Randomly on Thursday

1. 'Stache's employer gave him his employer letter! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

2. This is a crucial piece of our adoption paperwork that we having been waiting on for three weeks. When you start thinking about your little girl living in an orphanage three extra weeks just because of one piece of paper, it's a little crazy-making. But now we have it, which means that we can make progress with our Dossier.

2. I've discovered bullet journaling. Its early yet, but I think it might be a beautiful friendship. It's a very flexible system, which I find attractive. When I use regular planners, I use about 10% of it very intensely and 90% not at all. Some days I absolutely depend on it, but many days I don't even pick it up. The bullet journal allows for that kind of waffling. There's a good explanation of how it works here.

3. Teatime with boys continues well.

4. I've been watching a very wonderful program called The Great British Baking Show, which has been particularly inspiring for Teatime. This week I made a modified Victoria Sandwich, which is a classic British Cake.

5.

6. I did a half recipe of this recipe. A Victoria Sandwich is usually 2 layers with strawberry jam in the middle, topped with a sprinkling of powdered sugar. My version was one layer, topped with raspberry jam and Devonshire cream. It was a lovely combination, which Munchkin and I relished. Twinkle, inexplicably, prefers his cake without cream.

7. Next week, The Morning After, a compilation of musical and dramatic scenes, opens at Covenant College. It will run March 31-April 2. Using excerpts from many different plays, The Morning After explores themes of sexual brokenness and redemption. Very worth seeing! For more information, go here or email boxoffice@covenant.edu.

Empty Cupboard Cookies

It's Day Before Grocery Day, which at our house can be a day of rather interesting meals. We ran out of milk yesterday and flour a few days before that, and we haven't had white sugar for a week. So choosing a treat for the boys' Tea was a bit tricky.

I thought of cloud cookies, which have almost no ingredients, but it turned out that I was still missing some, so I made up my own version, which turned out quite nice.


Maple Cloud Cookies

4 egg whites
1 1/2 c brown sugar not packed down
1 tsp maple flavoring
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 275. Beat egg whites and salt on high until white and fluffy. Add maple flavoring and brown sugar slowly. Beat on high until you have soft peaks. Mixture should be rather dense, about the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Cover cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Drop large spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. Bake 45 minutes. Lift foil off the cookie sheet and set aside so that cookies can cool. Cookies should be light and airy, with a crisp/hard crust.

Tea with Toddlers and How it Just Might Fix the World

I have always considered the institution of tea time to be a magical thing. In college, I had Tea every Wednesday at 4, complete with real tea cups and scones. The rule of Tea was that it could not be consumed while reading a book or writing a paper, regardless of impending deadlines, so it was a brief, blessed rest from studying and, I firmly believe, the sole thing that kept me sane my junior and senior years.

I got this kettle for Christmas and I love it dearly. It is exactly like this one, although that company doesn't seem to carry the "Tiffany blue" color that mine is, which is a mystery.

After college, I more or less left the ritual of a regular teatime behind. But now I am reinstating it. It fixes EVERYTHING.

1. It helps with the witching hour. Late afternoon is a miserable time at the Fenn house. My mother calls it "the witching hour," and my precocious children have extended that hour to last from about 3:30 to 7. Nearly every single day, this is a time of unparalleled crankiness, regardless of whether they actually sleep during naptime or not. Tea provides a mood boost both emotionally (Hey look, tea! Hey look, cookies!) and physiologically (blood sugar boost).

2. It helps teach delayed gratification. In her book Bringing Up Bebe, Pamela Druckerman writes about how the French will often save their child's treat for the day until their afternoon snack, even if they buy it or make it with the child earlier in the day. We're doing pretty much this exact thing, and I think it's going to be very helpful. The boys help make a treat in the morning (It doesn't have to be sugar-packed, just something a bit sweet and treat-like.) and then they wait until after naptime to eat it. The ritual of it helps them have the patience to wait and believe me when I say that they can eat it later.

3. It makes going down to bed easier. Tea can't come until after naptime, so you'd better go start your nap! It gives them a reason that seems to make sense to them. Apparently "because you need it," "because you're throwing a fit for no reason," and "because Mama needs a break" are not reasons that that make sense.

4. It helps them last until dinner. 'Stache works at a cell phone company, a job that we are so grateful for, but the one huge downside is that he works until 6:30, which means it's frequently 7 o'clock before he actually walks in the front door. I hate (hate hate hate) serving dinner without him, for both relational and practical reasons, but getting two toddlers to wait until 7pm to eat dinner? Oy. Having a predictable, substantial snack at 4 helps them last.

5. It fills their tanks. One of the reasons that the witching hour(s) is so terrible is that their bad mood is perfectly coinciding with when I need to actually be doing things. Late afternoon is when I'm cooking dinner, it's when I'm rushing to finish the housecleaning before 'Stache gets home, it is not when I want to deal with clingy toddlers who are shrieking at each other and me for real and/or imagined offences. But when we have Tea first thing, right after they get up, it's me pouring attention on both of them. We sit around our kitchen table with our tea cups and our treats and I am talking to them. I am looking them in the face. I am listening to them. And then we finish, and the boys run off to play and I start cooking dinner or whatnot, and they are fine with that because I've just filled their tanks with time and attention.

It. Is. Magic.

It is not, however, picture-perfect, as evidenced by this photo which includes crumbs all over the table and a decidedly relaxed dress code.

Pro tip: My children love tea but don't like it to be actually hot. If I put their tea bags in their cups, pour in the hot water, and then make my tea in the tea pot, their tea will cool faster so I can have hot tea while they have lukewarm tea. 

A Cup of Tea ... and Rather a Bit More

Today, I held a Celebratory Tea. This is a particular tea party that I throw for the cast and crew at Covenant College after the show's all done and everyone has pried themselves up off the floor where they collapsed after strike.

I've done this for a few shows now, and have a bit of a framework for the menu, which is mostly different each time but there are a few favorites that always show up. However, despite the framework and the favorites, I feel like I'm always scrambling to remember what I did last time - did I double that recipe or triple it? How much food is enough food? So I had the happy thought of just recording everything here, to be inspiration to you, gentle reader, in planning your own celebratory teas, for aiding me in planning the next one, and to serve as a simple way of getting recipes to all those who requested them.

Such an inelegant, non-magazine-worthy photo, but I barely remembered to take one at all, so there you go

Clockwise from bottom:

- Various paraphernalia for making tea. With this particular crowd, black tea, preferably Earl Gray, was universally preferred.
- Gramercy Tavern's Gingerbread Cake, by smitten kitchen. I baked it in 2 loaf pans instead of a bundt pan. Completely delicious, very dark and spicy. Though only one pan is pictured, we consumed both.
- Easy Devonshire Cream, by allrecipes.com. I made a triple recipe.
- Simple Scones (recipe to follow). I made a triple recipe, minus 6 or 8 scones that we had for breakfast
- jar of lemon curd. The combination of scone, Devonshire Cream and lemon curd is sublime. (Devonshire cream is also called clotted cream.)
- ham, Brie, and mustard sandwiches. I used only a little mustard because I wanted the Brie to really stand out. I did 8 sandwiches, cut off the crusts, and cut them into triangles.
- [on the same plate as the ham and Brie] cucumber sandwiches. I used 1 large cucumber, peeled and sliced, and spread the bread with a mixture of 8 oz cream cheese, 1 clove garlic, 2 tbsp dill and 1 tbsp mayonnaise. This made 7 sandwiches and I cut off the crusts and cut them into squares. (Pro tip: use the smaller ends of the cucumber, and 4 slices will fit perfectly onto a piece of bread, so when you cut them into squares, each square has one perfect slice of cucumber.)
- plain slices of bread with the crusts cut off, for use with:
- butter mixed with sugar and cinnamon
- Bittersweet Chocolate and Pear Cake, by smitten kitchen. Amazing. Also, I was very fearful that I had over mixed, but it turned out fine.
- Twice-Baked Shortbread, by smitten kitchen. Just lovely.

I realize that there are three smitten kitchen recipes here, which seems a bit excessive even to me, but smitten kitchen has never not once steered me wrong. Wonderful recipes.

This menu more than adequately fed a medium-sized crew and a cast of 4. I made the gingerbread the night before, because it's better the second day, apparently, and I made the dough for the twice-baked shortbread the night before because that's what the recipe told me to do.



Simple Scones

1 cup heavy cream
2 cups self-rising flour

Mix thoroughly and knead several times, adding flour if necessary to keep it from being sticky. Roll it out to half an inch. Cut as you desire. Bake for 10 minutes (or until turning golden at the edges) at 450 degrees.



Incidentally, the next Covenant show is Waiting for Godot, directed by Cacey Williams. The preview is November 12th at 8, and performances are Nov 13, 14, and 20 at 8pm, with a matinee performance on November 21st at 2:30. Waiting for Godot is absurdist and thought-provoking. More information here.