Gut Check

The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice. Although it was cold he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage.

Then along came the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
The Lovely Other Dinosaur melted the Dinosaur’s cage with kind words and loving thoughts.

I like this Dinosaur thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
Although he is fierce he is also tender and he is funny.
He is also quite clever though I will not tell him this for now.

I like this Lovely Other Dinosaur, thought the Dinosaur. She is beautiful and she is different and she smells so nice.
She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur.

But he can be so distant and so peculiar at times, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
He is also overly fond of things.
Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things?

But her mind skips from here to there so quickly thought the Dinosaur. She is also uncommonly keen on shopping.
Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping?

I will forgive his peculiarity and his concern for things, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur. For they are part of what makes him a richly charactered individual.

I will forgive her skipping mind and her fondness for shopping, thought the Dinosaur. For she fills our life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises. Besides, I am not unkeen on shopping either.

Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old.
Look at them.
Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.

And that, my friends, is how it is with love.
Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together.
For the sun is warm.
And the world is a beautiful place.

(A Lovely Love Story, by Edward Monkton)

This was the children's book that my best friend read during my wedding ceremony. Between our individual vows and the vows we recited as a couple (and I stumbled over) and the call-and-answer vows from our families and friends. Our pastor forgot my last name and said a circle had 365 degrees, I forgot the vows...everything about the ceremony made me giggle and roll my eyes except the short story of two dinosaurs.

When Jenn got to the bit about the dinosaurs being old together, I came very close to choking up. In that moment I knew I wasn't standing on my grandparents' patio under a rented arbor draped with quickly wilting honeysuckles, in front of a shower curtain to serve as a background for pictures, wearing a dress I picked only because it fit on the first try....I was actually just standing with my husband, the person who I knew would be half of myself until I no longer existed. Nothing else mattered, I was home.

"And that, my friends, is how it is with love."

For all this.. for all the happy housewife blogging I did this year, for all the love and comfort and security I felt in my marriage...it wasn't enough. What the dinosaurs failed to mention is that sometimes how it is with love is one sided. I spent a great majority of the past year staring directly at my husband thinking I was seeing my own future, while-unknown to me-he was looking in a different direction. So it goes.

I've been a wreck since September. A waif, a whisper, just an idea of what I used to be. Not even a year a half..we didn't even make it through my 24th birthday. We married too young, maybe, but we certainly ended it way too quickly for me. I feel like I've crammed at least three lifetimes into the years before most people even meet someone they consider spending their lives with. I met my person and I know even now that it was right for me. However- that lovely person I knew...well...I think he's gone, replaced with a stranger who I remain unsure of. I don't even know that I'm not a stranger to myself, come to think of it.

It's almost Christmas. So the sun is not warm, and the world looks desolate and asleep. Everything feels...wrong. And I feel certain nothing will be right for a very long time.

But there's always one of the most beautiful words in existence to look forward to...

Eventually.

Walruses I have Loved Before

It is my birthday month. I want a walrus.

These are all from etsy. I am too lazy and do not feel like linking them all...soooo I suggest you do a search under Handmade for "walrus."

Please, please somebody paint me a walrus. I love them with my whole heart.




Oh, and here's mine- I call this "Wilton, Dealing with adult braces."

Liberal School Dropout, Go Back to Art School

(Bravo is playing commercials for Grease for some reason. There is a song stuck in my head. Guess which one.)

I started school this week! OK, yeah, its kind of crap so far, since I'm in the "Introduction to Online Learning" class thing and it feels a little like a community college crowd. Very much not my scene and the most non-challenging thing I've done in a very very long time...buuuuut I'm holding out hope that it will improve when I get into actual classes and design things.

In honor of what will hopefully turn out to be a pretty useful experience which leaves me all sorts of amazing artistic talent,--fingers crossed--here are some of my all-time favorite artsy things.

Boy With Hand Grenade, Diane Arbus
The knobby knees! The face! The utter weirdness! Diane Mother-Freaking Arbus! lovelovelovelove.

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch
Every time I look at this painting, I see some new detail. And I love the construction...the two rectangular side panels are hinged to either side of the center panel and close like shutters. I just think that's kind of neat.

Patience and Fortitude, Edward Clark Potter
The NYC library lions. No, I've never seen them in person, but they remind me of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Sex and the City, and the smell of old book- three of the Best Things in the World.

Christina's World, Andrew Wyeth
A print of this painting hung in my first elementary school's library. I stared at it every week during library time, tried to sketch it in art class, and by second grade, was obsessed with the whole mystery of it. Why? I have no idea- I was a really weird kid.

The Mob Has Spoken

Well, FINE. I actually wanted to share the recipe for the mexican pozole (B) I made with hominy and pork backbones because it was FANTASTIC...and the spinach-sausage phyllo thing (C) wasn't half bad. But you want knish. So I now give you ...(drumroll) potato knish!

Oh, and one person thinks I smell. Asshole.

No, I have no idea about the amounts of this recipe. I'm starting to think that maybe my food blog here is less than helpful, since the recipes I post are usually too open-ended particulary on the amounts of certain ingredients. Well. Cooking is more fun if you experiment anyway.

Potato Onion Knish
potatoes- yukon gold or little red ones, cut into cubes and boiled until tender- SKINS ON
slightly less onion than potato- white or yellow, quartered
sour cream- a couple tablespoons, maybe
butter- melted
garlic powder or garlic salt
celery salt
phyllo dough

Roast the soft potatoes WITH SKINS ON and potatoes, covered in melted butter in a 400 degree or so oven for a bit until brownish and deliciously roasty. Mash these roughly with sour cream and seasonings and more melted butter if you feel chubby that day. Brush even more melted butter onto sheets on phyllo, piling it four sheets high. Plop a large spoonful of the mashed potato and onion filling onto one side the phyllo, fold it over and crimp it. Coat it in egg wash or EVEN MORE MELTED BUTTER. Bake at 350 for twenty minutes or so.

I saw this recipe (kind of) on my most hated food network show, Diners Drive-ins and Dives. The tiny Jewish man making them suggested eating them with a big ol' blob of mustard, but I think it was better plain.

A Conversation.

my blog: Oh hey. There you are.

me: What? Who are you?

my blog: Your blog...remember? We used to discuss all the fun craft projects you had going on...and food...we used to talk food in sharp, witty little sentences with fun pictures...remember that?

me: Oh yeah. Well. How have you been?

my blog: Neglected.

me: Yeah, sorry about that. I've been pretty busy lately.

my blog: Bullshit. The most taxing thing you've done all week is reading through Why Women Hate Men and playing Peggle in the wee hours of the morning. Think of your readers!

me: All five of them. I think they're ok without updates of my boring life.

my blog: At least give them a recipe every once in a while, so they don't starve to death.

me: Fine. GOD. You're pushy for a anthropomorphic online journal.


Help me out. My blog getting on my nerves. I've made a few really awesome food things in the past few weeks, but I don't know which to post....so you five readers get to vote for mystery food! Come on, it'll be fun.

A

B

C

The poll is over there -----------------> somewhere on the sidebar. Go vote and I'll post the winner on Monday.

Identity Crisis Curry

Do you remember how Silly Putty was invented?

No?

Really?

Ok, fine. Go read this. I'll wait.

Thanks. You just saved me a lot of time explaining this shaky metaphor.

This meal was kind of like the invention of Silly Putty- I wanted one thing, it didn't quite work out, so I out it to use in a different way and it was amazingly successful. Like crazy, national fad successful.
I wanted a curry risotto. Ian, in his culinary wisdom, devised a way this might work, so I tried it....completely not in the ways he suggested. I'd like to say it was because I'm stubborn and overly confident of my own cooking abilities, but actually I forgot to re-read what he said on his blog comments and honestly thought I had it right. D'oh.
I also made a little dish I like to call "Green Chile Lentils," because it sounds better than "I Had Some Lentils And Shit In The Pantry So I Cooked It All Together With No Regard To The Outcome. " Individually, they were...good. Fine. Unremarkable. The risotto didn't exactly...er...risote...due to not adding quite enough liquid so it was more of a semi-creamy rice than anything. The lentils were good. Weird and all wrong, but good. Then I accidentally mixed 'em... WOO. Faboo.
It's a little thai, a little indian, a little mexican, a little chinese and a little italian. It's like fusion food and general confusion had a baby with googly eyes and a chicken wing and bad hair who cured cancer. Or something. Enjoy.


Identity Crisis Curry

Coconut Curry Risotto
basmati rice
1 can coconut milk
vegetable broth
curry powder
butter
toasted coconut
raisins
red pepper flakes

Melt some butter in a large-ish pot and add curry powder. Add the rice and toss to coat. Meanwhile, combine the coconut milk, vegetable broth and red pepper in a separate pot. Once the liquid mixture is warm, slowly add to the rice mixture and stir your butt off, tasting every few minutes and adding more curry powder and salt as needed. When it tastes ok, take it off the heat and add the toasted coconut and raisin.

Green Chile Lentils
lentils, whatever color
onion, chopped fine
water chestnuts, chopped fine
chicken stock/broth
jar of salsa verde
curry powder
turmeric
cayenne pepper

Sort and soak lentils in a whole lot of water for a few hours. Combine everything and cook 'til it looks/tastes done. Add more liquid if it gets dry. Ho-hum.

Top a plate of rice with the lentils and prepare to be amazed.

Dizzy

Sometimes I have weird, Naked Lunch kind of days.

Like today- my mind refused to shut down last night, so I only got one and a half hours of sleep before getting up to go to the Farmer's Market and things before the husband went to work at noon. I crawled back into bed in the middle of the day to read some Eclipse (Not that I should be reading anything else right this second... I'm now five books behind on my book blog. Lazy.) and nap.
I woke up around two from one of those weird, disorienting, vivid dreams that make me feel like I must have dropped so much acid in a former life. Lots of personally disturbing stuff, but other than that...me, Nick and Moe dressed as a 40s era jazz trio and had a photo shoot. wtf. It was crazy intense dream stuff- I can describe the costumes and exact composition of the pictures and everything. I had on this really light colored, (I feel like it was washed-out pink, but the photos were black and white, so I'm not sure.) thin dress with a collarless v-neck with tiny pearly buttons all the way down the front and short sleeves. I had on one of those frilly-on-the-bottom-hem old slips and white patent leather heels. It looked a little like a dress a woman doing laundry in The Grapes Of Wrath would wear. My hair was pin curled. Nick had on a grey suit and hat, jacket over the arm. Moe had on a pin-striped shirt with a vest and a porkpie hat. There was a close-up of he and Nick from the noses up wearing hats and it was the cutest thing I've never seen in my life. Strange, but cool.
So after stumbling out of bed I realized I had a song stuck in my head for absolutely no reason. "Let's Talk About Spaceships" by Say Hi To Your Mom; look into it, its good stuff. I grab my ipod and the dogs to take a walk, start shuffling songs and the first to come up...? "let's talk about spaceships/or anything/except you and me/ok?" Freaking weird.
We always walk near blackberry patches on the edge of the apartment complex and I checked today to see how ripe they are since I plan on baking a pie ASAP. No go; all red. When I came inside and looked at my produce from this morning, there was a single blackberry in a bag of potatoes we bought from a stall across the market from the only stall selling blackberries. I don't know. I think its strange.

Oh, and Nick has some kind of cold/flu/sickness. He hasn't been sick in any way for four years.

I know what's making me all anxious and loopy and ...whatever. Tomorrow is Father's Day. I so so hate Father's Day, especially in the last couple of years. I hate it for the same reason father/daughter dances at weddings make me have mini internal panic attacks and why I offered to make lunch for my FIL tomorrow, giving me something to do all day other than brood. I hate it the way unhappy people hate Christmas and Christmas songs for no reason other than that they are a-holes. I'm an anti-dad a-hole.

Ugh. I'm whiny and weird.

soooooo. I'm listening to my happy song on repeat very very loudly. "Hot Child In The City," which I feel is my personal theme song although I have nothing to back up that claim.