Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Environmental Munchies

Last night, Russ and I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth, interrupted periodically by the kitchen timer letting us know that our espresso snowcap cookies were ready to come out of the oven.

It is a combo that I highly recommend. An Inconvenient Truth is, by turns, a bit hokey and surprisingly touching. It was a docu-presentation that I'm glad I watched, if not only for a bit more insight into the history and issues surrounding global warming. And how can you not love a man with a drawly Tennessee accent? (I'll tell you, for me, it's just impossible.)

Our cookie choice fit in well with the images of polar ice caps melting and dramatically crashing into the water below them. I'm usually relegated to the land of dishwashing and cleanup, but these were so easy, even a kitchen-phobe like me thought they were a breeze. A gentle, clean breeze with no poisonous greenhouse gases.
Espresso Snowcap Cookies

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 teaspoons instant espresso (We used Folgers Decaf Instant Crystals and it turns out well)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 cup confectioners sugar, for coating

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, espresso, baking powder, and salt. With an electric mixer, beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until well combined; mix in cooled chocolate. With mixer on low speed, gradually add dry ingredients; beat in milk just until combined. Flatten dough into a disk; wrap in parchment paper. Freeze until firm, about 25-45 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 350°. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place confectioners’ sugar into a medium bowl; working in batches, roll balls in sugar twice (the more sugar, the better).

3. Place balls on prepared baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies have spread and coating is cracked, 12 to 13 minutes; cookies will still be soft to the touch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 18 small-medium sized snowcaps
(Adapted from Everyday Food Collectible Cookie Edition)

Monday, December 25, 2006

Kung-Fu Boogie

Russ and I received this as a gift and I'm looking for any (and all) creative solutions to properly destroy it. You know. Accidentally destroy it.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Snow Days in the Southwest

As I've been telling everyone that I meet in a five-mile radius who doesn't looks like a secretly plotting rapist, I loved Miracle in the Andes, almost as much as I loved the movie Alive. Actually, honestly, much more so. I've realized that I love anything that includes crashes, certain death, a surgery scene, and a hopeful tune somewhere in the middle, that sounds like "We're gonna die/Shoo-bop-shoo-wa/But I'm gonna get us out of this situation with total craziness and moxy/Shoo-bop-do-wa-wa..." And so on. I don't know why tragedy has to be set to 50's style pop. I guess it doesn't. I'm sure that there are some tragedy-narrative fans who hear the hopeful tune, as sung by Hank Williams or Sarah McLachlan or maybe even Fifty Cent.

Anyway, after this, I've been obsessed with moutain climbing. So, of course, I've been rabidly following the developments of the three (now two) missing climbers on Mt. Hood. If I could have a secret earpiece with five-minutely updates, I totally would, but so far as yet, the CIA and Madonna have been unwilling to lease me this technology, so I'm stuck with Internet updates. Until I got to Russell's parents house in Arizona and was blessed with the semi-miracle of cable TV. Ahh, news. Ahh, Discovery channel.

Which is how I became hooked on another climbing-related fix: the show Everest: Beyond the Limit. Last night, there were lots of frostbitten toes and fingers (some of which had to be removed), egos the size of the mountain that refused to descend even when they were running out of oxygen and falling asleep in the snow, and most disturbingly of all, climbers who had given up and laid down on the sides of the trails at Everest's summit to die. The climbers descending have to pass these climbers, sometimes still breathing, and instead of being able to do anything about it, they have to keep descending. Because the sad truth of it is, those people laying down can't be carried and won't get up and walk.

Even freakier? Because the summit of Everest is 29,000+ feet, there's no mold or heat and thus, the bodies don't decay. So one climber relayed the surrealness of climbing the summit and seeing, sometimes near the trail, the dead bodies of past climbers, perfectly preserved, still laying in the snow.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Stickshifts and Safetybelts

Yes, I know, it's that one Cake song that we all put on mix CDs for our crushes in college. But even more so, it's been my nighttime activity this last month.

I grew up in a family that drove American-made, beast-like automatics. Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, mostly hand-me-downs from other relatives. I think there was this general feeling among that hand-down-to-me generation, who were all mostly farmers or farmer offspring, that driving cars had to be automatic.

I learned how to drive on my grandma's Cadillac Seville and my parents' Pontiacs, so there was no way that a manual transmission came into the picture for a moment. They were definitely automatic people. I don't think I would've even known that manuals existed, if it weren't for my friend Diana. I was with her as she learned how to drive stickshift in her aqua Saturn. I was with her when she stalled on a few roads, intersections, and drive-throughs, while learning. I thought, at the time, that it was all rather stressful. Why would someone choose a car where you have to think that much?

Here I am now, an Angelino who relies on her car and has discovered that stickshifts are not just about being cheap and overthinky. They take less gas, they cost less money, and -- well, there's generally a less-is-actually-more associated with all aspects of stickshifts. They make sense (as opposed to cost cents).

In addition, Russell drives a stickshift. In fact, almost everyone I know drives a stick. I am a lone holdover from another generation with my Nissan and its $45 gas fill-ups. One day I was thinking about what would happen if I, in some unlikely hypothetical situation (situations that I, with my love of scenarios, come up with daily), had to drive somewhere and Russell's car was my only option? I wouldn't even be able to leave the driveway. I hate these sorts of realizations because it means that I take myself out of the hypothetical and decide upon one of two responses:

1.) Stay exactly in my present state of automaticy, feel the shame of knowing that I could better myself, but was just too lazy/unmotivated/ignorant to do so
or
2.) Put my money where my mind is and start asking for help to learn how to drive stickshift (and as a bonus result, also feel empowered, excited, and -- well, I can't think of another e-word, but basically, good).

I hate option two. But it's the only one that lets me function without anxiety-induced bodily gas.

So I've found myself driving around empty parking lots on weekend nights, with Russell in the passenger seat, giving me directions while I stall and have near misses and get laughed at my the security guard in the golf cart (who incidentally, doesn't drive a stick, so although I would technically be able to tell him to go suck it, I can't because his golf cart is electric and thereby, unsucky). I've never driven a truck before, so even being up high is a change of pace for this down-low (sedan) girl. Nothing, though, has rocked me harder than learning the fine art of, in Russell's words, "let up on the clutch, push down on the gas." Actually, those are Russell's dad's words that we laugh about because of how frustrating they can be, repeated in rapid succession in monotonation. What Russell actually says, as my stickshift guru, is that there's a moment when the clutch "catches," and once you feel that catch, you let up gently on the clutch and press down on the gas.

It all sounds like goobey-frubu to me. At least, it did at first. Then, I had my moment of catch while zooming through the lot a few weeks ago and I figured out what he meant. One day, when I'm a stickshift guru, I will tell my inductees that this catch means convergence. When both the gas pedal and clutch are at the same place at the same time, it's this magical moment. Then, they must continue and move away from each other again, thus breaking said magic. But it's a beautiful moment when they're together and they catch. Maybe it's what catching a wave while surfing feels like, although I'll never know since I draw the line at learning new skills that may include shark attack. In the end, it's knowing I made two disparate elements come together, just for a moment -- call me gear-heard, but it really is a thrill.

Don't let me fool you entirely with my fresh-faced idealism, though. This stickshift business is tough. There's a new place in my brain that I have to break into in order to mentally understand and get up the gusto to go do this driving. Sometimes, I get frustrated with myself, Russell, the security guard and I know I've done some damage to Russell's transmission. But I'm going to continue practicing because, as far as my life goes, driving a stickshift catches.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Joys of Teaching

Today, I was teaching a lesson on not relying on "to be" verbs in essays and I used an activity which required my students to write and then, revise a statement, one that most likely included a lot of versions of "to be" verbs. It was harder than they thought; a few of them even claimed it was impossible.

But then, the light came on and they saw what I was getting at (it helped that I told them exactly what I was getting at). The light coming on in one student sounded like this: "Hey -- is this what we're supposed to do in our papers?"

(This was also the student who posed the question: "So if Jesus says he's coming back when the world ends and it takes 48 nuclear bombs to blow up the entire world, then if we detonate all those bombs, wouldn't that mean that Jesus has to come back?")

Saturday, December 02, 2006

The Best Eye/Ear Candy of the Year

I've noticed that a lot of blogs I enjoy have been compiling their top tens of the year. So. I like lists. And I like sharing them. And I like blogging. This trifecta leads me to compose my own tops of the year:

Top Ten CDs (that actually came out in 2006) In No Particular Order:
1. Sufjan Stevens: Christmas Songs
(Seriously the most fun Christmas album ever -- you know it's gotta be with songs such as "Get Behind Me, Santa" and "Did I Make You Cry on Christmas? (Well, You Deserved It!))
2. Lily Allen: Alright Still
3. Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope
4. Madeleine Peyroux: Half the Perfect World
5. Cut Chemist: The Audience's Listening
6. Zero 7: The Garden
7. The Ditty Bops: Angel with Attitude
8. Ballaké Sissoko & Ludovico Einaudi: Diario Mali
9. Tally Hall: Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
10. Paul Simon: Surprise
11. Gotan Project: Lunatico
12. Bob Dylan: Modern Times
13. Belle and Sebastian: The Life Pursuit

Okay that was 13. Ten was very, very difficult. And I like 13. I got married on the 13th. So it's a lucky-unlucky number.

Now, My Top 10 CDs That Didn't Necessarily Come Out In 2006 But That Received Heavy iPod/CD Mixing/Blasting-While-Housecleaning Rotation:
1. Sonny Rollins: Saxaphone Colossus
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cast: Once More, With Feeling
3. Johnny Cash/June C.C.: 16 Greatest Hits
4. Shelby Lynne: Suit Yourself
5. Imogen Heap: Speak for Yourself
6. Neko Case: The Tigers Have Spoken
7. Tony Allen: Homecooking
8. Beach Boys: Surfin' Safari
9. Golden Smog: Weird Tales
10. Little Richard: The Best of Little Richard

Honorable Mentions: Monk: Thelonious Monk Orchestra At Town Hall 1959; Sufjan Stevens: Illinois; Natalie Merchant: Retrospective; Queen: Night at the Opera

Okay, again, too many CDs.

Top 5 Books (That Were So Good, I Just Had To Read Them Within a Few Days):
1. Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems (Rakoff)
2. The Los Angeles Diaries (Brown)
3. Doubt (Shanley)
4. Garlic and Sapphires (Riechl)
5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (Murakami)

Top 5 TV Guilty Pleasures (non-cable, because I don't have cable):
1. The Office
2. 30 Rock
3. Heroes
4. Ugly Betty
5. So You Think You Can Dance

Best TV-DVD Guilty Pleasure:
Seasons 1-7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (obviously!)

TV-DVD Series I Can't Wait To Watch This Next Week:
Season 1, Weeds

TV-DVD Series I'm Planning to Watch After Dec. 15:
Veronica Mars

Top 5 T-Shirt Designers
1. Ella Moss
2. Nicole Miller
3. Velvet
4. Deletta
5. Marc Jacobs

Best Flip-Flops Ever
Clarks

Best Time To End?
Now.