rivka

This time I'll tackle the food questions.

ailbhe and minnehaha K: Your dinner.

Tonight we had baked chicken thighs, Southern-style biscuits with butter, and carrot sticks, and ice cream for dessert. Dinner was cooked by Michael, who is getting to be a better cook every day. (Usually the cooking is my responsibility.) The chicken skin wasn't as crispy as I like it (my fault, not Michael's, because he was following my directions) - we probably should've upped the oven temperature. But overall, it was very good.

hobbitbabe: Do you have any kitchen appliances for mixing stuff up, and what do you make with them and should I buy one or more of them? (giant immovable mixer, food processor, immersion blender, old-style blender, etc).

I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer, a generous gift from wcg a few years back. It is, as you say, giant and immovable. Unfortunately, it has to live in the pantry and be carried out every time I want to bake.

I use it to make cakes, cookies, and other desserts. It replaced an ancient underpowered hand mixer. The difference is most notable with stiff batters like cookie dough. I made pumpkin cranberry bars to give as Christmas gifts this year, another very thick-battered recipe, and found that my mixer could easily handle double batches. It's also excellent for things that need to be really, really, seriously, impressively well-beaten, like this gingerbread cake roll.

Oh, and the other difference I almost forgot about: because it has a paddle that is cleverly positioned in the bowl, rather than beaters, you almost never have to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl when you're mixing. Which is very nice. Should you have one? If you bake regularly, yeah, you probably should.

bcholmes: You seem to have a lot of things to say about food: different recipes, liking exotic vegetables, eschewing chef-boy-ar-dee. What kind of relationship did you have with food growing up?

It was uncomplicated, for which I am extremely grateful. My mother was a good cook in what I think of as the classic home-cooking style of the northern U.S.; her meals were simple (usually meat-starch-veg)
but well-prepared and tasty. Food was never in short supply, and we had free rein to help ourselves except for the hour before dinner, which was known as "starving time." I don't remember negative comments about people eating too much or too little or the wrong things, except in the context of taking more than your fair share of a scarce resource like leftover cake. We did have to accept on our plate at least a "no-thank-you helping" of everything served at dinner, and we were expected to at least taste some of everything on our plate. Oh, and we were required to have milk at dinner, but I loved milk so I didn't mind.

We had family dinner together every night. My mother would start watching out the kitchen window for my father's car at 5:55 every night, and the minute his car pulled into the garage she'd call us to the table. We rarely went out to dinner and almost never had fast food - not as a whole family, anyway. Just if we were traveling somewhere.

I ate a lot of junk food as a kid, and was really skinny anyway. I used to spend my school lunch money (65 cents a day, as I recall) on candy at the 7-11. I'd split it with kcobweb, and in turn she'd share the dessert from her packed lunch with me. That horrifies me today, but obviously I survived it and was reasonably healthy. My mother didn't buy tons of junk food - mostly for budgetary reasons, I think - but we always had cookies, chips, and ice cream in the house and it wasn't rationed. I remember being surprised to go to friends' houses and be told "you can have two cookies."

I have a lot of happy childhood memories about food. Holiday dinners, church potlucks, cookouts and picnics at the lake, standing on a chair to help my mother bake.

Grandma Susan: Given that there is so much conflicting information about nutrition and health, how do you decide what to believe and/or what to feed your family?

Honestly? I spend very little time thinking about nutrition and health. My impression is that this is an area where a lot of people, including health professionals, have very strong opinions - yet the data backing up those opinions is often weak. I think the whole food-as-medicine thing is hugely oversold in American culture. So I decide what to feed my family based primarily on considerations of taste. I try to avoid language about "good" and "bad" foods. I strive vaguely for balanced inclusion of a broad range of foods - proteins, carbs, veggies and fruits - but I don't worry about fat, carbs, sugar, etc. I wouldn't eat pork rinds 24/7 because it would make me feel like crap, but I'm not going to worry about the components of my reasonably balanced and varied diet.

I do try to feed organic foods to babies (Ack! We've veered into parenting territory!) based on the vague idea that pesticides may be more of an issue when concentrated into a very small form, but it's even more heavily based on the fact that Earth's Best organic baby foods taste so much better than Gerber. Oh, and I was careful about introducing potential food allergens into Alex's diet because of our strong family history of food allergies, and I'll probably do the same with Colin.

You guys know it's going to take me a while to get to all of these, right? Here are the book questions, grouped together.

kate_nepveu: Of the Aubrey-Maturin books you've read so far, which is your favorite and least favorite? Or, if that's too difficult, most memorable/lingering and least?

The Aubrey-Maturin books are so clearly chapters in the same long novel, rather than separate books, that I have great difficulty keeping track of what happens in which book. If I had to choose by whole novels, I think I'd say that Master and Commander might be my favorite. I love the beginning of Jack and Stephen's relationship, and Jack's first experiences of command. Least favorite: the last two books. I think O'Brian started to lose his touch about when to show and when to tell, and also in many ways he was just rewriting earlier bits; ( spoilers! )

Sumana: Are you missing any Cherry Ames books you wish people would send you?

It turns out that there's a sharp drop-off in quality after the first few books. The first four take you through Cherry's training, her efforts to decide between military service and civilian nursing, and her military career. Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse takes place in jungle hospitals on Pacific islands and is quite harrowing. I'm interested in the next one after that, Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse, because it continues the wartime setting, but judging from the poor quality of the later Cherry Ameses I've read, I have no interest in seeking out titles like Cherry Ames, Department Store Nurse.

marydell: What's your all-time favorite book, and why?

I can't do a singular favorite book! Hmm... it's totally cliche to say Pride and Prejudice, isn't it, but Jane Austen's books are ones that I never get sick of rereading, and P&P is my favorite of them. But yeah, total cliche. Jeez. Okay, the other book that comes to mind is Lois McMaster Bujold, either Barrayar or Memory. I'd say that Barrayar stands better on its own. I love the way it examines womanhood and motherhood from so many different angles, through so many different characters, and I love Cordelia. Memory is an even better book in some ways, but it needs the rest of the series to give it full resonance.

moobabe: What's your favorite nonfiction book?

If I had to pick one nonfiction book to have on a desert island, it would be the Norton Anthology of Women's Lives, which is a huge collection of excerpts from women's autobiographies.

ororo: What's the last book you read for your own pleasure? What did you like best about it?

It was Georgette Heyer's Cotillion. No, wait, it was Jennifer Crusie's Fast Women. That's not the best Crusie by any means, but I like that, like all her books, it has strong secondary characters who are important in their own rights - not just as appendages to the protagonists - and because there is much more going on than just the romance. Cotillion is the book I read just before Fast Women. It's my very favorite Heyer. The first time I read it, I misinterpreted the signals and thought the hero was gay. Not in a slash sense - I thought I was supposed to read the hero as gay. Boy, did the ending surprise me.

Because I am a bad person, I forgot that I owe lynsaurus an icon post.

DIRECTIONS:
- reply to this post with a reason why you want me to do this meme with you, and I will pick six of your icons.
- make a post (including this info) and talk about the icons I chose.
- other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
- this will make sure you're entertained until the next meme rolls around.

lynsaurus picked the following icons. I appreciate that she explained why she likes them, instead of just giving me a list; I'll try to do the same if people respond to this meme. ( Read more... )

Okay: that was an incredibly successful party. The mothers-to-be had blitzed, happy expressions on their faces the whole time, and the guests were all overflowing with joy for them.

The food was great. The quiches turned out perfectly, and warming them up at party time went very smoothly. I tried two of three, and they were both good, although next time I make the goat cheese and tomato one I may use a more strongly flavored cheese than chevre. Although I don't know - it was tasty, just subtle. There's plenty of tossed salad left, but the zucchini bread, fruit salad, and punch are pretty much gone. There were two quiches left over, so I guess I overestimated how much people would eat - but I sent the leftovers home with the mothers-to-be, who were grateful to have them. The bakery cake was even cuter than I thought it would be, and tasted delicious. It tasted like a real cake that real people made.

There will be pictures, because people promised to send me copies.

I am sooooo exhausted.

A nice thing about having most of the guests at your party be women in their 50s-70s is that they kept cleaning up, all through the party. We'll have a lot of dishes to wash, but they pretty much kept up with the disposable dishware.

I wasn't precisely sure how the game would go over, but it was a big hit. Except that I seem to have made the questions too easy, because every answer was shouted out immediately - sometimes before I finished reading the question. Even the ones I thought were hard. Oh well - people seemed to have fun with it anyway.

I'm including the quiz under the cut in case anyone wants to play along at home. If you get #12 without Googling, you win - it was a question tailor-made for the specific crowd attending this shower.

( famous mothers game )

Via fairoriana:

Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.

See if anybody else responds with "I've done that."

Ask your friends do this in their journals to see what unique things they've done.

1. I dyed monkeys different colors. (I tested their vision, too, but that seems less outre.)

2. I interviewed Transylvanian villagers about their parenting practices.

3. I chauffeured Mary Daly around in my car.

Edited to add: I thought this one seemed familiar! The last time it came around there were ten things. I am interested to see that the Transylvanian one came out in the exact same words, years apart.

Seen all around, but most recently at klwalton. ( least-read books meme )

Or so papersky tells me.

My name derives from the Anglo-Saxons who had a settlement in the area. The headman was named Braenca, and his people who were pig hearders lived in a clearing or "leagh" in the forest of Anderida hence Braenca's Leagh. This has varied through the centuries to Braencsle, Brencheslega, Branchelegh, Brenchesle and finally to Brenchley.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the land was given to Richard FitzGilbert, the cousin of William the Conqueror.

I have quite an impressive history for such a small village. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was begun by one of my residents, and another was burned at the stake during the reign of Bloody Mary. My church is nearly 800 years old.

Take a look at my stunning panorama! I have "fantastic timber-framed buildings and idyllic church."

You're welcome to come by for a singalong on May 8th at 7:30. Or just stroll in my lovely gardens!

I am currently 7 degrees C, and hazy.

From tammylc and kightp, the LJ Interests Collage. I was struck by how hard it often was to figure out what interest of mine was being portrayed by a given picture; they're not strictly alphabetical, and the connection with the image is often tenuous. But if you click through all ten (or whatever) images tenuously connected to the same underlying concept, eventually it's possible to figure it out.

Should you choose to make one of these for yourself, be forewarned: many of the images that come up are NSFW. Very, very NSFW. Even if you don't have any NSFW interests.

( But no NSFW pics here. )

In my relief, I find myself not wanting to settle down to work. So instead, I am spamming you.

Meme from chargirlgenius:

Ask me to take a picture of any aspect of my life that you're interested in/curious about - it can be anything from the house I live in to my favorite shoes. Leave your choice here as a comment, and I will reciprocate by taking the pictures and posting them as an LJ entry. That way you get to see a little bit about my life (within reason).

My Johari Window thingy. Please?