Back on track . . . I think.

Who is with me on this? Fixing a homemade-from-scratch-minus-the-applescauce-dinner is in reality a recipe for EXHAUSTION. Maybe it's because we have those hard, unforgiving tile floors that bounce blenders around and kill your feet and back. Honestly, I need the wooden stool from my childhood to sit on to peel those potatoes. That stool used to be the dishwashing stool. My brother made a cheerful chore chart for the fridge, Who is the LUCKY dishwasher tonight?? Which potatoes, by the way, turned out pasty. Now that just sends the dinner down the drain, if you ask me, which nobody does. If there's one thing I can't stand besides loose hair, it's pasty mashed potatoes. I was over-confident last night because the last many times I've mashed potoates, they've turned out dry, fluffy and lovely. Not this time, sisters and brothers. I don't know what I did differently, except some of the boiled chunks stayed chunks, never mashed, merely winked at the electric beaters. So, I pretended they were creamed potatoes, where chunks are welcomed. When I was growing up Annie would come cook our holiday dinners. She was a famous cook. People to this day still talk about Annie's Leg of Lamb. Unduplicative. And she made creamed potatoes sometimes, which is a cross between mashed and boiled buttered chunks, but somehow saucy creamy, too. Hers were yummy and not a mistake.

While we're talking about Annie, she was . . . precious (remember, I use that word sparingly). She PEELED the grapes. Try peeling a grape. It take takes all day. Try peeling a bunch of grapes. But what a delicacy. She loved to appear at the living room entrance with a white linen napkin draped over her arm and solemnly announce with a bow of the head, Dinner is served. She was very proper. It was a BIG moment for three kids who were bored stiff all day waiting and waiting some more for Turkey Time, who for hours inhaled the aromas wafting from the kitchen that about drove us wild. Then she served dinner perfectly in her starched white uniform which she always wore, her salt and pepper hair formed neatly into a bun at her nape. And she wouldn't leave until every last spoon was washed and put away, never mind that she'd been there since 7:00 AM and on her feet all day long basting the turkey and peeling the grapes and creaming the potatoes. She also was a firm believer in washing every utensil that had graced the table, whether or not it had been used. She was just marvelous, always the calmest of cucumbers, always a kind word on tongue's tip (unlike myself, who sprouts prickles when under holiday meal prep distress).

Annie told me years and years ago that she prayed for me every day. And she did, too. What an immeasurable GIFT. I always worried, When Annie dies, I am going to be in serious trouble because she is the only person who has ever told me, I pray for you every day. Well, she didn't have a very happy life in lots of ways but she never complained and instead found deep satisfaction and pleasure serving others. Sure enough, she gradually became old and sick. Years ealier my granny had secured, upon demand, you don't mess with my granny, a public housing apartment for Annie. But now she needed nursing care and went to live in a home. Some of us would go visit her once in a while, and Annie always trilled a chuckle of delight, also inimitable, when she recognized us. We were blessed to celebrate her birthday one time, she lived way up into her nineties. When she died, sad day, my husband and I attended her Celebration of Life at her Catholic church. I'm so thankful we did. The only people there were her granddaughter and granddaughter's husband and maybe three ladies who went to funerals as a ministry to the deceased's family. I felt SO PRIVILEGED to honor this wonderful woman. I like to think she is in Heaven peeling grapes for Jesus. Except I don't think we eat in Heaven. But I know she is praising the Lord in some capacity with a joyful heart. And I hope she is still praying for me every day (not sure how that works, but I do hope).

I just ate a midnight snack, a whole roasted beet. The three day rule, you know. Plus, the memory of Annie stirred me.

So, I lived through the pasty mashed potatoes and the leftovers are going into the Swedish meatballs for tomorrow's dinner. Somehow, all melded in with the other ingredients and thus well-disguised, I'm thinking I won't care how pasty they are. But it will still bother me a little. Wonder why I'm wired like this. Seriously, I do have better things to worry about than disappointing tubers.

Last night's dessert proved interesting on many counts. The cupcake recipe dictated to reserve one tablespoon of cherry juice for the frosting, hence the delicate pink color. Since I made the cupcakes, then took a nap, then made the dinner, then ate the dinner, THEN made the frosting, I had to store that one lousy tablespoon of cherry juice. So, that is a very tiny little bit of something to stash. A long time ago my sister gave me a set of graduated mixing bowls to cheer me up. The smallest bowl is so microscopic you go, For Corn's sake, WHAT would anyone ever use that for besides saying, Oh, you adorable little mixing bowl. I GUESS you COULD mix one drop of this and one more drop of that in it. So, I thought, Why not? And the one tablespoon was a little ambitious, but we managed. Oops, I just this second thought of something else. And it's a Gorilla- on-Top-of-the-State-Vacuum-Repair-Store-Moment. I only used half the jar of cherries. The rest of the cherries and all their juice went into a medium-sized graduated mixing bowl and into the fridge. All I had to do was dip out a tablespoon of that juice when I was ready. Wow and heck fuzzy, as the saying goes. Another thing not to mention to the clever DTD. SHE never would have dizzed out like that.

Well, when the frosting with one troublesome little tablespoon of cherry juice was finally crowning the cupcakes, which, by the way, aren't they the greatest?, it turns out that the cupcake that landed on my orange Fiestaware plate had 5 whole big cherries in it, mostly congregated at the bottom (my hand mixer didn't mash the cherries so well as recipe indicated, cherries sniffed at mixer same as the potatoes oh, well). This is noteworthy because when I had to halve the jar of cherries, the best way was to count out half. Right? That was sixteen. So, there were 12 cupcakes with 16 cherries. Mine had 5. So that left one cherry for each of the remaining 11 cupcakes. Right? Mike and my stepson thought this was all pre-arranged, but it wasn't. I didn't cheat this time. It was just a little God-favor for the befuddled and beat cook. Or maybe because I had the orange plate and Mike and stepson had boring white. But it's still FW, so it isn't totally boring.

Then, and I was prepared for this, my stepson says, I want to take some cupcakes home with me. This is something new he's started, like I'm a take-out joint. But if he likes my cooking, far be it from me to be a Cupcake Hoarder. So now, my few remaining brain cells taken out by sugar, I set two cupcakes on a paper plate and loosely laid plastic wrap on top. I said, Careful not to dump the cupcakes in the dirt. They are top-heavy and this is what WILL happen: Slip, Slide, Dump. Later, of course, I thought I should have balled up Scotchtape on the paper plate and jammed the bottoms of the cupcakes to it. And even better, today I gave away two more cupcakes, but I manufactured a new brain cell because I slept for 12 hours last night and that furnished me the idea to fancy up those cherry suckers individually in plastic wrap. You know, lay out plastic wrap on counter, there's an art to that, set cupcake in center, swoop up plastic and fasten with garbage bag tie. This way it looked like a cute gift AND, more critically, if you dropped the cupcake it would be protected. This is more crucial than it seems. Once I picked up DTD when she was little from a birthday party. I noticed right away that the house didn't seem clean. It was icky. The nice mother handed DTD (Darling Tiny Daughter) a good-bye cupcake. Cupcake flipped right over and landed head first on the floor. I picked it up before the dogs could and, WOW!, suddenly it sported a wig. I kid you not, the sticky frosting was THICKLY COVERED in hair, mostly dog hair, I think. Of course, I'm one to talk. Well, then what? The mother saw all this, so everyone played Pretend Pretty and DTD and I quickly left with one hairy little cupcake in hand.

I don't know how on earth I can glean so much material from silly little cupcakes, but we're not done yet . . . almost done. I noticed today that the cupcakes, now displayed on a white platter and covered with plastic wrap, well, they looked a little worn around the edges. This worried me. Had some don't-mention-the-word ROACH nibbled to heart's content? Oh, yes. A great big roach named Mike. The cupcakes were generously sized and flowed a little over their foil liners, so Mike felt compelled to pick 'n eat those edges. Dadgum. It was all I could do to recover two cupcakes that weren't quite so raggedy to give to my friends. Honestly.

Last night I opened the dictionary to the exact right page. Tonight I found two words on the same page. What does this leave for tomorrow night?

Oh, when I wrote about Monks' Bread and manna, guess what? My dependable CDW came up with a winner. Get this:

I don't believe we get Monks' bread in this part of the country. It's funny, a friend and I were just talking about Roman Meal bread yesterday (we both grew up with it) and how you can't get that anymore. Why in the world would we both be thinking of bread from our youth ... yesterday? Wild isn't it? :) I don't believe I have ever seen a loaf of Monks' bread ... now it has me extremely curious. I think I would have put that together in my young mind too ... Monks' white bread and honey ... just like manna ...

Bread from our Youth LOVE,
CDW

CDW and I know why this could and does happen. Our minds are quite a bit alike. It's very interesting and fun, at least to us it is, and keeps us highly entertained.

I promise to end with this, you poor weary Blogees. When I was cleaning the kitchen last night, I squirted BAR KEEPERS FRIEND ... best since 1882 ... SUPERIOR LIQUID CLEANSER ... New IMPROVED Formula, aimed for the sink. I have a white sink and Bar Keepers removes the fig and cherry stains and whatnot. I always have bought powder in a can, but THIS time I succumbed to liquid in a bottle as I had never seen it before and KEM can't leave well enough alone, oh no. Well, the opening was clogged, probably because I trivialize shutting the cap all the way (lazy) and it dries out. So at first it wouldn't squirt, then I got testy and gave it a powerful temper squirt and I missed the sink and spattered my shirt all over. How did I do that? So of course my nice good moss-green shirt is all bleached. It's tye-dyed is what it is. I'll bet the Old INFERIOR Formula wouldn't have done that. These companies. They should leave well enough alone. Well, I still got the prized cupcake, you can't win 'em all.

KUPKAKE KEM