This year, Thanksgiving’s at our place. At last count, there will be about eighteen people banging around our house. In an effort to preserve my sanity and reduce my pre-hosting stress levels, I’ve delegated one hundred percent of the cleaning (plus bedding/sleeping arrangements and all mass-living organizational tasks) to my husband.

As for me, I’m doing the food. At this point, this means lists. Lots and lots of lists. There are shopping lists and will-you-please-bring-these-things lists and menu lists and what-to-do-on-which-day lists. Cooking for eighteen for three to four full days is not a big deal, really. It’s more a matter of organization … and space. (Right about now is when I start dreaming of duplicate large kitchen appliances. Anyone have an extra fridge they want to park on my porch?)

Today I took advantage of the snow-and-ice day and did the following:

*cooked three pounds of bacon (for just in case)
*made the first of two (or three) batches of granola because remember: I still have a family to feed
*mixed up a batch of Ranch dressing
*made three batches of pie pastry
*rolled out and froze four pie pastries
*baked three loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, and, from the leftovers, a pan of raisin bread sweet rolls for our immediate gratification
*I made the glaze for the rolls and icing for the bread
*made hot chocolate … twice.
*started on the cranberry sauce, but I haven’t finished it yet.

Oh, and I also made eggs and pancakes for breakfast, the pancakes with leftover ricotta because I’m trying to clean out the fridge (because I don’t think I’ll be getting a second fridge any time soon).

While I worked, I listened to Thanksgiving cooking podcasts to keep me in the groove (I’m feeling minorly inferior because I’ve never spatchcocked a turkey; have you?), and now I’m feeling just a wee bit fooded out. You know, the bleary-blah feeling one gets when the skies are grey and the entire day’s been spent inside with drifts of sugar and mountains of butter. Before I started typing, I just sat on the sofa staring at the computer, my eyes glazed over. All I really wanted to do was watch movies. (Too bad it’s Thursday.) Maybe I should just close the laptop and go read for awhile?

Perhaps, but first, a recipe.

Remember Olga from Puerto Rico, the woman who brought us yummy treats made by her daughter-in-law? The last week we were there, Olga finally slipped me the recipes, but it wasn’t until last week that I finally got around to making the Panetela, or what I uncreatively call Guayaba Bars.

My husband brought me the brick of guayaba paste when he went to Puerto Rico the first time — a last-minute grab from the airport gift shop. They eat it with cheese, he informed me.

Which is true, I’ve since learned, but the paste never really lit me up … that is, not until I had Olga’s bars, buttery and dense with a strip of tangy-sweet jelly in the middle and a dusting of sugar on top: perfection.

So, like I said, I made the bars last week. They are easy to make, and they look right sharp, too. Seems to me, they’d make an excellent addition to a Christmas cookie platter….

Guayaba Bars
Adapted from Olga’s daughter-in-law’s recipe.

The recipe calls for a whole pound of guayaba (guava) paste but I used fourteen ounces and still found the jelly to be a bit overpowering in its thicker places. Next time, I’ll use just ten to twelve ounces.

To make your own self-rising flour: mix 6 cups all-purpose flour with 2 tablespoons baking powder, 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda, and 1 ½ teaspoons salt. Toss well and store in an airtight container.

1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups self-rising flour
1 stick butter, cut in pieces and softened
10-12 ounces guayaba paste
Confectioner’s sugar, for decoration

Cream together the eggs and sugar until pale yellow. Add vanilla. Add the flour and the softened butter and mix well. The batter will be thick, like icing.

Spread half of the batter in a greased, square glass pan (lined with parchment, if you wish). Slice the guayaba paste and lay the pieces over the batter. Dollop the remaining batter over the paste and spread smooth.

Bake the bars at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into pieces (you can cut the bars sooner, but the still-warm paste will be a bit runny) and then dusting heavily with powdered sugar.

This same time, years previous: Shakespeare behind bars, Thai chicken curry, the quotidian (11.16.15), I will never be good at sales, gravity, lessons from a shopping trip, the wiggles, why I’m glad we don’t have guns in our house, chicken salad.

Yesterday morning, I walked downstairs in the dark, barefoot. Crossing the living room, I stepped on something weirdly soft and squishy. I switched on the light and —

HOLY HECK THERE’S A DEAD MOUSE ON THE FLOOR.

I whisper-shrieked, cursed (my older son witnessed the whole sordid debacle and later soberly announced to my older daughter, “I will forever remember November 6, 2018 as the day I first heard my mother say the F-word”), and then hop-ran to the bathroom to scrub my contaminated toes.

(We still have no idea how a dead mouse materialized on our floor. Best we can figure, it sprung one of our traps — occasionally we find them sprung…and empty — got injured, and then finally, days later, gave up the ghost.)

Now I’m scared to walk around the house in the dark.

 

This morning I fell while running. I was chugging up the gravel road when I heard a large dump-truck approaching the upcoming intersection. My younger son was riding his bike up ahead, so I had looked up to keep an eye on things. Suddenly, my foot nicked a rock and I hit the dirt, skinning my knee and tearing a hole in my leggings in the process. It’s only a small hole — a pinprick really — but still, it’s POP: Proof of Pain.

My computer is dying. When we were in Puerto Rico, some of the keys stopped working so I bought a wireless keyboard. But now the wireless keyboard keys are beginning to stick. The backspace key, especially, is cantankerous. I have to pound on it with all my strength (think manual typewriter-type pounding) which makes the already painful process of backspacing just that much more demoralizing.

Just so you know, this is what my face looks like when I’m type-pounding:

Have you seen Five Foot Two, the Netflix documentary about Lady Gaga? I’d barely known who she was — just some singer sporting outrageously ridiculous clothes — but then I (and my husband, too!) watched the video and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

I have so many questions, like:

*In the midst of such pressure and chaos, how does she tap into her center and find space to create? 

*How can a person live in multiple houses and ever feel at home?
*How can she continuously put herself out there and still have a sense of self?
*She’s a singer. She smokes. WHY.
*How can a person dance all over a huge stage, and up and down stairs, in sky-high stillettos and not break her ankles?
*Doesn’t she ever get cold waltzing around in her tiny t-shirts and super short shorts?
*And about those short short shorts: are they even comfortable?

That night after watching the movie I was so plagued with questions that I had trouble sleeping, no joke. 

Earlier this week we hosted a Salvadoran man for a couple nights. He was part of an advocacy group that’s traveling across the country in a bus, educating people about the plight of immigrants with Temporary Protective Status. Our town was the last stop before the group’s final destination, Washington DC.

I didn’t get to visit with our guest very much — both nights he arrived at our house shortly before bedtime, and in the mornings I left for work before people got up (and after crunching on dead mice) — but my husband did. Later, over supper, he filled us in on our guest’s history of attempted forced military recruitment, asylum seeking, police brutality, prison sentences, etc. — so many experiences that I can’t even begin to comprehend.

The kids reported that he made himself right at home, digging through the fridge for the butter, heating up the pot of beans I’d left on the stove. The first morning, he made them eggs for breakfast and then washed up the dishes afterwards. The second morning when I got back from work, our guest was already gone. Looking around, I noticed he’d emptied the trashes, scrubbed the bathroom sink, made his bed, and, once again, washed all the breakfast dishes.

As I fixed lunch for the kids and me, the lingering scent of our guest’s cologne stinging my nostrils, I found myself wondering: Who was this man who’d been thrown in prison multiple times, twice fled his beloved country, chattered to us in Spanish without pausing to draw breath, and made my children breakfast?

Suddenly, the quote that hangs on my wall by the dining room table, the one linking hospitality and strangers with the entertainment of angels, popped into my head, and I chuckled to myself. Oh yes, I thought, but of course.

Go well, stranger-friend.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (11.6.17), the quotidian (11.7.16), for the time change, “How are you different now?”, yesterday, let me sum up.