Aug. 2: Chocolate Malt Sandwiches

Tonight I'm not inspired. I'm just exhausted. I think the entire Pacific Northwest is exhausted. The heat has been unreal and unrelenting. Wednesday was a record-breaker. All conversations were about the heat: how hot it was going to get, how everyone was handling it and how long it would last. I thought about winter--when I started this blog--and how cold it was. And how I was trapped at home with my family with my Christmas shopping unfinished and snow falling every day. I decided that I prefer the heat. (But thank God for air conditioning.)

On Wednesday I stepped out on our porch to take a photo from the same vantage as the one I took on that cold day in December. I can't believe that was only seven months ago. How quickly time passes and what a difference the changing seasons make.

It's high summer now, and we're in full summer mode.

We camped at Blue Lake last weekend with the Higgins and Simmons families. Despite vicious winds the first night, we ended up having a great time. Looking back, we're grateful for the clouds that softened the sun, as our last day was cloudless and blistering hot. We had six adults, six kids, two boats, two motorhomes, two tents and one dog. We sat around the campfire, tubed, hiked, laughed and relaxed. But it seems to have been the last time we would camp with tents because yesterday James bought a motorhome.

It was a long time coming. Years, in fact. I've been resisting all this time. But there's no stopping James once he's made up his mind. And I have to admit that I got sick of camping in the dirt. Not to mention our experience with the broken tent and air mattress in June. As James said as we sunk to the rocky ground at 3 a.m. on the first night: "I bet you wish we had a goddam motorhome now."

And now we do. We pick it up later this week. All 31 feet of it. James and I stood out in the melting heat of the Poulsbo RV lot last Thursday evening, looked at it and said, "that's a lot of motorhome." And we then we sighed.

I wish now that I'd snagged that little coffee pot that we tried to unload at Wilma's garage sale yesterday. It would have come in handy in the motyhome. Denise, Aunt Cheryl and I spent Friday night and Saturday until 4:00 peddling my mother-in-law's treasures for $1 each. Linda joined us on Saturday to help--I couldn't have done it without the extra hands and good company. Wilma's move to the retirement home will coincide with the start of school. That means we have a lot of summer left to pack into the next month.

And that includes cookies. I still haven't added them all up, but I don't think I'm 7/12 of the way through the 42 recipes. I keep telling myself that the big push will come in December with all the Christmas cookies I'll bake. (I say that every year, and then I end up with a couple of tubes of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough.)

So, even though I was exhausted today, I managed to bake Chocolate Malt Sandwiches (pg. 41) tonight. This was a challenging recipe that I've been putting off because it calls for malted milk powder and creme fraiche. I finally found the malt, but I gave up on finding creme fraiche and made it instead. (Thank you Julia Child.) I felt kind of weird mixing buttermilk with whipping cream, heating it up and leaving it on the kitchen counter all day. Setting dairy products out to go sour seems un-American somehow. But I told myself that creme fraiche is French, so it's okay. It's an unclean country, right? All those hairy armpits and small showers and all.

James declared that tonight's cookies are an 8 out of 10. "Too sweet" for him to eat more than two. Christian gave them 1 1/2 stars out of three, the ungrateful punk. And Ian will eat anything.

Me? I haven't tried one. But I sampled the filling--which was, I admit, awfully rich and sweet.

So, now I'm sitting here trying to finish this post. The boys are in bed. The cookies are done. And James is calling me every few minutes: "What are you doing in there?!" He can't stand it that I'm in here writing, ignoring him. The big baby. It drives me crazy.

And so tonight I'm exhausted. It's been a long week. Camping, post-camping, housework, triple-digit heat, garage sales and yardwork have wiped me out. Toss in two double batches of jam (I can't believe I'm admitting to such blasphemy--it was Denise's idea), one divine pedicure, a pre-school field trip, and the biggest purchase after two houses, I can honestly say it's been a full week.

But all things considered, it's still better than a blizzard.