bagels and snotty noses

Well, not only is our child potty trained, with a few hiccups (polite phrase for them) here and there (a less polite phrase would be something more like "a few endless angsty whiny hour-long repetitive bathroom-leaving-bathroom-entering dramatic disaster-producing episodes"... but these seem to have stopped, so we'll go with "hiccups") ... our child is also nose-trained. I seem to have successfully, if perhaps temporarily, convinced my child that her hand will get sticky if she uses it to wipe her nose. Now she urgently says "I NEED to BLOW NOSE!". We STILL all have a blasted COLD. This is week 3. It started on Sept 19, for me, for her a couple days earlier. She's been well in between, but I haven't, and let me tell you, it sucks. I hate it. Amps isn't that well either. I'm coughing and congested at night, Nina's got a runny nose and Amps is coughing and feeling unwell. And I can't take anything, like a decongestant, or a gravol, without taking at least some risk with the baby. Blah. Teaching starts next week - it hasn't even started yet! If this season's anything like last year I'm going to have trouble pulling my teaching together...

Anyway. On Sunday, Nina helped me make some bagels. I haven't made them since I was pregnant with her - there was even a little note on the recipe that they had turned out too small, "but pregnant", I wrote in the margin, as if to explain that of course I would naturally want *big* bagels. (Actually, I remember not being able to eat much at a time, suddenly feeling massively full after 6 bites. Some of that is coming back now, but with this pregnancy at least the nausea has been better. It's the headaches and the endless cold that are problems)

Anyway - bagels. I love them. When we lived in Montreal I could get them whenever I wanted - literally - I had the best ever bagels, fresh as could be, available 24 hrs a day at Fairmont and St Viateur, not too far from where I lived, and near my favourite brew pub too (Dieu du Ciel. I can't start talking about food and drink in Montreal or this post will never end. And the deps! And the Chu Chai! And, and, and ... sigh).

But here? Well, if one is able to go to London, one can apparently get pretty good bagels. Consensus on the web indicates that the best are to be had a ways north of the centre, and/or in Brick Lane. Now, it is MUCH faster for me to make bagels than it is for me to go to Brick Lane and back. A very thorough internet search reveals that good bagels are categorically NOT to be had in this city. English ale? Yes. Bagels? No. Well, bready non-bagel toroid objects from the supermarket, yes, but these are NOT bagels. Bagels, as you know, are boiled before they are baked, whether you like NY bagels, Montreal bagels, or whatever. They are chewy, they are a bit crispy on the outside, they are fantastic with cream cheese and they are the ideal breakfast. 

Nina loves playing with dough. She loves putting things in the mixer, and turning it on, and watching it mix. She loves standing on a chair and helping me, pretty much whatever I'm doing. It's great. (In fact I've figured out that she can put all the cutlery away, leaving me to unload the rest of the dishwasher without interruption).  She liked putting her finger through and making the holes. She shaped her own little piece into a mini-bagel, and she loved eating it. In the end, they were a bit small (but of course I'm pregnant), and they are delicious. Next time I'll have a longer second rise. She loves eating them. And I do too, and somehow, making them felt like reconnecting with who I was before Nina, someone who had time to make homemade bagels, only this time I have someone to share it with who is making them for the very first time. 

Before the new baby comes I want to get to some more concerts, get to the chamber music club to play the grand piano, and do all those things I'll probably pause again, now that my child is the advanced, mature, age of .. er .. 2.

 "I TWO! Mummy .. is... " (let's say 27 for now.)

Well, if anyone wants the bagel recipe, leave a comment and I will post it (that'll save me some effort: no one ever comments! but that's ok folks, this is all for me, for Amps, for Nina, for, well, posterity).