Fordham Miller Fare

gone fishin'

i am trying to pack us up for our annual vermont getaway, but yesterday was felled with a nasty fever that sapped me of all my strength and momentum.  today, i'm feeling woozy and tired, but i've got my eyes on the prize....

thanksgiving question

i know there probably aren't many of you out there reading this anymore, but for those that remain, and that can successfully make a pie crust from scratch, answer me this:  why do i always need more (much more) than the called for amount of water to make the dough come together.

i made an apple pie this thanksgiving, but because i was not in my own kitchen, and did not haul my food processor from home, i had to resort to the truly by hand method for crust making.  usually i use the food processor, fitted with the sharp blade, to cut in the butter AND incorporate the liquid.  i never had really successful pie crusts until i tried this method.  i know that the secret to a crust that isn't tough is to handle the dough as little as possible, use very cold butter and water, and let the dough set up in the fridge for a few hours before rolling it out.  but when i add liquid to the flour/butter mixture, it always takes WAY more than is called for.  so this time, without my trusty cuisinart to rely on, i had to mix in that water by hand, a tablespoon at a time, as the recipe directed me to, and i ended up with a pie dough that was less than ideal.  but even with the cuisinart, i always have to add lots more water to get the dough to form a mass.  any ideas, ye cooks out there?

we had some surpise snow in lake placid on friday.  i kept checking the weather via the internet, and the forecast just got worse and worse and worse.  from snow...then to wintry mix...into sleet/rain...into just plain rain.  but the altitude and that artic blast must have done something, because on friday morning, we not only awoke to snow, but it snowed pretty much all day.  we spent a little bit of time walking around town with our friends jimmy and rhonda, and their two boys, who had arrived mid-day thursday.  then in the afternoon, while rhonda cooked a fabulous turkey pot pie (with, i have to say, a fantastic crust courtesy of their CSA farm store), jimmy and i took the kids to the adjacent golf course for some sledding.  it was a little dicey, as the sledding hill led pretty much straight into the road, save for a few trees that were just as menacing.  and the ground beneath the snow was the icy build up that had been coming down the two previous days.  but it was great to be sledding so early in the season, and about halfway into our adventure, the snow started coming down in earnest, and we had a view of the mountains and that quiet blanket of sound that comes when the snow falls, and it was really just ideal.

in sickness and in health

happy thanksgiving.  we are in lake placid, new york, reliving a family tradition of ours: the vacation illness.

   

thinking back, it probably all started in the summer of 1995 when bill and i (newly minted as a 'we') travelled from the east coast back to madison, wi.  we stayed over with some friends of bill's in ithaca, ny, one of whom had just whethered a stomach bug.  sure enough, 2 hours into our drive to madison, bill came down with it.  i'll spare you the gorey details.  we made it just shy of ann arbor, michigan, where we pulled into a super 8 motel and called it a day.

   

of course, kids only added to the likelihood that a vacation would involve a trip to the local hospital.  so in welfleet, july 2005, we were in town for about 4 hours before bill and maddy headed to the hyannis ER.  diagnosis: scratched cornea.  camping in vermont, august 2004, 4 hours in, morgan came down with sore throat and fever of 101.  after two hours in burlington's fletcher allen medical center, the doctor agreed it was likely strep, although morgan refused to open his mouth for a throat culture.  turns out: hand, foot and mouth (which is NOT to be confused with hoof and mouth disease).  we spent the night at my dad's house in hineburg, thankfully avoiding a whopper of a thunderstorm.

   

but bill and i have had our share of ER visits as well.

   

when i was seven months pregnant with madeleine, i threw out my back.  the pain was so severe that it radiated across my abdomen, and as we were on vacation in the relative sticks of upstate new york, i thought a visit to the local glens falls ER, where their labor and delivery department has the unfortunate name of 'the snuggery', was in order.  several thousand hours and 4 surgery sodas (so as to induce fetal activity at 2 a.m.) later, after determining that all was well in utero, i left with a prescription for codeine, realizing quite quickly why people might find it addictive.  after taking the appropriate dose, i didn't so much feel as SEE the pain disappear, like a heinous pirate ship slowly sailing away over the horizon.  someday soon i will tell you my latest, and perhaps last, experience with the opiate family.  but not today...

   

okay, trip to austin texas, january 2001, first morning there, bill pulled down a metal vertical blind on his wrist.  this one was pretty severe - bill suffered some permanent nerve damage, although the damage was sensory, not muscular, thank goodness (but still no picnic).  it meant he was wrapped up in bandages our entire trip, and had neurosurgery (neurosurgery for goodness sakes!) upon our return to new england.  yipes.

   

narragansett, ri, july 2003.  stomach flu.   another trip to austin, february 2007.  strep AND croup (three doctors visits in three separate cities).  and now, lake placid.  stomach flu again.  oh, that and the fact that we are on 'lice watch II - 2007.'

   

so there is a big pavlovian reaction to the beginning of a vacation, pretty much wherever we go.  if we are settled in, if things look like they are smooth sailing for the next several days, our spines tingle in anticipation of the calls to the 'triage nurse,' the search for the local medical facility, the hopes and dreams temporarily shoved aside for the more immediate matter at hand.   

   

today, madeleine is feeling better, and eating progressively more complicated solid food.  the heads are, by my best estimation, lice free.  and we are settling into some quiet family time, the kind of which we rarely have at home.  the weather, it's kinda schmutzy, but the town is pretty and devoid of throngs of tourists, the christmas lights are up, and overall, it's kinda cozy.  so far, so good...

stroller envy

is it october already?  i'll spare any of you who still may believe in me the usual excuses and cut to the chase: i am still obsessed with strollers.

that's right, my kids are 9 (9!) and 6, and i still lust after stroller nirvana. for years i tried to imagine the perfect stroller: part umbrella, part jogger, removable bassinet (because i was sure all my kids' sleep issues revolved around the fact that i had no bassinet for them), fits every car seat imaginable, converts to a bike trailer, and doubles as oh-so-hip fashion accessory.

imagine my disappointment after getting both my kids to do the miraculous - walk the three blocks into town on their own with almost no complaining - when this marvel came on the scene.  of course the retail price is about the resale value of my car, so it's probably best that i wasn't in the market, because i'm sure that i would have found a way to finance this masterpiece.  still, i know those early years of child rearing would have gone much better had i been lucky enough to have a frog of my very own.

to add to my nostalgic longing for the perfect perambulator, i recently spotted this beauty  on the streets of park slope.  mmmmm, there it was again, that chic 'i'm not a parent but i play one on tv' design, the 25 pottery barn colors to choose from, and the genius concept of the 'add a kid' attachment, saving one the agony of having to choose all over again when getting a buggy for two.  cheaper than the frog, and me thinks less than i spent on the 1..2...3...4 strollers i ended up purchasing.  for some women it's shoes...

interesting note: both strollers were designed by male duos.  now what does that say?

when you can't post...

...make a photo album!

not-so-candid camera

morgan and i share some pizza (pics and commentary courtesy of kristen at masslive.com)

http://www.masslive.com/campuscam/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/mass/view_gallery.ata?g_id=3821

because she asked

i think a big mamou is the feeling you get after eating a big meal at chef wayne's.

and i think a small mamou is the feeling you get if you only have appetizers.

notes from the weekend

• morgan has coined "smell out" as a way of describing a food-related intrusion into his (highly sensitive) olfactory world.  to his cousin jeff, who was eating a fritatta in morgan's presence, he declared, "jeff, you're smelling me out."
• maddy has started two-wheeler training camp.  bill took her to the town common saturday to practice her two wheeling.  because maddy has a tendency to vent her SUBSTANTIAL frustrations on her kindly parents with impunity, bill adopted the alter ego of "mr. ross, bicycle coach," to avoid being at the receiving end of her more virulent invectives.  while this was somewhat successful, bill believes that a disguise may be necessary to complete the ruse.
• both kids are home from school today.  maddy, viral fever illness.  morgan, potential for stomach flu.  me, i've got a stiff neck from "wrong sleeping" (exacerbated by two more consecutive nights of agonizingly "wrong sleeping"), and am awaiting return calls from the triage nurse ("just how many ibuprofens is TOO many?") and the massage therapist.  in the meantime i'm clining to my kaz Themipaq Heat Therapy System like the life raft in a stormy sea that it is.  (see picture, right.  no, that's not me, but mmmmm, i could use a little of that soft focus in my life right now...)
• btw, when you get your medical care from the local university health service, you can expect a lot of "those" kinds of questions when your 7-year-old starts reading everything in sight.  we are getting a HUGE head start on alcohol, drug, and sex education.
• oh, and two last words:  chef wayne's.

pop kiddie culture OR don't say i never took you anywhere

i wisely waited for kristen, bestower of dora tickets, to have the first say on the event.  i think i wanted to hear her take before coming out with my own.

first off, i argue that dora was not necessarily played by a woman.  true, true, i googled as many Dora Live! pictures as i could, and they all pointed to decidedly female actors.  but i still say that should the lead have fallen ill twenty minutes to show time, adam sandler's Lucy the Gap Girl would have made a great understudy.  and if peter pan can be played by sandy duncan, i say it's time for men to start filling Dora's shoes.

on dora itself (and mass media, pop culture and parenting), i'm a mixed bag.  on the one hand, i want to be pure.  no sugar and no tv and no computer and no saturated fats and no bratz dolls and no gendered clothing and no white flour and all that jazz.  on the other hand, i am weak.  so there's television and cookies and computer and pink jackets* and flashing tennis shoes and let's not even talk about family Survivor night.**  oh, but still no bratz dolls.

ironically enough, going to Dora in my rented monster truck was remarkably un-pc-guilt-inducing.  and the show was somehow decidely non-nightmarish.  two factors helped immensely.  (1) we had free parking about 5 blocks away, so we skipped the traffic jams on the way in and out, plus the kids had to work for it ("back in my day, kid, i had to walk 2 miles in a snowstorm for the ice capades."). (2) i seem to have effectively trained my kids not to drive me insane with pleading for toys and treats (tho' maddy and i did get in a tussle over what size of popcorn to get).  so we got to focus on the show, which the kids clearly enjoyed, and not the smoke and mirrors that serve to drain one of a good $40-60 bucks before the evening is over.

just so you don't get the idea that this was any kodak family moment, on the way back to the car maddy kicked a rather large abandoned styrofoam tub of ketchup lying in the street, and got condiment all over her white dress shoes.  she then proceeded to hissy fit the rest of the way to the garage, and she and morgan almost boiled over on the way home, to the point where i thought maybe we'd lost kristen as a babysitter for good.

but all's well that ends well.  next stop, disney world.

___________________________________________________________

*pink jacket for maddy, pink shoes for morgan.

**i live in fear of maddy betraying our Survivor secret in the wrong company. say, for example, at nature camp.  we'd have to go around with a red 'S' on our fronts, heads bowed in shame.

The Fordham Miller Car Engine Exploding Adventure. Live!

UPDATED!!  see below

There was some skiing, there was some Dora, and in between our car blew up.

I'm doing this in bulleted form because of time constraints.  At 8:10 I have to start making phone calls, LOTs of them.

• Maddy's winter break is this week.  We started at my dad/stepmom's a couple of days early, took in a bit of skiing, a chocolate tour, and we thew a couple of pots on a wheel.  BTW, the chocolate tour was given by Amy's twin, whose name happened to be Amanda.  Weird.
• Bill and Morgan joined us on Saturday.
• We headed home on Tuesday, intent on catching Dora's Pirate Adventure, Live!  Tickets and company supplied so graciously by our friend Kristen.
• At approximately 3:30 p.m., just outside Brattleboro, VT, our car suddenly started making a very weird flapping vibrating noise, and the battery light came on.  We coasted to a stop, I at the driver's wheel, freaking out and uttering expletive after expletive.  Bill remained calm, called AAA, got the tow truck set up, got the rent-a-car set up, and probably would have liked to have found some quaaludes for me.  I opened the hood and saw oil splattered all over the engine (hence the huge clouds of smoke).
• After much logistical running around, we rented a Dodge Durango.  Do not, I repeat, do NOT ever rent a Dodge Durango.  It is HUGE.  It's like driving a bus.  I had to park it down the street, because there was no way I was going to get it into our garage without taking off at least one mirror and 2+ square feet of paint, and of course I had declined the supplemental insurance.
• We came home, and I had 15 minutes to shower and change and run with the kids to pick up Kristen and take in Dora.  I will tell you more about that later, because now I have to start making phone calls.  Oh, and the kids are home all day.  Also, I think I have a cold.

UPDATE: This just in.  The car in question is dead.  It did in fact blow up, as their is a hole in the side of the engine.  Oh, and did I mention that we just had our other car towed to the mechanic for a new battery?