Moderation

My youngest daughter is a vegetarian. The rest of the residents of our happy home are not. It's a very amicable live and let live environment. We respect her right to choose not to eat meat and she respects our right to choose to eat it. All three of us have, at some point or another, attempted the vegetarian lifestyle ourselves. It never took. We loves us some beef. Because I swore I would not be one of those mothers who cooks multiple meals every night, I have taken to cooking predominately vegetarian at home. Every now and then I'll make a meal that includes meat and make a little meatless alternative for my little veg, but for the most part we only get meat when we go out to eat. It's respectful to her, it's better for us, and it's pretty darn cost-effective.

She is out of town this week, visiting my parents.

We are having a meat-orgy of unprecedented proportions. We eased in with Chicken Cordon Bleu. Meat and cheese wrapped in meat. Then we had BLT's - heavy on the B, moderate on the T, L was offered as an option but I'm not sure any of us took it. We indulged in a simple ground beef recipe that we all enjoy but that doesn't taste good at all with meat substitute. Ask me how I know. But last night... Oh, last night our meat-a-palooza got serious.

It was steak night.

Because we so rarely indulge, I gave Tom $20 and told him to pick up steaks on the way home from work. He passes a Whole Foods on the way home and I only have quick local access to Kroger. We never have steak; we should have the good stuff.

I'm not kidding, we talked about this meal for, like, three days. We were seriously psyched about these steaks.

He called from his cell. "I'm going in to pick up the steaks. What should I get?"

"The best you can get for $20 for 3 people. Quality over quantity. Ask the folks at the counter for advice. They'll be happy to help. They'll feel important."

The phone rang again in about ten minutes. "Three T-bones, baby!"

"Three T-bones for $20? That must've been one helluva sale!"

"I kinda supplemented your $20."

"By what?"

"By doubling it."

There was a tone of giddy anticipation in his voice that is usually reserved for those evenings when both girls have sleepovers.

I hummed while I prepared the baked potatoes and the corn. I hummed a little steaky song I made up myself. "Steak, steak, I'm gonna have steak. Steak on the grill, gonna grill some steak." I guess you really need the melody to get the full effect. It was totally a good song though. I could tell, 'cause it made me feel all tingly inside.

"When is Daddy getting home with the steaks?"

"Soon! Set the table - cause he's only gonna throw 'em on the grill long enough to warm 'em up a little bit."

"ouagh" (that's my daughter making a sound no mother should ever hear her daughter make)

Once those steaks were on our plates, there was no room for anything else. Our entire plates were eclipsed by meat. Grill marks on the outside, dark pink on the inside. Steaks as big as a dinner plate. Times three. We couldn't speak, we just consumed. Lea had no desire to supplement her meal with potatoes or corn on the cob, but both were on the table. No one had any room for any on their plate. Tom and I put a little dent in our meat then put a potato on our plate. Tom still didn't have enough room, so he cut off a huge piece of steak and stacked it on top of what was already on his plate, using the bottom steak as a surface upon which to cut his top steak into bite sized pieces.

At this point Lea was squatting on her chair gnawing on a bone. When I told her to please sit on her bottom she growled at me and turned away from the table, hunched protectively around her meat, throwing furtive glances over her shoulder from time to time to make sure we knew that that piece of carnage was HERS.

We finished it, folks.

I'm not proud of that, but we did.

When I got on Facebook the next morning, I noticed that all three of us had updated our statuses to mention our steak.

Folks.

Seriously.

This is a lesson in moderation. If we hadn't been so completely deprived for so very long, I doubt that any one of us would've behaved like animals. I think I need to send the veg to a friend's house at least once a month so that the rest of us can meet our base needs. A nice little steak - the size of the palm of our hands - served with a baked potato and a nice green salad. Maybe even a little wine for the grown ups. We'll use cutlery and everything.

But the story won't be nearly as fun.



I know, I know, No One Cares What You Had For Lunch. But come on. It was steak. And besides - it was dinner.

Morphine and Chocolate

Well, maybe just chocolate.

I wanted to go to Starbucks for hot chocolate this morning after I dropped Liv off at band practice. It was dark and cold and just felt like a hot chocolate sort of morning. But then I thought about the price tag on a cup of Starbucks hot chocolate and thought - "that's something I should indulge in with someone, as a treat, not take home and drink alone."

So I came home and made hot chocolate from scratch. Because I wanted to. Because I wanted the whole process. Because, I found, I didn't just want hot chocolate. I wanted to make hot chocolate. I wanted to measure ingredients and stir them over low heat. I wanted to smell the chocolate as it heated up. It took a long time. And as I'm enjoying these first tentative sips, I'm appreciating it much more than I would be if I'd just picked it up at the drive-thru.

And here's the kicker: It's really not that good. I made it with skim milk. I used cheap cocoa. It's - mediocre at best. So why am I enjoying it so much?

I think it's one of those 'everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten' things. Sometimes the process is more important than the product.

A couple years back I visited the Crayola factory with my family. Lea was a pre-schooler and Liv was barely a toddler. At the end of the factory tour, they had different stations set up to play with Crayola products, old and new. At the time, ModelMagic was new. Lea made a few things, smashed them, started over - in a word, she played. I played, too. No, I didn't. I worked. I started making this elaborate little sculpture. I was meticulous. When Liv started to cry and Tom suggested we move on I became very irritated. I'm not DONE! It wasn't that I was having so much fun with the process, I became quite obsessed with the product. Which I wasn't going to keep anyway.

How many times have we seen a child work for a long time (in child years) coloring a picture, only to casually throw it away when they were done? Our adult response to this is that they're not taking pride in their work. We retrieve it and carefully smooth it out and tell them how pretty it is. We ask them to tell us about their picture. The truth (more often than not) is that they're just done coloring. The process is over. The product never really mattered. And we are annoying them.

That's a difficult concept for success-oriented adults to wrap their brains around.

But I can wrap my cold hands around a warm cup of mediocre hot chocolate.

That'll have to be enough for today.

Painted Skies and Pie

I've been feeling a little despondent lately. You may (or may not - how self-centered am I, anyway?) have noticed my absence in the blogoshpere - I've just been sort of feeling like I have nothing to contribute. Not just in the blogosphere, in the whole general scheme of things. One thing a few weeks out of commission will teach you (you, in this case, being me - but I think the lesson transcends my personal experience) is that the world keeps spinning without you. It spins quite nicely, matter of fact. The sun remembers to rise and set. Dramas continue to unfold. You might be missed, but not much, and not for long. The place you held in people's days and thoughts is quickly filled in. It's the whole pulling your hand out of a bucket of water thing.

Sigh.

So that's where I've been.

But this morning, I had to take Liv to band practice. (Now don't say, "See? Someone needs you!" because if I hadn't been able to take her, arrangements could have easily been made. I'm way over myself.) I like taking her to practice at this time of year, because from the time I leave my house to the time I return, the sun rises (as it always remembers to do). Those of you who have been with me any length of time know that that is my absolutely favorite part of the day. Even if the sunrise is nothing more spectacular than the transition from dark to light, there's still just something hopeful and wonderful about it.

This morning's sunrise was more spectacular than a transition from dark to light.

We left the garage in almost complete blackness. In the fifteen minutes it took us to get to her school, we watched the sky take on cotton candy hues we laughingly described as scrumptious. Liv pointed out that she'd never thought about eating the clouds before, but today it looked like a swell idea. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? How about Cotton Candy with a Chance of Pie? We watched the colors shift before our eyes - it was quite a show. It continued after I dropped her off with our usual exchange:

"Have a great day, love you!"

"Love you too!"

"Always happy, happy!"

"Never crappy, crappy!"

I know, my life is just one big Hallmark card. I apologize to those I've made jealous by sharing this heart-melting daily exchange. Not everyone can be as eloquent and poetic as Liv and I.

Anyway.

So I dropped her off and continued to the McDonald's drive through because it's Monopoly season, ya'll home. By the time I pulled into my garage again, it was full-on day. No remnants of the cotton candy sky remained. All blue and white and bright. The transition was over.

I'd made it through.

Now what does this all have to do with pie? Well, not a damn thing, actually. Except that pie has been on my mind (and the minds of everyone I know, apparently) recently. Everywhere I turn, it seems, someone is talking about pie. And if you're reading this and thinking, "Oh! She's talking about me!" you're probably right - but I'm talking about somebody else, too. Pie talk has been everywhere I go. I do not hate this. I do not even mildly dislike this. Come on! Who doesn't like pie? Bye, bye Miss American Pie. (No! come back!) Pie, pie, me oh my. She's my cherry pie... (okay, maybe that one didn't fit quite as well...but come on...tastes so good makes a grown man cry - sweet cherry pie...) So, yeah, everyone's talking (and I'm singing) about pie.

My mom makes an excellent pie. (It's the law or something. Baseball. Hot Dogs. Mom. Apple Pie...) Her cream pies are good, but her fruit pies are to die for. I was well into high school before I realized that most people do not serve 1/4 of a pie and call it a slice. (And I have a weight problem! Go figure!) We had pie several times a week. Pie for breakfast was no big treat - we had that at least twice a month. MmmmmMmmmmmMmmmm - Mom's pie. The thing is, I don't make many pies myself because of this. I know mine would never be as good as hers, so I don't even try. I ask her to make me a pie when I go home to visit, and it's a treat, and that's that.

But one day, when I was living faaaaaaaaar from home. (With Shrek, in Far, Far Away...) I decided it was time to give it a shot. I called my mom and asked for the secret to her amazing pie crusts. She hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, then said, "Tammy, I haven't made a pie crust in years. I used to, but the roll out ones they make now are just as good with no guess work and no gambling." I was aghast. Mom's amazing crust came from the refrigerator section of my local grocery store? And I hadn't even noticed the transition - which must mean that it actually WAS just as good...

But you know what? Even with that little bit of knowledge under my belt, my pies still aren't as good as hers. Maybe I haven't been a mom long enough. Or maybe you have to know how to do it right before you start taking short cuts.

But homemade or bakery bought, one way or another, I'll be having a hunk of pie today.

Always (well, usually, anyway) happy, happy, ya'll.

Forbidden Fruit

How trite it is, to say "forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest". But like most trite sayings, platitudes and cliches it became that way for a reason. There is a deep and inherent truth to it.

Sometimes there is a literal truth to it.

Several decades ago my handsome hubby went a little heavier on the peach schnapps than perhaps he ought to have. The inevitable result of that little overindulgence lead to an aversion to all things peach related that persists to this day. He doesn't even like the color peach, so acute and complete is his distaste.

This aversion has lead to a ban on peaches in our home. Of course the girls and I love peaches. Of course we do; they are forbidden fruit. So we sneak them when we can, eating them outside - which is just glorious, because we can let the juice drip straight off of our chins onto the ground, or at other people's houses, or positively gorging on them if he happens to not be home for a day or two during peach season. (This is not a good idea, by the way. I really do not recommend trying this. Really.)

Now I know there are two camps on liver and onions. I have never met a person who is neutral. Liver and onions has lovers and haters. I'm in the love camp. I know exactly why, too. My mom was in the love camp and my dad was in the hate camp. When I was growing up, once a year he would go out of town without us for a golf tournament. Mom went into serious decadence mode. And for Mom, the ultimate decadence was ice cream for breakfast and liver and onions for dinner. That is how it was presented to my sister and I. (She's firmly in the 'love' camp, too, in case there was any doubt.) Liver and onions was a treat of the same caliper as ice cream for breakfast.

So back to peaches - the liver and onions of my own adult household.

This weekend we were traveling to my parents house for just one day. It is about a four and a half hour drive. My daughter wanted a peach for the road. I told her she couldn't eat one in the car with her daddy, but that I was completely certain that my parents would have some for us when we got to their house.

Regular peaches and those awesome little three bite donut peaches - nom nom nom.

Of course they did. My mother yelled at my father for having them on the counter where Tom was in danger of actually seeing them. (My mother yells at my dad a lot. He's sort of immune to it. Maybe if he'd let her eat liver and onions more than once a year...) Tom assured them that the mere sight of a peach decades after the incident would not provoke a replay of the pie-eating contest in 'Stand by Me', but it didn't diminish the reprimands. (I did notice, however, that he didn't spend a lot of time in close proximity with that counter. Better safe than sorry.)

So I had a peach. Maybe two. My girls devoured - I'm not sure - more than a mere couple, I think.

Peaches sort of send me into Bubba Blue mode. (I originally wrote Bubba Gump because I couldn't remember Bubba's last name and had to look it up, but frankly I think Bubba Gump is more recognizable than Bubba Blue so I'm gonna leave it here for you. You're very welcome, don't mention it.) : I like peaches. I like peach pie and peach cobbler and peach preserves. I like peaches in my cereal and on my ice cream (whether it's for breakfast or dessert). I like peach smoothies and peach yogurt; peach tarts and peach danish. I would wear peach body lotion if it didn't attract bees and repel my husband.

If they were not forbidden, would I have the same response? (Maybe. I could write a similar ode to cherries and I'm allowed to have as many of those as I like.)

But back to peaches.

It's human nature to want what we can't have, isn't it? Which brings me to beer. Doesn't it always come back to beer, eventually?


Are these the best beers in the world? Why no, as a matter of fact, they are not. But neither are available where we live, so when we get the chance to have one, we savor it. And we anticipate it. It's like ice cream for breakfast. We seek it out and will inevitably choose it over other - inarguably better - options.

Because we can't get it all the time or even most of the time.

Nor can we get these:


A simple, humble snack cake? Or a rare and coveted butterscotch treat? Depends on where you live, I guess.


Depends on whether or not they're forbidden.

Soylent Green is People

And flan is gelatin and gelatin is animal parts.

My youngest daughter is a vegetarian and she loves flan. She is not vegan. But lately I've begun to think she may be leaning that way.

She loves flan. Almost as much as I do. Which is, in case you may not know, an awful lot.

I've never made it. I get it at restaurants. And sometimes the grocery store, but not often. And once a student made some for me. But I've never made it.

So I was unaware of the ingredients.

I never thought gelatin.

And frankly, if I had, I probably wouldn't have gotten very excited.

But she did. Very excited indeed. Agitated, you might even say.

She is pretty firm in her conviction, a conviction the rest of the family does not share. As she is never obnoxious or preachy about it, I find it easy to be respectful of her decision. She never says, "you shouldn't do this", she just says, "I won't do this". PETA take note. Much easier to take someone seriously when they express their opinions respectfully. Just sayin'.

The more she is able to research things for herself, though, the more difficult it becomes.

She won't wear leather. Shoes.

Wait'll she finds out the upright bass is held together with hide glue.

Wait'll she hears about the conditions dairy cows endure.

Good bye, milk.

Good bye, cheese.

A little ignorance can be bliss. And bliss tastes a lot like flan.

We Want the Funk

Ok, I had a really swell post about my visit to the urologist all set to go today, but now you're just going to have to wait for that. Is the antici.....pation too much to bear? Sorry - I'll try to keep you entertained in the meantime.

I've mentioned before that my sister and I schlep pizzas at our friends' pizza shop. Well, yesterday there was a food service show sponsored by one of our vendors. The owners couldn't make it, as they had other family obligations, so they asked my sister and I to go in their stead. I had no idea what I was getting into, but am always anxious to do just about anything that takes me away from my regular routine.

We arrived at the show about half an hour before it wrapped up. Let me tell you why this is a really smart thing to do: No-one wants to pack their stuff up and they give EVERYTHING away! So we not only had a very delicious nosh as we worked our way through the samples at the vendors booths, but EVERYONE was giving us stuff. Not just a sample, but as much as we could carry. Serious SWAG, which Michael Scott so aptly defined as: Stuff We All Get.

Our bounty: T-shirts, bread, pasta, hot sauce, dressing, ketchup, canvas bags, stress pigs... the usual stuff.

Next we headed to a cookout and private concert. With Mr. Dr. Funkenstein himself, George Clinton and the P Funk All Stars. Did I mention that all of this included an open bar, too? 'Cause it did. There was a camera crew there all night - apparently they're working on a documentary - so if you come across a documentary about George Clinton in the future, give it a moment or two, cause you might just catch a glimpse of my sister and I. And wouldn't that just be a rare treat?

The P Funk All Stars took the stage a handful at a time, each costumed more elaborately and bizarrely than the last. My sister said at one point, "Looks like there's a Yankee Trader somewhere with a severely depleted inventory." Now I mentioned that this was in conjunction with a food show, right? So we have this stage full of serious funk - one may have even been tempted to not inaccurately refer to it as 'funkadelic' - and a mosh pit full of old white people dancing. It was so surreal. And awesome.

Let's see, we had a king and a clown and a pimp and a dude in a diaper and a dude dressed like a bride. There was a chickadee with angel wings and a top hat. How many free beers have I consumed at this point, you ask? No, I swear. All is true. My sister did not know what George looked like. They played 4 or 5 songs before he came out. My sister refused to believe it. "Diaper Dude is George, Tammy."

"Diaper Dude is not George. George is old."

"Diaper Dude is old."

"Diaper Dude is older than Pimp Dude, but he's younger than George."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes"

So she asked a stranger in the crowd and he confirmed that Diaper Dude was indeed not George and then she believed it. Do you see how my life is? Nobody listens to me. I can't fault her. It's been a lifelong model of behavior and she learned it from my parents.

Anyhoo.

Eventually George took the stage in all his multicolored cockatoo coiffed Santa Claus/Jerry Garcia glory. And there was a whole lotta rhythm going down.


And then there was that moment. Simultaneously my sister and I sniffed the air - eyes widened - is that? Sure was. That enchanting aroma of sweet mary jane wafting through the concert hall. We were a little taken aback, not because we find pot smoking so very shocking and scandalous, but more because Ohio has a statewide smoking ban and we've grown accustomed to not smelling ANY sort of smoke indoors, much less this pungent olfactory blast from the past. We started playing 'Spot the Pot'. We couldn't find the source. I gave up and went to the restroom. Apparently even when the beer is free, you still just rent it. When I came back, she said someone in the crowd had offered George a joint and he had toked it up right up there on the stage. I didn't believe her till I confirmed it with a stranger. Just kidding, I took her at her word. Because at that very moment I caught a glimpse of Angel Top Hat Chickadee enjoying a little bit of Mother Nature's herbal bounty, also on the stage.



"He's Probably as old as Dad."

"Yeah, but I bet Dad doesn't sing about his balls."

"Or toke doobs in public" (and to those of you who actually know my dad, I sincerely apologize for invoking that image)

So that was my completely unplanned and absolutely free excellent adventure. Man, I love it when a Tuesday night turns out like that.

Time to turn this mutha out.

Let Them Eat Cake

So my friend Beth says to me (she says), "We should take a cake decorating class."

"Oh, we totally should!!!"

She had recently purchased a cake decorating kit and was itchy to get some practice. I am always looking for an excuse to get out of my house. Seemed like a win.

But then we started looking at dates and schedules and decided we couldn't really make a multi-week commitment. I had taken a beginners course years ago, so we decided that we'd have a decorating day, armed only with what I remembered, what we could ascertain from the books I had saved from class, and any tutorials we could find on the interwebs. We are smart chickadees, and not entirely un-crafty - we could totally do this.

We figured the worst that would happen is that we'd end up eating an ugly cake.

We agreed that Beth would bake the cake and I would provide the frosting.

As I was awaiting her arrival, I made a batch of frosting and a batch of decorators icing. And I made an unexpected and completely accidental discovery. I have always liked wedding cake. I never knew why - seemed like it was just white cake with white frosting - which is fine and all, but just nothing I'd really go out of my way for. But wedding cake? Oooooh, I loved me some wedding cake. So today when I was preparing the frosting, I ran out of vanilla. I used all of the vanilla I had left in the frosting and there was none left for the decorators icing. On a whim I substituted almond. Just a little bit, not the full amount of flavoring that was called for.

And it tasted like everything I ever loved about wedding cakes. Awesome.

So Beth arrives with two beautiful from scratch layers of yummy chocolate cake.

And we realize that between us we have no food coloring or - more importantly - no decorators tips. I had books, and a practice board, and tons of parchment, but no tips.

Frick.

This experiment was gonna be pretty futile without those tips. So we started right off with a road trip to the craft store.

We got back and set to work.


This is what our two layers slapped together looked like. For my Western PA friends - does this not resemble a ginormous gob?


Beth got right to work frosting the cake.


Lea helped for a little while. Here she is piping on a little bit of the border.


And here's Beth piping some flowers directly onto Lea's finger. Yummy!


Our border looked a little something like this. It didn't resemble anything in the book, but we thought it was kinda cool.


Next step was some little blue flowers. We were pretty darn impressed with ourselves at this point.


Next we added these pretty peach flowers. Not bad for a couple novices with no real instruction, eh?

But then it got weird.

We started looking through the book and found instructions for making a little piped icing clown. And here we were with some horrifyingly hilarious clown head pics that I had found in the basement with my cake decorating supplies.

We did what anyone would do, I'm sure.


We made a two-headed scary clown.

With a booty that wouldn't quit..

Why two heads?

I think, perhaps, the more pertinent question would be, why not?

Why a bodacious booty? Child please.


Of course Pink got in on the act... And perhaps the vodka provides a little explanation for the two-headed booty clown.

Seriously, ya'll, You should have seen the concentration Miss Beth put into that booty. Can you see how she even raised one foot in a saucy flirty fashion? Man, we had WAY too much fun with that clown... We pictured it just gossiping and laughing away with - um - itself. Probably on a princess phone. And then we sang a little "Going Steady" from "Bye Bye Birdie". Because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because, really, when is bursting into song NOT the right thing to do?


So, in conclusion:

Delicious cake? Check.
Excellent company? Check.
Extemporaneous Show Tunes? Check.
Scary (but delightfully so!) Two Headed Clowns? Check

Sounds like a good day to me.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

I just had the most amazing lunch. All by myself.

I mention this, because as I was enjoying it - savoring it, even - I thought about how different that lunch would've been if I'd prepared it for my family.

First, the food: I sauteed about 1/4 of a thinly sliced vidalia and a thinly sliced cored apple. Then I used that mixture to make a sandwich with brie and whole wheat bread (we swear by Daily Bread - a local bakery. Our whole wheat bread is comprised of stone ground whole wheat flour, water, molasses, yeast and salt. Try to find an ingredient list THAT simple in the grocery store...) I lightly grilled that sandwich to melt the cheese and served it with a side of whole cranberry sauce.

Yum, right?

This is how I imagine the same meal going if I'd served it to my family:

Tom: Can I have one without onions?

Lea: Oh, GROSS! Onions and apples? GAWD, Mom! And what is up with the cranberries? When you said we'd be having cranberries I thought we'd have those good sliced ones like Memaw makes. (Note to you, gentle reader: You know, the jellied ones that slide out of the jar with a sickening "thawonk".) This looks gross. It looks like puke.

Tom: Don't talk to your mother that way!

Liv: I'll try it, but it doesn't look too good.

Lea: I'm not gonna try it. (Pushes it across the table. Begins to cry.)

Tom: No cranberries for me. Do we have chips?

Lea: Can't you ever just make a normal grilled cheese sandwich?

Me: You mean with processed cheese food?

Lea: (nodding enthusiastically) Yes! And would it kill you to buy white bread once in a while?

Tom: Don't talk to your mother like that.

Liv: I don't like this. Can I have cereal?

Lea: Don't hog all the milk! I want cereal, too.

Tom: (having dissected sandwich into neat little piles of stuff he won't eat. The chips will be gone.) Thanks, hon. That was great. (He'll have yogurt and maybe a little cereal himself as soon as a respectable amount of time has passed)

And this, my friends (that's me going all McCain on you. I'm Tammy Howard, and I approve of this post), is why I hate cooking, even though I think I'm pretty good at it. This is why on any given day, I'd rather go out to eat than cook for my family.

And this is why a disproportionate amount of my weekly food budget goes to cereal and milk.

I should give up and just give them what they want. But now that Liv has declared herself to be a vegetarian, there is only one meal the whole family agrees upon (Vegetarian taco salad. Our version features Frito's. So, yeah.) We have that about twice a month. Every single other day SOMEone is going to be unhappy with SOMEthing and I am going to be pissy about having gone to the trouble of preparing a meal (with love!) only to be rejected.

Fondue, tonight. Cross your fingers for me.