Fretting

Lately I've been having trouble falling back asleep. The first time is no problem, but if something wakes me up at night (as it has the past two nights) man, I'm up for an hour or two. And why am I awake? Why, because I can't fall asleep for the worrying! Worrying about work I need to do, worrying that I should be pushing academics on the kids (night time does strange things to my brain), and worrying about Liel's social life. See, Liel didn't really make friends during her year in preschool. Now she's socially ready to (I think) but the only kid she sees most days is her brother. I'm mostly to blame for this- I suck about arranging playdates. But I'm not entirely to blame...part of the reason I suck is because I get shot down probably 75% of the time when I try to set one up for her. Mostly it isn't personal (I hope!) but I hear "oh, we're busy this week, let's try for next week..." an awful lot. So I feel like a bit of a bother, since next week is always busy when we get there too, you know? Get knocked back enough and it sure starts to SEEM like maybe that mom just doesn't like me and I should give up.

But in the night two nights ago I had a rather sad realization. Zion wants to have a birthday party this year (it will be his first friend party. We offered last year but he said no). And that's lovely, and he has a number of friends who he'll want to invite and who will want to come. But that also means Liel will want a friend party this year. And Liel has 1, maybe 2 friends. I'm not kidding you, my eyes teared up thinking about how that might make her feel, and how I've kind of failed her in this way because I'm not trying hard enough to find other little girls for her play with.

So, I got back up and sent out 4 emails asking if daughters wanted to play with Liel this week. I've heard back from one, saying her daughter is away visiting grandparents, but we did make an actual plan for the week after (of course this is the one girl I can count as Liel's friend with as much certainty as is possible when counting friends for 4 year olds).

This is the most pathetic blog post I've ever made.

PS- success! Heard back from another mama and Liel has a playdate this week. Perhaps less pathetic now.

Stuff I made this week

I had a busy week, it turns out. Excuse some unflattering pictures of me- just focus on the awesome knits!

First I made this awesome circular shawl:




I took a day off part way thru the shawl to make these felted slippers.



When the shawl and slippers were done I made a dropped stitch cowl.



Then I made a hat.



Let's see the shawl again, shall we?

2 important notes

1. I am close to finishing my first circular shawl! It will be 60" in diameter and I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. I was always afraid of the extra long rows as one neared the end of a circular shawl, and while 500+ stitch rows can be a bit monotonous they aren't so bad after all! I think I'll try a square shawl next.

2. I'm going to Kerri's tonight to watch Mamma Mia! with her, Sayantani, and Liv. We're going to snack and drink girlie drinks. Liv fears the movie will be too campy, but I think I've successfully pleased and guilted her into coming over, at leat for a little while. I'm super excited about my evening plans! I'm also a wee bit sad that I'm not going to be spending the evening knitting and hanging out with Robert, though. Cause I'm cool like that.

Speaking of whipped cream

A few days ago Robert had a bake off. I would say it was against me, but it wasn't cause I didn't bake a single thing. No, it was his mom's butter cookie recipe (see below- it contains butter, but also margarine and/or lard) vs. Cook's Illustrated's.

The results aren't really the point here (but CI won, as I'd insisted it would. But I tried not to insist too loudly or too often cause I tend to be a kitchen control freak and then I feel vaguely guilty about it, esp when Robert is cooking and I'm backseat cooking and he gets all exasperated cause frankly I'm being a pain in the ass. Where was I?). The point is we now have a bunch of butter cookies in the freezer! And it occurred to me today that if I took one of those cookies, slathered it with raspberry jam and topped it off with a mountain of whipped cream I'd have a pretty freakin' tasty snack.

So now you know how I'm planning to spend my evening. That and knitting. Luckily I did some yoga with Liel a little earlier.

Top 10 Regulars

Lately (OK, fine, for most of my life) I've been giving some thought to my favorite foods. Normally when I make a top 10 favorite foods list it encompasses foods that are so delicious they transport the eater to some glorious pleasure palace of gluttony. I probably spend too much time wondering which is my favorite of the 7 deadly sins, too- but that's another blog post.

Anyway, as I was happily compiling my list (again) the other day I stopped and wondered: how much did I like artichokes? Would I, for instance, like to eat them every day? So I started compiling a new list, a list of foods that are delicious and enduring. Foods that I could eat daily (or nearly that). Basically it's not so much a top 10 list as an only 10 list. If you could only eat 10 foods (excluding condiments, spices, and booze), what would be on your list? Here's mine.

1. Potatoes. I like 'em baked, mashed, fried, scalloped, fried...

2. Lobster. It just never gets old!

3. Berries. This one might be a bit of a cheat, but if it has -berry attached to it's name I'm counting it for #3. Yum.

4. Salad. Yes, again with the cheating bit. Eh.

5. Corn. Fresh, in corn tortillas, masa, cornbread...

6. Beans.

7. Cheese.

8. Squash.

9. Onions.

10. Whipped Cream.

Crap. Crap crap crappity crap. I want beef on this list! But I can't decide what to eliminate in favor of beef. Maybe lobster, but that sure would be disappointing. I adore lobster, and really think i could eat it daily. But it's not as multi-purpose as beef. Sigh. Well, anyway, you get the picture. Try your list, it's harder than it looks!

On noodles and preserved fish

Today we headed down to Sunset Park to celebrate a belated Hanukkah with Kenn and Giselle. En route we stopped off at Russ and Daughters to get Kenn's gift- a selection of pickled and smoked fish! Bet you're jealous now. No, really! Put your tongue back in your mouth and swallow your drool.

If you must know I got him pickled herring with onions, pickled herring in cream sauce, pickled herring with mustard/dill sauce, pickled Icelandic Schmaltz, smoked/peppered mackerel and 2 whole smoked chubs. I love the name of those last fish so, so much. Here's a gratuitous picture of them, courtesy of Russ and Daughters.



Sadly, when I jumped out of the car to cross Houston and get to the store I dropped my hat (hand knit, of course) and didn't realize until we were in Brooklyn :( I'm really hoping that at least someone else will find and use my lovely hat, but I suspect it's just gone to trash. And I only wore it twice! I suppose the upside is that I can always make another. Fortunately I have enough of the same yarn left to duplicate it! The color was awesome with the pink streaks in my hair.

Anyway we had a great visit with the fam. K and G enjoyed their gifts (or at least pretended to enjoy them), and we loved ours! Framed photos of the kids, Lincoln logs, aleph-beit magnets (Liel could pick out lamed after I showed it to her ONCE) and, get this, The Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish IN YIDDISH. So, so awesome. I'm all about rescuing Yiddish from the jaws of extinction, and trying to keep it current. And, you know, learning it. I've wanted to learn for years, and even took a couple classes at our local Chabad. Sadly, I don't think I can learn Yiddish from two Dr. Seuss books, but hey, it's a start, right? Right.

Kenny had some fresh oysters that he got at a market near the South Street Seaport. What Kenny didn't have was an oyster/shellfish knife. But my brother is resourceful and determined. He opened them with a spatula! We squeezed some Meyer lemon juice on them, gave them a grind of pepper and mmmm. Delicious.

We also got noodles from LanZhou Noodles on 60th St and 8th Ave. Hand pulled noodles! The ones with duck were especially awesome. Kenny and Robert also picked up 30 dumplings from Family Dumpling on their way home, and those were g-o-n-e in record time. Sunset Park has its downsides for sure, but man, you can't argue with the food.

And the greens...

I just have to pop back in and say that the kale I cooked tonight was some of the best damn kale I've ever had, ever. And we used to grow kale back in the day, in our community garden in Goleta. Good kale. The stuff tonight was unreal tho! I could've eaten at least four times as much. It was Red Russian Kale too, which is my favorite.

My semi-gluttonous longing for more kale made me long for a backyard farm yet again. One day. One day.