Another Sleep Invention: The Cannoli Saw
So, our lives are about to change. A baby will come and live with us. Whee! Scary, though, right?
Henry’s birthday will happen right after the baby is born, and I can’t help but wonder: how are we to go about celebrating normal / special life events through these life-changing events?
Last year, when he turned two, we had a pretty big party. It was held in a space down the street that we rented. Wait, was that in a wholly different economy? Wait, was I a part of the 1% then? Also, I made about a jillion different sorts of cupcakes with many sorts of creatively conceived and executed toppings. Fluff frosting with black Himalayan salt, lemon buttercream, chocolate ganache. I made a truck out of a poundcake. God, I hope he doesn’t remember how good life was when he was turning two, and we were rich, and birthdays were littered with poundcake trucks everywhere.
This year, we must keep it simple. These are the ways in which I hope to do this:
1. It will be at home, so we don’t have to go anywhere, and almost no one will be invited. Should you not be invited, please reference the blog post on this topic in order to mitigate your feelings of rejection. Should you be invited, please try to limit the communicable diseases you bring over, since I’ll have a 2 week old.
2. Lower your expectations regarding myriad, well-planned snacks. This time around, I will serve only round foods that someone else has prepared, with the possible exception of cupcakes, which would be cooked by me, but still will still be (hopefully) round.
The other foods will be bagels and their accoutrements (like SMOKED FISH, which I intend to eat by the fistful the moment I give birth), served in the round containers we will buy them in, as well as donuts from Peter Pan donut in Williamsburg, but I don’t even know if we’ll manage to get out there in order to buy some of the fabulously round, made-by-other people donuts. These are the donuts that you read about on the Internet. These are the donuts that you dream about. These are the porn donuts. These are the donuts that the other moms with two children manage to have at their kids birthday parties, where they also only serve bagels and cupcakes — perhaps a smidge of fruit. I do hope to be able to pull that one off.
When I’m nervous about something, I like to have a plan brewing in my brain. Sometimes I brew plans while dreaming. Last night I dreamt about the birthday party, and this is the menu I’d selected:
- lentil soup
- salad
- cannolis
The cannolis were cannoli shells covered with dark glossy chocolate, filled with ricotta cream, and decorated with berries. Wow, were these cannolis were a thing of beauty. I was delighted to be able to serve them at the uber casual birthday party. But there was a problem, in that the cannolis were too long for one person to comfortably eat. And you know how you can’t really cut a cannoli because that bumpy shell stuff will just crumble? I mean, even biting one is a problem, in my experience.
I sound like I think a lot about cannolis: I don’t, actually, when I am awake. But this leads us to my brilliant invention. In my sleep, I dreamt up a small, specialized serrated knife called a cannoli saw. It allowed you to slice the shell (chocolate-covered or not) cleanly so that one cannoli (cannolo?) could be subdivided between multiple party guests. And you could put the bumpy shell in your mouth one bite at a time, and any shattering would be private, and not down the front of your shirt.
Zoaster, move over. Another award-winning dream invention.
Yes, a Recipe: Shameful Chicken
One thing that I’ve discovered in the past few weeks is something I am simultaneously ashamed and compelled to tell you about. It’s a new (to me) way to bread and oven-fry chicken. One gets the sense that it would have been popular in the Better Homes and Gardens set in the 70s, though everyone was probably too busy buying Shake and Bake, because something in a box probably seemed easier at that point in time.
First, I was at Target and found some boneless, skinless, somewhat inoffensive looking (no hormones, the word “natural all over the package, etc.) chicken breasts. You know, in the grocery section they’ve wedged in among the toys and clothing and scrapbooking materials.
I cannot get over grocery shopping at Target, and yet I do it when I am there.
Anyhow, somewhat sustainably produced chicken breasts for $3, and I bought them. A few days passed. I don’t often cook chicken breasts. I find them boring and easy to ruin, though I do have a few fantastic go-to recipes for them. One of my favorites is with onion, almonds, and lots of butter. Another is with sage and prosciutto, which, let me tell you, I never have on hand.
“Austerity is the new abundance,” a friend recently said, and then said “or is it that abundance is the new austerity?” Anyhow, this is a sentiment I can get behind and I wanted to use up those Italian-seasoned bread crumbs before they lingered in my cabinet, uselessly, for too long.
What could I do with chicken and breadcrumbs? Surely something — it sounded like a winning combination.
I started googling and found that there is a popular recipe template using the following ingredients:
chicken
mayonnaise
bread crumbs
parmesan cheese
Whoa. The idea is that you mix mayo in with parmesan, dip the chicken in the mixture, coat with breadcrumbs. and cook briefly in a super-hot oven.
I lacked parmesan cheese but I had some shreddy Mexican mix, and I shook in a smidge of cayenne pepper, too. I started to coat the chicken. Then I realized that I hadn’t made enough mayo mixture, and I added an egg and some olive oil and a bit of salt. A little lemon for acid. I figured I was putting in the mayo ingredients without emulsifying them.
Basically, I’m on the road to the message that you can’t mess this chicken up. It was fantastic. I made it again last night with boneless, skinless thighs. Chicken thighs, that is.
With the breasts, I’d started them at 450 for about 12 minutes and then gotten scared and turned it down to 350 for about 10. They were perfect. Tender, juicy, and yet cooked through. Browned on the outside. With the thighs, I did 400 for about 22 minutes. And I used romano cheese that time. Both were perfect. It’s like secretly frying chicken in mayonnaise. Don’t tell anyone. But pass it on.
Buss Up Shut
This great thing happened yesterday. All of the people in our building were invited down to the super’s workshop to a holiday party thrown by the super and his wife and the work crew that runs our small co-op.
Henry and I, with our dreams (my dreams) of an early bedtime, would arrive first, long before Daddy came home from work. “We have to get down to Debbie’s party,” we kept informing one another, during the pas de deux of me trying to get him shod and clothed and then him wondering just why Mommy isn’t ready.
Debbie is our friend and Henry’s babysitter. She is married to the superintendant, who we also hire sometimes as a handyman, plus they live in the apartment next door to us and are always on the premises. Consequently, they are the fixedest of possible fixtures in our apartment-dweller lives. Henry, who associates all parties with singing and cake, did not want to miss a moment.
To properly celebrate, Henry wanted to be sure that he had ALL of his cowboy gear either on him or with him, so he had the boots, the hat, and the guitar he got for Christmas, and I was compelled to carry his hobby horse. A cowboy needs a horse and a guitar, he explained. Not to mention a mommy to help carry his accoutrements.
The workshop is across from the washing machines in the basement so I’ve seen in but never seen the part where the party was — a big cement block room with workbenches normally full of work but cleared for the occasion. The periphery was lined with chairs and some big tables set out for food, and there was Soca (Trinidadian Calypso) dominating the soundscape, and cascading twinkle lights strung everywhere. They had warmed up what must normally be a pretty cold room.
The food was all stuff that Debbie had cooked, and it came down in huge foil containers that were slotted into stands with sterno containers under them.
I love our co-op. It’s a blend of different skin tones and different professions — nurses, court reporters, journalists, teachers, editors, writers, retirees, and accountants. No one seems destitute, nor does anyone appear to be living the Nobu-going lifestyle of the idle (or working) rich.
Last night, lots of us were gathered around in the twinkle lights scooping up our gracious friend and neighbor’s Spanish rice, braised oxtail, neckbone curry, potato curry, tamarind sauce, and torn up hunks of roti, the delicious, layered buttery bread known in Indian food as paratha. “Buss up shut,” Debbie called the pan of roti.
It often takes Debbie and I a few tries to really get what one other is saying, but I searched on “Bust up roti” when I got home and realized that it’s called Buss Up Shut, and it’s a specialty from Trinidad, where those guys are from. It looks like a torn shirt, hence the “bust up shirt,” hence the “buss up shut.”
The one thing I didn’t get to try that I wanted to was the Hennessy with cranberry they were making.
The inside baby and I scarfed and enjoyed two plates of food. (Uh, one apiece?) One neighbor kept telling Debbie that she was disappointed not to see the mango sauce this year, but personally, I could not get enough of that buss up shut with the tamarind sauce. Henry was shy except for with Debbie and I, and despite his status as a rice aficionado, only wanted to try the cookies: a white kind with chocolate stripes applied to one side and the chocolate bottom, and some pink wafers.
Chatting with the neighbors, I went into a sort of time warp and only realized that two entire hours had passed when I saw Henry yawning and rubbing his eyes. By that time, lots and lots of us were there with huge plates of food in our laps, and drinks in our hands, and Debbie’s son, an ace drummer, was standing up and tapping a screwdriver against a bottle of booze both artfully and thoughtfully. We had to go, though, and came back up in the elevator balancing the horse, and the guitar, and a huge plate of food for Daddy.
Happy this year. And happy new year!
Emotional Manipulation
Today I picked up my son from playschool. I felt guilty because I was late, and it’s not like it was the first time. When am I not late, lately?
I am the teacher liaison, so if the teacher needs to complain about a parent, to whom does she come to to do it? To me. So I feared that I was about to be spoken to, or not spoken to because it would be uncomfortable, and I burst in rather breathless at ten after twelve.
I’d already used the “I needed to find some pants that would fit me before I could leave the house” excuse with her last week, so I went with, “I’m so sorry and I promise that I will make a real effort to be on time in the future.”
The teacher, who can’t start her cleaning and prep for the next class until the last child is picked up, stood Henry up. They’d been reading together while they waited for me, and she handed Henry a holiday card, sealed, in addition to a little art project they’d made, and told him to hand them to Mommy.
It took a few tries to achieve the handoff but finally, I had the handful of paper. I figured I’d open the card later but I glanced at the art project as I took him by the hand and turned to bustle off with him.
What I saw seemed to be of a more framable quality than the cheerful gluey messes we normally bring home. It was a little square of very tasteful green paper, about 3.5 by 3.5 inches, with slightly smaller white square of paper glued in the center, and in the middle of that, a dark red painted handprint , anchored by a dark red glued on paper heart in one of the corners. Ok, another handprint, I thought. We see a lot of those.
But then, in cursive writing — clearly not Henry’s — it said “This is the hand you used to hold when I was three years old.”
And then I made an unplanned, unholy noise, a wail of happiness and sadness coming up in my throat. I lost control. Crying, snorting, tears, immediate blurred vision. “Whoops, those are some pregnancy hormones,” someone commented. The teacher explained that she did not mean to make me cry. Well, no. But it was nearly impossible to get ahold of myself. I quickly told Henry that I wasn’t sad, but that I just loved him a lot.
Despite the factual error — Henry is not three yet, but competitive New Yorker that I am, I stuck him in with a group of 3 year olds — it struck a loud and lovely but also overwhelming chord. It was like a church chord on Christmas in a place with very high ceilings, where you feel like you’re going to be blown away by the divinity of it all, the beauty and weight and emotion of the music and all of the love and care and belief that is behind it, even if you’re not a religious sort.
I am so savoring this moment in time with Henry, our last moments alone before life changes forever, again.
What if he isn’t always almost three and this close to me? Guess what, he won’t be. What if I forget what his squishy little hand feels like this week? It’s not like I remember perfectly what his hand felt like at 18 months, that one sunny afternoon when he was wearing a striped sunsuit and climbing the stairs to our porch and I tried my hardest to never forget even one detail of that moment when he was so beautiful and ripe and perfect, but in a very different way than he is beautiful and ripe and perfect on this Wednesday afternoon almost a year and a half later.
And I feel with great acuity a stab of guilt at my potential for another great love who is coming down the pike. While I want a sibling for Henry, and I want more love in my life, I don’t want to inflict the hurt and displacement every child feels when another child arrives on the scene. I know that it’s all for the good, but now more than ever I want to be able to do something well, to act gracefully in order to protect someone else’s feelings. And now more than ever, I will be distracted by the newbie, and crabby because I’ll be tired. It’s hard. It’s normal. People do it. Whatever.
But the teacher certainly got me.
Looked at another way, I got her, because she can’t quite scold me for being late while I’m sobbing at receiving a preschool project so perfectly planned and executed.
Who is manipulating who, here?
Pepper Grinders
I lost my sister a year ago in November.
The anniversary of Beth’s death was November 5th. I thought I’d write about it then, because I was at least theoretically aware of the difficulties that anniversaries of deaths can bring. But actually, on the anniversary itself, I felt comparatively wonderful. I had emailed with my parents. My mom responded saying that she’d been reflecting on what a miracle we had found in the midst of such a horror, in that so many of our friends and relatives supported us in the best way that they could.
And then she related that she’d been out shopping for a gift for someone, and that she’d seen some holiday things that she actually wanted to buy, though it had been several years since she’d felt like decorating or celebrating. And so she bought these holiday things. “And I just know that Beth would approve,” she’d joked, as a conclusion.
She’s right. Socks with ghosts on them, yard flags with Easter eggs, nonstick quickbread pans in any sort of celebratory shape: no one liked stockpiling holiday crap more than my sister. My mom’s email was warm and it made me feel hopeful, and like other people were hopeful, and that there was stuff to laugh about again.
And then, just a few days later, I was grinding pepper in my kitchen, delicious Costa Rican black peppercorns that our dear friends had just brought back for us, and suddenly the little black balls were rolling all over the kitchen floor. Oh no! My friends gave us those special pepper balls! Conserve them! I figured that the top had come unscrewed and went to tighten it up, but then I realized that the hard plastic resin that the grinder is made of had devolved, and a chunk had fallen out of the bottom.
My pepper grinder.
In my brain, I know that things are not important: people are. But what if I’ve lost the person who gave me the thing, and that my continued relationship with that person is enhanced by the thing? A huge part the way that my sister expressed herself was through the careful selection and distribution of gifts. Do you know how much I loved my pepper grinder? It was the most perfect one, selected and distributed by Beth one Christmas. Suddenly, I felt like the pepper grinder myself, chunks falling away from me.
For the next several days, I kept it turned over, so that the remaining pepper wouldn’t fall out, on the 2 x 2 square feet of counter that is mine to cook on. This is a hotly contested space that I fight tenaciously with my husband over if he dares leave anything on it. Something taking up room on the counter turns me into a fox with sharp angry teeth. So when he asked — Hey, is this broken? Yes. Can I throw it away? Uh, no, not yet.
Finally I got all of the information off of it that I could, and then put it into the trash quickly and with my eyes averted. It was like gulping down a big calcium pill while trying to focus on something else so as not to gag. It was like looking away while getting my blood drawn. It’s ridiculous but it was like saying goodbye to my sister all over again.
Enter Christmas. I love the lead up to Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right, snow sparkling off of your nose and shopping and cocoa, but it’s also somehow one of the most fraught and saddest, because anything that requires you to take stock of whether you are as happy as you feel like you are supposed to be also sort of stinks by design.
I’d love to know what Beth really thought of it: I love it only the tiniest fraction as much as she did, and maybe she had difficulty with aspects of it, too. Now, I wonder, why aren’t we shopping for our mom or dad and squabbling over who is going to drive and what will be on the radio and stopping for some crazy hot chocolate or coffee drink? Why aren’t we in her damn minivan with our KIDS, who love each other the way cousins should, and packing them in and packing them out and keeping them up later than they should be up and feeding them too-salty food at Boston Chicken after we shop? If you get to do this with your sister, I am just going to say it: there is a part of me that is furious with you.
The last time I was actually out Christmas shopping with my sister, we were in a bookstore. She was moving very slowly with a walker and could barely speak, and she took forever and ever at the counter, and she demanded that my husband and I also take her to Land’s End, and wow, was she difficult and tenacious and bound and effing determined to get all of the shopping that she could in, in. She knew it was the last time. It’s not like it wasn’t awful; it was really pretty awful. Things are easier, in a way, now that she is gone. And I am moving forward; I really am:
I heard an Olivia Newton John song on the radio this week and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really did. How can I describe this: when something is from childhood, it’s like a mural of memory, and the presence of my sister in this memory is so huge that she’s like, an integral color. Like blue. There is blue in the memory mural backdrop of the song, but there is also green, and purple, and white, and every part of it seems to contain blue, be it bold or subtle, in one way or another. And this is such a gift, to be blessed with her in everything, but it is also such a struggle. But the other day, Olivia Newton John was not making me cry. I was just happy remembering being little, and at a great enough remove that I could take the blue in the background in stride. I parked and sat there until it ended, stunned that what I felt was unadulterated enjoyment, without the need for cleansing tears.
After her death, people told me that before long, I would remember the healthy Beth instead of the sick one. I think that last week was an example of that happening. There are visions of her I will never forget, and I feel that I should never forget—why should I get to forget these grim situations if she actually had to endure them, and her 8-year-old boy had to see them—but I am also having moments of remembering and appreciating the stubborn, pretty, chronically late, fiercely protective sister as a backdrop to my life instead of the terribly ill, furiously angry, unable-to-support-the-weight-of-her-own-head one. Of course, they are the same person, but to be able to have the first without the second, sometimes, is a big relief.
I have not yet bought one Christmas present, and when I realized that it was the 12th, I began to panic. Today, after a dr’s appointment in Manhattan, I had a half an hour before I needed to leave to pick up my son at preschool and I stopped in at Williams Sonoma. But to shop? Probably not.
Here is my relationship with Williams Sonoma: After I graduated from college and before I moved to Texas, I needed a bunch of cash, so I worked days at a university, and evenings at Williams Sonoma. (They needed extra help for the Christmas season.) Before and after my brief stint there, all of the Phillipses have always had a soft spot for this warm, glowy, well-organized, too-expensive store with its $11 waffle mixes and little jars of lemon curd and Christmas soundtrack and tiny cups of coffee with real half & half. Today when I had an extra bit of time, and I was actually alone, I realized that I was going in there to grieve, or to celebrate, or to do the combo that I so excel at. Linens from Provence, and crockery for $69, and heavy cast iron pans, and memories of an aesthetic admired but never in real life achieved. I got myself a miniature cup of coffee and I noted the waffle mix I would never buy for myself and I would have judged her for buying for me and I went into the corner and cried and I got another tiny cup of coffee and I browsed the pepper grinders.
In this way I had about a half an hour with my sister, and then I left.
