Today was my last day of my first summer school class. It was an American literature class framed around 1960s rock n' roll. I have to admit that while I might have been physically in my seat with my eyes fixated on the screen before me playing Gimmee Shelter, mentally I was not at all there. This was because according to marker at the bottom of my Kindle I was 96% into Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. I was so close to finishing the book, so naturally all I could think about was how I don't cook with enough sauces and what I could throw together for dinner tonight. Derrick and I just got through a food drought. We had eaten our pantry nearly bare and the money from my last paycheck had dried up. I got payed today, and so I was really looking forward to slowly meandering down the aisles of Ralphs to get (hopefully) a week's worth of groceries. Since the night before we had bacon jalapeno mac and cheese with cheese sauce I had made a while ago then froze I really wanted to do something healthy. To me this translated into something with lots of fresh veggies over a bowl of whole grains. I know, very much a trendy Southern California thing to desire. Well, Julie Powell had me also craving something simmered in Madeira and butter with shallots. So how do I merge these two cuisines? I don't know, it is almost time for me to start cooking and I still haven't exactly figured it out. After getting home today I made my trip to the store and then settled in the guest room to finish Julie and Julia.
It is an entertaining read. Julie Powell comes across slightly more self-centered than she did when Amy Adams portrayed her, but she is still likable despite this. At least I found her more likable. She was honest, funny, and kind of a dork. I saw the movie quite a while ago and I don't really remember it being as funny as the book read. I could have somewhat of a bias though because she admits to being a Buffy fan which almost automatically heightens her likability for me. I guess this is just because in my life I have not really met any fellow fans. Another thing which Powell and I share in common is our philosophy towards food. She really writes about it in a way which acknowledges the sensuality of food and cooking. She even goes as far as to say "reading MtAoFC was like reading pornographic Bible verses". I don't know if I have ever read a recipe that came across as "pornographic" but then again I haven't ever tackled anything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I do, however, sometimes feel a bit naughty when making etouffee. Which must sound totally bizarre to anyone who doesn't feel like any food can be soul food like I do. There really is something to the connection between your stomach and your heart that I think isn't fabricated. Julia Child herself has some great quotes on love and food which I included in a D.I.Y. cookbook I made for a friend last year as a wedding gift.
Speaking of love and food, I bought some gorgeous beets today which I fancy is one of the most romantic vegetables out there. The color, the texture, the sweetness, all make them quite seductive. If only I could convince Derrick as much. Maybe a little goat cheese might sway him, because who can deny that combination?! I better start scrubbing the beets and pick the zucchini from the garden before it gets too late. I'm so excited to harvest the zucchini - it is the first one! I'm not exactly sure if it is ripe yet...we read 6-10 inches and firm. It is long enough, I'm just not sure if it is dark enough. We'll find out shortly!
One last thing. Where is Julie Powell now? Apparently she has written another book, Cleaving, but that was back in 2009. It involves her learning how to be a butcher and cheating on her husband. Her blog which started it all is inactive, and girl friend doesn't even have a Pinterest! My only conclusion is that her second book was not met with as much success as her first, and so she is hiding out somewhere in Austin or Long Island watching Buffy DVDs and feeding her cats haute cuisine. Cleaving got a whopping two stars on Amazon but it seems like most of the reviewers were just mad about her infidelity. This is understandable, but I just hope the poor girl didn't get branded with a scarlet "A" after some heartbroken critic yelled at her, "You'll never write in this town again!" or something. The world has changed a lot since the publication of Julie and Julia. Mostly we spend more time in front of computer screens. I wonder what Julie Powell would have to say about the over-abundance of food bloggers today. What would she say about the blogger Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) getting her own TV show on the Food Network? Whatever she would say I am sure would be funny and poignant, and I wish that she were still around so I could read it.
UPDATE:
I found out what Julie Powell has been doing. She has written a novel that was released January of this year. It is called Misadventures of a Fatwoman and this one got five stars on Amazon...good for her! I didn't know about it because my initial search involved Googling her name and then going directly to her website (http://juliepowellbooks.com/index.html). Her website curiously enough does not mention her novel. The last entry on her blog (http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/) is dated 2010.
UPDATE to my UPDATE:
Sorry for the misinformation above! Misadventures of a Fatwoman is NOT by the same Julie Powell. Amazon lists the author as Julie Elizabeth Powell, and I assumed it was the same Julie Powell since it came up on the same page as Cleaving. I guess that the world is still waiting for Julie/Julia Powell's novel!
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Thursday, July 31, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
The Plant Formerly Known as Lemon Verbena
Well, today we got a couple of gardening "chores" taken care of. Today Derrick very bravely cleared the area behind the greenhouse which looked too spider infested for me to go near. Wearing his new multi-purpose gloves he threw the planks of wood from the old raised beds aside and used the trowel to smash egg sacs. My arachnophobia has lessened substantially since I was a kid, but I was still scared enough that I watched with trepidation hiding around the corner by the wheelbarrow. We are clearing this area to get what we think is a blackberry plant growing up the backside of the greenhouse. Besides moving the miscellaneous wood and cinder blocks we will also need to level out the big mound of dirt left over from when there was a lettuce bed there. I don't know what we'll do with the wood, but the dirt will be no problem. Dirt can easily be recycled into pots after being mixed with nutrient rich mulch or compost.
Getting the blackberry in the ground is one of the current backyard projects, as is clearing the area by the "blood orange". We aren't really sure if the citrus tree in the back of the greenhouse is a blood orange or not, I'm only assuming so since I found blueprints my Dad drew of the backyard which included a blood orange in that exact spot. Funny thing is, Derrick cut into it with his knife and it was completely orange on the inside. However, it did taste kind of like a blood orange despite it being devoid of any trace of red whatsoever. We read online that blood oranges sometimes start out orange and then get veins of red, which my Mom confirmed, so maybe it just hasn't ripened all the way yet or something. Right next to the "blood orange" is a "lemon verbena". This plant smells just like lemon soap or Pine Sol. I'm reading Amy Stewart's book The Drunken Botantist and she has a section of lemon verbena. When I saw this I flipped over to that page but was surprised by her description and illustration. I began to doubt that what Stewart was talking about and the plant in my backyard were one in the same. So I hopped on Google and searched lemon verbena. Definitely not the same plant! I had been calling this shrub-like thing lemon verbena practically since we moved in. Derrick and had a couple we were friends with over to help us clean up the yard last summer and they told me it was lemon verbena. I never questioned it, and when I told my mom she accepted that this was its right and proper name too. After some internet sleuthing, I discovered that the plant in question was actually a lemon scented geranium. Aha! The Plant Formerly Know As Lemon Verbena I plan on transplanting into a pot because it is a little bit invasive. The bees love it, and it would look nice when it gets its little pink flowers sitting on the potting bench. I guess that the moral of the lemon geranium story is that I still have A LOT to learn before I can nonchalantly toss around nomenclature. A similarly humbling experience happened when I had planted an extremely sparse and cut-back Kale out front next to the geraniums. My mom was very confused when she saw that. Needless to say we moved it into the veggie bed outback where it is quite comfortable.
Tomorrow after I get home from work I want to do more weeding by the blood orange so that we can hopefully get two things done. First, I want to put the small trellis we found against the stephanotis and take the tomato cage which it is currently growing around off. Hopefully with better support and no weeds around it to suck up the moisture the leaves will look less yellow and heartier. Then, I want to see if we have enough edging to make a border around the blood orange and the Valencia. This should be pretty easy and then at our next trip to Home Depot we can pick up some rock or barks to fill the area with to keep the weeds at bay. Hopefully the weather tomorrow is just like it was today, overcast. If it is gray outside again then we can actually get some work done (that is, if I'm not too much of a zombie from waking up early and going to a soul-sucking retail job).
Getting the blackberry in the ground is one of the current backyard projects, as is clearing the area by the "blood orange". We aren't really sure if the citrus tree in the back of the greenhouse is a blood orange or not, I'm only assuming so since I found blueprints my Dad drew of the backyard which included a blood orange in that exact spot. Funny thing is, Derrick cut into it with his knife and it was completely orange on the inside. However, it did taste kind of like a blood orange despite it being devoid of any trace of red whatsoever. We read online that blood oranges sometimes start out orange and then get veins of red, which my Mom confirmed, so maybe it just hasn't ripened all the way yet or something. Right next to the "blood orange" is a "lemon verbena". This plant smells just like lemon soap or Pine Sol. I'm reading Amy Stewart's book The Drunken Botantist and she has a section of lemon verbena. When I saw this I flipped over to that page but was surprised by her description and illustration. I began to doubt that what Stewart was talking about and the plant in my backyard were one in the same. So I hopped on Google and searched lemon verbena. Definitely not the same plant! I had been calling this shrub-like thing lemon verbena practically since we moved in. Derrick and had a couple we were friends with over to help us clean up the yard last summer and they told me it was lemon verbena. I never questioned it, and when I told my mom she accepted that this was its right and proper name too. After some internet sleuthing, I discovered that the plant in question was actually a lemon scented geranium. Aha! The Plant Formerly Know As Lemon Verbena I plan on transplanting into a pot because it is a little bit invasive. The bees love it, and it would look nice when it gets its little pink flowers sitting on the potting bench. I guess that the moral of the lemon geranium story is that I still have A LOT to learn before I can nonchalantly toss around nomenclature. A similarly humbling experience happened when I had planted an extremely sparse and cut-back Kale out front next to the geraniums. My mom was very confused when she saw that. Needless to say we moved it into the veggie bed outback where it is quite comfortable.
Tomorrow after I get home from work I want to do more weeding by the blood orange so that we can hopefully get two things done. First, I want to put the small trellis we found against the stephanotis and take the tomato cage which it is currently growing around off. Hopefully with better support and no weeds around it to suck up the moisture the leaves will look less yellow and heartier. Then, I want to see if we have enough edging to make a border around the blood orange and the Valencia. This should be pretty easy and then at our next trip to Home Depot we can pick up some rock or barks to fill the area with to keep the weeds at bay. Hopefully the weather tomorrow is just like it was today, overcast. If it is gray outside again then we can actually get some work done (that is, if I'm not too much of a zombie from waking up early and going to a soul-sucking retail job).
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Gardening
Learning to garden is literally opening up a whole new world that has existed right under my nose without my knowledge. Sure, we all see plants around us whether they are herbs, flowers, shrubs, or trees, but for me it wasn't until I recently picked up gardening that I realized just how magical they can be. I realize using the word magical there probably made me sound like a nutty hippie, which is not what I meant at all. I guess what I'm trying to say is that gardening has deepened my sense of wonder in the world around me. By wonder I don't mean to imply some enigmatic sense of spirituality I share with the hummingbirds but a genuine curiosity which refuses to be sated. It makes me think of that saying you often hear associated with learning about wine, the more you learn the more you realize you know nothing...or something like that.
My boyfriend Derrick and I started gardening when we moved in together a year and a half ago. We had humble beginnings, and by this I mean we bought a tiny basil plant from the grocery store which we tended on the kitchen counter of our apartment. We loving watered the little plant which we had named Basil Hayden Christiansen. We wanted to put little potted plants all around our patio and we even bought organic potting soil in preparation. Then my dad died.
Things changed, and they changed fast. I was spending more and more time at my dad's house as his health rapidly declined from ill, to hospice, to the day that he passed away. Eventually I began moving my stuff from the apartment to my dad's house and Derrick slowly followed suit as his classes let out for the summer. Most of that summer I spent in the thralls of grief; I was numbly navigating what felt like a new life. Although I did live in this house with my dad for a few years, what has helped it feel the most like home (apart from Derrick being here) has been the work we've done fixing it up. My dad loved to garden. When I say this I mean it more than just how a lot of middle-aged men fancy a tomato garden. My dad was really passionate about gardening. His tomatoes made appearances on caprese sandwiches at his favorite local pub. His lettuces, lemons, beets, and peppers were all hits at the farmer's markets. Unfortunately, when my dad got sick the backyard became overgrown weeds and the beets swelled to the size of child's head. At first, Derrick and I just began by weeding to get the yard to look like less of a pitiful mess. Then we started watering and trimming back the overgrown plants which were already there. Considering we managed to revive quite a few hopeless looking specimens and part of the estate which was left to me included a box of my dad's seeds, it seemed that next it was only logical to try sowing a few of our own seeds.
I know comparing anything to life is pretty cliché, but I really feel like for me this is apt given how sentimental the analogy is. Through gardening we experience an almost daily dose of frustrations, and nothing compares to receiving felicitations on our budding green thumbs.
As we continue to learn together about gardening and life I will chronicle my experiences right here.
My boyfriend Derrick and I started gardening when we moved in together a year and a half ago. We had humble beginnings, and by this I mean we bought a tiny basil plant from the grocery store which we tended on the kitchen counter of our apartment. We loving watered the little plant which we had named Basil Hayden Christiansen. We wanted to put little potted plants all around our patio and we even bought organic potting soil in preparation. Then my dad died.
Things changed, and they changed fast. I was spending more and more time at my dad's house as his health rapidly declined from ill, to hospice, to the day that he passed away. Eventually I began moving my stuff from the apartment to my dad's house and Derrick slowly followed suit as his classes let out for the summer. Most of that summer I spent in the thralls of grief; I was numbly navigating what felt like a new life. Although I did live in this house with my dad for a few years, what has helped it feel the most like home (apart from Derrick being here) has been the work we've done fixing it up. My dad loved to garden. When I say this I mean it more than just how a lot of middle-aged men fancy a tomato garden. My dad was really passionate about gardening. His tomatoes made appearances on caprese sandwiches at his favorite local pub. His lettuces, lemons, beets, and peppers were all hits at the farmer's markets. Unfortunately, when my dad got sick the backyard became overgrown weeds and the beets swelled to the size of child's head. At first, Derrick and I just began by weeding to get the yard to look like less of a pitiful mess. Then we started watering and trimming back the overgrown plants which were already there. Considering we managed to revive quite a few hopeless looking specimens and part of the estate which was left to me included a box of my dad's seeds, it seemed that next it was only logical to try sowing a few of our own seeds.
I know comparing anything to life is pretty cliché, but I really feel like for me this is apt given how sentimental the analogy is. Through gardening we experience an almost daily dose of frustrations, and nothing compares to receiving felicitations on our budding green thumbs.
As we continue to learn together about gardening and life I will chronicle my experiences right here.
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