Welsh Rabbit

Last summer I subsisted mainly on scrambled eggs and scones. In order to avoid a repeat performance this year, I've vowed to try at least one new recipe a week.

This week: Welsh rabbit, a la Judith Jones, in her book The Pleasures of Cooking for One.

1 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp white wine or beer (or whatever. I'm sure you could make it with red wine too, and it would be delicious. Don't let me crimp your style.)
1 egg yolk
a pinch of dry mustard and a pinch of salt
5 or 6 drops of Worcester sauce (if you have it)
2 oz grated cheese (I used cheddar, but again, you could probably use whatever.)

Melt the butter on the lowest possible heat setting. Whisk in the wine, egg yolk, mustard, salt, and Worcester sauce; keep whisking until it's lightly thickened, like a soft custard. Then add the cheese bit by bit, stirring each bit of cheese until melted, then adding the next bit.

This will cover two or three slices of toast (depending how big the slices are. You might get four or five if they're small).

It's kind of like a cheesy Hollandaise sauce. Therefore it's probably delicious on eggs as well as toast.

***

Up next: pumpkin bread.

On empathy

We are finally - FINALLY! - getting started, testing the kids' reading speeds. Most of them take it in stride, although some of the sixth graders are already displaying the stigmata of test anxiety. They jiggle so hard it shakes the table, make silly errors, get fuddled in their words and pinched about the face as they read. It hurts.

"Ready?" I say. "Take a deeeeeeeeeep breath."

Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it doesn't.

I can feel myself falling into the attitude that so irritated me, sometimes, when I was younger (and sometimes irritates me still, when older people direct it at me): seeing and bleeding for the child's pain, thinking that there's something, or ought to be something, that I can do to stop it, and believing that I understand. Understand better than they do, even.

There is something infinitely condescending about believing that you understand someone else - someone you hardly know, yet - as if they were uncomplicated and could not contain multitudes. I know too many people who pride themselves on their empathy, and occasionally take it upon themselves to explain to me how I feel, except that they're totally wrong.

Sometimes I doubt the value of empathy. Not only does it lead people astray, so they believe they know how you're feeling and don't ask, but it also paralyzes them: they feel other people's pain so strongly that they can't bear to be there when other people hurt. I don't see that it doesn't anything that sympathy can't do better and at less cost. Sympathetic people don't take it as a personal affront when you tell them that, actually, they don't understand nearly as well as they think they do.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't feel this rush of fake understanding with the kindergartners and second graders that I'll be working with. I find them adorable but slightly perplexing, especially the kindergartners: it's impossible to hold a coherent conversation with them, as they won't stay on topic for more than a couple of sentences. This is going to make teaching them - interesting.