Archive for August, 2009:
Been there done that
In fourth grade I was on a class trip to Pennsbury Manor. My memory is clear. We were walking around a big room and on one side there was a smaller room set off from the main space. I looked into this room and had my first feeling of deja vu, although at age nine, I didn’t know what it was. I just knew I’d been there before. I got a cold rush of familiarity that jarred me. I have not forgotten that in 36 years.
Therefore, one would think, that keen powers of recall of things that happened, and even what might have happened, would prevail as life continued. Or one would hope.
On Saturday night I hunkered down to work on a project that is on a deadline. I often review and revise my work several times, so on opening the Word Doc it did not surprise me to see my own marks and comments. I continued my work all the time the changes were minimal. I’m gooood, I thought. After about two hours of this - with intermittent Facebook breaks (it was Saturday night), I decided to check another set of notes on the same project.
Been there done that.
I’d already finished these pages. I was doing work I’d already completed and sent off to my editor.
So this Sunday morning, coffee in hand, I’m ready to do work I haven’t done before.
But not without double-checking a couple dozen times.
Suburban, spicy, spinach enchiladas
In honor of having a fabulous day with my friend Melanie who lives in Mexico, I thought I’d share my recipe for Spinach Enchiladas. The actual post about my day with Melanie comes later.
To give credit where it’s due, the first time I had Spinach Enchiladas was with my friend Pamela — they were part of a Mexican feast she created for her birthday (and graciously shared with some friends). I knew my son would love the enchiladas, so before I even asked Pam for the recipe, I whipped up some on my own, and then did it again recently with even a better result.
According to Melanie, there are no spinach enchiladas where she lives…so consider this your warning that while they are delicious, chances are they are not authentic, hence the ’suburban’ disclaimer!
And we’re big into healthy foods around here, so feel free to swap out ingredients if you’re not.
Spicy Suburban Spinach Enchiladas
6 Corn tortillas (we stay away from white flour whenever possible)
Bag of frozen chopped spinach (I used Trader Joe’s, but any will do)
Fat free sour cream (I stick to Breakstone, the others taste funny to me)
Green salsa (again, from TJ’s)
1/2 cup Shredded Mexican style cheese (I use the kind made from 2% milk)
Green or Red Enchilada Sauce
I nuke the spinach and then squeeze out all the water. Otherwise you will have Soggy, Spicy, Suburban Spinach Enchiladas.
In a medium bowl I mix the spinach with a few tablespoons of the fat free sour cream and the green salsa to taste. It should look like old-fashioned creamed spinach at this point.
Use a small baking pan, spray with cooking spray.
Divide spinach eventually between six tortillas, in a “stripe” down the center of the tortilla. Fold over the ends, leaving other ends open (unlike a burrito, where you close the ends).
Did I forget to tell you to warm the tortillas? OK then, warm the tortillas by wrapping them in a damp paper towel and popping them in to the microwave for 20 seconds. If you don’t, it will still work, but the tortillas will crack. It will still taste really good though if this happens. Trust me on this one.
Put the tortillas with spinach into the baking pan fold down. Line them up cozy next to one another. Cover with sauce of choice and cheese. We measure the cheese for the lower-cal effect, but you don’t have to if you’re a rebel with low cholesterol.
Bake at 350 until until the cheese bubbles.
I can eat 2 or 3 as a meal. My son adds sour cream on top, sometimes I add a little extra heat with peppers.
Adios mi amigos, enjoy!
Brisket and the Art of Long-Term Friendship
I landed a job in the admissions department of a small Lutheran college in New Jersey. The fact that I knew nothing about college admissions wasn’t nearly as strange as the fact that I was the only Jewish staff member, and most likely, the only Jewish person on campus.
I picked up on the way things were done and grew comfortable in my role handling computer issues, desktop publishing and learning the admissions business. One day, waiting for a staff meeting to begin, we talked about our weekends, and subsequently our meals. And although the details before this elude me, I must have mentioned brisket. A somewhat tanned, dark haired woman turned to me. I’d seen her in the office before. She was new, but we hadn’t met.
“Did you say brisket,” she asked.
“Uh huh.”
“Are you Jewish?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a trick question.
“I am.”
“I’m Catholic,” she said, “I love brisket.” She moved from her seat next to me, and leaned in. “And lox and bagels. I’m the only non-Jewish person in line for bagels on Christmas morning.”
I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to make me, the lone Jew, feel at home or if she truly felt a kinship and wanted to bond over brisket and bagels.
“How do you make it,” she asked. “You know, the brisket.”
And so I told her.
That was over 18 years ago.
I was pregnant with my son and my new friend, Renee, was thinking about getting divorced. She was 32 - practically ancient to my 27 - but we were close friends from that moment on. She was a seasoned (as seasoned as one can be at 32) admissions counselor and showed me the ropes. Renee introduced me to Martha Stewart, country clubs and Eggs Benedict. I taught her the Russian-Jewish custom of tying a red ribbon to something to ward off any ne’er-do-well (i.e. her mother-in-law) wishing her harm. That next Christmas - the last with her ex - she decorated her house with big red velveteen bows. That was right around the time I started coordinating table cloths and napkins for dinner parties.
Renee was there the day my son was born and took a hearty dose of allergy medicine to attend his Bris (she was allergic to our dog). She reveled in my new parenthood and I listened as she mourned the loss of her single home, her Laura Ashley adorned bedroom and at times, even her ex-husband.
Our friendship, the way I remember it, just happened. There were no mommy cards, no texting, no cell phones. There was no email. At least there wasn’t for me. Our campus and local diner lunches took us away from campus and enabled us to find our similarities and revel in our differences. The pot luck dinners brought varied friends together. Maybe it had something to do with being young. I think it really just had to do with it being a much simpler time - or maybe back then, I just new simpler people. And I mean that in a good way.
But then I stopped working to be a stay-at-home mom. The college closed and Renee got a new job. I moved several times. We lost touch somewhere between Renee getting her master’s degree and me and my family moving to Cleveland. I couldn’t find her even though I was online, because I didn’t know where she was. This was before the days when you could find almost anyone on Google. Her parents were unlisted. Can you imagine? As creepy as internet access can be, it lends an element of permanence to relationships. It is really hard to lose track of someone these days. But not back then.
Renee and I lost track of one another, found one another and then lost track again. And then one day - about ten years ago — I got a phone call. It was Renee! She was packing her apartment for another move to another city and came across my parents’ phone number. She called them and they gave her my number.
Sometimes, after a long time, we hear from someone we haven’t thought of in ages. It wasn’t that way with Renee. I’d thought about her often. And even if I hadn’t, I think the key to these long-term, heavy-duty friendships is the willingness to remember the past and embrace the possibilities for the future. Would it have been easy for me to shun someone who called, after years, who lived thousands of miles away and with whom technically I had nothing in common? I had new friends in a new city and I believed I was on the cusp of an amazing life. But when someone reaches out through the years and over miles, it behooves us to slow down enough to listen and to remember those technology free years when we met and became friends because of brisket.
And anyway, it was Renee.
That night we talked and talked like we were sitting across the table in her kitchen, her dad playing with my son, sticking ten dollar bills into his one-year-old pockets. She and I filled in all the blanks - or so I thought — until I mentioned my four-year-old daughter and Renee said, “Who?”
She didn’t know I’d had a daughter.
We remedied the situation and saw Renee on a planned trip to Florida, where she lived. Another time she flew from to meet us on a different vacation. She and I spent a girlfriend weekend in Chicago. Ten years since our reunion we have not lost touch again - on the contrary. Through more moves, job loss, my divorce and both families’ tragedies, we’re more connected than ever. And as always, she can lift my spirits with three small words…Amy, it’s Renee.
Long ago and far away we giggled innocently about a handsome professor (we were married, not blind), shared recipes (so much more than brisket), talked about our families (the good, bad and ugly) and planned our futures (boy, were we wrong).
Now we talk about being single, and not naively. We reminisce about the past and look forward to times unknown. Today, the intensity of our combined experiences is way beyond that of a chuckle. We belly laugh until we cry - or until someone has to pee.
Come to think of it, that’s the same as when I was pregnant — and Renee was on the divorce diet.
That’s what you call coming full circle.
* * *
Brisket Recipes or Essential Ingredients for a Friendship
Unlike Texans, Jews don’t barbeque their brisket, we braise it like a pot roast. I started making ’sweet brisket’ when I got married. It’s a traditional holiday meal, but was unlike the brisket I grew up taste-testing in my grandmother’s kitchen. Shortly after I divorced, my grandmother passed away. I’ve only made her brisket since. Both recipes are below.
Sweet Brisket
5-7 lbs. brisket, first cut
Seasoning:
Salt
Onion salt (optional)
Garlic salt (optional)
Liquid:
1 12-oz bottle chili sauce
20 oz Manischewitz or other very sweet wine
2 tablespoons barbecue sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Vegetables:
1 sliced sweet onion
6 chopped carrots
3 lbs potatoes, quartered
Sprinkle seasonings over meat and rub in lightly. Sear the meat in 500 degree oven for 10 minutes on each side. Combine liquids and vegetables, pour over meat, cover and cook at 350 degrees for 3 hours. It freezes well if you invite light eaters and have leftovers.
Brisket with Gravy
5-7 lbs. brisket, first cut
Seasoning:
Onion Soup Mix 1 or 2 packets
Liquid:
Water
Sprinkle onion soup mix over meat and rub in lightly. Wrap meat tightly in several layers of aluminum foil and place in a roasting pan. Cook it at 300 degrees for as many hours as you can stand not eating it, at least 3. Slice against the grain, place back in roasting pan, cover with au jus and keep warm on 250. The more it cooks the better it tastes, it tastes even better the next day. Serve it with au jus or the brown gravy of your choice. Make it or buy it, I don’t think it matters. I’d say it freezes well too, but there’s never enough left to find out.
Cross-Posted at Imperfect Parent
Doolittle’s got nothing on me
I talk to my dogs. Let’s go out. Time for lunch. Want a treat? Get off the sofa. Ok, more likely: Make room for me.
I also, in the course of my day, tell the pups what I’m doing. I’m going to take a shower. Heading to the grocery store, be back soon. General Hospital is starting, let’s watch.
None of this is a problem for me. The dogs keep me company and I’m pretty sure they understand a good deal of what I say. I know they agree with me that Sam and Jason should definitely get back together but that Nicolas and Liz, well, that’s not a good match.
That being said, as if two (and until a week ago, three) dogs isn’t enough, I also tend to talk to the appliances.
When the phone rings I often yell, “I’m not answering you!” or “Call the cell phone!”
When the washer is on the fritz and buzzes throughout the cycle I say, “Just wash the damn clothes.”
When the garbage disposal broke sometime last week or the week before I said, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon I don’t have time or money to fix you, cooperate.” It’s still broken.
I also ask questions.
When the spring broke on the garage door and it sounded like a gunshot in the house, I asked, “Why? Why do you have to break today when I need to leave the house in 20 minutes?”
When I forget to take out the trash because I think it’s Tuesday, not Thursday, I look at the pile in the garage and say, “Why didn’t you remind me to take you out?”
There are also quite a few damn corners and chair legs that get berated when I bump into them on occasion, and toilets that might flush a little slowly sometimes for which a good crossing of the fingers, holding hands together in potty prayer and saying a chant of pleaseflushpleaseflushpleaseflush seems to work. Sometimes.
I also express gratitude to found keys, glasses, money and socks — sometimes resulting in kissing the object (except for the socks).
I’ve decided it is not an issue worth therapy though, unless they start talking back.
A contest I’m not sure I’d want to win
I don’t enter a lot of sweepstakes, but there was one that caught my eye. Not in a good way, mind you, but it attracted my attention because the prize was a six month supply of mayonnaise.
What is that, like, one medium-size jar? Total prize package valued at $3.79? Or if they really think you use a ton of mayo in your extended family is that six jars?
Now offer me a coupon — I’ll clip it or print it and be all over it like mayo on whatever you put mayo on. But energy and effort and another damn email list for a one free jar of mayo per as many contestants as enter? Because you know, your chances of winning are based solely on the number of people who enter.
Pass the mustard please, and I’ll be happy to pay for it.
Back to normal
With my daughter home from camp, things are back to normal. Even without Tucker. Even though I sneezed yesterday and the other dogs just looked at me with their canine mental ‘bless you’. Tucker would run into another room if I even thought about sneezing. I spent the past ten years apologizing for every achoo. I didn’t mind.
But it still feels normal.
I credit the fact that this is still a house full of dogs and the routines and supposed-to’s are meandering back into place with my son on the golf team and school starting Wednesday, with three people at the dinner table instead of two, size five purple Converse high tops by the garage door, extra laundry (extra extra due to camp), the sound of Teen Nick coming from behind a closed door and the shrill of girly laughter trailing after it.
It even feels normal that my daughter will start high school and my son will finish it.
Important things are as they should be.
Can’t get more normal than that.
Ode to a good dog
I walked around the house, picking up the bowls full and half full of water that we’d put every where Tucker liked to lay, so it was easy to give him a drink when he looked thirsty. Some of the water was still cold.
I took down all the bones from the top of the fridge, the bones Tuck wasn’t allowed to have because they might irritate his stomach. Those bones also forbidden from the other dogs since May. Giving one dog a bone and not the other is like giving one kid an ice cream cone and telling the other to watch him eat it. I dropped the bones around the house in the used-to-be-usual spots for chewing — under the dining room table, on the expensive living room rug, in the middle of the long hall leading to the bedroom where it’s easy to step on it if you’re not looking.
The rugs Tucker laid on the past few weeks, because it was easier for him to get up from a rug than the slick floor, stayed. They’re our bath mats really, because bath mats don’t slip, and by tonight they’ll be washed and back with their mates in the appropriate bathrooms.
Tucker loved the bathroom - it was a one-stop shop. A bowl perfect for drinking that was always full (and in a house with three dogs, always flushed), a cold floor and a comfy rug, and visitors. So many amenities! As a puppy it was the place he’d grab the end of the toilet paper roll to begin his romp around the house - the canine caper that ensued was not unlike that of high schoolers and trees. His antics got him a permanent place in the bathroom when I showered, because I never knew, as a pup, what he’d do alone for those few minutes. It remained his routine always, the shower started by anyone here and Tucker knew it was time to lie on the bathroom floor and wait. If you didn’t wait for Tucker, he barked outside the bathroom door to get in. So we always waited. The other dogs followed suit and many times there were three dogs in the bathroom at shower time, which was so sweet and very much like an obstacle course when wanting to dry off.
Tucker was 100 lbs of Golden Retriever sweetness. A Retriever who never retrieved, he liked to be chased around the table on the patio in the backyard, changing directions every time he thought you were about to catch him. He loved to roll in the mud out there too, and when we replaced it with mulch, he loved to roll in the mulch. It was then we learned he simply loved to roll around.
He would never hurt anyone but was a good defensive strategy for a house with one mom and two kids, because to everyone but us, he was really big. He was the dog, who when he got out of the backyard, came to the front door because he was no dummy - his bathroom was in there. He wasn’t going anywhere. Tucker was a dog who listened because he wanted to but could never quite get over his need to jump on people who came in the front door. He loved company and any food they might happen to have under aluminum foil. He was fiercely protective of us and loyal to us - and anyone hoarding treats. Tuck was the dog who was in-touch with our feelings, lying still and quiet if we were sick; wagging his tail at our happiness. He barked loud and deep at the doorbell but forgave you silently if you stepped on his tail or said no. He hung his head before getting yelled at when he scavenged in the trash - and only threw up when he was sick - not when he ate sticks, grass, chicken parts, coffee grinds or apple cores. Even with those escapades we knew he was very smart. But more than that, he was gentle. I called him Prince Charming. And Tootles. Once, I mentioned Tupperware and he came running. He also had a sense of humor.
There were a few years — the two-dog years — when all of us slept in my bed. Me, my much younger kids and two dogs. Then, with kids preferring their own rooms , and the adoption of dog #3 almost five years ago, Tucker took to his spot in the hall most nights, where he could see every bedroom. And keep his eye on the bathroom too, I’m sure.
I looked at the doggie place mat and Tucker’s food bowl. I’d have put them away but Zachary said it was OK to use them for the other dogs. The little dog bowl stand meant our biggest pooch didn’t have to bend all the way down to the floor for his food. Frankly, he’d have eaten anywhere — and anything. But why should such a good dog bend so far for his meals?
I let out the dogs - one and then the other - and tapped on the sliding glass door when I wanted them back inside - which was very soon after they’d gone out. Fed and filled they chewed, pawed, snuggled, annoyed and asked for belly scratches in the way dogs do. They walked off to their own favorite spots - one on my bed, head on the pillow (where else) and the other in the middle of the hall where she could see me, lest I go to bathroom, fridge, laundry room or basement without her.
Tucker never made a lot of noise, but Zachary and I agreed it was really quiet.
It’s morning. It’s time to feed the dogs again – and then shower.
Where, from now on, I’ll have just a little too much space to dry off.
Lizzie, Tucker, Mitzi - March 2009
August is the new October
Nothing says hot, humid summer like candy corn, costumes and bags of mini chocolate bars.
While I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that my kids start school before Labor Day, the folks at the big box stores have moved the sunscreen and flip flops to the end caps and stocked their shelves with all things scary, creepy and spooky. The Fall fabulousness is there too, with fake haystacks and cutesy scarecrows, spicy scented candles and everything pumpkin.
I think it’s wrong to buy school supplies when I’m wearing sunscreen but with two kids in high school that starts soon, I have stacks of spiral note books and boxes of pens and mechanical pencils next to the bug spray and aloe in the storage closet.
On principal I don’t walk down the Halloween aisles before October, but the permeation of holidays into months where they really don’t belong, makes my shopping excursions more like scavenger hunts.
Who buys their Halloween candy in August? Really. Who? I can’t buy it before the day of Halloween if there’s going to be anything left for a wayward trick-or-treater who happens to ring my doorbell. Either that or I buy the candy no one likes and then the kids skip my house anyway. No one wants lollypops or bags of pretzels on Halloween — even in cute themed bags, just for the record.
Then the other day I walked into the local card shop and was greeted by the scent of peppermint. Peppermint candles. To my right was a display of Christmas ornaments and in the corner of the store a friendly clerk was setting up a toy train.
“Can I help you find something?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you have Halloween cards?”
I gathered a few, paid and left — humbly reminded that things can always be worse.
She is 14
This picture was taken 13 years ago today, on my daughter’s 1st birthday. And you know what? She still likes bows in her hair. It’s “in.”
Ahead of our time, as usual.
