My sous chef was on strike this week because the recipe I wanted to make for this week’s edition of Fix-It Friday involved the food processor. She doesn’t approve of the food processor. Too noisy. She was mollified somewhat by the prospect of eating shredded cheese making cheesy garlic bread, but remained steadfast in her refusal to pose for photos, so this will have to be a photo-less edition. This is just as well, because this recipe doesn’t have very many steps in it to document.

Ingredients:

1 jar sundried tomatoes in oil (the jar sizes can vary a bit by brand, but you’re looking for 14 ounces, give or take)

1 smallish onion

2 or 3 cloves of garlic (a heaping teaspoon if you use the pre-minced stuff)

Using a fork, extract all the tomatoes from the jar and toss them into the processor. You will have some of the oil, but not all of it, that way. (Don’t pour it all in at once.) Cut your onion into quarters, toss in. throw in your garlic.

Blend until everything is chopped small and the color is sort of a salmon-y pink-red. It doesn’t have to be totally smooth, but it should hold together. If it doesn’t have quite the texture you want, try adding a little of the excess oil. (You don’t want all the oil at once — it could make your dip too gloppy and greasy.

Add some fresh-ground pepper, a smidge of salt, and some herbs.In the winter I shake on some Penzey’s Mural of Flavor, while in the summer I prefer tossing in a bit of fresh thyme or oregano. Blend a little more. You can serve it right away, but I like to let it sit because it mellows out the onion and garlic and makes the flavors blend better.

This dip works better on crackers or chips than it does as a veggie dip. I recently discovered these olive tortilla chips that make me feel very virtuous because they have flaxseed and lots of fiber in them.

ETA: This recipe is courtesy of Auntie Johanna, which was in the post as I first wrote it but somehow got deleted in my tussle with wordpress r.e. spacing. Wordpress in Safari does not like spacing. Grrr. Fine, I’ll use Firefox.

As is our tradition whenever one of us attends a concert without the other, Jim called me at 8:20 tonight as Bruce took the stage.

I held up my vibrating cellphone and told my karate sensei, “I sold a Bruce Springsteen ticket to be here tonight!”  

I think he knew from my laugh as I said it that I had no regrets. (Well, a little teeny one, when Jim called again at 9:30 and I heard “The River” crackling back at me. But these are the gambles we take.)  

You wonder, when you’ve been away for a while from something you used to love, “Did I just build that up in my mind? Was it really that good?” 

It is. 

I’ve been doing these Monday afternoon classes at the Y with my sensei’s wife for 3 months now and it’s been a nice gentle way to revisit the basics, starting at the shallow end of the pool. Doshokai, though, is the deep end, not least because walking into a room with 15 blackbelts and another 25 devoted students on the rise is a whole different energy than 5 moms and their kids checking out martial arts for a couple of weeks at the Y. That’s not to slam those people at all — they walked through the door, after all, which is already a lot of something. That’s fantastic, and some of them show true potential. But the intensity of practice is inevitably diluted in that setting in a way where, if you’ve done the real thing, you KNOW that you’re getting maybe 25 percent. 

 Riding a bike has never been “just like riding a bike” for me, so I think my paradigm for that phenomenon is going to be “just like karate.” I haven’t done most of the katas (complicated choreographed imaginary fights whose mastery and analysis forms the backbone of karate practice) since I quit 2 years ago, but of the 17 I had mastered before I quit, I seamlessly executed 13 tonight. This is not in any way a testament to my awesomeness — it is a testament to the validity of the deep training I committed myself to over those 9 years and the skills of my teachers. Everything came back like that — the courtesies, the customs of the dojo, the hand-to-hand techniques. I practiced something I thought I’d forgotten with a former sparring partner and without even thinking through it, I had her bent over with her arm locked out in about 2 seconds. And that was the thing I was BAD at. 

I valued equally the welcomes I got from the others in the dojo at the party following the workout. The only thing I know about some of those people is that they are sincerely committed to the same practice. When you know you can trust someone to stop their fist 3 millimeters from your nose every time, even if you have nothing at all in common off the deck, that creates a fellowship. 

I saw a lot of people who were greenbelts (one level up from the beginners) when I left, who were now blackbelts. Bittersweet as it was not having been there to witness their journey, it was gratifying to see how they’d progressed, been tempered like steel by the work they’d done in the dojo. I taught two classes on Sundays for years, one of them an all-ranks class that had everyone from brand-newbies and old hands. One of the nicest things about tonight was two different men who told me how much my classes had informed their journey through karate and how they thought of me as their first teacher, and another woman, who now outranks me, who thanked me for turning the key that unlocked one of the core techniques of our style for her. 

I was there when we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the dojo and was happy to witness the 20th tonight. It is still my community. I have to, want to go back.

If only to figure out who, of the 20 women crammed into the 6 by 6-foot changing room tonight, inadvertently stole my uniform pants.

My alarm clock malfunctioned this morning. You know, the one with fluffy blond hair that wears footie pajamas? The one that, every morning at 6:15 for the past few weeks, has padded into our room, come to stand before me about 4 inches from my face, waited until I opened my eyes, and then regaled me with her breakfast order? (You want cereal SQUARES an’ CHOColate balls for breakfast! Should Mommy get that for you! Need a new DIAPER! Should Mommy change your DIAPER!) 
Last night she woke up and complained loudly, then asked me to cuddle with her for a few minutes. Since these midnight wakings are so rare nowadays, I accommodated her, except I fell asleep in her bed. It wasn’t very relaxing sleep because she was restless. She kept pumping her fists and wiggling around and laughing and shouting out concert-type Wooo-hooooos. I can’t decide whether she was awake and trying to get the party started or having some exciting dreams. 
Either way, it must’ve exhausted her because when next I returned to consciousness, it was 8:16. I am usually expected to be at work at 8. Thank goodness I have abandoned my attachment to preprandial grooming and lay out my clothes the night before, because I was out of the house in 4 minutes and even had time to stop off to run a necessary errand before a 9 a.m. meeting. I find these anomalous malfunctions very disorienting. I wish she would get in the habit of having them on weekends.  

Wow. Y’all have got some seriously gross vomit stories up your sleeves.  Thank you, NB and Jo, for doing your part to make sure I never let another dog lick my kid. K, you are far from the only one who was feeling a bit queasy by the end of that litany of hoarquture, as Bon so beautifully coined it. 

I thought all of the stories you told were outstanding, frankly. Major Bedhead’s eloquently hurling roommate was probably the funniest story, and boy could I relate to Mary’s store experience. Grandma Texas, I suspect that Eliza’s adventures of last week are in part karmic payback for what I subjected you to when I was a wee kid. And, man, Liz’s sleep-vomiting roto-pooper and Tausha’s serial roto-hurlers make me SO dread the day Eliza brings that fun little bug home from school. 

I think, however, that we can all agree that although each story is impressive in its own way, none has quite the scope of Bon’s tale of woe. Rabbit-whacking, vomit-coated dogs, sympathy puking — this story was outstanding on all levels, managing to be gross in ways I had in no way anticipated. I mean, you figure a vomit story will have, you know, vomit. Not so much, rabbit intestines. That is some seriously baroque stuff right there, my friend — I hope your snake appreciated the chain of events his dietary needs set in motion.  

 And now for the comment part of the contest. I was looking for the 12th comment, and guess who made it? Now, the judges have reviewed the events and feel that Sarah cheated fair and square. Also, it was funny, and amusing the judges is as good as bribing them. 

 However, in the interest of fairness, I thought I should offer a second comment-number award. Because lots of people made more than one comment, I decided I would also give a prize to the 12th commenter on this post, which turns out to be Jill, to whom I must also give credit for posting the only vomit story in which the ceiling was part of the collateral damage. I am impressed by your brother’s achievement. Please pass on my congratulations to him. 

 You can email me your addies at elizasmo_at_elizasmom_dot_com, and I will send you whatever Eliza draws from the OSB tomorrow afternoon. Cross your fingers that you don’t get the nosehair trimmer. 

 Alright, now, I have to do some work, but I will leave you to ponder this: Should I be worried that today, as I was walking to my car from work, a man crossed himself as he walked by me?

**EDITED ** Alright, already I have learned something: Dogs + vomit = horror story of grossness. Thank you for that lesson! Now, can anyone top Bon? (See comments) I’m leaving the contest open until Monday at 7 p.m., at which point I will declare a winner.

The office is trashed, the bathroom smells like a two-dollar whore from the revolting combination of perfumes that have been spritzed about indiscriminately, and the last thing Eliza did before going to bed was gallop down the hall and throw herself into my arms shouting, “I am so much FUN!”

 I guess someone’s antibiotics kicked in this afternoon. 

 Not a moment too soon, is all I have to say, because between Eliza, the lousy weather, and various work and personal things, I was well on my way to my annual February Freak-Out this morning. (Anyone else do this? It’s a tradition I started when I was 18 — my poor father asked me an innocent question about the VCR and I threw a hairbrush at him and ran out of the room crying. I can pretty much count on subjecting my nearest and dearest to a similarly ridiculous episode every year around this time; the cumulative effects of weather, extended post-holiday let-down, and school/work always seeming particularly unreasonable mid-winter.) It seems to have been averted or at least truncated, though. Having the biggest worry diminished (I am not so stupid as to assume that we are out of the woods) has made all the other stuff feel less apocalyptic, too.

 Hopefully she continues like this, although the vomiting has left me a bit traumatized. I am so reluctant to feed Madam right now that I keep catching myself trying to make her forget it’s mealtime. That doesn’t work, in case you were wondering, particularly when there are waffles in the freezer. That must be eaten with SYRUP.  

With all of this pre-occupying me, though, I didn’t have time to do my usual cook-o-rama for Fix-It Friday.  Besides, I don’t know about the rest of you, but cooking with a sous chef who may or may not vomit on the proceedings seems less than appetizing. So I will share  some tips of a more general, less footie-pajama-clad nature with you today.The first, because ZOMG-have-not-talked-about-vomit-enough-yet, is that I feel quite vindicated about my Emergency Towel. Jim scoffed at my Emergency Towel back when he learned of its existence, but let me tell you, I would rather wash a towel than a carseat, and that’s exactly what I did last night — I lined the seat with the ET, deposited aforementioned glazed item, and proceeded homeward. This is probably one of those chick tips that all women know, isn’t it? 

And my second tip, the reason for the sharing of which will become clear in a minute (What is THAT? “the reason for the sharing of which”?) is the Oh Sh!t We Need A Gift Basket, more succinctly known as the Oh-Sh!t Basket. We should probably rename it now that we have a kid, but the name is a (bad) habit. I started this some years back when I was always getting ambushed by some relative of Jim’s having an Important Gift-Giving Occasion. There are generic fancy hand cream and shoe-polishing kits and copies of The Essential Bruce Springsteen (WHAT? Someone could be having a Bruce emergency RIGHT NOW!), but also fun stuff like the alphabet block salt-and-pepper shakers that I really liked, couldn’t justify buying for myself, but could imagine bringing a smile to a friend or relative’s face. Those kinds of gifts are the bulk of the box — I aim for items that I could imagine giving to a handful of friends or family, but whose appeal is not so broad as to be impersonal. I add to it year-round, and usually dip in it around Christmas as I examine the items I’ve collected and see if there’s anyone who’d particularly like them. Last summer, for instance, I bought a bunch of nice jewelry that I thought would flatter the coloring of several of Jim’s female relatives. I gave the anklet I’d bought to Jim’s sister so she could accent the tattoo she’d gotten in that very spot, and she loved it. Score!

SO that is my tip for today: Get yourself an Oh Sh!t Basket. It’s so much less stressful and financially painful that doing a pre-Christmas sprint, and you’ll never be caught off-guard by your second cousin’s sister-in-law’s baby shower again.  

And now for the third topic of my post (To recap so far: 1. VOMIT 2. Oh Sh¡t Basket), I am having a contest that doubles cleverly as a delurking ruse.  I am, according to WordPress, within spitting distance of getting the 2000th comment on this here blog. No, I’m not going to tell you how close. That’s the Contest part. Whoever leaves the 2000th comment will get a prize. What will it be? It will be whatever Eliza grabs first when I open the lid of the OS Basket, and I will send it to wherever you are.

Just to keep things interesting, I am going to give out a second prize: Whoever leaves the most outstanding vomit story in the comments (”outstanding” encompassing, but not limited to: horrifying, funny, gross, etc.) gets whatever Eliza grabs second when I open the lid of the OSB, and I will send it to wherever YOU are.