Hangover Soup

Despite going to 3 (delightful-thanks, hosts) parties last night, I am not exactly hungover, more like very sleepy and terribly uninspired. So I leave you with the easiest soup recipe I know, the soup I make when I don't have any fresh ingredients and am too lazy/poor to go to the store.

Tomato Rosemary Soup

1/2 an onion, diced, then sauteed
1 T fresh rosemary, 1 t if dried to add to onions
Add 1 small tin of tomato paste with about 2 cups of water, stir around a bit
Add 1 t sugar, 2 t salt, 1 t pepper
1 additional T of fresh rosemary
1/4 cup cow or coconut milk

Let cook for a few minutes, then eat. Takes abut 10 minutes and serves 2 or 3

I'm hoping this soup is good for my liver, because last night we drank like it was our job. Stories for another time, doves. We'll just say that the fire was impressive, Madonna holds up well, men of a certain age from Arlington look completely indistinguishable from generations of fathers before them (is there a special place they get their hair cut?), puppies are super-cute, I really hope the wine came out of the shirt I spilled it on ( and if you ever read this, Jeff, I'm sorry, but now we're even), relationships are hard, and it's nice that the police officer was so understanding. A fine time to alive, all told.

Books, everywhere, books...

I occasionally entertain myself with the "What if we had lots of money" game. This is different from the "We don't have any money" game, because it doesn't include upsetting things like, How will we pay the mortgage? and, What would really happen if I fed my child nothing but .39 mac-n-cheese, and because, not having money isn't much of a game, now, is it? Anyway, the "What if I had lots of money game" is all about fantasy, and it includes things like fabulous trips, having a well-paid seamstress to whip up beautiful clothes for my family (and friends! I wouldn't forget you!), or, endlessly, houses of (nearly) every flavor, Victorian, cottage, brownstone, mid-century, warehouse loft, tree house; you get the idea. This fantasy life also includes an unlimited budget for books, of course. But then, practical girl that I am, I get to wondering how we would house all the books- would we have built-in book shelves (yes!), would there be stacks everywhere (seems likely), would they ever get dusted (if current standard apply, this seems very unlikely indeed). So I particularly appreciate the beauty of these stair bookcases, and the installation piece with books is especially inspired. Someday, though, I will have those built-ins, as kitty is my witness (hear that, Stinky? You are being called upon. Do try to stop eating for a moment).

Sharper than a serpent's tooth...*

Soup, how I love you. You let me be known to my friends as a decent cook, you don't cost the earth, you are healthy, you are forgiving, and, importantly, you are warm. So you can imagine my distress when a friend told me that my daughter, upon being offered soup, said, "Oh, God, no more soup." I mean what kind of rotten kid would not be grateful to have a nutritious, delicious, and did I mention, warm, meal of soup? I mean yes, I think last week she had soup in her lunch 3 times and, it's possible, 3 times for dinner, but they were different soups! Today's was a curried roast cauliflower that was awesome, but the beast boycotted (it was a mistake to give her that option, yes?) and went with a tofu-sweet potato stir fry.

Here's the soup recipe (with thanks and apologies to Martha Stewart):

Cut 2 heads of cauliflower into medium sized florets, mix with a pinch of salt and a teaspoon or 2 of vegetable oil

Put cauliflower on a baking sheet and roast in a 450 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, until they start to get brown

Cut 2 onions, and saute them in a tablespoon or so of butter or oil until they are translucent

Add a few teaspoons of curry powder; continue to saute

Add roasted cauliflower

Add 4-5 cups of vegetable broth

Let cook for a little bit- 10 minutes, maybe

Puree in a blender

Salt to your liking

Voila!

And let it be said that there are 5 ingredients in here, and when I ventured into Aldi's this week (it was only my second time- kind of a weird place, and a little depressing, BUT...) cauliflower was only .89 a head. I decided that made it OK to eat 5 bowls.


*...it is to have a thankless child. Oh how I hated to have my father throw this at me, and how I swore never to quote Shakespeare to my (then unimagined) child, but it has a certain ring to it, you know?

Fuck You, Penguin

I know, but it really is called that. I really do not intend to have a blog where I just post cool things I see online (like, Oh, that George Bush sure is dumb! or, That Tina Fey is a riot!) because that would just be lazy. However, I am a sucker for snark and cute, so while my girl has cuteoverload (the standard bearer), this one is all mine.

What I would like on my tree...

Love. These were found on the blog for the non-fiction design group, a collective based right here in our fair city of Columbus.

Futhark is my favorite word today

FreeRice.com is an online vocabulary builder, where every word that you get right earns 20 grains of rice that is donated through the U.N. World Food program. So you get to be smarter and do good work, which is pretty righteous, if you ask me. Tell me your vocab level, and I'll tell you mine.

Wonderful Jewlery

Aren't these charming? They were created by local artist Anne Holman, who was just deservedly recognized by Out Magazine. She has her own collection of vintage maps and atlases, but if you had a little snippet of your own, she would be happy to make something custom. A little bit Steampunk-y, maybe? Winning, certainly. Would you wear one around your neck, like a vial of a beloved's blood, or would you line them up and glory in your riches? I wonder where the dirt comes from? We'll have to ask her. Where would dirt from your favorite place come from? I should say something high-brow like the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens, but I kind of think it would be somewhere closer to home, like maybe, actually, home.

We get to go here!

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia is filled with all kinds of medical treasures, including- but not limited to- the super-colon, the torsos of Chang and Eng, the world famous conjoined twins, and the tallest skeleton in display in North America. Just think of it, rows and rows of perfectly preserved organs, neatly labeled bones, and, oh, the anomalies! I cannot wait. When I was little, my (very wonderful) mother was a social worker in a local hospital, and when she came home from work I would beg her to tell me stories from her day. These included patient's dramas, the soap-opera lives of fellow staffers, and my favorite, "Gory Stories". These were really awful stories where someone endured terrible, painful things, but they were endlessly fascinating to my 7 year old self. Similarly, I know that looking at a "specimen" that is really something it's original owner no doubt suffered greatly over during their lifetime should not interest me as it does, but there you are. Gory Stories did me in, I suppose, and now my (very wonderful) mother is taking us there as a holiday treat.

And then, of course, there is the Museum of Natural History, a place I never fail to be inspired in. I would totally live there if I could, like in The Mixed up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler. Something about all those dioramas, and all that taxidermy, and all those bones, just makes my heart thrill. I was telling my (also wonderful) father that the girl has no memory of having been there, despite having a dozen or so trips under her belt. He agreed that this was a tragedy, and offered that as his Solstice (I know, but he would never say Christmas) gift to us. I have nice parents, yes?

I would like to say that my interest in all things medical and scientific reflected some untapped genius, but the truth is my love is almost entirely aesthetic. Yup, I really am that shallow. Organs in a jar of formaldahyde, an insect trapped in lucite, robin's egg shells, nests, racoon skulls? Love. I just think they're so pretty.

Off to re-read Geek Love and At Large and at Small.

Finally...

Mary Jo Kilroy FTW

The first Democrat to win a Congressional seat in Franklin County in a generation. 42 years! Wow. The good guys worked really hard on this- thank you, good guys! The whole provisional ballot thing is still bullshit, though.

Wallpaper

How pretty is that? This is a William Morris print, one of dozens that I would love to look at everyday. Remember how we hated wallpaper? What now-hideous thing do you think we will collectively fall in love with next? Wall to wall carpeting, in pea green? Low ceilings? Acoustic tile ceilings? The mind reels...

Midnight is a Place

After a rollicking Thanksgiving, where we fed and entertained around 30 people into the wee hours of the morning, our sleep schedule, never what one would call normal, is all kinds of off. My daughter, who is 10, has always been a champion sleeper, hard to convince to go to sleep, but perfectly happy to sleep until afternoon hours. I can sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime, like a kitty. On Friday, we slept until 2, napped again around 4, and then were WIDE AWAKE. After righting the house, eating again, catching up on Pushing Daisies, and, um, eating AGAIN, we went back to the book we had started a few days before. Joan Aiken is a contemporary author, 1924- 2003, who wrote marvelously grim children's novels (along with many other things, not yet explored by me.), known especially for her series, The Wolves Chronicles. This one, Midnight is a Place, takes place in a Dickensonian Victorian England, and centers around 2 children thrown together when their dreadful guardian dies, burning down their house in the process. As we know, all successful children's stories have orphans as the protagonists, and this book is no exception.The children are forced to find their way doing most vile things, like working as a "tosher" in the sewers, looking for discarded treasure, or risking their life in the carpet factory that should be theirs, or finding old cigar butts in the streets and crafting new ones with the tobacco bits. We talk all the time about how lucky we are; despite living in what most Americans might call poverty, we have incredible riches- a comfortable home, good food, books aplenty, wonderful friends to share everything with. But even with all these conversations under our belt, to read a book that does not stint in it's descriptions of hard lives was an eye opener for both of us, and further motivation to not buy things made by 10 year olds. We read, and read, and read, until it was 2 in the morning. I asked E if is she was too tired for me to keep going, but she was not a bit sleepy, so we kept going until the end. So worth it, despite the froggy voice I was left with.

Just as we were finishing, my partner came home with an out-of-town friend, who couldn't quite believe that children, and people with children, led lives like this. "You mean you'll all just sleep in tomorrow? Until how late? I think maybe I should reconsider this whole no-kid thing." Indeed.

Inspiration

Everywhere I look, really, are things that inspire. A quick glance around my tiny house finds books, pretty things, ingredients for a future meal, little girl shoes, big girl boots and a man hat, or three. This is an experiment for me, a way to keep track of everyday thoughts, experiences and, yes, inspirations.