verbatim

Whining, and Then a Flower

I can't tell you how many blog posts I've started in the last week, only to abandon each one midway because it was too boring even for me. So, if there's anyone out there longing to hear the next installment in my never-ending tale of appliance woes (spoiler: both oven and fridge are now fixed!), more details about my chronic insomnia, endless fretting about the preparations (or lack of same) for Pete's Bar Mitzvah, or a continuation of my incessant complaints about why Scrabble is the worst iPhone/iPad app every designed, you're out of luck. For now, anyhow.

Instead, today I will show you another photo I took with my new Lytro. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it! Remember, you can click anywhere to refocus the photo. So, for instance, try clicking first on the azalea in front and then on the one in back:

Cool, huh? There are some others posted here—take a look!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day began with breakfast in bed, but I did not get to loll in bed for all that long because I was expecting company! We were planning a small brunch for the extended family, and the house was still fairly squalid after nearly a full day of cleaning on Saturday—the clutter situation around here has gotten completely out of control. Then there were bagels to slice, and fruit to cut up, and coffee to brew, and so on. But it was a warm and lovely party.

My next chance to loll was kiboshed because Pete still doesn't have a suit for his Bar Mitzvah. (He and Andy had explicit instructions to get one while the girls and I were in NYC; they went and were so overwhelmed by the options that they glazed over and came home empty-handed.) So off we went. He got a suit, shirt, tie, belt, socks, and shoes, plus a second shirt and tie for the Friday night services before his Bar Mitzvah (he'll wear his chinos and blue blazer). 

Then I forfeited another lolling session because the girls also weren't yet clothed for the Big Day, so on Mother's Day, I found myself in my least favorite spot on the planet: the mall. Ugh. But ... we quickly found perfect (sale!) dresses for both Steph and Julie, and even a dress for me for the Friday night before! The girls wanted to look for new shoes too, but I was running on empty and just wanted to get home.

First Andy and I had cocktail hour. And then, finally, Julie and I went out to our new hammock, snuggled together under our favorite afghan (it was starting to get pleasantly chilly), and she read while I played Scrabble for over an hour. Talk about lolling! It was worth the wait.

Bright Copper Kettles

This week's smorgasbord of favorite things:

1. This awesome ad from the Canadian Paralympic Committee quite literally gave me chills:

It was filmed in one continuous shot without use of CGI. And check out the accompanying poster.

2. These mugshots from the 1920s are creepy and cool. 

3. Have you tried Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Crisps? As far as I'm concerned, you can file them under "Servings Per Container: 1." They're Pringle-shaped dark chocolate wafers with little Rice Krispie-ish bits inside for crunch:

4. This Procter & Gamble ad for Mother's Day brought me to tears:

5. Pete is now officially taller than me. (Steph has been for a while.) It won't be long for Julie, either.

6. I don't have time to write anything else, because I have to get back to the Kitten Cam. This guy takes in newborn litters and provides foster care until they're ready to be adopted. He has the cam on them 24/7 just for me. And you, too. When they're asleep, I rewind and watch the parts I missed when I was sleeping. Oh, gotta go, he's got the red laser dot on them again!

Mini Me

Is it Julie?

Or is it me?

Basta Pasta

Every time I try to think of something interesting for Meatless Monday, I invariably come back to pasta. This week was no different, although at least this time I didn't fall back on a tomato-based sauce. It was delicious, although a bit of work—nothing technically difficult, but the kind of recipe that will use up every surface in your kitchen and leave you with plenty of washing up to be done. For the bechamel, you might want to consider borrowing a pan from Ned Flanders and just throwing it away afterward rather than bothering to scrub it. I will definitely make this again. (Oh, and for Wendy and any others who are always hyper-alert to fat content, let it be known that one pan fed all 5 of us with quite a bit left over.)

Spring Shells and Cheese 

2 pounds medium zucchini
kosher salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
¼ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (I forgot to buy this, so I used a pinch of the ground nutmeg I've had in the cabinet since the Clinton era.)
pinch of cayenne pepper
freshly ground black pepper
6 cups whole milk
4 sprigs fresh thyme
3 bay leaves
grated zest of ½ lemon (My only lemon was icky, so I left this out.)
1 pound medium pasta shells
4 shallots, minced
2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
4 ounces parmesan cheese, grated
4 ounces gruyere cheese, grated (I used a microplane, but it came out too fluffy; next time I will use a regular grater. Or perhaps even a different cheese entirely—one that you can buy already grated!)
4 ounces baby spinach

Grate the zucchini into a colander using the large holes of a box grater. Toss with 1 tablespoon kosher salt, then place in the sink to drain, about 15 minutes. Squeeze out the excess liquid.

Meanwhile, melt 4 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour, nutmeg, cayenne, 2 teaspoons kosher salt, and black pepper to taste and mix with a wooden spoon to make a paste. Cook, stirring, until the paste puffs slightly, about 3 minutes. (Mine also turned brownish.) Slowly whisk in the milk, then add the thyme, bay leaves and lemon zest and bring to a boil, stirring. (Keep an eye on it, or else what a mess!) Reduce the heat and simmer until thickened slightly, about 25 minutes. Strain into a bowl; discard the herbs.

Meanwhile, position a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 425°. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain and add to the sauce.

Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until translucent, 2–3 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring, until almost tender, about 4 minutes. Add the zucchini mixture to the pasta along with the egg yolks and all but 3 tablespoons of both cheeses; stir to combine, then add the spinach.

Transfer the mixture to a 9-by-13-inch baking dish (it will just barely all fit) and sprinkle with the reserved cheeses. Bake until browned on top and heated through, 25–30 minutes. (Next time I will let it get even browner.) Let rest 10 minutes before serving.

 

 

I'm Game

Even when I'm burning the candle at both ends (as I seem to have been doing too often lately), I always find time to catch up on my games. When I'm at home I prefer to play on my iPad, but I rarely take that anywhere with me, so I play on my iPhone when I'm out and about. There's all this downtime in the car while I'm waiting for the kids to be done with their various activities, so I take advantage of the time to fit in a few rounds. I also play in bed when I have insomnia, looking very glamorous with my real glasses on (since I don't bother to put my contacts back in) and then my reading glasses on top of them.

I'm still playing lots of Scrabble, and I'm still convinced it's the best game on the planet as well as the worst app ever created (shame on you, EA!). At any given time I have about 8 or 10 games going. Words with Friends is a near-perfect app (although a slightly frustrating game experience for us Scrabble purists), and I generally have closer to 15 or 20 of those games going at once. I have a few opponents I beat nearly all of the time, a few who beat me nearly all of the time, and then all the rest feel like very good matches for me. But I honestly just love to play and don't get too caught up in the win/lose thing. 

The two newcomers among the word games are Scramble with Friends (like Boggle) and Hanging with Friends (hangman), and I have only a couple of opponents in both of those. I'm not great at Scramble—I've never liked games where you have to rush—but it's fun.

And finally, I have a few opponents to play Dice with Buddies (Yahtzee) with. As far as I can tell, that game is 86.3% pure luck, so I don't even pay attention to who wins or loses. I don't even know why I think it's so much fun, but I do. (You may recall that Julie and I play a lot of real Yahtzee around here. And Battleship. And MasterMind. And every other game you can think of. Speaking of MasterMind, has anyone found a good app? There are quite a few out there, but none that really do the trick.)

Every now and then, I've caught up on all my games, and everyone seems to be asleep or at work—even in all those other time zones!—and then all I can do is play Word Warp by myself. So this is all by way of saying that if you'd like to play any of these games with me, please challenge me ("wisekaren"). 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I got the iPad app for the New York Times crossword puzzle, and I love it! I get the Times delivered only on Sundays, but now I do the Sunday puzzle on the iPad, plus I get to do the whole rest of the week's worth of puzzles too. If you are not a regular puzzle-doer, you might not have known that they start out easy-peasy on Monday and get progressively harder as the week goes on. In truth, I often find the Saturday puzzle harder than the Sunday puzzle, because the Sunday puzzle usually has some gimmick that, once you catch on, makes it all go quickly. If I am really stuck, and it's not a matter of trying to remember or figure out something but rather that I have absolutely no idea (all those rivers in Asia and Scandinavian actors from the '50s and Olympic luge champs!), I will ask my friend Jimmy Wales for help. And I don't feel guilty about it one bit, because otherwise I'd just be stuck and wouldn't be able to go on. Once I look up an answer or two that I never would've known, I can usually proceed to fill in the rest. And when it's all done, you get this nice little banner that says, "Well done!"

My favorite puzzle is still the acrostic, which shows up every other week in the Sunday Times. I rarely have to "cheat" on those, because there are so many different ways to work it. And those get done in pen right in the magazine, just like in the old days.

Belated Blogiversary Announcement

In anticipation of my Big Birthday, I totally missed another big milestone, back in March: The 8th anniversary of the day I first dared to hit PUBLISH here at Verbatim! I think 8 years in the blogosphere must be something like 27.6 dog years, right?

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I do it all for you. If no one came by, why would I bother? I eagerly await responses to my (ever-more-infrequent, occasionally lame) posts—whether via the Comments or Facebook or Twitter or email—and truly treasure the connections and friendships I've made online.

Thanks to all of you for making this little piece o' the Internet feel like home to me.

Whiskers on Kittens

A few more of my favorite things (most of which I already shared on Twitter—are you still not following me?): 

1. You know those reusable shopping bags we all schlep to and from the market? Well, unless yours are washable—and you wash them—they're disgusting. All kinds of life forms can be found within: bacteria, mold, yeast, you name it. So, a while back I got a Groupon for 4 reusable and washable Envirosax bags. They have a million cute patterns, fold up to the size of your fist, and hold up to 44 lbs. each. The only thing I don't love about them is that there isn't a rigid bottom, so they do tend to kind of flop when you put them in the trunk of the car. 

2. Check out these Then and Now photos of rock stars. 

3. David Rees, Artisanal Pencil Sharpener, was in town yesterday and I missed him! Speaking of pencils, yes, I got these mechanical colored pencils, and yes, I am calling them a business expense.

4. I hope everyone has heard about the release of millions—yes, millions—of photos of New York going back to the mid-1800s. They're all available here, but since that site has, not surprisingly, been deluged with visitors, you might have trouble getting in, so here's a taste of some of what's there. I love the one of the painters working on the Brooklyn Bridge.

5. Werner Herzog's note to his cleaning lady.

6. People who don't know how to spell "cologne."

7. Lines from The Princess Bride that double as comments on freshman composition papers.

8. Kurt Vonnegut's response to the news that a high school planned to ban Slaughterhouse-Five.

Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In

The girls and I are back from a whirlwind weekend in New York! We had all been invited to a cousin's Bat Mitzvah, but Andy (well, Andy's knee) definitely did not feel up for the long ride, so he and Pete stayed home and "bached it." (That doesn't look right, but it can't be "batched," right?)

After studying all of the possibilities, we decided that the the best idea of all was for me to not have to drive at all. So we got up very early on Saturday morning and hitched a ride down with Lauren and Gary. We played word games for nearly 4 hours, stopping only once for a bathroom break. We got a little lost heading into Brooklyn, but it turned out that the turn we had missed would have led us to a major traffic jam—Mom and Dad did make the proper turn and ended up late to the service because of it! 

The Bat Mitzvah was held at the Church of Gethsemane, which hosts the Kolot Chayeinu congregation, and we lucked out and found street parking a couple of blocks over. Gary just had to knot his tie and slip on his jacket, but we 4 had to change into our dresses in the back seat. I am here to report that it is just barely possible to wriggle into Spanx under those conditions.

The service was lovely, and we were relieved when Mom and Dad finally showed up. From there, we drove a mile or so to the party, which was held at Deity Lounge (only in Brooklyn would you have a Bat Mitzvah service in a church and the party in a converted synagogue, amiright?). The parking gods were definitely being kind to us—this time we got street parking directly in front of the building. Deity is a very cool place, and ideal for such an event: The grownups were upstairs and the kids (and their loud music and crazy dancing—yes, I'm that old) were downstairs. It was so nice to connect with relatives I haven't seen in years—one cousin I had last seen when I was pregnant with Steph in 1996! Steph and Julie had a ball, coming upstairs every now and then to check in. I made it downstairs at one point and did the photo booth thing with them:

The food was delicious, and the dessert was rows and rows of high-end bakery versions of childhood favorites like Ring Dings and Twinkies! Yum! We were among the last to leave the party—why make that long trip if you're not going to milk it for all it's worth, right? Lauren and Gary graciously offered to drive us to our hotel, and we did manage to get lost again thanks to my maps app, which sent us ridiculously off-course. They then left to go stay overnight with friends in New Jersey.

We got settled in our room and then went out to find dinner. It turns out that there are bazillions of restaurants on 5th Avenue in Park Slope just a couple of blocks from our hotel; we walked up and down and finally chose a cute little Italian place called Campo de' Fiori. Julie declared it the best pizza she'd ever eaten, mainly because of the sauce.

The next morning we had continental breakfast in the hotel, checked out, and off we went! I knew we didn't have enough time to actually do anything, but we planned to see as much as possible. Julie really wanted to take a cab because she'd never ridden in one and because if we took the subway she wouldn't be able to see the Brooklyn Bridge. So we took a cab to the Staten Island Ferry, which was a surprisingly great take. The terminal is clean and nicely organized; you board the ferry and get a 20-minute ride across the harbor. We were told to stand on the right, so we got a great view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Then we got off in Staten Island, turned right around, and got onto a different ferry for the same ride back (standing on the left this time, of course). The whole thing took just under an hour—and was free! It didn't hurt that the weather was magnificent.

We asked a ferry guy for directions to Ground Zero, but he wasn't too sure. We then asked two different police officers, who were also a little unclear. I was shocked—it ended up being about a 10-minute walk, and they didn't know how to tell us to get there! We started walking, saw the Wall Street Bull, and then finally saw a few signs. We didn't go into the WTC Memorial, but we did see the site where the old buildings went down and the new buildings are going up.

I'm red-faced to admit this, but it had never occurred to me that "downtown" means "down" as in heading south and "uptown" means "up" as in heading north. Duh! (Well, to be fair to myself, we don't use the term "uptown" in Boston.) That was a revelation in terms of navigating. So I knew we had to start heading uptown in order to eventually catch our 2:30 Bolt Bus at 34th and 8th. We went down into the first subway stop we saw and said, "Driver, take us to Times Square!" Well, actually, we bought our tickets and hopped on the next train that came. It was just a few stops, and then I watched the girls' faces as we emerged to street level in Times Square! This is what they wanted: crowds, noise, lights, skyscrapers, excitement, and that feeling that everything in the world is happening right around you at that moment. We walked around, bought junky souvenirs, gawked at the pricey stuff in the M&M World store, people-watched, and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find public bathrooms. We ate a quick and yummy lunch at Pax Wholesome Foods. (Meanwhile, did you know that in New York, all restaurants have a sign posted in the window for their grade in sanitation? Are there reasons that someone might choose to eat in a restaurant that didn't earn an A? Ick?)

Then, with the girls still starry-eyed and me still dragging our suitcase behind us, we continued heading uptown. We wanted to get something to bring with us to eat on the bus ride, but we again ended up spending most of our time trying to find a bathroom. We were stunned that there wasn't one at Starbucks! When we were just about desperate, at last a sympathetic cleaning lady at a Burger King let us use theirs without waiting in the mile-long line to buy something first. (I would've been happy to buy something, but the line was moving so slowly.) We ended up just buying a bunch of Luna and Cliff bars at a little market. We didn't want to tempt ourselves with too much water, because we knew that the bus was going to make only one stop for a bathroom break, so we had just one bottle with us.

We finally made it to the bus stop outside the Tick Tock Diner, which is in view of the Empire State Building. Our driver apologized to us because instead of one of those sleek, fancy Bolt buses, we had a dumpy old Peter Pan bus that did not have electrical outlets as we'd been promised! My iPhone was just about out of charge, so that was a big bummer. He thought we would have wifi, but we didn't have that either. My iPad had plenty of charge, so I ponied up the $20 for a month of 3G in order to catch up on two days' worth of Scrabble and Words With Friends games, to text Andy, to see all the Bat Mitzvah photos my cousins had already posted on Facebook, and to check my email. The good news was that this bus did have a toilet in back! This was a huge relief to the girls, who had been very concerned about waiting until we stopped at a rest area.

The bus ride was uneventful, and we ended up not stopping since we had the use of the bathroom. The girls were glad that the driver decided to avoid the traffic on 95, because that meant that they got to add New Jersey to the list of states they've been in. We arrived at South Station just before 7pm and were very happy to see Andy and Pete and to get home.

As you know, I am very much a Nervous Nellie, so I am pretty proud of myself for having done this weekend excursion on my own. The girls really enjoyed their first taste of New York. Next time we will do it at a more leisurely pace.

Book Group

We met last night to discuss The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. I didn't know what to expect, because the book has been met with such fanfare in the press, particularly for a young author's debut, but then I had heard a lot of people who didn't like it at all. I ended up really enjoying it, although I would stop short of calling it one of the best books of the year.

The story takes place somewhere in the Balkans. It seems clear that it's the former Yugoslavia (where Obreht is from), but specifics aren't given. The main character, Natalia, is a doctor, and her grandfather was also a doctor. He shared with Natalia his stories about a tiger that had escaped from a zoo and terrorized his childhood village, and about the "deathless man" he met at several key points in his life. After his death, Natalia wants to find out more about her grandfather and about the characters in these stories, including the woman who became known as the tiger's wife. 

And that's all I'll tell you. The writing was gorgeous. Nearly every page had a sentence that struck me with its elegance or interesting way of describing something. 

The group was split—several people didn't like the book much or at all, but a few of us did. I initially attributed that to the fact that some people just don't like magical realism, but some of these people do like it—a lot—but just didn't like this one. So I don't know. I happen to love magical stories, and in any event you could read this book quite literally and just accept the magical parts as stories that aren't meant to be real, as tricks that people in all cultures have for comforting ourselves and explaining the world. Some call it religion, some call it myth, and some just allow it to be woven into their lives without calling it anything.

Next month we're doing Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. I thought I was the last person on the planet to read it, but apparently not.