Same stepdaughter in an exchange with her mom:

Mom: “So what’s your schedule tomorrow?”

S: “I dunno.”

Mom: “Aren’t you going to the movies with your friends?”

S: “No, I’m not!” (delivered with the sort of derisive tone only a teen girl can properly construct)

Mom: “But didn’t you tell me yesterday you were going to see a movie on Monday?”

S: “I’m going to see The Last Airbender on Monday.”

Mom: “I just said that!”

S: “No, you asked if I was going with friends.”

Sister S has been a world-champion hair-splitter since she was very young. We believe she has a future as a prosecuting attorney.

Step daughter is standing in front of the refrigerator, staring blankly in to it.

After a moment or two I ask what the issue is.

“I’m looking for something to eat,” she says.

“I made blintzes this morning. There is one left.”

“Really? Where?”

“Right in there,” I say, pointing inside at the top shelf.

“I don’t see it,” she says.

I take a closer look inside, and notice that the foil pouch containing the last blintz is not where I’d left it.

“Huh, that’s funny. I put it right there just a little while ago.”

“Where?”

“On the top shelf. I wrapped it up in a little foil packet.”

“Oh, that. I already ate that,” she says.

Long pause.

I stared at her, not sure where to begin. “So, when I mentioned the blintz, and you said… aah, forget it.”

Kids often say we don’t understand them. I have to concede that point.

It’s morning, and Michael is once again in mommy & daddy’s room making sure we don’t do anything crazy like sleep past 6:00 AM.

He’s chattering at his mom as she quietly puts together his outfit for the day, all the while giving ear to the morning news in hopes of hearing a positive weather report. I’m nearby, getting myself ready for the work day.

On the news, a story comes on about the dangers of illegal fireworks.

At the mere mention of fireworks, Michael’s attention is suddenly riveted to the television. The reporter describes the scenes we’re watching with an ominous tone, as mannequins are substituted for ignorant, idiotic pyrotechnics enthusiasts practicing highly unsafe techniques. The first one has his head blown clean off by a mortar shell. The second has his arm blasted into splinters by an M-80. The third has an eye shot out by a Roman candle. The message is very clear: illegal fireworks are extremely dangerous.

“See, Michael?” his mom says.

Michael pauses for just a moment, obviously still trying to absorb the gravity of the images he just saw.

“We… should… GET THOSE!” he says.

Gravity not absorbed.

Today we’re hopping an outrigger and heading down to Tahiti, where we’re going to be cooking up “Chevrettes a la vanilla et coco” (or Shrimp in coconut-vanilla sauce). As a bonus, we’re having ”Poulet Fafa” (or Tahitian Taro Chicken).

Tahiti is famous for its vanilla beans. They’re the most flavorful vanilla beans you can get, in my opinion. But to get them at the grocery store is to pay a steep price: our local markets sell one bean for anywhere from nine to fourteen dollars. Yikes! Buy them online and the price drops dramatically, but you encounter minimum orders and shipping costs, so unless you’re running a restaurant or buying for your extended family, probably best to stick to the local shops. Or do what I did: use Tahitian vanilla extract.

For the shrimp dish I used white shrimp, since they have a fairly versatile flavor base. The part I dislike the most about dealing with shrimp is cleaning and deveining. But once you’ve done a few, it goes quickly. The shrimp are simply pan-seared and seasoned, then set aside to finish in the sauce. The sauce itself is the real magic of this dish, brining the flavors of vanilla, coconut and rum together beautifully. The vanilla bean (or extract) is simmered with about ½ cup of rum (be careful here – all rums are NOT created equal! I used Coruba for its rich, tropical taste. Appleton or Meyers would work okay too) until the liquid is reduced by about half, and then unsweetened coconut cream is added and simmered until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper and stir in the shrimp. Simmer for a minute or two and serve.

The recipe recommends serving with sautéed spinach. I was not successful in my sautéing of spinach, and ended up making dark green mush instead of the crispy leaves I was hoping for. My mistake was in not drying the leaves well after washing them. The shrimp and the coconut-vanilla sauce was wonderful: not sweet, but aromatic and tropical; the vanilla was not overpowering but complemented the coconut perfectly. The recipe called for 1 cup of heavy cream as well, but I simply omitted that ingredient as I was not desirous of presenting my wife with another heart attack.

The chicken didn’t turn out as well as I’d have liked. I used medium sized pieces of white meat, pan-seared and seasoned. The taro leaves are the key to this dish. If you can find them, you’re fortunate. There are a few Asian markets out there who carry these, so be on the lookout (spinach will do in a pinch). Taro leaves MUST be treated before using them in any dish! Unless you want a mouth full of fire. Chop them up and simmer them for 40 minutes in saltwater to leech out the incendiary calcium oxalate. Rinse and squeeze dry before introducing into your dish.

I sautéed onions, ginger and garlic for a couple of minutes, then added chicken stock and the pan-seared chicken. After it cooked for a bit I stirred in the taro leaves and seasoned to taste, then finished with about ½ cup of coconut cream.

The chicken itself was rather bland, but the taro leaves in the dish gave it a warmth and depth that I was not expecting. In the future I’ll probably cut the chicken up into smaller pieces and marinate with lime juice and rice wine vinegar before searing. The recipe calls for 2 cups of onions, but I think it would work okay to scale that back to about ½ cup, and maybe introduce a small amount of chili pepper to the dish to give it a kick and some color. That, and I’d probably keep the chicken out of it until the last minute to retain the sear.
The two dishes went well together, each presenting a taste of coconut (prevalent in Tahitian cooking) but offering two different takes on it.

Next time I’ll post pictures. Promise.

Like any good husband, I try to make sure to let my wife know that I love her in different ways.

But sometimes the question comes to mind on the spur of the moment and she needs to ask. And on those occasions I like to have a romantic answer ready for her. She’s a dialog ninja, though, and sometimes my best efforts fall flat.

Recently we were driving to the store, and she asked:

“Do you love me?”

“Absolutely I do. Only more today than yesterday,” I said, thinking I’d given her a good one.

After a microscopic pause came the response: “How come you didn’t love me that much yesterday?”

I think she just loves to see me slap my forehead.

E komo mai!

A couple of weeks ago, we embarked on a culinary journey across the Pacific Ocean, upon which we will be sampling new and unheard-of dishes created in sincere Polynesian style. I have selected the alliterative name “Tiki Tuesday” as a venue for disclosure of the success or failure of each weekend’s Polynesian-Style dinner over the course of this summer.

Last weekend’s dinner was a success, in that the food was all edible and my wife and kids enjoyed it.

On the menu:

Kalua Pork
Fried Plantains in savory coconut sauce
Tropical Fruit Salad

A note for my Kosher-observing readers: you may substitute chicken breasts or chuck roast for the pork; it should work about the same.

Now, real Kalua Pork (or “Kalua Pig” as it’s called) is traditionally prepared in an Imu, a makeshift oven that’s basically a pit dug in the sand and filled with rocks that have been heating up in a fire. The pork is wrapped tightly in Ti leaves and Banana leaves, set on the hot rocks and then buried to cook all day. What you end up with is a smoked, pulled-pork kind of dish. It’s amazingly good.

Since I think the homeowner’s association would frown upon my digging up the yard and cooking a pig, I had to figure out another means of cooking my roast. I chose a five pound pork roast, seasoned it with salt, pepper, ginger and allspice, and set it in a smoker for six hours.
This would give it the flavor I wanted. It rested overnight in the refrigerator. The next day I coated it in a mop sauce consisting of apple cider vinegar, sautéed sweet onions, freshly grated ginger and passion fruit syrup. Then I wrapped it in Taro leaves and Ti leaves (Banana leaves are not to be found anywhere in the metro area) and aluminum foil (to hold it together) and set it in a crock pot for ten hours on low, adding a cup of water to make sure it stayed moist.

Ten hours was the perfect cooking time. The result was a tender, moist, smoky and aromatic meat that could be pulled apart with a fork and made into a sandwich (one of my kids ate it this way) or just eaten as is. No sauce required.

The plantains were fairly simple. I chose three green plantains, peeled them (not an easy task) and cut them into ½ inch slices. These I fried up in 2 tbs canola oil, and seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and paprika. About two minutes per side is enough to give them a nice browning.

I prepared the coconut sauce the same way as last time, only this time I didn’t bother with the corn starch, I used less milk and didn’t let it come to a boil. This kept it from curdling. Also, I added ¼ cup of mango puree and a half teaspoon of orange flower water to give it a tropical, floral note. This worked beautifully. I served the plantains with the coconut sauce. In retrospect I think I had a bit too much salt in the sauce, and the plantains were a bit bland on their own. Maybe they can be marinated.

The fruit salad consisted of pineapple, mango, kiwi and cantaloupe. Mangoes are strange; they have this wedge-shaped pit inside that’s hard to discern from the fruit itself. This makes it difficult to slice up unless you’ve done it a bunch. Practice makes perfect with these things.

For next week, I’m going to head back to cooking chicken, and see if I can amp up the vegetable factor. There are a few other ingredients I’m hoping to find around here: taro root, breadfruit and awapuhi.

A hui hou!

Some time ago I mentioned quinoa as an amazing little protein-packed grain, a virtual powerhouse of nutrition in a simple and versatile package.

It isn’t a grain, technically, because it isn’t the product of a grass plant (like wheat, corn or oats are for example). But it’s treated the same and it can be used just the same.

So it goes that we figured out a way to use it as a breakfast item.

It started simply enough: we like oatmeal for breakfast. It’s got that wonderful oat bran and soluble fiber that’s so heart healthy. But it’s a little boring. How to amp it up? Toast!

That is, toast the oats before you cook them. This brings out a whole different side to oats’ taste profile. Once we tasted the glory of toasted oats, we figured we could toast some quinoa and toss that in as well. Even better!

Adding flax seed meal and walnuts boosted both the nutrition and the flavor by adding Omega-3s and a wonderful nuttiness. And in our house, more nuttiness is a trademark.

This, in my mind, represents the height of morning nutrition:

Toasted Oats and Quinoa Cereal
2 cups pre-washed quinoa
2 cups old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup flax seed meal

In a medium-sized frying pan, toast the quinoa over medium heat. I like to do this about 1/2 cup at a time so it’s easier to move around. It will likely pop and jump around like itty-bitty popcorns as it toasts, so watch out for escapees. I use a fry screen to keep their excitement contained. The quinoa should turn from a light tan to a richer brown; don’t let it go too far.

When that’s done, dump it into a large metal bowl.

Toast the oatmeal about 1/2 cup at a time in the same pan. It won’t do anything while it’s toasting other than lie there and burn, so keep it moving. Dump it into the bowl with the quinoa when it’s done.

Pour the flax seed meal and chopped walnuts into the bowl with the quinoa and oats, and stir.

You’re ready to go. Note: This batch yields 24 servings! You can store it in a plastic zip-top baggie for later use.

To prepare two servings:

Bring 1 cup of salted water to a boil
Add 1/2 cup of the toasted quinoa and oats cereal
Reduce to medium low heat, simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
Let stand, covered, for one minute.

Serve with milk and a smidge of brown sugar or raisins if you like.

Rico!

Not too long ago, I recounted the tale of a difficult weekend.

On Monday I was breathing a sigh of relief to be shut of it.

Little did I know what level of Dante’s Inferno I’d be touring the very next weekend.

I think it began when I announced plans for a family excursion to see the annual Starlight Parade in Portland. These words, upon leaving my lips, passed through the aether and began to resonate deep in the interstices of time and space, where it then created a focused beam of adversity aimed directly at the most critical spot in our home’s plumbing system.

Before I go on, I must remind you that I hate plumbing problems. I don’t mind electrical wiring problems, structural problems or heating/air conditioning problems. Those are easy to deal with.

Plumbing is different. Plumbing is a way of routing water under pressure, and if not dealt with quickly and correctly will cause loss of resources, great amounts of wetness, pervasive and very expensive wood damage and significant reduction in dignity. This is why in every corner of our house there currently thrives some minor plumbing annoyance, from running toilets to an intermittent refrigerator water dispenser, a completely inoperable hot water tap and a defunct hot tub.

So, this one Saturday morning, I brought Michael outside to do some bike riding. It was time to take off his training wheels and see what he could do on two wheels. He actually got four seconds of riding time without my holding on to him! Pretty cool. On the way down the driveway, he asked me why the sidewalk was all wet.

“Probably the neighbors watering,” I said, and gave it no further thought.

Later, when my wife came home from errands, she asked me why the sidewalk was wet, and whether it was coming from our yard.

This time I went outside to give it a good look.

Sure enough, the water that was saturating the sidewalk was merrily bubbling up from our yard. Specifically, from the water meter. I pulled up the cover and saw a murky brown ocean.

No problem, I thought, call the water department.

They sent a guy around in under twenty minutes. He pumped out the meter well and took a look around.

“Yeah, it’s the fitting on the street elbow,” he said.

“And now you’re going to tell me it’s an easy fix and it won’t be expensive, right?” I asked, optimistically.

“Oh, yeah. It’s a simple job. All you have to do is-“

I sort of hung on that phrase there: “all you have to do is”

And by “you” he meant the poor shmuck who owns the house, who hates plumbing, and who had plans that day.

I asked him to repeat himself, so he described again the “very simple” process of removing the street elbow, cutting the reducer coupling off of the main line and replacing it with PVC adapters.

“It’ll take you half an hour and cost three bucks.”

My wife and I looked at each other, knowing full well both figures were way off.

As the water department dude drove off, she went and got the camera while I went to fetch the shovel.
My eldest daughter, having discovered that there was no water pressure in the house, came out to investigate. She wanted a shower, and said she was willing to work for it.

Yes, she has no qualms against performing manual labor barefoot and in pajamas.

And of course it’s necessary to dig out the concrete box surrounding the meter just to get to the pipes.

I’ll be needing a manicure after this.

Say a prayer. I’m cutting the water main.

Here’s the culprit. A leaky street elbow and reducer coupling.

So off to Home Depot I went, taking eldest daughter with me. She was gracious enough to put on some daytime attire before we left.

Okay – I got parts and teflon plumber’s tape. And a water pump. And a new PVC cutter. And some PVC cement. Let’s see… so far we’re up to $42.51. So much for the cheery estimate I got from the water company rep.

Now, I know how to cut PVC, and I know how to apply PVC cement. And I know that once you put the cement-coated pieces together, they ain’t coming apart: no way, no how. So it’s important to get it done right the first time.

Missed it by that much. Okay, okay, so I blew it the first time. I can get more connectors, they’re not too expensive.

Off to Home Depot I went, for the second time. Running total is now up to $48.69.

This time, I dry-fit the pieces and make SURE they’re the right length before I cemented them together. No more crude eyeball measurements.

Yeah.

Interesting fact: when you coat PVC with cement, the pieces fit together a lot closer than when you dry fit them, making it really easy to misjudge (again) how long your connector assembly is. I have learned something. Something I’ll only need to recall when I am forced to do plumbing work. Something I’ll no doubt forget long before the time I need to recall it.

I had made two attempts to get our home’s water main reconnected and had blown them both.

At this point, I had a hyperventilating, mouth-frothing panic attack became somewhat discouraged. I wasn’t sure if I could actually make this work. It was critical that our house has water, and my repeated screw-ups were causing us to run out of workable pipe length. Pretty soon I’d have to call in a back hoe and/or a fleet of professionals.

My wife, the soul of support, offered a suggestion:

“You need a beer.”

“It’s only noon,” I said, in mild protest. “Besides, I have to go get more parts.”

“I’ll go get them,” she said. “You need to relax.” She took the first connector set with her and sped off to the hardware store.

I hate plumbing.

Soon my wife was back, handing me the new parts. She bought two sets. Smart woman.

“Did you drink that beer?” she asked me.

“No…”

She heaved a sigh and marched into the house to get one.

After she came back out and forced me to relax, she offered a suggestion:

“You know, inside that coupling there’s a little ridge that lets you know how far the pipe goes in. How about you measure how far inside that ridge is, and use that to figure out how long the connecting pipe should be?”

“That’s a really smart idea,” I said.

With that in mind, I carefully measured all the distances and lengths involved in the connection from the water main to the meter.

I made the cuts, cemented the pieces and fit them together.

Not exactly perfect, but serviceable and solid.

Time to apply water pressure.

No leaks. Hallelujah!

Back goes the box, dirt and surrounding rocks.

After five hours and fifty-three some odd dollars, the problem was resolved. Don’t mistake this pose for relaxation. What you’re seeing is exhaustion.

And even after two weeks, I still have nightmares.

I hate plumbing.

note: the pictures you didn’t get to see were the ones where wife and daughter took their turns fitting and tightening the connectors. There were threats involved.

We’re cruising down the road toward Michael’s school, ready for his second-to-last day.

“Kidz Bop” CD #4 is playing, Michael’s current choice for drive-time musical accompaniment.

We pass rows of houses, those infamous spinning trees, a set of apartment buildings and a construction site. My mind is abuzz with the usual mental din, the background clamor consisting of thoughts of work-related trials, bills, kids schedules, plumbing problems, rodents and a host of other annoyances beseeching my attention.

“Daddy, look! They’re flying!” Michael suddenly says.

“What’s flying, sport?” I ask.

“The drops! Up there!” He points to the windshield. I can see little drops of water, remnants of yesterday’s gully washer as they travel up the glass, buffeted by the wind.

“Oh, yeah. Look at that,” I say.

Suddenly I’m transported back to the early 1970s, and I’m the young passenger staring out the car window at the little drops of water that dance and play across the glass, and imagining that each one has its own little universe. I used to wonder what was going on in each of these little drops of water, what they might be thinking, what business they had that drove them to follow the courses they took. My mind was a free space of possibilities and wonder unhindered by the burden of adult responsibilities.

I remember a specific instance in which my mother had picked me up from school early, probably because I was claiming to be sick, and I was forced to run errands. And it occurred to me that on that day my mom’s mind was probably roiling with troubles as well, no doubt wondering how she’s supposed to get anything productive done with a small boy tagging along.

“Where are the drops going?” Michael asked, snapping me out of my reverie.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure they have business somewhere,” I said.

After checking Michael in at school, I drove on to work in silence.

But I spent a little extra time wondering at water droplets while waiting at stop lights, and a little less time listening to my internal clamor.

And I made a mental note to do that more often.

Mornings are always fun. Usually my wife goes to work early and I get up to help her, just to make it a little less of a rush. Today she had to be out the door at 7:00 AM sharp to catch a ride with a co-worker.

So I made her breakfast and coffee and kept an eye on Michael downstairs while she finished getting ready.

I even took the time to straighten the entryway a smidge and got a few of my wife’s most oft-chosen shoes lined up, thinking she’d probably want one of the pairs there.

It’s important to understand that Michael’s mommy loves her shoes. I am not going to compare her to Imelda Marcos, but she has a lot of them. Being a male, I cannot understand the need for more than three pairs: grungy shoes, every day shoes, and Sunday shoes; so it’s hard for me to grasp the need to own so many different shoes, nor do I see how anyone can determine which shoes are the right ones for the given occasion/circumstance/venue/mood.

In addition, these shoes are prone to wandering off on their own and hiding. You can find them in the darndest places. Fortunately, I’ve gotten pretty good and shoe search and rescue, so my wife often calls upon me to locate a requested pair of shoes, which when you think about it is quite a feat. Let me remind you again that I am a man. Men are not widely respected for their ability to distinguish between colors or styles of apparel.

Which brings me back to my tale.

At 6:55 she called, frantic, from the top of the stairs:

“Tom! I need you to find my shoes!”

I sprang into action.

“Which shoes?” I called as I dashed over to the stairs.

“The dark cloggy ones that I haven’t seen for weeks and weeks!”

That narrows it down, I thought. “Dark cloggy ones?”

“Yes! They’re reddish brown and I have no idea where they are!”

“And you expect me to find them in five minutes?”

Intuitively, I first checked the entryway closet. This is where most shoes end up when they’ve gone missing for any length of time.

I dug furiously through a condensed layers of apparel strata like a possessed armadillo, tossing everything into the entryway: boots, umbrellas, a leg brace, an errant coat, and at least thirty pairs of shoes, most of them belonging to any of three teenage girls who, when asked to clean up, just toss their belongings inside this closet and quickly shut the door.

With one minute to spare, from the back of the closet I plucked out one pair of reddish-brown cloggy type shoes that haven’t seen the light of day for at least three weeks.

“There you are.”

“Thank you!”

“I think I’ve earned something for that,” I say.

“Congratulations.” she says. “You passed that challenge.”

Once again, I have preserved my spot on the island.