A Tale of Two Turnips

I pulled a couple of turnips out of the garden the other day and used the greens for a stir-fry. The turnips themselves I left on the table outside to get some of the mud washed off the roots by the rain that day.

But Cubby got to them first.

I went inside to check on something in the oven, and when I came back out, he was gnawing on one of the raw turnips. With mud on his face.

Clean vegetables are for sissies.

Good thing there were two turnips, because of course Charlie had to have what his big brother had.

Though I did cut the muddy roots off of his, in the interests of saving myself some laundry.

I took a bite of one myself, just out of curiosity. Those are some peppery sumbitches raw. I didn't think they'd eat more than a couple of bites each.

They each ate about half of their turnips, and then Cubby tossed his to Mia. "Dogs don't eat turnips," I started to say.

You'd think after seven years, I would know that Mia eats ANYTHING.

Next time I might manage to actually cook the turnips before they get devoured by the hungry--and without doubt very weird--hordes. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Lemons

When life hands you lemons in the form of two sick children who are producing prodigious amounts of mucous and getting up at 4:30 a.m. (because of the mucous) . . .

Plus dog shit in the back hall to clean up first thing in the morning . . .

Plus incessant rain . . .

Plus a husband who starts feeling none too chipper . . .

Plus the telltale sore throat that means it's only a matter of time before you, too, will become a walking mucous factory . . .

Make coffee. And lots of it.

Be back soon. I hope.

Pop Quiz Time

Okay, who knows what all of these acronyms stand for?

1) A.M. and P.M.

2) B.C.E. and C.E.

3) i.e. and e.g.

4) Scuba

So how'd you do? If you knew them all, then you are more qualified to answer questions from a three-year-old than I am. Or maybe you were like me: a little hazy on the full phrasing for some of those. ( "Scuba! I know this one! Submersible . . . c-something . . . underwater breathing apparatus? Maybe? Wait, lemme Google it.*") If that was you, allow me to save you some Googling.

Answers after a totally unrelated photo of Charlie wrecking the joint:

1) AM and PM=ante meridiem and post meridiem. I thought it was meridian, but that's just the line of longitude on a globe. Meridiem is a Latin word for midday. Good to know.

2) B.C.E. and C.E.=Before Common Era and Common Era. I did know this one, although this is the more recent way of referring to years and I still sometimes expect to see the old B.C. and A.D. I learned as a kid. Because I am ancient, apparently.

3) i.e. and e.g.=i.e. stands for the Latin words "id est" (which kind of means "in other words") and e.g. stands for the Latin words "exempli gratia" (roughly "for example"). Good luck explaining the differences in grammar usage to a three-year-old who thinks "comfortabler" (as in "more comfortable") is a word.

4) Scuba=Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. I got three of the five words there. Is that a passing grade?

Thank God for the Internet. It allows me to appear a lot smarter to my preschooler than I apparently am.

* Or if A. is handy, just ask him, since he knows the answer to everything. This is simultaneously helpful and very irritating.

No Fear Housekeeping

Anyone else remember those "No Fear" t-shirts that were so popular in the nineties? I had one for soccer. The slogan on it was supposed to convey how bad-ass and balls-out that activity was.

Kind of lame now that I think of it, but I could use one for cleaning.

The mildew smell was not eliminated by my efforts with the fireplace. Reduced, but not eliminated. Since even a hint of mildew is way too much, I decided a full-on assault was the only answer. This meant scrubbing down every wood surface in the dining room.

So the three feet of wainscoting that runs around the entire room, especially behind enormous pieces of furniture that are never moved? Yup, mildew everywhere. Wood floors? Mildew in the corners. Every curve and embellishment on our ornate Chippendale-style chairs? Yuh huh. Mildew. Door frames, window frames, tables, EVERYTHING in this damn room is wood and therefore susceptible to mildewing.

I did some of it last week. I got about half of the rest done in the hour and a half I had during Charlie's nap today. I'll probably be mostly crippled for the rest of the day. All you people who like to get all fit at the gym? Come scrub my house instead. The hours of repetitive motion and awkward bending are just as challenging to the body, and they can't be any more boring than a treadmill.

Only a little bit left to do in the dining room, and then I get to start on the bedroom attached to the dining room, which is so damp it might as well be a cave. And then there's the library. And the living room. And . . .

You know what? Just send me a case of Murphy's Oil Soap and a back brace, okay? I'm gonna need 'em.

The Future Is Now

We used to get the Lehman's catalog. It's the ultimate in wishful catalog shopping for people that live our kind of lifestyle.

One of the things I always used to see in the catalog was this extra-extra-large cast iron skillet.  I always thought to myself, "Who in the world needs a skillet that can fit a dozen eggs?"

Hi!

When I fry eggs for my family, I have to cook nine--two for me, two for Cubby, two for Charlie, and three for A. And that's not even with any for the MiL, who usually isn't home when we eat. A. would probably prefer four for himself, but even nine eggs don't really fit in my biggest skillet. I could use that XXL skillet I used to scoff at.

It won't be long before Cubby and Charlie will be eating as much as A., and at some point they'll be eating more than him. Of course, at that point they can also cook their own damn eggs, so I won't be trying to cook, like, two dozen eggs at a time myself.

I'm going to have to start making bacon in the oven, because I just can't fit all the pieces we eat in one pan on the stovetop.

I made custard the other day, a recipe which requires a two-quart baking dish for cooking, and I got about half a serving after A., Cubby, and Charlie had all had a go at it.

A. made omelets for dinner a couple of nights ago. He used a dozen eggs total, plus cheese and ham, to feed the four of us. Each of the children ate as much as I did. If not more.

I made an enormous apple crisp in a 13x9 pan a few weeks ago--the one that the cookbook calls "Apple Crisp for a Crowd"-- that was gone within two days.

I used to joke when Charlie was a wee baby and Cubby still a toddler and not really the honest-to-God little boy he most certainly is now that in the future I would have a hard time keeping up with the demand for food.

The future is now. Start your stoves, folks--the feeding frenzy is on.

A.P.D.--The Hideous Housework Edition

I am not a meticulous housekeeper. This is something I've accepted about myself. My house will never be spotless.

But it's not all my fault.

Not to pass the buck or anything, but old houses are a major pain in the ass to clean. They just are. They include features that present unique cleaning challenges. Probably because they were built with the assumption that servants would be doing the cleaning, and who cares about their convenience?

For instance, your average suburban house is unlikely to have an enormous brick fireplace with a woodstove in front of it. And if there is no enormous brick fireplace with a woodstove in front of it, there is no place for mildew to form in a wet summer, making the whole downstairs smell like an underground pit.

I, however, as the resident of a historic home, am the proud possesor of just such a fireplace, with just such mildew. It took me awhile to figure out WHY the whole downstairs smelled so mildewy, and then it took me awhile to clean the fireplace out. Because, you see, there is this huge, ungainly iron woodstove in the way, so I couldn't just crawl back into the fireplace to scrub it down.

Instead I had to move as much junk out of the way as I could--fireplace tools, andirons, chairs--so I could get a mop in around the sides of the woodstove and clean the bricks as best I could with water, vinegar, and borax on the mop. And now there's a big box fan roaring into the fireplace to dry it as quickly as possible.

It was incredibly gross behind the woodstove. Unsurprising, since I think I last cleaned back there about three years ago, other than cosmetic dusting for cobwebs or whatever. A lot of soot and filth can collect in three years. To say nothing of the mildew.

So gross.

And now it's your turn, my lovelies! What's the most hideous cleaning job you have ever been forced to do?

Bacon Is the Answer

No, not to everything. If I read one more, "Bacon makes everything better!" article or post, I'll . . . well, I'll curse silently to myself. But it will be vehement silent cursing. Bacon is good and it has its place, but its place is not in everything. Like mayonnaise. No. Please.

It does, however, have a place in meatloaf. Or rather, around meatloaf.

See, remember we don't eat bread? Well, without bread, it's hard to keep a meatloaf from falling apart into a big pile of loose meat when it's cut. So unappetizing. I've tried a lot of other things to glue the meat together, without success. But then I decided to wrap the whole thing in multiple strips of bacon, as recommended by America's Test Kitchen.

I did it originally for the fat it would add to the very lean, grass-fed ground beef we buy from the farm up the road. But it turns out that wrapping the whole thing in bacon makes a fatty meat swaddle (mmm, meat swaddle) that holds the meat in a nice compact bundle for cooking.

Plus, it tastes really good. As you might imagine. Bacon is definitely the answer to bread-less meatloaf. Just please keep it out of my mayonnaise.