The By-Gone Days of the Box

Fudgy? Chew? Let's not put labels on things, shall we?

When I was a kid, brownies came from a box.

And they were magic. Pour powder in bowl, add eggs, oil, and water. Pour into a pan, and bake. Voila.

It wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that I could make brownies from scratch. Somehow I'm pretty sure my mother would have preferred that I did not have such an epiphany. You see, mess was not her thing... still isn't. The box and the one bowl method were just enough mess to be tolerable. Plus, she didn't eat brownies anyway.

Cut to my own kitchen, where even though I hate doing dishes, I'll use them if necessary. (This isn't to say I might not shortcut and combine dishes, but I digress.) I bake by intuition, which can sometimes be problematic, but generally works out fine. I'm famous for saying, "Do it til it looks right." Whatever that means. I like to play; I like to identify the chemical reactions that cause the effects I see; I'm a food nerd. But I'm okay with it.

When I decide to make something new, I'll browse recipes for what I want to make, or something similar to it. Then, I'll morph them all into one, and change that too on the way. Case in point, I decided to make brownies. From scratch. I have other recipes, but I took out a few cookbooks from the library, so I figured I'd consult and see the opinions of Dorie Greenspan, Sherry Yard, Nick Malgieri, and Harold McGee (okay he was just for chemical input). Nothing struck me, so I went rogue. Note: These are deep intense brownies... primarily fudgy, but with a slight chew from the bread flour. If you like cakey, move on. You'll thank me later.

Fudgy Chewy Brownies... ish

8 oz semisweet chocolate, divded
4 oz unsalted butter
2-3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder... probably 3, but like I said, I'm not very good with measuring
2 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar, maybe a little less
1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed... i pack pretty tightly... just saying
1 tbsp vanilla
3 tbsp bread flour
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp sea salt... ish
Fleur de Sel

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line an 8 in square pan (I use silicone) with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray.
2. Put butter in microwave safe bowl, and half melt for like 30 seconds. Add 7 oz of the chocolate to the bowl and nuke again for 30-45 seconds, depending upon strength of microwave... basically, until you'll be able to stir it smooth.
3. Add cocoa powder, and whisk the butter, chocolate, and powder til smooth. No need to whisk too hard. Avoid aeration.
4. Combine flours with salt in a separate bowl.
5. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking til smooth, but avoid whisking too much to avoid that aeration.
6. Whisk in the sugars... it'll be a bit grainy looking. 
7. Stir in the vanilla.
8. Stir in the flour/salt. Mix in the last 1 oz of semisweet chocolate (if it isn't already broken up, crush it first).
9. Pour into pan, and smooth to the edges. It will be thick and quite viscous. Sprinkle the top with just a bit of fleur de sel.
10. Bake for 28-30 minutes... the top will be crackly, the inside moist. Definitely don't overbake. Cool a bit, then refrigerate before cutting. 

 Literally, it takes 10 minutes to mix up. 30 to bake. And the results are soooo much better than the box (not that I don't have respect for the box, as that's where it all began). But, if you haven't made homemade brownies from scratch at least once, you're missing out.  Have the experience.

No means no...?

"Santa knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!"

When I was a kid, no meant no.

Maybe also meant no. Yes meant we'll see.

To be fair, I don't have kids yet. I understand that the bundles of joy don't come with manuals. And, parenting is one of the, if not the, hardest jobs in the world. That said, when did it all start to go to hell in a hand basket? Was it when we overturned the notion that kids should be seen and not heard? Probably not. Was it when we decided discipline should and could no longer be physical? Doubtful. Or, when we decided that the primary role of a parent should be conjuring self-esteem and self-worth, without standards of achievement? I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm baffled by the new wave of child rearing that I have lovingly dubbed "Parenting by Negotiation." As a kid, I was asked to do something. If I did not or chose not to do it, then I was told to do it. At which point, if the required action did not occur, there were consequences. I knew this ahead of time. And by choosing or not choosing to comply, I dictated those consequences. I understood this. These boundaries were formed early on, at a time when perhaps they didn't seem so much like boundaries, but rather a style of communication and a foundation for relationship.

Case in point- I was at the grocery store over the weekend, and witnessed the following exchange between a mother and her approximately 4 or 5 year old son. (As I watched, I certainly gave credence to the notion that there were possibly extenuating circumstances, like the kid hadn't had enough sleep, or the mother hadn't had enough sleep, or the sun was a particularly energy-off-putting shade of light that day... but alas, these did not engender my support for the manner in which the situation went down. True, the child might have some sort of emotional problems, in which case this scenario is just a representation of one of many I witness all the time, all of which cannot be explained away by emotional issues, and if they can, we have an even larger issue for another post.):

The Mother has an arm basket on one arm, and her son is walking beside her in the canned goods and soup aisle. He latches on to a box of beef consomme three shelves up from the ground.

Son: I need this.
Mom: Honey, put that back.
The kid hugs the box tightly to his chest and scowls.
Mom: Nathan, put that box back on the shelf.
Son: No.
Mom: Yes.*
Son: No.**
Mom: Nathan, I don't want to have to ask you again...
Son: You didn't ask, you told. And you didn't say please. ***
Mom: Nathan, please put the box back on the shelf. ****
Son: No! I NEED IT!!! *****
Mom: Honey, I know you think you need it, but...
Nathan begins to scream, stomping in place.
Mom: Do you even know what it is?
From this point on, Nathan just screams and grunts, nothing intelligible, while Mom tries to deal with the situation. She gets on his level, still clutching the shopping basket on her arm.
Mom: Nathan, listen to me. Tell me what's wrong. Why do you think you need this? It's con-so-mme. It makes soup. You said you wanted pizza for dinner. Doesn't pizza sound good? Nathan, you have to stop crying and give Mommy back the box, okay? I know you feel like you need this now, but I bet if I ask you later, you won't. How do you feel about putting the box back on the shelf? Because if you don't, we can't leave the market. You don't want to live here do you? Honey, talk to me. ******
Nathan: I HATE PIZZA!
At this point, he takes a box of something off another shelf and throws it at his mother. *******
Mom: Nathan, that's not nice. We don't throw things. And you love pizza! Remember the pizza we had last weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house? Do you want Mommy to pick you up? How about if I let you carry that til we get done, and then we put it back? ********
Nathan: It's MINE!

Now, I've witnessed this whole thing because I was standing in line, and it went down 5 feet from me. Let me go back and touch on the asterisks quickly and my alternate response... Now of course, my responses and actions would change the course of events subsequently, but I'll ignore that, and so I digress...
* I will ask you once more to put that on the shelf. If you do not do it, we will be leaving.
** The kid says no again? I take the box, put it on the shelf, and we leave. Game over.
*** I didn't say please?! I will give you respect. In fact, I think that respecting your kids is one of the best ways to engender their respect. Treat them as people. Talk to them as people. But this? This is sass; this is disrespect. And I will not cow-tow to such needling.
**** You're right, I didn't say please. But that is irrelevant at this moment. The box needs to be back on the shelf now.
***** You need nothing. See prior action on **
****** At this point, I nearly lost it myself. Was she trying to convince a girlfriend to try a new brand of deodorant? I've seen better techniques of persuasion on Judge Judy. But frankly, this is where parenting has broken down. It's become a mutual situation, where everything is in constant negotiation, and there's no clear cut leader. Rule by Frustatocracy... that is to say, rule by whichever party holds out longer and doesn't cave in the face of exceeding frustration.
******* Throwing something at me? The audacity. See prior **
******** She lost. But I guess the kid feels good about himself.

I don't know if Nathan took home that consomme. I certainly hope not. What shocked me most were the length and nature of the interaction. There that poor Mother crouched on the floor before her defiant child, and negotiated. And not well I might add. She did make an effort to touch on the pathos, logos, and ethos of the situation, but I'm sorry to say Nathan cared for neither of those approaches. I'm certainly not suggesting she should have hit him. Or that she should have screamed back at him, especially not in that setting, where it would take on the effects of not only scolding but humiliating. Instead, the matter should have been squashed at the get-go. Mom clearly doesn't have a set way of dealing with these situations, except to negotiate them as they come. Nathan knows this, likes the game, and knows she'll play. He probably wins a significant amount of the time too. As I noted earlier, for this specific situation, there may have been extenuating circumstances both for the interaction and Mom's response; however, as I see it, there are at least three things that should not motivate a parent's behavior (99% of the time): guilt, frustration, and laziness. They all produce at best lackluster or even detrimental results, and at worst, will probably be some of the reason why therapy is needed.

As I read back over this, I sound like a horrible judgmental person. But let's remember that this interaction is but a representation of the trend these days. Forget Nathan and his mother's specific circumstance, but rather look at the endemic problem. It's the blind leading the blind, and neither one of them has a walking stick or a seeing eye dog for a mote of objectivity. Somebody has to be in charge; the boundaries must be clear at the outset. There are parents, and there are kids. The parents are in charge, and are responsible for creating order and raising children that will acclimate easily and readily into society, and contribute in a meaningful way. This can be accomplished in any number of ways, but at the root of any of these methods must be policy.

You'd think by reading this that I don't want to have kids. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I absolutely want them. I plan to enjoy them and the process immensely, but I move toward that end knowing the veracity of the following, seemingly trite, adage: Fences make good neighbors. Every relationship benefits from firm, identified boundaries. We all do better when we know where we stand, what is acceptable, what is not, and what stands to happen if we forgo those boundaries, including the knowledge that theoretical consequences will always be applied in practice.

I will love my kids. I will respect my kids. I will create for them a structure from which they will be able to grow and blossom. No will mean no. Yes will mean yes. (Teach them honor and integrity from the outset, and hope they will mimic your actions.) And maybe will seldom be used. (Why open a bag of worms unnecessarily? Kids are like bad attorneys... they remember the most idle of inconvenient details, and hammer away at them until you can't remember the issue in contention.)

In turn, I hope that they will love and respect me, and maybe one day, look back and thank me for meaning no when I said it.

I'll Admit It, I Love the Hokey Pokey

When I was a kid, we used to have roller skating parties.

I think we also just went skating sometimes, but the point being, we went to the roller rink, put on some skates (or eventually roller blades), and skated around and around in a circle. There were the jerks that went too fast and knocked people over, there were the newbies that clung to the side banisters and walls to just make it around, there were groups of girls strung out in a line, holding hands... Over and over, we would loop around. Sometimes we'd get off for a few minutes to grab a drink or some food, but overall it was just good contained fun.

My favorite part came about 2/3 of the way through a session. They would call everyone onto the rink to form a circle. It was time for the HOKEY POKEY. I can't tell you why I like it so much. Maybe it's the group aspect of it. Or the repetitive nature. We all sing a song, do silly movements, some people fall down... It's completely goofy... and I completely love it. Much like I love karaoke, the Chicken dance, charades, pictionary, and scores of other activities in which I have a gravely difficult time convincing other people to participate. Personally, I think that if clubs offered this activity around midnight, I might be inclined to go more often. Heck, I'd sit through the tired scene if I knew that at midnight, I'd get to Hokey Pokey.  Oh, and cell phones would have to be turned off. I can't imagine anyone trying to put a whole self in, or even an elbow whilst trying to email, text, BBM, or the like. Do I really think this is ever likely to happen, ever? Surely not, but a girl can wish. I can't imagine a bit of group bonding rooted in song and silly movements might not just be what we all need. You just can't ever be too upset when you're shaking it all about, or doing the Hokey Pokey and turning yourself around. You just can't.

My birthday's coming up. I think a night of juvenile fun might be just what I need. An evening where we do the Hokey Pokey, roast marshmallows, play silly board games, laugh, and talk. If you come, please leave your cell phones in the bucket by the door. You won't need them anyway.

Why This Blog, Why Now? It's Really Not That Important.

When I was a kid, Cool Whip was still cool.

People smoked on airplanes... in the smoking section, of course. However, this really just meant the difference between Row 37 and 38. I'm still not sure how the smoke knew that it couldn't travel beyond that firmly etched, ethereal barrier, but we trusted that that was the only possible solution to accommodate all travelers' needs. The non-smokers in Rows 32-37 accommodated by sucking it up, and in exchange, the smokers in Rows 38 til the back kept their cool because they could feed their nicotine habit. But, by the late 80's (and I'm really lumping together a bunch of moves from 1983, the first ban, to 1998 when it applied to all domestic flights), they just banned smoking altogether on planes. I'm not for a moment suggesting this is a bad thing, but it's certainly evidence of change. Now, just last month, they initiated a ban on e-smoking in planes, as they don't know the effects of the pseudo-cigarettes and don't want to make laboratory mice out of all the innocent passengers who merely set out to change their geographic coordinates.

Some people had car phones. Car, not cell. These were devices tethered to the vehicle, most often in the center console. They were for emergencies. I don't actually recall an instance where my mother used hers. I know she did, but I don't remember what the occasion was... and when I do have any memories, we had already moved toward the cell/personal importance justification mode of mobile phone usage. In those times, if you told someone you were meeting them at noon, you had to be there at noon. Or you were late. If you were running late, you were late. If the other party had already left, and you didn't have the foresight to make a call from home, oh well. We didn't text (this word originally meant "words"), or email, or any other form of advanced technological communicative verb you want to insert here. I think we had to be more on time. That, or more of your contacts simply wore the label "late person." They say technology makes us more connected to one another, but really, we've certainly lost connection to ourselves, and managing our time and activities; and we've definitely lost any connection to others, and sensitivity for their time. Of course, you can make the argument that it's happening to everyone, and so in a tit for tat measure, it's all the same. But I'm not. And it's not.

When we wanted to go the movies, we did one of two things: we opened the newspaper (the one that was delivered daily) and turned to the movie section, where we scanned our local theaters, and checked for convenient times. Well actually, first we might flip through the movie adverts to see exactly what we wanted to see, look at the bottom of the ad for available theaters, then flip to the "theaters section" where we could find times. The second option, if we were out and about, was to drive by the movie theater. The driver would slow down, you'd roll down your window and peak at the times listed on the marquis. And if you wanted to go in the evening, but were afraid it would sell out, you'd stop by early in the day to buy tickets. The ideas of calling Moviefone to get movie times, and buying tickets by phone came along later.

When we wanted to go somewhere we hadn't been, or call someone or a business we hadn't yet, we had books to assist us in these tasks. For the former task, we consulted the Thomas Guide; for the latter, the Phone Book. Sometimes when giving direction, a person might add, "Yeah, we're E4 on page 222 of the Thomas Guide." And you'd know. You could look it up and chart your path accordingly, or get someone else to do so. If you goofed up on your way, you would pull over at a gas station or convenience store, and abashedly ask for help. Sometimes you would consult the driver in the next car, or even some hapless chap on the street. Sometimes you'd get good advice, sometimes not. It was a crap shoot. And there was fun in that. No really, I promise. Of course, you have to understand that this was back when every nanosecond wasn't conceived of as the be-all-end-all crux to the rest of your life. It was okay to breathe, and I mean okay to breathe as the only thing you were doing, not breathing as a part of multitasking. But I digress. Back to the books. We also had the phone book, and granted we still do, as evidenced by the behemoth antiquated tome that was left on my doorstep just yesterday. But back in those days, when we wanted to call someone or a business, we consulted the white or yellow pages, respectively (we had books for both). There were also relevant adverts in the phone books, coupons if you will, by businesses listed in there. And it wasn't a coupon that you had to get ten friends to purchase as well in order to make it valid. No, you just had a coupon. And used it.

On my bedroom wall, I had a set of encyclopedias and year books. The former presented alphabetically and offered information on many topics. The latter offered synopses of historical events and junctures by year. I recall using them for research and general interest. When I had to write a paper for school, I would go to the library, and go through the course catalog (a big bureau of tiny drawers that had index cards with each book individually referenced). I would find the books that I thought might help me, then flip to the title page, and collect the information to create an appropriate bibliography. There were only a few variations on the theme of this task, depending upon whether the reference book was an encyclopedia, periodical or magazine, or general book. I might check the books out (which I might add, I was limited to 3 books and could keep them for but a week at a time), lug them home, and make my own index cards that summarized the information I needed to construct my paper. The research paper being a specific occasion, there were other times when I did not know something. If it wasn't in the encyclopedia, or on-hand somewhere nearby, I would have to ask another person, and hope that their knowledge base encompassed my query. If not, the search continued for another, wiser individual. The word "google" was not a verb at this time; merely a numerical representation. Now, of course, I love the ability to have information at my fingertips. I love that I can be independent in my pursuit to the answer of a query. With most of us carrying internet-ready PDA's, we have all become walking encyclopedias. Not surprisingly, this leads to much befuddlement on my part when someone calls to ask me something, the answer to which I don't know, and I have to reply, "I don't know. I can Google it for you?" Which, of course, they simply could have done themselves. Don't get me wrong, I love me the Google, and I love the instant access to information. But that knowledge pool and speed of answer are the very wonderful advances that manage to engender ignorance and sloth. Harsh? Maybe. Founded? Absolutely.

Perhaps this rant is a bit cynical for an inaugural post, and a bit Nelly-Naysayer, but let's just chock it up to nostalgia. Sure the methods by which we accomplished things were a bit more arduous, and took a bit more care and effort, but I figure it was a good weeding-out process. I miss the days when we weren't "on" all the time, when I didn't know where everyone was "checking into," or what they were doing at 3 a.m, when I wasn't missing a marketing opportunity by not tweeting... when it was okay to just breathe. Try it sometime. And after you do, call me to let me know how it felt. Call me. But not from your car because it was the only spare moment you had, and you wanted to maximize the use of your "wasted" time whilst stuck in traffic. No, call me when you aren't doing something else. Call me because you're choosing to use that time to call me.