moonbats for Christ

Okay, so here's a charming experience I had today:

I was sitting in a coffeehouse not far from my home, working through some deep, deep thoughts about worship and especially worship music. We are, as I have mentioned, bumbling through some fairly deep and radical changes to our community, and so occasionally I find myself in these one-woman brainstorming session, usually with an open journal and coffee getting cold in front of me, praying, thinking, taking the occasional break to bang my head on the table and moan quietly. These sessions are fruitful, and they are painful. Usually. It just takes some time to get through the noise and figure out what I really think - or MAYBE what God is trying to say - about a thing.

So I was thinking about church, and Sunday gatherings, and I was thinking about the uses of music and the things that get in the way.

And of course it practically goes without saying that one of the (many) things that gets in the way of the effective use of music in corporate discipleship is OUR CONSUMER CULTURE - the fact that people are in the habit of purchasing and consuming music rather than creating it, the performance paradigm, the fact that we have reduced art to entertainment and then outsourced it to "experts", so even if we wanted to create something, we'd likely feel unqualified. Our bodies cannot be trusted even to eeek out a praise chorus.

But of course, we long to be involved. We, everyone, has a drive to create, but since we've outsourced creativity, our finest contribution is: critique. Deciding whether we like it or not. How we feel about it. It's not just a habit, not just a cultural tic, not just an industry - it's pretty much a way of life.

And of course, God does care deeply about each person - their passions, their gifts, their problems. But how do we balance this with the idea that Sunday - corporate worship gathering - are not in fact all about me.

By the way, have you noticed how agitated I am? How long these sentences are? Can't you just hear me running out of breath, panting a little, as I go on and on? Keep that in mind.

So here's something that occurred to me: we have, over the years, worked very hard to "be good". I want very much to have good liturgy, good sermons - we've made our name, such as it is, on "good" sermons - and I'm pretty sure that everybody around church wants us to have "good music".

Everyone has a completely different idea of what constitutes "good music", and lots of them , frankly, could probably get sufficiently worked up to punch you in the head over it.

So here's what I think.

I think that most of the music we have done - over 25 years - is not "good".

You could go right now and download better vocals, more beautiful guitar solos, more perfect poetry, better melodies, and more thoroughgoing theology, in one minute, for free. If we wanted something "good", we could go out and buy it. Or our congregation could go buy it when they get home.

People in our middle class suburban congregation have instant access to EVERY CONSUMER PRODUCT ON THE EARTH. Any work of art that they might want to consume - see, listen to, read - is out here on the internet. Probably free. Or for money, but then you can get a free shipping upgrade and have it by Wednesday. Any kind of fun you might want to have, any sort of mental stimulation or emotional experience that can possibly be dispensed - you can get it. Probably instantly, and probably free, at home, in your underwear. Any time of the day or night.
So what can we, the local church, possibly give you that you can only get by being physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually a full part of the church?

and (this is a separate question)

what can you get by coming to church, in person, this Sunday, that you cannot possibly get anywhere else?

Well, I scrawled a couple of columns of answers to that, and then I looked up and looked around the coffeeshop. Because I knew what I thought the answers were, but I wondered if I could get any ideas from, you know, regular people.

And this is where things began to get a little weird.

A young man named Doug had come in and ordered a frappacino. I fell upon him like a seeker-sensitive wolf.

Me: (after blathering on for a long time)...blah blah blah that you cannot possibly get anywhere else?
Poor little Doug: Um....Community?
Me: Yeah, okay, tell me what community means to you. I think that means different things to different people, and everybody SAYS it, but what does it really mean?
Poor little Doug: You know, um, personal contact. Like, the chance to meet new people.
Me: (wild-eyed) okay, okay, good, good, personal contact.

I blather on for a while longer. Doug, to his credit, maintains eye contact and does not seem to be looking for excuses to back away. I let him get an occasional word in. He asks what church I'm working for, and I tell him. He nods. I begin perceive that Doug is a church guy.

Me: You're involved in a church, right?
Doug: Um, yeah, a little.
Me: Where?
Doug: (names large and growing independant church nearby. One noted for its good programs and music. One that a couple - okay, several - of my friends are currently attending, having left the church where I work.)
I moan, hopefully inaudibly, and slap on a smile and we continue to talk for several more minutes. I thank him for his time and squeeze his hand before we separate. I am nauseous.

Okay, so, worst case scenario - Doug goes to his church on Sunday and says to his friend the church staffer "Well, I can see why ___________ is coming here these days. The staff at their old church is F-ING NUTS. Nuts like crazy homeless people. Driven barking mad by liberal theology."

Over the course of the drive home, I begin to see that this is actually funny.

If that's the worst that can happen, I can live with that.

Ready for a Vacation - the revgals Friday 5

1. Getting ready for summer, do you use the gradual tanning moisturisers, or are you happy to show your winter skin to the world?
I got some (the Jergins product) last summer, and I liked the effect and found that I could bear the smell - mostly. What I lack, though, is patience - I am BY FAR the whitest person on earth (thanks a million, Scottish ancestors) and it takes multiple applications just to cut the glare. It seems like there's never a convenient time to apply, stand around til it drys, and then do it all again tomorrow and the next day. What I really need is a natural-looking, long-lasting tanner that works in one application and contains 50 spf. And smells like clean laundry. But subtley.

2.Beach, mountains or chilling by the pool, what/ where is your favourite getaway?
Beach, beach, beach - or else a trip to the big city, with shopping trips and matinees and museum junkets. But sitting on the beach is really the only place I can quiet the noise in my head.

3.Are you a summer lover or does the long break become wearing?
I do get antsy if I am away from work for too long. Also - the whole point of going to the beach is that it's pleasantly boring! Unfortunately, my husband takes several days to wind down - sometimes, by the time he's ready to start having fun, I'm longing to get back to work.

4.Active holidays; hiking swimming sailing, or lazy days?
Definately lazy and unstructured (unless it's the city whirlwind tour I mentioned above.) (Even on those, I want an open agenda so I can follow my whims and wander. This is not a travel style that's consistant with parenting a preschooler, by the way. Unless we follow his whims. Which today, just as an example, involved a 15-minute examination of a dead worm.)

5.Now to the important subject of food, if you are abroad do you try the local cuisine, or do you prefer to play it safe?
I love novelty, I love food, and I love having a good story to tell, so I always want to try the most exotic and weird thing I can. (I have a old friend with same urge, and so one of the pleasures of eating surprising meals is telling him about it when I get back.) But - even if you're not eating wildebeest and cuttlefish - WHY would you eat the same things you eat at home? (But then, I love novelty, and have been blessed with a very tolerant tummy. I know that everyone's so lucky.)

I am going out of town for a few days - a bunch of us are packing some small vestiges of civilization into our cars and driving out into the woods. TO THINK.

FOR THREE DAYS.

And so I leave you with Hugo.

benefit performance May 15

My brother-in-law Johnny Anderson - racontuer, sculptor, swordsman, bowhunter, military historian, general wildass - was in a very serious motorcycle accident a few months ago. Repeated surgeries have left him with a long recovery, lots of pain, and medical bills that you can't imagine.

So, if you're in the DC area, come on out. Bring cash. A big stack of fives will probably do. (A really big stack.)

Eric once worked a benefit for a sideshow museum where a performer invited the audience to come up and STAPLE DONATION TO HIS SHIRTLESS BODY.

While I cannot promise that will happen at the Palace on May 15,
I'd say that chances are better there than anywhere else in the District.
Okay, anywhere in the midatlantic states.

What is the longing of my heart?
What do I want?

I want us to just be
Just be ourselves
But ourselves full of Jesus
overflowing Christ
Putting others first
Questioning everything
Holding on to what is good
Acting justly
Loving mercy
Walking humbly
Seeing God everywhere
Especially in the other
Having a bigger view
And a smaller one
To feel God beside you when you wash the dishes
When you play catch in the backyard
When you pick at your sandwich in the breakroom
When you go through the drivethrough
To really listen
To love creation
Including these bodies

To wonder what really matters – just to wonder, just to start to consider wondering
That would be plenty.
that would be radical enough.



(this came out after attempt #948 to write a set of responsive prayers for the coming weeks. I just want to slam my head in the car door. Too many words.

I have often thought, especially in church, that bad art comes from writing to order. You know how you occasionally hear a worship song, and it's just clunky and dead? I always think that's from a person who said "we need a song about justice?Let's see, I'm sure I can write a song about justice...Hmmm...." and what you get is something with unassailable lyrical content that sings like a national anthem. (Not ours. I actually like our national anthem, especially the later verses. Like some made-up national anthem extolling a list of selected virtues.)

Anyway, I was doing some very bad writing indeed, and so I took a break and wrote that. It has not cleared my head very effectively - its still rather buzzy and hot in there - but I might be on my way.)

RevGals Friday Five: Wait and Pray

1. How do you pray best, alone or with others?
with others, I THINK. (Perhaps you should ask the others!)

2. Do you enjoy the discipline of waiting, is it a time of anticipation or anxiety?
I have always been complete crap at waiting, whether its 'on the Lord' or 'for that order of pancakes'. I am far too anxious a person, and always pressed for time (I'm trying to change that.) The best strategy for me has been to schedule my waiting (and worrying) - I literally write a date in my calendar, and then I can tell myself "Ooops, I cannot worry about that right now - I've prayed about it, and I'll be worrying about it on May 15. Think about something else." Unbelievably, this helps me.

3. Is there a time when you have waited upon God for a specific promise?
Not sucessfully, that I can recall. (see above).

4. Do you prefer stillness or action?
Stillness and I are only glancingly acquainted. I have always thought that this meant I was spiritually shallow. I have a friend, a colleague in ministry, who has helped me loosen up about this.

5. If ( and this is slightly tongue in cheek) you were promised one gift spiritual or otherwise what would you choose to recieve?
Patience and long-suffering? Perhaps the ability to concentrate.
We have staff prayer once a week, and we take turns leading. It is not unusual for us to spend much of that hour in silence together. I'm sure I'm the only person in that circle who's brain is routinely hijacked by the theme song from Pinky Dinky Doo.
I am not the only one who has occasionally drifted off,

something beautiful

Lies I've told my 3 year old recently

Trees talk to each other at night.

All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.

Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.

Tiny bears live in drain pipes.

If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.

Everyone knows at least one secret language.

When nobody is looking, I can fly.

We are all held together by invisible threads.

Books get lonely too.

Sadness can be eaten.

I will always be there.

by Raul Gutierrez on the blog Heading East, via the zen habits tumblr site.

friends in medium-high places

I am watching, right at this moment, 3 people I know on TV!

They aren't TV stars (not even INDIAN TV stars like my friend David) particularly

- they're magicians, serving as coaches and one of the judges in a (GOD FORBID) cable reality competition called (PERHAPS THE WORST TITLE EVER) (JUST TRY AND IMAGINE A WAY THIS COULD BE WORSE) Celebra-cadabra!

Okay, so here's the question - if you do a reality show that takes some not-exceptionally-clever comedians and actors and gives them 24 hours to learn to perform a magical effect...does this trivialize the hard work and creativity involved in professional magical entertainment? My husband thinks so.

I think:
the rather large amount of UTTER FAIL by the celebrity magicians proves that it isn't at all easy to do entertaining, fooling magic. (Which is not to say some of them aren't entertaining.)
The show is better than I expected. (Which is not to say it is actually "good".)

(I'm pretty sure that commercials that focus totally on LEARN MAGIC FAST, on the other hand, do demean the art quite significantly.)

I had a grand day, by the way.

1. What modern convenience/invention could you absolutely, positively not live without?
At the moment, I am in love with my fiber optic cable TV. How different would my life have been if I had been able to watch opera and foreign films on TV? (Or Queer as Folk!)
2. What modern convenience/invention do you wish had never seen the light of day? Why?
Um, my husband's smartphone - not smartphone's generally, just HIS, which chirps every time he gets a damn Facebook notification. For example, in the middle of his romantic restaurant birthday dinner. (Hey people! Quit sending Eric emails after 5! He can't NOT check it! It makes his wife exasperated!)

3. Do you own a music-playing device older than a CD player? More than one? If so, do you use it (them)?
I am the last broadcast radio listener. I was crushed that my walkman brand radio got terrible reception at my gym, and I had to fall back on my iPod.

4. Do you find the rapid change in our world exciting, scary, a mix...or something else?
Encouraging, especially as barriers to artistic creation and distribution get knocked down. There's a democratization at work that's wildly exciting. I wish it were more thorough-going (which is to say, it's cheaper to make a movie or a record than ever, but you still need to buy the computer, and the leisure to work on your project. So most people are still excluded.)
5. What did our forebears have that we have lost and you'd like to regain? Bonus points if you have a suggestion of how to begin that process.
I don't know - maybe more connection to our food? Generally, I think this is a great time to be alive, and the technology (and the democratization I mentioned above) is part of that. Maybe I'd want to recapture a cultural aesthetic of creating rather than consuming - singing around the piano instead of listening to records, cooking rather than drive-through - because I think people would have much fuller, more joyful lives. So maybe the way to begin the process is to help people come to grips with what's missing in conventionally successful lives.

One:

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

my husband joined Facebook about 20 minutes ago. He has 180 friends.

Ooops, 183.

2.
This is the cake I am currently baking for his birthday cake. Because 93% of the strangers on the internet who made it once would make it again.

3. My child has had a growing-up milestone, and I'm proud of it, but I can't tell you what it is. Because it's a milestone that decent parents would have made happen about 2 years ago. And we're doing a little happy dance about it, which exposes what pathetic parents we are. Regardless, I am happy.

4. 191.

5. Incidentally, only 2 other people from my high school class are on Facebook. Seriously? We are really that old and tech-averse? Really?

6. I really dig baking birthday cakes for people. I swear I would make cakes and send them to everyone by overnight mail if I thought the cakes would survive.

7. This is last birthday cake I baked - for The New Guy. It was very well received (which is not surprising, as it is mind-bogglingly delicious.) I recommend it, but only when/IF you have a large uninterrupted chunk of time to spend, since the presentation includes not only cake and frosting but also praline filling and a candied nut topping.

It takes even longer if you burn one batch of praline and have to start that part over.

It's really really good, though.

You know, when I sew, I always allow enough time to rip and re-sew at least one major seam, because my experience indicates that I'll attach something upside down and backwards. I should plan the same way when I make a complicated recipe.

Friday Five from RevGalsBlogPals

Friday Five! On Friday for a change!


1. If you could dramatically change your physical appearance for 24 hours, what would you do?

How radically? All my life, I've been desparately curious what it's like to be a man - but that's a whole lot more than a change in 'physical appearance'.

On a more superficial note, I would love to see what it's like to be a conventional beauty - tall, small waist, great bust, shapely, with high cheekbones and full lips. I am uninterested in conforming to society's standards of beauty - mostly - but I wonder what life would be like in that body.

2. If you could live in another place for 24 hours where would you go?
It's not very creative, but I could have a whole lot of fun in 24 unencumbered hours in Manhattan.

3. You get to do somebody else's job for a day...
standup comedian or morning radio dj. Or the woman who organizes Fashion Week in New York.

4. Spend the day with another person from anywhere in time and space...
My parents died 15 years ago. My mom was a very unusual person; I loved her, of course, but I still feel like she's kind of a mystery to me. So I'd love to have a chance to get to know her really well, see some of the influences that made her who she became, as opposed to just guessing at them. So maybe I would be Barbara Miller's freshman roomate at Vassar, 1941.

5. A magical power is yours. Which one would you pick?
The ability to stop time, so that I could get our home and my office completely reorganized while my husband and kid sleep. We could use the improvements, and they could use the extra sleep.

You'll be hearing from my lawyers in the morning

Children's television characters obviously modeled after me:

Jingbah, the pink Boohbah.
Similarities: Actually, I have a photo of myself from a couple of years back with fuschia suedehead hair and a pink chenille turtleneck. It's positively frightening.

Around here, we call that photo "Exhibit A".

I can't really sue the creators of the show, though, since the series was a something of a flop here in the US and I imagine they've spent all their Teletubbies money by now.









Abby Cadabby.
Similarities: In addition to the hair, Abby is funny, creative, cracks up at her own puns, frequently gets lost, and is undeniably an ENTP.

Differences: sadly, I cannot fly.










Pinky Dinky Doo.

Similarities: Artistic, literary, has a little brother, annoys others with her vocabulary, frequents museums.

Differences: i have better legs.

I'm watching this and Robert Rauschenberg just said the words 'secondhand goat.'

I am taking a vacation day tomorrow and going to see this (Several times, I have scheduled days off to go do art things, and then I found myself at home whining "I'm tired!" "I have cramps!" "I feel sorry for myself!" and lying around like a sack all day - not going to see art, not getting work done, just doing mundane crappy things like laundry and grocery shopping. Screw that. With God as my witness, tomorrow I am going to see art. And take pictures.

Among the most excellent blog posts ever: here.

A measley ONE of the Friday Five

This is probably cheating, or disrespectfully not following directions at very least. Still, while it is still Friday, I want to take a shot at the RevGalBlogPals Friday Five - my first!

The question: How has God revealed him/herself to you in a:
1. Book
2.Film
3. Song
4. Another person
5. Creation

Well, I'll take Film for 200, Alex.

On Easter afternoon - after the early morning and the two services which could not have gone better and the fun meal in the Chinese restaurant
(Incidentally, if you're looking to dine out on Easter, but want to miss the church crowd, I recommend some variety of Asian restaurant. I campaigned for Indian, but was outvoted by children.)

Anyway, Easter afternoon, toddler taking a nap, we've pulled on our sweats and done surgery on the newspapers and are beached in front of the TV. And my husband, God bless him, finds Godspell.

I watch about 3 minutes before I am crying.

It's not even a particularly touching 3 minutes - not 'On the Willows' or the crucifixion, not the scene with the ghostly unfinished World Trade Center in the background. It's the Sower and The Seed, with all those strangling weeds. I'm wrecked by this, sitting silent with tears just streaming down my face.

Godspell was tremendous for me when I was a kid. I was an odd combination of freakishly devout child and theatre weirdo. Neither of these went over well in my small rural town. The very idea that there could be a Broadway musical about Jesus - weird hippie clown Jesus! - seemed completely beyond dreaming, made my heart skip a beat. (It still kind of does.) My mother had found me a cast album; I saw the show on its first tour, when I was 12. I got a t-shirt. I wore it so much that, when I lost it at camp, it was mailed to me - no one had to call to see if I had lost mine.

I couldn't trace you a straight line, but I'm pretty sure that Godspell - listening to the songs, seeing the show, seeing the movie a year or so later, wrestling over the years with the whole idea - had something to do with me being, and doing, what I am and do now. I'm pretty sure it was one of the things that nudged my ideas about church and theatre and the overlap, ritual, public ministry, my theology of worship.

And I was crying on Easter because of that.

And because it's not a very good movie.

In fact, it's a pretty bad movie, in nearly every way I can think of. And it can be a really awful play. (That's partly because it's deceptive - both the music and the book seem simple, but require significant chops to present well. Plus it hasn't aged all that well. YES I have seen good productions - recently - but they're noteworthy because, hey, a good production of Godspell! Call the neighbors!)

And so I was crying because here's this thing, this artifact of my adolescence, this souvenir of my inner life, fresh and bright and precisely as I left it back in the 70s. Not dusty.

And I'm crying because, well, it's kind of crap, and what kind of person has this crap as a real milestone in her discipleship? and career development?

And I was crying because: immediately upon asking myself the question, I knew the answer. Everyone does.

In two different ways. In one way, practically everyone I know has something in their past - in their life with God - that they're not proud of. Someplace where God came and met them that they smirk about now - the scary lock-in, the tearful campfire altar call, the crush on some boy or girl that got them into heavy conversations. The dumb superstitious dare they made with God. You would never, as a cool postmodern follower, recommend any of these things...but God used them. So there's that way.

But what I was thinking on Easter was: well, it's all pretty bad, isn't it?

Let's imagine that it wasn't Godspell that had influenced me, but The Messiah. Or some other high-class work of art. Let's say that, at 12, I heard a great rendition of "Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs and Carried Our Sorrows", and God came and met me and it changed my life. Would I be embarrassed about that? No! Of course not! Classical music is dignified! and worthy! and it just shows what a sensitive Anglican soul I had - at 12! I'd tell everyone that! (I'd probably be a choir director today, if that had been the case.)

But I think that's a false, human distinction.
I think God, who hears every scrap of music on earth and is surrounded by singing angels through eternity, is no more impressed with Handel than with Stephen Schwartz. And no more impressed with Bryn Terfel than with Victor Garber, or even Ted Neely. (And why is Jesus always a tenor, by the way?)

The gulf between Godspell (or Superstar) and The Messiah seems very big from where I stand, but I think from God's perspective, they look much closer. Probably indistinguishable.

And the things we count as 'highest' in human artistic achievement are no closer to God's glory than the things we see as 'lowest.' Because, honestly - who is equal to that task?


No closer, but, I hasten to add - no farther away.

I have been trying to perfect my flapjack recipe.

The New Guy - my boss of about 2 years - is from England. Quick aside: he and I have rigged it so we have a weekly lunch meeting, and we trade off bringing lunch. He brings delicious sandwiches with exotic cheeses on wonderful hearty bread. They are always delicious and terrifically filling. For some reason, I have a deep, deep need to show off at these lunches; I am forever trying to impress him with my cooking.

Interestingly, I do not have such a deep need to impress him with my liturgist-ing. I mean, it's not that I'm slacking on my actual work - I just notice that the challenge of every-other-Wednesday-lunch does get me kind of excited. I'm sure that, eventually, I'll be flipping plain cheese sandwiches at him with a bored smirk, and he'll be just as gracious about that as he is about the spinach quiche and the fancy salad.

Anyway, I mention it because the flapjack craze around our house is his fault. (If 2007 was the Year of Poulet au vinagre, and it sure as hell was, 2008 may be the Year of Flapjack.) (If grocery prices remain as completely insane as they have been, it will certainly not be the year of any sort of meat dish, I can tell you that. Oatmeal remains cheap.)

Flapjack is a crunchy/chewy/sticky oatmeal bar cookie, made with butter, brown sugar and cane syrup. It's The New Guy's favorite sweet, and his daughters made some that he had brought in to share on a Wednesday. I made my first pan of flapjack that night.

(I'm not sure I'm using the word right, even. I'm pretty sure it's a mass noun, as opposed to American flapjacks, which I told Matthew was the cowboy word for pancake. Which would be a count noun, as in "Tex 'et 84 of them flapjacks.")

Anyway, you know how European recipes measure the ingredients in weights rather than volume? There are at least a hundred flapjack recipes on the internet, each one a little different, and apparently I would rather read them all than try to convert the measurements.

I keep trying them, and I keep messing them up. (It's a relative term. If you don't hate the mild molasses-y taste that the syrup adds, you really can't go too far wrong with a pan of butter, sugar and oatmeal.) Today's were the best so far - Ian begged for more! - but still not quite right. And a tiny bit burned.

But oatmeal is cheap, as I mentioned, so I do believe I will get this recipe right yet.

zobop!
Originally uploaded by aur2899

Go to this site immediately:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/flashsite/

and watch the installation video for Jim Lambie's work Zobop.

I think this is what heaven will be like. What it will look like, and what we will be doing there.

i was wrong

for about 3 years, I have been wondering how in f Classmates.com was able to use photos from my yearbook - Selinsgrove Area High School, Class of 1980 - in their ads. I have had conversations about this. I have NAMED people whose pictures appeared across the bottom of my screen - Hufnagels and Schrefflers, Hostettlers and Hollenbachs.

I was so so so sure that the "She Married Him???" couple had been in my class - Curtis Kantz and Judy Hummel, I thought, their stories fictionalized for sensationalism's sake.

Well, I was wrong.

As you can see, the woman in the ad is indeed from Pennsylvania, and is close to the right age - class of '78. The guy is younger, class of '90, from Bellevue WA.

Are people all over the country looking at these ads and saying (to their poor, beleigured spouses) "I swear to GOD that guy was in my homeroom!"

job performance review:

lifted from a friend's blog - this is the entry in its entirety:

Sitting in church yesterday before the service started, I heard a guy behind me say, "This church has too many metaphors."

a blog post I could have written, but it wouldn't be as funny

at Dooce.

Help Wanted

Help Wanted
Originally uploaded by diocee74

A little something for a cold evening.

I had planned to spend tonight reading this for my Thursday book club

but instead I am watching this

and I baked and am tasting this.

The TV show - great. Clear your schedule and watch this whole WEEK of specials about photography. See stunning pictures! Hear old cigar-chomping east coast guys talk about driving across the country in a borrowed VW bus in 1954! Seriously, it's quite a quick survey but very interesting and worth one's time.

The cake - worth one's time, but not as interesting. What's good about it: it's sweet, with a crispy sugary outside, and it only takes half an hour and is totally do-able with stuff from the pantry.

I would hate to indicate that I have become such a food snob that I cannot appreciate an easy recipe and a sweet, warm cake. (It may be true, I would just hate to indicate it.) But I kind of want this cake to be something besides just sweet - tarter, or saltier, or crunchier or something. (Hmmm - if you made it as cupcakes, there would be more crispy, sticky edges. You'd have to use pineapple chunks, and it would probably take more butter and sugar in the pans...but that would be lovely, right? Little individual upsidedown cakes? Perhaps with a little squirt of caramel or whiskey sauce? Hmmmm....)

I am digging this book. (Incidentally, unlike the recipe linked above, the book is written in American terms. Hooray! After the BATTLE OF THE FLAPJACK RECIPES, I cannot take this for granted.)Her 'goodness me, I'm adorable' smile begins to wear on one, but the food shots are gorgeous, and I must say - my cake came out looking precisely like hers.

couldn't resist

a little Easter knitting from Denise E on Ravelry.

unlike these

we survived Easter. More later.

milestone

I noticed today that I have 999 profile views on my blogger profile.

Somebody go click on that line near my picture over there and enjoy my goofball profile.

I made a totally excellent salad dressing last night. I started with a simple vinegrette from Martha Stewart Everyday Food:

2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon minced scallion (I used green onion)
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar (I used rice vinegar, which is less acidic.)
2 Tablespoons olive oil.
salt and pepper.

Well, in part because of this rice vinegar, this was TOOOOOO SWEEEEET.

I added: more salt
a glob of grainy mustard

and a small glob of Thai chili garlic sauce (you know that red stuff with the rooster on the jar?) (Ooops - internet says it's Vietnamese, not Thai. Actually, it's Californian. Anyway, used with a somewhat cautious hand, it's good for what ails your sauces, in nearly every case.

And after that it was too thick, so I put a little more vinegar and a squish of lime juice.

And then it was awesome.

I read most of this book this afternoon. Sitting in the cafe at Borders, not ordering coffee. I had planned to, I just couldn't stop reading.

Laughing out loud, crying real tears, pressing my hand over my mouth as I relived a period of my life that I was, frankly, pretty hard-pressed to live through the first time.

I could NOT put this book down. I had to wrestle it out of my own hand.

I was out running work errands, while World's Best Husband took World's Cutest Toddler home for his nap. We had purchased a potty earlier, and I stopped at Borders to spend A FEW MINUTES looking at potty training books. (Of course we have no freakin' idea what we're doing, and it doesn't help that every potty training tale we hear from our peers start with "well, for God's sake, don't do what we did" or perhaps "don't do what my parents did".)

(No kidding. I am scared. Of potty training.)

(And of course we are going to start talking about potty training during Holy Week, the crunchiest crunch time of my year. The plan is not to have actual potty use yet, but just to have it around, you know...build suspense. Create demand.)

Anyway, I read some excerpts from potty training advice books (ranging from jokey to Jeez, this is creepy) and then happened upon this book, The Second Nine Months by Vicki Glembocki, which I thought I would just glance through. Ha Ha.

I have no idea whether this book would be meaningful for anyone else. Part of me thinks that it was so stunning for me because her experience mirrored mine so precisely.
And then another part of me runs through the birth and new motherhood narratives that friends and acquaintences have shared, and I think - well, actually, I guess my experience, and the author's, were pretty average.

But when she talks about her rage - burning, utter rage - at her husband, her frustration and brokenness as her jaundiced kid fails to gain weight, her fears (well-founded) about fitting in with the other mommies, her yearning to return to work (I can only guess that the complications of working make up lots of the pages I didn't get to...)

Ian's first year was pretty much the worst year of my life (NOT HIS FAULT, I hasten to add. Well, not exactly. Not, you know, personally.) And I have told a lot of stories, mostly funny, about it. But Vicki Glembocki has put into words what I have never been able to.

I thought about buying a copy and STANDING OVER MY HUSBAND while he read it. And honestly, we pride ourselves on our communication skills, and even at our most contentious, I'd say we're pretty attuned to one another. And yet I know that he would understand me better after reading this other woman's book.

Best of the nets

1. Mrs. Kennedy interacts with her son:

Me: You know what? Whining isn't really the best way to get what you want in life.

Jackson: It isn't?

Me: No.

Jackson: I'm so confused.

Me: Uh . . .

Jackson: And normally it's very difficult to confuse me.

read it here, it's funny.

2. Twisty attends her father's funeral:

It was like the set designers from Twin Peaks and Napoleon Dynamite had fused with Elvis Presley’s interior decorator and been reborn as Liberace’s angst-ridden evil twin, who then suffered a psychotic break, and bought up the world’s supply of harvest gold flocked wallpaper, brass upholstery tacks, and fake oak paneling, and ate it all with fava beans and a nice Chianti, and then puked it up all over the living room from Sartre’s No Exit.

.

read it here.



3. My knitting machine looks kinda sorta like this: - different brand and specifics but that basic mechanism. Zillions of pictures here.

4. Hey! Celebrate with me! The manual which was lost has been found! Along with more parts! (When I was despairing, I searched on the web for the documentation, though not really exhaustively. Because, honestly, Easter's coming, and so my exhaustion must be saved for professional pursuits rather than recreational ones.)

Poop.

Several weeks ago, I became the excited owner of a mint-condition, all-pieces-intact 80s vintage knitting machine. But I had no place to set it up, what with all the moving furniture and the pulling up carpet and the repurposing of rooms. We've lived in this house for 16 years, and its housed numerous friends and almost equally numerous pets (and occasionally some friends' pets)(though not, to our knowledge, any pets' friends). Factor in the art projects, group meetings, creative collaborations and the fact that both Eric and I have supported ourselves working in the basement, and its clear that:

this has been a great house for us and
no wonder we have such a stunning amount of crap in here.

BUT It's been a great year for getting the house to work better and for getting out from under our stunning amount of crap.

So much so that I was able to set up the machine and give it a good cleaning tonight. (I was going to make fun of my husband for going to a magic event tonght, until I realized that my evening had been spent shouting "Swiper No Swiping!" and cleaning a knitting machine with Q-tips and alcohol. Who is the geekiest of them all?)

BUT NOW I CAN'T FIND THE DOCUMENTATION!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgh!

Garfield Minus Garfield.

Astonishingly excellent.

uh oh.

Click to see larger

via Dylan

In the News:

My sister-in-law in the DC City Paper

It's Gary Gygax's world, we just live in it (today's NYTimes)

My friend Paul looks like the kid from Everwood
but I didn't realize how much until he posted this old photo. Eerie, isn't it?

That is all.

EDITED TO ADD: No, it isn't. In the New Yorker that arrived today, a long report on magic and magicians in New York by Adam Gopnik, who's pretty great. I'm not a magician, but I'm close, and I am willing to say: Pretty well done so far.

It's REALLY HARD to write about magic - the particulars and especially the subculture - for regular people, in a way that's not beastly and not boring. The story itself is not on the web, but the abstract is here. The ending is particularly nice, but I guess you'll have to head to the newstand for that.

I had to dig up last week's issue, having somehow missed the excerpt from The Bishop's Daughter by Honor Moore.

No Knead to fear -

Bread update: I just mixed up a batch following the Sullivan Street Bakery recipe (as Natasha recommended.)

(Now I just need to remember to write a note, telling Beloved Husband and Darling Child to leave it the f alone until tomorrow afternoon)

Life in general good. Behind on work. Palm Sunday and Good Friday seem to be accelerating as they approach. Nonetheless, Deep Shift conference is worth attending. (And rumour has it that the NYC gathering will be very affordable. So I think you should probably sign up.)




Ian ate soap in the tub tonight. On purpose. More than once. (It was Neutrogena, which does not taste as bad as other bath soap. YES< BECAUSE I TASTED IT. Just to see.)

Perhaps he has some dietary deficiancy....like bubbles, maybe?

Is it me? Really? Seriously, you can tell me. It's me, isn't it?

So I finally made some of this freakin' No Knead Bread that the entire bake-o-sphere has been on about for a year.

The backstory: Mark Bittman, my #1 favorite in the pantheon of favorite food writers, wrote about this idea in his column for the NYTimes Wednesday food section last November. Read it here. I must admit, I scoffed. That cannot work, I said.

But a whole lot of people got excited about this recipe, and this technique (if, in fact, leaving something in the fridge for a couple of days could be called a technique.) (And, as I consider my love of brined poultry, I guess it can.) Really, it has been the talk of the food-blogosphere.

I was looking something up on Jaden's Steamy Kitchen, which I love, and saw that she was pimping a technique that she said was even easier and resulted in a loaf that was even tastier - from a cookbook called Artisan Bread in 5 Min a Day. Seriously, who could resist that?

So on Saturday I whipped up a bowl of this dough. And tonight I baked some off. The third loaf is in the oven right now for another couple of minutes. We've eaten one small loaf - I had planned to have it with dinner, but it didn't get done in time, so now it's not dinner, it's just an experiment.

Here are the things I think I did wrong:
I may not have used enough salt.
I think I may have played with the dough too much.
I definately didn't give those first two loaves enough time to proof today between fridge and oven.

It was never spectacularly wet and sticky like the dough Bittman talks about - after just a little while on the counter, it was more springy and earloby, like regular bread dough after some turns in the KitchenAide.

The result:
The crust is really excellent. No complaints there. (The bread I bake normally is famous for its crust, but the famous crust is the product of a fairly fiddly process involving ice water, a pump-spray bottle, and way too many oven-door-openings for a house with a toddler in it. This is definately the best crust I have ever had without the insane fiddling.)

The crumb (the soft inside part) is soft, medium dense, uniform rather than bubbley or interestingly textured. I was disappointed in this, especially after seeing the gorgeous photos like this one:
from Steamy Kitchen.

She also raves about the flavor, and this is where the evidence lies that I have gone wrong somewhere. The flavor of my loaves is decent, but it's not great.

On the scale of bread flavor (0 being a white hoagie roll at Subway, decidedly far worse than Wonderbread, and 10 being Peter Rinhart's Brother Juniper slow-rise French Bread made at home - dude, this was a 4. That's me, being charitable. A charitable 4.

Ideas for next time:
I could always try FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS.
I could go with the Bittman/Sullivan Street recipe (which has no sugar)(which is where I think the flavor problem may lie.)

I have to say, though - I was wrong. This really is easy and fast, and it really does result in a loaf of bread with some seriously good characteristics.

Figures that I would start experimenting with this at the END of winter, doesn't it? You'll be able to spot our house this summer. It'll be the one that runs the air conditioning all day and night, with the tip jar on the porch.

And it'll smell awesome.

Two things about which I said "I cannot believe how beautiful that is."

from The Sartorialist today. Please go there and spend a couple of minutes with the large size of this photo. I love The Sartorialist.

and:



Falling Slowly

I had heard this on the radio a couple of times - it made a huge impression from the first - but didn't know where/who it was until hearing it on the Oscars Sunday. The performance is just heartbreaking to me, just devastating.

(I'm also really struck, watching the clips, that these are the two least 'actor-y' -looking people I have ever seen anywhere, let alone starring in a movie.)

Anyway, some beauty in realness for a rainy day.

Pretty convicted by a cartoon bunny

Samantha Morton is a serious actress. She's been nominated for piles of awards (Oscars, Emmys, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Independent Spirits) and won many of them. This is especially notable since she is only 31.

We hate her.

Okay, we don't hate her. We love her with Christian love, of course, and with the sort of admiration one reserves for accomplished thespians. (And after reading her brief bio just now, the kind of admiration on reserves for people who have overcome exceptional adversity.)

But we don't tend to see those very serious rewarding movies around here.

We are familiar with Samantha Morton's work for the same reason most Americans are:

She's the most annoying cartoon voice on TV.



She's the voice of the big sister bunny on Ruby and Max. Ruby and Max is a lovely show and the dude loves it and I love practically everything about it - the incidental music, the wallpaper, the old-fashioned toys and their brand names (like the Little Earsplitter Ambulance). Max's expressions, and the way he sticks his paws out when he walks.

But Ruby - controlling, neat, purpose-driven Ruby - makes me crazy. I realize it's not just the voice, of course. The voice is plenty grating, but I think the crazy goes a little deeper.

Ruby always has some PROJECT going on. Something she needs to do - practice for a recital, make a poster for a BunnyScouts event, hustle little Max off to someplace to do something or other that he isn't particularly interested in doing.

Max, on the other hand, lives in the moment, pretty beautifully. He's fully alive, playing in a mud puddle or catching fireflies.

He's Ian, catching fireflies in the discarded bottle. And I'm Ruby, pushing the bottle aside,checking my watch, frog-marching him on so we can go somewhere and do something.

YES OF COURSE there are things we need to do. I don't feel at all bad about the hustling, even the frog-marching, involved in a pediatrician visit or even getting to the babysitters on time. I have no shame about wrestling him into his coat (oh, will it really be spring someday?)for a timely run to the dry cleaner, or overpowering his wriggling butt into a grocery cart.

But sometimes, I just need to sit down on the curb and leave him in the mud puddle for a while.

AmericanDigest.org, via my brother.

Baltimore - lustier than Rochester, not as naughty as Salt Lake City.

Andrew points out this feature in Forbes - the top ten American cities for the Top Seven Deadly sins, as discerned through spending and retail sales trends. Not the measures I would have chosen, but points for a clever idea.

I cannot believe that Washington doesn't rank in Envy or Pride.

I miss Pokey.

But not all the time.

via Whoopee.

and of course I am watching American Idol

is it just me, or does this year's top 30 have an extra-large portion of boys who sing
like women?


Okay, that's not very nice, and not a very progressive feminist or Christian thing to say.

It's also not actually what I meant.

What I actually meant was - LOOK like women. An extra-large portion of boys who LOOK like women.

Food Blogging as Procrastination

I have work to do.

I actually have 2 things due at work tomorrow, both of which need writing.

Instead, let me tell you about wanting an cast iron Aebleskiver pan.

I was reading Unclutterer, which I totally dig, and they were making fun of an as-seen-on-TV item called the Pancake Puff Kit. I haven't seen this on TV. I had never heard of it until tonight.

Yes, yes, yes, the web page is ludicrous.
Yes, it would be wrong to pay an additional $20 plus shipping for a plastic pastry cream squirter and some wooden skewers.
Yes, I'm sure the product is poorly made, designed as it was to be sold sight unseen.
And, yes, as is UnClutterer's main point, it is a total unitasking item, one that would sit untouched in the cabinet at least 300 days a year.

Dude, I want one.

Come on! You want one too, don't you? Don't you?? Don't you want to make spherical baked goods? And eat them while they're almost too hot to eat? Or else fill them with pastry cream and impress the crap out of other people?

Incidentally, I take a back seat to no one in my admiration for multi-task tools. I have 2 items (a cast iron skillet and a dutch oven) that I use every time I cook. I use the same wooden spoons and tongs every single night. I have 3 knives. Okay, and a bread knife. 4 knives.

But come on!! My french press doesn't do anything but make coffee, one cup at a time, but it does a good job. I want coffee, and I get coffee. So, go french press.

So I think I want pancake balls.

So I will be looking for one of these.




None too glamourous, but.....COME ON!

OH! and you know what else? Do you know what the traditional Danish implement for turning the spheres is?

A KNITTING NEEDLE.

How do I not have one of these already?

Today's recipe: the vegetable thing

I don't know where I got this recipe - perhaps from a library book called The Occasional Vegetarian, by Karen Lee. I recall liking that book, though I've never bought a copy. It seems to me that it was called a vegetable Tien, but a quick web search indicates that's not an english, or cooking, word. So I may have that totally wrong.

BUT it's an easy recipe, and it's delicious. It's in the oven as we speak.

2 small eggplants, sliced
2 large potatoes, sliced
2 (or more) tomatoes, sliced
1 red onion, sliced

salt
pepper
rosemary
thyme
basil
garlic
olive oil


Prep:
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Generously salt the eggplant slices and leave them to drain in a colander in the sink, at least 1 hour.

2. combine one-half cup olive oil with 2 cloves pressed garlic, and let it steep on the counter while the eggplant drains.

Assembly:
3. Rinse the eggplant slices. Dry each one, dip it in the oil, and fry over medium-high heat in a single layer until crusty and brown. (This seems like it will never happen, but it will. Squishing a little with your spatula will help.)

4. in a large glass cassarole (I used a tempered bowl) layer the vegetables. Sprinkle clipped herbs and salt and pepper between layers. Drizzle the top with the remaining oil (or some more plain olive oil.)

I don't think it matters what order you layer the veggies in - I tend to start with potatoes on the bottom, since they're the only thing that really needs cooking.

5. Bake at 350 for more than an hour (check at 45 min - if it's browning too much, you can cover it with foil) until the potatoes are soft.

This is good hot, cold, at room temperature, and is rather better the second day. It's very filling. The one I'm cooking now has fresh herbs and a sliced red pepper, (because it was on sale, which it never is...) but I used ancient dusty McCormick herbs in the past, and it's always been fine.

This recipe, in fact, recalls my only kitchen Brush With Celebrity - I made this for Dave Wilcox in 1999. (I catered the greenroom at his Cedar Ridge show.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Brother!

My brother writes books. He takes great pictures. He's a great cook, a creative brewer, a spectacular bargain shopper, a good stone-skipper, and an expert on a whole bunch of really obscure things.

And, as of a few hours ago, he's also a blogger.

May I direct your kind attention to:
http://beerinbaltimore.blogspot.com/

He'll be spending the weekend live-blogging a Belgian beer fest (not in Belgium. In Fells Point.) (The whole setup sounds a little like some on-air radio stunt to show the pernicious effects of drinking.)

My brother has been a beer writer and brewer for at least a decade. I have never, ever seen him even tipsy, not even when I visited him at college and we spent hours at the Stone Balloon. I find this odd.

Anyway, a drink blog - it's the perfect companion to my accidental food blog.

after a month of crap internet service

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

we are getting fios tomorrow.

Burtonsville: an interesting place for people who eat food

I work in the middle of nowhere.

The church is on a former farm, on a short stretch of road strung between two more significant roads. Some things about the area seem very rural, but it's too developed and well-traveled to be really country. And while some of the woods and ex-farmland nearby are pretty, there is nothing scenic about the piece of 198 where I work.

But let's put aside the very real challenges of suburban ministry (more like exurb ministry)for the moment...and talk food. I came to a stunning realization on Sunday afternoon - that Burtonsville, Md, which lacks so many things, is really up to its metaphorical neck in interesting places to eat.

I realized this as I waved goodbye to Genet and walked out of Oromia, the brand new coffeehouse that has opened in a strip center on 198. As well as excellent coffee drinks, and iced tea that actually taste like tea (!), they serve excellent sandwiches - and Ethiopian food!

I had never had African food before last week, when my friend Sarah and I visited Oromia. Sarah had lived in Africa, and as soon as she saw the design of the coffeehouse's sign, as gasped "It's Ethiopian!!" and RAN through the doors. We had a delicious lunch, and great coffee, and now I have somewhere besides Starbucks to deal daily with my caffeine issues.

We had lunch there Sunday, and as I was leaving the shop with the kid, I looked around and could see:

Hunan Manor, which serves a fine menu of inexpensive (Gringo-oriented) entrees. On Sundays, they offer a special menu, a page or more of fresh, authentic dishes (you know, those foods that your inlaws are scared of?) I've never had anything bad there. The staff will not steer you wrong.

a Cuban restaurant that the Post lists in its top ten

a great Afghan kabob place

brilliant homemade ice cream (and - sorry to have to say this - a great staff but horrid food.)

and a Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant that we eat at all the time.

Across Rt 29, there's a family-owned Italian white-tablecloth place, and a pretty good wine shop.

And of course, there's the Dutch Market, which is like paradise for me, combining, as it does, spiffy meats and produce with fresh baked good and cheese...and the strange flavors of my rural central PA childhood. Chicken corn soup with rivvles! Real pot pie! sour cherry custard!

Apparently, we about going to lose the Dutch Market soon; the owners of the (admittedly down-at-the-heels) strip center are going to re-develop it, and the market will have to go (Post story here.)

I'm guessing that low density and relatively low income has kept Burtonsville off the radar for most chain restaurants (we have plenty of fast food and sandwich franchises, and, of course, The Man) and so some small local chains and family-owned places have been able to make it work.

It's been interesting seeing the area change - get more diverse and interesting - in the years since we built the church. I can't imagine what will happen in the coming years.

Today's recipe: bread pudding

Steaming sweetly on the counter right this second:

A pie pan of this bread pudding with some nuts mixed in.

Pet Peeve: Because I have always hated burned raisins (these are okay, but a couple look a bit cinge-ed -) Next time I will try sprinkling the raisins into the pan before the bread, rather than on top. My bread floated a lot, because it was not the day-old sliced bread called for in the recipe, but huge chunks of week-old rustic walnut and raisin bread from The French Confection in Sandy Spring.

In the crock pot: more chili, this batch for tonight's magician's club meeting. (No, they don't have a secret handshake.)

Blogger won't show this at full size...

...but if you click below, it'll take you to a readable size.

You should totally click.

I found it on Berbercarpet's Flickr page, which has a variety of funny stuff. He doesn't say if he's the author or not... it's just great.

go to large size

when worlds collide

blasphemy alert.
Please do not watch this.




I saw it yesterday, and I felt compelled to post it.

It's the intersection of my two worlds: Liturgy and Toddler.

Today's Recipe: Walnut Tart

Mark Bittman rules, I have said before. When I saw this recipe in Wednesday's NYTimes food section, I knew I'd make it soon.

This is seriously good.

And before devoted reader NYK accuses me of, I don't know, trying to poison my family with saturated fat or mastermind America's obesity epidemic or something, let me tell you that this tart will serve at least 12. Bittman is nuts (ha ha) to suggest that this serves 8. (Perhaps as a main dish.) A TINY SLIVER of this - a piece so small it looks ridiculous - is very satisfying.

Other kitchen projects:
freezing bacon (because we need about a year to go through a pound of bacon, and they don't sell it by the slice.) (Method here.)

making guacamole. I used Trader Joe's produce section Guacamole Kit - a little box with all the veggies you need (in a non-cilantro household, which we are.) . I approve of this product wholeheartedly - the produce was ripe and fresh, sat happily on my counter for a couple of days (I cannot bring myself to refrigerate a tomato. I just can't. It's like microwaving baked goods. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong.)

(And they say we postmodern religionists don't believe in absolute truth. HA!)

Anyway, the guac kit is a good idea, and well-executed except for TEH GARLIC!!!AAAGHHHH!!! i has been kllld by teh garlic!

My husband, oddly, was not killed by the garlic, and happily ate nearly every slimy green bit in the bowl. The child even ate some. On purpose.

Roasting potato wedges (I wanted to give you a bonus recipe, because these came out really well, but the NYTimes site has had enough of my foolishness for one night and wants a password. Pffft, forget it. Basically, you bake some potatos, cut them into wedges, and toss them in an olive oil/mustard/salt-pepper-spice mix (I used paprika) and then roast them for 20 more minutes in a 500-degree oven. They get nice and crusty.

Incidentally, all those pictures are from other sites - my camera has died. (Perhaps it's teh garlic?)

Today's recipe: Oven Pancake

This is in the oven as we speak. For 41 more seconds. I added a drizzle of vanilla extract, so it smells especially excellent.

I also recommend the french press coffee and "Tak and the Power of Ju Ju" to round out this balanced breakfast.

A small handful of chocolate chips doesn't hurt, either.

I haven't explored much of the blog above, but this first glance looks wonderful.

Tonight's recipe: our favorite chili

is Clyde's Famous Chili (click on 'recipes' and select 'Famous Chili'.)

Eric made it, as he almost always does (I have made it exactly once, and hereby declare the recipe 100% foolproof.) It's relatively fast, for chili, and delicious, and it was a huge hit with the discipleship group.

For some reason, I expected them to be reticent about food, or maybe about messy red food composed of dead animals. I had totally misjudged them. They dug in like...well, like theatre students at a wine and cheese reception. (That's quite a sight, believe me.)

Even Ian likes it! Ian, in fact, loves it, and will be more than happy to sit in your lap for hours and scam most of your bowlful. One bean at a time.

So go forth and make chili. That is my advice to you.

Blog Maintenance Department: I just fixed my 'stalk me' links. Go me.

It is so good, so good you see!

About that macaroni and cheese from the other night: I am eating almost-the-last-bit right now, and it is not okay or pretty good, it is awesome. I will be making this once a week at least for the rest of our lives, our cheese budget (cheese budget?) will go to hell and my kid will weigh 200 lbs at his 36-month checkup AND I WILL NOT CARE.

something else awesome:


It's "Tupperware" (it's not actually Tupperware brand, it's Rubbermaid brand. You know what I mean, though - stuff for storing leftovers.)
It's FLAT.
It stores with the lid attached. In regular-depth drawers.
It seals perfectly.
It's translucent.
It even looks nice in the fridge.
You can buy it at the supermarket.

This is by far the most excellent kitchen product I have ever used. I got it for Christmas a year ago from my mom-in-law, and it's allowed me to get rid of a lot of my miscellaneous food storage junk with lids that, you know, pretty much fit....Now it's all Rubbermaid.


Edited to say: Through the wonders of the Internet, I find that I am not alone in my love for the Rubbermaid collapsibles. No less unlikely a forum that the Moby.com discussion board has a topic devoted exclusively to praising this product.

Sometimes I think the world is getting weirder - which is to say, more interesting - by the minute.

Update:

The mac and cheese only seemed screwed up - it actually came out pretty good. I'll use sharper cheese next time. (And I'll try the 'don't bother to make white sauce' recipes left the comments. Actual conversation in the kitchen that night:

Husband: I know this will be good, but jeez, it sure seems like a lot of work for macaroni. Couldn't you just, like, put cheese on macaroni?

Me: Snort. Philistine. Please allow me to enlighten you about the importance of white sauce in baked dishes.

Husband: (backs away quietly when I turn to stir the SOLID BOULDERS OF FLOUR that have formed in my pan of hot grease.) (actually, to whap them with my wooden spoon. Repeatedly.) (It worked out eventually.)

Anyway, as I said, a little bland, but good -good texture, balanced, fairly light. Fluffy inside, chewy crust.

But why take my word for it? Let's hear from the experts:

World's Cutest Toddler: (Takes one handful and gasps, loudly enough that I worried that he had burned himself. He gaped at his father.) Oh, this is SO good!

Thanks, too, for your CSA input. No shares are available at the one farm near(ish) us. I'm looking up 'community gardening.'

Is it any good? Sir, it's too good, at least.

Tonight I screwed up this recipe.

I KNOW! Hardly seems possible, does it? It's pretty much the recipe I learned in Home Ec in 1978. And yet, it's bubbling away in the oven, safe to eat but bland and rather hideous and NOT what Alton ordered. At all. Most decidedly, it will look nothing like this:



ever.

I am looking for a manageable recipe for mac and cheese, since Ian loves it (and in fact, so do Eric and I) but the stuff in the box is just gross - it smells like melting plastic to me. We grownups already have veins stuffed with trans fats and other non-food items, but Ian's relatively intact, so if I can find a recipe that I can cook and freeze in portions, I'll feel okay about that.

This may not be the recipe.

In other news, we saw Sweeney Todd today. Everything about it was done in a perfectly artful way, and beautiful, and yet I cannot quite say I enjoyed it. I appreciated it, but I spent two hours cringing, because I knew the story and people had said that it was shockingly bloody. And it is. It seems like Burton decided to play up the blood and squick out on the sex in the story (especially in the score), which is interesting to me.

The stars acquitted themselves quite respectably, and the supporting players were excellent. The vocals were quite good. Eric took issue with the physical choices for Todd and Antony, who, though they had spent years respectively in forced labor and at sea, affected walks that he called 'prancing' and 'mincing'. (And they were.) (I didn't notice during the film, but I must say he's right.)

I loved the costumes and all the art direction.

Also - Is that Michael Palin getting the closest shave? The internet is nearly silent on this vital point of information.

Incidentally, tonight's recipe: Banana Bread

Banana Bread.

Moosh 3 or 4 ripe bananas with your mixer (this should make more than a cup of very liquidy banana mooosh)

Add:
1 cup sugar,
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter, melted (but cooled so they don't cook the egg.)
Plus any spices or extracts.
mix.

In a separate bowl, mix together:
1.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda.
plus any dry additions like nuts or chocolate chips.

Drop the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir gently with a spatula. Don't overmix!!

Transfer to greased baking pan and bake at 325. In a loaf pan, this takes 45 min to 1 hour; I used muffin tins tonight, and it took less than 30 min.

question for the day:

Anybody know anything about CSA share farms?

I was reading a copy of Edible Chesapeake (not much at the magazine's site, but the blog has potential) that I picked up on my Friday Hamden adventure. There was a big article about community-sponsored agriculture - CSA farms, where a family could buy a 'share' in the year's crop.

I remember reading in someone's blog - maybe Brandy at loosetooth,com - about the thrill of picking up a little crate of fresh, ripe veggies every week, and the creativity of figuring out what to do with them. That sounds good to me, I thought! That would be a great thing for this summer!

But a Google search revealed: not much. If this is going to succeed for our family, I would need a pick-up spot that is really, truly convenient, one that requires very little 'going out of our way.' (Although, if we picked up on a Monday or a Friday, I could make the weekly trip to the farm a kid activity! That sounds wholesome and educational and like intentional living, doesn't it? Hmmmm...)

There seem to be quite a few in Maryland, but aside from Breezy Willow Farms, I can't find anything that's even vaguely close by. (Here's the best list I've found so far.)

Any advise or ideas would rock. Thnx.

There is something, one specific condition of life, for which I have a huge, throbbing soft spot.

In fact, that's probably an understatement.

I'm a little obsessed.

I am a little obsessed with people who grew up in rural Pennsylvania (and, to a lesser extent, anyone who grew up in the rural Northeast) and turned out fabulous. Artistic, design-y, literary, eccentric, brilliant, cosmopolitan...just in any way interesting or sparkly.

Here's one:





Another big icon of I Survived Rural PA is, of course, Jay McCarroll, the first Project Runway winner.

Another is my friend Jon David (sadly, no pic.)

Of course I knew none of these men growing up. None of them lived anywhere near me (there's plenty of rural in Pennsylvania, it's a big state.) - Jon David and Jay are a decade younger than I, and I think Chip Kidd is too. (So, when you watch the video and see his astonishing graphic output, evidenced by the fact that he designed, like, EVERY BOOK COVER AND JACKET IN THE LAST 20 years, you can ponder what in the hell happened to your career.) (He writes novels too.) (They're good.) (The nerve of some people.)

I didn't know them, but I feel like I knew them. I feel a link to these men, so that if I passed Jay on the street, or met Chip at a party, he would not necessarily stop and hug me, but would glance into my eyes for a moment and then give me a look - I can't even describe the look I mean, just a look of understanding that passes anything that could be spoken of.

(Don't roll your eyes. I said I was obsessed. You must have known it was going to be weird.)

You know what my hometown is like? What it was like?

Rent Nobody's Fool.

it's set in New York, and it has not one thing to do with the place I grew up. Nothing like the events in the plot ever happened to anyone I know. But I have to tell you, no movie has ever replicated the feel of my home town like that one.

Incidentally, the same caveats apply to Wonder Boys; no one at Western Maryland College in the early 80s sold an undergraduate novel or fathered a child with the dean's wife or tried to seduce her English prof wearing red cowboy boots. Or shot a dog. To the best of my knowledge.

But that movie is what college felt like. To me.

embarrassing, yet oddly satisfying.

guess what i did today?

I smooshed my nose against the vinyl-obscured picture windows at Charm City Cakes.

We made such a self-c0ncious fangirl fuss that Mary Alice came out and gave us an eyeball. "Oh, hi," we said before dissolving into mortified giggles.

Because whenever I meet someone famous, I rush home to tell you about it.

By the way - What the HELL was this building before it was a production bakery/reality show set? It's been bothering me for 2 seasons, and seeing it in person did nothing to alleviate my curiosity.

Question: #544 What if Christ does not accept me as I am?


Answer: You are seriously jacked.



You can admire Mark Driscoll or hate him (I'm not a fan) (duh) but this is fascinating.

What I think is interesting:
1. The whole idea - not unique, but thought-provoking nonetheless

2. The content of the questions that won a place in the series.

3. Driscoll's blog responses to the process (click on 'what mark is thinking' to see)

What I wonder about:
1. The idea of leaving the question open to the whole internet, rather than asking the congregation who will be in the room for the series. I understand it, I think, but I don't know that it's the decision I would have made.

2. Is there a place to see all the questions, and how they ranked?

I also want to give props to the web designer - yeah, the video ('How this works' page) loads slow and plays jerky, but major background love! And the empty chair. Also love.

(Don't hate me! I am not commending Driscoll's theology or personal charm! I just like the peeling paint. The peeling paint is worthy of commendation.)

couldn't be better

Sideshow Bennie, a friend of my sis-in-law, has consolidated his web writing into one big, photo-packed, funny, smart food blog.

Do not resist! Go to Side Show Bennie's Road Food!

what we've done to Christmas

The most accurate portrayal of the nativity that I've seen is in the film Children of Men. The movie tells of a not-so-distant future where people are no longer fertile, and humanity is gradually dying out. There are no babies, no children, and no hope.

As inevitable anarchy descends, communities and their cities are destroyed; allegiance and faithfulness fall away. Friendship, forgiveness and trust are quaint relics from the past. Then one day there's a whisper, an impossible rumour of a woman who is pregnant. As the rumour spreads, the world fights for ownership rights to the baby.

Towards the end of the story, the protector, mother and the crying newborn make their way to a place where the baby's survival can be guaranteed. The people fighting in the street hear the cry of a baby.

They can't work out what could be making that noise. They haven't heard that cry within living memory. But when they recognise it for what it is, they drop their weapons, they drop their guard, they even drop their determination to survive. Just for that moment, the world stands still.

Don't let a Christmas carol tell you otherwise: the cry of a baby when the world has been holding its breath is the most beautiful sound imaginable. It's perhaps the only sound that can ever change the world. Whatever chance we get, in whatever place we can, whether we choose Christianity as our faith or whether we visit it twice a year, all of us are called to seek out that cry and find where it might be born in the world.

Cheryl Lawrie works for the Alternative Worship Project in the Uniting Church in Australia

go read the rest - The Age is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia; Cheryl Lawrie's blog is [hold :: this space] where she posts amazing liturgy and poetry from her work creating worship in prisons and hospitals.

Reading her blog reminds me that this work is real...that facilitating worship and bringing people the sacraments is really precious, not just to me, but in reality. That communion isn't, you know, the garnish on the spiritual meal (where the meat is service and study...)

Is it really possible that we have 4 snowshovels and no rake? Really?




(I decided that it would be a kindness to our neighbors, some of whom are showing their house, if I cut down and hauled away the most obviously dead of the tropicals from our front 'flowerbed.' So I clipped, and hauled much of the brown stuff away to the woods - but the rest will require a rake. How can we not have a rake? We have a YARD. We have TREES. They make LEAVES.)

On the other hand, we don't have a mower, and that works out fine.

It's not like I want to be in a position of using a rake regularly.
It just seems odd, is all I'm saying.

I also dispensed with the pumpkin. The Halloween pumpkin. I'm sure the squirrels will enjoy eating it in the creekbed just as much as they have on the porch.

I want to point out, to their credit, that our neighbors do not seem to hate us. At all. Despite all this.

I am home with Barf Boy, who has not barfed in more than 28 hours. He's down for a nap, which gave me a chance for a few minutes of house maintenance (also threw in a load of laundry.) I have to get him up soon...

more domestic mysteries: if a family has 3 rubbermaid bins of Christmas decor, and used at least one-and-a-half bins worth (the unbreakable portion) for this year's celebration, why, when I go down to the basement to get something to put stuff away in, ARE THERE THREE OBSERVABLY FULL BINS???

Today's recipe: beef stew in the crock pot. After reading recipes at About.com and other sites, I decided that you could pretty much chuck WHATEVER into a crock pot with some stock and some wine and be able to dish dinner out of it in 7 hours. I'll let you know if this is true.

[edited to add: apparently, YES! $2 worth of meat, some sprouted root vegetables, and a little icky zinfandel + 7 hours = delicious! It's like magic!]


Later tonight, I will go on my neglected mommyblog and tell you The Happy Tale of A Boy and his Lobster.

something pretty

from http://susansargent.com/, where I am auditioning color combinations for knitting inspiration.

Hmmmm.

...I was taught to be skeptical of the body, its aptitude for failure, its tendency toward disappointment and even danger. Don’t love your body—love your mind, your good will, your spirit. Your body, left to its own designs, will lure you into too much leisure, too much pleasure, too much selfish living. And at this time of year especially, resolve to tame the body’s undisciplined wildness.

And then fail. Feel shame. Make an uneasy peace. Buckle down and try again. I’ve always wondered, when Jesus’ closest friends began to be thought of as his body, was it a punishing, distrusting relationship they had in mind, or a depth of love for self and the rest of us that I can barely imagine?

Kayla’s typical body resolutions:

1. Lose weight.
2. Walk more.
3. Eat healthier.
4. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
5. Blah, blah, blah….

Jesus’ typical body resolutions:

1. Have a radically loving relationship with my body.
2. Treat my body as both treasure and vessel.
3. Be a faithful companion to my body as we act in ways worthy of who God created us to be.
4. Enjoy my body. Stretch us beyond what we think we’re capable of.
5. Let my body take me even where I’d rather not go, if God calls us there.

- My Body, for You by Kayla McClurg

On Church of the Savior's lovely and thought-provoking blog, Inward/Outward.
(You should get their daily email feed.)

My kind of recipe site

Do y'all know about this?
http://cookingforengineers.com
Pick a recipe from the recipe file, click on the 'printer-friendly' option, and be dazzled by what seems to me perfection in the recipe writing arena:
clear, step-by-step instructions, illustrated with clear photos.



I am making a special surprise dessert from a friend's birthday, and the recipe on this site is the one I am using. I don't want to mention the recipe itself, for fear of spoiling the surprise, but I will give one hint:

I am making a dessert that will require a trip to the hardware store.
In fact, the hardware superstore.

Anyway, tip of the hat to Michael Chu, who is a good writer, apparently a good cook, and has a really good idea for a website.



not what I am making for the birthday.

I am now the oldest non-perv with a facebook account.

This is all Stacie's fault.

These are great.