Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Youth of Townsend Demand Arepas

Another two half days in a row, so I've had to be fleet in the writing. I took a full three days off for Valentine's Day and the long weekend, so I sat, blocked, facing the screen this morning at 9:15.

Oh well, might as well write, I thought. Two-thousand words later I was up to a the crucial chapter, where it all comes together, and on a roll. But the alarm sounded and I had to pick up the Dufflebag from school. Half days!

So I picked him up and we went to the library to get him a poetry book for a school project. I asked the librarians to recommend a book, and they did, and that helped us greatly. The Dufflebag is at the age where he isn't quite sure what a poem is, and he had previously offered a book on fossils and a comic book as his texts of choice for the project. This might sound strange to you, but I once met a presumably literate adult who thought poetry and prose were the same thing, only that prose was poetry done well. As in, written by the pros.

We got home and I hopped back on the computer. The Dufflebag followed me into the room and started reading poems out loud to me.

"Does it help to read them out loud?" I asked, through gritted teeth.

"It does, come to think of it!" he said.

"Great. That's just great."

I shut the laptop. I've retired for the day.

*

After working on the project, he went upstairs and I started working on lunch. I had some ground beef, and was originally going to bake bread with him, but there was a scheduling conflict with a pot of slow cooking baked beans. So I searched around in the books for a bread I could make on the oventop. I found one for arepas. I didn't have all the ingredients and was forced to substitute blue cheese dressing for actual blue cheese, which meant this threw off the proportion of the masa, but I think I got it close enough. I also added cumin and diced jalapenos. Otherwise, I went by the specs.

I'm not sure how traditional they tasted. They were like a cross between a pancake, fried dough, a biscuit, and a custard. The Dufflebag loved them and wanted more. You can never tell with him, but the list of go-to dishes is growing rather than diminishing. Plus, he inexplicable claimed to like Joanna Newsom when she played randomly on my ipod. I'm sure Jess isn't happy to hear this as she hates all female singers.

Just kidding, Jess. She made clear after a previous post that this isn't the case, and she only hates ninety-nine percent of them. Just kidding, baby. I'll be good. I promise.

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