Ah Yes, I Remember Now

Why don't I make enchiladas--cheesy, saucy, delicious enchiladas--more often? Because it takes forever, results in the whole house smelling like fried food, and makes a damn mess of me and the kitchen. At least, the way my mother did it, which is of course how I do it.

And what way is that, you ask? Well, it involves the following:

One pan in which to cook the filling. In this case, it was shredded duck and black beans (plus onion, garlic, and some of the enchilada sauce), though my mother made them with ground beef.

One pan with hot grease. In my case lard*, though my mother used vegetable oil to quickly fry the tortillas so they don't get soggy.

One pan with enchilada sauce in which to dredge the fried tortillas. My mother always used Old El Paso and so I do, too. I could make my own, I know, but I don't because we are obviously talking about Tradition with a capital "T" here. (Except for the duck and the lard, I suppose. So maybe not so much with the Tradition.)

A plate of grated cheese to sprinkle on top of the filling before rolling the enchiladas up.

And the baking pan with a layer of enchilada sauce.

It's a complicated dance. There are tortillas frying in hot oil, tortillas being dredged in sauce, tortillas being filled and rolled up, and the cook and everything in the kitchen inevitably ends up covered in enchilada sauce.

Then again, when it's all done and cleaned up . . .

Worth it. Though I would recommend getting your mother to make them for you if she doesn't live 2,500 miles away.

* Because the MiL just rendered some and sent some to me via A. the Courier. Thanks, MiL!

After Due Consideration

On days like today, when it rains for hours and we spend a lot of time inside and the noise levels increase in proportion to the inches of rain that fall . . . then I have to make a decision. The question is this: Are the weather conditions outside more miserable than the children's conditions inside?

If it's just raining and not too cold, then no. So I put on my jacket with the hood up and go sit outside in the rain while the three musketeers run around getting soaking wet and whacking each other with sticks. It's damp, and it's cold, but it's better than inside. Because it's at least a little quieter and no one is physically climbing on my body.

Later in the winter, when the weather conditions involve below-zero temperatures, feet of snow, and serious wind chill, I may well decide it's preferable to stay inside and listen to the shrieking acrimony. But for now? Get your jackets, kids. We're blowing this popstand.

Where Sleeping Dogs Lie

Ever since we moved to this house, I've been saying we need to get a dog bed. Of course, I want Mia and her old bones to have a comfortable place to rest in the house--where I suspect she will be spending the majority of her time when the really cold weather finally descends--but mostly I just want her out of the damn way.

The way our living room is laid out, there's a perfect race track all around the perimeter. The children of course take full advantage of this, and they spend a lot of time literally running in circles, sometimes to the soundtrack of Billy Idol*, sometimes pretending to be animals, sometimes just running around like morons because, well, because they're children.

And where does Mia choose to rest her enormous old bones? Yup, right smack in the middle of their track.

She's so big, she would literally span the entire width of the space between the end table and a chair. I can't count how many times the kids have fallen over her. Lucky for them, she never bites, even when startled, but it was obviously not an ideal situation for anyone.

So I finally remembered to ask A. to get her a bed. He did. We put it in a nice little out-of-the-way alcove of the living room. And of course . . .

Not who I was trying to get out of the way, actually, though it would be nice.

The children hopped right on and wrestled on it for awhile, but Mia? She tentatively walked around on it for a second when I called her over to it, but then gave me a canine, "NOPE," and settled back down in her usual inconvenient spot.

I moved it to a different spot next to the recliner, thinking maybe she wanted to feel still part of the action without actually being in the action.

Nope.

I moved it under the window next to the table we eat at, thinking the proximity to food might be enticing. 

Nope.

I sat on it with her. I sat in a chair next to it and petted her while she stood on it uneasily. I patted it to remind her occasionally that she had her very own bed.

Nope, nope, nope. For four days.

And then, today when the kids were doing their NASCAR impression and she was tripped over for the fortieth time, she finally gave in.

.

Good dog, Mia.

* I still love Billy, I do, but the daily (sometimes multiple times daily) repeat of this one CD is starting to wear on me. There are only so many times a person can listen to "Mony, Mony" with the background vocals of two screaming children before the nerves get a little stretched.