A moveable feast

I finally did it. I got tired of paying for that TypePad account and not using it.

As of now, I've moved. This blog now lives at http://www.fixinsupper.com.

Thanks.

The George Bush of mashed potatoes

Fool me twice, people.

I have been making mashed potatoes since I was 12 years old. Let's not do the math but suffice to say, that's plenty long enough to know how. Lately I have been looking up recipes for this very very basic dish because mine are not coming out close enough to the ones I grew up with.

Now, I'll start by saying, I already know what's wrong with the way I make them. [This is not the fool me twice part. Please be more patient.] Back where I come from, to steal a phrase, we did not make our mashed potatoes with 1% milk. And we used more butter. So my goal here is, make them so as they won't kill me, but still taste awesome. I know this is possible. I just know it.

So, I have been doing that which I NEVER do, and I have been actually FOLLOWING recipes. And both times, it has bitten me in the butt. Last time, they were so soupy, I literally made them into potato soup [7yo refused to touch] because they were unredeemable as mashed potatoes.

This time around, I knew the instant I poured the milk in that it had happened again [different recipe, same result], though a tad less soup-like. You just couldn't quite see the potatoes for all that milk. I was able to cook the milk down and return them to mashed potatoes, albeit really soupy ones. Cooking the milk out of your mashed potatoes is not where you want to be, in case you're wondering.

Next time? Screw the cookbooks. I think I'll buy some whole milk and use my regular fbtsomp* recipe.

*Fly by the seat of my pants

New BBQ joint

Well I've apparently let my blog really lapse since the 10mo came home in March. Frankly, in my head I still post all the time so I had no idea I was falling down on the job so badly. I apologize, if there is in fact anyone still reading. Besides my mom. (Hi, Mom!)

I ran across a new BBQ joint on the web today. Sounds funny but it's true. I haven't even had a chance to check it out yet but this guy is blogging his restaurant, so how can you go wrong?

I will report back as soon as I know more. Meanwhile, check out Mothership BBQ!

Party in a bag

So I love Publix. I know I have mentioned this before. I could change my blog's name to the "I love Publix" blog and I would feel completely OK with that. I discovered about three weeks ago that unbeknownst to me, at some point in the past few months, this blessed chain opened a store in Brentwood, a mere 14 miles from my house.

I haven't yet counted the grocery stores I drive past to get to the Publix (substantial number, I feel sure), but I am not feeling bad about that.

So strolling through the Publix the other day, I discovered this great little product from the Lundberg rice folks. If you haven't ponied up for Lundberg rice yet, please do. It is worth every penny. And the Lundberg Jubilee rice is so pretty that I described it to my sister as looking like "a party in a bag." At which point she says we have different understandings of the word party.

Nonetheless, I determined that we must do something special with this beautiful rice. So we found this awesome recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon's Passionate Vegetarian cookbook...combined brown rice, mushrooms, corn, carrots, onions, garlic, sundried tomatoes and her dragon salt. You bake in the oven. Wow!!! We've decided that, all due respect to CD, we'll probably unfortunately end up calling this dish "party in a bag" forever.

Deja vu

Yesterday Nashville's suburbs were ripped by a number of tornadoes. I spent most of the afternoon glued to my TV and weather radio....the whole situation was a bad reminder of April 16, 1998, when my neighborhood was devastated by a large tornado.

This time around it was much more emotionally complicated of course -- with a 1st grader scheduled to get out of school about the time the storms were coming in, you're faced with one of those awful choices you have to make as a parent: Should I rush over to pick her up? Well how stupid would that be, considering that they'll lock down the school for the tornado safety plan, and I'll be out on the street in a car and she'll be safe in the school basement?

And is she safer at my house than her after-care? Well actually, probably not. There's a basement there and we don't have one at home.

And wouldn't it freak her out if I rushed in to pick her up? Probably. You have to explain stuff to 6yos. They don't just accept everything at face value anymore.

So in fact, the only thing that would be improved by my picking her up would be my emotional state, briefly. Hmmm.

In the end, after several phone conversations, her dad and I decided she was just fine at school and that's where she stayed. Here's the best part. Was she scared? Heck no. She was mad that in the emergency preparations, she'd had to leave her backpack and lunchbox in the classroom, and that by Monday, the plastic bags in her lunchbox will be distgusting. She'll have to throw them away instead of reusing them -- as in, reduce, reuse, recycle. She's all ready for Earth Day.

Talked with several friends from the 'hood today while our girls all had their dance lesson -- everyone had been through a similar experience to mine yesterday afternoon. We were all reminded far too much of the '98 tornado, and shaken by how close (11 miles) some of the damage was yesterday.

More dramatic damage was only slightly farther to the north, in Gallatin, TN, home of my coworker Bill Hudgins and his wife Wilda Dodson. They are fine but have many friends affected.

While we could have a tornado at almost any time of year in Nashville (several years ago both Clarksville and Jackson, TN, were hit by enormous twisters in January, of all times), the spring always seems the most volatile, with lots of temperature fluctuations and rapidly changing weather. Here's to summer.