summer fare

The worst thing about summer (and I can list a whole ton of them) is that it really is too hot to eat soup.  Sure, we could all go the gazpacho route, but I'll admit here and now that I just cannot do gazpacho.  I'm sure there are some perfectly lovely ones out there and I believe I am capable, but every time I think of gazpacho I have some pretty vivid flashbacks to a concoction my mother used to call "gazpacho" which still triggers my gag reflex (think canned tomato juice with chunks of sour cream and raw mushroom floating in it. Blech!)  So soup's out.  And I like to believe I've come up with some pretty creative replacements.

In the spirit of Olympic multiculturalism, I give you my new summer favorite, tofu banh mi (serves 2 if one of you is willing to make yourself sick):

One package of extra-firm tofu (I used the high protein kind from TJ's pressed between paper towels under a cast iron skillet for about an hour)
1 large carrot shredded
As much cucumber as your husband who hates cucumber will eat (c. 1/3 cuke) sliced into thin ribbons
3T rice vinegar
1 T plus 1/3 c sugar
Salt
1/4 c butter at room temp or mayonnaise
1 T (or to taste) Sriracha sauce
1/3 c soy sauce
1 T fish sauce (optional)
1 large onion thinly sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper (or to taste)
1 baguette (I went to the bakery but you can make a killer one fairly simply recipe to follow)
1 c fresh cilantro leaves
1 jalapeno seeded and diced

1) Drain, dry and press tofu.  Cut into 1/4 inch slices.

2) Combine carrot, cuke, 1 T sugar, 2 T vinegar, and a pinch of salt  and allow veg to gently pickle

3) Blend butter or mayo with sriracha and stick back in fridge.

4) (This is the pain in the butt part) put 1/3 c sugar and 1 T water in a large skillet over medium-low heat.  cook, shaking pan occasionally (but not stirring) until the sugar is mostly melted and golden brown about 10 minutes.  Slowly drizzle in soy and/or fish sauce and remaining vinegar and then add the onion.  Cook stirring often until the onion is tender c. 10 minutes.  Add tofu and black pepper and cook turning tofu occasionally until it's absorbed most of the sauce.

5) Drain carrot mixture.  Split baguette (remove inner part if desired) spread butter/mayo mix on one half add tofu, carrot, cilantro and jalapeno.  Close sammich and eat quickly before someone else does.

James Beard's French Bread (which I also don't recommend making on hot days, but which smells amazing and works with any pot of soup you could ever make):

3 1/2 t dried yeast
1 T sugar
2 c warm water (c. 100 degrees)
1 T salt
5-6 c flour
cornmeal
1 egg white beaten gently with 1 T cold water

Combine yeast, sugar and water allow yeast to proof (get foamy) for about 5 minutes.  Add salt.  Stir in flour 1/2 c at a time until you have a "stiff dough."  Knead on floured board about 10 min until no longer sticky.  Cover and let rise in  a warm place (I use a cold oven) until doubled in size about 1 1/2 hours.  Punch down, roll into french style loaves.  Place on french bread pan or baking sheet covered in cornmeal.  Slash tops of loaves and brush with egg wash.  Cook in cold oven set at 400 degrees about 35 minutes.  (This recipe is awesome because it only has to rise once and goes into an oven that hasn't been pre-heated.)

guilty pleasure

I have a problem. Usually I’m pretty good at looking out for Future J (we’re counting the PhD as a pass and a hard lesson learned), and I’m not usually especially over-indulgent with things like staying out all night, my credit card, or (believe it or not) calorically dense fried potato products. I exercise, brush my teeth, eat vegetables, visit the doctor annually and occasionally call my mother. These are all Grown Up things that I do because Future J (and increasingly Present J) will thank me for them. What neither Past, Present or Future iterations of myself needs is Dear Prudence.

For those of you who don’t read the Washington Post or Slate, Dear Prudence is an advice column. Never having been a “Dear Abby” fan, I’m not sure how it stacks up, but I am desperately, embarrassingly, no-hope-in-sight hooked. I think part of it stems from my epistolary instincts and my deep love of wit—and while I’m confessing—puns (we could call it word-play, but that’s euphemistic at best). Part of it too is that my favorite kind of freude has always been schadenfreude. But deep down I think it’s just that I have a bit of downtime and I’ve succumbed to the age-old satisfaction of other people’s problems being more interesting than mine—and having the rush of having someone snarky tell people what to do about them.  I know, I know, I might as well spend my days watching talk shows.

But now that I’m deep into back issues of the column (it will be a sad day when the archive finally runs dry), I think I might be sabotaging Future J a bit. For example I’m so horribly embarrassed about reading this that I keep minimizing it whenever one of my co-workers walks by. It’s wicked conspicuous and they probably think I’m looking at something far worse than I am, but given the hours I sink into this, I *should* be embarrassed. The other problem is, the real news doesn’t seem interesting any more. I get three lines into some rant against Romney’s tax returns or Marcellus Shale or Joe Paterno and SNOOZE. I want the good stuff: the I slept with my daughter’s boyfriend and now I’m racked with guilt but secretly want to leave my husband and run away with him since I’m carrying his love child anyway grade A shit. And then I want a clever pun about quasi-incest and terrible mothers and stifling the selfish urge to elope. And then possibly a pro-choice lecture about how some choices are better than others. I want—no I need—to catch the media high, and the presidential election is not doing it for me; I need socially sanctioned voyeurism.

All the education in the world and it’s come to this.

(Not) Lacking Prudence

The Wrath of K--m

Since all the cool kids are updating their blogs, I thought it might be time for me to too. I think you’ll find I’m easily swayed, especially by the likes of WCFC and D’s Unfinished Business. They are so very cool.

So what caused such a hiatus? Such an agonizingly long gap between agonizingly introspective interludes? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I started the Job. It’s a good Job and I like my Employer, but I think that’s as much as I’m willing to post on the internet. It takes a lot of my time and energy and by the time I get home I often ignore the things that used to bring me pleasure—which I guess was the whole point of getting a job in the first place. After four months of work, I am now back down at my pre-unemployment weight because I don’t have the time or energy to bake bread/pie/cake/etc. every day; there’s perpetually a mountain of dishes in the sink (I used to spend at least an hour every day cleaning the kitchen, which didn’t so much bring me pleasure as make me want to punch something, but you get the idea); I only go to Trader Joes once—maybe twice—a week; and I no longer harass my sisters at regular mid-weekday intervals.

I watched the whole Legend of Korra, which had real promise, but ultimately ended up disappointing me. So Bryan Konitzko and Michael Dante DiMartino should be checking their mail for their thanks for nothing cards. And believe me, they're not alone.

I had a student go behind my back and file a formal complaint (my first btws) because I gave her a D. I should also add that the D represented an extremely generous bump because this student failed to take the final and did not turn in a final paper. She based what I felt was an extremely tenuous claim on the fact that I gave my students all of finals week to take the exam any time they pleased and to leave me the papers when they were done and she was confused. In point of fact, I reminded them of this in class (which she did not always attend), I sent email reminders, I sent individualized email reminders to her because I knew she'd be a pain in the ass if something went wrong and I wanted to preserve a written record. It was all for naught. The chair told me I had to let her take the exam a month later and that I should consider changing her grade--because he resists confrontation and she promised to be a relentless pain in his ass if he didn't lean on me. So not going to miss THAT part of teaching.

I also got married—or not. We’re still in limbo on that one since the county clerk can’t find any record of our marriage certificate and has instructed us to send them ours. This makes me very nervous because at best, they are extremely rude and at worst, completely incompetent and Steve and I would very much like to have all this behind us. Some couples like to draw out their engagements without ever making a permanent commitment, but this is getting a little ridiculous. I could go on about how angry the petty, local byzantine bureaucracy makes me in all its stupid, inefficient dimensions, but it would be a boring story that would only serve to beget more resentment against an agency that has already proven that they are only going to help me how and when they are legally obligated to do so.

Finally I lost several weeks to the lords of the health care under-realm. I mean sure, I was celebrating the mandate and all, but where I REALLY lost the time was when I went in to the doctor for a routine checkup with no symptoms, received a confirmation that there was nothing wrong with me, was given an order for a test to confirm this finding and then two weeks and $7200 worth of extra tests (including one very painful and intrusive biopsy) later, my original diagnosis of “nothing” was confirmed. In the meantime none of the doctors I saw bothered to disabuse me of the (never explicitly stated but strongly implied) notion that I had cancer that needed to be addressed immediately, which is, upon reflection, probably why I let them manhandle me so thoroughly when it now seems so wasteful and unnecessary. It is with no small amount of bitterness that I’m handing over my (none too small and rather frivilously computed) deductible, and the sight of the five weeks later still unhealed site where they stuck the GIANT needle in me still acts as a daily reminder of my deeply held resentment and ever-present mortality.

There have been other, smaller battles with other Goliathic (yeah, I made that word) bureaucracies, but they’re stupid, even by the very low bar set by the present entry.

So you see, it was probably in everyone’s best interest that I didn’t regale you with my tales of woe, as there have been precious few victories and several very real temper tantrums. And while I was very happy about getting married, the Powers That Be have managed to sully even that with thick layer of helpless frustration. All of this is obviously compounded by the heat, which Steve has reminded me is not exclusively mine to lament, but has nevertheless kept me from still more of the things I enjoy (namely anything that takes place outdoors) and has microwaved my brain to a gloppy sludge. My Anglo-Saxon stock wins out in the end.

At this point it would seem foolish to encourage any of you to call me, but anyone who feels like embracing their own folly, is welcome to ring.

Things are bound to start seeming funny any moment now.

j

more soup related news

I was mostly kidding when I picked the title of this blog. But as it turns out, my subconscious apparently knows me better than I know myself, because I really, really love soup, and all the things that we do in this town that make me happy seem to have fallen squarely in the soup category. This week it was Vietnamese pho. I love pho. No, I LOVE pho. When we were in the Cornhole and Steve was still trying to woo me, he would humor my regular cravings for what he has retroactively dubbed "garbage pho." This is because while I thought it tasted great, it did, undeniably, smell like garbage. And then, back when we were in State College and there was really no reason to leave the house and even less to leave the sofa, we would go to this little church on the edge of campus that had been converted into a Vietnamese restaurant and eat pho. It was freaking amazing. Even Steve agreed. It was so good that when we returned from Christmas vacation last year and found that it was suddenly out of business, I was depressed for weeks. It was so good that when I heard the rumor that it was shut down for health code violations, I didn't care. I still would have eaten that soup every day of the week. Since then, I've been in more or less a pho-less state. When we first moved to the Big City, we were optimistic that we might find pho, and as a result set off on a quest to try every hole in the wall Vietnamese restaurant in town. This was a rather disappointing venture. There was the pho that was so greasy that even a good scrubbing couldn't get the oily feeling off one's lips. There was the pho where Steve found a long black hair in his (to which he stated "still better than the garbage pho"), and the pho with the mushy overcooked rice noodles, not to mention the several other anemic, disappointing excuses for Vietnamese beef noodle soup. So we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would just have to make do with Taiwanese style beef noodle soup and leave it at that. That was until Thursday when we literally stumbled upon a place called Aseoma (which seems like a dumb name for a restaurant, but it stands for Asian Style Eats On M. Avenue). It was awesome. I would have voted for their pho in the soup off in a second. And as an added bonus, I'm not even sure this place qualifies as a hole in the wall. It was inexpensive, but there were cloth table cloths, art on the walls, menus that looked like they had survived without someone puking on them, and a tree in the corner with little fake mandarin oranges on it that looked so real we had a nice laugh with the waiter/owner? about the hanging of fake fruit on real trees. It was a great week for our little household--and no, clearly it doesn't take much.

soup walk

I don't really know what I've been doing for the last month or two. Mostly writing lectures. They're very bad in an objective sense, and I can tell from the way my students look at me that I'm losing most of them. But I'm trying to finish the whole semester's worth before next week, so there's an inherent necessity to do some corner cutting. Plus, it's becoming painfully obvious that I know bugger all about 19th century American history. And there's always the "they don't pay me enough to worry about this" track I can keep running on. So that's going. But good things are happening here too. I fit into my skinny jeans for the first time since Steve and I moved in together, so that was awesome. I also went to the best event ever known to human kind and possibly in the history of the galaxy: a soup contest. In a bid to get people into a certain part of town, the organizers of this annual soup-off paired local restaurants with local businesses who would serve their soup. Ticket holders got a punch card and a map so they could try all 21! It was like trick or treating if all the treats were soup and all the houses were chiropractors and dentists' offices. There were some great soups too: squash curry, onion bisque, tomato with a tiny croissant grilled cheese sandwich and some lamb stew that was a pun of a movie title that I cannot for the life of me remember. I want to say "Silence of the Lambs" but I know that's not it. I'll have to consult Steve when he comes home. (It was "The Lamb Shank Redemption.") There were also some truly gross soups like a "dessert" soup from an Asian fusion place that was more or less pieces of cantaloupe with tapioca pudding mixed with coconut milk poured over it. That one kind of made me want to yak, but it won in the "most original" category. The winner was a pineapple, tomatillo, habanero soup, that I also didn't love, but since I didn't bother voting, I'm not too fussed. The whole thing was totally awesome, and for the first time (maybe ever) made me really like the Big City I now call home.

Doctor Who?

It may surprise you all to learn, with me being the shy, retiring type who never EVER complains about anything, that I have a new pet peeve. At first I thought that it was people who insisted on referring to themselves as “Doctor.” As in, “Hi, I’m the Dean, Dr. Dean and that’s my assistant Dr. Blahblahblah.” But deep down, I get it. We’re not all jaded enough with our degrees to roll our eyes and instantly think “Hurray! You have a PhD! Who doesn’t these days? I don’t know about you, but the only thing mine does is disqualify me from any legitimate employment, forcing me to be stuck working for minimum wage at this super awesome community college.” Some people are proud of their accomplishments--and want others to acknowledge them too...on a daily basis. What really bothers me is people who insist on being called Doctor by everyone they work with who fail to address me that way. For example, all official correspondence from Dr. Dean that’s addressed to Ms. LastName, even though the whole organization knows I have a PhD because I put it on my application, and I’m fairly certain it’s one of the primary reasons they hired me. For reals, it came up more than once during my interview. My point: the super-pretentious titles cut both ways, and Dr. Dean may be earning roughly 750% of my salary, but at the end of the day, we both have more or less the same degree, which entitles us to exactly the same title. So I’ll call her Dr. Dean, but goddammit, she better start sending my letters to Dr. LastName!

cookie monster

You know how when you're watching your weight and you encounter a plate of cookies and you really want one and it's this epic Herculean struggle because you really want one but ultimately you decide to walk away and then you realize that not eating that one cookie doesn't make any difference in the grand scheme of things because the cookies are still there and it's not like not eating that specific cookie actually caused your pants to fit any better? I have been having an angry day--an angry day full of metaphorical cookies where my self restraint is my self restraint and the cookies are yelling at people. And I'm getting to the point where I'm willing to wear metaphorical sweatpants for the next few months if it means licking those last crumbs off that stupid plate. This morning I didn't yell at the pharmacist at Walgreens even though she had no particular explanation for why my copay doubled this month--a prescription that actually costs less at full price than what we pay for the prescription coverage each month. I didn't yell at the representative from the insurance company as she explained to me that my copay was only applicable if I bought a 90 day supply and that I was only allowed to buy more than 30 days at CVS. (Ironically enough I had tried to buy a three month supply last month and was told my insurance would only cover one month at a time.) I didn't even yell when she told me that, as a service to me, the insurance company accepted my regular copay at Walgreens for the first two or three months, nor did I tell her that I am not, in fact, a moron, and that their system was clearly designed to get me into a routine I would be too lazy to break and then charge me more for the convenience of not bothering to switch pharmacies. I didn't yell. I may have been terse, but since what I really wanted to say was "If I had another option--any option--for prescription coverage, I would take it no matter how expensive or inconvenient because your company is a lying, cheating, evil bureaucracy that should be burned down" I'm counting this as a win for self-restraint. Now I am not engaging a former elementary school teacher who has been posting increasingly insane right-wing crap on facebook. I wasn't even going to be all that snotty when I responded to her most recent post. I was going to invoke civil discourse and ask for a genuine, thoughtful expression of her perspective. But Steve kept saying "you don't want to get in fights with old ladies on facebook" which is true, except that today I so did. But I didn't. No cookies. No sweatpants. No sweet rush of guilt and satisfaction. Just good advice from Steve: hide her and move on. There might also be some slightly less metaphorical baked goods in my future.