my life 2008

We are just back from a trip to the US and have enjoyed figuring out the subtle differences, among our different hotels, in what internet access they offer and what is or isn’t included in the room price. It may not be the 7th circle of hell but it is in the high numbers.

While I could read email and your postings, I was unable to send. (It made no sense to me either.) I wanted to add to your adventures in turkey dining posting. We’ve taken to eating bargain turkey at non-festive times by cutting it up into large pieces, i.e., drumsticks, tossing them into a large covered casserole that fits into the microwave, dousing it all in lemon juice, salt, pepper and garlic, then microwaving till done, moving the pieces around to ensure even cooking. The final step is to brown to crispy the skin on the turkey pieces on the grill or under the broiler, while the liquid left in the casserole is thoroughly boiled in the microwave. This sauce is served over rice, which I usually put on about half way through the turkey time. The whole shebang freezes well in meal-sized servings. Like you, I am quite fond of cook once, eat many times cuisine.

So, are you done with Papa H in your literature class? If so, who are you on to now?
LG

That sounds like a delicious recipe, LG. It also sounds quick. I simply must try it. (Unfortunately, Safeway’s sale went away; they’re either requiring sizable purchases to score the cheap turkey or not selling them cheap at all; it’s all one to me, because the rest of their stuff is pretty expensive.) I’ll have to try your idea with a chicken. I love lemon juice and garlic. :)

Yes, we’ve moved beyond Ernie in lit class. We just finished Toni Morrison, and now are beginning Gabriel Garcia Marquez (translated, of course), Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It’s postmodern fiction, and the first time I’ve tried to teach it, so I’m fetching for ideas.

d

I’ll continue with the food discussion here due to the “Thanksgiving Dinner” post rejecting me for trying to post what it thinks is illegal content (shades of a Turing Test gone horribly wrong?).

The foodstuffs I’m hearing about here are just making me anticipate regular Thanksgiving even more. C’mon, Nov 27th, get here faster…

Speaking of brining though, I have made lime-marinated grilled chicken from Cooking For Engineers to great success. And according to the engineer cook who authors the blog/recipe file, brining works because the citrus (or other acid) breaks down some of the cell membranes and denatures some proteins, allowing the salt to get into the meat, both of which helps the brine’s water content get osmosed in – and enough water gets in that regular cooking doesn’t dry it out! Huzzah!

On the Tubes front, I’ve been hearing good things about Obama’s plans for the internet. Like, he’s recognizing that it would be a really really good thing for the US to have plentiful, widespread, and cheap broadband even to rural areas, and is tapping people who actually know how to do this to run these efforts. Yeah, DSL providers are bastages (we went through a bit of that here – we were a few thousand feet too far away for them), but I never knew that satellite internet access was that bad. Well-wishing and good luck your way, d!

K
The spam filter seems to hate the intersection of me and URLs in my comments, alas, so instead of providing an actual Uniform Resource Locator, I’ll instead provide directions for how to get to the article >:(
Go to Cooking For Engineers dot com. Click on “Kitchen Notes” in the topbar. Click on “Brining” on the left side.
INTERNET, HYPERLINKS ARE YOUR LIFEBLOOD – WHY WON’T YOU ACCEPT MINE? *quiet sobbing*

You tickle me, Kevin. :)

What’s worser about this blog software is that (I think) it checks the HTML itself for forbidden words. The list of bad words is something like 243 pages long, I think. I apparently can’t unplug the anti-spam filter. I’m sure it can be done, but not at my level.

I now have a very expensive internet package via satellite to the tune of $20 more per month. So like…it’s $100/mo for respectable internet usage here. (I could have gone with dialup, but I’d have to drop the “respectable.")

Lime-marinated chicken. Yumma. I dig citrus fowl. What am I saying? I like the birds of the air and the fish of the sea that way. Maybe I just like citrus….

d

Diana,

I always wanted to be the person who wrote the forbidden word lists for the motor vehicle bureaus of America. Some of the rejected vanity plate requests I’ve seen would make you scratch your head and say, “What’s wrong with that?”

Imagine getting paid to write bad words! It’s a graffitist’s dream.

Dave

I teach English as a second language (ESL) for the moms from Taiwan, the PRC and Korea at my son’s school. When one is new to a language, it is difficult to know when ones children are using bad words so we have a class, waaaaay out in the playing field, where we talk about swear words, what they mean and why they are bad words in our culture. It feels very odd to be spelling out and teaching the pronunciation of things like the bad f word. The myriad questions provoke conversations and flurries of translation. It is always interesting to place swear words into a heirarchy of naughtiness. I find the class deliciously naughty and uncomfortable at the same time.

The minefield of cultural differences among the Western, English-speaking world can provoke unintended revulsion. Bum is British for what we might call a fanny. In parts of Canada, bum is akin to ass as a rude word for same while in the UK, fanny refers very crudely to female anatomy. What we innocently call a fanny pack here, is a bum pack there. Here, fairly low on the rudeness scale is randy but not so in England thus no one named Randolph is called by his nickname in the UK.

All in all, it is a fun class. We laugh a lot and those who can, blush.

LG

Well, Diana, at least you have something a little faster than dial-up, which is all I can get here, even now! However, it works if I don’t get in too big of a hurry to read something, and is included on my telephone bill, so I don’t complain too often or too loudly!

Keep up the good work, Dear, and enjoy your Thanksgiving, whatever you do on that day!

LG,

That sounds like a rewarding job and quite entertaining, to boot. If you need some extra material, I can generate a list from my “forbidden” list. We have all sorts of things we don’t say in polite company, as it turns out. Until you start scanning the list, you don’t usually stop to think what terms you know that you wouldn’t consider bringing into normal conversation. :)

Thanks, Aunt B’Ann! I think I’m scheduled for three T-day dinners this year (and as noted, I already cooked my own a couple of weeks ago). I have two homes to visit this Thursday, and another one scheduled with friends in Denver on Saturday.

It’s a good thing I can run again. ;)

Love you!

d

Though I never thought I would say this; yes, i would be delighted to see such a list. When a culture is as ubiquitous and ill-defined as ours, it leads to constant aha moments of realisation. Your list sounds like it will provide ample revelations. I love to learn and that’s the wonder of ESL; one is constantly learning.

Have you read “Watching the English” by Fox? It is an anthropological survey of the Brits. It explained many of my father-in-law’s querks.
L.

Just wait until you try to order a pizza Diana. When I do, I have two choices to get it: drive into town twenty minutes one-way and pick it up or meet the delivery guy at 83 and 105. The former results in lukewarm pizza and the later smacks of a drug deal ("Ya got the cash?” “Do you have the merchandise?"). Much easier to pick up a Papa Murphy’s and cook it on my own.

Good thing I’m not a big pizza fan, Peachy. :)

I was out cutting some wood around Thanksgiving. Thought of you. Figured you probably had family out of school and/or in town so I didn’t ring you. Worry not, though. There’s lots where that comes from. I’ll be working on it fairly regularly this summer (and probably spring, as time allows). I’ll holler.

d