Childbirth was not such a bad thing. It was dramatic enough that I was the center of attention for a few hours. Then when things got really bad, events sped along and finished up, and somebody offered me a hearty breakfast afterward.
I understand, of course, that your mileage may vary.
It gets even better on the spectator end, because your party troops along to the hospital knowing something exciting is going to happen that day (or the next). You get to cheer the mother on, and shout out when you see the baby's head. You get to run out of the room after the baby's born and call everybody you know, then run back in and watch the little guy look around the room, taking it all in. You get to watch big brother and little infant face off for the first time.
So I can imagine why Peggy Vincent fell in love with delivering babies. In her memoir, Baby Catcher, she takes us along as she runs out of the house, sometimes in her flannel nighty, sometimes deep in Bay Area fog, and attends to her patients right in their homes. Vincent's births are scenes of siblings with their elbows on the bed, watching raptly, of women swaying, moaning or singing away the pain (whatever works), and of kittens playing with her shoelaces while she waits out a particularly long labor. Sometimes she takes a tea break. Sometimes she calls an ambulance, riding along as she holds the emerging baby's head in just a little longer.
This being Berkeley, she considers buying some Birkenstocks, just to fit in with the other midwives. But Vincent's face is as round and wholesome as the 4-H fair's prize squash judge.
Her husband accommodated her crazy schedule. Her children took it in stride when she came to school and showed placentas to the middle-school sex ed class. And Vincent herself rode the waves of a career she was passionate about, logging each of the 2,000+ births in her little book and flooding with memories every time she read her patients' names.
If it were me doing all that midwifing, I would would want somebody to whip up some Bacon 'n Egg Wraps as soon as the baby lay safely in the mother's arms. I guess everybody's hungry when all the drama concludes.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Bad Day for Granny Panties
You can't always believe those Amazon reviews. Some people read Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists and decided it was just a bunch of stories about unlikeable people who do nasty things to each other.
Well, I don't know. I once read that an author doesn't have to make us like his characters. But he has to make us understand them.
I must have understood as well as liked Rachman's American expats, toiling away at a newspaper in Rome, because I eagerly picked up his book all week long, hungry for the next story.
It was the small crises in these lives that captivated me. Rachman wove stories about missing things--an office chair, a laptop, a Rubik's cube--that framed these ink-stained wretches' larger predicaments. There was the Italian matron who faithfully read every word in every paper. Trouble was, by 2007, she was only up to the 1994 issues. There was the Accounts Payable maven who flew to a board meeting at the Atlanta headquarters and, suffice it to say, should not have worn her granny panties that day.
So take those Amazon reviews with a grain of salt. And get your books from the library where, just in case you don't like them, you haven't sacrificed your lunch money.
Now, if you need a dinner break between stories and you're reading about Rome, you can whip up something vaguely Italian like --
Ravioli Primavera
We tried this once with the Italian vegetables and it did not sell well (lima beans anyone?). So tonight, I tried a frozen mix consisting of french-cut green beans, carrots, zucchini and yellow squash. Looked to me like that pasta bowl emptied out pretty fast, and not just because people were eager to get to the luscious, bakery-decorated chocolate cake they had spied earlier in the kitchen.
Well, I don't know. I once read that an author doesn't have to make us like his characters. But he has to make us understand them.
I must have understood as well as liked Rachman's American expats, toiling away at a newspaper in Rome, because I eagerly picked up his book all week long, hungry for the next story.
It was the small crises in these lives that captivated me. Rachman wove stories about missing things--an office chair, a laptop, a Rubik's cube--that framed these ink-stained wretches' larger predicaments. There was the Italian matron who faithfully read every word in every paper. Trouble was, by 2007, she was only up to the 1994 issues. There was the Accounts Payable maven who flew to a board meeting at the Atlanta headquarters and, suffice it to say, should not have worn her granny panties that day.
So take those Amazon reviews with a grain of salt. And get your books from the library where, just in case you don't like them, you haven't sacrificed your lunch money.
Now, if you need a dinner break between stories and you're reading about Rome, you can whip up something vaguely Italian like --
Ravioli Primavera
We tried this once with the Italian vegetables and it did not sell well (lima beans anyone?). So tonight, I tried a frozen mix consisting of french-cut green beans, carrots, zucchini and yellow squash. Looked to me like that pasta bowl emptied out pretty fast, and not just because people were eager to get to the luscious, bakery-decorated chocolate cake they had spied earlier in the kitchen.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Red Badge
Lets talk about your high school. Was it one of those fine institutions where you came out ready to quote great books in your church talks and your letters to the editor? When people drop names like Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette, do you nod smugly, knowing exactly what books these characters come from?
Let's talk about my high school. Let's ask how I got my diploma and tassel and went out into a world where people talk about Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette and I have no idea whether these folks are their neighbors or the anchors on the local news or what-all.
(Actually, I know these are characters in books. I just looked them up. But I'm already straining to remember which books, except for the Jo March one.)
So, you probably read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter ages ago, but I just got around to it last week. I'll bet I can't tell you anything that you don't already know about it.
But let me just say that, around this house, we have threatened to fine people that use unnecessarily big words to say something so simple as, "That bird scares me." To wit:
"With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community . . . "
I would think paper and ink would be hard to come by in Hawthorne's day, but he seems to have used up plenty.
Next, Hester Prynne (who commits adultery, but you knew that), refuses to name her partner in crime. And I don't get why. I should think she would want him to share in the infamy. But a good author, as we know, holds back the best stuff just to keep us reading. Except that he drops so very many hints that we know who it is quite before the child he has fathered --
"[W]ith strange rapidity . . . arrive[s] at an age that was capable of social intercourse." (Learns to talk.)
I guess The Scarlet Letter stands firm in the canon of great books because it explores the question, "What is just punishment? When does it become unjust?"
So, since you've probably already read Hawthorne's classic, I think I'll just recommend the Mormon scarlet letter, Carroll Hofeling Morris' The Broken Covenant. It's a few years old, but it kept me up nights, mourning the downward spiral of the heroine, if you could call her that.
Meanwhile, here's a great soup that gives me an excuse to buy one of my favorite foods, flour tortillas, and eat up all the extras not needed for Chicken Tortilla Chowder
Let's talk about my high school. Let's ask how I got my diploma and tassel and went out into a world where people talk about Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette and I have no idea whether these folks are their neighbors or the anchors on the local news or what-all.
(Actually, I know these are characters in books. I just looked them up. But I'm already straining to remember which books, except for the Jo March one.)
So, you probably read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter ages ago, but I just got around to it last week. I'll bet I can't tell you anything that you don't already know about it.
But let me just say that, around this house, we have threatened to fine people that use unnecessarily big words to say something so simple as, "That bird scares me." To wit:
"With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community . . . "
I would think paper and ink would be hard to come by in Hawthorne's day, but he seems to have used up plenty.
Next, Hester Prynne (who commits adultery, but you knew that), refuses to name her partner in crime. And I don't get why. I should think she would want him to share in the infamy. But a good author, as we know, holds back the best stuff just to keep us reading. Except that he drops so very many hints that we know who it is quite before the child he has fathered --
"[W]ith strange rapidity . . . arrive[s] at an age that was capable of social intercourse." (Learns to talk.)
I guess The Scarlet Letter stands firm in the canon of great books because it explores the question, "What is just punishment? When does it become unjust?"
So, since you've probably already read Hawthorne's classic, I think I'll just recommend the Mormon scarlet letter, Carroll Hofeling Morris' The Broken Covenant. It's a few years old, but it kept me up nights, mourning the downward spiral of the heroine, if you could call her that.
Meanwhile, here's a great soup that gives me an excuse to buy one of my favorite foods, flour tortillas, and eat up all the extras not needed for Chicken Tortilla Chowder
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Bash, Ram and Destroy
Oh, you thought we were cheering for That Other Football Game?
Sorry. I'm digging further down in the pile of fame by reading H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights.
Bissinger spent a year in Odessa, Texas, following the fortunes of the Permian Panthers, a team that grips the passion of its hometown so thoroughly that one fan, who had to miss a game because of his heart bypass surgery, refused his post-operation painkillers. After frequent phoned-in updates from his son-in-law, he finally consented to the drugs once he knew the game was secure.
A few of you may be far ahead of me in your Friday Night Lights fandom. Maybe you've watched the TV show. I hope to catch up with you (thank you Netflix).
But anyway, the hero boys of Permian High School all hope to be the boys in That Other Football Game. But first they need to round up scholarship offers from some big state college. And before that, there is the Friday night pressure to perform, which makes some of them vomit, or tape up that broken ankle and play anyway. There is the psyching up, the readiness to bash, ram and destroy the opponents, especially if they happen to come from Midland's Lee High School. Oh, yeah, and there's something about keeping grades up too. The author catches the team's biggest star in one of his classes, hard at it over a worksheet on the 95 uses for a microwave.
The Permian Panthers attracted 20,000 fans to their weekly games. Odessians lived for Friday nights, sadly because there was nothing else to live for. Odessa sits far out on a sandy plain. There is absolutely nothing to look at. There is oil to drill but, at the time Bissinger wrote his book (1988), Odessa's high times were over. Yards full of oil rigs sat idle. Bankruptcy and foreclosure ran high. If I were stuck in all that bleakness, I too would show up at the stadium every Friday night and stuff myself with nachos.
An especially poignant chapter checked in with Permian's yesteryear stars. "So, what was it like to be a prince all senior year and then adjust to real life?" Hint: It's a sad thing to peak early in life.
A few cow patties. Football boys ready to bash, ram and destroy don't talk like ministers.
And as for your recipe, how about what I call the Sunday Nap Meal? Throw it together, then crawl under the electric blanket and snooze. Wake up, slide the enchiladas in the oven, and catch up on Facebook while they bake.
Cheddar Beef Enchiladas
Creamy Corn
Sorry. I'm digging further down in the pile of fame by reading H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights.
Bissinger spent a year in Odessa, Texas, following the fortunes of the Permian Panthers, a team that grips the passion of its hometown so thoroughly that one fan, who had to miss a game because of his heart bypass surgery, refused his post-operation painkillers. After frequent phoned-in updates from his son-in-law, he finally consented to the drugs once he knew the game was secure.
A few of you may be far ahead of me in your Friday Night Lights fandom. Maybe you've watched the TV show. I hope to catch up with you (thank you Netflix).
But anyway, the hero boys of Permian High School all hope to be the boys in That Other Football Game. But first they need to round up scholarship offers from some big state college. And before that, there is the Friday night pressure to perform, which makes some of them vomit, or tape up that broken ankle and play anyway. There is the psyching up, the readiness to bash, ram and destroy the opponents, especially if they happen to come from Midland's Lee High School. Oh, yeah, and there's something about keeping grades up too. The author catches the team's biggest star in one of his classes, hard at it over a worksheet on the 95 uses for a microwave.
The Permian Panthers attracted 20,000 fans to their weekly games. Odessians lived for Friday nights, sadly because there was nothing else to live for. Odessa sits far out on a sandy plain. There is absolutely nothing to look at. There is oil to drill but, at the time Bissinger wrote his book (1988), Odessa's high times were over. Yards full of oil rigs sat idle. Bankruptcy and foreclosure ran high. If I were stuck in all that bleakness, I too would show up at the stadium every Friday night and stuff myself with nachos.
An especially poignant chapter checked in with Permian's yesteryear stars. "So, what was it like to be a prince all senior year and then adjust to real life?" Hint: It's a sad thing to peak early in life.
A few cow patties. Football boys ready to bash, ram and destroy don't talk like ministers.
And as for your recipe, how about what I call the Sunday Nap Meal? Throw it together, then crawl under the electric blanket and snooze. Wake up, slide the enchiladas in the oven, and catch up on Facebook while they bake.
Cheddar Beef Enchiladas
Creamy Corn
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Long Time 'Til You Kiss a Girl
At Benjamin Nugent's 13th birthday party, he invited all the friends with whom he had bonded over sci-fi, Dungeons & Dragons, and computers. They sang the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme as the cake appeared, and told each other nerdy jokes.
What must his parents have thought? Perhaps they were simply glad that he had friends. But still . . .
"Do you tell him to ditch his friends because as long as he's one of them, he may not kiss a girl for a very long time? Or do you tell him to stick with them? Do you let him figure it out on his own even though you feel pretty certain he understands neither the nature of the dilemma nor what is at stake?"
Nugent, now a recovering nerd (if such a thing is possible), combs through literature and looks up a few of his old buddies to form a once-and-for-all definition of what a nerd is. In American Nerd: A Story of My People, he finds them in books as disparate as Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice. He hangs out at their weekend events, where they gather to discuss frames-per-second in their favorite sci-fi flick, or where they dress up in tights and chain mail and play out the heroic fantasies in their heads.
Even the Mormons show up when one of his skinny grade-school friend's mother finds the missionaries. Thank you, former-hippie mom, for making us all look like nutters.
After reading Nugent, you will definitely be able to spot a nerd. But then, you probably already can.
Frequent cow patties.
As for your recipe, maybe we should pay tribute to what nerds eat. But here at Bye-Bye Nesquik, it is beneath our standards to instruct you to order pizza, or to stuff yourself with Coke and Doritos. If you're going to eat the junky stuff, at least put some effort into it. The recipe below shouldn't overtax you:
Cocoa Munch Mix
What must his parents have thought? Perhaps they were simply glad that he had friends. But still . . .
"Do you tell him to ditch his friends because as long as he's one of them, he may not kiss a girl for a very long time? Or do you tell him to stick with them? Do you let him figure it out on his own even though you feel pretty certain he understands neither the nature of the dilemma nor what is at stake?"
Nugent, now a recovering nerd (if such a thing is possible), combs through literature and looks up a few of his old buddies to form a once-and-for-all definition of what a nerd is. In American Nerd: A Story of My People, he finds them in books as disparate as Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice. He hangs out at their weekend events, where they gather to discuss frames-per-second in their favorite sci-fi flick, or where they dress up in tights and chain mail and play out the heroic fantasies in their heads.
Even the Mormons show up when one of his skinny grade-school friend's mother finds the missionaries. Thank you, former-hippie mom, for making us all look like nutters.
After reading Nugent, you will definitely be able to spot a nerd. But then, you probably already can.
Frequent cow patties.
As for your recipe, maybe we should pay tribute to what nerds eat. But here at Bye-Bye Nesquik, it is beneath our standards to instruct you to order pizza, or to stuff yourself with Coke and Doritos. If you're going to eat the junky stuff, at least put some effort into it. The recipe below shouldn't overtax you:
Cocoa Munch Mix
Friday, January 18, 2013
Oh, la la! Your pipes are broken!
I bought a bottle of sparkling grape juice just before the election, just in case there was something to celebrate. Since there was not, it lay chilling the fridge until New Year's Eve, when it went well with (as they say in the world of slightly harder drinks) a bit of stromboli and a stout bowl of chocolate Chex mix.
I would be no good in the world of slightly harder drinks, where one is expected to know that wine in a box is a social faux pas. If you wish to keep your dignity, you must be willing to pay as much as a week's groceries for one bottle.
But how about a bottle that costs as much as a college education? No, seriously. We're talking an Ivy-league law school education. That's what a member of the Forbes family bid on a bottle that supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson. As told in The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace, rare wines whet the competitive pride of the set that own multiple homes, small jets, banking empires, etc.
That is, until they suspect that the wine on the auction block might not be so rare after all. For those of you interested in crossing over to the dark side, the chapter on wine counterfeiting proves interesting. Where do they come up with these tricks? Spraying bottles with aerosolized dust? Staining labels with orange juice and tea? Filing off corks and branding them the year of prized vintages? One fellow sprayed bottles with a shotgun to give them that weathered-by-the-centuries look.
Otherwise, Vinegar was a lot like reading baseball stats, with a good many unpronounceable names thrown in.
Far more delightful to read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. Mayle, a British journalist, and his wife visited the south of France often. They loved it so much they decided to buy a house there. It was a charming house, not like those boxy things springing up in suburbs everywhere.
Their first winter taught them the price of charm. The house had no central heating and yes, the south of France is warm, but not in January when the "mistral," a wind that starts in Siberia, howls across the continent. By the time the mistral reaches Provence, it can "blow the ears off a goat." It tends to foul the mood of Provencale folk.
It also tends to cause a lot of October babies.
But anyway, when Mayle engaged the local craftsmen and bumped up against their cultural quirks, their delays, their opinions of the British, he made it into a most amusing read. Somehow, having a Frenchman standing in one's kitchen exclaiming, "Oh, la la! Your pipes are broken" sounds more romantic than any household emergency I've actually lived through.
And the French are drop-the-tools serious about their lunch breaks. Actually, they're serious about any kind of eating at all. In honor of their love of food, I share with you:
Cider Beef Stew (OK, it's not French, but wow does it smell good!)
I would be no good in the world of slightly harder drinks, where one is expected to know that wine in a box is a social faux pas. If you wish to keep your dignity, you must be willing to pay as much as a week's groceries for one bottle.
But how about a bottle that costs as much as a college education? No, seriously. We're talking an Ivy-league law school education. That's what a member of the Forbes family bid on a bottle that supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson. As told in The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace, rare wines whet the competitive pride of the set that own multiple homes, small jets, banking empires, etc.
That is, until they suspect that the wine on the auction block might not be so rare after all. For those of you interested in crossing over to the dark side, the chapter on wine counterfeiting proves interesting. Where do they come up with these tricks? Spraying bottles with aerosolized dust? Staining labels with orange juice and tea? Filing off corks and branding them the year of prized vintages? One fellow sprayed bottles with a shotgun to give them that weathered-by-the-centuries look.
Otherwise, Vinegar was a lot like reading baseball stats, with a good many unpronounceable names thrown in.
Far more delightful to read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. Mayle, a British journalist, and his wife visited the south of France often. They loved it so much they decided to buy a house there. It was a charming house, not like those boxy things springing up in suburbs everywhere.
Their first winter taught them the price of charm. The house had no central heating and yes, the south of France is warm, but not in January when the "mistral," a wind that starts in Siberia, howls across the continent. By the time the mistral reaches Provence, it can "blow the ears off a goat." It tends to foul the mood of Provencale folk.
It also tends to cause a lot of October babies.
But anyway, when Mayle engaged the local craftsmen and bumped up against their cultural quirks, their delays, their opinions of the British, he made it into a most amusing read. Somehow, having a Frenchman standing in one's kitchen exclaiming, "Oh, la la! Your pipes are broken" sounds more romantic than any household emergency I've actually lived through.
And the French are drop-the-tools serious about their lunch breaks. Actually, they're serious about any kind of eating at all. In honor of their love of food, I share with you:
Cider Beef Stew (OK, it's not French, but wow does it smell good!)
Saturday, January 5, 2013
The Nobleman's Hobby
The picture on the cover has all the dark tones of a portrait of royalty, the kind hanging along the main hallway of the palace. The man on the cover wears a coat that drapes to the floor. And a bonnet with a ruffled edge. And he's pregnant.
Oh, oh, wait, that's not a man? It's a woman, the mistress of a Russian nobleman? Well, clearly beauty standards have changed since the 1780s.
The Pearl by Douglas Smith attempts a biography of Praskovia, the daughter of a blacksmith, given away to serfdom at the estate of the rich playboy Nicholas Sheremetev. Sheremetev just couldn't seem to fall in love with anybody of his own class, because that pretty little servant girl in his house captivated him so.
She became the nobleman's hobby.
Not only was she considered a great beauty in her day. She also sang like an angel. Nicholas built theaters for her to perform in. He had his friends order the latest plays from Paris, complete with costumes and intricate stage drawings.
Which became the nobleman's other hobby. I can't tell which he loved better. But he managed to fit them together nicely.
The love story failed to draw me in. But I really liked the chapter on serf theater. Theater as I know it always suffers from high competition (in the professional ranks) and absenteeism from rehearsals (in the amateur ranks). Pharmacists and school teachers can't seem to find the time to be dancing dandies. And this is not to mention funding, in both ranks. Wouldn't it be nice if a nobleman took it on himself to build the house, underwrite the costumes, invite his friends (the tsar, the empress, etc) to watch the show? Wouldn't it be wonderful if he pulled you out of your parlor duties and sent you to the singing and dancing lessons that readied you for the stage?
Well, maybe not. The serfs still had to serve dinner to The tsar, the empress and the rest of the company, before donning their costumes and make-up. And sometimes the master sat out in the audience, heckling you. Can't you hit the high notes? Look at the clumsy way you dance! And you couldn't slap him, couldn't walk off to the next town, couldn't do anything but throw in a couple ad-lib lines with veiled but pointed meaning, for which you would probably be punished later.
It was a pretty good chapter. It just didn't redeem the whole biography. And Smith had pretty vague information to go on anyway.
I tried hard, but never finished his opus.
But here is something we did finish around here:
BLACK FOREST BROWNIE TORTE
1 pkg (19.8 oz.) brownie mix plus ingredients to prepare cake-like verson of mix
1 can (21 oz.) cherry pie filling, divided
2 1/2 c. Cool Whip, thawed, divided
1/4 c. sliced almonds, toasted @ 325' for 6-8 min.
-- Heat oven to 350'. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans. Prepare brownie mix, cake-like version.
-- Divide batter evenly between pans. Bake 18-20 min. Do not overbake. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pans to wire rack to cool completely.
-- Place one brownie layer on serving plate. Top with 1 1/2 c. Cool Whip to within 1/2 inch of edge. Spread 1 cup pie filling over Cool Whip.
-- Top with second brownie layer. Spread remaining pie filling to within 1/2 inch of edge. Dollop or pipe remaining 1 cup Cool Whip around edge of torte. Sprinkle toasted almonds over top. Serve by cutting into wedges with large serrated knife. 12 servings @ 385 cals. each.
My family wouldn't have had a chance to eat this had not fate intervened.
I made this beauty for the ward Christmas party. Not even the fact that one of the brownie layers fell slightly apart defeated me. That was an easy repair.
But those finishing touches, oh my! I had nothing to pipe with, so we went with the dollops. And they simply could not wait to droop over the sides of the cake. They did not care that they had to appear in public, passing under the noses of a couple dessert snobs, whose own tortes always look like poufy party dresses.
I snuck it in to the church and opened the cake carrier to have a look (things sounded kind of slide-y on the car ride). Oh dear. I snuck it back out again.
Emma says I shouldn't have had such pride. "It's probably perfectly good eating."
Uh-huh. And what was she complaining about? Now we had this wounded but tasty confection all to ourselves. So sad, heh-heh.
Oh, oh, wait, that's not a man? It's a woman, the mistress of a Russian nobleman? Well, clearly beauty standards have changed since the 1780s.
The Pearl by Douglas Smith attempts a biography of Praskovia, the daughter of a blacksmith, given away to serfdom at the estate of the rich playboy Nicholas Sheremetev. Sheremetev just couldn't seem to fall in love with anybody of his own class, because that pretty little servant girl in his house captivated him so.
She became the nobleman's hobby.
Not only was she considered a great beauty in her day. She also sang like an angel. Nicholas built theaters for her to perform in. He had his friends order the latest plays from Paris, complete with costumes and intricate stage drawings.
Which became the nobleman's other hobby. I can't tell which he loved better. But he managed to fit them together nicely.
The love story failed to draw me in. But I really liked the chapter on serf theater. Theater as I know it always suffers from high competition (in the professional ranks) and absenteeism from rehearsals (in the amateur ranks). Pharmacists and school teachers can't seem to find the time to be dancing dandies. And this is not to mention funding, in both ranks. Wouldn't it be nice if a nobleman took it on himself to build the house, underwrite the costumes, invite his friends (the tsar, the empress, etc) to watch the show? Wouldn't it be wonderful if he pulled you out of your parlor duties and sent you to the singing and dancing lessons that readied you for the stage?
Well, maybe not. The serfs still had to serve dinner to The tsar, the empress and the rest of the company, before donning their costumes and make-up. And sometimes the master sat out in the audience, heckling you. Can't you hit the high notes? Look at the clumsy way you dance! And you couldn't slap him, couldn't walk off to the next town, couldn't do anything but throw in a couple ad-lib lines with veiled but pointed meaning, for which you would probably be punished later.
It was a pretty good chapter. It just didn't redeem the whole biography. And Smith had pretty vague information to go on anyway.
I tried hard, but never finished his opus.
But here is something we did finish around here:
BLACK FOREST BROWNIE TORTE
1 pkg (19.8 oz.) brownie mix plus ingredients to prepare cake-like verson of mix
1 can (21 oz.) cherry pie filling, divided
2 1/2 c. Cool Whip, thawed, divided
1/4 c. sliced almonds, toasted @ 325' for 6-8 min.
-- Heat oven to 350'. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans. Prepare brownie mix, cake-like version.
-- Divide batter evenly between pans. Bake 18-20 min. Do not overbake. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pans to wire rack to cool completely.
-- Place one brownie layer on serving plate. Top with 1 1/2 c. Cool Whip to within 1/2 inch of edge. Spread 1 cup pie filling over Cool Whip.
-- Top with second brownie layer. Spread remaining pie filling to within 1/2 inch of edge. Dollop or pipe remaining 1 cup Cool Whip around edge of torte. Sprinkle toasted almonds over top. Serve by cutting into wedges with large serrated knife. 12 servings @ 385 cals. each.
My family wouldn't have had a chance to eat this had not fate intervened.
I made this beauty for the ward Christmas party. Not even the fact that one of the brownie layers fell slightly apart defeated me. That was an easy repair.
But those finishing touches, oh my! I had nothing to pipe with, so we went with the dollops. And they simply could not wait to droop over the sides of the cake. They did not care that they had to appear in public, passing under the noses of a couple dessert snobs, whose own tortes always look like poufy party dresses.
I snuck it in to the church and opened the cake carrier to have a look (things sounded kind of slide-y on the car ride). Oh dear. I snuck it back out again.
Emma says I shouldn't have had such pride. "It's probably perfectly good eating."
Uh-huh. And what was she complaining about? Now we had this wounded but tasty confection all to ourselves. So sad, heh-heh.
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