Tag Archives: motherhood

cinnamon rolls really quick

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20

I read a lot. During the two weeks we were in Greece, I read four novels.

Even with all this opportunity for word dazzling, I’ve rarely come upon a passage that overwhelms me. This did…

“I never had any questions except the one about the moment when I could die. I should have chosen the moment before the arrival of my children, for since then I’ve lost the option of dying. The sharp smell of their sun-baked hair, the smell of sweat on their backs when they wake from a nightmare, the dusty smell of their hands when they leave a classroom, meant that I have to live, to be dazzled by the shadow of their eyelashes, moved by a snowflake, bowled over by a tear on their cheek. My children have given me the exclusive power to blow on a wound to make the pain disappear, to understand words unpronounced, to possess the universal truth, to be a fairy. A fairy smitten with the way they smell.” an excerpt from ‘Ru’ written by Kim Thuy

The grace of motherhood is the power that fuels all of the passions in my life. This stunning passage captures the magic of being a mother. I read it several times and then spent the rest of the day remembering…

It’s raining here today which means it’s a perfect day for experimenting. I’ve been thinking about a ‘quick’ cinnamon roll recipe for a while so I’m live blogging.

The cinnamon rolls are mixed, raised and in the oven in one hour and forty minutes. If they finishing baking in twenty minutes, I will have succeeded in making jumbo, heavenly smelling rolls oozing with butter, sugar and cinnamon in two hours. Fingers crossed!

I’m five minutes over. The rolls didn’t look cooked at twenty minutes so I’m trusting my instincts and baking them until I’m sure they’re cooked – I hate doughy bread.  Now to cool them before adding the frosting. I am getting impatient.

cinnamon buns

They are sufficiently cooled enough to add the icing/frosting – I flip back and forth between the two names!

cinnamon buns really quick

After two and a half hours, I am ready to enjoy what-appear-to-be wickedly gorgeous cinnamon buns.

quick iced cinnamon buns

Tea is poured and I’m biting…

fast cinnamon buns with icing

To put the taste into perspective, they are worthy of blowing any diet I might just have started.

iced quick cinnamon buns

Totally rainy Saturday cheat day worthy!

quick cinnamon buns

Cinnamon Rolls really quick

1 3/4 cup warm water

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup oil

3 tablespoons instant yeast

Mix in your stand-mixer and let sit for 15 minutes

Then add:

1/2 tablespoon salt

2 eggs

5 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Mix together for 10 minutes, then sit for 10 minutes.

Oil your counter then dump out dough. Using your hands, press the dough into a rectangle. Click on this link for good pictures to follow

Cinnamon-Sugar

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cinnamon

Mix in small bowl

Spread dough with 1/4 cup melted butter and then sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Roll up.

Divide into 12 rolls and place on greased cookie sheet.

Let raise for 45 minutes

Preheat oven 400*F

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes

Icing

1 tablespoon butter

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 t. vanilla

1 cup icing sugar

2 tablespoons milk

Place all of the icing ingredients in a medium bowl and beat together with a hand mixer.

Drizzle over warm cinnamon buns.

fast cinnamon buns with frosting

Thanks for reading.

far away from strawberry ice cream and morning glories

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1

Watching the stress fade from my daughters’ smiles fills me up.

For three years, I’ve struggled with how to mother my adult children. Their independence left me feeling useless.

The girls no longer need me to direct them. Their internal compasses are true.

Having the girls home over the last two weeks made everything clear. Every time that I hugged them, I felt their bodies soften as they paused in my embrace. I could feel the energy leaving my body and filling them up. Each day they seemed more centred, more grounded.

Nothing profound happened. There were no remarkable discussions. Simply the ease of being together in our family home, enjoying each other, calmed them.

The girls delighted in everything about ‘home’.. They want to know every detail of the new flower beds, the barn and the soon-to-be swimming hole. They need to feel  connected. That connection is the strength that carries them through their daily lives far away from morning glories and homemade strawberry ice cream.

I finally get it…

Strawberry Ice Cream

makes 1 quart

1 quart  frozen strawberries,  thawed – save juice

2/3 cup sugar

2 cups whipping/heavy cream

Place strawberries, juice and sugar in food processor and pulse until smooth

Pour strawberry mixture into the bowl of your ice cream maker while it is running

Add cream

Follow ice cream machine manufacture’s directions

Thanks for reading

she’s home

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An unbridled, full-out love fest is happening at the farm. Meggie is home.

We all need to touch each other to make sure that it’s real…

The last few years for me have been unwelcomed but inevitable. My daughters launched. They left home to begin their adult lives free of the confines of me. I’m being harshly dramatic. The world is just not that big any more. Cell phones, internet, texting and Skype made leaving home relatively painless for the girls. I, on the other hand, have internally kicked and screamed since they left. Recently, my struggle stopped and I am at a lovely, peaceful place. I no longer spend all of their time at home dreading them leaving. I am present in each moment and loving every second!

Meggie is a fabulous cook! She loves heading down to our vegetable garden to decide what we will have for dinner. Last night, we made a green string bean and roasted baby bell pepper salad with a warm grape tomato, balsamic vinaigrette.

Green String Beans and Mini Bell Peppers in a Warm Grape Tomato Vinaigrette

serves 6

2 quarts fresh string beans, blanched and chilled

6 miniature red bell peppers, roasted, skinned and sliced into strips

1 pint grape tomatoes

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon maple syrup

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

In a small skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat.

Add grape tomatoes and heat through, about 3 minutes – shake pan often

Reduce heat to low and add garlic – continue cooking 5 minutes

Remove from heat and whisk in balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, salt and pepper

Place green beans and roasted peppers in serving bowl. Pour warm vinaigrette over veggies and toss gently.

This salad is delicious with a mild chevre.

My kitchen is bursting with smiles…

Thanks for reading

Fresh Raspberry Pie and choosing happiness

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11

I love those moments of clarity that smack you with the force of a fly swatter.

For the past three years, I have been struggling with the loss of my daughters from my daily life. I’m not sure that struggle is the best description for the profound sadness that I have experienced, constantly, over the last thirty six months. The sadness ran tandum with every other emotion that I felt; happy, excited, stressed but always sad. And it’s not as if I haven’t been busy! I remodelled our farmhouse. I designed a new Italian restaurant menu. I helped open the new restaurant. I have continued to live my life as I always have but in a vacuous longing space.

I miss my girls. I miss our family busyness. The fun that happens when the five of us are together is golden to me. Allowing myself to be happy without their magic – well that’s been the problem – I’ve not really made any attempt to be completely happy without them. Maybe I thought that if I didn’t accept the fact that they are no longer living in Saint John, miraculously they would return.  I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s the only explanation that I can come up with for my insistence on being miserable.

Yesterday afternoon, after five gruelling hours in the hot sun laying fresh Kentucky blue grass sod around our new patio, Ralph and I headed out on the river. The day was spectacular. Lazy clouds, warm winds and flat water. We love to putt along the Saint John river admiring all of the beautiful farmland . It is truly one of the most stunning river valleys in the world.

The beauty surrounding us calmed me enough to finally understand how precious this time in my life is. I have raised three strong women who are blazing into their lives like lightening bolts. Our parents are happy and well. I still have a crush on my husband. I have a blessed life.

Peacefully and gratefully, I let the sadness go. I felt it leave as completely as it had descended upon me.

I will always miss my life when the girls lived at home but the life I am living is just as full, just as lovely. It’s just different.

I chose to be sad. Now, I choose to celebrate…

And I started with a fresh raspberry pie!

Follow the recipe from my link for the pastry.

For the filling I used:

5 cups fresh raspberries

2 cups white sugar

1/3 cup flour

Toss the sugar and flour together

Prepare the crust following the directions from my link

Shape the pastry

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the sugar mixture into the empty pie shell then fill with the raspberries.

Pour remaining sugar mixture over raspberries.

Top with crust, crimp, trim and brush it with a wash of 1 egg mixed well with 1 tablespoon of whipping cream. Make steam vents in pastry top.

Sprinkle top with sanding sugar.

Bake at 450*F 15 minutes

Reduce oven temperature to 350*F

Continue baking 45 minutes until crust is golden and fruit is bubbly.

I served my pie with homemade peach ice cream.

Thanks for reading.

hear me

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15

She’d left the apartment open so I could wait inside for her to finish work.

It’s weird being in your adult child’s home. Strange to open her refrigerator and notice that her fridge was not organized like mine.

I was sitting on the sofa that used to live at my house when she arrived.

“I can’t hear you,” she suddenly announced after ten minutes of normal conversation about things that didn’t matter much.

I knew where this was going.

“No matter what you wrote about Mom – me, the girls, the farm or work – I could hear your voice in your posts. I could hear you speaking. I have not been able to hear you since Christmas.”

Silence

“You have a wall up because you are protecting me. I’m OK. Write about it.  I need to hear you….”

In October she’d called and said, “Mom, I am not sure I’m still in love with him.”

Before that call, the last time she’d visited, we’d spent the entire weekend planning a wedding.

I listened as my daughter, with her newly acquired big city attitude complete with disdain for all things familiar, informed me that she was changing.

I am the Queen of Change. I am not afraid of change.  But this wasn’t a change I’d anticipated or wanted in my daughter. This was a complete annihilation of any semblance of the loving, gentle, articulate girl who I had raised. This was different; her ‘change’ could mean the end of something vital between us.

As the weeks took us closer to Christmas, our telephone conversations became terse snapping sparring matches inevitably ending badly, leaving silence to well up in two rooms separated by a thousand miles.

The holidays were reduced to a series of unfinished conversations, raw glances and resentful obligation. Then she left to make the most difficult journey of her life alone.

I had no choice but to wait, quietly. The frequency of her calls increased. Her moods were hard to anticipate: one day stable and focused, the next confused and lost. I wanted to guide her, to tell her what I thought, to steer her in the direction I thought best, as I had countless times before.  I didn’t.  It wasn’t my place.  Not anymore.

As spring approached, her struggle began to feel purposeful. Her language shifted from self-centered to self exploration. All of the anger dissipated into a graceful clarity. Her thoughtful insight began to act as her guide.

And so she emerged from her long season of struggle, still the daughter I loved so very much but less the little girl I’d always known and more a woman I would have to learn  to know.

Thanks for reading.

Love and Joy

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11

As I worked away in my kitchen this morning baking savory cookies, I was thinking about twenty-five years ago this month. I was waiting to birth two babies. My twins were due to arrive on January 4th, 1987. Having already tipped the scale at 193 lbs, I felt that they had been ‘cooking’ long enough!

It had been months, since I had seen my feet. I rested my belly on any flat waist - high surface that I could find. My wardrobe had been reduced to t-shirts - men’s size XL, a maternity jumper and an old pair of winter boots – once again men’s size 11 and an over sized faux fur coat with gigantic shoulder pads. It was 1986 after all!

I tried to do what ever I could to coax those two, not-so-little, darlings into the world.

One of my efforts involved me taking an hour-long subway ride into Manhattan. I was living in New York City.  When I arrived at the 6th Ave and 34th St stop, I climbed up into the Christmas madness that is Macy’s during the holidays. It was wild! Although I had gained an elephant in weight, from the back I looked normal. It was not until you got a profile or front - on view that the full grandeur of my physique was obvious. I can still hear ‘look at the size of that woman’, in a New York accent, ringing in my ears. Small children would shriek and hide behind their mothers…

I fought through the crowds and purchased 54 feet of thick synthetic green garland. Unlike the artificial garlands available today, in 1986 holiday greenery was thick and lush. It took four large Macy’s shopping bags to hold my new Christmas decorations. Holding my parcels left me wider than I was thick!

I could not fit through Macy’s exit. No matter how I tried I could not fit through the door with my packages. New York was a different place before 9/11. People were not as kind. A gynormous pregnant lady garnered little sympathy from frantic holiday shoppers. Finally, Macy’s security cop held the door for me and offered some sound advice, “might be better to wait until you have that baby before you do any more shopping!” I remember being so insulted that he thought I was only carrying one baby – it would have been a 15 pounder! I should have just been grateful that he came to my rescue. I’ll blame it on all the hormones charging through my body.

After an other hour long ride back to Queens, a 10 minute walk home and two flights of stairs – nothing.

My next bright idea was to clean my windows. I thought that all the stretching might give things a jump start. I was up and down on a ladder for a solid hour and still no action. “I might as well clean the outsides, too.” My livingroom windows sat at the same level as my fire escape. I climbed out of the window - picture a 200 lb woman squeezing through a narrow window casing – not pretty!  I cleaned the windows and then when I tried to pull the window up, so that I could go back inside, it was stuck! No matter how I pulled on that window, it would not budge. So there I was, stuck on my fire escape, in the middle of December, crying. Not because I was cold – not because I was locked out of my apartment. I was crying because I could not get those babies to leave the nest!

Finally, on the morning of December 27th, 1986, I knew that they were coming out to play! My labour lasted 32 hours. I was exhausted and yet totally energized. Seconds after they were born, the attending nurses layed the girls on top of me. In the moment when I first looked into their eyes, my world was changed forever.

Every year since, despite my excitement about the holidays, I am a little weepy. Not weepy in a sad way but rather a joy full way. Their birth was the happiest day of my life. Christmas is a constant reminder of the beginning of our journey together. I am deeply grateful to be a mother – to Kaitlin, Meaghan and Sara.

I love you, little girls.

As you can see from the photos, I have been busy baking savory cookies and tea breads. Once you have a good base, you can substitute whatever flavours you like. I baked savory shortbread, sun-dried tomato and provolone tea bread, black pepper and provolone biscotti and cheddar cheese thumbprints. My kitchen smelled amazing! All of these cookies and the tea bread freeze perfectly so, you can make them ahead of time and serve when you need them.

Savory Shortbread

makes 6 Dozen

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tablespoon hot paprika

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 cup butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

2 cups old cheddar, shredded

1/2 cup milk

In the bowl of a food processor, place flour, spices and salt – pulse to combine

Add the butter and pulse until it looks like coarse meal

Transfer flour mixture to bowl of stand mixer

Toss shredded cheddar with flour mixture

Add milk and mix until mixture forms a ball and has pulled away from the sides of the bowl

Divide dough in half and form into 2 long cylinders 2″ wide

Wrap in waxed paper and chill for one hour

Preheat oven 350*F

Slice cookie dough into 1/4″ slices and place on parchment lined cookie sheets 1″ apart

Bake until golden 12-14 minutes, rotate cookie sheets halfway through baking time

Cool on wire rack and store.

These cookies will keep up to 2 days in an air tight container or in the freezer for 3 months.

Thanks for reading

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