L and other updates

As I was washing out my pressure cooker the other day, I remembered what I had forgotten to blather on and on about in my last post.  The pressure cooker, of course.  When my wonderful sil was here, I was reminded about her forays into cooking with the pressure cooker.  My sil comes up with the most fab ideas and drags me kicking and screaming in with her, but this is one that I hadn't ventured to try.  Until this week.

I bought a used pressure cooker and canning jars from the neighbor behind me who used to have a giant garden and can a lot of veggies.  Now it's just her and she's cleaning out so I got a phenomenal deal from her for the rest of her jars, the water bath canner and the pressure cooker.  Naturally, my garden didn't do squat this year so it sat in the back of Friend Husband's car, lonely and sad (because you know that it can't enter the house unless and until I'm in a crisis mode-tearing hurry to get something done).  I wanted me a good pot of beans this week.  I make yummy charro beans and I just had a hankering for them.  Sadly, I didn't leave enough time to make them.  Enter the pressure cooker.

See, once upon a time, I also had a thing about The Passionate Vegetarian cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon.  Then life overwhelmed me and I haven't done much about the PV lately.  But I did remember Crescent talking about how wonderful and life changing it is to cook beans in a pressure cooker.  So I decided to go for it.  And honey, was she ever right! 

Charros are made with either pinto or black beans.  I put about 2# of pintos in with water to cover by 2 inches, some celery I had lying around, and a bunch of peeled garlic.  Maybe some pepper too, I don't remember.  And I brought that sucker up to 15 pounds of pressure.  And I made everyone stay out of the kitchen because I'd heard rumors that those things blow sometimes.  Plus it was nice to have the kitchen to myself for a change rather than having David in every 2 minutes asking for yet more food.

But I digress.  After the pressure was to the correct place on the gauge, I set the timer for 12 minutes, which was right in the middle of Crescent's estimate for "hard" beans.  After 12 minutes was up, I turned off the stove (no explosions!) and waited for the gauge to indicate that the pressure had dissipated.  After a time, I opened it up and tasted a bean.  Perfect!  So I added tomato, peppers, cilantro, and some salt (I forgot that I added onion before I boiled the beans), let them simmer a bit more and it was perfection.  And I estimate that it took about an hour.  Can't beat that.  SIL wins again, and so do I!

I made another batch of cardamon bread yesterday, which brings me up to 16 loaves in two days.  Know how many are left?  Three.  No, we didn't eat them all (I gave 8 of them to teachers/administrators at our enrichment/coop classes) but we did eat FIVE of them in 24 hours.  Yikes.

I was going to blog about what a loser mother I am but it sounds like I'm needed upstairs with my loser self so I'll close with these two bready pictures.

 

I hate Wednesdays...

Sarah said this is what I should title my blog today.  That was my first thought when the alarm went off way too early this morning.  Seeing as I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off, I will leave you with my Wordless Wednesday and take me and my bad attitude (and the children, I guess) off to classes. 

The Days Are Just Packed

My entire body hurts from head to toe, so this may end up being abbreviated, I don't know. I'm having trouble holding my head up straight.

So we'll start with Friday, where everything that could go wrong, did. I was so aggravated by the end of the day that I just didn't know what to do with myself. I'll leave it at that.

Saturday dawned bright, sunny, and humid. I dispatched some weeds in the vegetable garden early in the morning, then Rachel and I proceeded to take tea at Miss Annabelle's Tea Parlor. I've been here before, with a group of ladies from our congregation and I thought Rachel would enjoy it. I think she did, after she got over the intimidation of being in such a dainty place.

The tea parlor is in an old building (site of the first woman-owned hardware store in the U.S.) in Historic Loveland. It's a pretty little walk down there and those who are inclined to ride bicycles often find themselves riding right through as there is a popular bike trail that goes right through the town.

Upon entering the parlor, you are encouraged to select a hat from the wall. Of course, you can choose to go without, but part of the fun for me is finding a hat to fit my giant head. This was the one I found. I adored the netting but had to pull it up when we were taking tea.

Rachel chose a lovely black one that framed her face beautifully. It also had a fluffy feather, which was fun.

The tea was wonderful (but I think now that we should have ordered iced tea instead of hot...it was already hot enough outside). The food was just scrummy, and we had a great time talking and goofing off.

Blue crab sandwiches. Rachel liked them very much.

This would be one of the walls in the restroom. Yes, I take pictures of restrooms...you got a problem with that?

Rachel put on another hat when we were out looking at the teaware. I liked this one even better with what she was wearing.

After we left the tea house, we walked a very little bit in Historic Loveland but we had to make haste to buy Webkinz for Rachel had money burning a hole in her very purse. It was a satisfying day and almost made up for how hideous Friday was.

Today we had company for lunch, which was a nice change of pace. We scooted the children out to play in the pool so we could have adult conversation without interruptions. Ha! Where there are children, there are interruptions. David came in to use the bathroom 3 times. The last time, I failed to mop up the pool water that he dripped in the kitchen, which was a big mistake. Zidy came to the door and wanted in and as I was hurrying to let her in, I slipped on the puddle and slid across the kitchen floor. I landed on my rear and right hand, then fell onto my back. I had also attempted to bring my right foot, which was behind me, up to the front but ended up dragging it along the lino when I did. As I watched, it blossomed nicely into a big red pressure burn (complete with blister) on the joint right under my right big toe. So my head, neck, back, right arm, and right foot are not happy with me right now. Miss Grace I am not. I'm about to take some good zonking drugs and go to bed, praying that it is all better by the morning. You pray too, ok?

This will be a big week for us. Some of my brother's children will be coming up to spend a few days with us. We love spending time with the cousins! Then my brother and sister-in-law plan to come up on Friday night, then go to the Creation Museum with us Saturday before they head home. It'll be nice to see Robert again, as I haven't seen him since 2 Thanksgivings ago? Could that be right? I guess so. Anyway, I hope he can come up but if he can't, we'll do our best to make Amber's brief visit a pleasant one.

Sarah also has a big event happening this week which I'll let her announce when it happens (or whenever she chooses to).

So I don't know how much time I'll have online this week or if I'll even be able to crip downstairs with my clumsy self. But I leave you with this picture of a yummy yummy cake I made for dessert today, from Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke. This is the Scandinavian Almond Cake and it is wonderful. It didn't survive the day, that's how good it is.

Now y'all have a good week and be safe!

Bugs and the rest of my life, part 2

I think y'all're going to get sick of hearing about bugs before I'm finished talking about them. Sorry about that. But the bugs, they're everywhere! And they're so cool! I did discover today, though, that the cicadas' red eyes do not glow in that endearing and special way when they're dead. Too bad. They're cute little critters! I think the "season" or whatever you want to call it, is almost over now. But Monday, the things were everywhere. I was trying to move my garden fence to keep my children (and anything else for that matter) out of my garden but the old fence was so covered by cicadas in various stages of molt, that it became well nigh impossible to navigate. So I did the next best thing. I took my boy with me and we went to Home Depot to get the rest of the fence stuff I needed.

Whilst there, I finally got us a new grill. When Friends Judi and David left town a few years ago, they gifted us with their old "tabletop" grill. It was very cool. It held enough food for a meal for all of us (and that's a lot of food), plugged into the power so I did not have to mess with charcoal, and just generally held up very well. Until the power thingy had a meltdown (a literal and scary meltdown) and we were without a grill.

We've also been without a smoker for quite some time. Now most people will not see that as a major problem and, indeed, we've done very well without one for these last few years since the last one croaked. But having a smoker allows us to make quite delectable smoked meats, corn, fish, etc.

The point of this is that Dave and I saw something that was both a smoker and a grill and I was sold. So now we have one. It looks a lot like a red R2D2.



The unfortunate thing is that I didn't open the box and read the directions until after Friend Husband came home from work. If I had, I'd have known that the R2 had to be assembled (I don't remember much if any assembly on the last one) and seasoned, mind you, before use. Instead, I was being Suzy Homemaker and making some yummy mustard potato salad and marinating the chicken I thought we'd be grilling that very evening.

Fat chance.

When we came in at something like 7:30 from assembling the thing and starting it off on its seasoning, I threw the chicken into the oven and got ready to go to the market. Because they had their patio furniture replacement cushions on sale 30% off yesterday and the patio furniture has really needed replacement cushions for something like, uh, five years now. After much wrangling, measuring, and gnashing of teeth, we found some and came home to inhale what the girls had left of dinner and to put the twins to bed.

I don't even know why I'm relating all of this to you. Oh, the bugs! I completely forgot about the bugs!

Ok. Every spring we have a swarm of winged ants take over the sidewalk in front of our porch. This happened like 10 days ago. So far they haven't harmed anyone but it's really freaky to watch your sidewalk writhing in ant bodies. After we finished putting R2 together yesterday, I stood up to plug him in and saw that, unlike an hour before, the foundation wall was crawling with literally thousands of ants. Those of you who know me can attest to the fact that I have a fabulous scream: long, loud, and dramatic. Also uncontrollable. Before I even knew what was happening, I was in the middle of a totally unexpected and piercing shriek. Friend Husband followed my pointing finger and saw the ants.

Now generally speaking, we're pretty kind to bugs. I mean, we give the cicadas a boost into the trees, for Pete's sake. We put spiders outside (unless they're poisonous, but haven't had much experience there) to live again. The only bugs that we regularly kill are the mosquitoes when they are munching on us. But these ants had to go. There were way too many of them, way too close to the inside of our house. So Friend Husband unearthed the insecticide from the depths of our 3½ car garage (that last comment was for Friend Leigh who mistakenly called it the 'shed' the other day...LOL) and commenced to killing off the swarm. I did feel badly but what we really don't need is for the ants to further endanger the foundations of our house.

And no, they weren't termites. I know what termites look like as they are the other exception to our "we don't kill bugs" rule.




So now we're killers. Hard to know what to say about that. So I'll move on.

I have been doing a fair amount of knitting on the Hedera socks. I am now on the heel. This is the longest stinking heel that I've ever knitted, in the long and storied history of my sock knitting. Ahem. But it is 46 rows of heel knitting. Bizarre. Because I put a pic of it on here as I was beginning and because I don't put many knitting (or quilting) pics up here, here's one of the sock on my arm today. I know the lace is all mucked up and it's not something that will "block out", but I'm ok with that. As I said before, these are a labor of love. I made the leg probably twice as long as the pattern indicated. I wanted socks that went more up my legs than staying around my ankles. So there you have it.



Also, my children have been playing with my camera. Which is a no-no. Here is one of the pictures they took today. This is the best one out of about eleventy hundred. Grrr.



Tomorrow's picture fest (Lord willing) will be many many bug pictures. A plethora of bug pictures, if you will. So be ready for that, I'm just sayin'. Oh, and goofy family pictures. Because we're just like that. Be prepared and be well in anticipation.

Chapter Eight, in which Our Heroine Ponders Why it is that Blogging is so Difficult in these modern Days

I did start a post on Tuesday, which was Abby's 9th birthday, but since I was running around like mad trying to get the components to her birthday dinner, then trying to cook said dinner, I didn't have time to complete it. Then it was sort of stale. So here I am on Thursday, attempting to summarize all the things, interesting and otherwise, that have been happening around here of late.

Let's see...I made a cake! Wanna see it?


It was awfully yummy and it lasted almost a full 24 hours. I got one piece of it. Of course, I much prefer my cake unbaked (which means that I like the batter better than the cake) but this one is pretty good baked. She wanted me to make another one for her slumber party tomorrow night but I talked her down to cupcakes. Something about making two 4-layer cakes in a week makes me a little hysterical. I mean, I could do it but I don't really want to.

What I really want to do is to play Pack Rat on Facebook and to plant my garden.

The garden has been a bit problematic this year. I made 3 new ones last week (hee hee hee) and the soil is dreadful. It's almost solid clay. I don't know how anything survives in our yard. So I told Friend Husband that I was going to have to suck up and buy some topsoil in bulk so I could mix it in the gardens, make a layer around the house for drainage, and maybe put some in the yard for the poor grass. Our local soil outlet wanted about $150 for 3 cubic yards of dirt (their minimum order) and I reluctantly agreed. When Friend Husband heard about it, he didn't exactly hit the roof but he was decidedly unthrilled about the whole thing. Uncharacteristically, I had a mini-tizzy and told him that, quite frankly, I was sick and tired of loading, unloading, and moving eleventy-million bags of topsoil and that it would be a lot easier on me if I didn't have to do two of those steps. He pondered that for a moment then offered, "Ok, I'll go get the bagged dirt and we'll cancel the delivery." And we did. So now I'm waiting for him and eleventy-million bags of topsoil to arrive. We do get our exercise in the spring.

While I'm waiting and not playing Pack Rat, I'm knitting on the Hedera socks from Knitty and reading a couple of books. What can I say? My socks are not nearly as beautious as those pictured on the website. I seem to have issues with lace knitting and randomly end up with more or fewer stitches than I need. I decided not to worry about it since these socks are supposed to be for me (yay!) and it's a practice thing. It does make me much happier to knit socks than the dishcloths and sweaters I've been doing. I like my cute little dpns and the danglingness of the sock being formed beneath them. I like the idea that I can knit socks, for Pete's sake...who'd have thunk it possible? Not me.

I did really really like Knitting in America or whatever that knitting book was that I mentioned on my Xanga blog last week. A knitting book with a historical bent is just what the doctor ordered for Geek Woman here. I'm having other issues with a book I'm reading now.

I am concurrently (and accidentally) reading Eat, Pray, Love, and Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair. I waited a long time to get the former title and have discovered that I really don't like it at all. The adventures she has are interesting but I just don't like it. Perhaps I don't like the tone in which she writes. I don't know. I am enjoying DD & CCH, though. It's written by a woman whose blog I enjoy reading and it's not as bad as the title would make it out. It's been interesting, though, that the books have paralleled each other in many ways as I've been reading them. Each woman is adjusting to life without her husband. Each (at the point in the books I am right now) is traveling in another country. Each is attempting to find the definition of who she is after a big loss. I still like Laurie Perry's better. If EPL doesn't improve, it's going back to the library, unfinished. Life is too short to read irritating books.

And, now that Abby's birthday is past, it's time to think about camp. It'll be here before we know it. It will be nice to see Friend Janet and family, Friend Jennifer and family, Friend Cherylyn and family, and so many others. I do dread the drive though, and the cost of the gas. We're going to have to get up way too early in the morning after the camp closes to make it back here Saturday night...I'm getting to be too old for that. Oh well. Next year, Sarah can help drive.

And what else? Seems like I can blog up a storm in my brain while away from the computer, but not much in front of the computer. Oh well, it's probably time for me to go knit on that sock some more anyway. Sorry about the bizarre update, but I guess a bizarre update is better than none.

Wordless Wednesday

Guess what went on at our house today?

Summer tomatoes

I recently turned one of my Xanga blogs into a food blog. I love reading and writing about food (it's abundantly obvious that I like eating it) and I wanted to keep that blog because I liked its name. I'm still debating about whether or not I'll bring the recipes over here, like I do the content of my other Xanga blog. While I'm deciding, here's the post I put up over there tonight:

This is the time of year when (thank you, God!) we have ripe tomatoes coming out our ears. I always plant a lot of tomatoes, especially the grape tomatoes, since Friend Husband loves them so much, and I also share them with a couple of elderly couples in our congregations. But I also overplant the larger tomatoes because you never know what will happen. One year, my romas got end rot and were flat nasty. One year none of them did well. But most years, they do well and we are swimming in tomatoes about this time.

I love that.

If I weren't nursing a nasty cold right now, I'd probably be making gazpacho. If I had cilantro, I would have turned those ruby reds into hot and potent salsa (also tried and true for killing the cold virus...you heard it here first!). Sadly, none of those things happened. Happily, there is another wonderful thing you can do with all those ripe tomatoes and it falls under the heading of "comfort food", which I feel like I need right now. I don't know what it's called exactly, but let's just call it "fried tomatoes".

I first encountered this recipe in Frances Mayes' book, Bella Tuscany. She said that her mom and the cook would make these in the hot southern summers of her youth. I only make them once or twice a summer because they're basically heart attack in a skillet but man are they good. And, as Marilyn Harris says, everything in moderation, including moderation.

This is one of those recipes that doesn't have specific amounts. I know that that is discomforting for some but it's not rocket science. You need vegetable oil, ripe ripe tomatoes, flour, pepper, salt, oregano or thyme, and cream. A cast iron skillet is just plain lovely here, but you can make due with lesser cookware if that's all you have (note: every cook should have a cast iron skillet...I'm just sayin').

Cut the tomatoes into 1/4-1/2" slices, removing the top with the stem scar beforehand. Don't use the bottom of the tomatoes where the skin still is, unless you feel that you want to peel the sucker. It won't hold the flour. Trust me on this.

On waxed paper (like Frances) or a pie plate or plate (like me), put about 2/3 of a cup of flour. Again, it's not rocket science. More or less will not be a problem. Sprinkle salt and pepper in it and toss until mixed. Coat the tomato slices with the flour mixture.

While you're doing this, you will have been heating up your oil (4 T. or so, just enough to make it good and slick but not enough to come too much up the slices when they're in the pan) to a frighteningly hot degreee. Tonight, I put my electric range control on "8" and nervously sliced tomatoes until I could really smell the hot oil. Then I chickened out and turned it off. You don't want to do that. Hot is good here. When it's really, really hot, quickly lay the tomato slices in and cook. When they're brown on one side, flip 'em over and brown 'em on the next.

Ok, here's where these lovely fruits become magical and comforting. Pour heavy cream into the skillet, just enough to come about halfway up the slices. Jiggle the skillet around so that it's evenly distributed, add salt, pepper, and oregano or thyme and turn the heat down low. Those tomatoes will melt into the cream and become something wonderful that you never knew that you needed before today. Eat 'em up. They're ok cooled off, but much better hot!

Note to the lactose-intolerant: Friend Husband is one of the LI. He cannot eat any uncooked dairy without becoming ill. He does eat these, though. He scoops them out, tilting them to remove as much cream as possible, and so far he's not had any negative side effects. Give it a shot.

Note to the health conscious: Yes, this calls for totally fattening heavy cream. Yes, I know it's bad for you. Use Vitamin D milk if you must, but don't go any lower with the fat content of the dairy you're pouring over this. It will not taste magical at all. Just stick with sliced tomatoes and/or gazpacho if you don't want to mess with the cream.

More Mom Food

I'd forgotten about a few things.  My beloved sil reminded me of one of them:  Mom's Christmas fudge.  She used to make that in vast quantities and we'd just eat our way through it.  Yum!  We don't celebrate Christmas, but I do usually make fudge in the winter, just like Mama.

Mom had a period when she was big on grilled sirloin steak and Rice-A-Roni.  To this day, I don't often cook Rice-A-Roni, because I had my lifetime supply of it before I was 18. 

As I was sauteeing zucchini for breakfast this morning, I remembered something else she made with great delight over the summers, a dish she called 'calabacitos'.  Formerly, she'd make yellow squash, sauteed with onions and bell peppers, in butter and oil.  I've misplaced the recipe now, but I think that calabacitos was basically the same thing, only with jalapenos instead of the bells and then it was covered in cheddar or colby cheese and put in a hot oven to brown the cheese when the squash was done.  It was good eating.  I make the standard yellow squash dish (with jalapenos and a combination of butter and olive oil) for Doug several times a summer, because he loves it so, but I rarely make calabacitos because he can't eat cheese.

Well, it's a busy weekend here at the hacienda.  I'm about to take David downtown to Cincinnati Children's Hospital for his twice-annual kidney doctor checkup.  He's been very healthy since last December, so I don't anticipate any problems with that.  This afternoon, we have to get a few things ready for the baby shower that Sherri and I are hosting for the two new babies in the congregation.  Poor Sherri!  I'm sure she thought she was saving herself some trouble when she asked me to help.  Unfortunately, she didn't know that 1) I'm no good at party games (although I did try to tell her) and that 2) I don't go to baby showers.  Well, I do now, and since it doesn't hurt quite so much anymore, this is a good introduction back to that.  I'm hoping to get a little studying in today, for the new school year.  Tomorrow is Whitney's bridal shower, at Danielle's house, in the big middle of the day, so that blows a big chunk of my prep time.  Then Sunday we are scheduled to have lunch with our church friends who live in Indiana.  We used to have lunch with them and the Tony Meltons once a month and when the Meltons moved to Texas, we endeavored to keep up the tradition.  The Watsons are a lovely couple and I enjoy seeing them. 

And while we're driving there, I'll get to make up some lost time on my stupid sock that I had to tink back several rows on last night.  I was avidly listening to a group of homeschool moms talking about something and didn't realize that I'd knitted the right side design on the wrong side of the sock until I was finished with both needles.  I should have left it, but no, I had to attempt to fix it and the whole thing went hideously wrong.  At about 11:30 last night, I finally was able to control the problems and get it back into working order.  Yes, I'm slightly insane, but hey, it makes me the lovely person I am. 

And with that, y'all have a most excellent weekend!

Thursday Thirteen #58

Thirteen of Mother's Greatest Hits   My mom had a pretty limited repetoire of foods that she served.  She really didn't like cooking at all and pushed it off on me as early as she could get away with it.  Fortunately, I liked cooking, but I couldn't always make supper because I was at work or at soccer practice or whatever, so she had to.  As I was making Parmesan chicken for supper tonight, I realized that this was the only time I'd ever made it in our 18 years of marriage.  This was largely because it was Mother's alternate Sunday dinner.  The one Sunday a month that she didn't want to make a roast with potatoes and carrots, she made Parmesan chicken. But hey, Parmesan chicken is good stuff and so is roast, in moderation.  So I mused on the things that Mom made over and over again.  Here are 13 of them. 1.  The aforementioned Parmesan chicken.  The recipe called for sauteeing a sliced clove of garlic in olive oil in which to dip the chicken before you coat it in bread crumbs and cheese.  Mom was the kind of cook who would buy a head of garlic for Parmesan chicken, and then it would shrivel up and become dust in her cabinet, never having yielded another succulent clove or two to flavor a dish.  I, on the other hand, have more of a heavy hand with garlic.  Mom always said that, if she walked down my street blindfolded, she'd know my house from the garlic aroma wafting over it.  I take that as a compliment, although it may not have been intended as such.  So I put twice as much garlic in my olive oil as Mother, which shows great restraint, for me. 2.  The aforementioned roast with potatoes and carrots.  This one I do make every once in a great while.  Doug and the children really like it and it has the added benefit of being very easy.  It used to have the benefit of also yielding enough leftovers for another meal but that benefit no longer applies. 3.  Meatloaf.  Meatloaf was Mom's go-to dinner if she couldn't think of anything else to make.  That happened about once a week.  As a result, I loathe meatloaf.  I loathed it then and I really don't like it now.  Friend Husband, however, thinks that meatloaf is just grand.  Again, it's cheap and easy to make, so I usually make it for him at least once a winter. 4.  Spaghetti.  Mom loved spaghetti.  We loved spaghetti.  She made it every week.  My stepfather developed an aversion to it and told her not to make it anymore (or at least not to make it every week) so that was the end of our spaghetti dinners.  When he went out of town, though, we had us a big ol' pasta gorge.  Man, was that good.  I do make spaghetti (again, with much much more garlic than Mother dreamed could exist in the universe) at least once or twice a month. 5.  Chicken with rice.  When I was young, Lipton or Campbell's (I think it was Campbell's) did a campaign for something they called "souper rice".  This is rice over which is poured a can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with water and cooked with chicken atop it.  This was just lovely for Mom.  Easy and economical.  We had it once every two weeks or so. 6.  Pork chops with rice.  Not the same thing as the last entry.  This one featured rice mixed with chicken broth and cooked with seared pork chops atop it.  I make this once every 5 years or so, with lots of onions on it.  I don't cook pork chops too often, though. I will point out here that these last two dishes were about the only thing that my mom ever made rice with.  She wasn't much of a rice person.  We tend to eat it at least twice a week, but usually more often. 7.  Strawberry-cream cheese Jello salad.  I'm sure that you've seen these salads at church dinners or something like them.  Mom's had strawberry Jello, cream cheese, and pineapple, I think.  I did get the recipe from her a long, long time ago but I don't make it because Friend Husband is lactose intolerant and couldn't eat it.  Incidentally, this dish was the one that outed Mom's feelings toward Friend Husband after we became engaged.  She invited him over for dinner one Sunday and that dish was prominently featured in the array of foods.  I think she may also have made Parmesan chicken.  Anyway, he pointed to the salad and asked if he could eat it.  I, knowing about his inability to digest dairy, told him no, because it had cream cheese in it and the chicken had Parmesan in it.  Friend Husband happily loaded up on other food that he could eat (being a graduate student, he was happy with any sort of homecooking) but Mother was embarrassed and livid.  She thought he was making up this "lactose intolerance" just to diss her food.  To be honest, it wasn't that well-known of a disorder at the time, so she probably hadn't heard of it, but I think she was convinced for years that Doug just didn't like her food (which couldn't be further from the case). 8.  Ambrosia.  This was one of Mother's crowning jewels on the Christmas table.  For the uninitiated, it is orange pieces, banana, maybe pineapple (although I don't think Mom used that), coconut, and sugar all mixed together.  Mom put extra coconut and marischino cherries on top to make it look nicer.  It was good and it was only and always served at Christmas.  I usually make it once a winter, but with a lot less sugar than was on Mother's. 9.  Canned green beans.  These were the bane of my existence as a child.  Canned green beans (we didn't know that fresh were even available) just made me gag and I hated them with a passion.  Mother, on the other hand, really relished the ease with which she could put a vegetable on the table by opening a can of green beans.  I didn't serve canned green beans for years after we were married.  That was actually one thing that I vowed never to have on my table.  Funny enough, the twins dig them so I buy them for the twins and Rachel, who also likes them.  But I'm an adult now and I don't have to eat them. 10.  Ranch-Style beans.  These cropped up as a side dish many times.  I like them ok but they're not something I seek out.  It's hard to find them in Ohio anyway, but I usually bring back a case for Friend Cindy when we go to OK in June, and sometimes I bring back a can or two for us. 11.  Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.  I don't know whether she was serious or not, but if you ate at her house on New Year's Day, you knew you would be having blackeyed peas for good luck.  I carry on this tradition by making Hoppin' John from a recipe that dates from the dawn of our country. 12.  Lutefisk.  Mother, being a full-blooded Swede, granddaughter of immigrants, tried to have this most Christmases.  I was never thrilled about it. 13.  Pecan pie on Thanksgiving.  Mom was a big fan of pecans, and we got them by the bushel in my grandmother's front yard, so more's the better.  Them's good eatin'! 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Thursday Thirteen # 56

Thirteen (or so) spices I have in my spice closets/drawers (yes, plural)   black and green cardamon curry powder and turmeric black, white, and red pepper (and dried chilies too) garlic (granulated and fresh) chili powder garam marsala nutmeg and cinnamon fenugreek bay leaves (also good to keep those miller moths out of your cabinets) fennel, whole and ground Italian seasoning, rosemary, basil, oregano, and thyme cloves, whole and ground coriander seeds, whole and ground   Links to other Thursday Thirteens (Leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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