Foodie With Family ~ Life Happens!

School’s out for the summer!  Right.  School never really stops around here; we just take the occasional book-based learning breather.  Right now, the kids are spending hour upon hour laying in the grass -staring up at the clouds or down at the creepy crawlies hiding in the greenery- and soaking up a winter’s worth of Vitamin D.

There has been snake wrangling…

Who do you think moved faster when the snake wriggled out of mini-Jeff Corwin’s hands?  The boys or their mom?

There has been a snapping turtle sighting in the front yard…

Yeah, I see you gorgeous.  Just keep on moving.  If it’s all the same to you, I don’t want my kids to encounter you under the porch and lose a digit or two in a most unpleasant way…

Look.  I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re not invited to stay.  Keep on turning.

Buh-bye now.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  Phew.

And the lawn is packed full of  amphibians -both teensy and massive- who are endless sources of wonderment.

How does so much cuteness get packed into such a tiny little creature?

And then there was this afternoon.  The boys and a friend were exploring the back yard when they happened upon a dead baby bird -so young it only had little tufts of feathers- that had fallen from its nest.  They very solemnly decided to provide it with a proper burial.  Shovels were grabbed.  A vastly oversized grave was dug.  The tiny sun-bloated and smelly unfortunate was ceremoniously lowered to its final resting place.  A grave marker was meticulously crafted from scrap wood and Sharpie markers.  Grave marker, fresh flowers, and bits of shimmery quartz were arranged around the freshly dug earth.

I’m just going to let that name soak in a little bit.

Do you get it?

What a bunch of wild men.

Do you have magical summer childhood memories?  Floating down a slow-moving creek in an inner tube?  Sand castles that rivaled Windsor Palace? Sun-kissed skin and toes dappling in water from a sweltering dock?  Munching on mint leaves that grew by a beach? Ice cream dripping down cones and hands and arms? Baseball games and picnics and berry-picking and naps in hammocks?  What do you remember most?

This is the story of my mother’s fiftieth birthday and her durian.

This is my mother.

This is a durian.

This image comes courtesy of Wikipedia. When we had our very own durian staring us in the face we didn't know it would become the stuff of family legends and thus did not photograph it. Ah well.

My Mom is into adventure and excitement.  She doesn’t just march to the beat of her own drummer, she grooves to the rhythm of her foot on the sustain pedal.  She’s always the one with the fun ideas.  So when she was about to turn fifty (a handful of years ago) we thought we should do something exciting, wild, unusual and symbolic of what Mom meant to us.

My little sis, Jessamine, and I went to the store to seek inspiration.  And we ran into a durian.  It hurt.  Really.  I mean look at that thing.  It looks like it should be swinging from the end of a mace on some medieval battlefield.

It seemed exotic.  It was in the produce section.  “Mom loves exotic fruits!” we reasoned.  “Remember when she bought us that starfruit when we were kids?” (Starfruit WAS exotic in rural northern Michigan at the time. ) “Remember how Mom always encouraged us to try new things?”  It was a done deal. The two of us maneuvered the deadly looking fruit into our cart, bought a sturdy gift bag to use to wrap the fruit and were on our way.

At home, we stashed the gift bag on the counter and hurriedly finished prepping food and decorations for the party.

Hours later, friends and family gathered round her in the sunny front yard, Mom started opening her gifts.  Music, books, scarves -Mom’s favorite things- were present in abundance.  Jess stood holding our gift bag with our precious, symbolic gift for the woman who raised us so lovingly.  And Jess had a strange expression on her face.  She turned to me, thrust the gift bag into my hands and took two steps back.  I shrugged.  I passed the gift bag to Mom.  She opened it and listened sweetly to our explanation of why we picked such a scary looking item for her.  Her reaction was much as we expected.  She offered to open it and share.

That was the first problem.  We hadn’t really researched how to open one of these buggers.  One of the menfolk shrewdly suggested a hatchet.  Said hatchet was produced and the durian was cracked open.

And that was the second and biggest problem.  It smelled like roadkill at noon on a hot summer’s day and had the texture of runny scrambled eggs.  Holy wah.  While several people (counting spouses and friends) instantly fell away, those of us who were raised for a life of culinary adventure held firm. Sister Jessamine hesitated, watched Mom hold a drippy piece up to her nose to smell and refused to try it.  Little brother, Luke, baby sister Airlia and I all agreed to eat our pieces on the count of three.

One. (Wow.  This stuff looks gross.)

Two.  (This smells revolting.)

Three.

Airlia ate her piece, ran and threw up under a tree in my front  yard.

Luke spit his out.

And me?  I chewed it and swallowed it and tasted the foul sulfur taste for the two weeks that followed.

I’m still bitter.

As for Mom?  Well, she didn’t like it.  And I’m not even sure whether she actually got any closer to trying it than that one little squelchy piece that made Jess smarter than the rest of us.

All I know is this.  Durian doesn’t just look deadly. And as we draw near Mom’s sixtieth birthday, we’ve been asking what she’d like for her party.  Her first request?  No durians.

*After the party was over and the crowd went home we decided to learn a little about the durian.  Interestingly enough, even in Asia, where it is revered by many as “The King of Fruit” (ew), there are many who experience intense disgust at the smell and taste of durian.  I’m in the intense disgust crowd.  Forever.  And my smart little sister?  Well, she admitted that she smelled the durian’s stench coming from the bag and shoved it off on me.  So much for sisterly love.

Meet Maggie.  Maggie is the daughter of my dear friend Alison.  Alison and I are such good friends that we cherish a not-so-secret hope that we will one day be legally related.  In fact, despite the fact that I moved to our high school a year and a half after she did, had different last names, and different accents many teachers thought we were sisters.  Evidently the Michigan accent is indiscernable from the Canadian one to a New York ear.

Remember Leif and the blueberries?

Say 'hi!' to Mags, Leify...

This morning, Alison heard Maggie shuffling around in the bathroom.  When Alison asked Maggie what she was doing, Maggie responded with something along the lines of, “Not playing with your biptick, Mummy.”  You judge:

Did she or didn't she? (I actually think she did a bloomin' wonderful job applying it for a 3 year old. She does better than I do...

Did Miss Mags get into the biptick and did Leif get into the blueberries?

Clearly, Maggie and Leif have a similar personality.  This led Alison and I to arrange their marriage.  Skip all those dreaded heart-breaking teen years and whatnot.  I think we’re onto something.

When my devilishly sweet little fourth born rolls out of bed in the morning, this is the look he sports.

I don’t know how in the world this happens, but it does.  Every single morning.  Without fail.

And I have not discovered the hair care product yet that can tame it.  Most days it’s easiest to let it fly.  Sundays before church I try to tame his horns just a wee bit.

The hair starts creeping back up midway through the service and by the time everyone is gathering around the refreshment table they’re back up and flying. 

He has a devilish sweet tooth, this one…

In the interest of passing along much too much information, I’d like to point out that there was much rejoicing over here last night. Our tankless water heater is working again after 6 days of no hot water.

Now you might not think 6 days is a big deal. Heat water on the wood stove or the stove top, sponge bathe, go all “Little House on the Prairie”, etc… But I’m here to tell you that in a home with 6 males you’d better hope your water heater never fails. Ever. Because after 24 hours the smell cloud is overwhelming.

But here’s where my inner Pollyanna is going to speak up. The folks at Rheem were awesome. They had amazing technical support people available on the phones. These people were (a) sympathetic and (b) competent and (c) understandable. It was the best customer service experience I’ve had in years! They overnighted the parts to us and stood by on the phone to talk us through the repair.

The Evil Genius installed the new electronics board and fan and programmed the chip per instructions. I then skipped up to the shower and threw it on full blast. I was good and wet when the water went cold. I believe my reaction went something like this, “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Because let me tell you, unheated well water in January is very, very bracing. He went downstairs, reset the heater and told me to try the shower again. I did. The water was great for five minutes and then turned into little daggers of ice all over my head again. This time I believe I was pretty colorful in my reaction. All those people who tell me I must be a saint for raising five boys should’ve been around to hear my little dissertation. I made it abundantly clear that I’m not in the running for canonization…

Monsieur le Evil Genius ran downstairs and called the technical services division for Rheem again. They told him the error code we were getting was a fuel sensor problem and that he should either check his connections or bleed the lines. (And doesn’t THAT just sound violent?) He checked his connections and -lo and behold- there was one little baby connection that was not where it should’ve been. Rheem and Evil Genius to the rescue once again.

I had my shower. I feel human again. I can handle life again. Bring it on.