Just Happy To Be Here

Are Mormons Christians? The Latter-Day Saint View of the Nature of God

2012-01-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

Once in a while over the past couple of years I have written a post as part of the "Every Weird Thing You Wanted To Know About Mormons But Were Afraid To Ask Because Then The Missionaries Might Show Up At Your Door" series. In light of the current "Mormon Moment" (L.D.S. in politics, L.D.S. on reality t.v.), I am posting this piece on Mormons and Christianity. Not my usual light-hearted essay, but I thought those of my readers who are less familiar with the L.D.S. faith might be interested.

Most Evangelicals do not consider members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be Christians.

Even though we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Even though we worship Him along with the Father.

Even though our church is called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Even though we claim to hold the priesthood authority of Christ, and believe that He directs this, his restored gospel, through modern-day prophets and apostles.

In fact, we believe that He is the head of this church. It is His church.

But we're not Christians?

Oh yeah - it's that Nicene Creed issue. I'm not an expert on the Nicene Creed. I looked it up on the Internet to try to learn a little more about it and it was all Greek to me. Well, not all of it, but some of it was in Greek.

What I understand is that a couple of times during the fourth century A.D., leaders of church and government met as a council to try to come to an agreement concerning the nature of God. A compromise, maybe? Something they could all be happy with. To be fair, I think they did profess to be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But L.D.S. believe that a great apostasy occurred shortly after Christ's apostles had died off. We believe that the priesthood authority of Christ was lost from the earth due to unworthiness and corruption. We don't accept the Nicene creed as the inspired word of God.

We don't accept it, so we're blackballed from the club. The Christian club.

We don't believe that God would agree to a compromise between men concerning His nature. The Nicene creed states that God the Father, and Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit are one being. One substance, actually. Without wishing to seem disrespectful of the beliefs of others, I picture a gaseous mass of goodness that floats around the Universe, wielding unlimited power.

We believe that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate personages. Yes, personages. We believe that they look like us. Or, rather, that we look like them. Created in Their image. We believe that the Father and the Son have bodies of flesh and bone, like we have, only theirs are perfect, glorified bodies. We believe the Holy Ghost has a spirit body that is also in the form of man. They work together - they are of one purpose and because of this we can sometimes say they are one god. I think of a loving husband and wife being one with each other, but they are each their own person with their own bodies.

That is how we think of the Godhead. One in purpose, but three separate beings. Call me a nut, but this kind of Godhead (Trinity) makes sense to me.

Sometimes I wonder why people want to believe that God is an ethereal being. Is it comforting to think of Him that way? I'd rather picture God in the Heavens, in the form of a loving Father, watching over His children, knowing what it's like to be us. It just doesn't seem logical to me to think of God as a gas or whatever.

And is it reasonable to think we're the only people-looking beings in the whole wide universe?

As a Latter-Day Saint, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe that, as part of the Father's plan, Christ came to the earth, taught His gospel, suffered for the sins of all mankind, was crucified and rose again on the third day. He lives. He is the Savior of the world. It is through Him that we can return to the presence of our Heavenly Father. He is the way, the truth, and the light.

So, am I a Christian? That depends. Is believing in Christ and putting all your faith in Him enough? Or do you have to go along with the precepts of a group of men who decided something in the fourth century?

Somebody Has to Win

2011-12-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

I have a part time job as a substitute teacher in elementary school. It’s not a very well-paid position. Sometimes, when a child misbehaves at school, I’ll say something like, “I’m not here to baby-sit. They don’t pay me enough for that.” Invariably, and I mean invariably, several children drop their pencils and their chins.

“You get paid for this?” they ask. Incredulity is written all over their little faces.

I do get paid, but not very much.

But that’s okay because I have discovered a way to supplement my income. You know those extra-long receipts you occasionally get from places like Wal-mart or Home Depot or Rite-Aid that invite you to participate in an online survey? In exchange for your time, you are entered into a drawing for a grand prize of anywhere from $1000 to $10,000.

I take these surveys.

So far I have won a fifty dollar gift card to Rite-Aid (a third-place prize) and a free entrée at Panda Express. I haven’t kept track of how much time I have spent filling out surveys, but I’m sure it has been worth my while. There’s no way it averages out to less than substitute teacher pay.

A few weeks ago I received a voice mail message from Wal-mart. A pleasant computerized female voice thanked me for completing an online survey and informed me that I had been chosen to receive a $40 Wal-mart gift card. I was also assured that I would still be entered in the grand prize drawing that would take place this winter. She gave me a number to call to redeem my gift card. When I called the number, all I heard was the same computerized female voice tauntingly saying,

“Good-bye.”

That’s it.

“Good-bye.”

Tauntingly.

I am now involved in an e-mail correspondence with someone named Katrina Peters-McKenzie at Wal-mart’s corporate customer service department. It is obvious that she hasn’t actually read my e-mails. So far she has only sent me form letters about contest rules and regulations. But if I spend less than four hours trying to claim the gift card, and I succeed, the pay will be comparable to my substitute teaching pay. Plus, I am kind of enjoying myself.

On a visit to my parents in Florida one time, I got my mother started. We were in the grocery store and we got one of those extra-long receipts.

“You should get online and take these surveys,” I told her. “Somebody has to win.”

My parents are retired and on a fixed income. They could use a little extra money, I’m sure, and I can’t see either of them substitute teaching.

Well, my mother has taken it a step further. She spent the past year filling out and mailing in forms for the Publishers’ Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I’ve been encouraging her. Somebody has to win. Why not her?

Sometimes she’ll call me up and say, “I’ve got to make sure I’m home next Wednesday. That’s when they’re giving away $20,000. I told them I’d spend it on new kitchen cabinets.”

“Good!” I tell her. “Keep filling them out. Somebody has to win.”

My sister came to visit this fall. My uber-practical sister. We sat visiting in my family room one afternoon.

“Have you talked to our mother lately?” she asked me. Her eyebrows were raised.

“I talked to her a few days ago,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“She thinks she’s going to win the Publishers’ Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.”

She obviously did not approve.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s go to Panda Express. It’s on me.”

Lunchtime!

2011-09-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

It's almost lunchtime, and I can hardly wait. While everybody else is at school or work, I like to treat myself to whatever sounds good for lunch. Often it's something that nobody else in the family will eat, like asparagus, eggplant, or any variety of squash. These days it's eggplant. It's been my most successful garden crop this year and I've been picking them like crazy.

I have three favorite lunches I want to share with you:

Peanut Butter Toast with Fresh Sliced Strawberries

This one is pretty simple. Toast a slice of whole grain wheat bread. Spread with your favorite brand of peanut butter. Top with sliced fresh strawberries. So good. Mmm. I discovered this over the summer and ate it a lot. Peanut butter and jelly? Jelly is made out of fruit, right? It's a natural next step.

Grilled Eggplant and Toasted Pine Nut Couscous

Again, this is pretty simple to make. Buy a box of Near East Toasted Pine Nut Couscous and prepare according to package directions. Slice an eggplant lengthwise into 1/4 inch thick slices. Brush with olive oil. Grind sea salt and black pepper over slices. Grill on high until black marks appear and eggplant is soft in the center. Place on a plate alongside the couscous.

Asparagus and Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Cut Tillamook Extra Sharp White Cheddar Cheese into tiny cubes and place them on a plate. Break asparagus into bite-sized pieces. Saute them on high in a little olive oil until edges blacken but asparagus is still bright green. Not very long at all. Dump asparagus over the cheese. Eat with rice crackers and a perfectly ripe pear.

Lunchtime!

Family Vacation

2011-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've been swamped lately, so I thought I'd post this piece I wrote many years ago about family vacations. It's a little long for a blog post, but I hope you'll read it and enjoy it!

Neither my husband nor I come from families with big histories of family vacations. The only vacations my family ever took were when every few years or so my mother and her sister would load two families worth of kids (three from ours, five from theirs) into one vehicle and head off driving from Massachusetts to Indiana to visit relatives. I'm not kidding- eight kids and two women (the fathers never seemed to make these trips) in a station wagon or a van. This was way back before seat belts, obviously, or before seat belts became widely used. I can remember each time our family got a new (or new to us) car, the first thing we'd do was stuff the seat belts back behind the seats so they wouldn't be in the way. This was also before modern minivans. When I say we sometimes made the trip in a van, I mean a Dodge van with two seats up front and nothing but empty space in the back. Just an empty metal shell.

One year, when the eight of us cousins were mostly teenagers, each of our families had a foreign exchange student for the school year. We had a girl from Sweden staying with us, and our cousins had a Norwegian girl. (The Norwegian girl pretty much became a permanent member of the family and actually reads this blog!) The mothers decided we needed to go to Indiana for Thanksgiving. It would be a good cultural experience for these visiting students (even though we lived in the birthplace of Thanksgiving...). We left the fathers at home with their respective sides of the families. We took the van. Two middle-aged women and eight good-sized cousins, the Norwegian girl, and the Swedish girl, who was not happy at all to be there. She was convinced we wouldn't get back in time after Thanksgiving break and that she'd miss Driver's Ed. We wedged a cooler between the driver's and passenger's seats and the ten of us kids took turns sitting up front with the mothers. Keep in mind that Thanksgiving is in November and the only heat in the van was right up front. Everybody else sprawled out in the back with sleeping bags and pillows, trying to keep our noses warm. Everybody except the Swedish exchange student, that is. She was an only child and this was a new and most unpleasant experience for her, I'm afraid. She had brought along a a folding lawn chair, and sat bolt upright, wrapped in a quilt with a grim look on her face the whole way. And the whole way home. We got into a terrible blizzard in Ohio on the way home and were forced to stop for the night. (We usually drove the seventeen hours or so nonstop. There's even a family legend about my mother and my aunt switching off driving duty without ever slowing down the car.) So there we were, the two mothers, the eight cousins, the Norwegian girl, and one very disgruntled Swede, who was by this time kissing her U.S driver's license good-by, all packed into one motel room. This was my experience with family vacations.

My husband's family wasn't big on your typical family vacation, either. I mean like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon. The big family vacation thing for them was the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City once or twice. However, my father-in-law was an English professor, and they did, through his work, have opportunities for travel as a family. They were able to spend a year in Finland when the kids were young, and while there they traveled all over Europe in their Volkswagen bus. Five kids and Grandma, stopping at campsites, setting up the tent... They still have that tent. And years later, when the kids were older, they spent a semester or two in London. These were wonderful opportunities, but when the kids would complain and ask "How come we've never been to Disneyland?" their parents would say "Well, how many of your friends have traveled all over Europe? Hmmm?"

Somehow, as great as Europe was, it just didn't make up for missing out on Disneyland. So when my husband and I got married and started our family, we decided that family vacations would be a priority with us. And then we promptly moved vacations to the bottom of the priority list. In thirteen years of marrige we've taken only two family vacations.

I'm not counting visiting relatives. If I did, I could make it sound a lot more impressive. Thanks to frequent flyer miles my husband has accumulated during business travel over the years, the kids and I have been able to fly back to Cape Cod most summers to visit my parents. And when we lived back East, we were able to fly west and visit my husband's family. But as far as real family vacations go, we've only done two.

"We never go anywhere," our daughter would whine. "I'm the only kid in my class who's never been to Disneyland."

"How do you know?" I'd ask. "Has someone taken a survey?"

"No, but kids always say 'I've been to Disneyland three times. How many times have you been?' I've even lied , Mom, and said I've been once, but it was when I was really little so I don't remember much about it."

I actually started to feel a little sorry for her when she told me this, but what I said was "Well, how many of your friends have been to Cape Cod? Hmmm?"

"Mom, my friends have never even heard of Cape Cod."

One of our children, on the occasion of an outing to the fitness facility at my husband's place of employment, said, "I love coming here! Since I've never actually seen Disneyland, I think this is my favorite place to go."

Pathetic. Oh, so pathetic. My husband and I exchanged glances. Did we feel guilty that our children could be so easily placated?

Up until this time, we had taken one family vacation. When our three oldest children were seven, four and two, we actually planned and carried out a trip to San Diego. We went to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and the Wild Animal Park. (We didn't feel like the boys were old enough to fully appreciate Disneyland.) We had a wonderful time, and when we returned home, Kent and I renewed our vow to make family vacations a priority.

Well, four years somehow sped by, and we had become parents for the fourth time. Our youngest was now three. Too young to fully appreciate Disneyland, but at the same time, our daughter was eleven, and would perhaps be too old to fully appreciate Disneyland by the time her baby brother was old enough. We needed to do this for her, we decided. Plus, we needed to make an honest sixth grader out of her.

"Wouldn't it be fun," I said to Kent, "if we surprised them? Just got them up one morning and said 'Get dressed-We're going to Disneyland!" This is exactly what we decided to do. We made all of our plans. We decided on dates and made hotel reservations. For weeks I worried about slipping up in front of the kids and giving the whole thing away. I even wrote in fake appointments on my kitchen calendar on those days so they wouldn't suspect anything. Finally it was the night before the big day. We got the kids to bed as usual, as it was (or they thought it was) a school night. I waited until I was certain they were all asleep, then I began the packing and we got the car loaded. It was pretty late by the time we got to bed. Kent, naturally, fell asleep right away. To me, it was like trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, which is still, to this year, next to impossible for me. I lay there, thinking about the morning, watching the clock... When I finally did sleep, it was a sleep filled with dreams about the kids getting up, wandering out to the garage and finding the car all loaded up before we could spring it on them.

Finally the alarm went off. We had this all planned out. We got the kids up as we always did on school mornings and gathered in the family room. We are in the habit of starting out each day with a family prayer; We like to take advantage of all the help we can get, raising four kids... Our second son was his usual grouchy morning self, and collapsed on the floor near the couch. It was my husband's turn to offer the prayer. I was peeking towards the end when he asked, "And please bless us and protect us today as we travel to Disneyland." That grouchy little six-year-old's head shot right up and looked around. After Kent finished the prayer, nobody moved or said a word. I don't think any of them were breathing. Finally, our oldest son asked, "Uhhh, did he say Disneyland?"

"Get dressed!" we yelled. "We're going to Disneyland!"

It was better than Christmas morning. And I've never seen the kids move so fast. They were dressed with teeth brushed in record time. I didn't even have to nag. We got everyone loaded into the minivan (a seat belt for everyone-imagine that) and began the thirteen hour drive. I had good intentions of helping with the driving, but was soon nodding off, aware only of my mouth falling open occasionally. It had been a short night for me, or a long one, depending on how you looked at it.

We had the best time. The kids were great travelers. The excitement kept them from complaining about the day in the car. Of course we had a wonderful time at Disneyland. We broke up the trip home, stopping in Las Vegas to visit friends.

We arrived home happy, tired, and recommitted to keeping family vacations at the top of the priority list.

The Red Shoes - a film critique

2011-08-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

The Red Shoes

written, directed and produced by

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Once upon a time there was a young girl who longed to dance the night away in a pair of red dancing slippers. She put them on and laced them up and she was off. She enjoyed herself immensely. Once the ball was over, she found that although she was exhausted, she was unable to stop dancing. Through the magic of the red shoes and Hans Christian Andersen, she was compelled to dance or die.

In 1948, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger wrote, directed and produced The Red Shoes, a film about a ballet company's production based on Andersen's fairy tale. It is a drama and a tragedy. It has been been called a romance as well, but the romantic love that is supposed to be felt by the main characters comes across as secondary to the love for their respective arts, dancing and music composition. In a way, this only contributes to the overall theme of the film, that to dance is to live, and one must sacrifice all else, including love, in order to become truly great.

The Red Shoes is beautifully made of vibrant colors, graceful movement, and an Oscar-winning musical score. These three elements appropriately combine to lift the viewer out of real life and into a more beautiful fairy tale kind of world in both the ballet and the offstage scenes. This is a story about music, and about dancing, and about color as well; the red of the ballet shoes is strongly symbolic of danger and disaster.

The cinematography and the editing are first-rate, and to me, are the most intriguing aspect of the film. Not only is Technicolor (which was relatively new at the time) used to full advantage, but the cameraman employs other creative techniques with great success. There are several different point-of- view shots throughout the film (especially during the ballet sequences) which lend an artistic quality that is often missing in more conventional films. Sometimes we are viewing the ballet as if perched in the rafters of the theater, sometimes from offstage, and even through the eyes of the principal ballerina as she pirouettes successively across the stage. In fact, rarely do we view the ballet from where an audience would traditionally be seated, seeing the entire stage at once before us. During the twenty minute performance of The Ballet of the Red Shoes, we are treated to an experience that would not be possible for a traditional ballet audience. The combination of stage and film works magic before our eyes. Dissolving and fading and superimposition by the editors make it possible to convey the ballerina's personal feelings to us as she dances. We suddenly see the image of her lover superimposed over her dance partner, or the imposing figure of the ballet impresario attempting to force her choice between love and his promise to make her the best dancer in all the world. During The Ballet of the Red Shoes sequence, we are able to feel the conflict that is tearing Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) in half, and we realize that she is living in her real life the story she is portraying through the ballet: to dance is to live, not to dance is to die.

Moira Shearer beautifully and gracefully portrays Victoria Page, and not surprisingly, as she was a famous Scottish ballet dancer as well as an actress. In fact, many of the performers are both dancers and actors, which explains why the non-dance scenes are almost as smoothly executed as the ballet scenes. Anton Walbrook stars as Boris Lermontov, the head of the ballet company, and in spite of not being a professional dancer, manages to comport himself like one. Marius Goring as Julian Craster convinces us of his love for music and composing but not quite of his love for Victoria Page.

If one considers not just the credibility and power of the dialogue, but the plot and the means of carrying it out as part of the screenplay, one must judge the script to be exceptional. The parallel between the dancer's real life and the fairy tale of The Red Shoes is brilliant, and where it might disappoint a viewer who demands a happy ending, it doesn't disappoint one who appreciates a well-crafted story.

The editing of The Red Shoes shows great skill, not just as mentioned above in relation to The Ballet of the Red Shoes sequences, but throughout. The film flows smoothly in spite of being rather long. Various techniques are successfully employed to create fluidity, including one using shots of destination labels being pasted to wicker trunks in order to show the passage of time and the movement of the dance company between different cities.

As directors, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had a distinct style which came through in most of their work. Known for taking risks by making films that went against the prevalent trends of their day, Powell and Pressburger specialized in passion, beauty, and fantasy, all of which sing out in The Red Shoes. Many of their films, including this one, were projected box office failures, but managed not only to survive, but to succeed with audiences. Powell and Pressburger believed in their work, and believed in the ability of viewers to recognize them as the artists they truly were.

The Red Shoes has helped impress on me the importance of the arts, and has helped me to appreciate what must lie behind the scenes of any great work of art. It reminds me to consider and value the sacrifice that accompanies great art. The theme of The Red Shoes carries over into all art forms, including the making of a great film. To create is to live. This theme may apply in another sense as well. After all, Powell and Pressburger created a masterpiece that is very much alive decades after they finished production. To create is truly to live, and Powell and Pressburger and their unique style live on in their classic film, The Red Shoes.

Sourdough Start - World's Best Pet

2011-08-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

My husband and I have never been big on the whole pet idea. We both grew up with a dog in the house, and that was fine, but neither of us has ever felt the need to take one on as adults. Our kids never even seriously asked us for a dog. We let them know what our attitude was before they ever had a chance: dogs shed and they poop in the yard. And who almost always ends up taking care of the dog? The mom. And this mom had her hands busy with four children.

No dogs.

Cats were never going to be an option because my husband is allergic to them. Besides, they poop in the yard, too. And why would we need a cat of our own when every cat in this part of our state uses our flowerbeds as a litter box?

We had parakeets for a while. They were fun, but guess who usually had to clean the cage?

And we did the fish tank thing a couple of times. Guess who always had to clean the tank?

I thought we were done for good, but about a year and a half ago I acquired the ideal pet. My sister-in-law gave me a sourdough start. A living, breathing sourdough start. It resides in a plastic container in the fridge. It doesn't whine to be let out. No pooping. No barking. No shedding. No obedience training. I feed it a little flour and water every couple of weeks, if I think about it. It handles neglect very well; I once totally ignored it for six months and it's still fine. And the best part is, YOU GET TO EAT IT.

Sourdough Pancakes

Take your sourdough start out of the fridge the night before you want the pancakes. (You don't even have to talk to it. Of course, you can if you want to...) Put one cup of the start in a medium bowl. Add a cup of flour and a cup of water to each container - the medium mixing bowl and what's left of your pet. Stir both very well. Put your pet back in the fridge. Cover the mixing bowl lightly with plastic wrap and leave on the kitchen counter until morning. In the morning, add 3/4 tsp baking soda, 3/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar, and 3 eggs. Mix well and cook on a hot griddle.

Sourdough Bread (my sister-in-law Ruth's recipe)

In the morning: Take starter out of fridge. Transfer one cup into a medium bowl. Add one cup water and one cup flour. Mix well. Cover lightly with plastic wrap. Leave on kitchen counter.

Feed original start one cup each of flour and water. You can let it sit out on the counter for a little while until it starts to bubble and then put it back in the fridge.(This is kind of like taking the dog out for a little fresh air and then returning it to its kennel.)

In the evening: Add 2 1/2 cups each of flour and water to the medium mixing bowl. Mix well. Cover lightly with plastic wrap. Leave on counter overnight.

In the morning, put the contents of the bowl into the bowl of your large mixer. (You can also do this by hand.) Beat for two minutes. Add about three cups of flour and beat with paddle for five minutes. Let mixture stand for thirty minutes to let the flour absorb. Change to dough hook. Add one Tablespoon salt and about three more cups of flour. Knead until the dough is no longer sticky. (Takes a while.) Place dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough so that the top is also greased. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean dish towel and let rise until double in bulk. Put dough on counter and let it rest for ten minutes. Form into loaves and place on greased baking sheets (or in loaf pans, I guess, or bake on a baking stone) and let them rise until double. Brush with beaten egg with a little water added to it. Make slashes in tops of loaves with a very sharp knife just before putting in oven. Bake for ten minutes at 425 degrees and reduce heat to 375 degrees. Bake for twenty-five more minutes. You can spray water from a spray bottle on the sides of the oven every few minutes for the first ten or fifteen minutes. This is supposed to produce a chewier crust.

Sourdough start - the pet that keeps on giving!

Walmart Potato Salad

2011-07-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

There are so many high quality specialty food items available out there these days that we just don't have to make everything ourselves anymore. Some things just aren't worth the hassle.

Like potato salad.

Potato salad is okay. My husband likes it, but our kids don't. It's not something I ever wanted to eat a whole lot of. Two bites is usually enough for me. And making it is kind of obnoxious. (And I know I'm not the only one who thinks so because whenever I mention potato salad, my kids qoute a Spongebob episode where some random fish says, "Nice going, Buddy. It took us three days to make that potato salad. Three days!")
When you make potato salad, you have to cook the potatoes to the perfect state of doneness. I have always found that hard to do. You don't want them undercooked. If you overcook them, you end up with mashed potato salad. You also have to think about what goes in it. Some people like hard boiled egg, some don't. Celery or no celery? A lot of people think they hate celery. Some people like pickles, but sweet or dill? Will the kids eat it if it has onions in it? My kids won't eat it if it has any of that stuff in it.

My mother's potato salad is really good. She uses perfectly cooked red potatoes, cut up and coated with a tiny amount of vegetable oil, sour cream, green onions, tarragon, dill, salt and pepper. I used to make it once in a while for extended family gatherings, but again, it was so hard to cook the potatoes just right.

So once in a while I buy a small container of ready-made potato salad for Kent. I've tried different brands and varieties. They're always okay. I have my two bites and Kent eats the rest.

But last week I discovered a potato salad that was so good I've been day-dreaming about it ever since. I got it (of all places) from the deli counter at Walmart. It was the Loaded Baked Potato variety. I had way more than my two bites. I think I ate more than Kent did. There was some left over. Throughout the next day I polished it off a spoonful at a time.

Delicious!

So quit boiling potatoes and head to Walmart. You'll be so glad you did.

Remember - Loaded Baked Potato.

Subtitles - the only way to watch a movie

2011-07-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

My son Joel has a friend named Emma. Once in a while over the last couple of years, Emma has come over to watch a movie with Joel. I noticed one time that they had subtitles on.

"Are you trying to earn mastery points for Spanish class?" I asked, assuming the subtitles were in Spanish.

"They're in English, Mom," Joel informed me with an implied "duh."

"I always watch movies with the subtitles," Emma told me.

Oh.

That might drive me crazy, I thought, but whatever.

Last March I visited my parents in Florida. One evening we decided to watch a movie. After messing with the remote for a minute, my mother managed to turn on the subtitles.

"If we don't have the subtitles on, we don't always get what they're saying," she explained to me.

Oh, great, I thought. I'm going to have to watch this entire movie with words strung out across the bottom of the screen. This is going to be really annoying.

But guess what?

It wasn't annoying.

It was helpful.

I made the realization that I don't always get what they're saying either. Especially if it's an action film. Or a movie with a quirky British dialect.

I realized that when I watch a movie, I'm frequently asking a fellow viewer (usually my husband), "What did he just say?" or "So what's going on?"

And the fellow viewer (Kent) usually responds with something like "Shh. I can't hear what they're saying."

My parents don't seem to have hearing loss. I don't think Joel's friend Emma is hard of hearing. I just think they've figured out something the rest of us haven't thought of:

Movies often have bad sound.

I blame it on the filmmakers.They are familiar with the movie scripts. They know what the actors are going to say before they say it. Think about it. If you already know what words are going to come out of someone's mouth, you will hear those words when they speak them. Even if it's a bit muffled. When the filmmakers preview a film, they know just what's being said because they already know just what's being said. They think it sounds fine.

Excuse me? What did he just say?

One night after I returned home from Florida, Kent and I were going to watch a movie.

"Hey," I asked him. "Do you mind if I turn on the subtitles?"

He wasn't keen on the idea. I could tell he thought it would be really annoying to have words strung out across the bottom of the screen for the entire movie.

"If I can read the subtitles," I reminded him, "I won't always be asking you what's going on.You'll be able to watch the movie uninterrupted."

He agreed to the subtitles.

It took watching a few movies together with the subtitles turned on, but guess what? Now Kent turns them on without my even asking.

Is it because he finds it helpful in understanding the dialogue or is it because it keeps me from disturbing him with my questions while we watch?

I'll have to ask him.

But not during a movie.

Jeans Quilts - Thanks for the memories, Joel Craft

2011-07-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

I always wanted one of those really cool quilts people make out of their old jeans. Everybody loves a great pair of jeans. We all have our favorites. We break them in and they're soft and comfy. A great pair of jeans can become a dear friend. (Hey, some of us have a harder time making friends than other people do.) And then we can turn them into a quilt and cherish the memories we made while wearing them.

Yes, I always wanted a jeans quilt. Only one problem: I'm not a saver (see March 12, 2010 post Just Get Rid Of It!). When our jeans wear out, I assess their condition and then either throw them away or donate them to Deseret Industries. What I don't do is fold them neatly, stack them in a cardboard box, and tuck the box away in a corner of my basement just in case. Just in case times get really hard and I decide to patch them? Just in case we have a war on the home front and I need to rip them into bandages? Just in case I ever get enough to make one of those really cool quilts? It always seemed to me like it would take way too long to save enough for a whole quilt. And besides, I knew I'd never fold them neatly, stack them in a cardboard box and tuck them away in a corner of my basement. I'd wad them up and stick them under the bed. They'd stay there until it made me crazy to think about their being under there, and then I would get rid of them. So why not get rid of them from the start?

Then one day I was visiting my good friend and neighbor, Laurie Craft, in her garage, as she was preparing for a yard sale. I could tell she was a little stressed out about the whole thing. I've never had a yard sale (because I get rid of stuff as soon as I possibly can), but I've heard that people feel a little funny, when it comes down to it, about having strangers rifle through their personal belongings. And people can get their feelings hurt when someone offers a quarter for that precious little dress that their sweet baby girl wore just a few years ago that still looks like new. Or fifty cents for that candy dish with the pink flowers and gold edging that Aunt Sally gave them when she cleaned out and retired to Arizona. That, after all, could be considered a family heirloom.

Or that cardboard box of neatly folded and stacked jeans that were cherished friends to a family member.

"Jeans!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," Laurie replied. "They're Joel's." Joel is her husband.

She continued.

"I folded them neatly, stacked them in this cardboard box, and tucked them away in a corner of the basement in case there's ever a war on the home front and we need them for bandages. And besides, they were some of his closest friends."

Okay, I admit that I made up that last paragraph.

"Yes," she replied. "They're Joel's."

Hmm.

I was thinking about that jeans quilt I had always wanted to make. But I didn't want to stress her out about her husband's jeans.

So just how weird would my friend think I was if I offered to buy up her husband's old jeans?

On the big day I showed up early.

"I'm here to buy Joel's jeans. I want to make one of those jeans quilts but I've thrown away all our old jeans."

"Oh! How many pairs do you want?" Laurie asked me.

"I'll take them all."

I took them home and before too long I got started. I made a really nice quilt. We keep it folded up in our family room and use it when we watch movies. I can almost hear Joel Craft laughing at the funny parts. We've taken it to ball games and on picnics. I can just imagine Joel Craft cheering or asking someone to please pass the potato chips.

We like Joel Craft a lot. He's a great guy.

It's a good thing, huh?

Our daughter turned twenty-five a few days ago. I wanted to give her something special for her birthday. I still had some of Joel Craft's jeans. (I had actually saved them!) I decided to make her one of those really cool jeans quilts. The kind that will always bring back fond memories for her...of one of our favorite neighbors - Joel Craft!

"Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together" - peanut butter and chocolate

2011-06-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

My sons often ask me those ridiculous questions people (usually boy people) like to ask that force you to choose between two stupid situations.

"Which would you rather do - cut your own leg off or be ripped apart by a grizzly?"

"Who would win in a fight - a pterodactyl or a guy with a jet pack?"

"I refuse to be a part of this conversation," is my usual reply.

But a few years ago, I asked myself an equally stupid question:

If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, what would it be?

I considered this for a while.

Really, I did.

My first thought, of course, was chocolate. But can chocolate count as one food? And I thought I might want something a little more substantial after a while. Say, after a year or two. I finally settled on peanut butter. I was in a peanut butter toast phase at the time. Crunchy peanut butter and whole grain bread. I'd have to forget the bread and eat the peanut butter right from a spoon, but that wasn't a problem. Not like I hadn't done that before.

These days I'd probably choose something different. I 'm not sure what. (Good thing it's not too late, huh?) But I still like peanut butter. And chocolate. Recently I've enjoyed a couple of peanut butter-chocolate desserts that I just love. And a neighbor told me a couple of weeks ago that she likes to make smores using Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for the chocolate. Definitely got to try that.

Peanut Butter Pie is one of our family's favorite desserts. I think a lot of people make something like this. I got this recipe from my mother. Everybody loves it - and here's the important part - even people who think they don't like peanut butter.

Peanut Butter Pie

2 chocolate cookie crusts (I don't like the Oreo brand. I prefer Keebler.)

1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese

1 cup crunchy peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup milk

12 oz. Cool Whip (thawed)

1 can milk chocolate frosting

Mix together cream cheese and peanut butter. Add sugar. Add milk. Mix in Cool Whip. Pour into the chocolate crusts. Freeze. Frost and refreeze.

A young friend of mine named Kirsten brought over a yummy treat last weekend. They taste a lot like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, only I think these are better. Maybe because you get a whole panful. She gave me the recipe. I've opted to call them Kirsten's Peanut Butter Bites.

Kirsten's Peanut Butter Bites

2 cups peanut butter, divided

1 ½ sticks butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar, divided

3 cups graham cracker crumbs

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, divided

BEAT 1 ¼ cups peanut butter and butter in a large mixing bowl until creamy. Gradually beat in 1 cup of powdered sugar. With hands or wooden spoon, work in remaining powdered sugar, graham crackers, and ½ cup choco chips. Press evenly into a 9x13 pan. Smooth top with spatula.

MELT remaining peanut butter and remaining choco chips in a saucepan over lowest possible heat, stirring constantly, until smooth. Spread over graham cracker crust in pan. Refrigerate for an hour or until firm. Store in fridge.

Kirsten cuts them into little tiny squares and puts them on a plate. That way you can just take a little piece. And then just one more little piece. And then just... You get the idea?

Thanks, Kirsten!

Alphabetical Order or No One Ever Said Life Would Be Fair

2011-06-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

When I got married I moved up in the world. I used to be a W. Now I'm a G. Life is good as a G. Only six letters are ahead of G. There are only three letters after W. And they're X,Y, and Z. So really, W is pretty much last.

When I was in high school, they started what was called Arena Scheduling. In order to sign up for the next year's classes, you were forced to enter the Arena, which was set up in the gym. There you would visit a table for each class you wanted to take (or needed to take), and get signed up. When the spaces were filled, the classes were closed. Naturally they couldn't have every student in the school racing around the Arena at the same time, so they opted, just as naturally, to admit us according to alphabetical order. Well, that seemed fair, right? The kids who had been first at everything for their entire lives got first pick. For those of us who had been last our whole lives, Arena Scheduling was an emotional bloodbath. I remember finally just sitting down on the gym floor in exasperation, wanting to cry.

In high school, home rooms were assigned by alphabetical order, too. One year, those of us at the end of the alphabet had Mr. Malloy.

He was an M.

Right in the middle.

"I've read that people whose last names start with letters at the end of the alphabet are usually a little weird," he told us on the first day of school. "Experts say these people develop a complex from always being last."

He chuckled.

Not one of us was chuckling along with him.

I surreptitiously looked around the room. Okay, I admitted to myself, there could be something to this. There could be. With exceptions, of course. I hoped with all my heart that the other kids (who were also stealthily observing their classmates) were considering me one of the exceptions.

This past spring I was substitute teaching a class of second graders. I was leading them through the hall to the cafeteria. They were in "lunch line order."

"You lucky boy," I said to the first child in line. "Your last name starts with A so you'll always get to be first."

His eyes got really big.

"Is that why?"

A big grin spread across his face. He'd been first for three years of public school and he'd never known the reason.

When the new school year starts up, I think I'm going petition that "lunch line order" be redefined to mean alphabetical order from Z to A.

The principal at this school is a T.

He just might go for it.

Stealing Lilacs

2011-06-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

The lilacs have been in bloom over the last few weeks - some of my favorite weeks of the year. They were a little late this year due to a very long winter. Everything's been a few weeks behind. But the lilacs finally bloomed, and I began to drive my family crazy everywhere we went.

"Look at that lilac bush!" I'd exclaim.

"Yup."

"It's huge! Look at all those blossoms!"

"Yup."

"I'd like to steal some of those."

"Yup."

I come by it honestly - the tendency to want to steal lilacs. My mother was a lilac thief for years. We had a lilac tree in our yard but it never got many blossoms on it. She didn't want to cut them because then it wouldn't have any. And besides, there would never be enough to fill up the house.

So she stole them instead.

Up behind the dry cleaners and beside the cranberry bog on Route 28 were some giant lilac bushes. Every year they were loaded with flowers. I'm sure what she took was never missed. And I really don't think whoever owned them would have cared anyway. These bushes were out of the way and I bet most people didn't even know they were there. Possibly whoever owned the property didn't know they were there. My mother would come home and fill vases and place them all around the house. I can still smell them, mixed with the damp salt air, if I close my eyes.

Once when we were teenagers, my cousin Lori and I offered to drive the get-away car for my mother's yearly raid. She put on dark clothes and we waited for the sun to go down. We drove her up to Route 28 and let her off in front of the dry cleaners. She quickly disappeared into some foliage. We made a u-turn and pulled off the side of the road to wait, ready to make a smooth get-away. After a while, she re-emerged. So much for stealth, we thought, as she came trotting across the road, a big white garbage bag over her shoulder, clearly visible, bobbing up and down in the dark. She never would have been successful in the world of serious thieving.

I have had the same luck as my mother in growing my own lilacs. They're kind of sparse. Never enough to really pick. But I've never resorted to theft. I just think about it every year. Especially when I go to church. Beautiful lilacs grow all along the fence of the back parking lot of our church. It's a long fence. I don't think it's as long as a football field. Maybe sixty or seventy yards though. That's a lot of lilacs. Every year I think about putting on dark clothes, waiting till the sun goes down, and sneaking over to the church parking lot. I would take a black garbage bag with me. I confessed this yearly urge to a friend of mine at church one recent Sunday. She was all for it.

"When you think about it, it's really kind of a waste to have all those beautiful lilacs there all week," she said. "We get to enjoy them for a few Sundays and that's it."

But I was saved from the temptation to steal from the church (which would be much worse than stealing from the dry cleaners) by my friend Judy. She grows beautiful lilacs.

"I heard that you love lilacs," she said to me one Sunday at church. "I'm going to bring you some."

And she did. I arranged them in a big vase and set it on the front hall table. They looked beautiful and they smelled so good. I could almost smell the ocean right along with them.

Real Men Paint Fingernails

2011-05-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

I was at a gathering of extended family recently. I walked into the dining room to retrieve something out of my purse.

"Melinda, Brian will paint your nails for you if you want," said my cousin Lori, referring to her husband.

I must have missed something, I thought. They must have been joking around about Brian painting nails before I walked in here.

"No thanks," I responded. "I'd have it all picked off by the time I reach Nephi."

I walked around the table and happened to sit down directly across from Brian.

He was painting his little niece's fingernails.

"Brian really does do nails!" I exclaimed.

I don't know Brian well. I've only met him a couple of times over the years. But I'll tell you what about Brian - he's a manly man. Not in the least bit girly. You can tell that just by looking at him. He has an electrical background and works for a utility company. You just gotta know he drives around in a big pick-up and has maybe even scaled his share of utility poles. Probably loves all kinds of outdoor activities - four wheeling, camping. Maybe he hunts. And he's a big guy. You just wouldn't expect him to be a manicurist.

"So," I asked him, feeling a blog post coming on, "how did you get into the nail business?"

"I started years ago as a way to spend time with my daughters," he told me. Lori and Brian have two girls who have both grown up and left home.

Over the years he's gotten really good at painting nails.

"It's a lot like painting a racing stripe on a car," he told me. "You have to be smooth and steady."

He finished applying a coat of polish to his niece's tiny nails. As they were drying, he pulled open a plastic bag and fished out a nail stamping kit.

"Now, look these over and decide what you want," he told her.

I realized that this was his stuff and that he had traveled from Oregon to Utah with it so that he could do his nieces' nails. I loved this guy.

I had never seen the stamping process before. Brian carefully painted white over a tiny design on an image plate and squeegeed off the excess. Then he took a tiny finger in hand and patiently and precisely rolled it across.

"Do you like that one?" he asked. "It's okay if you don't. We can do it over."

It was perfect. They finished off the job. All the nieces lined up for their turns. Flowers and animal prints seemed to be the fashion of the day.

All the way from Oregon with his nail kit.

These girls love their Uncle Brian.

Don't you?

Senior Style - what was I thinking?

2011-05-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

I'm no fashionista. My favorite thing to wear? Jeans and a t-shirt. Usually the t-shirt is a hand-me-down from my boys. Happy day for me when they all outgrew the mediums.

But since I can't wear jeans and t-shirts everywhere I go, I am occasionally forced to shop for real clothes. I would sooner shove bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails than shop for clothes, but sometimes we just don't get to choose. And then I go shopping.

I try to find clothing that is age-appropriate but somewhat stylish. Fortunately for me, Costco carries great stuff for middle-aged women. And it's cheap and convenient. If I find something I like and it comes in different colors, I buy a few. It's kind of like having a uniform. Thanks to Costco, rarely do I have to torture myself by entering a regular clothing store. And if I do, I've learned to take my daughter along.

Carolyn became fashion conscious about the time she entered junior high. We'd be in a store. I'd hold up a shirt.

"How about this?" I'd ask. "Is this cute?"

"Yeah," she'd answer. "For you," implying that she wouldn't be caught dead in it.

"Well, I would not want to look like a teenager," I'd inform her.

Oh, don't worry - I'd read her mind - you won't.

Once in a while she pays me a real compliment.

"I'd wear that," she'll say in response to a new top I might be wearing.

Makes me feel so stylish!

Recently my Aunt Becky passed away. A bunch of us were visiting as extended family the day before the funeral.

I was wearing a new shirt.

My Aunt Peachy said to me, "I like that shirt. I'd wear that."

Hmm... I thought.

A few minutes later my Aunt Norma told me, "Nice shirt. I'd wear that."

My Aunt Marie said, "I have that same shirt in white."

Well, guess what. I have it in white, too. Naturally, I had bought it in more than one color. But I was too disturbed to own up to this.

I was dressed like my senior citizen aunts!

I mean, don't get me wrong; they all wear cute clothes.

For them.

I should have taken Carolyn shopping with me. What was I thinking?

A little later on a bunch of us were sitting around the dining room table. As it often does in family conversations, the talk turned to who looks like whom. My cousin Greg, one of Aunt Becky's sons, said, "I don't know what it is, but something about Melinda reminds me of my mom today."

"I think it's because I've grown my hair long," I quickly remarked.

But we know that wasn't it.

We know what it was.

It was the shirt.

Please Pass the Grits!

2011-04-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

My mother is a wonderful cook and has taken up Southern cooking since she moved to Florida. During my most recent visit, she made Shrimp and Grits for supper one night. I loved it. I've made it several times now. Sometimes I use asparagus instead of shrimp. It's delicious.

I've also started making Grits and Blackberries. So good. Mmm. I could eat Grits and Blackberries daily. Actually, for the past few days, I have.

Grits are my new favorite comfort food. And they're not bad for you. A one cup serving has 143 calories, less than one gram of fat, three grams of protein, 31 grams of carbs, and you control the sodium completely when you decide how much salt to use when cooking them. They are high in folate, and are a good source of iron, niacin, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin, and vitamin A. I don't recommend quick grits, or even following the directions on a box of regular grits. I think the slower method described in the recipe below, including the sitting and reheating time, makes a big difference. So worth the wait!

Shrimp (or Asparagus) and Grits

1 cup stone ground white grits (I've used yellow grits, too)
5 cups water
salt and freshly ground pepper
2/3 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 T. butter

2 T. olive oil
1 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 of a medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 of a bell pepper, finely chopped (I like red or orange)
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (or however much asparagus you want)
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 T. olive oil
1 T. flour
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 T. fresh lemon juice

Place grits in a medium saucepan. Gradually whisk in five cups of water and 1 tsp. salt. Bring to a simmer, whisking until it begins to thicken. Reduce heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally and scraping bottom and sides with a wooden spoon, for 45 minutes. Cover and remove from heat. Let stand for 30 minutes (or up to an hour).

Heat 2 T. olive oil in a pan. Saute garlic, onion, and bell pepper over medium heat for a couple of minutes. Season shrimp (or asparagus) on both sides with salt and pepper. Raise heat to medium high. Push vegetables to side of pan. Add the extra 1T. olive oil if necessary. Sear shrimp (or asparagus) in a single layer for two minutes. Flip and sear for one minute. Push shrimp to edge of pan. Sprinkle flour in center of pan. Cook, stirring flour into vegetable/shrimp mixture, for two minutes. Add chicken stock. Simmer until sauce thickens, about two minutes. Add lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

Just before serving, reheat grits over medium-low heat. Stir in cheese and butter. Season with salt and pepper. Serve shrimp (or asparagus) over grits. Don't go too heavy on the sauce. In the asparagus picture above, I went a little heavy on the sauce. You don't need that much.

Grits and Blackberries

Follow directions for grits in the above recipe, omitting the cheese and the pepper. Sprinkle blackberries with sugar (you can use an artificial sweetener) and heat in microwave until berries are juicy and hot. Put reheated grits in a bowl. Add a dab of butter if you want. Pour berries and juice over grits.

Easter Coloring Books

2011-04-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

It's Easter time and Easter always makes me think of (among other obviously much more important things) coloring books. When we were little girls, our mother always bought my sister and me new coloring books in the weeks leading up to Easter. They were filled with the outlines of spring flowers, baby animals, and plenty of Easter eggs. We would bring them to life using our box of 64 Crayola Crayons.

I remember the year I learned how to color like a big girl. My sister taught me how to outline. She is eighteen months older than I am and had probably picked up the outlining method at school. I have a memory of the two of us: we're stretched out on our stomachs on the hardwood floor of our upstairs bedroom in our house on Standish Way, each of us with a coloring book in front of us, the big box of crayons in the middle. My concentration level is high as I carefully trace just inside of the black line with my crayon, pressing down to get a nice dark outline. Then I shade lightly to fill in the space. I am so thrilled to know the secret and am proud of my work.

Last weekend my husband was asked to speak at our young niece's baptism. (L.D.S. children are usually baptized at age eight.) He wanted to use a coloring book as an aid in an object lesson.

And it's Easter time! I thought.

We went to Walmart to pick out a coloring book. I chose one with beautiful spring flowers, baby animals, and plenty of Easter eggs.

Kent needed two facing pictures: one colored like an older child would do it, and one like a toddler might do it. As soon as we got home, I went right to work. I got out my 64 Crayola crayons and selected the pictures I would color. I did the toddler picture first. I just scribbled across the page with two colors. ( I have actually seen coloring book pages scribbled in this manner hanging in the MoMA. Really. I think they were from a Winnie the Pooh coloring book.) Then I began the real masterpiece. I carefully selected my colors. I outlined meticulously. I shaded everything in.

Beautiful!

I love to color. Especially in Easter coloring books. I could have filled up the whole book, but I didn't. We gave it to Lora after her baptism, along with some new crayons. I hope she's enjoyed it.

Maybe she's even taught her little sister how to outline.

Old Slippers - New Slippers

2011-04-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

I got some new slippers recently. I ordered them from Avon. Who knew that Avon sold slippers? Anyway, it really was time for a new pair. My husband was threatening to burn my old ones.

“What exactly is it that you hate so much about them?” I asked him one day after my slippers had received a particularly scalding barrage of verbal abuse from him.

“You really want to know?” he asked me.

I assured him rather defensively that I did.

“They look like something an old housewife from back in the day would have worn, along with a bathrobe and hair curlers, when she went out to the mailbox to get the mail.”

I considered this.

“Well, I don’t wear curlers.”

They did look pretty bad. If slippers have lives, theirs were definitely expired. I’m sure I’d been wearing dead slippers for some time.

The problem is that I’m very particular about slippers. My feet are always cold. My slippers have to be very warm. I like polar fleece, and I like the bootie style.

Attractive?

No.

Warm?

Yes.

Hard to find?

Yes.

I finally decided I’d better give up and settle for something else. My new slippers are polar fleece, and they have memory foam in them. They are not the bootie style. They are very shoe-like. They have a pretty thick rubber sole (great for going outside to check the mail) and they feel like shoes when you walk. So much so that one day I got all the way to school and half way across the parking lot before I realized I was wearing them.

I showed my new slippers to my fashion-forward daughter tonight.

“They’re unisex,” I told her.

“Are you sure? They look one-sex to me.”

She didn’t mean women’s.

Well, I like them. They’re warm and comfortable. I’ll probably wear them for a long time - way beyond their natural lives.

I think I’m ready to let go of the old pair.

I’ll tell Kent to go round up some kindling.

Knitting and Crocheting 101

2011-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone out there remember granny square vests? You have to have lived through the late sixties, early seventies to have experienced them.

They were hideous.

I never had one.

Almost all the other little girls back in the day wore them regularly. Big girls, too, I suspect. It seemed like they had one for every day of the week. Did they actually like them? I always thought their mothers must have forced them to wear them so that the grandmothers wouldn’t have hurt feelings. I'm pretty sure it was the grandmothers who crocheted them. I remember discussing granny square vests with my sister when we got a little older. We were both so glad we’d never had a grandmother who crocheted.

Which is why I was so surprised when, back in the early nineties, my sister took up knitting.* She made me a pair of slippers for my birthday.

They were hideous.

Only she didn’t realize it. As soon as I got the wrapping paper off (I hadn’t even identified what they were), I held them up and started laughing uproariously. Hey, I thought it was one of those sisterly gag gifts and that we were going to laugh ourselves silly over it.

“What are they?” I asked, at the same time noticing that I was the only one uproariously laughing.

“They’re slippers,” she answered, very seriously. “I knitted them for you.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, immediately stifling the laughter.

“They’re Cougar blue,” I observed. I couldn’t think of what else to say. They weren’t shaped the same. As slippers, you ask? Right. Or as each other.

But this didn’t stop me. I pulled them on and stood up in them.

“I love them!” I exclaimed, probably overdoing the enthusiasm a little in an attempt to cover my previous social blunder.

They were kind of hard to keep on my feet, but I made sure I wore them for the rest of our visit.

A few weeks ago, I learned how to crochet. I’m an Activity Day leader over the ten and eleven year old girls from church. (See February 2011 post Hershey Kiss Roses.) A neighbor of mine, Kathie, is my partner. We thought it would be a good idea to teach the girls how to crochet. Of course Kathie would have to head this up since I didn’t know how to do it. Kathie would quickly show me first, and then I’d be able to help the girls. She taught us how to chain the first day. The second time we met, we reviewed the chain, and then she taught us how to go back up the chain and make another row. And then another one. And another one. I thought I picked it up quite easily and I managed to help some of the girls to catch on.

At the end of the hour, I had a skinny rectangle. I took my little project home and continued to work on it. It was kind of fun. And it was very satisfying somehow. I loved seeing and feeling the yarn build up and come together in a pattern, simple though it was. I was creating something. Maybe a Barbie blanket. Of course I’d have to get a Barbie. I sat and worked at it for quite a while. It was very therapeutic. It was relaxing and I just wanted to keep going. I could get hooked on this, I thought. (Sorry about the pun.) (Crochet hook?) Only I noticed that the further along I got, the stranger my rectangle was getting. In fact, it was no longer a rectangle. I now had a perfect trapezoid. My row was getting shorter each time I got to the end and turned around to go back. Hmm. So much for Barbie's blanket.

I learned two things from my crocheting experience. I learned that the reason those little girls back in the day had all those granny square vests was because the grandmothers found crocheting therapeutic and satisfying. They just kept making them. I also learned to appreciate the work my sister put into knitting those slippers for me. My Barbie blanket had turned into a Barbie trapezoid. Her slippers had turned into… well, I’m not sure what. But I bet making them was very therapeutic for her. And satisfying.

Maybe I’ll ask Kathie to teach me how to make granny squares. I could make vests for all the little girls in our Activity Day group.

* I called my sister to ask her if she minded if I wrote about her less-than-successful knitting experience. She claims to have no recollection of ever knitting me a pair of slippers. She does remember trying to learn to knit a coat hanger cover at a church group activity when she was a young girl. She says that was the only attempt to knit that she has ever made. But I have a home video that shows the two of us, with me wearing the Cougar blue slippers. Well, that doesn't prove she made them, she says. I think I humiliated her so badly when I laughed that she has blocked the whole experience. I feel terrible. Maybe I should make her a granny square vest to make up for it!

Oysters on the Half Shell

2011-03-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

It's my last day in Florida. My mother and I go out to lunch at a local seafood place. We sit out on the deck overlooking the water. She really wants some oysters, so we order half a dozen as an appetizer.

Raw, on the half shell.

Even though I was raised on seafood, I've never tried raw oysters. My mother reminds me that when my sister and brother and I were just tiny, we'd stand around our dad with our little mouths hanging open as he shucked scallops, just waiting for him to toss one our way. We loved them.

And nowadays, I love sushi.

Raw oysters?

Why not?

I pick up a shell and pierce the slimy blob with my fork. Just as I am about to slide it into my mouth, my mother says, "It tastes just like you're swimming."

It does.

I close my eyes and let it roll around inside my mouth a bit before I chew just a little and swallow.

I could be in the ocean.

I squeeze a little lemon on another one and I'm ready for my next plunge.

Plantains, Pineapple and Star Fruit

2011-03-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

My mother is an excellent cook. Whenever I visit, I can count on gaining a few pounds. In spite of my morning runs, this trip has been no exception. I've been averaging half a pound a day. Good thing I'm not staying long.

My mother is all about food. Good food. We talk about food all the time. We plan ahead, but we never fit it all in by the end of the visit.

"Oh, we didn't get to have the fish tacos," she'll lament the night before I'm leaving.

"Next time," I'll reply. "And the crab claws."

We have had time for the fabulous fruit side dish she makes with plantains and star fruit. She gets the star fruit from her next door neighbor, Nellie.

Nellie has a star fruit tree, but she doesn't care for star fruit. She gives my parents all they want. Star fruit really doesn't have much taste (kind of a mild melon flavor), but it's so pretty to look at when it's sliced.

And apparently it's loaded with Vitamin C and antioxidants.

Plantains, Pineapple and Star Fruit

very ripe plantains

ripe star fruit (golden in color)

pineapple

pineapple juice or orange juice
butter

brown sugar

Peel and slice plantains about 1/4 inch thick. Trim or peel star fruit and slice crossways. Saute plantains and star fruit in about two tablespoons of butter.

Add a tablespoon or two of brown sugar and saute a little longer. Add a can of pineapple chunks with the juice and heat through. If using fresh pineapple, saute it with the other fruit and then add orange juice (or I guess you could buy pineapple juice) and heat through.

Jurassic Park Night

2011-03-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

I'm lying in bed in my parents' guest room. It's dark. The curtains are blowing gently into the room. A sliding door is open to the lanai at the back of the house. Vertical blinds are pulled across, and the slats are softly rattling.

I hear strange sounds outside in the night. I reach over to the bedside table and feel for my cell phone. I compose a text to my son, Kurt.

I hear noises outside in the yard that sound like something out of Jurassic Park. I'm just saying...

I picture in my mind the palm trees, the giant agave plants and other exotic flora that make up the Florida landscape. It even looks like Jurassic Park.

(Insert text alert sound here.)

What dinosaur? The raptor? Is it a hissing with clicks followed by harsh squawks? Or is it more of a deep throated bellow? Like an elephant. That's a t-rex. If it's a very harsh rasp with rattling then it's probably a dilophosaurus, and you'll need to be careful cause they spit blinding venom.

I knew I'd texted the right guy.

I listen intently to the sounds outside the house.

More like the hissing with clicks.

(Text alert.)

Yeah, raptors are swift and lethal. They can open doors and attack in packs. I'd close the door, lock it, and turn off the light. Still, they'll get in if they really want to.

I consider this.

K. Thanks. Will do.

I think of the lanai. It's just a big screened-in room opening off the back of the house. In other words, the back half of the house has mere screens for walls. And roof.

I listen to the sounds of the Florida night and eventually drop off to sleep. I wake up to sunlight and what sound like regular old birds chirping.

I'm just glad I'm still here.

Florida Morning Run

2011-03-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

I lace up my running shoes and head out the front door of my parents’ Florida home. It’s a seventy degree morning in March. I glance up. A fairly strong breeze is pushing some high white clouds along the blue sky at a good clip. Tall straight palm trees are swaying far above me.

The air is damp and I can smell the salt of the nearby ocean. I love how it feels. My middle-aged skin, which has never acclimatized to desert living, is thirsty and greedily sucks up moisture. I imagine I can feel fine lines plumping out and hope to look five years younger by dinnertime.

The grass crunches under my shoes as I cross the lawn. The blades are broad and stiff. I recall a young woman I know who grew up in Florida telling me, “You don’t want to sit around on the grass in Florida, and you don’t want to walk on it barefoot. And you have to watch out for fire ants.”

I reach down to stretch out my ham strings and compulsively scratch my ankles.

“It’s a mile around our block if you take in Roanoke as well,” my mother has informed me. I hit the pavement with a slow jog.

Beautiful things are in bloom in every yard I pass: hibiscus covered in bright pinks, reds and yellows; gorgeous bougainvilleas loaded with magenta blossoms; stands of amaryllis in peach and red. Different things than grow at home. And to think they are blooming in March. I inhale the thick sweet scent of gardenia as I pass a bush that’s loaded with white blossoms.

I see the sign for Roanoke and take a left. I run down one side to where it ends in a cul-de-sac and then back up the other side to the main block. People have all kinds of interesting mailboxes, I notice. I see one in the form of a giant manatee.

Another species that seems to sprout prolifically in the neighborhood is realtor signs. Although I see evidence of a few children in the form of bikes and scooters abandoned in driveways, the area is mostly home to the elderly and “They die, you know,” my mother has told me.

As I run I glance up. Three large brown birds of prey glide in a circle, seeming at times to hang in place on an air current. Have they, too, noticed the For Sale signs?

I round the corner at the far end of the block and behold a lawn absolutely covered in pretty white birds. They’re the size of skinny chickens. They have fairly long legs that hinge backwards and long, pointy, dark orange beaks. I will find out later from my mother what they are. Think “four letter word for wading bird.” That’s right – Ibis. I’ve only ever seen one in a crossword puzzle. They’re pecking away at something in the lawn. Do ibises mean grubs in Florida? I wonder.

On my second time around I meet an older gentleman out for a ride in his golf cart. We wave as we pass in opposite directions.

Three times around.

I notice even more beautiful things growing and blooming – crown of thorns, Mexican petunias, even poinsettias. An elderly couple comes along on bicycles. They’re pedaling so slowly I wonder how they’re staying up.

Four times around.

I glance at my watch. If that was four miles, I’ve set a personal record. I don’t think so. Must have been Senior Citizen miles. They get a discount, you know.

Should I go around again?

Nah, I think, stepping onto my parents’ driveway and startling a gecko into some bushes. I'm on vacation. And besides, it’s about time for breakfast by the pool.

This is the Florida life.

Everything You Need To Know About the Apostrophe in One Simple Lesson

2011-02-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

I have a dream to teach every English-speaking person how to use an apostrophe correctly. Whenever, as a substitute teacher in elementary school, I get a chance to teach children about apostrophes, I tell them “Now you know something that many adults don’t understand. So go home tonight and teach this to your parents.”

I don't mean to sound like I think I'm really smart because I know how to use an apostrophe correctly. I know that it doesn't require a lot of smarts to understand. This is why I want so much to teach it to everybody out there who speaks English. I happened to pay attention in school the day they taught it. Maybe you didn't.

In case you didn't:

Are you intimidated by the tiny speck of ink or pencil lead known as the apostrophe? Do you feel an uncontrollable urge to throw one in before every letter s you write? Just plain unsure so you avoid them all together?

Well, wonder no more! Anyone can become an expert in the correct use of the apostrophe by simply completing the following tutorial. You will be helping me in my quest to rid the world of misplaced apostrophes and you will have increased confidence.

If you already use apostrophes correctly, I think you are wonderful! Read no further. And don’t apply for the certificate at the end of the course. It is intended for beginners only.

Gaining a Basic Understanding of the Apostrophe in Ten Minutes or Less

The apostrophe is used to show possession.

Example: The dog’s bowl is on the kitchen floor.

The apostrophe in the above sentence is placed before the letter s, indicating that the bowl belongs to one dog.

Example: The dogs’ bowl is on the kitchen floor.

The apostrophe in the above sentence is placed after the letter s, indicating that the bowl belongs to more than one dog. The dogs share the bowl.

Example: The dog’s bowls are on the kitchen floor.

The apostrophe in the above sentence is placed before the letter s, indicating that the bowls belong to one dog. There is no apostrophe in the word bowls because it is simply the plural of the word bowl. There is no need to use an apostrophe because nothing belongs to the bowls in the above sentence. (Don’t throw in an apostrophe just because you see the letter s.)

Example: The bowl’s interior had dog food in it.

The apostrophe in the above sentence is placed before the letter s in the word bowl because the interior belongs to the bowl.

There is a lot of confusion about apostrophes and last names. Many families like to display a sign by the front door that tells who occupies the house.

Example: The Smiths

The sign in the above example has no apostrophe. “The Smiths” in this case is short for “The Smiths live here.” The letter s in Smiths indicates that more than one Smith lives in the house.

Example: The Smiths’

In this case, “The Smiths’” is short for “This is the Smiths’ house.” The apostrophe follows the final s in Smiths, indicating that the house belongs to more than one Smith.

Example: The Smith’s

This is what we most commonly see on this kind of a sign. The apostrophe before the final s indicates that the house belongs to one Smith. I suppose if you’re the one who pays the mortgage, and you consider the house to belong only to you, and you want everybody to know that you are the sole owner of your house, the Big Smith… but it seems kind of weird to me.

The apostrophe is also used in contractions.

Example: do not don’t

Here’s (here is) the tricky part:

What is the difference between its and it’s? How do you know when to use an apostrophe?

Maybe you want to show that something belongs to “it.”

Example: The dog licks its bowl.

There is no apostrophe in the above sentence. If you used an apostrophe before the letter s in the word its, it could be mistaken for the contraction for “it is.”

The dog licks it is bowl?

No good.

So we leave it out.

Whenever you’re (you are) wondering if the word “its” should have an apostrophe, ask yourself “Do I mean ‘it is?’” If you answer yes, then you need an apostrophe. If you don’t mean “it is,” don’t use one.

Now take the following quiz and see how you do! Insert apostrophes in the appropriate places. Answers at the end of the post.

1. The girls dress is very pretty. (one girl)

2. The Johnsons live at 225 Sycamore drive. (a whole family of Johnsons)

3. The Johnsons house is at 225 Sycamore Drive. (a whole family of Johnsons)

4. I wouldnt touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole.

5. Lets go to Bettys and eat some peanut brittle.

6. I wonder if its almost morning?

7. There are five Brittanys in the class.

8. The birds feathers are all over the yard. (more than one bird)

9. The cat arches its back whenever the small child is near.

10. The players uniforms are old school. (more than one player)

11. Wont you come home, Bill Bailey?

12. I will go out to eat with the Petersons on Thursdays for the rest of the year.

13. I will go out to eat with the Petersons dogs on Thursdays for the rest of the year.

14. The Thompsons cat is stuck in the tree.

15. The bad guys mask fell off as he was holding up the bank during Fridays storm.

Hopefully this has helped a few people. Now go and teach it to someone else. Help to rid the world of misplaced apostrophes. It’s a worthy cause!

Answers: 1. girl’s 2. no apostrophe 3. Johnsons’ 4. wouldn’t 5. Let’s, Betty’s (implies Betty’s house) 6. it’s 7. no apostrophe 8. birds’ 9. no apostrophe 10. players’ 11. Won’t 12. no apostrophe 13. Petersons’ 14. Thompsons’ 15. guy’s, Friday’s

Scoring: 15 correct – you are an expert! Report your perfect score to me and I’ll e-mail you a certificate. (It could take up to thirty days to receive it.) 10 to14 correct answers – you’re getting there! Less than 10 correct answers – contact me for more tutoring.

Hershey's Kiss Roses - so easy a Cub Scout could do it - maybe!

2011-02-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

My responsibility in the church these days is to do Activity Days with the ten and eleven year old girls. It's like Cub Scouts for girls.

Talk about fun!

Last week we made these adorable roses out of Hershey's Kisses.

I used to be a Cub Scout den leader. What a difference. Don't get me wrong - I loved Cub Scouts. There's just a significant difference in what boys and girls this age are capable of as far as crafts go. I remember another den leader once telling me, "I just go into a craft store and ask for a craft that takes a normal person five minutes to make, and it's perfect for an hour-long den meeting."

The girls had no problem making these roses. They came out really cute.

If you're looking for a fun, easy, inexpensive Valentine for little girls to make for their friends, grandparents or teachers, this might be it.

You will need:

cellophane (red or pink for roses and green for leaves)*
wooden skewers
floral tape
Scotch tape
scissors
paper cutter**
ribbon
Hershey's Kisses

*I bought cello gift bags at Walmart and cut them up.

**Cutting the cello bags with scissors was tricky. The bags were not quite regular cellophane. They were a bit more plastic-like. The paper cutter worked really well.

1. Using the paper cutter, cut the pink or red cellophane into five inch squares and the green cellophane into four inch squares.

2. Roll a small piece of Scotch tape so it is sticky on both sides. Tape the flat sides of two wrapped Kisses together.

3. Carefully stick a skewer into the pointed end of one of the Kisses.

4. Put the pointed end of the other Kiss in the center of a pink or red cellophane square. Wrap the Kisses as if you were putting the wrapper on a Tootsie Pop, twisting paper around the skewer at the base of the Kisses.

5. While holding the twisted cellophane in place, start wrapping the floral tape around the cellophane and skewer. You must stretch the floral tape to make it sticky enough. Wrap tightly. Wrap just down far enough so that it all stays together securely without your holding it, then stop and put it down.

6. Fold a green cellophane square so you have points along the top edge. Do this by bringing a bottom corner up between the two top corners and then folding the whole thing over. It will be cone shaped. This need not be exact. You just need something that looks like greenery to place behind your rose bud.

7. Place your greenery behind your rose bud.

8. Continue to wrap with the floral tape. Rewrap where you already wrapped, incorporating the green cellophane into it all. Be sure to stretch as you go so that the floral tape will stick to itself. And wrap tightly.

9.When the bud and leaves are securely in place, continue to wrap down the length of the skewer. When you get to the bottom, wrap back up a little ways. Cut off floral tape and stretch and smooth the end around the skewer.

10. Tie a ribbon around the stem. Voila!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just Happy To Be Here

2011-01-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

I meant to start a blog long before I actually did back in 2009. The problem? I couldn't think of a name. I finally decided I just needed to start. I'd come up with a name later. So I lamely called it "Melinda's Essays" and composed my first post, intending to rechristen my blog as soon as I could think of something clever. Last week I finally came up with my name. Not exactly clever, but definitely an improvement. Today I changed it.

Same blog.

Better name.

Thanks for reading!

Are You Smarter Than a Sixth Grader? or How to Mummify a Chicken

2011-01-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I substitute taught in sixth grade. It wasn't your average sixth grade class. The members of this class are enrolled in the Accelerated Learning Lab. They belong to the Gifted and Talented segment of our society. They are the kids we already know are going to score exceptionally high on their college boards, rake in all the scholarships, and otherwise attain amazing accomplishments in academia.

I had a very interesting day with them.

It was Friday, so naturally a spelling test was on the schedule.

The teacher had left me a note on her lesson plan:

I'm sorry the words are so unusual. If you need help, I'm sure the students would be happy to assist you with pronunciation and definitions.

Yikes. I quickly read down the list. Phew. I knew them all. Among them were the following words: entrepreneur, microorganism, leviathan, epidermis, and ululate.

I administered the test according to standard spelling test procedure. State the word, use it in a sentence, restate the word. Everything was going fine until I got to ululate.

"UL - yeh - late," I stated.

"YOOL - yeh - late!" they corrected me in chorus.

"Really?" I asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yes! It's YOOL - yeh - late!" they ululated.

I'm not sure I've ever actually heard the word pronounced before (who would use it?), so I let it go.

Am I smarter than a sixth grader? Apparently not these sixth graders.

Their math assignment was to read to themselves the lesson on plotting data on a line graph and complete the exercises that followed. I have taught line graphs to elementary students many times and without fail, half the kids take one look at the data and feel overwhelmed. They refuse to even give it a shot, raise their hands and say, "I don't get it." Not these kids. They eagerly began the assignment and worked in silence for forty minutes, producing beautifully ruled graphs with color-coded keys. Not one of them asked me a single question about the work. Not even when it came to scatter plots. And when math was over, several of them begged to be able to continue.

What I found the most interesting (fascinating actually) during the day was the work these students were doing for their Ancient Egypt unit.

The teacher had left this note on the lesson plan:

Please tell the students that they absolutely may not peek in the mummification chamber.

This was when I found out about the chickens.

The day before, they had begun the process of mummifying chickens. Fryers, I assume. From the grocery store. They had used salt and cinnamon. Maybe other spices as well. I just saw salt boxes and containers of cinnamon on the floor by the teacher's desk.

The chickens were, at this moment, resting peacefully in a couple of long, white, heavy-duty cardboard boxes with sturdy lids fitting down over them. The students were not even tempted to peek.

I was, but I didn't.

Part of their assignment for the day was to design their sarcophagi.

Another note:

Please tell the students that they may not use a shoebox in their design for a sarcophagus as a shoebox will not last underground until May.

"After we design and make our sarcophagi, we're going to transfer the chickens into them and bury them outside," a student informed me. "Then we're going to dig them up at the end of the school year."

Wow. How cool was that? I've always been grateful for my good, average brain, but suddenly I wanted to be a sixth grader in the Accelerated Learning Lab.

When I got home, I went straight for my dictionary. I looked up ululate.

Ha!

The first listed pronunciation was "UL - yeh - late." A second one, "YOOL- yeh - late," was also listed.

I felt so smart.

Almost gifted.

Happy Birthday To Me

2011-01-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. I made myself a cake. I'm sure my daughter would have made one for me had I hinted at it. I'm sure my son, Kurt, would have made me a birthday pie had I asked him to. And I'm sure my husband would have bought me a birthday cake. But I've been planning my cake for almost a month. And they all knew I was planning my cake because I've been talking about it all these weeks.

It began on December 30 down in St. George, Utah. We were in St. George for our daughter's wedding open house. It's a Mormon thing. In our little culture we do the whole wedding thing a little differently. If the groom happens to be from a different place than the bride, he gets his own wedding reception. Only we call it an open house. Except the regular wedding reception that's held where the bride is from is also usually an open house. Only we call it a reception.

Anyway, at Carolyn and Brock's open house in St. George, one of the desserts they served was a vanilla Texas sheet cake. You can make a Texas sheet cake without the cocoa? Who knew? It was frosted with cream cheese frosting and each piece had a big, juicy raspberry on it.

And I loved it.

The next day I started planning my birthday cake. Texas sheet cake is made on a baker's half sheet, otherwise known as a big cookie sheet with one-inch sides. I happen to own two baker's quarter sheets. I decided to bake the cake in those and turn it into a layer cake. Because then I could add a gooey filling.

All along I planned to use marionberry preserves between the layers. Yesterday I bought some at Costco. When I got home, I opened the jar and tasted them. I was disappointed. They had an almost prunish taste. Not at all like marionberry jam I've had in the past. I went to the regular grocery store to look for a different brand. All I could find was raspberry. That would be just as good, I decided.

Somewhere along the line I described the cake I was planning to my sister. She gave me the idea of mixing the jam with marscapone cheese for the filling. So glad I listened to her.

I'd like to share my birthday cake with you. I hope you find an opportunity to enjoy it.

Vanilla Texas Sheet Cake

2 2/3 cups all purpose flour*
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup buttermilk (or use milk with a little vinegar or lemon juice in it)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Prepare two baker's quarter sheets (I'm sure you could use two round cake pans) by spraying with non-stick spray. Line the sprayed pans with parchment paper. Then spray the parchment paper with non-stick spray. Then flour them.

Mix flour and sugar together in large mixer bowl. In a small sauce pan, bring to a boil the margarine, vegetable oil and water. Pour boiling mixture over flour and sugar. Mix well. Add eggs, baking soda, buttermilk and vanilla. Mix well. Divide batter evenly between the two pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Place pans on cooling racks and let cool.

raspberry filling:

1 (22 oz.) bottle seedless raspberry jam
8 oz. marscapone cheese (you might have to look in the specialty cheeses at the grocery store)

Mix jam and cheese together until smooth. This made twice as much as I needed. I'm planning to eat the rest off a spoon throughout the coming week.

cream cheese frosting:

1/2 cup margarine
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 lb. powdered sugar

Mix all ingredients until smooth and creamy. This also made more than I needed. You probably could cut it in half. Or eat it off a spoon throughout the coming week.

Assemble cake with filling between the layers. Frost all over with cream cheese frosting. Garnish with fresh raspberries.

Really, it was everything I dreamed it would be.

* I just made the cake again, but this time I used cake flour. It was even better. To substitute cake flour for all purpose flour, use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour for each cup of all purpose flour. For this recipe, you would use two cups plus four tablespoons cake flour to replace the first two cups of all purpose flour. And for the 2/3 cup that's left you would use 2/3 cup cake flour plus 2/3 of a tablespoon, twice. Right? I'm doing this for you, you know. I already did it once for me, but of course I can't remember what I came up with. Two thirds of a tablespoon happens to be two teaspoons. So that's four teaspoons, or one tablespoon plus one teaspoon. So all together you need 2 2/3 cups plus 5 tablespoons plus one teaspoon of cake flour for this recipe. At least I think so.

Laundry Duty

2011-01-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

Laundry is a lot easier than it used to be. These days, I'm only washing clothes for two. What a huge difference! I make Joel, our sixteen-year-old, wash his own. I still do his sheets or he'd probably never change them. And I do his towels. But I don't wash his clothes.Why didn't I figure this out years ago when I was doing laundry for six? And half of it would come back through the dirty laundry still folded?

I came across this essay I wrote years ago when the kids were still young and I was a slave to the laundry.

One day last winter, my husband decided he was going to do the laundry. I don't mean he decided to put a load of jeans through.

"From now on," he announced, "I'm going to be in charge of all the laundry."

I felt his forehead and checked his pupils. He seemed fine.

All of a sudden, I was free! It was as if the invisible chain that had shackled me to the laundry room all those years had been sawn through. I never went near the washer and dryer anymore. Kent would tell me when we were running low on laundry detergent and I'd buy more. That was as close as I got to the whole process.

And I gave up the guilt. If somebody wasn't going to have clean underwear in the morning, too bad. Not my problem. Go talk to Dad.

And not only did he get the loads through, but he folded everything immediately and got things on hangers as they came out of the dryer. And then he put it all away. I sometimes suspect that he did all this just to show me how to do the job right - to prove that it could be done completely and efficiently. He has been known to give lectures on the proper loading of a dishwasher, too. I've often wondered where he got all his experience. It must have been in a previous life.

One day I was meeting with a group of teenage girls I work with in church. I was telling the other adult leader about Kent's taking on the laundry.

"This must be what it's like for the queen!" I exclaimed. She listened attentively, eyes sparkling as she imagined enviously how it would be to live in such luxury.

"I put my dirty clothes in the hamper and don't think about them again. Then I open my drawers and my closet and POOF! There they are, all clean and ready for me to wear again!"

The teenage girls were giving each other sidelong glances, obviously questioning our sanity.

Then a thought occurred to both of us at the same moment.

"This must be what it's like to be a tenager!" we let out in chorus.

After that I realized that it isn't just the queen and teenagers who enjoy certain luxuries. It's anyone who has a mother or a wife lurking in the background.

I know that dads and teenagers and even younger children are capable of helping out around the house, but isn't there an underlying responsibility that is Mom's? Mom has to see to it that the kids follow through and do a job right. Mom has to nag. If Mom has to nag to get the job done, she isn't exactly going to feel like royalty. I'm pretty sure Queen Elizabeth doesn't have to nag to get the chores done around the palace. And I know that this mom, quite often, just does it herself to avoid a struggle.

And let's face it - how clean can a nine-year-old really get a bathroom anyway?

And as for a dad, he can actually do a great job (although it usually takes a dad about four times as long as it would take a mom), but if he doesn't do it before his wife has to ask him, then it's still her responsibility. Seems like he's doing her a favor. Hmmm.....

Well, it was the best six weeks of my married life. That's how long Kent stuck it out. My parents came to visit, and I don't know if it was a masculinity issue or if Kent was afraid some of my mother's underwear would find its way into his wash loads. Anyway, I'm back in the laundry business these days. I don't always get it folded as it comes out of the dryer, (okay, rarely do I get it folded as it comes out of the dryer) and most mornings we're fishing for socks in the unmated sock basket. Of course, at the same time I'm doing laundry I'm also doing dishes several times a day, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning bathrooms,cooking meals, and helping kids with school work and piano practice.

And nagging.

My friend's husband is a school teacher. He's off all summer and he cooks dinner every night all summer long.

"Beth!" I exclaim. "How is it to have someone call out every night, 'Dinner's ready!' and go in and sit down at the table and have a meal appear before you as if by magic?"

I'm sure my eyes are sparkling as I imagine enviously how it would be to live in such luxury.

I have a sudden revelation.

"That must be what it's like for Kent!"

"Yeah," she brags, leaning back to relax as she awaits the dinner gong. "It's great to be a man."

Note: Looking back, I'm actually really glad for the opportunity I had all those years to be the one in charge of housework. Hey, I got to stay home. I got to be my own boss. (See May 2010 post "Stay-At-Home Mom.) Although when one of the kids fails to load his dishes into the dishwasher, I usually say something like "I don't mind cleaning up after Dad because he earns his keep around here. But the rest of you can forget it!"

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - a great read

2011-01-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

When I pick up a book off the shelf at the library, I read the flap on the inside cover or the description on the back of the book. (Usually I just go for the inside cover since the librarians insist on covering part of the text on the back of the book with obnoxious stickers. It's maddening.) I read what the book is about. If it sounds intriguing, I cross my fingers and proceed to a self-service machine, where I punch in my library card number and check out the book. (My children think it's ridiculous that I have my fourteen digit library card number memorized. Obviously, I'm quite proud of the fact that I do. Enough so that I've worked it into this writing. Any serious library patron has his library card number memorized. Besides, if you have your number memorized, you no longer need your card.) As I make my way home, I think about the delights of sitting down to a new book. Getting lost in a new story. In spite of keeping my fingers crossed the whole way home though, too often I start a book, especially newer fiction, only to put it down so many pages into it after being confronted with really foul language or vivid descriptions of intimacy.

Excuse me?

Who really wants that?

As my friend Laurie says, "Have you ever heard anyone say 'I liked that book, but it didn't have the "f' word in it enough.'"

Last summer I gave my daughter a book for her birthday. I picked it up at Costso and read the back cover. (No librarians at Costco.) It looked like a good read. I bought it, took it home and wrapped it up. As soon as she tore off the paper, she read aloud off the front cover, "A frothy brew of sex and intrigue." "Oooh, thanks, Mom! Looks good!" She hasn't let me forget it.

There are many books that would be just as good - I argue even better - if the authors just left the offensive content out.

Recently, I read a delightful, well-written, fairly new (2009) murder mystery called The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Not one offensive thing in it.

Well, unless you find murder offensive. I happen to enjoy a good fictional murder.

The main character is a very precocious eleven-year-old girl named Flavia De Luce. She lives with her slightly eccentric family in a British manor house that has seen better days. The year is 1950. Flavia is a chemistry prodigy. Her specialty is poisons. After she discovers a dead body in the garden, Flavia is one step ahead of the inspector in charge of the case the whole way through the investigation.

No crude language. No explicit sex scenes. No sex scenes at all, in fact.

And the best part: It's going to be a five book series. I just finished book two: The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Laughed out loud as I read. These books are fabulous. I hope book three will be out soon.

The author, Alan Bradley, is a Canadian man in his seventies. He does an amazing job with Flavia's character. I'm curious to know what his chemistry background is.

So, if you don't mind reading a book without bad language, if you aren't looking for a frothy brew of sex and intrigue, you might try these books. And you just might find the sweetness at the bottom of the pie.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

2010-12-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

Here's one last pumpkin treat to enjoy before Pumpkin Treat Season officially ends on January 2nd. I based this recipe on my friend Kelli's recipe for pumpkin dinner rolls. I replaced most of the white flour with whole wheat flour in order to make myself feel better about all the brown sugar I've added. And the butter. And the cream cheese frosting.

I made these once and when they were gone, we ended up with left over frosting. So I made some more cinnamon rolls. Then the frosting ran out. So I made more frosting for the remaining rolls. Now there are only a few cinnamon rolls left, but half a bowl of frosting. This is getting scary.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

2 cups milk
2 cups canned pumpkin
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 T. yeast (or 2 envelopes)
9 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
melted butter to brush on dough
brown sugar
cinnamon
ginger
ground cloves

for frosting:
8 oz package of cream cheese
1/2 stick of butter
four cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
maybe a little milk

Scald milk. Combine scalded milk, pumpkin, melted butter, sugar, and salt in bowl of mixer. Add yeast and half of flour. Mix thoroughly. Add the rest of the flour and mix for about five minutes. Cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down. Divide dough in half. Roll out dough in a large rectangle. Spread with melted butter. Sprinkle generously with brown sugar. Pretty much cover the dough. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon, ginger and ground cloves. Roll up dough starting on a long side. Cut into rolls with a serrated knife. Place them on a greased cookie sheet, leaving space between each roll. Cover lightly with a clean dish towel and let rise for about twenty minutes. Repeat with other half of dough. Bake at 375 for about 18 minutes. Mix all frosting ingredients together until creamy. Lick beater.

You could add raisins and or pecans to the rolled out dough. Yum.

"Here We Come A Caroling..."

2010-12-23T23:31:00.000-08:00

We have these amazingly talented next-door neighbors. They are very musically gifted. They’re pretty much professionals. They and their extended family and all their friends. Music is what they do. And at Christmas time, they’ve been known to do it in the form of caroling around our neighborhood. Only I’m realizing that they haven’t been around in several years. At least not to our house. And I’m pretty sure I know why.

There was a caroling incident.

One evening during a Christmas season past, Kent and I arrived home from somewhere. Our teenage boys were goofing around, as usual. One of them, (I think it was Kurt) said to another one of them (I’m pretty sure it was Jeff), “Oh yeah? Well, I’m telling Mom what you did to the Petersons tonight.”

“What did he do to the Petersons tonight?” I demanded.

Jeff immediately jumped onto Kurt’s back and tried to stifle him with a hand wrapped around his head, covering his mouth. Kurt probably licked it or something. Maybe tried to bite it.

“You did it, too, Kurt,” he accused, as he fell to the floor with a thud. “It wasn’t just me.”

“WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO TO THE PETERSONS?” I was a little bit nervous by now and when I get nervous, my volume increases. Kent and I have always been good neighbors. Considerate, polite, conscientious. What had these hooligans we call sons done?

“The Petersons came to our door Christmas caroling,” Kurt told us.

“Yeah, and Kurt didn’t want to go to the door,” Jeff was quick to add.

“Neither did you!”

“So what happened?” I demanded, rather impatiently. Was I going to have to be making amends after I heard whatever this was leading up to?

“So they were singing, and we didn’t want to go to the door. It’s so awkward when people sing to you. And Joel came downstairs and was going to get the door, but we stopped him. But I think they heard us. Anyway, we just stood still and tried not to move after that. I know they knew someone was home ‘cause they kept singing. I swear they sang about four songs waiting for someone to come to the door.”

And then Kurt started laughing. And Jeff attacked him again.

“And then Jeff, while they were standing there singing, turned off the porch light!”

Oh my gosh. So they knew someone was definitely home.

I looked at Jeff. He flashed a smile at me. The kind that says, “You’re not really going to get mad at me, are you?”

I shook my head and walked away.

I’ll come right out and say it: Christmas caroling can be awkward. I’m talking about when you are the recipient. It’s awkward in the same way that Happy Birthday is when you’re the one being sung to. You stand there feeling uncomfortable, wondering where you should look, and wearing a goofy smile. But Happy Birthday is relatively short and then you blow out the candles. If you could sing along it would help. But you’re not supposed to sing Happy Birthday to yourself. Nor are you supposed to join in with the carolers. I would never attempt to join in with the Petersons. I’d ruin their beautiful harmony. If I just had something to do while they sang… Maybe wave my arms around in a conducting pattern. As if that wouldn’t embarrass the kids. Maybe I could just tap my foot and nod in time to the music.

Anyway, I’ve missed the caroling. The Petersons haven’t come, and neither has anyone else. Maybe all the other carolers (like the Crafts and their extended family – some other very musically gifted neighbors of ours) heard the word that our family was inhospitable to their kind. But our boys have grown up. Mostly. And I think I’ve matured enough over the years to enjoy the music without feeling awkward.

Please come and carol to us. If you come and sing to us, I promise I won’t look around awkwardly, or wear a goofy smile, or pretend I’m conducting you. I'll be mature. I’ll just enjoy your beautiful talent and spend those few moments feeling the Spirit of Christmas in a way that I realize I've missed.

Santa Claws And Other Creepy Ornaments of Christmas

2010-12-13T16:55:00.000-08:00

I have a Santa-themed Christmas tree. Years ago, I mentioned to my mother that I was thinking about collecting Santa ornaments, and that’s all it took. Every year since then, I have found a new Santa ornament tied onto my Christmas present. Our Santa tree isn’t especially beautiful. When you look at it, you definitely don’t think “department store tree” or anything like that. But it’s not your typical let’s-throw-every-ornament-we’ve-ever-owned-on-it kind of tree, either. I actually really like that kind of tree a lot. With lots of big, colored lights and individual strands of shiny silver icicles. It would be topped with an angel or a star that some kid had made back in the 1940’s. I haven’t actually seen a tree like that in years. That’s the kind of tree that inspires that magical Christmas feeling of childhood, if you ask me.

But somewhere back in the 1980’s or so, beautiful trees became the fashion. I admit that I was caught up in trying to achieve a certain designer-floor-model look throughout the early years of my marriage, but finally concluded that it wasn't my thing. I just don’t have that type of creativity. That’s when I thought of collecting Santa ornaments. And my mother started buying them and sending them to me on my presents. Thanks to her, I have quite a large collection. When you look at our tree as a whole, it’s quite pleasant to behold. I do have some ornaments on it that aren’t Santas, but I mainly stick to red, white, gold and silver. I have several angels that I place high up around the top where, being less secular than Santa, they can be a little closer to Heaven. We have little wooden sleds with our names on them that we painted as a family one year. And there are the Lillian Vernon crocheted snowflakes I bought one year back when I was still attempting to create a beautiful tree. I think they work on this tree. I’d say it’s a passably pretty tree.

Until you get up close.

When you get up close and really start looking, you’ll see several Santa specimens that can only be described as unique.

Or ugly.

Or scary.

Probably the strangest one is the one I call Santa Claw. It’s handcrafted out of an actual lobster claw. Creepy, huh? It gives a whole new feel to the lyrics “You better watch out, you better not cry…”

I also have a Santa Gourd. Santa’s face is hand-painted on a dried gourd.

There’s Santa Star Fish, which actually looks pretty cute until you start thinking about it.

And Santa Milk Weed Pod.

How about Santa Cape?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with New England geography, it’s the shoreline of Cape Cod, where my mother found and purchased these Yuletide treasures. There are some very creative artisans on Cape Cod, and they are represented on my Christmas tree.

I’ll bet everyone I know from New England has a Santa Claw ornament.

If you have one of those family friendly, colored-lights-and-tinsel trees, with ornaments the kids made in elementary school, maybe a chain with links made out of construction paper, and a foil-covered star on top, call me. I’ll come right over and enjoy the nostalgia. And you can come over to our house and I’ll introduce you to Santa Claw. Just remember, “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…”

I hope your Christmas isn’t quite as creepy as ours!

The Black Beast - a perfect holiday dessert

2010-12-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

I got this recipe for a flourless chocolate cake from my mother years ago. It's called La Bete Noir, which translates as The Black Beast. The phrase is used in French to refer to something generally avoided or disliked.Yes, we should generally avoid this dessert. Dislike it? Impossible.

La Bete Noir

makes 16 servings

for the cake:
1 cup water

¾ cup sugar

9 Tablespoons unsalted butter

18 oz. semi-sweet chocolate (I use good chocolate chips)

6 large eggs

for the ganache:

1 cup heavy cream

8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 or 10 inch diameter springform pan. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper cut round to fit. Butter the parchment paper. Wrap three layers of heavy duty aluminum foil around the outside of the pan, bringing foil to top of rim.

Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Melt butter in large saucepan over low heat. Add chocolate and whisk until smooth. Whisk sugar syrup into chocolate mixture. Cool slightly. Add eggs to chocolate mixture and whisk until well-blended. Pour batter into prepared pan. Place cake pan in large roasting pan and add enough water to roasting pan to come half way up the side of the cake pan.

Bake cake until center no longer moves when pan is gently shaken---about 50 minutes. Remove from water pan. Transfer cake pan to cooling rack. Cool completely in pan.

Bring heavy cream to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat. Add chocolate and whisk until smooth. Pour over cake (still in pan). Gently shaketo evenly distribute ganache over top of cake. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours to set ganache. Cover and refrigerate until served. Cut into wedges to serve. To get a clean cut, rinse large knife under hot water after each cut.

At Christmas time, I like to serve it with peppermint whipped cream.
Whip heavy cream until almost ready. Add some powdered sugar. Finish whipping. Fold in crushed candy cane. If you let it sit a while in the fridge, the candy cane dissolves. Stir it up before serving. Put whipped cream in a ziplock bag. Cut off one corner. Squeeze out in dollops onto cake slices. Sprinkle extra crushed candy cane over top.

The rest of the year, it's fabulous with raspberry sauce.

Thaw 2 (10 oz.) pkgs. frozen raspberries. Squeeze out syrup through fine strainer or cheesecloth. Add enough water to make 1 ½ cups. Heat on stove. Mix ¼ cup sugar, 2 Tablespoons cornstarch, and a pinch of salt in small bowl. Add to syrup. Cook until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in ¼ tsp. almond extract (real or imitation).

Merry Christmas!

Personal Hygiene - keeping it in the bathroom

2010-11-28T14:16:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I witnessed something at the Costco gas pumps that I have not been able to forget. A middle-aged woman stood by her car as she waited for her tank to fill and flossed her teeth. Right there in front of all the Costco gas pump patrons and the attendant, she flossed her teeth. Her entire set of teeth. Is this normal? I’ve been thinking about her for years. What kind of person must she be? What might she be doing right now? Wearing a facial mask while she grocery shops? Shaving her legs at the public swimming pool?

I’m a firm believer in keeping one’s personal hygiene in the bathroom. I’m okay with a woman pulling hand lotion out of her purse and using it in public, or reapplying lipstick in the car using the little mirror on the visor. Anything else needs to stay at home.

I have a friend who once told me her pet peeve is people clipping their nails in church. Which means she has actually seen people clipping their nails in church. Who would do that?

I have a young college-aged friend who recently admitted to me that she has washed her hair in a Wal-Mart sink. But she was on a cross-country road trip. Under cross-country-road-trip conditions, I might have been tempted by a Wal-Mart sink, myself.

But all of these examples of public grooming – flossing, nail clipping, hair washing – are nothing compared to what I saw last summer while stopped at a red light. I just happened to look over at the car alongside me, and there was a twenty-something-year-old woman washing her armpits. I’m not sure what she was using. It could have been an actual wash cloth, a moist towelette, a diaper wipe. Whatever it was, she was scrubbing furiously with it. And when she saw that I was looking her way, she quickly stopped and looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I had seen what she was doing or not. I politely turned away. After about five seconds I looked again. She was scrubbing away at the same pit. Again she quickly stopped and looked at me with a worried expression. I politely turned away again, with a big grin on my face. This was getting to be rather fun. I jerked my head back in her direction. Down came the arms. Unfortunately the light turned green and I was forced to give it up. Hopefully she did, too.

I am all in favor of a thorough personal hygiene regimen. I like it when people are clean and well-groomed. I’m glad the woman at the Costco gas pumps has a flossing habit. I just find it odd when people commit acts of personal hygiene in public. Please, floss, clip and scrub regularly, but do it in the privacy of your bathroom!

Please Pass the Gravy - a plan for a stress-free Thanksgiving

2010-11-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I put the Christmas lights up in our backyard. (Yes, we put lights in our backyard. See December24, 2009 post "Christmas Lights.") We usually don't turn them on until the day after Thanksgiving, but after we got them up yesterday, I couldn't bear to unplug them.

"Just tonight," I told Kent. "Then we'll wait till next Friday."

Then, late last night, it began to snow. Christmas lights look so much prettier with snow. Kent had gone to bed. Joel was still out with friends. I was making my Thanksgiving gravy ahead of time. (I got the idea from my friend, Judy. She's a wonderful cook and she has a fabulous recipe blog - afoodieinutah.blogspot.com). With the wonderful smell of roasting turkey filling the house, that unique stillness that only comes when it snows at night, and the glow of colored lights out the family room windows, I was really enjoying a peaceful start to the holiday season. A little soft Christmas music playing in the background, a steaming cup of peppermint tea...

And on Thursday, when the turkey comes out of the oven, I won't have to stress about making the gravy. If I want to, I can make some more, but I won't have to worry about having enough drippings or ending up with lumps. Because right now, I have half a gallon of really good turkey gravy in a Ziplock bag in my freezer.

And as the holiday season starts to pick up and get stressful (our daughter is getting married a week before Christmas), I have last evening to look back on.

Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy

6 turkey wings, drumsticks or thighs (I used thighs)
2 medium onions, peeled and quartered
1 cup water
2 quarts chicken broth, divided
3/4 cup chopped carrot
1/2 tsp. dried thyme (I used sage instead)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Arrange a single layer of turkey pieces in a large roasting pan. Scatter onions over the top. Roast in preheated oven for one hour and fifteen minutes.

Place browned turkey pieces and onions in a 5 quart stockpot. Add the one cup of water to the roasting pan and stir and scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Pour the water into the stockpot. Stir in 6 cups of chicken broth, carrots, and thyme (sage). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for one and a half hours.

Remove turkey pieces from the pot and place on a cutting board. When the pieces are cool, remove skin and discard. Take the meat from the bones and save for another use. (Freezes well.) Strain contents of stockpot through a large strainer into a 3 quart saucepan. Press on the vegetables to remove any remaining liquid. Discards the vegetables and skim the fat off the liquid.

Bring the contents of the pot to a gentle boil.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour into the remaining two cups of broth until smooth. Gradually whisk the flour mixture into the simmering turkey broth. Simmer 3-4 more minutes or until gravy has thickened. Stir in the buttter and pepper. Add more sage (or any seasonings) to taste.

Serve immediately or pour into containers and refrigerate or freeze.

Placemat Totes - part of the "Every Weird Thing..." series*

2010-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

A young friend of mine named Jessie has a really cute tote bag she uses on Sundays to cart her scriptures and other church paraphernalia around in. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes known as Mormons) attend three consecutive hours of church meetings on Sundays. Yes, three hours. Really! First we attend our main church meeting, known as Sacrament Meeting (See February 26, 2010 post "Now Go Sit Down"). It lasts for seventy minutes. Then the adults and youth attend Sunday School classes until the end of the second hour. During the third hour, the women attend Relief Society (see my first ever blogpost "The Visiting Teacher" posted on July 8, 2009) and the men go to Priesthood Meeting. There are youth meetings for ages twelve to eighteen during the last hour, too. The children attend what we call Primary for both the second and third hours. There is also a nursery provided for babies between eighteen months and three years. In order to run all these classes and programs, everyone in the church has a responsibility. Maybe you teach the five-year-olds in Primary. Maybe you're in the presidency of the Sunday School. Maybe your responsibility keeps you busy on a day other than Sunday and you just attend to hear lessons prepared and given by others. Either way, a good L.D.S. church member always has books. And Kleenex. And maybe highlighters. A baggie of Cheerios for a small child. Breath mints. No-doze. (Just kidding - Mormons avoid caffeine.) Anything we might need to sustain us through three hours of church. And my young college-age friend, Jessie, has a really cute tote bag she uses on Sundays to haul all this stuff around in.

"Jessie, I love your bag," I told her one Sunday.

"Thanks. It's made out of a placemat."

Ha! Who'd have thought?

Many months later, I found myself needing to come up with an idea for a homemade gift. My responsibility in the church is in the Relief Society. Occasionally, the Relief Society holds additional meetings during the week. (Because sometimes three hours of church on Sunday is just not enough.) At these meetings we might learn a new skill, be educated on a topic, have a parenting class, go on a field trip to a museum. My job is to coordinate these weeknight meetings. We decided to have, in conjunction with our Annual Soup Dinner, a Homemade Gift Ideas Night. Women could share ideas for homemade gifts, giving help to whatever degree they felt comfortable. They could simply show the item. They could provide an instruction sheet. The could give a link to a website. They could offer personalized instruction to anyone who might want to make their item. As one of the women in charge of this activity, I felt like I needed to come up with an idea.

Jessie's placemat tote bag!

I actually made three of them. It was really easy. I'm pretty sure chimpanzees could be trained to produce these bags.

All you need is a placemat and a yard of grosgrain ribbon. And a sewing machine. If you can sew forward and backward in a straight line, you have the skill necessary to complete this project.

Step one: Fold the placemat in half (the hamburger way). Stitch along the sides. Make sure to backstitch at both ends.

Step two: Flatten the seam allowance open and form corner into a point.

Measure 2 1/2 inches from point and mark with a pencil. Both sides.

Step three: Stitch across from one pencil mark to the other in a straight line, backstitching at beginning and end. Repeat steps two and three on other corner of bag. Turn bag right-side-out. Voila!

Step four: Cut the yard of ribbon in half. Cut a notch out of each of the four ends by folding the ribbon in half ( the hot dog way) and snipping out a triangle. Make sure you snip in the right direction!

Step five: Position ribbon on bag. Stitch a small box-shape to secure in place. Stitch over it three or four times for added strength. Repeat with remaining ribbon ends so that you have two handles on your bag.

Step six: Load up bag and go to church. Don't forget the No-doze. Just Kidding!

*Every Weird Thing You Wanted To Know About Mormons But Were Afraid To Ask Because Then The Missionaries Might Show Up At Your Door

Pumpkin Treats

2010-11-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

Time for pumpkin treats!

Last week I realized that I had yet to enjoy a pumpkin treat this fall. I opened our neighborhood cookbook and found a recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread, submitted by my friend, Jodie. I knew it would be wonderful because all of Jodie's recipes are wonderful. Only one problem: I'd recently recommitted to eating healthy. Maybe we (whomever it is out there I make these commitments to and I) could compromise. How about if I changed the white flour to wheat flour and replaced the shortening with applesauce? And the chocolate chips with raisins? I did, and it was wonderful.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread with Raisins

2/3 cup applesauce
2 2/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 2/3 cups pumpkin
2/3 cup water
3 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
2 cups raisins

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a bundt pan with non-stick spray. In large bowl, mix together applesauce and sugar. Beat well. Stir in eggs, pumpkin and water. Mix flour and other dry ingredients together in another bowl. Add to pumpkin mixture. Mix well. Stir in raisins. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 70 minutes. Bread is done when a toothpick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool for about fifteen minutes, then invert onto a plate.

Okay, how about a couple of not-so-healthy pumpkin treats? I'm not making them this year- I'm only telling about them.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding (also from the neighborhood cookbook - Deniece - another excellent cook)

6 T. dark brown sugar
1 cup raisins
2/3 cup hot water
1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. allspice
pinch of salt
1 (12 oz.) loaf day old bread, cut into 3/4 inch cubes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a bundt pan and sprinkle with the 6 T. dark brown sugar. Set aside on a baking sheet. Place raisins in a small bowl and cover with hot water until plump. (I've made this without the raisins. Still really good.) In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin, eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla, spices, and salt. Toss in the bread cubes and stir gently to evenly coat. Let stand for a few minutes. Fold in the raisins. Put in prepared pan and press down slightly to make level. Bake for about 40 minutes or until custard is set in the center and top is golden. Let cool slightly, invert onto a plate and dust with powdered sugar. Slice and serve. This is my children's favorite fall dessert.
Deniece gives a recipe for macadamia sauce to go with it. I've never made it. I think it's really good as is. I did put caramel sauce on it once and that was really good.

Pumpkin Pie Shake

vanilla ice cream
canned pumpkin
milk
brown sugar
cinnamon
nutmeg
ground cloves
ginger

If your blender works better than mine, put all ingredients in blender and blend. If not, put all ingredients in large bowl and mash with a potato masher. All amounts are to taste.

Never Eat in the Dark - A Cautionary Tale

2010-10-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

It’s almost Halloween. I’ve recently seen recipes for Dead Flies on Rye, Monster Brain Dip, Eyeball Soup, Gorilla Sweat, Bloody Fingers and Body Part Punch. I even saw one for Varicose Veins on a Leaf. Most years I’m okay with these things. I mean, we know what they really are, right? They’re just regular food items that we eat every day. But this year, I’m staying away from these kinds of treats. I had a horrifying Halloween treat type of experience in my basement about a week ago. (Insert shudder here.)

I had been planning to watch a girl movie one evening on our big screen TV in the family room. I've lived with all guys for several years now and I don’t often get to watch what I want to watch. But this was going to be my night. Then our son, Kurt, turned up at the house with a girl. They had plans to watch a movie. A specific movie. They weren’t interested in watching my movie. Kurt graciously suggested that he and his date watch their movie in the basement.

He wanted to take her down to the basement?

“NO!”

I couldn’t let him take her down there. If she went down there, she might never come back up. And then her roommates and family members would surely ask questions. It’s definitely a family-members-only area of the house. It’s a guy kind of place. Joel lives down there. It has a faint smell of boy. There is almost always an assortment of dirty socks and dirty dishes on the floor.I sometimes refer to it as The Pit of Despair. But there was no reason I couldn’t take my movie down there and let Kurt and this young woman watch their movie on the good TV.

I decided to take a little snack down with me. Everybody else eats down there. I might even leave my dishes when I was done and make Joel clean them up later. He’d never know they weren’t his. I got a cereal bowl out of the kitchen cupboard. I poured in some Cheerios, some raisins, and some salted mixed nuts. My own healthy trail mix, right? It was that or ice cream and I'd been trying to make smart food choices.

I descended into the basement with my DVD. I got the movie going, wrapped myself up in a blanket and settled down on the futon. It was surprisingly comfortable. I ate my snack as I watched the movie. The sweetness of the raisins and the saltiness of the nuts – I love a sweet and salty combination. About fifteen minutes into the movie I scooped up the last little bit into my hand and put it in my mouth. I began to chew. I did not get the pleasant sweet and salty sensation I was expecting. Instead, my mouth was flooded with a terrible, horrible taste. I’ve never tasted anything this bad in my life. And that includes olives. I should have spit it out, whatever it was, into the cereal bowl. You would think I would have spit it out. I didn’t though. I kept chewing. I really can’t explain why. I think I thought that if I kept chewing I would have to get to that sweet-and-salty taste. After all, I knew I was eating Cheerios, raisins, and mixed nuts, right? I had filled the bowl myself. I kept chewing. It was horrible. And then…I swallowed. I have no idea what I ate. I was in the basement. I was in The Pit of Despair. Who knows what might have crawled into that bowl while I was watching my movie. In the dark. I had turned all the lights off. I’ll never eat in the dark again. And so much for my attempt at healthy eating; I had to eat a bowl of ice cream after all to try to get the nasty taste out of my mouth.

Four days till Halloween. If I’m offered anything called Worm Burgers or Stuffed Roaches, Black Widow Spider Snack or Bug Guts, I’ll be politely declining.

One Ear at a Time

2010-10-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

I can only hear things with one ear at a time.

I’ve been trying to explain this to my family for years. It has mainly to do with talking on the phone. Actually, with listening on the phone. I’ve never been a big telephone talker. I only call people if I need to tell them something. I tell them and then hang up. If I feel like chatting with someone, I’d rather do it in person. Probably because I talk with my hands. Okay – with my whole body. (I remember being with a group of friends once and one of them saying “Hey, I know! Let’s tie Melinda up and see if she can tell us a story!”) When I’m on the phone with someone, I guess I don’t feel like I can wholly express myself. So I mostly listen.

When I’m holding a phone up to my left ear (I’m left-eared when it comes to phones), and somebody starts yakking into my right ear, I can’t make out what either party is saying. Maybe I’m aurally challenged. Maybe I’m just a little slow. None of the people I live with seem to have this problem. My kids can have loud music playing in one ear and carry on a conversation with the person in the other ear with no problem. If the phone is for my husband and he’s watching a game on TV, he doesn’t even turn it down. Of course I suspect he wants whomever called him to realize he’s in the middle of a game and hang up, but he seems to hear it all just fine.

Maybe because I’m usually listening on the phone, my kids think I’m just holding it there, pretending. Because invariably, when I’m on the phone, my children will start talking to me. I immediately start waving my free hand around as if I’m swatting away a swarm of gnats. I give the kill gesture, the blade of my hand passing against my throat. I make the shush sign. I glare as hard as I can. None of these deter them. They keep talking at me. I have no idea what they’re saying and I have no idea what the person in my left ear is saying. I hurriedly walk to another area of the house, begging the pardon of the person in my left ear. My children follow me. They’re still talking.

Today I was on the phone when Joel got home from school.

“I’M HOME!” he hollered at me in a deep theatrical voice, even though he was only ten feet away from me and could see that the phone was up to my left ear. He gets this from his father. Kent always hollers a greeting of some kind in his loudest voice (and almost always in a foreign language – see January 2010 post “The Foreign Language House”) when he gets home from work.

Kill gesture. Swatting at gnats. Glare. I managed them all at once.

“Oh, Gee. Nice way to greet your son after a long day at school,” Joel chided me. His feelings were hurt.

I think he thought I was just holding the phone up to my ear, pretending again.

After I hung up, I once again tried to explain how I can only hear things with one ear at a time.

“Joel, I just spent twenty minutes E-NUN-CI-AT-ING to a computer, trying to reach a live person who could answer my prescription benefits question. I finally got a living human being on the line just as you burst through the door, all big and loud. What did you want me to do?”

He looked up at me from the chair at the computer desk.

“I wanted you to hang up and give me a hug.”

(Pause)

He held out his open arms.

I gave him a hug.

(Big sigh)

Maybe I could add another motion to my repertoire. Gnat swatting. Kill gesture. Shush sign.

And a hug.

Book Review - Baking Cakes in Kigali

2010-10-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

I just read a wonderful book called Baking Cakes in Kigali. It was written by Gaile Parkin, published in 2009. Ms. Parkin was born in Zambia and has lived and worked in many different African countries. She has written textbooks and children’s books but this is her first novel for adults.

Baking Cakes in Kigali is set in present-day Rwanda. The main character is Angel Tungaraza, a native of Tanzania, who has moved to Kigali with her husband, Pius, and their five grandchildren. Angel runs her own business, baking and decorating cakes for all occasions. She is a “professional somebody” who puts a lot of thought and love into each cake she bakes. As she meets with potential customers, she always serves tea because the choosing of a cake is very important business and mustn’t be rushed. Angel has a way of inspiring confidences. She is a keeper of secrets. Through her encounters with others, we learn about some of the horrible things that haunt this African nation, including genocide and AIDS. Angel is able to help many of her friends with their problems, and by doing so, she is finally able to face up to her own family’s disturbing history.

How can a book be so charmingly written, yet deal with such devastating topics? I think it's a great way to learn a little about another culture. It reminded me a lot of The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series. If Precious and Angel ever met, I’m sure they would become very good friends.

What Was He Thinking???

2010-10-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

One day when my son, Kurt, was about three and a half years old, I took him to a salon in the mall to get his hair cut. One of the girls took him across the room, seated him on a booster, fastened a drape around his neck and began to cut his hair. I sat in the waiting area with six-year-old Carolyn and Baby Jeff. Kurt was quite a gregarious little guy (this was before I scarred him for life - see July 2010 post "Scarred For Life") and although I couldn't hear what he was telling her above the noise of the hair dryers and the voices of the other patrons and stylists, I could see that he was chatting away to this young woman as she clipped. Then there was one of those natural lulls in the conversations around the room that occur every so often (and everyone thinks about Abraham Lincoln), and just then, Kurt turned around in his little booster seat and yelled across the room to me,

"Hey, Mom! Remember the time you cut my ear off?"

Really, I can't remember what my reaction was. Besides the surprise, of course. But I can remember every head in the salon turning to look at me. I have no idea what posessed him to make this claim. I have never cut off any of my children's ears. Or any other body parts. I did cut his hair once or twice when he was really little, but I swear I never even nicked him! Who knows what he was filling this girl's head with up to that point. I wonder if she's still telling this story? And who knows what else!

Baby of the Family or The Case of the Missing Dress Socks

2010-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

Kent and I are down to one child. The other three are technically adults and live away from home. Carolyn is twenty-four, a college graduate, soon to be married. Kurt is home from an L.D.S. mission to Brazil (see January 19, 2010 post The Foreign Language House), lives in an apartment with a bunch of guys, and attends B.Y.U. Jeff is currently serving a mission for the church in Germany.

That leaves Joel, our sixteen-year-old. And he has dreaded this.

"Joel!" I tell him. "It's going to be great! Just the three of us! We'll spoil you!"

"Oh yeah? How?" He knows we've never been indulgent parents. Nobody could ever accuse us of spoiling any of our children in the past.

"Well, we'll go out to eat more often now that there are only three of us, " I tell him.

He'd rather have his brothers in-house to wrestle with. They're at it constantly when they're together. A couple of weeks ago, Kurt came over to the house for a visit. I was working in the kitchen. I opened the pantry door and Joel was in there. He quickly put his finger to his lips before I could scream. I shut the door. He was carrying out a plan to attack Kurt. I don't know how long he was willing to wait in there. I guess he knows that one of the first things Kurt will do upon arrival at the house is look for something to eat.

"And we'll maybe go to a movie once in a while before it gets to the dollar theater!" I tell him.

He'd rather have a live-in ping pong partner. He and Jeff drove us crazy. Sometimes we had to tell them they couldn't play. Did you know ping pong is a violent sport? Jeff is the worst. He's a terrible winner and a terrible loser. He chased Joel and beat him with the paddles after every game.

And Joel misses that.

"Think about Christmas," I tell him. "The grown-up kids won't get as much."

It's no good. He misses his siblings. Even though he now occupies three bedrooms, he misses them. Three bedrooms. Really. This is the way he is being spoiled now that he's the only one left. Forget the dinners out and the movies. Three bedrooms. And not one of them is clean. He basically has a clothing bedroom, a sleeping bedroom and a school books bedroom. Although lately he's been sleeping in the clothing bedroom.

One day last week, Kent was looking for a pair of socks to wear.

"I don't have a single pair of dark socks clean," he told me.

"Well, I just did a dark load the other day." I was quick to defend my homemaking skills.

Then I had a thought. Joel, because he's generally not spoiled, does his own laundry. But he only washes what he needs. The rest stays on the floor in his clothing bedroom. I went in there. I found twenty-four of his father's dark socks around the room. You see, every Sunday morning when he gets dressed for church, Joel goes into our room for a pair of dress socks out of Kent's drawer. Then, when he takes them off, he throws them on the floor of his clothing bedroom. He doesn't wash them because he doesn't need them.One Sunday in a week. Twenty-four socks. That's three months of church socks on the floor of his clothing bedroom. Now when the other boys were living here and each taking a pair of dress socks out of Dad's drawer every Sunday, he never could have gotten away with it for three months.

The other night, while Joel was at basketball practice, Kent and I did a service project for him. We cleaned one of his rooms.

Has this kid got it made or what?

How To Feed A Crowd - cheap and easy

2010-09-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

My husband and I are affiliated with an L.D.S. congregation of college students. (See October 2009 post A Pediatrician's Advice or February 2010 post Now Go Sit Down.) They all live in an apartment complex in Provo, near Brigham Young University. Twenty-six apartments with up to six kids living in each one. We like to have groups of them over for dinner on Sundays. We usually invite two or three apartments at a time. It's a fun way to get to know them better, and many of them like the chance to be in a house now and then. If I had a dollar for every time one of them said "Real carpet!" upon hitting our family room, I'd probably have enough money to pay for a fair amount of the food I serve them. Feeding all these students as well as our own kids (and usually some of their friends) could get expensive. But I've figured out how to feed a crowd, cheap and easy. I've got it down. I make the same meal every week. They seem to love it, and, believe it or not, my family doesn't even get sick of it.

I make a big pot of Lasagna Soup and two pans of homemade foccacia bread. I put out ingredients for make-your-own-salad, including torn up hearts of Romaine, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and green onions. If I happen to have anything else that would be good in a salad, I put it out as well. They can also use the Parmesan cheese that I put out for the soup in their salad if they want. Then I make an easy dessert. Sometimes apple crisp in the Dutch oven, or Texas sheet cake. Maybe cupcakes and let them frost their own. I usually have vanilla ice cream to go along with any of these.

I got the soup recipe from my friend and neighbor, Cherie Peterson. She's an excellent cook. Her family actually calls it Freakin' Good Lasagna Soup. And it is.

Here's the recipe:

1 lb. ground beef

1 small onion, chopped

1 large clove garlic, minced (I actually use garlic-in-a-jar)

1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 (28 oz.) can Italian style petite diced tomatoes

1 tsp. beef bouillon (1 cube - I like the granules because you don’t have to unwrap them.)

3 tsp. chicken bouillon (3 cubes)

4 cups water

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 tablespoon dried basil

crushed red pepper flakes

about 5 lasagna noodles, cooked and cut into bite-sized pieces (a pizza cutter works well)

mozzarella cheese, grated

Parmesan cheese, grated

Ricotta cheese

Heat a little olive oil in a good sized pot. Add onion and garlic and sauté until golden. Add the ground beef and brown it. Drain fat and return ground beef mixture to pot. Add tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, bouillon, water and seasonings. (Adjust seasoning amounts to your taste. I never really measure.) Heat to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Add cooked lasagna noodles. To serve, ladle soup into bowls and top with ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

When I make this for a crowd (maybe twenty people), I triple it and use a whole box of lasagna noodles. Be careful with the crushed red pepper flakes!

So, on to the foccacia bread. It's really easy to make. Really! And so good.

Foccacia Bread

6 cups flour

2 cups warm water

¼ cup oil

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp salt

1 ½ Tbsp yeast (2 single use packets)

6 oz. grated Parmesan cheese

2 Tbsp Italian seasonings

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

Combine 3 cups of the flour, water, oil, 2 tsp. salt, sugar, and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Mix with beaters or dough hook for 5 minutes. Add remaining 3 cups of flour and knead for 5 minutes (by hand or in mixer). In a separate bowl, combine cheese and seasonings. Add ½ of the mixture to the dough and knead it in for 2 more minutes. (Sometimes, I make it to this point the night before, spray the inside of a plastic grocery bag with non-stick spray, toss the ball of dough into the bag, tie the top up and put it in the fridge. The next day I take it out, let it warm up a little and proceed.) Lightly cover the dough with oil place in a bowl, and let rise for 20 minutes. (If you had it in the fridge overnight, skip that. Just start here after the dough has warmed up a little.) Roll the dough out a little bigger than a baker’s half sheet (large cookie sheet with sides---11 x 17). Spray the pan and place the dough in it. The dough will retract a little; make it fit the pan. Spread the olive oil on the dough. Add the last 1/2 tsp. of salt to the cheese mixture. Sprinkle the mixture over the dough. Let rise for 15 – 20 minutes. In the meantime, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Poke the dough gently but firmly enough to leave depressions over the dough’s surface. (If you forget to do this, don’t worry about it! I usually forget.) Bake for 15 minutes, placing aluminum foil lightly over the top for the last five minutes to avoid over-browning. You might need to add a few more minutes of baking time, depending on your oven.

(This bread is really good for sandwiches. Cut in squares and split in half lengthwise.)

I serve this cheap and easy meal most Sundays from September through December. (In January I change it up by making Pasta Alfredo instead of the Lasagna Soup. Maybe in January I'll post that recipe.) If you're in the neighborhood, drop in and join us. What's one more mouth when you're already feeding a crowd?

October 24th update: There is a pasta shaped like little lasagna noodles. It's called campanelle. Target sells it. It's a little cheaper than a box of lasagna noodles, and a lot more convenient to use. Also, I've been making the bread with four cups whole grain wheat flour and two of regular white flour. It's really good and I feel a lot better about eating it. For the students, I make a pan of white and a pan of wheat.

Growing Up

2010-09-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

I just came across this piece I wrote up years ago. I had been asked to speak to a group of young girls from church on the importance of getting an education and preparing for the future or something like that.

I can remember being a very little girl and thinking that growing up was all a big hoax. I'm not kidding! I really didn't believe that my parents had once been children. That they had been born as babies into this world and grown to adulthood was inconceivable to me. Nobody could live that long. The days I knew moved altogether too slowly to make that possible. I truly believed that these two people, my parents, had been put in place on the earth as fully-formed adults, with manufactured histories, for the sole purpose of being my parents. They could tell me all the stories of their childhoods they wanted; I inwardly shook my head and doubted their actuality.

It's no surprise then that I lived my childhood day to day, thinking it would never end. I didn't seriously consider "what I wanted to be when I grew up." I didn't even consider it non-seriously. I thought I'd be a child forever. Well, in spite of what I wanted or believed, the years went by, a few changes occured, and I found myself a teenager. This was okay though. It was a lot of fun. I had fun friends and good times. I was also a good student and I enjoyed learning and I loved to read. But it never crossed my mind that I should be planning ahead. I thought I'd be a teenager forever. College never crossed my mind until my sister, who is just nineteen months older than I am, was filling out college applications. Two years later, I found myself at Brigham Young University.

Boy, was it fun! And the classes were okay, too. But guess what? Two years went by and I still hadn't given much consideration to what I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought I'd be a college student forever. And then all of a sudden, I knew without a doubt, that growing up was no hoax. I had to choose a major and choose one fast. For the first time in my life, I was forced to look ahead. I considered different subjects I could study, and decided I'd like to be a teacher. I went ahead and majored in Elementary Education, thinking it would be fun to work with children. Maybe I would be able to convince some of them that, yes, they would grow up someday. About the same time I decided on a major, I met my future husband. Naturally, the thought of marriage had never entered my mind at any time prior to this. Let alone the thought of someday being a parent. As I continued with my studies, however, I could see how my education would not only prepare me to have a career as a teacher, but the things I was learning I could put to use in raising my own children someday.

Well, I got married and finished my education and eventually we had our first child. The most important thing to me was being a mother. I worked as a substitute teacher until our baby was born, and then I put all my energy and education into raising my children. And the education didn't stop there. I'm a firm believer in continuing education, even in an informal way. I have continued to educate myself through reading, keeping up on what's going on in the world, and taking occasional classes. I am a teacher every day. I pass on my knowledge to my children. I encourage them to learn all they can and to look ahead!

Recently I have started substitute teaching again. My youngest child is in school all day and the schools are short on substitutes. I thought I'd try it out and see how it goes. If it doesn't interfere with my most important job of being a mother, I'll keep it up. I have found that I really enjoy teaching. I feel a sense of satisfaction when I can explain an idea to the kids (either at school or at home) and they get it! It's very rewarding.

I wasn't able to be a child forever. I wasn't able to be a teenager forever. I wasn't able to be a college student forever. But guess what? A mother and a teacher I can be forever.

Chicken on the Bones - with Skin!

2010-09-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

Remember when we used to eat chicken on the bones? With the skin? If for some reason we wanted chicken without bones and skin, we boned and skinned it ourselves. It wasn't the most pleasant task in the kitchen, so we usually just cooked it as was. Then along came conveniently boned and skinned chicken breast halves, individually flash frozen and available for purchase in giant bags at places like Costco, and for a pretty good price. Is it just me or is there something spineless about boneless-skinless? (I really just wanted to say that. I actually love the convience of boneless-skinless chicken breasts.)
Here's a recipe for the world's best chicken. It has to been made with bones and skin intact. I've tried it without. Don't even bother. Really - chicken with bones and skin. Try it. I promise that everyone you serve it to will love it. Young people might want to know what kind of animal it is that comes to the table with bones and skin. Just make something up.

Parmesan Chicken Breasts

6 chicken breast halves with bones and skin
1 cup bread crumbs

2/3 cup Parmesan cheese (just the dried powdered kind in the can)
2 Tablespoons dried parsley
1 Tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
1/2 cup melted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced (I use garlic-in-a-jar)
4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (don't even think about bottled lemon juice - for anything!)
paprika

Combine bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, parsley, salt and pepper. Set aside. Combine melted butter, garlic and lemon juice. Rinse chicken breast halves under cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Dip chicken pieces in butter mixture and then in bread crumb mixture. Place in 9 x 13 pan. Pour extra butter mixture over chicken and sprinkle with paprika. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Let Them Eat Cake

2010-08-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

Actually, I’ve never been a huge fan of cake. I have always preferred gooier desserts. Give me pie or bread pudding or trifle over a piece of cake any day. Unless it’s a particularly gooey piece of cake – maybe it has lots of filling between the layers. Then I’d be happy to indulge.

But recently I’ve had two experiences with cake, one literal and one literary, which are forcing me to reconsider my dessert options. And my breakfast options, too, I’m afraid. And my middle-of-the-afternoon-how-to-fulfill-the-craving options. Late at night…

A friend of mine e-mailed me a recipe for 5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake this summer. It was one of those “I’ll send it to five people, then you send it to five people…” pass alongs that we usually take one look at and that’s the end of it. Oh, if only I had deleted it. Instead, I’ve had chocolate cake every day for the past week. It’s ironic because I’m pretty sure one of the selling points of 5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake is that you’re only making a small amount and therefore won’t have a whole cake to work your way through. You know how we hate to waste things. We’d rather get fat. But now, I’m never more than a few minutes away from hot, gooey chocolate dessert. It’s really gooey. It’s the chocolate chips that make it so. In the recipe I received, the chocolate chips were listed as optional, but they really are a must. The first time I made it I left them out because I didn’t have any. Chocolate chips don’t last long in our house, especially if the bag’s open. The final product was no big deal.

Oh, why didn’t I leave it at that?

I bought some on my next trip to the store. Semi-sweet. Came right home and tried the recipe again.

Oh my goodness.

Don’t do it.

I’m going to print the recipe here just so you’ll know what not to do.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

4 Tablespoons flour

4 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons cocoa

1 egg

3 Tablespoons milk

3 Tablespoons oil

3 Tablespoons chocolate chips

a small splash of vanilla

1 large microwave safe mug

Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla. Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed! Tip cake out onto a plate or eat out of the mug.

I will redeem myself a little by telling you that every time I’ve made it, I’ve shared it with one or sometimes two other people.

And I’ve hidden the chocolate chips in a place they’ll never find them.

I just polished off my second cake experience this summer – Jeanne Ray’s Eat Cake, a delightful novel about a woman who bakes cakes and feeds them to her family in order to alleviate stress. Her husband ends up losing his job and seems to be on the brink of a mid-life crisis, but she steps up her cake baking and saves the day. The book includes recipes for several cakes.

Fortunately they all take longer than five minutes to make.

Bodily Remains

2010-08-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

We were at a family gathering one day a number of years ago. One of our nephews, who shall remain nameless, had recently lost a tooth.

“Did you put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy?” I asked him.

“Nah,” he replied. “I keep my baby teeth and string ‘em on a necklace.”

Whoa! Visions of voodoo and restless natives. But hey – I appreciate creative thinking. And it might be worth forgoing the dollar each time in order to create a piece of personal history – an heirloom that future generations would be sure to fight over: Time to divvy up the worldly possessions. Whoever gets the grand piano must also take the baby tooth necklace. And wear it.

I got a lot of mileage out of it. Whenever the subject of the Tooth Fairy came up, I’d tell about my nephew and his add-a-tooth necklace. I’m a substitute teacher. This always went over really well with the elementary school crowd.

But then one day a couple of years later I asked Mark (Whoops! Sorry, Mark.) how his baby tooth necklace was coming along and he looked at me like I was crazy! He claimed to have no idea what I was talking about.

Had I dreamed the whole thing? What a let down. I’m hoping I at least managed to convince a few grade schoolers to take up the craft.

I’ve read enough old-time novels to know that people used to will their relatives (usually poor, distant relatives who could have used a lot more) a ring made from their hair. Their deceased hair. To remember them by. Makes my ring finger itch just thinking about it.

Recently one of my Facebook friends posted a link to the website of Psyche Cremation Jewelry. Obviously I’m interested in this kind of thing, so I immediately clicked on the link. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. The page was quite intriguing. “Memorialize your loved one in hand blown cremation jewelry.” I especially liked where they asked “What makes Psyche Cremation Jewelry unique?” Does anyone really need to ask this? The small business owner will take the cremated remains of your loved one, be they human or pet, and craft them into a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry. Picture in your mind a pendant, the design of which incorporates the letters in “Uncle Ed.”

“Oh, how sentimentally thoughtful,” a friend remarks to you. “A necklace to remind you of your Uncle Ed.”

“Actually,” you respond, “this necklace is my Uncle Ed.”

Years ago, my grandmother’s husband died. I think he had been both her second and fourth husbands. She had him (them) cremated. His ashes were placed in a receptacle of some kind and given back to her. Somewhere along the timeline of death and funeral arrangements, my aunt and uncle ended up in possession of the remains for a few days. Aunt Norma refused to be left home alone with Ruel’s remains so Uncle Larry put them in the trunk of his car. One evening he had to attend a leadership meeting at the church. It started to go a little long. After a while he excused himself.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got my father-in-law out in the car.”

They all felt terrible that Ruel had been out in the car so long. They plied Uncle Larry with extra refreshments and insisted he leave right away.

Pretty handy, huh?

A few days ago, in the hopes of engaging me in a political discussion, my husband asked me if I thought it should be legal for people to use the art of taxidermy to preserve their dearly departed kin. A taxidermist actually lives in the house behind ours (and it’s only a little bit creepy). I told Kent that even though he might get a good deal on me from the neighbor, I didn’t recommend it. I’ve seen Mrs. Bates in her fruit cellar. She’s not a pretty sight.

Better to go with the jewelry.

"Please Pass the Worcestershire Sauce" - A Guide to Pronunciation

2010-08-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, one of my neighbors called me up.

"I found this recipe I want to try, but I don't have a couple of the ingredients. Do you have any Worcestershire sauce?"

Only she actually said "Wor-ses...Wor-ches...Wor-ses-cher-shy-er sauce."

"Worcestershire sauce?" I flawlessly responded. "Sure. Come on over and get it."

I've been listening to people trip over this word for nearly thirty years - as long as I've lived in the West. In Massachusetts, where I grew up, there is a city called Worcester, named after a place in England. Because we New Englanders grew up knowing how to pronounce this place-name, it's been a lot easier for us. We've always been able to just roll it off our tongues.

And you can, too, after completing this brief tutorial. It's time for everyone to learn how to pronounce the name of this common condiment.

The biggest mistake people make occurs in their division of the word into syllables, a natural technique we use when sounding out words. With this word, you have to think about it a little differently. It seems natural to divide it up like this: Wor-ces-ter-shire. But instead, you need to divide it like this: Worce-ster-shire.

Let's begin with the first syllable: Worce. The first thing you need to do in pronouncing this syllable is to drop the letter r. (Again, we New Englanders have had a leg up. We drop all kinds of r's. We also add them to the ends of words where they don't belong.) Go ahead and try it. It should come out something like this: woos. (oo as in look) Try it again. Woos. There! Very good.

Next syllable. Pretty straight forward: ster. Just like it looks. Actually, in New England, we would drop off the r and say "stah." This won't be necessary.

Now try stringing the two syllables together: woos-ster. You'll notice that when you do, you have two s sounds in a row. Combine them into one. Wooster. It does not rhyme with rooster. Remember, oo as in look. Try it again. Wooster. Very good!

Final syllable: shire. We are not hobbits. We don't live in the Shire. Let's pronounce it like this: sheer. Good!

Now, try it all together: woostersheer. Excellent! Add the sauce and you've got it.

Worcestershire sauce.

I feel so much better. Now, call me up and ask to borrow some. I've got a whole bottle in my pantry.

Scarred For Life

2010-07-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

My son, Kurt, claims that I scarred him for life. As he was growing up , it was nearly impossible to get him to make necessary phone calls, speak to adults he didn't know well, or answer the door if he knew it was a solicitor. It all stems back, he claims, to a bad experience he had as a little boy. Maybe around age eight. And it was all my fault. He claims.

I belonged to a neighborhood book group and it was my turn to choose the book. I chose Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. As the hostess and presenter, it was my responsibility to find out how many copies of the book were available at the public libraries, price the book, and take orders from anyone in the group who wanted to buy their own. I did this, and then ordered the appropriate number of books from a local bookstore. When they came in, I distributed the copies and collected the money from those women who had ordered them. Except for one. I had trouble catching one woman at home. The book sat on my kitchen counter for a couple of weeks. The date for book group was approaching. I needed to get the book to Laura Hughes so she'd have time to read it before our meeting. And besides, the woman owed me money!

I had just returned home from somewhere, and as I had driven past the Hughes's house, I had seen signs of life. I hurried into the house and picked up the book off the counter.

"Kurt!" I called to my son. "I need you to do me a favor, Bud. Take this book over to the Hughes's and tell Sister Hughes* she owes me $7.35." (or however much)

Off he went.

A few minutes later, he returned, still in posession of the book. And he looked a bit upset.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Weren't they home?"

"Yeah, but they didn't want it."

"What do you mean 'they didn't want it?' Did you talk to Sister Hughes?"

"No, Brother Hughes came to the door."

"Did you tell him his wife owes me $7.35?"

"No."

"Well, what did you say?"

"I said, 'My mom's selling these books and they're $7.35. Do you wanna buy one?' and he said 'Aahhh, it looks like a really good book, but I don't think we'd be interested.'"

I could see his ears burning and he was about to cry. He felt humiliated.

Somehow I guess he thought I was trying to bring in a little extra money for the household budget.

"Kurt!" I exploded. "I'm not selling books! She ordered this book and I'm just trying to deliver it!"

I guess I should have taken the time to explain to him what it was all about before I sent him off on my errand. And now I was feeling a little humiliated as well; Jim Hughes was under the impression that I was sending my kids around the neighborhood peddling books!

I took Ethan Frome from Kurt and headed over to the Hughes's. Jim Hughes answered the door. He looked surprised.

I immediately spoke up.

"I'm not selling books door-to-door," I assured him. "Laura ordered this for book group. Would you please give it to her and tell her she owes me $7.35? She can get it to me whenever."

Poor Kurt. We still argue about it.

"It's not my fault!" I tell him. "If you had just said what I told you to say, it never would have happened."

"Mom," he insists, "How could I have known? It sounded to me like you were selling books. I felt so stupid."

Scarred for life.

I don't know. Maybe I should offer to pay for therapy.

*In our church, we call each other Brother or Sister So-And-So. In Utah, since almost everyone is L.D.S., this is what the kids call everyone instead of Mr. or Mrs. Except at school. At school, they say Mr. or Mrs. When I substitute teach for neighbor kids, sometimes they slip up and call me Sister Gassman and then they say "Whoops! I mean Mrs. Gassman!"

Raspberry Chipotle Pork Tenderloin

2010-07-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

This recipe for pork tenderloin is fabulous. They sell Fischer and Wieser Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce at Costco and I found the recipe in a small booklet attached to the neck of the bottle. I also buy the pork tenderloins at Costco. They come in a two-pack, with two tenderloins in each pack. I have made this in the oven several times, but yesterday I grilled it. Inside or outside, you will need a meat thermometer.

1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary
1 T. minced garlic
1 tsp. sea salt
1 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 (about 1 lb. each) pork tenderloins
1 3/4 cups Fischer and Wieser Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce

Heat a gas or charcoal grill to medium heat (350 degrees). Combine the olive oil, rosemary, garlic, sea salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Whisk to blend well. Place the tenderloins on a baking sheet and rub generously all over with the seasoned oil. Place tenderloins on grill and immediately turn down to between medium and low. Shut the lid. Grill until meat reaches a temperature of 145 degrees, turning often as it cooks. While meat is grilling, heat the sauce in a small saucepan on the stove. When meat is done, place it on a platter and cover with aluminum foil. Let sit for ten minutes. Slice meat in 1/2 " to 1 " thick slices and arrange on platter. Pour sauce over meat and serve.

Enter Mrs. Belchamber... by Elizabeth Cadell

2010-07-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I love to read and I’m always asking family members and friends for book suggestions. They always have titles to recommend. The problem is that I don’t write them down. I repeat them very deliberately a couple of times and think my brain will be able to just call them up when I get to the library. Never happens that way. Once in a while I write them down, but do I ever have the paper with me when I get to the library? I almost always end up wandering the aisles, scanning the shelves, picking up and reading the inside cover or the blurb on the back. (However, the blurb on the back almost always has a large sticker over it that prevents you from reading it. Why do the library people do this? It’s maddening.) Actually, wandering the aisles of a bookstore or library is one of my favorite ways to spend time. I’ve discovered some of my favorite books this way, as a child and as an adult.

Several years ago, I came across a book in the large print section of the public library. This was before I even needed large print. I’m so glad I looked. It was called Enter Mrs. Belchamber… by Elizabeth Cadell. It looked kind of fun, so I checked it out. It was a fast and easy read and absolutely delightful. It had the feel of one of those great old-time movies (the book was first published in 1951) and as I read, I was picturing it on the big screen of back-in-the-day. Mrs. Belchamber is an unforgettable character. I won’t even try to describe her. This is a story about a young twenty-something-year-old Englishman who finds himself the legal guardian of three orphaned French children. As they are traveling by train from France to England, the young man and these children encounter the elderly Mrs. Belchamber. She attaches herself to their party, and, for reasons of her own, refuses to budge. It’s a sweet, simple story. It’s humorous and romantic, and maybe a little cheesy in some of the dialogue between a couple of the characters. But it’s a lot of fun. It's nothing literary, and you're not going to learn a thing from reading it. It's purely for entertainment. And the entertainment is refreshingly pure.

Elizabeth Cadell (aka Harriet Ainsworth) lived from 1903 to 1989. She was British, born in India. She wrote 52 light-hearted, humorous novels with a romantic bent. This is the only one I’ve read.

Elizabeth Cadell

I now own a copy of Enter Mrs. Belchamber... If you feel like something simple, light, and pleasant, come over and borrow it.

Homemade Ice Cream

2010-07-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

A lot of people make homemade ice cream in the summertime. When I was growing up, we always made it on the Fourth of July. We had an old fashioned hand-crank ice cream freezer. Sometimes we'd fuss about having to crank, and our mother always told us that hand-cranked was so much better than what you got from the electric kind. My mother would prepare the base and pour it into the metal canister. She'd get the freezer all set up on the driveway or in the garage and layer the ice and the rock salt between the wooden bucket and the canister, and attach the crank mechanism across the top. Then she'd call to all of us kids.

"If you don't crank, you don't eat!"

That was the rule. There were always cousins and friends around. The smallest of us would crank first, when the work was easiest. Easy but tedious. As the mixture began to freeze, the dasher had a harder time moving through it, and the cranking became more difficult. By the end, the adults would take over and finish it up. We never ate it until night time, after the fireworks. We'd all walk down to the beach just before dark and claim a spot either on the sand or on the footbridge. The fireworks were set off out over Lewis Bay. It seems like as many years as not it was too foggy to see them. But we still oohed and aahed as we listened to the cracks and booms. Then we'd walk back up to the house and have ice cream. Maybe the fireworks were sometimes disappointing, but the ice cream was always fabulous.

As soon as we'd all grown up and moved away, my mother bought herself not one, but two electric ice cream freezers. Electric? We all thought she'd sold out. But we didn't mind that she had two of them. Married kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors and friends continued to show up for fireworks and ice cream for many years. My mother would start making batches of ice cream a couple of weeks ahead of the holiday, pack it in containers and keep it in the freezer. Her specialities were lemon and raspberry.

Lemon ice cream, you ask? Yes. It's my favorite.

Okay, so some people will have a problem with these recipes because they contain uncooked eggs. Here are my feelings about it. How many of us eat cookie dough before we bake it? I do. And I love to lick the beaters when making a cake. Raw eggs don't make us sick. In order to get sick from raw eggs, three things have to happen. First of all, the chickens have to be sick. Secondly, the eggs that the sick chickens lay have to be contaminated by chicken manure. And then the bacteria has to get from the shell into whatever you're making when you crack the egg. The chances of this happening are very slim. It's a risk I've always been willing to take. Maybe because I grew up occasionally eating things containing raw egg and I never got sick. My boys make smoothies and throw in an egg or two for the protein. Never been sick. I imagine I'll change my mind once it happens, but for now, I'm living on the edge.

If you are worried, you could still use these recipes and before freezing them, heat the mixture on the stove until it's hot enough to kill anything. Stir constantly. Then you'd probably want to strain it before freezing to remove any little pieces of egg that might have cooked. You would also need to chill the mixture really well before freezing it. Your final product would probably taste a little custardy, but i'm sure it would still be yummy.

Or, you could live on the edge.

My Mom's Lemon Ice Cream (makes one gallon)

1 1/2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups sugar
2 cups light Karo syrup (corn syrup)
5 cups whole milk
1 quart heavy cream
4 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Whisk together eggs, sugar,and Karo syrup in a large bowl. Whisk in lemon juice. Then stir in milk, cream, vanilla, and salt. Freeze in ice cream freezer according to manufacturer's directions.

My Mom's Raspberry Ice Cream (makes 5 quarts)

6 cups fresh raspberries

2 cups sugar

2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 eggs, lightly beaten

2 1/4 cups sugar

3 3/4 cups whole milk

3 cups heavy cream

3 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/3 tsp. salt ( I don't have one either - more than 1/4 and less than 1/2)

Puree raspberries, 2 cups sugar, and lemon juice in blender. Strain through a fine sieve or layers of cheese cloth to remove seeds. Whisk together eggs and 2 1/4 cups sugar in a large bowl. Whisk in raspberry puree. Stir in milk, cream, vanilla, and salt. Freeze in ice cream freezer according to manufacturer's directions.

Peach or Strawberry Ice Cream (makes about 6 quarts - maybe a little more)

8 eggs, lightly beaten
2 2/3 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
8 cups cream*
fresh strawberries or fresh peaches
1 more cup sugar, or maybe two

This is my recipe, so naturally I have no idea how much sugar or fruit I actually use in it. Taste the mixture before you freeze it. If you need more, add more.The amount of fruit doesn't really matter too much. The more you put in, the fruitier it will taste and the more it will make. Cut up the fruit and toss it in a bowl with the cup of sugar (or more - probably more). Then mash it up with a potato masher. Mashed fruit is better than whole chunks. Whole chunks of fruit tend to be icy in the final product. Whisk together eggs and 2 2/3 cups sugar. Add mashed fruit. Stir in cream and vanilla. Freeze in ice cream freezer according to manufacturer's directions.

*If you wanted to, you could use whole milk for part of the cream.

Fast Sunday: part of the "Every Weird Thing..." series*

2010-07-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

In our church, the first Sunday of every month is known as “Fast Sunday.” Many people, especially my kids, ironically consider it to be the slowest Sunday of the month. During this twenty-four hour period, we go without food or drink for two consecutive meals. We then donate the money we would have spent on those meals (and usually more) to the Fast Offering fund of the church. The church uses that money to aid the needy, locally and around the world. While fasting, we pray for the poor, that their needs might be met. We also use this time to pray for help with specific problems that we or our family members or friends may be facing, the idea being that fasting aids in bringing us closer to the Spirit of the Lord. When we fast, we show our Heavenly Father that we are willing to sacrifice in order to receive His divine assistance in our lives and in the lives of others.

Our main Sunday meeting is called Sacrament Meeting (See February 26, 2010 post “now go sit down”), however on Fast Sunday, we refer to it as Fast and Testimony Meeting. Rather than have assigned speakers for this meeting, members of the congregation are given the opportunity to come forward and share their testimonies of the Gospel with everyone present. Many of the women who do this get quite emotional. And my kids can tell you exactly which ones they are. When they see certain women stand and walk up the aisle to get to the podium during Fast and Testimony Meeting, they’ll lean toward the family member seated next to them and make a bet about how soon the woman will cry:

“Two sentences.”

Or

"Six words.”

Or

“Before she even starts.”

Hey, women get emotional. And maybe we feel the Spirit more strongly than guys do. We’re definitely more sensitive, as a rule, than men are. So there.

Another common occurrence on Fast Sunday is the naming and blessing of new babies, known in other churches as Christening. In other churches, this ordinance is performed by the priest or minister, and sometimes includes a baptism. In our church, all worthy men are ordained to the Priesthood, and therefore, are able to name and bless their own children. This is generally done at the beginning of Fast and Testimony Meeting, before the Sacrament is passed to the congregation and before the time is turned to the congregation for the bearing of testimonies. The father (or another worthy Priesthood holder) carries the baby to the front of the chapel. He is accompanied by male relatives and friends (also worthy Priesthood holders) who have been invited to participate in the ordinance. They stand in a circle. The father holds the baby out on his two hands in the center of the circle. Each of the men places a hand under the infant for added support. The father then offers a special prayer during which he names the child and pronounces a blessing upon the child that will help him or her throughout this life. During the blessing, an odd thing almost always occurs. It has nothing to do with the ordinance, and is not an official part of Mormon doctrine. The men invariably start rhythmically bouncing the baby up and down on their outstretched hands. This may have started out as a way to calm an upset infant, because naturally some babies cry during the procedure. But I’ve always wondered if sometimes it’s why the baby cries. Sometimes I get this silly picture in my head of a circle of men, each holding onto the edge of a receiving blanket, tossing the baby repeatedly high into the air of a big top.

A few months ago, some neighbors of ours named and blessed their new baby in Fast and Testimony Meeting. The dad carried little baby Esther to the front of the chapel. The male relatives and friends also went forward to form the circle. I was too far back in the congregation to see how soon the bouncing began, but fairly soon, Esther started crying. Actually, crying is an understatement. Esther wailed. Wailed might be too mild a term to use in this instance as well, but I can’t think of another word right now. Screamed? Esther screamed through the whole thing. Toward the end of the blessing, the dad included something like, “And we hope that someday you’ll be able to look back on this day with fonder feelings than you’re having right now.” I thought it was great. Why shouldn’t she cry? I, of course, was picturing the big top.

Later in the morning, as we were waiting for Sunday School to begin, I was talking to Esther’s mother.

“That was a beautiful blessing,” I told her. "And I loved that she screamed through the whole thing,” I added sincerely. She looked at me kind of funny for just a second. Then we talked about other things, and she went to sit in another part of the room where she had set her belongings. After a minute, she got back up and came over to me.

“You know, while I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting,” she told me, “I caught a glimpse of you and I thought ‘Melinda probably thinks it’s great that Esther screamed the whole time. And that it didn’t matter or ruin it or anything.’”

How disturbing, I thought, that someone has figured out the inner-workings of my mind.

Esther’s fine. Like all those other women in Fast and Testimony Meeting, she was just feeling the Spirit.

* Every Weird Thing You Wanted To Know About Mormons But Were Afraid To Ask Because Then The Missionaries Might Show Up At Your Door

Robin's Egg Blue: A Bedtime Story

2010-06-28T23:06:00.000-07:00

One afternoon in late spring, a woman was working in her yard. She had just finished turning the dirt in the flowerbed along her back fence in preparation for planting. She sat back on the grass and spread out her seed packets. She had decided to grow a pumpkin patch across the southeast corner because she thought pumpkin vines were beautiful. She had seeds for several varieties of pumpkins including Cinderella, Amish Pie, and Halloween in Paris. Along the back fence, she would plant several varieties of winter squash because she loved winter squash. She had seed packets for banana squash, Hubbard squash, butternut squash, and spaghetti squash. She would use most of them to make delicious pies and cookies and breads and soups. Butternut squash soup was one of her favorite winter treats. The spaghetti squash she would just bake in its peel, scrape out the long strands with a fork, and eat them in a big heap with butter and Parmesan cheese, just like spaghetti.

She also had seeds for ornamental gourds. The name on the packet was “Little Guys Mix,” and it showed pictures of oddly shaped gourds in beautiful shades of autumn colors. She had never grown gourds before. She was hoping to harvest enough in the fall to make a decorative pile in the center of her big round red kitchen table.

The customary method of growing pumpkins and squash is in hills, with two to three seeds planted in each one. The woman worked her way down the fence line, mounding the dark, freshly-tilled soil of the flowerbed into small hills with her garden trowel and pushing the seeds an inch or so into the dirt with her finger.

When she was almost to the end of the flowerbed and only had room for a few more hills, she saw something on the dirt. It was a tiny blue egg. It was a robin’s egg. If you have ever seen a robin’s egg, you know exactly what kind of blue it was. Robins’ eggs are a unique and very beautiful shade of blue. Not very often do we see other things that are quite this same color. When we do, we call them robin’s egg blue.

The woman was surprised to find the tiny bird egg, especially in this particular spot, because the closest tree was across the yard quite a distance. She turned and looked up at the tall, straight maple, scanning the branches for a nest, and then looked back at the egg. There was a crack in the underside of the shell where it had hit the ground, and a clear liquid had begun to seep out into the earth. The woman mourned for the little life that wouldn’t be. She reverently scooped the egg onto the trowel and carried it to where she had left off her planting. She put the beautiful, broken egg down, carefully mounded dirt over it and gently patted with her hands. Then she pressed in three seeds from the Little Guys Mix. She finished the last of the hills and gave the whole area a thorough watering with her garden hose.

Spring turned into summer and the seeds benefited from the warm sunshine and plenty of water. Soon they began to sprout and put out leaves, pushing them up above the soil of their little hills. The woman was pleased to see them, greeted them, and welcomed them to her yard. The weeks went by and the little plants thrived. Their leaves got big and their vines crept across the dirt. The woman tended to them every day. She pulled out weeds and cultivated the soil. She watered and fertilized. And as the vines grew longer, she encouraged them to climb the fence.

Large, yellow, papery blossoms began to appear on the vines. One day, as she was watering the southeast corner, she spotted a tiny dark green fruit that was a pumpkin, forming where a blossom had begun to wither. She looked more closely and saw another. The pumpkin patch looked beautiful and the little pumpkins got a little larger each day. Soon squash and gourds were forming as well, hanging from their vines along the fence, but they were mostly hidden by the large green foliage.

The woman enjoyed looking for the oddly shaped gourds. It was something like an Easter egg hunt. She peeked under leaves and discovered wonderful designs. Some gourds were dark green and covered with warts. Some were smooth and off-white and a little rounder than an egg. Some were pear shaped and striped with lemon and cream. One gourd had a dark green bulb-shaped bottom and a long thin neck. Halfway up the long thin neck the color abruptly changed to golden yellow, as if someone had dipped it just so far into a bowl of dye.

The woman loved her garden and continued to take good care of it. Toward the end of summer, the leaves began to fail. They began to turn the color of straw and dry up. As the leaves died back, the woman noticed squash and pumpkins and gourds that she hadn’t seen before. The dark green pumpkins were streaked with orange, and continued to turn as the nights grew cooler. The vines hardened and became brittle.

One crisp, clear afternoon in the fall, the woman got her wheelbarrow from the tool shed and wheeled it over to the southeast corner. It was time to harvest the pumpkins. As she picked each one, she placed it in the wheelbarrow. There were Cinderellas and Amish pies, and Halloween in Paris. Some were big and some were small. Some were smooth and some had deep ridges running from top to bottom all the way around like pumpkins in coloring books have. She wheeled them through the gate to her front yard and placed them all around on her front porch.

Next she harvested the squash. As she picked them, she thought about her favorite recipe for banana squash pie and imagined she could smell the nutmeg and the cinnamon. She would put these in her cool, dark basement where they would keep for several months.

Finally, it was time to pick the gourds. It was late afternoon by now and the sun was beginning to set. The sky was a deep blue and the grass was beginning to feel cool under the woman’s feet. She had a basket hanging on her left arm as she carefully separated the gourds from their dried up vines with a small pair of garden shears. She placed each gourd carefully in the basket. As she searched among the decayed foliage, she was surprised at how many she found. Every time she thought she had picked the last of them, another one showed up.

As she was making a final check under some dried up leaves, she caught sight of one more gourd. Only it wasn’t quite like the others. It was one of the smooth, slightly-rounder-than-an-egg types, but instead of the usual off-white color of this variety, it was a beautiful shade of blue. It was robin’s egg blue. The woman reached her hand out and cupped it. It felt smooth and warm from the sun. She placed the shears around the vine a few inches above the top, and just as she managed to make the cut, she noticed the soft downy feel on each side under her thumb and her little finger, like feathers. She looked down at the blue, almost egg-shaped gourd in her hand. At that instant, small wings emerged where she felt the feathers. The wings began to flutter wildly in her hand. It startled the woman, and she tossed the gourd up and away from her. Then she watched as the fledgling first struggled, then managed to stay aloft. It rose up higher and higher in the sky and got smaller and smaller. She watched it until robin’s egg blue faded into sky blue and it was gone from her sight. She stared up at the darkening sky for quite a while. Then she took her basket of Little Guys Mix and she went into her house.

The End

Bobwhite! Poor Bobwhite!

2010-06-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

I’m descended from the Eastern Quail, nicknamed the bobwhite, after the conspicuous call it makes: bobwhite! poor bobwhite! My grandfather was Bob White. My father is Bob White. In our family, we all learned to whistle like a bobwhite before we could speak in full sentences. We were raised amid a huge covey of quail, ranging from small statuary to printed renditions on cocktail napkins. Quail where everywhere in our home as well as in my grandparents’ home. My grandfather had a sign made that spanned the space above his garage door. It read “Quail Haven.” It certainly was. My grandmother even had twelve place settings of fine quail china, along with every obscure serving piece the company manufactured.

My grandmother and mother were both really good sports about the whole quail thing. More than good sports, actually. They encouraged it. This was back in the day when, not only was it customary for a woman to take her husband’s last name upon marriage, but his first name as well. My mother and grandmother were both known as Mrs. Robert White for many years. They were bobwhites, too.

Naturally, when my parents produced the family heir, they named him Bob White, III. (Insert birdcall here.) Eventually, this littlest bobwhite grew up and found himself a mate. Julie is a modern woman. Although she consented to take his last name, I doubt very much she’s ever considered herself a quail. They have one child, our niece, Rachel. Not Roberta or Little Bobbi White. In fact, my brother insists that had she been a boy, she would not have been Robert White, IV.

I’m afraid our line of the Eastern Bobwhite Quail is dying out.

Out West, where I live, we don’t have bobwhites. People don’t even seem to know about them. One time when my mother was here for a visit, she and I were looking around in a boutique. My mother saw a little quail figurine on a shelf.

“Maybe I should buy this,” she said. Then, turning to the sales girl she proudly announced, “I’m married to Bob White.” It was like she’d said “I’m married to Brad Pitt,” only the girl had never heard of Brad Pitt.

“Mom,” I jumped in. “They don’t know about that here.” Then of course I felt like I had to fill the poor girl in on the whole bobwhite thing. I'm pretty sure I even whistled for her. She was very patient and acted like she got it.

No bobwhites here, but we do have their cousins, the California Quail. These are the ones that sport the little fishing lure on the tops of their heads. They moved into our neighborhood about a year ago. They run all over the place. They also have a very distinct call. Two of them, in fact. The first one sounds like they’re crying “Chicago! Chicago!” It also sounds just like my husband’s airless paint sprayer. The second one sounds like they’re calling “Kurt!” It drives my son, Kurt, crazy. He’s really spooked. He’s been out of the country for the past two years so this is the first time he’s heard them.

“I always think they’re calling me,” he says, looking around warily. “It’s creepy. And they want me to move to Chicago.”

My mother has the quail dishes now, and wonders what will become of them after she’s gone. Bob and Julie think they’re hideous, so they don’t want them. I think her only hope of keeping them in the family is if Kurt marries an old fashioned girl and they move to Chicago.

Welcome Wagon Meets Battle of the Barn Swallows

2010-06-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

We live in a really friendly neighborhood. It was a really friendly neighborhood seventeen years ago when we moved in. Even before we moved in, when we drove on the neighborhood streets, people waved to us from their yards. They didn't even know us yet.

We're a very welcoming bunch. There's a new young family on the corner of our cul de sac.

"We love the neighborhood," said Jamey, the mom, to me one day shortly after they moved in. "Everybody's been so nice. People leave treats on the doorstep day and night. My parents can't believe it. Every time the doorbell rings, I call my mom and say 'Guess what we just got!'"

Another young family has recently moved into the house right next door to us. It was previously inhabited by a woman from Iran. She was a very nice neighbor. She used to bring me homemade hummus, candied orange peel, pistachio cookies flavored with rose water, and other Persian delights. But unfortunately Jamileh extended the neighborhood welcome mat a little too far. Apparently in Iran, it's considered lucky to have birds roosting on your house. Some local barn swallows caught wind of this and showed up a few years ago. With Jamileh's encouragement, they built their nest of mud and sticks on the brick face of her covered porch, just above the front door. They've returned and rebuilt each year and have raised several broods of young barn swallows.

I'm afraid barn swallows aren't a good fit in our neighborhood. They're not exactly friendly. If you tresspass on what they consider their domain, which very selfishly includes all the front yards in our cul de sac (our front yards -is it really possible to tresspass on your own property?), they dive at you. It's quite intimidating. Hitchcockian, in fact. Even teenagers are terrified of them. I think one of our neighbor boys is permanently traumatized. He's had some run-ins with Jamileh's barn swallows in past years. Literal run-ins. Last summer he was afraid to leave his house. And he's a big strong athlete. He's on the basketball team. If word gets over to the high school of Weston running through our front yards with his hands over his head shrieking like a girl, his senior year could be a wash.

The new owners of the house next door arrived this spring about the same time as the barn swallows. As the Davies Family was busy settling in, the barn swallows were busy spackling the brick above the front door with mud for their new nest.

Weston's mom, Beth, whose house is on the other side of this one, gave the new neighbors a quick lesson in Iranian culture.

"You're not superstitous, are you?" she asked. They weren't. Amie, the mom, had already been on the Internet, looking for ideas on how to humanely evict the would-be tennants. She'd come up with Saran-wrapping the brick and hanging a tangle of fishing line over the construction site. Word has it that barn swallows are freaked out by fishing line. Beth offered to help.

They knocked down the most recent application of mud and covered the spot with plastic wrap. The birds, after much angry swooping and diving, simply moved their efforts over a little bit. Beth created an apparatus out of fishing line and paint stirrers, and helped Amie hang it. Eventually, they Saran-Wrapped the entire porch. After a few days of aggressive battling on both sides, the birds gave up.

On Sunday morning, as I was leaving for church, I saw Beth and her daughter, Callie, on their own front porch. They were hanging fishing line and strings of beads in the vicinity of their front door. Ha!

We live in a very friendly neighborhood. We don't care what color your skin is. We don't care if you have an accent that is different than ours. We don't care what religion you are. Liberal? That's okay. We just won't discuss politics. And generally, we don't care if you have pointy beaks and feathers. But if you try to trap our teenagers in the house with us all summer, we're going to do our best to drive you out.

By the way, Beth succeeded in discouraging the barn swallows from taking up residency on her porch.

This morning as I stepped out on my own porch, a barn swallow swooped at my head. I immediately retalliated by knocking down the mud and getting out the plastic wrap. I'm sure Beth and Amie will help me if I need them to.

This is a great neighborhood.

Stay-At-Home Mom

2010-05-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I had a nice long hot shower. I even took the time to shave both legs. I got dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and then “got ready” for the day. “Get ready” in female speak means put on make-up and do your hair. This morning as I was going through the make-up portion of my beauty regimen (which I’ve never been very good at), I wondered if I had put enough on.

Ha! I remembered. Doesn’t matter! I’m not going to work today.

Then it was time to do my hair. I didn’t even bother to use the hand mirror and view the back of my head.

Who cares? I thought.

When I do go to work, I’m a substitute teacher in elementary school. I love subbing. It’s like playing school and it’s always my turn to be the teacher. This year I took on a couple of long-term jobs. I covered the maternity leaves of two different third grade teachers. I just finished the second one a few days ago. I loved both jobs. The classes were small and the kids were wonderful. We had a lot of fun together and hopefully I managed to actually teach them a few things.

But I’ve missed my freedom. And I’ve really fallen behind at home. How do all you real working women do it? Kent and the boys have been pitching in more than usual while I’ve been on these full-time jobs. I’ve been really glad for the extra help. Someone even changed a roll of toilet paper last week. He put it on backwards (paper coming from the back) and I haven’t even switched it around. And when they don’t fold the bath towels the right way (first in fourths, then in thirds and stacked in the same direction so that they look nice on the shelves), I’m just glad someone else folded them. And when they unload the dishwasher and put things away in the wrong place (even though they’ve lived here as long as I have), I don’t even care. These things usually drive me nuts.

I’ve been really lucky to have been able to stay at home with my kids during the past twenty-four years. (Twenty-four years? I’m kidding, right?) Actually, it’s been part luck and part sacrifice. We don’t have a ton of money, but it’s been enough. We’ve always had what we needed and then some. We’re not “stuff” people. I don’t even like stuff. (See March 12, 2010 post “Just get Rid of It!”) And fortunately we’re not expensive car people. (See February 15, 2010 post “Dream Car.”) We’ve got everything we want.

Well, almost everything. I covet my friend Judy’s oven. It has a gas cook top and a double oven – one regular and one convection. My oven door doesn’t close all the way. But it works fine. If I’m roasting a turkey or something, I duct tape the door shut so we can eat at a decent hour. But other than that, I can’t complain.

Except about the washing machine. We have a front-loading washer. I don’t like it. I feel like we’ve been walking around in dirty clothes for the past five years, but hey, nobody seems to notice.

Sometimes I feel bad for my husband who drives his little old pick-up everywhere he goes. He says he doesn’t mind, but he is a man. He probably secretly dreams of driving something with a little more paint on the hood.

If I had a real job, I’ve often thought, Kent could drive a little bit nicer car. If I had a real job, we could go ahead and finish the basement. If I had a real job, we could take another trip to Europe this year.

But if I had a real job, I wouldn’t have had time to make Joel French toast for breakfast this morning. (Mom, how come you never make me French toast or pancakes anymore?)If I had a real job, I wouldn’t have been able to baby-sit my neighbor’s one-year-old while she helped out in the kindergarten class today. And if I had a real job, I wouldn’t have been able to go to Florida for two weeks last month when my father had open-heart surgery.

Yes, I admit it. As the kids have gotten older, there’s a lot more down time. But I can fill a lot of it with substitute teaching and still have my freedom. I can always say no. No, I have an appointment today. No, I’m way behind on laundry. No, I want to make my son French toast for breakfast and then have time to do the dishes.

And I like being my own boss. I decide what I’m going to do each day. Bathrooms or laundry? Mopping or yard work? Reorganize closets or wash the car? Or maybe spend the day reading a good book or hiking in the canyon and catch up on everything later. I get to do what I want, when I want.

Some people think stay-at-home moms are oppressed. I felt much more oppressed as I worked fulltime. At home once again, I feel liberated. Another salary in the family couldn’t buy this kind of freedom.

Rhubarb Season

2010-05-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

It's rhubarb season. I love rhubarb. Raspberry rhubarb pie, rhubarb crisp, strawberry rhubarb jam. My mother makes a rhubarb sauce for ice cream. Yum. Rhubarb is expensive to buy in the grocery store, so for years I've been getting it from my father-in-law. I finally planted some in the backyard last year but it died. Something ate it right out of the ground. It was a huge disappointment. I was really hoping to have my own supply. Did you know you can freeze it? (I shouldn't have told you because now you won't want to share your surplus with me.) Wash it and cut it up in 1/2 to 1 inch segments, toss it in a Ziplock freezer bag and put it in the freezer. I'm going to try again to grow my own. I'd love to be able to fill my freezer with it and make rhubarb desserts all year round. Just what I need...

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

(I never really measure when I make this. And you don't need to either. And if you don't have tapioca, you can use a tablespoon or so of cornstarch mixed into a little cold water for the thickener.)

4 cups rhubarb pieces (about ½ inch long)

4 cups sliced strawberries

1 cup sugar

Mix together in a large bowl and let stand for a little while.

3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca

¼ teaspoon salt

Add to fruit and mix well. Pour fruit mixture into a 9 x 13 pan.

1 cup flour

1 cup brown sugar

¼ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup butter

1 cup oatmeal

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

Mix together above ingredients, cutting in butter until mixture is evenly crumbly. Put on top of the fruit. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

I served this to a group of college students recently. Afterwards, one young man approached me.
"Okay, so what exactly is rhubarb?" he asked. "Because it looked like celery. I was a little nervous, but it was really good!"

My father-in-law still talks about the rhubarb pie his grandmother used to make. Last summer I got the recipe from his sister and gave it a try. It was delicious. Since I never knew my husband's great-grandmother, I'm calling it after Aunt Marc.

Aunt Marc’s Rhubarb Pie

3 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup sugar

2 egg yolks (save whites for meringue)

2 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons flour

Mix egg yolks, butter, flour, and sugar. Add rhubarb and mix together. Put in a pie crust. (I like Marie Callender’s frozen pie crusts. I used to make my own. Not anymore.) Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 350. Bake for 30 more minutes.

Whip egg whites with ¼ cup sugar and ¼ tsp. cream of tartar until stiff. Spread on baked pie and bake for 6 to 8 more minutes, until meringue is golden.

My neighbor, Beth, recently discovered a rhubarb pie recipe that has the egg whites folded right into the filling. Somehow it forms a delicious meringue-like top crust. She gave me a piece. Actually, she gave me four pieces, thinking I'd share with my family. I did. But it was hard.

Band-aids

2010-05-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of substitute teaching this year. Lately I've been on a long-term assignment in a third grade classroom. These particular kids absolutely love Band-aids. They want one every time they get a bump or a sratch. I finally had to explain to them my mother's rule about Band-aids and then strictly enforce it. It reminded me of this essay I wrote many years ago.

When I was a little girl, I stubbed my toes a lot. And like most kids, I skinned my elbows and knees frequently. The first thing I'd do after one of these mishaps was check for blood. If it was bleeding, I'd run right into the house and claim my Band-aid. My mother had a hard fast rule about Band-aids. There had to be blood in order to qualify for one.

Our cousin, Joy, would sometimes come and stay with us in the summer for a week at a time. She was older than we were. She had two months on my sister, who had nineteen months on me. And she had a knowledge of the world that amazed us. We'd follow her around for days, listening intently to her stories. We were fascinated. The things she had done and the places she'd been. Sometimes I'd be skeptical of the doings she'd relate to us, but then I'd remember the Band-aids. This was a girl who truly had daring.

We'd be out playing and Joy would hurt herself somehow. She'd gather herself up and head into the house where she'd confidently help herself to the Band-aids, even when there was no blood at all. My sister and I would exchange nervous glances, wondering what our mother would do if she walked in. Joy would just prattle on while applying the Band-aids (one was usually not enough), exploiting her thorough knowledge of first aid the whole time. We told her often of our mother's rule about Band-aids, and I noticed that her "hurts" were usually located under a sleeve or a pant leg. At the end of the week, she'd return to her home wearing a boxful of Band-aids of assorted shapes and sizes, artfully concealed under her clothing. In time, one of us would qualify for a Band-aid and our mother would discover a box stuffed with empty wrappers.
"Who's been wasting the Band-aids?" she'd holler.
"Joy did it!" we'd cry, tearfully defending ourselves.

I remember buying my first box of Band-aids as a mom when our first child was about a year old. I had plans to strictly regulate them as my mother had before me. Surprisingly, I found this wasn't necessary as all of our children were born with an unnatural fear of Band-aids.

One time when our two oldest children were small, we were attending a play group at a neighbor's house. My daughter fell and cut her knee. It bled. She came to me, crying. I took her into the kitchen where I proceded to wet a paper towel and apply it to the wound. Concerned mothers gathered to express their regrets to Carolyn.
"Poor little thing," they cooed as she bawled.
"She'll be all right," I assured them, "as long a nobody says..."
I had been about the spell the word Band-aid when suddenly our hostess appeared, waving the unmentionable item in the air before us.
"The poor little darling needs a Band-aid!" she exclaimed. I braced myself for what I knew was to come. Carolyn quickly upgraded her crying to hysterics. Her baby brother chose that moment to toddle into the room and, hearing me try to explain (over the shrill screams of his sister) about my children's strange aversion to Band-aids, and seeing for himself the aforementioned accursed article, he too began to shriek uncontrollably. Of course this triggered a chain reaction and soon more babies and toddlers were joining the chorus. Feeling embarrassed that we had caused such chaos, and fearing that somehow we had come across as ungrateful for the offer of a Band-aid (and just wanting to get my screaming kids out of there), I hurriedly scooped up both kids and our diaper bag and headed for the front door. The other mothers were busy trying to calm all the children we had upset. I tried to shout my thanks and an apology to our hostess over all the noise, although I'm not sure she heard me. As I glanced over my shoulder on the way out, she was still standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding the Band-aid between thumb and forefinger, gazing at it with a bewildered look on her face.

My sister and I still sometimes discuss resentfully how Joy used to waste our Band-aids. I've still got that first box I bought when our daughter was small. Maybe I'll send it to Joy.

Pasta with Cauliflower Ragu

2010-05-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

So I got home late last night from a two-week trip to Florida. I spent the day in recovery-mode. I wasn’t personally recovering from anything; I was helping the house to recover. The guys did a pretty admirable job while I was gone this time. My son Joel called me a few days ago to tell me that he had just used Formula 409 on the countertops. I was impressed. Last month I left town for a week and they never once washed the kitchen table. This time I even came home to clean bathrooms. Wow! But as any mother out there knows, what the guys call clean isn’t always what we call clean. I put on my favorite Jack Johnson CD and got to work. Before I knew it, it was late afternoon and I hadn’t yet made it to the grocery store. The guys had started out heating up things like frozen Buffalo wings and chimichangas from Costco for dinner, but as the days passed, they either ran out or got sick of it. They’d been surviving on cold cereal for several days. I needed to cook up a nice, healthy meal for them. I looked in the fridge. Not much, but there was a head of cauliflower I had bought before I left that still actually looked good. And earlier in the day, as I had been polishing furniture, I had picked up the latest Reader’s Digest and flipped through it. I had seen a recipe for Pennette with Cauliflower Ragu. I had been intrigued because it calls for the entire head of cauliflower, including the leaves, the core, and the stalks. Who knew you could eat the whole thing? We always have pasta on hand, and I had grated Parmesan in the freezer. Hmm… With just a few changes, I could make this work.

I did make it work, and it was delicious. (I didn’t tell them about the leaves, the core and the stalks.) Now it’s time to tackle the laundry.

Pasta with Cauliflower Ragu

1 medium cauliflower

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium red onion, chopped small

1½ tsp chopped garlic

sea salt

1½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

a little more olive oil

Kosher salt

1 lb. penne pasta*

¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese

½ cup coarse, fresh bread crumbs, sautéed in 1 T olive oil until golden**

1 tsp Italian seasoning***

Cut the cauliflower in half. Remove the leaves and cut out the core. Reserve the leaves and the core. Cut cauliflower into small florets, reserving the stalks. Chop up the core, the leaves and the stalks. Heat the ¼ cup olive oil in a large pan. Add the garlic, chopped onion, and the chopped core, leaves and stalks. Season with sea salt and cook over medium heat for about three minutes. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring frequently, for about twenty minutes. Add florets, crushed red pepper flakes and 1 cup of water. Bring to a simmer over medium high heat, then turn down heat to a medium simmer and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, for twenty to twenty-five minutes longer. In the meantime, heat water for pasta. Add Kosher salt to water. Cook pasta until al dente. Reserve some of the water as you drain the pasta. When the cauliflower ragu is done, add some extra olive oil and season to taste with sea salt. Remove from heat. Add pasta and about ½ cup of the reserved pasta water to the ragu. Stir (over low heat) to coat the pasta. Stir in the Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning. Top with bread crumbs and serve.

*I cooked whole grain pasta for myself and white pasta for everybody else.

**I put a couple of slices of whole grain bread (don't tell) in the toaster and then crumbled them up. I heated 1 T olive oil in a skillet, added the bread crumbs and tossed them around until they were crispy.

***The original recipe called for minced fresh rosemary. I didn’t have any or I would have used it instead of the dried Italian seasoning.

Humidity - Fountain of Youth or Just Another Bad Hair Day?

2010-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in a waiting area in a hospital in Miami, trying to read a book. But really I'm listening to one side of a cell phone conversation. A young man, probably in his late twenties, is telling a friend all about his recent trip West with his parents. They'd been in Las Vegas and to the Grand Canyon.

"Dude, if you ever get the chance to go to Vegas, do it. Dude, it's amazing."

He talks about the glassbottomed skywalk that goes out over a tiny part of the Grand Canyon.

"Dude, I was freaking walking on glass right above the Grand Canyon."

And he also mentioned the dry air.

"And Dude, there's no humidity in the air."

I've been thinking a lot about humidity since I've been here in Florida. I've been feeling a lot of humidity since I've been here in Florida. I grew up in a humid climate and I've been having flashbacks to my childhood: towels that never dry completely between showers or trips to the beach, sheets that are slightly damp when you slip between them at night. I don't think I really knew what dry was until I moved to the desert.

But I'll say one thing for humidity - it's great for my skin. Within two hours of getting off the plane, the alligator skin on my shins was gone. Gone! Here in Florida, I always feel like I've been recently dipped in a really good brand of lotion. I'm convinced that I look five years younger here than I do at home. No wonder Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth in Florida.

But my hair looks terrible. Ugh. And it takes me longer to dry it here because of the humidity. I straighten the curly part with a gigantic round brush and then add volume to the straight part using the same gigantic round brush. And within five minutes of finally completing this task, the straightened parts are going curly and the voluminized parts are flat against my scalp. In Utah, after completing this process, my hair can still look pretty good four or five days later! I know, that's gross. But try camping in the mountains with no hot water and no place to plug in a hair dryer.

"Dude," the young man tells his friend (and he sounds like Bill Murray in "What About Bob?" when Anna invites him to go sailing on her friend George's boat and he says "It makes my lips numb to think about it."), "My lips feel like they're, like, burned up."

Yeah, I think, but I bet your hair looked great.

Lost In Miami - Not!

2010-04-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

During the past year, my parents moved from New England to Florida, where my father promptly suffered a massive heart attack and landed in a hospital in Miami for by-pass surgery. Knowing that our mother is not exactly (big understatement) directionally gifted (she's never gotten anywhere on the first try), and would never be able to get back and forth between home and the hospital by herself without a lot of worry, my sister flew from Virginia to be with our parents.

My sister has never been lost in her life. She has a built-in compass. She's also one of those uber-practical people which probably helps a lot. It wouldn't be practical, for example, to be thinking about that family visiting their elderly mother in the hospital room closest to the sitting area on the eighth floor, and wondering how the daughter-in-law ever managed to get into those pants, let alone zip them up, when you were driving in an unfamiliar city. What would she have on tomorrow? And which one of them got stuck with the baked potato chips for lunch? My sister would only be thinking of turning the right way as she exited the parking garage and getting onto the on-ramp without wasting any time. My mother was in good hands. Marcia stayed for a week, and then our brother took over for a few days.

He's a guy. Even if he did get lost, well, you know... (He'd never admit it.) And Mom would never know the difference. She'd be busy thinking about several other things, especially since someone else was driving.

Next it was my turn.

"Be careful and watch her if she drives anywhere," Marcia warned me. "Sometimes she goes the wrong way."

I waited, thinking she was going to add something like "and ends up driving into the canal that runs through the neighborhood."

But she didn't.

"Oh!" I finally responded. "You're kidding! Goes the wrong way?"

So I found myself in Florida for my shift. I would need to drive my mother to Miami to visit my dad every day. It's a four hour round trip. My siblings had confidence in me. At least they pretended they did. I was prepared to banish all superfluous thoughts from my brain and encourage my mom to do the same in case I needed her help navigating. We could only afford to think of one thing at a time, and unfortunately it had to be the road ahead of us.

Or so I thought.

My parents have a G.P.S. in their car. I've never used one. I live in Utah - a huge, living coordinate plane. Everything is laid out on a grid. Every address is an ordered pair. The mountains serve as a compass rose, and you can see for miles and miles in every direction. Even I can get anywhere I need to go.

So we set the G.P.S. for the hospital and off we go.

My mother starts saying things like "She'll tell us to take the Federal Highway to Cove Road." At first I think she's talking about my sister, but soon it becomes clear that she isn't.

"Marcia went another way, but She'll want us to get on I-95 further down." I realize who She is and that She merits capitalization. My mother is refering to the G.P.S.

"It's not a she," I tell her. "It's an it."

"Well, I know, but it's a woman's voice," she insists.

"Mom," I say. "It's a computer."

But the closer we get to Miami, the more I slip up.

"She said to keep right in point seven miles," I tell my mother as she hangs up her cell phone from talking to my dad. By now I'm picturing Her as a glorious ship's head out in front of the car. I'm thinking about my driving with the left side of my brain, but indulging the right side as well. I'm imagining Her with long red hair flowing out behind Her, strong, confident facial features, seashells with cleavage... What does she do when she's off duty? Family? Probably a daughter named Marcia.

My mom and I love Her. She allows us to think about as many things as we want all the way to the hospital.

Unfortunately we leave Her in the glove compartment when we go inside. We would have liked to have taken Her to lunch. My mother and Marcia had been to an Au Bon Pain near the hospital one day the previous week, but naturally Mom can't remember how to get there. She calls Marcia for directions as we stand outside the hospital entrance. Marcia gives them to her from memory. Naturally.

"Okay, thanks!" Mom tells her and hangs up the phone. Without missing a beat she turns to a tall, capable-looking nurse with beautiful brown skin, a friendly smile and blue scrubs who has just exited the hospital.

"Excuse me," my mother says. (She loves to talk to total strangers.) "Do you know where Au Bon Pain is?"

This friendly, capable woman starts to give us directions, then insists "Just follow me. I'll take you there!"

When we get back into the car to go home that evening, I find I have a new mental image of Her: tall, capable-looking, blue scrubs, beautiful brown skin and a friendly smile.

We ask Her to take us home.

She does.

The Art of Gift Giving... And Receiving

2010-04-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

Ever notice how we tend to give people things that we like as gifts? We think something is great, and we’re just sure that the recipient of our gift will be equally excited about it? I know I’ve been guilty of this. And so has my husband. He loves containers with lids. It was one of the first things I realized about him after we were married. One year for Christmas, I got a set of Rubbermaid containers for the kitchen. I made sure that never happened again. Every year, while we’re out shopping for the kids, I pick up a set of them for him.

“Pretend you didn’t see those!” I tell him. “They’re your Christmas present.” And every year he loves them. We have so many plastic containers floating around inside our kitchen cabinets. It’s really hard to keep them organized. Lids everywhere. Every so often I take a bunch and put them in the basement or donate them to Deseret Industries.

A few months ago Kent gave me a watch for my birthday. He loves watches. He buys himself watches all the time. Well, not all the time. I should be fair, so let’s say “fairly often.” I’m not sure how many he has. Probably not as many as it seems like to me. But he does have quite a collection.

“Do you want your present now or tonight?” he asked me on the morning of my birthday. I could tell he was excited. I was a little nervous. My daughter says I’m a terrible gift-getter.

“You never like what Dad gives you,” she accuses me every Christmas. “You always end up returning it.”

Really, that’s only happened once or twice.

Three times at the most.

“How about now?” I said. He disappeared upstairs, and then returned with a beautifully wrapped gift.

“Happy birthday,” he told me and handed it to me. I took the gift nervously, avoiding his eyes as I thanked him. Looks a little too big for jewelry, I thought with relief. Sometimes he buys me jewelry. Not because he likes jewelry. I think it’s because jewelry is easy. I know I’m not an easy person to buy for. Okay, I admit it: I am a terrible gift-getter. As you are about to see. There’s not a lot I want. I’d rather he saved the money. And I really don’t wear jewelry. I wear earrings, but that’s it. I haven’t even worn my wedding ring in over sixteen years. And I only wore it sporadically before that. I think I have a little bit of claustrophobia or some related phobia; if my fingers swell up the least bit and I can’t slide the ring off easily, I get panicky. I like to tell people I don’t wear my wedding ring because it makes me feel trapped. Kent doesn’t appreciate this. I think it’s funny.

I slowly pulled the paper off, revealing a beautiful, shiny black lacquered box. With a lid.

I gasped, and then

“A box with a lid!”

“Open it,” he insisted after rolling his eyes. He’s a good sport about his obsession.

I opened the lid and I’m sure my face fell. It was a watch. I knew he sensed my disappointment.

“A watch,” I said lamely.

“Yeah, I remembered hearing you talk recently about wearing a watch,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic after my poor reaction.

Yes, I thought. I think what I had said was something like “Nobody wears watches anymore. They’re becoming obsolete because everyone just looks at their cell phones.” I didn’t say this aloud.

“It’s beautiful,” I exclaimed, and it really was, but I knew I was too late.

“It’s a really nice watch,” he told me. “And I got a good deal on it,” he assured me, knowing I worry about cost.

I felt terrible about my reaction for the rest of the day.

I have very small wrists so I had to get the watch sized. I took it to Precision Time in the mall. I secretly hoped they wouldn’t be able to take out enough links to make it small enough for me. (That had happened once years ago, before I decided that wearing a watch made me feel trapped, too.) Then we could return the watch and it wouldn’t be my fault, right?

“Oh, we can definitely make it small enough,” the girl assured me. “By the way, this is a very nice watch.”

Oh? I thought. It was beautiful. Just what I would pick out if I were ever inclined to wear a watch.

“You don’t think he spent a lot of money on it, do you?” I asked the girl as she worked with her tiny tools.

“He probably spent quite a bit,” she told me.

Suddenly, I had this strange feeling come over me. I wanted to wear the watch. I didn’t want to return it. I hoped it wouldn’t make me feel trapped.

I must be turning into a real girl, I thought. One who likes expensive presents.

So what kind of a person does this make me? I wondered guiltily.

I don’t think it was because I found out it was a really nice watch that I suddenly wanted it. I think I realized that I liked it because Kent did. He had picked it out and bought it for me. It was beautiful. He loves watches. I could share his enthusiasm for watches enough to love this one and wear it for him. And guess what? I’ve loved my watch. I wear it almost every day. I don’t have to dig my cell phone out of my purse every time I need to know what time it is. And I feel so grown up wearing it. It’s not too tight, but not loose enough to slip all the way around to the wrong side of my wrist. And besides, it has a really quick release mechanism if I start to feel, well, you know.

I’m actually looking forward to Mothers’ Day.

No pressure, Kent.

It's Spring!

2010-03-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

I saw a forsythia bush in bloom today. I thought I'd post this essay I wrote several years ago. My family is starting to get nervous. Anytime now I might try to pack them into the car for a drive.

“What a glorious day!” I exclaim for the fourth time in less than an hour. Springtime is here. Blue sky, sunshine, warm days. Although it’s usually impossible for me to decide on a favorite anything (book, movie, dessert), I can easily say that spring is my favorite season. And I say it a lot.

“Just feel that sunshine,” I order anyone who happens to be outside with me. “Isn’t it fabulous?” My eyes are closed, my face tilted upward, my arms outstretched. It’s almost a religious posture.

The grass is getting greener every day. Crocuses and daffodils are blooming. I have purple and pink hyacinths by my front door. At least once a day I get down on my hands and knees, awkwardly lean out over the flower bed and drink in some of their smell.

And any moment now the forsythia is going to burst open. I love forsythia. (My kids are rolling their eyes.) I love those long, willowy fingers of golden yellow, pointing towards heaven and their Creator. It makes me cringe when people curb its wild growth, trimming it into a neat, boxy-looking hedge. The little bits of yellow that manage to survive this massacre just don’t show up like they were meant to. Over the years I have schooled my family on this subject. It’s been pretty easy with the kids. If you’re brought up from birth with a certain idea, it has a good chance of sticking. I’m pretty sure none of my kids will ever dare to take a hedge trimmer to a forsythia bush. They think it’s a commandment. I worry a little about my husband though. He’s a trimmer by nature. He gets it from his parents. They’ve maintained a beautifully shaped hedge alongside their front walk for decades.

I’ve learned to watch for the forsythia. It used to catch me off guard every year, seeming to erupt all at once overnight. But now I watch for it. And it’s about to happen.

I’ve been known to take members of my family on what I call mystery walks or mystery rides in the car in order to show them something I want them to see. The first time I did this the kids were so excited. Of course, they’d convinced themselves and each other that it was Chuck E. Cheese’s that I wanted them to see. Their little bottoms bounced on the seat as we turned in the opposite direction from Chuck E. Cheese’s.

“She’s just trying to trick us!” they exclaimed to each other. “We’re really going to Chuck E. Cheese’s!”

You can imagine their reaction when we arrived at my destination: the building site of a new large and beautiful house of worship (L.D.S. temple) our church was building. I had honestly thought it would be really fun for them to see the progress that was being made. They all bawled. And I got mad. Needless to say it was a big disappointment. To all of us. But some good did come of it. Now, when it comes to Mom’s mystery rides, their expectation level is really low. So low, in fact, that once in a while they actually enjoy it a little more than they thought they would. Naturally they’d never admit this.

Often the object of my mystery ride is to view an exceptionally grand specimen of something growing somewhere. Like a forsythia bush. One midsummer day I told my daughter to get in the car.

“I want to show you something,” I told her.

“Mom, it’s a forsythia bush, isn’t it?’ she said accusingly. “I know it’s a forsythia bush.”

“How ridiculous,” I told her. “Forsythia isn’t even in bloom this time of year.” She visibly relaxed.

“Well, I know it’s going to be something dumb,” she assured me.

“I have never taken you to see anything dumb,” I defended myself.

We pulled up in front of a yard that looked quite ordinary, except for the absolutely giant free-standing rose bush in the middle of the front lawn. It was as tall as the garage and was covered with dinner plate-sized pink roses. Okay, maybe salad plate. She rolled her eyes at me and sighed, but I could tell she was impressed.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on all of my favorite forsythia bushes around town and today is the day. Spring has officially arrived. And this year, I even have a forsythia bush of my own. We planted it in the backyard last summer.

A few weeks ago I was talking on the phone about forsythia with my sister who lives in Virginia.

“You can cut branches and bring them in the house and force them to bloom early, you know,” she informed me.

“Oh yeah? Well, not if your bush only has six wisps!”

Maybe over the years my forsythia will spread into hundreds of untamed fingers of yellow blossoms. If I can just restrain my husband. Last summer I mentioned to my mother-in-law that Kent had planted a forsythia for me. Her response: “Well, just make sure he keeps it trimmed.”

Just Get Rid Of It!

2010-03-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

A few nights ago I attended a class on home organization. It was taught by a good friend of mine named Susan. She’s easily the most organized person I know. Not only are her closets organized, but they’re attractive to look at. If I were her, I’d probably be tempted to leave the doors open all the time: Someone’s coming up the walk! Quick, open the closets! Someone open up the laundry room door!

I’m not exactly an ultra-organized person, but I am a person with relatively few belongings to organize. I like it that way. And it makes me come across as fairly organized. The other night, Susan was encouraging us to get rid of fifty per cent of our stuff. If I got rid of fifty per cent, I’d be in trouble. However, I did come away inspired to make the belongings I do have look nicer in their closets, drawers, and cupboards. Thank you, Susan!

I wrote the following essay about nine years ago.

I’ve often said that given two hours, my husband and I could empty the entire contents of our home onto the back lawn. Kent rolls his eyes whenever I make this claim, but really, I can’t see it taking us all that long. I’m not a saver. We simply don’t have a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff would drive me crazy. Kent does seem to have been born with the saver gene, but I’ve done my best over the years to curb the tendency. He brought a few choice items into the marriage sixteen years ago that are still with us. There are the wool socks his family brought home from Finland in the 1960’s. There are the plastic yogurt containers from Germany (don’t even bother asking), and there is his vast collection of gym shoes. We called them sneakers where I come from. He had more pairs of gym shoes – mostly basketball shoes in those days – than even an N.B.A. player could reasonably feel good about. These days it’s running shoes. Why can’t he get rid of them when he’s worn them out? I don’t know. It’s beyond me. You ask him.

I remember a character in an Anne Tyler novel I once read. She called herself a Clutter Counselor. For a fee, she would come into your home and, with an eye not fogged by sentimentality, get rid of all your junk from attic to basement. I could do that, I’ve often thought. My teenage daughter recently told me, by way of a compliment she insists, that I’m the least sentimental person she knows. She happens to be a saver. She learned at a young age to periodically rummage through the waste baskets, looking for treasures I might have accidentally discarded.

I’m not all that bad, though. Even I know there are some things that must be saved, such as birth certificates and other important documents, family photos, a few samlpes of the kids’ school work, the wedding album… Until recently, this stuff has been stored in the master bedroom, under the bed. Houses these days seem to be designed and built with so little storage capacity that even someone like me finds it inadequate. And just knowing this stuff was all crammed under our bed made me crazy. Periodically (not as often as I should have), I’d haul it all out from under there, dust it off, run the vacuum under the bed, then regretfully push it all back.

Last winter Kent built shelves into a large closet in our upstairs hall that had formerly housed a washer and dryer. Finally I had a place for all that stuff that was under our bed. I got it all organized neatly on the new closet shelves.

“I can’t tell you how good it feels to have nothing under this bed!” I’d exclaim to Kent on a nightly basis. “Look under there!” I’d insist. “Nothing!” Every day for the first few weeks I’d get down on my hands and knees and peer under there. Daylight on the other side! For a while, I even vacuumed under there regularly because it was so easy to do. “Have you looked under the bed today?” I’d ask Kent. “Go ahead,” I’d encourage him, “there’s nothing there.” After a while he started to glance at me with a strange look on his face every time I said this. I guessed I was overdoing it.

I finally got my chance to declutter someone else’s house a couple of summers ago. We were visiting my parents and the kids discovered the eaves across the front of the house. I hadn’t been in there for years. No one had, by the look of things. They’d only shoved more and more stuff in without taking any out. Once I got started, there was no stopping me. By the end of about three days, I’d gone through everything. After making a pile for my sister, one for my brother, and one for my parents (there was nothing I was even tempted to hold onto), we hauled at least ten garbage bags to the dump. It felt so good. To this day, they haven’t missed a thing. And I didn’t even charge them.

Today I think I may have discovered the reason why my husband started giving me those strange looks every time I mentioned the void under our bed. As I passed through the bedroom this morning, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the toe of a running shoe peeking out at me from under the bed. I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to investigate. Besides, maybe it’s better if I just don’t know.

2010-03-12T16:46:00.001-08:00

Neapolitan Easter Eggs Are Here!

2010-03-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

Last year at about this time, my daughter gave me a wonderful treat. She had come over late at night to retrieve something from our house. We had all gone to bed already. She picked up whatever it was she was after and left in exchange a few seasonal egg-shaped candies wrapped in pink and brown and tan foil in a little dish on the kitchen counter. I found them first thing in the morning. What a nice surprise! The wrapper said “Neapolitan” on it in a cutesy font. I unwrapped one. It was made up of three layers: milk chocolate, white chocolate, pink chocolate. I took a bite. Mmmm. You really got that Neapolitan flavor. I popped the rest in my mouth. Before I knew it, I had eaten the rest of them, and all before breakfast. I called Carolyn, thanked her, and asked her where she had gotten them. Someone had given them to her at work. She’d try to find out where they came from. Probably some specialty shop, I’d said to her. They’re probably pretty pricey. They were all I could think of for the next two days or so. I really wanted more. When Carolyn saw the person at work who’d given them to her, she mentioned how much I’d liked them and that I was hoping to be able to buy some to satisfy my craving. Were they a local product? Sure, the person told her. They were from Wal-Mart. Carolyn called me up and we laughed about it. You know that really cheapy-chocolate seasonal candy made by a company called Palmer’s? Well, that’s what it is. I bought up bags of Palmer’s Neapolitan Eggs every time I went to Wal-Mart all the way through the Easter season. I carried them in my purse and gave them to everyone I knew so that they could try them, too. They were a big hit at the high school baseball games.
It’s Easter time again. I was so excited when Wal-Mart put out their Easter candy. I searched the shelves. I searched them again. No Neapolitan Eggs. But they do have them at Macey’s grocery store. I’ve started buying up bags. I hope I can get enough to last at least through baseball season.

(Now go sit down.) Part of the "Every Weird Thing..." series

2010-02-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

Mormons (L.D.S.) usually grow up to be fairly confident public speakers. This is probably because in our church, we don’t have a paid clergy. The bishop (what most other Christian churches call the minister or priest) is called to serve on a volunteer basis, usually for about five years. During this time, he keeps his day job. In our main worship service (Sacrament Meeting) on Sundays, members of the congregation participate by giving assigned talks on gospel topics. So instead of hearing a sermon from the same person each week, we take turns teaching each other.

In Primary (Sunday school for children), our kids have opportunities to give talks from a very young age. Before they’re old enough to read or memorize, a parent will stand beside them and whisper the words they’ve rehearsed. A child spends much of the two minutes he’s up there breathing heavily into the microphone while the parent repeatedly prompts. Even as they get a little older, a parent will usually help the child write his or her talk. I used to help my kids. (Sometimes I didn’t know about the assignment until we were sitting in Sacrament meeting. Or I knew, but had forgotten. I’d round up a piece of paper and pen and scrawl out a talk for whichever child it was.) I’d write it out for them right down to the closing of “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” And then I always put, in parentheses, the words “Now go sit down.” I thought this was funny. And they thought it was funny, when they practiced giving the talk, to say aloud “Now go sit down” after they said Amen.

Our boys are encouraged to serve two-year missions for the church when they turn nineteen. It’s customary for them to give a talk in Sacrament meeting before they leave and again after they return home. We recently had one son return from serving a mission in Brazil and another one leave to begin his mission to Germany within a week of each other. They were asked to speak in church on the same Sunday. They both did an excellent job. Their dad and I were very proud. Later in the day, I found the younger son’s typed-out talk lying on the kitchen counter. I looked it over and noticed on the last page, after he had actually typed out “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen,” he had added the parenthetical phrase: Now go sit down. I laughed and laughed. He said “I always write that when I give talks, Mom.” It has been many years since he’s needed my help. I told the older son about this. He immediately went and found the scribbled notes he’d used to give his talk and showed them to me. At the end, he’d scribbled, in parentheses, “Now go sit down.”

It was my second proud moment of the day. I hope they keep up the tradition when they’re writing out talks for their own children someday.

"Really Cool Fanny Pack"

2010-02-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, my husband, our daughter and I went out to eat at Costa Vida. As we stood in line to place our orders, I remembered that I had a coupon in my purse. I dug out my Ziplock baggie of coupons and began to rifle through it right there in the line. They were both horrified. Carolyn was probably twice-horrified: once that I would consider using a coupon and then because I kept my coupons in a baggie in my purse. Kent’s always in favor of a discount, but the baggie thing was a bit too much for him.

Yet for years, he has repeatedly tried to get each member of our family to wear a fanny pack. Someone will be packing for a campout or preparing for a hike and he’ll invariably produce a fanny pack (usually a free promo item from a software company which makes it even worse) and suggest to whomever it is, “Why don’t you wear this really cool fanny pack?” The kids and I try to point out to him that “really cool fanny pack” is an oxymoron.

The other day I was in the weight room at the gym. I saw a woman, probably in her late fifties, with her car keys safety pinned to her t-shirt. With an over-sized safety pin. It wasn’t up on her chest like you would wear a name tag. That would be really bad. It was very subtly attached down low and over to one side. Well, it was as subtle as you could be and still have your keys pinned to your shirt. At first I actually thought, “Wow! What a great idea!” Sometimes I go to the gym without a jacket, and my workout clothes don’t have pockets. I have to figure out what to do with my keys. A big safety pin would solve the problem. Then I remembered the incident in Costa Vida. I imagined what my family members would think of my pinning my car keys to my t-shirt with a giant safety pin. My kids would surely disown me. Kent would probably suggest I wear a really cool fanny pack while working out instead.

I think openly doing these nerdy things is a sign of confidence. A confidence that comes with age. Maybe in another decade or so I'll have lost all reservations. My mother-in-law carries her camera around in a paper gift bag. (I always think she's bringing me a present.) I hope to be just like her someday.

Dream Car

2010-02-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been a car person. I don’t know about makes and models. I go by color. And I really don’t pay much attention to that. The Petersons, next door, drive a white car. I think.

I know what I drive. It’s an Isuzu Trooper. It’s silver. I don’t know what year it is, but it’s getting up there. It’s starting to make a lot of sounds. Squeaks and rattles. Yesterday it whistled. Just for a moment, but it was clearly a whistle. I’m getting a little nervous.

As long as I have something reliable to drive that doesn’t look so bad that it attracts all kinds of attention, I’m good.

My husband, Kent, drives a little pick-up truck. It’s a greenish-gray color. I think it might also be made by Isuzu. Maybe Toyota. I noticed recently that it’s starting to look pretty shabby. Not much paint left on the hood. But it runs well and gets him where he needs to go.

We had a series of unreliable cars during the first few years of our marriage, cars that attracted all kinds of attention, but at least we weren’t in debt. When we were engaged, I borrowed Kent’s white Volkswagen Rabbit one day. It was old and I think it had bald tires. One of my neighbors was a little concerned and asked “Are you sure he loves you?”

We once owned an old V.W. bus (not my idea) that we attempted to drive across the country. We broke down in St. Elmo, Illinois. I can’t believe I just wrote that because I try really hard to block the memory. Bad experience. I’m scarred from it.

We had a car that had a whole list of things wrong with it. For a long time, it wouldn’t go in reverse, so we couldn’t park anywhere where we’d have to back up. The only door that opened from the outside was the driver’s door (and it was a four-door). It used to get a mystery puddle of water on the floor of the backseat. Never figured that one out. And for a while, whenever we turned a corner, the horn blared. This was a bit humiliating. As we’d drive through the neighborhood, people in their yards thought we were greeting them, and would wave to us with strange looks on their faces.

But we had almost arrived at that point. Our next car was brand new. I was so excited: a reliable car! Wrong. It must have been one of those that came off the assembly line on a Friday. Or is it a Monday? Whichever day tends to produce lemons. Sometimes it just wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even try to turn over. Not a sound. We took it in to the dealership for repairs.

“There’s nothing wrong with this car. It started right up,” the guy told us.

“No,” I told him. “You don’t understand. It only does it when I’m across town with two small children and need to get home. Or when I come out of the grocery store with frozen foods and my husband is working in the city and can’t rescue me. Or when I’m late for a meeting.”

The guy just looked at me.

“Well, it started right up. Apparently there’s nothing wrong with it. I can’t help you.”

We fought with them over this for months. Finally someone figured out that it had a short of some kind and they fixed it. We never had another problem with it.

And since then, I’ve always had a reliable car to drive. For which I’ve been very grateful. I remember one day driving my son, Jeff, and a bunch of his friends somewhere. They were about nine or ten years old at the time. They were talking about their dream cars: Mustang convertibles, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Jaguars.

Parker Almeida asked me “Hey *Sister Gassman, what’s your dream car?”

“This is it!” I told him with enthusiasm, referring to my red mini van. It was a Plymouth Voyager.

It got so quiet in the back of that van that you could have heard a Hot Wheels drop in a roomful of Cub Scouts.

I loved that car. It didn’t break down on me and the tires weren’t bald. It worked in reverse. I had complete control over the horn. Everybody was driving one just like it. It had two built-in car seats. We drove it for a long time. I never noticed when other people started getting rid of theirs. One Sunday in the church parking lot, a neighbor waved me down and motioned to me to roll down my window. She approached the vehicle.

“Melinda,” she said to me in a businesslike way, “Kent needs to buy you a new car.”

She’s a real car person.

From that day on, I began to be a bit self-conscious about my red mini van. I mentioned to Kent that it might be time to think about getting a new car. He agreed. It was a sad day when we sold it. That’s when we got the Trooper. And now it’s getting kind of old. I’m afraid my neighbor is going to flag me down soon and tell me that it’s that time again. But I do consider myself very lucky. Not many people get to drive their dream car. I wonder what my next one will be.

*These were neighborhood kids who belong to our church. We use Brother and Sister like Mr. and Mrs. I’m thinking about starting a new blog called “Every Weird Thing You Wanted To Know About Mormons But Were Afraid To Ask Because Then The Missionaries Might Show Up At Your Door.”

Low Rider

2010-02-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

Last week my son Jeff and I were in Walmart. Have you ever seen any of those People of Walmart slide shows posted on the Internet? Jef and I saw the live version. There was a young man in the men's department, bent over looking for the right size t-shirt on a low shelf. He should have been looking on a higher shelf, where they keep the large shirts, not down low where they keep the small shirts. Usually larger shirts mean longer shirts. This kid definitely needed a longer shirt. We could see half of his underwear. I nudged Jeff and gave a nod toward the show. Jeff immediately started walking faster to get away from me. I think he was afraid I was going to tell the kid to pull his pants up. Actually, I've seen worse. Fortunately, it seems like the trend to expose as much as you can get away with has waned over the past year or so. Evidently there are a few hold-outs to the fashion. This kid better be careful. He might find himself part of the People of Walmart collection.
I wrote the following about two years ago after I had a close encounter of the very disturbing kind in the K-Mart parking lot.

“Guess what I saw today in the parking lot of K-Mart?” I asked my husband and our three teenage boys as we hung out in our family room last evening. “Or maybe I should say 'Guess what I almost saw?'”

“What?” one of them responded warily, while the rest just wore that look that says “Oh, no. Here she goes again.” They've learned to recognize a moralizing tale before I even get started.

“I was on my way out of K-Mart. I saw a young adult male, I'd say between eighteen and twenty years old, and what looked like his mother and a couple of younger siblings walking toward me in the parking lot. This young man had on a t-shirt that came down to about his bellybutton, and a pair of jeans belted around the tops of his thighs!”

They all stared at me.

“Really!” I insisted. “There was nothing between his navel and the tops of his legs but a pair of cotton knit boxer briefs! I could see the entire fly of his underwear! I could pretty much see his underwear in its entirety. I was so shocked, and so sure that I must be seeing it wrong, that after we passed each other, I turned around to get a view from 'behind'. I could see his complete backside, clad only in a piece of jersey knit.”

“Now, that is wrong,” my husband rejoined.

“You're sick, Mom,” one of the boys commented, then each one wandered off or busied himself with something. They'd obviously heard enough.

I'm still in shock. I mentioned it to some neighbors of mine, a teenage girl and her mother. They thought it was pretty bad, but they didn't seem as shocked as I had been. Obviously, they'd seen it all before.

“Yeah,” said the girl, “you wouldn't believe what you see at the high school.”

I've been seeing the top part of boys underwear above baggy pants for a long time. I've been seeing a lot of top halves of underwear above very low riding pants for a while now. But to wear a pair of pants belted around your thighs? Does that even technically qualify as wearing pants? And you should have seen how this kid moved. Using an odd gait that it must have taken a lot of practice to master, he managed to move himself along in basically a forward direction. And all this effort for what? To keep the pants in place so they wouldn't fall down and expose his legs?

What brand of modesty is this? If these young men really want to cripple themselves walking around with pants belted around their legs, that's their business, but they should have the decency to spare the rest of us, and wear shirts long enough to cover their bottoms.

And it's definitely time to rethink all those “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service” signs.

I read an article by Jay Evensen in the Deseret Morning News a couple of weeks ago headlined Reining in a Sexualized Generation. He wrote about the Louisiana town of Delcambre, where the town council is considering prohibiting the showing of one's underwear in public. I remember reading this and being a bit skeptical. Hmm, I'd thought. As much as I agree that underwear should be worn underneath clothing, sometimes a strap here or a band there is accidentally exposed. I'd hate to see decent people get the book thrown at them on a technicality. But after the spectacle I witnessed in the K-Mart parking lot, I'd like to throw in my support. Maybe even move there.

It's a shame that city officials anywhere even have to think about issues like these. It's all about pushing boundaries, isn't it? If enough mothers, fathers, girlfriends, employers, shop keepers, restaurant owners, etc. would set their own immovable boundaries, maybe we could nip this thing in the butt---sorry, I mean in the bud.

Happy Birthday To Me - and Extreme Chocolate Cookies

2010-01-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

You know how birthdays are really not a big deal once you’re grown up? Try spending your big day with a classroom full of third graders who all think you’re great; I just had the best birthday I can remember since I was a child!

I’ve been substitute teaching these children while their teacher has been out on maternity leave. They are really sweet kids. We’ve gotten to know each other quite well over these weeks. And they were so excited to celebrate my birthday! All day long handmade cards were delivered to the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. One little girl even made me a bracelet by straightening out a jumbo paper clip and bending it into a curve. She fashioned a paper charm for it that said Happy Birthday. We talked about my birthday all day long. I think the subject came up every few minutes. By the end of the school day, I was starting to think that my birthday really is a big deal, just like it was when I was in third grade.

I took treats to share with the class. They loved them and they all want the recipe.

Extreme Chocolate Cookies

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups white sugar (granulated)

1 lb. real margarine or butter (I use Western Family brand Real Margarine)

5 extra large eggs

2 tsp. almond flavoring (1 tsp. if using real almond extract)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cream together above ingredients.

3 (12 oz.) packages milk chocolate chips

Mix chocolate chips into above mixture.

1 cup cocoa powder

6 ½ cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

Combine dry ingredients. Add to creamed mixture, mixing well. Don’t burn out your mixer; you might have to finish mixing by hand. Scoop dough using an ice cream scoop. (I use one with a two inch diameter.) Pack well. Flatten dough slightly with hands. Put some granulated sugar in a bowl. Press formed cookie dough into granulated sugar to coat. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 7 or 8 minutes. (Oven temperatures vary; do not over bake. If cookies crack, you're baking them too long. If you use a small scoop, bake for about 5 ½ to 6 minutes, but watch for cracking!) Remove cookie sheet to cooling rack.

This recipe makes 4 ½ to 5 dozen big cookies. Sometimes I form the cookies, freeze some of them on a cookie sheet without baking, then dump them into a Ziplock bag and freeze them for later. You can also bake them all and then freeze some. Or, just eat them all!

Avocado Milkshake - A Brazillian Specialty

2010-01-20T21:37:00.000-08:00

How about a recipe from Brazil? In some parts of the country, they drink avocado shakes. It sounds a little weird, but as soon as you taste it, you'll forget you ever thought so.This is one of the most refreshing drinks I've ever had.

1 large avocado
1 1/2 cups milk
2 T sugar
juice of two small limes

Put all ingredients in blender and blend well.

The Foreign Language House

2010-01-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the movie Breaking Away from back in the seventies? The main character was obsessed with the Italian cycling team and drove his father crazy speaking Italian around the house? We have a similar situation in our home. My husband, Kent, served an L.D.S. mission in Germany from 1980 to 1982. As is the case with most L.D.S. missionaries, he developed a love for the people he served and for their language. He’s still speaking it. Which is great - how many of us can speak a second language? He probably speaks it better now than when he lived in Germany all those years ago. But sometimes, usually when it’s early in the morning and we’re all getting ready for work and school, it can be a little… Well, Kent’s a real morning person, and the rest of us really aren’t. He’s quite chipper around the house in the morning, and chipper in a foreign language somehow comes across as extra chipper. And when he speaks German, he tends to shout it out:

“Guten Morgen, Meine Frau! Gut geschlafen?”
“Ach! Meine Kinder! Habt ihr gut geschlafen?”
“Was soll ich zum Frühstück essen?”

Fortunately, I speak some German and the kids have studied it at school. When they reached junior high they thought “Why not? We’ll probably have a head start.”

We also, of all odd things, have memorized quite a few hymns from the German version of the L.D.S. hymn book and we sing them during Family Night regularly (if you can call what we do singing). At church one recent Sunday, someone made a comment about occasionally singing a hymn in a foreign language. My son Jeff turned to me and whispered, “Sounds like us.” I whispered back, “No, we occasionally sing a hymn in English.” But only if the kids and I insist.

Two years ago, our oldest son, Kurt, received a call to serve a mission in Brazil. He was really excited. And so was his dad. Kent went right out and bought the Pimsler Language Course for Portuguese.

The next morning we got up for school and work.

“Bom dia! Como vai?”
“Você fala Portuguêse?”

And it was on to Portuguese. Kent was riding his bike to work most days. Ten miles there and ten miles back listening to Pimsler CDs through his ipod.

“Adeus, minha esposa!” he’d holler at me on his way out the door in the morning.

And “O restaurante fica na esquina!” he’d holler at me when he walked back in at the end of the day.

We’ve all picked up a few phrases over the past couple of years. And Kent can’t wait to try out his Portuguese on Kurt when he gets home in a few weeks. But in the meantime, Jeff has received his mission call. He’s going to (drum roll) Germany! He is very excited. And so is his Dad.

The morning after we got the big news, we all got up for work and school. Naturally Kent was the first one up and I could hear him in the shower, belting out the German National Anthem:

“Deutschland, Deutschland über alles
Über alles in der Welt!”

When Kurt found out where Jeff was going, he wrote the following in an e-mail:

Dude, Germany! That’s awesome! Dad must be off his hinges with joy. I bet he’s already trying to teach you German. He tried to teach me Portuguese and he didn’t even speak it.

Yes, it’s been back to German around here for the most part. Imagine how interesting it could get in a few years when we find out where Joel will serve?

German Cooking

Kent got me a special present for Christmas – a German cookbook. Oh great, many of you women may be thinking, a cookbook, just what every woman wants for Christmas. But the real gift is that, after twenty-five years of marriage, Kent is taking up cooking. I really don’t know if that was his intent when he bought me the cookbook, but that’s how I chose to interpret the gift. He’s gone along with it. So far he’s made potato pancakes and deep fried cauliflower. The potato pancakes were pretty good, but the cauliflower was fabulous. I know. Deep frying cauliflower kind of takes away from the whole idea of its being good for us. But I really don’t think it’s in the nature of cauliflower to absorb a whole lot of oil. It really didn’t seem too bad. Besides, I’ve heard that in the Netherlands they deep fry Milky Way bars. Makes this recipe seem okay.

Gebackener Blumenkohl

(Deep Fried Cauliflower)

from Culinaria Germany

1 head cauliflower

salt

3 eggs

white pepper

¼ tsp grated nutmeg

4 tbsp flour

½ cup white breadcrumbs

oil for deep frying

Rinse the cauliflower, trim, then divide into florets. Cook the florets in boiling, salted water for about ten minutes, until just tender. Strain the florets, refresh in cold water, and drain well. Beat the eggs with a little salt, white pepper, and the nutmeg. Toss the florets first in flour, then dip them in beaten eggs, and toss them in the breadcrumbs. Fry batches of cauliflower in hot oil and drain on paper towels.

A "Stupid Moment"

2010-01-11T21:43:00.000-08:00

I was at the gym working out on a treadmill. There is a TV in front of every three or so pieces of equipment. On the screen in front of me was a talk show. The host was a middle-aged woman with red hair. I suppose she’s famous, but I don’t know who she is. She was interviewing Dolly Parton. I know who Dolly Parton is, but I wasn’t really interested in watching this. What I really wanted to watch was the Food Network. I had seen it at the gym a few days before and went home and made Thai peanut sauce and grilled chicken skewers from memory for dinner. It was delicious. Besides, the volume on this TV was really low and I could hardly hear what either Dolly or the Red Head were saying. The closed caption was on, but it was delayed. So I was hearing little bits of the red headed woman and Dolly (but mostly hearing the football game on a TV somewhere down the row which had its volume turned up really loud), and then reading what they said about thirty seconds later. Really annoying. I looked up at the controls on the television set and noticed that the buttons to change the channel were gone. Empty holes in their place. But there were volume buttons. If I had to watch the Dolly interview, at least I could turn the volume up enough to compete with the football game. The TV wasn’t too far in front of me, and just a little higher than the level I was on. I tried reaching right up there while treading on the mill and nearly wiped out. Not a great idea. I paused my workout, awkwardly leaned up between my machine and the one next to it, and managed to reach the up volume button. I pressed it a few times and resumed my workout. It still wasn’t loud enough. I paused my treadmill again and awkwardly reached up there again. Better. I could hear them pretty well now, but I was still compelled to read the delayed captions. And by now, the Dolly interview was pretty much over. The Red Head announced that next up was Valerie Bertinelli. I know who Valerie Bertinelli is. But I really wasn’t interested in watching this. What I really wanted to watch was the Food Network. I had to go home and make dinner and I wanted some fresh ideas. Instead, I was forced to watch the Red Head quiz Valerie about her recent weight loss and bikini photo shoot. By now, I knew more about Dolly, Valerie and the Red Head (except her name) than I ever wanted to know. And then came the “stupid moment.” It was now forty-eight minutes into my workout. Right there, no more than six inches from my left hand, in the cup holder of my treadmill, was the remote. But by now there was someone on the treadmill next to mine and she really looked interested in Valerie’s weight loss. I finished up my workout, transferred the remote to the woman’s cup holder, and left. Bean burritos for dinner.

Ruth's Salsa

2010-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law, Ruth, brought salsa to a recent family gathering. It was delicious, as is everything Ruth makes. She told me she had made it using bottled tomatoes from her garden. She chopped fresh peppers, onions, cilantro, and whatever else, added it to the jar, and shook. Voila. I don’t grow enough tomatoes to bottle any. We eat them all. But I tried Ruth’s idea using a large can of diced tomatoes I bought at the grocery store. I chopped up two different kinds of hot peppers, orange and yellow bell peppers, green onions and cilantro and put it all in a good-sized Pyrex bowl. I added the canned tomatoes, some fresh lime juice, and salt and pepper. I made sure to put the lid on nice and tight. Shake, shake, shake. Salsa. It was delicious. You get some of that fresh salsa taste even though the tomatoes are canned. Since it’s virtually impossible to get good tomatoes in the winter, this seems like the way to go. We had it on breakfast burritos for New Year’s Day, and then ate the rest with tortilla chips during the afternoon football games. Yum. Thanks, Ruth!

Nativity by Brian Kershisnik

2009-12-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but when I first walked around a corner in the B.Y.U. Museum of Art and found myself face to face with a myriad of the heavenly host, a mother nursing a minutes-old baby, and a rather grief-stricken-looking father, I didn't realize I was looking at a nativity painting. At least I didn't realize I was looking at a painting of the nativity. There was no identifying plaque on the wall next to the painting. I did, however, immediately recognize it as something very familiar and right away I felt a connection with this work. A legion of angels dressed in the familiar clothing of L.D.S. temple patrons was passing by to get a glimpse of what I saw as the newest of their earthly kin. I saw these angels as ancestors and possibly descendants of the small new family depicted at the bottom of the canvas. To me, it showed the close connection between the birthing experience and heaven. When I went up to the front desk to inquire and was told that the roughly seven foot by seventeen foot oil and acrylic expressionistic painting was Nativity by Brian Kershisnik, I felt a little foolish that I hadn't recognized the Holy Family right away. I returned to the painting and immediately noticed the stable-like setting, complete with a mother dog and her recent litter. Of course I had seen it before, but it simply hadn't clicked. And the traditional blue of Mary's dress. And the attitude of singing praises of those angels who were preparing to fly off one side of the canvas and out into the night. And the tears streaming down many of their faces. Okay, so now the painting meant even more.

I spent quite a bit of time in front of Nativity during two separate visits to the museum. It was interesting to me to see the reactions of people as they rounded a corner and came in contact with this enormous picture. Old people, young people, tiny children literally stopped in their tracks and paid considerable attention to this painting. Because it's so large? That probably has something to do with it. But I think it has more to do with Kershisnik's appealing style; he uses color, line, and texture in a way that makes me feel comfortable and somehow included in his work.

The painting's dominant line is the river of angels flowing basically in a horizontal current across the canvas, containing soft interior curves along the way. Another significant line is found where the “river” diverts up and over the stable's earthly occupants, leaving them enclosed (in the negative space) in a soft, rounded, cozy setting. Some other important lines are that of the fence cutting Joseph off from Mary, and the vertical forms of the stable occupants suggesting that, unlike the visitors passing through, they are staying put---earthbound for the time being. Even these lines have a soft, rounded quality, and it is Kershisnik's use of curving lines that creates the overall warmth that is so inviting.

The color scheme of Nativity is appealingly simple, using mainly contrasting browns and blues. The differing values of brown Kershisnik uses in the basic stable setting, Joseph's attire, the subjects' hair color, and the mother dog and her puppies remind us again that, unlike the heavenly host passing over, this place and these beings are of the earth. Mary, however, gets to wear blue. Blue has been Mary's signature color throughout the history of Christian art. Kershisnik uses the deep blue of the heavens (shown mainly in the top left corner of the canvas) and Mary's blue (in the lower right) to physically give balance to the painting. It also designates Mary as the chosen vessel of the Lord and lifts her to a more divine status; she belongs to the heavens as well as the earth. A lighter value of blue is reflected in the dress of one of the midwives to further balance and give interest to the work. Kershisnik repeats the brown values in the hair color of many of the angels. Not only does this serve to aesthetically balance the lower right stable setting with the rest of the painting, but it also reminds me of the angels' connection with the earth; perhaps it hasn't been long since some of them dwelt on earth as mortals. The balancing act is completed by the use of brilliant white in the robes of the angels. High-key is tempered by the low-key blues and browns, giving an overall sense of balance and unity to heaven and earth.

Texture plays a big part in what makes this picture so enjoyable to look at. Of course the medium itself lends texture to the canvas, especially in the stable; the artist builds up with oil paint a suggestion of straw on the dirt floor. But the more noticeable display is the implied textures in the wonderful array of fabrics that clothe the host of angels. Many common textile patterns are represented and we (especially L.D.S. temple patrons) feel a certain familiarity and sense of identity as we pick up on them. I had to smile when I saw a woman point out a specific angel and heard her say to her daughters, “Notice how the red-headed angel chose this swirly pattern for her dress.” Another texture is seen in the glossy, mosaic-like pattern that makes up the sky. It adds visual appeal and also reminds me of the mosaics of the Byzantine and Christian styles, and seems like an appropriate way to paint the heavens.

In addition to his use of line, color and texture to draw us into his work, Kershisnik masterfully depicts emotion through the faces of his subjects as well as through symbolism. While Mary and the midwives emote a sense of peace and an admiration for the newborn Christ, and the angels display various emotions on their faces, it is Joseph who stands out individually. The conflicting combination of relief and grief and despair clearly comes through. I can see what Joseph is feeling. He is physically separated from Mary by a section of fence. The placement of the fence symbolizes what I think all men must feel when their wives give birth; in spite of being present, Joseph cannot fully be a part of it. He has seen the pain and the endangerment to life and, as a man (the protector), he naturally feels like he should have been able to do something to help. He is also feeling the magnitude of being responsible for this special child, the Son of God. I think it was Joseph that originally threw me off about the content of this work; we don't usually see Joseph depicted the way we see him here. With one hand on his grief-stricken face, he reaches through the fence to attempt to comfort Mary. She places a hand on top of his and is actually the one doing the comforting. It is amazing to me that an artist can convey these emotions so clearly and so strongly. I can also read meanings on the faces of many of the angels, one of whom seems to be noticing me as the viewer and giving me a look that says “I hope you realize how important this is.”

Brian Kershisnik's Nativity expresses his vision of and his feelings about the birth of the Savior with real emotion. His amazing use of the elements of art results in a unique warmth, a welcoming spirit, and openly invites anyone who sees it to actually be a part of it. I, as the viewer, have had a phenomenal experience with this painting. I have felt an overwhelming sense of somehow belonging to this picture and feel like I now have a whole new and more meaningful perspective of the birth of the Savior.

Christmas Lights

2009-12-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

We have one very selfish Christmas tradition that I just love. We put Christmas lights in our backyard. We have big windows across the back of our family room. That's where we spend most of our time. It's really nice to be able to look out and see strings of colored lights adorning our kids' fort and the pine tree right next to the house. In the front yard, we just do the simple New England thing - wreaths and candles in the windows. I think it's beautiful. The kids think it's boring. Kent is working on building a new shed in the backyard. Next year I'm going to decorate that as well. Maybe turn it into a gingerbread house. Some people collect those miniature Christmas villages and set them up around the tree. I'm thinking of creating a life-sized Christmas village in our backyard. Okay, maybe two-thirds scale. Some of those reindeer made of white lights that move their heads up and down like they're grazing, a big snowman that waves to us as we watch him through the window, a pond with skaters... Someday we'll have grandkids. Wouldn't they just love it? I think I'd better hit the post-Christmas sales.

Christmas Day in the Morning

2009-12-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

So you get up early on Christmas morning, charge into the family room and rip open the presents. Then what? It’s all over. Our kids figured out when they were still quite young that it’s better to stretch out Christmas morning as long as you can. They developed a Christmas morning ritual. They force themselves to sleep in as late as the oldest two decide. This about killed our youngest son for several years. Then we all get up and go downstairs. The kids open their stockings while Mom videos and Dad takes pictures. They look under the tree to see more wrapped gifts than were there before they went to bed the night before. He came! But nobody can touch. Believe it or not, we all go and shower and get ready for the day. Then we gather for Christmas breakfast. When the breakfast mess is at least cleared away from the table, it’s finally time to open the presents. But we don’t just rip into them. We alternate each year, starting with either the youngest or the oldest (somehow the kids keep track of which year it is), and open the gifts one at a time. In this way, we manage to stretch things out until at least ten-thirty or eleven. It seems to make it all much more exciting.

This has been our family’s favorite Christmas breakfast for the past few years. It’s also great for the Fourth of July.

1 loaf French bread
3 eggs, beaten
1 ¼ cups milk
3 T sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup blueberries (frozen blueberries are fine)
½ cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
¼ cup butter
1 package frozen strawberries in syrup

Cut or tear the bread into small cubes. Arrange cubes in a buttered 9 x 13 baking dish. Combine eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla. Mix well and then pour over the bread. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, sprinkle blueberries over the bread mixture. Combine the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb topping over the blueberries. Bake at 350 for forty to fifty minutes. While it’s baking, thaw and heat the strawberries. To serve, cut in squares (big squares) and top with strawberries. We’re actually going to use raspberries this year, as one family member has discovered he’s allergic to strawberries. Maple syrup is also good.

Merry Christmas!

One Neti Pot For Sale - Cheap

2009-12-05T22:35:00.000-08:00

I bought a sinus irrigation system a few days ago. I have some sinus issues so naturally I’ve been self-diagnosing on the Web. I read about these sinus rinse products that are available. So began my quest for pristine sinus passages.

I bought this device called a neti pot – a cross between a little personal-sized teapot and a genie’s magic lamp. Neti is an Indian word for nasal. Apparently, people in India have been irrigating their nasal passages for centuries as part of practicing Yoga. I tried Yoga once. It was painful. My neti pot instruction manual assured me that irrigating my sinuses would be a soothing and enjoyable practice.

The neti pot comes with little packets containing just the right amounts of sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate. When mixed with eight ounces of filtered water, they produce the perfect saline solution, guaranteed not to cause stinging or burning sensations in the nasal passages. Well, that's a relief.

So the idea is to pour the saline solution out of the neti pot through the spout into one of your nostrils. The solution goes up and over and comes out the other nostril, flushing away all your sinus problems. The booklet gives helpful hints on the whole process: use lukewarm rather than hot, boiling, or cold water, perform the procedure over a sink, since a whole cup of water is about to pour out of your nose, and my favorite tip, and I quote “Do not hold your breath and, if possible, make the sound ‘KHA…KHA…’” I loved this part. For the rest of the day, as each family member came through the front door, I ran to get my little neti pot booklet. After a quick explanation of nasal irrigation, I’d show him this part.

“Mom, you’re a freak,” they each said, but they couldn’t suppress the grin.

“KHA…KHA…”

That evening, I was ready for my first treatment. I gently warmed some filtered water in the microwave, making sure there were no hot spots, and poured it into the neti pot. I added the contents of one packet and, with my thumb over the spout, shook to dissolve. I then carried the pot and the instruction booklet into the bathroom. I gave the pot a little rub for good luck and imagined a sinus genie rising up out of the spout and granting me three sinus-related wishes.

“Standing in front of a sink, bend forward to your comfort level and tilt your head to one side’” I read. Here goes, I thought.

I poured. Some of the solution did start coming out the other nostril, but the rest of it was suddenly filling up my mouth. I quickly tried to make the “KHA…KHA…” sound and nearly drowned in the attempt.

After recovering, I looked at the booklet again.

“It should not come into your mouth unless you are tilting your head backwards.”

Oops.

I tried it again, positioning my head more carefully, but I skipped the vocals. I’d decided that the KHA… KHA… must have some kind of mystical yoga benefit that was way beyond my experience.

This time it worked fine. I wouldn’t have called it soothing or enjoyable, but I was hopeful that all my sinus issues would soon be resolved.

Within a couple of hours, I had a terrible sinus headache. It lasted all night. And I must have washed away some brain cells, because the next day, after the headache had subsided, I irrigated my sinuses again. Well, it could have been a coincidence, right? It wasn’t. I was almost immediately struck with the worst sinus headache of my life.

My face hurt.

Ugh.

For two days.

And so ended my quest for pristine sinus passages. If I want to cure my symptoms, I’m going to have to do it some other way. Better keep searching the Web.