Mad Skills

I went over to play a little more Settlers of Catan with Riley and Treat this afternoon. We had loosely arranged our game on Friday, barring any unexpected conflict, and with temperatures expected to hit the high 90s today, an inside activity seemed prudent.

We texted back and forth this morning to figure out where to play-- I have the game, they had the numbers, so it was a bit of a toss-up. In the end, I also had the car, so I drove up there to play.

When I arrived Emily was making herself lunch and Bill was nowhere to be found. "Neither of my parents want to play," Treat reported.

"Whaaaaat?" I said. "C'mon, Emily, all the cool people are doing it..."

She continued to grate cheese on her pasta, unfazed.

"You know you've always wanted to try it! Here's your chance!" I tried. "It's really fun! You'll like it!"

She shrugged. "Okay. Why not?"

I turned triumphantly to my nephews. "See what a little peer pressure can accomplish, boys? I haven't spent 22 years in middle school for nuthin!"

As the Turnip Turns

We got a load of turnips from our farm share the other week, and since then they have been languishing on the counter waiting to be prepared. I knew I wanted to pickle them, lacto-ferment them to be exact, with some beets and Mediterranean flavors, but until this evening the chore was not at the top of my to-do list. After a trip to the grocery store, though, I had the beets and I had the time, too, and so I set to prepping the vegetables for their bath in the brine.

As soon as paring knife touched turnip, I was transported to June 1990. It was my first day working as a cook in the flight kitchen of United Airlines. A child of the airline industry, I had been working in kitchens for 4 years, and when I saw the ad in the paper it seemed like a natural fit. Sure, I was dismissive of the quality of food I might be cooking, but the flight benefits and regular hours were definitely tempting. Imagine my surprise then, when at my interview I had to take a pencil and paper test about cooking techniques. I thought it went pretty well, but after the interview, when the executive chef, Hans, hired me, he explicitly told me that I was lucky to get the job. Evidently, my knowledge was spotty, but my attitude was spot on.

So there I was, on my first day, standing in a cavernous warehouse-sized space behind a row of 10 stainless steel benches and in front of a bank of 8 convection ovens, two 100-gallon steam kettles, three flat tops, and a 12 burner range. Hamid was my trainer and my first task was to carve 100 turnip tournees. He quickly demonstrated with his beak-nose paring knife-- in six quick cuts, he had a perfect little football of a turnip. And when I finished those? I was to move on to potatoes and carrots. These were for the business class meals on the British Airways 747 flight to London. United had the charter for all the BA food out of Dulles, and every morsel of it, along with all the United transAtlantic meals, and transcontinental business and first meals, was prepared from scratch.

The kitchen was a classic European brigade set-up. In addition to our German-born executive chef, we also had two French-born and one Chinese-American sous-chefs, a Thai lead cook nick-named Jimmy. Then there was Hamid, who was Iraqi, Derrick (Jamaican), Roger (French), Park and Houng (Korean), Suzy and Rudi (Indonesian), Miguel (Filipino), and Sherri and George, who were American-born, like me. All the meals we were responsible for were cooked according to classic French recipes created at UAL headquarters in Chicago-- meat, sauce, starch, and buttered vegetable.

Hamid went off to make 200 omelets or something and left me with a pile of vegetables and a gallon of water to toss the finished tournees in. I got out the smallest, sharpest knife from my roll and picked up a turnip. He had quartered his first, and I did the same, but after that I was lost. I tentatively made a couple cuts, but ended up with a chunky-diamond like thing. Even so, I threw it in the water, hoping it might pass. I struggled on like that, sweating in my new white coat and unfamiliar paper tocque, until at last Derrick came by and without a word turned one of the turnip quarters and handed me his paring knife.

It took me 40 turnips and until lunch time to get 100 usable tournees. By the end of the task, I realized that to be successful, you had to look past the side right in front of you and cut without hesitation.

That was my last professional cooking job, but even though I left the field to become a teacher a year later, it's a lesson that has had many applications over the years.

If Only She Could've Helped Blow Out the Candles

We took Isabel hiking for her birthday today. The weather was overcast and muggy, but not too hot, so we headed up to Great Falls a little after noon. We meandered up and down the trails, along the top of the gorge, and through the woods for about three miles. There was a bit of scrambling in some rocky spots, but for a 12-year-old dog, our girl did pretty well: tail up and trotting all the way. She slept soundly the whole trip home, but she was wide awake this evening when we went over to Bill and Emily's for Victor's birthday party, eager to see her cousin, Sonic, and one of her favorite cats, Trixie. She is never happier than when the pack is all together, and when we sang happy birthday to Victor in our traditional round, I think Isabel suspected it was for her, too.

Summer Past

Today was one of those rare Virginia summer days without humidity or even temperatures above 82. In celebration, we turned off the a/c and threw open all the windows and doors. A cool northerly breeze freshened the house while we were off riding our bikes, but this evening finds our place a bit warmer than usual. Even so, there is something about the sounds of my neighbors returning home from work and the the smell of the fresh cut grass coming in through the screens that reminds me of a time when not many of us had air conditioning. Then, there was less of a division between inside and outside, and we knew that nightfall would bring crickets for sure, and maybe even some cooler air.

Someone to Lava

One of Annabelle's favorite things to do when she was visiting this time was to pull out the ukulele (or banjo) and strum. I tried to show her a few notes and chords, and while she got the gist, she still preferred to make her own kind of music. "I need an instrument," she declared more than once. I knew what she meant.

Imagine our delight, then, Annabelle's and mine, when we went to see Inside Out on Monday and found the Pixar short before the movie to be an animated version of a ukulele song. It didn't sound that complicated to my novice ears, either, and so when we got home I looked up the chords and pulled out the uke. In no time the four of us were singing as I strummed:

(F) I have a dream, I (C) hope will come true
That (G7) you're here with me, and (C) I'm here with you
(F) I wish that the earth, sea, (C) the sky up above
Will (F) send me (G7) someone to (C) la-va.

Is there a Teacher in the House?

Richard and Annabelle have been a little obsessed with the 200 water balloons we threw in our cart at the craft store the other day. Once I taught Annabelle to to tie them, dozens of blown-up balloons have populated the house, some with names, many with faces, still others hog-tied into bouquets.

What we hadn't used them for, until this morning, was water bombs, but at 9 AM I made good on my final promise of their visit and filled 30 balloons with water while the kids changed into their suits. We agreed on the rules in advance: stay within the boundary, no throwing from a range less than four feet, and no head-shots. In addition, the minute somebody cried, the battle was over, and everyone had to pick up the pieces.

The three of us had fun splatting balloons at each other's feet, although Richard did score a drenching hit on my back, and happily, none of us cried. When it was all over, picking up might have been a bit contentious were it not for my advance planning-- all of our balloons were color coded. Richard had blue and green, Annabelle pink and purple, and I orange and yellow, so there could be no excuse for leaving any latex behind.

A Tale of Two Cities and Knights

For many years my nephews and I have whiled away many a summer vacation hour playing a board game called The Settlers of Catan. Involving resources, trading, expansion, strategy and luck, the boys and I have enjoyed it since Treat and Josh were nine, and Riley and Eric were 12. Back then, those younger boys played their hearts out to beat the older guys, and sometimes I was glad that I was playing, too, so I didn't have to take sides.

This summer, it was time to initiate Richard into the tradition, and so Treat and I played a basic game with him a few days ago. Richard has a strategic mind, and although he lost, he did quite well for a newbie, and we have had had many discussions since about different game plans.

This afternoon, at Richard's request, the three of us took on the most complicated expansion version of the game. It was hard and a little stressful with the addition of Barbarians who relentlessly march on the island to pillage the cities we are trying to establish. The approach that was so successful for Richard in the first game turned out to be somewhat of a handicap to him in this one, and he became a little discouraged. Treat, on the other hand, embraced the complexity and had a great game.

Oh, I enjoyed the game, but I found myself once again torn between two boys, both so eager to do well, that I was sorry there could only be one winner, even if it turned out to be me.

(Which it didn't, by the way. Treat won the day, but Richard was downright chivalrous in defeat.)