Reassuring words from your mother.

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Well kid, we are at (t – 4 weeks). I will be very interested to see if a.) you decide to arrive when the medical professionals and various sonogram machines say you will, b.) if you are able to exit my body in under 10 hours, and c.) whether or not you will go home from the hospital in gender-appropriate clothing.

I’m not sure why, but lately it seems that you have been testing the logistics of busting out of my uterus through the top of my stomach. I regularly feel you wedge your shoulder firmly against my hip-bone and push up with your feet with enough force to make me feel like I am going to re-enact that scene from the movie Alien. I don’t know who gave you this brilliant idea, but I want you to stop haning out with them this instant. And as for all these new stretch marks you are giving me – you will be grounded for this later.

We have been busily preparing for your arrival by, well, um, by – Okay! I admit it! We haven’t done anything other than spend our time trying to make sure that your big sister is aware of the implications of your arrival. (The importance of this will become obvious to you soon enough.) And speaking of your big sister…

I think now is also the time we need to have a talk about that incessant jabbering you hear all the time. That would be your big sister, Stella. I’m not really sure where to begin on this one. There are some things you’ll want to know about her right off the bat: She picks her nose. A lot. Don’t be too grossed out when she tries to pick yours. She’d just as soon smother you in kisses as she would just plain smother you. Don’t take this personally. She regularly has to be reprimanded for sitting on the other little kids at day dare. Also, she’s a biter. We are showing good progress in this area and hope to have it under control by the time you arrive – but we can’t promise anything. Mostly, what you need to know is that she has done you a great service by breaking us in. We have expended much of our freakish and obsessive parenting behavior on her and are hopefully going to be a little better at it this time around. Again, no promises, but we are optimistic.

So, my sweet little lump of baby, I guess what I am trying to say is: I hope you are born with one wicked sense of humor. You’re gonna need it.

Paper Thin

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I love any publication that writes about food. I love cooking magazines, cookbooks, and don’t even get me started on Food TV. [During the entire time I was in labor with Stella, the Food Network was on, muted in the background.] There is rarely a trip to Costco where I don’t pour over the cookbook section to see what they have added to their inventory. (I reserve my high-end Borders-type browsing for special occasions.)

So recently, when we got the “Low Introductory Offer of just $12 for 12 Issues of Gourmet” I – in a moment of weakness – I caved like a bad souffle. We own (and use) at least half a dozen Gourmet cookbooks, and although I made the brave declaration that we needed to sacrifice quantity for quality when it comes to our magazine subscriptions, I just couldn’t help myself…come on – 12 issues for just $12 dollars!

So when our first issue arrived this week I was giddy with excitement. It doesn’t have the article power of Eating Well, or the hard-core foodie, intellectual undertones of Cook’s Illustrated, or even the lighthearted, feel-good quality of Everyday with Rachael Ray (which, has been a surprisingly good addition to our collection), but it talks about food, and shows pictures of food and, in general, just makes you all warm and fuzzy just by looking at the glossy photo on the cover (a decadent Chocolate Glazed Hazelnut Mousse cake….OH YEAH!)

There is also an article in this first issue on Slovenian cooking, which I found of particular interest for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Slovenia is where my great-grandmother’s family (on my mother’s side) immigrated to the United States from. Slovenia is just not a place you read about very often, so naturally I was intrigued when it showed up in relation to my favorite topic (food). Secondly, there is a family recipe called Potica (pronounced puh-teet-zuh) that has quite an illustrious history when it comes to my mom and my Aunt Tess. It is basically an apple-strudel-type confection that, when made correctly, is the bomb. Emphasis on made correctly. You see, the trick to making good potica is that you have to roll the dough into a ginormous paper thin sheet – and not tear it in the assembly process.

My aunt, having had a past life as a bake-house owner has made and enjoyed many a potica in her lifetime. My mother – well, let’s just say that I remember a particular episode where a ball of dough was hucked into the walnut orchard behind our house. (It probably landed next to the batch of tamales that had been given residence out there after the great masa debacle of ’79). The irony to this is that I my mom is a great baker. I can remember all the great homemade, sesame seed-topped egg braid bread I enjoyed as a child, and the butter-licious parker house rolls that we would fight over straight out of the oven. Pretty much any baked goods we had were made from scratch – and they were good – all the way down to my bad-ass Holly Hobby cake I had for my 6th birthday. It was out of character to see something go so bad – so hilariously, and memorably wrong.

So, this article had lots of photos of large animal parts dangling from hooks, as well as your typical pallid, hearty, Eastern European folk (the article begins with a full-page photo of a woman with a large mole on her cheek and hay in her hair). One thing that particularly caught my eye was a lenghthy recipe for something called Struklji, which is Farmer Cheese Dumplings. The part I found most amusing was the description for how to work the dough.

Lightly flour dough and roll out on cloth with rolling pin, as evenly as possible, into a 24-by-20-inch rectangle, so that a long side of rectangle is nearest you. Dough should be thin enough for you to see any pattern on tablecloth.

Perhaps this is a gene sequence that, had we actually been first-generation Slovenians, would have given us the ability to work dough like this in our sleep. Much the way that we as American children have a sixth sense on how to intuitively make a box of Macaroni and Cheese from memory.

In all fairness, I need to come clean on the fact that baking is not my strong suit. I made my first official, homemade pie-crust just last year, and have yet to successfully produce an edible dough that involves yeast and kneading. I think part of the problem is that my highly segmented brain is confused by the combination of precision and chemistry required in baking, while also being a skill based on feel and intuition. It just freaks me out. ONE OR THE OTHER PEOPLE – ONE OR THE OTHER!

I guess, basically, what it comes down to is this: I can claim to be as big a foodie as I want, but when it really comes down to it, I wouldn’t last a minute back in the land of my people.