Sprung At Last

Waukau (Berry Pancake)

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The Child is going on a trip. She will fly on a plane without me; she will hand her passport to a customs officer by herself. She will see Niagara Falls, someplace I have never seen, and ride the Maid of the Mist, something I have never done.

I should be happy; I will have some much-needed time to myself. I should be proud; look at my girl, growing up fast! I should be excited; she has the opportunity to see more of the world, something I have always wanted for her.

I am sure that I am all of these things, though it doesn’t feel like it when I think about it too much.

She and one other girl were invited on the trip by a friend from school, also an only child; she is going to Canada with her family for ten days at the end of the summer. Just before the trip, we have dinner with the family so we could talk about the plans for the trip. The mother of the other invited girl, is also a single mother, is also there. She talks a lot, as she usually does, about nothing in particular: there are no pauses or silent moments around her.  The Child and her friends hang out in the hammock while the adults grill and marinate and slice and discuss things like allergies and food preferences and the validity of American health insurance in other countries.

I write notes and make a to-do list in a small notebook: The Child will need a suitcase and water shoes. There isn’t much for me to do: the host girl’s father has thought of every possible detail, and paid for everything. I try to think of things I should be asking, but it seems to be under control, and in any case, the constant chatter makes it hard to focus, so I don’t: I relax and watch the three girls, giggling in the hammock.

We amble through dinner, sipping lemonade and discussing the latest advances in mosquito-repulsion technology. The chatter starts to wear on me, and I find things to do to be in a different room from it, when I can: I help out in the kitchen, and then focus my attention on the host mother’s cookbook collection. She likes Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country, and I find myself entranced by America’s Best Lost Recipes, a collection of vintage recipes that have been tested in a professional kitchen and tweaked if needed to provide reliable results.

I focus on the cookbooks as long as I reasonably can, but then the girls disappear into a playroom, and the four adults are left to discuss the final details. I suddenly realize The Child does not own a suitcase; she is leaving in just a few days and everything has been thought of except the most basic travel necessity. The Departed packed his stuff in her suitcase when he left, and she and I have shared a suitcase ever since, but I am taking advantage of her trip to go away for a few days, too – and I never thought to buy her a new suitcase.

No suitcase. Not ready.

I remind myself that, like the babysitting, she is more ready than I realize. She is among friends and clearly well cared for. She will be gone for ten days, and will come home glowing with stories and memories.

A day or two before she leaves, I get a copy of America’s Best Lost Recipes from the library, and make her a special breakfast: Waukau, a berry pancake that is partly fried and partly baked, kind of like the pancake version of a frittata. It sounded really good, and not hard.

Waikau1

The recipe called for what seemed like a lot of sugar, so I reduced the amount, but the end result was still a bit too sweet for our taste. The pancake itself had a nice crispy bottom, and a crispy-sweet top from the sugar, with the all the berries resulting in a soft middle. The pancake base has very little flavoring and no sugar, so the whole dish is really about the topping.

Neither of us really liked it, though we both had ideas about what would make it better: Less sweet and more tart. I thought a strawberry-rhubarb mix with cinnamon sugar would cut the sweetness, or even just something more tart that the blueberries I used.

Or maybe just less sugar.

My Waukau also did not spread out to fill the pan as the recipe indicated, though it still puffed up nicely. This may have been my fault, since my pan is slightly larger than the 12-inch size called for in the recipe.

It wasn’t what we expected, and The Child didn’t eat much of hers.

Waikau2

 

 

Waukau (Berry Pancake)
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 large egg
  • ½ tsp vanilla
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 cups fresh berries
  • ½ cup sugar
Instructions
  1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Whisk the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk the milk, egg, and vanilla in a small bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the milk mixture in. Whisk until combined; a few small lumps may remain.
  2. Melt the butter in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Pour the batter into the center of the skillet and let it level itself. Scatter berries over the batter, leaving a 1-inch border around the edges. Sprinkle the sugar over the berries, again avoiding the 1-inch border.
  3. Bake until the edges are puffed and deep golden brown, 50-60 minutes. Transfer to a serving plate and serve immediately.
Notes
Use any combination of berries that appeals to you for this recipe. I used blueberries. The original recipe calls for ¾ cup sugar; I reduced this amount to ½ cup and still found it to be a bit on the sweet side.
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Ginger Flank Steak

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Although she is initially pleased at the result of her yard sale, The Child quickly realizes that she needs to find a source of income: the yard sale was a lot of work for not much money, and worse, eventually she was going to run out of stuff to sell. She starts to research.

Can I take surveys online for money? she asks.

No, I tell her.

Can I sell the photographs I take on this website?

Sure, unless you have to be 18 to do that, I say.

She grumbles and mutters. In the early part of the summer, she got training to be a lifeguard at the city pool, but even though she was allowed to take the class, and passed it, she was not old enough to work as a lifeguard, and spent her summer helping out as an unpaid volunteer at the little-kid swim class.

I say encouraging, mom-ish things, telling her she’s laying the foundation for a great summer job in the future, and eventually she’ll get paid for her efforts. She wants to get paid now. She signs up for a babysitting class, which is then canceled for lack of participants.

She attempts an allowance re-negotiation, complete with legal-looking contracts. I consider her proposals, and, realizing her allowance will decrease if I agree to them, end the discussions.Let’s talk about grades, I tell her.

She sulks.

I send an email to the next door neighbor, who has an at-home jewelry business. Any ideas? Please?

Can she babysit for us? I’m desperate next Saturday, she says.

I text The Child and her reply is immediate: OMG, YES!!!!!!

I plan to be home the evening of her first babysitting job, so I’ll be right next door if anything – anything at all – is needed. Or happens. Or she has questions. Or gets lonely after the little neighbor girls go to sleep.

I can do it, The Child tells me. She heads over to the neighbors’ house at the appointed time, and I watch nervously as the neighbors drive off, leaving my little girl in charge of two even littler girls.

I putter in the back yard, checking on my garden, and listening to them play in the yard next door. I hear squeals and fun and hope nobody gets hurt. After a while, I don’t hear them anymore. I go out to the mailbox – I think I might have forgotten to get the mail – and The Child is in the neighbors’ driveway, sidewalk chalking with the little girls. I ask her how it’s going.

You don’t have to be here, she tells me.

I head back inside, and after a while, make dinner. I don’t want to make anything fussy – in case I get called away to help next door – and I really, really want steak, which I can’t eat when The Child is around. I make one of my fallback recipes, a ginger-soy marinated flank steak, which is simple to make, tasty, and cooks quickly on the grill. I toss some asparagus in sesame oil and grill them alongside the steak for a light late summer meal. (The steak can also be broiled, and is super atop a bed of rice pilaf for a heartier meal.)

When dinner is done, I check in with The Child, by text, and she replies: I’m fine. I relax a bit and watch a movie, drifting off to sleep for a while. I wake up at 10, and send The Child another check-in text, but this time, she does not reply.

I try not to panic. I didn’t hear any police cars or fire engines. I turn on the porch light, just in case, and check next door, but the neighbors’ house just sits quietly, revealing nothing.

I sit on the couch, awake, and wait for The Child to return – and around midnight, she does. The neighbor delivers her to my doorstep, where she stands, beaming I did it and clutching $40.

It was so awesome, she tells me. This babysitting thing is so awesome! All you do is play with them, and feed them, and then eat and watch tv. And you get paid for it!

It’s a great gig, I tell her.

It’s easy, she says, and beams.

 

Ginger Flank Steak

 

Ginger Flank Steak
 
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I never make the mushroom topping for this, because it's simple and delicious on its own. But I've included the directions for those who might want to try the dish in its complete original form. generally skip the mushroom topping when I make this. It's delicious on its own.
Author:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • ¼ cup soy sauce
  • 2 Tbsp fresh ginger minced
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 Tbsp pepper
  • 1½ - 2½ lb flank steak
Instructions
  1. Mix all ingredients besides steak. Marinate overnight.
  2. Broil or grill steak 5 minutes per side.
  3. Optional:
  4. Slice 1 lb mushrooms
  5. Saute mushrooms in 3 tbsp butter, cayenne pepper, and juice of 1 lemon.
  6. Add reserved marinade and boil.
  7. Serve over steak with pilaf.
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Classic Peanut Butter Cookies

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The Child wants to have a yard sale. I have no idea why this should be, as I’ve done nothing – ever – to encourage her or instill the idea that a yard sale would be fun. I have sold stuff at exactly one yard sale since she was born, and she was not yet three and so doesn’t remember spending an entire day trying to stave off boredom by sorting change.

I took her to a yard sale once, and bought her a Lite-Brite set for a dollar; we got home and discovered it didn’t have enough pegs left to be of any use. I ended up buying a pound of pegs on eBay for an amount of money that wasn’t unreasonable, but did make the Lite-Brite somewhat less of a screaming deal. I suspect that there are people who go from yard sale to yard sale collecting pegs from Lite-Brite sets and selling them online to people like me, who arrive at the very same yard sales an hour later and don’t think to check the box before buying the peg-free Lite-Brite unit.

I’m fine with the Lite-Brite subeconomy – seriously, kudos to whoever thought that one up – I just don’t want to be a part of it. Nor do I want to sit outside on a rare sunny Seattle day waiting for people to come by and haggle with me over prices that are laughably low to begin with.

But, The Child reminded me, this was all her job. It was going to be her yard sale. Her sale, her stuff, her money. And so I relented, and when school let out, the first Saturday that the weather seemed like it might cooperate and one of The Child’s friends was around to help out, I stuck a yard sale sign out on the street as two girls finished putting price tags on the remnants of their toys and early readers.

Little kid stuff, they said, as I surveyed the dolls and stuffed animals and Disney VHS tapes.

People stopped by and it quickly became clear that my help was not needed – first, because they’d done enough preparation and had all the change and math skills they needed; but second because people didn’t really seem to be buying very much.

A neighbor boy stopped by and bought a stuffed animal. Another neighbor came by and asked if the girls would try to sell a couple of pictures for him; they agreed, and when the pictures failed to sell, they each chose their favorite one and he made a gift of them.

Mostly though, they sat around and played Minecraft and waited for customers. They didn’t complain, but I learned later, the customers did: The prices were too high. Much too high.

One lady yelled at me because I asked to much money for that red hat, The Child told me later.

What did you do? I asked.

I sold it to her for her price, she told me.

I can’t decide if I am disappointed or pleased with her lack of haggling ability, and simply note that this personality trait is clearly nurture, not nature – being half Jewish and half Dutch, The Child should surely have quite the talent for bargaining. I wonder if this is one of those recessive traits, and whether someone has done a study on this.

I notice the large box of stuffed animals has disappeared, and she tells me proudly that some ladies from the Humane Society came by looking for stuffed animal donations, and were thrilled to take the entire box.

Did you get a donation receipt? I ask.

No, says The Child.

How do you know they were from the Humane Society? I ask.

Because they said they were, she tells me.

I decide I don’t really care where the stuffed animals went as long as it isn’t back in my garage.

The Child ended up with about $30 for all her efforts, which was clearly not as much as she’d been hoping for, but she seemed satisfied: She did it by herself, and had money to show for it.

My only contribution to the day, other than hanging the yard sale signs, was to make some cookies for the girls to sell, to possibly make some extra cash. At least, that was my excuse: the truth of the matter is that I saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies in Joanne Chang’s Flour cookbook, and all I could think was, I haven’t had a peanut butter cookie in years. I asked The Child what she thought about the idea and she said, I’ve never had a peanut butter cookie.

How is that possible? I asked nobody in particular.

Everyone is allergic to peanuts, she said.

It was a valid point: I’d stopped keeping peanut butter in the house, since I couldn’t use it in her lunches – it was banned from her elementary school. She’s not allergic to peanuts, but because everyone else is, she’d never tasted a peanut butter cookie.

The cookies from Flour are everything a peanut butter cookie should be: giant and soft, but not overly so, with a bit of crunch for texture. They’d be perfect dipped in milk, if you happen to like to dip cookies in milk. I loved Chang’s technique of using a 1/4-cup scoop to measure out the cookies, which were perfectly large.

The cookies didn’t really sell well, like everything else that day, but we liked them, and in spite of the lack of customers, they were gone in no time.

 

Peanut Butter Cookies

Classic Peanut Butter Cookies
 
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Author:
Serves: 24
Ingredients
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1¾ cups crunchy peanut butter
  • 2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
Instructions
  1. In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides frequently while mixing.Beat in the eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined. Add peanut butter and beat on low about two minutes, or until thoroughly combined.
  2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture, mixing at low speed just until the dry ingredients are incorporated.
  3. Scrape the dough into an airtight container and refrigerate at least 3-4 hours, preferably overnight.
  4. When ready to bake, heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Drop the dough by ¼ cup balls onto a baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Flatten each ball with your palm, then use a fork to create the traditional criss-cross pattern.
  5. Bake 18-20 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown on the edges, but still slightly soft in the center. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
I took these out a bit later than Chang suggested and my cookies were more crispy than chewy. I loved them that way.
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