MFA Mama

triple coconut cake

   I realize I mostly post super-healthy recipes on here. This is not one of those. Big Child just turned twelve and asked me for a "coconut overload cake, like last year!" Unfortunately, last year we were so broke that I was totally improvising, and I don't even remember what the hell I did except that it involved lots and lots of coconut. So I Googled around for ideas, decided to go for a pudding cake since Big Child likes really rich baked goods, and saw one otherwise-gross recipe that included flaked coconut in both the cake AND the frosting.  BRILLIANT! While I couldn't actually taste the cake (STUPID WHEAT WITH ITS STUPID FUCKING PROTEIN!), I liked the idea of adding to the (god this is a douchey word, but bear with me) mouthfeel with something to give it a little texture.

Big Child's Twelfth Birthday Triple-Coconut Cake

The Cake:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 3.5-oz packet of coconut-flavored cook & serve pudding
1 and 1/3 cups water
3 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 cups unsweetened flaked coconut - you can use sweetened if you MUST, but remember you've already added sugar via the pudding and I think sweetened would be cloying

Beat eggs and oil together, add pudding powder, then add cake mix and water in alternating halves and once mixed, beat on highest setting or, if you prefer, WITH FEELING, for three minutes. Stir in coconut flakes and bake in two 8- or 9-inch pans for 35 minutes at 350 (if you use 9-inch pans, check at 33 minutes or it may get a little darker than you want it to due to the pudding mix adding sugar). Cool in pans for 15 mins and then on racks or plates until cool enough to frost.

The Frosting:

4 oz neufchatel cheese
2 oz coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tbsp heavy whipping cream
2-3 cups confectioner's sugar
2 cups unweetened flaked coconut

Toast the coconut flakes in a dry pan over low heat until golden. Set aside to cool. Beat the neufchatel cheese and coconut oil together, then add 1 tbsp heavy whipping cream and vanilla extract. Add confectioner's sugar one cup at a time, correcting with the other tbsp of heavy whipping cream as needed until you have the right consistency--you want shiny but not loose, forming nice peaks and ripples. Beat in half the toasted coconut, saving the other half to coat the frosted cake.

   Frost the tops of both layers, stack them, then frost the sides and coat with toasted coconut. If you can do this and have it come out looking neat and pretty you're a better woman than I am, but according to the MFAmily Gluttens it will be so delicious you won't care (I tasted the frosting and it was gooooood). Write "Happy Birthday" in gloopy cursive with one of those super-nasty HFCS gel frostings, top with re-lighting candles if you're a wise-ass like we all are here, and sing the birthday song. WHOO, TWELVE!

back

   Okay, so here is the deal now that I am done freaking out about it/going on hiatus.

   I no longer work for the erstwhile Job #1. It's absolutely fucking outrageous how that came to pass, so outrageous in fact that I think I'd better not run my mouth about it on the record, even pseudonymously. There is rather a lot of money at stake in certain...investigations...and I'm going to let that all shake out before I comment in any way. There are stories to tell though, oh yes there are.

   I have filed for Unemployment, but am hoping to have another job in place before I'd receive anything through that (there's a brief waiting period). I have one more paycheck coming, and a couple of bucks on the one after that (but nothing to write home about), and I've picked up work for this Saturday and next Saturday via Temp Agency #1. We're okay for the rent, the electricity, groceries for the next week, and the next bottle of Prograf. After that, I don't know. Hotter's eye surgery, sadly, is canceled, and I have NO idea how I'll afford my Pristiq (Synthroid and Symbicort are cheap and I can go without Mirapex and Nexium, although I'd prefer not to obviously).

   To add to my enjoyment of the above, the MFA Beater has been suffering grave mechanical issues, and was briefly unfuckingdriveable. I almost called out on my last day of work because of it, but managed to flog it downtown. Immediately after the shit hit the fan, I picked up a couple of applications within walking distance of the Hotel California (as we will start calling my now-previous employer), since I was already downtown, then barely got the fucking thing home. In a way this was good, as the workout I got (equivalent to a Stairmaster on low--think LOTS of revving the gas and stomping the clutch) kept me from getting emotional in any way until I was home. Today Hotter took a ratchet set and his feelings outside and rendered the Beater functional again by the skin of its teeth, so that's good.

   What else? Bumpus ran away. He slipped past Big Child, ran outside as if to greet the XY, who was here picking the kids up for dinner visitation, and just kept going. He was MIA for two hours. MICROCHIP YOUR PETS, Y'ALL. Now he's back, mysteriously damp and in need of a bath, and I have fond memories of being screamed at by my ex-husband on my front lawn to mull over when I wake up from tonight's round of nightmares in a cold sweat (yeah, HIIIII ANXIETY DREAMS).

   I'm trying to look on the bright side here. While the circumstances suck, I'm reconnecting with my kids in ways I haven't been able to in months and months due to work obligations. We're eating meals together as a family again, and thanks to the garden and beasts of Squatter Workshop, so far everyone/thing in the household has had enough to eat. If I were capable of timetravel I'd go back and kiss myself, with TONGUE, for getting rabbits. One fluffy-fryer only yields as much human-grade meat as a large commercial chicken breast, but its' giblets and trimmed skeleton yield three days' worth of meat for Isis, who would otherwise be subsisting on supermarket eggs about now (our four geriatric hens only produce enough backyard eggs for human consumption--we keep "dog eggs" in the fridge and crack one into each bowl of kibble we serve Bumpus to encourage him to eat more and help keep weight on him) given that she's a speshul preshus snowflake who's allergic to grains (including rice--WTF, ISIS?). So that's good. And finally, while I will miss those amazing benefits forever, working for the Hotel California was starting to take a toll on my mental health, and had been for a while. I won't go so far as to say I'm glad their underhandedness and illegal machinations forced a parting of the ways, but I'll admit to a certain amount of relief that it's OVER.

   Also, while life is sucking a fat one currently, I have some truly amazing friends, who have plied me with funny animal pictures and ratchet extensions, YA lit for my Kindle via Amazon and grocery money via PayPal (ain't technology grand?), sound advice and commiseration. Thanks for being awesome, everyone. Y'all know who you are.

   This too shall pass, like a kidney stone, slow and painful. ONWARD!

   And how are all of YOU?

 

what would you do?

   I have some dilemmas, and thought I would crowd-source them because sometimes y'all are wiser than I am about things:

I. Hotter's eye surgery. Do I cancel it because we are broke as a joke, or forge ahead because 1) VISION and 2) if things keep going as poorly as they are at work I may not have this excellent insurance coverage for long. My knee-jerk reaction was FUCK NO WE ARE NOT CANCELING IT but am I being stupid about it/making this harder than it needs to be?

II. Big Child's birthday. It's in six days, and we're still going to be overdrawn, and I don't know what to do. I can PROBABLY bake a cake with what we have on-hand, so there's that, but as far as gifts go...not so much. Do I 1) talk to him about it, explain things, and let him choose a gift that I will buy after we're back in the black or 2) _________ (I don't know--ideas?). He will be twelve.

III. Work. Things at my job...could be going better. Today there is a mandatory meeting wherein Management will address something monumentally shitty they've done to every single person in my department (in essence they have given everyone a huge paycut in a way that may or may not even be legal). A lot of my co-workers plan to quit on the spot if the meeting goes poorly. I am not that rash, but do I 1) hang tight at all costs, because BENEFITS and hey, this is my chance to really ingratiate myself with The Powers That Be or 2) take the time and energy away from the rest of my life to actively begin searching for something new and hopefully less shady?

not so nice

   The XY was late with the child support check, and I'm worried that I'll end up with overdrafts, because while I'm getting up early to cash and deposit the check, the bank helpfully posts charges before deposits.

   The Beater is getting sicker; it really needs those new spark plugs and I'm afraid it won't hold out 'til payday. Today I used some packaging tape to secure the front bumper, which is trying to fall off. Afterward, I realized I'd taped the hood shut in the process; guess it doesn't matter since I can't afford to have a mechanic look under there currently. Whoever I take it to is going to laugh at me for that.

   And naturally our washing machine seems to have shit the bed and given up. It's getting to where I come home from work and mentally brace myself to hear the list of what's sick, broken, and dying since I left the house. I'm sorry, kid, that I couldn't send you on the optional field trip that cost thirty dollars, and that I raided your piggy bank for gas money. I'm sorry, car. I'm sorry, washing machine.

   Hotter just came and showed me his ankles; they're puffy with retained fluid. What fresh hell is this?!?

   I really hope I accidentally ate gluten, because I can't stop crying over that dumb thirty-dollar field trip and if I didn't glutenate myself, and in the absence of the PMS Buddy reminder e-mail, I think maybe I'm just at the end of my motherfucking rope, and I have no idea where to go from here.

seizure

   Tonight at work I was out of sorts for no good reason, to the point that around ten o'clock I declared it "dairy challenge day" and went to town on a pint of Haagen-Dazs.

   At 10:30 Hotter called me to say he had a seizure aura. I made him get Big Child up and put him on the phone, reminded Big Child of what to do for someone having a seizure, and made the half-hour drive home in twenty minutes.

   When I got there, Hotter was in the recovery position, and Big Child was a little rattled but had remembered that "noise means breathing" and not called 911. "You said only call 911 if he's not breathing or if I'm too scared, and he was making noise so I knew he was breathing, and I was pretty scared but I knew you were on your way," Big Child said. "Was that right?" I reassured him that he'd done exactly right and let him read for twenty minutes before bed to de-stress.

   My kid is pretty awesome. Also? MY POOR KID, OMG.

   I guess we'll have plenty to talk about at Hotter's neurology appointment tomorrow morning.

what my littles didn't eat tonight

Meatballs

1 lb lean ground beef
1/2 cup chopped rolled oats
2 tbsp potato starch
1 tsp finely chopped parsley
2 tbsp minced onion
1 large clove minced garlic
1 large egg
salt and pepper or Adobo to taste

Mix ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl, form into tbsp-sized balls, lay out on greased sheetpan or Pyrex dish, bake at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes before putting the potatoes in.

Teeny-Tiny Potatoes

1 bag Teeny-Tiny Potatoes, rinsed and patted dry
1 pat butter (about 2 tsp)
1 clove minced garlic
the leaves from about a 2-inch sprig of fresh rosemary, stripped off and minced finely
salt and fresh-ground rainbow peppercorns to taste

Mince the garlic and rosemary together, then cut them both into the butter and rub the bottom of a glass baking dish with the mixture. Rub the rest over the outsides of the potatoes and put them in the oven with the meatballs. Bake both for thirty minutes (the meatballs for a total of forty-five minutes) at 400 degrees.

   When they're done, the outsides of the meatballs will be sizzly and crisp, and when you take the teeny-tiny potatoes out they'll squeak and their skins will wrinkle up. We had both with steamed broccoli.

   Or at least Hotter, Big Child and I did. I don't know why I don't just serve the Littles yogurt, toast, and apple slices to begin with.

let's just call it a fever

   Greetings and salutations!

   Man, I had almost forgotten how amazing two or more consecutive days off while not acutely sick-in-bed can be! I say that as someone who is currently walking-wounded kind of sick, but STILL! Today I:

*   Slept in, because my husband is awesome and gets the boys up and off to school with a hot breakfast (if they will eat it--the littles frequently opt to skip what is on offer at home and have breakfast at school and as long as they eat SOMEthing I don't get terribly exercised about it).

*   Got up, piled into the car with my husband and flatulent dog, and got lost several different times in the wilds of County Over The Line, where we inevitably end up going to purchase meat in bulk. Purchased beef in bulk from a very cool farmer. Got lost once more for good measure on the way home. WHEE! Getting lost in rural areas takes Hotter and me back to our dating days :)

*   Made a delicious chicken stir-fry dinner that everybody ate featuring roasted greens from the winter garden (okay sure, Little Child didn't like it and only ate the three-bite minimum to not be In Trouble, but that beats the nights when he takes one lick and gags histrionically then bursts into tears--bad as that sounds he has gone from "can't eat at all, pukes all things" to "merely a turd, haha"--and he ate all his rice and most of his veg). When everyone eats something that I make, even Hotter with his GI issues and the littles with their food aversions, I always feel like I've won something! Sure, only Hotter and Big Child appreciated the individual lemon custard cups I made for dessert, but they were so very taken with them that it made up for the littles' lackluster reactions (Big Child in particular was all "OMG YOU MADE THAT WHOLE THING BY YOURSELF FROM SCRATCH? WOW I HAD NO IDEA YOU WERE SO TALENTED!" and is just ever so gratifying to cook and bake for), and ate their own custards and those the littles scorned with gusto.

*   Fed the center stalks from the dinner greens to the beasts of Squatter Workshop, and finely chopped some for Isis's dinner.

*   Bonded with Little Child over our shared love for iThings (I lost The Precious today and was half-convinced it was in County Over The Line but was able to page it via Find My iPhone from Little Child's iPod Touch, because they're both registered to my Apple ID and technology is fucking amazing), showed him how to work the various features, and watched him figure out the interface even faster than I did (and proceed to learn how to do things I hadn't yet mastered my own damn self, because kids are amazing like that, the damn whippersnappers).

*   Took Middle Child on a pharmacy run to get a prescription and spend some CVS Extra bucks. We got Hotter a fleece throw since he is always cold, and Middly remembered that it's his teacher's birthday and selected a heart-shaped box of chocolates for her. We talked about how Little Child is picky and we therefore do not discuss ingredients at the table, how awful Isis's breath is (we got some chews for her that are supposed to help with that), how Big Child is a lunatic for Minecraft, and things we might want to make for dinner in the near future now that Middly has hit the "hollow legs" portion of boyhood.

*   Walked dogs with Big Child, and discussed Bumpus's progress in training (he is slowly becoming a civilized canine citizen of Casa MFA, rather than a Fraggle/Alien demon-thing), Minecraft, music, and literature.

*   Made myself buffalo wings from the wings of the whole chicken I cut apart for Isis's meals this week (Bumpus is now on high-dollar kibble once more in an attempt to make him look less like a walking coatrack with fur; he's not a delicate speshul snowflake like Isis is and can have grains so we're trying that route again--Isis now eats one entire chicken, giblets included, over the course of a week minus the breasts and wings, which become peoplefood). They were ridiculously good.

*   Made turkey stock from the frozen carcass of our Thanksgiving bird, picked the meat, and refrigerated the broth preparatory to skimming off the fat--turkey-noodle soup tomorrow, aww yeah!

*   Took a hot bath.

*   Baked some ugly drop-biscuits so that everyone will have something they enjoy for breakfast tomorrow morning (the littles see it as a terrible hardship when Big Child has bacon and/or eggs, because they don't like those things and end up "starving all the way to school," and everyone likes biscuits with various permutations of jam/honey/butter/fried egg on them or else plain in the case of Little Child).

   I feel like utter shite and think I may be abed all day tomorrow; whatever is wrong with me my lungs are sucking and given all of the eating I did today I'm declaring it a well-fed fever at this point.

   In other words "didn't even have to use my AK, guess it was a good day!"

   How are all of YOU?

festivus shopping advice needed, please

   I am at a loss as to what to get Middle Child for Festivus this year.

   Little Child is getting a refurbished 8G iPod Touch that I got a really sweet deal on. He's going to love it. I got the idea because a) he's the only MFA Child without a computer and b) he found an old flip-phone of mine and became obsessed with it, just taking pictures and listening to the various ring-tones. He was very sad to learn that those phones can't run apps and okay, fine, I went a little overboard but he's going to FREAK OUT. I can't wait!

   Big Child has asked for Minecraft, which I plan to get him. I'll probably also give him an Amazon.com gift card to use on more books (he's a reader, that kid is, and I love it--he just finished the Wrinkle in Time trilogy and my heart grew three sizes--it's so cool to have a kid who reads like I did at that age) (well, minus all the smut--I was very poorly-supervised!) since Minecraft doesn't cost much (I try to spend about the same amount on each kid).

   Middly is more complicated, since I received a special dispensation from Santa in order to spend $75 on the newt habitat for Sir Isaac, a.k.a. the WORST RAFFLE PRIZE EVER (I jest--he's kind of cute and eats pelleted food--no crickets!). So I want to spend less than $50 in addition to that, but I don't want to get him Minecraft (since he doesn't have a computer capable of running it without blowing up, plus if I get something for two of them the third would feel left out). Y'all are usually full of great ideas--do you have any for me re: Middly's Festivus gift? He is eight years old, enjoys typical boy-targeted things like Transformers, Legos, and Superheroes, and seems scientifically-inclined.

   Oh, and for anyone out there who plans to mutter about the idiocy of my spending money on gifts for my children given my often-precarious financial situation? FUCK OFF IN ADVANCE. They're children. It's the holidays. I'm working three jobs right now in order to be able to do this for them, and they absolutely deserve something fun. Festivus and their birthdays are the only time they get anything above and beyond the basic necessities, and the younger two still believe in the fat man. So: yeah.

 

P.S. This isn't about competing with the XY. He's getting them things like 3DSes and ATVs. Whatever.

headache: a one-act tragedy

Lights up. Setting: the MFA Bedroom, where MFA MAMA is nursing a headache and a cup of Earl Grey and HOTTER is playing an online game that he and BIG CHILD, who has just walked into the room, both enjoy.

BIG CHILD: May I watch you beat that part?
HOTTER: I guess, but everybody needs to be quiet. Mommy has a headache.
BIG CHILD: [yelling] HEY GUYS BE QUIET!
MFA MAMA: Out. OUT!
BIG CHILD: [yelling again] BUT WHY? I WAS JUST--
MFA MAMA and HOTTER, in unison: OUT!

lights down

a complaint I never thought I'd have

   So I know today is the thankful day, and I *am* thankful, overall, despite an epically crappy morning involving carmelized sugar spilling EVERYFUCKINGWHERE (don't even ask, I am ashamed of the wasted ingredients), but...well. 

   I'm not happy with the way our turkey was butchered.

   That is not a complaint I ever would have thought I'd make. I mean, the thing is dead and the head and feet are gone. A couple of years ago that would have been enough and I wouldn't have looked any further (in fact, I wouldn't have TOUCHED the thing--believe it or not I used to be the girl who made her husband place the carcass in the roasting pan because I was so squeamish of raw poultry in general). Now, though, knowing what I know of butchering poultry, I noticed the following about our bird:

*   There was a single, HUGE pinfeather in one of the drumsticks. One isn't a huge deal, but this was one of the bigger feathers and shouldn't have been missed.

*   This is a biggie: the neck was cut and not twisted off. This means that our turkey has several inches of neck-stump protruding from between the shoulders, and that is kind of gross (not to mention a waste--if the neck had been twisted free Isis could have eaten the entire thing, rather than a third of it getting roasted and subsequently discarded).

*   About a quarter of the lungs were still inside the bird and firmly attached when I investigated the cavity. Removing the lungs is one of the more difficult parts of butchering a bird, but given that we bought this thing from a farm that raises and butchers turkeys PROFESSIONALLY I expected better.

*   One of the legs is broken (the bone--all of the meat is there). This makes me wonder whether that happened before or after the bird's death. If I cut into that drumstick and find evidence of a hemmorhage it'll mean that happened before the bird died, and not only will no one want to eat that portion of the meat, resulting in further waste (well, SOMEthing will eat it anyway, be it a dog or the chickens, but STILL), but it'd also mean the bird suffered unnecessarily.

   None of these things add up to "ZOMG THE HOLIDAY IS RUINED" or anything, but it does give me pause. I wasn't going to go into the origins of our holiday bird, given that I know there are those who like to criticize my spending decisions, but we went to great lengths to procure an ethically-raised, pastured turkey. We do this every year because Big Child has an affinity for turkeys that began three years ago when he found out how commercial turkey farms treat their birds in general, and will FREAK THE EFF OUT and cry at the Thanksgiving dinner table if I tell him we bought a mass-produced bird from a supermarket. The year before last, his first year of turkeyvism, we got our turkey from the Hippie Food Coop, and last year we raised (and butchered) our own. This year, due to our having to get rid of the MFA Flock (and the fact that I secured Squatter Workshop as an alternate location for hens, rabbits, and the like AFTER our "window" for buying turkey poults), we went through Hippie Food Coop again.

   An aside: Did I purchase the organic, grass-fed yuppie-bird with funds donated by readers to help us out during Carmageddon? NO. I put down a deposit BEFORE all of that noise went down (oh yes, there is a WAITING LIST if you do not plan your purchase of a fancy-pants turkey months in advance), and paid the remainder when I picked the bird up after my most recent paychecks came in using money I earned at my various jobs, just as I paid for the MFA Bees and beekeeping classes in advance of the financial woes that immediately preceded our picking up the NUC. That is what some vocally critical people don't seem to realize about folks who have nice things (like, say, an iPhone or a beehive) despite being flat-ass broke: you don't always see it coming when your life falls apart, and have sometimes done things like sign a wireless contract or put down a deposit/paid in advance on a colony of bees or a fancy-pants turkey, that mean you end up walking to the bus stop with a smartphone in your pocket when your car dies, or having a fancy-pants turkey for Thanksgiving mere weeks after being so broke your family is food-insecure. If you judged me for not "hocking" The Precious when the MFA Minivan dropped dead, then a) you're an asshole, b) you're shockingly ignorant to think that the proceeds of selling a year-old used iPhone 4 on eBay would even cover the cost of breaking my wireless contract, let alone put a dent in the cost of a replacement vehicle, and c) if I was to do away with the iPhone in a burst of self-flagellating appeasement of innernet assholes, how would all of our various doctors, my kids' schools, and my three employers get in touch with me, given that I don't have a replacement phone lying around anywhere? Smoke signals? 

   Aaaaanyway, back to the bird: this kind of highlights everything I take issue with in the meat industry, bleeding-heart organic farms included. Am I going to turn vegetarian? No. I'm lazy, I'm anemic, and I like meat. But it's certainly given me something to think about today, other than where I last saw the eight-year-old maternity yoga-pants I like to wear for such occasions and how the hell I'm going to get melted sugar out of the burner plates and inner workings of my stove.