From the monthly archives: January 2008
Imagine you still saw everyone you knew everyday in one big building. Think of how these circumstances would affect your life now that you’ve emerged from adolescence and, hopefully, honed your social skills, broadened your experiential database and blossomed from physical awkwardness. Would the more level playing field make a difference? Would Ricki still belong nowhere? Would you tolerate Catalano’s idiocy, still, for the gaze of his doe eyes or might Brian Krakow now seem more of an ideal choice as a secure and providing partner?
Feeling a bit adventurous, I picked up some Jerusalem artichoke (e.g. sunchoke) at Brooklyn’s amazing Fairway Market some time ago. I had never heard of nor did I know, being it looked a lot like ginger root/nothing like standard artichoke, in what capacity I would use it. In searching for a recipe, I came across Vanesscipes, yet another veg food blog to bookmark, and her recipe for Pan-sized Sunchoke Latkes. CandyPenny and I patiently completed the recipe to perfection, combatting our hunger pangs and dismissing the prospect of easier noshes (Mighty Diamond).
But first, to wet your appetite: Gerard’s Herbal, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes:
“which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men.”
!
The sunchoke shredded very easily. So did my knuckle. Ouch!
Call the E.P.A, we got an olive oil spill!
The end result was delish. The flour, soy milk and egg replacer combined to make a hearty latke of super-sustanence with leek shreddings in every bite. My only regret was not picking up vegan sour cream along with the apple sauce.
Annie lives close to the middle of the country. An area I rarely am, as I’ve always been inclined to stay near bodies of water. Her state touches Utah, Arizona and New Mexico in a perfect x and y axis that impresses my sense of organization and placement. We met in the top, left corner of America within a grid of upholstered man-made walls that separated our work spaces. When I bid farewell to that corner she cradled my drunken posture, smiled as big as me without the equivalent vodka backing. Though these particular details remain vivid from photographs, they’re sharper in my mind. Jerome, her husband, smiling as only a lone man within all female company, drunkenly silly female company, can smile. Annie, under my armpit in my violent hug.
We are both of the same Keirsey temperament (ENFP? I don’t remember). She persevered past my early shyness to learn this, brought me Pick Up Sticks for my 23rd birthday and, now, is settled within my computer. An electrical source of benevolence. An ever present friendship, even when inactive. She has little boys with her beautiful red hair. She always wants to know what is going on in my life. The long version.
But it don’t take too much type for her to wholly understand.
In about 3 weeks I am leaving the country, the continent, the hemisphere. My 17 hour flight will take me up, up and away over the North Pole and onto the other side of the globe to Bangkok, Thailand. I have been planning this trip for about a year, figuring it the best way to fill the gap of time between finally getting teacher certification and starting both a job and graduate school. Now that the weeks are passing and this trip begins to becomes a reality, I am scared, excited and antsy. I’ve never left the country. Well, besides cutting through Canada to get to Michigan and the overly segregated tourist excursions of cruise ship ports in the Caribbean and Mexico. And although I have logged thousands of domestic miles touring this country via roadway, American culture is my own, for better or worse. Even if I don’t fit in with the locals in every state, I can communicate with ease, interpret maps and signage and rely on my prior experiences to help me along. Thailand is a mystery, which is part of the allure… but for a planner and semi-neurotic control freak, part of the anxiety. But! These are exactly the traits I hope to dispel into the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Siam! Or at least buffer them down with the fine grained sand.
But first, on the semi-neurotic/planning tip… From NY’s John F. Kennedy airport to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport and back, I will be traveling 17,000 miles or so. I decided to look into offsetting the carbon from my air travel. I learned the flight will create 3.13 tons of CO2, 8.46 tons when “radiative forcing” is factored in, which accounts for the role contrails play in the global warming. And how much is it to offset this 8.46 tons of carbon dioxide? A mere $46.52. What a bargain!
These muffins may not look so delectable but the texture is near perfect, often difficult for vegan baked goods! This was my Sunday success… My only complaints were that I added too much cinnamon and wished I had some berries to add.
Dry ingredients:
1.75 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 TBSP corn starch
1.5 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
0.5 sea salt
Optional goodies: raisins, nuts, berries, whatever
Wet ingredients:
1 cup mashed banana
1 cup soymilk
0.5 cup honey (trying to get rid of this bottle)
1 TBSP blackstrap molasses
1 tsp vanilla
0.5 tsp lemon juice
Pre-heat to 400 and line the cupcake pan.
Sift all of the dry into a large bowl.
Stir in optional dry goodies.
Whisk all wet ingredients into a separate bowl.
Combine wet into dry.
Fill batter to the top of the liner, makes 12.
Bake 15 minutes, cool for 10
As a longtime fan of Will Oldham and all his incarnates, I wanted to pay homage to the man with felt, embroidery floss and vintage railroad curtains I’ve had sitting around for years. Using the picture from his film, Old Joy, I drew the pattern. I hadn’t drew freehand in so long so this step took forever… and I still was not 100% satisfied with the result, particularly in the eyes. However, I thought the beard was characteristic enough to identify him. At first this was to be a pillow but I changed my mind after the stuffing distorted his features significantly.
To further honor his broad career of film and music, here’s Kanye West’s video for Can’t Tell Me Nothing, which features Will and comedian Zack Galifianakis and is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.
South of the Border. I have long seen these bumper stickers growing up in suburban New York. Being a fan of nonsensical roadside attractions, I had to appease my curiosity and make the swerving merge from the left lane to exit. The time of our visit was perfect: dusk in late January. The place was almost completely vacant. And so the fiber glass zoo of creatures was at our total disposal. Posing for pictures atop large mushrooms, in the arms on tall gorillas and oversized cultural stereotypes, the stop was well worth it. As a side note, the South of the Border billboards received a makeover a few years back as they were beginning to be perceived as insensitive to Mexican culture and non-native English speakers.
Driving off the continent and into the Florida Keys was a bit unnerving. Finding suddenly white-sanded shorelines, a large pelican population sitting pretty roadside and lengthy seven mile bridges… it plays with your equilibrium. The weather didn’t permit swimming unfortunately, never getting above about 70 degrees and being extremely breezy. Either way, there are no public beaches on any of the Keys (!) until the very end, Key West. It was a beautiful drive but the Keys were more geared to fisherpeople and scuba divers.
This took the cake as the silliest hairdo I’ve ever seen. His centimeter thick fence gave new meaning to “hair line”.
From sunny shores to an ice storm in Greensville, SC! Some playful patron of the Econolodge made a little snowman on my car during the overnight. Since I had initially planned on staying in only South Florida during my trip and packed accordingly, I quickly hit some Greenville’s amazing thrift stores to get warmer wear. The folks in Greenville were so friendly (attitudes grew less so as I headed west) and pointed me in the right direction. Greenville also gave me a welcome break from Subway’s veggie delite. Brixx’s offered vegan cheese substitution on all their pies.
Uh oh. What color state am I in? This zealous driver had a plethora of militant right-wing dogma plastered to his pick-up, including: G.od’s O.fficial P.arty. What a joke.
Savannah, GA was so nice even the dumpsters were encouraging.
This was one of the strangest natural sights I’ve ever seen. In South Miami the birds were congregated on the power lines chirping with great intensity. The bird-filled wires spanned blocks. This picture captured just a small portion of the chaos.
I’ve seen ribbons for many issues but this one supported Lap Dancing! This supporter cut me off heading North on the I-95 towards Jacksonville, FL. I was lucky enough to be behind him in traffic and captured his idiocy with my camera, much to his rearview curiosity.
Next time you’re in Key West, FL, look for the brand new roadside attraction: American Gothic muffler man style. I spied her husband, pitchfork in hand, en route earlier in the day so I had to pull over to photograph the Mrs. as the truck driver rested aside the highway.
There is a Fountain in Youth in St. Augustine, FL. You don’t have to follow a fairy to uncover the spring. Just follow the billboards and neon-lit signs, pay the outlandish entrance fee along and experience it between the busloads of tourists. Or take pictures of the signs for kitsch value, use their public rest room and walk back to your rental car.
Looking for something to do in Knoxville, TN, I stumbled upon Trampled By Turtles. They put on a great show that evoked spontaneous line dancing amongst uninhibited on-lookers… something a dame from Brooklyn doesn’t see every day. I even “yee haw”ed a few times but this was under duress. Dave, the banjo player, can certainly duel with the best of ‘em.
Living in NYC, I never get to see uninterrupted and expansive sky. Somewhere between Savannah and Atlanta I fell madly in love with her cottony dress and electric blue, thumping the car to the rumble stick-lined lane as I fumbled with the camera. Somewhere abouts Charleston, WV I lost her.
The Museum of Appalachia was one of the big highlights of my winter break roadtrip. About an hour or so north of Knoxville, the museum housed an obsessively thorough collection of Appalachian mountain folk relics. The museum’s 63 acres contained thousands of artifacts and 30+ log dwellings depicting the everyday life of these mountain folk. And they do weddings. I was impressed with the extensive collection of stringed instruments from the era, including this banjo made from a ham can and others made from toilet seats. Those crazy mountain folk!
Colonial Park Cemetery in beautiful downtown Savannah, GA contained the antiquated and dishevelled tombstones you’d expect from a historical cemetery, most being illegible. The majority of the bones earthed there passed with a epidemic of yellow fever that hit the city in the 1800′s. The grey overcast and straw-like grass complimented perfectly the dancing souls within its perimeter. This poor soul seemed to be carrying out the latter half of two consecutive life sentences.
Also within the cemetery was the largest aloe plant-looking monstrosity of chlorophyll I ever did see. So large that hundreds of visitors had etched their initials and hearts upon its leaves. Vandalizing plant leaves: all’s fair in love I suppose.
J.R.’s (North Carolina) is to the I-95 South as Wall Drug (South Dakota) is to the I-90 West and when I first realized I was a long ways from New York. After way too many billboards, our expectations were growing. But ultimately it was a disappointment. Sure, they had talking Jesus, Mary and Joseph dolls, Moonshine jam and Hummer perfume but I wanted even weirder random consumables.
After months of preparation, my graduate school applications were submitted to meet the programs’ early deadlines. Teachers College at Columbia University and the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison now hold my fate, my brain within their admissions committees. Madison is ranked numero uno in the country for my program, Teachers College is number 3… both above Brown, above Harvard and all those other Ivy Leagues. Can a C.U.N.Y. gal make this sort of transition? I’m going to try.
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