food and cooking

Rainy Sunday

Sunday 04 December 2016 | 0 Comments

"It's cold and rainy!" I said as I came back inside from taking pictures of the Boy, who was more thrilled than I was that it was cold and rainy. After a blistering dry summer, to have finally some cold, wet weather is a blessing.

It made the rosół we had for lunch all the tastier, the cuddling with Papa and Nana all the more comfortable, and family movie in the early evening all the more enjoyable.

The automatically created URL for this post indicates that this is the fourth time I've used "Rainy Sunday" as a post title:

Rainy Sunday

All within the last three years.

Thanksgiving 2016

Thursday 24 November 2016 | 0 Comments

In the morning, it's cooking. And the Boy wants to help. He wants so much to be a big boy, to do the things he sees adults do, to do the things he sees me do. It's humbling to think that I am for him the example of what a man is supposed to be.

After a few hours of work, we head to the backyard, where the leaves make a kaleidoscopic carpet and curtains. One advantage of things not being as wet as they often are -- there are colors. The last few years, it's seemed like it rained a lot during autumn and all the leaves just turned black and fell off. This year, there's no chance of that happening. Sure, we're eleven inches behind in rainfall now. But those colors.

Mid-afternoon, it's back to the kitchen to finish up everything. This goes into the oven, that comes out. The turkey remains the whole time. K's a bit nervous about the turkey: we haven't done a turkey. Ever. It's not "We haven't done a turkey like this" or "We haven't done a turkey in this gas oven" -- we just have never baked a whole turkey. Nana and Papa always contributed that to the Thanksgiving dinner. Still, how hard can it be? Research a few recipes, double-check the temperature and time in relation to the weight, then wait.

In the end, everything turns out fine.

Better than fine.

Everyone goes home, K goes to bed early, and I head downstairs for an after-dinner drink and cigar. I scroll through what's new on Netflix and see one of my all-time favorite movies is now streaming: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

How can I resist?

Preparation

Wednesday 23 November 2016 | 0 Comments

K takes care of Wigilia. We share Easter.

Tomorrow, it's my dinner.

Swing and Dinner

Thursday 17 November 2016 | 0 Comments

Comfort

Tuesday 15 November 2016 | 0 Comments

The Boy and I were playing just before bedtime. The miasteczko that T and he made during their visit this weekend is still up, so we decided to make use of it. As often happens when playing, the Boy decided to pontificate a bit. Picking up a convertible, he began explaining, "This is a big car. It can hold a lot. I think maybe 38 gallons." He handed me the car upside down and asked me to read what kind of car it was.

"It's a 38 Gallon Cruiser," I said. He beamed.

"I said that!"

I was expecting such a response, hoping for it at the very least. I like when something I say, something K does, something L makes him, gives him a certain kind of comfortable joy. It was the same with L when she was his age, still working out how everything worked, still not quite sure she had a handle on some of the basics. Of course, I look at her now and think, "You still don't have a handle on some of the basics," and I look in the mirror shaving and think, "You still don't have a handle on some of the basics."

K has a handle on the basics though. She knows what brings a smile to everyone's face: homemade rosół. The Boy leaves his bowl empty; the Girl goes back for seconds; even the older cat is happy to get the dregs in E's bowl.

The basics.

Soup with Papa

Friday 11 November 2016 | 0 Comments

The best way to get the kids to eat certain foods is to hide them. No, that’s not quite right. E will try just about anything. He might not like it (as when he commented that a butternut squash soup tasted more like “sea turtle soup”), but he’ll try it. No, it’s just L that we have to deceive. So K puts a lot of onion in a lot of soup, but it’s always turned to a paste that simply adds flavor and thickens the soup. Tonight’s soup: pea soup.

“What kind of soup is this?” she asked.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t want to know.”

Late October Sunday

Sunday 30 October 2016 | 0 Comments

With it being the last Sunday of the month, our family had a lazy morning that included a bit of television, a bit of computer, a bit of baklava, and a bit of exploring, all before lunch. The Boy and I went to our normal haunts, though we decided this time to go a bit deeper into the "woods" that consist of vines and bushes on the property behind ours, the house abandoned now for several years. We went deep enough that I had to crawl for a moment. Afterward, there was the usual: swinging, exploring the creek (where we found our lost ball behind our neighbors' house), and lounging in the hammock. We were there when K came out onto the back deck to call us in for lunch.

"We're being lazy on the hammock," the Boy responded.

In the evening, Nana and Papa came by for dinner -- another adventure in "we're no longer worrying about whether our kids will eat what we cook because they can survive skipping one meal from hunger." Of course that won't really happen with the Boy: first, he's too adventurous with his eating for that to happen, and second, when push comes to plate, he quickly reaches a point at which the stubbornness gives way to the hunger.

The Girl, of course, is an entirely different story, and I still wonder whether or not we're doing the right thing by her. That's the eternal worry of parenting, I guess, but I try to keep things in a more global perspective: hungry kids in Africa and all of that. Tonight was not all that much of a battle because it was tortellini: she likes pasta, though she predictably didn't like the fact that it was pasta stuffed with something. Despite the fact that she likes pierogi, which are essentially the same thing.

Sometime later this week, we're planning Indian -- dal with palak paneer. That should be a really interesting night...

Preconceptions

Thursday 27 October 2016 | 0 Comments

Every year, my students begin Romeo and Juliet with certain preconceptions, both about the play and about the character of Romeo. It’s a Shakespeare play, they reason. Shakespeare’s hard to read, noble and magnanimous and all that. He writes about noble ideas, noble dilemmas, high-minded philosophy. They don’t expect it when the play starts out and within a few lines, characters are saying things like this:

GREGORY

The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.

SAMPSON

‘Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I
have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the
maids, and cut off their heads.

GREGORY

The heads of the maids?

SAMPSON

Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads;
take it in what sense thou wilt.

GREGORY

They must take it in sense that feel it.

SAMPSON

Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and
’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

I take them through the text enough to get them to realize that these two characters, like Donald Trump, are fond of locker room talk that involves suggestions of sexual assault. (No, I don’t bring in the politics, but the thought crossed my mind to make the connection at least today.) I don’t point out to them what Sampson really means when he says, “Me they shall feel while I am able to stand,” but I suspect some of them get it.

Then there’s Romeo: He’s going to be a good guy, they reason, because the play is the most famous love story of all time, and the most famous love story of all time can’t possibly have anything other than the ideal man in it. So we begin reading and find this passage in response to Benvolio’s queries about what exactly is making Romeo’s days so long:

Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit
With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm’d,
From love’s weak childish bow she lives unharm’d.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
That when she dies with beauty dies her store.

“How has Romeo tried to win her?” I ask. We mark the text and make a list.

“She will not stay the siege of loving terms?” I ask, and the students figure it out.

“He’s used smooth words.”

“Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes?” I ask, and the students get it.

“He’s been making eyes at her.”

“Good. Finally, ‘Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold’?” Here they stumble.

“Money?”

“No — how do guys use gold to win girls?”

Finally, someone gets it: “Oh, jewelry!”

“Right!” Then the question — should I pursue the issue further? Should I lead them to see just exactly what Romeo’s saying here? Some years, I don’t. This year, I did.

“And what about the rest of the line?”

They look at each other quizzically.

“What do you think he means by ‘ope’?” I ask.

“Open?” a student suggests.

“Correct. Now, she will not ‘ope her lap to saint-seducing gold’?” I see in some of their eyes that they’ve got it, so I suggest what I suggest every year. “We’ll have to behave as adults in this unit and not giggle and be immature about some of the topics. So what’s he saying?”

They get it. They’re mildly shocked. The girls are a little angry and disappointed that this supposed hero of the greatest love story of all time is a fairly typical male and simply trying to get Rosaline in bed — to spread her legs, literally.

“Nothing ever changes,” one student observes.

The Girl tonight hit on her own preconceptions and battled them mightily. Beans are nasty. She’s decided that already. Of course, at her age, I’d decided the same thing about a lot of things, most beans as well. But we have a rule in our house as Nana and Papa had when I was growing up: you have to try everything. In L’s case, it was about three bites of beans.

We jokingly took a picture with a time-stamp (that’s in fact illegible) to see how long it took her to eat them. Although she didn’t have to sit at the table the whole time, she had her final bite around ten minutes before bedtime.

I remember doing the same thing.

Nothing ever changes.

Forbidden Fruit

Tuesday 25 October 2016 | 0 Comments

K bought a bag of treats for trick-or-treaters next week. It was sitting on the counter when E came down this morning.

He’s always the first of the two to come downstairs. We hear his little voice as we’re getting our breakfast ready: “Mama!” He needs his “stinky diaper” taken off, and he needs to get downstairs as fast as possible. Nevermind that often makes it downstairs half asleep and then plops down on the sofa in the livingroom for another half hour of sleep. He has to get downstairs.

So when he came down this morning, he noticed the candy.

“Why is there a bag of treats on the counter?” he asked.

“It’s for Halloween,” K explained.

She went back upstairs to do her hair and I peeked down to find he had taken the step ladder out and set it up to get a closer look. Elbows on the counter, chin in his hands, he just stood and stared.

It would take no cajoling at all to get him to eat the whole bag. Perhaps not all in one sitting, but then again, he might be able to pull that off. Then how he would complain about how his stomach hurts.

“My belly hurts” is his common excuse to get out of finishing dinner. Even when he says he likes it. Even when it’s potato pancakes.

In the evening, the Girl brought up a new concern. I actually brought it up; she worked it to a frenzy. Thursday is a special day for whatever reason, and the kids can take a stuffed animal to school.

“Daddy, I can’t decide which animal to take,” she explained.

Knowing the stinkers she has in her class, I reminded her that they might do something mischievous and to take that into account when deciding. A few minutes after going to bed, she came down to get some advice from K. She explained her concern: “When the teacher is not looking or when I go to the bathroom, one of them might grab the stuffed animal and do something to it, like cut it up.”

K gave the opposite advice: “Don’t worry about it. That probably won’t happen.”

But L was already worked up about it. She probably won’t get to sleep until late, and then we’ll have a rough morning, trying to convince her to pull herself out of bed.

Perhaps I should have thought things through a little more carefully.