pameladean | Well, here we are

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Well, here we are

I just took down the 2015 Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar (it does not do to be hasty about these things), the December photograph in which was a lovely one of a snow- and icicle-encrusted evergreen branch in the foreground, with a wave caught breaking in white spray behind it, and snow- and evergreen-encrusted islands on the horizon, somewhere on Lake Superior. The January photo for the 2016 calendar is also of Lake Superior, at Gooseberry Falls State Park, a rocky beach with lumps of ice perched atop the rocks, each one perfectly sized for its perch, as if a wave had come in and instantly frozen. In the background are the lake, looking very cold, and a low but brilliant sun. I read the Phenology section with great pleasure, because it almost always tells you to listen for the "fee-bee" call of chickadees establishing their territories, and the drumming of downy woodpeckers. And even in the middle of the city, I have heard both of these things already, birds not being great devotees of the Gregorian calendar.

Today a lot of house sparrows are yelling their heads off in the neighbors' pea-bush hedge, and occasionally a crow makes a pronouncement about some esoteric matter.

I'm hoping to post more, however mundane the content of the posts is. Here is a bit that I wrote but never posted just before Christmas.

"Today I made vegan cream of mushroom soup, which is quite delicious, if extremely rich; but I didn't make it to be eaten as soup, but rather to be used in a casserole the recipe for which comes from the family of one of my partners. Then I made dinner for Raphael and me (macaroni and goat cheese and steamed broccoli), and now I am roasting some mushrooms, to be followed by green beans and cauliflower. The last-minute roasted vegetables I made for Thanksgiving (turnips, broccoli, and carrots) were so wonderful that I want to have some more at Christmas dinner. Sadly, some people I seem to be related to don't like turnips, so I'm doing these different vegetables. I had more mushrooms than I needed for the soup, and that is how it all arose. I expect these vegetables will still be wonderful, and I also got some turnips to roast later in the week." In the event, the roasted vegetables were very good, and I did roast turnips, carrots, broccoli, and more mushrooms a few days later. Also very good. I was sneaking the leftovers cold out of the fridge as if they were cheesecake.

The day before Christmas was a better day for pie crust than the day before Thanksgiving. All the pies came out fine. David has heroically finished the mince, and both pumpkin pies are still being worked on. I didn't assist the situation much by making two loaves of banana bread and then lugging one all over on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day but never actually getting it out at a party, so now we have to eat all of that too. The horror. It's a good batch. The recipe uses up to six bananas, with enough whole-wheat flour and sugar to hold them together and some rising agents, salt, vanilla, and cinnamon, with optional walnuts. Aside from the quality of the bananas, which is not really under our control, the keys to a good batch of banana bread seem to be increasing the amount of walnuts, toasting them thoroughly, using fresh cinnamon and good vanilla (thanks,

carbonel!), and not under-baking the result. It's also useful to gauge the level of moisture in the bananas and lower the number used if they seem too gooshy.

Christmas dinner was small this year, but we all had a good time.

lydy was gallivanting about the East Coast and David's sister couldn't make it, so it was just five of us. We had lots of leftovers, which was very satisfying. I tried to recreate my youngest brother's balsamic-mustard-maple-syrup reduction for the salmon, but it came out too mustardy. Still very tasty, just not sublime. And the oyster casserole was a great success with

arkuat as a birthday treat. Follow Your Heart vegan cheddar substitute melts like Velveeta and makes a grand cheesy sauce with homemade vegan cream of mushroom soup. I had leftover soup and ended up making more cheesy sauce and putting it over baked potatoes after I'd eaten all the proper leftovers.

This seems to be a very foodish post. I suppose it's the time of year.

David and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary by going to Kyoto All You Can Eat Sushi. My favorite piece was the sweet potato hand roll, but it was all very good. On New Year's Eve Day David had to go deal with a complicated computer project. I made rosemary shortbread that was too dry and crumbly and slightly greasy, and oatmeal shortbread that did not work right at all. The rosemary was demonstrably shortbread, not greasy oatmeal candy like the oatmeal attempt, but it still wasn't right. I think Earth Balance has messed with the formula of their tub margarine so that it doesn't work right for baking, and I will henceforward need to only use the Buttery Sticks for baking. These are sadly no good for just putting on your toast or potato, which is annoying.

On New Year's Eve, David and I went to two parties. I actually hate this, and cherish a useless nostalgia for the comparatively few years when everyone I wanted to see attended the MinnStf party. Even then, when I had first joined MinnStf, there was at least one splinter group that had its own party; I just didn't know those people well and didn't care. The MinnStf party was hosted in a really grand fashion with chicken noodle soup, tacos with a vast array of possible fillings, and, it was rumored, a turkey breast; also huge tubs of hummus, interestingly flavored chips, vegetables (including what looked and tasted like heirloom cherry tomatoes of several varieties), and a plenitude of fruit and candy. The banana bread seemed surplus to requirements, so I didn't get it out. I had several pleasant conversations, and the general conversation upstairs was also nice. I felt guilty leaving, but was very glad, at the second party, to see at least six people I always love to talk to and a number of other congenial sorts, as well as two very self-possessed and fluffy cats. This party was also more than well supplied with edibles, so I didn't bring the banana bread out for it either.

We got home before 2, when I realized that I'd forgotten my knapsack with the lonely loaf of banana bread in it, so we had to drive back to get it, David exhibiting remarkable patience at my fecklessness. I am looking after Lydy's cats while she's gone, so there was half an hour of washing food bowls, parcelling out wet food to the healthy in small doses and to the cat with kidney issues in a larger one, refilling waterers, scooping litter boxes and cleaning up the floor where Naomi, the kidney cat, earnestly pees from inside the box. I don't even, but we love her a lot. Then when I got upstairs, Saffron produced a long fussy lecture about my deficiencies in being gone so much and then clattering around downstairs instead of attending to her. She had been quite adequately looked after by Raphael while I was away, but that was not, I take it, the issue.

She was very snuggly overnight. When I woke up I glanced at the clock and thought, 11:09, that's not bad at all. However, a closer look showed that it was 1:09, so there was some scrambling around. However, David and I had agreed that we would get to the Hair of the Dog party after three but before five, and we did manage that. This is one of my favorite parties, and it was really lovely. All but two pieces of the inadequate rosemary shortbread did get eaten. There were goat butter and good bread and goat and sheep cheeses and fava bean dip and Thai hummus and taramasalata and sesame brussels sprouts and fancy olives and six kinds of herring and celery and grape tomatoes and carrots and cornichons and a very chunky guacamole and a gingerbread trifle, which was not at all Pamela-safe, but Beth offered me a bite and it was stupendous. I had a nice conversation with Katie and Magenta and got to hear lemur anecdotes from Karen, and Josh let us look at the portable museums he'd contributed to the Kickstarter for. They are small blocks of lucite in which are embedded very small bits of museumy objects, like dinosaur skin and bone and a bit of tape from an Apollo mission's music selection. I liked the Japanese star sand the best (it's microfossils), but it was all well worth looking at and pondering. I also got to talk a bit to Laura Jean, which almost never happens, and to Tamsin, though most of my conversation with her had occurred the evening before. The general conversation around the museums also included Eric and David, and Beth and Barb J. and Bruce. It was not actually alliterative, though.

Eric and I had decided to just have our date continuing on from the party, so we went back to my house around ten, and I did a bunch more cat work. Ninja helped us make the bed, as usual, with an interruption from Lady Jane, who keeps trying to play with him but hasn't persuaded him to return the desire yet. We read our books and didn't stay up terribly late. Lady Jane leapt onto the bed for petting several times, but didn't want to stay. We had most of our date on Saturday, ending with brunch at the Himalayan Restaurant, a brief stop at the new coop on 38th Street, and a stop to fill up the tank of Lydy's car, which she had kindly lent Eric and me in her absence.

Then I came home and caught up on LJ and had many thoughts about people's 2015 roundup posts, about whether I am remotely a working writer any more and other somber musings. It's easy enough to fix this. Well, no, it's not easy at all. But it's very simple.

Saffron had more to say to me about my various absences, but this week will be normal, so perhaps I won't be scolded so much either by my cat or by my brain.

Pamela

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the portable museums he'd contributed to the Kickstarter for. They are small blocks of lucite in which are embedded very small bits of museumy objects, like dinosaur skin and bone and a bit of tape from an Apollo mission's music selection. I liked the Japanese star sand the best (it's microfossils), but it was all well worth looking at and pondering.

That's extremely cool! Do you have a link?

Happy New Year!

The link is here: http://www.minimuseum.com/

I have both the first and second generation (different items in each). The second is still available for purchase, but the first is only available exorbitantly on eBay.

They do not come with a flashlight or magnifying glass, but those can be purchased anywhere. (My magnifying glass came out of my 2nd ed OED.)

Thank you! I knew I was using the wrong term. There is something called Portable Museum, but it's not what you had.

P.

I thought the last two pieces were great!

I'm very glad that you got some. Some years you miss out.

P.

Happy anniversary, Happy Christmas, and Happy New Year! All that food sounded wonderful and it even made me want to try the turnips!

And the same to you! The turnips get very sweet, but they do still have a turnipy bite.

P.

Man, that vanilla of

carbonel's! Finding worthy uses in all its homes!

I sometimes double the amount recommended by the recipe, and it makes things better!

P.

Different form, though. All the Romance Exchange people got a bottle vanilla extract as a winter holiday gift.

I'm glad other people are making use of theirs. I kept a bottle for myself, but I've only used it a couple of times. Luckily, I believe it will keep for several years if it's tightly sealed.

Ours is entirely gone into either hazelnut cakes or peach vanilla bean gelatos OM NOM NOM NOM.

Happy New Year!

Thank you so much! And the very same to you.

P.

I am going to mine your posts for ideas of what to eat and cook when I'm tired of what I usually eat and cook, because everything you describe sounds mouthwatering.

Funny about turnips! It's like parsnips, a vegetable I'd never had until we lived in England for a while. My mother-in-law roasted them, and they were delicious: *sweet*, the way sweet potatoes are, but also nutty. A lovely flavor. And yet I hear they are often Not Faves with people.

You remarked on the chickadee saying fee-bee, the way they do, but do you know? for the longest time I didn't realize that that noise came from the same bird that said "chickadee-dee-dee." I thought the "fee-bee" came from the bird we call phoebe. You can see how I'd make that mistake. When I finally heard a real phoebe's raucous call, I felt bad for it. The chickadee says it much more nicely.

"Museumy" is an excellent adjective and should be widely applied (but only where appropriate)

I know just what you mean about being tired of all the things you cook and eat. I'm happy to provide inspiration.

With regard to turnips et al., I think there's a touch, in many of these root vegetables, of what a friend of mine once said about rutabagas: "Rutabagas taste like you already ate them." If you can taste that, it may be no good no matter how the vegetable is prepared. I just feel they are a bit sharp and a bit earthy, and, as you say, the roasting makes them so amazingly sweet but not bland.

I too took quite a long time to realize that it was chickadees making that call. Raphael and I once went to a county park in early March, on a (then) day of aberrant warmth, with temperatures in the seventies. The call was everywhere, and yet all we could see was chickadees. Finally one landed in a bush just before us and whistled its heart out. It was amazing that such a tiny creature could make such a piercing sound.

Years later, I had a character refer to that call as "phoebe," and one of the people in my writing group, a birder and the son of a famous birder, argued with me until I just gave up and changed the book. The call is actually called the "cheeseburger" call, because it does have a very short third note.

P.

Yes, I've heard one ornithologist describe that call as "sweetee (tee)," with that tiny extra noise at the end.

I also find that hakurei turnips are a good gateway turnip for people who think they don't like turnips. They don't taste like much, but man are they good sauted with toasted sesame oil.

Sounds lovely (except the dark musings, sigh) and I do so envy you that social life. While I love passionately my online social life, there's so much to be said for actually seeing people outside of relatives and inlaws.

I'd love it if you were part of my own in-person social life! And I'm sorry you feel so isolated. I am quite hermit-like myself much of the year, and even grumble about having to go to parties; but really they are a fine thing and good for me.

P.

I'm hoping to make 4th Street my con for this year.

EEEEEEE! I did not get an email notification for this comment or I would have answered sooner. If you could, that would be just lovely.

P.

Ah, very good! I am so glad you posted. When out sliding with the kids, we heard a lovely 2-note bird call and I wasn't able to tell them what it was. Also, we saw a downy woodpecker drumming on a maple tree.

I am disturbed that there is more than 1 New Year's party in the local Minn-StF related community. However, I cannot host such a party due to aversions to the behavior of many club members: going through the host's possessions as if they were one's own, setting up to play a game on the only available table space (gluing themselves into some of the few chairs and looming over the food), lack of inside voices, and etc. I also love Minnstf music with my whole heart, and having that be the focus of a party is deeply pleasing to me. Out of respect and affection for the club I don't host a New Year's Party (though we did have an invitational house-warming the year we moved into this house), but I am glad someone does, and that there is music.

It would be lovely if there were more parties on the holiday week between Xmas and NYE, but no one seems to host any (that I am invited to), and now that there are grandchildren, we don't have an Xmas gathering either.

K.

It's a beautiful call; I really love it. I'm glad to have helped edify your grandchildren. 8-)

I don't feel it's really a New Year's party without music, myself, which I why I don't just stay put. And I do understand the problems that accumulate over decades of people's just not changing. Nostalgia, however, does not really listen to these rational concerns.

We don't have enough space or seating for a New Year's party. You make me wonder about a smaller, or longer, open house one year, though.

P.

Alas, I have never grown to like turnips -- it's one of the few vegetables on which the spouse and I are in agreement. But parsnips and carrots and almost any other root crop, I adore, especially roasted.

I wonder how, when, and why banana bread became such a holiday staple. It's not Christmas morning in my family without it.

We made it down to Worcester for most of New Year's Eve with Chris and Sue and Gail, but didn't last until midnight thanks to a pair of bad colds. Good to hear that you had a merry time! :-)

I'm so glad you got to see them! I recall their parties, and them, so fondly.

I suspect the ability to love turnips, or the inability, is probably genetic, and there's not much to be done.

P.

(The deleted comment below is just me posting at top level instead of replying to you.)

Golden Crisco is the best vegan marge I have found for baking. It's useless for anything else, but it keeps forever, which is a plus.

You'd better be a working writer. Sit down and work! Write two words today and four tomorrow and so exponentially on...

Hmm, I have vegan baking plans in the works so this is v useful, thanks! I've just been buying regular Earth Balance sticks, though I'd been eyeing Crisco's sticks for ages.

Do you have a preferred egg substitute for baking? Sometimes I want vegan and not just nondairy, but I haven't baked much vegan stuff yet.

Fortunately, everyone I bake for is OK with eggs, so no.

I have generally found with making things vegan for parties and things that instead of trying to fake up something it's better to make something that was never meant to have eggs, like shortbread or crumble.

I generally avoid Crisco except for once-a-year things like the crusts for holiday pies, because it has trans fats. Less than half a gram per serving, so they can claim 0, but it has trans fats and I prefer to be cautious.

The best egg replacer depends on what the eggs are doing in the recipe. For quick breads like cornbread or banana bread or biscuits, that only call for one egg, there are lots of good recipes that just increase baking powder, or increase or add fruit if it's there already, or soft tofu if it isn't. This works well for high-fat cookies like peanut-butter ones. I've sometimes just used a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon or two of water or non-dairy milk as an egg substitute, but the eggs can't be doing any heavy lifting as structural agents if that is to work.

For recipes that use more eggs, it's correspondingly harder. Ener-G replacer will work fine right up until it doesn't, in which case suddenly your cookies are as hard as a rock. Chickpea water (either drained from a can, or the water left from cooking dry chickpeas at home) will whip up like egg whites and can actually be used to make macaroons or folded into a recipe that calls for that. You have to figure out something to substitute for the yolks, though, in that latter case.

In the absence of a specific request from the vegan guest, it is indeed easier to just make things that don't need eggs in the first place. Any recipe that calls for brushing tops or top crusts with egg can be ignored; you don't need to do that, and often that's the only egg there is.

After a somewhat harrowing period of experimenting with veganizing favorite recipes, I began to rely more and more heavily on vegan cooking blogs where somebody else had the failures and finally came up with a recipe that worked. You need to be wary of people who are obsessed with low-fat baking or who have much of any other dietary obsession other than being vegan (I don't mean food intolerances or allergies, though the more restrictions are put on the baking, the more likely it is to go wrong somewhere), but there are a lot of good and well-tested recipes on the internets.

P.

You are sly. After a nag from

arkuat, I went off to write two words, but if one starts at all, it's rare to stop after two, except in cases of extreme intransigence of either the story or the writer. So I wrote a paragraph, maybe fifty words. I wonder if going for four will result in a hundred. You never know.

P.

Happy New Year and Happy Anniversary! It sounds like you've been having a wonderful time. I do love your food posts. Everything sounds so delicious.

Best to you and yours for 2016.

Thank you, and the very same to you. (I figure there's a lot of year left, so good new year's wishes still count.)

I'm glad you like my food posts, because there might be more of them. I cook four or five days a week and it seems to take up a lot of my time and thoughts.

P.

As a Chicago fan, for a long time I envied Mnstf's unity of parties. Chicago fandom is so spread out physically and socially (and I just missed the Rogers Park heyday) that conventions were the only parties where I could see friends across multiple subsections. The Twin Cities are much more manageable geographically -- and real estate is more reasonably priced.

Now that I live in Madison (WI) and time has moved on, I wonder more about group dynamics, and stability, and growth. Are the splits part of just how social groups work? In the end I think it's good for fandom that all three cities now have multiple groups and multiple convention, but I wish there was better blending across groups socially. It's a lot of hard (and often quite deliberate) work, though.

Anyway, happy new year and happy anniversary! It sounds like you had some fine celebrating in there.

Deleted comment is just this one, which I put on the wrong level.

I think Twin Cities fandom has had both amiable and distinctly non-amiable splits, including at least one that tried hard to be amiable and failed. The split at the heart of the two parties we now attend goes way, way back to disputes about smoking, but it has many other roots and tendrils.

Being a human being is hard.

P.

Thank you for posting this. There ought to be a word for the pleasure derived from reading about other people's perspectives on shared experiences. (I enjoyed the rest as well, I hasten to add.)

The Minn-stf NYE party was low-key but pleasant, but I left well before midnight because it had been way too long a day. I have apparently fallen off the invitation list for the other local party. This makes me sad, but is not entirely unreasonable on their parts, given that I seldom see them socially the rest of the year. I just hope that I am not unwittingly participating in any of the behaviors that annoy people. But this year, it probably would have been a mistake to attempt it had it even been an option.

It certainly was quite a long drive between parties. I suspect they are just more focused on musicians. I doubt I'd be asked, frankly, if David hadn't taken so many photos of music parties.

P.

If you arrive at an acceptable vegan shortbread, I would be interested in the recipe. It's one of the things I occasionally miss, but have not attempted a non-dairy version of.

What I usually make is this:

1 cup Earth Balance margarine (Regular Style in a tub, or Buttery Sticks; don't use "whipped" margarine)
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon dried whole rosemary leaves, lightly crushed

Cream margarine and sugar together. Add flour and mix until incorporated. Dough will be crumbly around the edges but will adhere to itself. Knead very briefly just to get the crumbly bits in.

Pat dough into a 9-inch pie plate or an 8- or 9-inch square baking pan. Press edges with a fork if you want that look; cut into squares or wedges. Bake at 325 F for about half an hour, checking at the 20-minute mark, which is what the recipe says, just in case it's done, and then giving it ten more minutes so that the edge is a little brown before you take it out.

Stern old wisdom says to break it apart with a fork when it's cool, but I use a table knife to reinforce the lines I cut in the dough.

What makes this is the good margarine and also the rosemary, which adds a lovely flavor and helps make up for the lack of a strong buttery taste.

P.

Thanks!

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Well, here we are

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Rosemary Shortbread!

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