Mawneze and too many cabbage rolls

My mom's family is Cajun. They came over on one of the seven ships, picked out a bayou and immediately started boiling crawfish in the front yard. I am not Cajun. I spent too many years in Bossier City. Have you been there? It's where Bush hid out on 9/11 until people started calling the local radio station and saying, "Hey, Air Force One just flew over my house." But I digress. Years ago, I called my Cajun aunt to get her instructions for making chicken salad. I knew the directions would be vague. Recipes from my mother's side of the family always are vague. Always. You cook something until it looks right. You add ingredients until you've added enough. But that chicken salad was good. I was determined to at least take a stab at it. My aunt started by warning me that I'd have to buy a chicken cut I probably didn't even know grocery stores sold. I gamely wrote down "cheap chicken parts" as the first ingredient. Then she described how to put the chicken through a grinder. As I tried to mentally calculate how much a grinder would cost me, I heard her say, "And you're going to need a little mawneze." Thinking I'd heard her wrong, I asked her to repeat the ingredient. I'd heard right. Mawneze. "Can I find that at any grocery store?" I asked. "Oh, yes, any grocery store would have that," she said. Perplexed, I hung up the phone and called my cousin Kim, who promptly said, "She meant mayonnaise, you silly goose." Except she may have said idiot instead of silly goose.

I took a little break from Cajun cooking after that but decided to make my Mom's cabbage rolls for the new year. I know cabbage rolls are Swedish, but my Cajun grandmother used to make them. Here's the recipe, per my mother (and recipe is a very loose term): Make some rice. Boil some cabbage. Cook some ground beef. Put the rice and ground beef into cabbage leaves and shove it into the oven. No measurements. What could go wrong?

Step 1: Make some rice. I use sushi rice. It's sticky goodness.
I got a rice cooker years ago. Recently, I upgraded to a larger cooker. I love my rice cooker. You measure out the rice and water, punch a button and then walk away and forget about it until the cooker beeps at you. It's the perfect appliance.













Step 2: Boil some cabbage. I had to consult a cookbook on this step. My mother didn't specify whether the water should be boiling before I put the cabbage in. I'm sure this is an intuitive step for most cooks, but I need explicit directions. I ended up boiling the water and then adding the cabbage leaves. The leaves started the color of a watery, pale green and transformed into the color of a crisp dollar bill. Very cool.










Step 3: Cook some ground beef. One thing that confuses me about my grandmother's recipes is that they never mention the holy trinity: onions, bell pepper and celery. Did she not use them? How could she not have used them? I just add them anyway. I chopped them up, softened them a little in a pan before adding the ground beef and then added more onion. You can never have enough onion.

Step 4: Put the rice and the ground beef into the cabbage leaves. Easy peasy. Unless you're me. I scooped the meat mixture into the leaves, carefully rolled them and nestled them into a baking dish. Guess what I forgot? The rice!!! So I just left out the rice. Cabbage means money. Black eyed peas mean luck. No one's ever said anything to me about rice meaning anything but filler.

Step 5: Into the oven. I made the cabbage rolls for my in-laws. Before my husband left for Tampa, I said to him, "Can you call your sister and make sure she's not making New Year's Day dinner for them?" He assured me that she was not cooking so I got up early and got to work on the dinner. Naturally, my sister-in-law phoned me a few hours later and told me not to bother with cooking because she made a huge dinner for my in-laws. Mr. G.'s going to be eating cabbage rolls for a month once he gets back to Baton Rouge.

The flamingos got knocked over by a Honda

Mr. G. has many wonderful qualities. Driving isn't one of them. His nickname in high school was "Whoa-Whoa" because that's what his friends always said when they were in the car with him and he was behind the wheel. Over the years, he's backed into my car two or three times. He forgets to look behind him when putting the car in reverse. You do not want to see him backing down the driveway. He's usually staring down into his coffee cup or adjusting the seat while I screech, "Aren't you going to look behind you while you're backing out!?!! You could hit a child!!!!!" He usually calmly replies "I looked," glances in the rearview mirror and slams on the brake to avoid hitting the neighbors' poodle. You don't want to be in a car with us.

All of this brings me to the
day after Christmas. My mom, sister and I decided to hit Hobby Lobby for the 60 percent off sale (it was awesome). As I perused the tree lights and bemoaned the fact that only red lights with white cords were left (really), I spotted them. The adornment my yard was lacking. The adornment that had to go into my cart. The adornment I needed in duplicate. Or maybe triplicate. Light up Christmas flamingos for the driveway. I showed them to my mother, and she promptly said:

Mom: You know Glenn's going to back over them.
Me: But I love them.
Mom: You know he will.
Me: But I really, really want them.
Mom: OK, but I'd make him park on the street.

I bought them. Two of them. My little flock of six flamingos with Santa hats perched so jauntily on their heads. The plan was to put them along the front walkway. Aha!!! No cars drive along there. At least in theory. But they just didn't look right so I moved them to the driveway. I watched through the kitchen window as Mr. G. navigated his way down the driveway the next day. He hit the neighbor's bushes but completely missed the flamingos. Success!!!! Then I got up to go to work the next morning, hopped into the car, put it in reverse, punched the accelerator and mowed down the flock. Don't tell Mr. G.

My Hayley Mills and house obsession

Growing up, I loved Hayley Mills. Not in a stalker way, but in a I wanted to be her in every Disney movie kind of way. And I wanted her Disney movie houses. I'd winter at her Carmel ranch and summer at the yellow house in Beulah, Maine. What could be more perfect? A young Hayley and Disney parted long before I was born (although they came back together for a couple of sequels and a series). Luckily for me, I was a child of the Disney Channel golden years. Piglet and Tigger lived at Pooh Corner. Annette was a perpetual mouseketeer (who later grew up very quickly and won the lottery). The Edison Twins solved problems in their garage (with a very tricked out lab for a couple of teenagers). Oh, and then there was Danger Bay. Do you remember Danger Bay? I wanted to be an oceanographer until I took chemistry and physics in high school. Science wasn't for me.




The BEST thing about the Disney Channel during the 1980s had to be the Hayley Mills movies.


First, she was Pollyanna.

I got a little tired of the "glad" business. No one is that happy all the time. But check out the house, which actually was her aunt's house. I stole this image from hookedonhouses.net (full disclosure here).

In real life, the house looks like this:

Those crafty Disney artists fancied it up for the movie, adding several stories, miles of upstairs hallways and Pollyanna's attic bedroom. I love Victorian houses. There are so many details, gables and chimneys. There are bays, which you know hold window seats just perfect for reading or people gazing. There are banisters to wrap garland around at Christmas and tremendous attics you can actually stand up in. This is why I live in a ranch-style house. Naturally.

A year after Pollyanna, Hayley Mills starred in The Parent Trap. She went to summer camp, discovered she had a twin sister, caused her newly found twin to moon her dance partner, went on a march through the woods and wound up in the coolest isolation cabin ever. Then, she and her twin switched places and got their divorced parents back together (sorry if I just ruined the plot for you). The storyline was completely implausible, which is probably what made me love the movie so much.

One twin lived with her mother and grandparents in Boston. The other twin lived with her father in Carmel. The Boston townhouse was fancy and formal. The Carmel house was my ultimate dreamhouse. It had a pond for swimming, a courtyard, Spanish tile, an L-shaped couch, a huge fireplace and a balcony. I so wanted to live in that house, which is why I grew up to live in a cookie cutter ranch-style house. Naturally.

Even their bathroom was cool. Check out the walk in shower. At this point in my life, my grandparents were in the process of putting in a walk in shower. I was so excited, envisioning something similar to the Disney shower. It seemed to take them my entire childhood to install the thing so my enthusiasm waned. Construction takes time when you're relying on Time Life books as a guide.

From The Parent Trap, Hayley went In Search of the Castaways. Hayley is looking for her father, who has been shipwrecked. She encounters an earthquake, an avalanche, a tidal wave and, awwww, love. It was all so very implausible and the special effects were all so very bad. But it had adventure, romance and Maurice Chevalier sounding very French as only a Frenchman can.

Alas, there was no great house in this movie although the cast did camp in giant trees. Fortunately, Summer Magic was just around the corner.

If you haven't watched Summer Magic, I insist you do so. Immediately. And if you don't like it, absolutely do not (oops, double negative there) tell me about it. I won't want to hear it. Summer Magic is magical. It's the pink of perfection from its prissy pink nose to the yellow house in Beulah, Maine. How can a movie go wrong when it has a character named Osh Popham or an Ugly Bug Ball?

Here's the house:

I've found no information about this being an actual house so it was probably a set. It had a beautiful staircase, a hidden painting, fireplaces galore, a bathtub in the kitchen and a wonderful front porch. I love a front porch, which is why I live in a ranch-style house without a front porch. Naturally.

From Beulah, Hayley went to Crete for The Moonspinners. I'll go ahead and admit it. The Moonspinners is a silly movie. However, hear me out. The scenery is beautiful; plus, there's a creepy uncle, village children, a romantic lead, a wedding, a fabulous villa, a drunk wife and a silent film star who talks.

Last, and as far as I'm concerned, least, was That Darn Cat. I've never been found of this movie, probably because it's set in an ordinary home. No inspiration there.

The movie's leading character also is a cat. Growing up, it was just me and my grandparents' cat, Tom, most weekends (I'm sure adult supervision was present, but I'm telling this story). Tom hated me. Tom lurked in dark hallways and attacked me. Tom lived to scratch me. Tom sought me out. I was fine with dividing up the house and keeping to my side. He insisted on war. Finally, one weekend, we went to visit the grandparents and there was no Tom. My grandfather told me Tom was on a trip. That seemed a bit implausible even to a 6-year-old so I pressed for more details. Gently, it was explained that Tom had died at a very advanced age. My heart soared at this news. I could watch television in peace. I could walk down the hallway of the house to bed without fears of being attacked. I no longer had to hang out in the garage on weekends while Tom slept inside with a conceited smirk on his face. That darn cat. May he rest in peace.

Bailey the insane warrior

You've met Miss B. She's sweet, just shy of 30 pounds and absolutely adorable. She loves everyone: other dogs, cats, the postman, the exterminator, my mother-in-law, the IRS, the garbage men, lawyers. She shares the love.

Now meet Mia. Mia is my sister's dog. She's sweet, about 60 pounds and absolutely adorable. We spent Christmas with Mia and my sister. I was so excited. I imagined Mia and Bailey frolicking together, sharing toys, sipping cocoa and watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" before curling up to wait for Santa. Mia would sleep while Bailey kept watch for a fat man in a red suit. Or Bailey would sleep while Mia kept watch. Maybe they'd take turns. No, I don't have kids, why do you ask?













And, then, Bailey lost her mind. If Mia breathed, Bailey jumped her in a whirl of snarls, gnashing teeth and sheer insanity.  If Mia strolled across the living room, Bailey jumped her. If Mia decided to eat breakfast, Bailey jumped her. If Mia looked out the window to wave at the neighbors, Bailey jumped her. By the end of the day, Bailey was locked in her crate and Mia was sidling into rooms with a furtive look around the corners before extending her paws forward. At one point, Mia stood on the arm rest of the couch and refused to budge. She trembled and swayed ever so slightly.


Christmas morning, Bailey quietly opened her presents alone in her room. Then Mia packed Bailey's bags and put them in the car.