Dear Kid,

It’s Pumpkin Muffin time again. Yesterday I made my World Famous Pumpkin Muffins, and in a moment of What Was I Thinking I decided to make a double batch. For the record, that’s a LOT of muffins.

With any luck, there will still be one or two waiting for you when you get home.

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? Although I don’t think many people get a novel written in a month. There are plenty of people who can barely get a novel read in a month.

Of course, it’s No Shave November. The original idea behind NSN was not only to raise awareness about cancer by being fuzzy, but that the money that would have been spent on shaving supplies should be donated to help educate people about cancer and/or to help fight cancer.

You are not required to go shaggy in order to donate.

Today is National Cashew Day. No one knows why.

It’s also Eat a Cranberry Day. Don’t know why you’d do that with all the pumpkin muffins sitting here, but to each his own bog.

Can’t wait to see you in a few days.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I know it’s close to the end of the day and I am dangerously close to not having a post today. But fear not, Oh Child of Mine, I am getting this on the web before today becomes tomorrow, so all is right with the world.

Word of Warning: I’m tired, so I don’t promise coherence.

Today has been a crazy busy day. I had to apologize to the puppy (twice) for accidentally getting flour on his fur (he looked like he’d encountered about 6 large, un-melting snowflakes—but he didn’t seem a bit concerned about his decorations). And I did a bunch of stuff that would sound really boring in print, so I won’t bother you with the details. You’re welcome.

Important: November 15 is National Recycle Day. It is also Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. I like to think there’s a connection, but the idea of recycling some of the things (and by “things” I mean science experiments) that sometimes end up in our frig is a little scary.

In honor of Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, I took some things out the frig and then put them back. No germs were harmed in the process.

It’s also Clevelanders Are Visiting Day. We’ve had a lovely time starting to catch up. It’s been a looong time and I am thrilled they are here. More about that tomorrow.

In other news, it’s cold. Not just chilly, but C-O-L-D. Also it’s not warm.

I think I need to go to sleep now.

You should probably recycle something.

Love you kiddo,

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

One of our favorite recipes from the new vegan cookie recipe book is Snowball Cookies. And by “favorite” I mean one of the two recipes we’ve made so far. (The fudge recipe is for tomorrow.)

These are fantastic. You are warned.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put parchment paper on two cookie sheets. Parchment paper may be the best invention modern cooking ever came up with.

Beat ¾ Cup of vegan margarine until it’s fluffy. Margarine fluffy, not Gabriel fluffy. Although if you eat enough of these, you can be both.

Add 1 ½ Cups of flour, half cup of powdered sugar (try not to cough from the powdered sugar cloud that engulfs your kitchen), 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and mix thoroughly. Add 1 Cup of dairy free chocolate chips. Eat a few chips to be sure they are good. Eat a few more to confirm your suspicions that they are quite delicious.

Scoop the dough onto the parchment paper-ed cookie sheets. I used my handy-dandy-ice-cream-scoop-like-cookie-dough-measurer which worked perfectly. You want them to look like little hills of yumminess. Be prepared to fight off people who think eating them pre-baking is a fine idea.

Bake for about 12 minutes. They’ll be a little golden around the edges but you will think they need to bake more. They don’t. They are shortbread-y, so they’ll look uncooked when they are perfect.

Remove from oven and immediately sift powdered sugar over the cookies. Do not make the mistake of forgetting to read the recipe the second time you make them and powdering them before you bake because it really doesn’t work out all that well. Let the cookies cool (again, be prepared to fight off the hordes) and sprinkle with powdered sugar again.

Serve.

Do not worry about how to package leftovers. Because there won’t be leftovers.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Sunday is an interesting day.

It’s either the first day of the week or the last day of the week depending on how you count these things. For some people it is a day of rest, for some it is a day of work, for some it is a day of football (at least this time of year), and for some it is a day of catching up and cooking.

No century (if you are following the Gregorian calendar) starts on a Sunday. Rosh Hashana never falls on a Sunday.

Today (for me) has turned into a day of grocery shopping (did you know that when you buy $200 worth of groceries you can’t really go through the Express Lane unless the lane you were going to go through is staffed by someone who REALLY wants to go on break?), baking, cooking, soup making, and football watching (although I didn’t turn on the Bengals game in time and missed the safety. Dang!). I am really hoping some elves show up to help clean in the kitchen but so far no sign of them.

You may be wondering where the name Sunday came from. Turns out there are a lot of etymological explanations. Unfortunately, all those explanations involve a LOT of words which I don’t have time to read (what with being the only one home to do any cleaning up in the kitchen).

Who Dey!

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

The first day of September has come and gone. The good news is that we’ll have a Sept 1 again next year. The bad news is that this year’s is past, never to be seen again. Enjoy today because tomorrow will be too late for 9/2/13.

Did you follow all that? I hope so.

Yesterday was a calm but wildly productive day. Got a bunch of cooking and some cleaning done in preparation for Grandma and Grandpa arriving on Wednesday. I love, love, love having them here. I only wish I had elves that worked harder to get the house presentable.

It’s a good thing I don’t live in a time when women are expected to make bread on a regular basis. First of all, you know how I feel about expectations. Secondly, kneading requires Serious Effort, which is why all those women had fabulous triceps. Mine are whining about even having to type this.

As we have long established, Bobby Flay, et al., have nothing to worry about in terms of competition from me. I remembered the raisins for the challah (yay), but we didn’t have enough white flour. Pi and I decided I could use wheat flour so what we can say for sure is that the challahs (or challot if you prefer) are round, raisin filled, and finished. What they taste like remains to be seen.

Et al is the abbreviation for the Latin et alia. Et alia literally means “and others.” It is used as a scholarly way of saying “and all the other dudes of a similar ilk but it would be too inconvenient to list them all here.” You can see why et al is a better option. Not to be confused with El Al which literally translated means “tourists flying to Israel.”

But here’s the Yup-That’s-My-Mom kicker: While the loaves were busy rising, I found the white flour. I knew we had more. I even looked on the shelves in the basement (where I eventually found it) and it Was Not There The First Time I looked. Seriously. Sneaky darn elves. Little guys need to spend more time cleaning and less time moving unsuspecting bags of flour around.

Also got the apple kugel made. Booker thinks apple kugel is much better than challah because random bits of apple falling on the floor are much more to his liking than random fluffs of whole wheat flour puffing into the air and making him sneeze.

Have a great Labor Day!

Love, Mom