High Protein, Inexpensive Quinoa Recipe~! (Pass the Gas-X and Happy Mother's Day!)

 Nick and Leah wish me (& I am sure you, too) a Happy Mother's Day!

"Happy Mother's Day," says my gorgeous celebrity-style bouquet from Nick and Leah of Canadia!

<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In one month and three days, they can wish me a Happy Mother's Day in person!! (This is the day I am attending their wedding in Ontario, in a dress!)

In case you are following the story of my hot pursuit of a Mom O' Groom dress -- since February -- regard below an actual photograph from yesterday's shopping excursion.  (It typifies our many successes!)

Mother Of Statue-of-Liberty dress

             

           There are four other photos just like this~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>
only I am trapped inside completely different dress-parts, in other fabrics and colors.

Had it not been for Alexandra and Marina and Abigail retrieving arms and limbs hopelessly ensmeared in fabric, SWAT teams would have been involved in some crow-bar intensive event.

Hey, I just realized that over the next years, as I acquire several more daughters-in-law, Mother's Day will be like Christmas in that it is shared by others of the same religion (Hail Me, I Had Babies) where food and gifts are central.

Which brings me to today's Errant Recipe Gone Good.

Besides celebrating me, we are gathering here for a great evacuation.  Oh PLEASE go read the post about my Personal Evacuation where I had an allergic reaction to the Atkins diet. accidentally shat myself

Today's Mother's Day Evac surrounds decades of furniture and deadly detritus our four adult children have deposited here over the years.  Read about specific artifacts here:   I'm a Feature On Hoarders

So I literally drafted my children to come here -- today -- MOTHER'S Day -- to claim or burn their  remains, or perhaps mark them with a Number-Coded Sticker:  #1 meaning, "This is mine, but I want you guys to have it,"  #2: "This was one of my ex-girlfriend's so I cannot take possession of it nor acknowledge I know what it is," and #3: "My brothers and sister and I will do Rock/Paper/Scissors to Claim it for Permanent Abandonment at your home."

This system -- regardless of the numbers -- will result in their father and me carting their personal effects  to the landfill.  There is a WEDDING in a month so I have no time to hold a yard sale.  Or a bake sale.  Not even to raise funds for the gasoline I'll need to transport their refuse to our local dump, let alone the bribes I'll need to entice Landfill Guardians to permit toxic combustibles onto their site.

Meanwhile, to reward those offspring who have not moved to Canada To Avoid The Draft, I've constructed a feast for today made, naturally, of ingrediente du expiry languishing on the shelf beside the cancer medication. Any ingredient I did not understand (Italian Farro and Amaranth) I did not use. The rest I threw in a pot after discovering they shared similar cooking times. 

I combined the following:  French Petite Green Lentils (product of Canada!), Jasmine Rice, and Black Quinoa.  I chose to make this a Vegan Concoction as all of my kids and their betrotheds love vegan fare and ... well.  Because I ordered steamed lobsters for myself for this afternoon.  Cuz it's MOTHER'S Day.

RECIPE FOR VEGAN DRAFT MIX

1. Combine in cooking vessel one cup each of the above ingredients plus 8 cups of water.  

2. I am serious about the 8.  It all absorbs later, but let's not get ahead of the story.

3. Don't read directions on any of your rice or legume bags because they just drone on about how some of those eight cups have to boil BEFORE you add dry contents. *Rest assured that pre-boiled water ruins this recipe.  

4. Set your stove timer for 13 minutes.  All of the bags provided a range of cooking times:  anywhere from 15 to 20 and up to 25 minutes. So I took the 'mean' of these three numbers which, for those of you who are math and science oriented, you know "means" I selected the random number 13 because it is just the most fucking funny number regarding literature, the culinary arts and good luck.

5. After the rice, lentils and quinoa boil for 13 minutes UNCOVERED WITH A GENEROUS HELPING OF COCONUT OIL, remove it RIGHT NOW from the heat.

6.  Go take a bubble bath because it is MOTHER'S day by gawd if you -- a MOTHER -- are cooking today like some unsalaried chef, you need scented, aqueous respite before proceeding to number 7.

7. Don't you smell and feel glorious now?  

8. As you were busy languishing like dusty legumes on a cancer shelf, just LOOK inside your pot and see what happened! The Vegan Draft mix clotted up all nice.  

9. Now, quickly, while it's still hot,  chop and add the following: a red onion, a bunch of kale, one baby yellow pepper, one baby red pepper, another glop of coconut oil, one packet of Goya salad seasoning, precisely two or four 'dashes' of seasoned rice vinegar, freshly ground black pepper, a teaspoon or more of Olde Canadian Steak Rub which I buy at Heathe's Grocery Store in Meredith, New Hampshire until they discontinued it in 2011.  So use a nice tablespoon of any steak rub that has beautiful flakes of sea salt that shine like the diamonds on Leah and Marina's  engagement-fingers. 

10.  Stir and plate.  It's amazing hot or cold.

11. Once your children have coded their ex-possessions with stickers allowing legal authorization to have them all destroyed, and they have swept and spritzed the garage and basement with Febreze, demand that someone go pick up your steamed lobsters.

12.  Start eating them the instant they arrive.  But first, make your family extract the meat from all the shells because as we all know, E V E R Y  t i m e  you eat lobster, you slice a thumb with a claw-shell and bleed and upset everyone at the table.  

13. Eat the lobster meat with butter someone has melted for you and remind everyone how you slaved this morning over a hot stove to combine shelf-stable products in a pot of boiling water for them to enjoy.  And make them go eat it and leave you alone to make a smelly, lobstery mess in the privacy of your secret eating closet.

I will leave this at the special number 13 so you won't forget how many mean minutes to boil your Mother's Day Vegan Draft.

AND HAVE A JOYOUS DAY BECAUSE IT'S MOTHER'S DAY!

Black Quinoa, Petite French Green Lentil, Jasmine Rice Vegan Draft 

Buying a Wedding Dress: Cruel Cultural Experiment? Or Fun Excursion?

So the day after tomorrow, on Saturday, May 11, I shop for a Mother Of The Groom dress with Alexa and Emma, the beaus of my two boys, Jake and Zach.

My future daughter-in–law, the one for whom a Mother Of The Groom Dress is necessary, also has a name that ends in the ‘UH’-sound.  Her name is Leya!  Aren’t letters and their sounds FUN??!  I miss teaching …)

Nick and Leya, of Canadia

Due to living in a different country, Leya cannot join us for our shopping excursion.  But before I discuss her country-of-origin, I want to share the story of how Emma and Alexa will shop with me in two days … with precise data:  Technically, Leya alone will become my ‘first daughter-in-law’ in 36 days.  In our family’s Great Race, she is first up to marry one of several sons. This one is Nicholas. Theirs will be a stupendously gorgeous ceremony held June 15 at which I shall wear a new dress.

Zachary just got engaged last weekend and their wedding date is a mystery, but ‘in-progress.’  Much like the renovation of our town’s public library.  

Zach and Betrothed

Which brings us to our Alexa. 

Jake and Alexa

She loves libraries and has a degree very similar to the one Nick and I have.  We are all English majors.  She and my son Jake – a biotechnology major -- are not, technically, “engaged” as of today, May 9, 2013, I am pretty sure they have been “going steady” for so many arrays of years, often in the same dwelling, that she became my Common Law Daughter-in-Law in autumn of 2006. 

Anyway, I, Emma, Alexa and my actual birth-daughter whose name begins with the letter A – Abby – are shopping together for dresses.

In less than three days.

I have started pre-medicating.

Emma is orchestrating our shopping itinerary at places with names like David’s Bridal and Macy’s and Lord and Taylor  …  and there is good reason she is master of ceremonies for our shopping itinerary.

I do not shop.

I either wear something someone has accidentally left at our home in the aftermath of an alcohol-relevant party, or I wear clothing my sons and daughter have left back here at the house, which they used to wear in the late 90s, (my students used to get a kick out of this!).

My newest pieces fall off the rack when I bump them in error -- as they swing and hang like Salem Witches -- landing in my grocery cart, inches from the frozen food section… where I am standing … along with a dozen other Walmartians waiting to be ‘rung up’ by someone who will pierce my plastic bag with the sharp edge of my organic salad box, ultimately launching arugula onto the hot parking lot next to a wad of pink gum and a spilled Dunkin Cool-At-ta.

In summers, I am clad in whatever my husband has purchased for me the previous year at Clearance Sales held at New Balance or Nike Factories in Boston … including sneakers he buys by guessing my size, and he is typically close!

In case I have lost you, I do not shop.

When Nick and Leya got engaged last winter, I thought I’d probably wear something in my closet:  I have a kimono or two from the time I played Pitti-Sing in a production of The Mikado in 1975. Kimonos are famous for their forgiving waistlines which can expand or contract, depending on the number of boxes of Italian Cookies I have Stress-Ingested that week.

But apparently -- and Abby, Alexa and Emma have echoed this sentiment -- purchasing an actual dress for my son’s wedding is almost certainly some cultural rite -- much like those of Nelson Mandela’s people who ritually circumcise the village boys upon their 13^th birthdays in an outdoor spring ceremony. With a big impaling-sword and no anesthesia.  Much in the manner I expect to be shopping on Saturday.

And yes, my son is marrying a Canadian, but it is still customary that I acquire a new dress for the event.  I don't know what you've read about Canadia, but I have been there.  It is a lot more progressive than Massachusetts or the bulk of the original colonies. So I ordered a dress on EBay back in February. It was delivered on my stoop within three business days.

I was uncertain this was my dress, as it arrived in an envelope the size of a Hallmark greeting card. 

“Greetings, Carolyn Given, from the makers of Miracle Hose, the 400-foot hose that upon drainage, self-coils into the size of a Swiss Army Knife.  Enclosed, find your Miracle Bandage Dress!  Congratulations on your smart shopping choice!”

A bandage dress is all the rage.  I do not know why – because once I shimmied the spandex bandage panels over my kneecaps, then my thighs and eventually, using pulleys and levers like a body shoe-horn, the dress ascended one hip and then the other – as though the dress were somehow giving breach-birth to ME – I slid my fingers into the arm holes, dislocating a thumb and spraining my other wrist --  then I threw my shoulders into the bodice … I think I did “The Worm” …  and voila!

The bandage dress in all its spandex-glory accentuated every dimpled divot of cellulite riding over my ribs, collarbone and back-fat, making me look unlike the mother of ANY groom and more like The Mother Of Jabba The Hut.

Bandage Dress as it appears online

And so, Emma, Alexa and Abby are taking me dress shopping on Saturday.       

Special Effects MY Bandage Dress Created 

One of the reasons I am not a Shopping Person is my long and lovely marriage of 35 years to someone who is extremely tall. 

I am not especially tall, but my spouse is, so I am knowledgeable about both extremes.  The apparel industry does its darndest to make medium sized people happy.  They give us an infinite range of fashion options.

Before I explain why very tall men are forced to be nudists, I want to define tall. Tall is a 39-inch inseam.  It is 81 inches.  It is two-meters, ten.  Tall is six-foot-nine. It is a species of tall outside industry specs and is ignored by the garment community. In fact, "supply" is so unrelated to demand that it falls completely outside the propensity-for-shortness curve, baffling economists everywhere.

This means tall people are left, naked and alone, forced to shop in exclusive specialty shops with exotic names like Big Yank that come with big price tags and big clerks with a poor grasp of consumer relations and English.

“Excuse me,” smiles a really tall consumer.

“Woe, you’re tall,” says the sales associate.

The tall consumer explains he is here to purchase clothing.

The sales associate stares.

The consumer points to a rack of shirts.

Slowly, the sales person observes the gentleman’s pant cuffs, frayed to the shins from road salt, then embarks on winsome repartee.

“Shit.  I thought polyester stretched better ‘n that.  Y’all ever consider natural fabrics?  In like, your size?”

For years my husband and I drove like vagabonds from specialty store to specialty store, finally honing our routine for the sake of economy.  At the threshold, one of us shouted, “You carry 39-inch inseams here, in anything, at all?”

This was how we learned that Van Garde’s Exclusive Tall Emporium procured unhemmed slacks from their supplier, then Raoule the Master Tailor would hem them.  But the economy was such that it no longer paid to provide this service.  “You ain’t gonna find nuthin but a 36 inch inseam anywhere. Good luck.”

Those last three inches meant the difference between hypothermia and normal life-expectancy.

Depending on how good the sales’ associates’ grammar was, sometimes we’d go into the store and purchase some extra tall but very wide short sleeve summer shirts. 

But if their grammar was particularly bad, we’d spend hours selecting up to nine hand-knit sweaters, a gorgeous full-length leather coat, several silk dress shirts and dozens of industrial-length ties, allow the associate to ring them all up, then we would walk out of the store.

“Wait, ain’t you gonna buy this stuff?”

“In THIS economy? Maybe someone ELSE will come in who wears a 39 inch sleeve." Our theory being that, while it may not pay be to be real tall, it pays less to sell nuthin.  Which is how my spouse became an expert mail-catalogue and online consumer.

I learned this technique, myself, from him.  And why not?  

With this kind of convenience for someone my size – which is an 8 in everything: shoes, pants, dresses, shirts -- there’s no need to board a vehicle and drive to actual stores and touch fabric and enter dimly lit dressing rooms with fun-house mirrors.

With Klonipin as my witness, I will never go dress-less again

Unfortunately, the ‘click of a mouse’ did not manifest a flattering event-dress for my son’s wedding, and since my spouse IS going shopping with our leftover sons – the ones remaining in this country -- for things like ties and socks for the wedding, I am excited to re-learn this ritual.

 In less than 48 hours, I will be in the presence of sales associates with excellent grammar and even more excellent champagne who can easily accommodate my size 8 needs.  Many thanks to Emma and Alexa and Abigail for your support!  And to my beautiful almost-daughter-in-law Leya, for making this day-trip possible!

I'll Have The Exploding Heart, Please

There I am minding my own business and that of my spouse’s internal blood parts, when the entire Cancer Institute that manages his myeloma goes into overdrive to ensure he will partake next Monday of a medicine we recently learned killed six people -- out of a total of 300 -- when their hearts exploded. 

By Grabthar’s Hammar … what a bargain.  

In a different trial, I discovered another five participants died of exploding hearts… out of a total of 526!  They’re getting better at killing less people.

If maths serves me and it never has, I think this translates to a 1% chance of spontaneous cardiac death.   

Meaning, he has a 99% chance of not dying. Using a + or - margin for error, worst case is a 96% chance of not dying …

This led me to wonder if dying in a plane crash was statistically similar to him perishing from his life-saving myeloma therapy. I only ask because, after he is infused with this heart toxin on Monday and again on Tuesday, he is scheduled to board an airplane on Wednesday, and still ANOTHER one on Thursday to return home.  

Why not walk into oncoming traffic or take up fencing in lightning storms?

Meanwhile, according to the The Flying Book by David Blatner, more Americans died in car crashes in the last six months than in airplane-crashes in the last one hundred years.

I would have to consult with my math students at AMSA or SOKCS to be certain, but does that mean he should -- or should NOT -- be infused with a Heart-Disintegrator next Monday?

More helpful numbers:  in 1998, 2.5 million – total –Americans died of the following statistics:

 700,000 of heart disease

 500,000 of cancer

 50,000 of medical error

 and 20,000 in car crashes.

 Interestingly, not a single American died from a plane crash that year.

 Evidently, there is a greater chance of death from diagnosed heart disease he does not have … than from having a heart-toxin shot directly into his bloodstream. 

The greatest actual risk seems to relate to nausea.  There is a 60% chance he’ll get that, meaning – as long as his heart doesn’t explode – the risk of death only comes from missing the infusion room’s emesis basin and sliding face-first through his own emetic trail, slamming his head into a stainless steel footboard, dying from a brain hematoma.

Fortunately, this side effect isn’t scheduled for another 24-48 hours, post-infusion, when he can, at 35,000 feet, worf into an air bag located in a padded flap inside the cushioned chair in front of him, in a wall-to-wall carpeted aircraft.

The reason he still plans to journey on this safetycraft for a business trip?

So far, no medical personnel have told him not to.

To be fair, they have not told him much of anything, due to them not returning his calls yet.  They do return emails – but they are sort of nebulous.  “You may or may not have nausea so you might feel nauseated on an airplane, or you might not.  This depends on whether or not you typically get air sick,  and if you do, it makes this side effect pretty much a 100 % certainty, once you're airborne."  

Tick tock.  Three business days remain before the Big Infusion.  

Do we blindly open our veins Monday to receive cardiac C-4  we don’t know our insurance approved that we DO know might kill us prior to boarding a plane that seems statistically safer to ride than drinking tap water that contains coliform bacteria? You’d be surprised how often coliform shows up in drinking water.  There’s some fascinating statistics on that, but I will save them for another day.

Meanwhile, I feel confused that modern medicine – modern oncology in particular – at least appears today to be a non-integrated labyrinth of disjointed parts. 

It’s like Institutionalized Multiple Sclerosis, where the brain tries to keep all of the moving parts in synchronicity … but the legs and arms have totally different plans for the day.

I have been told that in times like these, I should jump rope or vacuum to spike my endorphin levels, and then my calmed mind can rationally ponder our choices.

I totally swear to you –I am not making this up – regard BOTH therapeutic options:  

The cord to the vacuum and my jump rope Houdini’d themselves into irrevocable magician’s clots.

What are the odds?

Our Dead Cat Romeo Came Back To Our House Last Night

Dear Jonathan, Abigail, Nick/ Jake/ Zach,

Raise your hands if you are familiar with Mommy’s ‘THE CAT’S NOT REALLY DEAD’ Syndrome.

  --------------

Really?  

No one? 

This forces me to compose a private email that will end up on my blog, so here goes:  I experience Phantom Door Syndrome. I expectantly open the deck's slider and call out to a dead cat so they'll come in.  I do this off and on for about a week, after they’ve ascended to the Eternal Litter’d Beyond.

Every single time we lose a cat – and I have lost count now, are we up to seven? – I do this.  It doesn’t matter if they have died unexpectedly or of natural causes (which I think only happened once: Tiger died of being, like, ten thousand years old. She was part turtle. And LB didn’t count, unless you consider ‘dying of being an ASS’ somehow 'natural.' And while Francis-Firecat was old, she technically died of Sudden-Euthanasia because, after her fur fell out and her skin oozed, she looked too stupid to live so I had her put down.

*If I ever start oozing like that, I want you to promise you'll put me down, too.)

Anyway, Daddy and Abby both have a version of Phantom Door Syndrome, except they don’t actively call into the darkness to get a dead cat to come in.  They’re just ‘vigilant’ about the slider-door the cat once paw’d at. Always looking in the door's direction, expecting the cat to paw at it. This vigilance lasts about three weeks.

I am sure spiritual people or those who are just decent consider this phenomenon an act of human hope, civility, or ‘muscle memory’. 

It is none of that.  It is an act of stupid. We simply forget the cat is dead. Our brains stay locked in the habit of Ready To Let Romeo In. 

It’s identical to the Human Phenomenon most folks have where, after a loved one passes, we get perilously close to dialing the deceased to share some snippet of news.

Few of you, fortunately, are in any way versed in this experience. Actually, by the time this happens in your lives, I expect you to text or vid-chat the dead.

Back in the day when technology was slow, there was, thankfully, plenty of time between cultivating the thought, "I should phone Mom to tell her Jake is Salutatorian for his class!" and the walk I had to take to get to our landline telephone.  By the time my hand touched the receiver, my brain had opportunity to fire off an instruction, "Hands OFF that phone, Carolyn! Your mother is not going to answer."

Fortunately, now that Romeo has been gone for more than six months, all of us have transcended the "Phantom Door Syndrome" grief stage.

Until last night, that is, shortly before midnight, when An Actual Romeo-Style-Cat appeared at the slider-door and used Romeo's cry-voice to be let in.

And that's not even the creepy part.

My mind went on 'Auto Pilot' as I calmly walked over to Let Romeo In.

I got as far as touching the slider-door handle. That's when my brain engaged.

The Romeo Imposter and I stared at each other.  She was fully expecting to be brought in. She even bowed her head down at the corner of the slider where it touches the house, then looked back up, eyes agog.  Just like Juliet used to. 

I called out to Daddy.

"Come see the Romeo Cat! There's a Romeo Cat here!" I shouted excitedly as I nearly opened the actual slider door. Because in that moment, hope lurked within my heart ...that maybe ... this was the real Juliet.  

The mind is a terrible thing.

Daddie came pounding over.  Or he would’ve if he were a pounder.  He is a stealth-walker and at least three times per year I need a heart defibrillator from him soundlessly manifesting before me.

But last night he pseudo-pounded over, his voice drenched in foreboding, "Do NOT let that thing IN."

Maybe it was not foreboding.  

More like ...threatening.

So I threw open the slider, wide.

That is when the Romeo-Style-Cat took one look at Daddy's voice -- and turned using her Totally Romeo Body and White Romeo Legs and trotted down the deck steps, into a darkness as black as Romeo's Tail.

I wanted to examine him, smell him, hold him... 

I wanted to know if it was Romeo.

And here's the weird thing.  As the Maybe-Romeo banged on down the steps, our deck motion-sensor light was not triggered.

I know what you are thinking, Abigail.  You are thinking the light was not tripped because this was The Ghost Of Romeo Past.

But that light is just fucked.

We don't understand its mercurial nature.  Certain things -- a strong wind, amoeba – activate it. 

Other things, like large lumbering men with myeloma foot neuropathy who risk their lives ascending stairs in the dark, do not make that light go on.

So I wanted to pad off in search of our big blue lantern flashlight to peer out after her, but I was too busy quizzing Dad.

"Are you SURE it was our Romeo that was dead in the driveway last November? Because there are tons of imposters. Remember when one of Zach's friends thought Romeo escaped two streets away, so she coaxed that cat into her car and drove it to our house, because we were away on vacation for two weeks, and she closed that thing inside our home to keep it safe -- causing the other cats to not eat or sleep for twelve days?? We came home to our two skittering-zombies plus one happy stray -- a taller- than-Romeo ‘Faux Romeo’ with dandruff, one wild eye and a uterus teeming with offspring.  So what you found, Jonathan, might NOT have been Romeo.  And now ours wants to come home."

Daddy just stared.

Since he’d evidently acquired spontaneous mute syndrome -- I blame myeloma -- I went on, "Were there any distinguishing features, Jonathan, on the alleged-Romeo you found?"

"It was Romeo."

"Was Romeo wearing his collar?"

“I think so!  It was the one Tiger, rest her soul, used to wear.  The expensive one.”

“And you’re certain Romeo was wearing Tiger’s expensive collar on the night of her demise?”

“Well, I wouldn’t bet my LIFE on it in this particular moment, Carolyn. I do know that Tiger's expensive collar is down in the garage, though."

"Ahh HA! So you can't recall whether allegedly-dead Romeo wore definitely-dead Tiger's collar -- but you SAY that collar is in the basement -- and you THINK Romeo might have worn it -- which means... eh.  Wait.”

(It is good no one paid money for me to go to law school)

"It means, Carolyn, I took it off of Juliet's corpse and put it in the garage."

"Not where I was headed, Jonathan. It means you were mistaken that Romeo wore it.  We'd never do that to him:  make him wear a dead cat's collar. That'd be like me wearing my dead mother's bracelets and  necklaces or—eh.  Wait.”  

"Romeo is dead, Carolyn."

"I want an autopsy."

"We land-filled him."

“I knew this was a mistake.  Back when we had scruples because our kids lived here, we used to bury our dead cats. Now I can't compare last night's Romeo-DNA with Exhumed-Romeo. Although I suppose I could use a lint brush like on CSI and acquire trace-evidence from the guest room comforter she slept on and—“

"I'm going to bed, Carolyn."

 ------------

I swear ... this is how Stephen King gets his best ideas.  I used to think it was nightmares but it's from real life.

Anyway, I hope it is Romeo and that he comes back again tonight. 

This time I am not letting Daddy pound over and use his scary voice. I am just going to quietly let her in.  Make her spontaneously manifest in front of Daddy.  Let HIM know how it feels to need a defibrillator several times per year.

I have to go to Walmart now.  They're having a spring sale on lint brushes.

Love,

Mommie ... of Pet Semetary

Cinco De Mayo Fiesta Potato Recipe!! Olé!

It’s that time again!   Time to share more un-recipes from my collection, ‘Errant Recipes Gone Good.’

As you know, I once made bruschetta in error with a broken bread maker, and gluten-free pizza crust the day I ran out of flour.  Check it out here >  Accidental Pizza Crust

And now, JUST in time for Cinco De Mayo Sunday, I’ve created Fiesta Pomme-Porridge!

SO …  

Yesterday, I was simmering organic red potatoes to make potato salad to celebrate Cinco De Mayo, but it seems instead of turning them OFF... I turned them DOWN.

They simmered all day long while I busied myself joining Twitter for several hours, ensuring the privacy-violation of every person and organization I have ever emailed by allowing Twitter to invite them to join the cult.

I am certain the reservation hostess at Davio’s, a Pro-Flowers customer service rep with whom I exchanged hostile words, and the owners of Mount Wachusett were thrilled to receive a big e-envelope with my name in bold, “CAROLYN GIVEN invites YOU to join TWITTER!”

The resulting guilt led me to take my spousal unit on a two-hour meander through undiscovered rural recesses of our town. 

As the sun began to set and our calves noodled beneath us, we quivered our way up to the house to microwave spaghetti squash and pour sauce over it, eat, then doze to Touch.  

Just before bed, I remembered to drain and refrigerate the potatoes.

Which is when I noticed the stove-top’s ‘red light’ blaring, alerting me that a burner was on. 

Huh, I thought.  I wonder which burner I lef---

Oh

My.

I ever-so-gingerly lifted the pot’s lid – much like a coroner lifting the sheet so survivors may identify the remains. 

“There is Elmer’s,” I reflected, “and there’s... this.”

In the hot murk lurked a mighty flotilla of ex-pomme de terre – (Do you speak French? This means apples-of-the-earth and they are eaten in Paris and most Territories of Canada.  In the US, they are spuds.  In my house, they are gruel.)

Bobbing in the white-wash was what looked like a poorly re-enacted naval battle.  Nobody won.

After draining the glue-water, I anger-mashed the carnage and tossed in some coconut oil and coconut milk (I had not planned on making mashed potatoes so had no dairy products on hand). 

As a ‘nod to the missing dairy’ I tossed in some Fiesta Cheese I was saving for Sunday.

The BEST mashed potatoes, ever!

Here is the Recipe: 

Fiesta Pomme, Olé!

On the Eve of Cinco de Mayo, boil infant red potatoes violently for one day to ruin-stage; mash or simply ‘move’ them about with a wooden spoon; add oil-of-the tropics from lands-afar and mild cheese.  Sprinkle a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Reverently sing, ‘Hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea’ – then plate. 

Garnish with black beans, corn niblets, minced garlic and finely chopped serrano chille.  Use safety scissors to cut-up some cilantro and, voila!  Or as we say in Spanish, ‘Hé aqui’ which means, “Enjoy These Cinco De Mayo Fiesta Potatoes!”  

Happy Cinco De Mayo Eve! 

"My Tummy Sits On My Thighs Like A Lumpy Toddler With No Soul"

"My stomach sits on my thighs like a lumpy toddler with no soul."  

I first wrote that sentence in an email to a friend the year I landed my first teaching job, roughly 18 months after my mother died. 

My lower tummy-inflation was novel and gave fresh meaning to the term ‘frontal lobe’.  I’d turn quickly and snap short women in the head with this appendage I’d never before had to navigate.

I won't say I was exactly ‘thin’ in the many months prior to my mother's passing. But I was very “busy” then and had little time to think about anything cookie or ice-cream related. In fact, during several intense funerary-arranging days, I subsisted largely on probate forms, attorney fees and coffee, which didn’t improve during the six months it took to settle the estate.

I conceded I was down fifteen pounds by the time I sold her house to a Mafioso-style family who, one day, simply took occupancy of it, painted the interior, stripped the roof of its shingles, began re-roofing, and cut down several trees … before there was a purchase and sales agreement. In fact, to acquire access to the inside of the house, they had jimmied the back-porch door.

“Boy these are motivated buyers!" I reassured anyone willing to listen, then off I went to lick a Rolaid wrapper, full of the electrolytes stressed women need.

These are the occasions for which chewable vitamin necklaces and Gatorade are made.

I would not earn my paunch-based frontal-lobe until well after the year 2000, after completing a graduate program in education, then acquiring my teaching license.

After three months working at an alternative behavioral site, teaching post-adjudicated children, I was forced to confront what looked like stillborn ballistic gel that implanted itself under my navel. I say "forced to confront" ...  because there it was, squeezed beneath my keyboard where I was building worksheets, stressing both quad muscles until they started to twitch.

You know how cows twitch their tails to keep mosquitoes away?  My thighs were trying to ‘twitch off’ my gut.

In nary a single education class had anyone warned me that schools inflate teacher-waist lines. Although it’s not the schools as systems that do this. It is the parents of the students who go there.

They love to love us pretty much each day, endowing us with endless gastronomical graft.

 Teachers become sadly adept at lying to ourselves. “Why, LOOK at all the work Mrs. Hoffnagel went to, to prepare these treats for us. This could very well be the day I learn I have been accepted to NASA’s training program and I might never eat another warm, home-made fudge frosted cupcake again. It would be rude not to have nine.“

As it turned out, my school didn’t have parents because, sadly, neither did our student body.

What this site did have was vocational training. The one responsible for my soul-less frontal lobe was, of course, Culinary Arts. Specifically, their infamous Phat Fridays.  Each week, our students collaborated to manifest some of the most original cookie designs ever.  These children were visionaries: Macadamia and Mocha Drizzle.  Oatmeal Scotchies with Glazed Kilt.  Sugar Cookies With Nothing Else.

 I was in my early 40s and thought I could still eat whatever I wanted, but my metabolism had other plans.  So after enjoying Phat Fridays to bolster the self-esteems of our society’s most fragile youth, there in my lap by Thanksgiving Day rested an unmistakable wobble-paunch, which had grown and evolved, not unlike organic curriculum.

In all its resplendence, there it sat: a wad that looked like a still-shot of a rolling ocean wave.  

In short order I embarked upon the more stringent Atkins diet (it is much more user-friendly today). If you are following my blog, which most of you aren’t, you would know that I have a very rapid-weight loss experience on Atkins for reasons I have been advised not to re-write publicly.

Weight comes, and weight goes. 

And in the last 8 months since my husband’s diagnosis with a plasma-cell disorder called multiple myeloma, I decided to respond to this health challenge with exercise, diet, a clear head.  Limited alcohol, no diving into entire cakes.  I used jogs, skiing, elliptical machines to release endorphins so I could rationally research treatments and clinical trials best suited to his needs.  

My weight was wonderful! 

But I ended up dragging stress-symptoms -- albeit fat-free -- to my physician.  She is enormously talented and a non-hysteric: things I admire as, when it comes to health-crises, I have lots of neither.  In fact, having done exhaustive research on my own symptoms, I was reassured to learn I likely had systemic lupus aggravated by multiple sclerosis with a touch of brain tumor, all confounding an underlying and undiagnosed diabetic pre-coma.

The thing about hypochondria is that, when all other diagnoses fail you, at least you’ve got that.

My doctor ruled all of those things out and came back at me with a diagnosis of Stress. I left with a new diet and exercise regimen and a list of vitamins, largely to reduce my blood pressure but to additionally quiet my busy thoughts. I had to return in a couple of weeks for a re-check of my blood pressure.

Between my first visit where I presented my doctor with stress symptoms and my blood pressure re-check, my doctor’s digital-scale informed me I had gained 8 pounds.

“Eight pounds in 13 days?" gawked the digital scale technician. "Maybe we should check your kidneys."  They checked my ankles to make sure they weren’t swollen, listened to my heart to see if it was beating.

“What are you checking for?  Congestive heart failure?  End-organ failure from undiagnosed diabetes? AM I EVEN ALIVE?” none of which boded well for my high blood pressure.

Meanwhile, my rational doctor simply asked, "Have you changed ... your EATING habits?"

"Well ... if by that you mean ... being forced to engage in three wine and vodka intensive ‘special memories’ then, yes. I threw one bridal shower then threw myself two follow-up pity parties. The post-festivus stomach acid didn’t exactly allow me to stick to my salad with chicken diet plan."

"What kinds of things would you say you've eaten that were different -- besides wine and vodka -- in 13 days?"

"Umm... a little bread. The kind they wrap around double cheese burgers.  A vat of home-made macaroni and cheese.  One loaf of breakfast toast, a box of Italian cookies."

"What about exercise?"

"Exer - who?"

"I see. Let’s give you this NEW prescription to get your anxiety AND blood pressure down, and get you back on a treadmill and out of cookie and wine boxes.”

"Elliptical and bottles."

"What?"

"Elliptical, not a tread mill. And I don't drink wine out of boxes."

"Well you don't drink wine 'Any More' -- your prescriptions will be at CVS in an hour.  You could take a nice WALK there."

"It's four MILES from here!"

"Indeed!"

Now that my tummy toddler is back, I have to say it is a comfort!  It reminds me of 13 glorious years of full-time teaching which I very much miss, in my rare spare moments. 

With my new blood pressure reducing medication, I feel very calm about my enjoyment of the occasional rice cracker and gallon of rocky road.

My fitting for the Mother of the Groom dress comes up on May 11^th, but if I pop a blood pressure pill, within an hour I can calmly note to myself that the color ‘teal’  rhymes with ‘conceal’ and ‘keeps it real.’

By the time all of my children are married and have kids of their own, this long-loved lap-land will be amply ready to accommodate several beautiful grandbabies, so I am wasting not another nanosecond worrying about my resplendent ocean wave.  A thing of beauty is a joy forever.  Pass the Oreos, please.