I was holding off, because up until today, Edwards was my guy, and it took me until this past weeked to get utterly disgusted with the whole Clinton machine, but this evening after work I stopped by my local make your own t-shirt store and orded my Barack Obama t-shirt. Delicate pink, with his victorious visage in gold, please.

I bought new nailpolish the other day. In English, the color is just "plum," and I'm no Francophile, but I'm pretty sure that the the botttle translates that in French to "Christmas Pudding." Um, what? That is awesome. I think that sums up the majority of the reasons why the French are fantastic and English speakers lacking.

Soups I've made over the last several weeks, where I got the recipe, how much I have left and how good they were:

Minestrone - The Joy of Cooking (75th Anniversary Edition)

Super complex and delicious, especially considering how low-fat this recipe is. I love to make this recipe when I have a refridgerator full of random vegetables getting elderly, because everything tastes good simmered in chicken broth with beans and pasta and bacon. This soup is all eaten and gone.

Corn Chowder - The New Basics

Ross and Erin left this cookbook behind when they got married and moved to Hotlanta. I am physically incapable of not rescuing abandoned books, and cabbaging onto this one has yielded many more tangible benefits than that copy of stories about Buddhist women languishing on my bookshelf. This recipe was pretty good; it included bacon, red peppers and lots of onion with the corn and milk, but didn't really thicken properly. I have three small containers of this soup in the freezer.

Bean and Pasta Soup - The New Basics

Tomato based soup full of beans and orzo, I added chicken breast to this soup. This got very thick and on the second day I put almost a quart of broth in it to thin it out and make it more "soupy." I had a tupperware full of this soup from the freezer for lunch today, and it was even more delcious than I remembered. There are still two frozen containers of this waiting for future lunches.

Curried Sweet Potato Chowder - Better Homes and Gardens

Here's the thing, I love the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook; it contains the best sugar cookie recipe I have ever tried, excellent recipes for dips, a whole section on slow cooker recipes, undsoweiter. It is my second favorite cookbook after The Joy of Cooking because of its broad sweep
(TJOC is broader; it has instructions on how to skin and cook a squirrel!) and reliability; I've never made a bad recipe from this cookbook. But now the caveat, it took a couple interesting recipes for me to realize how "midwest" this cookbook is. For example, last spring when we had a Kentucky Derby party I prepared a rootbeer pulled pork selection for our guests, and for the rootbeer sauce, the recipe told me to use a cup of "chile sauce." Now, to me, the urban international food conusmer that I am, "chile sauce" means something like Siracha or Choloula, so I tried to prepare a serving sauce with an entire cup of that, and, not surprisingly, it was mouth scaldingly inedible. I had never before heard of this "chile sauce" that lives in a bottle next to the A-1 and isn't spicy at all. I had a similar experience when making this curried sweet potato chowder. I was expecting a soupy savory pot of something that tasted not exatly like the panang I can get from Thai Tom, but at least vaguely reminiscent. No. Not at all. This soup was tasty, but milky and sweet, not savory and substantial. Nevertheless, I ate it all, knowing that the tuppers frozen would probably never be defrosted for lack of enthusiasm.

Sunday night on Masterpiece Theater they kicked off the public television opus known as "The Complete Jane Austen" with a production of Persuasion I had never seen before. Honestly, it wasn't a fantastic production; the 1995 version with Amanda Root as Anne Elliot is much truer to the text and a better representation of the novel, but I still loved it. I loved how they captured the tone and feeling of the book with a subtle, muted cinematography, I loved laying on my couch on a Sunday night knitting and watching some of my most beloved literary characters, and I loved the door opening wide open for me to talk about Jane Austen to everyone I know again.

And now, for the most magical thing I've seen all week: BOYFRIEND PARTY! It's not surprising that sassy Fitzwilliam and his wet t-shirt contest is leading the ranks, but it cracked me up that even Mr. Collins is deemed by some undefined subset of internet users as more desirable than George Wickham. Or maybe it's the bizarre 21st century "Hot or Not" qualitative judgement of the interactive page that baffles me. Either way, screw you, Hulk Hogan and American Gladiators, my Sunday nights just got way better.

I've gained many things personally from changing my habits and going to the gym almost every day, not the least of which are muscle tone, increased endurance and agility, many ridiculous choreographed step routines from my favorite aerobics class and the ability to undress and shower in a room full of strange women. This last one, however, has lead me to what I think is the most important lesson I've learned at the gym over the last 8 months; most tattoos are awful.

Since I was 14 years old, I've been dreaming of different ways to mark my body in ways that would express my true essence to the world. When I was 15, the very coolest thing I could possibly imagine was to have my name tattooed on my back in orange flame writing. Uh, yeah. Seriously. Lucky for me, I had the kind of sensible and non-permissive mother who wouldn't even let me get my belly button piecered, so the matter of permanent body art was a non-starter. Let me repeat, orange flame writing. Mom, thank you. So, when I came to my senses roughly six months later, I was quick to grasp that taste is an evolving and ever changing concept, and ink scarred into your epidermis is not. Forward from there, I would envision typewriters on my forearm, and hearts on my abdomen, and victorian pen drawings of animals and chandeliers, always knowing that it probably wouldn't happen, and that was probably for the best.

The last several months have taught me that even if your tattoo is something deeply personal and important and a song to your dead cat or something, it still probably looks dumb when you're toweling off in a locker room full of strangers.

As evidence, here is a list of the terrible tattoos I've seen on women at my gym:
1. Pooh Bear, the size of a silver dollar.
2. Countless, seriously, countless Asian symbols littering the flesh of lily-white girls who I am positive do not speak any Asian languages.
3. The ubiquitous "sweet-tribal-tramp-stamp." Except I didn't need to join the gym to see this one, because I've been to college.
4. A zebra head? Just the head? Really?
5. Truly unattractive flowers. I can understand why you might want a tattoo of a pretty flower, but why an ugly, unrealistic one?

Project Runway:
Ah, the requisite challenge wherein designers must make garments out of materials that should never be used for garments. I sort of wonder why the producers don’t abandon this genre of challenge, because the majority of designers just go the easy route making clothing out of whatever textile type materials they can scrounge. Last night was more of the same in this respect, with only Jillian using actual food products from the Hershey’s store. Christian seemed to be on board with the concept and spirit of the challenge by covering his dress with the brown inner wrappers of Reese’s, glistening with chocolate sweat. Everyone else tore apart pillows and larger pieces of Hershey’s branded merchandise to make dresses (Speaking of which, that store totally stressed me out with the insane, giant stuffed candy paraphernalia; who needs/wants that?! I will never ever go in that store).

In terms of favorite designers, six episodes in, I’m finally forming opinions and attachments (except for Ricky, I hated him and his stupid mesh hats from practically the first time I glimpsed him). Jillian wasn’t early favorite for me, but has been slowly winning me over. I thought I would get sick of smirky Christian with his silly hair, but so far I’m charmed by his sass. I’m glad creepy Steven finally left in the last episode, and I was bored by Elisa’s whole ‘I’m so free-spirited and unique’ thing. I can't decide if I really like Kit as a designer or if I just like her hair. I’m still livid that they kept awful Ricky over Chris a few episodes ago, but luckily that mistake was rectified by Jack’s untimely departure. I can tell that Rami is already a favorite to go all the way, but I’m not convinced his designs are really that interesting.

Okay, dicuss.

It looks like we're just standing awkwardly, but really that is me ice skating with my sister, Diana, and my brother, George.

Other Christmas highlights included:
A retro kitten apron from my mom
Many many Tom & Jerrys
Rhymnocerous & Hiphopapotamus
Crab on Christmas Eve
Drinking beer and falling asleep on Tamara's couch
Etcetera

I’m back in Seattle after 10 truly lovely days in the Bay Area. I imagine that someday I will find a better way to articulate the hard spot in my throat and the empty, prickly sensation in my stomach that I get when I’m driving to the airport in San Francisco. I guess that that someday will probably coincide with the point in my life when I start feeling less torn between Seattle and the Bay Area. I keep thinking that all my problems will be fixed when I align my life in a way that facilitates me moving back to San Francisco, but at least when I throw a party here in Seattle, people show up. Even knowing that, I miss being close to my family in a terribly acute way; I saw them so much this fall that waiting until June for my brother’s college graduation seems interminable.

On my last day in town yesterday, my family and I walked downtown to see Juno with Angelica. As we intersected Magnolia we ran into Eric, who taught Boys’ PE at my grade school walking with his mother and new baby daughter. He was the first person to tell me that life and boys and the universe wouldn’t suck so much once I was out of junior high, or at least he was the first person to tell me that who I thought was credible and might actually know something about it. Even though his parents live on the same block as my parents, I hadn’t seen him in probably ten years, and I’ve frequently reflected on the advice he gave to me as an awkward and miserable 8th grader. I wish we would have exchanged email addresses or something.

In this, the last day of 2007, I feel like I should do some sort of philosophical round-up or re-cap, and maybe I will eventually, but for now I feel exceptionally lucky to be onward and upward of where I was at this point last year, or even worse, this time two years ago. Geographical problems aside, I feel on-track and on-task. And tomorrow I am going to plant tulips.

Ill-advised things that I have bought because they had pictures of mountain goats on the label but in reality were not as cool as actual mountain goats and, parenthetically,the reasons why they were poor choices:
1. A warm 12 pack of Schmidt Ice (Duh, Schmidt Ice isn’t even good cold).
2. A tin of organic mints made by Paul Newman (Chalky texture, suspicious grey hue).

Things I have bought with mountain goats on the label that were exactly as awesome as actual mountain goats:
1. Several six packs of Scapegoat Ale. Hoppy and delicious.
2. Multiple cds and tickets to events where John Darnielle played music (full disclosure, no pictoral representations of mountain goats involved).

Sunday night Kim invited me to Heron's fish-painting party at The Center for Wooden Boats. Fish painting, which I didn't know about before, is a Japanese tradition by which fish patterns are transferred to paper or textile with, well, a fish and paint. The evening started when Kim and I met at three different grocery stores looking for likely appearing fish. We finally settled on some gutted trout and two bottles of sake and headed down to the lake. There were several people there who were not only very nice, but also suspiciously good at making fish prints. I was very jealous of their red and coral and teal colored tilapia outlines on deep navy swathes of cotton. I, on the other hand, named my fish "glitter fish" and ruined a perfectly good t-shirt.

Also, line of the night;
Person one whose name I don't remember: "Who the hell thought of putting paint on a fish?"
Person two: "Someone who thought, 'Man, hippies are going to love this.'"

This weekend, I saw friends and cleaned my apartment and cooked. I also watched a lot of tv. The breakdown is reflected below.

Movies I watched and will return to Netflix today:
1. The Lookout - As excellent as the reviews promised.
2. Bad Santa (Badder Santa Version) - I queued this up because my favorite review of Fred Claus went something like this; "If this movie were actually funny, it would have been Bad Santa. But it wasn't, it was Fred Claus."
3. Radio On - I'm not sure why I had this movie sent to me, but the best part was the ten minute version of "Heroes" that played during the credits where David Bowie sang in German. The film had a phenomenal soundtrack, but I just couldn't watch it. I guess I'm not alienated enough from society yet.

Movies I watched independent of my Netflix subscription:
1. Atonement - Kim took me as her guest to the SIFF screening of this film. It was easily one of the best I've seen all year. Even better than Superbad. It was so good I even stopped minding all the close-ups of Keira Knightly looking beautiful and pensive and chipmunky.
2. The Departed - First time I'd seen it since watching it in the theater last winter. Still good. The cast? Still suspiciously attractive.
3. The last 45 minutes of She's All That - No comment.
4. The middle 80 minutes of Stick It - Even worse than I possibly could have imagined. Actually, no, because in my imagination, this movie was funny and cheesy and a little bit clever, a latter day Bring It On. In real life, it was just mean spirited and clunky and painfully not funny.
5. Say Anything - Still not as good as good as Better Off Dead, except for the boom-box scene.

If anyone genuinely wants the recipe Cody used to make Scotch Eggs last weekend, you probably are an eclectic enough cook to just go out and buy your own copy of The Joy of Cooking. If for some crazy reason you think that is not a good use of your money or resources (independent of your specific feelings about Scotch Eggs, which I am still skeptical of), then we probably won't be friends, but I'll give you the recipe anyway.

Also, we went to a party, and now our cooking is famous. (I made the guacamole, my lap is in the picture.)

Last month I took an extremely horrible cooking class for French Pastries with Julia and Anne. Technically, it wasn’t painful or intellectually insulting to be there, but I couldn’t help but feel cheated that I was paying a lot of money for two sessions of essentially watching a woman make mediocre desserts in the common room of a depressing apartment complex in Everett. I hate Everett so much. Looking at the class fee, I had mistakenly assumed that we were paying for an experience that involved a commercial kitchen with plenty of counter-space for everyone to try their hand at lemon custard and crème brulee, when in fact, the seven of us were huddled around an island taking notes on a flaky pastry recipe that, frankly, was vastly inferior to the recipe my grandmother passed along to me years ago. But the real rub was revealed ninety minutes into the first class period when the teacher decided she had done enough teaching for one day and that we would have a better time watching a Rick Steves video about Paris. She claimed she’d seen it and that it was a really good way to learn about French food, but she was clearly lying because aside from the video beginning when Mr. Steves emerges from a Parisian butcher shop, there was not a single mention of food or technique. Not to outdo herself in ineptitude, the following week she was done cooking again before the allotted two hours had elapsed, so we watched the video again. From the beginning. Again. The same video. And her crème brulee didn’t set up and her cream puffs tasted pasty. Thank god there was wine.

In the end, I’m walking away from that experience over $80 poorer, with no recipes I would reprise to impress my friends and family and having wasted 5 hours of my life that I’ll never get back.

pumpkin photos, as promised! (thanks, Julia!)

My pretend boyfriend, pumpkin-face Harry Potter. He looked creepy before the googly eyes; googly eyes are the second best craft invention after glitter.

Nice boys carving pumpkins.

Robot-face pumpkin.



The slimy insides of that white pumpkin led directly to Cody not being interested in carving anything on it. He was also inspired by Seth, (red blur to the right) who purchased a large green gourd instead of a pumpkin and cut a hole in the top and called it a beer cozy.

Last night I went to an information session on the Master of Science in Information Studies program at UW, had the most delicious pumpkin beer at Big Time Brewery, ate Swimming Rama with prawns at Thai Tom and went to go see Jens Lekman in Fremont. All amazing things. Jens, oh, Jens, even with my overdeveloped English major vocabulary I don't know enough synonyms for the word "magical" to do that show justice. Jens was traveling with a giant band of attractive Swedish girls with hip haircuts and orchestral instruments and Floyd's Swedish doppelganger dj-ing from a laptop. Jens sang and told anecdotes and danced and played guitar and keyboards and I swooned and swooned and swooned over and over again. Towards the beginning, it looked like Cody and I were going to be stuck standing near a group of awful talkers, but the crowd shifted around and instead we were right next to an adorable girl that friendly and under five feet. The girl and her friends seemed charmed that we were worried about her being able to see the stage, and we danced together, and she told me about the time when she and Jens walked around an art museum in Chicago together. I imagine it was just like in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (True story, I have never been to Chicago and have absolutely no idea which or how many art museums are there, so as far as I'm concerned, they were listening to instrumental Smith's melodies and looking at Seurat paintings.) The best stage banter came after Jens had played a solo-version of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" but omitting all the choruses; he said that he liked silly songs like that, but that he hated the chorus, and that he also hated Chevy Chase's stupid face. Total magic.

Other highlights of the past week include a crisp fall walk in the arboretum with Megan, the illustrious Toby Shuster, finally seeing the Pipettes with Elisa.

Tonight I'm making my first bolognese sauce from scratch, improvised from Mark Bittman's instructions. I doubled the recipe, increased the meat, and used turkey and lamb with beef instead of ground pork. I substitute ground turkey for most recipes, and I had some frozen ground lamb that I figured would give the sauce a little more of a Greek twist.

Hello, November!

Cody and I made the most adorable Halloween pumpkins ever this year. And by “we” I mean that Cody got bored after scooping the guts out of his pumpkin and disappeared to drink beer while I got to carve two pumpkins. (Multitasking is one of my strong suits, I can drink beer and carve pumpkins at the same time.)

We were invited to Megan’s BYOP(umpkin) party and left our house ten minutes before the party started to go buy pumpkins and walk to her apartment. Safeway had a meager selection of gourds out in front of the store including some large misshapen orange pumpkins in tall cardboard bins, round pumpkins too small to make anything cool out of, and white pumpkins. We pulled almost every pumpkin out of the bin looking for a handsome one, took turns climbing into the bins trying to retrieve Cody’s cell phone when it fell out of his pocket and plummeted to the bottom of the pumpkin crevasse of hell, and finally decided on one tall orange pumpkin and one smaller white one. I had purposely picked out a tall pumpkin to fulfill my artistic vision; a pumpkin-face Harry Potter. Cody picked the white pumpkin because he was mad at the orange pumpkins for being in a bin that was laborious to fish a lost cell phone out of.

Pumpkin-face Harry Potter turned out exactly as well as I had hoped with the aid of some googly eyes and emergency nails when I cut the pieces too close together. The white pumpkin was carved with a robot with a heart for a chest. Hopefully pictures will be forthcoming. Hopefully I’ll just buy a new digital camera soon, because I’m tired of refreshing Flickr every half hour hoping that someone will have uploaded pictures of me or my craft projects.

We brought our pumpkins home and they looked even more charming when they were lit up in the hallway approaching the front door. For a whole week I lit the votive candles when I got home from work and make excuses to walk outside and admire the pumpkins in their full glory. Friday night tragedy struck when our landlord, Bessie, informed us via note on the door and that open flames were forbidden in the apartment complex, which seemed over the top, but I’d hate to be that girl that started the fire that wasn’t covered by the fire insurance and that consumed the worldly possessions of everyone else in the building (the majority of whom I dislike or have never met; beside the point). Saturday morning I ran into Bessie outside raking leaves and apologized for violating the candle rule, and that woman is the most amazing ever because she seemed genuinely sad when she said that she really liked our pumpkins, but her daughter had insisted that she enforce fire code.

I guess we could get some electric lights or something, but with Halloween two days away now it hardly seems worth it. Alas.