A snowy day

Every Sunday two members of our choir are supposed to bring treats for the choir, to give us strength to sing exquisitely, and then to help us recover after we have sung exquisitely. This basically means preparing breakfast for sixty people. For some, this is a competitive event, with choristers vying for the title of the most lavish and delicious treats bringer. For years, when Rebecca was in the choir, we worked together on the treats, and gave folks a run for their money. This was all due to Rebecca, of course. She planned the menu, and was the general in the kitchen, assigning me menial duties to get the task done. When Rebecca started back to school, she did not have time to sing in the choir anymore, but she still helped me with the treats, and last year Tom and I did the cooking, while Rebecca directed from afar via phone and email. This year I was on my own – no Tom, and Rebecca too busy to care about my treat troubles. I fretted all week about what to bring, and by Friday --- nay, Saturday morning, or even Saturday afternoon, I still hadn’t really decided what to make. Then after I had shopped for several options, I was so overwhelmed by the immensity of the treat ordeal that I took a nap. My treat partner called to tell me that if it was snowing, she would not be there, nor would her treats. Aaaaak! Finally, about eight in the evening, I swung into gear and made two kinds of focaccia, some barley soup which I was planning to serve in a crock pot, some boiled eggs to devil in the morning, and I prepared some raw fruits and vegetables. Once I got moving, I became enthusiastic, and enjoyed cooking – but I sure had been a slow starter. I went to bed about one, fretted all night about the treats, got up at five and found the world covered in white. There was snow and a big sheet of ice outside my garage, which is on a hill, so I opted to walk. This meant no soup and no drinks as I had to carry it all by hand. Since this was a “women only” Sunday, and the snow prevented many from coming, the numbers were few and my treats were minimally adequate, even without my partner’s help. This all reminded me of a Christmas pot luck at a job I had many years ago. It too was rather competitive, and I prided myself on bringing something spectacular every time. This year, however, I was in a funk and did not feel like doing a thing. I had planned some elaborate dessert from Julia Child, but when the evening to cook arrived I felt that I just could not do it. I looked in the refrigerator and found some apple tart filling left over from some other fabulous Julia Child dessert, and some homemade cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving. No doubt the applesauce, which had brandy and orange zest in it, was left over from Thanksgiving as well. I rooted about some more and decided to make some Bird’s Custard Pudding and fancy it up. I made the custard and put in the apple stuff. The milk in the pudding instantly curdled. Unfazed, I picked out the curds – large rubbery things - and discarded them. I put the resulting concoction in a nice dish with the cranberry sauce layered in like a parfait. When the morning came, I was humiliated about my dessert, and talked another woman who had brought apple juice into trading and saying she had made my dish and I would present her apple juice. Since she was the apple juice bringer type, everyone was amazed that she had brought real food. The odd dessert was the success of the party, and everyone pestered her for the recipe. She was mortified, and finally admitted that it was my doing. Then they wanted the recipe from me, but I had to claim that it was a family secret, as the dish was really quite unreproducible.

St. Nicholas Day

On Saturday, we had a visit from St. Nicholas – the real St. Nicholas – the holy bishop who wears a miter, carries a crozier, and rides a white horse, not the fat fellow in a red suit. Rebecca and Rachael both were always more excited about the visit of St. Nicholas on December sixth than they were about actual Christmas. Perhaps because Christmas can be so overwhelming, but the visit from St. Nicholas was their own special event and was always relatively serene. They put out their shoes and a bowl of oats for the horse, and eagerly awaited their gifts of something warm to wear – usually on hands, feet, or head – and fruits and cookies. Rebecca, who was the best child ever, was ever needlessly worried about getting a bit of coal or worse yet, being put in Krampus’ sack. No matter how firmly we assured her this could never happen because she was always so good, she worried terribly. One December 5th night late, it snowed for the first time in quite a long while. Rebecca woke up, and everything looked different due to the snow, the altered light, and the consequent new shadows on the wall from the bare tree limbs. She was sure Krampus was there to get her, and cried out pathetically. We leapt out of bed to comfort her, and she was relieved to see the snow and no Krampus. Did she perhaps she have some terrible secret that only Krampus would be aware of?
This year, Rachael actually forgot to put out her shoes, or possibly thought she was too big for Niklaus to visit her. She was delighted when she got up and found her shoes filled with cookies, candy, an apple, and this pair of gloves which I knitted for her. Later, when I was changing my linen, an apple rolled out from the sheets. I was mystified until I realized that, unlike the candy and cookies which were quickly consumed, the apple had been rejected and left behind.

A mismatched day

Often when I am at work (or sometimes even not at work) my whole focus of the day is to get home, get my cup of something hot, get in bed, get comfey, and settle down with my book. A few months ago, I came home from work at midnight, snuggled up with my book, Margaret, and a cup of hot chocolate. Ecstasy. But short lived ecstasy. The phone rang – a dreaded sound at one in the morning, especially after work, as it is usually the nurse following me calling to ask why I did or did not do something. Once a nurse called me in the wee hours to inform me that I had forgotten to chart the insulin I had given a patient. I recall that this particular evening, another patient had a reaction to a medication about 30 minutes before I was due to leave, and my focus was on saving his life rather than charting the insulin. I reported the call to my manager the next day, and she was incensed, I am happy to report. “What did she expect you to do - come in and chart it?” she sensibly asked. This particular evening, my friend Nurse Mademba was calling to ask me if I had taken the narcotic key home. I was confident that I had not, I told him. I hadn’t even used it. “Check your pockets,” he said. “You have to have it.” Well, I did check and I did have it. Grrrrrr. Someone had handed it to me at the beginning of the evening, and no one had used it the whole eight hours. The down side of taking the narcotic key home is that you have to bring the narcotic key back. Right then. My heart sank. I just can’t get dressed, I thought. I told Mademba I would bring it to the ER and he could come get it. He agreed. I left the house in my PJ’s and a sweater, and when I got to the ER, I decided to just take it up to my unit. The security guard looked at me like I was a mad woman. I started to explain why I had my pajamas on (they must see a lot of pajamas there) and he said, “It’s not that. You have on two different colors of shoes.”
This morning in church, two altos were tittering and looking at my feet. I assumed that they were marveling at how I was still wearing sandals in December. Later, as we were leaving church, Rachael said, “You know you have two different sandals on, don’t you?”
In the picture - above, disparate workshoes, below, disparate sandals - one brown and one gray, and to the right, Margaret contemplating one of the many dangers of getting dressed in the dark.

A busy day

A rather busy but productive day. After my triumph at the bank, Rachael and I went to the paper store to get special paper for my Auntie’s secret project. First we went to an office store, but they had only papier ordinaire, and we wanted something nicer, so we went to Arvey’s, a real paper store. This place had paper galore. I love a paper store, but they seem mostly to be posh boutiquey sorts of places with uppity staffs. Not as bad as wine or camera shops, which can be terrifying to the uninitiated, but close. While this one had everything, it was all warehouse-ish, and so not intimidating to the likes of me. The woman who helped us knew all about different sorts of paper, and seemed to take in the special needs of this project. Rachael too thought it was a fine store because it had free donuts. (The kind you eat, not the kind you put on your paper holes.) Later, I fixed us a yummy repast - mushroom tartlets, - which was supposed to be a meal-in-minutes, but actually was not. I was planning to serve it at four, giving Rachael lots of time to get to her six o’clock engagement, but I failed to factor in the time needed to thaw the puff pastry. I was thinking that I knew all about using this stuff, but I think I must have used it in my dreams, because once I began, the process was unfamiliar, and I can’t think of anything I have actually made from it. However, the tartlets were good and Rachael was ready on time, so all was well. I recommend this recipe. It really does not take much time, and is rather impressive. Your guests will think that you are quite clever and that you spent hours slaving in the kitchen.

A golden day

Actually, the whole day wasn't golden, but bits of it were. I was walking to the Cathedral yesterday afternoon for my Family Kitchen stint, and there was definitely a golden moment. This is the view from the Cathedral's hill looking down the street towards the water and mountains. The Cathedral is the building on the left, and an apartment building on the right.
I am off to the bank now to deal with the bank ogres. Wish me luck.

Update later in the day: my banking business, which I began working on in August, and which should have been a simple transaction, but which turned into a nightmare, as no one in the bank seemed to know what she was doing, is finally done. I have transferred money from one account to another, and it only took zillions of phone calls, letters, faxes, visits to the bank and a few tears of frustration. Finally, the brilliant Janice got it all fixed up. Tom's money is in his account and I can begin to pay his bills. Hurray!

A lemony day

About a year ago, I ventured into the mysteries of modern bread making – a vastly different thing than the bread making of my youth. Tom was helping me, and although we had a fun day, the bread was disastrous. The texture left much to be desired, and to top it off, (Shades of King Lear!) I forgot the salt. What a disappointment! So I decided that since one of Rachael’s favorite foods is bread pudding, I would use the bread to make that, and put in a bit of extra salt. Rachael was thrilled and even emailed a friend that she was having bread pudding for dinner. Well, it is scarcely credible, but true --I forgot the salt again! So the bread pudding was doubly unsalted, and was rather disgusting. Undeterred by failure, I tried again a month or so later, and had great success. I recently made Rachael some lemon pudding, and this suggested to her that it would be nice to have lemon bread pudding. So I tried that this evening, and it was rather good. I remember the first time I had bread pudding ever. I was about six, and was visiting my friend Therese’s house for dinner. They were rather posh, and consequently, my mother, anxious to avoid social disgrace, had given me many admonitions about table manners and about eating everything on my plate, even if I didn’t like it. I was suitably impressed with my duties to uphold the family honor. In addition to being posh, this family had a horrible Siamese cat who terrified me and made me sneeze. I was prepared to have a most unenjoyable evening. The dinner was served, and for the veg, they had artichokes, which I had never seen before. This bit of exotica both impressed and horrified me. What to do with it???? They showed me how to eat it, and I thought my ordeal was over, but then they brought out the dessert --- bread pudding. I thought I had never seen anything so disgusting looking. I still remember recoiling in horror and trying to look pleased at the same time. I don’t recall actually eating it – just my initial reaction. I know that thirty years passed before I ever had bread pudding again. Grandma Rossi made it, and I then realized that it was actually a good thing.
Here is the recipe for the Lemon Bread Pudding I made this evening:

Sugar, about one cup
Half a cube of butter
Juice and zest of two smallish lemons
Two tablespoons of flour
Three eggs,
2 Cups of milk
Five cups of cubed bread, preferably a few days old.
Cream the sugar and butter, add lemon juice and zest. Mix it well. Mix in the flour. Add the eggs and mix it up. Add the milk, stir it and pour it over the bread. Bake it at 350 for 50 minutes to an hour. Serve it hot with a bit of milk poured over it. Yummy!
Here are Rachael and Maria having a discussion about whom the pudding actually belongs to.

A teary day

Our poor little kitty took a turn for the worse on Saturday while Rebecca and I were preparing dinner for the aunties, so we took him for his final visit to the vet. Unlike, Margaret and Leslie who adored going to the vet, Michael hated it and always acted very badly. This time, however, he seemed resigned, and knew that his troubles would soon be over, so he was a good boy, and went gently into that good night. His funeral was this morning in the one two hour window we could find when we were all three neither working nor in school. Tom always officiated at these events, but in his stead, Julie, who has been a hospital chaplain, gave a very nice feline service. We sang our traditional pet funeral song – “All Things Bright and Beautiful” with special Michael verses.

He made our little Michael,
His coat so soft and gray,
His one green eye, the other brown,
His pussywillow tail.

He was our darling nurse boy,
With tender loving care,
His soft caress, his lovingness,
A cat who brought us joy.

He loved his little family,
Protected us from the rat,
His fearless heart, his loving heart,
Our Mikey was quite a cat.

Not very poetic, I'll admit, but heartfelt. The song didn't go well because we got too emotional to sing, so it was a bit disjointed. Rebecca made a lovely anise cake, which we had with tea, for the funeral meats.