800 pound gorilla

I don't want to talk about the snow, or the shoveling, or how many trees we have lost, or how many of those trees were lost into my next-door neighbor's driveway or in how many places the collapsing trees took out our fence. I am over snow. I am moving to Fiji. The end.

(Ok, it was fun pulling the kids around the neighborhood on their sleds.)

Let's talk about food instead. Here's what I made this week:

Zucchini with chick peas - I talked about this one before, but mention it again because this time I made it with a can of "tomatoes with zesty chilies" that I got at Trader Joe's, and they were not kidding about the zestiness of those chilies. They were mighty zesty, which made this dish mighty spicy, which made it quite different from the first time I made it but also quite good. So if you are considering this one, try it mild and try it spicy, good both ways.

Lentil Shepherd's Pie - This is two cups cooked lentils, an onion, garlic, and a bag of frozen mixed veggies sauteed with broth and seasonings and some flour to thicken things up, dumped in a loaf pan and then topped with mashed potatoes and baked. Easy to make and very yummy, especially if you are married to a mashed potato addict like I am. Leave a space in the potatoes though or the whole thing will explode in the oven. We shall never discuss how I came to know this.

Penne Primavera - Ah the bitter irony of making something titled "primavera" with two solid feet of snow on the ground. Zucchini, yellow squash and carrots julienned (you could surely just chop them, but the julienne bit always makes me feel fancy) in a tomato paste and cream sauce (I use just milk, works fine) and then tossed over the short-ish pasta of your choice. One of Chris's favorites, and other than the fancy knife work takes no time at all to make.

Pizza - I made pizza! From scratch! Both sauce and dough! And it was delicious! Sorry, I am still proud of myself for this one. In fact, I am making it again tonight, except this time I am using the extra dough to make breadsticks instead of cinnamon rolls. Both kids love breadsticks, and I've survived the last three snow storms by shoving fistfulls of M&Ms into my mouth, so nobody needs any more cinnamon rolls around here.

Broccoli Rabe with Rice Noodles - I avoided making this until I had almost run out of other options, because after I picked it and bought all the stuff it didn't sound very good to me after all. But it was! I sauteed broccoli rabe (which I had never had before, tastes like very bitter broccoli) and green onions with soy sauce and black bean sauce and then added soaked rice noodles to the wok for about four minutes at the end. I think next time I will try it with mushrooms and maybe a milder green - Chris suggested regular broccoli, I think it would be good with spinach.

Brownies - I made my first ever batch of homemade brownies yesterday, mostly as a way to entertain the children for twenty minutes. They were a total disaster. I tried to salvage a bit out of the middle last night, but even heaped with Cool Whip they were hard to eat. The rest of the pan went down the sink this morning. Consider this a call to arms, I need a brownie recipe and I need it fast!

22 inches, give or take

The view of my deck from my kitchen window.

Old Miss

I was nineteen the first time someone called me ma'am without irony. I was horrified. I was nineteen, nineteen! I was not a ma'am! My chagrin lasted for several years, as the ma'am-ings became more and more frequent. At some point, I ceased to notice, probably because there was no longer any way for me to deny my ma'am-ness.

And then this morning, Owen and I stopped at the paint store, and as we were leaving the clerk said "thank you, miss." Miss! I'm thirty-five, I was sporting copious matrimonial hardware on my left ring finger, and I was hauling my two-year-old along with me. I am no more a miss now than I was a ma'am at nineteen. I think the realization of my absolutely ineligibility for miss-ness is the first thing that has ever really made me feel like an adult.

What first made you feel like an adult, or are you still waiting?

Tidbits

Mia is better but a maniac from the drugs. Owen is sick and screamed his head off all day today. This is all you get from me.

Owen was accepted to preschool yesterday. He'll start in September if he is potty trained and if I don't run from the building clutching him to my bosom screaming "YOU CAN'T HAVE MY BABY" and take him home to have to myself for another year. He'll be two and a half in September, and he is so in love with school, and every morning when we drop Mia off he insists on carrying her school bag from last year so that he can pretend he is going to school too and I think he will be ready and it will be good for him but "WAAAAA MY BABY!" Expect a lot of this in the coming months.

Speaking of Owen, at bedtime tonight he spent five minutes pretending to take my head, throw it up in the air, catch it, and put it back on my body. Odd.

We had three or four inches of snow around these parts this morning, and after we had shoveled and played on the backyard playset and built a snowman taller than the children and accidentally knocked it over and built another one, Mia looked at the snow-covered sidewalks and decided it was a great day for a bike ride. Which is how I came to be pulling Owen in his Radio Flyer wagon and following Mia as she forced her training-wheeled big girl bike through the snow drifts. It seems odd runs in the family.

Last night, Mia's BFF was over for dinner, and I decided it would be fun to let the kids make their own pizzas. So I made the dough from scratch, which I had never done before and it took two tries because the first batch was not happy to see me, and I made the sauce from scratch, and I rolled out individual pizzas for each child and not one of them took more than two bites of pizza. Bitter, but what did I expect? Chris and I, however, loved the pizza and why didn't you people tell me that homemade pizza is so much better than any other pizza ever in the history of the world? And then I used the leftover dough to make cinnamon rolls. I am starting to think I have some type of mental disease.

You know what ticks me the hell off? I'll tell you. 1) People who mail out tax forms on the absolute last legally-allowable day (I'm looking at you, freelance clients, you too, mortgage company). I like to do my taxes early because I hate doing them and then they are done, and these late-mailers ruin January for me every year. 2) The way our letter carrier takes any packages that don't fit inside our mailbox and straps them to the open mailbox door with a rubber band connected to the flag, which has broken the mailbox door three times and the flag twice. Look, I wouldn't want to hike to everyone's door either, but I am tired of fixing the mailbox. 3) People who do not shovel their sidewalks. I mean, if you are unable to shovel your sidewalk, I get it, but if you can shovel your long, steep driveway then you are certainly capable of spending the extra five minutes on the sidewalk. Some of us are trying to ride bikes here.

I have a five-item to-do list for tomorrow, and four of them involve phone calls. I hate phone calls. Anybody want to make my phone calls?

Eaten

Stuff I made last week. Or rather, stuff I made last week that I don't think I've told you about before.

Vegetarian Pho - I used this recipe, and while the broth was cooking Chris said it was the best smelling thing that had ever happened in our kitchen. Which I guess I should be offended on behalf of everything else I have ever cooked, but he was right. Sadly, the taste did not quite live up to the smell. It needed a lot more salt/soy sauce, and even then it was missing something. We suspect that something was "meat." However, I froze two full meals worth of the broth, and we are planning to try it again mixed with a mushroom broth to give it a little more oomph.

Chili/Soup - I never know what to call this, it is basically a very soupy chili. Recipe is here. It tastes good, whatever it is, and I have half of it in my freezer, which always makes me happy. I made corn muffins to go with it. Both of my kids actually eat corn muffins, and there are precious few things in this world that both of my kids eat.

Rattlesnake Stew - This is supposed to be made with rattlesnake beans, but I used small white beans instead. Also onion, bell pepper, broth, carrot, celery, potato, corn, tomato paste and Tabasco. The recipe calls for poultry seasoning, but I left that out. It was good.

Falafel and Tabbouli - Ok, so I made the falafel from a mix. And I usually make the tabbouli from scratch, but when I went to the store to get the parsley and such I found tubs of fresh-made tabbouli for $1.99, which is much less than I would spend to make it, so I bought it. I also bought the pita bread and hummus. Whatever. If I were perfect, you would hate me.

Lasagna - Made in the crock pot, adapted from this recipe. Not actually any easier than making a regular lasagna, but handy for the days when you get home from swim lessons at 6:00 and need to have dinner ready to put on the table the second you walk through the door. Also, I have half of it in my freezer. My favorite thing about cooking is the way it paves the way for future laziness.

Cilantro rice and beans - I have this cookbook that I have used constantly for years, and lately I am going through it and trying to make things I have avoided before because they didn't sound good. So far, everything but one has turned out to be good. This was one of those things. It was delicious, and it takes ten minutes to make. All you need is cilantro pesto (just like the basil kind - throw a bunch of cilantro and two cloves garlic in the food processor and chop, then add oil and salt until it is the way you like it), some leftover rice, and a can of black beans. Mix them all together in a bowl, microwave for a couple of minutes, eat until you want to pop.

Weekend

On Friday morning, I took Mia to the pediatrician for a follow-up on a minor issue she has and, since she had started in with a touch of a runny nose and a mild cough on Thursday and since my poor three-month-old niece had been diagnosed with RSV on Thursday, I had the (non-hotty, although I am sure she is quite attractive, if you go that way) pediatrician take a listen to her lungs. She was fine, no problem at all, in perfectly great shape. Which is why I was more than a little surprised to be rushing her to the emergency room less than seven hours later.

Her oxygen levels were low and not responding to the usual treatments, her chest x-ray was questionable, and the ER doc told me we were possibly looking at another bout with pneumonia. Mia scored herself another hospital slumber party on Friday night, complete with full-time oxygen and regular visits from the respiratory therapist, but come morning she was considerably improved and we would have been out of there with the sunrise had we not had to wait until afternoon for the pediatrician to come spring us.

Mia is doing great, aside from the side-effects of her continuing medications. If you've never seen a four-year-old in full 'roid-rage, you are missing out. She was brave and calm and cooperative the entire time at the hospital, mostly because she was proud of herself for thinking to pack extra socks.

Mia giggled for twenty minutes last night when I told her that she was my hero, but it is the absolute truth.