Link to the shrimp recipe (if I can get away with it.)

I know the NY Times occasionally objects when civilians link to their content, but I'm going to give this a try.

Here is a recipe I've been making for a really long time. I saw it in the Times, a Wednesday food section, and I had it tacked to the corkboard in my kitchen for years. Now I have it memorized (though I rarely trust my memory for recipes, since, as my recent birthday cake slip-up* indicates, I'm not that precise even when I have the text in front of me.) I believe (guessing, from the notes in my kitchen notebook) that I clipped this recipe about 1997 or so.

I made this tonight for friends, which was a bit of a risk - it's got very strong flavors, and I can imagine someone finding it inedible. Happily, both the shrimp devotee and the more hesitant friend loved it. Even Ian ate a bite!

I usually eat this with white rice, but was too lazy for rice tonight - I bought a baguette, which we made very short work of. We had green beans and asperagas, which was also well received. (I cut up some cucumbers for this kids, and that made me realize that some kind of cucumber side dish would be really good with this, to contrast the salty and sharp flavors. )

In related food news, Ian and I had a tremendously successful first trip to the Grand Everyday Fresh Mart in South Laurel. Large selection of very nice produce at low prices, first of all, which is what I was looking for. (Seriously - Driscoll strawberries for 2.19 instead of 2.59, grapes for .99 a pound instead of $1.99. Large (don't know the official designation, but they were BIG) shrimp for 4.99/pound )(cheaper if I had been prepared to deal with the heads, which I was not). Live crabs and lots of fish on ice, which, along with making me what to cook them, make the trip much more exciting for Ian. The prices are competitive with the PanAm Latin American market, but it's much bigger and the produce looks nicer. Like the PanAm, it's pretty chaotic, but that suits me fine.

*The cake mistake - I have a lovely recipe for pound cake, from this excellent book which I totally recommend. Yes, it's got some jello salads and some things which require cans of mushroom soup. So don't make those. Duh. The things that are good are really good, including the sour cream pound cake recipe, which is what I made for Eric's birthday Friday. I used yogurt instead of sour cream, and where the recipe calls for 6 eggs, I only remembered to put in 3. It's still absolutely delicious. It's just a little more, um, "substantial".

more evidence of my awesome maturity

People who spin their own yarn apparently use a tool called an orifice hook. Yes, they do. It's true. I know this because someone who advertises on Ravelry mentioned them in her ad.

Disappointment: her Etsy shop is out of them, so there are no pictures there to reign in the imagination.

Tomorrow, if I get a chance, I will post the recipes for Eric's birthday cake and for the picnic fare that will proceed it.

Dinner Tonight: Chickpea Tangine.

* 2 Tbs. olive oil
* Half a gigantic onion, thinly sliced
* 3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs. minced from the jar.)
* i lb dried chickpeas, soaked about 18 hrs and rinsed
* several baby carrots, sliced into small chunks
* ¼ cup raisins
* 1 tsp. ground turmeric (shocked to find I had this in my cabinet)
* 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
* 1 tsp. ground cumin
* ¼ tsp. cayenne pepper
* 2 tsp. honey
(I used Really Raw honey, but didn't see any of the usual miscellaneous bee parts - Eric must have eaten them all in the top layer.)
* ½ cup plain Greek-style yogurt


The night before:
pick over the dried chick peas, rinse them in a colander, and put them in a large pot with 6 or so cups of water. I left them on the counter overnight, but transferred them the fridge before I left for work.

When you plan to cook them:
Take soaked chick peas out of fridge, rinse them one last time, cover generously with cold water and set them to boil until you can crush one with a little effort. It took about 30 minutes here. Raw chickpeas taste a little like raw chestnuts, which I don't recommend either. Cooked chick peas taste a little like roasted chestnuts, and retain some of their springyness. Stop cooking them before they get mushy.

(The original recipe called for canned chick peas, rinsed, which would make this a 20-minute dish, and I'm sure that would be fine too. I'm just a dried bean snob. And cheap.)

Heat oil in dutch over over medium heat.
Add onion and garlic, and sauté until onion slices are soft.
Stir in cooked, drained chickpeas, carrots, raisins, spices, honey, and 2 cups water.
Cover and simmer 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Keep an eye on it - I had to add about a half-cup more water at the 11 minute mark.
Serve, with a spoonful of yogurt.
Benefits from some salt and pepper.

THIS was a total winner, didn't take long, was definitely not technically challenging, and all with staple foods! We had everything except the yogurt already around the house. It's really delicious.

The original recipe is from last October Vegetarian Times. As I said above, it's even faster and easier.

to get this off the server, I'm putting it here.

Doing church and being church: blogroll

People on the journey

http://www.djchuang.com/
trends in culture, business, connecting through technology, church planting and leadership; especially focused on multiracial and Asian-American congregations

http://thecorner.typepad.com/
Bob’s personal blog – ideas, trends, politics, music, and church. Bob reads everything and knows everyone, and thinks ENORMOUS.

http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/
personal blog of a minister with an emergent congregation in London – excellent resources like “worship tricks” and tons of links to other alternative worship stuff.

http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/
Andrew looks at culture, trends, media coverage and whatever catches his attention. He travels all over the world and has great perspective. Plus he’s funny, and not afraid of an argument.

http://www.reallivepreacher.com/
pondering life and community in a small liturgical Baptist church in TX. Excellent writer.

http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/
Steve pastors in New Zealand; their church does especially interesting thing with visual arts and contemplation

http://soupiset.typepad.com/
Paul’s art and thoughts on art, music and worship, as well as family. Pronounced monastic leanings.

http://alternative.victas.uca.org.au/
Cheryl Lawton ministers in Australia

Designing worship – big ideas and nuts and bolts

http://www.smallfire.org/
alternative worship photo archive – pictures from services and events, with links

http://BCPOnline.org
If you need an idea, a prayer or a structured liturgy, this searchable ECUSA book is the best place to start.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/
a great music resource.

Jonnybaker’s worship tricks (see personal blogs – he has links in the right-hand column)

Cheryl’s blog has some beautiful liturgy (also above)

http://www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/
Dylan’s lectionary blog

www.avisualplanet.com
the very best place for church graphics

www.biblegateway.net
http://www.tniv.info/bible/
of course


Some Books of interest:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-3097203-8655215?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+complete+library+of+christian+worship
The Complete Library of Christian Worship
(Indispensible! You’ll need to assemble this set from used book distributors – Amazon always has some volumes – start with Volume 5, services of the Christian Year, then branch out to 4 (Sacred Actions) or 6 & 7 (Music and Arts.)

http://www.amazon.com/Spaces-Spirit-Adorning-Nancy-Chinn/dp/1568542429/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202231795&sr=8-1
Spaces for Spirit: Adorning the Church by Nancy Chinn
Excellent big vision for worship environments

http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Worship-Creating-Gatherings-Generations/dp/0310256445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202232052&sr=8-1
Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball
The primer for creating creative worship gatherings, from theological underpinnings to how-tos. The best introduction, and good to share with people who are nervous about the ‘weird stuff’, because the author is really grounded in the Bible and adamant about sound theology, right motives, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Worship-Evangelism-Sally-Morgenthaler/dp/031022649X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202232329&sr=8-1
Worship Evangelism by Sally Morganthaler
This book changed my life. Back in the early 90s, Morganthaler went looking for what had been lost and gained in ‘seeker sensitive’ (I hate that term used this way, but I know you know what I mean) planning. Even if this isn’t you situation, this book will help you think critically about worship planning.

What we did today

 

hung in the streets

 

looking old-fashioned

 

photographed random things

 

admired my current work in progress in the sunshine.

I love this photo!

Del Primo Boots
Originally uploaded by Mama Grouch

this is gorgeous.

illustrations from yesterday's post

fig. 1




fig. 2
(This was taken the first night I worked on it - it shows the base row of triangles plus 2 tiers. Much more is finished now.)

(Also, I made a decent dinner tonight. A successful experiment. More experiments on the same theme to come.)

(Also, I have posted a couple Easter photos on The Mulligan Years (first post in 5 months!) Go experience teh cute.)

(Also, I am distressed by all this 'imbed disabled by request' business which apparently has come into being while I was on blog hiatus. How can I post the ridiculous Killers video of the song that reminds me of the summer before my senior year of high school? Perhaps MTV will help me.)

Ah yes. MTV comes to my rescue once more.

The Killers - New Music - More Music Videos

don't watch the video. Just listen to the song and think about sitting in a car in driveway, wearing shorts and no shoes. Your curfew has just passed. The grass is wet.

I have been told to update my blog.

1. Happy Birthday Natasha!

2. Finished a great shawl with handspun yarn from Three Irish Girls. It is fabulous if I do say so myself (and I do.)

3. Making a Lady Eleanor entrelac shawl from Scarf Style.

4. However, I have no photos of these projects because my computer is pretty much full and so I when I download my camera, FAIL.

5. We survived Holy Week! And the groundbreaking for the farm. No casualties. I am exhausted.

6. I'm watching a cable rerun of Criminal Intent.
Villain: Neil Patrick Harris, looking like a cleanshaven Unibomber. In a hairnet.
Attempted murder weapon: a power drill.
Sponsor of this episode (I am totally not kidding) The Awesome Auger, which is basically A POWER DRILL. You'd think it was a Google Ad Word.

7. Made macaroons last week, for the first time in years. Recipe will be forthcoming. These are even easier than the peanut butter cookies, though far, far less nutritious.

8. Zoloft is a freakin' miracle. Praise God - really, truly, no kidding - for modern pharmacology.

9. I wonder if it freaks Seth McFarland out to see that animated alien come out of his navel in the Hulu commercial.

10 This is Ian's favorite video of the moment:




we both dig the moment at about 41ish seconds where the hamster (hampster?) is tapping to the music.

some sheep for Patsy

these are 2 book cover designs for the Way of Love. Patsy was having trouble acessing them on the server, and they were unweildy as attachments, so I have posted them.

THIS ISN'T REALLY BLOGGING. ITS WORK. IT'S A WORK WORK-AROUND (of which I continue to be the complete eternal queen.) lenten blogfast is still in effect.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


Adam Zagajewski
Translated by claire cavanaugh in the New Yorker.

Some Stuff to look at while I'm gone:

Nothing earth-shattering here, these are pretty well-known...

Our devotional blog, featuring reflections (in words and art) from people who are dear to me:

http://crcclentendevotions.blogspot.com/

Some food blogs I like:

http://101cookbooks.com

http://steamykitchen.com/blog/

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

http://snackreligious.blogspot.com

Pictures of outfits:

http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_cunningham/index.html

Fair warning:

Just wanted to mention that I won't be blogging during March. Blogging and Facebook are what I am fasting from for Lent this year.

Because I really love them. Much more than I love chocolate, or swearing, or making snarky judgements about strangers based on their outfits. (I have given all these things up for Lent at various times. The last one really made a change in my life - not that I never make snarky judgements anymore, but it is far, far from the reflex it used to be. Seriously.)

AND since I have a Wednesday night service to prepare for (and, like so many holiday services, IT IS NOT WRITING OR COORDINATING ITSELF, to my grave frustration) it's possible that you won't see another recipe, American Idol critique, book review, entertaining conversation with a 3-year-old, or photo of something lying in the street until April.

No, I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I'm trying NOT to make a plan for filling the time, but just see what it's like to go without this - without this outlet, and without you all.

I want to do it because I REALLY don't want to do it. You know?

Dinner tonight: finally, a happy ending!

Tonight we had 'use what you have' meatloaf, which turned out quite well, and this, which I was trying for the first time. I had been re-reading Mollie Katzen's Brocolli Forest, (incidentally, that link is for the NEW Enchanted Brocolli Forest; I have the OLD one, no photos, handlettered...) which has quite a few souffles in it, and was curious about spoonbread. But I was scared off by her recipe, with it's 6 separated eggs and the allowing of time for things to come to room temperature...since I already had meatloaf in the oven.

Well, Easy Basics to the rescue, as always. (This is the best cookbook I own, and it is a crime, a CRIME that it is out of print.) (Although I feel less guilty about posting the recipe, since you can't buy the book.)

It's perfectly lovely. It fits in my souffle pan. It is a bit 'washing-up intensive', using multiple bowls and pans, and it does require one kitchen technique that I am still far from mastering. And it's still great.


Spoonbread

Preheat the oven to 375, and find your soufflé dish. (Mine was behind the stack of loaf pans. I mention this at the beginning so that you do not find yourself, as I did, wondering what you’re supposed to pour this stuff – THIS stuff here, in the pan in my HAND – into.)

Butter the soufflé dish.

Mix in a bowl ¾ cup cornmeal and 1 cup milk. Let it stand for 3-5 minutes.

In a medium-sized saucepan, heat another 1 ¼ cup milk until just boiling. Add the contents of the bowl – cornmeal and cold milk – to the hot milk and cook it until it thickens, anywhere from 2-5 minutes. Cornmeal is unpredictable, I have found recently.

Remove the pan with the thickened cornmeal mixture from the heat. Stir in ¼ cup sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, and a stick of butter cut into 8 pieces. Stir until the butter melts.

Now let that sit and cool a little, while you separate 3 eggs.

Beat the whites of those 3 eggs until they are stiff (able to stand up my themselves) but not dry.

Take the yolks of those 3 eggs and beat them, one at a time, into the cornmeal mixture.

Okay, here’s the tricky part. This is the part where you FOLD the fluffy whites into the slippery, heavy cornmeal stuff. Easy Basics recommends transferring a big glob of whites into the saucepan and folding those in, then, once that mixture is all incorporated and pretty even, dropping all that on top of the rest of the whites (into the bowl of the stand mixer, in my case) to finish the folding.

Folding has always confounded me. You’re supposed to be gentle, so you don’t whomp all the air out of the egg whites; at the same time, you’re supposed to get it fully mixed, eliminating any big clumps of egg. These two goals seem mutually exclusive. Guess I’ll never get that Cordon Bleu certification. Use a stiff, heat-resistant silicone spatula to lift the batter over the puffs of egg, turn the bowl as you fold, scrape down the sides and the whole bottom. Don’t do it for too long.

Here’s the good news – mine looked totally bad, with big white dunes of egg visible after I transferred it to the soufflé dish. I thought I had messed it up totally.

Not so! It was completely delicious. And puffy like a soufflé, but the cornmeal gives it some structure so it doesn’t fall.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the middle firms up a little (the cookbook said ‘until it doesn’t jiggle’, but mine jiggled somewhat and it was perfect.

This was so light and SO delicious I could have fainted. Serve immediately by huge spoonfuls.


Now THIS is a successful starch.

Some things to be happy about:

1. my brother is home from the hospital
2. his wife has taken a new job
3. summer programs are gathering steam
4. my child is not always the unrepentant knob he sometimes appears to be
5, I am going to do something fun tomorrow
6. (that is, it will be fun if the little knob cooperates, which I would imagine that he will)
7. i took a day off this week
8. i made 2 really delicious things for dinner tonight.
9. i have read 42 of the 100 books on that list on facebook, so i'm perhaps my expensive education was not a complete loss
10. Jesus loves me, this I know.

Friday Five: Taking a Break

In that spirit, I offer this Taking a Break Friday Five. Tell us how you would spend:

1. a 15 minute break

I stopped drinking coffee about 3 weeks ago. (I had some mild withdrawl headaches, but only for a couple of days. ) I mention this because, up until 2 weeks ago, my answer would have been 'out for a cup of coffee!'

and now it would be (sheepishly) 'facebook.'

2. an afternoon off

OH, you mean like YESTERDAY? Yesterday my husband and I went out for a burrito, then enjoyed an afternoon show of Coraline in 3d. I do enjoy an afternoon movie. I also enjoy a few childless hours at the Borders Books, Music and Inadvertent Reference Library, where for the price of a cup of tea, I read fashion and graphic design magazines, and then RESTOCK THEM. (I have spent enough money at that Borders over the years to feel absolutely no guilt about this.)

3. an unexpected free day

Bad weather: art museum.
Good weather: Wandering around a city, usually the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore. Both of these involve pastry.

4. a week's vacation

Well, since I'm imagining, I think I'll imagine that my son is well-cared-for for the week, and my husband is performing in New York City or Philadelphia. Or is lecturing or something. So that there would be time for adventures together but also for me to wander alone, write, take pictures, look at fabrics and trims, visit a historic church and a market like Reading Terminal Market.

5. a sabbatical

I think I would stay mostly put and take classes. Seminary or art school?

I think this is just excellent.

By Carl Willat, at CarlsFineFilms.com. Shot on his PDA.

A couple of years ago. I had an on-line conversation about Trader Joe's - this might have been as long ago as my LiveJournal days - where Natasha and I agreed that shopping at our local TJ's made us feel kind of uneasy. I used to feel like I was taking up too much room in the aisles when I shopped there, like I was impeding the flow of the other shoppers. (And, incidentally, eating delicious natural foods apparently does not make you nicer or more patient. Not reliably, anyway. Didn't work for me. and evidently doesn't work for people who shop at TJs.)

I'm pleased to report that a new TJs has opened in the intervening years, which is closer to me and A LITTLE LARGER. The aisles are wider. And I no longer feel like a bull in a little-mesh-bag-of-avocados shop.

Spot The Worship Leader, round 2

Last time I watched American Idol, I picked Fat Chris (I'm really sorry, I know not everyone likes the F word...but there were 2 Chrises in the top 12, and Curly-haired Chris just wasn't good shorthand. And if I said The Cute One, I'd be the only one who knew what I meant.) He was my favorite contestant, both musically and personality-wise. And of course he's a worship leader.




In this season's auditions, to which I did not pay much attention but had on in the background while I wasted time on Facebook, I did pick a favorite contestant: Danny Gokey from Minneapolis.

And yes, tonight he mentioned that he's a music director at a church.

Why yes, I can spot 'em in a crowd.

I like a worship leader who has a little Robert Downey Jr. vibe.

Tonight Dinner: I'm doing it wrong, part 2

I tried to make this for dinner (another Martha Stewart Everyday item, but this one you can link to. Weird.)

This recipe is just wrong. (Maybe you can only link to the screwed-up ones.)

It says to simmer the polenta over low heat for 10 minutes until thickened. My polenta took almost 20 minutes to thicken up, over increasingly high heat. It also says to deglaze the pan (not the polenta pan, the pan you cooked the beef in) and then boil the vinegar over high heat for 5-7 minutes until it reduces. At about 3 minutes, my vinegar seized up into a disgusting black mess, not unlike the monster in The Blob.



Also, no tomatoes in February, not even grape tomatoes. I made peas.
That may not be the recipe's fault, technically.

It wasn't bad.

Edited to add: Speaking for food, check out this birthday cake from Pink Cake Box in New Jersey. Via Ravelry.

Recipe: Oyster Stew-soup-whatever

Put one or two redskin potatoes in the microwave, and nuke 'em for for about 8 minutes.
Chop the leaves from a couple of stalks of celery.
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large saucepan.

When the butter is melted, drop in half a chopped onion or a spoonful of minced garlic, as well as the celery leaves. Cook that for a few minutes over medium heat, with a little salt and pepper. If you have onions, cook until they're soft. If you have garlic, cook until it starts to turn golden.

When the potatoes are nuked and a little soft, cut them into chunks (USE AN OVEN MITT FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE) and add them to the pot. They will absorb all the butter -you can drop in another pat if you like. More salt, more pepper. Dice the one or two stalks of celery really really small and drop them in to the pot as well. Cook another 2-4 minutes.

Add fresh oysters. I had a 8 oz refrigerated pack - it looks like a can, with a pull top, but the container is actually plastic. They were good, because they were enormous ('Select' size) and fresh and semi-local...but more than 8 oz would have been even better. (2 cans would have been great, except that would make this $10 soup, which I cannot get behind in our current economic situation.) Stir those in, along with all the liquid from the can, and let them warm up for a minute or two. If they cook too long, they will get rubbery, and if the stick to the bottom, they'll tear and fall apart. Neither of these is a huge tragedy, but I prefer a little undercooked to rubbery.

Cover with 2% milk. Keep the heat at medium or lower - you don't want it to boil. Stir frequently over the next 5 minutes, until it is hot all the way through. Season to taste - I used a small drizzle of fish sauce and a decent shake of soy sauce.




Makes 4 large bowls.
Serve with Italian bread and butter.
We ate every drop.

I got you, babe

this being February, I have of course had several conversations about this movie, which find quite thought-provoking - deeply philosophical, if not precisely religious. For me, it has stood up to repeated viewings. If we are doomed to repeat, if the things we do cannot make us progress, if we cannot accumulate stuff and increase wealth and status...how then shall we live? What makes a satisfying life, in the absence of a future?

Apparently I'm not the only one who can find all this stuff in a comedy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/goldberg200602020835.asp

Interestingly, another movie that I watch with complete rapt attention at least annually, and one that never fails to make me laugh and cry, is also a Bill Murray dumbass comedy.

Hmmm.

national review link via Get Religion, a blog critiquing the way the news media covers (or usually fails to cover) religious questions. I read it at least once a week. (This is the website that jokingly suggested, in its predictions for the new year, that the Obamas would be joining our little church. Funny, eh?)

(One commenter helpfully added that we have space on the church grounds for their helepad.)

Hey, everybody, guess what?

Hey look, everybody! It's my brother.

For those of you who are not on Facebook (and so are not reading my daily Tweet-length medical updates) my fucking brother has been in the fucking hospital for a fucking week. 7 days - and it's been different every day. Bad news - he's got pancreatitis. Oh, wait, it's actually good news - it's because of his gall bladder! We can take care of that! As soon as his pancreas calms down! We'll just hang around here while we wait for the pancreas to calm down.

Dum de dum dum dum. Waiting for the pancreas. Waiting....waiting....

Oh, wait - let's do something different to his gall bladder. But it's complicated, so let's move him to the good public hospital. (What? This wasn't the good hospital? Where's the good hospital? Oh, just down the street? Great, let's go to the GOOD hospital.)

TEST
TEST
ANOTHER TEST
NEW RANDOM TEST WE APPARENTLY JUST MADE UP

Hmm, it looks like his gall bladder is better! By itself! So we don't have to do the complicated thing! Well, that's good - we'll just watch him for a couple days and then let him go. Oh, and let's give him food, and about time, since he hasn't eaten to speak of since last WEDNESDAY.

Hmmm, he's only a little better. What's that? Some sort of hole in the pancreas? That sounds serious. Fluid pooling in his abdomen? Running a fever? For 6 days? TEST TEST XRAYS MRI BLOODWORK TEST.

Also, you know that solid food thing? Forget that - what this man needs is a feeding tube. Lipids through the nose. That makes everyone feel better.

Oh, and by the way, he's in real pain, feeling like he's being punched in the middle all day long.

And did I mention? My brother is moderately hearing- and speech-impaired. Verbal communication with hospital staff ranges from excellently successful to seriously, WTF? So Jenny, his wife, is there all the time to facilitate communication. Eric or I visit nearly every other day and help out as best we can, and give Jenny a break.

This is confusing and stressful for me, and you can only imagine how worried Jenny and Sandy are.

So we made valentines.


with dinosaurs. Dinosaur Valentines FTW.

oh, what on earth is Paula wearing? I can't tell whether I like that piece of jewelry or hate it. Kinda cool and artistic and kind of a train wreck.

Dinner Tonight: I did it wrong

Tonight I made...

Oh, heck with it. I've been trying to link to the recipe, but apparently Martha Stewart Omnimedia does not want people to link. That's rather shortsighted, don't you think?

It's a Martha Stewart Everyday Food recipe called Crispy Ginger-Lime Chicken Thighs. You make a paste with curry powder, grated ginger, lime juice and scallions, and spread it under the skin, then broil the chicken thighs.

It was fast, and pretty tasty, though milder than I wold like. It also created a house-ful of smoke, which did not add to the dining experience.

I think I can do this better. Especially since the new supermarket in town has really cheap chicken thighs. (And, um, everything else. Inexpensive produce, a butcher shop, cheap shrimp.fish in tanks and on ice, This is a fine, fine addition to town. Also, shopping there will mean I have to learn some practical Spanish.)

.

Friday Five - These are a few of....

Over at RevGal, Songbird says:

... I found myself thinking of the way Maria comforted the Von Trapp children in one of my favorite movies. Frightened by a thunder storm, the children descend upon her, and she sings to them about her favorite things, taking their minds off the storm.

So, let's encourage ourselves. Share with us five of your favorite things. Use words or pictures, whatever expresses it best.

I was thinking of things and looking at Flickr...and I think I will do 5 top 5s.

1. Five Favorite entertainers:
Kevin Smith, Stephen Colbert, all three Roches.

2. Five Favorite Baby Names we didn't choose:
Sydney, Isabel, Aiden, Finn, David

3. Five Favorite Writers that I fantasize are my friends in real life:
Anne Lamott, Michael Chabon, David Sedaris, Don Miller, Jeffery Steingarten

4. Five Favorite things to eat that I didn't cook:
Tom Ka Gai, whole tilapia with scallions and ginger, cherry custard pie, coffee ice cream, fried pork dumplings.

5. Five Favorite Photos I took (that are on my hard drive at the moment.)

guess it happened.

okay, so who remembers my Halloween post, where I wrote about the triceratops costume I designed and made ON THE 31ST?

Which my kid would not wear?

Who remembers that one of my dear friends was skeptical in the comments? "Pics or it didn't happen," he wrote, echoing the spirit of the age.



He wears it around town - not daily, but a couple of times a month, he comes down the stairs wearing it over his clothes. They've seen it at the bank, at the dry cleaners...this was taken outside the Columbia library last Friday.

I think the coat makes it much, much funnier.

some photos that need no comment:

from the tres excellent Mimi Smartypants
















via the moderately vulgar but fairly entertaining No But Yes But No

Okay, so I...

so I wrote a Friday Five which was absolutely nothing but me whining about the things I would change about our house. But here is the thing - I love our house. Yeah, I wish it was in, I don't know, Fells Point or Red Hook or London or someplace fascinating. Yeah, I'd rather have a different kitchen floor. And a living room ceiling without a hole. And a yard where grass will grow. and and and and

honestly, who cares.

We are very happy here. We could use a maid, and a landscaper, and a professional organizer (incidentally, DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZERS MAKE? A lot. The answer to that question is "a lot.")

I had to stop watching HGTV because pretty much the only show I ever saw was "Why Your House Sucks So Bad" And "Why Your House Sucks So Bad II" and "OMG, No One Would Ever Even Consider Buying Your Completely Suckass House." Some real estate professional would sniff, "well, these countertops could obviously use some updating," and I'd think, I bet our countertops need updating. It was not relaxing, I finally realized. I wasn't getting new ideas for things I could do myself. I was just feeling inadequate. This is why HGTV makes money. I would invest in it. I just can't watch it.

Our counters don't need updating. They look fine, and they stand up to massive abuse every time I cook. The problems aren't the house's problems, they're ours - we have stuff we don't need, we aren't disciplined enough to get rid of stuff or decide where it should go. We changed businesses, we had a baby, we have a lot of junk. None of this is the house's fault, and nothing would make it better. Not even more room, because we'd just fill that! Not even some excellent storage like custom-built shelving - until we figure out what we need to keep, and what we need to dispense with, that would just give us more leeway to be undisciplined.

The point is: we are happy in our house. My kitchen is extremely modest. Small. Cheapo appliances (the fridges were free, in fact.) Imperfectly planned. But every time I walk into the kitchen itself, I think about some fun time I've had there, some culinary triumph - making that massive carmel cake, for example, or feeding our family 3 dinners with a dollar's worth of dried beans. Or this Christmas, improvising side by side with my brother, laughing our heads off and having everything come out insanely good! (and also: all hot at the same time.)

So Santa can bring all new floors and a French door to replace the clouded slider. And someone to fix the ceiling. I will never get around to it. (The getting-rid-of-stuff and organizing - that I am nibbling away at. It's frustrating, but I remind myself that it didn't get this way in a weekend, and it won't get fixed in a weekend either.) I'd rather be cooking. Or reading. Or writing. Or playing dinosaurs.

Via the blog at Bosco Peter's helpful site http://liturgy.co.nz

There's something about this - maybe the physical constraints of a webcam reinforce the feeling of deep emotion and hard thinking. I'm a Penn fan, as I've mentioned, though I think I would be kind of frightened of him in person (just that he would be dismissive and hurt my feelings, not frightened that he would, like, eat me or anything.)

(Well, look at him. Stranger things have happened.)

"there is absolutely no way in hell that I am going to spend two minutes and twenty-seven seconds watching some random video of some guy's KITTEN."

"Honestly, I know. And from Cute Overload, too. Really, Betsy?? REALLY? Way to waste an evening."

yeah, I'm so sure.

Dinner Tonight: Sorta like marinara

Before Dinner:
Husband: Spaghetti sauce? Are you going to put in some sausage or something?
Me: Not tonight. Tonight, just tomato sauce.
Husband: Hmmmph.

After Dinner:
Husband: WOW! That was great! Was that a new recipe?
Me: Sorta.
Husband: (suspicious) 'Sorta' how?
Me: well, sorta new, as in I've never tried to make it this way before.
P taught me how to make it. But it's really only 'sorta' a recipe.
(This 'sorta recipe' has impeccable credentials: P, a co-worker of mine, is from Philadelphia, and she is Irish, and this is the sauce that she used to win over her Italian inlaws.)
She sent me an email, really mostly just some ideas for ingredients, with kind of vague amounts. I think you really can't do it wrong if you keep stirring and tasting, I guess.

Husband: You should go write down exactly what you did! So you can make it again!

Fine.

P's Red Sauce by Betsy:

warm about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a deep skillet.
Dice one quarter of a huge sweet onion, and add to that a couple of spoonfuls of minced garlic. You can also dice up a couple slices of pepperoni - P suggests pancetta, which would be lovely, but we had a plastic bag of pre-sliced pepperoni.

Cook these in the oil for 3-8 minutes with salt and pepper.

When the onions start to get a little brown, slippery and a little softer but not yet actually soft, open a can (26 oz) of diced tomatoes in juice. (P suggested crushed tomatoes, you know, like a normal person would, but the can I grabbed out out the cupboard was diced.) Pour that in.

Bring that to a light boil, and reduce the heat to keep it simmering.

Simmer for 10 minutes. Taste.

I added: dried oregano, dried parsley, fresh (well, frozen) rosemary - just a few needles

(An aside: I got a boatload of rosemary when Tony pruned his outdoor plant, which I believe is on his balcony and has the size and density of a prison privacy hedge. I stripped 2 branches and froze the needles, and put the other 2 branches in a vase of water on the windowsill. I am hoping it takes root. The avocado is setting a good example.)

(I would really love having a garden bed that I've grown exclusively from garbage - like the avocado seed - and cuttings from friends. So every plant would have a story.)

P suggests a lot of fresh basil, of course, but I have used up my frozen basil from this summer and have not gotten any dried yet. She adds red wine. I used pasta water by the ladle-full when it looked like it was getting too sticky.

And we are unanimously in favor of sugar. Add a fairly small amount at a time - like a tablespoon - and give it time to disperse before you taste again.

Salt. Pepper. I didn't add pepper flakes, but that's hardly out of the question.

Just keep simmering and stirring occasionally - about 30 minutes total. It's chunky but also saucy.

It was really good. And I really believe that you cannot mess this up if you keep tasting.

Friday Five: Beating Cabin Fever

Here in Maryland, we had a beautiful day - warm and sunny, with air that smelled like fresh laundry. I was at home for most of it, hand-picking pine needles out of particularly stubborn patches of carpet and trying to reason with a 3-year-old. (Yay me.)

But over at RevGal, Singing Owl is in a pickle:

Here in snow country we are settled in to what is a very long stretch of potentially boring days. The holidays are over. It is a very long time till we will get outside on a regular basis. The snow that seemed so beautiful at first is now dirty and the snow banks are piling up. Our vehicles are all the same shade of brownish grey, but if we go to the car wash our doors will freeze shut. People get grumpy. Of course, not everyone lives in a cold climate, but even in warmer places the days till springtime can get long. Help! Please give us five suggestions for combating cabin fever and staying cheerful in our monochromatic world?

I really have only one suggestion, which is:

do the thing you 'never' do. In every area.

Take a different route home. Get your groceries at a store you've never been to. Choose a new restaurant or takeout, order something you've never had, read a genre you'd never dream of reading, try on a garment that's not like anything in your closet.

Here's the good thing: It's an EXPERIMENT. Therefore, it cannot fail.
There is so very little to be lost by trying on a flowery blouse, wandering the aisles of a new market for a few extra minutes, picking up a cheesy paperback (or a scholarly tome, whatever) on your regular library trip. If you hate it, then your suspicions are confirmed and you can go back to your favorite dish/author/black t-shirt with renewed authority.

But now you're a different kind of person. You're not the kind of person who only ever orders home-style bean curd, with no rice, only ever listens to NPR, only reads contemporary literary fiction and food books. (Ahem. That would be me.) You could do anything! At any moment! You're full of surprises!

And who knows - you might find you like short boots or vampire books or Vampire Weekend. That would be like a bonus.

I occasionally go through a discipline of randomness. For a specified period of time (3 days - never as long as a whole week, that I can recall) I discipline myself that, whenever I am given a choice, I will choose to do the thing I haven't done before.

(Confession - I have not done this in the last 4 years, since parenthood (though often tedious) means that every day one is forced to do things one has never done before. And would not choose, given the choice.)

And in the coming days, I will be doing something I never, ever ever do. I will be having people over.

I have invited my co-workers over to this squalid hovel modest suburban townhouse to eat pizza and, presumably, watch my son have a tantrum. It's all about community, people. Like, authenticity n'shit.

I never invite people over - except people who have lived here, the veterans of suburban bohemia - not because I am embarrassed about the squalid hovel, but because I am totally totally greedy about my free time. Since reproducing, I feel like I have about 6 minutes to myself in a day, and 2 seconds with my husband. Have people over? Are you kidding me? Friends take time! I need that time!

So I can spend it on Facebook. Again, Yay me.

I went to my knitting group the other night. I never go, because that would be giving away my 6 minutes to, you know, other people. I went and finished the project (an alledged Christmas gift that I have frogged THREE TIMES. Panic disorder and knitting are a tough combination.)

But, aha, interesting that panic should come up in this conversation, because in the 2 hours of knitting and chatting with strangers about this and that, ex-boyfriends, clothes, jobs, yarn, whatever whatever....I did not have one second of panic, not an instant of obsessive pulse-checking or jaw-clenching.

(I raise a tiny, tattered, slept-with, chewed-on, 46-year-old pennant that says "betsy".)

(Yay me. For real.)

Beautiful.

Go spend a few minutes here.

Chimene Jackson is a photographer I was priveldged to meet last year. She shot some beautiful portraits of Ian, and I had seen a lot of the family portraiture in her portfolio. These are her shots from her trip downtown Tuesday.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I loved this prayer.

(*My husband, teary-eyed but shaking with laughter at the end of the above benediction, turned to me and said "Oooooh, Rick Warren just got schooled.")

(this post was edited by the author on 1/28.)

A confluance of unlikely events.

We were in Baltimore yesterday, the Dude and I, our annual MLK Day trip to the Visionary Art Museum. We'd been hanging around for several hours, in the events building, making a musical instrument of some sort, eating cake. We had looked at the mechanicals endlessly and visited the robots (Ian looked at the photo of the man who built the robots and said "Wow. He was a really good fixer.")

I had somehow gotten him outside, FINALLY. Between the event venue and the main museum, there's a garden and The Sculpture Barn. Ian loves the garden, and staged a coup that resulted in us being in the garden, behind the barn for a while, instead of on the way to the car where we should have been going, where I was trying to get us.

It started to snow. There was a dusting already down, and it started to snow in earnest.

In the Sculpture Barn, there were 2 exhibits. One was a huge chess set, with pieces the size of 4th graders, made out of car parts. The other: hanging on the ceiling, huge Bible scenes and stories painted on enormous sheets of canvas, like sails.

And the sound system was playing, at loud, echoing levels, King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the whole thing.

We look up at the canvases for a minute, but it's too loud for Ian, who grabs my hand and leads me into the little log structure in the garden. We climb the stairs to its little tower chamber. Snow swirls around us, coming in through the log lattice roof. Ian is dancing to some mysterious music I can't hear, sliding in the snow.

Dr. King says, "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

And Ian says, "Mommy! It is snowing! Inside!! Isn't that wonderful?"

And I say, yes, Ian. It really is.

Dinner Tonight:; Leeks and Chicken.

Last night was a very bad night, and today would have been a very bad day indeed. Except for:

Eric plying me with a bagel.

Sarah taking me out for lunch, conversation, and Ethiopian Chai

"Say Hey" by Spearhead

and

Chicken and Leeks.

Preheat the oven to 450.
Take some leeks (I had 4.) Peel the stiffest outer green leaves off, trim the nasty-looking ends, slit the remaining leek down the middle, and wash all the sand out. There will be a lot of sand. I'm serious. Once they seem clean, keep running water over them for another minute. Lay the leeks in a baking dish with some sort of liquid nearly covering them - I used vegetable broth and leftover chardonnay. Stick them in the oven.

Heat up an frying pan on the stovetop. Once it's hot, coat it with olive oil and introduce 2 split chicken breasts (wait - would that be 2 breasts, or one breast which has been split? I don't know - 2 pieces. Whatever they were on the chicken, now they're 2 pieces of meat, I think we can all agree on that.) Anyway, drop those in skin-side down, and cook for 5 minutes. Throw some salt and pepper on them. Turn them over at the end of 5 minutes, and cook about 4 minutes more. (This is the side that will curve away from the pan, so it won't seem like much is happening, but it is.)

At the end of that 4 minutes, remove the pan from the heat. Take the chicken, open the oven, and lay the chicken on top of the leeks. Now lay a piece of foil over it all - you won't be able to seal it on, what with the hot pan and the oven mitts and the kid singing and the cats underfoot and whatever. So just cover it to the best of your ability, shrug, and close the oven.

It'll be done in about 10 minutes, when the chickens' juices run clear when you stab them. Don't overcook breast meat, for heaven's sake. Use a thermometer if you're jumpy - 160 degrees.

If you're an overachiever, you can go back to the greasy, partially-cooled frying pan, warm it back up, and saute some garlic in there. When the garlic starts to get golden, add the juice from the leek pan, and reduce that for a while, whisk in a tiny bit of butter and pass it like gravy.

(If any garlic turns black, throw it all out. No pan sauce for you today, sorry. Tiny amounts of burned garlic ruin everything they come near.)

Things that I wish I had done:

my friend Churchbird linked this article on her Facebook page.

Please go and watch the video quick before the NYTimes sues us all and takes it down in order to teach us a lesson. (Hi, Flip.)

It took me a moment to figure out how to watch it in full screen mode, (it's the little rectangle under the window, duh, pretty obvious once you catch on) but that's the way you should watch it.

World's Shortest Book Reviews.

I'm sure they're not, actually. They're not quite "Tonstant Weeder frowed up." Nonetheless, I have entered an online group that wants to read 52 books in 52 weeks, and I am about to finish my 3rd book of 2009.

1. Feathers Brush My Heart, Sinclair Browning, a collection of anecdotes by women who feel that they were contacted by the spirits of their dead mothers. I got this as a Christmas gift.
This book apparently means the world to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women around the world. It was not my cup of tea at all, but I wanted to finish it so that I could converse intelligently with the giver.

2. Tamera Drewe, Posy Simmons, either a heavily illustrated novel or a comic with a whole lot of text. Borrowed from the library. Excellently realized, but, since it's a story about chasing small-time celebrity and sordid behavior, it's kind of, um, sordid. None of the characters were admirable, and none were likable rogues, either.

3. The Sand Castle, Rita Mae Brown. Novella about the events of one family's day trip to the beach in Maryland in 1957. Beautifully done - constantly threatening to fall over the cliff into schmaltz, but somehow never does. Excellent economy, wonderfully evocative. Very good. (I am shocked to see that so many readers on Amazon hated it.)

4. The Man Who Ate the World, Jay Rayner. Food memoir (a minisubgenre I LOVE.). Rayner is a London restuarant critic, and he's witty and self-aware and uses funny Brit-isms to great effect. This is sort of a travel book, as he sets out to eat the perfect restaurant meal, wherever he can find it. He does a good job explaining food trends and giving a sense of place (though the place is, as often as not, pretty depressing.) I'm enjoying this book, but it has never grabbed me the way the Reichl and Buford books that I read this summer did. Which is to say, when I'm reading it, I laugh out loud and occasionally quote a finely-turned phrase to Eric....but when I've put it down, I'm not COMPELLED to get back to it.

Incidentally, last year I read another food memoir/travel book I can recommend unreservedly: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop.

On deck at the moment: I have to read the last few dozen pages of The Man Who, then I have 2 volumes of essays - I Wanna Be Sedated, about parenting teenagers, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I have read enough of each to say:
a) Sedaris is funny again, yay, as funny as Barrel Fever.
s) apparently there is nothing funny about parenting teenagers. AT ALL.
SO QUIT ASKING.

No one can accuse me of not being "well-rounded" - a book meme from Ravelry

"What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.
Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, (don't have the patience to do this in Blogger - I've noted them instead.) italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. "

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22 (in high school)
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary (college)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair (college)

The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (I have this, and will certainly read it this year, hi Beth.)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (College)

American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (A favorite of mine. Wish I could have edited it.)
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex (I'm interested in this one.)
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (my husband has read this in French. Pfeh feh.)
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange (College)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (high school I guess)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (Ick.)
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections (on the shelf)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ***I LOVE THIS BOOK!****
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury (college)
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (college)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter (high school)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (I am sick of Malcolm Gladwell and I haven't even read his books yet! as a New Yorker subscriber, I am just tired of him.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences , oddly enough, I LOVE THIS BOOK TOO!!
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield (high school)
The Three Musketeers


What, no Bleak House? Bleak House was the first (and, as near as I can recall, the ONLY) book that I was assigned to read and never finished.

My favorite professor ever, Leroy Panek, assigned this my senior year, and I just couldn't make it. I was directing a play, designing another play, taking a full load of English/American Studies, writing about Henry James, and dating TWO guys!

Plus, I had read so much Dickens (for Leroy - I worked my schedule so that I had a class with him every semester) that it was coming out my eyeballs, and I was developing a hatred not just for the author or the period, but for the nation and possibly even extending to the language. So I bailed on this cutting critique of the Victorian British legal system.

Perhaps he knew, and never forgave me, and thus my many daydreams of a life with Leroy went unfulfilled. Honestly, I loved this man, in the way only a tubby girl who likes to read can love an English teacher who is really, really funny.

( As you read this with a horror and fascination, keep in mind that I was in college 1980-1984, a heady time of extravagant optimism and poor boundries. The climate of social sensitivity - and general good sense - were not enough to prevent the routine coupling of professors and students, some entering into relationships that lasted years. Even lifetimes - many of the profs on our campus were married to former students, and many of those spouses were on the faculty as well.

It would have been considered poor form, I suppose, for some co-ed to be boffing the prof who was grading her work that semester. But aside from issues of fairness in grading for a specific class - the whole age-difference-power-differential thing? Not even on the radar screen. Not

My love for Leroy was pure, though, which is to say, completely unrequited. I loved college boys in person, and adored Leroy, unattainable, with his snide hand gestures, in his comb-over and cowboy boots.

Do you suppose he googles himself?

Right this second, I am making turkey stock using this recipe/instructions at Cooking for Engineers, a site I am quite fond of. You would not think we had enough carcass to make stock, since we divvyed up the leftovers, but Dude! this bird was gigantic! Plus I dumped in some extra vegetation.

I've already made a mistake, and let the pot get hotter than a simmer. It boiled while I was working a puzzle with Ian. Apparently this will give us a clouded stock. Eh, I can live with that.

UPDATE, 4:22 pm:
I just tasted the stock. It smells brilliant and tastes like water. Hmmm.

I find this interesting.

It makes me think about blogging.
And journaling.
And of all those pictures I take, at least 25% of which (you won't see these on the blog, you're welcome) are of stuff lying in the street.

What are we really doing here, anyway?
What compells me to save these things -
these ideas, these combinations of words, this stuff that I've already used up?






Yeah, I don't know either. I got nothin', as they say.

But I'll still be doing it next year. I'm pretty confident of that.

God's peace in 2009.
Thanks for looking through muh rubbish. With me.

betsy

Finally, a recipe!

You thought I would never shut up about the panic attacks, did you? Well, more coverage of my pathetic mental state is no doubt upcoming, but I made a really good dinner tonight! It's alarmingly healthy and really, really delicious!


Christmas Leftover Pasta.

Set 2 pots of lightly salted water to boil, and heat a large cast-iron skillet.

When the frying pan is hot, pour in a glug of olive oil.
Slice one large onion into medium slices, and drop them into the pan.
Add a bit of salt and pepper.

You are carmelizing these onions. The classic way to do this is explained with beautiful simplicity here. I always cheat a little - throw a quarter-cup of water and cover at the start, which I think softens them a little faster with less chance of burning. But you have to uncover them for most of the cooking, or they never carmelize. Anyway, you're cooking those until they are soft, much smaller, dark brown, and sticky. It'll take a while.

When one pot of water boils, add about 10 brussel sprouts (cleaned, stemmed, halved or quartered), plus whatever leave have fallen off into the Tupperware, and several handfuls of fresh broccoli florets. Let these boil for a few minutes, until they are brilliant green but still pretty hard.

When the other pot boils, cook a little pasta - I used 1 cup of Barilla Plus multigrain rotini, which takes at least 10 minutes to cook.

When the onions are completely limp and brown, push them to the sides of the pan and pour a small amount of olive oil into the center. Drain the vegetable and drop them into that pool of olive oil for sauteeing.

When the pasta is done, drain that (save a little liquid) and add the drained pasta to the pan. Mix everything together and add a little more salt. Turn off the heat.

Let it mingle for a couple minutes, serve in bowls. Really good with a sprinkle of pine nuts.

This would be great with some mushrooms in it, and it would work great with fresh spinach or chard, I think. Even Ian ate it! Well, not the sprouts, but everything else. This makes 2 generous entree portions.

I think this might actually help me.

I bought a giant (8.5x11, for me that is giant - I've been on the 5x8 format since 1988, when I bought my first daytimer at Price Club on Security Blvd). Anyway, I bought this giant but otherwise not particularly distinguished datebook for 2009, because I need a lot of room to write because I need to keep track of basically everything on the earth - my schedule, work deadlines, availability of church volunteers, Eric's gigs, Eric's social life, Ian social life for crap's sake.

What about my social life? you may well ask. Well, it's in there too, though it does not require a lot of room to write.

Which is largely by my own choice. I like to work, I like to hang with my husband, I like to read, I like to cook. I even like spending time with my kid, (although jeez! He needs to back off a little! He's getting awfully possessive. Frankly, I could use some space in that relationship.) Socializing has fallen far, far to the bottom of the list. And I'm not aware of missing it, usually. (Unlike, say, the time alone to write/read/think, without which I become observably twitchy.)

But I suspect that I actually need it, on some unacknowledged level. At least something low-impact, like going to my knitting group occasionally, and chatting with people who do not know me well and do not expect anything from me. Just hanging out.

(Hmmm. Except the last time I went to knitting, which was MONTHS ago, I was outed as a religious professional and got into a huge deep spiraling conversation about death.)

(Except - I liked that. It was actually stimulating and there was good give and take, and I think I helped the person a little.)

All I can say is, the last third of 2008 has been doing its level best to KICK MY ASS, and I am still here,"... hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair (most of the time)...struck down, but not destroyed."

(I wasn't planning on quoting this next part, because I don't understand it - "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." I don't understand that intellectually - I couldn't put into my own words what point Paul was trying to make - but I kind of feel that sentence in my bones. It rings true on some non-rational level.)

Okay, here's where I go all Christian-y on you. Sorry, I know this will not mean anything to most people, even followers...but the end of that chapter (2nd corinthians, incidentally my favorite book, chapter 4) says something I hope I can come to believe:

So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.

yeah, What she said.

My house is warm. This morning, my lucky kids have presents. I have presents, and we're having a great big breakfast. (To be followed later by more presents and a great big dinner.) No matter how bad things get here, we will not be competing with 98% of the world for misery. Having trouble finding the money for car or washing machine repairs is a luxury. Having loved ones to miss speaks to the great gift of loving and having been loved.

My children did not miss a single meal this year. We didn't flee from a war, we didn't need medical help and not get it. We have a computer and an internet connection, for crying out loud. The fact that I bought any yarn at all, even if it had been a single ball (which it so wasn't. I cop to that.) means I had extra money. I have people to take care of, and people who take care of me.

Christmas thoughts from a great blog, Yarn Harlot by knitting teacher/writer/designer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

We had a wonderful holiday visit, and great Christmas eve services, and I am still beat.

fa la la la la, la la la ARRRRRRRR.

1. Ian wants to be a pirate for Christmas. (It's my impression that 'fancy dress' events mark many holidays in the UK, and so hundreds of little Ians probably are pirates for Christmas.)

2. Its the 23rd, so of course we just watched Seinfeld in syndication. May I say that the Festivus episode (actual title, The Strike) represents a pinnacle of smart-assery to which all of us amateur smart asses aspire: to have a family inside joke adopted as a holiday in households all over the world. In my family, a rough equivalent would be if the Mitchell Family Greeting (kermit-like arm flailing, open mouthed head rocking) or the Miller-Mitchell All-Purpose Note ("Gun noot. B. Bacson.") somehow came into universal use. Even my own household does not adhere to these customs.

3. This reminds me of a David Sedaris story, one that I feel so close to my own heart that I cannot even remember where it's from, presumably one of the early popular works like Barrel Fever. David and his many siblings, in adulthood, have gathered for a family holiday, and are staying at a motel. Some circumstance (perhaps they won't smoke in front of their mother, who has cancer) has them sitting outside by a dumpster, sneaking cigarettes in a drizzle. Their father shouts out from the motor court patio at them: "You know what's wrong with you kids?"
and they answer, in a single, exhausted voice, "yeah, we're SPOILED."

The first time I read this, I gasped, caught in perfect tension between snorting laughter (because damn, that's hysterical) tears (at the realness) and blind astonished envy at the writing. I tried to read it to Eric immediately, which came to nothing because I couldn't squeak out a sound.

After several minutes, I calmed down and read it to him, and now it's quoted quite frequently.

Hummph: The Muppet Show, The House at Pooh Corner, and David Sedaris. Add to this The Long Secret (which is where my brother and I learned to turn to one another and say "Jesus hates you.") and it's a pretty good overview of the cultural influences on my upbringing.

Merry Christmas. Should we ever get around to it, we'll post something or other at www.mitchellhenning.blogspot.com.

busy kitchen 2

just knocked over an 8 oz bag of coffee beans onto my kitchen floor.

painstakingly picked up the beans, many of them one by one, finger and thumb, and then rinsed a collander-full in cool water.

These beans came all the way from Ethiopia to make me caffienated. They were roasted by a friend of mine.

I'm not going to keep them from their destiny just because of a little kitchen floor dirt. Far be it from me to stand in their way.

Also, my kitchen smells AWESOME.

Busy Kitchen yesterday:

a couple batches of these, for neighborhood distribution and church on Sunday

8 loaves of bread - a couple of loaves burned! which has never happened to me before! Weird!

plus a double batch of this, which I would make again with sharper cheese

and a pound of this, which needed more hot peppers. I didn't have the tiny red peppers I used last time, which come from a houseplant...guess I should have stopped by the auto shop and checked to see if the plant was still producing. My store-bought peppers reflect my timidity in these matters - I am terrible at getting the peppery-ness right.

The salad and the cassarole were for a party, where all the food was amazing. I also totally lucked out at the competitive gift exchange (Is this a southern thing? I never heard of this activity until I moved to the dc area. You know, where you draw numbers, and then, when your turn comes, you can either take a wrapped gift or poach someone else's desirable gift? It can be totally cut-throat - last night was hilarious, but moderately civilized- and it definately is entertaining and revealing of character.)

Anyway, I ended up with a cookbook and placemats! So we can eat our seasonal produce on handloomed indigeousnous textiles. That totally rules.

It also totally rules because the gifts we contributed were very popular, totally in keeping with the theme (good for the recipient, good for the world) and as close to free as humanly possible. I made a reusable string grocery bag (it actually wasn't finished yet - I put it in the box with the needles and a note) and a couple organic free-trade dark chocloate bars. (Expensive for candy bars, but very cheap for a Christmas gift.)

Both these gifts were extremely hotly contested, poached as many times as the rules would allow. Because, in the competitive gift exchange, I'm totally not competitive about getting gifts - I'm competitive about contributing desirable gifts, as confirmation of how damn clever I am. Not that anyone necessarily has to know it was me. I just have to know. It's satisfying.

Should you be competitive in this way too, here's a hint for next year:
It is impossible to go wrong with chocolate.

no casualties

A couple of years ago, after our first trip to the beach with our little darling, I quoted Heather Armstrong of Dooce as saying that traveling with a toddler equals SUFFERING. Oh, I avered, it was rough, but I wouldn't go so far as to characterize it as SUFFERING.

I was wrong.

I just spent the night in a glorious luxury hotel in Winchester, VA, where my husband had a gig. We ate gourmet dinners and breakfasts, stayed in a room with a wonderful bed with fabulous, million-thread-count linens, and a lovely rainfall shower. The pool was the kind of pool I dream about - the basement pool, with soft lighting and pillars coming up out of it and caryatids and a fountain. And a hot tub. And towels that would have been worth stealing.

In a town where the streets are filled with...yarn shops! Bead stores! Wine bars! Places full of handmade toys! Sidewalk cafes. Lovely old-fashioned Christmas decor.

I wanted to throw myself in front of a train.

Which I could have - they came though every couple of hours, past the beautifully restored train stone station. Even my tragic death would have been quaint and stylish.

Here's what the thing is, The books all say that kids love routine. Kids thrive on routine.

My kid HATES routine, all routine, with the burning heat of a thousand suns. He screams, he argues, occasionally he kicks...if he's in an unusually vile mood, he has been known to try to bite the person who is enforcing routine. (That would be me.)

There's just one thing worse. Guess what.

That's right. A disruption of rountine.

When Ian's routine is disrupted, he believes that this means all mores of civilized behavior are suspended. That it's okay to leap up and down on an upholstered banquette, to talk back to your parents, to see how loud you can scream, to never sleep. to stand in your crib and shout at people at 11pm. And again at 4:30. And again at 6:22.

I don't think we'll be allowed to stay there again any time soon.

I am very proud that I was able to administer some discipline (not that it seems to have made an impression) with appropriate self-restraint. I have said before - I don't beat my kid, but I understand why some people do.

Well, I didn't really understand. Until this weekend.

Between the frustration, the exhaustion, and the more-than-two-hour drive on absolutely no sleep...no one in our family should take our intact bodies for granted this evening.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

extensive research has led me to declare,
definitively and without fear of contradiction:
that this
is the World's Skankiest Christmas Record.
(in case you miss a lyric, read them here.)

Classic Literature, abridged

~CURTAIN~

Me: I am Sam! Sam I am! Would you like green eggs and ham?

Ian: Um...no.

Me: Okay, then.

~FIN~