Counter Culture Dancing

Couple things happened in my head while I was dancing my hypothetical balls off at Club Z in Williamsport last night with some of my girlfriends and our DD/supervisor/agent, Tom.

First, I was missing a whole lot during my crippled-by-self-consciousness 20s. Dancing at a gay bar is awesome. I did go dancing at a gay bar once in my 20s, with some gay temporary roommates. I got felt up (and not in a nice way) by some straight dude.

Which is a total quandary. What are the straight people doing at the gay bar? I know, I know. It's a bar, a club, there's dancing and the air is thick with poorly mixed DJ beats and cigarette smoke. The energy is contagious and it's totally counter culture. I guess there're some straight folks (like myself) who get a kick out of being someplace where different is normal. In Williamsport, if you don't want to hang out with the 20-23 set at Cell Block, it's the only place to go dancing.

But what was with the posturing straight men trying to grab my (luscious) bootie, and feeling up Amber, this drag queen who danced with us, and trying to dance with the irrepressible Hillary? What were they posturing? Were they pretend gay or pretend straight? Were they trying to feel us up so as to discern our sex? I feel like mine is fairly obvious. And Amber's was, too, but her girl parts done comparatively well. And Hillary is a feminine, shimmering pixie. Do their weasely minds believe genitals grabbing is more acceptable at a gay bar?

That was what I told myself the first time. But I'm older now and wiser and angrier and more aware of the very real way in which women (and very similarly homosexuals) are second class citizens, even now--in the future! I sincerely believe that most straight men are utter pigs and not to be trusted. And I follow @MsMagazine on twitter, so I get all these news feeds about the high sex-discrimination crimes that happen the world over. Now. In the future!

And when I got home last night and I was a sweaty, vaguely drunk, cigarette stinking mess in bed with my lover, and my body still ticked with energy and glee, when I thought about way in which the fun was kind of marinated in this palpable cultural dischord; I almost wept.

There is no minority for which I have greater sympathy than the transgendered/transvestites. I can't think of a worse affliction than looking in the mirror and seeing the wrong thing. Feeling like your skin got mis-sewn at the factory.

Summer Garden Tomato Soup

First, a little on the choices for this soup. I think that milk in tomato soup is gross. I also think that recipes that fake it with soft bread for thickening are wrong. The texture of soaked bread is godawful.

I used a coarse cheese grater to shred the zucchini and the onion. You could probably also just chop the stuff and then stick blend it, or use a regular blender. I just hate the heck out of cleaning the stick blender and the regular blender. Also, the texture that's missing from a lot of tomato soups is present in spades with the cheese grater method.

Vidalia onions sweeten up beautifully when they're sauteed long time over medium heat. The sweetness of the onions and the queer starchiness of the zucchini do a beautiful job of giving this soup some texture and thickening, without the grodie slime of the soft bread, or the abomination that is just tossing in some milk or cream. There's no roux, and there's only a skosh of oil, so this is actually vegan, and contains almost NO fat, but is still really satisfying & filling.

Recipe: Summer Garden Tomato Soup

1 T olive oil

1 medium vidalia onion

2 large cloves of garlic

2 medium zucchini

1/4 c. fresh sage

1/4 c. fresh basil

2 T fresh oregano

1 t. salt

8 tomatoes from your garden, boiled and peeled, or a big can of san marzano tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 pinch of tumeric

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a dutch oven over medium high heat.

Grate the onion, zucchini, and crush the garlic into the oil. Cook, stirring often, until the zucchini has sweated off all its moisture and softened, and the onions are sweet. Stir in the herbs and salt and let it cook for a minute of two until the herbs smell nice.

Crush the tomatoes into the mixture and stir. Add all the juices from the tomatoes or can, and some extra water, too.

Throw in the bay leaf and the tumeric and allow to simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat for an hour, or until it's reduced a bit. Reduce heat to low and cover to hold until serving.

Remove bay leaf. Makes about 8 servings.

I made some orzo that I stirred in just before serving, which was my original conception, but it was utterly superfluous.

Jammie Dodgers

I recently read this really hilarious thing about how the English think that Hershey's Kisses taste like vomit. I mean, imagine really clever, sarcastic, sardonic hate on Hershey's Kisses, but cooler and smarter sounding because English. Read it Here.

So at the Wegman's today, in the groovy international section where there are some real confectionary treasures, I picked up a packet (I believe that's the authentic word) of Jammie Dodgers. I chose these for a couple of reasons. I really dig sandwich cookies lately. I've been on a sandwich cookie bender. I ate almost an entire pack of vienna fingers (admittedly not even the best of the vanilla-on-vanilla sandwich cookies) all by myself the other day. I shared a few with the people I live with, but I was stingy. Another reason I chose the Jammie Dodger is because in this terrific movie by Aardman called Flushed Away, the heroine sewer rat (voiced by Kate Winslett) drives this cool boat called The Jammie Dodger.

The packaging is not especially promising. It's real red and yellow and a little bit overdone. So we bust into these things, and they taste like they've been hanging out in some mildewy basement for six years. The "shortbread" cookie is more like loosely packed saw dust. The "raspberry plum jam filling" is the texture of chewing gum and the flavor of cough syrup. When it warms up, it leaches onto your teeth and requires some aggressive tonguing.

My point in writing this blog is that while I don't altogether disagree that the Hershey's Kisses taste like vomit, this abomination of a shortbread sandwich cookie ignited in me a faint indignation that the national, waxy, Lazy American treat should be so verbally assailed by a nation that feeds its children mildewed sawdust patties filled with red cough syrup putty. WTF, England!

pumpkin spiced pumpkin beer bread

Here's a recipe I made up today. If I want to make it again, I will not remember. This is multi-purpose writing-it-down/sharing with you, so here it is. If you try it, let me know what you think.

Grease loaf pan, a full-sized one, or several smaller ones. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 t. each ground cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg (some extra cinnamon would probably be good)
salt to taste
2 1/2 t. baking powder
pinch chili powder
1 T cocoa powder
2 T olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
1 egg
12 oz. pumpkin beer
1/2 t. almond extract
large handful walnuts or pecans
2 large handfuls raisins

1. mix together dry ingredients
2. add wet ingredients one by one
3. mix until batter is smooth. There may be a few lumps. It will be runny--thicker than pancake batter, but not at all sticky. No need to strive for total smoothness. You don't want to beat up the beer. :-)
4. stir in raisins and nuts.
5. pour batter into prepared loaf pan
6. bake for about an hour (50 minutes minimum) until a toothpick inserted in the center pulls out clean.

I served it with pumpkin cream cheese that I thinned down with milk drizzled over. But you should do what you want. The love man says it's yummy plain.

The James Food Review

The way The James hides in a cozy concrete corner downtown epitomizes the enveloping homeyness I associate with Williamsport. The Pine Street facade is unassuming, and any
evidence that The James is inside the Holiday Inn is delightfully subtle.

The atmosphere is lovely—low amber lighting and sturdy, cherry-stained tables are arranged in an open space in the main area of the restaurant. Even so, the feeling is intimate.

The menu comes in two pieces. The main page has soup, small plates, toasts, pasta, large plates. The smaller page has sushi: cut rolls, hand rolls, sashimi, and salad. Perhaps providing two separate menus is meant to explain the lack of continuity in the menu since, aside from three of the large plates (Asian Lacquered Ahi, Miso and Mirin Glazed Salmon, Pancetta Wrapped Hamachi) that invoke Japanese flavors, the sushi feels out of place.

The offerings are a mix-up of Japanese fusion; Italian fusion with a preponderance of tomato, mozzarella, and pasta; and some American superstars like a Bacon Cheeseburger, Cowboy Steak, and Cobb Salad. The small plates include Roasted Crab Dip, Panzanella, and Jumbo Hot Wings.

After our server took the order, we were presented with a plate of bread and seasoned oil. The oil itself was nice, but heavy with dried oregano, sage, crushed red pepper, and basil. It was odd to me that the herbs were just plopped into the oil as opposed to being infused by heating, then strained and garnished. The bread was not extraordinary. It was a tad stale around the edges and lacked salt. Our bread course foreshadowed the rest of our meal, which fell a notch below expectation.

I ordered the Chicken Agnolotti from the pasta section. The description read, “caper and Limoncello cream sauce”. What arrived were four large agnolotti swimming in cream sauce with capers, oddly sans garnish. The capers were briny and sharp in just the right way, but the sauce lacked its purported Limoncello component. The agnolotti were filled with plain, shredded chicken which was not seasoned. The pasta was made in-house but lacked the fresh and tender lightness I expected. The dish, taken as a whole, was boring.

My date ordered the Chipped Tenderloin Toast, which consisted of sautéed beef chunks nestled in a long French roll and a sauce that invoked gravy via cheese. The beef had a nutty, browned flavor, but the cheese-gravy was uninspired. The roll was nice: the crust crisp and the dough chewy, but the real treat of this plate was the eggplant fries. These were strips of eggplant, battered and deep-fried and served with ketchup, which I found to be unnecessary. The delicate tang of the eggplant was not overcome by the batter or by old frying oil. They were perfectly crisp. I liked them so much I opted not to finish my dinner and had a side order of the fries (which were surprisingly inexpensive at $1.50).

While the fare was moderately priced, in the $9 to $24 range with a side salad costing $3, I found the website’s claim of “fine dining in a casual atmosphere” to be a bit off. The food we sampled was satisfactory but not exemplary, certainly not on par with other fine dining. One does not have to dress or make reservations.

Fortunately, there is more to a dining experience than the food. Our server was pleasant and quick and our food was served extra-hot. We both ordered the Brown Ale, which was lovely. The restaurant was comfortable and pretty; the luminaries and hanging lights were shaded with natural pulp paper. The dinnerware, though incongruous with some of the atmospheric elements, were these beautiful, heavy, white, elongated rectangular vessels. The flatware had a nice heft and squared edges that matched nicely with the plates.

While some restaurant reviewers award stars, I will use capers. Out of a five-caper system, I will use the average from three categories. For Service, I give 4 capers for the superb speed and food temperature. For atmosphere, I give 3.5 capers, owing to the paradoxical elements but general comfort and prettiness. For the food, there can only be 2.5 capers. Overall, then, I award The James 3-1/3 capers.

I love food and I'm on a diet

Hi.

For 2010, I decided that this chubby girl needs be chubby no more! That was 4 weeks ago, about.

I ate so much ridiculous and delicious food around the holidays, but each year, starting in November and ending after New Year's, eating gravy and overcooked meat and carbohydrate and fat laden holiday food is exceedingly delicious, but every year, I find myself eating nothing but grapefruit and dry tuna for about a week in January in order to feel detoxed. This year, I just decided to carry the torch and diversify.

I recently joined dailyburn.com. My boyfriend's on it, too. We're each other's motivators, which is good since we're both really into food. You could maybe call us foodies.

Anyway, for somebody who's totally into cooking and eating, when my daily menu looks like this

1 c raw baby carrots
1/4 c mixed salted nuts
2 string cheese
pita with hummus
grape tomatoes
other miscellaneous veggies
grapefruit
banana
other miscellaneous fruit
1 c. organic fruit yogurt from Wegman's

for days and days, well, I get bored.

So i finally got a moment to cook something and I made this turkey breast. I marinated it in lemon juice, garlic, olive oil. Then I baked it (a scoche too long, it's a bit dry), and i threw together some fake tzatziki sauce (lowfat plain yogurt, onions, cucumbers & a touch of black pepper and garlic powder), and I warmed up a pocket-less pita, and I added some grape tomatoes and feta cheese and cucumbers and baby spinach, and folded it over, and ate it up like a sandwich. YUM.

So today, I think I am making a huge, giant delicious spinach salad with the rest of the turkey and other veggie deliciousness for dinner. The point is that my little pick-around approach for the first several weeks was good because it got me in the habit of thinking about calories and nutrition and health and things.

Though I just had this kind of brilliant idea for a delicious tuna pita melt that would be kind of junk food satisfactory, but not unhealthy. At least, not as much as the pizza I've been craving.

And Oh My God the Crockpot

I had this revelation. I mean, maybe it wasn't so revolutionary as I think, but, ahem, It occurred to me that maybe the wrong approach is making recipes in the crock pot. So far I have been displeased by my crock pot efforts. They have consisted of artichokes, mac & cheese and chili. The chili was the best thing so far. Not that the artichokes were bad, but I grilled them once, and I don't think I'll ever come up with a satisfactory alternative to the artichoke grilling. Grilled Artichokes is boss. Anyway--I've been thinking lately that the crock pot could make my life easier in some ways, and cheaper, too, so I should consider learning to use it more adequately.

So I invented a fall stew this morning that is crock potting on low as I type this.

It contains the following:
(more or less) 1 lb of left over steak, cubed
2/3 of a small peeled acorn squash, also cubed
1 small onion, chopped
1 small zucchini, sliced & halved
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1/3 c. frozen peas
small handful of wheat berries
2 giant garlic cloves chopped coarsely
bay leaf
cinnamon stick
salt, pepper
shake of cayenne pepper
bit of clove and nutmeg
2 T (+/-) tomato paste

I want it to be fragrant and wonderful. It looked like it would be. It was also quite pretty. I considered putting potatoes in it. I also considered carrots, but decided against b/c of the acorn squash. Anyway, I'm totally stoked. If it is tasty, I'm calling it "Election Stew" and going to make it every election year on Election day. This evening, Pearl and I are going to my folks' house for some nice Election Partying. We'll sit around being coy about our politics and bitching loudly about how partisan it all is.

I hate my job and the coffee there.

People who shop on the internet are the most endlessly passive-aggressive people in the whole freaking world. Plus, everybody hates car dealerships, and if you're not right in front of the shopper, it's a lot harder to make him love you with your winning personality and surpassing cuteness.

The coffee here, though the woman in charge of it claims that it is the second-most-expensive commercial coffee available, is the worst swill I have ever sipped.

Quitcherbitchin, you say. You're right. I should quit complaining and just be pleased that it's free.

I think I shall risk offending the aforementioned person-in-charge-of-coffee and bring my own coffee maker & fine grounds. No more CVM mochas* for me!

*CVM mocha: 6 oz black coffee, 2 oz phony powdered creamer, 1/8 of a packet of hot cocoa. Add sugar or sweetner if you like. It's almost drinkable.

Should the blog have a particular topic?

I've been thinking. Maybe if I want my blog to serve a purpose, I should use it to do something that I HAVE THE TIME to do, instead of trying to think of it as writing practice and possible venue for the rougher draftings of the novel pages, short story tries, etc.

Wouldn't this blog be cool if it were devoted to reviewing movies? Kids' movies? Surf's Up was fantastic. It is satirizing this other movie that I didn't see. It's smart, funny and extremely well-casted.

I heard this thing on Fresh Air about Zooey Deschanel and how she's also a singer. If I'd seen Elf I would have already known that.

See how writing only about movies wouldn't work?

Then I thought I could spend a lot of time writing about Sales. But I don't know anything about Sales.

Food. But the Food network is already saying it. So is Epicurious.com, recipegoldmine.com, foodnetwork.com, marthastewart.com, et al.

So I will continue to write about whatever occurs to me.

And it will continue to be boring and vain sometimes.

And I will continue to feel conflict over the whole idea of blogging and whether or not I'm the kind of self-promoter who does it. I am. But I have guilt. Thanks Protestantism. I am so glad I was raised in your clutches.

I think I converted my brother to the Libertarian way of thinking this past week.

This boy I used to love asked me if I would vote for Obama. I said I would not. He said I should vote for Hillary because she is a girl (do you see why I no longer love him?).

Why doesn't Hillary have a last name? All the other candidates are known by their last names. Hillary is just Hillary. Is the notion that women will not always have the same last name so deeply ingrained? I don't have a last name at work. I only introduce myself as April, even though I love my last name.

Look Good Naked

On the TV Guide Channel, I learn more about the ways in which I am horrified by current TV offerings than I learn about what I want to watch.

My least favorite listing is Look Good Naked. Presumably, this show has a how-to format. I would also suspect that its demographic is heterosexual females aged 18-25. I have this suspicion for a number of reasons. I suppose I could watch it and find out for sure, but I am fairly certain I would be disgusted. I would probably feel bad about myself. It would also take all the fun out of this blog post.

1. Men don't care how they look naked, their partners will usually accept them unconditionally.
2. If men do care how they look naked, they probably don't need any tips on the how to.
3. Fact: men have higher metabolism than women, their bodies are designed to retain less fat.
4. I like to hope that people of substance over the age of 25 have realized that looking good naked is at the bottom of the list of necessary attributes in a partner. Or, if it is important, it is less important than it was before the age of 25.
5. There are many, many more depictions of nude or nearly nude women across cultures and publications than there are depictions of nude or nearly nude men, which is how we can guess with fair certainty what exactly they mean by "good."

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a normal heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. do not, under any circumstances, have a baby.
2. always do it with the lights off.
3. if you must eat, eat only things that say protien, vegetbale, fruit or water on them. No more than 1 lb of food daily, fewer than 500 calories.
4. Drink lots and lots of black coffee.
5. Smoke 4 packs of cigarettes a day.
6. Never engage in activity that may cause bruises, if you do get bruises, you should do it in the basement with the lights off.
7. Wax everything, every 3 days.
8. Save your pennies for 2 words: Gastric Bypass.

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a filthy rich heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. Hire a personal trainer.
2. Hire Oprah's cook.

Here's how to look good naked if you are me,

1. be me
2. don't worry about it
3. have pride in your stretch marks and hips
4. eat well

But here's the thing.

Looking good naked is totally subjective.

The TV program Look Good Naked is one of the many symptoms of the ways in which we have committed, as Americans, to a particularly unhealthy desire for sameness, narrow ideas of attractiveness and resisting individual thought.

Fried Dill Pickles!

I'm making some!

Recipe to come.

I Bought Shitting Tea!

I was at the grocery store with Pearl, right? And anybody who knows knows that shopping with a 2-year-old should get people nominated for Peace prizes--the 2-year-old and her intense social and physical discovery, the umpteen million shoppers who believe that they would do a better job being a parent to your child than you're doing, the dimwit 13-year-old cashiers and the Senior Bagging Clerks.

So I find myself in the tea/coffee Aisle. My colleague, bastard-who-did-not-create-myspace-url, has been talking up tea. But the tea at work is the dime-store variety and frankly, I am a bit of a snob. Coffee is drugs, and I'll drink tepid bathwater if somebody writes coffee on it, but tea--tea is like English or something, right? Should be savoured (see what I did there?) and enjouyed (again, less artfully). And I'm thinking, gee. I could go for some decent fruity tea for work. I wonder what's on sale!

Why I didn't just stick with Stash, I shall never understand. Oh wait. It's because I'm a cheap-ass single mother with too much to do and not enough time.

There's a beautiful red box. It has a marvelous Eastern pattern on the front. It says, "licorice," "individually wrapped," and the best, "slimming." The combination feels right and a tantrum and 15 minutes later, I own the beautiful red box. [Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that I purchased 2 red shirts and a red scarf at the Old Navy a short 2 hours later?]

I am feeling rather proud of the purchase, I am thinking, "even with my toddler, I make savvy and attractive impulse buys!" Wrong. For so many reasons.

I get home and the toddler monster is napping. I think I shall have a cup of tea. A trial run.

I read the box. I notice that the fine print looks awfully fine.

As it turns out, the tea is an "intestinal cleanser" made as a "dietary aid" during "weight loss programs."

I thought slimming was a word to get monkeys to buy stuff like coffee is a word that gets me to drink stuff. Slimming always has fine print, like, must do 500 50 lb curls daily in order for this to actually do any slimming. Right?

Not only does the tea seem to intend to deliver exactly what it's promised, there are about 4 box-sides worth of instructions. I am too afraid for the trail run. All I wanted was pomegranate or raspberry. Licorice sounded good, too!

Don't drink more than 16 ounces of this tea daily.
Don't use if pregnant or nursing.
Don't consume next to a fella named Ron.
Brew two minutes during initial doses. Eventually work up to personal taste.

I'm not making this up. (except maybe for ron.)

I took the pretty red box to work anyway.

I made a cup of tea.

I did not, as is my tradition, allow the bag to steep during the entire tea consumption. I brewed it fewer than 2 minutes.

The tea tasted a bit like warm dirt.

The tea did, in fact, make me shit.

A lot.

It also gave me gas.

Moral: check tea boxes more carefully in future. Understand implicit oxymoron in "savvy impulse buy."