Magpie Housekeeping

Pot Pie Disassembled

2011-05-23T06:00:00.002-04:00

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I seem to remember my mother ripping out an article from somewhere or another, a listing of various supermarket products that were unimpeachable and better than homemade. I want to say it was by Craig Claiborne and from the Times, but a diligent perusal of the Google has been fruitless. In any case, I think it included Thomas’ English muffins, and Campbell’s black bean soup – two kitchen staples of my childhood, the black bean soup always served with a paper thin slice of lemon floating atop. Lists like that are perennials; food editors must assign them on a regular basis. “Okay, Julia Moskin, it’s time for the quinquennial supermarket round-up – see what you can find”. Moskin’s list is pretty straight ahead: cheese, crackers, cookies, lentil soup, pasta sauce. I actually bought some Kozy Shack Rice Pudding because of Moskin’s list - rice pudding being something I love and never make - and it’s pretty damned good.

I found another such list on the web recently: “8 Grocery Store Products that are Better than Homemade (really)” - and based solely on the fact that Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies are listed, I was inclined to be seduced. Those Tate’s cookies are awesome, and thoroughly addictive. I was totally skeptical about one product, though, the Marie Callender’s Pot Pie. First, my husband and I make a mean pot pie, and second, we never buy frozen prepared food. Well, I cotton to an occasional frozen pizza, but that’s IT. I’ve never bought a TV dinner in my life. It’s not that we never buy frozen food - but it’s plain frozen fruit, or spinach, or ice cream, or that amazing naan they sell at Trader Joe’s.
Back to the pot pie and my inherent skepticism.

When we make a pot pie at home, we never do it as a double crust pie - we just lay a crust over the filling and tuck it in around the edges. The crust stays flaky and dry, instead of getting all soggy on the bottom.

But hey, The Motherhood offered up an opportunity to review the Marie Callender’s Pot Pie, and out of some perverse curiosity, I decided to try it. After all, I'm always encouraging my child to have an open mind about food.

We baked the pie for the dictated 65 minutes at 400°F, let it cool for another 5 minutes, and cut into it. The crust was golden, and steam was arising.

I distributed pens and index cards and we sat down to dinner.

Short answer? We won’t ever have it again. Tasteless, salty, gummy yuck.

Long answer? The single 16.5 ounce pot pie - which lots of people would eat all of - contains 96% of the recommended daily value of fat, and 66% of the sodium. It's full of ingredients I can't explain, including: disodium guanylate, interesterified soybean oil, disodium inosinate, polysorbate 60 and something just called "flavors". The chicken had a nasty, gelatinous texture. The carrots, peas and celery were flavorless (despite the afore-mentioned "flavors"). It's way too salty. The gravy/sauce was like condensed soup. The crust had a weird graham-cracker-like flavor, and most of it was gummy. It's not a quick dinner to put on the table - it took 65 minutes in the oven! It doesn't taste anything like a homemade pot pie.

If you want a homemade pot pie, make it yourself. If you don't want to take the time to do that, have a bowl of plain buttered pasta instead. It'll taste better, it's quicker to the table, and you know what all the ingredients are.

Disclosure: I have been compensated by Marie Callender's and TheMotherhood for my time writing this post and reviewing the product. The opinions are 100% mine.

Chores, Chores, Chores

2011-05-18T17:19:00.001-04:00

I am conflicted. She’s old enough to be doing chores, but we’re too disorganized to organize the chores. I nag clean up your room when I can’t walk in there anymore. We say do your homework every night before dinner. Brush your teeth seems to be a chore; shouldn’t it be ingrained by now?

We tried a printable blank chore chart I found online, and got as far as printing and laminating it and writing some chores in with a dry-erase marker. And it’s been forlornly stuck to the fridge ever since, unheeded, chores unchecked.

Since I am extremely fond of TeuxDeux for managing my own lists (a/k/a chores), I thought that an online tool might help for the kidlet - in other words, if it were something more interactive than just a printed chart. Lo and behold, MomSelect put out a call for reviews of a online resource for goal tracking, chore charts and to do lists. Timely, so I checked it out.

Goal For It lets you make customizable charts, which you can then use online, or print out. There are lots of available choices for chores (Eat My Vegetables), and you can make more on the fly if you need something specific (Feed The Corn Snake). Then, as the week goes by, you can click off the completed chores.

It makes a cute chore chart, it’s free (and no, we don’t have a corn snake, Kyla does).

I have a couple of caveats to report. You need to sign up for an account in the Goal For It online community in order to use it - and I need another online community like I need a hole in my head. Your child can’t use it (unless they’re over 13); a child’s chart “belongs” to a parent’s account. So, either you have to print it out so the kid can mark off her completed tasks, or you have to go on-line and do it for her - and frankly, I don’t love that. What I’m looking for is something that will help my child take ownership of her tasks, and check them off herself as she goes - and that kind of means that we need something stuck on the refrigerator, which means we’re back to print-outs (until Apple introduces a fridge with a built-in iPad).

That’s okay. The Goal For It print-outs are fine and dandy. Maybe someday we’ll actually use them.

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

Instant Dinner

2011-04-18T15:48:00.001-04:00

For years, I've seen Dr. Oetker products in the baking and dessert aisles at the supermarket - glazes, flavorings, puddings. But until The Motherhood asked me to participate in a Valentine's Day chat, I had no idea that they made frozen pizza. But they do! And they sent me some to try! For free! On dry ice!

We're on the crunchy side when we come to food, what with making our own bread, and belonging to a CSA, and investing in large quantities of grass fed beef, but I'm not above frozen pizza. Because, sometimes there's just no time to cook. We usually keep the freezer stocked with a couple of emergency pies from Trader Joe's.

The other day, the cupboard was bare, so we cranked the oven and cooked up the two Dr. Oetker pies. One was basically a plain mozzarella pie, the other was spinach. In their still frozen stage, both pies looked as though they'd been partially cooked, and then had additional ingredients added before freezing. For instance, the slices of mozzarella on top of the cheese pie had no evidence of meltage when it came out of the box. The pies were baked at 425°, directly on the oven rack, and weren't bad, weren't bad at all. The crusts were light and cracker-crispy - not as good as the chewy toothiness you'd get at Pepe's but far better than the soggy doughiness you get at your run-of-the-mill slice factory. The cheese pie had nice little flavor blobs of pesto and the mozz got all melty-toasty; the spinach pie was remarkably fresh tasting (and looking). The girl, naturally, refused to try the green pizza, but she loved the cheese pie (and even ate some suspicious-looking pieces of tomato).

Not bad, not bad at all.

And hey, there's a prize pack for ~~one commenter~~ De!! You'll get a cooler bag, a pizza cutter, an apron and some Dr. Oetker coupons. ~~Leave a comment by day's end on Monday 4/25 - U.S. residents only, please, and keep in mind that the Dr. Oetker products aren’t widely available on the West Coast.~~

Dr. Oetker provided us with the free pizza to try, and I received a stipend for participating in the review and giveaway, and a talk on The Motherhood. This is my honest opinion.

How To Play Santa

2010-12-14T10:00:00.003-05:00

It's always fun to play Santa Claus, but it's really fun to do it unexpectedly.

I was offered the opportunity, as Nintendo Ambassador, to take a Wii along to a holiday party, set it up, and leave it there. I thought that sounded like fun, but when I got to the party, the TV set turned out to be out of commission. So, instead I set up the multi-colored disco ball and sleuthed around the party, sidling up to people and engaging them in conversation about the Wii. Apparently, everyone in the suburbs has one, because the person who forlornly told me that she didn't have one, but wanted one, lives in the city. So, I took her by the hand and played Ed McMahon. Shrieking ensued. I think it's gone to a good home.

Disclosure: I am a Nintendo Brand Enthusiast. They sent me the Wii system (which included Wii Sports Resort) for me to give away. They also sent me the above-mentioned disco ball, along with a copy of Wii Party - both of which are a huge hit with the seven year old. I received no compensation for this post. I have to say, though, that it was awfully fun to be able to give the Wii system away rather randomly and out of the blue!

Finally Finished The Christmas Card!

2010-12-04T15:24:00.001-05:00

Classic Without Edge 5x7 folded card

Unique party invitations and greeting cards by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Christmas Comes Earlier Every Year

2010-10-26T13:04:00.002-04:00

Even though it isn't even Halloween yet, I confess that I've been thinking about Christmas cards, because it's a tricky thing, getting the Christmas card picture just right. I definitely tend towards the offbeat; last year's card had the kid riding a tractor and when she was two, she was throttling Elmo. Let's put it this way: I'm never going to be sending out a soft-focus commercial portrait (or even having that kind of picture taken in the first place).

The other day, I went through all the photos from our Canada trip, and showed one to my husband. "It's not very Christmas-y", he said. I pointed out that the girlie was wearing a green fleece hoodie and looks distinctly elfin; I don't think he bought it. I may have to keep looking.

In the meantime, I've been poking around at Shutterfly, looking at holiday cards and Christmas invitations and New Year’s cards because for the past five years, I've gotten my cards via Shutterfly. They're easy to work with, the cards are delivered in a snap, and there are lots of options.

I tend to go for a plain photo card like the "classic without edge", but a "gorgeous gift tag" on just the right picture could be perfect and stylish. Then again, I'm kind of loving the girlie in the sea in the "all wrapped up" card.

It's Christmas-y. Think I can talk my husband into it?

Do you want 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly? Click here to go to Shutterfly for information on how you can get 50 free cards this holiday season, and make sure to select Clever 1000 as the referral source.

This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do. In return for this post, I got a coupon code for 100 free cards.

I would not eat them anywhere...

2010-09-28T17:39:00.004-04:00

Did you know that Green Eggs & Ham is 50 years old? And, more importantly, did you know that there only 50 words in Green Eggs & Ham? And of those 50 words, only one of them has more than one syllable? I’ve read Green Eggs & Ham numerous times – as a kid, and as a parent – and its charm remains fresh, its persistence intact.

The Random House people – that is, the publishers of Green Eggs & Ham – are celebrating this half century of fifty words with a "HAM It Up" video contest: if you make a video of yourself and/or your kids acting out a scene from the book, you could win cash, art, and a year’s supply of (not green) ham.

The details of the contest can be found on Seussville, but get cracking! Video can be submitted until 11/3. Voting starts 10/5. And the winners will be announced on 11/15.

And because you might need help remembering all of the words, Random House provided me with a copy of the book to give away to one of you lucky people. ~~All you have to do is leave a comment (with a valid email address, please). Winner will be chosen at~~ ~~random~~ ~~on Tuesday 10/5 at noon EST.~~ AND THE WINNER IS #9 - YOURFIREANT.

So I will eat them in a box.
And I will eat them with a fox.
And I will eat them in a house.
And I will eat them with a mouse.
And I will eat them here and there.
Say! I will eat them ANYWHERE!

I do so like
green eggs and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you, Sam-I-am!

(Nobody paid me for this post, though I did get a second copy of the book for my own use.)

And the Winner...

2010-09-27T14:49:00.000-04:00

of the Gleek DVDs is

comment #12, the lovely Rima!

Gleekdom

2010-09-18T15:47:00.004-04:00

What is it about Glee? I have a hard time putting a finger on why I like it so much. There's an awful lot not to like - it's on Fox, it's on broadcast TV with commercials, it has a penchant for maudlin ballads, every character is a stereotype, and it's about high school. But, there's something about it that slays me. I love Jane Lynch and her every snarky line. I love the rivalry between the jocks and the glee club. I love the crazy big suspension of belief production numbers, even when I hate the music. And I love that it's about kids who love music and who love to perform. It's witty and satirical and sweet, all at the same time.

Last week, I got a copy of the just released 7-DVD "Gleek Edition" of the whole first season - thanks to the publicists at Fox. Yeah, it's got all 22 of the episodes, but it also has a lot of fun extras: karaoke, interviews with the stars, some behind the scenes stuff, a dance lesson, and best of all, a video jukebox of lots of the big songs. The jukebox lets you watch just a song, without trying to find it in an episode - and includes both the costumed, dance-filled production numbers and the plot embedded smaller songs (like Piano Man sung by two guys in a bar, and Poker Face sung as a ballad between mother and child). I watched through a bunch of them with the six year old - who loved Vogue ("that's Sam on iCarly's mother!"), and Bad Romance ("I just love Lady Gaga!"), and Fire ("It's Bruce!") and got up to dance to the big production numbers (like Ice Ice Baby and Safety Dance).

I was kind of disappointed that the football team's goofy dance to All the Single Ladies is missing from the jukebox - it'll be in the episode, but that's so tedious to find (or I'm so lazy). And the song clips are just clipped out of the episodes, so sometimes they end kind of abruptly.

Anyway. Are you a Gleek? Do you need a copy of this DVD set for your very own self? Leave me a comment (with an email address!) telling me why you love Glee so by Monday 9/27 at noon EST - I'll do a random pick and the Fox folks will send out a copy to the winner. While you're holding your breath, watch this - it's sweet:

Disclosure: No one paid me to write about Glee. Fox did provide me with a review copy of the DVD set, and will be sending another DVD set to the winner.

Is Your Bunny Under Your Lion?

2010-09-07T16:43:00.004-04:00

Remember Mastermind? That game with the little colored pegs? A logic puzzle where you have to figure out the hidden code? I used to love playing Mastermind back in, oh, junior high school, so closet geek that I am, I was secretly thrilled to find a booth at BlogHer stocked with a Mastermind variant suitable for younger kids.

It's called Animal Mastermind Towers - it's for two players and no batteries - and the goal is to guess the order of your opponent's animals before they guess yours. You can only ask yes or no questions, and they have to take the form "is your A under your B" or "is your C above your D".

I played it repeatedly with the six year old, who was completely entranced. Yes, I sniggered to myself every time I asked her "Is your giraffe on top of your pig?", but I loved watching her pick up the logic of how to ask the questions (and arrange her cards so as to get the right answer.

It's a pretty light-weight as logic puzzles go; I figured out the simple strategy almost immediately. It does have an element of luck about it - if you get a "yes" answer to a question, you get to go again, but you're stopped if you get a "no" answer (even though a "no" answer gives you as much information as a "yes" answer). Nevertheless, I'd far rather play this than Candyland, and someday sooner than later, she'll be ready for real Mastermind.

* * * * * * *

The kind folks at Pressman Toys are giving away a copy of Animal Mastermind Towers to one of you readers. All you have to do is leave a comment, and tell me what games you played as a kid. Comments close on Monday, 9/13 at noon EST. Make sure you leave a valid email address (like, sign in with your Blogger account). The game will be shipped to you by the company. Nobody paid me for this review, though I did get a free copy of the game.

Edited to add: The winner is #6 - FreshHell!

Naked

2010-07-23T11:16:00.000-04:00

Cross-posted from Gwen's Not Really, where I was guest posting while she was on vacation.

In Which A Guest Poster Writes a Spectacularly Disjointed Discourse Upon A Naked Not The Book By David Sedaris

First, let’s get one thing out of the way. “Nude” doesn’t equal “naked”. Lucien Freud paints voluptuous nudes. Noun. She wore nude stockings while toiling at her secretarial job. Color. Naked isn’t a noun. Naked isn’t a color.

Naked, then. Without clothes, without artifice. Lacking cover, unadorned. Raw. An adjective.

I sleep naked. Oh, sometimes when it’s cold cold cold, I’ll resignedly put on a nightgown. My bed is as naked as they come – a fitted bottom sheet, a handful of pillows, a duvet. No top sheet, no blanket, no quilt, no throw pillows. No frou frou. Naked. I like it that way. It’s calming.

Last night, I wandered downstairs in the late evening, past my naked living room windows, curtains being too fussy for the likes of me. I walked through the room in which my husband was watching television, and was amused to find the screen full of naked people – no, not porn, he was watching Taking Woodstock, and I stumbled past a scene of lots of people skinny dipping. I did a double take, “I’m naked, they’re naked.” It was some weird little cosmic moment.

After I retrieved my laptop, the whole reason for the naked excursion – hey, I couldn’t sleep – I clicked into Google Reader, and from there to Jo(e). Do you know her? Jo(e) writes and takes pictures. She takes exquisite photos of nature and people and buildings and things, and weaves quirky little tales around some of the pictures, giving all of her characters descriptive pseudonyms, like Boy in Black, or Retired Principal and his wife, Mother of Six. And there, to my distinct amusement, was more nakedness – naked photos on Jo(e)’s blog. It’s funny – on the one hand, Jo(e) wraps her blog in anonymity, and yes, Jo(e) isn’t really her name – and on the other hand, she winningly convinces people to take their clothes off so she can put their naked pictures on her blog.

And here’s the thing: all those naked people kind of look alike.

I’ve never forgotten a ballet I once saw – it was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and it was by Bill T. Jones – and though I can’t remember when it premiered or what it was called, I’ve never forgotten the final scene. Dancers and extras filled the stage, perhaps 60 people in all. Black and white, old and young, thin and fat, male and female, all shapes and sizes and colors, all the permutations of people, naked. All naked. And you know what? They all looked alike. Without clothes, we are naked. Without clothes, we are indistinguishable from our neighbors and friends and co-workers and enemies. We may be voluptuous nudes, we may be repressed secretaries, but we’re all the same at the core.

DSi/Pokemon Winner!

2010-04-07T15:02:00.001-04:00

And the winner of the Nintendo DSi™ and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky is Vanessa, of Am I Doing Okay?. She was the 24th comment (Oh, the things we could pict-o-chat!! I would love to win this!!), and random.org picked 24.

Mayonnaise!

2010-03-31T16:00:00.000-04:00

Bobby Flay cooks with mayonnaise. Or maybe he just makes potato salad with it, and since potato salad is cold, is that cooking? Oh, I don't know. He's touting the many virtues of mayo over on the Real Food Project on Hellmanns.com - complete with videos and condiment-laced recipes. Check it out.

Disclosure: Writing this post got me entered for a chance to win a Hellmann's prize package; no one paid me to say any of this.

Ooh, Pokémon! And a DSI to boot!

2010-03-30T14:04:00.004-04:00

Do you want to rock the socks off of your nearest 11 year old? Easy: Pokémon™ + Nintendo DSi™. Late last year, I got to wear my Nintendo Enthusiast hat and take my sister and my nephew to an event at the Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Center, celebrating the release of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky – a new game for the DS™/Nintendo DSi systems. Alex met Pikachu, stumped a gaming expert, and was given a copy of the new game and its 720 page strategy guide. Meanwhile, my sister and I wandered around the store, played Wii, admired the cunning little DS accessories, and waxed nostalgic over the museum-like display of a historical sequence of Nintendo handhelds – Pinky had a Game & Watch back in the early 80s.

Afterwards, Nintendo treated us to lunch at the Brooklyn Diner where Alex descended deep into the strategy guide, raising his head only for occasional sips of his egg cream. A few days later, he sent me his review of the game:

I recently obtained the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky video game for Nintendo DS and a strategy guide to go with it. I started playing it and went pretty far. Then, something in the strategy guide caused me to reset it so this overview is going to be mostly about just that. Anyway. The strategy guide provides a particularly special inside look at the game. It shows you what enemies you’ll encounter, what items are possible to obtain, and what traps to look out for. It even tells you tips on how to defeat bosses. I highly recommend this game for kids about 8-13.

So. You have a kid you need to please? Do you secretly want to play Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky yourself? You are in luck – I’m giving away a copy of the game AND a Nintendo DSi to go with it! Entry is easy – just leave a comment on this post by Monday, April 5th at 9:00 PM EST - but family members aren't eligible. The next day, I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner and I'll contact the winner by email! Make sure I know how to contact you: embed your email address in your profile, or include it in your comment. I'm looking at you, Anonymous.

Disclosure: No one paid me to write about this event or the game. However, Nintendo did provide a free copy of the Pokémon game (which I gave Alex as his birthday present), and treated all three of us to lunch. Nintendo is also providing the DSi and the Pokémon game for my giveaway.

Foxy Winners!

2010-03-09T12:02:00.000-05:00

The random number generator has spoken.

The winners of the five DVDs of Fantastic Mr. Fox are:

1. Harriet

4. Heidi

18. Libby

24. Dora

32. Ilina

Congratulations, and enjoy!

Let's Review: Fantastic Mr. Fox

2010-02-28T11:00:00.003-05:00

I don’t go to the movies much. I just, well, I’d rather read a book. But occasionally something comes along that I really do want to see, for some eccentric reason or another. Usually, because of the hassle and expense of actually going to the movies and sitting there in sprung seats with your feet sticking to the floor, we wait for the home release. But a couple of months ago, after Fantastic Mr. Fox came out, my husband and child went to a matinee while I was at work and I was seriously bent out of shape because that was one movie I actually wanted to see. I mean, it’s Roald Dahl, George Clooney, handmade animation, what more could you want?

Well, I got lucky. I got a pre-release copy of it on DVD, thanks to Twentieth Century Fox’s PR agency, and took it to my sister’s house the weekend before last. Saturday night, all the children got to stay up late while we watched it en famille, two women and four children, only one of who had already seen the movie.

It’s a lot of fun. Every time Fox opened his mouth, I peered intently at his furry face, looking for George Clooney’s fine visage (which never appeared, despite my willing it). The look and feel of the sets and characters is totally charming in a funky, sepia-toned way. The animals are so dapper and well-mannered, until they sit down to eat – when they messily scarf their food down like, um, animals. It’s witty enough for grown-ups – I think my sister and I laughed more than the kids did – but charming enough for kids, these kids anyway. (When asked later what her favorite part was, my daughter went on and on about how funny the electric fence was. This, though, is a child who has watched a lot of Bugs Bunny.) And as heroes go, Fox is flawed – after all, he’s stealing chickens – but he’s a good ringleader for his ragtag bunch and leads them to communal mecca at the end. I mean, wouldn’t you want to live in a supermarket and not have to forage and kill for your dinner? (Don’t answer that. I was being ironic. The point is, Fox is looking out for his friends.)

Okay then. You missed it in the theater? You can’t wait until it gets released on DVD on March 23rd? (And by the way, why does it amuse me so much that Fantastic Mr. Fox was released by Twentieth Century Fox?) You’re in luck – I have FIVE copies to give away. More precisely, I’m going to pick FIVE winners and Bender/Helper Impact is going to give them away.

To enter, leave me a comment below, with a fond memory of some Roald Dahl book or another (we're partial to Dirty Beasts). Alas, you must live in the United States. Make sure I can find your email address (like, edit your Blogger "user profile" so that your email address is in there PLEASE). Comments close at 9:00 pm EST on Monday, March 8th. FIVE winners will be picked out of a hat or some other suitably random method.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of the movie, for which I paid nothing, though it doesn’t really have any street value because it’s not even in a case or anything. I was not compensated for this review. The giveaway copies of the DVD are being provided (and shipped) by Bender/Helper Impact on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox.

A Fridge, A Dollar, A Dollar A Fridge

2010-01-21T13:44:00.001-05:00

Yo. I don't know about you, but I often call that thing in the kitchen that keeps the milk cold the "fridge", which could be short for "refrigerator", but might also be short for "Frigidaire" after the company that invented the first self-contained refrigerator in 1916.

Anyway, Frigidaire is supporting Save the Children, a non-profit dedicated to helping children living in poverty in the United States.

Everyday, Frigidaire is giving away gift cards, and all you have to do is spin. Even better, every time you play, Frigidaire will donate $1 to Save the Children, as part of their $250,000 commitment to support Save the Children's CHANGE program, dedicated to providing nutritious snacks and promoting healthier lifestyles for children living in poverty in the United States.

So what are you waiting for? A dollar for Save the Children, and a chance to win for you - go ahead - take a spin.

(And don't ask me what the title means. I hate coming up with post titles.)

How To Sew A Button

2009-12-14T21:00:00.004-05:00

I had the usual two grandmothers as a child. One was a lovely, but distant, woman – given to proper hats and an occasional foray into gardening. I can’t remember any domestic feats of hers, beyond making mashed potatoes in an electric mixer, which I knew was wrong even as a child. Her husband ruled her and the household, and it’s him that I remember roasting the Thanksgiving turkey, and making the waffles, and winding the clocks, and giving instruction. She was good at other things - she'd gone to college and recited poetry - but the running of the household wasn't her strength.

The other grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived about a half mile away from where I grew up. It was an easy, no busy streets, bicycle ride - and there were usually root beer floats at the end. She baked cookies, and made roast pork, and sewed pillowcases, and practiced frugality. She hung her laundry out to dry in the backyard, reupholstered furniture, darned socks, and wasn’t afraid to wear sneakers when sneakers were the right thing to wear. Her husband didn't cook a thing, though he could build a stone wall and developed his own film.

Those grandparents of mine taught me things - and their things surround me. We still use my (maternal) grandmother's canning kettle, and the canning tongs that still have a price tag from the hardware store in the town I grew up in. After my (paternal) grandparents died, I rescued several bottles of prohibition booze - hand labeled, god only knows what's in there.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an advance copy of "How to Sew a Button" - a book by Erin Bried subtitled "And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew". It's a charming, if slight, book. Divided into ten sections, it runs breezily through "how to make a pie", "how to introduce people", "how to unclog a drain", and "how to raise a good citizen". Lots of the content is genuinely useful, if you simply don't know how, or don't have that grandmother to ask. Some of it is dubious - I'm skeptical that anyone could actually learn to knit from two and a half pages of text with no photos or line drawings.

And some of it is downright wonderful. I totally want to make dandelion wine, just because. It's probably awful, but I love knowing that I could if my husband hadn't eradicated all of the cheerful yellow dandelions from my backyard, and the idea of it reminds me of that prohibition booze that my grandfather's brother-in-law made way back when.

Happily for you, the publisher sent me an extra copy - so you can learn to make an apron, or dry apples, or play crazy eights. If you'd like it, leave a comment, and tell me what your grandmother taught you. I'll do a random drawing in the morning on Friday, 12/18 - and one ~~lucky winner will get a copy, just in time for Christmas~~ Life In Eden will get a copy of the book.

Disclosure: The publisher sent me two copies of this book - one for me, and one to give away. No one paid me for this review.

The Household Guide To Dying

2009-04-09T14:03:00.008-04:00

Call me perverse, or maybe masochistic, but back in mid-March I signed up for a Mother Talk book tour, for a book called The Household Guide to Dying. Given that my mother was in the process of dying, and did so before I finished the book, it was a rather odd and slightly unsettling reading experience.

The book is not without its charms. It's a first person fiction narrative, written from the point of view of a woman who's wrapping up the bits and pieces of her life, as she prepares to die of cancer. Delia Bennet is a snarky advice columnist, with two school-aged girls and a husband who decorate her coffin for her as it sits in the middle of the living room. She spends days making lists for her daughters' far-in-the-future weddings, filling the freezer with homemade food for her family to eat after her demise, exacting revenge upon a cranky neighbor with a perfect lawn, and creating memory boxes for the girls. She contemplates making blood sausage with her own blood, as a way to live on in her loved ones - but (thankfully!) chooses not to. And she works on her final book, the last in a series of Household Guides, this one to be The Household Guide to Dying.

Threaded throughout are references to the inimitable Mrs. Beeton (and her Book of Household Management, the seminal household guide), as well as to Mrs. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice (Bennet, get it?).

The core of the book is Delia's journey back to a town where she'd lived long ago - a journey she undertakes because she's looking for someone. It devolves that she'd had a child who died at eight, whose heart was transplanted into a girl with a congenital heart defect, and she's looking for the girl. In the end, she doesn't find the girl, but the girl later finds her. And so, everything gets wrapped up with a bow and she gets to die with all of her chickens in a row.

I found the the narrative all well and good, but it's the little bits in the interstices that kind of enchanted me, like this:

What are the cockles of the heart anyway? The oddest thoughts come to you when you're standing at a graveside. And at a graveside a dictionary is probably the last thing you have to hand. I knew all about the heart, but when I got home I would have to look up the cockles.*

Many chapters begin with a question/answer from her advice column, or a paragraph from her forthcoming book. There's great music referenced throughout, interesting sounding plant matter (native to Australia, I guess), and chickens in her backyard.

Somehow - despite the illness and impending death of the protagonist, the book manages to be clever, comic and moving.

It ends, as it must, with Delia narrating her own death.

I imagined dying to be similar to leaving them at the school gate on the first day, knowing you have to go, you want to go, but every muscle screaming as much as them to stay, every cell clawing you back. But no, now I'm feeling it for the first and last time in my life, I discover it isn't like that at all. I am calm. I feel no pain. I watch them coming and going and my heart could not be fuller with them, but I experience total freedom. My family. It seems to be an ending yet not a goodbye. I seem to be leaving them for something much better, though I can't have loved them more. Although I want them, I can let them go. Such splendid poetic ambiguity. I thought I was right before this and now I know it for certain. Death is a poetic moment.

I guess it can be. It's hard to read that penultimate paragraph without wondering what was going through my mother's head as she took her last breaths. I hope it was poetic.

*And rather than running to the dictionary to look up cockles, I went back to Niobe.

The School of Essential Ingredients

2009-02-09T21:49:00.003-05:00

I like books. I like food. So when Mother Talk put out a call for reviewers for a book called The School of Essential Ingredients, and described it as being about a cooking class, I had to sign up, because, well, a fiction book about food? My kind of book.

Lillian's the chef at a small restaurant, and on the first Monday of every month, she teaches a cooking class. It sounds like a thoroughly enjoyable, and completely idiosyncratic cooking class - ranging from white cake with white icing, to homemade tortillas, to a complete Thanksgiving dinner. It's episodic, each chapter acting almost like a short story focused on one of the students. Bit by bit, we get to know the teacher and the eight members of the class, and they all get to know one another. We dip into their memories, of taste, of love, of life, of sadness. Characters pair off in various ways - as incipient lovers, as roommates, as apprentices.

And all the while, Erica Bauermeister writes of food with sensuousness and detail - you taste the butter on the tortilla, you feel the crabs killed alive in the first class, you smell the garlic "scent soaked deep into her skin". I flipped to the back of the book at one point, wondering if there were going to be recipes. There aren't, which is as it should be; recipes in a book like this would be far too tangible, much too concrete for the seductive tale that Bauermeister spins.

She picked up the paper Lillian had given them and laughed. "Now, this would be Lillian's idea of a recipe."

On the paper was written: "Take ingredients on the prep table, chop as need be. Butterfly turkey and flavor inside and out, as you like. Make a package. Send it."

As much as anything, Lillian is teaching her students to live, to love, to trust their own instincts.

The book hasn't much through story or a climactic event. But that's fine: when I finished, I almost wanted to start all over again, so I could pay better attention to the weaving of the spider web betwixt the characters.

The Conundrum and The Giveaway

2008-12-05T11:32:00.003-05:00

The decisions we make as parents for things to get our children become more and more fraught as time goes on and the children get older and develop strong preferences.

Case in point: clothes.

Mir's been the lucky recipient of many many hand-me-downs, which means that I've been mostly able to forestall taking her shopping for clothes (other than shoes which really have to be tried on). No shopping in stores avoids the "I want, I want" and the child's natural gravitation towards tacky, glittery, overwrought sleaze.

The Children's Place recently offered to send us a pair of pajamas to review - I said sure, I mean, free pajamas? What's not to like?

Well, the pajamas arrived yesterday, and I have to say that I wouldn't have paid money for them. But - the child LOVES them. She wanted to wear them to school today, she wants to have a pajama party, she did wear the accompanying hair scrunchy to school today.

So it's a conundrum.

My problem with the pajamas is really only with the top. The bottoms are soft brushed polyester knit, with a wide elastic waistband. The print is kind of gaudy, but I can deal with gaudy. The top is a different fabric, not as soft, with gewgaws galore. It's two colors, with fake layered sleeves (to look like a tee-shirt over a long sleeved shirt). The "short sleeved" part is puffy and ruffled, and the front of the shirt has a glittery, crunchy, painted-on picture. It's simply too much. A plain long sleeved shirt in a solid color to coordinate with the printed pants would have been perfect. As it is, I don't even want to snuggle with her in that scratchy shirt, much less look at her before I've had coffee in the morning.

I find that the merchandise at The Children's Place often has that dichotomy - sometimes in a single item, sometimes across the store, sometimes spanning seasons. Over the past five years, I've found lots of stuff there that is perfectly nice, inexpensive, non-offensive. I love their underwear - it has covered elastic at the waist, and it holds up well in the wash - and she loves the little bow in the front. They have a nice range of funky cotton and plain microfiber tights - and we have a constant need for tights because she's always ripping holes in the knees. Her favorite skirt these days is a tiered corduroy peasant skirt that I got at The Children's Place in the early fall. But sometimes when I go in at my lunch hour, there is not a single article of girl's clothing without glitter or sparkles or sequins or gewgaws or writing, and I turn around and leave.

But I'll go back again, tomorrow or next week, or when the seasons change, because hope springs eternal and I will find something - something that I'll like, and she'll like, and we'll both be pleased.

Would you like to go find something for your child at The Children's Place? They gave me a $30 gift card to give away to one of you. Leave a comment on this post, before the end of the day on Monday 12/8 - I'll do a random drawing and send out the card on Tuesday. Make sure I can find a valid email address.

Free will and independence - the desire of the child vs. the delicate sensibilities of the child. It's a bear.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

On the other hand, we did have this little exchange:

What does it say on my shirt?

Sleepyhead.

But I'm not a sleepyhead. Well, sometimes I'm a sleepyhead.

Bling Roundup

2008-10-24T12:51:00.003-04:00

Perfect Post

2008-08-01T15:14:00.002-04:00

The Hotfessional dubbed On Marriage a "perfect post", and if you'll go read her post about my post, you'll understand why.

Shiny pretty bling

2008-07-02T13:13:00.001-04:00

Thanks, Angeline!

Just another girl with mommy issues

2008-06-25T11:33:00.006-04:00

This post of mine was originally a guest post at Slouching Past 40. Before she took her site down, I captured the text.

6.25.2008
Guest Post #3: Just another girl with mommy issues

When I started blogging, it was purely as an outlet for the random flotsam and jetsam that gathered in the corners of my mind and on scraps of paper around the house. It wasn't meant to be a place for whining about my family, my job, my husband, my in-laws – especially because all of those people were readers, nearly from the get go.

But there are times that I long to whine. Oh, how I long to whine. So much so that I've thought of starting another blog, under the radar, just to have a place to focus my whining. Slouchy, forgive me. You said that we "could write about anything at all -- no holds barred."

My mother is so difficult. But here she is, dying of lung cancer. How does one strike a balance between gently caring for someone who needs that help and coming to terms with the fact that she is, simply, a hard person to be with?

She's been divorced for more than 30 years. And she's never gotten over it. And what's more? She professes to have had a terrible marriage. Somehow, she manages to have it both ways – both bad: a lousy marriage and an unwanted divorce.

She's a narcissist. It's one of the useful things I learned in therapy, that and "depression is anger turned inward." Years after my wedding, the priest, who is a friend, said to me, "the saddest thing about your wedding was that your mother was jealous."

She pretends to helplessness. When I was in the lead-up to the egg retrieval before our third IVF, my husband realized that the likely retrieval day was a really bad day for him to take off and he asked if my mother could be the one to escort me home from the hospital. I called and put the question to her. Dead silence. Then, "how would I do that?" Um, you take the train into the city, take a cab to the hospital, and come find me. How hard is that?

She lacks generosity. She has an ingrained miserliness born out of the early years of her divorce, when she was figuring out how to survive on her alimony. For any number of years now, she's had enough money to do what she pleases, but she'll still buy margarine instead of butter, 'cause it's cheaper.

And she resents having been frugal. Not long ago, she said to me, "well, you won't have to worry about putting M. through college, because I never spent any money on myself." Of course, the flip side to that is "if you hadn't smoked cigarettes for more than 50 years, you wouldn't be dying of lung cancer and you'd need that money to live on into your 90s like your mother did."

My mother doesn't get along with my husband, or my sister's husband. She stopped speaking to her brother years ago (justifiably – he’s a hostile incompetent), and stopped speaking to her mother at some point after her mother was moved into an assisted living facility. We've never figured out what her mother did to provoke the estrangement, but she alludes to a miserable childhood. She's cut off other long term friends – again, we've never figured out why.

I feel that the moment for illumination is past – my mother's mental status is as fragile as her physical one. So, what will happen when she's dead? Am I going to be able to let go of the baggage handed over by my difficult mother? Or will it follow me to my own grave? I suppose I'll find out if time heals all wounds.

Another Just Post

2008-06-11T12:59:00.001-04:00

More Bling

2008-04-23T20:14:00.003-04:00

Two more!

2008-03-05T14:38:00.001-05:00

And Yet More Prizes

2008-02-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

December 2007 - Just Posts

2008-01-11T13:20:00.000-05:00

More Prizes

2007-11-18T21:17:00.000-05:00

Just Posts

2007-11-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

Back in March, a post of mine was included as a Just Post.

And two of my October posts made the October list of Just Posts.

Being included in those lists is really gratifying.

Bling! And Blogroll!

2007-11-05T16:12:00.000-05:00

For National Blog Posting Month, I decided to clean up my main blog by putting all the prizes and awards over here. And the blogroll over there - to the left.

It's like scratching my back, and all of yours. At once.

Mayberry Mom said I'm a schmoozer, and so did Slouching Mom.

And Oh, The Joys said I'm nice.

Teryn dubbed me a Rockin' Blogger.

Eva of Antropologa chose me for the Thinking Blog award.

And Works For Mom gave me the Egel Nest Blog Award - because I've hatched!

And I can't for the life of me figure out why the award images don't line up flush left.

Just testing a badge...

2006-09-06T11:07:00.000-04:00