I’d eat people if it was legal 30 March 2010

So I’m sure you’ve heard about the rain here on the East Coast.  Yeah, not fun.  It’s been pouring for a good 48 hours, and the ground was already saturated from the rain we got earlier in the month.  There’s nowhere for all this rain to go, so rivers have been overrunning their banks.  Basements are flooded, roofs are leaking, and it’s impossible to go anywhere without getting soaked.

It’s still not enough to convince me to use an umbrella.  That’s why God made hooded jackets!  Sheesh.

Apparently my tiny little state made the national news this morning.  At least it wasn’t for firing the entire teaching staff of a high school, which is what happened in nearby Central Falls, Massachusetts.  That made the national news too.  That’s a scary school, I have to say.  Our local football team played there, and the game had to be held early in the afternoon because the town’s under curfew for teenagers.  Yikes.

So yeah.  Rhode Island is flooded, and it’s all over the news.  Cranston, near Warwick, is really getting hit hard because the Pawtuxet River is overflowing.  People from Cranston crack me up.  I haven’t met one yet that didn’t consider the F word to be just another word in the English language.  They drop F-bombs like it’s no big thing.  Hey, I’m a fan of the group “Intelligent, Classy, Well-education Women Who Say F*ck A Lot” over on FB, so that’s no criticism.  It’s just surprising how flippant they are about it, after being around people who look at me askance when I say, “hell.”

Fortunately I live on the high ground.  No flooding for me!  My house is warm and dry and water-tight.  Which is not to say that every house in my neighborhood is.  There are several yards that are completely flooded, and I know there must be a few flooded homes.  I’ve not yet been affected by the flooding in my area, though another mother at Grace’s school informed me that one of the side streets was so flooded she had to go completely around.  Yikes.

But it’s meant I haven’t wanted to go anywhere.  I did haul myself out to the Christmas Tree Shops to pick up a new raincoat for Grace.  She had a pink one with flowers as pockets that I think I bought in Washington state, but the pocket started tearing off.  It’s just plastic, not really built to last.  The Christmas Tree Shops had kids’ raincoats on special for $2 each.  Of course, these are not durable at all, but they keep her dry.  She has so many sweatshirts that she can wear under the raincoat to keep her warm that I don’t see the point in buying a real raincoat for her.  She does, however, have real rain boots, nice insulated ones from Land’s End, and I think that’s more important.

I also managed to find Utz Crab Chips!  I could not believe they have them.  My sister had led me to believe that you can only really get them in the Chesapeake Bay area.  She has a friend in DC send them to her in Atlanta because she loves them so much.  And the great thing about the Christmas Tree Shops is they’re like an upscale Big Lots, so everything’s cheap.  Including these chips.  I walked out of that store with three bags of chips (they’re small-ish bags), the raincoat, a new hat for Grace, and a toy for ME — and my total was just over $9.

With the weather being as crappy as it has been the last few days, all I’ve been doing is reading — hence the above photo.  Funnily enough, when I’ve got my glasses on, I can’t stand to keep them on as I’m reading.  So I stick them on top of my head or taken them off entirely.  It’s something about the way the lenses correct my vision that makes the print just a little too annoyingly small.  It’s not my age catching up to me — it’s the way I have always been, since I got glasses back in the 5th grade.  But yet if I have my contacts in, it doesn’t seem to bother me.  Go figure.  I am, however, seriously blind; I have to hold my book that close, no farther, or else I can’t see the words.  I think my eyes were measured at 20/400 once; that means, according to Wikipedia, that if my eyesight couldn’t be corrected, I would be on the border of being legally blind.  I don’t doubt it; it sucks being without my glasses.  I cannot see!  One weekend when Kurt and I were first dating, I’d forgotten my glasses on campus and my contacts had torn.  I had to go a full day without being able to see, and it was horrible.  I can only see clearly about three inches from my face, so Kurt had to lead me around almost like I was blind.  I ended up with the worst headache from squinting to try to clear up my vision a bit.

I will never again be caught without my glasses.

I have to say, I’m scared of the surgery.  For one thing, I can’t afford it.  But for another, contacts correct my vision down to 20/15, and there’s no guarantee with surgery.  My eyes might be too bad for them to be able to correct my vision to where I wouldn’t need glasses anyhow.  I think Kurt’s a better candidate; he’s only slightly near-sighted, though to hear him say it, he’s far worse off than I am.  He even wears his glasses in the pool.

I just hope the girls inherit his vision.  Mine is just Too Awful.  I can’t even see the time projected on the ceiling from Kurt’s alarm clock!  Thus far, Grace seems to see clearly, but I do watch both my kids for signs of squinting.  My parents didn’t notice I couldn’t see till my teacher told them I couldn’t see the board from the front row when I was in the fifth grade.  The first time I put glasses on my face, I was shocked at everything I’d been missing, the clarity of every leaf on the trees, the puffiness of the clouds, the separation of every blade of grass.  I can still remember staring at the willow trees in our backyard in sheer amazement.  To this day, I glory in how far I can see with my contacts in, especially if I’m having a “good contacts day.”  Sometimes I’ll even mention it to Kurt, I’ll tell him that I can see every little brick in the building way over there, and he’s somewhat dismissive.

But I know what it’s like not to be able to see clearly, so it’s not something I take for granted.  And if I couldn’t see, how could I read???  Oh, the humanity!

And time goes by… 26 March 2010

Sorry, folks, but the Righteous Brothers are wrong.  Time does not go by so slowly.  How is already the end of March?  Where has the time gone?  It feels like just last week I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my friends Chelle and Traci for a visit here to Newport, anxious only because I’d not yet met Traci before in the flesh.  But that was already nearly a year ago.

How is that even possible?

I know days and days are going by without my writing.  But as quickly as time is passing, it feels like nothing of import is happening.  I wake up, I take care of the kids, I do my housework, I cook dinner, I watch tv with Kurt in the evening, we go to bed — and the same thing happens all over again the next day.  Mind you, I am not complaining about my life.  I enjoy my uneventful, relatively stress-free life.  It just doesn’t feel like I have much to write about here.

But the time zooming by is stressing me out.  It feels like it’s slipping through my fingers, and the harder I’m trying to grasp at it, the faster it slips through.  I cannot believe that in four or five months I’ll leave Rhode Island for good.  That fact in itself is making me sad.  I have really enjoyed my time here, and though I enjoy Virginia, I will really miss my time in New England.  We’ve got so much to do and see still.  I still haven’t managed to get up to Vermont, and we’ve only driven through New Hampshire to get to Maine.  There’s so much to Boston we haven’t seen, not least of which is the USS Constitution.  Connecticut is still virtually unexplored, unless you count a few random trips to Mystic — and no, we haven’t gone to Mystic Pizza, though I have photos of it.

I will also miss the freedom I have here.  I am very fortunate to have a husband who steps up and takes care of the kids as much as I do, and who is perfectly okay with my going out with my friends every so often.  We’ve recently learned that Kurt’s new ship in Virginia will be leaving on a six-month deployment, so as soon as we move down there, he’ll have to fly out to meet the ship somewhere.  In a way, it’s a good thing because it gets the deployment out of the way right off the bat, and he’ll miss about half of it.  Three months away is pretty manageable.  But it will be weird to have him gone so long when he’s been home for three years.

No more nights out with my girlfriends, though.

But of course every cloud has a silver lining.  My best friend lives in Virginia Beach, so I see many evenings spent together as our children play together.  Her husband is in Iraq right now, so it’ll just be us two together.  And that’s quite an exciting thing, considering the last time we lived close to one another was ten years ago — coincidentally in southern Virginia, though we’ve both lived in other states since then.

I just wish I could slow it down, just a tiny bit.  I’d like to feel like I have a bit more breathing room, a bit more time to just enjoy my time without feeling like I have to squeeze something out of every precious second.  But I fear that time is long gone now…

In other news, I have been eating my weight in delicious foods all week long.  It’s Restaurant Week here in Newport, which means that all the local restaurants have banded together and decided to offer three course menus for both lunch and dinner at reasonable prices, $16 for lunch and $30 for dinner.  When you consider that some of these places would offer one entree for over $30, you can see it’s an excellent deal.  My friends and I live for Restaurant Week, as it would be virtually impossible for us to afford meals at these places without relinquishing our first-born children.

To that end, I have visited three restaurants this week.  We chose the high-end ones to get the best deal.  I mean, I love the Brick Alley Pub as much as anyone, but I can go there any night of the week and spend less than $30 per person for dinner.  I wanted something fancy.

On Tuesday, my friends and I visited The White Horse Tavern.  It dates from 1673 and is the oldest venue in Newport.  I love it so much because it really feels like you’re traveling back in time.  And the food was really yummy!  We sat next to a window with original glass, and since it was such a dreary, rainy day, we really felt a cold draft wafting through that window.  My friend asked if we could be moved, but the waitress assured us she’d just put on the heat.  Boy howdy, did she ever!  I was sitting right on top of the heating vent, and by the end of the meal I was sweating pretty profusely.  But my friend was comfortable, so it came out even.

On Wednesday, my friends and I visited Restaurant Bouchard.  I had never before been to a French restaurant, but this was good!  Both of my friends opted for the pâté.  You know, I hate to say it, but I don’t think I’m a pâté kind of girl.  I have had foie gras, which was quite delicious, but pâté made from other kinds of livers is just too strong for me.  Oh well.  They were just glad not to have to share, I think.

But on our way there, we were behind a car that kept swerving angrily behind a white minivan.  Finally at a stoplight, the driver of the angry car stuck his arm out the window and flipped off the driver of the white minivan.  At that point, I decided to back off a little, not knowing what the crazy driver was going to do.  Later on, as we walked from the restaurant back to my car, my friend M insisted she saw the driver of the angry car in another restaurant downtown.  Fortified by both a martini and some wine, she marched into that restaurant and asked the guy if he’d been the one driving the angry car.  Only M thought the car was red, but the man insisted he drives a green car.  My friend E and I could not believe she’d confronted that man, even though he denied being the one.  I tell you what, though — the three of us would make horrible eyewitnesses.  I could have sworn the angry car was black, E insisted it was blue, and M thought it was red.

Please don’t call us to the stand.  We just can’t agree.

Last night, Kurt and I had some time to ourselves and had dinner at the Castle Hill Inn.  The early interventionist working with Mary Ellen goes there every year on her anniversary, so she clued us in on asking for the front room.  And what a view!  Water views from either direction, spread out in a panorama from my seat.  It was so lovely.  And the food!  Super amazing.  A+++ WOULD EAT AGAIN, as my friend would say.  Too bad I can’t afford to go there but once or twice a year during Restaurant Week…

If you’re interested in seeing what I had at these three restaurants, you can start at THIS PHOTO and then click on the next photo in the set.  Try not to drool over your computer monitors, however.

Put your insides all on ice 22 March 2010

This weekend I hosted a dinner party.  See, Kurt has these coworkers that he’s pretty good friends with, and we’d already been to Family A’s home for their son’s birthday party, and to Family B’s house for a dinner party consisting of Colombian tamales.  (Yum…)  So you see how it was obviously my turn.

I wanted to make enchiladas.  I make these killer enchiladas, a recipe I bastardized from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, in that  I saute up some ground beef with homemade taco seasoning.  The Enchanted Broccoli Forest is a vegetarian cookbook, you see.  It’s a really rad cookbook; not only does it have some really excellent recipes, but it’s also completely hand-lettered and hand-drawn.  That’s pretty much why I bought it in the first place — that, and the copy I have is signed by the author.  I found it at a used book store in Washington for cheap.  Then my mom gave me her copy that my grandma gave her a long, long time ago, and which is inscribed from my grandma to my mom.  Now you know why I have to keep both copies, especially since the author-inscribed one is the revised version.

Back to the enchiladas.

What makes them vegetarian is that the filling is made up of zucchini and onion.  I even make my own red sauce, and once everything is assembled and baked (with copious quantities of Jack cheese, because cheese makes everything better), it comes out super, super yummy.  I do use flour tortillas, however, as neither I nor my husband are fans of corn tortillas.  So maybe they’re not traditional enchiladas, but they’re damn good.

Take my word for  it.

Kurt vetoed the enchiladas, however, as we’d just had the aforementioned Colombian tamales.  I guess he didn’t really want to overdo the Hispanic food, though that’s one of my favorite cuisines.  Wait.  I have so many favorites that I guess I don’t really have a favorite.  I pretty much haven’t met a cuisine I don’t like.

Now you know why I’m so chubby.

But what to make for a dinner party that involves so many people?!  It wasn’t just Family A and Family B; Kurt felt that we should invite a recently divorced coworker of his as well, and it turned out that he would have his two daughters with him this weekend.  That brought my total numbers up to seven adults and nine kids.

*gulp*

Have I mentioned that my house isn’t very large?  My table sits six comfortably, but somehow we squished all seven adults around it without feeling too cramped.  But nine kids?!  What do you do with nine kids?!  I was hoping that it would be warmer, but once the sun went down, it was just too cold to have them eat outside.  Ultimately we brought Grace’s picnic table inside for the littlest kids, and the bigger kids ate at our breakfast table on bar stools.

So it worked out.

Now what to make?!  I finally decided on Nigella Lawson’s One-Pan Sage-and-Onion Chicken and Sausage.  I’d made it several times before for company because it makes a lot of food, and since it’s a marinated dish, you do 90% of the work the night before.  But of course there had to be a few wrenches thrown in, most particularly the fact that the commissary was out of the sausages that I like to use.  Hmph.  Instead of a couple dozen sausages made by local company, I went with Trader Joe’s Irish bangers — which are seriously to die for.  I only wish I’d thought to buy more than a dozen.

I pretty much doubled the recipe and after marinating the chicken over night, dumped it and the sauce into two separate roasting pans.  I also lengthened the roasting time by 15 minutes to allow for the extra meat.  The problem is, the white meat turned really dry, and the juices burnt to the bottom of the darker roasting pan.

Dammit.

It didn’t help that my guests were in the kitchen with me when I pulled the pans out of the oven, so it’s not like I could just pile the non-burnt pieces onto the platter and call it good.  I mean, I did that anyhow, but I admit to being somewhat embarrassed about it.  My guests raved over it and thought it was delicious, so the flavor was obviously not affected.

For side dishes, I served up a fresh escarole salad with a homemade vinaigrette, as well as the roasted potato salad that I’ve made several times before.  Boy, is that stuff good!  Roasted potatoes, caramelized onions, and bacon, dressed with Dijon mustard, honey, and sherry vinegar.  Yummm.  Even Kurt’s friend who abhors onions couldn’t get enough of that salad, and informed Kurt today that when we have another get-together, that is the dish I am to bring.

Good thing it’s dead easy to do.

After dinner, the adults sat around and conversed (boys in the living room in front of the tv, girls in the kitchen — why is that??), while the nine children (did I mention there were nine???) ran amok.  It’s amazing how much mess nine children can make in a small house, even though I’d just gone through all of Grace’s toys and set aside a good chunk of them to discard or donate.  The kids found toys I didn’t even realize we had.  I swear, children have some sort of toy-dar that lets them see through walls and closet doors and under beds to locate even the most hidden toy, and it’s always the ones you put away on the highest shelf in hopes they wouldn’t play with it.  It’s like they know.

But all in all, a great time was had by all, and it’s been determined that now we will all get together, Family A and Family B and Single Guy (with and without his girls), every week or two for dinner and fun and kids running amok.  I promise, though, next time I will make my enchiladas.  I’ve got to redeem myself somehow!