Tuesday, January 27, 2009
perhaps something grand
Blog(s) is/are on hiatus temporarily: a small and distant light flickers in the darkness and draws me near. I will return in about a month, though sooner if I am wrong.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
And to your right...
you'll notice I added another gadget. Since I'm not actually concocting my own recipes from scratch and my apartment is too under-lit for decent food photography (yes, I blame the light and not my junk skillz (no, that's not a typo, I'm just feeling that dork at the moment)), I've decided to just create a list of links to whatever recipes I do try, accompanied by my own succinct commentary, instead of devoting entire blog entries to them.
a lot can be done when one is avoiding doing what needs to be done.
I scapegoat my loneliness as an inability to find people of similar disposition, but in actuality it is solely the product of a hindrance in communication on my part, an inability to find a satisfactory or effective means of self-expression, which has no relevance to the existence or non-existence of others.
My thoughts drift today to my grandfather's life. A month or so before I was born he suffered a severe stroke, which completely paralyzed half his body and reduced his effective vocabulary to less than a hundred words (many of them curses). It took him nearly a year to relearn how to walk just enough to move from the TV den to the bathroom, a process which took most people just ten seconds but for him could take up to ten minutes. Any retelling of my birth is always associated with the story of how my father took me to his father, who was still in the hospital, hoping that the sight of a new grandchild would bring him joy, only to have my grandfather burst into tears refusing to pick me up for fear of dropping me. Once, as teenagers, my sister asked if it bothered me that my age was always associated with our grandfather's stroke. Prior to that I had never really noticed that every birthday I celebrated with my father's family was always accompanied by a sigh as someone would inevitably mention aloud that he/she couldn't believe that it had been X amount of years since Grampie got sick, and everyone would fall into a hush, drifting away into his/her own thoughts.
My grandfather spent the entirety of his waking hours in front of the television, usually cursing at the Cubs game after game. The few times they reached the playoffs I would always silently root for them, indifferent to my distaste for baseball, because I knew it would bring a moment of happiness for my grandfather's otherwise frustrated life. (And of course, never once did they win.) In fact my grandfather spent much of his post-stroke life in a hostile state, bored, immobilized, and unable to communicate. There were few things he needed, and he could generally point or mutter a single syllable to my grandmother and she would dutifully drop whatever she was doing to fetch him another beer, a new ice cube for his cranberry juice, or the TV guide. Whenever she or anyone else could not interpret what he was asking for, he would get frustrated, unable to remember the appropriate word, and start cursing as the person listed off thing after thing, guessing at what he was trying to say. Sometimes the person would get it right and he'd smile, but much of the time he'd give up, turning his gaze back to the television.
My interaction with him as a child was minimal but never awkward. The only memory I have of him laughing whole-heartedly was when we were watching Tom & Jerry cartoons together. My grandmother would host Christmas Eve every year, always making my grandfather come out and sit with the family as we opened presents before dinner. Unable to follow the various conflicting conversations, he would look across the room towards me and my sister playing, and with his good hand make the gesture of a gun and shoot us both as we'd drop to the floor, staging our melodramatic death scenes; however, we would always recover quickly, gang up on him, pressing our imaginary triggers, and he would slump his head slightly over with eyes closed, limply sticking out his tongue as we both giggled away.
For sixteen years my grandmother acted more as nurse than wife to him, washing him, dressing him, and cutting up his food for him, until she too suffered the same stroke, on the same side of the body. I can't imagine how that was for my grandfather, to see her suddenly paralyzed, unable to help her, unable to call 9-1-1. He screamed and stomped until the downstairs neighbors used the spare key to see what the commotion was over. My grandmother died a week later in the hospital.
For almost two years the family tried to divvy up the task of care-taking. My father and his sister, both divorced and overworked, lived in distant suburbs, making it an arduous ordeal to come visit or help out, though not for lack of trying. My sister helped out as best she could but was also attending college in the city and dealing with her toughest year in nursing school. I, only recently having obtained my driver's license and still considered the baby of the family, was willing to do more but was generally dismissed as too young and told that focusing on school was more important. Somewhat luckily, my lone cousin, unemployed and directionless, moved into the apartment, playing Xbox at all hours to my grandfather's playful annoyance, but otherwise providing the unfeigned needed support.
Usually my sister and I would go together to spend time with him and help out, but generally after a few hours he'd look at us and say, "go". We'd intermittently battle with him with pouts, smiles, and shrugs as our weapons but he would keep trying to shoo us away. I'm the only person in the family who never knew my grandfather prior to his stroke. Like his three brothers, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a Chicago policeman. He worked as an undercover narc during the '60s and '70s, and my father remembers him as a very quiet, proud, and dauntingly serious man. Being incapacitated and having his granddaughters spend their Saturday night watching over him was often too much of a humiliation for him to bear. I remember one time, when my sister was too busy studying for a major test, I went over there by myself to make him dinner and watch the ballgame, excited to be helping out on my own. I walked in with a smile and he looked at me confused. When I told him my plans to stay he got upset, shaking his head and telling me to leave. I battled with him until he finally made a gun gesture with his hand and pointed it to his temple, saying "shoot me". I immediately turned around to walked out of the room and went into the kitchen, crying silently. I made dinner for us, went back in and stayed with him for as long he would let me.
My grandfather lived another eight years, being moved into a number of assisted living homes closer in distance to his two children all the while maintaining a horrible temper, which erupted into many staff phone calls to his children, nearly getting him kicked out a few times. Slowly his health deteriorated into further unthinkable states. He died two weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday.
I didn't mean to drag this out into forlorn details, which probably was unnecessary and I'll most likely lament my doing so later (as I've never held any of this open for conversation), but with everything going on with my family right now, I can't help but drift away in such reflections. I have a lot of apprehensions about marriage, family, growing old gracefully, etc. that consistently get me labeled as a pessimistic, commitment-phobe. If a conversation about having children ever came up with a serious boyfriend, I would always say no, with the excuse that I knew I couldn't handle taking care of a child by myself (as my mother for the most part did). Whenever the possibility of marriage comes up (however whimsically), I immediately think to myself, would I be willing to care for this suitor for sixteen years if he were to take ill? Threats of such extreme sacrifice linger in my head whenever considering potential long-term decisions involving others that I do not take them light-heartedly. I have so many ambitions that I want to accomplish as an individual, and my own self-doubts already occupy so much of my struggle, that I do my best not to take on further responsibilities without feeling willing to commit myself to them completely. This isn't fear, my friends, this is knowing what I want.
My thoughts drift today to my grandfather's life. A month or so before I was born he suffered a severe stroke, which completely paralyzed half his body and reduced his effective vocabulary to less than a hundred words (many of them curses). It took him nearly a year to relearn how to walk just enough to move from the TV den to the bathroom, a process which took most people just ten seconds but for him could take up to ten minutes. Any retelling of my birth is always associated with the story of how my father took me to his father, who was still in the hospital, hoping that the sight of a new grandchild would bring him joy, only to have my grandfather burst into tears refusing to pick me up for fear of dropping me. Once, as teenagers, my sister asked if it bothered me that my age was always associated with our grandfather's stroke. Prior to that I had never really noticed that every birthday I celebrated with my father's family was always accompanied by a sigh as someone would inevitably mention aloud that he/she couldn't believe that it had been X amount of years since Grampie got sick, and everyone would fall into a hush, drifting away into his/her own thoughts.
My grandfather spent the entirety of his waking hours in front of the television, usually cursing at the Cubs game after game. The few times they reached the playoffs I would always silently root for them, indifferent to my distaste for baseball, because I knew it would bring a moment of happiness for my grandfather's otherwise frustrated life. (And of course, never once did they win.) In fact my grandfather spent much of his post-stroke life in a hostile state, bored, immobilized, and unable to communicate. There were few things he needed, and he could generally point or mutter a single syllable to my grandmother and she would dutifully drop whatever she was doing to fetch him another beer, a new ice cube for his cranberry juice, or the TV guide. Whenever she or anyone else could not interpret what he was asking for, he would get frustrated, unable to remember the appropriate word, and start cursing as the person listed off thing after thing, guessing at what he was trying to say. Sometimes the person would get it right and he'd smile, but much of the time he'd give up, turning his gaze back to the television.
My interaction with him as a child was minimal but never awkward. The only memory I have of him laughing whole-heartedly was when we were watching Tom & Jerry cartoons together. My grandmother would host Christmas Eve every year, always making my grandfather come out and sit with the family as we opened presents before dinner. Unable to follow the various conflicting conversations, he would look across the room towards me and my sister playing, and with his good hand make the gesture of a gun and shoot us both as we'd drop to the floor, staging our melodramatic death scenes; however, we would always recover quickly, gang up on him, pressing our imaginary triggers, and he would slump his head slightly over with eyes closed, limply sticking out his tongue as we both giggled away.
For sixteen years my grandmother acted more as nurse than wife to him, washing him, dressing him, and cutting up his food for him, until she too suffered the same stroke, on the same side of the body. I can't imagine how that was for my grandfather, to see her suddenly paralyzed, unable to help her, unable to call 9-1-1. He screamed and stomped until the downstairs neighbors used the spare key to see what the commotion was over. My grandmother died a week later in the hospital.
For almost two years the family tried to divvy up the task of care-taking. My father and his sister, both divorced and overworked, lived in distant suburbs, making it an arduous ordeal to come visit or help out, though not for lack of trying. My sister helped out as best she could but was also attending college in the city and dealing with her toughest year in nursing school. I, only recently having obtained my driver's license and still considered the baby of the family, was willing to do more but was generally dismissed as too young and told that focusing on school was more important. Somewhat luckily, my lone cousin, unemployed and directionless, moved into the apartment, playing Xbox at all hours to my grandfather's playful annoyance, but otherwise providing the unfeigned needed support.
Usually my sister and I would go together to spend time with him and help out, but generally after a few hours he'd look at us and say, "go". We'd intermittently battle with him with pouts, smiles, and shrugs as our weapons but he would keep trying to shoo us away. I'm the only person in the family who never knew my grandfather prior to his stroke. Like his three brothers, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a Chicago policeman. He worked as an undercover narc during the '60s and '70s, and my father remembers him as a very quiet, proud, and dauntingly serious man. Being incapacitated and having his granddaughters spend their Saturday night watching over him was often too much of a humiliation for him to bear. I remember one time, when my sister was too busy studying for a major test, I went over there by myself to make him dinner and watch the ballgame, excited to be helping out on my own. I walked in with a smile and he looked at me confused. When I told him my plans to stay he got upset, shaking his head and telling me to leave. I battled with him until he finally made a gun gesture with his hand and pointed it to his temple, saying "shoot me". I immediately turned around to walked out of the room and went into the kitchen, crying silently. I made dinner for us, went back in and stayed with him for as long he would let me.
My grandfather lived another eight years, being moved into a number of assisted living homes closer in distance to his two children all the while maintaining a horrible temper, which erupted into many staff phone calls to his children, nearly getting him kicked out a few times. Slowly his health deteriorated into further unthinkable states. He died two weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday.
I didn't mean to drag this out into forlorn details, which probably was unnecessary and I'll most likely lament my doing so later (as I've never held any of this open for conversation), but with everything going on with my family right now, I can't help but drift away in such reflections. I have a lot of apprehensions about marriage, family, growing old gracefully, etc. that consistently get me labeled as a pessimistic, commitment-phobe. If a conversation about having children ever came up with a serious boyfriend, I would always say no, with the excuse that I knew I couldn't handle taking care of a child by myself (as my mother for the most part did). Whenever the possibility of marriage comes up (however whimsically), I immediately think to myself, would I be willing to care for this suitor for sixteen years if he were to take ill? Threats of such extreme sacrifice linger in my head whenever considering potential long-term decisions involving others that I do not take them light-heartedly. I have so many ambitions that I want to accomplish as an individual, and my own self-doubts already occupy so much of my struggle, that I do my best not to take on further responsibilities without feeling willing to commit myself to them completely. This isn't fear, my friends, this is knowing what I want.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::random eavesdrop:
DANSE RUSSE
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
- William Carlos Williams
recurrences and gaps
It's snowing outside. I have a window seat, and my cafe is wondrously empty. I have consumed the best oatmeal (fluff-tastic!) with dried cranberries and I don't plan on leaving until well after dark, to spend the day in the solitude (amid people - my urban addiction) of my own thoughts and putting those thoughts to paper (or screen rather - my technology addiction). I spent yesterday evening with friends and there was a sense of insincerity, a boredom, penetrating the entire evening, as if we all felt we needed to be there, as if we were avoiding an emptiness of which we did not want to speak of, but that emptiness was all the more obviated by the awkwardness of each other's company. I felt it in each of us but I am unsure if they all felt it within themselves.
The End of Solitude (my oatmeal morning read):
"Under those circumstances, the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing. We should never forget that. It has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another and marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent can stay in touch with far-flung friends. The gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as the Internet's dimensionality has grown, it has quickly become too much of a good thing. Ten years ago we were writing e-mail messages on desktop computers and transmitting them over dial-up connections. Now we are sending text messages on our cellphones, posting pictures on our Facebook pages, and following complete strangers on Twitter. A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone.
"As a result, we are losing both sides of the Romantic dialectic. What does friendship mean when you have 532 'friends'? How does it enhance my sense of closeness when my Facebook News Feed tells me that Sally Smith (whom I haven't seen since high school, and wasn't all that friendly with even then) 'is making coffee and staring off into space'? My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude."
"Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television."
I rarely ever feel bored when alone; whenever panic does strike it is only in the sense that I am wasting my time frivolously. Is this pole any better of an affliction? Is its cause not of the same source? I can't breathe without a heavy dose of solitude but I don't think that condemns me to be alone; the distinction is crucial.
This could be an interesting read.
There is a class at Wash. U. this semester on Joyce's Ulysses and I am surrounded by five or so people reading it at different tables. For some reason I find this to be a comforting addition to the ambiance here. The pair at the table adjacent to me breaks their individual work so that the man (who has already read the novel) can ask his friend (who's reading the novel) that if she ever figures out who the man in the macintosh coat is that she has to tell him, as he's been dying to figure that one out. This somehow shifts to a conversation on the works Henry James.
I keep to myself, enjoying the momentary drift of eavesdropping, but hoping that the conversation doesn't last too long so I can get back to my own work.
And I see this man's name all the time yet never get around to reading anything by or about him to a great enough extent that I actually retain it.
I recently (and finally!) bought a collection of Emerson essays. I sleep with it but I've yet to crack it open. I'm waiting until my feet dangle upon the edge, as they inevitably tend to do, looking downward upon a desperate end. Only then will I open it up and feel my center of gravity shift gently backwards, and I will fall away from harm to marvel upon a warm blue sky.
The End of Solitude (my oatmeal morning read):
"Under those circumstances, the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing. We should never forget that. It has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another and marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent can stay in touch with far-flung friends. The gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as the Internet's dimensionality has grown, it has quickly become too much of a good thing. Ten years ago we were writing e-mail messages on desktop computers and transmitting them over dial-up connections. Now we are sending text messages on our cellphones, posting pictures on our Facebook pages, and following complete strangers on Twitter. A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone.
"As a result, we are losing both sides of the Romantic dialectic. What does friendship mean when you have 532 'friends'? How does it enhance my sense of closeness when my Facebook News Feed tells me that Sally Smith (whom I haven't seen since high school, and wasn't all that friendly with even then) 'is making coffee and staring off into space'? My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude."
"Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television."
I rarely ever feel bored when alone; whenever panic does strike it is only in the sense that I am wasting my time frivolously. Is this pole any better of an affliction? Is its cause not of the same source? I can't breathe without a heavy dose of solitude but I don't think that condemns me to be alone; the distinction is crucial.
This could be an interesting read.
There is a class at Wash. U. this semester on Joyce's Ulysses and I am surrounded by five or so people reading it at different tables. For some reason I find this to be a comforting addition to the ambiance here. The pair at the table adjacent to me breaks their individual work so that the man (who has already read the novel) can ask his friend (who's reading the novel) that if she ever figures out who the man in the macintosh coat is that she has to tell him, as he's been dying to figure that one out. This somehow shifts to a conversation on the works Henry James.
I keep to myself, enjoying the momentary drift of eavesdropping, but hoping that the conversation doesn't last too long so I can get back to my own work.
And I see this man's name all the time yet never get around to reading anything by or about him to a great enough extent that I actually retain it.
I recently (and finally!) bought a collection of Emerson essays. I sleep with it but I've yet to crack it open. I'm waiting until my feet dangle upon the edge, as they inevitably tend to do, looking downward upon a desperate end. Only then will I open it up and feel my center of gravity shift gently backwards, and I will fall away from harm to marvel upon a warm blue sky.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
intimacy
Again, I'm having apprehensions about the direction I want to take this blog (as if the minimal amount of posts, mostly consisting of me quoting other texts, didn't already give that away). Something happened over winter break, which I have not discussed with anyone (not even with those involved since it occurred), and although I am finally settling back into everyday living, I can only assume that it is only a matter of time before this looming cloud strikes another storm. In the meantime, I have begun devoting a significant part of my free time to a certain task, which I have no interest in discussing due to my own superstitions (though this effort could prove suddenly futile within a matter of weeks). So as much as I use writing as a means of making sense of what's going on in my life, I am hesitant about doing so here for fear of my own tendency of repetitious exhibitionism. I generally enjoy open discussion and the imposed self-censorship in these two respects has rendered me a bit blank as to what exactly I can and should discuss here.
Earlier today I wrote an e-mail to a friend. We try to write each other daily, but sometimes can go weeks where one's too busy at work to write back. Since his last e-mail somewhat finished the subject we had been discussing back and forth, I started another tangent conversation. I'm posting an excerpt containing this portion purely because I haven't written anything even mildly thoughtful here in what seems to be months. I had wanted to touch upon this topic in depth for some time now, but just haven't felt in the mood to do so. Even now, I find myself too exhausted and instead cheat by tossing in text that was used for something else and only scratches upon the surface-level questions of a topic I would like to explore further. Perhaps a few more e-mails with my friend will yield conclusions less obvious.
This is another quote, related in my own thoughts though maybe not so readily with what's given here, that I meant to elaborate upon but didn't trust myself to do so level-headed, but perhaps it speaks for itself: "To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune." (This is taken from Chaplin's autobiography actually.)
It feels kind of like this:
Maybe I've hesitated on these subjects because I suspect my own thoughts to be so considerably skewed. Maybe that is why I instead look for insights from others.
Earlier today I wrote an e-mail to a friend. We try to write each other daily, but sometimes can go weeks where one's too busy at work to write back. Since his last e-mail somewhat finished the subject we had been discussing back and forth, I started another tangent conversation. I'm posting an excerpt containing this portion purely because I haven't written anything even mildly thoughtful here in what seems to be months. I had wanted to touch upon this topic in depth for some time now, but just haven't felt in the mood to do so. Even now, I find myself too exhausted and instead cheat by tossing in text that was used for something else and only scratches upon the surface-level questions of a topic I would like to explore further. Perhaps a few more e-mails with my friend will yield conclusions less obvious.
Something I've been mulling over recently… what types of roles do your friends play in your life / what do you expect out of someone to consider them a friend (versus just as an acquaintance or co-worker/collaborator, etc.)? Perhaps I'm trying to be too rigid in my definitions instead of just accepting my relationships with people as they come and go. Or perhaps I'm becoming too demanding of people that aren't meeting my tacit expectations (which is such a stereotypical female fault that I can't help but cringe whenever I do catch myself acting so). I'm not sure what in particular instigated this sentiment, but I find myself incredibly disappointed lately in my relationships with other people. Everybody seems so busy within their own lives (myself included of course) that they hardly ever seem to have time to connect with one another. I meet up with my one girl friend maybe about once a month nowadays and we spend so much of our conversations just playing catch up on tedious enumerations of what's been going on in our lives since we last met up that genuine discourse (and thereby connection) never actually occurs. My least favorite question: what's new? It drives me nuts to be asked this by friends and I'm not completely sure why. Perhaps because underlining that question is just how disconnected we've become - that conversation no longer flows out naturally but has to be forced out through a vague request. And why does there have to be anything new? It irritates me so much that I've started purposely withholding information from her as if to say (again, tacitly), what right do you have to know what's going on in my life if you choose not to make yourself a part of it? But then, how much of an effort have I made to maintain our friendship since she moved in with her boyfriend? I'll stereotype some more and admit that I've consistently avoided befriending girls that seek marriage and children as key components to their future happiness because I've noticed how much everything (and everyone) else becomes a far lower priority, i.e. used to fill in the down time or to break up the routine. (More accurately though, I have a tendency of avoiding interaction with females in general for reasons that go beyond the present topic.) I see a number of my friendships disintegrating in a similar fashion: lunch dates, dinner dates, tag voicemails, all initiated upon the temporal excuse that it's been so long since we've caught up! (Ergh, did I use "temporal" correctly? I'm too lazy to decide myself.) I've never been one to have acquaintances (part of my excessive all or nothing, perfectionist nature), but as we all get older and more involved within our little, separated worlds that's what our interactions are resolving into. Even the new people I've met in recent months, and within the past couple of years, seem to desire nothing more than going out to dinner or going to a concert or anything so long as we're doing something, where conversation about our thoughts or our emotions are reserved for the down time after we've already exhausted talking about how our week was. Are relationships (of the bf/gf variety) the only form of intimacy (of the emotional variety) adults desire to achieve? Again, I'm probably misdirecting my frustration, accusing human interaction itself instead of my own inability to bring up such topics at random if they truly are what I want to talk about, but such topics can't really be brought up at random without sounding awkward or forced, no? If we still lived in the same city and didn't interact so primarily through e-mail, would our friendship have dissolved similarly? Would your being now married have actually had affect (effect?) on our friendship in that case as well? (As I don't think it has changed anything here.) Maybe I just need to convert all my in-person friendships into asynchronous text-based interactions as the solution. ;-)
This is another quote, related in my own thoughts though maybe not so readily with what's given here, that I meant to elaborate upon but didn't trust myself to do so level-headed, but perhaps it speaks for itself: "To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune." (This is taken from Chaplin's autobiography actually.)
It feels kind of like this:
Maybe I've hesitated on these subjects because I suspect my own thoughts to be so considerably skewed. Maybe that is why I instead look for insights from others.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
checking in
I've nearly got my new laptop all loaded. I even swapped out hard drives and finally managed to get my new "superior" wireless router configured and secured. However, in one of my psychotic fits I did manage to leave all my dead laptop's data at my mom's house, but hopefully it will be shipped to me soon. (I miss my web bookmarks!) I'm still trying to play catch-up, so it's gonna be awhile before blogging resumes to its original/new capacities. Until then, one last cooking blog since I seem to be occupying much of my time lately cooking and recipe hunting.
Chickpea Broccoli Casserole:
Not exactly the most visually appetizing dish. Although simplistic in flavors it's great comfort food. The recipe is from, again, VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE; it's super easy to make and the mashed chickpeas work as a good protein source for making casseroles.
Blueberry Coffeecake:
This is probably my favorites recipe out of VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE so far. I slyly left it in the break room at work when I came in in the morning and the vultures devoured it with impressive speed. Even the co-workers who knew I made it, and therefore were suspicious of its ingredients, enjoyed it without complaint, well, except for the one who is allergic to walnuts (an ingredient I neglected to mention when he asked what was in it), but I'm sure the slight lisp he developed for the remainder of the day was totally worth it! Next time I'll add more blueberries and cinnamon. It wasn't quite as sweet as I would have liked it to have been but that may be due to the fact that I was slightly short of the required amount of maple syrup listed.
Brazilian Stew:
This is sooooooooooo good. And I don't think it's just because it's passed 3pm and I haven't eaten yet today. (I'm writing this as I wait for my second bowl's worth to cool down enough to eat.) The recipe is from Show Me Vegan, a cooking (and St. Louis) resource I'm very much enjoying recently. Who knew coconut milk and beer could be so good together?! For that matter, who knew beer could be good. Cilantro is one of my favorite herbs; I especially enjoy it in Vietnamese cooking but most of the best dishes at the local Vietnamese restaurants that pack in the herb are not vegetarian friendly. My mind is already fluttering with ingredients I can add and subtract to make even better variants.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
the cooking fiend
At least being without a computer for the next two weeks gives me more time to focus on my goal of improving my very limited cooking skills. I have a few cookbooks and a sundry stack of printed recipes that I will be working from. So to begin, I finally cracked the binding and spilled all sorts of ingredients upon my copy of Vegan with a Vengeance. I saw this book referenced repeatedly when I was searching through vegetarian blogs for recipes, so I figured it should be a pretty good place to start. Below are my first three tries. (Since the recipes are under copyright and I followed them to a tee, I won't post them, but the book's easy enough to find.)
Lemon Gem Cupcakes:
I brought these to the annual holiday party at work, which I usually ditch but I had to make up time for the week. The initial batch of lemon frosting tasted like frosted urine, so I had to make another batch sans lemon juice. The real test was what my carnivorous co-workers thought of my vegan dessert: two mentioned an odd aftertaste, which I didn't notice when I tried them. I can only guess that either the soy or rice milk are the culprit, since both can taste a bit odd if one is not already used to them. Otherwise, there was surprisingly little complaint.Moroccan Tagine with Spring Vegetables:
Yes, this is me trying to plate my food in a pleasing manner so it doesn't look like a heap of underexposed slop. Well, it still kind of does, but this is far more presentable than the plate I actually ate from. As for the entrée itself, apprehensively I took all the seeds and white interior out of the serrano chile, which ended up rendering it useless. Next time I'll add more heat to it, but otherwise it made for a set of yummy lunches to bring to work this week... the more lemon the better!Corn Chowder:
I just made this one tonight. This time I used the two jalapeños as suggested and it came out WAY too spicy. I'm still not sure how I'm going to try and neutralize them out, but otherwise the soup tastes pretty good. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have squeezed the lime before adding it as garnish (kind of looks like a green millipede crawling into a grave of yellowy-orange goo... mmm!).
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