She b-a-c-k! From Budapest, no less!

See what Cordelia has been up to this summer!!!!! http://www.cordelias-adventures.blogspot.com
What, you don't know Cordelia? She's a real doll, just 16 inches tall, and she wants to see the world. Past visits: NYC, Paris, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and now Budapest and Vienna. Still to come: Savannah and London.

Lucky daze

You might remember that several weeks ago I tossed a bottle into the ocean [otherwise known as posting a message here] with this basic message: "I am lonely and blue. Please help." And damned if J didn't come winging in from Jacksonville!!!! And anyone who comes to Houston in July willingly is a FRIEND of all FRIENDS!

[Now I am thinking, hey, what if I write, "I want to go to Paris." Will someone take me there? I am clicking my heels three times right now: I WANT TO GO TO PARIS or anywhere else where there is no laundry or lawns to water.]

Besides herself, she brought me books! Extremely loud & incredibly close by Jonathan Safran Foer and City of Thieves by David Benioff [which will be covered in my July book report]. And She-Monkey, which I made for J last year, which she brought along all dressed-up.



I took her to the TAODA doll artist club meeting, I took her to the Heights (19th St.) for some of my favorite things: Jubilee and Crickets Creamery and Colina's for pizza. We almost went to Phantom of the Opera, but instead we bought gouda cheese and wine (Verget Macon Villages 2007 - $15 at Specs) and watched, I am ashamed to say, Ultimate Fight Club and Jackass 2 late into the night.



If anyone told me that me and my school chum (and Husband1, two offspring and dogs) would be watching a guy put a sock on his banana and stick it in a hole for a snake to bite, I woulda said, "I think we have better things to do, thank you very much" but it happened. Husband1 posing next to his Ultimate Fight Club hero.





Thankfully Wayne did not eat her underwear or pee in her duffel bag. Harley was almost downright friendly and Sally was her usual wary self. And the girls weren't bad either.


Husband1 demonstrated his dog training methods. Here he is singing, "I Gotta Dog His Name is Blue," while Wayne floats alongside. In this way, he hopes to teach Wayne not to jump up on people.

We are now monogramming towels with J's initials and holding a spot at the kitchen table for her NEXT visit, which is bound to be very soon indeed.


After J left, I shipped She-Monkey off to Rhode Island as my stand-in for the real reunion. Hope they have fun but not that much fun.

Stay-cation!

I'm on a "stay-cation" this week. My mission is to chill out, enjoy the 100-degree days and get my laundry done. But oops, we had a little dryer mishap and I can't restart the dryer unless I want to barbecue the house. The appliance gods have been called.

So I am playing like I stay home all the time and Husband1 goes off to work, even though he works in an office 20 paces from the backdoor. The first three days of this staycation I barely managed to get dressed. But now, I think I can stay awake for more than four hours at a time.



Witness this dinner: spaghetti and meatballs from scratch (with a small romaine and avocado salad) and strawberry shortcake.

[Okay, so I lied. These are actually from two different days. The strawberry shortcake was dinner for the Fourth of July for color reasons, and the spaghetti was yesterday for no reason.]



On strawberry shortcake. The cake shouldn't be too sweet or cake-y, in contrast to the sweetness of the strawberries. Hence, the biscuit approach, which is from "The New Basics Cookbook," written by those SilverPalate gals Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins before Julee's father had a heart attack and she got religion and published A Fresh Start.

DISAPPOINTMENT. I am measuring flour for the slightly sweet biscuits and Husband1 says, "You know what would be really good? If we used Twinkies instead," and he is serious. Based on this alone, I don't think we will ever be featured on the eharmony.com commercial.

Anyway, I didn't go all out with the whipped cream from scratch because I didn't want the calories. I used reduced fat Cool Whip. But if you came over, I'd use the real stuff because food = love and I love using beaters anyway.

I did use half wheat/half white flour for these (the flour already comes this way), which I think makes them taste better but those same teensy weensy flecks of wheat that I love only make my family suspicious of anything I set in front of them. Oh, and shake up the baking powder. I read it on the can.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MEATBALLS. Meatballs are serious to an Italian girl, and I make them from a recipe {if you call it that} from my mom along with some tips from the Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook by Ina Garten. Ina is fat, so it makes sense to trust her with stuff that tastes good.



Things I have learned: I didn't realize that you only have to brown the meatballs; for years I thought they had to be cooked through at this stage. Nope, that's what the simmering all day is for, and a crockpot works well for this. Meatballs should not be the size of baseballs.
They should be smaller than pingpong balls but bigger than marbles. If you go half-sies with ground turkey and ground round, no one will know. If you use fresh breadcrumbs (couple of spins in the food processor), the meatballs are a lot fluffier and do not resemble small rocks or turds. When making the sauce, you might saute a little onion, right? Well, I sautee a little onion, celery and carrots in a little olive oil and garlic, and I do this because, you guessed it, I didn't have a damn onion, but I DID have one of the those frozen meal-starter veggie groupings, and it worked great. When everything was softened, I added a little merlot (or any red wine alcohol) and after it boiled off, I threw it all in the crockpot along with a 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes, some kosher salt, pepper and a smeck of nutmeg. I used some of that whole-wheat penne pasta and no one complained. Of course, by the time this was finished, there were only three people to eat it, one of whom shared that she didn't really feel like spaghetti and gave half to the dog. Still, I feel like a champ. And not just because I left a big mess for my offspring to clean up.

PS: {If you think I should include actual recipes here, tell me and I will, but I can't really believe someone would be that interested so I haven't done it.}

Today I might use the vacuum cleaner or take clothes to the cleaners. Then again, I could fold clothes and put them away. It's all so new!

Musical dog amnesia

This child has stopped talking altogether. She sings everything - and everything is a line from a musical. It's like a bad dream where I'm trapped in the audience for Lion King and I can't find the exit. I don't want to discourage anything here, but if I want her to empty the dishwasher, I just want to hear, "Okay," not, "It's a Hard Knock Life" from Annie.



On the good side, tap lessons are paying off. Glad to know I could send her downtown with a cardboard sign and tap shoes to help feed the family. She took a few days of fight choreography, so now she can throw a punch and slap your face like a pro.

Adam took off for six weeks in Crested Butte. He is supposed to be sending us a photo a day with a description of what he's doing. The reality: blurry photo of mountainside and "Gonna bomb down this hill..."

Update: Just $814 later, the Apple computer is back. On the counter. Right there next to a glass of ice tea. I could scream.

Thoughts on why I wouldn't be so good in an emergency...

The other morning, I woke up to helicopters swirling overhead. I thought, well, just another {awfully close} aerial search for a criminal and went back to bed. Then the doorbell rings, and I realize Bruce is probably in the office and it's up to me to get up and be the he-man in the house.

All I remember seeing is a German shepherd the size of a small burro in my frontyard. There was a sheriff standing next to it, but I hardly notice him. I did get the point that he wanted to search our backyard for a gun. {How CSI is that??} And he wants me to get my dogs inside. So I go running out the backdoor like a cowboy with a lasso trying to get the herd rounded up, and the dogs are going berserk.


As I am doing this, I am wishing I was not wearing these particular pajamas, but there is no time to make it better. I fill a bit like Pioneer Woman left alone to defend the homestead from Indians in my underwear and the rifle is across the way leaning against the barn.

All dogs are inside except for Wayne {of course}, but guess what, it is at this moment I cannot remember Wayne's name. I know he is named after a movie, but the only movie with names in it I can remember is Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and I know it's not one of those.

By now the sheriff is at the back gate ready to take Thor off the leash -- I can hear him talking to him in German - and I am stopped mid-backyard looking dazedly at Wayne, willing him to come to me nicely, but I can't THINK OF HIS NAME.

It's at this moment that husband enters scene from office and nonchanlantly starts conversing with sheriff (it's three guys on the loose and one was caught hiding on the property directly behind us - and they robbed a tattoo parlor, took off in a van, were chased by police, crashed into a gas stand at a nearby gas station and took off on foot. They think one guy maybe tossed a gun over the fence into our yard.) Note: we do not live near a tattoo parlor.

Luckily Husband remembered our dog's name. Personally, I was disappointed that Thor did not find a gun. All were apprehended.