The Red Container

About a week before Christmas my son Gecko and I made chocolate fudge, the same chocolate fudge I used to make with my first stepmom when I was a little girl. It came out just as delicious as the fudge in my memory. But what’s a girl to do with 5 pounds of fudge? You know it, I packaged some up in a red plastic Christmas container and sent it off to my dad in Tennessee.

When he called on Christmas Eve to thank me for it, I could barely understand him for his mouth was full of melting chocolate fudge. I was pleased that he was so happy about the homemade treat delivery. And that was the end of it... until today when a package from my dad came for me in the mail.

Right away I knew it was the red container finding its way home. My husband asked, “Why would he spend $2.89 to send that back to you?” I laughed, and before even reading the note tucked inside it, I replied, “So I can refill it.”

The typed note folded inside the red container was so adorable that I have to share it with you.

The Red Container
I am just a small, lonely, empty red container.
Once I was filled with sweetness that brought joy and love.
Little by little my contents faded away into the belly of a whale.
The whale was very happy but I, I grew empty.
At last there was nothing in me anymore and I languished quietly,
hoping I could go back home to be filled with love again.
The whale grew restless and put me in a big dark envelope and told me,
“Go forth and be filled by your young mistress far away.”
What will happen to me when I get home to my lovely mistress?
Will she fill me with love and send me out again?
Ah, the heavy questions in the life of an empty red container.

Am I making fudge for St. Valentine’s Day or what?

Kitchen Musings

1. We spend about $1000 a month on groceries (and cleaning supplies that I hardly have time to use and don’t know why I am always replacing.) Every week one of us makes a run to the wholesale club and to Walmart. And then there are still multiple trips to the market down the road for the daily essentials like fresh vegetables and whatever thingie I forgot that I must have for tonight’s dinner.



Oh wait, that’s the problem. Every night I stare blankly at the monthly menu planner clinging to refrigerator door. Tonight’s imaginary dinner sounds delicious, as does last night’s and tomorrow’s. I wander back and forth between the refrigerator/freezer and the pantry, opening one and then the other, making mental notes of the possibilities and... I am stymied. How come there is never anything to make for dinner in there?

2. Many many moons ago an old witch gave me a heavy, short, fat, square, green glass bottle filled with some sort of potion that was supposed to magically make my step-daughter TK’s mother’s boyfriend get hit by a bus become a nice guy. I dumped out the liquid spell on the back lawn (sorry TK) and then used that beautiful bottle to house my dishwashing soap all these years. About a month ago Kimani climbed up on the counter and smashed it on my granite countertop. Then for good measure she tossed what was left of it onto the floor where it shattered some more. That green bottle broke into a million sparkling pieces that took me forever to clean up. Not one of them landed on Kimani.

And now I can’t do dishes anymore. Ok, well, I can’t peacefully do dishes... because I have nothing to store my soap in. I keep having to drag out an oversized bottle of Dawn (Remember the trips to the wholesale club?) from underneath my sink. I squirt some into whatever small dish is handy and I use that to wash the daily pileup. Every time I have to dip my sponge into the dish, I wonder what other people do with their dishsoap. I think about those plastic pump bottles that always have dried up soap on them, like a used taper candle. I don’t want one of those.

3. Last Christmas my bestie got me a pressure cooker set. It saved my life. Ok, that is a slight exaggeration but it saved my sanity which is tightly tied to my life so yeah. I have since learned that almost everyone I know is afraid of pressure cookers. Have no fear, this is not your mother’s pressure cooker, it’s your great-grandmother’s. (During and after WWII pressure cooker manufactures, of which there were quite a number, started using cheap and available light-weight aluminum; and the blow ups followed. Those days are over. Pressure cookers are well-made once again.)



It takes a bit of practice to get the hang of it, but pressure cooking is definitely the way to go for about half of what I cook. (Which according to #1 isn’t much these days.) At first it was all about the time-saving. Every evening, hundreds of (ok five) hungry children start whining and I realize it is already 5:08 p.m. and I have not even started staring blankly at the menu planner yet. What to do, what to do? It is so hard to think with Autumn tearfully clinging to my leg begging for food. On autopilot I get out the pressure cooker and my favorite cookbook and a half hour later they all love me again. Now it is my go-to pan because food made in a pressure cooker tastes better. It’s true. You should get one.

4. Pan drippings, what the heck do you do with them? At least once a week I end up with a pan (usually my pressure cooker) that has an inch or so of left over meat juice. It is too slimy to dump down the drain and too watery to dump in the garbage. I could sop it up with handfuls of paper towels and dump it in the trash, or leave it overnight and hope it congeals enough to scrape it into the trash, or scrounge up an empty carton or can to pour it in before placing it carefully in the garbage bin... or I could toss it on the back lawn (in the same place as the magic potion) but then the coyotes might smell it and come eat our cat. (That happened once. It is a horrible story, a funny and horrible story which I will eventually be forced to tell you because some cat lover out there now thinks I am evil for using the word funny to describe a story in which the family cat gets offed by a coyote. When you laugh during the funny part you will forgive me.)

Whenever I am faced with the grease dilemma, I remember that I really want to buy a grease separator. I have this fantasy that if I can get the actual fat out of the pan, the rest can be safely poured down the drain with a swish of scalding hot water. The grease will thicken up nicely and can live out the rest of its life in a paper towel in the local landfill. Is this possible? Do any of you have a grease separator? If not, what do you do with your pan leftovers?

Let Them Eat Cake (Pops)

I told you a couple years ago that Jade is a budding chef and since then I have done everything possible to encourage his cooking adventures. I had hoped if he was involved in the cooking he might actually taste or even eat the food we make, but alas that is not usually how it goes. Except for when we make goodies... then he is all about eating... he eats the ingredients as we put them in, slurps the batter off the mixers, spoons, and bowls, licks the frosting knife, and of course smacks up every “accidentally” spilled sprinkle he can find.

So for Christmas I bought him the Wilton Kids Mega Sprinkles Toteand my mom got him the Nordic Ware Cake Pops Baking Panso that we could make chocolate and sprinkle-covered cake pops.



He was very excited about the idea of making cake pops and has been bugging harassing reminding me almost daily that we have to make them. This week three of my five kids had a snow day on Wednesday... what better way to pass the time but making cake pops?

After the fourth go-round with the pan in the oven (for 16 minutes each time) and lots of batter still left in the bowl, I decided that we are definitely buying three more cake pop pans. Then once the house smelled truly delightful and all the candy melts and sprinkles were lined up and ready, I read the part where Gina (of Skinnytaste) says to chill the cake balls for 45 minutes in the fridge. Uh, ok...

It felt like hours after we had first begun our big adventure when we were finally ready to start dipping. The Gecko chose black candy melts, Jade chose red, and I chose white. I microwaved the candy to get things going and then put the glass cups into a pan of simmering water to keep the chocolate soft. The first thing we realized is that the little cake balls did not want to stay on the sticks and that the chocolate was too thick and heavy for them. We glopped the chocolate on and then watched sadly as the sticks poked through or the cake balls slid down their sticks.









No matter the setbacks, the boys totally enjoyed decorating their cake pops and you can surely tell they are just about ready to debut in Martha Stewart...



And no matter how ugly naturalistic my boys’ pops turned out, rumor has it that they were delicious anyway.



I don’t know if I ever told you this but I loooove to cook, and I am kinda good at it. And totally screwing up cake pops is just not acceptable to me so... today we tried again. This time I thinned the melted chocolate (with a big dollop of Crisco...ewww gross, I know but, a). it works and b). there are grosser things in life to worry about) and I insisted that we wait the minute after dipping and before decorating that Gina suggested (and in our excitement we disregarded last time). Those two little changes made a huge difference in physical as well as aesthetic results as you can see...





And a little birdie told us this batch was scrumptious too...