Potatoes in the Mist

Today I made a quinoa, broccoli and cheddar casserole and it was quite good. It was a little scary, cooking with a new grain, but I weathered the storm. First you preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Then you take 1 1/2 cups of quinoa, rinse it in a fine sieve (this gets rid of saponin, its natural bitter coating) and simmer it in 3 cups of water for 15 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. Chop an onion and saute it in 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet until the onion is translucent. Add 2 medium crowns of broccoli, broken up into bite-size pieces, and 1/4 cup of water. Cover the skillet and cook the broccoli for 5 to 7 minutes. In a mixing bowl, combine the broccoli mixture, cooked quinoa and half a cup of sharp cheddar cheese. Put the mixture into a lightly oiled, 2-quart casserole. Sprinkle half a cup of sharp cheddar cheese evenly over the top. Cook 20 to 25 minutes and let stand 5 minutes. (Source: The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet by Nava Atlas.) Yum! Quinoa is high in...

Actually, my mind is not diseased. Just my body. And it's starting to get better. Good enough to blog, anyway ;) Today I dragged my carcass to the gym and library, because I hadn't been to either place in a while. I had a huge stack of library books and realized I should return the ones I've read. I also stopped by the laundry room in my building to drop off some books. There's a little library in my laundry room. I put books that I'm never going to read there. My books always get snatched right up, maybe because their competition is: The Scarlet Pimpernel The Zone of Sudden Death and Other Stories of Combat (I'm not making this up.) Although, Liz , they did have A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Cool, huh? I already read it, though, so I let it be. As I left the laundry room, I saw a man sneaking into the building through the back entrance. I saw he had a little suitcase-type contraption with mesh on one side, and through it, I saw the white tushy of a dog! He smiled a...

Merry Christmas, everybody! I hope you had a groovy day. I woke up on the 23rd, feeling grim with a day of travel ahead of me, but the day shaped up well. First I got a big Amazon box from Lisa ! She got me a stuffed shih tzu and a fun book about wiggling! (Not the Australian band, I promise.) On the train we had the privilege of hanging out with Caroline, an adorable 3-year-old from Virginia. She has officially made me re-think my stance on kids. Maybe in 2 years. (Don't worry, y'all...I won't rush into it.) Christmas Eve and the day itself were also fun. One of my favorite gifts was a pink coat from my sister! D got, among other things, a classic book on advertising. It was written in the 1920s, and has some, um, interesting views on mothers! (From Chapter One, "Early Influences"): "The greatest event in my career occurred a year before I was born. My father selected for me a Scotch mother. She typified in a high degree the thrift and caution of her race. B...

I saw a meme over at Michelle 's and it got me thinking. One of the questions was: what was your favorite Christmas gift? Picture it. Danvers, Massachusetts. 1983. I was 8 years old and for whatever reason, I wanted a white mouse really badly. I opened a number of presents that year. One was a collar, another was a leash. Although I actually was a bright child, in this case I didn't put two and two together. I still thought I was getting a white mouse, and I asked if the collar/leash was "an adjustable belt." Go ahead and laugh. Anyway, eventually I went out to the family room to plunder my stocking. I opened the door and suddenly there was this moving furry mass! I screamed. I closed the door. Then I opened it again and peered in. I saw a small, "brindle" Cairn terrier. That's the word breeders used to describe her brownish-golden, blond-in-summer, dark-in-winter fur. She had pointed ears and beady eyes. All she wanted to do was play. We'd give her ...

Yesterday, I didn't notice the strike too much. (All of you who live in the outer boroughs and have to come to Manhattan to work, please don't hold it against me. I know you had a tough time starting yesterday morning.) Today, it's officially crazy. 8th Avenue is choked with cars. Almost none of them are stopping for lights; when they do stop, they go again too early. So crossing the street is like walking an obstacle course and I'm sure the driving is absolute hell. To make matters worse, many people are trying to get to Penn Station. I would not want to be someone in the city trying to get to JFK or La Guardia. People are probably selling their bodies for taxis and then the taxis will crawl along at 2 mph. And taking the A train to JFK is out. The strike is also starting to trickle into unexpected places. At the gym, for example, there's a sign up telling us not to take too many towels, "because of the MTA transit strike." It doesn't seem to have aff...

Sometimes I am too sentimental, I know. I just finished a library book and now there is a nice pink glow over everything. And I kind of want to adopt a baby girl from China. No, not really. But the book kind of makes you think you do. I'll back up. The book is "...And Baby Makes Two" by Judy Sheehan. It's about a 37-year-old woman in New York who's kind of stagnating. Not interested in dating, has a good-enough corporate job. And then she seems to be surrounded by babies. And then she does a Google search for "single mothers," starts meeting with a group of women interested in adopting, and it takes off from there. I don't want to spoil the book if you plan on reading it, but it really was a cozy read. It's interesting, too, because lately I feel like I've been getting cosmic messages not to have children. I was going to my writing class last week and saw a girl from my class in the elevator. She joked that she was always jealous when she saw...

For a late lunch, I made butternut squash, kale and white bean soup. It is unfortunate that D does not like the "orange family" (butternut squash, pumpkin, acorn squash, sweet potatoes) and TW will no longer be coming over for dinner on Tuesday nights now that our mentor meetings are over. This means that my orange family soups will be ending up in the freezer. Oh well. It was very good. Here's the recipe (from one of Jeanne Lemlin's books): Heat 1/3 c olive oil over medium heat in a large stockpot. Saute 2 large diced onions for 10 min, or until tender. Add 10 cups vegetable stock (note to self and others: Health Valley is better than Kitchen Basics), 1 c diced tomatoes with their liquid, 1/2 t dried rosemary, 1/2 t salt, and ground pepper. Bring to a boil. Add 1 lb diced butternut squash, reduce heat to a lively simmer and cook for 30 min. Add 1/2 lb shredded kale and 1 can of small white beans (drained and rinsed). Simmer for 15 minutes more. You can serve it with ...

a certified yoga instructor. Finally! The day started with brunch with TN at Le Gamin. They have one branch at 9th and 21st where it takes them an hour to make French toast (no exaggeration). So we tried their new branch on 15th between 7th and 8th. No wait and the service was much better. TN felt that the bread was weird, which I guess it was, but you can't have everything. Then we saw The Family Stone, the new movie with SJP, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes and Dermot Mulroney. I was a little disappointed. It was about SJP clashing with Dermot Mulroney's family. Then there was a switcheroo where people ended up with different boyfriends/girlfriends. The movie made me like Dermot Mulroney less and Luke Wilson better. Luke was probably the best part of the movie. He had a very funny dream about SJP. Then I had my yoga graduation. One of the girls in my mentor group gave us little Hindu god figurines. She gave me and TW Ganesh (a little elephant) and she ...

LC (the one with 3 girlfriends) sent a strange gift to my husband's office today -- a foosball table. D is now assembling it (as I will soon be assembling some baked ziti). I think LC was inspired by our lunch conversation. D: I'd really like to get a foosball table. Can we get one for our apartment, Bearette? Bearette: No. You could get one at the office, though. There's that big space in the front. I'm a little embarrassed that my husband likes foosball. But it is what it is. I've noticed that all men seem to like Indiana Jones and the Simpsons. Maybe foosball falls in that category?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a puppy thief. But before you judge me, hear my story. I was at writing class tonight and it was going swimmingly. I think my 8-part structure represented a massive step forward. I know where the story's going now, people are identifying with my narrator, and she's more self-aware. Groovy. The writing class is in an office that is part of a suite of offices. It's a little, shall we say, unconventional. They sell Reese's peanut butter cups at the front desk. Anyway, a bunch of people were there tonight, having a party of some kind in one of the rooms. Someone dropped off a balloon animal at our writing class. Someone else invited us to attend the party. So we snagged some food (grapes in my case) during our break. In the office across from ours, there was a tiny, beautiful white puppy. Possibly a Maltese. The puppy was in a playpen with a "wee-wee pad" (that's what KR called it. She speculated that they don't walk the puppy). ...

My O key is only working sporadically, so if you see some O's missing, bear with me. I'm trying to fix them as I go along. Oh, I just ripped off the key by accident. (I was trying to clean around it with a pen cap.) In a way, it's easier to type o's now. I never realized how many o's there were. Anyway, yoga school is about to come to an end. I'm going to miss it. I know, I complained about all the stress and interminable homework assignments. But it was nice to be together with people, doing something I love, learning a lot and becoming comfortable with public speaking. I think the trick is to see it as chatting with friends, not making announcements to a group. It's bitterly cold here today. Before, it's been brisk, kind of a nice jovial cold, but now it's the real thing, with puddles frozen and everything. There was a guy in yoga today who was totally new and had trouble with almost all the poses, so the teacher kept coming back to him and showing...

Woo hoo! I just had my physical final and it was fabulous. It didn't have a "final" feeling at all. It was more like 16 of us got together and taught each other. Each person taught for 15 minutes, followed by the next. The director bought roses for us all (green!). I played Zero 7 during my part of the teaching. It went well. TW said it was "light and playful." D's friend LC is in an interesting situation. He has three girlfriends. They all know about each other. One of them isn't happy about it, and wants to be in a committed relationship. One of them does not want to commit. The other one is out of the running because she didn't call him over the weekend. It's kind of interesting, most of the singles I know are doing online dating and so forth and he has THREE PEOPLE. He says it's lonely, though, and he'd like to settle down. I asked, "How lonely can it be with four of you?" :P But I guess he means the loneliness of not being ...

I woke up this morning at 8:30 or so and was pleasantly surprised. I thought, "Oh, I can make it to the 10:00 Basics class." We're required to do a basics class each week. I heard the door open and shut and realized that D must have woken up and gone out before I got out of bed. I assumed that his friend L, who was sleeping on the couch, went with him. I went out to the living room to fetch my mat. I was pretty sure I had rolled it up the night before and put it on top of a chair. Then I saw a bunch of blankets scattered on the floor. My mat was peeping out from under them. Then I saw L's black, shaggy hair. He was sleeping on my mat, wrapped up in blankets. Nothing but his hair was showing. I knew then I'd have to rent a mat, but I was amused anyway. When I got to the center, I said, "I have to rent a mat today because my husband's friend is sleeping on mine." Of course I was waiting to say that. The rental mats are terribly thin, though, and I coul...

I just did this eight-part structure assignment for my novel and I feel 100% better. I don't know why I'm so allergic to structure. In fact, I chose Brown for college largely because it had no core requirements. But sometimes it's not a good idea to have complete freedom. In a novel, for example. Because otherwise it would wander all over the place. I'm going to have to do a lot of rewriting. But that's ok. Because you shouldn't see a first draft as a monolith. (Sometimes I do.) For dinner we had penne with kale and white beans. I didn't take a picture, because it actually looked pretty similar to the penne with spinach and chickpeas. It's easy enough. First, you boil half a pound of penne. Meanwhile, you put 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a big skillet. Saute 6 cloves of garlic and 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes in the oil for 2 minutes, over medium-high heat. Then add a pound and a half of kale (leaves ripped from the stems), 1/3 cup of vegetable sto...

So I got back from writing class tonight. I got an email from Bdogg , saying she's enjoying Twilight, which is cool. Another recommendation along those lines: Vamped by David Sosnowski. The hook: "A single male vampire looking for more than a one-night stand." Yes! And it got good reviews from all the heavy hitters: New York Times, People, etc. I love a good vampire novel, though I can't get into Anne Rice. She doesn't seem creative somehow. I wonder if I was a vampire in a past life. I was definitely a puppy in one; my friend TW agrees. Anyway, I got a little disheartened in writing class as I realized I need to redo my structure. In a big way. I have some good scenes, and an interesting situation (I think), but I need a focus. In a way, I guess there are too many situations and scenes. I have to figure out which one is the most important, and I need a "crisis." The problem is, there are about four, but one needs to stand out as the low point of the sto...

Hi all, I don't have too much to share but the mood to blog is upon me. Yesterday D and I were assailed by Wachovia people. They offered us 15 free songs on iTunes in exchange for our phone numbers. Not for a date, but so they could call us with bank info. I expected D to balk - he hates giving out personal info - but apparently he is only reluctant to give out his email address. "They'll only call once or twice, but spam is forever," he said. So I promptly bought 15 songs last night. This was a careful process which involved browsing iTunes by genre with a heavy emphasis on the '80s. After "buying" them, I decided I didn't like 2 songs (both from modern times) and deleted them. What the heck, they were free. If inquiring minds want to know, here are the ones I bought: Billie Jean - Michael Jackson (This is the best song to sing with a friend, ever. Preferably the friend can do a good falsetto.) Faith - George Michael (I considered Father Figure, but...

Tonight I went to see James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. I met Jules there (my first blogger encounter :) Jules is small and twinkly-eyed and looks a bit like Julianne Moore. She was kind enough to save me a seat, which was very necessary because the place was packed! I've never seen anything like it. I guess that's what Oprah will do for you. James seems very down-to-earth and likable. 100% pretension-free. He was wearing jeans and a thick, maybe flannel button-down shirt. Also sneakers. The questions were pretty personal: one woman asked plaintively, "Do you believe in God?" and one boy said, "Could you tell us a bit about Lily from A Million Little Pieces? That was pretty sad." I wonder how often he gets questions about that. They must be painful to answer. He just said that he still loves her and misses her. At the beginning of the talk, he said, "Before these things, I a...

This is from a site Lora frequents. I know it's not Friday, but I've never been much for rules. Appetizer When was the last time you did something you would consider courteous, what was it, and who was it for? Today at Whole Foods, I was passing in front of a woman with a cart. I felt as if I had stepped in front of her, although neither of us was in line yet. So I let her go ahead of me. I looked at the two-bite brownies and two-bite chocolate macaroons while I was in line. Those things have a lot of calories! A regular-sized brownie must be well over 200 calories. Salad If you were to have a painting done of you alone, what would you want the background to be? Pink! Soup Describe your voice. I'm told I have a nice voice. I do talk too fast, however. I wish I could naturally speak slower. When I try to do so, it sounds forced. Main Course What is something you would like to do, but you're afraid of the risk(s)? Practically everything. I'm very risk-averse. May...

So here are the windchimes on my terrace (a gift from my sister) and some snow shots. Whenever we have the first snow, I think of my childhood dog, Pepper, who liked to jump in the snowdrifts. Sometimes she got ice or little balls of snow caught in her paws, and we had to take them out. My camera is really a sorry piece of equipment. I've already sent it in to be fixed once, and it still has the same problem. Whenever I try to zoom, the lens freezes open and won't close, making it impossible to take pictures. The lens also freezes open on other occasions. It makes me mad. It is one of the cheaper digital cameras at $160, but $160 is a lot to pay for something that doesn't work. I guess I will send it in for repairs one more time. On a more positive note, practice teaching went pretty well yesterday. I liked the poses I was given to teach - two forward bends (janu sirsasana and pascimottanasana) plus a tabletop. I wasn't too nervous. I do think I will prefer teaching whe...

Sometimes I take my computer power cord, and plug it into different outlets on the side of my computer. D has warned me that this might short-circuit my computer. Well, tonight there was a hissing sound and my computer screen went black. Apparently it's entirely ok, other than the fact that it thought it was December 1969 when it woke up. I reset the date and time. Computers have personalities, don't they? I think mine is a girl named Silver. Then again, I named my former car, a '98 Honda Civic, Silver as well. We had dinner at Little Frankie's in the East Village with DG. At first it was unprepossessing because the music at the bar was very loud. But the music improved. At first, also, they tried to seat us at a communal table with some strangers, and we decided to wait for a regular table. It was really good! I was sitting right next to a heater. I decided not to bow to societal expectations when I ordered. Instead, I got exactly what I wanted: a pear and gorgonzola s...

I stopped by the library after lunch and got some more books. There was a little cartoon at the librarian's station that said: "If you don't pay your fine, Babar will break your pinky." It showed a librarian confronting a patron and a huge Babar looming behind the librarian. Now, we all know Babar would never do that ;) I also stopped by the pet store near this particular library. There was a foxy-type dog, a Pomeranian, and a dog that looked like Leah 's Simon in the front window. In the back, they had puggies, little black Labs, and I think another Pomeranian. The Pomeranian started to whimper and jump around, trying to bust out of his cage, when he saw me. They are so cute, they break your heart. On the way home, I saw someone that looked like Kelly Osborne - raven-black hair, pale white skin and a number of lip rings. But then the person's mouth opened and a male voice came out. I also saw a drag queen of a certain age sitting on a stoop. The drag queen ha...