This is my third night in a row being awake at 3:00 a.m. (actually, if we're keeping track - and I am - it's more like my eighth since Entropy Girl and I shared a bed in Buffalo and she is a relentless night waker; like mother, like daughter perhaps?). Last night it was the Boy Wonder who brought my snooze to an abrupt and unwelcome end:
Boy Wonder (moaning weekly): Mommmmmmmmeeeeee (pause) Mommmmmmmmmmeeeeee
Me (nearly falling out of bed in an attempt to move as fast as possible): What? Honey, what? Mommy's coming, sweetie....hi honey, what's up? Are you sick?
Boy Wonder: Can you tell Daddy I want him?
The conversation went downhill from there. But that was last night and this is tonight and I'm up now because his sister clearly thought I needed to update my blog and so sounded the alarm for me about an hour ago. She's thoughtful like that.
So on the Open House. Brainiac and I thought it would be a nice idea to have a little something for our townships Board of Supervisors, since they are technically our landlord. While we're at it, we thought, why not also the farm, historical and open space committees? Each of these groups were involved in lengthy and at times contentious discussions and operations regarding the house and we thought they'd all appreciate a chance to meet these mysterious people inhabiting the subject of so much emotional wrangling. Plus maybe get a bite to eat or something.
Why I thought it would be a good idea to do this three days after returning from nearly a week away would be a great subject for analysis. No time for such navel-gazing, though, with food to be prepared and a house to be cleaned. Last night before bed I made two warm dips - one for veggies, one for tortilla chips - and will also put out green and red salsas, a relish tray, bruschetta, drunken wieners*, brownies, and a variety of nuts and sweets. I've tried to avoid the fussy and last-minute because the whole point of the gathering is to meet people, not to avoid them by being holed up in the kitchen for the duration of their visit. As always, I'm worried about not having enough food.
Which brings me, sort of, to the pondering of great scientific questions. As I relate this, please remember that of my many charms and wonderful qualities, an adept scientific mind is not among them, and that any laughing and pointing should be done with as much care and love as possible. Agreed?
O.K., so I know that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Got it. Stuff changes or not - dust to dust, making compost, landfills filled with diapers - but the matter never actually goes away. Check. But as I planted sixteen bean seeds the other day I wondered about the beans (hopefully) to come. Where is the matter than will make them up now? Does the seed create the plant and its produce from, well, just the matter within its tiny walls? So does that matter come from? Surely it's not all scrunched up within the seed? Do you see where I'm going with this? To the unclear and uninitiated (that is, me) it would seem that growing things does, in fact, require the creation of more matter. And yet...well, now I've got a headache again.
I asked Brainiac about this and in response he merely gazed at me the way one might a slightly annoying but mostly adorable child, kissed me tenderly on the forehead and said something that I can't even reproduce here because it made so little sense to me. Meanwhile, those bean seeds are being rained upon even as I type this so I hope that whatever they're going to do in the way of growing and giving us green beans they're getting to it.
* The drunken wieners. Yes. Well. A throwback to the 60s perhaps but one that people seem to love whenever I dust it off. I'm pretty sure that my brother-in-law (known Internetly as Paco) appreciates a batch, as does my dad and, well, really despite the somewhat laughable name the dish just goes over, you know? I can only take one or two, myself, but I've known people who will bogart and the entire bowl if you let them.
To taste for yourself the wonder of the drunken weiner, start with a package of those little cocktail smoky hot dog things. They come sort of shrink wrapped which I find odd but which I suppose is fitting somehow since they aren't really food, after all. Anyway, prepare the sauce by messing around with various amounts of grated yellow onion, ketchup, brown sugar and a bit of some kind of whiskey or bourbon - Jim Beam or the like. I never measure any of this, but rather just throw it all together and taste until I figure it'll be good. Throw the little dogs in the mix and pour it all into an oven-safe dish that you'll also use for serving and heat until the weiners are heated through and the sauce is bubbly. Serve with cocktail forks and the expectation of applause.