A Day together with the family.

It was not planned, it just happened. Nastia's last weekend before she goes back to Stop and Shop over the weekends and Elena, for some reason had Sunday off. She keeps saying they are cutting hours because business is slow. So here we are all four of us off together on a Sunday. Teri buys pizza dough Saturday to make pizza fret Sunday morning. Teri and I bring down one of her special bowls. I've talked about them before, some of them she got from her mother and are precious and others she bought becausee they look like the ones she has. We drop the pizza dough into the cold bowl and I put the bowl on the stove far from the heat lamp so she won't acuse me of cooking the dough. So she complains that the bowl is on the edge of the stove vent and will fall over and break. Can't win sometimes. She takes the bowl and puts it off to the side of the heat lamp on the shelf over the stove. Later I notice it is not rising, so I move it closer to the light. By 11 that night it has risen beautifuly and I turn the light out. The next morning I take out the cast iron frying pan to make pizza fret. I've said it dozens of time, but I'll say it again. I love cast iron, there is something about it that I can connect to, something about the past, something about how once you get it seasoned, I don't know, I just love it. And I'm sure Teri and the girls just see some very heavy pans that daddy loves. I set up pizza fret and I use the cast iron. I know Teri likes to use the non stick 14 inch pan, but it is more like a gonna stick pan and it is on the list of things to be replaced. I hope I'm not on that list, well I know I'm not on my list, gotta check Teri's list. Sorry, thinking outloud. Teri will comment later that the pizza fret don't taste like Dad's and maybe it was because of the cast iron. I take a tiny bit of the dough to see if the oil is hot when Teri walks in asking if I'm making a test pizza fret (she makes test meatballs all the time when we have spaghetti and meatballs, italian thing, I guess. I could go on and on about the culatural shock I went through when I'd grown up on my mother's meatballs and then started dating italian girls and all they went through or their mother's went through to make meatballs. My mother's were just beef, egg, bread crumbs and some spices. I know italian meatballs are just adding pork, but there is so much more to it than that.) I let Teri take over and stand back to watch and assist. I go up stairs and wake both girls up telling them their mother is making pizza fret and to come help, you know mother/ daughter bonding thing. Elena is not a morning person. Alot of that has to do with tha fact she stays up to all hours of the night. I go to her first. I tickle her ear. I get the slits of her eyes opening, I know I'm in trouble, so I make it quick. "your mom is making pizza fret, why don't you go help." She reply is not nasty, but it is also not friendly, "I have my alarm set for eleven." I figure, what the hell and go to wake up Nastia. Nastia said to me one day years ago that she decided to be a happy person and that is why she is like she is. And yes she is a happy person. I walk into her room tickle her ear, then her nose, her elbow, she is in the deepest of sleeps. I check to make sure she is breathing, she begins to stir, stretch and I get some eye balls from the opening eye lids. I tell her her mother is making pizza fret and she should come down and join in. I will go up a second time to wake them up and I think it is the third time I go to wake them up when it's all cooked and ready to eat that I am cold and a little pissed that they did not get up to join in. We all sit down to breakfast. It sounds to me that Elena is being very pissy and I'm not happy that it took three time to wake them up, so I keep quiet. I don't want to ruin breakfast. Later I'm asked why I'm quiet and I say Elena is being miss cranky pants and all three disagree. Then the three 'ladies' talk about the length of their most recent crap, I kid you not. I'm done eating thank god. They are not talking about how long it took but how long it was. Women can be disgusting sometimes. I'm sorry this is a subject I never felt the desire to talk about. Breakfast is done and clean up is quick. I clean the last of the oil out of the large cast iron pan and Nastia wants to clean it. I tell her it doesn't need to be washed too much if nothing is sticking to it. I still can't just rub it clean. I need to lightly soap and water it. Then it must be dried over a flame to make sure it is completely dry and will not rust. I carry the pan to the sink, Nastia washes it. I then carry it to the stove and turn on the flame. Now why doesn't she like this pan? I think because it weighs almost as much as she does. We have tickets for Morbius at the movies at 3:30, all five of us, yes Nancy is coming too. We don't see her so much now that she has moved into the condo. /