Funny story.

Last year, my older daughter got a couple bottle lambs (one died) from a neighbor. Then last fall, some other neighbors gave us a ram. We kept the two separate, for the most part, and then, tired of sheep, my daughter gave the ram to a farmer friend. For months, she half-heartedly tried to sell the remaining sheep. Eventually, she found a farmer who said he could take it with his flock when they went to slaughter. He didn’t say if he would buy it from her or not, and she didn’t care. She just wanted it gone.

But then, when she was loading it into the truck to deliver it to the farmer, she called me on the phone: Mom, I think the sheep is pregnant. So I tromped down to the field and there was the sheep, trussed up and on her back, her bulging belly and swollen udder plainly visible.

My daughter was dismayed. “I just thought she was really fat!”

So she untied the sheep, let the farmer know her sheep would not be slaughtered after all, and made arrangements for a sheep shearer to come.

And then we waited. “Maybe she really is just fat,” I said, as the days ticked by.

But then Thursday afternoon, the sheep started hunching her back and stomping the ground. That night my daughter penned her in the shed. The next morning, she ran down to check first thing. From the kitchen window, I saw her look in the pen and then immediately spin around excitedly to look back at the house.

“I think we have a lamb,” I told my husband, slipping on my flipflops.

Down at the shed, I peered in and there, still covered with blood and goop, was not one, but two, new baby lambs!

We’d missed the deliveries by about an hour, probably. The female lamb is about half the size of the male, but they’re both active and eating.

And the mama is doing a fantastic job caring for them.

So much for my daughter’s plan to get rid of her sheep, ha.

This same time, years previous: stuffed poblanos, a problem, the quotidian (5.22.17), the quotidian (5.23.16), ice cream supper, Shirley’s sugar cookies, the basics, the reason why, through my daughter’s eyes.

It’s marvelously dark and dreary today. Cold, too. I got up in time to go running before it rained, the clouds so low my head practically brushed against them. Now, my exercise gotten, I can actually enjoy the closed-up, cozy house.

I’ve been drinking lots of coffee, and this morning when I was writing, my younger son brought me a mason jar of steaming hot chocolate. I procrastinated on eating breakfast and ended up missing it altogether — but hot chocolate is practically a meal, right? — and then when I went downstairs around noon to check on the kids’ jobs and school work and pull out leftovers for their lunch, nothing appealed to me. Instead, I mixed up a batch of herby garlic flatbread dough — and I got a hunk of feta out of the freezer to thaw — before disappearing back upstair to my room with an apple.

Soon, though, I’ll go back downstairs and fry up the flatbread. I want to take photos so I can share the recipe with you. And I want to eat some. It’s nearly two o’clock, and I’m beginning to get hungry.

But first, let me fill you in on some ailments that I’ve been meaning to tell you about. Maybe you’ll have some advice.

Ailment 1
I have a problem with my eyes.

During the night, or after sleeping, it sometimes feels like the insides of my eyelids are covered with hard bumps that grate against my eyeballs. Sometimes this happens for weeks on end, and then I’ll go for weeks with no pain at all. When it’s really bad — and by “bad” I mean it feels like my eyeballs are being scraped with a cheese grater, or an ice skater is waltzing over my retinas — I have to sit up in bed, unmoving and holding myself at a weird angle (I can’t lay on my back), until the pain subsides.

This all started soon after I had that horrible case of pink eye several years back, so I just assumed that I had some scar tissue on my lids. Over the phone, I asked my eye doctor’s receptionist about the problem, and he said that yes, pink eye can leave scar tissue, but when I asked the doctor himself, he looked at my lids and said, Nope, no scarring, just mild eye dryness. And then he suggested I make moisturizing my eyeballs a part of my nightly regime.

Which I’ve done to little effect: It helps in the moment sometimes, but it doesn’t do a thing to ease the whole problem.

So now I’m thinking I either need a new eye doctor or eye surgery to remove the scar tissue that I don’t have. Or maybe I ought to learn to sleep underwater.

Ailment 2
Earlier this spring, I suffered a horrific case of allergies. For weeks, my sleep was interrupted with nose-blowing. I’d even sneeze while sleeping (except then I’d be awake). Over-the-counter, 24-hour allergy pills did little to help — I tried two kinds — and even Benadryl didn’t do much. Since nothing worked, we started wondering if I was allergic to something in our room. The pillows, perhaps? So I stopped sleeping with them. It helped, for a little, so I bought an allergy-free pillow. But then the sneezing and sniffling came back anyway.

At my husband’s routine appointment with the allergist, he asked about my situation. The doc brushed it off, saying that it’s very unusual that adults develop seasonal allergies — which surprised me. Is that really true?

Anyway, after a couple months, the problem disappeared and now I’m totally fine — no meds and back to sleeping with my feather pillows.

Humph. Maybe we need a new allergist, too?

Ailment 3
Last week I cut off the tip of my finger. I was slicing a hard crust of sourdough bread with the serrated bread knife and, well, then I wasn’t.

Hearing my shouts, my younger daughter came, took one look, and walked off, so then my younger son stepped in, ransacking the house for bandaids and helping me slap them on.

My finger (and thumb, because I’d nicked that, too) bandaged, I sat down in the rocker and, furious and hurting, began crying, which scared my younger daughter who then called my husband who was in the middle of lifting a wall and, upon hearing the tale, got woozy. He offered to come home but I told him no — since the tip of the finger had still been attached (I had contemplated tearing it off the rest of the way but, deciding that the wound would be less painful with a lid on it, I just put it back down and bandaged it on), I figured there was nothing to do. Either it would reattach, or it’d fall off and I’d have a permanently short finger.

(And then my older son got on the phone. “Hey Mom. I understand that being a new amputee can be hard. Would you like me to arrange a therapy session for you?”)

That evening, when I rebandaged the finger with supplies my husband had bought at the pharmacy, I discovered that I’d taken off a part of my nail, too, and that actually, it ‘twas but a mere flesh wound, all things considered. Two days later, I started running again and it didn’t even throb.

And now it looks like the top of the finger may actually be reattaching, whoo-hoo!

Now, my ailments covered, how about some flatbread?

Ever since failing at Nadiya’s flatbread (why the hype over yeast-free flatbread when a little bit of yeast makes such a difference?), I’ve had a craving for the stuff. Yesterday I researched a bunch of recipes before landing on one that called for mixing fresh minced garlic and herbs into the dough. It was spectacular. Pliant and tender, billowy and flavorful, it’s the perfect addition to any curry dish or Middle Eastern meal.

This afternoon, I ate it warm, wrapped around kalamata olives and chunks of creamy feta. It was truly sublime — the perfect afternoon snack — and so incredibly easy to make.

This recipe, I think, is one you’ll want to memorize. Get to it!

P.S. My younger son just came down and reheated the last piece, brushing it with butter and then sprinkling it with feta and drizzling it with lots of honey:

Um … wow.

Garlic Flatbreads with Fresh Herbs
Adapted from The Minimalist Baker.

If you don’t have fresh rosemary, you can use fresh thyme or oregano or dill. Or use all dried herbs — they’ll rehydrate when you add the warm water. Basically, try to aim for a tablespoon of fresh herbs, and a pinch or two of some dried, if you want. But whatever you do, you must use fresh garlic. It’s what makes this bread.

1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup spelt flour, or whole wheat
2 teaspoons yeast
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2 cloves garlic minced very fine
1 tablespoon of minced fresh rosemary (or thyme or oregano)
a pinch of dried thyme (or rosemary or oregano)
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for frying
¾ cup warm water

Measure all the dry ingredients and herbs into a bowl and stir to combine. Add the oil and most of the warm water and stir to combine, adding more water, as needed (I’ve never used the full amount). Turn the dough out onto the counter and knead for several minutes. Place the dough back in the bowl, cover with plastic, and let rise for an hour.

Divide the dough into eight pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into thin, flat blobs (circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, whatever).

Drizzle some olive oil in a hot skillet. Fry one of the flatbreads until it’s bubbling on top and kissed with brown on the bottom. Lift the flatbread, drizzle in a little more oil, and flip, cooking the other side of the bread until golden brown. Wrap the flatbread in a towel to stay warm. Repeat with the remaining flatbreads.

Serve the flatbreads warm, with curry, butter and honey, cheese, olives, hummus, fresh tomatoes, etc.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (5.21.18), sauteed lambsquarters with lemon, after one year: Costco reflections, finding my answers, the trouble with Mother’s Day, the quotidian (5.21.12), rhubarb streusel muffins.

Back at the start of the pandemic, the pressure to cook all but disappeared. Feeding my family — just my family — required next to nothing of me. I missed the thrill of churning out large quantities of food. I missed the potlucks and parties and the people dropping by. It was boring. It was depressing.

Now, though, I’m beginning to relax into the easier routine. As I adapt to the rhythm of feeding six people three meals a day, I’m finally finding a balance. I refrain from doubling recipes so I have reason to cook more often. I add side dishes. I get creative with leftovers. I delight in shopping my freezers and pantry shelves. And whenever I manage to weave in the bits of produce that my daughter brings home from the farm or that I pull from my garden, I get a little tingle-zap of joy.

I try a lot of new recipes, too. Take Sunday, for example.

Inspired by Nadiya (that woman’s a gem), for breakfast I made spotted dick (aka Irish Soda Bread but come on, saying, “Would you like another piece of spotted dick?” is much more entertaining) and my younger son made homemade butter to go with.

Then for lunch, I made shawarma, flatbreads, and a broccoli salad with yogurt dressing, all from Nadiya. The flatbread was a bust — not nearly tender and pliable enough — and no one really cared for the broccoli salad. Also, in the process, I accidentally and violently threw a whole coffee grinder of coriander seeds on the floor.

And then I dumped the broccoli….

Somehow, though, and clearly in spite of me, the shawarma was absolutely outrageous. Fall-apart tender and juicy, and with an enormous kick of flavor, it exceeded my expectations by a long, long, looooong shot.

Shawarma, thin slices of meat stacked in a cone shape and then roasted, is typically served sliced off the cone and wrapped in flatbread (aka, gyros). This shawarma, though, requires no cone because — and here’s the trick — packing pieces of heavily seasoned meat into a loaf pan and then baking it yields a surprisingly similar effect! The meat doesn’t shave into bits as nicely as the traditional shawarma (once turned out of the pan, my loaf lost all its shape), but quick run a knife over the whole mess and no one will ever guess it wasn’t roasted on a cone.

Note: if you’re going to save the second pan of meat for another meal, make sure the entire family knows not to touch it on pain of death. And then freeze it immediately, just to make sure. I stupidly stuck the leftovers in the fridge and then my older son, who claims he didn’t get the memo, took two pieces — TWO PIECES — in his lunch today. I am bitter.

Chicken Shawarma
Adapted from Nadiya’s recipe.

Meat’s in short supply, as you’ve probably noticed. Chicken, especially, is hard to come by. Now, whenever I go into a store, if they have my favorite — boneless, skinless thighs — I snatch up the allotted amount, regardless of whether or not it’s actually on my grocery list. (Also, we’ve put in an order for meat birds — gonna raise ourselves some chee-kin!)

The recipe called for two tablespoons (!!) cayenne (on the TV show, Nadiya chirps, It’s not too much, I promise! Cayenne’s sweet!) but no, I’m not buying it. Also, I dialed back the salt a fair bit and it was still plenty.

3-4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
¼ cup vegetable oil, plus more
¼ cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons cayenne
2 teaspoons turmeric
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cloves
green onions, chopped, for garnish
fresh cilantro or parsley, chopped, for garnish

Trim off any big chunks of fat and cut the thighs in half. Coat with the oil. In a small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and spices. Sprinkle over the meat and toss to coat.

Smear a little oil in the bottom and up the sides of two loaf pans. Divide the chicken between the two pans, laying in one piece at a time and pressing them down as you go. Drizzle a little more oil on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. 

Allow the chicken to rest at room temperature for about ten minutes before inverting onto a cutting board. Slice the chicken into thin(ish) pieces, and top with green onions and herbs. Serve with flatbread or rice.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (5.20.19), rocking the house, pinned, moo, campfire cooking, the quotidian (5.19. 14), the quotidian (5.20.13), baked brown rice, my favorite things.