Secret BBQ Ribs

Have you tried my friend Josh's peanut butter cookies?  The recipe is here, and I suggest you take out a stick of butter and let it start softening now.  And while you do that, I will let you in on a little secret.  I didn't successfully make cookies until about four years ago.  I'm still not sure what I was doing wrong.  In high school and college while other girls were gathering around mixing bowls and bonding over the process of making cookies, I was staring dismally at a pan of flattened, crispy disks of sugar, butter and chocolate chips.  My oatmeal cookies turned out like day-old biscuits and my peanut butter cookies crumbled like sawdust at the first bite. 

What I came to realize is that although some people have success with the recipe on the back of the bag or the side of the oatmeal tin, I had to carefully research and find the recipe that works for me.  Josh's peanut butter cookie works for me every time.  When I take that cookie places, people sit up and take notice. 

So when Josh told us he had a trick for cooking BBQ ribs, I pulled out a pen and a pad of paper.

These ribs will make you look like the crackerjack of outdoor cooking.  People's eyes will roll back in their heads, and they will try to hide the fact that they are sucking on the bones.  And when they ask you what your secret is, you'll act all coy becaues you won't want to admit that you made them in the slow-cooker.

That's right: a slow-cooker!

Then There's a Pair of Us



Chairs by Hazelnuts



I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

- Emily Dickinson

My friend Charis likes to change the end of this poem to "To tell your name the livelong day/To an admiring blog." A pun that always makes me smile.

Here are some of my favorite frogs on the world wide bog:

Reindeer Games

Mr. Bach

"If I can't drink

my bowl of coffee three times daily,

then in my torment I will shrivel up

like a piece of roast goat."

J.S. Bach from the Coffee Cantata


Today in the break room, I brought up a question that has been puzzling me for a while.  A popular parlor game/ice breaker is posing the question "If you could meet anyone alive or dead, who would it be?"  However, there are many missing parameters that trouble me.  For instance, if you chose to meet Joan of Arc, would it be necessary to be fluent in Medieval French?  Or what if I was eager to meet Queen Victoria only to find she was scandalized my my loose hair and visable ankles.  Where are am I meeting this person?  What place?  What century?

You see the trouble.

Cloud Nine Banana Cream Pie

Homeschooling traditionally is hands-on learning.  My experience was no different.  For everything we studied, there was an accompanying hands-on project that generally included food.   A study of Jewish holidays would not have been complete without latkes.  When we were studying the Dark Ages, we all tried some cow tongue.  And I was extremely jealous of my sister Rebekah the year she decided to do a science fair project on leavening agents in brownies. 

Some of these experiences were of epic proportion.  When we studied Queen Victoria, we made queen cakes.  Mom mixed up the batter and let us fill the cupcake tins.  After about ten minutes in the oven, the cupcake tins overflowed and the bottom of the oven caught on fire.  

Army Day: The Celebration of Bad Puns

Mom

My mom and her father love puns.  They also play with their hair.  Naturally, my cousins, my sisters and I all play with our hair.  My sisters and cousins also indulge in the pun habit.  For the most part, puns elude me. 

I attribute it to being grounded in reality and far too literal, but I cannot effortlessly find alternative meanings in words.  At gatherings, over plates of brats and Grandpa's legendary potato salad, family would throw puns around like tennis balls.  I would sit quietly and muddle over a word in an attempt to come up with a tortured word play.  But before I could throw mine in the mix, someone else would use my word - only they'd use it better! The celebration of puns, however, is something I partake in with enthusiasm.

Grandpa started it.  On March 4th he and my mom would wish each other a "Happy Army Day!"  Do you get it?  March 4 = march forth = Army Day (I warned you it was bad).  After my mom moved out, she and Grandpa would call each other on March 4.  It became a joke between them to see who could call whom first.  When I was little, I thought March 4 was a nationally recognized holiday.  Obviously, one of the hazards benefits of homeschooling is growing up with your own holidays. 

Chicken Soup with Spinach and Orzo

A number of years ago, I called my mom and boasted, "I just roasted a chicken!" 


She was nonplussed.  "Anyone can roast a chicken.  It's taking the meat off the bones that is the hard part."


There is something to that.  Deboning a chicken is greasy, mindless work.  When we were kids, my parents would scare us into doing homework by regaling us with stories of chicken factories.  Now I pull meat off the pokey bones off a chicken and mutter, "I went to college...I went to college." 

To: New Mom, From: Working Girl

Being honest on the internet is tricky.  Assuming you successfully walk the line between too much information and vague rambling, there is always the good chance you'll come off either whiney or self-satisfied (see, even in saying that there is a certain smugness).   However, I am going to risk it, and write (briefly) about something that has been difficult for me: benevolance.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of new babies in our house .  And where there are new babies, there are benevolant people bringing hot meals and well wishes.  In turn, my mom took meals to new moms and others in need.  In the foggy future I envisioned for myself, I knew I'd be taking meals to people as well.

I never thought I'd be 29 and working full-time (let's face it; I never thought I'd be 29); but while most of my friends are raising babies, I am working at a desk from 8:30-5:00.  I appreciate the differences - they serve four people supper at 5:30 or 6:00; I serve two people supper at 7:30.  They run errands during the day with children; I run errands on the weekends with my favorite adult (and many, many more differences).  But I am a competative person, and it is easy for me to feel like I am less than I should be when my lifestyle doesn't align with their's.