it tastes like unicorns

Apparently the name "cake with internal sprinkles" was taken, so Pillsbury went with "Funfetti!" instead.

happy birthday, littlest sass!

This tiny baby turns 21 today, and in honor of her birthday I said we would spend the day doing whatever she wants. What she wants is to eat pizza for lunch, go see a matinee of Twilight (“You’ll love it, Katie! It’s my new Titanic!”), and eat pizza for dinner. After dinner she has requested white cake with internal sprinkles and cream cheese frosting (I actually tried to talk her out of that particular combination, but the girl was adamant). She's lucky she's one of my favorite people, and one of the only people I would eat pizza, watch the new (or the old) Titanic, eat more pizza, and then eat sprinkle cake with.

As Maura put it, "Oh my god, we're going to die." And when we do we will be canonized.

at long last, the burrito

That burrito was delicious, and Behind the Scenes at the Museum is good, too. A bit of a slog at first, but now I look forward to the few moments each day I have to read it (usually while doing something else, too: eating lunch, walking from my desk to the bedroom to pet the dog, feeling guilty for not working on The Thing). It's quite different from the Jackson Brodie mysteries, which I’m not ashamed to say I love -- there’s nothing wrong with stories in which someone is killed and someone else spends the entire book trying to figure out whodunit, just like there's nothing wrong with TV shows in which wealthy Upper-East-Side teenagers get drunk, have sex, and are mean to each other.

i wish i knew how to quit you, peanut butter toast

I am not exaggerating when I say that for years I ate three slices of fake Canadian bacon nearly every day for breakfast. Years. And then one day I grew tired of fake Canadian bacon and cast it aside like it meant nothing to me.

After that I played the field for a little while, finally settling down this past fall with peanut butter toast. Almost every morning this winter I've gotten out of bed, toasted a piece of O'Bread whole wheat, spread it with Teddie all natural peanut butter, and eaten it while I waited for the water to boil for my tea.






We've had a good thing going, me and peanut butter toast, and I really am a one-breakfast woman. But lately I've been fantasizing about other breakfasts: berries and Greek yogurt, a soft-boiled egg eaten eaten right out of the shell with a tiny spoon, even wheatberries and scallions.

Things are not over between us yet; I'll probably string old peanut butter toast along until the strawberries are in season, but the writing is on the wall: We're growing apart and I want to start eating other breakfasts. I hope we can still be friends.

sunday on the couch

I just got the following text message from the littlest sister: "Fabulous goodmorninging!" And to you, too.


Soon I will be moving from the couch to the car, and then to a couple of movie theaters in Montpelier, which seems like the perfect way to spend this day -- it's overcast and raininging.

your to do list

It's 66 degrees and sunny, and I'm about to go sit and read in the park across the street from my house (which, by the way, is chock full o' nuts; heard as I walked through on my way home a few minutes ago: "She's got the delusions and schizophrenia and bipolar, but her main problem is that she's lazy as fuck"), but before I go, I ask you to consider doing the following.

Tell the governor of Vermont what a jackass he is.
He's announced that he will veto the marriage equality bill that has been approved by our state Senate and is now in the the House. You can say send him an e-mail expressing your displeasure here. If you live in Vermont, consider attending a vigil tomorrow (not for the lazy as fuck, but definitely worth doing anyway); there's a list of locations here. And if you're feeling industrious, the Vermont Freedom to Marry website knows of lots of ways you could help.

Turn your lights off.
Chris says we're all supposed to turn out lights off from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. tonight. I did not ask if that means I'm not allowed to watch TV, either, because I didn't want to know the answer. You can read about Vote Earth here.


Now get to clicking, typing, and flipping those light switches.

beware the donald. no, the other donald.

Somehow I've managed to convince others to provide most of my meals lately, which is to say that all is going according to my master plan: First get others to cook for me, then get them to clean my house, followed by world domination and/or a nap.

Last night, for example, I was invited to my sister's for dinner, where she fed me delicious beer-battered-fish tacos with avocado salsa and warm corn tortillas. Unfortunately, my photos of the food didn't come out well (my dad suggested I hold a piece of toilet paper over the flash when I take pictures, but this has had no effect except to make me look crazy). However, under a special light in her basement Maura is growing pot plants, which photographed better than dinner did.


Naw, that's broccoli, or it will one day be broccoli if all goes according to Maura's master plan, which tends more toward crafting and gardening and making me dinner than world domination (now if she would just get over here and clean my house).

Maura also betters herself by listening to educational public-radio shows. Last night over dinner she told us all some biology-related facts she learned on Radiolab, concluding her mini-lecture by yelling, "And ducks DO rape," as if someone was going to argue the point.

Suddenly that Macho Duck song doesn't seem so funny, does it?

allez cuisine!

Chris and I recently joined our local co-op, which is actually a big, fancy natural foods store that also sells Fluff and Cheez-Its and exclusively hires cashiers who refuse to bag your groceries. But if we work four hours a month (either at the co-op or in the community), we get a 12% discount, so I spent this afternoon helping to prepare for the Junior Iron Chef competition, the theme ingredient of which seemed to be root vegetables. Let's just say that at 2:00 this afternoon I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a rutabaga and a parsnip, and now I know that neither appears to be edible. I do not envy the Junior Iron Chef competition judges.

kitchen stadium, champlain-valley-expo style

drinking your vegetables

One day awhile back, Chris brought home a can of V8 juice, poured himself a glass with dinner, and said he was drinking his vegetables. He's continued to drink his vegetables since that inspired evening, usually in the form of V8 or expensive carrot juice. But he's recently taken it up (or possibly down) a level.

He returned from a green trade show a couple weeks ago bearing a bottle of something called "Mighty Greens: Superfood Blend." It's a disgusting-smelling and -looking powder that he mixes with water to make an absolutely wretched drink, which he downs very, very quickly.

I tried to take pictures while he prepared and drank his vegetables, but there is no time for posing when you're drinking your greens, because the powder doesn't actually dissolve in the water, it just disperses, and as soon as you stop stirring it begins to sink to the bottom of the glass. If it were me I'd just snort the stuff (actually, if it were me, I'd just eat some broccoli), but Chris scooped the disgusting green powder into the water, stirred crazily for a minute, and then started chugging a pint glass full of army-green bile.


Halfway through the drink he paused, looked in the glass, and noted that there was a lot more powder at the bottom than the top. "This," he said, "is where it gets gross," and went back to chugging.


Uh, I think he shoulda had a V8.

SVG + GG

While in many ways Chris and I exemplify the expression "opposites attract" (he glides through his day singing little songs, I shuffle around swearing under my breath; he has an iPhone attached to his hand, I know where to place a stamp on an envelope), it's nice when our interests dovetail. For example, I love Gossip Girl and Chris has a job, so this intersection of Lily van der Woodsen and Seventh Generation is very meaningful to both of us.


You can expect that we will spend hours together reading and discussing the interview, after which, Chris will go to work and help create environmentally friendly cleaning products that famous people use, and I will turn on the TV to see whether Serena and Blair are talking to each other again (those girls are so fickle).

spring

On his walk to work yesterday morning, Chris and I spotted a tree covered with little red nubs that we though were buds. Sadly, they were just dead fruit left over from last year.


But it got into the mid-50s yesterday afternoon (for my Southern reader, this time of year in Vermont that's basically a heatwave), so I walked down to the lake looking for signs of spring. What I mostly found were the last vestiges of winter.

There's still snow in the Adirondacks:



There's even a little bit of snow on the shore of the lake:



And this rude bird acted as if he didn't even see me:


After being snubbed by that gull I walked up to Church Street, where if the freaks are any indication, spring has definitely sprung, or puked (I actually thought I saw Joaquin Phoenix, but it was just some scarily hirsute UVM hippie, which brings me to this question: Which came first, Joaquin Phoenix or the scarily hirsute UVM hippies?).

But it was there among the weirdos, college students, college-student weirdos, and others (mostly babies) flocking to our little pedestrian mall to enjoy the sun that I finally found what I was looking for: Buskers! Spring is here!

his & hers & abe's

Lunch today.

Preparation (his).

Preparation (hers).

Glamour shot (his).

Glamour shot (hers).

Eating (his).

Eating (hers).

Preparation/glamour shot/eating (Abe's).

Recipe (his).

1. Toast bagel.

2. Apply turkey and cheese.

3. Add chips.


Recipe (hers).

This is from my step-sister-in-law; I add dried cranberries, probably because she told me to. I did all of the heavy lifting last night (actually, there is no heavy lifting, unless you count stirring those damn nuts for five minutes), but the dressing keeps well, and if you can stop yourself from eating them, you'll have plenty of leftover nuts.

Salad:
1 head romaine
Gorgonzola cheese

Dressing:
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup walnut oil
1/4 cup olive oil

1. Whisk everything together.

Spicy glazed pecans:
2 tsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp water
2/3 cup pecan halves

1. Melt butter over medium heat.

2. Add sugar, salt, peppers, and water. Cook until bubbling.

3. Add pecans and stir constantly until well coated and sugar has begun to caramelize (about 5 mins).

4. Spread pecans on baking sheet to cool.

Toss all that shizz in a bowl, yo.

the student becomes the master

For once in our lives, Chris actually had to come to me for tech support yesterday. I may not be able to synch my iPod or change channels on our TV, and sometimes my e-mail just "disappears" and I need Chris to find it, but in some areas my technological expertise exceeds his. For example, I know exactly where to place a stamp on a envelope. iPhone Boy, not so much.

Chris had to pay a bill using an actual check and the Pony Express, which required lots of pieces of paper that he didn't have. Lucky for him, I could provide the piece of paper that is a check, the specially folded piece of paper that is an envelope, and the little tiny piece of paper with glue on the back that is a stamp. He does appear to know how to use a pen, but when it came to placing the stamp, he got confused.

Chris [holding the stamp uncertainly above the envelope]: "Where do I put this thing?"

Me: "You're kidding me."

Chris: "Here?" [Holds stamp in the air above the upper-left-hand corner.]

Me: "Wait, are you serious?"

Chris: "It's here, right?" [About to put the stamp where the return address does.]

Me: "Oh my god, really?"

Chris: [Moves the stamp to the spot where people have been pasting stamps since 1840] "Here?"

Me: [Mouth ajar, speechless.]

Chris: "Never mind. I'll google it."

tuesday afternoon

The old biddies are coming over to play bridge in a few hours, and I'm nervous, because (1) the old biddies are all much better bridge players than I am and (2) the old biddies are neither old nor are they biddies, and it might come to fisticuffs when they find out I've been calling them such on the internets.

In other news, Chris & I went to the Four Corners of the Earth Cafe for lunch, where they serve sandwiches representing all four corners of the earth. The writing on their menu is nearly impossible to read and the music sounds like an Eastern European rock opera, but in my opinion these things are assets, and the food is delicious.


Now I'm going to try and find an online bridge game so I can practice before the old biddies get here and kick my ass (literally, at cards, or both).

chaos & some rules

There were eight kids in my cousins' family, and unlike at my house growing up, where there were rules such as No Walking Through the Living Room, my cousins' house was lawless. In addition to the eight children, there were two golden retrievers (both of which loved to chase cars, hump legs, and bite kids), a senile old man, and two adults who never seemed to be home, all living in a small four-bedroom house. Not only were there no rules, there were no lucid grownups around to not enforce them, and my sister and I could do all the things that were prohibited at home, including watch cartoons, drink soda, eat sugar cereals, and walk through the living room.

After about half a day at my cousins' house, things would inevitably go Lord-of-the-Flies wrong: Someone would get bit by a dog, there would be a fistfight between a couple of the cousins over who had to change the diapers of the senile old man, and eventually my sister or I would have a post-sugar meltdown and want to go home. But before the crying started, there was the eating, and not just eating, but eating the kind of food that is prepared (or scavenged) by a horde of children under the age of twelve.

For example, lunch was usually a hobo-like affair that involved going to the park to collect cans and bottles, dragging the collected cans and bottles to Christie's Market where we would redeem them for money, and using the money to buy our version of hooch: penny candy.

Another featured lunch ingredient was Fluff: Fluffernutters -- sometimes without the nutter, because who needs protein when you can eat a corn-syrup sandwich? -- followed by whoopie pies (Fluff sandwiched between chocolate cake instead of Wonder bread). We baked our own whoopie pies using chocolate cake mix, because the Saran-wrapped whoopie pies sitting next to the register at Christie's Market exceeded our one-cent-per-item food budget.

Now that I am a high-rollin' grownup who can afford a $1.25 store-bought whoopie buy, I get mine at the Essex Quality Bake Shoppe (which made the whoopie pies for our wedding). The filling of these whoopie pies has so much shortening and sugar it tastes like sweet, whipped wax, and a whoopie pie from our wedding was not stale on our fourth wedding anniversary (though it was freezer burned).

Over the past week, several people have e-mailed to me this article about whoopie pies from the New York Times. And while I'm glad that whoopie pies are getting the recognition they deserve, many of the desserts described in that article are not, in fact, whoopie pies.

A few whoope pie rules:

1. Whoopie pies must always be individually wrapped in Saran wrap, not stored under some fancy glass doo-dad.

These look OK, but they ain't whoopie pies (please don't tell my dad I said "ain't" or I will have to pay a fine).

2. Whoopie pies should never have a glaze or frosting on the outside.

3. Whoopie pies are no longer whoopie pies when they are made with pumpkin cake or brown-sugar cake (puh-leez) or when the filling is maple-cream icing or when it comes in flavors such as rum, peppermint, Cointreau, raspberry or espresso (whoopie pies don't come in flavors, for god's sake; neither do creemees, for that matter, but that's a subject for this summer).

While this presentation may be fancy (it was, after all, a wedding), these are actual whoopie pies:


And this is what people look like when they eat actual whoopie pies.

They look like desperate, starved savages, basically, the very kind of people who would walk right through their own living room.

chris loves 'house hunters'

The man goes to a city council meeting and then comes home to watch HDTV. Is that an oxymoron?

Lines from the show I'm overhearing as I type:

"Ooh, walk-in closet. Nice."

"At this point, one thing that is definitely sticking out in my mind is the square footage."

"Make sure you stick to your list of must-haves and must-have-nots, and if you get one of your bonuses, bonus."

"They live in a three-bedroom home with their son Jack, who they call 'Jackie Boy.'"

"This is the culmination of all our dreams" [delivered with far less enthusiasm than the line about the walk-in closet].

From Chris: "Honey, International House Hunters is coming on!"

I need to go do an intervention. Or an exorcism.

before & after

Yesterday was very productive: In addition to the purchase-free trip to Costco, I went out to dinner, and then I went to a dinner party. That's right: It was a two-dinner Sunday (one meal for each thigh).

I also finally got around to putting together the before-and-after photos of our recently renovated little apartment. Although I (obviously) cannot take credit for doing any of the actual construction, I can take credit for not committing a homicide or checking into a mental hospital while the renovation was under way.

I've posted a few photos here; to view the whole slideshow, click HERE.

costco

We went seeking contact lenses.

But the other pilgrims had carts, so we procured a cart. And the others' carts were bountiful, overflowing with goods, so we, too, began to fill our cart.

First there were the pillows, two for $19.99, and another for $30.00. And why not? We deserve pillows, have earned a soft place to rest our heads at night. After the pillows came the toaster oven, but it had not convection, so we moved on. To the books. And though I have vowed to forsake Amazon and Borders, to instead support my nonexistent local bookstore, there was Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You, so lonely and literary among the piles of romance novels and mysteries and many copies of The Audacity of Hope. So it, too, at $6.99, went in the cart, followed by the bottles of wine, the 500 Ziploc sandwich bags, the jug of Kirkland-brand ibuprofen.

And then the lethargy set in, the catatonic trudging from aisle to aisle, confused about our wants and needs. We contemplated a plastic tray of 16 Fuji apples that could not possibly have been grown on trees. We passed by an old man wearing a hairnet and hawking Mentos. "Everyone loves Mentos," he called, and this is true. We do love Mentos, we love Mentos so very much. But should the Mentos go in the cart?

We looked again to the others, but now their carts were not bountiful but gluttonous. For whom did these pilgrims shop? Had they entire villages living in their McMansion basements? Did they send these foodstuffs to starving children in Africa? And what would the African children do with their five-pound tub of Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie dough? Their 49-pack of frozen beef taquitos?

"Let's go," I hissed.

"What?" he asked.

"Let's just get out of here."

"Did you see they have croissants?" He veered the cart toward the bakery.

"No, where?" I followed, mouth watering. Croissants. The cacophony of pilgrims and 52" flat-screen televisions. The lights shining fluorescently overhead.

Overhead. There were birds! Birds flying high above us, nesting in the corners of the cavernous ceiling.

"Wait! Stop!" I gestured toward what I thought was the front of the store, the huge warehouse doors that empty into the massive parking lot.

"But..." He looked longingly at our carefully selected, much-needed items, the bounty we would leave behind. "What about the cart?"

"Just leave it," I whispered. I grabbed his hand. "Leave the cart."

And so we went.

well that's a fine how-do-you-do

It's snowing up in here.


And bleak and ugly.



But the Crazy Pet Lady offers you this small consolation:


The Crazy Pet Lady is going to offer herself breakfast at Libby's Blue Line Diner as consolation (and also as physical, spiritual, and mental preparation for a trip to Costco; pray for me).

synchronicity

While I was honing my Couch Jedi skills this afternoon, Chris was at the hardware store buying a squeegee to clean the very windows I was taking photos of from the couch. And instead of peeling me a grape when he got home, Chris actually washed those windows.


Lucky for all of us here at Gruel for Dinner, I was able to take that photo without stepping off the Millennium Falcon that is my couch (I'm going to work this metaphor to the bone), although I did have to pause my show.

I was finally forced off the mothership when Chris stuck his head in the window (at this point he was out on the roof washing the south-facing windows) and requested that I go ask the neighbor if she wanted her windows washed (who is this man, and how did I convince him to marry me? In my world, neighbors are people you pretend you don't see when you're standing next to them in the elevator). Out of some misplaced sense of guilt I did as he asked, completely forgetting that I WAS WEARING MY JEDI OUTFIT.

In case it's unclear, I just knocked on my neighbor's door wearing high-water orange fleece pants; striped socks; clogs that are at least two sizes too small, forcing me to walk in a shuffle; and a stained pink sweater with gaping holes in the armpits. The neighbor actually looked scared when she answered.

There goes the neighborhood.

couch with a view

I was planning today to upload before-and-after photos of our apartment, but this would require that I (a) get off the couch and take the "after" photos and (b) get off the couch, find the jump drive, and move the "before" photos from Chris's computer to my computer. And I just don't think all of this getting-off-the-couch business is going to happen. The urge to lie here is strong in me, much like the Force was strong in young Luke Skywalker. I'm not lazy, I'm a Couch Jedi, and like Luke, who used his power to fight the Dark Side, I, too, am using my innate gifts, namely to lie here with the computer on my stomach while I download an episode of Gossip Girl.

So instead of the before-and-after tour, I offer you the following, photos I was able to take without disrupting my Couch Jedi training.

Views out two of our windows (the Flynn Theater sign is one of my favorite things about this apartment...



though I also love the geometry of fire escapes and duct work and roof lines out the window next to it).


And while I know that with this photo I will have exposed myself as a Crazy Pet Lady, I am woman enough to acknowledge that I am both a Crazy Pet Lady and a Couch Jedi.


My Couch Jedi Master Gossip Girl is ready now, and I dare not keep her waiting.

this morning

Instead of being bitter that on this, the first day of spring (or maybe that's tomorrow?), it's the coldest it's been in a week, I'm doing that half-glass-full shizz I'm famous for. Temperatures may be low, the wind frigid, and spring far, far away, but the sun sure is pretty.

I'm off to Johnson to have dinner with my friend Margaret, hopefully at the Winding Brook, but if not then (god forbid) at the Hoob.

Happy weekend!