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Six jalapenos is probably too much

Tonight's attempt to use up all my neighbor's tomatoes was salsa. Did I mention that both my neighbor and Oz have planted jalapenos? They are also coming ripe this week.

So I prepped six jalapenos (or was it seven?) by cutting out the seeds and membranes, then running them through the food processor. The downside to fresh crispy jalapenos? They expel a fine juicy mist when you cut them up. The juicy mist goes right into your eyes. I managed to cut the peppers into eighths without cutting off my fingertips or blinding myself.

Half the jalapenos went into the salsa. The other half went into refritos. I wasn't attempting to make an inedible meal …

The salsa was hot! I ended up with about three cups of chopped tomatoes, to which I added two chopped scallions, a handful of chopped cilantro, some olive oil, juice of one half lime, and about three minced jalapenos. Hot! Very fresh tasting, though.

The refritos were also hot! I sautéed one diced onion in olive oil with six cloves of garlic, two teaspoons of cumin, a teaspoon of salt, and some black pepper. When the onion was soft I added the jalapenos. A few minutes later I added two 15 ounce cans of pinto beans, rinsed and drained. I cooked that for a while and eventually mashed up the beans with a potato masher. The beans were stealth hot. At first taste, merely savory. Then the heat hits you and you grab a beer.

I had two avocados ripening on the counter, but they were too ripe. My guacamole ended up nasty so I sent Oz out to the store.

Our satisfying, but super hot supper: burritos made with the refritos and grated Monterey Jack cheese, topped with guacamole and salsa. Picture perfect.

Then Oz went out and picked about five more pounds of tomatoes.

Only two things that money can't buy

The most certain way to get homegrown tomatoes is to grow them yourself. Having a friend or neighbor who grows them is also good. You get a less certain supply, but that's the tradeoff for the zero investment in tomato acquisition. We've stumbled upon a third way: have a neighbor who grows tomatoes and then goes on vacation during the week when they all ripen. She called me into her yard last week and said, "Hey. They're all turning red next week. Pick all you want."

I said, "Okay." Score! She has romas and some beefsteak varieties. Mmm. Also a big pot of basil which I was invited to harvest.

Yesterday Oz said, "Do we need to go buy tomatoes?"

"Just go next door and pick some."

We actually did buy a few Green Zebras at the natural food store when we went there looking for something else. Green Zebras are a green stripy heirloom variety with a tart flavor. Maybe they're not ripe yet? How can you tell? They taste good regardless.

My kitchen is now a festival of tomatoes.

For lunch I made an Italian-style tomato salad:

2 hardboiled eggs, chopped
2 tomatoes (today: one red, one Green Zebra), diced
A few tablespoons each of chopped basil and parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
1 clove of garlic, pressed
Some (I didn't measure. A third of a cup, maybe?) diced fresh mozzarella (optional)
Extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, to taste (about a tablespoon and a half each)

Combine all ingredients and eat it up with an appropriate starch (rosemary bread or fresh pasta spring to mind). The egg yolks emulsify the oil and vinegar so there's kind of a sauce effect. You can also combine the tomato salad with cubed boiled potatoes (I use red potatoes and leave the skin on) and have an awesome gourmet potato salad.

For dinner we had homemade gazpacho with cheese and tomato quesadillas. Last week I ran out and got a panini grill (a George Foreman grill, really), so we've been playing with grilled sandwiches. We brush one side of a tortilla with olive oil (I got the cutest silicone pastry brush too) and put the oil side down on the grill. Then we sprinkle grated cheese on half, layer on a few tomato slices, fold over the tortilla and close the grill. Squish! A few minutes later we have quesadillas.

A few years back, my aunt gave me a tomato knife from Warthers. It's getting a lot of use! If you love tomatoes and kitchen tools, I highly recommend getting a finely serrated knife just for tomatoes. It's a pleasure to slice and dice them up and I'm in no danger of mixing my own blood with the salad. (This is not an ad for Warthers, but their knives are beautiful! I love my tomato knife. I got one for my mom. My cousin got a block set of their knives as a wedding present. I'm thinking, Damn, but that would make it worth getting married! That marriage is over, but she's got great knives. Actually, it's cheaper just to buy some knives.)

Thrashed

It's been a tough weekend for me and my elderly iBook. The iBook is a real trouper. It was purchased back in early 2002 and has been chugging along ever since with the original OS X release plus one tiny incremental update. It's a G3 600 MHz with a 20 GB hard drive, quite dainty and slow by current standards. But a great machine.

What hasn't been so great for a while: reading reviews of nifty software and not being able to run it because the OS is just too old. Scripts on web pages that don't run. Not being able to watch embedded video.

I finally bit the upgrade bullet. It's much less expensive than the new MacBook bullet, let me tell you, and now's the time. The current version of OS X is the last release which will run on my hardware, and my iBook only slightly exceeds the minimum system requirements. If this were a PC, that would mean I'm out of luck because you generally have to multiply the minimum system requirements for PC systems by a factor of four to get a usable system. The beauty of Apple is that a minimum system will run just fine. I went looking around online for people moaning about running Tiger on a G3 and couldn't find any. The beauty of Apple is also that such an absence usually means that what you think might be a problem is a total non-issue.

The new OS arrived on Saturday. I backed up all my data and verified whether my old software was going to run on the new OS. (Yes!) Backing up data, even with strict triage, takes forever when you've got a spanky new DVD begging to be installed.

So the first time I installed Tiger …

Yeah. Laugh.

The first install I did was an archive and install which would preserve my data. What that got me was a system that ran incredibly slowly and a hard drive which thrashed on system idle processes. iBook and me? Not happy.

The next install was a delete and install. No data but the system ran great. Very nifty. Except that I decided I didn't like my home folder name and you can't change that except by reinstalling.

Third time? The charm. Nice home folder name, clear hard drive, nice operation, though software does boot a bit slowly.

Man, staring at the progress bar is exhausting. I'm sure my iBook would say that drawing the progress bar is exhausting.

After all that, I set about resetting all my settings, reconstructing my bookmarks (and remembering all my passwords and userids), installing software, playing with software, turning off sounds, redoing all my email accounts, and finding out that some of the data that I backed up wasn't really backed up. Oh well. I probably didn't need that data anyway. Except for some of my writings. Oops. But then I discovered that my elderly version of Word is able to extract text from just about any file, so that's okay. To minimize (if not eliminate) that problem in the future, I now have Word set to save everything as RTF by default.

I think I can call this operation a success. A long, drawn out, tedious, frustrating success, maybe, but that comes with the territory. And now I can surf with Safari and play with Scrivener to my heart's content.

Also, someone sent me a dollar! For my novel! My shareware release method is not highly remunerative, so it's always exciting to get a dollar. Thank you!

Heavy thoughts

We don't have any scales in the house, except for a little postal scale, but that doesn't really count since it can't handle weights of more than a pound.

I'm pretty good with only knowing my weight when I go to the doctor's office. The fit of my clothes lets me know when to lay off the high calorie stuff and get a little more exercise.

Since last fall, when I knew I was going to have to sashay around in a red satin evening gown for that wedding in January, I started keeping track more carefully by using the scale at the gym. That scale was telling me the same thing as the doctor's office scale and it indicated a downward trend over time, which was the information I really wanted.

Then I started a course of physical therapy which took so much time that I stopped going to the gym. Fast forward quite a lot of months, and I've started going again. The scale says I've lost seven pounds.

I know that isn't true. My jeans say that isn't true and they would never lie to me.

The scale has to have been recalibrated.

What do I really weigh? I guess I'll find out in a couple weeks when I go to the doctor's office.

This reminds me of a girl I worked with on a summer job, way back when I was in college. One day, out of the blue and with perfect deadpan delivery, she said, "I was disappointed that I wasn't losing weight. So last night I tried the scale in the other bathroom. I lost five pounds in an hour."

So, now that we're all done with Harry Potter …

A day that begins with a cat horking up a hairball can only get better. My reflexes are pretty good. I went from slumber to moving the cat off my pretty rug in about five retches.

With that small accomplishment under my belt, I went on to get a little more sleep. Then I spent the rest of the day on mundane activities like buying groceries and doing the markup for my novel.

Yes, at long last, my WIP (work in progress) is no longer a UFO (unfinished object)! Isn't everybody excited? Y'all must be, seeing as how the deafening silence on the Guestbook page of Church Hill, the first novel, can only mean that everyone is waiting with bated breath for the sequel. (I'm not delusional, really. I'm being amusing. I'm amusing myself anyway.)

Please go check it out: The Egyptian Building: More of the same, only with mummies. If the html format isn't your thing, go ahead and download the pdf.

Thanks for clicking!

Things that turn up in my dreams

My to-do list includes the item "acquire business casual clothing." I have in my head a picture of a few collared shirts, a couple pairs of slacks, and a better looking pair of shoes than what I have now. This isn't rocket science, after all, and I ought to be able to put together a few outfits fairly easily.

My subconscious thinks otherwise.

I'm dreaming along last night and suddenly I'm in a fashion discussion with the Princess. She's waving around a black cashmere suit with a Louis Vuitton label and saying, "Oh no! This is business casual! I love this suit! These trousers are the greatest."

I'm thinking Does Louis Vuitton even make clothes? (Yes, they do.) and protesting, "No. I was thinking more like what I have on now. Only with better shoes!"

Also, the suit was lined with black leather.

How does my brain come up with this stuff?

The palate cleanser

Unoriginal I know, but I needed to get that last book cleared out of my head. This may not be a great book either, though I'm sure it will meet my expectations. Maybe that was the problem with the last book. My expectation of "not suck" was totally unrealistic.

We hadn't really been planning to get the new Harry Potter. Then we were in Target to stock up on kitty litter and we saw how they had tons of copies (only $17.99). Someone had been called away from replenishing the stock and left the "Do not open before July 21!" box just sitting there. Oz pulled out the cellphone to take pictures of it, much to the amusement of the surrounding shoppers, and somehow the book ended up in our cart.

I'm on page 470.

Reading a bad book

I try to avoid bad books. I check out reviews and try to get the book from the library if I'm not sure. But we got this book the last time we went to the bookstore. The cover art has been calling out to me for a while and the story elements appealed to me, so I took a chance.

Not going to do that again anytime soon.

The book was one of those that starts out great. These are the worst kind of bad book. They pass the first page test in the bookstore and get your hopes up for the first hundred promising pages.

Then the author runs out of steam and you can tell the editor did too, because suddenly pansies are being described in a manner completely un-pansy-like. Without a lively story to distract the reader, other wrong details start to pop out (a twelfth century person says, "Okay!") and make you question even the correct details. "Does Bushmill's actually make a single malt?" The plot points begin to depend on the protagonist abruptly becoming a real dumbass. The Big Surprise is totally obvious. Triteness happens. Or worse.

In this book, during a massacre of some (nice) heretics by some (mean) Catholics, "heads were severed from limbs." That is an exact quote. These nice heretics were evidently mutants with their heads growing out of their arms and legs!

Did the editors think no one would get that far?

I wonder.

I read it to the end just to see the full scope of the stupidity. I wish the acknowledgements included the names of everyone involved with this book so I could use that information as a warning label.

(Wow, the moon looks really close tonight.)

Peachless summer

Oh how I miss the peaches this summer.

Normally peaches make up a significant part of our summer diet, between the fresh juicy peaches (available till September) and the Edy's peach pops (available all year round, but only really good when peaches are in season). I've been waiting for the Amazing Bin of Peaches to show up at the grocery store so we can begin our peach orgy, but here we are, mid-July and relatively peachless! Even the freezer case is peach pop-free.

There's a smallish bin of expensive peaches which are okay, but not quite up to the usual standard of full-on juiciness that I've come to love.

So I googled "peach harvest" and found out why. That cold snap back around Easter? When the peaches were in full blossom? The hard freeze took out 60% of this year's crop. Sad for the farmers. Sad for us.

We'll just have to cross our fingers and hope for a kinder, gentler spring next year.

[Also, it is always 80's nite at Ukrops anymore. Tonight we danced through the produce section (peachlessly) to the strains of "Love Shack."]

Obsolescence

It was only a matter of time. It couldn't last forever. We've had twelve good years together. We were lucky to get that. It would be foolish to expect more.

Today I discovered that the battery in my cordless phone will no longer hold a charge. Not only that, this type of battery is no longer available. Newer batteries won't plug into the phone and their much higher current rating would fry it anyway.

Other than that, the phone/answering machine still works perfectly. The handset has this great hands-free mode that is not available with current handsets: it's big enough to clamp between my ear and shoulder without forcing me to crunch up like Richard III. The sound has always been crisp and clear, and the range is more than sufficient to cover my whole house and probably a good bit of the neighborhood.

This evening we went on a battery hunt. Oz made sure to pick stores which also had a good selection of phones. Some poor kid at Best Buy listened to my rant about "for want of a battery" and then sold us a silvery Panasonic phone system with four handsets, at about half the price of my old cordless phone.

It's the end of an era.

Just a couple weeks ago I got a call from a friend. When I didn't recognize her voice, she said, "Didn't you look at the screen?"

"'Screen'? What is this 'screen'? We are strictly low tech here, babe," I said with true Luddite pride.

No more. We have screens now.

But I refuse to spring for caller ID.

Under the rainbow

Yes, we did have a rainbow tonight as the thunderstorm moved east and the setting sun came out for a last showing. And our neighbor gave us (beautiful, purple, sweet, ripe) plums from the tree in her yard.

I've finally struck treasures in my closet cleaning endeavor. Old children's books with beautiful illustrations and some with not so beautiful illustrations. Yes, the copy of Little Black Sambo inscribed "Christmas 1969" from my grandparents. I would have been two-and-a-half. Very big on reading, these grandparents. My copy, "the only authorized American edition", has the original 1899 illustrations. Though I always like the idea of outwitting tigers and eating lots of pancakes with tiger butter, I never did like the pictures, even as a child. How odd that I keep the book because of the awful pictures.

The rest of the books are wonderful: Children of Many Lands, beautifully illustrated, a 1903 edition of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm inscribed in perfect copperplate penmanship back in 1912 to people I don't know. Books for little boys (which I never ever read) with my grandfather's bookplate on the inside cover.

As an aside, you publishing people who only publish books about little boys because little boys will only read about other little boys, but little girls will read anything? You need to talk to some actual little girls. This little girl found books about little boys anathema. I mean, yuck! Why would I want to read books about nasty creatures like my brothers? I read books to escape from boys! My elementary school library had a complete set of "Childhood of Famous Americans" biographies and I searched carefully through them and read only biographies of girls. I read all the biographies of the girls twice each before I finally broke down and decided that boys of color were almost as good as girls and started reading the biographies of black boys and Indian boys. Only when I ran out of them did I deign to read biographies of white boys.

But anyway, I have these beautiful books. I seem to have hit the wall with my getting rid of stuff project. On discovering that I was missing book three from a well-loved series, I went and ordered a copy. (But I'll totally give the complete series away to my friend's kid. Eventually. Before she outgrows it.)

Yep. I'm losing ground here.

Journaling should be illegal

So should using the word "journal" as a verb.

I'm still working on cleaning out closets. Today I pulled a bunch of packaging boxes off the top shelf of the laundry closet. I don't need the original packaging for three telephones, a knife set, a blender, and a CD player I no longer have. Really. I can let these things go.

Then I got to the boxes at the bottom of the pile. The boxes placed on that shelf when I first moved into this house and never opened since. One box is still unopened. (I know what's in there. It can stay in there.) Two boxes are books and too heavy for me to get down on my own. I'll have Oz get them down tonight and I'll sort through them tomorrow. The last box contained one pair of wooden shoes, one pair of carved wooden mules from the Philippines, two Star Wars figures (Yoda and R2D2), a box of crayons, a pair of pink maracas from Mexico, a stamp album … You get the picture. I also found a folder of newspaper clippings, comic strips, and cards and letters from college. I think my mother sent me the newspaper clippings, they're kind of on the chirpy side. The folder also held a poem, in my handwriting, which was a spoof of a greeting card poem and would seem really clever to an eighteen-year-old. I shall say no more! But I did scan it and email it to my friends who would have been complicit in its creation.

Then I pulled some boxes out from under my bed and found my old journals. No one should be allowed to journal between the ages of 11 and 19. I'm just saying.

No, I'm not "saying." I'm blogging it. Online. In public. Ish. I am never ever reading my archives.

So, yeah, there was some cringing, some throwing out of notes, some throwing out of "Why did I save this?" items. More cringing. Lots of cringing. I think I put my back out.

The journals have not been burned.

Yet.

Young readers, take comfort in this: It may be the end of the world now, but when you're 40 and you find journals in which you are angsting all over the place about some "he" (or "she"), you will wonder (1) Why was I getting so worked up? And (2) Who the hell is "he" (or "she")?