My boys made homemade "Sweethearts" for me this weekend! I posted the recipe - and photos - at BlogHer!
The work of their beautiful hands:
I can only sit pain-free for five minutes - TOPS - at a time, so my online time is limited until I feel better. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, all my gorgeous blogging buddies!! Kiss kiss!
After an unexpected blizzard and a little reworking of time and date, today is 12's birthday party! Instead of sledding - it's a cool -4 degrees outside at the moment - we are headed with two additional boys to Santa Fe for a several hour session of bowling. 12's additional friends arrive at the homestead tonight at 6 for pizza and cake and the good goddess knows what else.
(You may remember the time I tried to sell Avon during Men's Bowling League...)
I spent the last hour fumbling through kitchen, bathroom, boys' bedrooms with an almost empty spray bottle of green cleaner in one hand, dirty rag in the other. The boys attempted some kind of half-hearted attempt to appease me. They carried laundry to the basement under one arm. The dog chased them, I followed the dog, my dishpan hands snatching dropped socks and underwear at each step.
I'm catching my breath. The wall behind me sports a large rectangular opening. My home's intestines spill forth - an intersection of pipe and energy line. I want to cover it, cover the cracks along the outside walls that give the stucco the appearance of a rippled beige Mexican wedding cookie in this snow.
When I lived in Southern California such things mattered, the things involving surface, veneer. I find my synapses in that traffic at times, Los Angeles traffic, smog thoughts. None of it makes sense on these streets. The only cars that wait are those of ranchers at Malette's Feed and Grain. I wait there some mornings, buy a bale or two of alfalfa for the bunnies, share a cup of coffee half-filled with the dulce de leche you make by boiling cans of sweetened condensed milk. That sugar fills our veins, somehow fills the cracks that spider across everyone's home.
Here's the recipe I use to make dulce de leche. It's the same recipe everyone in town uses, and I learned it from old Mrs. Gallegos one morning after I dropped off two bottles of Skin So Soft. Really, nothing else in life is this simple, this delicious. Just be sure to keep the can covered with water, less you risk a kitchen explosion!
As Mrs. Gallegos said as she spooned a healthy dollop of dulce de leche into two ceramic mugs, then poured strong pinon coffe, "It's that hidden sweetness inside, Birdie, that lightens the black."
Mrs. Gallegos' Dulce de Leche
Ingredients:
1 can sweetened condensed milk
Method:
Peel the label off of the can of condensed milk. Place the can at the bottom of a heavy pot. Pour water into the pan until it reaches two inches above the can. Put the pot on a stove and turn up the heat.
Let the pot and can simmer for three hours. Watch that pot! You may need to add additional water if it starts running low.
Let the can cool, open, enjoy! You can spoon the dulce de leche over ice cream, into coffee, or just eat it out of the can with a spoon. Yummy!
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I posted these links of my recent stories of the past week or two at Beauty Dish, but I should have posted them here, this being my clearing house, so to speak, of stories. You've already read all this stuff, but I'm sticking the list for those who might stumble across this site, and for those whose newsletters were jumbled:
10 Easy Ways to be an Environmentally-Friendly Avon Lady
Derek Jeter almost got me arrested for postal terrorism
Out with the Old, In with the Cold (I take the Polar Bear Plunge!
Have a wondrous MLK day, wherever you are, whatever you do!
