Date Day

Mama and I had a wonderful date lunch today . . . and we deserved it.

(The idea came to me because a creative date time was a topic of Hibernate recently; it'd been a long time since we'd met for lunch.)

See, we'd spent the morning worrying about one of our NYCats, Patron, who has had some intermittent stomach issues this week, culminating in a trip to the emergency vet this morning for fluids and antibiotics.  It was only the ER vet because our regular vet is closed on Thursdays and we didn't want to wait a day for fluids.  We also had him ultrasounded to follow up on our vet's concern about an abdominal mass.  Turns out there is some intestinal thickening, either from something straightforward as inflammatory bowel disease or cancer.  Let's hope a change in diet and rest will reveal the former.  Either way, we're planning on going the slow medicine/palliative route; no one wants invasive or extensive treatments on an almost 15-year-old cat.  And if we can keep his symptoms under control, he's been pretty happy.  We knew this might be coming and we are better equipped to handle it, both from increased wisdom and experience, than we were with our cat Morgan, but it was still a pretty quick onset and a little disheartening.  He's home now and eating and purring and pretty happy; we've closed him and his brother Mojito in the basement alone to keep the Connecticats from harassing him.

All of which is to say, we were glad to have a midday respite at our favorite restaurant, Bloodroot. We had a peanut stew, a big marinated cabbage and tofu salad, special grilled cheese sandwiches on that incredible oatmeal bread, an incredible vegan chocolate mousse and our favorite butterscotch pudding!   Mmmmmm!   And a great chat with Selma and Noelle, the owners, about their upcoming trip to Italy, a new knitting project, and the secret ingredient in the mousse.   Restorative. And we brought some pudding home for Sis, who loves it, too.

If and when it snows this Saturday (or Monday or Wednesday . . . ), maybe we'll make some more.


Butterscotch Pudding
In a medium-sized pot, warm 1 cup milk and 2 cups heavy cream together with 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar.  In a larger pot, combine 3/4 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup water.  Bring to a boil and cook to form a caramel.  When sugar is golden brown, remove from heat and add milk mixture gradually.  It will boil up suddenly and violently, which is why the caramel must be started in the larger pot.  Be sure heat is off and all is combined.  Set aside.

Separate eggs; you will need 6 yolks.  Reserve whites for other purposes.  Slowly whisk hot milk into yolks, being careful not to curdle them.  Add 1 teaspoon Kosher salt and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.  Stir well.  

Ladle into 6 ovenproof custard cups set in a pan.  Fill the pan halfway with water, being careful not to get any into the pudding dishes.  Bake at 325F for about 30 minutes or until no longer wobbly.  Let cool; chill.

Serve with creme fraiche or whipped cream.

Best of Bloodroot, Vol. 1 Vegetarian

Swept Away by Gone with the Wind

A month or so ago, Mama suggested a very unusual and special date night.  "Let's go see Gone with the Wind" in the movie theater."  While I have seen the movie dozens of times, starting in early childhood--I was even Scarlett O'Hara for Halloween (in Gommie's billowy white prom dress) and read the whole 1045-page book one summer (it's very different from the movie--Scarlett has a child with each husband, for instance, and you learn all about her parents' courtship)--and Mama will tell you that my conversations are regularly sprinkled with GWTW references and quotes, I had never seen it on the big screen.

So, this weekend, we went for date night . . . to the 4-hour movie.  And it was magical.  First, they showed the film in its original aspect ratio, which is square!  Also, the film wasn't played nearly as loudly as modern pictures.  But the big screen and the immediate attention it demanded allowed us to notice several things--like the cat lounging under the sundial at Twelve Oaks, all the various musical themes of the film's score, the use of silhouettes throughout the film, panoramic vistas, the parallel narrative arcs of the first and second parts (mainly the death of Mrs. O'Hara in the first part and Melanie in the second and the crisis each spurs on), the rapid-fire dialogue, and more.

Of course, seen through the lens of early 21st-century liberal thought, we couldn't help but be disturbed by the elevation of a murderous, immoral, cheating, wife-beating man to heartthrob (or his murderous, immoral, lying, drunk wife to heroine) and the characterization and caricature of the film's African Americans.  It didn't help that the audience laughed every time Mammy talked and cheered when Rhett hauled Scarlett up the stairs to be raped--about which she was smiling and singing the next morning!  That is to say nothing of the glorification or mythologizing of the Old South.

Still, it's a gorgeous, well-paced, expansive film, the stuff of my childhood (and gauging from the sold-out theater, many others').  And I think I'll be quoting from it even more now.

Congratulations!

I'm doubly excited by the news this evening that Illinois has approved same-sex marriage because we lived there in those first golden years of our relationship and knew so many couples who can now be legally wed.

We've been pretty nostalgic for Chicago recently, especially after our date night Saturday which included a delicious Ethiopian meal and then a concert by those "troubadours of peace," Libana, a women's a capella group that focuses on music by women from around the world.  I have long known their CDs and songs because Artemis Singers, the lesbian chorus I sang with in Chicago, was often inspired by their arrangements.  It was a great evening of voices, percussion, other instruments (hammered dulcimer and guitar and clarinet), and dance, with selections from Albania, Sephardic Morocco, the Amazigh (the preferred term for the Berber people of North Africa), Gujarat in India, Malaysia, indigenous people in the Andes (I couldn't help but giggle because it sounded just like Peruvian street musicians in NYC!), new songs by women composers including the Peace Prayer Mandala, and others, including a chant-a-long.  It was a wonderful armchair journey, which took me not only to those places, but back to Chicago and practices with the chorus as well as (albeit very different) musical performances at Mountain Moving Coffeehouse.  Lovely memories, a lovely night.

A Treat from Istanbul

Tonight we squeezed in an unplanned date night after physical therapy, heading to Bloodroot for a Turkish dinner in honor of the owners' return from their vacation abroad.  It sounds like they had a marvelous time and loved the hospitable people, enjoying the sites including the usual Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, and Hagia Sofia, as well as a mosque designed by a woman (a first; link has some pretty photos.  I've actually been to Turkey, once, for a day, in the middle of a Greek Island cruise with Gommie--we saw the Roman ruins at Ephesus, but I don't recall eating there at all).  And what wonderful food!  Tonight, they served a dinner inspired by their trip, especially the foods at the spice markets (and Selma's numerous collections of Turkish cookbooks):

• Borek - a filled savory fillo pastry 
• Muhummara - a delicious spread made from roasted peppers, aleppo peppers, and pomegranate molasses
• Cemen - a spiced tomato walnut dip
• Apricot Pistachio Pilaf, with lots of great flavor and texture
• Lokum - Turkish delight (in this case, a not so sweet candy)

It reminded me of our favorite exhibition on the Silk Road.  I hope Bloodroot keeps some of these dishes on the menu.  It's a nice change from all the standard Italian around here.

Silent Night

What do you get when two mommies get laryngitis?

Yep.  This post.

Having no voice left at all after social yesterday and a long conversation this morning with my--what shall we call her?  The woman who also can't sit whom I'm getting to know--Non-sitting Buddy about doctors and diagnoses, but especially medications (since she's been to the ER twice for the same reaction to different drugs!!!!  Maybe Long-Lost Twin is more like it!), I haven't really spoken to the children since they got home.

I have no voice.  Which, for those of you who know me, means it is unusually quiet over here (and sorta frustrating). Especially because it seems that if I'm not talking, the kids aren't talking as much.  Dinner was very quiet.

And then I tried some sign language on them.  Remember how they knew some sign language by about 10-months-old, signing for "more" and "done" before they could talk?  At the height of our (okay, my) obsession with Alex and Leah of "Signing Times," they probably knew 50+ signs--for animals, colors, actions, places, people.  I loved refreshing my own skills and sharing it with them.  But it never stuck.  And now they don't even recall Alex and Leah (Babysitter does though; she can still sing all the words to the theme song!) Though, somehow, the alphabet did stick and they know it!  Anyway, tonight over dinner, I signed a bit with Mama, who can follow me most of the time (she watched "Signing Times" too!).  And the kids were flabbergasted.  How do I do that?  What were we talking about?  Maybe they'll be interested to learn some again.  But because that didn't help tonight, we managed to get them to bed with a combo of pointing and ritual, having to give up our nightly read for "Phineas and Ferb" because neither one of us can handle Harry Potter.

And now Mama and I are chatting on Gmail with each other, sitting here in the same bed.  Neither of us knows enough sign language to have an in-depth conversation and we're not ready to go to bed quite yet.  In fact, it's odd not to have talked today--we usually chat at some point, sharing snippets of our day during her commute  or between baths.  Thank heavens for computers (and that we have two of them so we can each use one).  It is, by the way, how we got started, you know, years ago chatting over the university intranet after work at the library that summer almost 18 years ago!  So, I'm actually enjoying this little electronic trip down memory lane, an unplanned date night.

Silence is golden, you know.

Addendum:  As I finished this, Mama initiated text-to-speech software (get this, Lambeth, she's using a British voice!)  Things have certainly changed!  And I don't miss that orange "pine" prompt at all.  Her iPad is cooler than my notebook.  She's charging the kids' iPad so I can be British too.

A New Kind of Date Night

Date night used to be a semi-regular part of our lives. But, of course, under the circumstances (yes, my back and, perhaps even more, the loss of our now-collegiate babysitter), we don't do that anymore.  But my new therapist--a LCSW and cognitive behavioralist who is helping me cope with the emotional issues surrounding chronic pain and teaching me some techniques to "manage gracefully" (my new favorite phrase from Sylvia Boorstein's introduction to Buddhism, It's Easier than You Think)--suggested we try to adapt our enjoyment of date night (usually a restaurant meal and some casual bookstore browsing.) to our new circumstances, to think outside the box, to give us something else to do or talk about besides our worries and to-do list.  Take out, a new movie, another at-home activity, anything new that we can do once a week or so at home once the kids are asleep.

And so, being an A student and loving a project, I spent some time thinking on what we could do.  I remembered that Gretchen Rubin, in The Happiness Project, mentions that one piece of good advice she'd learned was for every couple to have two games they enjoyed together, one outdoors (like golf, tennis) and one indoors (like Scrabble).  Mama and I don't have an outdoor game (and probably won't, beyond short walks), but we do like to play chess and our new Harry Potter Lego game.  And we also used to do puzzles.  So we opted for a puzzle night, focusing on a holiday puzzle Mama had gotten last year after the holidays and was eager to do.  We brainstormed how I could do a puzzle--sideways on a board on the bed--and we rushed cleaning the kitchen and such last Friday night.

It was such fun!  We issued a moratorium on digital gadgets and stressful discussions to help protect the evening.  Then we curled up with the puzzle while listening to our music playlist on shuffle.  It was just what we needed to get us out of our rut and have some relaxing fun.  It will be so easy to do again--and we want to, especially because we didn't finish it.

A Special Week

It's a special week here at the Hungry household because Mama is working from home during online training.  What's special is that there will be time in the morning and at lunch for outings together!  It's like a whole date week.  This morning, we did Whole Foods for the week's groceries and then a quick stop at the bookstore (mainly for magazines and coffee).  I love spending time with Mama and getting out of the house.  And we might have a few special lunches!  It's like my own vacation.  And she's very happy not to do her almost two-hour commute everyday.

A Tale of Two Meals: Opposites Attract

Date Night at Bloodroot

• Peanut and greens soup
• Roasted beet and orange salad
• Kasha with bowties and mushroom ragout, tzimmes, and latkes
• Ethiopian injera with collards, squash stew, potatoes and cabbage, and lentils
• oatmeal bread
• yogurt cheesecake
• spicy bitter orange sauce over vanilla ice cream
• hot tea

Lunch at The Cookhouse

• Fried sweet corn puffs
• Vidalia onion soup with cornbread and pepper jack cheese
• Baby-back ribs
• Brisket
• "Burnt Ends"
• Fruit and Nut salad (greens, apples, craisins, candied nuts, poppyseed dressing)
• Baked beans (so much like Ranch Style!!)
• sauteed collards with bacon (very Asian stir-fry, and barely cooked, not Southern greens at all)
• coleslaw
• sweet potato fries
• chocolate cake
• mixed-berry cobbler
• iced tea

At It Again

No, not snow.

Well, at least until tomorrow.

No, it was date night!

Dinner at Bloodroot was treacherous to get to--the ice there is amazing to behold this side of Antarctica--but the meal was incredible: endive and avocado with watercress salad, a walnut mushroom (I think) pate, French cream of mushroom soup to die for; then very spicy Haitian red beans and polenta-cornmeal with collard greens in coconut milk and a deconstructed butternut squash pasta with walnuts and sage (and Selma came to the table and gave me the recipe!); ending with this amazing boozy toffee cream with fresh fruit and the out-of-this-world butterscotch pudding. Sure, the ice scared me, but the food was an incredible reward! Plus two cookbooks from the used section which prompted a discussion with Selma on salt-rising bread, which she's never made. I told her I would try.

Bookstore next, with lots of titles to browse that we didn't buy. Because, come on, why pay $16 in the store when you can get it for $9 with free shipping online, often from the same company???? But at least we know which ones we like: Mark Bittman's Food Matters, Anne Perry's The Sheen of Silk, Christopher Kimball's Fanny's Last Meal, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, and several books for the kids including Meet Felicity, Ivy and Bean, and Socks. We did get a Mary Jane's Farm magazine and a book on Chinese characters which actually has Bud and Sis's Chinese names.

A nice outing, before the snow is, well, at it again.

Hogwarts Revisited

Sure, everybody else saw the new Harry Potter movie way back in November, but a variety of occurrences (or non), including the lack of a babysitter and a blizzard, had kept us away til now. And we were lucky to find a showing. So even though Mama is battling a mild flu (mild because she had her shot, the doctor says) and I had to stand through most of it, we went out last night, thinking the movie wouldn't be in theaters much longer. And it's our one trip to the multiplex for 2011! (Having not gone once in 2010, I believe).

And we loved it.

Certainly not because it was fun, uplifting, cheerful, or anything like that. Those of you who follow the books and/or films know that the end is not pretty, unless it's pretty gruesome. Death, torture, anger, separation, loss, sadness, struggle, uncertainty. For those of you not in the know, it's kinda like the Empire Strikes Back of the series: as the heroes are thwarted at every turn, nothing really positive happens except a clear progression to the climax in the next and last film.

But the effects were amazing (I especially liked the graphics of the "Deathly Hallows" tale), the acting mature, the pacing nonstop even with all that staying in tents which took so long in the book. And who doesn't like watching British greats Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Imelda Staunton, and even a cameo by Sophie Thompson, despite the abbreviated screen times? I've loved Rowling's wizarding world from the first read oh-so-many years (has it been more than a decade?), watching and rewatching the movies with Mama, and now waiting to share it with the kiddos, who are already curious about Harry and his friends.

So last night, even as we wiped away tears, we were loving it. The next film comes out in July: no blizzards then and our babysitter will be home from college! Call it a date.

Date Night

Canceled during Gommie and Pop's visit, date night happened last night because of the generosity of our young neighborhood babysitter M (the 11-year old who comes over on Tuesdays). She and her mom gave us a free night of babysitting for Christmas! I think this is one of the best presents we've ever gotten.

And so, like in days of old, before it was even called "date night" because we didn't have children and pretty much every night was date night, we went for dinner and then grocery shopping! (Usually, we would've done the bookstore, too, but we were ready to go home.) Dinner was Indian: masala dosa (this great potato-and-pea-filled crunchy rice crepe) and shaam savera (spinach/cheese dumpling in sweet-tangy tomato sauce), my beloved mango lassi, followed by chole peshwari (chickpeas and tomato in tangy sauce, a lot like chana masala, in the packages at the grocery) and paneer hare pyaza (paneer cooked in creamy tomato sauce with spring onions), plus lots of rice, chapati and poori breads (the poori reminded me of unsweet fried beignets! Boy, how I wanted powdered sugar). AND we ended with our favorite "squeaky cheese dumplings in creamy rose-pisatchio sauce." It was happy birthday, happy 2nd wedding anniversary, and happy new year all in one!

Then, surely not disposed to make unwarranted purchases, we headed to the special grocery store. "Let's get what's on our list first," I remarked, causing a man next to me to laugh. And while it's true that we always buy off-list at this store more than any other, I was more concerned that my grocery app hadn't uploaded my latest list yet. It did but the store was out of black-eyed peas!!!! A helpful clerk steered me to canned, at which I audibly balked. "See, I'm from Texas and I make my own black-eyes." He was from Alabama and understood, having mistaken me for a canned-pea-eating Yankee. But we did get some heirloom bean mixtures, a bag of farro, a few pomegranates, some funky museli, and a rose syrup, which rang up free, a nice little present.

The babysitters reported an easy and fun evening, offering to do it again in 6 weeks or so, a fantastic gift, to borrow Bud's evaluation of the evening, that keeps on giving!

Making Whoopie

It was date night here at the Hungry household. And it was a great one, in no small part because of whoopie.

Whoopie pies, that is.

Mama Teacher has been vacationing in Maine and I was watching her house. She brought back some tasty whoopie pies, a specialty of her home state (one of two, the other being Indiana). Yum! But even though she brought the kids' favorites--chocolate and strawberry--I horded the pies and took them on date night.

Which was almost rained out. We've had lines of severe thunderstorms today and one of them hit just as we were about to leave. So we waited for a break, only to get caught in the parking lot of our first stop. We sat in the car sharing one each of the delicious pies--like cake, but cookie-shaped, with that sweet frosting, but not too sweet, or shortening-laden--while we watched the torrential downpour. Then the sun came out, in the midst of it all, and there was not one but two rainbows, a bright inner one and a lighter outer one, fully arching over town. Gorgeous. Miraculous. Only the second time I've seen a double rainbow (the first time being over our neighborhood when I was a kid and dad was taking home a friend from a sleepover). The first time for Mama. We got mediocre pictures of the parking lot and the two rainbows, but it was lovely. And the pies were great (the book is too--thanks so much, Mama Teacher!).

We ran errands and made some fun stops, including the hardware store, where we saw a groundhog outside. My lucky day. Rainbows and groundhogs. It sounds like it should be a song from "The Muppet Show!" We got hardware to secure our new bookcases to the wall so they don't tump over, a shower curtain rod because we don't have one, and a storage unit to put behind the toilet downstairs, plus other hardware store stuff. Then we were off to the fancy food market, walking every aisle and choosing things we can't get at the regular store, like bacon chocolate! For Mama. And some fresh black mission figs for me to try. Then we got a snack from the steam table (two new bean salads: edamame succotash and a four bean salad, both with mirin and vinegar and red onion, etc) and just sat talking until we closed the store.

Outside was a star, the first we'd noticed through all the crazy, dramatic, picturesque (mind you, that would be Turner, not Constable) skies. I sang "Star light, star bright . . . " and Mama asked what I wished. It occurred to me that she didn't know I don't wish anymore. Not on stars or hay bales or birthday candles. Not from some morbid, fatalistic, pessimistic position about the futility of wishing, but because I think I have everything I could want and anything I could wish for would mainly be superfluous. Or hubris, because who wants to be jinxed? Sometimes, I'm more superstitious than I thought. Or, as Mama pointed out, too well-educated in the Greek myths! Regardless, I didn't wish on the star, only thanked it for everything, like the rainbows and the groundhogs, Mama and the kids, the whoopie pies and friends.

Date Night

The magic of last night continued well into the night because we had a babysitter for the evening! Yep, we're much better about scheduling our monthly date night. And so, last night, the kids were thrilled to tell their beloved babysitter all about the faerie village and the pizza/train restaurant and we left way before bedtime--it's such a treat that someone else can tuck the kids in without any trouble!

And what did we do? Grocery shopping! But not at just any store: we went to Balducci's and Whole Foods. Yep, fancy grocery shopping. We love wandering the aisles of upscale markets (and as granola as WF tries to be, the prices are upscale) and seeing what there is to buy (and laughing when we find strawberry fluff at one and snack pack rice pudding at the other). At Balducci's, we were fascinated by the truffle popcorn--that's not chocolate, folks, but dehydrated truffles which lent an earthy sophistication to the moviehouse treat. And I got a big jar of bitter-sweet marmalade, even though I was strongly tempted by all the specialty chocolate bars (well, not the bacon chocolate!). We also picked up some Icelandic strained yogurt and some Australian grapefruit-flavored yogurt, which turned out to be very, very soft, almost drinkable. We gorged on gouda and barbecued chorizo samples while considering what we would take home. I wasn't particularly tempted by all the oils and vinegars, but I did pick up some rosewater and orange blossom water for cookie making this holiday season. We almost bought, but didn't in the end, get any gourmet gelato.

Then off we went to Whole Foods, a store we used to visit on date night in Chicago (back when, without kids, every night was date night!! Remember those days??). We almost changed our dinner plans and raided the paneer and tikka masala at the buffet but decided we weren't ready to eat yet. So, we spent time studying the tea--oooh, rose petal black tea!!!--though in the end I opted for hot chai chocolate. And we also enjoyed looking through the cookbooks (Moosewood Restaurant Desserts or Baking Illustrated, anyone?) and rummaging through the organic cotton clothes. I almost got some caper and olive chips, with garlic, but they were corn not potato chips, which didn't sound right to us. And then there was a chickpea salad with edamame, bell peppers, and . . . cranberries?! Mama doesn't like fruit in her savories so we skipped that. I was also interested in an Amy's orange pound cake in the frozen section, at which point we realized it was time for dinner.

So we headed to our favorite vegetarian restaurant and had a wonderful light dinner, light in that we didn't each get one of each course! Instead, I got a creamy Czech mushroom and potato soup, with oatmeal bread, and a salad, while Mama had the pastitsio with a great cinnamon flavor. We finished dinner with a pumpkin tofu custard, which is one of my favorite desserts there. We even talked to one of the women about how she makes it, since Sis loves pumpkin: they use hubbard squash. Well, I have a sugar pumpkin and canned puree, so I'll have to use one of those to make it.

Food and fun, oogling and eating. A great date night.

Date Night

Dinner and a Broadway show. A pretty standard idea of date night for an American couple. Even if they're the first family of the United States. Yes, recently the Obamas, sans children, headed to NYC for dinner and a play. And the NYTimes lightheartedly explored the effects of the first couple's date on other married American couples, titled "If They Can Find Time for Date Night . . . "

Can you?

Um, well, we sorta had a date night on Friday. While friends of ours called to say they were drinking cocktails and watching a movie, we had baked scones and were sharing a cup of tea. To each her own. But really, these days, that's one of our favorite nights--no computers, no tv, no outings, just some fresh baked oatmeal scones (with marmalade and butter) and some tea. Sure, we'd love a show and dinner but are pretty much either too lazy or too cheap to schlepp to NYC to do that. Or even to one of the venues with shows here in CT.

Or even dinner out. Though, we did go out for Ethiopian food a few months ago on a date that was delightful. And are going out with said friends--I know, a double date, are you shocked?--this week. And it was easy to arrange. Our babysitter is usually available and the kids love her (of course, they go to bed so early that they never know we actually leave home!).

So, I'm thinking, I'm going to set date night as a monthly thing (have I said this before?). Too ambitious, expensive, and actually unnecessary on a weekly basis (given that we have every night together after the kids go to bed at 7 anyway), but kinda fun on a monthly basis. And I've written here (and here--and actually a few other posts describing actual date nights but you can search for those so I don't bore you with links) before about studies that show that date nights, especially, with new activities are great for couples (and I think it's mentioned here, too, in the article on sexless couples. Not that any of us thought that was relevant, right?) What say you, Mama? Shall I set up the First Thursday (hmmm, wonder where I got that idea??) of the month as our date night? Happy early birthday??!! You can even choose the first restaurant or activity.

Married With Children

Yet another article has come out about the effects of children on marriage and how couples just don't spend enough time together.

But keeping a marriage vibrant is a never-ending job. Deciding together to have
a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed,
collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an
intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.
Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years
ago.

And on the very day I read it, Mama and I had a date planned. She'd taken the day off for the kiddos' half-birthday celebration at school but our babysitter was still coming in the afternoon. And so we went out. Some errands, inevitably, but lots of fun at the craft store looking through the sale section and $1 rubber stamps. She went as crazy as I usually do, which was fun. And we perused the bookstore, checking out prospective titles for our book club. I also picked up Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, with a Christmas gift card, a book whose recipes I've tried and really like (such as All-Day Minestrone). It was a real treat, even if we didn't do anything extra-special.


We rarely hire our babysitter for evenings (and, as a delayed comment on Motherlode's discussion of the babysitter shortage for the inauguration, we only use our one trusted babysitter who has taken care of them two afternoons after school for almost 4 years. Grandmas are good in a pinch. :) ). A special night out, with babysitter, could quite easily come to $150 (that's about $70 for her, $60 dinner for us, plus coffee or trinkets); even if we do a freebie evening at the bookstore with no dinner, the babysitter would still set us back. So we don't indulge often. Unless Gommie is here to do the free babysitting. We're lucky, though, in that the children go to bed between 6:30-7, which means every night is a childfree night, even if we don't usually treat it like date night. Maybe we should. That's one of the reasons behind the book club, something new and different for us to do that's just about us.

Because we don't want to wait til the nest is empty.

(And besides:

Indeed, the researcher Ellen Galinsky has found that most children don’t want to
spend as much time with their parents as parents assume; they just want their
parents to be more relaxed when they are together. )

Date Night Tonight

We had date night tonight, which was a special treat. The kiddos were so excited when Dear Babysitter showed up around dinner and helped with bath. They were in bed before we left, thinking that DB was having a sleepover. Fine, less stress that way.

But tonight we deviated from our usual date night plans, which often include an errand and then dinner. Tonight, we skipped dinner, eating at home with the kiddos (meatballs, cheesey mashed potatoes, mixed greens, and biscuits). This saved a ton of money as well as calories (tomorrow is my WW meeting day and I'm trying really had on Core--for you civilians, that's a lot like Atkins/South Beach without the pork rinds!). We went to the bookstore instead. And it was fabulous.

In Chicago, we lived around the corner from a women's bookstore and loved going there on weekend nights to browse--not necessarily to buy, though we did a lot of that too, but to read titles, explore new topics, learn something unexpected. Tonight, we went to one of the big chains, not an independent store (of which there seem to be very few good ones here in CT), but browsed many of the same sections. Lesbian/Gay studies is always next to Women's Studies is next to African-American Studies, which are usually all right around the corner from New Age/Spirituality. We closely examined a book on American women in WWII, complete with wonderful pictures (Our Mother's War, I think) and laughed over the lesbian pregnancy books (glad that part is over!). I had wanted Kathryn Hughes's book on George Eliot but was curtly informed that literary biographies didn't sell and so they didn't stock it. This from a woman who spelled the author's name with two "L"s. Doesn't give you much hope for big chain bookstores, does it, especially when they sell bags and hang posters with a portrait of the author!

We had a chai in the little Starbucks and perused a book entitled The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life, with instructions on, for example, making your own rock candy or panning for gold. I love books like this (big surprise there, right?), and was also tempted to buy Back in the Day, on clearance, but wasn't as interested in Morse Code and heraldry. We spotted a book on beautiful English villages and grabbed it off the shelf immediately--such lovely pictures of half-timbered houses and thatched cottages. Like Lilliput Lane come to life. I'm convinced at least one of the villages was in Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson. So, we took that home too, to remember great trips and be inspired for another. We then moved on to music, listening to selections from Loreena McKennett's Alahambran concert. I'm not even sure we hit our more recent craft, cookbook, or mystery section favorites. But, despite promises to the contrary, we did wander into the children's section and picked up another Little Bear and Chicken Soup with Rice, one of DP's favorites.

It was this total geek love-in, with little talk of anyting but the titles we picked up. And that was a wonderful change.

Because The New York Times Said So

Recently, the NYTimes ran an article about date night, saying that couples should do something out of the ordinary if they really want date night to rekindle the romance. Ah, date night. What people without kids do every week that people with kids only dream of. Or do rarely. Our own success at saving a monthly date night have been below average. I'd give us a C. We go when my mom is here, about 4 times a year, and we've gone once with a real live honest-to-goondess babysitter. We do have admirable and inspiring friends who go out (until the third trimester of their pregnancy--and they're still in labor!) every month on the 11th, their anniversary. We could do that, on the 23rd (when we got together in August 1997) or on the 9th (when we made it legal in Connecticut in 2005), or both since they are two weeks apart. But something often gets in the way. Now, that said, we are very lucky that the kiddos are usually in bed by 6:30, no later than 7:15 pm, and so can watch a movie and have some real quality time every night (if we plan on it, rescheduling laundry or bills or the like). But many nights are for chores.

Not this week. We've had two dates. TWO dates. In one week. On Tuesday night, we went for Indian food. We're pretty much Indian food novices. DP has had a lot of Thai, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese but not Indian. I think she often feels that Indian is wrong--Thai spices used in odd combinations with different ingredients--but with her office catering in so much Indian, it's starting to grow on her. So, we went out for Indian, which is so much better than take-out. Starting with some vegetables fritters--I liked the spinach ones and the potato ones that I dipped in that sweet/sour tamarind sauce, we sipped on our favorite mango lassis and nibbled on the crispy, spiced pappadum. For dinner, I had malai kofta, a cheese and vegetable dumpling in a creamy, sweet, and mildly spicy, cashew and almond sauce. The dumpling tasted so freshly made; the ingredients really sang. And I love that sauce. DP had chicken madras--the "spiciest chicken dish on the menu--but then she was raised on Thai food, and, while she can't quite eat chilies straight up like her mom, she holds her own. But she was sweating while she murmured enjoyment. She had some garlic and cilantro nann while I had plain naan (I'd ordered Peshwari naan, which has the raisins and nuts and is my favorite, but the plain naan went just as well). And then we moved on to these incredible desserts--I can't tell you the names because they aren't on the take-out menu I'm consulting--a sweet yellow lentil and fruit pudding kind of like a rice pudding with some coconut flakes on top and the most amazing fried dough balls in a clear, sweet rose syrup, perhaps with pistachios. Those dough balls--wow! Indeed, you could say that about the whole meal.

For our second date night, we got a whole afternoon! This was brave of Gommie because the kiddos would be awake for some of it (but at least I got the nap started for her). DP took off work early and we headed to New Haven for tea and an art museum. Tea at Celtica, the Irish shop in town, was good. Not great. Portions were small for the price but we liked the Irish brown bread used for the sandwiches--a hearty change from mushy white bread (which I also like). And there were (frozen, store-bought) cream puffs and scones with whipped cream and a very nice strawberry jam. With some Earl Grey tea. And we reminisced about all of our other teas--in Chicago at the Palmer House for Christmas; at Polly's in Marlborough; at a National Trust shop in York; at Fortnum and Mason's; at that place I can never remember the name of in York with the fat rascals (yes, we had tea twice that day!); at Alice's Tea cup in NYC; at our favorite place in CT, the British Tea Shoppe in Guildford or Branford or Madison (I never remember that either). And that's just tea I've had with her (she's become quite an anglophile in ten years). Lambeth took me to some marvelous places in England, especially that manor house with the incredible tea. I really love the ritual of tea, even when the spread is mediocre.

Then to the Yale Center for British Art. Oh my, a special Orientalism show. Like I haven't had enough of that in my years at that museum in town. But at least I didn't have to read the labels, having written several myself on Orientalism and the West, Edward Said, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, what a harem really is, and the like. I actually wanted to see the permanent collection, post 1850, not the special exhibition, but we did head to it first. And I really liked it. I like John Frederick Lewis's depictions of the interiors of houses, especially the light streaming through stained glass windows and mashrabiyya, or turned wooden screens. I actually liked his painting of a harem woman in the garden, a very English rose garden with trellis, best. My taste is not always fine. But I know what I like. DP liked David Roberts's sketchbooks best, mainly because she likes to sketch. But there is something vibrant and immediate about such works. We were very disappointed to discover that the post-1850 works--by my favorite PRB, Alma-Tadema, and Victorian genre painters--were not on display, so we enjoyed the Elizabethan through 1850 works, particularly the Canalettos, the really early and elaborate portraits, and the Constables (which I prefer to Turner). It was like going back in time (my lifetime, not those of the paintings, though that happens too) to wander the museum as a childless adult, though I did wonder when we could bring the children and what they would like.

Afterwards, we hit the Asian grocery to restock, to pick up treats for the Lunar New Year playgroup today (that we skipped because we're getting 4-8" of snow today), and to get some bubble tea. I like bubble tea (coconut, not almond). And the coconut buns we picked up. DP who is often the exact opposite of me in food tastes got some seaweed salad and kimchee. It was a nice denouement to a delightful afternoon.

The New York Times was right, it felt really good to do something different and out of the ordinary. Even if it is what we used to do all the time.

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Mango Lassi

1 ripe mango
1 cup whole or lowfat plain yogurt
3 tablespoons sugar
½ cup cold water
ice

Peel, pit, and coarsely chop 1 ripe mango (to yield about 1 cup fruit). In a blender, purée mango with yogurt, sugar, and cold water until smooth. Pour through a fine mesh sieve to remove pulp, if desired. Serve immediately over ice.

Everyday Food