In no particular order (except chronology):
February 14, 1994. In an oatmeal bath, wearing mittens so I couldn't scratch my chicken pox. Crying because my cat, Sweetie, had run away.
February 14, 1996. Making a Valentines piñata for the class Valentines party!!!!!
February 14, 1998. Disguising my handwriting to pen the note, "Do you like Brea? Please place your response underneath the class dictionary."
February 14, 2001. I don't know, wearing a ton of glitter probably.
February 14, 2005. Sharing a mug of weak tea at Spill The Beans with Emily. Also sharing one set of headphones so we could both listen to Ani DiFranco.
February 14, 2007. Authoring this love note: "Roses are red/ Grass is green/ Be my Valentine/ Or I'll stab you in the spleen."
February 14, 2009. Flowers, Natural History Museum, Yaffa Cafe, a one-act play festival, NJ Transit. This was a good one.
February 14, 2010. Day: curled up watching Dexter, eating chicken wings, missing America. Night: Ryanair flight to Berlin!
February 14, 2011. Three-way date with Anna and her boyfriend, James. Later enjoying the dozen roses and chocolate truffles our moms sent us.
Look forward to these brief but compelling holiday-themed posts in Hungry Lion's future: A Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Sampler, A Groundhog Day Sampler, A Palm Sunday Sampler, and A Guy Fawkes Day Sampler!
Monday, February 28, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Why Is That Child Dressed Like A Turkey
If I said Halloween was my favorite holiday when I was little because I got to dress up as something fantastic, I'd be lying. Halloween was my favorite holiday because my mom took Jaci and me Fall Festival-hopping. We'd start at my elementary school where we'd crawl through the cardboard maze, then stop by Publix for some free cookie-decorating en route to Berea First Baptist church, finishing the night off there with a good old-fashioned candy scramble*. Of course, I did love dressing up. One year I even changed costumes in the car between Fall Festivals. But the opportunity to wear a terrific costume was not reserved solely for Halloween. I learned at an early age that costumes were de rigeur on every holiday, and perfectly appropriate on plain old school days as well.
When I was four, I sat on the living room floor with my mom while we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and colored a poster board cut in the shape of a giant turkey's feathers. Right before we left to eat lunch at my grandparents' house, she attached the poster board feathers to my back and a red sock to my chin. When we arrived, all I said for the first half hour was "Gobble gobble gobble!" and all my Granny said was, "Why is that child dressed like a turkey?"
For non-celebratory days in kindergarten, I favored two outfits: my cowgirl dress and my Indian dress. My mom made them both and they were basically the same pattern, except one was pleather and had fringe and beads, and the other was "tribal"-print muslin and had fringe and beads. It turns out your friends are more likely to believe you are Pocahontas's great great granddaughter if you dress the part. I was also fond of my gypsy, hula-girl, pioneer-girl, and Tinker Bell outfits (Mom made these, too).
Because I spent my formative fashion years emulating wild game, cultural stereotypes, and Disney princesses, vestiges of my costume craze remained in my wardrobe through adolescence. For most, middle school is a great exercise in blending in with your peers. This laudable pursuit was lost on me, and though I stopped wearing "costumes," I started wearing uber-conspicuous neon tights, cat-eye glasses, animal-print shoes, a pair of skants. In the few hours of high school I wasn't forced to wear "neutral" rehearsal blacks, I sported ill-fitting vintage clothing.
And now, in my august fifth year of college, my turbulent fashion history has left me bereft of any sense of style and a reluctance to wear anything but chunky sweaters. This is a result of several factors: my learning to knit, my living in a stupidly cold climate, and my penchant for layering. Thank God a significant portion of my coursework this year is dedicated to "dressing for the business," or, in my case, "learning how to dress like a competent grown-up who is not a social worker or in her fifties." It's been a challenging learning experience, but as I'm sure you're aware, acting school is all about breaking through personal barriers.
I still like to dress up for holidays, though. This Valentines Day I plan to go as an aorta.
*A candy scramble is when you get all the kids together in the largest Sunday school room and throw handfuls of candy at them.
When I was four, I sat on the living room floor with my mom while we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and colored a poster board cut in the shape of a giant turkey's feathers. Right before we left to eat lunch at my grandparents' house, she attached the poster board feathers to my back and a red sock to my chin. When we arrived, all I said for the first half hour was "Gobble gobble gobble!" and all my Granny said was, "Why is that child dressed like a turkey?"
For non-celebratory days in kindergarten, I favored two outfits: my cowgirl dress and my Indian dress. My mom made them both and they were basically the same pattern, except one was pleather and had fringe and beads, and the other was "tribal"-print muslin and had fringe and beads. It turns out your friends are more likely to believe you are Pocahontas's great great granddaughter if you dress the part. I was also fond of my gypsy, hula-girl, pioneer-girl, and Tinker Bell outfits (Mom made these, too).
Because I spent my formative fashion years emulating wild game, cultural stereotypes, and Disney princesses, vestiges of my costume craze remained in my wardrobe through adolescence. For most, middle school is a great exercise in blending in with your peers. This laudable pursuit was lost on me, and though I stopped wearing "costumes," I started wearing uber-conspicuous neon tights, cat-eye glasses, animal-print shoes, a pair of skants. In the few hours of high school I wasn't forced to wear "neutral" rehearsal blacks, I sported ill-fitting vintage clothing.
And now, in my august fifth year of college, my turbulent fashion history has left me bereft of any sense of style and a reluctance to wear anything but chunky sweaters. This is a result of several factors: my learning to knit, my living in a stupidly cold climate, and my penchant for layering. Thank God a significant portion of my coursework this year is dedicated to "dressing for the business," or, in my case, "learning how to dress like a competent grown-up who is not a social worker or in her fifties." It's been a challenging learning experience, but as I'm sure you're aware, acting school is all about breaking through personal barriers.
I still like to dress up for holidays, though. This Valentines Day I plan to go as an aorta.
*A candy scramble is when you get all the kids together in the largest Sunday school room and throw handfuls of candy at them.
Monday, December 6, 2010
FOAMHENGE
The following is a treatise on the merits of the prehistoric English monument known to tourists worldwide as Stonehenge, juxtaposed with those of its American emulator, Foamhenge.
As any Anglophile, Neo-Pagan, middle-Neolithic scholar, or person who's ever flipped on the Discovery Channel even once can tell you, no one quite knows how or why Stonehenge was erected in the middle-of-nowhere (Salisbury), England. Fortunately, this is not the case for Foamhenge, located in the middle-of-nowhere (Natural Bridge), Virginia. Mark Cline built Foamhenge in 2004 because, presumably, he knew what a kick-ass project it would be.
Stonehenge's placement on earth may be astronomically precise and line up with the sun during solstice or whatever, but Foamhenge is only a few feet off and YOU CAN ACTUALLY TOUCH THE THING. At Stonehenge, if you were to set foot over the rope circling it, the Royal Army would likely descend on horseback from behind the surrounding burial mounds, seize you, and lock you in the Tower of London. There are no such guards at Foamhenge. Little did I know, when I pulled off on exit 180 from 81N for some gas, that such a wonder even existed in the New World. But when I drove by a seemingly abandoned clearing with only an open gate and a FOAMHENGE sign, you better believe I whipped the car around. I thought, "I have found a gold mine, and it doesn't even matter that I'm stuck in Sunday-after-Thanksgiving traffic. There is no way I'm going to miss out on Foamhenge." Best decision I made that day.
Now, in England, the weather is perpetually disgusting. (This fact is also known to Anglophiles and tourists worldwide.) At Stonehenge, you have to squint to differentiate the dark gray stones from the dark gray sky surrounding them. Foamhenge, however, sits on a woodsy mountaintop enveloped by the azure Appalachian sky. And while I found no evidence of civilian life off of exit 180 save for an Exxon station, it turns out that Foamhenge sits in a three-mile cluster of other astonishing attractions courtesy of Mark Cline:
-Enchanted Castle Studios
-Dinosaur Kingdom
-Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum
-The actual Natural Bridge of Natural Bridge, VA. Cline can't take credit for this one. It's advertised on billboards for miles as the "Rock of Ages," and every summer it serves as the backdrop for a music and laser show entitled The Drama of Creation*.
Stonehenge sits off of a highway trafficked only by tour busses, surrounded by sheep.
Foamhenge's major selling point is its giant floating statue of Merlin, with an explanatory plaque detailing how he levitated the stones to form Stonehenge. Remarkably, Stonehenge covers this mystical element even more sensationally, albeit unintentionally and begrudgingly: this self-proclaimed reincarnation of King Arthur illegally squats at Stonehenge, bedecked in a white robe and brandishing a petition on behalf of the Druids to reclaim Stonehenge from the English Heritage Commission. King Arthur "stands up for the people, Dark Ages style." (Thank God he overcame his youthful identity crisis in which he mistakenly thought he was King John.) If I could witness the meeting of any two people on earth, it would be that of King Arthur and Mark Cline.
My visit to Stonehenge left me marveling at the enduring weirdness of the Brits. My visit to Foamhenge left me marveling at why I ever left the USA in the first place. I bid farewell to Merlin, jumped down from the sacrificial altar, and headed back to I-81. I was hungry and determined to hit up a Chick-Fil-A before they disappeared north of the Mason Dixon line.
*The one from Genesis.
As any Anglophile, Neo-Pagan, middle-Neolithic scholar, or person who's ever flipped on the Discovery Channel even once can tell you, no one quite knows how or why Stonehenge was erected in the middle-of-nowhere (Salisbury), England. Fortunately, this is not the case for Foamhenge, located in the middle-of-nowhere (Natural Bridge), Virginia. Mark Cline built Foamhenge in 2004 because, presumably, he knew what a kick-ass project it would be.
Stonehenge's placement on earth may be astronomically precise and line up with the sun during solstice or whatever, but Foamhenge is only a few feet off and YOU CAN ACTUALLY TOUCH THE THING. At Stonehenge, if you were to set foot over the rope circling it, the Royal Army would likely descend on horseback from behind the surrounding burial mounds, seize you, and lock you in the Tower of London. There are no such guards at Foamhenge. Little did I know, when I pulled off on exit 180 from 81N for some gas, that such a wonder even existed in the New World. But when I drove by a seemingly abandoned clearing with only an open gate and a FOAMHENGE sign, you better believe I whipped the car around. I thought, "I have found a gold mine, and it doesn't even matter that I'm stuck in Sunday-after-Thanksgiving traffic. There is no way I'm going to miss out on Foamhenge." Best decision I made that day.
Now, in England, the weather is perpetually disgusting. (This fact is also known to Anglophiles and tourists worldwide.) At Stonehenge, you have to squint to differentiate the dark gray stones from the dark gray sky surrounding them. Foamhenge, however, sits on a woodsy mountaintop enveloped by the azure Appalachian sky. And while I found no evidence of civilian life off of exit 180 save for an Exxon station, it turns out that Foamhenge sits in a three-mile cluster of other astonishing attractions courtesy of Mark Cline:
-Enchanted Castle Studios
-Dinosaur Kingdom
-Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum
-The actual Natural Bridge of Natural Bridge, VA. Cline can't take credit for this one. It's advertised on billboards for miles as the "Rock of Ages," and every summer it serves as the backdrop for a music and laser show entitled The Drama of Creation*.
Stonehenge sits off of a highway trafficked only by tour busses, surrounded by sheep.
Foamhenge's major selling point is its giant floating statue of Merlin, with an explanatory plaque detailing how he levitated the stones to form Stonehenge. Remarkably, Stonehenge covers this mystical element even more sensationally, albeit unintentionally and begrudgingly: this self-proclaimed reincarnation of King Arthur illegally squats at Stonehenge, bedecked in a white robe and brandishing a petition on behalf of the Druids to reclaim Stonehenge from the English Heritage Commission. King Arthur "stands up for the people, Dark Ages style." (Thank God he overcame his youthful identity crisis in which he mistakenly thought he was King John.) If I could witness the meeting of any two people on earth, it would be that of King Arthur and Mark Cline.
My visit to Stonehenge left me marveling at the enduring weirdness of the Brits. My visit to Foamhenge left me marveling at why I ever left the USA in the first place. I bid farewell to Merlin, jumped down from the sacrificial altar, and headed back to I-81. I was hungry and determined to hit up a Chick-Fil-A before they disappeared north of the Mason Dixon line.
*The one from Genesis.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Hey There, Chicken Neck
School photographers like to shoot kids in order from tallest to shortest, so they don't have to readjust the stool for every single weirdly-shaped fourth grader in the class. By the time it was my turn at the end of the line, they'd always have raised the stool completely and slapped down a phone book for me to perch on so the camera could capture my face in front of the woodsy or graffitied brick wall backdrop. Going last meant several things. I had more time to practice my smile, decide whether to take my glasses off like my mom told me to, read a Babysitters Club book, etc. Most significantly, I got to hear the photographer cajoling all of my classmates, particularly the girls, into smiling for their yearbook picture:
"Well, hey there Miss America!"
"Look-y here, it's Cinderella!"
"Aw, hi Ladybug!"
"Well, I'll be! It's Princess Jasmine!" (This was to Meenal Patel.)
"You must be a fairy princess!"
"Come on Sweetheart, big smile!"
I couldn't wait for him to liken me to a Disney role model or complement my jumper or ask me if I'd skipped a grade because I was so tiny. But fourth grade dramatically altered my future school picture day experiences and here's why: When I slid onto my booster seat in the library-turned-portrait studio, the photographer glanced at me and said, "Hey there, Chicken Neck." He proceeded to prod at my head until it was stuck at that terrible angle so popular in school photos, where my chin, forehead, and eyes were all pointing in different directions. His only cajoling was, "Yeah, you got a real long neck, Chicken Neck."
I didn't say much of anything, because I had to run catch up with my class as they trailed out of the library. Although if I could do it again, I certainly would make a point of asking that particular school photographer why he possessed only three fingers on his left hand.
"Well, hey there Miss America!"
"Look-y here, it's Cinderella!"
"Aw, hi Ladybug!"
"Well, I'll be! It's Princess Jasmine!" (This was to Meenal Patel.)
"You must be a fairy princess!"
"Come on Sweetheart, big smile!"
I couldn't wait for him to liken me to a Disney role model or complement my jumper or ask me if I'd skipped a grade because I was so tiny. But fourth grade dramatically altered my future school picture day experiences and here's why: When I slid onto my booster seat in the library-turned-portrait studio, the photographer glanced at me and said, "Hey there, Chicken Neck." He proceeded to prod at my head until it was stuck at that terrible angle so popular in school photos, where my chin, forehead, and eyes were all pointing in different directions. His only cajoling was, "Yeah, you got a real long neck, Chicken Neck."
I didn't say much of anything, because I had to run catch up with my class as they trailed out of the library. Although if I could do it again, I certainly would make a point of asking that particular school photographer why he possessed only three fingers on his left hand.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Norman, Connie the Fake
I called Norman, my landlord, to thank him for repairing the hot water and for fixing up the deck. I didn't ask him, "Norman, what on earth made you think that nailing a poorly measured piece of plywood to the uneven floorboards then painting the whole rotting thing blue was actually going to improve the deck in any way?" Instead, I said, "Norman, when are you coming back to remove the grill, busted chairs, card table, can of gasoline, etc. that you stored in my kitchen back to their home on the deck, or better yet, to a landfill where they belong?"
To which he replied, "Uhhhhh. Not today. Maybe in a couple of days. Today my face... it's swollen. Swollen twice the regular size."
I reminded him as kindly as possible about the shattered window in my living room and hung up.
The thing about Norman, and his wife Dalia, and their son Mike, is that they suck. Landlording, for them, is a family business. And it's a good thing, too, because none can complete a sentence without muttering incoherently, furrowing their eyebrows, repeating their previous asinine comment, and unloading unsolicited and irrelevant information on the listener. Such as the time Norman informed me he would be replacing our front door to comply with the city's fire code regulations. I was just getting to know him at the time and casually asked why exactly the door needed to be replaced.
"Because they're ballbusters," he replied, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Excuse me?"
"The inspector. For years it was a man. He never had no problems with me; I never had no problems with him. Now it's a lady inspector, she's bustin' my balls."
"Oh. What's wrong with the door?"
"All these doors, old doors. They're great doors. Had this house 12 years, never had a problem with the door. I got 9 other properties, all of 'em got good doors. Now this lady inspector's tellin' me it ain't 'fire resistant,' I gotta change it."
He sighed. "It's not easy being a landlord."
To brighten up our dismal, dirt-caked, decaying house, Anna and I bought some plants. I started out with an indoor vegetable garden, because I'm really only interested in growing things I can eat. The corner of our bedroom gets full sun, due to our south-facing windows which don't have blinds. I've got several pots full of basil, stringbeans, collard greens, mustard greens, and arugula. I call the basil and arugula simply Basil and Arugula, but I christened the stringbeans Bonnie and Her Babies and the collards Aimless Amos. Anna selected some lovely tropical plants for the kitchen windowsill. However, Home Depot neglected to identify these pretty little things. They were labeled only "house plants- decorative" and aside from the obvious aloe (named Burnheart) and the African violet (Esmerelda), we had no way of knowing what other colorful species we were purchasing.
Esmerelda, Burnheart, Tereza, and Sabina are pretty enough but the real star of our kitchen windowsill was Connie. Four brilliant yellow blossoms crowned her regal cactus stature, lighting up our dour kitchen like a candlelight vigil. So you can imagine our shock and disappointment when Anna went to water Connie one morning and discovered clear, plastic-y gobs beneath those luminescent blooms. It was HOT GLUE. Connie's blossoms were FAKE, glued onto her natural cactus flesh by the garden department at Home Depot in order to sell her as a "houseplant- decorative." Who even knows if Connie is real at all.
But we all have our crosses to bear. Obviously, Connie's is vanity and artifice. For Norman, Dalia, and their spawn, it's utter uselessness. For Anna and me, it's another year of living in New Brunswick.
To which he replied, "Uhhhhh. Not today. Maybe in a couple of days. Today my face... it's swollen. Swollen twice the regular size."
I reminded him as kindly as possible about the shattered window in my living room and hung up.
The thing about Norman, and his wife Dalia, and their son Mike, is that they suck. Landlording, for them, is a family business. And it's a good thing, too, because none can complete a sentence without muttering incoherently, furrowing their eyebrows, repeating their previous asinine comment, and unloading unsolicited and irrelevant information on the listener. Such as the time Norman informed me he would be replacing our front door to comply with the city's fire code regulations. I was just getting to know him at the time and casually asked why exactly the door needed to be replaced.
"Because they're ballbusters," he replied, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Excuse me?"
"The inspector. For years it was a man. He never had no problems with me; I never had no problems with him. Now it's a lady inspector, she's bustin' my balls."
"Oh. What's wrong with the door?"
"All these doors, old doors. They're great doors. Had this house 12 years, never had a problem with the door. I got 9 other properties, all of 'em got good doors. Now this lady inspector's tellin' me it ain't 'fire resistant,' I gotta change it."
He sighed. "It's not easy being a landlord."
To brighten up our dismal, dirt-caked, decaying house, Anna and I bought some plants. I started out with an indoor vegetable garden, because I'm really only interested in growing things I can eat. The corner of our bedroom gets full sun, due to our south-facing windows which don't have blinds. I've got several pots full of basil, stringbeans, collard greens, mustard greens, and arugula. I call the basil and arugula simply Basil and Arugula, but I christened the stringbeans Bonnie and Her Babies and the collards Aimless Amos. Anna selected some lovely tropical plants for the kitchen windowsill. However, Home Depot neglected to identify these pretty little things. They were labeled only "house plants- decorative" and aside from the obvious aloe (named Burnheart) and the African violet (Esmerelda), we had no way of knowing what other colorful species we were purchasing.
Esmerelda, Burnheart, Tereza, and Sabina are pretty enough but the real star of our kitchen windowsill was Connie. Four brilliant yellow blossoms crowned her regal cactus stature, lighting up our dour kitchen like a candlelight vigil. So you can imagine our shock and disappointment when Anna went to water Connie one morning and discovered clear, plastic-y gobs beneath those luminescent blooms. It was HOT GLUE. Connie's blossoms were FAKE, glued onto her natural cactus flesh by the garden department at Home Depot in order to sell her as a "houseplant- decorative." Who even knows if Connie is real at all.
But we all have our crosses to bear. Obviously, Connie's is vanity and artifice. For Norman, Dalia, and their spawn, it's utter uselessness. For Anna and me, it's another year of living in New Brunswick.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Foodie
I loved having journals when I was little but I didn't write in them very often. I'd pen a couple of rants at my parents, maybe record some made-up encounters between me and the boy I was obsessed with, and if I felt really inspired, I'd write some acrostics. Then I'd abandon my little diary with the roses and ballet slippers on the cover in favor of something new and Lisa Frank.
The only journal I've been able to consistently maintain, ever, in my 22 years of wannabe journaling, is a busted spiral notebook where I write stuff about food. It used to be my mom's notebook but she tore out her lesson plans from eight years ago and gave the remnants to me. It's incredibly practical. The entries are brief and the sparse narrative is limited to things like "Tonight I put Coors Light and five squirts of ketchup in the chili and it was AWESOME." It's full of wisdom gleaned from my own culinary experiences, such as, "If you plan to watch TV in bed all day you better make these chicken wings!" And it's a lovely chronicle of my life abroad:
"Are you cold all the time? Can you only afford £3 supermarket wine? Dump whatever white wine you have left but can't quite stomach in a pot, heat on the LOWEST possible setting (or the alcohol will evaporate and you'll feel like an idiot), add some honey, vanilla, and cinnamon. Delicious! Curl up and watch American TV online!"
Truth be told, I am excellent cook. My culinary inventiveness emerged early- before I could read I was preparing delicacies like Strawberry Juice for my family. To make Strawberry Juice:
-Get some little paper Dixie cups. Your grandparents probably have some in a dispenser next to their bathroom sink.
-Get your mom to cut the stems off some strawberries and put 2-3 of them in each little cup.
-Mash with a fork.
-Dump in some sugar and add some water.
-Mix all that up and serve to your family members!
As soon as I could hold a wooden spoon I was making Kraft macaroni and cheese. With Gramma's help I mastered dump cake, and with Mom's help I mastered Mexican. To make Mexican:
-Layer refried beans, ground beef, and Frito-Lay canned cheese in a baking dish.
-Put a bunch of black olives on top.
-Bake or microwave until nice and melty, and serve with tortilla chips and canned pears.
My parents had no choice but to buy me an Easy-Bake Oven. I lovingly concocted angel food cake and devil's food cake in that thing until the heat lamp busted from over-use. I also began to stray from those prepackaged mixes and create my own recipes. My cocoa-honey-cinnamon cake was weird, but it looked and smelled just like a real cake!
Now quite seasoned in the kitchen*, I make as much from scratch as time will allow. My favorite things to cook depend on the ingredient, method, or gadget I'm currently obsessed with. Past fixations include cheese making, sourdough baking, the crockpot, the Magic Bullet, Asian soups, stock making, crème brûlée torching, and the George Foreman grill. One of the main reasons I look forward to returning to NJ this year is the hand-me-down pasta maker sitting in my basement with my name on it. And I have big plans for an indoor vegetable garden!
I like to cook because I like to make stuff. But unlike papier-mâché, knitting, or collaging projects (other former and ongoing pursuits), the results are comparatively speedy and edible. Except my first sourdough loaf, which "rose" for 8749583 hours but still tasted like a wet brick. I like cooking for myself and I like cooking for others, although I no longer bring plates of magic cookie bars to college parties, as I mistakenly thought was custom when I was 18.
But mostly I like to cook because I'm good at it. And because apparently, it's the only thing worth writing about.
*PUN INTENDED!!!!!!!!!!!
The only journal I've been able to consistently maintain, ever, in my 22 years of wannabe journaling, is a busted spiral notebook where I write stuff about food. It used to be my mom's notebook but she tore out her lesson plans from eight years ago and gave the remnants to me. It's incredibly practical. The entries are brief and the sparse narrative is limited to things like "Tonight I put Coors Light and five squirts of ketchup in the chili and it was AWESOME." It's full of wisdom gleaned from my own culinary experiences, such as, "If you plan to watch TV in bed all day you better make these chicken wings!" And it's a lovely chronicle of my life abroad:
"Are you cold all the time? Can you only afford £3 supermarket wine? Dump whatever white wine you have left but can't quite stomach in a pot, heat on the LOWEST possible setting (or the alcohol will evaporate and you'll feel like an idiot), add some honey, vanilla, and cinnamon. Delicious! Curl up and watch American TV online!"
Truth be told, I am excellent cook. My culinary inventiveness emerged early- before I could read I was preparing delicacies like Strawberry Juice for my family. To make Strawberry Juice:
-Get some little paper Dixie cups. Your grandparents probably have some in a dispenser next to their bathroom sink.
-Get your mom to cut the stems off some strawberries and put 2-3 of them in each little cup.
-Mash with a fork.
-Dump in some sugar and add some water.
-Mix all that up and serve to your family members!
As soon as I could hold a wooden spoon I was making Kraft macaroni and cheese. With Gramma's help I mastered dump cake, and with Mom's help I mastered Mexican. To make Mexican:
-Layer refried beans, ground beef, and Frito-Lay canned cheese in a baking dish.
-Put a bunch of black olives on top.
-Bake or microwave until nice and melty, and serve with tortilla chips and canned pears.
My parents had no choice but to buy me an Easy-Bake Oven. I lovingly concocted angel food cake and devil's food cake in that thing until the heat lamp busted from over-use. I also began to stray from those prepackaged mixes and create my own recipes. My cocoa-honey-cinnamon cake was weird, but it looked and smelled just like a real cake!
Now quite seasoned in the kitchen*, I make as much from scratch as time will allow. My favorite things to cook depend on the ingredient, method, or gadget I'm currently obsessed with. Past fixations include cheese making, sourdough baking, the crockpot, the Magic Bullet, Asian soups, stock making, crème brûlée torching, and the George Foreman grill. One of the main reasons I look forward to returning to NJ this year is the hand-me-down pasta maker sitting in my basement with my name on it. And I have big plans for an indoor vegetable garden!
I like to cook because I like to make stuff. But unlike papier-mâché, knitting, or collaging projects (other former and ongoing pursuits), the results are comparatively speedy and edible. Except my first sourdough loaf, which "rose" for 8749583 hours but still tasted like a wet brick. I like cooking for myself and I like cooking for others, although I no longer bring plates of magic cookie bars to college parties, as I mistakenly thought was custom when I was 18.
But mostly I like to cook because I'm good at it. And because apparently, it's the only thing worth writing about.
*PUN INTENDED!!!!!!!!!!!
Friday, July 16, 2010
Rainbow Trout
If you are an elder, a white Christian of any age, or a member of my family, you know it's just not a summer until you pay a visit to Dollywood. Growing up, my obsession with Dolly Parton waned to a healthy, fascinated respect, but the wonders of her theme park continued to delight and entertain. Dollywood is part amusement park, part county fair, and part tent revival. I loved the logging-themed Log Flume, the American eagle exhibit, the fancy dresses at Lid'l Dolly's, and the gospel/clogging shows. I loved the woman in period dress sweating over a kettle of boiling lye soap in 96° heat. I loved the Birdsong Family. The Birdsongs were a mom, a dad, and a slew of young'uns who wore gingham and played instruments. Needless to say, those were some homeschooled kids if I ever saw any. Each year they'd have yet another infant on the stage playing a fiddle.
In addition to theme park thrills, Gatlinburg boasts the Smoky Mountain Arts and Crafts Community. Looping around a mountain, a two-lane highway connects the cabins/studios of these local artists. It's hard to pick a favorite amongst the potters, whittlers, macrame-ers, Indian jewelery makers, quilters, dream catcher weavers, and those people who melt colored candles over glass bottles. But certainly the most memorable of these Smoky Mountain traditional artisans is Stephen Sawyer, painter of the Art for God masterpieces. Sawyer portrays Jesus as a contemporary hero- a shirtless, ripped, tanned, glistening hero in a contemporary setting such as a boxing ring. A viewer might think she was looking at a country album cover or a naughty firemen calendar, if it weren't for the halo frequently hovering over Jesus, the only Byzantine relic of this flashy new religious iconography. Sawyer invokes Thomas Kinkade's skilled use of light in weird places to create a general celestial glow around all his muscle-y Jesuses.
Now if you think Gatlinburg is just a bunch of rednecks sweating and throwing their money away on hillbilly souvenirs, you'd be forgetting the hordes of dilettante outdoor enthusiasts like my mom, Jaci, and me. When we're not driving around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park looking for black bears, we are tubing down a river somewhere. Tubing is just like rafting except 329043 times slower. You don't have to wear a life jacket, and you can sleep and tube at the same time. Tubing is relaxing and heavenly.
So you can imagine everyone in the river's surprise when my mother, lazily floating on her stomach, plunged her arm into the water and yanked out a great big rainbow trout!!! We all thought the only aquatic life in that segment of the river was minnows, salamanders, and Coke bottles. But here, plucked from the muddy water without bait or dynamite was a humongous rainbow trout. We were elated. The little kids behind us were elated, as were their grandparents. Mom was elated because she'd just started the Eat Right for your Blood Type diet, which required her to eat loads of rainbow trout!
Mom stored the thing in the Wal-Mart bag we'd packed our lunch in. For the remainder of that victorious trip down the river, she dangled the bagged fish off of her wrist in the cool water. Back at the hotel she cleaned and cooked it, and we rounded off our locally-sourced supper with some of the addictive cinnamon sugar bread we'd bought at Dollywood (which wasn't on the Highly Beneficial list for Mom's blood type, but didn't appear on the Avoid list, either). During dinner I tried for the billionth time to convince Mom to take us to see The Miracle, but she said no, we had to go outlet shopping. That was ok; by the end of the week I'd scored some good discount school clothes, a new pair of moccasins, a miniature crock pot, and a season pass to Dollywood. By that time Jaci couldn't wait to get home where she already knew all the channels on TV, Mom couldn't wait to share the rainbow trout triumph with all our friends, neighbors, and relatives, and I just couldn't wait to return to the Smokies next year.
In addition to theme park thrills, Gatlinburg boasts the Smoky Mountain Arts and Crafts Community. Looping around a mountain, a two-lane highway connects the cabins/studios of these local artists. It's hard to pick a favorite amongst the potters, whittlers, macrame-ers, Indian jewelery makers, quilters, dream catcher weavers, and those people who melt colored candles over glass bottles. But certainly the most memorable of these Smoky Mountain traditional artisans is Stephen Sawyer, painter of the Art for God masterpieces. Sawyer portrays Jesus as a contemporary hero- a shirtless, ripped, tanned, glistening hero in a contemporary setting such as a boxing ring. A viewer might think she was looking at a country album cover or a naughty firemen calendar, if it weren't for the halo frequently hovering over Jesus, the only Byzantine relic of this flashy new religious iconography. Sawyer invokes Thomas Kinkade's skilled use of light in weird places to create a general celestial glow around all his muscle-y Jesuses.
Now if you think Gatlinburg is just a bunch of rednecks sweating and throwing their money away on hillbilly souvenirs, you'd be forgetting the hordes of dilettante outdoor enthusiasts like my mom, Jaci, and me. When we're not driving around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park looking for black bears, we are tubing down a river somewhere. Tubing is just like rafting except 329043 times slower. You don't have to wear a life jacket, and you can sleep and tube at the same time. Tubing is relaxing and heavenly.
So you can imagine everyone in the river's surprise when my mother, lazily floating on her stomach, plunged her arm into the water and yanked out a great big rainbow trout!!! We all thought the only aquatic life in that segment of the river was minnows, salamanders, and Coke bottles. But here, plucked from the muddy water without bait or dynamite was a humongous rainbow trout. We were elated. The little kids behind us were elated, as were their grandparents. Mom was elated because she'd just started the Eat Right for your Blood Type diet, which required her to eat loads of rainbow trout!
Mom stored the thing in the Wal-Mart bag we'd packed our lunch in. For the remainder of that victorious trip down the river, she dangled the bagged fish off of her wrist in the cool water. Back at the hotel she cleaned and cooked it, and we rounded off our locally-sourced supper with some of the addictive cinnamon sugar bread we'd bought at Dollywood (which wasn't on the Highly Beneficial list for Mom's blood type, but didn't appear on the Avoid list, either). During dinner I tried for the billionth time to convince Mom to take us to see The Miracle, but she said no, we had to go outlet shopping. That was ok; by the end of the week I'd scored some good discount school clothes, a new pair of moccasins, a miniature crock pot, and a season pass to Dollywood. By that time Jaci couldn't wait to get home where she already knew all the channels on TV, Mom couldn't wait to share the rainbow trout triumph with all our friends, neighbors, and relatives, and I just couldn't wait to return to the Smokies next year.
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