shining egg

new year.

over the weekend we celebrated rosh hashanah - the jewish new year.  (according to the hebrew calendar, we welcomed the year 5770.)  this is a precious time of year, full of synagogue services and family meals and visits with friends and lots and lots of food - brisket and honey cake and matzoh balls and apples and honey.  all of that, and much reflection.  it is the time of year when we look back over our behavior, our words, our actions from the previous year - an inventory of sorts - and look forward to the behaviors we hope to exhibit in the coming year.  it's an overwhelming time of year, but a unique moment for a pause, for reflection, for adjusting course (there is always somewhere to adjust course, isn't there?).

i could go on and on about this holiday season - about the tradition of dipping apples in honey, about the tradition of tossing bread crumbs into a stream to symbolize casting off the bad deeds of the previous year, about the haunting melodies in the synagogue, about the apple pie i make each year like my father did before me.  i could go on, but instead i'll leave you with this photo, which, for me just about sums it all up - the glorious weather this past weekend, the blur of time speeding by, the light in each of our lives.  i'll leave you with this photo, and with these words, which come from the written material distributed at the synagogue service we attended on saturday:

"when we really begin a new year it is decided...who shall be truly alive; and who shall merely exist."

that is, after all, the distinction i am continually trying to make - to live fully, to be truly alive, rather than to merely exist.  

wishing you all a moment of pause, a bit of time for reflection, and a happy new year - whether you celebrate this particular holiday, or not.

{also - reminding you that tomorrow is the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere, making today the very last day to shop the beach collection.  tomorrow, like summer, it will be gone.}

about hanukkah

my friend molly asked me to share some information about hanukkah.  so i did.  

the first candle

happy hanukkah!

t-minus 2 days

and i'm getting there.  today was the last day of school before winter vacation.  i spent the day trying to get my ducks in a row - for hanukkah, for gifts, for plans - everything for the next two weeks.  of course it's not all done, but once 230 came, i was able to exhale and begin to ease into the chaos that will be our life from now until january 5.

 

during my mid-day frenzy, i actually bought one hanukkah present, and consulted with my brother on several others.  i lined up a few holiday activities (we'll be making these.  and these.  and going to see this.), made plans with some friends to light our candles together.  and ate a good bit of the dough i had made for baking cookies this weekend.

this afternoon we got started on our hanukkah activities.  my grandmother had asked us to make her some cards she could send to family and friends.  hanukkah isn't like christmas with the cards, not at all.  but she wanted some, so we made some.  and it was so much fun.  

first, i had b. and l. each draw a small hanukkah picture on plain white paper.  i drew boxes on the paper to give them the approximate size i was looking for.  (l.'s was much bigger than the box i drew for her, but we loved it so much that we figured out how to make it work.)  we transferred the drawings onto some of these,and carved them into stamps with one of these.  i've been carving rubber stamps for a while now, and enjoying it immensely - the stamps are such a quick fix, they're perfect for a small design, for a whim.  and they were perfect for this project. 

but then, just because it's winter vacation and i was starting to feel all festive, i broke out martha's glitter and let the kids go to town.  and the cards look fantastic!  we even stamped the envelopes.  and we're going to add my grandmother's return address to the envelopes too, before we deliver them to her tomorrow.  just to make them as user-friendly as possible.  

i'm so pleased with this little project.  fun, quick, a little something for everyone.  and we've done something kind for someone else in the process.  (can you tell this made me happy?)  now, i'm trying to figure out what else i can stamp with these hanukkah stamps that i love so much.  and thinking i might have to make one of my own.

t-minus 3 days and counting

hanukkah starts sunday evening at sundown.  my kids winter vacation starts tomorrow at 230 in the afternoon.  and i have not done one single thing to get ready for this holiday season, save for taking out the box of supplies and listening to this song over and over.  that, and making peppermint bark and sugar cookies - neither of which has a blessed thing to do with hanukkah.  it's just that martha suggested, over on flickr, that my holiday spirit might return if i eat some holiday cookies.  i'm testing her theory.

really, though, i think my lack of seasonal enthusiasm has more to do with having had an extraordinary holiday season last year - full of meaning and celebration and joy.  and, too, that the world doesn't feel very festive to me right now.  i'm overly aware of how my children need nothing (they practically can't even think of things they want), of how i need nothing, of how desperately i don't want to spend money on things that are not needed when there are so many who need so much.  so i'm struggling with the spirit a bit.  and i'm alright with that.

on sunday the holiday will begin.  there will be candles and latkes.  there might be small gifts.  there will be family and love and joy at our table.  and it will be good.  

in the meantime, i'm planning to be back in this space before then with a few little things to share.  but first, those cookies.

speaking of the kitchen

thanks for all of the kitchen love.  i'm enjoying the space so very much.  and this week, i even took two kitchen photos, trying to embrace the light - which wasn't nearly as bad as i had feared.

i have been - and will be - spending lots of time in the kitchen this week, as we're having 14 people for thanksgiving dinner.  this is my favorite holiday.  (you've probably heard me say that about other holidays.  i love each one more than the next.)  the food, the family, the universal feeling of gratitude.  it's all so good.

 

i took out my thanksgiving file last weekend.  my brother and my husband (and some of my friends) make terrible fun of me for keeping a thanksgiving file, but i suspect that some of you will appreciate my desire to preserve memories and notes about who was here and what we ate and how the table looked for from thanksgivings past.  what a treat to open the folder and find menus, notes about what people were thankful for, marketing lists, place cards going back to b.'s first thanksgiving - he was two months old, and there is a single place card bearing both of our names.  and the leaf-print place cards, the photos of flower arrangements, place settings.  none of it fancy, most of it forgotten, all of it lovingly remembered as i flipped through those pages.

two items of particular interest from the file this year.  the first is a note to myself following the last thanksgiving we hosted, three years ago.  it's attached to the menu for that meal, which includes a cornbread stuffing we had never made before.  the note reminds me how many pounds of potatoes are enough and how much sugar to cut from the sweet potato recipe (i'm thankful to myself for thinking that i'd want to know those things in the future, because of course i wondered).  the note also reads, "DO make the cornbread stuffing again!"  but there is no recipe for the cornbread stuffing.  alas.  it seems that i kept some notes, but not others.

the second item of particular interest is a page torn from a white letter-sized legal pad.  it's been folded many times.  the words on the page are scribbled in my father's handwriting - there are probably only three people in the world who would be able to read it anymore.  it's from my dad's last thanksgiving, the words he wrote in preparation for sharing at the dinner table that night about all that he was thankful for; he passed away four months later.  that was ten thanksgivings ago, and we have read from that piece of paper at every single thanksgiving since.  his words are eloquent, they are universal, and they remind me exactly how much i have to be thankful for.  (reason enough to keep a thanksgiving file, don't you think!?) 

before i go off to wash the dishes from the pie crusts i made this evening, let me recommend that you check out heather's recipe for pumpkin muffins.  that's them in the photo there, and they are delicious.  i can't say enough about these simple treats - light, fluffy, moist, tasty as can be, and easy, easy, easy to make.  i learned today that grace makes pumpkin muffins as a breakfast treat on thanksgiving morning, it's a tradition in her family.  well i'm borrowing her tradition this year; i'll be making these again on thursday morning, enjoying them warm with a bit of butter as we peel and boil potatoes, truss the turkey, and give thanks.  and i'll be adding this recipe to my file, for sure!

coconut cupcakes are yummy

today is my mother's birthday. and also her mother's birthday.

can you imagine!? my mother was born on her mother's 23rd birthday. what a gift.

coconut cake is their favorite. (convenient that they have the same favorite, isn't it?) i've been making the same coconut cake recipe for a few years now, and though i love the cake, i wasn't crazy about the seven-minute-frosting. so today i tried something new: a coconut-cream cheese frosting. it's a bit thinner than i had imagined - not thin enough to be a glaze, but a wee bit thinner than a traditional frosting - but it's creamy and shiny and absolutely delicious. d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.

i'll tell you how i made it. but only if you promise not to say a single word about my arteries. it's frosting, after all. and it's two birthdays rolled into one. ok? ok.

coconut-cream cheese frosting - makes more than enough to frost 18 cupcakes
(adapted from this recipe)

1 8-ounce block of cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1.5-2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth.
add all but 1/2 cup of the confectioners sugar and beat until smooth.
add the coconut milk and vanilla and the remaining confectioners sugar.
beat until smooth. (there's a pattern here, you see?)
frost the cupcakes, trying not to eat as much of the frosting as i did along the way.
and enjoy.

happy birthday mom and gramz. i'm proud (and also feeling pretty lucky) to be your daughter and granddaughter. i'm wishing you love and joy - and most of all, peace - in the coming year.

sweet nothings

well then. my feet are still hovering a good few inches above the earth as i whiz around trying to keep all of my balls in the air. but the pace has slowed just a bit, and i'm dropping in here because i miss this space. i've noticed, these last days, as i'm racing here and there, that i'm so very aware of the beauty, the small moments of joy, the bright spots in each day (which have been sometimes buried deep in between layers of tissues and fever remedies and loads and loads of laundry). and i've missed sharing those moments here, with you.

since i last was here, we've had no less than eight separate infections/viruses/illnesses in our home. but it looks like we're on the mend now, finally. and i'm planning a little sage-burning ceremony, just to be sure.

so there's been lots of tending, and also packing. we're leaving on sunday for a big family trip: to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, my in-laws are taking the whole family on a cruise. i will admit to being ambivalent about spending seven days on a gigantic ship-of-excess, but i'm putting my hesitations aside now and plowing forward with the fun. it will be a great gift to spend a week with family, in the sunshine (hopefully there will be plenty of sunshine!), in a place where there are no plans to be made, no worries to be had. flip flops and bathing suits and shorts? knitting and embroidery and books? make-your-own-dessert-bar? all good.

but before we leave, some important things will happen here at home.

saturday evening marks the start of the passover holiday. we'll celebrate the start of the holiday on saturday night at my mom's house, with a huge festival meal that includes numerous rituals and ritual foods (and plenty of delicious foods that are traditional but have nothing to do with the ritual). it's wonderful, this holiday. a celebration of freedom - literally, a celebration of the freedom of the israelite people from slavery in egypt. but at our festival table, we take that celebration two steps farther, celebrating the freedom of all people who have ever been enslaved, and also celebrating our own individual freedom from whatever it is that enslaves us - our obsessions, our worries, our fears. there is so much there, and i'd love to write about the holiday all week long. but, alas, i'll be at sea. maybe next year.

so in honor of the start of the holiday, and because this recipe is too good to keep to myself, i share with you a most delicious passover treat. really, it's delicious. whether or not you celebrate passover, you can't go wrong with this one. (in fact, i've heard that it can be done with saltine crackers. but i've never tried.)

matzah brittle

line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and preheat your oven to 375.

cover your cookie sheet with a single layer of matzah (any kind of matzah will do). it's ok to have some overlap or some gaps.

in a pot on the stovetop, combine 2 sticks of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar. bring the mixture to a boil and boil, stirring, for 3 minutes.

remove the pot from the heat and pour the yummy sugar-butter mixture over the matzah, spreading the mixture around so that it covers all corners of the pan. (really, this is my favorite part. i could skip the chocolate altogether and just have the matzah covered with this toffee-type mixture. so make sure you get it all over.)

put the baking sheet in the oven for 5-7 minutes. i usually do 6 minutes. but i check it after 5. because you don't want it to burn.

when you remove the pan from the oven, the mixture will be bubbling and gloriously golden and delicious looking. dump a bag of chocolate chips over the mixture and let it sit for 5 minutes. (today i used milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate. you could use anything. my friend julie was going to use white chocolate in piping bags drizzled over the dark chocolate. yum. and beautiful.)

after the chocolate sits on the hot matzah for 5 minutes, spread the chocolate around to cover the whole pan. (or leave some sections free of chocolate if you're like me and prefer the toffee.)

then sprinkle with crushed nuts of your choice. or not. (my helpers weren't too excited about the nuts. so they're localized. one small section on each pan. that's how it's gonna be.) and place the pan in the fridge for 1 hour. (or in the freezer for 30 minutes if you can't wait an hour. like me.)

remove from fridge, break into pieces, and (gobble, gobble, gobble) enjoy.

i'll be back here before we leave. tomorrow, maybe. or saturday. or both.

it's almost valentine's day

my very first boyfriend broke up with me on valentine's day. i was fourteen. and devastated. he came to pick me up for our date that evening with twelve pink roses in hand, and he broke my heart before dessert. it was pretty awful, as fourteen year-old breakups go. so it shouldn't be surprising that i didn't really care for valentine's day for a long time. a long, long time. ok, i pretty much hated valentine's day. until i became a mother.

i can see the moment so clearly: my precious four month old asleep upstairs in his crib, and me, at the dining room table, sanding heart-shaped sugar cookies and reclaiming valentine's day. i suppose it must have been the explosion of love that occurs when you become a mother. or maybe i was old enough, finally, to let go of old wounds. but there, in the dining room on that february day, i took back this cheesy hallmark holiday.

that year there were rainbow colored sugar cookies (this was back before i gave up artificial food color) for the ones i loved. and since then, there has been a series of painted, stickered, stamped, and baked love notes sent to family and friends each year on february 14. there was the year (my personal favorite) that i covered the dining room table with kraft paper and gave the kids pink and red and purple paints and pastels and crayons and markers and let them decorate the whole table (they thought that was pretty great, too). then i cut the kraft paper into small pieces, stuffed them in envelopes, and sent them as our valentines.

this year, if you can imagine, the children flatly refused to execute my brilliant vision. i'm not sharing it because i have high hopes for next year. but we did come up with something small. and sweet. and gocco-able, which was fun for all.

and i had a little side project this valentine's day. i've had a bee in my bonnet, ever since reading about amy's marshmallows. i absolutely had to make pink marshmallows for valentine's day. and it was fun. and so easy. so, so easy. the ease of making these marshmallows was inversely proportional to the amount of worry i had about how hard they would be to make. funny how that works.

so i made the pink marshmallows. and i made a few special valentines using the paper-cut from amy's emailorder #8 (gee, thanks, amy, for all of the valentine's day love!) and my print gocco (which has been very, very busy this week). and i tied up the marshmallows with wax paper and twine, and i tied up the printed valentines, and i sent out a few special packages to a few special people.

because when it's almost valentine's day, and you feel the love all around you, you've got to spread it, don't you think?

(as an aside, i voted this afternoon. and when i stepped into that voting booth and cast my ballot, i cried. a historic moment. the voting, not the crying.)

the party

today was the day. BP day. the birthday party.

we're a family of at-home birthday-partiers. always have been. it just works for us. maybe it's because d. and i used to be summer camp counselors? anyway, we party at home.

there was the "7 continents" birthday party when b. turned five and there were seven activity stations and each child got a passport to have stamped as they completed each activity. there was the "cupcake" party when l. turned four and her friends came over to bake cupcakes and frost them and take the extras home in chinese take-out containers. there was b.'s "ancient egypt" party this past september with an ancient map and lots of clues and a search for buried treasure.

this time, though, we almost went to a play place. for the first time, we invited the whole class. plus our family friends. 17 kids. that's more than twice the number we've ever had at any other birthday party for either child. (we did agree, as a family, when we decided to invite the whole class, that the invitation would say, "no gifts please." we talked a lot about how many gifts she would be getting anyway - from family and close friends - and how any more than this would be too many to appreciate and enjoy. and there has not been one moment of regret from any one of us. another reason i'm so proud of my girl.)

i was nervous about the size of the group, to say the least. especially once we decided to stay at home, paint flower pots, and plant flowers. seventeen kids, in the basement, with acrylic paint, lots of brushes, a big tub of dirt, and a whole lot of primroses. yeah.

but the party was perfect. absolutely perfect. the kids painted, happily, for far longer than i could have imagined. the pots they created were incredible and all so different and of course i have no photo because i was running around changing dirty water and refilling little palettes. there were the pots that were covered with color, and the pots that were covered with dots, and there was the one pot covered with smile-y faces, too. all so different and clever and cute.

the chocolate cupcakes were a big hit, as always (it's my no-fail recipe - so good that they deserve two photos in this post). the frosting, a luscious buttercream tinted pink with these all-natural food colors. (turns out that their hot pink sanding sugar has food coloring in it. oops. but the food colors are all natural.)

d. read stories while the children were waiting in between painting and cake and planting, and he led a rousing game of "simon says." the children didn't want to leave. i kid you not.

the birthday girl was in her element. beaming (again) through the whole party. she was thrilled to have everyone to her house, the project was one that she loves, she was in heaven. i wish i had had my video camera in the final moments of the party, as she stood on the basement steps and said to all of her friends, "thank you for coming to my party. and don't forget to water your flowers when you get home."

sigh.