Posted in As Pictured Below, Christmas, Photographs, Travel, tagged Christmas, cold, December, decorations, iPhone, Manhattan, New York, photograph, Rockefeller Center, TiltShiftGen, TiltShiftGenerator, travel, vacation on December 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Freezing near the Rockefeller Center, I ungloved one hand long enough to get this shot, because I knew I just HAD to run it through the TiltShift Generator.
If I make any more trips to Manhattan in December, I’m getting a pair of those iPhone-friendly gloves.
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Photographs, tagged appliances, childhood, Christmas, cookies, cooking, crystallized ginger, food, ginger, Gingeroos, hummus, kitchen, Las Vegas, molasses, Nashville, oven, OXO, photograph, recipes, Trader Joe's, vacation on December 14, 2009| 14 Comments »
I’ve been on a cookie odyssey for a couple of years in search of a proper substitute for Trader’s Joe’s Gingeroos, which I discovered while vacationing in Las Vegas. (And yes, I DO always visit grocery stores on vacation. You should too.)
I don’t think molasses was a big component of my childhood treats, because these cookies were richer, darker, more sultry than any I had ever tasted. Chunks of crystallized ginger closed the deal … these were my new go-to favorites, only it was not to be. Double tragedy: The nearest Trader Joe’s is two hours away in Nashville, and they don’t seem to stock Gingeroos.
Admittedly, by cookie odyssey, I mean that I found one nearly suitable recipe and tried it a couple of times before my oven joined the Great Appliance Rebellion of 2009, rendering all cookie-baking attempts futile at best, infuriating at worst.
Then, November. My search is renewed after installation of a new stove.
I had found this recipe last year, but never got to try it. Miracle of miracles, it appeared in a sponsored link atop my gmail last week. It was culinary fate.
Triple Ginger Cookies, from the recipe journal 101 Cookbooks, are a huge ordeal to make, but they’re worth every minute. They’re what I call “grown-up cookies.” Not everyone will like them – they give off a bit of heat – and they’re not the kind of cookie that you eat a half dozen of in one sitting with a big glass of milk. You relish one or two with a cup of coffee or other hot adult beverage that may or may not be spiked with Bailey’s.
Just to make things interesting, I also made my own crystallized ginger for the recipe. I remembered paying a premium for crystallized ginger last year (around $4 extra a pound at the Fresh Market), and this recipe uses A LOT. The clerk at my Asian grocery store said they hadn’t received a shipment of crystallized ginger in months, so my backup bulk supply option was off the table.
Crystallizing ginger was a pretty big ordeal, too, but it made the house smell DELICIOUS and it reinforced my assertion that I do too need that OXO mandoline that I’ve got my eye on.
I’m not going to claim they’re just like Gingeroos, but they’re close enough.
Next kitchen project: the perfect hummus recipe. Also maybe, just maybe, fixing that hole in the ceiling.
Posted in Family, Photographs, tagged 1960s, 1970s, aging, ashtrays, awesome, brother, bus, cancer, Chesterfields, childhood, collections, college, cruise, death, divorce, family, father, grandmother, groovy, heart disease, hobbies, K-car, secrets, teenager, Thanksgiving, tour, vacation, weird on October 13, 2009| 4 Comments »
A co-worker complimented me on my paperclip holder this morning.
It’s an ashtray.
My grandmother (father’s side) LOVED to smoke. She loved it like some people love their pets. It was her hobby.
When we were children, my brother and I would argue over who got to flick the Bic to light her Chesterfields, secondhand smoke be damned.
After her diagnosis of lung cancer/heart disease, she halfheartedly tried to quit. I remember looking outside one Thanksgiving and noticing smoke drifting up from the open driver-side door of her K-car. She may have sort of tried to take her doctor’s advice to quit, but she wasn’t taking any orders off of anybody.
After she died, I found secret stashes of Chesterfields all over her house, in handbags, dresser drawers and cabinets. They seemed like dirty secrets, and finding them made me wish that everybody had just shut up and let the woman smoke after her condition was diagnosed as terminal. Instead, she seems to have spent her last couple of years sneaking cigarettes only when she could get all the caretakers out of the house.
This is only one of the entirely awesome collection of ashtrays that I inherited from her. Most are very evocative of the ’60s and ’70s, and there’s not a plain one among them. Like her, they’re colorful and weird, and they don’t really go with anything.
She died in the fall when I was a college freshman. Every year about this time I realize that I’m becoming more like her as I get older (sans the smoking and multiple divorces), and we could have some great conversations if she was still around. We could have spent the last 20 years taking those crazy guided bus tours that she liked, smoking our way around the continent.
She would have been a blast on a cruise ship.
Instead, I’ve got the grooviest ashtrays you’ve ever seen. They may never see another cigarette, but they’re great reminders of a majestically weird lady that I wish had been around longer.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adventure, alabama, animals, Bonnaroo, camping, coast, coyotes, hotel, humidity, Huntsville, insects, mississippi, South, travel, vacation, weather on June 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Since moving to Huntsville in 2007, I’ve been invited to go camping by everyone from co-workers and classmates to new friends and virtual strangers.
I’ve explained time and time again that as natives of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, my husband and I don’t camp. We rarely even discussed camping until two years ago, except to mock or feel sorry for those who felt the need to brave the sticky humidity, frequent rain, biting insects and frightful fauna of Southern Mississippi and lower Alabama.
Usually, these victims were fathers of Boy Scouts, lured into the wilderness by well-meaning but misguided troop leaders. Those who ventured out once got our pity, but those who went the next year after lodging a week’s worth of complaints about the first year’s mosquito-ridden disaster got nothing more than a good mocking.
Seriously, hotels are all around us. Use them. Love them.
The weather in Northern Alabama is admittedly more hospitable to camping. The humidity is lower (don’t even bother griping about the humidity here – I’ve been to Nicaragua in August), and at night, the temperature actually stands a chance of dropping below 85 degrees. There are still big checkmarks beside the boxes for biting bugs and snakes, however, plus coyotes seem well-represented up here.
There are, I suppose, a few events that could be made more fun by camping. I could get a really early start at the really awesome Tyrolean Traverse in Desoto Falls State Park. I could make it to some caves in Tennessee that local grotto members start exploring at ungodly times on Saturdays. Heck, I might even find myself at Bonnaroo next year.
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m talking myself into camping. My love for indoor plumbing supercedes many adventure possibilities. You’ve got more selling to do, North Alabama.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bus, calories, city, commute, crowds, escalator, food, hurry, husband, New York City, public transportation, streets, subway, travel, vacation on June 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I just realized my watch is still set on New York City time. I want to go back.
We spent our days and nights navigating subways and buses, seeing as much of the city as we could. We avoided shows and anything else with long lines, and ate whatever we wanted with no concerns over calories. Given that we inevitably seemed to exit and enter the underground via routes devoid of escalators, these extra calories turned out to be essential.
The streets teemed with vehicles bursting into aspirational 10-second sprints between intersections. The sidewalks were packed with people in a hurry, navigating their way through rare congregations of people inexplicably NOT in a hurry.
I had mixed feelings about getting back into my car alone Monday morning and driving 8 miles across town to work.
More on New York City later. I need to check on my husband, who either came back with a bad cold or swine flu. I wonder if I can blog from quarantine?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bus, cattle gap, cities, city, coast, college, crosswalk, escalator, London, Louisiana, mississippi, New Orleans, New York City, pedestrians, restaurant, school, South, streets, subway, travel, Underground, vacation, World War II on June 3, 2009| 1 Comment »
I’m planning a trip to New York City and I am PSYCHED. People who grow up in the rural South usually have one of three reactions to urban life:
I’ve loved city life since moving to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the early 1980s. My family’s home was an easy 20 minutes from the Louisiana state line, which was a mere 40 minutes from downtown New Orleans.
The Crescent City is a troublesome example, because it runs on its own rhythm. All cities do. But it introduced me to a world of close quarters, where strangers lived literally feet from one another, rode buses and streetcars, and many times, heaven forbid, WALKED. It was a world in which people ate dinner at 9 p.m., not 6 p.m., and they certainly didn’t call it “supper.”
It was a world of sophistication far removed from my home in Kiln, Mississippi, where I literally had to drive across a defunct cattle gap to get to school every morning.
I truly fell for city life when I was 21 and went to London for four weeks to take a World War II history class. I barely slept the entire time I was there because I didn’t want to miss a minute of action.
Between the Underground and an extremely well-run (read: on-time) system of buses, I could be anywhere in the city within a half hour. The crosswalks required traffic to come to a standstill for pedestrians to cross busy streets – and we’re not just talking crosswalks at red lights and stop signs.
After a lifetime of being accused of walking too fast, I was a welcome addition to the People in a Hurry on the city’s sidewalks. I learned the true people-moving potential of escalators, and I’ve been uncomfortable standing completely still on moving stairs ever since.
The restaurants, the shopping (note that my favorite destination in any foreign city is a grocery store, and a must-visit destination in any large American city is a foreign grocery store), the population’s ethnic mix … there’s just too much that I love to list it all.
New York has it all: subways, buses, foreign grocery stores, fast-moving sidewalk crowds, world-class restaurants, even non-stationary escalator-riders. And not a cattle gap for miles.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bachelor's degree, college, English, graduate school, history, job, journalism, literature, master's degree, tattoo, travel, UAH, USM, vacation, weekend on April 30, 2009| 2 Comments »
After completing my latest exam this past weekend, I gave serious thought to stopping my pursuit of a master’s degree in English. I have, after all, completed the graduate certificate in technical communication that I returned to school to pursue. I signed up for the master’s program on impulse, the way other people get tattoos, only I wasn’t drunk and this sure is costing a lot more.
I plan weekends and vacations around school, and I don’t even have kids. Years ago, I managed to get a undergraduate degree in journalism and history while taking only ONE upper-level literature course, meaning I have to take a few undergrad courses now. I obsess. I ponder. I worry. I wonder why I’m doing this.
Then, the fall schedule makes an appearance. I glance at it in spite of myself, and of course see a class that I would love to take. Coincidentally, the company I work for will pay most of my tuition starting this fall.
So now I’m feeling all Clash: Should I stay or should I go? I guess if I have to ask, then I already know the answer.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accident, bikini, blood, husband, vacation, Vegas on November 30, 2008| 3 Comments »
If you’re not the type of person who enjoys being the center of attention, then I have to advise you not to slip and fall like a cartoon character on the pool deck of a four-star hotel in Las Vegas.
I do hate to be fussed over. So standing around in bikini, half wrapped in a towel and bleeding on a couple of other expensive towels while waiting for the hotel’s EMT, was not the start of a grand Thanksgiving morning or a fantastic end to an anniversary celebration. Three hours and seven stitches later, though, I was back on vacation.
Kudos to the lady behind the towel counter, who didn’t freak out when I started bleeding on her fancy linens. Also kudos to the hotel EMT, who hastily applied a butterfly bandage to my gaping elbow laceration and sent me to the nearest doc-in-a-box for further repair.
Most of all, special thanks to my husband, who despite being way freaked out and worried about me, actually mopped up a little pool of blood when I asked him to (I hated to freak out the other guests). Later, after witnessing my one-handed eating efforts (can’t bend your arm with elbow stitches), he cut up my turkey for me. You can’t buy an anniversary gift like that.
Entirely Adequate 