Dux Parade

The girls and I went to pick my husband up from work on Wednesday, and as we pulled into the parking lot of the car dealership where he works, we were enchanted to see a mother mallard duck bossily waddling her way across the lot from the pretty pond (complete with fountain) that has pride of place on the south edge of the dealership's property. Behind her were two little ducklings doing a strange little walk that was half-waddle, half-jump-for-joy.

I stopped the van and we all quietly watched as she took a glance at us, decided that we meant no harm, and then led her babies in front of us and off the edge of the asphalt to a deep puddle in a ditch, courtesy of the recent heavy rains that has everyone in Indiana except the ducks saying mean things about Mother Nature. The three of them launched onto the water and swam busily across the puddle, traveling in an undulating S curve towards the tall weeds on the other side. Once there, the three ducks climbed out and fluffed their feathers; then Mama shooed her babies into the tall weeds, undoubtedly quacking, "Now I don't want to hear any noise. Not a single peep, you hear? You go right to sleep. No, you can't have another junebug; you've had plenty. You can have another one tomorrow. Okay now...everyone settled? Well, good night then. Mama loves you. *kiss*kiss*"

"That looks just like us," Meelyn said fondly as we watched Mrs. Mallard settling down to preen her feathers. "You, me and Aisling, waiting for Daddy to come in with a honk-honk-honk."

It really did!

PRODUCT REVIEW: University Medical Acne Free Skin Care Treatment

Having two teenagers who react to one tiny pimple in a manner that suggests that their faces have erupted into one big, running sore, we know a lot about skin care products in this house.

We used to have a popular skin care regimen that advertises heavily on the 'net, in magazines and on television mailed to us at our house, but it just got too expensive. It worked, but it cost a lot.

The girls tried just about every benzoyl peroxide product on the market, all with limited success. The best I could summon from the results was a very half-hearted meh. Some didn't really work at all and some were okay, but none of them were worth the money.

Until we found University Medical Pharmaceutical's Acne Free Skin Care Treatment, that is. It is a three-step regimen for the face that comes cushioned in a cute little orange-and-white box (although not so cute that your son would refuse to use it), packaging that is somewhat reminiscent of that other skin care system I mentioned above, except for the color scheme.

The girls rate it an A+ for ease of use -- although you do have to use it if you want to see results, I cautioned them -- and I rate it an A+ for the price, which is about ten dollars less than that other system. I also appreciate the availability of this product, which we purchased at the CVS right down the street.

We all give it an A+ for results. Aisling was having some troubles with her forehead, which is exposed to more skin oils due to the fact that she has thick bangs. Meelyn occasionally suffers from problems with her chin because she sleeps with her cheek cradled in one hand. University Medical's treatment program has given them both clear, healthy-looking skin. Aisling's forehead is the most remarkable thing; it is as smooth and clear as the day she was born, even with her fringe covering it up.

Any little breakouts the girls have are minor and quickly dealt with. I really recommend giving this product a try. Apparently, it is available at many pharmacies other than just CVS. I believe we paid $20 for the set.

Whisk Wednesday Assignment #13 - Billy Bi aux Paillettes (Mussel Soup with Cheese Straws)

This week's lesson was by far the hardest and our results were mixed, but not because the recipes were bad. The recipes were just fine and I have been so pleased to read in a flurry of emails that several of my fellow Whisk Wednesdays members had great results from their efforts and thought the soup was delicious. I think everyone probably felt that the paillettes were were delicious - where can you go wrong with puff pastry and grated fresh Parmesan?

I know exactly where we went wrong with the soup. Billy Bi (pronounced "Billy Bee" and named by chef Louis Barthe at Maxim's in Paris after restaurant patron William "Billy" Brand) calls for mussels, which are not exactly thick on the ground in my little blue collar city. I was thrilled to find 2 pounds of frozen mussels from Prince Edward Island for $5.99, which I didn't feel was a bad price for a dinner component, in the seafood case at Meijer; they were pre-cleaned and pre-cooked and I felt that I'd rather handily killed two (pounds of) mussels with one fishing net or however you'd prefer to state that.

Did you catch the word "cooked" in that last paragraph?

It turns out that one of the most essential parts of this recipe was the cooking of the mussels so that their juices could be used to add a layer of flavor dimension to the soup. Without those juices, the girls and I wound up with bowls full of pleasantly flavored creamy broth. It smelled fantastic, but the mere aroma didn't translate to the taste. It was too bad.

If we have an "exotic" seafood in some other recipe, I think I'll definitely make the drive over to Kayte's city (where the girls and I do so many other things, so it will be easy to combine several errands and save gas) and go to see her new friend, the fishmonger, and get the real, fresh deal. One of the things that really stings about this recipe is that Kayte's two pounds of fresh mussels cost less than my two pounds frozen!

One thing I enjoyed about this recipe was removing the mussels from their shells, which were the most intriguing indigo-black with pearly pale blue interiors - beautiful. The mussels themselves were ugly little buggers and Meelyn sat flinching on the chair across the table from me, uttering little horrified screams.

"Why are they that awful color?" she asked, shuddering.

"Because God is the artist of all artists and that's how he made them." I flicked another mussel out of its shell with a spoon and Meelyn recoiled when it landed in my bowl with a slight splash.

"I don't like this art."

"Maybe this is art that has to be tasted to be appreciated," I mused, throwing a lovely shell into the wastebasket.

Sad, sad. It didn't happen. Everything went off just the way it should have -- the herbs and wine, the roux with the cooking liquid added and then the cream poured in -- I was very pleased, until I took that first taste.

Swallowing, I said hesitantly, "I think it needs salt."

Meelyn tasted, then Aisling. "More salt, definitely," they agreed.

I added more and gave the soup kettle a stir, then tasted a second time. "I think it still needs more."

The girls agreed, so we went another round. Finally, Meelyn said, "You know, I think it doesn't really taste like much of anything. Except maybe cream."

I knew my husband would be very disappointed if I offered him a bowl of warm herbed cream after twelve hours at work, so I hustled some leftovers out of the fridge and served barbecue sandwiches, potato salad and green beans instead. *sob!*

But then there are the paillettes, the cheese straws. Shari said we didn't have to make the cheese straws for this assignment if we didn't want to. She'd already made them in a previous lesson (I jumped into Whisk Wednesdays at Lesson 12) and didn't intend to make them again. I, who have never even made a pie crust in my entire life, thought I'd go ahead and give them a whirl. Or maybe a "roll" would be more accurate. Anyhoo, the puff pastry doesn't call for any exotic ingredients, just flour, butter, and some egg, basically. I had everything I needed already on hand, so I set forth.

I had to scrub down my kitchen counter to roll the pastry on. Before I started, I wet two tea towels and put them in the freezer for fifteen minutes to make the counter nice and cool, which I believe has something to do with the pastry not getting all hot and sticky. In this weather, I could understand perfectly. Many's the time I've wished I could lay my hot and sticky body on a nice cool counter, although come to think of it, don't they do that at the morgue?

Ewww!

Forget I said that.

I measured out the flours and made a little well in the center as Le Cordon Bleu at Home instructed me to do; the only thing bad that happened in the making of the puff pastry was when my liquidy ingredients naughtily overflowed and attempted to frolic all over my counter and run off into the utensil drawer. I firmly put a stop to that and mixed them up with the flour and started rolling.

After that initial rollout, the dough had to be wrapped and put in the fridge for 30 minutes to allow it to rest. Cooling the dough helps it lose its elasticity: the elasticity is what makes the dough tough. (Isn't it very strange to see the words "dough" and "tough" right next to each other and contemplate their pronunciations? It isn't? Okay, then. Never mind.) The butter had to be softened by placing it between two pieces of parchment or waxed paper and pounding it with the rolling pin until it was the consistency of the dough. Aisling and I had a great deal of fun doing that.

After abusing the butter, we shaped it like the dough we'd just rolled out -- into a rectangle. Then began the process I really enjoyed, which was rolling the dough, folding and turning it, refrigerating it after each two rolls-and-turns. I can't really explain why I found that to be so entertaining, but I told Kayte in an email that I was so proud of that pastry, I was practically cooing babyluv at it each time I passed the fridge.

When we made the cheese sticks, the only mistake I made (other than not having an egg for the glaze, drat it all) was in not separating the sticks in the middle of my baking sheet a little better. The ones in the middle, because they were crammed in so tightly, didn't have enough room to puff up like the ones on the outer edges. But I'm happy to report that being squashed in closely didn't affect their taste.

"Thede theez thicks are good evn do they're nod puvvy!" I said indistinctly as I carried a little tray of cheesy paillettes into the dining room, spraying my family with a delicate rain of flaky crumbs.

Julia Child states that the most important part of cooking is tasting what you've made and I believe her.

Coming next week for Whisk Wednesday -- Julienne Darblay (Creamed Leek and Potato Soup with Julienned Vegetables) page 133-134. Sounds absolutely delicious and is perhaps the very soup that caused Julia to snort laughter through her nose when she inadvertantly said, "First, you take a leek..."

RECIPE: Chicken Stock in the Slow-Cooker

I was recently reading a really great book titled Not Your Mother's Slow-Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and I was intrigued by her recipe for slow-cooked chicken stock. She offers two different recipes in her book (pp. 95 and 96) and I formed a new one that consisted of parts of those two, plus a few differences that I like in chicken stock.

I was interested in her recipes because I had been hoping to find an easier way to make chicken stock that wouldn't involve adding back the humidity by boiling a big pot on the stove that we're trying to take out of the house with the central air running. Plus, I was thinking it would be nice not to have to keep adding water -- to just be able to put the chicken carcass and the rest of the ingredients in the slow-cooker and forget about them for many hours.

So this is what I came up with, although I highly recommend Beth Hersperger's book. She has what seems like some good, solid, family-friendly recipes in Not Your Mother's Slow-Cooker Cookbook (Meatballs in Tomato-Wine Sauce; Honey and Apple Bread Pudding with Golden Raisins) that sound really delicious.

Chicken Stock in the Slow-Cooker

This recipe is meant for a large round or oval slow-cooker. It should cook on high for one hour and then be turned down to low for 8-10 hours.

2 medium-sized sweet onions, cut in chunks
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
3 large ribs celery with leaves, washed and chopped
1 meaty chicken carcass, including skin and cooking liquid
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
4 "grinds" of fresh black pepper
1 cup dry white wine
Enough cold water to cover the chicken carcass

Place all ingredients in the slow-cooker and cover chicken carcass with the cold water. Turn the cooker on high and allow to heat everything until hot, an hour or so.

At the end of that hour, skim off any foam with a spoon. Return the cover to the slow-cooker; turn the heat setting down to low. Cook for 8-10 hours. If, during the cooking time, the water level cooks below the ingredients, add enough boiling water to the slow-cooker to bring it up to cover the ingredients again.

When the stock is fully cooked, line a large colander with cheesecloth and strain the broth into a clean pot. Press the vegetables to make sure all juices have been squeezed out. Discard bones, skin, herbs and vegetables. Season with salt if you'd like. Immediately refrigerate the stock.

You can either use this stock immediately, keep it tightly covered in the fridge for 2-3 days or divide it up into several freezer containers and save for later use.

This recipe makes about 3 quarts of stock.

RECIPE: Seafood Enchiladas à la Chi-Chi's

Oh, late lamented Chi-Chi's, bastion of Amerexican chain restaurant dining! I really miss eating there. I know, I know....many people turn up their noses at chain restaurants, but when you live in central Indiana and you have a small budget for dining out, you can develop a fondness for places like Chi-Chi's, the Olive Garden and Outback Steakhouse. I know that the food served in those places is inauthentic and mass produced, but my philosophy is "who cares, if it tastes good?"

And some of it is very good indeed, such as these seafood enchiladas, known as the Cancun. This is what I ordered nearly every time we went to Chi-Chi's and I have missed them wistfully. Until now, that is, because these are the real thing.

I made these enchiladas for dinner the other night (after finding the recipe on the internet) and my entire family swooned. But be warned - these are very, very rich. Next time, I'll cut the recipe in half, so you may want to take that into account if you want to prepare it yourself.

Seafood Enchiladas à la Chi-Chi's

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 tablespoons lobster base*
3 1/2 cups milk (I used 2%)
1 cup white wine (use a sweeter white table wine or white zin, not a dry white)
8 ounces Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded
3 ounces frozen salad-style shrimp, thawed
1 lb flake-style crab meat or 2 8-ounce packages imitation flake-style crab meat
10 6-inch flour tortillas

Directions:

To prepare the enchilada sauce

Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat and add the flour to make a roux. Reduce heat to low; cook and stir for 4-5 minutes. Add white pepper and lobster base, cooking and stirring for another minute. Turn the heat back up to medium and add the wine. Allow the wine to simmer gently for about five minutes so that the alcohol can burn off, leaving only the taste. Add the milk and 2 ounces of the cheese and continue to cook until the sauce has thickened. Once thickened, remove from heat so that the sauce won't scorch. Set it aside so that it will stay warm because you're almost ready to use it.

To prepare the seafood mixture

Chop the crab meat into small chunks place in a medium mixing bowl with the thawed shrimp. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of the sauce and set aside.

To prepare the enchiladas

Preheat the oven to 425⁰F and spray a 9x13 inch baking pan with cooking spray. While the oven heats, gently warm the tortillas in the microwave on a microwave-safe plate between sheets of paper towel, about 90 seconds or so (although microwaves differ; these need to be warm but not hot.)

Once the tortillas are warm and flexible, start by placing one tortilla on a flat surface in front of you, such as a large cutting board or pastry slab. Place about 2 or 3 tablespoons of the seafood mixture in a vertical line on the tortilla; flip the upper and lower ends inward and then roll the tortilla from left to right. This takes a little practice, so don't think badly of yourself if you're all thumbs. I certainly was. My enchiladas looked like they'd been rolled by a chimpanzee. Who'd been smoking funny cigarettes.

Proceed in the same manner with the rest of the tortillas, placing them side by side in the baking dish. When all ten have been rolled (I had some seafood mixture left over), cover with the warm sauce and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake for 13-15 minutes; remove from oven and serve on warm plates; sprinkle with paprika and serve.

This recipe, in my family's opinion, serves ten. That was a lotta enchilada, hahahaha. *ahem* Sorry.



*Lobster base can be bought at many grocery stores in the aisle with the soup and bouillon. The brand I bought was called "Better Than Bouillon" and it was soooo ugly in the jar -- it looked like used motor oil with a red crayon melted in it -- but it smelled like absolute heaven. And when you stir it into the roux and add the wine....blissful!!!!

If you can't find lobster base at your grocery store, you can purchase the Better Than Bouillon (Superior Quality Foods) for $5.95 plus shipping at Amazon.com. It really is necessary to achieve the authentic taste of the dish, so it would be a worthy purchase. Plus, there's a recipe for Lobster Bisque on the label that sounds divine.

When does it stop?

I was reading a funny article at MSN.com titled 10 Things No One Tells You About Parenthood by Craig Playstead earlier today and was amused -- and then bemused -- to note that number four was that you never get to go to the bathroom by yourself again.

He mentioned that he gets no peace from his toddler son, who bangs on the door and yells, "Lemme in!" and pushes little books under the door and tries to get in the door and then finally slumps, whining, against the door. I nodded in sympathetic agreement. I've been there and then a sudden thought assailed me: "Wait a minute. I'm still there."

I don't get a minute of peace in the bathroom to this very day. Do other people's kids outgrow the need to bond with Mommy while she pees, or is it just my kids? Naturally, I don't let Meelyn and Aisling in the bathroom with me. In fact, I do everything but rip the iron bathtub from its moorings and push it against the door to deter their entry. But they still stand outside, wailing and gnashing their teeth like souls that have been cast into the outer darkness.

They press their faces into the crack between the door and the jamb, attempting to carry on slightly muffled conversations with me, asking me important things like which Jonas brother do I think is the cutest and if I know where their Mission: Mango nail polish is and why their sister is the bossiest, rudest, proton-brained person on the planet, until I feel I'm going to go mad.

Maybe it's different with boys. Maybe Craig Playstead's son will someday hear the rattle of his father's favorite newspaper behind the closed door of the bathroom and think, "You know, I need to respect Dad's privacy and give him a few minutes alone."

But maybe not. And then Craig will experience the exasperation of listen to a teenager say, "Hey Half my Pop-Tart broke mmmfffmmmn in the toaster and mmmfffffmmmmm mnfffmmmm smoke detector mffffmmnnnn and a little flame shot up and mfffmmmmnnmffffm fire department?"

I feel I've done my civic duty now to all parents of young children who think the bathroom thing is going to end. You have been warned. Soundproof that place while you still have time.

How quickly they learn

On Thursday, my husband and I drove Meelyn and Aisling and my friend Margaret's kids (Kate, Lora and Alex) down to an evening of volleyball fun sponsored by one of the families in our homeschool group. This was Aisling's first official teen event and she was a combination of excited and nervous, especially when we got there and it turned out that most of the people there were teenage boys who loomed over her like corn stalks over a field mouse.

I have to say, it was a rare spectacle to observe Aisling being both quiet and bashful. If they could only have seen her two hours previously when I was yelling, "AISLING SHUT UP" as she attempted to make Hershey run around the coffee table in time to the martial beat of "Stars and Stripes Forever," which she was honking loudly on a nose kazoo.

Meelyn was also behaving inscrutably. The teenagers chose up sides by numbering off and Meelyn was the second server on her team. My husband and I were seated on the host's deck watching the game and we were considerably surprised to see Meelyn gently thump the ball over the net in a high arc, totally unlike her usual centimeters-above-the-net shrieking smash. We traded a look with one another and my husband shrugged one shoulder.

The other team was unable to return the ball in spite of the easy serve, so it went back to Meelyn. Again with mellow serve, so placid and tender it was practically burbling baby talk as it sailed over the net with a lacy bonnet on. The opposing team did manage to volley it back and ended up scoring a point, so Meelyn was retired.

"What was that all about?" I asked my husband.

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully, watching Mee as she jogged up to her place at the net. "Maybe she's...out of practice?"

"I was kind of hoping she'd, you know. Feed it to them." I cast a glance at the teenage boys on the opposing team, all swagger and bombast, as if they'd just scored a point off Sean Scott.

We were similarly nonplussed when she served the second time, again lobbing an easy ball over the net, much to our mystification. When the game ended, my husband called her over.

"What's the deal with those baby serves?" he asked, smiling at her sweet face with its bright eyes and pink cheeks, a faint glowing sheen on her forehead. "You're being awfully easy on them."

She beamed at us. "Daddy," she whispered, leaning closer. "I don't want to hurt them."

He laughed. "Their bodies or their pride?"

"Both!" she said, and grinned over her shoulder as she went back to the court.

Aisling, however, had no use for such social niceties. When one of the boys on Mee's team charged into her place to return the ball that she was getting ready to bump back over the net, knocking her flat to the ground in the process, Aisling was outraged when he didn't offer her a hand to help her back to her feet. The wind was slightly knocked out of her and the game stopped while she got up. "Geeeeshhh, be a gentleman and help her up," shouted one of the boys on Aisling's team.

He didn't though, and let me state that while I think helping her back up would have been nice, this is not an evil boy. He's really very nice. He was probably embarrassed that he'd lurched into her, and being an awkward teenager, he got a little flustered. I have made my share of social blunders, including standing with a bowl of potato salad and vainly trying to hold back snorting giggles when a retired general's very dignified wife fell off a picnic table's bench onto the grass back during my days as a camp counselor. So I felt very sorry for him and at least Meelyn wasn't sixty-five years old and wearing a summer dress, is all I can say.

But Aisling took it amiss. She had noticed the fact that, while the boy was very enthusiastic about the game, he was not a born volleyball player. So she took it into her curly head to teach him a sharp lesson when she came up to serve.

"I aimed it at him," she said to us later, scowling under her lowered brows with the same look she used to give me when I tried to feed her oatmeal without bananas in it some twelve years back. "I sent it right to him every single time and I scored points off him because he mowed MeeMee down and he didn't say sorry."

Oh, children learn all the time, every day, with everything they do. Sometimes it's just a bit hard to know what they're learning. And maybe why.

Big thanks to Katie

Katie very kindly said she would lend me her ninth grade Apologia Exploring Creation with Biology text and other student materials. Her three girls have all used it and benefited from this excellent science program and I thought it was beyond amazing that she was willing to lend me this set, considering that I still have her Peter Milward book titled The Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays, which she lent me about eighteen months ago. I love that book so much, it's all I can do to keep from sleeping with it under my pillow, nights. It's also unfortunately hard to come by - the people at Amazon tried to find it for me for eight months before they threw in the towel. So I still have the book, and yet Katie is willing to lend me more!

She brought the books to me at Moms' Night Out last Monday. To Katie, I was returning a single paperback book that Beck had lent to Meelyn and I was terribly pleased with myself for remembering to not only put it in the car but also give it to her once I saw her. I drove around for a month with one of Katie's Tupperware pieces on the front seat next to me for about four months, during which time I saw her several times a week. Yes, I know. If I were her, I'd never send homemade brownies home with me again either. Or if I did, I'd wrap them in a used paper napkin and say, "Here. You don't merit a more permanent container because you are a bird brain."

Anyway, when we met in the parking lot at O'Charley's, she said, "Wait a second and I'll give you the materials." She went to her van and lugged out this enormous shopping bag and dragged it over to me. When I saw its size and heft, I felt immediate misgivings about the scope of the Apologia science program, thinking wildly, "How many PAGES does that book HAVE??!!"

It turns out that the book is just the regular size you'd expect from a high school level science text; what was adding weight to the bag was the microscope that Katie also lent us. I was very nearly moved to tears. I thought I was going to have to buy a microscope with the tax incentive check (that finally came in the mail yesterday), and here's Katie, lending me her expensive microscope out of the clear blue.

I'll tell you: there are friends who will give you brownies and lend you books, but when they lend you their microscope, that's when you know that they believe your friendship is for keeps.

Thank you, Katie, for your generosity. You are an amazing friend.

Milestones

Today is Aisling's first day of playing for Mass -- she's going to play the recessional hymn, which is "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee." We went to practice yesterday at the church with the cantors and parish music director and when they heard her play, their words of praise brought tears to my eyes. It made me totally afraid that I could be one of those obnoxious stage mother-types who forces her reluctant kiddie into the offices of music directors around the diocese, saying urgently, "Look, my kid's got talent. Talent! That's with a capital tee-ay-el-ay-en-tee. You wanna know about talent? You gotta hear her do the Tantum Ergo. C'mon, Aisling, move your butt. Siddown at that piano and show the lady what you can do."

Also, tomorrow is Mee's first day in Driver's Ed class. Wednesday is her first day of hitting the streets, behind the wheel of a car emblazoned with large, brightly colored magnetic signs that read: STUDENT DRIVER in letters the size of which are usually seen on theater marquees or roadside advertising. She'll be out from 9:00am-10:00am and she has a new pair of sunglasses to mark the occasion. The public has been warned.

RECIPE: Tilapia Filets in Garlic-Lemon Butter Sauce

I made tilapia filets for dinner the other night and we were all really pleased with how delicious they were. Living in Indiana, we're really not accustomed to eating anything that isn't made of cow, pig or chicken. Seafood scares us.

But several of my friends have told me of the wonders of tilapia, saying that it is mild, non-fishy and easy to prepare. "Easy to prepare" is always a nice sound in my ear, so last week at the grocery we bought some nice flash-frozen filets.

The recipe for the butter sauce couldn't have been easier. Here's what I used:

6 tablespoons of butter

3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon dried parsley OR 1 tablespoon fresh parsley

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

paprika


I sautéed the minced garlic in the butter until the butter was a little bit brown, then added the lemon juice and parsley and gave it a bit of a stir. When it was all combined and smelling very savory, I tipped about half the sauce onto a foil-covered baking sheet that had also been lightly sprayed with cooking spray. Once that was done, I placed four frozen filets on the butter sauce and then poured the rest of it over the fish, sprinkling them with the paprika, which adds some nice color along with the wilted parsley leaves and the pepper.

I cooked the filets at 400⁰ F for twenty minutes, until the fish was cooked through the middle and flaked when tested with a fork.

This simply couldn't have been easier. It tasted really good and everyone said they'd like to have it again, which pleased me greatly. That is the FIRST TIME in the twenty-three years since I left the care and protection of my parents' home that I have cooked any kind of fish other than fish sticks or Tuna Helper, no kidding.

Doesn't it just figure?

Anyone reading remember Operation Tidykleen, the household de-clutterification "system" I started back in early May to make sure everyone's junk is picked up and put away on a daily basis?

Well, I told you it wouldn't last, didn't I?

Here we are in the first week of July: We have the flotsam and jetsam of nine uncompleted 4-H projects strewn from the front door to the back, also HISTO Indiana History items, ditto. With all the cooking we've been doing, the dishwasher always seems to be stuffed like a Christmas goose, with dirty dishes stacked haphazardly in the adjoining sink. There is laundry -- folded and unfolded -- on various chairs and pieces of furniture; my clean underwear is decorating the dining room buffet, right in front of a picture of the Sacred Heart. It is cringe-making. Wet bathing suits and towels and flip-flops and swim bags are dotted around the laundry room; there is a shoe on the kitchen table.

It hasn't looked this bad in here for more than a month. This house looks like a place that the Department of Health and Human Services might film for an employee training video to be presented at an in-service titled: "The American Family: Degeneration into Third World Squalor."

So this would be the day that the workers from the gas company are back on our street with their jack hammers and their yelling (but the central air is on, so I've been unable to hear any NAUGHTY LANGUAGE being hollered outside my window), waking us all up very early and causing three out of the four of us to come stomping downstairs with unpleasant attitudes. My name should be sent to Rome for putting up with those people.

Not only are they back on our street, they're also in our house. To turn the pilot light back on for the gas stove, furnace and water heater.

When the unexpected knock came at the front door, I was in the powder room, er...powdering my nose. And it looked like it was going to take a while, if you know what I mean. So I yelled through the closed door, "MEELYN!!!! ANSWER THE DOOR!!!!"

She did, and then came back. "There's a man from the gas company out there. They've installed the new meter and he says he needs to talk to my mom."

"Great," I muttered. "Tell him I ran away to join the circus."

"You don't want me to tell him you're pooping and that you'll be out in half an hour?" she growled into the crack of the door and then started laughing really hard.

"How old are you?" I asked her sweetly.

"Silly, you know I'm fifteen!"

"Oh, yeah. Fifteen. Well, listen, smartypants, do want to live to see sixteen?"

"Okay, I'll tell him you'll be there in a moment."

A few minutes later, flushed and flustered, having just-in-case sprayed the entire downstairs with cinnamon-scented "odor eliminator," as the can so delicately reads, Iwent to the door. A smiling man in a hard hat was lounging against the porch wall, no doubt thinking, "Finally! The lady who was powdering her nose has come to allow me admittance to her basement!"

I showed him to the basement door, cautioning him to watch out for possible vampires, mummies and other scary stuff. He was down there for about five minutes, which gave me plenty of time to look at my house as someone else might see it. Horrible. If I was embarrassed before, it was nothing compared to how I felt when he came stumping back up the stairs and went in my kitchen. If he'd had to go upstairs and look in my closet, I probably would have just took a fit and fell out right there, as we say here in Indiana.

He left, politely thanking me for my generosity in allowing his crew to install our new gas meter (does he know it's me who yelled out the window that day?) and I closed the door behind him and slumped against the wall. How many days has my house been in a pristine state of tidiness, only to have no one drop by to pay a call, deliver a package, or re-light my pilot lights? How many? WHY TODAY, OF ALL DAYS??!!

Whisk Wednesday Assignment #12, Part 3 -- Mayonnaise and Salade Messidor

This week's assignment turned out to be very tricksy and somewhat inscrutable. Like, there is supposed to be something inside an artichoke when you cut off all the green outer leaves, right? It's not just nature's little joke, getting us to pay for these odd-looking vegetables (most of which are tipped right into the trash) only to find....nothing?

I think I'm confused about artichokes.

This week was the one I've been waiting for - the week in which we were to make homemade mayonnaise, a task I set myself to do this summer. And I can now say that I've done it! So have Meelyn and Aisling, because if there was ever a three-person task, it's mayonnaise making: One person to stir, one to pour the oil, and the third to lie back in a kitchen chair, panting and nursing a rubbery, tired arm, waiting to spell Person #1 with the stirring. We made mayonnaise from two different recipes this week. Eh bien soit, one we liked and one we didn't.

I'm sorry to say that the one we didn't like was from Le Cordon Bleu at Home. The recipe, along with the recipe for Salade Messidor, can be found on pages 30-31 of the book.

Le Cordon Bleu at Home calls for the following ingredients in their mayonnaise:

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

salt and fresh ground pepper

1 3/4 cups vegetable oil

1 tablespoon wine vinegar

The girls and I undertook this recipe on Sunday, since I wanted a little practice before putting the salade together. The technique for making mayonnaise is completely straightforward and doesn't vary from recipe to recipe: beat the egg yolks quickly, add the oil slowly. But that's really the second part of the technique. The first part of the mayonnaise-making technique is to make sure you have all your ingredients at room temperature. That's not so difficult for the oil, which I'm assuming most of us store in a kitchen cupboard, no matter what sort you're using. But the eggs, now, that's a different story. To bring your eggs to room temperature quickly if you've forgotten to get them out of the fridge ahead of time like, say, me, you can put them in a small, deep bowl with warm water to cover them. Fifteen minutes or so should do it. I learned this handy trick from The Tante Marie's Cooking School Cookbook by Mary Risley, which is another book I feel I simply must own. (Kayte already talked me into buying Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, the book she and the group from Tuesdays with Dorie blog are baking their way through, and why I did this I simply cannot fathom, as I dislike baking to a degree almost phobic in its intensity.)

The reason it's important to have all ingredients at room temperature is because mayonnaise is an emulsion of egg yolks and oil -- you need to get all the little molecules that make up these two substances to bond -- emulsify -- and they can't do it if they're at disparate temperatures. Alors, any attempt to combine cold egg yolks with room temp oil is only going to end with you sitting hunched over on a bar stool, throwing back glasses of marc with a cigarette hanging unattractively out of the side of your mouth, muttering cuss words in French.

Meelyn, Aisling and I had great success with this mayonnaise. It obediently did just what it was supposed to do. The only problem was that it was bland. We added more salt. We added more pepper. We gave it another kick of vinegar. The one thing I didn't want to do was add more Dijon mustard, because it already had a faint mustard flavor and I wanted our mayonnaise to taste like mayonnaise. It didn't seem too much to ask. Frrustrated, I went to the shelf and got out Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, Julia Child's chef d'oeuvre, to see what her take on the recipe was. I can remember my grandmother's homemade mayonnaise, and it tasted creamy and rich and wonderful, whether it went into a Hoosier potato salad or on a turkey sandwich. It didn't taste like mustard.

Julia's instructions for basic mayonnaise (she lists seven variations) can be found on page 87. Here's the list of ingredients:

3 egg yolks

1 tablespoon wine vinegar OR lemon juice (we used lemon juice)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon prepared mustard

1 1/2 to 2 1/4 cups oil, whatever kind you prefer


I found the two recipes intruguing, because they're so fundamentally similar, yet different in ways that matter a lot. To our taste, anyway. Probably the biggest difference was the use of plain salad mustard in a small amount in place of the much larger amount of Dijon mustard. As it turned out, that was what made all the difference. Julia Child's mayonnaise beat Le Cordon Bleu's hands down, baby.

The Salade Messidor was easy to put together, except for the artichokes. We used two chokes instead of the extravagant six called for in the recipe. Le Cordon Bleu at Home has a very nice section at the back of the book that gives photographic depictions of how to do things like, well, peel an artichoke. So the girls and I peeled.



And peeled.




{And p e e l e d}



When we got beneath the outer leaves, we discovered to our dismay that our artichokes were nothing but outer leaves. Inside was a flimsy little bit of leaves-plus-prickly-fluff. What the- ??!! I thought there was supposed to be something inside the silly thing. This is what I get for waiting forty-plus years to denude an artichoke of its leaves, I thought, looking at the bit of nothing in my hand. It's a judgment on me. A punishment. Now I shall never know the joy of peeling and cooking my own fresh artichoke.

Sadly, I laid my knife down on the cutting board and wept for a while. The girls sympathetically passed me a tea towel on which to dry my eyes.

There is the bottom part of the artichoke, however -- is that all there is to it? -- and our artichokes must have been sub-standard because the bottoms were about as big around as quarters. Seriously. So I am completely kerflummoxed re: artichokes. How big are artichokes supposed to be in order to get an artichoke bottom that is big enough to balance the remainder of the salad on? Does it have to be as big as my head? A basketball? The moon, for heaven's sake?

The Salade Messidor was simple to prepare, artichokes notwithstanding. It also called for celery, caulifower soaked in a bit of white vinegar, some crisp-tender green beans and some peeled, seeded tomatoes. We had a smashing success with everything else, especially with skinning the tomatoes by dunking them in boiling water and then popping them into cold water.

Once the veggies were prepared, they simply had to be stirred together with some homemade mayonnaise and served, alas for the artichoke bottoms that never were!

We found that the salad needed salt a-plenty. Once seasoned, it was flavorful in an okay kind of way, but if Le Cordon Bleu thinks it has anything over my own friend-Julie's-mother-in-law-Connie's Summer Potato Salad, they've got another pensée coming, is all I've got to say.

The girls and I served the Salade Messidor with tilapia filets baked in herb butter and the Pommes Pont Neuf from the first week's lesson on page 253 of Le Cordon Bleu at Home. Pommes Pont Neuf are nothing more than homemade french fries, but with a snazzy name that translates as "New Bridge Potatoes," you feel like you're getting a little something extra, which may cause you to use an extra amount of enthusiam when coating each hand-cut piece with Heinz tomato ketchup from the huge plastic bottle someone plunked down on the dinner table. Bon appétit, mes chéries!

Next week: Les Soupes! We'll be making Billy Bi (Mussel Soup) on page page 311