Unti­tled

Well, from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous, as they say. The sub­lime being the inau­gur­al sum­mer din­ner with Jill, Joel and Jane (and ?), and Anne, David and lit­tle Katie. How per­fect it was to have every­one here for bar­be­cued ribs and chick­en, bean sal­ad, toma­to, moz­zarel­la and pesto (Jill took one look at the toma­to plat­ter and asked, “What is every­one else going to eat?”, so she helped her­self to a knife and the rest of the toma­toes and fleshed out the sal­ad). And my own invent­ed pota­to sal­ad, which was pret­ty suc­cess­ful, I think, con­sid­er­ing the amount that dis­ap­peared from the bowl:

Every­thing But the Kitchen Sink Pota­to Salad
(serves 6 as a side dish)

2 pounds new pota­toes, steamed and cut in half
1 large red onion, diced
2 bunch­es spring onions, sliced includ­ing the green bits
hand­ful radish­es, sliced
hand­ful sliv­ered almonds, light­ly toast­ed in a skil­let and cooled
4 sticks cel­ery, diced
6 slices bacon, pan-fried and well-drained on paper towels
3 ears sweet­corn, boiled for 3 min­utes and ker­nels cut off
1/2 cup mayonnaise
juice of 1 lemon

How easy is this: mix every­thing togeth­er (mix mayo and lemon juice in a lit­tle sep­a­rate bowl, then add), and toss. Delicious!

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My moth­er in law swears by hard-boiled eggs in her pota­to sal­ad, and if I’d had enough, I’d have added those too. Delicious.

Jane and Avery tram­polin­ing, baby Katie mewl­ing and wav­ing her hands, Jill dis­cussing preg­nan­cy with Anne and David, Joel offer­ing gen­tle tips on bring­ing small crea­tures home from the hos­pi­tal and last­ing sev­er­al years with them at home… I felt it had been far longer than a mere almost-dozen years since I went through all this with my own child, who took very good care of her cousin. Well done, Avery, and Jane could­n’t be brighter (I say with total lack of bias). We found a huge stash of cray­fish in an aban­doned min­now trap in the pond, and Jane ges­tured wild­ly toward them, say­ing, “This pond is full of crustaceans!”

Well, would that life could have con­tin­ued on that peace­ful, cel­e­bra­to­ry, gen­tle and deli­cious path, but today brought… chaos. Let me explain.

On Fri­day I drove myself to the local quar­ry to order grav­el for my piti­ful dri­ve­way project. Rol­lie had said eight yards, and the quar­ry guy said, “That’ll run you about 10 tons,” and looked at me ques­tion­ing­ly, as if I might have some­thing to con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion. “That sounds plau­si­ble,” I offered, and signed the cred­it card slip. Then as I turned to go, the guy asked, “Will you want that delivered?”

!!!!

Avery said lat­er, “I mean, nine tons maybe we could get home by our­selves, but ten tons? For­get it!”

So this morn­ing, in advance of the option­al deliv­ery, I had my phone on my bed­side table, and had seem­ing­ly just closed my eyes to sleep (I do tend to burn the mid­night oil when John is not around) when the ringer buzzed insis­tent­ly at 7 a.m. “Waah?” I answered bril­liant­ly, and a chirpy girl­ish voice said, “I’m sor­ry, I see on our receipt here that we were sup­posed to call you BEFORE we came, and he’s in your DRI­VE­WAY right now!” Oh dear. I dragged on some sneak­ers and wished vio­lent­ly to brush my teeth, but my mind was filled too much with images of a truck filled with ten tons of grav­el bury­ing my car to give prece­dence to mat­ters of per­son­al hygiene. I rushed out and stuck my hand out to the dri­ver of the ENOR­MOUS truck idling in the dri­ve­way. He stepped down from the cab and I swear: he was one of San­ta’s elves on off-sea­son employ­ment. All of 5 feet high, hands small­er than Avery’s, and if he did­n’t sport a long white beard, he gave every indi­ca­tion of doing so.

In the pour­ing rain, feel­ing fuzzy and sil­ly, I point­ed to the area euphemisti­cal­ly known as “the dri­ve­way” and said, “We’d like the grav­el right THERE. So I’ll just move my car…” and when I got back, I saw the truck had got no clos­er to the des­ti­na­tion for the grav­el than when I’d left. “No, no, we want the grav­el HERE,” I motioned. “No, lady, I’ll leave it right up here and let grav­i­ty do its work.” GRAV­I­TY? It would take a severe read­just­ment of the move­ment of the earth to make any of that grav­el move more than a hair’s breadth with­out heavy machin­ery. But it was rain­ing, it was ear­ly and… I had­n’t brushed my teeth, so I gave in. The rela­tion­ship between not brush­ing my teeth and let­ting ten tons of grav­el go some­where I did­n’t want them? This is my personality.

So the grav­el tum­bled out where I did­n’t want it. And then the truck advanced out of the dri­ve­way “area”, and I saw the bed of it clos­ing up, and tak­ing a big chunk of my tree branch­es with it. Oh dear. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I watched this hap­pen­ing and held my breath while some­thing much worse was hap­pen­ing: the truck neat­ly clipped the end post of my ancient and lov­ing­ly paint­ed white pick­et fence, and sim­ply… peeled the fence away. SERIOUSLY.

It all hap­pened in slow­mo. “Stop, stop,” I shout­ed in mut­ed tones, not want­i­ng to wake up the baby across the road. Final­ly he did, hav­ing dis­lodged a long bay of price­less cedar fenc­ing… “Son of a…” said the Naughty Elf, jump­ing down from the cab. “Son of a some­thing,” I silent­ly con­curred. For heav­en’s sake.

After express­ing his qual­i­fied and non-guilt-accept­ing “sor­ry,”, the elf drove away, say­ing, “Go back to sleep, now.” Oh sure, with ten tons of grav­el in two breast-shaped pyra­mids the size of small moun­tains nowhere near their des­ti­na­tion, and sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars’ worth of Con­necti­cut Preser­va­tion Trust fenc­ing on the ground in the pour­ing rain. Nighty-night!

Well, it was a long day of wait­ing for it to stop rain­ing and then Avery and me stomp­ing up and down on the breasts, feel­ing our hearts pound and calves ache, say­ing, “This is actu­al­ly fun, and such good exer­cise!” only to real­ize after about an hour that we had made NO DENT in the pyra­mids. None. So no! I received a lacon­ic and drip­ping wet “acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tor” and watched her count pick­ets and mea­sure inch­es and mut­ter unhelp­ful­ly. Sigh.

That was my morn­ing. That and mak­ing a big vat of:

Garbage Soup, AKA Kris­ten’s Gazpacho
(serves LOTS)

2 soup-can size whole plum tomatoes
3 small seed­less, or 1 seed­ed hydro­pon­ic cucumber
1 red bell pepper
1 red onion, quartered
1 large hand­ful nuts (any kind!)
1 large hand­ful bread crumbs (any kind!)
3 cups home­made chick­en stock
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup veg­etable oil
1 tbsp each: ground cumin, ground cloves
2 tsps ground cloves
salt to taste
cream to taste

Seri­ous­ly: so much of this soup is stuff you might have thrown away. For one thing, you can use tired cucum­bers, tired pep­pers, tired onions you’ve used half of for tuna sal­ad, or sand­wich­es. Nev­er throw these things away! They can always be ground up for soup.

Then, say your adorable neigh­bors bring you a rotis­serie chick­en to wel­come you home. You eat some for din­ner, grind the rest of the breast up with some mayo and tar­ragon for chick­en sal­ad. Throw the car­cass in a stock­pot with some cel­ery and onion and car­rot and boil for an hour. Strain, and you’ve got… chick­en stock for your soup.

Then you KNOW the air­line will insist that your child wants those two pack­ets of macadamia nuts from Lon­don to here, and YOU know she won’t want them. DON’T SAY SO. Take them, and throw them into your soup. And that heel of the loaf of bread your neigh­bors left along with the chick­en? You ate all the rest for toast? Throw that in too.

So grind up in your Cuisi­nart as many of these ingre­di­ents as will fit, pour­ing them into a very large bowl as you go along. Then mix thor­ough­ly, and VOILA. Chill thor­ough­ly (if you have room in your freez­er it won’t take long). Garbage soup. Every­one will thank you, and just think what you’ve used up that you almost threw away.

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Well, we sal­vaged our after­noon by dri­ving to Sey­mour to see “Kit Kit­tredge: An Amer­i­can Girl.” I’d love to tell you it was awful, a waste of mon­ey, a mean­ing­less for­ay into the relent­less mer­chan­dis­ing of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. But… it was love­ly. Beau­ti­ful­ly cast (although Chris O’Don­nell seemed a bit young to be the dad), gor­geous­ly cos­tumed, sweet­ly evoca­tive Mid­west­ern neigh­bor­hoods (although I think it was shot in Cana­da). A nice Depres­sion sto­ry­line, nice moral lines, but humor too, and emo­tion. Take any lit­tle girl you know, or for that mat­ter, any per­son who was a child dur­ing the Depres­sion. You’ll be glad you did.

Home to:

Cashew Beef with Red Pep­pers and Car­rots, on Angel Hair Pasta
(serves two, with leftovers)

2 filet mignon steaks, sliced thin
3 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps sesame oil
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1‑inch knob gin­ger, peeled and minced
hand­ful baby car­rots, sliced thin
2 red bell pep­pers, sliced thin
1/2 pack­age bean sprouts
hand­ful cashews
2 hand­fuls angel-hair pas­ta, bro­ken in half

Place the beef and soy sauce and oil in a shal­low bowl and mix well. Leave to mar­i­nate while you pre­pare the gar­lic, gin­ger and vegetables.

Put water to boil for angel-hair pasta.

Heat a large skil­let and throw in the beef. Toss well until cooked through, the remove with slot­ted spoon or tongs to a serv­ing bowl, leav­ing as much cook­ing liq­uid behind as pos­si­ble. Heat skil­let again and throw in gar­lic, gin­ger, car­rots and pep­pers. Toss over high heat until car­rots are JUST cooked.

Put pas­ta on to boil. Then add beef and sprouts and cashews to the veg­eta­bles in the skil­let and toss till heat­ed through. Drain pas­ta and toss with every­thing in the skil­let. DONE.

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You can always add more soy sauce if you need more fla­vor. It’s a love­ly col­or­ful, low-calo­rie stir-fry with every­thing: veg­eta­bles, pro­tein, a bit of pas­ta, just love­ly. I was total­ly inspired by the gor­geous chick­en dish my broth­er in law made for me this week: his was a rather more Ital­ian-ish dish with Marsala and parme­san, but the car­rots and pep­pers, and the noo­dles, were pure­ly stolen from him. Thank you, Joel!

So tomor­row is anoth­er day. I fear it will bring the DMV to my life, as I attempt to become legal­ly reg­is­tered (my car, I mean, not me) in Con­necti­cut. And a ten­nis les­son! Because play­ing on our own, just the two of us, guess what Avery and I dis­cov­ered? In order to play ten­nis, ONE of you must know how… to play ten­nis. Because all we did was try to serve (not so good there), try to hit back (hmm, a lit­tle rusty) and chase balls around the courts (very accom­plished!). So a les­son with Val, the swarthy pro­fes­sion­al, will be fun. And after a tear­ful vis­it to his din­ing room table tonight, I am for­tu­nate enough to have Rol­lie’s promise to help flat­ten my dri­ve­way breasts tomor­row morn­ing. Fin­gers crossed. Some­times flat is GOOD, trust me.