Lolie

Required Reading

2009-08-31T16:07:00.008-04:00

For some reason my mind was wandering today to some of the books I loved as a child. I thought it might be nice to come up with a list of the books that stand out in my mind as having shaped my personality, or whose characters became my imaginary friends, or that spoke to my child-self without condensation. I realized that I was thinking of the books I know I will be sharing with my children, when and if I have them.

Everything by Maurice Sendak, but especially Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life, The Nutshell Library, Mickey in the Night Kitchen and Where the Wild Things Are
Harriet the Spy
A Wrinkle in Time
The Old Mother West Wind books by Thornton Burgess
The Snowy Day
Laura Ingalls Wilder's books
My Antonia
Charlotte's Web
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Obviously, this is an incomplete list, but it's a start. What books from your childhood did/would you share with your children?

Two tomatoes

2009-08-16T20:57:00.006-04:00

Can you guess which one I grew and which I bought at whole foods?

My sad little tomato is like a fire hydrant in a dogs' world. Poor guy was tasty, though.

Let me see your lobster roll

2009-08-11T15:30:00.006-04:00

Montreal is a city completely devoid of street food. No hot trucks, no Mr. Softie, no one hawking little plastic baggies of nuts and candy on the corner. Street food is strictly forbidden. Except for this little boite, fashioned from a repurposed shipping container, kitted out with a solar power system, a big gas pizza oven and serving the most delicious lobster rolls I've ever tasted. They can be purchased individually or in combination with a bag of chips, a boisson gazeuse and a cup of thick, smoky, bacony chowder.

This one was mine.

And this was Tyler's. Doesn't it look like he got more lobster salad than I did?

83% chance of fail

2009-07-22T11:08:00.012-04:00

I meant to post more frequently. I really did. But, as you can see, I failed. Oh well. I'm here now, so let's just move on shall we?

As long as we're talking about failure, I would like to mention last night's failed dinner. I intended to make tilapia with an herb caper sauce and a salad of mache, basil, heirloom tomatoes and feta. The salad was fine. Better than fine, actually. The salad was fabulous. The basil and tomatoes were fresh from our garden. We had the same salad the night before, but it was good enough to eat two nights in a row, which is not something I do often. But, seeing as I was, apparently, fully committed to failure, I didn't get a picture.

The first fail happened with the herb caper sauce, which was originally meant to be a dill and caper yogurt sauce, with a grating of lemon zest. The dill, however, smelled like a homeless person, so I switched to tarragon from the garden. When I reached into the fridge for a lemon, the entire bowl of (seven? eight?) lemons had gone bad. Soft, spotty, mushy nastiness. I made do with what I did have, and the sauce was still pretty tasty. Or would have been if we had actually remembered to put it on the fish, which we didn't. We completely forgot about it. A fact that only came to my attention this morning, when I found it sitting on the cutting board. Exactly where I had left it about twelve hours earlier.

I did get a picture of the fiasco I made of the fish, which stuck to the pan horribly, despite a generous coating of olive oil, in a supposedly non-stick pan. The fish was bland but palatable. Finnegan ate more of it than I did, so at least someone was happy with his dinner.

A taste of home

2009-07-21T11:35:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if this is a Central New York thing, or if it happens elsewhere in rural America, but where I grew up there is a tradition of chicken barbecues to raise funds for local volunteer fire departments. The firemen set up a massive grill, generally in the driveway of the fire house, and the most delicious smoke billows down the road attracting locals and anyone passing by. The typical chicken dinner consists of a half chicken marinated and slathered in a vinegar-y salty herbal sauce, baked beans (presumably from a giant can, but I don't really know for sure), salt potatoes swimming in melted butter, and a soft, fluffy roll. Are salt potatoes a Central New York thing? I have never seen anyone eat them any place else. They are small white potatoes boiled in heavily salted water. In fact, the bag of potatoes comes with a little plastic baggie of salt. In my house the extra salt this little baggie would be saved, out of, um, let's say 'economy' and used when the regular salt ran out. Or, more often, until it's contents were accidentally spilled after months of sitting at the bottom of the refrigerator (Mami's) or the back of the cupboard (Papi's). Anyway, the potatoes are boiled in very salty water until soft, at which point they are permeated with saltiness and the skins, where exposed to air, get a slight salty crust. Then, to ensure arterial damage, they are drenched in butter. I never really ate them, because I am not crazy about potatoes. I never ate the baked beans, either. Syrupy and bland with cloying artificial smoke flavor and boring mushy texture? Not thank you.

But the chicken is a different story. Oooh the chicken was fabulous! Crisp skin, juicy, tender meat, and the salty, slightly acidic, smokey flavor. Heavenly. But, not living in Central New York, or really every wanting to have to visit, I miss out on the firemen's barbecues. Until now, it has always been a price I was willing to pay. But now Wegman's carries the sauce that all of the fire companies use, and I have a way to recreate the delicious chicken of my youth without the trip. It is so good we had it twice in the past week, once with fresh grilled sweet corn, and once with a caprese-ish salad of spring mix, tomatoes and basil from the garden, and fresh mozzarella drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic.

Pesto

2009-07-14T14:35:00.003-04:00

Last night's dinner was simple, very quick to prepare and clean up, and quite tasty. This weekend I gathered up some big handfuls of basil from the garden and blended up a quick pesto. Last night I stirred it into a pot of linguine, and that was dinner. But it wasn't much to look at, and besides, it was eaten up so quickly that I didn't get a chance to take a picture before it was all gone.

Ribs!

2009-07-13T11:54:00.010-04:00

Last night Tyler made his first foray into barbequing ribs. They cooked away, low and slow, for over 3 hours, and they were worth every second. They were smoky, spicy, salty and just slightly sweet from their rub, and moist, tender and falling-off-bone delicious from the long, indirect grilling.

Recipe:

2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon mustard powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons paprika
1 1/2 cayane pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon Chinese 5 spice powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

enough mustard to barely coat the ribs
1 rack of baby back ribs

1/2 - 1 cup apple juice

Rinse and pat the ribs dry. Wisk together the dry spices. Spread a very thin layer of mustard over the ribs, then rub in your spices. Wrap in foil and allow to marrinate, refrigerated, for about 2 hours.

Once the meat has had adequate time to marrinate, arrange coals on one side of a charcoal grill. While the grill gets ready, remove the ribs from the refrigerator. When the grill is ready, place the ribs on the opposite side of the grill, not directly over the heat, bone side down. Allow to cook slowly, rotating occasionally, until the internal temperature reaches 170. You will need to add fuel to keep the coals going, and keep and eye on the heat (you don't want it getting too hot or going out). Once the ribs are finished cooking cut them into individual rib sections and you can either add sauce or eat them as is, as they will have a lot of flavor from the rub.

To accompany the ribs we had tomatoes stuffed with bread crumbs, aged cheddar and basil (from the garden), and a mixed salad with the leftover marinated artichoke hearts and croutons made from the end of Saturday's baguette.

(Photos by Tyler)

What's for dinner?

2009-07-13T10:43:00.002-04:00

Even though absolutely no one ever reads this blog, I've decided to use it to post photos of meals Tyler and I prepare. I'm hoping that this exercize will improve my photography skills, and perhaps encourage us to make more interesting dishes. Let's begin with last Saturday's dinner, shall we? We had chicken liver pate, cornishons, marinated artichoke hearts, baguette and a wine we first had on our trip to Sardinia last year.

the vet, etc.

2008-07-17T22:25:00.004-04:00

This afternoon Tyler and I took our new baby kitten, and our sweet Jennie to the vet. After the appointment we were set to meet someone, and since we had quite a while to wait, we decided to have a beer at the pub next door. Since we had two animals with us, and they had outdoor tables, it seemed the perfect spot.

An older man was sitting alone at a large table, with a nice shady umbrella, and he invited us to sit with him. It was a kind and generous offer, and he didn't seem like too much of a crazy, so we thanked him, and sat down.

He was missing several teeth, and sitting in the heat so that he could smoke. He told us about his life, his family, and Philadelphia as he had experienced it; his father having been born a few blocks away on south street 105 years earlier. But the amazing thing was that he knew us so easily. When he asked Tyler what he did, he asked, 'so, are you an engineer?' Where we were from, 'Upstate New York?' what I did 'University of Penn? A secretary?' All of these were initial questions, we had never met him, or even spoken among ourselves in front of him, and all of them spot on (well, I have a fancier title, but, to a 70 year-old, yeah, secretary works). It was a little eerie. Or, maybe we are such a standard boring couple, that the assumption when you meet two people, carrying two cats, having a refreshing afternoon beer, you just have to assume, 'oh, yeah, engineer, UPenn, Central New York.'

Saturday morning haiku

2008-07-12T12:51:00.000-04:00

slept in until noon
the cat washes her anus
going back to bed

People I've exposed myself to recently (or they've seen London, they've seen France)

2008-06-01T23:15:00.006-04:00

So, I went to Princeton yesterday for my little pseudo-sister's graduation. As we were walking into the auditorium, right in front of the Newark Boy's Choir a big gust of wind came up behind us, lifting my skirt up into the air, almost over my head, exposing my very grown up, white cotton with lime green polka dots panties to a whole line up of adolescent boys.

Later, as we were walking to the car, I asked Tyler if I had at least had the dignity to avoid having a wedgie while my big potato ass was exposed to the assembled group of pre-pubescents. So, assured that he at least thought that my buttocks were mostly covered, (and that they were probably wondering what grade I was in, based on the aforementioned mature undies) I asked "why didn't you at least try to pull it down?" His reply, I swear, was - "I don't know, I was worried that some sort of crazy Animal House shit would happen. Like, I would try to grab a hem and the whole dress would come off, and then you'd be standing there naked."

Seriously. Right. Like he wasn't just enjoying getting a free peek.

ten things you will never find in my kitchen

2008-06-01T20:59:00.002-04:00

You will never find these things in my kitchen:

Canned fruits or vegetables
Cool-whip
Processed cheez food of any kind (whiz, spray, individually wrapped "singles.")
Instant rice (Uncle Ben's, Minute Rice, etc.)
Creepy processed meat products (bologna, pimento loaf, spam, Jeffu's canned toes, etc.)
Ho-ho's, Ring-dings, Twinkies, etc.
Crisco, margarine, butter substitutes of any kind
Non-alcoholic beer
Instant pudding
Pre-chopped garlic

Things I never thought I would end up having in my house, but have, and they weren't that bad:

Instant mashed potatoes (the frozen bag of potato pellets from Trader Joe's may sound unappealing, but they are actually really good if you make them with milk)
Instant biscuit mix (I know, this is just gross, but sometimes if I want Tyler to help cook, I have to cut some corners)
Instant coffee (not the Sanka shit or anything, but I do have some instant espresso that I've used for making ice cream)
Chicken Stock (or broth) from a can (or box). Seriously, I do make my own, but somehow I always run out faster than I can make more, and frankly, I use a lot of stock for stuff, okay?
Peeled garlic cloves - I bought these when I was making roasted chicken with 40 garlic cloves, and frankly, they are damned convenient. They taste pretty much the same as regular garlic, too.

Sundays

2008-05-18T18:14:00.005-04:00

Sundays, especially Sunday evenings, can be achingly sad. If you don't love your job, you hate and dread Sunday evenings intensely. Your life can seem small. Smaller than usual even. Another week over, another week to get through.

I tend to deal with this sadness by cooking a nice Sunday dinner. My favorite is a roasted chicken, with gravy (always), stuffing (occasionally), greens, and a salad. Perhaps this goes back to my childhood, when I would spend certain weekends (the custody agreement varied through out my childhood: one weekend a month, every other weekend, three weekends a month, etc.) with my father; separated from my adored mother, and stranded alone with an adult completely bereft of any culinary skills. My father's idea of a balanced meal was a fatty steak, shoved under the broiler, with no seasoning, for a minute, or a half an hour, depending on when he remembered to pull it out, a few potatoes, cut into quarters, boiled in plain water, and a packet of frozen veggies - lima beans, corn or "French cut" green beans, only - also boiled, and also cooked for an arbitrary amount of time, based on his ability to remember that he is, in fact, cooking. My father owned very few pieces of cooking equipment: a dented double-boiler, with an irremovable black crust caked on the lumpy bottom, a cast iron skillet, used exclusively for frying hot dogs, a simple, dull, knife, and a pig shaped cutting board, marked with knife marks, some darkening mildew, and bowed, as if it were arching it's flattened porcine back against the disgrace of our kitchen.

Have you ever smelled a forgotten pot of frozen corn, burning and smoldering over a gas flame? Let me tell you, it is not a smell you can ever forget. This was the smell of dinners at my father's house. It wasn't always corn, but every time, something - a pot of boiled potatoes, all water evaporated, potato starch blackened into a thick crud on the bottom of the pan, smoke (smoke, not steam, smoke!) billowing out from under the lid - had to be held out the back door by one of us, while the other raced up stairs, with a dining room chair, climbed up on it, and fanned the screaming smoke detector, until it finally stopped. Then it was time to eat.

We ate at an old pine table, seated opposite each other, silent and cautious. We both drank milk from tall, plain glasses and ate off of blue plastic plates, with years of knife marks and fork scrapes recorded in their surface. The unsalvageable bits burnt onto the edges of the food would be carefully cut off (by me, at least) and I would try to fake my way through the meal. It was typical kid stuff - pushing the food around the plate, stacking items here, spreading them around there, forcing gag-inducing mouthfuls down with a big gulp of milk. Screaming, fists pounding on the table top, tears - pretty standard. Once it was finally over, and I had eaten at least three bites of this, and two of that, I would drag the little wooden stool to the sink and wash the dishes. Or, try to. To this day, two decades later, my father still uses that double boiler, with all of its nasty, blackened crevasses.

I don't remember how it started, but somehow, getting back to my Mami's house Sunday evening, after a weekend with Papi, felt like a celebration. From Friday afternoon when he picked me up to Sunday afternoon when she did felt like an eternity. I was completely cut off from the person by whom I measured myself, and during those days away, I felt completely lost. I feel almost embarrassed to admit this now, but when I was little, my mother was my best friend, and over those weekends when she wasn't with me, I called her three, four, five times a day, and cried myself to sleep when she wasn't there to tuck me in and stroke my hair and sing to me as I fell asleep.

But, back to dinner... When Mami and I would get home from my weekend at Papi's, we would have a proper Sunday dinner. Sometimes it would have to wait until Monday, if we go home late, but we always had a special dinner together, with multiple courses, fancy dishes, a house filled with lovely smells, and the two of us, both so happy to be able to get back to being ourselves together. We ate off of fancy dishes, drank plain tap water out of wine glasses or even champagne flutes, all at a dining table spread with linens and illuminated by candle-light. As a kid I never noticed that those accoutrement's were second-hand, or shabby, or that my Mami had picked them up at thrift stores and yard-sales. To me, they were the epitome of elegance, and they made me feel like I was finally home.

So, now, as an adult, I feel sad on Sunday evenings. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I don't want to be alone at my office, with my husband at his. I want it to be the weekend all the time, with friends, and people, and nice, fun things, always. So every Sunday, I make too much food, drink a little too much wine, and stay up too late; trying to keep the next day from coming.

chunky monkey

2008-05-11T21:23:00.002-04:00

Why is it that no matter how terrible I feel about my weight, or how much time I spend obsessing about how chubby I am, I can never seem to stop eating long enough to lose a single pound? I mean, I spend a fleeting moment of every minute fretting over my dimply thighs and rounded tummy, but in the end it just leads me to the thought - "Oooh, you know, brownies would be so perfect right now." As much as I wanted to slim down for my wedding day, I didn't. And I can't stand to look at the pictures. Or, at least the ones I am in. I was a cow. And, maybe I am just using this as an excuse, but I don't think that my dress was very flattering. It made my already giant boobs look even huger, and frankly, it did nothing to camoflauge my waddle-y arms.

Damn. I wish I had some brownies.

So I married an ax murderer

2008-05-01T21:43:00.002-04:00

OMG - this movie is awesome. And it's not just because my dad's Scottish. Although it does prove my point that Scottish dad's are asses. Or arses. Or whatever.

Watching it this evening really made me nostalgic for the '90s. I think it would have been really fun. You know, like if I had been a bit older. Yeah, I had the bright red, henna-ed, My So Called Life hair, and wore the baby-doll dresses with chunky shoes and actually pretended that thermal waffle knits were appropriate outer wear. But still, I didn't get a chance to partake of the youth culture of an era when screwball cultural references were hip and funny, not declasse office banter. And before everyone was so incredibly plastic-surgerized and teeth whitened that they all look like Barbies. I could do well in a society where even the moderately ugly and/or chunky and still get laid on a regular basis. Plus, the great thing about the nineties, is that all of that music that we now recognize as awesome, would just be coming out. So, like, you could be that asshole on the cutting edge, who like "discovered" the Magnetic Fields and such. Oh, and of course, if it was still the '90s, at least the good part, we would have economic expansion, a reasonable hope of conflict resolution in the Middle East, and a President who could pronounce the word 'nuclear' correctly.

Yeah, living in the '90s would be great.

April Fools Idea

2008-04-01T13:47:00.002-04:00

Bad April Fools jokes:

Telling your husband that you want a divorce
Setting your neighbors house on fire
Telling your children that you never loved them
Spreading filthy rumors about your boss
Telling a friend she has cancer