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I am very much in danger of going out with a fizzle rather than a bang this year. I am so tired I can barely stand up, or sit down for that matter. So, without further ado; Quick Cassoulet Stuffed Bread Melts. A cassoulet is a slow-cooked bean and meat casserole, this meal is obviously much faster to prepare. We used chorizo and hot Italian sausage which we browned in a pan. Then garlic, onions, thyme, carrots and a bay leaf were added, white beans bulked everything out, then the pan was deglazed with white wine. The mixture was piled onto the hollowed out bread shells, topped with Swiss cheese and browned under the grill.
Something about the cheese on top of meat on a slice of baguette reminded me of bad generic French Bread Pizza, but actually it was pretty tasty. It seemed much more like a tomato-free meaty pizza than anything related to a casserole. Which is not to say that it was bad; the mixture was rich and flavourful. I did find the beans and carrots to be odd in a sandwich, but maybe that was because of the pizza feeling. Tomorrow we actually make a bread pizza with Nacho Bread Pizza.

This evening we made Chopped Antipasto Stuffed Bread which is basically a fancy meat and cheese sandwich. Two Italian cheeses and two different types of salami were chopped into bite-size pieces and mixed with lettuce, pickles, olives, parsley, black pepper, lemon juice, olive oil and basil. The bread was warmed in the oven, split, one side was spread with pesto, the filling piled in, and the whole shebang assembled. This is a very good, tasty, spicy sandwich, although again a little more labour intensive than your usual fare. However, what I really liked about this recipe was that by chopping up the meat and cheese, and adding in plenty of greens, you make a much lighter-seeming meal. This is very much like a deli sandwich, but the assembly method makes it seem far less hefty and stodgy. The other thing, which seems so simple in retrospect, is putting the baguette in the oven while the filling is prepared. In just a few minutes at a very low heat, the bread is revitalised, becoming as fresh and crispy as intended.

Once again we failed to eat the sandwich for lunch, maybe we can manage that tomorrow for Quick Cassoulet Stuffed Bread Melts. Having two toddlers in the house with two different routines makes for an interesting day, every day. We always bring Little A home for a post-lunch nap, which on a good day can be up to 3 hours. I am trying to get Baby N to sleep at the same time. Today was so successful that I managed to go to bed for a nap myself for a whole 12 minutes. Generous to a fault are our children. Anyway, our toddler guest doesn’t nap at home but rather naps in her stroller while out and about. So every day we start off like a travelling circus in the minivan, then sometime after lunch we splinter into groups. Later on we reconvene in the ‘van, and the “My Daddy” “My Daddy”, “My Mummy” “My Mummy” chorus resumes its beautiful strains. On particularly fabulous trips Baby N contributes some vocals too. This morning Little A ran in front of someone at the Children’s Museum and I watched helplessly as she got kicked across the room into a waiting chair. It was an accident, the woman she collided with was holding two kids and couldn’t see her feet, but Little A ended up with a split lip. Between her eyebrow stiches, the mysterious cut on her nose, her bruised forehead and her bloody lip, she looks quite a sight. It also turns out that she has an ear infection, poor wee thing. Still, at least the ear tubes are working, if the gunk in her hair is anything to go by. But really, she is very beautiful, just maybe not today.

Today we had mountains of stuff to do before picking up our friends from the airport around 6pm. At 9.30am it seemed like we had so much time left that we would be sitting around a spotless house drinking tea before leisurely driving to the airport, all showered and sweet-smelling. I don’t know what happened to the day but this afternoon we had two screaming inconsolable children and a lot of stuff which just got shoved into cupboards. The baby did not sleep for more than 5 minutes in a row all day. Every single time she fell asleep I’d carefully put her down and she seemed fine, then 5 minutes later she was screaming. It seems that she has been doing that ever since she got her injections but that’s almost a week ago.

Anyway, it’s great to see our friends, and their little girl seems like an absolute charmer. Little A was in bed by the time we got back from the airport, so we’ve yet to see them interact. I think there’ll be a lot of “that’s mine” from our wee one. I am trying to speed type as Baby N finally crashed out on the way to the airport so she must be about to wake up any time now. Hopefully we’ll have another couple of 5 hour stretches of sleep tonight, in my dreams at least.

This evening I made Spinach and Spicy Ham Pasta Bake which had a tremendous amount of cheese and oil products. But, it was a success with the weary travellers and ourselves. The onions are fried in olive oil and butter, the flour is sprinkled on top, the milk whisked in and everything is seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and nutmeg. Drained, cooked frozen spinach, spicy ham and Parmigiano cheese was added, followed by mozzarella and the pasta. Everything was mixed together, put in an oven proof dish, topped with Parmigiano cheese, olive oil and breadcrumbs, and browned under the broiler.

This meal was substantial and comforting. The creamy sauce worked well with the breadcrumb topping. It looked reasonably healthy, by virtue of the spinach, but it contained an enormous amount of cheese. Still, it tasted good so who’s complaining? Tomorrow we will be having Honey Chicken over Snow Pea Rice, which sounds pretty tasty. I am so much hoping for some sleep tonight. I think you can run for a while on pure adrenaline, but the crash has to come somewhere. If we could only get baby N to take a nap when Little A is asleep, then I could sleep and we could keep the crazy at bay for a while longer.

Today was the day of the book signing. I hadn’t exactly decided what to do this morning, whether or not to go, whether or not to speak. We have a friend who works in the cafe of the bookstore where Rachael Ray was due to do the signing today. She said she’d try and get us one of the 300 wristbands which were being given out so that I didn’t have to drag the kids in to the mall and line up for half the day. So as instructed I called her at 9am and she told me to call back at 1pm, as the bands were being handed out from noon.

I then I packaged up the girls, after a number of false starts, and we were all set to head off to The Children’s Museum. The phrase “Closed Mondays” popped into my head from out of nowhere, which I thought was pretty impressive as I barely know what month it is at the moment, never mind what day of the week it is. I checked online and, lo and behold, Little A was to be disappointed; the museum was closed. We left the house anyway, knowing only that coffee would figure strongly wherever our destination may be. Little A opted for playing on a trainset, so back to the Mall of America we went.

It turned out to be a pretty fortuitous decision; I saw our friend at around 11am and it turned out that she wouldn’t be able to get us the wristbands after all. I pretty much resigned myself to ending the year with our recipe book as unsigned as when we began; I couldn’t handle waiting anywhere with two fidgety children. However I was amazed to realise that the army of people sitting in their lawn chairs playing cards already had wristbands and were waiting to be the first people to meet Rachael Ray. The signing started 8 hours later. I strolled past the table and got myself a wristband. Easy; I was now one of the chosen 300.

After a slightly bonkers day where I seriously doubted my ability to be a sane stay at home mother of two, I made Pork Chops in a Sweet Chili and Onion Sauce with Creamy Cilantro Potato Salad while L bathed Little A and put her to bed. It was easy and tasted extremely good. The pork chops were seasoned with salt and pepper, caramelised in the pan then finished in the oven. The sauce was made with red onion, garlic, cumin, chili powder and brown sugar, joined after a few minutes of sautéing with chicken stock then butter. The cooked potatoes were made into a salad with mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, red onions, garlic, celery, red pepper, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Initially I thought that the liquidity of the sauce was at odds with the creamy potato salad, but actually this was a very good combination. Perhaps I was having a seasonal issue; the pork and sauce seems to be very wintery food, whilst potato salad screams summer, in my mind at least. The sauce was tangy and rich, I could imagine that it would have also made a good relish had there been less liquid. Given our aversion to cilantro, and my dislike of mayonnaise, raw onion and raw garlic, I was not particularly excited about the potato salad. I have to say it surprised me; there was enough contrasting tastes, textures and colours to make it seem like a fresh and gratifying new interpretation of potato salad.

All in all this was a very pleasant meal, although I ate in maybe ten minutes so I could drive off into the darkness with Baby N. Back to the mall we went, and I headed straight for coffee. The baby was still sleeping so I took a chance by not feeding her- although I was fearful that she’d wake up screaming just as we got to the head of the line. I took a bizarre pride in being the last person in the line for a while, texting L to say that “I is a slacker”. Everything moved quickly, I was maybe there for half an hour before it was my turn to do the meet and greet thing.

As I got up on the stage to meet Rachael, I glanced behind me and noticed that I was no longer the second last person in the line, I was now the third last. Santa had just joined the queue. When Rachael looked up and said “Hi Santa” I felt a mild panic; what if she only chatted with Santa while she signed my books? What if they had a long discussion about the perils of Christmas shopping? I would have no choice but to just leave the stage, silently, and curse my shyness in the comfort of my own minivan. So I quickly launched into some badly thought out, terribly delivered ramble about how it might sound strange but my husband and I are visual artists and we consider her to be a cultural icon and how we’ve done a couple of projects about her and in one we are cooking our way through the book she’s signing and we have been doing so since January 1st and could I leave a card with our website on because I wasn’t going to come but some of our readers, oh did I mention it was a blog, said I should come so here I am, and er thanks. And remarkably she was very polite and lovely and charming and didn’t call the stalker police, and said she’d love to hear more and we should send her some information. Then we had a normalish chat with one of her staff about how babies are an automatic reason to get to the front of the line, and I said I’ll remember for next time and then I went on my merry way.

I’m really pleased that I went and shook the hand of a real live celebrity personality. It must be ridiculously strange to be famous. People were standing all around and on the balconies above incessantly taking photographs and shouting down to Rachael. I like to think that I’m not particularly starstruck but I couldn’t really help myself from getting the camera out. It’s like a compulsion to document yourself, the normal person, with X the famous person, in a ‘look I was there, at that moment in history when a celebrity was there too’ sort of way. It’s particularly odd because essentially people were documenting someone demonstrating the art of, or at least the results of, being famous. It would be far less weird if the crowd were going nuts for a chef actually cooking, but because she was signing books it was like going crazy for the packaging rather than the contents, if that doesn’t sound dirty, or weird.

Tomorrow we are having Asian Pinwheel Steaks with Noodle and Cabbage Sauté. Maybe there’ll be pictures of our tattered but freshly signed book too.

This morning we decided to divide and conquer; L took Little A to the zoo while I took Baby N to the doctor for her 2 month check-up. 4 injections and a few tears later (only the baby this time, for I am now apparently a hardened parent, unlike when Little A was but a baby) we were on our way. After an exciting trip to a newly opened branch of Trader Joe’s, followed by a trip to Target for everything I couldn’t find on our first stop, followed by a third and final visit to our local grocery store for a jar of mincemeat, we were good to go.

Last week we had talked with friends about Christmas food, and L and I had raved about the fabulousness that is the mince pie. This seemed to be a mystery to our American friends, so I thought I’d make some for their Christmas party. In the couple of hours I had between returning from my epic shopping experience and leaving for the party, I made some of Nigella Lawson’s frangipane mince pies [recipe], which are utterly fantastic. Little A woke up a little way into the cooking experience, so she “helped”. A lot. At least cooking with a toddler helps you get over any perfectionist tendencies you may harbour. We then got the girls ready in dresses, which is a novelty unto itself. I swore I’d never torture my children by making them wear tights, but Little A at least seems to love them. Baby N is probably too little to have an opinion either way. I am really not a girly girl at all, and very rarely wear skirts or dresses, and Little A is very rarely to be found not wearing jeans. Of course she loves wearing dresses and was very excited about the whole event, especially when she realised that her baby sister was wearing a dress too. It’s the little things. So Little A had on her dress and pink tights, and her big brown suede boots. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

The party was a lot of fun and Little A was on top form. The baby mainly slept on my shoulder, waking up sporadically to scream. The injections have really knocked her out of sorts. I did nurse her once which was interesting given what I was wearing. I decided to wear a wrap dress that is a little too small for me right now, because I didn’t have anything clean, never mind smart, to wear. Plus I didn’t want to be left out on the dress action. To feed the baby I had to unwrap the entire dress. Of course I was wearing jeans and a tank top underneath, but still I must have been some sight. At least it was a relaxed gathering. I wouldn’t want to unwrap at a formal occasion. Anyway, party= very good. Leaving the party= very very very baaaad for a certain toddler of ours. Out of the handful of kids there she was the first to have a complete and utter meltdown. She set the bar pretty high in both the flailing around and the wailing/ screaching categories; I hope the other kids can compete.

So after getting our own personal scream balloon to bed, I made Pork, Chipotle, and Bean Burritos. This recipe is identical to what we made yesterday, but substituting pork for the ground turkey and chipotle salsa for the tomatillo salsa. The salsa was stronger today, so the whole meal had a bit more of a kick to it, but other than that, there was not much to choose between the two meals. Both are fine, neither are wildly exciting. Tomorrow we will be venturing into the world of fish and chips, which is a world dear to my heart. We’ll be having Crispy Horseradish-Battered Fried Fish with Watercress-Cucumber Tartar Sauce. It seems to involve a box of pancake mix which is always good for a laugh.

This evening we made Sausage, Mushroom, and Pesto Polenta “Lasagne”. We like pesto, we love pesto in fact. Earlier this evening Little A and I cooked gnocchi and pesto and I enjoyed eating her leftovers, very much indeed. The “lasagne” however, was unfortunately not so enjoyable, in fact it was downright unpleasant. The pesto ricotta mixture was a slight improvement on the tapenade or plain ricotta mix, but alas it could not save the dish. I would never have imagined before we started this project that we would repeatedly make versions of meals that we actively dislike. That seems like a pointless activity if ever I heard one. Still, we only have 20 more recipes to go, is that not just a little insane? We have been giving next years project an occasional miniscule little thought, and so far the farthest that we have got is that the good thing about this year is that you have to eat anyway. We’re thinking something along the same lines, but a little more flexible. We’ll keep on thinking until we figure something out. We only decided to do this project on the last day of December 2006, so we have plenty of time to decided. How about “One Year Project II: The Breathing Edition”?

Other things today have sort of overshadowed the Rachael Ray project. When I dropped off our bruised and battered little girl at daycare today, I noticed that the newly-constructed stage, against which she’d fallen, had some foam taped over the edge. When I picked her up this afternoon, the entire stage area was barricaded off so that the kids couldn’t get near it. A sign was up on the wall saying that the stage was still under construction. I went over and inspected the edge of the stage, and to be honest I’m amazed that Little A’s injuries aren’t worse. There is a raw jagged edge of chipboard and laminate just at toddler falling height. Either the stage wasn’t finished, in which case the children shouldn’t have been anywhere near it, or it was finished in a horrible way and this is a severe case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Either way we’re not too happy. Obviously yesterday our only concern was Little A’s well-being, but today we are starting to get mad. This was not simply a case of her falling over or falling off something or banging into something and getting a bruise or a cut. Little A is a toddler; falling over is what she does, but this particular injury could have been avoided, or certainly lessened. It doesn’t take much thought to realise that a hard, jagged unfinished edge (at toddler tripping height no less) has no place in a daycare setting.

And so today was the day that all our wonderful glowing thoughts about Little A’s daycare situation were somewhat mitigated. In between seeing the newly added foam on the edge and wondering why the * the edge had not been covered earlier, and returning to a full scale boycott of the half of the room containing the stage, I received an email from the Director of the place. She was informing us that there would be no exception to the 3 days a week= part time care rule, that Little A could stay there and we’d pay what we’d pay, or we could remove her. In fairness, we were hoping against hope that they would allow her to attend two days a week, against their policy, but this letter was a little more unpleasant than it needed to be. It was of the yes childcare is expensive, suck it up type variety. She does hope that Little A can return if our “situation improves”. Like maybe if one, or preferably both, of us manage to retrain immediately (requiring no childcare whilst doing so, obviously) and find a career outside the arts. Or maybe we could telecommute from Europe, or something. Oh look at the pigs outside, they’re flying right past our window, up in subsidised childcare heaven. And so it looks like very soon I’ll be a full-time stay at home Mum, attempting to continue one (admittedly financially dreadful) career collaborating with L, and trying to set up an online business at the same time. How about “One Year Project II: The Will I Ever Shower Again Edition”?

Anyway, it is almost tomorrow (yes I fell asleep once more upstairs nursing my beautiful baby. But on the plus side the house is very quiet, which is nice). Tomorrow is the day of the fifth and final polenta lasagne installment. We couldn’t be more relieved to see the back of this one. Fortunately it comes just in time for me to call a halt on the “bring back pasta in our lasagne” chant and placard that I’ve been working on. At least Super Mushroom Polenta “Lasagne” is vegetarian so there will be no more horrible sausage mixture. Unfortunately the P word is still in there. Shudder.

This morning we started the day with a plan; drop off Little A at daycare; spend the first part of the morning with my sister-in-law then take her to the airport; then work for the rest of the day. Just as A got back to the house after dropping off Little A, the daycare center called. Little A had fallen and hit her head and needed to go to ER. L turned right around to go and pick her up while I called the insurance company. Not knowing how bad her injury was, we thought that it might be imperative that she was seen immediately, so I tried to find out if we could go to a local ER. There is a hospital about 3 minutes away from her daycare, and our hospital is about 25 minutes away on a very good day. After being put on hold for, oh forever, I was finally told that they would prefer that we went to our own care provider, unless it was an emergency. But we needed to establish if Little A needed Emergency or just Urgent care. And we had to adhere to the policy, but there didn’t seem to be a coherent policy, at least not one that could be disclosed. If we went to another hospital she couldn’t tell me what it would cost us, other than to say that the hospital would be entitled to bill us at above normal rates, because they were out of network, and oh because they can. So I asked what would be the normal rates for an ER visit, and she couldn’t tell me because it depended on the severity of the emergency. I started to tell her that we didn’t know and blah de blah, without swearing at her too much or using too many bad words, but instead said thanks and hung up. As I was simultaneously fretting about Little A and fuming about the American healthcare system and the fact that we actually have good health insurance, L called to say that he would take Little A out to our regular hospital. He didn’t say how she was was doing before ringing off so I spent a few minutes trying to rationalise that A must be doing ok if they were driving out to our usual place of medicine. I called ahead to the hospital and was told that our doctor would see the little one immediately upon arrival. She was apparently really out of it when L picked her up, but she quickly seemed on better form.Turns out that Little A’s wounds are pretty superficial, but they surely do look dreadful. She has an enormous welt across the top of one eye, with a cut that our doctor glued together and stuck down with strips. There’s a second dark red line under the first, and the whole eye area is very swollen. The entire episode was a bit traumatic all round, but she is on good form again. What a relief.

Once I knew that L and Little A were safely back in the arms of a branch of Starbucks, sharing a cookie, I took my sister-in-law to the airport. En route we stopped at the Mall so she could do 45 minutes of power-shopping, the likes of which I’ve never seen. Spending the stupidly strong British pound on American goods seemed like a lot of fun. I agonise over every purchase; this was was the work of someone who really can shop. L and I of course spent the day with the kids, and as the builders upstairs were being ridiculously loud, we had to go out, so a nap was out of the question. We ended up back in the Mall, where it was at least warm. We certainly got some suspicious looks from fellow shoppers looking at A’s face then at us, then back again. Not so nice. Overall though, Little A was really brave and good, and she loves our doctor, which certainly helps matters.

Anyway, tonight we made Sausage, Mushroom, and Olive Polenta “Lasagne” which was the same as all the other versions of this meal, but with olive tapenade in the ricotta cheese mixture. Verdict: waste of good tapenade. Tomorrow, Sausage, Mushroom, and Pesto Polenta “Lasagne”, and hopefully a day free of drama and trauma.

This evening’s meal, Sweet and Savory Polenta “Lasagne” [recipe, via Oprah], had the addition of golden raisins and pinenuts to yesterday’s master recipe. What can I say? It was a little more crunchy and had some raisins in, which were indeed sweet. So yes, the polenta “lasagne” was both sweet and savoury. Yet still vile, unfortunately. This is definitely an instance where I have to disagree that a couple of ingredients make all the difference to the master recipe. The ricotta mixture was still clammy, the polenta still grainy and repulsive, the overall effect still disastrously far removed from lasagne. Highly unimpressed.

Out of respect for my sister in law who we haven’t seen for two years, and who is visiting for only 36 hours, we tasted this and then ordered pizza. This food is truly awful I am afraid. Tomorrow we make it all again, but this time with tapenade added to the ricotta mixture to make Sausage, Mushroom, and Olive Polenta “Lasagne”. At least we have leftover pizza, just on the off chance that the tapenade doesn’t make the dish fabulous.

This evening we made Sausage and Mushroom Polenta “Lasagne” [recipe, via Oprah] and I am very, very sorry to say that we will be eating versions of this meal for four more days. Today is Sunday, we will be eating polenta “lasagne” until Thursday. I might cry. The write-up to this recipe says that “This one could take 35 minutes; but the results taste far more time-consuming,” which is always a bit of a warning. The timing was pretty accurate, but we hadn’t reckoned on what a mess we would make cooking in our newly-cleaned kitchen. It hardly seems worth cleaning up again as we have to get everything out again tomorrow, plus our countertops are being replaced on Tuesday.

This meal is made with three components, as lasagne tends to be; meat, cheese sauce and a solid barrier of carbohydrates. The meat layer is made with sausage meat, fried in butter with garlic, onion, rosemary, portobello mushroom, red pepper flakes and black pepper. Chicken stock and lemon juice add some much-needed liquid. The white layer was a mixture of ricotta cheese, egg, Parmigiano-Reggiano, breadcrumbs and lemon zest. Pasta lasagne sheets were replaced by disks of prepared polenta. Three sets of layers were assembled, with difficulty. The meat was not “saucy” as a tomato-based meat sauce tends to be, so it could only be sort of sprinkled on the polenta disks. The ricotta thickened with breadcrumbs was almost impossible to even smoosh on top of the polenta; it had incredible sticking properties. Eventually we assembled the dish and topped it with shredded mozzarella. Aluminium foil was put over the top and the “lasagne” went into the oven. Once cooked we were perturbed by the anaemic nature of the melted but not browned cheese on top. Against instructions, we removed the foil and returned the dish to the oven until a little browning action had taken place.

I’m sorry to say that this meal lived up to our expectations, which is to say that we didn’t enjoy it at all. The sausage meat was quite fatty; we’d have preferred to use a leaner choice such as ground beef. The ricotta was really stodgy and solid; the sort of food that sticks to the roof of your mouth. The polenta disks weighed everything down; normal lasagne is hearty and filling, this was hefty like lead weights or concrete. Overall not a good dinner. The bacon bagel we resorted to was far more pleasant. Well, I have typed this entry entirely one-handed on account of the baby, and I am tired. My sister in law is currently in the air on her way here after a bit of a delay, perhaps she’d like some lasagne? I doubt it, but there’s always tomorrow. Then we’ll add some golden raisins and pine nuts for Sweet and Savory Polenta “Lasagne”. I can hardly wait.

The day in brief:

• New haircut (I asked if he could make the colour and cut last 4 years, please)
• New undergarments (oh the power of fitting things. I’ll say no more on that)
• Loss of one infant hat (Baby N has been very upset this evening ever since. Are the two events related?  Who knows)  

 

• Gnocchi with Sausage and Swiss Chard

 

The dinner in brief:

• Sweet Italian sausage fried= enormous amount of oil
• Onions, garlic, red pepper flakes and Swiss chard added to the meaty oil
• White wine and chicken stock dilute the oil
• Cooked gnocchi floats around in oily liquid
• Parmigiano cheese thickens the oil ever so slightly

Observations on dinner:

• Actually quite oily
• And ridiculously salty
• Who knows what Swiss chard tastes like? It seemed very salty. And oily
• Too much gnocchi to classify as dumplings, too much water to classify as a sauce
• Therefore, neither a soup nor a stew, but rather a water-logged meal.

On the plus side:

• It was very quick and easy to make

Other:

• Tomorrow we will be having Turkey Stroganoff Noodle Toss
• That sounds like something  we have already eaten