Clam chowder on a chilly night

Plus fried fish and the chef's occupational hazard--glasses spattered with tiny droplets of oil .  I was pan-frying some shrimp and tater tots that had been in the freezer through the difficult days of summer.  Each time I tossed a batch in the skillet, the water vaporized and catapulted grease particles far and wide.  Some found my glasses but many more coated the surfaces of the stove, countertop, and floor.

I will get a new kitchen one of these days, won't I?

Cat vs. Christmas ribbon--never too old

 
Tried the scrambled eggs recipe and yeah, they're nice and soft this way.  My current method of cooking on medium-high was producing tough ones.  With the butter the recipe called for, they might have been great.  (I used non-stick cooking spray.)

And now for a major panic attack--

I foolishly started two books right before Christmas and I don't want to give either of them up, but how is it going to be possible to finish them before starting the 100 Book Challenge?  Plus, I got a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat for Christmas and started on that.

I'm about a quarter of the way through The Passage and halfway through The Hunger Games but then I want to read the second two books in the Hunger Games trilogy.  I have four days to do it...or...I could add whatever I don't finish to the front of the list and push everything else back.  Would that be a cop-out?

Back to normal, whiny self--but first--

It's 5:45 on Thursday and I'm home, home, HOME! Be it ever so disorganized, there's no place like.

I lost a kid along the way (should pick him up Sunday) but I've got three dogs and a cat, and I'm home.

Nuthatch, rightside up for once

Survived another Christmas day.  The ice and snow started in at about two o'clock, so the out-of-towners had to leave.  Now there's nothing to do but but play on the computer and wonder if the snow will clear off enough to let usget back to the dogs on Thursday.

I'm such a scrooge.

I got a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat for a present and already I'm planning a herb garden.  Plus I learned what I've been doing wrong with the scrambled eggs--can't wait to get home and try it out.

Christmas soon

So here we are.  In Arkansas.  That last hour of driving on I40 in the dark with little traffic pretty much did me in.  At least when there's traffic, I feel grounded.  Like I know what's coming at me and where the road is and there's at least a reasonable assurance that the pavement doesn't just disappear over the next hill.

It took me 30 minutes longer than it did Ed, but what the hey!  We saw a fox!

Four nights, possibly longer if it snows enough to screw up the trip home.  I'll log on in the morning and check the weather.  All these morons (not local ones, national ones) get so excited about a White Christmas.  All that means to me is traffic delays and the possibility of a very scary drive home.

This holiday tradition sucks.  We should stay home at Christmas and travel in the spring and fall--travel with spring flowers and fall colors.

Enough griping.  I'm here and even though I never really liked my father-in-law all that much, I miss his presence.  For so many years he was here and lucid, talking a little more than I'd like but ever so loving, so kind and secure--the boss of benevolence.  And then there were the years when he became a very confusing child, sort of scary but more like...puzzing.  Depressing as hell it was to watch, but not so bad--he had a very gentle decline.  Last Christmas he was confined to bed, I think...or was it after the winter?  At some point they put his hospital bed in the living room and just cared for him there, quietly, discreetly, lovingly.

Now his absence is a great, gaping hole.  Even his spot at the desk is clear.  But his presence fills the house as it never did when he was alive.

Back to Christmas.  Christmas sucks when I don't have "home" to go to.  Mom always waited for us, no matter how late we were getting in.  We'd pull in the driveway after eleven hours of hard traveling and the motion sensor light would go on and she'd soon be at the door, crying a little and pulling us in.  Usually it was pot roast on the stove--she knew Ed liked it--and a few vegetables.  God!  I miss her so bad.

Dad would be there, going about business as usual, but I knew he was waiting just as well.  He'd put a few extra beers in the fridge for me, or just keep an eye out to the side, waiting for us.  He was annoying as heck but it was worth it--

He was Dad.

Christmas without them...the second one, I think.  It's not really Christmas.

Heavy sigh.

One more day of dogs...then off to doggie boarding school.

 

 

Man's inhumanity to food

I'm once again betrayed by my fellow man.  Is there nothing so wholesome that man can't pollute?  Apparently not wheat. 

I'm not sure I believe his flight of fancy about how, "...unlike fruit, grains don't want to be eaten," but the bare facts about what man's selective breeding has done to the plant are enough to make me bury my loaf of whole wheat bread in the back field.  I'm scared to feed it to the birds.

Why am I surprised?  We've screwed up every other food on this planet.  We've raised generations of kids thinking an acceptable meal consists of high-fat, carcinogenically-prepared CAFO beef on a high glycemic-index bun.  With gluten.  It appears that the pickle and the onion are the only healthy components of the meal.

So...what else has man done?  Are my "Detroit dark red" beets and "Crimson lights" Swiss chard the products of selective breeding that brought in poisonous enzymes as they attempted to make it hardy for the home garden?

Next time I buy seeds, I'm going to lean strongly toward the heirlooms

Should have read a long time ago

Book review--

The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh. 

I don't know what to say.  It was included in Shelf Discovery as one of the teen classics we never stopped reading, and maybe if I'd read it as a teen it would have been one.  But while Harriet The Spy still tingles my memory as something I'd like to read again, some day, this one doesn't.

It's still worth reading--especially if you're a teen.  But oddly enough, not if you're a Harriet The Spy fan.  If you really wanted to see Harriet back, you'll be disappointed.  What you see is a dim shadow of herself.  She's a flat character--a stereotype for Beth Ellen to act against.

It's good seeing Beth Ellen come into her own personality, but why did it have to be at the expense of Harriet?

Sunday cooking recap

 Was this

worth this?

Cooking on Sunday took a full hour-and-one-half longer than I thought it would.  The results were pretty good, maybe not my best but no one complained.

 No cooking this week, except maybe some Christmas cookies on Saturday--dang!  I just remembered that all three of the recipes I want to make require chilling the dough.  So on top of extra laundry on Friday night, I may be making cookie dough.

Sunday and...

Sunday and I refuse to reuse last week's to-do list.  I'm going to work in the garden!

What's the satisfaction in routine and why do we always fall into it?  Okay, maybe you don't, but why do I always fall into it?

It's efficient, up to a point.  It gets me out of the door in the mornings at an average time of 7:54 with a standard deviation of +- 2 minutes.  It keeps me from having to think about the minutia--the brushing the hair and deciding whether or not to floss.  Just do it--it's the routine.

And sometimes routine can become a self-help strategy.  I cook dinner on Sunday evenings because I like to cook and I want to remind my kids that I can cook.  (And that there's more to meals than carry-out or meat/rice/gravy.)  I walk the dogs every evening because the dogs need walking and I need dog walking.  It's what I am--I'm a person who walks my dogs.

It takes a vacation to remind me of how relaxing routine can be.  I miss routine like crazy when I'm gone.  Even the "fun" kind of vacation feels a little uneasy, a little inefficient.  It gets old having to think about the little things, and when I'm on vacation with the family, no one knows their turn in the toilet.  We have to stinking talk to each other in the mornings.

Still...I can't help thinking routine should evolve in a positive direction.  For every boring, tedious chore I add to my daily agenda, I should slough off two time-wasting habits and replace them with a fun one.  Hard Won Fun.  HWF--huh whuf.  I should get that printed on a bracelet.

But how would it work?  This winter, when I added "feeding the birds" to the daily chore list, I should have taken off one chore and replaced another with some  HWF.  But what?  Take off "clean up the mess Ed makes on the stove"?  But then the mess would never get cleaned up.  Take off "scoop the cat litter"?  But then the dogs would drag choice morsels of poop all over the house.  Take off "open the mail"?  The mail would never get opened.  Compared with most other women I read about, my daily chore list is pretty compressed already.

One positive HWF--I replaced my after dog walk routine of "sit at the computer for a half hour" with "read a book for a half hour."  That has been a huge reward.  But next time, the best I'm going to be able to hope for is to reschedule an unpleasant chore from "daily" to "weekly."  The mail, for example.  I can stack it up neatly and only deal with it once a week.  Dealing with the mess on the stove and countertops can be a bi-weekly chore.  But scooping the cat litter?

Not negotiable.

Started hilling up the row for the earliest spring planting--spinach.  It doesn't look like much but in my head it makes all the difference.  It's my attack on Trenton.  It proved my ragtag, dispirited army could still fight.  There will be a United States.  There will be a garden.

Been reading under the desk again

I've an accidental book review to post today.  I wasn't supposed to read it--but it just happened.

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick

It's full of books and with very few exceptions, I want to read them all.  Since most of them are short, or at least shorter than the average book on my 50-book challenge, I conceived the brilliant idea of adding them in to my existing list...alternating short with long...and making it a 100-book challenge.

Oops.  There are 73 book reviews.

Some may be out of print or unavailable; some I've already read.  Paring out the ones I've read leaves 68.  Removing the ones that aren't available in the library (and I probably don't want to buy) leaves 54.  It just might work.

But I forgot to review Lizzie Skurnick's book.  And the review is--

I don't know yet.  Of the few of the books I've read, I totally agree with her opinion.  But then, since when did agreeing with a reviewer's opinion become a necessity in trying her advice?  Her writing is pithy, funny, a little too revealing of the plot sometimes but that was on purpose.  She's writing about books for people who've shared them with her--spoilers are right okay.

And that's why I want to read them--I want the sharing.  I want to be the teenagers she never was, and I never was, either.

Weird dogs part 2

Remember me mentioning Weird Dog Behaviors the other day?  This is weirder and it's not even my dogs!  Down the road there are a couple of those big, roly-poly kind of dogs.  I think they're Labradors.  When I walk the dogs by, the black one always comes out to greet us, sniff butt and wag tails, but the brown one stays back and just watches.

So today, I went jogging by and both dogs came to see me, sniff me, jog in front of me, and overall rejoice that they'd been waiting all day for a pack leader to take them for a walk.  They went way down the road and up the hill in front of me.

I finished my jog and went home, then came back immediately with the dog walk.


The black dog came up and sniffed as usual.  The brown dog?  Barked at us and wouldn't come anywhere near.

So...a dog that doesn't like strange dogs?  Okay...

Challenge over

Finished my 10 book challenge yesterday with

Fractured Fairy Tales told by A. J. Jacobs.
Yes, it's the same ones as those on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  I was a devoted follower for many years of my youth--that and Yogi Bear are truly the best Saturday morning cartoons ever made although Phineas and Ferb would probably be third if (a) it had been around back then and (b) it was a Saturday morning cartoon.  Back in the 60's, Saturday mornings were special, special in a kids-only kind of way that the young whippersnappers of today will never comprehend.  If you weren't there when the cartoons were there, you missed 'em.  Period.

The book is fun, of course, but only one of the tales made me laugh out loud.  A few chuckles, for sure.  And best of all, the fairy illustrations.

I've also been remiss on my movie review obligation, probably because last weekend's movie was so forgettable it took me half of the dog walk to remember what it was.

Politically incorrect to the end, this movie showed a small group of people doing impossibly heroic things without muddying up the story by trying to hint at anything going on in their minds.  Backstories were remarkably thin.  Only the relationship between the brothers had any hint of depth.

But, hey.  It wasn't so bad.

The plan

I have it!  I'm going to set a 100-book challenge for 2013 but I'm going to include all the books in Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick.  I'll mix them in with the long, boring grownup books already on my list.

I have now until January 1 to finish reading her book, get the list assembled and possibly sneak in a reading of The Passage.

Coolish

The dogs got their long Monday walk today, but I can't say I didn't rush it at the end.  I couldn't find my sock cap, my scarf or my warm gloves.

I am now well ahead on my 8 week/10 book challenge, with #9---

Clearly I'm going to meet the deadline, but things don't look good for future challenges--it took me eleven days to complete a 294-page book.  Mind you, it wasn't entirely "light" reading.  And I did waste a little time browsing onto online map sites to try to figure out the tortuous routes taken by the Continental Army during their numerous hasty retreats.  But I didn't dawdle, either.

Next year's challenge is going to include books a lot bigger than this one.

So enough about me...what about the book?

It's a shocker--I never knew how close Americans came to speaking with a British accent.  The book is the story of a single year in the war that lasted eight years.  Eight years!  I never knew it.  (And note: I went though the public school system, took the required one-and-one-half years of American history, and as a consequence--I didn't know squat about the revolution.  The French were our allies?  Washington was self-educated and had no experience commanding an army?  Some of his best generals ratted him out?  He gave up Boston, New York City, AND Philadelphia?  Bunker Hill was a British victory?)

Sorry for failing to raise the spoiler alert--I assume you read it ten years ago when everyone else did.  Or else you paid attention in history class.

Given the narrow focus of the book--one year, two armies and 400 square miles of terrain--John Jakes did a great job and made me want him to write out the war.  Before now, most of what I knew about the war came from the historical novel Drums Across the Mohawk (which I also highly recommend).  And while 1776 maybe wasn't the best war book I've ever read, it was well worth the reading.

I just wish it had better maps.

Note: if there's a decent biography of Mercy Otis Warren out there, it ought to go on my wish list.  She opposed ratification of the constitution because it lacked a bill of rights.  Any recommendations?

Another day of cooking

I need to take some new pictures, but what?  Turkey and dumplings doesn't photograph well.  It looks like brains.  I could tidy up the front porch and take a picture of that...start on my house work again....

Maybe my cookies will turn out well and I'll take a picture of them.  I just made out a schedule that had me cooking from 4:20 to 7:30.  Don't freak out--there's a generous half-hour of dog walking in there and plenty of dead time, too.

Later.  Wow--wasn't I being optimistic?  I started before 3:00, took a short detour to let Callie drive me to Blockbuster and try parallel parking, and only just finished now--at 7:44.  What happened?

Nothing, as far as I can tell.  I just cooked.  Turkey and dumplings, cauliflower bacon gratin, frozen corn, fresh pineapple, toasted coconut cookies (still in oven) and canned biscuits.  It was well after seven when I noticed it was well after seven, so I met my "no snacking before seven goal."

I'm just a hopelessly slow cook.

Later.  Burned again!   The recipe called for salt and pepper to taste in a baked dish with raw eggs.  Even if you're such a blankety-blank expert!!!! that you know everyone has their own instinctual knowledge of how much salt and pepper to use, what would it hurt you to measure it just once and give us amateurs a freaking guideline????!!!!#@$#%

Saturday morning playtime

No digestive upheaval last night!  'Tis a miracle!

Remember this photo tomorrow...

...I say to myself.  Izzy went to the vet today for annual shots.  Remember last year after shots?  I didn't remember--until it was too late.  I was supposed to tell the vet what happened last time so she could see if there were other options, and I forgot.  I've never had a dog react with diarrhea and throw-up after shots before.

(Not) anxiously awaiting tomorrow.

Here's Old Bat Ears again

She's dying to know what I'm up to--but scared to venture off the porch.  Some violation of etiquette, or something, in her caged up mind.

Later that afternoon she made it down, so that's okay.

Sunday cooking recap

 

Sunday's dinner experiments were stuffed flounder
 from the Better Homes cookbook










and roasted Brussel's sprouts from allrecipes.com.




 The flounder (actually, Swai) were good but of course Callie wouldn't touch them.  The Brussels sprouts...well...I wish I'd looked at the reviews before I started.
I had a gut feeling that 45 minutes at 400 degrees wasn't the way to go, and I was right.  They were dried out on the outside.  One reviewer suggested 30 at 425--my gut feeling would have said 20 at 450.  I might try again.  But I'll follow the gut, not the recipe.

But first...

Kittens.



Will report the semi-failure of my cooking escapades later.  Just to say, as usual, I liked it; everyone else tolerated it.

Pots of dirt to you--living memory of a precious gift to me.

Years ago, my dad went out and dug up a patch of daffodil bulbs and gave them to me in a tub of dirt.  I don't remember where he got them from--either a vacant lot or the old house on Monroe Street.
I do remember that I left the bucket out in the front yard too long and it filled up with water--I was scared I'd killed them.  But they finally got planted under the bird bath and have bloomed sweetly every year since.  To me, they'll always be Dad's.

This spring we had to dig out a water leak under the birdbath.  We only dug as much as we had to, at the time, and I saved out a big bag of the bulbs.  The hole exposing the water leak is still there (think, eyesore).  But I saved the bulbs over the summer and just now filled up these pots with them.  The ones still in the yard will probably survive but I'm not sure about these.  I'll do my best.

 Book #7 and 8 are by Kaori Yuki-- The Cain Saga: Kafka






and The Cain Saga: The seal of the Red Ram Part 1.

Somehow I missed part 2 but I'm not screaming for it right now.  If I find it, great, but I'm not going to special order it.  They're a prequel to her Godchild series.  Technically I should go re-read that series but I think I've had enough for now.  The next manga I'm going to attempt will be Reborn!  

What to say?  Highly recommended if (a) you're a teenage girl into (b) manga and (c) creepy Victorian murders, poison, body-snatching, incest and revenge.  Compared to--for example--the Twilight series, these books seem almost wholesome.  There is redeeming love, loyalty, and goodness to counterbalance all the evil.   Plus, Cain and Riff are a whole lot hotter than dopey Edward and growly Jacob.

Kaori Yuki is a genius, albeit an evil genius.  Her drawings are pretty amazing, too.  It took me a long time to learn how to read manga and I'm still not too good and picking up the action not told in words--and that's a shame, because that's the unique charm of manga.  The "flinch", the "shove", the "fist in air"...I wouldn't have even realized that Riff punched Oscar if she hadn't said so in the author's notes.

Fence fit for a zoo

Ed's new fence.  It may not be elephant-proof but I bet it's bull proof.