Fluffy Furrday

When Augie comes back from the groomer's he looks like a ball of fluff. I wish you could see him in person to get the full fluffy effect.

P.S. re: z

If you were all worried about me and my X's and Y's and z's, the z equaling the death of my Cuisinart, I have some good news. News of the Cuisinart's death was greatly exaggerated.

I went upstairs after my last post to contemplate making guacamole without a Cuisinart. I took apart the Cuisinart and unplugged it and wiped down the base in one of those pathetic, "If I maintain you in death in the manner that I should have maintained you in life, maybe you'll come alive again," ways that reminds me of a mother cat with a baby kitten that doesn't make it . . . [jeez, this post was supposed to be all, "Yay! My Cuisinart works, so maybe all the rest of the stuff going wrong will turn out OK in the end!" and it has taken SUCH a maudlin turn] . . . anyway, I plugged it in and reassembled it for one last ditch effort before I chucked it . . . and it worked just fine.

And I just made some AWESOME guacamole with my 3 for $1 avocados from Henry's in Yorba Linda.

Stuff I'd Like to Cook

Some days you say, "I can't handle X." You avoid dealing with X. Then Y crops up and makes you realize that X is SO no big deal and you could SO handle X if only Y wasn't demanding your attention? Well, I'm ignoring both X AND Y to share with you a few recipes that I'd much rather be making than handling either X or Y.

• Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting from Smitten Kitchen via Not Martha - did I mention that I recently found out my father-in-law hates maple syrup? The very concept of someone not liking maple syrup blows my mind.
  
• Bakerella's Moist Yellow Cake via Not Martha - though maybe without the artificial butter flavoring
  
• DIY vanilla extract from Vanilla Review via Angry Chicken - did I mention I think I killed my Cuisinart? It's directions TOLD me to put the cheese in the freezer before running it through the shredding attachment. So why oh why did that cause an odd smell and possibly smoke to emanate from the base just prior to becoming completely unresponsive? This has nothing to do with Vanilla Review's instructions for making vanilla extract.
  
• Quick Fix Fajitas from Serious Eats - the death of my Cuisinart is neither the X nor the Y that I am avoiding by composing this post. Let's call it z. Just lowercase. No big thing. This has nothing to to with Serious Eats' recipe for Quick Fix Fajitas.
  
• Pan De Elote (Mexican Pan Cornbread) from Serious Eats
  
• Root Beer Bundt Cake from Serious Eats' Cook the Book series on Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

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VMFA on NPR

All Things Considered is doing a series of reports about museums. Yesterday's installment focused on the director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which the report described as being located in, "an elite Richmond neighborhood." Bob and Rebecca, I always knew you were elite neighbors.

East Coast Tour Highlights

After carving my Barack-O'-Lantern in Richmond with the fam, I continued my east coast tour. For some particularly museum-y highlights please see below for links to four reviews of five exhibits I enjoyed on my journey.

In D.C., the remaining members of A(rg)H attended Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples at the National Gallery of Art.

To get my fiber arts fix I went to the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian to see the TxtStyles/Fashioning Identity exhibit, and the Textile Museum where I saw Timbuktu to Tibet: Rugs and Textiles of the Hajji Babas.

In a close race, my favorite museum exhibit from my east coast tour was The Panza Collection at The Hirshhorn Museum.

Last, but by no means least, I went to Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum.

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You're a Turkey

I am in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving. Twelve years ago Bob joined me for Thanksgiving in Hilton Head with the in-laws. That was when we developed the "game" "You're a turkey." In honor of that monumental occasion I have composed a brief recreation.
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: ...
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: ...
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [furrows brow]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [continued brow furrowing]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [add "huh?" mouth to brow furrowing]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [attempts to ignore Bob & Sarah in the hope they will stop or go away]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [returns to reading book]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [concentrates on book and ignoring Bob & Sarah]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [scowls at book]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [looks up from book scowling]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: >sigh<
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: >mumble< >sigh<
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [stares at Bob & Sarah in disbelief]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: STOP IT!

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Happy Thanksgiving Furrday

Giving Thanks

Ten Things I am Thankful For (a non-exhaustive, non-sequential list):

• David
  
• Augie and Izzy
  
• Bob
  
• Rebecca
  
• Mom
  
• Gentle Reader
  
• We elected Barack Hussein Obama to be the President of the United States of America
  
• The New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
  
• Color theory
  
• Quilting, quilting, quilting!

Sign of the Times

Who was I talking to about the "O" logo for the Barack Obama campaign? He or she didn't like it at all. I completely disagreed, finding it more pleasing than any campaign logo I'd ever seen. Apparently Matthew Yglesias agrees with me. And he has a link to an interview with the designer of the "O".

Collections

As I've stated before, I am not a knitter. I'm also not a crocheter. But I am entranced by Supernaturale's use of a display case as a primer for crochet methods via WhipUp. I'm pretty much a sucker for anything in that sort of display case. But the start white of the crocheted bits against the dark wood is striking. The museum-like display and the labels remind me of Dario Robleto's collections of macabre ephemera in the Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego that I reviewed in October.

I'm similarly charmed by the design boards Lobster & Swan makes to record the things that inspire her each day, which I also found via Design*Sponge. Really, I'm a sucker for anything date-stamped. These collages remind me of On Kawara's Today Series, which you can go see as part of The Panza Collection exhibit at The Hirshhorn Museum.

Quilt News

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is showing Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt through December 14, 2008. In conjunction with that exhibit the PMA is showing Quilt Stories: The Ella King Torrey Collection of African American Quilts and Other Recent Quilt Acquisitions. The PMA is a great museum. I saw this particular Gee's Bend show at The Walters Museum in Baltimore. It's a definite must-see.

Also in quilt related news, Dear Ada shared some pieces from Sherri Lynn Wood's collection of Passage Quilts. These quilts commemorate and honor personal relationships, milestones, and rites of passage. You can read more about these quilts in the November/December 2008 issue of FiberArts.

Recipe Round Up

Serious Eats is doing a series of recipes adapted from Martha Stewart's latest cookbook, Martha Stewart's Cooking School. I have a couple of her cookbooks, and I never use them. The recipes are usually overly complicated or involve obscure ingredients or equipment (of course, I haven't really perused them since I started my cooking kick in Indiana, so maybe I wouldn't find them so esoteric or challenging now). But the recipes Serious Eats cooked so far seem pretty doable.

A few that I've been contemplating:

• Braised Red Cabbage with Caramelized Apples
  
• One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes With Swiss Meringue Buttercream
  
• Garlic and Rosemary Potato Puree

Recipes not from the Martha Stewart book that I'm contemplating making:

• Mushroom and Chicken Risotto from food writers Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza, who are writing a cookbook focusing on minimizing the use of meat, which was one of the suggestions in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. Via Serious Eats.
  
• We think our baking powder biscuit recipe is pretty darned awesome. But I'm tempted to try Amanda Clarke's biscuit recipe from Serious Eats.
  
• We think our pancake recipe from The Grit Cookbook is pretty darned awesome, too. But I'm tempted to try Mark Bittman's Rich Ricotta Pancakes. Via Serious Eats.
  
• David's Mom used to make meringues pretty regularly to serve with fresh fruit for dessert. I've never attempted it. But I'm tempted to try ditte isager's recipe from Design*Sponge. It's worth looking at the recipe for the pictures alone, even if you'll never make a meringue.

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Round Up

In this round up: embroidery patterns meet technology, bag making tutorials, underbritches, french seams and hand-rolled hems, collages, decoupaged ceilings, stenciled cement, space-aged chicken coop, sheep, recycle Brita filters, recycle CDs, wash fruit & veg, persimmons, Obama and food politics, Obama and criminal justice, and a funny post title.

SharonB, formerly of In A Minute Ago, currently of Pin Tangle, shared an online resource for vintage embroidery patterns, J. F. Ingalls, which is cool. But what's even cooler is she links to two tutorials from the same resource about how to use GIMP to turn illustrations from the catalog into usable designs AND to enlarge a design without getting the fuzzies, i.e. it shows you how to turn images into a vector images.

I have this very specific drawstring bag project in the sourcing materials phase that might be helped out by one or more of the bag tutorials collected by KathRed over at WhipUp.

I'm not the only one interested in Angry Chicken's underthings. WhipUp mentioned her unmentionables and collected a few more panty production links.

I'm not remotely interested in making a french scarf, but I am interested in learning how to sew a french seam and how to sew a hand-rolled hem both of which Colette explains clearly with beautiful pictures. Via WhipUp.

I'm in love with impactist's photos of cut paper collages over at Design*Sponge.

When I was in my extreme fish-themed bathroom phase I would have been all about decoupaging my bathroom ceiling with printouts of fish after seeing this awesome DIY decoupaged ceiling project over at Design*Sponge. I'm over fish in bathrooms, but I wonder what else I could do.

Design*Sponge has a Before & After showing some pretty impressive stenciling on a cement patio. This has totally set my mind racing about ways to spruce up our back patio with paint.

Yanko Design featured a very modern looking chicken coop via Re-Nest. I can't actually find any information about whether it is in production. C'est la vie. It might look more sleek in the backyard than the Eglu, I found in June also at Re-Nest, which appears to be for sale in the U.K.

Of course we all know chickens are the gateway-livestock to sheep. Serious Eats posted about people becoming sheep farmers and artisanal cheese makers . . . a dream I know at least a few of us share.

According to Re-Nest, the Take Back the Filter campaign, which I mentioned back in May, has succeeded! So start setting aside your used Brita filters because starting in January you can drop off filters at Whole Foods Markets or mail them in.

Did you know you can recycle CDs and DVDs? It's true, according to Re-Nest.

Re-Nest suggests a novel & eco-friendly method to really clean produce.

To supplement my persimmon post, Re-Nest has more information about persimmon buying and consuming.

On the food politics front, Gristmill has been closely watching the Obama transition team for signs about the future of the Department of Agriculture and other key food-policy posts.

In other political news, Prof. Berman shared his thoughts on what presumptive Attorney General Eric Holder might do in terms of criminal justice and sentencing. He also shared his criminal justice wish list for the incoming Obama administration. He zooms in on the criminal justice section of the a new publication from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, entitled "Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President."

Lastly, The Most Hilarious Blog Post Title if You Think Like a 12 Year Old Boy: Dingell Waxed

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Vacation Furrday

The boys relaxing in their first hour of Thanksgiving vacation.

Sphinxy says, "Riddle me this, who's the cutest?"

David and Izzy confer, "We are the cutest, no?"
Izzy sticks his tongue out in triumph.
Zoom in for cuteness!

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Birthday Prezzie

In finally unpacking my suitcase from my East Coast Tour in order to pack it for my Thanksgiving in Hilton Head, I found the AWESOME gift Bob and Rebecca gave me for my birthday while I was in Richmond: a set of sassy post-its! I totally need this as I have finally worked my way through my extensive post-it collection that I may have borrowed from my last job before law school.
How many times have I needed a tiny post-it tab that says "Moo"? So very many times. And yes, the sassy words are on every single post-it, not just the top one. I believe B&R got these from Mongrel, the super cute shop in Carytown. If you can't get to Carytown, you can buy them online from the source: Knock Knock.
I am also entirely fond of the pirate post-its. Maybe I could write in some parentheses and use them for my Art History Reading Group, (aka A(rg)H). Thank you, Bob & Rebecca!

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Birthday Prezzie

Yesterday I received a belated birthday prezzie from my friend Julia. Along with homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, she sent me a beautiful handmade scarf.

She knit it out of variegated blue ribbon. I've been wearing the two scarves she knit me for my birthday in 2005 in the cold weather climates of Washington, D.C., and Bloomington, Indiana. This ribbon scarf is perfect for the warmer climes of southern California. Thank you, Julia!

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Do I Have 4 Cents?

Do you want to give your two cents to President-Elect Barack Obama? I've already posted a few opportunities to pool your two cents with like-minded organizations. Here are a couple more: Amnesty International and Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Amnesty International has an app that helps you write a letter to President-elect Obama (requires registration) asking him to demonstrate his commitment to justice by:

• Announcing the timeline to close Guantánamo
  
• Issuing an executive order to ban torture and other ill-treatment as defined under international law
  
• Ensuring that an independent inquiry into the USA’s detention and interrogation practices in its “war on terror” is set up

Fascinating that both NOW and Amnesty International emphasize the individual letter writing format rather than the petition format. I wonder if these time-tested NGOs have found letters demonstrably more effective than petitions.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums has a partially editable letter to President-elect Obama stating:

Congratulations on your victory. As you now prepare to take office, I am sure you are assembling a policy agenda for the beginning of your term. I urge you to include federal sentencing reform as a high priority for your administration.

As a concerned citizen and member of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), I believe that the one-size-fits all nature of mandatory minimum sentences undermines a basic principle of American justice - that the punishment should fit the crime and the individual. As you develop your criminal justice agenda, please keep in mind these key facts about mandatory minimum sentences:

- Mandatory minimum sentences prevent the courts from considering the facts of each case or the individual's role. For example, only the weight and type of drug, or the presence of a firearm during a felony offense, determine the length of a mandatory minimum sentence. Judges cannot lower a mandatory minimum sentence because of the circumstances of the case or a person's role, motivation, or likelihood of repeating the crime.

- Mandatory minimum laws often punish low-level defendants more harshly than those who are more culpable. Those with higher levels of involvement in an offense that carries a mandatory minimum often have information to give prosecutors in exchange for a sentence reduction. However, people at the periphery of these cases - for instance, drug couriers, addicts or relatives of drug dealers - often have no information to give to prosecutors and end up with a longer sentence.

- Public support for mandatory minimum sentences has waned. According to a recent poll commissioned by FAMM, 59 percent of Americans oppose mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders. And fully 78 percent of Americans agree that courts - not Congress - should determine an individual's prison sentence.

- Mandatory minimum sentences are the least effective means of reducing drug use and sales. At a time of financial crisis, our sentencing policies should be cost effective, not just costly. Treatment of substance abusers is eight to nine times more cost effective than long mandatory sentences, according to the RAND Corporation.

I believe the time has come for a new approach on federal sentencing issues, one that upholds the traditions of individualized justice that Americans hold dear. I sincerely hope that you will give mandatory minimum sentencing reform the attention it deserves.

Thank you for your attention to this issue. I wish you the best of luck during your transition and beyond.

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Crisis Breeds Neologism

David coined a new term to describe our fun, non-mandatory evacuation from the fires last weekend: evacucation. We had a dog-friendly hotel all picked out and everything.

Ash

This is a picture of ash on our deck left over from the fires in Brea and Yorba Linda this weekend. Our place is about three miles from the southwestern corner of the voluntary evacuation area for the Brea fire Saturday evening. So we're just fine. Smells like the bonfire at summer camp . . . any suggestions for getting that out of the carpets? And the dogs?

Fire Furrday

For our fun, non-mandatory evacuation from the fires, we took the dogs to the Huntington Beach dog park.

The smoke from the fires made the sunset extra gorgeous.

This was Augie's first time at the Pacific Ocean and Izzy's first time at any ocean.

Unfortunately we didn't get close enough to the water's edge to see if Izzy would hop in.

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