Shrubbery

I have a thing for shrubbery.

It may have something to do with Monty Python:

ARTHUR: Well, what is it you want?
HEAD KNIGHT: We want... a shrubbery!
[dramatic chord]
ARTHUR: A what?
HEAD KNIGHT: Nee! Nee!
ARTHUR and PARTY: Oh, ow!
ARTHUR: Please, please! No more! We shall find a shrubbery.
HEAD KNIGHT: You must return here with a shrubbery or else you will never pass through this wood alive!
ARTHUR: O Knights of Nee, you are just and fair, and we will return
with a shrubbery.
HEAD KNIGHT: One that looks nice.
ARTHUR: Of course.
HEAD KNIGHT: And not too expensive.
ARTHUR: Yes.
HEAD KNIGHTS: Now... go!

Then again, it could be my mother. She once went to her favorite garden supply place, and encountered a woman wandering around the azalea department shrieking "where are your bushes?" - presumably not recognizing azaleas as bushes. Or shrubbery. "Where are your bushes?" is one of those lines now in the family lexicon.

Or perhaps it's an Edward Gorey thing.

On the shore a bat, or possibly an umbrella,
disengaged itself from the shrubbery,
causing those nearby to recollect the miseries of childhood.

In any case, I found myself highlighting a sentence in the Wilkie Collins book* I'm reading.

He drifted away aimlessly in the direction of the shrubbery.

And when you highlight things on the Kindle, other people can see it via "popular highlights". So will the next person to read said Wilkie Collins encounter my shrubbery highlight? I do hope so.

Incidentally, shrubbery is a collective, a plurality of shrubs, but A shrubbery is a place, a garden border thickly shrub-planted.

Bring me a shrubbery!

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*It's called No Name, and I got it as a free Kindle download. Free! I do love it when things go out of copyright. And I'm enjoying it, and I can't remember why I looked for it in the first place. Did you tell me to read it?

Dinner For One, for Two People

Cast of Characters
1 child who wants plain buttered pasta
1 husband who had a late lunch and doesn’t want any dinner at all
1 self who is craving vegetables

Ingredients
1 bunch of almost over the hill Asian braising greens from the CSA
1 bunch of similarly almost over the hill turnip tops from the CSA
3 garlic scapes from the backyard garden
2 springs of flat leaf parsley from the CSA
2 potatoes, because they’re there
Butter
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Balsamic vinegar (the dregs of a fancy bottle rinsed out with the cheap stuff)

1. Pour glass of wine.
2. Put pot of water on to boil the child’s pasta.
3. Wash and chop the greens, tossing out all the really over the hill bits.
4. Decide that sautéed greens isn’t really enough dinner, and boil another pot of water for some potatoes.
5. Peel and dice the potatoes, and toss ‘em in the pot for 10 minutes.
6. Heat up a little olive oil in a skillet with a lid, and toss in the chopped garlic scapes.
7. Remember that you forgot to salt the now boiling potatoes and the pasta water.
8. Cook the child’s pasta.
9. Rescue the garlic scapes before they start to brown, and toss in the still wet chopped greens. Slap a lid on the pot.
10. Mince the parsley and put it someplace where you won’t forget to add it later.
11. Drain the potatoes and mash ‘em with a pat of butter.
12. Drain the child’s pasta and toss with a pat of butter. Serve.
13. Scoop the greens onto the mashed potatoes and mix it all up, gently, with another pat of butter.
14. Serve up the demented colcannon in a bowl, sprinkled with a little rubbed kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, the minced parsley and a few drops of balsamic vinegar.
15. Eat. With more wine, as necessary.
16. Don’t share when husband says “I didn’t know you were making that. It looks good.” Because it’s just enough for one.

Bat Out Of Hell

Here’s the thing about meatloaf – it doesn’t need a recipe, it needs an attitude. Yeah, you need some meat, but everything else is mutable.

Start with an onion. Whack it up and toss it in a pan with some fat – olive oil, butter, bacon fat. You choose. Sweat the onion until it’s soft, maybe a little golden. Try not to burn it; you’ll just have to scrub the pan. You really object to onion? Skip it. You’ve got scallions or shallots or garlic? Sure, use ‘em.

Use whatever ground meat you like – beef, turkey, pork, veal. I like a mixture of beef and turkey. 1 ½ to 2 pounds of meat will work in a regular loaf pan. You need some starch to bulk it up – use oatmeal, bread crumbs, crushed crackers, leftover rice. I freeze the bread crusts that my diva daughter rejects – “it’s too crunchy!” – and buzz them in the blender for tossing in a meatloaf. Recycling, you know.

Now comes the fun part. Open the fridge and cast your eye upon the myriad odd jars and leftovers. Ketchup is a natural, but why not replace the ketchup with chutney? Or duck sauce from the Chinese takeout. Mustard’s good, either prepared or dry. I like a bit of sautéed chopped greens – spinach, braising mix, swiss chard. Or a handful of chopped fresh parsley. Oh, look at that! Baba ganoush! In it goes. You got an egg? Toss that in. Don’t forget some salt and pepper.

Work all the ingredients together with your fingers, fling it in a loaf pan, and bake it for a while. Yum.

The basic premise is meat + starch + flavorful wet stuff = good mixture for divine meatloaf. Be brave! How can it go wrong?



(And you thought this was going to be about Meat Loaf...)

How Well Do You Know Wal-Mart?

I came across a witty and perhaps esoteric internet quiz the other day: Walmart vs. Donald Judd. I scored 83%.

I sent it to my brother and my accountant. My brother scored 100%, but then he's an architect and has been to Marfa a lot. More amusingly, my accountant scored 100%, but he's cool for an accountant - he used to be in a rock band, and goes to Marfa every year.

How'd you do?







Edited to add: Marfa is a town in Texas. Donald Judd bought an old military base there which is now a "destination" for art pilgrimages.

Reading the Paper

They keep saying that the printed newspaper is going to go the way of all things. If that really happens, I will be in a saddened condition, because reading the physical paper is a far different experience than reading the news on a computer screen. I know that I would never have seen this gem of an AP story had I not been holding the good grey lady in my hands on the train this morning:

When the meal a man was cooking at his aunt’s house in Hartlepool caught fire this week, he grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of laundry to put it out: his aunt’s billowing, powder blue, size XL underpants. He ran them under the faucet and tossed them onto the flames, smothering the fire and saving the kitchen, according to a spokesman for the local fire brigade. The fire official said that using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire was a sound principle and that with underwear, “clearly it depends on what size you are.”

On the other hand, I probably would have read Marie-Jeanne's obituary with or without newsprint in hand, just because she was a Balanchine dancer and I pay attention to that sort of thing. In case you missed it, she had rather a marvelous entry into this world:

Marie-Jeanne Pelus — she dropped her surname professionally because she thought balletgoers might find it awkward — was born in Manhattan on her family’s kitchen table after her mother, a French milliner, went into labor while her father, an Italian chef, was preparing dinner.

I wonder, though, what happened to the placenta?

Four Calling Birds

My due date, or really my mother's due date, was Christmas Day. She had friends who were all set to arrive at the hospital with camels and myrrh. If you know me off-blog and know my last name, you'd understand that it would have been quite entertaining should I have actually been born on Christmas Day. But I wasn't. I was four days late, and I peed all over the delivery room.

Quite some time ago, Julie wrote a post that I stuck part of in my drafts folder for later use - and now the time has come. Today's my birthday.

December 29 is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 2 days remaining until the end of the year.

Events - Random and Mundane

1851 - The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1989 - Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia. He became the first non-Communist who attained the post in more than four decades.
1998 - Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million.

Births - Arts and Culture

1876 - Pablo Casals, Catalan musician (d. 1973)
1936 - Mary Tyler Moore, American actress
1942 - Rick Danko, Canadian musician (The Band) (d. 1999)
1946 - Marianne Faithfull, British singer
1952 - Gelsey Kirkland, American dancer

Deaths - An Assassination!

1170 - Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (assassinated) (b. 1118)

Holidays and observances

The fourth day of Christmas.

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Here's the meme:

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday Month and day only.
2. List 3 Events that occurred that day.
3. List 2 important Birth days (I've indulged myself and listed five).
4. List 1 Death.
5. List a Holiday or Observance. (if any)

More Little NY Moments

The other morning, I saw a child in a stroller, "reading" the Hanna Andersson catalogue. Starting consumerism early? Picking out his winter wardrobe? Looking for things for his Christmas list?

While waiting for my lunch, I heard the expeditor order "BLT, hold the bacon". Hold the bacon? Isn't that the point of a BLT? Especially when the place uses Niman Ranch bacon?

And last week, I was sitting in my boss's office, gazing out the window at the rooftop across the street, when I spotted a guy on the roof having a smoke and taking a leak.

Fatigue

Want to dip into nostalgia for the pleasing mustiness of library stacks and the tactile joy of oak-fronted card catalogues? Click here.

Rhymes with Wright

It's Children's Book Week this week, or so says the Children's Book Council, and since I've had some musings on books rattling around in my head, I thought this would be a good week to get them out.

Despite the fact that Miss M. is now FOUR, we have a sweet little board book that still comes out from time to time. It's called Bear and Kite and it's a quick poem of opposites, in which all of the second words rhyme:

Bear and kite
Black and white
Play and fight
Loose and tight
Wrong and right
Day and night.

Best of all? The author is Cliff Wright.

13 Google Searches

It's time for another edition of search queries! Here are thirteen ways that people ended up on my blog.

1. Magpie eggs for sale
2. What happened to my 9 cell embryos
3. How to paint leopard spots on bathroom
4. Is your husband in green paint
5. what does it mean if a cyst biopsy on my forehead comes back positive?
6. My chickens are sick
7. worksheets on the woods for preschool
8. Bun hairpin how to old-fashioned
9. Cabbage kings sea pigs
10. breastfeeding husband photo
11. "did you really make that face?"
12. one day at a time what was julies stuffed teddy bears name
13. leif garrett mom's birthday

The last one slays me, in part because I never wrote anything about Leif Garrett...it shows up in a comment left by the inimitable Bossy.

One of the things about looking at other people's search queries is parsing how they construct the query. Do they use full sentences? Do they use a question mark? In what order do the key words appear? And then there's the subject. Was query #10 trying to find a picture of a father breastfeeding? Apparently it is possible to induce lactation in men, but I think it's pretty rare.

Two queries that I get a lot are choreography ideas and extended breastfeeding. Extended breastfeeding I understand - I did write about it, and it is something that's a concern to people. But choreography ideas? It wouldn't occur to me that there were enough choreographers out there needing ideas and thinking that they might find ideas on the interwebs. Get in the studio, put on some music, and get your ass in gear!

Dear Easter Bunny

Dear Easter Bunny,
You are qute. Your present is the carrot.
Love
Maggie,
See you next year.

Hey - I could type when I was nine! But my spelling was rather, um, qute?

Dead Nut Expert

Sunday brought another wonderful obit from Douglas Martin of the New York Times - that of Elizabeth Tashjian.

Her father was a prosperous rug trader, and her mother came from an aristocratic family with a castle.

Ms. Tashjian had a museum of nuts, in Connecticut. The 48 word first paragraph contains the word "nut" five times.

According to the obit, she had a late life career as a guest on TV and radio. For those appearances "she often took along her huge, disturbingly suggestive Coco de mer nut" which weighs 35 pounds and "resembles buttocks".

I could keep quoting, but maybe you should just go read it and raise a cocktail peanut to Ms. Tashjian.

Free Association/Unconscious Mutterings

Irish Goddess encouraged me to play LunaNina's Free Association game, so here goes:

1. Limit :: LESS


2. Voice :: OF AMERICA


3. Change :: FOR A $20


4. Expression :: OF GLEE


5. Tailor :: MADE


6. Lemonade :: HOT (Craving hot lemonade right now)


7. Thought :: POLICE


8. Phoebe :: WHAT MY FATHER IN LAW CALLS MY MOTHER IN LAW SOMETIMES (it's not her name)


9. Impression :: IST = MONET


10. Sister :: SARAH

Truely Whimsical, and now you may bow

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Entirely Miss Reverend Lady Magpie the Prickly of Mabe Burnthouse Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Vanity Plates

My favorite license plate ever: ENTROPY

On a Ford Fiesta. Not mine. Yes, a long time ago.