Me: “It’s freezing out here. It’s a good thing I have these mitten-y glove thingies.” (Yes, in my everyday life I’m quite articulate.)
Reagan: “What?”
Me: “They have places for each finger and then a flap that pulls over and they look like mittens. So they are ‘Gluffins,’ I guess…”
Reagan: “What? What are they?”
Me: “Gluffins! You know, Gloves and Muffins!”
Reagan: “Muffins?”
Me: “Oh, yah….”
Reagan: “They are GLITTENS! Are you high?”
Me: “No, I’m not high! What do you know about being high anyway?”
Reagan: “Gluffins! Gluffins! I think you are high!”
Me: (laughing hysterically, yet denying illicit drug use)
Me: (still laughing) “I hope ‘Jaylor’ and ‘Take’ enjoy the ‘chries’ and ‘fricken’ we are having for dinner.”
Reagan: “You are so weird!”
I hate dream sequences. In movies. In books. They seem like a lazy writer’s way of foreshadowing or a way of introducing bizarre elements without resorting to a deus ex machina.
Nevertheless, I can’t stop thinking about the dream I had two nights ago.
In my dream it was Thanksgiving and, for some reason, I had decided that frozen pizza (DiGiorno’s, not delivery!) was the meal of choice for my family. As I was opening the first pizza box, the neighbor kids, all eleven of them, rambunctiously jostled through my kitchen.
They were like a pack of wild animals. They ran in one door and out the other, shrieking and caterwauling the whole way.
And it struck me.
“They aren’t going to have a ‘real’ Thanksgiving dinner.”
Thus I must cook it for them.
(Nevermind the fact that I was planning on feeding my own family frozen pizza!)
I started to freak out. How would I thaw a turkey in time? Do I even have a turkey? Do I make sweet potatoes with pineapple or with marshmallows?
The kids ran in and out again. Trailing the parade of unruly children was the oldest, a menacing-looking teenage boy. Muscular and rough looking.
He gave me the creeps and I felt apprehensive.
But I went back to worrying about meal prep. Mashed potatoes? Garlic or plain? Yeast rolls or biscuits?
Then I woke up.
And was afraid to go back to sleep! What if the dream re-started and:
A. I had to cook a whole gigantic meal while surrounded by screaming hordes of small children.
or
B. The teenage boy killed us all?
Am I crazy?
Do normal people fear returning to a dream?
And, wtf does it mean?
I find myself sitting here, trying to parse it out, find some clues to my psyche.
I’m not feeling overly stressed (well, except when I am). I really like to cook and I don’t normally fear anyone, much less teenage boys. (Okay, our landlord at work intimidates me, but she’s suchabitch.)
Do you think all dreams have meaning? Or is this just one of those inexplicable phenomena like Sarah Palin still being in the news?
January 13th, 2009 by jenjw4 in TWD · 17 Comments
Comments posted on the “Tuesdays With Dorie” blog about this recipe lead me to believe that either great minds think alike or I’m not very original! Almost everyone seemed to be making these muffins with chili. I didn’t make chili but kept with the southwestern soup theme and made “Chipotle chicken and tomato soup,” one of my favorite “Cooking Light” recipes.
While the soup was simmering I began the muffins by preheating the oven and spraying my new mini-muffin pan with cooking spray.
I’m sure my mini-muffin pan was thrilled that it’s inaugural use was for a Dorie recipe. (Yes, I do anthropomorphize my kitchen implements.)
So far my TWD recipes have had a theme, luckily not of raw chicken for dinner, but of using the wrong sized pans! Luckily the recipes have not suffered from the substitutions.
I whisked the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mixed the buttermilk, melted butter and egg yolk (YIKES, I just realized I may have actually added the whole egg on accident; I don’t remember seperating the yolk from the white.) I poured the liquid ingredients over the dry and quickly mixed them with a spatula and added in the corn, peppers and cilantro.
Unfortunately I didn’t have fresh cilantro and subbed in a couple of frozen cubes of the green herb.
It turned my batter a slightly sickly yellow green color.
Reagan’s new cookie scoop worked well in dividing the dough into the 24 mini-muffin cups. I popped the muffins into the oven and baked them for 12 minutes, cooled them for 5 minutes and then removed them from the pan.
The green color had dissipated and the muffins were a lovely yellow, tinged with the small bits of red and green pepper pieces.
My soup was good and the muffins were the perfect complement. They had a lovely texture, were moist and flavorful without being too spicy.
My dad is an anti-fatite (to steal Jerry’s anti-dentite phrasing). Growing up he would frequently make comments about my mother’s weight.
My mother, who at 5′8″ typically weighed and still weighs around 130 lbs.
He would also make comments about the weight of women we would see in public or on TV. Being overweight was clearly unacceptable.
In high school I was 5′7″ and 107 lbs. I didn’t diet, ate junk food for lunch, but was active enough to stay thin.
Then, in college, my beloved boyfriend D. broke up with me (LDR’s typically don’t work out when you are 18!); I wrecked my car, dropped out of school. And started not eating, taking laxatives, occasionally vomitting, and avidly weighing myself. I was really proud when I got down to 97 lbs.
In hindsight, it was more about control than about weight, and I’m sure I looked awful.
About a year later I met my husband, got pregnant, got married, got pregnant again. As a stay-at-home mom and burgeoning baker I gained weight, topping out at 182 lbs, wearing a size 14.
It’s hard for me to even admit that.
Last fall I began watching what I ate. Not cutting any particular food group or counting calories, but eating smaller portions and focusing on eating more fruits and vegetables.
I also started exercising regularly, which has, thankfully, become a habit. I attend a spin torture classes with my friends SS and AAM. I walk on the treadmill my dear friend Katrina gave me when she upgraded. When the weather is nice my husband and I walk in the morning, before work, giving us a chance to chat and start out our day in a healthy way, much better than continuously pushing the snooze button.
I’ve lost 23 lbs in the last four months, but, even better than that, I feel healthier and more energetic.
I’m feeling pretty content at 159 lbs. I can comfortably fit into M/L clothes. I can exercise without feeling winded. The diet changes I have made are do-able long-term and I don’t feel deprived.
But it’s amazing how much of this battle is mental.
Friday night I went to visit my preemie nephew D. at the hospital. My dad was there visiting, too, and said “I remember when you were born and you weren’t much bigger, but (gesturing towards me) look at you now.”
I just stood there, shocked. So did my husband. It was pretty clear he meant “but look how large you are now.”
It made me want to gain weight in a rebellious effort to prove that whatever I weigh I’m still the same person, that my weight doesn’t define me.
But I know I can’t think like that. I am no longer a rebellious teenager.
Thank goodness!
Instead I have two rebellious teenagers of my own to deal with, so I figure I need all the stress relieving exercise that I can get.
Most of all, I wish to be a good example for them, both of healthy living and of acceptance of others.
Except for dentists. I still hate those bastards.
And now for something completely different….
My dear friend SS and I signed up for “Tuesday’s with Dorie,” (TWD) a bi-weekly food blogger challange in which you make an assigned Dorie Greenspan recipe from the book “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”
I’d never actually made a tart (other than of the “Pop” variety) so I was especially excited about this recipe. I view TWD much like I view my book club, a chance to try something new, that I might not normally pick myself. In baking I have a tendency to choose recipes that are chocolate and portable (cookies). For book club I apparently pick out books with a recurring theme: “multigenerational family curses.”
Okay, back to the tart. I faced a few obstacles in making this recipe. First, the recipe requires a food processor; I own a very nice one, (Thanks, Mom!) but I dropped the work bowl at just the right (wrong) angle and broke the handle. This was more than an inconvenience, as the handle must latch for the processor to run. I called Kitchen Aid, and the new one is on the way (and cost $50!)
Too late for my tart, though!
My second obstacle was the lack of a tart pan. The recipe specifies a 9″ one. I do own a 9″ springform pan but I was afraid the tart would not brown as well due to the higher sides. Thus, my epic search for a tart pan began. (Again, not enough time to order one online!)
SS and I met “in town” on New Year’s Day evening to search for the appropriate pan. Despite living in a metropolitan area of over a 350,000 people, we have no kitchen supply store. Thus we decided to search TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Target, Walmart and Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Guess what? A holiday, after six p.m. is not the best time to go shopping. We traversed the town but only Target and Walmart were still open. And NO tart pans at either place.
Saturday, after spin torture class, we went to BB and B, dragging along my teenage son and our non-cooking friend L. (They were really amused by our cries of “OMG, look at these cute cookie cutters!” and our lustful looks at baking implements.)
Victory!
Sort of.
They had an 11″ tart pan. They had a set of six 4″ tart pans.
I opted for the smaller tart pans, figuring I could use them for other desserts and quiches for my family.
Plus they are super cute.
I had most of the supplies in hand for the recipe but had to make a quick stop at the grocery store for blanched almonds. Next time I’ll make my own as SS sent me a link with directions.
Feeling energetic I decided to make the tart that night. Unfortunately, I decided to work on the tart at the same time I made a dinner of roasted chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes and sauteed garlicy broccoli.
Unfortunately for my dinner, not the tarts.
Luckily no one ended up with salmonella.
I made the poached pears first; I happened to have three perfectly ripe pears on hand. I combined the pears with water, sugar and lemon juice and simmered them gently for fifteen minutes.
While the pears cooled, I made the tart dough. I whirred the flour and sugar in my blender, dumped it in a bowl, and used my metal potato masher to mix in the cold butter; then I kneaded the dough very briefly on a silpat mat, pressed the dough into the tiny tart pans and popped them in the freezer. (And I mashed the potatoes and put the broccoli in the microwave.)
My blender (Motto “Now for more than just smoothies!”) was useful in grinding the almonds for the almond cream. I pulsed them until finely ground and then mixed them with butter, corn starch, vanilla, sugar and egg yolk. I refrigerated the almond cream while I cut the pears into slices. (And cut up garlic for the broccoli and took the chicken out of the oven. Too early.)
Have I mentioned that I’m uncoordinated? And that I have a hard time following directions?
My pear slices, well, they were “special.” (But delicious!)
Now I had all the components ready but had to decide on baking times. The pastry dough had to be partially baked and cooled before assembly. I feared the time in the directions, for a 9″ tart pan, would result in overcooked crusts. I halved the blind baking time and that seemed just about right. (And made gravy.)
Setting the tart crusts to cool on a wire cookie rack, I ate dinner with my family.
And (barely) lived to tell the tale.
After dinner I put the almond cream on the cooled pastry crusts, topped them with mutilated pear slices and put them in the oven to bake. Again, I worried about the baking time, but decided to set my timer for 30 minutes and to check them at that point.
I joined my daughter in watching “Little Miss Sunshine.”
I love that movie!
About 25 minutes later Reagan said “It smells like your tarts are done.”
She was right and “bravo!” to Reagan for trusting her instincts.
(Seriously, that is a lesson it took me many years to learn and she already gets it at fourteen! Plus she knows how to temper egg yolks. My daughter is a wondrous creature.)
The tarts cooled until after little Olive “kicked ass” and they were fragrant and lovely and tasted wonderful.
Even my normally chocolate-dessert loving son and husband really liked the tart.
[Much, much more than the (literally!) bloody chicken.]
We had a nice Christmas. The kids got game systems that they love and we had the family over for Christmas. That went well, better than Thanksgiving, as there was no illicit aluminum foil thievery.
Backtracking, a couple of weeks ago I got a message that I had left some papers in a library book. I didn’t think much of it, as I often use junk mail as a bookmark, so I just waited until a book came in that the library had ordered for me. (I LOVE intra-library loan!)
BTW, I live in a very small town where the librarians know me by name; I know them; I bring them cookies; they know the names of my kids, the types of books I like to read and a couple of the librarians are fellow PTO cohorts.
(But they don’t know about my blog. Knock on wood.)
Thus, I was quite mortified when I opened the held book and a stack of papers fell out that included:
1. A late notice from our mortgage company.
2. Lab paperwork from my last doctor’s visit.
3. Half a blog post about Reagan cheerleading, in which, in an obtuse attempt to be humorous, I wrote scores of cheers in a stuffy Old English vernacular.
Including:
“Be egregious, be-e-e egregious!
Be egregious, be-e-e egregious!”
“We will, we will vanquish you!
Vanquish you!”
And my masterpiece:
“The Princes we be
Verbose to the Utmost
We will turn you to milquetoast”
I am a bit embarrassed. Partially that the librarians now know my financial and health situation, but mostly that they must think I am a crazy person. Who else would think to rhyme “utmost” and “milquetoast?”
A couple of days ago I took Reagan to the orthodontist, on the way home, clutching the precious paper that would give her school-time access to the wonders of chewable flavored rubber, she said, “The other day Jesse turned in a gum pass to Mrs. W.”
“So?”
“He doesn’t have braces.”
“Yah?”
“And he had whited out a name and written his in and changed the date.”
GUM PASS FAIL
Yesterday Taylor got home from his first chess meet and said “I’m not good at being black!”
RACE FAIL/CHESS FAIL
Last night leaving our tiny local grocery store Reagan whispered, “You know that clerk? She deals pot.”
“How do you know?”
V., Rea’s thirteen year-old friend, told Rea that her mom, K., “*borrowed” thirty dollars from her so she could buy pot from the rotund store clerk.
PARENTING FAIL
I don’t want to get dooced writing about work, but what am I, if not a rule-breaker? Dream-maker? Love-taker, don’t you mess around with me!
My work rents a small office in an even smaller town.
Our rent for the past few years was $250 per month.
I know, sounds laughably small, doesn’t it?
But you haven’t SEEN our office. It’s a shoe box formed between a U-shaped bar/restaurant. Thus we get the smell of cooking fries from one side and the sounds of the jukebox on the other. (Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town and everybody else, tries to put my sloopy down….)
Furthermore, a ceiling tile directly above my head is making it’s slow descent, dribbling crumbs of plaster on my head and desk. (”Someday love will find you; break those chains that bind you…. seperate ways”)
The front door has a huge draft.
Our only air conditioning is a giant, pre-1980’s window unit.
And it smells like mold. (We’ve got a thing that’s called radar love; we’ve got a wave in the air, radar love…)
The flourescent light for the front half of the office doesn’t work. Thus I type in the semi-dark, especially on cloudy days. (The lights are much brighter there; you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go Downtown….)
We have so little storage space that we have a file cabinet in the bathroom. (A, B, C, as easy as 1, 2, 3…)
Speaking of the bathroom, if you stop by and request to use it, you’ll get the following warning:
“You have to flick the light switch 2-3 times to get the light to come on. If the light turns itself off while you’re going potty, knock on the wall and we’ll flip the switch for you. Then when you go in, make sure you put the doorstop in the door, otherwise it might pop open. If the toilet starts to run while you are going, don’t worry, that happens sometimes. But make sure you don’t use more than five or six squares of toilet paper or it clogs up. And when you are done, make sure you hold the handle down until a count of ten or it won’t flush. Oh, and when you get done washing your hands, put all your weight into turning the handles because otherwise the sink leaks.”
Seriously.
Our landlords won’t fix anything.
And just raised our rent to $400 per month.
Lovely.
So my boss, M., sent the new lease to our Chicago boss, B., with a list of office repairs. Facetiously, at the end she included “paper thin walls that allow us to hear domestic disputes.” (Our landlords often have loud knock-down drag-out fights that are so bad I’ve almost called the police.)
B. didn’t realize that we were joking about the walls, and, writing a proviso to the lease, merely changed the wording to “Paper thin walls that allow us to overhear conversations in the adjoining properties.”
Shit.
Once the landlords get the list the “knock-down, drag-out fight” just may be happening within our little shoebox of productivity.
I need some advice. My deluxe vehicle in the sky, a 1997 Toyota Rav4, well, the goddamn fucking doors won’t close. When you shut the door, it just pops right back open. The harder you shut it, the faster it bounces back towards you. This only happens when it’s cold outside.
I’ve tried de-icer on the door, on the latch, but it doesn’t seem to help. The doors also have a tendency to freeze shut.
Any advice?
And NO, I can’t just go buy a new car! (Or build a heated garage.)
T-day minus one:
Don’t try to find turkey parts to make “make-ahead” gravy the day before Thanksgiving. THERE ARE NONE.
If you decide to use chicken parts instead, please read the full recipe. Otherwise you might realize, at 9 pm, that your chicken must be basted with butter every 20 minutes for two hours, then simmer on the stove top for another six hours, necessitating someone (your spouse, preferably) getting up at 5:00 am to move the chicken stock to the fridge.
Thanksgiving:
Planning to smoke pot on Thanksgiving at your relative’s house? Please bring your own foil, rather than hovering in the kitchen and trying to surreptitiously acquire some.
Note: If your homebase is lacking foil, it also might be best not to drink homemade wine in the car on the way to said relative’s house, as it makes one considerably less stealthy during foil requisition activities.
Or, you might consider asking “May I have a piece of foil?” as that would actually be MORE discreet than sidling over to the foil and noticeably startling when glanced at, retreating, approaching again, (x4), tucking the foil into your shirt front and scurrying out the back door. (Yes, mothers AND sisters-in-law DO have eyes on the back of their head, and, yes, will know what you were doing and will totally toy with you.)
When confronted about the illicit nature of the foil theft, saying “M. told me to!” like a four-year-old tattling is not the best idea, either.
Furthermore, if a relative is mad at you, for example, for stealing $22 from your nephew, and you decide to apologize, it’s good to stop at “I’m sorry,” rather then adding “that you are mad at me and I am mad at you.”
It’s also not necessary to add “And I didn’t do anything wrong.”
And, if the pot gives you munchies, then please DO NOT eat ALL the shrimp.
T-day +1
Do not go shopping. Unless you are bored. And feeling stir-crazy. Then you should brave the mall, as it will make you wish you were at home.
If you need to burn off a few postprandial calories, then believe the tree guy’s proclamation that “White Pines are easy to cut down.”
T-day +2
Realize, walking, that “one more mile” out is actually two more miles total and a seven miles is a heck of a long walk! Of course, on the walk, you may just spot one of these:
Carry it around the streets of your small town, hooked on a stick, a’la hobo napsack, in order to get it home to show to your children. Who will refuse to leave the warmth of the house and the intellectual stimulation of their video games to come and look at it.
Google it and find out that it’s a “giant puffball mushroom” and that it’s actually edible AND contains TRILLIONS of spores. Wash your hands repeatedly.
T-day +3
If you have a thirteen year old pms-y girl and she’s acting like a thirteen year old pms-y girl do not make any jokes about her dog getting kidnapped and returned to her in pieces. She won’t think that it’s funny and may go to cry in her room.
T-day +4
Return to work, refreshed from your long weekend.
