Books Read in May 2020

Homework by Julie Andrews – 7h 57 m. Technically finished it in April.

Favorite Quote: “I spent so much of my early life trying to unify my need for home with my commitment to work. These days, I’ve come to realize that home is a feeling as much as it is a place; is is as much about loving what I do as being where I am.”

Truthfully, I preferred her first book, Home, to this one. The first book had more details about theatre life and her work. This one felt more like her datebook, regurgitated.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men by Mara Hvistendahl – 9h, 53m. Hvistendahl writes about the deep seated mind set behind prenatal sex selection, and delves into the repercussions of unbalanced birth ratios. Her research focuses on the issue primarily in China and India, though I wished that she had spent more time unpacking the issue in America, especially in the world of fertility treatments. (She does have a chapter about it, but I wish it had been more in depth). As a pro-choice person, it is hard for me to condemn abortion, but there is something really disturbing about sex selection. One of the ironies Hvistendahl points out, is that there is so much pressure for sex selecting for males that even well-educated women do it; technological advances that allow for sex selection do not translate into advances in gender equality. The book touches on the idea of what value do we place on women, and how imparting value translates into objectifying them. When gender ratios are skewed towards men, traditional gender roles are even harder to break.

Memorable takeaway – comparing sex selection with another atrocity: “The most obvious problem with [Female Genital Mutilation] is that is constitutes a human rights abuse. But beginning in the 1990s activists managed to elevate the issue beyond the realm of injustice by arguing that it threatened women’s health.” That is to say health is an effective platform for change. Human rights is not.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai – 11h 41m.

“Everyone knows how short life is… But no one ever talks about how long it is … Every life is too short even the long ones, but some people’s lives are too long as well… If we could just be on earth at the same place and the same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But liste: You tow are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That is a miracle.” -Julian’s soapbox towards the end of the book.

This was a beautiful, beautiful book about love, memory, living, and the people in our orbit. I know it’s about the AIDS epidemic, but the passages about a mother trying to figure out how to be with her daughter, really struck a chord with me too. It was striking to be reading about AIDS while living through a global pandemic. There is the same sense of fear and the same list of medically recommended behavioral shifts. Indeed, I would get their epidemic and our current one mixed up in my head and then feel jarred when there were scenes with crowds of people. I very rarely cry when I read books, but with this one, I came pretty close. Life is too short not to move on. It’s also too long not to move on.

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel – 8h 20m.

“Henry didn’t think Jana was a mean person; he thought she was a good person, with a meanness problem.”

It took me a bit to get into this novel which follows the members of a string quartet from when they are first founded to when they break up, many years later. I felt some of the parts about music were overwritten, but then again, very rarely do I like reading descriptive passages of music; it makes me realize how very personal one’s reaction to music is. Also none of the characters were very sympathetic in the beginning. But 20 somethings rarely are in literature. The got better as they aged.

Twenty-One Truths about Love by Matthew Dicks – 3h 29m.

“Given my advantages, nothing I do will ever be as amazing as an octopus opening a child-proof bottle.”

Pithy, breezy, a fun, fast read. This books was told as a series of lists. I always like books with non-traditional narrative structures.

Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman – Audio book, narrated by Michael Sheen. I

I listened to this as I sewed masks for a church project and I found myself staying up late to sew so that I could keep listening. It was gripping, and Malcolm and Alice were such real, brave characters. I find Pullman’s books make good audiobooks for me because there is a lot of plot, despite it’s big ideas. Spoiler alert: I’ve never been so sad by the destruction of an inanimate object.

The “I Voted” Sticker

We made our own sticker this year.

Today is the Maryland Primary. It was originally slated for April 28th, but because of COVID, the state moved the election to June 2nd, and made it a “vote by mail” election. I deeply appreciate that the ballots were automatically mailed to registered voters so that I didn’t have to even request one. Voting should be as easy as it is important.

As I’ve watched the Democratic Primary process, with candidates dropping one by one, I came to feel that voting in the primary was going to be a wash. But then I looked at the ballot and reminded myself that there is more than just national politics. There were some local level elections as well. Also, to be honest, I am still somewhat confused by the process of electing delegates to the national convention. I tried to read up on that, but it seems a convoluted system and requires an advanced degree in statistics and probability.

Growing up, my parents often took me to the polls on election day. Now, since my children have been around, they come with me to the polls too. I want them to see how simple, yet important the process is. I want them to see that a lot of people do it, and realize that everyone should do it. This year, we didn’t have a polling place to go to — well, technically there are polling places open, but Maryland has set things up so that you don’t have to use them. Instead, we all walked to the mailbox down the street and dropped the completed ballot in the mail.

There was no election worker to smile and check my ID. And there was no one to hand us our “I Voted” sticker at the end. So after we came home, we made our own sticker.

Afterwards, I sent to it several of our elected officials, with a note asking them to please remind their constituents to vote. I’ve never written to my elected officials before, and I was a little nervous – I mean, I’m sure they get a lot of mail, and this seemed frivolous. But I thought that no one is handing out “I voted” stickers this year, and I wanted to see if I could get ours out into the world. I’ve always loved seeing the wide array of “I Voted” stickers that come across my social media feeds on election day, and this was my tiny way of trying to replicate that.

There is a lot going on in America right now. Certainly the outrage and civil unrest is compounded by a nation of people housebound and living under government mandated constraints for two months. I think that we are feeling particularly helpless and at a loss as to how we can make this country a more equitable, compassionate place. I’m at a loss too. I worry about not knowing what constitutes effective change and what is just lip service, albeit sincere lip service. I worry that I can’t perceive current events as relevant to me, when I know they are. I don’t want to read more media to try to sort this out for myself, so I think I need to delve into some more longform writings on race, class, and privilege. In the meantime, I voted.

Sally’s Recipe Box: Oatmeal Cookies

I am clearly not a food blogger which a fancy camera.

We have this index card box that is filled with recipes. The box belonged to the Husband’s mother. The recipes are a mish mash of things: papers clipped from magazines or the back of boxes, handwritten recipes in the type of neat yet indecipherable script that is no longer taught, some cards typed on a typewriter, a few even mimeographed sheets breaking away at their folds. The recipes titles often have people’s names in them: “Martha Ward’s Fudgy Icing”, “Grace’s Cole Slaw”, “Beef Stroganoff Eileen Dixon” There are a lot of Jello recipes.

I thought it might be fun to cook/bake/ assemble our way through some of these recipes. This month, we did Helen Trott’s Oatmeal Cookies. Helen was the Husband’s grandmother. I never got to meet her, but Husband said she was very nice and gentle.

The original!

The recipe was quite vague. No real directions at all. I wondered if people used to just know how to mix ingredients together to make cookies. Kind of Great British Bake Off style. And it called for Oleo. We didn’t have Oleo, so I used Crisco and butter. I actually misread the Crisco package the first time and added an extra 1/2 cup of shortening. Oops. But then I made the cookies again, as written, and I think I preferred the version with an extra 1/2 cup of Crisco. They came out more tender and spread a bit more in the baking.

The recipe also calls to “add spices, nuts, fruit, choc chips”. Not in any specific quantity. Just… you know… add them. If you want. How you want. Baker’s choice. Or in my case, kid’s choice.

So here is our recreation/ adaptation of Helen Trott’s Oatmeal cookies. I read introduction to the cookie section of King Arthur Flour baking book to figure out what order to combine the ingredients.

Helen Trott’s Oatmeal Cookies

  • 1/2 c. shortening
  • 1/4 c. butter
  • 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1/2 c. brown sugar
  • 1/4 c. Water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 1 c flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 c. oatmeal
  • handful of walnuts
  • handful of raisins
  • handful (or more) or chocolate chips)

Cream together shortening, butter, sugar and brown sugar

Add water, vanilla and egg until blended

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oatmeal, baking soda, and salt. Add flour to shortening/butter/sugar and stir until combined.

Mix in handfuls of nuts, dried fruit, chocolate chips, as the fancy strikes

Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 12-15 mins. Or 10 because I like my cookies partially raw.

The non “oops I put in an extra 1/2 c. of Crisco” version. Not as much spread, but still tasty.

So the unfortunate coda to this story. The second batch (seen above in a cookie jar made by our very talented friend Esther), fell victim to an ant invasion. It really pained my heart, but we ended up throwing the cookies out, having only eaten three or four (plus a bowl of the raw cookie dough. ‘Cause that’s how our cookie making rolls here). I’m not sure that there is really anything unhealthy with ant infested cookies, but it did wig me out a little. I’m a little ashamed of my own weakness, and wish that I could be one of those people for whom eating ant infested cookies could be no big deal.

Where the Wild Things Are

Our dog eared copy of the beloved classic.

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew – and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are. – from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

I feel as if suddenly it’s spring. Not just spring, but late spring, verging on summer. Somehow we missed spring, while sitting at home during a pandemic. The cherry blossoms (which are always an indicator here) peaked at the beginning of the stay at home orders. Usually the cherry blossoms are time marker for me, but this year, it was a blip, barely registering.

My cousin Karen has been writing daily on Facebook, each post labelled with the day number. I think if it were not for her posts and for the daily posts of other blogs I read, I would have absolutely no sense of what day it is or how deep into stay-at-home orders we are. When I’m working, the rhythm of time is pretty much defined by when in the process we are (ie. prep, rehearsal, tech, or performance) and when the next free day is. Without those markers, time seems to be particularly slippery.

Several years ago, when the eight year old was a baby, there was a knock on our door and it was our across the street neighbor with two shopping bags full of book they had our grown. In that pile was a well worn copy of Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. These days, the three year old has been really into reading Sendaks classic are at bedtime, there is something beautifully apt about Max’s story – how our walls are now our “world all around” as we sail “in and out of weeks.” I feel as if we are living with a pack of feral creatures who root in the pantry and fridge for food when the whim strikes, leaving mess and havoc in their wake.

To be sure, part of this is my own fault – perhaps I should not have left the three year old alone with a spray bottle, two cups of water, and some water colour paints. My hopes that he would docilely create art while I showered were laughably naive. I emerged from the shower to shouts from the 8 year old trying to contain the mess, and a rainbow of water spread on the floor, while the three year old stood on his chair, the spray bottle topless and empty. There are definitely terrible eyes being rolled and terrible roars and terrible teeth being gnashed. Sometime they are mine.

Unlike Max, I have no tricks to tame the beasts. Though come to think of it, his trick seems mainly to embrace the wild rumpus, even to instigate it. Maybe I should try more of that. Perhaps that is what we can learn from the little boy in the wolf suit. That at the end of the day, once we have exhausted ourselves rumpus-ing, we just want to be where someone loves us best of all. And where dinner is hot.

Off Headset (or why I started to blog)

What life looks like on headset.

Last summer, when I was pregnant with our third child, I had idyllic visions of starting a blog to document my pregnancy. I had always felt that I hadn’t been as mindful about the gestating process as I wanted to be. With my first pregnancy, I was five months gone before I admitted something was going on. With my second, I was working a pretty challenging schedule (Ring Cycle, anyone?). As a result, I never really took time to savour being pregnant. So last summer, I thought, “I have time off; I am going to start a blog to document things.” But then life, children, summer schedules, and quite honestly, inhibitions got in the way, and before I knew it, it was September and the pregnancy that I wanted to savour and document was … a baby. And I was back at work. And the next show happened. Then the next show didn’t.

And so here we are. But no time like the present, right? And nothing like a pandemic induced stay at home order to give myself time to “create before you consume.”

“Off headset” is what we say at work when we take our headsets off. Like when we go to the bathroom – because you don’t want to be the person who accidentally drops their headset into the toilet, or the person who broadcasts the sound of peeing to everyone else to hear. And at the end of the day, I say, “Off headset” as I am powering off my beltpack, and hanging up my headset – the signal that I’m are no longer available over headset, that rehearsal is over for me,and that I’m switching gears.

Life in opera can be all consuming. The long hours and middling pay means that one really needs to believe and love what one does to make a life of it. The intense rehearsals, monumental achievements, warm colleagues with crazy stories – these things tend to take up all my time and energy when I’m in production. Doubly so when I travel for gigs; when I’m in a new city, work can easily become the whole world, because throwing yourself into an show is the path of least resistance. But there is always a part of me that says, “This isn’t the sum of me! This sitting in rehearsal, solving other people’s problems, swapping horror stories during lighting sessions…. I have a life outside of this.”

So in that vein, I thought I’d create a space for myself to explore/write about things that occupy me when I am off headset – food, books, articles, thoughts, family, things that make me smile, think, and contemplate.

Books Read in April 2020

I seem to have a slight survivalist bent to my reading last month. I also finally read Lord of the Flies in March, fulfilling a long held promise to someone. That was not cheery. In truth, the reading selections were probably not pandemic related since the books have been on my TBR pile for a while. But there is something about these books that did speak to the current situation – about making do, and finding peace in what you have available to you. Libby (the e-book borrowing app from the library) has a cool feature where it tells you how long you’ve spent reading a book, and predicts how long it will take you to finish it. I find the data fascinating, but also motivating; if Libby tells me I only have 3 more hours left to finish a book, I’m more likely to make time to read. Here’s what I managed to finish in April:

Secondhand by Adam Minter – 9 hr, 2 mins. Minter follows the life and economics of the second hand industry – from the sorting process at thrift stores to where our discarded stuff goes after that. He delves into how people in other countries in Asia and Africa take our cast offs and find use and life for our used stuff, often refurbishing or repairing it along the way. The realization that most of what we send to Goodwill will ultimately end up in a poorer nation is sobering. Also, I didn’t think about it, but there is less of a market for used winter clothes because clothes that don’t sell at thrift stores go to countries that don’t really experience winter. Minter also veered off into some of the myths that increase trash in our lives – specifically that car seats expire.

Educated by Tara Westover – 8 h 32 mins. On a lot of “best of” lists a couple of years ago. It was often gruesome and uncomfortable to read- a lot of people gaslighting each other and just not being nice. One quote I loved, though, was about her life in Paris: “My life there was entirely new, and as near to cliche as I could make it.” I thought it an ironic statement – that she had gotten away from her survivalist family, but still had to make her own life.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser – 19 hrs. Another book about people striving to create an independent life from very little. I loved reading the Little House books when I was younger, though I realize they are a little controversial now. In the book, it is clear that Wilder loved her childhood, and in a way, the Ingalls’ poverty was what allowed her to see the country and understand the world. The story about how Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane came to collaborate on writing the books is also something I found fascinating to read. Fraser writes, “In years to come, [Wilder] and Lane would cling fast to this notion of ‘truth’ which reflected not objective reality but something closer to felt experience.” The subsequent fallout of the battles concerning the ownership of the Little House legacy made me sad, though.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid – Audiobook. This book worked quite well as an audi book. I’m not sure that I would have liked it as much if I had read the hard copy, but I love audio books of books with slightly different narrative formats. The women seemed trapped in their roles, and I couldn’t tell if that was a product of the era in which the book was set, or weak plotting.

The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Choski – 6 hrs, 20 mins. YA Fantasy novel – not my usual genre, but the eight year old has been listening to one of her books and I wanted to check out something else by this author because her use of South East Asian mythology appealed to me. The writing was beautiful, dense and evocative.

Definitely one of my biggest months for finishing books in a while. We’ll see what next month brings!

Life skills for kids

Life Skills Bucket aka cleaning supplies.
Life Skills Bucket!

This morning, the 8 year old made herself breakfast – a fried egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. The husband has been teaching her how to do this for about a year now. It’s an ongoing process – first he started by teaching her how to toast the English muffins or bagels. Then how to spread the cream cheese or butter. Since last fall he has been working with her on how to perfectly fry an egg. (Hopefully the next step is how to throw out the eggshells. But I have to remind myself that it’s a long term adulting goal here.) We still turn on the stove for her, though in moments of enthusiasm she has done it herself – which causes me a mixture of pride and panic.

What struck me this morning, though, was how comfortable she has become with making this humble breakfast sandwich. There was a time, quite recently, when spreading the cream cheese would lead to a meltdown. But this morning, she moved quite confidently from one step to the other: butter in pan, English muffins in toaster oven, crack egg into a dish, then gently slip it into the pan, cook just so, layer a slice of cheese on top, cover to melt the cheese then slip it on to the buttered English muffin. I watched her do it, and I thought, “Huh, she’s learning some life skills!”

I’ve been trying to teach some life skills during this quarantine period – to the eight year old, at least. We are still covering basic survival instincts with the three year old and the baby. So far with the eight year old we’ve done: hand sewing (blanket stitch and whipstich), cleaning the bathroom, using [ctrl] + [x] and [ctrl] + [v]. I’ve also started on a long held goal to teach her how to write in cursive. Not really a life skill in this day and age, but there is something orderly and elegant about it that makes me sad it isn’t taught anymore. On the list also is touch typing. It boggles me that the kids spend so much time on computers in school, yet no one is teaching them how to touch type. Every time I watch my kid hunt and peck, I want to scream.

She also, of her own accord wants to learn to crochet, and has other cooking/baking things on her agenda. I do worry that the life skills on our list skew towards domestic arts and stereotypical feminine crafts. Though perhaps this skewing is more a societal construct than my own, and on the list should also be “Resist the Patriarchy (while not being a slob)”. I did throw, “Use a power tool” onto the list, just to balance things out.

A couple summers ago, I came across this list of Life Skills from the Edit Your Life Podcast, and it hits a lot of the things that I hope my child(ren) can learn. Replacing the toilet paper roll is a big one for me. I think we have that one down. Actually there are a couple things on this list that I haven’t mastered yet (“Identify freezer burn.” is one…. Though I tend to be pretty forgiving of stuff in the freezer, so perhaps that one isn’t necessary.)

Some thoughts/ tips I had about teaching my kids life skills:

Be patient – Often I get frustrated because I think, “I can do this in 5 seconds!”, but then I have to remember that I’ve had 40 years to figure things out. I do give myself a lot of “time outs” to scream into my pillow when things get irrevocably tangled or slow.

Lower your standards – The bathroom is now my daughter’s responsibility. It definitely doesn’t get as clean as when I do it, or when our cleaner does it. But I think that at least she is doing it. For me, a lot of the value is in the doing and getting done. First of all it means that I don’t have to do it, and second of all, it means that it becomes a doable task for her, which I think is empowering.

Make it routine – Once I teach the kid how to do something, there is a reasonable expectation from me that I will have her do it again. I think a lot of adulting is developing good habits (still working on that myself!) – so I want her to learn that things that will serve her again and again. So we clean every weekend. When school was in session, she would pack her own lunch and make her own breakfast. I think that is the “life” part of “life skills”.

The three year old vacuuming. Imperfectly. But it’s a start.

Guajillo Chile Enchilada Sauce

Thumbs up! Child approved dinner!

We’ve been meal planning pretty strictly these days, mostly because it helps save on trips to the grocery store. On Saturday morning, I’ll take stock of what needs to be eaten, and what we have in the fridge, freezer and pantry, and then make a list for the Husband to take to the store. (Incidentally, he was wondering if he should have a handle – like DLH for Dear Loving Husband. The jury is still out on that one. I mean, I feel like anonymity is sort of futile. It’s a developing process, I guess.) I don’t particularly feel like we are spending less on groceries – actually I feel like we are spending more. But we aren’t eating out as much, and I find meal planning calming. For someone who is paid to plan, I probably don’t do enough of it in real life.

This week I had some blue corn tortillas to use up. I had impulsively added them to our Hungry Harvest order (“Ooh! they’re blue!”), but there weren’t quite enough for me to make tacos for the whole family, so they sat in the fridge for a while. I remember reading about migas in a book and that sounded like a tasty frugal way to use them up. When I started googling, however, I came across a recipe for chilaquiles brunch casserole on the ever tasty Smitten Kitchen website, and I was sold.

Often when I meal plan, I’m pretty diligent about reading recipes to make sure I put the ingredients I need on to the Husband’s list. Not this time. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I assumed that I could just whip up the necessary enchilada sauce from tomatoes and I-don’t-know-what. So I didn’t quite have the necessary ingredients to make any one of the enchilada sauces that came up in my search. But…. I realized I could probably make something up by combining different elements from separate recipes. And then, I came across this recipe and it called for guajillo chilies, and I got very excited.

You see, the Husband likes to buy me random things from specialty grocery stores. “I don’t know what you do with it,” he’ll say presenting the mystery item to me, “but it looked interesting. I know you’ll figure it out!” Some time ago, he had bought me a bag of dried guajillo chilies, which had been languishing in our basement pantry ever since. Now, I love using things up out of the basement pantry. There is something very satisfying about it – like “We have back up reserves! And we can use it!” Never mind that currently our back up reserves is stocked with, in addition to rice and flour, Welch’s fruit snacks and Oreos. Pandemic panic buying at it’s finest.

So I gleefully liberated the guajillo chilies from the basement and improvised this enchilada sauce. And it was pretty tasty! In fact, the whole casserole was a definite hit. I am blessed with kids who are remarkably good eaters, but I always have a bit of trepidation when serving new food – kids are fickle and who knows when they will suddenly develop limited palettes?

Here’s the recipe. I am by no means a recipe writer, so it is not terribly precise. I’m definitely of the taste as you go school, and I think this combination of ingredients is pretty forgiving?

GUAJILLO CHILI ENCHILADA SAUCE

  • 8 Guajillo Chilis
  • 2 cups broth (I used 2 cups water with Penzy’s veggie stock paste)
  • 2 large cloves garlic
  • 1 onion
  • 2 tablespoons tomatoe paste
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
  1. Heat guajillo chilies and unpeeled garlic in a skillet until they are warm and slightly soft. Remove chilies, cut open, discarding stems and seeds. Soak in hot water for 30-ish minutes. Toast garlic until it is soft and roasted.
  2. Heat broth in a saucepan. Dice onion and add it to broth. Squeeze the toasted garlic in as well. Bring to a boil and simmer until onion is soft.
  3. Whisk in tomatoe paste. Add cumin, oregano, and chilies. Cook for a bit.
  4. Put it all in a blender and blend til smooth.
  5. Pour back into saucepan and cook until thickened.

Weekend: Different but Same

I’ve been pondering what makes a weekend these days. When I am working, the weekends usually mean just Sunday since I often have rehearsals or shows on Saturday. And then there are the other typical weekend activities – lessons for the kids, batch cooking, birthday parties, trip downtown to a museum, sometimes even a day trip, football in front of a tv or with friends, social gatherings, church. These are often activities the Husband takes on, ref: stage managers work on Saturdays. (Sometimes I work on Sundays too, but usually I get one or the other off.)

Needless to say most of these activities are now frowned upon. But we did do some “weekend” type things these past two days. We celebrated birthdays: We drove by the houses of two friends whose kids had birthdays this week. We brought noisemakers and percussion instruments and yelled and sang happy birthday and then visited for a little bit – us sitting in our cars, and them standing in their driveway or on their sidewalks.

I took the kids on a walk down our local trail. The County has closed the road next to the trail to traffic on weekends so people can walk on the road, making social distancing along the trail more practical. It had just rained and there were plenty of puddles and mud. “We went on a muddy walk!” the three year old declared.

Husband made a big batch of chili. I get to batch bake/cook during the week, so Saturday was his day in the kitchen.

We went to church – which now means gathering in the basement for the livestream of 9am Mass. We actually “went” twice because there were technical difficulties the first time, so we streamed other services in the morning. But then we decided that we liked the atmosphere of our home church best, and we came back at 2pm when the Church had everything worked out.

We didn’t go out to the theatre, but we did stream the first half of Twelfth Night from London’s National Theatre. Despite working in the arts, I don’t see a whole lot of theatre, so I’ve been loving this series of performances. There is a flexibility and agility to theatre – both the performances and the technical aspects – that I don’t get to necessarily experience in my own work.

We cleaned. I’ve been trying to get the eight year old to clean. She now does bathrooms and windows. Somewhat imperfectly and slowly, but it’s a start. The slowness might be tied to the fact that she gets to listen to an audiobook while she cleans. Then also, on her own, she cleaned her room, including sweeping and vacuuming. When I exclaimed my surprise and delight, she said, “Well, when there is nothing else to do, you can always clean.” Not really my philosophy, but I’m glad it’s hers.

So I guess any one of these things can be done each day, but the weekend was marked by doing all of them. And also the fact that my husband didn’t work. That was nice too. We have certainly been having a lot of family time during the week these days, but I have to say as nebulous as a “weekend” is right now, it still brings on a different quality of family time.

I Baked a Cake

This week the baby turned 7 months old. So I baked a cake. The slimmest of excuses to bake a cake, but I think little things are worth celebrating these days. And cakes are worth baking. I’ve been looking through my collection of cooking magazines – Bon Appetit, Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur, Gourmet, stretching back ten years. I would like to cook from them more, partly in an effort to cull the ones that have no future with us, as they do take up quite a bit of space. Anyhow, I found a recipe for yellow cake with chocolate frosting in Cook’s Illustrated that was surprisingly unfussy. While I love the tenacity and scientific bent of Cooks Illustrated, sometimes I find the results aren’t worth that extra step or ingredient they like to throw in. Tastes are perhaps a little more subjective than their authoritarian voice allows. The cake turned out beautifully.

And while the oven was hot, I finished making at batch of Fig Newtons. (King Arthur Flour Cookbook)

So it was a full day in the kitchen. A full-messy-mountain of dirty dishes-batter on the floor-there are no plates leftover for dinner kind of day. I had many more of these days when this isolation thing started. Days where the kitchen was never clean and I went through 5 lbs of flour in one week. But lately we haven’t been able find flour in the store, so I’ve pulled back on the baking a little. And, really, maybe I only have the energy to be up to my elbows in dishes a couple days a week, rather than every day of the week.

So far in quarantine baking, I’ve made: Sourdough bread (lots of this), Chocolate Walnut Scones, Mrs. Field’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (really a huge amount of chocolate barely held together with a little dough), granola bars, and granola, empanadas, dinner rolls for Easter, and lots of pizza dough for our Friday night pizza/movie tradition.

It seems very cliched to panic bake during these times, but we do like our carbs here. Even the baby, who, despite my saying that she was too young for cake (never mind that I baked it for her), did manage to sneak a nibble from my mom’s plate.