Fatuous Observations

Forays in American cooking: part II

2008-07-22T15:08:00.002-04:00

It's not sporting to make fun of the USDA. They're such an easy target. While we were in Washington the other day, we walked past the USDA headquarters, a huge building near the Mall. I wondered if somewhere inside was a test kitchen where government nutritionists labored to create new dishes that are thrifty and healthy. I knew there was a cafeteria in the basement, and I was tempted to stop in. We were looking for a place to eat lunch anyway and I was curious to see if they served “Pizza meatloaf” or “Ranch beans” or any of the other dishes in the official USDA cookbook.

Today was supposed to begin week two of living off the USDA thrifty food plan but when I saw that for lunch today I was supposed to prepare “Chicken and vegetables, scalloped potatoes and a homemade peach cake” (not to mention grapes, and one slice of bread-and-marg per person” I decided that this is not how I want to spend my summer vacation.

One week doing this diet taught me a number of things, mainly that the USDA wants us to eat. They want us to eat a lot. I don't know if this is because most Americans really do eat as much as what is presented on this menu, or if it's because they're trying to move American agricultural products. As we progressed through the past week, my fridge got more and more stuffed with leftovers. I thought we'd need to take a time out between week's one and two just to eat them up. Even though I was using a menu plan designed for a family of four to feed a family of six, there was still more than we could eat.

Example: Lunch on day four was homemade turkey chili, cooked macaroni, and peach-apple crisp. The turkey chili was more than enough, and it had barley in it. Why would we eat barley and macaroni in the same meal? Even without the macaroni, there were three servings of chili left over.

The USDA plan sticks to the outdated food pyramid, so it's ridiculously carb-heavy. Potatoes and bread at the same meal? Cereal and toast for breakfast? It also relies heavily on juice as a source of fruit. Why not just eat an actual piece of fruit? Indeed, foods rich in fiber are not in abundance in this menu.

The USDA wants Americans to eat less sodium, so many of the recipes have no added salt and as a result are tasteless.

The USDA wants Americans to eat a lot of meat. Breakfast is usually vegetarian, but both lunch and dinner for both days for both weeks (except for dinner on the last day) include meat—mainly beef, chicken and turkey.

The USDA does not approve of butter and lists margarine as a substitute in all recipes. Most recipes call for minimal amounts of fat, and the cookbook has taken many dishes that are traditionally fried and reworked them so they are baked.

Apparently, the USDA wants us to eat lots and lots of rice and potatoes. I made rice pudding for dessert four times last week, and that's four times more than I've cooked it in my life up to this point. The USDA rice pudding recipe is OK although it has that unfortunate “what the hell is rice doing in my pudding” texture that is the one fatal flaw of this dish no matter who cooks it. I had to double the amount of sugar called for to make it palatable. One day we ate cooked rice cereal for breakfast. This was rice cooked in milk instead of water, to which you add a little sugar and cinnamon. Potatoes appear on the menu almost daily: hash browns or “baked potato cakes” for breakfast, the ubiquitous scalloped potatoes for dinner and lunch. One day, I even had to bake “crispy potatoes” as snack.

I can appreciate that it would be difficult to put together a menu like this, since not only do the foods need to be reasonably nutritious and cheap, the recipes need to appeal to what someone at the USDA has decided is the typical American taste: nothing too ethnic, conservative seasonings, familiar ingredients that are available everywhere, and the menu has to provide enough calories to satisfy everybody.

Still, not everything we ate was terrible. The scalloped potatoes were good the turkey chili became edible once I added salt to it, and the oatmeal cookies—made with applesauce to replace some of the fat—were delicious. The oatmeal cookie recipe is the only one I'll keep and make again.

Tales of doom regarding our economy plus rapidly increasing food and gas prices have left me feeling worried about how I'll feed my family if a serious crisis develops, which is one reason I tried this menu. There are other menus out there. The Hillbilly Housewife has published an emergency plan which will feed a family of 4-6 for $45 per week. (That's probably $80 in Charlottesville dollars.) I'd like to try it. You can access it here. It seems more sensible, less doggedly devoted to the food pyramid than the USDA plan. It includes many vegetarian meals which makes sense if you're trying to save money. The USDA's commitment to serving meat twice a day is silly.

Forays in American cooking: Two weeks on the USDA thrifty food plan

2008-07-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

I have achieved heights of ludicrousness I never dreamed possible. I am feeding my family the USDA way. I'm not the first person to try it. Jeffrey Steingarten, in a hilarious essay published in The Man Who Ate Everything followed the USDA thrift menu too, although his experience was different from mine in that he didn't feed an entire family and the menu seems to have changed since then. What I remember from Steingarten's essay is his description of a “peanut butter snack cake” which he says he ate “not without enjoyment.”

What is this thrifty food plan of which I speak? The USDA publishes a guide to help you feed your family nutritiously on a relatively small amount of money. You can access it here. It includes menu plans for two full weeks, a cookbook, shopping lists for each week, and tips on healthy eating and thrifty shopping.

Day one started with a trip to the grocery store. If you plan to do this yourself, I recommend that you bring both the menu and the shopping list to the store. Both are needed for clarification. But you won't try this experiment yourself. I have suffered so you don't have to.

I'd grabbed the list without looking at it carefully and as we progressed through the aisles of Harris-Teeter I became more and more appalled at the foods we were expected to buy. The thrift plan is designed for a family of two adults and two children. Since I have four children I'd planned to increase what I bought by 50% but this left me buying stupendous amounts of food. Thirty-two oranges, sixteen bananas, nine apples and 1.5 pounds of melon for a single week? Not to mention that I had to bypass the luscious Ranier cherries that were on sale, and also in season. Sixteen pounds of potatoes? Aghast, I decided to scale back to the amounts specified on the list.

We were led to buy foods I had never known to exist. Spinach comes in a can? We could hardly believe it, but it's true, there is such a thing as canned spinach. White bread? Does anyone actually eat white bread anymore? An entire gallon of ready-to-drink lemonade? Eight cans of frozen orange juice concentrate? Three and a half gallons of milk? My cart was a veritable tower of food by the time we got to check out. The total came to a not-so thrifty $197.

By the time we got home, it was time to cook the lunch. Day one's lunch consisted of “Turkey patties, hamburger bun (4) Orange juice (3 c), Coleslaw (2c), 1% lowfat milk (2c).” Yes, a hot, cooked lunch. Every day. I have news for the USDA: most American children are in school at lunch time. How, pray, am I supposed to pack “Potato soup, low salt snack crackers, Tuna pasta salad, orange slices, and oatmeal cookies”--day five's lunch menu—in a lunch box? Don't talk to me about tupperware. There isn't enough tupperware in the world to pack a five-dish hot meal in four lunch boxes every single day, not to mention Jon's lunch—and my own—I'm in school too, usually. And one must question when I am supposed to cook all this stuff. Can you imagine yourself frying up the turkey burgers at 06:00 so they're ready to pack in time for school?

But this was my experiment and if the USDA wants my family to eat a hot cooked lunch every day then my family will get a hot cooked lunch every day. And so it came to pass that on day two I was roasting a farking chicken at 9:00 in the morning.

But back to day one. The turkey patties weren't bad, although by the time I had finished cooking them, my children thought I was clearly off my rocker. They were excited too. I think they liked the idea of a menu set out for them, especially Mr. McP, my nine-year old.

The scheduled snack for day one was a slice of white bread each and “chick pea dip.” Chick pea dip turned out to be an inferior sort of hummus and I thought to eat it with white bread would be disgusting, so I toasted the bread and cut it into dainty triangles and my kids loved it. Loved it! Dinner was a hamburger helper-ish “beef noodle casserole” with lima beans (prepared from scratch) and sliced oranges and bananas for dessert.

Day two I realized that eating from the thrifty food plan was like going back in time to the 1930s. I was cooking almost the entire day. No sooner had I finished serving and cleaning up from breakfast, it was time to think about lunch. The lunch required a stupendous amount of preparation. There was the chicken, plus homemade potato salad, homemade rice pudding and an “orange gelatin salad” which I had to make from unflavored gelatin packets and orange juice. The lunch was tasty, except for the gelatin salad, which was inedible. Why not just buy a box of orange jello? Making it with the unflavored gelatin was actually more expensive and when you consider that nearly 100% of it got thrown away, it was not a thrifty dish. Dinner was a turkey/vegetable stir fry with rice and a homemade peach/apple crisp, which we ate not without enjoyment, to use the words of the inestimable Jeffrey Steingarten. After dinner, Mad Scientist brought his empty plate to the kitchen and said, “Thanks for making dinner, Mom. It was almost decent.” High praise, considering the source.

Today we begin day four.

If the van is a-rockin' or, There'll always be a Belmont

2008-07-15T08:45:00.002-04:00

Remember when Belmont was described by Realtors as every house buyer's dream neighborhood? Charming! Darling! Newly renovated! Mere steps from downtown! Jon and I used to snort at the hype because when you actually live here, you see that Belmont hasn't really changed that much. True, it's less common to see passed-out drunks in the park, but it was only a few months ago that Jon had to speak sternly to a man who felt that it would be perfectly appropriate to sleep off his hangover sitting on the curb across the street from our house--his back against a tree and his legs sticking out into the street.

We call this "keeping it real."

So this Saturday I came home from an errand, about 4:30 pm and noticed an old van parked in the curve of the road between our house and our neighbor's. A suspicious car is very obviously suspicious. I knew immediately that the occupants of the van were not a family visiting the park. Nor were they guests of any of the neighbors. Perhaps the passenger-side door left hanging open was a clue. Still, it isn't a crime to park your car in a public street, so I went about my business. Jon came in the house a little while later and said, "That van is a-rockin'." And it was. Bouncing and jiggling in an obvious way that left no doubt as to what was going on inside.

I admit, we thought it was kind of funny. That particular spot on our quiet street has long been a favorite place for people to park and have public sex. We have seen it before, but it's probably been a good three years since the last time, when I called the police because when I looked out my daughters' bedroom window I got a clear sight of two people engaging in oral sex in the front seat of a pick up truck. This was in broad daylight right at the time when the kids were expected home from school.

We didn't call the police this time--I don't know why except that we've called so many times over the years for nuisance things like this, we've grown jaded. Our neighbor was less amused and the police showed up about five minutes after he got home and saw the van parked in front of his house. Then came an amusing little street drama: the police officer confronting the van, then stepping back for modesty's sake to allow the occupants to dress themselves. The man emerged first. He was older than I expected him to be. The lady took a few minutes longer to correct her dishabille. She looked familiar. I am almost certain that she is a prostitute. The cop either chose not to notice this or really thought he was confronting two ordinary people who decided to have sex in a van in front of houses and a busy family park in the middle of the afternoon. The couple was "advised" and then they and the cop went their separate ways.

day trip photos

2008-07-09T19:12:00.009-04:00

Ambitious day trip yesterday.

Places visited: US Post Office Museum, Jefferson Memorial, lunch near Capitol Hill, Library of Congress, US Botanic Garden, National Art Gallery, National Zoo, Dinner in Adams-Morgan. We left Charlottesville at 7:30am and didn't get home until after 11:00pm.

What I did wrong: not studying my guide to the Metro beforehand. We would have been quicker and more efficient at catching our trains if I had done so.
Settling on a restaurant mentioned in Fodor's for dinner--it was an interminable walk from the zoo, and we passed by dozens of likely looking restaurants, but we were determined to eat at this particular restaurant, and it turned out that it wasn't even very good.

What I did right: Saving our trip to the zoo for last. We got there at 5:00pm, after everyone else had left and we practically had the whole zoo, including the pandas, to ourselves.
Staying in DC for dinner and avoiding rush hour for the drive home.
Driving all the way in to town and parking at Union Station. So much easier than worrying about finding a spot in a commuter lot.

Stipping paint is like childbirth

2008-07-07T08:56:00.003-04:00

Anyone who has given birth has probably experienced the post-birth amnesia. After a while, you forget the pain, even think, "Oh, labor wasn't that bad," until you begin labor with another baby and the memories come rushing back, and you think, "Oh God! How could I have been so stupid to have done this to myself again?"

It's the same thing with chemically stripping paint from an object. You try it once, are appalled at the results, vow never to mess with strippers again, until one day, you decide the fifteen coats of paint glutting your living room woodwork has got to go, and you once more expose yourself to mutagens, teratogens, carcinogens.

I did some research, and learned that "NMP" strippers are what you want and not this other stripper whose name I can't recall, but it did have a "T" in it. So off I went to Meadowbrook Hardware, which is my favorite hardware store, btw, and they had a selection of strippers, but none of them were labeled as "NMP" or as the now forgotten "T" formula.

I spent quite a long time in the stripper aisle at Meadowbrook, and finally selected "Dad's" brand stripper which came with a little plastic spray bottle. I thought it seemed handy, and that spraying the stripper would result in a quick, even coat and would be easier than applying it with a brush.

Choosing the brand with the spray bottle turned out to be a nearly fatal mistake, since with spray, you will have splashback. Tiny specks of stripper caused tiny painful chemical burns on my arms, my feet, my face, and perilously close to my mouth. It also dripped. A lot. I had decided that I probably wouldn't strip the baseboards, but as I sprayed the window, I noticed the paint on the baseboards bubbling and peeling as dripping stripper landed on it. So now I am doing the baseboards. Hurrah!

A few minutes after you apply the stripper, the paint comes bubbling up in an encouraging way, and you think it will come off easily, but you have been fooled, because it comes off in slimy bits, and inconsistently, as some areas will be stripped to bare wood, and others will have lost just the first coat of paint. Don't get me started on trying to get the paint off curved moldings.

I had been worried about the fumes, but one whiff of stripper evoked a distant feeling of very early childhood. I have a feeling I spent some time, as an infant, sitting in a swing or bouncy seat, watching my father strip woodwork. In that respect, the "Dad's" paint stripper was appropriate. Indeed, all that day, even after I'd scrubbed my arms and hands thoroughly (and of course I'd worn gloves) an odor of paint stripper hung about me that was, I admit, not unpleasant.

Here is a picture of the Window of Sorrow

In which I coin a term

2008-07-05T12:16:00.002-04:00

We frequently drink at Beer Run and were excited to have a relaxed neighborhood bar in Belmont. But then I realized that some people consider Beer Run to be in Woolen Mills and not Belmont at all. My favorite Belmont Bar in Woolen Mills? How can this be? It seems so Belmont-like. And yet, Belmont officially ends at the railroad tracks, and Beer Run sits on the Woolen Mills side of the tracks.

Last night, after the fireworks, dropping off a friend at his house on Chesapeake St. in Woolen Mills and driving over the tracks into Belmont, I thought about that little strip of neighborhood between the train tracks and Market St. and it came to me that henceforth it shall be called "Woolmont."

No need to thank me.
;)

If you give a girl a paint chip...

2008-07-02T07:45:00.003-04:00

Now that I am unemployed, I am about to repaint my living room so I have plunged bravely into the world of paint chips. My neighbor lent me her Benjamin Moore fan book, and with it were pamphlets from Pottery Barn with their paint collections from Spring, Summer and Fall of 2007. This was very exciting, as I had already purchased fan books with the Pottery Barn palettes for Spring and Summer of 2008, so now I have a wide variety of Pottery Barn-approved colors to choose from. Because where would the middle class be without Pottery Barn to guide us?

Even with all the help from PB, I'm having trouble deciding between Wedgewood Gray, Crystal Springs or Silvery Blue for my living room. I want the perfect blue-gray. Not too blue. Not too gray. I feel like Myrna Loy in Mr. Blandings Builds his Dreamhouse, a movie I rented last weekend because the narrator in Do the Windows Open? says she watches it often because it's so unrealistic. And it is unrealistic. Especially the scene where Cary Grant is arguing with his architect and his lawyer while wearing a quilted satin smoking jacket. It's also very funny. Anyway, there's this one scene where Myrna Loy is telling her painters what colors she wants. She says something like, “I want the kitchen to be white, but not a cold white, a warm white. Warm it up with something but make sure it's a color that doesn't give a suggestion of anything other than white.”

Actually, painting the living room is turning out to be something of a Project. Before I could even get started, I had to paint the armoire. We bought it second hand at Circa. The previous owner had antiqued it. She'd painted it blue, with an umber glaze and hand painted flowers on the door panels. She even signed it: Gloria Mitchell, 1993. I'm sorry, Gloria Mitchell, but what worked in 1993, does not work now. I felt bad painting over your hand painted flowers, but it had to be done. Now the armoire is a dark gray, although I'm thinking it needs to be black. I did just find the most fabulous new knobs for it at anthropologie.

Anyway, I realized that it makes no sense to paint the living room without doing something about the ceiling. Ever since we moved in, the paint has been peeling off the living room ceiling in large, loose flakes. Underneath is bare drywall. I realized that this means my ceiling hasn't been painted since about 1974. Long ago, some previous owner of our house covered all the old horsehair plaster with drywall. They did a really bad job, too. They also installed a hideous ceiling fixture in the living room. Yesterday I scraped all the large, loose flakes off the ceiling and I covered the areas with a thin coat of drywall mud. Today I will sand and prime those areas, and tomorrow I can paint the ceiling.

But I also realized that something needs to be done about the woodwork. Previous owners—probably the same ones who put in the drywall and the hideous ceiling light—painted all the woodwork in the living room mustard. Mustard. The people we bought the house from had painted white on top of the mustard, only now the white paint is peeling off in long strips—probably because the mustard paint is oil base and the white paint is latex. I have seen this happen before.

Not only that, Jon and I damaged the paintwork badly when we replaced the sash cords last year.

The only thing to do is strip them. Gah! I suppose I ought to strip them before I paint the walls. It's a good thing I'm unemployed.

The poverty diet

2008-06-27T07:32:00.004-04:00

For a sociology assignment, I am spending five full days in a row on a poverty diet, meaning I have just $4.25/day to spend on food. This is, apparently, $1.25 more per day than the official poverty food spending amount of $3.00/day.

I thought it would be hard, I thought I'd be starving, but actually, it isn't all that hard to eat well on $4.25/day. I considered putting my entire family on the poverty diet, since that would make the shopping simpler, but decided I didn't want to deal with the complaints. I saved my receipts from the grocery store, and made notes of the prices of things that I didn't need to buy, but had in stock in my house so I could calculate what they cost.

My biggest concern was feeding my addiction to caffeine. I knew that if it came down to a choice between food and coffee, I would have to choose the coffee, but it hasn't come to that. It turns out that a cup of tea with two splenda packets costs $0.13. A cup of coffee (made at home) with a mix of milk & half & half plus three splenda packets costs $0.32. I made pizza from scratch for dinner one night, and discovered that each piece costs $0.36. That's with organic flour, too. I used free-range, locally-raised, grass-fed beef ($5/pound) to make a Moroccan beef dish, that, because the beef was stretched with rice and other ingredients, came to $1.25/serving. Last night's spicy beans and rice cost $0.91/serving. That's with organic beans.

Breakfast on day one cost $0.80. It consisted of one egg ($0.28), 1/2 serving oatmeal ($0.06) made with 1/4 cup milk ($0.06) and one teaspoon sugar ($.02) plus 1/16 of a cantaloupe ($0.25) plus the tea-with-splenda ($0.13).

The key is portion control. I can't have second helpings of anything and I can't afford desserts or sweets or between-meal snacks. I'm not starving, but after some meals, I do feel somewhat unsatisfied, but it's nothing I can't handle. Calories for the day range between 1000 and 1300 which is a tiny bit less than what is ideal for my size, but who was ever harmed by eating *slightly* fewer calories than they need? I suppose a large man or a teenager would be hurting from this diet a lot more than I am.

Another key is knowing how to cook. If I had to buy a prepared pizza crust rather than making one from scratch, my pizza would have been a lot more expensive. Not everybody likes oatmeal, but it is much cheaper and more filling than cold cereal. And that's plain old oatmeal, not the instant packets, which are disgusting, anyway.

Equally important, drinking water with meals rather than some other kind of beverage (tap water) but that's something I have always done. Also, you need to eat whole foods, not convenience foods.

I have two days left on the poverty diet. I hope I don't sound too smug. I can see that without good shopping skills, cooking skills, or organization, living on $4.25/day could be very difficult. If I had to be at work all day, I'd have to give up my mid-morning coffee break because I couldn't afford to buy it, although I suppose I could pack myself a small thermos. Lunch would have to be brown bag, which is something I would do anyway. In nearly three years of working at UVA, I never once bought a meal in the cafeteria, although the food there is so unappetizing, it wasn't much of a sacrifice to do without it.

The way we live now

2008-06-26T08:19:00.005-04:00

I just finished reading Do the Windows Open, a collection of stories by Julie Hecht, who truly understands the trials of modern American life: the awfulness of florescent lighting and stuffed animals; the despair one feels when Easter decorations start to appear in stores. The narrator, who is never named, shares many of my own neuroses. I'm just like her, only not a macrobiotic vegetarian. The consumption of meat does not offend me. Or does it? Actually, meat-eating does offend me when it's people at Disneyland eating entire fried turkey legs. Isn't it bad enough to be at Disneyland without having to see people eating giant fried turkey legs? I could make an entire casserole out of a turkey leg.

I once had a relative named Auntie. That is the only name I knew for her. She was my grandfather's aunt, and died before I was born. One day my grandfather shook his head and said, “Auntie just wasn't made for the modern world.” I feel the same way about myself, which is why I enjoyed Do the Windows Open so much, whose narrator, like me, can't do many of the things that modern people take for granted or even find pleasant or desirable.

I realized there are many, many things I “can't” do. I can't drink tea out of inferior-quality porcelain. I can't make left turns onto busy streets. I can't shop on Saturdays and I can't shop at Sears on any day. I can't use a drive-through window. I can't live in a house built after 1940. Once, I lived in a house that was built in 1967. I lived in it for eleven years and it crushed my spirit. I can't live in a suburb. I lived in a suburb once. It coincided with living in the 1967 house. It was a dreadful experience, but it taught me a valuable lesson: it is perilous to raise one's children in the suburbs. And yet, there are people who believe that the suburbs are the ideal, indeed the only, place to raise one's children.

I can't shop for electronics and I can't be in the presence of too much mass-produced clothing at one time. I can't go to amusement parks on hot summer days. I can't watch children's sports. I can't drink water out of anything but glass, indeed, I can't drink anything out of plastic.

I can't squeeze in front of people to get to a seat in the middle of the row in a crowded theater. This eccentricity got me kicked out of the Walker Upper Elementary school moving up ceremony this year. I arrived late and the only seats were way up in the balcony, in the middle of rows which were guarded by very large people who all gave me hostile looks as I groped my way through the dark, looking for a seat. So I stood in the wide, deep recess between the balconies--I really took up almost no space at all--but some man, a fire marshal or something, told me I couldn't stand there. I explained about not being able to squeeze past large, hostile people, but he clearly thought I was being irrational, so I had to sit on an ottoman in the vestibule for a while until I could steal an aisle seat from one of the many people who exited the building during the middle of the ceremony.

Obviously, I can do any of these things, but doing them comes with such a profound sense of despair that I try to avoid them at all costs. I even pack my own tea cup when I am traveling, so that my lips need never touch Corelle and I will make a right turn and find a place to turn around rather than try to make an impossible left turn. I am always somewhat in awe of people who attempt the impossible left turn, and yet also slightly contemptuous.

If you find the modern world is hard and you can't understand the things other people do, then you will probably like Julie Hecht's stories and her delightfully neurotic narrator.

I want Wegmans!

2008-06-24T07:39:00.002-04:00

Oh, how frustrating is food shopping in Charlottesville!

Here are the perambulations I made last week in order to prepare for a party we had last Friday.
Monday: 1.) Whole Foods-- for their bulk section because I needed a variety of nuts. I bought pecans, walnuts and almonds, with which to make candied nuts. I also bought several spices I needed from the bulk section. I stocked up on hormone-free meat, since I was there, and bought a gallon of milk, since Whole Foods, which is very expensive for many things, has cheap, hormone-free milk. I also bought vegetables, because I planned to make pickled vegetables, only Whole Foods didn't have okra, so I went to....

2.) Harris-Teeter--for okra, paper plates, napkins and cups. Also lemons, which I did not want to buy at WF because I figured they'd be priced higher for exactly the same product. Canned baked beans, more vegetables.

Thursday: 1.) Feast--for local, salmonella-free tomatoes. Also for fun party treats that can't be found anywhere else: chocolate covered figs, locally made cheese, quince paste, truffle mousse, but not crackers because why pay $85/pound for something that is just a vehicle for truffle mouse and quince paste, so I went to....

2.) Giant--for the crackers and for cold cuts because their deli is less of a pain-in-the ass than Harris-Teeters, and probably cheaper too. I need eggs, so I went to...

3.) C'ville Market--because they carry local free-range eggs that are also packaged in cardboard egg cartons. Harris-Teeter and Giant carry free-range eggs, but they are in plastic egg cartons and they aren't local, and I don't like plastic egg cartons, so I always have to make a special trip to C'ville Market just for eggs. (Reid's now carries the same local, free-range-cardboard-packaged eggs as C'ville Market. I have not yet done a price comparison.) Bought more fancy cheese and was pissed to discover that they carry the same "red wine salami" as Feast, only for $2 less. Not everybody drinks alcohol so I went to...

4.) Food Lion--for soda, because why should I pay Harris-Teeter prices for the exact same product? Milk, for some reason, is super-expensive at Food Lion--something like $4.99/gallon. What's up with that? Also, clear plastic wine cups because Harris-Teeter's were outrageously expensive, and more plates. Oh, and chocolate chips, because Food Lion sells Ghirardeli chocolate chips cheaper than anywhere in town.

Friday: 1.) Giant (again) for rolls and decent bread for the party. Giant has the closest thing to my idea of a proper grocery store bakery, but it is still woefully inadequate. I bought two dozen rolls from the bulk bins in the bakery. I had been under the impression that Giant sold decent bakery sliced bread, but I was wrong. They don't. Don't talk to me about all the great bakeries in Charlottesville. I'm supposed to buy artisan bread for fifty people? What is this, Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous? I also needed olives for my Greek salad, but do you think Giant has a fucking olive bar? Of course not! Sometimes Charlottesville is really crappy.

This is why we need a Wegmans. Wegmans started out in Rochester, NY, but had expanded to Buffalo some time in my early childhood. I have no memory of a life before Wegmans. It is now creeping into the south.

Imagine this shopping experience: a produce section bursting with fresh, quality produce at reasonable prices, and with plenty of organic and locally grown foods to choose from. A bakery that has both fancy artisan breads, and a *fabulous* array of buns, rolls, bagels that you can choose for yourself from bulk bins. A deli with good quality meat! With Sahlen's hot dogs. SAHLEN'S HOT DOGS!!! A large natural foods/organic section. A bulk section bigger and better than Whole Foods'--and cheaper. Eggs in cardboard cartons! Cheeses! Olives! Reasonable prices!

Every summer we go home to Buffalo to visit family, and every summer I go to Wegman's and eat my heart out with envy at what the people of Buffalo--all people, there is none of this grocery store elitism you see here--can enjoy. I remember last year, gawping at the dairy section, in which, just in yogurt, there was a selection of brands and flavors unheard of in C'ville.

If you remember the Cold War, you probably remember that every once in a while there'd be a propaganda piece in a magazine or newspaper about an exchange student from the USSR being taken on a tour of an American supermarket and the student's dazed reaction to the abundance of food in the United States. When I am at Wegman's in Buffalo, after having spent an entire year shopping in Charlottesville, I feel just like those kids from the USSR.

Mysteries of American regional English

2008-06-20T07:48:00.005-04:00

My poll revealed that most of my readers say "lightning bug" rather than "firefly." The weird thing is, a lot of the people who say "lightning bug" come from more or less the same region of the country that I do, and I say "firefly." I'm grew up in Buffalo, NY for those of you who don't know. I asked Jon, who grew up a few blocks from me, and he says firefly too. I'm trying to remember my childhood summers in Vermont and Canada, but I don't recall thinking the kids I knew there used a different word than I did, and I do recall the fireflies were a frequent topic of discussion due to some kids' trick of killing them and wiping the phosphorescence on their arms in order to glow in the dark. I never did that.

The regional differences in American English are interesting to me. I like the southernisms I hear down here in Virginia. Like being told to "have a good evening" at ten o'clock in the morning. Or hearing a shopping cart called a "buggy," hearing trousers referred to as "britches," people saying they "about fell out," exclaiming "great day" when they are surprised, and mothers referring to their children as "brother" and "sister."

Why do parking garages, even brand-new parking garages, always smell like urine? The big new garage near UVA, next to the Studio Art Shop smells like a toilet already and it just opened.

That is all I have for today.

Quick June Poll

2008-06-17T20:41:00.002-04:00

Do you say "firefly" or do you say "lightning bug?" Which part of the country are you from?

Breaking social mores

2008-06-16T07:49:00.003-04:00

It's midterms already. I am taking one course this semester--sociology--which is easy, and yet I resent it. I am still so traumatized from two semesters of nursing school, I don't want to do any work at all. Still, an entire week's assignment will be to read a single chapter in the text (about 30 pages, with many graphs and illustrations) and post once in the discussion board. Compared to nursing school, in which a single week included 16 hours of patient care in the hospital, a three hour lecture, a quiz, twelve hours of writing pathophysiology papers, drug analysis and care plans, plus reading assignments sometimes topping two hundred pages a week--and all that for just one class-- I have it easy over the summer.

So this week is the midterm. There is also a "writing assignment" looming. We have three choices for the writing assignment:
1. Watch some movie--can't remember which one, this option is the least interesting to me--and write about it.
2. Live for five days on the poverty food allowance of $4.50/day and then write about the experience.
3. Break a social more, three times for three "victims." Record the reaction of your victims and write about the experience.

I will probably end up doing option number two, but number three is intriguing too. I imagine myself flossing my teeth on the bus, say. Or, I could walk around with the back of my skirt tucked into my underwear. I could approach complete strangers and ask them how much they earn, yearly. I could roll down my car window at stoplights and talk to the people in the car next to me about random things. Have they read any good books lately? What are they planning to cook for dinner? I could hang around outside downtown restaurants and ask people if I could sample what they are eating. I could wear my hair in two little-girl pigtails with big pink bows.

If you had to break a social more and your goal was to make the biggest impact and get the biggest reaction from your victims without getting arrested, what would you do?

Martha!

2008-06-12T10:17:00.005-04:00

Remember how Jerry Seinfeld would say “Newman!” and make an angry face whenever he was foiled by his evil mailman neighbor? My sister and I do the same thing, only we say, “Martha!” referring, of course, to Martha Stewart the woman responsible for raising the bar to unattainable levels for all things in the domestic arena.

Example: the hardwood floor.

Long ago, Americans lived in houses they built themselves, mainly of wood. Floors were almost universally made of wood, and early housewives probably gave as much thought to their floors as they did to their fingernails, ie very little. They noticed when they were dirty, cleaned them, and then forgot about them. After many years, wood floor went out of fashion. Wood has an annoying tendency to be very dusty. And hard and cold. And it is easily damaged. Wall-to-wall carpet was introduced , which was warm and soft, and which absorbed dust, rather than allowing it to float freely about. You could quickly vacuum and then go on your way. And yet, carpet came with problems too, mainly that people tend to spill things on it, and then it gets stained, and if you don't clean spills thoroughly and immediately, they may start to smell, and soon a wall-to-wall carpet is a giant sump of germs and dust mites.

So wall-to-wall became distinctly down market and hardwood enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. But somewhere between the time of wall-to-wall carpeting's rise to popularity and its downfall, Martha Stewart came into power and now, cleaning a hardwood floor has become as complicated as rocket science. Everybody—everybody!--has an opinion on how best to clean hardwood floors, and not only is everybody's opinion different, everybody says that everybody's else's methods will lead to that fate worse than death: dull floors.

I used to wash my hardwood floors fairly often but then I went to nursing school and gave up cleaning, and so as of yesterday, they hadn't been cleaned since October. I used warm water to which I'd added a little dish soap and a generous dollop of white vinegar, and you know what? This turns out to be the formula Martha recommends too, although she specifies “plant based dish soap.” Whatever.

It was a pain in the ass because my entire house is hardwood, and as I mopped, I reflected on medieval times and how the custom was to throw a big pile of rushes on the floor and every six months, or even once a year, rake them out along with the food scrapes and dog crap and whatever else had accumulated, and replace them with new rushes, and I thought that method had the great advantage of convenience, although dog crap on the floor wouldn't be very nice at all. Still, when your kids overfilled their cereal bowls and left a trail of cheerios and milk drops from the kitchen to the couch in front of the TV, you could shrug and say, “Meh, I'll just rake it out in April.” And by April, you could be dead of the plague, so who has time to worry about floors? But we don't get the plague anymore. We have Martha.

Speaking of hardwood, my mother-in-law is trying to sell her house. She has been trying to sell it since February. It is an unusual house, in that it is a tiny piece of Hollywood in Buffalo, NY. It is the second-kitschiest house in Buffalo, the first-kitschiest being a reproduction of a medieval castle, which happens to be on the very same street as my mother-in-law's house. It was built sometime in the 1920s or '30s by a man who wanted an exact copy of Norma Shearer's house. Norma Shearer was a movie star of the 1920s and '30s.

This is Norma Shearer:

This was her house:

My mother-in-law's house, it turns out, is not an exact copy, but it is close. My in-laws raised a family of seven children in that house, for nearly forty years, and it worked great for them, but it is really not a good family house. The only people I can imagine wanting to buy it now would be a gay male couple. I mean, there's a fountain in the living room, for fuck's sake. I can't believe that my mother-in-law's Realtor can't see this and rustle up a gay couple, but perhaps there is a shortage of gay couples in the housing market in Buffalo.

Anyway, the Realtor has been telling my mother-in-law that she ought to replace the wall-to-wall carpet in the bedrooms and upstairs hall, and Jon and I are nearly apoplectic in our efforts to talk her out of this idea. Old wall to wall carpet says, “There's great hardwood under here.” New wall to wall carpet says, “There's something crappy under here that the owner is trying to hide.” Jon and I are telling her to get rid of the carpets, buff the floors a bit and throw down some area rugs to hide the bits that look dull. My mother-in-law's Realtor must be more than a little dim. Maybe Martha should start helping people market their houses.

Anybody want to move to Buffalo and live in kitschy reproduction movie star house?

Mystery solved + pool ettiquette

2008-06-10T20:44:00.007-04:00

Jon and I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and when we got home, there was a somewhat hectic vibe in my bedroom. The room looked much as it had when we'd left the house, although my bedside lamp was moved to the left by a few inches, and a few things were out of place, but generally what struck me was a feeling that there had been a lot of activity in my room while we'd been gone. I asked the kids what they'd been up to, but they all said, "Oh, no, we didn't go into your room."

Then I found these pictures on Drama Queen's camera:

We joined a pool club, something I've been thinking of doing for years. Charlottesville has decent public pools, but they are so crowded during the day, it's ridiculous. I was sick of arranging my whole life around when the Washington Park Pool was likely to be less crowded. I was also sick of driving all the way over there, only to be turned away because someone had just pooped in the pool. I also didn't like having to park my towels on scorching concrete, because even when the pool was less crowded, there were almost never seats under the umbrellas. So we joined a pool and it is good.

I am still trying to figure out the whole scene at this pool, which is very kid-oriented. I'm observing the customs of the pool mothers, and it seems that the thing to do, if you want a relaxing time in the pool, is have a fairly young child who wants to swim in the 4' pool, so that you can float lazily around on a noodle and pretend you are "supervising" your small child, when actually you are enjoying yourself. My kids don't want to swim in the 4' pool. They want the big pool and they are too old to have their mom hovering around them, yet it seems that it isn't done for mothers to float lazily in the 4' pool if they are unaccompanied by a small child. The other option is to swim laps in the big pool, but I *hate* swimming for exercise. Hate, hate, hate it.

A couple of years ago, Washington Park pool was open at 6:00am every day, and in a moment of insanity, I decided try swimming instead of running. I have virtually no upper body strength, and after something like six laps my arms were so weak I could hardly lift myself out of the pool.

Back when I did crew, our coach arranged swimming practice in the winter so we could stay in shape when we couldn't be out on the water. Co-ed swimming practice, with mixed-sex teams for relay races, and a more sadistic training regimen does not exist, believe me. I think I have PTSD from that experience.

So anyway, I hate swimming for exercise, and frankly, I don't like parading around in front of people wearing a bathing suit, although all the other mothers look pretty much the same as me, but still. What I've ended up doing is pleading with Mr. McP to hang out with me so I can get in the water and swim about for a bit and cool off and then go back to my book.

Random stuff

2008-06-05T11:52:00.003-04:00

Remember how upset I was that Lowe's wanted to deliver my dryer to the wrong address? It all turned out well, and I just happened to be walking out to meet Mr. McP's bus as a truck came creeping down the street, the driver peering at all the house numbers, so I flagged him down, and he had my dryer, which he installed uncomplainingly in my second-story laundry room. After they left and I had put an inaugural load of laundry into it, I thought it might be smart to make sure the vent was patent, so I climbed out onto the roof behind the laundry room. I had to blindly stick my arm into a plastic thingy-do, that protects the vent opening, bend it 90 degrees and grope about in the dryer vent. I did this several times. Then I peered into the vent and saw something crawling about near the opening of the PVC pipe. It was a wasp. Not just a wasp, a wasp and a wasp's nest that I had been blindly groping with my bare hand! The shock, and the thought of what could have happened was so overwhelming I had to sit down for a few minutes and collect my thoughts. A shot of something would have been appropriate.

Lowe's is promoting a rebate you can apply toward their $65 delivery fee. Indeed, just last night on TV I saw an ad for Lowe's, promoting its “free” delivery. I filled out my own rebate form, and saw that you don't get a rebate at all. You get a $65 gift card to Lowe's. How lame is that? And yet, why would I expect anything better from the Voldemort of retailers?

Drama Queen's birthday was June 2, and we had a picnic on the Lawn to celebrate. (For non-Charlottesville readers, that's lawn with a capital L because I'm referring to the Lawn at the University of Virginia.) I used to think that I don't like picnics, but what I really don't like is preparing a ton of food and carrying it to a distant location. If someone else prepares the food, picnics are a lot of fun. We picked up sandwiches and drinks at the Mill Creek Market—they make excellent sandwiches there—and then went to the Lawn. We are so downtown oriented that to my kids, a trip to the Corner was fresh and exotic. The picnic was lovely and after we had birthday profiteroles which Drama Queen had made herself.

Jon has discovered that people have been trying to steal his motorcycle. There are definite cut marks on the locks he puts on it. When the scooter was stolen, what pissed me off most, next to the loss of the scooter, was the attitude of the 911 operator I spoke to when I reported the theft. "Was it in a garage," she asked, "Or was it just out in the open?" Clearly implying that we were at fault by not putting the scooter in a garage.

I hate that blame the victim bullshit. Our house doesn't have a garage. Many houses in Charlottesville don't have garages. Most houses in my neighborhood don't even have a driveway. We had done what we could to prevent a theft by locking the scooter to a post on the front porch, but the thieves cut through the cable. Since buying the motorcycle, Jon got two new sturdy locks that go right onto the wheel--no easy to cut cable. We hired an electrician to put more exterior lighting around our house. We bought a solar-powered motion-sensor light and attached it to a pole that sits near where the motorcycle is parked. And yet still, the little fuckers try to steal it. I *hate* that entitled attitude in which people think they can take whatever they want. Here's a suggestion. Why don't you get a job and buy your own motorcycle?

In which I post many photos of my bathroom redo

2008-06-02T10:11:00.009-04:00

Major demolition.

Old walls. This picture was taken after the demolition had been turned into a new space. We raised the roof on the back of the house, so what you're seeing here is the old wall, with that horizontal seam showing where the old ceiling used to be, and new drywall above. We ran beadboard up to the level of the seam so we wouldn't have to finish it with drywall mud.

New walls.

Old shower.

Old shower--specifically, the rot we found behind it.

New shower.

Old floor.

New floor.

Old Sink.

The pipes left behind after tearing out the sink made a handy toilet paper holder. For two years.

New Sink.

Old door.

We used an old sheet for a door for at least a year.

New door.
We hung it from a barn track.
I know this is not to everyone's taste--the guys at Better Living thought we were crazy for using a barn track for a bathroom. I love it. We found this door in our basement. It's the original back door to the house. Jon scraped off all the peeling paint and we frosted the glass, for privacy. This door is our stand against the mass-produced conventionality of modern house building.

This is what replaced the demolished area shown in the first picture. (It had been an unfinished porch.)

We are finally, finally almost done with this project. All that remains is a little trim. For the first time in two years, we have two fully functioning bathrooms. It seems like unimaginable luxury to take a shower in a clean space, with a real door, to have two toilets, to have two sinks downstairs.

10 pictures meme

2008-05-29T17:11:00.008-04:00

I've been tagged by bythelbs. The object of this game is to post 10 specific pictures.

Kitchen sink. I was tempted to clean before shooting, but that would be cheating, wouldn't it?

Inside of the refrigerator. What can I say?

My toilet. We're still figuring out how to work the trim in this part of the bathroom.

My favorite pair of shoes. I wear clogs pretty much 100% of the time. Yikes. I need to dust under my tub.

My closet. This is the only closet (other than the coat closet) in our entire house. None of our bedrooms have closets, so the six of us share this one, which is in the upstairs bathroom. Oh, and it doubles as a linen closet too.

Laundry pile.

What my kids are doing now. I can't round all four of them up into a single picture, but here's Mr. McP and his light saber. Yum.

Fantasy Vacation. London is my mecca.

My favorite room. This is the connection between the dining room and the sunroom. I love this space because we worked so hard to transform it from what it used to be, which is pictured below.
It gives me enormous satisfaction to reflect on the befores and afters of the back of our house.

Self portrait.

As usual, I'll just tag anyone who wants to play, but leave me a comment if you're going to do it, so I can come and see.

In which it doesn't taste like chicken

2008-05-28T15:02:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was Mad Scientist's 16^th birthday. We went to Zinc for dinner to celebrate and they were serving frog legs as an appetizer special. Jon, it turns out, loves frog legs, something I never knew about him. He rhapsodized on their deliciousness at length: frog legs were the best thing since sliced bread, if he were to be stranded on a desert island and could take just one food with him, it would be frog legs, etc, and soon had us whipped into a frenzy of desire for frog. I have always felt that I could go to my grave without ever having eaten a frog leg, and have no regrets. On the other hand, I didn't want to be a wet blanket and sit with an empty plate while everybody else enjoyed their frog legs. And if Jeffrey Steingarten could persuade me that a cricket taco might be worth trying, surely I could taste a dish that is loved by the French—the people most devoted to food of any on earth. I imagined that I could pick up a frog leg, and by not looking closely at it, could imagine it was, say, a chicken drumstick. And we all know what they say about frog's legs.

So. I was utterly unprepared for the legs to be served in pairs. That is, the frog legs were still attached to each other, much as they are in their natural state when they are still attached to a frog, although not drenched in butter and garlic. Jon speared a pair of legs off the platter and they flapped in such a way that I imagined all the legs gathering strength and hopping away from us. It was like being on Fear Factor. I could see Miss G was rapidly losing enthusiasm, but the other kids were still game, indeed, Mr. McP and Drama Queen ate with gusto, had second helpings, even. Mad Scientist pronounced the frog legs “good” but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he believed it. Miss G would not try them.

I needed to be strong. I could not sit there and not taste the frog legs when my nine year old son was happily gobbling them. I spotted a small piece of frog meat on the platter. It had become separated from its leg and seemed easier to swallow, so to speak. I popped it in my mouth and immediately was acutely, agonizingly, conscious that I had taken a bite of a frog. I literally almost barfed right on the table in the middle of Zinc. What I wanted to do more than anything was to spit it out, but one does not spit out one's food in a hip ironic bistro. It took every ounce of my self control to chew and swallow that bit of frog leg and not vomit publicly. Frog does not taste like chicken. It's more akin to fish, actually, but what it really tastes like is frog. How do you know what frog tastes like? As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan famously said about obscenity, “I know it when I see it,” the same is true for frog.

I should note that this is not to imply that Zinc is not a good restaurant, or that my aversion to the frog legs was caused by some lack of skill on the chef's part or that the frog legs were unwholesome. This is my issue, not Zinc's, and as I pointed out, three of the six of us thought the frog legs were great. The rest of my meal was delicious.

Rant Fest--Lowe's sucks, part II

2008-05-28T07:01:00.003-04:00

This week's Cville published five of Drama Queen's rants. Can you guess which ones they are?

Speaking of rants, Lowe's sucks. I know I mentioned that already, but it needs repeating. Yesterday, we went to Lowe's to buy a dryer. It annoys me that now that Ron Martin is out of business, our choices are limited to Lowe's and Sears. Choosing between Lowe's and Sears is like choosing between Darth Vader and Sauron. I decided on Lowe's because I'd read a consumer article in either Cville or The Hook about how the people in the Sears appliance department make a point of never answering their phone.

So, we purchased a dryer, which is to be delivered today. I was told someone would call me around 7:00pm to confirm a delivery time, but 7:00pm came and went and it was Mad Scientist's birthday and we wanted to go out for dinner, and we were starving, so we left. When I got home, there was a message--called in at 8:30pm-- saying that my dryer would be delivered to 710 Orangedale Ave between the hours of 2:00pm and 6:00pm today. That's great, except I don't live at 710 Fucking Orangedale Ave. I don't live on Orangedale Ave. at all. My street's name has nothing in common with the word "orangedale" other than it also has two syllables.

He left a number I could call if I had any questions--a number with a 757 area code--which of course, I called immediately and got nothing but attitude. "710 Orangedale Ave is the information we were given" snapped the woman, as if I were the one who'd screwed up.

How do I know I didn't accidentally give a fictional address for myself? Because after I gave my information to the dryer salesman, he sent us to the cashier to pay and she brought up my account and verified my address with me and it was correct then, so when and how it got changed to 710 Orangedale Ave is a mystery to me.

If my dryer is not in my laundry room by 6:00PM today, Lowe's is going to be very sorry indeed. And to the people who live at 710 Orangedale Ave, if someone arrives at your house with a dryer, I'm sorry, but please ask them to call me. At least they have my phone number right. (So far.)

Quirkiness

2008-05-25T19:03:00.002-04:00

I've been working this weekend, half hoping I would have the kind of terrible days that cause me to throw myself on my bed and cry when I got home--this to help validate the fact that I turned in my letter of resignation last week. So far, the days have been relatively easy, but there's always hope for tomorrow. I feel like I am being self-indulgent in quitting my job without plans to work anywhere else at the moment. On the other hand, I didn't fully realize how draining nursing school has been until the semester ended and I all but collapsed with exhaustion. I feel like I am convalescing from a long illness. I need time to relax and heal, to pay attention to my children, to focus on things at my house, to finish my bathroom, to throw a big party.

In order to be in compliance with my employer's policies, I must give 30 days notice when quitting--that is, if I ever want to work at this institution again, which I most likely will after graduation. My last day of work isn't until mid-June. I will miss my co-workers, but I will not miss the stress and frustration.

Anyway, I've been tagged by Zoe to list six quirky things about myself.

1. I don't understand raisins. Why not just eat dead flies?
2. I developed traumatic amnesia after watching the movie Trainspotting.
3. I love novels about the British navy.
4. I was once locked in the Buffalo Zoo after closing time. I escaped by climbing a fence.
5. I used to suffer from sleep paralysis, and had a number of out-of-body experiences associated with it.
6. Almost all plants put into my care will die.

The rules say to tag six more people, but I'll just tag whoever wants to participate.