August 28th, 2008
It got cold today, so I turned on the fireplace. Which made things nice and cosy… until I noticed there was a very cold draft moving through my living room. I am quite clever, and was able to trace the draft to two sources: the open kitchen window, and the open sliding glass door in the bedroom.
Apparently, I am not clever enough to avoid heating the entire out doors.
August 27th, 2008
This is not my recipe. It is from one of the best cook books ever, Splendid Soups by James Peterson. Splendid indeed! You should rush out and buy this book if you like soup. (It’s not vegetarian, in case you wondered.) Anyway, this soup is so easy to make and the results are almost shockingly good. Seriously. I would not lie to you. I took a lot of pictures but honestly, the whole works comes together in under forty minutes start to finish, and that includes time where you’re just twiddling your thumbs and watching TV while something simmers. Not bad for a home made soup.
First, may I introduce the fennel, of which one bulb is required:
He has a slightly licoricey taste. Here’s how you deal with him. First chop off his leafy stems. And cut him into quarters, cutting top to bottom. Here he is, just before the final quartering cut:
Notice the wedge shaped parts of his stem there at the bottom. That part isn’t nice to eat so we’re going to chop it off, as well as taking a shallow slice directly off the bottom. This destems him. The picture shows me making a very tricky and technically demanding angled slice to get the core/stem out:
Now he needs to be diced. Don’t fuss too much with this. The goal is to make little pieces that are soup-sized. I cut each quarter into thirds, vertically, and then cut across these for the dice:
Now you toss all those pieces into your pot. Next we will finely dice one medium sized white onion:
And that goes in the pot too. Next add a bouquet garni – basically just a bundle of herbs tied together with twine that will simmer in the pot and be removed before serving. You can use any herbs you like, though traditionally thyme, parsley, and a bay leaf are involved. Marjoram is the herb recommended by the author, and I used marjoram, bay, thyme, sage, rosemary, and parsley. Bundle them all up and tie it with some butcher’s twine, then toss it in the pot too.
Next we need to add 18 whole, peeled cloves of garlic. Seriously! When boiled without first being sauteed, garlic becomes very soft and mild. The soup will taste of garlic but it won’t be overwhelming. Trust me. Go for it. I used two whole cloves.
So now here is what your pot looks like:
It has a certain elegance, no?
Put the pot on the stove and add two litres of chicken stock, or in my case, faux chicken stock which involves no actual chickens.
Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for fifteen minutes covered. While that’s happening, chop up about four very red and ripe tomatoes, about two cups worth. I ended up with closer to three cups because I had a rogue tomato that needed chopping before it got too soft for any other use. The recipe says to peel and deseed them, but I gotta tell you, that just seems like a waste to me. You end up throwing out about a third of the volume of the tomato and I personally like the feel of the little seeds. So I left everything in. Which might also explain why I ended up with too much tomato:
And once the soup has simmered for fifteen minutes, you toss in the tomatoes and let it go for another ten minutes covered.
While that is cooking, strip some of the fuzzy bits off the fennel stalks and chop them up. Try for a tablespoon or so.
And while you’re at it, chop up about a quarter cup of parsley, very fine. I used flat leaf parsley which I prefer to the curly – the curly stuff feels yucky to me. And reminds me of bad diners.
It’s also time to prepare the beans. The recipe calls for properly cooking white beans from dry, but I can’t be bothered so I just use a can of precooked white kidney beans. The recipe calls for just one cup, but I also hate to waste half a can of beans since they come packaged in more than a cup, so I just use them all. When using canned beans, make sure to rinse them first. They come out of the can in a sort of sludgy broth that I have never tasted but looks gross. Here are the beans next to the tomatoes. Don’t worry about the continuity error.
Okay, so while you chopped fennel and parsley and rinsed beans, the tomatoes had their ten minutes to simmer in the soup. Now fish out the bouquet garni, which has outlived its usefulness and needs to go in the trash. Shake off any clinging onions or other bits.
Now add the beans:
And the parsley and fennel fuzz:
And some salt and pepper to taste. Stir. Behold!
Behold also the mess on my stove. Heh. Okay, now you just let the beans heat through for maybe five minutes, and serve with crusty bread and perhaps a nice salad. Hearty and delicious. Seriously delicious.
August 27th, 2008
I love having plants in the house. Recently I killed a cactus by overwatering (but seriously, it looked to dessicated and dry, surely it needed more water!), so today I went out to replace it. And came home with three new plants. One is a succulent, which is basically a type of cactus I figure, because it’s supposed to be let to dry and dies with overwatering. It’s the little fingery plant on the windowsill. The jade plant, on the table, has been around for a while. The other two plants, on the box and floor, are the other two new ones and much more my type of plant: green and leafy, easy to care for, hard to either over or underwater. In any case they form a very nice leafy composition by my fireplace and I am very pleased by them.
August 24th, 2008
“Vegans can eat chickens, right? I mean, I know they’re not plants – but they’re just so boring!”
August 23rd, 2008
Husband spotted this when he went for his morning shower today:
Can you see the weiner? Complete with its, shall we say, two friends? Here’s a close up:
Naturally I rushed to take a photo. Maybe I need a new category? Accidental weiners!
August 21st, 2008
So the other night Husband and I were walking down to Gastown to meet some friends for drinks when we saw a poster that caught our eye. In huge, bold letters it said “STOLEN” on top. Then there was a picture of a Boston Terrier. Then a description: “Stolen dog. Last seen wearing a pink Louis Vuitton collar, in the neighbourhood of X and Y streets. Has a tattoo on her belly that spells out ‘thug life.’ Reward: $5000. No questions asked.”
So what kind of person is the owner of this dog? This owner, who puts a vanity tattoo on their dog proclaiming their anti-society association with criminal lifestyles? Who wants someone to come forward but makes it clear that he believes the dog is STOLEN? Who puts expensive gear on a ridiculous looking dog? Is this owner, likely a person who uses their dog as a narcissistic extension of themselves and who is clearly hostile, the sort of person who actually will ask no questions? If they can afford such a huge reward, are they in fact an actual thug?
Husband and I cracked up over this sign. It’s quite interesting, the things people reveal (or portray) about themselves.
August 19th, 2008
In the past, my devoted readers have been valuable sources of recommendations for books which I can give as gifts and which the recipient will love. Just about every book I ever gave my brother was based on your advice, so you know I take you seriously. So, Internet, I turn to you once again for help, this time for me. I need some fiction! But I don’t know what to buy! So would you mind offering some advice on what I should check out?
Generally speaking, I like a more serious book. It has to be complicated enough and well written enough to be interesting, though not hard for hard’s sake, obviously. That’s just stupid. I like mysteries/crime genre, sci fi, and historical fiction. But not that historical fiction that’s all about women having epic romantic journeys – that stuff bores the tits off me. I don’t like fantasty, not even Tolkein (I know! Gasp!). I love stories (especially true ones) about man gettin’ whupped by nature (I own lots about journeys to Anarctica, for example). I am irrationally drawn to big books. I like a psychologically and/or politically complex story. And for god’s sake do not recommend The Da Vinci Code.
Here are some books I have loved:
- Everything by Neal Stephenson. And Kim Stanley Robinson.
-The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
-Shogun by James Clavell
-The Road by Cormac McCarthy
-Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel by Susanna Clarke
-The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
-The Children of Men by P.D. James
If that sparks any ideas, I’d love to hear them. All of the above books I listed came to me because of someone else’s recommendation – doesn’t it always seem like the best books fly under the radar? It’s like there’s a secret underground method of divining what’s worth reading.
August 17th, 2008
About a week ago I was walking to the gym and had to cross the street to avoid a guy who was standing on the sidewalk in front of my building peeing. Totally nonchalantly, not even trying to hide his penis. Actually maybe that was the point – to make sure his urinating penis was on full display to bourgeois oppressors like me. The worst part, I think, was that though he was pointing in the general direction of the raised flower beds our building maintains, he wasn’t peeing into them, but rather on the bench part where people sit to be close to the flowers. This transformed the act from one of convenience (there was no public toilet available, so I’ll use a bush) to one of sabotage (I’ll pee where people sit so they get my pee on them).
So anyway, here’s me, walking along and suddenly going, Holy shit, there’s some dude taking a pee onto my flower bench, like, fifteen feet away! I think I didn’t notice sooner because a) I’m not very observant and b) he was so clearly not making furtive motions that might have alerted me to the presence of shenanigans so I really thought nothing remarkable was going on. Until I saw the weiner. And then I made an abrupt ninety degree turn and continued down the street on the other side. A minute or so later, the guy cruised past me on his bike and stared at me for long enough that it became obvious he was getting some kind of thrill out of checking out the woman he peed in front of. I guess he was checking to see if I’d react somehow, and though inside I was totally grossed out, a little scared, and anxious, I have learned from my many similar experiences to play it cool so I just watched him right back, straight faced.
Normally I like my neighbourhood. It’s close to the skytrain and there’s a park across the street. But this is the fourth time something like this has happened to me in the last, oh, three months. I got flashed by a guy in a second story SRO, I saw a guy masturbating into a bush, and was lewdly propositioned by some skid on my way home from class (complete with explicit hand gestures made towards my crotch). And now this: the bench pee-er.
Living here is starting to freak me out.
There is a lot of freaky activity in my area but most of it blends into the background. I’m regularly panhandled to, regularly see homeless people sleeping here or there, smoking this or that, shouting at him or her. Once in a while I see an escort/stripper coming in or out of my building. Someone in here is dealing hard drugs and now and then I get to share the elevator with a junkie clutching a little package. These things have become part of the background and they don’t bug me. But the sexualized stuff? I can’t handle that, nor do I wish to learn.
I generally say that I don’t feel I’ve experienced discrimination for being a woman, and with regards to things like education and work opportunities I really think that’s true. I live in a nice bubble where I feel equal to anyone out there (in the philosophical sense – obviously people differ). But all it takes is one unwelcome sexualized encounter with a strange man to drive home to me that I am not, in fact, equal. I am, in fact, smaller, weaker, and incredibly vulnerable. My equality is predicated on the men in my environment choosing to not exercise their physical capacity to do violence, because god knows if they wanted to, I couldn’t stop it.
This is what makes sexual violence or the hint of it so frightening. As a woman, you are more or less entirely at the mercy of the potential offender to choose not to. So when I find myself on the sidewalk with someone who obviously does not give a shit about upsetting me, and actively works to upset me and there’s sexual content to the act, well, that makes me feel like packing my shit and moving to anyplace without a huge contingent of sexually misbehaving inhabitants. Unlike my neighbourhood. Which apparently is full of them.
Sigh. I don’t know where to go with this. I’ll just say that now, I’m a bit afraid of living here, which I never have been before. This incident with the peeing guy has somehow tipped the balance and I can’t laugh this one off. I keep thinking about it, especially when I’m getting ready to leave the apartment or getting off the skytrain for my walk home. We have a great apartment and we can’t afford to move… but yeah. I might start driving more to avoid being out in the neighbourhood quite so much.
August 16th, 2008
So last Christmas I managed to get my finger into my sewing machine and punched a hole straight through my index finder with it. It hurt like a bastard, scared the bejeesus out of me, and ended with a tetanus shot. I’ve been hesitant to sew since then, since I seem to have developed an irrational conviction that my sewing machine is merely lying in wait for the next opportunity to sew me. But today I got back on the horse! Here is the start of a quilt top I’m putting together. It’s a very simple pattern in soothing colours, intended for curling up on the couch and reading with:
Here is another view, this time on the Poang ottoman:
So it’s not very far along, but I’m rather pleased with it. Although it does occur to me that it’s really bland and vanilla colours, which is interested because my apartment is oatmeal coloured, which I often complain about. I used to blame my landlord for it based on the paint in this place, but maybe I have more to do with it than I’ve acknowledged. Hmm.