Postcards From the First Day of Summer

1) This is the time of year when the bloom of garden excitement begins to fade. You know, the weeds are coming back after initial clearing but there's not much in the way of food. At least not yet. It appears, though, that my early efforts may pay off in the form of yellow squash. Note to self: look up summer squash recipes.

2) This month's issue of Country Living featured a cover line that read something along the lines of "Summer's Perfect Wine" or somesuch. Turns out the editors have become fond of a particular "summer white" which I have loved for some time.

 We usually pick up a couple cases for summer fun but this year we bought three. One doesn't mess around in the face of media madness, you see. If you were to come to my house for dinner between, say, the end of May and Labor Day this is what I'd pour for you.

At $8ish dollars a bottle, Famega Vinho Verde is hands down the best affordable fizz you'll ever buy. Do you think less of me for waiting to take delivery of my three cases before recommending that you, too, seek it out?





3) I'm reading cookbooks again after a long hiatus. Through a convoluted path I've become a late addition to the Claudia Roden fan club (if there isn't such a thing, there ought to be - Claudia, call me!). Although I am not particular to Spanish cuisine, I'm relishing a slow, deliberate read of The Food of Spain. This book is absolutely amazing. Literally epic in scope, the first 100 or so pages is nothing short of a culinary history textbook. Roden traces Spain's intertwining Christian, Jewish, and Muslim histories that are the underpinning of every summer's breathless tapas articles. Truly extraordinary and I insist that you go buy a copy immediately, if not sooner.

4) We're enjoying a very nice lack of extracurricular activities at the moment. Baseball and dance are over and there's little movement on the scout (girl or cub) front. The next six weeks stretch luxuriously mayhem-free. There are some camps on the calendar, of course (in our town, parents who do not abundantly enrich their offspring during summer break are considered reportable to the U.N.), but until football and cheer begin August, it's nothing but old-fashioned summer fun around here. Firefly-chasing, popsicle-licking, tree-climbing, dog-hugging summer fun.

It's glorious.

Guests Merry With Your Cheer

My sister and her family are coming to visit this weekend. Among the routine logistical back-and-forths, the plans have involved a long Facebook thread about what we'll eat while they're here and where we'll buy it and how it will be prepared and whether or not I'll bother pleasing anyone but the two of us.

This kind of selfishness will surprise no one who knows me even a little bit well. It also has some precedent when applied to my sister and myself. We're the duo that, once upon a time, flew clear across the country to visit with our father's sisters and spent the entire long weekend with them eating pancakes at this very specific place and having dessert at that very specific place and so on (that we were young at the time and somewhat in their care comforts me in that it means we come by our obsessions honestly). Among other memories, I carry with me the yogurt and berries we ate at some posh hotel (the only breakfast we could afford), the peach daiquiris our grandmother served (it was the last time I saw her before her death less than two months later), the picnic lunch our aunt packed for the plane ride back to Philadelphia (shrimp & cream cheese spread on mini bagels which lasted until we just barely cleared the runway in San Francisco).

Some years after that trip we sat together in our parents' kitchen with the man that she would soon marry. Why we were there and our parents were not I don't recall, but I do remember what we ate. Brie and roasted garlic (hey, it was the 90s), a pesto made with half spinach and half basil (it shrunk in the micro), smoked salmon. That my future brother-in-law loves my sister was abundantly evident because knowing him better now I can say that there's no way on earth we'd get away with putting that array of foodstuffs on the table these days.

She'd like to do a bit of canning while they're visiting so I'm hoping to cue up some brandied blueberries or blackberries. That's an easy choice because we won't need to monitor a jelling point or whatever and can thus accommodate the distractions our collected five children will no doubt visit upon us. We'll also visit the local farm market, the merits of which she's listened to me extol for years now. I'll buy a couple chickens to grill and maybe some peaches to make into soup. Friday night I'll grill some cheese (yes! it's true - man, I love this stuff) and wrap bacon around jalapeños from the plants out by the old stone wall. We'll open the olives that are already marinating and the red onions I mixed up earlier this evening. Collectively, they'll be the perfect foils for a hot, humid Philadelphia summer evening.

When my sister comes to town.

Take Note

Take one youth football season (with it's thrice weekly practices and twice weekly games) and throw in with it a long-gestated corporate acquisition the scale of which will haunt me for years, four weeks of some kind of odd, exhausting respiratory illness for three-quarters of the domicile's inhabitants, and the further destructive machinations of another company that I never really did like all that much and what you get is a home cook that just hasn't been feeling it.

My name is Marsha (hello, Marsha) and my kids are eating an awful lot of hot dogs. Sure, they're local, nitrate-free hoity-toity dogs but that only gets you so far when they're on the menu as much as has been recently. Life hasn't been so terribly bad, I don't think, after all it's not as if they haven't been treated to a (swanky)PB&(homemade)J now and then. On bread that has 4 grams of fiber per slice! So there is that. (This is just between us, right?)

In the last day or so something seems to have snapped loose and Brainiac found me last night preparing a shopping list while sitting on the sofa and nearly buried in cookbooks. Some (Bistro Cooking and and the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook) were old friends, some (Make it Fast, Cook it Slow and Modern Spice) were newer favorites. For some reason it seemed terribly important to immerse myself in print rather than bytes for, although I considered running to Epicurious or All Recipes, I couldn't quite drum up the interest in what seemed at the time to be a very sterile, almost transactional, activity. I wanted to hold those books, cross-reference, sticky-mark, note the messages I've left to my future self reminding me to up the borage or leave out the tamarind or cook for ten minutes longer than specified or whatever.

I emerged two or three hours later filled with plans for, well, not hot dogs. Pho! Agrodolce! Amanda Hesser's Pasta with Yogurt! Rice and beans! (Yes, really.) Like the cookbooks that inspired them, so of the dishes on the list are old reliables to which I'm returning after a long break while others will be new adventures. The family is always a little suspicious when I start trying to shake things up (remind me to tell you about my very project-managed midlife crisis some time). As we shopped today and the kids tripped over each other to help pull ingredients off shelves, I talked about each and what we would do with it - the red curry and the walnut oil and the ginger all have a story to tell - and they took my ideas and my list and my recipes and threw back at me their own. Can we make a focaccia or maybe a socca? What about the dolmades? Can we make our own instead of buying from the "tapas bar"?

It looks like there is, indeed, life after hot dogs (and PB&Js).

The Reason For It All...

...or at least most of the reason for most of it all.

We had these pictures taken last fall to capture what seemed to be an almost magical time. The children were in that wonderful in-between state of needing and independence, not so old as to want to shrug away from publicly-offered hugs and not so young as to require constant and exhausting vigilance. Despite my personal fondness for near countless throngs in the next generation I am not exactly comfortable with actual babies (mine included, regrettably). I do toddlers really well, though, and preschoolers and I get along famously.

Now that we're halfway through the Boy's elementary school experience and the Girl has been promoted from pre-K, rendering my preschool parent days well behind me, I am almost eager for the next era. I hope that in my excitement I don't forget to remember this time when it seemed we'd be this way forever.

The March Hare

I am not going to belabor how much I hate February. I refuse. I will only say that for a short month is has a heck of a long list of offenses to answer for. How does one month become so terrifically ambitious in the dismay and mayhem department? It boggles the mind.

Beyond the regular old economic news which, honestly, is like background noise at this point (futures? oil? jobs? it's all almost quaint) my own rather quotidian worries have been rather rapidly overtaken by events that, if made into a movie or a book, no one would ever believe. Typical of my incredible good fortune, these things don't happen to me, rather they happen around me, to those to whom I am to closest. I'd rather they didn't happen at all, of course, but I suppose that's an unrealizable request.

On Friday, when news of the crash of Flight 3407 started filtering into the news, friends and colleagues started saying things like, "Oh, I heard Buffalo and thought about your family but then realized that the town isn't that small What are the odds?" My response? You'd be surprised.

Clarence Center is a difficult place to describe to suburbanites accustomed to towns that run into one another in one unceasing flow of buildings and cars. Clarence Center abuts my hometown of Williamsville, New York, more or less. In between the towns there is a ruralish, sparsely-populated area and then you come to the hamlet of Clarence Center. Three, maybe four blocks long, there's a church, a coffee house, a gift shop, a bank and a firehouse. And an elementary school. The cross streets - the few of them there are - are almost entirely residential but for a contractor here or a day care center there. It's a short drive out of town into the horse, dairy and green bean farms. It's the kind of town people think about when they talk about those all-American places that Norman Rockwell might have painted.

It's surreal enough that a place I know so well, even after being away longer than I lived there as a child, was involved in something so awful and completely random and weird. The thing is, my sister lives in Clarence Center, about 100 yards from the single house that was destroyed. She now shows identification to a sheriff's deputy to return to her home after work or errands. She has described the smell in the air, one that promises to get worse before it gets better. My niece takes cover under the dining room table when a plane or helicopter is heard in the sky (just a few miles from the airport, this is not an infrequent event). The good men of the firehouse next door are doing their best to assist the federal departments that have descended, trying to do what they can before the next snow blows in mid-week.

My sister, and the town, are hurting. Survivor guilt is the talk of the day and veterans in the area speak knowingly of PTSD. There's little I can do but be as understanding as possible in that thoroughly insufficient way of someone who isn't there, hearing the crackles of the still-smoldering fire, who isn't organizing grief counseling for the many school kids who live on that block, who isn't wondering how to begin to talk about something so totally, horrifyingly random and from which there is no protection.

Grand Re-Opening or, Not Even Close to 100 Things About Me

I thought I'd do a bit of a Grand Re-Opening here at Hot Water Bath, planned just right to follow my most recent Unannounced Periodic Shut Down wherein I don't post for an unspecified period of time (carefully designed and timed to drive away the couple dozen people who check in faithfully). To kick off the festivities, here is a little bit of information about me and what it is that I'm up to - just to provide a little context for the next time I up and go without so much as a by your leave.

In no particular order:

1) Today is my 13th wedding anniversary. Brainiac's, too.

2) We have two children, a Boy and a Girl. They are delightful.

3) We have two cats, a boy and a girl. They are somewhat, but only somewhat, less so.

4) I work for a hugegantic global corporation that makes products which a) some folks adore and b) some folks revile. Your mileage may vary.

5) We are Episcopalian. Some take this to mean we are too Christian and still others find us not Christian enough. That thing about mileage? Ditto.

6) As I get older I find righteous indignation more difficult to access.

7) My recent reading habits would have appalled the 20 year old me. I'm o.k. with it.

8) My superpowers include always finding good parking and rarely waiting for elevators.

9) I'd like to see new places, but hate the process of traveling to get to them. It's less taxing to stay home.

10) When I eat French fries, I match them up by size and eat them two by two. If there is an unmatched fry left at the end it doesn't get eaten.

11) I don't like ketchup with fries unless there is also malt vinegar.

12) My latest Strongly Held Conviction is that there are only three reasons people do any given thing: they want to, they have to or they *think* they have to. There are probably more of the last than the others. I have no idea if this would be considered true by actual scientific types, but it seems like it might be, yes?

13) Corollary to my latest Strongly Held Conviction: The reasons that people don't do something are: they don't want to, they can't or they don't *think* they can't. There are probably more of the last than the others. That thing about science types? Ditto.

14) I am a terrible housekeeper.

15) This is why I try to have large amounts of company every few months so that I give into a week long cleaning frenzy.

16) I reserve the right to an unlisted phone number for myself but am driven bonkers when other people have them.

17) I haven't been to a movie theater since the first Harry Potter film.

18) My Netflix queue tops 275 items as a result.

19) I love bread pudding.

20) I don't understand pass interference or roughing the passer in football. Unlike baseball's infield fly rule, which is just inexplicably random and something I can therefore ignore, the first two seem to completely oppose the entire point of football - to knock people over and prevent them from doing things that could lead to scoring. Placing limits on that goal, short of actual violent stuff (facemask penalties I totally get) seems counterproductive to the game as I understand it. Which apparently I don't.

21) Not understanding football is putting a damper in my newly begun career as a Football Mom. Who knew that Right Tackle was an actual job description?

I'm sitting here on our very uncomfortable futon, shivering, with a cup of tangerine-mint tea by my side hoping against hope that I'm not coming down with round 2 of the noro virus that's sweeping through town. The cats are asleep on my feet so at least part of me is toasty. I simply cannot be sick - I've got Sunday school tomorrow (note to self: find bag of feathers for discussion of the Holy Spirit) and all the get-ready-for-the-week stuff that goes on Sunday afternoons. Besides, if I'm going to be sick I insist it be on a work day.

It's precisely these kinds of days - cool gray and feeling unwell - that turn my mind to garden plans. Anyone whose ever bought so much as a ball of twine from a garden supply firm finds themselves buried in catalogs this time of year and I am no exception. Inevitably, I fill out order forms with all kinds of exotic flora - achilliea!, Liatris spicata - and just as inevitably end up doing the same old thing. I have neither the time nor the inclination to coddle a lot of decorative gardens, however much they're appreciated, so the usual purchases of bulkpack impatiens, petunias and alyssum usually suffice while any growing from seed happens in the vegetable patch (beans, zucchini, radishes and so on - all reliable workhorses).

This year I'd like to try something new, something not enabled by the mere completely filled-out order form, something that requires more heart and less cash. But what? I'm tempted in a thousand directions by three books intended to introduce children to the joys of gardening. Turns out they're just as handy for stuck-in-a-rut adults.

Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy includes some very clever ideas for gardening with children, emphasizing plants that grow quickly and produce some "consumable" result - bathing with an herbal blend, making musical instruments from gourds, and so on. I've made bean pole tee pees before but her sunflower house variation is so sweet and so much of the kind of summer magic I'd like my kids to remember that I literally started hopping up and down in my seat, eager to begin sketching out just how to do it. Lovejoy's directions for growing potatoes in galvanized buckets is nothing short of miraculous - I've read how easy it is to grow potatoes but every direction I've ever ready left me scratching my head, wondering what "magic happens here" was left out. Lovejoy is clear and concise and perfectly understandable.

The Children's Kitchen Garden by Georgeann and Ethel Brennan is a more traditional garden book, less moonbeams-and-magic than Roots. It's charm to me is that it describes an actual garden, grown by actual children - no theory, in other words. The bulk of the text discusses the requirements of a host of vegetables and herbs and the included recipes could be well understood by children older than, say, six or seven (with grown-up help).

The Enchanted Gardening Book by Alice Herck rounds out my current garden inspirations. The projects are more basic than those in Roots and it includes much less practical information than Kitchen Garden - it's magic is that it seems to call to an older time, when people did such things as make rose petal beads, when they memorized poems at the behest of the governess, and give tea parties using real china for dolls and teddy bears. I'd love to know more about the author and her motivation for producing this lovely, nostalgic book but neither Google nor authorsearch turn up anything.

With these three books by my chairside I am motivated to do things differently at last. I don't need more seeds, I realize. I've already got bean seeds for tee pees and sunflower seeds for a house (with pumpkin - I have those seeds, too - furniture). I've already got seeds for 4 O'clocks and snow peas and Easter Egg radishes and patty pan squash - not to mention everything I need to make sure that the cherry tomatoes grow within reach of snacking kids' hands or that there are ample paths between rows of strawberries. All I needed was to see what I already have in a new light, the garden equivalent of those people who will come rearrange your furniture, showing you the new decorating options you were too hidebound to see (or, my favorite, those fashion experts who come to your house to show you new ways to wear your own clothes).

Like with so many things in life, what I needed was exactly the same as what I already have. Funny how that works out.

Happy New Year, Internet friends. I hope that 2008 brings us all health and peace most of all. A few smiles, too, of course but mostly health and peace.

I spent yesterday, the final day of 2007, doing more or less two things. I turned 39 years old and I attended my grandmother's wedding.



My grandmother's first wedding took place when she was seventeen years old and the celebration was enabled in good part by the pooling of ration coupons amongst friends and her intended's eight older siblings. My mother was born within a year while her father was, as they said at the time, somewhere in Europe. She'd be nearly three years old before he father came home and the newlyweds would be together again.

I was a child when my grandfather died and I'd be surprised if my youngest sister has any memories of him at all. For most of my life, my grandmother insisted she would never remarry, that she liked her independence and hard-won ability to look after herself. There would be a few gentlemen friends to squire her to the movies or to the diner for supper, and the occasional fancy dress reunion of this or that warship but in the main she was on her own and abundantly available to her four children, eleven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.



And then she met (on a blind date) a man she not only would consent to marry, but offer her consent with such an alacrity that fairly shocked the entire family. Shocked we may have been, but we were all there present and quite literally cheering her on.

Very shortly after the ceremony the groom's son bundled up his young daughter and prepared to hurry back to his wife, who was too close to giving birth to travel safely or comfortably. He'd received a call that her contractions had begun in earnest and predicted that perhaps the time was near. With this is mind I shared with my grandmother and her new husband at my own leave-taking, some hours later, my realization that they would soon be jointly the grandparents of thirteen grandchildren ranging in age from infancy to 39.

Today I tried to explain to the Boy that very few children get to attend their great-grandmother's wedding, a notion that he of course couldn't quite grasp. I went on to tell him how lucky we are that she is so healthy and active and independent. "But Mommy," he said, "She's very pretty and not very old at all. Why wouldn't she be active?" His sister chimed in with the conviction that the bride must really be a princess and I saw that it must be true what is sometimes said about the very old and the very young, that the circle of age comes 'round on itself so that those who are truly left out of an understanding of life and love are those in the middle. The 39 year olds, for example.

Point 1) I just slid a "peppermint" cake (half red velvet, half white, swirled together) into the oven - the proper three layers now possible through the rummage-sale acquisition of a third (and fourth) nine-inch cake pan - and the kids are watching a rapidly failing VHS* copy of Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas**. I ought to be, I don't know, cleaning or something, but instead I'm here while trying to wrap my head around today's marketing list (peanut butter - not the good no preservative kind, it's for cookies - sour cream, graham crackers, frozen spinach, cider and something else that I'm sure to forget.

Point 2) "I need to remember to take a crow bar to church tomorrow," mused Brainiac last night. Now that has got to be one of the funniest things anyone has ever said to me. What on earth?

Point 3) My parents are, as I type this, preparing to attend one of the White House Christmas parties. Now, I'm not what you'd call a fan of the current administration (come to think of it, I can't recall being a fan of any administration but I'm hard to please like that), but I surely would love to take a gander at the gingerbread White House. I saw one being made on Food TV last year and - wow - is that cool. Anyway, this is special for my parents and I'm happy for them. Hope the Secret Service remembers to count the spoons when they leave 'cause my mom has a thing for spoons and who knows what she might hide about her person. Kidding! Kidding! My mom is a very moral and upstanding citizen. Ask anyone. You - with the earpiece - I'm talking to you. Don't touch my mom.

Point 4) I had hoped to make a batch of both jerk sauce and chocolate sauce but have come to realize that my personal sanity and overall well-being hinges closely on waiting until after Christmas. Things like jerk sauce are great winter-time canning projects since they rely much less heavily on warm-season ingredients. And then there's marmalade which can be made with all kind of winter citrus. So if you, like I, have not yet put away the canning kettle there's no real reason to go to the trouble now. Might as well leave it out and make up a batch of something or other when you have a less-than busy moment.

Point 5) My last post shared some of our Advent traditions. What I didn't talk about is one tradition that I've decided to cancel, at least for this year - the new pajamas for Christmas Eve thing. My kids don't need pajamas and buying some anyway would require a shopping trip I don't intend to make. We're a little light on hand-me-down, thrifted and clearance pajamas for warmer weather, though, so maybe I'll revisit this as an, I don't know, Easter tradition or something. Another key part of mothering sanity is, in my opinion, knowing when to let go of something that at first blush seemed unletgoable.
*My parents for years had one of those huge console-type stereos. For most of my childhood the stereo cabinet served as storage for candles, crayons and random household flotsam because the turntable rarely worked, except at Christmas. Yep, our own Christmas miracle. Turns out that my adult household experiences a similar technology-related holiday phenomenon in our VCR, which only works reliably at Christmas to show not only Emmet Otter but also a Finnish production entitled Santa and the Magic Drum which involves a Shaman who wants to be an elf. Those Finns, now they have themselves some Christmas spirit. Shamans! Indeed.

**Did you know there's, like, heated controversy over the DVD offerings of Emmet Otter? It never fails to amaze me the things over which otherwise rational people will argue.

The recent recall of green beans and other commercially-produced canned goods got me to thinking about the upcoming winter gift-giving holidays and the toy-related recalls. With regards to the parental side of my identity, these recalls hitting me where I 1) feed and 2) delight my kids is really getting just a bit too close to my inner Mama Bear and are hits I don't take blithely. Growing and processing at least some of my family's food and procuring what I can from people whom I recognize and can call by name gives me a feeling - however much of an illusion - of control. Likewise does an alternative approach to gift giving. I may pay a bit more for gifts than I would if I shopped at Stuff*Mart (with thanks and apologies to Madame Blueberry and the rest of the Veggie Tales crew), but what are mere pennies when stretched over the life of a gift that will last for years, possibly becoming an heirloom, or - let's be frank - meets my rather minimum standard of flat-out NOT poisoning the recipient?

So what's a girl who loves giving gifts, who loves determining just the right gift, to do? Here are my Official 2007 Hot Water Bath gift-giving strategies:

1) Thinking about giving less. Not less in terms of thought or even in terms of the number of recipients (I am the daughter of a woman who gave gifts to her favorite restaurant servers and as such I am incapable of not giving presents) but rather in terms of the actual tangible items. The families on your list might enjoy a museum or zoo membership or a cool picnic basket of the kind that can actually be used (with a promise to fill it with a great picnic once spring comes anew). For years when I couldn't purchase gifts for all my girlfriends I instead had a holiday brunch at my apartment. Champagne and smoked salmon at a restaurant is expensive and kind of a hassle. At home they're indulgent and nurturing. If my nieces lived closer, I think I'd give them a tea party. Alas, they're at a distance but I can still give them tea...and special tea cups just for them. Not elaborate, not cluttering, not too much, just special and just right. My father let it be known some time ago that he does not need anything that he has to dust and/or in some other way care for so he usually receives consumables like steaks or wine, or a book (he's a voracious reader) or greens fees. Note to self: talk to Dad about putting together a wish list on Amazon.

2) DIYing wherever possible. This year's homemade gifts on my project list include home canned items (pickled hot peppers, chocolate sauce, jerk sauce) gifted in embellished jars and including recipes and serving ideas, aprons, a wizard cape for my Harry Potter-mad nephew, wreaths, a puppet theater and more. Those who would laugh at or sneer at a made-with-love present do not deserve a place on the gift-list, I think. Even homemade items that miss the mark ought to be received with love and gratitude - effort and love always trump cash. If you fear that a child (or, sadly, an adult) on your list may not be charmed by a homemade whatever in the face of plastic battery-operated madness, persist. As the saying goes, we must be the change we want in the world and even if you're not a knitter (I'm not) or a quilter (I'm not) or a...I don't know...candle-dipper, you surely must have some kind of talent that can be put to good use. I cannot be the only 38-year old in the world who still loves mix tapes CDs, right? And I especially love them with collaged covers.

3) Avoiding mass-market retailers in favor of local shops, artisan-focused web clearinghouses like Etsy and your neighbors who exhibit at the school winter fair. My sisters and I have been known to pick up the occasional thrifted or yard sale item for each other with great success - both are excellent for pretty retro tableware (wine glasses to go with a bottle of local wine, say), jewelry (a nifty broach), books (great frameables can be found in old art books) or even toys (I've bought hundreds of legos at my local cancer-center thrift). The proprietress of my local toy store - they still exist! - knows what is made where and what companies really feel their products and resist such rapid growth as to require lowering quality and sourcing standards. She's the one who turned me onto Maine-made Taurus Toys and their marble run components that work with Duplo.

4) Not gifting for the sake of obligation. We've all been on the receiving end of gifts that were given for no other reason than the giver felt obliged - and it showed. Someday I'll tell you about the present I received that was accompanied by the statement, "I don't know what this is. Some kind of weird jam maybe. Whatever, Merry Christmas." Gifts given begrudgingly are not gifts at all and I'd rather receive heartfelt good wishes over a "here's the present I must give you" any day. A handwritten note of appreciation is yards better than the pre-wrapped random whatsits poorly made goodness knows where, for sale by the scores, not intended to last (or at least not last the year and you can buy another one) and only intended to put a thing in an emotional space that advertisers would have you believe to be empty but really isn't. Buy some substantial writing paper - Crane is nice, but there are lots of others - something heavy that says read this, it's important, get a pen that works (not always a simple proposition, I know) and dust off your best pre-email handwriting. You do to have time. It only takes two or three minutes to write down how much you value someone and the relationship you share. Put on the address and stamp before you stand up from your desk or dining table or wherever and put the finished card with your keys so you will remember it when you next go out.

5) Being practical where called for. Sometimes, delight and whimsy aren't on the menu. That should be o.k. and not something from which to shy. My newly-engaged grandmother and her fiancé have between them decades of acquisitions that they are about to combine into a single household and, while they are quite independent and mobile, getting out and about isn't always the easiest thing. Stamps, a selection of greeting cards, pre-paid phone cards and the like are the things I'm thinking of for them.

There you have it. Reading this, I think that my sister thinks she knows what I'm sending to her house for Christmas and she so totally does not.

A few quickies:

- Today is the first day of first grade. Despite the familial roundabout over homeschooling, the Boy reported for duty this morning at our neighborhood elementary. He asked to attend, a fact that weighed heavily against our inclination to pull him out. Actually, what he asked for was to 1) go to school and 2) still have "family school". We figure we can learn something from his view of these options as being not of the zero-sum nature that most grown-ups would assign. He would miss his buddies, we know, and that he had such a cheerful aspect in looking forward to the start of the school year must surely count for something. As I pointed out to a friend recently, the television show Family Ties had years of good ratings based on nothing other than the notion that sometimes kids will desire to create almost exactly the same kind of life that their parents would have rather not had. Go figure.

- You know I had fun packing his lunch, right? I am addicted to Cooking Cute and the thousands of Bento pics available from Flickr and have happily shared my addiction with both kids. Hello Kitty silicon cups? Yes! Lightning McQueen fruit picks? Of course! It's not consumerism, it's Bento! This morning I placed a BBQ pork sandwich, apple slices (some cut thin and then made into rocket ship shapes with a cookie cutter), a diamond-shaped Rice Krispie treat (a fun, sticky project with kids) and locomotive-topped skewers of alternatiing black and green olives into his little lunch carrier. Bliss. Lunch packing may just be the salve that gets me through my kids' schooling.

- The apple was from one of our backyard trees. Brainiac is consumed with apple picking lately and seems to have rather high expectations with regards to my ability to deal with them all. He has constructed an apple picker out of an empty coffee tin and some extenda-pole thing that is able to reach all but the very highest samples. Luckily, the kids don't hold their unsprayed and not-ready-for-Superfresh looks against them and eat them by the dozen.
- I am sick of tomatoes. You will remind me of this, won't you, when come February I yearn in poetic terms for last month's bacon and tomato sandwiches? I still have about 20 pounds to deal with and I am fighting my preference to fling them into the compost and turn my back on the whole affair. But, no, I am a responsible sort and will manage another dozen pints or so. I swear, I am NOT picking anymore other than the cherry varieties that I've been drying. Oh, but I might pick some of the remaining unripened for fried green tomatoes (use bacon grease for the frying and salsa for topping). That I could cope with.

- The geese have been flying the last few days and there's a distinct chill in the morning air. Since I am not among summer's biggest fans these are cheering developments. September is pleasant and happy month, being as it is the time when both my wedding anniversary and the birthday of my oldest fall, but its real purpose is to serve as the gateway to October.

The last two weeks have been a blur of activity, although I'd be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what I did. There was weeding and the ever-present weed prevention efforts (file under: hope springs eternal), some watering, some dehydrating (more cherries), a spot of reupholstering, and on and on, with little actually finished. No, wait, we did finish reading Prince Caspian much to the Boy Wonder's disappointment (which came hand-in-hand with an excited rally over the next selection, Neil Armstrong: Young Flyer). Prince Caspian is a lovely tale of renewal, hope and restoration and a wonderful thing to read if you are, as I am, somewhat depressed about current events. And the Neil Armstrong book, well, it has its charms, too. The entire Childhood of Famous Americans series is admittedly a bit twee, but they do present compelling portraits of some really remarkable people in the process of becoming who we know them to have been. You know, child being the father of the man and all that, and as bedtime stories they really are nice. There is probably a reason there aren't many profiles of bond traders or product managers in the series - nor compliance specialists, for that matter (which is how I spend a good chunk of my day)- but it's not something in which I'll delve into too deeply here.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, getting things done. On that page I've been meaning to shout out to my former roommate and occasional commenter Meg to congratulate her on the addition of two (I think) children to her family. I dearly wish everyone in the family a lifetime of love and a smooth settling in. If she were in the room with me I'd ask if she ever looks back at the girls we were and wonder how we got from there to here. Myself, I'm shocked on a regular basis.

So here we are, waiting for enough beans to come in to make dilly beans, enough blueberries for jam or pie filling (actually, I prefer turnovers but you know what I'm saying) and perhaps even enough zucchini to become sick of it - although it's hard to believe that point could possibly come, this early in the season. Meanwhile, I've tasked Brainiac to the project of making some kind of rain barrel water-off-the-roof collection system, a job which I sold by reminding him that "specialization is for insects" and he probably shouldn't spend all his free time on keeping our cars running, and I'm trying to work out - again - how to knit. I think my problem was trying to knit left-handed, when clearly (it seems to be now) a girl who throws right and bats right probably ought to knit right, too, even if she writes and eats left. Right?

My grand hopes that I would post pictures today of all my completed projects were, by all appearances, wildly over-ambitious. Brainiac distracted me from my planned achievements with a day-long outing on Saturday, us and the kids, exploring new areas, cavorting on new playgrounds and making new connections. I am always happy surrender to his occasional zeal for aimless meandering, knowing that when it strikes he will take great delight in bringing me to as yet unknown (to me) garden center, used book store or fabric store (sometimes all three). Saturday brought a visit to a Revolutionary War-era house, beautifully restored and now for sale, in addition to other sundry delights and I just never quite got to doing whatever it was that I had meant to do.

What it was that I had meant to do included finishing a dress for Entropy Girl, made out of a beautiful toile, blue and cream, with a scene of pastoral childhood of the kind that is usually found only in books and consists of kids fishing, flying kites, dancing around a Maypole, that sort of thing. It has made, as I thought it would, a very sweet non-fussy dress that I hope now to finish tonight and which the recipient has flat out refused to accept. No matter, for the truth is that I made the dress for me, even if I have long since left size 3T behind, and my daughter wearing it is not required for my complete joy in its creation. Nice, but not required.

And then there is the unmade Sun Bread, from a recipe found in the book of the same name wherein a town of clever animals convince the sun to make an appearance by baking bright yellow bread to relieve a long, gray winter. I've been begged for Sun Bread for weeks (to be served alongside cherry and pineapple upside down cake conjured from Eight Animals Bake a Cake) and, well, perhaps tonight is the night.

I had plans this morning to come here and share more ideas of what you can do with the cornmeal you undoubtedly ran out and bought so you could make cornbread. Instead, I am typing this from bed where I am also bidding goodbye to the last notions I had that I am not actually sick.

Another day, then, for the empanadas, cornmeal waffles, polenta, and spoonbread. Today my food concerns are a bit more pedestrian - what to feed the kids when thinking of food at all leads to unwelcome lurching in the mid-section?

There's always eggs and toast, of course, although I find that cooking eggs while I'm under the weather does nothing at all for improving my physical state. Buttered noodles work well, particularly rotini, the shape of which seems to distract the kids from noticing that I have neglected to add veggies or meat to the bowl (if I'm up to it, a generous sprinkling of grated Parmesan and some cracked black pepper in my bowl are wonderfully self-nurturing).

If soup is called for, I break out one of my boxes of pre-made broth. I do try to keep homemade on hand, but it's usually frozen so doesn't work well for last-minute needs. You can buy excellent organic veggie and chicken broths at many groceries these days, making them great pantry staples, so don't feel shy about keeping and using them. Heated broth with maybe some diced onion, frozen peas, a bit of kale and some of those teeny-tiny dried ravioli or tortellini make a great, last minute soup that's quick and delicious. You can also use celery, drained and rinsed beans, rice or anything at all that you have lying around and looks good and before you know it soup's on and you're off the hook for another few hours.

I've also been known to make beer bread, serve it warm and buttered along with applesauce or a clementine or something and call it a day (this approach has the added benefit of resulting in leftover bread, so you can serve it again the next day if events regrettably come to that). Because the bread has all of three ingredients it's crazy fast to make, the only requirement being that you need to remember to get it started a little more than an hour before you want it (maybe an hour and a half before, to include mixing and cooling time).

No matter what is served and no matter how it is made or procured, don't forget to include the kids in what you are doing and why. As impatient as you may feel and as intolerant of spills and dropsies as you might be (believe me, I have bitten my own tongue so often that it may well be perforated), tolerating kitchen mayhem now could lead to you one day hearing, as I did today, "Mommy, if you need to lie down it's o.k. I will pour Entropy Girl's juice and grind the coffee beans for you. Would you like some cinnamon toast?"

And with that, I feel better already.

Cookbooks are like anything else that someone might enjoy - as every golfer with an assortment of tee-bedecked ties or second-grade teacher with a cupboard full of apple-shaped coffee mugs knows - in that, once one's interest in cooking and cookbooks is found out by friends and family at large, one invariably receives as well-intentioned gifts all manner of odd, duplicative or even plain old icky examples right alongside the true treasures. And so it has been for me.

Recently I decided to cull my cookbook collection, both as a cookbook-specific effort to retain only those with true personal value and also as part of a broader intent to reduce the amount of stuff in general that we're currently carrying. Culling required me to engage in the thoroughly enjoyable task of rereading many books I hadn't cracked open in some time to decide where they fell in the culling sweeps. Some, once special favorites, were no longer right for my kitchen, but I knew another cook who might enjoy them. I felt good about these knowing that they'd remain in my world even if under different ownership. Others I could see no clear use for - they were either too strange, too narrow in subject, contained too many errors or were just in some other way unkeepable. (Aside: Why do cookbooks seem to be the least edited of any genre of book? I swear that some people believe that writing cookbooks involves nothing more than slapping some recipes on a page.) These were put into the free box at a neighbor's yard sale and then moved onto a local thrift. The collection remaining consists of cookbooks that I feel comfortable will carry me through another decade of cooking. They are solid, practical, well-written, instructive and, in more than one case, sentimental.

In August of 1992 my youngest sister and I traveled to San Francisco together to visit family and celebrate our graduations, hers from high school and mine from college. We visited with our father's sisters and our grandmother, skulked around the city, and thoroughly enjoyed being so far from our typical routines. Our grandmother had moved to the Bay area when we were very young and visits were few and far between (in those days, even calling long distance really meant something - remember when you'd get off the phone to take another call if it was long distance?).

Grandmommy, as we called her, was a home cook in the best sense. We eagerly awaited her Christmas box every year, not so much for the knitted scarves it inevitably contained (although now I treasure those I still have) but rather for the jams and jellies, candies and nuts they contained. She dried apples picked from her apple tree - years before Ron Popiel tried to get us all to buy dehydrators off early morning television. And on our visit her kitchen talents did not disappoint. Her peach tree was producing well and we enjoyed homemade peach daiquiries before dinner and her famous, memorable peach pie after.
Less than three months after the trip, Grandmommy was dead. In retrospect, it's clear to me now that she had been dying even as she served us dinner but I'm still not sure if she knew it herself. No matter, really, I suppose.

My only request of my aunts handling her estate was that I might have some of my grandmother's recipe files. A few weeks later I received in the mail an accordian file full of clippings, scribbles and pages torn from magazines along with three community cookbooks from her near four decades of living in and around Pittsburgh. The cookbooks remained unopened by me all these years until just the other day. Each of them, for different reasons, remained in my "keep" pile. And one has original recipe, enhanced by my grandmother in her characteristic loopy script and customary green ink, for peach pie.

Isn't it funny how a book can sit totally unreferenced and unconsidered for, oh, 13 years before all of a sudden becoming an heirloom? Peaches are still more than a month away for me but I can say with some certainty that my kitchen will offer forth at least one pie this summer, with many thanks and much love.

Well, that turned out to be a lot more complicated than expected. Why was it the modem and not something I'm trying to get rid of anyway, like our ancient and probably leaky microwave? With Brainiac's attachment to that thing a lightening strike is my only hope of ridding us of it once and for all. Ten minutes to steam green beans, indeed.

Since the modem fried much has happened and nothing has happened. Brainiac, lovely and wonderful though he is, forgot Mother's Day. I wasn't upset, really, since the whole day is nice when it comes off but nothing to get really bothered over, you know?. And I had the best giggle when driving to church and the guy on the radio said something about it and, out of the corner of my eye saw my beloved swallow hard and make a sound that seemed as though it might have been "earghfphma".

Even better was the laugh I had a few days later when, with an utterly straight face, he began a sentence with the words, "If you've been thinking about Father's Day I have an idea for you."

"An idea," I responded, "Does it look anything like the Vera Bradley bag I'm looking to buy myself for Mother's Day?"

It was not.

In other news, the Boy Wonder has four loose teeth. His special treasure box is all set on his nightstand, ready for offerings to and receipts from the Tooth Fairy, although he has also left her special instructions that under no circumstance is she to wake him up. "Fairies are cool," he said, "But I don't ever wanna meet one."

The Boy also fell into a pond on Friday. It was very hard to keep my mothering cool with that one but all is well. He was merely very wet, somewhat cold and only a little algaeish, and dried off to find himself in possession of a renewed commitment to swimming lessons. As a bonus, we taught him the meaning of "commando" when our friend whose house we were visiting was able to produce fresh socks, pants, shirt and shoes in his size, but no underwear. On balance, I'd say he regards the entire event positively.

And Entropy Girl. My sweet, beloved "primpress" (uh, that's "princess") of the sapphire eyes. Yes, her. E.G.'s speaking more in the last week or so. More in the sense of quantity of words said, although she's actually repeating the same words over and over (and over and over). "No way. I not." Based on today's conversational output, that means she's not going to 1) eat breakfast, 2) take a nap, 3) keep her shoes on her feet, 4) refrain from hitting her brother with a piece of laminate flooring or 5) stop saying "No way. I not."

I tell you, sometimes it's a very good thing she's cute.

My parents and sisters came down for the weekend to attend my cousin's graduation party. It was a lovely visit, although so rushed and full of activity that I think most of the adults felt very frazzled. I felt crazed before anyone actually arrived just in anticipation of how busy the visit was going to be. Nothing like a little anticipatory stress.

In addition to the graduation party and other family events, Brainiac and I attended his 20-year high school reunion. Now that was interesting, to say the least. Interesting, in fact, in ways I am still processing. I won't say too much about it, because the relationships that were picked up on Saturday, if only for three hours and then to be dropped again, aren't my story to tell. Seeing them presented a fascinating picture of the boy I married as a man some eight years removed from them. The child is the father of the man, indeed.