tollipop

my one and only quilt.

It’s about the size of a bento box, which gives you an idea of the extent of my patience with this project.  I have three sisters, all of whom are mad quilters, so meticulous and precise and exact that I have to leave the room when they start cutting fabric. I do love to embroider, though, and if I were running for Miss America and they asked me what I would do to make the world a better place, I’d say—teach our children, and our children’s children,  how to make french dots.  And I would win because no one else would think to cover our children’s children. 

 

In case you’re interested, I drew the picture onto a piece of linen with one of those marvelous washable pens.  After stitching over the lines, I sprayed the piece with water and presto!—the blue ink disappeared.  I could try to explain how I made the rest of the quilt, but if you followed my instructions a real quilter would have to come to your house and deprogram you.  And it would be intense.  Your family would be there, saying stuff like: “Debbie (if that’s your name), we love you. We want you back.  Just please set the rotary cutter down and stop rocking back and forth.” 

 

p.s.  See how the top right corner droops ever so slightly? That's the way I wanted it.   

raspberry patch

 
When I was nine years old my parents sent me out to work in the fields, and by “fields” I mean raspberry patch and by “work” I mean a blatant violation of the child labor laws. 

 

The raspberry patch was located several miles from our home and each morning during summer break, by the dawn’s early light, my mother would drop my brother and I off with nothing more than a crust of bread between us and a warning to pick our weight in berries before the sun went down. 

  

 We'd troop toward the weighing hut where the owner’s bellicose teenaged son would be picking his face and listening to heavy metal.  After ignoring us a full ten minutes, he’d grunt out a number, meaning which row he wanted us to harvest.  With the stealth of two ninjas, my brother and I would tiptoe to the assigned area. 

 

Why were we trying to be quiet?  Because these people owned a dog, which I now understand was a boxer but at the time believed to be a hound of hell.  He had huge, slavering jaws, a flat, pugnacious nose that oozed muck, and the cold, sadistic mentality of a professional killer. 

  

 His name was Major.

  

Oh, Major...Major.  How many times has my husband had to shake me out of a violent dream and ask why I was screaming “Down, boy!” ? 

 

That dog had the ability to come out of nowhere, and in the middle of an endless row of raspberry bushes, the slightest breeze to ruffle a leaf could stop my heart cold.

 

“Major?” I’d whisper, “Major? Are you there?” 

 

And it’s so bizarre, now that I think about it: if someone’s dog were to bite my kid, I’m pretty sure you’d see a small mushroom cloud rising up over Las Vegas for the fuss I’d make, yet it was not uncommon for my brother and I to come limping out of the raspberry patch at the end of the day, Achilles tendons severed, and my mom did not bat an eye. 

   

But on the other hand—and this is no lie—those raspberries were the size of small huts.  You could seriously plop one on the ground and take shelter in it for the night.

 

My brother and I liked to stick them on our fingers and stagger around moaning that we’d been amputated.  Bloody fingers, we called them.  Then we’d pop the berries into our mouths and I’m telling you--you can keep your sorbets and your fancy tarts, your mountains of whipped cream--there is no better way to eat raspberries than off your dirty fingers when you’re nine years old and worried that each moment could be your last. 

 

When that job was over, it was at least a couple of years before I could look another raspberry in the eye.  But now that I’m living in Las Vegas, a fact that has yet to truly register, I pass by those plastic containers of sad, shriveled berries in the grocery store and wonder if it’s worth selling a kidney to buy some. 

 

And then I wonder what ol’ Major is up to, and whether the owner’s son ever went to the clink for weighting the raspberry flats, and then I wonder about a whole bunch of other things and suddenly an hour has gone by and I find myself standing in the middle of the cereal section with no way to account for half the contents in my cart. 

warning: poorly constructed sentence in 5...4...3...2...1...

Over the weekend we went out for dinner for the first time with friends...(not the first time we went out for dinner, but the first time we met these particular friends for dinner and no, we did not eat them).  Under these circumstances I'm usually a bit nervous, wondering how the conversation will flow or if we'll run out of things to say within three minutes of sitting at the table. Except when it's Thai food, as such was the case, and then all I'm worried about is how much red curry I'll be able to inhale before someone escorts me from the restaurant and my husband checks our marriage contract to see if there's a loophole for gluttony.  There's NOT!  But in the end my fears were unfounded, as they usually are--the conversation was scintillating and I gave myself a facial with the pad thai when no one was looking. 

   

In other news, I made lemon bars for a birthday party on Saturday.  And I so wanted them to be lovely, but there's a small hitch, otherwise known as a recipe, and I keep stumbling over it every time.  I don't know what it is with me and recipes.  Did they somehow offend me?  Did they steal my boyfriend?  Sometimes I think if I actually forced myself to follow one, the electrical surge in my brain would be so great it would not only blow my head off but also sizzle the power grid for the western United States. 

 

This just reminded me of an email my mom sent me in November, two months before she passed away.  I had called her asking about caramel recipes and she responded by sending me three different versions, encouraging me with these words: 

 

I would suggest you try all three recipes and determine the exact temperature that produces the consistency you want.  Write down the exact temperature and then always follow it.  I would also suggest that these are recipes which must be followed EXACTLY, even if it makes your creative juices boil.

 

I wince for every time she used the word "exact".  If you want to torture me, just put me in a room of people and have them crowd around me, chanting that word.  I'll tell you anything you want to know.

 

Mom, I love you (in case you're allowed to read blogs in heaven). 

 

There's this girl, the fabulous Alicia, who sometimes writes about her cooking adventures.  She even documents the process in pictures so you can witness the masterpiece as it unfolds--everything mixed, measured, and baked according to plan.  When this happens, I press my nose up against the computer screen like a hermit coming out of the woods, hoping to be welcomed at her table and stare wildly when she attempts to engage me in conversation, as I only speak wolf. 

 

Since I couldn't bear to expose you to the madness of my methods, I will simply leave you with a picture of the failed bars.  They're pretty enough, I suppose, but if I threw one across the room right now it would put your eye out.  Apparently, when four eggs sound good, five will not make it better.  Nor will extra lemons, mystery amounts of sugar, or overriding the suggestion to bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.  When I was born, did someone wrap me in a bundle, knock on the door of this universe, and take off running? 

wishing you a lovely weekend...

I woke up this morning at about 6:00 and realized something was missing.  My husband.  I bolted upright in bed.  Oh no!, I panicked, is this the day we were supposed to escape over the Berlin Wall?!  But then I remembered that the wall came down.  And we don't live in Germany.  So I sank back into my pillow, feeling much better about things.

Friday mornings have a way of being more disorienting than usual.  I think it's because Thursday is like the Boston Marathon of music lessons.  And I'm like the runner who started training for it two days ago.  After school Sophie has her lesson with the world's greatest piano teacher, whose permission I have not yet obtained to discuss her life in detail, but I just want to say she's from Uzbekistan, I adore and venerate her, and I have NEVER seen anyone dissect a single measure of music the way she can.  She takes Mozart down to the molecular level.   

Afterward, I take little Izzy to her lesson with the world's greatest violin teacher, who also has not given me written consent to divulge her most intimate secrets, so all I can tell you is she's amazing and Isabella wishes she could have a lesson with her every day.  Which is why I run a lemonade stand on the weekends, selling drinks for $200 apiece. 

By the time Izzy and I get home from her lesson, it is almost 9:00 p.m. and all I want to do is curl up in the fetal position and go to a safe place somewhere deep within myself.  Bear in mind, I have also practised a total of 2 1/2 hours with the girls earlier that day, and can I just tell you that 2 1/2 hours of practising musical instruments with one's children is the equivalent of doing 6 hours of housework?  Not that I would know from experience, mind you, but I think the numbers bear themselves out.

Instead of finding my sanctuary, I am confronted by three screaming banshees who cannot seem to just take the cap off the toothpaste and get the job done, who are begging for bedtime stories and full of outrage at one another for whoever spit on whose hand during the dental hygiene fiasco, and I think to myself: How do I help these girls understand that after 8:00 p.m. my maternal instinct is less Ma Ingalls and more that of the tortoise who lays eggs on a beach and then shoves out to sea, leaving her young to be picked off by seagulls?

And all this blathering is my circular way of telling you that I HAD another post ready to go for today, one that I created on Thursday night after martial law had been established and a 30 second version of Little Red Riding Hood was relayed.  A beautiful, coherent post in which I simply showed you some of the lovely things I've been admiring on Etsy lately...which Typepad led me to believe they would publish for me at 7:00 this morning, but which they gobbled up the minute my back was turned.  And this leaves you, me--all of us--to wonder how differently your day might have played out had you'd been spared this unplanned detour through my mind. 

speaking of chocolate...

One of the books I’m reading to my girls these days is Fantastic Mr. Fox, which inevitably got me thinking about an all-time favorite, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I’m not sure how many times I read that book as a child…I have since read it to my own kids and let me tell you, it was a bit surprising to revisit the story as an adult.  Mr. Wonka?  You raise my eyebrows, sir.
 

But I love the story and am thinking, in particular, of the time my 1st grade teacher read it to us in class. I can still remember my toes curling with pleasure when it was time to put our work away and listen to her unfold the tale of little Charlie Bucket. 

 

When she finished the book, my teacher made an astonishing announcement: the following day she would bring a chocolate making machine to school, just like the one Willy Wonka used!  I nearly fell of my chair.  The line between fantasy and reality has always been rather fluid for me, and no more so than at that moment.  The rest of the day passed like a dream and as I lay in bed that night, twitching, my mind careened from one possibility to the next.  Would the classroom be edible?  Could I lick the chalkboard?  Did my teacher rustle up some Oompa Loompas? 

 

When I got to school the next day, breathless from an all out sprint, I was puzzled by the familiar appearance of the classroom.  Where was the chocolate river?  The funny little man with the tall hat?  Being too shy to demand an explanation, my anxiety brought on a low-grade fever as the day plodded along.

 

Finally, my teacher announced it was time to make the chocolates and would we all be patient while she went to fetch the chocolate machine from her car?  That’s odd, I remember thinking, how will she manage such an enormous contraption all by herself?  When she reentered the room carrying a Bunsen burner, a bag of chocolate chips, and an assortment of small, plastic molds, I nearly fainted at my desk.  The cruelty of that moment, the swift and dispassionate crushing of all my hopes and dreams, still haunts me to this day. 

 

In the ensuing years, I have noticed some people are just that way.  They don’t seem to need a great deal of imagination to navigate through life.  Which is pure tragedy on the one hand, but with a merciful boon: they avoid the disappointment that comes when reality cannot measure up to the exquisite capacity of the mind.   The rest of my classmates were duly impressed to witness 356 waxy brown lumps melt together and be repurposed into twenty-one chocolate hearts.  I was the only kid reeling from a death blow to the brain.  And I’m not saying which way is better, or if superiority even factors into this at all.  I’m just saying. 

 

Anyway, I’m leaving you with a picture of a chocolate that does not disappoint.  I took this picture two Christmases ago, which is the last time my mom felt well enough to make her most amazing, highly secretive, blissfully scrumptious chocolates.  This was an annual tradition in our family, and having sixty pounds of Belgian chocolate delivered to our door in the middle of November, massive slabs wrapped in thick white paper and bound with red seals, and the steamy sweet smell of pots of fondant bubbling merrily on the stove was sure to set off the bells and whistles of my imagination every time.

apricot harvest

newest addition to the shop!

the animal game

The animal game is something we play ad nauseam in this house, and by “we” I mean me and Caroline.  And by “house” I mean car, when we’re driving around town looking for $1.99 steak and egg specials.  So this is how it goes down, and the only reason I’m telling you this is because ever since I started this blog, it’s like a wolf fixation has gripped our family, and by “family” I mean Caroline (okay, I’ll stop doing that now).   

Caroline:  Do you want to play the animal game?    

   

Me: Do I? 

 

Caroline:  You go first. 

 

Me:  Okay, I’m thinking of an animal.  It lives in the forest… 

 

Caroline:  A WOLF! 

 

Me:  What?  No, wait for the rest of my clues.  It has a bushy tail… 

 

Caroline:  A WOLF! 

 

Me:  Hold on, sister.  I’m not done yet.  It has black rings around its eyes and it starts with an “r”. 

 

Caroline:  (slight pause)  A  rolf?   

Oh, man.  These are the moments, I’m telling you.  But enough of that—I wanted to show you the latest craze to sweep our house—embellishing old t-shirts.  I gave Sophie and Isabella carte blanche on a Saturday afternoon to use my sewing machine, scrap basket, and a few designated shirts. When they came downstairs several hours later, it was apparent my girls had been secretly attending a French immersion program for their generous interpretation of the term “carte blanche”, as no t-shirt within a ten mile radius had escaped their crafty fingers, even ones that could be considered new, and by “new” I mean unstained.   

Anyway, I just realized that showing you their work would first entail me sorting through their closets, which is a bit like jumping into the mosh pit at a Green Day concert, getting all banged up and stumbling out with a big patch of hair missing from my head.  Which today does not hold the same appeal as it did in my early twenties (for one night), so here instead is the t-shirt I embellished for Caroline, since she was predictably not to be outdone by her older sisters. 

 

it's monday and you're in for a story

Hello, Little Orange Kitchen readers!  Laura, that was sweet of you to mention this blog.  I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  I don’t like it when people ask me about my weekend.  Why?  Because I can never remember what happened.  And I am so tempted to leave you with the impression that I can party like Truman Capote, but even the senior citizens with the his n' her oxygen tanks pulling all-nighters at the penny slots (this is Vegas, remember) have more game than I do.  Way more.  No, the reason I can’t remember what happened one day ago is because I have less short term memory than that blue fish on “Finding Nemo.”  What’s her name again?  I forget. 

 

So do you have time for a story?  Because this one goes with the “may I come along?” print.  I read it to the girls and I honestly think Caroline was a bit miffed by the wolf disclaimer.  She’s one of those kids who wants to make you promise nothing bad will happen and then gets bored when nothing bad happens.  What am I going to do?  At any rate, pull up a chair and a cup of hot chocolate--I don't have the data to back this up, but I think story time takes thirty years off your real age. 

 

It was Tuesday afternoon and Blanche checked her appointment book.  Teatime with Granny it said, 3:00 sharp.  “Ooh, lovely,” exclaimed Blanche, “I’m very much looking forward to that!”  Blanche’s granny did not live alone in a cottage at the edge of a forest, the way most grannies in bedtime stories tend to do.  However, she did live on the upper East Side in a fabulous apartment overlooking Central Park, so perhaps that is not so different after all.  And Blanche, who lived in a comfortable brownstone near the Hudson River, was in the habit of walking through the park to visit her granny, so here again is a troubling similarity to a story with which we are all familiar.  And for this reason, I am interrupting myself to assure you, dear reader, that there will be no wolves making an appearance in this story.  Do I make myself clear?  Not a single one.  Mind you, there will be a rabbit with a background in martial arts and a hedgehog who may or may not be wild. 

 

The rabbit, whose name was Marigold, belonged to Blanche.  The little girl had rescued her off the streets of Greenwich, which is a much tougher neighborhood than you’d expect, especially for rabbits.  Marigold had fallen in with a bad crowd—lots of scratching and scuffling, contraband Easter eggs, shakedowns—the kind of life that takes a perfectly adorable bunny and turns her into a bitter, cynical doe with a raspy laugh and a penchant for cheese puffs.  It was during this time, incidentally, that Marigold took up with a pygmy hamster from Wichita who taught her how to liquefy the bones of her enemies by applying pressure to a secret spot near one’s hind leg. 

 

But all that was in the past.  Marigold loved Blanche and was utterly devoted to her.  The rabbit’s happiest moments were spent curled up in the little girl’s lap while she embroidered french dots on her aprons.  They were delighted to find they liked many of the same things--Hitchcock, lamb’s lettuce, Gregorian chants, and poetry.  Don’t you wish everyone could have a friend like that? 

 

For the trip to Granny’s house, Blanche and Marigold helped each other choose an outfit.  It was a beautiful spring day, and Blanche wore a dress the color of the sky.  Marigold, who was filled with notions about the upper East Side, wore white.  At the last moment she added a red hat.    

The girl and the rabbit set out briskly.  They did not want to be late for Granny’s tea.  As they approached the park, Marigold stopped and eyed the path. “Oh, Blanche—be a dear and carry me or I shall get my lovely dress spattered with mud!”  Blanche, who was anxious to set the rabbit at ease, picked her up and hurried along. 

 

The sun was bright and warm and the park was so lovely that is was not long before they ventured off the path and came across a hedgehog who was rooting through a discarded bag of cheese puffs.  When he noticed the girl and her rabbit, he straightened up immediately and brushed off his hands.

“Hello,” he said pleasantly, “How are you doing?” 

“Very well, thank you,” replied Blanche, charmed by the manners of the little fellow.

“My name is Percy,” ventured the hedgehog.

“I’m Blanche and this is Marigold,” said the little girl.  The rabbit looked away with a sniff.

“Might I ask where you are going on such a fine afternoon?” asked Percy.

“We are on our way to Granny’s house.  For tea.” Blanche looked at Percy and then down at her shoes.

“For tea, you say?  My, doesn’t that sound lovely,” murmured the hedgehog.

Blanche nodded in agreement and there was a moment of silence.

Marigold cleared her throat.

“I don’t suppose…” ventured Percy, “I don’t suppose…”

“Yes?” coaxed Blanche with an timid smile.

The hedgehog gulped and took a deep breath. 

“I don’t suppose that I may come along?” he said, jumbling the words together like a pile of fresh laundry. 

 

Marigold could hold her tongue no longer.  “Look, Mack.  Let me spell this out for you,” she snapped, “It’s the upper East Side.  You have to be domesticated to get in.”

Blanche gasped and gave the rabbit a little squeeze.

“Marigold!,” she scolded, “How could you?  What would Granny say?!”

Marigold looked at the ground.  She did not want to fall from Granny’s good graces.  Not with those purse strings.

 

A lone tear trickled down the hedgehog’s cheek.  “Oh, woe is me!,” he cried, “With the exception of Saturday nights, what is the use of being wild?  What good is my extensive knowledge of Robert Frost when there is no one to listen to my recitations?  What of my love of tender lettuces and the music of the ancient Catholic Church when I must keep these passions to myself?!”

Blanche looked at Marigold.  Marigold looked at Blanche.

“Who is your favorite film director?” whispered the little girl.

“Woody Allen, hands down,” replied Percy.

 

Marigold shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, it was nice knowin’ ya,” she said.

Blanche gave the rabbit another squeeze.

 

“All right,” said the rabbit, a bit crossly, “Come along, then.”

“Don’t worry, Percy,” said Blanche, bending over to scoop up the hedgehog, “Everyone knows rabbits are set in their ways, but once they come around, you couldn’t ask for a better friend.”

And that’s exactly how it happened.

may i come along?

newest addition to the shop!

the therapy we call photoshop

Am I the only one who didn’t get this memo?  Where were the after school specials?  The PSA’s?  World—meet the answer to what ails you—it’s called Photoshop.  See, Photoshop has this tool called a clone, and whatever you isolate and click on with the clone can then be replicated all over the place. Are you digesting this?  Are you sharing my vision?  I have a long list of things waiting to be cloned.  When it’s well past bedtime and the kids are still running around and fatigue causes my head to snap off and there is a 30 second buffer zone before the appliances in our house melt from the heat of my wrath?  I would clone THAT buffer zone.  It should be more like a minute.

And when the girls are at school, I would don protective gear and cross the police tape to get into their room, rummaging for hours before finding the one thing I am looking for—a square inch of floor space.  Then I would clone it and BAM!BAM!BAM!—that room would be naked as the day it was born.  And when Izzy comes home and asks, with wide, shimmering eyes, what happened to the hazardous waste material she was fond of nesting in, I would snap my fingers and say, “Talk to the clone.”  Then she would run away to the Pacific northwest and live in a giant redwood for the rest of her life.

 

Also, there is this tool that allows you to zoom in on your artwork, down to the actual pixel.  Do you know what a pixel is?  It is the equivalent of dividing a fly poop into four million uniform pieces and zeroing in on just one slice of the pie.  So you can get down and eyeball the molecular level of your masterpiece.   Then you can take this little eyedropper thingy and select one pixel, say it’s spring green, and drop it onto a neighboring pixel that is less than a spectral millimeter removed from the shade of the first.  And why would you do this?  No, I think the question is more—why wouldn’t you do this?  Why WOULDN’T you?? 

 

Then you’d just stare at the computer screen until retina damage sets in, lost in the beauty of it all, and even though the rest of your sad sack life rages around you, nothing can touch you because you are having a zen moment with your new guru, Photoshop.