mizarchivist

Every time September rolls around, I remember this is possibly my favorite month. I love the drop in humidity, the gorgeous skies, the return of apples, being able to wear jeans again: it's all pretty lovely. 

This being the second of a three day weekend, there was a great deal of cooking that happened. We were gifted with a lot of tomatoes last night, so I decided to do a version of cacciatore. I have no idea if it resembles in the end, but it did have this bizarrely  bready smell that wafted through the house all day. (Tomato, chicken breast with bone, lots of oregano and basil, not enough salt, garlic, and the last of the Shiraz from last night.) It will get 'et with ravioli on Tuesday or Wednesday. 
We're having purple_terror's absolute favorite people (Tom and Carol) over tomorrow for dinner, so I decided mini apple pies were appropriate. Carol's from here, Tom's the UK and they currently live in the Other Cambridge. Their visits tend to be a big deal. PT's making beef wellingtion, you know, like you do. At any rate, cutting apples, making streusel, dough, and a bit of apple sauce to top the raw apple all had to happen. They're all hanging out and waiting to bet baked. This is how it got to be suddenly not 7:30, but 10 all of a sudden. 

However! The day was not all drudgery. I convinced quiet_elegance to venture out past the easy Spy Pond park adventure and to the more daring Harvard Common playground. It was a classic People's Republic moment- coming off the 77 bus to a cacophany that was Bread and Puppets. The crowd was dense enough and it was odd enough I didn't want to linger- not QE or Crime Fighter's cuppa, I think. But it was just so beautifully perfectly Cambridge: something my mom and dad would have easily seen here almost 40 years ago. 
QE had not been to this playground. It was packed with pretty well behaved kids. I adore the water features there. Nobody at all will be surprised that Mr. D took to the mini climbing hummock (not really a wall) instantly and knew exactly what to do with the hand/foot holds. He just needed a bit of extra bracing. 
Of course ALL the students and many of their parents were in Harvard Sq. We ventured in for some good tea and some Lush refills. Wow. Just... wow. The bluegrass band playing in the alley were good, though. But the crowds were comedically large and filled with loud know it alls explaining to n00bs what XYZ landmark means/is. I will say as a PSA that Cardullo's has done some rearranging and it's not so claustrophobic anymore! We dared to bring the umbrella stroller in (since Mr. D. was still strapped in)- and it was not a menace. A-maz-ing. 
All in all, it was a lovely jaunt. It was just the thing I wanted to do: a little adventure with my dudes. Well, minus PT, who spent the afternoon building the components of his new homebrew kit. (woo, beer!) 

It has been a weird week not having purple_terror  around. I've heard that it hasn't rained the whole time, but constantly hot and Texas-like.
Once again, my narrative is such that there's not a whole lot but quick sketches of notable activities that boil down to bullet points, so...

- Friday night is usually when quiet_elegance  and I go out for dinner, preferably sushi, but on the bike ride home I got it into my head to have a picnic on the green up town, which is exactly what we did. We cleared out the fridge of most of the useful dinner substances and then supplemented from Nourish.

-Much of the actual weekend was spent in the kitchen, it felt like. Now there's a fridge bursting at the seams almost with stuff. I suspect there won't be much more cooking until the weekend again. Between kitchen stuff, I got to have somewhat  brief moments with very small groups of people. Often involving ice cream. The holiday yesterday was spent almost entirely inside. There was bbq brisket, homemade ice cream, local corn, lettuce from my garden, startlingly good sangria (I think it was the lemonade powder that really brought it together) and yet more low-key hanging out.

- I eventually successfully figured out how to get itunes to run remotely to the speakers in the living room, so I was able to hang out in there without actually being drawn into watching TV. The DMH cookbook has been expanded- It's filled with hand-written and printouts in plastic sheets in a 3-ring binder. Inevitably there's stuff smeared on the sheets.  Archivist brain has been considering transcribing into a Google document and organizing the shit out of it. However, the act of pulling apart the original binder and freeing up the double-triple-quadruple stacked leaves, and suddenly I rather like it as it is. The secondary knowledge I pull from the spazzy, chaotic scribbles are important as the recipes themselves. I did try to get things into approximate main course integrated with veg, breakfasts, and the monster section of desserts about right. Everything but the stollen recipes are all visible. Someone decided to collect about a dozen stollen recipes. Someone who lives here and is of Scandahoovian descent. Just saying. Someone currently in Texas (and why aren't you HOME already?! Nobody's clicking poker chips. It's weird.)
Also while listening to a whole lot of classical music in the living room, I actually read while not on a form of public transit, which seems to be the main time for fun reading (well, it is about 2 hours every work day, so that's nothing to sneeze at). I'll have to remember the piping in music to the living room and reading thing. duh. You know, like how I spent pretty much my whole life as a kid. Well, often.

- I was reminded of something while hanging out with only a few people at a time over the past 3 days. That really is the best way to be social for me. I get scattered at parties with a lot of people. If I'm throwing the party, inevitably, I don't actually participate in the fun parts, just the keeping ahead of the curve on keeping food chaos in hand. So, when there were just 3 guests over yesterday, I was still doing food prep some, but then I sat down. Ate. I think I mostly listened, but you know, that's really OK. I got to hear some very interesting things from people I thoroughly care for. So, no fireworks, but s'ok.   I doubt I'll stop having bigger parties, but the next time I'm going to put in several safety measures to try to actually attend my own party.

I would really like full sized dried corn husks so I can make tamales. I've now been to 4 stores and.... yeah. Really, no. Halp? If any of you out in LJ land do go to a grocery store where they do sell such a wacky thing as tamale wrappers, will you hook me up with at least 2 packages? 

Yes, corn. Corn's in season. Well, the last attempt with tamale making had husks that may have been 3" wide, if I was lucky. Not good enough, although will have to do for this occasion.

ETA:  I've husked the corn and it's not quite as bad as last time. I may be able to carry on tomorrow with my plan.

Ok, maybe yesterday wasn't entirely a wash, but a lot went wrong.
My plan- meet up with primal_pastry  for a craft consult (and doghnuts!), execute the requested activity (personalizing a hip flask)- success- and then start in on making tomales. tamales.

Hm. So- what went wrong. The first hunk of meat acquired turned green overnight. No. Sorry- bad. Delay to return bad meat, try again. Did not like second attempt, as it smelled just as rank, just not green. Consolation pork not likely to behave in the fall-aparty way I want for this application. Try second grocery, they have no pork butt.
Regroup, have late lunch. Go with K. to Penzey's and the new Meat Market down the block from Penzey's. The place is hopping and overrun with helpful sales people. Pork butt acquired.
Home. Start tamale-making. No longer 2pm, 4pm, but we soldier on. K makes 100 lbs of masa and sets it aside. Meat is seasoned and set to simmer- all is well. Plans put in to have a later dinner- no problem. I shuck corn and swear to K that there should be enough from 5 ears. Then we wait the hour+ for the meat before prepping the meat for the next bit: more spice, onion, garlic. Knife requires sacrifice from K's finger. Still attached, but massive blood thing. I finish the filling, discover masa has dessicated in the intervening time and needs major fixing. WTF, say I? It's mostly useable. Start assembly with M's help. Oh. These fresh leaves--- well, they're not really quite large enough. Not by a long shot. Awkward! It's getting late and we're all tired hungry, and some of us with hand wounds. Pizza order is threatened, but this time... no, this time I do not want to be thwarted entirely. I surrendered when the salmon turned out to taste like cat food last month, but dammit- no! 
50 lbs of the remaining masa is stuck in the freezer. There's still a fair bit of pork. Burritos, dammit. I can make those before a pizza would arrive. Plus, there's this fresh corn.

Next time: meat will be prepped the day before. Masa: we will use 1/3 the suggested amount and made within half an hour of construction. If I have a failure in acquiring the meat I want to use, I will either give up the notion of making tamales or be willing to use a substitute. I will purchase my corn husks so I can be sure they'll be a useable size... or try to find mutantly large ears.  I will trust the knife incident was not an actual factor.

In the meantime, I will look for pork butt more often for cooking. Tasty!... when not green.

In other news: I'm planning on expanding my work decorating hip flasks. I'll be getting 3 in the mail this week. I may have made my best mini dragon (one that's on an Altoids tin, not a flat pencil case size or tea tin) yet: gold and red on a sky background.

Negative movie suggestion: Ninja Assassin. After dinner was finally eaten, K and I decided to kick back and watch a movie we expected to be a bit lame. No... lame doesn't remotely cover it. And I swear I saw JMS's name on it, too- what's up with that? The sort of movie that a 3 year old would have been ashamed to call their writing. Also? Have some blood. No, really. The only good thing I can say about the movie was that I didn't pay full price at the theater, just Netflix.

I guess I'm not surprised I'm so tired today.

I'm sorry I can' t make it to dim sum as planned, but considering the lineup of things I am planning to do today, that might be OK-
-potato soup (like a baked potato with the works in liquid form) for later
-curry for dinner
-prep cholesterol cookies
-something dessert-like for tonight, as yet undetermined
Also I really want hot chocolate and I'm hoping to do some more crafty things at some point. So, I'll have fun but I might forget to do nothing, as usual.
Oh- purple_terror 's present to quiet_elegance  this year : a new snow blower. It seemed good tactics to give it to him last night. Once I clear it with q_e, I may be trying to find a new home for a fixer-uper smaller snow blower. More details on that later.

It's been a week since Bob's memorial- I've not written anything about it because I was either too tired or just not in the space to think about it. So, it was good- very standard churchy sort, as you'd expect at a church. Some of his friends/benefactors paid tribute- that was the best part. And so many people! I was hugely gratified to see that. So, thank you all for the im/explicit support. I think about and miss him every day, but it doesn't feel like a dagger in my chest. Nor do I need to torture myself with marathon Pink Floyd sessions. So, I'm getting back on the saddle and donning my food-fairy wings again. There's a lot of hungry people in the world, and I'll always over-estimate how much we'll eat in a given week. I did fall into the trap when I was Bob-focused that I rarely offered to others, but now I feel like I'd be doing more good by not settling on one person or pattern.

The season is definitely starting to turn, despite the recent omg-hot. When I'm on the bike path, I can see a few leaves  here and there turning red. There's more debris from the overhanging trees on the ground, and today, this morning- glorious. I just adore that more insistent coolness that means you want a bit of a jacket, but don't yet need socks or long sleeves all day. So when it turned out my train crapped out at Charles Street, I got to have the best walk up Charles Street then through The Common. Also, this weather means apples are going to be ripe soon. I've seen a few local ones from early harvests in, but they taste too sharp still- not that deep, sweet but tart thing that makes me hunt around for the peanut butter or insist on making crust for pie. We recently got a food mill. It's much fancier than the one I grew up with that only had one grind setting of super-fine. This one will do much more coarse finish, which bodes well for this season's sauce-making.

This is a good segue into mentioning that I'm reading Julia Child's memoir My Life in France. Amazing! But it makes me hungry a lot of the time. And while I'm not likely to go to Paris any time soon, I can focus all that pent up lust for travel on my Italy trip next spring.

Life at home seems to be pretty frickin' awesome of late. He's not much of a LJ writer these days, but I will say that quiet_elegance  is dealing with a lot of needful and in the end good stuff- after years of stoicism re: bad knee and back, he's making getting better a priority. Right now it's sort of adds up to a part time job given how often he's going to the doctor, at PT, etc. He's been between jobs for over a month at this point, but it really was providential, given how much time he'd have to take off for appointments, so in other words, wouldn't be. Despite the on-going pain, the man is downright chipper and entirely delightful to be around. His attentiveness- presentness- and the schmoop levels may well be lethal. Woe! ;) I'm proud as hell of this new path he's taking. It's like he woke up after years of dormancy.

And apropos of nothing from above, but mentioned previously- things are work seem to be going pretty well. I have actually finished writing up my scripts for my screencast recordings. My software choice is likely to be Camtasia, which pairs with my already installed Jing. Now I just have to start recording. Yay? Actually the best bit was having such positive feedback from my boss yesterday. Really, need to review the whole set of scripts before I try to record. Or practice by reading out loud (not a favorite task, but necessary)
So I should go do that.

I'm having a few folk over tomorrow. For some insane reason, I decided I wanted to try out a new dessert. The key ingredient is chocolate (no... really?!).
ingredients:
tofu chocolate pie filling (1 block silken tofu, one bag chocolate chips, 1/3 c.flavored liqueur - kaluah this time)
lady fingers
cool whip
carmel
marshmallow topping
hot fudge
oreos, crushed
vanilla-creme wafers, crushed

all put in layers: heavier on the pie filling and cool whip layers, a lot lighter for the sundae condiments. I think I actually managed 3 repetitions of the lady fingers. The concoction will be kept in the freezer to set and keep the cookie bits from (hopefully) getting soggy.

If nothing else, it'll be quite the buzz.

I have had a very good weekend.
I'll start really at Friday, as I wanted to write then but didn't and will be obvious shortly.
Caulay helped me figure out the ljdownload hack that allows you to have all one's entries with an icons and comments without going through the one built into LJ, which isn't very good, or whatever. This hack- written by awfief- downloads it into html month by month. So, didn't want to re-load for April by writing on the 30th after I was done. I found that the best format for this is the simplest browser design, which has no sidebars or extra color or anything. I think it's called Lynx. Anyway, good yay- 16 months of my history in printable format. I am planning on putting two pages per sheet, folding the sheets then binding them into some book format. I used to (about 4-5 years ago) print out the "best" emails from the year. I can't do that anymore. This is a little better. More compact. And since I don't keep a journal (right now) in any other form- it'll be good to leaf through sometime in the future. There's a reason why I'm an archivist smile

Saturday was really beautiful. K. actually wanted to get grocery shopping done early so he could go to wrenching 101 with nedod folk. I went off to a birthday party the girl of the hour, her boy, faterrisus, and bryt for an hour. The motorcycle ride was very good. I went up rt. 4, as it seemed a waste of an afternoon to go directly via 3. Which sucks no matter what.
The second birthday party of the evening was quite loverly. There was Redbones- Danny was ribbed for being 40. He got one of those awesome air guns, that's a big plastc tube with a heavy-duty plastic bag with elastic. So everyone practiced shooting puffs of air at each other. The cats. The furniture. Naw, I swear we're not 10. The post cake activty was watching Kill Bill pt. I. I'd not seen it yet, partly because everyone said how frustrating it was to have a cliffhanger ending, but many thought it'd be too bloody for me. For once, not so horrible. Yes! Lots and lots of blood. But it was cool blood. Sometime before it leaves theaters, I'd very much like to see part II.

Today I got banana bread muffins made, went to hang out with Doris and Jes, and just got home.

I guess the only crappy things that happened were having a minor freak about $ (and no biggie in the big picture. But let's face it: I'm very uptight about finances.) and getting soaked on the way home from Doris's. 'Course, now it's not raining. Typical. I think I hear Buffy calling me. And the guacamole. Best not to ignore the siren call of chip dip.

My adventure for the day was to go w/ K. to the grocery store.

K's auto is again living up to "Black Cloud" status. Wouldn't start. The damned thang. So, I dug out the truck and started in on the driveway until K. was convinced the 'Cloud wasn't planning on starting w/out help.

I successfully got the truck out of its berth in 2 tries. Woohoo!!

Much food was procured, dry gas, too. Not too many idiots were out in Lexington. Unfortunately, getting into the driveway required M.'s expertise, as it was not yet cleared from the concrete-like snow.

Grilled cheese, home made tomato soup, a warm living room and Victor/Victoria on. Now that I'm fortified, there will be much kitchen activity bounce

On Friday I went over to HOVIR and left the guys at home to blow shit up. (surprise!- seriously, they'd not done much of that this week and at least M. had an early day Sat.)

So, we hung out and played a game called Settlers of .. um, I think Katan or Catan- anyway, like Monopoly, but on a hex field n' stuff. I want to play again. Many of you will fall over now, as I *really* don't play games much. Not ones involving little pieces and dice n' boards n' stuff.

Saturday was a slow start- Eventually had lunch/breakfast, sweetmmeblue came over with kidlet to rollerskate, which was fun- Eventually had lunch/supper at 5 and then went grocery shopping, but was still hungry. I went a bit nuts at Wilson Farm, but that's OK.
Came back, had grilly things, corn, very good salad and watched B5 while the guys blew shit up again. Julz eventually showed after babysitting.

Sunday I got up at a middling time and decided a nice big breakfast was in order. Alton Brown talked about making omlettes, so I gave it a whack. They were pretty damned good! Julz and K. eventually dragged themselves out of bed, I forced omlettes down their throats (they were arguing a great deal, of course, about getting food made for them) and then headed towards the beach. And never made it. The traffic up 95 and beyond SUCKED. We decided the beach would be even worse, so we headed towards NH and J's dad's house. He has a pool. A very green pool. Lots and lots of tree sex and other flora and fauna. A bit of mucking out and it was a great swim.
Olive Garden for lunch/dinner and then saw League of Extaordinary Gentleman. Talk a bout a *cold* theater. Movie was Ok. I never read the comic, so dunno if they fucked up :)
Then home n' stuff.

I'm writing from home at the second and not work, as it's a double-meeting day. One here in Lex. at 10 then another in Worchester at 1:30. And the extra sleep hasn't helped much, apparently! But I did have *odd* dreams about already going to the meetings and having to remember to vote for something. shrug