Hobbits In Rivendell

Cookie Capers: A Swing and a Miss, But Not An Utter Fail

September 27, 2013

1:30 pm

6 Comments on Cookie Capers: A Swing and a Miss, But Not An Utter Fail

It is a truth universally acknowledged that peanut butter is a quintessentially American food. Isn’t it amazing how those “universal truths” are often utterly wrong? The Aztecs were actually the first to mess about with peanut-mashing, creating a paste that was a proto-peanut butter. Of course, George Washington Carver, an early food scientist, came up with three hundred uses for the humble legume between 1891 and 1927. In 1884 Marcellus Gilmore Edson – a Canadian – patented a peanut paste made from dry roasted peanuts. His work overlaps with the work of John Harvey Kellogg, whose 1895 pureé from raw peanuts was touted as a protein substitute for those without teeth (eek). In 1903 the first grinder for the specific use of grinding peanuts into peanut butter was patented, and the first recorded recipe for peanut butter cookies was in 1916. So far, not specifically American at all. Interestingly enough, the first time the traditional hash-marks appeared on top of the cookies was in a Pillsbury cookbook in 1936.. No explanation was given, so bakers assume it was to flatten them to allow them more thoroughly; others point out that it allowed allergy-sufferers to identify the peanut butter ingredient. (Nerdy “The More You Know!” history lesson sourced via About.com, TIME magazine’s brief history of peanut butter, and The National Peanut Board.)

According to the statistics people, America is the third largest peanut producer worldwide (hi Texas and Georgia!) and Americans eat around 700 million pounds of peanut butter per year (about 3 pounds per person). While we know that no one who reads this blog is by any means average, that does speak to a people who love their peanut butter – and their peanut butter cookies.

Typically, until recently, T. absolutely hated them.

The biggest complaint most people have about peanut butter cookies is that they’re not a low calorie food. T’s complaint? That peanut butter cookies are usually massively, ridiculously too-too-too sweet. D. posits that the sweeter the better, but T. insists that peanut butter cookies are supposed to taste of peanuts, not sugar. The argument came to its usual standstill when T. whipped up a batch of pbj cookies with… almond flour. Just to throw things off completely.

Almondy PB&C’s

Prep a cookie sheet, we used greaseproof paper. REHEAT your oven, 350F°/170°C

2 C blanched almond flour

1/2 C. natural peanut butter, in this case, crunchy

1/4 C. Truvia or 2/4 C. agave

1/4 Tbsp. vanilla extract

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 large egg or 1/4 C. ground flax, plus 3 Tbsp. water for egg replacement

Peanut butter cookies are simple enough to bring together – cream together your salt, sugar, your fats and your egg, at the last, add the flour and prepare for something ridiculously sticky. It took less than half an hour to roll the dough into simple balls. D. suggested that, since he didn’t want not-very-sweet peanut butter cookies that chocolate might as well be involved, since he doesn’t really like it. Lindt 85% was made into a quick ganache and used in place of the traditional jam thumbprint. Honestly, that was a mistake. Actually, there were a few mistakes:

What We Did Wrong

We forgot to spray PAM on the greaseproof paper. Yes. It’s greaseproof, but the cookies will still stick slightly if they’re not entirely cooled
We forgot to let the cookies entirely cool. ANYTHING made with almond flour MUST be allowed to cool quite a bit; it’s tender and delicate
We should have used a Silpat or something like it. It’s easy to get very brown bottoms to your foods when using sugar subs; Silpat helps it cook easily, cool quickly, and look better
We should have mixed sugars. Truvia is already made up of stevia and erythritol; in our quest to avoid weird aftertastes or the “cleansing” side effect of using many sugar alcohols, we’ve avoided Splenda. A tiny bit of Splenda? Is workable. A couple of tablespoons might have been helpful here, as it seemed to D. like the cookies got less sweet as time went on, and the peanut butter flavor took over.

What We Did Right:

We tried.

The list on the positives here might seem pretty short — it’s not. The attempt is A Big Deal. A lot of people, when faced with a necessary change in a diet, just… can’t. New, weird ingredients with strange names and unpredictable outcomes are really enough to make a person discouraged. It’s easier, in many ways, to retreat to “okay” foods, and try to stick with old favorites, than venture out into something new. Food blogger friends have urged us to get back in the game, but we’ve kind of become the worst kinds of food bloggers, the kinds who don’t blog about food. It’s because, to be blunt, there are a LOT of mistakes in the kitchen these days. Tons. We dump out baked items, bowls of batter, and we kind of hate ourselves just a little each time for the waste. But, waste and flops is how we fuel creation.

The verdict is that this is one tender, tasty and delicious piece of cookie. The chocolate was weird – it lost its temper and became really oddly crumbly – but with a dollop of low sugar Smucker’s, these will be a completely yummy compliment to a mug of Assam tea, or even a glass of milk. The almond flour makes these cookies more tender than the traditional peanut butter cookie, and they don’t have the sandy/shortbready feel of some recipes. (Have you ever had a gritty peanut butter cookie? T. has. It bewildered her.) T. feels this tenderness is an improvement. D. remains ambivalent.

As the days continue to cool and baked goods seem like a better and better idea (along with turning on the furnace – which we’re delaying until October, if we can), we’re going to keep messing with these recipes, working to see what we can do with them, and continue to try and perfect the tender, spongy scone – with just a tiny bit of fresh cranberry and orange zing (that was a success!), fine-tune our carrot cake muffins (still needs work) and present you with some new things to try – mainly because of sheer cussed stubbornness, but also because we love to tinker, and we’ve never met a recipe we couldn’t make better. (Or, our version of better, anyway.)

Cheers, and happy autumn!

Home, Making

by TadMack

September 3, 2013

4:15 pm

4 Comments on Home, Making

Baking, California, Food, Life

Once again, we draw to the close of another California summer. Unlike last year at this time, we’re not moving – yet – but that’s coming. Boxes are half-packed, projects are wrapping up, priorities are shifting, and we’re hopeful about future endeavors. We’re about to hit the road again — and , yes – we’ve been saving toward to a trip to Scotland sometime this autumn. It doesn’t hurt to have something waiting in the wings, to anticipate. Without these things, life tends to be just a little … flat, somehow.

On D’s end of the world, projects have really changed. We’d made a commitment to actually move in the location of one of his work-sites, but felt we’d be better served by waiting for a different project to come along. Finger crossed, we’ll know something more today! It’s been strange for D. to have been on two projects already this year, but he’s hopeful that longer-term positions – with fewer corporate politics – are on the horizon.

Meanwhile, T., who started a novel to give herself a break from revising a different one, has finally finished the replacement novel… and, right now, likes it better. Her agent is both amused and ambivalent. “Okay, then, give me that one,” is his response. Meanwhile, during the polishing of various pages, the beginnings of three other novels have sprouted in her head… so many ideas, so little time, and so much pouting when it comes time for revisions. Typical, typical.

It has been a beautiful summer. Aside from the spike during the first week of July – which we spent in Baltimore, trying to breathe water – the weather has been a lovely thing. The nippy nighttime lows in the 40’s/10’s and the days in the balmy 70’s-80’s/high 10’s-20’s, has made the days roll past pleasantly. We’ve made sure to keep our California Residency Kits nice and updated by both mucking about in the dirt a little bit – our Garden Away From Home has produced tomatoes, lovely cucumbers, and a watermelon is getting to the proper size at last – and tie-dyeing a few things, as one does when one lives here. ☺ (T. was born in San Francisco. Some things just come with the territory.)

We have had fun exploring a new form of dyeing which includes ice. Very correct for summer, indeed! We took soda-ash treated fabric and crumpled the damp fabric on stacked racks in the sink. We piled on crushed ice onto the top layer until the fabric was entirely covered, and then sprinkled powdered dye in various spatterings all over it. It’s not exactly tie-dye, it’s a bit more random, especially with the effect of the dilution/dripping from the melting ice from one layer to the next. The combination of splotches, drips, and the sharper colors from the dye concentrate remind us of Monet’s blurry impressionistic pointillism. We’re looking forward to finding better surfaces and doing a big project like a set of sheets. (The porcelain sink really did not love us for mucking about in it, but oh, well. Onward!)

In the midst of our happy, there is a bit of sad giving us some perspective. T’s kid sister is stuck in the hospital this week with a failing kidney. This latest bump on the road to failure, while imminent for a long, long time, coincided with the first week of her senior year in high school, which is just a big, fat crock of crap. Usually a girl with a penumbra of attitude and energy that extends three feet in any direction, now she’s drained and exhausted — and suddenly looks pretty small, which is a hard dose of reality to her family and friends. We continue to keep our fingers crossed that bed rest and massive antibiotics will let her pull out just one more year of use out of her gimpy kidneys, so she can wave goodbye to high school in style.

While others cheer the return of school rooms or favorite TV shows, for us, autumn is about the house being cool enough to bake! We eyed Smitten Kitchen’s almond crisped peaches, but never managed to make them, as the peaches – so huge and lovely from the Dixon Fruit Market – have simply never lasted long enough in this house! That’s a recipe to come back to, however.

In early March, there was a round of medical visits which gave us some expected – but unwelcome – news – heredity strikes again. Our families on both sides tend toward diabetes, and though we’re largely healthy, our internal organs had been showing some signs of wear. In an effort to prepare for what the doctor’s prognosis of the inevitable, we’ve changed some of our dietary habits for good. What’s been missing from our diets for the last six months? Conspicuous consumption of carbohydrates.

…not fats. Some people are surprised by that, but we were not… we’ve had an inkling all along that it wasn’t the butter or the eggs but the sugar that was going to ding us in the end. It makes us a little grumpy to be right…:sigh:.

As everyone knows, changing any dietary habit is really difficult – but tinkering with one of the building blocks of the food group seemed, at first, pretty dire. The name of this blog, way back in – sheesh, 2004? – was “Wish I Were Baking.” It wasn’t “Wish I Were Steaming Kale,” although that’s a fairly awesome name if you’re not obsessed with getting the perfect rise from a loaf of artisan bread. There was a lot of mental adjustment that had to take place, we knew, if any changes were going to be successful. If you look at a required change in your life as a tragedy… you can forget about it happening. We firmly elected to still find things to enjoy.

With that attitude in hand, we’ve been relieved to discover that it’s not been very hard. (Faced with the choice of your liver and pancreas imploding in flames, or drinking unsweetened iced tea instead of soda, what choice would you make?) Not only that, we’re enjoying the challenge. Cooks and bakers have had hundreds and thousands of years to perfect baking with traditional ingredients – flours, sugars, etc. – but there’s a lot less out there about tasty, healthy low-carb ingredients. (Please note the preface “tasty” before “healthy.” There’s enough out there that does not include either of those two things, trust us.) We’ve been waiting eagerly for the days to cool a bit, before launching ourselves into baking again. We’ve made a few experimental forays – which we haven’t photographed.

We call those things that don’t get on camera “Learning Experiences.” There were The Waffles of Brickyness, when Axel was visiting, which were the heaviest things we’d ever eaten. We learned from that, of course; namely that coconut flour is ALL FIBER and must be used sparingly and with some gluten powder, for goodness sakes. Most recently, the Pear Tart of Awful was a completely unnecessary disaster – fresh pears, lemon zest, vanilla, almond flour… and a sneaky quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum some bright light decided to include. What is xanthan gum for? Not homemade pear tarts, T.. Next time, we’ll stick to adding it to the one recipe we bought it for. Ugh. A shame, when we’d even made it vegan and everything… :sigh: Time to repeat the Test Kitchen Mantra: We cook, we fail, we move on.

Of course, we can’t go on and on about the amusing failures without discussing the successes. The slightly crumbly pigs-in-blankets – we hadn’t quite learned how almond flour worked, but those were tasty, even if they didn’t quite stay together. And, Lemon tea cakes, anyone? Yes, please. Tender and fragrant and a perfect combination of citrus and sweet. Very tasty, and quick, which was fun. A “throw-it-together” banana bread also turned out well, which just proves that you can make banana bread anytime, anywhere, out of pretty much anything. We are pleased with the lift the quick breads have – a really nice crumb, so we’re encouraged to keep trying! Up next will be a made-over recipe for the date slice we loved so well in Scotland – aka a date bar. A short almond crust, chopped pecans, and dates… yum. We’re also eying a lemon poundcake made with coconut and almond flour – dense, moist, and citrussy heaven. And, once they’re almost foolproof, recipes to follow.

Not every dish can have the natural sweetness of dates or bananas – sometimes, you just need rich, bitter chocolate. Our experiments with sweeteners in that vein have been mixed. There are tons of sugar substitutes – sugar alcohols – on the market – but only a very few which do not cause gastric distress in the amounts used in baking. However, we’ve had success in mixing a little bit of this, and a little bit of that – a blend of stevia and erythritol, the sugar substitute popular in Japanese cuisine, has seemed to work well thus far. Interestingly, erythritol isn’t all that sweet – it’s about 70% as sweet as sugar. However! With the addition of vanilla, one can trick the brain into thinking it’s eating something much sweeter. (We got this tip from a recent issue of Nature.) All these experiments and recipe makeovers are a work in progress, and the amount of small successes we’ve had has encouraged us to try bigger things… like that pear tart. :shudder: Well, we’re not fans of the idea of a “test kitchen” for nothing…

Our best “discovery” has been almond flour – it is lovely and nutty – completely gluten free, and very low in carbohydrate. A couple tablespoons of vital wheat gluten helps it lift in quick breads or biscuits, and a little lemon zest gives it interest – it seems to need a little citrus punch to keep it from being too nutty/sweet – but we’ve not managed to figure out how to use it for yeast breads – and that’s okay. Perfection probably shouldn’t be messed with, so we’re looking forward to turning out the perfect, crusty loaf of sourdough rye – and learning to sprout our own grain – and just eating our daily bread sparingly, with gratitude.

Truly: with gratitude. We’re down a few pounds, and feeling healthy. We have options. We have optimism, creativity and stamina, and a lot of garbage bags. We’re going to be just fine.

Nothing but blue skies ahead – and full ovens, soon. Happy autumn.

Freeway Pilgrims and Other Sojourners: On Travel

by TadMack

August 15, 2013

2:22 pm

1 Comment on Freeway Pilgrims and Other Sojourners: On Travel

California, Life

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

A friend said recently that travel wasn’t fun anymore.

While this may not be ground-breaking, and while she specified air travel in particular, the idea that travel is supposed to be fun is perhaps more significant. People used to go on pilgrimages and take long sea journeys as part of a sacred duty or their life’s work. They gathered their households onto their backs and set out on foot for better food, more land, better opportunities, better lives. It wasn’t for fun. Beautiful island locations why not try these out and understand where you can do a photoshoot. It was necessity, curiosity, and that stupid Manifest Destiny, but not just “fun,” as we understand it now. It’s only now that we have so much where we are that going elsewhere to look at something else is supposed to be part of the lark. And yet, fun is the expectation.

The only problem with the idea of “travel as fun” is that when people are involved, fun can be difficult.

Oh, don’t think that’s just the misanthropic/anthropophobic curmudgeon point of view. People in their normal habitats – eating, shopping, going to school – are fine. People in the act of traveling outside of their normal haunts – in and around airports, or on crowded interstate freeways, in train or at BART stations – those people are usually not fine. Impatient, rushing, pushy, increasingly belligerent people; loud, drunk, boundary-ignorant and vexing, these people’s public faces are something we sometimes wish they left at home. Is it because the toys of our culture allow us solo entertainment that we’ve lost the ability to get along in groups? Courtesy is not a lost art – truly, it’s not. In a thousand different ways, people show kindness to strangers, even in airports. It only seems like the vast majority prefers to act as boorish in public as possible.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

Travel does not always bring out our shiniest side. Even with the familiarity of the routines of security theater and suitcase maneuvering, we still have moments of bewilderment, as the unexpected takes over. Even things one expects one can count on, like the temperaments of friends, can come into question. People who are one way at home can, in a hotel room, emerge as beings wholly other than previously experienced. Friends who traveled with their grown children this past year have indicated that it wasn’t quite what they expected, and after travels with her adolescent son, another friend said the words “never again” quite firmly (and so did we). Couples we’ve known, traveling together, have decided to end their journeys solo after discovering that hardship and inconvenience does not bring out the best in every partner.

“I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith

Travel – this curious, ephemeral thing – is a gift. We are weaned on the idea of life being a journey, a locomotion from Birth to Death, with sightseeing along the way. That’s both part of this expansionist American culture – we’ve been chasing that Manifest Destiny forever, despite officially calling it a distasteful ideology – and part of a car-culture road-tripping West Coast heritage. Roads even wind through our language — someone “takes a turn for the worse.” We have “a rough road ahead,” or a “rocky road” might be dessert or a hard luck story. Robert Frost’s “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – ” – Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, Baby” – we’ve been, as a people, on the move for a long, long time, before chuck wagons and wagon trains. Perhaps it is a part of an American’s Puritan roots; if you believe that you are “but a pilgrim and a stranger;” just someone passing through, that there is a degree of impermanence to the place where you are, and the state of your existence, this changes the way you think. Things matter both more and less that you’d perhaps previously believed, if we’re all on our way elsewhere.

In grasping for that permanent impermanence, we are both energized and freed. If we are all on a journey, then we can take a deep breath when someone jumps a line and gets on the plane sooner than us. The progress isn’t where we are in line on the freeway, but the destination, yes? Getting there one car-length ahead will only anger those people we cut in front of, possibly damage our own bumpers, and cause further delays. And is it really our right to make things less fun for anyone else? Probably, no.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

If we are merely traveling, and our destination is our life’s purpose, then making sure that we all get there in one piece should be an objective. With that worldview, picking up someone else’s luggage and helping them get it into the overhead compartment shouldn’t be out of the question. It is freeing to realize that, rather than each choice locking us into a permanent road, the choices we make as we travel are merely crossroads – and U-turns are still available, as is backtracking. If we miss a plane or a turn, we can try again. Travel does not exist in the realm of “only” and black and white.

While traveling, we may get sick from the water, we may not understand the language, but as long as we’re not home, we still have a chance to see things we haven’t seen. We should never fear being lost, because the journey back will always give us new insights, as we travel. Certainly, we’ve come away with better stories – remember that time we saw the spotted piglets on that one dirt road when we were lost that one time? – that we would have had staying on the paved roads of familiarity.

As every Hobbit knows, not all who wander are lost.

…A reflection on travel as fun, as we near the end of this summer of Here and There and home again, a summer of knowing where we’re going, of celebrating where we’ve been; of acknowledging that this is not where we plan to stop for long; an exploration of the journey as equally imperative as the destination.

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in…” – D. H. Lawrence

Baltimore Architecture

by David T. Macknet

August 15, 2013

12:52 pm

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Traveling

Because it was so warm and humid, we didn’t get to see much of Baltimore other than the hotel and what was visible from our room. What we did see, though, was very reminiscent of Europe, with church steeples clearly visible above the surrounding buildings

It’s something we should have expected, probably, as Baltimore was founded much earlier than West-Coast cities, so would have more European influences. What we could see, though, seemed to be more “all of a piece” – as if it were constructed much faster than European cities.

We don’t know if we’ll ever return to Baltimore – and certainly will avoid it when it’s hot and humid (or when it’s cold and snowy). We’re really not used to the humidity; even though it may get very hot in California, it’s almost never humid. All of you who live with this: it’s a big struggle for those of us who do not.

-D & T

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: Adventures With Axel

by TadMack

August 7, 2013

11:59 am

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California, Life

He was our pronunciation go-to and prime Glaswegian accent mimic in Scotland, and now he’s in America… cheerfully making fun of the Minnesotan accent. Continuing to make us giggle like loons in public, it’s the return of Axel! And time for another ordinary-day Adventure!

The coast near what we call “home” for a little bit longer… (moving inland – packing continues).

And here, a cawing, cackling bevy of grebes and seagulls. A coven? A gossip?

Cruisin’ on the waterfront, in his ’38 (or was it ’28?) somethingorother. His very noisy somethingorother. Still, so very cool – and he was proud enough to pause and pose for us.

So, we’re walkin’ the waterfront in the cool of the … Wait. What is that guy doing? Throwing something to the birds? Playing catch? In that filthy, freezing water!?

The filthy is …unarguable, but he’s practically naked. Axel tests the waters and says “it’s not that bad.” We dare him to get in. Oddly, he ignores this.

Time to leave the swimmers behind and find some sushi. Ciao!

Three Things: Home & Away

by TadMack

July 21, 2013

1:59 pm

2 Comments on Three Things: Home & Away

California, Life

The world is beautiful through our rear view mirror, but there’s also hope for blue skies ahead…

Just looked up to realize that it was our friend Axel’s 2nd anniversary, and J&L’s first anniversary, so we’ve really and truly been here in the U.S. now for a solid year and some change.

In the give and take of this unusual summer – with friends arriving and departing, doing quite a bit of traveling ourselves, and in realizing that it’s about time to start packing AGAIN – we’ve been thinking a lot about our own arrival and future destinations. There are certainly a few things about our lives that have changed since we’ve been back.

Number one, we no longer tilt our faces to the sun, whenever it’s out. In Glasgow this summer, people are having the season of their LIVES, in many cases – glorious sunshine, lovely, balmy days, smiles all over. And you believe the world is beautiful, when the sun shines in Scotland. All nine zillion shades of green sparkle from sapphire and emerald, and people are kinder, and everything is just – amazing. They’ve all said that it can’t last, and of course, autumn will come eventually, but it is GLORIOUS just now, and we wish we were there to see it. ANY sunny day, when we were in Glasgow, found people lining the benches in the parks, peeling off shirts, exposing every bit of themselves to the sunshine. Entire neighborhoods camped out on the green, playing with their dogs, passing ’round a drink, just loving the moment. And, arriving home as red as scalded lobsters and a little sun-drunk the next day, but still, everyone would say it was worth it.

Living where we do, this summer we’ve sometimes gone for full days with fog that doesn’t lift… but we no longer have the little niggling worry in the back of our minds that the gray might last for six months. We trust in the reappearance of the sun.

Number two, we no longer have soundtracks running in our heads at all times. That’s kind of sad, really. We came away from Glasgow at the close of our concert season, music just tumbling through our heads. At any given time, both of us, or either of us could be found humming something, singing some tricky patch of harmony in Latin or German or Italian. It brought almost a physical ache leaving our music behind. If you’ve ever performed with an orchestra, with hundreds of voices and instruments doubling your own small sound, and making the rafters ring with sound, you’ll understand what we mean. Not having found the kind of choir interaction we had back there has meant that we’ve needed to put that aside for awhile, so as to not be completely overwhelmed. We’ve found that we kind of miss the music in our heads, and we’re looking forward to reacquainting ourselves with grappling with a major work of music, and the joys and frustrations of choral music.

Number three, and this one makes us laugh, we no longer are jumpy around cars. It’s so symptomatic of how West Coast Americans are enmeshed with car culture that when we had a period of time where we didn’t normally ride around in cars, and were on foot or lumbering buses for much of the time, that we forgot about speed. We forgot about merging lanes. We forgot about all of the things that we had to remember to survive in car culture… and coming back was tough. We both noted that we were tentative about being behind the wheel. We were both more apt to opt out of driving, if we didn’t have to do it. And we neither of us ever went as fast as the speed limit, much less exceeded it… well, that’s certainly over, and we’re back to our old habits.

We pulled out the Scrabble game the other night, and realized we no longer take pictures of our epic word battles – because we don’t take much time to play in person anymore. The arrival of friends who bemoaned the loss of the lemon cake reminded us that we’re not doing as much baking, either (although, experiments in lower-carb baking are forthcoming! Stay tuned! We made ice cream cones once already, trying to make waffles! We’re not ready quite to blog the flops, but it IS happening!). When we were Away, we lived our lives in a different rhythm, and though we held onto it, and made decisions which support us keeping things simple, it has become apparent that simplicity is elusive.

We don’t want to lose everything of what we learned and gained from being away… perhaps even some of the ache is necessary to keep, so that we know what we’re missing… so we’re moved to keep a little of Away nestled in, next to our hearts, wherever we make Home.

Baltimore

by David T. Macknet

July 4, 2013

4:00 pm

Stay Tuned…

by TadMack

July 1, 2013

12:04 pm

1 Comment on Stay Tuned…

California, Life

You know you’re in California, when…

On telephone: “Yeah, I actually had to turn on my windshield wipers on the way to work! And they weren’t on the lowest setting!

Yes, indeed, an amusing and, for some, utterly bewildering two soaking days of rain, which caused quiet moments of shock and awe…. followed this week by a brief descent into hell, as temps soar into the +100F/39°C. And we’re expecting even more adventures in weather, as we’re off to Baltimore for a week… where they’re having the usual summer combo of heat AND the rain. All at once.

Can’t wait to see what that does to one’s hair.

While the trip is for medical junk and so T. can sit on a panel at a convention, we’re treating this as a mini-vacation (unlike our house, there’s air conditioning, so one can determine that AC = vacation. It’s in The Rules) to tide us over while we prep for another move (again!!!) and until we leave the country in the autumn. (Poland! Scotland! Rain!) We’re going to enjoy a few within-walking-distance treasures of the city, while also doing a little sleuthing on Baltimore’s food scene. It’s always been entertaining to find sustenance as vegetarians on the road — how do people trying to avoid sugar/carbs and meat manage? Is California the only place you can find discerning eaters? We’re positive that’s not the case, and look forward to feeling our way toward what’s good on the waterfront that doesn’t have a shell, claws, or fins.

Plus, we’re going to The National Aquarium, which is causing no end of anticipatory squealing around these parts.

Rain. Hellish Heat. Then, Rainy Hellish Heat. “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.”

One Year Past, Chaos

by David T. Macknet

June 21, 2013

10:52 am

3 Comments on One Year Past, Chaos

Upheaval

Sometimes, looking back upon the past 14 months, we feel as if our lives have been delayed or misrouted somehow. We’ve moved from our Scottish flat with views of sheep, to temporary housing in a quaint little village, and then back to the United States. We stayed with friends near San Francisco for a few months, briefly considered moving to Puerto Rico, looked for houses in Palm Springs, and moved back up to the Bay Area. We’ve been in the same house since September of last year, but D. has changed jobs from working for a Scottish company, to working for a Bay Area Biotech company, to working for a finance company, and now is going back to another biotech company … for which he worked way back in 1997-99. Fortunately, he’s able to commute there fairly easily, and it’s a much better position for him overall. But oy!, the chaos! The quick-shifts. The ridiculous bouts of homesickness for a place and time that truly no longer exists. It’s a strange thing, to go from the life of a student to Real Life again.

In order to fit into the financial world, D. had to tone down his wardrobe to something resembling business formal, or at least not business casual. Shopping has never been his favorite, of course, so he dragged his feet until he’d gotten heartily sick of wearing the same few pairs of trousers … and now he’s headed back to the land of t-shirts and shorts. And heat, of course – Vacaville is brassy blue and bright hot, long into summer and early autumn.

On the plus side, D no longer has to worry about “looking right,” and he won’t have to worry about finding a “designated expressive activity area” away from the sensitive souls in the Finance industry.

We’re finding that it’s oddly constraining, having only work and no University to discuss, here – particularly when this site is out in the public, and visible to whomever. Can we talk about D’s work? Probably not. T’s never one to talk about what she’s doing, as her life is always in revision – and with our choral duties at end, and our foodie-ness devolving into mere fuel-efficiency cooking and eating (and losing quite a few pounds, incidentally. Yay! Can’t complain about that), we’re finding that we’re quieter online these days. But, that will change – as soon as we get settled again…

We’ll likely be relocating up to Vacaville in the next few months, giving us yet another upheaval in our lives, but it’s nice, going back to a truly good company – D’s remained in contact and has gone back to this company for a few short-term contracts over the years. He’s determined to stay with them for longer this time – they’re part of pharmaceutical giant Roche, now, so there’s the possibility of quite a bit of work internationally.

For now, though, he’s enjoying the counter-commute, and the smooth drive into work, with no stop-and-go traffic.

-D & T

Still Life With Hot Sauce

by TadMack

May 31, 2013

11:44 am

3 Comments on Still Life With Hot Sauce

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Move your eyes past the clutter of lace, rose petals, sea shells; past the near invisibility of glass plates, past the strangeness of orange sections on lunch-box lids, and a bottle of hot sauce, accompanied by, of all things, a Costco-sized bottle of honey; past the mess of laundry on the love seat. None of this is the point of the shot.

Actually, this shot had no point, except to take a couple of quick clicks to work on some focusing issues. BUT. Look at the color of the sky, out of both windows.

Maybe the best of lives are made up of such serendipity – a momentary glance through a viewfinder reclaims a perfect shade of periwinkle in the midst of the chaos of a life.

Other things to think about this weekend:

Email apnea. Oh, the sucking, black hole of the internet strikes again. Hat tip to the blog of Gwenda Bond.
Is the ordinary too boring?. This piece discusses the concept of “the unexotic underclass.” They might also be known as “the middle class” and — well, just read the piece. It’s a little longer, but well worth the effort of thought.
Never wanted to go to Australia? Too many things eager to kill you there (even solely via heart attack)? Australia says, “No, really, I’m HARMLESS!” with giant pink fluorescent slugs. No, really. You’re welcome.

The Hobbits wish you a blissful weekend, doing what we love best: finding a quiet corner, a hammock, and a book. Oh, and food. Second breakfast, if possible, and lashings of tea. ☺

Glasgow:
NY:
Grinnell:
Roswell:
Berkeley: