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Posts from the ‘Savory’ Category

Apr 4

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Have I fractured my funny scone?

More and more I feel like the wet blanket.  I seem to find certain jokes far less amusing than others—especially jokes that I feel marginalize any group of people or legitimate problem the world is facing.  Rape jokes, sexist jokes…general teasing that has to do with someone’s sexual orientation?  All of it just puts me in a sour mood and I wind up just wanting to leave wherever I’m currently at.  I don’t think I always used to be this way so what is it?  Is it something in the water trickling down from Berkeley that’s making me far too serious or am I just finally experiencing the social issues that were largely only textbook in their reality during adolescence?  Is it that I’ve just become too self-centered to be able to look at myself with an objective eye and laugh?

On one hand I’ve always been “so serious” about perceived injustice.  Even as a child I wanted to save the world.  I guess mom shoulda named me Ka-ka-ka-Katie.  **TRIVIA TIME: Name that movie and win a cookie!  PS: my last trivia winner still needs to email me his info so I can mail out a treat!  Hey you, yeah I’m talking to you, send me your info and any allergens to my blog’s email addy: rollingsreliableblog at g mai l dot com** I do think part of it is that I’m experiencing more of life rather than reading about it.  There are issues that seem far less important than they did and others that seem to be so ignored by people around me that I want to scream.  Sometimes I just want to get out a drum and hold it in someone’s face and yell “WAKE UP!”  The apathy and willful ignorance that serve as a constant state of existence for some…I don’t understand it.  I never have.  Some stupid little voice inside me just won’t shut up and I can’t sit by the sidelines and watch and do nothing.  I have to do something—even if it’s just letting the people I want to defend know I’m here.  I have to do something.

I noticed that there are people in this world just hellbent upon making it a miserable place for the rest of us and I have no desire to be around them.  Thankfully this is a minority of folks and I find that most people are generally decent and well intentioned.  Even so these decent people have a tendency to “kid around” to such an extent that I always feel very distant from them.  The joking, the kidding, the teasing…I don’t know it just gets old after a while.  I’ve always been one to provide a good ribbing and I like to think that I take as well as I give—but I’m more apt to get annoyed when the target is someone other than myself.  I’ll go up in arms twice as quickly when the butt of the joke isn’t my own.  I’d like to think with all the squats I’ve been doing my own ass is pretty springy and most stuff bounces off of it.  Provided I’ve had enough sleep and coffee that day anyway.  No coffee = no sense of humor.  Word to the wise and future significant others.  Take for example this joke which I’ve heard far too many times and which seems particularly relevant after the flurry of rape culture commentary in the past few weeks:

“Hey what do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”

“Nothing.  You’ve already told her twice.”

There may have been a time and a place, with the right people, where I’d have laughed at that.  Not anymore.  I have no circumstance in mind where I can find a joke like that funny.  Or many many others.  I’m too angry about those people who are trying to make this world a nasty exclusive place to find humor in injustice anymore.  I guess there are just some things that are…difficult for me to laugh about Hubbell.

Part of this too I think comes from my continuing goal to eliminate negativity in my life.  I’ve had so much of it and I’ve had enough.  I’ve had twice, maybe three times, my fair share to contend with—and I’m well aware that it still pales in comparison to what some other people in this world deal with.  I’m just so tired of it.  I can’t control or stop the general trend of the universe toward entropy.  Shit happens – act tough and get over it.  That’s a motto I’m pretty well versed in.  While I can’t control what chaotic elements life invites to the dinner party, I can make sure that my table is set.  I think if I were to be my own super hero it would be “Type A-girl” It’s so much who I am it’s even my blood type.  Badumsh!

I don’t really want to be known as the girl with the giant stick…in the mud but at the same time I can’t just forget about the world either.  I can only promise this: I can’t stop trying to change or control things but I can do my best to not take myself too seriously.  Just know that while I will do my best to accept teasing of my own faults and flaws, I won’t respond as kindly if it involves anyone else I care about.

And on the subject of anal personalities and table settings, how about some SCONES?  Those trademark tea-time pastry of oh-so-proper British ladies.  Since I’m trying to find a way to stay true to myself (the British proper side) but still flex my funny scone (what the Brits might consider the “Cowboy American” side) I offer up to you this melding of American/British sensibilities.  It’s a scone with a classic American twist: apple-cheddar.  Kind of like the southern Apple Cheddar Pie that is so damn good and so damn…colonial.

Dorie Greenspan’s Apple Cheddar Scones

From “Baking from my home to yours” Dorie Greenspan  **I do not own** Read more

Mar 28

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Bitter get on my horse(radish)

Now where did we leave off again?  Oh damn, are we still on the 4 questions?  This is turning out to be a long Seder!  Better get on my horse and keep this thing moving….

Yesterday I said that the youngest child is kept engaged by being required to recite the four questions but we only really went over the first.  The second question is:

Shebb’khol hallelot anu okh’lin sh’ar y’rakot, vehallayla hazze maror.
Why is it that on all other nights we eat all vegetables, but on this night we eat bitter herbs?

Answer: We eat Maror (a bitter herb) to remind us of the bitterness of slavery.

On Tuesday we talked about the first vegetable consumed of the evening—the Karpas.  While it is traditionally something bitter, like parsley, it is not actually the bitter herb to which this refers.  Confused yet?  Remember the symbolism for the Karpas was the dipping in salt water for remembrance of tears.  The second vegetable on the Seder plate is almost always Horseradish which as anyone who has handled raw horseradish knows, is particularly strong and pungent.  This is referred to as the Maror or bitter herb.  The inspiration for this particular ritual comes from the following lines in Exodus:

“And they embittered their lives with hard labor” – Exodus 1:14

“…and with bitter herbs they shall eat it” – Exodus 12:8

I know.  Who lets a book tell them to eat raw Horseradish just to prove a point?  I never said this thing as supposed to make sense….  And yes raw horseradish rather than prepared from a jar.  Vinegar is used to help soften and mute the astringency of the root.  This doesn’t stop me from using vinegar in my recipe below though.  Hey I only said I had to be inspired by the Seder plate for these recipes!

But Olivia why do you Jews have all these funny rules about eating?  Like the Kosher stuff?  What’s up with that?  And what is that “Pareve” or “Parve” thing you mentioned the other day?

Oy vey.  I always dread explaining the Kosher thing, especially since I clearly don’t keep Kosher most of the year.  I make an effort during the high holy days as part of the experience of celebrating the holiday, but otherwise I let the Kosher thing go.  I mean there are two schools of thought in my experience about the Kashrut (Kosher law): It’s commanded by G-d (Adonai) for some omniscient and unchallengeable reason OR they originated out of health and food safety concerns.  Well I don’t really ascribe to belief in a higher power and modern day science has more or less solved any food safety concerns.  For example we know now how to avoid Trichnella, the parasite present in poorly prepared pork.  But here’s the rough and dirty of Kosher laws that will help you if you do happen to have actively practicing Jewish friends:

  • Pork and Shellfish are off the table.  Always.  Pork is considered “unclean” and shellfish were “bottom feeders” and therefore forbidden.  Pork also had the nasty habit of carrying the aforementioned parasite and shellfish even today when prepared incorrectly can carry a slew of nasty bacteria.  Cholera is a horrifying way to die.  Additionally rodents, insects, reptiles and amphibians are all forbidden.  So just don’t go to Asia.
  • Kosher Meat: this isn’t food that’s just blessed by a rabbi.  It actually has to be slaughtered in a certain way and no blood is to be left on the meat.  The slaughtering process that is considered Kosher is designed to help remove all the blood and also to kill the animal in the most quick and humane way possible.
  • Fat that surrounds organs is forbidden.  The kind of fat that lines your liver is different than other kinds of fatty tissue.  Usually not an issue as most Americans don’t eat organ meat anyway.  (I do though.  It’s delicious)
  • No Meat with Dairy.  This is the big one that can throw people for a loop because it means your Kosher keeping friend can’t have a Cheeseburger.  Ever.  The ruling for this comes from a line about not boiling a Kid in its Mother’s milk and I have to admit, when you put it that way, it does seem kind of sadistic doesn’t it?  Anyway what this means is that no meat (Fish and Eggs don’t count though) can be consumed with Dairy or within a set number of hours of eating diary and vice versa.  Butter is considered dairy so that gets pretty restrictive.   Foods that contain neither meat nor dairy are called “Pareve” or “Parve” and these foods are useful because you can eat them with any meal.  Thus whenever I have a recipe that fulfills these rules I like to point it out.  It helps making meal planning a little easier since as you can imagine, a big banquet dinner gets quite difficult when you have to choose between using meat or dairy that night.
    This also means Jewish Lasagna is always vegetarian and therefore very, very boring.  (Not true!  I proved that with vegan lasagna.  But I concede nothing replaces mozzarella and a good bolognese.)

There are a bunch of other rules and details I could provide but this is enough for now I think.  Onto the recipe!  Tonight I made a Potato Kugel.  Oh boy more words we don’t know Olivia.  Okay so a kugel (coo-gull) is essentially a casserole made with noodles or potato.  Since noodles are obviously out during our matzo-only holiday, a potato kugel it is!  This is a staple of Jewish cuisine and there’s almost always a kugel present for any big to-do.  There’s also more often than not a BIG ego contest about who has the best Kugel.  Fueds have formed at many a Synagogue and between mother/daughter in-laws for decades.  Thankfully I have no one to compete with at the moment—Mom never really made kugel—so I can puff my chest out without fear and say mine is best at home.

9 times out of 10 Kugel is made as a sweet dish but this time around I wanted something savory to feature the Maror.  Horseradish goes so nicely with potato doesn’t it?  It’s got a lot of that traditional baked potato flavor without the bacon or the dairy since I use chicken fat.  This recipe can be altered quite easily to be rendered completely Parve by removing the chicken skins and using olive oil.  Or you could then serve it with some sour cream.  Mmmmmmm talk about potato heaven.  Flexibility makes it a great addition to your Jewish cookbook.  Look I talked about Flexibility and didn’t even mention yoga.  Gotta be a record!

Maror Horseradish Potato Kugel

An Olivia Original Read more

Mar 8

3 Comments

SciFriday and the Feminist Mys-Quiche

IMG_2932Today is International Women’s Day and I find myself focusing in on it through the lens of my culture—not the Jewish one but rather the geeky one.  As a woman I often find myself troubled both by the attitudes of the “normies” and the male geeks within the scifi world.  There’s one thing that unifies these two seemingly disparate groups: they remain ever incredulous about the geeks with lovely lady lumps.  Yeah I just wrote that sentence.

In my younger years I digested most of my science fiction in the form of the written word.  I grew up reading both the classics and every bargain bin paperback I could get my hands on.  Heinlein.  Adams.  Asimov.  Scott Card.  Herbert.  Huxley.  Clarke.  Wells.  Bradbury.  Oh…Bradbury.   But what do you notice about all these names?  They’re all male.  Every damn last one.  I have nothing against the male sex mind you and for a long time I didn’t really notice that my bookcase had this imbalance of gender.  I did after all have a few books written by women—Madame L’engle and Lois Lowry for example—but for the most part scifi as a genre was and is largely dominated by men.

For a while I was happy in this little world of spaceships, lasers and dystopian futures.  Then one day I woke up.  I think it coincided with middle school and frankly it kind of shocks me that I don’t remember realizing this sooner.  I had always been a very “girl power” oriented kid.  I was in elementary school during the reign of the platform british diva and definitely spent nights in front of my mirror singing “wannabe” with a hairbrush.  The theme I wrote up for my 10th birthday party?  Girls Rule, Boys Drool—Splash til you Crash Birthday Bash.  It was a pool party—ahem.  Anyway THAT embarrassing tidbit aside the point is suddenly one day I realized all my books were written about or by men. IMG_2929

Thus began my search for scifi written by women and a dark and disturbing realization: there is a great deal of scifi written by women but they changed their names to be accepted.  A number of books I’d read were written by women but I had no way of knowing that, and based on the trend by the more notable authors, I always assumed that names which followed the A. Z. Last Name formatting were men.  That was exactly what the publishing industry wanted me to think—or rather what they wanted little boys to think.  It started as a way for women to publish when it was considered indecent to do so and then carried on as tradition because publishing companies didn’t think boys and men would want to read books written by a woman.

IMG_2936Disgusted, I understood that this belief not only dismissed females as writers—but females as readers.  It completely ignored the girls who were reading, the girls who might choose to read a book because it was authored by someone with whom they share a certain ovarian affinity.  Talk about a total invalidation of my greatest love.  Heck even J.K. Rowling fell trap to that line of thinking as her editors didn’t believe Harry Potter would sell to boys if they knew the author was a woman.  Well that cat got out of the bag and Rowling is still richer than the bloody queen so fuck-that.  Sadly it’s probably somewhat true that boys would turn away more from female written works.  There are certainly a number of men I’ve met who avoid anything that seems remotely “feminist” out of fear that supporting it will suddenly doom them to marry a girl who doesn’t shave her armpits.  Disgraceful.

With the second wave of feminism (aka the 60’s) a number of female scifi authors came out of the woodwork. Notable among them being Ursula K. Le Guin who is usually the first and sadly only name people provide when I mention female scifi writers.  As for me, the first scifi work I encountered in my youth that made me think about this topic was Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale”.  If you aren’t familiar with the work it is about a dystopian future where a fascist and religiously dominant government has suspended the constitution following a terrorist attack.  In this world women have been stripped of any rights and are regulated to various roles in society; racism and homophobia also rampant.  The protagonist of the story is in the ranks of the Handmaids who function as concubines and whose sole purpose is to provide a womb for breeding; women reduced to literally the very thing that define their sex.  Other roles women play are wives, daughters, “Marthas” aka compliant infertile women and the Aunts who train the handmaids.  Infertile or troublesome women get branded as “unwomen.”

While this certainly sounds like a feminist manifesto, it should be noted that the book explores a variety of other oppressions enacted by this government for religious and racial reasons.  Heck even the men are just as regulated as the women; assigned various roles within the military structure of the government but it is only the higher ranking classes that are permitted to breed and obtain a handmaid.  As for the rest?  No sex.  Not even masturbation.  I particularly remember reading the part about underwear designed to prevent nocturnal emissions and thinking that this world is just as criminal to men as it is to women.  Gay men, as another example, are gender traitors and sent to death camps.

IMG_2941

I’d like to think that today we don’t have this problem anymore or that it’s at least diminishing, but well…when I was thinking about this blog I decided to go find a copy of this book.  I popped into a used bookstore on the street after yoga, ran up to the scifi section and discovered no listing for Atwood at all.  With a heavy sigh I trudged up to the “Fiction-Literature” area and sure enough there it was.  I went to check out and this was the exchange that followed:

Me: Glad you had this, I went looking in the scifi section first and couldn’t find it.

Counter: Well that’s because it’s not scifi.

Me: Uhh…well actually it is, I mean it’s soft scifi* but it’s definitely always been in that category from what I know.

Counter: it’s feminist lit.  It can’t be scifi.

And it was a girl behind the counter too.  Apparently feminism and scifi are incompatible.  So much for forward thinking but hardly that surprising.  I still get strange looks from most people who discover my love of the genre.  Strides have been made over the years but aliens and wormholes are still apparently a “boy thing” in the eyes of most.  I personally feel that more strides have been made in film and tv to promote the female empowerment of the geek world and it saddens me that books seem to lag behind which is why I’m so excited when I do find a thoughtful and geeky lady writer.  There is a need, especially in our youth, to identify and learn about ourselves.  That’s part of why people will seek out specific racial, cultural or gender groups and socialize within them.  We want to understand ourselves and while Joss Whedon comes pretty damn close, ultimately I’ll still learn more about being a woman from another woman.  That’s why it’s important to have these talks still and why you can’t ever be completely “color blind” in life.  So I hope more women writers are picking up the call and defying convention and I really hope that they drop the stupid initial-last name convention because while 5 boys might pass over your book, there will be one little girl who might finally pick it up.

IMG_2931

*Some people will claim it’s not scifi or only loosely scifi because it is about a dystopian future.  Funny that I don’t hear people rejecting 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 nearly as often on those grounds.  Now for those of you that would, look we can talk about this another time and I’ll school you on the history of the genre, also known as speculative fiction, and please stop trying to invalidate these books just because you happen to prefer hard-scifi which is a subgenre okay?

Oh right, I still have a recipe to share!  Well as you ponder this topic, why not bake up a lovely quiche for dinner.  Why a Quiche for today’s post?  It’s a largely egg based dish and since I’m thinking about ovaries and baby-mamas I immediately jumped to the ovary connection.  I’m weird.  Accept it.

Scifi Mys-Quiche

An Olivia Original – I made several mini-quiche but this recipe will make one large 9” pie Read more

Mar 1

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SciFriday: Something like a recipe, Bacon-bits and my creation!

From my heart and from my hand, why don’t people understand, my intention?

What’s this? What’s this?

Last Saturday one of my favorite authors was at a local SciFi bookstore – and holy crap did you know entire bookstores dedicated JUST to that genre existed? Anyway so this author, Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant from my Zombie-back ribs) performed a reading of her short story that is part of a larger anthology titled “The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius”

I know right?!

Book Signing!

Book Signing!

It’s a fantastically awesome anthology theme and the stories most certainly support it.  I can’t say I’m totally impartial about which one is my favorite so I’m not going to dive into that too much but rather speak about the event which focused quite a bit on the field of “Mad” Science.  As a scientist in a highly disputed field, biotechnology, I often would have debates with people both in and outside the science world about this one question: if we can do it, should we?  It seems to me that quite often in both stories, and real life, when the scientist ignores the second part of that question is when things get a bit “mad.”  Sometimes it’s a deliberate ignoring of consequences and sometimes it seems to be that the brilliant mind is so divested from reality, he or she can’t see that what is happening is wrong.  In those situations the scientist is so convinced that their intentions are noble, that the ends are so important, the means hardly matter.  In my tiny little opinion that’s where the “mad” part of mad science creeps in.  It’s almost like a fever that takes over and clouds the ability to make sound judgment calls.

While it’s highly exaggerated in fictional form, there are a lot of real world scary “mad” science things we could be doing today that are prevented only by morality.  We could, for example, clone a human being.  Today.  We have the technology.  The implications of such an act are what keeps scientists from doing it.  Rumors have emerged from time to time that China has done it – you choose to believe what you want there—but I don’t doubt that someday, someone somewhere, will toss consequences over his/her shoulder and actually make it happen.  Which leads to another interesting question about this kind of “fringe” science: if we can do it, shouldn’t we do it since someone else will and at least doing it first means we can control what happens?  Oh another delicious, delectable moral qualm that makes for amazing pieces of speculative fiction.  I wonder how often this was discussed by the members of the Manhattan project.  I really need to read more about that…. Damn it goodreads list, why do you keep growing??

My biggest frustration though with “mad” science is how often things get labeled as “Frankenscience” when the truth is so few people really understand the science they fear.  Oh god.  See right there?  That can definitely be the refrain of someone who is “going mad” can’t it?  But it has some truth to it.  Like I said I majored in the field of Biotechnology and get very frustrated with people who hold strong opinions on the subject of genetically engineered food yet understand almost nothing about it.  These individuals would most certainly call me a mad scientist for supporting certain applications of the technology—or for my personal desire to develop luminescent trees to line streetwalks with.  Aside from how freaking pretty that would be, it’s like the ultimate form of green energy.  Oh and yes  I THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE SEEING AVATAR OKAY?  Ironically enough, while we could clone a human being today, developing these trees is still outside our realm as I currently understand it.  Many people are familiar with GFP, green fluorescent protein, which could work but requires a black light to be seen.  From what I’m aware of, experiments that utilize luciferase (the protein that lets fireflies light up) have failed to produce enough protein to make any impact without overloading the cell machinery and killing the plants.  Again though I haven’t looked into this in a few years and I really should read up on it.

Okay new mad science project: time machine for the purposes of reading.

But back to the book, it’s fantastic and it’s certainly been helping me cope with a lack of good mad science-y television since Fringe left me.  There’s nothing remotely close now on regular programming to scratch that itch.  I feel like the show left the table without asking to be excused and so, much like a beloved scene, I demand Fringe return to the table.  Why?  I made some Peanut Butter Bacon Sandwiches damn it.  Now there’s some REAL mad science

WALTER: Megif avagin frim dim Tish.

LINCOLN: Excuse me?

WALTER: It’s Yiddish. It means “May I please be excused from the table?” No, you may not.

LINCOLN: Why not?

WALTER: Because I have just made some peanut butter and bacon sandwiches.

Not to be an underachiever I didn’t simply fry up some bacon and slap it onto a sandwich.  Oh no.  I decided that this application should be far more like peanut butter and jelly.  So what did I do?  I made Bacon Jam.  Why?  BECAUSE I CAN.

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  This stuff can be slathered on anything.  It can go in frittatas.  It can be eaten straight with a spoon.  I do really love it with some chunky peanut butter in the end; it’s just so damn tasty.

Olivia’s Mad Bacon Jam

An Olivia Original Read more

Nov 12

2 Comments

Muffin Monday: Bluffin’ with my Muffin?

  Let me edit this with the statement that I do have many male friends and no I don’t think they are all conspiring to get with me.  I just think this happens often enough, not all the time, that it warrants discussion.  Dear male friends: I know many of you find me as alluring as a baby sister who picks her nose.  That is all.Can men and women just be friends?  According to a sociology study recently publicized by Scientific American, the majority answer is: No.  Well no as in they can’t be platonic friends where one person isn’t secretly pining over the other.  Can you guess which gender does this more often?  You might be surprised…or you might not.  I wasn’t.  It’s men.  Story of my life.  I can’t tell you how many friendships, good friendships, I have lost with both men who can’t get past an attraction for me and the associated “friend groups” that are largely male dominated and side with said man.  .”   I can’t tell you how many times I’d need to say “Caraway just be friends?”  It’s been very frustrating for me as someone who always got along much better with men because women were “such bitches At least that was the case in middle school.  I’m finding that 20-something women with drive and career passions to be a much different and more companionable breed these days.  Let me edit this with the statement that I do have many male friends and no I don’t think they are all conspiring to get with me.  I just think this happens often enough, not all the time, that it warrants discussion.  Dear male friends: I know many of you find me as alluring as a baby sister who picks her nose.  That is all.

But don’t let me get dilly dally on this tangent.  Let’s chive back into to the topic at hand.  (Yeah these are caraway, dill and chive muffins btw.  I just don’t have a good segue today so I’m punning as badly as possible to get your food lovin’ attention.)

Men are statistically “more likely” though no numbers are cited, more likely to harbor secret feelings for their female friends.  These feelings range all along the spectrum of just plain ol’ sexual attraction to full on romantic unrequited love.  Some tempered by a realization that nothing will ever happen but a significant number of men in the study believed their female counterparts to be as equally attracted to them—though the study made it evident that this was largely untrue.  Most of the time the female friend is NOT interested, sexually or romantically, in the male counterpart and what’s more, they are often unaware of his affections. 

Most interesting to me was the correlation between the strength of the man’s conviction that his female friend is interested in him (i.e. that she finds him “attractive”) and his own feelings for the gal.  The more he likes her, the more convinced he is she must like him back—duh not so much.  In fact in my experience it’s largely been the opposite.  The more often the guy has developed this elaborate romantic fallacy, the less likely I am to be interested in him but I will say that it usually correlates to a stronger set of platonic feelings on my part.  By which I mean to say usually it’s a guy who I have deep vested, non-romantic/sexual yet very loving feelings for.  Thus I can sympathize and understand how for men, who don’t manage their emotions on the level that women do, this would easily be confused with the kind of feelings that lead to wedding bells.

This is also something I suspect I’ve experienced more often because I’m friends with geeky men.  From my *DISCLAIMER* totally subjective qualitative experience, geeky men seem to fall into this trap of falling for their female friends quite often.  I have a lot of theories about why this happens, namely that as a subculture that exists largely in worlds that utilize our imaginations and storytelling, it can be quite easy to get caught up in a fantasy and not recognize the reality.  I want to write a whole post primer on this for some of my male friends actually.  I often have to watch how I interact with guys now, especially as I get older and men get more driven by their own biological clocks.  YES YOU DO HAVE THEM.  Anyway.  *Ahem* As I was saying, I find myself needing to be more and more careful as the wild oats get sewn and guys start thinking “gee I want to get married after all.” 

A lot of the objections I’m seeing to this article are coming from, shocker, men.  Complains about society having hangups about casual sex and the usual misogynistic bullshit about how all women “bluff with their muffins.”  Yes some women use their sexuality to abuse men but that is NOT ALWAYS THE CASE YOU BITTER CREEPS.  I hate trolls.   I do acknowledge frustration over calling this a “study” due to no actual data and only 88 pairs surveyed.  Look I get that this article is largely a fluff piece based off a very small sample size but to supplement with my own subjective data again: every female I know has been in full agreement.  We find this happens all the time. 

Hell I lost my first male friend over the “boyfriend” designation not applying to him when I was five years old.  Seriously.  I knew two boys, wanted to “date” one of them which translated into him getting to be the Dad when we played house and the other pouted incessantly because I wouldn’t be his girlfriend.  Moving past playground antics to the blossoming of puberty, I lost my only friends in elementary school at one point because one boy decided to tell me after a year that he liked me.  He was actually physically angry when he discovered that I didn’t return his feelings; something which hadn’t entered his mind as a possibility.  He was convinced I liked him too.

I think this is the sort of thing that turns men into Petyr Baelish actually.  Now that I think about it.

Anyway what do you think?  Do you agree with this article?  Can men and women be just friends? 

Let’s mull it over with these delightfully savory muffins I made from Alton Brown’s cookbook.  Nom nom nom I love caraway seeds.  The flavor is just so unique and takes me back to proper east coast delis.  These are tender, firm muffins that can be eaten as a savory sweet with tea or paired with a dinner.  Or you can crack one, toast it, slather it with butter and eat it…along with two more.  Don’t look at me.  Please don’t look at me with those judging eyes…they were just so nice on a cold afternoon.  Seriously though because these are so flavorful and savory they will be amazing even after they’ve gone a few days and staled.  Just toast and serve with a good cheese and butter…that’s assuming of course you manage to make it to the day they get stale.  I wouldn’t know.  Someone called my bluff and all my muffins are gone L

 

Alton Brown’s Herb Loaf (Muffins)

From “I’m just here for the food: Baking” Alton Brown Read more

Sep 24

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Muffin Monday: Herb your enthusiasm

Whew!  First three days at my new job and I was wiped by the time Friday was over.  The lovely mommy-to-be that I’m temping for (she really was quite sweet and adorable!) keeps later hours than I’m used to and with the commute…well I pretty much spent 15 hours of each last day getting ready for, at work or commuting.  Not fun but I knew that it was going to be like that at first and you know what?  It’s totally worth it.  So far I’m really happy with the opportunity this position is going to give me.

The only downside is that kind of commuting can definitely take a toll on your frayed nerves.  I definitely can tell that I’m a little more snappy than usual.  This weekend with my friends I think I was bit sassy.  Hopefully my sharper tongue didn’t leave any deep cuts on any egos.  We nerds are a sensitive bunch but also capable of being highly critical.  Sitting around watching Galaxy Quest can quickly descend into heated debates about Star Trek series superiority.  TNG hands down – one earl grey hot…bitch.  We get a bit worked up about our various fandoms in this group.  I need to curb that enthusiasm when it’s paired with some slightly overworked nerve endings.  I’m finding though that the exhaustion stress of being overworked but happy with your work is still better than the angry stress of being unsatisfied with your work.  Tired Olivia can still be a happy Olivia.

Plus moving forward things should level off a bit.  I am hopefully going to be able to keep earlier hours, since I am more of an early girl, and the upside to that is I’ll avoid more of the rush hour traffic.  It’s still something like a 60 mile commute and that will make for a rough few months.  It’s not actually any different than my commute for the old job but the difference is that I no longer have a company bus to take.  I’ll miss getting to spend my commute time reading rather than actively doing the driving.  My poor RSS feed is so neglected.

The one fear I have to quell is that I’ll be spending less time in the kitchen.  Baking is my therapy so I tend to ramp it up when I’m stressed but there’s only so many hours in a day and I begrudgingly have to sleep eventually.  One reason I love making muffins so often is that they are a fast and easy thing to mix up and you can play with them as much or little as you want.  I went kind of crazy at a Farmer’s Market recently, Indian summer produce is so plentiful and cheap, but it needs to get used up!

This huge bunch of basil was calling out to me and inspiring dreams of a soft crumbed sweet muffin with a surprising herbal tone.  I looked around the kitchen and saw some lemons sitting on the counter.  Aha!  Lemon muffins with some chiffonade of basil?  Delicious though not quite there yet…I needed a third note to round it out; something sweet but not as sweet as fruit.  Corn meal.  Not enough to make these corn muffins, just enough to lend a little sweet and a little flavor.  I love adding fresh corn to dessert foods as a sweetener (as opposed to processed corn syreup) and it’s just the right time of year for it too.  Last year I made those corn flavored candy-corn cookies that were actually pretty damn tasty.  At some point I’d love to make an ice cream with a corn flavor to it.  But here I digress…on to the recipe.

Lemon Basil Muffins
an Olivia Original Read more

Jul 23

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Muffin Monday: Pack a Punch – Cornbread

From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer.

Every girl who could have the power, will have the power.

Who can stand up, will stand up.

Every one of you, and girls we’ve never known, and generations to come…they will have strength they never dreamed of, and more than that, they will have each other.

Slayers.

Every one of us.

Make your choice.

Are you ready to be strong?

Which leads me into the final day recap of that nerdvana that is San Diego Comic Con:

Day 4.5 – Girl Power

(Wo)manning the grill

My only goals for the final day of SDCC were to get into the panel for the Buffy 20th anniversary lineup and to get Peter S. Beagle to sign a copy of The Last Unicorn.  I accomplished both, still with no Fringe hat damnit, and finished the day happy.  The Peter S. Beagle story surrounding getting to his booth is a great one but deserves its own post and so I will wait to discuss that later.  Anyway Sunday is usually a wrap up day and so the most important moment was probably the last supper that night with my friends before we parted ways.  Everyone met up at “The Strip Club” which is a steak spot with a rather clever business model: they provide the steaks but you grill them yourself.  Talk about making money for doing almost nothing.  I’m not complaining though, it was the best meal I had all weekend and that’s because it was me and my Sith friend Chris manning the grills.  Ending comic con in a star trek uniform, friends and grilling steaks?  I can live with that…except for the part where now my friends are far away again.

But back to the big Con event of my final day: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  People still mock this show without knowing what it was.  I usually want to slap them.  This show is no fang-banger, overly fetishized vampiric paranormal romance that set female rights back under some religious agenda and has destroyed Comic Con.  Yes I’m looking at you Twilight and fans.  Buffy was one of the greatest, most female empowering episodic achievements to ever grace primetime network television.  I still have yet to see anything come close on a major network that touches the level of thoughtful feminism this show had.  I grew up with it and to say that it is important to me is akin to simply describing the universe as big—hence the focus on getting to see the 20 year lineup.  The panel itself was slightly disappointing especially compared to the Firefly reunion, it was a bit empty and would have been nice to see more of the cast assembled but I’m still glad I went.  Nicholas Brendan did the snoopy dance so I call it a win.

This show is still to me the first to really showcase a strong female lead that didn’t need men to succeed.  True she has men helping her but key to the plot was always that it was one girl alone who could save the world—no man.  True there have been female superpower shows in the past like Charlie’s Angels but do you notice that even within the title the women are grammatically possessed by a male leader?  Exactly.  When I talk about the “girl power” aspect of Buffy I always think of the last episode.  The speech from the finale of Buffy always gets to me.  SPOILER ALERT: if you want to watch this show at any time I’m about to basically ruin the conclusion of the arc for the final season for you.  Just be forewarned.

In the finale of BTVS Buffy decides she’s had enough of being the only strong woman in the world just because a bunch of men decided to set it up that way thousands of years ago.  In order to create an army that can fight off the advances of a very imposing ancient vampire army, Buffy gets Willow (a wicca more powerful than all of those men combined) to release Buffy’s power.  The intent:  activate all the women who have the potential for strength and greatness.  I always get chills when I hear the speech.   Buffy did awaken an entire generation of viewers to the idea that they could be strong.  This moment in the show serves a plot point but it was a pretty obvious reference to the significance of the series in popculture: Buffy inspired a new world of modern, strong females through a television set week after week.

From those who’ve never seen BtVS I still hear mockery, even of the title.  After all who names their superhero Buffy?  It’s such a funny name.  They say: wouldn’t it be better if she were “Hunter” or “Joan” or something that sounds a little less country club and a little more masculine.  I always have to explain that was the whole point.  Confront someone with an image that upsets their preset conclusions.  Most people see a blonde, waifish cheerleader with a silly name and discount her as anything more than a moppet.  People don’t want to have to look below the surface; that gets complicated and time consuming and worst it’s confusing.  Confusion makes people scared and angry but it’s important.  We need to take a bite out of something comforting and simple to discover complexity below the surface in order to grow.

In short this show probably irrevocably changed my life, inspired me and certain episodes still bring tears to my eyes.  Keeping with this theme of something both incredibly corny and unassuming that packs a punch below the surface…here are some jalapeño peppered corn muffins.  These are the most flavorful, earth changing corn muffins I have ever had.  I definitely prefer them to the sweeter variety and the moistness!  Oh my gosh.  The corn and additions help the muffin retain moisture during baking.  It’s amazing. 4 days later and they had still not dried out.  Serve this up alongside some steaks and fried swiss chard and you have the sassiest southern meal imaginable.

Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

From Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking: From My Home to Yours”                         Read more

Jun 24

A good cry and a great pie

You know some days I have such clever tie-ins for my dishes.  Others it’s almost a complete disconnect.  This is definitely one of those later days.

There is a posture in Bikram Yoga called “Camel” or Ustrasana.  It is the deepest back bend in the series and done toward the end of class.  It is challenging but rewards you with a strong, healthy spine and can be amazing for back pain.  It also is known to cause a severe flood of nausea and dizziness in beginners and to release a flood of emotions in practiced yogis.  Most days I’m good with this posture but when I’m dealing with stress in my life, or big upheaval, I will occasionally leave this posture with a choking sob for a few moments.  The day I graduated college I actually had a flood of tears after this posture.  Thank god it’s at the end of the series.

I know I probably sound like some sort of pansy here.  Some of the more hippie dippie practitioners will prattle on about heart chakras and how we store complex emotions that get released when the chakra in this posture is targeted.  I don’t really buy into crystal power or the idea that we can store emotions in joints; I firmly believe emotions are generated by our minds.  That being said, I do believe that the mental connection to performing some of the postures in Bikram yoga is real and can be tied to emotional release.

Camel pose involves a lot trust in your body.  You are in a position that is very vulnerable by both inverting your head and opening up your chest to expose your heart toward the ceiling.  The two organs your body will prioritize during starvation or nutrient depletion are the heart and brain.  Putting yourself in such a physically unprotected position can be very psychologically challenging.

I’m someone who will sit down and make a list, even if it’s just a list of how to organize my closet, when I need to relax.  Generating order and structure is my way of managing chaos in life so it makes sense that a posture which completely contradicts this would cause me to have such an intense emotional reaction.  For a control freak like myself it involves a complete mental surrender and when I’m under stress, the thing I want most in my life is control.  Giving up my control in that moment, after spending 70 minutes already in a sweltering hot room doing nothing but concentrate and focus, is terrifying.

It’s also incredibly important and healing.  Learning to let go has been one of my life lessons and as I’m only 23, I know there’s a lot more left to learn.  I used to get locked up and dwell on things I couldn’t control to the point that I would be paralyzed from doing anything at all.  College years have helped me learn to at least refocus during these times on things I can control.  For a while that meant self-imploding and being destructive.  That was another hard lesson to learn.  Cooking, cleaning and cardio have become my new way of funneling those frustrations.  Instead of destroying things I work to create them.  It helps me feel like I have purpose and structure.

Where I need to learn to go from here is to let go completely.  Sometimes I don’t get to create when I need it; maybe the kitchen is a mess or traffic keeps me from getting to yoga.  Something can happen to prevent it and then I end up even more frustrated than before.  So the next step for me is learning to really let go; to learn how to do a mental version of camel, release the emotion and move forward.

Of course that’s not to say I’ll ever stop finding baking or bikram to be a great release for myself.  I doubt I’ll ever be that “zen” that I can navigate my life completely balanced.  That’s another lesson from doing yoga: every day is a struggle to find balance.  Sometimes the postures are easy and sometimes you hop around on one foot like an alcoholic jackrabbit.  The important thing is that you keep struggling to find that center.

Centers can be full of delicious reward.  At the center of this pie (oh I’m so lame in my segues!) is a creamy herbed ricotta and swiss chard mélange.  Don’t let the intense shock of green fool you, this is not a healthy recipe.  It’s got way too much butter and fat in it for me to call it healthy food and justify it on a diet.  My stepdad will try to convince me that if it has vegetables in it, that makes it healthy and thus you can have half the pie and not worry about it.  I love him but that’s insane troll logic–like drowning a salad in a sea of creamy dressing and calling it low fat.  Instead take a yogi lesson and enjoy the moment honestly.  It’s a savory pastry full of flavor and great after a solid 90 minutes of sweat and heat.

Swiss Chard Ricotta Pie Read more

Jun 1

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Food for a Bibliovore

Not only is science fiction an idea of tremendous import, but it is to be an important factor in making the world a better place to live in, through educating the public to the possibilities of science and the influence of science on life which, even today, are not appreciated by the man on the street. … If every man, woman, boy and girl, could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standards of its people would be raised tremendously. Science fiction would make people happier, give them a broader understanding of the world, make them more tolerant. — Hugo Gernsback

I have a new short term life goal.  I’m trying to read all the 2012 Hugo Award nominees before Chicon 7 (aka WorldCon) when the winners are announced.  The Hugo Awards are “kind of a big deal” and were started by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories which was THE original science fiction magazine launched in 1926.  WorldCon has been running as a science fiction convention since 1939 and while I’ve never been, I’m aware it’s quite awesome.  The cities rotate globally each year–gee what a shock for something called worldcon, and so the title changes based upon the city location.  This summer it’s in Chicago and I betcha can’t guess how many times they’ve hosted…okay give up?  This will be the seventh.  Ha! Chicon 7.

Unfortunately since the list is quite long and I can barely steal time in the day to bathe (gross) much less read, I’ve had to shorten that expectation to reading all the Best Novels with the hopes that I’ll have the time to get to all the Best Graphic Stories as well.

I’m doing this because I have not been reading enough in the last two years.  I have a list of books on my “to read” list a mile long and it’s become so overwhelmingly unbalanced against books I’ve actively, recently read that I began to have a panic attack about where to start.  I know right?  Who has panic attacks about book lists?  Crazy people i.e. I do.

Admittedly the panic attack was more about how I don’t have time for anything anymore.  A response to the fact that I have not read enough and feel like this passion I had was slipping away from me.  Once upon a time I was reading two books a day as a child and a bibliophile to the core.  Adulthood seems to rob many of us of that with the daily drudgery of work, relationships and exercise needed to combat dwindling metabolisms that no longer allow for whole boxes of girl scout cookies as an acceptable dinner alternative.

You might wonder why the Hugo Awards if I’m going to pick a list to start with?  Well duh, I get to feast solely upon science and fantasy novels.  It also gives my tackling of my book list some sort of focus.  Simply pick one?  I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens.

The Hugo Award Nominees for 2012 are:

Best Novel

  • Among Others, Jo Walton
  • A Dance With Dragons, George R. R. Martin
  • Deadline, Mira Grant
  • Embassytown, China Miéville
  • Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

So far I’ve actually made a decent dent in this list.  I may even try my hand at reviewing them.  Right now I’ve been slowed down a bit by the fact that Deadline is a sequel and so I have a bonus book to read.  I’m also incredibly lucky that I’ve been reading A Song of Ice and Fire all this time so getting to A Dance with Dragons was easy enough and in fact, I read that book ages ago.  In the spirit of this endeavor I will most likely re-read Dance again and last.  The anticipation I felt leading up to its release over the last SIX YEARS no doubt colored my initial reading.  If I’m going to pick my own favorite from the Hugo Noms, I want to be as un-biased about it as possible.  Well I mean, I’m going to be biased because it’s a decision based on preference but I don’t want it to be adulterated by the thrill of expectation and only based on merit of enjoyment of the material.  If that makes any sense at all….

Anyway Gernsback, who started the Hugos, was a noted inventor and scientific utopianist.  The man held 80 patents when he died but also had a bit of an unsavory reputation for being a crook where it concerned his treatment of writers.  Such a mixed legacy to have the man who is unarguably a father to publishing in science fiction also be despised by those his role supported.

While Hugo may have been a bit of a miserly goat, you won’t find anything unsavory about this Goat Cheese Leek Tart.  (HA segue achieved!)  It’s delicious, it’s fattening, it’s out of this world orgasmic and that is all you need to know.  If anything is going to win an award from this blog entry, it would be this.

Belgian Leek Tart with Aged Goat Cheese (Flamiche Aux Poireaux)

from Bon Appétit October 2008 Read more

May 21

Polly Going Crackers

Systems Overhaul
You make it impossible
To do my job; Error.

Crackers and Hummus = best dinner plan ever.

Just a little haiku about how frelling crackers I am going here at work today. Systems have been changing over left and right, some without warning and some without adequate follow through. Our shipping system has been in the works to change for weeks and yet somehow almost no one received any of the the information to create a new account and now today it’s live with no way to access it. Meanwhile vendors are being problematic, schedules are filling up, directories are not directing…it’s just a bloody mess. The hardest part of my job though isn’t the technical hullabaloo that seems to occur on a regular basis, but interacting with people. It’s not that anyone I work with is particularly awful. I find that I like 99% of my colleagues and that is a rare thing indeed I believe. It’s just that I’m an introvert and no that doesn’t mean I hate people or have to be inherently shy. Introverts can be quiet wallflowers but that’s not what defines them.

What is an introvert? It’s someone who finds that interacting with most people requires an expenditure of energy versus an extrovert who gets a rush of dopamine and a charge from social engagement. An extrovert can enter a room full of strangers, flit from group to group making small talk and leave feeling awake and refreshed. An introvert can be perfectly fine in a similar social situation engaging with charming riposte but they will leave feeling tired and need some time to reflect, process and recharge. The more intimate the engagement, long time friends and such, the more comfortable the introvert will be. This is why introverts can spend days with the right people without feeling nearly so strong a “crash” as when around strangers.

Work colleagues aren’t strangers but there is a level of professionalism that must be maintained and boundaries that must be observed. An introvert will process this information constantly and thus find the social interaction at work very tiring. I especially find this to be difficult when stuck in situations where heads begin to butt. I’m a very strong willed person; prone to extreme stubbornness and fervor when I am knowledgeable or believe strongly in a subject. At work however, I find I defer more often than not out of constant fear over what I say and how I am saying it. I will make microsecond evaluations of every hand gesture, head cock and tone of voice in an attempt to quell my truculent nature and just get through the exchange. Couple that with some technical errors that are beyond my control and well, I get a bit cuckoo by week’s end. Not looking forward to this Friday I can tell you that much. Especially when I’ve become a bit of an ersatz IT guru and I know I’ll be asked for help with this damn shipping issue that I have no control over.

The introvert in me finds the ability to recharge in my baking/cooking endeavors. It is much to the frustration of family and some roommates I can think of who find it perplexing why I can be very angry when they come into the kitchen to question me while I’m baking. To most people, food is food and cooking is something done out of necessity rather than pleasure. I can certainly make cooking a social activity; in the past I’ve spent many a nights entertaining while cooking in the kitchen. The key element here though is that I was entertaining meaning I was “on” which as an introvert means expending energy. Cooking at the end of a long work day for me is a solitary activity that gives me something creative, physical and sensory to relax and focus my mind. Hence the feeling of intrusion when someone comes in and wants to know what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, steal a piece or just ask questions in general.

Gosh I must come off like a bitch here. How dare people want to know what I’m doing? I even find myself annoyingly high maintenance here. In any case what follows is a recipe for homemade crackers. It’s got a smaller list of ingredients than usual and the instructions are very simple. Plus this is a great bread dough to work out some aggression if you need something to punch, pinch and pull with the bonus of resulting in a delicious snack at the end.

Serve up these crackers with some homemade hummus dip. MMMMMM!

Lavash Crackers Read more

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