Tag Archives: Makes Me All Cozy Inside

Feb 7 2011

Back in the (Kitchen) Saddle Again

After nearly eight weeks of medication fog, I’ve emerged and am trying to shake off the 10 pounds I gained, and renewing my love of cooking.

The L**apro I was taking injected me with severe inertia and an addiction to flannel pajamas, fleece blankets and hours of Sudoku.  Combined.  I haven’t finished reading a book in weeks, and thanks to Netflix on the Wii, watched over 40 episodes of “Lie to Me” (starring Tim Roth) in ten days.

I had become powerless over laziness and had to admit my weakness in order to move on.

So I went off the medication cold turkey and within a couple of days, I’m feeling miles better.  I’ve been working out (for those of you who go to an actual gym or run miles or whatever, you may scoff, but I’m working out) on the Wii Fit.

The next challenge is food.  Rabbit hasn’t been getting enough vegetables, and PC’s digestive habits don’t do him any favors. Additionally, I’ve wanted to eat more homemade food, relax in the kitchen, and save money.

This weekend, I found a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies with sunflower seeds.  The cookies are made with white and whole wheat flours, in addition to oatmeal, raisins, lots of cinnamon and sunflower seed kernels, which I adore.  Plus, my friend Mary had given us, for Christmas, homemade vanilla extract – a beautiful tiny ceramic-stoppered bottle in which whole vanilla beans were steeped in vodka.  So the cookie dough was incredibly fragrant, with specks of vanilla bean seeds mixed in with the cinnamon and other ingredients.  PC won’t eat oatmeal cookies, so Rabbit and I have been enjoying them:

Tonight, Rabbit wanted chicken nuggets for dinner.  So I thawed some chicken breast tenderloins and cut them into pieces, and dredged them first in beaten egg and then in a mixture of bread crumbs**, Parmesan cheese, parsley, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  I baked them on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for 20 minutes and they came out crispy and smelling wonderful.

I had one large-ish sweet potato sitting in the cupboard for over a month, so I peeled it, cut it into one-inch cubes and boiled them for about five minutes.  Then I drained them and added a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of maple syrup, a little balsamic vinegar, some ground ginger, a pinch of salt, a lot of fresh cracked pepper, and a generous dusting of fresh chili powder (I get our chili powder at Open Harvest, the “Hippie Vittles” store I love, where their bulk herbs and spices are ridiculously fresh and inexpensive).  I turned the sweet potato cubes out onto the pan alongside the chicken nuggets to roast in the oven.

My trusty Tupperware veggie steamer (a million thanks to whichever friend gave me this on my 40th birthday) took care of the broccoli, carrots and cauliflower.  I coarsely chopped up three carrots and threw them into the steamer with some broccoli and cauliflower, put about two tablespoons of water in the bottom of the tray, covered it and put it in the microwave on high for four minutes.

Rabbit ate all of her chicken, a generous serving of the steamed veggies, two helpings of the sweet potatoes, and a cookie.  I ate a shamefully large plate of everything myself.  Picky PC loved the chicken, but bypassed the veggies and sweet potatoes.  He had (gag) canned peas.

**I always have bread crumbs on hand, and here’s how.  Homemade bread doesn’t have preservatives in it, so I know that if we don’t eat it all within three days, it’s going to start growing stale and then moldy.  So on day three, I break the bread up into pieces and put it in the food processor, and run it until the crumbs are extra fine.  I dump the crumbs into a gallon freezer bag and keep them in the freezer to use in recipes like the one above.
Also, I use the crumbs for bread crumb cookies, which are wonderfully soft, chocolatey and cakelike cookies, perfect to have with a glass of cold milk.  A perfect way to keep bread crumbs from going to waste.  I only use white bread crumbs for these, and keep the wheat bread crumbs in a separate container.
Jul 6 2010

Violin in a Homemade Case

Way back in the 1920′s, my grandparents ordered a field plow from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.  As a bonus, when it was delivered, Sears included (free of charge) one of their hot-selling items:  a “replica” of a Stradivarius violin. 

Over the years, I can recall my dad playing the violin, and being allowed to put rosin on the horse-tail hairs that made up the bow.  The rectangular chunk of amber rosin with a black paper backing slid across the bow to make it easier for the bow to produce sound from the violin strings.  The strangled results my dad forced from the violin were about as far from Stradivarius as a field plow. 

Later, he added an electric amplifier pick-up to the violin, for when it was played at country music gigs he had with his friends at bars and dances.  By then, it was officially a “fiddle” and not a violin.  Dad’s true talent was never with the instrument, and among us kids, only one was ever able to play anything even remotely resembling music on the poor instrument.  My brother Eighth managed to grind out the song “Crunchy Cookies” from an old music instruction book. 

In the 1970′s, Dad made a case for the violin out of scrap lumber, lining it with shag carpeting.  The outisde of the case was covered with strips of wood paneling.  I thought it very handsome at the time and spent some satisfyingly gruesome hours as a six- or seven-year-old playing with the case behind the sofa, pretending it was the coffin of a baby and that I was the funeral director.  At one point in this phase, I used a magic marker and printed “Dead Baby” on the side of the case, which sent Dad into apoplexy when he discovered it.  I recall a sound and justly deserved spanking for that one, and the case now has a spot where Dad had to sand deep into the wood to remove my morbid labeling.

The violin and its case sit quietly in my mom’s apartment.  It has been willed to my brother Third, who is the keeper of the family geneology and photo negatives.  Third has diligently tracked family history, traveling throughout the country to visit with people from the varying branches of the family tree. Dad wanted him to keep the violin in the family.  Hopefully nobody at Third’s house will desecrate the case the way I did. 

Jun 12 2010

Leftover Salt of the Earth

 

After the burial, some of the siblings changed clothes before returning to the church for the funeral dinner.   One of my nephews snapped this picture, taken the moment half the family was laughing at a joke while the other half listened to the shouted instructions from five or six other people who were taking pictures at the same time.

There was a surprising (not to us, but to others) amount of laughter that day.  When my brothers slid Dad’s casket into the hearse in front of the church, my brother #10 (back row, sunglasses in his shirt) looked over at Mom and said “See mom? He had us hauling wood, even at the very end!”  The procession to the cemetery was solemn, and the final blessing at the gravesite was very emotional.  Until the priest forgot the last portion of the Lord’s Prayer, and my uncle (Dad’s 83 year old “little” brother) remarked dryly that “Brother William wouldn’t have forgotten the words to the Our Father…”  Everyone cracked up, including the priest.

After the funeral director announced “That concludes our services, and please join the family back at the Assumption Arena for lunch,” my brother #3 had his son run to the car for a portable CD player that he set on the headstone of a nearby grave.  They played “Angel Band” from the OBrother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.  People were sniffling.  Then #3 loaded in the polkas. 

He played two of my dad’s favorite Czech polkas, from an accordion player/bandleader from the 1950s from eastern Nebraska, Al Grebnick.  “Pivo” (Czech for “beer”) and “Cabbage Annie.”  Both sung in Czech, with booping tuba bassline, raucous accordion and clarinet, and all of us kids singing along loudly, clapping and laughing.  Mom held hands with a family friend and we sang with gusto, saying the lyrics the way they sounded phonetically to people who don’t speak Czech:  Knock the hell out of Luke’s panties, Luke’s panties, Luke’s panties…Knock the hell out of Luke’s panties, Luke’s panties STUNK!  and  Pivo, Pivo, Pivo Chevrolet!

Everyone around the grave was laughing and shaking their heads at us, but we didn’t care.  We knew Dad would have just loved the whole thing. Afterward, people were saying how there would probably be an item in the newspaper’s police report about a disturbance of the peace at the Catholic cemetery.  Again, we didn’t care.  Mom was smiling when we left for the dinner.

At the funeral dinner, there was a lot of food, including giant Tupperware bowls full of salads, and four different kinds of pie.  I saw cousins I hadn’t seen in 25 years.  The church ladies had set up the pictures and personal items that had belonged to my Dad, and people gathered around to reminisce.   My brothers gave Dad’s favorite cowboy hat to our Uncle, who was visibly moved.  Kids ran and played, and we took lots of photos.

After PC and I went to the hotel to change, I left by myself for about half an hour and drove back to the cemetery.  It was deserted, and the awning had been taken down.  Dad’s grave had been filled in, and the flowers were laid on top.  I sat down and cried.  I talked to him for a little bit, and then just sat.  I took some of the flowers from his grave and walked about twenty yards to where my brother (who was stillborn back in 1964) is buried, and put them on Stephen’s grave.  Clouds were gathering and I went back to my mom’s apartment.

That evening, my brothers’ good friend opened his bar/restaurant party room to the family and told us to order whatever we wanted from the menu, on the house.  As dinner wound down, people took turns toasting Dad, and then toasting Mom. I raised my glass and said “I’d like to propose a toast to my brothers and sisters, the greatest treasure our parents ever gave me.”  Of course then I started crying, and my brother #4 said “I’d like to propose a toast to bread and toasters, without which we’d have no toast to begin with!” And on and on.  After we got finished and went outside to find our cars, we gathered in front of the restaurant and my sisters and I put on lots of lipstick and Auntie-kissed my 22-year-old nephew Nick, who blushed under all that maroon lipstick while everyone else took pictures.

We aren’t regular people.  We aren’t run of the mill.  Growing up, our family was often shunned by the people of means in our small hometown, but the ones who loved us still love us, and they showed it this past week.  Some might think it disrespectful to “carry on” so soon after burying a loved one, but why not celebrate his life by honoring what a character he was, celebrating what characters he made us?

He was a good man.  He was funny and loyal and worked hard.  He made mistakes and had personal challenges that he struggled with.  But he did the best he could and loved his family, and was proud of all of us.  I miss him so much, but I am so unbelievably grateful that he was my Dad.  Just look at that family.  Look at the love and the confidence and the closeness in that picture. 

Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

May 7 2010

Mining For Ore and Finding Something Else Entirely

Today Rabbit brought home school papers from this week, including the timed tests she took in math today.  She scored 16 out of 20 on the first one, and 18 out of 20 on the second one!  I was so proud. 

Also, she only missed one word on her spelling test, which was a testament to the work she’s been putting in at home.

While she was putting away her other things, I found a worksheet where she was supposed to write “ore” over and over at the top, to get into the routine of those three letters together.  The rest of the paper was fill in the blank, with each answer consisting of a word that contained “-ore.”

The first question:  “Where you go to buy things.”  Rabbit wrote “store.”   Good girl!

The second question:  “When you want extra.”  More?  No. Rabbit wrote “corn.”

I started giggling.

The next question:  “When it’s not very exciting, it is a…”  Instead of “bore” Rabbit wrote “storm.”

So, okay.  She’s sticking with the “or” sound.

Next question:  “The middle of an apple.”  She wrote “seed.”

I was laughing out loud by now. 

The final question did me in entirely. 

“When something ripped, it…”

Tore?  Oh, I don’t think so, people. 

Rabbit wrote….”Rippled.” 

How could you not love this child?

May 5 2010

First Farmer’s Market Day of 2010

It’s a happy day in the Eleventh household when the local Farmer’s Markets commence again for the season.  Tonight was the first Farmer’s Market of the season at our little local gathering area, in an open space between the stores and restaurants on the main street and the parking lot behind them.  Surrounded by buildings on three sides, the space was sheltered from the wind and even though it was relatively early in the season, people were out in force to socialize, eat, shop and listen to music.

I picked up Rabbit from school and we drove straight over to the Farmer’s Market.  She was so excited, but then her shoulders sagged.  The “Lumpia Lady” was not in her usual spot, selling Filipino lumpia, eggrolls, pancit and other treats.  She was a favorite destination for Rabbit and me – every time we went to the Market together, we’d get our vegetables and eggs, and then stop for a lumpia (Filipino eggroll, for lack of a better description). 

I calmed Rabbit down and explained that it was still early in the season, and there was plenty more to look at.  We stopped at a stand where they were making quesadillas from organic sharp white cheddar from the University’s dairy store, to promote the cheese becoming available for sale later this week.  Rabbit ate a piece, and then the lady started telling me that cheese made from the milk of grass-fed cattle is less likely to trigger side effects in people who are lactose intolerant.  Say cheese!  I ate some, and it was absolutely sensational. 

We found our favorite jam and jelly stand, and I forked over an obscene amount of money for a tiny jar of red plum jam.  The man was offering samples of a new product he and his wife started making last summer: dehydrated seasoned tomato slices.  Not sundried tomatoes; these were paper thin slices of tomato that were seasoned and dried.  “I don’t care for tomatoes,” I explained, shaking my head.  “I like tomato sauce, juice, salsa…I just can’t eat straight tomato.”  He grinned:  “Try it,” he encouraged me.  “I’m not a big tomato fan myself.”

I took a piece and tried it.  “Oh my God,” I said, “This is a revelation!”  He started laughing, and I bought a bag.  I can’t even describe the taste and texture, except to say that the taste is bright and intense and the texture is perfect.

Turning around, Rabbit grabbed my arm and started jumping up and down.  “The Lumpia Lady!” she pointed.  Sure enough, at the back of the crowd of vendors was our friend from the Phillipines.  She waved us over.  I told her how Rabbit and I had been looking forward to this since last fall, and she laughed.  We visited, and I told her about making pancit the other night.  “Oh! What did you use?  Chicken or pork?”  She listened to my account of the pancit-making and shook her head sadly when I told her I had used packaged coleslaw mix instead of shredding my own fresh cabbage, because the taste was almost nil.   She laughed about the noodles.  “Next time, you can break them in half.  And get some lime and squeeze it over the pancit when you get ready to eat it.”  She gave me her card.  “Call me next time you are going to be at the Farmer’s Market downtown and I will make you some pancit.”

We wandered over to another stand, where an older guy was selling honey in little plastic bears.  Local honey around here is so good, and we had just run out at home.  While we were chatting, a waitress from a nearby restaurant wandered through the crowd offering samples.  “Sweet potato quesadillas from Pepe’s” she called out, and people ran over to try it.  I snagged a bite and gave some to Rabbit, who grinned from ear to ear.  It was good. 

At the next stand, we got Rabbit a giant cookie, and watched some college-aged girls kneading out dough while an older lady gave them pointers.  They were making kolaches, the Czech pastry that is so popular around here.  It looks like a danish, with a hollow in the center filled up wtih poppy seed filling, prune filling, or filling made from fruits such as cherry, apricot or strawberry.  People around here jealously guard their kolache recipes, but everyone in my family knows my mom made the best kolaches ever.  Even though she wasn’t Czech, but German.  An older lady and I started talking about breadmaking, and she observed that the old German and Czech women would make the dough and form it into a ball, and just before putting it into the bowl to rise, they would slap the doughball several times.  “They called it ‘spanking the baby’,” she said.  I started laughing, because my mom did it, and I do that to bread dough, too. 

The sun was out and Rabbit and I sat on a curb divider by a little tree and ate our lumpia while listening to a girl and her mother play guitar and sing freshly-written songs.  The girl was high-school aged, with a ponytail and a scrubbed face, and her mom wore Birkenstocks and jeans.  Rabbit watched, and sighed happily.

Afterward, we went around the corner and upstairs to Pepe’s to see about more of those sweet potato quesadillas.  It was an eclectic little joint, with brick walls, mismatched tables, the windows open and a little counter where a college girl took orders and Pepe shouted greetings to people while cooking his vegetarian specialties.  There were only four entrees on the chalkboard menu, since he cooks from what is locally available and rotates the meals.  I was tempted to try one of the dishes with asparagus in it, but since Rabbit and I were sharing, I got the sweet potato quesadillas and some chips and salsa.

Rabbit was thrilled to have half of a can of Pepsi to drink, an unheard of treat for her.  She took a chip and set off to look at the plants and knicknacks in the restaurant.  When our quesadillas arrived, she dipped them in sour cream and ate blissfully.  They were out of this world – if you are ever in town, go the Havelock neighborhood and Pepe’s is upstairs over another business (I don’t remember which one).  Everything is vegetarian, but don’t let that slow you down. 

When we got home, Rabbit ate her giant M&M cookie, and now she’s in a prone position on the recliner here in my office while I write.  She’s sucking her thumb and her eyes are drifting closed. 

Just the two of us, in the windy outdoors, enjoying our town and people and each other.  Farmer’s Market day is a little slice of heaven.

Oct 26 2009

The Luckiest Worm Ever

My daughter LOVES worms.  She thinks they are adorable, and when PC digs one up in the yard, Rabbit has to carry it off and find it a new home.  Last summer, she carried a worm all over the back yard and put it on the swing, pushed it gently for a while, and then carried it down the slide.  She talked to it, and then later, when it was supper time, she threw it to a bird that promptly gobbled it up.

After the bird ate the worm, Rabbit had some remorse, but only to the extent that “I didn’t get to tell it goodbye!”

Recently, she’s been entrusted with a small garden trowel and she likes to go out and dig up worms on her own.  We have told her that as long as she stays in certain parts of the yard and doesn’t dig up any of our plants, she’s free to dig whatever she likes, provided she puts the dirt back when she’s done.

Today, the first really decent day in a long time, she went outside and got her trowel.  She found a worm.  And she decided, with the impending onset of winter, that she would make a beautiful little dwelling for this worm, in which to ride out the winter.

First of all, dirt needed to be involved.  She packed wet dirt around the worm, shaping it into a disc roughly the size of a hamburger patty.  She put it in the center of the patio, atop two green birch leaves.  As decoration, she found a tiny sprouting oak in the yard and pulled it up, inserting into the center of the worm ball.

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Next, she put up a decorative barrier around the perimeter, to keep away anyone or anything that might harm the worm.  This was accomplished beautifully with the use of an old hula hoop.

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A few flower petals next to the worm’s house is a nice touch, as well as four acorns pressed into the top.  Inside the hula hoop, we see her brief written tribute to the worm.

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Not quite fancy enough?  We’ll fix that, she decided. 

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Apparently, even worms need public art near their residential areas in order to thrive.  Either that or Rabbit felt that “love” and “Sweet heart fancy” with filagrees and loops surrounding them were a nice graffiti to give her worm the impression that he or she is living in a gentrified circle surrounded by urban scrawl.

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Sadly, the worm has succumbed to the fate of any upwardly mobile being obsessed with status, and ended up in a Gated Community.  Rabbit’s stern warning reminds us that there are the “haves” and then, there are the “have-nots.”

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“Dot [don't] cros this lin [line] inlas [unless] you need tdoo [to do] someding [something].” *

*Phonetic spelling is much more effective when you don’t have a head cold. 

No matter what, this is the luckiest worm in the world (or unluckiest, depending on your point of view).

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Oct 16 2009

Musical Souvenirs

When my younger sister and I were growing up, we were exposed to a wide variety of music, from Three Dog Night to Al Grebnick and the Boys (a Nebraska Czech polka artist from the 1950′s).  From John Lennon to The Lennon Sisters.  Kiss, The Cars, The Beatles, The Doors, show tunes, Disney music, folk music, Pink Floyd, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Emmylou Harris, Dan Fogelberg, Gordon Lightfoot, Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi and Bach. 

There were a lot of 45′s in the house, partially the result of my dad buying and then taking apart an old juke box, distrubuting the records to the kids.  Loudon Wainwright singing “Dead Skunk” was one favorite, along with a 45 of “The Monster Mash”  (“Waaahhhh-ooooo…..tennis shoe…..”)

Now that I have a child in the house, I desperately want to expose her to as many different kinds of music as I can.  With iTunes, we have an amazing opportunity to mix up music and search out those favorites from our childhood, to share with a little girl who sings all the time and loves to be held and sway back and forth while her parents sing into her hair.

The following playlist is only one of many that I’ve made for our daughter and burned onto CD for her to play in her room.  This is the one she plays at night as she’s going to sleep, and I can’t tell you the joy of walking past her on a Saturday afternoon and hearing her hum and then sing snippets of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.”

Long Time Traveller  - The Wailin’ Jennys 

MLK - U2 

Can’t Help Falling In Love - Elvis Presley 

Complainte De La Butte - Rufus Wainwright 

All That Matters -Mark Knopfler 

Dream A Little Dream Of Me - Mama Cass Elliot 

One Voice - The Wailin’ Jennys 

The Book of Love - Peter Gabriel 

Paris Nocturne  - Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg 

Maxwell Davies: Yellow Cake Review Farewell To Stromness - David Russell 

Across The Universe - The Beatles 

The One Who Knows - Dar Williams 

If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Lightfoot 

Skylark - k.d. lang 

All The Pretty Little Ponies  - Kenny Loggins 

I Only Want To Be With You  - Tina Arena 

Hallelujah - Rufus Wainwright 

Apocalypse Lullaby - The Wailin’ Jennys 

Only The Heart May Know - Dan Fogelberg 

To-ra-loo-ra - Kenny Loggins 

Clair De Lune - Debussy

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Jul 16 2009

Good Things To Eat

Last week, I made chicken and egg drop soup.  It was a day where I just needed to unwind and cook some comfort food, and it was GREAT.

A couple of days before, I made the chicken stock.  I used PC’s Grandmas old turquoise Club aluminum pot, and started off with olive oil, where I sauteed a whole yellow onion, chopped up.  I added the leafy top 1/4 of a bunch of celery, and let it cook, then added two cut up carrots, and then moved it all over to the side and put in three chicken leg quarters.

After they cooked for about five minutes, I added four or five cloves of peeled garlic, a bunch of thyme from the garden, salt, pepper, two bay leaves, and water to cover it all up.

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This pot is so old; PC’s Grandma cooked spaghetti in it, soup, chili….she got the cookware back in the late 1950′s, I think.  I even have the pamphlet that came with it.  I love it because it’s something she used that I can keep using, and think of her every time.

I brought the stock up to a boil and then reduced it, adding a tablespoon of cider vinegar (according to my mother, the vinegar draws the calcium out of the chicken bones to enrich the stock).  I let it simmer on low for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, I made a peanut butter and chokecherry jam sandwich.

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Man. I am an old lady.  Look at the retro bread box I use.  I love that thing, with the cutting board in the fold-down door. That was a good sandwich, too.

After a couple of hours, I took the chicken out of the broth and let it cool. I strained out the vegetables, and put the stock in a container.  I removed the skin from the chicken, pulled it from the bones, threw out the gristle and bones, and shredded the chicken into the container where I had put the stock.

A couple of days later, I removed the fat layer from the top of the cold container.  In the original soup pot, I diced carrots and sauteed them in a little olive oil and butter til they were all roasty.  Then I added the chicken and the stock.  I brought it to a boil and added finely chopped parsley, a little thickener, and then made the egg drops.

All you do is find a recipe for noodle dough and make it.  Don’t knead it too much and make sure it isn’t too floury and stiff.  Take the dough and instead of rolling it out for noodles, just get a little bit (about the size of the end of your pinkie) onto the end of a spoon.  Take another spoon, and scrape the dough off into the simmering soup.  Repeat until you’ve used up all the noodle dough. 

Simmer for about ten minutes.  At the end, taste and adjust for seasoning.  Add a tablespoon of butter (almost always my finishing touch to a pot of soup). 

Serve immediately, with bread and butter.