This morning I was standing in the frozen-foods aisle of the Asia Market, puzzling over which brand of vegetable gyoza I bought last week because the packages all look the same to me and I can’t read Chinese, when the Monkey burst into song. I found this somewhat disconcerting, because she was singing in Chinese, and I don’t speak Chinese, and I had no idea what she was singing about.
Look! A puppy!
That’s Sadie, 7 weeks old when the picture was taken, 9 weeks old now.
She is allowed to sleep on the bed, a privilege neither of our other dogs gained until they were much older, but she snores and rootches and usually ends up in the crate anyway.
She does not like to pee in the rain and will, if dragged outside, squat for an instant then dart back up the steps and, five minutes later, pee on the floor.
She slept in my lap while I drove her home from the breeder listening to Back Porch Music on NPR.
She harrasses the ducks by tracking them around the back yard.
She’s a basset hound, and while I used to think that maybe someday I would have dogs of other breeds, in all likelihood, I will just have a lot of basset hounds. It is probably best just to know your type and stick to it.
Passings, and cheese toast
My grandmother died this morning. To liven the mood I shall tell a story.
When I was about five or six years old, my parents drove me down to the beach for the day where my grandparents were camping. We had lunch, and I (and everyone else) was asked whether I wanted ham and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly, I said.
Then lunch was served, and I received a piece of cheese toast. Bread, with cheese broiled onto it in the toaster oven so that it was melted and brown. You know what I mean.
But I asked for peanut butter and jelly, I said to my father.
He explained that the cheese toast was a first course, and then we would have our sandwiches.
A first course. My grandmother was fixing lunch for eight or ten people in a camper, and she was serving a first course.
In a camper.
Because, by god, we will be civilized human beings and we will do things are they are supposed to be done.
She was not a gourmet by any standard — her mashed potatoes could cement a house. Nor was she an adventurous eater. She once told a story about eating dinner at a Chinese buffet: normally, she said, she didn’t like Chinese buffets, but this one didn’t have so much Chinese food, and so it was pretty good.
But when she made dinner, good heavens, she made dinner. We had hors d’oeuvres and first courses and half a dozen side dishes and dessert, and a jello salad for every month of the year. There was a precision to her meals; she had a set of rules, and she followed them. No one else cared whether she followed them or even knew quite what they were, but she did it this way because, to her, that was how it was supposed to be done.
Given my propensity to gravitate toward the opposite of what I think I am supposed to do and my continual need to try new things — not to mention my deep love of Chinese food — one might assume that my grandmother and I didn’t have a lot in common.
But watch me get ready for a dinner party or a holiday meal or even the odd Wednesday supper, plan every detail of multiple courses, spend days prepping and cooking, and there she is. Working through me, her spirit inexorably in my genes. Running back and forth to the kitchen getting everything right while the guests are arriving, then stuffing them until they beg for mercy and wonder why in hell I don’t just sit down already.
Because, by god, we will be civilized people, and we will do things are they are supposed to be done.
I hope that wherever she is, they are doing things the right way.
Toby, 1997-2006
Toby, my younger basset hound, died this week. For two weeks his appetite was a little off; for two days he was lethargic and vomited; and his heart stopped an hour after we learned that he had advanced liver cancer. On his last afternoon he chased his tennis ball, sounding joyously. Every day he lived to the fullest, with every ounce of heart and spirit. No one could ask more.
So much has been said in honor of dogs, from Byron to a million weblogs, that there seems little point in adding words to the fray. The only epitaph or eulogy he would want is that he was a good boy. You were a good boy, Toby, and I love you. And I miss you, terribly.
Godspeed.
Howdy, neighbor
This gal has taken up residence in my workshop:
Or guy. I asked, but she wasn’t talking.
When I cleaned out the shed Monday after leaving it fallow for a year and a half — with a job and a kid and a novel I’ve had no time for woodworking, can you imagine? — I found eight million mouse turds but no mice. Yeah, I counted. They were everywhere, along with grass seed from a chewed-up bag. Evidence of several mice, but they were gone.
Then Tuesday morning my daughter and I went outside and found a five-foot black rat snake hanging from the tool rack, looking at us. She dropped off and hid in the corner and I thought we had scared her off, but the next afternoon she was back, hanging around the rafters. So now I know what happened to the mice.
Black rat snakes aren’t dangerous — they’ll strike if cornered but they’re constrictors, so their bite isn’t serious, and I think we can leave each other alone. (She flicked her tongue at the flash, but I don’t blame her. I don’t like getting my picture taken, either.) Meanwhile, I no longer have to worry about mice in the workshop. And the kid thinks she’s the coolest thing ever.
Yep, it’s wild kingdom out here.
Five spice duck confit
For Chinese New Year, a bit of fusion cuisine. Every year we have a party for the lunar new year, and I try to make some kind of highly impressive centerpiece dish. One year I made a Szechuan duck that is similar to Peking duck, but like all Chinese duck recipes it requires last-minute preparation — in this case deep-frying — and I’d rather not spend all my time in the kitchen after our guests have arrived. So for the year of the horse (2002) I invented this as an equally tasty duck preparation that can be made a day ahead and requires only gentle warming before serving.
Molasses-ginger cookies
Most molasses cookies and ginger snaps harden not long after you take them out of the oven. The extra egg yolk keeps these soft for days.
- 3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon cloves
- granulated sugar for rolling
- Combine melted butter, brown sugar, and molasses thoroughly. Add the egg and egg yolk; combine well.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a second bowl. Add the butter-sugar-egg mixture and combine well.
- Chill the dough until it is manageable. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper (or grease them lightly).
- Form scant 1/4-cup scoops into balls; roll in granulated sugar. Place on lined cookie sheets and flatten slightly. Bake 15 minutes or until the edges are just set; the centers will still be quite soft. If using parchment paper, slide the entire paper off the cookie sheet onto racks to cool; this will help to keep the cookies intact.
Why people vote
Last fall I had a running argument with friends that voting ought not be made too easy because voting is an act of civic participation and therefore part of the fabric that binds a democracy together. People making atomized decisions in their living rooms are not participating in anything; they aren’t given the opportunity (or, perhaps, forced) to see themselves as part of a democratic society. The act of going to a polling place and voting in the presence of one’s fellow citizens, on the same day and in the same place, is as important to a democracy as the vote itself.
To my neighbors: A poem
How many times can a man mow his lawn
Before the grass turns brown?
Yes and how many times can he whack his weeds
Before he’s cut them all down?
Yes and how many hours can he spend blowing leaves
Without just moving them around?
The answer, my friend, is too goddamn many.
The answer is too goddamn many.
Why I don’t like the metric system
For the benefit of Canadians, Jacobins, progressives, engineers, and stuck-up stickybeaks of all stripes, I herein explain why the metric system is inferior to traditional systems of measurement for those who work with their hands, think with their right brains, and prefer not to resort to a calculator for every little thing.
Metric vs. traditional systems
First, I don’t like the term “metric system.” Either it refers only to the meter and ignores all of the other units of measure (which is silly), or it implies that it’s the only system that is metered (which is also silly). What is commonly called the metric system is part of a much larger system of measurement known as the International System, or SI. (The abbreviation is backward because it comes from the French, and they do everything backwards.)
The SI is all decimal, and its units, which include familiar ones like the watt and the second and less-familiar ones like the joule, are all interrelated in a very nice way that I won’t trouble to explain here. (You can read about it here.) It’s a very nice system, for many purposes — but not for all purposes. (I’m unnecessarily familiar with it from having been, at some time late in the last century, a theoretical physicist in training.)