“I do not know how the third world war will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth...rocks." - Albert Einstein

Ok, today might not have been the best day to start reading Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now.

Blazing car rammed into Glasgow airport

Controlled mayhem on London streets

"We're very very busy, and we've got a lot to do, and we haven't got a minute to explain it all to you." - BusyBusyBusy, Sandra Boynton

I FEEL as if I have been very very very busy. (But if I have, God knows what I have been doing.)

The two older boys have been at day camp every morning this week. They come home suntanned and hot and sweaty and tired and RAVENOUS. They eat like longshoremen and still I can count their ribs and see each vertebrae. I prescribe more ice cream.

We made popsicles out of orange juice with the new fancy-schmancy popsicle molds, and I dipped chocolate-covered frozen bananas, a remembered treat from my childhood that perhaps would have been better left as a fond memory.

We went swimming Monday afternoon (the intrepid Terzo tried to run away from me and jump in the big pool, and my sweet Seg showed me how he kicks his legs, learning to swim), but Wednesday afternoon we got rained out by an awesome thunderstorm. We all sat on the front porch and watched the rain pour down in sheets, and the lightning zap one of the big old oak trees near our alley. And then we had to run around the house mopping up under windows with towels, because I wasn’t quick enough closing everything up when the hail started.

Wednesday was also the day I lost my mind and vacuumed and then mopped all the floors on the first floor.

Terzo and I have gone grocery shopping TWICE.

But we also visited the train table (and the coffee bar, natch) at the local bookstore.

I worked (a new freelance venture) yesterday morning, and went into work yesterday evening. In between, I took a nice long nap, and afterward I stopped at my favorite neighborhood bar for buffalo bites. The food took FOREVER to come out, but my waitress was a sweetie pie. I sat and read Pardonable Lies and drank my Coke. It was all good.

This morning The Baby and I took a leisurely stroll, examining ants and stones and leaves. We collected sticks. We said hi to doggies and neighbors, and waved to buses and construction vehicles. We discovered that the neighborhood coffee shop is still not open (they are renovating and were meant to be open Thursday). Today, though, they were serving coffee from airpots out front, and the owner produced a doughnut for the very pleased Terzo. We sat on benches on the sidewalk and kibbutzed with everyone walking by. We met some new neighbors with their nine-month-old son, and caught up with some old neighbors, who have had a lovely new baby, who is four weeks old. Terzo charmed the pants off everyone. As always.

Primo has a friend coming over this afternoon, to play Stratego and hockey. His t-ball season wraps up tomorrow with a Parents-versus-Kids game.

We have two picnics to choose from for Fourth of July, and my older brother is coming to visit. H and I are going to a baseball game at the lovely PNC Park, to help celebrate his brother’s 40th. Zoo camp is the week after next, and swim lessons start last week of July.

I have twelve pints of blueberries from Hammonton, NJ, in my downstairs fridge, destined for pie, and a quart of “lusciousberries” (they look like plain old strawberries to me) from our CSA that are crying out for shortcake. I have to go find a recipe for kale, shred the kohlrabi for pancakes and zucchini for casserole for dinner tonight, and refill the popsicle molds.

God, now that’s only eighty degrees, I LOVE summer.

"Dad is great! Gives us chocolate cake!" - Bill Cosby

I never know what to get H for Father’s Day –but this year was relatively simple – I am having a portrait taken of the three boys together; we got him a new pair of sturdy leather work gloves since he lost his last pair; and I bought him a panini press. We were at a party over Memorial Day weekend at which the host served Panini with grilled veggies, meats, and cheeses. H was rapturous. It was a no-brainer.

We host Father’s Day dinner; in the past we have served grilled steaks but this enterprise frustrates H because his family is all about the well-done steak. H and I like our filet rare. It made him crazy and ruined his day to have to grill the living daylights out of a gorgeous piece of meat before anyone other than he and I would eat it.

Instead we prepped and grilled two eggplant, four zucchini, four red peppers; also sautéed two giant bunches of spinach. We offered fresh mozzarella, whole milk mozzarella, and sharp provolone (also white American for the kids). Our meat selection consisted of hot and sweet salami, cracked pepper roast turkey breast, hot capicolla, prosciutto, and Genoa salami. Our sides were fresh fruit (grapes and strawberries), devilled eggs, kettle potato chips, garlic- and feta-stuffed olives, a tossed green salad with carrots, cucumber, peppers, grape tomatoes, and field greens from our CSA. I baked a chocolate cake, served with vanilla ice cream, for dessert.

H wielded the press like a pro. Once we figured out that you kinda have to hold the sandwich back in the press with a wooden spoon until the bread heats and collapses a bit, they got a lot more professional looking. (Sorry, I did not take photos, as really, how would I explain THAT? My in-laws know the Internet exists, but that might be about it.)

I myself had a panini with prosciutto, provolone, zucchini, and spinach, chased by several (um, more than that) olives and about four devilled eggs. (I would have eaten more but everyone else ate them first – grumph.)

Liz at Pocket Farm is hosting a One Local Summer project, encouraging bloggers from around the country to eat at least one dinner a week created from local ingredients.

Still in the practically post-coital glow of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, I leapt aboard the bandwagon and signed up. I was thinking I might try to make my panini my first local meal for the project.

The ciabatta came from a local bakery that we know we are insanely lucky we have: their bread is amazing. Their raisin-walnut loaf is wonderful toasted with butter for breakfast, and I would walk across hot coals for their green-olive foccacia; often half of one was an entire meal when I was younger, thinner, and less, um, solvent. (What? Aren’t olives a vegetable?)

The butter was from Beaver Meadow Farm in nearby DuBois (that’s “DEW-boyz” to all you non-yinzers. I know, it makes my ears bleed, too.)

The prosciutto is made by Parma Sausage, in the Strip.

The spinach was from our CSA.

But the provolone was imported, as were the olives. I am sure my mother-in-law used Giant Eagle eggs for the deviled eggs, which means they could have been shipped from anywhere in the country. (I probably would have used eggs from Hillandale Farms, in Ohio, but really, I am still jonesing for my own chickens, although I need to investigate Mildred’s Daughters eggs.)

And that’s just what I ate; the rest of the cheeses, and lots of the meats, are most definitely not local. I think I can do better, especially for my first week out. But I have to admit, those panini are damn yummy.

So was the chocolate cake. H requested this one especially, as he likes the hint of cinnamon in the cake and the rich-without-being-too-sweet icing.

He may be a raging pain in the ass as a husband, but he’s a damn fine father and I was happy to celebrate the day with him and our three beautiful boys.

************

Brabham Family Chocolate Sheet Cake

(From Michael Lee West’s wonderful Consuming Passions)

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 sticks unsalted butter
4 TBSP cocoa
½ cup buttermilk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
½ tsp salt
1 scant tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together flour and sugar in a large bowl.
Boil water, add butter and cocoa and stir till everything is melted and it’s thickened a bit (it doesn’t get very very thick, just FYI).
Pour over the sugar and flour.
Using a large spoon, blend well.
Add buttermilk, eggs, salt cinnamon, soda, and vanilla.
Mix well.
Pour into a buttered 9x13 pan.
Bake 35 minutes.
Cool 5 minutes (preferably on a wire rack) and ice cake in its pan.


Chocolate Icing

1 stick unsalted butter
4 TBSP cocoa
6 TBSP milk
3 ½ cups confectioners sugar
1 TBSP vanilla

Melt butter in a saucepan.
Stir in cocoa.
Whisk in milk, pouring in a slow stream.
Remove from heat, add sugar and beat.
Stir in vanilla (and 1 cup chopped pecans if you like – we do not like.)
Icing will be grainy and lumpy. Pour over cake and spread to cover. Icing sets quickly so work fast.

We served this with Turkey Hill vanilla bean ice cream, from Lancaster County, about four hours east of here. (Reinhold’s is made right in Pittsburgh, and is the most delicious ice cream, but it’s not readily available in the typical grocery stores.)

And I forgot the vanilla in the frosting because Primo was interrogating me about what I was making, and I don’t do well when I am distracted when baking. It seemed ok, but I do wonder if it had anything to do with the icing not really setting? Which was fine, all gooey with the cold ice cream and all.

And since H left this morning with the two older boys for Stroudsburg and Thomas, the remainder of the cake is ALL MINE. Oh yes!

"If you ask me, there isn't enough blue food." - Mark Darcy in "Bridget Jones's Diary"

H went to play poker with friends tonight.
While I generally would rather read a book than watch a movie, I do have a small stash of old favorites, comfort movies, as it were.
Thye include “Moonstruck,” “Love Actually,” “The Parent Trap,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” and “Roman Holiday.”
Every once in a very great while, I will add to the collection. Recently I purchased a sure-to-be-godawful DVD called “Stick It!”
Its tagline caught my fancy: “It’s not called gym-nice-tics!”
I mean, c’mon, that’s FUNNY.
Plus, long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, when I was young and thin and shorter, before my seventh-grade growth spurt that put me at five-eight, I was a gymnast.
Not a particularly good one by any means – I spent an awful lot of time trying to learn to do an aerial (never succeeded) and a back extension (successful). I could do front handsprings but not back handsprings. I finally managed a back hip circle on the bars just before I grew half a foot.

I was gymnastics-obsessed - spent my seventh summer cartwheeling in my poor mother’s living room and jumping around on the front lawn pretending to be Nadia Comaneci. I amassed quite a clipping collection about Olga Korbut, Nadia, Ludmilla Turischeva, Tracee Talavera, Julianne McNamara – I knew all the names, all the big stars and the up-and-comers. I even subscribed to US Gymnast for a while.

I took lessons at a teeny little gym called Sunburst Gymnastics. I went once a week, for an hour, and then to gymnastics camp (half-day) for a week in the summer.
I competed in one meet, and I still have my medal (in fairness, I should tell you that everyone who competed got a medal, if you managed to do your back somersaults, and kick turns on the beam). Like everyone else in the gym, I sewed all my ribbons and patches to my leotard, and I wore little white anklets with colored pom-poms on the backs, and I will tell you right now, I HATED wearing grips on the bars, I only used chalk. I longed –yearned, I tell you - for calluses on my palms, and rips on those calluses.

My first floor routine was to the theme from Pink Panther (I could probably still do it if I had to – ba dum, ba dum, ba dum ba dum ba dum, ba dum ba DUMMMM, badadaDUM), second level floor was to Nadia’s Theme (natch), and the level three floor routine was to “Evergreen.” I never got past level three, sadly.

So. Did I watch this movie tonight? No, I did not. Because it was all the way UPSTAIRS and I was all the way DOWNSTAIRS and I am LAZY.
[WARNING: non sequitur approaching]
So I popped in “Bridget Jones.”

My favorite moment: when Mark Darcy kisses Bridget at the end, and she says, “Wait a minute. Nice boys don’t kiss like that.” And he growls, without even opening his eyes, “Oh, yes, they fucking do.” And then he wraps her in his overcoat.

The funniest moment: the fight scene between Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy.

The most heart-wrenching moment: when Mark meets Bridget’s friends, and is all shy and sort of awkward and cute, and then he flashes that gorgeous, elusive smile…sighhhhh...

The most cringe-inducing scene: Bridget’s speech at Mark’s parents’ ruby anniversary party. Or maybe when Bridget shows up at what she thinks is a tarts-and-vicars party in a Playboy bunny outfit, and everyone else is dressed normally…or when she answers the phone, “Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess," and it’s her mum...or...or...let’s face it, I love Bridget because she’s real. She fucks up. A lot. She says stupid things and acts like an ass. But she means well, and loves her mum and dad, and sticks by her friends. I would want her to be my friend. And tonight, for just a few hours, she was.

But she stole my boyfriend, just so you know.