secondhand gods

randoms

• "The Monsters of Templeton" is really very good (thank you NY Times Book Review!)
• Reddi Whip makes any kind of bland dessert even better.
• When confronted with the prospect of a hard frost in April, red squirrels are capable of making incredible leaps from amazingly distant pieces of lawn furniture onto tempting bird feeders.
• My lesson for the day at Widget Central was: write your name on your Lean Cuisine before trustingly storing it in the second-floor town hall freezer. I walked in at lunchtime today, rummaged through the freezer, and found my meal GONE. There were several other frozen entrees there, but all of them contained meat and I do not tend to purchase anything except the vegetable ones, because I find the meat in any kind of frozen meal to be "Smeat" and horrid and gristly and gag-worthy. I immediately uttered some foul oaths and proclaimed to the two startled bystanders using the microwaves, "SOMEONE STOLE MY LUNCH!" There was a moment of shocked silence and then one of them politely said, "REALLY? What was it?" I advised him as to the type of Lean Cuisine it had been. The other bystander gave a guilty start and said, "Oh, I'm microwaving that right now!" I fixed her with a gimlet eye and she said hastily that her HUSBAND had packed her Lean Cuisine for her that morning and she hadn't known what kind it was, so she had just pulled one out of the Widget Central freezer that "seemed right." She surrendered it without a fight and then went over to the freezer and blithely pulled another meal out without reading the box. I was on the verge of asking, "Meathead, if you don't know what kind he packed you -- EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE THE ONE WHO TOOK IT OUT OF YOUR LUNCH BAG AND PUT IT IN THE WIDGET CENTRAL FREEZER AT SOME POINT -- then how do you know THAT is yours?" But since I had recovered my lunch, it was not my job to safeguard some other poor sap's Sesame Chicken from the slavering wolfpack who exist on the second floor of Widget Central. Write your name on things. To her credit, she did seem properly horrified that she had practically taken food out of the mouth of a six-month-pregnant woman. I shudder to think what might have happened if I'd arrived at the freezer a few minutes later.

a little bit of weather, eating, reading

The weather here in Detroit has been absolutely lovely lately. There are red tulips in the beds and baby leaves on the trees and cardinals on the feeder, all of which are very cheerful.

GB has been traveling for the past 2 weeks and will be gone again next week as well. *sigh* I know it's his job and for the most part he really likes his job, so that makes me agreeable to it, but I certainly miss him when he is gone.

The travel is difficult for him as well, and he doesn't like being away from home, living out of a suitcase and eating restaurant food* all the time. But again, it comes with the job and he likes his job and there are trade-offs.

*Actually, this isn't true, because most of the time he'll sniff out a Trader Joe's in his port of call and load up on snacks. GB is one of those rare people who can get a nice loaf of bread and some tapenade, some good cheese, fruit and nuts and other little munchies, and be perfectly content to call it supper. I, on the other hand, am not. Anyway.

When GB is gone I eat a lot of cereal, lounge in the bathtub, go to bed early, eat snacks, and do a lot of reading. During his recent voyages I have consumed the following:

Beekeeper's Apprentice & Justice Hall - Laurie R. King. Typically, the idea of an author cadging another author's character, particularly an iconic one such as Sherlock Holmes, is so distasteful to me that I can't even pick up the book without shuddering. But my library chose Beekeeper as a recent book club selection, so I thought I would try it too. To my surprise, it was palatable. They didn't have the sequel, so I got the third in the series, and it was better than the first. Oh, not great -- merely passable -- but Sherlock Holmes is definitely recognizable as Sherlock Holmes even if his turn of the century feminist sidekick is laid on a bit thick for my taste. And it gave me the icky creeps to think that a Holmes in his mid-sixties would marry a twenty-year old. What is this, a Harrison Ford movie? But all in all, they were quick reads and while not particularly memorable, I couldn't complain too much. They paired well with a bowl of Cream of Wheat and some banana slices on toast.

Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig. This was an unmitigated disaster. I couldn't even finish it. Perhaps the relative success of the Sherlock Holmes thing in the above books made me cocky, but I pushed my luck. It wasn't even a sequel -- it was an actual attempt at rewriting bits of GWTW from Rhett's perspective. Unfortunately, this Rhett Butler was an utter ponce. I wish I could have those hours of my life back. I would have rather been watching Rock of Love 2 on VH1. Paired with grilled cheese sandwiches and Key Lime pie yogurt. Reading the nutrition info on the yogurt was more entertaining than this book.

Duma Key - Stephen King. I love Stephen King and although he has let me down in the past (Tales from a Buick 8, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the last few novels of the Dark Tower series), he is always worth the time. I think his early works -- the ones written when he was by his own admission drinking Scope out of the bottle when he ran out of other intoxicants -- are unparalleled. I was lukewarm on the most recent Lisey's Story but started out liking Duma Key. I thought it was creepy, atmospheric, the characters engaging, the story brisk but the book itself satisfyingly thick (I hate books that take me as long to read as People magazine.) I would find myself sitting in dull Widget Central meetings with my mind wandering to the beach at Duma Key and wishing the time would move more quickly so I could hurry home in rush hour and get back to Big Pink. And he still knows how to make you regret reading him after dark in an empty house.

However, he has never quite mastered the art of the successful ending -- The Stand being a prime example of a masterpiece of a book marred by a hasty and disappointing finale. Duma Key ended on a disjointed, ludicrous note with far too many loose flapping ends and a general sense of anticlimax. However, I can't complain too much because I did enjoy 75% of the story. Also, I read this one whilst enjoying a particularly fine bunch of sweet green grapes and really superior Thai takeout from the great little joint around the corner (Pad Almond, medium, with a spring roll and plum sauce), and Trader Joe's Cinnamon Schoolbook cookies (which I can recommend more highly than the book.)

Next in the queue: Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff. Hopefully with a Peanut Buster Parfait from DQ.

accomplishments

GB & I had a very accomplished day...enjoying the sunshine, we resigned ourselves to doing our duty by little unborn Snoop, and went to the local Baby Supe R Store to register for all the things they tell you you "need." After two hours and fraying tempers, we managed to pick out the necessities -- a stroller and carseat, a simple crib of honey colored pine that will eventually convert into a toddler bed, a crib mattress, and some other accoutrements. It was a vastly overwhelming experience. Everything seems to have enormous import. "Is this carseat a shade more stable than that one? Hmm. Try it again. Is the distance between the slats on that crib acceptable? I don't know...What the hell is a Pack and Play??"

GB & I, due to our whirlwind courtship and instantaneous recognition that we needed no more "stuff" to set up our newlywed household, eschewed a wedding registry when we were first married. This was our first giddy experience wandering around a store, pointing the scanner at whatever we wanted and hearing the satisfying "beep." While I enjoyed it, I think GB found the entire cultural phenomenon to be a bit unsettling. Being the sensible chap that he is, at one point offered that we could always find a perfectly acceptable crib secondhand, which I promptly refused. I'm not sure why. He's right. And two years ago -- living in what seems now to be a far more sensible society when it comes to material consumption -- I probably would have agreed. After two years living in the US, though, I am somehow unable to bear the thought that all of my other friends and their babies might have special cribs on their registry that Snoop might not. "Lead paint," I offered as a feeble excuse. "Updated safety regulations." In truth, it is really only the atmosphere of the US that has reinfected me to feel that everything must be purchased New, and put on a bear-emblazoned pastel Registry in order for it to be GOOD. I know, it's ridiculous.

Retaining some small scrap of common sense, I did decide that a special table just for changing the baby is unnecessary. It seems like once you have that pad, you can whomp it down on any surface of acceptable height and voila -- changing table. I have a dresser that I might even consider refinishing for that very purpose.

We came home tired and cranky, and I consulted our beloved red binder of collected recipes. That red binder is a nostalgic treasure trove of our eating experience. In Australia, we seemed to have lots more time and interest in cooking. We still cook every night now, but it is not the enjoyable, experimental experience that it was in Australia. I had loads of extra time to try recipes, and our weekends were built around trying new meals, mostly clipped from the spectacular "Melbourne Age" cooking section and weekend magazine, some cadged from our dear friends who lived on a farm outside of Melbourne. (They gave us a lemon tart recipe that would bring tears to your eyes.) Today, I picked out a tried-and-true beef stew recipe from -- believe it or not -- Patricia Cornwell's cookbook. GB,  who frequently brings books home from the library that he thinks I might like, recognized her name from titles on our bookshelves and brought that back from the Port Melbourne library one day. Although I was dubious, the recipes I copied from it -- the beef stew and the braided country bread -- are excellent. It was then that I learned to trust all of my husband's choices for me in the reading area. Sometimes there are misses, but he brings home some real winners more often than not.

GB put a loaf of bread in the bread machine and I retired to my back bedroom to try again with the sewing maching. The autumn placemats I tried for a Labor Day project turned out so wretchedly that I gave up the machine for several months. Today, however, I stuck with the basics -- just hemming. I'm making a set of napkins and so far, I'm pleased with the results. I still want placemats, but baby steps.

Speaking of baby steps, my 14-week appointment this week went well. The news from the first trimester screening is all good -- all is well and normal. The only thing that the doctor was a bit concerned about was my blood sugar. She is worried that I might be developing gestational diabetes. I'll have the test at my next appointment, but in the meantime, I'm to stay away from sugar. This came as a crushing blow. As if giving up real coffee, soft cheeses, sushi, Guinness, and red wine weren't enough!! I might be the only new mom in history to gain more than her baby weight in the first month of the newborn's life, since I will no doubt be binging on all of the treats denied to me during his or her period in utero.

**update to previous post: Suse, of course, is right. The wristwarmer pattern is Fetching, not Voodoo. Post has been updated accordingly. Thanks Suse!

apple picking

Whilst in New York State, we visited GB's family and spent a drowsy, golden afternoon in an orchard atop a bluff overlooking the Hudson Valley, picking apples.

The weather was so beautiful -- the sun so warm and heavy, and the air smelled liked apple juice and autumn leaves. We found it so easy to fill our pails with fruit, with only the buzzing of wasps and the far-off sound of the hay wagon and children laughing to disturb us.

Unfortunately, when we had clambered back to the parking lot, we soon found that perhaps the heady giddiness of the orchard experience had affected our judgment when it came to the volume and mass of the fruit we picked.

We picked seventy pounds of apples.

Luckily, it just meant that late into the night, the house was fragranced with the delicious smell of my MIL K's mouth watering apple crumb pies and apple tarts.

It's nice when stories have a happy ending, isn't it?

randoms

1.) It's Saturday afternoon and the heat of the last few days has eased off a bit. However, I still have chipmunks shinnying up the peony bushes to drink out of the birdbath, and big red squirrels creeping cautiously along behind me as I water the garden in the evenings. They wait til I'm inside the house again safely, and then try to slurp up as much slopped water as they can from the ground and off the plants in the garden before it evaporates. I felt so sorry for them that tonight I just left a bowl of water on the patio. Poor critters.

2.) I forgot about August gardens. I forgot how in August, everything starts popping out all at once, and you end up with a surfeit of produce, more produce than you can eat, and panic sets in that things will start going bad before you can consume them. We have a dry pint of cherry tomatoes off our bushes, and a big cucumber to eat before it goes soft and squishy. Last night, GB made lovely bruschetta with some fresh crusty bread (sliced thin), mozz, tomatoes, and fresh basil from our own garden. At Widget Central, we have a food co-op, of sorts. The gardeners have been bringing in paper sacks of their zucchini and pickling cucumbers, passing them out to coworkers and leaving them in the town hall with "Free" signs on them. I came home with two big beauts this week, and today I am setting about turning them into zucchini bread, with some help from our friend Bittman.

3.) I haven't yet read the new Harry Potter. As I said in a comment to Suse, I don't know why I haven't rushed out to grab up my own freshly-minted copy, except that I've been slogging through a few library books lately and I just haven't gotten around to it. At our local parade last week, someone had been up down every block, and chalked spoilers in bright pastels. "Voldemort Kills Harry!" "Dumbledore Wanted to Die!" Up and down every block, some industrious young anarchist had troubled him/herself to eke out every secret. I felt like kicking that kid's ass when the parade was over. However, not having read it yet, I can't determine whether the spoilers were accurate or not.

4.) Not having HBO, we are catching up on Big Love. Having exhausted the available seasons of their other fabulous offerings -- Sopranos, Deadwood, and Rome -- GB picked this last show up a few weeks ago. I fully expected to hate it, finding Bill Paxton's character to be almost unbearable. But strangely, it has us hooked, and we devoured the first season. Chloe Sevigny -- we love to hate her.

Lastly, here's some images of what you get when you go to our hometown parade.

And to answer the question that I am sure is going through everyone's mind at this point in the post: no, I have no idea why our parade was chock full of old men dressed like vikings.

market day

In the spirit of Barbara Kingsolver's new book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", which GB & I both read over our little vacation, and her resounding message "Eat Local," we woke up early this morning and trekked over to the excellent Ann Arbor Farmer's Market.

We took a thermos of coffee with us and wandered through crowds of Ann Arborites, between stalls of glistening produce and heaps of brightly-colored flowers. You could smell fresh basil a block away.

We bought all of our weekly fruit and veg requirements, including eggplant, lettuces, tomato, new potatoes, broccoli & beans, peaches & apples -- all from local Michigan farms. We also bought a dozen huge, fresh, local free-range organic eggs, for the princely sum of $1.75. We spent less on most items than we would spend at the grocery store, and almost everything that we bought at the Farmer's Market is organic. 

We came home and GB made a fluffy omelette full of mushrooms, dill, Brie cheese, onions & parsley, which we devoured with slabs of rye toast.

All in all, I can think of no better way to start the weekend.

making jam

I've been wanting to learn how to make preserves for a long time -- since we were in Australia, actually, and GB bought me several boxes of beautiful Ball Mason canning jars. But the timing was never right, and it always seemed very complicated. Until last week, when I happened to be at the library and thought, well, I'll just check out a book and read about it to see how complicated it really is.

By happenstance, GB passed by a roadside fruit market a few days ago, and brought home two big paper sacks full of Michigan cherries and Michigan peaches. He also bought five pounds of Michigan sugar. (If it's one thing that's been drummed into us by the Barbara Kingsolver book we've been reading, it's eat local. Which is surprisingly difficult.) And after looking up some very simple starter jam recipes, we were on our way.

We didn't have a canning rack, but we have a big stockpot, and the book showed us how to use the screw lids in the bottom of the pot to rest the jars on. We started by sterilizing the jars & lids, following all of the instructions very strictly.

Then we prepared our fruit, sugar, spices, and pectin, also in strict accordance with the recipes.

When the jars & lids were ready, we carefully extracted them from the simmering water using plastic-coated tongs. This was a bit of a pain in the arse without a professional canning rack, but we did it with only a few minor scorch marks. We filled the hot jars with the fruit mixture up to the right levels, and applied the seal lids. After screwing the screw lids back on, the jars went back into the canning pot, and the water level was adjusted to cover them.

We then brought the canning pot to a full, rolling boil, which according to the recipe we had to maintain for ten minutes. After that, the jars sat for five minutes, and were then lifted out of the water and set carefully aside.

The jam had to sit for twenty-four hours. It was tough to leave it alone for that long. After licking the lashings from the bottom of the fruit pot, the results in both cases were quite delicious. The cherry jam was made with cloves and cinnamon, which gave it a lovely Christmassy taste. And the peach jam was just simple, pure and golden fresh. GB & I could barely wait to see if our jam had set, the jars had sealed appropriately, etc. But we were forced to wait.

The results were mixed. My cherry jam, unfortunately, did not set. I can see it wobbling around in the jars, doing a slow slimy shimmy. I think it will still be good -- but I probably can't describe it as "jam." "Compote," maybe. I'm a bit disappointed about this, but it still might be good over pancakes or ice cream.

Now, GB is one of those people who can pick up something and be good at it instantly, which is a lucky thing because if he's NOT good at it instantly, he doesn't have much interest in continuing to do it. This can be a bit aggravating, as his spouse, because when there is something you would like to be good at -- say, sewing or jam-making -- and your efforts turn out snarled and bungled, whereas your politely interested observer husband can step in after watching you idly for a few minutes, and do whatever it was you were trying to do one hundred times better than you can, it makes you want to throw the project across the room and stomp around in grim silence for awhile.

His peach jam is brilliant. Perfect consistency, with a taste like fresh summer sunshine.

I think we'll continue to perfect the art of jam-making, after investing in some better equipment. It was a fun project. But rest assured, friends and family, it will only be GB's jam in your Christmas hampers this year.

found!

Photo was taken with my mobile phone, and I was tempted to digitally enhance the greenness, but I think you can clearly see -- I found myself a Shamrock Shake.

It didn't take my father long to leave me a rambling and aggrieved message disputing my memory of the Shamrock Shake Sickness. In his version, I am not three or four, I am a teenager. We are not in our university apartment, we are actually sitting in a McDonald's. In public, surrounded by other innocent diners. And in his fevered memory, Shamrock Shake (and a half-masticated French Fry) actually came out of my nose. He says my brother can verify this, but I think some money has exchanged hands.

GB says that if my father's version of events actually took place then he doesn't know if he can be married to me. In my defense, for the record, I have no recollection of the above-listed events. My father clearly needs to go lie down and remember who is currently laboriously knitting him a lovely pair of cotton ragg socks. With her own two hands. I think he'll come around.

PS -- Two hours, some leftover pizza, and a Cars CD later, the first coat of paint is up in the hallway. And let me ask you -- since when are "Arabian Sands" mauve?

st. patrick's day randoms

Jennifer, the Felt Mouse, is on a search for Shamrock shakes. I haven't thought of Shamrock shakes in ages. Although there is a story in our family (which has now attained mythical status) that when I was three or four, my folks took me out to McD's on St. Patty's Day and fed me fries and a Shamrock shake, which I promptly threw up in Technicolor all over the bathroom of our tiny university apartment. My brother was a mere babe in arms and he still solemnly (and perfidiously) tells my parents that he remembers the horror of green splatter on tile. That it haunts his St. Patrick's Day dreams. Boy, you lie.

Tasks for today:

• Begin prepping the front hall to paint. Can't wait to get the "Arabian Sands" on the walls and say GOODBYE (Does anyone watch "The Office" as passionately and zealously as we do? I love Stanley. Remember the episode with the bat in the kitchen and how Stanley solemnly threw his coat over his bald head and announced GOODBYE to everyone before beating a hasty retreat?) to the horrible kelly green high-gloss trim.
• Visit Petsmart to look at the cats up for adoption (GB hates this and says I only do it to torment myself) and buy something called a Furminator, which I read about in Consumer Reports and which is supposed to be a high-tech cat brush that will reduce shedding by some double-digit-somewhat-unbelievable-percent. Hairball season might just be averted.
• Look for Shamrock Shakes if I can convince GB that he's not going to have to clean me up later in the day.
• Write up a post about the fabulous movie GB & I saw last night.
• Buy coffee at C0stco.
• Home Despot so GB can get some things to turn our back den into not only an exercise room (remember the 300-lb treadmill? Our original plan was to hump it downstairs to the basement. Guess where it ended up) but a greenhouse as well; like his mom, he's bitten by the gardening bug and has been receiving seed packs by mail for the last week. I have a bad feeling about the no-man's land our den is about to become.
• Most Hated Grocery Store.

I'll report back on the Hunt for the Shamrock Shake.

nice things

I came home after a rather long and discouraging day in the widget mines to the following very nice things.

GB had been to the secondhand store, and found the following treasures:

Being somewhat of a purist where home-baked bread is concerned, and someone who spent several months of her overseas experience experimenting to find the perfect handmade loaf recipe, I had long resisted the idea of a bread machine. Also because we have zero storage room in our kitchen for another gadget.

However, I really don't have time to bake bread anymore, even on the weekends, and so GB picked up this bread machine for five dollars. I came home tonight to the alluring scent of fresh-baked bread filling our home. And you know what? It's good. Maybe someday when we win the lottery and I can devote my life to pursuing that which I enjoy, rather than that which I have to do for our stability and well-being, I will go back to handbaked bread. Until then, the Five Dollar Bread Machine will have to do.

And:

A one-dollar chalkboard for our kitchen wall. So we can write each other lovey notes and reminders, grocery lists and menus. Once we buy some chalk, that is.

And the piece de resistance:

A gift card from my parents, so I can go out and splurge on some spa-type items from Bath & Body Works. I see some scrumptious bubble baths in my future. Thanks Mom & Dad!

Something that is also nice: my husband making stuffed pork chops in the kitchen. You can call me whatever you want, just don't call me late for dinner.