just like martha

Last night, Monday night, was the second installment in my five part series, “Try to Cook Some Things During Lent Because This Is a Skill You Really Need to Acquire.” I selected my recipe from the “Everyday Food” cookbook, which as I understand it, is kind of like Martha Stewart for Dummies, in that Martha Stewart is in some way involved, but too embarrassed by the simplicity of the recipes to have her name front and center. The recipe I chose: Tortilla and Black Bean Pie.

I chose this recipe for several reasons. One, I love black beans. Two, the recipe called for 12 ounces of beer, which thoroughly intrigued me. While I may not need some of these spices I have to buy ever again, I can sure put the rest of that beer to good use. Lastly, it featured no meat, and as I mentioned in my last cooking entry, preparing meat scares the hell out of me. The middle ground between raw and burnt? I do not know how to get there with meat.

Anyways, Monday at 5 I left work and set out for the grocery store to procure such exotic ingredients as canola oil and scallions (known pseudonym: green onions). Well, Monday at 5 was a hellacious time to be on the roads. You stand-up comedians out there might be saying that anytime is a bad time to be on the roads in Atlanta, and to that I say, hardy-har-har. Most days, I have a fairly easy commute, but yesterday, the City of Atlanta thought it would be a good idea to get three lanes of traffic down to just one for some road work. It took me an hour-and-a-half to go five miles. Make no mistake about it, I was testy. Then it was off to the grocery store for more stress. After bumping buggies with my fellow 9-to-5ers for awhile and trying to figure out exactly what a jalapeno chile was, I was exhausted. And frustrated. It turns out no one makes 10 ounce packages of frozen corn, Martha Stewart! I can go 16 or 32 but I can’t go 10! And I don’t want any leftover corn! WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS SO HARD ON ME?

It just occurred to me that not everyone calls shopping carts “buggies,” but that’s actually what they’re called. Don’t let any damn Yankee tell you any different.

As I loaded my groceries in the car, shooting stink-eyes at the nearby shopper who was going to leave his buggy in his parking space rather than returning it to its appointed carrel, I had to fight the urges rising in my body to abandon the plan. Just go get a nice burrito, instead, the voices whispered. You’ve had a hard day. You’ve been sitting in traffic forever. The last thing you want to do is go home and cook. But I resisted. “Oh no,” I said to myself. “We’re going to see if all those people who said cooking was relaxing are full of shit or not.”

So off to home I headed. I laid out my ingredients. Here they are:

Before I started anything, though, I watched a YouTube video on how to dice an onion because I’ve had a lot of insecurity about that act since high school, when a friend’s mom told me I chopped onions wrong. A bunch of girls were trying to make tacos for a sleepover, and apparently I was the only one who couldn’t handle my assigned task. Actually, probably a lot of my issues with cooking, as well as some issues with self-esteem, stem from those sleepovers. But I digress.

With some YouTube knowledge behind me, I began dicing and mincing and grating and whatnot. It went pretty well. One frustrating thing to me is that the instructions say 25 minutes of prep time, but that doesn’t include all the chopping and so forth. It assumes 25 minutes once everything is ready to go. But you know Martha Stewart or her minions are not allowed to buy pre-chopped onion, so I don’t know why they don’t add a little chop time in there. Maybe if I ever get a cooking show, it can be called “Prep Time,” and it will just show what happens before the recipe actually ever gets going. It will basically just be me watching videos on the internet and trying not to cut my finger off, I guess. Oh, and drinking. If the hypothesis was to see whether cooking can be relaxing, then the experiment was actually rendered null and void by the wine I consumed while working my culinary magic. Was it the wine, the cooking or the television on in the background that relaxed me? Too many uncontrolled variables.

As I drank, most of the ingredients went into the skillet for some skillet time. The beer was all boiled off or distilled or off to beer heaven I guess. Here is that very process in action!

Then it was time to layer the bean and corn mixture with the cheese and tortillas. So here was my big downfall. Whenever I read that the tortillas were supposed to be cut to fit the shape of a springboard pan, my eyes kind of glazed over. I figured a tortilla was a circle, and why should I cut off some of the tortilla just to end up with another circle? But when I started assembling the layers of the pie, I realized that the springboard pan must be some circular pan that would help my creation keep its shape. Without this so-called springboard pan, the pie ended up being a little unwieldy. But now, at least I know what a springboard pan is. It would have been nice if they just called it a circular pan. Is it that one with the thing that goes around at the bottom? I guess that's the thing that springs it from its form. Not that I had one, but still.

The uncooked pie. You can't really see all the layers here.

The pie after some baking:

One slice for dinner, served with salsa, the rest to be eaten throughout the week.

The verdict: This recipe was delicious. It is hard to go wrong with cheese, tortillas, black beans and onions. But, I do have to point out that this took almost an hour for me to make so that it was in this arrangement, and most of those things probably could have been, like, microwaved and smushed together to create the same taste, right? So was it worth it? I don’t know. All I know is that only two recipes in, I am learning countless lessons about myself and about kitchen vocabulary.

the lost weekend

So, though I vowed to blog everyday during Lent, I hit a bit of a stumble this weekend. And I have to say, once the blogging went, all of my Lenten resolutions fell off track. I had some soda. I didn’t do any stomach crunches. And then I figured that I’d done so poorly that I might as well have some chocolate as well.

What got me so badly off track? Here’s the thing. Earlier in the week I had been scanning what was happening this week in history on Wikipedia – that’s right, just because I’ve abandoned my weekly TWIH in history doesn’t mean that I don’t still check to see the week’s events. Lately they’ve been kind of boring, though, so I haven’t felt too bad about not posting a recap. Plus it seemed that no one liked that feature anyways. But I digress. In my Wikipedia research, I noticed that famed Chick-fil-a founder Truett Cathy’s birthday fell on March 14, a Saturday this year. And wouldn’t you know it, I was scheduled to eat with my family at the South Asheville Chick-fil-a on that very Saturday!

As you might imagine, the excitement was palpable. That’s why I didn’t blog on Friday. I was just too keyed up, wondering how each franchise would choose to celebrate their founder. Would we all get free chicken or ice cream? Would we all get our own dwarf, in recognition of the fact that the first Chick-fil-a was called the Dwarf House? Would there be, God help me, a Funfetti cake?

Well, there was cake alright, but it was only for a little girl who was having her birthday party at Chick-fil-a. For everyone else, there was nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nothing to honor the man that gave the world and its food courts a tasty variety of chicken products and waffle fries six days out of the week. Even those stupid cows couldn’t get it together to produce a misspelled sign along the lines of “Happi Berthdayy Truett.”

The fact that the South Asheville franchise was not honoring Truett Cathy sent me into a blind rage. I threw my box of chicken nuggets against the wall and smashed the little girl’s birthday cake. I ran into the play area, knocking little children out of my way. I climbed to the top of the playset, took some shots of honey mustard sauce and proclaimed for the whole restaurant to hear that this was Truett’s day, dammit, and we needed to bless our chicken sandwiches in his honor. At that point I think I went into an off-subject rant about how it’s nearly impossible to prove that he actually invented the chicken sandwich, as the store’s marketing claims, but then I got back on subject by singing an impromptu opera about pickles. After my song, I spread my arms and fell backwards into the ball pit.

Then, as I rested in the ball pit, a vision of Truett Cathy appeared to me. He extended an arm to me, as if he was offering me a college scholarship for my commitment to the company. He pulled me up, and we waltzed around the store. I whispered “Happy birthday” and thanked him for the dance, and he whispered, “My pleasure,” just as every employee does when they refill your drink. But his “My pleasure” was not perfunctory or accompanied by a scowl, the way some employees say it. His was heartfelt. I think I fainted in his arms.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with my family standing around me, pouring the contents of their Styrofoam cups on my face to revive me. I did not feel guilty, for I knew they could get refills. I was drenched in iced tea and sweat, but I had done my duty. I had honored Truett.

Slowly, I got to my feet and headed for the condiment station, because I wanted to fill out a comment form to let this Chick-fil-a franchise owner know what I thought of his lack of loyalty and tradition (for those very loyal blog readers out there, this was in fact the same Chick-fil-a where I filled out a comment card regarding the lack of Diet Coke. You may have thought that was silly, but there’s currently Diet Dr. Pepper and Coke Zero at that Chick-fil-a. Who’s laughing now?). Anyways, they didn’t have any comment cards available, which in and of itself is an offense that I would mention on a comment card, if one were available. I think that’s what they call a Catch-22.

Anyways, that’s why I didn’t blog, and why everything went downhill so fast. But I’m back on track now. I think we can all agree that being tempted by the devil in the desert is basically the same as your hometown Chick-fil-a not recognizing its founder. Totally and completely the same.

ER, the good ol days

Okay! I was going to figure out a blog for today after I watched my Thursday night tv of “The Office” and “30 Rock.” But do you know what I learned while watching those two shows? It’s the “ER” where all the old doctors come back, the doctors from the glory days of “ER.” All the commercials showed Eriq LaSalle doing that karate move that he used to do on the original opening credits! Hooray! So I thought I would live blog it because then I don’t have to feel bad for watching “ER” instead of doing other things. I guess you shouldn’t keep reading if you have tivo’d ER or if you care about how this episode shapes up or whatnot.

The commercials are trying to be all coy about whether George Clooney will show up, but they just had his name in the opening credits. That’s good, cause let’s be honest, if I watch an hour of ER and George Clooney doesn’t show up, I will be PISSED. That was in fact going to be whole gist of this blog…will George Clooney show up? When? At the last five minutes? And will he have his hair cut in that Caesar style that was so popular in 1995?

Let’s talk about my history with the show ER. I started watching it at the end of the first season, because do you remember how critically acclaimed it used to be? Unfortunately, I think now it’s overstayed its welcome, and people take it for granted, and even Uncle Jesse is on it now, and so people don’t remember how amazing that show was when it first started. Then I watched it through all the George Clooney seasons, and probably a little bit after he left. Actually, definitely after he left, because I remember when Julianna Marguiles left the show, and she went out to Seattle to be with him. He was in the last five minutes. He was sanding a boat. Dear God, please don’t wait til the last five minutes to show me George Clooney on ER again.

You can tell this is a special episode because other guest stars include Susan Sarandon and Ernest Borgnine. Unfortunately, I fear this doesn’t leave much time for George to do his thing. From what I can tell of the plot, Noah Wyle is deadly ill and so I guess all his old friends will have to come back to say goodbye. Or maybe for his kidney operation.

Okay, at just 10:09, we have Julianna Marguiles! A minute later we have George! Oh my god, they work at the University of Washington now! Between this hospital and the Grey’s Anatomy hospital, Seattle is full of really hot doctors. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS WHEN I LIVED IN SEATTLE???????

Man, this is going to be so super touching. J-mar and G-Clo are waiting to get organs that will go to Noah Wyle! But Susan Sarandon is the grandmother of the boy with the organs in question and she’s not ready to let go yet! ONCE THEY FIGURE OUT THESE ORGANS ARE GOING TO NOAH WYLE THERE IS GOING TO BE A SCENE THAT WINS EVERYONE A FUCKING EMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, now I have to kill time with these characters I don’t know. I looked up some stuff on the internet, but now we have George again. Unfortunately, and I’m not quite sure how this happened, but Juliana Marguiles said “Spokane” wrong. AWKWARD. I guess George and Julianna are still together? They talk about their kids but it’s unclear if they all live together? Now George and the Chicago people are comparing names. The fact that they don’t know any of the same people is a testament to how many frickin’ characters have been on this show. But they didn’t compare Noah Wyle’s name. OMG missed opportunity. Do you think it bothers John Stamos that he’s the poor man, the very poor man’s George Clooney on this show?

Now Eriq La Salle is back and he is having a talk with Noah Wyle. What a great coincidence that Eriq La Salle works at this very hospital where Noah Wyle is waiting for a transplant. As it turns out, they don’t have all that much to talk about. I guess too much time has passed. And they are both strong men who can’t show emotions. Imagine if you were about to have a life-saving surgery and all the co-workers from your first job showed up? I think that would be bizarre. I wouldn’t want it filmed for a television show.

This is a very touching show about organ donation. How much longer til Doug Ross discovers that he is saving John Carter’s life? AND WHEN WILL THE GHOST OF ANTHONY EDWARDS APPEAR TO THEM ALL?

Actually, I think he already did his return episode, didn’t he? I think I read about it in Entertainment Weekly. Man, I bet Anthony Edwards regrets coming on too early, though maybe he didn’t want to get too upstaged by George Clooney. Maybe he doesn’t care about what’s going in Darfur and so they have horrible on-set fights. That’s just a conjecture.

All sorts of other random things are going on. A baby was abandoned. An old lady married to Ernest Borgnine wants to die at home. The organ transplant ladies from the ER hospital lost their plane and now I guess they are hitchhiking back? Maybe I should be paying closer attention. Eriq La Salle is having another talk with Noah Wyle, and now they are bonding over…wait hold up, now the scary ER music is playing and they are taking Carter away so I guess something dramatic will happen! But George Clooney is still in Seattle and I don’t want this to happen without him! Also there is an adorable little girl whose mom will get a new heart!

Wait, is the message of this show that doctors don’t even know whose lives they save in the course of their jobs, and it just turns out that sometimes they save their friends without even knowing? That would make me sad. But there’s only 15 minutes left so I fear that such a situation might be underway. I just don’t like George Clooney being deprived of this information about Noah Wyle. Noah Wyle would be all alone if Eriq La Salle weren’t there, and even though that is somewhat poetic since they used to be such rivals, I just want the whole staff there! I’m not sure if Gloria Reuben ever died from AIDS on this show, but if she’s still kickin’ I want her to come back too! And maybe Sherry Stringfield can work in the coffee shop that they all go to for ice cream?

I just checked Wikipedia, and Gloria Reuben’s character did not die. According to Wikipedia, “she is one of the only regular characters in American television history to contract the HIV virus without eventually being killed off by the writers.” Sorry I implied as much, Gloria Reuben.

Eriq La Salle just taught all the doctors doing the transplant surgery an important lesson in preparedness, just like lessons that he used to teach Noah Wyle!

The other people’s plotlines are boring and depressing me all at the same time. But without giving too much away, Noah Wyle is okay. George Clooney and Susan Sarandon live in ignorance of the unbelievable coincidence that they were a part of today. All George and Julianna know is the kidney went to “some doctor.” But don’t worry, we got a shot of George Clooney shirtless and sleeping in bed, and those were always my favorite ER scenes anyways.

a special request blog

Tonight I was talking to my brother George. I said, “George, what am I going to blog about in the next three hours? I have no ideas.” I asked him to give me an idea. Without pausing, he said: “Go over to your cd player, and write about what’s in there. Why, of all your cd’s, is that the cd in your cd player? Where did you get it? Why do you like it? [He listed off a whole lot of other questions here but I forgot every single one]” He ended by saying, “I’m just glad that you don’t have a 5-cd changer.”

What’s kind of weird about George’s prompt was that earlier this evening, when I got home from work, I poured some wine and listened to the cd that is in my cd player twice while I experimented with colored pencils. And I remember thinking, “I wish I could figure out a way to write about this cd, and how much I like it.” Lo and behold, the time has come to do so.

The cd currently in my CD player is “Middle Cyclone” by Neko Case. It came out last week, on the same day as the new U2, as a matter of fact. I ordered both CD’s from Amazon, and while I’m not quite ready to say that I’m underwhelmed by the new U2 yet (though everyone tells me I will be), I haven’t really given it a chance because I’ve been too busy listening to Neko. The few reviews I’ve read of “Middle Cyclone” have been decidedly mixed, but I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Here are some things about Neko Case, in case you’ve never heard of her. Rolling Stone’s online bio of her says she is “a teenage punk-rocker turned alt-country chanteuse” but she has said repeatedly that she dislikes the term alt-country so now I feel bad even having typed it. She sings occasionally with pop super group the New Pornographers. She loves animals. She grew up in Washington and has said that she had a hard upbringing, and she left home at 15. She creates amazing conceptual packages for her albums. She was banned from the Grand Ole Opry for taking her shirt off at a Nashville party (she says she was getting overheated). She just bought a farm in Vermont. She looks different in almost every picture I’ve seen of her. She’s on a very short list of people that I would actually like to meet and hang out with, but I don’t think that I could keep up with her.

I just wanted to mention that I do feel bad that I bought the cd on Amazon, and not from some independent record store. Amazon is so cheap, though! And the economy is so bad! But it’s sad because all the cool artsy places are going out of business and there will be no arts left soon! I guess that is a subject for another post.

Anyways, I think I started off on that rant because I’m having a hard time thinking of what I’m actually going to say about this album. The thing that most people are talking about, it seems, is that she recorded the frogs on her farm and included 30 minutes of their croaking at the end of the album. But no one talks about the 40 minutes of music that precedes that. (For the records, I love the frogs so far. Today I lay on the floor with my wine and listened to them croak. I’m not saying I’m always going to listen to them. But still.)

To address the music….most people love Neko for her voice, and I am one of them. But I guess the thing I like most of all about Neko Case music is that each song is this mini-world that is evocative in a way that very little other music is to me right now. And more than just being this little world of its own, it kind of brings me in and makes me want to create something, immediately. When I’m listening to Neko Case in my car, I tend to want to pull over and write short stories, which is an urge that strikes me at almost no other time, unfortunately. And this evening, as I said, I listened to the new cd while I played with my new crayons and colored pencils (I’m trying to be more artsy). I just kind of doodled and then wrote down words and lines that I liked from the songs. When something that I see or listen to makes me want to do something of my own….well, I don’t take that lightly.

Each listen of this cd is still revealing things to me, so I’m not quite ready to go track-by-track through it, which was one of George’s suggestions, now that I think about it. I would say, though, that if you are looking for a place to start with Neko Case music, most reviews I’ve read have said that “Middle Cyclone” is no “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood,” which was her last album, and that one is also excellent. I don’t know which one I like better yet…I will probably end up making a mix of the songs that move me most and listening to that.

I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think I explain why I like music very well. But that’s what in my Cd player, and will probably continue to be for quite a while. Thank you for the blog idea, George. The only problem I foresee is that I'm going to see Neko Case in concert on April 2, and now I might not have anything to write about then.

If you want to hear some songs and whatnot: http://www.myspace.com/nekocase

embroider this on your pin cushions

It was either this or try to read a book really fast.

what sound does the sheep make?

This weekend I went to the Atlanta History Center, because it was the weekend where you could get into some museums free with a Bank of America card. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by the place. There were exhibits on the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta’s growth, folk arts in the south, Bobby Jones and golf, and a pretty awesome Civil War exhibit.

Unfortunately, my experience of the Civil War exhibit was slightly marred by a school group that was present. Apparently the kids and their adult sponsors were assigned to find one fact to share with the rest of the group. So the kids would walk around with a friend, and then they’d get to a spot and read one random thing aloud. One kid would shout, “that’s my fact!” And then the other would say, “No, I want that one!” Even the adults were pretty annoying about it.

My favorite part about the history center, though, were the historic homes and the gardens. First up, I toured Swan House, which was owned by a very rich family with many things named after them in the 1920s and 1930s. The house was absolutely beautiful inside, and the voice on the audio guide was oh so soothing. Apparently the home is one of the most photographed sites in the country:

Beside the home was this garden:

And this playhouse:

Why oh why couldn’t I have been a rich kid in Atlanta in the 1930’s? I mean, I’d be happy living in that playhouse even now.

After Swan House, it was off to a farm. When you go from 1920s opulence to an 1840s farm complete with an outhouse, smokehouse, blacksmith shop, slave quarters, etc, it’s a bit of a letdown, no matter how much you love pioneers. It’s much more fun to fantasize about living in the other house. But the farm did have sheep!

Although this got me paranoid that I smelled like sheep for the rest of the day. Sheep and sweat--the most alluring scent known to man.

lose an hour...to cooking

When I tell people I don’t cook, I am usually greeted with disapproval. Apparently everyone needs to know how to cook. And though I’ve made it this far without learning much more than how to work a microwave, sometimes I do wish I knew more about cooking. Like when I’m staring down the options of another frozen Lean Cuisine or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So one of my Lenten resolutions, in addition to blogging every day, doing stomach crunches every day, and abstaining from soda and chocolate, was to cook 5 new things for myself.

Tonight was my first attempt. After perusing several cookbooks checked out from the library, I decided to with a recipe for “Vegetable and Couscous Stacks,” as written by one Rachael Ray. As someone who doesn’t cook, I have often been told I should check out Rachael Ray, since she promises to get you in and out of the kitchen in 30 minutes. Well, I have one complaint off the bat about her cookbook. Instead of beautiful pictures of the finished dish that inspire you to push forward to your goal, the only pictures in this cookbook were of Rachael Ray. I did not like that one bit. If I wanted to see Rachael Ray, I could watch her on television; however, there is something to be said for a Rachael Ray image that cannot speak to you, because she is two-dimensional. She’s loud and perky, is what I’m trying to say there.

I picked “Vegetable and Couscous Stacks” because I’m deathly afraid of cooking with meat. I am scared it will turn out raw so I tend to overcook it. I will conquer meat before this Lent is over, but I figured I would start out with something that wouldn’t give me salmonella, as far as I could tell. I did have some problems in the grocery store, because I didn’t know how to pick out an eggplant. Also, I didn’t buy fresh herbs the way Ms. Ray suggested; there is a recession on and the Food Network is sadly not footing the bill for me to learn how to cook (though I would be amenable to discussions regarding that prospect – surely everyone would like to sit at home and watch someone bumble through something they already know how to do, right? Plus, I would cuss a lot).

Here’s what I came home from the store with:
All laid out the way it is on tv!

Trouble began immediately, when I realized I copied down my ingredient list for the grocery store without including the ingredient of zucchini. This made me sad because I love zucchini. There was also trouble when I realized I didn’t really know how to get into garlic. Rachael said smack it with the flat of a knife but that didn’t do anything. So I just kind of broke it with my hands and now I smell bad. I also only skimmed the recipe beforehand, and I didn’t notice that grilling was involved. I don’t have a grill, so I had to do that thing where it just sits in a skillet thing on the stove. Skilleting?

Making this recipe was a non-stop fun ride of cutting things up. Unfortunately, I am not good with knives so it really wasn’t a fun ride for me. First I cut eggplant. Then I was off to my onion; during the cutting of said onion I sliced into my thumb. So now I’m bleeding everywhere. I don’t have bandaids in the house. But I have to keep moving! Because now eggplant is roasting in the oven and if I don’t continue at a fast pace I might not be done in 30 minutes! It’s okay to consume a little bit of your own blood, right? I’m not saying I did but I feel some probably got in the food. Other things I sliced included mozzarella and tomatoes.

It was a pleasant surprise how easy couscous was, though I didn’t know if I was supposed to put in 2 cups dry couscous or put in enough dry couscous so that the finished amount came out to 2 cups. I still will never know, I guess. While the couscous was cous-ing, I was supposed to remove the bottom and top of the can that the chicken broth came in, because that’s how you made the titular stacks in this recipe. You kind of pushed everything way down in the can and then pulled the can up and voila! Stacks.

Except I couldn’t get the bottom of the can off. Maybe I just wasn’t strong enough, or maybe it was the weird rounded edges that I ended up blaming my failure on. Either way, I abandoned the can and decide to just use a plastic cup. It would yield slightly bigger servings than intended, but according to Rachael Ray, these stacks were merely designed to be a side dish to some sort of hummus entrée, so I figured that if it was my main and only dish, it could be a little bigger than normal. By the way, was the 30 minutes supposed to include making that hummus dish and the paired dessert? Because there was no way. It took me 45 minutes just to do these f’ing stacks.

Okay, so here are all the ingredients that go into a stack. From left to right: couscous, seasoned eggplant, basil, tomatoes, mozzarella, red pepper and onion.

I assembled the stack in a Jimmy John’s plastic cup and turned it over onto a plate. I had a stack!

As soon as I turned my back, though, it became this:

I made two other cups out of all the stuff. Tomorrow for lunch all I have to do is grab a stack in a cup! Portable party cup indeed!

Then I’m just going to dump it out into a Tupperware bowl, because what I learned from eating my concoction is that this dish is really impossible to eat as a stack. You kind of just have to mess it all up and eat it as a veggie couscous cheese salad. But it was enjoyable. Maybe, if I had an extra 45 minutes, I would make it again.

I didn’t take a picture of the kitchen mess, but it took awhile to clean up. Lots of leftover pieces of food from all that slicing and lots of bloody towels. This is why I don’t cook, people. But I shall persevere, four more times before April 12.