dreaming of thanksgiving

yeah, yeah, yeah, i know it's halloween so i suppose i should be posting about that but to be honest, much as i like halloween and had the joy and delight of growing up in a die hard, spookiest house on the street halloween family (thank you big brother micky!), it doesn't really excite me all that much. maybe if i had little bambinos to dress up and take around i'd be more into it but as it stands... it's not speaking to my soul. don't get me wrong... i took great joy in watching it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown and am looking forward to the fun and merriment and what not, but it really doesn't excite me like thanksgiving.

thanksgiving is another matter altogether! i have always loved thanksgiving and at the risk of insulting my wonderful family in pittsburgh, i am really enjoying the having friends over for thanksgivings again since we've come back to california. family too, of course, since lucy and laurence are here and are awesome enough to celebrate with us, and this year we will also get the goodby clan! i loved doing thanksgiving at my parents' place in pittsburgh but i didn't get to do the cooking and that, for me anyhow, is the most fun part of the whole shebang. that said, i did do a thanksgiving dinner for our sorely missed dinner party friends every november so i guess i had the best of both worlds, family and friend dinners, now that i think about it. i was the official geever pie queen growing up and while we were living in pittsburgh and i get to do that, too! what can i say? i like thanksgiving meals and i like them a certain way so i end up doing most of it (control issues, anyone?). trump is always game for mashing potatoes, drew is a fantastic host who keeps everyone lubricated and entertained, and everyone pitches in at the hectic end. it's drew's favorite holiday and his enthusiasm and excitement have definitely rubbed off on me, but not enough to do a thanksgiving dinner every month, as he proposes at least that often. where there's life, there's hope. ;-)

so, what have i been dreaming of so far? a heritage turkey from the good shepherd farm, ordered via the wonderful folks at heritage foods. martha says if you get a fresh turkey you don't need to bother with brining as they're succulent to begin with but i don't know... i've kinda gotten hooked on brining. i think i'll stick with it. cook's illustrated is proposing dry brining this year but i hate anything that depends on loosening the skin to stick stuff under it. it's so easy to tear and then you're fucked, not to put too fine a point on it. i think i'll stick with the cook's country perfect roast turkey, which i've used before with great success and yumminess. salt pork - who knew? drew has requested the sausage, chestnut and mushroom dressing a la the good folks at williams-sonoma who still want too much for the much-lusted-after roasting pan. i'll do it as stuffing, of course, and w/out their $16.50 chestnuts. i'm going to get mine at our local zanotto's market; that's the one we go to on the site, as it happens. the chestnuts will be raw so i'll roast them, which i haven't done in a while and is half the fun. if you've never had freshly roasted chestnuts you are missing out on one of life's true gastronomic delights and they're super easy to prepare. sweet, warm, chewy roast chestnuts... i might have to do a trial run.

as for sides... roasted garlic mashed potatoes, this awesome acorn squash and apple bake recipe that i got from our new csa, farm fresh to you. i am super pleased with ffty... excellent produce and variety and they deliver! the potatoes we got last time were to die for. i wonder if i can request extras for thanksgiving? have to look into that. for veggies i'm thinking of martha's ginger sesame stir fried green beans that were such a hit at the dinner parties, plus something with broccolini. we love broccolini and i have to wonder just where it's been all my life until this past year or so. and sweet potatoes, of course. maybe the roasted ones from my low fat moosewood cookbook. haven't made those in a while and they're pretty darn good. sweet potatoes and squash both; too much? it seems sacrilegious to not have sweet potatoes but that'll be a lot with the squash. any opinions, oh gentle readers?

don't worry, i didn't forget dessert! i found a lovely maple bourbon pecan pie recipe in my martha stewart living cookbook last year that i plan to make again, though i was just comparing it to cook's illustrated perfect pecan pie and am making some adjustments, including using fresh vanilla bean instead of extract. i got some vanilla beans at costco a while back.... ten beans for $10, if i remember correctly. since they were practically giving them away i bought a bunch and really do want to use them. pumpkin and mincemeat pie too, it goes without saying. the wonderful belknaps will be joining us again this year so i hope dave is willing to tend bar again. our first year back he did so and regaled us with the wonders of the sidecar, a drink i had never heard of but now love. dave being the connoisseur and all he didn't just make us a sidecar, he made us three, all with different liqueurs (i think i liked the first one best). i hadn't eaten since breakfast and in a hot kitchen all day and was half way through my third when i realized i was getting rather drunk so had to stash my drink in the fridge until dinner was ready. good times!

i guess that's enough for the holiday after the current one, but ooh! i am excited! if you're in our neck of the woods be sure to stop by. i'm sure there will be more than enough.

the best stories are love stories

so i finally watched gran torino last night and wow! seriously. wow. drew wanted to watch monsters vs. aliens, and i'm sure it's good, but i insisted on gran torino and we are both glad i did. i was under the impression it was bleak and couldn't have been more mistaken. if you are looking for a film that is hilarious in all the wrong ways as well as a completely life-affirming love story (not boy meets girl love story but a LOVE story), rent that dvd post-haste, grasshopper. clint eastwood was a complete revelation... God, but the man can act. and direct!

so what's on my agenda for today, you ask? well, first off i am going to bake another loaf of cranberry bread. i used to have this great recipe for cranberry orange bread that i got when i lived in noe valley in san francisco (circa 1994-ish). they used to include recipes in the pg&e bill - don't ask me why - and the cranberry orange bread was the bomb. i lost it about ten years ago after many happy years of yumminess. curses! i found a a recipe that is almost the same. the first loaf was good, close but no cigar. i am going to tinker with the recipe and see what happens. i am also going to sand out and stain the minor scratches on my new-to-me mission style furniture. it's so pretty!!! i found a leather upholstered couch, chair and ottoman as well as a coffee table and side table on craig's list that we picked up for $550; a total deal. this is really nice furniture... solid wood and heavy as hell (not that i moved any of it! drew wouldn't let me on account of the gimpy back.) the chair alone would cost more than we paid for all of it and best of all, it will not trap cat and dog fuzz like the old couch did. while i'm sorry to see the old couch go, because i loved the style, i am not sorry to leave the slowly falling apart, fuzz embedded part behind.

and after that, who knows? it's a sunny, mild saturday and there is nowhere i have be at any given time... just a beautiful day stretching out before me, full of possibilities.

the long hiatus is over

almost a year seemed as good enough a reason as any to jump-start ye olde blog. if anyone out there might still care, that is.

life in california is treating me well, i am happy to report, though our cats are going to put us in the poorhouse. chiana has had vet bills out the wazoo lately due to what the vets euphemistically refer to as a "grooming accident" (my fault and yes, i am a terrible cat mom). of course it was after 10 pm so we had to go to the ER vet. now it seems tommy has some sort of infected bite on his face so we're going to the vet tomorrow. he and herbie were mixing it up the other day and neither escaped unscathed. the only silver lining to all the carnage is our aspca pet insurance. chiana's reimbursed bills this year alone (from the aforementioned incident as well as a sick-puking-episode) covered all of this year's cat policies (three), and who knows? maybe tommy's visit will pay for the dog's. the pet insurance itself is okay. i'd be happier about it but like any other insurance company they kind of suck. they discount amounts that they determine are "above usual rates" and then only reimburse 80% of what's left, to work out to a 55 - 65% reimbursement rate. it's still better than a zero reimbursement rate, but it's annoying.

there really isn't much else going on since we are pretty boring which, as i've said before, makes for bad stories but good living. it's not even halloween and i am already looking forward to thanksgiving and christmas! i got the latest williams-sonoma catalogue and was drooling over it like a pervert at a peep show. i am jonesing for their new roast pan but, sheesh! $280? is that really necessary? drew of course said "get it!" since he likes to encourage anything cooking-related and just likes spoiling me, but i cannot part with that much cash, even for all-clad. i am going to check it out at the store and compare the two sizes, then look on ebay.

i am also really excited about christmas, which is a change from last year. this year we're staying home, which means putting up a tree, decorating, watching christmas specials, listening to my charlie brown christmas cd, and setting up my fontanini nativity which i love in an almost co-dependent way. my friend sara calls it the club med nativity on account of the palm tree. i'd love to buy a few more pieces but i don't think i can indulge that whim this year, either. we have a few extra lambs and the shepherd carrying the lamb over his shoulders. i always loved that one as a kid.
and baking with my sister is another christmas festivity i am happily anticipating. we did the uber bake-a-thon last year, a good 12 hours of christmas cookie baking and decorating, last year. we decided we'd have to spread it over two days next time and that being the case i am going to make the mini panetonne from my martha stewart living christmas cookbook! i have been threatening to for several years but this year i'm doing it.

so, with christmas dreams and plans and roast pans on my mind, i bid you adieu. for now.

not quite in the christmas spirit

seeing as how i'm going home for Christmas next week you'd think i'd be bouncing off the walls happy and excited, and i am excited, but i am also gripped by a very big case of the blahs. i am kind of bummed out. i am tired. i am missing jame. i am not quite getting enough sleep, but enough so that i'm not exhausted, just a little tired. i am bored silly at work, which this time of year isn't surprising; it's super slow. it'll pick up again later. i tweaked my back in pilates class about three weeks ago and i am still not back to normal. close, but not quite 100% back, which really fucked up my ability to get the things done at home that i need to before we leave. at this point i'm about two weeks behind, easy. i have so much to get done before we leave and i get home in the evening and all those things i was going to do are just too much and i get some of it done but not enough. i kind of like having a t.v. and i also kind of wish we didn't, which will never happen so long as i'm married to mr. r. all i really want to do is stay home, sleep in, do some laundry and clean my house. oh, and never have to work again. i guess i'm just really ready to be on vacation next week, to be home.

that's another thing... this whole home concept. i was at my sister's the other night and called pittsburgh home, and one of the women there said it was only home if you'd move back and would i? and i said yes, in a heartbeat. so that leaves me in a weird place because i can't move back in a heartbeat since my husband, in addition to being allergic to the town i love so well, also finds the career prospects there exceptionally limited compared to here. which isn't a fair comparison, since ALL career prospects are limited compared to here, but you can afford to live in places like pittsburgh whereas here it's just scraping by. that's the really fucked up thing about the bay area and why i didn't want to move back here. you can make what anywhere else is a lot of money, 100, 125, 150k and still just be scraping by. and if you've never lived here it's impossible to understand. my dad hears how much we make and i know he doesn't get why we aren't rolling in dough. the rents are outrageous - we pay almost three times the rent of our last place in pgh for a third of space, and if we were still there we'd have bought a house by now. if we're lucky we can do that here in like, oh, five or six years. health care costs are more, energy prices are more... all of it is more except the wages, which are marginally more, but nowhere near enough more to compensate for the cost of living. haven't even been here two years and i'm already getting that "living in california exhausts me" feeling. fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

i hate feeling like charlie brown at christmastime. i am looking forward to making christmas cookies with my sister but apart from that, everything else that i need to do is just way to much fucking work with way too little motivation. i don't know... i am excited about making cookies. maybe there's hope for me yet.

i have totally fallen down on the blogging front. thanksgiving was great but no pictures this year, not a one. i tweaked my side/hip on my left side and now i am freaked out that i hurt my back again, since it's aching there, too. i seriously doubt that this is the case, but i can still worry about it incessantly. majorly unmotivated to do anything but loaf... ugh. thank god we're going to pgh on the 17th for almost three weeks of r&r!

brave little kitten

i know i am only the tenth zillion person to post about this on their blog today but i just had to post this video of this sweet little kitten who survived a horrific attack by teenagers who were kicking him around like a ball. can't even wrap my head around that; just reading the words hurts my heart. the video doesn't show the attack, just the cute little fuzz ball and the vet who did the surgery to save him. i literally looked at the link on the ccn site for like three minutes, trying to decide if i should watch it, and then i did a search and read someone's comments on a blog which indicated there was nothing more horrific (as if it were necessary) than the poor little creature after his surgery, which saved him at the expense of his leg.



sigh..........

and you know what? i don't even care what led these particular kids to do this, because by the time they're horrifically abusing animals like they did this one it's too late for them. they had some sort of fucked up things done to them, or witnessed by them, and now they have no empathy for other creatures and have embarked on a life of abusing others, human or not human. some of them will even grow up to be serial murderers of humans, which is why it's so important to treat animal abuse and cruelty like the crime that it is. find them and throw the book at them, contain them as best as can be done, because there's no way to save them. that i know of, anyway, and i'm by no means an expert on everything (even though my husband might think that i sometimes think i am!) perhaps i am being a bit too bleak, but it's hard to imagine how it's possible to rehabilitate anyone so callous and cruel that they would kick a kitten, never mind injure it so gravely that it loses its leg.

yet it's so very easy to admire the little kitten... curious and playful and looking to explore things. a terrible start i wouldn't wish on any creature, and he'll end up in a very good home with people who really love animals and will really love him. first thing when i get home (after feeding the cats their nummies - delays make herbie frantic), i am going home to pet and fuss over and be thankful for my furry little babies even more than usual.

Obama - Yes!!!!

YES!!!!
YES!!!!
YES!!!!

i completely stole that from an email from my brother, patrick, who lives just outside of amsterdam with his family. it completely sums up how i feel and if i'm going to capitalize anything on this little blog, the end of the reign of darkness we have fallen under qualifies more than anything else. whew!!!! seriously... i am so happy, so excited, so completely fucking RELIEVED!!!! i didn't know it was possible to be so relieved!!! about half way through obama's speech last night i started crying and just couldn't stop. 90% of it was sheer relief that, as gerald ford once said about completely different circumstances, our long national nightmare is finally over. i just didn't know how we could make it through another four years if mccain won and now i don't have to.

i am still kind of in shock. we have a black president - woo hoo!!!! this country will never be the same in ways that can only be great, wonderful, positive and thrilling! i never thought it would happen in my lifetime and i have never been happier to be proved wrong. i am so proud of this american experiment in a way i cannot even express, and i think of all the little kids who will grow up thinking that having a black president it totally normal, when everything in our history says otherwise. what an historic occasion, an historic paradigm shift. i love that these kids will think "why shouldn't the president be a black person? or a woman? or both?" it's just the first step towards finally starting to heal our country but what a first step!

drew and i were talking after he got home with the champagne - buying it beforehand was just too jinxy - while watching obama's speech and agreed that it felt so great to hear someone telling us we were going to have to sacrifice and work hard to restore our country, our world, instead of telling us to go shopping. what could be more crass, really, than telling a traumatized country to go hit the mall? but that's just what bush did. i distinctly remember reading how the president and first lady went to dinner at a mexican restaurant to let the country know things were "back to normal" when they were anything but and we were only just starting to tumble down the rabbit hole. i remember thinking "what the fuck do they mean back to normal?" it made my head hurt then and it still does now. i know that i am hungry for leadership that i can believe in, that restores hope to all of us, and i think obama can do it. as drew said last night, i am eating my words, even about the fisa vote (but man, he better fucking fix it pronto.) i think our country is so fucking starved for real leadership and is so worn out from the bullying, greed and neglect that bush tried to pass off as one and the same. i truly am more hopeful at this moment in history than any other... about my country, its founding ideals and principles which i truly and deeply cherish, and our place in the community of nations.

so say we all.