Erasing Musical Boundaries

It's not everyday your best friend introduces you to one of their friends and you are quickly adopted as a significant addition to '3rd party's' life. I believe and I bet you do to, that this phenomenon has nothing at all to do with my worthiness. It has everything to do with the school of thought that encourages 'any friend of yours is a friend of mine'.

It was a quick three encounters with Linda that led to my acquisition of a brand spanking new Drowsy Doll, found under the Christmas tree of our mutual friend with a note from Santa Claus. Linda and I had discovered the surprising coincidence that we grew up playing with the same baby doll, and through continued fits of laughter, we fondly remembered sharing our playrooms with other dolls, like the oversized Barbie doll, Tiffany Taylor. Tiffany could accomplish the remarkable feat of spinning her head around, just above her hairline, to allow for quick change from brunette to blonde at a whim. She was ahead of her time 30 plus years ago.

But back to my point. I am now the proud owner of a 2002 Mattel Drowsy Doll. I must say, she seems to have weathered the years better than most. (Of course, so has Linda). Those marketing geniuses have not only kept her on the front of the shelf but haven't messed with her winning recipe. Drowsy is still the same color, she's made of the same materials, and even the phrases she gurgles are the same exact words she would repeat to me when I pulled her string over and over and over again. Her voice box was attached to a string that pulled out of the side of her butt. I would coddle and rock her through things like "I'm sleepy" and "Mommy, I love you", when I was only a few times her size. The only change they have made is to eliminate the string from her butt and now you need only press on her tummy to hear her talk back.

If you've spent your life in a closet, and are not familiar with the Drowsy Doll, you can't appreciate her unique look. Her body is stuffed and covered with a pink material, pink like Pepto-Bismol or bubblegum, depending on the age of the eyes she is seen through. The secret distinction in the successful Drowsy recipe is the large white polka dots that pepper her pink body. Perhaps subconsciously reinforcing the bubblegum connection, but also making it impossible to lose her under a pile of clothes, overlook her under a dusty bed or confuse her with any other doll in a toy-box full of other body parts. She was the softest, most comfortable crib/bed-mate a little girl could have. It wasn't until she had made it past my 11th birthday, I was able to feel the sharpness of her voice box through her tummy stuffing, sufficiently compressed by then into the likes of a concave Barbie tummy. There was no mistaking Drowsy.

The strange thing about this infamous doll, aside from that string in her butt (which they fixed), is her head. It's not stuffed like the rest of her body, but is made of hard plastic with a little tiny tuft of blonde hair on top. Though a bit awkward to sleep with, since you have to make sure you lay your head on her soft parts, it does make her more kissable because the plastic wipes nice and clean everyday and just makes her little face seem more real. I'm willing to bet Drowsy is more popular than Raggedy Ann any day of the week. Ann's stitched facial features and the yarn hair just don't cut it when little girls go through the unfortunate, inescapable fantasy phase of being a mom around the time they celebrate their 6th birthday. Fortunately, some of us grow out of it, (some as early as 6 1/2, never to relapse!). But Drowsy, she was a keeper; she was my buddy. I didn't get rid of her until I stopped sucking my thumb -- recently.

My newly found old friend still sits in her box under the tree but I must somehow show my appreciation for the priceless memory she brought to me. It is a well-known fact among my friends that while I do have a strong faith in the true meaning of Christmas, I am not a Christmas gift giver in general. I believe people should give gifts because they want to, not in 'exchange' for another gift. The idea that this could only happen once a year is completely lost on me. Therefore, I could, and have, accepted Santa's Drowsy Doll out of the kindness it was given in and have no need to rush out to purchase an uncomplicated item of similar value. However, I wanted to do something tangible along with my thank you sentiments and thought some home made edibles would be a nice touch, not to mention good practice.

It is an even 'weller-known' fact that I don't cook. Nor do I bake. As a matter of fact, as a part-time house cleaner, I am often reminded to clean stoves since I barely recognize them, and when I do it doesn't occur to me they may have ever been used and are, therefore, dirty. That being said, I set out to make a batch of "Thank-You Brownies" for Santa Claus Linda. You see, I am always hopeful that the cooking gene will come out of remission when I least expect it. Apparently it hasn't yet. It may surprise some that I do appreciate cookbooks and delicious looking recipes, even if they are written in Greek. So, when I found a recipe for Chocolate-Pumpkin Brownies, I tore it out and carried it for weeks with the energetic intention of creating the masterpiece for a well-deserving occasion. Santa Clause Linda was in for the treat of a lifetime, a treat most of my family and good friends, let alone kind hearted friends-of-friends, never experience.

THE BIG DAY

Thursday morning I woke up at 6:00 am to workout and was in the grocery store by 8:30am with my ingredient list, determined it would be a productive day well before noon. I was looking forward to spending the afternoon shopping for the picture-perfect plate on which to present my masterpiece. If I have sufficiently created the scary scenario of me in a kitchen, you can also imagine the duration of a trip through the grocery store as I wander aimlessly back and forth, battling my A.D.D: cravings for something salty vs. wondering if my father had recently mentioned needing paper towels vs. my need to buy sweet ingredients vs. my compulsion to read every magazine headline strategically placed at eye level. I made my way down the 'Baking Needs' aisle …massive confusion…my head was spinning. I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out if a bag of semi-sweet chocolate morsels, which seem small enough to melt nicely, would serve the same purpose as a bar of baking chocolate that I then have to "chop" myself. The recipe was not specific (and that was just the beginning) but it did call for me to chop the chocolate into small pieces. My novice assumptions led me to believe that if there exists a bar called 'baking chocolate', that must mean there is something special about it, and those not labeled 'baking' specifically would not be appropriate for my recipe, which is to be 'baked'. Not to mention the fact that, if the recipe says I have to 'chop' the chocolate, it must mean to buy chocolate that does not need to be chopped would be a monumental mistake. I decided not to risk it and tossed 2 baking bars in my basket.

I found myself on my knees reading labels on cans of pumpkin. I needed puree. None of them said 'puree' - what a surprise. Some did say 'pumpkin pie filling'. That sounded like a clever disguise for something manufactured to taste like pumpkin, but only if it's combined in someone's mouth with a good crust underneath it and whipped cream on top of it. I was aware of people watching me; they probably figured I couldn't read. I chose a can that just said 'pumpkin'. I'd never heard of chopped pumpkin (which doesn't mean anything!) and figured if it's small enough to fit in a can it must have been pureed to some degree.

Chopped walnuts? More expensive then shelled walnuts but I had to chop chocolate and was not sure I was up for chopping walnuts too, so I splurged and grabbed them pre-chopped.

Allow me to further describe for you what I was dealing with here. Obviously I had started this experiment with a practical knowledge and experience handicap, but you'd probably agree with me that a typical kitchen includes such staples as flour, sugar, salt and maybe even vanilla. I was planning to cook in my mother's kitchen, and she too, would have those things under normal circumstances, I suppose, alleviating the need to buy an entire bag, bottle or container for a recipe calling for 1 teaspoon of anything. However, my mother preceded my father's move to Virginia by 2 months and in her own precious, obsessive-compulsive way, she not only efficiently packed every picture frame, knickknack, bed linen and curtain, but the kitchen. She left us 2 dishes, 2 forks, 2 glasses and a pan with no lid. Which reminded me, I was going to need a pan to cook these puppies in. At this point, if I had had a 10 year old daughter at my beck and call, I would have sent her scurrying to the neighbor's house to borrow a teaspoon of salt and vanilla, maybe even a few eggs but I was not about to personally start banging door to door. I picked up the smallest packages I could find of everything. While reaching for the sugar, my eyes wandered to the left where I was again distracted by a possible decision that I could have obsessed over for the next 10 minutes if I wanted. I wavered for a mere few seconds and wondered if, like rice, brown sugar is just a healthier version of the white and could therefore be substituted. Sometimes it's very hard to be me. I decided against it and went with familiarity over experimentation. By now, I was painfully aware I should have gone with familiarity over experimentation from the beginning and I wouldn't have found myself in the grocery store fretting over the size of pumpkin in a can or the color of sugar.

Cake pans…hhmmmm, if I got an aluminum pan with a plastic lid, I figured I could wrap them nice with a ribbon and save some time and money. Then Linda could actually pass them off to someone else as a gift it she's not into sweets. But if I got a real pan I knew could re-use it for my next batch of Chocolate-Pumpkin brownies. Same price. I went with the re-usable and back to the decision to buy a nice plate later.

But what size and shape pan? None of them said 'brownie pan' on them or even had brownies in the pictures on them. Probably the square pan would have been fine but what if they were too tight and came out too thick? The rectangle pan looked good; I was fairly certain I'd seen brownies in a pan like that before. But it might spread them too thin? I was sure I had seen brownies in a square pan as well. The deal breaker: which pan would I be more likely to re-use? GET REAL!

Luckily, I stopped at the bagel store on my way home and realized that I forgot the cream cheese for my recipe. They had hand packed plastic tubes of cream cheese, which the man behind the counter assured me was a measured ½ lb. I needed 3 oz. I was confident that a phone call to Matt would make the calculation easy, so I went with the tub rather than returning to the grocery store for the benefit of the well-labeled packaging that listed ounces.

Back home safe and sound, sneakers off, oven on, TV on, coffee reheated in the microwave, I began to study the details of my recipe. Not only did I need to create myself a double boiler, for 2 separate concoctions in this recipe, but I also needed an electric hand blender and a real blender. (Both of which left my possession, along with my husband, 10 years ago, and need I tell you, if my mother was the type to have blenders in her kitchen, I'd probably know better how to make a batch of brownies! I continued to study, trying to figure out if there was some reason why I couldn't fake my way through this recipe with a total hand job. By now I was wondering if I should head back to the store for a box mix. I wondered if Linda even likes brownies! I called Matt, the Superhero.

Yes, he does indeed have a blender.

Yes, his oven is fairly simple to use.

Yes, his radio works.

I took all my ingredients and headed to Matt's, but not before I forgot to turn my oven off.

There were no measuring utensils that I could find, but I was too embarrassed to call Matt again. As a trained culinary expert I was certain he never needed to measure anything, wouldn't have such primitive tools, and therefore, I didn't need them either. If it has enough sugar in it, what difference would the rest of it make, really?

I started the pumpkin mixture in the big blender. Easy! I was certain I'd be done sooner than I had originally thought. The butter and cream cheese blended beautifully; it was time to add "3 ounces of pumpkin". I opened the 8 oz. can, (YEAH, it's not chopped). I spooned out what seemed to be just less then half (though it was kind of hard to tell since I can't see through the can). The time came to add the egg, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon. Uh-OH! The pumpkin mixture ingredient list above the recipe didn't actually call for any eggs. How many was I to add? It did say add 'egg', not 'eggs'. I added 1 egg. The pumpkin mixture ingredient list didn't call for ginger or cinnamon. I hadn't bought any ginger or cinnamon. I couldn't find any in Matt's house.

I moved on, slightly discouraged by my set back, and decided I really wasn't having any fun. I was supposed to find a heat resistant bowl to melt my chocolate, over a pot that had ½ inch of boiling water in it. Of course it shouldn't really matter how much water was used to melt my chocolate and 1 inch of boiling water would certainly melt it quicker than ½ inch. The most interesting way I could find to chop my chocolate was a metal hammer-type thing that I believe would be called a meat-tenderizer. I pounded away and here, finally, I was having fun. I even began to wish I had bought the shelled walnuts rather than pre-chopped. The chocolate melted nicely, that was the easy part. The butter went next, and the 3rd mixture went on top of the boiling water.

It occurred to me that I was almost home free. The third mixture was the one with "4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of vanilla." The sugar was a stretch, having no measuring unit. I used a mug, a little mug, not quite 1 1/2 full mugs of sugar. Then I added the chocolate mixture while over the heat; this was going well. Finally, the last step "sift in the flour over the chocolate batter" then pour in the pan. Well…I use a 'SWIFFER' to clean floors and since the recipe DIDN'T CALL FOR FLOUR IT DIDN'T MATTER IF IT WAS SIFTED OR NOT!!!!!

I re-read the recipe, over and over again, but there was no mention of flour in the ingredient list for the batter. I had no idea how much flour I was supposed to add! I was tired, cranky, bored, defeated and getting distracted. I added a few mugs of unsifted flour, greased my pan, threw spoonfuls of pumpkin on top of the chocolate batter with a huff, added walnuts and made a mental note, AGAIN, of why I don't do this on a regular basis and why I would never do it again! I wondered if I could return my re-usable pan. I wondered if Giant would take back the flour, sugar, salt and vanilla that I had left over. I popped the brownies in the "350-degree pre-heated oven" as the recipe called for. I started cleaning up and made a mental note of the time; 50 baking minutes. Twenty minutes later, I had this horrible feeling that the smell of burning brownies was a bad sign. I had to turn on the fan before the fire alarm went off and I wanted to cry. I knew the middle of my mixture was not yet cooked through but the top and bottom were already black and crusty.

Not only did I have to clean up a mess of a kitchen, but also, I had nothing to show for all my efforts and once again proved what an undomesticated mess I am. I drove home with my tail between my legs, and my burnt brownies. When I began to cut into them, yup, just as I suspected, the inside was not cooked through. I put them back in my own oven for another 10 minutes and when they started burning, again, I put the fan on, again.

I cut the whole pan into squares, checking every bottom just in case any were salvageable. No; the bottoms were completely black, the top almost completely black and the center not nearly cooked through. I created a pretty presentation of them on a plate, covered it with tinfoil and left them in the middle of the island. It looked like there was something good underneath, something home-made, and edible. I would throw them away eventually but couldn't bring myself to do it right away. I went back to bed at 11:30 a.m., believing a nap would make the day seem less like a waste and when I woke up, I could start my day again with better luck.

I have sent my receipt and the sordid details above, along with the recipe, back to the magazine, politely asking if they will reimburse me for my ingredients.

Who would have thought not adding ginger and cinnamon would make such a difference???