Tomb Sweeping Day

There is a lovely little national holiday coming up known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. We all get the day off, but someone has decided that we should work Saturday and thus have off three days--Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I don't know about you, but working six days straight in order to have a three-day weekend is not my idea of a Good Time. For one thing Ayi doesn't work on Saturdays, so I have to take care of the damn dogs AND put in a full day teaching, which means running home at noon in heels to walk Duchess and The Little Emperor. My disdain at walking the dogs has nothing to do with the fact that The Little Emperor is now so enthralled at Duchess that he laps up her pee--ugh--it's just that I hate having to run home, walk the dogs, and run back to school in a little under an hour. The only three-wheeled motorcycle pedicab available at that time is the one-eyed hunchback midget, and even though he's pimped his ride (it's now a very classy pedicab with Hello Kitty floor mats) it's still a wild ride with Mr. Toad, sans Disney sound track.

As for Tomb Sweeping Day: well, I'd happily dust off my ex's tomb, although he's not dead yet. I'm crazy about my mother-in-law and would, as the last member of the family still in China (no matter how ex-member my status is)  indeed go sweep the tombs if I knew where they were. Mother-in-law's parents were killed by the Japanese during the occupation, so I doubt if even she knows where those bodies are. As for snobby aristocratic ex-father-in-law, his parents' tomb are a fucking shrine--I'm not kidding, they are a national shrine--so there's no need for me to Go South and pay homage. About the ex: once after he pulled a particularly shitty deal on my kid, namely calling her up, telling her he was in Beijing and asking her to wait on a street corner for him so he'd take her to lunch--then letting her wait an hour and a half in the 108 degree summer heat before telling her he'd changed his mind--- I told her once he was dead we'd drink a bottle of champagne, dance on his grave wearing pretty red dresses, and quote poet Diane Wakowski the whole time ("I'll dance on the grave of a son-of-a-bitch.") It cheered her up a bit, but cheered me immensely, as I finally put my Fine Arts degree to good use, quoting poetry and lifting my own spirits in the process.

When my daughter was here and in a particularly shitty mood, she once screamed at me, "We never have fun on Chinese holidays! We don't go anywhere, we don't do anything! We're not even having a picnic because we don't even know any dead people!" (She doesn't know how close she came to being one for that little comment.) I can't say Tomb Sweeping Day is a favorite holiday, but you know what? If I don't have to speak slowly and say, "No, honey, how ARE you, not WHO are you?" for the thousandth time this week, having a holiday is fine by me, even if I can't wear a red dress and dance the tarantella on the old bastard's grave. A girl's gotta have something to look forward to, after all.

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's...

So, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and as you are all aware, I do not have a boyfriend. This being the case, a co-worker at Mysterious Job Number Two questioned why I was happy about it being St. V's day, and why this would prompt me to bake peppermint brownies. (Recipe to follow.)

First of all, he's not getting any (brownies, that is.) Don't question my traditions. I like to bake, I have to work, it's a holiday, and I have to use up the Hershey Candy Cane Christmas Kisses  soon, before I remember they're in the house and start devouring them. Second of all, what is more soothing to the soul than the smell of baking chocolate? I don't actually enjoy eating brownies as much as I enjoy smelling and making them. Right now my neighbors are pea-green with envy from the delectable smells arising from my microwave. They've been poos, and I won't give them any, either. One I will cut and wrap up for my pregnant friend Coco (it's for her little Cocoa Bean, as I have dubbed the unborn one) and the rest go to work, where I will fling them on a table prior to sitting down to my Mysterious Job Number Two. With luck, they will be eaten quickly without any asshole comments (such as, "I didn't know they'd be sweet" or "What mix is this?" or "Do these have, like, chocolate in them? Because I'm like totally allergic.") but I'm not holding my breath.

I dined on deep-fried bits of meat done by Ayi, left thoughtfully on  plate covered by a bowl in the kitchen, just for me. I wasn't really hungry, but if I don't eat up what Ayi leaves for me the day she leaves it, she will feed it to the dogs for breakfast. (Revenge, thy name is  Passive Agressive Women .) BTW, if you make breaded pork cutlets, you completely change the experince by throwing in some toasted cumin seed into the breading. Really changes things up. I like nice plain food on occasion---potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce, for example, and lately I've been craving Ranch Dressing. The pork cutlets with cumin, however, sort of jolted me out of this and into a different palate of taste.

Brownies: These microwave BEAUTIFULLY. Melt 9 tablespoons of butter (half-cup plus one tablespoon). You can nuke it or do in on the stove top, but whatever you do, you must let it get back to room temperature before you mix in other ingredients. Otherwise, as wiser women than I have noted, your brownies will be very heavy and kind of dry. Since you're nuking these, and it's awfully easy to dry out anything being nuked, err on the side of caution and leave the stuff strictly alone for at least ten minutes. Go do your nails or something while it's cooling off. (This also gives any toast crumbs that may have accidentally been scooped into the pan a chance to settle, so you can fish them out.) Don't use bacon grease or olive oil. Bacon, which is actually delightful with chocolate, does not enliven baked goods (although it's a marvel on a Maple Bar.) Olive oil and chocolate--not a good combo either. If you have to go cholesterol-free, just don't bother with this recipe and make yourself some hot fudge (zero fat, if you use skim milk) and pour it on some fat-free ice milk and be happy.

When you return, stir in a cup and a half of white sugar, three eggs, a generous dollop of vanilla (at least a teaspoon, but not a tablespoon) and a pinch of salt. If you have the time and patience, you can then beat the shit out of this until it's light and fluffy and glossy and pours like a ribbon, which will ensure brownies with a lovely  meringue-like top. If you're me, you say the hell with it as you don't even have a proper wooden spoon anymore (thank you, Blessed Herbs Colon Cleanse) or some big-ass fancy mixer and so you just mix it up until it's fairly smooth and no yucky yellow lumps are showing. Now add 9 tablespoons of cocoa (that's a half-cup plus one tablespoon)   and stir in 12 tablespoons of flour, which is 3/4 of a cup or a half-cup plus a quarter cup or a half-cup plus four tablespoons (I spell this out as some of the women in my family are not really good at maths.) Gentle fold this in--do not beat--and as soon as it's more-or-less incorporated, pour it into a greased  and floured ( or cocoa'd) microwaveable pan--8 by 8 inches is good, but a round pie pan made of Pyrex is even better, as you can slice it into pie wedges when finished. Regardless, spread it in the pan, then sprinkle a bunch of cut-up Hershey Candy Cane Christmas Kisses  on top: sort of squish them in a bit so they're not all at the very top. Nuke on high power for six minutes, then check: done? Still squishy? Try another minute. Then another. Keep going until it's more or less set in the middle. There will indeed be some slightly wet places when you pull it out but these will dry up a few minutes out of the oven, because it's still cooking a bit. If you have used Pyrex (and I HEART THE STUFF!) the glass will retain quite a bit of heat and give your brownies a more finished appearance. Truthfully, you should let the stuff cool before attacking it. I mentioned earlier that I don't really like to eat brownies--I get a sugar rush, then I get cranky, and then I need a nap which is filled with my recurring dream of speeding along back country roads in search of a house I can call my own...I've had this dream so often that I know which road to take to go to which house and yet I somehow never get inside any of the houses...

These brownies are plain, simple, good, and can be dolled up a number of ways, such as using brown sugar and rum (instead of the vanilla), adding nuts, adding dollops of peanut butter, using a different liquor in place of the vanilla, using crushed-up peppermint sticks, adding a tablespoon of espresso powder, mint chocolate chips, plain semi-sweet chips, peanut butter chips, ad nauseum. They're the sub to a dominatrix dessert menu: they seem sweet and submissive but when all is said and done, they're really just there to make you their bitch. (That's probably why I don't eat them: I may empower someone, but I don't like to relinquish it.) (And that probably explains why I don't have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day.)

Happy Saint Valentine's Day to all of you: may you remember with gratitude and not a small amount of surprise how many people truly love you, warts and all.

Christmas Carols

I do love Christmas carols: I love to listen to them and I particularly love to sing them. I have a deep fondness for "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" as it is the first song I became cognizant of knowing all the words to...I was five, it was California, and I was standing on a pipe in front yard, twisting around by pushing my foot against the pipe, singing the song softly, when I realized that I had sung the entire song straight through: the knowledge that I had sung an entire song was electrifying: I have seldom felt such a sense of accomplishment and pride in myself since then. I also love "On the First Noel" but for different reasons: I just like the tune.

These two songs are on the list of songs that can be sung at my mother's house, but God forbid anyone sing from the List of Forbidden Songs. It's not that they're forbidden, it's just that daring to hum as much as a single bar will bring a load of shit down upon your head that you will never dare to even think of the melody again. Oddly enough, both are innocent, popular songs: the wildly inoffensive Silent Night, and O Holy Night.

 I have loved Silent Night since I was a small child singing "Round John Virgin." My older sister Sissy gave me a lot of crap about getting the words wrong, but it's my mother who still goes ape shit when she hears this song. Normally the nicest woman on the planet, something about this song forces her eyes into tiny slits contorted with rage while she hisses, "Silent? SILENT? What the HELL is so SILENT about it when all those damn people are SINGING!" Despite the propaganda TV mustered on the origins of the song--come on, we've all seen the creepy black-and-white Story of Silent Night either at school or late-night TV--the beauty of its inception eludes Mom. I have tried to explain: snowy Christmas Eve, a little candle-lit church, a  choir of small boys singing to a single guitar, the hush and stillness...however, the point escapes her and I dread being in public when the ubiquitous tune begins to play. Mom will be doing something charitable and kind--say, writing Salvation Army a big ol' check to drop in the bucket--and suddenly she'll hear it--the song, her nemesis, her Kindness Kryptonite--and her eyes will narrow into tiny slits while her face contorts with rage and she begins the tirade, "Silent? SILENT? What the HELL is so SILENT about it when all those damn people are SINGING!"

The other song I love but don't dare sing aloud is O Holy Night. There's a background story: to cut it short, suffice to say at a holiday gathering, when one of our talented lot was singing O Holy Night to her own accompaniment on a grand piano, Sissy began to feel ill: she dashed to the bathroom and in her panic neglected to shut the door, and the family was treated to the simulcast spectacle of her falling violently to her knees in front of the porcelain throne and vomiting noisily and copiously just as the lines, "Fall on your knees/O Hear the angel voices!" were being warbled by a trained soprano...Naturally we fell into hysterics at the sight. (We're kind of mean that way.) Sissy has loathed that song ever since, and as a sort of cosmic revenge, the singer (deeply offended) went on to fame and fortune and Grammy nominations while Sissy married someone who, when he vomits, sounds as if he's channeling  Satan. I still love the song, though.

I've loaded up the Ipod with lots of Christmas tunes and I keep the ear buds in around the clock. I learned the necessity of having holiday tunes around the Christmas I had no music except for an Amy Grant tape which was on loan to me for a few hours. (The horror! The horror!)  I have Karaoke versions too, so I can warble at will. I don't have my favorite carol, the Shepard's Farewell, or other old favorites, such as Hark Silver Bells, but I do have Santa Baby and I'm cooking up a version of it for a staff Christmas potluck which, if successful, will ensure I never have to coach the school drama club or choir again. Wish me luck.