Dining

J and I make a great culinary team. She's the "head chef" of our kitchen, and takes care of most of the "skilled labor" food preparation. My role is to do some more basic low-skill jobs to make her life easier. She knows exactly how to delegate certain tasks to me so that she can make sure that she's freed up to flip something into the skillet at exactly the right moment, or to add an extra layer of glaze at exactly the right moment in the mixing process, or to taste for an elusive and subtle texture. I do my part proudly, though. For instance, I can....well, I'm able to...okay, so I'm not actually good for much of anything in the kitchen except for carrying the groceries in from the car (but not putting them away, because I don't know where the correct spots are) or maybe taking out the trash once the bag gets full.

This is why cooking for the boys on Saturday evenings is so stressful. They usually don't look forward to it any more than I do.

Sometimes J is able to get something in the crock-pot earlier in the day, and that's a nearly foolproof method of ensuring that we'll all get a hot and delicious dinner in her absence. I say "nearly" foolproof, because someone might have endangered their family and home by turning the crockpot to "Low" instead of "Off" when they took the chicken out last week and then left a quarter-inch layer of sauce that gradually turned to charcoal in the bottom of the pan until the next morning. Someone might have scrubbed hard to get the crock clean that afternoon.

But on days like today, there just wasn't time to get something prepared beforehand.

"Wait," I called to her as she headed out the door "what am I going to give the kids for dinner?"
"Uhh...bacon and eggs. But don't give Owen eggs. Check James' Berenstein Bears cookbook for a breakfast toboggan recipe that he wanted. He'll eat that."

The kids looked as concerned as I did.

We rammed around the downstairs for a bit and penned Owen into corners while we built tall block towers before turning on the soundtrack to Jaws and letting him loose. When they started to show signs of being hungry (screaming, whining, and crying) I decided that I couldn't put off dinner prep any longer and went into the kitchen to start working.

I was already too late, and I knew it. J doesn't dread cooking like I do, so she starts doing food prep BEFORE the kids are melting down from hunger. My work becomes exponentially harder when I put off food prep until they're screaming and tugging at my leg. I went into the kitchen and reviewed my plan:

For Me:
A rasher of bacon and an omelette. I love omelettes, and they always turn into a heap of nasty looking egg mush when I try to make them. I knew we had all sorts of delicious things to put in an omelette (sun dried tomatoes and gruyere cheese) so I was up for risking failure again to get my omelette. I looked up instructions for omelette making on incredibleegg.org and read the directions carefully several times. Yes, I was sure I had it this time. This was going to be fine.

For James:
From page 14 of "The Berenstain Bears Country Cookbook--Cub-Friendly Cooking with an Adult" I found the recipe for a Tasty Toboggan. I wondered as I looked at it whether I counted as "an adult" that was qualified to help a bear cup with this recipe. It basically looked like a piece of french toast on two pieces of bacon. I decided not to get over-ambitious and to just do a piece of regular toast instead of French toast. After all, I know my limitations. James thought it was very important that I make sure that there was a visible pat of butter on the toast. He's really big into making the final result look just like the picture. I also decided he needed to eat a sunny-side up egg.

For Owen:
A clementine, cut up and seeded. A piece of toast with jam, cut up into small bites. Maybe a couple bites of bacon.

This wouldn't be too hard, right?

I started with the bacon, and that went okay, except for Owen continually pulling at my leg. Bacon is one of those things I'm actually okay at. I can usually guess when it needs to be flipped in the pan and when it needs to come out. So that went fine.

Then I got out the eggs. One egg for James. I put that in the pan while Owen tugged at my leg and screamed. "Yes, I know you're hungry. Let Daddy work."

I got two eggs out for my omelette and attemped to whisk them up in a bowl while James' egg was frying. "Owen, no, stay out of the trash can." <set down the eggs on the counter> "Owen, what do you have in your mouth" <set down flipper> "Did you fish that out of the trash?" <go to pick up egg, knock one onto the floor which breaks> "AH, no stay out of that. James, come in here and sit on Owen until I get this picked up." "Hey Daddy, why are you cooking the flipper?" "AHH!" <pulls flipper out of pan> "Gah!" <pulls Owen out of egg mess on floor>

By the time I got back to James' egg it was burnt on the bottom, and then it broke when I tried to flip it. The toast popped as I was attempting to deseed the clementine, and I gave up on letting Owen roam free and let him scream out his hangriness in the high chair while I attempted my omelette. I shredded the cheese, cut up the tomato, and made sure that the pan was greased and hot.

I poured my egg mixture into the pan and made sure that I gently pushed the uncooked portions towards the heat in the center, then continued cooking, gently tilting the pan and moving the cooked portions as needed.

I ended up with a heap of nasty looking egg mush.

Owen ate his clementine in about eight seconds and then refused to eat anything else, pointing instead at the big plate of monkey bread that J had made earlier in the day.

James was thrilled that I put a pat of butter on his piece of toast so that it looked like the picture, but then tried to eat a spoonful of just butter and almost threw up. He ate some of his bacon, but then just begged for the monkey bread that J had made earlier in the day.

I ate a few bites of my egg mush and decided that monkey bread would probably be better.

We're all really glad that I only cook once a week. The kitchen works way better when I'm just helping the master.

Quick Hitters

I.
We took the boys to a basketball game at RWC on Tuesday evening.

It was J's idea. She found free tickets for a special alumni night, along with t-shirts and hot dogs. Once we told James he talked about it for the whole two days before. He prayed that we would go watch basketball and eat hot dogs on Monday night. It was the first think he asked about on Tuesday morning. When we visited an ophthalmologist on Tuesday he was disappointed that it wasn't time for basketball and hot dogs yet. (Although he did want the doctor to check Clifford's eyes once he found out that this wasn't the sort of doctor who gives shots. Clifford is the new name of that big stuffed dog he carries around, formerly Hundley, formerly Woof-Woof.) He told the ophthalmologist that we were going to see a basketball game and eat hot dogs that night.

"Do you want to tell him?"
"Should we tell him?"
"I don't think it should be a surprise once we get there, right?"

That afternoon, J asked James to come and sit on her lap for a minute.
"James, do you know how we're going to a basketball game tonight?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna eat a hot dog."
"Right. I just wanted to let you know--and this is nothing to be scared about--I wanted to let you know that maybe there might be a mascot there."
"Yeah."
"Do you remember Reggie the Redhawk from homecoming?"
"Yeah."
"Reggie might be there to help people cheer and be excited. Or maybe not. He might stay home."
"I think Reggie will stay at his house."
"Well, we'll see. He might be there. But you don't need to be scared. Okay?"
"Yeah."

About fifteen minutes later I found James sitting alone in his room, curled up in the far corner of his bed.
"James, are you alright?"
"I think Mommy wants to go the basketball game all by herself."
"You don't want to go?"
"No, Mommy just wants to go all by herself."
"James...are you a little afraid of the mascot?"
He nodded and covered his face with Steven Bear.

We did get him out the door eventually, and thankfully Reggie was nowhere to be seen for the first few minutes of the game. James watched the game attentively, and then once the big red bird appeared he just watched him for about 20 minutes or so. He ate his free hot dog, discovered the pleasures of Gatorade ("Can I have more blue juice?") and then was quiet but intent on the game for the rest of the evening.

J and I talked about how much we enjoyed attending a game. It was, after twelve years of higher education between the two of us, the first time either of had ever attended a collegiate sporting event. (Go RWC, Northwestern, and UNCG!) We would do it again in a heartbeat. The smell of beer was conspicuously absent, there was good sportsmanship all around, and the game was interesting and well played.

I think that hockey is next on our list. Does anyone know if the Amerks have a mascot?

II.
I made a pizza successfully last night. I turns out that all I need is to have the dough and the sauce premade for me and to have someone else set out all the ingredients that I need. Then it's easy.

Except that it actually wasn't that easy, because I had both boys alone last night. J and I agreed to feed them early and then eat together once they were in bed and she was back from her rehearsal. Putting Owen down to bed is always challenging, so I wasn't supposed to actually put him to sleep last night. I was just supposed to keep him awake until 8:30.

He's figured out how to hop/bounce, so he spent a good portion of the evening bouncing determinedly on my lap (with the sort of expression that one might use while conducting important experiments in a scientific laboratory) while James played basketball. James wanted to set up a basketball court as soon as we got back from the game the previous night. He had to wait until morning, unfortunately. So first thing he brought his hoop downstairs, had J put it up on the powder room door, and then made a "foul line" from pillows. He's getting steadily better at shooting and passing. He insists that whoever is nearby clap for him when he makes a basket ("I made a score!") and then he runs determinedly across the length of the room and back, since the teams need to switch sides after a basket. ("I am the white team!") George watches him, but George is not a mascot.

So between Owen's bouncing and James' basketball I thought I'd be pretty well set to do my pizza prep. The most important pizza prep of the day happened after school, when I stopped at Wegmans and picked up some naan. Naan pizza is great. It's just the right size, and it means that you don't have to make a crust. For this particular pizza I browned up some spicy Italian sausage and did some red pepper and onion in olive oil. Owen was getting cranky as I worked over the stove (bouncing is hard work) but he held in. The sauce (leftover from one of J's previous pizzas) and the cheese were already thawed from the freezer. I turned on the oven to preheat and took the boys upstairs for some bedtime prep.

James had his teeth brushed, his friends collected, his sippy cup filled, and his prayers said. Once he was tucked away for the night I took Owen into his room and changed him into his pajamas. He was smiling on his changing table when I heard a thundering crash and a wail from James' room. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I think he fell out of bed and landed on the bottom part of his marble run, knocking the whole thing over. He was in a sorry state when I scooped him up. He was embarrassed, insistent that we had to build the marble run again right away, and also in need of "a bedtime story and a quick rock in the rocking chair."

He settled for staying up until Mommy got home so he could say good night to her. (I could hear the chime from the oven signalling that it was fully preheated.) No, he could not play any more basketball tonight. He could wait with me and Owen in the kitchen.

I did manage to get the pizzas in the oven, but I spent the majority of the next 20 minutes holding one screaming infant in one arm and one basketball-requesting toddler in the other. J sorted out Owen once she came back, and James managed to stay in bed without falling out again.

The pizzas were great. They had a nice spicy taste from the sausage. I think naan is the way to go.

A Day with James (and George)

James has started talking to George. Almost incessantly, in fact. He's always carried around with him and I suspect that until recently (when he became comfortable processing the world out loud) he's kept a silent conversation with his very curious friend. But now pretty much anything that happens is relayed out loud to George. "We're at Wegmans now, George. Did you see that?" (then he will hold George up the window so he can see.) "George, where did my car go? Oh, there it is George. Yay! We did it!" (James always refers to himself as "we" now, because George is there too.)

I. James and I were throwing a football around in the living room--this is the way many great father-son stories start, by the way; it's almost as good an opening line as "it was a dark and stormy night"--and James whipped it at me much harder than expected, so that the catch was almost as much in self-defense as anything else. 

"Wow!" I exclaimed, "that one had some mustard on it."

He started giggling.

"Daddy, you said that had MUSTER on it."

"Yeah, that throw had some mustard on it."

<More giggling.>

"George, that throw had some MUSTURP on it."

From then on, every throw had "mustard" on it, which made him laugh so hard that he could barely stand up, and when he announced that one particularly wobbly toss had "ketchup" on it, he got to laughing so hard that he just collapsed in a heap of giggles.

"That's funny, George!"

II. "James, if we're going to go outside we need to put your hat on."

"I don't want to wear my hat."

"You need to wear your hat if we're going to go outside."

"My nose is wunny."

"Yeah, don't do that with Steven. You don't want to wipe your snot on him."

"What's snot?"

"Never mind. Do you want a kleenex."

"I wipe my snot on Steven. That's what Steven is for. George, I wipe my snot on Steven."
"Don't wipe your snot on Steven, James. He'll need to take a bath."

"I wipe my snot on George too."

"Here's your hat, put it on please."

"George, I need to wipe more snot on Steven."

III. It is with enormous vindictive pleasure that I hereby report that the tag "cooking disasters" attached to this blog has NOTHING to do with anything that I screwed up. J made chili in the crock pot earlier in the afternoon and told us to eat that for dinner. When the clock hit six I walked over to the chili crock and found it completely cold. Sure enough, it was unplugged. Unplugged from the exact same outlet where I'd seen her ironing her clothes just before she left. I texted her.

She wrote back:

"Blargh! I told James to remind me to plug the crock pot back in!"

I suspect that James told George to remind him to remind J, and George just forgot to remind James.

I made hot dogs on the stove, cut James' up into pennies, and set it out for him with a squirt of mustard and a squirt of ketchup. "That's a funny noise, Daddy. George, that's a funny noise." He ended up having the dinner of champions. Half a hot dog worth of pennies, a pickle, three enormous piles of banana pepper rings, and several spoonfuls of ketchup directly off his plate before I caught him and took it away.

IV. James was working on a birthday card for Grandma Davis earlier today, so I think he had her birthday on his mind. That must have been why he was making her a cake in the bathtub.

"Daddy, I'm makin' a cake for Gra-maw. Here's her cake."

He put a cup full of water on the side of the tub.

"Here's another cake for Gran-maw. I need to tell George I'm drinkin' some cake."

He put another cup of water on the lip of the tub, and started drinking a third.

"I'm drinkin' yummy cake. Daddy, you keep Gran-maw's cake right there."

V. While James was making cake in the tub I saw this video posted on facebook by about four different musician friends. I know absolutely nothing about the tune that it's making fun of, but I absolutely love this woman's voice. If something should ever happen to J, and I say this in the full knowledge that she will read this in my blog, I would track this girl down and marry her so that she can come and do Flock of Uncles gigs.

James says "I want...to have to watch that again."

VI. When the bath was over I pulled the plug on the tub and the water started to drain out.

"Daddy, why that water go down?"

"Gravity makes it go down."

"What's grabbity?"

"You see this toothpaste tube? If I drop it, will it fall up or fall down?"

"It's gonna fall down."

"Yup, look it fell down. Gravity makes things go down."

"Why grabbity make things go down?"

"It's a force. It pulls down on everything that has mass. I think."

"Why it have mass?"

"Because...of something to do with...I don't know. There is a reason, though."

"Daddy, this is why you go to school."

"Are you telling me I should go to school to learn about gravity?"

"No, I wanna talk to George."

An Update

Of course I'm back to write about how the pizza turned out. But first, here's how the "ginky" stalemate turned out.

As I mentioned earlier, James staged a standoff when he woke up from his nap this afternoon by refusing to leave the neutral territory of his crib because it would mean surrendering his binky (or as he calls it, "ginky") for the very last time. He woke up at 3:30 at sat there for an hour, staring into space and refusing all offers of George books and animal crackers. I would peek in on him periodically and confirm that he hadn't violated the neutral boundaries of his bed. I used the time to write my first blog of the day, and to make pizza dough in the bread machine. Anyone who follows my blog knows that I don't have much luck with cooking ventures, so I was very careful to follow the recipe exactly. At 4:30 I looked in again and he was sitting in the same position, but with a basketball under his right arm.

"James," I asked "did you get out of bed."

He looked up at me with an expression of profound guilt and whispered through his binky "...no..."

He was out of bed and the binky surrendered shortly thereafter.

I wasn't looking forward to taking the binky away tonight. It doesn't really bother me, and I thought it was a bit of a raw deal that I should be the one to enforce the policy on a night when J was going to be away. It's been a long time, though, since I've had to deal with any major tantrums, and J generally has to be the disciplinarian while I waltz in at the end of the day with treats and retain Most Favored Parent status. I asked "Is this the right night to be doing this?" but in the end I agreed to be the one who would suffer James' displeasure and take the binky away.

Once he gave the binky up I attempted to do my practicing for the day, which was spectacularly unsuccessful. Between James knocking over all of the music on my stand twice and insisting that he play along with his own trumpet ("I wanna practice TOO!") I didn't get much done. Oh, well. It's hard to practice and be the sole childwatcher at the same time. I had a student coming at 6, so I wanted to make sure that I could time my practicing, dinner prep, and the necessary cleanup all right. We read a few books while I took breaks, and I even got a big container of pizza sauce made. I was practicing again when James came in with J's recipe box and dumped the entire stack of index cards onto the floor, after which he began sorting through the brightly colored green ones.

Oh well, I thought, I'll have to clean that up afterwards. A few minutes later, he came up to me and tugged my arm. "Daddy, wanna make GOOkies." And sure enough, he had the recipe card for chocolate chip cookies. I'm not quite sure how he did that. Maybe he learned to read while he was in the tent.

Just then the timer went off for the pizza dough, and I went to check the bread machine. This is what I found.

I have no idea how a recipe so closely followed could turn out quite badly, but if we've learned anything in this blog over the years, it is certain that I am completely incapable of making a pizza.

I decided to order a pizza and wings. I would have $25 coming in from my student and I had coupons. I printed a coupon off, and told J what I was going to do. It was now nearly 6:00, and my student was going to be arriving soon. I needed to clean up, get the pizza ordered as close to 6 as possible (so that it would still be hot when we picked it up after 6:30) and get the tent torn down. James protested the tent going down, but when he laid down in the middle of it I just kept on taking the tents down, and I think he could tell that I meant business.

I called Pontillo's at 5:50 and ordered a large cheese pizza and a dozen wings, and they said it would be about 25 minutes. I told them they could hold off on putting that in since I couldn't pick it up till 6:35. Then I stopped, thought for a moment, and looked at the calendar on the white board. My student wasn't coming at 6, they were coming at 6:30.

"Hello, this is Pontillo's Brighton."

"Hi, I called just a second ago and ordered a large pizza and asked you to wait to put it in?"

"Yes?"

"Sorry, please put that in as soon as possible. Can it still be ready in 25 minutes?"

"Yeah, that's no problem. I'll have them get started on it."

I figured that since it was less than a block away, I could get down there with James and at least get him set up with some dinner before my student got there at 6:30, even if I had to wait until after the lesson to eat. He certainly wasn't going to make it much longer before he needed dinner, and I didn't want to have to go out again once it was dark and freezing out.

We finished cleaning up the living room, and at 6:10 we put on shoes and coat and made our way out to the car. The traffic where we live is really terrible from 5-7 pm every day, and it took us about 5 minutes just to get halfway up the block to where the pizza place is. It's easy walking distance, but I didn't think I could carry back a pizza and James and make it back in time for the lesson.

We went into the store and I told them I was there for a pick-up. They asked for my name, and the clerk said he didn't have anything under Roy. They asked for my phone number, and they didn't have anything under that either. They asked whether I'd called the right location, and I confirmed that I'd called the Brighton location on Monroe Avenue. They asked what I'd ordered and I told them I had a coupon for a large cheese pizza and a dozen wings.

"We don't sell wings by the dozen."

"No, I have it on the coupon right here."

I pulled out the Pontillo's coupon. And at that exact moment I realized I was in a Salvatore's.

It was now 6:25, and James and I raced back to the car to drive home, him begging the entire way "Daddy, I wanna EAT. Wanna EAT, Daddy. Wanna EAT."

We got into the house about 30 seconds before my student, and I was just finishing up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for James when they came in the door. James got it all over his face and talked animatedly to my student's father (mostly about Curious George) while my student played duets, and then I felt the back of my chair being pushed repeatedly. I waited for my student to finish his etude, excused myself, and put on Curious George Christmas on the laptop in James' bedroom. I heard him laughing a few times, but he didn't come out and bother my student's father anymore. (He'd wanted him to come back to his bedroom and read George books while they were at the table.)

When my student left, I finally had the $25 in my pocket and the coupon ready, and James and I put on shoes and coats again and drove down to the 12 Corner Plaza in Brighton, to get our pizza from Pontillo's. I was sure I remembered where it was, so I didn't get directions before we left. We turned around once, and then turned around twice, and then I looked up direction on my phone. The directions led us to a pizza place, but it wasn't Pontillo's. At 7:35 we finally showed up at Pontillo's, picked up our pizza, and drove home.

James read a George book to himself at the table while we ate, and I didn't even try to take it away. That pizza was DELICIOUS.

At 8:00, I let him finish watching the last 10 minutes of Curious George Christmas and sat with him beside his bed as he sang along with the songs. We changed his diaper, brushed teeth, and he got into bed. And then the maelstrom hit.

I WAN' GINKY!!! I WAN' GINKY!!!

"No, James, tonight you're going to be a big boy and sleep without your binky, just like we talked about earlier."

"NO, GINKY!!! I WAN' GINKY!!!"

It was maybe 10 minutes of this before J arrived back from work. She listened in the hall for a few seconds, then shook her head and said "Are we sure this is the right night to do this?" I don't remember quite what I said to that, but the long and the short of it is that James is sleeping peacefully with his binky, we are all full of pizza, and we now know that it is a Salvatore's, and not a Pontillo's across the road from us.

And I still am yet to successfully make a pizza on my own.

Another Pizza Catastrophe

I am not a stupid person. I need to remind everyone before they read any further that at one point in my life I was offered a full ride to Yale. I am tolerably humorous and an excellent speller, and my total ignorance of the culinary arts ought not to reflect poorly on the arts in which I am competent.

Everything started with my attempt to practice in the kitchen while also being the lone set of eyes on James. It did not go well. Two of my mutes have dents in them, James knocked over all the music on my stand, bonked his head on my stand, stole my metronome, and dropped my B-flat trumpet on the floor, the third valve of which no longer works. By the time dinner came around he was in full-fledged mischief mode.

"James," I said "I don't think either of us want to eat minestrone soup."

I knew that James didn't want to eat minestrone soup. J made it last night, and he turned his nose up at it all night long. I ate mine because it was hot and good, and according to J, minestrone is one of my favorites. Except actually it isn't. I asked her last night what inspired her to make minestrone and she said "Because you love minestrone! Isn't this one of your favorite things that your mother makes?"

In her defense, "minestrone" does sound an awful lot like "chicken wings."

But I didn't say anything to her, because once you've been married for a number of years you learn that it's not a good idea to tell your wife that you aren't interested in whatever it is that she just spent the last hour and half preparing over a hot stove while looking after your hurricane-force son so that you can practice upstairs in your bathrobe. (Hint to newly married husbands: It's much better to tell her by letting her find out that you've written about it on the internet without saying anything at all to her.)

So there was leftover minestrone in the fridge, and James had stopped hurling books off of the bookshelves long enough to confirm to me that he was interested in what I was saying if there was some chance it might be about food.

"James, I think we both want a pizza, don't we?"

He nodded.

I should have stopped here. I should have remembered what happened the last time that I was home alone with James on a Saturday afternoon while J was at church and decided that I absolutely had to have a pizza even though I'd have to make the whole thing on my own from scratch with no help.

I thought through my situation. I knew that there was cheese in the freezer, and I knew that there was leftover sauce in the fridge. I would just need to come up with some sort of dough. It was already five o'clock, so it was definitely too late to attempt dough in the bread machine--besides, I wasn't eager to try that again after my last experience. What about flatbread pizza? I had flatbread pizza several times over the summer, and I thought it was very good. I looked through some recipes on my phone, and eventually switched to the idea of a "pita" pizza. The dough only called for four ingredients, and the internet guaranteed that it would be ready to eat in 20 minutes...that sounded great! It sounded just as good as those "one simple tricks that can reduce your car insurance to $.37 a day."

Meanwhile, James had tipped a glass of water all over the kitchen counter. I cleaned him up, mopped up the mess, moved away the chair that he'd pushed to the counter and told him to occupy himself in some non-destructive way while I made us a pizza.

To make a long story short, the dough ended up being a disgusting sticky mess about the consistency of Elmer's glue, only less tasty, that didn't knead, roll, cut, or do anything except stick and ooze to everything it touched. About ten minutes into the attempt I gave up on trying to roll out pitas and just dumped the remaining goo into a frying pan, washed my hands, and removed James from his perch on the chair that he'd scooched over the refrigerator, from which he'd removed every single magnet and picture and thrown it on the kitchen floor.

I managed to turn the goo into the world's ugliest pancake, and set James up in his high chair with green beans. I sprayed a pan, and stretched out the pancake as best I could, then went to retrieve the sauce and cheese. And when I pulled out the sauce, I found out it was leftover quinoa spaghetti, and not pizza sauce. Thankfully there was cheese in the freezer, so at that point I had ugly pancake with cheese on top.

In six years of marriage I am yet to figure out J's system of freezer storage. Every month she neatly packs our freezer full of groceries, and it shuts without any trouble. If I open the freezer and remove an item, I can put that item back in the exact same spot it came from only seconds earlier, and it either won't fit (how is this possible, since I was removing ice cream sandwiches from the container?) or multiple other items will shift and collapse, and then refuse to go back into their spots. So J, if you do decide to come home after reading this blog, be careful when you open the freezer. I only just managed to slam the door shut in time, and I'm quite certain that the next person who opens the door is going to take a bag of frozen peas to the foot.

I was feeling rather defeated as I waited for the oven to preheat. I was also feeling rather hungry, so I had a bowl of leftover minestrone soup. It was exceedingly delicious, and much healthier than pizza. James, who still thought he was going to get real pizza when I was finished, continued to express his excitement at end result. When the oven preheated I had no idea how long to bake a pizza that size, so I started with six minutes and then kept on adding an extra minute or two until the cheese looked brown. James was so excited when I took it out. I cut him off a few pieces, blew on them to cool them off, and gave him one. He chewed it thoughtfully, and then I asked him if he wanted another.

That means "I think you should eat it instead."

I did, and it tasted like undercooked Elmer's glue with cheese on top.

So here's what I propose: This blog is a national resource, often receiving extravagant praise from top critics. I've even heard that my regular entries are "the best thing on the internet since this." I'm asking you, if you're reading this, to support my blogging by donating gift cards to local pizzerias. All gift cards can be sent to "Fabricor Consonvs Pizza Drive" at 749 Washington Street, Spencerport, NY 14559. If you benefit from this blog in any way, please consider supporting it by making a one time gift card donation. And not only do we need one time donations, but we are looking for sustaining members of Fabricor Consonvs who would be willing to get us pizza on a regular basis. Whether it's weekly, biweekly, or even just once a month, your effort will be felt and truly appreciated. I'd also like to make you aware, if you're reading this, that for a limited time we have a matching gift. There is a generous and anonymous almost-two-year old who has pledged that he will eat just as much pizza as I do for at least the next sixteen years, so don't wait...send in your pizza pledges today.

Because seriously, James was really disappointed tonight.

How to Practice and Make Dinner

It all started with the drumset.

We've known for awhile that James enjoys banging on drumsets, but we found out this last week that the drumset has become a point of obsession. J and I played a recital at my school last week, and James threw the worst tantrum of his little life when he was plucked away from the drumset in the sanctuary afterwards. He kicked and flailed and shrieked as we carried him outside, twisting violently and trying to climb down. He's done this sort of thing before when something really upsets him, but we could both tell that this fit was unusual.

"James, that's enough!" said J, setting him down on the pavement.

This is when he'd usually calm down and start to forget about whatever it was that was upsetting him, maybe even coming over for a contrite snuggle. But this time he kept flailing on the pavement, and even tried to make his way back into the school when another adult came out through the big glass doors. He HAD to get back to that drumset. It took him nearly 20 minutes to calm down.

Yesterday, we visited Pax and Kylie for a bonfire, and James found the drumset in their basement. He had the same ecstatic smile the entire time he was beating the dusty old floor tom, and pitched a fit nearly as bad as "the Lima incident" when we took him up to put him in his pack and play for bed. Fortunately the dark room and the presence of Steven Bear sedated him relatively quickly, but there was no doubt that the drumset was the cause of the fit again.

I had two things to do this afternoon
1) Practice for at least an hour
2) Make dinner

J was gone at church for the evening, and I knew that it wouldn't be easy to get these two things done. James knew it was glorious outside, and he was begging to go out within 15 minutes of consciousness in the morning. (We did go outside in the morning, and had a blast playing the back yard...but no practicing was logged.)

I had an idea. About a month ago we'd finally retrieved (after six years of marriage) some old boxes that we'd thrown in a friends attic when we were first married. I remembered seeing an old set of drumsticks and a practice pad from J's percussion methods class. When James got up from his nap, I gave him a bottle, then took him into the laundry room to dig for the sticks. I found them right away, and set him up out in the kitchen. He couldn't have been more pleased. He beat away on the practice pad vigorously, and I set up to practice trumpet. Unlike the cacophony he can raise on a drumset (it's the cymbals that make it unbearable, really) a practice pad merely makes dull "thwump" sounds, and for 20 glorious minutes all was well as James and I both practiced our instruments.

At 4:30, it was time to make the pizza dough. I knew that tonight was a pizza night, and J had left a recipe for easy pizza dough that I could make in the bread machine. There would be no kneading, no dirty dishes, and no complications. All I had to do was follow the recipe and I'd have a fluffy golden crust that she'd made several times already to the approval of all parties. I pulled out the recipe card. One and a quarter cups of water. I measured the water out from the tap, and poured it in. Check. 2 tablespoons of yeast. I pulled the bag of yeast out of the freezer, dug the tablespoon out of the silverware drawer, and dumped in two scoops.

It looked like an awful lot of yeast. I looked at the card again, and noticed that it read "2 t yeast" but 1 1/2 T sugar. Oh, bother. I probably should have taken this as an omen and resigned myself to ordering a pizza, but I decided to try again. I washed out the bread machine bucket, and then started again, this time making sure that I apportioned the ingredients exactly as they were written.

Once I had everything ready I latched the bucket in place, turned the machine to setting 6, and pressed the start button. It gave a loud whir and then began to knead the dough. James, who is terrified of the noises that the bread machine makes, ran into the other room. After a few minutes his face peeked around the doorpost, and I asked him if he wanted to look at the bread machine. He gave a shy nod, and I picked him up. We opened up the top, looked in, and he surveyed the mass of wet dough.

"It looks good, James. We'll keep on checking on it though." We did have one previous failure with this recipe, when the bread machine failed to mix all of the flour into the dough, leaving dry flour all over the side of the pan. I resolved to check every 10 minutes or so and make sure it was mixing properly.

James was very helpful in all of this, and we both went back to practicing. We would check every few minutes, and he even asked to taste the dough that was on the spoon. I obliged (there was no egg in the recipe) and he nodded in approval. I asked if he wanted supper, and he nodded again. His supper was a disaster.

He's getting more particular about what he eats, and how he eats. Tonight, he only wanted to eat the cookies that Great-Grandma Davis had brought up from Pennsylvania earlier that day. I told him he'd have to eat the rice and beans that Mom had left for him first, and he absolutely refused. We went through ten minutes of my trying to force a spoon (then airplane, then missile, then outright bribe) into his mouth before he finally accepted some grapes. After the grapes were consumed I put some green beans on his tray, and he promptly threw them on the floor. (I found one in the bell of my C trumpet.)

I decided we'd had enough dinner at that point, so I wiped off his face and took him out of the high chair. As soon as I'd put him down I remembered--J told me to give him an avocado.

"James, do you want some avocado?"

He gave an enthusiastic nod "yes" and some goofy giggles, and I went to cut one up. When I turned around, he had climbed into the adult chair next to the table. When I picked him up to put him in his booster seat, he began to shriek. I set him back down in the big chair and looked at him wearily.

"James, will you eat this avocado if you can sit in a big person chair?"

Another happy nod. He wants to do "big kid" things now, including eating with his own spoon and fork. This makes a mess of everything, but we're trying to let him do it whenever we can. I let him sit in the big chair, and gave him avocado. He gobbled it up, begged unsuccessfully for a cookie, and then just as I was wiping him off, the bread machine timer sounded.

"Okay James, time to make a pizza!"

I set him down on the kitchen floor, walked over to the machine, and looked in.

It was a disaster.

My dough was a soupy mess, and there was no way it was going to form into a pizza crust. Again, I probably should have just ordered a pizza right there. But I didn't. I thought to myself: "I can salvage this--it just needs to be thicker! If I knead in enough flour, it will thicken up." I grabbed a fistful of flour, spread it on the counter, and then started to pull the soupy dough out on top of it. I realized as soon as I touched it that I should have taken my wedding ring off. I was immediately a sticky mess, and I was probably going to need more flour than the initial fistful.

I heard a crash behind me, and turned around to see that James was knocking over a stack of expensive Oxford texts in Greek, including my very expensive Vulgate Bible. I rushed over, both hands completely covered in sticky dough, and used my elbows to push the books away from him towards the center of the table. Running back to the kitchen counter, I somehow managed to get the the top off of the flour canister by picking it up with my elbows, and I reached my doughy hands in for more.

There were loud shrieks behind me. I turned around, and James was stuck attempting to get down from the chair. He was half hanging off of it, and clearly about to fall. I ran back to the table, leaving a cloud of flour in my way, and sat down in the chair opposite him, then lifted up my feet (my hands were a complete disaster now) and pincered his midsection between my ankles, leaning back to guide him down to the floor. He laughed uproariously at this, and I noticed that I'd spilled flour all over the Vulgate Bible as I hurried back to the kitchen counter.


I used the top of my hand to pull the cooking spray down from the kitchen cabinet, and resigned myself to getting the cap dirty in order to spray the pizza pan. (I got the pizza pan entirely by pulling the stove drawer open with my feet)

As I was putting the doughy mess onto the pizza pan I heard the distinct sound of a brass-nickel alloy falling onto the floor, and whirled around to see that James was pulling my trumpet apart and dropping the pieces on the floor. I'd heard him drop the third valve slide, and I was again pulling the trumpet away from him with my knees. I sat down again with the trumpet between my knees, slid it down to my feet, and somehow (really, this must have looked very impressive) with my doughy hands held safely away maneuvered it onto the table and out of James' reach with my ankle and toes.

As I walked back to the kitchen counter, I beheld the final state of the dough. It had firmed up a little bit, but it was full of uneven wet patches, badly stretched, and it barely covered up half the pizza pan. My shoulders drooped as I looked at it, and then I felt a tug at my shorts. James was standing next to me, and pointing at my fingers, which were still plastered in the dough. I held out my hand, and he licked my the dough off my middle finger. Looking up, he smiled.

"Is that good?" I asked

He nodded, and I offered him my thumb. He promptly bit it as hard as he could.


I attempted to salvage the dough by turning it into a calzone, although I completely forgot to put cheese on it until I was already in the process of putting it in the oven door, and once the cheese was on I just barely caught myself from baking it with a metal knife left on the pan accidentally. I also forgot to set the timer until it had already been in the oven for five minutes, and as I began to pile the dirty dishes in the sink, I looked back at my darling son.

He was trying to drink my valve oil.