Ha-ha, Tuesday, I beat you this week!

Tuesday, Tuesday, after last week's trampling, you may have thought you had today in the bag. School was cancelled, Tom left for NY. The odds were good that it might be a tough slog. But, you lose. Although the boys woke up before 6 am (horrid) and the snow started melting about an hour after things looked positively picturesque, this gal (and her little crew) had a lovely day. When we all finally slugged out of bed, I made some insanely good bluberry-Meyer lemon muffins on which we all gorged. Then the snowman ("Jack, why the dowel?" "Uh, to hold the balls together, Mom." Such an engineer this young one!), Home Alone, etc. And, I must give credit where credit is due and thank the heavens for an afternoon babysitter. Conversations about butts, sibling bickering, a bloody lip and also a bloody nose did have me fairly beat by 2 pm. And then, cue heavenly music and rays of light, the sitter arrived. While she was here, I mostly ran errands and worked on a piece, but even going to the dry cleaners and standing in a long line at a department store were fun. It is clear that sometimes I simply need to be by myself. While queuing, I considered -for possibly the 185th time in my life- that I wish my last name started with 'van' or 'van der'. Seriously, that is the surname equivalent of Ministry versus Cabinet or Office of. Cool versus less so. I'm not sure T would cotton to the idea of adding adjusting our name in this way; he's so literal when it comes to heritage and such. Just because we have no Dutch ancestry AT ALL shouldn't mean we can't adopt a bit of a name. In my opinion.

How is it 8:16 pm already? Surely, you're thinking, I can't mean that bedtime is near. But that's precisely what I mean, and so the mint chocolate cookie recipe that is staring at me with hangdog eyes -please make me, pleeeaase- will have to wait yet another day. I'm almost done with a book -who can believe it?!- and need the sleep. #gettingold #notsleepingpast6inasmanyyearswilldothat

For dinner I made some pumpkin ravioli in a sage-brown butter sauce and also enjoyed a cup of yesterday's potage. Even better today. Dinner = delicious.

On a serious note, have you read the first two installments (yesterday and today) of the Invisible Child series headlining the New York Times this week? It is a terrific, moving, heartbreaking call to action. The featured child is an 11-year-old named Dasani who, for the past two years, has lived with her seven siblings and parents in a mouse-infested, rotting, 520-square-foot room in a shelter in Brooklyn. Wow, wow. Please make time to read the pieces if you can.

Snow!

Though much has melted, the snow this morning was really beautiful. No school so play, a quick trip to the market, popcorn and Home Alone have made for a good day.

Parsnip, potato, persimmon potage

It's rare that I get to accurately employ such a rare-word alliterative title, and I'm psyched. It's the little things, you know?! Since getting the boys off to school, I've been working like a busy bee, cleaning, writing and cooking. Though I loathe my vacuum cleaner, I am happily enjoying my day on the home front. And I'm on bowl two of this delicious new dish: my 3P potage. It is utterly perfect for this cold, overcast day, I dutifully wrote every detail of its making down so I can share it with you, and it made for a marvelous way to both clean out the fridge and highlight true stars of winter produce.

In case you're unfamiliar with the relatively antiquated, definitely rarely-used word, potage, it is a thick soup or stew in which the vegetables included (potages don't have to be vegetarian but this one is both veg and vegan) cook down into mush. The word potage derives from the old French pottage, meaning potted dish. Admittedly, I helped things along by whipping out my immersion blender when each veggie was easily pierced with a knife; mine is a Type-A potage made by a hungry gal. Bygones. It's delicious now matter how it came to pass.

Potages often incorporate the vegetables one has on hand. In this way, historically at least, they change with the seasons. In my fridge I had a fresh pound of parsnips and some lingering rutabagas. My pantry proffered a handful of small red-skinned potatoes, some shallots, garlic and good olive oil. And a glance at my windowsill reminded me that one of the persimmons I'd plucked last month was finally seriously ripe*.

The gears in my brain clicked into motion. A slow saute of chopped shallots and garlic then invited chopped parsnips, potatoes and rutabagas into the warm pot. I added salt, pepper, rosemary, and vegetable broth, brought things to a boil before lowering the flame to maintain a shy simmer. When the veggies were tender, I added a half-cup of the persimmon pulp and blended the whole thing into creamy oblivion. As a final touch of pretty and texture, I added diced persimmon (from the lesser-ripe of the two; but it was still pretty ripe) and a few rosemary leaves to the top. Both were delicious stirred in!

*I've had to learn that with persimmons you simply must wait until they resemble water balloons. Literally, the interior will be borderline-liquefied pulp encased by the tough skin. Then you can easily use the flesh without major fear that the tannins will make your mouth feel like you ate a furry caterpillar.