I made a quick trip to the grocery store Saturday night. Oh my.

Only later did it hit me that that Trader Joe’s was in walking distance of a train station, that riders can transfer to the light rail that goes straight to Levi’s Stadium and that maybe that figured in…

Finger foods, desserts, hors d’ouvres, any kind of party food, things especially that didn’t need to be cooked–whole shelves and freezer spaces were picked utterly clean. It was amazing.

One woman with a very full cart told me she’d had to venture out into the crowds and traffic and she was making sure she wouldn’t have to again for awhile.

The police sent out a message today telling us not to go on the expressway and that it was closed past X for security reasons and really, you might just want to stay as far the heck away as you could, y’know?

Stitches West is at the Santa Clara Convention Center the second weekend from now and having missed it last year for the flu, I cannot WAIT to finally go again.

The Levi’s Stadium was built a few years ago just down the street (over the Convention Center’s objections) and the biggest parking lot serves both.

So, um, they don’t need to use that stadium for awhile now that football’s over, right?

She’s recovering from surgery after breaking a hip but you can’t keep a good woman down–she was going to be ninety and by golly we were going to have a celebration. I think she told the doctor he had to okay it and well, hey, how could he not, then?

So celebrate we did. Ninety and a day. It was quite the party. Old friends came from Oregon for it, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren came in from everywhere all over. The grandkids blew up balloons one by one to create this dragon that stretched far around overhead while the little greats gleefully popped as many as they could get their hands on. Hey, guys! (as one of the young parents told me afterwards.) Not all of them!

Balloons and tape (and a little hanging wire) can become this?! Creativity is a magical thing.

One of the grandchildren told me, I know your daughter! She was in grad school in Ann Arbor when we were!

And in the slide show there was a photo of Jean and her husband with Conway and Elaine that got me right there. It took me by surprise how fiercely I missed those three, mixed with my gratitude that we still have Jean.

I asked one of her sons if he remembered them and he said why yes of course. I told him their granddaughter had grown up and gone off to college and met and married my son and they had three children now.

That just made his day. Small world.

Jean grew up in Hawaii and misses the fresh-picked mangoes of her youth; she’s an avid gardener and has tried several times to grow them here but always lost the trees to the cold. She’s content now to cheer me on and I love that it matters to her how mine does.

I just figure she can’t go anywhere till I’ve finally had a chance to offer her one.

It’s strange walking through a grocery store thinking oh wait no not that no oven, oh wait not that…

I froze a half a pan’s worth of leftover berry crisp before going out of town a few weeks ago and it is silly and funny how important that crisp feels now: we will have it tomorrow morning for a special treat. I make crisp all the time, only, I can’t. So yeah. Treat. It’s like we’re hardwired to want right now what we have to wait for even if we wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise.

I called a number of companies yesterday, trying to find one, anyone, that had a Bosch double oven in stock, preferably an 800 series. The 27″ size I needed would have been nice but I gave up hope of that pretty quickly–30″ is the standard. The woman at a Sears store checked her computer to see if any of the other Sears in the entire San Francisco Bay area might have a floor model in either size, since they sell them. I got nowhere.

But I did get the curious bit of information from her that if I ordered online the company would charge me a hundred dollars less than if I went to the store to do so. And I thought, are they *trying* to kill off their physical stores? Wow. At that I wanted to go in to order from her personally in thanks for her considerable time she spent on the phone with me but I really did want to see what I was buying first.

After all, we went oven shopping a couple of years ago just to see what our options were if we were to get rid of the too-random-temp one with the broken lower oven. (The unit that just blew up.) There was one brand where the back of the handle on the door had sharp exposed upper and lower metal edges the length of it that you could easily cut your fingers on, and I did: the handle looked pretty in front but the manufacturer had skimped so that the metal wrapped around but didn’t actually meet much less get seamed at the back. I cannot begin to imagine how they thought that was okay. Maybe they assumed people would order online and then simply be stuck with it?

Bosch is a good brand. But I still wanted to see one first. Trust but verify.

I finally tried searching for ‘major appliances, (specifically) my town,’ and that brought up Davies Appliances in Redwood City.

I was intrigued. I’d forgotten about them. My contractor took me to their store when we were remodeling over twenty years ago–good to see the little guys still succeeding out there.

The thing you saw first walking in their door was a Bosch 800 series 30″ double oven. And it was beautiful.

They offered us a good price, they offered us a contractor whom they said knew their stuff on the installation–that this was all they did, and they would make it look like it was the oven the kitchen had been remodeled with in terms of fitting into the existing cut-out. Shipping was free. We wanted an extended warranty? Three years or five? Five? Sure.

Sears had offered none. That had been the deal breaker. Our then top-of-the-line Thermador double oven blew through an $800+labor motherboard in three years and the second one a few years after that and you bet I wanted to spend a few hundred not to have that problem again any time soon.

The amazing thing? None of this three-week-wait stuff. It will be picked up from the distributor Monday and they will call before they come. Which might not be Monday–but it might.

Been too long since I’d had the perfect chocolate, so I met up with my daughter today at Timothy Adams for a mug’s worth and a truffle or two and for some catch-up time with her.

We saw Timothy starting to stir a pot of something after we arrived, and turns out it was a dairy-free praline mixture so my allergic kid could eat it. He poured it onto some toasted nuts and put a big piece in front of her as we sat. Just because he could.

The mug felt like enough for me right then but I’d had the kid at the counter put two–eh, make it four truffles–into a take-out bag. You can’t have Richard totally missing out, now, can you?

Michelle had parked right nearby but I’d had to circle around and settle for a spot near the far end of a long narrow alley that stretched to the block the shop is on. There was a tall, blind-looking building right up against the asphalt on one side and a series of smaller buildings on the other, including one that looks like the house straight out of the movie UP; in front of it, the alley opened up a bit as if to try to leave it a tiny paved front yard.

And so. On my way back, there was a large FedEx truck halfway down the alley and five or six men beyond, standing near where my car was just out of sight. The truck started backing up at about that point, so at least I wasn’t going to have to dodge it squeezing by. Not a whole lot of room.

There are times when one can become acutely aware of how it looks to be gray haired and walking with a cane. I fought the sudden feeling of vulnerability with the only thing I had: I offered up a silent prayer for everybody in that alleyway whoever they might be.

There were more of them than I knew: two more men were tucked up against the back of the building next to the UP house–and (take a few more steps) one had a mail cart. Okay.

And near them was a woman. She was standing holding a cart holding, one might easily guess, all her worldly belongings, with them as disheveled as she was. Her face had been exposed to the sun for a very long time and her eyes didn’t see things quite the way I would.

I found myself pulling that bright pink and white striped cheery paper bag out of my purse and asking her, Would you like one? It’s from the Timothy Adams shop around the corner there, as I handed her the dark plain truffle, thinking, Keep it simple. Just chocolate.

She let me give it to her; the men behind her were watching, smiling.

A few more steps, and the FedEx driver was a young man calling out to me. His window was rolled down, his elbow resting on the truck door, and he asked me in delight, Was that chocolate?

Yes it was, I grinned.

Can I have some? he teased, with zero expectation.

Sure! Ginger okay?

His surprised oh wow reaction meant that I’d made the right choice on that one–that he was the kind of person who would turn around and do something for someone else in response and pass it along.

Meanie that I am, I saved the date caramel marzipan for me. It lasted about three hours. I was going to wait till my sweetie got home but, y’know, chocolate-covered date caramel marzipan! Sorry, Richard–I’d have handed the guy the hazelnut praline if that’s the one that had come to hand but it wasn’t.

Not that Richard minded.

I picked Richard up a little early as the traffic time estimate climbed. Somehow, for all the craziness that is rush hour between San Francisco and south of there, we got to Afton and Neil’s hotel within a minute or so of what we’d planned on–how, I don’t know. I’d left home over an hour and a half earlier.

Our friends who scuba dive in Bali love this one Indonesian restaurant in the City and that sounded good to them. (And it was!)

I’ve known Afton via online knitting groups for at least 15 years, probably more like 20, but the only time I’d gotten to see her in person before was when I went to Stitches East ’08. I’d never met her husband nor she mine.

Stories were swapped and good food shared and a great time was had by all–and then Afton swiped the check rather than letting us pay our share. The little stinker. I got back at her, though: I reached into my purse and pulled out the edges of two cowls and of a ball of green yarn that was becoming a third one, without even saying what they are because color is everything: Choose one!

Ohmygoodness I didn’t bring anything for you!

You gave us dinner!

Well, okay, then. She debated, loved the green (and it matched her handknit sweater) but went for the navy Epiphany.

There’s no more of that yarn to be found, I told her–Cascade discontinued it after its second mill run. Royal baby alpaca, cashmere, silk. By way of saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind.

Looking on their website, they do seem to still have some inventory in an earthy–gold? How would you describe that one? (The dress is white and gold! No, blue! Never did get that argument–the dang thing was purple, or at least the cropped version I saw back then.)

Anyway. And then I handed her a skein of undyed light brown cashmere, the first yarn plied on my new electric spinning wheel. Just because I could. So there.

We had only just gotten started when we dropped them back off at their hotel. So glad for the time. So wishing there were more.

Yesterday, Parker wanted to go out to see his apple tree. His daddy explained that we have winter up here and what that meant but he wanted to see, and being ever ready to share the joy of my backyard orchard, especially with a grandchild, I went outside with him to inspect how the Fuji was doing.

It did still have a very few leaves left clinging. The other deciduous trees were bare now but one. So we talked about all the fruits and each in their season and all that was fine with him for it to be that way, he wasn’t disappointed like his father had been a little afraid he would be–he was simply learning new things. Winter bare, not from a book but in person. The leaves fall. Spring will come back when it’s time.

There was actually some fruit and greenery over to the left but he knew what those were and they didn’t interest him.

Today seemed like the right day to ask him: “Would you like to pick a lemon?”

His face lit up. “And make lemonade?!”

Me, grinning back: “And make lemonade.”

The Meyer happily had a few right in his reach. I mentioned it had thorns and to watch out for them and he was fine. He walked around the back of a peach (the Tropic Snow) to get to–oh wait, he liked that one next to it even better. It only just now hits me that I had said a lemon, so a single lemon was all he expected or took. Unlike sharing apple slices around the room, this was just going to be between him and me.

It took some pulling and a bit of branch coming with it because the lemon tree wasn’t entirely ready to let it go yet–but this early, they’re closer to pure lemons and less orangey. He skipped a little happy dance all the way back inside to the kitchen in great anticipation.

I found a cup-size strainer and showed him, bringing it down to his eye level again and again, how it caught the seeds and let the juice run through. See? More seeds on this other half of the fruit, too.

I added some water and sugar. Don’t skimp. He’s only just turned five. I poured half the lemonade into a second cup for me, tasted it, and added more sugar to his cup. Mine was sweet enough and very watered down and his definitely sweet and with great enthusiasm he pronounced it wonderful.

Meantime, Hudson was the ever-cheerful, outgoing little boy he always is even when he’s tired. Always ready to laugh. Always willing to wait his turn when I pay attention to his sister a moment. He’s an amazing little two-year-old.

As I sat on the floor, Maddy crawled up to me, patted me on the leg to get my attention, and held out a hand expectantly in clear expectation that I would blow on it. I did. She grinned. A few minutes later she stood up with her mommy holding onto her hands, let Kim let go, and instead of plopping right back down to safety or the highly tentative shifting of her weight onto the next foot forward she actually took two solid steps on her own coming towards me, falling down finally on the third. So close.

And given the sudden wail of frustration out of her that took us by surprise, I think she suddenly realized that she actually wanted to walk. That this was going to happen even if it meant giving up the comfort and safety and speed of the crawl. She needed this.

Soon, little one, so very soon.

It took picking up my fifth cookie (good thing we rolled them thin, good thing they’re not too big, good thing breakfast was a good excuse) for me to see it. Richard wasn’t raised a musician but I sure was.

Do you see it?

Blink.

I sent a note off to Tatiana, the woman who had made my rolling pin, with no intent but that she should know, and she had the same surprised reaction–and wrote back quickly that she had caught that effect on other designs and had changed them as needed but had somehow missed it on that one. She would be sending me a new pin straightaway.

I wasn’t expecting that at all! But I’m in happy anticipation all over again, made all the sweeter by gratitude, that I’m going to get a new, really cool rolling pin that this time I can say I know we can and will use a lot.

I found myself flashing back to Mr. Kitto’s fifth grade classroom when he stood at the front making arm motions that we were supposed to copy for reasons I have no memory of, just the fact that his right side corresponded visually to my left side and I kept wanting to turn around in my seat to face the same way he was facing so that I could be completely sure I was echoing him correctly. I was in fifth grade, fer cryin’ out loud, I was supposed to get this by now! But looking at each other, we were opposites to each other and part of my brain knew and part of it refused to. So close.

It’s still a really cool cookie. I wonder how many people would notice? Would they guffaw? Would they be afraid they might cause disappointment if they called attention to it? Would I lay such burdens on my friends?

If the cookies tasted good? (If it’s for Jim and his family? Don’t miss that story if you haven’t seen it yet. Can you believe that kid is a senior now?!) Heck yeah! (Gleefully conspiring.) We could have fun with this before we retire the oops version.

What I really wanted was beautiful musical cookies to offer the piano tuner, who came today, but the whole thing was just too new and uncertain. I needed a little more proof of concept first.

But I did show off the rolling pin itself and he thought it was as cool as I did.

So after that bit of procrastination, here’s how it went this evening.

The cold dough was very hard, so Richard rolled it out for me between two sheets of parchment paper. A shout-out here to Joanne, whose wax-paper-layers tip was exactly the memory of my mother’s pie baking I’d been trying to think of. Parchment works even better.

We quickly found we needed just the slightest sifting of flour onto the pin, not any more than that, and so I got out the small citrus-seed strainer (or at least that’s what that thing has always been to me.) Shake a little on, shake the excess off, roll the flattened dough with the embossed pin. Lift the cut cookies out with a very flat spatula, re-roll out the rest while those are baking, repeat. And here you have your before baking and after.

I had a toothbrush still new in the package and it was perfect for getting any small bits out afterwards. There were surprisingly few to have to worry about, but still, it was a highly useful tool. Richard’s first try was a flat-edged toothpick and it was too bulky in the tight spots.

The star cookie cutter cut off too much of the musical patterns. You know what this means. I ended up searching Williams-Sonoma, Amazon, Wilton, Ateco (new to me) and Sur La Table looking for cookie cutters in the shapes of the ones the rolling pin vendor used, hoping I can find who makes some and who sells them in easy driving distance.

What, order? And have to wait to make more?

So in between wrestling the ladder inside, setting up the overhead greenery-with-bells, cleaning the rug, wrestling the tree and ornament boxes back into the garage, getting the guest bathroom toilet to work that we’d simply turned the water off to to stop its leaking (yeah we paid that plumber $150. It lasted two days) and various laundry and cleaning, finally, this got done, too. I used the Russian rolling pin vendor’s second of two recipes (because there’s still no cream cheese here), weighing my sugar, flour and butter on what I think of as my yarn scale to get the right amounts.

Into the fridge. Tomorrow we roll with it.

(Really? You wired that to turn off in the garage? Why? Yes he did, and now a remote is on order to turn it off via his cellphone. It’s all geeks to me. But that does keep the control and plug for the bells out of baby reach.)

I don’t need to eat any cookies. I do need to bake cookies, though, clearly.

I’ve never signed for a package from St. Petersburg, Russia before–there’s some novelty right there. Then it made sense that if we’re going to bake with it, pre-Christmas would be the most likely time so we decided to open the box. (Ed. to add Tuesday, in retrospect it may have been the package for Richard that was the one needing the signing.)

The rolling middle part is 8″ long–it’s not huge, but then, I have one that is nothing but huge and weighs a ton and this is a nice change.

I’m suddenly wondering: some of the vendors offer custom designs of your choice. I’m picturing that moment when you first pick up a lace shawl when it’s done blocking, swing it around your shoulders and feel like it’s the prettiest thing you ever made–could you make cookies embossed to match that lace?

Okay, though, wait, one step at a time here.

I know you have to refrigerate the dough and I know you have to flour the pin and I know you have to try to keep the cookies from being drowned in that flour; I’ve never even seen much less used a laser-engraved rolling pin before so the rest is all a great big unknown. Hopefully not for long and hopefully not with a steep learning curve, and all helpful hints are welcome (please!) Would powdered sugar instead of flour work to keep the dough from sticking to the pin? Cocoa?

It came with its creator’s favorite recipe. They have cream cheese in Russia? Is it anything like ours? If you’ve ever had fresh cream cheese it’s a bit different from our standard Philadelphia-type. (And I don’t have any of either at hand–yet.)

I think we’re going to have fun with this.

It was a very good day filled with friends and family and food and love (thank you for that dinner, Michelle!) and I suddenly realized with a start that it’s nearly 11:00 and we’re done here.

Leftover creme brûlée, macaroons, and homemade cranberry coffee cake brought to the door still warm from the oven (thank you, Phyllis!) for breakfasts to come.

So what do you want for your birthday dinner? they asked me, trying to plan Saturday’s grocery trip(s).

You know, I could muse on that all day. What would make the most perfect grouping of foods you could hope for? Within reasonable preparation? (I think turducken is right out, as is anything alcohol for us.)

Anybody got any favorite dish ideas to share or point to? An unadorned, perfect Comice pear: that would be a great start.

I had never had a fresh persimmon in my life before I moved here, much less known that there are two types and that if you want the Hachiya kind, you pretty much have to live near a tree. Shipping is not the strong point of a fruit that is ripe when the texture becomes a soft jelly inside.

Last year my neighbor with the persimmon tree let me help her pick and give away several hundred pounds’ worth this time of year and even so I only got to about half; the rest were too high for my telescoping fruit picker.

She sent me a note looking forward to my coming again this year and I considered for about a nanosecond, picturing that quite heavy, awkward pole and prongs swinging well above my head and the way I occasionally managed to crash it down last time, hopefully but not always entirely controlled… No, I argued with myself, just no way, this is not my year for it, concussion-wise, I couldn’t dare. Too much risk.

I offered to find replacement pickers if she needed the help and she had someone else who wanted to, no problem, thanks. And that was that.

I thought. Wistfully.

There was a bag at our door. She wanted to wish me good health and she hadn’t wanted me to miss out–she knew how much I liked them.

Suddenly it’s a harvest year to remember in a good way. I was not expecting that. Verklempt.

Aunt Mary Lynn is thankful for the leftover spiced pecans that Richard made.

Her daughter-in-law is thankful for the leftover spiced pecans that I made. (I’m not the only one who likes them that way.)

We’re thankful that everybody had such a great time at our tables of sixteen.

And… having forgotten to set a tap dripping last night, I’m thankful we didn’t have to call a plumber away from his family on Thanksgiving and that we only had to wait an hour to have the pipes thaw so that we could take showers before going to said celebration.

It was already 32F again when we got home. The mango (which we left covered) is at a happy 51F and the kitchen tap got set to dripping in time.

Me, I’m crossing my fingers: I was getting the first of the leftovers that were sent home with us out of the back of the car and didn’t see in the dark that the lift gate hadn’t lifted all the way and hit my head hard. Someone in my inbox wanted me to decipher an easy knitting pattern for them and I told her I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait till morning. I wasn’t knocked out–I have been four other times in my life that I can think of right now–but I instantly just wanted to go to bed.

Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. My brain can still write. It just hits my worry spot is all.

Last night I made the spiced pecans and baked the chocolate tortes and bought the apple cider and was glad my part in Thanksgiving dinner was done.  All but the glaze on the tortes, no biggy.

Only, I hard-crack-staged the sugar syrup and those pecans were right at the edge of too caramelized. Crunchy, though, and I really liked them, but there was a bit of fussing while someone here was trying not to be unhappy but they just weren’t quite…

No problem, I can make more.

No I couldn’t. We didn’t have enough sugar. We always have sugar. (Can you make this with that grainy organic Trader Joe’s stuff? Better not experiment and mess any more with his family’s tradition.) You know what this means, don’t you? We had to go to the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving.

I toasted more pecans, but that was the easy part. We put it off and put it off and finally headed to Costco about an hour before they closed.

It was actually less crowded than a typical Saturday, to my great surprise–but even better, people were being mellow. Clearly anticipating the next day’s meal and company, and people seemed to be picking up that one last thing they’d forgotten.

There was one mom with a crying one year old and a toddler and she–the mom–absolutely melted when I pulled out a Peruvian finger puppet for each of her little ones, an orange lion with a furry mane and a vivid green octopus with a hat. Handknit as always.

So. The tortes got glazed. The pecan coating got done to the soft ball stage only, the way Richard likes it: because after I got the 1/2 c water/1 c sugar/1 tsp cinnamon boiling, there could be gadgetry involved and there is no better way to get a geek to take over than putting electronics into the process. He put a glass thermometer on the side and with the laser thermometer in his hand pointing constantly at the center of the pot he compared temps and kept up a happy running chatter and soon announced, There! It’s 238!

Already?

Okay, so I put in the vanilla (one teaspoon) and stood back as hot steam burst forth, and then–hey, you have to put in the *pecans immediately now, honey, not just admire them.

Right, right, and he dumped them in and stirred hard and it takes some doing at that point. Finally, he poured them onto the cookie sheet the pecans had been toasted on.

See? To softball stage and it comes out like this!

I grinned. He preferred his and I liked mine and Aunt Mary Lynn will be quite happy to have both. Trust me.

(Meantime, it’s 9:50 pm and 33F already and the mandarins are covered, too, tonight. It is COLD out there.)

*Fanny Farmer says two cups. I put in closer to four. Stretch that sweetness across as many nuts as possible as far as I’m concerned.