Beautiful Plumage

Noah's school was thoughtful enough to provide a timely craft this week, in the form of this tasteful, understated centerpiece:

 

I feel like it's either going to take a candy-colored shit on the table or hold us up at gunpoint for some stuffing.

***

Have I told you that Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday ever? While it used to be the thing I barely tolerated as a kid, a stupid holiday with no presents or candy, it's now BY FAR the best day of the year. I spend the day awash in butter and heavy cream and carbohydrates and the first bottle of wine gets opened at 11:30 in the morning because I need to "deglaze" a "pan." Plus, not to brag or anything, I make a fucking amazing turkey. The secret is basting with my secret basting baste of awesome every 10-15 minutes or so, and really the only hard part about that is not drinking all the melted butter directly. Some is okay. I mean, it is a special occasion.

Also on the menu this year: roasted elephant garlic with French baguette, assorted fancy cheeses, Jason's mushroom, leek and challah bread stuffing that is pretty much the reason I married him, mashed sweet potatoes with orange, a broccoli and cauliflower gratin that does absolutely UNSPEAKABLE things to the vegetables, and some kind of apple crumb-top pie that somehow managed to survive a full 12 hours last year before we all ate the rest of it for breakfast the next morning.

(I should probably clarify that yeah, it's totally just the two of us, plus the kids. If we are lucky, Noah might eat the crunchy burned bits off the edge of some stuffing, although I worry that Ezra might SERIOUSLY cramp our style and put quite a dent in our coveted stash of delicious leftovers.)

Anyway. I am jazzed. I am antsy. I keep going to the basement to coo at our very-recently-murdered turkey and out to the garden to talk shit to the heads of cauliflower. YOUR HOURS ARE NUMBERED, BITCHES. IMMA GONNA FUCK YOU UP WITH SO MUCH CHEESE YOU'RA GONNA THINK YOU CAME FROM A COW. 

(I wonder why none of the neighbors asked us about our plans for the holidays? Hmm.)

 

The Crazy-Eyed Peacock Octo-Turkey Bandit hopes you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I do too, but, you know. Stay away from my house. I have no food for you. All for me. NOM NOM NOM, etc.

In Which a Good 75% of You Will Glaze Over By Paragraph Four

Since you guys proposed SO MANY awesome topics yesterday Tuesday, I shall continue to mine them for awhile, or at least until something actually important happens in real life that requires a veryimportantblogupdate!, and no, I'm not counting last night's Tuesday night's all-night preschooler-puke-a-thon. (He's just fine now, of course, which is good because we are plum out of clean sheets.)

From Cagey:

I have been reading The Unhealthy Truth and seem to remember you mentioning it on one of your Advice columns. The book is blowing me away and I am shocked at how few folks realize how food can really affect us - say, Red #40 for example.

I was wondering your thoughts on this and if you have seen whether certain things affect Noah. For example, artificial colorings are the devil now in our house because my son flips his lid every time he has them. And this is the same kid who can eat ice cream and go right to bed! For him, Red #40 is like main-lining a bit heroin.

Yep. I did write about this book, mere HOURS after I'd finished reading it, while I was freshly seething with rage. I have since gone back and re-read sections and pondered it some more and guess what! I AM STILL ANGRY.

(Hold on, 'cuz it's about to get screedy and caps-locky up in here.)

(I mean, more so than usual. And about other things besides an overflowing coffeemaker, or something.)

For the record, I am not a big conspiracy theorist. I am more of skeptic than a believer, and while I certainly gotten crunchier in recent years with the cloth diapers and homemade baby food and all, I still am a BIGFAN! of things like modern medicine and scientific advancements. I'm allergic to most antibiotics -- HIGHLY SO -- thus personally have always had to depend on alternative treatments for myself, and I'm not trigger-happy with the prescriptions when it comes to the kids. But both of the boys have gotten both seasonal and H1N1 flu shots this year and I would jab 'em in the arm again in a heartbeat. We fully vaccinate, falling on the "debunked" side of the vaccine/autism fence, although I think the chicken pox one is bullshit. (I never had it, and have to depend on the half-assed, temporary protection of the vaccine myself. Glad it exists; disagree that it belongs on the childhood schedule; worry about kids not getting their boosters and getting sick as adults.) I've seen the Feingolding gone amok at Noah's school, am a bit weary of suddenly every problem in the world being blamed on yeast and gluten, though I have nothing but sympathy for parents and child dealing with honest-to-God allergies and am extremely careful about sending Noah to school with clean peanut-butter-residue-free hands and non-triggering snacks, and would hope others would do the same for us. So basically, I was expecting to agree with some of what this book has to say...but also to roll my eyes at a lot of it too.

My eyes bugged out of my head, but they sure didn't roll. I'm not going to get into all of it -- the genetic engineering and corn refiners and the FDA's refusal to protect us from stuff that's long since been banned or flagged as dangerous overseas (soy baby formula, anyone?) -- but seriously, IS GAH HEAD EXPLODING TIME NOW.

Anyway, the whole artificial coloring thing. Yes, they affect Noah big time. They are banned in our home. Red 40 and Yellow 5 are just like...I don't know. Tiny seismic earthquakes through his neurological system. Artificial flavorings, too. He gets hopped up and agitated...while also weirdly shutting down at the same time. Loss of eye contact, anxiety, tantrums. He defaults back to echolaic speech or just goes silent. Anecdotal? Coincidental? Totally, sure, maybe. But it's so fucking scary, you guys. So why even argue, when it's a pretty safe assumption that Red 40 and Yellow 5 are two little things that we can all live without just fine?

And they are in EVERYTHING. It doesn't have to be garishly candy-coated. It's stuff that should technically, be healthy. Yogurts. Granola bars. Fruit snacks. Boxed cake mixes (seriously, why the FUCK does a CHOCOLATE CAKE need both red and yellow food dyes?). Toothpastes, kiddie vitamins and cold medicines. It's BULLSHIT, trying to shop at a "regular" grocery store when you need to avoid this stuff, even more so when (like us) you've also cut out high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils for various other Frankenfood reasons.

We're lucky that we live in an area where Whole Foods is about as common as any grocery store, along with Trader Joe's and several year-round farmer's markets where we buy pretty much everything from produce to grains to meats and fish. (Up where my parents live, you either live on one fancy organic aisle at the Acme or drive close to an hour to the nearest Whole Foods in New Jersey.) We're also very lucky that we can afford to shun the processed foods and eat organic, local, humane, sustainable and all those other hippie food buzzwords. I'll sacrifice plenty of other columns in our budget before I cut food corners, particularly for the kids. (She says while wondering if it's too early to switch from coffee to Coke. And fun-sized Snickers.)

And it took us a long time to get fully here, by the way. Hell, we potty-trained with M&Ms, fed Noah Flintstones vitamins, brushed his teeth with sparkly blue Disney-branded toothpaste. It really wasn't until we stopped giving him anything artificial that we really saw how little it takes to really affect him, be it candy or fast food chocolate milk or a fruit-flavored Triaminic strip. We don't deny him the occasional treat or get hysterical if friends or family offer him something we wouldn't necessarily feed him at home...we just sort of know what we're in for and up our focus on the rest of his diet for a day or two.

If you are unsure of how or where to start, The Unhealthy Truth is a great book for this as well -- at least after scaring the pants off you the author devotes a chapter on how to prioritize your grocery list and budget, taking baby steps to avoid the "worst" things and slowly get your kids to accept healthier versions without feeling like you've just ripped the rug out from under them and clobbered them with a Deprivation Hippie Stick.

Anyway. I actually wrote the bulk of this entry yesterday, right before my parent-teacher conference at the public school program. And finally, OH GOD FINALLY, I got to sit there in front of a team of teachers who had nothing but lovely, wonderful things to say about my child. What a delight and a joy he is, how smart and funny he is, and how much progress he's already making. I'm certainly not all, "OH, IT'S ALL BECAUSE WE THREW OUT HALF OF HIS HALLOWEEN CANDY. ARE BEST PARENTS EVER."

In the grand scheme of things, it's admittedly a tiny part of the puzzle. Though WOW, did I ever have a lot to say about it.

In other news, Noah is kicking ass at school. And I'm committing that phrase to published type: NOAH IS KICKING ASS AT SCHOOL. We celebrated by not coming right home so I could sit around and finish this entry. I hope you understand. It's been a long time coming.

The Bacon Poler Express

So I figured something out, something that should really help my time-crunched, messed-up schedule quite a bit. I just need to multitask. Everything I do must serve a dual purpose. Like, I can put Swiffer cloths on the baby's knees, color my roots while I drive, teach my preschooler how to use his pragmatic language skills to argue with our health insurance. And lunch! Oh, what a pointless uni-task waste of time that is! Until now!

Yep. Time for another adventure in microwavery. On today's menu:

BACON POLES!

So I actually felt a little sad about how terrible that poor souffle turned out, especially since...well, come on. It was a souffle. That I microwaved. Let's not stack the deck too high against any chance of success, shall we? So I chose this recipe because 1) it contains bacon, 2) I had a coupon for bacon, 3) microwaved bacon is actually pretty darn good, and 4) BACON POLES, YOU GUYS.

MEAT STICKS.

BEEFLOGS. (Okay, PORKLOGS, if you buy into the idea of a single magical animal that gives us pork and bacon and ham and logs.)

(Also pictured, top right: "Seaside Cheese Dip." The secret ingredient is canned clams!)

I'm a big fan of things wrapped in bacon, and an even bigger fan of meats on sticks. Put meat on a stick and wrap it in bacon, and I will...uh. I will eat it. Yeah. I'm that serious. (Although if you present me with the other recipe on page 55 -- Microwaved Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Livers -- I may pass on those.)

ANYWAY! It's a pretty straightforward recipe. Packaged breadsticks, bacon, scissors, paper towels and a paper plate.'Twas a simpler time, in a way.

I wish I could say that my perfectly seasonal choice of paper plate was intentional, but it's actually a leftover from last Halloween. (I also may have some fun-sized toffee bars or some other thing that no one in our household likes. You know, in case our BACON POLES! don't turn out so well.)

Cut bacon in half with scissors. Ew. This is actually not super fun, but I suppose it's necessary to achieve true spiral "barber pole fashion."

 

Mmmm, meat barber lollipops.

Now, there was no way I was going to follow the times in the recipe -- while "Defrost" and "Medium" have proven to be fairly comparable, cooking on "High" in a modern-day microwave is the 1977-equivalent to roasting over an open rod of plutonium.

My microwave actually has a "bacon" setting, but it requires math and stuff, like dividing an 8-ounce package of bacon by 10 strips and then multiplying by three strips, which means this is about 2.4 ounces of bacon but you can only enter whole numbers awwww fuck it, let's just nuke the plate for a minute and a half or so.

 

The crackling sound means it's working! Or that it's about to explode. Definitely one of those two things.

 

Okay, so the first batch came out a leeeeeettle well-done. They tasted distinctly burnt, with playful undernotes of char-broiled nitrates. The bacon-wrapped section of breadstick was cooked to the point of blackened petrification.

(STOP MOCKING ME, STUPID JACK O' LANTERN PLATE.)

 

Take two! I was determined to succeed this time, since DUDE. It's a fucking microwave. Surely I can not fuck up a fucking recipe that involves little more than pressing a a fucking button. I mean, for all my mockery of this cookbook, I am running dangerously close to being run over by a GE-powered truckload of irony.

I also wanted to eat some bacon, so I made a few modern-day concessions: the rotating turntable went back in, and I used the "bacon" setting, figuring that even if the cooking time wasn't exact, the power level would be. I aimed for underdone, and checked on them compulsively. Come on, BACON POLES!

Huzzah! Close enough, more or less. Eh.

 

For cookbook-photo comparison purposes. I am so serving these at our next Key Party! They'll be awesome dipped into some Canned Clam Cream Cheese Dip!

Okay, so of course I tasted the BACON POLES!, despite the fact that the end product sort of alarmingly reminded me of these dog treats we used to give Ceiba, until we figured out that she was just gnawing off the bacon-like wrapping and then hiding the rawhide stick-part under the sofa cushions.

These were neither especially bacon-y nor pole-like -- eaten warm, the breadstick was kind of chewy. Once they cooled, the breadstick STILL tasted overcooked and the bacon was rendered down to little more than salt. A thick, reddish-brown crunchy coating of salt.

The first one was pretty good, in a "wow, it's like they figured out how to sell bacon in a vending machine" sort of way.

The second one was...uncomfortably salty. What is this world, where bacon is something other than completely delicious? I am distinctly unsettled.

By the time I nibbled on a third one my tongue was shriveling up and I needed WATER WATER MAYDAY WATER.

 

Ceiba really liked them, so...that's something. 

(It will probably surprise absolutely NO ONE AT ALL that Paula Deen has her own recipe for BACON POLES! She makes hers in a fancydancy oven. And then she covers them in cheese.)

(BACON POLES!)

Microwavery in Action

Oh, come on. You knew I was gonna do it.

So last night I made the infamous spinach-cheese souffle. In the microwave. MICROWAVED SOUFFLE. BECAUSE WHY NOT. Would you like to see how it turned out? In painstakingly over-documented, un-retouched, high-res detail? Yes? Then keep on clicking, baby.

Weekend Vignettes

For reasons that I believe can go mostly undocumented, we thought the dog had salmonella on Saturday. We found stray mussel shells from a disastrously ambitious dinner scattered in the yard; puddles of sick scattered pretty much everywhere else. She's actually just fine, but I just wanted to mention it anyway because I had to clean up a LOT of barf. You know. Just in case Ceiba ever reads this website one day. I cleaned up your barf, and I didn't like it. And now you never call! Ingrate.

*They ALL DIED before we could cook them. I set them on a paper towel for ONE MINUTE and every goddamn mussel decided to commit ritualistic suicide rather than face the hot pan of death. I was going to drown you in WINE, you bastards. WINE. We should all be so lucky to die such a death.

***
In other best-left-to-the-imagination news, we have a mouse in our kitchen. And clearly, the most useless-ass pets EVER.

***

Scene: Every Saturday Morning In Our House, Ever

Jason: Anything you want to do today?

Amy: I want to go to Ikea.

Jason: We're not going to Ikea.

Amy: (dramatic flailing)

Fin.

***

You probably know by now that I eat pretty much everything. Food is my hobby, since I don't know how to knit and dislike standing for long periods of time. I'm actually trying to think of something that I won't eat. Wait, okay, I've got it: raw onions, Cool Whip, head cheese. Tongue as long as it still resembles a tongue. I used to not eat rabbit -- because you know, bunnnnnnies! -- until we moved to the suburbs and a goddamn rabbit ate all my flowers and now I will eat the hell out some rabbit. I will eat that rabbit, if my dog ever stops gnawing on diseased mussels long enough to catch the stupid thing. (Hey, here's a recipe!)

Saturday night I ate pork cracklins for the first time -- fancy cracklins, apparently, since they were served on a charcuterie board alongside wee little pickles -- and for the first time in ages I was completely flummoxed by a food item. It was salty, crunchy and aggressively unhealthy -- my top three most favorite adjectives for food -- but OH MY GOD, IT WAS SKIN, RECOGNIZABLE SKIN, THERE WERE VISIBLE HAIR FOLLICLES. I could FEEL the skin-like texture on my tongue, I was Homer Simpson, sampling from the regenerative bacon buffet in the Garden of Eden.*

So instead of eating them, I lined a few up on my arm and asked Jason to get another few orders because the restaurant was chilly and I wanted a cardigan. Jason was all, "give those back, they're delicious."

*If you know what I'm talking about here, congratulations! We can be friends. We'll eat some deep-fried skin and then go get ice cream.

***

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Noah loved everything about it, except for the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese, whom he eyed warily from the table, nervously eating bites of pizza. When the costumed Chuck E. Cheese (who was missing one furry glove for most of the proceedings) showed up, we had to retreat to a safe distance.

Noah: THAT BUNNY NEEDS TO GO AWAY.

Amy: He's a mouse, sweetie.

Noah: THAT BUNNY MOUSE NEEDS TO GO HOME.

***

As we drove home, Jason and I had a 20-minute unironic conversation about minivans and the many, many attractive features they offer. We're certainly not in the market for a new car or anything, but Jason rode in his coworker's Odyssey and like, maaaaaan, that thing was sweeeeeet. You don't even have to fold the stroller or anything. I remembered the same thing about a friend's minivan in a fit of retroactive lust, shaking my head at my naive young ATTITUDE towards minivans, back when I knew NOTHING about the world and what happens to all your "adequate cargo space" once you have two children.

Amy: I mean, just THINK of all the stuff we could buy at Ikea!

***

We never made it to Ikea. We went to the Big Box Baby Store instead and bought additional baby gates, because our 9-month-old does not have the sense God gave a bunny mouse. While shopping, I was approached TWICE about the Ergo carrier and whether I liked it (yes, oh God, yes), what age I started using it (31) (haaaa, I'm an ass), and then approached again by someone trying to decide between two different floor gyms and which one was better (is it for your baby? no? okay, get whatever one blinks and makes noise.)

Less than an hour after that, we stopped at Whole Foods and a timid young thing in high heels asked me what the difference was between brown eggs and white eggs, and if she hard-boiled the brown ones would they like, be the same? With a white part and a yellow center? She then admitted that this was her first grocery-shopping trip out on her own, and I noticed that her shopping list contained the instruction to "open egg carton and check for broken shells."

Amy: Wow, I must look like, really extra helpful today, or something!

Jason: I think it's more that you just look so much like a mom.

Amy: Do I look like I drive a minivan? Because I don't. Yet. Seriously, the back seats FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, OH MY GOD.

***

We've been pricing up laptops for awhile now -- the Macbook's motherfuckingboard was going to cost a motherfucking fortune to fix, plus it seemed like the water damage was pretty damn catastrophic, and the repair couldn't guarantee that other inside-techie things hadn't shorted out -- and I was resigned to buying a cheaper non-Mac, because. Well. Cheaper. I officially put off the purchase waaaay too long, leading to lost posts and enormous amounts of frustration once the mouse key broke, randomly moving the cursor to different parts of the screen while I typed gaaaaaaaaah kill.

So on Thursday we went to the Big Box Computer Store and I glumly pecked on some keyboards and finally declared one "pretty okay." I knew we could get it cheaper online though, so we didn't buy it.

On Friday -- before any of this other stuff happened, even though Jason probably knew it was a pretty safe bet that I would make stupid jokes out in public, that I would bug him about taking me to Ikea, that I would wander around stores looking like a frumpy, frizzy, minivan-lusting mom -- he came home from work and pulled a brand-new Macbook out of his briefcase. I was stunned.

Jason: You use it every day. It's what you do. It's important. You should have the one you want.

Our anniversary is in a few days. Eleven years. Our life is nothing like the one we thought we'd have once upon a time.

(I still have the one I want.)

Bitter Greens

One day, someday, although my money is on it not being today, I will learn to shut my stinking piehole and not tell the Internet things. This was published yesterday, and you'll notice that I ever-so-casually mentioned that yeah, neither of my kids have any food allergies! Isn't that great? I mean, so far, and all, knock on Ikea end table made of a wood-like material.

So of course after dinner last night, poor Ezra erupted in hives all over his arms and legs. Mama erupted in a case of raging alcoholism.

And because I'm a cocky know-it-all MORON, I'm having a hard time pinpointing what caused the reaction, since while my in-laws were here we showed off Ezra's admittingly amazing palate and appetite like a goddamned party trick, allowing him to eat pretty much anything off the table without keeping track of how many new ingredients he was getting exposed to and how many times. I THINK we can blame it on some spring garlic that I bought by mistake at the farmers' market and just started using in place of leeks (which Ezra has eaten multiple times, which is what I meant to buy but was in a hurry and grabbed the wrong stalks), in a couple of his veggie dishes and stews. And my mother-in-law gave him something else with regular garlic, I think, so...yeah. I was really on the fucking ball this weekend.

It wasn't that terrible of a reaction, as these things go -- he barely seemed bothered by the rash and it never spread to his torso or face -- but irregardless I'm demoting him back to Normal Baby Eating Habits for awhile, all single-ingredient and boring and shit. No more lamb stew with chickpeas and eggplant! No barley and asparagus medley! Eat some stupid sweet potatoes like the rest of the seven-month-old population. Sorry.

***

Tomorrow morning is our IEP meeting with the school district. The last report arrived yesterday, from the school psychologist who observed Noah at the evaluation and at school. Still not getting any easier to read these things. Or write about them. The details are Noah's, not mine. Seeing him reduced to such clinical language, his behavior framed as unrelentingly negative, reminds me that this blog shouldn't do the same, but should be the alternate record, the one with the good stuff, the funny stuff, the stuff about the kid who I love the stuffing out of, no matter what.

Regardless, I think it's okay to share that I am very anxious about tomorrow (Jason too), even though I know we won't have to make decisions on the spot, or anything. (I've dragged my feet on a few health-related doctor forms for precisely this passive-aggressive reason: I want an excuse to stall and hem and haw afterwards.) We're more or less assuming at this point that Noah will qualify for some level of help. My wager on just what level (he could attend as little as two days a week and as often as five, or get itinerant services as needed) changes by the hour.

I was getting pretty comfortable with our initial decision to keep him more or less mainstreamed and send him to Montessori, where at least THERE the teacher observed some of Noah's more -- ahem -- self-directed behavior and immediately framed it as a positive, as a good thing. We're not getting much of that from anyone else, frankly, though I know in order for Noah to qualify for the district's preschool program the evaluators HAVE to make everything sound dire and significant. I don't want to turn down free services for reasons that might have to do more with my own wounded pride than me really truly knowing the level of help my child requires. I also don't want to hand him over to a program -- because it's free, because it's the almighty school district -- that aims to squash the very things that make Noah who he is in the name of getting him to some lowest-common denominator level of "success." I don't want to lose my grip on the fact that we are talking about PRESCHOOL.

I don't want to let him down; I don't want to admit just how lost I am sometimes. I do want to take him out for lunch and then go to the playground. Yes, let's just do that instead.

A Bunch of Turkeys

(Photo-heavy post warning. Click below or skip it completely. It's like your very own Matrix blue pill/red pill conundrum!)