Eggy Bake

It's an unusual weekend around here. JoyDad is off in North Carolina, celebrating the newly-minted PhD earned by his sister, Auntie Running-at-the-Mouth. We're all mighty proud of her! but Joy and Rose and I get to be proud from a distance.

Rose especially is missing her daddy, so I've tried to add some extra fun to the weekend. One of the fun things we did Friday night was to make an unusual meal, a meal beloved by the female contingent of our little household, but of which JoyDad isn't a great fan (and especially not for dinner): Eggy Bake.

Eggy Bake is a dish I learned way back in high school at a service-week I did with some other volunteers in Ontario one summer. Very simple, all the ingredients are household staples, and you serve it hot with maple syrup. The name I learned it by is Aggkaka, a Scandinavian title and treat -- but the name just sounds so gutteral and scatological, I just couldn't bring myself to call it that with the kiddos.

However, Rose was on the ball. "Is it really called Eggy Bake?" she asked while devouring her portion, having glanced at my recipe and noticed another title. "No," I fessed up, "the real name is Aggkaka. But I call it Eggy Bake because 'Aggkaka' doesn't sound so great."

"Aggkaka? Why doesn't that sound great?" she persisted.

Oh sh..., I mean, crap, that is, caca! I wasn't planning this vocabulary lesson!

"Well honey, in some languages 'kaka' with a K means 'cake,' like in Swedish I think. But in other languages like Spanish, 'caca' with a C means... poop."

Her eyes opened a little wider. "Oh," she said, "I think I'll keep calling it Eggy Bake too, then."

Down at the other end of the table, her younger sister was inhaling her own serving with delight (and independently with her fork!) Between bites, we suddenly heard Joy's comment on the situation:

"Uggh...ka...ka!"

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Here's my Aggkaka / Eggy Bake recipe, exactly the same as I found it on this website when I went scouting around to confirm that people really do call it "Aggkaka":

2 T. butter
3 eggs
2 c. milk
1 c. flour
2 T. sugar
1 t. salt

Melt 2 T. butter in a 9x9 baking dish at 425 degrees. For batter, beat the rest of the ingredients together. Pour batter into the hot butter. Bake 20-30 minutes or until set and golden brown. It will fall when you take it out -- don't worry!

Serve warm with syrup. Serves 4 (but 3 hungry JoyFamily ladies can polish it off no problem).

Money Hungry

A week ago Thursday, Joy's day had an unusual little glitch.

It involved one of Joy's fine-motor practice tasks, putting coins into her mission-bank from church. The bank is a globe-shaped receptacle to help kids save their coins for denominational projects (we've helped dig wells in Haiti, and support an orphanage in Benin). For Joy to practice dropping the coins in the slot, an adult gets the small stash of quarters out from the base of the bank and gives them back to her to drop in.

In general, she's gotten very good at it. But a week ago Thursday, she tried a new innovation. With one of the quarters, instead of putting it in the bank, she put it into her mouth.

I bet you can guess where it went from there. Her babysitter said that the look on her face as it went down the hatch was priceless! She was so not expecting to consume that coin.

We've not been particularly worried, having seen no particular ill effects. We did call the doctor, and they pretty much told us to watch for the quarter's exit -- and we probably don't need to worry as long as we don't see any signs of discomfort, lack of appetite, coughing, etc. She's continued to eat well, and doesn't seem distressed.

I guess we maybe should've been addressing Joy's constipation issue before this happened? It makes it... how shall I say... challenging to determine whether she's successfully gotten this thing out of her system or not. We have not yet observed its passage, four... erm... movements later. It's possible that we missed it. I guess if it doesn't show up soon, we'll have to call the doc again.

Poor kid, coins and cherry bombs. I'm amazed that she still enjoys food at all.

My Gal Is Red-Hot

Joy's been keeping us on our toes lately! One of the things that kind of ebbs and flows with her is how assertive she is with boundary-pushing and getting into things. Well, right now she's doing a lot of that pushing, using her strength and lightning speed to indulge in forbidden fun.

And the kitchen is full of forbidden fruit! Quite literally. Every now and again she'll make a break for it, tear into the kitchen and snag an apple. Or a peach. Or a big ol' tomato from the garden. Before we know it, she's sunk in her teeth and had a lovely chin-dripping bite.

She did that yesterday too... and got something a little bit more than she bargained for.


When Joy gets a red pepper on her plate, it's sweet and delicious.

This one from the garden was a "cherry hot" aka "cherry bomb." Even JoyDad approaches these with caution.

Oh, the look on her face as she realized that this wasn't the taste she'd expected!

The bite flew back out onto the floor. Her eyes watered. Her nose ran. Her lips got very rosy. My gal was red-hot.

I wonder what she was thinking. I wonder what lesson she took from it, if any.

I think JoyMama and JoyDad's lesson is: to put up the gate. And to put the hot stuff out of reach!

Reverse Psychology

For some strange reason, Joy didn't want to take her seizure pills last night. Usually there's no trouble. I wrap them up in a bit of fruit (last night it was Turkish apricots, always good to up the fiber in the diet, if ya know what I mean!)

I was chasing her around the living room with the apricots, doing the silly-mommy approach of "num, num, so good!" and pretending to eat them myself before trying to pop them into her mouth. She was having none of it, and I was getting frustrated.

Then JoyDad said, "Let me try."

He placed the apricots on the corner of the counter closest to the living room, and then backed off.

Joy got a mischievous look in her eye, zoomed around past the counter to snag the apricots, and chowed down without even slowing down.

JoyDad understands this girl a little too well, sometimes. Mischief-makers, the both of them!

A Newly-Acceptable Vegetable

My daughter discovered a new vegetable last night!

She's so picky with veggies -- her repertoire has been so terribly limited. Any new addition to the acceptable vegetables is utterly delightful, and met with great rejoicing by her parents.

Tender fresh raw snow peas from the garden are now in the thumbs-up category. Wahoo!

By the way. We're not talking about Joy and autism.

We're talking about Rose. Y'know, the neurotypical one.

Heh.

Photo Wednesday: Jackson Pollock Edition

Behold, the aesthetic force of a single handful of butternut bisque!



At least I haven't heard her singing "threedy boogie college"... not yet, anyway.


Update: As requested in the comments, here's the recipe for the "paint"/butternut bisque. It's from a lovely cookbook called Simply in Season.