Alice's Adventures In Kentucky and What She Found There cont...

More of my pictorial ethnography, mostly taken from this afternoons jaunt to the local Meijer's.

Meijer's.

Annie chooses an apple.



When we drove across the country we went past the Hormel Factory when we drove through Beloit, Wisconsin. Across the street they had some sort of Food Institute where I assume that they try and come up with credible evidence that this stuff is actually food.




Yes. That's right. Pepto Bismol Pink eggs. Coloured with FDBC red dye #40.




"Now all you can taste is the hog anus."




Longest potato chips aisle I have ever come across.




Start 'em young.




Taken in the parking lot of our extended stay hotel, next to the window where I saw the penis. Note the binoculars, handily placed on the window sill.




Look closely. They deliver feelings.

Creation Museum

I'm still in Florence with Annie. We thought about driving down to Lexington to visit the horse park today, but it's raining, which would mean mud - not exactly wheel chair friendly.

Daniel spent a good deal of time trying to convince us to go to the Creation Museum which is not very far from here. My first response was,

"Why? They'll kick me out or my head will explode or both."

He thought that it would be amusing, I agreed that it might be, for about 5 minutes. Then it would be infuriating and I would want to leave. Not worth the $21.95 per person. Plus, as I told Daniel after he offered to subsidise our visit, I don't them to get any more money.

"But I want a t-shirt."

We attempted to placate him by perusing the website for half an hour, which provided light amusement. We even came up with the idea of a t-shirt for them: A stick figure with its hands over its ears with the words "LA LA LA LA" coming out of its mouth and the words "Prepare to Believe" underneath... Kate? Interested in designing it for us?

I had this idea that I was going to address some of their silly arguments here, but it's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. I mean they are so blatantly (purposely?) misinformed that it's like refuting arguments made by a toddler.

Further to my adventures

Apropos to this afternoons blog entry, this takes place in Ohio:
Mk: yeah.

7:07 PM Ok. So I was helping my aunt go grocery shopping

and she was telling me about this delicious appetizer she makes...

7:08 PM by tossing a bag full of frozen meatballs into a crock pot and filling it up with grape jelly and cocktail sauce

me: That sounds just awful.

Mk: I tried very hard to mask the horrified look on my face

me: awful

7:09 PM Mk: and thought to myself that my aunt has gone completely insane and what person on earth could possibly ever want to eat any combination of those ingredients

well...

we got to the checkout-stand

and the cashier was ringing us up...

she sees the grape jelly, cocktail sauce and meatballs and says

7:10 PM "Oh! you're planning to make Jelly Meatballs! I love those!"

Alice's Adventures In Kentucky and What She Found There

I am in Florence, Kentucky, which is a suburb of Cincinnati.

Here are some pictures:


This is a picture of the penis I saw on the first day. I was walking out to the car, I heard a flutter of blinds and I looked up. There it was, swinging away, adjusting the blinds unabashedly. My first instinct, which I obeyed, was to crouch behind the car and stifle my screams and giggles. This was after Daniel overheard a drug deal happening in the next room.


"Green tea." This stuff looked like some sort of cleaning fluid and tasted like what I imagine antifreeze would taste like, were you to mix it with a 1:1 sugar ratio. The worst part is people probably think this is a better choice than regular soda.

I have no words for this.


Daniel complains about the financial crisis or expounds on the wisdom of Jon Stewart, I can't remember which. Annie looks on.


Drive through pies. Apparently before I got there, the pies were made out of some sort of candy bar. I guess that is fairly symbolic of midwestern cuisine, kind of like taking two cans of soup and combining them, or using products made by Frito-Lay as an "ingredient" or doing something really horrible like adding marshmallows to sweet potatoes.

Launderette and Self Absorbtion

Our laundry situation reached a critical mass yesterday when we realised that both of us had gotten to the dregs of our underwear selection. I'd like to say that it was because we had both been sick but I'm sure it's got a lot to do with laziness too - we're fortunate to have a launderette around the corner, but that still is woefully inconvenient most of the time. You can't just toss in a load as you walk out the door.

So yesterday, we went to this particular launderette around the corner and there were 2 girls and a boy, maybe in their early 20's or younger, sitting around in chatting away, loudly but uninterestingly. They had a pile of large, denim covered cushions.

Typically, I ignore other people in the launderette as I would hope they would ignore me. Today was no exception. At one point, however, I turned my head to look at the clock and one of the girls (sweat panted and fake tanned with terrible lipstick and a mess of hair piled on her head) turned directly towards me, made firm eye contact and said this:

"It's okay, we're sisters. We do this all the time."

I said, puzzled,

"Do what?"

This was followed by an awkward moment between us as she made an incoherent mumble whilst struggling with whether or not to tell me what she had mistakenly thought I had overheard. I shook my head to indicate that it didn't matter and went back to stuffing clothes in the machine. Clearly (or at least hopefully) whatever it was that she had been talking about was something potentially embarrassing or incriminating. She wouldn't have been worried about my opinion if it was something as mundane as washing denim cushion covers.

The voyeur in me was curious, despite my better judgment, and I thought about it as we walked home. If I hadn't been working so hard to tune out the sounds of my surroundings - the owner of the establishment inexplicably leaves the radio tuned to John Tesh's horrible radio show "which plays '1980s, 1990s, and today's soft rock' music, interspersed with various factoids and other information Tesh considers useful to listeners, often with topics such as health and well-being" - I might have heard what potentially nefarious act this girl and her sister apparently commit regularly.

I don't care as much today as I did for the 90 second walk home last night, but in addition to wondering what she had to say, I also think it was amusing that she assumed I disapproved of whatever she was doing or talking about. While I realise the pot-kettle implications of talking about self-absorbtion in a personal blog that is singularly about me and what I do on a day to day basis... but it's funny that people often jump to the conclusion that immediate (or really any) situations are automatically personal, based singularly on the fact that they are involved on some level (or maybe not even based on that much - people are pretty insane sometimes).

When I started making plans to move out of the house that I had lived in with my ex-boyfriend, 8 months after I had broken up with him, he became extremely angry with me for asking him to get the remainder of his things out of my garage. I said, during one of our ridiculous phone conversations, "You're acting as though I'm moving out of the house just to inconvenience you." He told me that he believe that to be the case (of course he said it angrily and with a lot more swearing). It was in my reflections on dealing with him that I started to really notice how often people firmly believe that "it's all about them." and what a waste of time that kind of thinking really is. Basically: If people are as self absorbed as you, yourself, probably are, then the chances that their actions are purposely to hurt, annoy or disrupt your life are slim to none.

Love.

Continuation of the health insurance saga

Yesterday I had a weird scare, so much so that I subsequently sat down at the computer and tried to purchase health insurance. If you've been reading this regularly, you will know that I have already gone through one round of this and have been bolstering up my reserves of strength in order to try again.

I discovered that to purchase proper individual health insurance it will cost me $1000 a month. If I just want emergency coverage? $435 a month.

We bring in about $150 above the number that would qualify me for the Healthy New York program, allowing cheaper rates.

In short, it's prohibitively expensive.

Myers Briggs and Old Dreams

I've been volunteering 4 hours a week at a place that assists low-income women and families with building the skills to find employment. Things like resume assistance, interview coaching, computer skills and even help with finding the right clothes for the job interview.

It's a really interesting place and I've been enjoying my time there. Mainly I sit at the front desk and do odd jobs as needed. I've been reading a portion of one of the "career guidance" books that we have available for clients to borrow, every time I go in. It's based on Myers-Briggs personality typing. My feelings for that whole field are mixed. Part of me thinks it's really interesting and helpful and part of me thinks it's a way to try and legitimise reading your horoscope.

As I've been reading, I've not only been keeping track of my own personality type (ENFJ - although I'm not really an extreme anything, falling in the middle of most of the scales) but also trying to figure out what Ryan is. He's obviously an "Introvert" (as opposed to "Extrovert") and obviously a "Thinker" (as opposed to "Feeler"), but the other 2 are a little harder to define. Nevertheless, I found a paragraph in the book that I thought might have been written about Ryan himself:

"Thinkers can be analytical to the point of seeming cold and feelers can be personally involved to the point of seeming overemotional. When Thinkers and Feelers clash, more often than not, the Feeler ends up hurt and angry, while the Thinker is confused about what went wrong."

I find Ryan's obliviousness cute most of the time and irritating some of the time. We rarely ever "clash" - actually what struck me about those 2 sentences was that it seemed a perfect description of what happened with That Girl.

***

Last night we went to bed well past our regular bedtime. Before I went to sleep I started remembering a dream I'd had the night before and I told Ryan about it. It was part of a series of dreams I've been having all swirling around the same subject. Something about that dream or perhaps the 2 sentences I found in the Myers-Briggs book reminded me of another dream I had in London last May. Completely unrelated to the topic of my recent series of dreams (maybe I'll write about them later), in this dream, the girl in question had approached Ryan's family with the news that her husband was unable to impregnate her, but it would all be okay because she'd come up with a solution. The solution was this: she would use Ryan as a donor and that way, Ryan's parents would become her child's grandparents. Everyone seemed in full support of the idea, except me. I don't remember how it ended, just a weird feeling of disconnect.

Pretty obvious why my insecure, worried little brain pulled that vignette from: I found the whole situation so distressing - particularly because it remained (and remains!) unresolved. Often I find that dreams help me resolve situations that I might not have another way of really working on; after I broke up with my first boyfriend, I had a series of dreams over several months which started out as angry dreams where I expressed (read: yelled at him) how hurt I was by his actions and ended up as simple discussions, the last dream being a dream about having a conversation with him at a party - then I never dreamt about him or the incident again. My friend Alex died when we were 18. I was racked with guilt for not having gone to visit her in the hospital sooner - I was scheduled to go the day she died - about once every 3 months or so, for several years afterwards, I would see her in dreams which helped me feel less horrible (yes, I realise it didn't change the facts, but it still helped my brain). She seemed so comfortable.

But this dream? Singularly unhelpful - just a manifestation of my own hurt and frustration. Yuck!

We've chosen a CSA farm

After much deliberating, a trip to an informational fair and some whining plus the creation of visual aids, Ryan and I have picked a CSA. It is our first but I'm excited because it will ensure that all of our vegetables will be local and seasonal. I'm also excited to be inspired by the different vegetables that will be available throughout the season. Also, we are going to be able to can, pickle and jamise things and as such won't have to deal with the awful winter tomatoes they have here (among other things).

We've actually decided to join 2. One is a 'normal' CSA called Sweet Land Farm that offers a share of vegetables, fruits and flowers. We chose them mainly because they offered a fruit selection as part of their regular share and that they grow kale pretty much throughout the season (that was more my requirement than Ryan's). The added perk are the fresh flowers - which I love, but never buy. We considered doing a combination of a fruit CSA, plus a vegetable CSA, but it started to get pricey when you consider our second choice, Red Tail Farm. They do things a little differently: You purchase a debit card from them at the beginning of the season, which gives you a discount on their various items. They do vegetables as well, but mainly we are looking to buy their honey and truly free range eggs. The debit system will work well for us, because sometimes we use a lot of eggs and sometimes we hardly use any. Plus I like the idea of supporting beekeepers.

So here's to knowing where our food came from!

Alice makes a frowny face.

This morning my husband is making tapioca pudding. He looked up a bunch of recipes and wandered into the kitchen, muttering, among other things, the word "experimental."

Last night it was homemade mayonnaise.

I'm not sure what has recently possessed him to make squishy, slimy unpleasant things but he used the mayonnaise to make egg salad with celery in it. What's next, custard??

Ill.

I'm sick. I've spent the last couple of days wallowing around in bed and on the couch, feeling sorry for myself and watching endless hours of Simpsons, periodically falling asleep.

I was actually woken up from this afternoon's nap by an acute sneezing fit. I had another one just now that resulted in the floodgates of my nose opening, sending out snot at an alarming rate. I had to run screaming to the bathroom, while Ryan laughed at me.

I apologise if that description was too graphic.

In other news, Ryan and I will have been legally married for a whole year in one week and one day.

And finally, the people at the place I have been volunteering at have offered me a job.

I Went To Bawstin

I went to Boston to visit my friend Larke who lives there and hang out with my friend Margo who was in town for the Biophysical Society Conference.

We had a blast.

Chimp hides rocks.

Before I post the Boston pictures, this article about a chimp who is possibly able to plan for future mood swings is a good read.

"A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers."

"Crucial to the current study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, prior to the zoo opening in the morning. "

"This suggests that Santino was anticipating a future mental state - an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals, according to Mathias Osvath, a cognitive scientist from Lund University in Sweden and author of the new research."

From the BBC.

If that wasn't cool enough for you? Watch elephants problem solve.

In Which Alice Shares Her Most Recent Pictorial Adventures

I have a lot of pictures to catch up on. So consider this entry a pictorial one. Some of them are a little graphic.

Firstly, in an effort to become more of a "local" Ryan and I went with our friends, Jonas and Conny to Ithaca's Chili Cook Off.

We arrived prepared.I can only assume that the booth these people were in was devoted to some sort of charity whose cause is to help science find a way to rid these poor people from the horrible parasite apparently attached to their brains:


The chili was passable and we had a good time considering there was a karaoke contest that we had to avoid.

NEXT. Boston.

Okay, technically that is the next adventure. But, in keeping with my self imposed tradition of documenting injuries to my person (these photos are a bit graphic....sorry):


D'you think I should email them to that stupid woman who denied my health insurance?

Craiglist! Again!

In honor of this being the 400th entry, I have decided to go along with tradition and make a post involving Craigslist.

I became so fed up the other day, with regards to my furniture search on Craiglist, that I posted the following:

WRITING WITH THE CAPS LOCK KEY ON (RANTS AND RAVES)

---

Reply to: pers-qrvtp-1060059121@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}
Date: 2009-03-04, 12:39PM EST


SOMETIMES I READ POSTS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITALS AND LACKING IN PUNCTUATION BY SHOUTING THEM OUT LOUD. This is amusing to me, because it is true and rather a fun activity for those bored enough.

We are teaching Jeeves to read.

Really.

We bought a book called: "Teach Your Dog To Read" by Bonnie Bergin, Ed.D. and have started working on "Sit" and "Lie Down."

According to the book, it goes beyond just symbol recognition. Some dogs can actually get to a point where they interpret symbols they have not seen before. I think that Jeeves can at least get to the average 20 words or so.

Also, it may give us a tool to deter Jeeves from doing things like eat grapes off the counter, eat leftover slices of pie, or eat rising bread dough. Because we can leave signs up to discourage him. I'm not holding my breath on this one, but imagine if it did work.

My friends make cool things

One of my Favourite-People-On-The-Planet made this with some of his friends:

Overheard

These are three things that I have overheard in the last 2 days:

1. "I love coming to Chili Fest. Only nice people eat chili."

2. "Oh My God That Looks SO GOOD. We have to buy it and look, it's glutton-free! I wonder what glutton-free means..."

3. "YOU should watch where your walking, missy."

The last one wasn't so much overheard as it was directly shouted at me, from the window of a car in the Wegman's parking lot. The old man was apparently disturbed and disconcerted by my gradual realisation that I was on the wrong side of the parking "aisle" and the resulting walking somewhat near the front of his (stopped and waiting for another car to get out of the way) car.

I'm glad he had something to tell the wife about, when he got home.

Lansing MI mayor lays into Fox News anchor

Update: The Great Alice Improvement Project

So, I vowed to be more creative and watch more movies and just be more positive in general. I couldn't stick with the Thing-A-Day thing because it honestly became too much to actually document the Thing I was making every day. For example, I make dinner almost every night and that seemed to count...so...I started to feel like the whole thing was a little redundant. I could have put restraints on myself, like, "making dinner doesn't count" but that's not very fair because I really consider cooking fabulous meals a creative outlet and I do it regularly.

For example, over this last weekend, I made:

Bread and butter pudding
Orange glazed tempeh, with kale and brown rice (I've made it twice now and I think it's one of my favourites, despite all the orange squeezing involved)
A lunch spread of pamboli, humus, olives and zata
Kale and feta salad with dill and spicy mustard dressing

I made stock yesterday and tomorrow's (Happy Birthday Ryan!) piece de resistance will be cake plus a similar setup to the above mentioned lunch spread.

I have started and frogged a project twice now and I have started writing a story that I will probably end up deleting.

Tomorrow, I will start volunteering at the front desk of a local organisation that is designed to help low-income people get back into the work force after a life changing event. While this isn't necessarily a "thing" or "creative" it is something I think will help me with some of the demons I have been dealing with since the move.

As far as seeing more good films, because I have do have some sort of regular form of cultural edification in addition to books, I have started watching things that have been on my "should watch that" list for years. For example:

Chinatown
Walkabout
The Machinist

And I've got copies of some others to watch including:

Badlands (Thanks Nina!)
The Fall (Thanks Nina!)

I have also started reading A History Of The Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani and made Ryan check out 2 books by George Bernard Shaw for me. I am also rereading The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean and making plans to accompany this with a purchase of an orchid. Seems to me that if the mold can continue to flourish on our window sills, despite frequent bleach baths, then an orchid would be quite happy here.

Okay, so I still haven't really made any local friends. Well, that's not true. I haven't made any come-over-to-my-house-in-your-pyjamas-let's-drink-a-bottle-of-wine-between-us-and-make-silly-jokes friends. I am working on this, however.

In OTHER NEWS: California is going bankrupt.

Mugwump and a repeat of "Spoil Her Valentines Day"

Last years Valentine's Day entry. I'm posting the link because I still find the typography in the pajamagrams.com ad hilarious.

***

I'm going to be a mugwump again and ask, "What the hell are my downstairs neighbours doing that results in my house shaking? It sounds like they're playing Dance, Dance, Revolution with clogs on."

I'm tired of being the grumpy upstairs neighbour. Have I really turned into a get off-my-lawn kind of asshole? I'd like to note that I never say anything to them. Nope, I just make passive-aggressive blog entries in the hopes that they might one day do a search for "Ithaca + How To Be An Inconsiderate Neighbour" and come across this, realise it's about them and then stop playing loud music at all hours, smoking under our windows, leaving trash out, yelling at each other, drunkenly, in the middle of the day (or night), filling the main hallway with smoke, not recycling, frowning at me in the launderette and giving the wrong address to the take out man when ordering in the middle of the night.

***

Squished Friend and my brother got engaged in a BART station.

WELL. This weekend was a little different.

1. Ryan's parents came for a very nice stay. I made bread and butter pudding one night. It wasn't as good as Jenny's, but still passable. I also made pamboli, which I had been anxious to try, every since I copied the recipe out of Jenny's cookbook: How To Cheat At Cooking by Delia Smith .

2. A horse flipped over onto Annie and squished her. She has a fractured pelvis and will be wheel chair/bed bound for 6-8 weeks. I may go down and spend some time with her in Cincinnati.

3. My brother and his girlfriend got engaged. Both this piece of news and the last piece of news were brought to my attention within five minutes of each other. My brother sent me this email:

Oh, and I got engaged last night. While waiting for BART in the Powell
street station. Thought you should know.

meemo.

I responded with (of course):

You know, whatever the bums at the BART station shout at you, you really shouldn't take it so seriously.

Happy Birthday-In-One-Week Ryan!

Because I got my Valentine's Day present early (and at all), I'm going to say Happy Birthday to Ryan early.

I sent the following out to Ryan's school chums:

Ryan's birthday is on Thursday 19 February - I was wondering if you were interested in meeting up and having some cake? We won't sing, because otherwise Ryan will leave.

***

Happy Birthday, Love. Thanks for the pearls.

Jeeves' second near death experience in 2 days

This morning, in a bout of self pity after my job interview offer was rescinded, I went for a walk. (honestly, who does that? Who sends someone an email asking to interview them and then changes their mind? Not to get all sour grapey but I got the feeling that they were horribly disorganised. I've already worked for one disorganised maniac who couldn't make up his mind about anything.)
After crying a little, with regards to the job interview, I resolved that they were probably jerks, exercise was the best answer, so Jeeves and I went for out to the Triangle Woods, by our house. We've had a thaw the last few days (weather in the 50's!) and so all the ice is melting and the rivers that have been made through the ice are extra engorged and the currents are quite strong.

So, of course, Jeeves fell in. To tell you the truth, it was a lot scarier for me than for him. He just floated around scrabbling at things while I tried to get to him through the mud and underbrush. By the time I got near, he'd managed to find a foothold and was trying to haul himself out. I was afraid to get too close, because the ice could have held him, but I didn't know if it would have held me. And if it had crumbled under me, he would have been lost.

I was perfectly okay, rationalising everything I needed to do, ready to chuck my cell phone in case I needed to jump in (and might need it after). Then he scrabbled out, rolled around in the snow and I burst into tears. Again.

I came home, dried him off with a towel and tried to fry an egg. I'm terrified of egg yolk so if I fry an egg (which is a very, very rare meal for me in the first place), it has to be over hard. It fell apart in the pan while I was trying to flip it over and I ended up with a partially scrambled fried egg.

Today really sucked.

Is this your homework, Larry? Is this your homework?

Last night, I was walking home from Trivia Night at a bar that I went to with the girlfriend of one of Ryan's school chums. I found some kid's homework and across the top was scrawled: PLEASE TAKE MY ASSIGNMENTS MORE SERIOUSLY.

Pretty funny.

When will someone make something better than iTunes?

iTunes and MS Word are 2 ridiculously annoying programs and I think it's awful that any of us ever have to deal with them.

The Worst Thing Jeeves Has Ever Done

Dear Family,

Today, while we were out taking the laundry to the launderette, Jeeves ate a large bowl of rising bread dough, the equivalent of 2,000 calories or 2 loaves of bread. It has been deemed "The Worst Thing He's Ever Done." on account of the serious medical implications. We have been told by the vet that after inducing vomiting, we must watch him in case he becomes "drunk."

He's downstairs at the moment, going through his second round of hydrogen peroxide induced vomiting.

Lots of love,

Alice & Ryan.

Pictures of Jeeves during the midst of his discomfort (or comfort? We can't decide. He certainly did not want to walk anywhere or be in any position that was not lying down on the floor.):

England shuts down

Hello Alice,

You asked how are we dealing with the snow, well as you may guess with great difficulty. It seems a few flakes fell and Britain came to a complete standstill. London was in a terrible pickle as the bus depots were snowed in and much of the Unground was also snowbound. At the moment some of the counties have been reduced to using table salt for the roads as they have run out of the usual stuff!! Here in Hellingly we were virtually cut off from the world for two whole days. The worst part though was the biting cold - much, much colder than when you were here. It has now all gone but more is promised for next week!! Like Jeeves, Lucy thought it was all great fun.

Sue has now got herself a laptop and one of her neighbours is teaching her how to use it. He used to train the Metropolitan Police force so no doubt she will soon overtake me with her knowledge and skills.

Hope all is well with you both,

Love Fran.

P.S. Done anymore crosswords lately?

I, Anonymous

I found this great column on The Stranger, called I, Anonymous. People write in with their anonymous rants and they are published. It's kind of like Craigslist's Rants & Raves, but usually more eloquent. Sometimes they're sad, sometimes they're disgusting, sometimes they're funny (this one is funny and disgusting).

Felicia's Atomic Lounge plus I'm behind on my Things

I'm behind on my Thing-A-Day. Here's the latest thing:




Anyway. I'm going to make up for it today, as yesterday I was a little swamped with work and the creativity was sapped out of me. I need to make a birthday card for Ryan - I feel like I've got a handle on the felting thing and the rest of the Ron Replacement Placemat and Coaster set will take longer than a day per piece. On to smaller and less time consuming things!

In other news: I may have a job interview next week. It's a part time job at a software company. I'll still be able to work for Paula, but I'll have a little extra cash for clothes and trips home. Plus it'll get me out of this house.

In other, other news, I'm going to see a band tonight called the Hogwashers and a bar called Felicia's Atomic Lounge. This is exciting for several reasons. One, it's live music. (Remember the days when I used to post all the shows I was going to up here? Because I lived in/near a big city that had actual shows that I would want to go to? So much so that I would have to choose? What a great hobby that was!) Two, it's at a place in Ithaca that serves cocktails and vegan/vegetarian food. It's a bar with an ethos! Just like home! Three. My best friend from elementary school is in town this weekend, because she got waitlisted at Cornell Vet School. How awesome is that?

Pretty awesome.

Dumplings

This evening I had a hankering for some Chinese-esque food. Well, actually it started a few days ago, which was good, because that meant that today, when I really felt like it, I had the potsticker wrappers all ready to go. Here's a quick sum up. Apologies for the short nature of the description, but at least I'm putting up pictures this time!

1/4 of 1 large eggplant diced
1.5 carrots, ghetto-julienned with a potato peeler
1/2 lb mushrooms diced (yes, I know it's kind of a pain)
1/4 of a chinese cabbage, diced
1/4 packet of veggie ground
soy sauce, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, white pepper (to taste)

Everything was tossed in a wok, then put in a refrigerator, while the brothy soup was being made (miso, mushrooms, water, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, white pepper, cayenne, seaweed). After this it was removed from the fridge and a heaping teaspoon was placed in the middle of 38 potsticker wrappers, which were then folded over and stuck together with warm water. Some of them were then steamed and served with Ryan's version of Gyoza sauce (soy sauce, olive oil, brown sugar, sesame seeds and a splash of rice vinegar) and the yummy brothy soup. The rest were frozen, flat, so they don't stick to each other, in a freezer bag.

That is roughly a pictorial of the order of things, including the final sit down with Ryan, wearing his new shirt from auntie Fran.

Thing A Day - Project 2

You know that awful saying that people say to you about life giving you lemons and such? You know, it's that totally irritating saying which is just about the last thing you want to hear when something shitty's just happened?

I put it into practice (sort of).

Unable to knit a flat circle, because of my very distractable brain (which, mind, is one of the reasons I try to knit - because it incorporates a lot of the things I am really bad at, like paying attention and following directions, at yet I still find it enjoyable.), I knit a very curly one. So curly, in fact, that it's nothing like the pretty felt coaster it was supposed to be. So I sewed the ends together and made a flower. I think I'll stick it on a scarf or something later on.









On to the next Thing.

Thing A Day 2009 - Project 1

Ever since Ryan's work friend Ron urinated all over our placemats in a fit of drunken sleepwalking, I've been searching for replacements. Yesterday, I decided I would just knit them and felt them and I thought I would do a whole set. So I started with a trivet.

Here it is pre felted:


And here it is, felted:


I'm going to try the coasters today. I realise this is hardly the more complicated stuff I'd hoped (nay promised) to get into with my knitting but it's Thing A Day. A mindless rectangle was all I could hope for.

Insomnia and Asparagus Scones

I have been suffering from frustrating insomnia, not for any particular reason other than genetic, but frustrating none the less. I suggested to Ryan yesterday that perhaps I was gradually becoming nocturnal (I mean more so than I am already) and asked him if he would still love me, were that the case.

"I'd try. But it'd be hard, because I'd never see you."

Last night, I went to bed reading a Christmas present from my father, Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules, short stories compiled by David Sedaris. I actually fell asleep (not because it's not a good book! It is! You should read it!) while reading for the first time in weeks and was in blissful somnolence by around 11:30. Then I was woken up, loudly by knocking on my door.

The knock came again, rousing me further from my unconscious state and thus I realised I'd better go and see what it was about. Ryan was no where to be found and I wasn't wearing anything except a small t-shirt and underwear. As I was steadying myself on the door frame and looking around my house in confusion, a voice called out,

"Hello! Hello?"

Yes, I replied.

"You order some teepiedoe?"

"What?"

"teepidoe."

"What?"

"Did you order some teepidoe?"

I was trying to figure out what he was saying as well as work out the current problem of me being trouserless. I couldn't really think how I was to solve both problems.

Luckily, at this point, Ryan returned.

"You live here?"

"Yes."

"You order some teepidoe?"

"What?"

"teepidoe."

"What?"

"Did you order some teepidoe?"

"No."

Ryan checked the address on the receipt and it was ours, but clearly, we couldn't have ordered any teepidoe as we had no idea what it was.

This morning, I asked him about it. He was just as confused as I was as to what the man was saying, but seeing as he wasn't mostly asleep and was wearing trousers, he had the wherewithal to send the man away.

***

Prior to that incident I had made Asparagus Scones. I absolutely love asparagus. And I love asparagus wrapped in phyllo dough, but having neither phyllo dough nor the time to make it, I looked for something that would provide the same satisfying, carbohydratey, buttery deliciousness. They're a great thing to stick in a packed lunch.

2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3 tbs parmesan cheese
1 1/2 c grated cheddar cheese
1 c butter, diced.
1/3 c milk
2 eggs
1 lb asparagus, steamed


Prehat oven to 425 F.

Trim the tips from the asparagus and reserve. Slice the stems into quarter inch thick little cylinders.

Combine the dry ingredients and the parmesan cheese.

Add the butter and smash with a fork or pastry knife until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.

Combine eggs and mik in a seperate bowl, then add to the flour mixture and stir until it all starts to come together.

Add cheddar cheese and asparagus pieces (not tips). Bring together to form a nice stiff dough and knead (add more flour if necessary).

Once all is incorporated, lay dough out on a floured surface, knead a few times and then form it into a rectangle, about 1/2 an inch thick.

Using a sharp knife cut rectangle into 3 strips, lengthwise. Cut each strip into triangles or rectangles or whatever. Place triangles onto a greased baking sheet.

Brush with milk.

Press asparagus tips artfully into the tops of the scones.

Put in oven for 15 - 20 minutes.

Ridiculously Easy Soup

1 Onion, chopped

3 heads of broccoli, floretted

1 block of Gorgonzola (or Stilton or Bleu etc), crumbled (maybe 6 oz?)

3 cloves garlic, minced

salt, pepper, olive oil to taste

Water/stock

Toss the chopped onion in a saucepan on low heat. Once it is softened, add broccoli and garlic. Cook for about a minute. Add the water/stock (I did about a pint and a 1/2 water with 4 cubes of my homemade stock). Leave to simmer until broccoli is cooked. Remove from heat and add Gorgonzola, stir until it is fully melted/incorporated. Whiz in a blender, in batches, until smooth. Return to saucepan and reheat.

SERVE AND EAT. (You can sprinkle a little extra Gorgonzola on the top if you wish and serve with nice, fresh, crusty bread)