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Sunday, March 25, 2007
I can't help myself.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Allow me to properly introduce my new friend.
I didn't withhold the details on purpose; I must have been a little tipsy on lambwiches. The rice stuff I was going on about is sold under the name "Rice and Shine" by the fine hippies at Arrowhead Mills. Please do not confuse it with "Rice 'N' Shine," which appears to be an over-priced diet food. Apparently, its claim to fame is that it contains "Risolubles™," which I can only guess are some kind of quick-dissolving hilarity aid.
I've made the stuff a few times since my first attempt, and I'm now devoted. It's an elegant, quick, delicious, cheap whole grain. Hoo. Ray. Its only failing is that I don't know what to call it. Brown rice "polenta" is clumsy. Rice cereal sounds like baby food or breakfast. Rice mush? No. Rice gruel? Rice grits? No and no. And none of the puns that keep popping into my head: rolenta... po-rice... grice... um... rits... I got nothing.
So, readers, chime in. What would you call it? And I know you're out there... I can see you through my computer (well, Google Analytics can see you, and I can't stop pestering Google Analytics to rat you out).
I've made the stuff a few times since my first attempt, and I'm now devoted. It's an elegant, quick, delicious, cheap whole grain. Hoo. Ray. Its only failing is that I don't know what to call it. Brown rice "polenta" is clumsy. Rice cereal sounds like baby food or breakfast. Rice mush? No. Rice gruel? Rice grits? No and no. And none of the puns that keep popping into my head: rolenta... po-rice... grice... um... rits... I got nothing.
So, readers, chime in. What would you call it? And I know you're out there... I can see you through my computer (well, Google Analytics can see you, and I can't stop pestering Google Analytics to rat you out).
Not Like Vomit in Any Way That Really Matters
On a good day, I love to cook dinner. I start at 5:30 or 6, and I listen to the radio as I wash and chop and stir and eventually, by 7 or 7:30, dinner is ready and the house smells good and we eat and I don't have to wash any dishes. On a good day, all those things make me happy, not just the last one. On a bad day, I don't even get home until 7:30, I'm already hungry and exhausted, and I can't imagine anything I want to do less than wash and chop and stir. This has been happening a lot lately, thanks to all the work I didn't do while we were away and now have to catch up on.
So I got a crock pot, thinking it would be great to come home to a house that already smells good and where dinner is already ready. I got a 6-quart Rival, and one of the reasons I picked it is that I get to call it a crock pot without anyone saying, "Actually, it's just a slow cooker. Crock Pot is a trademark of the Rival Corporation." Okay, not even my friends are that pedantic, but still. It says Crock Pot right on it, and somehow that makes me happy.
What didn't make me happy is that it's no less work to make a good meal in the crock pot. It's the same amount of work on a different schedule. The first time I used it, I figured I'd chuck the stuff into it right after breakfast, get dressed and go to work. By noon, I was still in my bathrobe, still unshowered, still chopping and browning and deglazing. Which, of course, is just when my friendly and well-groomed neighbor rang the bell (Hi, Jenn!). She managed to conceal her surprise at my condition fairly well. At least I wasn't holding a half-empty bottle of wine. I figure every neighborhood needs someone to set the bar low, and I'm happy to help. I've always gravitated more towards one-downs-manship than keeping up with the Joneses anyway. You don't really worry about letting yourself go if you never had a firm grasp on yourself to begin with.
I finally got everything in the crock pot, got myself looking more like a respectable member of society, and left the house, and I admit that I did feel a certain satisfaction whenever I remembered that dinner was cooking itself as I worked. It was pretty much ready when I got home, and the house did smell pretty good. But it wasn't until two nights later that I realized the true value of the crock pot. Those slow-simmered, stewy dishes that the crock pot specializes in freeze really well, reheat easily in the microwave, and are generally tastier the next day anyway (and with the crock pot, you don't have to be home all day to monitor a burbling dutch oven). My giant crock pot made about six servings of curry when it was only about half full. So one dinner's worth of labor gave me three dinners (for our two-person household), and could have given me six. Not bad at all.
More for my own reference than as a recommendation, here's what I made, minus an ill-advised red pepper. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't like well-done peppers, and what did I think was going to happen to that pepper over seven hours? It wasn't inedible, but I won't slow-cook peppers again.
Crock Pot (or Slow Cooker, if you must) Beef Curry with Garbanzo Beans
two pounds stew beef, extra fat trimmed off, and very well browned
3 small onions, chopped and browned
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 15-oz cans garbanzo beans, drained
6 small carrots, chopped into bite-sized hunks
1 tsp salt
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp whole cloves
7 cardamom pods
3 bay leaves
---
3 tablespoons curry powder (or more to taste)
cream
3 Tbsp flour and 3 Tbsp butter for beurre manié
Combine everything but the curry powder, cream, flour, and butter in large oval crock pot. Set it to cook for 7 hours on low. Leave the 2 tablespoons of butter out on the counter so it's soft when you get home. Once it's done, thicken it with a beurre manié, or however else you usually thicken things. Taste it, and add salt or hot sauce if it needs it. Fish out any cardamom pods, bay leaves, and cloves that you notice, but don't worry about finding them all. They just, um, add authenticity or something. Also, it's really hard to find them all. You're better off just warning people.
Either stir cream into what you'll serve tonight, or let people add their own at the table. I'm not sure how stable the cream would be through freezing and re-boiling, so don't add it to the whole pot if you're planning to have leftovers.
One last tip: don't serve this on a plate if your cat has been throwing up a lot lately. It's uncomfortably reminiscent of a certain kind of cat hurk. But, but, it tastes good! It's very nice! Where are you going?
So I got a crock pot, thinking it would be great to come home to a house that already smells good and where dinner is already ready. I got a 6-quart Rival, and one of the reasons I picked it is that I get to call it a crock pot without anyone saying, "Actually, it's just a slow cooker. Crock Pot is a trademark of the Rival Corporation." Okay, not even my friends are that pedantic, but still. It says Crock Pot right on it, and somehow that makes me happy.
What didn't make me happy is that it's no less work to make a good meal in the crock pot. It's the same amount of work on a different schedule. The first time I used it, I figured I'd chuck the stuff into it right after breakfast, get dressed and go to work. By noon, I was still in my bathrobe, still unshowered, still chopping and browning and deglazing. Which, of course, is just when my friendly and well-groomed neighbor rang the bell (Hi, Jenn!). She managed to conceal her surprise at my condition fairly well. At least I wasn't holding a half-empty bottle of wine. I figure every neighborhood needs someone to set the bar low, and I'm happy to help. I've always gravitated more towards one-downs-manship than keeping up with the Joneses anyway. You don't really worry about letting yourself go if you never had a firm grasp on yourself to begin with.
I finally got everything in the crock pot, got myself looking more like a respectable member of society, and left the house, and I admit that I did feel a certain satisfaction whenever I remembered that dinner was cooking itself as I worked. It was pretty much ready when I got home, and the house did smell pretty good. But it wasn't until two nights later that I realized the true value of the crock pot. Those slow-simmered, stewy dishes that the crock pot specializes in freeze really well, reheat easily in the microwave, and are generally tastier the next day anyway (and with the crock pot, you don't have to be home all day to monitor a burbling dutch oven). My giant crock pot made about six servings of curry when it was only about half full. So one dinner's worth of labor gave me three dinners (for our two-person household), and could have given me six. Not bad at all.
More for my own reference than as a recommendation, here's what I made, minus an ill-advised red pepper. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't like well-done peppers, and what did I think was going to happen to that pepper over seven hours? It wasn't inedible, but I won't slow-cook peppers again.
Crock Pot (or Slow Cooker, if you must) Beef Curry with Garbanzo Beans
two pounds stew beef, extra fat trimmed off, and very well browned
3 small onions, chopped and browned
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 15-oz cans garbanzo beans, drained
6 small carrots, chopped into bite-sized hunks
1 tsp salt
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp whole cloves
7 cardamom pods
3 bay leaves
---
3 tablespoons curry powder (or more to taste)
cream
3 Tbsp flour and 3 Tbsp butter for beurre manié
Combine everything but the curry powder, cream, flour, and butter in large oval crock pot. Set it to cook for 7 hours on low. Leave the 2 tablespoons of butter out on the counter so it's soft when you get home. Once it's done, thicken it with a beurre manié, or however else you usually thicken things. Taste it, and add salt or hot sauce if it needs it. Fish out any cardamom pods, bay leaves, and cloves that you notice, but don't worry about finding them all. They just, um, add authenticity or something. Also, it's really hard to find them all. You're better off just warning people.
Either stir cream into what you'll serve tonight, or let people add their own at the table. I'm not sure how stable the cream would be through freezing and re-boiling, so don't add it to the whole pot if you're planning to have leftovers.
One last tip: don't serve this on a plate if your cat has been throwing up a lot lately. It's uncomfortably reminiscent of a certain kind of cat hurk. But, but, it tastes good! It's very nice! Where are you going?
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Lambwiches
I have a food bias. I scoff at foods that are presented as "just-as-good-as" substitutes for other foods. Margarine instead of butter, tofu instead of meat, soy milk instead of milk, "Rice Dream" instead of ice cream, and all those strange wheat-free pastas instead of good old semolina.
I do know that some of those foods (tofu! rice noodles! maybe even soy milk!) are delicious in their own right, and have identities independent of what they're supposed to be standing in for. But in my head, tofu's good reputation is tainted by the travesties that are Tofu Pups and Not Dogs. Soy milk has a bad reputation because, well, I don't even like milk that much, and if all I ever hear about a product is, "It tastes almost like real milk! You almost can't tell!," well, I'm not going to be beating a path to the fake-dairy section of the market to try it out.
But I know I'm wrong about some of those things. I know I'm missing out. I know I have a bias, and I'd like to get over it already. So the other day, having breakfast with a gluten-free friend (you know what I mean), I was happy to discover that her Special Gluten-Free-So-it-Won't-Kill-You, Tastes-Almost-Like-REAL-Cream-of-Wheat Rice Cereal was delicious! Just plain delicious! Not delicious-for-rice-cereal, just plain tasty. AND whole grain. Man. I felt like I had discovered a new continent or something (I believe I've already covered how easily excited I am).
So I spent the next few days thinking of all the things I could do with my new friend Rice Cereal. It had a clear place in the polenta and grits family, but I was so excited, I wanted to push it even farther. I remembered that as it cooled, it had become quite thick and (ironically) glutinous in consistency. That reminded me of arancini and omusubi and I figured I could give something like that a shot. "Lamb-Stuffed Rice Balls!" is what I thought, and then I thought, "Why does all this stuff sound so much better in other languages? Stupid English." So maybe I should call them something else. But first I had to make them.
Shall I spin out the long, sorry tale? Shall I go into all the reasons I thought this was a good idea, and all the reasons I was wrong? Throw in a little suspense? A few laughs? Too late. We're all busy people, and I bet you'll appreciate it if I cut to the part where I was laughing resignedly to my brother on the phone, prodding a cooling, pasty, greyish blob of stuff that was never going to be made into balls of any kind, stuffed or not. I had called him, as I often do, for advice, once the time for advice is long past and all he can do is talk me down from the ledge of Plan A, and encourage me towards a safe, sensible, ground-level Plan B. Thank goodness I can be a bit of a disaster in the kitchen, or I wouldn't end up laughing with my brother on the phone so often.
So the menu departed from the ambitious and misguided "Lamb-Stuffed Rice Balls and Greek Salad", veered alarmingly towards the meager "Bread, Cheese, and Greek Salad," and ended up at the respectable "Seasoned Lamb Patties with Brown Rice "Polenta" and Greek Salad". And what do you know, it was quite good. The only sign of the averted disaster was the tremendous pile of dirty dishes created as I careened from menu to menu. My main Eater and Dish Washer accepted his lot gracefully, and I counted myself lucky.
"But where do the Lambwiches come in? I was promised Lambwiches." I hear you say. Well, I had to set the stage. I had to illustrate how my vagaries and whims and, uh, research, all result in News You Can Use. I do all this so you don't have to! So here, edited down so as to be actually helpful, is a recipe for the delicious lunch we had the next day (you can skip all the above steps, and you're welcome):
Lambwiches (serves 4 or 5)
patties:
1 pound ground lamb
6 cloves garlic (less is fine, but will be less delicious)
half a bunch of parsley, big stems removed
one small red onion, quartered and peeled
2 eggs
salt and pepper
relish:
1 small red onion
half an english cucumber
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
a pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon dry oregano
mini (3 or 4 inches across) whole wheat pita bread—two or three per person
hummus
Make the patties: Put the garlic, parsley and quartered red onion in the food processor. Whiz until minced (wheeee!). Mix the minced vegetables, the egg and the meat together by hand. Make small patties and sear them in a frying pan, on a grill, or in the broiler. You can do this well ahead of time and reheat them in the microwave right before you make the sandwiches (ground lamb seems fatty enough to survive this kind of mistreatment).
Make the relish: Cut the cucumber and red onion into batons (more or less) and mix them with the vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and oregano. Ideally, let them sit for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally. It's nice if the vegetables get a chance to soften and become a little pickley.
Warm the pitas in the toaster or under the broiler, cut a slice off of one edge (halving them makes them too small to stuff), and open them up. Spread a layer of hummus all around the inside of the pita, and tuck in a warm lamb patty. Fill the rest of the space with vegetable relish. Set out other things, like sauteed eggplant and some black olives, but no one will eat them because they'll be too focused on their messy and delicious Lambwiches.
My gluten-free friend won't be able to enjoy a lambwich, but I thank her (and my patient brother) for helping midwife them into existence. Call this my IOU for a home-cooked meal for both of them. How about some braised lamb shanks and root vegetables over rice "polenta"? It'll be good, I promise.
I do know that some of those foods (tofu! rice noodles! maybe even soy milk!) are delicious in their own right, and have identities independent of what they're supposed to be standing in for. But in my head, tofu's good reputation is tainted by the travesties that are Tofu Pups and Not Dogs. Soy milk has a bad reputation because, well, I don't even like milk that much, and if all I ever hear about a product is, "It tastes almost like real milk! You almost can't tell!," well, I'm not going to be beating a path to the fake-dairy section of the market to try it out.
But I know I'm wrong about some of those things. I know I'm missing out. I know I have a bias, and I'd like to get over it already. So the other day, having breakfast with a gluten-free friend (you know what I mean), I was happy to discover that her Special Gluten-Free-So-it-Won't-Kill-You, Tastes-Almost-Like-REAL-Cream-of-Wheat Rice Cereal was delicious! Just plain delicious! Not delicious-for-rice-cereal, just plain tasty. AND whole grain. Man. I felt like I had discovered a new continent or something (I believe I've already covered how easily excited I am).
So I spent the next few days thinking of all the things I could do with my new friend Rice Cereal. It had a clear place in the polenta and grits family, but I was so excited, I wanted to push it even farther. I remembered that as it cooled, it had become quite thick and (ironically) glutinous in consistency. That reminded me of arancini and omusubi and I figured I could give something like that a shot. "Lamb-Stuffed Rice Balls!" is what I thought, and then I thought, "Why does all this stuff sound so much better in other languages? Stupid English." So maybe I should call them something else. But first I had to make them.
Shall I spin out the long, sorry tale? Shall I go into all the reasons I thought this was a good idea, and all the reasons I was wrong? Throw in a little suspense? A few laughs? Too late. We're all busy people, and I bet you'll appreciate it if I cut to the part where I was laughing resignedly to my brother on the phone, prodding a cooling, pasty, greyish blob of stuff that was never going to be made into balls of any kind, stuffed or not. I had called him, as I often do, for advice, once the time for advice is long past and all he can do is talk me down from the ledge of Plan A, and encourage me towards a safe, sensible, ground-level Plan B. Thank goodness I can be a bit of a disaster in the kitchen, or I wouldn't end up laughing with my brother on the phone so often.
So the menu departed from the ambitious and misguided "Lamb-Stuffed Rice Balls and Greek Salad", veered alarmingly towards the meager "Bread, Cheese, and Greek Salad," and ended up at the respectable "Seasoned Lamb Patties with Brown Rice "Polenta" and Greek Salad". And what do you know, it was quite good. The only sign of the averted disaster was the tremendous pile of dirty dishes created as I careened from menu to menu. My main Eater and Dish Washer accepted his lot gracefully, and I counted myself lucky.
"But where do the Lambwiches come in? I was promised Lambwiches." I hear you say. Well, I had to set the stage. I had to illustrate how my vagaries and whims and, uh, research, all result in News You Can Use. I do all this so you don't have to! So here, edited down so as to be actually helpful, is a recipe for the delicious lunch we had the next day (you can skip all the above steps, and you're welcome):
Lambwiches (serves 4 or 5)
patties:
1 pound ground lamb
6 cloves garlic (less is fine, but will be less delicious)
half a bunch of parsley, big stems removed
one small red onion, quartered and peeled
2 eggs
salt and pepper
relish:
1 small red onion
half an english cucumber
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
a pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon dry oregano
mini (3 or 4 inches across) whole wheat pita bread—two or three per person
hummus
Make the patties: Put the garlic, parsley and quartered red onion in the food processor. Whiz until minced (wheeee!). Mix the minced vegetables, the egg and the meat together by hand. Make small patties and sear them in a frying pan, on a grill, or in the broiler. You can do this well ahead of time and reheat them in the microwave right before you make the sandwiches (ground lamb seems fatty enough to survive this kind of mistreatment).
Make the relish: Cut the cucumber and red onion into batons (more or less) and mix them with the vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and oregano. Ideally, let them sit for half an hour or so, stirring occasionally. It's nice if the vegetables get a chance to soften and become a little pickley.
Warm the pitas in the toaster or under the broiler, cut a slice off of one edge (halving them makes them too small to stuff), and open them up. Spread a layer of hummus all around the inside of the pita, and tuck in a warm lamb patty. Fill the rest of the space with vegetable relish. Set out other things, like sauteed eggplant and some black olives, but no one will eat them because they'll be too focused on their messy and delicious Lambwiches.
My gluten-free friend won't be able to enjoy a lambwich, but I thank her (and my patient brother) for helping midwife them into existence. Call this my IOU for a home-cooked meal for both of them. How about some braised lamb shanks and root vegetables over rice "polenta"? It'll be good, I promise.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Estamos en casa!
What's that math thing where you cover half the distance to your destination, and then half of the remainder, and then half of that, and so on? You continue getting closer and closer to your goal, but you never actually arrive. I have no idea what that's called, but it should be known as The Coming Home From Spain Phenomenon.
We covered quite a lot of territory at first. Got to the airport, got on the plane, and got across the ocean no problem. I'm especially happy about that last accomplishment, because if there's any part of traveling that you want to go smoothly, it's the vast-body-of-water-crossing part. I do pay attention when they demonstrate the yellow vests and the inflatable rafts and I promise, when the time comes, to remove my shoes and leave all hand baggage behind while I follow the floor level lighting to the nearest exit, which may be behind me. But, really. I can't believe that any of that will be the least bit helpful when something awful happens to the plane as we're going a kajillion miles an hour six miles above the ocean (I'm pretty sure those were the numbers on that helpful info screen). So, yes, I'm very happy we did that part without a hitch. But once we landed, there were nothing but hitches between us and home.
We stood in just enough lines (baggage, customs, security) that we missed our next flight by five minutes. The next flight wasn't for six hours, and since we could have hitchhiked home in six hours, we decided to instead take an earlier flight to a nearby city and take the bus home from there. All this decision making and plan-changing, of course, involved many different Airline Officials, and felt like wading through complicated, official porridge. But the officials, even while mired in porridge, were extremely helpful and kind, and we successfully flew to that nearby city, and were done with planes for a while. But then the bus was late enough getting to the airport that it just decided to be both the late-leaving six o'clock bus and the early-leaving eight o'clock bus, just to average things out and piss off a few more people.
Days later (I'm sure) we finally pulled into the dark, freezing bus station in our dark, freezing hometown. The first cab at the cab stand was empty, so after looking around for the appropriate amount of time (given the temperature, about forty seconds), and then hopped in the second cab, belted up, proclaimed our destination, and were about to get a little closer to home when (of course) the owner of the first cab barreled out of the station and requested that we get out, unload our bags, load them in her cab, and allow her to take us home and take our money, as was only right, fair, and proper. We're usually easygoing, tractable people (at least in public), but we had moved beyond usual. This poor woman, who had a point, was our Last Straw. We mustered up all our remembered skills from toddlerhood, set our respective jaws, and said, "No." And (eventually) it worked. Grumpy resistance pays off! Look out world!
So then, only about 45 minutes earlier than we would have gotten into town had we hitchhiked, we got home. After a month away from our native cuisine, we were good, loyal Americans and got Thai take-out for dinner. And then we went to bed.
Now, even after I've warmed up, eaten, slept a lot, and settled in, it still feels good to be home. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed my first trip to the grocery store. I knew what everything was, I could find everything I needed, and I could rest assured that the cheese was all industrially produced and free of anything offensive like listeria or complex flavor.
We covered quite a lot of territory at first. Got to the airport, got on the plane, and got across the ocean no problem. I'm especially happy about that last accomplishment, because if there's any part of traveling that you want to go smoothly, it's the vast-body-of-water-crossing part. I do pay attention when they demonstrate the yellow vests and the inflatable rafts and I promise, when the time comes, to remove my shoes and leave all hand baggage behind while I follow the floor level lighting to the nearest exit, which may be behind me. But, really. I can't believe that any of that will be the least bit helpful when something awful happens to the plane as we're going a kajillion miles an hour six miles above the ocean (I'm pretty sure those were the numbers on that helpful info screen). So, yes, I'm very happy we did that part without a hitch. But once we landed, there were nothing but hitches between us and home.
We stood in just enough lines (baggage, customs, security) that we missed our next flight by five minutes. The next flight wasn't for six hours, and since we could have hitchhiked home in six hours, we decided to instead take an earlier flight to a nearby city and take the bus home from there. All this decision making and plan-changing, of course, involved many different Airline Officials, and felt like wading through complicated, official porridge. But the officials, even while mired in porridge, were extremely helpful and kind, and we successfully flew to that nearby city, and were done with planes for a while. But then the bus was late enough getting to the airport that it just decided to be both the late-leaving six o'clock bus and the early-leaving eight o'clock bus, just to average things out and piss off a few more people.
Days later (I'm sure) we finally pulled into the dark, freezing bus station in our dark, freezing hometown. The first cab at the cab stand was empty, so after looking around for the appropriate amount of time (given the temperature, about forty seconds), and then hopped in the second cab, belted up, proclaimed our destination, and were about to get a little closer to home when (of course) the owner of the first cab barreled out of the station and requested that we get out, unload our bags, load them in her cab, and allow her to take us home and take our money, as was only right, fair, and proper. We're usually easygoing, tractable people (at least in public), but we had moved beyond usual. This poor woman, who had a point, was our Last Straw. We mustered up all our remembered skills from toddlerhood, set our respective jaws, and said, "No." And (eventually) it worked. Grumpy resistance pays off! Look out world!
So then, only about 45 minutes earlier than we would have gotten into town had we hitchhiked, we got home. After a month away from our native cuisine, we were good, loyal Americans and got Thai take-out for dinner. And then we went to bed.
Now, even after I've warmed up, eaten, slept a lot, and settled in, it still feels good to be home. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed my first trip to the grocery store. I knew what everything was, I could find everything I needed, and I could rest assured that the cheese was all industrially produced and free of anything offensive like listeria or complex flavor.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Last Miscellany from Spain
-The small food shops (butchers, bakeries, greengrocers) are staffed by women who look like they could be politicians. They are extremely, agressively well-groomed. They wear white smocks or pink aprons or other non-surprising food-service uniforms, but it's clear that their native dress is sensible navy suits with two-inch heels and tasteful gold jewelry. I've never before seen a woman with perfectly coiffed hair and flawless, understated makeup run a bloody piece of meat through a bandsaw.
-The hippest young women here have mullets with very short bangs. The most stylish old ladies have shockingly red or orange (or both) hair. There is a sliver of the population which is both past middle age and extremely trendy (I'm guessing they're gallery owners or fashion designers), and they have bright red mullets with very short bangs. In a month, I have seen five of them.
-My hair is chin-length and brown, I don't have bangs, and I usually dress in what The Great Sarah Vowell calls "the bruise pallet" of black, grey, blue, and brown. As soon as I open my mouth, it's clear I'm not Spanish, but apparently I'm not identifiably American either. So far, everyone who has guessed where I'm from has guessed France. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I didn't think I had enough existential angst in me to look French. Perhaps I have the appearance of existential angst covering my goofy Pollyanna creme center. Or perhaps it's mygiant distinguished French nose.
-First Sign Of Globalization at the stadium during the game: In line for hot dogs (sorry, salchichas) at half time, some guys behind us were talking about market optimization and revenue tracking (or something) in Northern Californian accents.
-Second SOG at the stadium: After the game ended, we clapped the players off the field, people started making for the exits, the music came on, and it was Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire? Walk the Line? One of those—it was weird. But good! Who doesn't like Johnny Cash?
-At a huge, packed, dark, noisy book release party, the food was hard to get to, and not too user-friendly. Standing around chatting outside in the spillover crowd, we saw a pizza delivery guy drive up on his scooter, hop off, look hopelessly at the crowd and say, "Juan?" It was a classic tale of yearning and desire, illustrated. One guy really really wants to get rid of a pizza, get his money, and leave, and some other guy is trapped in a sea of patrons of the arts, desperately hungry. We never found out if the guy who eventually traded money for food was the same Juan who called in the first place, or just some opportunistic hungry guy, but within seconds of that box being opened, it was emptied. Maybe the pizza delivery company is onto something...
-The hippest young women here have mullets with very short bangs. The most stylish old ladies have shockingly red or orange (or both) hair. There is a sliver of the population which is both past middle age and extremely trendy (I'm guessing they're gallery owners or fashion designers), and they have bright red mullets with very short bangs. In a month, I have seen five of them.
-My hair is chin-length and brown, I don't have bangs, and I usually dress in what The Great Sarah Vowell calls "the bruise pallet" of black, grey, blue, and brown. As soon as I open my mouth, it's clear I'm not Spanish, but apparently I'm not identifiably American either. So far, everyone who has guessed where I'm from has guessed France. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I didn't think I had enough existential angst in me to look French. Perhaps I have the appearance of existential angst covering my goofy Pollyanna creme center. Or perhaps it's my
-First Sign Of Globalization at the stadium during the game: In line for hot dogs (sorry, salchichas) at half time, some guys behind us were talking about market optimization and revenue tracking (or something) in Northern Californian accents.
-Second SOG at the stadium: After the game ended, we clapped the players off the field, people started making for the exits, the music came on, and it was Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire? Walk the Line? One of those—it was weird. But good! Who doesn't like Johnny Cash?
-At a huge, packed, dark, noisy book release party, the food was hard to get to, and not too user-friendly. Standing around chatting outside in the spillover crowd, we saw a pizza delivery guy drive up on his scooter, hop off, look hopelessly at the crowd and say, "Juan?" It was a classic tale of yearning and desire, illustrated. One guy really really wants to get rid of a pizza, get his money, and leave, and some other guy is trapped in a sea of patrons of the arts, desperately hungry. We never found out if the guy who eventually traded money for food was the same Juan who called in the first place, or just some opportunistic hungry guy, but within seconds of that box being opened, it was emptied. Maybe the pizza delivery company is onto something...
Friday, March 09, 2007
To Add to the Millionaire List: Second Home in Spain
We're getting ready to go home, and I think I'm almost ready. I've pretty much blown off work this week, in favor of sucking up as much tasty Spain as possible. Now that I'm so comfortable finding my way around the city, it's lovely to just wander down the sunny streets, stopping for coffee or a snack or a new t-shirt with skulls on it (it's fantastic—looks like a nice floral pattern from four feet away), not really caring where I'm going.
But I'm really ready to be back in my own house, where I don't have to be on my best-house-guest behavior all the time, where I can leave hair in the bathtub and leave dishes in the sink and burp out loud (more often). Sounds nice, huh? Wanna come over? No? Maybe another time.
I can't wait to be surrounded by fluent English speakers, but I'm going to miss all the Spanish-learning that's been happening in my brain. I can almost feel the renovations, and it's really sped up over the last week or two. I wish I had a voice-recorder with me, so I could make transcripts of all this stuff that I know I'll be missing soon.
But I'm really ready to be back in my own house, where I don't have to be on my best-house-guest behavior all the time, where I can leave hair in the bathtub and leave dishes in the sink and burp out loud (more often). Sounds nice, huh? Wanna come over? No? Maybe another time.
I can't wait to be surrounded by fluent English speakers, but I'm going to miss all the Spanish-learning that's been happening in my brain. I can almost feel the renovations, and it's really sped up over the last week or two. I wish I had a voice-recorder with me, so I could make transcripts of all this stuff that I know I'll be missing soon.
Visca Barça!
I can't call it soccer, because that's the game where suburban American kids run around a field in a tight pack (presumably surrounding a ball of some kind) while their parents stand on the sidelines alternately drinking giant coffees and yelling, "Go, go, go!" at their kids. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I fully expect to be a coffee-swilling, yelling soccer-watcher one of these days.
I can't call it football, because that's the interminable TV show where giant black men either stand around waiting for something to happen or charge at each other as hard as they can while little white men with wires in their ears yell, "Go, go, go!" at them from the sidelines. Not that there's anything wrong with that either. They're all getting paid a whole lot of money, and I can't say I would pass up millions of dollars to run around in tight pants and be in soup commercials.
I can't be all ex-pat about it and call it futbol, because that's even worse than "amuse bouche" in terms of slap-worthy pretension. So I'm stumped. But whatever it should be called, it was fantastic. It was maybe the fifth professional sports game I've ever been to, but it's the first one that made me understand what all the fuss is about. The stadium holds 100,000 people, but it was a slow night, so there were only 70,000 there. Only 70,000 people all holding their breath together, all jumping up and screaming together, all chanting, "Hijo de puta!" together. I've never had so much fun swearing. And swearing is fun! I got so into it that I twisted my ankle leaping to my feet after a goal. I even found myself doing the back-seat-driver-shuffle with my feet, but instead of mashing on an imaginary brake pedal, I kept trying to nudge an imaginary ball.
The game we saw was an extra-exciting one, because there were four goals scored. I know the joke is that it's a boring game because nothing ever happens, but it's actually more exciting. There might not be any goals scored at all, or there might be one or two, so when one happens, it's a huge deal. All 70,000 people leap out of their seats simultaneously, screaming. There is hugging. There is even a little crying. There are flags as big as bed sheets. I was sitting next to a guy who clearly spends his days being very quiet and respectable, and for most of the game, he wouldn't do any more than mutter, "Venga, venga, venga!" under his breath. But he leapt up and yelled with everyone else at the first goal, and even threw his hands up for a moment before he composed himself. After sitting next to him for two hours, leaping and yelling and muttering together, I felt like we'd been through quite an experience, and I half wanted to kiss him on the cheek and wish him a safe trip home, but I didn't want to cause an international incident ("American Terrorist Assaults Local Accountant"), so I let him go without even a handshake.
I can't call it football, because that's the interminable TV show where giant black men either stand around waiting for something to happen or charge at each other as hard as they can while little white men with wires in their ears yell, "Go, go, go!" at them from the sidelines. Not that there's anything wrong with that either. They're all getting paid a whole lot of money, and I can't say I would pass up millions of dollars to run around in tight pants and be in soup commercials.
I can't be all ex-pat about it and call it futbol, because that's even worse than "amuse bouche" in terms of slap-worthy pretension. So I'm stumped. But whatever it should be called, it was fantastic. It was maybe the fifth professional sports game I've ever been to, but it's the first one that made me understand what all the fuss is about. The stadium holds 100,000 people, but it was a slow night, so there were only 70,000 there. Only 70,000 people all holding their breath together, all jumping up and screaming together, all chanting, "Hijo de puta!" together. I've never had so much fun swearing. And swearing is fun! I got so into it that I twisted my ankle leaping to my feet after a goal. I even found myself doing the back-seat-driver-shuffle with my feet, but instead of mashing on an imaginary brake pedal, I kept trying to nudge an imaginary ball.
The game we saw was an extra-exciting one, because there were four goals scored. I know the joke is that it's a boring game because nothing ever happens, but it's actually more exciting. There might not be any goals scored at all, or there might be one or two, so when one happens, it's a huge deal. All 70,000 people leap out of their seats simultaneously, screaming. There is hugging. There is even a little crying. There are flags as big as bed sheets. I was sitting next to a guy who clearly spends his days being very quiet and respectable, and for most of the game, he wouldn't do any more than mutter, "Venga, venga, venga!" under his breath. But he leapt up and yelled with everyone else at the first goal, and even threw his hands up for a moment before he composed himself. After sitting next to him for two hours, leaping and yelling and muttering together, I felt like we'd been through quite an experience, and I half wanted to kiss him on the cheek and wish him a safe trip home, but I didn't want to cause an international incident ("American Terrorist Assaults Local Accountant"), so I let him go without even a handshake.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Metro Strategies
Old metro-taking strategy: When exiting the train, step onto the platform in the midst of a scrum of harried, bustling Spanish commuters. Barrel along an underground tunnel with them, carried by the current. Come to a fork in the tunnel, with signs pointing to two equally unfamiliar destinations. Thoroughly annoy the horde when you stop abruptly in the middle of the passage and unfold your giant map. Flap it about, turn it upside down, and try to read 8-point type in a language you're only just getting the hang of. Give up, and decide to follow the herd to wherever they're rushing. If so many people are in such a rush to get there, it must be good. Carry on barreling down tunnels. Eventually, daylight will appear at the top of an escalator. Let yourself be carried up, and out onto a street you've never heard of, with no familiar landmarks, and facing who knows which way. The herd will be immediately absorbed into the city. You are now alone on a deserted, unidentifiable street. Walk to the nearest intersection to begin your research. Since whoever laid out the city had a very fancy plan that involved snipping off the corners of the blocks so they are more like very square octagons than very square squares, it's impossible to see the street signs for both intersecting streets simultaneously. You identify one street, but then you have to walk around a corner, pass two cafes and a flower shop, and walk around another corner and past a cellphone store until you can identify the other street. That done, you can now identify exactly where on the map you are. That might be handy if you were meeting someone, or if you were calling a taxi, which you now begin to feel might be the best way of getting to your destination, which must be around here somewhere. But you want to walk. You want to figure this out and be done with transportation already. So that means you have to figure out which direction you're facing. So you set out down one of the streets, making your decision of which one based solely on which street is sunnier (if it's chilly out) or which is shadier (if it's hot). One block later, the map and the city will start to agree with each other in a helpful way, and you now know that you have only to walk back up the block you just came down, turn right, go two blocks, turn right again, and you're done.
New metro-taking strategy: After nearly a month of the practicing the former technique, realize that, while you don't know the streets well enough to know where you are precisely, you do know the neighborhoods well enough that whatever direction you walk in, things will start looking familiar within a few minutes, and you'll be able to navigate from there, without ever having to look at the map. It's very freeing to leave the train, not even try to understand any of the signs, just following the flow of fellow-travelers, end up on the street, and continue strolling. There is no anxiety, no map, no back-tracking. You know the city well enough to know that there's no chance you'll accidentally wander into a scary neighborhood, but it's still unfamiliar enough that there's a lot of interesting things to look at as you walk. Like the beautiful scooter parked next to the dumpster. Like the old office chairs someone has left next to the dumpster, to wait for the garbagemen. Like how the chairs look pretty clean, and they're just the right distance from the scooter to offer a really good view, and they look comfortable enough to sit on for a while while you draw.
New metro-taking strategy: After nearly a month of the practicing the former technique, realize that, while you don't know the streets well enough to know where you are precisely, you do know the neighborhoods well enough that whatever direction you walk in, things will start looking familiar within a few minutes, and you'll be able to navigate from there, without ever having to look at the map. It's very freeing to leave the train, not even try to understand any of the signs, just following the flow of fellow-travelers, end up on the street, and continue strolling. There is no anxiety, no map, no back-tracking. You know the city well enough to know that there's no chance you'll accidentally wander into a scary neighborhood, but it's still unfamiliar enough that there's a lot of interesting things to look at as you walk. Like the beautiful scooter parked next to the dumpster. Like the old office chairs someone has left next to the dumpster, to wait for the garbagemen. Like how the chairs look pretty clean, and they're just the right distance from the scooter to offer a really good view, and they look comfortable enough to sit on for a while while you draw.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Translating "Sick" into Spanish
To the citizens of Europe's most beautiful cities, an American vomiting into the gutter is nothing new. They see it all the time. America practically specializes in exporting binge-drinking college students to Europe. So I shouldn't have been so worried about whether or not I could make it to the corner store and back without hurling. They would have just stepped around me and continued on their cultured, sophisticated ways. As it happened, it was no problem. What was a problem was my desperate craving for the sick-foods of my home country.
In general, I'm an adventurous eater and I like trying new foods in foreign countries. That all ended when I was flattened by food poisoning. I wanted 7-up and only 7-up, dammit. And when I wanted something more solid, I wanted saltines and I wanted applesauce. And what I really wanted was for my mother to bring them to me, but I knew that was probably an unreasonable expectation, with her being 3000 miles away and recovering from surgery. And I don't think the TSA is letting you take big bottles of 7-up on flights any more anyway, so that was out. I had to handle getting my own sustenance, at least until my domestic-support-staff/ home-health-aid got back from the office.
So I made it all the way down the block, and stood there in the market, trying to will the familiar packages into materializing on the shelf in front of me. It didn't seem to be working. So I took a deep breath, forced my brain to concentrate on problem-solving and not on nausea, and did my best. I gathered the blandest, softest, plainest foods I could, managed to pay for them, and scuttled back out into the street. I made it all the way back home without incident, kicked off my shoes, dropped my grocery bags, and whimpered my way back to bed clutching a bottle of lemon soda.
It must have worked, because I did not die (despite my midnight resignation to a life tragically cut short by my own cooking). My heart still beats, my stomach still does its gurgly work, and my brain still hosts an overactive imagination. An aside to my family: apparently I really do love you an awful lot, because it was very sad to picture you all at my funeral. But, on the bright side, you do look good in black. Such a handsome bunch.
So, for future reference, and in hopes that someone might benefit from this hard-won information, here's how some traditional American home remedies translate into broken Spanish:
Saltines = Grissini (those plain, crisp breadsticks the diameter of pencils)
Applesauce = Purée de Patatas (Instant Mashed Potatoes) (as close as I could get)
7-up = Fanta Limón
Bananas = Bananas
Love of a Good Man = Amor de un Hombre Bueno (not available in supermarkets)
And a note about the grissini: they might actually be a better sick-food than saltines. They're made of the same basic stuff, of course, but their long, thin shape really lends itself to being eaten while lying in bed. All the crumb-producing chomping action takes place inside the mouth, thus preventing cracker crumbs from ending up in the sheets or stuck to the neck or in the hair. Cracker crumbs in the hair=bad morale.
Now that I'm feeling better, I've learned something else: a country known for its fantastic food is a great place to be newly-recovered from food poisoning. Think you liked the food before you got sick? Try it now, when it's the first food with actual flavor you've eaten in days. "This is the best bread I've ever eaten!" "This fish is astonishing!" "Oooh, can I have some more rice? I love it!"
It's kind of fun. I wouldn't say it's worth it necessarily, but it is a nice bonus in the whole nasty affair.
approximately:
-I don't want to eat anything.
-I'd like a little broth to drink.
-I want some noodle soup.
-I'd like some chicken soup.
-I want a small cheese sandwich.
-I want a beer, some salad, fish, potatoes, and a coffee, please!
In general, I'm an adventurous eater and I like trying new foods in foreign countries. That all ended when I was flattened by food poisoning. I wanted 7-up and only 7-up, dammit. And when I wanted something more solid, I wanted saltines and I wanted applesauce. And what I really wanted was for my mother to bring them to me, but I knew that was probably an unreasonable expectation, with her being 3000 miles away and recovering from surgery. And I don't think the TSA is letting you take big bottles of 7-up on flights any more anyway, so that was out. I had to handle getting my own sustenance, at least until my domestic-support-staff/ home-health-aid got back from the office.
So I made it all the way down the block, and stood there in the market, trying to will the familiar packages into materializing on the shelf in front of me. It didn't seem to be working. So I took a deep breath, forced my brain to concentrate on problem-solving and not on nausea, and did my best. I gathered the blandest, softest, plainest foods I could, managed to pay for them, and scuttled back out into the street. I made it all the way back home without incident, kicked off my shoes, dropped my grocery bags, and whimpered my way back to bed clutching a bottle of lemon soda.
It must have worked, because I did not die (despite my midnight resignation to a life tragically cut short by my own cooking). My heart still beats, my stomach still does its gurgly work, and my brain still hosts an overactive imagination. An aside to my family: apparently I really do love you an awful lot, because it was very sad to picture you all at my funeral. But, on the bright side, you do look good in black. Such a handsome bunch.
So, for future reference, and in hopes that someone might benefit from this hard-won information, here's how some traditional American home remedies translate into broken Spanish:
Saltines = Grissini (those plain, crisp breadsticks the diameter of pencils)
Applesauce = Purée de Patatas (Instant Mashed Potatoes) (as close as I could get)
7-up = Fanta Limón
Bananas = Bananas
Love of a Good Man = Amor de un Hombre Bueno (not available in supermarkets)
And a note about the grissini: they might actually be a better sick-food than saltines. They're made of the same basic stuff, of course, but their long, thin shape really lends itself to being eaten while lying in bed. All the crumb-producing chomping action takes place inside the mouth, thus preventing cracker crumbs from ending up in the sheets or stuck to the neck or in the hair. Cracker crumbs in the hair=bad morale.
Now that I'm feeling better, I've learned something else: a country known for its fantastic food is a great place to be newly-recovered from food poisoning. Think you liked the food before you got sick? Try it now, when it's the first food with actual flavor you've eaten in days. "This is the best bread I've ever eaten!" "This fish is astonishing!" "Oooh, can I have some more rice? I love it!"
It's kind of fun. I wouldn't say it's worth it necessarily, but it is a nice bonus in the whole nasty affair.
approximately:-I don't want to eat anything.
-I'd like a little broth to drink.
-I want some noodle soup.
-I'd like some chicken soup.
-I want a small cheese sandwich.
-I want a beer, some salad, fish, potatoes, and a coffee, please!
Monday, February 26, 2007
Girona
We took a weekend trip to Girona, a small city in Catalunya that's surrounded by Roman walls and bisected by a river. I had heard it was beautiful, but I had no idea. It was like a hilly, green, misty Venice. And while it's clearly over-run with tourists in the summer (there are multi-lingual menus featuring color photos of french fries in the windows of most bars), we seemed to be the only foreigners in town last weekend.
We arrived in mid-morning, and walked to our hotel from the train station. We left our bags there and walked across the river and into the old town. We climbed up the narrow deserted streets to the cathedral, and climbed further up through the cathedral gardens, and then further up to the Roman tower. When we looked over the railing, we could see down into the leafy green ravine that runs behind the cathedral. We hadn't seen another person in maybe half an hour, so it was a bit spooky to peer down, catch a flash of orange light amongst the green, and see an old woman, dressed in a black European Old Woman get-up, tending a small bonfire. We were up at the level of the damp green forest canopy, and she stood on the open forest floor, clearly getting the wool of bat and tongue of dog ready. We tiptoed silently back from the railing, and carried on with our touring.
As we were idly looking out for a nice place to have dinner, we walked by a restaurant whose posted menu was only in Catalan and showed an aggressive lack of french fry photos. We took these as the twin signs of a good bet, decided to forgive them for their contrived logo, and planned to come back for dinner.
As far as we could understand the menu and the waiter, we ordered: Baby Vegetable Salad, Paella with Small Lobsterthings, Salt Cod Carpaccio, and Veal with Foie Gras (first prize for Tastiest Ethically Questionable Dish). The meal began with three amuse bouche*: a shot glass of carrot soup, a bite of eggplant topped with caviar, and tuna tartare on melba toast. I would never have thought to combine eggplant and caviar, but it was fantastic. And the paella, veal, and carpaccio were also impeccable, but the dish that sent me around the bend was the baby vegetable salad. Whole baby vegetables, each flawless and perfectly cooked: two little grilled leeks, a blanched baby corncob, two blanched carrots, a deep-fried zucchini with the flower still attached, three mini grilled eggplant, and a few heirloomy-looking tomatoes. They were casually arranged in a lovely little heap, and simply dressed with olive oil and sea salt. It was the best thing I've ever eaten. No, wait:
It was the best thing I've ever eaten.
That's more like it. Each vegetable was so exquisite, I imagined the chef sleeping in his garden so he could pick each one at exactly the right moment. And I will never get over my three-year-old-self's utter amusement and fascination with Things That Are Small Versions of Big Things. You'll never go wrong showing me a mini anything. I try not to squeal, but I'm not always successful.
We shared a ginger gelato for dessert, and with our coffees they brought a little stone tray with an assortment of tiny chocolate/peanut concoctions. Perfect. The chef popped up in my imagination again, giggling to himself as he glued one peanut to another with a bit of melted chocolate.
When we left, the whole waitstaff (three nice fellows) and the chef saw us off from the door very kindly. I admit it was a rainy night in winter, and they were hardly busy, but I was still touched.
The next morning, I discovered another Girona superlative to get excited about. Our hotel was clearly energy-conscious, with compact fluorescents, low-flow toilets, hallway lights on motion-detectors, and one of those gizmos where you have to stick your room key into a slot to turn on the lights. I'm in favor of all these energy-saving strategies, but it didn't make me look forward to the shower. Also, we're in Europe, which is not known for robust water pressure. So when I turned on the water and saw the deluge, I was pleasantly surprised. When I stepped into it and felt like I was getting power-washed (but nicely), I was in awe. I've never experienced so much water when I haven't been swimming. I tried to tear myself away before I drained the river, and my only regret about our trip to Girona is that I only took that one shower. We'll simply have to go back.
*I feel like enough of a pretentious twerp typing out "amuse bouche" (which is practically asking for a slap), but plural amuse bouche? Amuses bouches? Amuse bouches? Amuses bouche? Yummy li'l free thangs? That's the one.
We arrived in mid-morning, and walked to our hotel from the train station. We left our bags there and walked across the river and into the old town. We climbed up the narrow deserted streets to the cathedral, and climbed further up through the cathedral gardens, and then further up to the Roman tower. When we looked over the railing, we could see down into the leafy green ravine that runs behind the cathedral. We hadn't seen another person in maybe half an hour, so it was a bit spooky to peer down, catch a flash of orange light amongst the green, and see an old woman, dressed in a black European Old Woman get-up, tending a small bonfire. We were up at the level of the damp green forest canopy, and she stood on the open forest floor, clearly getting the wool of bat and tongue of dog ready. We tiptoed silently back from the railing, and carried on with our touring.
As we were idly looking out for a nice place to have dinner, we walked by a restaurant whose posted menu was only in Catalan and showed an aggressive lack of french fry photos. We took these as the twin signs of a good bet, decided to forgive them for their contrived logo, and planned to come back for dinner.
As far as we could understand the menu and the waiter, we ordered: Baby Vegetable Salad, Paella with Small Lobsterthings, Salt Cod Carpaccio, and Veal with Foie Gras (first prize for Tastiest Ethically Questionable Dish). The meal began with three amuse bouche*: a shot glass of carrot soup, a bite of eggplant topped with caviar, and tuna tartare on melba toast. I would never have thought to combine eggplant and caviar, but it was fantastic. And the paella, veal, and carpaccio were also impeccable, but the dish that sent me around the bend was the baby vegetable salad. Whole baby vegetables, each flawless and perfectly cooked: two little grilled leeks, a blanched baby corncob, two blanched carrots, a deep-fried zucchini with the flower still attached, three mini grilled eggplant, and a few heirloomy-looking tomatoes. They were casually arranged in a lovely little heap, and simply dressed with olive oil and sea salt. It was the best thing I've ever eaten. No, wait:
It was the best thing I've ever eaten.
That's more like it. Each vegetable was so exquisite, I imagined the chef sleeping in his garden so he could pick each one at exactly the right moment. And I will never get over my three-year-old-self's utter amusement and fascination with Things That Are Small Versions of Big Things. You'll never go wrong showing me a mini anything. I try not to squeal, but I'm not always successful.
We shared a ginger gelato for dessert, and with our coffees they brought a little stone tray with an assortment of tiny chocolate/peanut concoctions. Perfect. The chef popped up in my imagination again, giggling to himself as he glued one peanut to another with a bit of melted chocolate.
When we left, the whole waitstaff (three nice fellows) and the chef saw us off from the door very kindly. I admit it was a rainy night in winter, and they were hardly busy, but I was still touched.
The next morning, I discovered another Girona superlative to get excited about. Our hotel was clearly energy-conscious, with compact fluorescents, low-flow toilets, hallway lights on motion-detectors, and one of those gizmos where you have to stick your room key into a slot to turn on the lights. I'm in favor of all these energy-saving strategies, but it didn't make me look forward to the shower. Also, we're in Europe, which is not known for robust water pressure. So when I turned on the water and saw the deluge, I was pleasantly surprised. When I stepped into it and felt like I was getting power-washed (but nicely), I was in awe. I've never experienced so much water when I haven't been swimming. I tried to tear myself away before I drained the river, and my only regret about our trip to Girona is that I only took that one shower. We'll simply have to go back.
*I feel like enough of a pretentious twerp typing out "amuse bouche" (which is practically asking for a slap), but plural amuse bouche? Amuses bouches? Amuse bouches? Amuses bouche? Yummy li'l free thangs? That's the one.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Hostia! Que bueno plato de quesos!
Choppily scanned from my sketchbook, a slice of market life. According to Babelfish, which tends to give a realistically crappy translation of what I was trying to say, the conversation above goes something like this:-Hello
-Hello! I want to do--um--ah--a plate of cheeses for--um--three people. (That good I am!)
-It is worth. I have wmwmwmwmw and mwmwm. That you want mwmw wmwm? Mwmw or mwmw? And wmmwmww. Mwm mwm three wmwmwm.
-Um... what? (consecrated wafer!)
Hostia, or "consecrated wafer," is something like the Spanish equivalent of "damn," in that you wouldn't say it in church or to your grandmother, and it's a handy all-purpose exclamation or intensifier (Damn, that's good! Damn, that hurts! Damn!), with the added bonus of a funny English translation. Anyone looking for a new exclamation? May I suggest "consecrated wafer?" It's not completely inoffensive and twee, like "fiddlesticks!" or jiminy crickets!" but it has the potential to be an acceptable stand-in for the really crude, multi-syllabic exclamations that can get you kicked out of the PTA.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Good News/Bad News
Good news: Since I brought my laptop to Spain, I can work here, just like at home.
Bad news: Since I brought my laptop to Spain, I can do a lot of farting around on the internet here, just like at home.
Good news: The internet has good some stuff on it! I can keep farting away! It's good for the planet (see below)!
Lichen Threads: Two women have pledged to only buy sustainable/organic clothing for a year, and document their struggle. Sounds good to me. I don't think I'm ready to take the pledge, but just reading about their project will probably guilt me into being a little more mindful about my own choices. I know green is more important than cheap, but sometimes I need a reminder.
Bad news: Since I brought my laptop to Spain, I can do a lot of farting around on the internet here, just like at home.
Good news: The internet has good some stuff on it! I can keep farting away! It's good for the planet (see below)!
Lichen Threads: Two women have pledged to only buy sustainable/organic clothing for a year, and document their struggle. Sounds good to me. I don't think I'm ready to take the pledge, but just reading about their project will probably guilt me into being a little more mindful about my own choices. I know green is more important than cheap, but sometimes I need a reminder.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Pigeon Defense and High-Stakes Laundry
It's not just here in Spain. Many places have problems with pigeons. There's even a world-wide pigeon-defense industry, with netting, spikes, and electric contraptions used to deter pigeons in various places. Cairo has solved the problem in the most practical way: they eat their pigeons. But Spanish cities are still in the trenches with the rest of the urban world. And there's even an additional level of nuisance here (probably shared by many other warm-weather cities). Almost all Spanish apartment buildings have balconies. This is a nice thing. It makes it easier for the residents to enjoy the temperate weather, grow sun-loving plants many stories above ground level, and hang their laundry in the fresh air for pigeons to crap all over.
I couldn't believe there was no ingenious European solution for this problem, but after our friend warned us about his laundry lines, I started looking around at other people's, and saw that while some people had flung ragged sheets of plastic over their laundry, and some had pulled their long balcony-blinds over the clothes, most people just seemed to be hoping that the neighborhood pigeons would choose another balcony to poop off of than the one right above theirs. And while I'm all for positive and hopeful thinking as a way of life, that really seems to be taking it a bit far.
So I have made Pigeon Poop Defense Shield 1.0 out of some dowels, a woven-plastic tarp and some plastic clips. It folds nasty-side-in to hang up and store, and if the Poop Alert Level gets raised (pigeons are fickle creatures), it's exactly the right length to be covered by three opened (clipped-on) sheets of the local daily newspaper (a sort of the-world-is-your-birdcage kind of strategy).
Don't hold your breath for the unveiling of version 2.0, or even 1.1, since it only has to work for the month that we're here, seeing as how I'm pretty sure our friend thinks I'm crazy. The thing'll be in a Spanish landfill before we board the plane home. But if I were here for longer, I bet I could refine it enough that these nutty European clothes-washers would see the light, and pigeons everywhere would see their laundry-defiling plots foiled.
But while the pigeon issue (can't resist. not sorry.) has been dealt with, laundry-hanging here is still more challenging than laundry-hanging at home. Our friend's apartment is three stories up (on what is confusingly called something like the Piso Primer). The laundry lines hang off the balcony railing, so the laundry dangles three stories above what might be called "the backyard," but really looks more like an alley where Bad People hang out. I think the scruffiness of the yard might be intentional, to increase the chances of the first-floor (or whatever they call it) resident's being able to keep all the manna that falls into it in the form of other people's clean, damp underwear and towels. Everything about it seems to say, "Forget it. If you ever want to see your dropped pillowcase again, knock three times on the door and leave 60 euros in a bag under the fourth bench from the bus stop. Otherwise, finders keepers." I'd love the catch a glimpse of the guy, so I can see if his socks match.
So, three floors up, something I wouldn't think twice about at ground-level becomes a bit of a feat, and I'm a lot more attentive to my laundry-clipping technique. I feel like a construction worker sitting on an I-beam eating my sandwich 30 flights up. Can you tell I'm not a big rock-climber? Hanging out laundry in Spain really does produce enough adrenaline to keep me for a while. As far as I'm concerned, I'm lucky to be so easily amused. Extreme sports are expensive. Laundry? Practically free.
I couldn't believe there was no ingenious European solution for this problem, but after our friend warned us about his laundry lines, I started looking around at other people's, and saw that while some people had flung ragged sheets of plastic over their laundry, and some had pulled their long balcony-blinds over the clothes, most people just seemed to be hoping that the neighborhood pigeons would choose another balcony to poop off of than the one right above theirs. And while I'm all for positive and hopeful thinking as a way of life, that really seems to be taking it a bit far.
So I have made Pigeon Poop Defense Shield 1.0 out of some dowels, a woven-plastic tarp and some plastic clips. It folds nasty-side-in to hang up and store, and if the Poop Alert Level gets raised (pigeons are fickle creatures), it's exactly the right length to be covered by three opened (clipped-on) sheets of the local daily newspaper (a sort of the-world-is-your-birdcage kind of strategy).
Don't hold your breath for the unveiling of version 2.0, or even 1.1, since it only has to work for the month that we're here, seeing as how I'm pretty sure our friend thinks I'm crazy. The thing'll be in a Spanish landfill before we board the plane home. But if I were here for longer, I bet I could refine it enough that these nutty European clothes-washers would see the light, and pigeons everywhere would see their laundry-defiling plots foiled.
But while the pigeon issue (can't resist. not sorry.) has been dealt with, laundry-hanging here is still more challenging than laundry-hanging at home. Our friend's apartment is three stories up (on what is confusingly called something like the Piso Primer). The laundry lines hang off the balcony railing, so the laundry dangles three stories above what might be called "the backyard," but really looks more like an alley where Bad People hang out. I think the scruffiness of the yard might be intentional, to increase the chances of the first-floor (or whatever they call it) resident's being able to keep all the manna that falls into it in the form of other people's clean, damp underwear and towels. Everything about it seems to say, "Forget it. If you ever want to see your dropped pillowcase again, knock three times on the door and leave 60 euros in a bag under the fourth bench from the bus stop. Otherwise, finders keepers." I'd love the catch a glimpse of the guy, so I can see if his socks match.
So, three floors up, something I wouldn't think twice about at ground-level becomes a bit of a feat, and I'm a lot more attentive to my laundry-clipping technique. I feel like a construction worker sitting on an I-beam eating my sandwich 30 flights up. Can you tell I'm not a big rock-climber? Hanging out laundry in Spain really does produce enough adrenaline to keep me for a while. As far as I'm concerned, I'm lucky to be so easily amused. Extreme sports are expensive. Laundry? Practically free.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Letter From Spain
Through a unpredictable combination of friendship, luck, scheduling, good fortune, flexible bosses, and luck, I'm in Spain for a month. A month! I can't get over it. It's practically balmy here, between 40 and 50 degrees, but all the Spaniards can't get over how cold it is. They've been lamenting "el frio polar" and we've been laughing at them. We're staying in our friend's place, and he's here too, when he's not at his girlfriend's. So we have a fully-equipped kitchen, a wee Spanish washing machine, and a guy to answer our questions about, "how do you say..." and "where's a good..." and "what the heck is...." In return, we feed him when he's here and make him laugh with our Colorful Foreign Ways. We stay up late and drink wine and eat cheese and listen to obscure American soul records (records!), and then the guys get up in the morning and stagger to work at the ungodly hour of 9:30. I'm left to crack the whip over myself and get some projects done. My eyes are generally open by 10. Almost always.
I have some work to do while we're here, but I'm also in charge of feeding us, and doing food-procurement. I speak just enough Spanish to confuse people, which complicates my mission a bit. The first few days I was kind of intimidated about going out and speaking Spanish, but I realized that in order to get good food, there was just no way around it. There are fast-food type places and supermarkets here where you just have to pick and pay, but to get the good stuff in the market, I have to speak at least a little Spanish.
handy phrases:
me gustaria
por favor
gracias
es todo
poco mas
lo siento
que?
que?
que?
I can't think of a better way to force myself out of my comfort zone than to reward myself with sausage and cheese.
So I go to the neighborhood market almost every morning, and try to not buy more than three people can eat in a day.
The neighborhood market is a covered space that takes up a whole city block. There must be at least 250 stalls of various sizes, each with their own specialty. There are vegetable and fruit sellers, cheese and ham booths, stalls that only sell salt cod, or olives, or eggs, grocery stalls where you can buy dry goods, "cooked legume" stalls, seafood sellers, meat sellers, chicken sellers, and the whole center of the market is filled with seafood sellers.
Each fish stall has display counters heaped with crushed ice, and there are burbling open gutters in the cement floor that carry away the melting water. Most of the fish are whole, laid out on the ice with their eyes and teeth and gills and everything. I haven't been brave enough to ask for a whole fish yet, but I think they'll filet them for you if asked. At the end of the day, when the fish is all sold and the ice is all melted, you can see them hosing down the whole area, and then scrubbing every surface with bleach, and then hosing it all down again. The market smells more like lettuce than it does like fish.
The egg sellers have clear plastic bins of eggs for sale, of various sizes, different colors, different prices, and all seemingly tossed into the appropriate bin as though they were apples or walnuts or some other un-fragile bulk commodity. When you ask for some, then they'll whip out the egg-shaped box and pack them up, but not until then. I suppose it saves checking every egg for cracks and holes. Any flaw would be immediately obvious in those piles of eggs. The egg stalls are aggressively clean-looking—the eggs are the the least-white thing visible, with the white-aproned women wearing white hats, the white tile, and the bright lights. Compared to the other stalls, they look like surgical suites. I suppose the vegetable stalls don't have to make up for their products coming out of an animal's hind end.
The vegetable seller I go to is one of the smallest vegetable stalls (most are at least twice the size), but every vegetable is treated like and looks like jewelry. Large, usually green, edible jewelry. The zuchinni looks like it must have been picked by dreamy, reverent farmers who bite their nails to the quick. The romaine lettuce is so clean and translucent it looks like it's lit from within. And the spinach, usually Dirtiest Of All The Leafy Vegetables, looks like it was washed in clear running water at least 40 times, but without actually ever being touched. The people that work in the stall clearly take their work very seriously, with never a wasted breath or a wasted movement. I found them intimidating at first, but by my fourth or fifth daily visit, they couldn't pretend not to remember my broken Spanish and my makeshift vocabulary of eyebrow- and hand-gestures, and they asked where I was from, and even smiled a bit, and gave me free parsley. And now I love them, and also their vegetables.
The first week, our friend took us around the market, showing us where he and his mother like to shop (he grew up in this neighborhood, and his father has a shop selling sewing notions in the non-food part of the market). I dutifully wrote down the names of the best stalls, but it took me three or four trips back before I could find them all again. Every day I think, "I should make a map of the market" and then I get there and it's all I can do to navigate around the old ladies and dogs and strollers and crates and find something for dinner that I know both how to say in Spanish and how to cook.
I have some work to do while we're here, but I'm also in charge of feeding us, and doing food-procurement. I speak just enough Spanish to confuse people, which complicates my mission a bit. The first few days I was kind of intimidated about going out and speaking Spanish, but I realized that in order to get good food, there was just no way around it. There are fast-food type places and supermarkets here where you just have to pick and pay, but to get the good stuff in the market, I have to speak at least a little Spanish.
handy phrases:
me gustaria
por favor
gracias
es todo
poco mas
lo siento
que?
que?
que?
I can't think of a better way to force myself out of my comfort zone than to reward myself with sausage and cheese.
So I go to the neighborhood market almost every morning, and try to not buy more than three people can eat in a day.
The neighborhood market is a covered space that takes up a whole city block. There must be at least 250 stalls of various sizes, each with their own specialty. There are vegetable and fruit sellers, cheese and ham booths, stalls that only sell salt cod, or olives, or eggs, grocery stalls where you can buy dry goods, "cooked legume" stalls, seafood sellers, meat sellers, chicken sellers, and the whole center of the market is filled with seafood sellers.
Each fish stall has display counters heaped with crushed ice, and there are burbling open gutters in the cement floor that carry away the melting water. Most of the fish are whole, laid out on the ice with their eyes and teeth and gills and everything. I haven't been brave enough to ask for a whole fish yet, but I think they'll filet them for you if asked. At the end of the day, when the fish is all sold and the ice is all melted, you can see them hosing down the whole area, and then scrubbing every surface with bleach, and then hosing it all down again. The market smells more like lettuce than it does like fish.
The egg sellers have clear plastic bins of eggs for sale, of various sizes, different colors, different prices, and all seemingly tossed into the appropriate bin as though they were apples or walnuts or some other un-fragile bulk commodity. When you ask for some, then they'll whip out the egg-shaped box and pack them up, but not until then. I suppose it saves checking every egg for cracks and holes. Any flaw would be immediately obvious in those piles of eggs. The egg stalls are aggressively clean-looking—the eggs are the the least-white thing visible, with the white-aproned women wearing white hats, the white tile, and the bright lights. Compared to the other stalls, they look like surgical suites. I suppose the vegetable stalls don't have to make up for their products coming out of an animal's hind end.
The vegetable seller I go to is one of the smallest vegetable stalls (most are at least twice the size), but every vegetable is treated like and looks like jewelry. Large, usually green, edible jewelry. The zuchinni looks like it must have been picked by dreamy, reverent farmers who bite their nails to the quick. The romaine lettuce is so clean and translucent it looks like it's lit from within. And the spinach, usually Dirtiest Of All The Leafy Vegetables, looks like it was washed in clear running water at least 40 times, but without actually ever being touched. The people that work in the stall clearly take their work very seriously, with never a wasted breath or a wasted movement. I found them intimidating at first, but by my fourth or fifth daily visit, they couldn't pretend not to remember my broken Spanish and my makeshift vocabulary of eyebrow- and hand-gestures, and they asked where I was from, and even smiled a bit, and gave me free parsley. And now I love them, and also their vegetables.
The first week, our friend took us around the market, showing us where he and his mother like to shop (he grew up in this neighborhood, and his father has a shop selling sewing notions in the non-food part of the market). I dutifully wrote down the names of the best stalls, but it took me three or four trips back before I could find them all again. Every day I think, "I should make a map of the market" and then I get there and it's all I can do to navigate around the old ladies and dogs and strollers and crates and find something for dinner that I know both how to say in Spanish and how to cook.
I Will Not Make A Feet-Pun-Title. I Will Not. It Is So Difficult To Resist.
For me, the worst parts of winter are the feet-related parts. After thirteen winters in the frozen north, I have solved most of the other problems of winter (solutions include: down, silk, fleece, shearling, bag balm, and fossil fuels). But feet are a special challenge. Feet are where the body meets the outside world, and winter makes the outside world cold and slippery.
The cold is just a six-month-long annoyance, but the slipperiness really cramps my style. I spend winter grouchily mincing around outside like I'm wearing a hobble skirt, instead of my preferred activity, marching around like I own the place.
But this year, instead of just mincing and grumbling and shooting dark looks at the houses of the Non-Shovellers, I took matters into my own hands, seized control of my destiny, and did some internet shopping. I bought some really mean-looking steel spiked contraptions that wrap onto your shoes, and give you Total Dominion Over The Ice. And they make me about a quarter inch taller, too, so I feel all competent and powerful (hey, it doesn't take much for some of us shorties).
Once I strap them onto my waterproof boots, I can march over ice, slush, water, snow, and half-thawed roadkill (the normal mix around here a few days after a snowstorm). The only bad things about them are that they're a bit of a pain to get on over your shoes, and you certainly don't want to wear them inside unless you need to aerate your wood floors or de-thatch your carpet. The other drawback is that I have lost my fear of icy sidewalks, and if I go out without my spikes, I'm a bit like a toddler who's swimming without waterwings for the first time, "Hey no problem, I can tota-aaaaAAH!!" But with a little common sense, I feel like I've finally conquered the slippery.
So now that the slippery part of Winter Feet is solved, the cold part needs solving. My feet, once chilled (49 seconds sockless exposure to a 65-degree home? chilled), will not re-warm without strenuous exercise, a hot bath, or six hours in bed. The other night, with freezing feet and warm everything else, I rigged up an emergency Feet Heater (Sedentary Model). I do not recommend this, and I'm sure there are countless ways to injure yourself or others with one of these, but here it is, as a cautionary illustration only, I'm sure:
You will need two hand towels, a plastic zipper bag, and a microwave. Fold one of the towels so it will fit flat in the plastic bag. Once it's folded, get it thoroughly wet, and wring it out (still folded). Put it in the microwave for some small length of time. One minute, perhaps (remember, this is not advice or instructions or a good idea). Once it's steamy, remove it from the microwave with tongs or a hot pad. It will be very hot! Very very hot! That's the point! Slide it into the plastic bag, squeeze the air out, and seal the bag. Wrap the hot, dangerous thing in the other (dry) hand towel, and put it on your feet. Now you will be immobilized by comfy warmth. Rally the troops to bring you beverages and entertain you and make dinner.
Winter! Do your worst! We have spikes and dangerous home-made contraptions!
Ha!
Ha ha!
The cold is just a six-month-long annoyance, but the slipperiness really cramps my style. I spend winter grouchily mincing around outside like I'm wearing a hobble skirt, instead of my preferred activity, marching around like I own the place.
But this year, instead of just mincing and grumbling and shooting dark looks at the houses of the Non-Shovellers, I took matters into my own hands, seized control of my destiny, and did some internet shopping. I bought some really mean-looking steel spiked contraptions that wrap onto your shoes, and give you Total Dominion Over The Ice. And they make me about a quarter inch taller, too, so I feel all competent and powerful (hey, it doesn't take much for some of us shorties).
Once I strap them onto my waterproof boots, I can march over ice, slush, water, snow, and half-thawed roadkill (the normal mix around here a few days after a snowstorm). The only bad things about them are that they're a bit of a pain to get on over your shoes, and you certainly don't want to wear them inside unless you need to aerate your wood floors or de-thatch your carpet. The other drawback is that I have lost my fear of icy sidewalks, and if I go out without my spikes, I'm a bit like a toddler who's swimming without waterwings for the first time, "Hey no problem, I can tota-aaaaAAH!!" But with a little common sense, I feel like I've finally conquered the slippery.
So now that the slippery part of Winter Feet is solved, the cold part needs solving. My feet, once chilled (49 seconds sockless exposure to a 65-degree home? chilled), will not re-warm without strenuous exercise, a hot bath, or six hours in bed. The other night, with freezing feet and warm everything else, I rigged up an emergency Feet Heater (Sedentary Model). I do not recommend this, and I'm sure there are countless ways to injure yourself or others with one of these, but here it is, as a cautionary illustration only, I'm sure:
You will need two hand towels, a plastic zipper bag, and a microwave. Fold one of the towels so it will fit flat in the plastic bag. Once it's folded, get it thoroughly wet, and wring it out (still folded). Put it in the microwave for some small length of time. One minute, perhaps (remember, this is not advice or instructions or a good idea). Once it's steamy, remove it from the microwave with tongs or a hot pad. It will be very hot! Very very hot! That's the point! Slide it into the plastic bag, squeeze the air out, and seal the bag. Wrap the hot, dangerous thing in the other (dry) hand towel, and put it on your feet. Now you will be immobilized by comfy warmth. Rally the troops to bring you beverages and entertain you and make dinner.
Winter! Do your worst! We have spikes and dangerous home-made contraptions!
Ha!
Ha ha!
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Moneymaker #7,839
Note this day: the day that you read for the first time of a world-changing invention that will make me a rich woman and put my name on everyone's lips. Well, as soon as I line up an engineer, a whole lot of money, a manufacturer, and a distribution deal. Ahem. Any minute now. But here's the goods:
Mashed potatoes, apple pie, tomato sauce, roasted red peppers, peach pie, scalloped potatoes. Mmmm, right? All delicious, all economical, all fairly healthy (depending on who's cooking. If it's my brother, prepare to die very happily of a massive coronary. Mr Butterfat, he is.) But all of them would be a lot healthier if the fruits and vegetables weren't peeled. The peels have all the good stuff. But big tough peels are not the nicest thing to find in your mashed potatoes or your pie.
So, you know those wallpaper-scoring tools that you use when you're removing old wallpaper? Or those little gadgets that promise to cut through only one thickness of newsprint, to facilitate clipping articles that you will set aside and never send to anyone or, indeed, ever look at again? You know those?
Well, we need something along similar lines for peels. Something that will cut the peel into lots of tiny little pieces while it's still attached to the fruit or veg. I'm imagining something that looks a little like a palm sander, that you would rub over the surface of the fruit. That way, the peels stay on for their vitamin- and fiber-providing power, but no one has to chew through them.
Now the only thing is to come up with a catchy name that will sound good on late-night TV. Peel-olator... Fibro-tron... Fruita-max 3000...
Engineers and venture capitalists, please contact me for licensing and investment information. Don't let this amazing chance slip through your fingers! Once in a lifetime opportunity! The yard sale of tomorrow depends on the misplaced innovation of today!
Mashed potatoes, apple pie, tomato sauce, roasted red peppers, peach pie, scalloped potatoes. Mmmm, right? All delicious, all economical, all fairly healthy (depending on who's cooking. If it's my brother, prepare to die very happily of a massive coronary. Mr Butterfat, he is.) But all of them would be a lot healthier if the fruits and vegetables weren't peeled. The peels have all the good stuff. But big tough peels are not the nicest thing to find in your mashed potatoes or your pie.
So, you know those wallpaper-scoring tools that you use when you're removing old wallpaper? Or those little gadgets that promise to cut through only one thickness of newsprint, to facilitate clipping articles that you will set aside and never send to anyone or, indeed, ever look at again? You know those?
Well, we need something along similar lines for peels. Something that will cut the peel into lots of tiny little pieces while it's still attached to the fruit or veg. I'm imagining something that looks a little like a palm sander, that you would rub over the surface of the fruit. That way, the peels stay on for their vitamin- and fiber-providing power, but no one has to chew through them.
Now the only thing is to come up with a catchy name that will sound good on late-night TV. Peel-olator... Fibro-tron... Fruita-max 3000...
Engineers and venture capitalists, please contact me for licensing and investment information. Don't let this amazing chance slip through your fingers! Once in a lifetime opportunity! The yard sale of tomorrow depends on the misplaced innovation of today!
Friday, September 29, 2006
Fuzzy Math: A Rationalization in Three Parts
Part One: Cheap Pants
I hate buying pants. I like *wearing* pants, don't get me wrong. It sure beats walking around only half-clad, and sometimes a skirt just doesn't do the trick. But for how difficult it is to find pants that actually fit me, you'd think my body was so freakish that people would gasp in horror and sympathy when I walked down the street.
Well. They might, but I've never noticed it, and I certainly don't feel like I have a freakish shape. I just can't find a pair of pants that feels the same way.
The effect of this situation is that I found myself the other morning realizing that I only own two pairs of pants: Jeans and Black. And of course, both were dirty. The days of summer-skirt-wearing were ending, and I needed a little wardrobe-development-expedition. Also known as:
[dun dun dun] Shopping. For. Pants. [tortured scream]
I girded my loins and set out. If I have time, I generally start at the bottom of the price-scale and shop my way up until I strike gold. Last time I shopped for jeans, I went to six stores, and probably tried on thirty or forty pairs. I ended up with some good jeans, but they were expensive (even if I didn't factor in the cost of all that time). Now do you see why I only owned two pairs of pants?
But today, somehow, the planets aligned and I found two pairs of jeans at the Salvation Army, for a grand total of $14.00. They're maybe a little more hootchie-mama than I was looking for, but not so hootchie-mama that everyone gets a gross little peek down my drawers every time I sit down. And they are actually the same length as my legs. In other words, unprecedented success.
Part Two: Luxurious Cookware
I've been wanting a particular pan for a year or so now. It's sturdy, thick-bottomed and great looking (and I bet it has a hell of a time shopping for pants too).
It can go in the dishwasher, it can go in the oven, and it has two loop handles, so it's easy to sling around and easy to store. And it's gigantic. I really like to make stew and meaty tomato sauce and braised chicken and stir fry, all of which are much better if there's enough very hot surface area to really brown the food, and not just make it sweat. Our existing large pan does have a lot of area, but it's not very thick, so there's only a six-inch circle of actual hotness in the center of the pan surrounded by a large, lukewarm doughnut-shaped territory.
So the new pan sounds great, right? Sounds like just the thing? How about for two hundred and thirty dollars? Still sound good? Yeah, that's why I've been dreaming about it and not buying it for the last year.
Part Three: Dubious Conclusion
But today, fresh from The Triumph of The Pants, I did a little math...
Two pairs of jeans that fit me: $68 each, $136 total
A just-adequate large frying pan: $85
10 morale-boosting fancy coffees because I'm chronically depressed by the quality of my cookware: $25
Total: $246
Two pairs of Sally Ann Special jeans: $7 each, $14 total
The Best Frying Pan Ever: $230
Total: $244
So, look at that! I can buy the pan and actually save two bucks! I think I'll treat myself to a fancy cup of coffee to celebrate.
I hate buying pants. I like *wearing* pants, don't get me wrong. It sure beats walking around only half-clad, and sometimes a skirt just doesn't do the trick. But for how difficult it is to find pants that actually fit me, you'd think my body was so freakish that people would gasp in horror and sympathy when I walked down the street.
Well. They might, but I've never noticed it, and I certainly don't feel like I have a freakish shape. I just can't find a pair of pants that feels the same way.
The effect of this situation is that I found myself the other morning realizing that I only own two pairs of pants: Jeans and Black. And of course, both were dirty. The days of summer-skirt-wearing were ending, and I needed a little wardrobe-development-expedition. Also known as:
[dun dun dun] Shopping. For. Pants. [tortured scream]
I girded my loins and set out. If I have time, I generally start at the bottom of the price-scale and shop my way up until I strike gold. Last time I shopped for jeans, I went to six stores, and probably tried on thirty or forty pairs. I ended up with some good jeans, but they were expensive (even if I didn't factor in the cost of all that time). Now do you see why I only owned two pairs of pants?
But today, somehow, the planets aligned and I found two pairs of jeans at the Salvation Army, for a grand total of $14.00. They're maybe a little more hootchie-mama than I was looking for, but not so hootchie-mama that everyone gets a gross little peek down my drawers every time I sit down. And they are actually the same length as my legs. In other words, unprecedented success.
Part Two: Luxurious Cookware
I've been wanting a particular pan for a year or so now. It's sturdy, thick-bottomed and great looking (and I bet it has a hell of a time shopping for pants too).
It can go in the dishwasher, it can go in the oven, and it has two loop handles, so it's easy to sling around and easy to store. And it's gigantic. I really like to make stew and meaty tomato sauce and braised chicken and stir fry, all of which are much better if there's enough very hot surface area to really brown the food, and not just make it sweat. Our existing large pan does have a lot of area, but it's not very thick, so there's only a six-inch circle of actual hotness in the center of the pan surrounded by a large, lukewarm doughnut-shaped territory.
So the new pan sounds great, right? Sounds like just the thing? How about for two hundred and thirty dollars? Still sound good? Yeah, that's why I've been dreaming about it and not buying it for the last year.
Part Three: Dubious Conclusion
But today, fresh from The Triumph of The Pants, I did a little math...
Two pairs of jeans that fit me: $68 each, $136 total
A just-adequate large frying pan: $85
10 morale-boosting fancy coffees because I'm chronically depressed by the quality of my cookware: $25
Total: $246
Two pairs of Sally Ann Special jeans: $7 each, $14 total
The Best Frying Pan Ever: $230
Total: $244
So, look at that! I can buy the pan and actually save two bucks! I think I'll treat myself to a fancy cup of coffee to celebrate.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Kitchen Brain
Food is one of my favorite things. I love to eat good food, I love to cook, and I even get a dorky little thrill out of grocery shopping. But food is not the only thing I like. There are things other than recipes, menus, and kitchen trivia that I want to store in my brain. So I made myself a whole separate brain that I can just set down and leave in the kitchen, to free up room in my original brain for some of that other stuff. It's like a room-specific pensieve (if you don't know what a pensieve is, then congratulations; you're not a huge geek, and here's a link if you're curious).
Since I'm not Dr. Frankenstein (Little Miss Frankenstein doesn't count), I don't keep my extra brain in a big jar of formaldehyde next to the toaster. It's more like a binder.
Here's what I have in there:
Dinner Ideas:
"What should we have for dinner this week?" is the question that no one wants to hear at nine o'clock on Tuesday night when it's time to make a shopping list. So The Brain has a list of things we like to eat. It makes planning meals feel more like ordering takeout, which is a task at which we're naturally quite gifted.
Reference:
There's a page in there for all the numbers I can never remember: ratios of water to rice, quinoa, oatmeal, barley, lentils; how many cups of fruit fit into our big baking dish before the cobbler will boil over and start a fruit-flavored fire; what temperature is pizza temperature; how much rice makes four servings; stuff like that.
Shopping List:
In a pocket in the binder (so I can pull it out and stick it back without the tedium of wrangling rings) is a list of all the groceries we never want to run out of. I update the list every year or so as our tastes, budget, and eating habits change (the pile of twelve years of obsolete lists is a revealing survey). When I'm getting ready to go to the store, I look at the list, look around the kitchen, and see what's low or missing. Then I go over the menu plan we made for the week, and add meat, produce, and odd ingredients to the list. I used to make a shopping list from a master list without also planning menus, but I finally figured out that that's a good way to never run out of mustard and brown sugar and capers, but it's not necessarily a good way to end up with something you can actually have for dinner.
Easy Recipes:
If, upon an evening, I have a sous chef cooking, I can point him in the direction of the binder, and say, "It's all in there! While you cook, I'll be upstairs blogging about cooking." Gosh, which reminds me...
[interlude]
Okay. It's under control. The best laid schemes of cooks and sous chefs are often knocked awry by forgetting to defrost the day before.
Anyway, some people have an easier time than others deciphering cookbooks, and that is not enough reason for them not to cook. We have a few dependable recipes translated into English as actual human beings speak it, and they're in The Brain too.
The Section That Must Not be Named
Takeout menus. For when all else fails. They're stuffed shamefully into plastic pockets at the back of the binder, but they actually function more like a last resort than as an actual resource. Whenever I'm feeling doubtful about the success of a cooking experiment, I can reassure myself that whatever happens in the kitchen, dinner can still be piping hot on the table in half an hour. That usually helps me muster the courage to persevere, and we haven't yet had to throw dinner onto the compost pile and call in the pros. But there's always a first time.
Since I'm not Dr. Frankenstein (Little Miss Frankenstein doesn't count), I don't keep my extra brain in a big jar of formaldehyde next to the toaster. It's more like a binder.
Here's what I have in there:
Dinner Ideas:
"What should we have for dinner this week?" is the question that no one wants to hear at nine o'clock on Tuesday night when it's time to make a shopping list. So The Brain has a list of things we like to eat. It makes planning meals feel more like ordering takeout, which is a task at which we're naturally quite gifted.
Reference:
There's a page in there for all the numbers I can never remember: ratios of water to rice, quinoa, oatmeal, barley, lentils; how many cups of fruit fit into our big baking dish before the cobbler will boil over and start a fruit-flavored fire; what temperature is pizza temperature; how much rice makes four servings; stuff like that.
Shopping List:
In a pocket in the binder (so I can pull it out and stick it back without the tedium of wrangling rings) is a list of all the groceries we never want to run out of. I update the list every year or so as our tastes, budget, and eating habits change (the pile of twelve years of obsolete lists is a revealing survey). When I'm getting ready to go to the store, I look at the list, look around the kitchen, and see what's low or missing. Then I go over the menu plan we made for the week, and add meat, produce, and odd ingredients to the list. I used to make a shopping list from a master list without also planning menus, but I finally figured out that that's a good way to never run out of mustard and brown sugar and capers, but it's not necessarily a good way to end up with something you can actually have for dinner.
Easy Recipes:
If, upon an evening, I have a sous chef cooking, I can point him in the direction of the binder, and say, "It's all in there! While you cook, I'll be upstairs blogging about cooking." Gosh, which reminds me...
[interlude]
Okay. It's under control. The best laid schemes of cooks and sous chefs are often knocked awry by forgetting to defrost the day before.
Anyway, some people have an easier time than others deciphering cookbooks, and that is not enough reason for them not to cook. We have a few dependable recipes translated into English as actual human beings speak it, and they're in The Brain too.
The Section That Must Not be Named
Takeout menus. For when all else fails. They're stuffed shamefully into plastic pockets at the back of the binder, but they actually function more like a last resort than as an actual resource. Whenever I'm feeling doubtful about the success of a cooking experiment, I can reassure myself that whatever happens in the kitchen, dinner can still be piping hot on the table in half an hour. That usually helps me muster the courage to persevere, and we haven't yet had to throw dinner onto the compost pile and call in the pros. But there's always a first time.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Sex and Death in The Summertime
Fruit flies are a fact of life in summertime, and I'm enough of an uptight American that they really gross me out. I am not, however, American enough to solve the problem by refrigerating all of my produce. Tomatoes get mealy and wooly and mushy in the fridge. Peaches are meant to be eaten when they're ripe, juicy, sweet, and at body temperature. This is a family blog, or I would further explain how I feel about eating really excellent tomatoes and peaches. Suffice it to say that I'm actually blushing a little bit right now. See? American enough to be embarrassed by sensuality, but not American enough to stop.
Where was I? Oh, fruit flies. Right. There is a fruit fly trap that you can buy, which I did buy, which worked great. It works for a month, and it costs $7.00. Is freedom from fruit flies worth 23 cents a day? Is it worth $28 per summer? Well, yes, probably so. But can you do it cheaper? Yes! Definitely so! Read on!
The place I bought the trap describes the bait as "a vinegar solution." They would have been better off describing it as "a proprietary blend of acetic acid and other natural ingredients," because then it never would have occurred to me to make my own and save seven bucks.
I had a bunch of those disposable food containers that I think of as salad-dressing-size. They hold about a half a cup. I put a couple tablespoons of High Tech Fruit Fly Attractant (see above) in each container, covered them with foil, and poked a few fruit-fly sized holes in each foil lid. Then I strewed them about my kitchen and waited for victory. It worked like a charm. If I really wanted to prove it to you, I could take a picture of one of the traps that has what looks like about fifty little corpses, but it's really gross, and I like to have a pretty blog. So here's a nasty little drawing instead:
Where was I? Oh, fruit flies. Right. There is a fruit fly trap that you can buy, which I did buy, which worked great. It works for a month, and it costs $7.00. Is freedom from fruit flies worth 23 cents a day? Is it worth $28 per summer? Well, yes, probably so. But can you do it cheaper? Yes! Definitely so! Read on!
The place I bought the trap describes the bait as "a vinegar solution." They would have been better off describing it as "a proprietary blend of acetic acid and other natural ingredients," because then it never would have occurred to me to make my own and save seven bucks.
I had a bunch of those disposable food containers that I think of as salad-dressing-size. They hold about a half a cup. I put a couple tablespoons of High Tech Fruit Fly Attractant (see above) in each container, covered them with foil, and poked a few fruit-fly sized holes in each foil lid. Then I strewed them about my kitchen and waited for victory. It worked like a charm. If I really wanted to prove it to you, I could take a picture of one of the traps that has what looks like about fifty little corpses, but it's really gross, and I like to have a pretty blog. So here's a nasty little drawing instead:
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