http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html
Thursday, September 25, 2008
I like the man building our fence.
He just gave me a peach-blueberry turnover and told me that he'd bring us fresh trout on Monday. Mr. Fence Man, it is enough that you and your crew are building us a fence at rock-bottom prices and that you brought your puppies over to play with Toby yesterday. It is wonderful that you talked about how you wanted to go and help rebuild fences on Kauai after Hurricane Iniki and how you built a fence around a macadamia nut farm on Kona as a barter for airfare and lodging. We like you already. But we will not object to being fed.
Mr. Fence Man goes on my People to Make Pie For list.
Mr. Fence Man goes on my People to Make Pie For list.
Dinner last night
Totally inspired by Surfrunner, I'm posting pics of the dinner I made last night, and sort-of recipes, as best as I remember them.
I made beef short ribs over mashed potatoes and parsnips with an heirloom tomato salad. It was good, if kind of heavy--we were both stuffed. The great thing about short ribs is you can start them like 3 hours or more before you want to eat them, and do other things in the meantime. And they're so yummy.
I started by frying some coarsely chopped onion and bacon in a big enameled cast-iron oval dutch oven. Then I seared the ribs on each side in the same pot, deglazed with some shiraz, added some bay leaves and parsley and a bunch more shiraz and some chopped carrots, covered up the pot, and put it in the oven at 350. I left it there for about 4 hours, checking it occasionally and adding liquid whenever it looked in danger of burning, and ladling the liquid over the ribs a couple of times.
About an hour before we wanted to eat, I chopped up five parsnips and five baby Yukon potatoes, peeled five cloves of garlic, cut a big hunk of butter into little bits, and put all those in a smaller enameled cast-iron oval pot, topped off with a lot of rosemary branches. That went into the oven next to the ribs pot.
About an hour later when the parsnips were soft and roasty-looking, I took the pot out, added more butter and a little cream and some fresh chopped parsley, and mashed everything up with a potato masher, which is easily one of my favorite kitchen tools.
Our friends from whom we got the giant mystery squash (which actually turned out to be a mutant ginormous zucchini) kindly gave us a whole bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that they are growing in their (clearly thriving) garden this summer. I sliced up some of those, poured a bit of olive oil over them, and scattered torn basil leaves around the plate:
and served us each a big rib on top of a pile of parsleyed parsnip-potato puree, which I tried to get Jam Guy to say five times fast, but he didn't want to:
That rib had a bay leaf sort of glazed onto it. I thought that was neat. Hard to get a picture of, also because I was rushing to take the pic before our food got cold.
It was super-yummy, and Toby enjoyed eating the bones. The tomatoes were, as tomatoes continue to be for me lately, an absolute revelation in how good and how diverse tomatoes can be. The deep red-and-orange one was big, fleshy, and very sweet, almost cloyingly sweet but not quite--almost obscene in its juicy meatiness. The little green-yellow ones were crisper and kind of lemony-tart, and so the two types balanced each other really well. I'm excited to grow all kinds of tomatoes here next summer.
I made beef short ribs over mashed potatoes and parsnips with an heirloom tomato salad. It was good, if kind of heavy--we were both stuffed. The great thing about short ribs is you can start them like 3 hours or more before you want to eat them, and do other things in the meantime. And they're so yummy.
I started by frying some coarsely chopped onion and bacon in a big enameled cast-iron oval dutch oven. Then I seared the ribs on each side in the same pot, deglazed with some shiraz, added some bay leaves and parsley and a bunch more shiraz and some chopped carrots, covered up the pot, and put it in the oven at 350. I left it there for about 4 hours, checking it occasionally and adding liquid whenever it looked in danger of burning, and ladling the liquid over the ribs a couple of times.
About an hour before we wanted to eat, I chopped up five parsnips and five baby Yukon potatoes, peeled five cloves of garlic, cut a big hunk of butter into little bits, and put all those in a smaller enameled cast-iron oval pot, topped off with a lot of rosemary branches. That went into the oven next to the ribs pot.
About an hour later when the parsnips were soft and roasty-looking, I took the pot out, added more butter and a little cream and some fresh chopped parsley, and mashed everything up with a potato masher, which is easily one of my favorite kitchen tools.
Our friends from whom we got the giant mystery squash (which actually turned out to be a mutant ginormous zucchini) kindly gave us a whole bunch of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that they are growing in their (clearly thriving) garden this summer. I sliced up some of those, poured a bit of olive oil over them, and scattered torn basil leaves around the plate:
and served us each a big rib on top of a pile of parsleyed parsnip-potato puree, which I tried to get Jam Guy to say five times fast, but he didn't want to:
That rib had a bay leaf sort of glazed onto it. I thought that was neat. Hard to get a picture of, also because I was rushing to take the pic before our food got cold.
It was super-yummy, and Toby enjoyed eating the bones. The tomatoes were, as tomatoes continue to be for me lately, an absolute revelation in how good and how diverse tomatoes can be. The deep red-and-orange one was big, fleshy, and very sweet, almost cloyingly sweet but not quite--almost obscene in its juicy meatiness. The little green-yellow ones were crisper and kind of lemony-tart, and so the two types balanced each other really well. I'm excited to grow all kinds of tomatoes here next summer.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Fences and neighbors
We are putting up a tall fence. One of our neighbors, a lovely elderly woman who likes to stop and chat over the 4-foot fence we are replacing, reportedly commented to the fence-building crew that our planned fence is "unfriendly."
We are not TRYING to be unfriendly, but we are definitely building the fence with privacy as a big priority (another big priority being that Toby's Houdini-like escape adventures be permanently and categorically thwarted, and a smaller priority being that random folks quit hopping our fence and crossing our yard to get to and from the creek trail behind us). I am a little fretful about facing opposition from this neighbor, and sort of fretting about whether to invite neighbors that aren't actually also our friends to the wedding, since it's going to be in our backyard and sort of obvious, although less obvious with our new fence. There are so many truly important friends that I want at the wedding, and the necessity to keep the guest list small is so real and concrete, but I also want to maintain good neighbor relations in our little neighborhood. This is hard. I think for starters I need to bring the chatty neighbor a pie, but after that my diplomatic strategy runs out.
We are not TRYING to be unfriendly, but we are definitely building the fence with privacy as a big priority (another big priority being that Toby's Houdini-like escape adventures be permanently and categorically thwarted, and a smaller priority being that random folks quit hopping our fence and crossing our yard to get to and from the creek trail behind us). I am a little fretful about facing opposition from this neighbor, and sort of fretting about whether to invite neighbors that aren't actually also our friends to the wedding, since it's going to be in our backyard and sort of obvious, although less obvious with our new fence. There are so many truly important friends that I want at the wedding, and the necessity to keep the guest list small is so real and concrete, but I also want to maintain good neighbor relations in our little neighborhood. This is hard. I think for starters I need to bring the chatty neighbor a pie, but after that my diplomatic strategy runs out.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Sigh.
I was going to write a post about how much skinnier the cast of the new "90210" is than the cast of the original; something about how even though I wasn't allowed to watch the original show when it was running (from when I was entering seventh grade to when I was graduating from high school) I wanted so much to look like Kelly and Brenda. I knew I wouldn't ever, but I dieted my booty off (literally) trying to get thin and cute like they were. Today, looking back at pictures of my high school self, I want to holler at that girl: YOU ARE SO FREAKING HOT! LOOK HOW SKINNY YOU ARE! YOU WOULD BE EVEN HOTTER WITH ANOTHER FIVE OR TEN POUNDS ON YOU! EAT SOMETHING! EAT THAT SPAM MUSUBI I KNOW YOU WANT! And while we're chatting, JUST DATE THE DRAMA CLUB/MARCHING BAND/CHESS CLUB/MATH TEAM GEEKS YOU HAVE ALL THOSE CRUSHES ON, AND FUCK WHAT YOUR GIRLFRIENDS WILL THINK!
Anyhoo, it worries me what students today are going to think they need to look like, when I compare the Kelly-and-Brenda bodies I was aspiring to look like back in my literally lean years
with the body of Shenae Grimes, who plays the "new" Brenda character:
Anyways, that was the post I was going to write. But then while looking for those images to use to illustrate my point, I kept finding all these mean blogs that basically reamed out the actors in the original 90210 for getting older and not looking like teenagers anymore--even though any present-day picture I found of the two actress I wanted so much to look like showed that they're totally grownup hotties now. I thought about how hard we can be on ourselves and on our idols; how little I appreciated my face and my body in high school and how I worry about laugh lines now and how I might look back in another fifteen years and wish my thirty-year-old-self thought more highly of her appearance, just as today I wish my fifteen-year-old self did.
And then I just felt sort of bad for picking on Ms. Grimes for being so skinny, because she is after all just a nineteen-year-old--a tough age to be, and in a tough business, and she probably wants to eat whatever the Canadian version of a Spam musubi is, but it might be a career risk for her.
I wish for her that she enjoys being nineteen and lovely, and that it feels like a gift and not like a burden.
And I'm glad I don't have a TV, because things like this clearly get me too worked up. I am off to play in the dirt instead.
Anyhoo, it worries me what students today are going to think they need to look like, when I compare the Kelly-and-Brenda bodies I was aspiring to look like back in my literally lean years
with the body of Shenae Grimes, who plays the "new" Brenda character:
Anyways, that was the post I was going to write. But then while looking for those images to use to illustrate my point, I kept finding all these mean blogs that basically reamed out the actors in the original 90210 for getting older and not looking like teenagers anymore--even though any present-day picture I found of the two actress I wanted so much to look like showed that they're totally grownup hotties now. I thought about how hard we can be on ourselves and on our idols; how little I appreciated my face and my body in high school and how I worry about laugh lines now and how I might look back in another fifteen years and wish my thirty-year-old-self thought more highly of her appearance, just as today I wish my fifteen-year-old self did.
And then I just felt sort of bad for picking on Ms. Grimes for being so skinny, because she is after all just a nineteen-year-old--a tough age to be, and in a tough business, and she probably wants to eat whatever the Canadian version of a Spam musubi is, but it might be a career risk for her.
I wish for her that she enjoys being nineteen and lovely, and that it feels like a gift and not like a burden.
And I'm glad I don't have a TV, because things like this clearly get me too worked up. I am off to play in the dirt instead.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tractor day, and big adventure at the dump.
Today Roger, Jam Guy's friend and coworker, came over with his tractor to grade the orchard area. The idea was to pull up the layer of what Roger told us was "bermuda grass" to make room for the field of poppies we envision there, and also to smooth out the ground in the area so that it's comfortable for everybody to walk on at the wedding.
Yesterday Jam Guy did a LOT of work in the garden while I was working at a winery event, all to make it easier and more effective for Roger to do his tractoring. When I came home, I found all the fruit trees pruned into much smaller fruit trees (which I am given to understand is very good for the trees) and an enormous pile of branches stacked tidily against the greenhouse. Moreover, the old stump around which I had proudly dug my very first trench--we used the trench to flood the area around the stump, to facilitate its removal--had been pulled up. Poor Jam Guy was a little sunburned and a lot tired, and I was so impressed by everything that he had accomplished while I had just been pouring wine.
(The winery job, by the way, is SO MUCH FUN. Here's what I do: drive for about half an hour through progressively prettier wine country, pull up at a winery literally carved into the side of a hill, with views of vineyards rolling up and down in gentle waves. I stand behind a bar in the tasting room inside this hill, pour tastes of wine to happy strangers and chat with them, and when there are no happy strangers around chat with the happy winemakers, managers and vineyard staff. It is pretty freaking awesome. It doesn't pay very much, but I don't care, because I feel like I am getting paid to hang out at a cocktail party.)
Anyways, tractor day: Roger brought his tractor over in a big trailer behind his cargo van, and generously offered to use the trailer to help us haul all of our yard waste to the dump. Roger is adorable. He has this big white beard; he drove around in his tractor wearing a straw cowboy hat with a feather stuck in it. He is a study in idioms about cheerful men: he literally has a feather in his hat; his eyes literally twinkle, his laugh literally booms. And he really seemed to enjoy tractoring and hauling stuff to the dump and just being a nice and helpful friend.
While Roger gamely tractored about, Jam Guy and I piled tree boughs and bermuda-grass bits and literally hundreds of tiny unripe apples onto the trailer. I felt really guilty about the apples going to waste--the branches needed to be cut, but the apples are too green for any people to want to eat them--but Roger says that he thinks there are critters that scavenge at the dump, and probably they will eat the apples. I think he might just be saying that to relieve my guilt. I'll take it.
At the dump I was kind of fascinated, because I'd never been to a dump before. We made a stop to drop off some wood planks, another to dump all the tree limbs and leaves and apples, and a last one to leave some aluminum sheets that had been under the old tool shed that a nice man kindly removed from our garden after we put it up on the "free" section on Craigslist. The woman who worked at the aluminum station checked with a magnet to make sure that the sheets really were aluminum (I guess to make sure they were recyclable) and then peered at me as I hopped out of the van and said "You are a very pretty girl," apropos of nothing. I was having a good day already, but damn if that didn't just totally make it for me. I'm not sure there is anything much better for one's morale than getting a sincere-sounding compliment from a stranger when you are dirty and in your mucking-around clothes and your hair is escaping every which way from its braid.
Anyways. My easily-petted vanity is not the point. The point is: Because of Roger's cheerful and gracious help, we accomplished today what would have taken us months to accomplish on our own. Roger is aces.
Here are some "before" pics:
And some "after" pics:
PS: Ha ha, I said "dump."
Yesterday Jam Guy did a LOT of work in the garden while I was working at a winery event, all to make it easier and more effective for Roger to do his tractoring. When I came home, I found all the fruit trees pruned into much smaller fruit trees (which I am given to understand is very good for the trees) and an enormous pile of branches stacked tidily against the greenhouse. Moreover, the old stump around which I had proudly dug my very first trench--we used the trench to flood the area around the stump, to facilitate its removal--had been pulled up. Poor Jam Guy was a little sunburned and a lot tired, and I was so impressed by everything that he had accomplished while I had just been pouring wine.
(The winery job, by the way, is SO MUCH FUN. Here's what I do: drive for about half an hour through progressively prettier wine country, pull up at a winery literally carved into the side of a hill, with views of vineyards rolling up and down in gentle waves. I stand behind a bar in the tasting room inside this hill, pour tastes of wine to happy strangers and chat with them, and when there are no happy strangers around chat with the happy winemakers, managers and vineyard staff. It is pretty freaking awesome. It doesn't pay very much, but I don't care, because I feel like I am getting paid to hang out at a cocktail party.)
Anyways, tractor day: Roger brought his tractor over in a big trailer behind his cargo van, and generously offered to use the trailer to help us haul all of our yard waste to the dump. Roger is adorable. He has this big white beard; he drove around in his tractor wearing a straw cowboy hat with a feather stuck in it. He is a study in idioms about cheerful men: he literally has a feather in his hat; his eyes literally twinkle, his laugh literally booms. And he really seemed to enjoy tractoring and hauling stuff to the dump and just being a nice and helpful friend.
While Roger gamely tractored about, Jam Guy and I piled tree boughs and bermuda-grass bits and literally hundreds of tiny unripe apples onto the trailer. I felt really guilty about the apples going to waste--the branches needed to be cut, but the apples are too green for any people to want to eat them--but Roger says that he thinks there are critters that scavenge at the dump, and probably they will eat the apples. I think he might just be saying that to relieve my guilt. I'll take it.
At the dump I was kind of fascinated, because I'd never been to a dump before. We made a stop to drop off some wood planks, another to dump all the tree limbs and leaves and apples, and a last one to leave some aluminum sheets that had been under the old tool shed that a nice man kindly removed from our garden after we put it up on the "free" section on Craigslist. The woman who worked at the aluminum station checked with a magnet to make sure that the sheets really were aluminum (I guess to make sure they were recyclable) and then peered at me as I hopped out of the van and said "You are a very pretty girl," apropos of nothing. I was having a good day already, but damn if that didn't just totally make it for me. I'm not sure there is anything much better for one's morale than getting a sincere-sounding compliment from a stranger when you are dirty and in your mucking-around clothes and your hair is escaping every which way from its braid.
Anyways. My easily-petted vanity is not the point. The point is: Because of Roger's cheerful and gracious help, we accomplished today what would have taken us months to accomplish on our own. Roger is aces.
Here are some "before" pics:
And some "after" pics:
PS: Ha ha, I said "dump."
Monday, September 15, 2008
These are the good old days
Sometimes I see my present life in flashes of Super 8 film, etchy, jerking, filled with warm yellowy tones. There are two young brothers, neighbors of ours, that are always playing some kind of ball--basketball, football, weird hybrids of both--out on the street, and I think about how if I have children these boys will be grown men, or close, by the time my children are throwing a ball. I think about how the images of me from today will seem funny and old-fashioned to my children, viewing them in whatever medium we view photos and movies in when children of mine are old enough to view photos and movies. I wonder if I will look to them like my mother looks to me in our old home movies--glamorous in her beehive and go-go boots, radiating a vague discontent that makes her more beautiful, more distant and mysterious--or like someone happy and aware of her ridiculously good fortune. Or like something else entirely.
I hear in my head the whir and flap of old projectors and wish with all my heart that the woman I am now will be recognizable to my children within the mother I become. I wish that if our children see a photo of Jam Guy and I walking out of the house arm in arm the way we do, flirting and kissing, they roll their eyes and say "Mom and Dad haven't changed a bit," and pretend to act grossed-out but are secretly glad and reassured about their parents' love and about love in general. I wish that they respect the choices I made before they were conceived and that those choices somehow, in some way, someday have a positive effect on their own lives. I wish that the values I hold most precious today--be kind to all people and animals, respect your environment, be slow to judge and quick to succor--I am still holding then and able to convey to my children.
And I wish that they dress up in the clothes I wear today and laugh and laugh when they are five because the sleeves touch their toes, and then dress up in them for nerd day at school when they are twelve because they think my clothes are so dorky, and then when they are eighteen beg to borrow them because my retro threads are going to be so freaking cool.
I hear in my head the whir and flap of old projectors and wish with all my heart that the woman I am now will be recognizable to my children within the mother I become. I wish that if our children see a photo of Jam Guy and I walking out of the house arm in arm the way we do, flirting and kissing, they roll their eyes and say "Mom and Dad haven't changed a bit," and pretend to act grossed-out but are secretly glad and reassured about their parents' love and about love in general. I wish that they respect the choices I made before they were conceived and that those choices somehow, in some way, someday have a positive effect on their own lives. I wish that the values I hold most precious today--be kind to all people and animals, respect your environment, be slow to judge and quick to succor--I am still holding then and able to convey to my children.
And I wish that they dress up in the clothes I wear today and laugh and laugh when they are five because the sleeves touch their toes, and then dress up in them for nerd day at school when they are twelve because they think my clothes are so dorky, and then when they are eighteen beg to borrow them because my retro threads are going to be so freaking cool.
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