Cookie Baker Lynn gave me a sweet little award, but sadly, I don’t know enough computer mechanics to fetch the box of pink cupcakes and post it here. But that’s okay; I’ve learned to function despite my limitations. I can still play the game.

I don’t usually play games (board, pass-the-recipe, or otherwise), but for some reason this one caught my attention. I think it’s because after I get through telling you about some of my favorite things (hum along now: raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens/crisp apple strudel and warm woolen mittens) (I think I garbled those lyrics), I get to tell you about some of my favorite blogs—blogs that make me smile and think and be a better person (not necessary all at the same time). Then those tagged people can, if they chose, follow suit, and in this way we waltz Maria-style through the blogosphere.

So here we go. My ten favorite things, in no particular order:

1. Mr. Handsome’s smile. It’s dashing and lights up the room and he’s kind of stingy about flashing it which makes it all the more special (though I think it would still be special if he chose to beam me with it all day long).

2. The UPS truck.

3. My baby’s cheek-pats and lip-smooshing kisses (when they aren’t overdone).

4. The relief that comes after finishing dread jobs, such as window washing, sorting kids’ clothes, and wet mopping the floors.

5. Homebound dates with Mr. Handsome—when the kids go elsewhere and we have the house all to ourselves and can do projects, watch movies, and eat what we want, when we want.

6. A good read-aloud.

7. Going on walks with my sister-in-law.

8. Good ol’ Mennonite four-part singing. For a joint Christmas service, the masterful song-leader had us sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah and suddenly all those ordinary people sounded so glorious that I thought they must’ve sprouted wing buds underneath their suit jackets and polyester blouses. Mr. Song Leader was a blast to watch, raising his hands in the air, fingers fluttering, to make us hold the notes extra long, and eyeballing certain people so they’d slide their voices up to the tippy, tippy, tippy-top of the scale.

9. Getting comments on this little blog.

10. Food.

And now, for the fun part: bloggy friends who inspire, encourage, and delight me. Again, in no particular order.

Life in Transition: Sarah is Mr. Handsome’s older sister. He adores her and makes it no secret that he wishes I were more like her—adventurous, relaxed, and a self-starter. Sarah is the type of person who paints the living room of her mother’s house with a two-year-old and six-month-old twins underfoot—and laughs about it. She has been known to travel cross-country with five kids by herself … multiple times. (She reports that earplugs and graham crackers play a key role.) She’s one of the most accepting, least presumptuous people I know. After being with her for a few days, I find that I lighten up more, start new projects, and spend more time with my children. She doesn’t update her blog that often, but when she does, I’m inspired.

Jumping Off the Food Chain One Box at a Time: Mavis, otherwise known (by me, in my head) as The Dot-Dot-Dot Lady, daily pours out the details of her high-energy existence. She’s forever setting new challenges for herself (walk-a-thon, grow 2000 pounds of vegetables, figure out more ways to annoy her husband), and has an unhealthy obsession with formal wear. I love her.

Breed ‘Em and Weep: Jennifer writes candidly and humorously (often at the same time) of her divorce and bipolar illness. An exceptional word craftswoman, she inspires me with her writing and brutal honesty.

ThyHandHathProvided: This is one of the few friends I call when I can’t take life anymore. She is sweet and gentle, but take note—there is nothing wishy-washy about her. Her blog is full of recipes, glimpses into their life as a homeschool family, tales from the garden and chicken butcherings, and right now she’s doing a spiffy giveaway. Even though we live only six miles from each other, our paths rarely cross, but this past Monday she invited me out to coffee (her treat) and we talked for four hours straight. Mr. Handsome called at 11:00 to find out where I was. Since I said I’d be home between 9 and 9:30, he had a right to be worried. When I got home I apologized and then lit into him, “You mean you waited a whole hour and a half before calling to see if I was okay?!” He grinned sheepishly, but quickly switched back to being the martyr: “I just sat in the chair, watching the road, waiting for the police to drive in…” Okay, okay! I’ll call next time!

Subsistence Pattern: Mr. H (another Mr. H!) and his wife work year-round, growing all the food they need. They’re forever trying new foods, or variations of the old standbys, and are currently storing oodles of potted plants in their basement—they bring up different pots at different times, give the plants good light for several days, and then pick the leaves to make incredible salads.

The Home Grown Journal: Mama Pea lives in the boonies with the wolves … and her husband. She quilts and grows things and lines her make-up drawer with bright red paper to elevate her mood. You need to do things like that when you live in brr-Minnesota.

Seven Spoons: Tara takes beautiful pictures, writes well, and gave me my new favorite popcorn recipe for which I am eternally grateful. (Though snorting cayenne pepper is not a good idea. I accidentally did that last night when I was fixing the popcorn to go with our shoot-‘em-up movie, and then immediately started batting at my nose with the back of my hand, like a dog, I realized, so I added a couple snorts and head shakes for good measure and then busted up laughing.)

Clover Lane: Sarah, a mother of five, is a crafty, industrious, thoughtful, insightful, opinionated woman living in a big white house on a clover lane somewhere. Half the time (okay, not quite that often) I don’t even agree with what she says, but I love that she thinks and writes about more than, oh, I don’t know, sniffing cayenne powder.

Dinner with Julie: I knew it was time to switch from lurker status to follower status when I kept clicking on her site to see if she had written anything lately. This is one of those ladies that blows my mind with all her productivity. She’s gifted, too, with both words and food. And lately she’s become more vulnerable than ever before.

Paprikahead: Rosanna writes sparingly, beautifully, about the food she creates, foods that (sometimes) take a long time to make because she employs old-fashioned methods. She has a cookbook coming out soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

That’s ten, folks, so my job is done. Go on and visit my friends and then please do introduce me to yours. I got five hours sleep last night, it’s sleeting, and the kids are hacking their lungs out—I could use a cheery diversion.

About one year ago: Baked Brie

I’m a firm believer in the old-fashioned thank-you note, handwritten and mailed with a stamp.

You probably immediately thought of a time when I could’ve/should’ve written you a thank-you and didn’t. I’m not perfect, and I didn’t say I was obsessed with writing thank-yous. I didn’t even say I liked writing thank-yous. I said I believed in them.

My brother didn’t use to believe that he should have to thank people. He felt like it was an unnecessary action, a stupid one. He thought that if he did something nice for someone, or they for him, then they both knew it and there was no need to talk about it. The extra words were superficial hoopla to him, empty fillers like “how are you?” —a phrase that neither of my parents ever employ. But my parents told my brother that he needed to verbalize his thanks because it was important for other people to feel appreciated. What it boiled down to, my mother said, is never to scrimp on being nice even if it sometimes seems stupid or frivolous.

Of course, the flip-side to all this thanking is that you act so polite that your niceties ring hollow. Which reminds me of the I’m Sorry Phase I went through in middle (high?) school: every night before going to bed I apologized to everyone in the family for any way in which I might’ve wronged them that day. I didn’t necessarily have a particular incident in mind when I said I was sorry (though there were no shortage of mean acts on my part); it’s just that my mother had drilled into my head the scripture Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and I took it to heart. My little neurotic obsession didn’t last too terribly long, and nowadays I could probably do with more frequent bouts of humility.

Not all thank-you notes are of the same caliber. To my way of thinking, there are four kinds of thank-yous. Here they are, in order from most common to least common.

1. The obligatory thank-you note for birthday, wedding, and graduation gifts. Often these gifts were given without too much forethought (hello, gift registries), so it stands to reason that the subsequent thank-you notes end up sounding a bit rote. These can be a chore to write, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile.

2. Thank-you notes that aren’t prescribed but aren’t unexpected, either. In these cases, the person, upon receiving the note, is mildly surprised, but then switches easily into thinking, “Well, yeah. Of course they’d write me a thank you for that [meal I delivered after the baby was born/the weekend they spent at our house over Christmas/etc].”

3. Thank-you notes from children. Although almost always forced, these notes carry tremendous weight for two reasons: one, they are so dang cute, and two, you know all the work that the parent went through to get the kid to write the card, and as a result you’re thrilled that there are people in the world who think it’s important to teach gratefulness and who are willing to spend time with their kids doing so. In fact, upon receiving a thank you from a child, you feel so touched that you almost write a note to the parent to thank them for making their kid write a thank you note to you.

4. The best thank-you of all: when someone is just doing their job but they do it so thoughtfully and intentionally and well that you just have to say something. In these cases, writing the notes is wonderfully fun, a delightful act stemming from sincere gratefulness. In fact, I’d go one step further and say that these notes are much more fun to give than to receive (though I think receiving them is probably pretty grand, too).

I rarely do thank-you notes of the last variety, but when I do, I get such a buzz that I don’t easily forget them. The last person who inspired a Number Four Thank-You was my pharmacist. Yep, a pharmacist. My pharmacist is not just any old pharmacist. He is Completely Amazing. Take into account the following:

*He knows our names.
*He makes sure I get my coupons and double coupons and that I don’t forget to use them.
*He warns me when medicines are extra expensive and when they won’t be covered by insurance…
*…and then he goes and looks up why they aren’t covered by the insurance and what brands are covered and then fills me in on all those little details, without me ever even asking.
*He cheerfully answers questions about serotonin levels and weight gain, sleep problems and allergy meds, and stimulant overdoses (not the coffee-induced ones).
*When a certain medicine doesn’t come on time, he calls to let me know. He wants to save us the trip, he says.
*Once when I tried to fill a prescription for a sick Baby Nickel and it turned out that Nickel hadn’t been entered into the computer system yet and I didn’t have his insurance card with me, my pharmacist told me to just go ahead and take the medicine anyway (I did not suggest this)! He didn’t let me pay, either. He just told me to stop by with the card the next time I was in town and then waved me away. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I thought to myself, Well, I NEVER! I’m not sure, but I think I may have gotten a little teary-eyed over that one.

After that amazing kindness I had no other option but to make the man (and his team) a pan of ooey-gooey sweet rolls. When I walked into the store and plunked the tray (with the accompanying thank-you note) on the counter in front of the dear man, he looked up at me startled, and I don’t think it was because it was the first time he had seen the lower half of my body (I always go through the drive-thru) (and wow, that TOTALLY came out wrong—I’m not implying that he was looking at me in any special way because he wasn’t). (Goodness. This is getting stressful.)

Anyway, he said, “You didn’t have to do this,” and I said, “I know, but I wanted to; you guys are amazing,” and then I walked out.

Everything is the same as before (he doesn’t slip me free drugs or anything), but he did go about getting Yo-Yo’s pill in a smaller dosage despite what the doctors told us—that our insurance won’t cover for sixty small pills instead of thirty large ones. When I told him what the doctors said, he cocked an eyebrow and told me to wait a sec. Then he came back and said he could do it for me, no problem.

You know what else I heard about this pharmacist? (This will be the last rave in this review—promise.) I heard from an inside source that in order for an elderly woman to keep getting the same color pill (because apparently older people often don’t know what kind of pill they are taking, just the color of the pill), he had to order some crazy-huge number of the pills (like 8,000) in order to be able to get it in the right color…and so that’s what he did.

People who do their jobs really, really well are all too rare. But there are exceptional people out there. So often I focus on the people who are lacking—the clueless social worker, the clerk who can hardly run the groceries by the scanner because she’s coddling one of her ridiculously long nails that just broke, the brusque, insensitive doctor. But no one says I have to dwell on those people—I can “pick on” the ones who are doing a stellar job. It’s my choice.

This post is getting long and rambly and slightly off-track, but I don’t feel like wrapping it up all tidy-like. Instead, I’d rather hear your take on the thank-you note business. Do you think they are silly, stupid, and superfluous? Do you love them to pieces, writing notes to everyone for everything? Have you ever given or received a thank-you of the Number Four caliber?

(Are you hungry for sweet rolls now? Never fear, I have just the recipe for you! You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you?)

About one year ago: Capturing the moment

Over the years I have amassed a tidy little collection of liquors. To some people it would seem like a crazy huge extravagance, but to others it would appear laughably small. To me (and I’m who matters here, right?) it is pretty close to just right. I have brandy, rum, whiskey, Creme de Menthe, cognac, vodka, Baileys Irish Cream, triple sec, and most recently, a bottle of Kahlua. It’s enough (though I am wishing after Grand Marnier and Kirsch).

(And for those of you who now think I’m a true-blue slushy, I’m not. I’ve never even been drunk in my whole live-long life and most of those bottles have been there for years and years and years. So there.)

I’ve taken to amassing another sort of bottles lately, those of the Asian variety.

I know nothing of Asian cooking. I’ve never traveled to Asia, and I speak no Asian languages. The closest I’ve been to relating to Asians (not counting a few friends and family members who are part Asian but who are completely at home in our culture) was when we hosted a fifteen year-old girl from Indonesia for a summer. She was a sweet girl but lacking in her z’s—zip and pizzaz. She had one serious downfall: she didn’t know how to cook Indonesian food (the consequence of housemaids and education-driven parents), so I didn’t get any good cooking lessons out of her. I was sorely disappointed.

(I did teach lots of Asians when I was an instructor in the local Mennonite university’s English as a Second Language program. It was the year I got married to Mr. Handsome, and I was outrageously in love and I guess my giddiness eeked out around my professional [HA!] edges because during the final program the students did a spoof of the teachers and they had me talking constantly about Mr. Handsome. I laughed till I about peed my pants, and from then on made it a point to censor my chatterbox. I’ve only been mildly successful.)

Even though I have no handle on Asian food, I still like it. It’s totally different from our normal fare, and considering that my cabinets are filled with sacks of oats, boxes of chocolate, and ketchup and mayonnaise, I knew if I was going to cook anything Asian, I would need to make a few purchases. So I did. So far I have fish sauce, Tamari soy sauce, Sriracha, Chinese five-spice, oyster sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil, and coconut milk. I have fresh ginger and a big old bag of cilantro in the fridge. (I also have matzo meal, chickpea flour, tahini, and dried chickpeas for a Jewish kick I was planning on embarking upon but haven’t gotten around to executing yet.)

I collect all these goodies from our local Oriental Food Market. When I go there I always end up taking longer than necessary (I do that with most grocery stores, though), creeping through the isles, peering at all the strange labels (half of which I can’t even read), and imagining the exotic dishes that they’re used to create. It gets my creative juices flowing.

Two of my favorite spots in the store are the freezer section with its huge heads of cabbage, bags of sprouts, oysters, and chicken feet (not that I’m planning on buying chicken feet any time soon—we had our chance to harvest a beautiful bouquet of feet but I chose to pass them up—I can always buy them, cleaned and neatly packaged in plastic wrap, if I so desire—which I don’t) and the fresh produce isle. This past time there were bags of fresh tamarindo, which looked exactly like the brown brittle pods that littered the dirt road in our Nicaragua community. I was never crazy about the fruit when we lived there—I didn’t know how exactly to use it and couldn’t google it to find out—but I squealed with delight when I saw it here in the states, more over the collision of my two worlds than over any real desire to actually eat the fruit.

I’m fully aware that my slew of new jars will take me eons to use up, considering that I only use them sporadically, but they keep forever, so I don’t regret my purchases at all. Why? Because these bottles have helped me to create the most fabulous peanuty noodle dish I have ever made.

Granted, I haven’t made many peanuty noodle recipes, but I have tried several and that has to count for something. In each of the previous recipes I could sense potential but I just didn’t have the know-how to harness it. Now I know. I have harnessed it. I’m happy about that.

One of the bonuses about this pasta is that it’s good warm or cold, making it perfect for packed lunches. Remember when I asked Mr. Handsome if he liked his lunch and he gave me a quick yes answer to get me off his back? Well, when he got home from work that day, I asked him again what he thought of his lunch, and he said, with heartfelt umph, “It was delicious!”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it!” I replied, happily, firmly, á la Julia Child. (You know the scene—when Paul walks into their little kitchen and dips his fingers into one of the many bowls cluttering the table and Julia says, It’s good? and he says Yum, and she says, all confident and self-satisfied, Yes, it IS good, isn’t it.)

(I apologize if all the Julia Child references are getting to you. That movie—and the subsequent food—really made an impression. Be patient with me, please.)

Peanut Noodles
Adapted form the November 2009 issue of Food and Wine magazine

The original recipe called for two teaspoons red pepper, but I dialed it way back to about a half teaspoon in deference to the children. I love heat though, and the kids weren’t crazy for the dish (a couple of them did claim to love it after several hours of playing on an empty stomach), so next time I might make it my way. Ooo, my lips are tingling already!

The next time I make this, I think that instead of reserving most of the sauce to add at the last minute, I’ll toss it all together the first time around—it seemed like an extra unnecessary step (though I could be wrong about that—I guess I’ll find out). I’ll still hold the celery back, though, adding it immediately before serving. (Updated on June 21, 2010: no, it’s better, if anything, to keep the cooked noodles in the fridge, undressed, and then heat them up in the microwave before spooning the peanut sauce on over top. I’ve been keeping a jar of peanut sauce in the fridge, cooking up pasta for whenever the craving hits…which is quite often.)

1 pound spaghetti
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
½ cup unseasoned rice vinegar, divided
3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon sesame oil
½ – 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
1 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 large garlic clove
3 stalks of celery, trimmed and thinly sliced
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
lime wedges, optional

Cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine the celery, fresh cilantro, 2 tablespoons of the rice vinegar, and 1 teaspoon sugar. Stir well and set aside. (It can be refrigerated for a day or two, though it will lose a bit of its crispness.)

In a blender, whiz together the peanut butter, 6 tablespoons of rice vinegar, 3 tablespoons of sugar, the soy sauce, water, sesame oil, red pepper, ginger, and garlic. Add a half cup of the dressing to the noodles (run a fork through the sauce to make sure that there are no chunks of ginger) and toss to coat. Serve the noodles with the extra sauce and top with the celery. Don’t forget the lime (like I did).

Update, January 28, 2010: I made this again, but with 1 teaspoon of hot pepper flakes. It was the perfect heat for me, but Mr. Handsome said it was a bit too hot for him, so I’ll stick with 1/2 teaspoon from now on and just sprinkle extra pepper over my food. (Silly me forgot the lime the second time, too. I’m hopeless.)

About one year ago: On not wanting, the origins of the current bet.