We have a problem with horizontality around here and have for some time. To wit:

and



The primary symptom is that any given horizontal surface is almost continually covered in an intractable coating of junk consisting of paper, small toys, errant earrings, nuts, bolts, grass seeds (true!), and goodness knows what else. We have it bad in our house and as much as I'd like to blame the 200+ year old domicile's lack of storage I know that the truth lies elsewhere. Namely, with me.

I feel kind of out of my league in this online spring cleaning program I'm following - some of these women really rock the housekeeping thing, whereas I'm kind of the kid in the basement with a dime store guitar singing Jukebox Hero into a floor lamp "microphone" while they're selling out Madison Square Garden (precisely what the song is about, diluting my point somewhat). I am the Cherry Cherry to their Neil Diamond. In keeping with my lack of skill I'm not spring cleaning rooms, turning my attention instead to neglected bits of square footage. Mine are small accomplishments, but they're come upon honestly.

Last night I completely denuded the living room tables, dusted and oiled them. Yes I did! I know homekeeping experts are mixed in their opinions of oiling wood furniture and I (not an expert) come down on the side of pro. The oil smells nice and some of my tables are older than I (remnants from a time when furniture was still make by hands rather than machines and wasn't intended for replacement every 10 years) and have survived oiling all this time so I have no hesitation. A bit of lemon oil and an old cloth diaper go a long way to putting things right.





The oil was just the beginning. All that stuff on the tables? Put away.. Well, mostly. Some of the papers ended up on my desk, which requires a horizontality treatment of its own which is unlikely to happen today. The broken play necklace has been glued, the wallet-size photos put into my new wallet, the flyers about the pre-school rummage sale put into my purse for when we venture out, the library books gathered and placed into two of the coffee table cubbies, etc., etc., etc.. Away.

I will sum up my quietude of late with seven words: Brainiac's doctor has ordered a chest x-ray.

She is merely being cautious in light of his history and none of us is particularly worried but the directive is indicative of the general state of affairs around here. Between what looks like a mild (but still) secondary infection for him, an on-pins-and-needles situation for me and the general schedule-busting mayhem that comes with spring break we're all a bit spent. As I type this it's nearly a quarter to nine at night - the first night in three that I've been awake to see this time tick-tock past. That I'm still up and energetic enough to start a load of laundry and cruise the blogs a bit, I'd say that things are looking up.

None of this is to say that I haven't managed the odd burst of household productivity. The children's au pair turned 25 years old on Monday night and we celebrated with this:

O.K., you know, that doesn't look so hot all big and blown up on my screen like that. Trust me when I tell you that it was really quite yummy. Yummy makes up for a number of aesthetic issues, yes?



The essential idea came from Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini cookbook, after the blog of the same name. Because I can never leave anything alone I made some changes to the core recipe, gilded the lily a bit and ended up with what seemed like the very essence of indulgence.

Instead of Clotilde's pate sable I used a regular old American-style pie crust - I had no time for a learning curve and knew my recipe to be perfectly acceptable. Over the crust which had been baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, I poured a caramel of dark brown sugar (the original recipe called for light brown sugar). This was allowed to set for several hours.

Over top the caramel is a bittersweet ganache made with heavy cream and nine ounces of dar-ar-ar-ar-ark chocolate. After that set I topped the whole thing with sweetened whipped cream. The original recipe doesn't call for such tarting (ha!) up, but I don't need heavy cream just sitting about the house begging to take a swim in my coffee.

You can see from the pictures that this tart/pie was strictly amateur hour. Unlike the wildly talented Clotilde I will not be offered a book deal on the basis of my capacity for turning out delicious and beautiful confections. It was wonderful to eat, though, smooth and creamy and just sweet enough between the caramel and whipped cream. The very dark chocolate added a deep note that kept the whole thing from being too cloying. Best of all, the celebrating recipient loved it as I hoped that she would.

(Note: The date on this post isn't right. It's March 6, not February 29. I'm curious as to how this happened, but not nearly enough to actually figure it out. It is what it is.)

I wish I was making it up when I tell you that Brainiac has me watching, as I type, a television show about runways. Runways! I am so going to retaliate with a show about, I don't know, sewing for dollhouses or balloon sculptures or something. Runways! Honestly.

We've had a little bit of spring feeling in the past few days - a most welcome development. I know it can't last, of course. Our date of last frost is still some weeks away and anything can happen. Even so I'm definitely feeling springy, with all that such a feeling brings with it. I'm sketching (and re-sketching and) the garden plan, double-checking the supply of canning jars and lids and, most unbelievably to just about everyone who lives with me, doing all these nesty spring cleaning type jobs.

Starting small, of course. I don't want to hurt myself with sudden cleaning moves to which my body is most unaccustomed. I'm gearing up for a major meme-type collaborative effort but, again, have no wish to rush into anything. I'm all about the ramp-up here at Hot Water Bath and the little cleaning-like project that's given me the most satisfaction so far is organizing the living room bookshelf.

I don't actually have a before pic of the bookshelf but trust me when I say that its condition didn't exactly illustrate the message I deep-down wanted to send: that two grown-up people with a teensy amount of au courant taste if not quite a matching budget (hence the prefab faux cherry model bought at a discount from a big box store because the packaging was damaged). We've gone from three shelves crammed with workbooks, scraps of paper festooned with the phone number of long-forgotten need and goodness knows what keeping the bottom doors from closing (possibilities: a large bag with a number of plastic coins mimicking various denominations of U.S. currency, a tin of long since dried markers, a white board with a faded clock face).

But now! Now we have this:



O.K. I can see in this shot that the Girl's little pink bible has fallen in back of the Uncle Sam bank. Whatever. It's so much better than it was and I'm not going to fret about a little imperfection. The important thing is that without all the junk and not-often-used miscellanea we can see that which we truly value - pictures of people important to us, heirlooms and books that see frequent reference (I'm amused to note that The Book of Common Prayer ended up on top of one of Brainiac's books about Scotch).

Like I said, I'm starting small. In this case, though, small seems quite large, indeed.

Did you ever read these weekly Works for Me Wednesday (WFMW) lists? There's nothing I love better than a tip (or two or three) to make my life easier so I've been really attracted to them lately. It's like reading Heloise on steroids and I've learned everything from how to hand sew button holes (good for the button hole challenged me) to ideas for new songs to sing to the kids on long car trips to how to buy a properly fitting bra. Really, it's like having a couple hundred BFFs who can't wait to e-mail or call with their latest great ideas.

I've actually been tossing around a few canning-related WMFW tips but figured I could wait until gardening and canning season are at hand, to keep things topical and all. Then I had an experience driving home from my parents' last week that I've been talking about since then with all the moms I know and it seemed like a pretty good topic. So here goes, my first Works for Me Wednesday tip, from my house to yours.

The kids and I take a few car trips a year without Brainiac. For this reason (and because our cars are always wretchedly old specimens - no in-car movies here!) we've always carried AAA. The expense has proven useful over the years and, whenever I'm tempted to drop the coverage, I'm reminded of being on the Beltway pulled over, pregnant and in the rain, with a flat. Or the time that I drove over some big old construction bolt and lost a tire. And just last week I had my front driver's side tire changed just a couple miles from the Lehigh Tunnel - there was a two-inch bulge in the sidewall that developed after I hit the Mother of All Potholes and immediately knew that I could not drive my babies another mile with that tire. (At this point I'd love to say that my tip is that I learned to change my own tires, but no.)

It's with this backdrop that I make my little WFMW offering to the world: Make sure you have an operational spare tire, and if at all possible keep a full-size spare. If you don't have a working spare, AAA can't help you. So even a "donut" spare is a good idea and I'm a little surprised at how many people I found in a short, totally unscientific survey that don't keep even this minimal solution around.

A full-size spare is helpful because not only can you resume your driving at a normal speed and with normal conditions, but because it buys you some time in having to get a new tire. Since I resent automotive-related expenditures of just about any kind and the need to purchase new tires always seems to come just when I have something more fun I'd like to do, having the full-size tire as a back-up can give us some breathing room to complete the trip without seeing the inside of an tire dealership, shop for price or gather the money from the budget without worry.

In a WFMW nutshell: Keep a full-size spare if you can (or make sure your donut is workable if you can't).

A week of escapist reading has informed me that I am not alone in my rather low level of enthusiasm for February. To wit:

“February, and all I have ever known it to mean, brings with it a touch of dread to the mornings.”

Sylvia Jorrin. Sylvia's Farm. Bloomsbury, 2004

And then there's this:

"“After a stressful deadline in February – that bleak month when Ann Arbor hibernates and people hurry, hunched over in sky jackets through the dark – I decided to reward myself with a good meal.”

Jenni Ferrari-Adler. Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant Riverhead Books, 2007.

This, not from a published work, touched me the most deeply:

“I hate February.”

The pre-school director, a friend and fellow sufferer.

But that, as they say, is enough of that. With the last of this wretched month within grasp and March preparing its entrance, I am ready to pack up the entire experience of these last three or so weeks into my Big Box of Denial to be shoved into the top shelf of the closet on the third floor in that room that really creeps me out. In other words, I am done.

I have to confess, things are looking up. I was away with the kids for a few days and arrived home to a package that had come all the way from England. I'd no idea what it could have been and was delighted with a surprise from French Knots.




Isn't that just the most darling thing? I've been all organizey about my laundry lately, so this is right up my alley and just so sweet. Plus, she enclosed a chocolate bar - a chocolate bar which I did not share with anyone. Yippee!

As if that weren't enough cheering, the good folks at Fresh Preserving (the home of Ball canning) read my sad little confession that I don't own a copy of of classic Ball Blue Book and graciously sent me one, accompanied by some freezer jam containers and pectin. Now, I can't say what thrills me more - that these nice folks really are nice or that I can now say I've had my very own bloggy moment of having been noticed. Perhaps it's a little of both. Because I'm never satisfied, I asked if I could maybe interview one of the Fresh Preserving canning experts. With some luck and planning, that'll come in late March or April just as garden planting starts.

With these not-so-little sparks of happiness I'm definitely ready to stow that Big Box of Denial. March may come in like a lion, but you won't hear me complaining.