Bye bye, pear and raspberry pie

TIME SENSITIVE

We're off to dinner at a friend's house for probably the second time in the past 18 months (not counting Adam and Jeannette, who fed us many many times over the summer). We owe these friends a Tandem pie. Thanks, phone, for reminding me to buy one this morning (though I remembered on my own and was walking home with a pink bakery box in my mittened hands when I got this reminder).

Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?

Googling: "Do wolves have eyelashes?"   "How to get a bird to eat out of your hand."

Lunch: leftover strawberry/peach pie (this was yesterday. Today no lunch because my stomach was rebelling against something, possibly that pie...)

Mulling: It's hard for an introvert to shop at Trader Joes sometimes. I will deliberately avoid certain lines because I know I'll have to discuss how my day's going and what I'm doing this weekend and what I'm making for dinner.

Packing: Things for the girl! Zoë flies to Bangalore out of Logan on Monday. She'll be in Cambridge for the weekend, where we will meet her for the day on Sunday, armed with bags of saris and salwar kameez and electrolyte tablets and hand sanitizer and (most importantly) her passport. Have you ever sorted saris and tried to figure out which little blouses go with which gorgeous silky sari fabric, and folded them into a tidy, colorful pile? I recommend it.

Birthday Girl

Well dang. I was going to post every single day, November-style, and somehow nine days have elapsed since I last wrote a little something. In the the interim, there were horrific world events and small personal events and a third whirlwind trip to Ikea and hours of work, much of it in the dark after 4PM, candles lit hygge-style.

It's my sweet baby girl's 23rd birthday, and we are celebrating from afar. If I really get it together, I will bake a pie tonight.

Little Bean

Summery

It feels warm these days, so warm that my body is confused, by the sweating and whatnot. So warm that I've switched my usual breakfast from my beloved oatmeal to my summer version of oatmeal, a variation on bircher muesli.

There are many versions of this, but I like to soak some oats in dairy or non-dairy milk (or apple juice)--you can soak them just a little while, but overnight is best. Then add fruit and nuts of your choice, and a couple of dollops of yogurt or kefir. I usually grate half an apple and add some toasted almonds, and as you can see I had some blueberries today. As you can also see, my coffee's on ice.

So that's what I've been eating lately. And that's what I've been drinking lately, although I'm eagerly anticipating a strawberry-rhubarb shrub I'm making (it takes a week), which when mixed with seltzer will be the perfect summer drink (I think). And speaking of rhubarb, I had never made anything with it until last week, when a bunch from the farmers' market turned into my almost-shrub and a glorious strawberry rhubarb pie, too.

I am proud of this pie, and I can hardly wait to make another one.


I've been watching (and savoring) The Americans and Mad Men with my trusty TV Club.
Reading (and loving) The First Bad Man, by Miranda July.
Missing my girl, who's getting settled in Mysore, where she's learning to speak both Kannada and Tamil this summer, before starting grad school in Chicago.
Digging in the dirt almost every day, just as I'd hoped.

This isn't the best photo of them, but you can see my lupines' happy green leaves and a couple of purply spikes (also forget-me-nots, always going crazy all over our yard, and some chamomile that came back, and some iris I need to divide...). Lupines are my favorite.

Winner winner, banana cream pie for dinner

Banana pie/You are making me crazy...

Pi Day was a smashing success--everyone loved my pie despite the fact that it was a little messy, sliding around into a glorified pudding shape. Jonah had seconds!

You know, sorry to segue from pie into poop, but I have been losing my remaining faith in humanity lately. As things begin the melt-freeze-melt-freeze phase, it's increasingly clear walking around town that people are disgusting slobs, and have been letting their dogs poop hither and thither, not scooping. Giving all of us dog people a bad name, I might add. The long, cold winter is no excuse. It's just gross.

31415

Happy Pi Day, lovey doves. I crowd sourced ideas for the best kind of pie to make today, but I plan to disregard all the great suggestions (pecan, sweet potato, cherry, etc) because I've got four ripe bananas and a creamy dream of banana cream pie in my head.

Lulu is visiting for two weeks while my parents gallivant around northern California and Portland-the-Second. I hesitate to mention this, for fear of jinxing it, but she has been quite civilized so far, waking me at 6:45 or even 7:00, rather than, say, 4:45 in the freaking morning. We mince around the block, Lulu sniffing each individual brick, me breaking every bit of ice that my feet can find. Later in the morning, Mark and Gus head off to the beach while Lulu and I settle in for a long walkabout. Mostly, I let her decide which direction to go, and I catch up on my ever-expanding podcast list.

Don't let my glad expression give you the wrong impression.

Isaac is also here for two weeks, for a luxurious spring break! Zoë, meanwhile, is using her break (only one week) to visit Berkeley, one of the grad school possibilities. Did I mention that at least two grad schools have pretty much offered to shower our girl with money, attempts to lure her to study with them? She is weighing her options right now, but what looks certain is that she won't need to take on any debt whatsoever to get her PhD. So, so proud of her and curious to see what she decides! As of now, it looks like she'll either be in California, Chicago, or India next year.

This weekend's kitchen plans include building a pendant light fixture that will hang over the sink. I'll show you when it's done.

All the Things

September, slow down! It's speeding past, full of new schoolish things and medical-related things and heaps of library books, plus my victory in getting Mark hooked on Friday Night Lights (everyone thinks he or she is immune, due to his or her disinterest in the subjects of football and Texas, until it's too late to turn back and they're staying up til midnight watching just one more episode), and not to mention our weekly dark double-feature nights of watching the very last few episodes of Breaking Bad along with the first two seasons of the excellent British series Black Mirror with Jason and David. The dark night of the TV soul is lightened by the fact that we also eat pie--so far, blueberry, apple, pecan, and tonight...pumpkin.

Isaac cracked his head open one night and had to get it stapled up. And yet, he claimed it only "hurts little bit."

Note blood stains on pillow. We spent three hours in this room.

Completely unrelated: he also got his wisdom teeth out. When this photo was taken, he was feeling groovy.

We took this picture because we thought the name "Illuminati" was funny. It was only later that it dawned on me that "maxillofacial" surgery includes Botox injections, and I became very creeped out by the whole place.

50+ hours of intractible hiccups, to be specific. Mark checked out fine in the end, as you can see by his diagnosis. And no, he's not hiccuping any more.

Completely unrelated cat torture. No, actually no cats were harmed in the taking of this photograph. Theo loves any attention Isaac gives him, and Isaac is gentle with his cat puppet. That cat is ENORMOUS, right?

So there you have it, most of our medical adventures this month. Meanwhile, in Madurai India, Zoë rode her bike into a manhole, but she escaped with only bruises. And I undertook a very dull elimination diet to try and figure out what my stomach doesn't enjoy digesting. I've given up in confusion after a week of no caffeine (not to mention no dairy, soy, wheat, or pretty much anything else), but we'll continue to work on it, my stomach and I. In the meantime, I will eat a slice of pumpkin pie tonight.

Ten Things That Help

1. Pie.*

2. Friends and family, their kind words and sweetness.

3. This fella.

I like to imagine I'm writing an obituary for Minnow (a real one, published--in my imagination--in the New York Times), in which I refer to Theo the Cat as his "protégé."

4. Mom and Dad, and the Caribbean parade that went down their street on Sunday.

5. Taking a walk, the sky, the ocean, people being weird, birds, the smell of burnt toast.

6. Books.

7. Coffee.

8. Work.

9. Naps.

10. Puppy porn.

*Ooh, that pie photo is blurry because I was like "HURRY UP HURRY UP PIE, PIE FOR ME." Here is the recipe, and I swear this was the best pie I've ever made and one of the best I've ever eaten. I whipped crème fraîche with a little sugar to dollop.