The Lunch Encounter

Suits-Herself-Cindy suited up her daughter’s picnic bag with handmade snack bags. You can do it too, for your post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches. Keep your mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce contained in cotton – none of that icky USB/USP/BPC/PVC plastic-ack-cancer-attack stuff for all yall. Or all we all over here in this PC/WannaB/YuppE/D-I-YerselfY/ household.

The angry chicken shows you how to make cute reusable snack bags.

Snack bag in action with Cindy and Freya.

The Angry Chicken HerselfE

On this holiday, and forever, love one another. Knit yourselves closely together and stay toasty warm inside and out.

Ok Go, Last Leaf. Watch it here.

Thank you, Along-for-the-Ride Heidi.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. Enjoy every stitch of that late night sandwich, then press close, with your slightly bigger selves.

KNitpaD

In a nonword:
HUH?

This is a custom job. Each piece selected carefully and with personal criteria. Each bit lovingly buffed to a shine. No one action predictable. Assembly line thinking will not fit, hard as I try by reading books, attending seminars, consulting with experts (my friends who are parents).

I am a grasshopper parent. I sang and played until summer had passed and then I had a child. Now my friends who were ant parents, those who had children when they were younger and did their parenting work first, laying the foundation, reaping and sowing, are sowing the benefits of their hard work.

No one would think to call them empty nesters because their nests are so full. So full of all the things I did in my early grasshopper life. I look at them with envy sometimes and then dig deep into my memory. Oh yeah, I did do those things. Long ago. Was it as good then? Who knows? Who will ever know?

Would raising a child have been better then? For me, no. I was way too busy playing the fiddle, singing and dancing, to take the time to raise a child. The poor neglected thing would have been feral.

Do I sometimes wish he was grown now and I had time to ride my bike, play my bass, come and go as I please? Yes, I do. Do I forget who I am, the complete me, the me who rode her bike from Vancouver to LA, played in a band, went out to eat at 2 am? Yes, I do. Then I sit still for a few moments and mine my memory. She is there, just resting, gathering and concentrating her energy into love for a child, that grasshopper of a creature, the boy who is singing and dancing and playing his fiddle to his heart’s content.

Too bad youth cannot be banked,  like many other things. Interest would not be needed, just the opportunity to withdraw.

Okay, I realize that this post is total mush-cliche-saccharin. What the heck?Thanksgiving is around the corner and if there is a time more suited to mining your most cloying impulses, I do not know of it.

The breads that rate for sandwich makers in NYC: Sullivan St., Grand Daisy, Eli’s Bread, Tom Cat, Balthazar. Handmade, each one different. Hard as one tries to fit these oblong breads into rectangular holes, they will not fit. I say, look each sandwich in the eye and see who it is, not what you want it to be. And then savor it. Burned, chewy, soft, sweet, hard, salty, yeasty spots and all.

Suits-Herself Cindy made a guest appearance at Barcroft Elementary during Virginia Farm-to-School  Week as a  FreshFarm representative. She is natural at connecting with kids over a Vegetable Lunch Encounter.

I got to be a rock star in my son’s eyes because I engaged the “speakers”. He asked me to please attend, and to “pretend I don’t know him.”

The brussels sprouts display was popular, and, at the end, I had a group of kids eating raw green beans! Who says these kids don’t eat vegetables?!
I love the one of the lunch table with all the kids raising their cups of broccoli with hamburgers and chocolate milk in front of them.

I suggested that she had found her calling.

Right. I’m going to write a book called “My Five-Year-old Eats Pickled Herring.” I’ll sell it to the Swedish community.

And I do wish I knew what my calling was.

On a separate note, but thinking of food, and what to call oneself, Cindy riffed.

Oh, also, I have a new favorite condiment. My grocery store was giving it away if you bought some cheese. I never would have bought it.

It’s kind of a mayonnaise/mustard mix with some peppercorns in it. Together with the Amish bologna, it makes a very tasty sandwich. BUT, mostly the word “gourmaise” just makes me LAUGH. As I laugh I have to admit that it is really tasty (with the bologna). Yum, gourmaise.

Here’s a photo just in case you ever decide to blog about weird, made-up condiment names.

I have heard about this Amish bologna that Cindy has been fetching  from the farm market she managed on Tuesdays. Apparently she’s been ingratiating herself nicely with those farmers because she’s has been invited to “Squirrel Fest” later this month. And, she took a lift in the back of a pick up, perhaps with some bologna and squirrels along for the ride. I am hot with envy.

I believe it is my calling to post about weird made-up condiment names, so there goes. Once this is, as they call it on WordPress, published, I will have fulfilled my destiny, met my calling and can spend the remainder of my life as a diletante. Squirrel Fest attendee, rock star, Amish bologna connoisseur, undercover mother, author of “My Ten Year Old Says He is Going to Eat Salad When He is Thirteen”, and repeat snooze button pusher.

Crackin!

Banh mi, smanh mi. I know, I know, we are already so jaded about banh mi. Like the New Yorker cartoon circa 1970 of the boy in the schoolyard investigating his bag lunch, “Oh no, not pate again.”

Baoguette, in NYC, makes a superlative banh mi, worth a long walk out of the way. I have eaten many banh mi, living about the length of a baguette away from “Little Saigon” in Arlington, Virginia, and Baoguette demolished all previous impressions.

Although I had read that the catfish was especially delicious, I asked for the top-of-the-menu choice, pork terrine and pâté. Not adventurous necessarily, but a way to check the bar. The bar at Baoguette is higher than the withers on a Central Asian Ovtcharka.

And the bread is from Tom Cat. Like the gingham dog and the calico cat, there was not a trace left behind when I was through.

That Christoph Niemann is a genius. Clever too.

Thanks much to Mr. Toth for bringing this superb toast picture story to my attention. Everything you need, and more, is there, all around you. Let’s be honest here…I’m talking about myself. Everything I need, and more, much much much, more is all around me. Thank you holy rolling mother of toasters for the friends who point out life’s riches to me. Without the personal alerts I would be blind, trip hard and knock out my front teeth. Knock out my front teeth on life’s riches. What a shame that would be.

The people who surround me make me tangible. Without them/you I exist in theory only. I think therefore I am? Nah. iPhone therefore iAm? Nah. I am a herding creature and feel real when I press up against the crowd around me.

Thanks to Suits-Herself-Cindy for spotting me on the cover of the Times magazine and making me tangible.
See, there I was, waiting to be made actual through the recognition and visual editing of friendship. Call me shallow, call me callow, call me coreless. Nope, that’s not it. I’m here, all firm and strong and founded on a cornerstone. It’s the people about who bring you out of the stone, find the sculpture of you within the mineral, give you edges, boundaries, features. And tell you how to wear your hair. Cindy had the sense to give the girl who was masquerading as me a haircut. Snip, snip, she became me. Revealed.