narfles

Readers know how I feel about Lynda Barry. An interview of the lady herself at The Rumpus by Anne Elizabeth Moore: "It doesn’t matter what their days were like before, their lives. Lynda Barry is in the room with them now so everything from this moment on will be amazing."

From Barry: "The one thing I can say about images and work with images, if I can put their function into one sentence: it’s the thing that gives you the feeling that life is worth living. Which is step one, I’m not saying it’s really worth living or it’s fantastic. I’m saying it’s also the thing that will keep you from killing yourself and others. So it’s a public service, I think [laughter], to engage in images."

unununununununun

This weekend I got an tour of East Coast former-Pennsylvania Railroad stations via an unexpected trip to Charm City. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is my one and only love, but I also got to see Frank Furness's little brick Wilmington station (twice) and spend an anticlimactic hour and a half in Baltimore's beautiful Penn Station. 

B and I relaxed into acceptance by the time the train back North arrived and on the way back we sat across from some drunken New Yorkers. We talked about Sodastream and running. Well, they talked about running. The lady half of the couple already googled me and found this blog, which proves she is much better at drinking than I.

unununununununun

Saveur magazine is making the world a better place by asking amazing comics folks to make one of favorite things: recipe comics. The most recent one is from Corrine Mucha and includes "choi butts." 

Photo from Saveur 

Other contributors include Dorothy Gambrell, Jillian Tamaki and Anthony Clark. And it is a great place to see work from criminally under-read Laura Park.

home and away

Good

*Click to enbiggen*

this...

turned into this

The roof is actually even more potty than this now that I've begin to thin and repot seedlings. Besides the vegetables you see here I am growing some sunflowers for B, and some zinnias for me. Between the two is nasturtium; I have several pots of those grown from seed. Will they actually flower?

&&&
From my parents' basement...
It shoots popcorn! It jazzes up the counter with its wild lettering! It only smells a little like burning wires! Bonus: giving it to me makes my parents seem less like hoarders.

&&&
This week was a bad one for stress, but a good one for art. My friend Pete not only brought his bad self to visit, he brought a housewarming painting with him:
One Day by Esther Pearl Watson
I keep going back and looking at it over and over. Especially the little socks.

&&&
More art arrived with Eva today. I commissioned a set of portraits for B's birthday awhile ago from Simon, and she graciously lugged them from Vienna to Brooklyn. They look so much like us that I had to redact! I thought that we'd put them in the bathroom so guests feel safe knowing that we are always watching.

Today was Y-U-C-K yuck, so in order to feel like less of a shell I cooked some soup. Beet soup!


(CSA beets--gone!)

Yesterday I made the bread with special closer help from B and J.


(Two loaves. Hot damn!)

Both recipes are from my 1964 version of Joy of Cooking, which includes recipes for squirrel, includes directions on how to season lard, and reminds us that "even eminent and distinguished persons are only human." Good to know!

other places, other things

My buddy Goodloe Byron, the cat that designed the cover for Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown, has had an article written about his process over at Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes. In his delightfully self-effacing way, Bryon describes his thoughts about different versions of a cover he made for Matt Stewart's Twittered, and to be published by Soft Skull Press, novel, The French Revolution. If you've ever wanted to know what goes into choosing a cover for a book, this is the article for you.

!!!!!

The new issue of Bookslut has a column by Charlotte Freeman on cookbooks, financial panic style, which of course never end up being entirely about the recipes. She mentions one of my favorite books, M.F.K. Fisher's restrained How to Cook a Wolf and two others by Patience Gray and Elizabeth David that I will have to get my hands on. I find books like these to be very heartening, as they are survivor stories with (mostly) happy endings. Isn't that what we all wish for?

!!!!!

As a child, I thought often about messages sent and messages found, probably as a result of reading many, many mystery novels and living in a neighborhood bereft of civic pride and strewn with all sorts of written trash. Here, Quigley's Cabinet pulls together an excellent list of messages in bottles. I've always dreamt of finding one, maybe washed up on the rocky banks of the Schuykill or in a shark's belly, but I am probably too uptight about the dying oceans to send one now.

"I'll be the mommy superhero and you'll be the daddy superhero"

I'm glad that that 3 year-old picked up on my daddy superhero vibe. Next time we'll not only save B and the baby, but the world!

&&&&&&&&

Check out this great blog, The Deal With Disability, by Eva, a woman with cerebral palsy. She can't talk, is in a wheelchair and rocks a short haircut that seems to be very confusing to the people she meets. Her very presence seems to be so confusing, in fact, that people act like assholes to her all the time. So, to set them (and us) straight, she has strapped a video camera to her chair and presented videos of her daily interactions, with commentary.

While it may hurt to see yourself reflected in some of the targets of her camera, Eva's writing is really funny and her blog provides many teachable moments.

&&&&&&&&



Quigley's Cabinet would have earned a place on the sidebar with just this entry on photographs, discovered in an estate sale, of vegetables taken by a proud English gardener of the fruits and vegetables he raised. But, she also blogs about giant insects, Cronenberg-movie inspirations, and dolphin-abusing eccentrics.

Hippie Stew for Two

When I lived alone in my Philadelphia bay window, I would host stew nights for friends, poor and not. There were also sometimes outfits and aprons involved. The stews were usually just giant pots of vegetarian hot mess, cobbled together from the reaches of my fridge—hey, with enough garlic and salt you can make anything taste good. I miss the close-quarters-love of stew night here in the Lonely Apple, so I decided to make a little stew for me and my main man.

Here’s the recipe:
1 large can of diced tomatoes (or 4 large tomatoes, diced)
1 can of chick peas, don’t drain them!
1 large carrot cut into circles, then into wedges
½ Vidalia onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
7 or so napa cabbage leaves, chopped into squares
2 zuchinni or summer squash, chopped into semicircles
2 pinches paprika
salt
black pepper
1 small jalepeno chopped or 3 pinches red pepper flakes.

Sautee the onions, garlic and carrots until the onions are nice and soft; add spices about halfway through.
Add chick peas and tomatoes; stir!
Add zuchinni, cook until zuchinni look a bit translucent; add the cabbage squares; stir
Cook until cabbage is bright green (and white) and tender.

Serve with long grain brown rice. I mix wild rice into mine, but you don’t have to.

***

Can you tell my lunch was unsatisfying?

***
What's even better than stew night is when you come home to a house full of cooking smells and are shortly served a delicious pasta, cheese, fava beans and bacon thing by your honey. What's even, even better is when your long-time buddy is there too. Luckily for me that happened last night.

This issue of Conjunctions, with stories by Elizabeth Hand and Shelley Jackson, made me subscribe: "Postfantasy fictions that begin with the premise that the unfamiliar or liminal really constitutes a solid ground on which to walk."

%%%

I enjoyed Kate Beaton's Mystery Solving Teens even though she forgot the part where they make out.

%%%

Mouth-watering food-pornery at Last Night's Dinner. If you are the angry sort, you might call it yuppie-flavored, but I'm just going to enjoy it. Besides I am picking up from my CSA today and I don't want to be a hater just because my camera sucks.

meat in a bag

Sunday, sunday, was filled with scrubbing, arranging, cooking and trying not to kill people.

Breakfast:
Delicious CSA eggs, fried in butter
prosciutto
prunes n figs
strawberries
sheep yogurt
cheese
bread
cereal options (not explored)
tea
coffee

Dinner:
Whole chicken with extra thighs, stuffed
white potatoes, carrots, fennel bulb, parsnips in chicken pan
sweet potatoes
purple kale
cabbage n fennel bulb

Guests included SEC, PS and my parents. It was a fun dinner despite my somewhat ragged nerves and some unfortunate storytelling. When everybody left, my clothes smelled heavily of chicken.

As much as I like making big dinners for a lot of people, I am not so sure that my new meat mastery is to be totally celebrated. I don't even really like chicken and I certainly don't want to make eating it a habit. Still, you throw all that shit in a bag, and your dinner is good to go. Chicken baked in plastic, my friends.

dreaming is free (wave to Debbie)

My dreams last night included:
* Co-ed platonic showering as a timesaver and consideration of the options for explaining this delightful, if somewhat awkward, technique to significant others.
* An invasion of my garden by poor taste and poor composting. Also illegal fences.
* Indoor plant placement for the single male, including snake plants
* Office building shenanigans
* A return of certain vices, with regret

Not too far from real life, if a bit more colorful. I blame the terrible chocolate soy dessert I made and not reading before bed.

***
Lately, I've been making dinner. It has been delicious, you should come over. A few hours after that it is late, and I get inspired to do projects or practice--writing, drawing, gluing things to other things. I know I should just go to bed so that the tomorrow(s) won't be awful, so instead of actually making things, I split the difference and stay up too late doing nothing. Then I am exhausted and pissed off when I wake up and droopy and stupid at work. Apparently I can only be a gettin'-it-done superstar in one arena, and despite the terrible choco-barf I made last night, it seems to be in the kitchen. No one is more surprised than I.

***
So what should Eye Baggins Jones do with her unruly clock and seasonings?

link-smackin' good

Maud Newton has two events coming up that sound really great. Both are at the Housing Works Cafe & Bookstore.
###
A week of groceries on $30? Here in New York? These folks are doing it and making really good food too. (Except for the nasty raw food week. Raw food dinner is a-ok. Raw food breakfast is not for the hedonistic, to say the least.)
###
Science and life and being a lady--all the good things, no? Thesis--With Children is great writing on all of those topics and more. I have especially been enjoying the posts on race and academia.
###
Speaking of science, here are some great posts on depression, courtesy of Neurotopia 2.0. Read the entire enlightening series.
###
I've also been doing a lot of art snooping these days. If a poor person buying art is wrong, I don't want to be right!

Pickles!

I always crave pickled onions with my rice and beans. Now I needn't be left wanting. These were pickled with cloves, allspice and a bay leaf.



Carrots pickled with garlic and dill. I needed to do something with these CSA beauties before they turned to mush.

My first time pickling anything certainly turned out surprisingly well. What new things are you trying during this long winter?

Winners and more

I'm back and eating a kick ass dal that I adapted from a recipe in Curries Without Worries by Sudha Koul. I added extra ginger in the hopes it would revive me post-travel.

All from the pantry, except the ginger, which I got from the fridge.
***
The winner of the contest is ctheokas. I had another wonderful entry from a previous winner, but I think she's disqualified this round. Yay Chris! Send me your address, your package of awesome is waiting.

As an aside, why don't more people like to win? What sort of contests would you like to see here? I'm sorry, but for now no win-a-date prizes are available.
***
When we arrived at the apartment I had a letter from one of the schools I applied to. I sat on the couch, bracing myself for the let down. But guess what? That feeling of face-reddening disappointment never came. I got my first acceptance! I can only hope that there are more where that came from.

Next customer please

“Hello sir—uh, ma’am.”
“Hi! Sir, ma’am—whatever it’s ok. I have a turkey club and salt n’ vinegar chips.”
“No. It’s not ok.”
(Little laugh)
“Yeah it is. Whatever!”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Aw. Don’t you think I’d make a dashing man?”
“No.”

A dinner for 28

1) sangria with oranges, grapes and apples
2) Moxie
3) Bacon-wrapped prunes
4) Robbiola, goat gouda and tallegio
5) Bread, bread, bread
6) Bratwurst
7) Grilled cauliflower
8) Red beets, yellow beets
9) Potatoes n’ garlic
10) Grilled fennel
11) Grilled onion
12) Grilled mushrooms
13) Cherry pie
14) Fruit
15) Delicious sleep

Maybe we'll see you next year?

Moody Fruit

From the CSA:



Gift fruit:

Sunday:
Passing recipes back vegetarian
The Sweeney
Tomato staking
Dusty, busted ghost stories make good dreams
Station to station

Monday:
Time to read China Mountain Zhang, I guess
Amanda's hotel comment card
Guten nacht Hallo Berlin

For color

I wish there had been more summer nights like this.

I have to thank the Small Beer Press crew for the head's up on iced barley tea.

Yum!

Why I love bug girl's blog:

"Sapromyophilic flowers are commonly red to mimic meat, and some of them also produce heat, to further mimic decomposing flesh or a recently dropped turd."

Read all the National Pollinator Week posts!