Dark Side of the Moon

Steampunk addendum

2009-12-05T02:03:48Z

Addendum, from the other side of my brain: Yes, yes, I know, this is probably another one of those "inner me" purchases that might not work. But all sides agree that my body type is a hell of a lot closer to a Victorian matron than to a Thai fisherman, so *phffft*.

I Can Haz Steampunk

2009-12-04T21:35:47Z

I'm not planning to enter the Masquerade for Arisia but I was idly looking for steampunk fashion just for fun, and then I also heard about the "Malice in Wonderland" ball, which, again, I might not go to, but if I did... anyway, I found this Silk Ensemble. And it's on sale for less than I'd ever have expected! And it comes in large sizes! And it comes in two pieces! And I could wear the skirt bustled up, with the top as it is, or a vest and white blouse instead, for steampunk, and I think I can wear the skirt with the waistband over the jacket, a black sash belt to cover the elastic, and a hoop petticoat underneath, for more of a ball gown.

And it's lucky I ordered now, because they don't say on the website that one should allow up to 21 days for production as well as the shipping time.

Chocolate Ganache & Dark Cherry Tart

2009-12-03T21:56:02Z

Last of the Thanksgiving dessert recipes...

Chocolate/Cherry Tart

First, bake the crust:

1-1/4 cup flour
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom (or, seeds from 2 pods, crushed)
7 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 egg lightly beaten with 1-1/2 Tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter (with a pastry blender or two knives or your fingers) till it resembles fresh bread crumbs. Add the egg-water mixture and stir till it forms a dough. Roll into a ball. Refrigerate 15-30 minutes (warning: it needs to rest, but the longer you refrigerate then the harder it will be to form). Flatten out into a 9" to 10" pie plate or springform pan to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thickness, going at least 1/2 inch up from the base to hold the ganache. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 15 to 20 minutes depending on thickness, till set and very slightly browned. Cool at room temperature.

Next, the chocolate ganache filling:

1-1/2 cup heavy cream
12 ounces good quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped if needed
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

Bring cream just to a boil in a saucepan or in the microwave (be careful it doesn't boil over). Remove from heat and add chocolate and butter and stir till melted. Pour over the tart base and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours to set.

And the cherry topping:

(2) 12-ounce bags of frozen dark cherries, thawed and cut in half
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup orange, pomegranate, or berry flavored liqueur, or port
sprinkle of ground cloves

You can bake this with, or right after, the tart's crust, or by itself. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Drain cherries well. Mix with the rest and put in a baking dish. Bake for about 20 to 30 minutes. Let cool. Spoon over the ganache just before serving.

dA Update

2009-12-01T23:42:06Z

Two claywork figurines were finally finished. A couple of other pieces are still in progress.

Eduin

Ashta

Apple-Pear Pie

2009-11-29T17:06:18Z

Yet another of the Thanksgiving desserts. This is a simple variant of my own on the ubiquitous apple pie, and I don't believe recipes that say you can get by with only six apples. (Well, yes, you can but those make very flat pies.) I used one pear for every two apples, which, after peeling, coring, and slicing, came to proportions of one part pear to three parts apple. Enough to add some additional flavour and mellowness, and to reduce the amount of sugar needed.

Apple-Pear Pie

pastry for top and bottom of a 9" pie
8 medium-sized tart apples (I used Granny Smith)
4 medium-sized pears (I used Anjou)
2 Tablespoons flour
1/2 cup raw sugar (or a mix of light brown and white)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Peel, core, and slice the fruit. Mix gently with 1 tablespoon of the flour, and with the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Put the bottom pastry in the pie plate and sprinkle the other tablespoon of flour over the flat center. Spoon in the spiced and sugared fruit. Dot with pieces of the butter. Put the top pastry over and press the edges together, then cut small slits in the top crust to let out steam. Bake for 20 minutes at 425, then lower the temperature to 350 and bake 40 minutes longer.

Two Southern Pies: Pecan and Lemon Chess

2009-11-29T02:18:22Z

For Thanksgiving I made several desserts. Some I may have posted already, but it doesn't hurt to have them more accessible. Here are the recipes for the first two...

Pecan Pie

This recipe comes from a family friend in Virginia, where I grew up.

1 unbaked 9" pie shell
1/3 cup butter, melted
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1-1/4 cup light corn syrup (yes, this is necessary)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 oz. (about 2 cups) pecan halves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It's easiest to melt the butter in the microwave, putting it in the bottom of a large mixing bowl. Stir in the remaining ingredients and mix well, then stir in the pecans enough to coat. Pour into the pie shell and bake 50 to 60 minutes, till set.

Lemon Chess Pie

Practically takes the place of a sorbet in clearing the palate after a heavy meal. The recipe is noted as having several contributors in "The Stuffed Cougar" cookbook sponsored by The Collegiate Schools in Richmond, Virginia. My copy is an 8th printing from 1983, and the original publication was 1973. Two lemons is usually right for the required rind and juice.

1 9" unbaked pie shell
2 cups white sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons grated lemon rind
1 Tablespoon flour
1 Tablespoon yellow cornmeal
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, mix sugar, salt, lemon rind, flour, and cornmeal together. Beat in the eggs. Stir in the butter, lemon juice, and milk, and mix well. Pour into the pie shell and bake 50 to 60 minutes, till set.

Pumpkin, but not yet the Chutney: Kadu Bourani

2009-11-28T02:54:19Z

There's a reason. This is what I made a few days after the chutney with the leftover pieces of pumpkin that I'd grown tired of dicing. I searched out several recipes for the dish but I liked that this one allows the pumpkin to cook by itself for a long period of time (no stirring every 5-10 minutes like the chutney) and it came out wonderfully well, very tender and flavorful. This is a dish made in three parts: (1) baked carmelized pumpkin, (2) ground beef & tomato sauce, (3) a garlic'd & minted yogurt sauce. Each part is very easy to make and the combined flavors are astonishing good together.

Kadu Bouranee, Kaddo Bourani, Kaddo Bowrani, etc.

Baked Pumpkin:
3 lbs. pumpkin, cleaned, peeled, cut into 1" to 2" pieces
1/4 cup mild-flavored oil (canola instead of olive)
1 cup demerara sugar, or raw sugar, or a mix of light brown and white sugar

Toss pumpkin chunks in oil and put in a large pan, at least 9" x 13", in no more than double layer. Sprinkle sugar over the pumpkin. Cover with lid or foil and bake at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 4 to 5 hours. The pumpkin will reduce in size as the water bakes out, then brown and carmelize in the resulting sugar glaze, i.e., this is not too much pumpkin.

Yogurt Sauce:
2 cups plain yogurt (not fat-free)
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 teaspoon dried mint
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix together. Refrigerate at least 1/2 hour to let flavors blend.

Tomato-Meat Sauce:
2 tablespoons mild-flavored oil
2 lbs. ground beef
1 large onion, diced
3 crushed garlic cloves
14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes, preferably fire-roasted
6 oz. can of tomato paste
1-1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

In a large skillet, heat the oil. Add onion and saute till golden brown. Add ground beef and garlic and cook till the meat is no longer pink, breaking it up into a loose crumble as it cooks. Drain excess fat and oil. Add the diced tomatoes with their liquid, the tomato paste, and the seasonings. This should be somewhere around the consistency of chili or "sloppy joe", so add more water if needed. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, covered or not.

To serve:
Spoon yogurt sauce over the bottom of the plate or bowl. Put pumpkin on top. Put a ladle of meat sauce over the pumpkin. Top with more yogurt sauce.

Main source: "PUMPKIN WITH YOGURT & MEAT SAUCES (KADDO BOURANI) A LA HELMAND RESTAURANT" from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The original calls for only a little over 3 hours of baking for the pumpkin, but with a lot more sugar, and there's a slightly different meat-tomato sauce.

This could be done with butternut squash instead of pumpkin, or possibly sweet potatoes. Or, maybe, a mix of the squash and sweet potato would hit about the same notes? Must try that.

Foolish Flaps

2009-11-24T15:24:07Z

I bought a pair of Thai fisherman's pants off eBay and they came yesterday and I tried them on this morning. I love the color ("mangosteen" which ought to be orangish but it's a red-purple-brown), I love the feel of the cotton fabric and the way it flows when I walk, and I even love the puff of air across my legs as the side flaps open with each step.

But the flaps open too far when I sit, so I need to pin it or wear something underneath. And the doubly tied waist makes my stomach and bottom bulge even more than usual, so I should wear something long and loose on top. And mostly, really, it's an inner-me purchase instead of an outer-me one.

The inner-me is half my age, half my weight, and half a foot taller. She can walk in stilettos without needing full leg braces, and trek cross-country for hours. The outer-me is a lumpy ball of flesh who can barely walk down a flat sidewalk for more than a block, and the accompanying sounds are huffing and puffing and a popping knee joint, not the casually cruel click of heels. Sometimes we can compromise on ethnic chic, on Boho artwear, but I'm not sure this one will work. Eh. We'll see.

If we did look like our inner visions... I wonder who would recognize friends, family, anyone. Would the selves be cookie-cutter? all looking like airbrushed Photoshopped nonentities? Or would they be distinct enough, and would you know enough of the person, to smile and say, "There you are! I knew it was you."

Points

2009-11-21T23:11:30Z

Dreams are odd things.

Yesterday morning I had a very involved dream. One of the minor bits was visiting, with my family, a pub somewhere on the South Shore of Boston. It was midafternoon and we were there for a late lunch and the place was almost empty. Leonard Nimoy came in. (Fact: He grew up in Boston. Dream: He kept a house near the pub for when he visited Boston.) The pub specialized in odd drinks and he wanted to show off some sazerac he'd found. It was in a decanter rather than a bottle, and the greenish-glass of the decanter had an usual shape. The flange at the top spread out into wings.

Yesterday daytime I looked up "sazerac" because I couldn't remember what it was, or if I'd ever known other than hearing the word. It's a cocktail made with rye whiskey (orginally made with cognac), bitters, a sugar cube, and also absinthe. Absinthe is known as the "green fairy". Fairies have wings. Fairies also, usually, have pointy ears.

Very odd.

(No, I didn't forget the Pumpkin Chutney. It happened. But I need to take a photo, for better illustrating the point there.)

Progress Notes

2009-11-15T02:04:40Z

Pumpkin Chutney
The reason for chutney is that we're on the last jar of the apple one I made back on June 27th. The reason for pumpkin chutney is that we never carved the Halloween pumpkin, and I don't like throwing it out. But a twelve-inch tall jack-o'-lantern pumpkin isn't a sweet small sugar pumpkin, so the recipe needs to be one that doesn't make it stand on its own. But it's huge (relatively). It's taken hours. I've diced about 3/4 of it now and that's in two large plasticware containers, and I've at least cut the rest into sections and peeled them and put them in a bag to do tomorrow. Except now I've got a blister on my index finger where I leaned too hard on the knife. Yes, yes, I know, you're supposed to let the knife do the cutting, but I get impatient.

Clay Work
I'm formalizing the ideas for the figurines in my head (that's my excuse). I bought more clay (it was on very good, and very rare, sale). And I did make the torso for the image based on The Red Tree and that's something. If you haven't read Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Red Tree and you like psychological thrillers, and can deal with ambiguity in exchange for clever imagery that varies from the realistic and mundane to the bizarrely surreal, I highly recommend it.. The torso is also a practice piece for another I have in mind, inspired by Jennifer Pelland's story of "Big Sister, Little Sister" which will be a more complex work. (They're both on LJ, btw: Kiernan is greygirlbeast and Pelland is jenwrites

Promises, Promises

2009-11-14T03:04:59Z

Friday the 13th, but at least it's a Friday. This weekend is for pumpkin chutney and clay figures. I should do these, and if I promise recipe and photos to you then it should happen. Right?

My therapist says there are too many "should"s in how I talk about myself. Feh.

Recipe Redux

2009-11-07T16:32:38Z

Sometimes I cook from recipes, sometimes I cook from my own native wit. Sometimes recipes fail, sometimes my wits do, too, and then I try to see what else can be done.

Last weekend, I made a side dish based on a recipe that I'd made once but I didn't take the time to find again. It was for sorta southwestern spicty sweet potatoes with brown sugar and cinnamon and chili powder and I used what I remembered and what else I've done with them and what else I had. I made a lot, because I wanted to take the leftovers into work for lunches.

Version 1.0: Pare and cut up 3 pounds of sweet potatoes and 2 pounds of carrots. Mix with brown sugar, ground cinnamon, ancho chili powder, garlic powder, a little nutmeg and salt and black pepper, and enough olive oil to make the seasonings stick to the vegetables and the vegetables not stick to the pan. Roast at 400 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes, till done.

But I used too much spicing and the proportions of sweet and spicy were out of whack. There were more carrots around. There were also some leeks in the fridge that were going bad. So a few days later...

Version 1.1: Pare and cut up another 2 pounds of carrots. Clean and chop a couple of leeks. Mix with some olive oil (but nothing else) and roast as before. Mix with the previous vegetables, also adding honey to taste.

This worked much better. The added vegetables spread the spicing around and the added honey blended the sweet and spicy flavours together. We had them as a side dish again with dinner, and I got a couple of lunches at work, and today when I needed lunch there wasn't much left. So...

Version 1.2: Pare and core and cut up an apple. Mix with the leftover vegetables. Top with sliced or shredded cheddar cheese and cook in the microwave on med-high for 2 to 3 minutes.

The apples added wonderfully to the dish. So now I have to work from scratch again to get out a version 2.0, which will have sweet potatoes, carrots, leeks (or scallions? or onions?), apples, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, chili, garlic, nutmeg, salt, pepper, olive oil, and the option of either pan-roasting as is, or baking in the oven with cheddar cheese as a casserole. Leaving out the garlic and chili would make it more traditional, but I think I like having them there. I just need to work out proportions better, which means I really should dig up that original recipe. :-)

November 1st

2009-11-01T13:17:13Z

It's been a while. If anyone would like me to do a 3-card reading for them, just ask. You don't have to be on my friends list, and it's fine if you tell others. I use this deck. It's not Tarot, but it seems to work.

Randomness

2009-10-31T23:42:04Z

Not even a first draft, just words thrown down like a handful of dice, the ones that didn't roll off the table...

I want to go someplace else
be somewhere else
be someone else
it doesn't matter where
it doesn't matter whom
Just
not here
not me.

The dishes didn't all fit in the dishwasher.
I have failed.

Someone said there's a poem he reads every year
and that makes me want to read it
but it's not online
not all of it
the little I saw is good
why can't I write like that?

There's too much spice on the sweet potatoes.
I must remember to get the car inspected.
There's a message on the answering machine
from Tuesday.

It's all hallow's eve and the weather is warm
and the wind is blowing all the leaves off the trees
and I want to be out there and I want to be blown
away
away
away.

Not a lot of fun going on

2009-10-30T21:59:40Z

When I came back from Richmond, I was developing a sore back molar that got worse over the weekend (naturally). So on Monday, I called the dentist office and on Tuesday I saw the dentist and he said the tooth had split and it ought to come out. Do it now, or wait? Now, said I, and he did. And he asked what painkilers I'd been taking and I said I had some leftover meds from knee pain, and so he didn't give me a prescription for more, or any prescription for anything else, just some gauze and a sheet of "what to do now." I went to work and read the sheet and it said "do this" and "do that" and "keep taking the antibiotics" and I said, er, huh? I called the dentist office and said "antibiotics?" and they said "let us check" and then they said "oh that sheet is for general dental surgery, just do the gauze and the rinsing and whatever else he told you." The sheet says "Instructions Following Your Tooth Extraction." Hmmm. But I did the gauze and the rinsing and took more pain meds when I needed to sleep. And the space kept hurting and it started to get worse, and frankly it didn't look so great either. So today I called and said "it's nearly the weekend, can someone look at it before then?" and they gave me an appointment with another dentist. He looked at the space. He said, "well, yes, there is a little swelling..." in the tone of voice that really says "uhoh" especially with only about 2 seconds of observation. He went off to check on something, or talk to someone. He came back. He said, "I've called the pharmacy downstairs. Take two of the antibiotics right away and one at dinner and one at bedtime, then three times a day." He also gave me prescriptions for large-dose ibuprofen for daytime and a different pain med for nighttime. Also instructions for additional salt-water rinsing and for hot moist compresses. Also instructions on how to contact the dentist-on-call if things got worse over the weekend, and "please do call if needed!"

I support doctors who try not to use antibiotics as an automatic response to anything and everything. Drug-resistance in disease-causing organisms is a big, big problem. But in this case, 'twas not so good, and now we play catchup.

Unexpected Gifts

2009-10-28T22:59:39Z

A while ago, I put in an order to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab for the "Falling Leaf Moon" limited edition scent, which turned out to be an absolutely wonderful one. I've ordered from there before and they always send a couple of little sample vials free with whatever you order. The sample vials are called "imps" if you order them directly, and the free ones have come to be called "frimps". This time I also ordered a t-shirt from the Trading Post section, which has a separate website and payment process and the order shipped separately. There'd been a problem with the printing and the t-shirt was delayed, but it finally came this week. It came with a bunch of little foam Halloween stickers, and a striped orange and brown and green pencil, and another frimp of sample perfume: "The Last Squished Jelly Bean."

Guess what the scent is?

Licorice.

But I really like licorice jelly beans.

Long time no post

2009-10-26T00:54:06Z

I've had other stuff on my mind than LJ. But catching up from when I last posted...

On the 17th, my sister did not die in a fiery car crash right before my eyes. She did, however, get sideswiped by an elderly driver as we followed her back to the house after a dinner out. He was making a right turn on red as she went through the intersection and rammed directly into the right rear side of her car, even though she swerved and honked the horn. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The car was still driveable, not totalled. But it was not a nice thing to have happen.

On the 18th, my uncle did not shoot me. I went over to his house to deliver some of the extra sandwiches from after the funeral, and my sister warned me to call first. Apparently he keeps a loaded revolver (no safety) by the front door. I called. He didn't shoot me. Neither did the stuffed black bear (also near the front door) savage me. The stuffed Canada goose behind his easy chair looked more dangerous but I avoided eye contact and stayed out of its reach.

On the 19th, the dog did not disappear forever. My sister had recently acquired a shelter dog, an English setter, to replace another shelter dog who'd died. My mother had missed the other dog very much and had wanted another in the house, so my sister complied. The other dog had gotten elderly and unactive, but this one was young and strong and had gotten loose before (my mother's fault: "but she'd wanted to go out?" without attaching the lead) and had only been found when she turned up again at animal control. We had her out on the lead. Come time to bring her in, the end of the lead had broken off and the dog was gone. We dithered. The dog was a roamer. The tags had fallen off in the ivy some days before. Finally I went out driving around the neighborhood, more to do -something- than expecting any good result. I stayed out as long as possible, even as it grew dark, and on the final pass in working my way back to the house, I saw a similar dog being walked by a man. It was the dog. He'd hoped she'd lead him to her home, but it hadn't worked. They'd caught her earlier and if I'd gone out earlier I wouldn't have seen her, so really, it was a miracle we'd met. Next day, I bought one of those ID capsules with a slip of paper inside. It's not something easy to knock off, and even though the leads have been replaced with sturdier versions, it feels safer to have that on her.

On the 20th, we did not find the will but we did find the lawyer. There was a folder from 1996 that had copies of my parents' wills and powers-of-attorney. There was a letter from a lawyer saying that the originals were with another lawyer. There was a scribble on my mother's will that said she'd changed it in 1999. There was no copy of the change. The lawyer who'd written the letter was now an Episcopalian minister somewhere. The phone number on the letterhead had been disconnected. There was no indication of how to find the lawyer with the originals of the original wills. My sister started tracking down the minister (he turned out to be in Pittsburgh now), I started Googling, and we found the second lawyer in the area, still in practice.

On the 21st, we still did not find the will. The found lawyer's assistant said that the notes in the archives said the originals had been put in the vault at Nations Bank. Nations Bank is now Bank of America. The Bank of America representative, the one from the downtown main banking center, said "We don't have vaults. Do you mean a safety deposit box? Any branch could have one of those." My sister said no, the only safety deposit box had been at First Union. Which is now Wachovia. Moral of the story from the last two days: do not assume it will be easy and obvious for anyone to find your lawyer or your bank even 10 years from now.

Also on the 21st, I did not die in a fiery car crash in Connecticut. But it was close. This was between New Haven and New London on I-95, a two-lane per direction road at that point, and the speed limit was 65, I think. The traffic was going faster. I'd thought I had plenty of time to pass a car going only 70, but as I started, another car came up very quickly behind me. Very, VERY quickly. So quickly, I was afraid to brake and fall back behind the first car, for fear he'd ram me, so I sped up myself to finish passing. Unfortunately, what that did was to close the gap between my car and the first car that the second car had sped up even more to try to shift through. He ended up swerving around the first car in the other direction, through the breakdown lane, and mouthed obscenities at me when he came back on the main road because I'd obviously been deliberately cutting him off. Oh well.

On the 22nd, I went back to work. On the 23rd, ditto, but also a call from my sister to say that the will had been found, it had been in a vault at the main Bank of America downtown, so much for their representative. On the 24th, I did grocery shopping, and started another batch of lemon-balm/rosemary cordial. On the 25th, I went to an all day workshop at the Fuller Craft Museum to learn how to make textured beads in polymer clay. It was a good class. I'll go to more there.

And that's what's been happening.

Rain

2009-10-17T03:33:30Z

The funeral was today.

On the way back to the hotel, the four of us (me, husband, 21-yr-old son, 19-yr-old daughter) talked about the differences between it and what we might want for ourselves. My daughter wants to be dressed in Master Chief footed pajamas (she still regrets not buying the Halo 3 boxers she once saw) and her ceremony should be non-religious and no more than 30 minutes long. They should show the video of Thriller and read quotes from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and from Star Wars if there's time, and there should be a bag of ground coffee put in the coffin with her. Given the coffee and Thriller, her brother offered to blow her head off with a shotgun when she came back as a zombie, but she thought her final ending ought to be more epic. So instead he's going to get up high on a stepladder, or something, and drop down on her with an axe, and that's been deemed acceptably cool.

It's always nice to plan details beforehand.

(Please don' t think they were being flippant about the actual funeral. They were, and are, wonderfully understanding of when to be serious for such occasions, and when, afterwards, a touch of humor would be welcome.)

Over

2009-10-12T16:56:36Z

My mother died early this morning. Those who've been reading this journal for a while may remember that she's been and out of hospitals for the past couple of years with congestive heart failure and other problems, that she broke her hip at the beginning of July and that accelerated the decline. My sister did miracles of care, and there were very good days over these past three months that she was able to enjoy, and in her own home. Even at the end she wasn't in deep pain, but she'd become so frail that her skin tore easily, there was constant aching, it did hurt greatly when she needed to be moved onto her side or adjusted in bed, the other conditions were getting worse, and there was no hope of turning any of it around. She went quietly in a sleep that had been increasing troubled lately, but last night wasn't. She's fully at rest now, at peace.

Tentatively good and hoping for better

2009-10-12T03:36:51Z

The wireless is, I think, it seems, currently at least, working.   It took a lot of fiddling with settings, of setting and resetting passwords and connection defaults (including going back to our original DSL password), and we still haven't seen if it'll stay working if we ever need to reboot the system.

Tomorrow: work. Yes, I know it's a holiday. But something needs to be done for Tuesday that didn't get done on Friday because I was getting my daughter back from college for the long weekend.

Tomorrow evening: Monster starts on SyFy, 11 pm Eastern US, English dubbed version. EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH.   *cough*   Seriously, it's only labelled anime because labelling it a psychological thriller dealing with medical ethics, genetics, sociopaths, behavioral conditioning, East German experiments, Czech fairy-tale writers, secret societies, and police procedurals and manhunts, would take too long.   There are no super powers of a sort other than Dr. Tenma's tenacity, there are no demons except those that are inside... who? Everyone, possibly.

The Wikipedia page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga) (because it's a little hard to search on "monster")

Maybe just cell phones and cable...

2009-10-08T04:24:47Z

Our land-line phone service is Verizon. We've been having trouble with static and on-and-off dial tone for a couple of years now, and sometimes they fiddle with the outside wires (and the service guy tells us the whole area needs replacement wires and boxes) but lately they're saying it must be inside and until we check every phone jack and circuit they're going to keep insisting it's inside. So our land-line is unuseable.

Our internet service is Verizon DSL. Luckily the DSL has been more dependable, though, sharing some of the same old telephone boxes, it's sometimes had problems in bad weather and we've gotten used to checking for a blinking DSL light under such circumstances.

This morning, a nice solid green DSL light but suddenly no internet access.   This evening, the same. We tried powering everything on and off, checking connections, running through the diagnostics, and still no internet.   So I spent an hour or so on the phone (my cell phone) with Verizon support.   Now we have internet access.   But in the process...
(1) We have a completely new network connection icon that we have to click before we can use the internet. There's still the "Local Area Connection" that comes up automatically when we start up the computer, but now we also have to click on "Verizon Online DSL" because that one doesn't start automatically.   And it needs the other running, too: it's not a replacement.   So, two little network boxes blinking away on the task bar. I did manage to fix it afterward so we didn't have to fill in the new password, because, oh yes...
(2) We had to reset the password for our Verizon account. However...
(3) He had trouble getting the password reset because, until I pointed it out, we didn't take the obvious route of using the temporary password he'd just issued, but instead tried to get the password reset by answering my "security question" which was set up 9 years ago and turned out not to have as obvious an answer as it must have seemed at the time. And after I made one error, it said I'd used up all my attempts at answering the question. So...
(4) He tried to clear out all the cookies and cache so I could try a new answer. Except in doing so, he also reset all the Internet Explorer settings to their defaults.   I'm still fixing that. There's also something else that I'll have to fix, because...
(5) We have no wireless now.   All of the above had to be done with the ethernet cable directly from PC to Verizon modem. Because of the new connection and the new password, the Linksys wireless router will have to be completely reset before we can put it back between the two. He did offer to transfer me to the Verizon special team for setting up home connections like that, but, guess what, that doesn't qualify for free support and they'd have to charge us.

And we still don't know what happened, why it happened, or whether it will happen again.   Why do I feel this is like having a car towed in because the engine stopped working, and getting it back with the first engine still there, a second engine added, two ignition switches, and a note that "sorry, we had to yank out the brakes to fit in the second engine, but we don't do brakes"?

Catching up, catching breath

2009-10-04T16:11:37Z

I know it's been a while since I posted, but it's not that I've been absent from LJ. I've been following other people's journals and that's made it hard to talk about minor problems or pleasures when other people are dealing with matters of life and, unfortunately, death.

There's not a lot to report. A revitalization of a side interest, the roleplaying site is gearing up for a transformation. Work, too, looks like a major project that's had various incarnations over the years is finally getting funding to take us past the "this is what we could do, if you let us do it" stage.  Personal creative projects? I also need to move there, to get past the ideas and on to implementation.

Tomorrow is my son's 21st birthday. We'll have a bottle of "his" wine with dinner, to celebrate his coming of full legal age. When my husband and I went together, when it became more serious, he told me that at his wedding he'd be given a case of wine from his birth year that had been set aside by his father, a man very knowledgeable indeed about wine. Supposedly he and his three siblings each had a case, and they'd joke with each other over the quality of the birth years.   It turned out this wasn't so: no case.   I understand how that works, a passing reference not meant seriously, a good intention never implemented or only partially, fading out over time.   (But I didn't care for the unsympathy of the excuse given, however joking: "Oh we drank a bottle of it whenever you were bad." )   I still thought it was a good idea. When my son was born, the first of the grandchildren, we asked my father-in-law to pick a case of wine that would last well and so yes, there is one. There's one for each of the kids born before his death, and that makes it an extra blessing, that in having the wine we'll also be remembering him.   We aren't saving it strictly for weddings, though.   We'll have one bottle tomorrow, at my son's permission and expectation, and the rest will be his, for whatever he considers worth the celebration.

But next Sunday, he and some friends are going down to King Richard's Faire so that his first legally purchased drink can be mead. :-)

Supreme of Old Rooster

2009-09-29T18:55:44Z

"Supreme of Old Rooster"

This is based on the "French Casserole Chicken" recipe in Joy of Cooking, the one that's also called in its introduction "Supreme of Old Hen". The time given is for what I had: a rooster that was, if I remember right, about 18 months old. This is absolutely ancient compared to what you'd find in the supermarket. calygrey said, and I confirmed it on the internet because I couldn't believe I'd remembered correctly, that the breeds raised for meat are killed at 8 weeks old. Seriously, they're 4-5 lbs. by then, and if left alone they wouldn't get much older because their heart gives out. Reduce the cooking time to only 1 hour, or even 45 minutes, if you're using one of those.

one 4 to 5 lb. chicken, cut into pieces
1 + 1/4 sticks butter (1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons)
1/2 cup orange brandy liqueur
(or white wine with a little fresh or dried orange peel, or orange juice)
3 large apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
1 medium onion, minced
4 Tablespoons flour total, separated 2 + 2
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
3 cups chicken stock or broth
1 cup heavy cream or sour cream
1 lb. noodles, preferably the broad flat ones
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Use a heavy pot on top of the stove. Melt one stick of butter (1/4 lb., 8 Tablespoons, 1/2 cup, however you want to measure it) in the bottom of the pot over medium heat. Brown the pieces of chicken a few at a time, removing them to a side plate after. Add the liqueur/wine/oj (whichever you're using) to the butter along with the apple slices and onion and stir, then cook, covered, about 5-10 minutes till the apples and onion are tender. Add in 2 Tablespoons of flour and the salt and paprika, and stir about 5 minutes till the sauce is slightly thickened. Stir in the chicken stock and add the pieces of chicken. Bring just to a boil, and then cover and reduce heat to simmer. Simmer for 3 hours or more, till the meat is tender enough to start pulling away from the bones. Near the end of the cooking time, cook the noodles separately and drain. Mix the hot noodles with 1/4 stick of butter (2 Tablespoons) and the parmesan and set aside. Remove the chicken from the pot and raise the heat to boiling to reduce the sauce, stirring, for about 5 to 10 minutes. Mix the remaining 2 Tablespoons of flour into a little bit of the cream (whichever sort) till smooth and stir that into the pot to help thicken the sauce. Lower the heat and stir in the rest of the cream. Put the chicken back in the sauce and serve it over the parmesan noodles.

Playing (with) Chicken

2009-09-28T18:59:12Z

Yesterday I went off to calygrey's house and learned quite a lot about the insides of chickens.

Chicken Butchering 101

(1) Catch your chicken. She already had the four roosters penned in an old dog house, so catching them today was relatively easy.

(2) Kill your chicken. No cleaver. The cleaner way is to hold the chicken upside down with your hand around its legs, get its head between your foot and the ground, and jerk up to break the neck. Then you drop it on the ground and let it flop frantically around for a few minutes till it realizes it's dead.

(3) Scald your chicken. Have a big pot of water ready with the temperature around 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit. Not boiling, because then it's hard to avoid actually cooking the skin. Leave the bird in the pot for a timed 5 minutes.

(4) Pluck your chicken. Push the feathers out with your thumb when possible, because that's easier on your hands. There will be a lot of feathers. Try not to be too surprised how small the bird is without its feathers.

(5) Remove extraneous parts. Cut off the head. Cut off the feet at the "knee" joint (anatomically closer to "ankle"). Peel the skin off the feet; it will come off like a tight glove, including little caps from over the claws and a bigger cap from the spurs. Save the feet for stock, and the head too if you've bothered to pluck it.

(6) Open the top. Slice the skin from the breastbone up along the neck and open the top of the bird. Find the long grayish ringed tubes of the trachea & esophagus and loosen.

(7) Open the bottom. This part is tricky because you don't want to puncture the lower intestines. Bend back the tail bump and make an incision very close to that, between the tail and the anus, trying not to slice too deep and not to cut your hand. Cut a slit about the width of the tail piece. Put a finger in and wrap it around the colon to keep it out of the way as you incise two more slits to make a triangle around the anus. Again, be very careful not to cut too deep.

(8) Gooey, gooey chicken guts. Once you've separated the anus from the rest of the bird, reach in through the cuts and pull out the internal organs in as complete a mass as possible. Which means digging around and ripping connective tissue first, but try not to squeeze or tear the actual organs.

(9) Toss out the parts not for general consumption. The intestines are obvious. If you're digging out the insides of a rooster, there's two small yellowish lumps that are testes. The gall bladder is a (usually) greenish sac stuck to the liver. Be VERY careful removing it, and do so by cutting or pinching the liver itself to be sure of getting all of it. If the dead chicken has been lying around too long a time, there'll be a streak of greenish on the liver where the gall bladder lay against it and "leaked." Remove that, too. The gizzard looks like a solid ovoid of tissue. Cut through it around the rim enough to butterfly it open and you'll find the inside is full of gravel and dirt. But there's an inner yellowish membrane between that and the meaty bit, so if you tease that layer apart then you can just peel the mess away. Throw out that membrane, and rinse the rest to be sure all the grit is really gone. If you didn't manage to pull out the trachea/esophagus tubes from the bottom, get rid of them now from the top.

(10) Keep the "good" parts. The heart is a rounded dense cone. The liver is floppy and a deep burnt-orangeish red. Keep the cleaned part of the gizzard. The spleen is a very small dark reddish lump. The lungs are small pinkish-red sacks and extra work to get out: they're underneath another layer of connective tissue and the lobes fit between the ribs. The best way to get those out seemed to be to dig fingers along the ribs, trying to get underneath the lungs and then separating them from the other tissue once loosened from the ribs.

(11) Oil gland: removing the oil gland from the tail is optional. If you want to, it sits on top of the tail piece near the joint. Slit around and underneath to remove. If some of the orange-yellow oil comes out, just rinse it off.

(12) Final clean up. Rinse the bird thoroughly, inside and out. Rinse the organ pieces you're keeping and put them in a separate container to use as soon as possible. The bird itself will keep much longer than one bought from a supermarket. Make sure to do a good cleaning of the sink and any other area you used.

calygrey is a very knowledgeable and patient teacher with a great sense of practicality and humor, full of good information and tips. She offers these sessions fairly often, and I highly recommend the experience if you can handle it. (Maybe not for vegetarians, but I've always thought that if you eat meat, you should be able to take a certain degree of responsibility for knowing and caring how it gets to your table.)

Next post: Recipe for a Rooster.

New England Fall (or is that "Fail"?) Weather

2009-09-23T16:11:38Z

Last night I'd checked the local forecast for the next few days:
Wednesday: High 81, Low 65... Friday: High 65, Low 38