A reader’s meme from Mindy via Deb. I decided to play along because the closest ‘big’ book was Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules [obtained at a recent Scholastic book fair], which seemed potentially fun!

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

Honestly, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was the closest I could find without standing up! Everything else in arm’s reach is a short picture book.

Find Page 123.

Find the first 5 sentences:

On the way back, Mom was really talking up Magick and Monsters, saying how it could help me with my “math skills” and stuff like that. All I can say is, I hope she isn’t planning on becoming a regular at these games. Because the first chance I get, “Mom” is getting handed over to a pack of Orcs.

Thursday

After school today, Mom took me to the bookstore and bought just about every Magick and Monsters book on the shelf. She must’ve dropped about $200, and she didn’t even make me cash in a single Mom Buck.

[drawing]

I realized maybe I judged Mom a little too quick, and maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing having her in our group after all.

Oops, that was 6 sentences. Sorry. Anyway, it’s intriguing! After I get back from the Y, I’m going to have to read more, to find out how this turns out!

Feel free to play along if you’d like…

I heart breakfast - at least on Valentine’s day!

Orange Chocolate Chip Scones

1 1/4 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup butter, warmed to room temperature
1 egg
2 Tab orange juice concentrate, thawed
2 tsp grated orange peel
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Thaw orange juice and warm butter. Preheat oven to 350° F. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In separate bowl, combine egg, OJ concentrate, and orange rind; mix well. Add wet ingredients and chocolate chips to dry ingredients. Shape dough into a ball and place on a lightly floured surface. Pat dough into a circle about 1/4 inch thick. Cut circle into 8 wedges (or 10 if you’re a family of 5) (or however many hearts you can manage if making for a special treat) and place on a foil- or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

I think these originally came from a website called “Baking Bits”, but I no longer have the source written down. Z-boy called them “breakfast cookies” when he was little, so the entire family adopted the name. They’re yummy, and simple to make! Although they’re best fresh out of the oven and slightly warm, I made them Wednesday night so they’d be available for a special Valentine’s Day breakfast. (I don’t believe in early rising, not even for making special breakfast treats!)

Z-boy copied this recipe out of a book at school and brought it home. He made one the other night (using vanilla ice cream instead of fruit flavored frozen yogurt), and then shared it with me. We both thought it was pretty good, but he said the honey added a “weird taste.” You definitely could taste the honey, but that’s only “weird” if you don’t like the taste of honey. I guess he doesn’t! When he thought we were out of honey he suggested using maple syrup instead, but insisted on honey when we found it in the pantry. I think I would have preferred maple syrup (since I love maple flavor), but deferred to my little drink master. Next time, he’s going to make it without honey or maple syrup. After all, when you’re starting with ice cream and chocolate syrup, why add sweeteners?

This drawing was also on the sheet of paper. I forgot to ask whether or not this was also in the book, or if it’s his own interpretation of a milk shake.

Remember all that “Millenium” 2000 merchandise that sat, unsold, on store shelves, even once it went on deep discount? Turns out it found a new life. Ethiopia never adopted the Gregorian calendar, so they celebrated the “new millenium” today. Look at this picture (picture 4 in this gallery) if you don’t believe me.

But come on people, you’d think you could have learned from our mistakes and endless nattering on the topic: the new millenium doesn’t start until 2001! Sure, “2000″ makes for better goofy sunglasses than “2001,” so celebrate all you want, but don’t call it the new millenium for another year.

(okay, I admit it: I bought some of that merchandise on deep discount, seeing as how I was pregnant at the time and thought it would make a good souvenir for baby-to-be…)

One more thing: did they just recently have Y2K computer problems to deal with?? That just brings up too many mind-twisting questions when I start to think about data management issues (maybe all computer programs have a “map date to the rest of the world” field??)

I grew up in New Mexico, in the desert on a high plateau in the southeastern corner. About every five years or so, we would drive out to Missouri to visit my mother’s brother. I remember stopping at A & W Drive-Ins and having a baby bear burger with a frosty mug of rootbeer. I remember my dad complaining “I can’t see the scenery for all these trees!” and me replying, in that sing-song ‘parents are so dense’ voice of a child, “but daaaadddd, the trees are the scenery!” (For what it’s worth, now that i live in Michigan and visit New Mexico, I understand what he meant!) I remember that I usually got a case of strep throat, and it was blamed on the window unit A/C (we had swamp coolers in New Mexico, evaporative cooling works when the humidity is so low!).

But most of all, I remember the fireflies. They were so magical since we didn’t have them back home. They became for me a symbol of summer in the midwest.

fireflies in the forest, photo from wikimedia commons

They’re still a sign of summer, for me, but fireflies also evoke a different memory for me now. One evening in 2000, I went into labor while at a free outdoor concert, and I remember seeing the first fireflies of the season as we walked back to the car. My little “June Bug” became a “Lightning Bug” at that point. It was June 21st, the first official day of summer, so in my mind, fireflies shouldn’t show up until the first day of summer.

We made an exception this year, since they decided to show up on June 15th. The boys stayed up extra late, running around the neighborhood with friends, trying to catch fireflies. Last day of school, first day of fireflies - what’s not to celebrate? Happy summer, even if the official calendar says we have 5 or 6 more days of spring to go yet!

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More about fireflies:

• According to America in So Many Words, as conveyed by answers.com, “lightning bugs” is more commonly used in the US than “fireflies.” Go figure!

Firefly is the older, British, and more literary term, but it has lost its glow to the homegrown lightning bug in nearly every corner of the present-day United States, except the Pacific Coast and the far north.

• The Wisconsin DNR provides info for kids about fireflies, including an experiment of sorts.
• howstuffworks provides a scientific explanation of bioluminescence.
• And for tech geeks, here’s a networked nightlight based on fireflies.
  

Z-boy is in a 1/2 class with the same teacher that C-boy had. As a result, we are familiar with some of the curricular units they cycle through over a 2 year period. Right now they are studying sound in science. As part of this, the students design and make their own musical instrument in time for the Science Fair.

Knowing this was coming up, and since Jonski Papa is a woodworker, I was struck by an idea I read in a nature projects book, to compare the sound of different kinds and thicknesses of wood. We have lots of wood lying about, so I thought that would be fun. Then after watching the very cool Animusic 2, Jonski Papa thought it would be fun to make a xylophone kind of thing on a central rotating drum.

Two weeks ago, we got this note in the weekly classroom newsletter:

Soon the children will begin designing their own instruments. At that point we will ask you to help them out at home to make and test the instrument they have designed.

Apparently I read the “At that point” as “At this point” and got the impression it was time to start working. So on February 10th, I suggested we start. Z-boy was cantankerous at first, and said he would just make a maraca. When I suggested the rotating xylophone, he said that what he really wanted to make was a guitar with drums attached. After some flipping through Rubber-Band Banjos and Java Jive Bass, he settled on a banjo.

Z-boy and Jonski Papa did some experimenting along the way. First they put rubber bands on a box, to show how the box resonates to increase the volume. Then they experimented with rubber bands over bridges, to show how the length of the string changes the pitch. Finally, they assembled necessary supplies (a plastic food tub, a scrap piece of lumber for the neck and some for the bridges, fishing line, and tuning pegs). (Yes, we just happened to have tuning pegs lying around - doesn’t everybody??)

Anyway, they finished it that weekend, and Z-boy was so excited he took it to school on the 12th. He understood how it worked and was able to explain the principles to his class. When Jonski Papa picked him up after school, he found out the assignment hadn’t even been made yet! For once, our family finished a project ahead of time - before it was even officially assigned! (Amazing!!)

As part of the sound unit, the “instrument petting zoo” arm of the local symphony came to school and the kids got to try out different real instruments. Z-boy is fired up about the flute, the trumpet, and the violin. Of course we don’t have any of those at home, so we’re hoping to tide him over with what we do have for now (kid-sized and full-sized guitars, kid-sized mandolin, dulcimer, marimba, bugle, assorted percussion…)

I’ve been out of my sling for nearly 2 weeks, but I still have some lifting restrictions – about 10 pounds, or not much more than a jug of milk (which is 8 lbs). The doctor specifically warned me against removing heavy turkeys from an oven, or carrying a big pot of potatoes in boiling water.

The former was going to be the biggest challenge to a traditional Thanksgiving, in large part because Jonski Papa and T-boy have been out of town since the 14th. Instead of inviting guests just to have someone to manage the turkey, we accepted an invitation to feast with friends. When I checked with C-boy and Z-boy to find out what I should offer to take, C-boy immediately exclaimed, “mashed potatoes, like Grandmother makes!” So of course I wasn’t too surprised to find this poem in his backpack at the end of the school week:

Mashed potatoes. Yum yum yum!
Ate or eat which one?
Small plate? No, I want a
Huge plate of mashed potatoes!
Eat or ate which one?
Deep down in the bowl mashed

Potatoes!
Oh so good!
The yum yum yum potatoes.
Ate or eat which one?
To eat mashed potatoes.
Oh so good!

I’m not big on mashed potatoes myself. I have too many childhood memories of being required to eat cold – and thus unpalatable! – mashed potatoes. But it’s almost a chicken-and-egg conundrum: did my potatoes get cold because I didn’t like them, or did I stop liking them after the first few times I was forced to eat them cold?

So when asked, I told our hostess that I would be in charge of mashed potatoes for C-boy’s sake, and also that I would bring the cranberry chutney that has become a tradition for Jonski Papa and I: not Mama Stamberg’s, but Madhur Jaffrey’s Garlicky Cranberry Chutney.

Garlicky Cranberry Chutney
from Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbook East/West Menus for Family and Friends (Harper & Row, 1987)

1-inch piece fresh ginger
3 cloves finely chopped garlic
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (I used a mixture of red wine and pear vinegars)
4 tablespoons sugar (I used 3 Tab raw sugar)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

l-pound can cranberry sauce with berries

1/2 teaspoon salt (or less)
ground black pepper

Cut ginger into paper thin slices, stack them together and cut into really thin slivers.

Combine ginger, garlic, vinegar, sugar and cayenne in a small pot. Bring to a simmer, simmer on medium flame about 15 minutes or until there are about four tablespoons of liquid left.

Add can of cranberry sauce, salt and pepper. Mix and bring to a simmer. Lumps are ok. Simmer on a gentle heat for about 10 minutes.

Serve warm or cool (refrigerate to store).

That left me with the mashed potatoes. A year or three ago when I made mashed potatoes, they came out all gluey and horrid. Since I knew that some potatoes were better for boiling and some for roasting – something to do with the starch profile, I think – I worried that it might have been from using a mix of potatoes from my CSA, that I’d used the wrong type of potatoes. But after listening to (and calling in to!) Turkey Confidential from The Splendid Table, I’m now convinced it’s because I used my stick blender in an attempt to get lump free potatoes (C-boy doesn’t like lumps).

Although “like grandmother makes” does seem like a high bar, in truth her method is rather traditional, probably about the same as in my Betty Crocker cookbook. The thing is, I favor roast potatoes – less work, plus I vastly prefer the taste and texture (even when cold!). I’ve tried to get them to eat roasted ones, which Z-boy tolerates, but C-boy doesn’t (maybe because of all the seasonings I use, or the crusty bits one gets from roasting). So this past year, whenever I roasted potatoes, I’d also bake a few large ones. I taught C-boy and Z-boy how to scrape out the center, mix it with butter and salt, and voila! A mashed potato-like substance.

Because of my doctor’s prohibition against big pots of potatoes, I thought about roasting, but that’s not really what my child wanted - and it was Thanksgiving after all, the day of family traditions. Betty Crocker’s recipe calls for 2 pounds of potatoes, boiled in 1 inch of water. Seems like that would stay under my 8 to 10 pound restriction, even if I upped it to 3 pounds of potatoes to serve a crowd. Plus, I’d be cooking them last minute at our friends’ house, so I could get someone else to drain out the pot if necessary.

Both dishes turned out to be successes. All the six children had one or more servings, and actually seemed to enjoy them (although I think a few other adults stuck to the more tasty side dishes, as I did!). The kids weren’t so keen on the chutney (I probably would have despised it as a child, had my mom been able to find fresh ginger in the store!) but the four other adults all raved about it and ate multiple helpings. Everyone was full and happy – more from the offerings of the house (including a fine heritage turkey from a farm on the other side of the state), but also from our small offerings.

Jonski Papa also made the cranberry chutney at his mother’s house. His older brother wouldn’t even try it. Oh well, you’d think we’d be used to such attitudes, with the selective diners in our own house. But when it’s your big brother, at least you can tease him – with your own kids, you’re better off saying “maybe when you’re older and have more sophisticated tastes, you’ll like it,” or exclaiming “great, more for me!” while serving them a huge plate of mashed potatoes and a few slices of turkey.

In honor of eating seasonally, I made a special treat for back-to-school. What’s in season now? M&Ms, of course! In particular, the “Jack’s Gems” ones that are being discounted as the associated pirate movie wanes in popularity. :^)

I have an M&M cookie recipe but results were not stellar the last time I made it, so I turned elsewhere. Also, I wanted to make bar cookies since it would be quicker. I looked at the bar cookies chapter in one of my cookbooks, but didn’t find any chocolate chip bars recipes to adapt, so I turned to the back of the toll house morsels bag and adapted that.

M & M Bar Cookies

1 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
3 large eggs (mine were local! :^)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cup M&M candies

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 15×10 inch jelly-roll pan (or if you don’t have one, combine a 9×12 cake pan with a bread loaf pan).

Beat sugar and butter in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Gradually beat flour mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate bits. Spread into prepared pan(s).

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cool in pan or wire rack.

Changes I made:

1. The original recipe only calls for white flour, but I didn’t have quite enough so I topped it off with wheat flour. It adds a nice touch (although at such a low percentage, it probably doesn’t improve the nutritional value much!).

2. The recipe calls for 2 cups of chocolate chips. I only put in 1 3/4 cups of Ms, but that seemed like too much, so I would try 1 1/2 next time.

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Here’s a picture of the boys on the first day of school. C-boy is entering 3rd grade, Z-boy is entering 1st, and T-boy will start going to a co-op preschool next week. And yes, they got some of these cookies in their lunchboxes today!

When I go to the Farmer’s Market, I make my rounds of various vendors. I start at my CSA where I load up my big green tyvek bag with the ‘extras’ and then grab my box. I put these in the car or bike trailer and then make my rounds of the other vendors. The CSA covers most of our vegetable needs, so the rest of the trip focuses on fruits and sundries.

I have little nicknames I use when thinking of the vendors or when talking about them to T-boy. We have “the cookie lady” - she also sells eggs, and occasional produce, but T-boy insists we visit her for cookies (we usually get PB cookies with chocolate chips, or ginger snaps). There’s also the “Turkish cookie lady”, who sells a wider variety of baked goods with less sugar than is typical in the US, including a tahini ’sweet’ roll that’s delightful. C-boy and Z-boy vastly prefer the cider from one orchard, so I always buy that from my “apple lady” (although in the late spring she was my “rhubarb lady“!).

And then there’s the “plum man.” He wears a black cowboy hat and is unassuming, straightforward, and soft-spoken. Ask him how a certain variety of plum tastes, and he might give you some characteristics (sweet or tart or …) or he might just say “how do I describe a taste? I just can’t do it.” But he sells an amazing variety of plums (along with other things, but he’s got the biggest variety of plums of anyone, so “plum man” he is!). He starts with small red plums, then moved on to yellow plums. Now he has a different (larger) red variety, and the italian plums should be coming in soon.

Michigan cherries at top left, tiny plums at bottom right. Notice the similarity in size (if not color).

This summer I’ve added “the cherry people” to my rotation. As with the plum man, they sell lots of different things, but I stop there for cherries. Every week I buy 2 quarts. He puts them into a plastic sack, and I store it in my fruit crisper drawer at home, washing them as I need them. One day a few weeks ago, I reached into the drawer and grabbed a few cherries to finish off my breakfast. I stuck one in my mouth, took a bite, and thought “that’s a weird cherry. Maybe it went bad?” I popped the next one in, again thought “that texture is all wrong. How bizarre!” - and then realized that I’d grabbed some of those tiny plums. There was nothing wrong with the plums as plums, believe me, but it was a shock when I was expecting cherries. I got yellow plums the next week, to avoid suffering through a repeat, and by now the plums are bigger so I’m safe.

Last week Z-boy decided he liked cherries. He decided this at a friend’s house, where he somehow discovered the joy of spitting out the pits. (The previous day, he rejected cherries when offered at home, in part because of the pits!) Inspired by his big brother, T-boy now eats cherries, too (although I have to pit his). So now I have competition for my cherries - I might have to start buying 3 quarts! Cherry season has been going since early July or maybe late June, but I fear the season will end too soon (and I’m afraid to ask). But there’s still a few more varieties of plums to work through, and some more peach varieties (not to mention the nectarines that rival the ones I ate while working at Yellowstone) before we launch into apple season, so I think we’ll be in stone fruit heaven for a few more weeks. Now if we could just convince C-boy to join us…

A few weeks ago, Z-boy turned to me in the kitchen one night and said: “Tell me the truth. Do you put on heelys and skate around the house after I go to bed?” Where this came from, I have no idea, but after assuring him I did not, he proceeded to ask “Do you have any other secrets you’re hiding from me?”

Z-boy has been obsessed with skateboarding for months now, so Jonski Papa read him the biography of a current skateboard phenom, Andy Mac. Although they’ve been visiting various skateboard parks in this part of the state this summer (Z-boy on his skateboard, C-boy on inline skates), T-boy usually stays home. He’s too little for skate parks, plus he still needs someone to hold him up while skating. So I was surprised while planning a trip to the library the other day when T-boy insisted he get a book about Andy Mac. I dutifully found the book, and let him carry it on the way home. He showed it to his dad and proudly announced “We got a book about Andy Mac!” “Oh. What does Andy Mac do?” his dad asked (expecting to hear something along the lines of “ride a skateboard”. “He drops in!” T-boy replied. The title of the book, in case you didn’t follow the link, is Dropping In With Andy Mac (’dropping in’ is the name of a particular skateboard trick).

We also got 2 picture books about skateboarding on that same trip: Cosmo Zooms and Skateboard Mom. You can probably guess the plot of the latter book from the title (if you can’t, here it is: boy gets skateboard for his birthday, mom grabs it away and rushes out the door to show her stuff). But what got me was when we finished the book and I turned to the back cover and saw: “You better ask your mom what surprises she has up her sleeve…” Deja vu! Wasn’t Z-boy doing that just the week before? Eerie.

As it turns out, the author of this book used to be on an amateur skateboard team as a kid, and has founded The International Society of Skateboarding Moms which is “about making time for play, no matter your age.” I really wish I were better about making time for play, or had a more playful spirit, but I just don’t see myself stepping on a skateboard any time soon. A scooter is okay, but that’s about as extreme as I’m willing to go for the time being!

(And no, I’m not going to tell you what surprises I have up my sleeve - at least not today!)