Hey! Lookit me!

I am sooo excited to teach a cooking class for the first time. Lookit me! Better yet, take my class!

Me in fours! You?

Four Jobs You've Had in Your Life:

1. bartender
2. dental assistant
3. bank manager
4. programmer

(can I do 4 more? waitress, hostess, administrative assistant, legal secretary)

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:

1. O Brother Where Art Thou
2. Monsoon Wedding
3. Blade Runner
4. Mad Max (ah, when Mel was young ... )
   

Four Places You've Lived:

1. Manhattan, NYC
2. Phoenix
3. Manila
4. Cologne

(can I do 4 more? Tokyo, Okinawa, Tennessee, Illinois)

Four Websites You Visit Daily:

1. GMail
2. Bloglines (my RSS feed consolidator, which then sends me on to lots more lovely places!)
3. Ebay Buying: Items I'm Watching
4. My own blog to check my comments and write!
   

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch:

1. House, M.D.
2. Foyle's War
3. NYPD Blue (it's always on somewhere!)
4. Alias
   

Four of Your Favorite Foods:

1. my "cassoulet"
2. Barbara's Bakery Shredded Spoonfuls
3. Freshly made tortilla chips with lots of salt
4. my chocolate cream pie
   

Four Albums You Can't Live Without (at least for the moment):

1. Can I do zero? You know, there just aren't any albums I can't live without, ever! AlthoughI have to admit, loud Charlie Daniels has gotten me through many day of housecleaning I didn't want to do!
   

Four Places You'd Rather Be:

1. India
2. scuba diving
3. Kenya
4. visiting friends in Jordan
   

Four People Who Are Now Obligated To Do This to Their Blog:

1. Margaret
2. Eva
3. Brian
4. Kalyn
   

(not crazy about the "obligated" thang, but that's how it was passed to me ... and it's fun to do, so ... um ... pretty please?)

Snow #2

Unbelievably, these are un-touched-up colors, exactly as they came out of the camera. Aren't these blues heavenly?
Taken Jan 5, 2006. All rights reserved

Snow #1

In the back yard.
Taken Jan 5, 2006, All rights reserved.

All is calm ...

I don't have a great camera, and I don't have great skills, so I don't know if these pictures express to you what I'm experiencing today, but I wanted to give it a try.

We live in the woods, and we have lots of big windows. ¾ of the windows have no blinds or drapes, because they look out into wilderness. The windows on the street side of the house have mini blinds, but unless there's a blazing hot sun beating in on that side, the blinds are always pulled all the way up. We love having the outdoors be a constant part of our line of sight.

Outside the windows right now is the most beautiful, heavy, fluffy snowfall. It's coming straight down, steadily trying to blanket myentire world in white. The trees, birdfeeders, deck, lawn, garden, everything is frosted with this gorgeous white stuff, too light to do harm to the trees, dry enough that snow removal is more like sweeping than lifting.

What is it about a snow like this that gives you the sensation of such a peaceful, calm silence? I don't know the answer, but it's one of the times when I am so thankful to be home to enjoy it.

This & that from tonight's dinner

Are these homemade potholders a part of your childhood? Wasn't it wonderful to spend just a short time and end up with a present for your (patient, grateful) mother? A young friend made this one for me a couple of years ago. Evidently the frame that she used was only about 4 inches square, but at her age, she didn't recognize how terribly small the potholder was. I was sincerely grateful for her desire to give me a gift, but didn't think I would have much use for it. But look! (Or "Behold!" as Mimi Smartypants would say. [see her item#3]) It's just the right size for a lid handle, and I use it all the time!

These gorgeous butternut squash came out of our garden this summer. We've been keeping them in the basement, which really isn't cold enough to be a good root cellar. So, to use them up, tonight I made a butternut squash puree, with milk, butter, salt, and pinches of allspice and cinnamon.

Do you know an easy way to remove the strings from these babies? It's not so important when they're going to be pureed, but for baked halved squash, I hate to have strings in my squash cavity (or any other cavities, come to think of it). I've tried spoons and ice cream scoops to no avail. What do you use?

Tonight was a night of using up stuff that needed using up. I had some thawed frozen chopped spinach left over from the Maple Feta Artichoke Puffs of a few days ago, so tonight I made Herbed Spinach Bake. Often spinach & rice dishes are a bit, well, BLAND. When this one is made with pepper jack cheese, it's anything but. T politely took a small portion at first, but after getting a taste of it, he went back for seconds and thirds!

One of the main ingredients is rice. I use Indian Basmati rice almost exclusively and cook it in only about 1¼ cups of water per cup of rice, maybe a hair more, rather than the usual 2 cups. It makes a rice that is firm, with separate rice kernels, perfect for mixing into other dishes, putting in soup, or using as a base for gumbo or other dishes that are served over rice. About the only thing it wouldn't work as well for would be rice pudding, where you want a softer rice, I would think. What kind of rice do you like to use? Do you stick with the recommended 2 cups of water?

And now that I think of it, I think this evening qualifies for Sweetnick's ARF/5-a-Day! But do you have to cook the meal on a Tuesday to be included?

Ok, for all you people who let your pets outdoors at night unfenced and unleashed, do you sometimes lose track of your pet? If so, you need a pet blinker! (me too) They're inexpensive at retail and doubly cheap on Ebay, so we have no excuse. I'm buying one right away!

The Cool Tools website is amazingly fun. I think I'll put a link to it in my sidebar, that's how much I like it. Subscribe on your RSS feeder and see all the cool stuff that people find. Often it's books, and I've never yet bought one of them, but it's been fun going to Amazon and poking around inside them.

Dec 7-9, Pune, India

Wednesday 7	Thursday 8	Friday 9
1am arrive Mombai Int'l Airport
3am arrive at hotel
	noon Lunch with Minal
	pm Shopping with Celine	pm Shopping with Celine

As I mentioned in a previous post, we arrived in Mumbai the wee hours of Wednesday, 12/7 after having flown right through Tuesday. India is 10.5 hours ahead of us (who knew that time zones came in fractions?); on EST we actually arrived Tuesday at 12:30 pm. Eighteen hours of flying, plus all the time on the front end and the back end, made for 28 hours awake for poor me, who can't sleep on planes no matter how long it's been since the last shuteye. So, we spent the first half of Wednesday sleeping till noonish, and caught another nap in the afternoon, and basically spent the day in the hotel getting our feet under us.

Thursday morning we flew to Pune. Home of Hope Aradhana soon-to-be-Williams, and former home of Faith Amrapalli Williams. Site of happy unitings all around. There are many orphanages in Pune, and many of the children there are adopted by international parents. In fact, the adoption rate from orphanages in India seems to be very good. But more on that later, if I remember ... :o)

At each hotel, we discovered that when we asked for two connecting rooms or a suite, we always got a suite. And a suite never included two bedrooms, which was our primary goal. So, at the President Hotel in Pune, we went to our suite, realized the miscommunication, and requested two adjoining rooms. We were thankful to find that they did have the two rooms available, one with a king sized bed and one with two twins. Since we knew that later in the week Nanette would have Hope with her (!), she took the room with the king-sized bed.

The rooms were spacious and pleasantly appointed. My bathroom was particularly nice, with black marble and a large counter area around the sink. We found that our hotels all included a bidet in the bathrooms, a nice feature usually lacking in the U.S.! The one quibble I had with the President Hotel is that the floors are carpeted, but the daily cleaning didn't include vacuuming. Instead, a broom looking as if it was made hand-made with sticks and hay was used on the carpeting. Not that I needed daily vacuuming, but I'd have felt a little better about sanitation if I knew that a vacuum had been run over the floor before I arrived.

After we got settled into our adjoining rooms, Minal came to welcome us. Minal. What an amazing woman, and what a privilege to get to know her a bit on this trip.

Minal (pronounced meh-NALL) has served as the India-side social worker for both Faith's and Hope's adoptions. She is married with grown children, has lived and worked in the US, has an excellent education, and has the gravitas that comes with having lived for a while and looked the good and bad of life straight in the face. She also, as you can see here, has a lovely smile and a gracious sense of humor.

Minal assists with adoptions because they provide revenue for her main passion, ASHA, which is a walk-in center that assists women who have lost status for a variety of reasons: abuse, abandonment, divorce, pregnancy out of wedlock, rape ... all these things can cause an Indian woman to be cast out by her family. From a woman's perspective, life in India is a bit like walking a tightrope. Arranged marriages are common. Whether arranged or not, if the marriage works out, it's great, you can stay on the tightrope. But what if your husband turns out to be an abuser, or a philanderer, or spends all the household money on things other than the household? A wife has only one honorable option: stay in the marriage. Anything else causes her family of origin, her husband, and even herself to lose face. At best, she will be shunned. At worst, she will be punished.

Minal works with cast-out women to help them find options for themselves. She confesses that the work can be draining and that she often finds herself angry at a society that is so hard on women, so easy on men. But she persists, and I can only imagine her to be an ocean of calm and resolve for these women who are so desperate. I don't know what Minal's religion is (Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism are the big three in India), but I would be honored to call her "sister" in any case.

Minal shared lunch with us in the hotel restaurant. Nanette caught her up on Faith's progress: an extremely bright and happy daughter who is excelling at school and bringing joy to everyone she comes into contact with. We viewed pictures and reminisced about Faith's adoption, and covered a variety of topics concerning Hope Aradhana.

We carefully chose items that didn't have any lettuce or other fruits/vegetables without rinds or peels, and ordered bottled water to drink. Other than those precautions, it's generally safe to eat in India, especially in hotels that cater to westerners. We did have to be careful to use bottled water for anything that would go into our mouths, including ice (we had none the whole two weeks! I love ice!) and our toothbrushes. It's amazing how inconvenient it is to be unable to just reach for the sink and draw some safe clean, water. It's one of those things you take for granted until you visit somewhere where it's lacking, and it's a reminder of how pampered and privileged we Americans are. I definitely drank less water in India; bottled water just wasn't always available. On two occasions, out of habit, I dunked my toothbrush in tap water before realizing what I was doing. Fortunately, a thorough swish in bottled water seems to have taken care of any problems that might have otherwise been caused, because I didn't suffer any noticeable illness. If we go back to India, as we hope to do, I hope I remember to bring a small bottle of bleach for those absent-minded moments.

Minal is a very busy lady, so she was unable to personally escort us on our shopping trips the next couple of days. We were incredibly lucky, though, that her sister Celine was in Pune, visiting from Cincinnati! Now, this lady is a shopping powerhouse. And she had procrastinated about her shopping and was leaving Sunday to return to the States, so she was more than happy to wander around with us picking up Indian treasures, in her case for her daughter who also lives in the US.

Nanette wanted to pick up a number of jewelry and clothing items as gifts for friends back homw as well as gifts to give both Hope and Faith as they grow up. She wants to be able to give them a gift and say, "I bought this for you in your home city in India!" Isn't that a great idea?

Celine was available to help us later in the afternoon, so we retired to our rooms and tried valiantly to remain awake, wanting to acclimate to the local time zone as quickly as possible. We mostly succeeded, although we did both drop off for about ½ hour before Celine arrived. Her phone call from the lobby woke us, and we jumped up to go out on the streets of India for my very first time, and Nanette's first time this trip.

Celine ushered us into a car (Minal lent us her car and driver for the afternoon, wasn't that generous?) and off we went. I was like a kid with her nose pressed up against the candy store window. The pedestrians, the colors, the gorgeous saris, the very different way commerce is conducted, the dogs navigating the traffic, the sidewalk vendors, the carts loaded with nothing but bananas, the motorcycle rickshaws and the apparently reckless way everyone drove ... I was just soaking it all in, in wonderment and joy.

Well, OK, the crazy driving wasn't exactly a pleasure. In India, the lane lines are apparently a suggestion only. Three cars might squeeze down a road intended for two. Cars literally drive six inches apart sometimes. Passing on both sides is allowed. There are roundabouts everywhere, and I never did figure out how the drivers knew who was continuing around and who was exiting. Crossing over the center line into oncoming traffic is routinely done and excites no obvious reaction from anyone. We played chicken with an oncoming bus once (although our driver didn't seem to think it was close). I was hanging onto the handle above my window and hoping the driver wasn't watching his rear view mirror, not only because he needed to pay attention to that bus, but because I didn't want him to see my raised eyebrows, wide eyes and grimace of fear! At the last minute, the bus and we executed a neat maneuver to safely pass each other, and I decided it was OK to breathe again. Whew.

The interesting thing is that, with all the dodging, passing and honking, it's all extremely civil. I didn't see any signs of anger in the drivers, no gestures, no road rage. It's just all in a day's driving in India. Who's to say it's not better than our highly regulated roads, where we often read about angry encounters resulting in injuries, near-injuries, deaths, or lawsuits?

Speaking of pedestrians, there's no concept of traffic yielding to pedestrians in India. Around here, if you want to cross a street, you step off the curb and 99% of the drivers will halt to let you cross. In India, you takes a step into the traffic & you takes your chances. If a car is bearing down on you, you run! Or you wave your arms authoritatively to get it to slow down till you get out of its way. I didn't see any pedestrians get hurt, so everyone obviously knows the rules. I tended to follow my escort like a frightened duckling behind mama duck. It worked for me.

Well, this post is getting longer than I expected, so I'm going to go ahead and post it and come back later to tell you about our two days of shopping adventures with Celine! Does a post about shopping sound boring to you? Yeah, me too, but remember, this is shopping India style. It's not about what you buy, but how you buy it! Come on back & see what I mean!

A great new year's breakfast

Since yesterday morning was Sunday, we had to be at church earlier than we normally like to eat on weekends (yup, night owls, us!), so this morning I prepared us a nice wholesome and delicious New Year's breakfeast. Found this recipe for Fruit & Yogurt Topped Oatmeal in Better Homes & Gardens. It was featured in an article about feeding kids the morning after a sleepover ... do we qualify? It was easy to make. Of course I modified it slightly to suit our tastes. IWe both enjoyed it a lot! Not low calorie, but filling and really, really good for us. T followed it up with a nice cup of tea made with the loose black tea and tea steeper that his Secret Santa (sister) gave him for Christmas. It was a wonderfully relaxing way to start our final day of the holidays.

If you don't like oatmeal, but you live with someone who does ... why not try this recipe so you can taste it? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you discovered that oatmeal this way actually tastes good?

P.S. Check out The Virtual Recipe Collection to see this and other recipes for whole grain breakfast items!

A zero-calorie feast for the eyes

Cheers!

Here's hoping things are only looking up for you in 2006! It's been a pleasure to meet all you blogfolk. Simba and I are looking forward to lots more engaging interactions in the coming year, God willing and the creek don't rise!

See a previous picture of Simba

(P.S. Check out the weekend dog blogging at Sweetnicks Sunday night for pictures of Simba and other canine cuties!)

Notes on the trip to India

I'm going to try to buckle down to share with you some of the happenings on my India trip, not least because I would love to have a record of this once-in-a-lifetime trip for myself!

While in India, I posted once very early in the trip. That posting was done to Hope's blog; you can read it here. I've since decided that this record really belongs on my own blog, so henceforth any entries made with be made herein, but not heretofore. Ahem.

Maple feta artichoke puffs

After making the onion dip, I had the uneasy feeling I might not be living up to my "rep" by bringing something so simple, so I decided to dig around the house to see what else I have on hand to bring to the party tonight. I found one sheet of puff pastry, feta, canned artichokes, frozen spinach, and a variety of add-ins. What I came up with was these puff pastry squares, which turned out to be tres yummy!

I find it really hard to make just a tiny bit of anything; I always overestimate how much is needed. One sheet of puff pasty won't make a lot of puffs. So, when it comes time to stuff the pastry squares, we'll see how I did with my estimating.

The ingredients reminded me of everyone's old favorite, the hot artichoke dip. Using those ingredients as my starting point, I crumbled about 2 ounces of feta, and sprinkled on some parmesan cheese, perhaps a tablespoon or a bit less. I used my favorite chopper from Pampered Chef to finely chop a few artichoke hearts and perhaps 1/3 cup of the frozen chopped spinach. I cut the defrosted puff pastry into 16 squares using a fluted pizza cutter, and melted about 1 teaspoon of butter.


Next I added the melted butter to the cheeses and mixed thoroughly.


I tasted the mixture at this point and found it pretty harsh. After some thought, I decided to add some balsamic vinegar, about 1 tablespoon. It was better, but it still needed something. (I wondered whether all this tasting was using up too much filling!) So --- what the heck --- let's try some real maple syrup. About a tablespoon went in and rounded out the flavors very nicely! (I wouldn't try this with the fake maple syrup. If you don't have the real stuff on hand, try adding little bits of honey till you like the taste.)

Now it's time to assemble the puffs. I wet the four edges of a square of puff pastry with a brush dipped in water, put a tiny spoonful of filling on a square ...



... then folded the four corners toward the middle, pinched the open edges together and brushed the top with egg wash (1 egg with about 1 tablespoon water, whisked with a fork).


Repeat for all the others ...



... and, to my surprise, I had exactly the right amount of filling for 17 squares, which meant I got to have a tiny spoonful as a treat! Now that's a happy ending! :o)

I put the squares on a baking sheet lined with unbleached parchment paper, covered them with plastic wrap that I had sprayed with PAM to keep it from sticking, and put it in the refrigerator until time to bake. A couple of hours later, I popped the sheet into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. The puffs opened slightly at the top, turned golden brown, and didn't last long at the party. And that's a second happy ending. (Sorry, had to rush to the party so I didn't have time to take a picture. You'll have to use your imagination!)

Recipe in printable form

Can I come in?

When he's done patrolling the back yard, saving us all from squirrels and ensuring that no interlopers have interloped, Simba comes to the back door and waits quietly to be let in. The expectant look on his face tells you that he knows he will get a tiny dog biscuit (suitable size for a tiny dog) each time he comes in. Sometimes I catch him licking his chops as he waits.

He used to bark when he wanted to come in, bark when he was let in, and bark while I was getting the biscuit for him. I've trained him to bark less, but the one bark I wish he would not have discarded is the one telling me he's ready to come in. All too often he sits there silently for some minutes before I realize he's there.

What a good dog!!

See a previous picture of Simba

Check out the weekend dog blogging at Sweetnicks this Sunday night for pictures of Simba and other dog cuties!

New Year's Eve-Eve appetizers

We've been invited for a small party at friends' tonight, and I'm bringing an appetizer. My first choice --- always! --- is the Barefoot Contessa's Pan Fried Onion Dip. This is french onion dip like you've never tasted before, folks. I usually tinker with recipes till I get them the way I like them, but this recipe requires zero tinkering. Vary the amount of cayenne pepper to taste, and get ready for a sweet, smooth, delicious dip, excellent for baguette slices, chips, crackers, or, yes, just a quick spoonful all by itself! Delish!!

It's such a pleasure to make this dish. When time permits, caramelizing onions is one of my favorite things to do. It's easy, requires very little attention, and if you keep the heat low enough, you really can't overcook them. The onions smell so great while gently sauteeing, and it's such a delight to check in on them occasionally, giving them a stir, and watch them slowly, slowly acquiring the golden color that means they're sweet as sugar. When I'm a little shy on veggies, I'll make them as a side dish, eaten warm out of the pan, just butter & onions & a blissful smile.