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Beets are not forever

The tiny spots of beet juice washed out of my white fleece sweatshirt. I like it well and I've worn it about to death (and to work too, because the princess cut, mock turtleneck, 3/4 zip style isn't totally sweatshirty). (Also, my workplace is very casual.) I'm sure if my co-workers ever saw me, they'd be tired of seeing me in it.

The sweatshirt is on its last legs anyway, so I went and ordered a bunch of more grown-up looking sweaters yesterday evening. No one will recognize me in something other than the same three things I've been wearing all winter, right? I'll have to think of something stealthy to do.

Hmm. Still thinking.

What I'd like to do is discover the secret of the puppy room in the daycare center in my building, but I suspect I could just go in and ask, "What is the puppy room?" and there's nothing particularly stealthy about that.

Where's the puppy room for the office workers? That's what I'd like to know. We could all use some puppy time.

Pink with exclamation points

I am not quite superhuman, I discovered last week. Pretty close, but not quite.

Wearing a white sweatshirt, I roasted and peeled fresh beets and prepared a beet soup.

About the time my hands were covered with beet juice and the cutting board was liberally splotched with deep, dark pink, I realized that I should probably have changed into something darker and pinker. I checked my sweatshirt, found it unmarked, and continued peeling.

I thought I'd made it through the entire process with sweatshirt unscathed, but afterwards I found two faint pink spots on the front, as if someone had lightly tapped me with a pink highlighter.

Unlike the sweatshirt, the soup came out perfect: tasty winter root vegetables and greens, and the most amazing color. I think it's great, especially with yogurt and a baked Japanese sweet potato on the side, but Oz has flatly refused to consider anything with beets in. (He has only experienced the soup telephonically.)

"Fresh are way better than canned," I told him. "I hate canned beets too."

"When my Polish grandma made borscht, she didn't use canned beets. They didn't have them then."

"Oh, come on. It was the fifties! They had canned everything."

Oh well, more soup for me. Also, in the process of researching the beet roasting process, I found The Italian Dish. Sadly I don't think even pine nuts and pancetta will make beets acceptable to Oz.

Oh well. More for me.

Super food secret

I made this soup a couple days ago. It was lacking that certain something.

Salt.

I put feta on it, but that wasn't enough.

The next time I ate some, I put in more salt and that did the trick, but what really sent the soup over the edge into luxurious flavor was a dollop of whole milk Greek yogurt. I just stirred it right in and turned the soup into this creamy, rich creation.

Not that improving dishes by adding butterfat is exactly a secret, but you heard it here … also.

The soup was white beans, red and yellow bell peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, and butternut squash simmered in vegetable broth with onion, carrot, celery and garlic. I seasoned it with fennel seed, cumin, coriander, balsamic vinegar, and (obviously) an insufficient quantity of salt. Next time I may throw in some kind of hot pepper for extra zip.

You probably figured it out, but the yogurt was plain yogurt.

I think this is fantastic because my food routine here in Alexandria is all about freezing. I cook up a pot of something and then freeze it in single serving containers so I will have ready-made lunches and dinners (I hate cooking when I'm hungry, so in the evenings I cook after I eat dinner). I haven't tried freezing any cream or milk-based dishes because they won't survive the process in good condition. But turning bean soup into a cream soup through the magic of yogurt, that opens up a whole new world.

A look inside

Tonight I saw a fox bounding across Braddock Road, a block or two west of Russell. Fox in the city!

I was driving home after an MRI of my knee. $420 after insurance. It's only the second week of the year and, with this and a few appointments last week, I've met my deductible a couple times over.

The actual injury to my knee occurred about 15 years ago. I did see a doctor at the time, but he wasn't interested in doing more than poking at it and saying, "Oh, you probably have a tear there." I quote.

The injury might not have merited much in the way of treatment at the time, but some guidance on how to avoid making it worse would have been nice. Fast forward 15 years and a few incidents which wouldn't have bothered a non-torn knee in the slightest, I can't wear shoes with arch support or padding without my fibula feeling like it's coming loose at my knee.

You might say, "Don't wear shoes with arch support or padding, problem solved." And I would say, "You are funny. Ha. You must have taken the same comedy class that all the orthopedists take in med school." I am also developing some compensatory problems, the big one is osteoarthritis in my left ankle, from favoring the knee, and avoiding padded shoes isn't going to do anything for that.

I'm hoping that this doctor will do more than point at the MRI and say, "Oh, you have a tear there."

Anyway, the new new thing in the MRI experience is satellite radio. When I've had MRIs before, it was just earplugs because the machines are so damn noisy. This time I brought my own earplugs, but the technician pointed to a pair of crummy headphones and said, "We have satellite radio now. What channel do you want to listen to?" I thought, what the heck, and picked 80s (because I was a teenager back then).

Big mistake.

The sound quality is so bad (now that I think of it, the headphones must be metal-free and so the sound would have to be transmitted through a vinyl tube) and the machine is so loud that you won't be able to hear the music anyway. Well, unless you pick heavy metal or some other genre with a lot of distortion which would only be enhanced by the sound of the Magnetron.

I guess trying to figure out what the song is over the noise of the machine does offer some distraction. I got to hear Blondie (yay), Sammy Hagar (well, that was the 80s too), and some song by the Fixx which I hadn't heard before and still haven't.

Don't let this happen to you. Go for the earplugs.

Knowing

I do not have what it takes to be a real Southern lady.

I already figured on this, but it's official now. My landlady's housemate, who is from Mississippi, has brought the point home by walking around being a real Southern lady. The contrast is shockingly stark.

First of all, she dresses like a grownup for work. She wears suits and dresses. And high heels every day. She probably remembers to take stuff to the dry cleaners.

I wear jeans and Chucks. Then again, I am in a room by myself with the door closed while she has to interact with other humans daily. I try to remember to wear a collared shirt on those rare days when I have to deal with humans from outside the Office. I have a small bag of dry cleaning sitting by the door that I really need to remember to carry down to the cleaners. It's been there a month.

Secondly, she has a purse dog which sometimes travels in an actual purse. The purse dog has little outfits. She walks the purse dog while she's wearing her suits and heels. On such occasions the purse dog often wears a little topknot bow which matches the suit. Picture perfect for a Savannah square.

I have two cats, each of which outweighs the purse dog by a factor of two or three. If I tried to put the cats in outfits, the outfits would end up shredded, eaten, and barfed up on my bed. Or the cats might just sigh and fall asleep. You never know.

These items are more lady-specific than Southern-specific, but I'm getting there. It's a food thing: pecan pralines. (She says "prah-leen", I say "pray-leen".)

She makes them. She got up at 5:00 am on Christmas Eve to make a batch so she could hand me two pounds of pralines in an Ann Taylor bag on my way out at 7:00. ("Oh, I like to get up early," she said, "I'm just a morning person." "Oh?" I nodded, still stunned from rapid ingestion of cappuccino.)

They were great, by the way, like mainlining butter and brown sugar. I ate one at work that day. Anymore, refined sugar makes me kind of grouchy and I needed to get a good grouch going for something I was writing, so a praline was perfect. Most of the rest disappeared down the maws of my family.

So anyway, whatever it is that gives a lady the drive to get up before dawn and make candy for a bunch of people she doesn't even know … that is something I lack. As long as I stay out of the deep South (it must be in the water? the humidity?), I don't see myself developing it either.

Less itchy

The allergist peeled the allergen-impregnated patches off my back today. The itching lessened immediately, telling us much of it was really from the patches themselves, but I did show some response to a few things. Those spots are still itchy.

Now I can take a shower and get warmed up! But no scrubbing the back because I have to go back in a couple more days to have the itchy spots looked at again.

Then the allergist did skin testing on my arm and provoked mild histamine reactions to everything. These tests were for pollen, dust, pets, and other inhalant-type allergens. To which I've never been allergic, I might add.

What does this mean? More importantly, what does it mean given that I'm dosed to the gills on immuno-suppressants and anti-inflammatories?

We really can't tell. The immuno-suppressants might be suppressing allergies which have developed in recent years, or they might have affected my immune system in such a way that the test can't yield accurate results.

Most importantly, what does it mean for the cats?

The reaction was very mild, so they can rest easy:

But they'd better watch that attitude:

(Sparky isn't really giving me a bilabial fricative, he just forgot to put his tongue all the way back in his mouth.)

Itchy and scratchy

I am getting tested for contact allergies this week.

My back itches.

The allergist stuck these big patches impregnated with assorted allergens onto my back on Monday afternoon.

I have no way of telling if the itching is contact dermatitis or just a result of having large adhesive things stuck to winter-dry skin.

Also, I cannot take a shower until the allergist removes the patches tomorrow afternoon. Ish. Sponge baths in midwinter leave one feeling colder than when one began with the bathing.

Did I mention that I itch?

I'm not supposed to scratch either, but I've found that leaning up against a wall is somewhat soothing.

It's not clear whether my recently developing sensitivities to random things in the environment is due to the lupus, or just part of ageing (but the only one of my relatives with similar problems has some lupus symptoms too). More and more I'm finding that my eyes burn (and if I don't remove myself from the irritant I'll get a rash) when I'm exposed to sunblock, citrus peel, anise, cologne, hair spray, almost any products containing "fragrance" and many things that simply have a smell.

Most things have a smell.

This could get problematic if my immune system decides that it's out to get everything. It's bad enough that it's out to get me.

Kouhaku, still

Yesterday's Kouhaku entry was not entirely complete, what with being written while I was on the phone with my office's tech support straightening out some issues with my employer-issued laptop (on which I spend more time keeping up with employer-mandated updates and maintenance than I do actually working).

The on-hold music is so insidious that I completely forgot the Michael Jackson tribute impersonation by SMAP. This is good to know. I'll get myself put on hold with tech support next time I need to bleach my brain of something.

So, yes, during the "Let's take a moment to remember the artists who died this year" segment, SMAP danced around in the style of Michael Jackson while clips from his 80s music videos ran on the big screen (showing us by the contrast that no one but Michael Jackson has got Michael Jackson's moves). Considering it was SMAP, they didn't do too badly and SMAP even got to do an additional song of their own later in the program. I'm guessing that the extra screen time means that Annoying SMAP Guy has managed to rehabilitate his image since last fall's public nudity incident.

Last night some of my Kouhaku questions were answered on Wonder X Wonder, which did a "Backstage at the Kouhaku" special. The giant animatronic Mega Sachiko which I thought might have been in part a video construct was in fact an entirely physical construct. Eight meters tall! They showed a clip of Sachiko going to check out Mega Sachiko. "More eyeliner! Also, I don't do my lashes like that!" she declared and Team Sachiko sprang into action, spray painting on more eyeliner and trimming the eyelashes. We also learned that the animatronic effect of Mega Sachiko swiveling and nodding slightly at the audience was a last minute idea of Team Sachiko who implemented it by dragging on Mega Sachiko's base. They are lucky Mega Sachiko didn't fall over, but then Mega Sachiko was kind of bottom-heavy.

Wonder X Wonder also showed the mom of one of the Funky Monkey Babys turning up at NHK studios on the morning of the Kouhaku with a big mess of homemade manju for her son to distribute among her favorite enka singers and anyone else to whom her son might be beholden. How sweet!

Strangely watchable

We must be getting old.

Not only did this year's Kouhaku not have any run-from-the-room moments, but we actually watched the whole thing. Even at midnight, when we typically take a break from the Kouhaku by hanging out in the kitchen and drinking champagne, we brought the champagne and potato chips up to the sitting room and enjoyed the champagne with the Kouhaku.

The production staff must have been asleep at the wheel, preoccupied with the collapse of the world financial markets, or whatever it is they do when they're not dreaming up new ways to attach feathers to the NHK Hall dancers.

Usually they take the year's most irritating, earworm-spawning song and turn it into a twelve minute production number. This year? Did not happen.

Usually the sound engineers crank up the caterwaul effect on the enka numbers and leave the viewers clutching their collective heads in agony. Did not happen. Enka numbers actually rather sweet. Maybe they got some sound engineers who can hear frequencies in the normal (for humans) range.

Also, the creepiest enka singers usually get the longest songs, but this year they were rotated off stage rather quickly and with fewer than the usual number of extreme closeups. Phew! One of the enka men was backed up by the male NHK dancers wearing only haramaki and undershorts. Sadly, the dancers did not dance, but only posed in unison. (Maybe the Kouhaku producers should consider adding more scantily clad dancing men to the lineup.)

The ongoing battle of Kobayashi Sachiko and Mikawa Kenichi for the wackiest and most elaborate costume did not disappoint. While the costumes were similar (giant beaded caftans with tayu headdresses gone mad), the sets (also part of the costume) went above and beyond. Mikawa's had a sub-continental theme with the Taj Mahal on the giant screen backdrop surrounded by whirling lotus blossoms and the face of an annoying Japanese guy (not sure what his significance was) in blue. The NHK dancers were in Southeast Asian temple dancer costumes with moves stolen straight from the walls of Angkor Wat. No dancers for Kobayashi, who was out there by herself. Actually by herself as she was raised up in the hands of a giant animatronic Kobayashi in matching costume. (Still not sure if this was an entirely tangible structure or a combination of disembodied hands plus clever integration with giant video screen. Could not bring myself to look that closely.)

This year's giant video screen backdrop was a huge improvement over last year's. Much better resolution, to the extent that they were able to display photos and video during some of the songs, as opposed to last year's headache-inducing moiré patterns. For one enka song ("All I need is you and sake"), they ran sentimental snapshots of elderly couples who did not appear to be actively boozing it up. I guess snapshots of boozy seniors are too realistic for sentimental entertainment.

The children's numbers were strangely child appropriate. One of the children could even sing on key in a surprisingly powerful voice (is she the next Tendou Yoshimi?) and did a traditional pentatonic scale tune about a giant fish festival. The one surreal note there was Sakana-kun dancing around behind her with his plush fish hat on.

The pop singers were the big surprise. Most of the pop groups were singing and playing musical instruments. The minority were of the large ensemble, costume-wearing and dancing variety. The pendulum must be swinging away from idol/talent end of the spectrum. All is not lost, though, they still can't spell or capitalize so we had groups with names like flumpool and Funky Monkey Babys. The Funky Monkey Babys were pretty good, or maybe I just like the sentimental Japanese hiphop ballad genre. There was another hiphop balladeer who got to have audience participation in the form of sunflower waving, giving us a fine example of the deep conflict between the desire to move in unison and the ability to stick with a beat. One of the celebrity judges, Yokozuna Hakuho, was clearly hearing the beat of a different drummer and his sunflower was bobbing along in arrhythmic counterpoint to all the other sunflowers (and when I say "all" I do mean all).

And that was Kouhaku 2009. What's up? Was this a special watchable Kouhaku in honor of their sixtieth broadcast? NHK might think so. They did make sure to tell us that the Kouhaku would be available through NHK On Demand for the entire holiday weekend.

Does this signal a new trend in Kouhaku watchability?

We won't know till next year.