Debi: (Just Enough) Squash & Black Bean Empanadas, with Neighbors

Last week, I decided that we had been eating entirely too much purely beige food. After a cooking frenzy over the holidays, I had grown tired of standing in my kitchen chopping and sauteeing and frying and baking and plating, only to come back an hour later and spend almost as much time scrubbing and wiping and wrapping and sudsing. I stepped back for about a week and we ate a combination of leftovers, boxed macaroni & cheese, pancakes, and take-out. By last Thursday, I decided that enough was enough; we had to eat something good.

One of my favorite cookbooks is Veganomicon, a vegan cookbook with some recipes so complicated that I put it aside for months at a time, exhausted by the prospect of "patshken zikh mit," a Yiddish phrase that translates roughly to "messing around with tiny details forever until you go nuts." However, I had rested my cooking brain for long enough to decide to attempt a recipe like that, and so I settled on "Roasted Acorn Squash and Black Bean Empanadas."

Ever roasted a squash? That actually takes as much time as preparing some entire meals. You have to chop it open, which, even with a good knife, should be considered a dangerous athletic event. Then roasting it, in your oven, takes an hour. Then it has to cool long enough to scrape the seeds out, and then there's cutting it up into the right size pieces for your recipe. And for this recipe, that's just to get past the first line in the ingredients: "1 roasted squash."

Fortunately (and I use that term ironically), in my house, the day often begins just after 6am, when my youngest wakes up. I had that squash roasted before taking my older daughter, Ronni, to school at 8:45. Nope. I'm not kidding.

So, the next thing on the list was to make the empanada dough. I mixed up a batch while Sammi, the resident 4 year old, watched cartoons, then set it in the fridge to chill. After a morning of lounging, playing the occasional board game, coloring, and eating a beige lunch, Sammi and I commenced the rolling process. This may very well be Sammi's whole reason for being alive. She loves to roll dough. Last year, for Hannukah, we gave her a little child's size set of real baking implements, and I think she'd sleep with her rolling pin if we gave her the chance. On a chair dragged to the kitchen counter, she rolled and rolled, dribbled the surface with flour, rolled again. She sang a cheerful tune to herself.

It is such a peaceful experience to bake with her -- both of us industrious, the kitchen warm and good-smelling, our hands busy and purposeful. This may be why she and I did not find our groove together until she was old enough for a "project." It's like we need a common cause, outside ourselves, to take the focus away from our early struggles as mother & daughter. She was such a sick and unhappy baby, and unable to tell me why -- and then I was such a distraught, helpless mother, unable to fix the trouble. Now we can talk and work together to roll out that dough, smooth out those lumps, mix in the herbs and leavening to make our friendship rise, sweet and spicy, in just the right amount of time.

So. Dough rolled out, it now needed to rest in the fridge, chilling until closer to dinner. It occurred to me in mid-afternoon that my neighbor's birthday was the next day. A quick call to confirm with my husband that he approved, and she and her husband were invited to join us for dinner. I added a cake to my mental list of things to make after picking up Ronni from school at 3:35.

We bundled up and dragged ourselves out into the snowy day to get Ronni, then dragged ourselves back. Ronni and Sammi sat at a small table in the kitchen, snacking and working on homework and coloring, while I began the process of making the empanada filling. There was that squash again -- and then I added black beans, oil, seasoning, lemon, maple syrup...almost done...time to roll out the dough again.

Sammi, in all her glory, rolled thin the squares I cut from our dough, spooning the filling into the middle of each while Ronni grumbled over another set of math problems. Oh my. That sure didn't look like much food. What to add?

I keep my laptop on the kitchen counter, so I quickly looked through my fridge and freezer for a complementary vegetable to serve with the empanadas. Finding corn, I quickly located a good recipe on Vegweb.com: Spiced corn. It was easy to make, and easily doubled. Done.

What was I forgetting? I have an hour before dinner, the empanadas are ready to go into the oven. What else?

Oh.

Cake.

Not enough time to make and frost a birthday cake. Not enough time to make and frost a birthday cookie either. Dessert in our house can't have any chocolate -- Sammi has GERD, so the acidic foods stop appearing after mid-afternoon -- so I quickly located a recipe for white chocolate and dried cranberry dessert bars (with some substitutions -- I used margarine and vanilla almond bark), and goaded Ronni into finishing her homework quickly enough to help me mix the ingredients. Flash - into the oven just as the empanadas came out, and as our neighbors arrived, and just minutes after the phone call from my husband that he wouldn't be coming home from work in time for dinner, after all.

Ronni, Sammi, and I sat around the table with our neighbors -- a dear married couple who we've adopted as our extra brother- and sister-in-law, though they are no relation -- and enjoyed the fruits of a day's labor. As the oven beeped to tell us the dessert was ready, C (the husband half of the couple) came into the kitchen to help me McGyver our 5 and 6 birthday candles into a 2 and 9 for B's 29th birthday. My flour-spattered, pink-cheeked daughters sang enthusiastically, and their daddy arrived in time to eat the last 3 empanadas.

So, there's the ambitious dinner we tried last week. The verdict? Too much "patshken zikh mit," for a recipe with no leftovers. However, there was just enough love and fun for a winter's day in the city.

Debi: Big City Blessings

Along with the many other things I appreciate about living near a big city like Chicago (the city border is five blocks from my house), I have come to be deeply, deeply grateful for the availability of unparalleled medical care. If you have insurance (and of course, this is a whole other political discussion that makes my blood boil, but we're not writing a political blog here...), you can get excellent care in any number of hospitals. If you are a child, Children's Memorial Hospital, here in Chicago, is one of the best in the country.

We discovered just how specialized the care at that hospital is when our younger daughter was diagnosed at a year old with a serious congenital heart defect. It turned out, after we got the diagnosis and began furiously searching for information, that the two doctors who have done the most research on the condition -- and who perform most of the corrective surgeries for it nationwide -- are here, at Children's Memorial. They did the surgery for our Sammi, and while I have nothing to compare it to, I found the care at the hospital to be just wonderful.

Now, our older daughter, Ronni, has been diagnosed with another congenital defect, this time of the bladder and ureters. She'll require surgery to correct it, and so we had no hesitation in choosing the pediatric urology faculty at the same hospital to guide us through the process. Earlier this week, she had to undergo a scan that we knew would take a long time, involve a lot of waiting and remaining very still, and might, in other circumstances, be quite frightening. The people at Children's Memorial, however, know exactly how to handle this -- and I had some good ideas, too.

That picture above is of Ronni undergoing a DMSA scan. Sitting next to her, holding her hand, is her best friend. That best friend, along with her mom who is one of my best friends, came with us and was allowed to stay in the room during the procedure. The radiology techs have rigged a DVD player to their machinery so that children undergoing their scans can watch a movie while they lie still and wait. Since the scan takes 90 minutes or more, this is a lifesaver. Ronni's best friend was set up in some chairs with some pillows and allowed to lie there with Ronni, watching the movie, holding her hand, keeping her company, the entire time.

The kind of population density around here can be daunting to those who are used to living in the suburbs or, like Stori, in the country...but it is a great comfort to me to know that there is unlimited personal opportunity surrounding me at all times. Meeting friends as dear and as kind as the ones who came with us to the hospital this week, having a hospital this excellent nearby, having the infrastructure to support our easy movement through our days here -- all these things make me feel safe, loved, supported, and cared for in an environment that probably looks like none of those things from the outside. Isn't it glorious how we look at the lives we've built for ourselves? I feel lucky, every day, to live here.

(And, by the way, the test went well. There is no damage to her kidneys, and so, while she'll still need bladder surgery, it is likely to be the last step in our journey. Thank goodness!)

Stori: the story of us

It was 5 years ago this month that my husband and I had our first official date. It was 2 years prior to that the first time he asked me out. My husband is brilliant, but fast he is not.

It all started at a wolf trapping school put on by the Alaska Trapper's Association. Every year, the club holds a general trapping school held in October, and most years a wolf trapping school held in January. I was working in the pharmacy at that time with my friend/pharmacist/boss Jeanie. Jeanie is an amazing cook from Louisiana, very cajun style of cooking. Her husband was a member of ATA and the club asked her to cook for the 3 day school. She in turn asked me to come up and help, it was my 2ND helping out at the schools. The school is held at Twin Bears Campground, about 30 miles outside of Fairbanks up Chena Hot Springs Road. Marc's trapping partner Jim Walters was putting on the school, and with Marc also a member, he was at the school to volunteer. It was one cold weekend! The first day, Friday, the temps were hovering right around -50 below zero. I was very glad I had drove up with Jeanie and her family. I had Paige with me who was only 4 at the time. The next day, we were in the cookhouse. Jeanie, our friend Charlie, and I were cooking. Paige and Jeanie's daughter, Amie, were playing cards. A couple guys were sitting around the barrel stove lieing to each other, the rest of the students and helpers were outside setting trail, or in the classroom for a lesson. I was standing at the cooking range stirring a big pot of Jambalaya when this horrible smell hit me like a punch in the face. I turned around to see what was so offensive and there he was.

Standing in the door way like some giant mountain man. Wolf hat and face mask, bunny boots, refridgerwear outer clothes, holding out a string of 6 frozen martin (weasel type fur bearers), and all 6 foot 2 inch, 250 lbs. of him reeking of wolf urine. He was the horrible smell. He had accidentally spilled some wolf scent on him and it was potent!! He asked me if I minded if he thawed out the martin over the cook stove. Definitely not a homey kitchen smell I would imagine.

Later that night after supper, we were all sitting around having a drink and visiting. Some folks, Jeanie's husband Jimbo mostly, were playing some bluegrass music. There was only 3 females at the school that year, and I was the only single one. Marc had sat there the whole evening watching me turn guys down when I guess he started feeling brave. He asked me out for supper sometime, I said yes, I just didn't know it was going to be 2 years later. The day of the school was Sunday and we woke up to -62 below zero. Our cooking range ran off of propane and it was cold enough to freeze the propane in the bottles. We had no lights, the generator's battery and exploded during the night after it had froze solid, no way to cook, and only a barrel wood stove for heat in the cook shack. That morning when Paige and I woke up in our little cabin, our hair was frozen to the wall. It was the coldest I had ever seen it. Jeanie and I were sitting there having a cuppa when Marc and Jim walked in with torches. They were on their way outside to hold open flames on the propane tanks to thaw out the liquid enough to turn it back into gas, so we could cook breakfast. The only thought I had was that crazy bastard was going to kill us all in a fiery explosion, but at least we'd be warm.

After the school, Marc would drop by the pharmacy at least once a week to visit. For the next two years, we would run into each other at various events. Trapping schools, ATA end of the year Spring Flings. It was at one of the Spring Flings when it all really started going. My family and I had decided to quit Alaska and were planning on a move down to Montana. My parents had already accepted an offer on their cabin and I had given a tentative notice to the pharmacy. My friends were throwing a semi going away party for me at a local bar the week following the Spring Fling. On a complete whim, I invited Marc to drop by. We had a great time at the party, the house sale fell through, my family decided not to move, and the wheels of fate had started to turn. We followed up with an actual date to a comedy show the next week, which Marc stopped at the dump on the way, should have been a sign for me. We have been inseparable ever since.

We dated only 6 months before we were married. But were engaged 4 months in. In life, some things just work out the way they are supposed to and it fits just right. We were married September 25Th, 2004 in my parents back yard. Jeanie was my matron of honor. We had a potluck, and a bonfire. We had just finished building the barn, so we gave many new barn tours. It was a perfect evening.