March 29: Lemon Madeleines

Last week sucked. Well, it ended up good (fingers crossed), but it's a week I'd rather forget.

I find it ironic, then, that for this week I made Lemon Madeleines (pg. 190). The French writer Marcel Proust made madeleines famous when he featured them in the opening scene of his novel Remembrance of Things Past.

So, Friday was my birthday. I turned 41. I spent part of the day on a table in a medical clinic having what was supposed to have been a biopsy. That's because on Tuesday I discovered a lump. A large, painful lump. And it had a swollen, painful friend up where lymph nodes usually are. Wednesday it was nothing to worry about, per a general practitioner. Thursday it was a "mass with a blood supply and an enlarged ancillary lymph node," per the radiologist at the breast clinic. Sigh. Hence the biopsy.

But it turned out, we hope, hope, hope, to have been an infected abscess. So, now I'm on antibiotics and am waiting for test results. I may be back for a biopsy on Friday, depending on what those lab results and a follow-up ultrasound show.

It's scary and humbling to have the firepower of American medicine aimed directly at your left breast.

And what's the cause of all this excitement? Possibly the painful blow Ian gave me with his elbow. Right to the boob, last Friday.

Okay. So enough of that.

Those lemon madeleines are yummy! Delicate and very French, I think. Like little cake-like lemon bars. I can't wait to make the orange-cardamom versions. My cousin Heidi gave me the madeleine pan for my birthday, and I was very excited about it. I heart kitchen stuff.

Right now, for example, I'm roasting a whole chicken in my Dutch oven (one of three different sizes that I own). Inside the chicken is a sprig of thyme (home grown) that I cut with my cute, green herb snips. The chicken legs are tied together with my kitchen twine, and I basted the chicken in melted butter (unsalted, of course) using the best basting brush ever made (the one that comes apart for cleaning). I could go on and on, but I won't. Some people say that my blog posts are "long-winded." Hmph. But since those people don't read the blog, I'll just continue on my merry way.

Didn't Maya Angelou say something about caged birds singing not because they want an answer but because they have a song? I have a song, godammit, and I'm singing it. La la la la la la!

So, anyway, back to the birthday. Yeah, it sucked at the beginning, but I was very happy and relieved at the end. I just hope it stays that way. I'm hoping that someday I'll look back with nothing but gratitude--someday when the shear terror wears off. Meanwhile, there are chickens to roast, fifth-grade projects to manage, cookies to bake, runny noses to wipe and lots and lots of kids' sports to juggle. Someday, I hope, I'll look back and say, "remember that birthday when Ian almost gave me cancer?"