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When I Root …

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Pamela

Aside: I have got to either fix this blog layout or change the way I crop my photos. My head looks even pointier than usual.

Posted in TIMBERS! | 1 Comment

Gingered Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Pamela

I wasn’t overwhelmed with the last two pies I tried so I was on the lookout for something good and the NYT delivered last week with this recipe for Gingered Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.

Big giant hit.

I screwed up and forgot to buy fresh ginger for the crust so I skipped that part. To be honest, I didn’t read the recipe that carefully in advance and didn’t notice it until I started baking and it was too late to drop everything and run to the store. I also didn’t use the egg for glazing the rim. That’s the sort of step I consider fussy.

Rhubarb is funny because when you’re buying those big giant stalks it looks like a ton and when you start chopping it up and measuring it, it goes quick. I had a scant 4 cups. I threw in a few extra strawberries and didn’t have any shortage of filling.

The recipe calls for zest of an entire orange and I’m not a huge citrus person and especially not orange but I went ahead and put it all in and it was brilliant. It added just the right tang with the strawberries and rhubarb.

I was also concerned about the streusel topping because I thought it would be too sweet. Nope. It balances perfectly with the filling. And I ended up not having as much candied ginger in my stash as I thought so my topping was skimpy on the ginger. Next I make it I’m going to make sure I have tons of candied ginger.

One hundred gold stars for this pie.

I don’t think I ever posted the URL for Forevertron. The photoset is here.

Posted in cooking | 3 Comments

BEG-A-THON!

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Pamela

Sticker on a light-pole near Jeld-Wen Field.

You know what never gets old? People asking you for money.

Just kidding!

Of course it gets old. Every day when I’m downtown I’m chugged and spanged until I think cruel things about the unfortunate. [Note: those links not necessarily suitable for all ages].

People are always telling you it’s for “a good cause” and “think of the children!”

But think about this.

What would the world be like if there were no stories about vampires, wizards, spaceships or dragons? No stories about magic monkeys, alien sex, [Warning: that story is not for folks of a delicate nature] sentient computer disks, eternally trapped spirits, magical cards or Indians with time machines.?

Getting a little funny feeling in your stomach?

I thought so.

Here’s your big chance to help speculative fiction nerds go to summer camp and write great stories.

Once again, I’m raising money for the Clarion West Writers Workshop. You might remember me doing this in 2009 and 2010.

Here are my posts from when I attended the workshop in 2008:

[NOTE: Actually the links don’t work because turdpress so royally screwed up my archives when I had to migrate from blogger. I’ll come back and fix later.] [FIXED!]

Overview, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4 part 1, Week 4 part 2, Week 5 and Week 6.

I can’t possibly convey what an amazing experience it was for me. I still think about it every day.

How can you help? Sponsor me or someone with some of your hard earned cash. Any donation from $1 to $1 million will be happily accepted. Even more than $1 million would be fine. You know that little jar you have in your laundry room where you put the change that falls out of everyone’s pockets? Just empty out that and send it. That would be great. And if you have no money your kind thoughts will do.

In return I am pledging to write at least 3000 words a week and I will revise and submit one story.

Here’s all the info you need to contribute: Clarion West Write-A-Thon 2011 and here’s the direct link to sponsor me.

I’ll post an update every week to let you know how I’m doing. I’ll also send out some annoying spamela emails with additional begging so be on the look out for that!

Also, I’m matching the first $100 so if you donate now, it’s like, doubled.

Thanks for supporting nerd writers!

Posted in Clarion West | 1 Comment

Sprouts!

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Pamela

I keep calling these pea sprouts but they are cucumber sprouts. I planted them on Saturday.

This is what they looked like on Tuesday morning.

This is what they looked like on Tuesday evening.

This is what they look like this morning.

* * *
Yesterday after work I was waiting for the bus. A woman I know from the bus arrived at the bus stop and came up to me and asked if the bus had come yet.

I didn’t even know what to say.

“Yes, but I decided to wait here so I could tell you that it had already come by.”

There are two buses that go to the park-n-ride. One takes a different, slightly longer route. I usually take the first bus that arrives.

The longer route bus arrived first and this same lady asked the driver about the other bus. “Is it coming? In a few minutes? Did you see it?”

Lady, he’s driving a farking bus, how does he know where the other bus is?

But the funny thing is, he answered all her questions very confidently: yes.

Posted in doing it wrong, garden | 5 Comments

Happy Birthday Soph!

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Pamela

Sophie is 19 today. This photo was when she visited my apartment in Lake Oswego shortly after I moved to Oregon.

Today she’s all grown up and traveling somewhere like Hungary or Turkey or Thailand and won’t even see this. Love you, Soph!

Posted in pamily | 2 Comments

Use Your Eyes Ref

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Pamela

They hurt Kenny Cooper! (Update: I just saw the highlights show and I guess it was our own guy that bashed Kenny in the head. But I bet the other team wanted to bash him in the head.)

It seems like the seats behind ours are assigned to a new pair of people each home game. One person is familiar with the game and the team, the other person is a newbie. Thus, every week we spend the entire game listening to someone explain Timbers 101. I guess if we’re fans of the Free Beer Movement (and we are) we shouldn’t complain about this. But sometimes people could learn by watching.

Yesterday we went downtown early and went to the bar and watched the US Mens National Team lose their first game (in group play) ever in the Gold Cup. They lost to Panama with the help of bum officiating.

From there we went to the stadium and had just enough time to buy a beer and get to our seats. I missed getting 200 photos of my Timbers doing their warm-ups.

See that guy in the yellow? He ruined my day. Yesterday and today.

I booed at him so hard my eyeballs almost popped out of my face. My eye sockets still hurt today from the pressure.

That’s FUTTY! who’s down on the field. (Sadly, I didn’t not get a good shot of the sign that said: Hold me closer Futty Danso.) He had to go out on a stretcher.

And here the ref is probably trying to figure out how to call some more random fouls on our team.

Here’s our coach before he got ejected from the game. Right as we went into stoppage time.

I guess he might have said something not very nice about the officiating. Two seconds later, the other team scored the only goal of the game.

I’m going to break my rule about embedding youtube clips so you can see this Alaska Airlines commercial featuring Coach Spencer. It was the only thing that cheered me up today.

I’m going to need to give up for a better camera if I want to get decent shots.

The guys wore their Rose City kits in honor of Rose Festival.

We’re going to bounce back in the next game. Next weekend. It’s going to be awesome. RCTID.

Posted in TIMBERS! | 1 Comment

Margarita Pie

Posted on June 11, 2011 by Pamela

This week’s pie was inspired by Sue (Awesome photos if you’ve never seen a saving white sturgeon photo essay.)

I told her I was working on pies and she said she’d had a terrific margarita pie with a pretzel crust. That sounded worth checking out.

Some of the first recipes I found involved stirring margarita mix into Cool Whip and then scraping into a graham cracker crust. I didn’t think I’d learn much from making that so I held out until I found a super complicated recipe with lime curd and frothing egg whites and folding whipped cream. A recipe that would get every dish in my kitchen, except the frying pan, dirty.

I had trouble with it. I get nervous with recipes that say, “mix until just combined” which is why my cornbread always has big flour lumps in it.

In this case, “lightly fold just until streaks are gone.” I was folding and folding and folding and more streaks appeared. By this time I was tired and had a million dishes to do so I finally scraped it into the crust and hoped for the best.

It’s not pretty but it tastes okay. The recipe called for the pretzels (the Madison pretzels, btw) to be ground fine but I think they could be a little coarse. I’m not the biggest lemon meringue fan and this is basically lemon meringue only with lime and tequila added. It’s worth eating and I learned something, I guess, but measuring “how much I like it v. how much trouble it was to make” I would say we probably won’t be having this again.

Two lukewarm results in a row. I need something epic. There should be fresh fruit by the time I get around to making my next pie.

Posted in cooking, doing it wrong | 4 Comments

Amazing Secrets of the Gut Bomb

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Pamela

Last night we had takeout Mexican food. I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst indigestion I’ve had in years. I got up once and thought I was okay but Bob started flopping around and I hissed, “Stop breathing on me!”

I had to get up again and got an Alka Seltzer and wandered around the house. I still couldn’t settle down so I thought maybe I could find a movie or something on TV.

You know what’s on TV in the middle of the night?

Infomercials. 500 channels of infomercials.

Infomercials fascinate me because they are so phony. It’s a particular flavor of phony that they all share like they’re made at the same factory from actors who are trained to act the same way. And there is so much talking with so little information provided.

The first one I saw started with a man carrying about 12 folding outdoor chairs which he couldn’t hold on to. Voiceover: Has this happened to you?

Like the only choice was to carry all those chairs at the same time.

The solution? The pocket chair. It’s a tiny little chair that you can fold up and keep in your pocket. How handy!

Except, I’m not a large person and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be comfortable sitting in this tiny chair. I bet kids would like it.

The other one I watched had to do with Free Money. Did you know there is tons of free money out there that THEY don’t want you to know about? The government has tons and tons of free money. You can just fill out a form and get your free money. What are you waiting for? The guy who wrote the book is interviewed by an attractive blonde woman who is practically foaming at the mouth because she’s so amazed about all this free money that’s available to anyone, even you and me. The man tells us he doesn’t make any money off the book, he just wrote it as a public service. Well, the mean old FTC doesn’t think his work is a public service.

The book is usually $30 but it was on sale for $20 last night plus s&h which many dissatisfied people on the Internet said added up to about 14 additional bucks. Plus I guess they subscribe you to a newsletter or something and keep charging you. But what about all the free money? Another funny thing is he pushes it like this is a compact book which streamlines the free money getting process. It’s not like all those telephone book sized tomes that show you where to get free money and waste your time with so much information.

I didn’t buy anything but I also didn’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Someone should do an infomercial about insomnia.

Posted in doing it wrong, sleepless in Vancouver | 2 Comments

They Might Be Giants

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Pamela

I saw this yesterday in the front yard as I was racing off to the park-n-ride. It was all I could do to not pull over right that second and fawn over it. But I always leave for the bus about two minutes later than I should so I had to wait until I got home. It looks like there will be bunch more this weekend.

Check out this tomato peeking out of the walls of water. I’ve never had great luck with the walls of water so I’m often too lazy to even put them out. This year they are doing their job. I’m going to leave them a bit longer and haul out the big, tall, shiny, new tomato cages I bought. All four of my tomato plants look great and have flowers. Even the one that I grew from a seed and then knocked all the leaves off when I planted it.

This is the main garden plot. Most of that is volunteer sunflowers. I need to get in there and yank a bunch out. In normal life I’m freakishly organized but I like to let my garden do what it wants. Last year I had way too many sunflowers and it got a little crazy with cucumber vines crawling up them plus they made it tough to move around in there.

I’ve got a lot of greens. Is there turnip blight this year? I haven’t seen one baby turnip at any farmer’s market and the ones I grew myself make huge giant greens but there’s no turnip. I’m so sad because one of my favorite spring moments is the first bite of a baby turnip. I think I’ve got a potato plant out there which must be from compost. I just started the pumpkins and lemon cucumbers in the house.

In the back that giant bush is my raspberries. I’m going to have a huge raspberry crop this year. I can’t wait to have fresh raspberries for breakfast.

This isn’t my garden. This is the hedge between our house and the rental next door. I’ve mentioned to the last two tenants that they might want to talk to the homeowner about the hedge. It hasn’t been whacked back on their side in years and it’s out of control. It doesn’t ruin our lives and we’re not the most up-to-date whackers ourselves but it seems like a pretty basic homeowner issue that someone should give a crap about. Meanwhile, we’ve talked to the homeowner on the other side of the rental and she also has overgrown hedge issues. She’s much more motivated on this than we are. Now the rental is empty again and rumor has it that the homeowner lives overseas so we’ve teamed up to try to get some action on this.

Posted in garden | 2 Comments

From the Notes Stuck All Over My Desk

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Pamela

Office utility room before.

The weather lady said it was going to be 85 today. The first time it’s been that warm here since September 3rd. I cried a little when I read that. I got my new bathing suit out and a tub of SPF 5000, I can just dunk and go sit in the backyard and bake away.

After I watch the soccer game.

Office utility room after.

I have some advice. I think I’ve given it before but I fell victim to this yet again and I should know better. I’m reminding you. Write this down.

Never give a lawyer the only copy of something. Never. Don’t even let him (or her) touch it. Not even if s/he says they’re just taking it back to the office to make a copy and will bring it right back to you. Don’t do it. That document will disappear forever and make trouble for you.

I5 Interstate Bridge

For this week’s pie I tried Coconut-Sweet Potato Pie with Spiced Crust and it did not turn out wonderful. My spiced crust came out doody. I think the graham cracker stuff was a tad stale (my fault) but also the coconut bits give it a weird, unappealing bite. The filling was also, just okay. Of course we’ll still eat it but this will not be going into rotation.

Self Explanatory

I keep a piece of paper and a pen next to the TV so I can jot down things I want to remember later. I live in never-ending fear of forgetting something and I always think of things I don’t want to forget when I’m watching TV. Hence the system.

Of course, the notes are always cryptic and often written in semi-darkness so later when I look at my piece of paper it says stuff like: “make list [indecipherable]” or “make cook and do.” This week I found a note that says “long term plan, do it now.” I guess that’s not going to happen. I’m sure I’ll end up okay.

Last item: my story The Battle of Little Big Science has been reprinted at Expanded Horizons so if you haven’t seen it, now’s your big chance. Editor Dash found a great photo to post with it, too.

Posted in baking disasters, Clarion West, doing it wrong | 3 Comments