Category Archives: chocolate

Spicy hot cocoa bread with cream glaze

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hot cocoa cake

hot cocoa cake

As you probably know by now if you’re following along at home, I’m a waitress. The interesting thing about being a waitress is that it’s not interesting at all. I come home from my work and want to talk about my day, but there’s not much to tell, really. I could relate a few gossipy stories about my co-workers, and I could tell endless stories about how perplexingly rude people can be, but nobody wants to hear that. So why am I talking about it now? Well, I just thought you’d want to hear about everybody I waited on yesterday, and exactly what they ordered. Settle in, it’ll be a long list! I’m kidding, of course, but the truth of the matter is that waiting tables can be quite poignant sometimes. As a server, you’re addressing a very basic human need, you’re watching people eat and interact with each other, and depending on your mood, people can seem wonderful, foolish, or even vaguely disheartening. Sometimes the smallest gesture can seem so beautiful and sweet. Yesterday I waited on a woman and her nearly grown son, just the two of them. I’d like to think I’ll go out with my sons someday. (And the boy paid, which, undoubtedly my boys will be doing, because I’m just a waitress, for chrissake, it’s not like I’m actually saving any money!! Waitressing – the cash will be gone in under a week, but the anxiety dreams last a lifetime!!) The mother left the table for a spell, and the boy sat at the table alone. He was quite a tall person, and he had a tiny tube of lip balm, which he applied with slight, sweet self-consciousness. And then sat and read the miniscule writing on the tube, waiting for his mother. It sounds silly, I know, but I found it moving. I wondered what this pair were doing, out and about, before they stopped for lunch. A lot of people are looking for attention when they go out to eat, which is why they complain, and tut and fuss, and send food back. One fellow who comes in nearly every week likes to talk to everybody sitting around him. If nobody will talk to him, he talks very loudly to his wife, holding forth on one subject or another, seemingly waiting for somebody to jump in and give him a bit of argument. Yesterday he spoke in his carrying voice on the subject of nuts. You can have a whole bag of nuts, he declared, and every once in a while, one of them is rancid. And you can never tell which one is rancid, but one rancid nut will put you off all nuts for a while. Isn’t it the truth, I thought. If there’s one thing waiting tables has taught me it’s that we’re all nuts. Everybody is crazy. The world is a big bag of nuts, and sometimes you get a rancid one, but mostly they’re sweet enough.

Cocoa cake - bird's eye view

Cocoa cake – bird’s eye view

Speaking of sweet!! This bread is loosely modeled on yet another recipe from Mrs. Beeton’s tome of everyday cookery. Her recipe was for a malt bread. I love malt powder, and for some reason it reminded me of hot chocolate mix I used to love as a child, which had cocoa powder and malt powder and cinnamon. A lovely combination! The bread is not too sweet, (which is why I can get away with calling it bread and not cake!) and I think this helps you to notice the taste of the cocoa, rather than just a sort of sweet chocolatey flavor. It does have chocolate chips and a sugary cream glaze (which is supposed to be like the whipped cream in your hot chocolate, of course), though, so who am I kidding? It’s a cake.

Here’s Bob Dylan’s rambling, charming Highlands. I love this exchange…

    I’m in Boston town, in some restaurant
    I got no idea what I want
    Or maybe I do but, I’m just really not sure
    Waitress comes over, nobody in the place but me and her.

    Well, it must be a holiday, there’s nobody around
    She studies me closely as I sit down
    She got a pretty face, with long white shiny legs
    I said, “Tell me what I want,” she say, “You probably want hard boiled eggs.”

    I say, “That’s right, bring me some.”
    She says, “We ain’t got any, you picked the wrong time to come.”
    Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me.”
    I said, “I would if I could but I don’t do sketches from memory.”

I love Time out of Mind! As a bonus track you get Standing in the Doorway, cause I can’t stop listening to it.
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Mocha mousse cake

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Mocha mousse cake

Mocha mousse cake

I was sewing some felt owls the other month, as one does. The seams flying through the machine, somewhat sloppy and uneven, brought to mind a phrase my mother uses. “Loving hands at home.” The phrase, taken as a whole, is an adjective, and it describes work that is not technically perfect, but that is made with love. It’s such a nice expression, particularly if used by a mother, because a mother’s hands can be so magically comforting. When my boys were little I could soothe an achy belly with a tummy rub, and Malcolm still asks me to put cool hands on his forehead when he’s feverish. The exact shape and size of your mother’s hand seems to be imprinted in the memory of your own hand. My mother’s hands are calloused from cello-playing, but they’re always very soft and warm. I have a vivid memory of a train ride to Washington DC. I must have been in middle school. It was just after Christmas, and the train was very cold, but we all sat close together in the cramped compartment two facing seats make. My mother’s hand rested on my knee for some time, and the warmth of it felt good. When she took her hand away, it was as if the whole train became a little colder – not just the place where her hand had been, but every place.

I’m grateful to have grown up in a home that celebrated a loving-hands-at-home aesthetic. If the expression is taken not as an absolution of mediocrity or a justification for lackluster effort, but as an appreciation of the imperfections that make something unique, it becomes very freeing. I find that I’m raising my own boys this way. We color outside the lines. Sometimes, we don’t even make lines first! We find more beauty in lack of symmetry, in less-than-clean lines. An irregularity in fabric or wood is not a flaw but an opportunity to make something distinctly lovely. By hand, with affection for the work and the object that it produces, like true amateurs. I believe this is what they now call “artisanal.”

What’s this? A chocolate cake recipe in January! Nobody wants to see that! We all want light and healthy, dammit. Well, I’m a rebel, so here it is: four layers of dense, dark chocolatey, cinnamony cake with 3 layers of light mocha-cinnamon mousse, with the whole being topped by melted bittersweet chocolate. Actually, I made this cake for my mom’s birthday back in November, but what with one thing and another, I haven’t gotten around to telling you about it yet. My mom likes not-too-sweet things, she likes dark chocolate, and she used to eat these candies called “coffee nips,” which came in a yellow and brown box. I combined these ideas to make this cake, which is dark and rich, but not too sweet. She said it was the best birthday cake she’d ever had!! Of course, it might have been a cake that only a mother could love.

Here’s Peter Tosh with Equal Rights, because my mother likes it a lot. And so do I.

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Crispy almond oat chocolate chip bars (gluten free!)

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Almond oat chocolate chip bars

Almond oat chocolate chip bars

Isaac is deeply suspicious of anything remotely romantic. He’s not all that scared of Voldemort, but if any of the tiny larval wizards come close to kissing each other, he runs into the the other room, hands over his eyes. So when he uses the word “lover,” he’s talking about somebody that loves things. Clio, for instance, is a big lover. She loves everyone she meets, food, walks, all dogs, food, treats, warm radiators, picking the boys up from school, food. Children, of course, are natural lovers, they’re bubbling over with love, until somebody tells them that it’s just not cool, man, and they learn to be detached and insouciant. I’ve never learned that lesson, I’m afraid, so I’m still a lover. Here’s a fun thing to do when you can’t sleep: without over-thinking, list ten things that you love (aside from your family, of course!). It puts you in a good frame of mind, and wards off the whispering worries. Alright, here’s mine. Ready? Begin! Otters; Tintin; long, complicated novels; sunshine on a cold day, shade on a warm day; Skip Jmes; Nina Simone; a pat on the back; chard; pictures of windows; films with lots of watery green in them. Is that it? Is that ten? You know, I probably could have said food, walks, all dogs, food, picking up the boys from school, warm radiators… Heh heh!! Come on, everybody, try it, it’s fun! What? You think it’s dorky? OMG! Don’t be such a hater!

Guess who loved these cookies? Everybody! In the whole wide world! Well, everybody in my world! Malcolm was all, like, I’m not even going to try them, and I was all, like, whatever, I don’t even care if you try my cookies. So he tried one? And he ate, like, four of them? And I was all…you better slow down, and he was all, what? They’re healthy! Which, you could pretend that they are, because they have oats and almonds, but you’d be lying to yourself about all of that butter and sugar. My English friends will recognize that these are a lot like flapjacks, but my American friends would be confused if I called them that, and say, “Those are totally not like pancakes, man.” (As Americans do.) One thing you should know about these cookies is that they’re ridiculously easy to make. You mix them all together in a saucepan and then spread them on a tray and bake them, and that’s pretty much it!

Here’s Nina Simone with Music for Lovers. It’s a little schmaltzy, but oddly fitting for this post, and Nina Simone is so cool that she can get away with it. Or so I think.
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Chocolate marzipan cake and marzipigs

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Chocolate marzipan cake

Chocolate marzipan cake

Rabbit rabbit! This morning I woke up feeling alright. Had a good cup of coffee, cuddled with the boys for a minute, and then Clio and I went out for a quick run. Bells were ringing out over town, the sky was bright on the melting snow, the birds were busy in the trees. We ran into lots of people and dogs, Clio exhibited her signature exuberance, and everybody cried, “happy new year!” 2013 feels like a hopeful year, so far! I had this picture in my head, in the middle of the night, of the world as a giant music box that played joyful, hopeful huzzahs and kisses and fireworks. As midnight struck in each part of the world, the tines struck the chord that set off happy cries and good wishes. Good wishes for everyone, because we’re all in it together, all hoping for the same things – I know I’m becoming redundant, but I believe this so strongly this year!! Yesterday we had a lovely quiet day. Malcolm and I went for a long snowy hike with Clio. The sky was dull and grey upon grey upon grey, but rosy on the edges, and the trees were dark and slick and beautiful. The ground was cold and wet, the mud seemed oddly black against the snow. Malcolm wanted to go on his secret passage-trail. I said, “If it’s too snowy I won’t be able to go, so don’t get your hopes up!” And he said, “I can’t not get my hopes up, because I’m a jolly good fellow!” When we got to the path it was too steep and snowy. I stood at the top and said, “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” Malcolm took Clio down the path, and made little footholds for me in the snowy mud, and I carefully edged down like the old lady that I am. Malcolm said, “Mom, you can do anything when you’re with me!” I do believe I can!! We walked and walked, and came out in a sort of valley down to the river, with the sky muted grey & rose, the world quiet, bridges crisscrossing across the sky, and Malcolm charging towards me, pink-faced and happy. When we got home David and Isaac were back from their separate trips-out-the-house, and we made a funny dinner of ring-shaped French lentil, chard, and butternut squash pie (I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!!). And we made a ring-shaped chocolate marzipan cake with a touch of cherry. And we put marzipigs on top, which I love very dearly!! I’d read that somewhere in the world they make marzipan pigs for good luck on New Years, and when Malcolm said the cake looked like mud (a compliment from a ten-year-old boy, believe me!!) I knew we’d put our marzipigs on top, as happy as pigs in mud, as hopefully we all will be in the new year!!
Marzipan pigs

Marzipan pigs

Here’s Talib Kweli with Get By, one of my favorite resolution songs (and he samples Nina Simone!) I have a sneaking suspicion that I posted it last year, in which case we’ll call it a tradition.
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Coconut cherry chocolate bar cookies

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Coconut, cherry, chocolate bar cookies

Coconut, cherry, chocolate bar cookies

Happy boxing day!! We’re having such a nice, slow day, surrounded by the chaos of Christmas presents and Christmas wrappings and new toys to play with and things to build (if you’re a boy) or chew to pieces (if you’re Clio). We gave the boys a few noisy toys, which they played with for hours (starting before I was out of bed, of course!). And then, at one point, a hush fell on the room. Malcolm was on the couch reading a new book, cuddled with Clio. I used to love to get books for Christmas. I can vividly remember the keen pleasure of opening a new Tintin, or Joan Aiken, or book about horses. I’d be wearing new Christmas pjs, maybe, holding a new stuffed animal, sitting by the fire, absorbed in this new world. It’s hard to capture that feeling again when you’re an adult, which is why David’s present was perfect in every way. He gave me some beautiful new dishes (one is pictured above), some blank books with little drawings from the dishesdrawing AND a Tintin book!! It’s all about how Tintin is drawn, and has little quizzes to test your Tintin knowledge. I love it!! I feel as excited as a child! As giddy as a schoolboy! And the best part is that I also feel inspired, by blank books and blank dishes. Oh the things I’ll cook to present on the dishes, and the nonsense I’ll write to fill up the books! The books I used to get for Christmas excited me because they contained vast, unknown worlds, and it was such a pleasure to watch them unfold. Of course we all have those worlds in our heads, strange and new – all of us do, and they can all come pouring out onto these blank lines. blank-paper

These cookies were very easy to make, and they seem quite fancy, cause of the chocolate and cherry combination, which always tastes like a celebration. Basically, they’re a coconut shortbread covered with a thin layer of cherry preserves, and topped with a chocolate ganache. Like a version of millionaire’s shortbread, I guess! I put a bit of sherry into the shortbread to make them taste extra Christmassy.

I know I’ve been posting a lot of Jimmy Smith, lately, but he’s just killing me! His songs are so warm, and pleasing, but completely unexpected in parts, till he brings it all home again. Here’s We Three Kings. I love how grand and big band-y it is, before it breaks into this ridiculously joyous and swinging tune.

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Yule cake with cranberries and chocolate chips

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Yule cake

Yule cake

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!! Merry Christmas you beautiful old Ordinary, you! I hope everybody is making merry with their friends and family. Best, warmest, brightest wishes to everybody!

Your playlist assignment for this week is songs about peace. It could be world peace, peace of mind, a still and peaceful moment, or a song that sounds like peace to you in any way. I’ve made the playlist collaborative, so add what you like!

And as a bonus, here’s last year’s Christmas playlist, with some tracks added. It’s a doozy!!

And a recipe for yule cake. I found an old recipe in Mrs. Beeton’s cook book, and I adapted it somewhat. It’s a mild, yeasted cake, with dried cranberries, clementine zest and bittersweet chocolate chips. Not too sweet, and very Christmasy. Nice toasted with butter, actually!!

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French-cake-a-week: Buche de Noel

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Buche de noel

Buche de noel

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through the cake section of a French cookbook from 1962. It’s nearly Christmas!! Three days till Christmas eve, and we get presents on Christmas eve, too! Or so I’ve been told over and over and over again. The boys have been waiting ages for Christmas, and I’ve been waiting for ages to make this cake. The time is finally right! Tis the season for buche de noel. I’ve gotten into the habit of talking about French films in my preamble to my French cakes, and it’s a habit I’ve enjoyed, so here we go again… This is a season of lights, in which we celebrate the lights on our Christmas tree, and in our hearths and hearts, so let’s talk about the Lumière brothers. Their name means light, of course, and they invented a way to organize lights and shadows to make pictures, and to project them so that we could all see them. They invented cinema, or more specifically, the cinématographe, a device that recorded, developed and projected motion pictures. (Of course they didn’t invent moving pictures singlehandedly, but were part of a long process of experimentation performed by many different people in many different places.) They were the first to perfect the art, though, and the first to project it. Cinématographe means “writing with movement,” which I find a beautiful idea, and which many film theorists would be drawn to, later, in discussing the language of cinema. I love the films of the Lumière brothers. They’re short (50 seconds), simple, beautifully framed, and oddly compelling. This time of year, when I look at the boys and the pure, concentrated force of their love for everything about Christmas, for everything that makes Christmas magical, I’m always more than a little envious of them. We’ve all become jaded about film, I think. Digital effects, techonological advances, and millions of dollars thrown at what has become an industry have helped us to forget how magical film must have seemed at its birth. Watching the Lumière brothers films is like seeing a child excited by Christmas – thrilled by the lights, proud of the decorations they made, hopeful and inspired. And, of course, I love the Lumière brothers films because they’re all (wait for it) about ordinary people, and every day situations. Their films are called actualités, and they record mundane, daily events. The very first film shows workers leaving a factory, along with a large dog, a horse-drawn carriage and a few bicycles. Subsequent films show babies eating, trains arriving at a station, children playing marbles. But they’re so beautifully shot – they’re static, but the composition is so thoughtful, and the play of light and darkness so graceful, that they’re unforgettable. By noticing and recording an ordinary moment they make it memorable. And surely that’s what film is all about.

As the Lumière brothers were the first filmmakers, this buche de noel is the first cake in my French cookbook. Although it seems fancy, it’s actually quite simple – a sort of genoise sponge cake, just butter, sugar, eggs and flour, spread thin, and then rolled up with mocha cream inside and out. I followed the cake recipe exactly, but I was a little perplexed by the mocha cream, which seemed to consist of uncooked egg whites and coffee, so I strayed a bit on the cream, and made my own, sort of a pastry cream/mousse, with chocolate and coffee. Very delicious!! And, as you know if you’ve been following along, my attempts to make marzipan were mixed, so I bought some to make these leaves. And then added a bit of green writing-frosting, because if there was one thing this cake needed it was more sugar!! The whole cake was lovely – after a few hours in the fridge it set enough that you could cut it into slices, but we finished off the cake, all of us attacking it directly on the platter!!buche-de-noel

Here’s the first part of a show on the Lumière brothers that shows all of their early films and has lovely dry, witty, informative narration by Bertrand Tavernier.

And here’s Ding Dong Bell, by The Ethiopians. Another song that I posted last year that bears repeating. I love it!!

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Marzipan, cherry and bittersweet chocolate chip cookies

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marzipan-cookiesClio loves Jaques Tati. From the opening credits of Mon Oncle to the frighteningly affectionate german shepard of Trafic, she watches with rapt attention, ears perked, golden-grey eyes bright. I’ve never had a dog who watched television, and I said she must be a genius! David pointed out that the inclination to watch television is not exactly indicative of intelligence – a point I must concede. However! She’s watching foreign movies! She’s watching artsy French films. I rest my case. The truth is, of course, that Tati is not high brow or difficult in any way. Tati is pure pleasure from start to finish – visually beautiful, with lovely colors and graceful movements, and thoughtfully, perfectly quiet, with just the right sounds at the right times. We saw an interview with Jaques Tati from a television program that must have been called Showstoppers! The interviewer seemed nervous, and very sweetly kept on and on asking Tati about his favorite show stoppers, in his films, or Chaplin’s films, or Keaton’s films. Tati’s films, of course, aren’t about the fine art of show-stopperism. The action comes gently, in wave after wave, swirling and swelling and falling. In this interview, Tati secured himself the coveted position of patron saint-filmmaker of The Ordinary by saying that the purpose of his work is to bring a smile to ordinary life, to find the beauty and humor in things that we do everyday, and in everything that goes on around us. He’s laughing at us, but kindly and generously, with warmth and fellowship, because he’s as foolish as any of us. These foibles connect us, and the act of noticing them makes every moment, and every movement, important. In another interview, not with Tati, but with the stars of Trafic, the actors were asked how working with Tati had changed their lives. They replied that they look at everything differently now, the movements of people on the street, in their homes, in their businesses, and they, too see patterns and humor. This is a quality I aspire to. I want to notice things, everyday things and the movements of the people all around me, and recognize the beauty and comedy of it all. This feels like a grand ambition to me, an important aspiration. Tati proves that a comic film, so light and warm and absurd, can have great weight and depth, with strong, far-reaching roots that connect us all.

Why am I talking about a French film when it’s not a French-cake-a-week recipe?!?! I’ll tell you why! Part of this recipe was meant to be in a French cake, and was, in fact, from my French cookbook. These could be called “failed marzipan cookies.” I tried to make massepain, to make little shapes for my upcoming Buche de Noel (act surprised!). Instead I made a sort of almond toffee, delicious, but too hard to form into little shapes. So I cut it into little cubes, mixed it in with some dried tart cherries and some dark chocolate chips, and made one of the best cookies I’ve ever eaten!! They’re irresistible. The tartness of the cherries sets off the sweetness of the marzipan, and the chocolate is perfect with both. You could probably use regular almond paste for this, but it wasn’t hard to make failed marzipan. I simply combined sliced almonds with regular sugar (not icing, as I should probably have used) a few teaspoons of warm water and a few teaspoons of vanilla extract in a food processor, and I processed it for ages. Well, maybe 15 minutes. I scraped down the sides, now and again. The processor became quite warm inside, and the oil seemed to separate from the almonds. The resulting mix, when I pressed it altogether was quite hard and slightly grainy. I let it cool its heels in a bowl overnight, and it dried out a bit more. And that was that!!

Here’s a scene from Trafic with a very human gesture that I think we’ll all recognize!!

Here’s the Maytals with Happy Christmas. I posted it last year, too, at this time, but I just love it so much!!

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Nutella cookies

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Nutella cookies

Nutella cookies

We saw such an interesting movie the other night. Female, starring Ruth Chatterton, is a pre-code movie. This means that it’s shocking, sassy and salacious! This, in fact, means that it was made before the enforcement of the “Hays Code,” a set of strict rules imposed upon the film industry in the early 1930s. These rules determined what you could show in a film and what you could say in a film, of course, but I find it fascinating that they also controlled the plot of a film. You could get away with showing a “bad girl” or a “fallen woman” if she was punished by the plot – if her immoral actions resulted in death or redemption (and marriage). I love to watch post-code movies and see the way that humanity, in all of its imbalance and immorality, seeps through the cracks in the plot, to watch for moments when it’s obvious that the outcome of the film has nothing to do with the characters in the film, with their desires or fears. (Watch Some Like it Hot, and remember that “the code” discouraged the depiction of gay characters.) Female (1933) is something of a cusp film – the code had been introduced, but not yet strictly enforced. It tells the story of Alison Drake, the boss of a large auto plant, who long ago decided to “travel the same open road that men travel,” and to treat men exactly as they’ve treated women all of these years. And so she does! She has brief affairs with any young thing that catches her eye at the office, and she forms no emotional attachment and expects that they’ll do the same. In the end, of course, she’s tamed by a strong “alpha male” who looks alarmingly like Ronald Reagan. And so, in a sense, it could be a post-code movie, despite all of the innuendo and her shocking behavior throughout, because she’s redeemed by marriage. But the film struggles against this tidy ending. For one thing, it’s very funny throughout, and when she declares her decision to leave her company to her future husband and to have at least nine children, it comes across almost as another joke. And the humor is so clever and satirical. The show Mad Men got a lot of attention for showing how degradingly women were treated at a certain time, especially in the work place. Alison Drake turns that world on its head, but with such honesty and good nature that we almost take her side, though she’s using and abusing all the handsome boys at the office. The film raises questions, but it doesn’t make simple judgments about the characters or their actions. For instance, throughout the film it becomes obvious that Alison Drake’s servants like her very much. They talk to her like an equal, and they take an interest in her life – the chauffeur goes so far as to fight for her honor in response to a slur on her character. This makes her seem like a real, human character, and one who cannot be penned in by a simplistic Hollywood ending. She’s told to be softer and more feminine to snag her man, and she tries this approach, but with an unmistakable smile on her face the whole time. Oh those naive days of yore, when women thought it would be clever to pretend to be something they’re not to get themselves married. Thank heavens we’ve grown beyond that, as a society. But wait, what’s this? On the Fox news website recently, and written by a woman! Advice that women should be softer and more feminine if they’d like to get themselves married! I won’t give it any more attention than it deserves, especially since Stephen Colbert has pretty much said all that there is to say.

So…nutella cookies!! They’re like nutella because they’re made with cocoa powder and hazelnuts, and they have nutella mixed into the batter! They’re like nutella because they’re delicious and addictive! They’re crispy-outside-soft-inside-chocolatey-nutty-melty-pleasantly-plump-and-weighty. And they’re fun and easy to make.

Here’s The Carter Family with Single Girl, Married Girl. Surely one of the first feminist anthems, and from such an unlikely source.
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Apple cherry chocolate chip bars

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Cherry, apple, chocolate chip bars

On days like this I’m so glad that I have everything in my life tidy and organized. That I’m on top of it all! I’m looking forward to the meeting that all three of Malcolm’s teachers requested – I’m sure they want to tell us how well he’s doing, and how he’s got everything tidy and organized, and he’s on top of it all, too! I’m glad I don’t have to spend the day feeling guilty as hell because I yelled at him about the state of his notebook and his backpack and his uncorrected essay and his seeming complete apathy about anything related to school. So that he left for school saying he hated me, and I don’t have a chance to apologize and tell him how smart he is for nearly eight hours. That would be a horrible feeling! I’m glad that I don’t have to feel like a bad example to him because I’ve got teetering piles of bills (piles? Heavens no! You should see my up-to-date and immaculate filing system!) that I only seem to pay when the next one is due. I’m glad that I didn’t yell at Isaac on our snowy walk to school because he’s always half a block behind, and he can’t walk faster because his rib hurts, and I’m glad that I don’t have to worry that he has low energy and constant bouts of strep and tummy aches. Because, of course, he eagerly eats every meal I lovingly prepare, in all their wholesome goodness, and gets plenty of protein and vitamins. I’m glad that I can keep my house spotless and tidy, and I don’t feel as though I spend hours digging in sand, as I clean, because within seconds the clutter collects and the dust settles, and the counter is covered in crumbs. I’m having a lovely, peaceful day, sitting in my pristine, spare-but-stylish house, watching the soft snow fall quietly outside, not thinking about the crumbling plaster in every wall, that can only be fixed by a fellow this guy knows, who was an excellent plasterer, but is now long-dead. Who is having an anxious and grumpy day? Who is? I feel better now, though. The snow has shifted to rain and back to snow. But it’s warm in here. And it’s Clio’s first snow! She may have pink eye and an upset tummy, but can that stop her enjoyment of the snow? It cannot! Snow makes her crazy!! She races back inside and flies around the house, bouncing off of furniture, throwing herself at me at an alarming speed. And yes, this is an old house and the plaster is crumbling, but I love it anyway! Yes, we have numerous teetering piles of papers, but the papers are mostly drawings by the boys, and they’re beautiful, clever, well-executed drawings! Maybe I’m not exactly on top of this sea of worries and responsibilities, but I’m floating along with it, rising and falling, okay for now.

Malcolm likes fruity candy. Many days he asks for a dollar to go buy some fruity candy at the store down the block. But as nice as it seems for him to come home from a long day of school, when it’s cold and wet outside, and buy a box of candy, and cuddle on the couch with the puppy and watch a movie – nice as that seems, I can’t let him do it every day! So I bought him some dried tart cherries. They’re very nice! Chewy, fruity, lovely and sweet/tart. He ate half the bag, and then I put the rest in these bars, along with some apples and some chocolate chips. I added ground walnuts to the batter for a change of pace, and they made the bars lovely and dense, with a mysterious walnut flavor. I made these like brownies, which is a fairly lazy and easy way to make something. Melt some stuff in a pot, stir some other stuff in, and spread it in a pan. And that’s that!!

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with 8 Million Stories. They’re having a bad day. But it’s a good song!
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