Facing up to Facebook

OK, I quit Facebook. I'm sorry if this bothers anyone, but my entirely personal and grown up opinion is that Facebook is yuck. I never could make heads or tails out of what was supposed to be happening there. And then I had this huge horrible guilty feeling every time I thought of it, like, "You should go to your stupid Facebook page and figure out how to be sociable. Your friends must be wondering what is wrong with you and why you never talk to them, you loser." This has not helped my stress level or my self esteem. So, forget it. I looked up how to make the account go away, made it go away, and now I do actually feel better. I'm not rejecting any of my friends, just that weird website.

It's fine with me if you like Facebook. I still like you and pretty much everything you stand for. It's just my particular quirk. I have lots of them. Here's a short list:
* I don't like shredded coconut baked into anything - it has the taste and texture of cereal box. I have to believe that it does not taste that way to normal humans, because nearly every cookie bar ever made has coconut stuck in it.
* I don't like movies about WWII.
* I'm not thrilled by SUVs, even though I own one - in the parking lot, they look to me like so many hippos lined up at the river's edge for a good wallow.
* Black and white Mary Jane shoes. Fine with me if other people wear them, but I had some once and ended up hiding them in the back of the closet until I outgrew them.
* Naked mole rats. Ewwww.
* I don't like standing there sucking it up on the Wii. Video games should be played as God intended, from a comfy chair. Please, for the love of heaven, just let me sit down.
* Don't get me started talking about Twitter - even more random and weird than Facebook, WAYYYYY beyond my comprehension.
I'm quite happy if you do like these things. It's not you, it's me.

What do I like? Lots of stuff, way more than what I don't like. Good dirt, for one thing. Know what my wonderful husband got me for my birthday? Five yards of topsoil for the garden. Isn't that romantic? (No? Oh, but yes!) I was so excited, and he knew I'd be excited and he kept the secret and teased me with the impending arrival of my gift and then there it was, a dump truck full of chocolaty brown goodness pulling up to our house. It had either rotted horse our cow manure in it, I'm not sure which. And then when Rick came home, he also had a big bag of coffee grounds from Starbucks to add to it. All for me! We spent my whole birthday weekend hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow from the driveway to the backyard. :) I already have garlic and shallots and leeks and spinach and beets growing up in it, and clover all over the rest of it to do its magic with nitrogen and make the soil Even Better, and Rick made me a little fence around the whole expanded "farm" area. It is the most beautiful thing. I already have all sorts of plans for the spring.



What I really want now is a little plastic farm set: a barn, a cow, a little pink pig, so when people come over and I ask if they would like a tour of the farm, I won't look so ridiculous when it turns out to be a little vegetable plot in the backyard. That'll do it, right?

Caramel Macchiato, extra Caramel and other regional and cultural foods of note

Our son turned 21 on Monday. We officially have two adult children. w00t! For his birthday, I took elements of cakey-ness that I know are good and made a homage to our son's favorite Starbucks drink, using chocolate mocha cake, caramel glaze (used as filling) and mocha buttercream. Then our daughter made it perfect by putting whipped cream on top and drizzling it with more caramel. The fun part was I made it all from scratch, except the "birthday letters" we put on for fun. Man, was that one sugary cake. But good, especially warmed up a little. I was going to put a picture of it but you wouldn't understand. It looks like a mess, like it melted. But that's what the drink looks like. Oh, forget it. Here's the picture and you can think what you like.



I've been busy doing everything but making money lately, mostly eating. Let's see: Steph and I went to a "Sock Fest" in Portland (when she invited me, I said, "Excuse me, did you say 'suck fest'?"), where we wandered around a Sock Museum (I kid you not) and marveled at all the wide variety of fibers and colors you can knit with, and the wide variety of materials and colors and shapes you can use as knitting needles, too. We didn't win anything, even though I TOLD the man at the front door that he was to give me a WINNING raffle ticket. The day did include good food, specifically burgers: we met up with some friends and had lunch at Red Robin, where somehow Dawn managed to pick up the tab for everybody. So it turned out I spent no money at all the whole day, got lunch and had fun. Can't beat that.

Then Rick and I went to the Beaverton Farmer's Market a couple Saturdays ago, where I was completely unable to not spend money. I got a plethora of live herbs in little pots for my garden. So now I am the proud owner of parsley, rosemary and thyme, but I didn't buy sage. I don't use sage for much other than singing along with Peter, Paul and Mary. I've already snipped at the rosemary to make a focaccia. I've never made focaccia before - it was really good, if I say so myself. Among other herbs as well, I got a lovely ornamental oregano with bell-type green and purple flowers, and a huge fuzzy Cuban oregano plant which I have put out by the front door. I love it. We also bought dinner fixin's, featuring baby red potatoes, maitake mushrooms and fresh salmon with organic vegetables and strawberries. I'm afraid to cook fish, I've no experience, but Rick grills it amazingly well. Very fun, local and it made a delicious meal.

Last Saturday Steph and I spent part of the afternoon wandering around a "cultural fair" which was really a fundraiser for the local Orthodox churches - I didn't know there was an orthodox church on Walker Road, but there it was - and we enjoyed souvlaki and Russian pelmeni and Greek coffee while watching teenage Greekies dancing traditional dances. Opa! "Why don't we eat like this every day?" my daughter asks. Well, child, because it takes HOURS to prepare this stuff. But I could make pelmeni once in a while. Really, I could. I will. Eventually. You have to work yourself up to such things, you know. And I'm going to make her help me.

I've had many lettuce salads from the garden, nearly one every day for lunch. Good eats and emotionally satisfying. Something other than me is munching on the cabbage. I don't care too much because I'm not sure even why I planted cabbages, except they do well in the winter. I ate enough cabbage as a child to last my whole life. Though I do like a little of it in my borscht. I have an ambition someday to be able to make and eat borscht that comes entirely from my garden, except for the meat and sour cream. This winter I'll have about half the veggies I need from the garden: beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbage (if it survives). Garlic is going to be planted but it won't be ready until next summer, and onions and potatoes have to wait until spring planting, too. Did you notice borscht is basically all root vegetables that grow well in cold weather? Well, it's from Russia. Makes sense.

It doesn't fit in any way to this post, but for fun here is a Japanese clip of a little chimp being more amazed and entertained by magic tricks than any little kid I've ever seen: magical. I particularly like that, since I don't speak Japanese, I hear pretty much what the chimpanzee hears, and I can see how the animal follows the visual clues he is given, not the words. And I do hope they kept the rest of his day predictable and comfortable, after all those shocking surprises. :)

love,

cat

Greenish

I am a greenie in pretty much the same way some people are Christians: I am green when it is convenient, doesn't cost me anything and I feel like it. I'm greenish. I want to be green. I agree with the idea that we should be good stewards of the earth God gave us. I just want to have an Easy Button for it. A big, red, plastic Easy Button.

In Alaska, it was easy for me to feel very green. Green is not a popular concept there. Alaska has no weekly pickup of recyclables, no bin to toss your stuff in. Many people don't even bother with garbage service. They use burn barrels and a trash pile out on the back of the property. Businesses don't bother with recycling paper, even. You can have all the plastic Fred Meyer bags you want, no one talks about banning them, and no shop I saw posted that their coffee is served in compostable cups and lids. They wouldn't dare.

Rick and I found the recycling center, which is run by nice, graying volunteers who looked to me like they might have been hippies since it first became hip to be one. They were only able to accept certain items for recycling (no glass, for instance). It was kind of like going back in time for us, to about twenty years ago when our kids were little and we'd take our recycling down to the center on Denney Road and toss it all into the labeled dumpsters.

Last year, we quickly found it prudent not to talk much about recycling and such to our huntin', fishin', truck drivin' friends and neighbors. Alaskans blame greenies for ruining everything from the local fishing to the economy. In fact, I found that making a statement like, "Look at how much garbage we created from this one fast food lunch," after church on Sunday would get my friends, people I love and who love me, asking me if I am a greenie, in a carefully neutral tone that didn't fool me one bit. I figured it prudent to say with perfect honesty, "Not very." I didn't have to explain that I'm ashamed of my green failures. It's perfectly legal for Alaskans to carry concealed weapons. In fact, several times over the year we lived there someone would point out to me in church on Sunday morning that in a crowd this size he/she could guarantee me that at least five people had guns on them at that very moment. This was in the way of reassuring me that we were safe in case a crazed gunman rushed in, threatening people. Hmm.

As we were leaving the great state of Alaska (which really is a great state and I do miss it a lot, guns, trucks and all), I heard on NPR that San Francisco has passed a law making it illegal to throw compostable materials in the trash. No more eggshells, coffee grounds or carrot tops in the garbage cans, folks. I was intrigued. Both my grandmothers lived in The City (that's what you call San Francisco if you live in the Bay Area) and I know one of them definitely would have taken to this law easily because she never threw anything away if it could possibly have some use. She saved everything, and I mean everything. If someone had shown her that you can turn lettuce leaves and old wet paper into good soil for the garden, she would have taken to it. I think. As long as you made it clear it had nothing to do with hippies. Anyway, kind of in honor of San Francisco's new law, when we got to Beaverton I made a worm bin for our kitchen scraps. And then the Big Hot came and made us all miserable for a week and probably killed the worms. I still have to check to see if I need to start over or if the little guys were able to hibernate or something until the weather cooled off. I fear they're cooked, though, so I haven't looked yet. Do you do that, put off finding out if the worst has happened? I do it all the time.

Anyway, the picture I've attached demonstrates my current state of green: my first garden salad! It was a three-bite salad and it was delicious and beautiful in a bowl my daughter made. The lettuce will grow along with my greenie-ness. 'Cause in Portland, man, you had BETTER be green. Thankfully guns aren't legal here. No way Portlanders have the restraint of Alaskans when it comes to strong convictions.

love,

cat

Watching TV Can Do Strange Things to Your Mind

When we get tired of gardening and writing and looking for work, one of the things we do is watch TV. And we have lotsa cable now, so it is amazing the things we find. Our most recent find, last Sunday afternoon, is Cake Boss on TLC. Seen it? Ha-larious New York Italian family baking amazing cakes. They had me at "Forget about it."

And I am so jealous of everyone who gets to be on Yard Crashers. This landscaper named Ahmed hangs around at home improvement stores, looking for someone who is trying to fix something with their backyard with too few resources, convinces them he really wants to help (which is apparently hard to do - lots of people turn him down) and then he follows this lucky person home and completely remodels their whole yard. I AM SO JEALOUS!

But the hardest part of TV for me right now is the new series of Prius commercials. You know, the ones where weird people are dressed up as nature and dance around or whatever it is they do? All I can think is, "Soylent Green is people! Tell everyone!" And then I shiver. Go here if you really want to know what I'm talking about - but be warned: this is 1970's sci fi at its most ...umm... horrifically cheesy. There are certainly many things to miss about the 70's. :) Do you know the secret of Soylent Green? (Hint: I already told you.)

And if that was too weird for you, here is a video of a pug pushing a pink baby stroller around Portland: click here. Don't say I never gave you anything wonderful.

I made hot dog buns today. They look amazingly terrible. I was scared of them at first but now I love them. How are you doing?

love,

cat

Five degrees of Rick

A couple nights ago, Rick got a message that his friend Carl was in the hospital. Rick knows Carl because years and years ago Carl managed a book store near our house that I went to frequently and we got to know each other. Carl used to ask me to come work for him, since I was so clearly a book fanatic. I was never really in a position to say yes to that, so I played coy. A couple of years into our casual friendship, Rick needed a job and I went to Carl and said, “Hey, would you hire Rick instead?” and he did. They became friends. The person who let Rick know about Carl’s hospitalization is Brent, his son. Rick and Brent are friends as well because Rick started a guy’s Bible study – oh, years ago – and Brent was part of it.

Rick went to the hospital, where he sat with Randy’s parents, waiting for Carl to get out of surgery. Rick knows Randy’s parents because Randy was one of his students years and years and years ago when the world was young, back when my brother also hung out with Rick, back in the days when Rick was trying to catch my attention. (Naturally I played coy: it's what I do.) Randy’s parents were there because Carl’s wife and Randy’s mom happen to be sisters. Someone there tried to introduce Rick to them and they were all like, “Oh, no, we’re old friends.”

So then Rick was waiting for Brent (Carl’s son, remember?) to come up to the room. Brent finally does so and Rick asks, “What took you so long?” Brent says, “I was talking to Becca’s dad, ‘cause her grandmother is recovering from surgery here.” Rick says, “Vergene is here?” Brent and Becca are dating, which was one of those pleasant surprises for us when we heard about it. I remember shaking my head and saying, “Brent found Becca? What a small world…” See, Becca’s kin are people we have known for many long ages. Dave and Vergene, her grandparents, were pillars of our church for many years, and friends of ours. Kind people. Our kids ran around their farm growing up. As Rick stepped into Vergene’s room, Lori, their daughter (Becca’s aunt), greeted Rick with surprise. She was part of his volunteer youth staff team, also years and years ago. Rick visited Vergene, caught up with Lori for a while, and then came home.

Tomorrow, Rick is meeting Jordan and Amanda for premarital counseling. Jordan has been a friend of my son’s since they were both about five years old. And, you shouldn’t be surprised by this point, Jordan’s wonderful family lived next door to Dave and Vergene.

If we were in Alaska, all this interrelated stuff would not be surprising at all. Alaska's like that, just one giant small town. I used to have to remind myself to be extra careful and not talk about stuff I knew about people because like as not the person I wanted to mention would be the brother of the person I was talking to, or someone they used to babysit.

But we’re in Oregon, current population 3,559,596 (I assume that number includes us, if not: 3,559,598). We didn’t introduce any of these people to each other. I know, right? We're not good at stuff like that, but apparently it happens anyway, so it's ok. It had better be, 'cause you know us... If you haven't already, clearly you are going to fall into our vortex eventually.

We’re praying for Carl, that he recovers well. Be strong, Moose King.

love,

cat

The Quest

I have been on a quest. Around the beginning of July, when we first arrived in Beaverton, disoriented, the TV happened to be on. Martha Stewart was poking holes in cupcakes with a fork. Martha is generally inscrutable to me. (This means I don't get her at all.) But deliberately disfiguring fresh cupcakes was intriguing enough that I turned up the sound and started paying attention. She was making tiramisu cupcakes. Ah, tiramisu.

The first time I heard of tiramisu, I thought it must be some Japanese dish made with tofu and seaweed (isn't that what it sounds like?), so I didn't inquire. But then on one of our visits to California before she passed, my mother mentioned that tiramisu was her very favorite dessert. She must have come into this love later in life, or she kept it a deep secret from me, because I swear I never heard of it growing up. Anyway, we went somewhere and had some and now it stands up there with my other favorites, which is pretty much everything on the Olive Garden dessert menu, and creme brulee.

So here's Martha, dabbing espresso and rum into her little ladyfinger cupcakes and I suddenly need tiramisu. Out of the blue, just like that. I can't explain it. As I expected, the recipe on her website looked like a lot of work. If I'm going to labor anyway, let's make the real thing instead of messing around with tiny cupcakes. I found the recipe I wanted, and The Quest was On. I needed marscapone, rum and ladyfingers.

Martha said you can find marscapone cheese at Trader Joe's. How fortunate I now live within two miles of a Trader Joe's! It took about a week, what with moving and boxes and a few other matters, but to the store we went. Marscapone, check. They did not have ladyfingers. "That's a seasonal item," the checker said. It wasn't until we got out the door that I asked Rick, "When is it ladyfinger season?" The question gnaws at me.

I figured I could solve the cookie dilemma later. Now what we needed was rum. I could not for the life of me think of where a liquor store is. There used to be one in frumpy, tired Beaverton Mall, years ago, but now it's Cedar Crossing and thinks it's cool and the liquor store is gone. Alaska has giant Liquor Barn stores, can't hardly miss 'em, but Oregon doesn't trust anyone with the responsibility to sell alcohol but themselves. Therefore the stores are unadorned, matter of fact and unobtrusive. Rick knew where one was. I looked at him with narrowed eyes so he explained, "It's right next to Starbucks." Oh. No wonder, then.

We headed to the state-run store. I don't know about Rick, but I was trying to look like I have a clue. It must have worked because the guys behind the counter barely gave us a glance. So there we're standing, looking at a whole wall of rum. Light, dark, spicy, clear (clear?), kiwi, mango. Apparently you can do a lot of weird things to rum. Naturally we chose based on the coolest bottle. We made a show of checking them all out, but once we saw the one with the pirate on it, it was all over. I hesitated only because some small rational part of me was suggesting rum with a jolly pirate on it might not be top quality, but it had a quality price, and come on, it was a pirate, so we bought it. The stupid boys behind the counter didn't even card me. I ask you.

Anyway, yesterday was the day. I figured (rightly) the marscapone probably has a "use by" date and Rick would give me an earful if I ended up throwing it out. But the ladyfinger problem still loomed. So I found a recipe online and made them. They're pretty much whipped egg whites and sugar. I couldn't find the beaters for the mixer, so I ended up doing it by hand. I couldn't be having with the mess of a pastry bag, either (and mine is in a box somewhere anyway), so I made a solid sheet, like a jelly roll and cut it into strips afterward. Came out great, but those ladyfingers sure slurped up the rum. I gave Steph a bite of ladyfinger after it was dipped and she made an awful face. "Man, that's strong," she said. Worrying. But I followed the recipe. It wasn't until later I realized I probably should have accounted for an absorption difference, since my cookies were fresh and most ladyfingers are dry. Maybe Martha knew what she was doing, dabbing rather than dipping. Shoot.

I assembled it anyway. Couldn't find a 9 x 9 baking pan, so I grabbed a round cake pan. When the first layer filled the pan to the brim, I realized I might be in a little trouble. No problem, use foil to make an extension for the towering tiramisu. Afterward, I realized I could have used a springform pan. Martha would have thought of that. Shoot.

I took my beautiful mess to Vic and Dana's last night: if you can't experiment on your friends, who can you experiment on. We sliced it up. A certain alcoholic odor was wafting up from my demure looking tiramisu. "Oh, dear," I thought, but handed the pieces round, anyway, my eyes watering slightly. We bravely bit in. The cream part was great, but then those drunken ladyfingers asserted themselves. They had given up dancing with the pirate and were prone, overcome, swooning and woozy. They were probably at the blubbering "I love you, man" stage of inebriation. They definitely wouldn't pass a breathalizer test. We kept eating, though. Suddenly we were laughing a lot more.

My quest is fulfilled, though I don't know how long it will be until I live down the "drunken dessert" incident. Martha never would have let Captain Morgan kidnap her like that. She'd have whipped him into shape in no time.

love,

cat

What a Difference a Day Makes

Wow - air conditioning is nice. Really, really nice. So nice I could keep talking about how nice it is for about an hour. Though I'd be repetitive.

Portland's all time record high temperature is 107 degrees. The news stations all went on about how we were going to hit that record Wednesday. Portland news stations are like that. In Alaska, the wind would be howling around the house and I'd search all over the news to see if it was safe to go to work, and they'd finally say something like, "It's gusty in the valley this morning. It's pretty slick, too." Winds to 60 mph and more on an icy day and that's all I'd get. In Portland, every year at least once all regular programming stops for hours because two inches of snow fall, with reporters standing ankle deep in slush in an intersection, pretty much saying, "Yep, look, snow!" except with a lot more words.

And don't laugh so hard about two inches of snow, Alaskans. I say this with love, but I've seen how you drive. Portland has, like, two snow plows, and most of the vehicles on the road are rear wheel drive with regular tires. Portlanders aren't complete babies.

So back to summer - sorry I got distracted. It's easy to do when you are sitting in air conditioned bliss (it's SO nice). So Wednesday the weather doesn't even bother to get up to 107. We got 106. It's miserably hot, who asked Portland to turn into Phoenix, and it doesn't even hit the record high. We hit the high for July 29. Oh, and we hit the all time high night time low, if you can follow that. Lame.

Monday evening I ventured out to the vegetable garden to water my seeds, and amazingly, I had sprouts! And after all my whining about how it was all going to shrivel up and die on me, here are seeds coming up in less than a week. I had to show everybody. I nearly ran out into the street and dragged pedestrians to the back yard so they could see, too. My theory is that the ground is so hot the little guys wanted to throw their jackets off and pop out of the ground. I definitely need to remember this for spring planting. Those warming pads for seed trays could make a big difference. And so far, the seedlings are doing just fine. I'm watching over them like a mother hen.

The vet didn't buy my "my son made the dog sick" story. But he did prescribe her Robitussin DM and Benadryl. I kid you not. He took pity on our unemployed state and did some conversion math in his head so we could use OTC people medicine on our dog. She doesn't like the taste of Robitussin any more than I do, but I don't make near as much fuss. I don't think. No, I'm sure I don't make that much fuss.

Rick applied for a job with the FAA (seriously) and I sent off my soon to be famous children's story, "The Moose Ate My Broccoli." We'll keep you posted.

love,

cat