Monday Riches

Last Monday was one of those days when I was looking forward to bedtime before I even got up in the morning. We were all tired from the weekend. The children didn’t sleep as long as they should have. Gabriel had to be gone in the afternoon and evening. Crankiness ensued on all sides.

Finally, after supper, we went on a walk to lift the spirits. They stayed aloft until we came back in the door, and bedtime dismally greeted the progeny of the family. They refused to settle down, although they normally are happy to go to bed. Finally I got Gregory up and rocked him until Bronwyn came and wanted to be in my lap too. I pulled her up, along with her spotty blanket without which her soul would shrivel up and die. I rocked my two babies, and I thought, I am so rich.

I am so rich.

Apology

I’ve been gently reminded by my husband that it really isn’t Christian to say you hate anybody, even if you meant it to be cheeky and not seriously. So if you live in a place where you can buy frozen southern biscuits, I don’t really hate you, and I’m sorry for saying I did. Maybe the next time you pop some in the oven you could pray that I would learn how to be more honest and diplomatic and less of a drama queen.

Southern Biscuits From Scratch

(click photo to go to source)

Do you like those flaky, mile-high, buttery discs of heaven that come from southern USA and are called biscuits? I do, too. Do you live in a place where you can buy them frozen, pop them in the oven to bake, and eat them? If you do, I hate you (in a Christian way, of course). If you don’t, let me tell you how you can make them. (I adapted this recipe from one I found on the internet. Does that make it “mine” since I made it a few times now? I never know.) You’ll need:

2 C. flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 T. butter, frozen
2 T. lard, frozen
1 C. buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 450 F or 230 C. Lightly grease a baking sheet.

Mix the dry ingredients. Grate the frozen butter and lard into the dry ingredients and mix lightly until it’s well distributed. Make a well in the mixture, and pour the milk into it. Working quickly, mix lightly until you have a sticky dough.

Scrape the dough out onto a floured surface and pat it flat. Sprinkle it with a bit of flour, fold it in half, and pat it flat again. Repeat until you have folded it four or five times. Using a biscuit cutter or drinking glass, cut the biscuits. Be sure not to twist the cutter as you cut them out; just push it straight down into the dough. Pushing it straight down means you don’t pinch the edges of the biscuit together, so you’re sure to get the high, flaky layers that characterize a southern biscuit. I think I got about 8-9 biscuits out of one batch. (I rework the scraps into more biscuits, even though they may not get as nice as the first cutting does.)

Place the biscuits on the baking sheet, throw ‘em in the oven, and bake about 15-20 minutes.

You can eat these with sausage gravy, with butter and maple syrup, or just on their own right out of the oven. Goodness, my mouth is watering already.

Our Kids

We’ve been having normal life lately. It’s so nice.

Gregory takes daily swing rides. When our neighbors noticed Bronwyn vigorously “helping” her brother swing, I mentioned something about the first child being made of china, but the second child is made of plastic. “It looks more like he needs to be made of rubber,” our neighbor replied dryly.

Bronwyn remains fascinated with horses. “Ho’se? Ho’se?” And one of us has to go get Gregory to put on her back for a horsey ride.

A friend loaned us her Bumbo seat. Gregory likes to sit in it and think Deep Thoughts About Life. (Notice the spoon in his lap? He’s still looking for it in his hand.)

And this happened the other day when I combed Bronwyn’s hair into braided pigtails for the first time.

I laughed so hard.

There’s a peek into our daily lives. I’d love a peek into yours!

-A Grateful Mama

A True Dubliner

I read somewhere (okay, here) that being a true New Yorker means:

• you don’t gawk at celebrities on the street
• you know how to maneuver through the tourists without breaking your pace
• you can tell a cabbie the best route to take to get you to your destination
• you don’t feel threatened when walking at night

I have accomplished all of those things in Dublin except the first, mainly because a) I don’t recognize many celebrities, and b) there aren’t many in Dublin. But man, it’s good to be at home here and feel like this is “our” neighborhood. Tomorrow I’ll feel like a foreigner and a dumb immigrant again, but that’s how culture shock works. Next week I’ll be back to feeling at home.

Don’t get me wrong — I still consider myself a country girl at heart, but I do see some advantages to city life. Choice of four grocery stores within a mile of your house? Doctor, pharmacy, convenience store, and lovely park within walking distance? Largest shopping centre in Ireland a ten-minute drive from your house? Yes, thanks, I’ll enjoy that while I have it.

Greek Roasted Potatoes

Image from Martha Stewart

For my Valentine’s menu, I wanted Greek roasted potatoes. I was low on groceries and needed to come up with a decent side dish with four potatoes and two carrots, so I made Greek roasted vegetables instead. I’ve also tried this with turnips, but they weren’t too great. I bet parsnips would be, though!

Garlic. Lemon. Oregano. You cannot lose. Here is the recipEEE!

Greek Roasted Potatoes

3 pounds baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup olive or canola oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons oregano or Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup beef stock or chicken stock
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Place potatoes in a single layer in a 9×13 pan and pour oil over them. Add garlic and seasonings and toss well to coat. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes. Add broth, toss, and bake again for 10 minutes. Add lemon juice, toss, and bake till soft, about 15-20 minutes more. Stir occasionally.

This Is Us

A friend needed a picture of our family tonight, so after supper we went outside before the light died. I put the camera on the waste bin, propped it up with a roll of paper towels, glanced through the owner’s manual to learn how to do the self-timer, and came up with four shots of the Gabriel Jantzi family before the battery died.

*** *** ***

On an unrelated note, Gabriel’s and my bedtime conversation went something like this:

Me: It seems lots of places are having an early, mild spring.

Him: Yeah, all across the northern hemisphere.

Me: It gives me a sense of impending doom.

Him: You know what, I don’t worry about that at all. I don’t think it’s coming, but if it comes, bring it on. (Grins) I won’t have to pay back student loans then.

 

*** *** ***

There, now you have a picture of our family and a glimpse of our relationship as Jennifer the Pessimist and Gabriel the Eternal Optimist of Wonder and Light.

Sincerely,

Your Resident Pessimist

Gregory: Four Months

Oh Gregory! You’re four (and a half) months old.

You weigh about 14 pounds and are in the 90th percentile for height.

You go to bed at 7:30-8:00 every night now, sleep until about 4:00 when you wake up to feed and go back to sleep until around 7:00. You still take a nap between almost every feed during the day.

You are so giggly. It’s so much fun to make you laugh and laugh. We were a little worried when you didn’t smile for your first six weeks, but you are definitely making up for it now.

You like watching your big sister play. You like being in the doorway jumper or playing on the floor. You also like being in your car seat (we can’t get over how different you are from Bronwyn) and almost always take a nap or are just happy when we go driving somewhere. You can also roll from your tummy to your back.

We still can’t really figure out who you look like. Definitely a Jantzi, but other than that you just seem to look like Gregory!

You’ve already had a mini haircut. You are kind of bald at the sides but the hair in the back was getting long and straggly. Mama said your hair looked like an old man’s hair. So one night Mom and Dad took a scissors to it — but they cut it too short, so now you look like an Amish old man who just got a haircut.

The following documents Mama’s pitiful attempt at getting a good shot of you and Bronwyn:

Ha. Lunch and a nap made everything better.

Today we’re going to the embassy to complete your paperwork for your American passport application. Last time we were there, they told us they need a certified copy of our marriage certificate. Your uncle mailed it to us from Canada, but apparently it got lost because we never got it! So we ordered another one from the courthouse in South Carolina, and now that should be all we need to get your passport and American citizenship.

We can’t imagine life without you, Gregory!

<3

Sometimes I Take Pictures Of Things That Make Me Happy

Sunshine

on a wash line full of cloth diapers

and a little girl with messy hair and rubber wellies

=happiness

(Yes, we have daffodils in full bloom in February.)

10 Things

(source)

Ten things you may not have known about living in Dublin:

1) Traffic is slow, clogged, and awful, but it’s not scary in the sense of NYC-traffic-scary. In fact, drivers here tend to be more courteous than the average American driver (and definitely more courteous than the average Canadian driver. Sorry if that offends any Canadians (but it’s true; even Gabriel admits it).). But the streets and roads were built for a horse-and-carriage society, and there just doesn’t seem to be room for expansion. Rush hour is a terrible time to drive anywhere. Once it took me an hour to drive seven kilometers. Ridiculous! The positive side, of course, is the courtesy. You can pull out in front of someone and it’s okay as long as you wave at them or put on your four-ways to say thanks.

2) The city water is free.

3) Dublin has some really, really nice parks. Just across the road from us is a beautiful one with a river, a walled-in garden, walking paths, and a museum. All free. Bronwyn and I like to go over there and just wander around. We’re also within a few kilometers of two other nice parks, both of which have great playgrounds for little tots and big kids.

4) There are three maternity hospitals in Dublin, all dedicated solely to the care of women and infants. I could write a lot more about the prenatal care here, and I plan to do that soon.

5) Just a ten-minute drive from our house is the largest shopping centre in the country. It has over eighteen acres of floor space and some of the narrowest parking spaces I’ve ever seen (just ask Mom how I managed an eleven-point turn while trying to park there one day when she was along).

6) Traffic again: streets are so, so poorly marked. About a year after we were here, Gabriel got a free phone with a package deal from a mobile phone company, and the phone has a GPS with downloadable maps. That has been invaluable to us SO many times; it would be such a pain to drive in Dublin without it. I really don’t know how anyone drives in Dublin without a GPS unless they grew up here and know all the streets and roads by memory.

7) It’s a windy city, probably because it’s so close to the coast. Gabriel checks the forecast and groans when he sees high wind predicted because it makes his cycle ride to school even worse than normal. (No, he doesn’t like cycling to school, but he does it for the health benefits and because it saves money, and because (traffic again!) it’s easier than fighting traffic.)

8) Homeowners paint their doors whatever color they feel like painting them.

9) Dublin is essentially a collection of villages that grew together. That’s why part of our address is “Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.” Each “village” usually has a parish centre/Catholic church, a bank, a butcher, a few shops, a druggist, a GP’s office, and if you’re lucky, a public library. And OF COURSE a pub.

10) The buses are double-decker. Riding on the top of a double-decker bus is one of the best ways to see the city.