Thanks friends and neighbors. Please send me posts you'd like me to see, since I won't be checking in all that often. I forgot to post the link to my new blog. Here it is: One Thousand Days and Nights of Chinese Cooking
I wish you all a very good 2010! May it be brighter than 2009, which was a year of hard lessons for many in this nation. A few years ago, I tentatively entered online life through Vox. I discovered quickly that I was able to post poems and receive instantaneous non-academic feedback, which is of great value to me. I also reacquainted myself with the arts of photography and sculpture. That said, I have decided to spend the majority of my creative energies on a new endeavor in the next year. The book of fairytale poems is still being tortured in layout stage. When it is available, whether it is published or self-published, I will let you all know. The next year.....
I have been busy home-schooling my children and struggling to keep up with creating and keeping my domicile clean. What has been forgotten this past year, is good nutrition. "What about integrating art into cooking and eating?" I thought during a long winter's nap. This makes perfect sense.
I also had the pleasure of seeing Julie and Julia, which not only made me salivate over the gastronomy, but also provided a spark. My Julia Child is definitely Gloria Bley Miller, who did for Chinese cooking, what the former did for French cooking. She brought it, in its authenticity, into American households. As a teenager, I created sumptuous meals for my family. Her book is weathered and loved. Miller was also an artist and an educator. Her husband, Richard Miller, was a famous sculptor. I used to imagine their Greenwhich Village house as a refuge from my suburbia, from the pains of ticky-tacky houses. I laugh at this now, but it was very real to a fourteen-year-old misunderstood artist.
This year, the year I turn forty, I return to the art of Chinese Cooking. I am publishing my blog through Salon, so I won't be as much of a presence on Vox. Please come over to see me! If you want me to read anything, please send Vox mail to me. Thanks for a year of warmth and kindness. I wish you all health and prosperity in 2010!
One of the best parts of being in Ohio is that we have reconnected with Ben's (huge) clan of family. I've known them for over 14 years, but from a distance. I was a bit slow on getting all the names right and the spouses and the kids. When I saw one kid I'd known as a little kid (now late teens) I did not recognize him to everyone's amusement.
How could I not know Hunter?
The clan has been together in the same area of Ohio forever. The 14 years Bens been with me in Californa never really took him out of the family loop. Now that he's back here, it's almost like he never left. I have to say I love being part of the "clan".
Today Ben's aunt Bobbie (Barb) had everyone to her home in Mansfield for "pigs in a blanket." (pork and ground beef balls with rice wrapped in cabbage in a soup of tomato and spices and sauerkraut. Thick chunks of bread and butter and mashed potatoes finished the meal. All served straight from the kitchen to whoever showed up, whenever they showed up. The pot had been cooking for over 10 hours - started the day before and then reheated today so the flavors blended and mellowed. It was so unbelievably good and satisfying. We all ate wherever we could find a spot while the tv played one of many football games. Ben helped this cousins set up his mom's new speaker system to go with her new tv. Ben and his cousin Lonnie worked together on the project - joking and teasing each other. Honestly they are as different as night and day, but underneath the "types" the connection - the family tie - is obvious. Ben- his tight black jeans, pink and black sneakers, red and black flannel topped with a black biker jacket, tatted and pierced, blue hair, goofy humor - in the snow, Ben makes snow men. In the snow, Lonnie waits for hours with a gun or bow for his prey to pass close enough for a clean kill. Lonnie with his home full of stuffed and mounted animals, deer watch his tv from behind his chair - the black bear comes out of the wall behind the tv. The turkeys and peasants are flattened into wall hangings. Lonnie - in his camo pants and loose muddy boots - hair trimmed short - buff - while Ben is a computer whiz who does art for a living. Lonnie works at a correctional facility. He is big and tough. I'm sure on one messes with Lonnie. Different. Wildly different. And yet I've watched them getting closer with each gathering.
Ben's family accepts each other 100%, Can't say they accept everyone - or every type - but once someone is in the family "clan" everyone has their back.
Every time we are with Ben's family - I feel - like I am a part of something.
It's wonderful to feel this much love - from them all and for them all.
And Ben.
I coughed and wheezed all night long. No more "i'm ok, it's just a cold." I drive my mess down to urgent care.
Yes, I have a cold - and that cold has camped out in my lungs. Now it's bronchitis. I got a whole mess of meds to take and an shiny new inhaler. My script called for me to get a vaporizer and other non rx stuff and then to up my vitamin c, liquids, and REST. He asked if I needed a note for my empoyer so I could get out of working for a few days till the anibotics and steroids - whee.
Once I settled in on my second pot of tea I watched SHAKES THE CLOWN. Wow, I loved it. Bobcat rules.
Nym headed in to the vet today too. Like mommy he has a infection in his ears and in his nose. He's beside me right now on his part of the couch. Me, I'm on my end with my feet up watching tv for the 6th day in a row. But I don't want this to get worse - so - I'm resting with the steam of the humidifier filling the room with the scent of vicks.
Have you ever eaten something so good it gave you a tongue-gasm?
Do you tend to prefer breakfasts that come with a syrup decanter or three?
Aren’t waffles a serious pain in the dumper to prepare?
And really, don't you think pancakes are more exciting as headwear for small to medium sized mammals*?
Right. Well, here’s what you’re gonna do…
Turn your oven on to 350° F (175° C), then go about getting all this stuff together: 5 cups bread cubes, 4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups milk, 2 tablespoons white sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 tablespoon softened butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Next, mix the eggs, milk, salt, and vanilla all together. Works best if you do this in a large bowl or something similar. Milk and eggs need boundaries or they’ll just run roughshod right over you (figuratively speaking, of course).
Anyway, liberally slather the inside of an 8x8 baking dish with whatever edible lubricant you like – I recommend butter – and then evenly fill the bottom of the dish with bread cubes. Dump the egg/milk mixture all over it, pat the whole mess with butter in random spots, and then let it sit there for a few minutes while you mix the sugar and cinnamon together and whip up a can of frozen orange juice. Some people don’t like coffee, you know.
After you’ve sprinkled the cinna-sugar all over the top of your casserole, stick it in the oven for around 45 minutes. Might take longer. Might not. Just let it get nice and golden brown and try not to freak out when you look in the oven and see it has expanded to forty times its original size. That’s totally normal (and completely humane).
Finally, scoop a big ol’ wad out onto a plate, douche it with your favorite syrup, and push it in your pie-hole. Don’t just gulp it down like a starving Rottweiler, though. Let your tongue take a run at it a few times first; have its fun for a bit. It works hard everyday; helping you talk, picking your teeth, gesturing provocatively to persons of the opposite gender.
C'mon. Go make your tongue some funky French Toast Casserole. You know it’s the right thing to do.
*Yes, I know it’s a dorayaki, not a pancake, and that Oolong has gone on to bunny nirvana. I am also fairly certain they have plenty of syrup there.
Ben and I took the doggies out for a walk through our yard and then through the park across the street.
