Magic and Matthew

The most memorable holiday gift I received this year, the thing that most made me smile through the whole Christmas season, was to see my nephew Matthew and his emergence into our crazy extended family.

Because at least outwardly, it wasn't always this way when he was a younger lad.

Not that he wasn't a part of our family before, he's always been loved and accepted, same as his brother, Joshua.

But now Matthew, in some way, for whatever reasons that his mom and dad attribute only to him, appears to be opening up to us.

This has not been an easy post to write. I don't want to sound over-emotional about it or anything except what I really do feel: amazed and extremely surprised and happy about Matthew's progress.

Matthew is autistic. He and I have always gotten along fine together, but autism, to the extent I understand it, is a condition that often keeps people affected by it within themselves, in their own little worlds.

(Check here if you want more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism)

And that's how I had always accepted Matthew, although loving him unconditionally.

He was always there, as much as he could or wanted to be there...but aloof, distant in some way, off in a corner or doing something else, most often by himself.

And I accepted that.

He always enjoyed it when I picked him up and swung him around or turned him upside down, sometimes far beyond what my aging bones could manage, but there was also a time just to let him be.

And that was OK.

But he so much has always loved just doing the things we all want to do. And that's HAVE FUN!

I had always understood the amazing caring his parents always had for him and the work they did with him, and the sometimes rough roads they had travelled to get him all the help he needed.

And I believe those have paid huge dividends.

This Christmas, when we had our family get-together, Matthew was an entirely different child.

He was communicating. He was opening up to the world. He was teasing me and others. He was talking. And it was amazing and it made me very happy. And so here was Matthew, breaking onto the scene.

Matthew has grown into a person who now acknowledges he knows us and he loves us and, hopefully, he can feel our love for him.

And while his mom and dad give him all the credit, we know their love had a lot to do with it.

Now, THIS is what life's all about.

How to make Swedish Nuts

REALLY, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY.

INSTEAD, MAKING NUTS TASTE GOOD IS HARD.

That is, if the directions aren't exactly clear, or if the person in charge of acquiring the ingredients and then whipping them into shape as per instructions doesn't know a pecan from a toucan.

Or if he doesn't have one of those high-falutin' whipper-upper thingies.

Blogger buddy Anna sent along this recipe for Spiced Swedish Nuts, something she said her husband and everyone else raves about.

I hummed. I hawed. But being the amateur gourmet chef I am, a master of chicken stir fry, bacon and eggs and Kraft Dinner, I finally decided to try them. The first thing I did was look at the recipe.

The next thing, of course, is to get the ingredients. This is where I began to foul up. As instructed, I bought the pecan halves.

Unfortunately, because I actually tried to remember the ingredients instead of writing them down when I went shopping, I only bought half a pound. So I had to go back to the store a day or two later.

And when I did, they didn't have the pecan halves any more, they just had the pecans in the shell, a whole giant package. Unwittingly, I figured a bunch of whole nuts is better than half a thing of half-nuts.

So I bought that, leaving me with this:



Well, DOH! I've never busted nuts before (only had mine busted). And these things are HARD! I had to bring out all the artillery.

Nothing really worked all that well. Pecans are, ahem, tough nuts to crack. But I needed another half-pound of "pecan halves." So I soldiered on, through trial and tribulation.

I tried my garlic press. I tried my pliers.

My hammer worked the best, but a lot of pecans lost their lives in the process and were crushed to bits. I don't know how the professionals do it, but if there's a secret, I couldn't discover it.

And my dang nuts seemed to be laughing at me. Doesn't that look like a sly grin to you?

Anyway, I never got even close to extracting half a pound of pecan halves from that big pack of nuts. I gave up after about half an hour.

And compared to the hugely expensive but convenient pack on the left, I ended up with what's on the right. So fine, let's proceed with the recipe.

I had to extract two egg whites from two eggs, leaving the yolks behind. But what the heck was I supposed to do with the best part of the egg, the yolk?

As instructed, I heated up the pecans.

And in an amazing first for me, while I was doing that, and without the benefit of an electric mixer, I had to manually "whip" the egg whites, chili powder and all kinds of other stuff like sugar in a "large bowl."

UNTIL STIFF!

Surprisingly, I managed to do both things simultaneously.

Then all I had to do was mix all this gooey stuff together.

Back in the oven they go, for three 10-minute intervals of stirring (not one 30-minute interval, no sir-eee!)


TA-DA!!!

I'm sure I got the volumes (or is that weights) of the ingredients wrong, but they ARE good!

I thank you, Anna. And I hope the Muppets' Swedish Chef would be proud.

I'm Just Sayin'...

It's Day 1 of 2008.

And I was going to pose the question, just wondering, how we could be doing all this celebrating...

When we had all this going on in the year that just passed and which is still going on in the year we're ushering in...

But I decided not to. Kind of. Because to focus on that would just drive everyone crazy.

It would be counter-productive and pour cold water on the festivities and diminish the positivity that, well, maybe things CAN change.

It would completely ignore the reality that there ARE beautiful things and beautiful people around.

We just have to push away all that other crap to find them and focus on them because, barring some mass stream of consciousness that results in a global revolution, we can't control anything else.

So we interrupt this program to bring you images of the beauty that's all around us.

ALL THE BEST FOR 2008.