Fallish favorites

Fall is just a brilliant season--seriously, a genius move on the part of whoever thought up this little universe of ours.
The leaves, the spices and flavors, the slight change in the weather, it's all a perfect lead-up to my most favorite season, that being winter.

Now a few seasonal loves...

Cute husband calls the combination of Old Chubb and Scotch the perfect concoction for autumnal liquid courage.  Sad but true.

 

Now, on to liquid strength...

I have been searching for a tasty creme brulee whole bean coffee since my mom told me such a thing existed, and, well, as I should have known from the very start of my search nearly 3 years ago, Harry & David delivered.  Snowflake coffee mugs from IKEA also help the flavor for a winter-wisher like me.

And, well, how do I put this...ah yes, the greatness and glory of fall has now been bottled.  Get yours today, morning will be less painful.

Happy Halloween indeed.  For me the commercials are true, the absolute scariest part is having to give away all of my Reese's.

Memories of a strange childhood

I think that one of life's great gifts is being able to joke (as an adult) with your parents about events in your childhood.  It's always interesting (and usually humorous) to learn what your parents were thinking when punishing you for doing crazy stuff--for instance, though he maintained a gruff exterior when removing my television from my bedroom after my third C in a row on an Algebra test, my father later told me that he felt terrible about it for weeks, and that the actual removal of the tv from my room as I watched sadly about broke him for good.

Or when they admit that certain things they absolutely insisted that you do, in truth, seemed pretty ridiculous to them too.  Like when my parents decided it would be a good idea to have my brother and I dress up after school one day a week and sit in the dining room with my mom where we would all sip tea and nibble scones.  As though we were British people.

You can imagine how well this went over with a six-year-old and a twelve-year-old.  I distinctly remember Alex and I staring at one another across the dining room table, a look of total confusion on our faces, "Is this real?" we wondered.  "Are we really being made to do this?"

Well it didn't last long...in truth I only remember doing it once.  And just a few months ago Alex and I brought this up to my parents.  My father had completely wiped it from his memory, which my mom found funny because she said it had been his idea.  And she admitted that she thought it was absolutely nuts at the time and it took everything she had to not burst out laughing that afternoon.  My parents always went to great lengths to maintain a united front, which as a kid annoyed me to no end, but in retrospect I find it kind of sweet.

Nonetheless, the scone event did not traumatize me enough that I don't eat scones.  I adore scones.  And since I had a little time today, I made my first batch ever entirely from scratch.  I usually use a mix.  And there's no shame in that!

These are so absolutely marvelous.  No chalky texture, not hard as rocks.  Delicious amazing goodness in wedge form.

So I wanted to share the recipe with you, because what better way to say I love you than a sweet from my home to yours.

From Simply Scones by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright
Chocolate Chip Orange Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled (yes, that's a whole stick, live a little!)
2 large eggs
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (I used regular size; chocolate is one thing that should never, under any circumstances, be consumed in miniature)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch-diameter circle in the center of a baking sheet (I used a non-stick mini-scone pan, which lessens cooking time by about 7 minutes and shapes the wedges uniformly).
In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cubes and distribute them over the flour mixture.  With a pastry blender or two knives used scissors fashion, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles course crumbs.  In a small bowl, stir together the eggs, orange juice, vanilla, and orange peel.  Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine.  The dough will be sticky.  With lightly floured hands, knead in the chocolate chips until they are evenly distributed.
With lightly floured hands, pat the dough into an 8-inch-diameter circle in the center of the prepared baking sheet.  With a serrated knife, cut into 8 wedges.  (Or just press the dough evenly into a scone pan.)  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes (or 12 to 15 with the scone pan), or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of a scone comes out clean.  Remove the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes.  With a spatula, transfer the scones to a wire rack and cool for 10 minutes.  Recut into wedges, if necessary.  Serve warm, or cool completely and store in an airtight container.  These scones freeze well.

Have a happy evening.

Certain scenes from an uncertain life

One more rainbow...

(Photo by cute husband, since he had shoes on, and I tend to run around shoeless.)

I could actually make out the entire color spectrum (Roy G. Biv) on this one.  Breathtaking!

Think we might need to change the name of the blog to Rainbow Blog. 

And a sunset to beat the band:

These little gifts keep my motor running during uncertain times.

For the love of beer

In a world of self-proclaimed wine aficionados, sometimes us beer lovers are unfairly judged as, shall we say, low brow.  We're supposed to listen to country music and smash empty cans against our heads (not that there's anything wrong with that), while producing a hearty burp of satisfaction with our Bud Light. 

It stinks to be stereotyped.  Cute husband, who held my hand and showed me the way down Good Beer Lane, calls light American mass-produced beers, ahem, weasel piss.  He quotes one H. Allen Smith, who, upon tasting his first American beer, said, "Put it back in the horse!"  See, beer drinkers are snobs too.

Don't get me wrong I love wine (see previous long-winded posts about the heavenly glory of Louis Jadot Chardonnay), and I love tasting new wines, and can taste the difference.  Seems like wine lovers and beer lovers in this country have stepped to either side of yet another dividing line.  The wine lovers say, "I hate beer!  Ha!  Crap only has one flavor."  And the beer lovers say, "Wine!  Ha!  Bunch of stuck up fools."

(Hmmm, it's just occurring to me now that maybe I'm just an alcohol lover.)

But anyway, I've been lucky enough to have beer lovers in my life who are the real deal.  My mom taught me to love Moosehead; cute husband's parents took me to Rohrbachs in Rochester, New York for a brat and a brew when I was 22 and I've never looked back; cute husband is practically a professional beer taster, and (not so) little brother Alex has discovered so many tasty new beers, which he brings home, slaps down on the kitchen table, and says, "You've gotta try this one with me." 

And the truth is, the really great brewers out there take just as much time and pride in creating their flavors as do those grape-crushers in California, Chile, and France.  And it's time they got a little more respect.

Tonight we supped on my new favorite beer, called St. Lupulin, an extra pale ale.  Aside from its complex (but refreshing!) flavor, it was the description on the side of the bottle that really had me at hello:

It reads: A mystical legend echoes in our brewhouse-- that of St. Lupulin (loop-you-lin) the archetypal hophead.  He devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops, tending to the flowers and the beloved resin within--lupulin.

Extraordinary oils in this yellow resin provide this dry-hopped extra pale ale with an undeniably pleasing floral aroma and clean, crisp finish.  One sip of this seasonal summer ale and you, too, will believe.

Odell Brewing also has a winter seasonal brew called Isolation Ale, that I can't wait to try come that time of year.  Here's its description, via the website: Ever been in a warm, cozy cabin and had a secret desire to get snowed in? 

 (Me: Why yes Odells, all the time!  Even in summer!  How did you know?!) 

To celebrate the winter season, we offer our Isolation Ale--a traditional winter brew made with premium malts imported from England.  It's just one of the reasons Isolation Ale stands alone. 

 (I love any company that dares to pun.)


So wise up world, enjoy a pint with your loved ones.  Preferably as the sun goes down on another day, and all that awaits for the rest of the night is renewed hope for tomorrow.

Think like a moth

Perhaps he doesn't understand the concept of a window.  Or perhaps he just keeps on believing, against all odds, that he can make it through to what he just knows awaits on the other side.

Maybe there's no difference between the two.
I've got to respect any living thing that's always choosing the light.

The Weekly Reader

It's quiet here on the mountaintop.  Yesterday--the first day of summer--was marked by an elk herd sighting, and, get this, a baby deer sighting as well! (I was furious with myself for not having my camera with me.) I had never seen a baby deer before.  I had no idea they were so small.  For some reason when I thought of a baby deer I was picturing the baby cow that's born out on the trail in the movie City Slickers.  But no, they are adorably little, and speckled, and this one was hopping like a bunny just following his (or her) mom down a big hill with his (or her) little head darting all around looking at the great big world.  For a moment I wanted to be a deer, so I could have deer babies...

 

 (wunderground.com)

In other news, I wanted to share the book I'm reading with all of you--I know I did this just a few days ago, but when the really good ones come along, I think I've got a duty to share.  I mentioned in that post that I was intrigued by Julie Orringer's new book, The Invisible Bridge.  Well, before I started that one, I thought it would be good to read her first book, a short story collection called How to Breathe Underwater.  I picked it up from the library last night around 7:30pm and at 12:30pm today I've got about 60 pages left to go.  Yes, it was one of those that I sort of, um, stayed up all night reading.  Most of the stories have to do with girls coming of age, and as someone who tends to read a lot of women's literature, I'd be hard pressed to think of anything I've read that achieves such a pitch-perfect portrayal of what it is to be a girl, in terms of our relationships with men, each other, our families, and ourselves.  It's just beautiful, and makes me so excited to pick up The Invisible Bridge.  Before I started How to Breathe Underwater, I had been reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a book about which I've read and heard many excellent reviews.  But I just couldn't get into it--it's just so British, like the petroleum.  Other than the Immortal Bard, Brit Lit has just never been my thing.  Think I'll wait until it's out in paperback so I can slog through it on my own time and not have to beg the library for one more week.

I titled this post "The Weekly Reader" thinking it was a clever title for a weekly reading update, but then it reminded me of an old elementary school memory.  Remember Weekly Readers?

(wow, found a very retro one)

And that reminded me of another elementary school memory.  Scholastic book orders!  Do they still do those?

 (Yep, looks like they do.  Sadly the one pictured above is offering "American Idol" books.  What?)

On book order day I would literally go mad.  The teacher would bring in the box after lunch--the white one, with the Scholastic red.  She'd say, "If we have time, we'll hand these out at the end of the day."  I'd spend the rest of the afternoon eyeing that box behind her desk, and if I felt like she was forgetting, I'd go up to her desk and remind her.  Having to wait until tomorrow was simply not an option.

Many are happy it's summer.  I am too--seems like summertime always produces a few happy, carefree times.  But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy that we are now on the down slope--the days will all be getting shorter, fall is the next immediate season.  But I shall attempt to live in the moment.

Celtic Pride

This day started out wonderfully.

We're talking tea, with a really funny name...

Yes, I NEED my morning thunder.

And it was supped against an inexplicably beautiful backdrop...

And accompanied by a good book, and a good fruit...

Then in the evening I met cute husband at a pizza joint--we hadn't seen each other in three days.  It was a joyful reunion.  The reason we went to the pizza joint was to watch the beginning of the Boston Celtics-LA Lakers basketball game.  It was game 7.  High stakes.

We left after the first quarter and headed for home--the Celtics were up, we had great hope, though of course we lived in fear, as any true fan will.

Interlude:
Nearly six years ago, in the winter of 2004, a college girl sat in her heat-less, mouse-infested apartment in Boston, Mass. sipping her morning coffee.  The anchor of the early morning local news came on the television and reported that the Boston Celtics had lost yet another game.  With a dismissive grin and a shake of his head he said, "Ah, folks.  The Celtics aren't just bad, they're completely irrelevant."

Meanwhile, the college girl's boyfriend--a die hard NBA basketball fan--often spoke to her about his favorite basketball player, a man--an intense, passionate man--by the name of Kevin Garnett.  They called him KG for short.  He played--toiled, really--for an abysmal team called the Minnesota Timberwolves.  The college girl's boyfriend worried that he would be stuck in cold and unforgiving Minnesota forever, never living up to his potential, the world never knowing how great he could be.

A couple of years passed, the college girl and her boyfriend left Boston for good.

Then, like a miracle, in 2007, that player--KG--got traded.  To the irrelevant Boston Celtics.  And in June of 2008, KG and the Celtics won the Championship.  They beat the LA Lakers.  And oh the victory was sweet.

The no-longer college girl and her boyfriend celebrated by getting married that very month, and nearly two years into their marriage, there was a rematch.  Lakers v. Celts in the Finals.

They watched each game with their hearts in their throats. 

And on the evening of June 17th, 2010 as the clock neared 10pm mountain time, their hearts were broken.  The Celtics lost.

Doc Rivers--the majestic coach, Rajon Rondo--the boy wonder, Paul Pierce--the warrior, Ray Allen--the shooter, Big Baby (Glen Davis)--the gentle giant, and Kevin Garnett--the unbreakable heart of the team.  They lost.

And though our hearts are broken, to loosely quote Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans, "They're Hall of Fame in our book."

I love you guys.

Crime & Punishment or, law school

I hadn't planned on blogging this evening.  I got home late and was doing good just to be sitting in front of my computer spooning my Trader Joe's Chana Masala into my mouth while surfing the net.  Cute husband is in finals so dinner together is, basically, out of the question.  Law students in finals are fascinating, someone has got to do a study.  They sit in one place for hours at a time in a state of complete and total concentration.  When they do finally get up--either to eat or go to the bathroom--they remain in a kind of airtight bubble out of which NOTHING can pull them.  I will simply say, "How's it going?  Feel like you're making progress?"  And I get this haunted stare, like, WHO ARE YOU, why have you entered my extremely private thought cave?  Furthermore, he is so in the swing of torturing himself so that he can do well, that any offers of kindness are rebuked as scathing critiques of his ascetic way of life.  "Need anything?" I say in my sing-song sweetest-wife-ever voice, as I do his dinner dishes.  He does not look up from his papers.  "All I truly need is to study."

Touche.

So I guess I decided to blog tonight because, well, I'm kind of lonely.

During my sad and pathetic dinner/web surf, I found this link and I had to share it.  Once again it was found via Blog of a Bookslut.  Apparently, there is, truly, now a video game of Dante's Inferno.  So someone by the name of Robert Brenner decided to write a what-if of a Crime & Punishment video game.

Highlights:

CHARACTER: You’re Raskolnikov, a student radical in St. Petersburg. Somebody’s stolen your birthright. Somebody’s gonna pay.

MISSION: Fight your way through a nightmarish philosophical struggle that anticipates the rise of Communism. Smash the capitalist class. Raise the consciousness of the lumpenproletariat. Redistribute the wealth—to yourself.

WEAPONS:  Marxist dialectics, Napoleonic complex, an axe. You can upgrade your axe to a chainsaw.

CHEAT CODE: Ctrl-P unlocks Sofia’s panties.

It cracks me up...

But it got me thinking about reading Crime & Punishment in Mrs. Jenkins' 12th grade English class.  (Lauren was by my side for this traumatic experience, hope she reads this so she can tell me if I'm remembering everything correctly.)  Mrs. Jenkins spent weeks telling us how much we were going to love Crime & Punishment--it was going to change our lives, make us better people, turn us into geniuses in just under 500 pages.  On the day the books arrived we were all chomping at the bit with our $5 cash, thinking, I've got to get my hands on this thing!

That night I sat in my bed struggling, fighting against the meager 30 pages she'd assigned us.  It was the first time in my whole life when I was truly just reading words; they meant nothing to me.  Night after night I kept forcing myself, promising myself I would get to the bitter end, I had to see the bright light I knew must be at the end of this tunnel.  But alas it was an oncoming train--of nothingness.  To this day, I hate that novel.  I have met many people who loved it.  I even married one of them.

A professor in college said that reading is just the reader trying to connect with the writer any way that he can--searching for any commonality that will put them both on the same ground so that he (the reader) can feel like he's in good hands, like he's listening to someone who knows something about him, and the two of them can move forward together.  Dostoevsky and I just weren't meant to be.  Mrs. Jenkins loved that novel so much.  She just couldn't get over its power.  I do that with books too--I push them on people, say, it's so amazing, it will change your life, you'll never forget it!  But in the end reading is just for two.  And what happens between reader and writer no one can ever really know.

But it wasn't all for naught.  Tonight when I ran across Crime & Punishment: the video game, it was nice to get the jokes.

On the road again

All things must end...

...the evening clouds disappear into the veil of night...

...the most perfect dinner is consumed...

...your favorite tile gets old and must be ripped out...violently...

...and the gardens in such brilliant bloom this season, will go quiet in the season to come...

...and I have to leave Kansas City, where I think, no matter how many other cool places I go to and live in on Earth, my heart will always be.

But I'm one of the lucky people who has good stuff waiting for me at both the arrival and departure gates of airports, and so tomorrow I get to see cute husband for the first time in 3 weeks!!!!!!

Often all that's left of a time is a darkening sky, and a happy memory or two.

And the sad but beautiful part is, you've got to just make due with that.

Where do you go when the world's got you down?

In between worries for summer plans (cute husband's and mine), and the fact that my parents are stranded in Europe due to volcanic ash, not to mention other various and sundry concerns that define my anxiety-ridden way of life, I have been escaping in my mind to a little beachfront cottage with a white deck that looks out over the water, with no one else in sight so I can hear the soothing sounds of the waves.  (I really don't think there's ANY sound more relaxing--if I could live and sleep each night by the ocean I think my night owl lifestyle would be cured.)  In my daydream I'm alternating margaritas (my new recipe: tequila, lime juice, and a floater of Grand Marnier) with Louis Jadot Chardonnay.  Cute husband sits on the ledge and plays his guitar.  In the mornings I walk for miles along the beach and by afternoon get brave enough to go far out into the water, wading for hours and feeling the sunlight on the top of my head.  When I get home as the day begins to fade, I step into the front hallway of the white cottage, the floor covered in sand, and this poem painted on the wall to remind me of what's important.

Whenever I had trouble sleeping as a kid, my mom would tell me to just go somewhere nice in my mind, somewhere I'd love to be, and imagine all the things I might do in that place.  To this day, I still do it, and it really works!  I think it has an effect on my writing too, as it helps me create scenarios in my mind and forces me to take the time to really flesh out all the details that help bring a scene to life.

So if you've got troubles, if you've got worries, meet me here, in the little cottage with a white deck...

...of course you can't see the cottage in this photo because it's invisible to the naked eye.  It appears quite clearly after two margaritas.

The runaway train

Today I've been thinking about getting older.  I know some of my readers will groan here...just a second, let's let them groan...because they might find it a bit, shall we say, naive, for me to be talking about getting old when I am but a rip-snorting twenty-seven.  I know I've written here before about how twenty-seven feels old because all of the items on my "To Do By 27" list have not quite been checked off yet, but that's not really what I'm talking about today.

Today I'm thinking about how pleasant it can be to get older, how there is a certain wisdom involved in admitting that time is passing, and that you are moving along with it.  Being home, it has been nice to drive by old places and remember them when they looked new.  I feel a certain pride as I walk through my neighborhood admiring the tallness of the trees and the thickness of their roots, because I was here when the trees were tiny, when the trees had just been planted.  We used to have to be extra careful to close our blinds at night, but now it's not such a big deal, because the trees are big enough to obstruct the view.  It's funny to remember my parents commiserating with my friends' parents, "Can you believe how small the trees are?  They're practically bushes.  It's going to take forever for them to look normal."  But forever turned out to be the duration of our childhoods; none of us can believe how fast forever went.

I like to remember the block parties we used to have down the street, and how we are one of only a few families that remain here from those older days.  My parents tell me there are no more block parties, and that makes the memory even sweeter.  My vision of it is like a cloud that clears in the center to reveal a muggy July night and the dads in shorts and the moms running back and forth to their houses to grab more food, and the kids in bathing suits waiting on the curb for the fire department to arrive (they used to come and spray us).  And best of all the falling night, as people start to trickle home, but a few stay, drinking beers, swatting mosquitoes, laughing and talking and telling the kids to stay close, it's getting dark.  It's hard to believe now, but that was the best night of the whole summer: we all started looking forward to it the day school got out in May, and for the end of July and August we were sad that it was over, and said how it had been the best one yet.

The passage of time is undoubtedly scary--I think Ben Folds' analogy of life barreling on like a runaway train is quite apt.  But I can't help but feel glad for the things that I have to remember, I can't help but feel that they make my heart bigger and make going into my own mind even more fun than it used to be, when I was younger, and I used to just think about the things that were to come.  I miss so many things, I regret not savoring certain moments more, but how nice to have them stored along the little shelves of my mind.  How nice to know they are there.

An Imperfect Island

One of the most difficult things about my new commitment to writing and my promise to myself to at least try to do the thing that I've always said I've wanted to do, is that I feel like a real slow poke in the game of life.  This December I'll turn the whopping (and, frankly, ugly-sounding) age of 27.  It depresses me greatly that to this point I've still yet to have a true career or an income that's not hourly-based.  If you had asked me at 17 where I thought I'd be in ten years, I probably would not have said, "Nowhere."

Additionally, cute husband is also in a transitioning/no non-hourly-based income stage of life.  Though he spent three years after college working as a newspaper reporter, he's now back in school and we're smack dab in the middle of the three-year commitment to law school and all its grueling days and late nights and an overriding fear, considering the bad economy, that the great job he left the working world to find, won't actually be there when he gets out.  Add to that that we've moved to a part of the country (the South!) that neither of us is very familiar with and that neither of us ever would have imagined living in.  In so many ways we feel like we're on our own little island, away from the family and friends that we care about most in the world, trying to plod our way to our dreams.

But when I got to thinking about it I realized that marriage is, by definition, moving to your own little two-person island, no matter if your home happens to be centrally located in the middle of all of your loved ones or in a far corner of Siberia.  At the end of the day you are still just coming home to one person and only the two of you know the truth of what's real between you.  The relationship is the center of your reality--the thing that everything else flows through.

And the more I thought about it I realized that this little island we feel like we're on right now is just one island in a sea of islands that make up a life.  That life is elementally a series of stages that we go through--times when we aren't getting what we want, times when we're muddling through, times defined by little things: the burrito place down the street that my husband and I go to each Monday evening so we can spin the wheel and maybe win a free burrito because it cheers us up a little and gives us a little time, if only 30 minutes or so, to complain, whine, maybe celebrate, attempt to make each other laugh, at which we sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, and then we walk home hand-in-hand.  And something tells me that no matter where we are ten years from now, we'll still talk about Monday night burritos, and all we'll remember is how much fun it was, and probably how young we were, and how all of the things we were unsure about actually turned out okay in one way or another.

And I'm reminded of another island of my life.  When I was five my family and I made a move from one state to another and due to many different circumstances we hadn't had the time to buy a house in the state we were moving to.  So for about a month we had to live in a Residence Inn hotel.  Add to this it was late summer and there was a horrible drought, and my mom was eight-months pregnant with my brother, and add to that my mom's uncle--someone we all really loved--was dying of lung cancer, leaving my dad as the only person who could care for him at and between chemo sessions.  And so we lived in the crappy little motel and by day I wandered over to the crappy little motel pool and cooled off while the man who cleaned the pool each afternoon learned my name and entertained me with stories I didn't understand.  And back inside the hotel room, which my mom kept at around 50 degrees, I wrapped myself in sweatshirts and she and I watched the old Monkees TV show and giggled our brains out.

In the midst of what was probably one of the lowest points for my parents, when nothing was going right, and at any moment things could go terribly wrong, this is what I remember--that cool pool in the deep and abiding midwestern heat and giggling all afternoon at the Monkees.  Maybe it's just because I was so young and therefore oblivious, but I can hear myself saying those two words about myself as I am now, another twenty or so years down the road. 

And so I realized that though we are not in the perfect place we've imagined for ourselves, there is something worthwhile in the muddling through.  There is no such thing as being nowhere when you are trying to get somewhere.  And though right now this island feels big and wide and we can't even see the water anymore, somewhere off in the distance our boat's still tethered to shore and soon we'll walk our way back to it and ride away thinking fondly of our time here.

So I'll keep writing my way towards my 27th birthday.  And if anyone asks, I'm 23.