Birthday weather & stuff

Once again, the first cold front of the fall season has come through on (or within a few days of) my birthday! I am so very happy. A break from the oppressive summer heat is the best present I could ask for.

On Saturday we got some rain from Hurricane Ike (for those of you wondering: no, we did not have lots of wind, we did not lose power, we did not lose phone service, and we only got about 2" of rain over 24 hours) and so it was rather wet and humid near the end of last week.

Yesterday was sunny, dry, and rather pleasant, temperature-wise. Today was absolutely amazing. Again, sunny and dry, and the high temperature reached maybe 78 or so. Right now it's in the mid-60s and we have all the windows in the house open.

Also, the light changed this weekend. It's taken on that goldeny fall hue, and the blazingly white summer washout light is gone. Somehow it's easier to see. Things seem prettier.

I had a really nice birthday weekend. Doc took me out Saturday night to a yummy family-style Italian restaurant, and we met some friends there. No wine with my meal, but only 11 more weeks to go on the moratorium (actually I don't crave wine anymore so it's much easier these days). We stuffed ourselves and then came back to our house, where we had coffee and cake, good conversation, and played some "Pain" on the PS3. I had a great time with good friends and good food. Maybe that's the point of life: good friends and good food.

One of my favorite gifts from Doc is a book called "Hello Cupcake." When it's our turn to bake cupcakes for our son's class, they will be the best damn cupcakes ever!



Maybe a boy child won't really want these particular cupcakes for class, but I think they're beautiful:



And probably the cutest cupcakes EVER...

How much of an omnivore are you?

This is an interesting list, compiled by the folks at VeryGoodTaste.co.uk. How many things on the list have you eaten? My score is 49, which is not too bad considering how picky I am about meat. And only 24 things I wouldn't consider eating!

The VeryGoodTaste Omnivore’s Hundred:

• Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
• Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
• Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses de Bourgogne
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Soudough Bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted Cream Tea
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whiskey from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (I have had Kaopectate, does that count?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost (Gjetost is one of my favorite cheeses!)
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu (nasty stuff)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3-Michelin-Star Tasting Menu
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (and hated it)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

What was the fascination with Jello?

So I'm in the beginning stages of writing my second cookbook. This is the recipe gathering and testing stage. I have a fair number of recipes that I have developed over the past four or five years that I plan to include, but I'm on the lookout for sources of inspiration and new ideas to adapt. I have a lot of cookbooks and I love to relax by casually leafing through them. For the past couple of evenings, I have been reading one that I haven't looked at in a very long time. This one is kind of a family heirloom: "A Kitchen Happening*" compiled by the St. Peter's Hospital Auxiliary group in 1976, which I think is probably some sort of women's charitable fundraising group. At the bottom of the title page is the explanation for the asterisk in the title: "*We Knead the Dough."

Ha!

Anyway, my grandma was a member of the Auxiliary and contributed some recipes to the book. I wasn't able to immediately locate her recipes, although I bet if I asked my mom she'd know. I have to say, though, I was pretty hard-pressed to find anything in this book that I would consider eating, let alone testing and adapting for my own cookbook. I guess the 1970s were an era when "Italian" in the title of a recipe meant that you used a can of tomato soup and a chopped green pepper, and where anything with soy sauce had to be called "Oriental." Spices other than salt and pepper, and ethnic food of any kind, were just emerging in mainstream America, and still had a long way to go.

I thought I'd transcribe a couple of really... interesting... recipes here for your gastronomical reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Green Jello Salad

1 pkg. lime jello
1 cup boiling water
1 cup (small can) pineapple
1/2 cup canned milk
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbl. horseradish
3/4 cup nut meats

Dissolve jello in boiling water. add can of pineapple and juice. Cool. Mix rest of ingredients and fold into jello.

Tuna Souffle Salad

1 pkg. lemon jello (4-oz.)
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup cold water
1 Tbls. lemon juice
1/2 cup real mayonnaise
1 can tuna
3/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup sliced stuffed olives
2 Tbls. chopped pimientoes
1/2 tsp. grated onions
1/4 tsp. salt

Dissolve jello in hot water. Add cold water, lemon juice, mayonnaise and salt. Blend well with rotary beater. Pour into tray and quick freeze 20 minutes. Turn mixture into bowl and whip with rotary beater until fluffy. Fold in remaining ingredients. Pour into 1 quart mold. Chill until firm and garnish. Great with hot rolls! Serves 6.

Now, to the credit of this book, there are maybe only twenty recipes for varying types of gelled concoctions, so it's not like the 1950s when Jello was KING and half a book might be devoted to the art of apsic. I had to print two of the more disturbing ones here, though, as a representative sample. I can't figure out how anyone ever thought it was a good idea to mix fruit jello with fish, celery, mayonnaise, pickles, onions, or any other decidedly savory ingredient. My rule is that Jello should be sweet and adulterated only by fruit, if absolutely necessary. (Kind of like my rule that bagels and cream cheese always must be either plain or savory, never sweet. I have few food rules, but these two are pretty important.)

Mrs. Pat Lewis submitted this recipe that made me laugh out loud. Mrs. Lewis is spunky!

Half Peach Stuffed with Cottage Cheese

Place on lettuce leaf. I'm not going to explain that. I will say that I put this right on the dinner plate with the rest of the luncheon. If you are serving the shrimp, I forget the cottage cheese and add more pieces of fruit.

And last but not least, something that sounds positively horrible:

Green Pig

1 cup chopped celery
Grated onion
1/3 cup sour cream
1 jar salted cashews
1 pkg. frozen peas

Add at the last minute, 1 pkg. frozen peas. Serve on lettuce.

Not everything in this book is this bad. Really, there are a few recipes that I would almost consider trying, if it weren't for the fact that I have a lot of other really good cookbooks and great recipes from Mom and Grandma, and, you know, not exactly endless amounts of free time. Still, I love this book. It's a lot of fun to look through.

Olympic-sized breakfasts

I just read an article that discussed what Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Michael Phelps typically eats for breakfast:

• 3 fried-egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, and mayonnaise
  
• A 5-egg omelet
  
• A bowl of grits
  
• 3 slices of French toast with powdered sugar
  
• 3 chocolate chip pancakes
  
• 3 cups of coffee

I love food. Looooooove food... oh yes, my pudginess does not lie. Yet I am having a really hard time imagining how one person can eat that much in one sitting. I am trying to visualize all that food laid out side by side (one of my tricks for weight-control-by-guilt), and it's kinda scary.

I guess that when you're burning off 10,000 calories each day, though, it's necessary.

Contrast that with what Doc and I ate for Sunday breakfast yesterday... a small portion of hash browns, a pumpkin spice waffle with syrup, a small slice of grilled ham, half a peach, and coffee. (Each, of course.) I was so stuffed that I didn't eat lunch until 4 p.m.

So, here is my question. If you had to eat 10,000 calories every day, what would you eat?

Millions of peaches, peaches and cream

Have you seen the peaches lately? Unbelievable! I stopped at my local Albertson's a few days back to pick up some contact lens solution, and was stopped in my tracks by the peach display near the front door. I have never seen larger, more perfect peaches in my life. And they are freestone! I bought almost 5 pounds. Too bad they are neither organic nor local.... but I couldn't help myself.

So what do you do with 5 pounds of peaches? Turn them into ice cream!

Summer Peach Ice Cream

3 nice large peaches
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup half and half
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Remove the pits from the peaches, and chop peaches into small pieces. Put into a blender and puree until smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg until light yellow in color. Add sugar, whisk to blend. Mix in cream, half-and-half, vanilla, and salt. Add peach puree; stir to blend thoroughly.

Pour into an ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.

This makes a seriously rich and creamy ice cream and it's just busting out with peach flavor. I want to try experimenting with less cream, more milk, to make a lighter, more ice-milk-y version. My favorite ice cream in the universe is Blue Bell's Vanilla Bean, and I think part of the reason I like it is that it's very light in texture; it's not too rich, and it's moderately creamy without having that mouth-feel of "oh my gosh I am eating pure fat."

Weenie Roast

Everyone needs one of these for their next cookout!

Thanks to Doc for this disturbing image.

HOW much do we eat?

Especially now that I'm eating a lot less than I used to, I've become very aware of portion size. I think that you could safely say that what qualifies as a "kids' meal" today at most restaurants would have been a full on adult meal 40 or 50 years ago. I often order a kids' meal, not only because it's generally inexpensive, but also because it's generally quite enough food for my appetite. Quite frankly, a kids' meal should really be enough for most people, too, ESPECIALLY if people would slow the fuck down and take a little time to digest their food. When you do that, you get full a lot faster and don't overstuff yourself. But in our SuperSized American Culture, adult meals are often 3 to 4 times that size, with a corresponding increase in calories.


Of course, the downside of eating these smaller portions is that the selection often leans towards bland, non-nutritious food. 

I propose that other restaurants follow the lead of TGI Friday's restaurant and offer smaller portions of their regular dishes. Fridays' version is called "Right Portion, Right Price." Kudos to Fridays for recognizing that not everyone can nor wants to eat two pounds of food at a sitting. I don't want to pay $14 for, say, a plate of pasta and then have to feel like I've gotten my money's worth by receiving a pile of noodles bigger than my head.

I found an interesting article on Divine Caroline that shows you a visual representation of what average portion sizes used to be 20 years ago (this was 1988, folks!) compared to today. It's kind of scary.

Bacon Jam!!!

I have discussed my love of bacon in this venue numerous times before. And today, I learned of the existence of Bacon Jam. Yes, that's right; Bacon Jam, made by Skillet Street Food, a roving Airstream lunch counter in Seattle. Bacon Jam is a delicious (I assume) concoction of bacon, onions, and balsamic vinegar, all caramelized and cooked down into a lovely spreadable consistency. Can you imagine! This might be something I attempt to make on my own. If you want to buy some, they sell it on eBay.

Weird Food Tastes

After living with my husband for more than ten years, I am finally beginning to realize that a lot of the foods and food combinations that I like are just plain weird. My loving husband is more of a food traditionalist than I am, or perhaps I should say a food purist. He likes food close to the source, lean and fresh and healthy, prepared plainly so you can taste what the food actually tastes like. Butter and salt are about the only two condiments a person should ever need. There are rules for sandwiches: which cheeses and spreads go with which meats, and what can and cannot touch within a sandwich. If you are having a cheeseburger, cheese IS the condiment. None of this is out of the ordinary, I think.

I just have bizarre tastes. Here's where I confess them.

For instance, my all-time favorite sandwich is peanut butter and pickle. Now, before you decide you no longer want to be friends with me, try it! You might be pleasantly surprised. The sweet crunch of the peanut butter is balanced out by the juicy saltiness (or sweetness) of the pickles. I prefer whole wheat bread, crunchy natural peanut butter (no sugar added), sweet pickle slices or a combination of sweet and dill... and sometimes a bit of mayonnaise. Yikes! Did she just say "mayonnaise?" Yes I did, and it adds another complex layer of salty creaminess. I've been eating these since I was a little kid. Grandma ate them, my mom and her brother and sister ate them, I eat them, and if I ever have kids, I'm going to try to get them to eat them too! Much to Doc's horror, I am sure. :) And lest you think I'm completely nuts, try googling "peanut butter and pickle sandwich," and you will find that I am far from alone in this!

I also like to make a dipping sauce that is a combination of sour cream and soy sauce with ginger and a dash of sugar. It's delicious! Creamy, salty, and sweet. Great with veggie sticks, or for dipping sandwiches, chicken, or steak.

If balsamic vinegar was inexpensive, I would drink it like a fine liqueur. Delicious! I put it on everything.

I love Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (in the blue box), and I add mustard and Tabasco to mine. Just a bit will do - a teaspoon of each. I learned this trick from a friend in college when Mac and Cheese was a staple of our low-budget diets.

Bacon and chocolate go GREAT together!

Put a bit of extra salt into your next batch of chocolate chip cookies. An amazing difference! Again, the combination of sweet and salty together is delicious.

I don't eat french fries without ketchup. French fries are merely the vehicle.

I dip chips in mustard.

Worldly as I like to think I am, I am surprisingly unadventurous when it comes to meat. In fact, I don't eat much of it at all anymore, and what I do eat tends to be plain old ground hamburger or fish. I'm reading Bill Buford's "Heat," and also watching Iron Chef America on TV, and all these dishes are so heavily meat-focused and often prepared practically raw. Yuck. Iron Chef America has largely been responsible for my return to near-vegetarianism. I truly believe if you are going to slaughter an animal, you should use ALL the parts, for food or other uses... but I have to admit that there is no way I am ever going to eat brains, tongue, kidneys, skin, tripe, membranes, livers, cheeks, feet, ears, intestines, marrow, stomach, bladder, or anything else that's not something very ordinary that comes in a package for $5 a pound at the supermarket. I'll leave those bits to others, to more sophisticated palates than mine. Bon appetit.

I don't like pumpkin pie, pecan pie, turkey, or chocolate ice cream. Is that un-American?

I love Velveeta. Yes, I know it's not really cheese. I don't care. I love it. I love it on pickle sandwiches (again with the pickles! No PB this time though) or melted with milk and salsa, as a dip for corn chips.

I love pineapple on my pizza. Not many people do, apparently.

What weird things do you love?

1970s Kids Cookbooks

These are some photos from two cookbooks I had when I was little and LOVED. The first three images are from Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls, and the last one is from The Little Witch's Magic Cookbook. There are more images from these and others on my Flickr page.

I looooooved the photo of this cake, and I think I made it once. The best part was that the eyes were sugar cubes set inside eggshells, that you SET ON FIRE! Ghost Cake with Flaming Eyes! Scary!



I wanted to LIVE in this ski chalet.



My favorite recipe in the entire book. The authors were smart; they put the desserts at the front of the book.



Maybe this is where I got my love of peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches...

Rainbow Chard: Success!

My personal Holy Grail of Cooking has four dimensions: Delicious. Nutritious. Cheap. Doc-Approved. It's really hard to hit all four of those, but I think I did tonight, although I may have fudged a wee bit on the nutrition aspect, as you will see later on when you read about the sausage.

I impulsively bought a big bunch of rainbow chard at Central Market a few days ago, largely because it was beautiful but also because I'm trying to work more nutritionally rich plants into my diet (dark, richly-hued foods, like blueberries, spinach, orange, broccoli, tomatoes, black beans). At the time I had no plan for what I'd make with the chard, but whatever it was, it was going to be damn pretty.

Tonight I pulled the chard out of the fridge (chopped a few days ago, when I was originally going to use it but ended up being too tired to cook) and thought, "Dammit, I need to use this tonight before it gets too old." So I did one of those crazy things I do where I just start adding things to a saucepan and hope for the best.

Sauteéd Chard, Potato, and Sausage

4 ounces pork sausage
1 medium sized Yukon Gold potato, scrubbed and cut into 1/4" dice
2/3 cup water
1 bunch rainbow chard (or any chard), stems included, chopped into 1" pieces
1/2 cup green beans
1 teaspoon garlic 
1 small serrano or jalapeño pepper, diced
Salt to taste

In a medium saucepan, cook pork sausage until browned, breaking into small bits with a spoon. Pour off most of the fat (not down your drain! See note below), leaving a little for flavor. Add potato and water; cook on medium-high for about 5 minutes until water is mostly evaporated and potatoes are tender. Add chard (you may have to do this in 2 batches if it won't all fit), green beans, garlic, and serrano pepper. Stir. Cover pan and cook for just a minute or two, until chard starts to wilt. You don't want to overcook it. Remove from heat, add salt to taste, and serve.

Yum!

I served it with cheese-tortillas (sharp cheddar melted on tortillas, under the broiler).

Note: When I ask you to pour off the fat from the cooked sausage, please don't pour it down your drain! All that grease gets into the sewer system and sticks to pipes like cholesterol on your arteries, and causes all sorts of problems. Pour it into an empty tin can, cover it, and freeze. Keep using the can until it's full, then toss it in the trash. There's probably a way to use this technique without having to put a recyclable tin can in the landfill, like lining the can with cling wrap or something so it can be popped out later... but the hot fat might melt the plastic. If you have any ideas, let me know. 

Monkey, monkey, YOU!

Monday night, my stomach hurt from laughing for 2 solid hours. We saw Eddie Izzard's show at the Majestic Theatre, and I think it was the very first stop on his pre-tour tour. His material was somewhat rough and he made jokes about "must... work... on... that... one..." (pretending to write in an imaginary notebook). He seemed to find his groove toward the second half of the show, and completely sucked us all in to that zone where you're laughing so hard that you can't stop laughing even though your stomach hurts and your face feels like it's going to crack in half!

For instance, did you know that Charles Darwin wrote a book, called "Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, YOU!"

And that giant squid lived in the hold of Noah's Ark, but were constantly asking for towels and trying to tune in "The Riches" on the telly? He said "My other problem with this story, is, ok. 'Alright, tigers, there you go, hop on board, badgers, follow along, spiders, deer, more badgers?.... um, hey, who do we have on board now? ' 'The tigers.' 'What, just the tigers?' 'Yes, just the tigers so far. They seem bigger!'"

And the bit about God inventing creme brulee for the badgers and then hand-feeding it to them.... LOL. I guess you had to be there.

He also kept whipping out his iPhone on stage to look up stuff on Wikipedia! It was really hilarious the first couple of times, until the audience started doing the same thing and finding the answers first.

Last night Doc and I went to a cooking class at Central Market, to learn how to cook Moroccan food. The food was great. Our classmates were interesting. The chefs were knowledgeable. But I don't think I'll be back. It was way too expensive for the experience. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know, and I know how to follow a recipe, which is really all that we (sort of) did. I say "sort of" because we had printed recipe packets but the chefs kept saying "I don't like the way they say to do this, let's do it this other way." And I was expecting more of an individualized experience. I thought that Doc and I would have our own station with ingredients, chopping block, stovetop, and we'd experience making all the dishes ourselves. Instead, we had a group of about five people and we all would find one little task to do... like Doc chopped some garlic. I grated the peel off an orange. Somebody put everything in the pot. It just felt very very basic. I wanted to learn about Morocco, the history of their food, what types of special ingredients they used, how they make phyllo dough, etc etc etc, and instead it was more like a lesson in how cooking almost never happens in reality: with 15 people in the kitchen getting in each others' way and feeling like we're not contributing.

Radishes? For breakfast?

I have been eating vegetables for breakfast every morning this week. No, really, I have! And I feel very pleased with myself for getting in so much fiber and nutrients before 10 a.m.

I don't generally like to eat sweets for breakfast; I prefer savory foods. So no matter how fabulously inexpensive and nutritious plain oatmeal and fresh fruit sounds when I'm grocery shopping on the weekends, the truth is I just can't choke it down in the mornings. That stupid cardboard tub of oatmeal sits lonely in my cabinet at work.

My usual breakfasts consist of either a piece of raw fruit and some cheese, a plain fruit smoothie and a slice of cheese, leftovers from the night before, a bagel with cream cheese, or beans and cheese on a tortilla (a breakfast burrito without the egg). Or, like this week, vegetable sticks with homemade hummous.

My highly scientific research — consisting of a focus group of myself — indicates that brightly or unusually colored vegetables cut into little bite-sized pieces with hummous really DO taste better than the standard carrot sticks, celery sticks, broccoli and cauliflower with oily Ranch dip that seem to be the standard American choice for raw vegetables, or "crudites" if you want to get fancy about it, and I do. Why is eating fun-looking food more fun? I have no idea. Ask any child under the age of 10, they can probably give you a better answer than I can!

This past weekend I bought some maroon-colored carrots (carrots such as "BetaSweets," pictured at right and available at Whole Foods, Central Market, or other organic groceries, have 40% more beta-carotene, higher sugar content, cancer-fighting anthocyanin, and a much smoother texture than orange carrots... plus they just look NEAT when they're cut open!), radishes, snow peas, and a variety of bell peppers. I cut them into sticks (except the radishes, which got sliced in my food processor, and the snow peas which needed no alterations) and tossed everything into a Ziploc bag.

Then I made some hummous, which sounds really intimidating but is ridiculously easy and very healthy. Here's how I make it: Rinse and drain one can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and dump into the blender. Add about 3 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste, available in jars in the health-food section of most grocery stores), about 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, a half teaspoon of garlic salt, and blend it all up. You'll probably need to add a bit of water if it's too thick. Scrape down the blender and add water just until the blender begins to blend it consistently without you having to poke at it with a spatula.

I know how to keep my man happy!

(Whirring mixer sounds coming from the kitchen)

Doc, from living room: What are you making?

Me: Cinnamon rolls!

Doc: You are SO SEXY right now.

Other topics

I realized tonight that I've only made three short posts in the past three weeks that AREN'T about my miscarriage. Part of me is tired of thinking about it, and I am sure that my readers, all two of you, are tired of reading about it too, so I'm going to try to move on to other topics now for the most part. I can't promise there won't be the occasional "woe is me" post, but I am trying not to let the woe engulf me and writing about normal things will be an exercise in getting my head out of that sadness.

So. Onward!

Last.fm
Doc turned me on to this cool site called Last.fm. It's a free service (similar to Pandora) that keeps track of what music you listen to, streams music that it thinks you'll like on your own personal "radio stations" (and does a darn good job, by the way, of choosing music that I like), connects you with people that have similar tastes, and introduces you to independent artists and music you may not have heard before.

Try it! It's very easy to install and operate. It imports your iTunes listening history and then is able to custom-tailor "radio stations" for you.

The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
I absolutely love Cracked.com's lists. The people who write them are hilariously witty and razor sharp. Even if I don't have any interest in the topic, although I usually do, I still read them for the quality of writing. Here are just a few choice quotes from a recent article about six adorably cute animals that can fucking kill you. This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as "cute" are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.

There is no way you could look at a big, fat, happy, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, "If she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy." You would totally name her Sassybaskets and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassybaskets against the world! Look out, New York, here comes Sassybaskets!

The platypus is mother nature's way of saying, "I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you."

It turns out swans are now and have always been vicious, mean little motherfuckers who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute its presence. And then going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.

Orange Almond Cake with Caramel Sauce
A few weeks ago I made a delicious cake. It is in no way low-calorie or low-fat, and it tastes utterly decadent. Here's the recipe:

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1/3 cup light sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 ounces almond paste, crumbled

Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon rum extract
1/3 cup orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 350.

Lightly butter a 9"-round bundt cake pan; set aside.

With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the apricot preserves, sour cream, and vanilla extract; beat for 1 minute more.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt; lightly fold into the batter along with the almond paste.

Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan . Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the center of the cake is firm when the pan is lightly tapped.

For sauce:
In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for a few minutes more. Drizzle over cake slices.

Recent Activities
Last Friday night we went to an art show and dinner with Kathryn and Brett. Even though I didn't particularly care for most of the art (a student show, watercolors), it was nice to get out and do something cultural with friends. I don't know why we don't do that more often. Recent events have got me thinking a lot about priorities and free-time activities, and I've realized that I miss actively making art and actively going out to look at other peoples' art. I want to start doing that more often. We need to force ourselves to find the time.... maybe by just writing on the calendar what we are going to do, and then sticking to it. For someone who's supposed to be an artist, I sure avoid art a lot of the time. I don't understand myself sometimes.

Cheese Roll Call!

A world of cheeses
Deliciously made for you and me
Flavors like Provolone and Brie
Each with its own ethnicity.
So many cheeses
Are available all around the world for you to eat
Especially good with crackers and meat
A nice yummy treat!

I sure do love cheese. Here are my current top five:

Ford Farms Coastal Cheddar: The most delicious sharp cheddar I've ever had. Has a bit of crunch to it (crystallized calcium, not salt as you might think) and a perfect texture: not too creamy, not too flaky.
Gjetöst: A delicious light brown cheese, dense and super-creamy, with a salty, sweet caramel flavor. Made from cows' and goats' milk and whey. It can take a while to get used to the unusual taste.
Welsh Harlech: A cheddar infused with sharp, pungent horseradish.
Gruyere: The classic sharp and nutty Swiss cheese.
Cougar Gold: A sharp white cheddar made by students at the creamery at Washington State University.
Stilton with Apricot: A mild creamy blue cheese with apricot bits. Yum!

I guess that was six, not five, wasn't it? It is so hard to choose!

8 Years of Hitched Bliss!

Yesterday Doc and I celebrated our 8-year anniversary! Yay, us!!! It really hasn't felt like 8 years (well, 12 if you count the time we were dating), and I know that's a Very Good Thing. We've made a point over the last few months of spending more time together in the evenings, and on evenings when we do our own things in our respective studios, I feel lonely.

He is truly the light of my life, and my best friend. He is so funny and intelligent and sexy and cute and caring and generous and honest and faithful and loyal and entertaining. I am so glad that we managed to cross paths in life.

Sometimes it just hits me how much a simple thing like one simple decision can be so fragile, so fleeting, so life-changing. If either of us had made any number of other decisions prior to the moment that we met, we might never have met or married at all.

What if he hadn't been able to come to that party we had where he discovered my CD collection and realized that we had the same semi-obscure interests? What if I'd gotten more involved with the person I was casually seeing at the time that we met? What if he had already grown distant from Tommy when Tommy and Ginger were dating? What if he and I had decided to date a few years earlier when we were first introduced, when neither of us were ready and it wouldn't have worked out?

It's weird to try to tally up all the things that had to go absolutely right to lead us to this point. I think this is where some people like to imagine that God, or whichever higher power they ascribe to, had a hand in things. I don't think so, personally. This world is so complex that crazy things like this happen all the time, and the times when things work out either really well or really badly is when we start to question the events that led up to that point.

Anyway, back to the anniversary. We did not give each other big gifts, as is our tradition, but I did get him a few bars of fancy soap that he likes, and he got me some rosemary seedlings (since I managed to kill the two large plants he got me last Christmas), because, he says, it reminds him of when we got married. How sweet is that??!

He was working onsite at a client's all day yesterday, and when he came home we spent some quality time together (wink wink) and went out to stuff ourselves at Texas de Brazil (and if you're planning on eating at a churrascarria and having sex in the same evening—two ways of getting stuffed, har-de-har-har—I'd highly recommend having sex FIRST).

I do love that place but lord have mercy, is it ever expensive. We had a buy one/get one free coupon (they send those out to their mailing list for birthdays and anniversaries), and that's about the only way that I'd be comfortable eating there. At $45 prix fixe per person, you're looking at $100+, more if you have anything to drink besides water.

They offer a dessert menu, but I have no idea how anyone could possibly fit dessert in after partaking of the orgy of meat and salad. The 5-inch-tall slice of cheesecake with an inch of fudge on the bottom and caramel on top looked pretty appealing, even so.

And I think I mentioned this last time I posted about Texas de Brazil, but I swear I could eat my weight in goat cheese. Just give me their rice, black beans, and goat cheese, and I'm a happy girl.

A Gravy Kind of Love

Thanksgiving went well! We have way too much food left over, as usual. Anyone want some stuffing or mashed potatoes?

Doc's turkey was awesome; it keeps getting better every year (this coming from someone who doesn't even really like turkey!). He had to leave it in the oven a full hour longer than he planned, in order to get the temperature up to that minimum safety level (170 degrees F). Not sure why that was; perhaps our 25 year old oven is not working quite right. But most of our guests arrived shortly before it was done, so the timing worked out pretty well in the end.

I have a ton of wine (thanks dad!) left over along with about a cubic meter of stuffing. That ought to get me through the next few days quite nicely :)

Besides the fact that our food seemed to be a hit, the highlight of the evening for me was playing a few lively games of Catch Phrase Music Edition, where you have to get your teammates to say the title of a song that appears in the little device's window, without saying any of the words in the title or revealing the artist. It took us a while to get into the groove but once we warmed up to it, we had a lot of fun. Bob was trying to get his team (Brittney and Chris) to say the word "from" by telling them "on a Christmas package, not 'to,' but ..." and Brittney yelled, "NOT TOO EXPENSIVE!" That just cracked me up. Also, "A Gravy Kind of Love" is CLOSE to the name of the Phil Collins song, and appropriate for this holiday, but not quite right.

Today I did nothing but sleep, read, eat, and nap. A few other things like showering and writing a little, too. But really and truly this was a lazy lazy day. It helps that the temperature didn't even hit 50 today... cold grey weather makes me want to snuggle under a blanket all day. Also, it snowed yesterday! On Thanksgiving! In Texas! It didn't last long, and turned into sleet after a few minutes, but still, it was pretty cool. We had a fire going all day, and had to turn on the heater upstairs.

A day of serious cookery

Wow, sometimes a week goes by and I haven't posted, and I don't know how that happens. I just lose days at a time. Weird.

My brother Bob has been in town for a few days, which has been fun. We went to trivia at Trinity Hall on Sunday night. The questions were really tough this week, and we met our goal to come in Not Last. Third from last is pretty respectable, isn't it?!

I took today off work and spent pretty much the whole day cooking! It was tiring, but fun. I made:

• Apricot-cranberry chutney
• Tossed field greens salad with sliced honeycrisp apples, grape tomatoes, gorgonzola and croutons
• Creamy balsamic vinaigrette
• Apple pie (with extra filling going into little flaky puffpastry shells)
• Pumpkin pie
• Chex mix
• Sage rolls (turned out absolutely awful; completely tasteless and mealy. I threw them away)
• Focaccia bread with sun-dried tomatoes (as a replacement for the nasty rolls)
• Mashed potatoes with cream cheese, butter, garlic and chives
• Bacon (to put on the mashed potatoes and green beans tomorrow)
• Two quarts of mint iced tea
• Hash-brown casserole (for tonight's dinner)

Tomorrow, I am making sausage-cranberry dressing in the morning, and Doc cooks his turkey in the afternoon. Right before we eat I will sauté green beans in butter and some of the bacon I cooked today.

No sweet potatoes this year! There's not enough popular support for them in the people that I knew for certain were coming to dinner. I like them OK but only when used in a savory dish.

I'm excited about tomorrow, seeing friends and family and eating lots and lots of food... but I'm really sad that mom couldn't come this year. She's spending the day with my other brother Mike and her brother John and his family in Seattle.

Mayotini, anyone?

There are many things that I like about Japan and its culture: Yaki soba, okonomiyaki, yukata, chopsticks, tea, cherry blossom festivals, respect, hokusai, love of nature. However, some things I don't think I will ever fully understand, such as bizarre physical contests masquerading as game shows, manga, anime, strange food like corn ice cream and sea cucumber, and restaurants such as...

Mayonnaise Kitchen.

That's right, a restaurant devoted to mayonnaise. It's become somewhat of an obsession among young Japanese, who call themselves "mayolers," or mayo fanatics. The photo at right is of a "Mayoty Dog"... a vodka drink made with mayonnaise, with mayo on the rim!! Mayo! In your perfectly good vodka! Might as well add some tunafish and chopped onion while you're at it!!

Mayonnaise Kitchen also allows customers to purchase their own personal bottle of mayonnaise that the restaurant keeps on tap for whenever they dine, which I find really bizarre.

I guess maybe it could be compared to a restaurant devoted to chocolate, or wine, or another singular gourmet ingredient... But mayonnaise? Come on! It's an American white-trash condiment! If you go to the grocery store you'll find eight billion different kinds of mustard, but mayonnaise is pretty much mayonnaise. I can't see how you can build an entire restaurant around it.

For me, mayo has exactly two uses: in homemade Ranch dressing, and in tuna or chicken salad. That's it. Not spread on sandwiches, not as a dip, and certainly not in my martini!

Making cheese!

I made cheese last night! It was really incredibly easy. You warm up a gallon of milk using a thermometer, and just add a couple of ingredients to make it curdle, and when it's separated you strain it, microwave it, knead it like bread dough, and voila! Fresh mozzarella.

Learning to make cheese is one step towards self-sufficient commune living. Now I just need a cow... :)

Cooking spree

I had an unexpected surge of energy this evening and went on a cooking spree. I made:

* Giant pot of marinara sauce
* Big pot of ground beef and Italian turkey sausage, combined

Froze part of each of those for later use, and combined the rest into sauce for the lasagna tomorrow night.

And:

* Potato-garlic cloverleaf rolls
* Lemon cupcakes

And I broiled a steak for Doc's dinner tonight, and what will become my lunch tomorrow. I also made a gallon of mint iced tea and a couple of quarts of lemonade.

Tomorrow night I need only to assemble and bake the lasagna, toss a salad, and frost the cupcakes.

Doc's feeling a bit better

Doc's been feeling somewhat decent the past few days... relatively speaking, of course. He's woken up without much of a headache, and that is a nice change. It usually hits later in the day but I don't think it's to the degree that it has been recently.

He says that the Depakote is doing really weird things to him. Before, the headaches would come in long waves, kind of like a sine wave that went really high in intensity for a while, then would dip somewhat lower for a while. Now the headaches come in shorter bursts that don't get quite as high or as low. Both amplitude-modulated and frequency-modulated. Also, it's like the cluster and the migraine and the Depakote are in a 3-way knock-down drag-out fight inside his skull, and one of them usually will have dominance for a short period before one of the other ones takes over for a while.

He has to gradually build up to taking 4 pills a day. Tonight he starts on week #3 (3 pills). Should be interesting to see what happens when he's on a full dose.

Saturday we had a good day. Spent a lot of quality time together, I went to Molly's wedding shower, we went out to the movies to see "Stardust," which was quite surprisingly good and then later watched "The Constant Gardener" from Netflix, and we ate takeout for dinner.

At Molly's shower, I saw a girl that I remembered from high school but haven't seen since 1990. She and I had a class together and we sat together every day and goofed off the entire year. She was a year younger than me but she was one of the "cool kids," the ones who occasionally cut class, probably smoked and drank, and generally had a much more developed social life than I did. But she hung out with me in class, talked to me, seemed to like or at least accept me. I definitely remembered her for that, and occasionally wondered what happened to her. I didn't know that Molly was friends with her younger sister. She now has three kids, including a 2 week old baby girl and a 3 year old boy who knows all the words to Johnny Cash's entire repertoire, and is as funny as ever. She said that she remembers me, although I'm not sure that's actually true. She may have said it just to be nice. It doesn't matter, though, I had a good time talking to her his weekend.

Today I began lunchtime yoga classes. I haven't taken yoga in a year and a half, because I was lazy, training for a marathon, and really liked going out to eat every day instead. But I'm changing my ways now. I hope to go to yoga at least 2 out of 3 times per week, endeavor to cut back on my seriously out of control diet-Coke habit (by not drinking any before lunch time, for starters), and to continue my healthy diet changes. I've already stopped eating all deli meat (turkey, ham, roast beef, etc) and have cut way down on my meat consumption in general. I'm trying to eat more fruit (breakfast smoothies help a lot with that). More changes probably to come, but I think these are good goals to start with.

Anway, after yoga I felt fantastic all afternoon, as I usually do when I get those endorphins going in my bloodstream. I am certain that tomorrow I will barely be able to move! But I should be used to it after a week or so, I think.

Meat Orgy!

Saturday night Doc and I took advantage of Restaurant Week and went to Texas de Brazil with Brittney and Chris. I'd never been there nor to any churrascaria, so was not quite sure what to expect other than what friends have told me (large salad bar and guys walking around with meats on skewers, cutting and serving at your table).

Holy freaking shit. This was an absolute stuff-your-face experience, a shameless orgy of meat. I have never seen so much amazing food in one place in all my life (although my mom's cocktail parties and holiday dinners come close, I must admit...)

Where to even begin?!

I am not, personally, a huge meat fan, so that was not really the main draw for me, but what I tried was absolutely excellent: Brazilian sausage, bacon-wrapped filet mignon, garlic sirloin steak. Other offerings that I was way too full to attempt included parmesan-crusted pork, bacon-wrapped chicken, pork tenderloin (I tried a bite of Doc's; it was the best pork I've ever had), flank steak, lamb, and ribs.

The "salad bar" now... that was heaven on earth. Potatoes gratin, jasmine rice, black beans, lobster bisque, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano, goat cheese and sun dried tomato strata, olives, prosciutto, grilled provolone, asparagus, green beans, carrots, a giant vat of crispy bacon, mozzarella balls, smoked salmon, grilled peppers, cheesy bread rolls, garlic mashed potatoes, a pasta dish with red sauce, little burgundy mushrooms, tabbouleh, sushi, artichokes, and, oh yeah, salad too!

I ate a light early lunch Saturday to try to be nice and hungry for dinner that night, but my plan seemed to backfire. I think I got past the point of hunger to where I wasn't all that interested in eating anymore, by the time we got there. Or it could have been the fact that I wore my contacts for the first time in a week and a half and had a bit of a headache and dizziness going on. Anyway, I wasn't able to eat very much, nowhere near what I was hoping for, to get my money's worth!

I did, however, save a teeny bit of room for some key lime pie. Actually it was more like key lime cheesecake. Completely delicious, and included in the prix-fixe Restaurant Week price!

Now I know what to do next time. The meat was great, but I'm going to go for the salad bar-only option (half the price!)

Roadtrip Day 7: All Over The Place

This morning I got up early again and went walking in Gig Harbor with Mom, Aunt Sue, and family friend Yasuko. We walked around the harbor and marina and through the downtown area, then stopped for coffee and scones. Yasuko is a bit older than Mom and Sue, and as a teenager Mom babysat her kids.

It turns out that her daughter, Christine Wada, works in Hollywood and was the costumer for one of my favorite movies, O Brother Where Art Thou. She's done costumes for a lot of movies, including a few Coen Brothers films.

We drove up to Sequim with John and Sue so Mom could meet with the plumber and get the fixtures and tub choices finalized. We walked around the property for a bit first, and it had rained earlier in the day, so everything was wet. It was cold, too! I would say between 50 and 55 degrees.

Later we ate lunch at a little cafe on the waterfront, more of a dive really. It looked like a place where old people go to sit all day and smoke cigarettes. The fish and chips were excellent, very lightly battered so not too heavy. I really and truly love malt vinegar on my fish and chips. Who needs tartar sauce?

While Mom was at the plumber's shop, the rest of us went to a few antique/junk shops to see if they might be places Mom would like to go to search for old doorknobs and other authentic house accessories. Then we got blizzards at Dairy Queen.

Note to self: Never eat fish, chips, and ice cream for the same meal. Ever. Again. You will regret it.

Traffic was awful coming back home; a bad accident had shut down the highway. We exited and tried to take back roads. John was driving mom's car and knows the ins and outs, but as it turned out, so did everyone else. It probably would have been quicker to stay on the highway.

I took a few photos at John's, of his house and the surrounding forest.









Later, we left John and Sue's as they had to pack up for their monthlong vacation at their Alaskan island cabin, and drove back to Redmond to Mike's house. I was not feeling well at all (again: fish, chips and ice cream are a bad combination) and so I pretty much laid around for the rest of the evening, reading and feeling sorry for myself.

We'll spend tomorrow with Mike. No idea what we will do.

Weekend Update

I got all my holiday shopping done today. I realized mid-morning that today was pretty much my only opportunity to do it, due to various commitments over the next 2 weeks. Not to mention, the closer to the 25th it is, the more doses of crazy get added to retail excursions, and I don't much like shopping as it is.

I was out for 6-1/2 hours (insane!) but surprisingly I still had energy when I got home. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I only spent a tiny portion of those 6-1/2 hours at a mall. Malls are their own special version of hell, especially around the holidays.

Anyway, I had energy enough to bake and decorate sugar cookies for my office holiday party. From scratch, baby. They're thin and chewy and have peppermint icing. Holy crap, they're good; as K1 said, "hide-them-from-your-significant-other-good."

I had planned also to make pasta with meat sauce, garlic baguette slices, and a spinach salad for dinner, but that is going to wait until tomorrow instead.

Yesterday we went with Kim, Brittney, and Chris to Six Flags. Like I've said before, winter is the only time of the year to go to amusement parks. I was shocked at how many people were there; I've never seen a crowd that big during the winter. The lines for some of the rides were really crazy long. I freakin' love the Titan. The Spongebob 4-D ride was great too (not that I'm a Spongebob fan, but the seats moved and jolted you around in sync with the film and we got SQUIRTED at one point, it was nutty). We had a great time talking and laughing and drinking hot cocoa. I cannot believe that i paid $11 for a slice of pizza and a medium coke. Park food prices are absolutely insane; so is parking ($15).

Friday night (hey, guess I'm working backwards chronologically with this post) we went to my office's Level 2 holiday party (the one I am making the cookies for is the Level 3 party -- my department; next week is the Level 1 party, hosted by the president of the university) at the division vice president's house. There were waaaaay too many people there for the size of his house. We made an appearance, ate some appetizers and wine, and then left to go to Times Ten Cellars for a drink and some relaxation (me and Doc, Brittney, Yvonne and Nate, Ben and Chelsea, and Chelsea and Helena). Yvonne had her first glass of wine since she's been pregnant! (It's fine to occasionally partake after the 1st trimester). It took her well over an hour to finish that one glass; she says that it's strange how her body is changing so drastically in response to Le Cheetoh.

Yesterday I picked up my unrepairable sewing machine from the shop (it only sews backwards now! and sadly, cannot be fixed because they don't make the 35-year-old parts anymore). I got it into the hatchback of the Prius with no problem, but as I scooted it back against the rear seat, a muscle in my mid-back went **TWINGE**. That crazy painful sharp pain that makes it hard to breathe. I tried to stretch it out a little before I got back in the car, and then when I got home I laid down on the heating pad for several hours. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it to Six Flags later that day or not, but it looks like this time is not nearly as bad as it has been before. I did OK at Six Flags (thanks to my good friend Darvocet) and today I hardly feel it at all. I've decided to start doing yoga on my own again. I think that the reason my back has been spasming a lot lately is because I've let myself go, strengthwise. Yoga will help strengthen my back and stomach muscles and, hopefully, this won't happen as much anymore.

Today was the day of the White Rock Marathon. I did not participate. I feel all kinds of latent Catholic guilt about that, because I said over and over again that I would do it; in fact, I INSISTED that I was going to find a way to complete it despite my stress fracture. I realized, though, as the weeks went by this fall, that it would be a really really dumb thing to try to do. I would probably end up making my injury worse by keeping my training at that level. And even if I didn't push myself with the training, if I'd tried to run/walk 13 miles today I know I would have re-injured that leg.

There is always next year. Yvonne says that after she has the baby in May, she'll want to train for it as well, to get back into shape. I think that it's a good goal to have and I'm totally supportive of whatever she decides to do, but I also think that she might be so tired from being a mom that she just plain might not have the energy. I plan to train either way, once my leg has a chance to get stronger. I'd like to start training in earnest in March. I hope that's enough time. We'll see.

Carbonnade à la Flamande

This afternoon I took The Aluminum Falcon (as I'm calling him temporarily) out to the grocery store for the first time. His hatchback trunk holds a lot of groceries, all nice and neatly stacked. He has a "cargo net," although I'm not quite sure yet what it's for. Maybe to hold breakable things? It does seem to prevent things from sliding all over the place.

I'm really happy about having a new car. Did I mention that this is the first new car that I have ever had? It's also a first for Doc. My Saturn was a year old when I bought it in 1998; my Honda Accord was five years old when I bought it from my parents in 1995. I loved that car and hated to sell it, but it kept having the same problems over and over again and I got tired of paying multiple hundreds of dollars to get it fixed every few months. And my 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which was never really "mine" per se, was the car that I learned to drive on and had full-time my senior year in college. It had no air conditioning and would die at every stoplight when the temperature was below 60 degrees. But it just wouldn't stop running. At times I wished it would.

Today was nice and sunny and cold outside, so of course I was completely in the mood to cook all day. I made a dozen banana muffins and a mini loaf of banana bread, a fruit salad, some fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, and a delicious beef stew called Carbonnade à la Flamande. Normally I'm not much of a beef stew fan, or a beef fan in general unless it's in the form of a hamburger or a cheesesteak sandwich. But this was very tasty. It also garnered the Murdock Seal of Approval, which is always an honor.

Carbonnade à la Flamande

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 1/2 pounds boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
4 strips bacon, diced (uncooked)
1 cup chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 (14-ounce) can beef broth
1 cup water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
2 bay leaves
1 (12-ounce) bottle dark beer
Freshly cooked brown rice

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large zip-top plastic bag. Seal; shake to coat.

Turn the heat on a crockpot or slow-cooker to high.

Heat a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Add bacon to pan; cook 1 minute. Add beef mixture; cook 3 minutes or until browned. Remove beef from pan.

Add onion and garlic to pan; sauté 2 minutes. Add broth and water, scraping pan to loosen browned bits.

Place beef in the crockpot. Add broth/onion mixture, brown sugar, vinegar, tomato paste, mustard, thyme,bay leaves, and beer. Let simmer 2 hours on high, and another hour on low heat, or until beef is tender. Discard bay leaves.

Serve over hot cooked brown rice.

thanksgiving menu

Thanksgiving never used to be one of my favorite holidays, but the older I get, the more it approaches favored status. The food itself is not the selling point for me — I'm not a fan of turkey, nor mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, soggy green beans smothered in cream soup, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, or cranberry sauce. But I do like spending time with my family and friends.

Since my parents moved to the other side of the state a few years ago, we've started a tradition of having Christmas at their house and Thanksgiving at our house. And we always invite our friends over as well, a tradition that started well before my parents moved out of town when my mom would generously invite my friends whose families lived out of state and who otherwise might spend the holiday alone.

This year is probably the last year I'll get to spend Thanksgiving with my parents; they're moving out of state next summer. It makes me sad to think about it.

This year, the menu will be: Doc's roasted turkey; gravy; dressing with sausage and cranberries; leek and garlic mashed potatoes; balsamic glazed carrots; sauteéd asparagus with garlic and Parmesan cheese; field greens salad with sliced tart apples, spiced pecans, gorgonzola cheese and dried cranberries with balsamic vinaigrette; antipasto salad with cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and kalamata olives; cranberry sauce; apricot chutney; rosemary rolls; pumpkin tarts; apple cream cheese torte; wine.

Missing from the menu this year is pizza, which makes me sad because it was on the menu mainly for my brother, who is now living in Boston and can't be with us. I did send him a "pizza kit" in the mail, to help him feel a little less lonely this year. Also, we are going to try to set up a video chat during dinner so we can eat "together."

when the most exotic spice was paprika...

This weekend my mom brought me some cookbooks from the late 1800s and early 1900s that she doesn't want to take with her when she moves next summer. Old cookbooks fascinate me, I guess because it gives you a real sense of what everyday life was like. It's interesting to learn what types of ingredients were available (or not available or not yet invented or I have no freakin' clue what something is) and especially what was common knowledge at the time, which you can deduce by noticing what techniques are and aren't explained. And the vocabulary was so different! Words like quickset, mercurochrome, black-draught, whiting, table sauce, farina-kettle seemed to be common usage.

Women by and large knew how to cook because they had to. (Ruffled feather disclaimer: I'm sure that men were certainly capable and some were happy to cook as well). Not only was cooking generally thought of as "woman's work" and most women were homemakers, but almost all meals were either eaten at home or packed and carried. Today, by contrast, even for someone like me who loves to cook and probably does so more than the average person, I eat my meals out probably 25% of the time.

Anyway, my point is that because it was expected that the audience for a cookbook would already know all the basics and many of the advanced methods, nobody wasted the paper or ink on detailed instructions for each recipe. So you get things like a list of ingredients (some with precise weights or volumes, and some with "an egg-sized piece of" or "fifteen cents' worth" or "enough" as the amount) with the lone instruction: "Bake."

We're spoiled today by the variety and quality of ingredients. American women of 100 years ago didn't have as much to work with. And boy, was Jello a favorite.

Crust Coffee
(from "For the Invalid's Tray" section of Aunt Jane's New and Revised Cook Book and Suggestions for Farm Home and Stock, circa 1929)
Toast bread on both sides until a deep brown. Place in a bowl, pour over 1 cup boiling hot water. As soon as it is cool enough to drink add cream and sugar if desired. This has been known to quench thirst.

What could be better than toast tea, suspected of quenching thirst? Hmm... how about fish jello?

Jellied Tuna
(also in Aunt Jane's, but surprisingly not under an "Emetics" heading)
1 package McConnon's Lemon Quickset
1 cup boiling water
1 cup cold water, less 2 tablespoons
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup tuna fish, flaked
1 cup peas, fresh cooked or canned
2 tablespoons pimiento, finely chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise

Dissolve Quickset in the boiling water. Stir in and dissolve 3 heaping tablespoons sugar. In a measuring cup put 2 tablespoons of vinegar and fill the cup with cold water. Add to Quickset mixture. Add salt, also chill. When slightly thickened, fold in remaining ingredients. Turn into individual molds. Chill until firm. Garnish with additional mayonnaise.

Also in Aunt Jane's, a handy-dandy first aid guide. Did you know that in case of cinders in the eye, you should rub soft paper up like a lamp-lighter and wet the tip to remove, or use a medicine dropper to draw it out? (The word "cinders" always reminds me of the book series "The Great Brain" by John D. Fitzgerald, that I absolutely loved when I was a kid.) Or, if the cinders prove to be too much, "tests of death" include: Hold mirror to mouth. If living, moisture will gather. Push pin into flesh – if dead the hole will remain, if alive it will close up.

The Rumford Common Sense Cook Book, circa 1930 and published by Rumford Chemical Works, makers of Rumford Baking Powder, insists that for school lunches, "boys like plain folding lunch boxes, girls prefer daintiness of equipment." Apparently kids in the 1930s liked to eat sandwiches made from sardines with plenty of lemon juice. I'm sure that smelled fantastic by the time noon rolled around!

Tamales, acccording to The Good Eats Cook Book by the Housekeepers of Kent, Wash., circa 1900, consisted of green pepper halves stuffed with a mixture of tomatoes, bread crumbs, ketchup, and "table sauce," tied with a string, and boiled for a half hour. Or just stuff them with meat and bake. The inside front cover of this little recipe pamphlet had an ad for Look's Bazaar, with a recipe for a "Modern Up-To-The-Minute 'Woman'". What does this 'Woman' consist of, you may ask?

Take dainty undermuslins, add to this the best hosiery made (THE TOPSY HOSE) add two parts corset (The ROYAL WORCESTER of course) one for Sunday and one for common, and mix thoroughly. Then take a generous measure of shirt waists (you never can have too many), add to this a couple of nice silk petticoats (The Morris Brand) and a mixture of outside skirts (or if desired, the materials for them can be supplied by us). For a frosting or finishing touch add a few collars and belt pins, hair ornaments, fancy collars, head scarfs (ribbons may be used if not over 30). Mix all these parts thoroughly and you have the MODERN UP-TO-THE-MINUTE "WOMAN"

Sixteen layers of clothing, some whalebone rib compression (hey, who needs to breathe, really?), two hours later, and I'm ready to start my Washing Monday!

Good times.

it's meat... and cake!

Tonight for dinner, I was feeling creative, and so I made a Meat Cake! It's a cake... made of meat! It's meat... and it looks like a cake! I grilled some ground beef patties (mixed with Lipton Onion Soup Mix, which I've recently found out that food snobs look down upon, and some A-1 sauce), then stacked 2 of them like a layer cake and iced them with garlic mashed potatoes. The confetti on top is chopped red bell pepper and yellow pear tomatoes from my garden, and some scallions.

i wanna rock and roll all night, and part of every day

I'm severely manic today. I don't know what the deal is. I've got tons and tons and tons of energy, and I feel like I'm flying high, like everything's falling into place, like I'm getting tons of stuff done, like I can keep going all night. It's almost like I've taken some mood altering substance that's got me going going going going going. (I didn't.) You know that feeling where you can almost feel every blood cell in your body zipping along through your veins, like your energy is almost visceral, it's this THING that you can feel circulating through you and it makes your whole body hum and vibrate? That's what this feels like, except I'm keeping it perfectly under control, it's right at that knife edge where it could go too far and suddenly I'd feel like complete shit. I'm keeping it on the knife blade today, all day.

I'm even typing crazy fast. (And making crazy lots of mistakes, but that's another story). Even now, at 9:45 p.m., I still feel like I'm cresting on some crazy energy wave, although I can feel it abating a little bit.

Here is what I've done today, in no particular order:

• Got up at 7.
• Made a list of money that we owe people, and money that is owed to us for various minor recent things.
• Assisted on a video shoot for a documentary about kids attending cancer camp.
• Ate breakfast.
• Ran errands at Target.
• Washed all the towels in the house in a strong vinegar soak to get rid of the impending musty smell that I've sensed lately.
• Belled the cat. (That was Doc's task, actually. Loki's furious about having to wear a collar ... a shiny neon yellow reflective collar with a loud jangly bell. No more stealthy misbehaviour for him. We're convinced that he knows he's invisible sometimes.)
• Finished some work on Debbie's website.
• Helped Doc complete 5 invoices to send off to clients.
• Went through Doc's database and closed out jobs that needed closing.
• Entered Doc's recent expenses into his database.
• Talked to Arushi for 45 minutes.
• Ate dinner and drank a Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale.
  
• Prepared and sent off 3 recipes to Erica, who's revamping our QFC website and reviving our newsletter from the dead.
• Collected Molly's DVDs to mail back to her.
• Collected a DVD to mail to Joel.
• Made a list of things to do tomorrow after running.
• Locked myself (somehow? or was it a cat?) out of my filing cabinet which I purchased at a surplus sale at work and to which I have no key.
• Took photos of the file cabinet and locking mechanism to take to a locksmith tomorrow.
• Measured some stuff in the bedroom to try to determine the best place to put the treadmill.
• Thought about posting some stuff to eBay or craigslist, but didn't do it.
• Exported Cover Story to post to my blog and/or Youtube.
• Ate some cheese and crackers.
• Made my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow.
• Did the dishes and cleaned all the counters.
  
• Cleaned out underneath my bathroom sink, my bathroom drawer, the cabinet above our toilet, and the cabinet in the cat bathroom. Tossed a bunch of old stuff, rearranged some items, consolidated some items, and began putting together an "emergency kit" for work with toothpaste, tampons, eyedrops, floss, sewing kit, deodorant, ibuprofen, etc.
  
• Talked to Mom on IM and tried to help her solve a computer problem.
• Checked out the art of Jose Emroca Flores.
• Complained about the 107 degree heat this afternoon.
  
• Sat here writing this post, fidgeting like I need to get up and do something.
  

Things that I did Saturday:

• Got up at 9.
• Went to the gym with Doc; ran 3.5 miles while he used the treadmill.
• Came home, showered, dressed, and ate lunch.
• Drove to Grapevine to a fitness store, where we bought a treadmill (I probably ran another half mile, this time in my bare feet, testing out the treadmills).
• Went to the crazy nutty Grapevine outlet mall and walked around for a while. Suprisingly – or perhaps not so surprisingly – found absolutely nothing I wanted to buy. Played a quiet game in my head called "Is America Fatter Than Me?" (answer: Yes.).
  
• Made bierocks when we got home (I made the dough; Doc made the filling and assembled them) and cut up fresh veggies for a mini-salad-bar.
• Watched a mostly useless 2 hour Discovery Channel show about the search for Atlantis, that could have been covered in 15 minutes.
• I think I did some other stuff but that was 24 hours ago and the mind is not so sharp these days.
  

Things I neglected to do this weekend:

• See Bob while he was in town. I thought we'd get together Saturday night after his trip to Six Flags, but he had to drive back to Lubbock in kind of an emergency that night because the friend that he was with found out his dog died that day back home :(
• Call Yvonne back in time to get in on the farmers' market co-op thing for this weekend.
• Run or walk or bicycle today.
• Move all our eBay/craigslist stuff to the garage.

Like you care about any of that! I know, it's mostly just a list for me to feel proud of myself and wonder how I had the freakin' energy to accomplish it.

Last Friday, I had a meeting with Ian. I'm going to be working with him on a project -- iTunes U for our university. He seemed quite open to the design assistance that I was offering him; I was initially a little wary that this would turn into some kind of uncomfortable ownership battle over the design. He seemed to like my initial concepts, though. I thought it might be a little strange to talk business with him for an hour, but it wasn't, really. In a way, I think that having the kind of history with him that I do makes me almost more comfortable working with him than with someone that I don't know and whose reactions I would have a hard time anticipating. Afterwards, he came and stood in my cubicle for a few minutes and we chatted about various things which I can't even remember now.

Friday night Doc and I went to Stout, a very quiet nearly deserted bar on Greenville (how do they stay in business?) and had a few drinks and played pool. Later we went to Yvonne and Nate's house for a few hours and had some pizza and more drinks with Brittney and Chris.

I think that I'm done with alcohol for a while, at least until after the marathon. Not that I drink too much or anything; in fact, I only have 1-2 drinks a week at the most. But it's extra calories that I don't need. Of course, I'm finishing off my Tilburg's Dutch Brown from dinner as I type.... and of course this isn't a hard and fast rule. I'm sure I'll have a celebratory drink on my 34th birthday.

We've started to ramp up our long-run distances. This weekend was 3.5; next weekend is 4. We'll do about 1/2 mile more every weekend until a few weeks before the race. I'm concerned that I'm not doing enough strength training and other types of training like stretching or swimming or yoga. I want to run every day because I feel it gives me the most benefit, but I don't want to run AND do another form of exercise – that's way too much time. So I really just need to develop a schedule. I was going to yoga Wednesdays and Fridays, but my work schedule's been kind of messed up the past 2 weeks and I haven't gone. I think I need to do 3-5 runs a week, 1-2 days of other training, and have one day of rest.

from the garden

This is my garden. We don't actually have any "yard" to speak of in our backyard – the redwood deck you see covers almost the whole yard, and the corner that doesn't have deck on it has giant overhanging trees that provide 100% shade. So, we can't have a plant-it-in-the-ground type of garden. On the little table, we have thyme, marjoram, oregano, basil, and sage, as well as a red bell pepper plant and an heirloom tomato "Mr. Stripey" plant. On the deck in the rectangular containers we have bell peppers, "patio" tomatoes (roma sized), and yellow pear tomatoes. That plant is just going crazy producing these amazingly sweet bite sized yellow tomatoes. Almost more than I can eat. (Almost). At the top right is a rosemary plant – the last one remaining from our wedding. Out of the picture to the right is our Satsuma orange tree. I'm completely shocked that I've been able to grow anything at all to fruition. Normally I accidentally kill everything.


I have two peppers on this plant, and this one has started to turn red. I'm a little confused by this process. I bought this as a "red bell pepper plant." The rest of my plants are "green bell pepper plants." But I always thought that a red bell pepper was just a green bell pepper that had further ripened.


These are two unripened yellow pear tomatoes. They'll probably turn yellow in about 4-5 days. See how, in the one on the left, it looks like it's in two sections? Like it has an abdomen and a thorax? Like an insect? This really kind of freaked me out at first. I thought I was growing mutant tomatoes. It turns out that the little "waist"-like midsection fills out as the tomato gets bigger.

Last night I made cheese ravioli (ok, Mr. Sam's Club made my cheese ravioli) with a sauce of patio tomatoes from my garden, garlic, Vidalia onion, olive oil, white wine, and a mixture of basil, oregano, sage, thyme, and marjoram from my garden. YUM.

cars!

I'm kind of embarrassed by my last post. It makes me seem like a whiny baby. I thought about deleting it, but a larger part of me doesn't really want to, because that wouldn't be true to myself. I WAS feeling sad and lonely that night, and I don't want to edit my personal history to make me sound better -- to myself or others. I am who I am. I know y'all love me even if I am moody sometimes.

On Friday I did go running over the lunch hour, as planned. I really liked getting it out of the way in the middle of the day and freeing up my evening, but my energy level did not seem quite as good as it usually is in the late afternoons. Also I wasn't sure how the timing would work out -- getting to the gym, running, showering, and getting back to the office within an hour (it didn't quite work). I ran 3 miles, although I'd only planned to do 1.5. My legs were really burning and I thought I'd have to stop, but I pushed myself hard to 2.5 miles and by then the pain disappeared, so I went for all 3.

I think I'll try it a couple more times and see how my energy is, and if I can streamline the timing somewhat.

After work I went to Gloria's with Yvonne, Nate, Jim, Brittney, Chelsea, and also Bill from our office. There was much laughter, sangria, and