From covenant to contract.

Anybody want to help me elide the 150+ years between the Plymouth colony and Ben Franklin's Autobiography and see how American identity arose from this ellipsis? In six fucking pages?

Back to work!

pizza hut clones.

R made pizza hut clone breadsticks, dipping sauce, and meat lovers' pizza last night. They were all AWESOME except that the breadsticks were a little dry - you make a normal dough with oregano and garlic powder in it (we used part whole wheat flour too) and then make a topping out of garlic powder, parmesan, oregano, etc. and brush them with olive oil and then top with the shakey stuff - but it needed more olive oil. Probably be better to make a paste out of the olive oil and other stuff and press it on top.

But dayum the sauce was good - we make kickass marinara but pizza sauce always leaves something to be desired - I decided that what we're missing is the inauthenticity factor. So we used a large can of crushed tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste and oregano and italian seasoning (like, a shitload of them) and about a tablespoon of sugar...and garlic powder. And yep, that was it - it really did taste like pizza sauce instead of pasta sauce.

And then he covered it up in cheese and italian sausage and mushrooms and onions and pepperoni. Yum, yum. (Fuck you, arteriosclerosis.)

dag.

i'm real tired. I got a haircut this morning - it's a pretty good one, but I"m just stunningly plain these days. I can't be bothered to fancy up most days - and it's only PARTLY because I'm too punk rock to do that. We had to take the dog to the vet because he'd been throwing up all day. It was expensive. Then I cleaned the house. I'm over it already. MTM is the only things keeping me afloat. And I can't even take a NAP b/c the bed is covered in clean, yet unfolded laundry that I have to take care of before I can nap.

I want a citrus champagne cocktail, and to do nothing. Instead I think I'll have some tea and study.

Sigh.

Ha ha.

Fuck you, spam commenters (which are the only KIND of commenters, but that's to be expected.)

I've foiled your insincere flattery and unrelated links by turning on word verification! Ha ha!

out.

to dinner. Went to the Flying Burrito and had my favorite things: queso and chips, carne asado burrito with no beans, and mango margaritas. Yum.

I just did not FEEL like cooking tonight - and also, tomorrow's housecleaning day, and I'm just tired and whiny. But we rented about a billion movies (it was $33! But that did include an $8 late fee...we got all three discs of the second season of Mary Tyler Moore, my IDOL, and also Kinsey, and Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Fest.

p.s. now we're drunk.

accidentally. but DAYUM, the crab quiche was good. real good. i have to say, all modesty aside, that i am one of those born piecrust people. (cake, no. pie, hell yes.) all my piecrusts come out flaky and delicious.

and i'm going to bed REAL soon.

goodnight.

the office

there's a crabmeat quiche in the oven (lard and butter pastry prebaked in a deep souffle dish; filling of mushrooms [nearly past their prime] sliced and sauteed with shallots and a little white wine and a touch of cayenne, then about 1/3 cup cream, stirred into 8 oz [!] cream cheese and a whole bunch of raw scallions, green and white, chopped, and also 6 beated eggs.) Baking right now, smells delish. Perhaps we should have a salad to lighten things up? nah.

and wine. on number 2 so far, and our thrift store wine glasses are BIG. i feel better already. (don't forget i got up at 5 and was on the bus by 8 and didn't get home till 6 - so i deserve it, yes i do.)

notice that capitals fall by the wayside as the wine kicks in. also, i'm wearing a bandanna to keep my infinitely ANNOYING bangs out of my face.

the office is still very, very funny. i didn't *really* forget, but i forgot the extent of the funny. i'm married-may i still have a little crush on tim? cause i do.

enough. (except my little paper in the James seminar got an underlined GOOD and some comments about good writing and stuff, yay. you'd never know it from here. i love that guy.)

now, enough.

oh god.

up at 5 am to finish grading and finish my in-class shit for today. good thing I like the kids and they're trying so hard, or i might be grumpy right now.

Wait, I am grumpy right now. I haven't finished my readings for Gura OR for the James class. I *hate* not having the readings finished.

more coffee....

oh yeah...

I'm making a crabmeat quiche tonight, whenever I can be bothered to get off my ass. AND a piecrust. Because I"m like that.

A title.

Umph. Realized at 5 till 10:00 this morning that my chosen bus came at 10:15. So I had to showerbrushmyteethwashmyfaceshavemylegsgetdressedpackmybagsandGO really, really, fast. And I made it to the bus stop on the bing! of time, and then the bus was late.

And my flipflops gave me a blister, so I got off downtown and went and bought this new kind of bandaid just for blisters, and I have to say, I highly recommend them. They're all smooth and sleekety and they let the offending shoes slip right over the ouchy place instead of getting all rucked up and falling off, like normal bandaids. But of course, they're also 4.49 for 5 of them. So you make up your own mind about that.

Last night I made chicken vindaloo, which was very good, and not as spicy as one would think, although there was a fair amount of noseblowing. I've never made Indian food before, and I've never even really eaten Indian food before, but Robert says it was authentic and delish, and I concur on the delish part, at least. With brown (!) rice and plain whole milk yogurt. Nummers.

Grading papers. It's no fun. Well, it's a little fun. (you can be arbitrary if you WANT to, so you feel all virtuous that you're being fair even though you so hate that one kid.) I should be done with them by tomorrow's class.

Out.

Up at 5 am.

I hope my students thank me. I hope my presentation thanks me. I hope there's enough coffee for 2 more cups in the pot.

It's now 6, I'm taking the 7 am bus, and it damn well better not be dark anymore by the time I have to leave.

(It's my own fault for getting all caught up in the Julie/Julia Project blog yesterday. I could have slept in till 6:30 this morning if I hadn't.)

There was a time when I wouldn't have gone to BED yet.

Yesterday.

Well, Andrew came over for breakfast yesterday and I ended up cooking even though I had a presentation due. (grrr - can you tell?) We had oeufs en cocotte with rosemary and parmesan, cheese grits with a dash of cream, sausage, and toast. Mmmm.

Then we drank those addictive margaritas while Ken was over recording vocals later - and several Belgian beers - and then I went to a housewarming party at Leslie's. So today I feel a smidge crappy. My head still hurts (no coffee yesterday, for some reason) so I just drank a big cup of tea with no noticeable effect.

And I still have to finish my presentation. Maybe later I'll go to Thrift World with Jamie - that will cheer me up. (i THINK it will cheer me up.) Maybe I just need a nap and a shot of seratonin?

Blah?


P.S. Later - not so blah. Leftover ziti with ham and spinach and a couple of bites of Callebaut dark chocolate and three (!) blackberry muffins later, my hangover seems to have abated. (Also, I have done not jack shit productive but sit around and read the Julie/Julia project from the beginning all day. Fuck a presentation.)

Crab dip and draft workshops.

Because Wednesday was so busy and productive, of course Thursday was backlash day. I ended up spending more or less the entire day on the couch, watching MTM shows and drinking margaritas. (Not till after 5 o clock, of course.)

For dinner (yes, for dinner - it was meant to be an appetizer, but we ate it all and got full) we had crab dip. Oh my GOSH this was better than any crab dip I've had in a restaurant (and certainly better than that disgusting orange Cajun crab dip that Robert like from Harris Teeter.)

Here's how to attain the glory for your ownself. (I think I got this from recipezaar.)

8 oz cream cheese, softened
3 tsp heavy cream
2 tbs grated parmegiana (I used more)
1 tbs white wine
2 tbs diced red bell pepper (I left this out)
1 tbs diced roma tomato (I left this out)
2 tbs diced green onions (really, about 1/2 - 1/2 cup would be more appropriate)
1 tsp liquid crab boil (used powder b/c we had it)
1 tsp ground mustard
hot sauce
6 oz lump crabmeat, drained
2 tbs parmesan cheese for topping

Fold all ingredients together except the parmesan for the topping. Spread evenly into ovenproof baking dish. Microwave for 2 minutes on high, then transfer to oven and broil till top is slightly browned and bubbly.

Serve with thin toasted baguette slices (it would probably be really good if you buttered them with mild garlic butter beforehand, but we just used plain toasted ones.)

Oh man. Make it tonight.

(And hooray, R bought 2 tins of crabmeat and we only used one - what crabby patty delight will we have tonight? Stay tuned!)


(Oh yeah, the draft workshop went pretty well, except it took about twice as damn long as I thought it would. No more student model! Or much shorter student model!)

Superhubs!

My husband is the best. I walk in the door after a day that went like this: getting up at 6 am after a birthday party for our friend Bobby (went to bed at 12:30 last night), teaching, finishing a paper in the break, going to class and then directly to a seminar with no break in between, having a meeting, and then a long trudge back to the car.

He has cleaned the WHOLE house and dinner is ready to go into the oven and there's a nice cold Belgian beer waiting for me. I love that man.

The beer was...weird. Fruity, with an almost tannic aftertaste - like....cheap port? But good. Really interesting. And the pizza was whole wheat crust with olive oil glaze, fresh rosemary, heirloom tomatoes, and sheep's milk feta. Mmmm. I'm the luckiest.

Cocktails while writing.

Mmmmm. Drinking one of the Best Margaritas in the World (see above post) while writing a paper is a really good way to make the process just a little more painless. (Another good way is the new little digital voice recorder I just bought - I'm a much faster and more glib talker than writer, so it speeds up the prewriting/note-taking/thinking time considerably - plus, who wants to procrastinate when they have a new little electronic toy they could be playing with? Good on all counts!)

Back to my margarita. (GOD I love this desktop widget blog post thingy.)

Pizza

Last night we made margaritas (yum, yum; equal parts silver tequila, key lime juice, and grand marnier) and Robert made pizza.

He's the best husband in the world; I was totally bent out of shape b/c I had spent about 15 hours in the MRC working on a DVD clip project and something went awry in the compression process and the DVD looked like SHIT and hung up (I ended up having to take the DVDs to class and do lots of scrolling and rewinding. Very unprofessional and unimpressive use of technology in the classroom, and as far as I'm concerned technology in the classroom can suck it.

Anyway, he made whole-wheat crust and fresh basil and heirloom tomatoes and olive oil and roasted garlic (no sauce) and it was GOOD. And the margaritas made me feel better, and then I watched Time Bandits. (I will be paying for this indulgence later; I have a paper due Wednesday and a presentation Friday that I should have been working on but wasn't.)

And then we had chocolate ice cream, and went to bed. And Jamie had allergies and was sad, and Leslie was all buzzy from the margarita, and was doing everything very slowly and carefully.

The end.

Diggers' Soup and a bread experiment

Well, I'm trying out Lindy Toast's Digger Soup - it's simmering away merrily as we speak. Also making some bread - not recipe kind, just throw everything in and knead it real good kind. We had about 1/2 cup of orange juice left over so I threw that in as a kind of dough conditioner (citric acid, why not?) I'll post how that goes later. Boy, the house smells good though.

There's no feeling more comforting and virtuous than soup on the simmer and bread rising, is there?

Shepherd's Pie

Mmmm. Leftover chicken and roasted garlic mashed potatoes last night, plus a TON of red onion, garlic, a few carrots and peas, ground beef, rosemary, and some mushroom beef gravy, make a tasty fall-is-coming kind of meal.

(If you want to try it: browned ~ 3/4 lb of ground beef, minced a whole red onion, 1 carrot, and 5 cloves of garlic in the food processor with a BIG branch of rosemary from the plant out front. Then I pulsed in the beef (yes, it looked like dog food) and stirred in the peas and the gravy (plain roux with sliced mushrooms and beef broth). Put it in a deep casserole dish and topped with the leftover mashed potatoes, then baked it at 375 for 45 minutes. Now it's bubbly and crusty brown and ready to eat and BOY does it smell good in here.

Also, we made chocolate ice cream for dessert. TOTALLY decadent, considering that we didn't let the chocolate melt ALL the way in the cream, and so there are tiny flakes of plain chocolate in it. Dee-lish.

Resolutions implemented.

In the spirit of food-blogginess, we had last night for dinner grilled ribeyes ($9.99 a pound! Is this a result of rising gas prices? It was from Harris Teeter, people, not Whole Foods!). I made mashed red potatoes (they come out less puffy but it was all we had in the house - and we bought 10 lbs of them at Costco, so anything using up potatoes = a Good Thing) with the drippings from roasted chicken instead of butter, and also with lots of our enormous supply of roasted garlic. And also hot sauce. Robert LOVED them - I felt they might have needed some herb help, but I couldn't put my finger on what it would be. And then my favorite part, the spinach salad with a mustard and balsamic dressing, walnuts, sliced apples, and raisins. Mmmmm.

I made enough to take the salad for lunch today, along with the leftover chicken, artichoke, and olive pasta from 2 nights ago.

New resolutions

Now that I have a magic widget for this task, I resolve to keep up with this thing more better. And also, I resolve to make it into something of a food blog - I'm obsessed with them! My favorite tool of procrastinators is to read The Hungry Tiger and Toast and drool and copy/paste millions of recipes into my tidy little e-recipe program (freeware! Yum! That's its name!)

Um, my students are fine, I have a crush on William James (and also a plan to finish that damn paper - I'm going to combine it with a presentation in the James seminar) and also a teacher-crush on my 70 year old professor in that class (he's AWESOME, I will say no more) and my Gura class is pretty good too. I find the Puritans oddly charming - they're not nearly as grim as I had thought. They're actually sort of utopian, although political realities knocked that out of the box pretty quickly.

My students...well, they run the gamut from "awesome" (one kid, when asked what popular culture sells, said "ideas". Well, let's just go ahead and sign you up for some 300 level seminars, kid) to apathetic, disaffected, and maybe even kind of dumb. (not many of those, though. I think it's going to be good.)

But godDAMN, it takes a long time to do ANYTHING for that class. Like read/check the plagiarism exercises.

More later! I promised!!