A year, reviewed

Favorite foods.

Your favorite posts this year:

1. Caught on Chat Roulette
2. Women hold up half the sky
3. Hot cocoa taste test
4. Made for TV drama
5. Five things needed to induce sleep in a toddler
6. Failure or alas I cannot get published
7. My skin or my soul
8. Icebox cupcakes
9. Petrichor
10. Silly soup song

My favorite slow-cooked sentences:  

1. We are stardust, we are golden
2. My heart, plucked
3. Tenebrous

My favorite photo-inspired post:

Before the beginning they were brothers

My favorite readers:

You.

The Slow-Cooked Sentence had more than 3,400 visitors this year, with more than half of them regular readers. Many of you discovered The Slow-Cooked Sentence through three other blogs, Our Seattle, Arthouse Easel and Earthy Crunchy, and I thank them for the regular referrals.

My favorite blog of 2010:

Chez Danisse authored by Denise Parsons, a writer and artist living in San Francisco. Denise knits scarves, she once raised worms and her writing is ethereal, contemplative, dreamy. I like reading it.

Mud and sunshine

He scooped a puddle with the snow shovel and in the process reminded me that it's the action and not the outcome that matters.

Sweet, sound advice for the season

Destroy and conquer what ails you. Peanuts by Charles Schulz.

 There's no better way to relieve stress from:

1. the hustle of last-minute shopping,
2. the bustle of boxing up packages to be mailed at prices that outstrip the gifts' values,
3. the worry that school work won't be wrapped up before the term's end,
4. the anxiety of traveling snow-covered roads,
5. the runny noses and coughs that linger,
6. the stack of empty pizza boxes piling up because there's no time for decent meals

than to take a handful of candy canes and smash them with the bottom of a soup can. Unwrap and pulverize the peppermint candy into sweet shards and dust. Listen to the solid thud of the can as it slams against the floor. Watch as the smooth, slender sticks splinter and crack. Feel the sense of satisfaction spread with the destruction.

During this season of artifice that builds to a crescendo of over-indulgence and credit debt, it feels good to break something down. So carry on! Melt dark chocolate into thick whipping cream, add a splash of peppermint extract and heat it until it turns into a smooth, rich ganache that will be sandwiched between thin layers of white chocolate and crushed candy.

This version of peppermint bark, with its layers of chocolate that are heated, then cooled, requires time, time enough to drink a cup of tea, to knit a few rounds, to read a chapter, to take a cat nap. Do this. You'll be doing yourself (and everyone you know) a favor.

Peppermint Bark
Very loosely adapted from Bon Appetite, December 2008

22 ounces (2 packages) white chocolate such as Guittard Choc-Au-Lait White Chips or Ghirardelli Premium Baking Chips, Classic White
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
12 candy canes
7 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Put a piece of foil, slightly larger than a 12 x 9-inch rectangle on a baking sheet. 

Stir white chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl set over saucepan of barely simmering water (do not allow bottom of bowl to touch water) until chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove from over water. Pour half the white chocolate onto the foil. Using an icing spatula, spread chocolate to fill rectangle. Sprinkle with half the crushed candy canes. Chill until set, about 15 minutes

Stir bittersweet chocolate, cream and peppermint extract in heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat until just melted and smooth. Cool to barely lukewarm, about 5 minutes. Using icing spatula, spread bittersweet chocolate in even layer. Refrigerate until very cold and firm, about 25 minutes.

Rewarm remaining white chocolate. Working quickly, pour white chocolate over firm bittersweet chocolate layer; spread to cover. Immediately sprinkle with remaining crushed peppermints. Chill just until firm, about 20 minutes. 

Lift foil with bark onto work surface. Cut into desired shapes and sizes. (Can be made 2 weeks ahead. Chill in airtight container.) Let stand 15 minutes at room temperature before serving.

Notes from the cook: Firstly, I rounded up the amounts in this recipe in order to use all the white chips, chocolate and candy canes because I have no patience when it comes to recipes that leave me with leftovers of a special ingredient, which just gets wrapped and shoved into the cupboard to be forgotten. Secondly, the original recipe, as well as those reprinted on blogs like Orangette and Soule Mama, recommended using real white chocolate, which contains the cocoa butter of true chocolate, but lacks cocoa solids, the element responsible for milk and dark chocolate’s brown color and nutty roasted flavor. I didn't and here's why: In a Cook's Illustrated taste test that compared real white chocolate alongside "fake" supermarket brands, the losers weren't confined to the fake brands. 

"Our winner turned out to be not real white chocolate at all but an artificial white chip: Guittard Choc-Au-Lait White Chips," according to Cook's Illustrated, November 2009. "Tasters raved over a creamy texture akin to “crème fraîche” and a strong vanilla flavor. It was the second-cheapest brand in the lineup, costing just 27 cents per ounce, and beat out a real white chocolate from the same manufacturer. We also found that a good brand of imitation white chocolate like Guittard has another decided edge over the real white deal: A lesser amount (or lack) of cocoa butter keeps it from oxidizing too quickly and extends shelf life." 

I couldn't find Guittard Choc-Au-Lait White Chips at my grocery store, so chose Ghirardelli Premium Baking Chips, Classic White, a fake chip that tied for second place, beating out the real white chocolate bar made by the same manufacturer. This chip’s “sweet cream” flavor was “rich,” and “milky,” with a “buttery” texture, though some noticed a slightly “waxy and chalky” aftertaste when prepared in mousse.

Going the distance

A present arrived in the mail from a fellow blogger and it made my day. Andrea Lani is someone I began reading some months ago and although I'm still getting to know her, I've discovered we share things in common:

She's a writer who wishes always to be writing more.
"Why have I not submitted anything in the last year 
(other than the fact that I haven’t written anything in the last year)?"

She has twin sons.
 "I can’t think of time when I’ve felt less equal to the task of parenting (actually I can...the first two years of the twins’ lives...)"

She loves the wilderness.

"When I take a short walk into nature and sit down with my journal to jot down my observations or sketch whatever is before me ... my thoughts slip off their hamster wheel in my head."

She's opinionated.
"I am a huge proponent of public school anyway, and if you let me I'll get on my big (probably offensive to many) soap box about how public school is our most basic democratic institution and that (like water) if the people who care about education (or clean water) only send their kids to private school (or buy bottled water) then there will be no political pressure for public school (or tap water) to meet high standards and it won't be there for those who need it, but who may not come from a family who has the time, interest or motivation to make it work (or it will just flow rusty from the tap)."

I like to read what Andrea writes, so I subscribed to her blog, Remains of the Day, which is a place where she sweeps ups her thoughts and the crumbs under her table. Blog friendships are tough to define, being removed by time and space, yet I'm finding on-screen friends much easier to make and maintain in my newly transplanted state. This dilemma interested me, so I went in search of more on the topic and found this article in The New Atlantis written by Roger Scruton, who argues that the ease I've had in slipping into these blogging friendships is because they're easy come, easy go.

"When attention is fixed on the other as mediated by the screen," Scruton writes in summer 2010 issue, "there is a marked shift in emphasis. For a start, I have my finger on the button; at any moment I can turn the image off, or click to arrive at some new encounter. The other is free in his own space, but he is not really free in my space, over which I am the ultimate arbiter. I am not risking myself in the friendship to nearly the same extent as I risk myself when I meet the other face to face. Of course, the other may so grip my attention with his messages, images, and requests that I stay glued to the screen. Nevertheless, it is ultimately a screen that I am glued to, and not the face that I see in it. All interaction with the other is at a distance, and whether I am affected by it becomes to some extent a matter of my own choosing."

Scruton's "Hiding Behind the Screen" is a thoughtful and long piece of writing that goes on to examine the negative side-effects of social networks, and I enjoyed it -- but not as much as I enjoyed Andrea's peanut-studded chocolate bar, though I admit would've been better had she been there to share it.

+++

I follow a changing handful of blogs via Google Reader, an aggregator that allows me to effortlessly keep up-to-date on the writers I follow. If you don't use such a device, think about employing one because it saves you time and energy by regularly checking websites for updates and creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper."

Tare or in which Christmas is unwrapped

tair
noun

Santa delivers. Christmas, 2009.

1. The weight of the wrapping or the container that holds the object.

Two months ago, my son Sam decided to ask Santa Claus for an Apple laptop despite being told that the jolly elf wouldn't deliver such a gift. All this 9-year-old boy knew was that Santa granted wishes and this was his heart's desire. Sam reasoned that classmates had received Nintendos and computers, so he couldn't understand what price and parental veto power had to do with it.

Because he believed in the power of Santa, Sam remained optimistic despite my warnings of disappointment, my explanations that some things one must buy oneself, my skepticism over the gift's usefulness given his weekly computer time limit of 45 minutes.

When wishes came true, 2009.

Optimistic, that was, until this past weekend.

"Mom, is Santa real?" he asked as he followed me around the grocery store.

I pretended not to hear the question and sent him to pick out brussel sprouts.

"Mom, do you believe in Santa?"

I told him I believed in everything Santa represented: love, kindness, magic, giving. We talked about why Santa doesn't bring gifts for parents, why children are given different gifts and why those gifts aren't always fair and equal, we talked our way out of the grocery store, down the road and back into the kitchen where he asked, again, if Santa was real.

I looked at Sam, his ocean eyes somber, his mouth drawn into a serious line. This was my son who once confided in me that he wanted to be Santa when he grew up because he would be able to eat cookies and milk all the time and live forever. Now he had poked holes in the wrapping of his belief, but the tare was heavy and he couldn't or wouldn't take that final step to expose the lie told in love.

Sam, aspiring to be Santa.

I sighed, smiled, then shook my head no. Five minutes later I found him curled up on the couch, silently crying. I stroked his hair and rubbed his back.

"Thank  you," he whispered.

"For what? For disappointing you?"

"Now I won't wonder why I don't get some things other kids get, and I won't try to explain it."

The pocket tree

The men in my family came home with a tree just 2 feet tall. The boxes of holiday decorations hauled out of the attic dwarfed the tree. My 3-year-old son dwarfed the tree. The cat dwarfed the tree.

What were you thinking? I asked. The tree was too tiny to hold a string of lights, too tiny for most ornaments, too tiny to scent the home with pine, but my Grinchy thoughts were ignored. 

In five minutes, the tree was trimmed. My daughter lay at its base and set up the Nativity, my youngest son kissed all the ornaments, my husband hung leftover decorations from the jackalope while my older boys settled down to read Christmas stories. 

Later, I walked past the tree and caught the faintest whiff of pine, so I stooped over for a big sniff and got poked in the eye. You win, I told the tree, rubbing my eye and laughing at how Christmas is coming despite my protests.

Later today

There is a type of sadness that settles over my heart like fog rolling in slowly, casting quiet shadows and muting colors almost imperceptibly, so that my landscape is changed but unnoticed by me, like how I keep forgetting that the sky should be blue instead of gray.

I've had trouble staying warm lately, even when I wear two shirts, a fleece vest and wrap myself in a wool blanket. I've tried to warm myself by sitting in a patch of sunlight on the rare days it breaks through the clouds, but the light is pale and weak. It wasn't until today that I wondered whether this chill was my sadness, cold and damp, hugging my shoulders, curling around my toes. 

I know what this is, I know we all manifest our stresses and anxieties in different ways. Right now, my mom has hives because she's working so hard to be strong and positive as she cares for my dad. This sadness is why I can't think ahead, because I can't envision what is out there. I don't know how to prepare myself or my children for what will come in three weeks when I see my parents at Christmas, in three months when my father's chemotherapy is wrapping up, in three years.

The sweet thing about this sadness is how it contains a radiant and desperate joy that explodes out of me sometimes. I cry until I laugh. I run and the world spins under my feet. Tonight, I danced.

Marcel worked late, so the kids and I were alone for dinner. We made pizza, ate chocolate pudding for dessert, and then turned the stereo up loud and danced as we cleaned. Paper airplanes whizzed through the air, the littlest jumped about naked, having cut short his bath to join us in the kitchen. We danced to my children's favorite songs -- the Glee soundtrack, We Might Be Giants, Arlo Guthrie. I boogied until I was breathless and laughing, until I flopped on the floor, gulping for air, until I was warm and no longer sad.

Today

My father began chemotherapy. I don't know what to write after a sentence like that. That's all there is inside of me right now. I'm a blackboard to write upon, I'm cataloging the moment, not thinking forward or backward, not planning, just here, because tomorrow it'll all be erased.

The morning's song

At 8:30 every weekday morning, the house is filled with the squawks and squeals of the clarinet, the plaintive plucking and moaning of the violin. My sons are learning to make music, a plodding and painful process that I might not survive.

 The clarinet was mine when I was 12. It's been passed down to my three sisters, my daughter and now Max. He plays it loud, really loud. The sound explodes out of the bell with a force that sends me scurrying for the silence of the basement. The violins are loans -- one from a neighbor, the other from a local shop. Someone once told me that the sound of the violin most resembles the human voice, and Sam's version of "Mary had a Little Lamb" sounds like mourners at a funeral wake.

At 8:45, instruments are shoved pack into cases, backpacks are slung over shoulders and my two older sons throw me kisses and head for school. As I shut the door, I sigh and smile, happy with the sound of silence.