Lillet & Trey (America Hates Us!)

Desperate Times

2009-04-14T14:51:00.004-04:00

This is the store on Graham Avenue that sells grave markers and other monuments. It used to have a sign in the window saying "For 24 Hour Service Call Jerry 718-XXX-XXXX". Apparently the recession has spurred a side business: Fresh Baked Bread! No need for funeral baked meats or nothin!
I'm concerned that the "prosciutto" bread might go best with fava beans and a nice Chianti? [Also: The cartoon mouse in the lower-left corner appears to be barfing, but that is a sharpie'd word bubble that says "ASK FOR JERRY."]

Hard To Believe

2009-03-17T14:00:00.002-04:00

This was taken only two weeks ago; the past few mornings when I have taken them out the tulips are reaching out of the ground, and there are crows calling as well as starlings.

With a handful of exceptions, I have been outside with them every day since June 7th. I really feel as if somehow I've earned the spring.

Chana Masala. Feminism.

2009-03-04T10:43:00.010-05:00

I've been trying to be better about planning meals for the week. We did a major Fairway run weekend before last and I purchased tons of dried beans in the bulk aisle, and my new plan is while I'm cooking Monday's meal, for example, to put beans on to soak for Tuesday or Wednesday. They taste better, less cans, cheaper, etc. I had forgotten to do this Sunday night and so Monday morning I asked Trey to put a big bunch of navy beans in water for me as well as two cups of chickpeas -- the navy beans got eaten in a delicious stew I made Monday that I christened "Everything In The World Good For You In One Fucking Pan" and that I didn't get around to photographing, so perhaps that recipe will some another time. Last night I had the chickpeas which had been soaking for a day and a half, and figured I'd make hummus for the week and then chana masala, since we'd had soups 4 days straight-ish.

I looked at several recipes, and realized that I wanted to incorporate the Madras Curry Paste that I had made a few weeks ago in order to make a spicy eggplant and black eyed pea dish that was mindblowing and now I can't find the link to it. Never in my life did I think I would be making my own curry paste, but it takes 5 minutes and it is out of this world. Especially since we had gotten the organic ginger from Fairway, which is, not to get all GOOP on you, a world away from any other ginger I've ever tasted.

Having an immersion blender is a revelation. The best thing about making the curry paste this way is the smell when the ingredients start to blend and the coriander and mustard seeds are being crushed, a blast of perfume hits your brain. I made extra so I can do more things with this later in the week.
I get really geeky about turmeric and its health benefits. I wish I could make the blog scratch-and-sniff.

While I was making the paste, I was cooking the chickpeas (it took about 1.5 hours, but that is no problem when you are eating artichoke paste on flatbreads and having a nice Primitivo! Also roasting garlic for the hummus I would be making, and prepping a medium onion and 5 cloves of garlic for the chana masala. I am blown away by how true it is that dry beans have a lot more personality than canned ones. The chickpeas were really tender and sweet, the best tasting ones yet, I think they benefited from extra soaking.

I added some olive oil to the big pan, let some cumin seeds toast in there, and then the fuse blew. FUCK! After that was resolved, and the pan heated up again, I sauteed one medium onion, diced, and some chopped garlic and sprinked with sea salt and let them soften. Once soft, I added a big wad of the curry paste (around a tablespoon and a half) and some tomato paste.

I let this cook some, and the realized it seemed that I'd need more liquid, so I added 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of the red wine I was drinking, also a teaspoon-ish of garam masala.

I decided it needed 1/2 can of crushed tomatoes and another big wad of curry paste. This did the trick, and then I added black pepper and two big handfuls of baby spinach. Awesome!

What else is going on? Who cares. It's cold, the dogs are great, Trey and I are fine, I have a job. I'm tired of ranting about things. Oh! except there is one thing that has been on my mind lately, and it is why in the hell women squirm away from 1) the term feminism and 2) are reluctant to identify themselves as feminists.

On a blog I read a lot, a Brooklyn mom blog, the author asked her readers to comment on what feminism meant to them. When I said that to me it was very simple -- the belief that men and women should have equal legal, political and social rights and dignity, and that each person has sovereignty over him or herself -- I was criticized for "sounding like a dictionary." Which made my blood boil, because, well, if you go to THE DICTIONARY that is WHAT FEMINISM MEANS. It's very simple. 2+2=4 simple.

The complicated part is the question, What in our day to day lives can be considered a "feminist" act or "anti-feminist" and this is what I think that this blogger was trying to explore, but the fact that there was uncertainty around what feminism itself WAS, was ringing proof that feminism remains hella necessary. You can discuss "is wearing makeup feminist? is it value neutral? is it oppressive" all day long, but that doesn't change what feminism as a principle IS, just as the fact that you can have four oranges or four mansions or four kittens or a four-chambered heart doesn't change the FOURness of 4. What makes me insane is that all the baloney and fear and weirdness around the term feminism, which should be as simple as "four", is an index of just how deeply, deeply ingrained misogyny is in our country. Just because you can have women in successful political positions, that women vote, that women can drive, blah blah blah, is not enough if to even SAY that you are a feminist is a source of any kind of frisson of weirdness or nascent shame. What the fuck? I mean, do you really not believe that you are equal to a man? Not in physical strength, not in having to join the Marines, not in having to slave away in an office, but as a HUMAN BEING, do you really not believe you are equal? Think about this! Really THINK about it.

Because once you do, you'll realize that there are two kinds of people in the world (men and women alike): Feminists, and assholes. It really is that simple, and that is why I think it is so scary to so many people, because we still, for all our freedoms, live in a world where Living While Female is a crime punishable by rape and death, and in an atomistic culture like ours that encourages these fantasies of exceptionalism, it's really sobering to have to admit that there is still a shitton of change that needs to happen. The Supreme Court, in Gonzales vs. Carhart, has decreed that I do not know what is best for my own body and life. Doctors are allowed to withhold medical care from me because of my sex. If doctors refused treatment to black people, there would be outrage. There is much less when the victim is a woman. Internalized misogyny is everywhere. It sucks, but it's better to stare it down, down, down.

I see this in lots of parenting blogs as well. The apotheosis of the internalized misogyny of mom-bloggery to me was in the title of that Salon column, "Mothers Who Think."
"Mothers Who Think."

As opposed to?

As opposed to all the other bovine mothers out there, placidly squeezing baby after baby out of their fuckholes, their sad MFA-less cunts? Who says that mothers aren't thinking about shit all the time? In fact, maybe lots of mothers are too busy thinking about all kinds of things to submit their writing to Salon? Why wasn't this shit called out immediately? "It's okay to be a mother, because I maintain my MASCULINE THINKING WRITING BRAIN ALSO, I'm not a MERE WOMAN." Why doesn't Salon have a column titled "Black Folks Who Don't Steal Shit"? It really is THAT offensive, but this shit is the water we swim in and we don't even notice anymore.

Are you a feminist? Yes. You. Are.

Almanac

2009-01-12T09:55:00.003-05:00

Ever since we adopted Sir Specialness, (who for blogging purposes I'll christen "Basil") I have walked him in the early morning before I go to work. Every couple of weeks Trey will take the morning walk, but 95% of the time I have been out the door with the dog at 6-ish a.m., rain, shine or snow. When we adopted Basil's sister Britta in October, the routine didn't change, but the sunrise certainly has. 6 a.m. in December is really damn different from 6 a.m. in July. Some mornings we would leave the house in that pre-dawn inkwash blue that I had always associated with desperately finishing a term paper, heading to the airport, or running out of blow. Now it's me and the dogs running across Meeker, Britta biting Basil's leash, singing the "crossing the street" song, which spontaneously emerged one day to the tune of Titannica's "Getting the Shaft Again":

Running across the street!
Running on all four fee-eeeeet
We're running! Running across the STREEEEEEEEEET!!

Some early mornings the park's black trees and indigo sky are out of a Kara Walker installation: this morning there was a full silvery moon and grey pink clouds. I keep hoping the sky will lighten earlier, but I also like the fact that the run is less crowded in the morning because of the cold. I love the dailiness of taking them out even though sometimes it makes me panicky, or they are stubborn [as in Sunday morning's adeventure: Pulling 120 Pounds of Excited Dogs Away From A Rat Carcass While Everyone Is Standing On A Fucking Sheet Of Ice! This year, spring will be the best spring ever, I'll get to watch its unfolding like Muybridge parsed the cantering horse.

Protean

2009-01-08T13:44:00.005-05:00

I haven't gotten the "WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR PROTEEEEEIIIIINNNNNNNN" question for a long time, but am anticipating all the ignorant (well-intentioned and not-so) questions on this subject I'll get should I become pregnant in the near future. "I get my protein from the same place animals do -- Plants!! And not the rendering kind, source of much "protein concentrate" in livestock feed. Click on the link, gentle reader! Plants, people. Like, what elephants eat. The same elephants that go around killing people as revenge for culling, bad-ass strong elephants that will beat the shit out of you!"

Per most dietary guidelines, a pregnant woman needs 71 grams of protein a day. It's 1:30 pm and by my calculations, I'm up to 56 grams. Big bowl of Cheerios (2 cups, 6g total) with 2 cups soy milk (14g) and a massive bowl of lentil soup (2 cups of lentils have 36 grams of protein). A 4 oz serving of tempeh has 18-20 grams. Throw in some peanut butter and I'm way over the daily requirements. This doesn't even count the amount of protein that is in vegetables: Broccoli rabe has 17 grams of protein per bunch. This is both validating and reassuring.

A Shot In The Arm

2009-01-02T12:14:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year! I hope yours was nice, Gentle Reader. Mine was, in part because I got the Carolina range from Agent Provocateur on sale and started the New Year off nicely. I can't decide which is my favoriter new acquisition: this underwear or the immersion blender I got for Christmas. Can I tell you how fucking amazing an immersion blender is? NO MESS! INSTANT marinades and smoothies and things! It's like being a superhero and your power is point your finger and liquefy.

I had a nice time away with my family the week of Christmas, and the dogs loved it in particular, the SMELLS! The SOUNDS!! The RIVER!! I finally played Rock Band and yes, it was fun, but it also made me miss playing with my band. The band seems to be on some kind of hiatus and I am wondering what to do with myself now. I've found myself wishing that instead of learning to knit four years ago I had learned how to play the guitar. Then the house would be full of music instead of yarn.

(Insert expected bit of wondering aloud where this blog will go and if I even want to bother with it anymore, etc etc. Will it be about vegan cooking and small dailinesses? Ranting about politics is so fucking tiresome at this point, and now that Obama is going off the rails with this Warren bullshit and Vilsack nomination I have lost all interest, not that any of it comes as any surprise, but it is disappointing nonetheless. Can you be disappointed if you aren't surprised?) There is writing I want to do but I'm not sure if it is bloggable, or blog-appropriate, or if it would instead involve starting a whole other blog project and is that the best use of my time?

I am very grateful for my job, but know that after this I need to do something new and that has meaning for me. Here are the possible options:

Become a Pilates instructor. Become a schoolteacher. Ultimately get paid to write, using a new blog as a springboard (cue visions of working from home with baby and ultimate book deal blah blah blah). The RockRidge institute is no more, so I can't work for them. And beyond all these options is another, more secret plan. TOP SECRET!

Happy New Year again!

My Latest Invention: Udon with Fiery Tempeh, Red Cabbage, Broccoli and Coconut Peanut Sauce

2008-12-12T16:56:00.003-05:00

This is awesome. Here is how I made it:

Cube tempeh. Prepare marinade: 1/2 cup rice vinegar or wine, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup maple syrup, 4 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup+ of sriracha hot sauce. Maybe a dash of cardamom and black pepper. Cover tempeh and bake in a baking dish covered with foil at 400 for 25 minutes, stir it some, cover and continue to bake for 20 minutes, uncover and let bake for 10 more or until sauce is mostly evaporated but not burned.

While tempeh cooks, prep veggies (shred red cabbage and lightly steam broccoli florets) and udon (cook it, drain, toss with a generous amount of sesame oil to prevent sticking.)

Make the peanut sauce too. Heat a little bot of water over low-medium heat, and add 1 cup of peanut butter, slowly so it will emulsify and get liquidy. Then gradually add about 3/4 can of coconut milk, more or less to taste. Using a whisk is good.

When the tempeh is done, remove from oven. In your big pan or wok sautee 4 cloves of minced the garlic in coconuut or peanut oil (could could add ginger as well, we were just out) for about 1 minute. Add the red cabbage until cooked, color is brighter, but still crisp -ish. Add the udon and tempeh chunks and mix thoroughly. Turn off the heat, and serve with broccoli florets on top and douse with a liberal scoop of peanut sauce.

A Random Dinner: Linguine with Garlic, Walnuts, Butternut Squash and Kale

2008-12-12T16:53:00.003-05:00

This is a dish I invented about a month ago. I had never cooked butternut squash before, and one thing lead to another:

Sautee a ton of garlic and chopped walnuts in olive oil until toasty and softening

Add your roasted chunks of butternut squash

Add chopped kale and let it cook until wilted

Toss with linguine, add more oil if you like, salt and pepper

It is mindblowingly good!

I Forgot That We Don't Have A Rolling Pin

2008-11-10T14:39:00.004-05:00

But this turned out nicely just the same!

Four Years

2008-11-05T10:51:00.005-05:00

What occasioned this blog four years ago was the nausea and rage upon waking to the looming, inconceiveable prospect of a second Bush term. Over the past four years so much has changed for me personally through this blog and my relationships with the blogosphere: I reconnected with Ashbloem, who is now one of my closest friends: I discovered the bankrupt shitshow of Intelligent Design creationism and how that triggered learning about biology and ethology and has changed my worldview and made me vegan, I learned to knit, I've rejected much falseness from my life, I learned so much more about politics and what my politics are and what I believe my responsibilities to others are, I learned to cook, I grieved my mother, I ended up standing on freezing streetcorners stumping for Kucinich. I fell in love again and again with my husband's beautiful mind. In short, four years of engaging in this virtual world has had an amazing effect on my real, embodied life, for which I am very grateful.

And even more grateful that, (even though I am a Kucinich/Nader girl at heart), that I got to wake up, four years later, to THIS man as our President-elect.

A change one can believe in, indeed. Today is a very good day.

I Voted: [By The Way, WHAT Is This Doing In The St. Cecilia's Gym?]

2008-11-04T11:49:00.003-05:00

I went to vote today. I love going to the polls. I want to volunteer here next time -- I think I would be good and organized (and also would like to give what for to the bitchy hipsters who are rude to the polling staff. Trey went an hour after me and said it was unbearable, tons of entitled people being rude to the very polite cop who explained to them that they'd have to remove their OBAMA/BIDEN buttons to enter the polling place, etc.)

I've voted in the St. Cecilia's gymnasium three times now -- but this was the first time I saw this sign.

This is insanely inappropriate, as ExxonMobil is responsible for the Newtown Creek Oil Spill or, as it is known by Wikipedia, the Greenpoint Oil Spill, an underground oil spill at one point up to three times the size of spill from the Exxon Valdez. Reading Greenpoint Vs. Exxon you wonder just where ExxonMobil gets off trying to do "community outreach" while they dodge litigation like PG&E in Erin Brockovich.

Vegan MoFo: The Easiest Soup In The World

2008-10-30T15:00:00.007-04:00

Get ready for the Easiest Soup In The World.

My husband did 2 days of dishes today and I didn't want to leave him with a mess. Plus I had stuff to do besides cook, so I decided to make one-pot Easiest Soup In The World. I make versions of this all the time. All you need is onion, garlic, a starch, a can of any kind of beans or chickpeas, and a green. Even parsely will do. Or not. If you don't have any greens, don't worry. That's how easy it is. Tonight I felt like using black eyed peas.

Roughly chop the onion and sautee in 2 tbsp (or less!) of olive oil. This soup is also super low in fat and high in fiber. YAY!

Add one cubed potato and as many whole garlic cloves as you like. Here I have a handful, maybe nine? I love garlic. Add the potato, garlic and 2 cups of vegetable broth. (again, this homemade broth is awesome. Will make again this weekend!) I sprinkled some fresh thyme in my prep bowl, just to be fancy. Cover and bring to a boil.

We had some carrot I had cut up when I thought I might stir-fry last night, so I threw that in too. Cook until the potato cubes and garlic cloves start to soften. Throw in the can of drained beans.

When the beans have heated through, chop your greens and add them to the pot until just wilted and bright green. Season and serve!!!

Vegan MoFo: Brought To You By House of Herbs

2008-10-29T11:17:00.006-04:00

MAN I am tired today. Yesterday was a long day in shitty, chilly weather. I wanted to make something quick and easy. Luckily, we had HOUSE OF HERBS cooking wine on hand! It's like the Hamburger Helper of cooking wines!

First, I marinated some tempeh to bake in the oven at 400. I wasn't sure if these guys would end up in a stir-fry or what, but there was gonna be some tempeh involved. I used equal parts soy sauce, the homemade veggie broth from last week still going strong, and HOUSE OF HERBS cooking wine. (Can I say that you can totally taste the difference with the homemade broth?)

I knew we had broccoli from the market -- maybe a stir-fry? With spelt soba? Oops! Half the spelt soba is gone. Fuck. Oooh -- we have Israeli Couscous... make that would be good? Tossed with broccoli and tempeh? Okay, let's cook that up. I sauteed some garlic in olive oil, toasted 1 cup of couscous, and then cooked with 1.5 cups water for 10 minutes.

When the couscous was done I realized I didn't feel like dealing with a stirfry. We had mustard greens and chard: maybe mixing the two would be a nice blend of flavors, the sweet chard and the spicy greens? Sure. Let's do that.

Add some sesame oil too! MMMM!

Thank you HOUSE OF HERBS!

Then I watched HOUSE!!

Vegan MoFo: The Great Divide

2008-10-28T09:40:00.003-04:00

People who know my husband and I often describe us as being the same person save our genders. We agree on almost everything and when we do have an argument it's usually because one of us didn't understand that the other one was saying the same thing. Sure, we also have dumb couple fights like every other couple in the universe, bouts of relationship bad weather -- that's normal! But overall, I count my blessings every day that I found my soul mate and we get to share a life and family together.

We are friends with a couple who are radically different from us in that they seem like total opposites and yet their relationship is happy and working. He's a liberal Democrat from a WASP-y New England background: She's a hardcore Ayn Rand-ing Republican Jew from Long Island. He's Red Sox and she's Yankees. He's a very mild mannered person and she is a hotheaded kickboxer, actually and figuratively. Privately I've wondered how it works -- not in a judgmental way but in a truly mystified way -- but he's happier than I've ever seen him and they have adorable children. I get the temperament thing, but the Republican thing?

And thinking about this made me remember the one massive difference between Trey and I, an issue almost as polarizing as the clash between liberal and Republican:

Trey loathes mayonnaise and thus, Vegenaise.

I will eat it with a spoon. I adore Vegenaise. We have had at one time 4 jars of Vegenaise in the fridge.

So when I make chickpea salad, I will sometimes split the mashed chickpeas between two containers, and dress one with oil and mustard and vinegar and curry powder and cumin, and that is for Trey. And the OTHER one gets 3 tablespoons of Vegenaise and mustard and pickles and celery and parsely and eaten right out of the bowl.

I have learned to simply accept the fact that Vegenaise tastes like slimy hell to my beloved, and to respect it. Also this means I get to eat all of it. If this is the only gulf between us, I am lucky indeed.

Vegan MoFo: A Very Bad Idea or Bouquet Garni Gone Terribly Awry

2008-10-27T09:55:00.005-04:00

I was feeling pretty crappy and dazed this weekend with some killer PMS and generally panicky. I had planned to get a lot more cooking done on Saturday than I did. But Sunday after 12 hours of sleep and good times at the dog parade in McGolrick, I felt up to making seitan. In particular, I'd been wanting to try Joanna's Chicken Style Seitan Cutlets to have for the week, for a piccata since they seemed perfect for that purpose.

I put the cold water on the stove. I assembled a delicious bouquet garni of a big handful of Penzey's Parisien Bonne Herbes, several bay leaves, some rosemary stalks, some thyme stalks, aroudn ten peppercorns and some sage leaves. I didn't have a tea bag or any cheesecloth, so I just cut the foot off of a lair of laundered tights that had a big run in the leg. I popped the boquet garni into the cold water.

Then I mixed the wet and dry ingredients and kneaded the dough, which smelled delicious. Already I had high hopes for this recipe! Joanna's technique of flattening the cutlets between sheets of parchment paper is pure genius. As I slipped each lovely cutlet into the pot I imagined how delicious they would be, breaded and fried and covered with lemon and wine and fines herbes and capers. I began imagining cutlet-y dishes with which to impress my mother-in-law, who is not so privately horrified at our veganism. This was the first step towards new culinary triumphs chez moi!

I brought the cutlets to a low boil, and then to a simmer. I set the timer for an hour.

I checked on them. They had not risen to the top. And the broth -- The broth ... I had made a BIG MISTAKE.

If you are going to use the foot of a stocking for your bouquet garni -- DON'T USE BLACK STOCKINGS FROM H&M!!

I am off to buy cheesecloth, and we will try this again later in the week.

Vegan MoFo: Greens! Greens! Greens!!

2008-10-27T09:51:00.002-04:00

Look at my haul! I had been thinking that October is one of my favorite months, and this clinches it. Our CSA haul Saturday was FULL of greens: we got a chard, a massive kale, and the biggest bunch of broccoli rabe I have ever seen! See the greens poking out of the Trader Joe's bag on the left? That is the broccoli rabe, and the stems are touching the bottom of the bag. Mmmmmmm!!!

Vegan MoFo: Candle 79

2008-10-24T08:51:00.002-04:00

Wednesday was Trey's and my third anniversary. We each played hooky from work and for dinner went to Candle 79, which is one of the best restaurants I've ever been to. We had a bottle of a biodynamic Gewurtzraminer (eugene Meyer, 2006), the seitan chimichurri skewers, the cornmeal-crusted eggplant-tofu napoleon (un!fucking!believeable!) a cashew-crusted pan-fried seitan cutlet over greens and coconut rice, and the grilled pomegranate tempeh with sautéed haricots verts & almonds, sweet potato-squash purée,
chocolate molé sauce, fennel-apple salad. AMAZING. And we had ice cream! I never eat dessert! It was really stellar. I didn't take any pictures, because I wanted to be gazing moonily at my husband while talking about food.

Vegan MoFo: Homemade Vegetable Broth

2008-10-21T11:01:00.006-04:00

I had been saving vegetable scraps in the freezer in order to make broth and then LoLo posted her Vegetable Broth recipe on Friday, so I knew that would be a weekend project. I had in the freezer some leftover onion ends and skins, stems from chard, collards, and broccoli rabe, and some green pepper detritus: wilting in the fridge I had some carrot greens, 2 bunches of parsley, and a whole bok choi. I added more roughly chopped onions and their skins, a couple of potatoes, some more wilting peppers, leek tops, a whole celery root going soft, and a pear. Plus a handful of garlic cloves, bay leaves and peppercorns.

After I came back form the farmer's market I added new carrot tops, some celery leaves, some old thyme and basil that were drying out, stems and all. Overall this was simmering away on the stove for about 6 hours, or while I did all the other puttering about I needed to do.

I forgot to get cheesecloth and didn't feel like cutting up shirts again, so I strained the broth in batches in the french press. I had about a gallon!

I decided to use it as a base for the VCon French Lentil Soup With Tarragon (notice I did the prep nicely!)

Homemade broth made a serious difference!

Vegan MoFo: Trip to Penzey's Spices/ Mmmm, Zatar

2008-10-21T10:47:00.003-04:00

on my way home from work Friday I stopped by the Penzey's Spice stall at the Grand Central Market. I bought chipotle chili powder, a big bag of tarragon, cumin and coriander seeds, sumac, savory, and zatar. Also a "French" spice mix with culinary lavender whose exact name I cannot recall. I was very tempted by the Indian spice mixes but I could probably do better on Atlantic Avenue and should take advantage of that while we are still living here.

I first tasted zatar pie at Najeeb's, which is now Odara, and is still probably very good. The Penzey's version incorporates sumac which is not the norm, per the Wikipedia on Za'atar (which would make kind of a great boy's name, although it'd like naming your girl "Mrs. Dash") At any rate, I like the citrusy bite of the sumac added in.

I made Trey a little snack of roasted garlic and oil smeared on a halved baguette and then paved with zatar. Really, really delicious.

Also: Can I say, Harissa is addictive? It is the chili garlic paste in the picture next to the Zatar container. It's got such a different smoky depth in comparison to the lighter, zingier sriracha. So so yummy.

Vegan MoFo: The Fridge, Saturday Afternoon

2008-10-19T08:32:00.002-04:00

Here's a cameraphone shot of the fridge with this week's produce. I think I may make cassoulet tonight because it is getting CHILLY and I have leeks and carrots and organic potatoes. The best thing about organic potatoes is being able to leave the skins on when you cook them, for extra vitamins and also because peeling potatoes sucks if you are lazy like me.

The Garden of Eve farmstand had ORGANIC broccoli rabe and I got two bunches! We had one last night with some French lentil soup (pics etc will be up tomorrow) and it is surprisingly different from my regular Rosemary Farm brocoli rabe, more tender and green and sweet. Still super-delicious.

Vegan Mofo: Not Just For Humans

2008-10-19T08:08:00.003-04:00

We switched Sir Specialness to Natural Balance's Vegan Formula around a month ago. At first he wasn't that into it (he loves junk food, like the time we ran out of food and I had to snag a bag of Purina at the Korean deli at 7am -- he could have eaten the whole bag in one go!) and I would put flax oil and nutritional yeast on it. Now he loves it! Other vegan foods he likes are chickpeas, peanut butter, and most of all, BREAD. If I break off a piece of bread for him he does a little wiggly seated dance and when I surrender the bread he gingerly takes it in his mouth and pads off to his bed to enjoy it.

Vegan Mofo: Quick Debate-Watching Comfort Food

2008-10-16T13:17:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was a pretty stressful day for me, 10 hours at the office amid some intense speculation regarding the future of the company I work for, followed by a decent time at the dog run until I had to immediately remove Sir Specialness because some imbecile too lazy to throw a ball with their actual hands brought a laser pointer to the run. Laser pointers can trigger really bad, medication-requiring OCD in dogs, and furthermore, you aren't just putting your dog at risk in the run, because every dog sees it and reacts. Sir S. is already really shadow and light sensitive and I am going to have to figure out how to confront this situation in a graceful yet uncompromising way.

So when I got home at 8 I was tense and spent and wanted fast comfort food, so I came up with this fast pasta. While the spaghetti boiled, I sauteed 5 diced cloves of garlic in a generous amount of olive oil in my big skillet, and then added 2 Tofurky beer brats that I sliced into tiny half-moons and stirred them until they browned. Then I added one bunch of shredded collards and a tablespoon of red pepper flakes and a splash of red wine vinegar. It was comforting and yet had garlic and greens and even Joe Fucking Plumber would have asked for seconds.

Vegan MoFo: A Survey

2008-10-15T17:52:00.002-04:00

I was an idiot and did not document last night's delicious Tofu Piccata. :-( So here is a survey in honor of Vegan MoFo that I found on Vegans Are Friends Not Food!

1. Name a song that involves food in some way.
- France Gall, Les sucettes
2. What criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?
- The pictures, and if when I flip through it there are at least 10 things I want to make and eat right away.
3. What did you eat today?
- A banana, a peanut butter granola bar, sesame noodles with broccoli, tempeh with broccoli rabe and rotelli (leftovers)
4. Name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.
- Soy curls
5. The Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. What will the title of the show be?
- okay, I am STUMPED! And snappy titles are usually my forte! Can anyone help me out here?????
6. Favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?
- Sriracha and harissa
7. How old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?
- 34.
8. Favorite vegan cheeze?
- Whatever S’Nice uses on their vegan cheezesteak.
9. Cutest baby animal?
- BABY OTTERS and ANTEATERS and SLOTHS
10. Favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?
- Blackberry
11. Do you take any vitamins/supplements?
- Yes I take New Chapter Organic Perfect Prenatals and Dr. Fuhrman’s Osteo-sun.
12. What food/dish most embodies the Fall season?
- CASSOULET
13. What food would you have a hard time living without?
- Tempeh, kale
14. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?
- Coffee
15. It's 10PM and you're starving. What do you eat?
- Chickpeas out of the can, beer
16. If you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?
- Sir Specialness, our dog, loves BREAD! He freaks out about bread, it is crazy!
17. Worst injury you've gotten in the kitchen?
- Draining pasta, I accidentally poured boiling water on my thigh. 2nd degree hell.
18. When you have a food-related question, who do you call?
- Google
19. Summer is ending- What food will you miss most?
- heirloom tomatoes
20. What snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?
- Green and Black’s 70% Dark chocolate
21. Favorite soup to make on a rainy day?
- Potato-garlic-greens
22. What's your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?
- Carrot Ginger Beet
23. Favorite brand of root beer?
- N/A
24. What is one dish that you have never but would like to veganize?
- A vegan white pizza.

Vegan MoFo: Broccoli Rabe

2008-10-14T12:34:00.002-04:00

I adore broccoli rabe. It is one of my favorite things in the world. It's also pure nutritional goodness, full of calcium and iron and vitamins A, C, and K. But did you know also that broccoli rabe is packed with PROTEIN? Yes. One bunch of broccoli rabe, cooked, has 17 GRAMS of protein. A PREGNANT WOMAN requires 60 grams of protein a day. One bunch of cooked broccoli rabe has as much protein as a hard-boiled egg. Amazing! I think I want to try a version of the infamous Julie Hasson seitan sausages with broccoli rabe this week. I will keep you posted!

Not Vegan MoFo But Awesome Just The Same

2008-10-13T10:27:00.002-04:00

Vegan MoFo: A New Creation -- Coconut Israeli Couscous With Cashews and Garam Masala

2008-10-13T09:27:00.010-04:00

(Every time I see this brand of coconut milk I sing that French Kicks' song, Roland. Ro-Ro-land, blah blah blah BLAH, la laaaa la LAAAA, la LA! LA! LA! LA!)

Sunday we went to Fairway in Red Hook. I love Red Hook and imagine living there, it feels like you are in a little seaside town to me. Trey always says we could never live there because you can't get anywhere else from there, but that's what I like about it. Besides, what more do you need than Fairway and a view of the water?

Every time we go to Fairway we spend a ton of money, but since much of it is on bulk food items it ends up being a massive savings. Case in point: I cook at home almost every night. If I'm not cooking at home, Trey is eating leftovers and I bring leftovers to lunch at least 70% of the time. We make coffee at home, that's a savings of up to 8 dollars a day. When I first started "sleeping over" Trey would get two lattes from Lola's (now Magda's) a day. In the pre-gan days of yore it was not uncommon for us to go to Fada and blow close to 100 on dinner. Etc. Now we eat better at home and BQE Liquors is right around the corner, so I can get a whole bottle of bordeaux blanc for the price of a glass + tip. I digress though, I just love Fairway. They have organic French Lentils. Stay tuned.

They also had Israeli couscous in the bulk food aisle and I had been having it on the brain: I hadn't had it since (I think?) Ashbloem's wedding, and had been thinking it would be a nice thing to experiment with. I was craving the spicy tempeh I make fairly often, inspired by the VCon spicy grilled tempeh but I always tweak the sauce recipe and I bake it in the marinade for about 50 minutes so that the tempeh gets really saturated with the flavor and sort of falls apart in a delicious BBQ-y way. I thought that the israeli couscous could be a nice compliment to the tempeh ... but how to make it? I checked on the Israeli Couscous with Pistachios and Apricots in VCon: but I didn't have half of those things in the house -- and the only pistachios were the spicy ones Trey got for himself and I didn't want to mess with that. Plus those flavors seemed like they'd be upstaged by the tempeh. I needed something simpler.

Starting with coconut oil! I love coconut oil, even if I can't get the jar open half the time. I find it's a really good base oil when the flavor of olive oil or peanut oil might interfere with what you are going for.

I sauteed 5 cloves of minced garlic and a small diced white onion for about 2 minutes, then added 2 cups of the israeli couscous to toast it, stirring for about 5 minutes. (I'm using the VCon recipe as a guide here for liquid-to-couscous ratio and approximate cooking times.)

Then I added 1 can of Ro-Ro-Land coconut milk + enough water to equal 2 1/2 cups of liquid, added that to the pan, and then, because it smelled right, several generous shakes of garam masala (probably 1 tablespoon, a little more maybe) 1 teaspoon salt and some black pepper. I let this boil and then covered it, reduced the heat to low until everything was absorbed. I had some diced green pepper ready to go but thought better of it and was glad I did. I let this cook on low for about 10 minutes and then stirred in some crushed cashews, and gave it another 5 minutes until it seemed the couscous had absorbed all it could.

Meanwhile, the spicy tempeh was done, as you can see, and I prepared a bunch of swiss chard and a handful of the braising greens from the CSA share in a wok: heating the wok, splashing in some coconut oil, adding some chopped garlic and ginger when the oil was HOT, and then tossing the chopped greens with some soy sauce and a splash of rice vinegar. This takes like 5 minutes, tops.

And here you go!! My beautiful plating!

I have to say this is one of the yummiest dinners I have ever made. The combination of the coconut milk with the garlic, salt, and garam masala made this almost like tapioca pudding but not too sweet: a really nice silky and comforting side for the spicy tempeh. Next time I will make the tempeh even spicier! I was glad I listened to my nose as I went along and didn't add anything too "green" to the coconut couscous.

Coconut Israeli Couscous with Garam Masala and Cashews

2 cups israeli couscous

1 can coconut milk + enough water to make 2.5 cups

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 small yellow onion, diced

1/2 cup cashews, chopped

1 tablespoon garam masala

1 tsp salt

black pepper

2 tbsp coconut oil

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and onions until they begin to soften, about 1-2 minutes. Add the couscous and stir constantly so it begins to toast, about 5 minutes.

Add the liquid (coconut milk and water), salt, garam masala and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on lowest heat for 10 minutes or until most of liquid is absorbed. Add cashews and stir a bunch of times: cover again for another 5 minutes or until it seems like the couscous can't really absorb any more liquid -- use your judgment here. Serve with

Spicy Baked Tempeh

1 package of tempeh

3/4 cup white wine

1/4 cup srirachi hot sauce (or any ol' hot sauce)

3 tbsp maple syrup

4 cloves garlic, crushed or minced

1 thumb-sized lump of ginger, minced

1 tsp cayenne powder

dashes of cumin and coriander

1 tsp molasses

2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

Preheat oven to 400. Slice the tempeh into 1/2-1/4 inch "fingers". Combine all marinade ingredients in a measuring cup. Place tempeh in a 9 x 14 baking dish and pour marinade over pieces, turning to coat. Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes: then turn pieces over, re-cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes: then remove foil and bake uncovered for 10 more. Serve with couscous above and yummy greens.

Vegan MoFo: Garam Masala

2008-10-10T12:16:00.003-04:00

I wish your screen could be scratch-and-sniff. This is a close up of garlic and garam masala sauteeing for the Dill Basmati Rice with Chard and Chickpeas from VCon: I know I've posted lots of recipes from that book and will be branching out in the coming days, but it's just such a great book that it's the one I would take to the desert island. Veganomicon and the His Dark Materials trilogy, that's all you need.

This was the first time I opened the bottlejar of garam masala we bought at Fairway. The smell of it in the pan is totally intoxicating, like, Annick Goutal intoxicating, almost floral, in fact almost the glycerine floral of a Gewurtzraminer! It's been a source of wonder to me how much cooking is about smell as much as taste. Obviously everyone knows this intellectually, but when I'm experiencing it first hand it thrills me as much as playing music, the way the coriander and the cumin and the cardamom make a sort of chord, which is obviously (duh!) why perfumers talk about "notes." The garam masala's perfume gave me an amazing inspiration for something to try that could be genius or could be a train wreck but I'm going to try it Sunday and post it Monday.

I wanted to use coconut oil for this but I couldn't get the jar open and was feeling lazy so I used canola. I love love coconut oil for how it lets flavors shine through when you cook with ginger or cook greens. I need to try harder to open the jar this weekend.

Vegan MoFo: Chard Porn

2008-10-08T17:17:00.003-04:00

Swiss Chard makes me so happy. I never thought I'd get as excited about buying greens as I do about buying expensive underwears, but it comes pretty close.

Chard tip: If you don't get around cooking your chard when it is super fresh, chop it fine and throw it into soup, it is still delicious.

I am obsessed with looking up food on NutritionData.com. Look how amazing chard is!

Vegan MoFo: Nothin' Says Lovin' Like A Tofu 'McMuffin'

2008-10-08T11:21:00.004-04:00

I don't miss or think about cheese ever, but for a while I missed eggs, or I thought I did. Then I figured out that what I was craving was something fried between two pieces of something toasted, and lo, the perfect breakfasty sandwich! I had a batch of baked tofu in the fridge, so I pan fried two slices in a little olive oil while my english muffin toasted in the oven. I then put Vegenaise on each toasted muffin-half, a little ketchup and sririacha or rooster sauce (which is not made from roosters! it's vegan!) and a slice of tomato. Holy hell, it is soooo good!

Vegan MoFo: Collards and Quinoa -- The Starsky And Hutch of Good-For-You Goodness

2008-10-07T10:42:00.007-04:00

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! I like cutting the collards into 1/2" ribbons, sort of like a fat chiffonade, and then cutting the ribbons in half again before sautee-ing them. I think that works well with the stiffer and thicker texture of the leaves. Also the very edges of the pieces get ever-so-slightly caramelized.

I think "quinoa" is Inca for "Rice of The Lazy." I love it because you can buy it in bulk, it's a complete protein, it takes 18 minutes to prepare. Blam!! And it really soaks up flavor so nicely. The only thing lazier is couscous. This is a picture of our lunch from Sunday: the stew from the night before ladled over quinoa and with the collards on the side. My only regret is that I didn't grab two bunches of collards as the bunches availaible were on the small side.

Vegan MoFo: Spicy Peanut, Eggplant and Shallot Stew

2008-10-07T10:13:00.002-04:00

When I was in my final semester of college, a gang of my friends started coming up with a series of fairly elaborate pranks -- one of which involved attaching someone's strap-on dildo to the sculpture in the Quad -- and decided to name ourselves after colors, like in Reservoir Dogs, except that, since it was Wellesley, we'd all be shades out of the J. Crew catalog. I was "Aubergine" and that is fitting as I have come to love eggplant like nobody's business.

This recipe from Veganomicon is soo delicious and warm and spicy, and the perfect thing to make it starts to get cold at night. (It also used the green beans, eggplant and potatoes from my farm pickup this morning!) Whoever figured out that salting eggplant made it delicious deserves some kind of culinary Nobel.

Vegan Mofo: Farmer's Market Haul

2008-10-07T09:56:00.002-04:00

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm a Cancer. I used to scoff at the whole Linda Goodman "Cancers Love Food" characterization:

Cancer never feels really secure, and no matter how much love he gets, he always needs more. His emotions never let him become sure enough to relax completely. He's always piling up tangibles against some imaginary future disaster. Some Cancerians actually keep big cardboard cartons of food of all kinds under their beds. It keeps away those nightmares. You may think that's stretching the truth, but when was the last time you looked under a Cancer's bed? If you don't find the canned foods there, look on the closet shelves. You may find two dozen cans of paprika and twenty-eight boxes of fortified bread crumbs he bought on sale in 1943. What's he saving it for? Don't ask ridiculous questions. There might be a famine someday. He's prepared. (Noah must have been born in July. The flood didn't catch him with his rudders down, either.) Why doesn't he use all that paprika and all those bread crumbs? The answer to that one raises another question. Why doesn't he use those fourteen pairs of new pajamas and the seven dozen cashmere scarves he's been given over the years as gifts? They're still in the original tissue paper. Who knows? Maybe he's planning to wrap them around the animals to keep them warm when the next flood comes. Could be. He thinks that far ahead, and he remembers yesterday's catastrophes vividly, even if he wasn't there.

Ha ha ha!! Linda Goodman, you are right on the money! It is so so hard for me to control myself at the farmer's market because everything there COULD BE MADE INTO SOMETHING DELICIOUS! This is a typical Saturday haul, mostly CSA share items. Here is a list of what is in the picture, and I'll try to blog what happens to each in the coming week.

Collard Greens
Shallots
Swiss Chard
Honey Crisp Apple
Bosc Pears
Carrots
Wax and Green Beans
Potatoes
Leeks
Arugula
Bok Choy
Green Peppers
Beets
Red Onions
Escarole
Dill
Rosemary

Vegan MoFo: Peppers, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Use The Food Processor

2008-10-03T13:04:00.003-04:00

Look at these gorgeous peppers! They are all from Garden Of Eve Farm, the farm where our CSA produce is grown. The paler green one and the red one came in the share, and the poblano (dark green unsliced one) I bought at the stand. I cannot begin to describe the difference between farm-fresh peppers and the other kind, but it is the same gulf that separates fresh tomatoes from stringy flavorless store tomatoes. And the smell!

You can see the bite I took out of the poblano before cutting it. I am not sure why I did that, especially given that the last time I used poblano peppers from this farm I cut them without wearing gloves and not only were they so hot that I started coughing as I de-seeded them, but my hands began to burn for ELEVEN HOURS. ELEVEN HOURS, people! I now wear surgical gloves when I deal with peppers, I bought a giant box of them. Because the only thing worse than having your hands burn all day is taking out your contact lenses after you are SO SURE you washed all the pepper juice away. (And the only thing worse than that is when you change your tampon. Your OB tampon. Gloves. Are. Your. Friends. )

In the periphery of this photo you can see my two favorite kitchen items: the handle of our happy orange Le Creuset saute pan, and the food processor. When I first moved in with Trey, I had a phobia of the food processor. It seemed so complicated and I had been warned about how sharp the blade was, and I think I had a vague idea that you had to press something down into it, like a juicer. When I first started cooking a lot, I made many things out of Vegan With a Vengeance and I remember making the marinade for the (excellent!!) Jerk Seitan in the blender. I can't remember the first time I summoned the courage to use the processor, but once I did I was hooked. I am thinking it is likely that I made pesto. For a while the running joke was that I dirtied the food processor every night for Trey to clean up. But it is addictive! So many worlds open to you! Creamy soups! Chimichurri! Tapenade! Hummus! PESTO!

Mmmm, vegan pesto! This is another example of a flavor trick I learned: The salty funky note dairy cheese provides in sauces, such as the parmesan in dairy-full pesto (How about dairylict! Neologism Alert!!) or in a traditional Alfredo can easily be provided by onion powder and nutmeg. I kid you not. I first learned of this trying Lachesis' vegan Alfredo recipe from the PPK fora, and started applying it when I made pestos. Now the idea of cheese in pesto seems insane to me. Nutritional yeast and a bit of onion powder provide all the umami you need.

And this leads me to what is to many non-vegans the Unbelieveable Truth: I don't miss cheese. I don't miss cheese at all. Even though I used to go to Murray's and bring home tubs of gorgonzola cremificato and butterscotchy gouda, my palate has really changed to the point where when I open the office refridgerator and the milk has gone off it smells like cheese to me. I don't even like Teese! I'd rather have vegan sour cream on my nachos or a cashew-tofu ricotta for that fatty creamy goodness. Or avocado. On a toasted everything bagel. Right now.

Arugula Pesto

1 bunch arugula, washed and patted dry
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup walnuts or more to taste
Salt
1/2 cup best olive oil you have in the house
1 big handful of fresh basil leaves
1 tsp onion powder
Dash nutmeg
1/3 cup nutritional yeast (or more to taste)

Put all the ingredients in the food processor. Press the magic button. Scrape down the sides with a spatula and press again. Taste. Adjust anything accordingly.

My Worst Vice

2008-10-03T12:42:00.003-04:00

We are addicted to garlic in our house. We eat a lot of it, which is probably why we don't get sick much. In fact it is rare that I cook without garlic somewhere in every meal. But I have a very bad habit, and that is that I buy the pre-peeled garlic from the Rosemary Farm produce stand on Graham. I know. It is bad. And I keep meaning to bring the containers back there to have them refilled but then I forget. I know. Very bad! Just because I am vegan and that means I already use less water than those beef-eating peoples, so much less that I guess I could run the shower for a YEAR and still use less water, does not give me a license to buy that pre-peeled garlic from Rosemary Farm. Even though I did order a gallon of rice vinegar from them so I would use less bottles.

Man, this picture is making me hungry. Do you know what would be so delicious right now? A pizza! A vegan pizza with cashew alfredo sauce, caramelized onions and leeks, spicy tempeh sausage crumbles from VwaV and maybe, just maybe some Swiss chard shreds on top!

Vegan MoFo Salsa Porn

2008-10-02T16:21:00.003-04:00

YEAH BABY. A co-worker generously brought me a bag of frozen roasted green chiles from Hatch, New Mexico last month and I made salsa with them. You can see the black roasted bits from the chiles: the bright green apple-ish bits are fresh tomatillos from the Garden of Eve farmstand, and the red bits are organic heirloom tomatoes and Thai hot peppers from my plants out back. Oh, and a ton of minced garlic and lime juice.

I had never made anything with tomatillos before and they blew me away with their crisp fresh taste, almost as if an asian pear and a granny smith had a litter of fat little babies.

It's Vegan Month Of Food!

2008-10-02T10:31:00.002-04:00

The Vegan Overlords have declared October to be VEGAN MONTH OF FOOD in the blogosphere, and I cannot deny their sway. I will be blogging about vegan food as much as I can this month, and hopefully learning how to post multiple pictures in one blog entry.

I took pictures last night while I was cooking and left the camera in the kitchen, alas!

For most of the past year -- year and a half? I have taken over as primary cook in our house. As Trey has famously said, when we married I "couldn't boil water" and now I have grown into [in my humble opinion] a pretty decent cook. I am very grateful to Trey for his infinite patience through my obsessive phases, because once I get an idea for a recipe or get a craving for a certain dish, we have it many times in a row until I move on to something else. So we had the Vegan Scalloped Potatoes phase and the Pot Pies! phase and the Beer - Battered Seitan phase and Red Cabbage Korean Slaw Fest and the Lolo's Mac - And - Cheeze phase and the Spicy Baked BBQ Tempeh phase and lately it's been the Variations on Piccata Inspired by The Seitan Piccata Recipe In Veganomicon phase because you just cannot, CANNOT go wrong with pan-fried things in a sauce of lemon, capers, herbs and white wine.

The great joy I have discovered in cooking and in cooking vegan is how creative it is and how much like making music. In the same way you hear a chord progression and suddenly "see" where a melody belongs, I'll see poblanos at the farm stand and be able to smell what to do with them in the coming week. Two years ago, this attitude towards food was utterly foreign to me. Now cooking falls in with music, perfumery and wine tasting as Ultimate Synaesthetic Funtimes.

And speaking of synaesthetic funtimes, (which maybe should be the new title of this blog, come to think of it) is discovering the secret ingredients that make something delicious and become the fulcrum for their veganization. Like how chickpea salad is a million times better than tuna salad, because the flaky mashed chickpeas make a better backdrop for a dressing of Veganaise, coarse mustard, diced celery and cornichons. You lose the metallic fish tang in favor of a more velvety creaminess even more comfort-foodish than the tuna salad (or chicken salad) of yore. [I love chickpeas! Love them! I will eat them out of the can with a fork. They are the perfect legume! If the world blows up I will be in my cave eating the bejeezus out of canned chickpeas. There will be more on this blog about chickpeas in the coming days, much, much more. With pictures, I promise you!! NOM NOM NOM! ]

Another secret is celery, celeriac and celery seed. The thing that makes chicken soup taste chicken-y is actually celery seed. Go to your spice rack, open the celery seed, and smell it. See? I told you! So you don't need a dead chicken in every pot, you can make CHICKPEA noodle soup that will kick the ass of every soup you have ever had in your life. Saute in the soup pot a handful of celeriac dice, a diced yellow onion (tennis-ball size,) 5 cloves of garlic and a medium sized carrot, also DICED. Sprinkle the sautee-ing dice with salt and a dash of celery seed and cover to sweat a bit. Add 3 cups of veggie broth (or water and chuck a bullion cube in there) and let come to a boil. Toss in a can of drained chickpeas and let cook for 3 minutes: then add whatever noodles you like best (linguine, alphabets, soba, whatevers) and keep stirring. When the noodles are almost done, toss in some chopped parsley and celery leaves and even some chard if you have it and MMMMMMMMMS!

Best of all, there's no arsenic!

For My Husband, Who Is Brave And Good

2008-09-22T16:43:00.005-04:00

For David Foster Wallace

2008-09-15T09:19:00.003-04:00

The Victor Dog by James Merrill

Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.

From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,

Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear? I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel's
"Les jets d'eau du palais de ceux qui s'aiment."

He ponders the Schumann Concerto's tall willow hit
By lightning, and stays put.When he surmises
Through one of Bach's eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,

Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn't sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from

Whirling of outer space, too black, too near
--But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.

Still others fought in the road's filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forebearance.
Can nature change in him? Nothing's impossible.

The last chord fades.The night is cold and fine.
His master's voice rasps through the grooves' bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave's
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone

Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel
Opera long thought lost--Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle

Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars . . . . Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished? Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life.
___________________________________________

I will miss you very, very much.

A Cold Hand Seizing My Heart

2008-09-04T09:07:00.002-04:00

This is the tempeh marinara I made a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling small and blue about something. Now I can't remember what I was sad about, but I remember that the marinara was fucking awesome. The green peppers are from the CSA and they

were delicious, sweet and clean and flavorful and, well, like ACTUAL peppers, which I never had tasted before. I thought I didn't like green peppers very much.

The secret of this marinara is that you simmer the tempeh in a mixture of wine and soy sauce while you prepare the rest of the sauce in the big skillet. Sautee garlic, red pepper flakes and red onion in olive oil, add a tablespoon of tomato paste and two crushed massive heirloom tomatoes, add the diced green pepper, let everything reduce and combine, throw in some fresh parsley and oregano, and when that is all delicious throw in the tenderized tempeh and its broth.

I feel like I may need to make this marinara again soon, as this election is now making me sick to my fucking stomach. It was the sick and scared and horrified feeling of walking to the subway and seeing the headlines proclaiming that my country was fucking stupid enough to CHOOSE a second Bush term that occasioned this blog. Everything has gotten so much worse since then, and I honestly think it is possible that we may have a McCain/ Palin presidency. People. Are. That. Fucking. Stupid.

I didn't drink the Obama Kool-aid: before, I'd be happy if he won, but was pretty sure that I would vote for McKinney or Nader, as I disagree with about half of Obama's policies and I'm sick of centrist crap, and sick of voting for people who take my vote for granted. Obama is not a progressive candidate. His pandering to AIPAC is retarded. His stance on FISA is embarrassing. I call bullshit on a black man denying marriage to gay people. We have no fucking business being in Iraq or Afghanistan. His health care plan is unimpressive.

But Sarah Palin? She's soooo perfect for America. So perfect. She's the fucking embodiment of this nation, a perfect storm of hypocritical entitlement and self-righteousness. Just as the U.S.A. is the only nation to massacre civilians with nuclear bombs and yet predicates its foreign policy on murdering more people to PREVENT those nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, Sarah Palin is the kind of woman who claims for herself the rewards of feminism and yet seeks to deny all other women the right to their own bodies. Everyone else gets to be a second-class citizen, a rape-able Handmaid. She's like one of the Aunts at the Rachel and Leah center, walking around with her cattle prod. Can't afford to raise a baby, teen mom? "Let 'em eat moose!"

We watched Black Book this weekend (it's stellar) and this triggered my new wave of fear and nausea. We already are living in a police state, in St. Paul people are getting dragged out of their cars at gunpoint and searched for no reason at all [Laurie Arbeiter is a friend of a friend of mine -- third person in the article] while people stare and do nothing on their suburban porches. Cops shot a dog in my neighborhood for no reason, a pitbull named Brownie who barked and wagged his tail at one of them. Seven shots. I walk our Sir Specialness every morning and am sickened that anything bad could ever happen to him, could ever happen to Trey, to anyone, we are all the same. This is what sickens and angers me about this Republican gnostic dominionist misogynist crapfest, is that their rhetoric is predicated on completely denying that sameness and in denying REALITY. That's why these people are global warming denialists and forced-birthers and intelligent-design advocates. Wrong place at the wrong time? Fuck you. Lost your job? Fuck you! You're not white? Fuck you! You're a pig? Fuck you, you're delicious! You got raped? Fuck you, you liked it, you whore! You live in Bangladesh and you are drowning because of my Hummer? Well fuck you, and I don't even know where that is!!

So now I'm considering seriously for Obama, which will at least make my sister very happy, and I love her so it's worth it. I'll be happy to listen to a President who at least can speak in complete sentences, after all these years. But otherwise it's making me incredibly, incredibly sad. How happy can one be about a decision made at gunpoint?

I'm In Love!

2008-08-18T12:56:00.003-04:00

From the Sunday Times:

Recent posts on Style Rookie include a photo shoot of vintage clothes and masks that has a hazy, suburban-wasteland quality; a selection of thrift-store buys; a chart dissecting last season’s Blumarine collection pointing out references to Christopher Kane and Comme des Garçons; and catchy headlines like ‘‘I Take on Resort 2009.’’ It’s a well-rounded selection for a fashion-related blog: thoughtful critique, cool outfits, funny pop-culture musings. Not bad for a 12-year-old.

Tavi's blog is so wonderful! She's a fine writer and an incredible stylist! Check out this "Geek" photo shoot she did with her friend. AMAZING!

Tavi, your blog makes me feel happy and inspired and hopeful. I hope my kids turn out as confident in their creativity -- at least there will be a ton of vintage in my closet for their repurposing purposes.

Barnard-Stokes Heresy

2008-08-15T14:16:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned before how much I simultaneously love and am stirred up by Postcards From Yo Momma.

Surfing it today, I was suddenly seized by the idea that what if my mom were somehow elsewhere sending some other, nicer girl mom-emails that I would inadvertently find on this site?

I see her in the mirror more and more, in the ever-softening tricep, in the crazed glossy look I have in some photographs. And like her, here I am, in a null job, simmering and squandering. Infinitely better off, infinitely happier, but still -- It would be so nice to tell her all the things I understand so differently now, but would it even be possible, were she to come back to me? I think it's only her absence that makes it possible to murmur I'm sorry, I get it, I love you. I know. Her absence hurls my freed heart at the stubborn sternum, pounding against a door that will never open.

New Awesome Website

2008-08-07T10:01:00.003-04:00

While I was obsessively checking the Agent Provocateur website to find when my new half-price underwears would be "despatched", I came across HumaneMyth.Org . People who care and go to the trouble of searching out labels like "cage free" or "humane care certified" have the right to know whether or not those labels actually mean anything. Most people want to "do the right thing" and want to treat animals humanely -- this site provides ample material for people to figure out what it is to do so, including but not limited to moving accounts by people on how they were transformed by their experiences working with animals. Here's an excerpt from former goat farmer Cheri Ezell-Vandersluiss' story (she seems like such a great woman!):

But we later witnessed the deaths of some of our baby goats, and that finished the process of altering our life course. We watched in horror when a goat was roughly held in preparation for his throat to be cut. He cried out with such terror, and then the knife quickly crossed his neck. It was not an instant death. The struggle went on for twenty or thirty seconds, but it seemed like an eternity.

So yes, you can raise them and have them graze in green fields of grass and brush them every day, but when you ultimately put them in someone's truck or on a livestock trailer, and they go to be slaughtered, I don't care if you say a prayer before they're slaughtered or if you simply send them into the slaughterhouse. Their throats are still slit. They feel pain. They gasp for air. I can't imagine what goes through their minds. If you look into their eyes you can see the fear, and the abandonment. You've loved this animal, and then you've sent them off to this horrible death. So I can't imagine "humane" and farming going together for raising any sentient being. The words just don't go together for me.

Jim and I have since left the dairy industry and converted our farm into a sanctuary for farmed animals, wildlife, and companion animals. Now when I go to the grocery store, I have such a hard time going by the meat department. It sounds strange because I used to shop in the meat department like everyone else. And now I have a hard time even looking. I see people going over and selecting their cuts of meat, and I want to take them by the hand and explain to them that this came from a living being who had feelings just like all of us. That meat came from a cow who had babies, had a family--or tried to have a family. I want people to understand these are sentient beings who, if left to their own devices, have a real bond with their own kind, and with us humans too, if allowed to. And yet I see people picking up the slabs of meat, and they have no concept of where that meat came from or how that animal suffered when he or she was slaughtered. It's not their fault. It's just the way of life society teaches us, the way of life I was taught before my own experiences led me down another path.

Open Letter To Some People

2008-08-01T13:50:00.000-04:00

Do not ride your bike on the fucking sidewalk. In particular, do not ride your bike while walking your dog on the sidewalk, thereby occupying the entire span of the sidewalk with your deep seated need to be Holly GoDouchely. Wheels = Street, Sidewalk = Feet.

Having a dog makes me so much more careful than I used to be, and so much angrier at the carelessness of others. People who do not stop at fucking stop signs make me insane. Oh I’m sorry, Mrs. Giant Yukon SUV! I am sure you are on your way to Princeton Plainsboro to perform that heart transplant so that’s gotta be Dr. House you are gabbing with on the cell phone, telling him how to save lives! No wonder you are barreling through the stop sign at Monitor and Henry at 5:30 am – and who am I to criticize you for not putting on your signal – CLEARLY Dr. House needed to be reminded that the heart bone IS INDEED connected to the other heart bone, my bad!

Oooh, look! A total BADASS was here, clearly, leaving that broken glass all over the sidewalk. Rock And Fucking Roll! Guess what, my dog has to walk barefoot on the fucking sidewalk, asshole. Iggy Pop wasn’t on PetFinder (didn’t wanna be MY dog, apparently) or it would have been totally rad -- but now you must clean up after yourself.

Last night Trey and I took Sir Specialness to McGolrick Park. We were north of Meeker when Sir S. lurched into a crazy hopping gait, forcing us to scramble across Driggs where he started frantically biting at his back left paw. Instantly I knew he’d stepped on something sharp and sat to grasp the paw, Trey securing his collar from behind. My finger brushed the splinter of glass and came away bloody. Sir S. was trying to reach around to deal with it but I knew he’d get glass in his tongue or throat and so I had to get it out first. I thought of asking if a bodega had tweezers or something, and then realized that I used my teeth all the time to pluck stray hairs off of my poor husband. So I put his paw up to my mouth and nibbled at the splinter (is there dog AIDS? Too late!) but no luck. I spit the dog blood out, tried again with my finger and this time slid it out. Sir S. stopped twitching, Trey released his collar and he trotted on towards the run, good as new.

In short: I am the person who will suck out snake venom if you get bit, will kick your ass if I see you breaking glass on the street, and orders the HeartGuard gimlet, straight up, pretty please.

Summer Squash Soup

2008-07-17T11:38:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday's CSA share had lots of summer squash, which has never been a favorite of mine -- until I came up with this recipe last night! Originally I was thinking it would be a white-bean squash soup, then a squash/ parsley number, but as I progressed with my recipe I realized that straight -up and simple was the way to go.

Simple Summer Squash Soup

8-10 medium sized summer squash
One medium yellow onion (between tennis-ball and wiffle ball size)
4 cloves garlic, peeled
4 tbsp olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup white wine

Trim the ends off the squashes, peel with a vegetable peeler and slice into roughly ½ thick rounds. In a colander arrange a layer of squash rounds, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt, and keep adding and salting layers until all the squash is in the colander. [Like with eggplant, salting leaches out the excess water in the squash for better flavor.] Let the squash drain for about 15 minutes, press it with your hands to release any extra water, flip the layers over and repeat the process.

As the squash drains, slice the onion in half and then into slim half moon slices. Peel the garlic cloves and slice them into thin slices lengthwise. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a large cast-iron skillet or pan over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic and a pinch of salt and stir to coat. Cover the pan for about 6 minutes to let the onions sweat and sweeten, stirring occasionally. (Now is a good time to flip the squash in the colander!) Continue to stir the onions and garlic until they begin to caramelize and soften.

When the squash slices have drained, squeeze out the excess water, place the squash on a cutting board and roughly chop the slices so you have ¾ inch –ish pieces. Add the remaining 2 tbsp of oil to the pan, keep stirring the onions and garlic until the new oil is warm, and then add the chopped squash. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes.

[FYI -- At this point, if you are tired, you can abandon the idea of soup and use the squash in the pan over pasta –taste it! It’s really good, right? Just eat it as a side OR you can continue on to the last step, which is:

-- Turn off the heat
-- Add the contents of the skillet to a food processor
-- Process until completely blended. It will be thick, and here is where you can add the white wine until you get the desired texture. You could also use vegetable broth, or soy milk for a creamier soup, but I think the wine brings out the simple richness of the summer squash best. Also, it is an excuse to buy a bottle of white for “cooking purposes” which you can drink while cooking, yes?

Kohlrabi

2008-07-14T15:48:00.002-04:00

We got kohlrabi as part of our CSA the last two times, and I found this amazing recipe for Quick Kohlrabi Pickles! (The second time I made it I tried slicing them into skinny slices rather than cubes and think they are even more delicious that way.)

Whatevs!

2008-07-14T15:21:00.004-04:00

Obama's position on FISA is unforgiveable, especially coming from a so -called expert on Constitutional law. Sad,puke-inducing, the predictable tacking towards the "center". It worked so well for Kerry last time, why not give it another go?

The whole idea that "centrist" politics are somehow "better" or a "compromise" is in the vein of the King Solomon baby-dividing trial --You can't share the baby? Cut it in half! [Awesome idea, maybe I can use the Gonzales vs. Carhart fetal dismemberment plan! You know, if I'm feeling blue state!] In other words, a really bad idea!

God I'm such a fucking square! Look at me, caring all about "facts" and "the rule of law" and "Geneva conventions" and "the Constitution" and "truth" and shit! Maybe there's a magazine that will help me fit in with the cool kids!

Putting The "T" In "Intarsia"

2008-07-10T09:13:00.002-04:00

Completed baby sweater for my friend's son! I am glad he was named Townes and not Quentin.

My Birthday Dinner

2008-07-09T10:56:00.003-04:00

at the ABC Cafe in Ithaca was damn good!

Birthday

2008-07-09T10:24:00.003-04:00

Last week we spent three days at Farm Sanctuary near Watkins Glen, New York. It is one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I have ever visited, and Trey and I and OUR DOG had a stellar time. The whole Finger Lakes region is as if lifted from a children's picture book about -- well, farms -- with its rolling hills and crisp skies blue as chickory-flowers.

Farm Sanctuary has only three cabins. In the morning the dog (who I shall refer to as "Sir Specialness") would wake us up very early and one of us would take him for a walk in the dewy morning, where he would snap his jaws at tiny moths fluttering around the daisies and red clover and vetch. We could see the cows on the other side of the field and hear the commotion of the chickens, ducks and geese. The first morning we were dying for breakfast, as we'd been up since 5:30-is and breakfast started at 8:00. The best thing about breakfast is that everything was vegan. It is a great feeling to wake up in a strange place and know that you can eat EVERYTHING there, which is why I ate an entire cherry turnover (and I seriously could give a rat's underpants if I ever ate sugar again, give me a salt lick!) in about 30 seconds. A huge woodchuck was grazing out on the lawn and at long last Trey got to see one, as every time we go anywhere outside the city I see Mr. Woodchuck and Trey does not.

After breakfast we got a tour of the farm and to meet the animals who wanted to come meet us. A cow named Maya licked my hand and it was shocking to feel how raspy her tongue was. I petted a sleepy pig named Sprinkles. I have no trouble believing why cannibals supposedly referred to human meat as long pig as touching a pig's flank feels a lot like touching one's fat grandmother. And if you ever get the chance to look a pig in the eyes, as I did, it's uncanny.

I had what felt like the best birthday to date in that it didn't even need to feel like my birthday -- it was just happy and clean and nice. We took Sir Specialness on a two hour hike through the Watkins Glen State Park, we ate chinese food near the little gazebo in town where The Hepcats were slated to play. For dinner we drove to Ithaca which is an adorable town. The whole day was infused with a bubbly peaceful happiness, which crystallized in the moment when, driving along Route 23 in the late late afternoon, we saw a blindingly white creature crossing the road, so bride-white and ambling that my first insane thought was holy shit a polar bear? when we slowed to a crawl to pull up alongside the albino doe, who met our gaze before springing lazily away into the woods. It felt as if we had seen a unicorn.

And the dog -- oh my god, the dog! I am so besotted with him, he is so good and kind and goofy and trusting and funny and I love him so very much! It has been one month since we took him in and it has been a real sea change, and I should have blogged about it while it was happening but getting up every morning at 5:45 to put on one's slobber-covered dog pants from H&M makes one really sleepy at work. And how quickly you become one of the "dog people!" Swapping rescue stories, recognizing people, avoiding other people, etc. And how I could care less that the house is covered in hair (Sir Specialness sheds like a moose -- I swept the floor Sunday and the amount of hair pre-dustpanned was, I kid you not, the size of a large pizza) and I love the sweet puppy smell of his ears and even when for whatever reason his dog penis is showing I feel a weirdly maternal pride that he's got a really big one instead of, well, vomiting, which is the effect that every other dog dick has had on me since birth. When he smiles and dog laughs it is as if the sun shone an arrow right into my heart. It may sound crazy to some, but Trey and I agreed that the feeling of rightness about choosing Sir Specialness and his choosing us felt just as monumental and right as when we chose each other. Lately ours has been a very happy home.

From The Desk Of OMFG!

2008-06-06T11:35:00.004-04:00

We pick up the dog tomorrow! My sister Elle had said that when she went to pick up her rescue dog, she brought a little gift to the foster mom. I found out that our dog's foster mom is vegan, and she didn't have Veganomicon yet and was wanting it, so I went to Amazon and ordered her a copy for a gift, as well as a copy of Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust for myself (which is very good and totally worth reading -- I didn't know, for example, that Hitler worshipped Henry Ford).

And in throwing the packaging away, I see the coupon that came with these two tomes:

ONE FREE NEW! SOUTHERN STYLE CHICKEN SANDWICH from McDONALDS

One Bride A-Leaping!

2008-06-06T08:04:00.006-04:00

Ashlee and David's wedding may be the most fun wedding I have ever attended -- maybe even more fun than ours! It was perfect and perfectly expressive of their McBennelandishness, which is what makes a wedding great -- when you see the particularity of two people expressed in the event, when you know it is THEIR wedding. So it was beautiful and moving AND also a ton of fun.

And everyone there was nice and kind and fun and awesome. Not one mean person there, no bad apples. The three day period of setup, execution and breakdown went fairly seamlessly from my point of view, with people who had never met before immediately pitching in and doing what needed to be done and EFFICIENTLY and suddenly -- lo! Everything was set up, everything was perfect. Many hands make light work, especially when they are the hands of such lighthearted, warm-hearted people. So many times over the weekend I thought this is the way things should always be -- such was the McBennelandishment of the whole weekend!

And there was vegan food! GOOD vegan food! Not just penne with vegetables!

Trey and I had so much fun together too, just being together, reading the comics in the hotel, being a couple, being best friends, being a team, noticing birds, making each other laugh. It's so nice to be at weddings together because as you are wholeheartedly present with and cheering for the couple as they pledge their love, you are also re-pledging your love along with theirs. And they are such a stellar, happy, perfectly suited pair of adventurous, kind, funny, fun-loving people you can't help but want to jump up and down and pump your fist in the air about it.

As people were toasting the couple during the reception, I suddenly realized what the theme of my toast would have been -- I remembered that line from that Louise Gluck poem I have used in blog entries about weddings (like brides leaping from a great height) which was a poem we studied in Kate Brogan's Modern Poetry class which is where I first met Ashlee, and realizing in a flash how that image, as a symbol of risk-taking and faith and an adventurous spirit was SO EXACTLY Ashlee to me! and how much I admire her and her creativity and spontaneity and romantic nature, how she loves to luxuriate in the world. But she was wrapping up the toasting and I didn't want to get up there and ramble on when I wasn't sure exactly what to say and it was time to move on to the DoubleWide (btw, one of the most fun bars I have ever been to, so many NYC bars TRY to be the DoubleWide and FAIL miserably, Trash Bar being one of many pathetic examples, props to you DoubleWide!) for what was a really spectacularly fun afterparty.

So this morning I realized that I didn't even remember what that poem was called, and through the grace of Google discovered that I have mis-remembered that line for 13 years: it's

Like brides leaping to a great height-

Evermore upward, not hurled into space. A key difference. Rereading the whole poem, I realized that it says so much about what I treasure about my friendship with Ashlee, and how she inspires me to be more brave, and worry less, and ignore the Puritanical depressive voices in my head. So here it is, in full:

Celestial Music

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

I love you!

L

DALLAS!

2008-05-28T14:03:00.002-04:00

These are a few of the second batch of pom poms I am sending to a certain BRIDE-TO-BE today! And tomorrow Trey and I are off to Dallas for the WEDDING OF THE YEAR!

I have so much else I want to write but I'm so tired and excited and trying not to forget the eight million things I need to do before we leave. (Sadly, a bikini wax will not be one of them, and it is seriously become That 70s Show down there!) But after work I am getting a pedicure, doing a voiceover, cleaning the house, practicing the ukulele, packing everything, making sure the parasols fit in my duffle bag, YOU NAME IT.

I am really truly honored to be a part of this wedding. I couldn't have predicted, so many years ago when the bride and I were in Modern Poetry Class together at Mother Wellesley, that things would be the way they are today for both of us, but I'm really happy that they are.

Neighbor

2008-05-28T13:55:00.003-04:00

I nicknamed this kitty Bijou last winter -- but I am beginning to think Bijou may really be a "Buster"! B comes by the door in the morning or in the evening and sits Bast-style until I come out with some food. B lives in the wild yard next door and I am beginning to think that a whole colony may be hanging there -- I've seen 3 other striped kitties -- one is definitely a tom with a HUGE FAT OL' Tom face.

Oh and guess what? WE ARE GETTING THE DOG!!!

But In Other News

2008-05-09T13:27:00.003-04:00

Next Sunday we will have a "home visit" from a representative of a rescue agency to see if we are fit parents for a DOG. I am both over the moon that they liked our application, and terrified at what a massive life change this may be. We have been scouring PetFinder for months now oooh-ing and aaah-ing over different dogs, but this one seems perfect for us and has been fostered with cats and is very gentle with no aggression issues nor prey drive, and is a big mellow guy in the house. So we will see what happens! I just remind myself that, just like having a baby, a million people do this all the time and it will be fine no matter what.

Speaking of having a baby, I need to get on that. I am hoping that we will concieve when we are out in Dallas for Ashbloem's wedding. I am super fertile THAT WEEKEND and feel like it would be lucky somehow. I know that is completely irrational. I just would love to have a weekend of wild hotel sex and fun times to celebrate my good friend's wedding and get pregnant that way. I've found I've been weirdly superstitious about this, about the "vibe" surrounding conception, which is nonsense.

You know what drives me crazy? Shitty examples and sloppy writing in the New York Times. Yeah, my writing is sloppy at times on this blog. Guess what, it's a blog that now like 6 people read. I'm not Cathy Horyn, writing:

What separates the nerdish Bruce Banner, who morphs into the Incredible Hulk, from the mousy Luisa Annan, who as the outlandish Marchesa Casati aspired to look like a wild animal and for one Belle Époque-era ball wore a necklace of live, writhing snakes?
The answer is nothing. They each make their claim on the world by becoming Another.

Well, no, because Bruce Banner CANNOT HELP becoming The Hulk, and Luisa Annan decided to put on a costume. Sloppy work, Cathy. You should have picked Catwoman instead of The Hulk.

In this vein, I had a troubling interaction with my sister-in-law a month or so ago. We were discussing homeschooling and she was singing the praises of some program that used a method called "stylistic writing" which I guess was meant to encourage liberal use of the thesaurus.

Me: What do you mean by "stylistic"? I asked, politely.

SIL: Stylistic! she said, you know, where instead of "blue" you would say "cerulean", or "devoured" instead of "ate"...

Me: Do you mean "stylized"? I asked, again, being as neutral as I possibly could.

SIL: No, I mean STYLISTIC!

Sigh. It did not seem kind or appropriate to state that over my dead body would I use a homeschool curriculum that encourages your kids to be shitty, shitty, shitty writers.

And lo! I got my tax rebate in the bank account today! What a joke! But at least there will be cash on hand to pay a certain adoption fee if it comes to that!

headdesk

2008-05-09T11:04:00.004-04:00

First of all, this shit totally fucking annoys me -- this "article" by Gloria Feldt on the Huffington Post, "Should Hillary Drop Out? Absolutely Not!" In it she employs the following bullshit analogy:

They wouldn't stop a football game in the last quarter just because their team was winning. Why would they want to stop the presidential primary before the last states have voted?

Yeah. That's true. But this isn't a fucking football game, it is the goddamn primary, and it is OVER ALREADY. In fact, I submit that treating politics purely as a spectator sport is a major part of the fucking problem -- it's the reason why people dismiss so called "fringe" candidates and have conversations about "electability" instead of values. It's not the fucking Oscars. Whether or not Charlize Theron wins a little gold guy for wearing ugly fake teeth has no bearing on the survival of millions of human beings, on access to health care, on the future of the climate. It means someone at ICM gets a new Lexus. Everyone, everyone grow the fuck up already and that includes the Clintons.

Also: Fuck this having-a-female-President-at-all-costs business. How about a GOOD President. It sucks and is unacceptable the level of mysogynistic crap that gets hurled Hillary's way. Citizens United Not Timid, all that shit is totally unacceptable and I call people out on it all the time. That being said, Hillary sucks. She sucks, people! She is a race-baiting opportunistic liar, and I'm not fucking voting for her, and if you seriously support her then you are an imbecile. And you know what else? I think you are a shitty FEMINIST.

How is it feminist to threaten to incinerate a large civilian population? How is it feminist to have supported the sanctions against Iraq throughout your husband's presidency [omg I almost typed "husband's pregnancy" which tells you where my head is at] that resulted in the deaths of half a million children? How is it feminist to support an illegal invasion that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilains, that is turning the cradle of civilization into a teratogenic wasteland (birth defects since the invasion have skyrocketed, so I think that's a reproductive health issue), increased sectarian violence and thereby increasing violence against women, and seriously rolling back women's freedoms in Iraq? Not to mention all the Iraqi women and girls now forced into prostitution and sex trafficking? As a feminist, Dennis Kucinich trounces Hillary Clinton. I'm sorry, but it's fucking true. Would Gloria Feldt support Condoleeza Rice for President, a woman who basically ignored dozens of explicit warnings that the World Trade Center was being targeted? How about Phyllis Schafly (who is getting an honorary degree from Handmaid's Tale University, what the fuck...) This is fucking nonsense. We should call out sexism on the carpet non-stop, it doesn't mean we should be bullied into voting for someone who has shown that their desire to be President means any kind of moral calculus goes into the shitter. Sorry, that's how it is. When Kathleen Sebelius is running, give me a call.

And yeah, McCain is a fucking maniac, and I don't think Obama is so great either. I do think that Obama can beat McCain, even if Obama then fucks up everything and is a one-term president. But we are at this point, with these options, because of people like Gloria Feldt and pretty much the entire media who treat elections like a spectator sport and pat themselves on the back for reading the pie charts on page 1 of USA Today.

And honestly, the fact that anyone is SURPRISED that Clinton has gotten this bad leaves me gobsmacked! Remember back when John Aravosis was bitching about how "PRESIDENTIAL" Clinton didn't need to have to deal with "fringe" candidates like Kucinich in the pre-primary debates? And now AMERICABlog is daily exhortations for Clinton to drop the fuck out already? You reap what you sow, Beltway bitches!

Kitchen

2008-05-08T09:46:00.003-04:00

My organization/ prep skills have improved, as now I make an effort to have everything ready to go so I am not all over the place.

This is making me really hungry.

Tipico

2008-05-08T09:30:00.003-04:00

I made this dish both Sunday and Monday nights because it is that fucking delicious. Adapted from this amazing "Italian Rice And Beans" recipe of Lolo's, I tweaked it by adding a minced clove of garlic at the beginning (Lolo is very garlic averse), swapping slivered almonds for the pine nuts (because that is what we had in the freezer) and then doubling the greens -- in here are spinach, chard and RAMPS!

Look at me, I bought RAMPS at the farmer's market, which means I am a full on hippie/ yuppie person. But you know what? Ramps are delicious!

This dish is so yummy, salad-y enough for spring and hearty enough for winter, tastes even better the next day, and super nutritious.

I started watching Top Chef. Trey laughs at me because I will say Peggy Hill-esque things like "You know what I would have done for that challenge?" He's very good to me, that man of mine.

I have been feeling so fucking tired when I come home at night, from being at a desk with no natural light for 9-odd hours a day. When I come home, there is so much stuff to do, and all I want is to be OUTSIDE in the real world, in my yard, surrounded by air and trees and vegetation (and we live in Brooklyn right off the BQE.) I have been woefully unproductive at work, not blogging, not writing, just drifting in an endless, enervating surfing fugue that leaves me utterly drained and with a searing pain in my right trapezius. Ugh.

Birdhouse In Your Soul

2008-04-30T16:29:00.002-04:00

This is a picture of my favorite urban phenomenon.

I noticed this a couple of years ago -- if you look, you will notice that every single lightpost has a sparrow who nests in the tubular crosspiece, whether on Graham Avenue or 6th Avenue. Sometimes more than one sparrow -- this one had a little guy poking out of the opposite hole but you couldn't really see in the picture I took. Look today -- if you look up I guarantee you will see someone loudly singing in his luxury, rent-stabilized high rise. Now THAT's loftology for you!

Brooklyn Bunny

2008-04-22T11:15:00.003-04:00

We are addicted to watching Roebling, the bunny on Brooklyn Bunny. Now every time I walk by the street bearing his name, I get a little HOP in my step. Hooray, Roebling!

A More AccurateTitle For This Article Would Be,

2008-04-21T16:48:00.003-04:00

Face It, Some People Will Always Make You Pick Up Their Slack!

Have you seen these? If you haven't, take a look. Make sure you have some Kleenex.

Elaine Vigneault wrote a good diary at DailyKos about the need to demand transparency in animal agriculture. There's a very disturbing image at the end of her diary -- it's of particular interest to me that many commenters criticized her for including it.

Some Things

2008-04-17T15:11:00.002-04:00

I kicked the ASS of the beauty - industrial complex by both coloring and cutting my own hair last night. It looks awesome. And I went to yoga. And I made dinner.

It is Pope-mania in Midtown and a true pain in the fucking ass. If it were The Arcade Fire, I could understand.

Things are looking up -- the weather is gorgeous, a certain AWESOME WEDDING is around the corner, and we are going to Farm Sanctuary for my birthday -- I just got the packet in the mail this week.

Hooray!!

Spicy Tempeh With Brussels Sprouts And Quinoa

2008-04-17T15:02:00.003-04:00

I make this tempeh at least once a week. Here is the recipe! It is adapted from the Spicy Tempeh in Veganomicon but I tweaked it -- plus I bake the tempeh in the oven rather than grill it.

1 block tempeh, cut into wedge shapes
1/2 cup wine
1/2 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/4 cup sriracha (rooster!) hot sauce
1 tsp cayenne
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp molasses
1tbsp pomegranate molasses
3 garlic cloves, minced
about a thumb-sized lump of ginger, cut fine to match the garlic (USE ORGANIC GINGER IF YOU CAN THAT STUFF IS OUT OF THIS WORLD, TASTE-WISE)
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
black pepper
juice of 1 lime
some lime zest

Preheat oven to 400. Place tempeh in a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Combine all the marinade ingredients in a measuring cup, mixing thoroughly and tasting until you like it -- feel free to adjust to your liking. Then pour over tempeh, flip tempeh pieces to coat, and cover with foil.

Bake for 30 minutes, remove foil, and flip tempeh -- bake uncovered for 25 more minutes.

Cookies!

2008-04-17T14:59:00.004-04:00

These are the Rosewater Pistachio cookies from Veganomicon! TOTALLY DELICIOUS! The pigs say, HOORAY!

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift

2008-04-15T16:21:00.003-04:00

This weekend Trey and I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. The cherry blossoms have not yet bloomed, but the magnolias! Holy moly, they are beautiful! And we saw grackles and a yellow warbler, who was so golden and hoppity and nice! In our own back yard all the birds have been making a royal mess of our feeder, and there are two new birds we've seen, a kind of Junco and a Brown Headed Cowbird.
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Last night I made a fantastic chili! Really, insanely good. Here is how you make it!

5 cloves of garlic (or more), minced
One roughly diced onion
2 diced poblano peppers
A few dried hot peppers, sliced
1 modest carrot, peeled and diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 head parsley, chopped fine-ish
2 tbsp Olive oil
1 8 oz package of tempeh, cubed into 3/4" cubes
1/4 cup-ish molasses
White wine
Tamari
1 can (the bigger one) crushed tomatoes
1 can black beans (the soup can size)

1 tbsp cumin (or to taste)
1 tbsp thyme (")
2tbsp chili powder
2 tbsp mole chili powder (or whatever, you can mess around)
1 tsp fennel seeds

Put the tempeh cubes in a small saucepan. Cover with 1/2 cup wine, 1/2 cup tamari, and 1/2 cup water over medium heat. When it starts to simmer, reduce heat to low and cover, stirring occasionally. Let this simmer while you make the other stuff.

In BIG saucepan or skillet, saute the hot peppers, garlic, onion, and carrots until they start to soften - 5 minutes Add the poblano peppers and saute some more -- another 5-8 minutes. When these soften too, add the tomato paste and combine. Add the dried spices (except the fennel! -- that's for the tempeh!) and the parsley -- saute for another 5 minutes or so. Now add the crushed tomatoes and drained black beans. Cover and let simmer/bubble. Check on the tempeh. The tempeh should be getting tender and the liquid level reduced. Add another 1/4 cup wine, 1/4 cup tamari, and the molasses and the fennel seed. Stir so the molasses is mixed in all the way, and then cover and let simmer a bit more, say 10 minutes. Be sure to turn the tempeh pieces.

Now add the tempeh/ broth mixture to your main skillet of chili. Add some paprika or whatever other flavors you like, and simmer for as long as you can -- at least 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. I swear to you, this chili will drive you crazy.
________________________________________________

In happy news, I do not have breast cancer. I had a lump in my right one for 3 days and luckily it went away. I didn't tell anyone but Trey and only when I knew it was going away. The internet is cruel to encouraging one to think a zit is a ductal carcinoma.

Girls Girls Girls!

2008-04-02T09:06:00.003-04:00

I had a really, really nice time in Boston with Ashbloem (who will be played by Scarlett Johannsen in the movie) and the other stolichnaiads this past weekend! I mean, SRSLY nice, and relaxing, and wild and fun and good, and it made me realize how lucky I am to have solid smart women in my life, both Wellesley-related and non. It also reminded me of how grateful I am to just LIKE WOMEN, PERIOD.

I was in the mood for more girl-hangouttery yesterday so over IM I invited my good friend Daisy to go to the movies, and we picked The Other Boleyn Girl, which was overall much better than I thought it would be -- or rather, the two leads' acting was much better than I had been lead to believe.

Moral of the story? Boys who are incapable of being good friends will not make good BOYFRIENDS, especially if they are the goddamn KING and think they are all that. Oh, and patriarchy sucks ass, and boobs. Because life is precious, and God, and The Bible!

P.S. The selection of this picture is in NO WAY meant to imply Natalie Portman would play me in the movie about me: that would be Marion Cotillard, right?

Faraway, So Close

2008-04-01T12:21:00.003-04:00

Gore is launching a new $300 million advocacy campaign to foster awareness of climate change working with the Alliance for Climate Protection.

What do they propose? Lots of good stuff. But there's one big-ass lacuna there! Can you guess what it is?

My diet is vegan not just because I care about animals. It's because it's an environmental issue, and it's also a human rights issue. Eating factory farmed meat is like wearing Nikes made out of dead toddlers. Come on, already.

I'm extra sad because of something that happened in my neighborhood. Here is my IM with my sister from Tuesday:

lillet langtry: okay
i love my neighborhood
i was in the backyard
7:32 PM starting to do some gardening stuff
step one being to transplant my mom's irises into these bigger pots
i look in the italian people's yard 2 yards over
and they have 2 pet bunnies! running around!
one white and one orange!
7:33 PM then
mr. pontani comes out
gives me this long monologue in italian
about polish people, housing prices, he's going to italy friday
7:34 PM and then goes into the shed and comes back with this bottle of homebrew port
and tells me I should take it with "a little soda."
7:39 PM sister: i just took the pups out for their last daylight romp
that is a goot
Hoot

I told Trey about the bunnies and he was totally excited to see them. I tried to videotape them one afternoon when I got home from work but the battery in our camera was dead and I couldn't figure out how to charge it. And then I was off to a super fun weekend in Boston!

When I came home Sunday night, Trey told me the bad thing that had happened: He went out in the backyard to look for the bunnies again. And saw one. Skinned, and being gutted by Mr. and Mrs. Pontani. I was glad he hadn't seen them when they were sweet and alive.

All of that and what for? A wad of flesh the size of two fists, maybe, and all, in the end for nothing.

They're Gonna Show That Rosemary Farm!

2008-03-28T13:27:00.005-04:00

Rosemary Farm is the fruit stand on Graham south of Metropolitan between the 99 cent store and the crazy health food store run by the lady with a very notceable boob-job and Restylane pout. I do the bulk of my non- farmer's market/CSA produce acquisition at Rosemary Farm (which is why I am known there as the "purple potato lady.")

But lately the deli on the NORTH side of Metropolitan has been putting up all kinds of signs proclaiming the superiority of their produce offerings -- like this one from last month!

To Want -- And Want --

2008-03-26T17:09:00.002-04:00

How that wrung the heart!

these are making me bawl my face off.

I miss you, I'm turning into you, it's fine.

Reality = Treason In This Great Fucking Nation Of Ours

2008-03-25T07:37:00.004-04:00

Hai, Hillary! I can haz question?

Why is "mis-spoke" the new "lied"? Why not say you “bespoke” about something, i.e., you MADE UP SHIT TO ORDER?

Re: Obama’s speech. It was pretty amazing, and I wept. I finally got the whole Obamamania thing. But here’s the catch – Why is he apologizing for Reverend Wright’s words?

James Dobson and Ted Haggard call the White House on a WEEKLY BASIS and they are psychotic bigots. Hagee, McCain’s BFF ought to work for the Weather Channel, as he figured out that the Gays caused Invisible Grandpa to trash New Orleans via hurricane. But Reverend Wright?

“"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."”

WTF? All of that is TRUE! Reverend Wright is SPEAKING THE TRUTH! And what makes me very sad is that Obama’s amazing speech was occasioned by a need to distance himself from the truth. And that despite the stark honesty in his speech about how class divides exacerbate racial tension, he doesn’t support single payer health care. Among other things.

But sadder still is how the fact that the Wright “controversy” even exists shows how entrenched and crazy race issues are in this country, as white pastors get to spew completely INSANE hateful shit – Evolution is a lie! Women are whores who don’t deserve to own their own bodies and like shooting fetus angels out of heaven like so much Precious Moments skeet! The Rapture is coming! Gay peoples is evil! – a black pastor actually discussing REALITY is treason?

Uncanny

2008-03-17T08:06:00.002-04:00

Friday would have been my mom's 65th birthday.

I still have her ashes in my vanity and haven't really gotten it together to scatter them. Her handbag lives under the vanity as well, and among the mess on top of it is her bottle of Chanel No. 5, a fragrance that does not work on me but will remind me of her forever.

All weekend I had very disturbing dreams of people continually breaking into the house.

And this morning while I was scrambling for tights, I moved the chair away and saw that the Chanel No. 5 bottle lay smashed on the floor.

I Bet She Has A Statement To Make, Too

2008-03-11T09:00:00.005-04:00

Ladies, can we band together and form an organization to put an END to this tradition of the "stand by your cheating man" political wife? That is what offends me the most about this scandal, is that Spitzer's wife got roped into standing behind him at the podium, with that bevaliumed expression. The wife's presence underscores the hollowness of the now de rigeur public apology -- since it stands to reason if the man was sorry for hurting his wife, if he had any regard for her whatsoever, the LAST thing he would do is drag her up to the podium like that.

"Hey, honey, ummm, I'm really sorry but, ummmm... Yeah so I was screwing some hookers. I know. I'm REALLY SORRY. Hey can you do me just one more thing? Just eat these Valiums and slap on a fentayl patch and kinda stand up here during this press conference? What? WHADDAYA MEAN you don't want to? You fucking uptight bitch! You can't do this ONE THING FOR ME?"

SO can we just stop it with the press conferences? Henceforth just release a statement that says "FUCK, I GOT CAUGHT. SHIT!" and we'll all move on.

Sigh. I am glad I will never be in that situation -- but were I, the only press conference I would be having would be with a bottle of tequila, a locksmith and a lawyer.

On the bright side, it is scandals like these that bring out the BEST in the New York Post's headline writers!

Pot Stops Short of Calling Kettle The "N"-Word, Heads Implode

2008-03-11T08:53:00.004-04:00

What. Is. Wrong. With. People?

Gotta love all the super-pro Hillary people, who went on and on and on about how "qualified" she was etc etc etc and now get to watch her take the Democratic party down in flames! If we end up with a President McCain next year, the blame will lie COMPLETELY with the Democratic party (AGAIN) for having their heads up their asses. [As far up their asses as the heads of the pouty lil' Nader-haters!]

This That And The Other

2008-03-10T16:59:00.004-04:00

I had a lovely weekend. It poured awful rain on Saturday and I stayed in all day. Birds clotted the feeder and the rain made spring splashy sounds all around. A Brown Headed Cowbird has been visiting and he is very handsome. All is distilled into its fundamental right-ness when we just get time together at home cocooned and nice and quiet.

And then, we went to FAIRWAY!!

Sez It Allz!!!1111!!!!!!

2008-03-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

I was looking for change and I found this...

Where Have I Been?

2008-03-03T14:43:00.002-05:00

I have not been on the Australian Cattle Dog Puppy Farm, alas.

I love Australian Cattle Dogs. We went to Westminster last month and one of the nicest dogs we met was a dog named Lincoln who won Best of Breed. I am all melty-dog-crazy and am currently crushed out on a dog we saw yesterday en route to yoga, a sweet 3 month old Australian Shepherd/ Bernese Mountain Dog mix (according to his person). I mean, that is the perfect-est breed mix ever.

What else? Trey put up bookshelves and I rearranged the books. I invented a killer lemongrass-miso soup with watercress. Watched Marion Cotillard win the Oscar. Trimmed my own hair.

Today I am wearing an all green and brown outfit at work, big departure from the usual black. My shoes are from CutesyShoes.com; mahogany brown mary janes with a 3 inch slim heel, (not leather and not sweaty-making), brown fishnets, a greeny-brown tiny-tweed skirt given to me by an ex-friend, a grasshopper-green t-shirt from J Crew that I bought for five bucks at the thrift store on Metropolitan, an aphid green pinup-girl sweater from my mother-in-law, and actual makeup. Somewhere between hot librarian and extra from Vertigo. Yeah. Perhaps. I walked out for a good half-hour just now and it is deliciously springy. Sitting on the low edge of the block-length fountain on 6th Avenue across from Radio City, the light was white and celebratory and invincible -- the hyper-bleached astringent dazzle of near-death experiences and alien abductions.

That's Mighty White Of Me!

2008-02-19T11:53:00.003-05:00

I just found the blog Stuff White People Like and am laughing my ass off at myself -- Christ, I'm really fucking white!

Note: it’s weird that there are some white people who won’t take aspirin, but will take Ecstasy, Cocaine, Xanax and Vicodin.

Guilty as charged!

This entry is priceless. His work is awesome, but whoa! Guilty again! And yes, I am dying for Be Kind, Rewind to come out!

So far, per this blog the only non-white things about me are that I dance like crazy at concerts and that I am very happily married.

SWPL is up there with this! Well done!

Scarf Friends

2008-02-15T16:26:00.003-05:00

I finally finished my horizontal scarf using the "ballband dishcloth" stitch -- I think it turned out okay. I hope Trey likes it.

In Case You Couldn't Quite Grasp How Ugly It Is...

2008-02-15T12:52:00.003-05:00

You've gotta love how the brickwork there was done by drunks. One day this thing is going to make the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire seem like Tinkerbell farted.

Metastasization Documentation

2008-02-15T12:35:00.002-05:00

They are making progress [sic] on the glorious THE HUMBOLDT. Those pallets have been on our street mouldering in the rain and occupying parking spaces for over a month now, by the way. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Up the street, the MAZE is even more hilarious than before! The banner trumpeting "STELLAR LIVING" has fallen to hang half down for about 6 weeks now. A friend of mine and I walked past it on Sunday and there was a realtor who made the Millionaire Matchmaker resemble Grace Kelly by comparison. The inside of the Maze smells like mold and the light in the "lobby" recalls waking up hungover in the bowels of an abandoned aquarium after a nuclear strike. The outside detailing is secured by duct tape in some places. Oh yeah, but per the Realtroll people are "already living there!!"

Oh god, please check out THE MAZE's website, where this uber-douchely bricolage is billed as "The Epitome of LifeSTYLE."

I heartily agree, oh MAZE copy-scribe. I wholly, wholeheartedly agree.

Tastes Like Chicken

2008-02-13T15:17:00.002-05:00

Trey and I went to the Westminster Dog Show on Monday and part of Tuesday. I love the dog show because the dogs are lovely and the people are crazy and there is beer. We got there early for the Australian Shepherds on Monday and they were so beautiful and smart and nice. You get to pet many of the dogs there if they are inclined to be petted, and I spent most of this morning looking at Petfinder and having my heart melt away.

One weird thing about the dog show though -- There are a shitload of fur coats on display. On the people, not the dogs. Just sayin', animal lovers of Westminster! Just sayin'.

Today I ordered in a burrito from the place down the street from which I order a burrito at least once a week and have been since the summer. It is the same burrito every time: beans, rice, tomatillo, guacamole, and lettuce. Today my burrito comes and I wonder why it is fatter than usual. I bite into it and encounter resistance, like, serious resistance, as if I have bitten into a sock. A dry, fibrous resistance that makes my teeth squeak. And lo! My fucking burrito has chicken in it. Wads of stringy dry nasty chicken, doubly inexcuseable since the order-taker called me "Lily" so he knew it was me, the crazy meatless burrito lady who has been known to order burritos 4 days in a row, every day the same burrito sin pollo, sin queso, sin carnitas.

As I wait crankily for my replacement burrito I realize that I have not eaten chicken in almost 3 years (with the exception of the chicken in the pasta salad my sister made for my mom's post-funeral gathering) and let me tell you something: Chicken, as it exists in 98% of food is fucking disgusting. I cannot for the life of me think why someone would think this burrito with chicken would trump the veggie version. Truly. I understand why people would miss pizza -- this shit? ??????????????????

Speaking of chicken, check out another reason why Hillary isn't all that: she's BFFs with the Monsanto Corporation! And this article is written by another Wellesley alum, imagine that.

Back at work, the flourescent lighting hums and hums. All day on CNN covers the fucking steroids trial -- Waterboarding, anyone? FISA? A new campaign -- Life Takes FISA!

I am approaching 36 years old. Some days I think I want a dog far more than a child. Some days I think I never want a child at all, I want to never cross that rubicon, but to linger in the haven of between things kin to the safe feeling of traveling on the train between stops with nothing to do but read and dream and wait. Walking through the slush in the morning, I am aware of my pre-motherhood days as numbered, which means nothing, is a simple factual observance.

Why I Know I Married Mr. Not-Only-Right-But-Perfect

2008-02-05T08:34:00.000-05:00

Saturday was Trey's birthday! The Day Of Class. After breakfast we went for a walk, and picked up some essential items, pictured above:

Emergen-C, Lee Konitz CD, a Sylvie Vartan LP, and of course, a WOMBAT!

I am so so lucky to love and be loved by someone who knows what's important.

Always, Always A ...

2008-01-30T11:56:00.001-05:00

Weddings are in the air, and it is nice. I just bought our tickets to Dallas for my dear friend’s wedding in which I am honored beyond belief to be a bridesmaid. Yesterday I went to 47^th street to help a friend choose her wedding bands, and the weekend before that I took the same friend wedding dress shopping. She was totally overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. I didn’t really know either, but I planned a day of appointments for her at boutiques for “inspiration” and we had a nice day – and she tried on two dresses that were positively breathtaking and I could see it in her face and we both teared up some. It is a very powerful archetype, the Bride: and the moments in life where you and an archetype align are powerful, powerful moments, no matter how that alignment is manifest. It’s sort of the way even though the Tarot is rendered in dozens of styles, the Tower retains its Tower-ness; the World remains immutably the World.

Another good friend of mine’s sister is getting married this summer, and has been telling me how both incredibly happy and incredibly stressed-out her sister has been, because so much of planning a wedding involves engaging with a whole complex of vendors and media whose job on some level is to make you feel guilty and afraid that unless you spend x-hundred dollars per head on napkin rings you are a failure. [On of my worst experiences with this was after our first meeting with a caterer who busted out menus that started at $150 pp for fucking HORS D’OEUVRES and this guy was a friend of a friend. I had a full-on panic attack and threw up on the street afterwards. Later I got it together and catered our wedding for much, much cheaper – but it was the moment when I felt the shameful burning rays of God’s Decoder Ring TM like police flashlights busting Shame Party 2005: Why don’t we have any money? Why do I not have credit cards at age 33? Why didn’t we save anything? Who do I think I am to deserve anything? ]

But the other side of the wedding shame spiral is the shame women are made to feel at being anything APPROACHING a “Bridezilla.” God, I fucking hate that term. Our whole culture makes such a big deal out of getting married: to even TRY to have any kind of wedding involves engaging to some degree with the businesses and media surrounding weddings [many members of which are very nice and amazing – where I found my dress, for example, or the person who did our flowers] and then to top it all off, as a bride to be you are severely restricted in how much you are allowed to talk about this big event or OMFG you might be an asshole. All the women I know including myself have/ had internalized this shame, and it sucks. Why can’t you talk about a big party you are throwing involving a huge life change and celebration with your family and community? Whether it’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral or an impromptu flash mob on Coney Island, it’s a big deal! You are allowed to feel weird about it, happy about it, process it, figure out your take on it, and talk about it! Leave it up to America to find yet another Womanhood Catch-22 to make women feel guilty and silenced and shitty about a day that is a celebration of a choice that they’ve made.

I guess this comes from feeling protective of my friends who are going through this process because I remember how strongly it affected me, how much I felt like The Velveteen Bride, unable to run and play with the real brides, or whatever. Feelings of illegitimacy and isolation are something I’ve been struggling with for 25 years now, and although now I pretty much have the upper-happily-ever-after-hand, they surge back every now and again, in a wave of hot tears, or a strong kinaethestic compulsion to impale my heart on a stake. [I really wonder where that come from, actually, but it has been there forever, a sucking feeling in my chest that cries out to be stabbed like an itch needing scratching. Does anyone else have this? Is there an AutoHeartStabber's Anonymous?] Now it’s something I give a little space to, it doesn’t rule my life, nothing special, like birthmarks. I guess having lived in the grip of idiopathic shame for so long I want to keep it away from anyone I love, like Ripley yelling get away from her you bitch!

To be always a bride is to be always choosing the unknown over the safe, to choose vulnerability over cynicism, to choose throwing a party over freeloading, to choose giving your parents another shot over blaming them forever, to choose Yes I said Yes I will Yes and Let’s Go! One foot in front of the other, holding some flowers so I won’t stab myself in the heart.

Vegan White Trash Breakfast

2008-01-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

I have been obsessed with vegan McMuffins. This one has a Gimme Lean patty on it (sauteed in Earth Balance with some garlic and fennel) and 2 slices of tofu, marinaded in garlic and tamari and then breaded in a little flour and salt and cayenne and fried in the Earth Balance) on a toasted English muffin with Vegenaise, ketchup and that spicy rooster sauce. Trey made fun of me, but I made him one yesterday with no mayonnaise and he agreed that it was awesome.

I'm still working for Dennis to keep him in Congress. I was crushed when he dropped out, but what can you do. I just hope that everyone who made fun of him enjoys their shitty, shitty healthcare premiums for the rest of their lives.

I have met some really amazing people through my Kucinich-ing and am totally 100% proud to support Dennis still. In addition, just through being truthful and talking to other people (including strangers) I got several people to support him in the primary. Even though it is scary, standing on a streetcorner with a sign ends up being the right thing to do sometimes, and I'm determined to continue to fight the good fight, to organize, and to try to be the change I wish to see in the world, not just blog IN ALL CAPS!!!!! about it.

Purple Potato Lady

2008-01-28T10:29:00.000-05:00

We buy a lot of our produce from the place on Graham and Metropolitan that I recently noticed was named "Rosemary Farm." A few days ago I bought some Yukon Gold potatoes and the girl behind the counter asked me, "Why no purple potatoes today? You always buy the purple ones! You have an air of mystery, and you buy purple potatoes!"

Which made my day.

I'm Glad My Mom Isn't Around For This

2008-01-23T12:58:00.000-05:00

My mom had many, many movie star crushes, some typical, some not-so (she had a big crush on Steve Buscemi, for example, and had a framed picture of him in her bathroom.) I can still see her handwriting in the letter she wrote me about her latest crush at the time, a "very talented young actor named Keith Ledger." Being the cunty, eye-rolling bitch I was often wont to be w/r/t my mom, I used to tell people about her constant erroneous take on his name. [In her defense, it turns she was not alone!] When I found out yesterday that he had died, the first thing I thought was that I was glad my mom wasn't around to know that "Keith Ledger" had died at 28 -- it would have broken her heart.

There are a lot of things I am glad my mother has missed. Another horrible flooding of her tiny apartment, her sister's death last July, my cousin's suicide last year, now Heath Ledger's death. It sounds insane but I know she would have been a wreck, not only for the premature loss of an actor whose good looks and talent she loved and crushed on, but because it would be just another reminder of how deeply sad and wrong the world can seem -- I remember how she was when John Lennon died.

Since Everyone's Reading That NYT Piece about "Ethical Slaughter"

2008-01-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

Here's an interview demonstrating one of the many reasons why I love Isa Chandra Moskowitz, among other things.

Baggage

2008-01-17T11:58:00.001-05:00

I just crossed "clean purse" off my to do list and lordy lordy, look who's got 40 pounds of crap in her bag! FOUR lipsticks, (NARS Pigalle, Fire Down Below, and Napoli, plus Poppy King's Rouge Sinner and Rose Sinner (obscured), FOUR Rimmel Soft Kohl eyeliners (there is also one in my desk drawer) and a Laura Mercier concealer. A stitch counter, an unopened cable needle, my 2007 and 2008 datebooks, loose prenatal vitamin tablets (next to the pennies.) 2 checkbooks and 2 pairs of gloves.

I got a Wellesley Women for Hillary e-mail the other day. I think it's great if you want to support Hillary, if you support her positions on the issues: subsidizing major insurance companies with tax monies and FORCING people to buy into these subsidies, continuing participation NAFTA which erodes our economy and exploits the workforce of other countries; if you think that the Patriot Act is awesome and support the Homegrown Terroism Act HR 1955; if you'd like to stay in Iraq and keep the massive illegal embassy and have no problem with the massively corrupt "oil law" that was the whole reason for the invasion in the first place; if you are fine with military force against Iran; if you support nuclear power, and if you believe that a corporation has the same legal rights as a person, then by all means vote for Senator Clinton.

I was on some comment thread over at Pandagon a couple of days ago, where the subject was how shitty the US healthcare system is. In the thread, I posted "Vote For Kucinich in the primary then, he's the only one who supports universal healthcare." A commenter asked me, "why do you think this is?" and I told her that it was probably because he was the only one who didn't take money from Big Insurance or Big Pharma, as Clinton, Edwards, and Obama do. And in a thread of 100+ comments, there was no response. No. Fucking. Response on the one issue that every American cares about.

Honestly, the Democratic party in this country is a fucking joke -- if the "liberal" bloggers like AmericaBlog and DailyKos (do not fucking get me STARTED on the dishonest post by Kos saying that since Hillary was the only Dem on the primary ballot in Michigan that all registered Dems should turn out for Romney as some kind of STRATEGY -- First of all, Kucinich and Gravel were on the ballot, and second of all, why are we being encouraged to stoop to this shit?) would rather play at being pundits following a horse race than talk about issues and support the only real progressive, then they deserve what they get. They deserve the flaccid Congress that they have. It's just a fucking embarrassment. It's bad that people are so fucking stupid -- when the so-called SMART PEOPLE are even stupider, it's truly pathetic.

Construction

2008-01-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, soon to be the ugliest Scarano project to date. You can't see the bulldozers and pallets occupying the parking spaces on the street.

When I lived with my dear friend Hope on Kingsland Avenue, we would pass this corner every day on our way to the subway. When I was first dating/crushing on Trey, we would wave at his (now our!) house! One day I left a lipstick kiss on the doorjamb: in NARS' Gipsy.

Now that corner is on the way to -- ugh. Ugh, ugh. ugh.

This Is The Way The World Ends

2008-01-16T10:35:00.001-05:00

With the ugliest of all Scarano buildings being built on your block.

I have no words.

Cognitive Dissonance

2008-01-16T10:04:00.000-05:00

From the NYT, "Chef's New Goal: Looking Dinner In The Eye"

[...] More chefs are trying to bridge that gap. Tamara Murphy, the chef at Brasa in Seattle, took delivery of 11 freshly killed piglets last Friday, destined for dishes of pork belly with braised greens and paprika-rubbed roasted chops. “I don’t name them,” said Ms. Murphy, who wrote a weekly blog in 2006, chronicling the short lives of some of the piglets earmarked for her restaurant from Whistling Train Farm. “They are being raised for food, and there is a respectful distance I need to keep” she said. Ms. Murphy visited the piglets weekly, starting the day after their birth, and accompanied them to the slaughterhouse before serving them in a dinner that was called a Celebration of the Life of a Pig.
“The hardest part of the slaughter was the betrayal,” she said. “The pigs get in the trailer because they trust you, they get out of the trailer because they trust you, they go into the pen because they trust you.”

If this language were being used to describe human children instead of pigs, we would rightly decry the speaker as a sociopath. I call serious bullshit on Ms. Murphy's "respectful distance" that's a euphemism for "if I named the animals I was going to kill, I couldn't do it because it would make me feel horrible about the horrible thing I'm doing." There's no respect in treating a living animal like a "unit of production," even if it gets to run around and have fun before you "celebrate its life" by turning it into a tasty feast that you will shit out 36 hours later. How is that a celebration of life? It's a celebration of our capacity to rationalize fucking everything under the sun, that's what it is. It's a celebration of our ability to make all kinds of excuses for satisfying our hunger for a brief sensation. What kind of person weighs the crunch of bacon over the trust of a piglet? Ms. Murphy isn't starving, is she?

I mean, if a guy takes me out to dinner, and we see an awesome movie, and I have the time of my life, it's gotta be okay at the end of the evening if he pins me down, shoves his cock in my ass and near-painlessly slits my throat as he comes, right? I mean, I've had a good, free-range life, it was over in a second, and really, in the guy's defense, there's just nothing like the orgasm you get while fucking a dying chick in the ass! And I'm sure the guy is really honoring me, you know, in his heart! He's really grateful for what I've provided! I mean, I had a good life, right? And hey, it wasn't like I lived chained to the wall of a brothel for years before I was "processed," that's for sure! Thanks!

A Few Things

2008-01-07T10:18:00.000-05:00

Did I mention that I hate Evites? I feel so guilty typing this as many fine people I love dearly use them to tell me about fun events, but I just fucking hate them. I hate having to click on five things to see what I've been E-vited to. I hate the nagging reminders that I still haven't responded to "Fajita-Fest 97" or whatever it is. I guess since I have never sent one I don't appreciate the convenience and the organization of the Evite, but, just like I can't bear to read things in certain fonts, the minute an event is manifested in an Evite my desire to attend plummets.

Did I mention that I hate the way people talk about politics like it's a fucking football game, and do so in a tone of overweening self-congratulation for being so much more sophisticated than people who actually care about, like, what happens to people? Did I mention that I want to drop-kick people who talk about "electability"? Because those are the same kind of namby-pamby wannabe Beltway insider "Dems" who thought Kerry was the key to 2004 and think that Hillary Clinton will somehow get elected because she has a shitload of money. John Aravosis is a perfect example of this, a fawning bootlicker who has the audacity to consider Kucinich to be not a real candidate and then bitches and moans about what a useless pile-of-shit Congress we have now. Connect the dots, moron. Vote your fucking values.

I was not surprised that Huckabee got Iowa. OF COURSE HE DID! LOOK WHERE WE LIVE!! He might as well be President Applebee's! If Huckabee get's the GOP nomination, I will be laughing my ass off and crying and puking at the same time.

Also -- I had a very unsettling dream in which Dennis Kucinich made a pass at me in the magazine store in Grand Central Station. I don't know what to make of that, as in real life there is no way any man, least of all Dennis would two-time Elizabeth Kucinich. I'm still voting for him in the primary, of course, and I'll be flyering in Union Square this coming Saturday. Consider yourselves E-vited, okay?

Truly, madly, sadly,

L

Holiday Magic

2007-12-31T09:43:00.001-05:00

This Christmas Day was one of the nicest I've ever had, in that we spent it together, in our own house, under our own tree, alone. I love Trey's family, and I love mine, and last year's Christmas at my dad's place was an extra-nice one, especially because Trey and me and my sister and brother-in-law all have a great time together. But the bustle of the holidays is always super emotional and stressful for me -- the 9 hours of driving, the guilty feeling that I spend less money than other family members on gifts, the fact that I end up drinking more than I'd like, sleeping in strange beds. It's great, but it's stressful, and this year's Christmas was a little caesura -- maybe the only one we'll ever have, as next year we will probably be with my side of the family and going forward we may be three. Knowing this made our Christmas day feel rich and saturated to me.

We woke up and I made biscuits and gravy, and we opened presents really slowly, and called people on the phone, and watched shows about dogs. My sister Elle and I g-chatted throughout the day. Then around 1 Trey and I decided to head out for our usual geriatric walk to McCarren and the dog run, etc (although the book-seller on Metropolitan would be closed, and so we'd be unable to check the copies-of-Possession: copies-of-Atonement ratio.)

The day was sunny and silent and blue. Hand in hand we rounded the corner onto Herbert when Trey stopped short.

-- Tree!

And there in a low branch of the tree right in front of that tile warehouse was a hawk. A massive and very beautiful hawk with stippled feathers clutching his Christmas dinner, a freshly decapitated pigeon. We stared at him for a while, no one seemed to move, really.

I saw a hipster couple approaching us, and tried catching their eye while pointing upward towards the hawk's branch. They didn't notice me though, and I guess they startled the hawk who dropped the headless pigeon and flew to a tree next to the McGuiness/Humboldt exit ramp.

-- There's an enormous hawk over there, he dropped his pigeon! I said, but the hipster girl was not impressed and seemed grossed out by the pigeon carcass which, in her defense, was nasty. They walked off.

We hid behind a van so we could watch him return for his dinner, which he did after about 5 minutes. He seized the pigeon, and took off around the corner onto our street! We ran around the corner and Trey spotted the hawk perched high in a tree on the corner of Richardson atop his pigeon. We watched him a few minutes more, and continued on our walk.

Williamsburg is at it's finest when utterly fucking empty. There is a special quality to the quiet in places which are normally bustling -- I find the quiet of the countryside to be kind of disturbing, but the quiet of New York when everyone's gone is pure holiday magic.

When we returned to our street the hawk was still there -- we stared as pigeon feathers spiral-drifted downwards past the pairs of sneakers draped over the phone wires. A couple of our neighbors came out and we all watched for a time, until Trey and I got cold and went inside.

I made linguine arrabiata and we watched Casino Royale and drank a bottle of wine we'd been saving since our wedding. It was a perfect, perfect Christmas. Praise be to Ceiling Cat!!

(This picture is not a very good one, but it is of the hawk.)

I Think It Is Safe To Say That My Cooking Has Improved Since 1981

2007-12-31T09:36:00.001-05:00

Sol Invictus

2007-12-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

A few things:

The rubicon has been crossed! I have officially turned into my mother, and I am here to tell you, ladies, it is NOT SO BAD.

I know this happened because I found myself walking through Anthropologie and gave myself a little mental pat on the back because all of the totally cute ornaments would be ON SALE in a couple of weeks! Take that, Anthropologie! You can't fool me, you crafty bastards. Next year, that glass polar bear will be shining on MY TREE, and not for no EIGHTEEN DOLLARS.

The other things that seems to have, if not crossed the rubicon, be nudging a toe in that direction, are my boobs. Formerly, if I may say so, one of the top ten racks of all time, I looked at myself naked in the mirror yesterday and thought -- Well, that was fun while they lasted.

WTF? CNN is on, and the story is, I SHIT YOU NOT, "Where is Santa? Santa on NORAD's RADAR. www.noradsanta.org." Wow, I am so glad that Norad's back in the saddle, after being useless on 9-youknowwhat, but don't you worry! Norad's got a LOCK on Santa.

In other news, Trey and I have at last embraced the tenets of abstinence-only sex education, which means that we are now fucking SANS birth control. This is a very weird situation for me -- never have I experienced this level of ambivalence about anything -- wanting a baby very much at the same time being ACUTELY aware of the finitude of my time alone in my own body, and my time alone with Trey, our time alone together as just us. I think it is a good sign that at the end of the day, in my heart, I could take or leave being pregnant (or take or leave what I imagine being pregnant to be, to mean, to be a means.) If there is to be a Minou Langtry-Desolay, my divided heart will be more able to let her be exactly who she is, on her own terms. Ends in ourselves.

We are not going anywhere for Christmas and I cannot recommend this enough to anyone. We are going to see Trey's family in Queens tonight: I made eggplant rollatini to bring, al the gifts have been bought and made. And then tomorrow we are doing NOTHING! Staying at home under our tree, opening presents, eating brunch, walking around, enjoying the fact that no one is around, that we haven't had to travel. I haven't been this happy about Christmas in a very long time. Everything is perfect, everything is going to be just fine.

Merry Christmas and much love

L

My Moon, My Man

2007-12-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

I had a really lovely weekend, an honeymoon kind of weekend despite the fact that I crashed so hard Friday after a crazy work week the minutiae of which are too soul-crushingly boring to detail here.

Saturday morning we woke up to our cat on the bed chirruping. What distinguishes this scenario from perhaps at least half of all the other cat-occupied household in the universe is that our cats were feral four years ago when Trey rescued them from the snowy backyard, where they hid under the sofa 23.5/7, the .5 the rushing out and scarfing down of their food. So now that Twiggy hops up on the bed to chirrup and flop her butt in my face to cuddle, it's like Helen Keller tracing W-A-T-E-R under the pump for the very first time.

We proceed to go about our old-person Saturday routine: Dog run visit? (Bernese Mountain Dog today! YAYYYYYYY) Check. Farmer's market? Check. Go to Sunac for stuff like vital wheat gluten and oatmeal and peanut butter? Check. Napoli bakery? Not today. Oh shit, I forgot garlic! Rosemary Farm on Graham. Check! And into the apartment, into our little world and the very warm bed.

This is what I made: Celeriac soup with potatoes, sweet onion, chickpeas, collard greens and parsely. Roasted turnip fries coated with a pepper/cumin/mole powder/thyme mixture. And turned all the limp vegetables into homemade broth. We joked about it: Did you ever think we'd be making vegetable broth from scratch and drinking mint tea and watching animal shows in the cold? I love you. I love you. When the broth had cooled and was strained (had to use cut-in-half T-shirt from My Finance Company Employer in lieu of cheesecloth) I put it in an enormous Mason jar and covered the top with foil. A dirty, dirty hippie is what I have become! Later on: stir fried buckwheat soba with garlic, ginger, carrot, red cabbage, tossed with toasted cashews and sesame seeds. Nothing is more fun that not having to leave the house -- knowing that you can come up with something amazing, with what is right there in front of you, inside you, holding your hand, over and over again.

Little Song For Ashbloem

2007-12-12T09:24:00.000-05:00

Tri -lo-bite, lives under the sea!
He's older than you! He's older than me!
He doesn't have hands or pearly whites --
He doesn't need them, that's not how a Trilo-BITES!

You Were Right About The Stars. Each One Is A Setting Sun.

2007-12-06T20:49:00.000-05:00

Do you know what is maybe the new extra worst development in grieving?

Is when you can't remember what the initial stabbing sadness was like. Because to return to the primary gasping sadness is to be as viscerally close as you can to the person you will never see again, like shoving their pajamas in your face to smell their very last smell.

But now I am like a double mastectomy patient opening the mailbox to find a Victoria's Secret catalog. What does this have to do with me, now, in my taking-to-bed, barren and beyond state?

Oh, Mom. I know our lies were always wishes.

But what now?

What the sharp knife fuck now?

LOLZ!!1!!!1!

2007-12-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

We Can Haz Tree!

2007-11-26T10:53:00.001-05:00

I guess I needed to read this particular translation of the Bible to see the light!

The Prime Directive

2007-11-20T12:53:00.000-05:00

We have a stray-ish gentleman caller. He saunters into the backyard and asks for food which we dutifully proffer: We call him Black –And-White Kitty. He is handsome, vocal, uncollared. He seems increasingly hungry with each visit, and likes to roll around in front of the back door. Our cats are very indignant that we dare to acknowledge the existence of Black-And-White-Kitty, much less give him cans of food – last night when I fed him Twiggy seethed, ran around the room, and then glared at me, and it wasn’t until this morning that she stumbled on the bed to rub her face against mine.

Last Saturday was sunny – we had fed Black-And-White-Kitty and I was puttering around, when Trey exclaimed:

“Black-And-White-Kitty has a mouse!”

I ran to look – and yes, Black-And-White-Kitty HAD trapped and was "playing with" a mouse, a very tiny one employing that mouse maneuver of freezing, then making a (futile) break for it, only to feel another terrifying paw-clap on his little mouse back.

What was I supposed to do? Part of me was rooting for Black-And-White-Kitty: He HAD trapped his mouse, after all. But he had just eaten a can of Fancy Feast – he didn’t need to eat Mr. Mouse. But what if Mr. Mouse was hurt too badly to rescue? Then what? I asked Trey, he didn’t know what to tell me. Finally, I decided, fuck it, I’m going outside. Trey yelled “DON’T TOUCH THE MOUSE WITH YOUR HANDS.”

I got in between Black-And-White-Kitty and the mouse, who was hunched in a ball less than an inch and a half long. I scooped him up with two curved and dry leaves and held him in my palm. His tiny ears were translucent, his fur was mussed from being in Black-And-White-Kitty’s mouth. He quivered like a hummingbird’s heart. What was I going to do now? He had gone from being tortured by Black-And-White-Kitty to the palm of a giant who didn’t speak Mouse and could offer no reasurance. I realized that there was no place I could set him down to relax without Black-And-White-Kitty seeing me and returning to finish the job. Where could I put Mr. Mouse so he could recover in peace?

I returned to the kitchen.

“Trey, can you bring me that takeout container? And put some toilet paper in it?” He did, and I set Mr. Mouse and his leaves in the little plastic box. We marveled over his smallness and his shell ears and such a long tail for such a small mouse! He just shivered some more.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I said. “I didn’t want to leave him outside to get eaten again – so maybe he can just rest and get better and we can take him outside in the front? Can you bring me the top of the box before he – FUCK!!!”

Mr. Mouse sprang to life! and leapt out of the box in my hands and ran for freedom! Or rather, ran UNDER OUR REFRIDGERATOR!

“Oh, FUCK! Oh, NO! I’m sorry, Mr. Mouse!”

Black-And-White-Kitty was looking into the kitchen. Poor Mr. Mouse was now under the fridge, the fridge Twiggy stares at daily as if it were the television set from Poltergeist. I had made a terrible mistake. Unless Mr. Mouse could find his way out through the house, perhaps through the same route the occasional giant cockroach uses to enter our kitchen, I had consigned him to death by starvation or housecat. He was already probably hurt – now he would very well waste away in the darkness, like a mouse version of Adrian Brody in The Pianist.

Every day that week when we’d see Twiggy looking at the fridge, we’d ask her brightly if she had seen Mr. Mouse, and hoping he had gotten away.

The following Sunday I got up and staggered to the bathroom -- someone had left a hairball in the living room. A hairball with a very long tail.

Mr. Mouse lay on his side, at once rigid and deflated, his little feet clutching at nothing. I gathered his body up with a paper towel and laid him in the dying garden.