Category: To Occupy my Time

Making pita bread/chips

I’m off to the Rose Festival Parade tomorrow, and I’m bringing along Hummus and Pita Bread. I’m making my own pita bread from my new favorite cookbook Make the Bread, Buy the Butter.    It’s so exciting!

Pita balls ready to roll.
 

Pita balls rolled and ready for the very hot pizza stone (pita stone?)

Finished pitas.  I think my stone was hot enough that I needn’t have baked them for very long.  In the recipe, she recommends eight minutes.  My first batch, baked for that long, were nearly burnt. I  kept reducing the time baked, but they all went from dough, passed quickly through bread and into chip form.  The author mentions she can’t get hers to puff, but all of mine did. I’ll try again next time with very little cooking time and see what results they give.  These were very, very good.

Sam Adams Political Cartoon

Just as the election of Bill Clinton my Senior year of high school (he was the first president I voted for!) and the eight years of politics that followed shaped me, so did the election of Sam Adams.  Before Sam Adams was elected I described him as “a politician for the right reasons.”  Not long after he was sworn in I, along with the rest of Portland, found out that I was wrong and that Sam Adams was a politician to feed his ego more than anything else.  Four years of a mayor with no political clout followed, which was a great disappointment, not to mention a complete waste of time.  This political cartoon by Jack Ohman will probably not be funny to anyone not familiar with Adam’s political career, but it manages to sum up the last four years in a nutshell.  I laughed reading it, but it was a laugh full of dark humor.
 
 
 
 

Four hours of Hamlet? Have I got a project!

I couldn’t really just sit through four hours of Hamlet with nothing to do.  So I assigned myself a project.  I went through five Rubbermaid storage containers and culled things.  It was a great success, I now only have three storage containers and the project lasted the entire length of the movie.
 

Requiem: Curtis Swimming & “wedding” dress

At Cottey College we lived in suites, a group of dorm rooms joined together by a living room, kitchen and bathroom.  At the end of the year, most suites would have Free boxes, which we wandered about taking advantage of, kind of like an early form of naked lady parties.  It was from a free box I got this sweatshirt.  I can still picture the woman who owned it previously, she was tall and blond in that reassuring Nordic way.  I wore the bajeesus out of this sweatshirt and then tried to make it last a bit longer by practicing some needlepoint on the frayed edges.  This was a great companion.

Interesting coincidence.  Cottey College is located in Missouri and when I was living in Somerville, Massachusetts, my downstairs neighbor saw me with this shirt and excitedly queried me as to where I got it. It turns out that he went to the very same Curtis High School as the original owner of this sweatshirt, though he didn’t know her.
 

I call this my wedding dress as it has made appearances at many weddings.  I bought it for Teresa’s wedding   in the late 90s, but that was just the first of many.  I love that it’s red, form-fitting and has an interesting pattern.
 
But what I really love is the back detail with the fabulous crisscross straps.  Many other people love this detail too and have told me so.  Goodbye beautiful wedding dress.
 

Found it!

In my essay about Mrs. Brown I reference a stir fry recipe.  I still have it, it was in one of my memory boxes.
 

Are you hungry for stir-fry, made in the style of 4-H circa 1985? Here’s the recipe:

You need:

  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (if you have it)
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  • 1/3 c. water
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 2/3 cup carrots, sliced thin
  • 2/3 cup celery, sliced thin
  • 2 cups broccoli, separated into flowerets; cut the stems into think slices
  • 1/3 cup onions, sliced thin
  • 1 cup bean sprouts (or use canned green beans) [Here I must interject and say, no, do not use canned green beans as they are nasty]

Equipment

  • large skillet with lid
  • knife
  • cutting board
  • measuring cups (nested and liquid)
  • measuring spoons
  • wooden spoons

Note: you can use frozen vegetables in this recipe too.  Be sure they are defrosted. Then dry them with a paper towel to prevent splattering.

1. Mix cornstarch, ginger, garlic powder, soy sauce and water in a glass measuring cup and set aside
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan with a lid
3. When the oil is hot, add the dry carrots, onions and the celery
4. Cook for one minute, stirring occasionally
5. Then add the broccoli and cook for 2 minutes. Stir constantly.  The broccoli will turn bright green.
6. Add the liquid and continue cooking for 1 minute or until it’s bubbly.
7. Then add the bean sprouts, reduce the heat, cover the pan and cook for 2 more minutes
8. Don’t get your face over the pan when you take off the lid.  Steam will rise up and could burn you.
9. If you want, serve over rice.  Makes four servings.

Yes! I boiled them!

Thanks to my new cookbook Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese I made bagels.  When I told people I was going to/had made bagels every single person asked me, “Are you going to/Did you boil them?” And yes I did.  Here’s proof.
 
I have to say that making the bagels was incredibly fun.  It was a bit labor intensive, but well worth the time.
 
I love my new cookbook!

Wheel! Of! Fortune!

Mom, Aunt Carol and I got to see a taping of Wheel of Fortune at the Convention Center.  It was great fun.
 

Things you should know about going to a remote taping of Wheel of Fortune:

  • The information emphatically requires no cell phones and no cameras.  If you follow their instructions and do not bring your cell phones and cameras you will be annoyed because the vast majority of people DO bring their cell phones and cameras with no consequences.
  • There is a lot of waiting around.  First there is the waiting around to get in when you are herded, cattle-like, through a switchback of a line.  However, Wheel of Fortune knows their audience and there are chairs in which to sit all along the line, for those who aren’t able to stand the whole time.  
  • For those who can’t really stand long at all, they just get to go to a holding area to wait for the rest of their party.  This brings up unfortunate images of “culling the weak ones” in my mind, but rest assured that your loved one will still be waiting when you get to the front of the line.
  • When you are herded into a seat, you may not really like your seats.  That is okay, as they will be taping multiple shows and there are a lot of people who leave after the first show is done.  Then you can get much better seats.
  • They will want you to clap a lot.  So if you try and keep up with Vanna’s clapping as the Wheel is spinning, your hands will be quite tired by the end of the session.
  • It takes a very long time to tape three 20-minute shows. The taping itself lasted about 2.5 hours and that doesn’t include waiting in line.  So get ready to settle in.

Observations gleaned from my session:

  • Pat Sajak spends very little time on stage.  When they have finished the round he immediately leaves the stage, returning just as the next round is going to begin.  There is very little schmoozing
  • Vanna is the only one on stage who knows the answer to the puzzle.
  • When Vanna walks around answering questions, 30% will be interesting questions to which I want to know the answers, 65% will be the eye-roll inducing and grammatically incorrect “Can I have a hug?” and 5% will be people wanting to take their pictures with her.
  • Vanna does not get to keep the clothing she wears.  Given that she wore three different one-piece outfits that I found a bit ugly, I see this as a blessing.  She does, however, wear her own shoes with her outfits.  She reports that she has a lot of shoes.
  • It takes eight people to move the mini-Wheel used for the final puzzle on and off the stage:  four to push/hold up cables, and four more to place a rotation of press board on the floor for the mini wheel to roll over.
  • I find the TV industry to be incredibly inefficient in the realm of labor.
  • WOF has a “remote crew” out of Florida who do all the remote tapings.  The regular crew stays back in California.
  • There is only one Wheel and it is very heavy.  Watching the crew change the wheel between segments was my favorite part.
  • The reason the contestants tend to yell out their letters in a rather obnoxious fashion is that there are two people employed to make sure the candidates can spin the wheel and they hype them up as much as possible.
  • When Pat Sajak mishears a contestant’s letter choice the stage goes dark, the contestants are ordered to turn around, there is a general murmur of discussion on the stage and then they restart the round with a brand-new puzzle.  Also, Pat Sajak will tell you that it’s the first time it has happened in the history of the show.  Don’t believe him.
  • Because contestants are not allowed to name their actual employers, when a contestant identifies hers as a “local athletic apparel manufacturer” half the audience will lean to the other half of the audience and whisper “Nike.”
  • The “kissing cam” was a hilarious part of the experience, even if I felt dumb the whole time for laughing.  This was where they would show two members of the audience framed in a heart and the couple would laugh in recognition and kiss, to the audience’s approval.  Or, they would lean over a row and down three chairs to kiss their spouse who was not the person in the frame originally, or attempt to hide their eight-year old selves as their older sister attempted to kiss them, or sit uncomfortably as their wife moves in for the kiss.  Good clean fun.
  • When the productions likes us, they give us super cool Wheel of Fortune blinky pins that are very fun to wear at school the next day.