Bread, Wine, Salt

This last week of light posting has been brought to you by a failed oatmeal muffin recipe. I am working on an oatmeal muffin recipe for Lunch in the Park , because we learned last week that Kate makes oatmeal muffins which are so good as to earn her good karma. My last attempt was utterly meh, though my boys ate them happily. I will go back to the drawing board and tweak the formula again.  That is what recipes are, of course, they're chemical formulas and when I try a new baked good I'm doing a bit of science. My last experiment did not produce the expected results, so I have to go change my procedure. I should note that I'm doing all of this work myself and not relying on my mother to do it. That's how science experiments are supposed to be done.  There's a mother at my sons' preschool who doesn't seem to grasp this, and so she weekly regales me with the tales of woe that result from her older son's science project in which she, the mother, must be u...

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for many Christians. (In which we read about making our prayers private and then smear oily ashes all over our foreheads where everyone can see them.) I haven't had ashes in years because my kids are not yet old enough to manage the meditative noon service and my husband sings in the choir at the last service, and someone has to actually be in the house while the kids are sleeping. I didn't expect to be able to go this year anyway, since I knew I'd be spending the day at a hospital offering up my patience, my compassion, my arm strength, and my ability to not roll my eyes at hospital staff in service of a client. As it turns out, I received ashes from the hospital chaplain who was visiting the maternity ward, and I go to explain the whole praying in public/ mess of ashes contradiction to a Jewish doctor who was sitting behind the desk while I received the ashes. The preparations for Lent started before today. On Sunda...

My Husband is the very best of husbands and I wouldn't trade him for anything. He unloads the dishwasher, after all, a task I find tedious, and he never takes it personally when I completely rearrange things he has put in the dishwasher.  I don't like to complain, so we'll say that a feature of his unloading of the dishwasher is that things sometimes go to unexpected places.  So this morning as I was searching for my little blue boxes to pack the boys' lunches I could find the lids but not the bottoms.  I looked in the drainboard, the container drawer, and the other drawer where things seem to go, but they were not in any of those places.  The lunch I wanted to pack didn't fit neatly in the Ziploc lunch containers and I was in a rush, so I shuffled things into containers for sharing and headed out the door. Ravioli and veggies (green bowls for them, glass bowl for me), blood oranges,  blueberry muffins .

Sleep is surprisingly necessary for the proper functioning of my body.  Most of the time I get enough sleep and I wash my hands often enough I can avoid most of The Yuck, the nasal/sinus/chest phelgm monster that travels the preschool circuit.  But my job sometimes gets in the way.  I was up all night on Sunday, so what had been an annoying thing at the back of my throat, easily vanquished with gargling and tea, became a full blown head cold, complete with that most undignified of symptoms, the runny nose.  This morning, after dropping W at preschool and humoring A through a toddler art class I walked to the grocery store to pick up the extra soft tissues, and the ingredients for this soup. This is potent stuff.  You have to be dedicated to garlic and ginger to eat it made with the full amounts.  But it's just the thing when you can't smell and you need something to give you a boost.  It won't cure the common cold, but it will make a lovely companion...

Some Valentine's Week love from my very talented friend Chenoa.