Potholders for My Mother

The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.



Now that Mother's Day is over, I can show you the potholders I made for my mother to match her kitchen colors and replace some grease-blackened ones. As padding, I used two squares of worn denim with a layer of batting sandwiched inbetween. I want to ask Mom in a few weeks if that's a good weight and flexibility for hotpads.

Tomorrow, The Dessert from Mother's Day!

Sunday Dinner: Rhubarb Chutney

For Mother's Day, my sister and I put together an evening party for our mother (which included an aunt, cousin, and my in-laws). That wasn't until 5pm, so I wanted to have a light Sunday dinner. My cupboards were getting bare, so I made dahl (curried split peas from More with Less) and rhubarb chutney on Saturday and then put brown rice in the oven on timed bake Sunday morning.



The rhubarb chutney was great! It reminded me of the apple chutney I make and can in late summer (from Simply in Season) which involves lots of spices, chopping and peeling, and a long time simmering down before the actual canning bath. I'm really in love with rhubarb this spring and I'm going to plant a crown this week if I can get my hands on one yet.

Rhubarb Chutney (tweaked from a newspaper insert called "Relish")

Bring to boil:
1/3 c. apple cider vinegar
3/4 c. packed brown sugar

Add and simmer, uncovered, until rhubarb is tender and whole mess is thickened (less than 10 minutes):
4 c. chopped rhubarb
1/2 c. raisins
1/4 c. gingerroot, peeled and minced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp. salt
5 black peppercorns

Serve at room temperature and keep leftovers in fridge. Makes a little over 2 cups. Serve with curries, cheese, or grilled meat.



The rhubarb chutney is to the left there. For some reason, all of the photos of Sunday dinner were blurry and not in an artistic way, so that's the best photo I have of the finished product.

Something Like a Crepe

I like to read cookbooks, so I knew that there was a recipe called "Oven Pancake" in Simply in Season, but it didn't seem that appealing and I couldn't figure out what kind of meal it fit in.
Well, lo, a friend of a friend served an oven pancake with Sausage and Greens Soup (also from SinS, as I abbreviate in my supper notebook), and epiphany: crepes! The ingredients are so similar and the texture is silky, just like crepes. I duplicated that menu, and I'm hooked.



Ben did his first helpful work in the kitchen: he grated the smoked cheddar to go on top of the pancake. He worked steadily, with absorption, and only at the end did he ask for a piece of cheese. What a guy!



Vegetable or Fruit Oven Pancake

Grease 9" pie pan or iron skillet with 1 Tbs. butter.

Have ready 2/3 c. lightly steamed or sauteed asparagus, in 1" pieces, or other vegetables (I sauteed the asparagus right in the iron skillet)

Whisk until smooth:
3/4 c. milk
2/3 c. flour (can use WW pastry)
2 eggs
1/4 tsp. salt
(I added some thyme too)

Pour over asparagus and butter in skillet. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes, until puffy and golden. Sprinkle 1/2 c. grated cheese on top and serve immediately.



I will use this oven pancake for snacks, lunches, and alongside soup for dinner. Leftovers were a great snack straight from the fridge. I'm pleased at the simplicity, thrifty use for less-than-prime produce, and room for creativity.

Fixing Her Sundress

This sweet dress was just too loose at Genevieve's skinny little middle. I discussed it my experienced friend Rebecca and on her advice, stitched on two-inch pieces of elastic, stretching it as I stitched, to tighten the elasticized waistband further. I used a small zigzag machine stitch. But the waistband puckered and curled too much for looking good.

So I ripped that off and made a dart at each waistband side seam. Much better!

Busy Day Breakfast: Oven French Toast

This is what I make when I want to get laundry on the line, take a shower, start a batch of bread, go to market and get the kids out the door by 9am (dressed; and I dress too).

Recently I came across some Pepperidge Farm whole wheat raisin cinnamon bread at my discount grocer for $1.50 a loaf. For this recipe, I stacked two slices to get the requisite 1" slices.



Oven Baked French Toast (from Recipes from the Old Mill - lots of tweaks from me)

Generously butter a 9x13 baking pan.

Place 1" thick slices of bread in pan (about 8 slices French bread).

Combine and pour over the bread:
4 eggs
2 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cinnamon (skip if using cinnamon bread)
pinch salt

Using same bowl, mix with fingers and sprinkle evenly over the bread:
1/2 c. dark brown sugar, packed
1-2 Tbs. corn syrup or honey
3/4 c. chopped pecans (can add raisins here if using cinnamon raisin bread)
(sometimes I add a little pat of butter to each slice too!)



Soak overnight - either in fridge or in oven set on timed bake. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Serve with a little extra syrup. Supposedly serves four.



My husband and I were invited to a champagne brunch on a Friday night one time and it was such fun that I later planned one for some friends. We felt merry eating bacon and French toast for dinner and pleasantly devious drinking champagne with it.

Fleas: I'm Not Laughing Yet

Genevieve got some bites on her legs occasionally this spring. We looked at them and looked around, but didn't see anything, so we went on. Then I got A LOT of bites on my legs one night. In typical fashion, I ruminated on this until I was terribly afraid we had bed bugs.

Do not google bed bugs, like I did, unless you want to worry and lose sleep, like I did. I called two exterminators, who came and used flashlights to study every millimeter of all three mattresses in our house. One guy said to me, "If you've got 'em, you've got the cleanest bed bugs I've ever seen!" I was not amused.

I started to clean as if we had bed bugs. This involved washing and drying every scrap of fabric in the bedrooms; I couldn't bring myself to do that, so I *just* did the beds and curtains and changing pad. I vacuumed everything. I wiped down everything I could. I prayed. I cried. I snapped at people. Sometimes I apologized.

Genevieve and I kept getting bites. Then my sister looked at my legs and said, "Margo, those look like flea bites." So, with faint hope in my heart, I went back to Google, and after copious research, discovered that indeed, those were flea bites. And that since we don't have carpet or pets, the fleas were hanging out in our beds, waiting for a good long session with Genevieve and me (the two guys didn't get bit at all).

So now I started cleaning as for fleas, which is simpler: wash all the bedding, vacuum your fool head off for a week and make sure there's some boric acid going in the bag too to kill any survivors. I bought one can of boric acid, but other than the electricity and water for all that laundry and vacuuming, my frenetic cleaning spared us the expense of foggers and exterminators.



I learned that the beautiful nursery curtains that my mother-in-law made for me are washable. The fabric, 100% cotton, was marked dry clean only, but I was desperate, so I washed them on delicate and ironed them. No problem at all. In the midst of my despair, I did take a few photos of this, thinking to share this discovery with you.



All this happened in April. I kept on blogging and homemaking as usual, needing something positive to focus on. I tell you now because these kinds of dark personal stories are instructive and build the sister-love among us.

I think the fleas are gone, but it's still not funny to me. Maybe next year I can look back and laugh and say, "remember that time I thought we had bed bugs?"

P.S. Thanks to Jennifer Jo's post for inspiring me to share this story! More cheerful things to come tomorrow. . .

Reading For My Book Clubs

For one of my book clubs, I recently read (most of) When Everything Changed by Gail Collins. Fascinating history. It reinforces why my mother went to seminary in her 60s and why my mother-in-law asks me when I'm going to get my master's degree. I finished up a dishcloth during discussion.



For the other book club, I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I liked it because it included lots of domestic details; in fact, I wanted to bring you a quote, but in the heat of reading (it lured me into staying up til 1am one night finishing it!) I didn't write it down and then I forgot and returned the book to the library. The book is about "the help" (black maids) in the 1960s in Mississsippi. Fortunately for my budget, I was able to check both books out of my library.

What are you reading? Liking?