World's Shortest Book Reviews.

I'm sure they're not, actually. They're not quite "Tonstant Weeder frowed up." Nonetheless, I have entered an online group that wants to read 52 books in 52 weeks, and I am about to finish my 3rd book of 2009.

1. Feathers Brush My Heart, Sinclair Browning, a collection of anecdotes by women who feel that they were contacted by the spirits of their dead mothers. I got this as a Christmas gift.
This book apparently means the world to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women around the world. It was not my cup of tea at all, but I wanted to finish it so that I could converse intelligently with the giver.

2. Tamera Drewe, Posy Simmons, either a heavily illustrated novel or a comic with a whole lot of text. Borrowed from the library. Excellently realized, but, since it's a story about chasing small-time celebrity and sordid behavior, it's kind of, um, sordid. None of the characters were admirable, and none were likable rogues, either.

3. The Sand Castle, Rita Mae Brown. Novella about the events of one family's day trip to the beach in Maryland in 1957. Beautifully done - constantly threatening to fall over the cliff into schmaltz, but somehow never does. Excellent economy, wonderfully evocative. Very good. (I am shocked to see that so many readers on Amazon hated it.)

4. The Man Who Ate the World, Jay Rayner. Food memoir (a minisubgenre I LOVE.). Rayner is a London restuarant critic, and he's witty and self-aware and uses funny Brit-isms to great effect. This is sort of a travel book, as he sets out to eat the perfect restaurant meal, wherever he can find it. He does a good job explaining food trends and giving a sense of place (though the place is, as often as not, pretty depressing.) I'm enjoying this book, but it has never grabbed me the way the Reichl and Buford books that I read this summer did. Which is to say, when I'm reading it, I laugh out loud and occasionally quote a finely-turned phrase to Eric....but when I've put it down, I'm not COMPELLED to get back to it.

Incidentally, last year I read another food memoir/travel book I can recommend unreservedly: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop.

On deck at the moment: I have to read the last few dozen pages of The Man Who, then I have 2 volumes of essays - I Wanna Be Sedated, about parenting teenagers, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I have read enough of each to say:
a) Sedaris is funny again, yay, as funny as Barrel Fever.
s) apparently there is nothing funny about parenting teenagers. AT ALL.
SO QUIT ASKING.

No one can accuse me of not being "well-rounded" - a book meme from Ravelry

"What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.
Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, (don't have the patience to do this in Blogger - I've noted them instead.) italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. "

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22 (in high school)
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary (college)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair (college)

The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (I have this, and will certainly read it this year, hi Beth.)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (College)

American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (A favorite of mine. Wish I could have edited it.)
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex (I'm interested in this one.)
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (my husband has read this in French. Pfeh feh.)
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange (College)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (high school I guess)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (Ick.)
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections (on the shelf)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ***I LOVE THIS BOOK!****
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury (college)
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (college)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter (high school)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (I am sick of Malcolm Gladwell and I haven't even read his books yet! as a New Yorker subscriber, I am just tired of him.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences , oddly enough, I LOVE THIS BOOK TOO!!
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield (high school)
The Three Musketeers


What, no Bleak House? Bleak House was the first (and, as near as I can recall, the ONLY) book that I was assigned to read and never finished.

My favorite professor ever, Leroy Panek, assigned this my senior year, and I just couldn't make it. I was directing a play, designing another play, taking a full load of English/American Studies, writing about Henry James, and dating TWO guys!

Plus, I had read so much Dickens (for Leroy - I worked my schedule so that I had a class with him every semester) that it was coming out my eyeballs, and I was developing a hatred not just for the author or the period, but for the nation and possibly even extending to the language. So I bailed on this cutting critique of the Victorian British legal system.

Perhaps he knew, and never forgave me, and thus my many daydreams of a life with Leroy went unfulfilled. Honestly, I loved this man, in the way only a tubby girl who likes to read can love an English teacher who is really, really funny.

( As you read this with a horror and fascination, keep in mind that I was in college 1980-1984, a heady time of extravagant optimism and poor boundries. The climate of social sensitivity - and general good sense - were not enough to prevent the routine coupling of professors and students, some entering into relationships that lasted years. Even lifetimes - many of the profs on our campus were married to former students, and many of those spouses were on the faculty as well.

It would have been considered poor form, I suppose, for some co-ed to be boffing the prof who was grading her work that semester. But aside from issues of fairness in grading for a specific class - the whole age-difference-power-differential thing? Not even on the radar screen. Not

My love for Leroy was pure, though, which is to say, completely unrequited. I loved college boys in person, and adored Leroy, unattainable, with his snide hand gestures, in his comb-over and cowboy boots.

Do you suppose he googles himself?

Right this second, I am making turkey stock using this recipe/instructions at Cooking for Engineers, a site I am quite fond of. You would not think we had enough carcass to make stock, since we divvyed up the leftovers, but Dude! this bird was gigantic! Plus I dumped in some extra vegetation.

I've already made a mistake, and let the pot get hotter than a simmer. It boiled while I was working a puzzle with Ian. Apparently this will give us a clouded stock. Eh, I can live with that.

UPDATE, 4:22 pm:
I just tasted the stock. It smells brilliant and tastes like water. Hmmm.

I find this interesting.

It makes me think about blogging.
And journaling.
And of all those pictures I take, at least 25% of which (you won't see these on the blog, you're welcome) are of stuff lying in the street.

What are we really doing here, anyway?
What compells me to save these things -
these ideas, these combinations of words, this stuff that I've already used up?






Yeah, I don't know either. I got nothin', as they say.

But I'll still be doing it next year. I'm pretty confident of that.

God's peace in 2009.
Thanks for looking through muh rubbish. With me.

betsy

Finally, a recipe!

You thought I would never shut up about the panic attacks, did you? Well, more coverage of my pathetic mental state is no doubt upcoming, but I made a really good dinner tonight! It's alarmingly healthy and really, really delicious!


Christmas Leftover Pasta.

Set 2 pots of lightly salted water to boil, and heat a large cast-iron skillet.

When the frying pan is hot, pour in a glug of olive oil.
Slice one large onion into medium slices, and drop them into the pan.
Add a bit of salt and pepper.

You are carmelizing these onions. The classic way to do this is explained with beautiful simplicity here. I always cheat a little - throw a quarter-cup of water and cover at the start, which I think softens them a little faster with less chance of burning. But you have to uncover them for most of the cooking, or they never carmelize. Anyway, you're cooking those until they are soft, much smaller, dark brown, and sticky. It'll take a while.

When one pot of water boils, add about 10 brussel sprouts (cleaned, stemmed, halved or quartered), plus whatever leave have fallen off into the Tupperware, and several handfuls of fresh broccoli florets. Let these boil for a few minutes, until they are brilliant green but still pretty hard.

When the other pot boils, cook a little pasta - I used 1 cup of Barilla Plus multigrain rotini, which takes at least 10 minutes to cook.

When the onions are completely limp and brown, push them to the sides of the pan and pour a small amount of olive oil into the center. Drain the vegetable and drop them into that pool of olive oil for sauteeing.

When the pasta is done, drain that (save a little liquid) and add the drained pasta to the pan. Mix everything together and add a little more salt. Turn off the heat.

Let it mingle for a couple minutes, serve in bowls. Really good with a sprinkle of pine nuts.

This would be great with some mushrooms in it, and it would work great with fresh spinach or chard, I think. Even Ian ate it! Well, not the sprouts, but everything else. This makes 2 generous entree portions.

I think this might actually help me.

I bought a giant (8.5x11, for me that is giant - I've been on the 5x8 format since 1988, when I bought my first daytimer at Price Club on Security Blvd). Anyway, I bought this giant but otherwise not particularly distinguished datebook for 2009, because I need a lot of room to write because I need to keep track of basically everything on the earth - my schedule, work deadlines, availability of church volunteers, Eric's gigs, Eric's social life, Ian social life for crap's sake.

What about my social life? you may well ask. Well, it's in there too, though it does not require a lot of room to write.

Which is largely by my own choice. I like to work, I like to hang with my husband, I like to read, I like to cook. I even like spending time with my kid, (although jeez! He needs to back off a little! He's getting awfully possessive. Frankly, I could use some space in that relationship.) Socializing has fallen far, far to the bottom of the list. And I'm not aware of missing it, usually. (Unlike, say, the time alone to write/read/think, without which I become observably twitchy.)

But I suspect that I actually need it, on some unacknowledged level. At least something low-impact, like going to my knitting group occasionally, and chatting with people who do not know me well and do not expect anything from me. Just hanging out.

(Hmmm. Except the last time I went to knitting, which was MONTHS ago, I was outed as a religious professional and got into a huge deep spiraling conversation about death.)

(Except - I liked that. It was actually stimulating and there was good give and take, and I think I helped the person a little.)

All I can say is, the last third of 2008 has been doing its level best to KICK MY ASS, and I am still here,"... hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair (most of the time)...struck down, but not destroyed."

(I wasn't planning on quoting this next part, because I don't understand it - "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." I don't understand that intellectually - I couldn't put into my own words what point Paul was trying to make - but I kind of feel that sentence in my bones. It rings true on some non-rational level.)

Okay, here's where I go all Christian-y on you. Sorry, I know this will not mean anything to most people, even followers...but the end of that chapter (2nd corinthians, incidentally my favorite book, chapter 4) says something I hope I can come to believe:

So we're not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There's far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever.

yeah, What she said.

My house is warm. This morning, my lucky kids have presents. I have presents, and we're having a great big breakfast. (To be followed later by more presents and a great big dinner.) No matter how bad things get here, we will not be competing with 98% of the world for misery. Having trouble finding the money for car or washing machine repairs is a luxury. Having loved ones to miss speaks to the great gift of loving and having been loved.

My children did not miss a single meal this year. We didn't flee from a war, we didn't need medical help and not get it. We have a computer and an internet connection, for crying out loud. The fact that I bought any yarn at all, even if it had been a single ball (which it so wasn't. I cop to that.) means I had extra money. I have people to take care of, and people who take care of me.

Christmas thoughts from a great blog, Yarn Harlot by knitting teacher/writer/designer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

We had a wonderful holiday visit, and great Christmas eve services, and I am still beat.

fa la la la la, la la la ARRRRRRRR.

1. Ian wants to be a pirate for Christmas. (It's my impression that 'fancy dress' events mark many holidays in the UK, and so hundreds of little Ians probably are pirates for Christmas.)

2. Its the 23rd, so of course we just watched Seinfeld in syndication. May I say that the Festivus episode (actual title, The Strike) represents a pinnacle of smart-assery to which all of us amateur smart asses aspire: to have a family inside joke adopted as a holiday in households all over the world. In my family, a rough equivalent would be if the Mitchell Family Greeting (kermit-like arm flailing, open mouthed head rocking) or the Miller-Mitchell All-Purpose Note ("Gun noot. B. Bacson.") somehow came into universal use. Even my own household does not adhere to these customs.

3. This reminds me of a David Sedaris story, one that I feel so close to my own heart that I cannot even remember where it's from, presumably one of the early popular works like Barrel Fever. David and his many siblings, in adulthood, have gathered for a family holiday, and are staying at a motel. Some circumstance (perhaps they won't smoke in front of their mother, who has cancer) has them sitting outside by a dumpster, sneaking cigarettes in a drizzle. Their father shouts out from the motor court patio at them: "You know what's wrong with you kids?"
and they answer, in a single, exhausted voice, "yeah, we're SPOILED."

The first time I read this, I gasped, caught in perfect tension between snorting laughter (because damn, that's hysterical) tears (at the realness) and blind astonished envy at the writing. I tried to read it to Eric immediately, which came to nothing because I couldn't squeak out a sound.

After several minutes, I calmed down and read it to him, and now it's quoted quite frequently.

Hummph: The Muppet Show, The House at Pooh Corner, and David Sedaris. Add to this The Long Secret (which is where my brother and I learned to turn to one another and say "Jesus hates you.") and it's a pretty good overview of the cultural influences on my upbringing.

Merry Christmas. Should we ever get around to it, we'll post something or other at www.mitchellhenning.blogspot.com.

busy kitchen 2

just knocked over an 8 oz bag of coffee beans onto my kitchen floor.

painstakingly picked up the beans, many of them one by one, finger and thumb, and then rinsed a collander-full in cool water.

These beans came all the way from Ethiopia to make me caffienated. They were roasted by a friend of mine.

I'm not going to keep them from their destiny just because of a little kitchen floor dirt. Far be it from me to stand in their way.

Also, my kitchen smells AWESOME.

Busy Kitchen yesterday:

a couple batches of these, for neighborhood distribution and church on Sunday

8 loaves of bread - a couple of loaves burned! which has never happened to me before! Weird!

plus a double batch of this, which I would make again with sharper cheese

and a pound of this, which needed more hot peppers. I didn't have the tiny red peppers I used last time, which come from a houseplant...guess I should have stopped by the auto shop and checked to see if the plant was still producing. My store-bought peppers reflect my timidity in these matters - I am terrible at getting the peppery-ness right.

The salad and the cassarole were for a party, where all the food was amazing. I also totally lucked out at the competitive gift exchange (Is this a southern thing? I never heard of this activity until I moved to the dc area. You know, where you draw numbers, and then, when your turn comes, you can either take a wrapped gift or poach someone else's desirable gift? It can be totally cut-throat - last night was hilarious, but moderately civilized- and it definately is entertaining and revealing of character.)

Anyway, I ended up with a cookbook and placemats! So we can eat our seasonal produce on handloomed indigeousnous textiles. That totally rules.

It also totally rules because the gifts we contributed were very popular, totally in keeping with the theme (good for the recipient, good for the world) and as close to free as humanly possible. I made a reusable string grocery bag (it actually wasn't finished yet - I put it in the box with the needles and a note) and a couple organic free-trade dark chocloate bars. (Expensive for candy bars, but very cheap for a Christmas gift.)

Both these gifts were extremely hotly contested, poached as many times as the rules would allow. Because, in the competitive gift exchange, I'm totally not competitive about getting gifts - I'm competitive about contributing desirable gifts, as confirmation of how damn clever I am. Not that anyone necessarily has to know it was me. I just have to know. It's satisfying.

Should you be competitive in this way too, here's a hint for next year:
It is impossible to go wrong with chocolate.

no casualties

A couple of years ago, after our first trip to the beach with our little darling, I quoted Heather Armstrong of Dooce as saying that traveling with a toddler equals SUFFERING. Oh, I avered, it was rough, but I wouldn't go so far as to characterize it as SUFFERING.

I was wrong.

I just spent the night in a glorious luxury hotel in Winchester, VA, where my husband had a gig. We ate gourmet dinners and breakfasts, stayed in a room with a wonderful bed with fabulous, million-thread-count linens, and a lovely rainfall shower. The pool was the kind of pool I dream about - the basement pool, with soft lighting and pillars coming up out of it and caryatids and a fountain. And a hot tub. And towels that would have been worth stealing.

In a town where the streets are filled with...yarn shops! Bead stores! Wine bars! Places full of handmade toys! Sidewalk cafes. Lovely old-fashioned Christmas decor.

I wanted to throw myself in front of a train.

Which I could have - they came though every couple of hours, past the beautifully restored train stone station. Even my tragic death would have been quaint and stylish.

Here's what the thing is, The books all say that kids love routine. Kids thrive on routine.

My kid HATES routine, all routine, with the burning heat of a thousand suns. He screams, he argues, occasionally he kicks...if he's in an unusually vile mood, he has been known to try to bite the person who is enforcing routine. (That would be me.)

There's just one thing worse. Guess what.

That's right. A disruption of rountine.

When Ian's routine is disrupted, he believes that this means all mores of civilized behavior are suspended. That it's okay to leap up and down on an upholstered banquette, to talk back to your parents, to see how loud you can scream, to never sleep. to stand in your crib and shout at people at 11pm. And again at 4:30. And again at 6:22.

I don't think we'll be allowed to stay there again any time soon.

I am very proud that I was able to administer some discipline (not that it seems to have made an impression) with appropriate self-restraint. I have said before - I don't beat my kid, but I understand why some people do.

Well, I didn't really understand. Until this weekend.

Between the frustration, the exhaustion, and the more-than-two-hour drive on absolutely no sleep...no one in our family should take our intact bodies for granted this evening.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

extensive research has led me to declare,
definitively and without fear of contradiction:
that this
is the World's Skankiest Christmas Record.
(in case you miss a lyric, read them here.)

Classic Literature, abridged

~CURTAIN~

Me: I am Sam! Sam I am! Would you like green eggs and ham?

Ian: Um...no.

Me: Okay, then.

~FIN~

No kidding.

'Tis the season, I confess, when I climb the radio dial from my usual favorites (AMU, PFW, RNR) and head up to the Easy Listening end of things. Yes, "WASHFM, home of your" absolutely horrifing "lite n' easy favorites"......plays Christmas music, nothing but Christmas music. from now until midnight on the 25th. And that's what I'm listening to.

Yeah, occasionally there's a tidbit that sends me lungeing for the switch. Today it was Rod Stewart injuring O Holy Night....but to be fair, all Rod Stewart songs send me lungeing, except Hot Legs. There's some terrible, terrible new version of So This is Christmas, sung by (I can only imagine) some American Idol person, which should never be played anywhere under any circumstances.

But I love Cydni Lauper and the ReAnimated Corpse of Frank Sinatra, singing a duet about Santa. I love any version of Baby It's Cold Outside, even if it's not David Johannsen. Of course there's way too much Mariah, but you occasionally get to hear something really great, like Ella or Etta. Or even Mel.

Plus they play the Porky Pig song, (which I find is not actually Mel Blanc at all but some small-market DJ) singing Blue Christmas in character and you can hear someone, presumably the recording engineer, laughing himself senseless in the background.

And they play Snoopy's Christmas.



They played it Saturday afternoon, when we were in the car. From the moment that I heard the first fakey sound-effects-record explosions, I was a goner.

"Mommy, is that song making you sad?" asked Ian from his car seat.

BECAUSE I WAS CRYING.

Because of Snoopy. Because this record came out when I was 5. Because I have heard it so many, many hundreds of times, and the record itself - not just the lyrics or the melody, not the weird random bass breakdown in the middle, but every pop and groove of the recording - is grooved into my brain. There is nothing sad about the song, nothing I can think of that I am longing for or missing that the song embodies. It doesn't bring some specific memory flooding back.

It's just that some things just hit you, like that little hard rubber hammer hitting you on the knee at the doctor's office. My brain has reflexes too, apparently. And nothing seems to slow them down.

world's easiest cookie:

This is a cookie I remember from my childhood (from other kids' houses - I don't recall my dad making cookies at our house. Cakes yes - cookies, not that I can recall, except the sliced Pillsbury roll.)

Anyway, there are lots of complicated recipes for these on the web, but there's NO EXCUSE for working hard at making this cookie. 4 ingredients, 12 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350.
Grease a cookie sheet (spray grease is fine for this.)

Mix together:

1 cup peanut butter
(regular commercial stuff, smooth or crunchy - I've never tried it with natural peanut butter yet.)
1 cup granulated sugar (you could skimp on this; one recipe I saw suggested using Splenda, which I think would work fine, though I haven't tried.)
1 egg.

When completely mixed, roll into balls. Bake at 350 for 9-10 minutes. They don't turn brown, just look a little dryer.

While they're in the oven, unwrap some Hershey's kisses, dark or plain milk chocolate.

When you take the cookies out of the oven, remove them to a plate. and squish a kiss into the center of each.

Good warm, good cold. Good smooth, good crunchy. They even survive a little burn (I burned the first batch on Saturday. Still good.) Makes 18-24, depending on how big you make the balls.

this made me positively giddy:

When I journey, as a writer must, from town to town seizing people by the lapels to persuade them how effortlessly infectious my latest book is, they are too often not so curious about what is in the book. What they want to know is, how did I write it? Maybe they are scheming to run home and write my next one while I'm still out stirring up business. Even so, I feel I should respond.

"I'm not going to tell you," the novelist Donald Barthelme once said to an interviewer who asked him to reveal a certain narrative strategy, "because it's a secret."

"From whom?" asked his interviewer.

"From youm," said Barthelme.

Roy Blount Jr. in today's Washington Post Book World. The rest of it as at least as good. I kept reading random phrases aloud to my husband while he was trying to watch a football game (and also show our kid Christmas music videos on his laptop. So clearly, this was worth taking my life, or at least my domestic tranquility, in my hands.

And then we watched the hamster on the piano eating popcorn. And life got even better, if that were possible.

Music from Noggin helps me feel less crazy. Slightly.

Afraid Parade! from Kelsey Friday on Vimeo.


Side note: I went to Youtube (yeah, always trouble, I know) to see if anyone has posted this video. No one had, but one of the alternate suggestions for a search - along with "afraid of Americans" (a Bowie song) and "Soft Parade" (of course) was:

afraid of pickles.

Which led to various clips from the Maury Povich show featuring a young woman who was (and apparently continues to be) afraid of pickles.

I think that may be the name for my all-girl band.

So what you're telling me is: life on board ship was actually prettty grim

Me: Hey, little dude, time for a nap. Let's check that diaper.

Ian: NO! I am a PIRATE! Pirates don't get their diapers checked by anyone!

Me: Oh yeah? Really? So you just sit around in your poop all day?

Ian: YES!! We sit in POOP AND PEE! ALL DAY! ARRRR!

I feel like a new woman.

Mostly. The meds are doing a fabulous job. I feel almost like myself again. OF COURSE the is plenty for me to be jumpy about, like our ridiculously high electric bill and the rolling snowball of Advent and the Terrible, Terrible, Terrible About-to-be-Threes.

And of course, David is still dead, and please let me remind us all that THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT, all this crazy with the heart palpatations and the headaches and the not walking to from the kitchen to the bathroom without the phone reciever so I can call 911 in case I have a heart attack while washing my hands.

David, I wish you were here.

I would only punch you once, I swear.

Beans in the crockpot. (edited a little since the first publication)

The night before, rinse a pound bag of dried beans - I used Goya 16-Bean Soup Mix - and soak in cold water overnight in the fridge.

In the morning, drain and rinse one more time.

Put these in the crockpot with a couple of green peppers, a couple ribs of celery, and one large onion, chopped into large pieces. Add one can of stewed tomatoes (with liquid.) Add one cup vegetable broth, and a bunch - say, a tablespoon, unless your hand slips and you put in, like, a huge handful by accident - of Cajun seasoning.

Here's the deal with the crockpot: it's magic. I seem to be unable to screw up dishes in the our crockpot, which is at least as old as I am, and belonged to Eric's mother.

I started the pot on high before breakfast, and covered it and switched it to medium before leaving the house. But you could probably start it on medium and leave it there all day; you might even be able to leave it on low all day. I do not actually know how long these take to cook - certainly they would be done in less than 10 hours...maybe 6 hours on medium-high? Guessing.

Eric checked the beans around one, and threw some more liquid in it - another cup or so of vegetable broth. (If you do not have a helpful spousal equivalent at home for the cooking process, start with more broth, or broth cut with cold water, when you put the dish together in the morning.)

When I came home at 7:30, the beans had been cooking for more than 10 hours. They weren't burned at all. The tomatoes and celery had disintegrated; the peppers and onion were delicious, as were the beans and the thick, savory liquid. I threw in some frozen corn and peas to brighten it up and add a little crunch, and heated those through. You should adjust the seasoning, now (unless your hand slipped and you dumped a whole ton of Cajun seasoning in. If that happened, it's too late, and it is what it is.)

Vegan, fat free, high protien, a little salty, very satisfying. Makes 6-8 servings, maybe more with rice. Yay, beans.

Much Better

Today was much better.

I had thought that take an emergency mental health day, but it was not to be. I remembered (at 11 or so Monday night) that I had promised a design job for Wednesday, and Tuesday would be my only chance to work on it. So I slunk in a little late, closed myself up in the Art Cave, and got it done. I usually love interruptions - sharing my office suits me very well - but I was really happy to have very few today.

I went to the doctor this afternoon, and just knowing that I was going to be seen helped ease teh crazy a little. Indeed, I did get the Uninsured Hypochondriac Package, and thank God for that.

And thank God for Dr. K, who listened to my heart and lungs, looked at my blood, listened to The Great Litany of Symptoms.

I got some meds, but mostly I got assured, in a very serious manner, that I am going to be okay. It seems to be working. I feel a little more like myself.

PLUS the beans in the crockpot didn't burn! They came out really good! I'll post the recipe here.

This was not a good day. I mean, as they say, the Lord woke me up this morning, so it's a good day...but that was pretty much all downhill from there.

spend about an hour trying to get our general practicioners office to answer their phone. Fine, I will take my sorry-ass, poverty-stricken, uninsured hypochondriac business elsewhere. That'll show 'em.
But where?

I raced out of the house on multiple missions, trying to get the shirts to the cleaners, the kid out of the house, the deposit to the bank, and back in time to get my car to the shop so they could tell me why the check engine light is on.

But, aha, one tire is completely flat.

great, unstrap the kid, move the shirts and etcs over to Eric's car. Make him come outside to bring me the key. Which I instantly lose, and spend a good 15 min looking for, crawling under the car, feeling through piles of leaves, whatever.

It was in Eric's pocket. Hey, at least his car's clean now.

The kid and I go on missions, Eric stays home and waits for the auto club guy, who changes my tire. Hey, at least my trunk's clean now. Unfortunately, my back seat is full.

Missions accomplished; I come home and make a pile of pancakes, which everyone eats. That was nice.

we all go and drop off my car; Ian falls asleep in the car, and we drive around for a while and then stop for burgers. They were pretty good.

Husband calls the shop, and finds out that I need 4 new tires, an oil change and a freaking CATALYTIC CONVERTER which costs AS MUCH AS A WHOLE CAR USED TO.

This is the point at which I begin to despair.

As we drive, we construct a rationale for putting off the catalytic converter replacement, and worry ourselves into a lather wondering about the price of special-order low-resistance tires.

blah blah blah, we're at the dealership for more than an hour for this and that. I am somehow able to keep from crying during this time.

We come home. Kid eats a hot dog and watched Charlie Brown Christmas on dvd. I cry surprisingly little.

I find a general practicioner in the Yellow Pages. I call his office, and the doctor himself answers the phone, and LISTENS TO ME TALK ABOUT MY SYMPTOMS. And tells me he will see me tomorrow. And what to do in the meantime. I will have to ask to him about his Uninsured Hypochondriac discount program.

While husband puts kid to bed, I go to the grocery store. Things are bruisingly expensive, and yet it cheers me up some - it is hard for me to feel despair in the grocery store. (Interestingly, I once experienced what I believe was a psychotic break in a grocery store - the Giant on Rolling Road in Baltimore. So I guess it's not actually impossible.)

I come home, put some beans to soak, and watch The Grinch, which is colored so brilliantly that I have to think it's been digitally remastered since last year.

I am still sad, still worried about a lot of things (and unable to discern what's a real, serious thing that I should be taking care of and what's just bad brain chemicals triggered by grief.) Still wayyyy tooo short-tempered with my kid. Still thinking of things that could go better at work.

I am ready for something different.

I survived Advent One.

I am watching "Hobbits Gazing at Each Other with Strong, Unspoken Feelings."


I do believe that I cried my way through this entire film in the theatre. I cried because the spider was scary, when Gollum embodied the human condition, when Sam did pretty much anything.

It is an awful lot of Eijah Wood in one sitting, though.

What I am learning on the food network tonight:

Duff met Mary Alice when he was working a ridiculous campus job at UMBC. He was a facilities guy, and he was called upon to fish her pearls out of the dorm drain.

Duff plays bass! Like Rodney! I find this facsinating. Could this be a Baltimore thing, this tattooed bass guys making superior desserts? Rockers making the world a better place through cookies? (Neither is from Baltimore originally. Perhaps it's just an unusually hospitable place for cheery weirdos to make a life from scratch.)

I will never be a chef. (I didn't learn this on the Food Network tonight - I learned it reading an article in the Post years ago. When a woman wrote about how she was always the one who had to carry the 50 lb bags of flour up the first escape.) It is entirely too much work. And Bill Buford's book totally confirms it. As does Ratitouille.

I will never be a chef, but I might be Duff Goldman for Halloween sometime.

so instead, let's admire the Keith Haring balloon

macys parade thanksgiving 2008 005
Originally uploaded by Sherri K!

Hell for Hypochondriacs:

Oh my dear Lord. The other night, I was complaining about this and that, and my darling husband was kind enough to look up some things on this site.

EPIC FAIL.

yesterday's story

I woke up Ian. We were chatting - him standing up in the crib, me puttering around his room a little.

Ian: (gasps) What was THAT sound?
me: I think it was one of the cats, sneezing. It sounded like the cat exploded, didn't it?
Ian: OH. (long pause.) .....should we go check?

we're watching the World Magic Awards on cable. All the performers on the bill appear to be winners of The Consistency Award, since every single one of them is doing the same material, WITH THE SAME JOKES, wearing the same costumes, that they have been doing on TV specials for as long as we have been watching magic on TV specials.

It's gruesome.

Not to mention the vaguely sheepish "celebrities" - people from reality shows, mostly - who are tasked with introducing the acts. Dougie's doing a good job as emcee - he's actually a magician, did you know that? He's pretty good, I hear. He's been doing mostly gags on this show, but I read that he does quite a respectable close-up set.

The best thing about this show in Hans Klok's sparkly pants.

Squash me

< carnival squash


butternut squash>




I used one of each to make tonight's dinner, a pasta dish vaguely modeled on this Mario Batali recipe. Very good, even though I had rather a free hand with the crushed red pepper and it came out spicier than I'd like.

I made it with whole wheat pasta, and a perfect combination of texture. Plus, this would make a terrific vegan dish as well - I adore cheese, but this would be just fine without it.

This may be the healthiest thing I have ever cooked.

goofball stories illustrated

I don't know if you read this tale of woe on my other blog, The Mulligan Years.


but someone did! I found this stuck on my monitor this morning: the anonymous artist (I have my suspicions...) even captured our matching pink cheeks!
What a wonderful thing for someone to do for me. ( look! he's even wearing a little homemade cardigan... wow.)

Also, thanks for the comments. I really appreciate it.

Ian the Terrible was only really awful for about half the day, so that was a huge step forward. Also, husband has been going out of his way to make sure that I have time to do things like go for walks and complete a sentence and stuff like that. So that has helped a lot. I'm not, you know, walkin' on sunshine or anything, but I seem to be handling things a little better than yesterday.

So thanks for my cartoon, Anonymous! I really love it.

It's Sunday. I got nothin'.

the sadness, the lack of sleep, the crazy hypochondria (which can be kicked into clinically insane overdrive by a friend having a heart attack, believe me) the terrible twos and ADVENT all got together and mugged me. I am hurting.

Okay, first of all, I would like to protest that THAT LAST POST about Scrooge and Love Actually etc etc was definately created after midnight. That was today's post, people. This is just wrong.

Second, have I mentioned my intense dislike for this woman?

Oh my, I do not like her at all.

I am not in the habit of hating random people on television - I figure that I am not the target market for most shows, and so, when a professional presenter is in some way distasteful, I barely notice. Even on shows I love, I can overlook a great deal - for example, the presence of Nina Garcia (Stacie knows why I am snickering.) But this woman...Foodnetwork.com tells me that she has authored 13 cookbooks! That she went to the Le Cordon Bleu!

All I know is, I just saw her make a drink that involved hot apple cider, bourbon, mulling spices and... COOL WHIP.

Seriously? Come on, Food Network - Seriously?! Really, seriously?

(I want to say that I'm not a snob, at least not a very convincing one. I have enjoyed my share of Cool Whip through the years. But seriously - even if you care nothing about weird fats, or about flavor - non-dairy whipped topping in a hot clear liquid is a bad idea. )

I'm watching a terrible movie that I love - Love Actually. This actually dovetails nicely with today's household theme, Holiday Sentimentality.

Basically, it snowed for a second, and we all went over the edge.

Eric called me from the supermarket - he was delerious, buying bread cubes and cranberry sauce. We made a chicken, though, rather than a turkey. This was our faux thanksgiving, as we are going over the river etc etc for the buffet at the officer's club, as we do every year, an excellent way to do the holiday together.

But tonight we had nuclear family mini-Thanksgiving: roast chicken, apple-raisin stuffing, le suer canned peas, yummy cranberry sauce (not homemade, sadly - Eric makes this BRILLIANT fresh cranberry-orange sauce every year for Christmas. I think the recipe was in Parade Magazine, like 10 years ago. Eric has it memorized. I think we have to postage-stamp-sized clipping pinned to our kitchen bulletin board. In fact, let me see of I can find it on the web.)

Oh! Here it is! You can see why it fits on such a small clipping. I can't remember whether he puts anything else in it (grated ginger, maybe?) Anyway, it's great, plus it's easy. And fast.

Hey! Songbird should make that!

We followed up mini-Thanksgiving with a mini-viewing of a Christmas movie - the kid doesn't have the patience for a whole movie, so we just watched a few musical numbers from Scrooge before bed. Will I ever not cry at this story? At "I haven't missed it?" No kidding - I cry at the Bill Murray sarcastic version.

This week has been pretty rough, frankly. One might even say sucktastic. I was doing pretty well last week, spending time planning a funeral for my friend David, thinking about what to say, what to wear, running out to buy shoes (didn't think I should officiate my first funeral in Doc Martens). This week, though, there has been little to distract me from thinking about...things. (Little besides my husband, my pre-schooler, my congregation, looming freaking ADVENT ALREADY, not to mention Christmas gifts.)

So maybe a little stuffing, and a little terrible Albert Finney dancing, was just what I needed.

Kitchen Equipment Advice

Songbird over at RevGal is freaking out about Thanksgiving (with pretty good reason, I must add), and so she's doing a survey. About kitchen equipment.

Honey, you've come to the right place.

1) Do you have a food processor? Can you recommend it? Which is to say, do you actually use it? I have 2 - both Cuisineart brand.

My first was a little tiny one, just one chopping blade and one speed (though it does go both directions.) I got that one to make baby food, for which it was completely successful, and I do use it for little things occasionally - not more than once a week.

And then I have the big one - my brother found me a used one in total mint condition, all the blades. I use it at least twice a week, and sometimes a lot more, chopping vegetables, grating cheese, making bread crumbs, crushing ice.

I use them both enough to keep them both out on the counter all the time.

And this is a pretty good time of year to buy one, incidentally - lots of competition. If one had tons of time, I would say try Craigslist or your congregation, since lots of people have bought them and never use them and will, like, GIVE them to you. But time is short for Songbird.

2) And if so, do you use the fancy things on it? I use all the blades, some more than others. But I found it pretty much impossible to store the blade assemblies safely UNTIL I HAD THIS BRILLIANT IDEA:

magnetic knife bar
mounted vertically on the wall, back in the corner where the kid can't reach them
it really works.


3) Do you use a standing mixer? Or one of the hand-held varieties?

I have that very one, except in white. We call it The Riding Mixer. I never baked until I had it. I LOVE it. I would say I use it 3 to 5 times a month, lots more this time of year.

4) How about a blender? Do you have one? Use it much?
I have one (also found by my brother, King of the Refurbished Appliance) but I have never used it.

5) Finally, what old-fashioned, non-electric kitchen tool do you enjoy using the most? I adore my Lodge cast-iron pans, my heatproof silicone spatulas, and my flexible 'brownie spatula'. Oh! And my bench knife. But I think the most convenient kitchen tool is my instant-read thermometers (I have 2) that I use nearly every day. YOU NEED one of these for Thanksgiving, I think, more than other specialized kitchen thing.

I got all this stuff (not the cast iron, but all the gadgets I mentioned above,) from the King Arthur catalog, but nothing on the website now looks like the ones I have.

Bonus: Is there a kitchen appliance or utensil you ONLY use at Thanksgiving or some other holiday? If so, what is it?
Eric's family passed on their electric bunwarmer. We use it for biscuits on Christmas. Exclusively.

I sometime worry that I embarrass my church. You know, by being ME.

But I guess it could be worse.

Honestly, you barely have to read it. Just look across the bottom of your screen as you wait for it to load - 'swinging-biker-vicar'.

Man, too bad this blog already has a name.