Dizziness and Flonase.

Picking up my Flonase from the pharmacist yesterday, I chuckled at the big sticker on the box of that showed a nose, accompanied by the words "FOR THE NOSE". The pharmacist asked what I was chuckling about. I pointed at the sticker and she replied, frowning, "You'd be surprised."

The Flonase is because I've been having dizzy spells for a week or so. Last week they were so bad I couldn't really get off the couch. It was compounded with a nasty cold, so that might have been another reason I spent the morning working from a horizontal position. Ryan came home early to look after me, which was really nice. He does nice things like that a lot, so I forgive him for giving me the cold.

Anyway, the cold left but the dizziness is still on and off and this, compounded with a recurrent pain in my ear that has been going on for about 6 months resulted in me going to the doctor. I say doctor, but actually, because my health insurance is through a university and thus crap, I went to see the nurse, who, although very, very, very (very) nice, did about as good a job as I can do at home. Except she looked in my ears, which I think would be difficult. I think she actually knew less than I do about the way the ear nose and throat works. I have great respect for nurses - there are many members of my family that are nurses. THIS nurse however just told me I had residual effects from my cold and it would go away in a few days. To which I responded NO, it's not. This is something that has been exacerbated by the cold, but it is not the same thing as the cold because I had it BEFORE the cold and it is now AFTER the cold and I still have it.  

"Do you want some antibiotics?"

"I thought you said it wasn't an infection."

"I'll go and talk to someone else."

The nurse practitioner came in after a bit and looked in my ears. Turns out that I have a small amount of fluid in my right ear possibly caused by inflammation due to allergies. And now I have a small brown phial of generic Flonase. 

I'd like to have health insurance that results in me being able to see real doctors with some regularity. In college I went in for a physical examination, done by a nurse practitioner. I had been talking to her about trying some birth control methods (this was before I knew birth control pills made me nuts). She wanted a pregnancy test before she gave me a prescription for anything. Some old lady volunteer took my blood - stabbing me many times. It resulted in nerve damage that lasted six months and made it almost impossible to do up a girth - which I had to do every day, several times a day as it was part of my job.

The nurse practitioner who did the exam got my test results back, shouted them across the waiting room. When I returned to her a week later, complaining about my arm, she squeezed my arms a few times, looked perplexed and said that nothing could have happened when my blood was being drawn, that fit the description of my symptoms. I didn't believe her, but not being the person I am now, I didn't say so. She was wrong, by the way. I checked with an IV nurse. 

This blog is so old it's become self referential.

For lack of any better material, I'm going to point anyone interested to an old entrry (of mine), from back when I was more interesting. Cheap, I know, but it was one of my favourite entries, mainly because of the title.

Have a read.

And then read the follow up.

A Guide To Arguing With Idiots.

I think that this is one of the funniest book covers I've ever seen.

I don't care who you are, republican, libertarian, democrat, communist, independent, whatever. This man is not only a moron, he is dangerous because people listen to him and the filth that he spreads is poisonous. How can anyone take his ramblings seriously?

I'm just pleased that his helpful guide to arguing with idiots has a picture of one on the front for easy identification.

READ HISTORY.

The Third Man on Banjo

I'm trying to convince Ryan to learn this. Possibly my favourite soundtrack from possibly my favourite movie.

EDIT: I keep coming back to my own blog to watch this.

Constance McMillan, Prom is Stupid and You Don't Actually Want to Go.

Apparently there is a girl named Constance McMillan whose desire to take her girlfriend to the prom has caused some consternation and outrage at her school, which resulted in more consternation and outrage after she went to the ACLU.

McMillan was told that she was not allowed to bring her girlfriend as her "date" and if they showed up separately, but danced together, they would be kicked out of the prom. She then approached the ACLU for legal assistance and the school responded by canceling the prom for everyone. Of course I have no evidence of this, but it suggested to me that canceling the prom for everyone was a rather insidious way of getting a bunch of high school kids "on their side".

"You ruined the prom for the rest of us, you big ruiner!"

I have to admit that I can't really understand the fuss. I don't understand why she wanted to go to the prom in the first place, I don't really understand why anyone wants to go to proms. I went to one, it was boring and expensive and I didn't like any of the people there except my boyfriend at the time, who, strangely, insisted that we go in the first place.

I had more fun before prom, hanging out with Margo and drinking champagne. If only we knew what a portent that was.

So, although I stalked the facebook page, because I'm intrigued by the issue, I'm declining to "become a fan". Although I wish McMillan the very best in all her endeavors and I think that it's shitty that she goes to a school run by bigoted idiots, I'm an equal opportunity jerk. I'm not going to support anyone, gay or straight, in the pursuit of such a ridiculous, out dated, overrated tradition that promotes the pervasive high school mentality that out of which, some people never grow. (Once, in high school, during our "brunch" a friend of mine once came to me and said, "My dad told me last night that these were the best years of our lives." We both contemplated the meaning of that, very sadly while hoping that it wasn't true. And, thank goodness, it isn't and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably pumping your gas)

Incidentally, someone on the facebook page actually vehemently suggested more than once that being gay was a "race" because you were born that way. By that mentality, people with Down's syndrome are a race. In fact you could even extrapolate that sentiment to suggest that people with specific hair colours belong to a specific race. Which, as a matter of fact, makes about as much sense as calling black or white a "race" - (excuse my anthropologist geekery) there's only one human race currently in existence and that's ours.

For those interested

I'm ceasing the cooking and making things from this blog and moving it over to a less personal one.

www.incidentalice.wordpress.com.

This is all in preparation for potentially starting to think about maybe selling some preserves on Etsy. I'm going to move Thing A Week there too. I'd like to not scare off potential customers/readers with my rabid atheism, extreme left wing views or my hatred of Garrison Keillor so I'm going to leave that here.

Beluga Lentils in Mirepoix

Mirepoix is a delicious combination of onions, carrots and celery, very common in french cuisine. Traditionally, the ration calls for the same amount of onions as carrots and celery combined - so a 2:1:1 ratio. This evening, we used 2 medium onions. We sauteed our mirepoix this evening in olive oil, added some salt. Once it was cooked down, the onions were translucents and soft and the carrots and celery were a rich and vibrant colour, we stirred in a cup and a half of beluga lentils and enough water to cover the beans by about an inch. Got the beans up to boiling, then turned the burner down to a gentle simmer and left  them, checking them periodically for flavour and doneness. Beluga lentils aren't of the mushy lentil variety - they stay nice and firm when cooked. It's such a simple dish yet so flavourful.

We had simple bowls of it while watching QI, but I imagine it would be nice over rice or mixed into a salad.

Victorian Kitchen Garden

I found this awesome show called "The Victorian Kitchen Garden". It's very inspiring, particularly because we want to do something similar in the future. Some of the wintery growing tips might not be that necessary, if we end up in northern California, however it is nice to know that it's possible to grow a large variety of vegetables and fruit throughout the year with out the expense of living in northern California (it's just a lot more work).

Anyway. The series is from 1987 and features a man named Harry Dodson who was taught by several Victorian head gardeners. He himself was a head gardener for an estate for many years.
 The idea behind Victorian kitchen gardens was that all the vegetables and fruit necessary for the entire year were grown on the estate in various green houses, boxes and plots. Key to this was the Victorian snobbery of wanting to have exotic fruits and vegetables throughout the year, so the gardeners were expected to provide fresh vegetables in the middle of January and things like pineapples, melons, peaches. Dodson revives an old Victorian garden, using Victorian methods over a period of 12 episodes. It's highly entertaining - well, if you're into gardening. My favourite was the chicory or Belgian endive grown in complete darkness and the sea kale grown in giant, clay, bottomless, lidded pots and buried in manure.

***

We planned our plot this morning and I'm sort of in the middle of getting an old wine decanter turned into a mossarium. I have all the bits, I have the gravel down and I'm now trying to explore ways of getting the charcoal, soil and moss down the neck of the decanter without making a huge mess.

We're tracking our gardening expenses this year, so if you include the $26 shiitake mushroom kit that my mother sent to Ryan for his birthday, we're down $78 something dollars.

More Strange Elevators: Vomiting Out of Glass Elevators

I had another strange dream last night. I dreamed I had a long conversation with an old friend in my old bedroom at my parents house. I don't remember much of it, I tried really hard because I was woken up in the middle of it by a dog banging on the heater with his tail, but I do remember him confessing to me that he gets "slightly turned on by people vomiting out of glass elevators."

I had a dream last night, what-what?

From: Alice
To: Ryan
Date: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:00 AM
Subject: dream

I  just remembered a dream I had: a new Cornell lab was opening up in Texas and we were going to have to go there. I kept asking, "For how long?" thinking - 6 months, I could stand, a year, maybe, but not forever! and you were being really evasive, saying things like, "When the projects finished." or "Well they need people there pretty soon."


You were also wearing a silk paisley lounge jacket and an ascot at the time. 
 
I don't want to move to Texas.

From: Ryan
To: Alice
Date: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Subject: dream

"Darling!  Darling.  I think I ought to tell you, we'll be moving to Texas.  New lab and all that, you know?"
"For how long shall we live in Texas?"
"Oh, you know, old sport.  Not long, I should think.  Only until the project is finished, what? ... I don't suppose I could trouble you to mix a stiff W and S?"
"But how long will we be in Texas?"
"Thanks, that hits the old spot.  Nothing like a good W and S, what?"
"How long will we stay in Texas?"
"Well, I say.  They need people there quite soon.  The, uh, intellectual pool is particularly shallow in that part of the continent."

Barnaby

A considerable amount of entries have mentioned my fairly constant companion for the last 4.5 years. Jeeves, Jeeps, Jeevles, Shorty, Short Lumpy, Fatty Lumpkin, House Otter, Nasty Little Grape Eater, Barley Grape, Spotty Furface, Fur Pants, Doggo, Doggo Futzf, Bonk, Bonkles...

I adopted Jeeves from the San Mateo Humane Society (search the page for Jeeves) a little after I dissolved a long term, quite serious relationship. I had come to some sort of conclusion that a dog was a sure thing. I had seen his little picture on the internet and I knew he was the right dog. Jeeves came home with me and for a long time it was just me and him, even for a time after I met Ryan.

Even since we have moved to Ithaca, he and I spend the majority of our time together because I work from home and when I'm not working from home, I'm often at the barn with...Jeeves. 

Well, my fairly constant companion received a constant companion of his own last weekend. Casey buys hay from a man who had little Barnaby chained to a cattle barn. He wasn't miserable - he was perfectly well fed and perfectly healthy. It just seemed like such a sad little existence for such a friendly, exuberant, cheerful little dog. I say little now...but we think he may end up hitting the 50lb mark.

Barnaby. Barnacle, Barnstable, Barnington, Barn-dog, Barnaclese, Barnles...etc

The Chieftains Featuring Ry Cooder

This album is, I fear, going to be like that Prairie Home Companion movie. I can't stand the Chieftains, but I love Ry Cooder, just like I can't stand Garrison Keillor, but I love Robert Altman. Although I never watched Prairie Home Companion, because I didn't think I could manage to sit through 90+ minutes of Garrison Keillor, I am listening to this album. So far, it's not terrible, but I could do without the flute and possibly the fiddle.

Black Beans with Leek over Cauliflower Puree

Cauliflower puree

1 head of cauliflower, "floretted" and the florets chopped
2 potatoes - russet or yukon gold or something similar (ie not a waxy potato), diced
1/4 cup olive oil (approx)
1/2 cup milk or soy milk (approx)
1 cloves garlic minced very finely
salt (to taste)
fresh ground pepper (to taste - I used a little over 1 tsp)

Steam the cauliflower and the potato until quite soft - the cauliflower was softer than I would eat it, were I not planning on purreeing - but I like firm vegetables. Once steamed, drain the water out of the pot and put the cauliflower and potato back in the pot. Start to break it up with a hand mixer. Add olive oil, milk, salt, garlic and pepper and then mix some more until it is smooth. At this point I turned the burner back on and let it cook some more.

Black Beans with leek

Half of the white bit of a large leek (take one large leek, chop off the green end - save that bit for stock - and the root end and use half of that. Or the whole thing, depends on how much you like leeks)
1 can of black beans - or equivalent of soaked, dried beans*
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
salt
fresh ground pepper

Heat up some oil in a pan. Once it is hot, add the leeks and saute them until they soften. Add the can of beans. Add chopped garlic, salt and pepper and leave to cook in its liquid, while you puree your cauliflower - you may need to add water as the liquid reduces.

Spoon the puree onto a plate and serve the beans on top.

*I've been really doing a good job about presoaking dried beans recently and I find the flavour difference that much more worth it. It's also a better idea as far as environmental impact goes, despite what Nina Shen Rastogi would have you believe - she wrote an article for slate about canned vs dried and forgot to take into consideration the energy required for making the cans and then recycling them or that it is much easier to buy bulk dried beans than bulk canned beans - meaning much less packaging. However, we do have cans of beans on hand, because sometimes you need something quick and filling and nothing does that like a can of beans, heated up, with salt and pepper, lots butter or olive oil, with maybe a teaspoon of vegetable stock if it's handy or whatever else you want to flavour it with (curry, cayenne, oregano, basil, beer...etc).

Proper Snow.

This morning I woke up at 6:15 and looked out the window. There was so much snow! It honestly felt a little like Christmas did when I was small. Not that snow reminds me of Christmas (I've never celebrated Christmas in a place that had average winter temperatures below 40 degrees), but just the excitement of waking up to such a pleasant anticipated treat. I wanted to wake Ryan up and show him, but I thought better of it. He woke up a little anyway, looked out the window and then curled up and went back to sleep. 

This is the kind of snow I was expecting when I first heard about the supposed enormous amounts of snow that Ithaca gets. This is let's-get-out-the-snowshoes-and-go-to-the-woods kind of weather. Let's-get-really-cold-doing-fun-things-outside-and-then-come-in-for-hot-chocolate-kind-of-weather.

Thing A Week and The Supersizers

My Thing A Week plan is going well.

Last week I made this Chocolate Black Tea cake for Ryan's birthday. I substituted walnuts for the hazelnuts (because I had walnuts but no hazelnuts) and made a cocoa frosting for it. I also made a leek and potato pie, but I don't think that counts for Thing A Week because I make vegetable pies all the time. I'm ammending the original stipulations: baking only counts when it's something that I need more practice at (cakes and bread, basically).

Despite it not counting, I'd like to mention the fabulous crust I made with olive oil, water, a little baking soda and vinegar. We already typically make oil crusts instead of butter crusts, but I thought that olive oil might add some nice flavour to complement the potatoes and leeks. The trick was olive oil in the freezer for several hours, following a suggestion I read in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This makes an excellent butter/fat substitute, if you're interested. I don't like using packaged butter substitutes because most of them are mostly water. You can watch an extreme version of what happens when you try and cook things with fake butter on one of my favourite television shows, The Supersizers* (1:17 is where the point of interest starts and yes, that's real horse that they're cooking):

I think I'd rather go with the full flavour of olive oil than bland, processed "butterine" if I'm not going to use butter itself) Substitute the frozen olive oil into your recipe 1:1 for your normal fat ingredient, and when you are adding that and the water (ice water!) to your flour, bring it together so that it is just barely on the side of incorporated. Mine had this beautiful marbley look to it. Then it goes back in the fridge for an hour before rolling out between two pieces of wax paper (it will stick to counters).

This week's Thing A Week:

A paper mache box to store chopsticks and other kitchen utensils as part of my Organise/Decorate the House on a Budget of Next to Nil plan. I also came across the interesting idea of using contact paper to cover up ugly kitchen cabinet doors when you rent and can't do anything about your hideous dark crappy kitchen cupboards So I'm going to inspect contact paper to see if a) it looks like crap and then b) I can make our kitchen a little cheerier. Only if it's cheap though.


*it's worth watching the whole 2 seasons of this show. Two journalists (Giles Coren and Sue Perkins) spend a week each episode living as if they were in another time in history, wearing the clothes and most importantly, eating the food. My favourite episode is the Supersizers Go Wartime. Giles makes a cake using paraffin and gives American servicemen diarrhea and Sue paints her legs with gravy and eats a pair of stockings.

Seeds.

We chose seeds! We ordered from TomatoGrowers: purple jalapenos, carbon tomatoes, sweet baby girl tomatoes and a kind of sweet pepper that's name escapes me at the moment. It was really, really hard to choose. It took 4 hours. Because we have no space and no sun, so we can't really be too ambitious but we wanted the essentials and we didn't want to overlap with our CSA too much. We figured, you can never have too many tomatoes and peppers are nice too.

We're also going to sprout some of our dried beans and put in a herb window box in the bedroom (that window gets the most sun).

I thing I'm really looking forward to spring: today I made Lemonade For One (one lemon, 1tbsp sugar, 1 cup water, mix. Add gin if needed). It's not the same when you're wrapped up in cashmere, wool socks and slippers.

Although I still find the snow a bit of a novelty, I'm a little tired of my activities being so beholden to the weather. By activities, I mean "ability to fall asleep outside". Last summer, I fell asleep in the yard, I fell asleep on the balcony and I fell asleep in the woods. I'm looking forward to finding new and exciting places to fall asleep. Oh and the riding. I'm looking forward to that too.

Craftzine.

Really Craftzine? Really? Normally I love your blog. I forward entries all around, post them to Facebook and Twitter, and recommend it to my friends in person. I go to your site everyday and am possibly a better (at least more organised, possibly more creative) person for it.

This entry makes it seem like you've run out of ideas. 

Who hasn't figured out how to make a pasta dish by the time they've moved out of their parents home?  And if they haven't, they probably have no interest in cooking anyway and wouldn't be reading Craftzine for cooking tips.

This goes in the same category as the article I read in the Palo Alto Weekly several years ago that recommended using "heavy objects" such as rocks or bookends to keep books in place on shelves. Rocks, along with cowboy boots filled with rocks and doorstops, can also be used to keep doors open. Another article in the Palo Alto Weekly that recommended stacking smaller pots inside larger pots to save kitchen storage space*



*although I don't have copies of the articles in question, I assure you both of those were real articles.

Ludgate Farms

Today we went to Ludgate Farms and I was disappointed. I think I was hoping for another Milk Pail, which is this awesome grocery in Mountain View that is always unbelievably crowded for a very good reason: cheap, fresh produce, an amazing cheese selection and a substantial bulk department. It's where you go to buy ingredients for delicious meals that you are making from scratch . I've bought a weeks worth of groceries there, for two people, for under $20 and that included food for having people over for dinner one night.

Ludgate Farms was not Milk Pail. While the produce itself was fine, there wasn't very much of it, which I will forgive because it's the middle of winter. Produce aside, the products that they did have were all covered in dust and not only that, a lot of the available items were either close to or actually passed their expiry date. The ones passed the expiry date were usually offered at a discount. My feeling on this is that I don't really want to pay anything for rancid olive oil, so discounts aren't really going to help. That and everything was unbelievably overpriced - $16.00 for a box of Emergen C? That's twice what it costs elsewhere. Believe me, I'd rather shop local and I understand the plight of the small business but I do not have unlimited funds and I can't afford to pay double. What was most frustrating was their "bulk" section, which wasn't "bulk" in the sense that you bag it yourself or that it's cheaper than the prepackaged version. You buy what they've bagged and tagged for you, already (read: no bins) and then you pay more than you would at Greenstar (for example), which up until going to Ludgate Farms, I thought was expensive.

What they should do is get rid of those millions of bottles of olive oil and premade pasta sauces and preserves and just focus on selling good fresh produce and install bulk bins and offer competitive prices.

Thing A Week

Last year, I tried to participate in Thing-A-Day 2009. It did not go well. Sometimes I make several things a day, sometimes nothing at all. I think it might work if I were completing pieces for a larger project, like, for example hexagons for an afghan - something very small, quick and simple but still working towards a larger, more useful project. Part of my problem is that my main "chosen medium" - that is my "craft of choice" is knitting, and even the simplest of quickest knits can take hours. Not suited to banging out a thing a day. Additionally, functional elegance is really important to me, so I was discouraged by the round trivet I was >trying< to make, that ended up a useless flower that lies around my house annoying me - I can't throw it out because I made it, I can't frog it because I felted it, but there isn't much of a point to it.  I tried to include cooking as part of my creative sprint, but I cook almost every day, pretty much from scratch and not every meal is a feat of amazing, complicated, creativity, it seemed like cheating to count a simple broth with chopped vegetables and udon noodles as a "thing" but if I added home made dumplings to that meal then it did count? I guess it just didn't seem like I was stretching myself enough to count meals. 

 So I've decided to make my own challenge. Thing A Week. Starting at the beginning of this month (February) I am going to complete at least one thing a week. Meals don't count, but baking, preserves and pickles do as do "ingredients" things like dumplings, fresh pasta and large batches of curry paste. And I'm going to do it for a year. The project doesn't necessarily have to be started and finished in one week, I just have to complete at least one thing a week, hopefully this will encourage me to finish projects.

So. I've finished Casey's neck warmer and Ryan's hat. I have some other knitting projects started. And I'm going to attempt a cake this morning. After cleaning the kitchen and bathroom and possibly doing some laundry. Do those things count?

EDIT: Drinks like the barley water I made two weeks ago (delicious but I failed to document it in any form other than a chat with Miss Margobee) and this great idea for Lavender Lemonade totally and utterly count.

Huge storm and neck warmer

The huge storm I mentioned in the last post is apparently happening at the moment. Except, it's not as big it was threatened: I think we are getting the edge rather than the middle.

Ithaca is not as snowy as people who you tell you are moving there would like you to believe. Sure, it's snowier than Palo Alto, but a lot of places are. Everyone who had heard of Ithaca gave us the, "Better get used to winter! It's really snowy there! Snow all winter! Snow, snow, snow!" upon hearing we were moving here.

But it's no where near as snowy as Tahoe, which was what we thought about when we thought "lots of snow".

So right now, it's snowing, it's been snowing all day. Outside is very quiet - the noise is dampened by the snow. And to be fair, there is quite a bit of it. But in a few days it will melt and outside will be wet and grey and ugly.
Anyway. I'm glad of the opportunity to experience several "real winters".

Here's what I've been up to, when not working:

It's a birthday present for my friend Casey, who hopefully doesn't read this blog.

Spring flower preserve plan.

We're due for a huge storm on Wednesday. 90% chance of snow all day long. Right now, it's 18 degrees F.

I'm looking forward to spring. 

With that in mind, I've started to think about the jellies and jams and tasty preserves that I want to make. Last summer, Ryan and I made pots and pots of Cornelian cherry jelly, from Cornelian cherries, scrumped from Cornell Campus. 


In Northern California, spring comes for a couple of weeks. I used to mentally remind myself to enjoy the daffodils, naked ladies and tulips while the lasted, because they only lasted 2 or 3 weeks at most. I did the same thing this last spring, here in Ithaca. I kept reminding myself to enjoy the spring bulbs because they wouldn't last. But they did! For weeks and weeks! I've never seen so many blooming flowers all at once. Snowdrops, tulips, narcissus, daffodils and best of all thousands of violets. So I've decided to try violet jelly this year. There is also an abundance of crab apples at the airport that we didn't manage to get to last year, so I'm thinking crab apple lavender jelly and I've recently found out that people make jelly out of geraniums!

Pomegranate Molasses

I bought some pomegranate molasses yesterday. I found a recipe for it in one of my cookbooks and then visualised making it myself. Spending all that time separating the little garnets from their little honeycombs of protective skins and then...not eating them by the handful?

Clearly, that wasn't going to be possible. It's like pomegranate jelly or other preserves - I'm sure they're delicious but how to you make it without just eating the pomegranate?

(also: it's much cheaper to buy a 10.5 oz bottle of molasses than to buy enough pomegranates to make 10.5 oz of molasses)

You also can't always buy pomegranates, because they are a fruit that you have no choice but to eat seasonally - although, one could argue the same for a lot of other fruit, despite the fact that they are available in the store year round - who wants to eat a yucky, bland, dry, out of season orange?- but pomegranates aren't even available when they aren't in season.  

As much as we try and buy local (the CSA really helped with this one), I am an Arab, and Arabs crave things like tomatoes, lemons and most importantly, with regards to this blog entry, pomegranates. All things that are somewhat readily available in a Mediterranean climate, but not so readily available locally here in upstate New York. So about once a year, I crack and buy a pomegranate. One of the ideas of slow food living, so if you can't buy local then at least buy from the region that is known for the particular ingredient/food. So I bought Lebanese pomegranate molasses.

***

Yesterday, driving home from buying the above mentioned molasses, we saw that Pancho Villa's is taking down its sign. It looked like this:

 

Which reminded me of this sketch, from about 2:00 onwards:

Knitting and Bananas

I've been watching a lot of these videos recently - brought to my attention by my father in law. I think they're great. Mainly I've been watching the "Why people laugh at creationists" series, although I did try and sit through Thunderf00t's discussion with Ray "The Bananaman*" Comfort. What struck me as interesting was Comfort's inability to get his head around the fact that people who aren't religious do not have an "origin story". He asked Thunderf00t how the earth began and Thunderf00t starts discussing the scientific concept of the unknown. This became Comfort's "aha" moment and he claimed (repeatedly) "You don't know, but I do know". As if having any kind of answer trumps not having an answer. Nevermind the millions of people who share this planet who have a completely different answer. He says some (mostly) other ridiculously inane things (like "Where I'm from, in New Zealand, up is down!") and then I turned it off. I'll try again later. But back to the "can't get his head around the fact that people who aren't religious don't have an origin story" - that is a fundamental problem with discussing religion with a lot of religious people. They can't even begin to put themselves in the shoes of someone who doesn't have any belief in a supernatural being - the question: "Do you want to be an atheist and go to hell?" seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to ask if you can't get your mind around the fact that atheists aren't choosing hell, because they don't believe there is a hell. 

***

I've also been knitting again. I'm about halfway done with a new hat for Ryan:

I want to attempt something bigger next but I'm concerned that I'll not finish it and buying all that yarn is expensive! I feel like I ought to use up my stash before I get going on anything large like a sweater. Or this sweater dress that I'd like to make, but I'd change the cable pattern to be just one cable up the left hand side so it goes all the way up the dress and make the rest of it ribbed. I also think I'd prefer it in a warmer colour, like a beige or brown or even the light olive.


*If you only click on one link in this blog entry and you haven't seen Ray Comfort talk about the Banana being the atheists nightmare (I can't do that phrase justice, not have a kiwi accent), click on this one. And remember, it is not a tutorial for masturbation, which is what my mother thought it was.

Mystery ingredients.

It's been too long since I posted here. So, here's a picture of some ingredients. I'm trying to remember what I made with them.

Whatever it was, I bet it was delicious.

[Edit: I remembered! Curry paste! and it was delicious]

Fight!

Last night Ryan and I were in the middle of discussing our Christmas shopping details and we heard shrieks - shrieks followed by a woman screaming, "GET OFF ME!" repeatedly. So, we walked outside and heard more shrieks. Ryan went to put on his shoes and I ran over to where I heard the shrieks from. As I was running across the cul de sac, a boy - maybe 17 or 18 - wearing what seemed to be nothing but a towel, appeared from the neighbours house. I heard more screams, so I yelled back to Ryan to call the police. The boy in the towel yelled, "No - DO NOT call the police! Just go home!" Which seemed so ludicrous at the time I just ignored him - to me it sounded as if a woman was being attacked. We turned out of the cul de sac and saw two women fighting, one was pulling on the other. I wasn't sure which one was screaming. Ryan walked over to the girls but before he had gotten to them the boy in the towel darted between Ryan and the girls, yelling at him to "Just go home!" I ran back to the house and called the police, who arrived before I finished talking to the dispatcher. When it came time to make his statement to the police, he seemed to be trying to make it about Ryan intruding, instead of that there were two women fighting. That is, until his father walked up to him, leaned down -the kid was sitting on the pavement in his towel, shivering- and said, "Shut up."

According to Ryan, the kid stank of alcohol and kept saying that he knew the women involved and would take care of it.

I was baffled, frankly, by this kids behaviour. I attribute it mostly to the alcohol and an inflated ego. What did he expect was going to happen in the middle of Palo Alto? What kind of person would ignore someone shrieking like that? I doubt I was the only person to call the police.

It was a similar situation when our neighbours burglar alarm went off and no one responded. We called the police and the neighbours who's house it was, were furious because the police came and took a set of keys they found lying on the floor in the kitchen. Apart from the "wouldn't you want your neighbours to call the police if there was legitimate cause to believe a burglar had broken in" argument - their burglar alarm had been going off for a whole hour and was preventing anyone from going to sleep.  What were we supposed to do?

Marmaladey Apple Jam.

I found this recipe last night, when I was trying to figure out what to do with a giant back of pie apples that had not been turned into a pie. We leave Saturday and I'm going to be gone for almost a month, so a pie or anything that needs to be consumed soon was out.

For the most part I followed the recipe, but I did do a few things differently. Here is what I did.


From Just Hungry:

• For every 1 lb /450g of peeled, cut up apple -
• 11-13oz / about 320g-370g sugar - more if you have sour apples, less if you have sweet
• 1 whole lemon, organic/unwaxed

My version:

3lbs apples
1 32oz bag of brown sugar
2 unwaxed lemons,  juice and rind
2.5 unwaxed limes,  juice and rind (I had half a lime in the fridge that I wanted to use up)

I peeled the apples, then chopped them in quarters, then chopped the core out then cut the quarters in half. I rinsed them and then put them in a pot with the lemon and lime juice and the sugar. I let that sit for half an hour, with some stirring, as directed. The sugar draws out liquid from the apples and that liquid, along with the juice and sugar, became a beautiful brown syrup. I then turned on a medium low heat, still stirring occasionally, to make sure there was no burning. I brought gradually up to a boil and kept it boiling until it reached 220 degrees F. It doesn't mention this in the original recipe, but I wanted to make sure it would set. I've heard of the metal spoon method and the cold saucer method, and I try these each time, so that I can get a feel for what to look for in case I ever make jam and don't have a thermometer handy, but I still prefer the thermometer method. That way, if it doesn't set, I can say, "I don't understand, it certainly got hot enough!" instead of doubting myself on whether or not the jam was really moving in sheets down the back of the spoon. I never use pectin so this is sort of crucial. I'm not sure why the original recipe doesn't talk about this, but perhaps the 4 hours of recommended simmering would help ensure that the jam will set. After it started boiling, I added lemon and lime zest and chunks of rind, instead of tossing in the whole juiced lemon half. I turned it down and let it simmer for about 2 hours. It started tasting really, really delicious at some point along the way, so I pulled down my jam jars and sterilised them in boiling water, along with my metal ladle, my tongs and the jar lids. Oh and a spatula.

The jam was set perfectly this morning and I just had a piece on toast. It's got all the lovely bitterness of marmalade and all the sweetness of apple. Definitely one of the better preserves I've had.

Curry.

I have decided that I'm not buying ground spices anymore, if I can help it. I've made my own curry powder a few times now and it is vastly superior to the pre-made stuff, with the added bonus that I can make it as hot as I like. I've been making it with mostly unground spices in the coffee grinder. I knew that black pepper is only really worth using if it's fresh ground and I guess the assumption would be that it is the same for other spices, but I didn't know the joys of making proper curry from scratch until just recently. Shocking, to say the least. 

I made the following delicious dal the other day. I was proud of it because it was exactly what I was craving - something spicy and just a little tomatoey, but not so much that it became a tomato dish, per se.

1/2 diced onion
3 cloves minced garlic
knob of minced ginger
tsp coriander seeds - toasted*
tsp cumin  seeds - toasted*
tsp turmeric
tsp cayenne pepper
2 cardomom pods
salt
olive oil
stock
1 cup red lentils
1.5 tbs tomato paste

*Toss the coriander and cumin into a hot pan and keep heating until they start to become aromatic and you hear a "pop" or two coming from the seeds.

Heat up olive oil. Once olive oil is hot, add onions. Cook until soft, reduce heat, add garlic and ginger. Cook until aromatic. Add a little bit of water/stock and deglaze pan. Add more stock, lentils and spices and salt. Cook until lentils are almost done, then add paste. Serve while hot. 

Last night, Laila and I made this dish from the Rhymes with Vegan blog, with a few changes. Instead of roasting the squash in halves, we chopped it in to chunks and I didn't have any leeks, so we used half a red onion and we skipped the mock chicken and the peas (Laila doesn't like peas...). We served  a bowl of quinoa, with the squash on top and then a ladle of curried chickpeas over the top.

I recommend it and I recommend making your own curry powder for it. I used Mark Bittman's:

2 small dried chiles
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seets
1 tsp fenugreek
1 tbsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp ground ginger
cayenne

Heat the chiles, peppercorns and seeds in a pan until browned and aromatic. In the last minute of cooking, add the ground spices. Cool and then put in the coffee grinder and add the cayenne. You can store it or use it.

Death at a Funeral

I have walked out of exactly 2 movies in my life. I am a picky movie watcher and spent a lot of time watching movies for free when I worked for Landmark. The first was Julien Donkeyboy. I don't remember why I walked out, just that I did. The second was Death at a Funeral. I remember why I walked out of that film, oh boy, do I remember.

It was somewhere around when a tallish guy got in a physical altercation with a dwarf that was supposed to have been his dead father's lover. It was attempting to create an awkward situation that was so awkward, it was funny. It didn't succeed, it just felt really, really contrived and pandering to some sort of sophomoric frat boy humour community that clearly would never have come to see this film in the first place (Mr. Darcy is in it? It's playing at that obscure theatre where my mother dragged me to see The Piano? Come on guys, let's go!). Up until the gay dwarf fight, I hadn't noticed any attempts at jokes in the movie and neither had anyone else in the audience. I really kept thinking that we were watching the first 10 or 20 minutes of the film, waiting for it to warm up before the hilarity would start, until I looked at my phone and realised the movie was already half over and it was probably time to leave.

It's odd that Ewen Bremner was in both of those films, because I sort of like him. I also count Dirty, Rotten, Scoundrels as one of my all time favourites, which was supposedly made by the same people as the above described waste of time and celluloid. Anyway. They've decided, in all seriousness, to remake it.

I can only assume that the new version, which they're strangely calling the "American" version, despite the first one being made mostly by Americans, is to try and rectify the mistakes of the past with a new cast (Chris Rock) and new setting ("Urban America" as opposed to "Upper Class England") Unfortunately, the cast and setting was not the problem in the last version.

***

I did see a movie that I loved the other day, called Mary and Max. Narrated by Barry Humphries and voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette. Here is the preview:

Old chestnuts and badly breaded cauliflower.

Of all the cooking techniques I have mastered, breading is not one of them. This evening's dinner was rather a miserable failed attempt at breaded cauliflower with garlic, capers and red wine vinegar, sauteed chestnuts and mashed fava beans with carrots.

The last recipe was my own invention and by far the most successful. I heated some olive oil and tossed in half an onion and let those soften. Then I added one chopped carrot to soften and followed that with a can of favas, liquid and all. Finally, in addition to salt and white pepper and 3/4 teaspoon of stock paste, I added some coarsely chopped garlic. Other two dishes were recipes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. The chestnuts would have been fine, except that the chestnuts were old and dry, thank you very much Wegmans. Old chestnuts and the gone-off soy milk with a sell by date of February 2010 that you sold me 2 weeks ago which resulted in a full hour of me lying very still on the couch, willing myself not to vomit, have made me a little concerned about the drop in the quality of your merchandise. The real pity was that Ryan had never eaten chestnuts before, so his first experience was not starchy, sweet comforting nutty warmth as it should have been, but instead, a chewy and rather dry experience.

The breaded cauliflower, however was down to technique, which I do not have and am considering not trying to have anymore. It's so much mess that it doesn't quit seem worth it. The last time I tried something similar was when I attempted tempura vegetables. That was even worse than the cauliflower. Oh well. Live and learn.

Divine Watermelon

There's a full sentence! There's punctuation and everything!

Atheists that are silly.

After literally years of wanting it, I finally purchased Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I then proceeded to read it from cover to cover and then cook a lot of things, including beer-glazed black beans, olive oil bread, sea-salted brown sugar cookies, and a celeriac and bean bake.

I have so many more plans and I keep imagining bringing it to California, despite it being huge.

***

I read this blog entry today, discussing something called Atheism 3.0. Which is the new "New Atheism", "New Atheists" being a group of people that are "vocally vicious" about there being no god, as opposed to "Old Atheists" who just kept to themselves and were nice and didn't make people uncomfortable. Atheism 3.0 is for people who think religion is a good thing, they themselves just don't believe in god. It reminds me of my old boss saying that he himself didn't recycle because he knew it didn't actually do any good, but he though it was a nice thing to do and certainly encouraged his 6 year old son to do so.

The argument for faith given in the RNS article:

Faith provides meaning and purpose for millions of believers, inspires people to tend to each other and build communities, gives them a sense of union with a transcendent power, and provides numerous health benefits, Sheiman says. Moreover, the galvanizing force behind many achievements in Western civilization has been faith, Sheiman argues, while conceding that he limits his analysis, for the most part, to modern Western religion.

These "many achievements" may or may not have needed religion in order to reach fruition. The real question is, why are we still relying on it? Surely we've come out of the dark ages, we understand why a lot of things happen and we're continuing to move forward. The things moving society forward today, towards bigger, brighter and better achievements, are arguably not religion and faith. You could even argue that religion is sending us backwards, what with the absurd creationism-in-public-schools-thankyouverymuchOklahomaandKansas. I'm not even going to get started on all the horrible things religion has been responsible for. You can watch a debate about it for yourself.

And this is where I start to pine optimistically for a beautiful, Utopian society full of well read people who appreciate, value and seek intelligence and common decency.

Chocolate Milk

This story about the current chocolate milk war going on reminds me of the Cupcake Wars of ought seven. It also reminds me of something I read somewhere (location escapes me) of parents feeding kids McDonald's food through the gates during lunchtime at school, so the kids would "eat something" as opposed to going hungry because they wouldn't eat the healthier lunch offered by the cafeteria.

I say this with regards to this quote:

"We know that when flavored milk is taken out of the school, kids' milk consumption goes down," says Ann Marie Krautheim, senior vice president of nutrition affairs for the National Dairy Council."

Yes. So? You're worried about calcium and growing bones? Feed them broccoli. Or any of these vegetables. Kids don't need to drink milk, chocolate or otherwise. They certainly don't need the sugar (3.1 grams per ounce) that comes in chocolate milk.

"Krautheim argues that children don't drink enough milk as it is. And if schools remove chocolate milk, kids will choose less-nutritious drinks. "

Then don't offer less nutritious drinks. Is that so hard? Why is that so hard?

Dream: I find a new light source

I've been having some really vivid dreams lately. Last night I had a long dream about an old friend and my cousin.

The other night, there was another long dream but the only part I could remember was when I standing in a someone's kitchen - it was one of those super modern kitchens that you see in magazines, where the fridge, stove and dishwasher are the brushed metal kind. It was an Eichler, and one side of the kitchen was completely sliding doors that looked out onto a nice but small garden. In the middle was a large island, which I was leaning against and looking out the windows - it being between me and the windows - and along one wall was a sort of galley kitchen, with a fridge, then counter space, then sink, then more counter space, under which was the dishwasher and somewhere in that mix was the stove. Above the sink, stove, dishwasher and counter space were cupboards made out of light wood. At the end of the galley was a big cupboard, presumably used as a pantry. The counters, including the island, were all covered in shiny polished black granite, which as a rule, I typically do not like but it seemed to work here, I think mainly because of all the sun streaming in from the windows. And the sun was really streaming in. It must have been late afternoon and at just the right time for the sun to hit the windows directly. So on my right was the galley kitchen and on the left was a black wall that didn't reach the ceiling, nor did it reach either side of the room I was in. It looked like something that someone had put up to divide the kitchen from the living room, and indeed, on the other side, a big white couch with huge, oversized pillows were leaning against the wall. Someone - I don't remember who, was watching sports on a huge flat screen television that was on another wall, facing the couch. The wall that the television was on did reach the ceiling, but was otherwise, the same width as the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. There was more ambient light coming in from somewhere.

So, I was leaning against the island, which was covered in newspapers and playing with a sort of succulent or cactus flower. I had the whole plant in my hand or else it was just the root, I couldn't tell. But it was bright green at the more root-looking end and then shifted into a bright pink end that was flower shaped, but it was sort the same texture as the rest of the root - thick and slightly bristly, with short, tiny tendrils coming off of it. I had a small glass bowl next to me, full of water. It was similar to the fish bowl that comes with a beta fish. I took the root and dropped it in the bowl and instantly, the light in the whole house changed to a dark blue. It was very similar to scenes in movies that are shot in the day time, but made to look like it was night by shooting through a blue filter or whatever is they do. Whoever it was watching the television yelled

"What's going on? What did you do?"

I couldn't explain it, so I took the root out of the bowl and the light went back to normal.

Ryan woke me up and some point. He was standing next to the bed, wearing a pair of pleated trousers that I hate. He hates them too, so his wearing of them is infrequent. I said,

"Why are you waking me up with pleated pants?"

Pomplamoose and PE Teachers

I love this band. They are so awesome.

Here's another awesome song they do:



In other news, a former classmate of mine was involved in a bit of scandal. Apparently he lied on a resume trying to get a job as a baseball coach at our old high school after working at a skeezy futures broker company (and believe me, I know skeezy finance guys. The money is not worth t). He lied about his position at the fund as well his experiences with baseball in college. I wasn't surprised, the guy was unpleasant in high school, in a way only someone who is totally uncomfortable with oneself can be. I always suspected that he might be closeted, because he was so angry and would use such harsh, homophobic epithets. He defaced a yearbook of mine in middle school. It was kind of a pathetic geek story: all year long he'd been unbelievably cruel to me and I had responded by being bizarrely and ridiculously nice back, thinking that maybe, one day, he would see that I was a nice, friendly person and stop saying horrible things to me and about me. My final attempt was to ask him to sign my yearbook which he did, but not before writing rude things on every page. Surprisingly, I wasn't surprised, only saddened that he had clearly declined my multiple offers of friendship.

I was such a weird kid.

Of course one could argue that this was middle school, forgive and forget etcetera. But he continued to be a total dick all through high school. The most pitiful moment was an outburst in humanities class about how Zorba the Greek had every right to leave his many families, because he needed to do what he needed to do to be happy...the outburst deteriorated into an upsetting admission that his father had done just that and run off with his secretary or something similar.

I felt sorry for him then, sort of the same way I'd felt sorry for him after he'd defaced my yearbook. That doesn't mean I didn't still think he was a dick.

Anyway. Him trying to be a PE teacher reminded me of this Armstrong and Miller sketch:

Green Muffins

3-4 cups of the greens of your choice (I used mustard greens and purple kale, but one could use spinach or something similar)
1 1/2 cups canola oil
4 small farm eggs from your friend's neighbour or 3 large eggs
1 to 2 teaspoon chopped garlic (I used 1 giant clove from our CSA garlic)
2 cups (soy)milk with 2 tbs white vinegar (2 cups buttermilk works as well...)
6 cups all-purpose flour
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F and prepare a muffin tin as needed (greased or lined or nothing if it is non stick). Combine the eggs, oil, buttermilk and garlic in one bowl and mix. Add chopped greens and mix it further. In another, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and pepper.

Fold the wet ingredients in to the dry ingredients, stirring just enough so that they are mixed. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin, fill each spot up to the top. I thought about sprinkling sesame seeds on mine and then forgot, so if you were to want to sprinkle anything on top, now would be the time. A nice idea would be chopped almonds or olives.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. They are really delicious straight out of the oven but also make for a yummy snack that can be packed in a lunch.

Thanksgiving Menu

I am not, by any standards, a domestic goddess. I can, however cook. Or rather, I enjoy cooking as opposed to laundry, scrubbing toilets and making beds. I've started planning the menu. I'm trying to stay as seasonal as possible and pretty much only using vegetables from the CSA with a few exceptions (brussel sprouts, apples, bell pepper).

Preliminary Thanksgiving Menu.

Lemony Hashed Brusselled Sprouts

Stuffed endive (stuffed with apple, bell pepper, onion, olives, walnuts, sesame seeds, olive oil and basil)

Mark Bittman's Millet Bake, courtesy 101 Cookbooks, brought to my attention by the scintillating Sara Hancock.

Roast vegetables:
Carrots (purple ones!)
Garlic
Parsnips
Potatoes
Onions

Baked, stuffed, delicata squash

Olives (Yay Wegmans!)

Red Onion Chutney

Garlic-Rosemary figs

Toasted Squash Seeds

Cranberry butter

Rolls

Fresh bread

Butternut squash pie (I'm leaving the pies/desserts to Ryan, but I know he's planning this one)

Beverages:

Growler filled with something delicious

More delicious beers

Bellwether cider

Elderflower soda, juice

Currant wine

In more food related news, last night I made a delicious (delicious!) curry, started by making my own curry paste. It turned out so well, that I think I'm going to make quite a large batch next time and can it. Pictures and recipe to follow soon.

GAH.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091116/pl_afp/japanusdiplomacyasiaobama?

I'm not sure how showing respect to a foreign dignitary "weakens" the US's position in anything. Can someone please explain it to me?

Also - how can anyone still take Bill Kristol seriously? He's the one responsible for the Palin.

Oh well. Here's some music.

Oh yeah. This is where I moved to.

Late fall in Ithaca. Beautiful.

Where have I moved to?

This was sent out to the Ithaca Freecycle group.

Crazy Launderette Lady

The joys of working from home include being able to get little odd bits of housework done during the work day. That one is able to do chores during the day doesn't, of course, mean that they actually get done. The last 2 weeks I have been disgracefully neglectful of my regular houseworky tasks, but we had a guest (my brother), so I excused myself.

Since he left yesterday, I have no more excuses not to be a proper domestic, other than malaise or laziness, I went to the launderette with a pile of laundry. It's right around the corner so I can take things over there and then come home and, theoretically, get some work done.

Launderettes are funny places - a really public place full of complete and total strangers watching you literally air your underwear. Kind of like being on an airplane: one would never, ever sit that close to a complete stranger in any other setting. If you both go to sleep, you're probably sleeping closer to them, proximity-wise, than you might with your significant other. You see a different side of a person when you see them in these sorts of situations, such as at the launderette. A side that perhaps might otherwise be only seen in the home. The sweatpanted, messy haired, trashy magazine reading, grumpy side. One is completing a household chore that most people aren't particularly fond of, in a public sphere. In short, often one is often at their worst at the launderette.

This morning's experience was no exception. I went to switch the load from the washer to the dryer*. I had a woman literally shove the laundry cart at me. Apparently I had left the offending cart in front of her dryer.

"Are you done with this?"

"Yes"

"Then get it out of my way."

And she pushed the cart, quite forcefully, in my direction. I had to catch it, to avoid it running into me. I looked at one of the other patrons, to gauge her reaction to this behaviour, just in case I had misread hostility when there was none. The other patron looked as shocked as I felt.

Part of me wanted to say something like, "Yeah. I knew that was your dryer. That's why I purposely left my laundry cart in front of it. In fact, I wasn't even in here doing laundry, I was just in here specifically to put a laundry cart in your way, to inconvenience you, yes, you specifically."

I didn't though, because my statement would have been an effort to convince her that not every red light or stubbed toe was because someone else was so obsessed with her that they went out of their way to ruin her day, but had I said that, it probably would have contributed to her current self absorbed world view rather than forcing her to question it.

Of course that is an awful lot of assumptions to make on my part. I am assuming that people don't want to be the kind of person that shoves laundry carts at strangers, when in fact, this may have been working for years, cultivating that specific part of her personality as a trait she values and admires.


*we used to dry things at home, on lines we strung up in our living room. But then the house started molding, so we had to stop.

Lemming, Lemming, Lemming of the ADA

Apparently there is an American Decency Association (ADA - but not to be confused with the American Dental Association).

Upon the discovering of the existence of this organisation, I (of course) immediately looked up "American Indecency Association". It, unfortunately, doesn't exist. I think I want to rectify that.

On the ADA's home page it has the following statement: "In the last main session (sixth video) of the conference, Mr. Trueman and Mr. Ensley answer questions and discuss in detail not only why we must continue to battle pornography, but how we can battle pornography in our own back yards."

That got me giggling because I imagined a bunch of people in corduroys and turtleneck sweaters running around their back yards after artificially enhanced naked people, while waving crucifixes at them.

I am a fairly normal person and I lead a fairly normal life. I don't live inside a cult housing complex or on an Amish farm. Somehow though, I manage to avoid seeing pornography almost every day and I've managed to do this for most of my life. So how come these people are having to battle pornography every day?

Wine and arguments

I've eaten a lot of kale today. Kale with scrambled eggs and then kale with rice. My favourite way to eat it is with soy sauce and lemon juice.

***

Ryan is making croissants. We had a fight earlier because I feel like his enthusiasm on the search for a second dog has waned. Among his claims after I snarkily said, "Should I just stop looking? Because you don't seem to really want a second dog." was that it was hard to get excited about a dog on the internet. I'm not sure how he expects to find a dog. To me, the beauty of the internet is that we find a few dogs that fit our requirements and then go and look at them. I don't want to go to the SPCA once a week and feel miserable for hours afterwards. Among his other claims was that it was hard to walk two dogs on a leash.

I found both of those arguments thin.

He said, "How can I get excited about a picture of a dog on the internet?"

I replied, "I'm not asking you to get excited, I'm asking you to participate in the process of finding a second dog."

And it made me feel like one of those baby crazy women. It made me sympathise with those baby crazy women (shit!). I took a bath while I was still angry. I thought, if I ever decide that I absolutely want children, I'm going to have to have the same damn argument. This sort of thing is always going to be up to me.

***

Which drives me nuts!

***

As such, I'm still a bit angry. Maybe I'll have some wine. Maybe I'll buy a horse.

***

We bought wine on our trip around lake Cayuga. We only ever buy wine when we go wine tasting because of New York's inexplicable liquor laws: One cannot buy wine in a grocery store, only beer (as far as alcoholic beverages are concerned).

***

Jeeves is learning a new trick: turning the floor lamp on. He's not quite there yet, but he's getting it.

***

Email to my husband.

from: Alice
to: Ryan
date: Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:54 AM
subject: You can't have a poodle.

I had a dream last night that we (including Jeeves) were wandering around in some big city. There were lots of stray dogs. There was a little brown dog that started following us around. You found a piece of twine and tied it to the dog and we brought it home - we were living in the big, nameless city in a 3 room apartment. All 3 rooms were living rooms and over filled with old, 70's-80's ish furniture. Things like dusty old futons with Indian wood cut print cover sheets loosely draped over them. There were lots of wood, lot of rugs and a large, old desktop computer. We were getting ready for a party. I was trying to find the new dog to show to some people only to discover another, different dog. This one was a gray miniature poodle cross. I found you and asked you where the brown dog was and you said you'd taken it back and found this one instead. I was furious with you. For one thing, I thought it was awful to bring the dog home and then just let it go and for another I did not want a poodle. I told you these things and you told me I didn't have any good reasons for not wanting a poodle, implying that it was just my snobbery. I started listing all the reasons I didn't want one - their hair doesn't stop growing, so you must cut it or have it cut, which costs money, they get really filthy and gross and need a lot of bathing, I didn't want small dogs...etc. You said that you would take charge of all the grooming and bathing. When you said that, I looked at the dog and it was wearing its hair in a little top knot held in place by a bow - which you had done to prove to me that you were going to do all the grooming necessary. I couldn't stop feeling awfully for the little brown dog and couldn't make you understand how reprehensible I thought 'replacing' it was.

The dream ended with me watching you play with the poodle on the floor and telling me I would grow to love it. At that point I could see that it wasn't all poodle, it had a bit of spaniel in it. And the more I looked at it, the more it looked like a black spaniel.

Sorrel Soup

From my mother:

The sorrel I have is perennial and has grown into a huge plant. I don't know how it stands up to snow and frost but it definitely grows in England. Though I never had it there, it was probably regarded as a poor persons food.

Ingredients:

A big bunch of sorrel leaves, stems trimmed off. Wash well.
Potato scrubbed but leave skin on. Chop into cubes and parboil or put in microwave for 4-5 minutes.
Bunch of spring onions chopped fine including greens
3 Cups of vegetable stock
2 tablespoons Olive oil
Nutmeg, salt & pepper

Heat oil, medium, add onions and sorrel leaves, stir and cook for three minutes till leaves turn bright green.

Add potato, vegetable stock, cook for about 6 minutes or until potato is fully cooked.

Grate in nutmeg

Leave to cool a bit and blend til smooth, return to pan to heat through if necessary.

Taste, add salt & pepper to liking.

It has it's own flavor and doesn't taste like anything else.
(The original recipe called for thickening with corn flour but I find potato does just as good a job.)

Oh I also added a large pinch of dry mint with the potato & veg stock.

How many uterus related arts and crafts projects can there be?

I've spent a lot of time on Etsy because I can find reasonably priced unique clothes that (most importantly!) fit me. I think the fitting me part is because when I buy vintage, it was usually made in a time when my size was closer to the average as opposed to the tiny people side of things.

I have, though, come across some really hideous items for sale and I'm very glad to say, someone finds them as hideous as I do.

My ex roommate Shawn passed this along:

www.regretsy.com

Enjoy!

Nonsense is good for you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?em

Of course. If something was a little weird, and it turned out to be a
lion shoulder blade above the tall grass, one would have needed to
figure it out, right soon. We still need to be able to spot
unsettling things. "That's odd, I saw movement in the car. There
isn't supposed to be movement in the car. Aha! There is a man laying
in ambush in the backseat."

That's a neat article. Thanks for sending it to me. I hear the devil
calling, "Back on your heads!"
-Ryan

Dreams: David Mitchell Lookalikes

Last night I had a dream I walked into a pub that was having a David Mitchell lookalike contest. Everyone in the pub looked exactly like David Mitchell, even the kind publican that sold me a pint.

I was the only one not competing.

Death and grieving.

My ex-boyfriend died on Thursday night. We lived together for three years, had a dog together and cared a great deal about each other. He played the harmonica and the guitar and he was quite a good photographer.

I'm not going to go into the nasty, awful, messy details of breaking up, except to say it was a bad one. I think, partly, because everyone, except me, towards the end, thought we were going to end up together, married, etcetera. The awful details of the death are this: he had a brain aneurysm, in his sleep. They found him with our dog licking his face, trying to wake him up.

I didn't go to the funeral, for a number of reasons. I think that funerals are probably a really healthy thing - everyone gets together and decides to grieve together for a certain amount of time and then, one can move on - but for me, I didn't need to see a lot of strangers to grieve. Not to sound melodramatic, but I've already grieved over the death of our relationship and I've already grieved over Al. I realised somewhere along the way he was never going to be well, I was never going to be able to make him well, and I had to leave him to so that he could begin to figure things out on his own.

I spent most of Friday morning sobbing, I mean really sobbing. I think I even screamed a few times. Then I went to the barn because you can, or rather you should, for your own safety, leave your emotions on the ground when you get on, so I thought it might help me feel normal again. But instead of riding, I went to a school fete with my friend and her children. I ended up drinking a beer with a man who went to the same tiny, smaller-than-a-lot-of-high-schools, photography school that Al went to, Brooks.

So there I was, in the middle of central New York (well, actually closer to the Pennsylvania border), talking to a complete stranger about my life in Santa Barbara. Reliving moments and reminiscing about things that happened during my life with Al. It was a little surreal.

******

I keep waking up in the middle of the night and remembering that he's dead. It's really awful. I did it three times last night. I start going through conversations that we had - everything from the mundane to the excruciating. No particularly vivid dreams yet, though. Just an awareness of his presence in a lot of them.

******

On Saturday night, I left a strange party early and went to bed by myself. I called Margo and started crying almost instantly. I'd gone from being tremendously sad to feeling abjectly guilty. I'd read his obituary and it just seemed so trite and banal - I think he would have hated it. Well, I hated it anyway. It made me a little sick. I don't know what else I expected - it was filled with all the usual obituary stuff. I think it was because it reduced someone who was larger than life down to a few lines on a piece of paper.

*******

So here I am, Wednesday morning and getting back to work, finally feeling more normal. Still tired: I overslept this morning - it's 11:16 and I haven't even made a cup of tea yet.

I think I'll do some work and then head out to the barn. My mother said something that struck me as apt: "You know, I just can't quite get it into my head that there's a world without Al in it."

I'm not paying $50 to hang out with people I went to high school with.

http://www.paloaltothemovie.com/home.html

"Someone watch that trailer and tell me this isn't utterly absurd. If these people are trying to represent Palo Alto as Any Town, U.S.A. that is just patently false; and if they are representing Palo Alto as the rich niche that it actually is, well, I can only say with devastating honesty that that is just not a very interesting story, Tom Arnold or no."
-JT

"It looks shallow, cliche, and vapid. much like its namesake."
-BB

I just found a website announcing my ten year high school reunion. It's at a shitty bar in the town I went to high school in. And by shitty, I mean overpriced, loud and lacking in any personality, but still full of sweaty 20 and 30 somethings dry humping each other and yelling over the terrible music. The last time I went there, I ended up having to leave early to preemptively remove one drunk member of our party, before what she was doing started counting as sexual assault. Blame my drunk friend if you will, but I don't think that behaviour is out of the ordinary for that place.

It's also exactly where and how I would have pictured my high school reunion happening.

My complaint though, is not really about the bar, it's about the cost. Because I would probably go if it were, maybe ten bucks. But it's not ten bucks, it's fifty.

My apologies to any one who doesn't find fifty dollars an obscene amount of money for this particular event, but really? Really? Fifty dollars? Fifty dollars to go and hang out at a crappy loud bar in downtown PA? And have awkward conversations with people? I can do that for free pretty much anywhere else, the only difference being that I may not have already had awkward conversations with those people, 10 years ago. It would be a hundred if I want to bring my husband. We could have a nice meal for that. I can pay $35 dollars and go and see a show in the city at an awesome bar instead of a shitty one.

There was an alternative - the organiser suggested that if we didn't wish to drink, $10 or $15 dollars at the door would be fine, in order to help defray the costs of the reservation. That solution isn't really workable for me though, because being I don't think I could manage the evening sober and it seems like it might suggest a substance abuse problem or at the very least be regarded as a little tacky, if I showed up already inebriated.

I'm not sure what a high school reunion is for, anyway, these days. Isn't one of the wonderful things about facebook that you can keep in touch with/stalk people you want to keep in touch with but you can fairly successfully avoid those you don't?

Mosquito Bites.

I am the indignant sufferer of mosquito bites, all on my foot. Two of said mosquito bites are on the sole - one on each.

Since moving to the East Coast, I have started suffering rather more severely than in the past from mosquitoes. At the beginning of the summer, I was horrified by the dragonfly sized mosquitoes that insisted on suckling my blood while I was asleep. It was during a camping trip with Ryan when I fully came to realise exactly how much more flavourful I must innately be than he, because for every 1 bite he had, I had 7.

And not just 7 little bumps. These were giant welts that were painful. It's not that they didn't itch - the itching and all the indelicacies of scratching the itch came later. First was sore, aching pain as my immune system went into overdrive.

These giant winged monsters, however, have proved nothing compared to the gnat sized mosquitoes I encountered the other day, whilst walking through the woods near my house.

At firsts I thought that they seemed more like the mosquitoes I was used to, out west. Small, irritating, but not of the agony causing variety.

Not so. I smacked one, absently on my left arm, just below my elbow, while looking at something else. I know that killing them mid-suckle is usually a bad idea because it makes the bite that much worse, but I felt a small tickle and I reacted to it. I had already found and killed one eating my right elbow, so had become a little reactionary.

Within minutes both bites had spread into flat, white, raised bumps, which would have been a quarter inch in diameter, if they had been more circular. They had, instead, bumpy and uneven edges.

That evening, my left arm was swollen. The next morning, it was a third again its normal size, red, and inflamed. My elbow ached. I spent the morning looking up things like "Really horrible mosquito bite" and "mosquito bite inflammation" on Google. I self-diagnosed myself with skeeter syndrome and moaned a lot about it to my husband.

I was finally back to normal when yesterday morning I woke up scratching the bottom of my feet. One bite in the very middle of the arch of my right foot and the other on the side of my left foot.
There is no more irritating a place than the bottom of your foot for an itchy insect bite. People can tell you all they like that "scratching just makes it worse!" but try not scratching an itch that you are reminded of every time you stand up. Or put on shoes. Or bring the bottom of your feet in any contact to anything.

Then, this morning I sat down to read my email, only to discover a second bite, this one on the bottom of my left foot. Swollen, uncomfortable and itchy. When I notified my husband of the new development, he had this to say:

You ought to stop sticking your feet out from under the covers. Don't give the little bastards the opportunity.

Japanese food experimenting.

It's late and I'm trying to make red bean paste.

I've been, lately, really getting into trying to make Japanese food, to some degree of success. I'm finally getting the hang of onigiri and last night I even made a carrot sesame furikake for the on going onigiri experiments.

Most of my instruction has come from 2 places.

1. Just Bento/Just Hungry - 2 unbelievably friendly, informative blogs by the same person. There is SO MUCH there and it's all good.

2. Cooking with Dog - a YouTube channel that is campy and informative! The show is apparently hosted by a miniature poodle named Francis. At first I thought that the dog just hung out watching the cooking - I didn't realise that he was the host. Francis' voice is provided by a very polite Japanese man who has to be heard to be truly appreciated. I watched several of the videos yesterday and walked around saying, "Mix it well" over and over again. You'll understand when you've watched one. The cooking is done by the cutest little Japanese lady who always tells you how enjoyable the food is at the end of each segment.

Tonight I decided to attempt red bean paste because a) it is delicious and b)we found the asian markets in Ithaca and I had to get something. The red beans, the sweet rice flour and the aloe vera juice sufficed.

It is now 11:56. I started boiling the beans 2 hours ago and there's no end in sight. I soaked them for 22 hours, I boiled and drained them then boiled and drained them again and now I'm just waiting. Waiting and sleepy.

Radio Dream

I had a dream last night that I was hosting a radio show, which I was using to plug this blog.