the pieces of my life

Yesterday morning, Pie comes bounding into the bedroom as I’m getting up.

Pie: Do we have blueberries?

Me: Why, yes, I believe we got pack from Boston Organics last week.

Pie: May I make blueberry muffins?

Me: That sounds like a great idea. Go flip through one of your kid cookbooks and find a recipe. Also check my whole grains cookbook.

A few minutes later she comes back.

Pie: Your whole grains cookbook didn’t have one, but my kid’s cookbook does. Can I make it?

I look at the recipe.

Me: It’s got a lot of butter but, well, sure. Go for it!

About 15 minutes later, we’re in the kitchen. I look at the recipe.

Me: Okay the first thing you need to do is get the butter from the fridge and melt it on the stove.

Pie: Can you do that?

Me: No, you’re the baker.

Pie: But I’m only nine. I can’t use the oven or stove.

Me: You are already nine, which is a fine time to learn properly and safely to use the oven and stove.

Pie: I think nine is too young.

Me: Do you know that when I was nine, if wanted cookies, they only way I could get them would be if I baked them? I followed the recipe on the back of the Nestle’s package and made Tollhouse Cookies.

Adam: And it always comes back to your poor, difficult childhood.

Me: You [to Adam], shut up. You [to Pie], get the butter.

Pie: You do it! I’m not going to use the oven or the stove! Can’t you do it for me?

Me: No. I don’t even like blueberry muffins. I’m not making them. If you want blueberry muffins, you will learn to use the oven and stove. I will be by your side helping you, but you will do it.

Pie: BUT IF I USE THE OVEN I WILL BURN MYSELF AND DIE!!!

Needless to say (though I’ll do so anyway), there were no blueberry muffins yesterday.

Curled up in Doodles's little twin bed.

I love coming home to this sight. Normally Pie falls asleep in her own bed, and makes her way into our bed in the middle of the night. But when she has a babysitter, despite the painted nails that she’s allowed, she still gets “sad” when it’s time for her to go to sleep. So, inevitably, she crawls into her brother’s small bed. I’m thrilled that he tolerates it. They have their moments, but when it comes down to it, they take care of each other.

Adam and I had our cooking class tonight. For about a year we took a once-a-month cooking class from this amazing woman in the next town over. She took a hiatus to go to culinary school, so tonight was our first class since then. Oh. My. God. It was amazing. I went in tired and cranky and I left sated and happy and with a gallon of rendered duck fat. No, seriously. Our teacher, Rose, is a vegetarian, and while she whips up this scrumptious meals for us (tonight was duck fat fries with duck breast, fig salad, pasta with a short rib sauce, and a ginger creme brulee–she’s expanded her class to more than once a month, so if you’re local and you want in, just let me know!), she often has more leftovers than her carnivorous family can eat. Which is where my family comes in. So I now have a huge container of duck fat in my fridge. And giant bag of potatoes from Boston Organics. If you’re in the ‘hood and you want duck fat fries, you know where to come!

We subscribe to Boston Organics (is subscribe the right word? I guess so, but it sounds funny to subscribe to veggies). Every week a box appears on our front porch full of organic goodies. For a long time we had a CSA, but I found myself overwhelmed. I love eggplant, but I finally lost it on the fourth week of getting five eggplants. Need I say I’m the only one who likes eggplant in this house? With Boston Organics, I have a “no” list (as in NEVER send me cauliflower because we will never, ever eat it) and they send reasonable amounts of each food. We get 2/3 veggie and 1/3 fruit. It works. Well. Except for those times when I leave town for a weekend. Or when Adam has a lot of nights working late or Doodles has Cub Scouts or track and field or Pie simply melts down early and we don’t have family dinners. Which has been happening a lot lately. So the veggies have been piling up. I had three bunches of asparagus in the fridge and six beets and a whole lot of yellow squash. I was determined to use some of this stuff up.

Asparagus? Easy. Roasted for Shabbat dinner tonight. That’s the best way: a smidgen of olive oil, a bit o’ time in the oven, and we’re all happy. Beets? A little more challenging. Adam loves beets. I think I could even call them his favorite vegetable. But he likes them really simple. Roasted. And that’s about it. I dressed them up tonight with a little lemon, onion, and olive oil. Myself, I prefer them with oranges and goat cheese, but my man is a simple man so plain beets it is.

But I refuse to prepare all six beets “plain,” as Adam won’t eat leftovers, which means I spend days eating boring beets until they get slimy and tossed and I feel guilty about wasting food. So today I had a brainstorm. Red Velvet Cake. I was going to make Red Velvet Cupcakes. With the beets. (Which, by the way, is one of the traditional ways of making it. None of that “two bottles of red dye #40.”) Genius.

I roast the beets. I puree the beets. Pie comes into the kitchen. “What are those?”

“Pureed beets,” I tell her.

“Ewww!”

“No, they’re good!”

Her nose wrinkles. “They look gross.”

She goes off to play. I bake hallah. I roast potatoes. I make Red Velvet Cupcakes. Pie returns when the cupcakes are done.

“Cupcakes!” she exclaims.

“Yep!” I say, frosting them with a cream cheese frosting.

“What kind?” she asks.

I hesitate. “They’re chocolate cupcakes. The name of them is Red Velvet Cupcakes.”

“Red Velvet?” Pie asks. And she gets right to it. “Are they called Red Velvet because of beets? Did you put the beets in the cupcakes!”

Luckily, I have the other three beets prepared to make Adam’s plain Jane salad. So I evade the question. “The beets are here in the sink.”

“Oh,” she says. And went back to play.

At dinner tonight, she pronounced the cupcakes “delicious!”

And the boy? He’s nobody’s fool and you’re not going to sneak a veggie past him, even in a cupcake. My Red Velvet Cupcake, which by the way, didn’t have a smidgen of red in them by the end, were pronounced “not for me,” and left half eaten.

You can fool some of the Pies some of the time and all of the Doodles… never.

My father, Peter, likes to complain that I don’t post enough but considering that 1) I don’t see him offering to come up and relieve me of some of my responsibilities (babysitters are always welcome!) and 2) where are his blog posts? I say to him a big fat thpppppp.

Today was one of those days when my greatest achievement was not killing my children. I have officially turned them over to Adam and I’m sitting her drinking my chardonnay, too lazy to get up and turn off the Miley Cyrus, which means tomorrow “Party in the U.S.A.” will torture me on my morning run.

Not related to my children’s monster meltdowns: After school today, I was sitting outside with my neighbor Beetle while Tab and Doodles played in their “clubhouse,” aka the bushes outside Tab’s house.

“So,” Beetle said. “Doodles has to wear all green tomorrow to school?”

“What?”

“He has to wear all green tomorrow for school.”

“For his play?”

“I don’t know.”

I yell to Doodles, “Hey, Doodles! Get out here!”

He lumbers out. I ask, “Why does Beetle know you have to wear green tomorrow, but I don’t?”

I get the mother of all “duh” looks. “Because I told her!”

Of course. Tomorrow all the first graders in the school are celebrating an African festival. There will be a play. My son will be playing the Boa Constrictor. There will be music on drums they made themselves. There will be a feast. Provided by the parents.

Another parent and I were assigned to make Benne Cakes. Of course, allergy-free Benne Cakes with Ener-G Egg Replacer, which I’ve never had much luck with. She starts first. I get a call. “These things are absolutely flat. Completely unusable.” In my cocky Martha-Stewart way, I assured her that I’d make mine and let her know how they were, fully confident that they’d be great. I made them. They’re flat. Completely unusable. And dark. And weird looking.

So I do a little Web research on Benne Cakes. Only to discover that benne means… sesame seed. Which we aren’t using. Because of allergies. So these things I’m making? My African Benne Cakes aren’t African and aren’t cakes. Yum!

Now I get to stay up late making more non-African, non-Benne, non-cakes. Lucky me!

So, Peter. You were saying?