A Charmed Life

It's summer and we're baking

A July 4th tradition around here is Blueberry Tart. This is my signature summer dessert (even though I got the recipe from my friend Jeanne, who got it from one of her many cookbooks or cooking magazines). It's so popular in our house that when more than two pints of blueberries come home from the grocery store or farm, everyone starts asking me: "Are you making blueberry tart?" After the incredible taste (the secret is in topping the cooked berries with fresh just after baking), my favorite thing about it is that it takes just a few minutes to put together and you don't have to roll out a crust. I like to serve it a la mode and garnish it with fresh raspberries for the holiday. If you're reading ahead to see the recipe, you'll be disappointed, a) because I didn't invent it so I don't think it's right to give it out and b) cuz I'm just not gonna.

My second favorite blueberry dessert is blueberry gingerbread. One year--17 years ago, to be exact--I was visiting my friend Ann in Illinois and we stopped by a farm for fresh-picked blueberries. I made blueberry tart and she made blueberry gingerbread. Blueberry and gingerbread are not two tastes I would think to put together, but thank goodness someone did, because it's fabulous. Pair it with whipped cream, ice cream or lemon curd (I know, but it works). Yum.

This banana bread is one of Meredith's favorite things that I bake. This recipe is from the King Arthur Flour cookbook--one of my staples--and just delicious. Frankly, I would throw blueberries in this, too, but Meredith objects. It's supposed to be made with whole wheat flour, but that's a little heavy. I usually use one cup whole wheat and one cup all-purpose white.

So, that's it for baking this weekend. Now it's off to the pool.

What goes around...

Interesting, how things in life interconnect, especially with the Internet. Through my work, and the Internet, I've encountered two authors who have made my after-work hours more enjoyable.

A few months ago I noticed a blog entry on our Google alert for Cloth Paper Scissors. When I clicked on the link I saw that while Cloth Paper Scissors was mentioned in passing, the blogger, mystery writer (and mixed-media artist) Sharon Wildwood, mainly expressed her frustration that she was writing a Greek immigrant character in her latest book and was unsure how to research the life of Greek immigrants, beyond watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." She didn't know any Greeks to ask, and was asking the members of her blogging group, Poe's Deadly Daughters, for advice on how to research her character. Well, anyone who knows someone Greek knows that we Greeks can't shut about about our culture, so I took Sharon's plea to the universe as a personal invitation to respond. I did, assuring Sharon that "MBFGW" was actually not as exaggerated as a non-Greek might think, and also pointing her to two books that I thought captured the Greek immigrant experience particularly well: "A Place for Us" by Nicolas Gage and "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Sharon found my suggestions helpful and since then occasionally asks me questions about names, relgious habits, etc. I confess I have yet to read one of her previously published books based on a Vietnam nurse; she kindly offered to send me a trade copy and I will, of course, gift her with a copy of Mixed-Media Self-Portraits. This back-and-forth has been fun, and I can't wait to see her new book and discover whether she has actually used any of my suggestions or is just humoring me because she thinks I'm a cyber stalker.

So, last week as I was making my way down the stairs at our offices I noticed a book sitting on the ledge: A trade copy of "Old Maid's Puzzle," a quilting mystery by Terri Thayer. A new book's position on the ledge generally means that it is available to anyone who wants it, usually because it's not the type of book we review. Quilting mysteries--and there are a passal of them in this genre--fall into that category. We're all big readers at our office, but I'm the mystery lover in the group, so these usually come my way. This was no exception, but I took it with some trepidation.

The first quilting mystery that arrived, a few months ago, professed to be one of an extremely popular series, but you couldn't prove it by me. I couldn't stand the main character and only read the whole thing because I was desperate and because sometimes books improve as they go along. Not this one.

The second was well-written enough, but the connection to quilting was minimal--a group of quilters happened to be staying at the ranch where the murder took place, but they're weren't involved in the action at all, except as backdrop. If I'm going to read a mystery with a gimmick, I want the flavor of the gimmick to permeate the story (that's a rather tortured metaphor, I agree, probably influenced by the coffee-mystery series I occasionally partake of).

So, I did not have high hopes for "Old Maid's Puzzle," though I did like the charmingly drawn cover. I always read the author profile first, however, and was intrigued by the statement that she wrote her first book, "Wild Goose Chase," because she couldn't find the kind of quilting mystery she wanted to read on the market. Now that sounded promising.

The first page hooked me. The book opens with titillating scene between the main character and her boyfriend. Okaayyyy. This is clearly not going to be your average quilting mystery. And not only that, it is not your average "theme" mystery. Extremely well written, the book not only kept me turning pages, but had me nodding delightedly at the dead-aim Terri takes on the contemporary quilting world, from the chatty--and sometimes catty--quilter's listserve and the tension between traditional quilters and art quilters, to the tight-knit quality of quilt guilds and the strong willingness--some might call it religious fervor--of quilt enthusiasts to bring others into their fold and teach them their art. It's a satisfying mystery as well; although I thought I was a step ahead of the plot in putting the pieces together, I didn't guess the murderer until the last second, and yet it all made sense. This book won't be out until September, and she's working on a third; I'll have to go back and read her first one in the meantime.

So here is where it comes around: When I finished the book I went online to find out more about Terri and as I clicked through her blog I found a link to Poe's Deadly Daughters and--Sharon Wildwind! I know there are a lot of downsides to the Internet, but I really love how it connects everyone together--quilter and mixed-media artist, mystery writer and reader, author and journalist.

Lost and Found

That's me, the queen, in the center, with my mouth open. What's so unusual about that, you ask? Well, for one thing, I'm not saying anything. This is the climactic scene in "Once Upon a Mattress" where Prince Dauntless finally tells his mother (the loquacious and domineering Queen Aggravain) to shut up, thus overcoming the curse that has plagued his father, King Sextimus the Silent. Over my shoulder, the young man with the dazed expression on his face and the crown on his head is my friend Ted in the act of discovering that while his wife has lost her voice, he is regaining his. I had such trouble keeping my composure when, in the next moment of the play, someone says, "The King can talk!" and he strides over to me and says--eyes bulging, eyebrows wiggling, head swaggering--"And I've got a LOT to say!" (Then chases me offstage ordering me to "hop! skip! jump!")

He cracked me up. Still does. Even though this picture was taken 30 years ago, for me and Ted, time has not passed. Sure, he's lost most of his hair, while I've gained even more weight. But as far as our relationship is concerned, seems like old times. Even though we lost each other for about 25 of the years in between.

Ted married his college sweetheart while still in college, and moved back to Cleveland; I graduated and moved to Boston; and after a couple of letters back and forth, we lost touch. I often wondered what had happened to him. Had he and Jan stayed together (they were so much in love, but so young)? Had he continued his writing (he had promise as a novelist and a playwright)? Was he still acting and singing (he could do everything from low Elizabethan comedy to, well, anything, really)? Most of all, did he remember me?

We had been great friends in college, taking an instant liking to each other when we met in the theater department my freshman year. We had a lot in common: Both of us are gregarious and self-deprecating; both of us have a love of writing, words, and wordplay; both of us love musical theater. Both of us liked to chase after members of the opposite sex who were "out of our league," or, in my case, playing for a different team (a lot of cute, gay men in the theatre department, ya know).

Anyway, about five or six years ago I'm at my computer and an email from my (now defunct) Boston Globe account pops up. That was about the time when Google was first reaching its prominence and reporters were starting to put their email addresses at the ends of articles. The subject line said something to the effect of "Is this you?" and I recognized the "From:" name instantly. On the other hand, Ted has a not uncommon last name, and I was getting a lot of outside email because of my job. So I was dubious: Could it be? Nah, it's probably SPAM.  But I opened the email, and lo and behold, it was my old friend Ted.

I can still feel the leap of joy in my heart when I saw that email. We immediately began corresponding, first catching up with each other on our lives, then asking about other mutual friends, then growing philosophical. He and Jan were still happily married (and I suspect Ted still feels she's out of his league). I had married the love of my life, too, (albeit 20 years later--took me a while to figure out I should be checking out guys who were checking out women). Our parents had all passed away. We both had two children. When it came to careers and hobbies, there was bit of a twist: he was (and is) very active in community theater, doing plays all the time, while I hadn't been on stage other than to give a speech in all those years. He was also writing plays for his church and community theater and had written a novel that was awaiting a second writing. I, on the other hand, was a published, working (that means "paid") writer. True to our natures, and our relationship, I was all "Oh, gosh, you still do theater and actually wrote a novel--I'm not worthy!" and he was all "But you really DO it, you're a published writer, working for the Boston Globe--I haven't actually published anything!" (P.S. I was only freelance for the Globe, though on a regular basis. Still.)

There's a lot more to blog about on this relationship, including the time, about a year after we found each other again, that I drove 800 miles to Cleveland to see Ted in a peformance (he had no idea I was coming, though I clued Jan in), saw the performance, stayed up half the night talking in a bar with Ted, picking up RIGHT where we left off in college, and then drove back home the next day.

But this is what I want to say: About six months ago, I stopped hearing from Ted. Not that unusual; sometimes we go a couple of months between emails. So I emailed him, and they kept bouncing back. What happened? Why hasn't he been in touch? God forbid I should pick up the phone. The old insecurities made me wonder: maybe he didn't want get in touch for some reason. Maybe the Boston sports teams had just whupped Cleveland's teams too many times. Or, maybe, something had..happened. I Googled him and couldn't find an email address that worked. Finally, last week, I found one for Jan through her church (if you want to find a wayward man, contact his wife, I always say), she responded, and I heard from Ted a few minutes later. Turns out he'd left his job in December, didn't have my email address at home and, what with job-hunting and life, hadn't gotten around to Googling me again, hoping I would find him. And of course, I had been waiting for him to Google me. The first words of his email reply were: "Thank God."

A flood of emails ensued, proving once again that our relationship is special, that we fill a small but important void in each other's lives. We're not "just friends," we're great friends. And I don't think either of us will let the other go silent again. Because we've both got A LOT to say.

(To hear Ted's voice for yourself, check out his website with voiceover demos.)

Stainless Steel Star

My oven's gonna be on TV. It was "discovered" on craigslist. And I had no idea it was so talented. Actually, they only want it for it's looks. So Hollywood--or in this case, Boston, as it is going to be set dressing for PBS' teen engineering show, Design Squad.

Built in 1959, this double oven is the Norma Desmond of appliances--once glam and all the rage, but the world moved on to computerized models. When we moved into our house, this built-in beauty was deemed too old (too used, might be more appropriate) for my husband to use. As he is the main cook in our home, we did stove top, microwave, and take-out until we could get a new, shiny Thermidor settled in.

The old Fridgidaire was relegated to the garage, where it sat for nearly 3 years until Nick allowed me to list it for sale. It still works, I had the original paperwork, and the dials and stuff are actually pretty cool and retro, but I like to pull my car ALL the way into the garage, so up on craigslist it went, for $35. I figured if I got someone to take it away for free, that would be fine.

A week later, I got an email from "Myk" wanted to know if the oven was still available. Yep, come and get it. So, this young man in flip-flops and an earring with longish hair and a very personable demeanor shows up in a very large van last night with lots of other old "junque" in the back. I had to ask--what' up? Oh, this is going to be on the set of Design Squad he said, as Nick helped him maneuver the oven onto a dolly. Myk had been in our area collecting stuff for the show all day.

Nick and I were psyched! Not only did the oven go to a good home, but it was going to be on TV. For an appliance almost as old as I am, that's a pretty good retirement--way better than the scrap heap.

As Myk levered the oven into the van, I thought sure I heard her say, "I'm ready for my close-up..."

Preserving a tradition

My friend Ruth lives in the city. Twice a year, she comes out to enjoy a country experience: picking strawberries in the summer and apples in the fall. When we began this venture some 10 years ago, we'd choose a day, drive out to the farm, grab a low, wide box and spend the morning chatting quietly between the rows of ripe strawberries while birds chirped, dragonflies buzzed, and other pickers conversed in low tones. Occasionally we'd comment that "here's a good row," and "these are so ripe they're falling off the plants!" and "Ooh, look, it's like finding a treasure chest full of rubies." It was very relaxing. We'd pick tons of berries, pay for our loot, and go back to the house for coffee and berries with cream. It was a simple and inexpensive pleasure.

The last couple of years, we've been dismayed to find that some of our favorite farms are charging more and more for the "experience," not just for the berries. They're putting minimums on the picking (in other words, even if you just want to pick 2 quarts you pay for a minimum of four) or charging more the less you buy (under 10 lbs $2.99, more than 10, $1.99), plus an "entry fee" of $2, which isn't bad when you're one person, but if I take the girls with me (and who can look at their children and say: the grown-ups are going strawberry picking, but you're not?), that's 6 bucks before we even pluck one berry! The last time we went, it cost me about $25 to go berry picking. So much for a pleasant country outing! Not to mention, some places have become so popular with young families that they're overcrowded and the pickings aren't so good. Last year we spent more time looking for ripe berries to pick than picking--and we paid a premium. And at the end of the day, I felt rather ripped off.

I do understand that farmers have to make a living, and U-pick seasons are often the way to do it. I also realize that a lot of people with young kids come and the kids run all over the place, eat berries, and the parents don't actually buy that much, so farmers have to make it worth their while.

I also like to support local farms, and like to be surrounded by small farms--it's good for the planet and they preserve open space and the rural character of the area I live in. But still....

This year, the place we usually go was so overpicked that their website informed us that today, in the height of strawberry season, there were no strawberries to be had. So we were forced to look elsewhere. Thank goodness! We found another farm, closer, with no minimum (we bought about 15 lbs. altogether anyway), no lines, no farm hands barking orders of where we should stand, pick, not pick, etc. Better yet, there were plenty of ripe strawberries. Oooh, look, there are some ruby-like beauties right there!

Aw, shucks

Gee, I feel like an official part of the blogsphere: I've been given an award. The lovely and talented Bella Enchanted gave me and some other lucky bloggers the You Are Sweet! award.

Thanks!

A Guy and His Grill

This is Nick striking his Super Griller pose today. And really, what's more manly (and fatherly), thank a guy with fire, meat, and a pick-up--especially when the grilling takes place between a Red Sox win and a Celtics bid for the first championship in 20 years?

The last time the Celtics were in it, Larry Bird was still playing and Nick and I were still dating. We weren't even thinking of marriage at the time, let alone children. When marriage did come under discussion and we talked about children, the options were zero or two. I wasn't sure I wanted kids and he just couldn't think that far ahead--or that far into a commitment.

There were several turning points that led us ultimately to decide to have kids, but for me, one of the ones I recall most clearly was when I was discussing it with my wise friend Jeanne who said, "I can imagine you not having kids, but I can't imagine Nick not having kids." She was right, of course (she always is). Nick is playful, silly, kind, reasonable, patient, and relatively unflappable--all good attributes for parenthood (and all the things I am not). And, he comes from a big family, so the puppy-like rough-and-tumble of sibling behavior seems natural to him. The fact that he had a less-than-present father himself makes his own hands-on parenting all the more special.

From the start, he has always been fully engaged as a parent. Changing diapers; walking Olivia around the house in the wee hours so I could get some sleep, coercing Meredith to take bottled, pumped milk when I went to work; wrestled them into pink tights while they kicked; chasing them both around, bent over, arms outstretched to keep them from running into the street, or down the stairs, or over a cliff. When Olivia was little he was great at spending floor time with her--but if I was away, nothing else got done. Very typical guy behavior. But when we had Meredith and took opposite work schedules, it didn't take him long to figure out that if he was going to keep his sanity, he would have to learn to do more than one thing at once. Soon, he was taking them on field trips to the grocery store, the park, the hardware store, and so on. He cooked, did laundry, ferried them to birthday parties, and let them put his hair in barettes and bows when it got long (though he didn't leave the house this way).

"You're so lucky," other women would say to me. And I would reply that yes, I was lucky, and I absolutely appreciated him, but isn't that what any father should do?

The ones who are truly lucky, of course, are our girls, who have a close relationship with a father who is truly present in their lives. A father they can count on, one they can talk to about anything (even if he blushes to hear it), one who will brave the mall to take them shopping for my Christmas presents and wake them to see a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of stars. He is a dad who can discuss the wonders of the periodic table with his daughters one minute and choke up while reading "The Velveteen Rabbit" the next.

I had planned to include a lot of images of Nick with the girls in this post, but my scanner is not cooperating. So, instead, you get a picture of Super Griller. His alias is Super Dad.

Bloom Where You're Planted

Olivia spoke at the graduation ceremony and alumni reunion of her former middle school earlier this week. There we caught up with former classmates and their parents and siblings. One young lady, the older sister of one of Liv's friends, responded to my question about her college plans by telling me she was going to Smith.

This reminded me that I applied to Smith when I was her age and was not accepted. I harbor no bitterness: their rejection only proved how incredibly smart they are out there in the ivory towers of Northhampton. For while my young friend Catie is the perfect Smithy--brilliant, poised, self-assured, well-spoken and independent--the Cate that's writing this was only independent. And even that was mostly bluff.

The fact is that while I was probably smart enough to get in, I was not the best of the best. But I thought I SHOULD be--my B-plus average notwithstanding. I somehow thought, with my teenage self-centeredness supercharged by my only-child ego, that my vision of who I was--or, more accurately, who I should be (there's that "should," again)--was Smith material. Not to mention the romantic notion a girl from the flatlands of Ohio has of the rolling hills and ivy-covered walls of New England, especially in the '70s.

I had not yet learned to listen to the little voice inside of me that says, "Hey, you! This discomfort you're feeling? That MEANS something. It's a signal that this is not the right situation for you." That little voice was a stop sign I blew right through while reading the Smith brochure, writing my application, and while balancing cup, saucer, and finger sandwiches in trembling hands at the lovely tea some local Smith alumnae hosted for prospective students.

In reality, not getting into Smith was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. And not just because I would have been miserable there, constantly trying to measure up academically and socially--and most assuredly not succeeding. But because the place I ended up, Wittenberg University, a college I fell in love with at first sight, where I felt at home instantly, was so much better suited to my academic style and capabilities and my social comfort zone. There, I was in a much better position to not only find myself--in my opinion one of the chief purposes of college--but to nurture my goals and dreams, find and define my self, learn and enjoy the learning. In short, a place where I could blossom and grow.

I think, looking back, that while there were certainly missteps, disappointments, and angst during my four years there, from the time I stepped on that leafy and--yes, hilly and ivy-covered--campus in south-central Ohio, I felt comfortable in my own skin. It's where I first learned to listen to the little voice, especially when it whispers, "Yes!"

So, thank you, Smith, you taught me something after all. And congratulations Catie, Smith is lucky to have you.

The mouse, the hamster and the boy

So, there's been a lot happening at our house. First, there was my up close and personal encounter with the mouse in the cupboard. In our pantry we have what I believe are original (1900) cupboards hung over counters that appear (by the looks of the laminate and the style of the doors below) to be from say, 1959. One day I noticed there were wood shavings on the counter. I opened the cupboard, where we keep pasta, cereal, and baking supplies, and found more wood shavings and also paper shavings, and also small brown sesame-seed shaped items that were NOT sesame seeds, if you get my drift, and promptly figured out: mouse. Then I did what every self-respecting wife of a handy man does: I closed the cupboard and told my husband there had been a mouse in the cupboard and that "we"--meaning he--should do something about it. (In my defense, I did clean up the mess the critter had left behind.)

The next morning I returned to the pantry to find even MORE wood shavings and a lot more "seeds." Hmmm. We had removed everything that was in a box (and thus gnawable) but left bottles of things. I started taking bottles out and suddenly something small and brown scurried along the back of the cupboard. It was the smallest, cutest, mouse I'd ever seen--no bigger than my finger from tip to tail. Having been raised on Disney films and Beatrix Potter tales, I immediately gave it a back story: It had been out on its first grocery trip with it's mother and, having been dazzled by the varieties of grains and the taste of cornstarch (the corner of the box was nibbled away), it dillydallied and got left behind. Now it was frantically trying to find its way home and then this giant discovered it. Or something like that. Anyway, I tried to nab it with a plastic cottage cheese container, but the poor little thing misunderstood my intentions, despite the fact that I kept repeating over and over, "I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm just trying to rescue you. I'll let you go outside, I promise." I guess this mouse never watched Cinderella or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or at least didn't understand English, because he grew even more frantic and finally leapt to the ground and ran away. The next day my husband closed up the holes in the pantry, we disinfected the shelves, threw out anything perishable, and put everything else in gnaw-proof containers.

But that was not the end of our adventures with animals. We have noticed that one of our hamsters, Gennica, has been getting smaller, despite the fact that she eats well and drinks like crazy. (Not to mention running on her wheel at all hours.) I finally became alarmed and sought out a vet that specializes in "pocket animals." She confirmed what I suspected, that sweet Genny has diabetes--apparently not that uncommon in hamsters--and is essentially a dead hamster walking. It cost me $75 to find this out (though they will euthanize her for free), but it was worth it because the vet assured me that this is something that we could not have known or prevented. This is a great relief to Meredith who takes very good care of the hamsters and would have been devastated to think she did something wrong. So, when Meredith grows up and writes her tell-all about her Mommy Dearest, one of you please remind her that I spent five times what it costs to buy a hamster to get it diagnosed so she wouldn't feel guilty about its death, OK?

And then there's a different kind of animal: The Boyfriend. I use the term "animal" not because he is one but because he--as a boyfriend--is the first we've encountered as a species in this household. Olivia now has a boyfriend, just shy of her 16th birthday, and we are all thrilled (and her father and I are a little nervous about where we all go from here). I have no problem putting this info on my blog because Liv and Nate put it on their Facebook pages (so much for the Telephone Song from Bye, Bye Birdie!). Anyway, these two are a perfect match and very sweet, so we are all pleased (his parents, too).

Feeling Chairitable

I got the idea for this flower-filled chair from Susan at The T-Cozy. A few days after her chair planter appeared on her blog, I spied this chair by the side of the road with a FREE sign. The seat was completely gone, but everything else was intact--just what I wanted and at the perfect price! Handy Hubby stapled in the hardware cloth and I took it from there.

I get so many great ideas from Susan and her blog has wonderful vintage eye candy. She herself has reached a certain vintage and is having a special giveaway to celebrate, so go on over and leave her a wish, and maybe you'll be the one to come away with some wonderful vintage party favors.