My Truant Pen

The turkey mocks back

On November 6th, I made this wise statement: After years of panicking about cooking, I’m now confident that a) there will be enough food b) I know how to cook a turkey.

Ah, hubris!

Also, this might be a good time to mention that I try very hard not to be superstitious because I do not believe in superstition. It’s totally a load of crock, in my humble opinion. Also, I TOTALLY JINXED MYSELF WITH THIS STATEMENT. That was nearly as bad as talking about a no-hitter, people.

I changed two things about how I cooked my turkey this year.

1) I bought a new pan. My old pan always stuck to the top of the turkey, and pulled flesh off when I went to baste it, and was really too small for the behemoth birds that occupy my oven on Mocksgiving day. So I saw a new, bigger pan that didn’t have a lid but did have a cool little rack thingy and I went for it.
2) I read Cook’s Illustrated. Their November edition had some neat ideas on roasting turkeys. I didn’t do the pork one only because I couldn’t find the pork. I didn’t do the brining because I’m really lazy. I didn’t do the baking powder crispy skin bit because I have a hunch that the extra oil I add is needed to make the amount of gravy I produce.

But I did try the temperature thingy. I cooked the bird at 325.

And here are the results. Glorious, no?

Quite possibly the finest-looking bird I've ever cooked

And completely underdone. The breast was done, mind. The popper thingy popped out. The temperature was right for that breast meat. But the bottom of the bird — the dark meat and thighs, etc? Totally undone. Completely.

I hadn’t flipped the bird. I’d cooked it right side up. And since the skin looked so amazing, I didn’t crank the heat up (note: I actually think that was the right call).

We had let the bird set for half an hour, as recommended, and everything was on the table when my husband started carving and we realized that we had a turkey-disaster on our hands. Thinking fast, we pulled out cookie sheets and put turkey parts on the sheets to cook that way. It actually worked out ok. And frankly, I’m not sure that anyone would’ve even noticed if I just failed to put the turkey on the table period. There were so many fantastic options that the turkey was, well, gravy. Mocksgiving was by no means ruined by the total turkey FAIL.

Additionally my gravy was also a fail. I’m good at gravy. I make gravy all the time. But the open-topped pan allowed for much greater evaporation of delicious turkey-juices, so I kept adding water to the drippings. I added too much, and it came out as weak sauce. I actually usually (shhhh) add chicken boiullion (however you spell it) to my turkey drippings when they start to percolate to increase the volume of gravy. Since it cooks with the turkey for several hours, it ends up tasting like turkey gravy. But this time, it just tasted weird. If I want to use the open pot, I’m going to need to come up with a better plan for gravy. Of course, the fact that the turkey wasn’t COOKED might also have led to a diminution in drippings and subsequence chickenosity of the gravy.

Lessons learned:
1) It’s probably a good idea to start the turkey wrong-side up and flip it halfway through
2) Wrap the entire pot in tinfoil before cooking, not just turkey, to prevent evaporation
3) Maybe cook a larger turkey at 350 instead of 325.

I’m actually half-tempted to make a turkey on Thanksgiving just to tinker and figure out what I did wrong. (I can hear you saying “WHAT? Thanksgiving IS turkey day!” Not for me. If I can’t cadge an invite to a Thanksgiving dinner someone else cooked, Thanksgiving is likely to be a pizza night.) Also, the turkey and gravy didn’t come out well. This means NO HOT TURKEY SANDWICHES FOR ME. This, friends, is completely unacceptable.

As an additional Mocksgiving note, I made this Cranberry sauce ahead of time. More than 50% of my motivation was that I’d previously made pomegranate molasses for a recipe I didn’t end up making and it was lurking in the ‘fridge making me feel guilty. This was a fantastic make-ahead dish. It tasted excellent and looked amazing. If you need to bring a dish to a Thanksgiving, I’d heartily recommend this one. I doubled this recipe, and really. Don’t double it. All 28 of us having a serving barely made a dent in it.

Isn’t it always the way?

Often my problem with the blog is finding something to say:
Blog Date 21389 – still live a boring life

But right now I have things to say! I have new pictures! I have Mocksgiving redux! I have last night’s rather intense Presbytery meeting and thoughts inspired therein. I have a report back on how to report sermons and get the podcastified. Thane learned a new word!

Look at that! That’s like two weeks worth of posts! All worthwhile! Content ho!

But is that what I want to talk about? Nahhhhhh….

What I really want to talk about is my hair. I used to be blonde.

Here’s a picture of me taken under my dorm window at Blacksmith, freshman year of college. I was 18. (I’m in the middle wearing a silk tank top and black skirt).

I was blonde — Bonus: three of the four people with me were at Mocksgiving!

That was purely natural hair. It hadn’t been cut in years. I certainly didn’t dye it or style it or anything. That was my hair color.

Flash forward to now.

My hair has darkened from truly and honestly blonde to a sort of chestnut. As if that’s not bad enough, it’s chestnut with (ahem) gray streaks in it. Or, perhaps given their source, Grey streaks.

In addition to totally changing colors, my hair has thickened considerably. Back in that collegiate photo, my hair was quite fine and on the thin side. Now my hair is very heavy and thick. Towards the end of my pregnancy, even with super-duper rubber bands I couldn’t put it up in a pony tail. It would just drag it down. I can’t really use most barrettes anymore (and I like using barrettes to pull my hair back).

I have declared Saturday “Brenda is Fabulous” day. It begins at 1:30 with a bra fitting After nearly five years of I’m pregnant, no I’m nursing, no I’m weaning, no I’m trying to get pregnant, etc. ad nauseum (no really — there was lots of nauseum involved) I’m finally planning on a permanent single-occupancy body. I actually threw away all my regular bras when I got knocked up, because I knew otherwise I’d never get around to getting ones that actually, you know, fit. It’s been like two months since I last nursed, so…. it’s time.

Then at 4 pm I’m going to go see Dale (I always want to call his partner Chip, but I suspect that would be rude) and get my hair cut. Or something.

But oh! What the heck am I going to ask for? Something fashionable and current? Something classic and elegant? A mohawk? And what about colors? Do I do anything with the gray? Do I age gracefully? Do I do an at-home wash? Do I get highlights? Will I keep them up if I get them? Do I just ignore the issue for another few years? What am I trying to look like?

What do you think?

When in doubt, post pictures

So I’m still in a post-Mocksgiving recovery period. For the record, it was 28 adults and two very needy small people. Work is really really busy, so you’ll have to just wait for updates. But Mocksgiving! It was great! OK, there was a minor turkey-related disaster, but we were smart and figured out how to get the thing cooked before serving it and so far no one is complaining of food poisoning, so I think we’re good!

Last night I had a blissful few hours off from parenting and cleaning up, thanks to my husband. I spent that time getting about 650 pictures off my camera, captioned, organized, face-tagged and trimmed down. I want you to know they only went back to Columbus Day. One month. 650 pictures. Oof.

Anyway, here’s the first set! This is Thane and Adam’s shared birthday, and Mocksgiving!

Fall Gatherings 2009

Ivanhoe, or how my son learned to love the classics

The other day we walked down to The Book Oasis (sidenote: how cool is it that we can walk to a local used bookstore?). We were bringing in some old books to trade for some new ones. On the shelf, we noticed one of the Illustrated Classics. It was Ivanhoe. It had pictures. We figured, “Why not?”

Grey loved it. It’s hard to figure out how much he’s actually GETTING from the books, but he begged to read it. He ate it up. Then, when we’d finished reading it together, we got the old Ivanhoe movie and watched it together. (This has been mostly a Daddy and Grey thing.) And again, he loved it. He talked about Ivanhoe and King Richard and Robin Hood.

So we got another one: Treasure Island. There was the treasure map, the Black Spot, Ben Gun, a skeleton used to line up the compass, buried gold, and of course Long John Silver with that parrot on his squinty-peg-legged-salty-taking self. In Treasure Island, boys are treated like men, in the way men wish they were treated.

Between them Ivanhoe and Treasure Island ARE the archtypes of Knights and Castles, and Pirates. They are the stories from whence all the inaccurate hoopla flows. What a delight! What a touchstone of boyhood to encounter these books and begin daydreaming in the way that boys have daydreamed for 150 years now of days that never were — but the world would’ve been a more interesting place if they had been.

Last night, Adam and Grey watched the old Disney version of Treasure Island. Do you see a trend? Illustrated Classics = Have an Old Disney Version appropriate for young people.

I don’t know about Grey, but Adam and I are hooked. Next up: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Or maybe the Three Musketeers (since we already HAVE that old movie).

I had this brief moment as I went on my Illustrated Classic buying orgy where I was like, “But these are abridged! What if I’m teaching him to read the easy version and he’ll never stretch himself to read the real version?”

Then I remembered that my son is 4. Somehow, he’ll survive the abridged version. In fact, no way he has the patience for the unabridged version. So let’s give him good stuff to daydream about. Let’s teach him to love literature. Let’s show him that the old that is strong does not wither, and that a story can be good and still not have action figures available for purchase at Toys R Us. And best of all, let’s get to reading some good stuff at night, so I never have to read another L’il Critter story to THAT child, at least!

Explaining Facebook

Recently my mother-in-law and husband joined up on Facebook, adding themselves to the “everyone else I know” contingent. And in the last week or so, both have had questions or comments about it. So as a public service, I hereby offer this explanation of what the heck you do with Facebook.

1) What the heck does it mean when you post that you have “Mastery in Artichokes”?
Facebook offers a bunch of games like “Mafia Wars”, “Farmville” and “Fish World” — to name a few. These are cooperative games, so if I do something in my game, I can offer a “bonus” to all my friends on Facebook who also play. This creates an altruistic incentive for me to do things like announce my recent Artichoke victory. The other people who play the game can get points because of it.

Facebook games are funny things. They’re pretty simple to play. The way you “win” is by checking in on them regularly. They’re also highly interactive. For example, in Farmville you visit your friend’s farms (you can see what they’re doing with them) and help out in some way. You’d think this would be entirely the purview of time-wasting losers like me, but I’m continually surprised and amused by just who plays and how seriously.

You have three choices when your Facebook friends keep announcing they’ve found Lost Kittens. First, you could join the game. Why not? You don’t have work to do anyway. Second, if you choose not to join the game, the appropriate thing to do is politely ignore the posts and pretend you don’t notice that your friend just posted about finding a lost moose on a rollercoaster. Third, if you find them annoying (and who can blame you if you do), you can block all similar content by hovering over the offending post. A drop down will appear on the right and pick “Block Farmville” (or whatever is driving you nuts).

2) Friend regret
So someone you vaguely remember from High School asked to be your friend. You thought she was nice enough 15 years ago. But once you friended her, you discovered that she keeps posting about Artichokes, church events, and linking to her boring blog. You don’t want to offend her by “un-friending” her, but you also really don’t care about the Advent Workshop (November 22nd after church! We’ll be making Advent Wreathes!). If you look at the image above, you can see that there is a “Hide (Name)” option. The person in question won’t know that you are “hiding” them, and you can still check on their wall if you want to talk to them about something or see what they’ve been up to.

3) Have you forgotten that I live across the country/will be taking care of our kids while you go this event?
Yesterday I sent out an invite to Prayer at the Close of Day tomorrow. My husband made a growly noise because since I will be there, he can’t be. My mom pointed out she lives 3000 miles away. But often times if you belong to a group (like our church group), invitations will go to all group members. I didn’t actually pick each and every person and send the invitation to them.

If you find Facebook is sending you too many emails (or not enough!) Facebook has very granular settings for controlling emails. Click on the “settings” link in the upper right hand corner when you are logged in. The third tab in controls notifications. Scroll through and make choices appropriate for how you want to be contacted:

Hopefully these will help you enjoy Facebook more. If you have any additional questions on how it works, please feel free to let me know!

It’s Monday and I have a headache

Someone has a case of the Mondays! Oh, it’s me. Hrm.

I’m philosophically opposed to spreading a bad mood by sharing a bad mood. It’s sort of like being contagious with the flu. When you’re capable of transmitting something that’s making you miserable, keep it to yourself already. But today I have a piercing headache, sleep deprivation, sub-par coffee, intransigent SQL, and solo-parenting duties when I get home. I keep breaking unrelated code to what I’m working on, which is double bad because we operate on a “you find it you fix it” sort of policy. And I’m pretty sure there’s a clever fix to what I’m trying to accomplish, but I can’t quite reach it due to the piercing headache.

So you know what today calls for? More cheerful links!

First of all, we have Gives Me Hope. I challenge you to read this site without tearing up a little. If you’re pregnant or nursing, I recommend you grab a box of Kleenex first. This is an antidote to CNN.

Second, in a similar vein and only to be opened if you have iron self-control and/or a couple hours free, we have My Life is Average. The update rate on these small, joyful vignettes of daily life makes this a truly dangerous link.

Finally, The Discovery Channel did right by me and released a new “Boom De Yada” video. Although it does not have Bear Grylls saying “Arachanids” it does have some fantastic stuff.

The combination of these three links should a) absorb all your free time for the rest of the week b) leave you feeling happy. As for me? There’s nothing wrong with me that two tylenol, a trip to Starbucks, a good night’s sleep and a week of vacation wouldn’t fix.

Commence panicking

This is the week before Mocksgiving. Unusually for me, I got the invitations out pretty early this year… Septembrish. I was proud of myself for not procrastinating.

Now, a week away, I’m ready to start my annual, pre-Mocksgiving panicking. Mostly, this has to do with physics. After years of panicking about cooking, I’m now confident that a) there will be enough food b) I know how to cook a turkey. Of course, this hubris means that we’ll get a half-scorched/half-raw Thomas this year, but hey. Once every ten years is totally forgivable.

But there are a few things that make Mocksgiving what it is, to me. First, I invite people to my house. I host them. We do not go to a hall or a restaurant. I welcome people into my home. Somehow, this is important. Second, we all sit down together and eat a meal together. It’s not a buffet. There are tablecloths and silverware.

Um, actually that’s pretty much it. The rest happens by magic — the conversations and pot luck dishes and hot beef injections (love ya Ben). The friends and walks and board games. It’s a pretty awesome thing.

But. Right now my RSVPs for Mocksgiving have us somewhere between, oh, 27 and 35 people. I have enough plates and cups and silverware. There will be a gracious plenty of food (although I always end up buying the very largest turkey I can lay my hands on, which regardless of how long it’s been thawing in my ‘fridge and whether I bought it fresh or frozen WILL be frozen solid when I go to try to remove the giblets). But seating? How do you get 32 people to simultaneously sit down in your reasonably-sized house? Do I set the top of the piano? Do I lay a board on top of the couch? It’s a good thing the fire department doesn’t come to visit on Mocksgiving, letmetellyou.

And all this brings me to the only part of Mocksgiving I really actively dislike. I really hate excluding people. I would like to be able to invite everyone I know and like to come sit at table and dine with me. I used to be able to, back when I had fewer friends. But whew. Man. I can’t do more than 30. I just don’t think it’s possible, without renting a hall. I often turn down people’s requests to bring guests, many of whom are people I also know and like. So basically, if you’ve come before you get grandfathered. After two or so years of not making it, you may not get another invite. I may really like you and not invite you. I probably wish I could. One of these days, I might try renting a hall and seeing if I can pull off that collegial feeling. It just somehow doesn’t seem right.

So please? If you get an invitation, come and celebrate and be prepared dine on the piano. I want you to come very much. But if you DON’T get an invitation, don’t read it as a statement on our relationship or think it’s because I don’t like you. And if you really wish that you could do Mocksgiving? I hereby authorize you to do your OWN Mocksgiving (as though you need my permission). If you do, I’d love to get pictures of your celebration.

Ok, so I’ll need a 30 pound turkey, 5 loaves of bread, 5 pies, 15 pounds of potatoes….

I think last year we only had about 20, due to late invites

Prayer at the Close of Day

When I was in college, there was an evening service in our chapel. It was at 10 pm on Wednesday nights. The first semester I was there, still trying to figure things out, our chaplain left. But before he did, he taught me how to set up the service and how to sing the chants. For the next three and a half years, in close connection with the college organist John Anthony, I led that weekly service.

It remains one of the most significant spiritual experiences of my life.

We were a small , extremely ecumenical group that met late on those Wednesday nights. There was me the Protestant, a handful of Catholics, a Greek Orthodox girl and an agnostic. Harkness Chapel was always airy and dark on those nights. I’d enter in the back door and light the candelabras. They made a pool of yellow light below the vaulted ceiling. We’d begin in silence with muffled greetings. Then song, chant, prayer, more silence, song and chant again. We’d end holding hands and singing, before scattering back to our homework and brightly lit dorm rooms.

In the four years I was at college, I believe I missed fewer than five of these Wednesday night services.

During that brief period of velvet night, I felt peace, fellowship, contentment. I made room for silence. I listened. I slowed down. There was room for the Spirit to move in me and to speak to me. There was space for me to slide back inside my own skin, and remember who I am. There was a tremendous connection with those few other pilgrims, coming to find the same thing.

I suspect many of us want to get back what we had in college. There were our collegiate figures, our somehow ample time for fun, the energy of youth, the proximity of all our friends… heck, just getting to sleep in and have someone else do all the cooking. But the thing I’d like to get back from college is that service — that peace.

Happily, unlike my youth, this may be something attainable. I can aspire to this connection to the Almighty. As my living is concentrated down to the most necessary, I find I need to stop taking away and start adding. This is something I will add.

So. Next Wednesday night at 9 pm (a nod to my now-elderly status), I will open the doors of Burlington Presbyterian Church and light candles. I will sing “The Spirit within us moves us to pray”. I will make room for silence. And if you would like to come, I will smile and worship with you.

Prayer at the Close of Day
Wednesday nights
9 – 9:30 pm
Burlington Presbyterian Church

May the spirit of the Lord remain with us throughout the night.

The power of the internet compels you

Dear Internets,

I need help. I’m pretty sure what I’m trying to do is easy-peasy if you know how. I do not know how.

Here’s the sitch:

1) Our church has a good sound system, done in the last 5 years, connecting the microphone and speakers
2) I want to connect a device to that sound system to record the sermons
3) I suspect my 120 gig iPod would do the trick nicely
4) I don’t know how to hook the iPod up to the system

Am I right? If I have a cable/doohickey can I just plug my iPod into some sort of “line out”, press play at the beginning of the service, and then download audio off the iPod when I get home? Advice, please!

–Me

Dribs and Drabs

Seriously, when did he get old enough to build towers?

Grey: believes that anything can become a joke with a combination of three elements: “knock knock”, chicken, and Barack Obama

Thane: Somehow learned how to build with blocks and spent half an hour last night amazing me with his Mega-block-abilities

Grey: has finally found a lovey. It’s a $4 white rabbit named “Robby” that was in his Easter basket. Robby did not do well with being washed. Grey will tell you about how Robby’s a baby, but now he’s old (with his bedraggled fur). Why do children not fall in love with their high quality stuffed animals?

Thane: likes to eat corn. One kernel at a time. After carefully inspecting each kernel to verify that yes, this is a piece of corn. His fastidiousness in this regard would be more understandable if he didn’t consider grass an aperitif and leaves a delightful dinner.

Grey: has decided his favorite food in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD OMG is the spaghetti & meatballs I made for dinner on Sunday. Canned sauce (with onions & green peppers added) and IKEA meatballs. But hey, it’s nutritionally slightly superior to Mac & Cheese, so no whining.

Thane: is too busy playing to play with meeeeee! I am sad about this and want to bop noses to make him laugh.

Grey: Learned some good skills on a playdate last night, about asking for what you want, compromising, and talking people into sharing instead of sulking.

Mommy: wishes she were hanging out with her guys right now.