she's just saying...

Knitting countdown starts now

Starting tomorrow, I'm putting aside all personal knitting (sob!) and working on Christmas presents. Once again, with no money and lots of yarn, I'm setting the goal of knitting all presents for family and friends. So, no talking about what's on the needles or showing works in progress on the blog sidebar til January, assuming I hit my target dates...

So, the perennial question: would you rather ask for and receive exactly the gifts you want or would you rather be surprised by the imaginative choice of the giver? For me, this becomes the dilemma of whether to choose a pattern/yarn/color I think the recipient would like or whether to ask them beforehand, which isn't as much fun. I've thought of choosing a few options I want to knit and having them pick from those, but that's a lot of work, frankly.

It's not so hard with my sisters as I know their tastes, but for nieces/nephews, it gets tricky. Those twenty-somethings can be very choosy. Of course, I know what they really want and probably need more than any knitted item: cold hard cash.

 

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Eyeball update

Surgery was successful and easy. No pain yet, only a little blurry vision. I've spent the day sleeping, shopping online under the influence of anesthetics and wandering around the hotel lobby. I look like I've been in a bad fight, I'm moving a bit drunkenly and I'm wearing sunglasses so the staff is intrigued and whispering.

The hotel offered a (free) breakfast this morning that I squirreled away for after the surgery and hosted a (free) wine and appetizers happy hour tonight - sweet! The new season of "The Good Wife" begins tonight that my eyebrows are happily anticipating, so life is fairly pleasant, all in all. Sure beats last time.

Thank you for all the good wishes -- really, I'm feeling guilty for having such a pleasant little get-away.

Since you don't want to look at my eye right now, I'll post a pic of the hotel lobby.

Silver Cloud Inn, Bellevue. Tell them that mysterious lady sent you.

one eye down, one to go

It's sad that I have to schedule surgery in order to get away for a few days rest.

Here I am, laying back on a king-size bed, watching a first-run movie, eating shrimp phad thai in a quiet comfortable hotel in Bellevue, Washington. I'll be here for two more days, relaxing, reading, knitting and maybe taking a walk in the park across the street.

However, one little detour first: in twelve hours I'll be lying unconscious while a surgeon threads a suture around my right iris and draws it up like a pursestring. Oh, well. Minor price to pay for a little away-time.

Meanwhile, back to the movie...

RDM: Welcome to 1980!

Warning: random rant ahead. The 35 million renovation of the Redmond-Bend airport is very snazzy - it has a second floor and an electronic arrival/departure board and everything. But what idiot forgot to include electical outlets? Here we are, huddled on the floor by the two outlets available in the vast waiting area, which don't even have seating near them. Honestly! It's infuriatingly stupid. Other airports have got it - the Seattle airport (ahem, home of Microsoft) has outlets built into each seating area, one for each seat. Plus data ports, not that anyone uses them anymore.

I have complained about the Redmond airport before, but this really points out the small-town mentality of the place. It makes me crazy to think about it anymore so I'll end this post here. Plus it's really  uncomfortable typing at floor level.

Even the logo is kinda last century.

and the season stumbles to a close...

So now that it DOESN'T MATTER, the Red Sox are creaming the Yankees in their series this weekend.The Bosox pitchers and rookies are playing great as the cool in-crowd players have to sit it out with their Ben-Gay and Ace bandages.

And meanwhile, the hapless Mariners are facing Tampa Bay, ensuring the Rays a sweep right into the playoffs.  *sigh*

I'm in a weird American League pinch, as I can't possibly root for the Yanks or Rays to win, and the Red Sox and Twins have a long-standing animosity that I can't get over. So I'm going for the Texas Rangers! Here's my rationale: they're in the West and I have some loyalty to that division (plus why would I ever root for the Central), my brother lives in Texas (not that he ever follows baseball), and most importantly: Henry was born in Texas. So that makes him Texan by birth and me Texan once-removed. Anyway, that's my story and I'm going with it. Now I just need to find out who the hell they are.

So, in doing my initial research, I've found some Rangers insider information:

Official Texas Rangers Claw and Antler Shirt 

You've seen the players wearing it, and now you can wear the Claw & Antler tee, too.

The blue and red Nike cotton t-shirt that have the claw on the front and antlers on the back will be made available to fans again in late September. These are the T-shirts the Rangers have been wearing this summer that signify their two celebratory gestures. The claw is a long-distance high-five that players give each other after doing something good during a game. It was first devised by Esteban German in the Minor Leagues and brought to the Rangers by Nelson Cruz. The "deer wave", or antlers, is given when a player does something special that requires him to utilize his speed.

Ooohhkaayy... Um, go Rangers! Yeah!

Friday frylet from someone much more creative

I'm sick and grouchy and miserable right now (the cold inevitably became a raging sinus infection) so am not fit to write other than to go on about how crummy I feel and how I get no sympathy and have to keep a house, job, child and pets all going and I know you don't want to read that.

So instead I'll point you to a blog-friend's funny and creative slide show chronicling every day of his baby's first year. It's much snappier and wittier than that just sounded and goes very fast so check this out and enjoy.

Magnus - 365 so far with 102 to go... from Chris Kryzanek on Vimeo.

Anosmia

Meaning: a lack of functioning olfaction, or in other words, an inability to perceive odors. I've been plagued with this condition for periods in my life due to sinus conditions, and let me tell you, it stinks.

I'm motivated to write this today because this latest cold has killed my sense of smell again.  And with that, the ability to taste anything subtler than thai chili paste. I was making a chicken dish last night and snipped some tarragon to add to it. I chewed on a few leaves and thought: my tarragon is a dud! What happened? It was like I was eating a piece of grass. I asked my resident taster, Henry, to chew on some and tell me what he thought. He was at a loss to describe it but definitely tasted something. ("Not really  mint, but green, kind of like that other green stuff [basil] but not really. More weird. Kind of bitter, but a little sweet...")

So, tarragon is gone. As is chocolate and vanilla and any other pleasurable flavor, really.

I went through almost a year of no smell a few years ago and actually got pretty depressed. There's no good season for it: you miss spring lilacs, summer grass mowing, fall cider and Christmas trees. Unfortunately I didn't lose weight, as I kept on eating trying in vain to capture some hint of flavor. I found I gravitated toward fried food as there was at least some satisfaction in the "fatty mouth feel" as we used to say in the snack biz.  I think the worst was eating a brownie: absolutely nothing.

This is how I test my sense of smell: I open a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sniff. If I get nothing, no good. The only good news that I've found is that the world actually smells more bad than nice and you skip those odors as well. It was a good time to be at the diaper stage, for one thing. And when my smeller comes back, it's always a surprise how many things smell. Dishwashing liquid, hand cream, the garbage bin, office supplies, Henry's laundry hamper, cat food - I'm bombarded with a cacaphony of scent.

As an anosmiac,  you get no sympathy. If you lose any other sense (hearing, vision, touch) it's taken seriously, but losing your sense of smell is seen as kind of a joke. Or at least trivial. There's a web forum for folks like me (of course) where we console each other and discuss possible treatments and the inconvenience of it all. It has the tone of nobody knows the troubles we've seen: really, it's a disability! It's dangerous! You could miss a gas leak! a fire! or poison yourself with sour milk!

Anyway, I'm hopeful that this time it's a temporary cold-related differently abledness. I'll let you know. Meanwhile, if I faint, don't bother with the smelling salts.

totally sick

I'm sick. Really sick. It's supposedly just a cold, but I've never had one this bad. I'm suspicious that it may even be the flu, though no one supports me on that. I've got it all:

• headache
• sneezing
• congestion
• runny nose
• sore throat
• body ache
• fatigue
• fever

And it's gotten worse at the week has gone on. Poor me. And poor Henry! The first thing to go was my patience, unfortunately. I won't go on about how hard it is to be a single mom when you're sick - it's too whiny and pitiful. But it's hard. Anyway, no posting til I feel better. And no photos, as piles of tissues are hard to shoot.

 

 

Got one!

"Hand knitted." Good, huh?

C'mon, readers.  #1Sister and I are throwing down here. Whatcha got?

I hope this means what I think it does.

Retronyms

No more canning recipes, I promise. This is more of an amuse-bouche. 'Cause we love that stuff.

I stole this from Schott's Vocab Blog:

Free Parking, Fresh Air and Other Retronyms

"Retronyms?

Yes, retronyms – terms that have been created to clarify an existing word rendered ambiguous by evolutions in technology or social practice.

For example, the term “acoustic guitar” was only coined when the electric guitar was invented, similarly “free parking” only emerged when car-parks and parking meters were introduced.

“Black and white photography” would have been a bizarre tautology until color film, and if you had said “free range eggs” two hundred years ago, you would have been stared at.

Other retronyms include: unsafe sex, fresh air, dial-up Internet … you get the idea."

So, Schott asked his readers to send in theirs. His winners:

"All who participated will be sent whole milk by snail mail, but the following will also receive organic (heirloom) vegetables":

“Paper money.”

“Genuine leather.” 

“Natural flavor.”

“Straight marriage.” 

“Landline phones.” 

“Hairy legs.” 

“Paper edition (for newspapers).”

"Brick-and-mortar company, hand crafted."

"Dumb phone" (As in: I have a dumb phone – it only makes phone calls.)

“Birth mother.”

“Propeller planes, silent movies, conventional weapons, natural grass.”

 

So, readers? Add your own - you can beat the NYT folks fo' sho'!

As per demand: Peach Salsa

Didn't I once say I wouldn't publish recipes because they're so boring to read? This one is by request for Dani.

Last year when I had a huge amount of peaches to can I started experimenting beyond jam. Jam isn't that interesting to make and it's kind of a ho-hum gift. I needed an interesting recipe that was unique. I love mango salsa on fish and chicken, so late one canning night decided to go with a peach version.

As usual I don't measure so this is approximate. Go with your taste buds. Remember that hot food can mask a lot more sweetness than cold, so under-sweeten.

If you're going to can this, try not to cook more than a few minutes as it will cook further in the hot water bath. I'm not going to go into how to can as it's too tedious to type out. There are a million sources for that info if you need it. I love reading the State Extension Service websites, myself. Reminds me of home ec class in the sixties. Those were nice simple innocent times.

If you're only eating this fresh, you don't even need to cook it, I suppose. Never tried it that way.

Peach Salsa approximately

• 1 chopped red onion (red for color - any kind will do)
• chopped red bell pepper (eww! eww! I only add for authenticity here)
• 1-3 jalapeno peppers, minced, depending on your heat preference
• 1/4 cup white or cider vinegar
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 6-7 peaches, peeled and chopped
• 1-2 tomatoes, peeled and seeded (surprise ingredient!)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• Grated lime zest from a whole lime, then squeeze it and add juice
• half a bunch of chopped cilantro - maybe 1/3 cup
• salt and pepper

I like to start the onion, garlic, peppers and vinegar on very low heat for awhile to soften and lose their rawness. Whoo that's pungent! Then add sugar, peaches and tomatoes and let it simmer for a few minutes or longer. Add the last ingredients, cook a minute longer and can. Or cool and serve.

Advanced add-on: depending on the juiciness of the peaches: before adding the last four ingred., dump this into a strainer and press lightly to extract the watery juice. Then boil that down to a syrup and add back. Warning! If you forget to watch it, it can caramelize and burn quickly. Ask me how I know.

This sounds disgusting.

 

When comments go bad

I've been very fortunate as a blogger in that most commenters are agreeable, or at least agree to respectfully disagree. I've gotten only a handful of negative comments overall. This is probably because I steer away from controversial subjects for the most part so the random cantankerous reader has little to object to. The cranky will always find something though.

Those few have rankled (great word, by the way - sounds exactly like it feels). These commenters have no problem criticizing or belittling a complete stranger. Or actually, I guess they kind of enjoy it. Clearly that's the price you occasionally pay for sticking your personal thoughts out there in the blogosphere for anyone to judge. 

Who are these people and why do they take the time to respond to my silly blatherings? Can't say, as none of them have blogs I can stalk and harass back. Not that I would of course. Happy thoughts or none at all is my motto. Luckily most of you feel the same way. I appreciate that.

Moving on. Next, peach salsa!

Yes, we can!

Even though I'm known to jump on the trend train, I hate it when something I've done forever suddenly becomes the latest cool thing and I seem like just one of the nouveau crowd. Knitting was one example, except I love that there are new hip young dedicated knitters (a la Ravelry, the knitting social site, that I'm addicted to). So that's not really an example. Never mind.

What I'm referring to here is canning food. I've canned food since my twenties, when I had a weird episode making ketchup, which (ketchup) stayed around seemingly for years. It was delicious, actually - more like tomato relish/chutney with a ketchup texture. But how much ketchup does one need?  We ended up ditching it in the middle of the night in the garbage. I've regularly made peach jam and tomato sauce over the years - good for Christmas gifts and makes me feel like a traditional and practical farmer's wife from the midwest, none of which I am.

So this year is no exception. Adam calls me when he has tomatoes and peaches that are no longer saleable so I have a direct pipeline to the raw foodstuffs. I've been canning the usual suspects and have branched out to the peach salsa and tomato jam shown above as variations on the theme.

"Apparently canning and preserving are back big time," Lynne Rossetto Caspar is saying, as I type this, on "The Splendid Table." How annoying, seriously.

So far I haven't sickened anyone with botulism, yet. I use the hot-water-bath method, both for the jars and myself, and that seems to work. I haven't graduated to a pressure cooker and probably won't, being one more random appliance to store. (We do have a cousin who collects them as yet another example of our family's weird collecting fetish. Though I suppose they're more useful than some of the things we hoard enjoy...)

You do have to buy some equipment as shown here, but it's a small investment for the great feeling of pride and accomplishment you get as you realize you can provide for your family in the face of the upcoming apocalypse. You'll all be scrounging for scraps, and we'll be full of tomato jam and feeling smug.

The accoutrements of canning

 

Bosox blues

From a recent Bleacher Report reader poll:

What are the Boston Red Sox' chances of stealing the American League Wild Card from the Tampa Bay Rays?

A) 5%-10%        39.1%

B) 10%-20%       11.3%

C) 20%-30%        9.6%

D) Higher           9.6%

E) Zero             30.4%

Since it's impossible to rule the Bosox out completely, I'm in the 5-10% crowd. But it's sure taken the excitement out of watching. More a feeling of foreboding, hopelessness and dread. Just your typical Red Sox emotions, with the exception of a few surprising years in the last decade.

first day of sixth grade

first day sixth grade, originally uploaded by Meltrier.

The traffic jam to get to the school drop off was about the worst I've encountered in fifteen years in Bend, so Henry ditched me in a parking lot and went overland. So far, middle school makes elementary seem lame and is awesome, so here's hoping it stays that way for awhile at least...

Farm Stand Ratatouille

This is the time of year we get the best vegetables in Central Oregon. Stop at Paradise after work, grab all the ingredients and you've got a one-stop, one-pan meal.*

The traditional recipe for ratatouille calls for sauteing each vegetable separately, combining them and baking. But that's not going to happen around my house. So this more a description of how I cook vs. a recipe, and you should modify as you wish. 

1 eggplant  

1 big yellow onion

2-3 zucchini

3-4 tomatoes

a few cloves garlic

Herbs and such: parsley, pepper, lemon juice, capers, thyme, rosemary as you like 

Note: some people add bell peppers, but never in this blog...

Slice eggplant into 1 inch slices, salt both sides and drain in a colander for at least a 1/2 hour. (If you don't have time you can skip this step, but the eggplant will be mushier.)

Meanwhile, slice the onion and cut the slices in half and saute in olive oil in a large deep skillet for 15 minutes or so.  Add the garlic now so it doesn't burn.

Slice the zucchini in 3/4 inch rounds, cut them in half, add to onion.

By now the eggplant should be drained. Wipe the salt off and blot hard with paper towels, then chop into 1 inch cubes. Add to pan. Let the zucchini and eggplant cook for awhile before adding the tomatoes.

Slice the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds, chop and add to the pan.

Let everything bubble along for a bit til it's the consistency you like. Add flavorings from above list as you like and serve!

The great thing about this dish is that it gets better in the next few days, it's great at room temperature, and goes with everything. I like it with couscous, or just good crusty bread, a little red wine and some fresh basil sprinkled on top.

*Olive oil, bread and wine not available at Paradise. Darn.

High Desert Under Labor Day Freeze Warning

News Story - KTVZ Bend.

I know - it sounds like a set-up for a joke, but it's not. Bring in the houseplants, cover the tomatoes. If you ask me we could use a touch more global warming in our neck of the woods for the next month or so...

The loudest goldfish in the world

Normally I don't need the alarm clock to wake up: I have pets. They all start bugging me about 6 am: the dog has to go out (only the third time of the night), the cats are bored and the goldfish is hungry.

Our goldfish lives in a big tank in the living room, where we provide him sensory stimulation and he provides us with the pleasant sound of trickling water through his filter. He's a basic goldfish - after the heartbreak of the fancies, we went for a simple yet sturdy variety. We've had him about two years now. He started out small with black and gold stripes; hence the name "Tiger." He's now about three times as big, has grown out of his stripes but kept the name.

Contrary to YrBigBro's comments about goldfish having no memory, Tiger is very smart and aware. He plays in his air bubble column, has favorite corners to sleep in and lets us know when he's hungry, which is a quite a few times a day. He blows loud bubbles at the surface which can actually wake me up from the other room. I don't think I'm anthropomorphizing when I say he's got a distinct personality. (If you want anthropo-whatever, just ask #1 Sister about the complex emotional relationship between her frog and snail. Now that's creepy.)

I may be the oldest in the house, but I'm not in charge. I serve at the pleasure of the children and animals who coinhabit the home. They constantly need to eat, play, cuddle, be cleaned up after and be let in/out/driven someplace. My role is to work to provide for their needs and take care of them when not working. I realize I created this situation. I'm not complaining. I'm just... saying, I guess.