Sometimes we entertain and go to gatherings many times in a row, like this last weekend, and we end up bringing home leftovers or leaving leftovers, and suddenly, I don't cook for days. It is always odd, this huge energy of cooking and then the leavings after.
Regardless, I go to a grocery store midway through the mayhem and buy things like kale. Kale, kale, kale. I am in love. (I also lust after golden beets.) It's also full of iron, so maybe I'm anemic too. And today I thought to myself, hmm, kale pesto. That sounds crazy. That sounds like that terrible hummus you made when you were drunk several years ago that included canned peas. (It was awful. We'd been aiming for spinach. I don't recall exactly why we used peas, but I regretted it immediately. There is no redeeming canned peas.)
But then the people at the Times go and write about kale pesto ... and I'm entranced. I'll probably eat it tomorrow. Maybe without cheese. Not sure yet.
I dyed more yarn, and every time I do, I feel like I could do this for a living. With some surface design and writing thrown in. I need better tools and I'd like more room, but I am happy to have space to do it at all. I need to make a niddy noddy. I shall make one out of PVC pipe.
My arms are not better. This is still very sad.
The weather is turning, and that is not sad.
I'm trying to take full advantage of living so close to the library, what with my new library card and all. I want to read books about bookmaking. It makes me feel like a cannibal.
Noah has graduated, and, in a fitting end to his terrible semester, his group members have not turned in their final project correctly and he has to take care of it. No big deal, but a terrible last note.
We are finally both out of school. It is shocking. I'm sure we'll establish some kind of more-normal cohabitation, but so far it's a lot of looking at each other and watching TV online together. As it well should be.
Eat your kale, friends, and enjoy the height of spring. Make merry with me, ye who have been studying too hard. Come into the sun.
18 May 2009
07 May 2009
Being Homemade
Because aren't we all, in a way? Or VW bus-made if you let my mom tell you a story ... which can stop right there, Mom! Geez.
I mean yogurt, granola, bread, dinner. Dear Jeff sends me good reading, which is not so different from when he was a student of mine (ha ha! compliment complete), such as this woman who did a cost-benefit analysis on homemade vs. store-bought goods. And she apparently loves this granola, though I argue for this one. Really, the second one is called "honey-toasted" and it didn't burn in the oven like my last batch.
I think my own cost-benefit analysis would turn out differently because we eat differently. And what I make has a lot to do with what doesn't hurt my arms and elbows, so it has to fall into this easy-to-make category of homemade. So, in the last six months, we've gone from eating, say, pasta with crockpot sauce heavy on onions and red wine to marinated, then baked, tofu and frozen stir-fry vegetables. Not a terrible change ... but you should notice the lack of chopping, the lack of stirring, etc.
I shall, then, list out what I make at home and wouldn't change:
1.) Yogurt. No question. I crave the taste of my own yogurt. I drained some yesterday and drank the whey mixed with peach nectar. I put the drained stuff in a yogurt tart. I love love love yogurt and, even with shopping at Aldi, making our own is cheaper than buying. Not by a lot, but by enough, and the taste is much better. I haven't tried the easiest method of making it, which involves letting it sit in a warm place overnight--I'm still using a hot water bath--but the 8 hours would be even easier.
2.) Bread for the right occasions. Mostly that means weekend eating. (Don't you eat differently on the weekend? We graze like crazy. Good crusty bread facilitates this.) Homemade, good bread is easy, I say, and I've been doing it for eight years now, off and on. My bread now veers into no-knead, or all mixer-knead, but either way it is great. And I love the original no-knead recipe--I bake it in my 8-qt. steel stock pot with aluminum foil to cover. Which is developing a roasty patina.
3.) Bath salts. Not edible, but if you take a lot of baths, there is no question. Sugar scrub too.
4.) Hummus. Though I'm disappointed lately with how mine turns out.
Okay, I can go on, but mostly it comes down to me saying, "People still buy that already made? Why?"
And in arm news, I may not get better. This is too sad to say much about. So that is the end of that.
Off to rest, shall we?
I mean yogurt, granola, bread, dinner. Dear Jeff sends me good reading, which is not so different from when he was a student of mine (ha ha! compliment complete), such as this woman who did a cost-benefit analysis on homemade vs. store-bought goods. And she apparently loves this granola, though I argue for this one. Really, the second one is called "honey-toasted" and it didn't burn in the oven like my last batch.
I think my own cost-benefit analysis would turn out differently because we eat differently. And what I make has a lot to do with what doesn't hurt my arms and elbows, so it has to fall into this easy-to-make category of homemade. So, in the last six months, we've gone from eating, say, pasta with crockpot sauce heavy on onions and red wine to marinated, then baked, tofu and frozen stir-fry vegetables. Not a terrible change ... but you should notice the lack of chopping, the lack of stirring, etc.
I shall, then, list out what I make at home and wouldn't change:
1.) Yogurt. No question. I crave the taste of my own yogurt. I drained some yesterday and drank the whey mixed with peach nectar. I put the drained stuff in a yogurt tart. I love love love yogurt and, even with shopping at Aldi, making our own is cheaper than buying. Not by a lot, but by enough, and the taste is much better. I haven't tried the easiest method of making it, which involves letting it sit in a warm place overnight--I'm still using a hot water bath--but the 8 hours would be even easier.
2.) Bread for the right occasions. Mostly that means weekend eating. (Don't you eat differently on the weekend? We graze like crazy. Good crusty bread facilitates this.) Homemade, good bread is easy, I say, and I've been doing it for eight years now, off and on. My bread now veers into no-knead, or all mixer-knead, but either way it is great. And I love the original no-knead recipe--I bake it in my 8-qt. steel stock pot with aluminum foil to cover. Which is developing a roasty patina.
3.) Bath salts. Not edible, but if you take a lot of baths, there is no question. Sugar scrub too.
4.) Hummus. Though I'm disappointed lately with how mine turns out.
Okay, I can go on, but mostly it comes down to me saying, "People still buy that already made? Why?"
And in arm news, I may not get better. This is too sad to say much about. So that is the end of that.
Off to rest, shall we?
04 May 2009
Resurfacing
Only to say I finished editing 300 pages in 1.5 weeks and am now editing 42 pages in 2 days. Which is a much better editing-to-days ratio. Good lord the end of the semester! I'm not even a student and yet it haunts me still, with all this work, all these people who pay me. I do like getting paid.
I may have found my perfect granola/muesli recipe, with 3/4 c. honey and 4 T. oil; I love my yogurt; I cook sometimes, things like carrot-potato soup with nutmeg, honey, and leftover quinoa; and Noah buys the best groceries. I haven't been going with him lately, as I can't carry or pick up things, really, and am mostly useless and grumbly because of that--anyway, he goes and I don't and he gets home and I'm all, wow food! Avocados! A block of cheese! Wow! Best way to receive groceries ever. Excellent at grocery-shopping, that one, buying frozen pepperoni pizza rather than sausage because pepperoni is easier to move off of a half (for me).
Am I really an editor? All this editing and my grumbling about it make me wonder if I really am suited for it, or if it's something I can just do. Like algebra--I can do algebra but don't love it. You know? I grumble about style sheets and people who don't know how to use commas (I don't mean errors, I mean AT ALL) and inconsistently styled headings and question myself about my understanding of hyphenation rules. I don't think I hyphenate as correctly as I could.
So, maybe not a real editor. Maybe a pretend editor. Or a skilled editor who'd rather be making anything at all.
It's been five years since I graduated from college, this spring. Oh my a long time. I think the art degree and the head copy editor job I had there are the two most useful things I got out of college. Loved the rest, for sure, but those are the useful ones.
And I'm definitely moving to Seattle in late October.
I may have found my perfect granola/muesli recipe, with 3/4 c. honey and 4 T. oil; I love my yogurt; I cook sometimes, things like carrot-potato soup with nutmeg, honey, and leftover quinoa; and Noah buys the best groceries. I haven't been going with him lately, as I can't carry or pick up things, really, and am mostly useless and grumbly because of that--anyway, he goes and I don't and he gets home and I'm all, wow food! Avocados! A block of cheese! Wow! Best way to receive groceries ever. Excellent at grocery-shopping, that one, buying frozen pepperoni pizza rather than sausage because pepperoni is easier to move off of a half (for me).
Am I really an editor? All this editing and my grumbling about it make me wonder if I really am suited for it, or if it's something I can just do. Like algebra--I can do algebra but don't love it. You know? I grumble about style sheets and people who don't know how to use commas (I don't mean errors, I mean AT ALL) and inconsistently styled headings and question myself about my understanding of hyphenation rules. I don't think I hyphenate as correctly as I could.
So, maybe not a real editor. Maybe a pretend editor. Or a skilled editor who'd rather be making anything at all.
It's been five years since I graduated from college, this spring. Oh my a long time. I think the art degree and the head copy editor job I had there are the two most useful things I got out of college. Loved the rest, for sure, but those are the useful ones.
And I'm definitely moving to Seattle in late October.
22 April 2009
Am I Really Okay with This?
Doing some editing on a dissertation, and the references have no style. Fashion police, no; they adhere to no one school of style. And this really bothers me. BOTHERS ME.
But they are mostly consistent to themselves. And the dissertation committee members apparently do not care.
However ... I care. Poor little unstyled citations, I care about you. Because I know three different schools of style and can recite them. Honestly. I recognize them on sight. I am an editor. This is what I know.
I am leaving them alone. I am. I am. I am. Breathe.
And should I capitalize "with"? I am undecided on that one.
But they are mostly consistent to themselves. And the dissertation committee members apparently do not care.
However ... I care. Poor little unstyled citations, I care about you. Because I know three different schools of style and can recite them. Honestly. I recognize them on sight. I am an editor. This is what I know.
I am leaving them alone. I am. I am. I am. Breathe.
And should I capitalize "with"? I am undecided on that one.
14 April 2009
Squash, Rotten, with Deceit and Broccoli Pesto, Updated with Photos of Railings
I slow-cooked a spaghetti squash today. Set it out last night and everything. Made this broccoli pesto with generous amounts of parsley. Tossed and ... tasted and ... it was totally rotten! I should have surmised that from the weird root looking things inside it with the seeds when I cut it open.
Definitely the first time I have cooked something ROTTEN without knowing it was rotten. Oh squash and slow-cookers, so useful, and with a hidden currency of deceit. Deceit!
The broccoli pesto was tasty with some whole-wheat fusilli, though.
Should I walk to the library now? Yes I should.
Update: Kaffe Fasset's book, Glorious Color, makes me wish I was twenty years older, living in Fasset's pattern photos; Gary Paulsen published a book for adults in 1992 that I picked up, fell in love with, and thought sadly, No one publishes books like this anymore, on great paper with full-color paintings, with no real plot; David Sedaris is really funny but I keep hoping for a happy ending anyway; and these photos of railings make me feel indelibly peaceful. LA, maybe? I don't know.
Definitely the first time I have cooked something ROTTEN without knowing it was rotten. Oh squash and slow-cookers, so useful, and with a hidden currency of deceit. Deceit!
The broccoli pesto was tasty with some whole-wheat fusilli, though.
Should I walk to the library now? Yes I should.
Update: Kaffe Fasset's book, Glorious Color, makes me wish I was twenty years older, living in Fasset's pattern photos; Gary Paulsen published a book for adults in 1992 that I picked up, fell in love with, and thought sadly, No one publishes books like this anymore, on great paper with full-color paintings, with no real plot; David Sedaris is really funny but I keep hoping for a happy ending anyway; and these photos of railings make me feel indelibly peaceful. LA, maybe? I don't know.
13 April 2009
Oh Hai Guyz
Aren't you always thinking in lolcat?
Let's see ... hosted a Passover seder, chopped things with few painful repercussions. Went to a large Easter brunch full of excellent largess. Am making the second batch of chocolate matzo crack right now. Dyed yarn; feel like I'm getting somewhere on my dye trials. Good lord I am the same girl I was in college, mostly; I think in the same trials, I record results the same way (haphazardly), I try to be kind of scientific about all of it, and I freak the hell out when I encounter toxic materials.
Oh, toxic you say?
The dyes I use are only toxic in their dry state. Once water is in there, well, I wear gloves and wouldn't drink it, but it won't kill me anymore. But, let's say, a container full of dyestock leaks and leaks through the plastic bag and leaks into the large bin it's inside of and ... all the liquid evaporates. And there's dry dye everywhere. Oddly enough I moved so fast I forgot to wear gloves during the whole ordeal. And given the lack of migraine or sinus freakout, I am assuming I have not absorbed too much toxicity.
In college, I used cyanide to make cloth blue in the sun. I crushed glass and didn't wear a mask or gloves (bad idea) with a hammer inside a piece of canvas. I mixed clay in a room with an incorrectly-installed vent fan, which pulled nothing out of the room. Yay clay so light it floats on air, living in your sinuses for a few years. In grad school, in my ceramics class, I angrily and kind of crazily left the clay lab in a blaze at the end of the semester ... and forgot my beautiful particulate filter mask.
Well, I'm sure I'll get a new one soon enough. Because I have sinus trouble and I don't want to die. From my dye ...
I think I just forgot my laundry. Uh, bye again!
Let's see ... hosted a Passover seder, chopped things with few painful repercussions. Went to a large Easter brunch full of excellent largess. Am making the second batch of chocolate matzo crack right now. Dyed yarn; feel like I'm getting somewhere on my dye trials. Good lord I am the same girl I was in college, mostly; I think in the same trials, I record results the same way (haphazardly), I try to be kind of scientific about all of it, and I freak the hell out when I encounter toxic materials.
Oh, toxic you say?
The dyes I use are only toxic in their dry state. Once water is in there, well, I wear gloves and wouldn't drink it, but it won't kill me anymore. But, let's say, a container full of dyestock leaks and leaks through the plastic bag and leaks into the large bin it's inside of and ... all the liquid evaporates. And there's dry dye everywhere. Oddly enough I moved so fast I forgot to wear gloves during the whole ordeal. And given the lack of migraine or sinus freakout, I am assuming I have not absorbed too much toxicity.
In college, I used cyanide to make cloth blue in the sun. I crushed glass and didn't wear a mask or gloves (bad idea) with a hammer inside a piece of canvas. I mixed clay in a room with an incorrectly-installed vent fan, which pulled nothing out of the room. Yay clay so light it floats on air, living in your sinuses for a few years. In grad school, in my ceramics class, I angrily and kind of crazily left the clay lab in a blaze at the end of the semester ... and forgot my beautiful particulate filter mask.
Well, I'm sure I'll get a new one soon enough. Because I have sinus trouble and I don't want to die. From my dye ...
I think I just forgot my laundry. Uh, bye again!
01 April 2009
Darning Socks, Insulting Peasants, and Food
Perhaps I am overly excited about this, but I just watched a video on darning socks, and let me tell you, I have more socks that need darning than I want you to know about. I am a bit of a sock lover, a sock-wearing fool, and I decided in college that it would benefit me far into the future to amass as many high-quality wool socks (Smartwool, really) as possible. And to love them forever. And hopefully own enough to only do laundry every two weeks ...
Anyway, few of my to-be-darned patches will match, you know, at all, but the holes will be filled!
Brief interlude: younger cat Eto just brought home another maimed bird, two in two weeks; I am closing the blinds again, as I cannot take such violence. I think some of my neighbors are witnessing this as well ... I hope it's the dog-owners whose dog maybe, hopefully, scared Eto away and hopefully didn't see him and his bird-victim, or maybe one of the many immigrant neighbors, who I imagine are not as freaked out by this, since they cook a lot of cabbage and peanut oil and onions, which I find to be earthy, like peasant/farm earthy. I am revealing all my assumptions, aren't I? In other words, maybe peasants don't mind animals eating animals? I am two or three generations removed from farming, so I should be more realistic about this. And the main neighbor in question is a graduate student in physics with a gigantic Apple TV or iMac thing.
Since I am not making a lot of things right now except food, and am insulting my neighbors, all farmers, and all peasants, I will change topics. I plan to write more about those foods I am making in days to come.
SUCH AS:
--Mole skillet pie with greens, teamed with sauteed corn, red onions and kale
--Chinese noodles with stir-fry vegetables and orange pan-glazed tempeh
--No-knead bread with steel-cut oats, served with roasted carrot "fries," garlic tahini sauce, sun-dried tomato hummus, and parmesan-yogurt sauce (which is exactly what it sounds like)
--Lentil soup with spinach, teamed with poppy-seed polenta (accidentally made with 3 tablespoons, not teaspoons, of poppy seeds, postponing all possible drug tests by necessity)
--Almond-quinoa muffins with dried cranberries (they are a bit weird, almost too health-food for even me)
--And lots of nori rolls, when the mood strikes, rolled by Noah the master roller
We are eating more home-cooked food because my arms are a little better and I am chopping a little more. Yum, food. Yay, lower food bills. Yay, food that is more real-ingredient-centered.
It's NaPoWriMo and I am not participating. Go elsewhere.
Anyway, few of my to-be-darned patches will match, you know, at all, but the holes will be filled!
Brief interlude: younger cat Eto just brought home another maimed bird, two in two weeks; I am closing the blinds again, as I cannot take such violence. I think some of my neighbors are witnessing this as well ... I hope it's the dog-owners whose dog maybe, hopefully, scared Eto away and hopefully didn't see him and his bird-victim, or maybe one of the many immigrant neighbors, who I imagine are not as freaked out by this, since they cook a lot of cabbage and peanut oil and onions, which I find to be earthy, like peasant/farm earthy. I am revealing all my assumptions, aren't I? In other words, maybe peasants don't mind animals eating animals? I am two or three generations removed from farming, so I should be more realistic about this. And the main neighbor in question is a graduate student in physics with a gigantic Apple TV or iMac thing.
Since I am not making a lot of things right now except food, and am insulting my neighbors, all farmers, and all peasants, I will change topics. I plan to write more about those foods I am making in days to come.
SUCH AS:
--Mole skillet pie with greens, teamed with sauteed corn, red onions and kale
--Chinese noodles with stir-fry vegetables and orange pan-glazed tempeh
--No-knead bread with steel-cut oats, served with roasted carrot "fries," garlic tahini sauce, sun-dried tomato hummus, and parmesan-yogurt sauce (which is exactly what it sounds like)
--Lentil soup with spinach, teamed with poppy-seed polenta (accidentally made with 3 tablespoons, not teaspoons, of poppy seeds, postponing all possible drug tests by necessity)
--Almond-quinoa muffins with dried cranberries (they are a bit weird, almost too health-food for even me)
--And lots of nori rolls, when the mood strikes, rolled by Noah the master roller
We are eating more home-cooked food because my arms are a little better and I am chopping a little more. Yum, food. Yay, lower food bills. Yay, food that is more real-ingredient-centered.
It's NaPoWriMo and I am not participating. Go elsewhere.
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