Black Sesame Pear Tea Cake

This cake is weird. I'm just gonna put it out there, right up front, this is a weird cake from Bon Appetit.  But in making it, I am reminded of an episode of Chopped where Alex Guarnaschelli was judging, and man, she is mean, she is tough, but she is honest.  And it was down to the dessert round and I forget what the ingredients were but she was faced with a plate of some kind of avocado mousse thing.  And with that narrowed-eyed expression of doom she looked at the chef who made it and said, "This dessert makes no sense..."  Then her eyes softened and she continued, "...and I've eaten almost all of it."

This cake is weird.  Everyone says so.  It's weird, it makes no sense, and everyone in the house is eating it.  So you try it, you be the judge.

This is ever-so-slightly labor intensive, with the added stress of needing a spice grinder to grind the sesame seeds.  Some of you will have had the dubious honor of being on a Facebook thread I posted while in the mall, wondering if a spice grinder was redundant with something I already owned.  Like, the food processor.  But I was gently encouraged to buy, if not an actual spice grinder, then a separate coffee grinder for spices, and the investment was worth making.  Sears was having a sale, so I bought a coffee grinder.

This cake is also made in a loaf pan, and may I offer you some advice?  If you set out to make a cake in a loaf pan, please be sure you do in fact own one.  Don't just assume you own one.  I mean, it's understandable, of course you own one, who doesn't?  C'mon, when was the last time you made a banana bread or a meat loaf?  In the loaf pan!  Right!  You have one!

I didn't have one.  Did I lend it to you, by any chance?  If I did, please give it back.  In the meantime, I made this in 9x9 baking dish and it was totally fine.

Weird Black Sesame Pear Tea Cake

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more
• 1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup almond flour or almond meal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup black sesame seeds (note right here - if I ever make this cake again, I will take the 1/2 cup to a 1/3 cup.  The sesame presence was very strong, in an almost..."dusty" way.  Maybe that's not the word but it was this barest trace of bitterness, not enough to be unpleasant or inedible, but enough to make you go, "Hmm....weird")
• 1 1/3 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 (medium) firm but ripe Bosc pear, peeled, cored, cut into 1/4-inch cubes (and another note - it was Panda's observation that the cake needed more pear, and I agree with her.  If I make it again, I will use two)

Preheat oven to 325°. Butter, or spray with Pam, a 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan or a 9 x 9 baking pan.

Whisk 1 1/2 cups flour, almond meal, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and 2 tbsp sesame seeds in a medium bowl. Grind remaining 1/2 cup sesame seeds in spice mill to form a thick paste, about 2 minutes.

Using an electric mixer, butter and 1 1/3 cups sugar in a large bowl until well combined, 2–3 minutes. Add sesame paste and beat, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl, until blended, 1–2 minutes.

Weird.  Add egg and egg yolk. Beat until pale and fluffy, 3–4 minutes. On low speed, beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.

Toss pear with remaining 2 tbsp. flour in a small bowl; fold into batter.  The batter is grey.  Yes indeed it is.

Spoon batter into prepared pan; smooth top. Sprinkle with remaining 2 Tbsp. sugar

Bake until a tester comes out clean when inserted into center, about 1 hour.

Let cool on wire racks and serve.

See what happens...

Orange Almond Chia Muffins

I think Steve T was the one who first told me about Chia seeds, and then it seemed I was reading about them in every other article about Super Foods.  Chia seeds, yes, as in the seeds you use to grow a Chia pet.  They are, supposedly, amazingly good for you for all kinds of reasons (google for yourself, or read about ten of them here).  They're also dirt cheap, supposedly, but a while went by without me knowing where to obtain them. Enter Trader Joe's.  Yeah, they started carrying chia, and I bought a couple bags and started experimenting with eating them.  First up was a recipe I found in Whole Living for a coconut breakfast pudding.  It's glorified oatmeal, let's be honest, which they tart up into a "pudding" by adding sauteed nectarines and such.  You soak oats and chia seeds overnight in almond milk, and then boil up the next day with cinnamon and shredded coconut.  I doubled the recipe and added some dried cranberries to it, skipping the sauteed fruit, and kept the lot in a tupperware in the fridge.  I was surprised when Jeeps and I got a week's worth of breakfast out of that batch:  let me tell you, those chia seeds EXPAND.  A half cup of this is like Lembas bread.

Next up were muffins, in keeping with the breakfast theme.  Every now and then the kids get Cheerioed out, and ask can they have something else for breakfast, please.  Now you know me, I don't cook cheefully before noon, so muffins do the trick nicely for everyone.

For a change of pace, these muffins are made with almond meal (also available at Trader Joe's and Red Mill makes it as well).  Unbeknownst to me, almond meal produces unspeakably good baked goods and I believe these qualify as gluten-free but don't quote me on that.  Whatever their classification, they are yum - citrusy with a slight crunch from the chia seeds, and as with the pudding, very very filling.  Two with a banana and you are good to go.  One makes a nice snack before bedtime.

Orange Almond Chia Muffins

• 3 cups almond meal
• 6 tbsps chia seeds
• 3 eggs
• 6 tbsps milk (regular, almond, soy, hemp, whatever you like)
• 6 tbsps orange juice, freshly squeezed
• 1/2 cup honey
• 5 tbsps coconut oil (or butter), melted
• Zest of one large orange
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp almond extract
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• sliced or slivered almonds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.  Line muffin tin or spray with Pam

Mix together all dry ingredients, set aside

Mix together wet ingredients.  Add to dry and stir until just combined

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.  Top with slivered or sliced almonds if desired.

Bake 25-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

These freeze and defrost very well.

Ox-Tail Soup

[Tita] noticed a smell that struck her. A smell that was foreign to this house. John opened the door and stood there with a tray in his hands and a bowlful of ox-tail soup!

Ox-tail soup! She couldn't believe it. And behind John, in came Chencha, covered in tears. The embrace they exchanged was brief, because they didn't want the soup to get cold. With the first sip, Nacha appeared there at her side, stroking her hair as she ate, as she had done when she was little and was sick, kissing her forehead over and over. There were all the times with Nacha, the childhood games in the kitchen, the trips to the market, the still-warm tortillas, the colored apricot pits, the Christmas rolls, the smells of boiled milk, bread with cream, chocolate atole, cumin, garlic, onion. As always, throughout her life, with a whiff of onion, the tears began. She cried as she hadn't cried since the day she was born. How good it was to have a long talk with Nacha. Just like old times, when Nacha was still alive and they had so often made ox-tail soup together. Chencha and Tita laughed reliving those moments, and they cried remembering the steps of the recipe. At last Tita had been able to remember a recipe, once she had remembered the first step, chopping the onion."

--Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, 1992 Doubleday, New York

Oxtail is a bony, gelatin-rich meat, which is usually slow-cooked as a stew or braised, and as such, it is a good stock base for a dynamite soup. As with short-ribs, the sections of tail put out a lot of fat, and you'll need to skim this off during the process.

Nacha's recipe has 2 ox-tails, onion, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes and string beans. The recipe is within the narrative of the chapter but from what I can tell the tails are cooked on the stove with the onion and garlic, and "a little more water than you normally would, since you are making a soup. A good soup that's worth something has to be soupy without getting watery."

I was leaning more toward a barley-vegetable version, and wanted to include red wine and mushrooms to really boost the flavor. I didn't have any quick-cooking barley but I did have Trader Joe's 10-minute Farro which I've been totally into lately. Farro is composed of the grains of certain wheat species. The exact definition is the subject of much debate. Suffice it to say it is nutty and delish, the 10-minute kind is particularly awesome, and you can read more about Farro here

So after some reconaissance I ended up halving and loosely following a recipe on Epicurious, which offers this little teaser: During hard times, luxury cuts like steaks and chops give way to humbler ones. None are humbler than the oxtail, and all across the country, depression-era cooks made much of it, frequently in soup. Even in these days, when humble cuts have become restaurant menu stars, soup is still a good way to go with oxtails. Simmering them slowly with garlic and vegetables in red wine yields a rich broth and tender, succulent meat, making a lavish feast for us all.

Lavish Oxtail Soup

• 1 pound oxtails (4 or 5 3-inch sections), patted dry
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 shallot, diced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 oz dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in 1 cup hot water, water reserved
• 5 more cups water
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cup red wine
• 6-8 carrots, sliced
• 3-4 ribs celery, sliced
• 1 scant cup quick-cooking farro or barley
• Chopped parsley
• 1 or 2 beef bouillon cubes (just in case)

Heat olive oil in dutch oven over medium-high heat. Season oxtails with salt and pepper and brown on all sides. Remove from pot and set aside.

Add onion, shallot, garlic, and thyme and saute 2-3 minutes. Fish mushrooms out of the warm water and chop fine. You don't have to...I only do to disguise them. Among the shredded meat, they are not recognizable as mushrooms and then the kids eat them. Ha. So chop or not, but add them to the pot.

Add 1 cup red wine, scraping up bits from bottom of pot with wooden spoon. Put oxtails back into pot, add the 5 cups water, the reserved mushroom water, and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover, and simmer for 3 hours.

Strain broth into a clean put, reserving solids. Put pot into fridge for 2 hours, or the freezer for about 45 minutes so the fat rises and solidifies. Skim off as much as possible and discard. Pour broth (which will be very jelly-like) back into soup pot and heat over medium

Shred the meat off the tailbones and add to pot along with carrots, celery, the reserved onions and mushrooms, and farro. Taste broth and add salt, pepper, or a boullion cube if necessary. Simmer about 20 minutes until carrots are tender. Stir in chopped parsley and some frozen peas if desired, and serve.

Peasant food: it serves a certain purpose.

Sweet Potatoes with Black Rice

Isn't this gorgeous?  I love mason jars.  And here's a funny thing:  twelve-year-old girls apparently love to organize things into jars.  Even if those things are weird grains that they wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, it's fun to decant them into the jars and arrange them on the shelf. But great grains they are and one of my resolutions this year is to eat more of them.  So without further ado, I introduce the Grain of the Week:

Bl--...

Wait.

Let's let Mark Dacascos from Iron Chef America have the honors.

BLACK RICE!!!!!!

Thank you, chairman (makes "call me" telephone gesture).  Black rice, also known as purple or "Forbidden Rice", is high in nutritional value and contains 18 amino acids, iron, zinc, copper, carotene, and several important vitamins.  It is indeed a deep black color and usually turns deep purple when cooked. Its dark purple color is primarily due to its anthocyanin content...

Blah, blah, blah, it looks cool in the jar and anything called "Forbidden" is usually pretty good.  So what to do with it?  Well, on the back of the bag there happened to be this recipe for sauted sweet potatoes with black rice which sounded forbiddingly tasty.  And so, with an open heart and an empty stomach, I say unto you in the words of my uncle…

ALLEZ CUISINE!!!!!!

Forbidden Sweet Potatoes with Black Rice

• 3/4 cup black rice
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil (I used coconut oil because I'm a total evangelical convert, I'm addicted, it's crack, I use it in everything)
• 3/4 cup scallions (and by the way, see these scallions here?  They are the last thing standing in my garden.  No lie.  Pulled 'em right out of the frozen ground)
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced (which I skip entirely in favor of a heaping tablespoon of my jarred, pressed ginger, and you should too)
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced

Bring rice, water and 1/2 tsp salt to a boil in a saucepan, then reduce heat to low and cook rice, covered until tender and most of the water is absorbed (about 30 minutes)

While rice is cooking, heat oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Saute scallions, ginger and sweet potato, stirring until coated, about 2 minutes.  Reduce heat and add salt and pepper to taste.  Cover and cook another 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until sweet potato cubes are fork-tender.

Add rice and toss gently to combine.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley or cilantro and ignore your husband, who hates parsley and cilantro sprinkled on his food.  It won't kill him.

Serve to the Chairman.  I'm sure he doesn't mind a little parsley sprinkled on his food...

Valentine Lollipop Covers

It's nearing Valentine's Day which means the floor by my desk is a disaster area. I send my girlfriends love notes on the 14th. I like Valentine's Day to be about the message. It kind of drives me crazy how it's become a second Halloween in the schools but I play nice. These lollipop "matchbook" covers are quick, cute and easy, and they satisfy my need for things to be handmade with kids' need to be sugary.

For your generic lollipop, a piece of cardstock 2 3/4" wide and 6 1/2" long will do the trick. Score at the 2 3/4", 3 1/8" and 5 7/8" mark.

You need to punch a hole in the center of the thinnest section for the stick of the lollipop to go through. A hole punch seems the obvious answer, but unless you have one of those special long-nose kind, it won't reach to the center. Among my more obscure craft supplies is this hand punch, hammer and setting mat. I think it's to set eyelets. Tell you what: I'll just leave you to fend for yourself on this step.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

The cover is now made, now you just need a little (or a lot) of decoration for the front. Redman's sole directive is that his Valentines not be too "lovey mushy". So we went through my drawers of rubber stamps and he picked this friendly one, to be stamped in brown and blue ink.

We mounted it on red paper and stuck it to the front. Then slide the stick of the lollipop through the hole and stick down the flap in the back. Done and done.

Panda adopted the same matchbook design, but skipped the lollipop in favor of a single heart-shaped chocolate. These go to her girlfriends as there seems to be an indefinite hiatus on boys receiving Valentines.

Fine by me.

Sweets to the sweet.

Coffee-Cocoa Rubbed Brisket

So this happened because whenever we go down to Maryland to visit my seester, I end up hanging out with my brother-in-law watching a lot of TV. One night he let me control the remote and we ended up watching like seven back-to-back episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives which, after Chopped, is like my favorite Food Network show ever.

I love me some Guy Fieri, now there's a man who loves food. I totally want him to come hang out in my kitchen and just make those mouthgasm noises. My BIL did comment that a lot of the food didn't look that good, and furthermore, it didn't seem like food I would eat. Guy certainly makes it sound amazing, but who knows how it actually is in person.

Anyway, one episode featured the restaurant Momocho in Cleveland, and the chef featured his specialty: coffee-rubbed brisket. It was slow cooked for hours, then shredded and served in a tortilla with onions and peppers.

This definitely had possibilities. Tacos and burritos are a sure thing around here and this meat looked really spectacular. Furthermore it could be made in the slow cooker.

I remembered an episode of Chopped where the secret ingredient was ostrich. One chef rolled it in cocoa powder before searing it. I thought about doing this with the brisket because when I make chili, I always throw in a square of baker's chocolate. Yet the coffee rub sounded interesting, too. Could I do both?

Of course I could.

I scouted around the Internet, compared and contrasted, and in the end, came up with this. And it was crazy.

Coffee-Cocoa Rubbed Brisket

• 2 tbsp coffee
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt (the brisket, I confess, came out just a tad salty so I'm taking it down to a teaspoon, you can add more later if it needs it)
• 1 can coconut milk

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut the brisket into two pieces, rub all over with either olive oil or coconut oil and then roll it in the dry rub, really getting it coated. Your hands will be a mess. It's OK, just keep packing on the rub. Get the brisket into a ziplock bag and let it sit for either 2 hours or overnight.

Pour the can of coconut milk into the slow cooker. Put the brisket in, cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Take the brisket out, skim the fat off the gravy. Shred the meat with two forks and put back into the cooker.

Serve over coconut rice, or in a soft tortilla, with onions and peppers.

Die.

Spatchcock

(Bangs wooden spoon for order) All right, settle down, this is serious business. Hey you...no giggling. Enough.

Right. So. Spatchcocking.

(giggle)

Sorry. This both looks more difficult and more obscene than it actually is. Actually, no, I take part of that back, something about this whole process is definitely sort of obscene. But the results are obscenely good, especially if you are, like me, a fan of roast chicken skin.

So, spatchcocking (knock it off!) is simply removing the backbone from the chicken and flattening it out onto your baking sheet and roasting it thusly. Basically it's one step short of dismantling the whole chicken. I've seen it in magazine articles quite a few times, and Lucinda Scala Quinn features it in the January issue of Martha Stewart Living, roasted with lemons and shallots.  I always trust Lucinda so I decided to give her recipe a try, and with two chickens so I would have a good foundation for the week ahead of going back to school.

Lucinda Scala Quinn's Roast Spatchcocked Lemon Chicken

• 1 whole 4-pound chicken (or two smaller ones and if doing two, double everything else below)
• 2 tbsps plus 1 tsp olive oil (like I measure)
• 2 lemons, thinly sliced, divided
• 6 small shallots, peeled and quartered lengthwise
• 1 bulb garlic separated into cloves
• Sprigs of thyme, oregano and rosemary

Preheat oven to 425. Brush 1 tablespoon oil on a baking sheet and place half the lemon slices and half the garlic cloves in single layer on top of oil, then scatter the herbs on top. Note: the cloves do not have to be peeled.

Place chicken, breast side down, on a work surface. Starting at the thigh end, cut along one side of the backbone with kitchen shears. Courage. Turn the chicken around, cut along other side of backbone. Set backbone aside (more on this later). Flip chicken and open it like a book, pressing down firmly on the breastbone with the heel of your hand.

Place chicken, skin side up, on top of lemons. Rub skin with remaining olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. With your fingers or spatula, carefully loosen and separate the skin off the breast, and slide the remaining lemon slices underneath against the meat. You could slide some butter in there too. Why not.

Roast chicken 20 minutes. Toss shallots and remaining (peeled or not) cloves of garlic with 1 tsp oil. After 20 minutes, scatter shallots and garlic around chicken. Roast another 25-30 minutes until a thermometer inserted in thickest part of breast reaches 165.

Transfer chicken to carving board, let rest 10 minutes. Serve with the pan juices, roasted lemons, shallots, and garlic cloves (squeeze them out of the skins if you left them unpeeled).  Now just take a minute and look at that skin.  Look at it!  Are you looking?  That is chicken skin!

Now, remember the backbones? Watch. Are you watching? Good. Throw them into your soup pot. Add 2 quarts water and turn the heat on medium-high. Peel 3 or 4 carrots, chop them any old how, throw them in. Add 3 or 4 ribs of celery. Throw in a couple onions, quartered. Leave the skins on because they will give the stock color, in fact if they are the last onions in the bag, shake all those loose skins in there. Got old garlic, those little center cloves that are so hard to peel so you chuck them back in the bin? Throw those in, don't peel them. Whatever sad vegetables there are in the bin, just throw them into the pot. Be sloppy. Add salt and pepper. Bring it to a boil and then turn it down low and forget about it for a few hours. Strain it through a fine sieve or cheesecloth, and discard all the solids. You are left with liquid gold, and tomorrow you can simmer it up with carrots, celery, barley, shred leftover chicken into it, and before digging in, drop in a slice or two of roasted lemon and one of those big, fat roasted garlic cloves.

You rock.

You spatchcock.

It to me, sock.

Happy New Year, y'all.

Christmas Cookies 2012: New Recruits

Another year, another successful cookie binge.  I can't make one more.  OK, I could, but I can't, I'm so done, I'm sugar-coated. This year rounded up the usual suspects, my tried-and-true friends:

Chocolate Crackles

Chocolate Gingerbread

Spice Stars

Lemon Poppyseed

And then we had some rookie cookies join the lineup, some good, some great, some neither.

Let's start with Cassis Crisps, which looked like they would be good but turned out to be thoroughly OK.  They are a basic roll-and-cut cookie, the dough is flavored with creme de cassis - a currant flavored liqueur - and sprinkled with sanding sugar.  The original recipe has you hand-cut them into squares, but I got really ambitious and cut mine with a swan-shaped cutter, and figured I could really get my Martha on by making a paper stencil to sand just the wings.  Seven swans a sanding.  Har har.  This was an epic fail after six swans, and I got mad and just pelted the rest whichever way.  In the end the cookies just didn't taste like anything interesting.  So here is the recipe, have at it, maybe you can make bourbon crisps or peppermint schnaps crisps or something.

 

Next were chocolate-orange-espresso thins which taste amazing, and the kids surprised me by totally mauling them.  The flavor is really terrific, my only complaint was that they're the kind of cookie where you  make the dough into a log, chill it, and then cut it into rounds.  For some reason, I suck at this.  It totally stresses me out.  So I made a batch that way, rolling the dough log in sanding sugar before I sliced it so the cookies were edged, and they were great; but then I adapted another recipe for a roll-and-cut method, cut stars and sprinkled them with the sanding sugar.  In my opinion, they came out even better, and the cook was less stressed.  In the link I give you both methods, you can decide.

Last is orange-hazelnut shortbread which is knock-it-0ut-of-the-park, punch-the-wall AWESOME.  Panda gets credit, she picked it out of the magazine and I first I went eh? because of the labor-intensiveness of roasting hazelnuts and zesting oranges.  Don't listen to me.  TOTALLY WORTH IT.  This was my lunch today.

So that's the cookie lineup for 2012.  Tomorrow is the last day before break so tonight we were busy bagging and boxing them up for teachers and aides.  By the way, whoever introduced decorative Chinese food containers into the market, thank you, what a lifesaver.

Happy Holidays!

Cassis Crisps

• 2 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup creme de cassis
• Coarse sanding sugar, for sprinkling

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl. Put butter and granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add eggs and creme de cassis, and mix until combined. Add flour mixture, and mix on low speed until smooth.

2.  Divide dough in half, and wrap each half in plastic; refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour. Working with 1 half at a time, roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thick, and cut into 3-inch squares. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Reroll scraps; repeat with remaining dough.

3.  Bake cookies until golden brown all over, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days

Portrait of a Young Lady and Things Unsaid

This post is sticky and gooey and soppy and I’m so proud of my daughter that my throat aches.  With parenting you always worry you’re doing it wrong, you’re not doing enough, but then you realize, no, you’re doing fine, you’re doing GREAT actually.  I needed this today, and I’m crying over it and I’m sharing.  Fair warning.    Today I was supposed to have a block of parent-teacher conferences for Julie (I'm using her real name today), but with one thing or another going on at work, I couldn't get over to the school.  So I sent an email to each teacher explaining the schedule conflict, that I had looked at her report card and was pleased with her grades and how she was managing schoolwork and sports and activities and social life - all of which I consider to be the true test of middle school.  If there was nothing they felt was pressing to discuss, I was happy to call it a “no news is good news” conference and hopefully we could chat another time.  But by all means, feel free to call myself or my husband if there was anything they needed to discuss.  Yours very truly in Christ, blah blah blah and send.

At the end of the email to Julie’s social studies and english teacher, I tagged on something a little more personal:  the memory of how the two of them had come up to us as we were waiting on line at the funeral home in October, at the wake of the two boys so tragically killed during Hurrican Sandy.  I recalled to them how they had both hugged Julie so tight, spoke to her so kindly, and how I had nearly been undone by their warmth and compassion.  “It’s something I’ve never forgotten, will never forget,” I finished.  “Life is so fleeting, and too often things go unsaid, and I just felt it was important to share this memory and let you know what it meant to me, to all of us.”

Over the next hour, a barrage of teacher emails came flooding back, and none of them had to do with grades:

“Thank you so much for your kind words, now I know where Julie gets her kindness from.  She certainly is one of the sweetest, most sincere young ladies I know.”

“She’s a real delight in the classroom, I’m glad to get to know her better this year”

“You’re right, life is precious, and we’re a family here in North Salem.  I’m so glad that you could feel that genuine love and concern for our students, and I’m touched that you would share that back with me.”

“Julie is such a wonderful young lady.”

“Your email made my day."

"Julie always walks in and leaves with a smile on her face.”

“No news is good news indeed – Julie is a wonderful young lady who does everything you could ask with a smile.”

“Thank you, I love a “no news is good news” conference, the cancellation was no trouble at all, it let me get a cup of coffee!”

“Thank you!”

“Thank you so much, this made my day.”

The only personal conference I had was a phone call with her math teacher, because math is the bane of the existence around here.  Math is the 70 in the bouquet of 90-somethings.  Math sucks.  And it sucked for me in middle school, I totally sympathize.  But again, the phone call was less about the grade, and more about the attitude.  "She is always smiling," Dr. F said, "and I can see it's hard for her and I can see the struggle, but she is all right with it being hard for her.  She sees the bigger picture.  And I'm telling you, you can't teach that.  That comes from her home life."

I very openly told her how sometimes, if a math problem has me stumped, I'll get on Facebook and put the problem out to my own friends.  I didn't think that would be well-received but she laughed.  "Look at what you're teaching her though!  You don't sit and tear your hair out - you show her that you will go anywhere and do anything to find the answer.  We live in a world of innumerable resources, there's no reason to suffer through it alone.  You think outside the box, you think communally, and she sees that.  She's a great kid and she's going to be fine.  I have a few strategies here to help her out...."

I printed out all the emails, highlighting the good parts in pink, and I left them on Julie's bed for her to find.  And now a certain young lady is standing up just a wee bit straighter today.

As is her mother.

Life is short and too often things go unsaid.  If someone made a difference in your life - however big, however small - tell them.  If you have a memory of someone that touches you to this day - tell them.  If something random makes you think of someone - tell them.  Tell them.  It's so simple, it's such a little thing, but it makes so much difference.  It can make their day.

And if something is hard for you, let it be hard.  Don't suffer alone - we live in a world of innumerable resources.  Look for answers outside the box, look to your community, do it together.

You're going to be fine.