My kids don’t see their great grandparents all that often, but whenever they do, there is an immediate connection.

When they came for a visit last week, the children wasted no time claiming them as personal entertainment makers, plying them with books and board games, and showing off their newly learned piano songs.

The Greats jumped right in with remarkable gusto, reading book after book, playing multiple games of chess, explaining the purpose of each of the pills they had to take, and telling stories.

This time around, my grandmother brought her childhood Bible school books, yellowed but in excellent condition, for my kids. She gave my youngest girl a lesson out of it, reading the story to her and quizzing her with the follow-up questions. My girl basked in the one-on-one attention—grandma all to herself!

Soaking them up, that’s what my children did while they were here. When grandpa was sitting by the fire working on the crossword puzzle, my daughter silently pulled a wooden chair alongside his soft one and quietly worked on her (rediscovered) knitting. The kids wanted to sit beside them at the table and ride with them in their car on the evening outing. They wondered where the grandparents went when they disappeared for naps, and how long till they’d come back downstairs.

But my children also exhibited an uncharacteristic reserve, too. A bit in awe of these folks with the wrinkles and white hair and walking cane, they didn’t argue too loudly or crowd them too roughly. They watched their grandparents closely, occasionally coming to me with little whispered reports: I was talking to grandpa but he never said anything because he didn’t hear me!

When I was tucking my daughter into bed the evening they arrived, she asked me their age, which I didn’t know. She didn’t say all that much after that, but I could tell she was both impressed and saddened by my guessed number—it was high. They won’t be around forever and she knows that.

This same time, years previous: a boy book, my apple lineup, chicken and white bean chili, peanut butter cream pie, horseback riding, my year of homeschool torture, chicken salad, Chinese cabbage and apple salad, why I homeschool

“I’m not spoiled, I’m primitive!”

That’s what my older daughter yelled at me after I had a hissy fit about my children having the nerve—the nerve!—to thumb their noses at the food I serve.

I busted up laughing, of course, which stopped her short and prompted her to ask, “What’s primitive mean?”

That’s my girl, the primitive spoiled one. Or the primitively spoiled one. Or the spoiled primate.

Whatever.

My son has been playing with his MP3 player. So far he’s already deleted all the music he put on it. Smart move, sonny.

And he’s discovered it has a webcam and that he can hook it up to the computer and then take pictures of the computer screen which makes the screen go on into infinity, like those three-way mirrors in dressing rooms.

I’m intrigued with the pictures he comes with. Like of me turning my head:

Or of me writing:

Don’t I look tortured?

It’s already come in handy, too.

I sent him out on a six-mile, round-trip bike ride with orders to take pictures of the agreed upon destination spot as proof he got there.

He also took a nauseatingly wobbly video of the trees and road and garbage cans, his voice in the background saying, “You believe me, Mom? You believe me now?”

Here’s a novel way to peel garlic. It really does work! (I entertained the family with a demonstration. My husband was sufficiently impressed.)

I have another little non-recipe to share with you. It’s my method of choice for preparing sweet potatoes in quantity.

I stuff my oven with sweet potatoes and bake them potatoes until they’re fork tender. (I’ve always pricked my potatoes with a knife, because that’s what I do with the white ones, but I recently read that you’re not supposed to prick sweet potatoes. Which makes sense, considering that my baked sweet potatoes ooze lots of juices that turn to balls of char when they hit the stove floor. I’m eager to see if no-prick baking equals a cleaner oven.)

Once the potatoes have cooled a bit, I tear off the peels with my fingers. The skins go to the chickens and the soft potato pieces plop into my large mixing bowl where I give them a thorough beating with my handheld mixer.

Now, at this point I have two options. I can either refrigerate or freeze the potato puree for later (think sweet potato pie!), or I can proceed with the mashed sweet potato recipe. I usually just work up to this step and then refrigerate the whole kit and caboodle. The mashed potatoes tend to disappear over the course of the next several days, usually before I can even get around to making a pie. The kids love to eat it by the bowlful.

But if I want to make this into an official side dish, I stir in a little salt, scoop the mashed sweet potatoes into a greased baking dish, dot the top with butter, and then bake them in a hot oven.

And that, my dears, is about as simple as simple gets.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

sweet potatoes
salt
a little butter

Roast the sweet potatoes, scoop out the soft flesh, and beat it until it’s creamy smooth. Stir in some salt to taste. Spoon the potatoes into a greased baking dish, dot with butter, and bake at 350 degrees till the top gets slightly caramelized and the potatoes are hot the whole way through.

I’m in a cooking rut. Zero inspiration, no happy kitchen feelings, nothing. And I miss it. Because turning out pots of beans, baked potatoes, granola, chef salads, and bread, over and over again, is delicious, but boring. I need my cooking mojo back asap.

I have a hunch that my bah humbug cooking slump is a result of other busyness. There have been lots of writing projects (does this mean I prefer writing to cooking? I’ll have to ponder this) (oh, and last night when I was in bed, my mind racing with lots of writing energy, I said to my man, “I just have so many ideas and things I want to say and not nearly enough time to do it, know what I mean?” “Um, no,” he said), church meetings, homeschooling, cleaning, and celebrating. As a result, I end up cooking the fastest and easiest foods possible, not wanting to waste extra minutes and mental energy on recipe research and food play.

I did, though, come up with a new brownie recipe. It goes something like this.

1. Be appalled at the insane amount of candy your kids hauled in on October 31st.
2. Make lots of disparaging remarks about childhood obesity and rotting teeth, all the while giggling hysterically and shoveling as much candy into your mouth as you possibly can.
3. Sometime in the next 48 hours when you emerge from your candy coma, stuff the majority of the candy in a hide-y hole and try to forget about it. But first, fill a bowl with mini chocolate bars (sadly, or happily, depending on how bad your hangover headache is, this is just a fraction of the chocolate haul).
4. Mix up a batch of brownies.
5. Unwrap (important step alert!) the chocolates—Butterfingers, Kit-Kats, Snickers, Milky Ways, Mars, Reese’s, etc.—chop them up, and stir them into the brownie batter.
6. Bake the brownies, taking care to under bake them by a good 5 to 10 minutes.
7. Once cooled, cut and freeze. Because there is no way (in ha-a-ill) you’ll be able to stop your fingers from shoveling these babies into your mouth.
8. Every time you eat a brownie, ponder these two amazing facts: a) the candy bars do not give the brownies a chemical flavor (and you were sure they would), and b) chocolates are good on their own, yes, but they are so much better when encased in gooey, chewy, rich, chocolate-y brownies.

Halloween Candy-Infused Brownies

Brownie batter (I made a double batch)
Assorted Halloween chocolates, chopped (2-3 cups)

Combine, (under) bake, and eat. Brilliant.

This same time, years previous: a teacher’s lesson