The first Valentine's Day Scott and I shared as a married couple, I decided to make an elaborate cookie recipe that I remember took me almost 1/2 day to complete. Looking back, I'm sure the recipe wasn't all that complicated, but I hadn't baked much if at all back then, and so it probably took me double the time, and more angst and stumbling around in the kitchen than it ought to have taken. Plus, it didn't help that our kitchen was a true galley kitchen, and you could literally stand in the midle and touch both sides of the counters on opposite ends. The cookies were some kind of heart-shaped sandwich affair, with a heart cut-out middle, and lots of rasberry jam, and dusted over the tops with confectioner's sugar. I'm sure they were good but, of course, I remember the process of it all rather than the results.

I try and make a special cookie every year for Valentine's Day, but I know I've skipped many years in-between--like the ones when I was nursing a newborn, or too exhausted to even open a package of dry noodles, let alone bake something. This year, I definitely felt the baking bug bite, but I wanted something simple, yet memorable. Something with maybe a taste of cherry, something I could easily veganize if I needed to so, of course, I could enjoy the results, too.

Yesterday the weather was amazing--temperatures in the low 60s, and the smell and feel of spring in the air everywhere. Sometimes you can feel the change in the seasons in your bones, or on the ends of your hair as the wind lifts it up. The daffodils at the bottom of the yard have opened, there are purple crocuses along the rocky path in the front yard, and on the way home from work yesterday I noticed that some of the cherry blossom tree buds had opened up into flowers. Despite how springy everything is I feel a little sad about what might be a "false start" and can't quite give myself over to it. It is, after all, only February 1st today, and I worry about what will happen to the new flowers if we get a wintry cold spell, or snow or sleet.

And while baking on a balmy winter day seems contradictory somehow, I did it anyway, while T. was hard at work on her math problems.

In her thinking cap. Math was hard yesterday.

I made cookies--chocolate chip cherry ones, and they're healthy, to boot!

Chocolate Chip Cherry Cookies (Vegan)

1/2 cup Earth Balance, softened in the microwave

3/4 cup turbinado sugar

1/4 cup chia egg (I just added a tablespoon of chia seeds to my 1/4 cup measuring cup filled with water to create the "egg")

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 3/4 cups spelt flour

1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped dried cherries 

Preheat the oven to 350. In a large bowl, add flour and baking soda. Mix in melted Earth Balance, sugar, chia egg, and vanilla. Stir until combined. Fold in chocolate chips and cherries. Drop in balls on an oiled baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the bottom edges are lightly brown.

I've always found New Year's Day to be a bipolar sort of occasion, marked by extreme opposite ranges of emotions all crowding in for time in the spotlight. Even as a young child, I always felt both the thrill of a new year and the weight of the passage of time. I remember being awed and saddened, too, by the idea that one year was gone forever. I was often, on New Year's Eve, kept awake by the thought that a new year awaited, stretching out ahead like an empty patch of ocean, and that the familiar landscape of the poor old year, with all its bumps and glorious parts, had receded away into the distance.

It didn't help matters that this New Year's Eve, L. slept with a heavy pipe wrench in his bed, to ward off maruaders. He's been worried about all the 2012 end-of-the-world business for quite some time, and was in an anxious panic.

One of the rooms I always miss the most when we travel away from home is my kitchen. I miss the space of it, and the light coming in through the windows in the morning; I miss how I feel when I'm in the kitchen, cooking up food for my family, or making myself the first pot of coffee in the morning. At our house the kitchen is very much the heart of the home. I felt this the minute we first saw the house. I didn't care that the walls were covered in 1960s flowery wallpaper, or that we'd have to replace the appliances immediately, they were that bad, or that there were brass knobs on the cabinets. I loved the space, and the light, and the sense that this was a place where good things could happen, and where everyone would want to be.

And everyone does, most of the time. You can run through our kitchen, as the kids do constantly, from the dining room and into the hall and around again, in a loop. T. likes to sit at the kitchen table and color or draw, or she'll sit on the end of the counter and help me cook.

It's outdated, our kitchen, but I love it. It's the heart of it that matters, anyway, and its heart is sound and good.

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It's so hard to let go of a great weekend. Actually, it's hard to let go of any weekend and face the work-week, but when you've had a really good weekend you want to keep hold of it for as long as you can--which, in my case, was until 5:30 on Monday morning.

T. expressed the same sort of sentiment when she bounded out of bed at 6:00 on Monday. She's usually a little cranky and clingy on Monday mornings, and finds separating from me and home difficult at the start of the week. But yesterday she was energized and excited by the fact that she would have her first gymnastics class later that afternoon. "It was such a nice weekend," she sighed."But today is GYMNASTICS!"

I don't believe in overscheduling kids and filling their afternoons and weekends with non-stop activities. Scott and I decided some time ago that we are lucky that we can afford one paid extracurricular activity per child, as long as that activity stays within a certain budget. We still can't get L. interested in signing up for anything, but T. is always enthusiastically exploring her options. She took three back-to-back sessions of ice skating until she witnessed an accident on the ice--not a serious one, but drops of blood spattered across ice can be pretty gruesome. Since that day she's had a pretty full-blown phobia about hockey skates meeting flesh and her interest in ice-skating has--understandably--dwindled, even though we've encouraged her not to give up on it entirely.

Gymnastics is her choice for now. She's flexible and strong, but her small size sometimes makes her feel less confident than her peers in her physical abilities. I'm hoping that gymnastics will help with this, and give her that extra boost of excitement and energy on those tired I-hate-Monday mornings.

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On Sunday, L.'s friend from elementary school came over for a "hang out date" (L. informed me, make no mistake, that middle school kids do NOT have playdates). This was the first playdate/hang out date L. has had in I can't even remember how long, and I hadn't seen L.'s friend A. since 5th grade graduation in May. I was astounded how big he had grown--how he had morphed over the summer into a tall, decidedly tween looking boy instead of the more baby-faced elementary school kid I always remember. L. to me looks the same as he always has, although family and friends do tell me that he has an older look about him too. 

Anyway, it probably helps the growth process some that L.'s friend is a voracious eater. They are a study in contrasts, L. and his friend A. A. will eat almost anything and has a seemingly insatiable appetite while L., of course, will eat hardly anything, and most of the time couldn't be bothered to eat at all. In anticipation of A.'s visit I decided to mix up a batch of my favorite pizza dough recipe. A. loves pizza, and this was one of the few foods I thought would bring the two kids together, since A.'s tastes are very different from L's. But when A. showed up for the hang out date he came bearing a large cheese pizza--very kind and thoughtful of his parents, I thought.

I decided to turn the dough ball into a family favorite: soft pretzels. I posted this recipe on the FE site awhile back, but Flickr ate all my photos, and this recipe is so easy to make, and so much fun if you have a small helper like T. in the kitchen, and so perfect when you have an extra hungry kid in the house, that I thought it was certainly worth reposting.

Easy Soft Pretzels

I hope this Monday morning finds everyone in Irene's path safe and sound. We spent Sunday playing "pick up sticks" with the kids outside in the front and back yards (until poor Scott got swarmed by angry yellow jackets). We didn't lose any trees, thank goodness, but several large branches came down and the yards were littered with sticks and leaves and all kinds of storm-related debris blown from the tops of the tall trees-including those poor displaced wasps, who were probably wondering what happened to their safe tree-top home. I love our neighborhood, and the old trees surrounding our house, but the sight of the tall pines bending and whipping back and forth in the wind was pretty scary. On Sunday we awoke to a different world: birds chirping outside, chain-saws firing up, sun coming in through the window blinds. The day seemed washed clean and new again--it was such a transformation from Saturday's stormy weather.

We spent most of the day indoors on Saturday, and I spent the morning baking and cooking, because I was worried we'd lose power. We made "hurriane soft pretzels" and a big pot of vegetarian chile, and a pot of brown rice. Being housebound was also a great chance to let T. do some of her own baking.

My fingers are double crossed so I don't jinx things, but Night One of the Power Down Plan worked pretty smoothly. L. made some grumbling noises about how powering down his computer each night would damage it over time, but he shut it down on his own. I fully expect it NOT to go smoothly some point down the road, since L. has trouble grasping the impact rules, etc. will have on him in advance, so we're keeping the hatches battened for the time being, and treading carefully.

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Last summer, right around this time, I became obsessed with cherries. But up until yesterday,  hadn't bought a single bag of cherries. I did eat a handful of the ones my neighbor brought to the pool the other day, and they reminded me that I have been neglecting cherries lately, in favor of apricots and lots and lots of watermelon. There's only so much you can do with watermelon, though, whereas cherries are filled with possibility. 

One of the things I like (although you could look at this the other way, I suppose) about having co-slept with both children for so many years is that whenever they are feeling vulnerable, or sick-in-the-night, they seek out the comfort of our bed. L. doesn't do this much anymore, although he will, on occasion and when he's not feeling well, make his own "bed" out of a pillow and his sleeping bad and lie down on the floor next to our bed. T. has transitioned on her own to sleeping the entire night in her bed now and I've been thumbing my nose at all the advice-givers (including pediatricians) over the years who warned us that if we co-slept we would never ever get our kids out of our bed. EVER. So I know when T. is feeling sick--if she has a headache, or is feverish, because she'll appear in our bed, snuggle right up next to me, and toss her arm across my neck. 

Since becoming a Mama almost eleven years ago I've developed many Mama "super powers"--such as, super-hearing, which gives me the ability to hear L. sneak an extra piece of bread even though he's been cut-off from the bread bin, and super-vision, so I can spot a danger to my children before it evens pops onto the horizon, and also super-touch, which allows me to instantly sense any deviation--by even a quarter of a degree--in my children's body temperatures. I was wide awake, then, at 4:00 a.m. when T. smooshed her hot body next to mine in bed, stuck her hot feet under my leg, and wrapped a hot arm across my neck. 

I spent the week sitting in a large air-conditioned room watching too many powerpoint presentations. On Monday I was fully engaged, still riding the end-of-semester high; Tuesday I did well, too. But by Wednesday my attention span was decidedly fragmented. I'd focus for awhile, then find myself restless, and my mind would wander. Then I'd resurface for a few minutes, then lose myself in some thought or in doing what I so often criticize my own students for doing: checking e-mail compulsively on my iPod. Drat that WiFi access.