Summer Vegetable Ragout

I have to confess (and I’m sure you noticed), cooking lost a lot of priority the past few months.  Work has been crazy, school is insane, the garden is demanding, the kids’ activities have us running all over, and I’ve agreed to dance in Frank’s recital.  Between work, yardwork and homework, Panda’s class and rehearsals, my class and rehearsals, Redman’s games and practices…you can see where I’m going with this.  Let’s just order Chinese Food.

But bang and bang, Panda’s two recitals were finished, and last week was her last ballet class in Ridgefield.  And suddenly I have Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights free.  Welcome back, Kotter!  I can actually plan a dinner.  I can plan a week of dinners and there will be people here to eat them!  We can eat on the deck!  I can put flowers on the table on the deck while we eat the dinner I planned!

Life is great.

So all my cookbooks are stacked up next to my bed again and I’m getting reacquainted with some old friends.  Diving back into one of my very favorites, Fast, Fresh & Green, here’s a simply awesome recipe for Summer Vegetable Ragout with Zucchini, Green Beans and Corn.  This is a lemon-bright, elegant succotash of sorts.  I doubled the recipe below, subsituted asparagus for green beans because it’s what I had around, and I used frozen corn instead of fresh.  A little bit of prep time goes into this, but then it’s 1-2-3 in the skillet and just totally delicious.  Redman really liked it, which surprised me.  Then again, he’s always surprising me.

Summer Vegetable Ragout

  • 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
  • 1/4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/4 cup chicken broth
  • 2 tbsp heavy cream (I used half-and-half)
  • 1 tbsp Canola or Olive oil
  • 1 cup fresh corn kernels
  • 3/4 cup sliced baby zucchini (slice baby zucchini straight across; if you don’t have baby, use regular, sliced lengthwise in quarters and then straight across)
  • 3/4 cup sliced slender green or yellow wax beans (I used 1/2 bunch of asparagus, cut on the diagnol into 1″ pieces)
  • 1 cup medium-diced yellow onion (I used a red onion because I had half a one hanging out in the fridge)
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 tsp finely chopped garlic
  • 1 tbsp chopped fresh herbs (I used parsley, basil, chives, thyme and just a little bit of mint)
  • Freshly ground black pepper

Combine the lemon juice, lemon zest, and Worcestershire sauce in a small bowl.  In a liquid measuring cup, combine broth and heavy cream.  Set these aside.

Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the corn, zucchini, green beans, onion and salt.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the bottom of the pan is browned, 4 to 6 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook, stirring, just until well combined.  Turn the heat to low, add the broth-cream mixture, stir well to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan, and cover.  Simmer until the liquids have reduced to 1 or 2 tbsp, about 4 minutes.

Remove the pan from the stove, and stir in the lemon juice mixture and most of the fresh herbs.  Season with pepper and stir again.  Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the remaining herbs.

This and a cranberry-radish slaw, along with two rotisseries chicken, were dinner on the deck.

Black Bean & Quinoa Everything

All the Trader Joe chatter is about these things lately:  Quinoa and Black Bean infused Tortilla Chips.  I bought a bag to try at home.  Gone in sixty seconds.  I went back to the store to buy ten bags and they were gone from the shelves.  I asked a crew member if there were any in the back and he, and a few more crew members, burst out laughing.  ”Girl, those chips became like Peppermint Joe-Joes.  People are lining up at the truck for them!”  As a testimonial to how perfectly freakin’ AWESOME the crew is at Trader Joe’s, one of them took my cell phone number and promised to text me when the next shipment came in.

And she actually did:

Hm, usually my love has a better effect than that.  Anyway, I hurried over and scored six bags and there was this great communal love-fest in the snack aisle with a bunch of us loading up our carts and discussing the best way to serve these chips.  People confessed to eating an entire bag solo before dinner.  One guy insisted we try them with TJ’s corn relish, and I myself converted a few people to trying them with the peach salsa.  And then a nearby Crew member went in for the kill:

“Have you tried our Tri-Color Quinoa yet?”

We turned as one.  Eyebrows raised.  Pardon?

“The Tri-Color Quinoa.  Over in the pasta aisle.  There’s a recipe on the back of the package for Black Bean & Quinoa fritters that sounds like it would be great with the peach salsa, too.”

I was gone.  I love black bean fritters to begin with, and this sounded really good.  I ended up not following the recipe to the letter…merely because I was too lazy to get out the food processor.  I’ll leave it up to you to try their way.  Here’s my way:

Black Bean & Quinoa Fritters (My Way)

  •  1 red bell pepper, diced small
  • 1/2 red onion, diced small
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 can black beans, drained
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
  • 3 cups quinoa, cooked in chicken broth (I got confused here.  Did they mean measure out 3 cups quinoa and then cook it in classic 2-to-1 ratio, in this case 6 cups of broth?  Or to prepare enough quinoa in chicken broth to yield 3 cups?  I went with the latter and cooked 2 cups quinoa in 4 cups broth and the yield was enough with some left over)
  • 2-3 eggs (start with 2, you may need to add another to get the ingredients to bond and the fritters to hold their shape)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.  Actually, if you combine all without the egg, you could stop here, add a vinaigrette and end up with a very nice salad…

But add the egg, mix it all up.  Heat olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat.  Scoop up a generous tablespoon of quinoa, drop gently into the oil and gently flatten into a patty.  My first batch fell apart and I needed to add the third egg.

Fry until brown on both sides and drain on paper towels.

  

To go along with these babies, I had a salad spinner basket full of greens from the garden:  yellow swiss chard, beet tops, and leaves from Purple Peacock Broccoli, which is a cross between broccoli and kale so the leaves are edible.  And to prep the greens, I had one from the Department of I’ve Been Meaning to Do This for Years but Never Got Around to It:  flavored olive oil.  I don’t know what’s taken me so long, it’s not like this is a time-consuming, labor-intensive chore.  I guess it was just being in Homegoods and finding a couple of glass bottles for olive oil on clearance and deciding one of them would be exclusively for herb-infused oil.  And there’s nothing to this at all:  wash and dry sprigs of thyme, rosemary, oregano, whatever you want, and cram them into the bottle.  Peel and smash a few cloves of garlic, slice them lengthwise so you can get them through the neck of the bottle too.  Add a pinch of red pepper flakes.  Then funnel in your olive oil.  Stop up the bottle, let it sit a few days.  Next thing you know you’re using it to sauté everything, dunking bread in it, drizzling it over pasta.  When the oil runs out, just pour more in.  And be sure you arrange it on a cutting board with a bouquet of just-picked roses and a lemon, because that’s what all the cool people do.

So here’s the Money Shot of sautéed greens and quinoa-black bean fritters.  Amazing how that entire basket of greens cooked down to a wilted lump.  But fabulous cooked down in the infused oil and then braised with a little added chicken broth.  Top the fritters with a spoonful of peach salsa and you are in business.

Serve.

Die.

Visions

It’s looking just the way I thought it would.

Jeeps broke his back building the wall, I broke my back removing the sod.  We used all the rocks out of the old wall, and then scavenged the yard for every single rock we could find.  We even considered the many crumbling stone walls in the acres of woods around our house that used to be farmland.  We lacked a mule to haul them.  We toiled on, stacked and dug, dug and stacked.

Jeeps stacked in unseasonable heat.  I dug in the rain.  He lost the nail on his pinky because a dropped a rock on it.  I swear did something bad to my right tricep.  We couldn’t move by 6PM every night; the kids ate cold cereal or pizza while we fell into bed like death, primed with 50 Advil each.

 

One thing about our marriage:  when we have a shared vision of something, we make it happen.

  

  

We wanted an arbor for the gap in the wall.  Jeeps is very particular about keeping hardscape in line with the mission/prairie style of our house.  Translation:  no white, frou-frou pickets or curved arches.  I stepped back and let him find something, I’m usually fine with whatever he picks out anyway.  And he found this sort of Japanese-style one:

I love it and I can totally picture a Sweet Autumn clematis clambering over it.  Then we looked high and low for a bench that would go with the plan as well.  We fell in love with this one, it’s gorgeous but way too expensive:

This one is smaller but more reasonably-priced and we dig the rising sun motif on the back:

So the idea is to walk in through the arbor, then there will be that circular, gravel path with the bench at the top, in the corner of the triangle.  Apart from a few standing perennials that survived the construction, I get to build the beds up from scratch.

I’m starting with the circle bed in the center.   I have about a $230 budget which is comprised of birthday money from my mother-in-law (she always gives a check for your age plus $100), and whatever cash I squirrel away or find in the laundry.  And where else do you go to squander the stash but to Claire’s Garden Center?

(Cue Hallelujia chorus)

I love this place.  This place is the bomb.  I could spend $1,000 here in half an hour.  Easily.  But I only had $230 and after nights in bed with my garden books, pencil and paper, and the Claire’s catalog, I had a very definite plan and did not deviate.  When I was tempted by other plants, I took pictures, took note of the price, and sternly told myself, “Another time.  I said, ANOTHER TIME!  PUT THAT DOWN!”

So here’s my vision for the circle:

It all started with the iris and the geum, because I discovered, sort of by accident, that they look really cool growing together.  It’s not that their flowers look good together, in fact they bloom at different times; rather it’s the tall, spiky leaves of the iris and how the stems of the geum sort of disappear, leaving the bright red pom-poms floating in and around the spikes.  I love how it looks and wanted to duplicate it in the new circle bed, but since it was the iris foliage I was interested in, I decided to get this really cool variegated kind.  The red flowers against that green and yellow are going to be awesome.

I picked the rest of the plants to get a good stretch of flowers from spring to fall.  The Brazilian buttonflowers will be the last to bloom; I actually started them from seed and technically they are annuals, but supposedly they self-sow really easily.  If they don’t come back next year I can fill the space with asters or mums.

So that’s the vision.  Here’s what I came home from Claire’s with:

And here’s where it all will go:

(Sigh)….Yeah, I know, the iris is tiny right now and I have to transplant the susans and echinacea from my other beds, and the buttons are still in the nursery pots.  Besides some yarrow ‘Coronation Gold’, these are all the plants I’m buying.  Maybe.  [Editor's note - PUT THAT DOWN!!]  I’m going to establish the circle bed, divide or move some other existing perennials, and fill in the gaps with a lot of zinnias and sunflowers.  I think I’ll put some supplemental squash plants down here too.  Herbs, too.  But it’s not going to look complete this year, I accept that.  Eye on the vision, people, eye on the vision.  To garden, you have to have vision and patience.

(And by the way, I fucking hate patience).

Something Out of Nothing

Sometimes…it works.

You remember to set up the coffee the night before, so in the morning all you have to do is press a button.

You bought frozen hash browns during the weekend food shop, and feel smugly virtuous as you serve your children something other than cereal on a school morning.

You remember what day it is and who is going where.  You remembered to write the check, sign the permission slip, sew on the button, buy rinse aid, re-stock toilet paper.

You find a moment to write, to weed, to walk through your gardens.

The laundry is not only folded, but put away.

Things are where they are supposed to be.

You have time.

Your family is relaxed.  Your stomach is calm.

You have game.

It all works.

And from two potatoes, two onions and a bag of frozen corn, you make soup.  You whip up a box of Trader Joe’s Birds’ Nests.  For kicks, you assemble a salsa of halved cherry tomatoes, black beans, cilantro, red onion and more corn.

And everyone eats it.

I love days like these.

Arroz con Pollo (y Lágrimas)

I wanted this dish to be great.  This should have been great and it was so not great.

I’m depressed.

I did it for Redman.  He loves Mexican food, he loves rice and beans, he loves chicken.  And I love that little boy to pieces, I don’t need to explain to anyone here, this is not about sons, this is about dinner.  I thought why don’t I make this kid arroz con pollo?  He’ll love it.  And I’ll make it in the slow cooker, this will be a snap.  A slam-dunk.

Hah, it was more like a brick.

It’s my fault.  I didn’t think.  What’s going to happen when you put rice in the slow cooker for six hours, huh, smarty-pants?

Nothing attractive, I’ll tell you that.  It tasted all right, and Jeeps and I ate it, but the kids couldn’t get past the look of it.  Panda managed a few polite bites.  Redman looked at the dish and asked where the rice was.  And he was right to.  It tasted fine, but it looked like puke, there’s no nice way to say it, and when your dish looks like that, there’s no way to rescue it.  Even today I dissolved some of it in a lot of chicken broth and tarted it up with lime juice and cilantro, thinking it could pass for a Mexican soup.

It didn’t pass.

So live and learn, y’all:  NO RICE IN THE SLOW COOKER!!!  Let me beat myself with a wire hanger and repeat that.  NO!  RICE!  IN!  THE!  SLOW-COOKER!  EVER!!!!

I will give you the recipe now, verbatim, but note well that you should make yellow rice and peas separately, on the side, and then serve the slow-cooked chicken over the rice and it will be beautiful.  A slam-dunk.

Pollo Sin Arroz

      • 1 pinch saffron threads
      • 2 tablespoons boiling water
      • 1 large red onion, chopped
      • 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
      • 2 bell peppers, any color, chopped (I used red and yellow)
      • 1 1/2 cups rice
      • 2 bay leaves
      • 2 tsp dried oregano
      • 1 tsp paprika
      • 1 tbsp dried parsley
      • 1 28-oz can tomatoes, drained
      • 3 cups chicken broth
      • 8 skinless chicken thighs
      • Salt and pepper
      • Frozen peas
      • Chopped cilantro or scallions

Put the saffron in a small dish and pour the boiling water over.  Set aside.

Season chicken with salt and pepper, set aside.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat.  Saute the onon, garlic, pepper for five minutes.  Add the rice and stir until well coated.  Add the herbs and tomatoes (if using whole tomatoes, break them up).  Empty all the vegetables and rice into the slow cooker.

Working in batches, brown the chicken on both sides and add to the slow cooker.

Pour the broth and reserved saffron over all.  Cover and cook 6 hours on high heat.  For the last 30 minutes, stir in the frozen peas.

Garnish with cilantro or scallions if desired.

Serve.

Sigh.

And no, I’m not going to show you what it looked like.  Let’s just pretend it looked like this:

Spring Flings

A great weekend of friends, family, fun, gardening and candy.

Daffodils and muscari are thriving.  The tulips are starting to bloom.  Bleeding hearts are bleeding their little hearts out.  The crows are molting.

   

   

   

The seedlings are doing well.  All the tomatoes have been moved into 4″ pots and I set out the broccoli this afternoon.  To help keep the cutworms away, I read about this trick of cutting paper towel rolls into rings and putting them around the seedlings.

   

Behind the veggie garden was always this eyesore of weeds, rocks, burning bush seedlings and whatever cuttings and crap I would lob over the fence.  I got sick of looking at it so last weekend I thought up, cut in, planted, mulched…and now it’s one of my favorite places.  It’s also the home of Redman’s little pine tree; his teacher owns a Christmas tree farm and she gave each kid in the class one to take home and plant.  And name, if they so wished.  Redman named his Gasol.  As in Pau Gasol.

   

Over on the other side of the yard, Jeeps has started to move the stone wall to create the new triangle bed under the living room windows.  I don’t know what happened but my weeping cherry tree standard totally croaked over the winter, such a bummer (for me, that is; Jeeps always hated that thing).  But the Andromeda looks terrific.  I love Andromeda…when I was little I called it a “popcorn bush” and would strip off all the little white blossoms into a bowl to serve my stuffed animals.

   

Saturday was our annual Egg Hunt.  Last year it poured rain but this year it was picture-perfect gorgeous.  Jeeps broke out the bunny suit and cavorted with our neighbor Elizabeth, who not only owns a chicken suit, but dons it and crosses the road.  I always wanted the kids to wear hats or butterfly wings, and I always put it on the invite, but it never happened.  However, my friend Brandy stepped up and brought the baby in his bear suit, to which she stapled some long ears and added a pom-pom tail.  Too bad he can’t eat chocolate yet, I would’ve totally given him a Cadbury egg.

   

   

And then it was Easter Sunday.  We got up and had candy for breakfast; I worked outside, the boys watched the Knick game, Panda was…somewhere, I don’t know where she was but she came back for dinner which was roasted turkey breast with potatoes, carrots, red onions, brussels sprouts, and green beans.  Followed by more candy.

Happy Easter and Passover to all.

Are You All Right, Sister?

I was in Starbucks with Redman, and we were examining the goodies in the display case when a black gentleman spoke to me.

“Excuse me, sister, are you on line?”

“No, no, you go, we’re deciding,” I said.

“Thank you, sister,” he said, and stepped up to order.  Meanwhile Redman was watching, and, I could tell, processing.  I got my coffee, he got his treat, and we sat down at a table.  It took him all of four seconds to dive in.

“Why did that man call you ‘sister’?”

I smiled.  “Well he didn’t know my name, and maybe he likes to say ‘sister’ instead of ‘ma’am’.”

“Do you like that?”

“I do actually,” I said. 

He was done with the topic and into his game.  I drank my coffee and thought about the salutation of “sister”, and a very vivid memory I have of its usage.  It was a train ride, nearly seventeen years ago.  Jeeps and I had broken up, and I was taking the train home from Manhattan with a bag full of belongings.  You know that ride, right?  It’s as good as it gets.  I had no recollection of how I’d become so entrenched in his apartment, and now I figured it was going to take me a month to extricate myself, and I could not wrap my mind around the fact that I was no longer part of a couple.  I sat by the window, pressed up against the side of the car, wanting to disappear in the crack between the seat and the wall, wanting to be invisible, wanting to die.   I’m not one for crying in public but I was exhausted, and when the tears came, fuck it, I just let them fall.  I was one miserable mess and the goddamn train wasn’t even at 125th Street.

Then someone tapped my arm.

“Are you all right, sister?”  This black woman was sitting there.  When did she sit down?  I had no idea but there she was, reaching across the empty middle seat between us and offering me a tissue.  I took it and tried to smile.  “Heartbreak hell,” I said.

She nodded.  “I thought that might be it.  I’m sorry.  You go ahead and cry.”  She opened a book and started to read and left me be.  I looked back out the window, clutching my ball of damp tissue, strangely touched by the “sister” she had used.

Are you all right, sister?

Sister.

I liked that she called me sister.  Why didn’t we all do that, why wasn’t that salutation the norm for all women, black, white or otherwise?  It should feel natural to call an unknown woman of my own age bracket “sister” rather than “Hey, um…” or worse, “ma’am.”  

So I tried it out, not long after, in the mall when I saw a woman struggling to get on the escalator with a stroller and a toddler.  I said, ”Do you need help, sister?”  She smiled and thanked me and we got her safely aboard, but my insides had cringed.  I felt dumb.  ”Sister” felt phony, like trying on a jacket three sizes too small.  I didn’t try it again.

Fairly recently, I was on line at a deli in the city, wearing one of my favorite grey sheaths, and the woman behind me tapped my shoulder and said, “Sister, you are wearing the hell out of that dress.”  I thanked her, burning with pleasure, and jealous of how natural and wonderful “sister” sounded in her mouth.  Damn her.  

So anyway, while I can’t say it, I’m always acutely aware of the sisterhood.  We women…we’re all in this together, but too often in our youth we view each other as competition.  It’s in our later, wiser years that we come to realize how much we rely on each other – not only our close girlfriends, but more and more often, strangers.

This past Christmas I participated in something over on Rants from Mommyland, a wildly funny and irreverent blog about motherhood that has at its core a strong sense of sisterhood, and a belief that we hookers have got to stick together.  And so the founders, Kate and Lydia, tried a small social experiment called Helping Hookers:  if you were in need that holiday season, email them with your name (or not) your situation (or not) and where you could really use a gift card to help with your kids’ holiday.  If you could help, email your contact information.  The needy would be matched up with the helping.

Well, the experiment went viral and within two weeks Kate and Lydia were overwhelmed by the needs and even more overwhelmed by the volunteers.  Match me up.  Match me up with two women.  I can take five, give me an address, I’m going to Target today.  For a while the helping outnumbered the needy, but slowly the scale began to tip, more and more needful women were coming forward, Kate and Lydia were working around the clock, matching up sisters and posting the incredible stories that were coming in about women who had received a Helping Hooker.  Finally they had to end it to save their sanity but what an amazing something they created out of basically nothing.  And in all the thousands of matches they put together, they only had one story of confirmed fraud.  One.  It restores your faith.

Anyway, I participated and was matched to a woman, Maura, in Poughkeepsie, and I sent her a Target Gift Card.  Some volunteers had chosen to be anonymous but I signed my name on the card and put my return address on the envelope.  She wrote me after New Year’s, a beautiful, beautiful letter of thanks and a heartbreaking situation I won’t repeat here, but the $100 I sent her helped give her kids a Christmas.

I may never meet or interact with Maura again in my life.  But she is my sister.  I sponsor a woman in Afghanistan through Women for Women International, and a child in Mozambique through Save the Children.  They are both my sisters.  These are big, globally-organized things.  In the every day world, I try to sponsor women in other ways:  just by saying something.  It’s so simple and has such an impact but too often things go unsaid. 

I try to say them.  If I see a woman wearing a knockout pair of shoes:  I tell her.  If the dress is fabulous: I tell her.  Because when a woman, a stranger, leans into your space and gives you a tissue or a compliment, she becomes your sister.   That woman on the train, she is my sister, and I often think of her, seventeen years later when I am now forever entrenched with Jeeps, and I thank her for being in that seat, thank her just for being socially fearless and asking: 

Are you all right, sister?

Yes.  I’m all right.  Thank you, sister.

Williams-Sonoma Pasta

I bought myself two cookbooks last week.  One is the original Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, because I can’t live any longer without my own copy.  And the other is Williams-Sonoma Pasta.  This is a bloody great book.  I always see it in my local Homegoods, I always stop and browse through it and take mental notes.  Finally I decided it was getting ridiculous, I should have it for my own.

So what to make first?!  I hate that with a new cookbook I end up in a funk of indecision.  But after taking it to bed a few times (shut up) tonight I took their recipe for Linguine with Italian Tuna and Cherry Tomatoes and tweaked it a little to suit what I had on hand.  I’ve never cooked with the Italian tuna in olive oil, but I make tuna cakes all the time so I wasn’t worried it would be rejected.  I had no linguini so I used cavatappi.  I had cherry tomatoes and I also had some cauliflower that needed to be used.  The recipe called for sun-dried tomatoes and capers, which I did not have, nor did I have spring onions.  But the garden is full of chives so I cut off a bunch and substituted, and at the end I threw in some diced mozzarella.

And it came out AWESOME.  The flavor from the tuna wasn’t too strong, it just gave a really subtle, background savoriness.  I really like the combination of pasta and cauliflower, but I wasn’t generous enough with the cherry tomatoes, next time I will use the whole two pints.

Pasta with Italian Tuna and Vegetables

  • 2 pints cherry tomatoes (I used 1 pint mixed red and orange)
  • 1 head cauliflower cut into small florets (my addition)
  • 8 green spring onions, including green parts, thinly sliced (I used a small handful of chives and snipped them with scissors)
  • 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup olive oil plus more for drizzling
  • 1 lb linguine (I used cavatappi)
  • About 6 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and thinly sliced (I didn’t have)
  • 2 6-oz cans Italian tuna in olive oil, drained and flaked
  • 1/4 cup capers (I didn’t have)
  • Large handful of Italian parsley leaves, coarsely chopped
  • About a dozenciligene -small mozzarella cheese balls – halved

Preheat oven to 450.  Start water for pasta boiling.

Toss cauliflower florets in a large bowl with 1/2 the olive oil, salt and pepper.  Spread on baking sheet

In same large bowl, toss cherry tomatoes, onions (or chives), and garlic with the rest of the olive oil, salt and pepper.

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Roast cauliflower for 10 minutes, then add tomatoes to the baking sheet and roast another 10 minutes.  I miraculously timed this so that the tomatoes went into the oven at the same time the pasta went into the water.  Thank you.  Thank you, I try my best.

In a large bowl, put the tuna, parsley, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and diced cheese.

Drain the pasta and add to bowl.

Tip veggies off tray into bowl.  Toss all well.  Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

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Is the toast burning…or is your house burning?

I have a whole bunch of blogs bookmarked that I take in with my morning coffee, and Free Range Kids is the top of the list. Today her blog featured an article that should have been a story of a little girl’s resourcefulness and a community’s strength. Instead it was made sensational news under the headline “A Parent’s Worst Nightmare!”

Now make no mistake – if your kid is not where he or she is supposed to be, your heart goes into your throat. You can’t help it. And I’m not saying it’s not a scary thing. But let’s step back and look two independent facts:

1) FBI Statistics reveal that there has been no increase in crime against children. Your child is more likely to get struck by lightning than be abducted. Furthermore, the majority of abductions are committed by people the child knows, not strangers.

2) The world is an imperfect place. Mistakes are known to occur. People are human. Shit happens.

Yes, it is frightening when your child isn’t where they are supposed to be. In this case, yes, the school, on its second day of the session, in the chaos of sorting out who goes on what bus, missed that this little girl boarded the bus for daycare instead of the bus for home. Yes, the little girl arrived at an empty house and was upset, but through her tears she had the wherewithal to go to a neighbor’s house. Calls were made. The grandmother was sent for. Cookies were served. Everything worked out fine.

And the mother went to the newspapers.

What. The. Fuck.

Look, maybe I’m in the minority here, but this is overreacting. If she had to seek out fame for her “ordeal”, then it should have been spun as a positive story. Because it was one! The child regrouped and went to a neighbor! Great job, honey, that was smart thinking! And the neighbor took her in and gave her a snack and called the mother. Mrs. So-and-So, I am so grateful to have you as a neighbor, thank you so much. A mistake was made but it worked out fine. Yes, Ms. Principal, it was a little scary for a few minutes, but all is well. Under the circumstances, I can forgive the mix-up, I’m sure it won’t happen again. And hey, I’m glad she knows what to do when things like this happen, that’s really the greater lesson, isn’t it?

No. A parent’s worst nightmare! This is unacceptable! The school shall pay, heads will roll, my child is damaged forever!!

Actually, honey, your kid is fine. It’s you who’s acting like a lunatic. One of the commentators on the blog post said something great, I think she was quoting her grandmother: “If you behave like this when the toast is burning, what will you do when the house is on fire?”

Think about it. If there is a break in the routine of any magnitude, would you want your child to be the one who keeps calm and goes with the flow, or the one who is hysterical? Most of us want the former, but there lies the break in parenting style: some parents don’t want ANYTHING to EVER happen to their child. As a result, they have children who can’t do anything when something happens. Other parents teach their kids to deal efficiently with every day glitches, with confidence that doing so will render them able to keep a cool head when faced with a real emergency. And face it, which is more likely to happen in a lifetime – burned toast or a house fire?

We tend to run what-if scenarios with our kids that involve dire circumstances: fire, severe injury, abduction. Yes, your child needs to know how to get out of the house, how to dial 911, and to not take rides from people he doesn’t know, and when in doubt, scream loud and run away.

BUT! Do you also prepare your child for the every-day, mundane shit that invariably happens because life is chaotic and messy and people are human and make mistakes? What are the things that are so much more likely to happen, and could your kids deal?

So let’s brainstorm and play a game of “What if?” Try running a few of these past your children, or come up with your own to share. The only rules are 1) no life-threatening emergencies and 2) try to steer their first reaction away from, “Call for Mom and Dad.”

Start off simple. Here’s one that I always toss at Redman when he’s playing outside: “What if your ball rolls into the street?” That’s a good one, right? It happens. Balls are round, the driveway is smooth, kids throw wild. The ball rolls into the street. What do you do? (Or rather, what do you NOT do?)

You’re playing in the yard and you see a raccoon. In the daytime. Lumbering along looking kind of dopey and…weird. What do you do? (Depending on where you live, you could extend this to bobcats, coyotes or bears)

A dog wanders into your yard. Nice dog, friendly dog, looks a little lonely. Maybe he’s lost. Suppose it’s a really hot day and he’s panting like crazy. What do you do? (No you may not keep him)

Let’s take one right from the source: You go to an after-school program on Mondays, which involves going on a different bus. However, we just had a long holiday weekend with Monday off so even though today is Tuesday, your brain thinks it’s Monday, so you get on the after-school program bus. Oops. It’s Tuesday. You were supposed to go on the home bus. Nobody is home. What do you do?

Now let’s up the ante a little. Suppose Mom and/or Dad (whatever the case may be) is in bed with a horrible flu, broken leg – point being all the usually responsible adults cannot get up on a school morning. Could you get yourself ready, get yourself breakfast, and get yourself to school? (This last part of course depends on how that normally happens – does your child walk to school, walk to a bus stop, or get taken to a bus stop? In any case, anyone can be felled by stomach flu at any time, so what is the Plan?)

Same situation, but in the evening. Mom and Dad are down for the count. Can you make yourself some dinner? (NOTE: a PB & J, or a bowl of cereal is a perfectly acceptable dinner!!! This is a test of resourcefulness, not cooking technique.)

From somewhere in the house, you hear your Mom or Dad bellow, “OH MY GOD, TURN OFF THE WATER MAIN!” Do you know what that is, where that is, and how to turn it off?

You drop a glass and it shatters. Mom and Dad are outside doing yardwork, and you are not wearing shoes. What do you do? (No screaming. Extra credit for knowing where the vacuum cleaner is)

While outside playing you fall in the muddy creek, swamp, whatever wet and muddy place there is to fall into. Your pants, shoes, and socks are soaked and muddy. What do you do? (Obviously changing clothes is the answer, but the REAL point here is that they know to a) not walk into the house with muddy shoes and b) that they leave the soaked and muddy clothes in an appropriate place, like the laundry room, mudroom, the garage or back steps, etc.)

You shart. (Come on!!! Life is messy and it happens!!)

Play along with me. Leave a comment with some non-life threatening situations you’d want your kid to be able to handle. Let’s not worry about everything that might happen, and worry about what is likely to happen.

Faith in Germination

Usually I’m a very trusting person, but when it comes to bulbs and seedlings, I just have no faith.

It’s an awed kind of faithlessness…after all these years of gardening, I guess I still can’t believe the miracle of it.  That from tiny seeds grow such beautiful things.  My friend Marie said pretty much the same thing on Facebook the other day:  “After almost 40 years of life I am still astonished and thrilled each spring when the forsythia bloom…”  You can imagine I couldn’t hit “like” enough on that one.  Every spring I start my seedlings in my Bio-Domes (available at Park Seed, a very worthwhile investment, mine have lasted for years) and put them in the window.  I swear, an hour later, I am peering down into the cells.  Anything yet?  No?  With the direct-sown crops, I’m even more of a wreck, down on my knees searching the soil where I broadcasted lettuce seeds and peas.  They’re not coming up.  They won’t come up.  It’s been a week.  This is the year when they’re not going to sprout.

But they do.

You’ll notice I gave peas a chance.  Not only that, but I mixed the garden peas in with flowering sweet peas.  This should be interesting…

My bulb fear is a little more justified.  Three years ago I planted over two hundred daffodils along the lower stone wall.  The show that spring was spectacular.  But the following year, there was no show.  Not one.  I’m not kidding – NOT ONE CAME BACK!  If I hadn’t taken pictures of the blooms, I would swear I had hallucinated the whole thing.  To this day, I don’t know what became of them.  I assume something ate them.  But ate all of them?  From underground??  It’s bizarre.  So you can imagine my angst this year, trying to recall the exact location of all the daffodils and alliums I dropped in October.  Every day, poking around the beds for the telltale shoots.  I put some here.  I think.  Maybe here?  Surely here.  I know I put them here.  Where are they?  They’re not coming up.  They have to come up.  Everyone else’s are coming up.  Some people’s are in bloom.  Where are mine?  I’m a failure.  Where are they?  They’re not coming up.  I’ve been burgled!!

But they do.  They did.

So my seedlings are started, and thanks to this unusual spring I have been busy busy busy outside.  The cool weather crops are sown, the beds are raked out, and I’ve been occupied with the usual rearranging of plants based on what was successful last year, and what was a failure.  I’m waiting on a shipment of plants as well, which brings up an interesting topic:  mail-order nurseries.

It seems January 1st brings a free-for-all of soft porn garden catalogs in the mail, and a lot of people ask me if I ever do order plants online.  I do, but not as much as I used to.  When we moved to this house there was not one flower in the whole 1 1/4-acre lot.  I ordered a lot of plants online and learned a few valuable lessons the most valuable being this:  if you buy cheap, you get cheap.  Sure, maybe you can get 10 plants for $10.99, but they will arrive in a miniscule state, possibly damaged from the shipment, possibly bareroot with no viable life, and it will be 2-3 years before they really establish themselves.  Is it worth it?  Well, when you’re kind of broke with over an acre to fill, it has to be.  Gardening requires extraordinary patience.

These days when the garden catalogs come, I peruse for pleasure and ideas.  I tear out pages and take them with me to local nurseries (Claire’s Garden Center in Patterson usually has everything, and last year I discovered Rudolph Gardens whose plants are, pardon the expression, dirt cheap). I’m at the stage now where I don’t start many perennials from seed any more, it’s mostly veggies and annuals.

Heliopsis helianthoides scabra 'Sunburst'

This year I am starting a ton of lupines because I love them so much, and there’s this breed of variegated heliopsis called ‘Sunburst’ – I’m trying it out because I like the foliage a lot.  I started some orange and yellow Butterfly Weed, too, because the kind I have is pink and I don’t like it much.  Also, last summer in North Creek, I took some Baptisia seeds from the Tombs to see if I could get them to germinate for our yard.  Baptisia is just a gorgeous thing but it takes a long time to establish.  It would have major, added sentimental value if I could get this particular strain going.

However, here are two online nurseries that I do regularly buy from:

Graceful Gardens in Mecklenburg, NY, run by Amanda and Mark Shenstone.  They have an interesting operation where they sell their plants in 4-packs, and you buy trays of 8 packs for around $80.  That comes out to $2.50 per plant, which is virtually unheard of in the online nursery world, and you’d think for that price you’d be getting crap.  But let me tell you:  these are good plants.  The first time I opened a box from Graceful Gardens, I nearly passed out.  The packs were gorgeous – lush, healthy, definitely not crap.  So every year I order from GG those small-seeded things I have such trouble germinating myself:  foxgloves, poppies, etc.  They don’t carry a huge selection, you won’t get the latest breeds or exotic varieties or the hard-to-finds.  They have the tried-and-true foundation plants, the ol’ reliables, and their quality is first-rate.  So is their customer service, Amanda is a total doll.

Bluestone Perennials in Madison, OH.  They have a larger selection, and are a wee bit pricier, but their plants arrive in excellent shape and I’ve never lost one – whatever I ordered from Bluestone remains a star.  Now that I think about it, all my current Baptisia plants come from Bluestone.

Once upon a time I did order a lot of hellebores through catalogs.  Grown hellebore plants are extremely pricey and I always felt I could just afford one.  And one hellebore just doesn’t cut it.  So I went with the option to buy five or six online every year.  Sure enough they arrived with maybe two leaves, and it has taken about four years for them all to mature, but well worth the wait.  Here they are…all growns up! By the way, the best way to photograph hellebores is to practically lie on the ground and point your camera up at them.

They are so gorgeous, and they have the most wonderful timing, blooming right when you think you’re going to go out of your mind with winter fever.  And check this out – they made babies!!!!  As soon as they grow some true leaves I will transplant some, and pot the rest up and give away as gifts.  Let me know if you want one.  Or three.