Day 9, July 10

It was Sunday so my relatives went to religious services while my cousin's husband and I watched grandma and my cousins' kids.

We read a Diary in the Life of a Spider in English and translated it into Chinese for my grandmother.  It's definitely not my favorite kids' book of all time.   But like I've said before, this summer is turning into good exposure therapy. Ahem. We also practiced having her look for the "I"'s in the book.  There was also some princessish mermaid book with obscenely anorexic Caucasian characters. Le sigh. We tried charades--my grandmother thought it was hilarious to see the little ones pretending to be crocodiles and bunnies and elephants.  We colored.  Markers these days are a.m.a.z.i.n.g.  Even my grandmother had fun.  Hangman proved to be a bit tough for the pre kindergartener and 3yo but I was impressed with how much they could do.  Then we eventually made our own pizza dough.

We had an enormous lunch with vegetarian food from the temple.  For an afternoon snack, after the kids swam and I went to retrieve belongings chez moi,  we made silly faced-pizzas with zucchini and carrots.  It's amazing how when you're not the parent, it's so much easier to get kids to think cleaning up as a special helper is the most fun thing in the world.  We also did a dose of calcium via yogurt.  And I had my cousin's daughter pick out her favorite carrot to snack on--I love that the Boston organics sometimes come with carrots with the leaves still on top.  They're delicious in salad and soup stocks!  And so pretty!

For dinner, after everyone else left, I made lettuce wraps with fresh sauteed carrots, zucchinis and garlic scapes with sesame oil,  focaccia pizzas, and some other veggies.  And half a bottle of heffenweizen each.  Bliss.

Grandmum's now on her evening snack of mango sorbet and trying to get me to eat ice cream.  We have an awesome adapted post-it note written communication system going for times she can't hear.  She sang me her favorite song.

I'm exhausted.  But it's a good kind of exhaustion.

Word of the day: Tomorrow

Lessons learned of the day: Parchment paper and toaster ovens do not get along.  Thankfully, toaster oven fires are also easy to put out.  Oy vey.

Gram's story of the day: http://insearchofanothertime.blogspot.com/2011/07/grams-story-of-day.html#links

Current Read: It's kind of funny that I'm concurrently reading The Proust Project...Edited by Andre Aciman... 28 authors were asked to choose a favorite passage from In Search of Lost Time and comment on it in essay format.  There's a certain level of parallel universe irony going on within the passages chosen that does not escape me.

Day 8, July 9. Focaccia, Take II: Garlic Scapes!

This went much better the second time around... I think...GARLIC SCAPES!  I'd never heard of these beautiful beings until I received them from Boston Organics.  But all my relatives who saw them since then have remarked "omg, Americans sell them?  It's ___ in Chinese."  I'm still playing around with them to see what else they can do but so far, I'm a fan of these beauties.  If you want a fantastic musing on garlic, check out Jesse's poem: http://rhymes-with-messy.blogspot.com/2011/06/garlic-glorious-garlic.html












So we had breakfast while I waited for the dough to rise.

 Watched a little lady gaga being interviewed by a Chinese woman wearing noodles...

I made a conference call...  Had some lunch...  vegetarian wontons with fresh vegetable soup (broth made with garlic scapes, carrots, carrot leaves, kale stalks)

 And finally it was time to spread the dough, wait for it to rise some more, and bake.

Much better this time!  No burnt tops!  ...but it could've used more salt and olive oil... there goes being healthy...

Day 7, July 8

More lessons learned: You cannot buy a fishburger at McDonald's at 10am...even if you ate breakfast earlier and are ready for lunch at that point.  Further, fishburgers are hard to find, anywhere.

Breakfast:
banana crepes
sausage
toast
milk

Lunch...yes I managed to escape McDonalds fate...

Summer salad:  egg whites, boston lettuce from Boston Organics, tomato, caramelized onions, TJ's basalmic vinaigrette
Mushroom Ravioli: Took the swiss chard from this week's organic box and sauteed it with onions.  Added it to Trader Joe's mushroom ravioli in truffle sauce, alongside half a tomato
Toasted focaccia
Kale egg white drop soup: Made a veggie stock base from carrot tops,  kale stocks, carrots, and onions...  dropped in egg whites

Foccccccaccia

First attempt at baking foccacia or any type of bread for that matter...  Not bad for a first try... but I guess caramelizing onions and then baking them makes for burnt onion tops that need to be scraped off...  lesson learned for next time!

Brunch with grandma

I would've taken pics but the meal was dug into before I had time to pull out the cam... I'm not kidding you, the elderly may take half an hour to walk down a block, but they can be quick when they want to...and have selective appetites...


Gram's meal:
1 Banana walnut pancake with vermont maple syrup
(Pan fry 1 1/2 bananas in butter and remove to place in the batter...
toast walnuts...
Make batter: 1c flour, 1t baking powder, 1/2t baking soda, salt, 1 egg, 1 cup of milk, would've added a teaspoon of vinegar had I had it...or a few tablespoons of sour cream had my grandmum not stuck it in the freezer, caramelized bananas, and toasted walnuts)
1 Egg, over easy
1 vegetarian sausage
1 c milk
1/2 c coffee
1 small piece caramel apple bar

Yes, I could be a housewife...!
I more or less had the same but with soy and skipped the egg...

Speaking of caramel apple bar...I found the missing pyrex bowl and container after grandmum went to bed.  And I couldn't figure out how to get my mouse to work last night (long story) and my trackpad is dead so oh well, pity me, I just *had* to bake.

Here's the rest of the Caramel Apples experiment:

1c sugar
1/2 c water
Put on high heat until boiling (careful!!!!!)
Once it starts boiling, gently swish it around to evenly caramelize sugar
Very very carefully add a pat of butter at a time until you get caramel

There weren't a whole lot of apples left once my grandmum finished snacking on them but I spread what was left onto a greased cake pan and poured the caramel on top.

In a separate bowl, I mixed two eggs and three egg yolks, sugar, flour, baking, salt, and cooled melted butter.  I poured this on top of the caramelized apples and baked at 350 for 30 minutes.
In the future, I'd use a deeper pan perhaps--e.g., a round one.  But it still tasted good :)

Lessons learned in living with the elderly:
1. You need lots and lots (and lots) of napkins.  And if you think you have three times as one needs, get another handful more.
2. Going down the street for lunch is a three to four hour process.  Plan accordingly.
3. Although everything takes ten times as long as usual, life experience gives you an edge on hiding things quickly and well. Expect to spend three hours a day looking for items that have been safely tucked away. Plan accordingly.

The apple baking experiment will finish once I find the mixing bowl that was out... stay tuned.

Apples

Approx 1 c sliced apples

Approx 1/4 c sugar

Approx 1/4 c Trader Joe's pineapple juice not from concentrate

1/2 stick butter in pats

 

Heat until bubbly...