Category: Uncategorized

Yeah, well, just because our parents were born in the Southern part of the U.S. doesn’t mean we California kids had any idea what a shotgun shack might be.

Well, thanks to Wikipedia’s explanation, we’re pretty sure we’ve seen one — houses with a front door that opens into a front room with rooms linked one into the next, so that if one shot a shotgun in through the front door, it would go straight out the backdoor and go through every room. Hallways in houses apparently take extra lumber and blueprints, so the very poor often have in-one-door-and-out-the-other houses like this. An unsubtle irony indeed, that guns are also associated with these, as if the poor must always have violence follow in their wake.

*climbing down from the soapbox*

But we digress.

The real question is, “Glasgow, what do you know about shotgun shacks???”

So far, they know they’re in Mississippi… and probably that they’re a vacation destination.

Sometimes it’s just plain weird what you find in cabs!!

It’s rare we take this kind of cab, which is a fancy — and more expensive — city cab, unless we’re in a hurry and running late somewhere. In this case, we were being whisked to our chiropractor’s office, and snapped a very amusing pic of the Mississippi tourism ads on the bottom of the folding seats across from us.

When we first moved to Glasgow, we were astounded by how many of our acquaintances had been to Florida, and counted it an American version of the heavenly paradise (since both of our father’s mothers hailed from that part of the world, we both disagree. Vehemently. Why? Florida during summer break. Enough said). Now it seems that Mississippi is elbowing in on the Scottish tourist dollars, and we wish them the best of luck. Frankly, as long as they have sun, we’re pretty sure the Scots are keen to visit there.

If for no other reason than to visit the shotgun shacks.

---

Speaking of vacation destinations: We’re off to London to see the Queen! Okay, not really; although we might walk past Buckingham Palace on the way somewhere else. D. is off to spend some time with his familia, and T. is going to be let loose in the big bad city all alone. She thought she’d be able to finagle a vacation out of this, but still is stuck on the last twenty or so pages of her manuscript — so will probably simply drag her laptop to London and work, instead of going outside. *sigh*

On the off chance that D. can eventually drag her into the open air, any suggestions on what off-the-beaten-track things we should explore? We have four days…

No, we never can eat anything normal.

A week ago, everyone was creating variations on Cross Buns, the ubiquitous one-a-penny English rolls from the little piano lesson song. (We can only assume people were eating them hot.) T., having read the BBC explanation of why cross buns were a symbolic Easter thing decided she wanted to go a different direction with her rolls. After all, Jen was making Sweet Potato Rolls that looked pretty good. We were inspired.

You might think that carrot rolls are… odd, but really, a yeast-raised bread can support just about anything, and carrots are sweet. If you can manage to eat zucchini bread and carrot cake, you can certainly manage these rolls, which have only a teaspoon of added sugar, and a touch of natural sweetness.

Carrot Cranberry Rolls

• 8 large carrots
• 1 1/2C warm water, between 100°-110°
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. yeast
• /1/2 tsp. salt, freshly ground cinnamon and allspice, and powdered ginger
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract
• 6 c. Whole Wheat flour plus 2 C WW White flour
• 1/4 C dried cranberries (next time I’ll add more)

1. First cook and mash your carrots. You can steam them in an inch or two of water to do this. We left the peels on.
2. Next, combine the yeast and warm water in a large bowl. Add the sugar to give the yeast a little something to eat. When the yeast is bubbly, gradually add 6 cups of flour, to form a sticky dough
3. Add salt and seasonings — all other ingredients EXCEPT for the cranberries.
4. Lightly oil the bowl where your doughball is resting, cover with plastic wrap, and let your dough rise in a draft-free place until it doubles in size. Depending on the warmth of the kitchen, this should take an hour or a bit less.



5. Now oil your pan!
6. Punch down your dough, and add your cranberries. You’ve waited this long so that they don’t suck up too much moisture. Turn your doughball out on a floured surface, and knead it thoroughly, adding flour until it will take no more. This is a very soft dough, but the kneading should take no more than about twenty minutes.
7. Let the dough rest for ten minutes to allow the gluten to relax. Then divide the dough in half, then each half into six equal portions. Form your portions into rolls, and lay into your lightly oiled pan.
8. Allow your rolls to rise until more than doubled in size.
9. Bake the rolls until they reach an internal temperature of 190°F/87°C and are golden brown, or about thirty-five minutes.

The rolls aren’t actually sweet, but they are reminiscent of a good raisin bread in that they can be used with savory spreads and fillings, but also equally lend themselves to a bit of margarine and a tart plum preserve. If you were looking for something a bit sweeter, 1/4 C of sugar might make them more of a breakfast/dessert bread, and you could always roll the dough with the brown sugar, spices and cranberries inside.

We plan on using more cinnamon and allspice next time we make these, as the spices really compliment the very mild carroty flavor.

Hope you’re experimenting with foods in your neck of the woods, and that you had a good Pesach or Easter, if you celebrated.

…at least in this city, when the birds start tweeting out of control.

It’s insane, but somewhere around 2:45 a.m., without fail, a wee happy bird in the tree outside our bedroom window wakes up and feels the need to praise its creator with lovely liquid trills. It sounds so happy, we feel slightly curmudgeonly in wishing it would SHUT UP ALREADY, but good GRIEF are the birds in this city loud.

We accept this of the seagulls – raucous, shrieking, nasty things. We accept this even of the pigeons, who each morning greet us with a sharp crack of sound as the flight of seventy or more takes wing all at once. But somehow swallows and robins and thrushes were meant to be sweet background noise on a walk in the woods, not the chirruping little annoyances that wake us out of a dead sleep each morning.

Oh, well. More than any change of date or time, the chirpy prattle of the little dun-feathered aggravation reminds us the days of drench and drab will soon be over for another while.

“I wonder if
the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing robin, sing:
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.”
–   Christina Rossetti

 

…because man simply doth not live on cake alone.

D. has always had a knack for dough in any form, and for the first time, he tried his hand at egg noodles. Generally an egg noodle pasta “recipe” calls for flour – a pound, fine-milled – and a dozen eggs, period. No milk, water, oil — just flour and eggs is the “traditional” way egg noodles are made. However, a dozen seemed…extreme.

Okay, a dozen to egg-leery T. seemed extreme (It’s sad when your diners are that picky, but there you have it), so D. obligingly fiddled with the recipe. (Well, yes. He was going to do that anyway…) He used four cups of semolina, a cup of finely-milled AP flour, and four eggs, as well as about two tablespoons of freshly minced rosemary, a tablespoon of garlic powder, and onion powder.

We wondered whether it made a difference to have noodles with eggs in them or not. After all, many rich golden pastas that you find in the store are egg free, and made with semolina. Egg noodles just seemed …unnecessary. However! Cooks say that while egg noodles are more delicate — easier to overcook, by far, than plain semolina noodles — their delicacy also enables sauces to absorb into the noodle, instead of just sitting on the surface, ready to splash off and stain your shirt.

(Who knew!)

These were a quick fix for supper, and after about twenty minutes for them to dry over our bamboo clothes airer (which is quite handy, though we someday are going to make screens for this), we boiled a few of them plain for a taste-test. T. admitted that the egg taste is well-hidden.

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

– W.S. Merwin

A stainless steel needle, leaving tiny perforations, linking us together with a whisper-thin cord of loss. The imagery of grieving is painfully apt, isn’t it? It’s always amazing how one less person can change your whole point of view.

A bit ominous to start off with a poem about loss, but, that One Thing We Dreaded happening has happened. We are Here — six thousand miles from home — and someone we loved was There — six thousand miles too far away — and now they are not.

Since time seems to run strangely here, in this endless round of waking and sleeping and studying, it felt like we had just seen him a minute ago — yesterday — and it was briefly incomprehensible that he should be so ill when we just saw him, and he was, okay, not fine (you’re just not ever fine with cancer), but …passable. Doing okay. We thought… we thought we had more time. Maybe ’til next summer. Maybe ’til next Christmas. We made appointments that were half promises to ourselves, have bargains with each other. See you next time. See you later. See you, we’ll see you, we’ll look for you.

And don’t we always try to make deals? Such greedy babies we are, human beings, always reaching out a grabby hand, wanting one more day.

Four years was a long time, though, for someone with pancreatic cancer. It was a miraculously long time, and now that the time is over, we acknowledge that we are grateful for what we had, and celebrate the end of pain.

The whole month of December, we realize now, was a singularly perfect, shining gift. We were unaware of how close we stood to the end of things, so we turned our backs on the sheer drop, and baked and cooked and laughed and argued about everything and nothing in particular. We’re pretty sure we both put on at least ten pounds each just from trying a new take on Pineapple Upside-down Cake or Guinness Cake or brownies or Vietnamese spring rolls or matzo balls or Bananas Foster or lemon curd every day. And the ice cream every night — wow. We knew we would have to work off every single pound, but for six solid weeks, we made the choice not to worry about any of it.

And it turns out we were right to set that aside.

“In the midst of life, we are in death.” – John Rutter’s Requiem, Agnus Dei

One of the strange benefits of being so far away from home right now is that we can sort of delay grieving. Psychologists are likely even now standing by on the periphery of our imagination, screeching about the unhealthiness of this, but not dealing with things is a way of dealing with something difficult sometimes — you take it in little bits, as you can. It’s not like we don’t know the truth. It’s just that there are different ways of knowing things. We prefer not to take this one head-on.

Of course, when we go back home, then the loss will be inescapable, as we count on everyone being where they are supposed to be when we go home. Strange how we can be away and change, but everyone at home is supposed to stay static, because Home, to the human psyche, seems to be a static concept. Hm. Perhaps by the time we get home again, we will be more easily reconciled to the truth. At any rate, we’ll deal with that later, when we have to. Grief is a strange, slow process anyway, so this is all going to take time.

To wrap this up: don’t worry, Mom. We’re fine.

---

Because the world deals constantly in irony, as soon as we successfully launched our expedition to the Baths, the plumber — a different plumber than the first three — has come along to fix the boiler once and for all.

Theoretically.

As we are solidly now two months and two weeks into having no central heat or hot water in the flat, we are …ambivalent. Seriously. It’s horrifying, but we’ve actually gotten used to trekking two blocks to shower, and we expect cold water to come out of all taps. It’s now second nature to put the kettle on to sluice down the counter top after food prep. At the Baths, there’s a room filled with nothing but bathtubs. We were informed that they’re …for bathing. In the olden days, many people used to trek a couple of blocks for a bath. Since only about three quarters of the flats in the city had individual bathrooms by 1984 (we learned that handy little fact The People’s Palace Social History Museum), the whole communal bathing thing was routine for a number of people.

Still, we’ll be excited if the boiler is actually fixed today… but we’ll believe it when we see it. We are now working directly with the owner of the flat, though, so hopefully progress will come more easily. Hopefully.

T. is still knee-deep in a major overhaul of her latest work in progress, while her editor patiently (!) waits. She has been rapidly researching lampworking, and is glad to introduce another hobby into her character’s life… but remains a little grumpy about having to rewrite her cello-playing character. Apparently there are lately too many string-instrument playing girls in young adult literature. (Too many cellists. Who knew!?) Meanwhile, D. is being published in the Kelvingrove Review next month, a University journal dedicated to “critical analysis of recent scholarly work in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and education.” He’s been offered a copy editing position on the journal, which he could obviously do in his copious free time. Not. In a losing effort to retain some free time for him, T. is being a teensy bit pushy about D. not accepting any more little jobs. No more baking birthday cakes for random small children, no more tutoring gigs, and no more making people’s webpages (except for the last one he agreed to do). The guy’s got to sleep some time.

We are really enjoying the Baths. We are indeed the youngest people swimming laps at seven in the morning (actually, aside from the half-asleep guy handing out towels, we’re the youngest in the whole building, period), and some of the few who use the sauna, and it’s very peaceful. No one really speaks to each other, aside from saying “Good morning,” and when we’re done, we’re actually very relaxed, but wide awake. Aside from the mammal-sized spider T. found in the shower one morning, we have encountered nothing unpleasant. T. has even become shockingly immune to the cold, and tends to leave the building carrying her sweatshirt, and wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt. Maybe that’s the secret to the myriad Glaswegians who run around in shirtsleeves in thirty degree weather. They’ve all just come from the gym.

Elsewhere, we hear of spring actually spring-ing, but it’s not really happening yet here. Every morning we laugh as we pass frozen puddles on the way home (in shirtsleeves, it’s just a weird juxtaposition. It’s surreal not to feel it so much). Still we have snowdrops growing up through the gravel at the back gate, we have partially sunny, though freezing, days, and the trees in the garden across the oval are budding. Against the backdrop of a leaden gray sky, the birds are returning. Light is dawning sooner and lingering later in the day. The Earth’s slow pulse is beating, as “the Spring comes slowly up this way.” And not a moment too soon.

Yet another couple weeks of links. Of particular note, here, is the last few paragraphs of the HealthMap tracks swine flu pandemic worldwide article, in which someone talks about donating time to this application en lieu of donating time to another charity. Because … helping those with access to technology (i.e., those with money) stay away from the infections is just as good as giving food to the poor! Yeah. There’s a flaw there, somewhere. See if you can find it.
Continue reading “Links” →

And now in the category of Better Than The Alternative: The scene is D’s job, the time is 6 p.m., and the workers are hemorrhaging like fleas escaping a submerging rat. And W. stops at P’s desk, smacks his palm down flat on the surface and says in a friendly way, “So, what’s your plans for the night, wee man?”

Oh, no, he didn’t.

In T’s family, “Little Man” is the honored nickname of Elf, the 2 year old nephew who is just over thimble-sized and rather loud. Little Man is not something adults call other adults. It’s a… baby name. Or, at least it’s derogatory, and is usually finished with the word “syndrome.” If someone called an adult Californian “little man” or “wee man,” them’s would’ve been fightin’ words — at least really heavy sarcastic rejoinder words. Not so here. P. responded with voluble cheer, and W. and P. wandered out the door and into the dusk together.

D. adds, “The thing is, W. doesn’t even come up to my chin. So, who’s he calling wee?“

Meanwhile, T. is now battling whatever cold thing D. had, but of course, since some people are show-offs, she’s trying to turn it into a sinus and ear infection. OVERACHIEVER!

In her weakened state, T. spends a lot of time swathed in multiple knit things, and since previously the temps have been holding in the low forties, with high pressure giving us chilly, sunny days, all has been well. However, it was 23ºF/-5°C this morning at nine-fifteen when D. left for work, and not even a weak sun was shining through the thick fog. T. met the postman wearing her hair tied up in a bandanna, a comfy turtleneck beneath a thigh-length a sweater, and two pair of pants with her woolen socks and D.’s purloined foot duvet slippers. (Yes, they have a stupid name. Yes, Restoration Hardware is a pretentious store, we don’t shop there. Yes: the most important thing: the slippers were not only a (re)gift, they are really warm.) The postman gave her a look, and shook his head.

“‘S really nae tha cold,” he began, scribbling something on his electronic pad.

“No?” T. inquired politely, waiting to sign for the packages.

“Nae,” he said heartily, warming, as it were, to his theme. “You’d know it if you were out in it. ‘S nae that cold, ’til you bundle up for it. ‘f you were like me, down and topside again, in and out of the truck, you’d see the best thing to do is to just get out in it. You’ve got to embrace the air, y’see.”

“Right.” T. said, grinning. “Embrace the air. I see. You do realize that’s a completely Scottish mentality, right?”

The postman shrugged and headed back downstairs. “I do what I can,” he said modestly.

So, just in case you were unclear, at the time of this posting, T. checked the accuweather.com forecast, and at noon today, it was indeed 27°F/-2°. And T. can now agree with those snowbound from the Northeast, the Northwest, and far flung corners of northern Canada.

Tis nae tha cold atall.

Busy days, spent writing and, in D’s case, running around representing Uni faculty. He has turned in to a fill-in lecturer, as a few of the professors have been out with pregnancies and illnesses. He’s always prepared to step in, but his last gig included traveling to the other end of the city and carrying the flag for the university during a tour of the library and archive collection at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. That was unusual, to say the least, but entertaining. Sadly, he couldn’t take pictures, so you’ll have to ask him about the original Audubon paintings he saw.

Housing Update:Not much to say, since the heat/boiler situation hasn’t much changed. Sadly, the issue has moved into the realm of litigation; our downstairs neighbor can’t get the property manager to even pick up her phone calls anymore. She advised us not to mention her name when we phoned.

So. Not much change, not much nice to say, and both of us bracing ourselves against the idea of having to move, if things aren’t resolved or well on their way to resolution, by the end of the month. Deep in our souls we groan, “NOT AGAIN!!!“… but we will if we have to… People are beginning to look at us oddly, though. What is it about us and boilers? And ovens? Or, is it Scotland!? We vote it’s just Glasgow.

---

No, this is not a cake doughnut. It’s an actual cake. It was the practice run of the Guinness Cake brought for dessert this past weekend. One of D’s supervisors gamely keeps inviting us over, despite the fact that we haven’t yet had a house where we can be comfortable in inviting them to a meal in return. (Lacking sufficient furniture and/or heat most of the time does create an issue.) Since we can’t host them, we always bring part of the meal, and this time, D’s coworkers got to taste the “reject” cake.

It wasn’t a true reject cake; we just wanted to make it late at night, and, realizing we had no cocoa powder, substituted a bar of very dark chocolate, just to see what would happen. We observed the recipe on Epicurious, and halved it as Smitten Kitchen did, and then added our own twist and made a creative frosting.

The first thing we noticed is how much different the stout smelled. Americans who try this recipe should know that Guinness…beer? Ale? Stout? Whatever you call it — has a different brewing recipe in the U.S., in Scotland, and in Ireland from whence it hails. Therefore: no two Guinness Cakes, apparently, are going to turn out the same. Add to that, flour of a higher humidity on the West Coast of the U.S. (baking in humid areas changes the flour, no matter how you sift it, it’s just not as light), and a different oven, and we came up with a whole new cake than our first try back in January.

It was much more moist and dense, thanks to the moisture in the air and the additional oils from using a chocolate bar in the batter. To T., at least, the sugar in the chocolate bar made the cake far too sweet, and it seemed the sugar was almost granular and crunchable, like the first cake we made in January back in California. Even the whipped-cream frosting didn’t help cut the sweet on that one! However, palates differ wildly, and oh, our Glaswegian buddies have a sweet tooth. D. and his coworkers finished work on Friday with a cheerful sugar high and probably bounced all the way home. Funniest were their reminiscences about Desserts of Fridays Past: “Oh, do you remember when he made that apricot pastry?” “No, I didn’t get any of that one. But that lemon cake… yeah, that was good.”

This February marks two years that D.’s been consulting for the company… and so, it’s time for a raise. If for nothing else, his boss owes him for the cakes with which he supplies the staff for tea! He’s asked, and been told that they’ll chat about it.

The real cake we made Friday afternoon, and iced just before lunch the following day. This one had a good cocoa powder in it in addition to the chocolate bar (70% dark), and we went with a more traditional ganache frosting. D. and I confined ourselves to tiny slivers at the Professor’s house, but even his two year old son was quite taken with it. Dense and rich and much more moist than our first two tries, it was sliced up and carried off to church on Sunday with the Professor’s wife, as she feared for her hips if she left it at home for too long. It really turned out well, and the addition of instant coffee granules in the ganache gave just a ghost of bitterness to the already less sweet cake. It was perfect with a hot drink, like black coffee.

Of course, there’s a moral to the story: no good deed goes unpunished. Bringing more cake to the Professor’s house reminder his wife of her long-ago wish D. cater her son’s birthday party someday. Since the wee man is turning three, he’s having a costume party, at The Tall Ship, and of course, the theme is pirates. Wouldn’t D. just love to make her son a nice pirate cake? She’s willing to pay him… Please? (She begs very attractively.) (Imagine T’s eye-rolling.)

She’s the wife of D’s PhD supervisor… so, what are you going to do? Exactly. Meanwhile, stay tuned for Aaargh! The Pirate Cake. And more of T’s eye-rolling.

(Seriously, D loves baking, and finds many creative things a challenge, so he’s not bothered. Ignore T’s eyes. If you look at her squinting, you can just pretend she’s blinking or something.)

There have been many kind congratulations from many people who are aware of T’s winning a national honor for her book. There have also been many questions from many people, many of which have been leveled at T’s mother, who has no clue, but dutifully passes the questions along. T. was trying to wait until she actually knew something to reply, but knowledge — or the lack of it — has really never stopped her from speaking yet. So, T. will now answer a few questions.

---

Q: So, she gets to go to New York?

Nope. The award ceremony is in Washington D.C. — it’s a national award, thus it makes sense to go to our nation’s capital. She’s recently discovered that her publishing company is paying for her airfare. This goes a long way toward ensuring she actually shows up. Unfortunately, this also goes a long way toward her feeling like since they paid for the dance, they get to pick the music. This is worrying her more than you might think, as she’s pretty sure something evil like microphones and public speaking are part of paying the piper on this one. Beware the Ugly Electronics.

Q: Does she get to meet Michelle Obama?

If she does, it’ll be on the news. Because there’s a good chance she’ll pass out, and be tackled by Secret Service personnel.

Q: Does she get a medal?

Yes. As the American Library Association (ALA) is essentially the sponsor of the Book Olympics, indeed, there are medals. They cannot, however, be worn on a ribbon around the neck. Fortunately. Book People get out so rarely, there would be a rash of poorly accessorized sweats, if a means to wear the medals were provided.

Q: Is the medal gold?

Nope. As mentioned, this is the BOOK Olympics, not that other one, so the medals are all some kind of etched bronze. Books pretty much don’t rate as much as sports, nor do educational awards get as much flash and bash as athletic awards. It is the way of the world, Young Grasshopper. No one says it makes sense.

Q: Does she get a sticker on her book?

Yes. And for those who live and die by stickers on books, this means a lot. (Some people only buy books for their children that have stickers on them that mean This Won An Award. This is remarkably short-sighted, since the award committees are just made up of …people. Not gods.) To T., it means an amusing guess-where-they’ll-put-it game, since the cover of MARE’S WAR has three people on it, and there’s really not a good spot to place it that won’t look really, really weird. Fortunately, this is not her problem.

Q: Are they giving her money? How much money does she get?

You’ll have to look it up the answer to either or both of those. Like with the X-Files, the truth is out there, somewhere. Since you obviously have failed to recall what your mother said about asking people about how much they make, we are not going to help you with that. At all. And stop asking T’s mother, or she’ll start taking names. Seriously. Since when have her finances — or, more realistically, her lack of them — been your business?

Q: Does it mean she gets more money for her books?

You with the MONEY again! *sigh* Look, maybe. Publishing is, like many other things in the arts, a thoroughgoing gamble, a complete crapshoot. (Please note that this refers to the gambling game, craps, and is in no way as vulgar as it sounds.) While having won a national award increases one’s public profile, and causes editors to scrutinize what you say in interviews to the point of calling your agent and asking about books which do not yet exist (this has already happened), theoretically, it should give her agent more clout in contract negotiations, thus netting her more money in the long run. “More” being an amusing euphemism for “perhaps someday she will earn a living wage from this writing thing.” However, this is all conjecture; this is not T’s area of concern; this is why she has an agent.

Q: Why does she have her name in the New York Times Arts Section for the 21st of January?

Because her editor is kind. And it’s good PR for Random House. No other reason, really.

---

We hope you’ve been edified, and are as deeply honored as you should be that you now know just as much as we do about what’s going on. Tune in next time as we provide answers to such questions as The Meaning of Life, explore Artificial Intelligence and Time Travel, explain Cultural Relativism, and otherwise reveal our genius to the world.

---

House Update: No change – but it’s on the far horizon. D. wrote a distinctly polite little note to the property managers over the weekend which did not mention the word “solicitor” at all, yet resulted in a 25% reduction in our rent (woot!), which is more of a response than we’ve ever, ever had from any property manager thus far. Hint: asking for their response in writing and saying that you are collecting documents puts the fear of God into people. The upshot of this is that we may very well be able to stay here… if they don’t delay dealing with things. An engineer came yesterday and looked around, and is going to make a bid; we expected a second one yesterday, but he never showed. Fingers crossed – some kind of movement will happen, soon.