she's just saying...

Little tiny pill

OK, this is going to sound pathetic, but really it's not.

I did go out with a friend for a birthday drink and food at my favorite local wine bar. Henry went with us and behaved beautifully, taking care of us and entertaining himself (and many others, as usual). I was kind of reluctant to go as I felt a headache coming on at work, but took an Imitrex on the way there and soldiered through.

By the time we got home, it was clearly a migraine lurking behind the pill that mildly suppressed it. I took another one and lay down "for a little bit" until the pill did its work. Henry again was lovely, making me tea and bringing me his blankie (yes, he still has one - she's now a member of the family).

Three hours later, I woke up to find him watching cartoons and eating cereal at 11 pm. This morning promises to be fun...

I don't know how many of you experience migraines. Imitrex works, slower than you'd like, and pretty much always knocks you out. The key is to take it AS SOON AS YOU FEEL THE MIGRAINE, not like me, who pretty much ignores the signals until it demands full attention and acquiescence. You really need to get out of denial and act immediately if you don't want to end up in the emergency room, painfully reciting all your medications, doctors, insurance info and medical history over and over while an ice pick is being hammered into your temple, waiting around while a meth addict trashes the place, eventually getting a shot that makes you throw up and knocks out the headache while a nurse's assistant feeds your child doughnuts and Pepsi at three in the morning. Not that that's ever happened or anything.

Just saying.

Top Ten: Happy Homemaker edition

Here's a quickie:

Top ten main dishes I make for dinner:

1. Pasta with pesto sauce. This is (strangely) Henry's favorite food. He'll eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner, and even after dinner. I have to buy the bulk jars of pesto from Costco in order to afford this. I add fresh tomatoes to get a little more nutrition in it.
2. Spaghetti with tomato sauce, homemade with turkey sausage added.
3. Pad Thai. This is easier than it seems, using jarred pad thai sauce. It uses a lot of pans though.
4. Fish tacos. Easy.
5. Caesar salad with grilled salmon. Another surprise is that Henry loves salmon. Praises be! I make a killer Caesar dressing that I've perfected over the last 25 years. Secret ingredients and all.
6. Lemon chicken stir-fried with veggies.
7. Zucchini risotto. My sister Susan's award-winning recipe, minus the heavy cream and 1/2 the butter.
8. Roast chicken on the grill. No clean-up.
9. Grilled teryaki tuna. Super easy, with Japanese sides.
10. When we're out of time, Spaghettios or chicken pot pie. For him, not me. I go to cheese, crackers and a glass of wine.

(PS: I don't eat beef or pork, which is why meatloaf isn't on the list. Henry can if he wants, but I don't cook it.)

Squash(ed) cat

To demonstrate my earlier statement about my sister shopping in unusual stores, I present her latest gift to me: the Squash(ed) Cat.

Yes, that is an orange acorn squash with cast iron cat appendages stuck in it.  (I supplied the squash.)

Cool, huh?

It looks great next to Judi's felt bowl.

It must be fall.

Stone Soup - the real lesson

The other night, Henry thought some chicken soup would help his sore throat, but I didn't have any canned. I realized that I actually had half of the chicken I cooked Sunday (a chicken on every grill!). I also had noodles, of course, so I started to scrounge around for what else I could add in order to produce homemade soup at 7 pm on a school night.

I reminded Henry of the Stone Soup fable we read the night before, and remarked that this was our stone soup as I found shallots, carrots and celery and made some broth. He got totally into the spirit of the moment and dumped in some left-over broccoli from the fridge. We went out and cut some parsley from the parsley farm and some thyme and sage from the front herb boxes and kept improvising.

Henry started weaving his own version of the Stone Soup story while we were cooking, spinning it into a half-hour tale complete with characters, plot, setting, dialogue, drama and mood. I was entranced by his story and how he conjured up such a colorful tale on the fly.

The soup turned out to be delicious, and it was a classic learning moment for me. I'd been worried over Henry's lack of focus in class and inability to finish his work when the others did. While stressing about what he couldn't do compared to his classmates, I neglected to notice the unique things he can do, those amazing creative skills that set him apart. As I mentioned here before, I hope his teacher and I can find a way to keep his spirit up and frustration level down while he struggles with the structured classroom learning environment of public school. I feel I fail him regularly by focusing on the negative, but isn't guilt one of the defining emotions of parenting?

Wok this way

While at the Japanese Dollar Store, I bought a wok, one of the very few things there that wasn't $1.50. Because I'm my father's daughter, I always read the label, which said:

CHECK A MANUAL BEFORE USING [must have been written by a technical writer]

• Please be careful not to be burned when removing the anticorrosive oil. Please burn it before use in order to vaporize the protection coat. Please use it just when finishing reading the notice afterwards. There will come out smoke and bad smell when heat the article, please turn on the exhaust fan and keep enough ventilation.

Maintenance after use

• After use, please wash the article by water first and use a brush to make it clean then. [LOLwok?]
• If use detergent, as it will make the article easy to become rusted, in order to avoid its happening, please wash the article by water after using detergent, fire the wok on the burner enabling make moisture wet gone over and apply eatable oil to its surface.

CAUTION

• The blemish on the surface is artificial without any influence. [That's what they all say.] Do not extremely cook without anything in the wok so as to avoid fire. Do not let the vegetables or food lying in the wok too long. Do not use knife to clear the dirties from the bottom of the wok. Do no let the water over to the handle rivet.

I'm a little nervous about it now - I usually try to avoid making smoke and bad smell come out when I cook.

Fellow Travelers

My older sister and I are close, relative to the rest of our family. That means we make an effort to see each other once a year in addition to the July 4 family get-together. We've traveled together quite a few times without killing each other, so I consider that a success. But we do have very different travel styles that I've learned over the years.

I'm kind of a hang-out, mosey-around, soak up the atmosphere, take a nap, have a drink kind of traveler. She's all about getting out and about, seeing key attractions (most often architectural landmarks), taking photos, packing it all in. I like a big leisurely breakfast, then snacking on stuff during the day and often appetizers and drinks at cool spots at night. She basically doesn't eat all day, then likes a late big dinner at a nice place. I like to stay in fancy hotels, she'd rather save the money and use it for dining. No right or wrong here, just very different.

Traveling with another person can be tough -- there is always a point when you get on each other's nerves. Or maybe it's just me. But Susan and I do pretty well given our differences in style. We both like to shop in unusual stores, something my last boyfriend really chafed at. We always have a good, easy conversation. And she gets me to see/do things I'd otherwise miss, I know.

For example, she's been very focused on finding this Japanese 100 yen store. Packed with bizarre, clever little things, many of which we couldn't identify. Everything was $1.50, with a few exceptions. There are a lot of things I'll buy if they only cost $1.50. Even things I don't quite recognize.

We hit a vintage pottery store, something NO boyfriend would have been able to tolerate. Then a mystery bookstore - we were on a roll. I did my part in contributing to the retail economy in Seattle, as these are certainly things we don't have in Bend. I miss the quirkiness of city life and casually finding amazing discoveries around every corner. Oh well, my mantra: you can't have everything.

Off to the game...

The Omnivore's Hundred

Thank god Jen provided the topic for a post just when we were about to be sucked into the Sticky Swamp of Cuteness forever.

Originally from www.verygoodtaste.co.uk: "...Below is a list of 100 things that I think every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life. The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers."

"Here’s what you do:

1) Copy this list into your blog , including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating."

So here goes, my comments in parentheses:

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (girl scouts!)
3. Huevos rancheros (like every weekend)
4. Steak tartare (used to love this in NYC restaurants)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10.Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21.Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24.Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27.Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (covered in chocolate)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more (more NYC excess - it was the '80's)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (Montreal)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (Kaopectate?)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (um, all four?)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe (Paris)
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (my old advertising clients!)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (Paris 1977, NYC in the '80's again)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake 

Hmm. I guess I'm quite the omnivore. Don't mean to sound like an obnoxious food snob, but this isn't a very ambitious list, IMHO. I probably had most of these 20 years ago (ok, that sounded snobby).

How about you guys? (Bloggers: Here's an easy post for Labor Day weekend!)

Pioneer woman 2008

I'm feeling very self-sufficient and capable these days. Of course, you know some calamity will now smack me upside the head just for saying that.

Today I went from out digging the waterfall hole-to-hell to cooking up a fancy blueberry-nectarine crumble to buying macho things at Home Depot like concrete and caulking guns. Now I'm going to knit a little. A true Oregon suburban homesteader! Even though I don't raise my own chickens like my blogbuds Amber and Kathi [and what's with chickens and blogging, anyway?]

Here's an update on my water feature follies:

random materials and tools

This doesn't include the most important items like the pump, the pump filter and the hose, which I have to buy at a landscaping supply place on Monday.

Here's the hole, ready to be covered with underlayment (old carpet) and the incredibly expensive and heavy liner.

Every step in the process raises another unforeseen problem to be solved. One step forward, two steps back.  I really want to finish this, though if I turn on the water and the whole thing craps out, I may throw in the towel and hire somebody. 

What's your nemesis project? Did you give up or persevere?

loose ends

Time to tie up a few:

1.Yes, Henry does not like the retainers. He says he'd rather have the braces again, and even offered to pay for them himself. We're trying them (actually, he's trying them) a few hours at a time. And they have been lost twice in the two days we've had them. Unfortunately, they're clear and small and easily overlooked.

2. I think I've solved the catnip situation. If you can't cage the cats, cage the catnip.  They hang around it alot but haven't tried to break in yet. I think the smell alone drives them crazy - they don't have to ingest it. Does anybody know?

The owner of Chow (the out-of-coffee cafe, in case you didn't guess) sent me a lovely email apologizing for our experience. He said they weren't out of coffee - it was a server misunderstanding. That's good to know - I'm definitely trying it again.

3. Our knitting group may have found a home - Makahna's Cafe on Galveston. Great spot! Meets all our criteria (natural light, not too noisy, comfortable space, parking, beer and wine). The owner, Steve, kept it open just for us, which was wonderful. He's working on staying open evenings more. Check it out!

4. I did buy an electric mower and love it.

5. The laser treatments I had to control my glaucoma were very successful. My interocular (great word) pressures are way down, and should stay that way for a few years, hopefully.

chicken

We had grilled chicken last night. But not just any grilled chicken. It was a whole organic bird. First I brined it, then butterflied it, then seasoned under the skin, then grilled it with mesquite chips. That's about as much as you can do to a chicken, and it was worth it.

I didn't take a photo, so you'll have to imagine the deliciousness.

Wine-flation

I've noticed a definite price creep in the wines I've purchased over the last year or so. Not that wine prices overall have risen; it seems to me that prices have stayed pretty flat, actually.

Rather, it's my purchase choices that have moved slowly but surely up the price chart. Years ago, I bought the "fighting varietals" as they're called in the wine biz: $5-$7 bottles. Then for a long time I'd look for deals under $10. That was my limit, unless it was a special occasion. At some point, that crept over $10 to maybe $11. Now I look at my bottle six-pack (thanks, Safeway) and realize that the average post-saving price is more like $13. I've moved up the racks from the bottom shelf to the second to highest, and reach up to the top shelf now and then.

This is the problem with drinking good wine - it spoils you for the cheaper stuff. As my palate has evolved, my "wine price comfort zone" has grown as well. Luckily, there are some great wines to be had in my current price range.

Of course, I said that a few years ago as well.

me me meme

Okay, I'm piggy-backing on the meme on Knit One Quilt Too. Hey, Kristen!

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Um, let's see. 1998. Dating Bruce. Driving to Portland every other weekend. Working at the agency-that- must-not-be-named. Training Flash. Thinking about adoption. Wait - it might have been Kev. Who can remember?

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
1. Work on that darn entrelac bag! Whose idea was it, anyway? Oh, right.
2. Write back to my friend Maurice in Hawaii - I miss him.
3. Hit Safeway for the third time this week.
4. Look for work.
5. Attend the Knit-Up at PJ's tonight - highlight of my week!

3. Snacks I enjoy.
Cereal, plain yogurt, fruit and maple syrup.
Cheese and crackers (my staple single-girl meal).
The little candy bars that are in accounting. Have to come up with reason to visit accounting.
Is wine a snack?

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire.
Get a housekeeper.
Give a million dollars to Heifer International. That's a lot of chickens! (and ducks, bees, geese, goats, rabbits and of course heifers).
Fix the potholes on 16th Street.

5. Places I have lived.
In reverse chronological order: Bend, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, Fairbanks, Vermont, Florence, Paris, Vermont, Pittsburgh PA.

6. Jobs I've had.
Are you kidding? OK, titles only: marketing manager, marketing director, consultant, account director, management supervisor, account supervisor, account exec.(right on up the ad agency ladder), scuba instructor/divemaster, temp secretary, traffic manager (newspaper, not cars), bookstore manager, pipeline inspector, restaurant manager, pizza cook, waitress, figure drawing model, girl scout camp counselor.

OK, who's next?

The Out-of-Coffee Cafe

Memorial Day afternoon a friend and I went out to lunch at a newish well-reviewed cafe in town. It's a breakfast/lunch place with the trappings of a fancy-casual restaurant: wines on a rack, water in a carafe, spendy prices. It was about half full, but it became apparent that they were at the end of a busy 3-day weekend. The wait staff were a bit disorganized, but we're used to that in Bend. The food and wine took forever to arrive, but we're pretty used to that as well, and we were in a nice spot outside. Unfortunately, they were out of two of their five sides. A little disappointing, but ok. The sandwiches were not very ok, which was really disappointing, as they were about $10 each. But anyway, on with the point of my story.

While we were eating, we heard a waiter tell some new arrivals that the kitchen was a little backed up, so "take your time deciding." Then I thought I heard him say that they were out of coffee. I was pretty sure I misunderstood him, but about 10 minutes later another party sat down and were told the same thing. Now, without naming names, this cafe is directly opposite one of our best grocery stores and is right next door to our fancy organic one. Across the street are TWO coffee shops, one of which roasts its own beans on the premises. Couldn't somebody run over and buy a couple of pounds of coffee??? Come on, it's a breakfast place. Ya gotta have coffee!

I relate this story not to be mean-spirited - I'm sure they were slammed all weekend. But it's emblematic of why so many businesses fail: the inability to plan ahead, think creatively, take responsibility for decisions and take some action to enhance the customers' experience. Never mind enhance, meet their basic expectations. These little trendy restaurants come and go all the time around here in continual turnover. All that planning, investment, remodeling, stocking and training, but they're out of beans and can't go get some.