Tea-ny tiny

In our world of cell phones and text messaging, on Saturday I was touched to watch my niece Rebecca pick up the home phone, squint up at a list of phone numbers on the wall to find the number of her neighbor friends, then dial and invite them to our tea party at 12:30.

Oh, it was so fun. Everyone put on their dresses, brushed their hair, and arrived promptly for tea, which turned into a bit of a luncheon. My niece (on the right) nailed the part of dainty tea drinker. Doesn't she look like a 1930s deb?

Okay, so I kind of forgot how tiny this tea set was. But who cares when it means you can have 4 refills of our special tea? We had tea sandwiches, fruit salad, brownies AND cupcakes, which we made with homemade buttercream frosting earlier that morning together, in four different colors, per Rachel's request.

I taught them how to hold out their pinkies, and even without my suggesting they use their finest manners, they politely asked each other to pass various items around the table. I humored them by offering, "More tea, mademoiselle?"

So sweet.

And you remember how I mentioned the spilling stuff on the tablecloth thing in my last post? While I wasn't looking, these sweet children spilled sugar all over the tablecloth. They didn't even try to hide it. "We had a little accident," one of them said as I stood in the kitchen, preparing the fruit salad. William was suddenly at my side, asking for a napkin to clean it up. So civilized, these children!

And what a good sport, that William. But when your aunt is letting you drink pure sugar to wash down the brownies, cupcakes and peanut butter and jelly, you'd probably put up with a bunch of girls, too.

Kindred spirits

Starting around age 12, I developed an obsession with tea parties. I thus formed The Tea Party Guild, which also speaks to another healthy obsession I had with my Roget's Thesaurus. I came up with the name after looking up synonyms for "group." I considered "society," "gathering," and then ultimately decided on "guild" for the simple reason that it made me think of the Lollipop Guild in the Wizard of Oz. Which is a ridiculous leap, especially when you consider that I was truly aiming to be like Anne of Green Gables. I wanted nothing more than to gather my kindred spirits, use big words I didn't quite understand yet, and have an occasional afternoon of all things fanciful. If we happened to spill a little tea on the nice table cloth, launching us into an elaborate scheme to clean it before an adult noticed that evolved into a complicated web of not-so-clever cover-ups that ultimately led us to being caught red-handed, so be it. It would be such an Anne situation. And believe me, at that age, whatever I could do to be more like Anne Shirley, I did it (though I never found myself in any particular sticky situation).
"It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?" Oh Anne, you're adorable.

Fortunately, I had 4 very close girlfriends at the time who bought into my love of Green Gables and tea parties, and boy, oh boy, did we have fun. We dutifully rotated hostess responsibilities from house to house, and for each party we wore dresses andhats. I even scored a pair of short gloves from the old Emporium in Boise. As part of the guild membership, we banded together each Friday in wearing dresses and hats. Looking back, I'm not sure whether I was more blessed to have friends who did this with me, or classmates who did not ridicule us to our faces.

For our tea parties, we generally stuck to the simple Bigelow and Celestial Seasonings variety packs, but we also made goodies, like those fancy crustless tea sandwiches with cucumber and cream cheese, not to mention sweets like lemon bars, merigues, you name it. My parents had the perfect antique-y dining room, too, with plenty of mismatched tea cups featuring dainty gold embellishment. My mom helped by ironing one of her nicest table cloths, and even boiled the water for us once we had sat down adn began chatting (though don't think the trappings of the occasion were any indication of civilized grown-up talk; close your eyes and you could just as easy picture girls standing around their lockers, gossiping about crushes and who's going through puberty fastest).

ALL THIS IS TO SAY, I gave my 10-year-old niece a tea set that she could paint herself as a birthday present, and it is now all decorated and ready to use. She has requested a tea party on Saturday. We're spending the better party of the morning and afternoon together and my mind is already swooning with ideas of all the things we can bake and assemble and talk about. I am so excited, feeling like I was born to be an aunt with nieces to have tea parties with.

I. Can't. Wait.

What shall I give you?

Here are your options:

1. Two rotting pumpkins on the porch steps

2. A one-pound bag of dirty Kleenex

3. Expertly stacked (empty) mini boxes of Junior mints

4. Vegetable soup I've eaten so much of I can hardly stand the sight of it (and there's so much left...gah)

5. A photo taken before the sickness took over, displaying the only Halloween costume I've put any effort toward in the last 10 years.


Option 5, you say? Fine by me!

Losing daylight and bad metaphor alert

We all know it is bound to happen. As of two nights ago, the horizon at 5:45 was nearing the end of its tube of toothpaste, so I came home and ran down the street to capture the last bit of light squeezed out over the top of the bluff. ( A total stretch. I warned you.)

Living in Spokane gets rough starting now. You wake up in the dark, you come home in the dark. You hope the roads are dry, and pray your car makes it up the hill when they aren't. It's cold till about April 27. Everyone whines. You pause on QVC when you're channel-surfing because shopping at home is the more realistic option (or because watching their featured "gem fest" sounds like it could be an all-out laughfest).

Living in Spokane also gets nice starting now. There's long underwear, for one (and tights! don't forget those), and that magical feeling-some call it relief-when your body thaws (and let's not forget nice, hot baths), and then there are all those girls like me who equate cold weather with hair dye and going dark. That's fun to think about, right? And finally, a chance to hole up in the house and just craft and bake and call all your old friends. There's that feeling of optimism that this cold WILL end, and while you wait, why not skip a day of work and go skiing? 

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. For tonight, I've got a date with a swimming pool. Indoors, of course.

When we were 8

While searching for my grown-up journal tonight, I came across my "My Secret Diary" book, which I kept as an 8-year-old. It was a paperback, 50-page or so, junior diary for young girls who need direction on how to write about secrets. I ordered it with my mom's permission from the Scholastic Book Order form which we always got at school every few weeks. 

"Is some secret someone special to you?" it asks on the back cover. "Is something on your mind that's private and personal? Write all about it in My Secret Diary."

One of the nice features was that it taught you how to write your secrets in code, and there's one page that lists directions for starting a sponge garden in your bedroom, and another to list your new years' resolutions. (The thought of an 8 year old thinking about such resolutions is kind of sweet, isn't it? Nothing too heavy, like "Lower my cholestorol," or "Pay off my VISA." Mine were simply to be nice to everybody, to not litter, and to cheer people who are feeling unhappy.) 

But every time I look through this, I can't help but wonder if other 8 year old girls who got this book from Scholastic wrote anything remotely close to this? I mean, really:

Let me explain the "and not dead" part. It was one of the biggest tragedies of my life at the time when I learned that Fred Astaire was not actually alive. I don't know if you could have called it a crush, but I really had a thing for this man, and dreamed of one day being Ginger Rogers, dancing gracefully in super-high heels and a billowy dress on a shiny floor. I also had no idea that I was even unique to know, at my age, who these people were. I breezed right past colorful Saturday morning cartoons and graduated to 1930s black-and-white musicals (except for maybe Punky Brewster and Alvin & the Chipmunks. And the Smurfs. I wasn't completely lost in my generation). And the only Astaire/Rogers movie I absolutely did NOT like was the Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Why? Because ol' Fred died at the end.  My young heart not bear it.

Then, of course, was the real heart of the matter in this book: my crush on Lyles. This was intended to be the only place I could express this affection, which would last through the bulk of my elementary school career, ultimately, save the few weeks here and there when my eyes were averted to Gabe or Karl.

Finally, here's all the proof you need that, when asked, "What's on your mind?" I would tell you "Slumber Party for 4."

I can't decide what my favorite part of this illustration is. The friend who's kind of walking in from the right side, not worth drawing in completely and looking a bit like a frumpy spinster? The fact that we're smartly dispersed around 2 sleeping bags? Or that there are only 2 sleeping bags? Or the key element that to this day is a very important part of a happy evening - the bowl of popcorn?

Casserole: the verb

What dish deserves its own event?

Answer: The casserole, of course. And an event it got.

To be perfectly honest, I was a little worried that planning a gathering of this feastable magnitude would only lead to a let-down afterward for not living up to the high expectations we'd set in our minds. I remember that feeling when I was younger when my party planning entailed glorious mental images of endless laughter, puffy paint, ghost stories, snacks, sodas, movies, fun music and staying up till sun-up - the reality being that we all fell asleep by, like, 10 p.m., while watching a movie.

We had been planning this party for literally 2 months, right after we made the discovery that we all shared this guilty pleasure for canned soup with pick-your-vegetable, cheese and crunchy topping. I tried my best to keep myself from imagining a table overflowing with hot pads, serving spoons a dishes of varying sizes containing steaming, creamy delights, with people standing around it in wonder and amazement. Or drink stations around the kitchen to offer the social lubrication needed to loosen our dance joints and aid us in enjoying a game or two, causing us to hoot and holler.

I blocked those ideas from my mind and just decided to just let the thing happen, casserole style.

Do you see how appropriate that was? The casserole is basically the easiest dish ever, designed to quickly fill the tummies of you and the rest of your army. You can try to make it more difficult, but we all know that in the end, you're just going stir something together and plop it in a dish and bake it. It's not a dish to worry about - it comes out every time.

So all we had to do, in theory, was to provide the place and invite the known casserole lovers to bring their casseroles (and a little booze), and our party would be set.

I'll take this opportunity to mention that a casserole never suffers from throwing in a few last-minute ingredients. Corn and cheese are great examples. Also great for describing what else got thrown in during the final hours of party-prepping, such as the embroidered souvenir "Casserole King" t-shirt for our friend Jeffy (oops, forgot to take that picture) and a couple games (which weren't as cheesy as they were brilliant).

When the guests began parading in with their hot dishes, the magic happened. It all turned out. The party totally casseroled. What else do I need to say here? I think I've gone on far too long about it. My lack of photos only speaks to the amount of fun I had - here's practically the only photo I managed to pause to take.

In case you wondered...

This was the finished deal. Pret-ty rich, difficult to slice, but fun.

27 Fabulous Chocolate Wafers

Here are the first 9, coated on one side with melted bittersweet chocolate and stuck to the pan.

And here are strawberries we picked this summer, thawing out in sugar on a warm stove.

Some heavy cream, whipped stiff and introduced to the strawberry goop from the stove (boy was it hard to not mistake it for fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and eat it for a snack).

And the remaining 18 wafers, stuck neatly in line for a treat which is waiting in my freezer now. Mmm.

It's a Pop-Art Strawberry Icebox Cake, adapted from the one on Epicurious that uses raspberries.

Homecoming

As an employee of my alma mater, nostalgia is an elusive feeling. I watched the wrecking ball thwack my freshman dorm to make way for new developments; I run into my old professors every couple of weeks; I'm among the first to hear campus news and big announcements. The transition from undergrad to employee was so fluid, and at this point, I've worked here longer than I studied, so the concept of "homecoming" is mostly lost on me. This weekend, though, homecoming entailed my class's five-year reunion. So before the campus filled up with alumni from various years, I decided to walk around and pretend I haven't been here for awhile.

I imagined my first stop would be the site of my aforementioned freshman dorm. It was part of what is known as "The Village." It was comprised of 6 super-ugly, identical buildings that Whitworth acquired after Expo '74. This is not to say that my experience living in it was any less fun or meaningful, it just got zero points on the aesthetic scale. Whitworth meant to use these buildings as temporary housing for students, but 35 years later, two are still standing. This is one of them.

Sophomore and junior years, I upgraded to the historical end of campus. I'm always a sucker for brick buildings and deciduous trees. Can you blame me? One of those windows on the first floor of that building straight ahead was mine. Can you get over that sun-bright green everywhere? These are crucial walks to take while you can.

Many college campuses have quads. Whitworth has a loop. I've always liked that about the campus, because I think it's translated well to Whitworth's intention for its culture. Plus, it makes for fun wordplay in our publications. ("Are you in the loop?" "Get in the loop!" Cheesy, no?) I'm sure that no matter what year you graduated, this shot is one you know well. It could be anywhere in the loop, but those towering pines sure would bring anyone back to memory lane.

The location of the entrance and the geraniums and marigolds that hold out through the first frost and greet you on your way in each fall also haven't changed since the moment I arrived on campus. And here we are, back to where I started.

My first slipper attempt

There's just something about these that remind me of a cartoon fish, opening its wide mouth to dispense some sort of sea-life wisdom to a small fry, or to reprimand him. Yup, I'm pretty sure I have Max Fleischer to blame for this one.

Once you put them on, however, they resemble slippers. Phew. This is from the Mary Jane pattern on Purl Bee. Once I got the hang of it, it was pretty fun. Before I got the hang of it, it was frustrating. My index fingers felt like they had been continually pushing buttons, except the buttons were metal and pointy. Working in the round on a very tight pattern will do that to you. But I just pushed on through, and I felt like a real trooper when things started resembling what I had seen in the pictures.

When I first started knitting, I was told that whenever you want to start a new pattern, don't worry about the overall pattern before you start, otherwise you may be too intimidated to even begin. Just take each row as it comes, looking things up in your knitting dictionary or asking an old pro, or searching for tutorials on YouTube along the way if you don't understand what you're supposed to do.

This seems to be very unlike sewing, where you better darn well read the entire pattern so you know why there are all these strange markings everywhere, and think twice before you do anything, and I mean anything, lest you screw up the rest of the process. If you have a mom to fix your mistakes (like I do, but only when we're in the same city at the time), you might be okay, but nevertheless, you have to know where you're going with sewing.

Couldn't we all just sit here and wax poetic on the comparisons we can draw from this lesson? "I'm just moving through life like a knitting pattern..." perhaps you're thinking. Or maybe, "My life has been carefully mapped out like a sewing pattern...I always kept these little dots marked along the way, knowing I would come back to them someday..."

Luckily, this blog was not intended to provide the saccharine for your morning tea. (But I'll go ahead and say "you're welcome" to any who could possibly make use of this analogy.) I just wanted to show you how stuff works out and you end up with some pretty cozy slippers to sit back and relax in. And I did it moving step by step, without reading too far ahead in the pattern! That's what my point was.

And now, off they go to the post office to help my about-to-turn-27 friend celebrate her life of easy living.

I'm ready for my close-up

Do you feel uncomfortably close to this decadence?

(if not, just click for a larger view, but I hope you don't need to.)

I made these brownies for a li'l evening party last week, and I thought it would be fun if I allowed our guests to take a bite of these and as I sat back to witness their reaction. But then I chickened out and blurted out the surprise as soon as one of them said, "Oooh, brownies!" Me: "They're spicy!"

They're made with cardomom, chipotle powder, coffee extract (because I couldn't find the instant espresso powder it called for) and some other stuff, like gobs of chocolate. And they tasted fantastic with at least 2 of the 3 bottles of red wine we had at our disposal. You can view the recipe on Smitten Kitchen, where I always go when I need culinary inspiration (also, Deb has mastered food photography, where I have not).

Please prepare yourselves for the making, baking, and raking delights of fall. And I'll prepare myself for the look I know I'm going to get for writing that.

But how can we get the children to eat their lentils?

For the past 20 years, the Lentil has been the heroic legume of the Palouse.

Wax the Beemer, Suzie, it's time to lead the parade to celebrate this culinary wonder. Fresh from Le Cordon Bleu, Mr. Lentil is ready to put the "wow" in this cr-wow-d.

Oh, and Peg, would you mind removing yourself from that Steely Dan song and strapping yourself to a pole in order to flip-flop for about 30 minutes in honor of this thing? We promise we'll have a nice vat of lentil chili ready for you after it's over, because, after all, you'll do anything for lentils, right?

"Not quite sure how I ended up in this gosh-dern parade, but I reckon enough folks enjoy seeing me do this, and heck! This might be the only shot I have at showing the youngfolk how things used to be done."

Crystal's all like, "Okay, okay, I get it, trombones." They're doing it for you, Crystal, they're doing it for you. And for the lentils.

Lentil Festival 2009. Like I would miss this thing.

Isn't it romantic?

Spending a good hour on this floor really makes you wish you hadn't broken your mop.

But the pain was worth it, as I got to eat this top-drawer meal, listen to my Ink Spots record, and read my new Ready-Made magazine, all by the gleam of it.

The only thing left to make this solo evening truly complete was to find this playing on my TV and sit down with a big box of Kleenex and eat bon bons.

Just kidding. I scrammed out of the house to meet a friend for drinks. But I really had you there for a second, didn't I? HA!

The gift of an afternoon off

I'm not sure which came first - my love of the name "Black-eyed Susan" or my love of the flower itself.

On a recent afternoon, I took advantage of a network outage at work to just enjoy the summer heat with a walk around Manito Park. There's something about walking around a park - or anywhere - by myself that makes my senses all the more heightened and my mind all the more curious. For instance, in the butterfly garden, I spent a good long time trying to figure out what inspired this mathematical equation, etched in the park bench. Thoughts?

And then I can never end a visit without going to the dahlia section. Man, I love these things. The petals are sometimes so tubular, and long and floppy, mangy even, it's impossible for me to look at them without mentally morphing them into a lion's head, like in Alice In Wonderland. And then, there are dahlias like these, that baffle you as to how they could belong in the same family. Beautiful.

Plaid to meet you

On a nearly 100-degree Sunday afternoon, having spent a considerable amount of time in the air conditioned bookstore, I toted Msr. Dumas, an iced Americano and my picnic blanket over to the park to find some shade. As soon as I sat down, I realized I had created a ridiculous plaid mess, wearing my plaid dress on a plaid blanket. In addition, I was about to read page 1 of a 1,400 page, 3 lb. book. 

I'm just glad this guy arrived to add his stripes to the pattern ensemble. We were quite the sight.

The fruits of my labor, it seems

I'm trying to rediscover the joys of blogging while also relishing these days of hot weather. It's tough!  I'll keep trying.

The heat prompted me to do two things today. The first was to make sun tea. I left a jug on the back deck this morning before going to work, and when I got home, I drank a nice tall glass of peach iced tea. (But only after sending away a fruit salesman. No joke, he came to the door as I pulled up to the house after work, holding an armful of citrus fruits - a grapefruit, lemons, a lime, and an orange. Tried to sell me them by the crateful, cut each one open for me to sample, right there on the front step. I thought for a moment of Snow White and feared for my life a little bit, but how could I resist the novelty of eating a grapefruit on one of the hottest days year? I couldn't. So there I was, one hand holding my keys, travel mug, purse and book, the other hand dripping with citrus juice and drying into a sticky mess. After I politely turned down his sales pitch, he proceeded to collect ALL of the fruit he had just cut open and carefully placed them in my sticky hand/arm. "Don't want this to go to waste!" he said. Thus ended the weird encounter with Fruit Man and began the most clever maneuver of my life to unlock the front door without dropping the exposed fruits.)

So, sun tea. It went great with this Pasta alla Norma I made from a recipe in Cook's Illustrated. This was also the first time I ever bought anchovies! That is how much I trust the folks in the Test Kitchen. If they say a recipe needs it, I will not question it. And I liked it here. Not sure I would recommend a pasta dish on a hot day, but whatevs.

The second hot-weather novelty of the day was this serendipitous marriage of stuff we had in the freezer. Strawberries, lemon sorbet, limoncello, ice. Oh, and a little club soda to make it blend more easily. And a little sprig of basil to make it fancy. Ooooh man. Brilliant. We are so good to us.