Morsels

Actually, I’m not a lumberjack - not even close (well I do have a nice collection of flannels as well as heels so maybe I’m closer than I think). Point is, this is the song son C the younger was singing as HE put on his flannel and boots on his way over to our neighbor’s house to do some chores for him. We are in Finger Lakes and everyone is getting wood for the winter fires. I walked over to visit him at some point with IPod headphones and a coke and he was splitting and stacking wood. Hours later, he and Dennis returned feeling that sense of satisfaction only a nicely split and stacked log will give you. Turns out C is actually quite the log splitter, which only surprised me because of the activity itself. It’s been a bit of a challenge to get him interested in the sort of outdoors/wood work that this place affords. But he is perfectly happy working really hard at home on his skateboarding or playing basketball — he knows the enjoyment of physical exertion. And he knows that Metallica can help any strenuous activity (or so he claims, but it seems reasonable if you are a fifteen year old boy).

We had Chicken Marbella for dinner, that famous, easy and great recipe from The Silver Palate cookbook. It’s really the only recipe from that book that has survived for me — but it is a keeper.

Since it’s been so long since I have posted I have all these thoughts saved up. Trick is, to get them out faster and more frequently, I know. I actually changed laptops — gone back to a PC and have been experience FEAR OF THE NEW. I miss my MAC but it just wasn’t practical for my office environment. And I used PC’s for so long that once I got through the fact that my computer wasn’t as “cool” looking as my Mac, I find the navigation, etc to be second nature. BUT the point is that I have wanted to write about this conundrum that I have been rolling around for some weeks now.

The other day (ok week) I was having a business lunch with a group of wonderful women, one of whom is a new mother who also happens to work for me at cleveland.com.  We were discussing food and cooking and she allowed as how she fed her son chicken fingers (you see why I am keeping her anonymous?) There was much exclamation and concern and advice. One of the women goes to Costco every few months, buys chicken breasts, salmon, etc and packages them up into meal proportions, freezes them and pops them out for her weekly meals. They all plan and shop for the week on Sundays.

But it occurred to me that there are many women who don’t know how to plan and cook for the week and beyond that, if you add the desire to eat like a locavore, eat responsibly and healthily AND cheaply — it gets pretty daunting if you haven’t had a certain amount of background in that kind of cooking. It is actually not that hard to do but it is very hard to explain because there is so much that goes into it.  I read somewhere recently someone who suddenly realized that she could save a LOT of money not by shopping around a recipe but shopping for what is in season and on sale, THEN creating meals around that. Well, duh. But to actually learn that and then do it when someone tells you to plan your meals on Sunday and cook some of them or else you and your family are going to turn into chicken nuggets with legs? Another story.

I suppose the only thing I can do is try and impart what I know — and to be fair, it is all passed down from my mother who learned how to cook this way by being a poor wife of a poor graduate student in France in the 60’s (how romantic does THAT sound?) and then cooking for our family on a faculty salary in the middle of the natural food revolution and then on a farm.

By the way, I know there are plenty of people who know how to do this and are doing it — but it is that time-crazed, suburban, urban working mother who is most in need of this and the least likely to know how to tackle it.

I have a (very) soft spot for Oprah. I am not sure that that is a “cool” thing to say. But I love her magazine. I actually never see her show. In fact, I don’t know that I have ever watched it? But I love the ideas, the writing, the spirit of the magazine and so I bought the latest issue for our drive to Haverford for our first viewing of my new nephew, Luca. And I found this delightful piece by Michael Lewis on fatherhood. Really, the beginning of the piece, which is about being somewhat uninvolved and lackadaisical didn’t interest me much. I like an involved, loving father, I say. BUT he tells a story about his daughter Dixie standing up to some boys in a pool in a Bermuda resort that is just priceless. And I am somewhat irritated that I can’t link to it because it doesn’t seem to be up on the Oprah website.  The anecdote is really long but I am going to go ahead and type it out for you because I love it and I hope we all buy his book:  Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood which is coming out in June.

Here goes:

We’re at a fancy hotel in Bermuda. Like fancy hotels everywhere, the place is paying new attention to the whims of small children. The baby pool is vast — nearly as big as the pool for the grownups, to which it is connected by a slender canal. In the middle of the baby pool is a hot tub, just for little kids. My two daughters, now ages 6 and 3, leap from the hot tub into the baby pool and back again. The pleasure they take in this could not be more innocent or pure.

Then, out of nowhere, come four older boys. Ten, maybe 11 years old. As anyone who has only girls knows, boys add nothing to any social situation but trouble. These four are set on proving the point. Seeing my little girls, they grab the pool noodles — intended to keep 3-year olds afloat — and wield them as weapons. They descend upon Quinn, my 6-year-old, whacking the water on either side of her, until she is almost in tears. I’m hovering in the canal between baby pool and grown-up pool, wondering if I should intervene. Dixie beats me to it. She jumps out in fron of her older sister and thrusts out her 3-year-old chest.

TEASING BOYS! She hollers, so loudly that grown-ups around the pool peer over their Danielle Steel novels. Even the boys are taken aback. Dixie, now onstage, raises her voice a notch.

YOU JUST SHUT UP YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE!

To the extent that all hell can break loose around a baby pool in a Bermuda pool, it does. A John Grisham novel is lowered; several of Danielle Steel’s vanish into beach bags. I remain hovering  in the shallows of the grown-up pool where it enters the baby pool, with my entire head above water. My first thought: Oh…my…God! My second thought: No one knows I’m her father. I sink lower, like a crocodile, so that just my eyes and forehead are above the waterline; but in my heart a new feeling rises: pride. Behind me a lady on a beach chair shouts, “Kevin! Kevin! Get over here!”

Kevin appears to be one of the noodle-wielding 11-year old boys. “But Moooooooommm! he says.

“Kevin! Now!”

The little monster sulks over to his mother’s side while his fello Orcs await the higher judgement. I’m close enough to hear her ream him out. It’s delicious.

“Kevin, did you teach that little girl those words?” She asks.

“Moommm! Nooooo!”

“Then where did she learn them?”

As it happens, I know the answer to that one: carpool. Months ago! I was driving them home from school , my two girls, plus two other kids - a 7-year old boy and a 10-year old girl. They were crammed in the backseat of the Volkswagen Passat, jabbering away; I was alone in the front seat, not especially listening. But then the 10-year old said, “Deena said a bad word today.”

“Which one?” asked Quinn.

“The S word,” said the 10=year old.

“Ooooooo,” they all said.

“What’s the S word?” I asked..

“We can’t say without getting in trouble,” said the 10-year old knowingly.

“You’re safe here,” I said.

She thought it over for a second, then said, “Stupid.”

“Ah,” I said, smiling.

“Wally said the D word!” said Quinn.

“What’s the D word?” I asked.

“Dumb!” she shouted, and they all giggled at the sheer illicit pleasure of it.

The the 7-year old boy chimed in. “I know a bad word, too! I know a bad word, too!” he said.

“What’s the bad word?” I asked brightly. I didn’t see why he should be left out.

“Shutupyoustupidmotherfuckingasshole!”

I swerved off the road, stopped the car, and hit the emergency lights. I began to deliver a lecture on the difference between bad words and seriously bad words, but the audience was fully consumed with laughter. Dixie, especially, wanted to know the secret of making Daddy stop the car.

“Shutupmotherstupidfuck” she said.

“Dixie!” I said.

“Daddy,” said Quinn thoughtfully, “how come you say a bad word when we spill something and when you spill something you just say, ‘Oops’?”

“Stupidfuck!” screamed Dixie and they all laughed.

“DIXIE!”

She stopped. They all did.  For the rest of the drive they whispered.

So here we are, months later, in this Bermuda pool. Dixie with her chest thrust out in defiance, me floating like a crocodile and feeling very much different than I should. I should be embarrassed and concerned. I should be sweeping her out of the pool and washing her mouth out with soap. I don’t feel that way. Actually, I’m impressed. More than impressed, awed. It’s just incredibly heroic, taking out after this rat pack of boys. Plus she’s sticking up for her big sister, which isn’t something you don’t see every day. I don’t want to get in her way. I just want to see what happens next.

Behind me Kevin….. is relaunching himself into the baby pool with a real malice. He’s as indignant as a serial killer who got put away on a speeding ticket: He’s guilty of many things but not of teaching a 3-year old girl the art of cursing. Now he intends to get even. Gathering his fellow Orcs in the hot tub, he and his companions once again threaten Quinn. Dixie, once again, leaps into the fray.

TEASING BOYS! She shouts. Now she has the attention of an entire Bermuda resort.

YOU WATCH OUT TEASING BOYS! BECAUSE I PEED IN THIS POOL TWO TIMES! ONCE IN THE HOT POOL AND ONCE IN THE COLD POOL!

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It goes on but you just can’t top that. Oh, O love her. And I do believe, whenever I hit a snag or a bump or an irritant I will remember TEASING BOYS!!! It’s a wonderful alarm call.  Ladies, channel your inner Dixies as appropriate.

Luca, btw, is just adorable and I am sure he will have better manners than those bad boys.