Fingers crossed
Just made some more calls for Hillary - apparently I have made 37 calls now. Keeping my fingers crossed for next Tuesday. (I got a Blogger app that is compatible with iOS 10, but it makes me title every post.)
Posts
Comey
I'm so annoyed with James Comey right now. His timing couldn't be worse. 11 days from the election, he makes this announcement. And it will probably be nothing.
Zoe just got a bunch of early birthday presents from my mother and sister. She was thrilled. "I love all my presents!" she said. 'They wanted to give me presents before my birthday. That's nice!" It made me kind of nostalgic for childhood, when presents make you ecstatic. Most adults are kind of "eh" about presents.
I don't like the iOS 10 update on my phone. It requires an extra step to unlock your phone and it's not compatible with the Blogger app. So I'll have to blog from my laptop like a Cro-Magnon; much easier to include photos when I'm blogging from my phone. Now I have to email them to myself, download them, and attach them. (First world problems.) I went on a field trip to Governor's Island with Zoe's class today. They have the longest slide in NYC; also good views of the Statue of Liberty. I also made white bean soup in the slow cooker today. Very simple, but tasty. You use 2 cups dried Great Northern beans (no need to soak them), a bay leaf, a chopped onion, 6 cloves of garlic and 6-7 cups of water. Then you cook it on low until the beans are tender, and you can use an immersion blender to puree it, and add a little extra virgin olive oil and salt. I added about a teaspoon of salt and a drizzle of oil. I also left some chunks in when I pureed it, becaus...
Last night I saw Alexander McCall Smith at Barnes & Noble. He spoke for over an hour to an appreciative audience. I've read most of his books and the others seemed to as well. It was a nice community. Finally he said, "I'm getting concerned looks from management," and started to sign books. He wore a kilt and bowed at the end of the reading.
Pinterest is the best for slow cooker recipes. I'm currently cooking this white bean vegetable soup . This kale soup and veggie pot pie are on deck. (I learned that expression from my old ob/gyn when Zoe was about 37 weeks. I asked, "How much longer?" and my ob/gyn said, "She's on deck." The ob/gyn also did stand-up, hopefully not mentioning any of her patients). The veggie pot pie in particular is intriguing. I've tried several iterations of it, all of which involve making your own dough, and this version looks good and not labor-intensive.
It just struck me that when I started this blog in 2005, I had no idea I'd eventually be writing most of my blog posts on my phone. And I think my first entry was about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes! I made Tuscan white bean soup from Pinterest today. It was a kitchen-sink soup with tomatoes, celery, carrots, onion, zucchini, summer squash, cannellini beans, kale, broth, olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, red pepper flakes, sugar, salt, pepper, and white wine vinegar. I liked it.
I like using the crockpot to cook steel-cut oats overnight, but they do tend to catch on the sides of the pot. That's what happens cooking on low. So last night I decided to cook them on warm (the lowest setting). It worked perfectly. They cooked, and have a nice nutty flavor, but they didn't catch. (I put in 1 cup of steel-cut oats, 4 cups of soy milk, and 3 Tbsp brown sugar.)
I stayed up way too late watching the debate last night. We all did. Eric said he didn't want to miss a minute. The boys stayed up later, watching the post-debate commentary. Even after Zoe was asleep, though, I had trouble falling asleep because of all the adrenaline from the debate. It was riveting TV, but Trump is a huge a--hole.
Just read an article in the Times, very disturbing, about the horrible torture of detainees in secret CIA prisons post-9/11. Many of them were held without explanation, and one out of four were wrongly detained. Trump wants to bring back "waterboarding and worse." Another reason not to vote for him...as if you needed one!
The soup was good. Next time I make it, I would use less water (1-2 cups less). I would also purée less of it - though I got to use the immersion blender, and that was fun. It's actually pink (the blender, not the soup). I cut the potatoes in smaller pieces than the recipe required, and I'm glad I did that. Not tiny pieces, though.
I just finished Winter Storms by Elin Hilderbrand. It was the third book in the Quinn family trilogy, set on Nantucket (like all of her novels). She is one of my favorites. A couple of fun things from the book: a local band called Four Easy Payments; and a scene where a character "sabers" champagne (slicing off the top of the bottle with a saber). Don't try this at home...