A Cleaner Cleaner Plate Club

If you haven't checked out The Cleaner Plate Club blog ever, or in a while, now's the time to check it out again. The layout is updated, with bright-colored childlike art, and the whole site is streamlined. Looking good! I told Ali that I felt like I'd just run into a friend who lost 40 lbs and went on What Not to Wear-- except that I still like her!

Ali, in addition to being a lovely human being, is a terrific writer, and she's put together a book full of personally-tested recipes for making good food for the young people you love. Much of the posting now is done by her writing partner, Beth, whom I don't know so well, but the site is looking good, so I'm off to catch up on my reading. Definitely check it out, and the book, too, if you have a chance.

Just Visiting

Way down at the bottom of my blogroll, there was a link called "Tiny Baby". Trevor James Millimaci was a baby whose site I came across one day while bloghopping through random sites. He was very, very tiny when he was born, with many complications. I think his mom started the blog because it was all she could think of to do with her time, since he was stuck there in the hospital, connected to feeders and machines and tubes, and she was home, without him.

I was once a premature baby too, so I took interest in this little guy.

Week after week, I'd tentatively pop in, hoping things were looking up, and that he'd eventually go home. And he did. I rooted for him each time he'd gain a pound. His mom posted pictures of him with his big sisters as he grew and grew, and started to look more like a little guy and less like a very, very premature baby.

He had big round eyes and a surprised o of a mouth. He wore fuzzy blue outfits and a cow Halloween costume. He had a Christmas. He smiled. A lot. And he started to talk. And then, some time in late June, when I'd let my visits to the site lapse for many months, Trevor James Millimaci died.

It seemed like he was home free. He was so much bigger and stronger, and he had people that loved him, and I'm sure they hoped and hoped he was out of the woods. But parts of him weren't strong enough.

I was just going to delete the link and not say anything. I didn't know him, didn't know them, at all. But as I scrolled through the pictures that preceded the image of the flowers in the cemetery, I saw his smile, just like any other little baby's, and the hopeful posts of childhood milestones finally, heroically reached, and I couldn't let him just disappear without saying something. In this peculiar internet world, we can't help but make human connections. I cared about what happened to him.

Rest in Peace, beautiful Trevor James Millimaci. If there is a heaven, you are in it, and all the things that little boys love are there.

The Best Recipe Ever

Hello. Come along with my friend Karen as she and her daughter Abbie make a loaf of bread together.

Good Cookies

My friend Angela needed cookies donated for a school bake sale, so I volunteered to make some. I felt like making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. A chef I know had recently recommended the Smitten Kitchen site to me, so I did a search on the site and found Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip and Pecan Cookies.

Yum! This is an almost-perfect oatmeal cookie, both crispy and chewy. I loaded them up with a little too much sweet, using both chocolate chips and currants, and I had to skip the pecans, because I didn't have them on hand and didn't feel like another trip to the store. I would recommend ditching the currants, definitely using either pecans, or possibly walnuts, to counteract the sweetness, and if you do decide to use the orange zest, halve that quantity. I made a double recipe with half the orange zest. It added a nice fragrant lift, but wasn't overwhelming.(These would be AWESOME with chocolate chips, coconut AND nuts...)

Because I had to make a lot of them, I made logs of the dough the first night and rolled it in parchment. Then I cut and baked the cookies the second night. It made fairly easy work of the sticky dough to slice it with a sharp knife, but I found that I liked the chewiness and thickness of the cookies better when I rolled each slice into a ball before baking, thus back into the stickiness.

I always find it makes things less sweaty and hectic, and that I'm less likely to burn the last batch, if I make the dough one night and bake it the next. These cookies, especially as I made them, are intense, so make sure you have an ice-cold glass of milk or soymilk handy.

Why the Blog Hasn't Been Updated

Facebook, I've decided, is like a cute boyfriend with a teensy drinking problem: charming, fun, distracting, irreverent, irresponsible and ultimately not good for you. Best taken in small doses.

The night before last, I was IMing three different people, rapid fire, at the same time (sorry, I didn't think it was a good idea to tell you that you weren't the only one). I sort of fb'd myself out. This is not to say I am sooo popular that I can't keep up with all my "friends". I don't have that many, and I don't go around collecting acquaintances like so many Easter eggs in a basket. I just think everyone happened to be on at the same time, so while I was having a long conversation with one person, I was chatting lightly with a couple of others for part of the time.

Here is the kind of witty repartee that results from the fb experience:

one of my friends was telling me about the great day he had snowshoeing in the morning and going to the beach at night, and I said that would be my idea of a perfect day if it included bacon, and he said bacon rules, and I said I'm going to sign all of my emails bacon rules from now on and he said are you a fan of bacon and I said does bacon have a fanclub? and we both ran over and found out that yes it does and we joined it

...and that is the kind of stuff that happens on fb. So far, three people (not that I'm trying to sound popular) have asked me about the bacon fan club or joined it themselves.

Is it fun? Yes. Is it sort of dumb? Totally. Is it an interesting trend that people are seeking the anti-social social? Yes. I could pick up the phone and talk to each of these people, but I don't have anything that important to say (obviously). It's the tech version of the teenage phonecall "What are you doing? Nothing. Me too." that can still last for hours. I don't know if they're busy, and I probably should be doing something else myself. It's multitasking, it's checking in on the ones you love, albeit peripherally. It's good to have a sense of what is going on in friends' lives, because sometimes the things that make up our lives from day to day aren't the big, life-changing news things, but the little every day things like eating scones, planning a birthday party, going snowshoeing, or liking bacon. Enough to join its fanclub...

Online Eye Candy Link-O-Rama

One of my favorite Sunday afternoon activities is leafing through a link-rich publication like Bust or Readymade, and then checking them all out on line.

Here are some links for your day off perusing pleasure: airbedandbreakfast (rooms for rent in private homes all over the world), sharesomecandy.com, ffffound.com, photojojo.com, domestic-construction, theselby, thedesignfiles, truefilms, duluthtimber, lavender and limes, jensiska, smart girls at the party. These are just a few of the sites I noted last night. I also love to surf Bust's entire music section, including the music ads, looking for and listening to things I never would have found in my own plodding progression through Amoeba.

PS- 26. I collect vintage train cases. If anyone has one lying around, or comes across one cheap at a yard sale, I'll take it. I lean toward the older, straight-sided cases in cool, natural colors like aqua, cream, yellow, caramel, green and modern prints that will look good in my bungalow, but I have cases of all shapes and colors. I envision a wall of them someday.

27. I am not interested in scrapbooking.

Me, Meet....Me

I have a truly modern dilemma: somehow I have created two Facebook profiles. So some of my "friends" are attached to one profile, and the other half to the other... I don't know how to merge them or if this is at all possible, so I decided to try to become friends with myself. Then at least my friends would have a mutual acquaintance.

So, I sent myself a friend request. Simple enough. When it arrived in the email box that both of me share, we gladly accepted it. Except I was already logged in as the me who had sent the request, so I had to log out and log in as me again. In order to do that, I have to log in with my log-in email, which is exactly the same as the other one. So it thinks I'm just me again, poking around the same profile with the same friends. It became necessary to change "my" contact email and send a confirmation to "myself" so that "I" could then accept the change of email address and log in as "me".

Tapping the keys gingerly, I logged in. But until I confirm my change of email to my alternate email, I must still log in with my original email. Which takes me to..........my original profile. I can search myself on Facebook (who started this stupid site, anyway?) and find both of myselves, but only one of me is now accessible by me. The other one is off-limits to anyone but me.

This all came about because a year or so ago, I put up a rudimentary Facebook page just to see what would happen. NOTHING did. Nothing. For a really long time. So I canceled my page. Apparently one of the ways they (oh, those evil they) get you hooked is by leaving your name in the files, even if you go away, so that as your former friends and long-lost stalkers are sitting in their cubicles, staring at the clock at 3:18 on a Wednesday afternoon, after clipping all the binder clips within arm's reach to each other, they can type your name in and unknowingly entice you to rejoin. Again and again. Sort of like stepping in gum.

So, my message is this: If you are looking for me, and you find me on Facebook, just pick the me with the friends you like the look of best, and you can be part of that group. If you want to gossip about me to me, I can't wait to hear the dirt. I have been very naughty lately, or so I've heard.

Or, better, send me your email address as a comment to this blog if you don't know my email address, and I will answer you and we can be friends, and not "friends". If I don't answer you, you can always try my evil twin.

Love,
Tam

For Reference: Hughes email and Mac Mail fix

Because it took me so long to find out how to fix the outgoing mail server issue with hughes after the email "upgrade" (again), I thought I'd put the information out there for anyone else who is searching. Here's what fixed the hughes + mac mail receiving but not sending problem: go to Preferences, click on the account in question. Click the name of the smtp server for outgoing mail at the bottom, which will give you the drop-down menu. Go to Edit Server List. In that window, click on the server to edit, then go to the "advanced" tab. This will give you the boxes you need to fill in with your email address and password. Choose password authentication, and you should be done. By the way, after the all-day Madonna Covers Marathon on the hughesnet tech support line was over, I was able to reach someone fairly quickly and go through this. I did, however, still have to listen patiently while the person went through the script: Yes, ma'am. May I repeat to you that the problem you are having is with email receiving but not sending? Yes? Be assured that we are going to fix that problem, ma'am. Is your computer plugged in?

Waterboarding Made Obsolete

It seems my friends at hughes.net have devised a punishment more cruel and unusual than any the FBI, CIA, or any other three letters could come up with: Calling hughes.net's generously termed "customer service" line today gets you at least twelve minutes (I couldn't stand it any longer than that) of a looped, slightly off-key cover version of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita". Translate that through a garbled cell phone speaker and you've got a recipe for torture that is the audio equivalent of sticking the points of frilly toothpicks under your toenails. Who thought this up?

"La Isla Bonita, now that is a nice song. We should use it as our hold music. I could listen to that over and over again. "
"Yes, me too, but we can't afford to purchase the licensing to play the real Madonna version."
"Maybe we can buy a bootleg copy from one of the stands at the flea market on Sunday. That is the solution!"
"Ah, I am happy, now we can play the song we love over and over and share it with our friends who call us for technical assistance."


May I also add that if you have a choice, you should never, ever, ever use hughes.net for your internet service? The "Fair Access Policy" is invoked on a whim, slowing your upload, download and browsing speed to barely dial-up level without warning. One weekend, we weren't even home, and somehow exceeded our allotment of broadband while we were gone, with the computer off... but the difficulties in reaching an actual person are an effective deterrent to doing anything about it.

Each time hughes.net "upgrades" the email system, there is a guaranteed loss of service. Forget getting answers from their FAQ or bulletin site. They don't speak Mac, and insist that the problem-- which suddenly and coincidentally appeared the same day they executed the upgrade-- is a problem with your system--something Apple has done. (I found the answer to how to fix the problem here: on Apple's discussion forum. Go to the advanced tab on the setup for the account, and change the authentication to password. Done. All of this happened to me last time they upgraded, and I finally remembered this time to look for a solution outside of hughes. Which is, I think, their goal.)

If you survive the hold music, when and if you are finally allowed to reach customer disservice, you will be connected with a massive call center in India, (or perhaps a very small one masquerading as a very big one, judging from the length of time I was on hold) where people with names like Sally and Joe will not know what you are talking about, and will use many prepared statements such as, "I am sorry you are having difficulty. May I prepare the answer for you?" or "Thank you for your patience. If I understand you correctly, you are having trouble with your email. Now I am going to tell you the solution, starting with the first step. May I begin? Is your computer plugged in?" They are all very nice, and exceedingly polite, but the system just isn't working.

We've had DirecTV via Hughes for years with no to little problem, but if I were going to get satellite internet again, I'd go with Wild Blue, which was unfortunately unavailable when we signed up.

The Alarm Clock of Beautiful Deadened

I am still in the midst of the big work project. For your entertainment, I am posting an article from the French magazine Figaro which I translated using the babelfish translator online. I was hoping for more biographical information for one of the principals of the winery (the name of which I've removed here to keep the search engines from total confusion) and this is what I got. Enjoyez-vous!

The young generation knew to regild the blazon of this house.

(Thank goodness! That blazon really needed regilding.)

The readers who follow our heading with fidelity start to know my attachment with Burgundy and its high-class wines. They can show charmers and silky Chambolle-Musigny, rough and virile Nuits-Saint-Georges, sharp and minerals with Chablis, opulent and greedy Meursault Bref, on this narrow strip of land which goes from Marsannay to Santenay, while passing by most septentrional chablisien at the almost southernmost coasts chalonnaises, the emotions follow one another without never resembling each other. (Not never.)

This richness comes as much from the soils that men who cultivate them and maintain them with the wire the centuries, that they act wine growers proudly exploiting their some wrought vines, at the large houses of trades which knew to carry the wines of Burgundy beyond our borders.

The alarm clock of beautiful deadened

Among these last, it is one, among oldest, whose wines were often a source of frustration. The F______ house, celebrates nuiton field, always had the reputation to produce frank wines, but missing brightness sometimes. Of aucuns would say even austere. The matter was present, the soil also, but it missed small something for magnifier the unit. For all to say, this house made figure of beautiful deadened.

This reputation is from now on to throw to the oubliettes. A recent tasting of the year 2006 revealed wines dazzling, right, greedy, with an explosive fruit, letting speak the soil much more than the breeding. A true revelation. Better, a revolution!

Throw that reputation to the oubliettes! Vive la revolution!

A Vital Hit of Kitten

I suppose it's bad internetiquette (I thought I just made that up, but it's already in the urban dictionary) to skim photos from other sites, but this is the photo I need right now, from cuteoverload.com. This photo makes me feel the same way as I do when I see the grandpa and the toddler on my way to work.

The original caption and credit: Lady Buffington looks after her week old kittens at the Humane Society of Harrisburg Area in Swatara Township.
PAUL CHAPLIN, The Patriot-News

Haiku High Five

Yet another reason to get over there and check out the Cleaner Plate Club again: Agribusiness Haiku. I hope she doesn't mind me posting it here, it was just so damn good. There are more.

For Monsanto
Your stock grows…in Hell.
GMOs: they’re a sin now!
Sez who? The pope, dude.

New Minimalist Look?

O Header, where art thou? If you saw it, you know that there was something, um, fuzzy about the former header. I will fix and put it back up asap. Just not yet. For now, here's the quote that was on it:

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry." E.B. White

Or writing Charlotte's Web. And speaking of fantastic children's books, take a look at the FABULOUS link on the right sidebar. The Dewey Drive is a book drive for libraries in need. You can donate books for children who need them via Amazon. It brought tears to my eyes to read that some little person wanted the book "Summer Pony," which was one of my favorites as a fourth-grader, but no one had donated it yet. Books were such an important part of my young life. Check out the drive and read the response from one of the recipient librarians here.

Ok, gotta go work on that header...

Online Site for Election Results

Here's the link for California election night results, which should be updating momentarily.

Happy Blogaversary to Me

Last January, I started typing to myself on a little blog. The first post was fairly tentative. I didn't tell anyone about it for about a month, then I told one or two people. After that, I fell down, so I chronicled the progress of my big knee owie.

How far I have come in a year! I think I will make myself a cake.

Soup Tuesday

Today, between working and catching up on the blog, I am making leek and potato soup, recipe courtesy of chocolate and zucchini again.

To start with, I had a chicken carcass in the fridge from a hickory-roasted rosemary chicken that Mike made a couple of days ago. There was too much flavor in that thing to let it go to waste. So I caramelized some mirepoix vegetables in my big stock pot (thank you Grandma and Grandpa). In English, that's an onion, two carrots and a stalk of celery, which is what I had on hand. I tossed in the carcass and boiled it up with approximately 12 pint glasses of water (that was the measuring unit I had on hand as well). Forgot entirely to put in the peppercorns, juniper berries and bay that I usually throw in, but there was so much in there already with the rosemary, garlic and hickory from the chicken that I don't think it needed it.

While it was boiling, I cleaned and chopped my leeks, then sweated them in a saucepan with olive oil, butter and salt. When they were done, I put them aside on a plate and about 10 small yukon gold potatoes took their place in the same pot, which was then filled to cover with the warm stock. I boiled the potatoes in the stock until they were soft, dumped the leeks back in the pot, added some more stock and pureed with my new stick blender (thank you Monty). Then I added more stock to get the right consistency, a little salt and fresh black pepper, and voila, dinner is made. Some nice bread and a salad oughta do it. Finally, I have cooked my way out of my veggie box leek back-up.

I see now from checking out the recipe that I could have boiled the leeks and the potatoes together in the stock and saved a couple of steps, but this was the way it worked out. Pretty tasty, very easy.

Ur Bubbles, I Has Em

more funny pictures
(You're supposed to be able to read that this says "invisible champagne" by the way.)

Don't Know Why

I don't know why I find this video of elephants marching down New York's 34th street so moving, but I do. I've watched it 3 or 4 times now, and it still brings tears to my eyes. Can you imagine how magical it would be to see real live elephants marching down the street in the middle of the night, trunk to tail? In New York? (During this strange and sappy time of my life, when I love so many things, I really love elephants. Oh yeah, and those beautiful black horses toward the end with the arched necks. And monkeys. And cats. Fish, too. And Grandpas with toddlers. And all my little girlie friends.)

Apparently when the Ringling Brothers circus come to New York this summer, the closest the trains can get is Queens, so the elephants and the horses make the rest of the trip on foot, through the Manhattan tunnel and down 34th street. Here's another view, and another.

I heard the story as one of the top stories of 2007 on NPR. During the report, you could hear the sounds of the crowd in the background, and there was a lot of happy, supportive shouting. One guy just kept yelling, "Elephants! Yeah! Elephants! Wooooooo!" The reporter asked the guy why he kept yelling, to which the guy responded something like, "It's ELEPHANTS! Ain't nobody don't like ELEPHANTS, sir."

*I guess they do this every year, and for whatever reason, PETA protests it. I respect the thought behind PETA, but I thought it was pretty lame of them to follow the parade along the sidewalk with signs and say things to people like, "Don't pretend you care about the animals, ma'am." and "Shame on you." As if thinking elephants are cool is something to be ashamed of. I guess they see this as a cruel and unnecessary publicity stunt, but it's a cheap stunt for them as well. Where are they when the everyday animals are truly abused. Where are they for the dogs and the cats and the laboratory rats? Not walking down 34th Street.

I bet the elephants actually like it. How many times do they get to go for a nice walk and check out the scenery? Next time I see a PETA member, they'd better be wearing hemp shoes, that's all I can say.

A Holiday Classic

Don't forget to stop by Cavalcade of Bad Nativities this year for a stocking-full of blessed kitsch!

If you missed last year's entries, go here.

Now that there's almost no time left to shop, if you want to see Mark Morford's gift idea list and look for a little something for yourself, go here. By the way, Mark lost a little of his uber-hip cred recently when he waited in line at 6 am at a Best Buy to buy a Wii. Yes, it was ostensibly for his time-deprived, politically correct and media-innocent far-away sister, but those are just excuses.

Christmas Reality

This is a perfect example of what life is like:

A perfect holiday dessert, executed with style, flair and kitschy perfection. (In three flavors, no less, AND beautifully photographed.) I love Tartelette and also Orangette, because these young, beautiful and enviably dainty patissières make it look easy. I imagine them flitting about their flour and glitter dusted world in flirty hostess aprons, fingertips trailing sparkling fairy dust.

In real-life, made by a regular person, this is what can happen. Poor, poor Alison! As you know if you've been reading this, I am familiar with sponge-cake failure. Along with sponge-cake failure comes the feeling that you're not quite the chef or baker you thought you were, and maybe not woman enough for the job. Martha Stewart would shun you. Especially heartbreaking during the holidays. It's hard to get back at the whisk after that. But the holidays are all about making it work. "Remember the time we spent all day and night baking that buche de noel and it fell apart, and we had to get up early and drive to a bakery and buy one and pull the decorations off in the car on the way to school, and re-frost it so it would look like we made it?" Like that. At least in my mind, that's how it would work. But we don't know what happened at the end of Ali's story. I liked the suggestion about piling up Ho-ho's and making them look like tiny yule logs, France be damned.

I have made one, in fact, at least two, of these dreaded buches de noel. My recipe, which was given to me by my English teacher (and the mother of a future Chief Justice) in the 8th grade, is much, much more low-tech. I think it includes instant pudding and possibly Cool-Whip. Of course, that doesn't help Alison, but I will locate it and post for you, and if I can find the picture of the one I made when I was 15 or 16, I will do that as well. For now, just send condolences to Alison at Cleaner Plate Club.