Gestational periods are tough for the impatient among us (say, me). My album is in the chrysalis stage, a real and visible thing, present though not yet fully formed.
Am I content with progress? Not in the least. I want to see the butterfly emerge. It’s right there! Almost among us! Come out, come out!
Who has a Costco card? I need to see if they sell patience. I could use several cases.
For today’s cuteness break, I give you this: a friend’s newborn baby, so wee he fits in a lunchbag.
I like happy baby photos but I loooove grumpy baby faces. Extra cute!
Yes. It is def con 90 adorable. You’re welcome.
Halloween! Pumpkin-flavored pumpkins! Dia de los muertos! 25 shopping days until your head explodes and you realize no one needs all that crap anyway!
It must be November.
For Elaine-related news you can use: read the November newsletter
Vegans/vegetarians, this post is not for you (except maybe the end).
Think about happy free-roaming Fred here, and skip down, or read something else.
(Are they gone? Is it safe? Wait one more minute? Okay.)
…. la la la la la, happy chickens…
… frisky chickens frolicking… nothing to see here….
Okay. I think we’re good.
So here is the story. I am hosting Christmas this year, which was going to be 3 or 4 people and now is going to be twice that many. (Yes, in a New York apartment. What is that? You need a place to go? Join us! We’ll have to suspend you from the ceiling to fit you in, but it’ll be fun there. Toasty.)
Christmas is one of those meat-and-potato holidays for many families, and mine is no exception. Which is fine, except that I cook meat fairly close to never. I find it sort of oogy to handle, ripping at bones and muscles as one must. Everything lives by eating something else that lives, I know this, I just feel less bad when ripping away at plant parts. Whatever. It is what it is.
The point is: my skills are perhaps not-so-bueno on the meat roasting front. I may have never cooked a whole chicken on my own, ever, in fact. (I did once, several years ago, thanks to the contributions of a team of people and a fair amount of wine, successfully cook a turkey. We were brash and bold and full of confidence then. Ah, youth.)
I settled on chicken because cow is more than I can manage, pork is divisive, I don’t know from ducks and geese, and (obviously) a turkey takes a team.
Then I consulted several recipes, and they all said the same thing: whatever you do, for the love of all that is holy, don’t try this for the very first time on guests! Test it out first.
Hence: the practice chicken.
This particular chicken (let’s call her Wilma) had a pretty good life, I think (right up to the being killed and subsequently eaten part). So that calmed me, right off the bat.
Even better: my excellent-cook friend who does not fear meat slipped me an annotated photocopy of what amounted to a ‘Roast Chicken for Dummies’ recipe. (It has fewer than 5 ingredients, all of which I can pronounce.)
So that left purchasing a roasting pan, which was drama enough for several daytime soap episodes, and the actual Cooking of the Chicken.
The pan got bought, the chicken got put on it (by me! Without a team!) and into the oven they went for 70 minutes.
I am sorry to say I failed to take a photo of Wilma when she emerged from of the oven. But she was a beauty. Browned perfectly, and wafting potato-onion-chicken perfume into the air.
AND: Moist and flavorful. Yes! Even the white meat!
So the practice chicken was a success. But oddly enough, I didn’t really care if it was or not. I found myself observing the experience of trying to learn roast a chicken with a sort of compassion for and interest in the process.
And I think there are lessons about the process that apply to more than chickens.
And finally:
Some days are the donut
and some days are the empty space inside the donut.
It’s time once again for Late Night Poetry here at The Skinny (our motto: you’ll sleep after you eat all that turkey later this month).
Something about this called to me. The reluctance, I think. The surprise when emotion comes from you at something you didn’t think could tug on your heartstrings. “I didn’t know I was grateful”. Way to go, Bruce.
by Bruce Weigl
I didn't know I was grateful for such late-autumn bent-up cornfields yellow in the after-harvest sun before the cold plow turns it all over into never. I didn't know I would enter this music that translates the world back into dirt fields that have always called to me as if I were a thing come from the dirt, like a tuber, or like a needful boy. End Lonely days, I believe. End the exiled and unraveling strangeness.
– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16523#sthash.v3ULVrns.dpuf
By Anthony Kelly, source: http://www.anthonykelly.co.uk/page6.htm
I missed Halloween this year, but I can tell you what I would NOT have been: sexy pizza.
I mean: come on.
Who thinks of these things? Does anyone find pizza sexy? Pizza is delicious and beloved by all right-thinking non-vegans (and only really available on the east coast ((don’t start; you know it’s true)) ) — but SEXY? Not so much.
If I’d have been on top of this trend, I would have organized my friends to all go as a group of sexy something-ridiculous. Sexy spinach. Sexy dust bunnies. I would, of course, have been sexy garbage disposal.
On the scary costume front: I *almost* drove to D.C. for the sole purpose of trying to dress up as Obamacare, since it seems so truly frightening to so many congresspeople. (“Trick or treat, senator!” “AAAAAAAAAH! RUN, children! RUN!”) But that was a bridge too far.
So this year has come and gone. I think next year, unless I come up with something better, I’m sticking with my default: sexy woman-in-a-warm-coat-and-comfortable-shoes.
It’s a use-your-imagination costume. Those are the best.
Fall leaves, beautiful crisp air… fall is such a new beginnings time, if you ask me.
Which I realize you didn’t, BUT if you are suddenly curious to know what new things I’m working on, you should:
Hello my wee chickadees! Sorry to see you’re up and about. But I have something for you; it’s time once again for Late Night Poetry (our motto: It’s the Middle of the Night So Put the Accordion Down Already).
Found this while trolling around for lovely fall poems. It spoke to me.
By David Baker
All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon
with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting
chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.
Down the block we bend with the season:
shoes to polish for a big game,
storm windows to batten or patch.
And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.
Source: The Truth about Small Towns (University of Arkansas Press, 1998)
