Chris gets a New Coat

So at the start of every school year, the new crop of med students participates in what's known as a White Coat Ceremony.  They go up on a stage, group by group, and they are presented with their White Coat, the outward symbol that they're a med student.  It's a really cool ceremony, actually, because it celebrates their potential.  And it's a time for family and friends to gather and cheer on their med student.

So last year (that would be August 2014, if you're having trouble keeping up), Chris had read about it and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  So when he found out that he'd been accepted, he called his parents to invite them up and told them that this was a big deal and he would really appreciate it if they could be there.  As it turned out, his Mom was traveling that weekend and couldn't be there, and his Dad was non-committal.  So I braced him up as best I could and promised that the kids and I would be there with bells on to cheer him on.

So a week before the ceremony, his sister and I were texting back and forth and she asked when the ceremony was and for more information generally, so I gave it to her, but thought nothing else.  I just figured that she would call or text the day of, because she's very thoughtful that way.    A few days after this exchange (Wednesday before the ceremony to be precise) she called me and said that she and Dad (and maybe Chris's brothers) wanted to try to come up on Sunday, but wanted it kept as a surprise just in case they couldn't make it, so would I help them?  And I said, "Heck yeah, and nothing easier since Chris is never around!"  So we started plotting.

I planned a BIG family dinner for Sunday, to celebrate Christopher (of course), we made  a traditional NC barbecue and all the sides.  Chris said, "Isn't this kind of a lot of food?"  To which I replied, "It's a lot of people, and also shut up, it's delicious."  He had no argument for that.  I sent his sister details on when to show up and where to park and made sure that we would park in the same parking deck so that Chris could see his family BEFORE the ceremony.

So the day arrives and he and I are both a jumble of nerves, though for very different reasons.  We left Church a bit early so that we could make it to the ceremony on time.  At the last minute, Chris decided that we would drive together and then, THEN he tried to change where we were going to park.  And to that I refused in Diva like fashion.  He looked at me funny, but then headed for the parking deck.

As we drove up the road towards the deck, I looked up and saw his family (all but his Mom) standing on the second level watching for us and I pointed them out and said, "Who are those crazy people?"  He glanced up and said, "I don't know...WAIT!  WHAT?!"  And I started to laugh because the look on his face was PRICELESS and then he started to tear up and laugh all at the same time and he said, "Did you do this?!"  And I said, "Your sister and I make a MAD team!"  He was so touched that they drove all the way up here just to be with him to celebrate.

There were hugs all around and exclamations and lots of pounding on the backs and the kids were squealing with delight and jumping up and down because they got to see Paw-Paw AND Jenji AND Mike and Rusty AND Daddy all in the same wonderful day!  My father in law was thoroughly impressed with my secret keeping skills and Chris really was knocked off his feet.  I don't think I stopped grinning until we got our seats and got settled.

At which point Maggie decided that she had had ENOUGH.  Enough of dresses, enough being quiet, enough sitting still, enough not napping, enough enough ENOUGH.  So I took her out and tried to nurse her to quiet her down and tried to rock her and cuddle her, and she would calm down for a few minutes.  Long enough for us to go inside and see where they were in the program, and then it was more screaming and more out in the hallway.  I went back and forth with her until it was time for Chris's group to go up.

Then I handed her off to Mike and I took the big kids down to edge of the mezzanine to see their Daddy.  (Lilu had been crying for him basically since we sat down.  I think she thought he'd be sitting with us.)  So they saw him walk onto the stage and Lilu chirps up, "Hi Daddy!"  And I started to giggle because (of course) it echoed through the whole theater!  So then they call student by student and one of the faculty puts the coat on the student, and Chris was the second one, so they call his name and both kids shout "YAY DADDY!!"  And the whole theater erupts in cheers and applause, and that right there is where I lost it and started to cry and cry.

Because here's the thing.  Chris has wanted to be a doctor his whole life.  It's the only thing he's ever really wanted to do.  And not because he likes the lifestyle or wants to show off and drive a fancy car or anything, but because he likes to help people.  And when he didn't get in (years ago, when we were fresh out of undergrad), we talked about different career paths where he could still help people, but it just wasn't what he really wanted to do.  He tried different paths and different jobs, but he was never happy, and I think it was because he only ever wanted to be a doctor.  And here he was, getting his white coat at long last.  He had worked so hard and here was his dream of what he wanted to do and to be and he had made that happen.  I could not have been prouder of him than I was in that moment.

(Oh, and when I turned around to take the big kids back to their seats, Maggie was sound asleep on Uncle Mike's shoulder.  I should have handed her off an hour ago!)

So we sat through the rest of the ceremony, and then joined the masses to try to find Christopher.  We met up and went to shake hands with a few faculty members, and everywhere we went, Chris was greeted with cries of "YAY DADDY!"  by his classmates.  It was sweet and endearing and so many people told us what a great moment it was.  And it was a great moment, but for more reasons than just the kids.

We took some pictures (Jenn's turned out MUCH better than mine), and then headed back to the house where we were met by my parents and Sherry and Jeff and my nephew Joshua.  We ate and talked and laughed and had a wonderful time together.  And Chris looked at me and said, "This is why you made so much food!"  And I said, "Yes!"  He was still completely surprised and it was thoroughly fun to tell the story over and over and over again.

(BIG thanks to Jenn for taking such great pictures!)

Apres moi, le deluge...

Christmas eve...may I just say, that when Chris and I were looking at our town house, one of the first things we talked about was how great the layout of the kitchen/dining room/living room would be for our Christmas eve party? 

So it goes without saying that we were super excited for our party this year.  Chris agreed to do most of the food prep, if I would do the cleaning/organizing/decorating.  And since I had long since ceased to care if the house was beautiful, I readily agreed.

For those of you who are new, we host my family every year on Christmas eve for a Nabs Party.  Nabs are what Chris' family call appetizers, so everything is casual and fun.  In years past, we've just ordered up a chicken nugget tray from Chick-fil-A, but for the past couple of years, Chris has stepped off the verge of crazy and decided to COOK our own nuggets.  And this year was no exception.

So the night before, we're in the kitchen and he says to me, "How many chicken breasts do you think I need to thaw to feed everyone?"  And I say, "I don't know...one each?"  And he says, "No way!  We need more than that!"  So he pulls out our bag of frozen chicken breasts (we buy the big kahuna bags at Costco) and starts counting them out...at TWENTY-TWO I stop him and say, "Whoa, nelly, you're going to be cooking ALL NIGHT!" 

Please to remember there are only TWELVE of us, and 2 of those are 6 and 3 years old respectively!

So Christmas eve dawns, and the kids and I get to work cleaning the house and Chris gets to work in the kitchen.  Our running joke with each other was that, Christmas 2014 was brought to you by cream cheese, cheddar cheese and jalapeno peppers because here's what was on our menu for the night:

• chicken nuggets
• steak bites
• boursin cheese (made with cream cheese)
• jalapeno pimento cheese (made with cream cheese and cheddar cheese)
• jalapeno poppers (made with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and bacon)
• cold spinach dip
• warm spinach dip (made with cream cheese)
• chips and salsa
• cheese and cracker tray
• homemade cheese ball (made with cream cheese and cheddar cheese)

and for dessert!

• mini-cheesecakes with cherries
• pecan tassies
• cherry blossoms

So some of these things Chris had put together the night before, but he still spent the bulk of Christmas eve in the kitchen, which is why it wasn't until later in the afternoon that we noticed that our roof was leaking.

Oh, yes, you read that right.  It poured rain the WHOLE day, and I had noticed what appeared to be a water stain on the ceiling in the Girl's room, and mentioned it to Christopher as a cause for concern, but we had been so wrapped up in med school applications and worry with that, that we sort of just ignored the ceiling in the hopes that it would go away on it's own.

No such luck.

But water dripping through a heating and cooling vent onto the floor, will awaken you to a sense of the reality of homeownership faster than anything else, so we set a bucket underneath it, Chris stormed up into the attic to marvel at the inadequacies of the roof, and I called the HOA and left an urgent voicemail because it's CHRISTMAS EVE, no one is in the office.

Then we went back downstairs and had a party!  Because what else can you do?

Everyone came, it was SUPER fun, my sister and her whole family had been sick since before Thanksgiving so we hadn't seen any of them in a looooooooooooong time, and we had really missed them.  So we talked and laughed and ate and laughed at Chris making this MOUNTAIN of food for all of us.  We read the Christmas story from Luke 2 and the kids opened presents from their Nana and Popper.  It had been such a long time since we had all gotten together, that I was just happy sitting on the couch surrounded by most of my favorite people in the whole world.

Needless to say, we were eating chicken nuggets for DAYS and DAYS.

Shout Out

Did you think I had forgotten you?  How could I ever do that?  It's just that my life has sort of run away with me.  So while I try to (in vain) to catch up with it, I thought I'd give you something fun and delicious to try.

For all of my gluten-free sisters.


Mexican Cornbread, this time PANCAKES!

We cordially love pancakes in all their varieties in our household, and last Sunday after a long day, I was tired and whipped these up.  Just mix up the ingredients in the order that they appear, then fry them on a medium-high heat pan, lightly greased (I use Pam).

2 eggs
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can of green chiles
1 can of creamed corn
1 cup of corn meal (I use white, but you can use whatever)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

Fry up the pancakes and keep them warm in the oven while you warm up some beans (which is how I eat them), grate some cheese, pull out the salsa and sour cream and lettuce (you could also add guacamole, tomatoes, onions, fried eggs, whatever really).   Assemble and top them as you desire.   Serve them forth.

(In the spirit of honesty, I will tell you that neither child partook of these delicious little pillows, but willingly ate beans and eggs.  Go figure.)

(Leftovers are fine in an airtight container on the counter, but after 1 day or so, they start to be a little less joyful.)

In Review

Well, it was sort of expected, wasn't it?

That amid the chaos of the holidays and dogsitting and a freelance project, that some balls would drop?  Right?  And as much as I love you all, this blog is pretty low on the priority list since it doesn't DIE if I don't feed it regularly.

But now that the holidays are over and the dust is settling from the Girl's first birthday, I'm starting to surface again.  I was thinking about all the cool things that I need to tell you, or show you in some cases--knitting projects that I've finished and am quite proud of.  But to do that I'd actually have to take pictures of the said projects and since it's been chilly here, we're busy wearin' 'em.

How about I tell you about the 3rd Annual Burnstopia Christmas Eve party instead?

It was lovely, really lovely.  I was very stressed out the Sunday before, just feeling really overwhelmed by everything and a bit bummed because I live with the Grinch.  Or Ebeneezer Scrooge, take your pick.  Chris doesn't get excited about Christmas until the Christmas eve party is in full swing.  But my Prince, he pulled himself up by some deeply buried Christmas cheer on Christmas eve morning and he cleaned and cooked and laundered like a Champ.

My family all came down, including my nephew who has been serving a mission in Denmark for the past 2 years, and my 96 year old Grandmother.  There were NABS in abundance...

Chris' favorite contribution (and my brother-in-law's and my nephew's) were these homemade jalapeno poppers. 

Here's the main spread:  chicken nuggets, bruchetta, shrimp, my favorite marinated veggies, chips and salsa, assorted cheese (and gluten free crackers for my niece) and a very yummy cheese ball.

And finally we come to the desserts:  mini-cheesecakes made by my mom, Sherry's pecan tassies which I SWEAR she puts crack in (I actually teared up when I ate the last one because I knew there would be no more until next Christmas) and Sherry's cherry blossoms (those are the pink cookie, they are basically butter and sugar and almond flavoring with a chocolate kiss and when they're warm from the oven there is nothing better on the planet.  Except for the aforementioned Pecan Tassies).  Not pictured:  the homemade caramels that my Mom made for me and my sisters.  I'm HOARDING those.  I occasionally ration one out to Christopher, but that's only when I'm feeling particularly benevolent.

We ate and talked and laughed.  It was rowdy and crowded, but I love looking around my small living room and seeing so many people that I love in that one small space.  We passed the Girl around and I took pictures of her with everyone, because every child in the world should be loved the way that she and the Boy are loved.

My Dad read the Christmas story from Luke 2 and the kids opened presents from Nana and my Grandma.  It was far from perfect, but just exactly what a Christmas celebration should be.

Maniacal LAUGH

For the past 3 years I have been experimenting with sugar cookie doughs.  More specifically I have been trying to replicate a sugar cookie that I can only get in Savannah, GA.  They come from a local bakery down there and every time we go down we stop in and buy a few (insanely priced for COOKIES) so that I can bite and think and savor and then try again.

I am not exaggerating when I say I have been going slowly insane trying to replicate these cookies!  I have tried no fewer than 5, 829 versions of sugar cookies.  I have googled and searched and searched and googled, I have experimented and come close and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked some MORE.  I have given up about 38 times, and then, like the crazy fool that I am, I keep TRYING again!

Chris went down to Savannah for a suicide trip to see his Dad and his family for a couple of days after Thanksgiving, and while he was down there (the babies and I stayed here) he was under orders to bring me more sugar cookies, for we are entering the High Baking Season around here.

In the meantime, I tried the 5, 830th version of sugar cookies and was SADLY disappointed.  So I sat down at my computer to write an email to Christopher and quit for the 39th time.  And there, in my humble in box was an email from Chris' best friend.  A best friend that I love but seldom hear from as he's...Chris' best friend.  So I open it and what to my wondering eye should appear?

A link.  To a pdf.  OF THE RECIPE FOR THOSE SUGAR COOKIES.

I called Chris immediately and said, "Oh my HECK!"  And he laughed at me and told me a classic story of It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know Southerness, and I printed it and thanked his best friend PROFUSELY and then stood up in my bedroom and laughed meniacally! 

Because I WIN.

(And in my own defense, can I just say?  This is the STRANGEST cookie recipe I have EVER seen.  There's NO leavening of any kind!  You knead them at the end almost like bread dough.  No WONDER I couldn't figure it out!  T'ain't nat'ral.)


But now I get the cake-iest most delicious buttery sugar cookies whenever I want and I don't have to pay exorbitant prices for them.  I am as giddy as a school girl.

I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win I win!

Cleverness shall be rewarded

I made cookies this morning.

Or rather, I baked the cookies that I mixed up yesterday this morning.  Mainly because it's so much cooler in the morning, but also because Chris is working overtime and I wanted him to be able to take some in his lunch/dinner.

So I was baking cookies and making breakfast at the same time.  You may well imagine that the Boy thought the cookies were PART of breakfast and began begging for cookies almost immediately.  I patiently explained 437 times that the cookies were NOT for breakfast, that he could have a cookie AFTER he ate a decent LUNCH.  And after the 437th explanation he seemed to accept it and move on.  Which was nice.

Fast forward.  The Girl is taking a nice little nap, and my parents are coming down today to pick up the Boy for a little sleepover at their house.  I was talking to him about what we were going to pack in his overnight bag and he declares that he needs a little snack.

(Now, everyone is different, but in our house, in the pantry, there's a shelf near the bottom that the Boy can reach and access Boy-appropriate snacks: fruit and cereal bars, dried fruit, nuts, occasionally crackers etc.)

So he goes to the pantry and pulls out his "snack bag" (it's a simple cloth bag that holds zippies full of snacks) and says he needs to put together some snacks to take to Nana's house (never mind that as soon as he gets to Nana's house he'll get all NEW snacks, but that's beside the point).  So we go through the pantry packing up his snacks to take to Nana's.  He declares that he needs some, "Nuts!  Mama, cashews and almonds and pecans (which he pronounces PAW-cawns)!"  So I pack a little zippy of nuts.  Then, "Dried fruit, Mama!  I need some mango!"  So I pack him a little zippy of mango.  Then he says, "I need a fig bar, Mama."  So he gets a fig and cereal bar (from Trader Joe's, natch) and adds that to the bag.  Then he says, "I will also need a cookie, Mama."

At which point I look at him and think, "He has staged this clever ruse in the hopes that in the midst of all of those healthy snacks, I wouldn't notice that he's asking for a cookie!"  But it's so clever, that of course, I gave him a cookie.

Which he promptly ate.



The bag of snacks remains untouched.  I can't help but think that, in spite of their nutritional deficiencies maybe treats DO make kids smarter...

Milk and Cookies

I've been working on perfecting the chocolate chip cookie for nearly a decade.  The problem has been that Chris and I are looking for a texture that's almost impossible to achieve, crispy-chewy on the outside and soft-chewy in the center.

But I've done it.  I've perfected the Chocolate Chip cookie.  And the Boy agrees.

(You know how, that first year with a baby they grow and change so fast you almost can't keep up with them?  But then after their first birthday it seems to slow down and you can catch your breath.  And then, well, then it seems like you go to bed at night with one child and you wake up in the morning to a totally different child.  The Boy is changing so fast now.  He's losing the last traces of my Golden Baby and becoming a full fledged, dirt loving, gangled Big Boy.  I've known it was inevitable, but it still hurts my heart a little bit.  It seems I am always being left behind...)

A Weekend of Family Dinners

I grew up in a family that had family dinner basically every night.  Almost always the same time, so we always knew as kids when we needed to be home.  My Dad would be home from work and Mom would have made something--animal, vegetable, grain--for us all to eat. 

And so I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that we're not actually very good about having family dinners in our household.  Don't get me wrong, we WANT to have family dinners, they just don't always pan out.  Chris works 5 evenings a week, so most nights it's just me and the Boy.  And to be honest, the Boy has become a dawdling eater, and in my pregnant state of high irritability, it's hard for me to sit with him every night while he eats dinner.  It's easier (and a lot less shrewish) for me to work in the kitchen (cleaning up), or to work on the computer while he eats in peace.

So imagine my surprise when we came to the end of this past weekend and had had, not 1 but TWO proper family dinners!  One of them by candlelight, per the Boy's request. What can I say, at 3 he's very romantic.

Saturday night, Chris cooked what can only be described as Midwestern home cookin' (hamburger steaks, onion gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans), the Boy ate green beans BY CHOICE for the first time EVER.  And Sunday night, I cooked, herb roasted chicken, stove top and green beans with brownies for dessert.

We'll just leave you all to wonder at how many Tums I had to eat to balance out the heartburn.  The heartburn that has been RELENTLESS for the past SEVEN months.

The point of this post (aside from a little boasting on my part, TWO family dinners is nothing to sneeze at in these parts), is this...I could actually tell the difference it made for the Boy.  He ate better, by which I mean, GREEN BEANS!  An actual BALANCED meal!  It was shocking...usually his dinner is composed of the Carbohydrate of the Moment and milk.  And he didn't dawdle like he does when it's just him and I.  He chewed with his mouth closed and made intelligible conversation with us.   He was enchanted by the candles and pleased with both his parents at the same time. 

Which leads me to the conclusion that, maybe there's some kind of magic to be found in family dinners.  I'm actually looking forward to the day when Chris can move back to day shift and we can have them more frequently than just the weekends.

Summer Options

Are you like me?  You love all the fresh fruit and veg of summer?  I love it, I do.  But sometimes, I get a little tired of salad.

Solution?  Soup!

But, M, you say, it's far too hot for soup!  And right you are!  It's FAR too hot for soup, we are melting melting over here, in fact, if you walk outside, it is much like breathing soup!

But this is not a hot soup.  It is a cold soup.  And it is delicious.

I had never actually had Gazpacho before, but it's lovely.  I found a super easy recipe in Real Simple and made only a few modifications, and we all loved it so much I thought I'd share.  This one goes out to all my friends with green thumbs who have an abundance of tomatoes and cukes this time of year!

Gazpacho  (adapted from Real Simple)

2 pounds ripe tomatoes--chunked up and tossed into a blender
1 red bell pepper chunked up, deseeded and tossed into the blender
1 small onion chunked up and tossed into the blender

(are you sensing a theme here?)

1 clove of garlic tossed into the blender
1/2 English cucumber chunked up and tossed into a blender
1/4 cup olive oil  poured into the blender
2 tsp. vinegar poured into the blender
2 Tbsp. parsley tossed into the blender

Whiz the whole mess in the blender until smooth.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Voila.

Here's what we did differently:  we cooked the pepper and onion because raw pepper and onion does not agree well with my husband.  We added 2 Tbsp instead of 2 tsp of vinegar and the recipe called for red wine vinegar and we used apple cider and it was just fine.  It blends up thick and lovely so we bought some crusty bread and scooped it up with that.  It was light, it was refreshing and a great way to get your veggies without having the same salad.

Next time I think I'll try adding some fresh basil or rosemary...I like parsley fine, but with the pepper, onion and garlic, I think the soup can hold its own against a stronger herb.  Also, I think it would be lovely topped with a small amount of pesto.  I'd also like to experiment with tossing it with some cold pasta...since it's so thick it might work.

Now go forth and enjoy the summer's tomatoes and cukes.

A Vegetarian Dilemma

I've been a vegetarian for 13 years.  I got sick and went to doctors and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, so I started to eliminate things from my diet.  I got down to what was essentially a vegan diet, and that's the point where things normalized.  But I was STARVING all the time.  So I gradually added in dairy and occasional eggs. 

But that didn't fix all the problems.  My guts were still...inconsistent.  Unpredictable.  I was still having good days and bad days.  But I didn't know what was wrong and I was now out of health insurance.  So I just accepted that it was what it was and left it alone.  For 13 years.

When I was pregnant with the Boy, I craved meat.  And not normal cravings, intense, insatiable cravings.  I didn't give in to them, I was too scared of being sick again.  So I did the best I could with beans and soy and cheese and eggs.  And nothing really changed.

And then this year...my weight has been...off...since the Boy was born.  It took a long time to bounce back from the pregnancy and delivery and nursing, and then it took a looooooong time to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight which was still MORE than I normally weigh.  I spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking my diet and workouts, trying to get my body to loosen it's grip.  And so I switched to protein at some point in every meal, thinking that I was eating too many carbohydrates and perhaps that was what was messing with my weight.  So I switched to soy protein at breakfast, beans, nuts and nut butters throughout the day and usually some soy protein in the evening.  I feel like my blood sugar evened out and I definitely consumed less sugar through the day, but I didn't see a noticeable difference in my weight.

And then...well, I was just so tired all the time, run down, drained and depleted, just not great in general.  So, come the Spring, I started to think about the last 13 years as a vegetarian, and really ponder a return to meat.  I vacillated, I waffled, I reached new heights of indecision.  One day I would be absolutely determined that I was going back to meat, and the next day I would think...no...not yet.  So, while I vacillated and waffled, I incorporated more fish into my diet and hoped that would fix it.

I've been feeling worse in the past couple of weeks, and craving a wide variety of meats.  So on Father's Day, Chris carved me up 2 ounces of red meat and let me just say, it was delicious.   Paired with a giant serving of salad and a medium serving of potatoes, it was a perfect dinner.  And for the next 4 hours, I wasn't hungry, and for the first time in WEEKS, I wasn't completely exhausted.  And that's saying something.

Here's the thing.  I believe everyone should choose what works for them.  I believe that EVERYONE needs to eat more fruits and veg than they probably do.  I believe in moderation in ALL things, including how and what they eat.  I don't want to have a grand debate on the virtues of vegetarianism.  Because I believe people should choose to do what works for them. 

For the time being, I'm going back to an omnivorous diet.  I think it's what my body and my life needs right now. 

Baking FAIL: the Mother's Day Edition

I think I'm about to throw in the towel.

I quit.

I give up.

I surrender.

My sweet sister requested her favorite chocolate cake for Mother's Day dinner.  So I got up bright and early (ok, not that early) to bake one fresh before church.

Chris lovingly reminded me not to be in a hurry because I always make mistakes when I hurry.  And I really wasn't in a hurry.  It was a nice, leisurely morning. 

Please bear in mind that I've made this particular cake 40 bajillion times.  It's a family favorite so I make it for everything.

Aaaaaaaaand this morning?  Bad.  Bad. Bad. Bad.

I forgot the baking soda, people!  The baking soda!  Do you know what this cake was like?  It was chocolate LEATHER!  It didn't rise AT ALL.  And the worst part is, I didn't even notice until Chris pointed it out!  It's like I took my brain out to go to bed and forgot where I put it!

Seriously, I quit.

What I have been doing all. morning. long.

Making Bagels!

I used Rose's recipe, which was so great because she had her father help her.  She asked him, during a taste test, "Dad, are they like what you used to eat when you were a kid?"  And he said, "No.  They're BETTER!"  And they really were heavenly.  I used 3 cups of whole wheat flour and 2+ cups of bread flour.  It yielded this lovely soft but chewy inside and a crispy-chewy-crunchy crust.  They are SO good.

But.

Dude.  SOOOOO much work!  I told Chris, it would be worth it if we were still living in Brunswick and there wasn't a bagel place for miles around, but here we have a Brueggers just down the road, so I don't know how much I'll actually make them.  They are really freakin' good, so maybe...but we'll see.

The Boy seemed to like them...

That was our lunch today.  I had meant them for breakfast, and started them at 7:30...but they weren't done until 11--so we had them schmeared with cream cheese or peanut butter and jam...they were every bit as good as the ones I ate in New York.


In other news:  I got up this morning at 6:30 to work out.  I haven't worked out since well before we moved down here...which would be, oh, 5 months.  Let me just say, I kind of wanted to die.  And in the middle of my near-coronary experience in the living room I thought to myself, "This is why doctors say that exercise needs to be a routine.  Because when you get out of the routine it is just so very painful going back to it."  Over all, I'm pleased with myself for getting out of bed and getting (some of) it done.  Tomorrow my goal is to make it out bed a bit sooner so that I can get it all done.  My other goal is to be back in my jeans by Christmas.  And for those of you who know me well, you know this is pretty typical of me.  I wear loose clothes all summer long so I don't really notice that the ice cream as accumulated on my bum...until winter.  Then I have to bust my bum into some shape so that I can wear my jeans.  I have a longer range goal to actually...you know...STICK WITH the exercise come next spring and summer, but we'll see.  In the meantime, I have to put some bagels in the freezer before they go stale...

Soupy Saturdays

Once the weather cooled off here, Chris and I instituted Soup on Saturdays.  We're all home together so we have some time to cook up a big pot of warmy goodness.  We make it a point to buy some crusty bread and we end up with an enormous bowl of soup in the fridge to eat on all week long.

So far we've made:

• Pioneer Woman's Corn Chowder
• Mushroom Barley soup (and oh my HECK this one was GOOD)
• Russian Borscht
• Roasted Tomato Soup (this one is a gold standard in Burnstopia)

We've got a lovely cottage-pie stew on deck, a creamy baked potato chowder and I'm starting to think about attempting a fish chowder--but I need a decent recipe...I'm not shelling out a ton of money for 3 or more different kinds of fish if it's just going to be meh.

The mushroom-barely was from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and I futzed with it until I came up with this super thick, rich lovely stew like meal.  With some toasted rosemary bread it was heaven itself.

I've never actually had borscht before so it was fun to make.  I love the technicolor beets and you know, anything with sour cream as a condiment is delicious.  I started saying numbers in Russian to my Boy just to mess with his head and he's become addicted to them.  He comes up to me and shouts, "DVA-PYAT!"  Which is "TWO-FIVE!"  and I know it's my job to recite them and he chants them after me.  I know he has no idea what they mean but it just makes me laugh to hear him speaking Russian.  I've started doing the same with French and he loves them too, but doesn't know them quite as well as the Russian ones.  If I get him started he can say all of the numbers in order from 2-10...1 is still hard for him.  Mostly, I'm just sowing seeds, hoping that in the years to come as we sit down to work on foreign languages it will come a little easier to him than it otherwise would.

I also found this recipe for grilled cheese sandwiches using pesto and fresh mozzarella (which the Boy says, "RELLA!") so one afternoon we made up some grilled cheese sandwiches with pesto and moz and finished off the soup.  It was warm and delicious.

The Corn Chowder was good, but Chris made it really spicey!  So I poured it over plain baked potatoes and topped it with a little cheese (feta or cheddar, both were good) and that mellowed the spicey quite a bit.

So tell me, how are you enjoying the cooler weather?

Summer Salad

Ok, so this post is really for my sister Susie, but I thought all of you might enjoy it too.


I came home from the family reunion STARVING for vegetables.  So I headed out grocery shopping and picked up an assortment of crunchy, earthy greens and here's what I did:

1 bag of broccoli slaw (it's a mix of grated broccoli stalk, red cabbage and carrots)
1 zucchini, grated
1 yellow squash, grated
3 carrots, grated
1 bag of snow peas, sliced (Market Fresh packages these so that they're washed and easy to incorporate)
4 stalks of celery, sliced

Toss it well.  The squashes and carrots are water logged and will clump together so use a giant bowl and toss toss toss.  I topped it with Italian dressing but it would also be good with something gingery and Asian.  Or that yummy lime vinaigrette would be good too.  I think next time, I might also add a couple big handfuls of bean sprouts for I love me some sprouts.

I'm thinking I'll be eating this all summer long.  It makes a nice big bowl full so I'm keeping it in the fridge so that I can grab a big bowl full for lunch and dinner and everything is streamlined and EASY.  For I am lazy but happiest when eating healthy.


Now your turn, what's your favorite summer salad?

Wonder Bread

A few weeks ago, the Luminous Eleanor Q, asked for a bread tutorial.  And since she is my Jewish Twin, I am happy to oblige her!

I grew up with a lovely mother who made all of our bread.  Partly for economics (it's cheaper to make your own anything) and partly for nutrition (my mother DESPISES store bought bread which she describes with a tone of disdain, "It's nothing but AIR!"), we ate homemade bread all my life.  On very rare occasions (when my mom was traveling and there wasn't any bread in the freezer) my dad would purchase us the forbidden and illicit store bought white bread of our childish dreams.  But as surely as my mother lives and breathes, once she came  home, she made more bread and that much maligned "loaf" would find its way to the trash.

As an adult, I realized that I really needed to learn to make bread because I CRAVED it constantly when under stress and being an adult is really stressful.  I found that nothing would satisfy like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on homemade bread and nothing would comfort my anxieties like a piece of homemade bread toast with cinnamon and sugar.  And so, in graduate school I set out to learn to make bread.

I am a book learner.  When I don't know how to do something whether it's a foreign language, dealing with a newborn, or making bread, I turn to a book.  I can read, think and understand it in a matter of hours.  (I don't know how, my brain just works like that.)  So, when I was a 2nd year Masters student, I requested Rose Levy Beranbaum's series of cookbooks (the Bread Bible, the Cake Bible and the Pie and Pastry Bible).

Now, I love Rose (as you can see, we're on a first name basis).  And for understanding the science behind bread (or cakes or pies) there is no better book out there.  She can explain to you why you need the ratio of water--flour--fat--salt--yeast and how kneading will develop the gluten and which flours and yeasts are best.  But there really are some things you just can't learn from a book.

It took many many months of me trying and failing in varying degrees to learn to make bread.  And any regular reader of this blog knows that I still fail spectacularly some time.  (Bread Bricks for dinner anyone?  Pumpkin Flop-overs for dessert!)  But I am here, to share with you what I've learned about our friend, the staff of life.  Know in advance, that you don't have to have a ton of space in your kitchen to make bread, I learned in a kitchen with (I kid you not) 2 square feet of counter space.  As long as you're organized and line up your ingredients and tools, you should be fine. 

First things First:

I think most sane people are afraid of Yeast on some level.  It is a living thing, after all.  You feed it and nurture it, only to turn around and EAT it.  It seems a little strange.  So the first rule to Bread making is that you must Stop Fearing the Yeast.  Respect it, but don't be afraid of it.  If you remember a few things, you'll be just fine.

Among other first things.  You'll need about 6-8 hours to make bread.  Not continuous hours, but a good chunk of your day when you'll need to be home and reasonably un-distracted.  Also, and this is a totally whimsical thing, but you should try to maybe be in a good mood.  I find that when I'm happier, when I'm thinking about my family and how much I love them, my bread turns out better.  I don't know why, it just does.

Final first things.  You'll need some good stuff.  Bread flour (I use Gold Medal Better for Bread), you want UNbleached, the bleaching stuff will kill you.  Now, you could go fancy and get King Arthur, it's wonderful flour, but it's expensive and it's probably going to take you a while to figure out what the dough should feel like before it turns out well...so may as well hold off on the good stuff until you really know what you're doing.  Yeast (I use Fleischmann's in the jar, I just like it better that way.), you want to buy it fresh and then keep it in the fridge so it's cool.  You don't want to use old yeast or old flour as they can affect the outcome of your bread.  Which is ok, you can eat the spoils of failed attempts...it's good, it helps you figure out what you like and don't like in a loaf of bread.

On to the breadmaking!

(You should all know, this is my MOM's recipe.  I told her that I wanted to do this and she chuckled and was humble and sweet about it.  I told her that if you all had questions, I was going to send them to HER and she would answer them, at which point she started to PROTEST.  But if you send me questions, I shall still forward them to her at which point she'll probably just CALL me and ask me to clarify on the blog.)

Assemble your necessary ingredients:

FAT:  You'll need 1/4 cup of a fat that is solid at room temperature.  My mom uses shortening, I like butter, you can choose what you like.
Liquid:  The recipe calls for 1 cup of powdered milk to 1 quart of warm-hot water, which is what I do.  But if you want to use regular milk and warm it up, you can do that, if you want to do soy or rice milk (as long as it's unflavored) I'm sure that's also fine, though you may get different results because of the varying protein structures.  Mostly you want to make sure that it's on the warm side of hot.

First, you want to dissolve your YEAST in 1 cup of warm water (not too hot because that will kill your yeast, and you'll want to add a pinch of sugar to feed the yeast).

Next, you want to melt your Fat of Choice in your Liquid of Choice.  At this point you also want to add 5 tablespoons of sugar (if you choose to use honey you'll want to use LESS liquid) and 1.5 tablespoons of salt.  I usually add 1-2 cups of bread flour at this point as well.  And I stir with a whisk because my flour can be a bit lumpy at first.  It should still be really runny (runnier than cake batter).

Now you'll stir in your dissolved yeast--it should have puffed up quite a bit while sitting there.

Now you begin to mix in the flour.  My mom's recipe calls for 6-8 cups of bread flour, I ALWAYS need more.  It's more like 9-10 cups of bread flour, but once I count up to 9 cups, I start adding it by halves because if you get too MUCH flour you'll get Bread Bricks.  (And you'll want to switch from a whisk to something sturdy like a wooden or plastic spoon, don't use a spatula you can't get enough force behind it and you REALLY don't want to continue to use a whisk because cleaning really thick bread dough out of a whisk is NOT fun.  Go on, ask me how I know that.)

Once the dough gets thick you want to start mixing and kneading with your hands.  I am a HUGE advocate for using your hands when making bread, you need to FEEL the texture of the dough to know when it's good and ready.  You want to knead it for 10 minutes.  Now, whether that's 10 minutes consecutively or 10 minutes total with a short break in the middle that's up to you.  I've had success both ways.  But make sure that you streatch it and knead it for 10 minutes.

As you're kneading you can add incriments of flour to get the dough to the right consistency.  Just be ware the Bread Bricks.  I usually add by half cups and then quarters and then just pinches until it feels the way it should feel in my hand.

 

Once it's slightly sticky, but not too sticky, it should feel sort of smooth and stick to itself more than your fingers.  THEN, you set it to rise.  Somewhere warmish (just not really cold), and cover it with a lid or a thin towel, you just don't want it to dry out.

2 hours later it should have risen and puffed:

Then you'll punch it down, and leave it to rise again.

2 hours later it should have risen and puffed again:

(it's stuck to the lid of the bowl.  Lovely!)

Now comes the fun part.  You want to flour your work surface, like this:

Dump out your dough. And divide it in half with a pastry scraper thing.  (I don't normally endorse bazillions of different kitchen tools, but I LOVE this scraper!  I use it all the time!)

Once you've divided it in half, divide those halves into halves again.  This will give you 4 mostly equal sized loaves.

Grease your pans and shape your loaves.  Place the loaves in the pan and lay them out to rise again. (You'll want to cover them with a thin towel of some sort to keep them from drying out again.)

2 hours (or so) later, you should be ready to preheat your oven.  Warm it up to 350 degrees and when your loaves are as big and puffy as you desire, slide them on in.  Be GENTLE, you don't want the dough to collapse on itself.

(these loaves were so big, only 3 would fit in my oven, so I baked 3 first and left the smallest to rise while the others baked.)

Bake for 45 minutes or until the desired brown.

Dump the loaves out onto a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely (if you CAN) before cutting.

Allow them to cool completely before freezing them.  This recipe will make 4 big beautiful VOLUPTUOUS loaves of bread.  We nearly always eat an entire HALF after it comes out of the oven with honey butter, or butter and jam, or cinnamon and sugar, or honey, or just butter, or just plain.  It's perfect for cold nights with a big bowl of soup (I can heartily recommend tomato), or as a grilled cheese sandwich with said soup.

Sweet, sweet honey

Chris works.

Chris works hard.

Chris works with a wide variety of people.

Sometimes this wide variety of people bring him stuff.

Chris brings that stuff home.

Some of the stuff is GOOD stuff.

Case in point, last week Chris brought home this gorgeous bottle of honey.  My initial reaction was to mock such fancy pants stuff.  But then we UNCORKED it, sliced thick slices of my voluptuous homemade bread, spread on some butter and drizzled this honey all over it.

Oh.My.Dear.Sweet.Nectar of NATURE it is GOOD.

I have eaten nothing for the past 4 days but bread with butter and honey and I am NOT sorry.

You know how most honey, the honey you buy in the store tastes slightly sharp and edgey?  This is all smoothe edges, soft, melty sweetness.  Lights will literally fire off in your brain as you eat it.  You will speak in softer tones.  You will love the world.

So, that's my suggestion.  If you have those people in your life that you want to give something to them but they have everything they need, give them a bottle of this honey.  Remind them how sweet life can be.

Our Monday Night Tradition

Per Whimsy's request, and owing to my own over-active sense of guilt, here is our new favorite Monday night activity.

Pizza!

Now, if we're e'er in Savannah, we love to go to Vinnies.  Hands down the best pizza in the South!  And maybe anywhere, we had pizza in New York that was good, but not as good as Vinnies.  But Vinnies, alas, it is an hour away and pizza is a great way for me to get veggies into my child without too much mess, so I make this once a week.

The thing about pizza is that you're really only limited by your imagination when it comes to toppings.  When we go to Vinnies, Chris likes to get italian sausage and pesto and I generally go for mushroom and feta cheese.  But when we lived in Durham and had no Vinnies, we went to Amantes and Amantes had some awesome topping combinations.  So the two that I make regularly are derived from both of these sources.

I've tweaked a recipe from Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything which I bought for Chris one year for Christmas and which he's never used but I've had great luck with it.  Everything I've made out of here has turned out, and the recipe's stand up to some personalization which is perfect for me.

(I had brilliant intentions of including pictures, and I did start to take some, but DUDE--it was slowing me down and I was tired and hungry and also trying to feed, bathe and put a small toddler to bed, so...not so much with the pictures, sorry!)

First, take 3 cups of bread flour.  (You can use all purpose flour, but I like the texture of bread flour best.)  (You can also substitute up to half of the flour with wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour, whatever flour floats your boat.)  Next you add 2 teaspoons of yeast, 2 teaspoons of coarse salt and I add 1 tablespoon of dried italian herbs.

Mix all of that together and then mix up your wet ingredients.  Take 1 cup of warm water, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and I crush 3ish cloves of fresh garlic into this.

Add your wet ingredients to your dry and add more water if necessary.  (I almost always add more water.)

Then, turn your dough out onto a floured surface and add more flour if necessary and then knead it until it's soft and no longer sticky.

You should end up with a lovely ball of dough.  Set it in a relatively warm place to rise for an hour.

(It's never to early to think about toppings.  If I haven't done it already I take out a box of frozen spinach to thaw...I also start chopping some pepper...)

Once your dough is puffy (it takes about an hour in a warmish room, longer if you're like us and keep your house cold), I divide it in half.  You can make one big, thick crust pizza or 2 smaller thin crust pizzas, it's up to you.

Flour your work surface and roll out the crust.

Grease your pans!

Shift the crust onto the pans and preheat your oven (500 degrees).

Now you get to play!  I like to use pesto for one sauce and just whatever red sauce you happen to have on hand for the other (we buy classico and doctor it up, I like the chunks of tomato on pizza), so sauce them up!

(Just a word about pesto on pizza--dude, DO it.  It's SO good.  Full of flavor, and the olive oil makes the crust crispy and delightful.  I can't advocate this enough.  It's awesome with tomato and mozzerella, with feta cheese, with some kind of meat, with other green veggies, it's good with almost anything!)

Now, for my pesto pizza, I use soy breakfast sausage.  The herbiness in the faux sausage compliments the pesto in all kinds of awesome ways.  You can use regular pork sausage, italian sausage, chorizo or whatever.  And then top with mozerella.  This one was a really wet moz, so i didn't grate it, I just pulled it apart with my fingers.

For my veggie pizza.  I have borrowed heavy inspiration from Amante's Greek pizza for this one.  I use a red sauce, and then the spinach.

You want to press all of the water out of frozen spinach (you can use fresh but you should cook it first) and then I just pinch it and pull it apart and layer it onto my pizza.

After spinach I layer on the peppers.  You can use whatever color floats your boat.  I chop them small so that the Boy will eat them.

After that I add mushrooms and olives (I used canned for convenience's sake).

And finally the feta cheese.  I can eat feta cheese any time, any where.  I love it.  On salads, on pizza, on sandwiches, I care not.  It's always good.  But if you're not a fan, you can leave it off.

Finally top with your mozerella.  (For veggie pizzas, they need some help in the spice department.  The chopped pepper helps a bit, but I also sprinkle liberally with this pepper blend called Hot Shot! You can get it in your spice aisle, I think McCormick's makes it.)

Bake for 15 minutes at 500 degrees or until the desired color of brown-ness.  I think there's nothing quite so good as burned cheese so I tend to cook mine a while.

Cut and serve!  Enjoy!

Cupcakes for Emily

Years and years ago I was working for a small financial company (now DEFUNCT) in downtown Seattle. I worked in customer service and spent most of every day on the phone with moderately dissatisfied customers. I blame this experience for my distaste for the telephone in general nowadays.

But while working there, I encountered several very cool people. One of those people was Rosanna. Rosanna was this amazing baker. And she had a plum tree in her yard so in the summer we would get all of these amazing plum treats. But in the FALL! she would bring in pumpkin cake.



mmmmm. Pumpkin Cake.




Her's is AMAZING. So when my birthday rolled around (in January, natch) and she asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, I didn't even think about it.

"Um. Pumpkin Cake, Rosanna, Pumpkin Cake."

She brought me one and I got to take the leftovers home to my family. It was official. We were all in love with this most delicious dessert. So, when I finally submitted my notice to leave (and go back to school, natch), I asked Rosanna for one parting thing.

Her pumpkin cake recipe.

It did not come easily. She COMPETES with this recipe. AND WINS. So, she relinquished it under the strictest of terms. I couldn't share it with anyone. NO ONE. It was to be put in the M shaped vault and locked up for LIFE. And using it for competitions, however small or local or ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY they may be was FORBOTEN.

Now, anyone who really knows me knows that I can not, CAN NOT keep something GOOD a secret. (It's why I'm generally the last to know about pregnancies, moves, job changes, etc. I just can't help myself! When something good is happening I feel COMPELLED to share it!) So, very very gradually and with copious amounts of GUILT, the recipe began to leak out. First to my Mom. Then to my sister. Both worthy women who make this cake every Autumn.

And then we moved to Durham. And the next year we met Brad. (Sorry Brad, but!) And then something EVEN BETTER happened and we met his amazing wife Emily! See, Brad was in Chris' program at school, and we heard that he had moved out to Chapel Hill, leaving his wife and 3 kids (the youngest just a couple of weeks old) in Utah to join him a bit later. We had him to dinner--feeling sorry for him and all, and over dinner he told us about Emily.

As soon as he said, "My wife has red hair." I thought to myself, "She and I are going to be great friends!"

So, a couple of weeks pass and then we saw Brad walking in to church with this small parade of darling children and this gorgeous redhead walked in with this teeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiiny baby and I thought to myself, "Ah-Ha! That must be Emily!"

That Sunday I did something that I NEVER do. I walked up to her and introduced myself. And you know what? We became great friends.

That Autumn I made pumpkin cupcakes as per usual, and I took half the batch over to Miss Emily and her brood of awesome chickadees. And I continued to make them per her request for the next two years.

Then came the awful day when we found out that Brad was packing up the Wonderful Emily and their delightful family and moving them 3000 miles WEST to some Wild West settlement in California. I cried. And then I emailed the recipe for the cupcakes to Emily. And then I made her a road trip care package, for I would miss her heartily.

And then we moved. And I do miss her heartily, but never more than this past weekend when I made pumpkin cupcakes for the first time this season. I so wished to have her in my kitchen keeping me company, so as a virtual baking experience...

First you have to rustle up some really cute, cheap child labor!

Then, you sneak up on your recipe.
Like all works of genius, this one can be a bit of a diva.

Assemble your cast of characters.
Make sure the super secret character is hidden in the back.

mmmmm. Cream the pumpkin and brown sugar. Frankly, anything that starts with CREAM is going to be delicious, whether we are referring to the Noun or the Verb.

While that's getting creamy, make sure you mix up all your dry ingredients.
They all have a similar sense of humor so they get on smashingly.

After all the sloppy wet ingredients are creamed and happy, you add in the stodgy dry ingredients. They help hold this party together.

Then you fill the cupcake papers. Now, you could probably get 24 cupcakes out of this recipe, but they would be skinny cupcakes. Nay, anorexic cupcakes, sad, pitiful, size 0 cupcakes. And we don't want those too, too skinny cupcakes here. We want only VOLUPTUOUS cupcakes! Plump cupcakes! Plus-sized, REAL WOMAN, curvaceous cupcakes! So I make 18 instead of 24 and we're all the happier for it.

After they come out of the oven and you're transferring them from the cupcake tins to the rack to cool, remember to drop one on the floor.

This one you get to eat warm and UNfrosted, and oh man it's good.
(What? My floors are clean. Mostly.)

Be careful who you share that cupcake with because then he'll come back all Oliver Twist on you with the please, sir, we want some more!

(His father dressed him this morning. I would never have put him in a dark brown onesie with navy pants, but alas, I was sleeping in so I shall not complain.)

Now, you'll take some room temperature butter, cream cheese, vanilla and confectioner's sugar and whip that up until it becomes more than the sum of its humble parts. Schmear that on those pillows of pumpkin goodness and here's what you get:

17 perfect pumpkin cupcakes. Ok, maybe there are only 16 in this picture because another one may have been consumed warm and unfrosted after experiencing the bliss of the first one...the one that fell on the floor. Anyway, the number need not matter, what matters is that these are glorious relics of autumnal pleasure, and as I eat them, I think of my friend Emily.

And I miss her.

Tasty

So, I haven't posted anything about baby food because several of you have posted about how easy and how much BETTER (healthier and cheaper) it is to make your own. I have STOLEN artlessly from you, thankyouverymuch, and as such haven't had much to add to the overall body of blog posts on homemade baby food.

Until today.

So I've been toying around with different oatmeal concoctions, trying to get the consistency just right. My main issue with baby food is that most of it is inedible. I am a picky girl--I admit it. I'll eat most anything (except food with a face--if it has a face in its original form, count me out) but it has to be GOOD. DECENT. EDIBLE. And so in creating variations of the Boy's standard favorites, I experiment with different textures and flavors.

Which brings me back to oatmeal. We buy the boxes of organic cereal for him--I use it as a thickener for fruits and yogurts because it is the very definition of tasteless paste on its own. But for real cereal that I want him to...oh...EAT, I buy whole rolled oats and grind them up to different textures in my blender.

I've tried different liquids for cooking (water, formula, juice) but none of them produced anything good, so I scrapped it and started using the fruits that I blended for him. We've started adding back texture to his food so they're a bit thicker and have some small chunks of apples, peaches, pears and blueberries in them.

Here's the ratio that works best:

4 tablespoons of ground oatmeal
8 tablespoons of blended fruit

There's enough liquid in the fruit to fully cook the oatmeal and it creates a lovely texture. So this morning for breakfast the Boy had oatmeal cooked in 8 tablespoons of a blueberry-peach combination. I added a tablespoon of whole milk ricotta cheese to add creaminess and a bit of protein and a sprinkling of cinnamon and lo, he INHALED it.

Here's the proof:




Edited to add: It's 3:20 in the afternoon. Hey, did you know that peaches, blueberries and oatmeal have a lot of fiber? Yeah. That was interesting.

Bar-B-Que and Transcendence

As you know, Wednesday was the Husband's birthday but he's had such an INSANE week that we didn't celebrate until last night. As I know you've missed my snarky restaurant reviews, I have planned my return. Unfortunately...

No snark here.

Per his request we went to Allen & Sons, a tiny, hole-in-the-wall, CLASSIC bar-b-que establishment on highway 86 in Hillsborough, NC. The place had gotten RAVE reviews and the Husband...he loves him some bar-b-que so off we went.

FIRST WARNING: When I moved back to the South after years out west and up north I made the rookie mistake of referring to bar-b-que as a VERB as in To Cook OutSide With Fire. We were on our way together somewhere and the Husband STOPPED the CAR to inform me (in a 20 minute lecture) that BAR-B-QUE is a NOUN not a VERB, it is a KIND of FOOD and not the manner in which it is prepared. If I wanted the VERB it would be To GRILL or simply To Cook OutSide With Fire. But that if I was going to survive the South again, I needed to understand this ONE concept very clearly. So now you know, we're talking about the NOUN. The FOOD. Not the VERB: to cook outside with fire.

We get there and it's this old house that's been converted into a restaurant for I don't know how many years. We sit, we order lemonade (which is so sweet that diabetics should beware), and we peruse the menus.

SECOND WARNING: VEGETARIANS YE BE WARNED. There are NO vegetarian options. Oh, the cole slaw is vegetarian enough but it's a SIDE if you really want to experience Allen & Sons you have to eat some form of meat. And also, I was a BAD vegetarian last night. I ate the fish.

The Husband orders a standard bar-b-que plate that comes with cole slaw, hushpuppies and french fries. They brought it out with a bottle of warmed sauce. He looked at me over a pile of pulled pork with a totally blissed out look on his face. I was sorry, not for the first time, that I hadn't brought the camera. They brought a basket of hushpuppies and my plate of 2 catfish filets and french fries and cole slaw and DUDE...the Dude loves cole slaw for some reason so I was pretty happy. There was no chance I'd ever be able to eat the entire plate, so I settled for one piece of fish and some of the fries and the SLAW.

We ate quite happily for some time, I ordered a dish of cherry cobbler and ice cream--made with SOUR cherries mind you, which is the only REAL way to make cherry pie or cobbler. It was divine. Swimming in butter but DIVINE nonetheless.

As we sat mulling over the meal we'd just consumed and watching other customers drift in and we started talking about how miraculous food is. Now, I have more than the average girls' share of body issues and food issues (this you all know about me by now) but it cannot be denied in the South that there is something truly transcendent about Southern Food. Here we sat and across the restaurant was a large table filled with older established white folk, two tables from them was an African-American couple, just behind the door was a South Asian mom and her two kids and then in walked two Punk/Anti-Establishment type girls who ordered take out. And then there was The Husband and I--two graduate students just trying to blend in.

We talked for a long time about how interesting it is the South. People talk about their differences; racial, religious, cultural, political, linguistic even--but what they don't see is the way that everyone lays down those differences for The Food. We all eat it, catfish, bar-b-que, collards, slaw, beans, corn bread, fried chicken, grits, fried green tomatoes, ocra, biscuits, pie and the ever present carafe of Sweet Tea or lemonade, in our case (we don't drink the TEA). It's all there...those ties that bind us together and make us equals whether we acknowledge them or not.

Sometimes I wish people would just notice.