And your little dog, in addition.

Dear Alberto,

Enjoy spending more time with your family.

Smooches,
NR.

Ease on down the road, indeed.

Dear Karl,

Don't let the door hit, kick, bite, stab, waterboard, anally probe, humiliate, sensorially isolate, strip naked, dog-bait, or otherwise "bring to the brink of death" you on your way out.

Warm regards,
Nora.


*tip o'th'keyboard (??) to JS

Dinners

Summer vegetable fritters
Grate, sprinkle with salt, and drain in colander over sink:
~one zucchini
~one beet
~one large carrot
~one medium potato
~THEN aggressively squeeze tons and tons of moisture out of that stuff, cheesecloth twist method
Mince fine a handful of garlic cloves, to taste
Small chop leftover raw chard, approx 1/2 cup loosely packed
Leftover brown rice, approx. 3/4 cup, maybe 1/2, you know I don't measure when I'm cooking on the fly...

Toss all o'that in a bowl, mix thoroughly together. Add spice, seasoning, little sauce, etc. I used Penzey's Mural of Flavour generously, with a large pinch of cumin and a big dash of vegan Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. Add some (1/4 cup?) flour for binding, mix well. Make well in center, beat one egg in well, then mix the slurry altogether. Form into smallish patties and fry up aggressively in a bit o' high heat oil (I used grapeseed augmented with homemade chili oil, also grapeseed-based). Eat with a few drops of that same chili oil as dressing, or maybe if you like ketchup (je le deteste) this would be a good time to eat some, or perhaps a creme fraiche or crumbled blue cheese. Makes "5" of undetermined size (I molded my fritters with a small mise that holds maybe 1/2 cup?), so feeds two, or one for dinner and planover lunch. Probably freezes really well. Serve with sweet corn on the cob, as I did, or with a green salad, as I will, or with some sort of chickpea number, heavy on the lime juice and green chili. This could go a lot of ways.

+ + +

Quick tofu and green bean stir fry
1/2 lb. tofu, cut into thin 1"x1/2" planks, or other pleasing shape
large couple handful of green beans, julienned (yes, it's totally worth it to do this, watch your fingers) to yield maybe 1 1/2 cups total
minced red onion, 1/4 cup or so (again, not so much with the measuring)
dried cranberries if you're feeling it
toasted almonds if you're feeling them
for Sauce, mix together a pleasing combination of:
~honey
~rice vinegar
~soy sauce or tamari
~bit of chili garlic sauce (you know, rooster sauce?)
~whatever's sitting around

In a high temp oil (see my above oil machinations), fry tofu on one side until that side is browned. At the halfway point of "browned," add most of the red onion and all of the cranberries. At the "browned" point, add the green beans and toss well over heat. Cook until crisp-tender (or to taste if you're a big soft food lover, you weirdo), adding sauce right at the end and letting it bubble like crazytime to reduce a bit. Pour over brown rice, garnish with remaining raw onions and toasted almonds and just freaking TRY not to burn your mouth, okay?

+ + +

I've gone a little nutso from the farmer's market. Tune in next time for caramelized sweet onion and goat cheese pizza with, you guessed it, homemade chili oil, and the not-quite-a-quesadilla-not-quite-a-pupusa-but-it-acted-like-both. See also Big Salads, Too Hot To Bake, and Box of Mac-N-Cheez.

Oh and...

Here is an AMAZING article (NSFW) that starts out with the story of a very extreme piercing and moves into one of the more interesting discussions on gender, change, and body choice that I've recently read. Highly recommended reading for those that want, but please consider yourself informed about the metal and the bits.

There is a person from my college days with whom I wish I'd been closer. We're acquaintances and have many of the same friends still, but we weren't in each others' nearest orbits. I had and have so much respect for her, the strong choices he made to become the person he knew she was, the self-knowledge and strength. Also very kind, very cute. And I always felt like his was a model of physical self-determination that I respected and wanted to emulate for myself, even if our methods, extents, and goals were different. The bottom line is, as I've said before, complete ownership of one's own body. If that means ink and metal, or if that means a different body than the one one's mind was born into, the people who are brave enough to create the vessels they want to live in--regardless of what the mainstreaming effects of society tell them they should prefer--well, those are the folks for me.*



*Also, my friends who are largely comfortable with what they have, with less "options packages," you are also alright by me. But not all of us are born finished.

In the meantime...

inbetween time, ain't we got fun?

In the past month:
work
gym
gamelan
crappy Monday night TV (I cannot look away, David Caruso! You suck!)
vacation, friend and family
cooking, home and away
decorating and rearranging
buying a couch
Zip car-ing
movies
finally finished Anna Karenina (!!)
freelancing

Hope to have a full report on all very soon.

+ + +

From as far back as I can remember up until I was about 18, my dreams were dominated by one enduring image or occurrence: in almost every dream, no matter what the situation was, my eyes would get stuck shut. I'd blink, in the dream, and just wouldn't be able to open them. I could pry them open with my fingers, in the dream, but with the next blink they'd stick again. It's the kind of imagery that *must mean something* but I don't know what it means. The kind of thing that maybe I'd look up in a big ol' dream dictionary if I was in a chain bookstore and had some time to kill.

But at about 18 or 19, this imagery stopped appearing and I haven't had recurring dream imagery up until the past two weeks. Lately, I've had several dreams in which I lose all or most of my teeth. In some, I try to return the teeth or tooth to my mouth, but it's always too large for the empty socket. The most recent was the most troubling: my teeth started chipping, cracking, crumbling, and peeling out for no reason, along with strips of my gums. In the dream I cried, screamed, felt around my mouth with my tongue afraid that I'd feel another broken tooth falling away from the socket. It was the only dream in which I knew what was happening was irreversible, that my teeth were gone for good. It's been the only dream in which I've lost more than one or two teeth total. And it's the only dream in which I've piled the tissue and teeth from my mouth together outside my mouth, crying and hoping a doctor can help me. Up until the last month I'd only had a couple of tooth dreams a year, but the frequency's certainly up now.

In the last four nights, I've had two dreams with very vivid spider imagery. I haven't run into a lot of spiders since we relocated to the east coast--haven't had a lot of spider exposure since I left my folks' house for the dorms and then the city, in fact. So I'm not entirely sure where this is coming from now. Last night, the spiders were large, colourful, like the garden spiders I remember from my family's first house in the relatively less arid southeastern corner of my home state. One stretched towards me on its web as I pulled one strand of the web, trying to free my hand from the sticky. The other dream featured more, smaller spiders, teeming I don't remember where, but teeming.

My teeth are fine, great even, and I haven't seen but a few spiders in the last year. This must mean something.