granola

I'm not much of a week-day breakfast person -- give me a cup of coffee and I'm pretty much good to go. But Evan has recently taken to making granola, and suddenly I often find myself hankering after a bit of breakfast before dashing out the door at 7:40 every morning.

Anything Goes Granola
(as stolen from Mark Bittman):
5 cups rolled oats (not quick-cook)
3 cups mixed seeds & nuts (we've been using chopped walnuts, almonds, and cashews)
1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or other spices to taste
1/2 cup to 1 cup honey or maple syrup to taste (we've been using 1/4 cup agave nectar)
Salt
1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
1 cup to 1 1/2 cups raisins or other dried fruit (we've used dried cranberries and also some chopped crystallized ginger -- delicious!)

Mix all ingredients except the dried fruit in a large bowl, and then spread out on a rimmed baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown. Remove, add dried fruit, let cool, and eat away. This is wonderful with plain old milk, but even better with home-made yogurt.

national holidays

Working on what is a holiday for most might otherwise be incredibly frustrating except for the fact that the boss is in India, Radio Paradise is playing, and Erica and I are reserves processing demons on days like today.  Double time and a half doesn't hurt either.

notions

I am reading The Diamond Age, perhaps two decades too late to fully appreciate it, but in passing it is mentioned that a particular theater in futuristic Shanghai regularly shows Dances With Wolves. As a girl I loved Dances With Wolves, Little Big Man, Jeremiah Johnson, the story of Eunice Williams, kidnapped as a child by Mohawks in 1704 and refusing to go back to her puritanically white world.

I wonder sometimes, though, whether my teenage fascination with these tales of going native, of throwing off civilization's shackles and disappearing into the wilderness, revolved around the notion of transformation or the notion of disappearance.

you don't say

tastes, or, letting go of no-longer-valid truths

I don't like carrot cake. This has been a constant, if generally unspoken, tenet of my life dating back a quarter century to an unfortunate moment of mistaken identity (carrot cake is such a profound disappointment when you are an eight-year-old girl expecting a delicious bite of chocolate cake).

Andy came over to my place on New Year's Eve with part of a carrot cake in tow, fresh from his sister's oven. I, ever so slightly tipsy, blurted out in a moment of rudeness unusual even for me, "How nice of you, Andy, but I don't really like carrot cake!"

He looked crestfallen. I quickly apologized. And the next morning, in the midst of gathering up beer bottles and wine glasses, washing dishes, righting the wreckage of the previous evening, I decided I'd better give his carrot cake a go.

And lo, it may be time to admit that I perhaps like carrot cake, and that this tenet, once so accepted, is no longer valid.

bridge, 1.7.10

videos on my mind

This from Debra, and just gorgeous:

(One Year in 120 Seconds)

This from Andrew, silly and catchy and strange:

(United State of Pop, 2009)

at bennett park

in the winter garden III

in the winter garden II

in the winter garden I

indeed

Little Girl: Mommy, why do people in New York always wear black?
Mommy: I don't know. Maybe they just don't like looking pretty.

--Upper East Side

(from Overheard in New York)

nomenclature

Stepdad Paul had to be taken to the emergency room the day after Christmas. He'd started feeling ill the morning before Christmas with the usual suspects: low-grade fever, chills, body aches. Mom sent him off to bed, where he spent the next 24 hours or so sleeping, drinking theraflu, and being generally miserable. This seemed particularly sad to us not only because Paul so rarely gets sick, but because Paul, while not much of one for complaint, seemed so very disappointed that he wouldn't be able to cook the Christmas dinner. (Paul is quite the amazing cook, and we all look forward to his Christmas dinners).

He was feeling a bit better by Christmas evening and emerged to join us around the dinner table for a little while. He even partook in the opening of the presents and, after making some sarcastically humorous remark, we all looked at each other and smiled knowingly. Our Paul was back on his game again. Thank God.

But not quite. Saturday morning found all of us gathered around the breakfast table staring with appalled fascination at Paul's right foot, which was bright as a boiled lobster and twice its normal size. Mom and I suggested he go to the hospital, just to have them take a look at it. Paul, being so rarely sick and a semi-rugged outdoorsman to boot, shrugged us off and retired with Shanna to the study to do a little internet research. A few minutes later he hobbled back downstairs and said, "Well. Yeah. You better take me to the ER."

Turns out Paul picked up a little bacterial infection while vacationing with Mom in Hawaii a few weeks back. A particularly nasty little infection that starts with what seems to be a 24-hour bug and ends in liver and/or kidney failure, meningitis, and eventual death.

Nate made up a bag lunch for them to take with them, and Mom drove Paul off to the Anacortes emergency room. I decided I better go see what was going on when, over an hour later, we still had not heard from Mom, nor was she answering her cell phone.

Evan very kindly drove me down to the hospital, where I had to call the ER from the waiting room and state my business. Which is what brings me to nomenclature. I said that I was looking for Vicki McNeil and Paul Dinnel, and when asked how I was related to them, started to explain that she was my mother, he was her husband, etcetera, etcetera. What came out, and what I found so surprising, was this: "I'm their daughter."

In the end, Paul got a course of IV antibiotics and a week's worth of pills and seems to be doing much better. And me, well if anyone asks me next December where I'll be spending the holidays, I might say, simply, "At my parents' place."

adrift