster and cheaper than one thinks.