• crazy stuff,  domesticity,  fighting the fat gene,  I'm an idiot,  Lemon Week,  raving lunatic rant,  spilling my guts,  Stealthy Spy Cooking

    Citrus Week Day Two: Lemon Bars!

    lemons!

    Good thing I’m the boss here at Lemon Week SAJ because anybody else would be FIRED! So it’s day two…sort of. I didn’t say I’d do all the days in a row! Whatever, right? Just write something already.

    lemonade

    So far we’ve made lemon scones, lemonade, a vodka drink for me (that I called SAJ-quil because I was fighting an irritating cold that I am now over) and Lemon Bars!

    I love LOVE lemon bars. It’s really bad. I inherited this love of lemon and sugar and butter from my mom and now just like my mom, I find myself battling extra pounds on my body that make me less lithe than I’d like to be. Dumb genetics! I shouldn’t have made the lemon bars because it is next to impossible for me to walk by the refrigerator door without hearing those little bars screaming for me.

    Shut up! Lemon bars, shut up!!!!! (I can hear them all the way from my seat at the table.) I am so taking them to a friend’s house and leaving them there. Ack.

    Weight schmeight. (My attitude becomes me, I know.) In my book, you can’t have a lemon week without lemon bars so here I am introducing them to Bug just like my mom introduced them to me. Hopefully, Bug takes after her dad and doesn’t inherit my thunder thighs or my incredible lack of willpower.

    mixer girl waiting for the crust to be ready

    Bug loves to cook with me in the kitchen, the poor kid. She also has to put up with my harebrained method of recipe-reading that involves frantic number-checking and re-checking and then weeping and wailing because I cannot read a recipe from top to bottom in order without skimming or leaving out major parts.

    I’ve always thought I was retarded because I cannot keep numbers in my head longer than a butterfly sneeze. I’ll read 1 1/2 cups and then by the time I walk from the cookbook back to my mixing bowl, I’ve forgotten whether it was 1/2 or 1 1/2. I know most of you will laugh at me but this is a serious problem for me when it comes to baking. In fact, this is why I don’t bake usually. It’s way too much work for me. You should see me racing back and forth across my kitchen trying to put together a list of three ingredients. It’s insane. And then sometimes I mix up teaspoons with tablespoons and you can see why things don’t always come out right.

    I’ve self-diagnosed myself with dyscalculia, which is sort of like dyslexia but with numbers instead of letters. I’ve always hated math ever since I was forced to play “math baseball” in second grade. I remember I practically peed myself in fear as I stood at the blackboard staring at the squiggles while the class shouted at me to add or subtract. I’ve managed through the years, figuring out ways of counting on my fingers secretly or making up complicated dot patterns. But recently with motherhood it’s gotten worse. Sometimes when I’m at the bank, I have to write my account number three times before I get it right. It can be pretty embarrassing.

    Anyway, this is not a moan-fest about how much I hate math. I just wanted to include that so you can see why baking is extra fun for me. I can design notecards and web banners and even packaging while using a ruler and fractions and picas just fine but for some reason when I’m in the kitchen, I get struck with major anxiety about reading numbers or just plain reading. It’s weird.

    shortbread crust! sugaring the top

    I mostly wrote all those words about math anxiety and dyscalculia so that you don’t laugh when I tell you that I misread the lemon bar recipe (thanks Calee for the link!) and somehow couldn’t figure out how to make the shortbread crust that goes under the lemon bars. I thought it wasn’t included in the recipe so I found another recipe online and used that. But it wasn’t enough so I had to make two batches. Amazingly, it all turned out fine. I don’t know how but it did. I guess shortbread crusts are indestructible.

    But because of my crazy-making recipe reading, Bug had to wait quite a bit between the crust-making and the lemon-bar-mix—making which is fine. Patience is a virtue right?

    lemon bar!

    The lemon bars were divine.

    me and my chins love lemon bars

    Me and my many chins enjoyed them mightily.

  • Buddies,  Life Lessons,  party party,  spilling my guts

    Adios Amigos!

    invite-prep

    Is three days enough time to plan a proper farewell party for your very best friends? I mean a really good party that they’ll remember forever because they are moving so far away that it feels like they are moving to the other side of the earth and you want them to know just how much you are going to miss them? It’s kind of a tall order, right? That’s not nearly enough time to hire a Mariachi band or a sky-writing airplane, or even enough time to write a sonnet!

    Then why did we wait until the last minute to plan such a thing? I have no idea. I guess we were in denial. How could they just up and leave us like that? It’s abandonment I tell you! No no no no la la la la sob sob sob…also I’m sort of on party probation since I just hosted the spectacular Seed Rainbow party and I happen to live with someone who isn’t as excited about party-planning as I am (and I’m not referring to Bug).

    my couch is very friendly

    However they are our best friends and you know what? Best friends just want to hang out with you. They don’t care if your carpet is stained or if your bathroom isn’t sparkling clean. They don’t care if the meal is potluck and they bring the entire dessert course themselves. Coffee is fine, margaritas are nice too, but even tap water will do. Really all that matters is that we get together, all of us, one more time and do what we do best: talk, laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

    friends

    margaritas

    helping myself to some guiso

    margarita cupcakes!

    Sonja wants to take a nap

    Mr. Actually Owly Kid

    playing in Bug's room

    photo books

    margarita swilling dishwasher Sprite

    The thing that kills me is that before Bethany came to live in California I didn’t really have a group of friends like this. I had lots of friends but I didn’t have a group that all hung out together interchangeably. I remember talking late into the night with Bethany over instant message, telling her how I wished I had time to work on my computer or just plain sit with a cup of coffee uninterrupted but I couldn’t because I had a kid who needed my CONSTANT attention.

    cupcake capers

    I remember Bethany telling me that I needed a play-group. I thought she was nuts. It sounded nice and all but I couldn’t put upon my friends like that. They all had their own crazy lives. There’s no way I could just drop in on them and say, “Ack! Can I come over so our kids can play and I can get something else done?”

    happy kid

    But then Bethany moved here and in some strange quiet way she built a group of friends for me. It wasn’t so much that she organized a group. Nothing like that was ever said. I’m sure that wasn’t even her plan. It was just her way of sending out emails and not letting dreamed-up plans drop through the cracks. If someone wanted to do something, she was the communicator and it happened. No drama and no excuses for not having fun.

    garlands R us

    Rapunzel and Bethany

    Before I knew it my calendar was covered in penciled dates and times. Not a week went by where I wasn’t going somewhere to meet up with somebody. Our kids got to be friends and now sitting around with a cup of coffee laughing my head off while my kid is off somewhere else in the house laughing her own head off is totally normal. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought that even was possible. But now it is. Now I have a play-group.

    And now she’s leaving! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

    Just kidding. I am terribly sad. But in a way I think God sent Bethany out here so I could learn how to be a better friend. And now that I’ve figured it out, I don’t need her anymore. I mean I do, but not in the way I did. I’ll miss her fiercely but there must be somebody else on the East Coast who needs her more. So with a tear in my eye, I will let her go because I remember what it was like before she moved here.

    all the bloggers in the house

    group shot goof shot

    bloggers

    Adios amiga. I’m gonna miss you. I’ll do my best to keep this group together even though sometimes it seems like you are the glue.