"Rest. Rest. Rest in God's love. The only work you are required now to do is give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within."

--Madame Jeanne Guyon

Hey Molly: It snows here 2.

We may not have big pine trees, bay windows or Yosemite near by, but it snows here in tract-homes-R-us too, Molly.



Close up of real life snow on grass:


On another note, this little kid of mine is good for new laughs every day.

Yesterday, M and I are talking in his office. Notice which book A picks from his bookshelf:



Her two newest words are 'Oprah' (pronounced: 'O-puh') and 'question mark' (pronouned: 'qwemuck.' She has never seen the Oprah show (poor kid has loser parents with no cable) but became obsessed with her on the cover of an old 'O magazine' issue on my nightstand. She kept pointing at her (this is my cue to name what she's pointing at) and so I said, 'lady' but this was not the answer she wanted, 'uh, swimsuit?' I tried again (Oprah was in a pool). No, this was not what she wanted to know. 'Oprah?' I queried. 'Opuh!' she exclaimed. Man, how we underestimate the intelligence of these little people!

Qwemuck comes from one of her favorite books, 'Alicia's Best Friends', where Alicia's friends try to force her to pick one best friend and this forces poor Alicia into crisis. On one page, there is a giant question mark above Alicia's head, as she ponders which of her friends she will choose. It's been over a month since we last read that book together, at which time I pointed out that this was called a question mark and that it meant Alicia didn't know what to do. So yesterday, as we're reading the book again, Audrey points to the qwemuck and say's 'hmmmmmm.....?' while tapping her chin. I just stared at the child in disbelief.

Other funny things.... (anyone still even reading this?)

She L-O-V-E-S looking at Thomas Keller's 'Bouchon' cookbook...
(oh--and points to his picture on the back cover so I'll say, 'Thomas Keller.'



Is obsessed with being pushed around the house in her doll-stroller. (And climbing into anything that is too small for her, in general. A few days ago she tried to sit in a regular-sized shoe box (literally.)



And is completely addicted to all stuffed animals. This is Jay the giraffe, being forced to wear mommy's headband--which he does not like, as you can see.

What lives for more than 900 years?



We probably all understand, on some level, that our choices impact the world around us. However, until seeing these numbers in Tuesday's edition of USA Today, it hadn't really hit me, what a significant decision, 'paper or plastic?' really is.

Before now, I've bought the re-useable bags to sack my groceries and remembered them only about 5 out of 10 times. Storing them in my car helps significantly. But still, sometimes my memory is lazy.

As Anne Lamott said of our fleeting lives: "100 years from now? All new people."

Which sparks another thought: "900 years from now? All my plastic bags, still here."

P.S. Neither of us are very politcally adamant or active, but last night M and I had fun taking a quiz (out of several, this one was definitely the best and most comprehensive), which quantifies your political alignment with various candidates based on issues. Since we are so adamantly against going with the current tide of voting based on 'cult of personality' or empty rhetoric, we found it extremely helpful and interesting. Completing this quiz might help you see who you should really vote for--it did for us! Click here to take the quiz.

Cooking



Help! I can't stop baking cupcakes. And the main problem is that I'm not taking them to share with my kids' class or a book group or anything. We're just eating them. Yesterday, M requested yellow. What is the technical definition of addition again?

On another food note: tonight we had a dinner that just really hit the spot: Creamy Asparagus Soup and Pumpkin Apple Struessel Muffins. Yummy, easy and comforting in this cold weather.

You can recreate it in under 30 minutes (prep time). Here are the recipes:
(P.S. Don't get hung up on precise measurements. (Precisely the reason I don't post 'recipes' more often. I suck at it.)

Creamy Asparagus Soup
1. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a pot
2. Sauté 1 finely diced shallot (or onion, but shallot is better)
3. Add 1 bunch of asparagus chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (remember to trim off the ends of the spears first as they give a certain undesirable flavor.)
4. Add about 2-3 Tbsp. flour and cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly so as not to burn the roux or make it clumpy.
5. Add 2 small (or 1 medium) finely diced potatoes
6. Add 4-5 cups of chicken broth and simmer on a low boil for a while... (30-45 minutes?)
7. When potatoes are very tender, purée the soup using a handheld/immersion blender until completely smooth.
8. Just before serving, add about 1 cup half&half and a few (1-2?) Tbsp. soy sauce (only Kikkoman!) and bring just to boil. (Don't let this boil ferociously or for long. You're just reheating with the cream, etc.)
9. Add salt & pepper to taste.
10. Stirring in a 1/4 cup or so of plain yogurt or sour cream, just before serving, adds a very nice flavor to the soup.

Apple Pumpkin Struesel Muffins
* This recipe is a tweaked version of one I found online
In a large bowl combine:
1 1/4 cup pumpkin
2 cups finely diced apples (tart ones are especially nice in this)
2 eggs (slightly beaten)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla or almond extract

In another bowl, whisk together:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar (raw cane sugar is always best, but white will do!)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix lightly, only until just moistened. (Over mixing is the #1 reason for consistency problems in muffins.)

Fill muffin cups or greased muffin tins until about 2/3 full.

Make struesel topping:
Mix together 2 Tbsp. butter, 3 Tbsp. flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. (you could also add chopped pecans if you'd like.) Sprinkle this mixture on top of muffin batter.

Bake for about 30 minutes on 350F. or until a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy warm and with good butter!

Reality- Part 2
Audrey & Anne

On the list of women I admire, Audrey Hepburn and Anne Lamott are at the top. Both experienced unbelievable heartache, but survived with impeccable grace, albeit in very different ways.

Audrey was private, disciplined and demure, handling herself with enviable nobility and grace in any situation. Anne is shockingly honest, irreverent and self-revealing, channeling the source of her grace through side-splitting writings.

Audrey was kind and always looked perfectly stylish. After a lifetime of battling hopelessly frizzy bangs, Anne has surrendered to dreadlocks. Having read extensively about the lives of both women, I could go on, but will present my conclusion instead:

Though I envy the regal Audrey H., my reality is much closer to Anne's. I like them both, but am sure that Audrey would be embarrassed of me; I eat too much and say unrefined things that I later regret. Anne and I would have a hoot, if it weren't for the fact that she probably already has enough friends and is likely wary of people wanting to be her friend just because she's famous. Not me, even if she loses all her fame and never writes another word, I'd still take her out to lunch or let her stay in our guest room is she needed a place to stay. I'm pretty sure she'd like my other friends, too.

Reality



Reality is much less idyllic than Disneyland and Winnie the Pooh. It's more like when you are in a department store shopping for a sweater for yourself, only to notice that your child's toes are jammed up against of their shoes, WHILE they're sitting in their stroller, (ones I SWEAR we only bought in November). So you feel bad and walk to the kids shoe department to get them some new ones and then your kid starts saying they are hungry, right in the middle of the aisle, and so you pull out a handy-dandy string cheese...quickly pick out some footwear, try them on the kid, and as you are trying to enter your pin code to pay for them, your kid starts gagging up a wad of cheese (because she's stuffed 3/4 of it in her mouth at one time.) Not so gracefully, you reach your left hand out to grab the expelled dairy while still punching the pin code at the same time. The salesmen smiled patiently and still gave Audrey a balloon, even though her mom was sweating and holding a wad of cheese. Proceed back to women's sweater department, only to discover in the dressing room that you have an urgent situation, which shall remain nameless. Thank goodness for baby wipes. Try on sweaters only to notice that you are already sweating (at 10am) and your white t-shirt is no longer white, but you are meeting a friend for lunch in an hour. Dig in bag of random things in car, to find only short-sleeved shirt: a pajama top (it's much warmer than it was when we left home 2 hours prior).

Reality is that you barely get a moment to eat when you're having lunch with a friend AND your precious 17-month old baby. Reality is that other kids think your kid looks like she's dressed up for Halloween, even when she's not. Reality is that your kids' diaper slides down their leg and makes them look like they have elephantitis when it contains approximately 2 pounds of pee, cause you are a bad mom. and you keep wondering why their pants are falling down. it's just too much to ask of ANY diaper.

Look very closely at the bulge in these pants.


Notice how the diaper is at her knee?
Thank goodness for good friends, who can laugh with you about it and distract your kid from the fact that the hoot is at their expense, by feeding them bites of Panera brownie.

Honeys



We are attempting to get our money's worth out of the Disneyland passes we bought last year for Mike's birthday. They expire in April and we'd been twice, before this last week; once just M& i, and once with A, in October. (Unless you fork out the dough for the mega-pass, pretty much the entire summer is blocked out. But as M says, who wants to go to Disneyland on a day they're blocking out due to heavy attendance, anyway?!) Having the pass is great, because we can bring Audrey for just a few hours and leave before we hit the point of diminishing returns.

This time we visited Adventureland, Frontierland and Critter Country. She L-O-V-E-D the Enchanted Tiki Room (don't think I've been to that show since the 70's) and the Jungle Cruise.








Indiana Jones and Baby Indie

She found the Davey Crocket Canoes extremely boring (her parents too; gimme a break: something is wrong with an attraction when you've got to rope people into going on it. Plus, there's just something wrong about a large riverboat, pirate ship and canoes sailing in a 'lake' the size of my parents' backyard.)



She actually did ok with Pirates of the Caribbean, but get a hold of this folks--Audrey's least favorite attraction: Winnie the Pooh. Yeppers, she freaked out the entire time. I must say, it was quite a cacophony of noise and confusion. Very psychedelic and not at all enchanting. Afterwards, we saw the live characters and she wasn't too keen on them either.



Despite my best efforts, Pooh freaked her out too.




Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? We are!

Confessions of a famous mommy blogger

The following are passages are from an article entitled , 'Confessions of a mommy blogger,' published in the February issue of Wondertime magazine. Written by Catherine Newman, who apparently has several parenting blogs, the article had me rolling with laughter. I'll definitely have to check out her blogs. But in the meantime, here are some pieces of Newman's wisdom on blogging:

On connecting:
"If there's a single fact to take from the 70 million blogs that inhabit the Internet it's this: Whoever you are--however thrilled or frantic, bored or despairing, buoyant or afflicted with love like an aching in your bones--someone out there understands. Especially if you're a mother. Someone out there is still awake with a restless toddler. Someone out there has swigged the last of the cooking sherry, or dotted a nursing newborn with Doritos fallout. And someone is writing about it."

Postcards from the Edge
"It's the dirty details, the follies and foibles, that satisfy the sharpest bloggy cravings...The blog entries of mine that people like best: the time we forgot to strap Ben into his car seat because we were too buys splitting a raspberry Danish; the time I left baby Birdy in tears, waiting to be nursed while I shoveled cold and guilty mac n cheese into my face, which I called the equivalent of 'putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.'

Blogging is the underbelly of scrapbooking, its tantruming, scatalogical doppelganger...If scrapbooking is the urge to put it all together, blogging might be the urge to take it all apart. Blogging might not make life tidier, but it keeps life in your memory, and keeps it real."

B here: I have never scrapbooked and I never will. Who has the patience to spend 2 hours and $20 on one page? I can't even get it together and get pictures developed. The closest I come is putting together a digital photo book.

On what she's not blogging about
"Some of the most significant events in our lives are ones I haven't been able to write about--friends who've been gravely ill, others who've divorced--and I always feel strange about that, waffling on about string cheese while my heart is breaking. Similarly, I don't tend to write about the darkest places in my relationship with Michael because, well, my relationship is at stake. But as a result Michael often sounds kind of sickly perfect (which he often kind of is). I never fret publicly about my parents aging because they are as hale and hearty as oxen, not to mention they are loyal readers and would kill me. (Being read by one's parents changes things, doesn't it? When I use the word 'bong', even jokingly, I cringe.)"

On being a famous blogger:
"Do I worry about being stalked? I always laugh when people ask that; the only people who stalk me wear dirty nursing bras and mashed yams. They are, in other words, my people."

Anyone can cook*
(*not necessarily well)


'Don't know about you, but I LOOOVED the movie, 'Ratatouille.' (Gusteau, R.I.P.)

This past week, 5 lassies joined an evening Hip Cooks Class (great initiative, Kell!) where we learned to 'chiffonade' and prepared a meal for 15 consisting of: Tri-colored potato salad, Moroccan Chicken and a Chocolate Tart with purple butter, which we all got to enjoy, once prepared. A very fun time, indeed!


Kelly arranged the evening for Ginger, in honor of her birthday.


Sarah toasts with her third vodka, straight up.


The others students stare in disbelief. (Hi Carri & Will!)




Some of us student chefs were getting cranky that it took so long to serve the fermented grape juice.


Denise and her look bear a striking resemblance to Collette, from Ratatouille. I wonder if being a gourmet chef just tends to bring that out in people?






Sarah, Denise, the Moroccan Chicken.

Ginger, our teacher Erica, and Kelly.

Meanwhile, Mike, Audrey and Matt played Golf Wii at the McCormicks...


The next evening, in complete rebellion to my newly acquired culinary knowledge, we had Belgian waffles (complete with homemade, naturally colored and not overly-whipped cream) for dinner, before watching another episode of Pride & Prejudice. (Mike may need to listen to some heavy metal to compensate for lost testosterone in the coming week.)


Not sophisticated, perhaps. (I'm still willing to bet any of the Hip Cooks would have traded their Moroccan Chicken for one of these babies Friday night. )

Candy Revelations



Two very meaningful life lessons have been revealed to me via candy metaphors:



First, I realized that you are definitely reaching maturation when you start preferring Peanut M&M's over the plain kind. As a kid (or even adult under age 30), there is no way in heck I would eat these nasty things, for several reasons. For one thing, peanuts are nearly a vegetable. Who wants vegetables in their candy? For another, the crunch candy shell to sickening sweet chocolate ratio is much higher. Anyway, I realized that I am seriously getting old when, tonight, the salty/sweet combo appealed to me above plain.



The second, is that Mike compared the lure of materialism and constant acquisition of new possessions, as akin to chewing Hubba Bubba gum.

Remember HB? Or Bubbalicious? So insanely yummy-- soft, squishy, and perfectly tasty. For about 30 seconds before it's flavorless and tough.

Puffed-Oven-Plagairism


Photo used without permission from Kelly Shaw

Hey all you Plagiarism attorneys listen up! Here's a lawsuit idea, free of charge: some unsuspecting individual--the original inventor of the 'Puffed Oven Pancake'--is awaiting your ruthless representation. The defendant is my own sister, who shameless published the recipe on her blog...

While the defendant does, admittedly, mention Betty Crocker and Mrs. Fox in her narrative, she neglects to use the words 'adapted from,' or similar, under the title of the recipe. Further, I will put money on the fact that she did not get a signed release from Aunt Jemima for use of said Aunt's likeness.

Considering the 'glove outcome' and recent Seinfeld debate, I definitely think you have a case.

9:21 am.



Every day my kid cracks me up. Yesterday while I was making dinner, Audrey started playing for ages with a rag I'd used to wipe the table, while the play-kitchen she got for Christmas went unnoticed. Her continual favorite is the broom & dustpan set we keep for small messes. How true it is, that kids would rather play with weird things than toys.


The McMasters came to stay with us for a few days during the New Year's break. It was a great time of talking, catching up, and playing charades: pictured above, is Jez doing his award-winning Nemo face.





Last night we had Bernaise sauce with dinner. It was yummy and reminded me that we should have it more often...although it isn't exactly 'healthy.' Ok, I'm stalling....time to get started on a new week. That's always hard, or is it just me?