the kitchen floor is dirty

This is not news. This is everyday life. It strikes me as painfully ironic that when you most need your kitchen floor to be clean enough to eat off of (there's no way to put that phrase that doesn't end in a preposition), there is no way you can get it that way, much less keep it that way. So the dirt sticks to the raisin that falls on the floor, and before you've realized that the 9-year-old has dropped raisins on the floor, the not-quite-2-year-old has eaten three of them.

That's life.

The children don't seem to mind. Lucy doesn't care if the bottoms of her socks (or feet) look like she's been walking around outside, and the boys would probably rather I not scrub the floor. I mean, when the floor is clean (for the whole 5 minutes it stays that way), they have to be obsessive about taking muddy shoes off at the door.

In fact, now that I think about it, the children would all probably prefer that I leave the house untidy and not bother too much about the floors. The main result of it, from their point of view, is that then I am far more likely to ask them to pick up toys when they've finished playing, and way more likely to recoil in horror if they walk into the house in muddy shoes. (And, as this is England in spring, muddy shoes are pretty much the order of the day...) Dusting would be ok, and cleaning the bathrooms doesn't disrupt them too much.

Then again, maybe I should just go for a walk.

Baked beans go with everything

I admit that this isn't news. Not a 'current event' of the sort that bored me as a teenager. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but I always found fiction more compelling at that age. I suppose that what I am about to post is the former: truth, stranger than fiction. Or at least I find it so, since I am from Southern California, where baked beans go with hot dogs and hamburgers, next to the coleslaw.

Here, in England, beans go with a lot more things. Toast, for example. Baked beans on toast is one of my kids' favorite things, especially with soft boiled eggs. If you're British, you probably don't find that odd. (Then again, you might--my British husband doesn't like eggs, so he's not a reliable source.) I don't mind. It makes the kids easy to please when their dad is away. They think it's a treat.

And then there are those intercultural moments in our house, when baked beans find their way onto plates with really odd pairings. Today, it's enchiladas. One of Iain's very favorite meals is enchiladas with baked beans. It still disturbs me slightly. I stick with refried beans, which are the fitting accompaniment to enchiladas.

Green enchiladas aren't something you find much in Durham. Maybe not at all. The Central American proprietor of Salsa y Sabor (next to the bus station) does the green salsa. I was going to post the recipe (and probably will eventually), but now it's time to eat.