A house in the clouds

I hope that Frightened Rabbit have seen Up, since I think this song has a lot to do with the movie (go have an adventure and make tiny changes to Earth!). I even think that Carl Fredricksen would really enjoy them, since they're not rap and not they're not too noisy. All of their songs are just as good as the one below, especially because of their wonderful Scottish accents.




The kids dancing around in this video make me happy every time I watch it, as do the thank you notes they make the band at the end. It's almost like they're saying, "I have just met you and I love you!"

How to turn scary green things into junk food

Maple-glazed asparagus







The pictures don't really do the asparagus justice. It was so green and so gorgeous that I felt it would be a disservice to just boil it in some water and throw it on a plate. Luckily, the very crop share that I got the asparagus from provides recipes on their blog, and things in life generally turn out well when you pour maple syrup on them.

The actual recipe is here, but here is the short version: Cook the asparagus in olive oil. When it starts to brown, drizzle maple syrup and coat evenly. Turn off the heat and add sea salt and butter. It tastes like candy, and does real candy make your pee smell funny? That's right, an added bonus.

Roasted Kale



Kale is difficult to make very interesting, so when I heard that this recipe turns kale into something like "potato chips," I thought it was worth a try.

Chop up the kale into manageable pieces. Toss with some olive oil and some sesame oil if you have it (sesame oil brings out the flavor in kale). Add some garlic, red pepper, black pepper or anything else that you might want your kale to taste like. Cover a baking sheet with foil and spread out the marinated kale. Cook at 375 for 10-15 minutes. Turn the kale over as needed and continue cooking until kale starts to brown and become brittle. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve.

One important component to both of these recipes, and many other ones, is sea salt , further proving that it is in fact one of the things that white people like.

Learn more about Horse and Buggy Produce - they got started when one guy discovered an isolated Mennonite market and wanted to share the wealth. You can also learn more about organic farming in general and find a CSA in your neck of the woods at Local Harvest.

A guy walks into a bar...

There are lots of different versions of 'funny' in the world. One would think that the New Yorker caption contest, found online and in the back of each issue, would want to celebrate that. You'd think that a contest opened up to the public, who must notice that the normal cartoons aren't very funny, would go well. I'm finding that this is increasingly not the case. I worked with fifth graders who are funnier. (That's not sarcasm. I taught creative writing at an elementary school and gave the kids blank New Yorker cartoons so they would come up with a caption as a warm-up exercise. The best one? A picture of a husband and wife sitting on the couch. He is completely covered in hair, Cousin It-style. The caption? "I think I need to shave.")

The ones that win are starting to resemble the caption for every other cartoon in the magazine: bland, obvious (or not obvious enough), sort of making sense but not really worth saying. As with most things in life, we can turn to Family Guy to make a clear, well-informed point:

Last summer I submitted my own take on a cartoon, which I was positive I would win. It was too hilarious not to win, or at least this is what I thought before noting that my version of hilarious is much different than the New Yorker's version of hilarious. The picture was of a man who had failed at shooting himself and in the process wrecked most of the living room with gun shots. His wife stands angrily at the door. My idea? "This is why we can't have nice things!" Maybe not the funniest thing in the world, but certainly better than "Once you've finished killing yourself, come to bed." Oh, the existentialist anguish of modern society! The lack of connection! The perils of the modern marriage! What droll personalities these pencil drawings seem to have.
My more recent foray stings even more. The picture is of two couples sitting in a living room that has the whole universe as a backdrop. My idea? "We moved here because it has more space." Their winning commentary on society? "5,000 galaxies and nothing on."
Clearly I'm not getting over it anytime soon. Which is why it's become my mission to win this contest, at least once, and have fun coming up with hilariously unwinnable alternatives in the process.

For the New Yorker contest, I've also had some near-successes with stock phrases. I figure that by reusing the same New Yorker-friendly idea each week, one of them is bound to stick eventually. Two good ideas to start with:

"I sure could use a martini."
"This reminds me: you're fired."

See below an example of how this caption can be used successfully. It wasn't deemed to be New Yorker funny, but it still works with the picture. Also, it was a pain to go back through the archives and find the actual cartoon, so Matt drew his own take on it, which has a lovely Don Hertzfeldt flavor to it.



And a more recent cartoon:



"Man, I sure could use a martini!"
"This reminds me: You're fired."


Perhaps to be beaten by:

"Hot enough for ya?"

I imagine that the winner will create an overextended metaphor using the desert wasteland of the economy. I don't know enough about the economy to do that, so I'll be counting on someone more New Yorker-ish will be able to beat me to it.




For more takes on silly cartoons, see Garfield Minus Garfield, The Strip Doctor and Marmaduke Explained.

And if you didn't get the Don Hertzfeldt reference or you just need some screwed up cartoons in your life:

Cookievangelist?

These cookies:me::fancy wine:fancy wineperson

I'm bringing back the old-school SAT analogy because finally, years later, it's a useful format. I imagine that eating this cookie is an experience much like enjoying a fine wine. I'd try to be more specific with this analogy but I don't know what makes a wine "fine" except maybe being really, really old. I'm not too picky about my junk food and at first read I thought that the New York Times article on chocolate chip cookies, linked below, was hilariously and appropriately pretentious...until I ate the cookies. You can literally taste lots of different things going on in this cookie. The body of this cookie, if you will. Caramel. Butter. Tannins? I'm still not clear what tannins are, so maybe.

Much like a fine wine, you want to let the cookie age. Well, not the cookie, but the cookie batter. After mixing everything up, let the dough sit in the fridge for 12-36 hours. The lucky people behind this article did a test by cooking bits of the same batch of dough after a certain number of hours. The dough that refrigerated the longest came out more golden, with more texture and with lots more flavors than dough that was cooked immediately or sat for a shorter amount of time. The dough itself will at first seem a bit drier and more crumbly than if you baked it immediately - this just means that the wet ingredients had time to saturate evenly in the dough, and that in 18-20 minutes you will be enjoying some crunchy-soft heaven.

I'm not quite fancy enough to use all of the listed ingredients (i.e. the French and expensive-sounding chocolate they recommend). Crushing up a Ghirardelli dark chocolate bar was more than good enough, and I've even used Kroger-brand chocolate chips in the past when I was feeling extra classy. Just don't tell anyone at the New York Times.

Here is a link to the article and the recipe. I used dark brown sugar out of necessity, which made the cookies a lot thicker and heavier. Still good, but you won't want more than one. The batter itself is amazing, but the key thing no matter what recipe you use is to sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on top of each ball of dough before baking.




Watch on to learn more about the pro-cookie agenda and Cookie Monster's self-identification as the 'Robert Downey Jr. of cookies'. I believe these cookies would make Stephen Colbert proud.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Cookie Monster
colbertnation.com
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Strawberry desserts and dolls

These crop share strawberries were too gorgeous not to take pictures of:







After their photo shoot, they formed the basis of some delicious strawberry shortcake. I didn't think I liked strawberry shortcake, but that's because I had only ever had the sponge-like fake shortcake from the grocery store. Making it at home is highly recommended - these came out with the perfect sweetness, with a crispy outside and a soft and warm inside.

Strawberry Shortcakes
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the dry ingredients. Using your hands and/or a spoon, mix in slices of chilled butter until the mixture becomes crumbly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and put about 1/3 of a cup of dough down for each shortcake. You should come out with about 8. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes, or until cakes start to turn golden on top.





Since I've had Strawberry Shortcake on the brain, I kept thinking about a doll that I used to have. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, but now that I've looked it up, I've realized that it's inherently creepy, maybe in a David Lynch way.

"Cupcakes hide inside their wrappers 'til it's time to surprise - then out they pop!"

Beards, babies and other dangers

In researching a project on teacher tenure, I was lucky to enough to find this editorial from the LA Times outlining a history of the teacher tenure movement. Not to be repetitive in these posts, but tenure was originally a reaction to discrimination against...guess who? Hint: not rich white men.

Things that turned women from caring educators into abusive harlots included:

- wearing skirts above the ankle
- being out in the evenings
- being married
- being pregnant
- having a beard. Okay, this one was for men. The teacher in question was charged with growing a beard that was "an outgrowth of his radicalism". All I can picture is this. And this. Which makes me laugh.

I had a college professor that looked like Will Ferrell, and I secretly longed for the day that he would bring a cowbell to class. This made me come to class every day and learn, learn, learn in the process. Educational beards - 1, weird 60's rules - 0.

Learn to coo, learn to moo

My summer class focuses on the history of American education, and so far has been based around a PBS documentary from 2001. It's very well done, and features background music to fit each decade. My personal favorite played as young women in the 1950's learned to cook and wash fake babies, in training for their required real babies later on. It's called "I'm Gonna Be An Engineer," and the original version is by Peggy Seeger. Possible relation Pete Seeger has his own take on it.




"You only got the job because I can't afford a man": You know that current nagging little question about why teachers aren't paid very much? Trace it back to how teachers were hired during Westward Expansion in America.

Men would only become teachers if they "hit their head too many times" and couldn't be of use anywhere else. Women, however, were biologically built to be mentors and carers. It was a "moral calling", said Catharine Beecher, founder of teacher training schools and 1/2 of another famous pair of siblings. Conveniently enough for those writing the checks, women could also be paid less than their male counterparts, and recruiting efforts were tailored accordingly. Think of it like being a work study student that every department wants, except women didn't get to pick their department or job or really anything, and actually they weren't allowed to go to college until way past pioneer days, so that's kind of where the analogy falls apart. Women did need a 6th grade education in order to teach little pioneer kids and, like all fine ladies, they were trained in Connecticut before they were sent out West to shape a changing a world. Assuming their oxen didn't die and no one got dysentery, pioneer education was ready to roll.

And just because you can't use the word 'pioneer' this many times and not mention it:

Swiss Chard

(nom nom nom)

I had never had Swiss chard before, and I assumed it would be like every other similar-looking early summer green thing at the farmer's market (needs lots of added flavor, tastes tough and intensely healthy, like going to vegetable-eating boot camp). Nothing at the stand was labeled and I only grabbed it because I heard someone else identify it. That way, I could say I tried it, and if it went horribly wrong I would know what to avoid the next time. I'm glad to say that can't be further from the truth. Imagine, if you will, turning butter into a vegetable. Yes, it's that confusingly good.

Wash leaves and chop into manageable pieces. Cut off the toughest part of the stalk (either discard or save to use in a later recipe - I used it on pizza). Sautee in pan with some olive oil, minced garlic and red pepper flakes. After cooking for about 5 minutes, add some sea salt and some margarine or butter. Enjoy your paradoxically delicious butter-vegetable.

An Animaniacs Lesson

Tutoring middle and high school students on their humanities homework has thrown me into the dangerous realm of history and geography, of which I have limited knowledge. Details evade me, but I'm good at large themes and making things up when necessary (English major, anyone?). After helping an eighth grader study for her uninspired social studies test of labeling a blank map of Europe, I realized that I am in need of some refreshers.

Naturally, this is where the Animaniacs come in. Wikipedia describes the show as one mixing "old fashioned wit, slapstick, pop culture references, and cartoon violence and wackiness". While I love the phrase "cartoon wackiness" more than most things, it's also worth pointing out how smart the show (and the songs) really are. Below is a helpful study guide, for those of us who were young but not impressionable enough the first time around.

The Presidents

The Countries

The States and Capitals

Is there a reason why it's the British who knows all of the states and capitals?

Bananarama

I made the mistake of buying buttermilk for a previous recipe, forgetting that they sell it big and it only gets used in small doses. I also keep forgetting the easy trick of adding lemon juice to milk. However, scrambling to use up food before it goes bad can lead to things that taste quite good:







Buttermilk Banana Muffins

1/2 cup margarine
2 eggs
2 bananas, starting to turn black
1 cup sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour, to make things sort of healthy
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk, forlorn and forgotten in the back of the fridge
cinnamon and cardamom as desired

topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup instant oats
1/4 cup flour
2 tbs margarine

Cream together the softened margarine and sugar. Add eggs one a time (mine were poulette eggs bought from my crop share. I felt very cultured, but it turns out that poulette is just a fancy French word for hen). Add in the rest of the ingredients, mixing well. Pour batter into a greased or paper-lined muffin tin. Mix together the brown sugar, oats, flour and cut in the margarine until the mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle topping onto muffin batter*. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow deliciousness to ensue.

*Really just sprinkle it. I had too much topping, and in trying to use it all up between the 12 muffin tins, I overloaded each one and it didn't all get a chance to cook. They are still delicious, despite the fact that they are shedding a suspicious-looking white powder.

Note: recipe makes more than one muffin.

This is the newer of my two orchids from the local farmer's market. It is a towering giant, and I haven't killed it yet, which is a point of pride for me.