I had a breakdown this morning.

The kids started fighting with each other right from the get-go. They fussed about school work. They fussed about chores. They fussed about the height of their spoons, for crying out loud! I had to, for the thousandth time, point out the toys and junk and dirty socks that needed to be picked up. Pajamas were strewn over the floor long past the getting-dressed time. Someone had knocked all the coats off the hooks while looking for a particular one and then left them all in a heap. And then when I finally got to the point where I could sit on the sofa with the big kids to do our reading, the littles interrupted me repeatedly. Sweetsie begged to do her school work and then fussed when Nickel got too close, which then, amazingly enough inspired Nickel to get even closer. (DUH, Children, DUH!) Interruptions are normal, but it felt much worse today because I was trying to explain element #39—yttrium—which was a frustrating proposition considering I can’t even pronounce the element, let alone explain it.

So I burst into tears. (Come to think of it, this was maybe before we got to Yttrium. But in any case….) I sat on the sofa and sobbed. I not only cried, I cried to the kids. I told them that I’m tired—tired of telling them to do things that they already know they need to do, tired of thinking up consequences when they don’t listen, tired of them picking on each other, tired of them trying to get by with doing the minimum, tired of them purposefully turning a blind eye to the messes. I informed them, between heaving sobs, that I don’t like spending my days directing, bossing, and meting out consequences. They could do better and we all knew it. I wrapped up my saga with something lame and heartfelt like, “I’M SO TIRED AND I JUST WANT US TO ALL GET ALONG!” Sniff. Hiccup.

The kids were speechless. Sweetsie stared at me, half standing and half sitting, not sure where to go or what to do. Yo-Yo didn’t move a muscle. Miss Beccaboo leaned on me extra hard and then got up to fold a blanket that was laying on the floor. I honked my nose, and then opened up the Bible and read to them about the Ammonites.

The end.

Except not really. While I felt better after my emotional hissy fit, I was still tired. The kids did their work, and we plodded slowly forward through millimeters and Islam, envelope addressing and piano. The littles played and fought and screamed their way around the property, interrupting us every fifteen minutes to bring us a newly laid egg. And then my sister-in-law called to see if I’d meet her at the park. She’d watch the kids, she said, if I wanted to go for a walk. I did. And that helped. A lot.

We all came back to my house and I took my turn watching my niece and two other kids (a mutual friend had joined us) while their mothers went for a walk together, fed everyone lunch, visited with the mamas when they returned, made blondies, and all together felt much more in control of my life, productive, and hopeful. When everyone left, I put my kids in their rooms for rest time and then ate an embarrassing quantity of the still warm, ooey-gooey blondies.

I’m still on tender hooks, but I’m feeling better now. Fresh air, human interaction, blondies, coffee, and rest time make for a pretty powerful picker-me-upper.

And thank goodness for that.

I discovered this recipe several weeks ago and have made them a half-dozen times since then. At least.

They couldn’t be easier, really. I mixed up this latest batch while cleaning up after feeding lunch to seven children and two adults (not counting myself), holding a semi-intelligible conversation (though that may be up for debate), washing two and a half dozen eggs and selling one dozen (though that may have taken place while the blondies were in the oven), feeding the Baby Nickel more and more and more food (I don’t think it’s humanly possible for a child of his size to consume as much food as he did), cutting the heels off the loaves of bread so Sweetsie could gnaw on them (apparently, she was starving), washing dishes, keeping a watch out the windows at the children streaking (not literally) around the property, and double-checking the recipe on line. One would think I would have a breakdown after all that, but I didn’t. All that hubbub only served to make me feel good.

(This does not mean that my children need to act up even more in order for me to maintain my equilibrium. I just want to be clear about that, on the off-chance that you were thinking such utter nonsense. Not that you would ever say such an insensitive thing, of course, even if you did think it. However, if you did say that, I can promise you our relationship would suffer. Especially on days like today when I’m teetering on the brink. On the brink of what, I’m not sure. My eyes are squinched shut ’cause I don’t want to know.)

But about the life-saving blondies. They can be whipped up faster than the mood shifts of a PMSy mother of four (though I’m not PMSy, currently). That’s saying a lot, dearies. All you do is this: melt 7 tablespoons of butter in a bowl (or pan), stir in a cup of sugar, an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a cup of flour and YOU ARE DONE. (Of course, you can add all sorts of goodies to the batter, and I consider chocolate chips to be nonnegotiable, but you could leave those out if you’re not feeling up to climbing up on a stool to get to the chocolate that is stashed in the uppermost cabinet above the microwave.) Spread the stiff mixture in a pan, pop it in the oven, and twenty minutes later, grab a hot pad and pull your saving grace from the oven.

Feed the blondies to your children, all except the poor little one who forfeited any potential sweets because he called you a bad name earlier today. You, of course, did not reciprocate, so you eat his share. And then some. (When no one is looking.)

Blondies
Adapted from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen

Deb’s recipe calls for a whole stick of butter, but I found the resulting bars to be too greasy. Cutting back to 7 tablespoons seemed to do the trick.

Some of the add-ins I’ve used include: chopped pecans, chocolate chips, mini-caramel balls, and coconut. See Deb’s post and the subsequent comments for other add-in possibilities—she includes a long list of ideas.

7 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 pinch salt (update: a scant ½ teaspoons)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
½ – 1 cup add-ins (chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, coconut, candy, etc), optional

Stir the ingredients together in the order they are listed. Spread the dough into a greased, 8 x 8-inch pan and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

They are quite gooey while warm, but set up considerably after cooling. They freeze well.

Yield: not enough. Make a double batch.

About one year ago: Meatballs, with lemon zest, oregano, and Parmesan.

This morning I got sweaty hot hanging up laundry while standing a foot off the ground on a lingering snow bank in a pair of Mr Handsome’s rubber boots. (I was wearing other clothes, too, but no coat.) As I pinched the clothespins to fasten the towels to the underwear to the shirts, three separate flocks of geese flew above me, heading due North. I felt like kicking up my heels to the tune of their nasal honk-honks.

Which was a good thing because The Baby Nickel was using a hammer in the clubhouse and I had to ‘kick up my heels’ (read, walk/waddle/stomp) the whole way across the back forty to confiscate it. And then to the house because Yo-Yo was hollering about Something Or Other. And then over to the pump to redirect (that’s such a nice way of saying ‘making her quit’) Sweetsie who had decided that two feet of melting snow didn’t provide sufficient moisture for the great, gloppy, squishy outdoors and was filling up the green watering can, and completely disregarding my stern “turn it off right now” commands.

It was a rough day. All four kids decided to cop an attitude. Simultaneously.

Take lunch, for example. Sweetsie coughed without covering her mouth or turning her head. Miss Beccaboo yelled, “COVER YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU COUGH!” and then drove the point home by coughing in Sweetsie’s general direction without covering her mouth.

“Both of you go sit on the sofas,” I ordered. “Sweetsie, you on the brown and Miss Beccaboo, you’re on the green. Now, practice coughing into your elbow for a bit.” They commenced hacking.

The Baby Nickel looked at me and then coughed, mouth uncovered, all over the table. “Do you want me to go sit on the sofa till I can work it out?” he inquired happily, sliding off his stool before I even had time to answer.

And so it went.

Last night when I was tucking Sweetsie into bed, she said, “Can we have Dutch puff for breakfast tomorrow? We always have granola and oatmeal and baked oatmeal and I’m tired of that stuff!” I studied her, my sulky, blond-headed, thumb-sucking third child, and then said yes.

This afternoon she came into the kitchen where I was preparing to bake a pan of baked oatmeal for tomorrow’s breakfast. “Why do we always have to have this rotten old stuff! I don’t like baked oatmeal! We always have to eat it!”

“Honey,” I said, “You can’t have everything you want all the time. I listened to what you said last night and made Dutch puff for breakfast this morning, so I don’t want to hear you complaining now. I don’t want you to be a kid who fusses whenever you don’t get what you want. You need to appreciate what you have and quit the whining.”

“Then why don’t you give me to Shannon!” she retorted. (My friend, mother of Sweetsie’s friend.)

Humph, I thought. Don’t tempt me.

Ponder this: Life is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

For much of the morning my kitchen windows were foggy because I was boiling down another four gallons of sap to yield another pint of liquid gold. If you try to tell me I’m not a magician, I won’t believe you.

Mr. Handsome set the alarm for three a.m. Monday morning. He needed to take the two loaves of bread that was busy proofing in the refrigerator out of the refrigerator so that they would be ready to go in the oven first thing in the morning—he wanted to give a loaf to the owners of the house where he’s been working over in WV. I left the house before him that morning to go to an appointment, all four kids in tow. The house was a disaster when we left, but five hours later when I returned, it was spotless, the only thing out of place was a solitary loaf of bread, wrapped in a red-checked cloth, that was sitting on the counter by the stove, forlorn and forgotten.

The peanut butter sandwiches we had for lunch were extra delicious.

There are still huge swatches of snow on the ground, several feet deep in some spots, but there are also huge bare areas. The kids run around in shorts and tee-shirts, sprinting through the drifted snow in their bare feet to get to the trampoline, the clubhouse, the chicken coop, the barn. When they come inside, their fire engine-red toes track water and mud everywhere.

Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo painted their arms and legs with mud—it was their armor, they said—but then they couldn’t wash off at the pump because the water was too cold (and they had to stand in snow to get to it).

This climate is foreign to me. I feel like we’ve been relocated to a different country, maybe Iceland, and like a National Geographic photographer ought to be snapping photos of our exotic existence.

The robins were singing this morning.

I know I’ve been loading you up with carb recipes. Consider it your last chance to indulge before we get inundated with crunchy green things. Before long we’ll all be outside digging in the dirt, and our tastebuds will have shifted from craving stews and hot biscuits to longing for spinach, lettuces, and new peas.

But we’re not quite there yet. We still have a few more weeks left in which to use up all that produce that got put up last growing season. And so we grit our teeth and cook up another bag of frozen green beans, open another jar of canned fruit, thaw another quart of strawberries (to go with the Sweetsie-loathed oatmeal breakfasts).

The following soup recipe does not cause me to grit my teeth, flavor-wise, in any way, but it is, in my mind at least, a winter dish. Hot soup equals frozen ground, no?

However, if you have a few wrinkled, sprouting spuds rolling around in the bottom of the crates down cellar, this recipe is for you. It’s a deeply comforting soup, guaranteed to make you feel like you’re still snuggling at your mother’s breast. Even though the mere thought of simmering and boiling may make your spring-lusting soul cringe, this soup is bound to make you relax, slow down, and take it one muddy day at a time.

On the other hand, it might make you want to get outside right this very minute and sow even more potatoes than you were originally planning on planting.

Creamy Potato Soup with Bacon and Boiled Eggs

5 pounds potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 onions, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 bay leaf
5 cups of water
1 cup cream or half-and-half
12 eggs, hard-boiled
6 pieces of bacon, chopped
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups grated cheese such as Cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Colby

Fry the chopped bacon in a large soup pot till crispy. Remove the bacon pieces and set aside. Drain off all but two tablespoons of the bacon drippings.

Add the onion and celery to the soup pot and saute over medium-high heat for about ten minutes or until they have softened. Add the chopped potatoes, the bay leaf, and the water and simmer till the potatoes are fork tender. Add the salt, pepper, and cream and heat through (do no boil). Remove the bay leaf and taste to correct seasonings.
To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top each bowl with a diced, boiled egg, some crumbled bacon, and a generous sprinkling of cheese.

About one year ago: my OCD indulgence and a warm winter day. Apparently, what goes around, comes around.

The children are outside cavorting in God’s white, cold, windy, big world, and I’m inside doing one, or all, or a combination, of the following: twiddling my thumbs, checking email, baking biscuits, pacing, taking pictures, making business phone calls, and writing. It’s hard for me to settle into a groove when my kids are playing so nicely. I feel like I need to do something important to fully appreciate the blessed peace, but since I’m not sure exactly what that important thing would be, I fritter away the precious moments thinking about what would be the best way to spend it. Follow? No, I didn’t think so.

The other reason I have such trouble settling down is because at any minute (LIKE RIGHT NOW) the doorknob will rattle and a kid will come stomping in and demand something of me. Loudly. So whatever I choose to do has to be something interruptable. (And yes, spell check, that is a word.)

So I’m making and photographing and (soon will be) tasting biscuits. I figured (after I started them) that they were an all-around good activity to get into because if the kids get hungry, then I can just hand them a brown paper bag filled with piping hot biscuits and send them off on their merry way, thus buying me more time to write about the bag’s contents…which would be biscuits, in case you’re having trouble following.

Okay, now I’ve shipped out some buttered biscuits, fielded another phone call, and I’m almost out of time. Let’s get down to business.

I don’t make biscuits all that often. They involve last-minute work, something I don’t need while in the midst of The Arsenic Hour (when everyone is falling apart at the seams and you seriously consider sprinkling some arsenic in their food), and often by the time I’ve finished pulling together the main dish and a couple veggie sides, I’m ready to ditch the bread side all together, or else just slice up a loaf of sourdough if it’s absolutely necessary to have another starch (and it usually isn’t—I was raised by a mother who thought it appalling to serve both spaghetti and bread sticks).

But there is something quaint and comforting about a hot biscuit. Light and tender and made just for that moment. Because of the work required, biscuits aren’t an afterthought, but rather an actual thought-out gift, made all the more special because they aren’t a central part of the meal.

So what does it say about my gracious hosting skills that I preassembled biscuits for our company dinner last week and then forgot to serve them? I don’t think it says anything actually, except that I am an airhead. Even while I was groaning over my ditzy-ness, I knew we were okay food-wise, seeing as we had a triple batch of Indian chicken and mounds of brown rice, green beans, applesauce, pickled beets, and chocolate-dipped pistachio shortbread for supper. I guess you could say the biscuits weren’t exactly crucial.

I made the forgotten biscuits for lunch a couple days later. My parents were visiting and I served all the leftovers from the former company dinner (and we’re still eating the Indian chicken leftovers). I enjoyed the biscuits, but they didn’t rise as high as I had hoped.

I made biscuits again for supper last night. These rose sky-high (perhaps because the oven was hotter), dragging my droopy spirits right up along with them. Throughout the rest of the evening, whenever the word “biscuit” floated through my brain, I had happy thoughts. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get the kids to bed so I could have one of the leftovers.

There were still two biscuits when I went to bed and I told Mr. Handsome in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed, under any conditions whatsoever, to touch those biscuits in the morning. They were for my breakfast. And my first thought upon waking this morning? Biscuits and coffee for breakfast! Whoo-hoo!

I am officially obsessed.

You know how leftover quick breads often seem to turn dry and tasteless after a day or two? Well, these biscuits don’t seen to have that problem (though they’ve only sat around for about twelve hours, max, so I can’t say I know this to be actually true). Even twelve hours after being pulled from the oven, they are still light and flaky, tender on the inside and slightly crispy around the edges. I’m kind of crazy about them.

As for the biscuits I made this morning, it appears that they were trying to do jumping jacks in the oven. The hot, hot air made them leap high and then freeze, slightly slumping over to one side.

Beautifulness!

Deliciousness!

Forget what I said about not being a biscuit lover. I didn’t know what I was talking about. And now I do. I am, now and forevermore, a biscuit devotee, buff, afficionado, fan, etc, etc, etc.

Sky-High Biscuits
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads by Bernard Clayton Jr.

A couple notes about the ingredients:
1. There is no sugar in these biscuits, so for those of you who are abstaining from processed sweeteners for lent, eat up. Warning: eat one of these biscuits spread with butter and drizzled with honey and you’ll feel as guilty as sin.
2. Lard. I use lard. I love lard. Lard is light and lovely and ethereal. But, if you’d rather not use lard, use butter or solid vegetable shortening. (But lard is better.)
3. The recipe calls for milk, but I’ve been using some soured raw cream that I found in my freezer. Do what you’d like, but I’m convinced that the cream makes the biscuits even better.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup lard (see note)
3/4 cup cream (or half and half or milk—see note)
cornmeal for sprinkling

Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Using a fork, cut in the lard. Add the cream and stir to combine. The dough will be dry and crumbly. Turn the dough out onto the table and knead briefly, just enough to bring it all together. Roll, or pat out, the dough till it’s about ½ inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter or a glass, cut out the biscuits. (Important: cut straight down through and come back up again without twisting the glass, as twisting the glass will smear the edges and perhaps inhibit their sky-high rising inclinations.) Gather up the dough scraps and re-roll and cut, till all the bits have been used up (but be gentle—don’t overwork the dough).

Place the biscuits on a greased baking sheet that has been lightly sprinkled with cornmeal and bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Yield: 8-12 biscuits, depending on the thickness of the dough and the size of your biscuit cutter.

About one year ago: Dark Chocolate Cake with Coconut Milk.