There's no domestic bliss here this weekend.

So, I had all kinds of plans for myself this weekend and I got none of them done. Well, very few of them, anyway, and those that I did get done I can't say that I got done well. Let me give you a few examples.

Example One: I had planned on shoveling the driveway on Friday night, so that I wouldn't have to do it on Saturday, but I ended up staying later at work than planned, Doug picked me up and talked me in to sticking around in Harvard Square for dinner, and by the time we got home neither one of us felt like suiting up to go out into the cold and dark to finish the shoveling that Doug started on Thursday morning. So, we ended up doing it Saturday morning. And I ended up getting into a really foul mood while shoveling because I was simply amazed at how much snow we have and unless we have some serious melting in the near future we will be piling this stuff in the street because our piles have reached their maximum capacity. (Don't even tell me about an impending snowstorm for this week because I just can't hear that right now.) The piles we have made from shoveling are already about my height and then some, and I can't lift the snow any higher. See here? We used to have a fence, but now we just have snow. I was trying here to make a space for our garbage cans to go, and I succeeded, but only for a few hours, because when I went out later that morning to go to the grocery store I noticed that an avalanche slid into my nice, clean spot. Too bad, garbage cans. You'll have to go in the street.

Example Two: After calling much of Saturday a wash, given the hours spent in the yard shoveling and contemplating my potential death should one of these beauties fall on me as I'm walking in the driveway (yes, I know that I should knock them down, and I tried, but, in yet another example of jobs done poorly, I'm too short to reach them even with my shovel stretched at full length, so the most damage I was able to do to them was break off their pointy tips. A small win, I guess. Now instead of piercing my skull should one fall on my head it may simply knock me unconscious for a few minutes.), I decided to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox before bed. I almost achieved this goal, almost succeeded, until I fell asleep with my chin on my chest about two-thirds of the way through. That's no reflection on the movie, of course, since I loved all that I did see. It's simply another indication that this weekend was pretty much a waste of my time.

Example Three: And a waste of my money. I spent quite a hefty sum at the grocery store on Saturday buying ingredients for my planned meals today, and yet somehow two did not turn out at all like planned so I have scratched the third and will attempt it another day. So there goes that money, down the drain, flushed away like, well, I won't say.

I first attempted aebleskiver, in my new aebleskiver pan, and had such high hopes. See? Don't they look like they had such potential for looking like this? (Thank you to Secrets of a Kitchen Wizard for the photo (and for showing me up).) But in the end, my aebleskiver looked like this: I suppose my consolation on the aebleskiver (which tasted great, even if they looked like a cross between clams and footballs) is that Marge, in her letter to me, said that it took her about three tries to make hers come out well, too. Of course, if it took her three tries that means I may be making these forever before I get them to be the little carbohydrate beach balls that I was hoping they'd be.

I probably should have taken my breakfast-cooking experience as a sign of things to come for the rest of the day, but I ignored all warnings and set out to make an eggplant ricotta bake for dinner. I tried this recipe before, without much success (please read on for more info on that failure), but thought I'd give it another go because I like eggplant and the recipe seems like it should be easy enough for me to handle. But, no! Rosanne, why would you think that a recipe with only three straight-forward steps would be easy enough for you to handle, especially when you didn't get it right the first time? I made the exact same mistake today that I made the first time I tried this recipe. I cut the eggplant slices too thin, and, consequently, when I roasted them they turned out like this: Eggplant briquettes, anyone? Gah! I mean, I even told myself when cutting the eggplant to cut the slices thicker than I did last time, so that I could avoid the whole charred eggplant thing. Whatever. I threw away the most charred pieces and used the severely-roasted ones, and I can only hope that when we finally eat this tonight the sauce and cheese will overpower any of the eggplant flavor. And then I will file this recipe in the back of my recipe box to try again (third time's a charm, right?) someday a long time from now when I'm having a little better luck than I have been having this weekend.

Oh well. What to do now? I wanted to practice my violin, but at this rate I'd probably snap some strings or drop it on the floor and crack the neck. I might have to stick to reading, but I guarantee that I'll be asleep in fifteen minutes, so what's the point? Maybe a nap. Or maybe I should clean. Sigh. What a perfectly good weekend, and what a way to spend it!

Aebelskiver... say what?

I normally don't eat food with names that I cannot pronounce, so it's a good thing that Trader Joe's calls these little tiny balls of doughy tastiness "Danish Pancakes;" otherwise I would have skipped right over them while looking for something delicious (and premade) to serve at Marieke's shower. These aebelskiver were the hit of the whole spread at the shower (well, maybe other than the mimosas), and they deserved their place in the spotlight. They were delicious. Slightly crispy on the outside, warm and spongy on the inside, and not sweet at all. Not fried in a vat of grease like fried dough, and not rubbery like a traditional pancake (maybe I'm the only one who makes rubbery pancakes?). I sprinkled some powdered sugar on the top, but also served them with some raspberry jam, and either topping was a fine accompaniment.

Well, Marieke's now mother-in-law was at the shower, and she noticed these little Danish pancakes right off the bat. She wanted to know if I made these aebelskiver myself, and I kindly handed all the credit over to Trader Joe's, after asking her if that's what they were actually called (what do I know?). This got us to discussing the ways you can make them, and that she has a special aebelskiver pan at home that she hadn't used in ages, and that they're pretty easy to make. And then, when we were at Marieke and Curt's wedding - in the receiving line, actually - and we saw Marge again, she remarked to her husband about the aebelskiver I served. Craig was pleased that I served such food out East (is this regional fare?), and he and Marge decided to send me Marge's aebelskiver recipe. I told her that I'd love to have it, and thanked her, but I admit to not expecting anything out of it. I'm cynical, I suppose. I'm a New Englander. We say things that we don't deliver on, but with the best intentions, of course, so I suppose I expected the same from Craig and Marge. I was happy enough to have had such a nice conversation with them; they truly are such pleasant people.


But wait - what's that? It's my new aebelskiver pan! I found it in a box on my doorstep on Thursday, and it was a complete and total surprise. Doug thought it was one of the pedals he had ordered, but when he saw that it was an Amazon box and addressed to me, his curiosity was piqued, as was mine. Once I got through all the bubble packaging and saw the little holes in the pan, my mind instantly went back to Marieke's wedding, the receiving line, and Marge and Craig's comments about sending me the recipe. But they said nothing about a pan - and where was the recipe? That came in the mail the next day, complete with Marge's alterations to make it come out just a little bit better. I have to say that I am so impressed - and pleased and excited. Marge and Craig's kindness has touched me. A big thank you to them! Are all people as nice as them out in the West?

I do New Englanders some injustice, though, when accusing all of us of being unfriendly and a bit cantankerous. We do have our own kind of niceness here, a quiet, unspoken neighborly niceness, and Doug and I experienced it earlier this week. This was the scene on our street on Wednesday, during the big winter storm (was it a blizzard? Maybe just a Nor'easter? I watched the news virtually all day on Wednesday and am still not sure about what this storm was, exactly. In Connecticut it had a name - Benedict. Here in Massachusetts, it seemed to be just a storm.). Doug and I spent a good two and a half hours shoveling out our driveway, steps, and walkway, and uncovering the cars, in the mid-morning while it was still snowing pretty hard. We witnessed one of our trees falling down, but thankfully were not under it when it fell: Our street didn't really get plowed that day, and even by the time I left for work the next morning the street sat under a good six or more inches of snow. I knew that by the time we would come home that night the street would likely have been plowed, and that would mean that the opening to our driveway (that we had spent so much time shoveling!) would be plowed in. And then we wouldn't be able to get into our driveway. So all day on Thursday I had a vision of Doug and I driving onto our street that night, trying to ram the car into our driveway, and getting stuck. And me getting out and shoveling around the car while Doug rocked it back and forth, burning out the clutch, to get it unstuck.

But we didn't have to do that. Anxious visions be gone! Because our neighbor, the one who I don't think I've ever said even one word to in all the time that I have lived here (he's not a talker, and really neither am I) snowblowed our driveway after the snowplow came by while we were at work. And he widened the path that the plow made on our street, too, giving all of us more room to put our garbage cans. That was another touching moment, knowing that our neighbor had done something so kind and thoughtful, even though he probably doesn't even know our names. So maybe we New Englanders aren't so unkind and unpleasant after all. Maybe we just express ourselves differently. Regardless, this week was definitely the week for kindness, the kindness of virtual strangers, and that made it a really good week.