On Saturday, we all went to the annual Mennonite Relief Sale. It’s a big-time event, with a huge auction, lots of baked goods, ethnic food, fun stuff for kids, and so on, with all proceeds going towards Mennonite Central Committee, our church’s relief organization.

In other words, the more donuts you buy, the more you help the poor.

It seems kind of screwy to me, this type of do-gooderism. All the clapping and cheering when a quilt bid shoots up over the thousand dollar mark. The sugar highs, the bloated stomachs, the cheap toys that will soon find their way to a landfill. Is this really an effective way to alleviate poverty?

Yes, yes, it’s about community, I know. It’s about a bunch of people rallying for a common cause. It’s festive, kind of like a huge family reunion, and I haven’t missed the weekend for years.

It’s tons of fun, but still, it makes me feel funny.

Anyway, it was while I was standing outside the hamburger and hotdog stand waiting for my son to finish up his shift that I had an important conversation with my friend. It was about popcorn. (I think it’s safe to say that everything in my life revolves around food, yes?)

We were discussing kettle corn (which was being sold there, but of course), and she said her family had recently started making popcorn with maple sugar. “I pop the corn in coconut oil, and we add a couple spoonfuls of maple sugar and some cinnamon to the kernels. Then when it’s done, we add butter and salt, too.”

“Cinnamon?” I asked, not really paying attention. I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s just that we were surrounded by hundreds of fellow Mennonite, and I was a little distracted.

“Oh yes, it gives it a nice flavor.”

“Mm. Maple and cinnamon, it does sound good…..” My eyes and mind were wandering again. I forced them to focus. “But don’t you have trouble with it burning?”

“No, we just shake and stir the whole time. The popcorn starts to stick together because of the sugar, so you have to get it out of the pan as soon as it’s done.”

“Mmm… Hey, who’s that woman over there?” I said, because I really can’t carry on a conversation and people watch at the same time. “Does she look familiar to you?”

By bedtime that night, the too-many-donuts-and-potato chips feeling had faded, but the passing popcorn conversation lingered. And as it lingered, it intensified, so that by the following night, after I had made a triple batch of sweet and spicy popcorn and a triple batch of regular butter popcorn (that’s three cups of kernels, eek), I grabbed the bag of homemade maple sugar out of the freezer and set the popper back on the burner for one more batch of popcorn.

And, wow! Holy kerpopping corn! Not only did my husband tell me he liked it, he made eye contact with me while saying so. And folks, when I get the eye contact, it means something is seriously good.

I made the popcorn again on Monday because we were having a rough day and because I wanted to do a post about it (the popcorn, not the day) and because I didn’t eat enough for lunch and supper wasn’t coming around fast enough (probably because I was making popcorn) and because I really, really wanted to taste that maple-y sweet saltiness again.

The melted maple sugar does this fantastic thing where it coats the kernels with a crust so faint and delicate that it disappears with the first bite. And the maple-cinnamon flavor is profoundly delicious but so mild that it makes you want to cram handfuls of the stuff into your mouth on the off chance you might capture more of its ethereal sweetness. But no matter how much you cram, the flavor remains aloof, more an essence than a solid taste. Such a tease!

Maple Sugar and Cinnamon Popcorn
As half-heard from my friend Kris

This is the first (and second) time I’ve ever made kettle corn successfully and it’s all because of my whirley-pop. I’m in love with my whirley-pop and I’m even more in love with it now that I know it can turn out such awesome popcorn.

½ cup popcorn kernels
1-2 tablespoons coconut oil
3-4 tablespoons maple sugar
1/3 – ½ teaspoon cinnamon
2-3 tablespoons butter, melted
coarse salt

Put the popper on medium-high heat and add the coconut oil. When the oil is good and hot, dump in the popcorn kernels, maple sugar, and cinnamon. Stir without ceasing until the popping has stopped. Immediately dump the popcorn into a large bowl and toss with melted butter and salt.

This same time, years previous: rustic cornmeal soup with beet greens, donuts, sweet rolls

I’m grumpy. Yesterday I was all cozy and happy and warm and today I’m bite-your-head-off grouchy. Frailty, thy name is woman! Bah.

A lot of it has to do with one child who refuses to stop with the snarky. She spews venom, calls names, and doesn’t do any of the things she’s supposed to do. After coming downstairs from one of my many attempts at reasoning with her, I picked up a stool and heaved it across the kitchen.

But only in my mind.

Instead I slapped together more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the masses and made a speech about how rest time would be extra long because I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t get some peace and quiet.

But enough about that. I’m sick of wallowing. So … how about I tell you about my latest money making adventure fail?

Saying “latest” in relation to making money is kind of slap-your-knee hilarious because I NEVER embark on money-making adventures. I am so not entrepreneurial. But a friend of mine, a couple actually, told me about how they made all this money donating their plasma, so I decided to try it.

It wasn’t a quick or easy decision. The donation center is 25 minutes from our house, and two trips a week would make a noticeable wrinkle in our calm (GROUCHY) home routines. I talked to a number of people about it, called the center several times, scrutinized the calendar, and then went for it.

The first time I showed up at the place, I didn’t even get passed the preliminary sign-in because I had brought the wrong ID. (I took “original social security card” to mean The Original Social Security Card. But apparently there’s the little problem of a name change?)

The second time I went in (with a large white envelope stuffed with every scrap of identification I could find, from several copies of our marriage certificate [in case the paper wasn’t the right thickness or something] to insurance cards to passports), I made it passed the identification station only to get hung up at the finger prick place. My hemoglobin was 36 percent when it needed to be 38 or higher.

On the way home I stopped at a pharmacy for some iron supplements, and over the course of the next two weeks I popped pills, suffered upset stomach and constipation, and contemplated the wisdom of this new endeavor.

The third time I went to the center I made it passed the blood prick place (39 percent hemoglobin, yay!), got to enter my name in a drawing for an ipod touch, made it through the 30 minute computerized questionnaire in which I signed my life away, passed my physical (and got a bag of fish crackers and a bottle of water), and finally, finally made it onto the donation table.

The nurse hooked up the bags and wires and slapped my identification stickers all over the blood draw tubes before telling me to make a fist so she could check my veins. She poked about for a minute before saying, “Let me see the other arm.” She poked that one for just a minute, and then, “I think I need someone a little more experienced.”

Someone A Little More Experienced came over and poked my arms for just a second before excusing herself. I could see her conferring with someone out in the hall. Then she came back and chirped brightly, “We’re going to have to let you go today. Your veins are too small.”

She must have mistaken my confused What The—? look for disappointment because she said encouragingly, “What I suggest you do is go home and do some exercises to enlarge your veins. You can do things like squeeze a ball while you watch TV—that should help. And then come back and try again in a couple weeks.”

I thanked her and calmly gathered my stuff, but inside I was busting up all over the place. My veins were too small? Vein enlarging activities? Good grief, and yeah right, whatever! I stick my neck out, try to make a little money, and bam, I get told my veins are too small. Ha!

So I’m out ten bucks for the iron constipation pills, another ten or fifteen for gas, several hours for time, and I have nothing to show for it except a bag of orange fish crackers that I already ate. And the new self-awareness that I have small (does this mean they’re sexy?) veins.

Of course, there is the off-chance I’ll win that ipod touch…

This same time, years previous: the donut party, part one

It’s blustery and cold, but I’m sitting on the floor in front of the fire, warmed from top to bottom and inside and out by:

1. Coffee
2. Chocolate
3. A nap
4. The fire
5. My fuzzy blue hoodie
6. A quiet house because my husband just left to do The Kid Shuffle—dropping off kids that are not ours and picking up the ones that are, the end result of which will be our whole family, back home, for a movie and popcorn, and maybe some Hamlet, too.
7. The release and relief that comes from completing my obligations. Which, in this case, were:

a. church (I managed to wear matching boots!)
b. a potluck (I referred to my list and it was a headache free event, yay!)
c. a drama (my life is a drama, yes, but this was a staged drama)

Our church’s worship committee sent out a group email to some of us asking if we’d be willing to do some Biblical storytelling (which is a fancy way of saying telling the story instead of reading it). I was studying the email one morning, debating whether or not I wanted to go through the ordeal of getting up in front of the church and attempting to not embarrass myself, when I became aware that two boys, my son and his friend, were sitting at the table behind me slurping up their breakfast cereal. “Hey boys,” I said. “How would you like to do a drama for church some Sunday?”

“Yeah!” they shouted, fearless boy creatures that they are.

And so one afternoon during rest time I read through a couple different versions of the plagues and jotted down a sketch. The first time I read it through with my son, his whole face lit up. “You wrote this?” he said. “Wow! You’re good!”

His amazement startled me—it was just a rough little sketch, nothing fancy about it. But then I realized that he was seeing and understanding, perhaps for the first time, the act of composing, up close and personal. He’s read and listened to lots of stories, and he’s seen me type for hours at the computer, but never before (really? can this be true?) has he seen a story dreamed up, jotted down, and then brought to life with voices and facial expressions and movement—a story just for him and his friend. It was a light bulb moment for him. (That he thought I was endowed with magical powers just made it that much better.)

On the car ride to church this morning, just the two of us because we had to get there an hour early for another practice, I asked him if he was nervous.

“Not really,” he said. “I’m just excited. I wish I could do this every Sunday!” Seriously? Whose child was this? My husband has not one drop of actor blood in him, and I was up since five this morning, mulling over all the bad grammar and storyline inconsistencies and trying to dream up more ways to bring the sketch to life. How in the world did a child of mine escape the stage fright curse?

The boys pulled the drama off without a hitch. (There were a few cases of word garblage, but I don’t count those as “hitches.” They are 11-year-old boys, after all.) The mics worked, neither of them choked on the pita they were chewing, and they didn’t get a wild case of the giggles or mess up the order of the plagues. Oh, and neither of them fell down. So that was good.

Now the little adventure is over and I can bask in the stress-free calm. In fact, the feeling of relief and relaxation is so deep and marvelous that I think it might be worth it to stress myself out just so I can have this peaceful little Sunday afternoon buzz I’m tripping out on.

This same time, years previous: pulled braised beef, serious parenting