Endless Knots

Mother of the Year 2009

My friend Kate made my day. Go to this site and make someone else's. Especially meaningful to me because we raised our kids together in those treacherous early years when we wondered whether we had the stuff to be mothers at all. (Flash to Mirm, Abby, Lize, Sam, and Will: We got over it. Waaay over it.)

 

Mother of the Year 2009

Go to this site and make someone else's Mother's Day. And...thinking a lot about my own mom. It's been 20 years since I could say Happy M-Day to her in person.

Matzoh Balls by phone

It must have been the first year I was making Passover dinner. I remember standing by the kitchen table, talking on the phone with my mother, reaching for a scrap of paper, and taking down the recipe. That scrap has occupied a hallowed space in my recipe book ever since, opened to that page every year when it's time to make the Matzoh Balls.

For those who know the customs of Passover (tonight, Seder, don't be late), the placement of this recipe in my three-ring binder is hilarious, if not sacrilegious, stacked as it is on top of the Fettuccine Alfredo recipe. No noodles are allowed during Passover, which, for me, is akin to giving up most of my diet, as pasta in any form constitutes my favorite consumable.

Since I posted the recipe (along with the scrumptious soup that I also make for this meal) as part of a Rosh Hashonah menu a while back, I won't repeat it, but will remind all makers of "kneidlach" (or as my mother called them "kneidles") to separate the eggs, beat the whites, then gently fold them in into the matzoh meal, a little at a time. Result? Your matzoh balls will not only float but will melt on contact with your taste buds, light, airy, delicious.

Meanwhile, Happy Passover to all celebrating freedom, an aspiration for humanity everywhere.

Starting the new year with a bang

Literally. The cliches outstrip the metaphors:

It had been hanging on by a thread

...surviving on razor thin margins

......stretched to the breaking point until finally

...........out with the old and in with the new

We were sleeping in a bit this morning, savoring that luscious state where morning light has yet to flood the shadows of dreams...when

Crash!

The animals, must be the animals, destroying something but alas, all three accounted for in our room, their heads popping up as fast as ours.

Something downstairs...something huge...something very very loud and crashy, something

...exactly like...glass

The wire fastening the mirror (the old wood-framed mirror, etched at the top with a marine scene, its glass large enough to reflect the whole torso, if you can call it a reflection when the glaze is so old that it always looks smoked and dirty) to the wall above the toilet in the small downstairs bathroom had snapped.

Glass and porcelain should never meet head-on. Splinters, shards, slivers everywhere. Much cleaning and pondering of objects. How long have we had that dustpan? Who gave us the small Japanese fan? Why did I decide to bring Japanese Coke bottles back from Nara and what possessed me to turn that whole bathroom into a Japanese theme? Where did we even get this mirror?

And may this one not be the start, as the old husband's tale says, of seven years of bad luck. Indeed, consulting the interwebs, I now learn that there are various counter-active measures one can take, first, making sure that all shards are removed. We've swept, washed, vacuumed, washed, vacuumed, in short, begun the new year by cleaning house.

Thank you, mirror.

And so we begin 2009 with a clean sweep.

Happy New Year, friends (and check the wires on all your hanging objects)!

Merry Christmas from the Pine Street Inn

We went en masse to Boston's Pine Street Inn today as part of the lunch clean-up crew. Wish I'd taken more pictures - instead, we wiped down counters, scrubbed walls, mopped the floor, and washed a lot of pans and trays. Here are a few shots, including the incredible cookie-making feat of Daughter #1, who arrived in Boston at 3 PM yesterday; by 7, she'd produced 275 home-baked chocolate chip cookies that we took with us today (she's also the one who suggested we spend some hours this Christmas volunteering).

Read about Pine Street Inn and think of how you can find a similar place where you live. They housed more people last night than ever before. No further explanation necessary. And thanks to Coffie Fields for finding room for us and to Susan Miskell for showing us the ropes.

Donations that will become meals



Number of meals served per day

Clean counters, thanks to volunteers



275 cookies making their way to Pine Street Inn

There's joy in Beantown

Beeps and Chirps has granted permission for me to post a photo from his magnifique collection. So to the spirit of the days...Symphony Hall, Boston. Can you spot Santa?

Thanksgiving 2008

As we look ahead to Thursday, I'm continuing the tradition of posting our family menu. Due to pressures all around the fam, we decided to go for a different approach this year. Normally, we have our tried-and-true recipes but they can be very time-consuming, for example, my very popular Harvest Soup or a particularly spectacular stuffed mushroom recipe.

So we're doing something we've never done before - choose a relatively simple menu that comes straight out of one of our fave magazines, Fine Cooking. Its recipes are dependable and easy to compile shopping lists from - and the pictures are so inviting that it's hard not to want to make the food.

While this menu may sound complicated, any real cook reading the recipes will recognize that they are pretty straightforward to prepare - and, having done the shopping already, amazingly inexpensive. Turkey, even the kind we all should be buying, meaning without antibiotics, grain-fed, free-range and all those other hyphenated things, is just a couple of dollars a pound in these parts ($2.19 to be precise). So enjoy.

Check out the recipes linked here. And, we're adding one more recipe from another good food rag, Gourmet, as a special treat for our vegetarian.

Roasted Turkey a la me (but the Fine Cooking Juniper-Ginger Butter looks great)
Rustic Bread Stuffing with Dried Cranberries, Hazelnuts & Oyster Mushrooms
Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Shallots
Maple-Tangerine Cranberry Sauce
Cauliflower with Brown Butter, Pears, Sage & Hazelnuts
Green Beans with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette & Parmesan Breadcrumbs

And from Gourmet:
Wild Mushroom Bundles

And coming via relatives:
Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream
Apple Pie with French Vanilla Ice Cream

Happy Birthday, Annie!

For all lucky enough to know NetAge's anchor--and favorite friend of our family since she was just a little peanut, please join me in wishing Annie Marascia Luongo...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Yom Kippur - again

See this post from last year as thoughts turn to those I love and how to love them even more. Happy holidays to all.

5769

One beauty of humanity is our ability to celebrate the New Year in just about every month of the year. In a few hours, the year 5769 begins according to the Jewish calendar and we'll be celebrating with our beloved family and friends. Even if you're not Jewish, please join us in raising a toast tonight to new beginnings and in giving thanks for the joys of the past one. For me, I'm grateful for spending time with the people I love most, especially the immense amount of time I've been able to hang out with our children particularly in the past few months, for the new friends I've made both personally and through my work, for being able to speak honestly even when it's been uncomfortable, and for having the time to write, garden, and do yoga, three gifts that make me very happy.

None of us can ignore how difficult this year has been, and, especially, how scary things are right now. I have a dear friend who may lose her house, another who will be deployed to Iraq in a few weeks, another whom we were lucky to visit with today who just lost her husband, and another who is quite ill. I know all reading here can add to this list. What can we do? We can remember to always say "I love you," be more forgiving moment by moment, and tell jokes. I wish I had one at the ready but, sentimental me, I'm in the teary space.

I leave you for the next day or so with a few snapshots from the opening of Building Steam, where our daughter, Eliza, showed a new piece that caused more than a few wows. When we have a really good shot of the drawing, I'll post that. Meanwhile, here are a few shots that show its detail and in the last photo, one that shows its size with the artist and her father.

 

Happy Fourth!

According to Wikipedia, in 1781,"the state" of Massachusetts became the first to recognize July 4 as a state celebration. Almost right. Technically, we're a Commonwealth. (The difference apparently is in name only but, me, I only live in such entities, apparently - born in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, have lived my whole adult life in Mass.)

There are no doubt a zillion blog posts about Independence Day in the US, what it means, why it's important, and how America is this, that, and the other thing, good, bad, blah-buh-dee-blah-blah.

I have only this to say: Founding a country is a really big deal. A HUGE deal. Now think about all the countries that have been founded. The imagination of our species, the desire for independence, the drive to start anew, the imperative of freedom, all testament to the brilliance of humanity.