More of the Chicks

Baby chicks poop a lot. Which is a good thing. Trust me on this. Because when something plugs this up it could mean the death of a baby. Those in the know call it pasty vent or pasty butt. And I am now counted among those in the know. Cute little bundles of fluff with a wad of excrement glued to their rear and it was up to me, their mother, to remove it. Think dried on meconium for those familiar with that unlovely substance, or gum in the hair for the rest of folks.

Ah, the lot of mothers. My daughter-in-law has spent the day dealing with a prodigiously and violently ill offspring, and the resultant mountain of laundry, which puts my little bottom wiping in perspective. As in most things, if we knew then what we know now...

Good thing infantile beings are so cute.

Our Family Has Expanded

Once again I am
experiencing the thrill and joy of new motherhood in my life, and like every new mother cannot get enough of the sight of my young. I find myself peeking in and gazing with awe and love at my newborns.

I love the sound of their tiny voices and watching them sleep and play. They are adorable. And I hover like the mother hen that I am, checking to see that they can drink, but not drown, and know how to peck at their food and not their sibling. I am truly the mother hen--to twelve new chicks. I ordered ten and got a free promotional chick; the twelfth one must be a stowaway.

I set out this year to do a few specific things. At that time I had no inkling I would be raising chickens a few short months later. As far as learning fifty new things, I think on chickens alone I have accomplished that. And I have no doubt that these fluff balls will continue to teach me in the coming months. And I look forward to it. Gotta run, I have a family to check on.

Just a quick clarification for my followers. If you see an asterisk by one of the books I've read, it means it is classic literature. As you will soon realize, there are very few of those. I now have no doubt that I will be able to read 50 books by October, but I am less certain of whether I will be able to fulfill the requirement that half of them be a work of classic literature.

There are essentially two reasons for this. One: many of the classics are dense and wordy and take an unearthly amount of time to wade through, therefore me slowing down. And two: I am maybe not high-brow intellectual enough when faced with a stack of books, to choose the lit. It's a personal flaw that I am working to overcome. So now you know.

A Feast of Roasted Vegetables

My quest for eating fifty somethings I have never eaten before once again took me to the vegetable section of the grocery store and local fruit and vegetable store and I brought home a fennel bulb. I have never eaten one before, not so much because I hadn't heard of them, but because I really do not like the flavor of licorice.

But this year is all about pushing myself. Out of my comfort zone and experiencing new things. Which has been very enlightening. I've always known I like change. But I've liked it on my own terms. I hate when things at work get changed; it's hard to stay current and the change usually involves taking something easy and quick and turning it into something infinitely more time consuming and difficult.

So I took my fennel bulb, cut it in half, added a whole leek chopped in big pieces and a few carrots, slathered everything in olive oil and kosher salt and roasted them in a 400 degree oven till things started smelling like a chef lived here. I had to take the leeks out early because they cooked faster than the fennel, and I snuck a few bites, just to taste test. I've had leeks in soups before so I was surprised at the intensity of flavor that roasting brought out.

When a fork stabbed into the fennel with ease, I declared it done, and fixed myself a plate. And yes, it does taste like licorice. But a mild and sweet version. Along with the carrot and the leek, it was a melding of interesting flavors. One I highly recommend.

Don't Whine When You Write A Memoir

Some of the books I have read lately have been memoirs. A memoir can be a great way to get a glimpse into someone else's life and walk in their surroundings for awhile. Some memoirs can be profound and powerful as the author/protagonist faces a life threatening illness or overcomes some other huge life challenge. And some can be about a life experience I can only dream about, like "Under the Tuscan Sun."

What I have discovered about myself is, drumroll please, I hate it if the author is a whiner. Now I can tolerate the kind of whining where people recount a miserable experience where they run out of gas, and get splashed by mud and dumped by their boyfriends all in the same day, or something like that. I usually end up relating to them and feeling empathy. What I can't stand are the type of whiners like the authors of "Julie and Julia" and "The Saucier's Apprentice." These are two pathetic people who wrote books that should have been interesting if it weren't for the fact that they squandered all the good will I had for them when I started reading by moaning and complaining and making me very glad that I wasn't stuck in a cross country airplane next to them.

And the sad thing about it is they probably don't even have the insight to realize that they come across that way. Just a word of advice to all prospective memoirists out there: when you're done proofreading, give it one more read-through. And keep an ear out for excessive use of woe-is-me narrative. If Gilda Radner can tell me about her battle with cancer and do it in a way that makes me laugh and want to have her over for dinner, then certainly a guy who got to spend four months in Italy and France taking cooking lessons surely should be able to.

Love Letters to Pudding

One of the hardest parts of this challenge is finding contests to enter and then sitting down and knocking them out. There are a bunch of easy ones, and I'll resort to them eventually. But they are also not very interesting. One of the reasons I included contests as a category was because it would force me to get creative.

This contest allowed me to do that, in a strange and possibly cheesy way. Kozy Shack pudding has a contest that requires you to write a personal ad to eleven different pudding products. So far I have completed five. It doesn't sound that hard at first until you try to find enough different adjectives to describe chocolate pudding. And I'm pretty sure, silky, smooth, velvety and rich are a bit overused. I may have to make a pudding run to help spark the imagination.

On another note, I made a homemade cream of celery soup with apples and blue cheese topping. It was rather bland except for the blue cheese. My husband said it was like being fed air. We both hit the pantry later in the evening scavenging for snacks.