Susiej

I know Valentine’s Day has passed; but I didn’t have time to make these stained glass cookies until now. After several failed attempts over the years, I usually ended up with smashed candies running all over the cookie sheet in a sticky, layered mess.

Either the gods were with me this time, or I finally found a recipe that works. Don’t be intimated by this recipe; it’s really pretty easy if you remember to keep your oven at 325, and not 350, and to chill the dough first.

The idea is to use a straw to make a hole in the top, and to tie the cookies with string as ornaments; especially for Christmas-themed cookies. Except, I’m much more realistic now that I have four boys.  What’s the point when the boys will eat them five minutes after I hang them anyway?

The ingredients were pretty simple, and came from a Martha Stewart cookie magazine that I ended up buying because we couldn’t find the magazine in time to return it when it was due. Here’s the recipe:

Instructions:

1. Cream butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg; beat until smooth, 1 minute.
2. Mix together flour and dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and slowly add to butter mixture.
3. Stir in vanilla.
4. Place mixing bowl in refrigerator for at least 45 minutes. Don’t skip this step. The cold dough will not “melt” on the cookie sheet.
5. Meanwhile, unwrap the candies, and place candies in a plastic bag, and begin hammering it with a meat tenderizer. You’ll need to cover the bag with a towel; but be careful. We ended up making holes in the towel.
6. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
7. Remove cookie dough from refrigerator, and roll out to 1/4-inch thickness. Use a bit of flour to keep the dough from sticking.
8. Use the large hearts to cut the cookies.
9. Using a spatula, move the cut cookies to a parchment-lined baking sheet, about 1 inch apart.
10. Once the cookies are on the baking sheet, use the smaller heart to cut out the space for the candies.
11. Sprinkle broken candies into centers, being careful not to let the candies lay on top of your cookies.
12. You can either cook the baby hearts, or use them to roll out more dough for cookies.
13. Martha says to put the baking sheet into the refrigerator to chill the dough for about 15 minutes. I don’t have that kind of space in my refrigerator; so don’t worry if you can’t.
14. Place baking sheet in oven, and cook for about 6-8 minutes. The trick is not to let the cookies brown, as the stained glass windows will turn out bubbly and not clear.
15. There were a few cookies that did not have enough candy to reach the edges of the cookies; it’s hard to know just how much the melted candy will spread. When that happened, I just added a few more peices of candy to the centers, and they melted very fast with the rest of the candy.

I am definitely making a green batch of shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe, I’ll have them done before Easter.

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Filed under: eat, holidays by SusieJ - 6 Comments →

Dance club is a clandestine ritual that parents can only attend by invitation, when you are lucky enough to be asked to serve as a chaperon. I was invited.

First,  Dad was out of town, so the boys and I huddled around the computer together as we watched You Tube videos that explained how to tie a tie.  After several failed attempts, with the clock ticking, we bailed on the Windsor, and just went for a basic knot.

My son and I left, already sweaty from the stress of our preview, the tie dance. Here’s what I observed about dance club.

• The girls stand in a line; the boys line up directly across from from the girls to form parallel lines.

• The instructor serves as DJ, and coach, calling out the dance steps they’ve learned so far with his very Madonna-like microphone. He changes the music seamlessly (covering several eras of music).

• On cue, the instructor tells the boys to move down the line every 5-7 minutes. The girls stay put, as a different boy moves down the line to dance with a new partner every few minutes.
• The instructor has been teaching dance club at this school for 35 years. He’s elderly, and he’s hip.
• The kids have learned a lot… the mashed potato, the cell phone, the electric slide, and the box step.
• Also, the dip.
• I felt a bit cheated when the instructor said, “How many of you gentlemen dipped your Mom’s last week?”  I did not get dipped.  I’ll be looking into that.
• During the box step, the participants are asked to discover three new facts about their partner.
• It was the boys, some of them, that found their groove, and had arms flying and heels kicking in a flurry of excitement. They were truly enjoying themselves, and were sad to see the time ending. This surprised me. Some boys didn’t want to move, at all.

• Girls enjoyed dancing with other girls, and often paid more attention to the girls beside them, rather than the boy across from them.
• The energy radiated off the four lines of kids dancing in unison was intoxicating.
• During the Box step, the music was The Bee Gees, How Deep is Your Love. Tears filled my eyes at the prospect of realizing many of us will all be together again, in some shape or form, as parents at our children’s weddings. I looked around, and many other Moms were wiping tears away as well. I hope I am standing with every one of them at some wedding in the future.  Just so we can say, “Remember when…?”
• If none of those Moms are there at the weddings, I will trust that the Moms I am with experienced something similar, somewhere else, and I’ll try to form that bond with them, and share a tear.

I waited for at least 35 minutes for my son to finally make it down the line to where I was standing… close to my Nikon D80 camera. I lifted the camera to shoot, and my son’s face, in a panic, mouthed the word “No!” to me.

I chose to go with the “building trust” route, and gently put my camera down. I shot only hands and feet.

Next year will be even better, and I can’t wait to be invited again.

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Filed under: Tears, boy, love stories by SusieJ - 3 Comments →

There is the agony of chauffeuring the kids from soccer practice to play date, and then there is the ecstasy.

This book, Garden Spells by my new wanna-be-best friend, Sarah Addison Allen , has blissfully-entertained me, via Book on CD as I have transported my kids from points A to B to C to C and D…

Check out this little tid bit from Sarah Addison Allen’s bio page:

Garden Spells, my mainstream debut, didn’t start out as a magical novel. It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own…and my life hasn’t been the same since.

There is one cardinal rule we Moms must never break, for the sake of sanity.  Those kid CDs full of their favorite tunes do not work in the car.  Only in their rooms.

Books on CD can get you through weeks of monotonous carpools. You can usually find a great selection at your library. Of course, the trick is to find a book that entertains your passengers as much as you.  Garden Spells did that by introducing a little 5-year-old girl, Bay, who drank milk with sugar, with her favorite food, Pop Tarts.  Of course, there’s also Evanelle, who thoroughly delighted  my kids because she just  “hates summer.” Little do they know why.

Yes, there were a few times when I did have to shut down the CD because the dialogue got a little, how do we say it, too hot for little ears, but there are pause buttons designed for that exact purpose at your convenience with a push of a fingertip.

Once, at a particularly climatic moment, we were almost home.  I had to bypass my driveway, because I literally “could not put the steering wheel down” and ran an extra errand just so I could hear what would happen next.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that get us through the day.  So thank you again, Sarah  Addison Allen, for the passion you put in my little Volvo.  And also, thank you for the recipes.  Mabye I can work up some spells up of my own.

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Filed under: Life, reviews, try this by SusieJ - 4 Comments →

I called ahead to find the bypass; surely there was a way to get to point B without traveling through the environs of my youth? I was told that straight through the town was the direct route.

It’s not that I don’t like driving down the roads that lead to my hometown anymore; it’s just that I like to be efficient. If I’m going out of my way to go through there, I want to be sure that I can kill two birds with one stone; to get to point B, and also get some Brownie points by visiting my Mom. Without the brownie points, the drive seems like a waste. Do I avoid this place because I just don’t want to be reminded?

Or is it because once I am enveloped in a 360 degree circle by these hills, that I feel like it’s a homecoming; a homecoming that is illusionary. While it’s not as painful as it once was, I do find it rather annoying that I am, deep down, wishing things aren’t the way they are.

This takes an enormous amount of energy; I have none to spare.

So, with no detour available during this winter snow scrawl that left the back roads a bit treacherous, I was forced to see these all too familiar, from-the-car window views from my childhood not as destinations that simply take me home; but rather as a stranger would, seeing them for the first time.

This landscape I loved so well betrayed me; it let the world change before I was ready.  I need to blame someone. To claim this as my own, I would have to accept the mourning, and the betrayal that accompanies the fact that I don’t live here anymore. That I am an outsider. Now, I can see, in a detached way, these icons for what they are — historical markers, fragments of dreams, and striking landscapes.

Except, my heart attached itself to every scene I saw, vining a memory around each curve, each fence post, and even the clouds. Once I started paying attention, I found myself wanting to devour the landscape. Literally. I grabbed my camera, stopping to take a shot here and there to capture the pristine beauty of these roads that are so unlike anywhere else that I see anymore, anyplace.

With each picture I snapped, I was trying, in as dignified way as possible, to imprint them in my memory, trying to lift what is so deeply ingrained in my psyche to the top; so that I can access what I need in a moment’s notice, whenever the need strikes.

I stopped snapping pictures here; this spot is the recurring starting point for so many of the dreams I have at night – yet I don’t know why.

There are usually dark, black cows here, which I have always found majestically beautiful in their own way. The storm forced the cows to take shelter, I imagine.

The task, I realized was too formidable, more than my hands could click. The camera cannot link what I see with my eyes with what I see with my heart. Each fence post, each curve in the road, and each abandoned graveyard has tentacles that reach out to flash a long-forgotten memory.  With my camera out of my hands, I realized these roads have already wrapped ribbons around my heart. I cannot see these road as a stranger.

I needed to get moving to Point B, and I was getting too many questions about “are we there yet,” from my one-and-only little companion in the back seat every time I stopped. What a difference it would make, if I traveled these roads more often with him, to visit his Grandma.  Then, these roads would grab his heart too, and start spinning its ribbons.

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In my newspaper column this week, I revealed startling facts: There are 800 million people who go to bed hungry. While some Moms are forced to choose between utilities and food, the global economic crisis is stressing the supplies of  food banks at precisely the moment when the food is needed the most. In 2007, the number of undernourished people in the world increased by 75 million. We can expect that number to rise.

Imagine, finally getting the courage to ask for help, and there is no food on the shelves at the food bank.  Imagine looking at your children.

There is a way you can simultaneously ease your own food budget constraints, while sharing fresh, nutrient-rich foods with our world’s food banks.  Plant a garden, and give what you grow to your local food banks. With gardens, there’s always a surplus of something.

My best shot is a badge that I’m sharing,  (the code is below) to encourage everyone to remember the hungry, and to fill the gaps by planting a garden. Today, the average tomato travels 1,500 miles and requires 400 gallons of gas to arrive at your table — this must change too if we are to remain  a sustainable planet.

Code for the small badge: [a title="givewhatyougrow by susiejpics, on Flickr" href="http://www.susiej.com/index.php/give-what-you-grow/"][img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3282/3282964326_3525b137da.jpg" alt="givewhatyougrow" width="166" height="161" /][/a]

(Replace these [ ] with these <> to make the button appear.)

To win your own packet of seeds from Burpee’s Money Garden, visit here.

Our country’s history carries a strong correlation between growing and eating.  Vegetables were part of the United States’ arsenal during World War I. The government, trying to ensure our soldiers had enough to eat, earmarked funds for a national school garden program. A steady supply of vegetables would keep food costs down and save the War Department money. Backyard “Victory Gardens” fed our nation as the Great Depression reverberated across the land. Eleanor Roosevelt even planted a Victory Garden at Pennsylvania Avenue. By 1943, nearly 40 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed stateside were grown in gardens at schools, parks, rooftops and backyards. Careful preservation allowed us to export our harvests to our allies.

Every six seconds a child dies because he or she is hungry.

While there are many similarities between The Recession and The Depression, one common thread of both crises is the feeling of powerlessness. The Victory Gardens planted during World War I were one practical way families cut their food budget, and shared their crops. Harvesting crops also boosted morale. We only need to read Ruth Krauss’s book The Carrot Seed, one time to feel the victory of the child who learns that “it did come up,” to see how gardening feeds the souls of children. Growing food preserves our world.

But what about the work? Pat Marfisi, a gardener in drought-stricken Hollywood Hills, uses the “no-dig” or “lasagna-style” method of layering newspaper, mulch and straw directly over the sod to create a nutrition-rich bed. (Repeat, no digging.) The rich soil allows him to extend watering to more than 10-days. His garden, he says, “inundates him with food.”

If kids that help in the kitchen are more likely to eat what they make, kids are more likely to eat what they grow. A single freshly-picked snow pea could transform their palate; the sugar content of a homegrown pea is much higher than any grocery-store pod. Beans can  grow into great forts, and sunflowers make great houses for children to explore nature’s marvelous bugs. Now’s the time to explore seed catalogues, and books like Sunflower Houses that give step-by-step instructions for transforming vegetables into magical spots.

While we wait for spring to make its long journey back, take this time to ponder our extensive, food supply chain, the taste of a garden-fresh tomato, and the depleting stores of our food banks. When spring arrives, I hope you’ll be ready to share what you grow. Our dinner tables could use an infusion of good, ripe, old-fashioned flavor.

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Filed under: Life, column, gardening, news by SusieJ - 15 Comments →

My friend, who is a high school English teacher, was lamenting her reading of the Twilight series, which her students begged her to crack open.  (Actually, we don’t talk anymore; we just email each other.) She wrote,  this “is so poorly written but I can’t put the damn thing down now.”

The work of a teacher is harder than I imagined; especially when you must endure poor literature, but I give her credit for attempting to peer into the world of her students. There is some satisfaction that she is finding in the gesture, and for the bridges it connects.

I left my computer, crawled under my covers and was so relieved that I am still reading Jhmpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth. As I delved deeper into the book that night, I was tempted to email my friend back to tell her to throw Twilight down, and instead to start reading, along with her students, Lahiri’s star-reviewed book. But then, I stopped myself, as the material echoes  The Catcher in the Rye. Do schools still think that’s inappropriate for teens?

Her students came to mind precisely because Unaccustomed Earth explores the minds of teens, children, resenting and rejecting their parents view; and then suddenly finding themselves integrating those very facets of their parents into their own adult lives.

When my son asked me, “What makes her such a great writer,” I found myself at a loss for words. Indescribable. The architecture under Lahiri’s work is almost invisible — as is all great literature. Her sentences are about the present moment, yet still somehow reveal a unique, almost tainted, perception, culled over pivotal past events in the lives of each character. Each revelation is a new layer, as the core of each player is exposed. How does she deliver so much detail around her fictional characters, yet not bore me? Why do I want to know more about each person?

Great writing does the work of suddenly making the reader aware that this random story is truly about him. A rare birds-eye view of your own life that may allow you to alter your course of action, and take a path you may have not considered. Or, you could stop, now that you’ve seen where you’re headed. Is there relief that you will catch yourself from falling off the brink, now that you’ve seen what could lie ahead? Or, are you still bewildered by where you see your life heading?

Unaccustomed Earth is only one example of a book that does this; although this book does that job perfectly, there are so many great works of literature that accomplish this goal.  But perhaps, Unaccustomed Earth paints a picture teenagers are not ready to accept. Maybe it would miss them entirely, as many of them are just discovering their parents view, and are all too eager to reject it. For some people, Twilight may be the greatest literature of all time. Just depends where you are in life.

I’m still in that luxury state. I’m just far enough into the Unaccustomed Earth to know how delicious Lahiri’s writing is, but still a long distance from the ending. Usually, at that point, I began to twaddle in my reading, pushing away the finality of the book as much as I can. But, I’m not quite there yet.

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Filed under: Life, reviews by SusieJ - 4 Comments →