must . . . touch . . . sea urchin . . .

The oldest two varmints are off for their first day of what The Hulk calls "head learning." I have some curtains to hem, laundry to do, a plumber to call, a vacation to plan--my only criterion is that there must be tide pools with creatures in them, and you would not believe how that restricts our choices. We're thinking the Oregon coast, probably near Cannon Beach--anybody out there have some good suggestions?

We cleaned up at the fair--so much better than baked goods! Some blues, some reds. And I forgot to go get my Blue Hubbard, frown.

The hay shelter is coming tomorrow. I'm putting a poll on the sidebar and I want everybody to tell me what to do about our goat operation.

and my mom wonders why I don't shop there

You know how I'm mean-spirited and like easy targets, so you can understand why this website made me giggle. My favorite, even with its shades of NSFW, is the lady with the too-short dress/jumper/who knows what with her business hanging out. Be warned, churchers: it has swears. And I'm guessing they'll be sued by Walmart in three . . . two . . . one . . .

spoiler alert for people who have been in hypersleep since 2004

Lost issues:
Is it just me, or is Michael's ex-girlfriend/Walt's mom a huge butthole? Baby stealer. I think Sally Field should play Michael in the movie adaptation of his story. And Alfred Molina can play Walt's mom. It'll be a huge hit--I predict the Palme d'Or!

they draw near to me with their essential oils, but their packaging is far from me

I am a feedback person. I call companies all the time, telling them when I love or hate their product, and why. Sometimes they give me free stuff, but not always. Were I a huge, soulless corporation, I think it would be nice to hear legitimate feedback from an actual consumer of my product, because of course their opinion matters SO MUCH to me.

I just called the Mrs. Meyers people and told them that they should sell their shower cleaner in little packets of concentrate, like ketchup or something. Because their spray bottles are of sufficient quality to be re-used indefinitely, and recyclable or not, those big bottles are a ton of plastic and packaging waste. Wouldn't it be better to just dump a little packet in the bottle and add your own water? Tell me where I'm wrong. I think one barrier is that they'd have a more difficult time getting people to pay for the packet, because people are used to paying for a big spray bottle of water. Quantity, not quality. It's what America does best!

I think the girl thought I was a kook.

our contenders

my Blue Hubbard squash

John's pumpkin--probably his first county fair vegetable entry ever

The Hulk's "Largest Specimen" zucchini

Pinga's yellow tomatoes

Captain America's green tomatoes, stem on

The Hulk's potatoes

Superman's carrots

a fair is a veritable smorgasbord

It's fair time--everyone else in the state has started school already, it seems, but not here. We do NOT crowd the fair. The show steers aren't going to walk themselves, are they? Or the fruits and vegetables pluck themselves from the stem and arrange themselves on a styrofoam tray to be judged? I don't think so.

Today we're going to pick a mess of produce to enter. No red tomatoes, since the fiendish chickens ate them all while we were gone. But you can enter green tomatoes as well, and I have a zeppelin of a zucchini, as well as some gorgeous Blue Hubbard squash. Eee! I love a fair, especially when it's done properly, as ours is. I decided not to do any baked goods, because they're sort of a hassle, time-investment-wise. Too much else to do.

Pictures of our entries later.

ways to spend more money in this time of economic uncertainty

Look at these hair thingies. LOOK AT THEM. If you have a baby girl and you don't want one of these fierce hair clips (like the owl, seriously, THE OWL) then you are dead inside. They're made by my sister Claire's friend, and she also sells them at the Cache Valley Gardeners' Market. Technically they are not garden produce, but let's not quibble about semantics.

I'm such a beefcake I can't even get through the door

I just spent the last three days with John in Salt Lake relaxing, buying clothes and kitchenware, watching movies and eating off the fat of the land. Which in Salt Lake means lots of restaurants. We did steak, Mexican, Chinese, German and wedding food (the guy cutting the prime rib sliced his hand and bled all over the meat--sad for him and we are maladjusted because we thought it was kind of cool). I ventured outside of my comfort zone and ate the serrano peppers in my share of the "Puntas de Filete a la Nortena" we ordered. John picked his out--wasted! By a girl!

One of the movies we saw was Terminator: Salvation (groan, what a smurfy name), because I like so much how I'm afraid of intelligent robots and the future where everywhere is Nevada, and I thought, why not compound my neuroses? Why not cradle them and sing them lullabies, while spoon-feeding them beefcake weight gain supplement and royal jelly? Well, mission accomplished! But I was thankful that they addressed the topic of whatever do people eat when the whole world is a sucky dust bowl (coyote), because I worry about those things. Like, what are they going to do in The Road after all the canned goods run out (maybe the bloodcults are just innovators)? I turned to John at the triumphant end of WALL-E when they find that live plant and said, "Um, that's bindweed." I saw those leaves. Not going to be growing fruit anytime soon.

In other news: IT'S PEACH SEASON! Go and get you some. I got some Glowhavens from Sumida's this morning that are, I am not lying to you, softball-sized. And can you believe that I'm selfless enough to save them to eat with our company tomorrow? It's true, I am better than other people.

shut up, tv chefs

I realize that to hate is toxic and all loathing equals self loathing, blah blah blah, but man. That Giada "chef" woman. I extra super can't stand her vaseline smile and her third-grade princess hair and her mantis gestures and her CONSTANT name-dropping of her grandpa whom no one cares about.

As long as I don't see or hear about Rachael Ray and her harp seal voice I can kind of deal with her, but my disdain for Giada is at a constant simmer, with boiling flare-ups whenever she takes up valuable screen time at my in-laws' house when I could be watching that Double Dare guy tell me about junk food.

who wants to make something you can buy pretty much anywhere?

I'm getting low on soap, and I was thinking, maybe some of y'all would like to come and learn how to stick it to Big Soap! Imagine, freeing yourself from the shackles of the industrial soap complex. It is a humbling yet empowering thought.

I think a class size of five to seven people would be manageable, at least for the maiden voyage (date and time to be determined). For a five dollar fee to cover costs I will provide materials (fats, fragrances, lye, etc.), and class participants will only need to bring a crock pot/slow cooker of their choice. All the soap washes out, so you can use your regular old food one.

If you'd be interested in something of this nature, leave a comment. Friends, family, acquaintances and randoms welcome.

zucchini bisque

You could ask for a lovelier color, but that would be so greedy of you.

If you're like me, you're finally to the point where you have more zucchini than you can use, and you're getting mighty sick of eating it sauteed all the livelong day, and maybe you haven't got a bunch of mozzarella with which to make it into parmigiana. And it's a little cooler outside than August usually is, so you're going to make some zucchini bisque. Here's how you do it:

Zucchini Bisque
(adapted from Bountiful Harvest)
1/2 C butter
1 onion, diced
3 C shredded zucchini
3 C chicken broth
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/4 t nutmeg (optional--you know how kids are)
1/2 C cream

Saute the onion in the butter. Add the zucchini and chicken broth, and simmer, covered, for fifteen minutes. Add seasonings and puree (I use an immersion blender). Stir in cream (I used milk this time), heat through and serve.

she said she love you love you long time

Look how young and innocent we were. But that DENIM, for crying out loud. Matching shirt and pants? What a disaster.

You know that story about the boy who saves a snake, and then the snake bites him and is all, not my problem, see above, re: snake. "You knew what I was when you picked me up" is the take-home phrase for the audience, to teach them that creatures, people, substances, etc. can never act in a way contrary to their nature. Sharks will bite you, people will betray you, and drugs are bad, mmm-kay?

John and I were friends for four years, but like any self-respecting Mormon couple, we only dated for about six weeks before we got married. Here's a good story from the four years of friendship/unrequited love: John had gotten home from a trip to England where he chaperoned a youth soccer team, and he called me and asked if I wanted to go out for dinner. Only it was more like an hour of "Do you want to go do something? I do if you do, but if you're busy . . . Do you want to go, because we don't have to. Maybe we could go somewhere and get some food, or maybe watch a movie. Well, what should we do? I don't care, just whatever. You choose." Eventually we decided to go get some dinner, then watch a video at his house--he lived with his parents, since their house was only a few miles from the university.

Well, TWO HOURS LATER I called, wondering where he was, and so great was his anticipation for our evening together he had FALLEN ASLEEP and my call woke him up. So he finally came over to get me, and we went to I think it was Golden Corral, where you pay up front, and he turns to me and wants to know, "Uhh, am I paying for you?" I mean, what a gentleman, right? Really knows how to romance a lady. But I am a mistrustful pessimist who sees signs of pending treachery everywhere I turn, and I had anticipated his boorishness and brought my own money, which I think helped to alleviate the feeling of worthlessness his remark gave me. After our unremarkable dinner we went back to his house to watch THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION of all things, and I sat on the couch, next to his dad, while he sat on the floor. The movie, as you know if you've seen it, sucked royally, and I was epically peeved at him about the sleeping and the dinner and the avoidance and the general air of aloof disinterest. What was his problem? I was a smart, beautiful, talented girl, and he was being a total schmuck.

So I guess we were cosmically fated to be together or whatever, or I would have never answered a call from him again. To hear him tell the story of our relationship, though, he was concerned about the five-year difference in our ages, my lack of passion about anything, and he was afraid I wasn't interested in him. BULL.

But after the four years of acquaintance and the ponderous six weeks of dating/courtship, John and I still knew very little about each other--I just knew I needed to marry that tall, pale, handsome drink of water with the crazy strong forearms. John absolutely was buying a pig in a poke, because I hadn't ever really been myself with him--I was still operating at about 65% of natural, waiting for that betrayal I knew was bound to come. What a relief for him when he found out that I do have opinions, oh BOY do I have opinions. And what a relief for me to have learned that I don't have to worry about John leading a secret double life and poisoning me when he wearies of the charade. Knock on wood.

Last night John strapped on the headlamp to go out and engage the multiple wasp nests in the goat pen--our kids had gotten numerous stings earlier in the day. He came back in after his Bataan death march and began recounting how he had killed nest after nest after horrid buzzing nest, until he had the last nest to go and only vapor left in the spray canister. So my hunter-gatherer, the one who does the dishes I dirty and pays for me to take cheesemaking classes, knocked the nest and its inhabitants to the ground and squished it all into a pulp with the wasp spray can. And as he stood there at eleven o'clock at night, gibbering with excitement and miming smashing motions, I was reminded again that even though neither of us knew what we were picking up, I made the right choice and I am thankful.

some thoughts on health care reform

I think this article has some interesting solutions to the health care clusterfarg, that most intelligent and non-crazy people (the ones who aren't shrieking about how God will judge Congress, which: He probably will, but I bet involvement with a bill of dubious value comes somewhat further down the list than manslaughter, sexual assault, infidelity, drug abuse, fraud, tax evasion and perjury) would embrace, or at least be intrigued by.

And thanks to my friend Heidi, here is a link to H.R. 3200 if you get a hankering.

Also: I've heard from friends and family who use it such terrible things about mostly VA Health Insurance, but Medicare and Medicaid as well that I feel very wary of trusting the government to inject itself any further into the health care system. That reform is needed is undeniable, but I'm a cock-eyed anarchist, and like the government and its attendant programs to be as small as is possible.

matters of state for the second week of august, 2009

Our new mattress will arrive this afternoon! And unless I'm mistaken, the thickness thereof will require purchase of new sheets. I love sheets.

Knowledgeable Lost watchers: is there going to be a time when Kate is not toxically boring? Or perhaps is played by an actress of sufficient ability to imbue the character with depth and dimension?

Every time I see that Blackberry/U2 commercial it increases my hatred of Bono by orders of magnitude.

None of my new chickens are laying eggs yet, because they are lazy bums looking for a handout.

Traci had a goiter a couple of weeks ago, and we were pretty freaked about it. But I looked it up on a new thing called The Internet, and found out that you are never supposed to feed a goat anything from the Brassica family, because it inhibits their iodine absorption. So when we were feeding her the leftovers of all our cauliflower we were KILLING HER! But I took a dish of salt out to her and some nori sheets I had left over from the last time I made sushi. She was too good for the nori, even after I took a nice big bite of it to show her how tasty it was. Uppity. She liked the salt, though, and lapped it all up. The goiter started going down, and the next day it was soft and much smaller. So I'm basically a vet now.

We're trying to decide what to do with our goat "herd." Traci needs a companion, and I need a goat whose teats are not like huge novelty teats you might buy at a Nascar event. I love the actual milking, but all the prep work and cleanup is kind of a drag. And if there were a way to keep them from putting their poopy feet in the bucket that would be really great. Stupid autonomous animals.

the walking wounded

The sunflower seed-sized chunk of skin I sliced off.

Maybe you think that you can shove the stuck zucchini slice off your mandoline blade without the guard or a protective tool like a chopstick, but that's probably because you're an idiot like me. Because those Zyliss people are not screwing around.

The thumb whence it came.

I don't know what the good is of having an opposable thumb you can't use. By David Sedaris's standards I am now a one-thumber.

sticking it to big kimchi: an essay in photos

***UPDATE***

I have heard through the grapevine that this doesn't really taste like Korean kimchi, so if any of y'all were looking for authenticity I'm sorry to disappoint you. It does taste really good, though. Maybe it would help if you buried it.

Recently a neighbor friend of mine made some kimchi, as though rotten cabbage were a totally reasonable-and desirable-foodstuff. Patently false though I knew this to be, I value her opinion enough to dare to taste her finished product. And my friends, fellow wandering sheep, travelers in the dark and dreary wilderness: let me affirm to you that I felt an electric thrill course through my body, bearing witness of the divine goodness of kimchi. It was like eating the sun and the moon and the starry, starry night all at once. And I've been jonesing for it ever since. You stick this in with all the other stuff I've learned to enjoy over the past ten years, and Past Me would look at Current Me and say, "You are so weird it's scary." And Future Me would show up and say, "Shut up, the both of you, because you don't even know from weird. Come on over here and eat some of this frog that hatches its babies in the flesh of its back." I don't think I want to be Future Me.

But back to our story. Since I've been having fever dreams about it, I would swear Wendy put some as-yet-unnamed addictive chemical in the kimchi to make it so hideously delicious, but I know she doesn't abuse her body or the world she lives in. So it would seem that kimchi is just good, despite my palate's xenophobic convictions. And perhaps the sauerkraut I had at a Relief Society meeting years ago is a gateway food.

Wanna make some? Sure you do, because it's way easy. Here we go, fermenting our own foods! WOO! Here's what you will need:

One bunch of green onions, chopped--they're roughly five to a bunch.

One head of Napa cabbage, cored and shredded.

One cup of shredded carrots--I didn't even peel mine! Shh.

Two tablespoons of grated ginger.

Three cloves of garlic, minced.

1/2 t crushed red pepper.

1 T sea salt.

1/4 C whey from all that yogurt and cheese you keep making.

Toss it in a bowl.

Get a meat hammer or similar poundy tool.

And pound the snot out of it until it makes a swampy sucking noise and has made a goodly amount of liquid.

Stick it into a jar--depending on how big your cabbage was, it should fit in a quart with not too much left over. Make sure the mixture is at least an inch below the lid.

Push down on the mess with your poundy thingie until the juices come to the top, put the lid on nice and tight (otherwise air gets into it and messes with the process and you've either wasted a bunch of vegetables or created a potent botulism serum, depending on whether you're a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full person), and let it sit on your counter for three days. Then it's edible and you can keep it in the fridge. MAKE IT.

Kimchi
adapted by my friend Wendy from Nourishing Traditions
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 head of Napa cabbage, cored and chopped
1 C shredded carrots
2 T grated ginger
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 t crushed red pepper
1 T sea salt
1/4 C whey

Mash and pound the whole lot of it in a big bowl for five to ten minutes until it makes a bunch of juice. Put it in a jar, close the jar tightly, and let it sit at room temperature for three days, after which it should be stored in the refrigerator.

I love the taste of emulsion in the morning

At the time I denied that it was pregnancy cravings, but having gotten ten years of distance from the event, I'm willing to admit that drinking Italian dressing was ill-considered at best. It sure hit the spot, though.

es aqui . . . donde vive . . . mi amor

I'm sitting here eating this trout that was still swimming around yesterday afternoon, innocent of the knowledge that my niece Brittany's husband Caleb had designs upon his life. I would have cooked him last night, and almost did at about midnight, but I was afraid of the likelihood of extremely vocal recriminations from the rest of John's family who for some reason find it strange-even inconsiderate!-to fry fish in the middle of the night in a cabin full of people. So I made do with two very filling cups of Abuelita hot chocolate. My verdict: it's okay for vacation, but I still take offense at the taste of cinnamon in my cocoa.

But back to the fish. I tried doing them whole rather than filleting them tonight, because I did such a crap job of it last time, and anyway I've always been fascinated by the pictures of whole fish all fried and hanging out like nothing's wrong. This one time? John and I were in Seattle? And I got some steamers, which came with clams and mussels and shrimps, and all the little shrimps still had their heads on. It seemed really gross, with their little rat eyes staring up at me, so I made John tear all their heads off. I knew he would be good at it because once he killed a crab with a boat oar. Strangely, I've never had difficulty twisting a lobster apart and eating its gooey innards, but I guess the shrimp heads were too unexpected.

The fish is good--his eyes are all melty, which actually is kind of gross, now that you mention it. He left one of his eyes in the baby fryer, which was not cool, but a scrubby sponge will take that right out. He tastes fresh and delicious and if I hadn't promised Superman that I'd save some for him for breakfast the fish would be gone already.
The smaller fish was caught two days ago, and I'm afraid that he has reached the end of his "best by" date, so he's going to go to the garden or something.

Sadly, I just tried to take the lid off an ice cream carton and had extreme difficulty. I'm afraid this may mean that trout is my kryptonite! What an unfortunate turn of events.

you need a project

Hey! Why are you guys just sitting around? You need to quit telling me how bored you are, because only boring people get bored, bored people don't have enough chores, I will not allow the use of the word "boring" in my classroom, etc.

I'm going to be gone for a couple of days, and I want you to make some cheese while I'm out. Here's a link to an easy recipe for making a nice, softish, unripened cow's milk cheese. And I want a 500-word essay about it when I get back. And don't think you can mess around with the kerning, because I will know.

for the hostess who wonders what to pair with her balut egg

Internets, why do you insist on giving me dry heaves?

I could have gone my whole life without knowing about maggot cheese, but now I have to spread the misery around like Casu Marzu on bread to everyone I know.

And I find that Germany and France are Jonestown-level kookoopantses as well! I must say that cheese mites sound much less disgusting than leaping, hook-mouthed, organ-eating maggots, but still. Now I have a tummyache.

birds turning into fish? now I've seen everything

I was making these cookies for our family reunion (this is what we spend much of our summer doing), and I was struck by their Escherian appearance. Hey, I'm a slatternly hausfrau. If I don't get jazzed about cookie dough and babies pooping in the tub, then I'm in for a lot of disappointment. Kidding! My job is totally fulfilling.

It is, you know. I especially love now that I'm coming out of the fog of toddlerhood a little bit and can see glimpses of what my varmints will be like as adults. FREAKING AWESOME is what.

When I was in college I registered for a class called "Goedel, Escher, Bach." (Not misspelled, I don't have umlauts.) From what I could glean from the syllabus it was meant to discuss the interwoven nature of art, music and mathematics. But I was not in a super learny phase of my college career, and once the five people in the room had exchanged names I was snowed. Totally out of my depth and felt like they were speaking a foreign language that was not Spanish, which I at least could have faked.

Oh! I just looked it up on the webernets, and I was wrong even about the purpose of the class! NOT about art, music and mathematics, YOU PROLE HOW DARE YOU DEFILE OUR LEARNING SPACE WITH YOUR IGNORANCE. Did I mention that I dropped that class?

I still love Escher, though. He's a righteous dude. And I think it would have been a tremendously stimulating class if I had been more "cognitively present," we'll call it.

are you lookin' or goin'?: adventures in english V

A good usage rule of thumb that Country Living, among others, would do well to remember is that explained simply, a "sight" is something you see, and a "site" is a place (virtual or not). Thus, vintage pins are NOT a welcome site at flea markets.

harvesting youtube videos

Have you seen this little bit of not-okayness? I get a sinking feeling in my entrails when I'm near high, unsafe places--you know, like when you free-fall on a ride or something? And that's how this video of a hike of the Caminito del Rey in Spain made me feel. It's long and you will probably have nightmares.

and when she walks she walks with passion

Do you know what I just did? Umm, dug potatoes out of my own garden is all. Jealous much? Next I plan to harness the power of the atom to create cold fusion. It will be anticlimactic, but I want to give back.
My garden is magical. There is so much craziness going on out there, and it's amazing to think that I grew all those little buddies from seed lo, these many moons ago. To think that on Thanksgiving this year I'm going to be able to eat pumpkin pie made from a Blue Hubbard squash that I grew with my own paws? You can't buy that kind of satisfaction. And I'm really, really sucky at gardening, you guys! But somehow I was able to stay on top of it while it really mattered, and now the weeds are subdued enough that I don't have to worry about them too much.
The tomatoes are disappointing, though. I think they're too crowded to get red. Blurgh. I only have little yellow Sun Sugars, which at least are really sweet. But if I don't get an open-faced tomato and Red Leicester sandwich this summer then I'm afraid I'll have no choice but to build a massive movable disk that will block out the sun and then NOBODY gets ripe tomatoes and EVERYBODY has to use my cold fusion electricity. I decided not to give back.

of shows I watch while I run

I guess my internal code of ethics is a little sketchy, because given these circumstances; a plane crashes on an island, lots of dead bodies beginning to rot in the fuselage, wild boars rooting around trying to eat the bodies--I'm thinking, well, problem solved. And the cherry on top is that once the boars have dealt with the sanitation issue, you can let them "process," we'll call it, the raw materials into ham and pork chops. Win-win, right? But it seems that since nobody else on the island even considered that option, I'm a sociopath. Whatevs. Just don't go on a pioneer trek with me.

Also: I'm trying barefoot running for variety, and it's fun. Tarahumara Indians, watch out.

product may stay: anything from Lodge that I've used

I cook a lot--gosh, a couple times a week or more, I'd reckon--and I'm lazy and sort of cheap. So that's the given information to plug into the geometry equation of my remarks.

Five or six years ago for Christmas John gave me a ginormous Le Creuset pot--the baby cooker I've mentioned. He gives the best Christmas presents. But everyone, including John, scoffed at me for wanting such a yooge pan, because what would I ever cook in it? Well, like Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth, they would have chosen their words more carefully if they'd known they would have to eat them. Because I use that pan all the time. Like the taste of humble pie, family? EAT IT.

Even though my kids are still young, when my boys really get behind a meal it gets kind of scary how much they eat (they come by it naturally--their uncle Daniel would eat fifteen slices of French toast in a sitting--I'm concerned), and the baby cooker can handily fill their gaping pieholes. But you know what? That pan was grossly expensive. It's okay, because no one else makes a French oven that big, and I promise that I needed it. However, once you get into the smaller sizes there are a lot of other brands that promise similar results. I'm partial to Lodge because I'm a hillbilly who grew up on Dutch oven cooking, so when I saw their six quart enameled oven I signed myself on up. And it's every bit as good as my Le Creuset, from a usage standpoint. The iron is thicker and it's quite heavy--heavier than a Le Creuset of similar capacity--and the look is less refined, but I love it all the same. We'll wait and see if it has the my-grandma-brought-this-across-the-plains (or would have if she could afford it) heirloom quality of Le Creuset, but for fifty bucks at Fred Meyer (or sixty on Amazon) I can take that bet.

Now: a while ago Lodge introduced their Logic line, which comes pre-seasoned, and I don't know why it took me so long to buy a decent skillet from them. I lovelovelove my new pan (we made some fried green tomatoes in it just last night, and holy cow, the scores of tomatoes that thing will hold without crowding!). None of the eye- and throat-searing grease fire potential that comes from seasoning an old-school cast iron skillet, and it really will last until you accidentally drop it in your blast furnace or hit a coyote in the face with it. For John's birthday the first year we were married I evidently had not met him yet and bought him a traditional Dutch oven, which sat in the unopened box until I pulled it out last year to try a batch of no-knead bread. Seasoning aside, I have no complaints, and it too will be passed on to my children. Hopefully they're not so eager to inherit it that they hurry us off the mortal coil before our time.

I haven't tried the "L Series," and it looks sort of smurfy, but there's just so much shoddy cookware out there that the people who still make good quality thingamabobs should be praised. Product may stay.