The New Castle Theatre Company was founded by a handful of recent William Penn High School graduates, all of whom were eager to start the next chapter in their lives, yet not quite ready to let go of senior year. Many of us were drama club brats, though some were dragged in by friends, significant others, and sheer randomness. A lot of us had taken classes with Mrs. Arlene Bowman, someone with whom I lost touch years and years ago, but who I still remember quite fondly. [EDIT: Mrs. Bowman is on Facebook! I'm pretty sure Ebbie recommended that she friend me. So fun to reconnect with teachers who have been influential in my life!]
So, yeah. It was the summer of 1993. The previous school year, my best friend Candace and I had written a one-act play called DETENTION HALL, which we'd entered into the First Annual Delaware Theatre Company's Young Playwrights Competition. Our play was one of three winners chosen that year. The inspiration had been the theme of jealousy, as inspired by the DTC's performance of AMADEUS. It was a definite homage to THE BREAKFAST CLUB, but it was also a tribute to my massive, largely unrequited crush on Jason Shannon. In fact, Candace and I had cribbed some of the dialog from diary entries I'd written about said crush. As part of the competition, the play - along with those written by the other winners - were staged at the DTC in the spring of 1992. Afterward, we'd celebrated at Denny's, which is pretty much where most of our celebrations took place back then. Later that night, I'd make out with someone else I had a massive crush on, and though he ended up breaking my heart not once but twice over the next six months, at least this crush wasn't entirely unrequited. (Although, if we take into account what he wrote in my senior yearbook, the thing with Jason wasn't really either.)
Anyway, the following year, Wendy and I wrote another one-act play. This one was called LEADER OF THE PACK, which was an homage to the song of the same name (in fact, we even had this lip-synching routine to the original song that was performed at the end of the play). This one was staged at WPHS, by the drama club, the spring before we graduated. During this time, my good friends Ebbie and Colin and I had been talking about forming a community theater company, and I think we'd even scouted locations in Old New Castle. The day we graduated, after we'd gotten our diplomas and were all sort of milling about the gym, I said something to Mrs. Bowman about wanting to put on an evening of one-acts that summer, and that's what lit our collective fire.
To round out DETENTION HALL and LEADER OF THE PACK, I wrote another one-act play about a high school couple who tries to stay together during their first year of college but fails in their efforts. I'm totally blanking on the name of this play, but Emily Hogan and Rafael Avila played the couple in question. LEADER OF THE PACK starred Becky Schmidt, who dragged her boyfriend at the time, Andrew Charnik, into the NCTE mix. Andrew had been in a lot of my classes, but I'd never really gotten to know him before that summer. He's now one of my oldest and dearest friends. As for DETENTION HALL, this kid with 90210 hair played the boy lead (I'm blanking on his name, but remember the picture that appeared in the News Journal's article about the production - was he a Jason, too?), and Candy took over the role of Leah. I directed all three, Wendy staged managed, and we somehow managed to convince a bunch of people to come along for the ride.
There were twice weekly rehearsals, a lot of which took place in someone's basement - was it Shannon's? Shannon was playing Leah at some point, I think, before Candy took over. It's funny; that play took over my entire summer, but some of the details have gotten so fuzzy. Like, I know Tammy Baker played one of the girls in LEADER OF THE PACK, and Shawn Rairigh was involved, too, but I can't remember if he acted that summer or just ran the sound board. Ebbie had a role, but Colin didn't, and I don't know why. Marie-laure, the French exchange student staying with Candy's family that summer, helped out, too, and I vaguely remember arguing with Shawn over speaker wire, but I have no context for that whatsoever.
Something I do remember very clearly was how much drama took place behind the scenes. We'd rented out the Arden Gild Hall, and they'd had this pastural backdrop from a previous performance. That didn't work for us, so we painted the flats black - and then got in trouble for painting over the faux meadow. The guy who took care of the Hall got drunk one day and yelled at us for interrupting his siesta. Rafael's girlfriend wasn't thrilled that he was spending so much time working on the play, and I got so stressed out pulling all of the elements together that my mother was ready to kill me.
But somehow, we pulled it off. We put on a real, honest-to-goodness play. After our final performance, we broke into the pool near the Gild Hall, and took an illicit swim in our t-shirts and underthings. I remember Tammy whispering to me, "That French girl keeps putting her butt on the jets!"
NCTC put on three more productions, although by the second year we moved to what would become our new home at the Chapel Street Theatre in Newark. People came, and people went, but there was a core group of us who stayed involved every summer: me, Candy, Raf, Andrew, Becky, Shawn. The second year, we staged STASIS, written as a traditional three-act play and inspired by a prank Ebbie played on me and my friends senior year. Brandon got involved then, and ended up writing most of the material performed in our final production.
There are so many crazy things that happened over those summers, like the huge falling out Wendy and I had during the second year, when she decided I'd gotten too bossy and threw a chair at my head the night before we opened. I can't blame her; I threw a stapler at Shawn the following summer because he was drinking beer out of a paper bag with Andrew's little sister Sarah present (she was, like, nine at the time) and being generally incorrigible. The third year, a woman who worked with my mom took a role in one of our one-acts, and there was a particularly scandalous tryst that broke out between her, Shawn, and this girl Heather during our cast party. Earlier that summer, during rehearsals, I decided Raf wasn't making himself vulnerable enough during a monologue and made him practice it on stage wearing nothing but his boxers. The final year, Becky played a bird and I played a dog in a little scene Brandon wrote that we scored with the Muppets' "Mahna-Mahna." Angela DiMeglio got involved with set design, I'm pretty sure April's family did the programs and tickets at least one year, and oh, man. The memories. So many memories.
What really trips me out is how much our little productions affected our lives in big, big ways. Like, Wendy later met her husband Casey while volunteering at Chapel Street during the regular season. Or, like, the name of our third-year production was CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE - which I'd later recycle for my second novel. Stuff like that.
We talked about having a reunion at one point, but that never quite came together. Maybe three years from now, to mark our 20th Anniversary. I've often thought of trying to convince the old gang to put on one last show, if only because despite all of the stress and heartache, those summer plays mark some of the best times in my late adolescent life. Whether or not that ever happens, who's to say? Andrew's living in Tennessee, Raf's in Baltimore, and I don't think I've even seen Brandon since 2000, though I recently had lunch with his younger sister Matthia, who is still like family no matter how many years have gone by.
There are a lot of NCTC'ers on Facebook, and if you're reading this, I just want you to know: I love and treasure you all so much. Thank you for being part of something so special. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
*Technically, I'm posting this at 1 a.m. on the 14th, but the 13th was our official "birthday."
- feeling:
nostalgic
Oddly enough, I just called my mother to verify the changes she made to the original recipe, and she says it's the low-carb bake mix that turned her off to this recipe. She said if she made it again today, she'd use flour, cornstarch, or a mixture of flour and Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) for the coating. Methinks one of us will be making this again soon!
Mahi-Mahi with Spicy Peanut Sauce (a.k.a. "Peanut Butter Mahi-Mahi")
INGREDIENTS:
¼ cup low-carb bake mix (or flour, or cornstarch, or Panko for a crunchy alternative, or a mix of any and all of the above)
½ tsp. salt
2 lbs. mahi-mahi fillets, cut into 6 equal-sized portions (roughly 5 oz.) <-- I love to buy the individually frozen fillets at Shoprite or BJs
3 tbsp. peanut or canola oil, divided
3 scallions, thinly sliced
2 tsp. grated fresh ginger (TIP: fresh ginger freezes well and keeps for a really long time, and frozen ginger grates more easily!)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1-2 tsp. hot chili paste (or more, if you like your mouth on FIRE)
½ tsp. ground cumin
2 tbsp. reduced-sodium soy sauce
½ cup natural peanut butter (no sugar added)
2 packets sugar substitute (Splenda preferred)
PREPARATION:
Heat oven to 250 degrees.
Mix low-carb bake mix (or flour, cornstarch, Panko, etc.) and salt on a plate. Press fish pieces into mixture; tap off excess.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Cook fish, in batches, four minutes per side until golden brown and cooked through. Transfer to oven to keep warm.
Wipe skillet; add remaining tablespoon of oil. Cook scallions for three minutes, until softened. Add ginger, garlic, chili paste, and cumin. Cook, stirring, one minute.
Add soy sauce, peanut butter, sugar substitute and 2 tablespoons water to skillet. Mix until smooth.
Return fish and accumulated juices to skillet. Reduce heat to low; cook two minutes for flavors to blend.
[EDIT: Found peanut flour tonight at Trader Joe's. Read online that it has the same fine consistency as cornstarch, so I think when I make this recipe next, I'll use it to dust the fish before pan frying. YUM!]
I've never, in all my years as a renter or a homeowner, had to hire an exterminator. I only have vague recollections of one or two exterminators coming to any of the apartments my mom and I lived in when I was a kid. Exterminators were people you saw on commercials, or in movies with gimongous cockroaches that refused to vacate the premises. Exterminators weren't people I needed to know.
Until this summer.
I tried everything I could. Scratch that: WE did. Because Joe was my partner in this. He did more than his fair share. He's the one who started by filling spray bottles with the vinegar and water mix. He cut down the Weed that Won't Die, like, a dozen times. He's the head of Grounds Maintenance here, because grass is my biggest allergen and every single time I mow the lawn I get sick. (It's true! I once had a friend who couldn't do dishes because the skin on her hands was so sensitive that she was allergic to dish soap AND rubber gloves. So someone always had to do dishes for her. It *sounds* convenient, but it's really not!) But yeah, he really was by my side during the Battle of the Ants.
So we started out with the vinegar and water stuff. We tried a bleach and water mixture. At one point, I had half the kitchen covered in cinnamon, trying to create barriers so that I could make dinner without having to deal with ants. It was during this period that we solicited opinions via Facebook and learned about Terro. Terro reduced our ant population significantly, but once we removed the Terro baits (after two and a half weeks - the box says two should be more than enough), a stubborn faction kept on returning. So we bought two dozen conventional traps and set them up in the kitchen and bathroom (more on this in a bit). This was when we discovered the holes near the poorly installed cabinets - holes I tried to shim with cinnamon sticks (since ants hate cinnamon). When both of those measures failed to produce results, we decided to give in and hire an exterminator. In the interim, I set out more Terro baits to at least localize the ant population so I could, you know, cook in my kitchen.
Friday, at 1:30 p.m., the exterminator arrived. He works for Maguire Professional Pest Control, based out of Claymont, DE. My mom uses him and recommended his company. We were not disappointed. The exterminator was in and out in less than twenty minutes, and at least five of those was spent telling us about his bloodhound and how everyone loves his dog and he hates little dogs (Skitty was out of earshot, thankfully) and yeah.
But what I really wanted to write about was some of the wisdom I've acquired about ants, so that some of you may benefit from my experience:
1. Ants seek out water. This is why you find them in around the sink and in the bathroom.
2. Ants seek out food - any food. This is why, when you're having an ant problem, you must adopt a No Crumb Left Behind policy. You must also rinse your dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (though, ahem, I think when you have an older dishwasher, like we do, you should ALWAYS rinse the dishes) and you must never EVER leave dirty dishes in the sink. This provides a buffet for your ants, and will keep them strong and healthy.
3. Terro is great ... if you don't have a massive ant population. Joe calls it ant crack, because they will descend on your liquid dots of death as if they were possessed. But if you have an out-of-control ant population, this won't do the trick.
4. Traditional ant traps are pretty much useless, unless your ant "problem" is so small it doesn't even warrant a trip through Terro Land. But if you're stuck on using them, go with Maxforce FC Ant Bait Stations. The exterminator put a couple of these by the sink after spraying, and before the ant population went under, they flocked to these suckers like they were made of Terro.
5. Controlling ant trails largely depends on taking charge of your greenery. And by this, I mean everything from the decorative bushes out front to the grass out back. The exterminator (and why do I feel like capitalizing the "E" - because he was an ant Terminator?) advised us to keep all "vegetation" at least a foot from the foundation of the house. He also told us, surprisingly, NOT to mulch our beds, because the mulch would provide another place for the ants to set up shop. As for the Weed that Won't Die, he told us to treat it with Roundup. We haven't tried it yet, because Joe literally poured bleach on this thing and it's still blowing in the breeze, green and lush and healthy. But I think Roundup will be in our future, and I'll report back then.
6. If you live in Delaware or the tri-state area, you're pretty much screwed when it comes to ants. Multiple professional sources told me that ants have been particularly bad in our area for the past three summers, but this was one of the worst ever. This may be true for other parts of the country as well, but I live here, so here is what I know.
7. The ants are not part of a global conspiracy. I floated this theory after talking with the first exterminator I considered hiring. Business had been slow, he said, because of the economy, and he'd had to lay a bunch of people off. I joked to Joe that maybe the pest control community was breeding a kind of super ant that didn't respond to anything you could purchase in a grocery store or at Home Depot so that we'd be forced to use their services. He said, "You know, I'd actually thought of that ..." (I was kidding. He may not have been.)
8. If you have to call in the big guns, ask them to use Termidor. Read the page I linked to, and you'll see how insidious this stuff is. But, like I said, we tried going the environmentally friendly route, and the environment wasn't friendly back to us. The good news is that everything he sprayed inside and outside of the house was pet safe the minute it dried. So we only had to keep Scout out of the kitchen, bathroom, and backyard for a couple of hours.
And there you have it.
When Joe and I woke up Saturday morning, there were literally maybe five ants scurrying around the kitchen, trying to find some sort of safe haven. We went out of town, and when we got back Sunday evening, the ants were gone. ENTIRELY GONE. There are still Terro baits sitting next to traditional baits, but there is not an ant to be found in the entire house.
I, for one, am relieved.
- feeling:
thankful
I know, I know - SHOCKER!
My inspiration for the experiment comes, in part, from Laurie Halse Anderson's WFMAD Challenge. In one post, she included a photo that outlined her "Happy and Sane Writing Schedule." I immediately thought, "Huh. Maybe I should try that."
So last week, I printed out this template. I blocked in all of the regular stuff, like my Monday night Combat Aqua class, the creative writing class I teach at the Y on Wednesday nights, all of the appointments I already had scheduled in Outlook. Then I marked off chunks for my freelance project, blogging/Facebooking, answering email, and phone calls. I even set aside time for things like snack breaks.
Those of you who are self-employed, even in part, know how difficult creating a schedule like this can be. Especially in this day and age, when there are so many electronic distractions. But I've gotten into the habit of scheduling my workouts ahead of time, and on Sunday nights I plan out our meals for the week, based on A) what we have in the house, B) what's on sale, and C) how much time I'll have each night to cook. This helps eliminate the OH MY GOD, I HAVE TO TEACH CLASS IN AN HOUR AND HAVE NOTHING FOR DINNER SO WE BETTER PICK UP A BAGEL EN ROUTE syndrome, which is bad from both nutritional and financial standpoints.
It's been working well, for the most part. So I'm hoping that by applying the same principles to everything from editing projects to studying Spanish, I'll be able to fit in more "want to" items with all of the "have to" ones.
I'd love to elaborate on this further, but I see that it's time for me to be working on a manuscript.
More tomorrow ....
- feeling:
productive
Lara's Garden Vegetable Soup
INGREDIENTS
1 T olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
Heavy pinch of red pepper flake
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ of a 6 oz. can tomato paste
6 cups low-sodium broth or stock (vegetable, chicken, or beef)
1/2 pound frozen green beans
1 15.5 oz. can chick peas (or your bean of choice)
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes (I prefer fire roasted)
1/2 cabbage, shredded into ½” wide strips like noodles
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
1 large zucchini, diced
Fresh grated parmesan cheese (optional)
PREPARATION
Pour olive oil into Dutch oven (or large soup pot) and heat on medium-high. Add the carrots, celery, and onion. Sprinkle a little bit of kosher salt over the vegetables to help them release their moisture and cook until soft, about five minutes.
Add garlic, red pepper flake, and cook another minute, stirring constantly so that garlic won’t burn. Stir in the tomato paste and cook off for another minute or so before adding the dried spices to the mix. If you rub the spices between your hands as you add them, you’ll help release their oils.
Pour in broth or stock and turn heat up to high. Add green beans, chick peas, and diced tomatoes. When soup has come to a boil, reduce the heat to medium. Wilt the cabbage into the soup in handfuls and cover. Let simmer for 15-30 minutes before adding the zucchini (if you’re using frozen zucchini, you should add in with the green beans). Cook for another 10 minutes, or until all of the vegetables are tender.
Top with a sprinkle of parmesan (optional) and enjoy!
Variations:
* Substitute kale or other cheap, hearty, nutrient-rich green for cabbage
* Add in any other non-starchy vegetables you have on hand, like red bell pepper, yellow squash, or mushrooms.
* If you like spicy food, like we do, you can add a few splashes of hot pepper sauce to the mix.
TIP: I usually make a double batch of this and freeze half. That means I need 12 cups of broth or stock. If I don't have any homemade on hand, I'll use a box of good-quality stock and then substitute the rest of the liquid with straight-up water. You honestly can't taste the difference!
BONUS RECIPE: Homemade Stock
If you make a lot of soups/stews like I do, you probably already take advantage of your grocery store's sales on broth or stock. (Seriously, when good quality chicken stock goes on sale, I buy as many as the store will let me! Same goes for canned tomatoes.) But here's a cheap, relatively easy way to make stock out of food that would otherwise go to waste.
Joe and I cook with mushrooms a lot, especially Baby Bellas, which we can get very cheaply at the Newark Farmer's Market. When we use them in a recipe, we take the stems off before wiping the dirt off the caps. Then we throw the stems into a quart-sized zip top bag and put it in the freezer. We'll keep adding stems until the bag is full.
When carrots and celery are going limp, we cut them into 3-inch chunks and put those in a quart-sized freezer bags, too. There are a lot of veggies you can do this with, especially when a recipe calls for half of a bell pepper or onion and you don't have any other use for them any time soon. Cloves of garlic freeze well, too, as do some fresh herbs (basil and rosemary, for example, freeze well, even though their color turns).
If you make roasted chicken or bone-in chicken breasts, or purchase a rotisserie chicken at the market, you can throw the carcass(es) into a gallon-sized freezer bag. These are great in homemade stock. Same goes for turkey.
The recipe part: well, there really isn't one. Basically, when you notice your frozen bits and pieces are taking up too much space, you know it's time to make stock. Rinse everything off really well. Throw it into a big pot and cover with water. If you have fresh herbs, you can throw those in, too, or use dried. I do like to put in half a dozen whole peppercorns, and I love adding a whole yellow onion, skin on (it gives the broth a lovely color and you get the same flavor from it).
Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. When the broth looks/smells great (usually around an hour later - you may have to add more water if it's simmering at too high a temp), turn it off. Strain it through a fine-mesh sieve or a colander lined with cheesecloth. When it's cooled, you can pour some of it into quart-sized or gallon-sized zip top bags, lay them on a cookie sheet, and put them in the freezer. They'll stack like envelopes!
So I'm going to make myself do it.
Why should I have to MAKE myself, you ask? I'm a writer, aren't I?
Um. Sort of.
Here's the thing: writing is an awful lot like exercise. You need to do it regularly, or you're not going to get any visible results. I could go to the gym once every two weeks, and I might work up a sweat on a really good day, but that's not going to help me shed pounds or build muscle. And if I haven't lifted weights for, like, three months, and then suddenly try to do 190 lbs. on the leg press ... OUCH. Or if I haven't done any cardio for half a year, and then try to run a 5k, I'm going to tear something. (Not that I run. I was never a runner, even as a little kid. Short legs on a fat kid makes running not so easy. Also kind of ugly. But that's a post for another day.)
I tell my writing students that they need to have DISCIPLINE. I tell them that I understand they may not be able to write every single day, but they should, at the very least, set aside three times a week to do so. I tell them to make goals for themselves, either "I will write for an hour" or "I will write five pages" or "I will write one chapter."
I tell them all of these things, and then promptly ignore my own advice.
Kind of like Dr. Phil advising people about diets, yes?
In grad school, I was pretty good about writing regularly. I wrote two nights a week that I didn't have classes and one weekend day for at least four hours. This is likely why I wrote two novels in three years and sold both within four months of each other.
I've never been great with discipline. I'm a hard worker, yes, but discipline? Not so much. Rigorous schedules scare me. I don't have a set bed time, I don't have a set wake time, and I don't have a set writing time.
But that's going to change. Because right now, I've got the meal planning thing down. I've got the gym/workout schedule down. (You should see my triceps. Holy cow, they are banging!) I'm purging crap, exterminating ants, and getting my metaphorical isht together.
So it's the perfect time for this challenge. It's the perfect time to get my toe back into the water, and maybe make some progress on the novel I've been playing with since March.
The time for playing is OVER. Time for work.
- feeling: optimistic
And for those of you on Facebook, you can see the video and a really cool trailer for Holly Cupala's TELL ME A SECRET here.
- feeling:
amused
So I caved. The exterminator arrives Wednesday.
Here's the good part: I decided to take this an opportunity to declutter my kitchen using the strategy Alton Brown outlines in his very excellent GEAR FOR YOUR KITCHEN. Basically, what Alton says is to take every pot, every pan, every knife, every gadget, and every tool out of the kitchen. This will begin Phase I, which lasts for sixty days. Every time you retrieve one of the removed items, you're allowed to store it in the kitchen again. This should tell you pretty quickly what you use on a regular basis.
At the end of the sixty days, you enter Phase II. Everything that hasn't been allowed back into the kitchen must then be carefully evaluated. A lot of stuff should be easy to toss (my prime example: we have three of the exact same type of whisk. Why do we need three? I do not know). But other stuff you might have to ponder for a while. Like, I have two vintage fondue pots that I refuse to part with, even though I haven't made fondue since ... wow, since 2001?
As you begin Phase II, everything that doesn't get tossed or donated gets a piece of masking tape on it. The taped items are on a six-month probation. If you use the item within six months, the tape comes off and it gets to stay. I can already tell you some of the items that will make the Phase II cut, like my Crock Pot, which I use far more in the winter than the summer, and the stand mixer, which we use when we bake but don't necessarily pull out weekly. Items that survive Phase II become official gear for your kitchen, with one caveat: if you don't use the item once a year, it's got to go. Alton is VERY clear about this. He says he makes fresh pasta at least once a year for just that reason - so he can keep his pasta maker.
Joe was not exactly enthused about this plan. He said, "You're taking the measuring cups out? Why? They're just going to come right back in here." Sure, but we have three sets of measuring cups. Which ones do we want to keep? I did make a couple of exceptions: my Furi knife block stayed put, with all of its knives intact, even though there are a couple I rarely use. But they're a set, and they already had storage, so I didn't see why I should get rid of the meat fork thingy just because I've used it three times total. I also didn't remove things like my salt pig and pepper grinder, because I use those every single time I cook, and it would've been wasted effort.
But everything else got the heave ho, much to Joe's chagrin. I can't blame him for being upset; in the past week, I made him purge clothes he's had since college, socks without mates, and spare parts from the computer graveyard. He's also cringed through me chucking the toys Scout never plays with, which reduced the dog toy population by at least half. His grandfather was a hoarder, and if I didn't keep Joe in check, he'd be one, too.
My mom is an infamous hoarder, though not bad enough to end up on a TV show about it. She hates getting rid of anything, and feels supremely proud of herself every time a single tchotchke ends up in someone else's hands. I went the opposite direction; because my mom never let me get rid of my stuff as a kid, I became very unsentimental about a lot of things, and routinely donate huge bags/boxes to the Cancer Federation.
Even so, I have acquired an enormous amount of STUFF. I feel burdened by it. Worse, my house is a total sty because of it. There are things EVERYWHERE. And okay, there are a few categories of stuff that I do hoard, like craft supplies. I could open a store with the amount of craft supplies I own, yet I rarely make crafts (in part because my craft room still isn't finished. But it's almost there. Almost). Books are another biggie, though in recent years I've started donating those to libraries and public schools, because really, am I ever going to reread FEELING SORRY FOR CELIA ever again? It was a cute book, I enjoyed it, and now I need to move on.
But the worst - the absolute worst - is all of the PAPER. Bins of receipts. Boxes of handouts. Warranties, instruction manuals, paid bills, etc., etc. And this doesn't include all of the programs, ticket stubs, and other memorabilia I hang on to because I intend to put them in scrapbooks some day.
Oh, yeah. It's bad. Real bad.
The last time I had a workable filing system, it was 2001. Which means I now have tax forms old enough to put through the shredder. "Create Filing System" is almost always at the top of my on-going To Do list. It's ironic, too, because I am fantastic at creating filing systems for other people. Even Joe - I've created two or three that account for every scrap of paper possible. But when it comes to MY stuff? Not so much.
So, we're purging. And we'll continue to purge until there are enough stuff-free surfaces that we can hire someone to come in and clean our house once a month. That's the carrot on the stick: purge everything, and we will never scrub the bathroom floor again.
I have a little side project that's related to this purging, but I think I'm going to wait a week or two to unveil it. It's going to be good, though. I promise.
- feeling:
determined
Some fun and semi-related facts:
1. The first time I ever ate at Red Robin, I was visiting a friend in Seattle. I had the Royal Red Robin Burger, the one topped with an egg. Have you ever had one of these? It is OMG good.
2. Joe's and my first date was at a Red Robin, because it was one of the only places open after 10 p.m. on a Sunday night. It wasn't this Red Robin, though, but the one in Bethlehem.
3. Two of my favorite writer friends, Pam Smallcomb and Laura Bowers, used to meet up regularly at the Red Robin in Townsend, MD, because it was halfway between where they lived in MD and where I am in DE.
4. My friend Steph is a Diamond State Roller Girl. Her husband, Emmett, is their house DJ. After they got involved, I found out that this guy I went to college with, Steve, is part of the DSRG. Steve figures heavily into my Greg Brady story, but when Em relayed that to him, Steve didn't remember what he was talking about.
5. Yesterday I found out that Matthia, who for years was like my unofficial little sister and who inspired (in part) Lucy from CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, knows Emmett, because they both worked at the same company for a year or so.
And this, folks, is what it's like to be a Delawarean. We're all separated by, like, one or two degrees max.
ANYWAY, come out and support the Roller Girls. They're really cool! And you'll get a tasty burger to boot.
Tonight I took the tomatoes and jalapenos, added minced red onion, minced garlic, a tablespoon of olive oil, some chipotle Tabasco, the juice of a lemon, and a ton of fresh cilantro (we love our cilantro!). It's marinating in the fridge, but early samplings have been tasty. VERY tasty.
Anyway, thanks to Wendy's abundance, I've had to come up with recipes using lots of zucchini and squash. Here are a couple of favorites, plus tips at the end. Enjoy!
Zucchini and Corn Medley
INGREDIENTS
1 Tbsp. olive oil
4 slices bacon, chopped into lardons*
1 small onion, chopped
1 heavy pinch of red pepper flake
2 cups zucchini, chopped
1 1/2 cups fresh corn kernels
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (Pepper Jack would work, too)
PREPARATION
In a large, deep skillet, heat olive oil on medium high. Add bacon and cook until evenly brown and mostly crisp. Remove bacon with slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.
Add onion and red pepper flake to hot bacon drippings and sauté for one to two minutes before adding the zucchini and corn. Continue to sauté until the vegetables are tender but still crisp, about ten minutes.
Season with salt and pepper, then spoon into a bowl. Add cheese and bacon and toss until the cheese starts to melt. Serve warm; leftovers can be served cold and still taste fantastic.
* We buy the Oscar Mayer center cut bacon at BJs and keep it in the freezer. The packaging is re-sealable, which is awesome. When we need bacon for a recipe like this, we put the frozen slab on a chopping board and cut off strips that are about ½ to ¾ inch wide (cutting on the short side). This makes the poor man’s lardon. If you heat the olive oil in the pan ahead of time, the frozen lardon won’t mess with the pan’s heat too much. Easy peasy!
Chocolate Zucchini Cake (a.k.a. Salad Cake)
INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup canola oil
2 cups grated, skin-on zucchini
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup milk (lowfat is fine)
1 Tbsp. white vinegar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
4 Tbsp. unsweetened baking cocoa
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup milk chocolate chips, divided
1/4 cup chopped pecans
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour the bottom of 9x13" baking pan and set aside.
Put shredded zucchini in a small bowl and sprinkle with salt. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together applesauce, oil, and sugar. Add in eggs, vanilla, milk, and vinegar and beat until blended.
Sift together both flours, baking soda, cocoa, and cinnamon. Add to the wet mixture in thirds, mixing on low speed until each is fully incorporated.
Gently squeeze excess moisture from zucchini and add to the bowl, folding it in by hand. Fold in ½ cup of chocolate chips.
Pour mixture into prepared pan and top with chopped pecans and the remaining half cup of chocolate chips. Bake for 40 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly touched. Enjoy warm and refrigerate leftovers for later.
MORE USES FOR ZUCCHINI:
1. Wendy sent me this recipe, which is a zucchini bread that uses curry powder. We haven't had a chance to make it yet, but it's on the docket for this coming week. She says it's fantastic, and from looking at the ingredients, I'm inclined to agree.
2. At her 4th of July BBQ, Wendy made burgers that charred on the outside but stayed super moist on the inside. Her secret? Throwing some zucchini and mushroom stems into the food processor and then adding them to the meat. It stretches the protein and makes a fantastic burger to boot!
3. On a similar note, Joe and I recently made Bobby Flay's Roasted Vegetable Meatloaf with Balsamic Glaze, which uses zucchini. He says to finely dice it, but we grated it by hand. My mistake was adding grated yellow squash as well. The meatloaf was so moist, it didn't stay loaf-y. I said it looked more like meat cake, whereas Joe likened it to meat paste. We served this over the Zucchini and Corn Medley and it was OMG good. Special tip: if you like spicy things, as we do, substitute Heinz's Spicy Ketchup for the regular kind. Or, spice up your own ketchup. SO GOOD.
4. I've been making double batches of my take on Weight Watchers' Zero Points Garden Vegetable Soup, which I'll post soon. The recipe calls for one large, diced zucchini. The rest of the ingredients are wicked cheap, especially if you make your own broth/stock, as we do from time to time (will post our method for this, too, soon). When I made the soup on Sunday, I substituted yellow squash for the zucchini and it tasted just as good.
5. Later this week, I'll be making Danny Boome's Eggplant Lasagna, which we've made before and absolutely adore. It uses sliced, roasted eggplant in place of noodles. But I'm pretty sure you could substitute sliced, roasted zucchini and it would be just as tasty.
JOE:
ME: Snookie? From JERSEY SHORE?
JOE: Say what now?
ME: Never mind.
Sweet, indeed!
One thing Google Alerts has been telling me is that more people are blogging about SWEET LIFE this summer. I thought maybe because it's a summery book in general, but maybe it's because of the inclusion on the list? My editor at Random House (who's sadly no longer with Random House) once told me that nominations were, from a sales standpoint, more important than ending up an official selection. According to her, librarians and school media specialists often use current nomination lists for their book orders. (Then again, maybe she told me this as a consolation of sorts, since I've been nominated for the BBYA list but never made the final cut.)
On a mostly unrelated note, I met with Z for the second time last night. He's 10, and he wants to be a writer. His stuff is really kind of crazy advanced for a 10-year-old, and he's completely precocious (in a good way). I loaned him David Lubar's HIDDEN TALENTS, because I think it will appeal to his sense of humor and appreciation for misfits. We also talked about the WEENIE books (which made him giggle, because that's what 10-year-old boys do when you say the word "weenie"). Anyway, I've never worked closely with someone his age/grade level, but I'm really enjoying it! It's made me wonder if I might be good teaching middle school language arts. This has come up a few times recently, because Wendy discovered that her daughter "read" both THE OUTSIDERS and THE PIGMAN in the most unusal way. See, her middle school doesn't have enough copies to go around, so the teachers assign each group a section and then they present the chapter to their classmates. THEY NEVER READ THE BOOKS START TO FINISH. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, it has both of us incensed.
On my never-ending to-do list, I have a note to see what I can do to maybe help these teachers get more copies of books. Is that even the real problem? Or is it that the state tests require them to cover too much material in not enough time? Or is it that the classrooms are stuffed with too many kids? I feel like I should know these things. I feel like there should be something I can do to help.
Any DE teachers who read this - please feel free to leave comments or email me directly. I'm serious about wanting to help!
As of today, I have crossed off the following:
25. Take more ballroom dance classes
27. Learn Spanish
29. Watch the entire BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA series on DVD
30. Take an art class
Four. Items.
To be fair, I'm very close to crossing off #35, which was to see all of the 2009 Best Picture nominees. I've watched every one except AN EDUCATION. I'm also close to crossing off #20, which called for me to try five new restaurants in Delaware (so far we've hit three). And #6 (finish craft room) is literally a week or two away from completion.
But this means that I need to get moving on some other list items, and soon.
In other news, I haven't done a Summer Fitness Challenge update in a while, and here's why: I've completely lost track of who has done what and when. Also, there are a bunch of people who just don't check in. And since I didn't require anyone to put their $10 in up front, I'm not even sure if the people who are still competing have a crack at the $120 we thought we'd have at the end of the competition.
This is largely my fault, since I didn't have a good tracking system in place when the competition started. And I should've made everyone put their money in at the start. AND I should've been more on top of the e-mail reminders and such.
There are larger problems, though, like the point system. It confuses everyone and there's no way of checking the math unless people submit their starting weights and week-to-week weight loss.
So I'm at a bit of a loss. Trying to unravel the mess that has become the Summer Fitness Challenge is daunting. It requires me to weed through a ton of e-mails, set up a tracking system, ask people about their money, etc. It was on the list for today, but it's already 4:30 p.m. as I type this and I have to leave for my last Spanish class in two hours. Between now and then I have to practice telling time - son las cuatro y triente nueve ahora - AND make some dinner.
Can I get off the hamster wheel yet?
- feeling:
drained
- feeling: grateful
Okay, so my "little boy" is a four-and-a-half-year-old schnoodle named Scout, and his "dentist" is really the vet. Only instead of getting a normal, six-month wellness exam and a vaccination or two, this time Skitty needs a teeth cleaning. The teeth cleaning requires the vet to put him under anesthesia - the same goes for all dogs who get teeth cleanings - and the whole production leaves me feeling just a wee bit nauseated.
Let me explain.
I got Scout about a month after I moved into my house. When I was house hunting, one of my main criteria was that it have a fenced-in backyard. Becoming a pet parent was almost as important to me as becoming a home owner. I knew I wanted my future pet child to have a big playground of his own, and I knew that having a yard with a fence would make it easier to housebreak him. (The kicker, of course, is that when I first got Skitty, he was a pound and a half, and so small he could fit through the slim opening between the fence and the gate. He couldn't really go leash-free in the yard until he was almost six months old.)
The first 90 days as Scout's mom almost broke me. He was trouble from the start. I knew he was going to be small, so I'd bought him one of those too-precious dog carrier handbag things. He tried to chew through it immediately, so it got returned. I tried to crate train him, but he'd throw his little body against the door of it and yelp until I let him out. This is a dog that was born in someone's home, mind you, and not some abusive puppy mill. I'd spent months researching breeders (and before I get any lectures from those of you who support adoption, I am seriously allergic to cats and moderately allergic to dogs, so I had to get a hypoallergenic puppy - and I'm still mildly allergic to his saliva), and I had chosen one who raised her pups with love. She'd warned me that Scout was "inquisitive" and "energetic." He was the first of his litter to climb out of the whelping box, which is partially how he got his name (I'd been leaning toward Oliver prior to that).
Anyway, eight-week-old Scout was a terror. He had razor-sharp teeth and he chewed on me constantly. I kept thinking of Gregory Maguire's descriptions of Elphaba in WICKED. Yes, it was that bad. He wasn't one of those dogs who consumed shoes or tore up furniture, but he loved making a chew toy out of me. He was tiny and he was fast, and I couldn't so much as take the trash out unless I had him tucked under one arm because whenever the door was open he'd make a break for it. I spent the first couple of months chasing him around the neighborhood, though he never got more than a yard or two away before I'd catch him.
He wasn't the first dog I'd owned, and he wasn't even the first dog I trained. I even enrolled him in a puppy class at PetSmart, where he stole the hearts of every other pet parent in the class. Even so, Scout could never master loose-leash walking, and he still struggles with "wait" and "stay." At one point, I was convinced that he couldn't be trained, period. I remember sitting in the vet's office, half in tears, telling him that Scout and I weren't on the same team, and that he was so crazy I thought he might need to be medicated. The doctor talked me through some behavioral modification techniques and assured me that Scout would mellow with age.
By month four, I'd gotten Scout to stop biting me, and I'd gotten better about blocking his access to escape routes. At his next check up, the doctor said he was like a completely different dog, and I seemed like a completely different owner. "We're on the same page now," I told him. But it was still hard.
When Scout was almost six months old, his then-vet, Dr. Lindsay, scheduled him for neutering. The procedure was going to be more invasive than I'd hoped due to an undescended testicle. And he was still pretty small, weighing in at a little over five pounds, if I remember correctly. I dropped him off at the vet's office in the morning, then headed into UD to teach my classes. When I got back to my office, I had a voice mail from the vet. It started with, "I wanted you to know that everything is okay now" - emphasis on the now - "but ..."
My heart stopped at the "but."
Turns out that Scout was one of a handful of dogs that don't react well to this standard anesthetic protocol, and they almost - almost - lost him. I started crying even as Dr. Lindsay told me that Scout was doing well and taking in IV fluids, and that they could use an entirely different protocol next time. Until then, she said, I needed to fatten him up a bit.
So I started feeding him scrambled eggs, chunks of low-sodium hot dogs, bits of cheese and lots of tomatoes. Even so, the second time he went in for the neutering procedure, I was a wreck. He'd definitely bulked up some, and Dr. Lindsay was confident that he was strong enough to get through the procedure fine. But from the time I dropped him off to the time I got that call that yes, he was alive and well and fully neutered, I was in full-on panic mode.
And of course he really was fine, though his hyper-energy post-surgery lead to him tearing a couple of stitches, at which point they did have me give him sedatives (to prevent further tearing). And of course, the older he got, the less manic he was, and now he's almost like a normal dog, with maybe a couple of spazzy episodes a day. Mostly him jumping from floor to couch to floor to ottoman, racing from me to Joe to his stuffed chicken (few toys survive Skitty's "love," but this little orange chicken Sarah Dessen sent him a couple of years ago is still intact - he adores it) and back again. Sometimes just watching him tires me out.
So tomorrow he goes in for this teeth cleaning, which I know is important to his overall health and well being even though it scares the living crap out of me. I love my Skittypants like he's my child, because in some ways, that's exactly what he is. Even when Joe and I start our human family eventually, I know Scout will always be my little boy. There are few things that make me laugh more than one of his well-timed snorts, or when Joe and I start riffing about how if we don't give him a cookie, he's going to shank us with his paw (quoth Joe: "He's the Dogfather, and he demands his cut"). There are few things I love more than when he sinks into my lap and lets out one of those deep, contented sighs.
Even as I type this, I can't help but look over at him snuggled up against a polka dot pillow, his legs resting on top of the giant Bobo my mom gave him recently because Jake and Daphne never took to it. His little furry chest rises and falls in a slow, soothing way, and when I wrap up this post and head off to sleep, I know he'll be right at my heels, eager to take his place between the window and my head.
Tomorrow will be rough, and I've been beating back a mild panic all day. Logically, I know that Scout is a strong, healthy dog. Logically, I know that nothing bad will happen to my baby. It's a routine teeth cleaning. The vet knows which anethesia to avoid.
And yet.
Emotionally I know I won't be calm until I get that call that he's alive, awake, and in recovery. Emotionally, I know that I won't feel fully okay until I can bring him back home, pull him on my lap, and pet him until I get that deep contented sigh.
Yeah.
- feeling:
anxious
In high school, my best friend and across-the-street neighbor, Candace, and I liked to throw parties. Lots of them. With themes. And Candace's dad, who was a long-distance truck driver, drove an egg truck for a while, so we always had a lot of eggs. And by "we" I don't mean just Candace's family; I mean that Mr. Weir used to give us eggs, like, all of the time.
My interest in cooking started with eggs, which I would scramble for myself at a very young age. In high school, I started reading my mother's battered copy of THE JOY OF COOKING, and from time to time I'd try to make stuff. There were disasters - like the chicken curry I made using her 10-year-old curry powder that was orangey-yellow and tasted like crap - and there were successes, like my deviled eggs. Deviled eggs, which I'd make for just about every theme party Candy and I threw, not to mention holidays and whatever festive occasion deviled eggs were appropriate for.
Then came my high school graduation party. My mother has her own recipe for deviled eggs, and even though I don't remember the exact details we ended up having a deviled egg off. My friends were smart enough not to choose sides, though secretly my mom and I both declared ourselves the victors. When I moved out, my mom gave me an old glass deviled egg plate and paperback copies of THE JOY OF COOKING (Vols. I and II). We've had an on-going deviled egg war ever since.
So. Fourth of July, cookout at Wendy's. I mention that I'm bringing my (in)famous deviled eggs, and my Nana Sherry asks me for the recipe, for inclusion in the family cookbook. I've never actually written out my recipe for deviled eggs, because the process for me is largely intuitive. I use the same set of ingredients but never really pay attention to amounts. However, since she requested the recipe, I tried to write one out using a dozen hard boiled eggs. Below, you'll find the results of that experiment. Whether or not you like my eggs ... well, that's all just a matter of taste.
And Mom? If you're reading, I challenge you to find your recipe and post it or send it to me to post here. The deviled egg off continues!
Lara’s (In)Famous Deviled Eggs
INGREDIENTS
1 dozen hard boiled eggs
½ cup mayonnaise (Hellman’s, full-fat preferred)
½ tsp. Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. pickle juice (b/c Nana Sherry asked - I prefer dill but used sweet pickle juice the last time and it worked fine)
½ Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
¼ tsp. garlic powder
¼ tsp. paprika, plus more for sprinkling
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. fresh ground pepper
Heavy pinch of cumin
Light pinch of chili powder
PREPARATION
Slice hard boiled eggs in half and scoop yolks into a large bowl. Mash yolks with fork.
Add all of the rest of the ingredients into bowl and mash with fork until combined.
Using a hand mixer, beat the mixture on low and then gradually move up to high speed. Do this until the yolk mixture is a little bit fluffy. If it’s not getting fluffy enough, you can add in a little more mayo, pickle juice, OR cider vinegar – while still beating – until the mixture is the preferred consistency.
Take a one gallon zip top bag and spoon yolk mixture into it. When all of the mixture has been put into the bag, squeeze the top lightly until the mixture has settled into one corner. Snip the corner so that a hole is the size of a dime.
Arrange all of your egg white halves on a plate (one made especially for deviled eggs is both festive and useful!). Pipe filling into halves until there’s a nice little mound.
To finish off the eggs, sprinkle with paprika.
TIP: If you’re traveling with the eggs, it’s best to leave the filling in the zip top bag (uncut) until you reach your destination. Then you can pipe and finish on site!
[NOTE: As I said, I don’t normally use a recipe when I make deviled eggs, because for me it’s largely intuitive. I know what ingredients we use and I add a little bit of this and that until it tastes the way we like it. I’ve approximated the best I could here, but feel free to play around with the amounts. My mom, for instance, likes hers a bit more vinegar-y, so she skips the pickle juice and beats her yolks until they’re super airy, almost like an egg mousse. And yes, we really HAVE had a deviled egg rivalry that stretches all the way back to my high school graduation party!]
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Happy 4th of July!
- feeling:
festive
This is how I became the owner of a priced-to-sell copy of Julie Powell's foodie/spiritual rebirth memoir JULIE & JULIA: MY YEAR OF COOKING DANGEROUSLY (though my particular trade paperback version didn't bear the subtitle). The movie was debuting the next month - in fact, it was coming out the Friday before STELLA's launch party. At one point, I'd been planning on leaving the bookstore and heading straight to the theater, because it seemed sort of fitting to celebrate my foodie YA novel by watching a foodie movie.
But this was all before the most horrific week of my life unfolded. I didn't actually get to see the movie until it had been out on DVD for a couple of weeks.
The book, by the way, had been sitting on the shelf of my nightstand since that third week in July. I never got past the first chapter.
I'm not entirely sure why it was so difficult for me to read JULIE & JULIA. It could be that since it was purchased during the most horrific week of my life that it carried with it the stink of something ugly. Even tonight, as I finally got to "The End" - the third "The End," because if you read the book you know that Powell drags that ending out for about 14 pages too many - I couldn't help but think, "I can't believe I bought this the week X happened."
No one could call me a private person, because I'm not - not really. But I don't talk about the most horrific week of my life publicly, because it's not exclusively my story. Someday you may learn that I've published a darkly comic adult novel that is really just a thinly veiled fictional account of several major life events that, yes, began during the most horrific week of my life. And maybe then it will be something I'm ready to talk about, or maybe I'll deny that any part of that book is autobiographical (which will be a lie, since everything a writer puts out is autobiographical in some way).
In last couple of years, as I've grown more and more jaded about the book business, I've found myself reading less and less. Sometimes I get excited about a book I've scored at a conference (WINTERGIRLS, WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON) or that I've bought because everyone else on the planet has both read and adored it (THE HUNGER GAMES, which was edited by the amazingly talented David Levithan, who's every bit as good an editor as he is a writer, or vice-versa). And when I get excited like that I'll go on a bit of a reading tear, and the stacks and stacks of Books I Hope to Read Someday gets a wee bit shorter.
And then there are books like JULIE & JULIA, which I'd wanted to read since I read the first reviews. The book I purchased as a reward to myself for merely because I had the fortitude to pick up a prescription during the most horrific week of my life. The book which languished on my bed-side table for months and months before I actually read past page 20.
I should note that by the time I made a serious attempt at reading JULIE & JULIA, I'd already seen the movie. On DVD. It is the only thing I've ever watched the ridiculously adorable Amy Adams in that sort of made me hate Amy Adams. Not because she is so ridiculously adorable but because her character was so ridiculously unlikeable.
And even though I knew Adams was playing the role of Julie Powell, as scripted and directed by Nora Ephron, my intense dislike for her character made me think that Julie Powell was an insecure, whiny brat who stumbled into a book deal not because she was such a fantastic writer, but because she had the right gimmick (cooking her way through MtAoFC in a single year, and - gasp! - blogging about it!) at the right time (foodie culture ftw!).
So while I'd try to get through a couple of chapters of JULIE & JULIA, I started doing the thing that I rarely do, which is sidelining one book entirely for another. I read Cynthia Leitich-Smith's ETERNAL, which I adored and passed onto Wendy. (And hi, Twihards out there. If you want to read a vamp book with impeccable writing, THIS is what you should be buying.) I read THE HUNGER GAMES, which I adored so much I ordered CATCHING FIRE like two days later, and then passed both on to Wendy (who read the second half of HUNGER GAMES *and* CATCHING FIRE in a single night). I spent one full day watching a lot of DVR'd TV, catching up on all of the magazines that had accummulated during spring semester, when I didn't have any time to watch TV or read magazines.
But then I started to feel like I had to not just read JULIE & JULIA, but I had to actually finish it. I won't lie; it was a struggle. Sometimes Julie Powell can be funny, and sometimes she can be self-deprecating in a way that I find admirable, but a lot of the time she's just plain grating. Even though some of her professed flaws were markedly like the flaws I recognize in my self, I still couldn't make myself like her. I didn't find her story inspiring or plucky. Like I said: the right gimmick at the right time. I felt sorry for her husband Eric in the same way I feel sorry for Joe on the nights that I start crying over takeout menus because I have no freaking idea what I want to eat and I am starving and none of the hundreds of suggestions he makes come close to being the right one (and okay, sometimes hormones are responsible for those nights, but still - he puts up with me and loves me and waits patiently until I've made the life-altering decision between pizza and Chinese). And still I felt the writing too tedious to get through more than a couple of chapters each night before bed.
But then Wendy and I went to the Janet Evanovich signing, and I bought my copy of SIZZLING SIXTEEN but didn't read it (had. To. Finish. JULIE & JULIA). And then I picked up STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS, which I need to read for the freshman seminar I'm leading in the fall, but didn't start it (had. To. Finish. JULIE & JULIA). And then today Wendy and I were both squealing over how we've never read PRIDE & PREJUDICE (Mary, don't kill me!) and need to start some kind of "Classics We Should Have Read Years Ago" book club, and I told her that I was still trying to muscle through JULIE & JULIA but that I was almost - almost - done.
And then tonight turned out to be one of those nights where I started reading in bed and waiting to get tired but never did. And when I realized I only had about thirty pages left, I said, "Okay, let's finish this thing," with the steely determination of Kara Thrace battling the CYLONs (did I mention we've been watching BATTLESTAR GALACTICA obsessively for, like, WEEKS?).
So I did. I finished it. I read all three endings, each one getting more and more eye-roll inducing than the last, and I read the Acknowledgments and author bio, and I even flipped through the preview of CLEAVING, Julie Powell's second food-inspired memoir in which she pours her heart out about becoming a butcher and screwing around on her saintly husband. And when I closed the book I knew it was going to be one of those nights when I just couldn't sleep, partially because I can't stop thinking about the circumstances surrounding my purchase of the book and how I'm still dealing with the aftershocks of that horrific week, and probably will be for years, if not the rest of my life.
It's ironic, I think, to write an overtly navel-gazing blog post at 2 a.m. (now 3:07 a.m., as I do a half-hearted proofread), while complaining about the difficulties of reading an overtly navel-gazing memoir-born-from-a-blog, being every bit as self-involved as the author I found so grating. Not Alanis ironic, but ironic in the more traditional sense.
And yet.
I finished the book.
Finally.
It feels like an achievement of some sort. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe because I'm merely days away from the one-year anniversary of the start of the most horrific week in my entire life, and I am okay.
I am really, really, really okay.
And for a while? I didn't think I'd be "okay" ever again.
So forgive the ironic navel-gazing and grating self-involvement. I'm writing this more for me than anyone who reads my silly, inconsistent blog anyway. I don't have a cooking project, and I don't expect to get a book deal from my largely pop cultural ramblings and occasional naked confessionals.
I'm just me, a mediocre YA novelist has-been and fairly decent college instructor who cares more about her students than they have the wisdom to comprehend. I suck at returning e-mails, I'm about 42 items behind on my to-do list, and I am wearing a t-shirt relic from my pre-surgery days that's so big on me the short sleeves come to mid-forearm and the bottom hangs low enough to be considered skirt-length.
What I'm saying is that I'm a mess, and I know this about myself. But I'm also okay.
And I finally - finally - finished that effing book.
- feeling: triumphant
SUZANNE COLLINS
Author of THE HUNGER GAMES TRILOGY
IS COMING TO CHILDREN'S BOOK WORLD!
Children's Book World is
thrilled to welcome
SUZANNE COLLINS, author of 2010's most anticipated book...Mockingjay!
September 22, 2010
6pm-7:30pm
In Order To Attend, Please Read the Following Information Carefully:
In order to meet Suzanne Collins, you must purchase your copy of Mockingjay at Children's Book World.
CBW's copies are specially marked for this appearance. Stop in or call us to pre-order your copy! (Mockingjay's official release date is 8/24/10.)
This is a first-come, first-served event. Suzanne will make every attempt to meet as many fans as possible in the time allotted. No line numbers or tickets will be distributed for this event.
Weather-appropriate clothing is encouraged as the line will begin outside the front door and will wrap around the building.
There will be no presentation by the author.
Due to an existing hand strain, rather than signing books, Suzanne will stamp each book with a custom-made stamp created exclusively for fall 2010 Mockingjay events only. There will be no actual signing at any events.
She will stamp ONE copy of Mockingjay per customer and will not be able to personalize.
Photographs are allowed, but customers may not individually pose with Suzanne Collins.
It's these last four that get me. I mean, really? What's the point? Do people worship Suzanne Collins so much that merely having the chance to smile at her while she rubberstamps your copy of MOCKINGJAY is enough for them to stand in line for hours on end?
I get that she's big. She's huge. If the movie version of HUNGER GAMES casts Peeta and Gale with guys as swoon-worthy as the TWILIGHT boys, she could possibly be bigger than Stephanie Meyer (and even if she isn't, at least she has the talent that warrants that level of hugeness).
I don't know. I just can't get over the idea of standing in line for someone to stamp your book.
Am I the only one who finds this utterly absurd?
- feeling: amused
African Groundnut Stew
INGREDIENTS
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed small
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
64 oz chicken stock (can substitute beef or veg. stock/broth)
1 cup long-grain brown rice
1 14.5 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 cups salsa (I like spicy, so I used a mix of medium and hot salsas. You could probably sub in canned diced tomatoes with jalapeno or spice your own canned tomatoes)
1/2 cup peanut butter (I prefer natural)
1 medium to large zucchini, chopped
1 medium to large red pepper, chopped
1 tbsp cumin
1/2 tbsp thyme
salt and pepper to taste
PREPARATION
Heat oil in large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the sweet potatoes, red peppers, and onion and sauté until the potatoes are tenderized, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook for another minute.
Add the chicken stock, rice, cumin, and thyme. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until rice is cooked, about 45 min to an hour. Check it frequently.
Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir and simmer until zucchini is tender, or keep on a low bubble until you're ready to eat.
[NOTE: This makes a LOT of stew. When we have leftovers like this, we often freeze some in gallon-sized freezer bags. We lay the bags on a cookie sheet and squeeze out the air until they lie flat. This makes them easier to store. Enjoy!]
To our right, in the breakdown lane, there were three cars and a tractor trailer parked, with various people milling around. In hindsight, I realized I probably wasn't the only one who drove over this mysterious black metal box. I got off the next exit - or at least, I tried to. I actually had to pull over before fully exiting because the car was making such horrific noises we thought we might have blown a tire and were driving on a rim. Joe got out and ascertained that the tire was safe, but the car was leaking something. So we pulled into a Wawa parking lot and called the insurance company, AAA, and my mother, who begrudgingly gave us all a ride home.
Five days later, as I was killing a few minutes before heading into a doctor's appointment, a State Farm agent informed me that my car had been totaled. It didn't look totaled - it didn't even look broken when I left it behind in the Wawa parking lot. But it was an old car, and it had more than 160,000 miles on it. Using NADA, State Farm placed the value of the car at $2,999, but considering some minor damage - a chip out of a seatbelt, a small chink in the windshield we'd filled, a rip in the driver's side seat - they deducted $600 from that value. Which meant that repairing the car would've exceeded 70% of its estimated value of $2,333 ($1600 and some change).
My mother had warned me that this might happen; Joe was certain it would. But I'd held on hope. Beckett wasn't just any car. He was a great car. I'd acquired him in August 2001, using my very first book advance check (for BRINGING UP THE BONES; hence the name Beckett, as the title of BONES was taken from my favorite Samuel Beckett poem). I'd driven him up and down the East Coast, promoting that and subsequent books, visiting grad school friends in New England, taking a road trip to Montreal with Bec, and traveling to watch the Lifetime adaptation of TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HOLLYWOOD STARLET being filmed in a suburb of Toronto. It was the car I drove to sign the papers for my first house, the car in which I brought Scout home to that house, the car that brought me 90 miles north for my first date with Joe.
And so I cried.
Most people do not understand my attachment to Beckett, or my loyalty to a car that, in the previous six months, I'd had to spend nearly $800 for various repairs. (Except Carolee. When Carolee's beloved Hyundai died, she found an exact replica online and dispatched her husband to PA to purchase it for her.)
My first Saturn, a dark red, 1997 SL with manual transmission, was purchased in Indiana, during my miserable stint as a features writer for the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. I'd been driving the Bondmobile, a 1990 Oldsmobile with many, many buttons and gadgets, since my junior year in college. It had been a "present" from my father, who later defaulted on the payments, sticking me with a $6k loan for a car that was never, ever reliable (right after he gave it to me, it died and the dealership gave me a loaner VW Passat with butt warmers for the month it took to get the Bondmobile functional). Not long after I'd arrived in Fort Wayne, the Bondmobile broke down about a mile from my apartment. I called AAA, who told me they couldn't get to me for two hours. It was freezing out, though, so I left the car and walked home, only to get a call from AAA stating my car had been towed before they could get to it. (I canceled that AAA membership, I was so mad.)
Anyway, the minute I got the Bondmobile back I took the morning off from work and drove to the nearest Saturn dealership. In high school, my friend Tabitha had been the first to get a brand new car for her sixteenth birthday. It was a white Saturn, and I was in awe. Plus, I got sucked in by the "no haggling" pricing strategy the company touted on its commercials. They put me into a lease - dumbest car mistake I ever made - on the car that would come to be known as Bridget (yes, after the protagonist in BONES; I'd started writing the novel the previous summer, though I only got about 25 pages in before reworking the whole thing in grad school). I later converted the lease to a loan, and used Bridget as a trade-in for Beckett. Beckett was purchased in part because Noah, my boyfriend at the time, couldn't learn how to drive stick (he was useless in a lot of ways, but his inability to master a manual transmission pissed me off more than anything else about him - except for his pathological lying and Internet porn addiction, that is).
The main difference between Beckett and Bridget, besides Beckett having automatic transmission, was that he had keyless entry. We'd also opted for a six CD changer that was installed in the trunk. But otherwise, he was just a green version of Bridget. Bridget, the tough, scrappy car that I'd towed home to Delaware after deciding I couldn't stand another minute of working for Chicket (my mean nickname for my editor at the Journal-Gazette, so named by Angela because her teeth were all shaped like small, off-white Chiclets). It was the car I towed to Boston, when I moved there for graduate school. It was the car that, when I became the cheese in a 10-car pile up sandwich that occurred literally across the street from my Medford rental home, was so safe that I was the only one who walked away from the scene of the accident, instead of being carted off in an ambulance.
Joe bitched about Beckett an awful lot. He was convinced there was something wrong with the transmission, despite three mechanics checking said transmission and deeming it problem-free. It was never comfortable for him to drive, because hi, he's six-foot-five and Beckett, while a great car for short people like me, had bucket seats and not nearly enough room for Joe's enormous feet and sprawling legs. He would say mean things about Beckett while we were in the car, and I would rub Beckett's dash and tell him not to listen. "You're a great car," I'd tell him. "The best car." Often, when Scout was with us, he'd snort in agreement.
I knew Beckett wouldn't last forever, but our plan had been to keep him up and running until we could afford to put me into a certified used Prius. At that point, Joe would take over Beckett, driving him until his dying breath.
Funny how all three of us were in Beckett when that dying breath came, far too soon and completely unexpectedly.
I got to see Beckett one last time, the day before he was towed to that great big salvage yard in the sky. I removed the silver frog thing that hung from his rear view mirror. Cleared out all of the stuff that had accumulated in the glove box and trunk. Took pictures of him with my iPhone, just before Joe ripped out the stereo he and his brother had installed after we junked his Beretta in January. Got into the rental, some sort of generic, mid-size Chevrolet, and said goodbye to my old friend.
These days I'm driving a 1998 Nissan Sentra, a low-mileage vehicle that Wendy was looking to sell because she and her husband rarely used it. It's platinum and has the coldest air conditioning known to man, so we named her Betty, as in the frosty (ex)wife of MAD MEN's Don Draper, as played by the excellent January Jones, who I adore even if she was a train wreck hosting SNL (quoth EW: "January Jones, you're so pretty, but you proved on Saturday Night Live that God doesn't give with both hands").
Betty's no Beckett, but she likes to go fast, and she's making this heat wave far less insufferable than Beckett would have. Sure, we had to get her a whole new exhaust system and two new tires (which amounted to $1400 in repairs less than five full days after acquiring her). Sure, her transmission gets cranky in the lower gears, and there's sometimes a hiccup when you're idling. And sure, she's got this bizarre pinkish patch of spackle on her left passenger door, which Wendy's husband applied after some neighborhood brats threw bricks at the car for fun, and it started to rust.
But she's growing on me. I've found a new place to stash my prescription sunglasses. I've learned to ease up on the gas in stop-and-go traffic. I'm starting to ignore the "check engine" light, which never goes off, even when there's nothing wrong with the car.
Like I said, Betty's no Beckett, and she's no certified used Prius either. But she's a good girl, a tough girl, and she takes us where we need to go. Which, at the heart of it, is all that really matters, isn't it?
- feeling: nostalgic
It was love at first read.
To me, the Stephanie Plum books are like a really good batch of homemade mac-n-cheese - not some frou-frou gourmet kind made with lobster and truffle oil, or even the boxed orange stuff from Kraft (though I'm sure Stephanie would prefer that kind). Comfort food reading. I guess they're like the adult mystery equivalent of Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries series; from the outside, they look like light fluff, but once you dive in you're surprised by how wickedly funny they are. These aren't semi-disposable books, but the kind you pass along to anyone who hasn't yet been indoctrinated.
Anyway.
Ever since I got hooked, I've been trying to figure out why the books weren't adapted into a TNT series. To me, they screamed television. But then, last spring, it was announced that there would be a feature film adaptation ... starring Katherine Heigl. That's right; Stephanie Plum's push up bra and too-tight jeans are going to be filled by IZZIE STEVENS.
Now, don't get me wrong. I like Katherine Heigl. I think she's weirdly pretentious, but I also admire how outspoken she is - especially when she publicly backed T.R. Knight after his unfortunate outing. But COME ON. Stephanie Plum? As Meredith would say, "Seriously? Seriously."
So, okay. Wendy was probably even more devastated than I was, but she's been a fan of the books a lot longer than I have. A couple of weeks later, casting for Joe Morelli, Stephanie's on-again, off-again boyfriend and Ranger, her bad boy-who-won't-settle-down on-again, off-again mentor/employer/lover, were announced. For Morelli, some idiot decided on the very IRISH Jason O'Mara. JASON O'MARA. And yes, he's dreamy, and yes, he looks very, very kissable, but SERIOUSLY? Seriously.
Wendy was more upset over the choice for Ranger - Daniel Sunjata (aka Franco from RESCUE ME) - because she'd always envisioned Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Ranger. I could buy that; I'd always thought Jon Tenney (aka Brenda's husband Fritzy on THE CLOSER) would make a fantastic Morelli.
Both of us are impatient to find out who will be cast as Lula, the lovable "former 'ho" and Stephanie's sometimes sidekick. Wendy's pulling for Mo'nique; I think Sherri Shepherd would be good, too. And then there's Stephanie's Grandma Mazur - I know everybody wants Betty White for the role, but I think that's because she's funny and likes to make dirty jokes, and not because she's anything like Grandma Mazur.
ANYWAY.
All of this is a very long preamble to explain that while trying to find out if anyone else had been cast for the movie, I discovered that Janet Evanovich was doing a very quick book tour and would land in Bethesda, MD, on June 23rd.
E-mail to Wendy: "We are so there."
And so we were! We drove down to Bethesday in between morning rush hour traffic and the late afternoon rush hour traffic, on a day that hit something like 98 degrees (the temperature, I mean, not the former boy band). First stop: Barnes & Noble, to pick up the wristbands that would allow us to line up for autographs. We got there at 2:30 and we fell into the 200-250 group. Seriously! They told us to come back at 7:30, which gave us a LOT of time to kill and in less than ideal weather.
But we were troopers; we walked the streets of the downtown area, going in and out of little shops, until sweat was pouring down our backs. Then we decided to do an early dinner and stretch it out for a couple of air conditioned hours. And thus we ended up in Jaleo, a Spanish tapas place that had been on one of the "Best of" lists we'd researched ahead of time. I like tapas; the food is "Lara-sized" (read: good for someone who's had gastric bypass surgery). Of course, small plates dining is sort of dangerous when stretched over a two-hour period and preceded by a full carafe of a strawberry mint sangria made with sparkling white wine.
The food sounded so incredible it tooks us, like, twenty minutes just to order. We made good choices, though - piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese! Tiny chorizos wrapped in crispy potato, like an upscale tapas version of Pigs in a Blanket! Wild mushroom rice with Idiazabal cheese! - and oh, man. Can you say indulgent?
I should note that both Wendy and I are part of the 2010 Summer Fitness Challenge, which began officially yesterday. I should also note that Wendy talked me into buying a small cup of Dunkin' Donut Munchkins on our way to Bethesda, because it was, after all, Stephanie Plum Day. I wish I could say we skipped dessert after our incredibly long dinner, but the lure of rice pudding was just too strong.
Finally, we paid the check and rolled our over-stuffed selves back to the car, to pick up the books we'd purchased when we first got into town. Then it was back to Barnes & Noble, where we stood in an incredibly long autographing line that wound around several shelves of series mysteries and romances (smart marketing, yes?). The B&N was having problems with air conditioning, and cramming hundreds of autograph seekers into an already busy multi-level store didn't do anything for temperature control. Worse, there was some insufferable woman directly behind me in line who invaded personal space and talked some random guy's ear off about the most bizarre things, like her dog puking and her being unhappy about the vet's reaction.
At a certain point, I realized the store employee with the sticky notes wasn't coming around - no personalization. So that sucked. But we got to meet Janet's daughter Alex, who was handing out "I <3 Ranger" or "I <3 Morelli" pins. And there were ballons with Rex and Bob on them. AND a guy who we think is Janet's husband took our picture with Ms. Evanovich herself. I said something dorky about how her books give people a lot of laughter, and something even dorkier about her hand cramping up. She seemed sweet but tired; she'd done a marathon session in Trenton the previous night and there were hundreds of people behind us she still had to contend with.
And then it was over. Just like that. We stopped into another Dunkin' Donuts on our way back to the car, to get iced coffees for the ride home. And being the domesticated women we are, we did a quick trip to Shoprite when we got back to DE, so Wendy could stock up on supplies for her trip to Ocean City and so I could stock up on fruit and veggies (which I would need to make up for yesterday's transgressions).
I have pictures of everything (even the food) on my iPhone and my camera, but I've been working off my laptop almost exclusively since February, when Joe started building me a new computer. The laptop won't recognize the iPhone because it's "authorized" on my other computer, and I haven't bothered to install my camera's software or Photoshop Elements on the laptop. So eventually there will be pics, most likely on Facebook.
So that's what we did, and where we went, and what we ate and drank. The part I can't write about, or rather choose not to, is all of the stuff that goes along with taking a mini-road trip with a really great girlfriend. The conversations, the in-jokes, the silly moments that no one would understand even if you tried to tell them. It's been so long since I've had that much quality time with a friend. I mean, almost all of my friends are in their 30s or 40s, and almost all of them are married with children. It's gotten to the point that making a coffee date with Carolee requires weeks of planning, because all of us are so busybusybusy that we can't do anything impromptu. It's sad, but I get it, because even though I'm not officially married (yet), and even though I don't have kids (yet), my strange, cobbled-together career and personal pursuits make my schedule one of the crunchier ones. Somehow I managed to turn summer break into "Three Months Where I Have Obligations Every Single Weeknight Except Thursday." Seriously.
But yeah. That was Lara and Wendy's Day of Fun!
*If you get this undoubtedly obscure pop culture reference, I owe you a Tootsie Roll pop. Your choice of flavor.
- feeling: happy
Buffalo Chicken Chili (Lara's take on Rachael Ray's Recipe)
INGREDIENTS:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
2 pounds ground chicken
2 large carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 ribs celery with leafy tops, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. smoked sweet paprika
2 tsp. cumin
1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups chicken stock (Mom had given me an open carton of beef broth, so I used that instead)
1/2 cup hot sauce (I used regular hot sauce mixed with 2 tsp. of chipotle-flavored Tabasco)
1 Tbsp. honey
1 29 oz. can crushed tomatoes
Blue cheese, crumbled (I used gorgonzola, since that's what we had)
Ranch dressing (optional)
PREPARATION:
Place a large pot over medium-high heat with the EVOO, 2 turns of the pan. Add the ground chicken and break it up, lightly browning it for 5 minutes. I use a potato masher for the job; it breaks the meat up beautifully.
Add the carrots, onion, celery, garlic, paprika, cumin and bay leaf and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 7-8 minutes. Add the chicken stock and scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pot.
Add the crushed tomatoes, hot sauce, and honey to the chili and bring up to a bubble. Simmer on low for 8-10 minutes more to let the flavors come together. (I prefer to let chilis mesh for longer, so I think we had it on the stove at a low simmer for another 20-30 minutes.)
Top each serving of Buffalo Chicken Chili with blue cheese crumbles and a generous swirl of ranch dressing (optional).
[NOTE: Rachael's original recipe calls for the chili to be topped with tortilla chips that have had blue cheese melted on them. I wanted to omit the chips, but that meant I needed to play around with the added salt (kosher only, natch). The ranch dressing was my own addition, necessary because I made the chili extra spicy. I use a lowfat version. You could try omitting the honey, if you're watching your sugar level, but Joe and I felt that once I put it in, the chili had a depth that was lacking. Enjoy!]
You can read all about the 2010 Summer Fitness Challenge here.
- feeling: ecstatic
1 cup frozen fruit + 1 cup yogurt + 1 scoop protein powder + 1 cup liquid + sweetener/extras = blender goodness for two!
FROZEN FRUIT: Any will do, but no matter what I'm using I always try to add in at least half of a frozen banana (or a quarter, if I'm making a smoothie for one). Frozen bananas give smoothies a yummy richness that you can't get from other fruit. You can have a good smoothies without frozen bananas, but you can't have great ones.
YOGURT: Again, any will do, but I prefer plain, lowfat yogurt. Greek yogurt has more protein, but since I'm using protein powder I can get away with using the cheaper stuff.
PROTEIN POWDER: I used to buy whatever Trader Joe's had in low-carb vanilla. But after my weight-loss surgery, I found that most protein powders turned my stomach. For a while I would use powdered skim milk as an added protein source, but encouraged by Shelly's legendary blog, I recently purchased a 2 lb. tub of SEI Max Protein. This stuff is so choice that it tastes good even when I'm licking some of it off my finger. Seriously!
LIQUID: I prefer lowfat, unsweetened soy milk - again, for the protein factor and for the richness it brings to the party. But I've also used 1% milk, almond milk, rice milk, etc. My recent score was purchasing a quart in the refrigerated Asian foods section of the Newark Farmer's Market for $1.99. Better than the boxed stuff, and lower in calories, too!
SWEETENER: I've tried using sugar-free syrups (like the kind they have at coffee shops), but they have a strange aftertaste to me in smoothies. I'll use Splenda sometimes, but my preference is for 2 tsp. honey. It's just enough to take the edge off the yogurt and soy milk, but not so much to blow the calories out of healthy range.
EXTRAS: Another Farmer's Market score: a one-pound plastic tub of ground flax meal for under $3. I put 1-2 Tlbs. in each smoothie batch. If I don't have flavored protein powder, I might add in a splash of vanilla extract. I've used other extracts, too. And sometimes I will break down and make the Elvis, which means adding peanut butter. This is more of treat kind of smoothie than an everyday one.
So, what about this tropical smoothie? I landed on the recipe almost by accident. We'd just picked up a bunch of frozen fruit at Shoprite (which is often far cheaper than buying fresh - the exception being that in summer, you can buy huge tubs of blueberries and the like for dirt cheap and freeze them yourself), and I was trying to decide between cherries and mangos when I remembered we had pineapple. And voila! The world's best smoothie was born.
Lara's Tropical Smoothie
INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup frozen mango chunks
1/2 frozen banana, broken into two pieces
1/3 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1 cup plain, lowfat yogurt
1-2 scoops vanilla protein powder (again, I highly recommend SEI's Max Protein)
1-2 Tbsp. ground flax meal
2 tsp. honey
1 cup plain, lowfat soy milk
PREPARATION
Layer all of the ingredients except the soy milk into a standard-size blender IN THE EXACT ORDER THEY'RE LISTED. (This is important to the alchemy of the smoothie, though I have no idea why.)
Slowly pour in the soy milk. It should start to creep down into the layers. Keep it on hand, because you may need to add more once things get going.
Turn on the blender. After 30 seconds or so, lift one corner of the lid up to allow some air to get in. If the mixture isn't moving, you need to add more liquid. I always use the soy milk, but if you're really trying to restrict calories you could get away with water.
Pour into two tall glasses and enjoy!
[NOTE: I have never sat down and figured out the calorie count for each serving, but my feeling is that it's probably around 350. This might seem high, but sometimes we'll have them for breakfast. More often than not, I make them for us at night, about three hours after dinner. This satisfies Joe's freakishly strong sweet tooth and keeps us both away from junk. Plus, every single ingredient is healthy, so you can feel good about downing a glass whilst watching, say, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on DVD.]
BONUS RECIPE: Lara's Turbo Oatmeal
INGREDIENTS
3 cups water
Heavy pinch of kosher salt
1/2 cup nonfat instant milk powder (available at BJs in large quantities for cheap)
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats (Quaker is also available at BJs - great deal)
2 Tbsp. ground flax meal
1/2 Tbsp. cinnamon (optional)
PREPARATION
Put water and salt in the pan and heat on high until it's at a soft bubble. Stir in the nonfat milk powder and immediately turn the heat down to medium. Stir in the oats and flax meal for two minutes and remove from heat. Stir in cinnamon, add toppings of choice, and serve.
[NOTE: this makes 2, 1.5 cup servings, which is the recommended size for "heart healthy" oatmeal. Joe usually eats the full serving, while I stick more with 3/4 of a cup. I add some Smart Balance spread and Splenda while the oatmeal is still hot in the pot, so that leftovers get chilled ready-to-eat. I'll eat it cold the next day for breakfast, if Joe hasn't snagged it as a snack first.]
[NOTE #2: the combinations of added toppings/mix-ins are endless. Sometimes I'll put golden raisins in Joe's with chopped nuts. If we have extra fresh blueberries in the fridge, I like to toss those in, too. We both love a little sliced banana on it, too. Etc.]
