You're Doing It Wrong

stats
I check my blog stats about once a month partly out of curiosity and partly just to make sure nothing strange is happening. By strange I mean a surge in unexplained traffic. The only strange thing that’s happened several times is people on bulletin boards or social networking sites (is that what you call those?) like MySpace hotlinking an image from my site.

My favorite part of the stats is the top search strings. I get lots for “you’re doing it wrong” and numerous variations which surprises me because why would you look that up? They can’t all be looking for me. I also get a lot for reverse mullet and braids and this month Star Wars Valentine. I should probably link to what these correspond to, but I’m too lazy this morning.

The most perplexing one that almost always tops the list is Eva Green. When she first appeared I search online long enough to figure out she’s an actress but I know nothing about her and have never written about her. Apparently it comes up on a search because I wrote about a book called Eva in the same post about gardening some scratchy green branches.

I saw something about Eva Green presenting at the Oscars and thought: hey, there’s that lady. This morning Eva Green appeared on Go Fug Yourself. Now I know.

Disappear
I misplaced a CD a long time ago. I never looked that hard because I always assumed it would turn up in another CD case. For some reason I thought about it this weekend and decided to go through my entire CD collection and see if I could find it.

My collection isn’t substantial. When I lived in L.A. my apartment was a short walk away from at least 3 great record stores and at that time I had nothing better to do every weekend than troll around all three and buy stuff.

I got rid of a bunch of stuff when I moved to the PAC NW and since then my intake has dwindled to about 2 CDs a year, usually gifts.

I moved my CD storage thing and found oodles of dust and lots of CDs I’d completely forgotten about but no lost CD. (I’m not saying what it is because you’d laugh so hysterically you’d probably strain a muscle.)

So where could that CD have gone? I know it didn’t end up in the player because that’s where I looked when it was first lost. It couldn’t be lost behind some furniture because I moved everything during the big home improvement project.

Must be The Borrowers.

One Work Bowl Away From Insanity
Did I really write that I was thinking about more challenging cooking projects that took a bit of work? I must have forgotten my sanity shot that day.

On Friday I tackled a recipe that I knew my husband would love and I didn’t fully grasp what I was getting into until I’d already started and by then it was too late and I didn’t have a plan B so I slogged ahead.

This was a recipe that involved starting something in the food processor and tossing with something chopped and setting aside. Melting something in a saucepan, combining with something else and putting in the fridge. Mixer. Grater. Spatula. Measure 5 spices. Strain. Mix in a big bowl. Scrape into a baking dish.

By the time I was finished I was shrieking “bitch, bitch!” at the woman responsible for the recipe on the folded up piece of paper on the counter in my kitchen.

Still, it was delicious and it did make my dear husband happy.

We need to factor in that I was still sleep deprived and hormonal and frustrated with a situation that I don’t wish to discuss here. I don’t always mind big cooking projects. Timing is key.

On Saturday was the tamales which also destroyed half my kitchen so my mantra upon awakening this morning (through gritted teeth) was: no cooking, no cooking, no cooking.

And that would have been fine except I had a big pot of chicken broth from my tamale chicken and I hate to waste things. So I just threw together some chicken soup and a salad and that’s going to be my dinner.

Bob had tickets to six, I’m sure thrilling, hours of jazz, which he took his mother to. I graciously decided to stay home. (Meaning I didn’t want to go.)

It’s storming right now. I’m going to peek at the Oscars and decide between that and the two chick flicks I have stacked by the TV.

The Sky’s Alive With Turned On Television Sets
I’m cheating and posting this Friday because Saturday is going to be my no computer day and I’m going to make tamales and draw and stuff.

I saw in the news somewhere that Lost has been losing viewers and this person was putting forth the theory that it was like The X-Files and people are turned off by the confusing and convoluted plot. I was a HUGE X-Files fan and I loved the show continuously regardless of the convoluted plot until Mulder left because the best part of the X-Files was the connection between Mulder and Scully and not whether or not aliens were vaccinating the Klingons, or whatever.

Lost started losing me last season when it became less interesting and most of the characters became unsympathetic. Why do I care about these people?

Nothing happens on this show. We never move forward. It’s the same thing over and over. If I have to watch one more close up of Kate’s trembling lower lip and then outburst that “because they’re going to kill ___” [insert Jack or Sawyer] one more time, I’m going to brain myself with the remote control. We’re, what nine episodes into season 3 and we’ve seen how many characters? I love Jack, too. But an entire episode about his tattoo?

It started losing me halfway through last season because it was so awful and Michael couldn’t go 5 minutes without saying, “My son!” and then Claire couldn’t go 5 minutes without saying, “My baby!” But then, the end perked up and I got back into it. I don’t hate the show but it’s not my first choice when the DVR is filled with shows.

And while I’m bitching about shows, let’s talk about 24. I wasn’t even going to watch 24 but I have some fans in my office and I didn’t want to be out of the loop if it turned out really good. The only thing I like in 24 is Jack Bauer. But holy crap, this show wrote the book on the same thing over and over.

Every season we have to have a bunch of really stupid bystanders to stand around saying stuff like, “Jack, what’s happening?” and “Jack, I’m afraid” and what about scene after scene after scene where they download the schematics of the Louvre onto Jack’s PDA even though they’re top secret but somehow it always works and there are never any platform issues or software glitches. Chloe says, “Jack, I can’t do that.” and Jack says, “Chloe, you have to try.” And 2 seconds later: ta da! It’s done. In less time that it takes to update your operating system they can redirect satellites and have a team at the landing pad in a remote area located 4 hours of gridlock away.

And then there’s always someone trying screw-over the president. I’m going to delete from the DVR and just keep up by overhearing people talk about it at the office. Maybe.

Finally, I’d like to talk about Heroes. I liked it enough to add it when it started and I’ve enjoyed it. They have Steven-freaking-Carrington on the show for Pete’s sake. But holymoly has a show ever gone from zero to we-take-ourselves-too-damn-seriously faster? And it’s kind of like the shows above, we’re barely moving forward. I want something to happen. Not just everyone standing around crying/bitching/confused about their abilities. I thought The 4400 had abilities.

I’m sticking with the show although the Niki/Jessica plot is completely uninteresting. But I love Matt Parkman and I really love Hiro, my favorite TV character in a long, long time.

Also, just in case I haven’t said it lately, Veronica Mars is the best thing on television.

Bob took this photo I can’t remember what year, maybe 2000-ish and we were at a Filmpark in Germany.

Job History
My first job out of college I worked at a place that helped people get a contractor’s license in the state of California. My job title was research assistant and the place called itself a school and I suppose that’s at least partly true.

At that time, individuals seeking a contractor’s license needed 4 years of experience and then they had to fill out a somewhat complicated application and take a lengthy examination. I have no idea how they do it now. What our company did was take an experienced applicant and completed his application and prepared him for the examination.

You could make a good argument that we weren’t doing the world a great service because the operation was based on a hardcore sales drill. Some of those men were shamed into signing up for the course and many of them weren’t smart enough to do the application or pass the examination without our expert hand-holding. Do you really want that guy building your swimming pool?

And for the record in terms of gender, I remember one woman going through the entire time I was with the operation which I think was about 2 years. There were some complications with that job that I’m not going to get into right now and but let’s just say that the people who ran the place were not very nice but I liked my job and working with the students.

The purpose of this post is to mention a particular student that I thought about yesterday when I was driving home from work coming up under the topic of: I wonder whatever become of _______________.

Once the salesman finished emptying the student’s wallet, he was brought to me for processing which included collecting information for the application. They had to choose a name for their contractor’s business and it couldn’t be vague or misleading. You couldn’t call it “Super Special Contractors Inc.” if your license was just for plumbing. And if you were a sole proprietorship you couldn’t have a business name that sounded plural.

I remember this one guy and his wife who sat there bouncing a tiny baby on her lap and they wanted to call the business Joe-Bob Plumber & Son. I explained the whole sole proprietor/not plural thing and they were disappointed. They hoped their son would want to go into business with his father someday.

I was horrified that this poor little baby, couldn’t even walk yet, was already saddled with the expectation of taking over his father’s business. (And if I recall further, Dad didn’t pass the examination on his first attempt.)

So I wonder what happened to that kid. He’d be old enough to work with the old man now. Did he go for the plumbing or did he run off to New York to become a dancer and bitterly disappoint his parents?

The photo is from around 1974 and that’s me with the pretty smile and my grandfather, Fred Wilder of the Orleans Wilders.

Wide Awake I’m Not Sleeping
The sleep thing WAS going a lot better. I woke up at 4:30am every other day this week and since I go to bed between 9pm and 10pm, that’s decent enough sleep to keep me functional and not a danger to myself or others. This morning I woke up at 2:30am. Wide awake, brain grinding on overdrive. By 3:30am I wept quietly into my pillow. Enough already.

I came to work early. I’m going to get my stuff done and do some cleaning and organizing this afternoon since my brain is going to be mush. Then I’m going to leave early and relax this evening and sleep like a baby tonight. This is just a phase. Everything is just a phase.

On to part 2 of my new recipe procurement strategy.

The main challenge is to find things that we both like. Bob’s favorite meal is meat with a huge side portion of meat and extra meat on the other side. I prefer to accessorize with meat and usually only with seafood and poultry. My favorite foods often involve legumes and greens which Bob will politely eat a portion of and then root around in the refrigerator to see if there is any meat. Fortunately he is very happy with seafood and poultry and I almost always have a package of Trader Joes sausages in the fridge that can be whipped up and served alongside the lentil chard soup.

The next issue is the ingredient list. I love rich fatty food as much as the next person and Bob even more than that but I don’t think it’s healthy for us to eat a trough of macaroni and cheese three nights a week. So any recipes that call for two cups of heavy cream or 3 pounds of cheese are rarely brought out. I also don’t like frying even though I think browned things are delicious so any recipe with extensive frying is generally skipped over.

Also remember I had this digestive meltdown last year which if you’re truly interested you can find here. Start around April 10th. Going back and finding that I see that last April I also made gumbo and had insomnia. At that time the two were related because the gumbo turned my digestive system into a rebel attack on me, the empire, and I couldn’t sleep during any of the battle scenes. Since then the rebels have been conquered although there are minor uprisings if I eat more than a tiny serving of anything fatty and delicious like French fries or chips.

The other ingredient tidbit is I hate when a recipe has about 35 items, 25 of which you don’t normally have on hand and especially those things where you have to buy a bottle of something that costs $16 and you only use 1 tablespoon.

This weekend I think I’m going to make tamales which is not a new thing. I think my next new thing is going to be paella and I need to buy smoked paprika and I need to start scouting out recipes.

Pudding
Both the Oregonian and NYT Food sections have big articles about pudding this week. Completely different articles written by different people. Is late February pudding season? Does pudding go hand in hand with the Lent season? What secrets does pudding have to offer?

Both articles include something called Indian Pudding, NYT’s is Indian Cornmeal Pudding and this apparently has some connection to American Indians. I had no idea. Where did the tribes get the milk?

I recently found a blog via megnut where a woman is going to cook everything in the French Laundry cookbook. I thought she had a post where she talked about challenging herself in the kitchen and I’m not finding it right now so either I’m making it up or just can’t find it because, as usual, I’m doing this in a big hurry. This is just like the whole Julie/Julia project where another woman cooked everything in Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking Cookbook.

I’m not insane enough to attempt to cook every recipe in a single cookbook but this got me thinking about trying harder to find recipes for things I haven’t made that would be fun and yummy and take some work. The thing I like about cooking is the tangible reward after all the work is done that can be shared and appreciated by others. My least favorite part about cooking is dishes.

I don’t mind general dish duty but when I’m into a big complicated thing and every pot and bowl and tray and spatula in the kitchen gets dirty and I have to constantly stop and wash and dry for reuse, or put away so I have a place for the next steps or else I have to reconfigure the dishwasher to cram more stuff in or empty it and that eventually makes me cranky. I should point out that I’m the kind of person who can’t go to bed if there are dirty dishes in the sink.

At the moment I’m wondering about making one of these pudding recipes this weekend and I have more to say but there are people paying me to write a memo about the Indian Civil Rights Act and not to write about me and my recipe selection strategy so perhaps a sequel tomorrow.

My Office Window

(Dang, when I first did this I had cute little arrows pointed to the different items but when I saved it they disappeared and I don’t have time to fix it right now. OOF!)

Update: Okay, arrows fixed. What I forgot to mention earlier was how he cleaned the window. He has a little suction cup and he used it to help himself swing back and forth like a tick-tock — I swear I’m not kidding — and he swept his squeegee back and forth to clean the window. It took about 10 years off my life just watching him (meaning trying very carefully not to watch him).

And to answer angelfeet’s question: this is only the second time in two years I’ve had someone wash the outside window and last time they used one of those elevator bench things that goes up and down and it was two guys. I hope we do have the same guy because a photo series would be awesome. I also thought it was funny that as soon as I took out my camera he stopped what he was doing and smiled for me.

The Kitchen of the Sahara Continues
So I tried this new cookie recipe from the newspaper and what a giant forking disaster. I was supposed to beat some butter with sugars and then add a mixture of flour, cocoa and baking soda. There was salt, baking soda and vanilla as well. The recipe said it might be a tad crumbly but not to worry about it. Divide my dough.

Does anyone see a problem here?

I actually stood there with the recipe in my hand thinking: okay, I know what a stick of butter is, right? I know what a cup of flour is, right? I even know that if you just scoop your measuring cup in the flour you’re likely to scoop too much so I don’t do it that way. I have no idea what went wrong but either the recipe was corrected later and I missed it or the magical drying vortex of my kitchen struck again.

That pile of dust can’t even fake being dough. Side note: the scary red color comes from the raspberry-chocolate chips.

I gamely packed my dust into logs by sheer force of will and wrapped them tightly! with plastic wrap and stuck them in the freezer. Then I made the gumbo which turned out fantastic. There are few cooking smells as delicious as when the finely chopped celery, onion and bell pepper hit the roux in the pan.

Time to bake the cookies.

That red thing is the silicone baking mat which at this point, I don’t love or hate. The recipe said not to worry if when I sliced my cookies, they got a little crumbly, just stick the cookie bits back together.

The cookies that look like turds? Those are crumbs I squeezed in my fist to get them to hold together.

The whole mess was still crumbly out of the oven but I thought what the hell: we’ll call it scrapple. Wikipedia says that scrapple is a savory mush and something about offal. What’s that stuff they have at the frozen yogurt store that looks like cookie crumbles? I thought they called that scrapple.

Bob ate half the pan and said they were great.

I finally took the time to figure out how to use Google Reader and I would give you a link but everything I try just brings up my Google Reader which as it turns out, is sort of like every time a drug addict turns on his computer, there’s a big pile of drugs sitting there.

I thought this was going to be a great time saving device and I wouldn’t be clicking on blogs that haven’t been updated. No this has turned into an obsession of I must keep up with every post. It tracks all my blogs even when I’m not around so when I log on, all the posts I used to miss, are right there waiting for me. To be perfectly honest I completely love it.

I had a fabulous day in the sun. I took a few photos. My NaBlo prize, in part, was a Flickr Pro account and I’m trying to use it more although can’t stop suffering from photo insecurity. Here’s the feed if you want to subscribe. You can do that with Google Reader, too. I can’t believe I’m pimping for Google.

On my walk a dog ran out and barked at me and chased me. I should have taken a photo but it all happened so fast. Of course, the dog was a big as my fist and wearing a pink sweater and his people were calling him (her, it, whatever) Mimi so I wasn’t scared this time.

Tomorrow is no computer day and I’m planning on some writing and sewing and making of delicious gumbo. And feeding the sourdough. I can’t get that baby to thrive.