Let's see...eight elegantly-dressed female Barbies...and a single Ken doll naked from the waist down.

The girls don't usually do much with their Ken dolls. Sometimes they serve as obligatory princes or husbands, but they are mostly ignored.

This particular Ken doll was allowed to come to the princess party, I was informed, "because he had a fancy shirt."

The lack of pants apparently was not an issue, however. What kind of party is this? I'm not sure I want to know.

Oh, the things I will endure for the love of cooking. I've burned myself on the oven, I frequently slice my fingers, and I once dropped an entire frozen chicken (and the plate it was sitting on) on my toe.

Now I have a new experience to add to my list: inadvertently burning all the nerve endings in my fingers with jalapeno oil.

You see, yesterday afternoon I looked at the big bowlful of cherry (and a few Roma) tomatoes I had picked off our lovely tomato plants and decided that we just might have enough to make a batch of salsa. My husband, a lover of all things spicy, was going to be home from a trip soon, and I thought it would be a great idea to welcome him home with a jar of fresh, home-made salsa from our very own tomatoes.

As I chopped the jalapeno, habanero, and Anaheim peppers, I took a few precautions. I made sure I did it when the baby was napping. I didn't want to touch the spicy peppers, then thoughtlessly touch her poor little baby skin. I made sure I chopped the non-hot ingredients--tomatoes, oninons, cilantro and garlic--before turning my knife and cutting board to the hot stuff. And I made sure to wash my hands well when I was all done.

That's why I was surprised when, 20 or 30 minutes after I had completed my chopping and washed my hands, I touched my finger to my lips and immediately felt a burning sensation. I licked my lips. Mistake--more burning! I drank some milk and washed my hands twice more. The mouth-burning subsided.

Then, another half hour or so later, as I was putting my jars of salsa into the fridge, I noticed a burning sensation under my fingernails. It wasn't excruciating, but it wasn't comfortable either. I washed my hands again, thinking surely whatever pepper oils were lingering had to be gone.

By 10 p.m., my fingernails were fine, but the burning had moved down, to my finger tips and the area around the first knuckle of each finger. I googled to determine what to do when your pepper-chopping turns on you, but there was so much conflicting advice: soak your fingers in milk! soak them in vinegar! soak them in bleach-water! rub them in a tub of ice cream! (who wastes good ice cream by rubbing their fingers all over it?) that finally I just went to bed clutching an ice pack in my fiery fingers.

By morning, they were feeling much better, though still sporadically tingling and burning. Then I went and picked blackberries, and the purple juice soaked my fingertips. By the time I came home, the burning had stopped! Did the acid in the blackberry juice neutralize the capsaicin from the peppers? I was ready to call myself healed and chalk it up to a blackberry miracle, but now--about 24 hours after I first touched the darn things--my fingers are back to feeling somewhat sore and achey, though no longer fiery.

I have no idea what happened. I've chopped peppers before without this delayed and painful reaction. Did I happen to get the spiciest peppers in the whole wide world this time? Has my skin somehow transformed into a sponge that eagerly soaked up the capsaicin?

Whatever it was, I'm thinking now of not eating this salsa at all, but keeping it as a sacred memento of the pain I endured to create it.

Or...I could let my husband crack open the jar and enjoy it with some chips tonight.

I am not a sappy chick.

I never used to cry at movies. Never. In high school, we'd watch chick flicks, and my friends would be sobbing, and I was totally cool. Maybe a little misty, nothing more. I prided myself on my non-girliness.

Well, since I became a mother, my toughness has completely gone out the window. Show me a scene of a mother loving her children, or a mother fearing for her children, or a mother protecting her children, and I am just a goner.

The silliest movies have been making me cry. The new Star Trek movie made me cry. Star Trek, people! An action movie! In space! But here you have this mother, delivering a baby, all the while listening while her husband (spoiler alert!) is disintegrated. How horrible would that be? And then later another mother (whom I totally didn't recognize as Winona Ryder) vanishes right before her son's eyes. And then the other night I was watching The Incredibles--again, an action movie, albeit an animated action movie for children--and I got choked up. The missiles are coming for the plane, and Elastigirl is yelling, "Abort, abort, there are children on board!" and desperately trying to figure out how to save her kids...I just couldn't help it. I cried a little bit. It was sad.

I don't know why this is the case. It's not like these things weren't sad before. It's not like I didn't have feelings before. Somehow, having children has just upped my Sappiness Sensor. I used to be able to keep my distance from the things I was watching. Now, even a completely fictionalized and unrealistic depiction of a woman losing someone she loves is enough to make me, in the back of my mind, imagine losing someone I love...and the choking up ensues.

Is it hormones? Motherlove on steroids? Senility setting in? I don't know. Just make sure that if you sit next to me at a movie--even an action movie--you bring the Kleenex.

My husband recently started a new job that requires some traveling. We're lucky in that none of the trips are horribly long--the longest has been a week--but it's been an adjustment for the kids and I, since we've been used to having him home every single night.

When he does have to be away, it's sometimes hard to figure out how much I should dwell on the fact that he's gone. I don't want to talk about him incessantly to the kids, because I don't want to make it into a bigger deal than it is, or focus on the sadness of missing him. At the same time, I don't want to ignore their feelings either. But young as they are, it's sometimes easy to tell myself that they probably don't notice things as much anyway.

And then they remind me that just because they can't articulate their feelings doesn't mean they aren't there.

Tonight, setting the table, Lucy got forks out of the drawer and then placed one next to each plate I had set out. One for me, one for Beth, one for Lucy, even a little plastic one for Evie. She wound up with one grown-up-size fork left in her hand.

"Where's Daddy's plate?" she said.

"Daddy's on a business trip, remember?" I said. "He'll be home tomorrow."

She set the extra fork down on the table. "You don't move this fork, Mama. Don't move it! Not even at night time."

"You want me to leave it till Daddy comes home?" I ask.

"It's for him, Mama. You don't move it," she said firmly.

And there it sits.

Tomatoes.

Fruit? Vegetable? Red. Delicious. However you classify them, they are my favorite. And, apparently, Pablo Neruda's too. And my tomatoes are all beginning to ripen, and it makes me happy. Enjoy some tomato poetry today:



Ode to the Tomato

The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
assassinate it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and the totality of its freshness.

--Pablo Neruda


Doesn't this poem make you want to go assassinate some tomatoes right now?

My garden is bursting with zucchini and I've been finding all kinds of ways to cook it. Stuffed zucchini, omelettes with zucchini, zucchini cakes, and of course the classic: zucchini bread.

After a Facebook dialog with my friend Jess about ways to make the stuff a tad bit healthier (since my regular recipe is full of white flour, sugar, and oil--oh, so yummy!) I experimented and came up with this:

Healthy-ish Zucchini Bread

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup no-sugar-added applesauce
2 eggs

1. Grease bottom and sides of an 8- or 9-inch loaf pan and set aside. In a medium mixing bowl combine the lfour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg; set aside.

2. In another mixing bowl combine sugar, zucchini, applesauce, and eggs. Mix well. Add dry ingredients and stire just till moistened.

3. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake in a 350 oven 45-50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove loaf and cool completely.

Variation: add 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (or one square unsweetened melted baking chocolate) and stir well. Bake 15-20 minutes in muffin tins, for chocolate zucchini muffins.

The chocolate zucchini muffins have been a breakfast favorite around here, and Beth had the following to say about the zucchini bread: "My tongue can't wait to taste more of it!"

And then I made another loaf and she didn't want any of it.

Sometimes my children are just beyond comprehension. But the zucchini bread was good both times, I promise.

One. We survived camping with a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 1-year-old! We even enjoyed it! As far as I'm concerned, camping with dozens of extended family members who make all the meals, entertain your children, and are thrilled to carry your angry baby in their arms when she screams is the only way to go.



Two. I started doing the Jillian Michaels "Thirty-Day Shred" exercise video, in an attempt to curb the regrettable piling on of pounds that has occurred since I returned from Grenada. Now, I think of myself as somewhat fit. I ran thirteen stinkin' miles at one time, people. But this video? So killer! I did Level One yesterday morning and I'm still hurting. I'm planning on Level Two tonight (do I know how to have fun on a Friday night, or what?). Eventually, I will do Level Three. I will.

Three. My husband has been gone on a lot of business trips lately. This is good because it means his company is making money. This is bad because I have a heck of a hard time making myself go to bed at night. I plan all these projects to keep me busy while he's gone--quilt-making, novel-writing, recipe-trying. And then I get the kids in bed and am so completely wiped out that I sit around wasting my time on the Internet, and then at 9 or 10 I drink a diet soda and decide to finally get something done, and then go to bed at midnight or later. And then the baby wakes up at 6 a.m. Repeat for two or three or five days and you have one tired mommy. Apparently without a spouse around to make me stick to my bedtime I morph into my daughter, who always wants to stay up just *little bit* later, please...

Four. I really liked Michelle's post at Scribbit on how parenting your youngest is different than parenting your oldest. My youngest is only 1, but already Eric and I think we let her get away with so much more than we did with Beth. And I can already imagine some of the other situations she describes popping up.

Five. I am the only one who is sad that she no longer has a reason to go school shopping? For herself, that is. I'd like some new shoes and a new winter coat and a lot of fresh, empty notebooks and nicely-sharpened pencils.



Six. I loved The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Arnold Spirit is funny, fascinating, and brave. He's the anti-hero kind of teenager you'd like to imagine yourself as having been: the brilliant underdog outsider, proving himself to the world.

Seven. Check out this Name Anagram Generator, which doesn't just spit out a list of words, but chooses the funniest anagram your name can possibly make. (Thanks, Emily, for the link). Me? One error-free juiciness. Indeed.

Read more quick takes here.

"Mom, I want a doll cake!" she said.

Months and months ago, she said this. I think she saw a picture of one somewhere. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's a dome-shaped cake with a Barbie doll stuck into the middle of it, frosted so that the cake looks like the skirt of Barbie's giant ball gown.

I'd seen it done before. And how hard could it be? I figured I'd bake the cake in either a Bundt cake pan or a pyrex mixing bowl. Invert cake, insert Barbie, frost. Easy-peasy. I didn't give it a second thought until the day before Beth's party.

Then I started looking at the Barbie I had purchased. And mentally comparing the length of those long, slender legs with the height of my pans. I realized that the method I had imagined would result in a skirt that went from the floor to about Barbie's knees. Not good. So I turned to the source of all knowledge--the Internet--for help.

Turns out there are a few different methods for making a doll cake:

1. Buy a special kit from a cake decorating place. They include a doll that doesn't actually have legs. It's just a Barbie body on a stick. That would certainly make the cake easier, but I didn't think Beth would enjoy playing with the no-legs doll after the cake was eventually eaten. The stick doll is actually pretty freaky looking, if you ask me. Like the result of a horrible genetic mutation at the Barbie factory.



2. Bake the cake in a bowl that is a lot taller than it is wide. The Pampered Chef 8-cup batter bowl is apparently the perfect size. But I did not own any bowls even approaching this width-height ratio, and no time to track down a Pampered Chef lady who might happen to have this bowl in stock and could sell it to me immediately, nor the inclination to spend money on a bowl specifically for one little cake.

3. Stack several cakes on top of each other and then stack a cake baked in a bowl on top of that. I got this idea from a very helpful YouTube video. God bless YouTube, when it's 18 hours till your daughter's birthday party and you have to figure out how to create the cake you've been promising her for months. This method sounded a little more involved than I had originally imagined, but no more difficult than making a layer cake, which I've done many times before. Plus, it allowed me to use a real Barbie with actual legs, and did not require me to purchase special equipment. This was obviously the way to go.

So I turned on my oven at about 7 p.m. the night before the party--in my 80-degree house--and went to work.

I baked the cakes, and cooled them in the fridge, and colored a bunch of frosting purple, and began the process. At one point the heat had my frosting quite runny, and my tower of cakes was getting a little tippy, so I had to put them and the frosting all back in the fridge to let them firm up a bit. All that to say, it was getting late when I finally had my dome complete and was ready to put the Barbie in.

At which point I realized I'd forgotten to cut holes in all the cake layers and I had nowhere to put the Barbie.

So, with a long serrated knife and a spoon, I dug a tunnel through the center of the cake. When all was said and done, it was slightly off center, but I was way past the point of aiming for perfection. Once again, I was ready to insert Barbie.

I carefully wrapped her lower body in plastic wrap so she wouldn't get all messy, slid her legs into the hole...and discovered that her hips and rear end were still sticking up out of her dress.

Turns out I'd purchased Ballerina Barbie--who is standing on her tiptoes--and is thus an inch or so taller than Regular Barbie.

It was 10:30 p.m. the day before the party. The cake was completely baked and frosted and I wasn't sure I had enough ingredients to start over with a new doll cake that was one layer taller. The kids were in bed and Eric wasn't home and even if I did get them all up from bed to run out and buy a shorter Barbie, Target would be closed by the time I got there.

I think that at that point I mentally cursed Ballerina Barbie and her stinkin' long legs and her stinkin' toe shoes. Heck, the kids were in bed. I might have even cursed her out loud. I know that in desperation I eyed my nice, sharp chopping knife and considered just remedying the situation with a little emergency surgery...but a Barbie with her feet hacked off probably would not be any more pleasing to my little 5-year-old than a Barbie with a stick for legs.

So I got creative. I'd made some zucchini muffins that morning. I balanced Barbie in the middle of her too-short skirt. I took muffin pieces and arranged them around her hips. I held it together with toothpicks. And then I covered it up with frosting. Lots and lots of frosting. It was some kind of bustle-type thing on top of Barbie's ball gown. Ball gowns have bustles, right?

When it was finally done (I don't know what time it was. Close to midnight, I think.) I decided I better put Barbie in the refrigerator for the night. With the heat and the slightly-melty frosting and the precarious nature of her gown, I thought a night of hardening up in the fridge was just what my creation needed.





However, I'd decided to make the cake on my fancy pedestal cake stand, not a regular flat plate. Six-inch-tall cake stand + layers and layers of cake-dress+ Barbie's torso and fancy hairdo sticking up = massive birthday concoction that was way too tall to fit in my fridge. And Ballerina Barbie doesn't even have any joints in her torso or hips--she can't bend at the waist at all, but is forced to be perfectly upright forever--so I couldn't force her into a backbend all night long to make her fit.

So I ended up rearranging my entire refrigerator at midnight and removing the top shelf. Then, finally, I closed the door on Barbie and her ridiculous cake-dress and stumbled to bed.

The next day, when Beth saw it, she said: "Oh, my! Oh, my! It's the most beautiful, perfect cake ever!" and rushed to wrap her arms around me.

And it was all, all, worth it.