Pizza Cooking

Posted on August 28, 2002 by Pamela

Earlier this week I made some fabulous pizza sauce. I roasted a huge tray of tomatoes along with a big red onion and about 8 cloves of garlic. I ground the whole thing up in the food processor and then ran it through the ricer. That ricer is handy — I need to find a better place to put it so I can grab it more often. When I was ready to make my pizza I put the sauce in a pan and added several teaspoons of Penzey’s pizza spice and let the thing cook down for over an hour. For the crust I used the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for deep dish — the one with a potato. And for my topping I roasted a bunch of squash and zucchini with Italian spices and then stirred in some marinated artichoke hearts – spread that on the pizza and sprinkled the whole thing with Parmesan cheese. Came out excellent.

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Power Hour

Posted on August 26, 2002 by Pamela

For my power hour yesterday (in the yard) I hacked back Rhodies. I don’t know how healthy these plants are. The one out front looks mighty peaked and the super tall one in back — I’m trying to whack it down to my height which means I’m going to have nothing but sticks when I’m done. Yesterday was our 6 yr. anniversary and Bob took me to see Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and we had a nice dinner.

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Yoda, Naked

Posted on August 24, 2002 by Pamela

So can you tell that I have these major dry periods where I can’t think of a thing to blog about?

Well first, I think this opinion column from The Onion says it all: “while watching The Empire Strikes Back, the second act of which is practically all Yoda, not once did you wonder what he looked like naked?” And even though I think the article is hilarious — I have to admit, in all my endless wondering about Star Wars things, I never once wondered about Yoda naked.

In other news, Bob bought a digital camera this week. He’s already made a couple of movies which he showed me yesterday. One was “Bobman makes iced tea” and featured music by Topaz from High Sierra. Another one was called something like, “What my kitchen looks like, blurry.” Tonight he went to the Jazz Fest and train tracks for more footage. Yay.

My garden has finally kicked into gear — better late than never. Last weekend was my first tomato harvest — I got 6. (My early girl remained a single stick all summer long until I finally pulled it out to save it from complete embarrassment.) Today I got about 46. Last weekend when I saw Mom she gave me about 10 lbs. so yesterday I made pasta sauce and today I made minestrone with the leftovers. I think I’m going to make some pizza sauce and some salsa and get caught up for the rest of the weekend. Gardens have a way of making you hate them.

Finally, my cousin Kathy gave me an Obi-Wan Kenobi bank. You put money in (or press a button) and it lurches around with a light saber and says stuff about the Jedi. Then you can wave your hand in front of it and it will keep going. Now I have a Darth Vader phone (rings like the Darth Vader theme), an interactive Yoda with light saber, the Obi-Wan *and* and Darth Maul action figure. I take everything out of the box and actually play with it. Screw this collector stuff.

Oh, also we saw Great Big Sea, The Young Dubliners and Seven Nations on Tuesday night and it was super fabulous.

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Smoke on the Water

Posted on August 19, 2002 by Pamela

We went camping at Crater Lake this weekend. We met a whole bunch of the family there. The camping part was super fun — we had a great campsite with lots of room for everybody. But the smoke from the fires was bad and when we drove to see the Lake on Saturday, it was too smokey and we couldn’t see it. And the drive home today seemed to take forever and I’m unspeakably tired and will have to fill in more later.

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Change Your Life

Posted on August 15, 2002 by Pamela

Go to Trader Joes and buy the chili-lime mayo — then use it on everything. It will change your life.

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Tiger

Posted on August 14, 2002 by Pamela

This morning I saw Tiger on my walk for the first time in at least 2 months. Tiger is one of the coolest cats alive. I saw him sitting on a rock and I called to him and he looked at me and yawned and turned his head. Snotty little cat.

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I thought it would be funnier.

Posted on August 13, 2002 by Pamela

Bob and I ate dinner outside tonight and when Bob was carrying his dinner out – when he got to the door of the shop I heard some loud expletives and he stomped back into the house. I ran into the shop to see what happened, looking for salad strewn across the floor or a drink dumped onto his plate. All I saw were a few drips on the floor. He came out of the house and said, “I almost lost it all.” “Oh,” I said, “I ran in here. I thought it would be funnier.”

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Beastly Heat

Posted on August 12, 2002 by Pamela

I slept better last night yay. But the beastly heat is moving in so it’s a lot to hope for that the whole week will be filled with good sleeping. I screwed up my newsreader yesterday and now I can’t log in. I’m wondering if this might be a good thing. I can probably add a couple of hours a week to my life by ignoring that stuff. But I’m so addicted. H’ep.

In the meantime, you can find out All About Coffee.

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I Own Every Non-Original

Posted on August 11, 2002 by Pamela

Last night I could not fall asleep. It’s not like this doesn’t happen fairly regularly and usually I just stay there in pre-doze and try to think sleepy thoughts. Last night it was making me mad so I finally got up and finished watching The Claim that I taped off of Sundance. I’ve wanted to see it for a long time and for the most part I loved it but the story is pretty grim. Did Thomas Hardy hate his readers or what? After the movie I crawled back in bed and it still took another hour or so to fall asleep. I think I got to sleep at 2am.

Also last night I watched Rock Star. Was that movie made for me or what? I loved it except for the totally lame story. But the soundtrack was fabulous. I think I own every non-original on it already. And seeing all the rockers made me very happy.

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Impossible

Posted on August 11, 2002 by Pamela

Who invented conference room chairs and tables? Because somehow they managed to figure out a way that no matter what, you’re straddling a table leg. That would seem to be impossible. If they can do that why can’t they solve other impossible problems?

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