No, turn off your dirty mind, I meant this post will be a quickie because I have places to go, people to see. OK, so I am going to Ipswich and the people are a babbling toddler and a cooing infant but it will be fun! And if there is anything I need it's some more fun. I hit the two best Armenian stores yesterday to grab some of their favorite foods so I am going laden with bags of unpronouncable stuff to fulfill my daughter's ancestral needs. Not that I don't love it all too, but it's off my plan until I get old enough to not care about being able to walk and see- then gangbusters- start bringing me platters of bulgar pilaf and trays of su boereg and the lamb lehmajhun, the spicy one please. I will sit like a baby bird with my mouth open waiting for my minions to place in tasty bits. Sounds like a communion doesn't it? Well in a way it will be. Guess I better also stock up on 3X nightgowns for this final feeding frenzy. Thoughts of this phase make the idea of dying not so bad!
I got some Kesseri cheese, some hand made string cheese, boeregs with cheese and spinach, vegetarian lehmajhuns (ick), a bag of big pistaschios, red lentils because they make a fabulous mock kufta, choeregs, and a small tray of bakalva 'just in case'. It was tough not buying meat based things because I love all of it but I am dealing with a housefull of vegetarians except for one item- monti. Monti are tiny pasta boats filled with a ground meat and butter and then baked on a sheet tray to brown the dough. They are then boiled in chicken broth and a healthy plop of yogurt added for the best soup ever. They are easy enough to make and I've had fun doing it but don't have a couple of full days to make all the different parts and get it together. I hope someday my daughter and granddaughter will come over for a day of making it together, but the granddaughter part won't happen for a long time.
When my kids were little we did lots of cooking together, but I would have the kitchen prepped beforehand with all the ingredients out, the portion they could do ready for them, and no expectations other than an afternoon of clean-up involving getting dough out of the hinges on the upper cupboards. My daughter never lasted long at our projects, losing interest and wandering away after messing about for a few minutes- if she couldn't do something perfectly she wasn't interested in doing it at all- very task oriented and linear. My son lasted a bit longer but he was always making scenarios out of his dough, forming stories and performances- he was a small living comic book with no filter. The beings that enjoyed our kitchen experiments most were the two dogs. They were allowed in as long as we didn't have chocolate about because we had an unfortunate chocolate incident with one of them that ate a big candy bar and nearly died from it. And believe me, I would have rather been cleaning dough out of hinges on a ladder than cleaning up after that incident. Poor Pirate.
An update on my kids- my daughter has gone on to play in the kitchen with preserving and pickling and 'puttin' by' as my grandmother used to call it. She and her husband joined a farm share and they are inundated with whatever is picked in a particular week so she ends up with vast quantities of some odd things so cans them for future use. They also make wonderful presents throughout the off season. Her husband plays around with beer brewing and I gotta say it was quite tasty. My son has very little to do with anything in the kitchen but eating. But recently he has found a new girlfriend who is currently in a pastry program in France, so I think his interest in doing a grown-up version of his 'bread performance art' might be coming back. We have a date this summer to revisit an afternoon of baking so I'll report back on that when it happens.
And for now, a shower, another pail of coffee, and out I go.
OH YEAH, don't leave yet!
I finished the shawl last night and blocked it on the rug in the living room. Today it is done and beautiful, but I wish I would have stuck with it for another skein like I was supposed to- it's long enough, but a bit more would have made it fabulously luxurious. Frankly I was sick to death of back and forth knitting: 11 stitches and turn, 11 stitches and turn forever and ever. I won't be making another one! Instead I am making a modular scarf out of subtly variegated wool, knitting hexigons on double pointed needles. I have one hexigon done and have knit the second one four times but it's coming out backwards- today I have to conquer that. Self teaching is a bitch.
No comments :
Post a Comment