It seems that all I think about nowadays is either blue food for Sasha’s film gig or his pending appearance in Small Claims Court where he is being frivolously sued by the photographer, Sherman Hines. Both played a part in our weekend because it was the only time that Sasha could be here at home and that we’d have any chance at all to get caught up on anything. So, while dipping cold cuts and cheese slices in blue food dye, we reviewed the legal situation while toasting our nephew’s twenty seventh birthday with pink champagne. I guess you could say that we got a lot of bang out of the weekend buck.

In my own small world, my maiden effort at blogging, Sherman’s Behind,  apparently got itself noticed by another blogger last week, someone who writes about marketing and communication, who has suggested he’d like to include it in an article about “how the internet makes the David and Goliath story obsolete.” His readership, he tells me, is about five thousand people, but so far nothing further has happened on that front. 

In the particular situation detailed in my blog, David has yet to score a victory and Goliath keeps coming on strong, so I’m not sure I can agree with the premise anyway just yet. In the meanwhile Sasha has started a  new Facebook group called People Supporting Sasha in his Claim against Sherman Hines, so the saga continues in that universe as well. As fascinated as I am by social networking and the power of the internet to disseminate information rapidly, I am beginning to find the entire thing quite fatiguing intellectually and would far rather focus my own attentions elsewhere. If I didn’t believe so strongly in this particular struggle, I’d have packed it in a long time ago. 

When I’m not reflecting on the vagaries of the legal system. I am still enjoying myself quite a lot these days. One bit of happy news is that yet another broody hen in another habitat entirely, seems to be sitting on another clutch of eggs. This time I had the wit to turn to my friend and mentor, Ron Rogerson, of Oaklawn Farm Zoo, for some advice on how to achieve a happier outcome this time around. According to Ron, it is likely that the previous hen had, at some point in the past, eaten an egg or two and that the behaviour just resurfaced again in the barn. Cannibalism can apparently lie dormant sometimes .

With a new opportunity before us, this time we are planning to take Ron’s suggestions and handle the situation a bit differently. We will, by night, remove the broody hen and her eggs  to an apple box or bushel basket which we will then cover with a small blanket or a towel. This we will remove again to a secure and private habitat in which no other birds will be present and the hen and eggs will be left in peace. Apparently, once uncovered, the hen will hop in and out of the box (or basket) for food and water and the eggs should be quite secure until they hatch. Unless she’s another cannibal, that is. 

If that happens, we are definitely giving up.

Isn’t there an expression somewhere about screaming “blue murder?” Because I had occasion to scream those two words a few times myself this past weekend although not in the same sentence and not in the way anyone might think.

I should have seen something coming last week when my absent spouse posted to his Facebook a photograph of his right hand on which he sported several fingers that were partially stained blue. I was aware, of course, that the movie he is working on involves that colour in a big way and that virtually all the food consumed by the actors has to be coloured blue. Although I certainly recognized that film food comes under the purview of the property master, I also know that it is often contracted out to caterers, which is probably why I made a little joke of his photograph and didn’t give it any further thought. I thought he was just messing around.

Like a lot of other parts of our domestic existence, Sasha’s return every week-end is usually planned to be relaxing and low key. At whatever time he might arrive, I try to prepare something quick and simple for us to eat (this week it was a lemon pasta/green salad combo), and after sharing a bottle of wine and some of the week’s biggest news, we turn in and make it an early night. With the animals, there is always a busy workday lying ahead.

This past Friday, however, when he arrived from the city carrying the usual duffel bag full of laundry, his book bag and computer case, my husband also handed me a large shopping bag from the Bulk Barn, asking me to take it with me into the house. Thinking it was a gift, I opened the bag eagerly and realized right away that I was in for it. The contents could have no possible relevance to me. 

What was I ever going to do with a supply of blue ‘chocolate’ baking chips, blue jelly beans, blue cake sprinkles, a bag of blue cake “sparkles” (which looked like the same thing to me), a tiny vial of blue food paste, three small bottles of blue food colouring, two tubes of royal blue ‘decorating’ icing,  four tubes of something blue called “sparkle gel” and two aerosol cans of another blue product called food colour spray? In another bag, from a restaurant supply house, arrived an additional litre of blue food colouring and a vat of blueberry puree. There were also some disposable storage containers, a Granny Smith apple and a small jar of mayonnaise. A frisson of anxiety gripped me then because, having lived through similar circumstances, I could see the Food Experiments coming on.

By mid Saturday morning I was taking the mumbling non-sequiturs in stride as my partner had begun to think aloud about the making of what he was now describing as “a ton” of blue food. My feeble inquiry about using a caterer received the slightly testy reply that it was still his responsibility to “work out the logistics” before the actual food production could be consigned to someone else. 

Early that afternoon, after his "emergency" run for yeast and flour, I could hear him cranking up the bread machine which soon began to conjure large amounts of wretched looking smurf blue dough. Pools of dark blue water sat in a number of bowls and pots in our white apron sink. Worried about staining the porcelain, I reached in at once to dump the offending liquid, emerging from that fiasco with a pair of hands that were smurf blue right up to the wrists. They probably heard my screaming several kilometres away. That’s when the word “murder” came up. 

Luckily for him, Sasha is pretty proficient at removing stains, having needed this skill on his own flesh many times over the years. However, the tension between us continued to escalate when the isopropyl alcohol he first recommended failed to do the trick. After I had scrubbed hard with the heavy industrial hand cleaner that he keeps in our mudroom, my mitts paled to the soft robin’s egg blue with which I will apparently have to live until the colour fades on its own. 

Less surly on Sunday morning, and attracted by a large, expensive bag of frozen crab legs and claws, I assisted voluntarily in the enterprise of removing all the crab meat from the shells (most of which were long, multi-jointed legs) without cracking them at all. Snapping at the joints was a no-no because the resultant tube-like receptacles were later going to be dyed blue and filled with marzipan. Blue marzipan, of course.

My participation in this effort was motivated purely by self interest, I confess, possessed as I was of a hankering for crab cakes made with the Old Bay seasoning a friend had brought me from the Carolinas. Since the meat was a superfluous by-product of the blue food experiment, I saw my chance and took it.

While I fried up the crab cakes for brunch, my happy husband stood beside me mushing up two big tubes of marzipan and dyeing them, once again, the now very offensive bright smurf blue. We ate our meal as the unbroken crab shells boiled on the stove in a huge pot of vibrant blue water.  Suffice it so say that things remained blue here for the remainder of the day.

When he left this morning with his bags full of colourful food props and supplies, I think Sasha felt the weekend had been a big success. I couldn't relive it if you paid me.

Much later today, when all the evening chores have been done and I can sit down in peace with a book and a drink in my hand, it sure isn't going to be blue Curacao. I can definitely promise you that.