Ravings of a Textual Deviant

*coughcoughcoughsneezecoughcoughHACK*

Someday, I’d like to be over one cold for more than a couple of weeks before I get the next one.

Yesterday, I got an email with a recipe in it from someone purporting to be mother. It’s not that my mother can’t cook, but that she’s spent decades advertsing the fact that she prefers not to. (In fact, I think this is the only recipe e-mail I’ve ever gotten from her that wasn’t a joke.) Even when I was a kid, she usually didn’t make anything that had more than three ingredients (four if one of them was water or optional) unless it was a major holiday. The recipe does indeed appear to be legit, but I’m still going to watch my mom for signs of pod person-ness.

Speidis

1/4 cup wine vinegar
1/4 cup oil (I use olive oil)
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon chives
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon tarragon
3/8 teaspoon garlic salt
1 Tablespoon salt
3-4 drops tabasco
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Mix all together and put in pieces of lamb meat. Marinate, turning occasionally, for 2 days. Skewer, barbecue or broil. To eat, wrap a piece of Italian bread around the meat on the skewer, slip the skewer out, and eat.

For ground lamb, leave out the water and the bay leaf and use only tiny amounts of the other ingredients, especially the liquid ones. Mix into ground lamb. Add bread crumbs/matzah meal if desired. Form mixture into small meatballs and alternate on skewers with pieces of tomato and onion. Broil, serve.

I saut?ed the remaining onion and tomato and served it separately. It was great.

For reasons unknown to me, speidis are apparently unknown outside the Binghamton, NY. area. However, this was one of my favorite meals as a kid, and I can highly recommend them.

All told, I was either working at home at least part of the time or unemployed at home since August. I’ve only been back to work on in an office situation for a week, but I’ve noticed that a couple of things are changing already. The first is that I am not eating as much–partly because I’m not as stressed out, but mostly because my fridge is 12 miles away, so I’m not visiting it every twenty minutes.

I’ve also been making better use of my time. When I’m home all day, it’s easy to put things off. When I’ve got to get myself into a schedule–even a reasonably forgiving one–that seems to flip a switch in my brain. Things fall into place. Breakfast is eaten every morning, errands get run, appointments made and meetings met, and I’m not up reading half the night so I sleep better, if not more.

I can get used to this, at least for the next seventeen months and three weeks.

My brother sent me a postcard a while back telling me he had this recipe, but didn’t actually tell me where to find it. Eventually, I received the following:

ok, here’s the recipe for the veggie stuffed kugel. it’s from the vegetarian times complete cookbook. I didn’t try the kugel recipe part- i was suspicious, so i used the family recipe for that part.

Personally, I’m very suspicious of this kugel recipe, so I’ll try to get the family recipe posted soon.

stuffing:
2T canola oil, 1 medium onion sliced thinly (i think I diced), 1 minced garlic clove, 1/2 c each shredded carrot and parsnip, 2 stalks finely chopped celery (I omitted), 1/3 c chopped walnuts (i forgot but think it’d be a good idea), salt to taste, 1/4 t fresh ground black pepper

in a large skillet, heat oil and cook the onion and garlic for a minute and a half (damn, this book gets specific!), add carrot, parsnip and celery and cook, stirring until the veggies are tender-crisp- about 6-8 minutes. stir in the walnuts and pepper.

kugel:
butter flavored cooking spray (!?!?), 1 t fresh lemon juice (my eyebrows raise skeptically), 3 large uncooked potatoes- peeled and diced, 2 large mashed and cooked potatoes, 3/4 c egg substitute (they call it egg replacer out here- yellow box), 1/4 c matzoh meal, 1/2 c reduced fat margarine (i’m suspicious of low-fat fat, personally), 1 t baking powder, salt to taste, 1/4 t pepper, dash cinnamon

preheat oven to 400 degrees. spray a 9×13″ baking pan generously w/cooking spray, set aside.

in a food processor fitted with a steel blade (like I know what kind of blade my food processor has. you probably do, though ) puree uncooked potatoes with lemon juice until smooth.

As a matter of fact, I do. It’s the one that isn’t plastic.

pour into a large bowl. add mashed potatoes, egg substitute, matzoh meal, margarine, baking powder, salt, pepper and cinnamon, mixing thoroughly.

pour about half of this into the pan, pushing into corners and smoothing with a wet spatula. spread stuffing evenly and top with remaining kugel. spray surface w/ cooking spray (again, skepticism. the crust is always the best). bake until browned, about 1 hour.

I love my brother.

Those of you who drive in places like Boston, New York, Chicago, and L. A. can just go look at something else. You deal with this crap every day, and you can plan for it. I don’t, so I didn’t.

Today was ex-Governor Orr’s funeral, and apparently everyone who ever voted for him for anything showed up…combine that with anapparently popular motivational speaker’s presentation downtown. Net result was that, coming south into downtown on Pennsylvania St., I came to a dead stop at Vermont Ave. and it took me twelve minutes to go the next two blocks. I literally could have gotten to my destination faster by walking. Overall, I was twenty minutes late, and I didn’t even have to deal with the police officers who weren’t letting Great Big Company employees park in the Great Big Company parking lots. (Employee IDs apparently mean nothing to Indy’s Finest–perhaps understandably, as Great Big Company security is anal-retentive enough to suck the upholstery off furniture when they have a mind.)

As far as I can tell, traffic was completely gridlocked all over downtown for most of an hour at least. People got tired of waiting and were recklessly weaving lanes an inch at a time (sounds strange, but true), turning left or right from whatever lane they happened to be in, and generally disregarding laws of both traffic and physics.

And while I am thinking of it, if I were (current Governor) Joe Kernan, I’d be getting a wee bit nervous about my health; first our sitting Governor (Frank O’Bannon) dies, then Orr. Aren’t these things supposed to happen in threes?

It’s not my favorite salad, but it’s in the top 10. I’ve blatantly ripped off recreated it from one I had at The Claddagh last week.

As always, proportions and amounts are a matter of opinion.

Ingredients: salad greens (I like baby field greens), blanched green beans, boiled and cooled small red potatoes, sweet bell peppers (red, orange, yellow, or a mix of any of the above; blanching optional), capers, smoked salmon (or cooked salmon; both are good, but smoked salmon is truer to the original).

Step 1: Blanch beans, and peppers if you like.

If you’ve never blanched a vegetable, it’s pretty simple. Boil some salted water. Drop your fresh veggies into the boiling water for 1-2 minutes–just long enough for themto get some color. Put them in icy-cold water immediately upon removal from the pot. Personally, I use a large sieve for ease of removal. I also recommend working in small batches; you don’t want the water temperature to drop below the boiling point. The point of blanching is to cook the vegetables just a tiny bit, so that they pick up a bit of salt from the water but remain crisp and brightly colored.

Step 2: Boil small red potatoes.

The time on this will vary depending on the size of your potatoes. Try to buy potatoes that are about the same size; it makes for less guesswork during cooking. For the record, I boiled my potatoes in the same pot that I used for blanching the beans and peppers.

Step 3: Assembly - Stage one

You should have time to complete this step while the potatoes are boiling. Cut the beans and peppers into bite-sized strip. Combine the greens, beans, and peppers. Cut the salmon into bite-sized pieces.

Step 4: Finish the potatoes

When the potatoes are completely done, plunge them into the ice water bath, or run under cold water. When they are cool enough to handle, cut into bite-sized chunks. If they’re still a bit warm, run the chunks under cold water until they are room temperature at minimum–colder is better.

Step 5: Assembly - Stage 2

Mix the potatoes in with the veggies and greens. Arrange salmon on top. Sprinkle with capers. Add dressing. The first time I had the salad, it was with a tarragon-dijon vinaigrette. Purple basil vinaigrette or maple vinaigrette would probably be very good, too.

Step 6: Devour. Repeat all steps as necessary.

Ever since I got word that I was going back to work, I’ve been more nervous than I care to admit. The company that I will be contracted to is the same one that spawned the Project of Elemental Evil. Fortunately, it’s an entirely different physical location, an entirely different department, and an entirely different group of people. Also, I had advance word that interpersonal relationships over there were “pretty tranquil.”

After one day, it looks to be pretty tranquil indeed. My teeny little desk was waiting for me, it had a computer on it, and I was able to get most everything I needed set up with fewer than three calls to the help desk (my personal metric for success). I took it as a good sign that there was a lot of laughing, joking, and mutual poking of fun at the group’s weekly meeting. Not mention the fact that they had a weekly meeting, with an agenda, no less…and they more or less stuck to the agenda.

So far, so good.

“Uncle Ed knows Aunt Li is crazy. That’s why he married her.”

–my sister-in-law, to my nephew

Fishing for sources, or just asking–

What are three or more web sites you?ve used recently as a player or GM? Why do you use them? What do you get from them?

Leaving out various search sites like google…

1. Lunar Ellipsoids, be warned…as you all embark on long-term spaceflight, you’re going to need some in-flight meal. And I’ve got a great source for ideas.

2. Also for the Lunar Ellipse, the Thomas Edison website…for obvious reasons.

3. I tend to find myself in need of names from a wide variety of other cultures. The kalabarian’s website probably isn’t the best, and I am not sure how accurate it really is, but it’s better than nothing. I’m open to suggestions on this one particularly.

Most of the time, I use the web to track down specific information that I need for a game. Honorable mention to Steve Jackson’s games downloadable GURPS Lite rules, which makes it easy to keep my play-by-email players in other states up on the basic system rules.

Today’s main objective was to run all the errands required by the upcoming job change. I handed in my laptop, pager and key to the old employer, filled out all my paperwork, and said my goodbyes. I must say it’s gratifying when every single person in the office is disappointed that you’re leaving. Still contracting is full of uncertainties, and you have to go where the work is. Fortunately, everyone at my old job understands that, and was very nice about it.

As for the new job, all the paperwork is turned in, so the only thing left was the drug test. Fortunately (?), I have been fortunate to avoid Cathy’s difficulties. My dad’s clinical chemistry company develops urine testing products, and in the last round of product development, I donated so many samples that I got used to “anywhere, anytime”. The lab tech commented that I was both quick and, uh, prolific. I just smiled at her and said “I came here prepared.”