I’ll have chicken and only chicken. And by that, I mean chicken with everything.
Posts Tagged ‘Food’
Something ain’t right here
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010Touchdown in Maui
Saturday, April 17th, 2010Thanks to a couple who missed their plane, we made it to Hawaii. Continental overbooked, but we caught a break at the expense of the misfortune of others. I sit here now listening to the sounds of the Pacific Ocean and drinking a margarita as Devon marinates the fuck out of some chicken for tomorrow’s dinner. I’ll make some brownies later, because this is the sort of stuff we do on vacation.
I wasn’t sure we’d make it. Last Thursday, I spent the night in the ER with Dad, whose colon decided to go rogue and strangle his small intestines. That’s the way colons are sometimes, going bad when you least expect it. Dad survived the surgery and is recovering fairly well, minus part of his colon and sporting a colostomy bag. He had a pacemaker put in today, since he has also developed a heart condition. The time in the hospital is not doing good things for his cognitive function. Most of our travel plans seem to be up in the air until we actually leave.
I spent part of the 10-hour flight falling in love…with Walt Whitman. Few people make me as happy to be alive as Whitman. Dude was actually fired from his day job for writing Leaves of Grass. People thought he was a big ol’ perv. I’m not a big fan of poetry in general. I spent too much time in college listening to too many emo kids whine about their pain, I guess. But Whitman is the shit, y’all.
We’re getting married on Monday (me and Devon, not me and Walt Whitman), and I’ve suggested Devon run from the crazy lady while he can. He is marinating chicken instead. He can’t say he wasn’t warned.
Daybreak in the spare bedroom
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010“I can finally literally touch the back wall. That hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s like a fat man seeing his penis after a decade.”
– Devon, on clearing some boxes out of the spare bedroom
– Devon, on clearing some boxes out of the spare bedroom
Now that we can see our figurative penises again, we should be able to get the back room into shape. We both want a well-ordered, domestic home, but we are not particularly well-ordered people, which is why we still have unpacked boxes after six months.
We have too much stuff. WAY too much stuff. The amount of stuff that would be appropriate for people who have been married for a decade and are living in a large house. In fairness, we were married for about six years total, just not to each other.
Mentally, we do not accept the fact that we live in an apartment in New York City. Devon just bought me a freezer for my birthday. A freezer. Because the one that came with our fridge just wasn’t good enough. The freezer will be going in the spare bedroom, which is why Devon was clearing boxes. We have a juicer, an espresso machine, a coffeemaker, a bread machine, a deep fryer, a pressure cooker and more pots and pans than you could shake an infrared thermometer at, and we have two of those.
We haven’t decided to toss much. We rented storage space so we could move some out. In other words, we rented an apartment for our stuff. We hope to have a house someday, but for now, we pay rent for our things.
But damn, that freezer is gonna be awesome.
Homeless, briefly
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010So last week I locked myself out of the apartment when I went downstairs to do laundry. I was stuck out in the hallway for 3-1/2 hours in my bare feet with nothing but a bucket of laundry detergent until Devon came home, because my pride wouldn’t let me use a neighbor’s phone to call him to ask him to come home and let my sorry, forgetful ass in.
My pride hates me.
When I told him the story, he was all, “You’re going to blog this, aren’t you?” And it seems like a slam dunk, what with me taking a nap in the hallway with my laundry-detergent bucket as a pillow. But the truth is, it actually wasn’t so bad. A neighbor supplemented my bucket with some socks, a cereal bar, a jacket and some magazines. Another neighbor let me hang at her place for a bit before her daughter had to go to sleep. So instead of a series of misadventures, I have a story that renews my faith in community, and a pretty dull blog entry.
Damn you, community!
How to score with (boy) nerds
Friday, December 11th, 2009I qualify “nerds” because there was a terrific post about scoring with female nerds at The Park Bench, which inspired this one. After speaking* with Devon, I put together this primer on dating male nerds.
Be interested in his obsession
And he WILL be obsessed with something, whether it’s Battlestar Galactica, forensic science or making chess pieces out of recycled yak dung. Being genuinely interested makes life easier for everyone, but “fake it ’til you make it” also applies.
Be aggressive
Boy nerds have taken a lot of rejection since high school. A LOT. He may not recognize you shoving his head into your breasts as flirting, in which case you’ll need to come on stronger. Nerds are very smart and very, very dumb.
Have breasts
Nerds are still men, and men like boobs. Anything that emphasizes your breasts (say, shoving his head into them) will let him know you are a woman and that he should consider the possibility of having sex with you at some point in the future.
Build a World of Warcraft toon now
The good news is that you won’t be trapped watching football on lazy afternoons. The bad news is that you’d better be ready to part with $15 a month for a World of Warcraft account. A toon is a WoW character you control, and you will need one if you want to spend this time together. Start building now, because your level-15 noob just won’t cut it when he’s doing level-80 raids. It’s OK. While this seems lame now, you will TOTALLY FUCKING LOVE IT BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME.
Feed him
The average nerd isn’t so dense that he will die of starvation, but he may consider Whoppers and beer a balanced meal. If you encourage him to eat real food and take care of himself, you might prove invaluable in keeping him alive.
Be prepared to make bizarre abstract arguments
Like, who would win in a fight, Caprica Six or Megatron? Q or Elminster? This is nerd philosophy. Embrace it and your nerd will embrace you.
Wooing a nerd helps if you are also a nerd. Odds are, though, that your nerdiness will have a different flavor than his, so it helps to brush up on the basics. Your learning curve will be steeper if you are not a nerd, but it can work if you are committed and persistent. Go get ’em, tiger.
* Nerds don’t speak. We IM. Even ones who live together.
Looking for some cheer here
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009I seem to have misplaced my Christmas spirit. Until about three years ago, I was so amped for Christmas that people had to tell me to calm my shit down, because it was just embarrassing in a grown woman, and I would tell those people to stuff it, because I had some Christmas cookies and eggnog to devour. Then I would waddle myself over to the TV and watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” under the explosion of Christmas lights and decorations.
Christmas is always nice (last year I spent it in Rome, which was awesome), but I haven’t felt that giddy excitement in awhile. Maybe it’s because global warming has fixed it so that New York hasn’t even seen snowfall yet. More likely it’s because so many of my Christmas memories have centered around tradition — making Italian cookies that take all day to make, even with three people; decorating the tree; making highly alcoholic eggnog punch; mom telling me not to put so much booze in the eggnog punch; mom begging me to open one of my presents early, because she liked giving them even more than I liked getting them.
When I mentioned that I wanted to start creating some traditions of our own, Devon pointed out that those things tend to evolve naturally. Not sure I agree with that, since traditions happen because people make them happen. At any rate, we don’t tend to do the same thing twice, which makes it hard to create traditions, so I’ve decided to create some of my own. I was too wiped to do cards or decorations this year, but I’m going to do one festive thing if I have to kill people to make it happen.
What do you guys do for Christmas that has meaning for you? (If you don’t celebrate Christmas, let me hear your other holiday traditions. I’m a fan of yule.)
It’s the little things
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Sometimes, my dad is awesome.
I was making cheesecake for Thanksgiving and asked him whether he wanted to lick the bowl.
Dad: No, I don’t…[he sticks his pinky in the bowl and licks it tentatively.] Mmm, this is good. Give me a spoon.
So I let my dad slurp clean the remains of a bowl of cheesecake batter all by himself. Either I’m a very good daughter or a very, very bad one.
Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night.
Food: Just Say ‘No’ to yeast infections
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009When you see how dead easy it is to make your own yogurt, you’ll buy the store-bought stuff only during moments of extreme desperation. It takes a bit of time, but most of that can be spent watching TV or organizing your underwear drawer while the milk and heat do their thing. Devon found that using yogurt instead of milk made for fluffier omelets. I like this recipe because it lets me have plain organic yogurt for half the price of the non-organic kind in stores.
If you’re looking for the sugary, gross stuff on the supermarket shelves, this isn’t it. This recipe will give you 4 cups of plain yogurt. Adding vanilla extract, sugar or jam will jazz it up a bit, and you control how sweet it gets. This recipe calls for a yogurt maker, but you can make it without one if you can find a consistent, low-temperature heat source, such as an oven that goes as low as 100 F. If you’re feeling experimental, you can buy your own yogurt culture
I also got my yogurt maker at Amazon, but they no longer carry the dirt-cheap one I have, and the ones they do carry are about twice the cost of the one I bought, so look around.
You can skip the dry milk if you’re using whole milk, but I recommend it if you’re making low-fat or skim yogurt.
Yogurt
- 4 cups milk (whole, lowfat or skim)
- ¼ cup dry milk powder (optional)
- ½ of an 8-ounce container of store-bought plain yogurt
Pour the milk into a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat to 185 F. Let the milk cool to 100 F to 110 F. While the milk is cooling, plug in the yogurt maker.
Add milk powder, if using, and half of the container of yogurt. (If you add the culture when the milk is too hot, you will kill off the bacteria that make the whole thing work.) Whisk the powder and yogurt in gently until they are incorporated and lumps are gone.
Pour milk into preheated yogurt maker, set up according to appliance directions, and let set for 4 to 7 hours. The longer you let it set, the tarter the yogurt will be.
When yogurt is done, drain off the whey, if desired, and cool in fridge.
Draining off a lot of the whey will give you a thicker yogurt, and I got pretty close to the texture of Greek yogurt by draining it over and over again until all the whey was almost completely drained off. Warning: This technique will cut your yield in half.
