Veggie Paella

I had Nick and Jojo, back from the Virginia GOTV trenches, and Rupali and Nathan over for dinner last night and duh it was super fun and also yummy. Both couples got married this year and Nick and Rupali are in PhD programs at the NerdCircus so lots of fun things to talk about. N&J brought "good" and "bad" lettuce (both yummy!) and R&N made a cinnamon-nutmeg-chocolate cake which I am scarfing down at lunch today.

Kima showed off her brand new black fleece sweater which is keeping her super cozy, and I made veggie paella, which is both dairy-free and vegetarian! Well except that I used chicken stock, but Rupali doesn't mind, fortunately :)

Veggie Paella from Bon Appetit
Ingredients:
* 2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 cups chopped onion
* 1 cup chopped red bell pepper
* 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
* 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
* 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
* 2 cups canned vegetable broth
* 3 large plum tomatoes (about 10 ounces), seeded, coarsely chopped
* 1 cup frozen peas
* 1 cup drained canned garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
* 1/2 cup chopped peeled carrot
* 1/4 teaspoon crushed saffron threads
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper


* 1 1/2 cups (about 9 1/2 ounces) couscous
* 6 canned artichoke hearts, quartered
* Sliced red bell pepper rings
* 1 lemon, cut into 8 wedges
* Chopped fresh parsley

Preparation:
Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and chopped bell peppers; sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and paprika and sauté 1 minute. Stir in broth and next 6 ingredients. Bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and cook 5 minutes to blend flavors. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Mix couscous into vegetable mixture (I added more broth before this and I think it helped a lot!). Cover and simmer 1 minute. Remove pot from heat. Let stand covered 5 minutes. Fluff couscous with fork. Let paella stand covered 5 minutes longer; fluff with fork again. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to serving bowl. Arrange artichoke hearts, red bell pepper rings and lemon wedges atop paella. Sprinkle parsley over and serve.

Snugglehound

From Kima

Definition of snugglehound here. And "Clunk". Eleanor, you may want to pay close attention. :)

Keys to easy fun dinner party

1) Invite fun people. (duh)
2) Easy-ish food items that cook for an hour in the oven. This way you can hang out with guests while things finish up or 'rest' or cool a bit instead of frantically sauteing things at the last minute (that's the 'tricky fun dinner party').
3) Get Anna to make freakin-good pomegranate fruit salad!
4) dishwasher.

I had a hankering to roast a chicken on Saturday night so I invited Rupes and C.N. and Anna and Katie over. The roast chicken you stuff with garlic and ginger and lemon slices and oil it all over with salt and pepper, and of course one must have potatoes, so to use up the rest of our local cream I made potato gratin, just layers of sliced potatoes with salt/pepper/gruyere in between, filled up with cream and baked for an hour. Josh made delicious roasted red and yellow beets and their beet greens that we picked up at the Mill Valley Center in the morning. Super duper yum. And Anna brought the fruit salad and wine was brought by guests and it was like, a super fun evening!

Of course now I have another dinner party coming up and can't just be a one trick pony so roast chicken and potatoes are out out out. I have been recently starring fun recipes in the food blogs I read so perhaps I will turn to them for inspiration...

Words I don't like, part 349

"Colorways".

Working from home

I had a dentist appointment this morning and a Kima-nails-cut appointment this afternoon and figured I may as well just take the day off um, work from home.

Of course it is Draft City in our living room thanks to the a/c unit in the dining room. So I shrink-filmed that sumbitch right up!

From Design

Can you spot the cord and remote control sealed in their winter tomb?

That helped a whole lot but there was still the front door to contend with. Fortunately, my new blogs had a solution, and there were even extremely detailed Flickr instructions on how to do it. Nonetheless, I totally sewed the first tube too small and had to start over. Good thing I have 9 million yards of Mali Family Planning cloth to work with.

From Design

But wait there's more!

From Design

Double tube action!

Now Kima and I are toasty. And yes actually I did get a lot of work done today!

Caramelized or Carbonized? And how to slice a pizza

I wasn't sure what to make for dinner last night - I had a little bit of broccoli that was slowly turning brown, some leftover mozzarella floating in water, and a lot of tomato sauce. Among other things. Some sort of pasta bake? Well, we're all out of non-spaghetti pasta. Maybe pizza?

The answer to Maybe pizza? is always yes.

I whipped up some dough and started caramelizing onions (part of random resolution #41, making something you've never made twice a week). Everything was looking good until I got off the phone with my parents. People! Do not call your parents, put your dog in a down stay, and then forget to check on your onions because you're too busy checking if your dog is still obeying you!

I left them about 2 minutes too long and there was much blackness, but not so much that I wasn't going to use them on my pizza. My other thought was, if I make myself eat these, I won't ever forget about onions again.

Of course if you have caramelized onions you do not need tomato sauce on your pizza, so there is still a large container of it in the fridge. The pizza, however, was delicious, with the onions and the steamed broccoli and a few tiny pieces of Philly's Best Pepperoni and some (ok, a little too much) red pepper flakes. And the mozz.

Back in my youth we used to get pizza from Timpone's, who were famous for their "campustown" pizza, thin crust, sliced in half and then into strips. This was an ingenious way to make pieces of pizza that are always 'mouth-width', and prevent a lot of the messiness of biting into a huge broccoli floret or mushroom or what have you, and it sliding off along with all of the cheese remaining on the slice. As I am partial to thin crust pizza myself, I think I'll start cutting up my pies like this all the time. I think they even taste better!

Doog

Kima is curled up in the recliner chair next to our dining room table, where I have spent much of the weekend watching Daily Shows and relearning how to use Mom's sewing machine (to make draft snakes and eventually potholders!). We went for a long hike today up at Jerusalem Mills where she was very well behaved, and now she is snoring softly, her face turned into the back corner of the comfy chair, like a little spotted pretzel.

Ding Dong

So this guy moved in next door to us last week - now we have neighbors on both sides. Cool! I haven't met him yet, but now twice, our doorbell has rung, and I answer the door, and NO ONE IS THERE.

But someone is standing at my new neighbor's door, presumably just having rung his doorbell. Are the wires crossed? Am I hearing things through the wall (no, it is super loud, in my house!) Is it possible that this is the fault of resonant frequency or some other physics-related phenomenon?

A mystery!

WaPo article on White House butler

You must read. As with many good things, it came via Atrios. And take his advice to read all the way through.

OCD

over possible holiday card options. Will break out by eating arugula salad leftover from Election Night party and working on $30 million budget.

What to do post-election to satisfy blog cravings

Thanks, Apartment Therapy and other design-y blogs, for filling the gap left by 538. Instead of lovely maps and graphs I can now look at:

Night Owl Paper Goods
Felt Coasters on Etsy

Totally addicted

to everything bagels and plain cream cheese. Guess it must be fall!

Making it happen

I was feeling pretty good after knocking on doors in South Philly (Point Breeze - looks like The Wire) on Sunday. J and I did two sections, about 35 houses, trying to find the newly registered voters the office had on their lists, and making sure they knew where they were going and what to do if they ran into any problems. We got two volunteers but only made contact with about 5 of the folks on our lists - lots of them had moved. Across the street from "Monique's" house, her neighbor was sitting on the stoop, and asked for a button.

"You tryin' to get 1542?"
"No, 1544 - Monique? Is she around?"
Her daughter came to the door. "Monique? She's not there anymore....and anyway, she's not 18!"
When I said that our list said she had registered, the daughter gave me this great look, raising her eyebrows a little bit and shaking her head. "Huh uh. She just turned 17."

The daughter then signed up to volunteer, and her mom looked at our materials to see how to vote straight ticket Democratic. The neighborhood was grim - lots of vacants, lots of pitbulls, but it was Sunday, just after church got out, and so there were also lots of folks dressed up, hats and suits, people checking us out and then smiling, or just sitting on their porch and nodding as we walked by with our materials and clipboard. "I'm ready to go," one man said. A young guy on his cellphone was strolling down the street, and told his friend to hang on.

"You guys know if Obama's still ahead?" He was, we said. "But make sure you go vote anyway! You registered?"
He affirmed. He knew where to go, he was all set. We continued on to our next zone and he picked back up with his friend.

We had a newly registered woman at one house, and when I rang the doorbell a little girl answered. I was surprised that she was white, about 7 years old. She only opened it a crack and I started my intro, and then her dad started yelling. "We know who we're voting for! Close the door! Close the door! Close the door!"

I wasn't sure how to mark them down - respect their desire to not be bothered, and check the "non-supporter" box so they don't get another visit? Or just fill it out as not having talked to the woman who had registered?

That night, I called home, and my Mom said she had just gotten down making 125 phone calls to Ohio, and she'd been doing the same all week. I'm so proud of my mom.

I done voted

Edith and I woke up early, like it was Christmas. And it feels like Christmas! Last night I just wanted to go to sleep so I could wake up and it would finally be election day. We trucked over at 7:01 to our polling place we used in the primary, meeting lots of excited folks carrying coffee mugs along the way. The line going into the cafeteria, for 7-12 was extra long (50 people? 75?), but our place was in the art classroom and the line was much shorter. The election judge was handing out oatmeal cookies to the longer line, especially the older folks. A guy in a scooterchair beepbeepbeeped his way to the front of the line. Two cops were present, hanging out. People's smiles were huge. After about 15 minutes we got up to the front.

And they didn't have our names.

"But we voted here in the primary," we said.

"Nope, nope - oh there you are. You're supposed to be voting at Brent-xxx School."

And they printed out a little slip of paper with the address and our names on it.

Oops! I guess we had finally changed our address only when we last voted, and sure enough, when we went back home, our MD sample ballots had the Brent-xxx School location on them.

Edith went off to school, to vote later this afternoon, and I puttered around, heading over around 8:30. Took about 10 minutes, moving quickly, but with fewer people, the festive atmosphere was also reduced. I'm always so convinced I have somehow hit the wrong button, so I double and triple checked everything.

Our local NPR, WYPR is reporting no problems so far in MD, just some long lines. On my drive into work (it is so nice out, I thought to bike, but the Surly's in the shop getting its cable disconnectors installed...and also I am lazy and scared of the increased number of car crashes on Election Day) one of the election judges was getting interviewed outside our polling place.

Party at my place tonight....Baked Alaska, arugula salad, pizzas, and lots of HOPE that we're finally gonna elect this guy. What a long road.

The Vet Who Did Not Vet

Cute. Cutting.

Yes We Carve!

Deep Thought

Is it possible that the man who processes my travel expense reports, whom I have never seen, is the nicest man on earth?

Dropbox

www.getdropbox.com.

Hopefully this will prevent me from almost losing lots of files when I think they are on my laptop, but really they are not, and I delete the only copies from my USB drivekey thingie, only to search and search and search through my laptop at home and then through my emails and then through my sent emails. The IT people at work claim we will all have something like this very very soon, and all the stuff on our shared drive, which is only available in the Baltimore office and therefore pretty useless to our field office staff, will be up in the cloud. I kind of love the cloud. And this Dropbox, it syncs things, so when I'm working on my minutes from the net use meeting 3 weeks ago, I don't have to save the latest version onto my USB thing and then take it to work and copy over the last version on the work computer. Everything updates, you can share things, you can get a link to a document to send to someone who doesn't have a Dropbox account, and it has this cute little icon that has a rotating arrow when it is updating your stuffs.

Kind of yucky day today at work for no good reason, took off to search for the lost document in the afternoon, and now, of course, feeling a bit better because I found the doc, made changes, and sent it to a nice man for review before our nice phone call tomorrow. Accomplishing actual things always clears the funk. Now off to confit some leeks for a near-future goat cheese tart thing, and figure out dinner.

Mulled Cider

I'm in unfocused mode, milling around the internets, and this recipe reminded me of the delicious cider cocktail with aromatic gins that I had last Sunday. Did I mention that it was delicious? Because it was. And the aromatic gins are HOMEMADE, people. Ginger and orange and clove and YUM CITY.

This one caught my eye because of the black pepper (and Alec should totally make a black pepper gin!) But where will I find star anise and allspice berries?

Oh wait, that's a rhetorical question. And J, if you're reading, do not try to get them before the bus tomorrow. Seriously.

1 gallon apple cider
10 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns, lightly crushed
2 strips orange peel, about 2 inches long
6 dried allspice berries
4 heads star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, thinly sliced
Orange twists, for garnish

Combine apple cider with all other ingredients except orange twists in a large pot and stir well.

Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep for 10 minutes before serving.
Serve cider in a heatproof mug, garnished with an orange twist.

A fine fine chili

I made this chili for a birthday potluck a few weeks back, it was a big hit, and made lots of leftovers that I froze during my trip. So nice to come back bedraggled and have comfort food all ready to go. Also I replaced the water with stout so you know its good. Bon Appetit, Nov 2002

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound ground pork
1 pound ground beef
1 pound chuck steak, fat trimmed, cut into 1-inch cubes
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups water - why use water when you can use Chocolate Stout!
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 6-ounce cans tomato paste
2 teaspoons sugar
3 cups diced fresh tomatoes
3 cups diced onions
3 cups diced red bell peppers

3 cups canned black beans, drained, rinsed (from three 15-ounce cans)
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 3/4 cups (about) beef broth (or water)
Grated cheddar cheese

Heat olive oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add ground pork and ground beef and sauté until brown, about 3 minutes. Add cubed beef and garlic and sauté 5 minutes. Add stout; bring to boil. Add cumin, chili powder, oregano, salt, and cayenne pepper. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes. Add tomato paste and sugar and simmer 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, onions, and peppers and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

Add black beans and cilantro to chili. Add beef broth 3/4 cup at a time, until thinned to desired consistency. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Refrigerate uncovered until cold, then cover and keep refrigerated.) Bring chili to simmer. Ladle hot chili into bowls; top with grated cheddar cheese and serve.

Luuuurve

"Weaponized spinach"

Also I have the greatest parents and the greatest funky kitchen supply store in Urbana IL.

That is all.

Yes We Carve

www.yeswecarve.com

Phew

Just unsubscribed from Andrew Sullivan's blog and now I feel I can finally keep up with my google reader. And that my news/election feeds aren't full of blither anymore.

Suffering from Exhaustion

Just like the celebrities!

So last week I flew to Geneva for this meeting I had organized on closing the gap between mosquito net ownership and use. 15-30% of households that own a net aren't sleeping under it, so we wanted to look at why, and what we could do to change it. The meeting went ok and then I flew to Wisconsin for Claire's wedding.

Claire's wedding was great and so nice to see Kira and Jay and Aaron and to catch up with Bridget and Ben and Kevin and Sarah. Everyone got really tired about 8pm though and since Kira and I had early flights, we pooped out after the dancing was over.

Then I spent all day flying, and all night flying to Accra, where I promptly fell ill with my standard sore throat/congestion/fever/fuzziness Airplane Crud, which has now descended a bit and given me a nice productive cough. The first day of meetings was brutal; the second everyone else went on site visits, which I, fortunately, could justify skipping since I'd gone out to several on my last two visits, so I slept all night Tuesday night and more or less all day Wednesday, minus a few hours watching bits of "American Dreamz" (only watchable in a sick/fuzzyhead state) and "Grosse Pointe Blank" (always, always watchable).

Thursday seemed to be a little better but then the afternoon hit and I couldn't take it anymore. Intending to lay down for 20 minutes I quickly passed out for three hours. Managed to get up for our musical interlude/dinner thing, and then went back to bed, taking a Nyquil, which, I will warn you, is effective for over 12 hours. Do NOT expect to be awake anytime before your 12 hours are up.

I have my 4th transatlantic flight in less than two weeks tonight starting at 3am. Obviously not an ideal itinerary, but I felt guilty about making the cost too high because I was using project money to get myself to a wedding in the middle of my work trips, and so I didn't make them change it. However, since I'm routed through JFK I get to spend some time with some good people and also get to bed earlier than if I had stayed on the flight back to Dulles.

What the...

How is it possible that between the time I go for drinks (8pm) and the time I return (midnight) there are 54 blog posts awaiting me, almost all election-related?

Seriously, I cannot keep up. I saw something like Obama up 7 points nationally. That's all I need to know at this point.

I'm Sticking With The Union

I know this election is about a lot of things. But this here, this is one of those things. A white AFL-CIO guy giving a speech about racism that makes me tear up? Seven minutes, but all worth watching.

Mad Dog Climbing Skills!

In our world, we call this "stemming". Love the look on the other doggies faces at the end!

Free Time

I am getting some quality blogging time in because we are THIS CLOSE to turning in our second proposal for the renewal of the project, otherwise known as my job. And by "this close" I mean we've sent it out for final comments.

Now back to "everything else that must be done before Sunday".

No more feeling sorry for you, Gov. Palin!

Thanks Daily Dish.
Rebecca Traister doesn't feel bad for Palin:

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.

When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.

(Hat tip: John Cole)

Bootcamp

Eleanor and Ofer went on vacay to places that are really, really far away from here, and so for those three weeks their Dalmatian/Dane mix, Rigley, went to Boot Camp for Dogs. El and I discussed her trepidation about this when I was in Chicago on my vacay, but it seems that all went quite well, he had a blast and wore himself plum out, and now doesn't pull on the leash at all. The caveat is that they've trained him with the pinch collar, which he doesn't like (but respects, now), and is this a good method, especially since it causes El no small anguish when stronger corrections result in some yelping.

But still, he walks so nice on a leash now, she says!

Let us now shift the scene to Baltimore last night on Guilford Ave. Edith invited over her med school classmates and the family of the girl a group of them tutor, and this family has in addition to the middle school girl, girl twins who are about 6 or 7. Probably 7. This was, oddly, the second set of twins I had met that day, the first ones being the kids of a woman I work with on malaria database stuff. But whatever, back to my story.

Kima, not surprisingly, sniffs out the girls' nervousness and begins to bark menacingly. In a "what the hell are these creatures, clearly they mean me great harm" kind of way. This scares the girls even more but amazingly, their mother is nonplussed. She hasn't had her walk yet so I take her out, agonize again over how these problems are incompatible with my not too distant future, in which children (possibly my own, and definitely those of my friends) will be in my house. While I'm going over this she's pulling ahead as always, and so I take out my phone and dial the number of a trainer some friends of ours have worked with.

Shane will be coming over on Thursday, just before the VP debate (gah! but it must be done), to work with us. His website outlines his strategies which are aligned fairly closely with the Cesar model - the owner has to be the pack leader, need to get control, etc. He uses e-collars for training, when appropriate. I expect he'll probably advise me to get a prong collar for walks, although I'm not sure he actually said that, because during half the conversation I was walking Kima and getting cornered ON ALL SIDES by other dogs, like in Indiana Jones when the spiky doors are closing in on him.

So, kids, what happens when worrisome things happen to me and I have to make decisions? That's right, anxiety dreams! Not only did I dream I had to remember my passport number in order to get out of Switzerland to Claire's wedding (related to my meeting next week), I dreamt I was walking Kima with a prong collar and she wasn't responding no matter how hard I yanked, in a terrible Milgramesque sort of situation.

When I woke up I realized everything was ok, however. Kima has a ton of potential as already demonstrated by her being able now to sit consistently at intersections and wait till I give the ok. I'm sure she will impress the hell out of Mr. Shane, both for that and for her crazy dog fears. She's a piece of work!

Going Up

Some people are not daunted by the housing market, like the folks who live across the street from us.

Butternut Squash and Sausage

Are like rice and beans. They love each other. Also, this dish reminds me of midwestern casserole/hotdish and makes me nostalgic.

Butternut Squash and Sausage Bake
- serves six to eight-

Ingredients
1/4 pound Italian sausage
1/4 cup olive oil, divided
3 onions, quartered and sliced
5 thyme sprigs
2 teaspoons dried sage
salt and pepper
1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 1/2 cubes, (about 6 cups) seeds and scrapings reserved
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup shredded smoked mozzarella
3/4 cup chicken stock
3 slices white sandwich bread, cut into cubes
2 tablespoons melted butter, optional, plus a little extra to prepare baking dish

Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 9-by-12 inch baking dish.

2. Remove sausage from its casing and cook in a large skillet over medium heat until just browning, breaking up sausage with a wooden spoon as it cooks. Remove cooked sausage and refrigerate until ready to use.

3. Add enough olive oil to the rendered fat in the skillet to equal two tablespoons, and then add the onions, thyme and sage. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, scraping the bottom of the skillet to loosen brown bits. When onions are thoroughly soft, remove and set aside.

4. While the onions cook, simmer the squash seeds and scrapings in the chicken stock for 10 minutes, strain and keep the stock warm over low heat.

5. Add the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet. Toss the squash with the flour and arrange in a single layer in the skillet. (If the skillet isn’t big enough, you’ll need to do this in two batches.) Let the squash brown, undisturbed, for 4 minutes then stir the squash as it cooks for the next 4 minutes. Season liberally with salt and pepper and set aside.

6. To assemble the casserole, layer the onions in the buttered baking dish. Dot the onions with the sausage bits evenly, and then top with the squash. Sprinkle the smoked mozzarella over the top, and the pour the stock into the baking dish. Press the top of the casserole with a spatula to evenly distribute the liquid. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes.

7. While the casserole bakes, pulse the bread crumbs with the melted butter (if using) in a food processor until you have coarse bread crumbs.

8. After 30 minutes, pull the baking dish out of the oven, remove the foil, top casserole evenly with breadcrumbs and bake uncovered an additional 20 to 30 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed and the top is nicely browned.

Black Bean Tomato Quinoa

this looks pretty good. The only drawback is that it's touted as 'diet food'. Whatevs! Thanks Serious Eats.

Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa
- serves 4 -

Ingredients
2 teaspoons grated lime zest
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup quinoa
1 (14- to 15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 medium tomatoes, diced
4 scallions, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Procedure
1. Whisk together lime zest and juice, butter, oil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a large bowl.

2. Wash quinoa in 3 changes of cold water in a bowl, draining in a sieve each time.

3. Cook quinoa in a medium pot of boiling salted water (1 tablespoon salt for 2 quarts water), uncovered, until almost tender, about 10 minutes. Drain in sieve, then set sieve in same pot with 1 inch of simmering water (water should not touch bottom of sieve). Cover quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover sieve with a lid (don't worry if lid doesn't fit tightly) and steam over medium heat until tender, fluffy, and dry, about 10 minutes. Remove pot from heat and remove lid. Let stand, still covered with towel, 5 minutes.

4. Add quinoa to dressing and toss until dressing is absorbed, then stir in remaining ingredients and salt and pepper to taste.

Too Lazy. Or Something.

I made the carrots for dinner tonight and then munched on crackers and a nice Trader Joe's cheddar that Edith seems to have forgotten about. I meant to go to the grocery store TWICE this week and so far, haven't left the house once I've gotten home except to walk Ms. Kima. This means I am making funny little dinners (ok, tonight was funny - last night's risotto with pesto and sauteed um fried-in-olive-oil chicken was DELICIOUS) to use up things that are sitting around.

Work is nutso this week with proposal and partners dropping in and out and in and out and me being all responsible for the freaking 14 million dollar budget (responsible as in, I have to MAKE THIS SHIT UP). Not that it's not all going to change 100% next week, and then after we present the whole idea to the donor, who is involved with some computer software you may use every day, and who want to put different partners together so that they can Control The World.

Also I've been enjoying ThursdayNightSmackdown WAAAAAY too much and now am starting to blog like her. So sorry Moms about the swearing.

Also, the Couric interview with Palin is making me sick to my stomach. And also gleeful. Oh, schadenfreude...

Eggs and Goat Cheese? Yes Please

Slow-Cooked Scrambled Eggs with Goat Cheese
- serves 6 -

Ingredients
16 extra-large eggs taken out of the fridge at least a half-hour before using
1 1/4 cups milk or half-and-half
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, divided
6 ounces fresh goat cheese (I like Coach), crumbled
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives

Procedure
1. Whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk, salt, and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a large saute or omelet pan. Add the eggs and cook them over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the desired doneness.

2. Take the pan off the heat and add the goat cheese, chives, and the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Stir and allow the eggs to sit for 30 seconds, until the cheese begins to melt. Serve hot.

Carrots

I think I'll make this tonight. Maybe Whole Foods has saffron I can get on my way home from work. Another Tanis recipe:

Saffron Carrots
Serves 4

1 tablespoon butter
Pinch of saffron, crumbled
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 ½ pounds carrots, peeled and sliced into thin coins
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large skillet fitted with a lid, melt the butter over medium heat. When hot, add the saffron, garlic, lemon zest and carrots. Season with salt and pepper. Toss the carrots in the butter to coat. Add ½ cup of water, bring to a boil and simmer, covered, until the carrots are tender, about 5 minutes.

OMG my phone knows where I am

This really shouldn't be that surprising!

I just downloaded a bunch of directions for Sean and Marin's wedding this weekend, and on the printout there's a "get googlemaps on your phone" URL. So I go and download the thing for my blackberry and as it's setting up it's telling me "this is your location". And there's a little map of the Inner Harbor. Spoooooooooky. And like duh, all at the same time.

Now I'm really psyched that I didn't spend 300 bucks on a GPS for my car!

I can get directions AND traffic, although it says, rightly (and in very small print), that I shouldn't use it while driving.

Awesome.

Rennet En Route!

I've been asking people all over town (even in DC!) where to buy rennet locally, and no one knows. So I've used the magical internets to provision me with enough cheesemaking supply to make 40 pounds of mozzarella.

More importantly, at the farmer's market this morning I identified a local dairy whose gallons of whole milk are a) not ultrapasteurized and b) only $3.50!

Basement, toute seule!

I spent a long time, about half an hour (eons in dog time) in the basement, where Kima has traditionally been too afraid to go by herself (stairs appear too steep, and also don't have sides). When I was done and almost up the stairs she looked like she really, really, wanted to hang out with me, so I retreated down and called her - and she came on down!

Now she's a total pro, and I have to worry about someone accidentally shutting her into the basement. This is unlikely - she always prefers to be around us - but still. Worst Case Scenario.

The basement project, you ask? Well, I broke down all of our empty cardboard boxes, dramatically improving our junk-to-space ratio down there, and in the process, found my headlamp I had given up for lost.

Accidental Arrabiatta

From Food

So that pepper/tomato sauce I made last night was pretty good - especially because the peppers were a lot more spicy than anticipated! It went great with this locally made pasta I got near where I park my car, and there was enough leftover for Edith and Khaliah to enjoy as well, plus lunch today.

Tonight, I reattempt granola, with Nick's excellent suggestion of baking it more gently.

You Can Confit All Kinds of Shit

Um, I kind of just fell in love with this food blog, and then fell EXTRA in love because she's a girl!

thursdaynightsmackdown.com/

Or perhaps this is a better use of the pepper

From Bitten:

Here we have the same old August/September ingredients, but, lordy, what a difference 25 seconds in the food processor can make.

Over gentle heat, cook a minced clove of garlic in olive oil until soft; if it burns throw it out and start again. You could put in half a small chile, like a serrano, too, and you should certainly sprinkle it with salt. As it cooks, cut a big, sweet, ripe red pepper (or two smaller ones) into strips and chop up a big, sweet, ripe, red tomato. Don’t peel either.

Pluck three or four sage leaves from the bunch your friend Frances gave you from her garden. Add the pepper to the cooked garlic, re-salt, raise the heat to medium, and cook for a couple of minutes until it starts to smell divine. Add the tomato and the sage leaves and simmer for, I don’t know, 10 minutes — it will depend on how wet everything is. You don’t need it cooked down too much, but the peppers ought to be tender.

Puree the whole thing in a food processor or a blender; I got a good cup and a half of red-pink sauce that tasted so rich I’d have sworn it had meat stock in it.
Boil some spaghetti, reheat the sauce and serve; this amount of sauce is enough for three main-course servings of pasta. I tried a forkful with grated parmesan, but that was a waste of a cow’s energy. It needed nothing, not even pepper, although I did drizzle some extra olive oil on my portion. Jackie said it was “refined,” not a daily word in our table-talk vocabulary, but let’s just say that if you were served it in a fancy restaurant and they charged you $22 for it you wouldn’t feel cheated.
Refined or not, I take back what I said about that raw tomato thing being the best dish in the world: this is.

Roasted Pepper Salad

I have two red peppers waiting to be dinner - fortunately this recipe just showed up in my inbox:

ROASTED PEPPER SALAD
- makes enough for a small crowd -

Adapted from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis.
Ingredients

12 large sweet peppers, preferably a mix of yellow, orange, and red
Salt and pepper
2 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed
Red wine vinegar
Olive oil
1/2 cup Niçoise olives, rinsed
Basil leaves
Procedure

1. Roast the peppers over an open flame, either a wood fire or on the stovetop, or under the broiler. Try to get the peppers as close to the flame as possible so their skins will blacken and blister quickly. Turn the peppers frequently with a pair of tongs so they roast evenly.

2. Spread the peppers on a baking sheet so they can cool to room temperature. Some cooks will tell you to cover the just-roasted peppers, or put them in a bag, but I believe too much steaming overcooks the flesh.

3. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, split them top to bottom with a large knife. Scrape the seeds from the insides, then turn each pepper half over and scrape away the charred skin. When all the peppers are scraped, slice them into 1-inch-wide strips and put them in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper and toss well. Add the garlic, capers, and a teaspoon or two of red wine vinegar.

4. Drizzle lightly with olive oil. Toss again. Don't refrigerate the peppers—it'll kill their delicate flavor. Leave the salad at room temperature until ready to serve, up to several hours.

5. To serve, taste and adjust the seasoning, then mound the salad on a platter. Garnish with the olives. Drizzle with a little more oil. Decorate the salad with basil leave.

Who doesn't love Bean Soup, because Ham Hocks are awesome

This cookbook sounds like yum city so I'm glad Serious Eats is posting recipes from it all week.

Zuppa di Fagioli with Rosemary Oil
- makes 8 to 10 servings -
Adapted from A Platter of Figs by David Tanis.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 large onions, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 bay leaves
4 cups (2 pounds) dried white beans, preferably new-crop, picked over and rinsed
2 pounds smoked ham hocks
12 cups water
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, ground fine in a mortar or spice mill
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon Rosemary Oil (recipe follows)

Procedure
1. Warm the 3 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium heat. Add the diced onions and cook gently until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and bay leaves and cook for a minute more.

2. Add the white beans and smoked ham hocks. Cover with the water and bring to a boil. Skim off any surface foam and turn the heat to low. Simmer gently for an hour, stirring occasionally.

3. Add the ground fennel, red pepper flakes, and a good spoonful of salt. Continue cooking for 1 hour more, or until the beans are quite tender and the smoked pork has begun to fall apart.

4. Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper. Cool to room temperature, the refrigerate, uncovered, overnight.

5. To serve, reheat the soup over a medium flame, stirring frequently. Thin with water if it has thickened too much overnight. Check the seasoning and adjust.

6. Drizzle a teaspoon of Rosemary Oil on top of each bowl of soup.


Rosemary Oil

To make the Rosemary Oil, warm 1/2 cup of olive oil in a small saucepan. Chop about a tablespoon of fresh rosemary and stir it into the oil. Turn off the heat.

Bikey bikey

The new Surly got a great test ride this weekend on streets, bike paths, gravel and mountain bike/horse trails. It may be time to try a different saddle but the bike is fast, the tires are strong, and it held up great over a variety of terrain. Just what I wanted! The NCR Trail, C&O Canal towpath, all roads are open to me.

Exploring the difference between hammered, fluted, and fluted-hammered fenders just now, I found Velo-Orange, a guy in Annapolis who is the second incarnation of Grant Petersen.

I'll post pics of the Surly once I remove the ugly decals with the hair dryer tonight.

Also, I had a great weekend.

Poor Googling Skills

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/213806.php

Talking Points Memo has an explanation for what the hell that mansion was last night behind McCain. Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA.

Not Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which might have been, um, a little more appropriate?

Fleur

Photographs of Flowers by Edvard Koinberg, a tribute to Carl Linnaeus.

Wreaking Havoc

That's me. Always on the path of destruction.

Oopsie

You know, when you forget to bring an important undergarment with you while biking to work, it's nice to know that Filene's Basement is right across the street to make sure you can be decent for the rest of the day.

Guiliani

The tone of his speech is "ridicule".

Food Weekend

I had a very nice weekend.

Highly highly highly recommend Peter's Inn in Fell's Point. Best food in Baltimore that I haven't eaten at Edith's house. Casual bluegrassy cozy atmosphere. Watermelon in the water and grrrrreat wines. We got there at 7:25 on Friday just before the rush. Scallops with black lentils that tasted like 3 whole ham hocks had been cooked in; lamb chops too delectable to not pick up and gnaw the bones; pot de creme with coffee ice; to-die-for mosaic beet salad with yellow beets cut into stars and itty bitty red ones cut into circles. Not to mention the toasted goat cheese.

Saturday was pizza with the Hazan tomato sauce, mozz from somewhere in Belvedere Square (where we could not find rennet), and sauteed mushrooms.

Sunday, bbq at the Spindler-Ranta-Richardson's, bringing ginger-peach crumble from the Figs Table cookbook, which goes something like this:

Topping:
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup pecans or walnuts
1/2 cup sugar (I used brown)
1 tsp ground ginger (used fresh)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces, cut in after you've mixed all the other ingredients.

Inside:
5-6 large peaches, cut into large dice
2 tbl fresh ginger
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbl sugar
juice of one lemon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

combine the inside stuff in a buttered 8x8 pan, put the topping over it and smooth it out. Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes. My topping didn't turn out as nice and brown as I expected but perhaps I didn't cook long enough. Oh well. It was soooooper tasty.

At the BBQ we also encountered Megan's Grilled Peaches, which are nice fresh peaces, cut in half and pitted, placed skin side down on the grill. Mix up some rum, brown sugar, nutmeg, and baste it on. Grill till yummy.

There was also Sundar's carrot halva and some yummy bratwurst made of chicken.

Monday we grilled again with the veggies obtained from the Farmer's Market, a nice striped eggplant and some zucchini, and a delicious flank steak! Edith made a wonderful arugula salad and this totally amazing Trader Joe's vanilla cake.

Gourmet's Casual Entertaining | September 2001
Random House

3 lb flank steaks
1/3 cup white-wine vinegar
3/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Lightly pierce steaks all over with a sharp fork or knife. Whisk together remaining ingredients and transfer to a large resealable heavy-duty plastic bag. Add steaks and seal, pressing out excess air. Marinate steaks at least 6 hours or up to 1 day.
Prepare grill for cooking.

Grill steaks on an oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals, turning once, about 12 minutes for medium-rare. Transfer to a cutting board and let stand 5 minutes. Thinly slice steaks diagonally across the grain.

Cooks' Notes:
• Since flank steak is thicker on one end, the thin end will be cooked medium.

Please note a long carving knife is now on my christmas list. :)

Stained Glass

A better picture of the WhollyTerra glass piece I got at Christmas last year (thanks Grandma!).

Granola

Combining a few different recipes, but here's what I'm trying:

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole pecans
1/2 cup sliced almonds
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 dashes salt
1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut
3-4 tbl? wheatgerm
mix. whisk together 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 cup honey, pour over dry stuff, mix, spread on baking sheet and bake at 375 for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

makes 10 cups?

um, try not to burn it while listening to the DNC.

Red Beans and Rice, Here I Come

I've gotten the OK to sign up for the weekend 'course' on malaria eradication at the Tropical Medicine & Hygiene meeting in New Orleans in December. So now I'm there for almost a full week, starting Friday night the 5th!

On the list:
Spotted Cat(above)
Tipitina's
Dick & Jenny's
Cochon
Cochon
Donna's
Cochon
as many po'boys as I can eat.

More delicious and musical pics here from the New York Times.

Kerry Speech

I liked Biden's speech last night, but thought the way he attacked McCain was kind of confusing and could have been a lot more pointed (honestly, the highlight for me was his adorable mother). The "McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right" just sounded playground-y to me. Unfortunately for most of the viewers, Kerry's speech was cut away from for punditry, but it is Much Better at outlining the vast differences in Candidate McCain vs Senator McCain (which is also a much more elegant rhetorical device).

Kerry also weighs in on patriotism in language that I think everyone should hear. Here's the speech (only 13 minutes).

Banksy in New Orleans

Julia, merci mille fois-o for the heads up on the Banksy in New Orleans, and the Gray Ghost grafitti war.

Love!

Shorpy, the 100 year old photo blog:

Bummer

More people are leaving work for the grass on the other side.

Very soon, I'll be the longest-serving program officer in our whole organization. Institutional memory? It's me and one part time person, and of course our admin support staff, who have also been finding better opportunities. How is this level of human resource planning ineptitude possible? How have we not replaced the five people who've left in the past year? How do we expect to staff and backstop the 20 projects we're currently bidding on?

WTF?? It's not like we don't have project budgets to cover staff. These aren't cuts dictated by the university because of poor/contentious accounting of discretionary funds, or projects that haven't been renewed.

Seriously, it will be the malaria team only pretty soon here. That ain't right.

You Lucky Dogs, You

It is as delicious as it looks. I'm not sure if the secret ingredient is the farmer's market stuff or the fancy cyclist olive oil, though.

Pesto Recipe

2 cups basil leaves
2 tbl pine nuts
1 tsp salt
1/2 c olive oil
2 cloves (crushed) garlic

Blend in cuisinart. Freeze. Repeat.

Hazan Tomato Sauce I

This, I make tonight:

Marcella Hazan Tomato Sauce I
(modified for anti-celery)
for 6 servings
2 lbs fresh ripe plum tomatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

1. Wash tomatoes in cold water. Cut them in half, lengthwise. Cook in covered saucepan at a steady simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer gently for
1.5 hours or more (until each tomato is cooked).
2. Puree the tomatoes through a food mill into a bowl. Discard the seeds and skin.
3. Rinse and dry the saucepan. Put in the olive oil, then add the chopped onion, and lightly sautee over medium heat until just translucent, not browned. Add the carrot and saute for another minute. Add the pureed tomatoes, the salt and sugar, and cook at gentle simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes (until thickened to taste). Stir from time to time when cooking.

Sesame Street Raps

This one's for Nick and J:



Thanks to Very Short List for the tip!

Art Bikes

These in particular were awesome, but we didn't have a good camera.

Why hello

Are we there yet?

Huzzah, Picasa

A very clever person was using Picasa this weekend, and I noticed that it seemed to be able to solve the problems I've been having with iPhoto, namely, it is a pain in the butt to upload photos from iPhoto to blogger.

Unfortunately Picasa is meant mainly for PCs, but there's a plug in that works fine with iPhoto. So now uploading pictures will be, like, so easy dude.

Fer example:
Fun things in Ghana! A lovely bed of bagged water is the best way to travel when in the back of a pickup truck.


And, every President should have his own line of air fresheners:

$5000 in FCFA

This was less impressive than I was hoping, size-wise. If you had $5000 in twenties it would look the same.

Bla Bla lights

Finally getting around the posting the pics from the last trip to Ghana/Mali. This was the inspiration for the porch lights - they also had a really nice fixture made of empty wine bottles, mostly clear, all busting out from a central point like a glass explosion. But that picture didn't turn out.

Eating Well

Blackberry-peach tart with cornmeal crust (mostly butter - requires lots of chilling and freezing)


A plum that tastes like red.


Roast chicken with braised red cabbage and prunes from Fergus Henderson of St John. (picture taken prior to roasting!)


Mia Ribollita Preferita from Jamie Oliver's Italy cookbook.

Mozzarella

So after reading the Kingsolver book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I wanted to make my own mozzarella. We found citric acid and low-temperature pasturized milk easily at the health food store and then went to my high school physics teacher's world foods store to find the rennet.

The instructions say to heat and then add the rennet, stir for just a minute, and then let it curdle. I wasn't convinced that the curd had actually set (below).


But then I cut it with a knife and lordamercy it had worked!



I was then too occupied with straining the whey off and kneading the mozzarella to take pictures, but here's how it ends up. I recommend NOT forgetting the crucial step of adding salt.



Kingsolver claims this takes 30 minutes but it was more like an hour.

Dad's new obsession

We went to get my Dad a Kryptonite lock at the bike store, where they had not only a complete Surly Cross Check on display, but a Pedersen bicycle (not for sale).

Now Dad is obsessed and really wants to get one with a Shimano internal rear hub. I think they're fugly. Judge for yourself at Pedersen Bicycles.

Kima doesn't seem to realize

that the squirrels will not come back down once she has chased them up the tree.

Happy Dog

Our backyard in Illinois is all fenced in, which is great for Kima. Behind us there is a big Bernese Mountain Sheepdog that she got in a barking match last night with. This evening we were all outside, feeding the fish (which Kima halfheartedly tries to catch), and Theo emerged. After a quick session of barks she actually calmed down a lot, I guess deciding that he posed no threat!

This is sort of amazing to me, and at the same time, makes total sense.

Martha's Vineyard

So I got to go up to the Vineyard with Ede's family this year, and of course it was completely awesome. Her parents and brothers and their girlfriends are hilarious and generous and it was so nice to be in a big family environment.

Not to mention the house and beach and island are bee-yootiful! And that we ate ridiculously fresh food (um, yesterday's harpooned swordfish anyone? Anyone?) and gorged ourselves on Chilmark chocolates. Fried clams, blueberry pie, sole with tomatillo salsa (Jed just whipped that up the first night), local steaks, super delish heirloom tomatoes, pizza bianco, and wine, wine, dark n' stormies, wine and mojitos.

All the houses of course are done in this cedar shingle style which gets gray with age and looks so New England to me. There were lots of options for getting to the beach, including kayaking across the pond, walking, biking, and of course driving 5 minutes. In the pond there was a swan family, a cormorant family, and a school of jumping fish that got serious air - one particularly vigorous little minnow skipped, kid you not, 12 times across the top of the water.


Zeke and Otis chased some quail and an osprey and some herons made recurring appearances in the field behind the house.

Just under 12 hours

I was a little worried about being sleepy on the drive from Baltimore to Urbana, but as long as I didn't wear sunglasses I seemed to be ok. Kima, however, zonked out the entire way.

Farmer's market this morning was like something out of the Kingsolver book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, that I am reading at the moment. Local producers known to my parents, chatting about what's new and fresh and what's the last of the season (blueberries).

Kima's digging the backyard, not literally, and the fish have now learned to stay Out Of Her Reach. The squirrels, of course, already know this.

The coolest thing I saw on the drive, which was on I-70, was a 1930's car (shaped like the car in this picture) which after extensive googling turns out to be more like 1948 or 1950 Chevy Fleetline or similar. It was creamsicle orange and cream and sooooo gorgeous. It passed me on the highway and I raced to catch up with it to see if I could spot any identifying marks - it had none, but no grill (weird) and two pair of horizontally placed tail lights in back.

already smelling chowdah

Vacation

Getting everything done before vacation is really stressful.

But the deferment of my gratification is down to only 3 hours. Focus!

HIV in Mali

Seriously?

Dudes. I took 2 meeelion cfa to PSI today and they told me they didn't want it. Thus began a long and involved process of negotiating exactly under what circumstances we are allowed to give them money.

It was awful nice to see my peeps there though. I never bother alerting anyone to my presence in Bamako anymore because our schedule gets so packed so quickly that I often don't have any free time in which to hang with people. Today however was different - a veritable Tour de la Nostalgie, from PSI to marché to the other marché and back again.

With luck I will continue said Tour Friday evening with old college friends, prior to racing off to the airport. Is it bad that I'm really looking forward to the Air France lounge in Paris, and all the free muesli/cappucino/pain au chocolat I can eat?

I Concur

Emphasis mine. This is why I bike. Merci BikeSnob!

One of the things that make cycling so great is that it enables you to avoid crowds and pointless delays. Few things are more satisfying than effortlessly weaving your way through a traffic jam. So while I’ll begrudge nobody his or her Critical Mass, personally I don’t understand the appeal of forming a crowd and creating a pointless delay. And it is a delay, whether you’re in a car or on a bike. I once accidentally got caught in a Critical Mass ride while out riding. I felt like a dolphin ensnared in a tuna net. One second I was sailing along, and the next I was trapped among a bunch of people with rickety bikes rolling on wobbly, rusty brown steel rims on the verge of collapse. It was like watching a Beatles “Yellow Submarine”-esque cartoon LSD sequence where all the bicycles were rolling on pretzels. Sure, they had taken back the streets, but I wish that as a cyclist they might have saved a small sliver for me so I could get to where I was going.

Ah but then it gets better:

People do need to see other people out there on bikes. They need to become accustomed to them so they learn to respect them, and they need to see how practical and effective they can be so they consider riding them themselves. Many cyclists illustrate this day after day, not only by riding their bikes to and from work during rush-hour but also by using them for recreation and even racing on them. A driver who sees you zip past as you ride your bike to work, and then sees you riding your bike to dinner later with a date, and then sees you going for a road ride that weekend doesn't realize he's seen only one rider—as far as he knows he's seen a bunch of riders, and he sees them using their bikes successfully. Effectively, you’re a Critical Mass of one. Meanwhile, a mob of people on crappy bikes blocking traffic one day a month isn’t a “mass” at all. At best it's a party. At worst it’s effectively just one big stupid person.

For all my moosies, who love playing in sprinklers

Especially Hope.

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2008/07/and-now-mooses.html

In Accra

And flying to Bamako via Burkina tomorrow. We have had Yet Another Whirlwind Tour here in the former Gold Coast, bopping around from hilly district to beach district interviewing people who work in malaria, mostly asking them "Hey, how are things going? Have they gotten better? How come?".

Traveling with Leanne, our second-newest team member, is awesome, and of course our team here is fabulous and totally on top of everything. We are leaving the very competant Dr. Nazzah with six more interviews for next week, when I will be in Mali for the same work there. Looking forward to food I know how to find and better internet, as well as a full morning of shopping. Not to mention catching up with my Mali homeboys Brandon "Keita" C. and Ryan "Diabate" S.

Even more so than usual have been very glad to be able to SMS back and forth with the states on this trip, and not only because Leah Q is my by-remote tour guide. She is getting a fun present when I get back!

Haven't taken many pictures except of the Most Amazingly Dedicated Community Health Volunteer Ever, and one of a man sleeping in a pile of water sachets in the bed of a pickup on our way to the beachy-mangrove-malarious district. He looked VERY comfy. It's on my blackberry so maybe I'll post it from Paris.

Off to pizza and beer - and by the way, Julia F, yours is the only blog I ever check when I am short on time. Each post is like a little delicious canape.

Milk is Milk

Parker Paul plays piano and that's it. A little ragtime, some simple statements on the essential being of milk, chocolate, and wine, it's nothing magical but it's likeable. You know, the way that kids in junior high are adorable in their dorkiness and awkwardness and you just want to tell them that later on, everything will be ok, but when you do, they give you that "Gee whiz Ms Cooper, I know, gawd".

Check out "Milk is Milk" at My Old Kentucky Blog, plus an interview.

Pet Peeves

1) Plastic electronics packaging that cannot be opened without sharp implements. Inevitably, this leads to cutting oneself on the hard plastic. People, can we not instead use higher-tech hidden alarm-setter-offers to foil would-be thieves?

[Sidenote: Opening something like this always reminds me of Steve Martin's Shouts and Murmurs piece for the New Yorker, "Designer of Audio CD Packaging Enters Hell" way back in 1999. Which of course someone in physics at Ohio State has reproduced for your reading pleasure.]

2) People who don't use their turn signals.

3) People at the climbing wall who talk too loudly about beta. I know, this one is unkind. But no one needs to hear your advice for getting up that 5.8.

Oh BSNYC, so glad you're back from vacation

--Between AFLD testing and their own tests, how is it even possible that the Garmin/Chipotle riders have any blood left? Could this be an elaborate subterfuge, and could bloodletting in fact have performance-enhancing benefits that the rest of the sporting world has not caught on to yet?


--Should the ASO just allow doping at this point and implement a Maillot Dopage for the highest-placed drugged rider?

Thanks BikeSnobNYC! You're pretty much the only interesting thing about the Tour this year.

Hamster video games always remind me of Mike Rickard

One thing I like about trips

I get to actually read books.

Ratatouille

Made this over the weekend with help from a book which I will credit once I remember the title. [N.B. The New Vegetarian Epicure, by Anna Thomas]

Get:
1 eggplant, medium to large
3 skinny zucchini
3 big yummy summer tomatoes
some basil
6 cloves garlic
2-3 onions, or whatever you have
1 red and 1 green pepper
some parsley
2 cups tomato sauce or diced canned tomatoes
you do have olive oil and black peppercorns, right?

Peel and 1/2" dice (or 1" dice; or cut into 3" slices) the eggplant and zucchini. Toss liberally with salt and set in a colander to drain for at least 45 minutes (I recommend taking a nap during this time!). I think this is probably a key step though I'm not quite sure how it works.

Slice your onions; cut your peppers into strips or squarish bites, however you prefer. Chop your garlic.

Rinse your zucch and your eggplant in cold water then squeeze excess water from them in the colander.

Put 2 tbl olive oil in a large sauté pan or large pot. Heat the oil and add the garlic, stir for a minute, add the onion. When soft, add zucch and eggplant and sauté 6-7 minutes on medium. Add the tomato sauce and the chopped pepper and some basil.

Cook that, covered, at a simmer for about 20 minutes. Then add your parsley, a little red wine vinegar, a bunch of ground black pepper, maybe some salt to taste, more basil and the chopped fresh tomatoes just till they're warmed through a bit.

Enjoy warm or cold, with or without pasta or rice, and imagine you're in Provence.

Nick is right

I think at some point I was saying to Nick that salt was salt. Nick said no, this is incorrect, salt is NOT salt. Try Balinese sea salt, for example. And I still resisted, because I am stubborn and contrary.

Well!

I went to Glarus Chocolatier, across from Whole Foods in Harbor East (dangerously close to work, mind you), to get a little gift box for our new malaria teammate Alison. I saw that they had bars of chocolate with sea salt (which I know and love because of Vosges). So I got one for me, along with her box of truffles (one of which is lavender!).

It is chocolate with Balinese Sea Salt and eeet eeez deeeeleeeshus.

And also awesome because the salt crystallizes into a little four sided pyramid, which is called a "square pyramid". I had to look that up and was really hoping for a more latin name, like "quadratrihedron" or something. Kind of disappointing.

But - take away message - Nick is right. About salt.

Photo credit: Big Tree Farms

Selling good habits

When I used to sit at the cross-roads in Ndende and hawk condoms, I was proud of myself for using advertising for good, not evil. This New York Times article gets at a lot of the things we try to do in our job. I often wish we were more innovative in this type of approach - for example, a lot of people don't use mosquito nets to prevent malaria, they use them to get a good night's sleep free from buzzing and biting insects (of all kinds). Yet a lot of our behavior change messages still sell malaria prevention as a main motivator of net use. While most of us at my organization and at others doing similar work know (thanks to advertising and research) that formative research and understanding your audience is crucial to designing effective campaigns, this part of the process also remains underbudgeted.

Thanks to Jen, whose blog is great, for the link!

Langhorne Slim, with abandon

We went and saw Langhorne Slim at the Ottobar last night. I'd heard a couple of his songs a few times and vaguely liked them, but went mainly because of the rave reviews of his First Thursday show last week. "Don't miss this guy!" was the message. Good thing I listened.

He and his band, the War Eagles, get more sound out of an acoustic guitar, an upright bass, and a drumkit than most other groups can manage with multiple instruments - case in point, this show rivaled Friday's Justin Jones show, which had acoustic and lead guitar, bass, trombone and sax, pedal steel, drums and a backup singer. With a cute, Bob Dylan-esque hat that may or may not have had a feather in the brim, and what my friend called an 'effeminate yet sexy' butt wiggle/strut thrown in for good measure, Langhorne brought down the house, strumming complex chord changes and singing like it was his last night on earth. His voice is a little high, but strong and confident, with just a bit of the Dylan whine.

Wikipedia tells me that he went to music school, which makes a lot of sense, and would also explain why his bassist, Paul Defiglia, and the drummer, Malachi DeLorenzo, are so talented.

The opening bands, Scruggs (think very early Uncle Tupelo) and The Red Vines (Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles) were also excellent. The Red Vines had a guy on keys and trombone who, let's be honest, was most responsible for their awesomeness. Poppy, melodic, with a smattering of psychadelic organ, the only thing missing was a tambourine for the female singer to smack against her thigh. Both are from Baltimore so I'm sure I'll be seeing them again soon.

Feist on Sesame Street

I had this album growing up called Sesame Street Rock, with songs like "Can't Get No Subtraction", "Born to Add", and other modifications of hit songs. One of the last times my friend's kid was visiting the office, he was obsessed with REM's "Shiny Happy Monsters". Glad to see Feist serving it up with monsters, penguins, and chickens just back from the shore too.

It's been a long week

Carcetti, Mayor

Just saw this on the Senator Theatre's website. Huh.

Lasagna OD

Did I mention I made that pork ragu into lasagne?

I reached the OD point today at lunch. It might have been lunch # 6. Please. No mas.

Surely there is someone who would like the half-pan that is still waiting in my freezer.

Edith, Kima says hi

Blueberry-Rhubarb Crisp

It's Rhubarb season!! Don't miss it!

This is the topping from the previous rhubarb recipe over a bunch of rhubarb and a pint of blueberries. This plus vanilla ice cream? Heavens to Betsy, the most delicious thing ever. I think that this will be breakfast tomorrow.

Woo hoo wedding!

So, like, all my favorite people who could be getting married have gotten/are getting married this year.

Alison and Darien
Rupali and Nathan
Nick and Johanna (pictured above)
Sean and Marin (Sept)
Claire and Mr. Claire (Oct)

At least I will get them all out of the way and have plenty of time next year to go camping. I would also like to share this picture, because Nick Laughton got voted "Best Dressed" at Nick and Jojo's wedding. Thanks to Rachel for taking it and to Josh for sharing! I had a long post drafted about how beautiful the whole weekend was and what a good job Nick and Jojo did delegating and how it was so very moving and fun and personalized all at the same time, but you know, if you were there, you knew it, and if you weren't there, you don't know N&J anyway, so you won't care. Let me just tell you though, that it's too bad if you weren't there, because it was AWESOME.

Sean and Marin better bring it, is all I'm saying.

Keeping organized

It's a struggle to keep all the things on my to-do list in one place. Right now they're scribbled onto different pieces of agendas, draft documents, my notebook, and in the 'notes' feature of Outlook (which is only useful because it syncs with my blackberry).

Crystal has been recommending an online service called Backpackit, which looks fancy and useful but is not free. I use my Google homepage all the time, so it occurred to me today (duh!) that there must be to-do list widgets I could add. And then they would be right there, staring me in the face, whenever I click over to check my email or the latest headlines!

I added a bunch, but ended up with My Listy, because it has a little tab feature so I can separate "Work" and "Home" tasks. Also - you can strike out a task and then get some satisfaction from looking at its doneness, rather than just deleting it when it's finished.

Crossing my fingers that this will help keep me on track!

Old Chatham Nancy Camembert

This cheese is really good.

Weekend Tally

Number of important things forgotten (I'm blaming stress): 4, including rent.

Number of people laid off at work over the last 10 days: 12

Number of BBQs over the long weekend: 2

Length of time spent watching Men's Wimbledon Final: 6 hours!

Length of time spent running after 4th set: 45 minutes

Score in 5th set when I returned: 2-2 (rain delay)

Number of bad songs deleted from my iTunes: 497 (yes!)

Total number of hot dogs fed to Kima for training: 5 (each one cut into 25 pieces)

Number of new tricks learned: 0

Percent improvement at loose-leash walking: 50 (petit à petit)