I took two years of art class in high school. My instructor was grumpy man with a dry sense of humor who drilled us on technique like there was no tomorrow. The first year of art class we learned perspective. There was one perspective…

And then there was another…

And then there was yet another…

And when he tired of teaching perspective, he started in on the shading.

There were still lifes, too, with multi-sided glass bottles. He was mean.

Because I didn’t take art until I was a junior, that meant that I was a senior when I took Art II. (Look at me! I can do math!) I was bummed about that (once I caught on to how the math added up) because I discovered I loved art class, and I wished I could’ve taken all four years. Alas, oil, sculpture, and water colors were not to be my lot in life. (Maybe this is why I am forever mixing oil and water and turning the end result into sweet sculptures?)

But I wasn’t the only slow learner—there was another senior by the name of Brian who was in my same situation, and because we were high-and-mighty seniors with inflexible schedules, we ended up taking the class during Mr. Art Teacher’s free period. As a result, it was more of an independent study, but Mr. Art Teacher never let us forget that we were cutting in on his free period, and he made us suffer for it, too. To teach us the proportions of the human body, he had us sketch each other over and over and over again. I drew Brian bending over, Brian reaching up, Brian doing leg lifts, Brian doing back bends, Brian sitting with his legs crossed, Brian doing a split, Brian swimming, Brian running, Brian spazzing out.

We also learned the proportions of the head, and then we utilized different techniques—pencil point, stippling, cross-hatching—to draw faces.

Pencil point was fun, but very tedious. Do you recognize these eyes?

That’s right, it’s Atticus Finch.

Otherwise known as Gregory Peck.

When my brother was in art class, a few years after me, he drew a picture of the two of us and then gave it to me for a Christmas present.

I was—and am—thrilled. I never give away my art because I do so little of it and because it takes so incredibly long to complete a picture. It now hangs above my sofa, right under a picture of another little boy.

Can you guess who this little boy is?

Yep, it’s Mr. Handsome, back before he had earned the Mister prefix. It appears he always had the handsome part down.

I drew the picture while we were dating. The Grand Matriarch gave me the original to work from and kept my secret for the many months that I worked on it. It was to be a Christmas present, but I didn’t get it done in time, so it turned into a Valentine Day’s gift. But by that time, I had decided that I wanted to break up with him (not because of the drawing). So I hitched a ride with a friend up to his home place in New York over Valentine’s Day weekend, gave him the picture, and then told him our relationship was over. I cried all the way back to Virginia.

Oh, you want to know why I was breaking up with him? Well see, I didn’t think he listened to me very well. He never asked me questions; he didn’t pry into my personal life like all my girlfriends did. He was rather aloof and cool, and I didn’t feel nurtured enough.

But he called me the next day and reported he had already read a good chunk of two different books (recommended by his older sister, bless her heart) about communication and how men and women relate. He asked me questions. He was attentive. I agreed, relieved to the tips of my grief-stricken toes, to give the relationship another shot. Six months later we tied the knot. (And then we fought for an entire year, but that’s too tedious to delve into right now. I’m supposed to be talking about art.)

I started a few other pencil point drawings after that, or maybe it was before—I don’t remember.

You can see the gridding process a little more clearly in the unfinished pictures.

We learned about pastels in the last quarter of my senior year in high school, and then we used pastels to draw a face. (Mr. Art Teacher really knew how to drive home a point.) I chose to draw a picture of an old woman that I found in an old National Geographic magazine. After working on her for nine weeks, I grew rather fond of her and started referring to her as My Granny.

My parents had the picture matted for Christmas, and my father built the frame. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

I’m particularly fond of her fly-away hair and her crinkly laughing eyes. She’s watched over our home for so long that she’s practically a member of the family. In fact, when no one else is around, she talks to me. Sometimes I hold her stick so that she can flex her fingers, but though she pleads most pathetically, I refuse to give her a turn with the hairbrush.

I never draw anymore. I’m not actually an artist. I’m not compelled to pick up paper and pencil and record my world through pictures, and the pictures I did draw didn’t come welling up out of me—all my art was copycat work. Which I don’t think discredits it as art; it’s just not inspired art.

In any case, inspired or not, I plan to teach my kids the techniques that I learned in high school. I saved all my notes from class, so I’m equipped and ready. And, if and when my kids go to high school, I will insist—no ifs, ands, or buts—that they take art every single year.

And I hope their art teacher is good and mean, too.

About one year ago: A bedroom birth. My baby is FOUR years old. I am such an old woman.

I’m a little under the weather. I can tell because I didn’t want coffee this morning and the only times I don’t want coffee are when I’m sick or pregnant … and I’m not pregnant. I’m not even really that sick—I just have an itchy throat, an itty-bitty headache, and extra sensitive eardrums. (Why, oh why, have all my children been gifted with such hearty sets of lungs? We’re a family of noisy windbags—there’s no two ways about it.)

I’m the first to acknowledge that I’m a pansy when it comes to illness. No, that’s not true—Mr. Handsome is the first to point it out. But I have to agree with him; I simply can not cope with even a touch of illness. I don’t understand how some people are able to function when they have fevers. Mr. Handsome is one of those people. He may shiver and shake all night long, but come morning, up he pops, ready to go to work. It’s a mystery.

(Lest anyone think that I’m a complete wimp, let me remind you that I pushed a seven-pounder and two nine-plus-pounders out of my nether regions [the other seven-pounder was evacuated via the sunroof], and I did not have medication and I did not cry. I yelled and swore and whimpered, but I did not cry.)

Despite passing up my coffee this morning, I was not sick enough to stay home from church. We drove the snowy eleven miles into town and, like we do every Sunday, we marched up front, staked out our chairs, and then Mr. Handsome and I proceeded to juggle toys, kids, attitudes, and hymnals (though I didn’t actually sing, myself) in full view of the brethren and sistern. And now this afternoon, after an Ibuprofen and a nourishing bowl of beans and rice, I feel well enough to drink coffee.

And eat a couple brownies.

I know, I know. Sugar weakens the immune system so it’s stupid to eat sweet stuff when you feel blah, but I do it anyway. It’s foolish maybe, but it’s also delicious.

These brownies are astonishingly good—rich, chewy-moist, and so dark they are almost black. This is astonishing because of this one little fact: they are made with cocoa powder, nearly a whole cup of it, instead of the standard bar chocolate. I’ve always thought that cocoa is somehow rather inferior to the bar version, that goodies baked with cocoa will be dry and crumbly-powdery like the cocoa itself, but—oh hark!—I think that no longer. My anti-cocoa-in-brownie world has been rocked, and it’s been a most glorious experience.

These are brownies to call home about, so I did. My mother couldn’t even wait twenty-four hours for me to post the recipe, so I recited it to her over the phone while she wrote it all down. She didn’t quite believe that I could remember the exact recipe without looking and kept asking me to repeat things and saying Now are you SURE you got that right? and How can you REMEMBER this without looking? and Just go look up the recipe and THEN tell me, but I held my ground (in the bathroom where I was hiding from the rest of the family). I gave it to her straight. And now I’ll give it to you, too.

Rock-My-World Cocoa Brownies
From Deb at Smitten Kitchen

I’m wondering if I could make the recipe with an even cup of cocoa. I may try that next time, but if you beat me to it, report back here, okay?

10 tablespoons butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
½ cup flour

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Turn the heat back to low and add the sugar, salt, and cocoa and stir to combine, cook for a minute, stirring steadily, and then remove the pan from the burner. Cool slightly and then stir in the vanilla. Using a wooden spoon, beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the flour and stir to incorporate. Beat it a little longer with the wooden spoon, forty strokes or so (it’s a stiff batter so this is no easy task), and then pour the batter into a greased 8 x 8 inch pan.

Bake the brownies at 325 degrees for 25-35 minutes—the top should be set, but a toothpick inserted in the middle will come out a little wet. Cool, cut, and eat. (The cooling part is optional.)

About one year ago: nothing, so I’ll leave you with some other brownie recipes. Brownies (my standby), Coconut Brownies (fancy-shmancy), and Chocolate Truffle Cake (kind of a brownie, kind of a cake).

Lentils, lentils, lentils. Oh, how I love them! But seriously, they sure do know how to cause problems in my house—strife and anguish, tears and bellyaching, much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Like I said, problems.

Nobody but me really likes them. Oh, they’ll all eat them, though only with the natural consequences clearly outlined: you may not have any more food, AND THAT INCLUDES DESSERT, till you eat your lentils. This is our general rule, no surprises here, but I have to repeat it several times, with painstaking enunciation, for it to sink in.

What’s up with these people? Did they not come from my very own womb? Did I not eat enough lentils while they were in my womb? (I’m not talking about my husband here—though all my children have thought, at one point or another, that he came from my belly, too.)

(And by the way, the Baby Nickel has a specific idea of where each of the kids sprouted in my body. He says that he came from down low, right about the spot of my c-section scar, that Sweetsie came from my tummy, that Miss Beccaboo materialized somewhere in my lungs, and that Yo-Yo came out of my shoulder, or maybe my neck. It’s rather humbling to see the world through my children’s eyes. I am a vessel and nothing more.)

In any case, my approach to lentils is much like my approach to shoofly—I am convinced that at some point they will fall deeply and madly in love with the little legumes and so I doggedly continue to serve them. And again, as with the shoofly, Mr. Handsome is a major stumbling block. Oh, he’ll eat lentils when I serve them (and he acts—most of the time—like a big boy at the table, chewing politely and talking about other things), and he even takes the leftovers in his lunch some days (after I level him with my beady eyes and hiss that he has no other lunch options), but he’s not ga-ga over them.

You’d think that after living in Nepal and Thailand for several months he’d have a little bit of affection for the lowly legume, but he does not. He remains totally aloof, even while I’m mounding the rice and lentils onto my plate, shoving tremendous mouthfuls into my mouth and then collapsing back into my chair, eyes rolling heavenward as I savor the luxurious flavors. He’s one cool cucumber, that man.

To me, lentils are pure comfort food (as is pasta, red beans, buttered toast, popcorn, salsa, granola, tomato soup, and baked corn, so maybe that’s not saying much). I made a batch of them last week during the middle of the stomach bug attack (that I have still managed to successfully evade—three cheers for the SQUIRREL! technique), and I ate them several days straight, once even for breakfast. I served them to a friend who came for lunch and she gave them high praise and ate seconds (as did her kids, lucky woman).

So ignore the wails of my children and the suppressed sighs of my husband and make these lentils. They’ll transport you heavenward, far away from the suffering of the other family members, and that’s gotta be worth something, no?

And one more thing. Please tell me this: what is your favorite way to make curried lentils? I need more ways to torture my children.

Curried Lentils
Inspired from the collection of lentil recipes in Extending the Table

*If you like your lentils hot, feel free to add some minced jalapeno, cayenne pepper, or hot sauce.
*You can see from the pictures that I added a small white potato, too.
*Swap the spinach for other greens, like chard or kale.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons ginger root, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons curry powder
1-2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 cups dried lentils, rinsed
1 large sweet potato, medium dice
1 10-ounce package spinach, fresh or frozen, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, plus wedges for garnish
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish

Put the lentils in a saucepan with five cups of water and simmer till tender.

While the lentils are cooking, saute the onion, garlic, and fresh ginger in the olive oil. When they are translucent (but not browned), add the cumin, curry, and salt and cook for another minute, stirring frequently. Add the potato, spinach, and one cup of water and simmer, covered, till the potato is fork-tender.

Add the lentils (including the liquid, though most of it should have already been absorbed) to the vegetables and heat through. Stir in the cilantro and lime juice and taste to correct seasonings.

Serve the lentils over rice, with a flurry of cilantro on top and a wedge of lime alongside.

About one year ago: orange-cranberry biscotti