Corn Chowder

For Christmas, my parents gave me some new dishes. The desire for dishes is a family gene passed down from my mother, so it was fitting that she and I picked them out together. They are a beautiful creamy yellow with a great feel. I'm looking forward to enjoying a lot of home-cooked meals on these plates. Among the first pieces I picked out were soup bowls designed to hold a generous portion.

With new soup bowls waiting to be filled, the obvious course of action is to try out some new soup recipes. On Monday night we had corn chowder. It was the perfect recipe for my new yellow bowls.

Mama's Corn Chowder
2 T butter
2 large celery stalks, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
4 cups of chicken broth
1 cup instant mashed potatoes
1 bay leaf
1 15 oz can cream-style corn (w/ liquid)
1 15 oz can whole kernel corn (w/ liquid)
2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
½ c flour
1 ½ cups half & half (or milk)

Sauté the celery, onion, and carrot in butter for 5 minutes in a large stockpot. Don't brown the veggies; sweat them instead. Add 4 cups broth, instant mashed potatoes, and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Your pot will look like this as you bring it to a boil:
Add the cans of corn (with their liquid), sugar, and white pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. The soup will be getting thicker. By now, your pot will look like this:
Combine flour with half & half (or milk) and stir with a whisk until the mixture is smooth. Add this mixture to the soup and simmer for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until thick. Serve in your brand new yellow soup bowls:
Yummy.

Tiny Treat

My Christmas stocking is clear evidence that Santa (or perhaps Mrs. Claus?) has an Etsy account. Santa's stocking acquisition agent picked out all sorts of things to amuse me, a girl who clearly hasn't fully grown up.

Exhibit A? These ponytail holders with tiny pocketbooks printed on a pink background:

They are available from this Etsy shop, one of my favorite places to browse.

Perfect for all of my varied ponytail needs. And trust me, those needs are significant.

No Longer Taking My Calls

Over the weekend, my friend A and her cousin T joined us at Sassafras House to meet the parents and enjoy some post-Christmas cheer. My friend A has been my lifesaver on more than one occasion and regular readers will recall her cousin T from the bathroom re-tiling project earlier this month. Let's just say they are part of my (extensive) team of Jersey-based angels.

T is handy (and amazingly willing to help) so I asked her to bring a drill to hang the new outdoor clock that the Sassafras Sister gave me for Christmas. That project went off with out a hitch and looks great, ready for my summer back deck lounging pleasure:
Then T was also called into service to replace the toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom. The old seat suffered from a loose bolt and had become a pain in the backside (pun intended). It's not just any friend that you implore to help replace your toilet seat, of course. And it turns out that mine wasn't just any toilet seat. Affixed to the house since who knows when, the loose bolt on the seat was stuck. Thus, it could not be tightened to prevent the seat from moving. But neither could it be easily loosened to get a new seat on board.

Internet, I must apologize for inducing you to read about the toilet seat at my home. But imagine how much worse it would be for you if you were T, who not only had to hear about the toilet seat but got to fix it.

That entailed lying on the cold bathroom floor under the toilet. And while A suggested it wasn't the first night T had spent lying on a cold bathroom floor, we were all able to agree that it may have been her first time doing so while sober.

It took a lot of patience and more than an hour to loosen the bolts and replace the seat. T invoked very few swearwords, which is unheard of at this house when home improvement is on the agenda.

But now we have a new seat in the upstairs bathroom. One that doesn't move around. That's most happy.
And the cousins had their revenge by giving my family and I a complete drubbing in a new card game. So it wasn't a complete waste of an evening for A and T.

Real Life Conversations with JT: Poor Service Edition

The backstory: The grandparents recently reminded me of a time years ago when my family was in NYC and had ordered supper at a restaurant. Service was slow and then the waitress appeared at our table to explain that the chef had quit. JT was tickled by the story and kept asking his grandparents to repeat it. On Friday, after we'd all been outside to do some yard work, I made lunch. JT served as the waiter, taking sandwich orders and then delivering the plates to the diners. After all the orders had been served up, as he was taking his own plate to the table, he announced, "I quit." We all laughed. After lunch, he and I had the following conversation:

Mama: JT, would the waiter please clear the dishes from the table?

JT: I quit. I can't do that.

He's turned the story into a game of his own.

Christmas

There is nothing quite like the joy of Christmas day. My son's big shining eyes on that morning just makes all the rough spots in life suddenly smoother.

He's nearly nine years old this year and though he's had some doubts here and there (and a whole lot of questions about Santa's logistics), he's still a believer. His excitement on Christmas Eve was palpable. And yesterday morning, with its abundance of toys and a stocking full of treats, did not disappoint.
Suffice it to say that thanks to Santa, we now own nearly every cactus-themed item in the Playmobil catalog.

Grandma and Grandpa and his Auntie KO and Uncle M supplemented the Western assortment, thus enabling the pirates to join the invasion (and have a place to dock their sloop).
We emptied our stockings of their tiny little treats (every year, that's my favorite part of the day).
Then, while invasions proceeded apace in the living room, I got in a Christmas Day nap (a tradition that anyone who has been up until 1 am on the 24th deserves to enjoy). We had some snacks in the afternoon.
Our friends the R-K family joined us for Christmas supper.
This is my third Christmas as a single mama; there are still moments in the day when I miss my old life and the promise it once held. But Christmas was rich and happy and for at least one day I lived in the moment.

And the moment was most goodly.

Santa Cam

A few weeks ago, JT announced that he'd like to install a secret camera in the living room so that he could see the Man in Red when he arrived on Christmas Eve. I suggested that a Santa Cam would be intrusive and might spoil the fun. The boy reluctantly agreed to allow Santa his workplace privacy.

Now that Santa has filled the stockings and cleared out of Jersey for his travels west, it seemed perfectly acceptable to snap a photo of the treasures awaiting a little boy come Christmas morning.
PS: I hope that Santa found Tiger helpful.

Stalker

Most days, Tiger the cat spends some quality time lurking under the tree. JT thinks Tiger is checking to see if there are packages for him. I think that Tiger has more nefarious purposes.
Each morning I walk downstairs expecting to see that the tree has been tossed over so the cats can have their way with it.

Brrrrrrrrr!

When I was in the 2nd grade and living in northern California, my grandmother came to visit and we went to San Francisco to enjoy the sights of the city at Christmas. So it seemed only fair to continue the tradition more than 30 years later.

The city this time around is New York. The scenes: Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree and Santa at Macy's on Herald Square. And did I mention the biggest cold spell of the season? The temperature was below 20 degrees as we set off on the city-bound train Monday morning. JT's Grandma is a California native and not used to temperatures below 40, let alone below 20. But she had a warm coat and gloves and we hooked her up with a hat and a fleecy scarf. She was quite the trooper.

We saw the tree and walked around to view the windows uptown.
We braved the crowds at Macys....
....and patiently waited to see Santa.
Once we were in Santa's innner sanctum, JT gave a shy smile and let the man in red know that he'd like some Playmobil toys.
A most lovely way to spend the day.

Real Life Conversations with Dad: Smart Mouth Edition

The backstory: Last' weeks adventures in furnace repair ended with the discovery that I have been somewhat remiss in my furnace maintenance duties. The boiler which serves up the steam heat in my home needed some cleaning and general attention that my friendly PSE&G repair man completed under the watchful eye of my father. The end result of repair number three: a much, much warmer home. It's like the furnace has been waiting for years to serve up this much heat.

I came home from yesterday's shopping adventure to a warm and toasty home. So toasty that when I started to make supper, I needed to take off my sweater (relax, I had on a shirt underneath).

Me: It's so hot in here that I feel like I'm in Florida.

Dad: Yeah, well if we're in Florida, where are the damn bugs?

As they say, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Sassafras Clone

Sitting around is not exactly my style. In fact, I'm the sort of person who is always hoping to have a little extra time to get a few more things done. I have often thought about how much more efficient I would be if only I had a clone on hand.

My clone could grade papers while I do the laundry. The clone could change the sheets while I grab a shower. The clone could get supper on the table while I clean the bathroom. Really, the prospects are endless. Yesterday morning I needed to bake some cookies for the basketball game bake sale and I also wanted to work out. This job really called for a clone.

So, while I got in a run, my clone (also known as my mother) baked 6 dozen cookies.
I could get used to this sort of thing.