Diane Davidson - Tough Cookie

I thanked him and hauled the precious skis upstairs, where I screamed bloody murder when I tripped over what turned out to be Arch’s physics experiment. Once I’d stored the still miraculously unbroken skis, I stomped back to the hallway, seething. A god-awful mess awaited me. According to the skewed label, Arch had meticulously dropped bleach on black fabric to demonstrate the random spatter patterns of quantum mechanics. I, unfortunately, had kicked the bucket of bleach down the carpeted hallway and taken out not only our gold shag rug but a pile of blue jeans waiting to go into the laundry. With rags, I blotted what bleach I could from the ruined rug. Then I threw the jeans into the wash—they’d be okay for painting and gardening—and hung the grossly spotted and experiment-ruined black fabric in the bathroom.

I tried desperately to be a good mother in the teach-your-kids-and-support-their-interests department, but every now and then my failure quotient became awfully high. Regardless of American sentimentality toward motherhood, I longed to create a Mother’s Day card that told the truth: You can’t win .

In the kitchen, I typed Arthur’s wine list and suggested foods into my computer. Then I contemplated my next few culinary events. I checked the number of cookies I had made for the following day’s library reception. I decided that in addition to the wrapped platters of almond Christmas cookies and Chocolate Coma cookies, I should make Jack’s delicious marmalade muffins and more of the gingersnaps I’d muffed on television. When you fall off a horse, you should get right back on, right?

I took out unsalted butter to soften and made sure I had whole nutmeg, then hunted for my molasses and cider vinegar. By the time Tom came in, loaded with bags containing chilled cans of pasteurized crab and a dozen different sauce ingredients, I was loading scoops of buttery, spicy cookie dough onto baking sheets.

“Aha!” he said expansively as he pulled me in for a hug. “The Queen of Cream tackles gingersnaps again!”

“You read the article in the Killdeer paper?”

“Yeah, somebody faxed it to me,” he replied absent-mindedly. “How’re you doing? You’re not corpulent, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I sighed. “How was The Jerk?”

“His usual self. I felt sorry for Arch, so I bought some lean ground beef and—don’t kill me—Velveeta and picante to make him some Chile Con Queso. We can have it with chips and vegetables. He always orders it in restaurants, so I figured I’d give it a go for him.”

I laughed. “Great. So much for corpulence. I’ll thaw some halibut steaks for us, too. The queso will be good. I need some comfort food myself, since I had to say good-bye to my van today. It was awful.”

“We will buy you another van.”

“You don’t understand. It was so sad.”

His green eyes searched mine. “Hey, Miss G., y’know how many prowlers I’ve wrecked?” The slight scent of his aftershave made me shiver…. Whose idea was it to have dinner before you went to bed?

I said, “Is this a statistic that’s going to upset me?”

“Six wrecked. Four totaled.”

“Ah.”

“What are you making there, Queen of Cream?”

“Marmalade Mogul Muffins,” I said happily. That was the thing about Tom: You never could stay in a sad mood for very long when he was determined to cheer you up. I removed halibut steaks from our freezer while Tom sautéed the ground beef for his Mexican appetizer. Then I pulled my zester over plump oranges, whirred the fragrant strands of zest in a small electric grinder, and measured out thick, best-quality marmalade.

“Mind if we invite Marla over?” I asked. “All this back and forth to the ski area, I haven’t seen or talked to her. She loves halibut.”

“Okay,” he said as he stirred picante sauce into the lake of melted cheese and browned beef. “Only tell her not to come until six, I need to talk to you first.”

“Sounds sexy. I need to talk to you, too. Suppose we could do it somewhere else?”

He grinned. “Later. Call Marla—”

At that moment Arch screamed from upstairs that he wanted to know who had ruined his experiment ! I called back that I had, because he’d left it where someone could trip over it in the hallway. I was rewarded with a slammed door. I sighed. Well, we could all make up at dinner. Hopefully, Tom’s queso dip would smooth over my son’s mood.

“Call Marla,” Tom said calmly, “then I’ll tell you about this artist who filed a complaint against you today.”

“Who did what ?”

But Tom was ripping open a bag of chips. I phoned Marla, who declared she was famished, thank you very much, and what kind of wine should she bring to go with the halibut? Not that she could drink any, but maybe Tom and I would, she said. I racked my noggin for a stored tidbit of oenophilic advice from Arthur Wakefield, and told her a full-bodied, spicy white. Marla promised she’d be over in twenty minutes, armed with the vino.

Tom asked: “Miss G., did you pretend to be an undercover cop, and have lunch with a woman named Boots Faraday so you could grill her on the Portman case?”

“Oh, sure, Tom.” The oven timer beeped. I gently levered the crispy cookies onto waiting racks, then put in the muffin cups. “I invited Boots Faraday to lunch and said, ‘I’m an undercover policewoman. Don’t tell anybody. I do have a bunch of questions for you, though. Don’t tell anybody that , either.’”

Tom asked, “Want to make a pasta dish to go with the halibut?”

I nodded, angrily chopped garlic and onion, and tossed them into a pan shimmering with heated olive oil. “I did not pretend to be anything with that woman.” I didn’t want to tell Tom about the collage I’d bought him, because now I was wondering if the gallery had a return-for-cash policy.

“Watch yourself, because that woman has served time for assault.”

“You’re kidding.” I set water on to boil for orzo pasta. Then I chopped a few ounces of smoked ham and a couple of tomatoes, and stirred them along with some whole-grain mustard, Madeira, white wine, marjoram, and oregano into the headily fragrant, sizzling garlic mixture. A spicy pasta dish would go wonderfully with the halibut. When the sauce was simmering, I asked, “Boots Faraday assaulted somebody?”

“Seems she did a series of artworks for a client. Man owned a snowboard store, he used a snowboard as a down payment on half a dozen collages featuring snowboarders. When Ms. Faraday finished them, the guy said he’d changed his mind. He didn’t want the collages anymore, but he told her to go ahead and keep the board. She could even hang the collages in Killdeer restaurants, he added happily.”

“For heaven’s sake.”

Chile Con Queso Dip

1 pound lean ground beef

12 ounces English-Cheddar flavor Velveeta, or regular Velveeta

½ cup medium picante sauce (or ½ recipe of the tomato, onion, and chili sauce from Sonora Chicken Strudel, well drained)

Corn chips and crudités

In a wide frying pan, sauté the ground beef over medium-high heat, until brown but not overcooked. While the meat is cooking, cut the Velveeta into 1-inch cubes. When the beef has browned, add the Velveeta cubes, turn the heat to medium-low, and stir until the Velveeta has melted. Turn the heat to low and add picante sauce or the Mexican strudel sauce. Heat just until bubbly and serve with chips and/ or crudites.

Marmalade Mogul Muffins

½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1¾ cups sugar, divided

4 large eggs

2 cups buttermilk

4¾ cups all-purpose flour (High altitude: add ¼ cup)