Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Turkey Soup Recipe

1. Go into kitchen at 8:30 am and assemble all the turkey soup parts on the counter.
2. Roast bones.
3. Make stock.
4. Realize you need to de-fat this if you want to eat it today.
5. Do speed de-fatting like Mom did with the ice cubes.
6. Research Best De-fatting device and order it on Amazon so this doesn’t happen next year.
7. Chop vegetables.
8. Ask husband to help chop vegetables and season the stock in his special way.
9. Watch as husband adds butter and sautés each vegetable before he adds them to the de-fatted stock, essentially adding a stick and a half of butter to the broth. 

It turned out really well, though. I suppose milk fat is tastier than turkey fat.

 

Thanksgiving

Well, welcome to Thanksgiving in the bubble. 

All of this reminds me of the year Mom died, when I celebrated Hannukah so I could avoid the first Christmas without Mom. I think that if life takes away an essential part of a tradition, like a Mom, you can get a little of your own back by breaking with tradition yourself.

So, this Thanksgiving, Gary and I are staying in our bubble, just like all brain-based humans in America, and because life took away our traditional holiday, I’m responding by saying to life, “I can do that too.”

What am I doing? A stupid minor thing, but it delights me. I’m deconstructing our turkey. This year there will be no brown turkey to carve with legs and thighs and breast all in one. America’s Test Kitchen aired an old episode in which they cooked the dark and white meat separately.

(Had I stuck with tradition, I would have also been stuck with a fully frozen turkey on Thursday. I obediently followed the Facebook advice to put the frozen turkey in the refrigerator on Sunday, and when I chiseled it apart on Wednesday night it was still just as frozen. Had I poked at the whole turkey on Thursday morning it would have been unusable. )

I suspect Macy’s is doing the same. They said, “We can’t have crowds at the parade? Well then, all bets are off, we’re tying the balloons to flatbeds and driving them around instead, so there.” I am surprised they didn’t just cobble together balloon video from old parades. 

I expect there were more than the usual number of nuclear families eating brisket or lamb instead of turkey this year, just to get back at life.

As a result, Gary has not stopped raving about the excellent turkey. Separating the white and dark meat is going to be a new tradition.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/26

This week the peonies went from this ...

... to this:

The orange glazing project went from this:

... to this:

The Orange appears to be a bit overripe. I think I will stop on this one.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful Gary is still here despite his (crosses self) Covid. He feels much better - he doesn’t even need his cane anymore.

The Season’s Cheese

Only 30 shopping days until Christmas!

Yeah, and then what? Given how this year has been measured out in coffee spoons full of POISON, it seems like this year there should be a multitude of tiny little gifts instead of one big gift. Perhaps that’s why so many friends have been buying themselves Advent Calendars. Advent Wine Calendars, Advent Cheese Calendars. 

Done. Exotic cheese of the day calendar for me. I suppose I should get something for Gary too. Well, he can have half the cheese. 

Skipping Appointments

The doctor’s office called to say our sainted GP will be working in the ICU on the day of our physicals, so I opted to have the physicals with the Physician’s Assistant.

Gary heard about it and stated forcefully that he was not visiting any hospitals with the covid spike the way it is now. The covid is currently a red and silver miasma pulsing out of the hospital roof and floating down to the parking lot. I suppose we could run our windshield wipers and knock all the covid dust off, but it just seems wiser to not risk it.

I also cancelled the mammogram appointment that I made last week. Back then, the woman making my appointment said I called at a good time, there were openings now, when the week before they’d been booked out to January. Now they could get me in a few days. It didn’t occur to me to ask what happened to all those December appointments, and of course all of Saint Louis is under a lockdown. This is an absolutely non-essential mammogram.

I hope my doctor stays safe working in the ICU and dodges the microbes.

2020 Retrospective

My favorite time of year is fast approaching. No, not Thanksgiving. Not Christmas.  It will soon be Retrospective Time again.

2020: The Year In Review. What do you think the big story will be?

Of course, this year, some CNN or Time intern has been tasked with finding the Non-COVID stories. Australia caught fire, there were hurricanes, and Herman Cains, and then we’re back to Covid again.

Perhaps they should have blank pages dedicated to what didn’t happen, like a big empty five page spread on the Olympics. 

I can’t imagine what I’ll do Jan 1, when I usually my make own year in review. You know, the post filled with all the concerts and vacations. Sigh. 

Weekend Time

It annoys Gary, but I like to do two things at once - especially if one of the things I am doing is watching television. I like to clean up after dinner and watch television, or do the laundry and watch television. 

(In case you think I’m overly burdened with domestic work, and that makes Gary feel like a slacker in that he is not doing housework and laundry ... to be honest I am usually reading Facebook or doing a NYT crossword from 1998 while I’m watching television. You can add a third task, ignoring the dust and potato chip debris in the room with the television.)

This super-productivity goes dormant on the weekends. This past work week I tabled a dozen things that I needed to do, so I could do them on the weekend - and the weekend came and I did none of those things.

Instead, I just spent FIVE HOURS laser-focused on seeing how I could join a Zoom call with an Alvin the chipmunk voice. I even missed breakfast because I was so intent of doing just that one thing.

Rewriting the Novel: New Phase

Done with the outline and on to writing. Much more fun than outlining. Of course there are new problems.

When I was in the community college class, the teacher commented that there were no noticeable differences between my writing voice and Jerry’s. That day has passed. I am retooling chapter one and now it’s all expository dialog and pedestrian descriptions, which are especially garbage next to Jerry’s really lovely and polished descriptions.

Of course, Jerry’s draft had already been through the garbage phase, plus he was probably in a state of creative mania, so he had that going for him. Right now I’m just getting the characters off the train and into town. 

Another issue is that I’ve shifted to first person, and it’s a false note when my earnest and practical heroine shifts gears into poetic descriptions. I’ll have to get out Jane Eyre and Rebecca and see how they did that. They didn’t do it in the first draft, probably.

Gavle Goat

I was discussing Zozobra and Burning Man with a friend who clued me in to what must be the greatest of all Fiery Catharsis Voodoo Dolls: the Swedish Gävle Goat, or Gävlebocken.

First off, the goat is just really visually pleasing. It’s a Swedish Yule goat, which is evidently a straw goat with a handle. It makes a good Christmas ornament.

Alternatively, you can get the 50 foot high version.

That’s the straw goat in the middle of the town square in Gävle, Sweden. So, in the tradition of Zozobra and Burning Man, you figure that giant straw creature was made to be burned down.

Evidently there’s some disagreement about that. Ever since the first goat was erected in the 60’s, people have been driven by a compulsion to torch it. I love the city elders who stoically build it, knowing that if you build it, they will come, and they will burn it down.

Then, after years of the war between the Goat Builders and the Goat Burners, a faction decided they would make their own goat, perhaps as a decoy goat, I don’t know. The new goat was smaller and easier to demolish. The Wikipedia page has a list of the ways people found to kill the new goat. ‘“Smashed.” “Collapsed.” “Rammed with car.”)

Then the two pro-goat factions battled each other. To quote the Wikipedia page,

“There was some hostility between the Natural Science Club and the Southern Merchants, evidenced by the fact that the Natural Science Club put up a sign near their goat wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone, except the Southern Merchants.”

I know the citizens of Gävle probably take this very seriously, but I prefer to imagine it  as a merry war. Why is this not a quirky independent Christmas movie? 

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/19

This week the peonies went from this ...

... to this:

The Orange went from this ...

... to this:

Skin

A barbecue place in my area serves deep fried chicken skin as an appetizer.

”Well that’s keto,” I thought, and I ordered some.

Heaven. Two cups of tasty crunchy chicken skin.

Two days later, I made a spatchcocked chicken, and of course the real appeal there is the crispy skin. Gary elected to eat a sub sandwich instead of extra helpings of my spatchcocked chicken, so, before I packed away the leftovers, I took a fork and ate all the crispy skin. Spatchcocked skin doesn’t refrigerate well. Can’t waste it. 

I think my barbecue place should offer turkey skin for the holidays. I also think that Tyson chicken should take all the skin they strip off their skinless breast filets and package it specifically for skin appetizers.

I’ve already bookmarked some crispy skin recipes and I am not even ashamed.

X Feet Apart

I saw an image of the Georgia recount, and thought, “take away the masks and that looks just like the Florida recount in 2000.” Then I realized that while those people aren’t seated as close as you would have seen in 2000, they are not six feet apart.

The six foot rule is not being enforced in my county. Saint Louis county over the river began  enforcing mask and distancing rules as of Monday, as did my brother’s county in Albuquerque. (He described a mad rush on toilet paper and avocados.)

My county still stubbornly pouts, “Ima Amer’can, you can’t tell me whar tuh stand.” No enforcement at all, relying instead on dirty looks and boycotting. (Looking at you, Daniel’s Greenhouse and Nursery.)

Beneath the sign at the pharmacy that says “Customers are encouraged to stand six feet apart” you’ll find stickers on the floor. Spaced three feet apart.

Opportunity for favorite penis joke, again: “Why do women have poor visual spatial perception?” (Hold hands six inches apart.) “Because we keep being told this is nine inches long.”

Procedural

We’ve been watching a lot of detective shows lately. (Poirot is back in the rotation - we’re sticking with it, except for the hard pass on the After the Flood episode.)

Every episode has Japp or Poirot or someone asking “where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

This is how I imagine I would answer that question.

Poirot: “Where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

Me: “I have no idea. That’s a Belgian accent, isn’t?”

Poirot: (beams)

Me: “All right then. Am I free to go?”

Poirot: “Non! Where were you at 8:17 Tuesday evening?”

Me: “All the days just run together in the Pandemic. Tuesday evening? Curse of Oak Island is on Tuesdays at 8:00.”

Poirot: “You have zee TiVo?”

Me: “Oh, you’re right. I record it for later and watch the whole hour in twenty minutes. Let me check the Alexa app ... okay, it says I played ‘Color My World’,at 7:55. I wanted to play it on my guitar, but I didn’t remember how it goes, and I either have to have  heard it recently or I have to see the words  —“

Poirot: “Yes, yes, madame. How long did you play your guitar?”

Me: “I play my guitar until my foot falls asleep. I don’t know how long that takes.”

It takes twenty minutes.

Poirot winces at my rendition of Color My World.

He chastises me for ignoring page 1 of The Dummies Guide to Guitar which teaches correct guitar posture and appropriate guitar-playing stools.

However, he agrees I have an alibi for 8:17 Tuesday evening.

Soy Burger

McDonald’s is here to say it will be offering a vegan plant-based burger called the McPlant.

I am here to say, “been there, ate that.” I grew up on plant-based burgers. Our school district served soy burgers exclusively.

Perhaps next year McDonald’s will introduce another of my high school foods, the McRectangle:

From the press release for the McRectangle:

“There are other pizzas out there, but the McRectangle delivers our iconic taste in a stick-to-your-teeth-kind of pizza," the company said in a statement. "It’s made with a steamed, flavorless “crust”,  ketchup-based sauce, and served on a plastic tray molded to fit the classic rectangular pizza shape.”

Perhaps then McDonald’s will serve up the Nike sandwiches.

(I don’t know if my school’s Nike sandwiches were as ubiquitous as pizza ala rectangle. I don’t know why the meat and cheese subs were called Nike sandwiches - either they were imported from Japan or it was a comment on something that weighed twice what you would expect it to, like Nike tennis shoes.)

From the McNike press release:

“There are other plastic-wrapped sub sandwiches you can heat in a special convection oven until hot enough to cause third degree burns, “ the company said in a statement. “People will go wild for the blast of flavor, which is ‘Gummy,’ with notes of ‘250 degrees Fahrenheit.’”

A New Word for Me

Today I met a co-worker who described himself as a brutally frank over-sharer. 

I thought, “Ah, the distaff version of me,” — only I would be the distaff version of him. I needed the opposite.

I looked it up and he would be the “agnate” version of me. Did you all know this? Am I the only one?