A weather-proof recipe for all you midwestern types
This "snow" business is getting on my nerves. Unacceptable.
Here, now, we completely disregard the fact that heart disease is currently the number one killer of American women to indulge in a recipe from my childhood. Best served as dinner when you've eaten nothing but fiber-rich vegetables and fruit all day.
LEAH'S BURNT CHEESE CASSEROLE
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 35-45 minutes
Ingredients:
-3 medium baking potatoes, peeled & sliced
-1 lb. ground beef (or Trader Joe's lean ground soy meat)
-1 can corn (15oz.)
-1 1/2 cans mushroom soup (10oz. each) or 1 big can (15ish oz.), can substitute another cream-based soup if you're feeling adventurous
-1 lb. grated cheddar
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Microwave potatoes in oil for three minutes in a deep casserole dish.
3. Brown beef in a frying pan until basically cooked, adding salt/pepper/thyme as you please. Layer on top of potatoes. (Soy meat should be added straight to the dish without pre-frying.)
4. Add layers of corn, soup, and cheese, spreading all evenly.
5. Bake, covered, @ 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
6. Remove lid and broil for 5 minutes.
Mousing, Continued
Well, I
had been hoping to find a way to start getting up earlier.
I'd been dreaming I was escaping from Sweeney Todd around 7:30 this morning. He was brandishing a butcher knife at me and wearing a flowery apron, and it was clear from his smug grin that he thought the apron was ever-so-adorably ironic. I scrambled down the side of the building and had halfway woken up when a sliding crash and scurry in the kitchen brought the cat flying into my room in hot pursuit of what I was fervently hoping was nothing. I rolled over and though the light was dim and my nearsightedness makes the world look like it's underwater, it was clear she had a mouse in her mouth.
I know cats aren't known for their kindness and efficiency in killing small creatures, but this was ridiculous. She chased it around the room for ten minutes, and every time I thought she was about to show a little mercy and finish the little guy off, they'd stop and stare each other in the eye for a while, and then start the pursuit all over again. My barely-awake instinct was to wait for her to deal with the situation so I wouldn't have to. We shouldn't
have mice. We are clean women. I wanted no part in touching anything skittery and wild.
But then I saw its face. The poor little guy was round and gray and the same size as the cat's tiny fabric "mouse" toys. She seemed to think he was just a much cooler version of the toy, but what I saw was round floweret ears, twitching whiskers, and a nose like a shiny, black bead. His sides were heaving from his racing heart as he calmly stepped into the cup I held out for him. I didn't want to take him out into the snow, but I couldn't just let him live in our house. The pale, early morning sky reflected weak blue light onto the four inches of freshly fallen snow as I crept across the street in my long red coat to release him in some bushes across the street. They still had some thick clumps of leaves at the bottom where my mouse might find a little comfort as he drifted off to sleep. I gently set the cup down to let him walk out. He crouched in front of the bush, surveying his fate, and I apologized as best I could as I left him there, staring.
Labels: memoir
Quote of the Week
Mr. G.: What band is this [on the stereo]?
Me: The Arcade Fire.
Mr. G.: Huh. Sounds like
Evita.
Book Report: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder
This one goes out to my friends in Los Angeles, as well as those of you who've happily accompanied me to confusing places like the
House on the Rock,
The Mutter Museum, and the Barbie Museum.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology in West L.A. is exactly the project you'd expect Jorge Luis Borges to create if he got tired of writing and moved on to visuals. An exhibit on nineteenth century theories about memory leads into a hall of folk remedies and superstitions (mouse pie will cure stammering), a collection of tiny mosaics made from butterfly scales, sculptures that fit inside needle eyes, and so on. Bats that can fly through lead are represented. There's an exhibit on American trailer parks that resembles a study of ancient cultures like you'd see at a natural history museum. Climb the stairs to view a gallery of Russian astronaut dog portraits, wander into a tearoom full of women chattering in a foreign language (something East European?), excuse yourself, and head back down the stairs to attempt to sort your brain out.
I'd been wondering what the hell the place was supposed to
mean for about a year and a half after visiting until someone mentioned
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder offhand and I immediately bought the book. Lawrence Weschler writes for
Harper's (where some of the book originally appeared in essay form) and
The New Yorker, and bothered to do some research after the museum left him equally bewildered. What came out of his research is a short and amusing history of museums in their original form, which was equal parts private collection (the art/science/natural history exhibits that we know and love as separate museums nowadays) and display of dubious curiosities (wonders from the mysterious east, including many,
many human horns). The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a throwback to those sixteenth century "Wunderkammers" or wonder cabinets, and it's surprising to learn what's "real" and what's not in the museum - as well as what kind of person it takes to run such a place.
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technologyby Lawrence Weschler
Vintage Books, 1996, 168 pages
Buy it here.Labels: California, entertainment, travel
Mousing
I was stowing our deck chairs in the rear stairwell of the house when I spotted something about the size of my thumb scurrying out a frantic circle a few feet away from me. I figured it was a hyperactive bug and dismissed it at first glance, but closer attention revealed it to be an actual, real life mouse. Commence nonsensical bellowing. The mouse marked out a wilder circle on the landing, then ran straight toward me, bounced off my foot, and disappeared into a hole in the wall somewhere next to the staircase. I finished yelling, wondered why I should freak out at the sight of a mouse when the gnarliest of insect invaders leave me calm and collected, and called in The Expert.
The Expert had been watching from her usual perch on the kitchen radiator, but after poking around the stairwell with her in my arms, I realized there was no guarantee she wouldn't run for the mystery nook under the stairs that might allow her to crawl under the house and vanish for all time. Left with no choice but to dampen her excitement and take her back inside, I gave her a couple of skritches and went back to work on my computer.
It must be dull to be a resident Expert receiving so few consultations, but she does bring a cuddly peace of mind to the household.
Labels: memoir
Oh my my my
Theraflu is the culprit, I hope. Why else would I have woken up around three remembering when I lived downtown and someone left a grocery bag full of A-cup bras on my door handle? Did they intend it as an insult? Isn't there some way I can
use the incident in a story? And late in the morning, where did those dreams come from? A family walk at the beach led to ice caves in the hills, where we skated in our shoes through tunnels that led to an abandoned subway station where the skeleton of a horse was frozen into a wall of ice. We visited my favorite childhood home, reaching not only the location but the
time when we'd lived there, so all our things were still there. We were delighted and set to robbing ourselves with no clear idea how to bring our treasures back with us through time. You can't rob history. Otherwise, we'd all have a lot of amazing hats.
Labels: memoir
This is the year I started keeping track.
Not as many as I was gunning for, but
Infinite Jest managed to swallow about two months out of my year whole...here it is, live in the flesh: my book list for 2007. The top five are bolded.
1. The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft - ed. Joshi
2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
3. Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman
4. Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold5. Love and Rockets – los bros Hernandez (series of fifteen books)6. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov (didn’t finish…maybe next year)
7. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole8. The Actual – Saul Bellow
9. Mr. Sammler’s Planet – Saul Bellow
10. If on a winter’s night a traveler – Italo Calvino
11. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov12. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
13. America (The Book) – Jon Stewart et al
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J. K. Rowling
15. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace16. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
17. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
18. Stories by Anton Chekhov – trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky
19. Interiorae – Gabriella Giandelli
For 2008, I'm demanding more nonfiction. Bring it on, Dawkins.
Labels: entertainment
