Cornish Pasty

So, yesterday I went out with the fam (bb and his wife and daughters), to ... stuff. With bb it's always an adventure, because we go out to get gardening supplies, and instead we end up in Vienna (Virginia, although I wouldn't be surprised if it were Austria, either, knowing him) at a festival with rides and everything and end up in a little Cornish shop that sells pasties.

Pasties (not as in 'Paste' like glue, but pahst .. like ... pahsties ... I guess ... my Cornish isn't very good) are these puff pastries filled with savory stuff, like ground beef and potatoes or ground lamb and potatoes or diced chicken and curry and pees and (wait for it) potatoes.

It was ... AWESOME!

Little EM ordered the Provencial Chicken, a gravy filled goodness that we all agreed was best, but she didn't like it (too ... 'slimy'?), she liked her little sister's sausage roll.

*sigh* 'Merkins. All zey vant iz zee haut-dawg.

But the food wasn't the experience for me.

Okay, so: me, I come in with my big, crushable floppy hat that was supposed to save me from being turned into scalded lobster (do you think, for even one second, that I was spared that fate? The pasties weren't the only thing in that store that was pasty. I have nice sunburn now, as I write. ouch-ouch-ouch!).

Hair hennaed, and I come up to face this tall, towering imposing Bertha with 'Rish Red hair and Hazel eyes and a booming contralto voice, sizing me up and down for the phony that I am ('You're not Cornish. I am Cornish!'), and demanding to know what I want.

That was the first girl in there. 'Girl' meaning 'Grown woman.'

(*sigh*)

Then a guy comes along, behind the counter, and stuffs, like: 50 pasties on a cooking sheet the size of my bed into this huge oven. And he was like rail-thin (her husband?) and a big, red bushy beard, bigger than him, and a thin straw mop of red on top of his peakéd face and wanders back into the kitchen, not saying one word.

My mouth was hanging down by my feet by now.

AND THEN!

And then, we go up to pay and there's this woman half way inbetween those to shapes and sizes with long, red hair, sizing me up, contemptuously ('You're not Cornish, 'Merkin girl'), with blood, red eyes, the same color as my brothers, and, guess who's paying, having an animated conversation with the cashier with hands waving in the way, the only way, Italians can speak?

bb, himself.

And it turns out that that girl, the cashier, is 'Rish-Italian, so bb says, 'I'm Italian, too,' and they start bellowing at each other, in big friendly tones like they've know each other all their lives, trading stories about growing up in Irish-Italian neighborhoods and how their grandmothers would stuff them with food all they while gesticulating and shouting 'Eat! eat! eat!'

And I wanted to say, or did I whisper, 'I am, too!' I'm Irish-Italian too, but when it was my turn to speak, which, in an Irish-Italian conversation, it never is, unless you muscle your way into it, which I don't, so it never is, like I said, ...

... so when it was my turn to speak, I think the words got caught up in my throat when they glared at me when I said, 'um.'

The pasties were really good ... filling, too, I could only manage a few bites before I was full.

Granola nut

So, another entry in `phfina cookbook — granola:

• 2 cups old-fashioned Quaker oats (although Amish oats could work, too, I guess)
• 1 cup almonds, chopped
• ½ cup honey
  
• 1 cup (cran)raisins
  

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Roughly, lightly chop almonds (if they are chopped too fine, they burn ... I know @_@)
3. Mix almonds and Quaker/Amish/Unitarian oats on a cooky sheet, toast in oven until toasted, not burnt (like my first time) ... 10 minutes or so should (over)do it.
4. While toasting the Presbyterian oats, heat honey in pan, bring to a boil (I'm fo' realz here: really boil it)
5. Remove almonds/oats from oven, remove honey from heat. Quickly mix in the toasted Heavenly oats (that you didn't burn the Hell out of, geddit? Heavenly/Hell? *sigh*) into the honey, add the (cran)raisins. Mix until completely assimilated (like the Borg, but not)
6. Press mixture into a pie pan. And when I say 'press,' I mean press! so that it's all smooshed together, smooth and completely flattened and fills the pie tray.
7. Let cool for a while. Eat, every morning, by slicing out a `phfina-sized wedge. Leave time, after, in your morning routine for ... you know ... because they keep you regular. *ahem*

You like? I could write my own recipe book. That way I'd sound all grown up. A grown woman: me! `phfina! :D

I do sound like a grown woman, don't I? Or am I not even fooling you? :(

I would wonder if grown women wonder if they are grown women, but I already know that isn't true. Grown women don't wonder that. They don't have time to: I've watched them, I've heard about them, ... but I don't see them in the mirror. Grown women sternly shepherd their children from place to place: soccer club, the Cornish Pasty shop, the Memorial Day parade in the (sun)burning hot sun, never thinking of themselves and their tired feet, but watching over their brood like hawks and rolling their eyes at their husbands. Grown women cook supper of matzo ball soup for their sick kids, vomiting all over the place, neverminding the fact that they want to puke too: they just bear down, cook the soup, clean up the messes, the puke, that is, and comfort their crying babies to sleep, then do the laundry before dropping of, heavily, to sleep next to their snoring husbands.

Grown women have exactly 2 minutes 37 seconds to have a microburst conversation with their friend on the phone, and all the while, their children are tugging at their skirts, moaning: 'Mo-o-o-o-o-om-m-m-m-m!' and rolling their eyes at their grown women mommies so embarrassing them and when can they play on their mom's phone is the real question.

Grown women don't wonder if they are grown women. They simply are. They aren't little babies pretending to be independent because they haven't (yet) been kicked out of their apartment, because they just made rent payment, again, and published a silly little recipe to show the world, "Look, mommy, I'm a grown woman, I can write a recipe that is just one step above 'cold cereal and milk'!"

I do wonder, sympathetically, if grown women ever wish they were little babies, like me, again. But I know that's not possible ... for either of us: grown women, all grown up and mature, handling everything the world throws at them with grace, dignity, and hard, hard work, just like my Nana did, to her last day,

... and little babies, like me.

New story: Rosalie Gets Asked Out on a Date

Story title: Rosalie Gets Asked Out on a Date

summary: Rosalie has a new belle. A new belle who asks her out on a DATE! So exciting! Fluffic ... in the mode of phfina.

Read it, and review this one-shot with an 'update soon!' that always overjoys authoresses with your stunning display of wit, appreciation and insight.

Wait, that was sarcastic, wasn't it?

kisses

Girl Gamers? or just Gamers?

Hm ...and hm.