Use every part of the buffalo and the reading chair that backfired

One of my firmly half gen-x/half millennial hobbies is to peruse Google Books for old, completely intact books. Since I don’t have time to go find actual physical old books in thrift stores and library sales, and since I have physical touch dyslexia when it comes to enjoying the smell and feel and whatever else book lovers gush about, google books is my poison of choice. Gutenberg and other open source platforms are too easy and don’t have helpful answers to inquiries like “books on prostitutes during the Middle Ages” and other pertinent information I need to know. Part of the problem (and brilliance) of old books is you get the original source. I don’t want some college professor’s take on housekeeping in the 1700’s I want to read the actual book on house keeping in the 1700’s, which is how I found Mrs. Beeton’s Book Of Household Management. I couldn’t put it down. This lady was the centuries bygone version of Martha Stewart and the Pioneer Woman rolled into one beautiful book on how to fix your life, make friends, take care of your house and throw parties all with a sick toddler on a hip.

Someday I will throw a dinner party using the exact menu/recipes and decor laid out in one of the chapters (and anyone is invited who is willing to eat such things as “Haunch of mutton, boiled turkey and celery sauce, boiled tongue garnished with brussel sprouts, blancmange and cabinet pudding.” . I have no idea what “blancmange” is and I hope that “cabinet pudding” is not a descriptor of where it sits for any length of time.

I hadn’t had a chance to put the book to practice until a friend gave me some Montana, happy, cow-in-a-field knuckle bones. Jamie has been down with the flu for the last five days, and I decided it was time to pull out the bone broth with the help of Mrs. Beeton. Since we’re the type of family to save things forever, it was hard to actually use the bones since we usually can only afford meat from mass produced sources. To assuage my guilt, I p̶u̶l̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶s̶t̶y̶ ̶M̶r̶s̶.̶ ̶B̶e̶e̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ er… fired up the computer and google searched a recipe in the book for “Marrow dumplings”. So after turning the bones to almost mush in the crockpot for 30 hrs, I then tossed all of the marrow, fat and cartilage into my vitamix (which I’m sure Mrs. Beeton totally had) with the rest of the ingredients.

The results were…interesting. Not wanting to traumatize my children, I fished them out of the soup after steaming them and put them on a separate platter on the dinner table. When the pile of brown, squishy… (never mind, I won’t describe what they looked like) got some interesting comments from my offspring, I promptly set out a gummy bear reward to anyone willing to try them. I had a 75% success rate with this strategy, although the gummy bears may have negated any health benefits from the marrow balls, but whatever, I’m still counting it as a win. I ate several myself and kinda sorta liked them, I enjoyed them more when I pretended I was in a castle in a German forest.

My children do not entirely approve of my love for Mrs. Beeton, and they would approve even less if they knew that I have plans to make elderberry barley water if Jamie doesn’t improve soon. In a renewed effort to inspire and encourage more reading in the household, I bought this reading chair. The proprioceptive input you get from gently swinging is great from the brain and for sensory seeking kids who have a hard time sitting still long enough to read.

The chair as a gentle haven of learning backfired though, because a design flaw ensures that one side will slide to the other side when you least suspect it. It’s like a Venus fly trap that snaps shut and drops you on the ground just when you get to the good part in a book. It’s not inspiring anyone in the family to adopt my hobby of reading strange books.

It’s ok though, Jim says he can fix it and meanwhile I have bone broth and marrow dumplings for any injuries incurred.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

We go through a gallon of yogurt a week.  Those cute little individual yogurts became a joke a long time ago and we switched to the grimmer “family size” pints that come in two awe inspiring flavors.  Strawberry and Vanilla.  My kids felt like this was the yogurt boneyard as there were no bouncing rabbits or superheros promising half sugar and healthy bones...but alas, my offspring punished me by consuming more yogurt, not less.  Our yogurt consumption got so out of hand I had a yogurt maker in my Amazon cart and was researching urban cows, when the ever classy Walmart answered all my yogurt dreams and started selling massive containers of the healthiest, plainest, fattiest, thickest yogurt I’d ever laid eyes on. I thought maybe my kids would turn up their delicate noses at it and I wouldn’t have to consider getting stock options in the dairy market, but instead they like it MORE.  (take that Mr. Rabbit)  

And this is what my gourmet cooking hobby has devolved into… freezer, crockpot, costco and hurling massive globs of soured milk at my children while I rotate long division, phonegrams and the principal parts of verbs (and that’s on a good day).

I lost the baby tonight. I was making dinner and thinking wispy nonsensical thoughts when it occurred to me I’m not usually allowed such luxury.  I was missing my stalwart sidekick. The (normally) naked one who dismantles the Tupperware cupboard and starts a rock band in the pots and pans… he wasn’t with any of his brothers and I checked the house twice before moving on to the backyard and garage.  I was telling myself not to panic and that he had to be around here somewhere when I was casually informed he’d gone out the front door “to look for dad”, which was a big problem considering dad wasn’t home.  After running up and down the street debating whether I should start hollering like a madwoman in hopes I could enlist some neighbors, I decided to check the house one more time.  Of course I found him… happily behind my bathroom door with a palette of last year's Halloween makeup which he was dutifully painting all over himself and everything else .  He jumped up and down with excitement flapping his arms and jabbering in what I could only translate as “Look Ma! I’m going to be the next Rembrandt!”.  

We’re reading “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll for book club, and I’m having a strong case of nostalgia.  That same feeling you get when you hear an old song, or smell something that reminds you of your great grandmother’s pot roast.  Unfortunately, my 2016 middle aged brain is a little horrified my seven year old self was in love with a book written by a creepy mathematician who was so obsessed with three little girls he wrote out the story he’d been telling them.  One of the questions for our book club is “ Do you consider this book to be an adult’s view of childhood, or a child’s view of adulthood?”  and the question contributed not a little to the aforementioned lost baby episode.

As an adult it seems surely the book had its origins at Burning Man or something, but I also distinctly remember consuming the book as a child and thinking it made perfect sense…. Which makes Mr. Author Man a bit more creepy, not less...hmm.   It has very little in the way of plot (like most Romantic Era books. cough cough), but lots of pretty words.   I still have the same, beautifully bound hardcover that captured my attention as a child, so I strategically left it out today for my own children (to see if it would capture their attention), but the only comment I got was, “Oooh, we can use that book to hold down the corner of our fort!”. And thus it went back on the shelf to continue its Velveteen Rabbit existence.  
 

...maybe in a few years I’ll give it and my cookbooks another shot?