I have spent at least six hours the last two days making food for the New Year's Eve party we are going to/co-hosting. If you want uncomplicated, easy recipes to make I would definitely NOT recommend using recipes from Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen or Gillian Duffy's Hors d'Oeurvers. I suppose I should have seen it coming with the word SLOW in the title, but the appetizer book (which is full of just gorgeous photos) has a subtitle that includes the word SIMPLE.
Sure eggplant tastes wonderful after you soak it for 30 minutes, cut it in thin slices, fry it, and then sauté it with a lot of tomatoes for about 40 minutes but it takes for frickin' EVER. But that doesn't even hold a candle to the Ginger-Watercress Roulades I made. I just wanted a simple rolled sandwich on some sort of tortilla-type bread.
Once you find yourself wringing out pickled ginger and then laying it on paper towels to remove excess moisture and triple-spinning watercress and gently towel-drying it, your night is over. The worst part? Worse than going to three different specialty stores looking for the lavash? Once you roll up a thin tortilla bread with just cream cheese, watercress, and wasabi you have a very, very, very small roulade. I had to roll two of them up together to make it look more than itsy-bitsy. After 90 minutes the result was 3 fairly small rolls. Never again.
Seriously, ringing out pickled ginger? I am going to have drink a lot of Champagne to make up for that.
Happy New Year (anyway)!
Many thanks to Jen at What's Your Name Mommy for this:
I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read.
The comments on this post by Fussy reminded me of one of my favorite jokes:
Why did God make patchouli?So that blind people could hate hippies, too.
Which of course leads to these other gems:
What do the deadheads say after the drugs run out?God, this music sucks.
How do you know if a hippie slept on your couch last week?
He's still there!
One of my old boyfriends used to say, "I hate gin."
What he really meant to say was, "I hate gin. Exept when it is in front of me, or when my girlfriend buys a bottle and leaves it at my house. Then I love gin, as do all my roommates. Oh yeah, I won't ever replace it, either."
Good times. Gosh I wonder why that never worked out?
When AmigaBoy and I were first dating he used to say things all the time that indicated he thought we were permanent. "We should go to New Orleans together," or "We should go rafting next Summer." Nice things. Incredibly sweet things. It made me nervous.
I was much more accustomed to men who said things like, "We shouldn't tell anyone we are dating," or "I haven't dated anyone for more than six weeks, so I am sure it won't last." Then I was terribly surprised when those things didn't work out!
So, AB and the sweet things. He also held my hand all the time and said highly complimentary things. So I was sure it was fishy and it was starting to bother me. Shouldn't this person act as if I didn't exist? The more he seemed to want me, the more I was ready to bolt. Finally one night we were out for a long walk. He held my hand and said all the normal things he said and I just blurted out, "You are freaking me out, this is going too fast, why are you always talking about the future? We might not even make it that far! And for god's sake, stop HOLDING MY HAND all the time."
His reaction? "Oh, ok, no problem." Then he stopped holding my hand. I felt so calm and good in that moment. I felt a surge of huge attraction and I stopped freaking out. Sudddenly it was alright if he talked about the future or held my hand, or did sappy, nice things.
Sometimes just getting it off your chest is all that is needed. Then the thing you thought you needed isn't there anymore.
Apparently it is link day. Go here, go NOW:
Sweet Juniper Takes On Walmart Shoppers
Before Wood started smoking crack during the pregnancy, we had chosen either "Makayla Trinity" or "Katelyn Mackenzie" to be our daughter's name, but every time we got high those names just sounded a little too fancy. So one night Wood smoked like three rocks and as she puffed out that last smoke she was like, "Juniper" and that's how we came up with it. But Wood had to give some guy named Tyrone a blow job to get the crack, we didn't just find it in any food aisle.
I know not much gets done in the weeks before Christmas so instead of work, here's a few fun time wasters:
Happy Monday!
Sometimes I just don't want to start thinking about things. For instance, I don't want to be directed to a site that has a lot of comments about how BSG might be going downhill. I once read a recap of one of Alton Brown's shows and the writer talked about how AB said, "Um" too much. My inlaws told me about how they hated Rachel Ray's voice. Neither of which bothered me up until that time. Now? Now I can barely tolerate watching. I WAS HAPPY BEFORE.
There's something wrong with me, when people start explaining how they dislike this, that, or the other thing then I start to look at it with a much more jaded eye. My husband has ruined more music for me in this very way. I'm already way too introspective, people.
Sometimes, I just want to be.
Now, I eat of the animal flesh and I consume dairy. I wear leather and am fully cognizant that might seem a tad bit hypocrital when I tell you that I try to eat only organic, free-range, or wild-caught (for fish) food.
This isn't about the well-being of the animal. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't make me unhappy to know that Little-Mister-Chicken-I-Am-About-To-Eat gets to see the sun and run on the grass and all that shit. Fine. That is a nice upside.
I am more concerned about eating an animal that sits in its own body waste and ingests growth hormones. Then, because it is stuck in a cage surrounded by tons of other birds that go nowhere, Mr. Chicken also gets sick a lot and sees a lot of attention from bugs. Mr. Chicken gets a lot of antibiotics that I wouldn't ingest if given the choice. Growth hormones and antibiotics and general ill-health shows in your bones. Therefore when using a broth made from boiling the flesh and bones of an animal, I hope that animal got to run around a little and wasn't given pills that I wouldn't let a professional athlete use, let alone a child.
When there is a topic out in the blogosphere that I disagree with, I usually just swallow hard and move on. Not worth getting upset about. This one I felt a little in the pit of my stomach, but I put it aside. People just don't understand, right? Nothing worth getting your panties in a knot about. Which is ultimately true. Usually if I am unhappy I vote with my feet. So, after a glass of wine and a little false bravado, I have decided not to visit a certain high-traffic site while there is a banner up against free-range, organic chicken stock.
Word.
[Edited to add: Let me explain that I understand that this ridiculous argument makes about as much difference as a single raindrop in the Pacific Ocean. Call me Don Quixote.
Also: This is said much better, with a lot more educational links over at Lilbit's site.]
Last night I drove up to Bellingham with a friend for Girls' Night Out. Partway there the traffic came to a deadstop. I got the car stopped and then looked into my rearview to make sure the person behind me was going to stop also. He wasn't and didn't and that made me hit the lady in front of me, too. When I called to tell the news to my husband, he insisted on driving our other car (in rush hour) up to us and swapping so we could continue on with the wonderful evening.
I don't know quite how to repay such selflessness so I will start with a small comment I made on a post about weddings being stressful:
Before the wedding you hear over and over how you won't recall a single detail from the day and how it goes by in such a blur. Therefore, I was dedicated to making sure that I would remember each detail. Because AB is Italian we had this HUGE wedding with family members from all over, we made sure everyone brought their kids, and had a rowdy time.We loved it. We closed the place down. After the wedding we were the ones outside saying goodbye to everyone, drinking leftover beer from the trunk of our car. Even the catering staff left before we did. We felt guilty and offered to leave but they just said, "Oh have a great time, just close the gate before you leave!"
It was awesome. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
In a heartbeat. I mean, after the car is fixed, AB gets over that cold, and my head stops hurting so much from the night before.
Lane at Pink Elephants did a quick recap of some of her favorite posts for the month and suggested others do as well. I really enjoyed a lot of the free-form writing that took place this month, but I can't say I thought I wrote the most amazing stuff that was ever written. That wasn't exactly the point. It did, however, get me back onto writing here in a much more regular basis. Thanks, M. Kennedy! So here are the (few) highlights of the month, including all the posts I did after I signed up for this thing on October 16th:
It seems that some of my best work comes out of completely embarrassing myself. That's good, because then I have a lot to work with.