Towel Howl.

Vacation is incredible, isn't it?  We arrived at the lake house around two a.m., nervous that the key wouldn't still be in its hiding place and that we would be spending the night sleeping in the great outdoors.  Fortunately, the key was there and we instead slept in a plush bed.  (Matt's mom is the master of the comfortable bed.)

Already I'm feeling more relaxed, less stressed.  So is Mitch.

This morning, while Matt slept in (I slept approximately four and a half hours of the six hour drive), I walked Mitchell down to the dock to relax.  I began to re-read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (secretly wishing that I'd grown up in the Sedaris household) while Mitch sat in the sun, dog-smiling away.  After about thirty minutes, Mitch got up, went to the steps, and took a little dip in the water.  Completely unprompted, completely natural (he is a wild swamp dog, after all).  I guess he just needed to cool off. 

Now he's confused because I won't let him on the couch, and he seems less than thrilled about his new wardrobe.

If this pisses him off, just wait until he find out that Fletcher will be here in a few minutes.

Random and Scattered and Weird

Life here at M Cubed has been crazy lately, resulting in a lack of posts.  What sucks is that the crazy is mostly either too boring to post, or far too juicy to post, and I can't share too much with you right now.  (I know that sucks, but all in due time, people.)

The good news is that I'm eating fresh pineapple and that I get to look at this cute face when I wake up in the morning.  Also good is that we're headed out to Matt's parents' lake house soon for some much needed relaxation.  Oh, and I completed my big "painting the floor to look like the ocean" project, and I'll do a big reveal for you when we return, tanned and rejuvenated.

(Mitch, lying on my leg, being morningtime cuddle friend)

(hanging out and watching Friday Night Lights)

The bad news is that I think we have a woodpecker ghost outside, and it's driving me crazy.  Also, so many things in our lives are up in the air right now that it's hard to focus on my phone Scrabble (but I'm still averaging over 300 points per game, so that's good). 

One more thing.  One of my teacher friends from school has started a new blog where she provides reviews of Savannah restaurants and discusses other food-related oddities.  Today she and I went to my favorite place in Savannah, Back in the Day Bakery, and, as usual, it did not disappoint.  I had some sort of fancy grilled cheese sandwich with chicken on fancy bread.  I could have eaten five of those sandwiches, they were so good. (Check out her blog for more pictures of the bakery itself.)

And what's a trip to Back in the Day without an old-fashioned cupcake?

Expect posting to slow a bit in the next week or so.  Right now I'm off to finish packing and laundry and dishes and everything else I have to do to be on the road by 7:00.  Eek!

Real Passive Aggressive

[source]

Today was one of those super productive Maniacal Mandy kinds of days.  I started what will be my biggest summer project, doing something about the disgusting floor in our sunroom.  I worked on that until my body hurt too much to do it anymore (I have a big blood blister on my finger and am not sure I'll be in any shape to walk or squat tomorrow).  I also knocked off another item from my summer to-do list when I opened and filed all of the mail.  I hate filing the mail. What a tedious and miserable task!  (But it's amazing when the mail is filed and organized!)

While filing the mail, I came across about three different letters from my friends at Real Simple, reminding me to renew my subscription.  Here's the thing.  We subscribe to like seven magazines, and I never really know when I need to renew the subscriptions.  It's hard to know, too, when I actually need to renew because the magazine people are always trying to scare me into renewing like eleven months before I actually need to do so.  Most of the time, the letters from the magazines don't get opened until it's the semi-annual mail filing day (or until Matt has to suffer through a Friday without getting to read the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly). 

So today I opened a letter from the Real Simple folks.  Here's what it said (emphasis mine):

. . .Your subscription payment is 90 days PAST DUE, and we've had to suspend delivery.  This is one more reason you need REAL SIMPLE.  Each issue gives you time-saving solutions for everyday tasks, like how to pay your bills on time.  Please take a moment to return the top portion of this statement along with your payment. . .

Okay, Real Simple.  Fine.  Our credit card numbers changed and so you couldn't automatically charge me.  But why so condescending!?  Perhaps the next issue could have a feature about how you can catch more flies with honey.

(But I'll still renew, because I love that magazine, even if they can be bitchy.)

Ice Cream, Just Like Thomas Jefferson Used To Make It.

Did you know that Matt's not a big desserts guy?  It's really annoying, because, as you might have observed, I am a big desserts girl.  I mean, reallly?  What's wrong with him?  Why doesn't he want to subsist on cupcakes and cookies and ice cream?  Matt likes to joke that for dessert he'd just like another steak.  But I think that's stupid because you can't put icing or sprinkles on a steak.  Silly Matt.

I was torn about what my next ice cream flavor would be: Butterfinger or Oreo?  Fancy, I know.  But here's the thing--it kind of is.

Because, like the self-indulgent fatty that I am, I bought both Butterfingers and Oreos.  I figured that all I  needed to make them was a good recipe for vanilla ice cream and then I could do half of the batch with the Butterfingers and the other half with the Oreos (but not mixed, because that would be gross.)  So I set out in search of the perfect recipe for vanilla ice cream.

I found this one from David Lebovitz, which seemed pretty good, except that it called for a vanilla bean, which I didn't have.  And I was all sweaty and gross after a run-in with the demon frog, so I didn't want to go into Fresh Market looking like such a dirtbag.  So I searched again, and this time I found Thomas Jefferson's recipe for vanilla ice cream.  Seriously.  The recipe, written in his own handwriting, is at the Library of Congress.

How cool is that?  The caption at the Library of Congress site says:

"A passionate gourmet, Jefferson acquired a stock of standard French recipes for sauces, fruit tarts, French-fried potatoes, blood sausages, pigs' feet, rabbit, pigeons, and various other dishes. Among the most popular of these recipes at Monticello was this one for vanilla ice cream--written by Jefferson, with his own recipe for Savoy cookies to accompany the dessert on the back."

Are you kidding me right now, Thomas Jefferson?  That recipe was kind of hard to read, so I searched a little more and found it at Monticello's website.  According to Monticello,

"Jefferson was able to enjoy ice cream throughout the year because ice was "harvested" from the Rivanna River in winter and taken to the Monticello ice house, which held sixty-two wagon-loads. The ice house located in Monticello's north dependency wing was used throughout the year primarily to preserve meat and butter, but also to chill wine and to make ice cream. In 1815, Jefferson noted, the ice supply lasted until October 15.


While George Washington's papers contain a prior reference to an ice cream maker, the first American recipe for the dish is in Jefferson's hand:


Ice Cream.


2. bottles of good cream.
6. yolks of eggs.
1/2 lb. sugar


mix the yolks; sugar
put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla.


when near boiling take it off & pour it gently into the mixture of eggs; sugar.


stir it well.


put it on the fire again stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent it's sticking to the casserole.


when near boiling take it off and strain it thro' a towel.


put it in the Sabottiere*


then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. put into the ice a handful of salt.


put salt on the coverlid of the Sabotiere; cover the whole with ice.


leave it still half a quarter of an hour.


then turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes


open it to loosen with a spatula the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere.


shut it; replace it in the ice


open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides


when well taken (prise) stir it well with the Spatula.


put it in moulds, justling it well down on the knee.


then put the mould into the same bucket of ice.


leave it there to the moment of serving it.


to withdraw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turning it well till it will come out; turn it into a plate."

Why don't I have my own ice house?  Oh yeah, because I have a freezer.  I guess it's nice that I don't have to harvest ice from a river during winter.  That would be hard.

Fortunately, Monticello's site also had the recipe translated into everyday terms, which was nice because I wasn't wild about the idea of straining the ice cream "thro' a towel" or putting it "in moulds, justling it well down on the knee." 

I was old-timey, though, with my dutch oven ice bath.

And even though it sucks that I don't have an ice house, I have some things that Thomas Jefferson didn't have. Oreos.  And Butterfingers.  And a dog who sits on furniture like he's a human! Take that, TJ!

And I have a Cuisinart ice cream maker that doesn't even require ice or rock salt.  Ha!

Okay, back to the ice cream.

IT'S REALLY GOOD!  It's creamy, of course, and has just the right amount of vanilla flavor.  I didn't have "two bottles of good cream" like TJ called for, so I just used a pint of heavy cream and a pint of whole milk, both from Target.

After the ice cream was finished in the fancy schmancy ice cream maker, I divided it into three separate pints.  One Butterfinger, one Oreo, and one plain vanilla. 

(PS--in my opinion, half the fun of eating Oreos is doing this. 

Matt hates it.  I think it's hilarious.)

I made Matt try the Butterfinger as soon as he got home (he who, although he doesn't care about sweets, occasionally craves a Butterfinger Blizzard from Dairy Queen), and he paid me and TJ quite a compliment.  "You've finally made an ice cream that I could eat all of in one sitting." 

WIN!  I win!  Thanks, Thomas Jefferson, for founding our country and for providing me with a great recipe for vanilla ice cream!

Also, Thomas Jefferson, you looked pretty hot in HBO's John Adams miniseries.

Guess I should give you the recipe, huh?

Thomas Jefferson's Famous Vanilla Ice Cream

Beat the yolks of 6 eggs until thick and lemon colored. Add, gradually, 1 cup of sugar and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil 1 quart of cream and pour slowly on the egg mixture. Put in top of double boiler and when thickens, remove and strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. When cool add 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla. Freeze, as usual, with one part of salt to three parts of ice. Place in a mould, pack with ice and salt for several hours. For electric refrigerators, follow usual direction, but stir frequently.

Demon Frog

It is really, really hot outside. 

Like, really hot.

Like, I took the pup for a walk at 8:45 and it was still 95 degrees.

Like, my hydrangeas are wilting.

Like, I am wilting.

But you know that it's hot.

What you probably don't know, though, is that we here at M Cubed have been being stalked, harassed, and generally mistreated by an evil poisonous Georgia frog.

This frog. 

(see him, way up at the top?)

I think he may be a Georgian River Frog**.  Or he may just be a demon.

When I was outside yesterday, minding my own business and watering the hydrangeas, the frog suddenly inflated his entire body and began to belt out some hellish squawk yell thing. 

And I don't like frogs, anyway.  I mean, they're like the thing I fear most (unless you want to count albino children), and I'm pretty sure that they can sense my fear (both).

But I'm working on overcoming these anxieties.  How can I ever convince Mitch to be okay during a thunderstorm if I myself can't be okay around a teeny tiny [poisonous and homicidal] little frog?

So today I went back out to those hydranges, and this time I had a camera so that you could witness his big scary inflated body.  The camerawork is shoddy at best, and I have only a rudimentary knowledge of any movie-making software, but, please, enjoy the voiceover work.

Oh, and while I was sitting here in the living room tonight--again minding my own business--I heard his little frog war cry again.  There's a 78% chance that the next time I step outside there will be an army of frogs waiting for me, and they'll all jump down my throat and jump on me and then I'll choke to death on poisonous and hateful and mean frogs.  And then they'll all inflate again and make that noise again to celebrate their victory.

**Also, he's probably not really even this kind of frog.  But he is an evil frog.

Poof!

There's just something about summertime that pits me against nature.  (Or pins me against nature, if you're like stupid Olivia on The City.  I hate her with every ounce of my being.)  If it's not mosquitoes or nearly dead moles or jumpy frogs or slugs or snakes, then it's something else. 

As I was driving down the parkway this morning, groggy because I'd had to peel myself out of bed at 7:45 (so early for summer!) and because I failed to eat a healthy breakfast, I became a murderer.  The incident happened shortly after I merged, when I was going between 45-55 mph, and some very intelligent bird was  hovering about four feet off the ground, directly in front of me.  I tried to brake, and I couldn't swerve without getting into an accident, so I hit it. 

Thump!

Horrified by my murderous act, I looked in the rearview mirror.

Poof!

There was a poof of feathers at the scene of the crime, almost cartoonish.  It was like a pillow fight on a sitcom.  Actually, it was like the end of this Pixar short (around 2:30). 



Or this disturbing few seconds that Matt recommended of Randy Johnson hitting a bird with a fastball.



Gross!

Anyway, I'm still driving around with souveniers of my kill.

Ugh.

Anyone have some rubber gloves?

R.I.P., bird.  Sorry you're dead.  Maybe as a ghost bird you can go to all of the other birds and instruct them to maintian a high altitude when flying around such busy roads?

Does This Mean That I'm a Prude?

So, today I was in the middle of one of my very favorite activities, walking through Target whilst talking on the phone, when I was stopped in my tracks.  I was walking past the kid clothing section, a place where I normally do not stop (because, aside from those that I see at Baby Gap--which basically just look like miniature real person clothes--I think kids clothes are boring and not nearly as cute as other people seem to think that they are).  But I stopped as soon as I saw this:

Really?  Madonna?  On your baby?  I mean, it's not like the humor is lost on me.  I get how that's funny.  I just can't seem to shake how by dressing your young girl in this shirt is somehow setting the expectation that she'll one day mature, that she'll one day become this:

[source]

(By the way, there were much skankier pictures that I found that Matt said were not blog appropriate.)  And, I mean, more power to Madonna and her freaky arms and such, but it just creeps me out to have a toddler advertising her future skankiness.

But that wasn't all.  There were Aerosmith shirts for the kiddies.  Because nothing screams "wholesome childhood" like Steven Tyler.  (By the way, my senior year of high school I was obsessed with Aerosmith's song "Pink."  I loved it because, I, too, loved the color pink, and I thought the song was catchy.  Apparently "pink" has more than one meaning, and I was sending out some mixed messages by playing the song on repeat as I drove around in my '86 Ford Escort singing at the top of my lungs. Here's the video for your Wednesday enjoyment.)

And Bob Marley.  "Daddy, am I still too young to smoke pot?"

And the Grateful Dead.  "Hi, Mommy.  When I grow up I'm going to die of a drug overdose."

And Run DMC.  Because no kid's outfit is complete without a faux gold chain.

And ACDC.  I really don't know anything about ACDC except that either Beavis or Butthead wore their shirt.  I think I'd keep my kid out of Beavis and Butthead attire until they were at least eight.

And The Beatles.  Well, no real complaints there.  Except that maybe the kiddos would misunderstand the meaning of the greatest of all of their songs, "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?"  We don't need to be encouraging our youth to forsake safety, now, do we?  Safety should always come first.

You know, though, as much as I might disagree with the messages that these shirts would communicate, I have to say that I don't think they're nearly as awful as some of the tshirt alternatives that are out there for little kids like, "My brother did it" and "Aren't I cute."  I REALLY hate those shirts.  No, your brother didn't do it, and no, you're not that cute.  (Especially when you're screaming in a restaurant or in front of me in line at the store.)

But I think this is the one that makes me want to puke all over myself the most.

[source]

Oh, shoot.  Matt says that he just got Mitch a collar that has this same saying on it. 

**Note** Apparently the person I believed was Bob Marley is really Jimi Hendrix.  Many thanks to the friends who pointed this out to me.  (If it's not Danny, Donnie, Jordan, Jon, or Joe, I guess I am ignorant.)  Jimi Hendrix, by the way, is just as bad for a kid shirt.  But not as bad as 50% Mommy, 50% Daddy, 100% Cute.  I'll take a mysterious death and a rockin' "Star-Spangled Banner" over that shit any day of the week.

Discovering Our Love Languages

Not long ago, Cassie referenced this quiz about love languages.  When Matt and I looked at the descriptions of the love languages, it was pretty easy to identify which love language each of us subscribed to.  I said immediately that my love language was acts of service: I love it when people do things for me (get me a glass of water, get me a glass of wine, take my plate to the kitchen, clean the house, do all of the driving on long road trips, etc.).  Not that I don't like a thoughtful gift or a nice hug, too, of course. 

Matt's is quality time.  Matt doesn't really need much besides someone to be in the room to hear him call out all of the correct answers (questions?) on Jeopardy!.  Not surprisingly, Matt's favorite times (and some of mine, too), are when we stay up late, sitting at the kitchen table, talking and laughing and feeding Mitch too many treats.

Even though we thought that we knew our love languages from the descriptions (which Matt insisted, by the way, were stupid), this weekend we took the quiz, per Cassie's request.  Matt went first.

It did not go so well, because for the better part of ten minutes, he mocked the quiz--yelling his insults from the other room-- for its stupidity and transparency.  I have to admit, he had a point.

The five love languages are: touch, service, quality time, words of affirmation, and gifts.  The questions on the quiz were really subtle.  For instance, check one:

• I love it when you celebrate my birthday with a gift.
• I love it when you celebrate my birthday with meaningful words.

What love languages could these answers possibly support?  Matt had believed that the love language theory was stupid in the first place, and didn't keep it a secret that he found the quiz to be a complete waste of time. 

Was he wrong?  Nope.

Because it took all that to discover that quality time is his love language.  Mine is acts of service.  Basically, if he does things for me then I'll hang out with him.  Sounds good to me.

Hey, Matt, the house needs to be vacuumed and the clothes need to be put away.  I'll be lying here on the couch when you're done, and I'll be happy to hang out, and to listen to you shout out the answers during Jeopardy!  Hell, I'll even provide you with affirming words like, "You're so smart during the kid's tournament."

What's your love language? 

(Oh, and if you're looking for a super-fun old school quiz, here's The Spark's Purity Quiz.  How pure are you?)

Happy Two-Hundred Thirty-Fourth, America!

This weekend, wanting to celebrate our nation's birthday in style, we packed up the car and headed to Augusta for a somewhat impromptu visit.  Hugh was butterflying chickens, and Mitch just seemed a little too comfortable in his day-to-day life, so it was what I'd consider a necessary trip.

The visit itself was pretty uneventful (unless you consider my brush with a homicidal toad an event), but it was relaxing and fun.  We enjoyed food, and friends, and laughs, and dogs, and drinks, and more drinks and food and friends and laughs and dogs. I think we made Mitch sing "I Will Always Love You" about fifteen different times. And Fletcher and Mitch are finally coming around to being the best of friends (well, almost). Although none of us ate 54 hot dogs in ten minutes, this morning I felt like maybe I had, and then perhaps blacked out because of hot dog consumption.

Hugh = Old Man River

Fletcher = beauty dog

[above: Matt and I demonstrate how "civilized" we are by using cloth napkins.  This was about five minutes before I showed off my amazing corn on the cob eating skills and then choked.  I did that twice.]

Toad the Murderer

You'll have to visit Cassie's blog to hear more about the food and the weekend's menu.  Right now I'd like to just drink some water and go to bed.  Celebrating the birthday of a nation is hard work!

What'd you do this weekend?