Pickapeppa pack of peppers 28 February 2009

A few days ago, my good friend Elle wrote about a dip she likes to serve that involves Pickapeppa sauce and cream cheese.  Soften the cream cheese, make it look pretty by lifting bits of it up with a fork, and dump a fair amount of Pickpeppa sauce on top.  Serve with crackers or other sturdy chips.

Well, now, that sounded like something right up my alley.  My friend Judy had served something like it at my baby shower for Grace, only she had used jalapeño pepper jelly as a foil to the cream cheese.  With Wheat Thins on the side, it was to die for.  Seriously.  So I was eager to try out Elle’s Pickapeppa rendition, only I had a slight problem.

I did not have Pickapeppa sauce.

It’s a Jamaican thing, you see, and here in Newport, if it ain’t Portuguese, the likelihood of procuring said item is pretty darn low.  I can’t even get chorizo!  Instead I have to make do with chouriço, which is delicious in its own right, but it isn’t chorizo.

Elle, bless her heart, took pity on me and Priority Mailed me not one, not two, but three (!!!) bottles of Pickapeppa sauce from the bayous of Louisiana.  What kind friends I have!

Entonces (Kurt’s taking Spanish this semester, so the language has been creeping back into my speech lately), it was time to make Elle’s Pickapeppa dip.

Don’t laugh that I used tortilla chips.  It was all I could find!  Now Kurt tells me we’ve got water crackers from my party in the cupboard, but I couldn’t find them.

But doesn’t that look good?  If you haven’t had it, Pickapeppa sauce tastes somewhat like Worchestershire sauce, but sweeter and with a kick.  Kurt says it tastes like a sweet BBQ sauce.  Either way, it’s yummy.

I prepared all this in secret tonight while I was getting together my pot of homemade chicken stock so that Kurt would be completely surprised.  There’s nothing more that Kurt likes better than for me to bring him food on a whim while he’s sitting on the couch.  Well, there are a few things he likes better, but let’s keep this blog PG, shall we?

Let’s see what Kurt thought of this new flavor combination:

You can’t tell from this photo, but he really liked it! He was kind enough to share with me, and I can tell you that it’s a great combination.  The tortilla chips actually work quite well with the dip because they’re pretty neutral in flavor, but I can see other crackers working well with it too.  I’m definitely bringing this the next time I have a party to go to, and I have to whip up a contribution at the last second!

Speaking of going to parties, my friend decided to have us and another couple over for dinner.  She boiled bratwurst in some beer and had her husband throw them on the grill — my absolute favorite way of making bratwurst.  I brought some Colman’s mustard, which is spicy English mustard that’s really got a great kick to it, and works very well against the sweetness of the beer-boiled brats.

But I couldn’t just bring a bottle of mustard, could I?  Oh, no.  So I decided to make my roasted potato salad (recipe HERE).  B told me later that she felt a bit of trepidation when she heard I was bringing potato salad because it isn’t one of her favorite things to eat.  If you’re like her, and you aren’t a huge fan of potato salad, you owe it to yourself to try this version.  First off, the potatoes are roasted, and that just makes everything delicious.  Secondly, there are caramelized onions in it.  Then you add bacon!  How can anything not taste good if there is bacon involved??  And thirdly, the dressing isn’t an insipid blend of herbs with some mayonnaise.  It’s more of a honey mustard sauce.  All of these things together make for a heavenly combination that isn’t anything like your traditional potato salad.  You can also serve it both warm or cold, though I always serve it warm-ish.

The salad was obviously a hit because that was the first thing we ran out of at dinner last night.  I could have made a double batch, and I think it would have been eaten up with no problem!

And now I go to check on my chicken stock.  Man, I’m turning into a right Betty Crocker, aren’t I?

Those lipstick kisses 26 February 2009

We have this diners’ club card that gets us a free entree when we buy one at regular price at various restaurants in and around Newport.  What I like about it is we’re saving a lot of money because we’re eating two-for-one, but it’s introducing us to a lot of local restaurants.  I much prefer to eat locally because that’s where you find the real flavor of a place.  You can eat at Olive Garden or TGI Friday’s anywhere in the country, but where else besides Newport can you regularly get chouriço and bolo levedos on the menu?

My point exactly.

Our favorite places are the establishments that don’t punch the card, so we can come back as often as we like and get the two-for-one deal.  Otherwise it’s a one-shot deal.

Kurt initially told me that he didn’t have time to go to breakfast with me this morning, but I cajoled him enough that he finally relented, though it meant a very short lunch break for him as a trade-off.  I didn’t mind the short break, even though he had class tonight, leaving me to wrangle the kids by myself.  I needed to spend some time with him, just one-on-one, without Grace interrupting every two seconds.

So we ended up going to this place down on lower Thames that we’ve been to once before.  As we sat down, the waitress came to lay down cutlery, and immediately asked, “Coffee for you [indicating me], and water for you [Kurt], right?  And you’d like milk for your coffee instead of cream?”  Wow.  Seriously wow.  We’ve been going to this other diner for at least a year, and sometimes they still can’t remember that I want coffee and Kurt wants water. Yet this woman not only remembered our drink preferences, but also that I preferred milk and that we had a diners’ club card.  I was highly impressed.

Being with Kurt was like recharging my batteries.  We’ve been going through some really rough patches lately, but somehow I think things are finally looking up.  Maybe it’s because spring is right around the corner, I don’t know.  But something feels much better between us, and I can only hope this is permanent.

As if that weren’t enough, I had the most incredibly mellow day today.  I didn’t have either the radio or the tv on for most of the day, and that’s almost unheard of.  I almost always have the radio going.  ME slept most of the day, which was good, since she had been awake almost all of yesterday, and Grace behaved herself amazingly well.  I didn’t have to put her in time-out a single time.  Instead we cuddled on the couch and worked through an activity book that teaches her numbers and counting and adding and subtracting — with stickers!  She loves loves loves the stickers.

And reading!  I actually got to read a real, honest-to-God book.  With pages, even.  I’m on The Duchess by Amanda Foreman, which chronicles the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was one of the most influential women of her time, though she struggled with many personal demons.  It was originally published under the title Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, but was repackaged when the movie The Duchess came out.

[Totally unrelated aside: Fergie's album The Dutchess makes me twitch with the misspelling.  Ugh.]

Anyhow, I know I’m only 31 pages in to it, but I’m really enjoying it.  It’s not a dry biography, though it’s certainly not a novel.  And it even inspired me to delve into a huge entry about James II on Wikipedia; Rosie would be so proud.  Here in the US, we don’t learn much about the transition between the Catholic nation England had been before Henry VIII and the Anglican nation it is now.  Basically we’re told that Henry VIII abandoned the Church so that he could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.  But it wasn’t that easy.  England flip-flopped between Catholicism and Protestantism for almost 150 years after the death of Henry VIII.  The question wasn’t settled until James II, the last Catholic monarch, fled England for France in 1688, at which point his daughter Mary II and her husband William III became joint Protestant monarchs.  Hence we have William and Mary, who then lent their names to a small liberal arts school in the New World, founded in 1693 — my own alma mater.  Parliament also then passed a bill forbidding the ascension of any Catholic to the throne, and neither could a monarch marry a Catholic.

Bet you didn’t know all that!  And neither did I, till tonight.  I knew that the children of Henry VIII were divided between Catholicism and Protestantism.  His son Edward VI was all for Protestantism, but when he died, his half-sister Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary, tried to return the nation to Catholicism.  When she died after five years on the throne, her half-sister Elizabeth I became Queen, and she reversed all of Mary’s Catholic policies.  I thought that’s where the fight between the religions ended, but obviously it was only the beginning.

Can you tell I’m fascinated by all this stuff?  Anyhow, I’m really enjoying The Duchess thus far.  I’m sort of surprised I don’t already own it.  I swear I had picked up a copy of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire somewhere along the line.

And now I’m off to read in bed!

Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ 25 February 2009

Gotta love the grin on that kid, don’t ya?  She’s a cutie, I think I’ll keep her.

See how pleased she looks with herself?  This was after the second time she rolled over from her back to her belly on Sunday — the first time she had ever done it!  I was getting nervous that she was never going to pass this milestone.  I can’t remember when Grace rolled over, but I do know she was ahead of the timeline that all the books gave for just about every milestone.  I credit her being two weeks overdue for that.

The thing is, as with most second-born kids, we’re not giving ME everything we gave Grace.  We can’t — we have things to do now.  I was very careful to give Grace plenty of floor time when she was a baby to make sure she could strengthen her back muscles enough to flip over.  With ME, it’s easier to keep her in her chair or her Exersaucer while I get some things done around here.

Our pediatrician reassured me that larger babies (and Mary Ellen is pretty big for her age) don’t turn over as soon as their smaller counterparts.  She kept teasing us too!  She would lay on her back, then slowly turn on to her side, and look like she was going to roll completely over, but right when it looked like there was no going back — she’d let go and flop on to her back.  Sheesh.

But now she’s done it, so I can quit worrying.  Yay!  Now I just have to wait till she figures out the crawling thing.  Grace started crawling at 7 months, which is too soon for my tastes when it comes to Mary Ellen.  I would much rather her wait a bit!  Grace was also cruising a week after she started crawling and walking at 10 months.  Early milestones are great when you have just the one kid, but once you have more, you’re all for slower development.

The pediatrician asked at ME’s four-month appointment if we were going to start her on foods.  I said, probably too vehemently, no way!  He looked a little taken aback, since he had started all three of his kids on food at four months, but then I explained my reasoning.  For one thing, Grace has a serious food allergy.  When there’s a history of allergies in the family, it’s always suggested to wait.  Secondly, I’m just too lazy.   I don’t want to start having to bring food with me instead of bottles, and it’s just so much easier to make up a bottle than to prepare cereal.  Thirdly, ME spits up a lot, and right now it’s just milk.  Once we add in food, she’ll be spitting up all sorts of things that will stain whatever it touches.  Milk is so much easier to clean up.  And fourthly, I’d rather not feed a kid before she can sit up on her own.  ME is getting better, but her back isn’t quite strong enough to support her yet.

That said, if you choose to feed your baby sooner than six months, more power to you.  This is simply what works for my family, and I realize that not everything works for every family.  I’ve known some folks to hold out on food entirely till the child is nine or twelve months old, and as long as the kid continues to grow and thrive, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Enough of Mary Ellen.  Grace is doing fairly well.  She is acting out a bit here and there, I think in response to the attention that ME receives.  But she’s not mean about it.  It’s just a normal four-year-old reaction to no longer being the only child.  Sometimes she doesn’t listen, and I have to tell her something many, many times.  It’s so frustrating when she does that, like get into Mary Ellen’s face.  She’s actually trying to entertain her, but she’s so loud she ends up scaring the baby.  I tell her over and over and over again, “Don’t get into the baby’s face!” but she does it two seconds after I say it.  Eventually she’ll figure it out.  I hope.

One thing that I am enjoying about Grace is how our friendship is developing.  Obviously, I am still her mother, and still a figure of authority, but we’re moving into a new phase where I enjoy her company.  There have been times where I’ve gone somewhere with just her, leaving ME with Kurt, and it’s so much fun to listen to her tell me all about her day at school or whatever is going on in her head.  She’s a trip!  Some of her gestures are so adult in origin, like cocking her head to the side or rolling her eyes a bit, but you can tell she’s just mimicking the adults around her.

She’s also becoming a lot more cuddly.  It’s probably a response to how much cuddle time the baby gets, but I don’t really care what the reason is.  Grace never was much for cuddling until now, so I will take whatever I can get.  She’ll come up to me and ask, “Momma, can I cuddle with you?”  So I put down whatever I am doing and pull her into my lap because I know only too soon, nothing will entice her to cuddle with me.

You know, I think the best decision I ever made was to have kids.  Obviously it’s not a choice for everyone, but it was the best choice for me.  They are my joys.