In the Spirit of Full Disclosure

Some random thoughts:

• I love making recipes suggested by my bloggy buddies, even if sometimes things don't go as planned. Phantom's foray into waffle serving was not a kid-feeding success. I made Purple Kangaroo's banana waffles, using buttermilk, and they were yummy! Ianqui always has a good internet recipe featured in the upper corner of her blog, Julie has been a good source for recipes, and dr. mmmmm has awesome (and funny) smoothie ideas (none of which I've actually tried to make, come to think of it). PK asked, in the comments to my post about yeasted waffles, whether I leave the batter out all night or refrigerate it. In winter, I leave it out. But for Mother's Day, Curious Girl and I decided to surprise Politica with waffles in bed. So we (being the sneaky surprising sorts that we are) made waffle batter on Saturday afternoon while Politica was out politicking. We let it rise for 70 minutes and then (here's the sneaky part) put it in the back of the fridge, where Politica never noticed it. It was just as yummy the next morning.
• Thanks to all of you who have said such nice things about my previous post. I do think of myself as a thoughtful mother, but I feel compelled to point out that I'm blogging my best side here. While I'm all about turning toward CG in general, sometimes, I'm selfish. The other day in the car she asked for funny songs. I said, and it was true, that I'd taken the big CD holder into the house and we didn't have many CDs in the car. She wanted a different CD and I said I'd trade for the other one of my CDs that was in the car door (a Barenaked Ladies one). When I opened the case, I noticed it contained the Strawberry Shortcake holiday CD Curious Girl had been asking for (we had honestly not known where it went). I declined to mention my find, and played BNL anyway.
• Liz and PK and several other people have concluded that Moosewood's Fudge Brownie recipe is really better described as a cake recipe. Maybe so: I've not made this version, which is googleable (like here). The one we use for birthday brownies extraordinaire is this one, from Moosewood Cooks at Home: Preheat over to 350, and butter an 8-9 inch square pan. Melt 1/2 cup butter and 3 squares (3 oz.) chocolate together. While they melt, assemble 1 c. lightly packed brown sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 2 large eggs, and 1/2 c. flour. When butter and chocolate have melted, remove from heat. Add the brown sugar and vanilla and beat by hand or with electric mixer. Add eggs (you can add them directly if using a mixer; otherwise beat them separately first). Stir in flour, and mix until batter is blended and smooth. Pour into pan and back for 20 minues, until the brownies are just beginning to pull away from the edge of the pan and are fudgy in the center. The recipe also gives directions for getting more cake like brownies but Liz's commenters put the kibosh on that sort of notion so I won't mention it here. I don't know whether Liz et al. and I have different tastes in brownies or whether this recipe is better than the other.
  
• I love Suzuki violin. We had our group play-in this evening, and it was really cool to see the group of kids up on the stage getting bigger and bigger as the hour wore on. Curious Girl is the youngest child in our group by several years and she held her own! (she plays a 1/4 size violin. very adorable, very hard to keep in tune.) I have been so impressed with how tactile and how fun her violin teachers have made everything. This experience has got me thinking about how even college learning could be more fun in some respects. Part of what I want to do as department head is celebrate the fun of what we do. I hope my colleagues don't think it's too cheesy that my thoughts about adult education are getting influenced by watching a toddler learn. Of course, it's influence along the lines I was already thinking: I'm a big Ann Berthoff fan, a big fan of learning by doing, by making meaning out of experience as we go along.