Doldrums of winter

It's a balmy 16 degrees this morning, it's almost March, and we're in the doldrums of winter. It's ugly outside: the snow is dirty, the sidewalks are icy, and the back yard looks like a dog poop bomb went off. You can't pick that stuff up in weather like this.

I hear the Pope warned against celebrating St. Patrick's Day on the 17th because it's during Holy Week. Regis read the real rules of the Catholic Church and they say it should be moved to the closest Saturday after Lent but that would be April 1st and who wants to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in April? So I guess they got a dispensation to have it on the 15th. It isn't the beer they object to but the corned beef. Couldn't the Pope just declare that corned beef is a fish for that day?

This is a capybara. The capybara is a is a semi-aquatic rodent of South America. It weighs about a hundred pounds and is about 2 feet tall at the shoulder. Capybaras are gentle and will usually allow humans to pet and hand-feed them, like a giant guinea pig. During Lent capybara meat is especially popular as the Catholic Church, in a special dispensation, classified the animal as a fish in the 16th century. Give a yell for those Catholics and their winks and then go down to the river and try to net one of these babies. .

I read on Charlie's blog this morning about a Can of Whoop Ass. I laughed out loud...then had to do some research. Thank God for Google is all I have to say.

And, in case you aren't familiar with whoop ass yourself, you can find the directions for how to open one here, on e-how, in the section on resolving conflict in your relationships. You never know when this will come in handy. Hey, does that look like Condi Rice just below the can of whoop ass?

How to Open a Can of Whoop Ass

Sunday night

It was such a nice weekend, I hate to see it end. We took Ella with us to Menards this morning. I had forgotten how hard it is to shop with a two-year old. She was good but she is no longer happy to sit passively in the cart. She wants to get down and walk...and pick up everything she passes. She never fussed when we put things back but we had quite a collection of stuff we didn't want...a watering can, a kneeling pad, a screw driver, a roll of duct tape. Regis said she is a retailer's nightmare. Or maybe not if we had bought any of that stuff.

We tried to watch the Oscars tonight but we don't have tv. We assumed, in the age of the internet, that someone would have it streamed. Regis figured out how to hook the computer to the tv but that was as much luck as we had. There were a few sites that said they had it but it was coming from China or something. Probably some guy in China with his movie camera aimed at the tv. I guess I'll read about it in the paper like I usually do.

Other fun things we did today: made Cuban bread (a bread so easy it almost makes itself), made fettucini noodles and Alfredo sauce, put a smoke detector in the office (well, ok, that wasn't so much fun), read the paper and took a nap in the sun. All in all, a good day.

Pizza

Isn't this pretty? I used round cake pans instead of the rectangular pan and I think it was the right choice. Half of food is the look. We used Italian sausage, sweet peppers, caramelized onions, and mushrooms. And of course mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese. There isn't a lot of cheese on the top...just the parmesan and some olive oil drizzled over it...and I think it's so you can see the filling. If you read the recipe, you might have noticed that there was 1/2 cup of corn meal in the dough. I thought that was interesting but I think it's what made the dough light and crisp. Even in the center with all those vegetables, it didn't get soggy.

We watched the movie Ed Wood after dinner. I ordered it because Johnny Depp is in it and Tim Burton directed it...and I wanted to give them a chance to redeem themselves after Sweeney Todd. I'm sure that's important to them. Ed Wood, Jr. was a movie director, acclaimed to be the worst director of all time. He did a lot of B horror flicks in the 40s. The movie is in black and white and there are lots of recognizable actors. We really liked it and I'd give it a 4/5. Siskel and Ebert loved it and had it on their list of best movies of the year. Here's their review.

Happy Sunday and last week of February!

At the movies again

We made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner last night...thick slabs of bread with white cheddar, provolone, and sharp cheddar. Then we watched Gosford Park. I liked it and gave it a 4/5 but Regis wanted to drive right down to the mailbox to get it out of the house.

It's about a murder at a British hunting estate so people wander around dark hallways wearing dreadful furs with the feet attached, kind of muttering under their breath in thick British accents. They light each other's cigarettes and have breakfast brought to them in bed by a valet or a lady's maid. The murder was very refined (just a little knife stuck in when you weren't looking...no blood) and there were no chase scenes.

I love British movies which seem to be often like this unless it's a British movie about transvestites like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in which case there is more flamboyance and more action. Regis likes movies like The Bourne Identity. That's too stimulating for me with all the chasing and shooting and killing. I thought Gosford Park was very funny in places and I chuckled. Those Brits can be quite wry.

We slept until past 7:00 this morning and I'm not rushing into anything today. We're making Chicago-style pizza tonight either in the rectangular pans or in the round cake pans that might work but might be too small. I found the right pan online and Nordicware makes it right here in Minnesota. I should have known. Here's the recipe:

A Chicago Legend

In Chicago...eating pizza is a dining experience, not just a snack as in most places. But it wasn't always that way. Ike Seawell changed things back in 1943 when he created deep dish pizza. (Some folks call it Chicago Pizza.)
This recipe was adapted from the book The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith. Jeff wrote that "I have tried to figure out how it's done at Pizzeria Uno and I think that I'm very close. I ran my recipe by Mama, a gorgeous black woman who has been cooking pizzas there for thirty years, and she smiled and nodded. You can't get much better than that!"

Dough Recipe

* 2 packages rapid rise dry yeast

* 2 cups warm water

* 1/2 cup vegetable oil

* 4 tablespoons olive oil

* 1/2 cup cornmeal

* 5 1/2 cups flour

In the bowl of a stand mixer (e.g. KitchenAid), dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the vegetable oil, olive oil, cornmeal, and half of the flour. Beat for 10 minutes. Attach the dough hook and mix in the remaining flour. Knead for several minutes with the mixer. (Note: because the dough is very rich and moist, it would be difficult to do this by hand.)

Remove dough and place on a clean countertop. Cover with a very large metal bowl and allow to rise until double in bulk. Punch down and allow to rise again.

Punch down a second time and you are ready to make pizza!

Oil your deep-dish pizza pan. Depending on the size of your pan, place some dough in the pan and push it out to the edges using your fingers. Put in enough dough so that you can run the crust right up the side of the pan. Make it about 1/8-inch thick throughout the pan.

Filling for a 9- or 10-inch Pan

* 1/3 pound sliced mozzarella cheese

* 2 cups Italian-style whole peeled tomatoes, drained and squished

* 1 teaspoon basil

* 1 teaspoon oregano

* 2 cloves garlic, minced

* Salt to taste

* 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

* 3 tablespoons olive oil

Place the cheese in tile-like layers on the bottom of the pie. Next put in the tomatoes and the basil, oregano, garlic, and salt, reserving the Parmesan cheese for the top. Drizzle olive oil over the top of the pie and you are ready to bake.

Variations: Before you put on the Parmesan cheese and olive oil drizzle, you might like to add any or all of the following:

* Italian sausage, hot or mild

* Yellow onions, peeled and diced

* Pepperoni, sliced thin

* Mushrooms, sliced

* Green sweet bell peppers, cored and sliced thin

Bake the pie in a 475°F oven until the top is golden and gooey and the crust a light golden brown, about 35 to 40 minutes.

I'll take a picture!

Out of the cone of silence

I feel like I was so cranky from the cold and wind the first part of the week, that I left out some details of our exciting lives...

Regis is coming home to work on March 3rd although he says he will believe it when he sees it. The phone is hooked up, the office is cleaned up, and the desk is ready. Out of the cone of silence.

I decided tonight that I had to have a Chicago-style pizza pan. Of course, Target didn't have what I had in my head so I had to settle for a rectangular unit which doesn't seem right. Rectangular pizza? Shades of Jeno's and little wiener slices.


We went to Dino's in North Mankato for dinner. If you're local and haven't done that yet, you should. The food is delicious and the ambience is very nice. They serve New York style pizza, pasta, sandwiches, and some different appetizers. We had bruschetta tonight that wasn't like it's usually served. We've had blue cheese kettle chips there before that were so good you wanted to lick the plate.

Regis was in an east coast driving mood tonight. Honest to God, he is the only person I have ever know who has made a U-turn on both Minnesota Avenue and on Belgrade Avenue. He doesn't believe me when I say it just isn't done. He must have switched lanes a hundred times on the way over and back. If I had been driving, I would have picked a lane and stayed in it. It's just my way.

My right wrist is killing me. I don't know if I've been kneading too much bread or lifting too many bales. I bought a brace for it at Target tonight.

We saw Bill tonight when he was home for an hour to meet his kids for dinner. He came home Tuesday night to find the motor on his furnace had burned out and the temp in the house was 35 degrees. I'd say that was fortuitous. Tomorrow he flies to Cincinnati, then Singapore and then somewhere else equally exotic. It sounds exciting but tiresome....you know how I like to travel. We didn't give him any crap about the guy cleaning off his driveway at midnight.

I helped Peter with an essay today and complimented him on his writing. He thanked me but said it was kind of like your mom telling you you're handsome. Not much credibility when you're the mom, I guess.

Amazing how much better we felt with the temperature in the 20s and the sun shining today. A guy almost feels like he might survive the winter. Paul Douglas says the worst is behind us. Pretty soon folks will be out with their ice chippers, putting a can of beer in the snow bank until they're done cleaning the driveway.

Middle of the night snow removal

I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of a jet plane with all engines ready for take-off on the front yard. When I sat up and pulled the curtain aside to peer outside, it wasn't a jet after all, but one of these snow machines brushing snow off my neighbor's driveway that happens to be about 8 inches from my bedroom window. This is not my real neighbor doing this: Bill and Jean are gone for the winter so they contract with someone to remove their snow and cut their grass. Is this guy crazy? IS THIS GUY CRAZY??? There wasn't enough snow to brush yesterday much less in the middle of the night. A person who is not getting regular sleep does not need this kind of experience...the loud noise, the snow being blown against the siding of the house, the bright lights because you know this thing has headlights like the Gulag.

Sleeping has been like this lately...this is a great old Donald Duck cartoon and only takes about five minutes so get a cup of coffee and relax for a minute.

New PTO policy

That stands for paid time off. Regis works for the rich guy in Mankato who owns the basketball team. The one who has more money than God but gives employees a ten dollar check for Christmas WITH TAXES TAKEN OUT. Buy yourself a nice Big Mac meal. Anyway, the new policy is that you can call in the morning of the day you decide you want to, say, play golf, and just say, "Take it out of my sick time." So I think that's what Regis will do tomorrow. It's going to be 40 below with the wind chill. Good morning for golf.

I managed to get the baby gift over to Katherine Nova Callahan before she went off to school. I wanted to take a loaf of bread and do you know how hard it is to coordinate those three things? Baby gift, card, loaf of bread. I almost didn't wrap the books because it was too much. But I did and she's cuter than a bug and she got the books before she could read them herself. (Nova is a Hopi word that means chaser of butterflies. Erin said if Mike got to give her the last name, she got to give her a hippie middle name.)

We went to Harvey and Kathy's for tacos. They were good, and even better with the pinot noir that I brought. It was very relaxing to sit in front of their fireplace with a glass of wine and listen to the wind howl. Holy crap it should not be this cold at the end of February. The sky looked like the middle of December when we came home: stark, dark, cold, forlorn.

I hope I can sleep tonight. I was awake at 1 last night, looking at houses on the internet. I found a nice one on 9th Street but it has a pool and I'm not interested in that as a project. I didn't sleep much until I got up at 5. Not much the night before either which made it a bad day for brain function.

I finished Pretty Birds. I liked it but the person I thought was an enemy turned out to be a good guy in the end and I missed how that happened. It happens to me a lot that I miss a detail. It's what makes me avoid book clubs and quizzes.

Off to bed.

At the movies

I have a reputation for being one of the worst movie selectors of all time. Regis said he was going to get me a button that said, "Do not rent movies to this woman!" I think it's due to my trusting nature. If it gets rave reviews on the box, I think, hey, it must be pretty good. Thus we have suffered through some awful trash.

Tonight while working on our Netflix queue, I decided to search for a list of the worst movies. I found Roger Ebert's most hated movies list which is a hoot. He's really funny when it comes to blasting bad movies. About one he said it should be cut up and made into ukulele picks for the poor. He listed my favorite bad movie The Village and his review is so funny it's way more entertaining than the movie. I love his last paragraphs:

It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

That, my friends, was the most productive thing I did today outside of lunch with Peter and Kathy. I spent all afternoon trying to take a nap because I couldn't stand the sound of the wind anymore. I was interrupted by the wind, dog barking at the moaning screen door, the wind, the UPS guy, the wind...and by that time I was so crabby and tired I really did need a nap.

I see the little weather bug on my computer says the temperature is 0. Tomorrow the temperature will be -. What does that mean? I know this just gets worse when you perseverate on it but I can't help it.

On a more positive note, there's a story in the Trib about critter cams and a little video to go along with it that's really amazing. A video taken by a camera on the back of a seal that I can look at in my own house and then email to my friends. Wow.

No school today!

There's no school today as we celebrate President's Day with sales at Kohls and Herbergers. What that has to do with presidents is a mystery but it's a good day to stay home...it's 2 below and the wind gusted to 40 mph during the night. Amanda wrote on her blog about surviving February and that's exactly what it feels like. We've gotten spoiled with these wimpy winters the last few years and this is hard on us. I think we've lost the right to brag about our hardiness because there sure has been a lot of whining going on about the weather this year.

The worst part of the weather change is that Saturday and Sunday morning, it felt like that damp spring weather. The weather forecast on the Trib homepage showed high 20s all week and then all of a sudden the wind comes up and it's 2 degrees again. All those little sunny faces and double digit temps and now the thermometer with ice hanging from the end of it. Brutal visuals.

My feet are so tired of wool socks and shoes. I think I'll get a pedicure this week in preparation for sandals.

Regis started another blog but I hesitate to recommend it because he has a content warning. He does cuss some but so do I and I didn't realize a warning was necessary. Maybe it's a sign he intends to get worse so take your chances. Today his post is about his frustration with deli food here in the Midwest. He should start a deli university of meat cutting, cheese selection, and roll baking. He thinks our rolls (as he calls them...we call them buns) are loathsome.


I have a poolish on the stove this morning waiting to be made into bread. Regis got me two new bread cookbooks for Valentine's Day. This one: The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread is just a gorgeous book. I made a poolish baguette yesterday but I had to rush the rising and I don't think it turned out just right. I can't bake bread when I'm trying to make a meal because it's too many things happening and I have a short attention span. Regis wants me to read about all the chemical stuff related to bread baking but I really don't care about that. I have enjoyed reading about bread bakeries in Paris and the Summer Loaf Festival in Portland. Here's a cool website about bread, too, called The Fresh Loaf. It's addictive, so be careful.

I gave myself until 8 to sit here and futz around. I see it's about that time so I'm getting up and moving on with the day. Stay warm, Miles and Callum!

Bologna

Yesterday I felt like I was getting a cold or the flu or something all day. I took two naps in the afternoon and didn't do a thing until dinner time. We ordered sandwiches delivered so even that wasn't much.

This morning we got up early and made our weekly trip to HyVee for groceries. I think we're on the seventh week of menus and organized lists so it's working out well. Some nights I don't feel like making what I had planned but it's still better than not having a clue what to cook. Regis has been helpful with all parts of it...shopping, cooking, and cleaning up.

We were home by 8 and started with our daily kitchen work. We wanted to try bagels so we got started with that, then baked potatoes for twice-baked potatoes, got the ribs ready for the roaster, and made whole wheat baguettes. Tiffany and Peter were here for dinner and we had a nice meal together. I sent Tiffany home with lots of left-overs, a computer monitor, cookies, and two jugs of St. Peter water. Peter took ribs and potatoes to his buddy's house in Mankato but wouldn't take any Valentine cookies because that would be weird.

I almost forgot the bologna story. Regis has had weird food cravings lately and today it was bologna. Not Oscar Meyer, but deli bologna. I didn't even know they had bologna in the deli. We ordered it then he shuffled off to the bathroom. The guy asked me how thick. I said I didn't care so he made it about 1/4 inch. Like the packaged bologna. Regis almost died. Apparently, in a deli, bologna is sliced paper thin. Who knew. He should stick around when there are important decisions to be made.

Now that everyone has gone home, we're ready for bed but it's only 6:40. The wind is howling and makes the screen door moan. The dog growls and barks everytime he hears that noise.

That's it. I don't care what time it is...I'm going to bed to read.

Saturday

Peter came home this morning for a long weekend. He was driving his own car and was very proud to squire us around to a few errands and then out to eat for breakfast. Funny when kids come home, one of the things they want to do is eat at a favorite place. His is Massad's in Mankato. Tiffany likes to hit all the fast food joints. Tiffany is coming home tomorrow for the day so I'll have both kids under my roof again. We're having ribs and twice baked potatoes. There was a lot of discussion about the menu!

Kramer had a bath this morning. Well, actually a shower. Regis bought a contraption that screws onto the shower head so it's easier to bathe him. We bought some of the perfumed shampoo from the groomer so he smells nice, too. He sure was happy to see Peter. He went right to his toy basket and got the ball Peter always throws for him.

I have a three-day weekend and I don't know why, but one extra day makes it seem like a real vacation. I feel like I don't have to do a thing today.

Baby goats are here!

Check out pictures of the baby goats!
http://goatcentral.blogspot.com/

Dysfunction Junction: Where's my gumption?

I think I'll blame my lack of gumption at home on being busy at work. I get a lot done there but come home and fold up like a card table. I shouldn't admit this but I've let the cleaning go lately. Those of you who know me, know I am capable. Of letting it go, that is. Like I used to tell my kids: You can write your name in the dust, just don't write the year.

Valentine's Day today so I put on every piece of shiny, sparkly, red bling that I own. It was more of a fashion statement than it was real fashion. It's too cold to care about fashion anyway. See the post on the fur-lined Elmer Fudd hat.

I made mushroom and scallop risotto for dinner last night. For a one-pot meal, it was complicated. I had to get everything ready because there is no sitting down to sip wine between acts and it took 90 minutes. It was very good but labor-intensive.

The cookies in the picture are not the cookies I made this year. They are the cookies I made last year but if you don't read carefully and just look at the pictures, you will think, "Oh, Teresa is at it again with the cookies". I did make some but haven't frosted them yet so it's not a complete fabrication. If I don't get to it soon, I'll just put shamrocks on them. You gotta roll with it, folks.


The temperature is supposed to be very cold again tomorrow as you can see. It's mid-February and we're having this weather fit for polar bears. What the (you know the expletive). This is what it should lbe like here tomorrow....bright blue sky and cold as hell.

I'm going to a meeting at 6:30 then we're going out for a Valentine's Day bite to eat. Most places will be busy so maybe we'll go to some unromantic place like Hermie's Bait & Grill. Nothing like Reuben Balls on Valentine's Day.

My brain hurts

I spent the last two days at a retreat with special ed folks from southern Minnesota, learning about the new state regulations about special education. Some if has changed since we met in August...new laws, new interpretations by lawyers, new something or other. You wonder why anybody would make a career of this. It was fun because we had a glass of wine and laughed when the business was done and then went out for a nice dinner. But my brain hurts tonight.

Today on my way home, I noticed that the snow is melting on the fields. It was only 15 degrees today but the sun was high enough in the sky (I guess) to start melting snow. There's a sign of spring! Paul Douglas said Sunday was the most dangerous weather day we've had in twenty years with wind chills in the negative forty range. We deserve a sign of spring after that.

Another sign of spring...the baby goats are starting to be born in Washington. Check out T Minus Nothing at Goat Central.

Despair

Our weather station says the wind chill is 40 below this morning and we're starting to feel despair. I heard GK on the radio yesterday say that some Minnesotans go to warm climates during the winter but he thinks its better to suffer despair quietly in your own home than to go somewhere and hope things will be better when you come back. Something like that. I liked the part about despair. Below zero wind chills are what make us appreciate spring and summer so much.

We're carb loading again today with pancakes for breakfast and pasta for dinner because a guy can't survive in weather like this on salads. You could take the trash can down to the curb, slip on the ice, and that would be it. At least with pancakes in your belly you might survive long enough for the next car to come down the street and see you there like a popsicle in the snow bank.

Tom's making pasta sauce and meatballs. After I announced that I hate those little frozen meatballs, he said he had planned to try and fool me. Ha! I had those meatballs once in a nice restaurant to which I will never return. The same place that served me a French dip on a (you know the expletive) wiener bun. This restaurant has had several inexplicable fires over the years so I'd say they are getting their just desserts for trying to slip fake meatballs past discerning customers like me. And the wiener bun, well, there is no punishment evil enough for that sin.

We're spending another day hunkered down. I haven't had sandals on since October and my feet are crying out to be liberated. In the last few winters, we've had a few warm stretches where you could actually get by with sandals on a sunny afternoon without looking like a complete nut. One of the good things about global warming, sorry Al. Not this year. I've been in wool socks and boots for weeks and it doesn't look like a break any time soon. If you haven't looked at the prediction for next Friday night, the wind chill might reach 55 (you know the expletive) degrees below zero.

A very good book to recommend: Pretty Birds by Scott Simon. Here's a snip from a review:

Young women served as snipers for both Bosnian and Serbian forces during the siege of Sarajevo; Simon, a prize-winning correspondent and NPR Weekend Edition host, interviewed one of them and has masterfully imagined her life.

The book begins with half-Muslim Irena, 17, perched on a rooftop, wearing a black ski mask, sighting down a rifle and listening to a sneering Serbian propagandist on the radio ("The Yanks send you food Americans wouldn't give to their dogs") before she pulls the trigger. Simon then flashes back to the spring of 1992, when Irena, her parents and her parrot, Pretty Bird, must flee their home on the mostly Serb side of the city. When they make it (barely) to her grandmother's apartment, they find her slain on the staircase.

Simon's account of the family's refugee life—sans water, electricity and supplies, they eat snail-and-grass soup—is full of brilliant details ranging from the comic to the heartbreaking. When a former assistant principal spots Irena, once a high school basketball star, he offers her a job that quickly has her recruited, indoctrinated and trained in deception and weaponry. That's when the action really begins to move along.

Pretty Bird is released for mercy's sake, flies to his old home and is caught by Amela—a Christian and Irena's former classmate and teammate—who concocts a devious and difficult plan to return him to her friend. A deeply felt, boldly told story and clean, forceful prose distinguish this striking first novel.

Stay warm today, friends. Babies especially, Miles!

Hubris

I think the Greeks called it hubris, the fatal flaw of pride. I complained about the temperature yesterday and it promptly plummeted to 3 degrees today with a wind chill of 21 below. Well, maybe it's not a classic case of hubris but it's close. No, the more I think about it, it isn't hubris at all. Maybe irony. If I change it, I have to think of a new title for the post and I don't want to do that.

Weekends are just not long enough. We had friends over for Reuben sandwiches and beer last night. We aren't much for late nights so they were gone by 8:30 and we were in bed by 9:30. We went to the HyVee this morning with the intention of going before the snow and wind started. We would have gone to the Coop instead but I wanted scallops and they don't always have them. We got in the door and I was putting away the canned things when the wind started. I was glad to be home.

We fiddled away the afternoon...Regis shopping for a Valentine's Day flat-screen monitor and me looking at recipes. I told my friend Joanne I would put together a menu for her son's graduation party in June. There are lots of things to consider...room in the refrigerator, cooking time, out-of-town relatives, teen-agers, etc. We're avoiding ham sandwiches, taco bars, and pasta salad as passe.

For dinner, we're making Alton Brown's Who Loves Ya Baby-Back Ribs and Emerill's Twice Baked Potato Casserole. Don't even read the recipe for the potatoes if you have any heart disease. We're waiting for the casserole to finish so we can brown the ribs under the broiler. It smells delicious.

Regis has the movie Blade Runner and I said I'd sit in the living room for the showing but it doesn't sound like my kind of movie. Replicants? What the.... I checked it in Google and here's the deal:
A replicant is a genetically engineered creature composed entirely of organic substance. Animal replicants (animoids) were developed first for use as pets and beasts of burden after most real animals became extinct. Later, humanoid replicants were created for military purposes and for the exploration and colonization of space.

Things

Things
by Fleur Adcock, from Selected Poems. © Oxford University Press, 1986.

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse
and worse.

What a great poem if you wake up at 5 surrounded by the worse things.

Regis and I made a bracelet last night and it's really pretty. I tried to get him to take a picture of it but he was engrossed in something else by that time so it will have to wait. It's a Valentine's Day bracelet with lots of red and pink buttons, some of my Grandma's buttons, and silver hearts. I made the button trinkets and he attached them to the bracelet with tiny pliers.

Peter bought a car. At least he did if the insurance isn't too painful. His Grandma took him to the local car dealership in Canby, helped him get a loan at the credit union, and helped him with the insurance. Bless her heart. Now he can come home when he wants and even if he doesn't go anywhere, he knows he can. It's a 2001 Chevy Impala with 65,000 miles on it...probably not the kind of cool car a kid would like but a reliable car that will get him through the next few years.

When I gave Regis the car report, I said it had 65 hundred miles on it and he was amazed. So amazed that my brain said something was wrong...mental calculator...6-5-comma-0-0-0...oh that's 65 THOUSAND miles not 65 hundred. It's my math thing.

We made marinaded tofu last night. As much as I like the flavor of the marinade, tofu just doesn't seem like food to me. It seems like faux food. Even with the lo mein, it wasn't a satisfying meal. Next time, I'll let Regis eat the tofu and I'll drink the marinade.

It's 10 degrees here this morning. 10 degrees. It's almost the middle of February so can't we catch a break? I should be glad we didn't get the 20 inches of snow and whiteout conditions they had in Wisconsin. This has been a long winter already, hasn't it?

Teresa's horrible no-good very bad day

Yesterday started out badly. I spilled soup in my school bag, all over my calendar, papers from the Department of Education, papers from a meeting Monday afternoon, and my to-do notebook. Then I rubbed my itchy eye so hard that I must have broken a blood vessel because now it's all red and runny like some grotesque eye infection. My hair looked awful...it's too long and I don't think I dried it long enough so it hung in gray strands like old sea-hag hair.

(I am on the road to recovery. I have an appointment with an eye doctor at 10:30 and an appointment with Patrick for a haircut at 4:00.)

I watched most of One Punk Under God last night. It's a story about Jim and Tammy Faye Baker's only son Jay. He's a pierced and tattooed punk minister of a church called Revolution and a very thoughtful, intelligent man. He believes that religion should have an open door to all people and preaches sermons with titles such as “Nobody Likes a Selfish Bastard,” “Jesus: A Friend to Porn Stars,” and “Galatians Baby!” Definitely worth watching.

Peter has that obsession young men get with cars. He's been without one for a couple years and he's intent on getting one...yesterday. He's being rational and thoughtful about it but my eyes glaze over when people talk about cars. All they are for me is four wheels to get me where I'm going. I bought a car once over the phone...no, wait...I had a friend buy a car for me over the phone. The people at work shrieked and wanted to know why I wouldn't drive it first. What would that tell me?

It was after the tornado which smashed my little gray Camry flat. I was without a car for a couple weeks, then decided I had had enough of that. I had Joanne call the Toyota dealer in Mankato to ask what they had in a certain price range and then tell them I'd take the green one. That was about all the psychic energy I had for that process at the time so it worked out fine. I wish I still had that car.

I like my Beetle for going to work but it's a car for short trips and nobody in the back seat. When we take Ella, getting her in and out of the car seat takes a contortionist. We don't like to take it to the grocery store because you almost have to pack stuff in the glove box to get it all in the car. If you have bad knees you absolutely do not want to try and ride in the back seat. It would take a crane and the jaws of life to get you out. And that's enough about cars.

Ella's balloon animals

Bob has a new hobby and Ella has a supply of balloon animals. I told him I think we can get him a gig at the elementary school. Little kids love balloon animals. His website had a picture of the bags of balloons. I bet we'll be seeing these for a long time.

We had about two inches of snow followed by an hour or so of sleet. Unpleasant. The snow was sort of like late March snow...heavy and wet.

More later...

Sunday in the kitchen

I found a lot of projects in the kitchen today. I'm going to start with the last one first because the blogger is being uncooperative. These are candied orange peels. I decided to take the rest of the Christmas oranges up to Tom's for fresh screw drivers and didn't want to waste those nice peels. They have to be boiled twice to get rid of the bitterness, then boiled again in a simple sugar solution for 45 minutes.

After they've cooled and dried a little, you drag them through melted chocolate. It's messy and you have to lick your fingers a lot. I also got rid of a few orange peels because I got tired of the whole mess. They're delicious if you like the combined taste of orange and dark chocolate.

I made stromboli for dinner today. It's an Italian sandwich with pepperoni, hard salami, ham, and cheese. I used a calzone recipe for the dough.

Here it is assembled with the onion, green pepper, and garlic. I used provolone, mozzarella, and parmesan. Regis said the real Italians would put the gravy on the side. That means the red sauce.

Here's the finished product with the Mylanta that you usually need when you're done.

This is Scotch broth made with beef bones and onions. It simmered all afternoon and will be made into soup tomorrow with barley, mushrooms, and carrots.


These are croutons I made with a loaf of bread that was sort of a mistake yesterday. I meant to make the dough only but set the machine wrong and baked the bread in the machine. It made not so good bread but very good croutons.

So, that's it from the kitchen for today.

Taxes and beer

We went to the bar for beer before meeting Marie to do our taxes. She has wicker furniture, hard wood floors, rag rugs, and a cat named Nick who chases his shadow or his tail. You can't get that at H&R Block.

We went back to the bar after we got the bad news. It was kid's night at Patrick's so it was nerve-wracking until about 8. We ran into Kate and talked about our collective cynicism about work, politics, life and everything else until we left at 8:30. It was a long night by old people's standards. Kate's going to see Barak Obama at the Target Center on Saturday. I don't care. I can't believe he's any different than any of the rest of them. I'll vote for Hillary or nobody.

We had a few good laughs about the Super Bowl XLII. Extra large II. I said they should have little snapshots of the athletes as they appear today in the corner to show that they are not Super Human. Joe Namath for example. He was so cute in 1968 but Regis says he has gotten long in the tooth.

Books and biscuits

I'm too tired to write much today. I went to work early in spite of a late start, worked hard all day, then came home and cooked and cleaned up in the kitchen. I tried the Cook's Illustrated recipe for baking powder biscuits. I love that magazine. They have such good illustrations so you aren't left on your own to figure out folding and rolling. Honestly, they were two inches high and just as flaky as the ones in the picture which are not mine because I'm too lazy to get up and take a picture of them. They peeled apart in lovely white layers of soft dough. Magic.

This is the book I'm reading, The Summer He Didn't Die. It's more of a novella. I know I'm going to hate it when it ends. I like all of Jim Harrison's books. Some of them are listed on the right under my favorite books.

So now with a belly full of beef stew and biscuits, I am going to bed to read. It's still 12 below and it's dark. This is enough of this day.

Weather bragging

Picture me doing that dance football players do in the end zone after they make a touchdown.

Yesterday the temperature was 47 degrees in the afternoon. Today, at 1:29, the temperature was 8 below and the winds were gusting to 25 mph, making for a wind chill of ...TA DA... 39 below. And that, my friends, is an 88 degree difference in the feel of the air (actual temp versus wind chill temp) in two days. Take that Siberia. We get to brag, and dance, about surviving this shit.

Tonight I'm having wine and crackers for dinner. Regis had left-over Portuguese stone soup. One of our favorite recipes. I can email the recipe if you ask. For the soup, I mean.

I didn't sleep very well last night. With the wind nearly blowing the roof off the house, it was hard to relax. In between the bouts of restless sleep, I had weird dreams. Peter called right before I drifted off, expressing some distress about school. All of his classes are either online or on the television system so he has no interaction with other humans. Regis said it's like going to college on a space ship. It hasn't been the most satisfactory experience but he's being rational and thoughtful about his decisions so I'm not worried.

Regis and I are going to watch Superbad tonight. We'll see if our old-age sense of humor can take it. If it's like Napoleon Dynamite or Taladega Nights, it will be a short video adventure.

Radiohead and Dilbert

Disclaimer: If you know Radiohead and love their music, don’t read this. Or at least don’t be offended.

We got this week’s edition of Rolling Stone and there’s a picture of a blond guy with a headline that says The Future Belongs to Radiohead. I assumed Radiohead was the blond dude and I thought the headline was intriguing. How could the future, THE FUTURE, belong to Radiohead and I had never heard of him?

The future belongs to Radiohead. I read the article, rather than attempting to talk about this as if I knew something about it which I sometimes do, and discovered the name of the cover lad is Thom Yorke and the name of the band is Radiohead. Ohhhhh. I get it.

Then I started thinking about all the bands I haven’t heard of anymore. If you’ve gone by the CD racks at Target, you know what I mean. Who the hell is Radiohead? Now 26? OneRepublic? Maroon 5? There are a couple on the Top 40 list I recognize: Led Zeppelin and Rascal Flatts, the last one only because I made a wedding DVD for some friends and this was one of their favorite bands. This was a band that almost made me jump off the roof.

It’s the beginning of the slide. First you can’t name any bands on the Top 40 list, then you can’t set a digital clock or program the VCR, and pretty soon you can’t operate a motor vehicle or comb your own hair.

I've tried to keep up in small ways. I say back in the day instead of back in the old days. I have a blog and an iPod and I know about things like web-based news readers and uploading digital video to Youtube. But I get the feeling that it's not enough.

Speaking of teachers, I got the seniority list the other day. I was one of the few hired in the 70's and I was at the top of the list in several categories. I sent an email to the superintendent's secretary: Dear Nancy, There is a mistake with the seniority list. The top of the list is for old people. Please correct. Love, Teresa

And yet one more segue. There was a great Dilbert cartoon in the paper yesterday that reminded me of some aspects of my job…the sweet nectar of the illusion of progress…that euphoric feeling you get between the time you make a plan and the time some moron comes along to thwart it. It can last anywhere from less than a minute to as much as a minute. Yeah, that’s it.

Pierogies a la Alice

Regis and I made pierogies today. We must have been channeling Alice because we had her recipe and when they were all done, Regis said they were just like she made.

Oh my God, what a lot of work, though. This is my Grandma Elsie's meat grinder which I have had for years and never used. We had to cook a roast yesterday, then today grind it up with a head of boiled cabbage, two onions, and a pound of bacon.

Then we made the dough. Things only got tense once in the eight hours this project took us and that's when we argued about whether to cut the dough circles first and then put them through the pasta roller...or roll the dough first and then cut the circles. I was picturing uncooperative dough but this was very easy to work with so I didn't have to represent my dough views so vociferously.

You can see this makes a real mess. After the dough circles were cut, we put put a spoonful of meat in the middle, wet the edges and sealed them up. Regis boiled them in a big pot for 10 minutes, then drained them with a slotted spoon.

About half way through, we realized we had more filling than we had dough so we made another batch of dough (7 cups of flour, 5 eggs, 2 1/4 cups water, and 1/2 cup shortening) so we could finish the filling. We'd also made a bowl full of mashed potato and cheese filling. I should have known this would be enough to feed the Russian army and a few other armies besides.

When they're done boiling and have cooled a little, you fry them in a pan with butter. They remind me a little of potato krub...lots of carbs and butter. You'd think the Poles and the Norwegians would have had enough to do in the winter without all this kind of labor.

Regis figures we made about 175 pierogies. That should last us into 2012 unless we find a market for them.

It's either my eyes or my brain

I've been sitting here in the half-dark, waiting for chicken wings to marinate and the bread to rise. I poured a glass of wine and got into comfortable clothes. Then I looked at my cell phone so I could call someone. Why did the names have little packs of cigarettes or dog houses next to them? Oh...I finally get it. Cell phone or home phone. Life is so complex.

I hope I didn't make a grammatical error there with marinate. As much as I can figure out right now, marinade is the noun, what you slop over the wings, and marinate is the verb. I don't want any critical comments so if you have any, keep them to yourself ha ha. My son, Peter, has gotten very formal in his speech and his speech preferences. He says bad grammar bothers him. Some of it bothers me, other stuff I don't give a shit about. I read an article once about all the mistakes people make in their oral and written speech, even very educated people, because mostly we use what we grew up with (sorry to end a sentence with a preposition).

I remember one of my linguistics professors saying that it doesn't pay to get too hung up on language things because it changes so fast. Then he would bend over and laugh hysterically. He was a very tall man and he had lived in China for a time so he had Chinese mannerisms such as bending over and covering his mouth to laugh. I've noticed (rapid and ragged segue) that quotation marks are going the way of the wagon wheel. Boy, you can't find many people that want to talk about this kind of thing. Good thing I didn't go to the bar after work tonight if I was going to talk about grammar.

The cooking plan for the weekend is chicken wings and bread tonight. Tomorrow we start the pierogies. At least we make the filling for the pierogies tomorrow. Alice made a meat and cabbage filling and we're going to try a traditional cheese and potato filling. The little pasta machine came yesterday and that will be great fun.

So, on to the weekend.

Friday finally

It's three degrees this morning. Bill Watterson may have summed it up best. “I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.” Paul Douglas says for the last couple weeks, Minnesota has resembled a well-manicured Siberian gulag. These guys look about as happy as most people I've run into lately.

Yesterday, I had an appointment across town. About the time I was walking out the door, the guy called and said, "Yeah, I had something come up and I can't make it." I thought, "Sure, dude. You just don't want to walk across campus and get in a cold car when it's fifteen below." Not that I blame him.

I made Andouille sausage soup last night. I was worried because it was more of a gumbo process than a soup. The roux was very thick, the recipe called for about three cups of various onions, and then that spicy sausage. It gotr rave reviews, though. I threw in a handful of rice so it was a good hearty soup for a cold night.

Here's the recipe:

Andouille Sausage Soup

    1/2  cup olive oil
     1/2  cup flour
     2  cups julienned yellow onion
     2  cups julienned white onions
     2  cups julienned red onions
     8  pearl onions, -- peeled
     1  pound Andouille sausage, -- cut into 1-inch pieces
     2  tablespoons   minced shallots
     2  tablespoons   minced garlic
     1 leek, white part only, -- julienned
     3 bay leaves
     1  tablespoons   chopped fresh thyme
                      Salt and pepper
                      Pinch of cayenne pepper
    2 1/2  quarts chicken stock
      1  cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
     1/2  cup chopped green onions
      2  cups cubed French bread, fried in olive oil --
 until  golden brown
     1/4  cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
     1  tablespoon finely chopped parsley

In a large saucepan, combine the olive oil and flour.
Stirring constantly cook for about 10 minutes for a blond roux.
Stir in the onions and cook for about 10 minutes or until
the onions are golden.
Add the andouille, shallots, garlic, leeks, bay leaves, and thyme.
Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Stir in the broth and bring the liquid up to a boil and reduce
to a simmer. Simmer the soup for about 1 hour.
Skim the soup occasionally
to remove any fat that rises to the top.
Remove the bay leaves.
Stir in the grated cheese and green onions.
Ladle the soup in a shallow bowl.
Garnish the soup with the croutons, cheese, and parsley.

16 below zero this morning

It doesn't help to warm a car up in this cold weather. No amount of time really helps. I suppose the engine warms up but nothing remotely warm ever comes out of the vents. I keep waiting for the call that school's closed but I don't think it's coming. All babies, old people, and small dogs should stay in the house where it's warm today! See, even the penguin has decided to stay in bed.

Combat the cold with Finnegan's Irish Amber and pasta

It is too dang cold to be real. It's zero degrees...ZERO DEGREES...here now and now going down to 15 BELOW ZERO tonight. Good grief is all I can say. I came home from work, followed shortly by Regis, and we just quietly got in the car and drove to Patrick's for beer, companionship, and pasta. Two friends from school were in the next pew, I mean booth, so we bought a few rounds, ate some pasta and wandered home. Time to turn on the electric blanket and go to bed.

You can't describe accurately the effect on a person's mood of a day that starts with light at 7:30 and ends with dark at 4:30. I know, I know...it's better now than it was a month ago but 8 hours of daylight is ugly. Especially when you spend those daylight hours at work. It's enough to make a guy a little cranky. It must have made the early folks feel a little hopeless...when they hadn't experienced many winters...they must have thought it would never end, that it would always be cold and dark and summer would never come back. Now we know better, maybe just because of the calendars we buy at Barnes and Noble for 75% off because we're too cheap to buy them in December at full price.

I wore my boots at work all day today. Light blue leather plush lined boots with wool socks underneath. What the hell. They looked just fine under my velvet pants. One of our Spanish speaking students pointed and said, "Cool pretty boots!" Yes, and warm, too, I said. Garrison Keillor says we don't worry about fashion in the winter, we just worry about survival and I think it's true. I've given up foot fashion and the next step is hair fashion. Bring on the fur lined Elmer Fudd hat.

Of course, there is always Patrick's, Irish Amber, and pasta. That's survival.

Work whacked at 4 p.m.

It's been a very long day and I feel a lot like this duck must feel. Padded room and straight jacket time, folks. It doesn't help that I don't sleep and it's so dang cold. I told Regis yesterday that I thought I was getting used to it because it didn't even really feel cold anymore at 12 below. Wait a minute. Today felt bitter, wicked cold. My feet were so cold that I stopped on my way to a meeting and bought a pair of fluffy white slippers with rhinestones that I can wear under my desk. A very professional look, don't you think?

When I'm awake in the middle of the night, I find new blogs to read. I started out looking for goat blogs which are few and far between. I have discovered quite a few cooking blogs. These are my favorites of the ones who write frequently. It does make you wonder what happens to the people who just quit. Did the computer crash? Did they move? Forget? Find another hobby?

• Shazam in the Kitchen
• Smitten Kitchen
• Use Real Butter
• Tastes Like Home
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks

The author of Tastes Like Home is a woman from Barbados and she uses a lot of interesting fruits and vegetables in her cooking. I love The Pioneer Woman. She has another blog where she writes about her life on a ranch with four kids. The story about how she met her husband is a hoot and almost made me late for work one day. They all have great photos of their food, recipes, and stories. Kitchen writing at its best!

Insomnia and snow plow whacked at 4 a.m.

Here's another bread recipe, similar to the first one, but the Dutch oven technique is different and worth a try. The recipe came from Mother Earth News and has you let the dough rise for a long time, then bake it covered.

No Knead, Dutch Oven Bread

1⁄4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1⁄2 cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting. You may use white, whole wheat or a combination of the two.
1 1⁄2 tsp salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the flour and salt, stirring until blended. The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at least 8 hours, preferably 12 to 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently shape it into a ball. Generously coat a clean dish towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put the seam side of the dough down on the towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel and let rise for about 1 to 2 hours. When it’s ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least 20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat oven to 475 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven and lift off the lid. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. The dough will lose its shape a bit in the process, but that’s OK. Give the pan a firm shake or two to help distribute the dough evenly, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect; it will straighten out as it bakes.
5. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove the bread from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour before slicing.

Yield: One 1 1⁄2-pound loaf.

Aside from bread, it's hard to be of good humor at this hour. Maybe if I could drink a cup of coffee and go back to bed but I have to drag my butt out into the below zero weather to go to work. Tom, our mailman friend now retired, says we haven't had a winter like this for a long time. He's very glad to not be carrying a ten-pound mailbag ten miles a day this winter.

Sunday dinner

Here's the roast beef. I cooked it in the crock pot with some caramelized onion, red wine, and beef broth. It was delicious.

Here's the finished product. We had hearty white bread and mashed potatoes made with warm milk and butter and gravy made from the stuff in the crock pot. Hard to beat red wine, beef broth, and caramelized onions. I figured out that the secret to caramelized onions is a little sugar.

Here's a picture of the present Tom and Betty gave me...the little shot glasses with red spots and the tray. They got three of my favorite things in one present...red, shiny, and glassware. Lovely!

The roasted cauliflower was ok but not a hit with Regis. I think it need more cheese which I suppose defeats the purpose of a vegetable. I made roasted cauliflower another time that we liked better. I must have found the recipe in a cookbook because it isn't in my recipe file. Yeah, let me know if you're dying to have it. I expect my mailbox to be flooded.

On to the work week. Looks like the temperature will be in the single digits, slowly climbing to a high of ten by Friday. Bring on the bikinis.

Our next food adventure

Our next cooking adventure is something called pierogi. It's an Eastern European dumpling that Regis remembers his mother making. Many emails have been exchanged about how to make them: how thick the dough, how big the circles, how to grind the filling. There's a place in Pittsburgh called Pierogies Plus that makes them to sell by mail order. This is one of those little cultural things you learn about when you marry someone who's not from here. In the course of conversations, JB (sister of Regis) learned we were making beef commercials and asked what that was. It's like the UN of food here today.


Here's a picture of pierogi that came right off some Polish website. You have to roll the dough 1/16 of an inch thick so I finally broke down and bought a hand-roller for pasta dough. See the picture above. They make one that attaches to my Kitchen Aid mixer but I'm too cheap for that.

Apparently, Alice made her pierogis 6-7 inches across but JB says they stay together better during cooking if they are a little smaller. As with any family recipe, there are differing opinions about everything. It makes a big batch so we'll have some for Super Bowl Sunday. It's always more fun to make something interesting.

There's a pastry dough that you roll into circles then fill. You can make the filling with almost anything but Alice's recipe calls for ground chuck roast, cabbage, onions, and beef broth. You boil them and then fry them in butter. Sounds a little like krub only rolled. This is Alice's recipe:

Pierogi Filling

3 lb boneless chuck roast

1 small head of cabbage

1/2 lb of bacon

1 large onion chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Sweet rolls

I made sweet rolls with the bread dough and wasn't very happy with them. The dough wasn't sweet and soft like the dough you usually make rolls with that has eggs, milk, and sugar in it, but it was dressed up with lots of brown sugar and butter and pecans. I'll try the dough for bread this week and give the final verdict but so far it's a thumbs-down.

We're taking the last of the Christmas stuff to the basement today. Was that our plan last weekend? It didn't happen then, obviously. All that's left is the big tree, the Charlie Brown tree from the porch, and a box of miscellaneous stuff that got left when I packed up the other stuff.

I have a beef roast in the crock pot so there isn't much to do this afternoon. Some people would use this time productively but not me. I think it's a good excuse to be lazy.

Bread the no-knead way

My first impression of this is not so good. You can do a search on google and find several different recipes for no-knead bread since it's all the rage. Here's one from the NY Times. The recipe I used called for 3 cups of water at 100 degrees, 1.5 T of yeast and 1.5 T of kosher salt, 6.5 cups of flour. Then, instead of kneading it, you mix it with a spoon. It says DO NOT KNEAD. What the heck. Have you ever tried to stir that much flour into that much water? It would be easier to knead it. It's rising now so we'll see how it goes. Updates along the way.

Saturday

Weather report for Miles: On our roof this morning, it's 12 below zero and the windchill is 26 below zero. Keep that Pategonia bunting on, kiddo. Better yet, stay inside.

Regis is sleeping in a little before he goes to a mandatory quarterly meeting. There will be 80 people there and ten of them will bring small kids. He said they run rampant, filling the pop machine money slots with paper and dumping ice from the machines onto the floor. It sounds like hell.

We bought our groceries for the week last night then went to Michael's and bought some supplies for our new bracelet hobby. Mom, could you send those buttons? We're anxious to get started but we're approaching this like we do most things...not a lot of planning. So far, we have a little of this and a little of that and we'll learn as we go along. Nothing wrong with that.

Our Sunday meal this week is beef commercials. Mashed potatoes, gravy, meat, and bread. It must be what cavemen ate in the winter. I have three soups on the menu this week, too: Andouille sausage soup, beer cheese soup, and German potato soup. I found a new recipe for roasted cauliflower (much, much better than boiled) that I'm going to try:

Balsamic and Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower

8 cups 1 inch thick slices cauliflower florets (about 1 large head)

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp dried marjoram

1/4 tsp salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Toss cauliflower, oil, marjoram, salt, and pepper. Roast on rimmed baking sheet until starting to soften and brown on the bottom, about 15 minutes (watch closely). Toss the cauliflower with vinegar and sprinkle with cheese. Return to the oven and roast until the cheese is melted and any moisture has evaporated, about 5-10 minutes more.

I'm going to make giant snickerdoodle cookies this morning and I want to try the bread recipe that was in the paper a couple weeks ago, the one that doesn't have to be kneaded and the dough can be left in the refrigerator. Oh yeah, and I might vacuum.

Uff da...it's wicked cold

The temperature started out at 12 degrees this morning then dropped like a rock. When I came home from school it was 1 degree and the wind chill is hovering right about 23 below. It's ugly.

I did a pile of dishes. I don't know who comes in and messes up my house when I'm gone. Kramer has parties or something. Dogs who eat a lot of snacks and use wine glasses come in here during the day.

We're going on Week #2 of my menu planning campaign. So far, so good. No real problems. I ended up with one extra meal that I can make for breakfast or save until next week. I have the menu and the grocery list for next week ready so I can buy those groceries tonight. I know, I know...too much. I did give up on my maintaining a clean house campaign. That's really beyond my capabilities. Our house isn't dirty...but it's not tidy either. A friend of mine said today that everything should have a place. I said all my stuff does have a place...out where I can see it. Hey, we're all different.

I have friends who attribute their house cleaning knowledge to growing up with every Saturday spent in routine chores. I never spent a Saturday sweeping cobwebs; my mom took us to the library. So I grew up loving to read and appreciating the beauty of a good cobweb. Nothing wrong with that.

On to the weekend.

Gas hole mystery NOT solved

Oh, man. I can't believe I didn't check snopes before I fell for this one. Check it out at Snopes, the Urban Legend Reference page:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/icon.asp


Happy birthday #30 to Young Regis who turns 30 years old today!

Dark chocolate has the same anti-oxidants as blueberries

This is not scientific, of course, so if you're using my blog as a source for your research paper, I would stop right here. I'm just saying that in my personal wellness plan, dark chocolate counts. This is the creative guide to the food pyramid. Anchovies at the top and chocolate, cheeseburgers, red wine, and pizza at the bottom. Hey, ketchup can be a vegetable. Ronald Reagan said so.

It was a long and weird day. I woke up at 2:30 with a nightmare about bad guys coming to a farm house where I was carrying a baby. I peeked through the mini-blinds to see them cocking guns like Chuck Connors in The Rifleman. I had to take the baby to the attic to hide and we rode up on a varnished wooden slide that was actually a cool invention. It was a disturbing dream and I couldn't go back to sleep. When Regis got up, he said he had a dream that we lived in Chagrin Falls, Wisconsin. If there isn't a town in Wisconsin by that name, there should be.

I went to my internship class tonight. I was the oldest person there by years. There were a couple young pups from Iowa where I think you can get a principal's license before you reach puberty. I'm sure they think in Minnesota you can get one with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Actually, one guy was very nice and thoughtful. The other two men (no offense meant to the gender) traded softball coaching stories. Doh.

I tried to talk Larry, the district tech guy, into joining me in a class action lawsuit today. We would be a class of two. I can't remember what the lawsuit was about but it was probably stupid and not lawsuit worthy. But he said we'd have to hire a lawyer and the lawyer would get all the money, the women, and the house in Maui and we'd end up with thirty seven dollars. I guess I'll just hold out hope for my oil wells as Larry didn't think my experience garnered from Law and Order would be very valuable in a real court of law.