2010
Lend Me a Hand (Pie)
If you were on Twitter last night, you may have witnessed the dramatic live tweet of how my nice dinner for Simon–the one I’d spent an entire week preparing for–ended the way they all do: with me on my knees in the kitchen keening “noooooooooo” and shaking my floury fists at the unforgiving heavens. Soundtrack: the entire Carmina Burana.
As people were kindly counselling me on Twitter and I was kindly trying to thank them, in reality I was only getting more frustrated because no one seemed to understand that the problem isn’t that I pick recipes that are too complicated for my skill set or that I’m just generally culinarily incompetent or that I’m easily distracted (okay, maybe a little of that), but no, the things that go wrong are not the type of things that can be solved by practice or guidance or your grandma’s no-fail recipe or even therapy because the things that go wrong when I’m wearing the proverbial apron (I hardly ever wear a real one, and this is why I can’t have nice things) are just totally random, wackadoo things that seem to happen to me alone. Some of my misfortune might be user error, but I really think it’s mostly just bad luck.
For starters, when I roasted the sweet potatoes prior to mashing them, I didn’t peel them first (because when we make sweet potato fries, the skin is the yummiest part), and then I let them sit out on the hot baking sheet too long, such that when I was finally ready to mash them, I had a pile of sad, dessicated wedges, which I had to individually pry open with my fingers and squeeze to extract what mashable contents I could. Behold the remains:
(I only needed two sweet potatoes for the recipe, but realizing that things had gone awry, I was relieved when I spied a third potato in the veggie bowl (this one a yam, but close enough), and yet just as I was congratulating myself, I discovered that my spare potato had grown roots and was black with rot at the core and was therefore unfit for human consumption. Awesome!)
Phase two was adding the spices and cream to the mashed sweet potatoes. We had cumin (yes!) but no coriander or cream (drat).
Next up I was to roll out my phyllo dough–my store-bought, pre-made, frozen, fool-proof phyllo dough–into a twelve-inch square on my floured work surface. I thought this was curious, as never in my thousands of hours of watching cooking shows have I ever seen anyone roll out phyllo dough, but hey, this is a Martha Stewart recipe, and she would never lie to me. I trust you, Martha! So, let’s see, “On a floured work surface, roll out the puff pastry–” OOOOOOOHHHHH. Puff pastry. PUFF PASTRY. I do not have that. MARTHA.
But I think phyllo can still work! Let me just look at the directions here so I can adjust the baking time and, oh, ha, yes, I need to thaw the phyllo first, of course! I totally knew that! I check the time, see that it’s past 8 p.m., and decide to forgo thawing it on the counter for five hours and instead thaw it in the fridge overnight. I’m so very sensible.
Flash forward to Day Two of cooking a recipe that claims “Active time: 15 min. Total time: 45 min.” Day Two! Who said recipes don’t have a sense of humor? Ha ha ha OMG.
Okay! So! Day Two! Renewed vigor! Let’s do this! CLAP CLAP! I’ve got my thawed phyllo, my mashed and seasoned sweet potatoes, and now all I need to do is cut up the chicken leftover from last week, when Simon grilled a dozen breasts at once so we’d have meals and snacks aplenty. All I need is two of those breasts and…hello, there is only one now because Simon took the other to work that day for his lunch because he didn’t know I needed it because I had been stupidly trying to keep this whole stupid thing a surprise, despite the fact that he knew something was up when he saw the miniature funeral pyre of potato skins adorning the overturned colander, as if upon an altar (see Fig. 1).
BUT I CAN’T BE STOPPED and he knows this. I cut up my chicken and throw it onto the mashies, which I’ve smeared onto the phyllo squares, which I then fold into triangles and squash down, rustically, because water isn’t making the edges stick together and you can’t exactly crimp phyllo with a fork to close the seams, Martha, and even though the recipe called for an edible paste of eggwash to bind the edges, we certainly do not have a single egg on the premises. I mean, really. Do I look like the kind of person who frequents specialty markets?
MASH, SMEAR, SQUASH, HULKSMASH. (This is why I could never maintain a lifestyle blog.)
For the sidedish, I lightly steamed some fresh green beans, which were no longer quite so fresh and were actually a little slimy and…fermented? (Is fermentation what makes Natto do that thing that Natto does? Yeah, that.) But I served them anyway! And no one died!
Here was dinner: my Chicken and Sweet Potato Hand Pies*, from the September issue of Everyday Food (Simon gave me a subscription for Mother’s Day, at my own request; I’ll just wait here while you laugh it out amongst yourselves), and my non-deadly green beans.
Everything actually tasted really good, and when it was time for a second helping, I could see the wheels turning in Simon’s head as he tried to decide whether to take the smaller hand pie (a sign of generosity) or the bigger hand pie (a sign of approval), and the instant I recognized what he was doing, his choice ceased to matter because, man, don’t you just love him? God bless the man who eats my frankenstein dinners–and on the hottest night of the year, when we shouldn’t be eating savory pies full of root vegetables but chilled bowls of watermelon soup or some other raw (i.e., not cooked; i.e., no cooking required; i.e., fool-proof) delicacy. Or, you know, a bowl of cereal (which is a dish I have never once screwed up *knock on wood*).
*If you want the recipe, this nice woman posted her successfully executed version, with only a few modifications from the original. Warning: She makes it look easy; do not be fooled.
2010
What Would You Save?
You’re going to have to nibble the crust first before you get to the meat of this one. (Read: Two bits of housekeeping and then a real post.)
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Who doesn’t love a good momfail? When it’s not your own, I mean. (Disclaimer: Actually, I sometimes enjoy my own momfails when they’re not too bad; forget “blogging as community,” what did people do before they could turn their most embarrassing mistakes into Content?)
Click over here to share your best momfail stories (yours or someone else’s; when it comes to awarding money, agirlandaboy.com doesn’t discriminate against the childfree or the schadenfreudsters!) and you’ll be entered for a chance to win yet another $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer and our sponsor.
(For what it’s worth, I always try to tell stories with my reviews, and although they’re not, like, masterpieces or anything, I wanted you to know they’re more than just shilly productspeak. Who else is a fan of making sponsored posts worth your time? Why, it’s our old (young!) friend Alexa! After you read my review post, you should read hers too. Teaser: oxygen tank + baby + open flames!)
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And speaking of Alexa, the winner of a signed copy of her book is…#38, which is longtime reader Abby! Congratulations, friend! And now the rest of you can hie thee hence to buy your own because I don’t know if I mentioned this but it’s a really, really good book.
***
The last morning I woke up in Guerneville I checked my email and saw I had a message from my mom titled “Sleepover at [Genius Baby Brother]‘s house (cats too!).” In the body of the message was a link to a news story about the massive wildfire that was burning out of control in the hills directly behind my parents’ new house, and so saying that they had a “sleepover” at my brother’s place was her casual way of telling me they’d been evacuated and were staying at the old house until the authorities let them back in. Needless to say those final few hours at the summit were a little less than entirely relaxing. (Like a nice massage but without a “happy ending,” perhaps? No? Wrong metaphor?)*
When I got back within range of civilization and cell phone coverage, I had a chance to talk to her about what was going on, and of course my first question about the evacuation was inevitably the question anyone would ask about an evacuation: What did you take with you?
“What do you think I took?” she asked.
“Your knitting,” I said, because she’s always making something lovely for someone, and doing it so effortlessly that I bet when she gets into bed her fingers turn to needles and she knits in her sleep, working not in cotton or wool but the night air because my mom is MAGIC.
“Well, yes, of course I took my knitting. The project I’m working on right now, at least. And family pictures, of course. And the cats. And the computer. Everything else can be replaced.”
“Right.” (We all know this is right.)
“Do you know what I did first, though? I had just come from work, so I changed out of my uniform. We didn’t know when we’d be let back into the house, so I had to decide what I wanted to live in for the next few days, and I knew it sure as heck wasn’t going to be my work clothes.” (She’s a nursing supervisor, so she wears white pants and a white jacket and occasionally borrowed scrubs in the aftermath of bodily-fluid-related incidents.) “I changed out of my unform and I put on my flip-flops. Couldn’t live without those.”
We talked on about the fire and how it had come within an after-dinner stroll of their house, how they watched the deer invade their streets with a little more urgency than normal. When the shock wore off and reassurance settled in, though, my mind kept going back to what she had said about not wanting to live in her work clothes, even if only until she could get to a Target and buy something new.
As far as symbols go, this one comes pretty cheap, but it’s no less powerful for that, I think. For the past thirty-plus years my mom has worked in the same career and for the same employer and done the good and necessary work of healing and comforting people (and indeed of saving many, many lives)–and yet she didn’t want to be stuck in that role against her will, and at a time when the truly important things were at stake. For her, changing out of her work clothes was a priority on par with saving the cats and the family photos. For me, that’s a lesson in how we do–or do not–let our careers define us.
When we’re just starting out, we want to define ourselves by our work. I daresay it’s expected of us. Before we’ve even performed the ceremonial ker-chunk of the mortarboard tassel from this side to that, everyone’s asking what we’re going to do with our lives, and they don’t mean what our long-term life goals are or even where we’re headed to celebrate immediately after the graduation ceremony–they mean where are we going to work, in what hallowed break room will we dutifully perform the proverbial ker-chunk of the time clock.
If we’re lucky, we find a job we like, and if we’re crazy-lucky we find a job we love (*raises hand*), but even in the best circumstances–actually particularly in the best circumstances–our jobs begin to matter less and less as other parts of our lives establish themselves and begin to matter more. As we live and grow, we’re able to loosen the death grip our identity once had on our career–or vice versa–and we’re able to let go not just because work got forcefully shoved down the priority ladder by things like, oh, let’s say true love and children, but also because I think that as we get older most of us realize that we don’t want or need to be defined by our work, and we certainly shouldn’t seek that out, especially in a shaky economy and as part of a generation that read all about Willy Loman in high school English and have thus been forewarned.
By now you know what I’m saying, so I don’t really need to go on, but even as a person who loves her job, I wanted to say–because I don’t think it’s said enough–that for all that our first-world Oprah-American culture believes we should find a way to make our greatest passion our paying career, it’s actually a wonderful and healthy thing to be able to treat one’s job like a job and not feel like we have to, as my mom put it, live in our work clothes on a permanent basis. Besides, if everyone were spending forty hours a week working their passions, what would become of our free time? Would we spend it poring over TPS reports? Sometimes the things most precious are the things we do when no one’s watching (and I’m not talking about happy endings here, your pervs).
*Maybe I’ve already written about this before, but it bears repeating: Simon’s bro-in-law swears to god that he was offered a happy ending after his massage at a spa in a mall in suburban Southern California. I refuse to believe this would happen in a spa in a mall in suburban Southern California, even though Simon (who was at the spa the same day and yet was not extended the same offer, much to his dismay) (not that he was dismayed because he would have accepted but because it’s nice to be thought of, you know?) (perhaps the difference was because the bro-in-law is English and the suburban Southern California mall-spa workers are excited by exotic clientele?)–*ahem* even though Simon swears that sort of thing happens all the time (not that it did to him on that day, mind you). I know most of you out there are women, but do you have any light to shed on the topic? Is it perfectly reasonable that a[n English] man would be offered a happy ending to conclude his massage at a spa in a mall in suburban Southern California? Or is that such stuff as crazy lies are made on?**
**One hundred gold stars for catching the reference, and if you did, you might be interested in this.
2010
Unapologetic
Did you enjoy the undertone of angst and profuse apology in that last post? Yeah, me neither. Here’s the good stuff:
1. I finally got an Epiphanie bag and the chance to spend time with Maile, who is warm and generous and awesome. Wouldn’t it be great if she agreed to give a bag away on Style Lush? Only a truly warm and generous and awesome person would do that…
2. I got Chookooloonked! Unshowered hat-head and all, dagnabbit. Karen has a way of capturing a person’s essence, though, so perhaps it’s time I just make peace with the fact that my essence is a little bit on the greasy side.
Photo by Zan
3. I met Meg, who, if you believe in destiny, was the whole reason this opportunity fell in my lap at all. In case you didn’t catch on yesterday, she and her team of readers at A Practical Wedding are leading the charge in getting my middle-aged tuchus married off (in style!) once and for all. I’m so excited I could puke.
Photo by Zan
4. I came away from the weekend feeling very special–in the same way that Simon suprising me with a chocolate cookie or hanging a dirty note on my bathroom mirror makes me feel special–and I’ve got a fun idea brewing about how I’m going to pass that along.
Photo by Zan
5. Maggie did a perfect recap write-up that you should all go read.
Now, where words leave off, photos begin. (I said I was done apologizing, but if you’re reading this on a phone or a slow connection, I owe you one.)
Photo by Zan
