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.

Back when I was a graduate student the first time around (working on my first graduate degree in creative writing), I lived in a very snowy, very cold part of upstate New York. I had arrived in Binghamton, NY at the beginning of January, deep in the heart of winter, and not long after a big snowstorm had blown through. The shuttle from the airport left me off at the bottom of a hill near the main campus building, and I had to make my way from there to graduate housing in the dark, just me and my suitcase, winding my way through what seemed like mountains of snow. I spent weeks and weeks of my first year there trudging through tall snow drifts back and forth between classes, and marveling at how it could possibly be so cold that the tips of my hair would frost, and the inside of my nose would feel as if I'd sniffed in a handful of fresh snow. 

There was, more often than not, snow everywhere that winter. The flipside was that the weather drove us indoors--into the library, or each other's apartments for an impromptu gathering, or TV watching session, or if it was near the end of the week, into the campus bar (you have to love a campus that comes with a bar!) . We graduate students would sit and dissect that day's writing workshops, and any gossip we could pass around, feeling all the while oh so set apart from the rest of the world.

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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I've been in meetings most of the week, and trying to control the impatient itch I've been feeling to get out and Christmas shop. On Tuesday though, one of my morning meetings ended surprisingly early so my good friend/colleague L. and I decided to seize the moment and head to some local shops together. While our goal was to holiday shop, somehow, happily, we ended up at my favorite thrift store. 

There are few shopping experiences I enjoy more than thrift-store shopping with the right friend. While sorting through odd framed prints and picture frames, I found this:

and fell in love with it. Yes, a blender. But not just any blender! A vintage, they-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to Waring blender, which was in beautiful condition and just promised to be hands-down, no-question-about-it, better than my current  modern blender. It has a heavy base, and a charming cloverleaf glass top.

It's not a Vitamix, of course. I can't afford one, and even if I were to scrimp and save for a year (or two, or three) to raise the money to buy one, I'm not sure I could ever justify to myself spending $450 on a blender--unless my livelihood (or life) depended on it. It's a blender, after all. And while I have no doubts that it whirrs things to perfection, I was pretty certain that my $10 vintage Waring could do a pretty good job, too.

Raise your hand if you love raw cookie dough!! (I'm raising mine.)

If you're like me, when you start to dip your finger into that bowl or pre-made roll of dough (or allow your kids to do it), you have that little devil on one shoulder saying, "Yum! Yum! Salmonella schmalmonella. Dough was made for eating!" and the little angel on the other saying, "No, no! You're going to puke like there's no tomorrow. Just wait 'til it's baked, silly!" ... And the devil usually prevails. 

While I've never had the unfortunate experience of getting food poisoning from eating raw dough, I know others who have. And a new study in the latest journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that a large outbreak of dangerous E. coli in 2009 was caused by store-bought, ready-to-bake chocolate cookie dough. More than 80 people in 30 states were affectted, and 35 were hospitalized.

While Salmonella from contaminated eggs is the main (and very legitimate) concern of those who bake cookies from scratch, it turns out that raw flour was the likely culprit in the 2009 food poisoning outbreak cited in the study. Wait, there's such a thing as raw flour? Yup! The eggs in most pre-made doughs you buy at the grocery store are pasteurized, and most of the other ingredients -- except the flour -- go through "pathogen kill steps," the NYTimes reports.

Experts say it's hard to quantify the risk of eating raw cookie dough, but suffice it to say, there's always a chance that this seemingly innocent and delicious act could land you in the ER. Bummer!

This weekend the leaves began to fall in earnest. This time of the year, my husband's leaf-disposal values and my own often clash. He likes to wait until the bulk of the leaves have fallen, and then he devotes almost an entire day to raking and bagging. I like to dispose of them as they fall--sort of like my obsessive-compulsive need to vacuum all the time. I also like the excuse to be outside whe the weather is so quintessentially fall-like, and taking care of leaves is the perfect excuse to put the inside of the house on hold for a few hours.

T. wanted a huge pile of leaves to jump in, but she got frustrated with the whole process half-way through. She's been feverish and fighting some kind of virus, and she stomped off in her monkey pajamas and her fleece hoodie before the pile was complete. Later we read a story together, and she folded up small and vulnerable in my lap. She still fit there, in my arms, in the warm space between my chin and my knees.

We took down Halloween. In two weeks Christmas will be up around the house. T. put up our Be Thankful wreaths--the ones she made last year. As we get closer to Thanksgiving, the kids will write out another leaf to attach to each wreath--what they are most thankful for this year. This fall life has felt especially fragile, for some reason. Friends have been battling health problems--some very serious ones. I make my vow, as I do every year, not to let Thanksgiving slip away, buried underneath all the glittery consumerism of Christmas. 

Halloween is in three days, and the hunt for odds and ends to finish the kids' costumes is still underway.Do you remember L.'s DIY Clone Trooper costume from last year? The one I spent hours on (and almost severed my fingers while sawing through a white plastic trashcan)? The one L. claimed he would wear year after year because it was so good. It's in bits and pieces all around the garage and this year L. wants to be some character out of the computer game he likes to play these days. When he first told me about it I though, oh this will be easy because the character I thought he was talking about appears in a suit and has dark black eyeglasses--an easy find. But, as it turns out, this character wears a flak jacket and a gas mask.

"A gas mask?" I asked L. "Like from WWII?"

Yes, as it turns out. And a flak jacket, like the kind a SWAT person might wear. But, fortunately, L. informed me, he can wear his regular Vans with the costume, so he won't need to buy any shoes or boots.

Amazingly, there are people out there who have already tackled the gas mask dilemma, like this enterprising young man. I have a feeling L. and I will be spending some quality time with duct tape this weekend.

Thank goodness T. is going as an astronaut, and planning on wearing her brother's orange NASA jumpsuit. No assembly required.

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Ever since we adopted these two lovely ladies:

We have been well-stocked on these:

Am I the only parent who sometimes tiptoes around the house when the kids are busy by themeselves, for fear that once they hear me, they'll remember they needed/wanted something?

Somehow, I don't think I am.

Yesterday I had a huge to-do list to work through. We had a wonderful, busy, fun weekend and my parents were in town, too, which made things more wonderful and busy and fun. We ushered in fall by going to two festivals: the annual International Festival downtown, featuring food and crafts and music from all around the world, and the first annual Oktoberfest, also downtown. The weather was crisp and perfectly fall-like, and everyone seemed infected by the lifting of the heavy, hot summer temperatures. But as most--if not all--teachers know, Sunday is a bittersweet day. Too much play on Saturday means all that work for Monday gets pushed into one day, a day also loaded with getting-ready-for-the-week chores like laundry and baking and helping L. with weekend homework.

Sometimes Sunday makes me feel very grumpy, and very overwhelmed.

So when I came out of the shower on Sunday morning and heard T. busily playing in the room, I tiptoed carefully downstairs past her room. L. was in the office, also busy, with the door closed. Scott was at a tennis match, and the house was quiet, in that way that takes you by surprise when you're a parent. When kids are very, very little, too much quiet never bodes well (I can't tell you the damage that was done when the kids were little, always when things got eerily quiet); but when your kids are older quiet is a good thing. It means they're reading, or absorbed in some task and you hold your breath, because such quiet is always a very tenuous thing--at least at our house.

And it must never, ever be messed with.

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After yesterday's post, a few readers commented and e-mailed asking if I had any tricks or ideas for making lo mein at home. Ideally, you'd buy authentic Chinese lo  mein noodles--these are thick and chewy, but if you don't have a handy Asian Market near you, liguine noodles are a good substitute, or a thick spaghetti noodle. What you really want for good lo mein is some type of toothy, chewy pasta that holds the sauce well. L. is a purist and will NOT eat lo mein that's made with pasta noodles, but the rest of us have found that a more than suitable substitute. Many grocery stores also have an Asian food section, and you can buy Japanese soba noodles, which also work well. Avoid the thinn egg noodles and rice noodles, because these won't work well with traditional lo mein.

L. would tell you that the key to good lo mein is to have the perfect "noodle to vegetable ration" which means, for him, that you shouldn't more noodles than vegetables, or vice versa. He always laments that my lo mein sauce doesn't match the sauce he gets at his favorite Chinese restaurant, but I have come close to perfecting it. I combine a 1/2 cup of Hoisin sauce with 1/4 cup of soy sauce, some water (maybe 2-3 tablespoons) and a little corn starch (again, maybe 2 tablespoons). I whisk it all together so the starch doesn't clump and I pour it into the wok or frying pan just before the veggies are almost done. If you pour it in too early it will cook off and your veggies won't be as saucy as they should be for lo mein.

Other tips:

Saute a little garlic and ginger together in oil before adding veggies. If you're keeping this vegetarian, add the tofu next and cook until it crisps. I like to fry to tofu along with the ginger and garlic because this adds flavor to the tofu.

We had an amazing dinner/evening with friends on Saturday night. It took nearly 10 years of living in North Carolina before we met friends we really connect with as a couple--and as a family. I have many good friends I connect with just wonderfully on my own, and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but I think you know how rare and fulfilling it is to find those couple friends--you're good friends with the wife, your husband is good buddies with her husband, and your kids actually get along and play together--if not perfectly every time--perfectly enough.

My friend also gets L.--in the ways that count. Knowing his issues with food, and his love for all things lo mein, she planned a dinner that was truly custom made for him, but that was also a great dinner idea for any get together involving kids: a fix-your-own vegetable lo mein bar. She cooked up pans of cabbage and fresh basil and sprouts and set up two large serving bowls of cooked lo mein noodles. She also had small bowls filled with all those lo mein staples: mini corns, water chesnuts, fresh sprouts, and more just-picked basil from her garden. Bottles of soy sauce and spicy chili sauce lined the counter and she poured cans of lychee fruit into a large pyrex lined with ice cubes for a refreshing accompaniment to the meal (very welcome if you doused your noodles with too much red chili sauce). The kids each started with a bowl of noodles, and then "built" their lo mein just the way they liked it. For the first time in I don't know how long, L. not only sat at the dinner table with everyone else but he ate a large bowl of lo mein, washed it down with root beer and declared it "the best dinner ever." She sent us home with a large ziploc bag filled with cooked noodles, and he polished off two more bowls for lunch yesterday.