Kitchen Snippets

Here's a few details about my culinary habits. Nothing earth shattering, but whatever...

1. I usually use cucumbers in a big cucumber salad.

Slice and peel the cucumbers. Put them in a bowl with water and vinegar, about 1/2 and 1/2. Add some sugar, about 1/2 a cup. Salt and pepper. and stick it in the fridge.

This way you can have cucumbers any old time you want. Plus, it goes really well with Italian food of which we have been eating a lot of lately.

2. Sometimes I eat cheese. No crackers, just cheese.

And that orange stuff that comes in little squares of plastic that some people put on sandwiches, that is not cheese and I would normally not have it in my kitchen. Fie! Fie!

3. My first starter cookbook is the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. It's the one with the red and white checkered cover. Everyone should have one even if you are only slightly cookishly inclined.

4. I'm beginning to like Agave Nectar. For one, it's dark instead of white like sugar, which goes with the whole "goth food" thing. For two you can put it in Kool-Aid and it doesn't make you all "g-g-g-g-g-g" the way sugar does. It also is good on cereal.

5. I like to use fair trade cocoa.

6. MSG is icky. Instead of the packets that come with Ramen noodles I use a few broth cubes from the freezer and melt them down to put over the noodles. Plus, it tastes better this way too.

7. I use old bananas and turn them into banana bread. Not too original I know, but you would be surprised how many people just throw away perfectly good bananas just because they are a little brown.

Well, there you go. Just a tiny glimpse into the world of Gothgirl.

Caster Semenya's Got Talent!

In today's world of sometimes blurred gender identity and ongoing discoveries of bizarre medical conditions, it can be confusing how to react to those around us who fall into these categories. But what does it say that when faced with a person of large build with short hair who turns out to be athletically talented, running for a female team, the assumption is made that something must be wrong. Surely someone who looks like this and is so very good at running can't possibly be all girl.

Can they?

Oddly enough, this is a true scenario. Recently, eighteen year old Caster Semenya was declared female after undergoing 'gender testing' the very same day that she smoked everyone in the 800 meter race in Berlin. She is broad shouldered, tall, stocky build and walks with a distinct sway that could almost be described as masculine. Oh, and she runs really fast.

What I can't help but wonder is why did the question arise. Granted, she was not accused of cheating in any way. Rather the testing she underwent had more to do with the possibility of her having a medical disorder which might blur her gender. But the outcome of that test just goes to show how ingrained and pervasive the ideas of what it means to be feminine can be. Was this testing done because of her appearance or because of her ability? Or both? It begs the question. A fellow blogger raised the question would this have been a scandal if she had been a svelte, blond Icelandic girl with long flowy hair and sculpted nails? And ran really fast?

She received a hero's welcome when returning home to probably the biggest show of "I told you so," in recent history. Which leads me to wonder then what if she looked the way she does and couldn't run really fast? What if she was just a regular non athlete girl? Would that diminish her worth in any way? Would she be expected to pretty herself up a bit for the sake of attracting a partner? Or fitting into some Westernized ideology of what a girl is 'supposed' to look like?

I can't help but be a bit outraged by this situation in that she obviously rose to the ranks of greatness within her field, but for whatever reason her gender identity was doubted causing the validity of her ability to come into question. More importantly the situation begs the question where do we perceive that a person's worth is held. Appearance? Ability? Talent? Does the answer change if the person is of a different gender? Apparently, it does.

"The Graveyard Book"

Okay so the truth is that the Cheesy Bread stuff that I posted turned out kind of gross. It sounded good. It might have even looked good, but nay it did not taste good or sit on the stomach very well. So proceed with caution.

In totally other news however, I did recently finish reading "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman. I have been a fan of Gaiman ever since his Sandman (genius) Graphic novel days, and he has only evolved since then. When he was promoting "American Gods" I had the life-completing opportunity to attend a book signing at Jo-Beth Cafe. Ever so much fun. Of course scads of people attended dressed up like his Sandman's Endless characters, myself included. Three guesses as to what character I picked. Of course there are about twenty more girls dressed exactly like me, plus a handful of Deliriums, and a very few Desires. No Dreams anywhere in sight. Bummer. So anyway, I make my way up to the line where he is signing the books. He is handed my books "American Gods" and "Death: the High Cost of Living". He pauses, his hand poised over the book cover. His eyes flick up to me as the lady next to him tells him my name. He looks me over solidly taking in my black clad get up, the ankh necklace, over sized belt, and combat boots, and says in his I'm-so-British accent "Well, I've never seen that one before," and proceeds to sign my book.

It was all I could do not to jump up and down and squeal.

As far as all that goes, it remains one of my favorite celebrity memories, right up there with David Carradine, and Amy Grant.

But back to his most recent endeavor. Gaiman is such a skillful story teller that you get plunged into the tale without even realizing that there is a moral. He is a master at asking the question "What if?" and then following through until the story is complete. The Graveyard Book is a story of Nobody, young Nobody Owens who escaped murder as a toddler and is thereby raised by a family of ghosts in a nearby graveyard, including a non-ghost mysterious guardian by the name of Silas. Answering to the moniker Bod, he grows up an anomaly, a living boy among the dead. The apparent macabre nature of the story is quickly balanced out by the innocence of the boy and the genuine affection that the disembodied souls have for him. The story of Bod, beginning when his a little boy jumps forward every few years. He is befriended by another living child at age five, a girl whose family lives nearby. Along the way he meets ghouls, werewolves, thieves and assassins. Ultimately the story culminates when Bod must inevitably confront his would be murderer, when he is a young man of fourteen.

One thinks this is just a story at first. The answer to the question "What if?" And while in many ways this is true, it is also very much a story about potential, about finding ones true self and being who you are. The story of Nobody Owens teaches that things do not always turn out the way you want them to but that that is also okay.

I cannot give anything by Neil Gaiman a bad review and so with that I must admonish all of you to go out and read "The Graveyard Book".

Cheesy Bread Pudding

This little ditty is actually something I made up. I sort of modified a bread pudding recipe until it was no longer sweet and had a bunch of cheese and meat in it. Yum. You will need:

1 lb. ground meat, I used turkey.

4 eggs

3 cups of cubed bread, I used the saved up heels of loaves of bread.

2 1/4 cups milk

3/4 cup cheddar

3/4 cup mozzarella

Oregano

Basil

Measurements are of course completely arbitrary. First I toasted the bread cubes in the oven for about 10 minutes at 300. This actually sort of over toasted them so maybe five minutes. Meanwhile I mixed up the eggs, milk, cheese and spices. Here you can also add red pepper or whatever you want to. Then I mixed the meat and bread cubes tossed together in a 2 quart, oven safe pan. Pour the egg mixture over this and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. When a knife comes out of the middle with a clean blade, then it is done. That is a knife that you use yourself. It's not going to magically produce a knife like Harry Potter's hat or anything.

Writers, right?

So I just got back from a thing at the library where a bunch of writers get together to do writey stuff. These are actual writers, people who submit stuff to magazines and contests and take part in poetry nights, and know what a Seven Crown Sonnet is and stuff like that. My friend who told me about it has actually written and PUBLISHED an actual book. I haven't read it yet, but I will and then I'll have to review it. So here's little ole' me, peering out from behind my notebook saying, "Um, I have a blog?"

The thing is, I felt both wildly exhilarated and completely intimidated at the same time. If I start to go to this regularly then that means that I'll have to actually BE a writer. And write stuff. And let other people see it.

Auuuugh!

But then again, come December I am also going to have a Master's degree. Which means I'll have to do Master's degree stuff. I don't even know where to start with that one.

As far as being a writer goes, I don't know what intimidates me more, the idea of flexing my creative muscles or having to exercise my intellect a little, or both. I feel like the kid who has been bragging that he can bench press such and so amount and is now standing next to his brother's weight bench surrounded by his expectant friends who all have their arms folded and giving the look that says "Oh yeah? Prove it."

Thing is, I've always been a writer. I wrote in the fourth grade when I thought I was reformatting "Cinderella" into a novel, and on through college when I wanted to first be an English major, then took a brief foray into acting which turned into a career for a time. And now, oddly enough, a marriage, two kids and an almost-degree later, I am back to writing.

I always thought that writing was just like acting except it's on paper.

And the people I met today seem most like the kinds of people who would say, you have to start somewhere, and would be supportive even if all I can do is one sonnet at a time, or one chapter at a time, or even just one segment at a time. I'll just have to see where all this takes me. In the mean time I have an outline I need to finish.

And that's how it starts.

November, sung to the tune of Annie's "Tommorrow"

New Moon'll come out, November!
They told us at the ComicCon that November,
Brings New Moon...

Just thinkin' about November,
Makes me want to reread and remember,
Till they're done,

I'm sure that the day was gray and lonely,
When Bella Swan lost her one and only,
Oh!

The movie comes out, November!
Relive all the drama in November,
Come what may!

November, November! It's too far, November!
You're only three months away!

I Can't NOT Say It.

Something has been nagging at me for the past week, ever since that tragic shooting in a fitness class in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. It seems that for the most part, the story was reported by the news, a few snippets here and there have emerged about the shooter, but other than that there seems to be radio silence in response to the event. Where is the outrage that usually accompanies this sort of thing? Why is no one shouting their solidarity with the women who were horrifically victimized by this criminal, as we did during the Virginia Tech shootings? Why does it seem that no one is truly disturbed by the actions of this man?

Not to long ago a famous incident occurred in which music icon Rhianna was brutalized by her then boyfriend Chris Brown. The response to that occurrence seemed to have been "Well, what did she do to provoke him?" or whatever.

Jump ahead to: Old-what's-his-name decides to take an automatic weapon into a room full of women, shuts off the lights, and starts shooting, killing four and wounding many. One of which happened to be an ex-girlfriend. It has since been found out that he planned this for quite some time, even chickening out at one point, to the extent that he felt that women in general owed him the time of day because he was a "nice enough guy" and he was "clean cut and wore a touch of cologne". (Paraphrased quotes). One could conclude that if some one had expressed an interest in him to the extent that he was seeking that this would not have happened. By that conclusion one could deduce that somehow it was the women's fault. So what did the ex do to provoke this kind of response? I'll tell you what:

Nothing. Period.

The reason this happened is because one man made a choice. That choice had nothing to do with anyone else's actions or lack there of. Chris Brown made a choice. That choice had nothing to do with Rhianna's actions or lack there of.

Are we afraid to align ourselves with the victims of this shooting? Or is the hidden truth that we fell into the trap of thinking that certain things are owed to us if we do our part? Are we afraid to examine the motives and thoughts of this mass murderer lest we find something similar to our own?

The news of the shooting is disturbing. The shooting reflects the motives of one man, but the media silence reflects the possible motives of an entire society, and that is what I find truly disturbing.