Some coworkers and I walked from the office down to Pike Place Market for lunch today. The weather is glorious, and it felt so good to get out of the office!

Nikki, Dafny and I had fish and chips at Jack's Fish Spot -- greasy and salty and delicious. I ate mine while we were waiting for the others to rejoin us. Jen and Megan went to La Vaca, and tatterdamelion got chicken teriyaki somewhere in the neighborhood. It looked fire-engine red, and Jen (who tried a bite) said that it was not really very spicy (although he had asked for spicy), but it was full of flavor.

After we all regrouped and started walking back, we were ensorceled by the beautiful displays of caramel apples in the window of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Nikki and I split a plain caramel apple -- a sweet, crispy-yet-not-too-hard green apple, drenched in perfect, sticky-yet-not-too-sticky caramel. They slice it for you there, which makes sharing one much easier.

(A Bacon Maple Bar (really!) would also have been acceptable. But driving to Oregon for dessert seemed a bit ambitious. Also because none of us had a car anywhere nearby.)

Right now my office is treating everyone to impromptu root beer floats! They have orange soda, too, in case you don't like root beer. Orange soda + vanilla ice cream = Creamsicle-y goodness.

And, in case all that was not enough sugar -- tonight is Nikki's "Castle Falkenstein" game, and we are having a brownie-off. tatterdamelion is going to make New Mexico Chile Brownies (having toyed with, but then rejected, the idea of Banana-Rum Brownies), and I have already made Orange-Ginger Brownies -- a little orange oil and some chopped crystallized ginger. Mmmm. I almost made Bacon Brownies, but in the end sanity prevailed.

The sticker on every Starbucks hot breakfast wrap or sandwich you buy reads: "Great coffee deserves great food."

I understand their marketing spin. Right now, Starbucks is doing a clean water initiative: with each purchase of their Ethos branded bottled water, a little bit of money goes to clean water projects. (Or, you could save up some of that latte money and just make a donation to Partners in Health, which does wonderful clean-water projects, including several of our Gifts That Give More™. Bonus: No horrible plastic bottles cluttering up anything!)

Starbucks' Ethos bottled water marketing has the spin "Because Noel and his family deserve clean water." (Really? How did Starbucks make that determination, I wonder? Did Noel and his family pass some moral test devised by Starbucks, a test which other, lesser families failed? No, seriously, I understand why they phrase it that way -- it just bothers me.)

Anyway, it makes sense for Starbucks to continue this "deserving"  theme throughout other pieces of their marketing. I do understand that.

And it's subtle enough that you might not be bothered by it. But it bugs the heck out of me.

While upstairs playing with the girls, I started flipping through some old school notebooks that I have up there in boxes. (Why I still need notes from my college classes is beyond me, although some of the doodles are very pretty.)

I found this list. Clearly, it was made when I was pondering what sort of job would be Right For Me.

• Company of smart people [check!]

• No or very minimal physical labor [also check!]

• Opportunities to create [weeeeell, sometimes, sort of. I have enjoyed writing creative copy.]

• Making a difference in the world [yes! yesyesyes!]

• No direct day-to-day dealings with the general public [check! And a good call on this one. The general public is horrid to deal with.]

• Respect from colleagues and people in general [from my colleagues, I think yes. From the general populace? Not really, but that's OK.]

• Money, but not very important -- enough to live on [I think that's covered. :-)  ]

• Security -- but I don't want to feel trapped [ah, the classic conundrum! Good luck with that!]

• The opportunity to travel [nope.]

• A job that would force me out of my ruts [this really isn't about the job so much, is it? It's about how I respond to the job, whatever it may be.]

Are there no depths to which "Farmland Foto" will not sink?

It is not enough that they cart a cute little pony around to various daycares and let the children sit on it and trot around the yard a bit.

It is not even enough that they take exorbitantly priced photographs of the events to ransom sell to the parents.

No, they also have to dress the kids up in chaps and a cowboy hat.

There is no fighting the cuteness.

$25 for three photos? Done and done. Before I knew it, the checkbook was in my hand.

I couldn't even struggle.

The power of cute compeled me.

On the bus ride in to work this morning I was thinking about my post from yesterday, on the same recipes I use and reuse right now.

"Why was that post so negative sounding?" I asked myself. "Isn't it good that you've figured out how to cook food that works for you right now? Who could want more? Whom are you trying to impress?"

I started thinking about Expectations -- the Expectations that others had of me, the Expectations that I have of myself, and (most dangerously) the Expectations that I only think other people have of me.


Maybe I am good enough, after all. :-)

It occurred to me recently that I really only cook the same few meals again and again right now.

It makes sense. I just don't have the time, energy, budget, and frequency of shopping that I used to have. Gone are the days when I could spend a leisurely hour dicing, chopping, and then sauteing 10 kinds of vegetables for Baked Ratatouille. Say hello to the days where dicing one (1) onion and throwing it in a pan with some ground beef is about as much as I can manage.

In the interests of Science, then, here are the 12 recipes I am currently reusing again (and again and again). I hope to one day return to my recipe adventuresomeness of yore.



That's it. That's pretty much all I ever cook anymore.

--sigh--  When I think of the hundreds of recipes I used to experiment with, from all corners of the world... my boxes of index cards filled with neatly inked recipes and my notes on them... my extensive spice collection, not very often used nowadays... I miss the old days.

But this phase of my life is not compatible with foodiness.

Another silly quiz from the endless tubes of the internet...

( Read more... )

Andrew took yesterday off work, and aawhitewood and Tom came over last night to babysit so that we could go out and have dinner on our fifth anniversary.

Five years! It seems to have gone by extremely quickly -- probably because of the two Special Projects that have been taking up all our time recently.

Today, in the annals of weird groceries, I bring you: "Okroshka," a 2-liter bottle of Ukrainian root beer from the "Kvas Monastyrskiy"! The label proudly proclaims "The Ancient Tradition."

The label is half in Cyrillic script and half in English. The English part informs me that this is a "Nonalkoholic [sic] beverage made from malt concentrate."

There was lots of GTGM work for me at my job today.

• Today I updated copy on this Gift That Gives More™, which we launched Monday: Help Cyclone Victims in Burma. I feel good that we're able to get some aid to people who need it in the aftermath of this horrible disaster.
  

Sounds like the government there is being horrendous, not letting aid in... if this doesn't provide impetus for an uprising, I don't know what will. I've heard rumblings of neighboring nations forcing the junta to accept aid. What a world.

• I also launched two new Gifts That Give More™: Pay for Teacher Training in Zambia and Send an AIDS Orphan to School in Zambia.

• Worked on content for the "Help Fund Research" side tab on The Breast Cancer Site (pending some help from tech). The page points to our Endowed Fund for Breast Cancer Research at Mayo Clinic Gift That Gives More™.

We've established a fund for a research position at Mayo Clinic, and contributions are matched up to first $250,000 -- sadly, though, we've only funded 10% or so of it so far. So if breast cancer research is your thing, consider slinging a few bucks in that direction.

Personally, my heartstrings are more tugged by stuff to do with kids, like the Dolls for Refugee Children (for $20, buy dolls for two little kids living in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border), Feed a Haitian Student for a Year (for only $50 -- very timely in light of the massive increase in food prices recently, especially on islands like Haiti).

I also like preventative-medicine ones, such as Bednets for Africa and Haiti ($20 funds six large, insecticide-treated bednets to combat malaria), and the Protect Africans from River Blindness ($20 funds pills for fifty people, killing any parasitic Onchocerca volvulus worms in their systems).

I just asked my millionaire, idealistic boss, Tim, what his favorite is, and he unhesitatingly said that it was High-Efficiency Stoves for Darfur Refugees. It's a stove that he would take camping and he says he usually tosses one into his shopping cart when he's shopping on our site. :-)

Was inspired to post about what I think the world will be like in 500 years, assuming we have not blown ourselves up by then.

Assuming we as a species get through this awkward, self-destructive adolescent phase of ours, I predict:

• A smaller overall world population that lives more lightly on the earth, leaving vast tracts of nature completely alone and policing its reproduction rate in one way or another.

• Tall cities hooked together with sophisticated communication, set in the midst of jungles and forests.

• Robots doing a lot of the work, and people with lots of free time to garden, dance, do traditional crafts, tinker, play games, etc.

• Instead of nations, alliances of city-states, a la Renaissance Italy.

• Some city-states owned and operated by corporations; others by religions or other associations / groupings of people.

• Since this wanton shipping-everything-all-around-the-globe thing just can't continue, resources-wise, I predict more local, small-scale productions of goods, and the withering of worldwide brands on products, especially heavy products like wine or soft drinks. Branding on intellectual properties / ideas, however, could still flourish.

• Widespread mining of the landfills that we are currently creating. People of the future will develop sophisticated techniques for extracting value from the landfills we're creating today. They will have to!

• I predict the development of very disparate cities, culturally speaking, but a world in which it's easy to move from one city to another. Skycars! Pack up your life and move to Edenia, the City Without Shrimp!

What do y'all think the world will be like in 500 years?

If you're sufficiently invested in your predictions, feel free to place a bet on the matter over at LongBets.org. Read their rules on how it works, and how your bet could pay off long after all of us are gone. Neat stuff!

Today is "Hidrillez" in Turkey and Anatolia -- a pagan(ish) spring festival. (Wikipedia article here.) Excerpts from the article:

"Hıdrellez, is actively celebrated in rural communities. [ ... ] Before Hıdrellez Day, houses are cleaned from top to bottom, since people think that Hızır will not visit houses that are not clean. New cloths and shoes are purchased to wear on Hıdrellez Day."

. . .

"Hıdrellez celebrations are always performed in green, wooded places, near sources of water, or near a tomb or shrine. Eating fresh spring plants, lamb’s meat or lamb’s liver is another custom in Hıdrellez. It is believed that eating the first lamb of spring will bring health and cure the sick. It is also believed that picking flowers or plants in the countryside, boiling them and drinking the water will cure all illnesses, and that the water thus obtained rejuvenates and beautifies.

Various practices are performed on Hıdrellez night (May 5) in the belief that Hızır will bring blessing and abundance to the places he visits and the things he touches. Food bowls, pantries and purses are left open. Those who want a house, vineyard or garden believe that Hızır will help them obtain such things if they make a small model of what they want.

In Ahirkapi, Istanbul, during the celebrations, wishes are attached to symbolic wish trees. The festival organization accepts online submissions. Wishes are printed out and attached to the symbolic trees by organizers. Wish Form (form is working for 2008 celebrations.)

Ceremonies to improve peoples’ luck are also widespread at this time. [ ... ] The night before Hıdrellez, young girls who want to test their fortune and improve their luck gather in a green place or near water. They place some of their belongings, such as a ring, earring or bracelet in an earthenware jar and close the jar with fine muslin. They then they put the jar at the bottom of a rose tree. Early in the morning, they approach the jar and drink coffee with milk and pray for their peace and tranquility not to be spoiled. They then open the fortune jar. As they remove the objects from the jar, they recite verses or quatrains, and comments are made regarding the owner of the object that is taken out."

Catherine notes: Drinking coffee early in the morning and praying for my peace and tranquility not to be spoiled? That's every day for me. Usually it doesn't involve an earthenware jar closed with fine muslin, or sitting under a rose tree, though, although perhaps it should.

echsdoc has inspired me to go view the Roman statues from the Louvre, which are only at the Seattle Art Museum until this weekend.

Am pondering taking a few hours off work on Friday and walking down from my office. Any locals want to tag along? 

Otherwise, might try to go Saturday evening before dinner out with Andrew.

I used that canned "Hello Boss" coffee from the other day to mix up two types of drinks for myself.

1) Shot of Kahlua, "Hello Boss" canned coffee, whole milk, ice cubes.
2) Shot of Creme de Cacao, "Hello Boss" canned coffee, whole milk, ice cubes.

Do these drinks already have names? Are these White Russians? No, White Russians are made with vodka. I think.

So I think I will call them Boss Kahlua and Boss Creme de Cacao. Not the most interesting names in the world.

(My all-time favorite made-up name for a drink was "Black & Cran," which is what I called blackberry schnapps + cranberry spritzer. I was smirking to myself for days over how clever I was.)

aawhitewood came over today and babysat BOTH girls for SIX hours, which totals up to approximately 12,000 karma points, give or take a few. (Side note: Why don't you switch to username "councillour"? I bet more people would look for you under that nom de plume.)

I dressed up more than might be strictly appropriate for a Sunday brunch date with my very own husband. Sometimes it's fun to dress up in pretty swirly dresses and nice shoes!

Last night was Nikki's every-other-week "Castle Falkenstein" game downstairs. I actually managed to stay awake this week (ahem), but mostly because I'd worked from home that day and stolen a nap mid-afternoon.

Anyway, a scene from last night's game caught my imagination. As Nikki described a new character we were meeting, with her outlandish goggles, collection of mad-scientist oddments, and sprawling, be-turret-ed, windmill-bedecked estate, I was moved to ponder this new -- thing -- that is emerging today. That thing called Steampunk (Wikipedia article here).

Is it a subculture? Is it a genre? Is it a proto-subculture? Is it a movement? Or just an aesthetic? Or not even that?


I have to say that viewed simply as a subculture, Steampunk beats Wicca hands-down. The fiction is better, and there's less chance of being burned at the stake for it. Plus, you have full permission to wear waistcoats or corsets along with very high lace-up boots, brandish preposterous-looking ray guns, and gleefully cackle things like: "At last! At last! My invention -- my creation shall live once more!!!"

---

Thanks for bearing with me. As a reward for your patience, here are all the links I have to steampunk-y goodness. So if that's the kind of thing that turns your crank, hop into the horseless carriage and putt-putt-putt away!

The first in what may be an ongoing series...

Funky Asian groceries!

Today I bought carrot-flavored noodles, "Hello Boss" brand canned chilled coffee, and a "Blessedness Chicken" plastic cup -- the zodiac sign of the hypermuffin  . We already had a "Blessedness Pig" plastic cup, the zodiac sign of the wren.



Sadly, my digital camera doesn't seem to be the greatest for product packaging photography. I don't know how other people seem to do it. Ah well.

This morning's xkcd comic generated many, many links in the comments to various bits of bacon-y goodness. Here are two that look simply astounding:

• Dark Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes (yes! Chocolate, and bacon, and there's coffee in it, too!!! Triple yes!)
• Bacon Apple Pie. After giving the recipe, the blogger writes:
  

  "So how was it?

  I wouldn’t be posting this if it wasn’t absolutely incredible. It wasn’t greasy like I thought it would be. The flavor was a perfect balance of sweet and salty. I served it up with slices of smoked cheddar cheese for a room full of amused but open-minded skeptics, and the entire pie was gone in 10 minutes."

I also belong to the LJ community bacon_lovers, so I get the inside scoop on all things bacon-related.

Mmmm, bacon.

Here is a quiz thing that's been going around. The point is to measure how well-read you are in The Classics. (Not the Classics I majored in, Latin and Greek -- "classics" as in Moby Dick.)

Apparently the list is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded but you never actually crack the cover. I have to say, though, that some of these are not "The Classics" as I would define them.

The directions:
"Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. (I did both where I read the book in school, but I had already read it on my own beforehand.) Put an asterisk (*) next to the ones you'd read again or recommend to someone, even if you originally read them for school."


There are a lot of books that aren't on this list but should be, IMO. Ah well. Mine not to quibble with the silly internet quiz thing.

Realized that right now, I have zero (0) afternoons at home WITH Andrew here as well -- during his "weekends," I'm at work in my office, and during my weekends, he's at work in his. Making it impossible to do any afternoon gardening, because I can't watch the toddler AND the baby AND garden at the same time, especially if it requires a trip to the store to buy dirt.

So I took today off work to "get stuff Done." Also influencing my decision: (1) big protest march in downtown Seattle today, probably snarling up my commute home if I had gone in, and (2) feeling yecchy.

Because of the feeling yecchy, I didn't really want to garden, but I girded my loins and did it anyway. I bought 9 bags of dirt at reasonable prices, weeded the second frame, dumped in 6 bags of said dirt, planted the two pumpkin seedlings that have been festooning my windowsill for the past month, and mulched the heck out of them.

Witness: