An Open Letter to Obama and McDreamy

Guys, let me get this out of the way.

I love you, I freakin' love you. No one else in the public eye is even in your league*. There's no denying you're hot. It's all over the media.

But seriously, I'm starting to get a little worried about you. I'm starting to wonder if I'll end up seeing you hosting infomercials in a couple years all because of how 2008 goes down.

McDreamy, you didn't even give us a chance to miss you during the writer's strike. Every two minutes on tv you were elegantly voicing Mazda or State Farm. And then Enchanted came out. And there was the press tour. Then it came out on DVD. Now Made of Honor is in theaters and while naturally I will watch it because - hello, those eyes - I worry that there might be some overlap with the 9486 times TBS runs Sweet Home Alabama. (Also how Reese Witherspoon picks whoever her country sweetheart was instead of you I cannot fathom, but that's another open letter.) Take a day off. Go drive that race car you love. Hang out with the twins.

And you, Obama. My man. WTF? Where oh where is your momentum going? I have had to institute a near news moratorium Chez Magniferous because I can't hear one more pundit say (as though for the first time), "Why can't he seal the deal?" Talk to McDreamy for a bit about what happens when the spotlight dims. All I'm saying is, I don't want you to end up doing ProActive commercials. McDreamy, maybe you could loan Obama a little mo' just to get through the election. After that he'll be able to pay you back double with "political capital". Not that you, Obama would ever use quid pro quo. Think of it more like the Super Friends helping each other out of a tough jam each using their own special powers.

There, I've said it. Now this doesn't mean I like you any less. It just means that when 2009 rings around I want us to still be friends.

*Excluding supernova ex-pat Johnny Depp.

Moronblogging Motherload

I know, this is VERY unlike me. You see, I went to the store the other day. Possibly yesterday. And I had a customer service fiasco. Most shockingly I did not tell you about it. For that I offer up this giant basket of eye candy.

I went to Harris Teeter to pick up a few things that we unnervingly did not have for dinner. It was a mad house because I live in Yuppieurbia and the parking lots had just let out. I found a line where the woman was receiving her change and nabbed it quickly. I put my little basket on the counter and at that moment the cashier asked the woman if she needed help to her car. To my surprise, he decided to abandon the register and take her there -- leaving me stranded at the register with a horde of carb-craving post Gold's Gym federal workers chomping at my heels.

I finally found a self-service check out and got the hell out of there. As we had dinner I dropped the old Harris Teeter corporate email a little line about what had happened. This afternoon my phone rang. It was the Harris Teeter manager. He apologized profusely and said he'd watched the video tape and that he'd be right over with a gift basket for me. Whoa. Sure enough, he brought by this basket of goodies. I can't think of very many people who wouldn't enjoy the stuff inside - it runs the gamut from sweet to salty, doughnutty to organic exercise bar, every apple, banana and orange variety they could get their hands on, and there's a nice bottle of Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon in the center. Way to go Harris Teeter. Considering I've been to your store four times this week this is probably a pretty good investment in my continued delight with your store. 

Plus, given rising food costs I should be able to sell this on the open market in a few weeks and cover some future child's college tuition.

Knitting on a Knitting Blog?

This is an actual finished object. I realize you might think I was taking an extreme close up so that I could conceal loose ends that might need to be woven in making this a work in progress (WIP) rather than a finished object (FO), but let's just call it fringe shall we?

I made a slew of these scarves from a heap of yarn I got last summer. I knit some way back in November and now today, voila, the very last one. I finished it at knit night last night and it is delightful to be able to move on to more seasonal knitting. So help me I will finish the lacey feather and fan pattern in lovely magniferous colors that I started last summer. It may make its debut sometime before the first snowfall.

Soon on Magniferous: Fewer Food Posts?

I must have a theme today because the economy is really rattling around in my brain today. So, gas is like, really expensive and stuff. In D.C. it's tipped past the $3.50 mark. I seriously remember $1 gas. Was it really that long ago? There are now surcharges on top of surcharges. Airline flight prices are going up so fast you need a team of Wall Street floor traders just to keep track. And if you want a window, an aisle, a soda, 3 non-tree nuts, a pillow, a paper ticket, or any seat at all... it's all gonna be extra. I have a whole rant on the airline industry perking, so we'll just stick to food sticker shock for today. 

News that the pizza slice is feeling the heat from food price hikes hits right where it hurts - the abdomen after several superb slices from Pie-tanza. Price of Slice Could Cost More Dough

At least you can fall back on basic staples, right? How about a big bowl of rice -- not so fast. Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

"The worst case of food inflation in nearly 20 years has more Americans giving up restaurant meals to eat at home. Food price hikes changing eating habits

While it kind of sucks for us here, and some people might need to downsize their SUVs so they can afford both gas and the food to which we have been accustomed, I'm worried about the little progress developing nations had been making toward meeting the most basic need - being able to feed their people being wiped out by food costs and availability beyond their reach. Disaster in Haiti as World's Food Prices Jump

UN chief warns world must urgently increase food production

A worsening food crisis. The US and its allies need to act.

Really the whole thing just makes me even madder that we haven't come up with a better power alternative than oil. I can barely fathom that they've made an HE (High-Efficiency) version of my laundry detergent while it still takes gallons of gas to get places. We're a pretty industrious and creative world, why do we still slug along with this scarce, non-renewable resource controlled by very few powers? It numbs the mind. 

Global Giving

Kiva

Update: Wow, I'm not imagining things.

Agency warns of 'silent tsunami' of hunger

World Bank says food prices have risen 83 percent in three years

What's Better than Potatoes?

Jac requested potato leek soup for dinner last night. We had the leeks, we were a bit shy in the potato department. He headed out into the briefly cleared weather, but I cringed moments later when the storm cracked down again. So I made a lovely potato leek soup which we had with greens and these out of this world rolls from Harris Teeter.

Today though, I have perhaps the ultimate bougie problem. I get to work at home, but the cleaning ladies will be here at some point today. I don't know what their schedule is. I've been working at home a lot lately, so pretty much every other Monday I am on edge all day wondering when I'll need to jump up and evacuate the house for a couple of hours - truly a difficult situation. These Mondays, it's not just the puppy who jumps up and runs to the window with each noise outside, it's me too.

You might think that someone who gets to spend this much time at home would just clean her own house. But the truth is that I'm usually insanely busy while working at home and then there's the economy. See, during that whole dark period of our lives known as the Era of Three Houses, we didn't have a dime or a dollar to spare. Yet our two housekeepers - one for the city and one for the country - were none the wiser because we just let them keep cleaning. And today, as our family micro-economy begins to rebound, the actual economy is so crappy that both ladies have mentioned they're looking for referrals for more work. The cost of cash is seriously cutting into their earnings. So anyway, they clean on. Was that a car door?

Crepes for Breakfast

It is fair to say that I am a night person. My brain wakes up sometime mid-morning but it doesn't actually get rolling until sometime in the afternoon. My husband Jac is a morning person. He comes from a family of morning people. If you're not up by 7:30 in their house they put a mirror under your nose to see if you're still breathing. Well, it's not quite that bad, but it still takes a little awareness of your other's inclinations. 

A few weeks ago I got a yen to make crepes. My mother made crepes quite a few times when I was growing up and I tried my first batch a long, long time ago. We would make them and stack them on the counter with wax paper dividers until there were enough for sweet or savory crepes. I remember my mother making savory dinner crepes and sometimes my stepmother would make a breakfast of strawberry crepes in Spring. 

My mother has the magic crepe pan. It is enamel over cast iron, like le Crueset. It's taken on the color and texture of a pan seasoned for generations. Crepes slide into and out of that pan as though animated by Disney. She lent it to me for some party years ago and with me it stayed until a year or two ago when she wondered where it had gone. I surrendered the prized pan and settled for an electronic gizmo.

But the gizmo was at the river house, so the city house demanded its own crepe pan. I got a French crepe pan from Sur la Table and those French sure know how to make some pans. But one more barrier stood between us and a breakfast of decadent fruit-filled crepe goodness - our circadian rhythms. One morning I'd wake up thinking of crepes only to discover Jac had just had a bowl of cereal (since he'd been up for hours). Another morning he'd hold off on breakfast only to sigh when I walked into the room with an English muffin. 

This morning the dogs conspired to get us out of bed far earlier than is sane for any weekend day. My bleary eyes focused long enough to pull up a recipe for crepe batter. Fortunately it's supposed to clabber (sit) for an hour which was just long enough for my brain to power up.

So that's how we ended up with crepes with an assortment of strawberries, bananas, Nutella and sweet cream cheese for breakfast this morning. Yyyyyyummmmmm.

There Will Be Blogging

WTF is it with men and old skanky crap? There are men who want to dig in the dirt for relics. (Okay a few women.) And car buffs, and book collectors, and those guys who use metal detectors and were "finding the good stuff the very first day!" The male I spend the most time with has an affinity for an exceptionally large array of skanky crap.

So when we spotted this vintage outdoor lounge furniture out on our walk with the dogs today. How did I know there would be no passing it by?

All I said was, "Okay, but I'm blogging it."

Not Cindy McCain's Pasta Salad

Jac is one of the few people in the world who wasn't born with a genetic lust for Family Pasta Salad. In fact, I think if fruit were on the table he would choose that over FPS. And that is saying A LOT. Still, FPS is a part of life and on a crisp spring day when all appears right with the world, a girl's gotta have FPS. But then I pictured Jac, sadly forking over his dinner, wondering what happened to the wife who made him things he likes to eat.

Rewind to last night. Our lovely tomato mozzarella basil sandwiches were accompanied by a store bought jarred corn and red bell pepper soup. Yum, refreshing, springy! Far too late in the cooking process I got it into my head to accent the soup with some actual dried red bell pepper we'd picked up at Penzey's spices. Yum-o right? Oh, but no, we had a little culinary disaster because of an aggressive dousing of red bell pepper and subsequent gumminess that led to our corn soup tasting more than a little like corn and raisin soup. He let me live another day to redeem myself.

It's my big chance. So tonight I will yet again make Turkey Sloppy Joes because a) we cannot get them out of our system and b) we don't skimp on the class around here. And with that hearty homey meal, Jac will have pasta salad especially designed just for him, with no hint of family tradition anywhere to be found.

Not Cindy McCain's Pasta Salad

• Elbow Macaroni
  
• Prepared Pesto
  
• Cayenne Pepper
  
• Red Pepper Flakes
  
• Olive Oil
  
• Dash of Vinegar
  
• Chopped Garlic (confess I used the jar)
  
• Parmesan Cheese
  
• Salt
  
• Pepper
  
• Chopped Tomatoes
  

Cool the macaroni. Mix all the other ingredients into the pasta, using amounts to taste. Chill. Watch your husband rejoice.

For Ina and Jeffrey

There is a reason that after each week of work in the city Ina Garten makes her beloved husband Jeffrey a roast chicken dinner. There may actually be several reasons. I am one frickin' finicky eater, particularly when it comes to anything of the meat persuasion. I come from a long line of salmonella fearers and though I like to think I am not among them, I want my chicken to be done-done, not just done. Roasting chicken is one way that we cooked food purists can co-exist with this burgeoning population of moisture and rare food fanatics.

Another reason it's such a great dinner to welcome Jeffrey home is that it's basically a hands off endeavor once you get the thing prepped and in the oven. You can talk basting, but America's Test Kitchen basically proved that basting just makes you feel good. So it's a way to make a mid-week splash while sitting on your ass.

Finally, there are the leftovers. What could be finer than a faux post-Thanksgiving sandwich? I frankly never go anywhere without my cranberry sauce. Ask Jac, we keep a can in the glove compartment just in case.

So this week I made us a lovely roast chicken with thyme (that had been petrifying on the window sill for quite some uh, days.) We had it again last night with new and improved veggie sides - where once there were mashed potatoes, green beans and stuffing (one potato lover, one stuffing lover) now there were sweet potatoes, asparagus and brussels sprouts. It's quite the versatile wonder.

What To Knit

Not one, but two of my dear friends are secretly early-ly pregnant. There maaay be some friends babies that have arrived in this world for whom I have not knit. And that is a shame I will just have to find a way to remedy. A step in the right direction would be greeting these future adorable children with something I actually started making NOW, you know, before their moms are in labor.

But, what. to. knit. ?

I keep marveling at this Debbie Bliss Baby Knits for Beginners book I have because not one but two of the suggested items are scarves. Now I am no mommy. I have not taken a single Lamaze class. But, the notion of wrapping a scarf around an unpredictable baby's neck just doesn't seem that bright to me. Also, I've made 6,137.42 scarves so there must be something more appealing. I am leaning toward a pair of sweaters begun in unisex colors because I am constantly stymied from making clothes for babies who already talk by the notion that they will have 5 minutes to wear any item I might make them by the time I finish it. Surely I can make two knitted goods in the time that these friends create actual humans. Surely.

So Long Sunday Simmers...

Until we meet again hot savory, simmer all day, soups that eat like a meal.

Arlington Farmer's Market

We made it to the Arlington Farmer's Market today. Thoughts of my fridge overflowing with veggies I haven't quite decided how to use yet filled my head. But the breads and produce looked scrumptious. Rain threatened (hence the ominous look of some of those pix), but we persevered and came home with some peasant wheat bread. It was kind of crazy crowded and I think I'm looking forward to the return of our own micro-local Columbia Pike Farmer's Market next month. Also, though I new not to bring them from the research I'd done, I think an open air market is a natural place to mingle with your dogs.

Keep Your Eye on the Birdie

We're not going to the river this weekend. So I have to confess that this photo is from last weekend. It might as well be today though, the clouds have settled back in and we are in for another endless bout of rain. See these little birdies in the tree? It's the tree right outside our back window. Only those aren't little birdies, those are big vultures. Oooooh, scary. At one point there were 10 on the tree. I guess this photo shows a mere eight creepy vultures steps from my door. Ah the country. 

A Few of My Favorite Things: Cookies

The Internet is so amazing that when you stumble upon one of its shortcomings you start to wonder if it's actually you who is not quite smart enough to figure it out. Surely there must be some way to look something up when you have no idea what it is called and you have no good grasp of a way to contextualize the thing so that you have a chance in hell of actually finding it.

"Yummy cookies that maybe are Italian and kind of nutty that have chocolate but not really any dough?'

So I was lucky today to stumble upon some of my favorite cookies clearly labelled as Lacey Macadamia Chocolate Cookies in Whole Foods. Now I must figure out how you make these outrageous goodies.

Bad Moblogger

Why do I always forget to photograph my delicious restaurant meals
until we're half done? Flambé Banana at THAI Shirlington with coconut
ice cream and Grand Marnier. It almost makes a restaurant without
cheese, potatoes or bread worthwhile.

Busier than I Look

Yeah, it may look like we're all just relaxing out here, but the dogs have been playing their hearts out,  Jac has been steadily paring down the Tivo backlog, and I can see the floor in my craft room again. I made dinner Friday and Saturday nights. Friday was ultra comfort turkey sloppy joes with waffle fries. Saturday I made fried eggplant (gotta use that oil people) with a tangy marinara dipping sauce, pasta with four cheeses, herb toast and salad. 

I am bringing a heap of decluttering back to the city with me. I'm obsessed with scanning and shredding these days so it's no wonder I was digging out old bank statements this morning to bring them into the 21st century. I just don't understand why Adobe Acrobat has to be so darn expensive. It's nose to nose with the new Apple airport back up system for next thing I will buy that I cannot afford at the moment. 

And I am taking knitting in the car for the ride home because Godhelpme I do not want to be knitting Christmas scarves in May. 

Remembering MLK

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Tree Meany's Revenge

OMGWTF! There is a tiny little sapling like one inch from the pole now! How did you fit that through the Internet tubes? Why hast thou foresaken me?

Victory in the Face of de Tree Pt2

When we moved a couple of years ago, we found a lovely neighborhood that had been here for generations. We moved into a tiny bungalow with a huge yard. It's wide open green space was a big change from our densely gardened and wooded yard in our old home. Yet, there was something refreshing about it. All that space finally allowed us to inhale again, and take in everything around us. I truly didn't miss the trees. We have a couple in our back yard, but it's not, you know, a forest. 

Naturally that's when our new neighbor stepped in. Last year she asked both of us if we'd like to plant some nice big trees in our yard. It reminded me of our old neighbors waxing poetic about how much they benefitted from the shade our tree gave their house. I somehow extracted myself from the conversation without agreeing to re-tree my back yard.

My natural inclinations were validated when I looked back at the antique photograph of this house, sitting all alone on a patch of land. A model-T type car and a small patch of trees are visible in the distant background, but the house is surrounded by, well, space. 

So when the neighbor again approached this year to urge (by this point it was urging) us to plant trees in our yard, I winced when she explained to me that this part of the neighborhood used to have many more trees. Um, I have photographic evidence that it did not.

But even if it didn't, I'm overjoyed that she wants more trees here. Trees help filter out all that horrible pollution we're producing. I hope she plants a bunch in her yard. 

But, then she planted a tree not in her yard. I'm not sure she realized it wasn't her yard since she thinks my yard is her yard and probably thinks lots of things are her yard. She planted a tree in the right-of-way three inches from the utility pole that serves our houses. Three inches.

I don't grasp this AT ALL. So for a couple of months, the unbelievably unflappable Jac and I glared at the tree-let wishing its early demise. We conspired elaborate plans that fell apart when we thought of the Tell Tale Heart guilt we'd carry.

Until yesterday when I spotted the Virginia Power truck trimming trees that were too close to the poles and lines. "Uh, hellooooo, you up there?"

And today, no tree stands three inches from the utility pole. I'm sure one will be planted beside my mailbox by dusk, but it is another small victory against mother nature encroaching on populated areas... what a minute, what?

Victory in the Face of de Tree Pt1

My favorite season is Autumn. I love watching the leaves turn colors. Loved playing in them when I was little. Love the crisp sound of fall leaves underfoot. Love sitting under a shady tree. Loved climbing and perching years ago. But where I live trees sometimes take on superpowers and are imbued with a sort of supernatural significance. The tree does not lie. The tree is never wrong. The tree is God.

I might be a little sensitive to the subject since our earliest days of homeownership were marred by a battle of alarming proportions with our next door neighbors some years ago. There was a tree in our yard that everyone in the free world agreed was one good gust of wind away from flattening our house, but our neighbors decided they didn't want us to take down our own tree.

They staged a sit in. Under the tree. In their own yard.

Yes, it was a grand tree, it had been there many years, longer than the house, longer than most of the neighborhood. But it  was a sick tree. It's roots exposed severe damage that had caused someone to shore it up with concrete. It's limbs were secretly hollow. The tree was a shell of its former self.

Yet the sit in continued and we had to have the police come and mediate the situation while an extremely large and costly tree removal crew stood by. They even drove their car into our legs as we stood in the street directly in front of our house in an attempt to further blockade us. It was OUR TREE in OUR YARD. Eventually it came down.

But that was just in time, soon after communities started protecting trees and making them protected from removal. The problem was that anyone could brand any tree historic and then there was a protracted process to even consider having that designation and its accompanying restrictions waived. 

As our neighbors said at the time, quite emphatically, "You live in a FOREST." Eventually they moved somewhere even greener and we were able to exhale.