The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Leek and Potato Soup

I love leeks.  I love everyone in the onion family, but I have a special affection for leeks.  I tried to describe why, but it sounded like really bad middle school creative writing, so I deleted it.   So we'll just skip that and move on to the cooking part.

I bought a couple bunches of leeks at the store earlier in the week, and potatoes, so that at some point this week I could throw together the soup.  It's one of the simplest things to make, and it's warm and comforting on a cold wintery evening.

The recipe I followed is from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I., by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.  It's the first entry in Chapter One - Soup.

Potage Parmentier (Leek or Onion and Potato Soup)

"Leek and potato soup smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make.  It is also versatile as a soup base; add water cress and you have a water-cress souop, or stir in cream and chill it for a vichyssoise.  To change the formula a bit, add carrots, string beans, cauliflower, broccoli, or anything else you think would go with it, and vary the proportions as you wish."

~~~~~

Here's what you need:

3-4 cups or 1 lb potatoes,

peeled,

and sliced.

 

3 cups or 1 lb leeks,

 

thinly sliced, including the tender green

* A few things to keep in mind about leeks - first of all, you want to trim the darkest green parts away - easiest way is to cut them on an angle while you rotate the leek on your cutting board.  You can see that inside the darker parts the green is lighter and kind of yellowish - this part is okay to use.  The darkest part tends to be drier, kind of like the skin you peel off of an onion, only not AS dry. 

Also, leeks tend to have dirt or sand in between their layers, and the best way to get rid of that is to slice the leek cross-wise

and soak it all in a deep bowl of cold water.

Swish the leeks around in the water to help loosen the dirt.  The leek will float, and the dirt and sand will sink to the bottom.

And you'll also need

2 quarts of water

1 T salt

And that's IT.  How simple can you get?

Place everything in a 3-4 quart sauce pot

and bring to a boil. 

Drop the heat down, partially cover the pot and simmer for 40-50 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

Mash the vegetables with a fork or run them through a food mill - or use a food processor an immersion blender to puree everything.

Taste it, and add more salt if you think it needs it, and add pepper to taste.  Ta da!  You're done!

Now, if I had thought ahead, I would have picked up a baguette to serve with the soup.  But I didn't think that far ahead, and I didn't have time to make bread, so I found a recipe for a Quick Onion Flat Bread in a little cookbook called "Fast Breads!" by Howard Early and Glenda Morris.  It was published in 1986 and I think it's now out of print.  I've posted that recipe after this one, in case you don't remember to get a baguette while you're buying the leeks.

Oh - and below - I swirled in some half & half to make it look pretty.  The book calls for whipping cream or sweet butter stirred in before serving, and a sprinkling of parsley on top, but I didn't sprinkle parsley.  Sorry. 

   

Quick Onion Flat Bread

I tried out this recipe to accompany the Leek and Potato Soup I made the other night.  It's pretty simple to make, it cooks quickly, and is pretty tasty.  It's more like a biscuit than a bread in texture, and I think an improvement to the overall flavor would be to mix some of the the minced, sauteed onion into the dough in addition to scattering it on top.  That's just my opinion.

Okay, here's what you'll need to do.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees F.

Mince 1/4 cup of onion.

Saute onion in 2 tablesoons of butter until golden.  Set aside.

Combine the following dry ingredients:

1  1/3 cups unbleached flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 2 tsp baking powder.

And combine the following wet ingredients:

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water and 2  1/2 T vegetable oil.

Add the wet mixture to the dry and combine to form a rough dough.  Knead it on a lightly floured board for about a minute,

then pat it out to about a half inch thick on a greased pizza pan or a parchment lined baking sheet.

Beat an egg with a tablespoon of water and brush the surface of the bread with it.

Distribute the onions over the bread and then sprinkle with a teaspoon each of poppy seeds and sesame seeds.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. 

Serve right from the oven.  Perhaps accompanied by a bowl of Leek and Potato Soup.  Just a thought.

    

Happy Scholar

I could gaze at him all day.  I'm so unbelievably lucky.  A thousand times over.

Little Thinker

Knock, Knock. Who's There? Julia's Face.

Here she is, and see how nicely she's healing?  Thank goodness it was all surface scratches and  nothing worse.

I also like that look on her face. 

She has many looks, as those of you reading this blog may have noticed over the past few years. 

Yesterday I brought her to the doctor's to make sure she didn't have strep.  She didn't really have symptoms, but since Alex had it, I just wanted to know for sure, one way or the other.

I had to bring Alex, too, because Bill was at work, and my biggest fear was that he would tell Julia what was coming.  The strep test.  Throat culture.  Spanish Inquisition.  You know.

But, amazingly, he didn't. 

The three of us sat in the waiting room with another mom and her little girl.  The girl was somewhere between one and two, very cute with dark blond hair parted on the side and swept into a little braid on one side. 

She was a little leery of Alex and Julia, both bigger kids who were playing with the toys like they owned the place.  (It's so funny to think of Julia as a "bigger kid.") 

The waiting room is this little rectangular room with chairs that line one wall beneath the windows, and two chairs on the opposite wall, right next to the large window into the receptionist's area.  A couple of other chairs are at the other two walls, and there is a low table with 4 kid chairs and some toys in the middle.

I was sitting in one of the chairs near the receptionist's window.  Alex and Julia were playing, and the other mother and her little girl were over to my right.

At one point Julia came over to me and leaned on my knee.  She gazed toward the receptionist, a hopeful expression on her face, and asked, "Mom, is it okay if I ask her if I can have some of what she's eating?"

The other mom burst out laughing. 

I told Julia no, and she accepted this like she knew the answer all the time but figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

When it was our turn to go into the exam room, of course the nurse took one look at Julia's face and asked about that, so I told her and Julia told her version of it and Alex chimed in a bit of detail as well.  Then I told her we weren't there about the face, and I explained the whole strep thing. 

Let me just say right now - the nurses, like the doctors, at this place rock.  They just do.  I love them.  They are kind and THEY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING.  I had anticipated all sorts of struggles with Julia once she realized the strep test would involve sticking things into her throat.  I figured, knowing Julia, it would be worse than dealing with Alex the day before.  So I was poised and ready.

The nurse got the little swab kit out and told Julia "I'm just going to tickle your throat" as she peeled apart the plastic wrapping and took out the evil tongue depressor and the giant double Q-tip.  She had Julia sit on my lap, and I wrapped my arms around Julia and held her hands, ready for the writhing.  The nurse moved in quickly, asked Julia to stick her tongue out (on went the tongue depressor) and to say "Ah," and basically as Julia opened her mouth, the nurse stuck the Q-tips in and even though Julia flinched and tried to turn her head, the nurse moved right with her and kept the swab in there until she hit pay dirt and pulled them back out.

It was over in seconds.  Julia sat there not quite knowing what just happened, not liking it, but not saying much either, because it was over and what was there to say?  She swallowed several times and looked unhappy, maybe she whimpered once, but that was IT.  The nurse left to run the test, and I sat there marveling at how nicely it all went.   

While we waited for Julia's strep test result, my kids decided to tell knock knock jokes.  And I wrote them down.  Yes.  I have a little notebook for scribbling stuff like pictures I want to shoot and, yes, stuff my kids say.  I can't remember everything, you know.

So here they are.  My kids made these jokes up right there, on the spot.  Geniuses, they are.  Geniuses.

Knock Knock Joke #1

Alex:  Knock knock.

Julia:  Who's there?

Alex:  Light!

Julia:  Light who?

Alex:  Light, can ya go to the doctor and let me through?

Knock Knock Joke #2

Julia:  Knock knock.

Alex:  Who's there?

Julia:  Telephone.

Alex:  Telephone who?

Julia:  Telephone's gonna...go to the doctor and let open our tongue and be sick.

Knock Knock Joke #3

Alex:  Knock knock.

Julia:  Who's there?

Alex:  Knock knock.

Julia:  Who's THERE?

Alex:  NO - it's "knock knock!"

Me:  You mean Julia needs to say "Knock knock who"?

Alex:  Yeah.

Me:  Julia, say "knock knock who."

Julia:  Who's there?

Me:  Never mind.  I'll say it.  Knock knock who?

Julia:  No, I want to say it!

Me:  Then say it.

Julia:  Knock knock WHO.

Alex:  Knock knock we're sick, we need your help with something, too.

~~~~~

I love when little kids make up their own jokes.  I seem to remember my niece doing that for a while at some point, years ago. 

Anyway, the test was negative, and I was hugely relieved.  So today - both kids are at school/daycare - and I have time to myself!  The house is quiet!  No one wants juice!  No one is screaming because the other one "took that (insert toy name here) and I wanted to play with it"/"won't be quiet"/"won't share"/"won't play with me"/"wants me to play with her but I don't want to"/"said I was stinky" and so on.

Okay, well, that's it for now.  I can't think of a graceful exit line.  Have a good day!

Cakes - Scottish Meringue Castle - Mom's Birthday - 1996

Let's see, where to begin...well, I'll start with the platform - that's my painted-with-thinned-royal-icing version of the Anderson tartan, our clan tartan on my mother's side, on her father's side, and on up the line.  Here's a picture for comparison, though this picture is, I believe, the Modern tartan, and I think I was copying a blanket or scarf that was either Ancient or Weathered.  I didn't make notes on it.

Anyway.  I painted the colors on a piece of foam core, which you can get craft supply stores. 

The actual cake was lemon, and I used lemon frosting for the grass, and for what I believe is supposed to be a perfectly round rocky island down in the bottom front.  The written part is more royal icing.

The castle itself, and the little "stones" or whatever they are leading from the drawbridge across the tartan water to the perfectly round rocky island, are made of Swiss meringue that I piped onto parchment paper and allowed to dry.  I piped each little stone individually and then used royal icing as the mortar when I built the castle.  I think the drawbridge was the only thing I piped directly onto the parchment whole.  My notes also say that I formed the towers of the castle around paper towel rolls, which explains how I managed to get them all a uniform size and round, rather than amoeba-shaped.

Swiss meringue is a cooked meringue, which means it is heated while you're making it and therefore you don't need to bake it like you would meringue cookies.  The whites are safe to eat, and can remain perfectly white. 

Why the little rocky island?  I needed a place to write "Happy Birthday" to my mother.  Plus it made the whole thing more interesting than just the castle sitting dead center all by its lonesome.

My notes also say that I got the idea (in some form) from Martha Stewart's magazine, but I don't remember what she made out of meringue.  Hmmm.

Anyway, that's the cake for this week.   

   

A Few Little Things

My left eye feels like morning has come too soon and the light is just way too bright for it.  My right eye is fine, however.  Eye strain?  Should I sit facing the other way on this couch on alternate days so each eye is exposed to the vast brightness of outside equally, and the left eye won't be so exhausted?  Perhaps an eye exam.  But then, the last time I was there, the doctor cheerfully told me that when you hit 40, your eyes start to get drier or something and you start to need glasses for reading (or typing on the laptop?).  I was not as cheered by all this as he seemed to be.

~~~~~

I brought Alex to the Dr yesterday because this cough he's had is not going away, and he's congested and snores so loudly the house shakes.  Okay, that last part isn't true.  But his voice has started getting all raspy, and his tonsils looked like little moons in his throat, and so I figured we should check it all out. 

Our appointment was mid-afternoon, after Bill got home from work, so it was just me and Alex, and Julia stayed home with her father.  Alex is fun to hang out with.  Plus he's very sweet and affectionate and cute and my son and my firstborn and an interesting and sensitive little person.  He is generous with hugs and I Love You, Mommy, and I am greedily inhaling and absorbing all of that, because I know the day will come when these things will not be dispensed with such abandon.

Anyway, we hung out in the waiting room for a while - Mondays are busy, especially Mondays after school vacation weeks.  We watched other bits of families come and go...saw a couple of little babies...he's kind of obsessed with babies at the moment.  He wants me to have another one.  I tell him over and over that we want two, we have two, and we're not planning to go beyond two.  I remind him good friends of ours have a baby that he sees on a semi-regular basis.  That should be enough.  But still.  He suggests names for this fictional third child of mine.  He has clearly given this a lot of thought.  Perhaps we should get him another pet.

Finally we were called into the examining room, I told the nurse what was going on, Alex contributed his five cents' worth (he is my child - he has more than two cents' worth of input), she took his temp (normal) and said the doctor would be in shortly.  We played "I Spy" and he showed me how he could hoist himself up on the exam table all by himself because he's a big boy. 

The doctor came in - she's not our regular doctor, but all of the doctors where we take the kids are fabulous, so I don't mind seeing someone different now and then - and looked in Alex's ears, listened to him breathe, and peered at his throat.  He's got some congestion in his right lung, and yes, his tonsils ARE big. 

She decided she'd test him for strep.  His sore throat is gone, and he hadn't had a fever.  But might as well rule it out, since it's prime time of the year for strep and related adventures.  She left the room to get the tube with the giant Q-tips, and when she came back she explained to Alex that she just needed to tap the back of his throat with these things. 

"Will they take the red off it?" he asked.  I love this age.

Well, I guess anyone reading this has most likely had a strep test.  I think I'd rather have a needle in my arm than have giant Q-tips jabbed into my throat.  Just for the record. 

Alex was sitting up on the exam table, and the doctor tried to hold his tongue down with a tongue depressor so she could poke his throat, but he didn't like that tongue depressor.  Not one little bit.  He kept pulling away, or shutting his mouth...lips firmly pressed together, eyes fearful and suspicious.  Need a plan B.

Plan B was to have him sit on my lap and have me hold his hands so he couldn't grab the instruments of torture from her hands.  That worked fine, except his head was still free of restraint, and there wasn't much I could do to keep him from pulling his head back or clamping his teeth down on the oversized popsicle stick and not letting go.  The doctor finally had to emphasize that she couldn't take it out of his mouth until he let go of it.

All this gave me horrid flashbacks to a bright, high-ceilinged office, a huge red high-backed leather chair, a kindly doctor with a big flat wooden paddle that he needed to stick down my throat (it seemed), and the fact that it took my mother and the nurse to hold me in that chair so he could take a look.  The perfume of rubbing alcohol filled the air, and I can't smell it to this day without the urge to gag.

I suggested to Alex's doctor that maybe without the tongue depressor she'd have better luck.  I told him to say "loud" really loudly (* over the weekend he was demonstrating "LOUD" and "soft" and that's when I happened to get a REALLY good look at his throat).  Eventually that worked, and I felt the tap of cotton swab in my own throat when he jerked back from the nice doctor and her giant Q-tips.  He looked betrayed and annoyed and kept swallowing, trying to get rid of that poked feeling.  I told him a lollipop would help.  I told him he deserved two.  The doctor said she'd be back in five minutes with the results.

Five minutes later.  He has strep.  Antibiotics are prescribed.  He can't go back to school til Wednesday. 

As we were leaving, the doctor told Alex he could go get his two lollipops, and he told her they weren't both for him. 

"One is for me because I'm sick and I was a good boy, and the other one is for my sister because she has a bloody face!"  The doctor looked at me but before I could say anything, Alex launched into a lengthy recap of Julia's "agony of defeat" moment on Sunday.  I tried to condense it, but Alex actually waved a hand at me, stepped IN FRONT of me and told me he could tell it because he was there and I wasn't.  The doctor listened intently to the story and then confirmed that yes, Julia did deserve a lollipop after that.

~~~~~

Julia's pink elephant has gone missing.   

Yesterday we were "doing a big clean up" in the kids' bedroom, because I am just so sick of the coughing and congestion and dry air and dust and closed windows and germs and all that.  A part of me wanted to just set all the toys on fire, as that would be the quickest way to get rid of them and whatever stray germs had colonized in the fake fur.  But instead we stripped beds and dusted and cleaned doorknobs and gathered all the stuffed animals into a pile so I can wash them in vats of boiling bleach water batches over the next couple of days, along with all the sheets and blankets and all that.  As we sorted stuffed animlas (I am washing them by size), I put Julia's elephant on her stripped bed because I just washed it the other day.  I didn't want it mingling with the germy toys.  I didn't think about it again until after dinner, when I remade the beds and the elephant wasn't on the matterss any more.  I thought she'd probably been playing with it while Alex and I were at the doctor's.  But Bill didn't know where it was.  Julia didn't.  And it wasn't in any of the obvious or usual spots. 

Last night Julia woke up several times and after searching around in the dark on her bed, would start whimpering because she couldn't find her elephant.  I'd explain that we would find it the next day, and she would cry, so I'd bring her into our bed til she fell asleep and I fell asleep and then I'd wake up when she started grinding her teeth, so I'd bring her back to her own bed and wait for the next round.  Maybe that's why my left eye is so tired.

As I've been typing, the kids have been searching, giant flashlight in Alex's hands, for this missing pink pachyderm.  No luck so far.  I have a feeling I'm going to spend my entire day looking for this thing.

~~~~~

And it occurred to me this morning...Julia had a bit of a sore throat last week, AND a low fever.  So I am thinking I need to get her in to see the doctor today so she can have her throat swabbed too.

That should go well. 

~~~~~

Update:  I found the elephant.  I started loading the first batch of germy stuffed animals into the washing machine and there it was.  I would have SWORN on all sorts of holy publications that I hadn't put the elephant in there.  But clearly I was mistaken.  Or Julia stuffed it in there to be helpful.  Or I am just losing my sanity. 

That last one seems the obvious choice to me.

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cheesecake

This was one of the two cakes made for my husband's birthday last week. 

My husband loves fresh cherries, and I had a bag of frozen cherries, so I thought I should incorporate them into something.  At first I was going to mix them into cake batter...but then I thought...cheesecake!

I didn't have a specific recipe - I kind of winged it with what I had in the fridge and the freezer and the pantry.  I had some cream cheese...I had an 8 oz container of mascarpone (that I hadn't needed when I made the Chocolate Tiramisu for one of my Valentine's Day posts...and frozen cherries...and chocolate chips. 

Now, personally, I'm a plain cheesecake kind of person.  I like some other flavors or toppings now and then, but if I could only have one kind ever?  Plain, NY style cheesecake is what I'd want.  But it wasn't my birthday.

So here's what I did.

First, I made a crust for the cheesecake.  Actually, not a crust.  I didn't have (oddly enough) ANY cookies or biscotti or anything like that to pulverize and mix with melted butter to make a typical cheesecake crust.  So then I thought - I just won't make a crust at all.  And then I thought that might not be socially acceptable, so I thought...hey, I've got sliced almonds...and sugar...and melted butter...that would taste good.

So I took about a cup and a half of sliced almonds and toasted them in a pan until they started to turn golden, and then let them cool a bit.

I melted about 2 tablespoons of butter.

I put the cooled almonds in my food processor, added about 2 tablespoons of sugar,

and pulsed to combine them and grind up the almonds a bit.

Then I poured all that into a bowl

and combined with the melted butter.

I used an 8 inch springform pan, and I wrapped a couple of sheets of foil around it (underneath and up the sides) so that water wouldn't get in later.  (Cheesecakes are often baked in water baths.)

I poured the almond mixture into the cheesecake pan,

spread it around so it covered the pan evenly, and patted it all into place.  Then I put the pan in the fridge while I made the batter.

When I decided to make cheesecake, I took out all the possible cheesecake components so they could start to come to room temperature.  (Those that were in the fridge, that is.)  Here's what I ended up using:

12 oz neufchatel cream cheese

8 oz mascarpone

2  6-oz containers of yogurt (one was blueberry, one was strawberry - both were Stoneyfield Farm, lowfat).  (Why yogurt?  Because I didn't have any more cream cheese or mascarpone, didn't have sour cream, and knew this cheesecake would need a bit more of something in the dairy dept.  Why blueberry and strawberry?  Because that's all that was left in the fridge.)

1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

zest of one lemon

1  1/2 tsp vanilla

12 oz frozen cherries (thawed)

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

I also got a large cake pan (larger in diameter than the springform pan I had prepped for the cheesecake) and set that aside.  I also set the oven to 350 degrees F.

Okay.

First thing to do, if for some reason (like, oh, not planning ahead) your cream cheese and mascarpone aren't softened yet, is to put them in your mixing bowl and beat them until they are smooth and soft and creamy.  If you don't, you'll have lumps of cream cheese or mascarpone in the cheesecake.  It doesn't ruin it, but it's not necessarily desirable.

Once you've got those two softened, add the yogurt...

and then the sugar...and the eggs

and the vanilla.

When the batter is nice and smooth,

stir in the cherries and lemon zest

and the chocolate chips

and combine well.

Pour the batter into your chilled springform pan and set that in the center of the larger cake pan.

Pour about an inch of water into the pan and place in the center of your oven.

Shut the oven door, set the timer for an hour, and go find something to occupy your time.

After an hour, go ahead and look at it.  It's not ready yet, which you can see if you jiggle the pan ever so gently.  There's still a lot of motion in there, right?  Not done.  So shut the oven door and check it again in about 30 minutes.  It's probably getting closer, but it's still not there, I bet.

Since you're using a rather gentle cooking method (the water bath), it's not going to suddenly be overcooked in another five minutes, so go ahead and let it cook another fifteen minutes or so.  Keep checking until the center barely moves (or doesn't at all), and then carefully take it out of the oven.   If you bring the whole thing - cake pan with VERY HOT water and springform pan - work slowly and carefully and set the whole thing down somewhere flat as soon as you can, just to avoid spilling any hot water on yourself.

Next, remove the springform pan from the water and set on a rack to cool. 

Remove the foil, too, by the way.  You should probably put a towel or paper towels under the rack - there will be drippage.

It's going to take a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time for the cheesecake to cool.  In fact, unless you're up early in the morning making this, don't plan on eating it until tomorrow.  After it comes to room temp, then you need to refrigerate it for a good long time - 6 hours or so, or overnight.  Yes, it was silly of me to make this ON Bill's birthday as a birthday cake...but I wasn't really thinking that far ahead when I started in.  I just thought - CHEESECAKE! - and I was off and baking.  Fortunately we had that other cake to eat on Bill's actual birthday. 

Anyway.  You've let the cheesecake cool to room temperature and you've refrigerated it for at least several hours or overnight.

When it's time to serve, the first thing you'll need to do is run a knife around the cake to separate it completely from the sides of the springform pan.  Then pop the hinge on the pan

and lift it off.

   

The easiest way (well one of them) to slice the cake is to run your knife under hot water before you make each cut. 

Wipe the knife clean in between cuts as well.  This way the cake won't stick to the knife and pull against the rest of the cake.

Not that it will taste any different.

Now some feedback...

Bill liked it a lot, and since I'd made it for him, that's really all that mattered.

Alex bravely tried a bite, but he didn't like it.  It's a texture thing.

Julia liked it.

My sister, her family, and some of her husband's friends who tried it also liked it.

My parents liked it.

And me?

Overall, I was surprised and happy with how well it turned out.  The "crust that's not a true crust" was fine, but it's a different texture from a traditional crust, so there's a bit of mental adjustment needed.  (Or not.  I think I'm the only one who had any mental adjusting to do.  Figures.)  The texture of the cheesecake was creamy and light, and the cherries added a nice burst of juicy fruitiness throughout. 

I'm not sure if I'd put the chocolate chips in again.  I guess I just don't like hard bits of things in my cheesecake, but that's just me.  I used mini chips, which I think was a better move than using the standard size, but maybe if I did this again, I'd make the following changes - I'd make a cookie crust, and then melt a layer of chocolate over the crust, chill that til it's hard, and then pour the cheesecake batter over the top and bake it.  Or...I'd serve it with a drizzle of chocolate ganache.  A healthy drizzle. 

Or maybe I'll make something without cherries...maybe steep toasted hazelnuts in some cream for a while and add that to the batter...with a ribbon of ganache running through it and more chopped, toasted hazelnuts on top...or in the crust...or both...and some whipped cream. 

Or maybe I'll just satisfy my purist heart and make a plain one.

Sigh.

To borrow from Sondheim, "so many...possibilities."

 

Face First

(Let me know if you see a pattern...)

When she was oh, a little over a year old, I think, and still getting her sea legs, she took a digger going from the kitchen step at my parents' house onto the rug on the porch.

And for a little while, she looked like this:

 

And then...let's see, when was it...around a year later, she was jumping on Alex's bed - the one that has the iron headboard and footboard with the pretty scrollwork (used to be mine) - and she dove face-first into the footboard, split her lip and ended up with 4 stitches and looked kind of like this:

And then...a couple of months ago, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and one of the symptoms was the partial paralysis, or palsy, in her face, as evidenced here:

Granted, she looks kind of cute with that crooked grin above, but still...a three year old child doesn't need palsy.

Fortunately that disappeared and she went through her antibiotics and all that, and apart from a cold this week, she's been doing pretty well.

So anyway, today, being the last day of winter break, Bill thought it would be nice to take the kids sledding over at City Park.  He bundled them up in their snow pants and hats and boots and jackets and mittens, and off they went, bound for adventure.

I took a leisurely shower, puttered around a bit and was putting the coffee cups in the dishwasher when the car pulled in the driveway, and Bill came in the door carrying Julia.  I took her and brought her into the bathroom, sat her on the edge of the sink, peeled off her winter outerwear, and examined her little face.

And right now?  It's looking something like this:

I Say Dumb Stuff

Yesterday the kids were playing outside in the snow.  Well, the ice-encrusted snow.  And of course, they were eating snow and munching on shards of ice like they were eating doughboys at a fair. 

Irrational things pop into my head - not just because I have kids - my head has always been like this.  I jump way ahead to disaster scenarios.  I'm the original mountain-out-of-a-mole-hill-maker.

So I'm watching them happily licking and gnawing on rough-edged sections of backyard ice, their little cheeks and noses red from the cold.  And isn't that ice cold?  You're cold...the ice is cold...isn't that kind of reducing the amount of fun you're having out there?  But you're kids...and you pay no attention to extreme cold, because it's too much fun to eat great pieces of ice and great scoops of snow, because it's there, and you're kids, and that's what kids do...

But I am (in theory) an adult, and more sensitive to the cold, and more aware of things like, oh, frostbite!  But of course they don't know what frostbite is, and how can I explain it without graphic pictures that I'm sure I could download if I just did a quick search....

So I open the window over the kitchen sink and yell out to my foolish, fate-tempting children the following:

"STOP EATING SO MUCH SNOW AND ICE!....YOUR MOUTHS WILL FALL OFF!"

They glance at me for a moment, then go back to their snacks.  I close the window.  I tried.   

And from behind me, downstairs, where Bill is changing water in the fish tank, he says, "your mouths