Sunday Afternoon Baking
“Slow as molasses.” It’s funny trying to explain to the kids some of the phrases I use often, but this one is evident as soon as one has any dealing whatsoever with molasses (by the way, what the heck IS molasses??). I’m making a monster batch of ginger cookies, and getting that 1/2 cup of molasses out of the container took, oh, about five minutes. No exaggeration. Drip, drip, drip. And yet the flow was also relentless and difficult to stop, once started.
This is a really good recipe, and makes the most perfect-looking, sugar-studded cookies. My friend Zoe gave it to me, and I thought I’d post it here. It’s been awhile since I posted a recipe. Today, I doubled the recipe below, and plan to freeze about half.
Ginger Snaps
3/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar, plus extra for rolling
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tblsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
Cream together sugar and butter, beat in egg, add molasses (Patience, please!). Sift together flour, soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon. Stir flour mixture into butter base and mix together thoroughly. Make small balls (about one teaspoon) and roll them in sugar. Place on pan, leaving enough room for spreading, and bake at 350 for 8-9 minutes.
It’s the most gorgeous fall day and Kevin and kids are outside raking leaves. We didn’t do much yesterday and this morning I found myself fantasizing about hiring a cleaning company to come in and scrub my bathrooms … but instead did a quick clean-up in both, up and down, and left with the girls for Sunday School. The boys stayed home and picked up the living-room (lots of new piles added on top of old ones) and vacuumed downstairs. So the state of the house could be worse. The only task I’ve really set for myself this afternoon is to bake these cookies and make the kids’ lunches for tomorrow. My mom is having us over for supper tonight and I’m very very happy not to have think of what to cook. The thinking of it occupies almost as much time as the making of it.
Oh dear, the smell of freshly baked cookies is being forcibly blown out into the backyard via the stove vent and has attracted the attention of several small people, who are now clamouring and drooling at the door.
A Saturday Without Chores
Quick morning post while the kids are occupied with Playmobil and baby CJ is hopping in his gigantic bouncy device. Guess I’ll never discover a better term for that thing. Speaking of discovering better terms for things, the kids and I developed a pithy phrase to shout after cars which have nearly run us down at intersections: “Patience, please!!!!” So far, that’s not been the first thing out of my mouth in that situation, so I will need to practice.
Today we are discovering what it’s like to have one car. So far, I’ve had the car every time I’ve needed it (two music lessons per week, basically), so haven’t exactly felt the loss of the extra vehicle, but Kevin has to work today (Saturday) in Toronto, so the kids and I really are confined to walking/bus destinations. As we walked to swim lessons yesterday afternoon, we discussed all the activities we could do, and there was a general sense of excitement about not having a car at our disposal. Adventures! We decided to go to the library, partly to pick up another book in the Little House series (actually one I didn’t know existed, Laura’s diary account of the Wilder family’s journey from the Dakotas to Missouri), and partly because the big kids never get to come along on our library excursions, since we usually go while they’re in school. Not sure what else we’ll do. Taking the bus to the children’s museum isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Or maybe just invite a friend or two over. Mostly, my focus today is on not doing too much extra stuff. No bathroom cleaning. The barest minimum of laundry. None of the usual Saturday chores. We’ve already had our groceries delivered. Nina’s buying club was on hiatus this week, so for the second week in a row, we needed groceries. Just goes to show how much we’ve been relying on this local source of food–and how hard it is to purchase and eat consistently local without it.
Okay, baby CJ is not the happiest of souls at present. He’s wanting to climb things, now, to pull to a standing position. He can get himself upright on the first step of our back staircase, and has recently made an attempt to climb the stairs. Didn’t make it far, I’m relieved to report. Desire does not match ability at this point.
Uh oh, it’s getting noisy in those other rooms. Looking forward to a day with nothing extra, I shall sign off here.
Writing Day
This writing day is feeling a tad useless … or perhaps a better descriptive would be non-cathartic. It was interrupted by an appointment mid-morning, and I’ve spent the better part of what was left filling out grant applications. Not exactly exhilerating.
Election Hangover
Oye, yoi, yoi, today I’ve got election hangover. Our “safe” Liberal seat was lost by 72 votes, and the “safe” Kitchener Centre Liberal seat also went down in flames, both to Conservatives; though in the country overall it’s hard to pick any real winners. Conservatives are back with yet another minority (apparently we don’t like them quite enough). Liberal support tanked, but is obviously still out there–they finished second overall in seat-strength. The Bloc was strong again in Quebec, proving that the Conservative ploy to buy Quebec votes failed sorely. Dippers made some gains, including taking a seat from a prominent Conservative in Alberta. Greens won nothing. Gloomiest of all, voter turn-out was at an all-time low. Conclusion: Real change ain’t a comin’ to Canada any time soon.
I think it’s time for our government to move to proportional representation, or at the bare minimum to some model of governing that favours real cooperation between parties. The minority parliamentary model we’re working with now, with its confidence votes and playing chicken, is really just a big pissing contest. It seems invented to create failure, not success; in other words, we the people are supposed to recognize this “natural” dysfunction and, shaking our collective heads in disgust, vote in a majority next time. Except that’s virtually impossible with five legitimate parties scrabbling for our votes. Majority parliaments work because they’re based on a two-party system. Canada no longer has a two-party system. I’m tired of people having to worry about splitting the vote if they vote with their hearts.
Can someone give me some good reasons for not going to proportional representation as a governing model? It can’t just be because the big parties have too much to lose. I wonder whether there are some ideological uncertainties about it too: does it make the country more fractured, does it entrench regionalism?
I’m writing this in a rare moment of quiet this morning. Woke with supper dishes still unwashed and cluttering the countertop, with supper needing to be made in advance due to Beckett lesson this eve, with diapers in the washer, a pile of dirty clothes on the basement floor, two laundry baskets overflowing with clean, unfolded clothes in the living-room, F with a playdate here this morning to supervise, and baby CJ with a hankering to crawl everywhere, eat everything, then get frustrated and demand to be carried about in a sling. Plus we walked out the door thinking we were late for school (we weren’t). I’ve only conquered a few of these problems so far, but things are temporarily looking up. Laundry’s hanging on the line. The girls have played beautifully together all morning. Baby CJ went down for a nap. Dishes got washed. I’m cooking up a black bean and grain stew. Is there any way to fry quesadillas in advance? The 6pm music class is proving hairy to get to, and we’re dashing out the door still chewing our food, despite what seems like pretty good advance organizing.
Oh, my squash refused to soften last night. I roasted it for ages, but in the end gave up and discarded it. I’ve never had this happen before. And our CSA sent us gobs of chard and kale yesterday, and yet more beets, so I need to get organized and cook something out of this stuff before our fridge turns from jungle to swamp.
While the Dishes Wait
Dilemma: to blog or to finish making supper and start the dishes? Hmm.
Kevin’s off fetching our CSA box, almost the last of the season, and the girls are playing “Little House,” and just came into the kitchen dressed in aprons and bonnets and mittens, wondering how they could help. Taking them seriously, I suggested cleaning up the living-room. The sounds of things being dumped currently accompany this task, but here’s hoping things are being dumped into appropriate containers. Boy, with baby CJ on the move, danger lurks in every wretched Playmobil flower abandoned on the carpet. I came out to the living-room today to discover him under the art table, grabbing up fistfuls of broken crayons with evident delight. Oh, F just returned to the kitchen and I see her Little House outfit includes a baseball cap, and beneath the apron a mermaid costume.
We are having leftover surprise tonight (thanks, Janis, for bestowing that name on a supper made from whatever’s discovered in the fridge; makes it sound so cheerful). I put whatever’s in the fridge into a big bowl, added a gravy-ish white sauce, and sprinkled cheese on top, then baked it in the oven. We’ll see if they eat it; after all, everything is mixed together, and my kids, like many kids, prefer some separation upon the plate.
Also roasting a squash and prepping a salad.
Baby CJ is so incredibly on the move that I simply marvel at his mobility. He crawled from living-room through dining-room to kitchen this afternoon, ending near the fridge. Then he suggested I pick him up and carry him around in the sling; he’s spent about three hours in that sling today and my back doth protest. But, really, baby CJ wants to walk. Whenever possible he gets a taller person to help him stand. He can hang on and stand quite ably, and as soon as he masters the getting up part, there will be no stopping him. Apparently, by six months, babies feel big. They don’t care to be identified with those blobby infant-types any more.