Avgolemono Soup (Egg-Lemon Soup)

Welcome to the first installment of In My Mother-in-Law's Kitchen! My mother-in-law, Marilyn, was an amazing woman who made her own cheese, kombucha (before it was a fad), soup, family clothes (including Wayne's underwear - yes, I just went there - and snowboard pants), and more. I was handed literally hundreds of recipes when she and my father-in-law were killed last year.

As I'm working on compiling a cookbook for Marilyn's family with these recipes, I'm also trying my hand at as many of them as I can. Once a week, I'll post a recipe with my attempts at its creation. I'll try to gather stories from the recipes as well. Unfortunately, when I botch something up in the kitchen I won't be able to call her up and ask her how to fix it! But hopefully I can honor a small piece of her memory with this journey.

Okay, on to the first recipe. There is a very personal story associated with this one. Back in September 2006 when Wayne and I started dating, I was incredibly nervous about eventually doing the inevitable: meeting his mother. Wayne and I had known each other in high school and I knew her to be incredibly strict with her children. I was worried about feeling her judgment and not making a good impression.

In December of that year, during my Winter Break from teaching, Wayne and I drove up to Oregon to spend a week with his family. We arrived on a Wednesday night, in time for dinner. This added to my anxiety.

Wayne's parents lived on a farm. They were not wasteful people. Everything in their home, everything on their kitchen table, was wrought from their labor. I knew that Wayne and his brothers had always been taught to clean their plates.

I, on the other hand, had always been given encouraging nods if I even took just a few bites of food on any given day. My illness left me with no appetite and no real interest in food until after my kidney transplant. Getting enough calories was always a struggle, and cleaning a plate was practically unheard of. By the time I was a 25-year-old adult approaching the home of my future in-laws, I knew that my food habits could be considered rude.

What greeted me that night, though, were warm hugs and a bowl of this soup. From the first bite, I was in heaven. It was tangy, creamy, soothing. My mother-in-law looked on with pride as I had seconds and then thirds. I noticed Wayne wasn't eating his. "I've never liked this soup," he said. I think my jaw literally dropped to the floor, but I quickly recovered it and ate what was left in his bowl, too.

And with that, I'll offer a disclaimer that this soup isn't for everyone. Wayne doesn't like it. I love it. Marilyn - who copied her recipe card for me that very December night, not realizing that I would inherit her original card five years later - said it was one of her favorite soups. It's a MLL dish - Must Love Lemons.

So without further ado, here is the recipe!

8 cups chicken broth [Marilyn made her own, of course...I used the cardboard box variety from the store!]
1/3 cup rice, uncooked
2-3 lemons
4 eggs [Marilyn's chickens hatched 'em...mine came from Trader Joe's hens.]
1/4 lb butter [8T; I used unsalted]
1/4 cup arrow root powder [I used flour]
salt and pepper to taste

I halved the recipe, which serves 6-8, because I knew I was cooking for one and I wasn't sure it would turn out well.

Here are the steps:
Melt the butter in a small saucepan...

and mix in the arrow root powder or flour.

In a separate large pot, bring broth to a boil, add rice, and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Lower heat. Add butter mixture to the broth and boil for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Beat together eggs and lemon juice.

(I know - all of my mixtures are looking very yellow.) Now for the hardest part: tempering the eggs! Add a spoonful of the hot broth to the egg/lemon juice mixture and stir in thoroughly.

Repeat a couple times before adding the mixture to the broth, slowly to avoid scrambling the eggs. Then salt and pepper to taste.

That's it! Super simple, although I have to admit that I had a few bits of scrambled eggs in mine because I wasn't totally successful at tempering! But it tasted wonderful!

So how did I do? Well, Wayne had a few bites to humor me and his response was, "This tastes just like Mom used to make. Now, where are the leftovers from lunch?" So while I wouldn't call this recipe a unanimous hit in my house, I would call it a universal success! It is so good - even more so because it makes me think of Marilyn. Give it a try!

School Trips

This week's RemembeRED prompt was:
School trips. We all go on them. What trip do you remember the most? Where did you go? Who was with you? How did you get there? Have you ever been back?

The funny thing is, I didn’t really go on school trips until becoming an adult.

Oh, I went on field trips to museums. That’s about the only thing I remember. And not to criticize the educational value of these excursions, but museums seemed very mundane compared to the places some of my classmates were able to experience: the week-long trip to the great outdoors in the fifth grade. The eighth grade adventure in Washington, D.C. Yes, even senior prom aboard a boat in the San Francisco Bay.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go on these trips. In fifth grade I was on so many medications that had to be taken every six hours around the clock that I feared what my friends might think at the sight of it. By eighth grade, I was adamant: no one must know of the disease that was slowly shutting down my organs. And by senior year, every other day was consumed by a four-hour after-school trip of its own: my regular dialysis treatments at Stanford Hospital. Non-dialysis days were dominated by complete exhaustion after a full day at school.

There is no doubt that I could have gone on school trips, had I really wanted to and hadn't cared so much about what others thought. When I have a will, I tend to make a way. But I just didn’t have the desire to be “that girl” on an excursion, the one who had to have special accommodations or needed to sit down and rest a little more often than everyone else.

Years later, when I became a teacher, myriad opportunities for school trips presented themselves. This time around, people still didn’t know of my chronic illness, but as a post-transplant adult, I felt freedom to take such trips – and I knew that should students or fellow teachers observe me taking medication, I would turn it into a proud lesson in the value of being “that girl.”

The first trip I took was to the great outdoors – an overnighter in the Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco. I bunked with a group of seventh grade girls, officially as their chaperone and unofficially as their confidante during late-night conversations. I experienced all that I had missed out on 15 years earlier – the rustic accommodations, the morning hikes, the afternoon nature lessons, the cafeteria-style food. At some point in the trip, I realized that I wasn’t living vicariously through anyone, although my students were the reason we were on this adventure. I was living this too.

And so, when we reached an obstacle course with an 80-foot ledge up one of the amazing redwood trees, I knew that my days of vicarious living were about to be truly incinerated forever. Unsure that I would even be able to climb the tree due to muscle wasting in my arms and legs (another side effect of having cystinosis), I surprised even myself when I made it to the ledge in record time. With my kids cheering me on – “Jump, jump, jump; you can do it!” – I walked to the edge with shaky legs and prepared to make my “Lion’s Leap.” I looked down at the smiling faces below me, though I soon heard only the loud clanging of my knees inside my head.

I turned my face upward and looked at the magnificence that was all around me. Redwood trees shot into the air as far as the eye could see. I knew that somewhere up there, just as my kids were doing from beneath me, God was smiling down at me from above. I had made it.

And with that, too frightened to leap and grab hold of the swinging bar that was about six feet out from the edge of the blank, I instead fell backwards and let the harness and ropes catch me. On this trip, I was content to simply have the new experience of making the climb. I knew that next time I would jump.

Unconditional Companionship

Many of my friends know that I am an animal lover. In the great cat person vs dog lover debate, my position has been primarily decided by the constraints of apartment living. I always figured that if I had a dog, he would be a large, protective breed requiring backyard running-around-space; this just hasn't been my reality for the past several years. And although my parents at one time bred Yorkshire Terriers in their condo, I can't really see myself with a smaller dog.

That being said, my husband and I actually do own a large dog, a McNab Shepherd named Patches. She was my mother-in-law's dog, and worked faithfully on the farm before I lost both of my parents-in-law prematurely to an act of unspeakable violence. When we traveled up to Oregon to start the long and arduous journey of picking up the pieces of their murder, Patches became my refuge. When I couldn't take the thoughts I was having inside the house (the location of my mother-in-law's murder), I escaped to the porch and called for the dog. Patches, despite her size, would come and clumsily crawl into my lap. There was no way I was leaving the farm without her.

Unfortunately, though, there was also no way I was sharing our tiny apartment with her. I knew that Patches would not thrive without wide open spaces, especially after living on a farm since puppyhood. It was no small blessing, then, when my husband's boss offered to take care of Patches until we were able to purchase a house.

And so, my dog lives about an hour away from me. Her worth is unmeasurable in part because she was raised by someone who is no longer with me. I can't wait to get Patches back.

It's not that our lives are devoid of animals, though. In fact, I am concerned that I will be classified as a crazy cat lady before my 35th birthday. In our small, 1000-square-foot apartment, we have three cats: a Bombay mix, a Russian Blue mix, and something that can only be classified as beautiful. I think I have finally managed to capture the softness and loveliness of Mumtaz's coat on camera:

 Mumtaz grooms her coat almost constantly during waking hours - but it pays off in softness

She is an amazing creature to me. The lone survivor of a coyote attack on her mother and siblings, Mumtaz has earned her name - which means "excellent" in Arabic. I am so thankful for this fighter, survivor, and sweetheart and all she represents to me.

Yes, I just wrote an entire blog post about pets. But you see, every day I am reminded of how wonderful it is that we live in a world in which creatures of different species can be companions and loving friends. Even when they get on my nerves (as they do when they make their beds in freshly laundered, unfolded, unattended sheets), I still don't know how I'd manage without them.

Poe, our Russian Blue, looks up from her bed of unattended sheets

Homemade Jam (Sort Of)

I've been wanting to make jam at home for a while now. I love the stuff, but grocery store and mainstream brands just have too much sugar (or worse, high fructose corn syrup), and the organic varieties cost too much for a family on a budget. So when I saw an easy recipe in this month's Real Simple, I decided to give it a try!

It was so quick: just a bag of frozen, 100% berry blend fruit (the recipe called for fresh blueberries, but I used what I had on hand, lemon juice, sugar, and salt. It cooked for a total of about 30 minutes, including a gentle cook for the first five minutes or so (to soften the frozen berries) and a near boil for the remainder of the time.

It turned out fantastic! So yummy!

Day 19 (30DJC)

Prompt 19: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

To be able to give unconditional love would be a superpower indeed. I fail so miserably at it, but can think of nothing else I'd rather do. (And everyone knows I hate flying, anyway.)

Beautiful Flaws

The disease I have, cystinosis, causes a buildup of the amino acid cystine in all the cells of the body. This amino acid, so benign in individuals without cystinosis, crystallizes into toxic levels and destroys organs in someone like me.

My eyes are saturated with cystine crystals - even with hourly eye drops (which I confess...I don't take hourly) that are designed to dissolve them. These crystals cause eye discomfort and photophobia (light sensitivity). I am fortunate to have dark eyes that seem to be less impacted by the reflection of light. Many people with cystinosis experience such pain in bright conditions that they choose to wear sunglasses even inside, while under artificial light.

This would seem to be a nuisance. And, well, it is. The eye drops - which must stay cold and spoil after a couple weeks - feel good. Even so, who wants to put eye drops in every waking hour? It is tiresome and inconvenient.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us that even our flaws - nuisances, inconveniences, tiresome though they may be - are beautiful. I went to a new ophthalmologist recently. He had never seen a patient with cystinosis.

I tried to prepare him. "My eyes are saturated with crystals," I said.

"I've read about cystinosis," he responded rather matter-of-factly. "This will be interesting."

But no medical textbook, no patient warning, no prior experience could prepare him for what he would see when he looked at my eyes with a slit lamp.

I heard him gasp.

"Oh! This...is...wow. It's beautiful!" He looked to my husband. "Have you seen this? You have to see this! It's amazing."

As I looked at my new eye doctor, grinning from ear to ear in spite of himself, I had to blink back tears. They weren't tears of resentment, or tears of anger, or the tears that sometimes come from feeling misunderstood. They were tears of joy. Because he understood perfectly - my eyes are beautiful.

My eyes are a window into my illness. They sparkle with a substance that my whole body is full of - a substance that, despite its toxic nature, forms crystals as lovely as snowflakes. I am beautiful because of what I have endured, because of the blessings I have been handed, and because my uniqueness makes me shine.

As my ophthalmologist rushed out of the room to gather his colleagues for a look at his patient's eyes, I smiled at my husband.

"Beautiful flaws," I said.

Day 18 (30DJC)

Prompt 18: Illustrate your job(s).