i'm going canadian next week, see you all in october!

you know, hot applesauce burns like a mofo when it bubbles out of the pan. but it's really yummy on vanilla ice cream. i succeeded in making matt jealous when he called with that last bit. the applesauce is really for him, i'm not that big of a fan of cold applesauce. i guess i could nuke it, but that's just so wrong.
i've been trying to find something worth doing between st. john canada and quebec city, and frankly...there's nothing. moose, and pine trees and towns that end their names in depot (mary spotted that, something about new brunswick). i guess we'll be deciding where to go on sunday, whilst i force feed amy zucchini. it seems there's more going on around the st. laurent, i was just hoping to spend some time speaking english. because i am a bourgeois spoiled american, and also lazy.
i suppose there is something relaxing about not speaking the language, you're kind of devoid of responsibility. although i sort of fear driving down that blockaded, vertical, cobblestoned hill road that matt had to back the car up and around a sightless curve because there's just no way that i can do what he did, because i can't drive. i'd have to make amy go and move the blockade and then drive down ahead of the parade narrowly escaping the french police. just like the bourne identity, but with a honda. why don't they do car chases with hondas anyway? i feel i could identify with that, but then i suppose eco-friendly, thrifty, single women don't really identify with car chase driving.

i put about three cups of zucchini into the spaghetti sauce last night, and i'm finally conquering the beast. there's still plenty left. but i'm starting to feel like i'm winning. the rest of it is getting used tonight. everything in the fridge gets roasted, no survivors. amy is coming saturday and i won't be around much next week, so all the fresh food must be eaten. there will be salad, and roasted vegetables and a whole lot of bread that had to leave the freezer to make room for the pies. i have reached my cooking saturation point. i still enjoy it, it's just really hard to eat all that food by yourself. despite my landlord's idea that i have a permanent roommate, most nights i'm only feeding myself and by the looks of my kitchen i'm cooking for an army. an army that really likes squash, and baklava, and fine cooking chocolate.
i am excited to have a guest, even if i do have to clean. i'm hoping the sun will rise over the ocean just right so my house will be all pink inside. that's the best part of living on the ocean, a pink house. i'm also hoping that i can make it look like someone neat lives there. someone who takes the recycling in sometimes. you know, last time i went i made 8 dollars. and .05 cents a can. now you know what my shed looks like. no really, it's that bad.

there has always been a computer policy at work, warning us all that we should be using our time better than "surfing" the web. as far as i know, neither i or anyone i know are in trouble regarding this policy, but we were reminded of it yesterday. we were sufficiently freaked out and understaffed to keep me from blogging about how i set my cat on fire this weekend. which is a shame because that was a great story. especially since chairman meow is fine and was only really upset by my screaming and chasing her with a towel. (cough) but anyway, i have no expectation of being dooced, though i'm sure i've earned it. the internet is only one of one thousand ways i can waste my valuable workday time. it's just the one thing that is logged. they have no idea how many library books i've read during my tenure. or how many bowls of cream i've whipped while on the clock. or indeed how many letters i've written, or bills i've paid, et cetera. and still, we meet our goals and exceed our expectations. so i'm really just not going to worry about it at present.
we picked and bought 34 pounds of apples on sunday. we made 11 pies and baked one. i'm planning to make applesauce, and applecake and...well...i don't know what else but you get the picture. i'm surrounded by glorious tart crisp mcintosh apples. it's fall-tastic. i wanted to get a big blue hubbard squash too, but it wasn't that kind of orchard and frankly i might not be woman enough to deal with a squash of that calibur. i'm still in zucchini overload. plenty of time for fall squashes when all that damn zucchini is ate up.
i've been trying to convince sara that an apple pie is a very good wedding present. we've been bartering. in addition, she will receive one large or two small pumpkin pies whenever i get around to making them and she would also like an oil change. the mechanic in question is amenable to the deal, if sara can get her car to amherst. once there, sara will try to convince him to look at her brakes, and since he's matt i'm certain that won't be a problem. he's adorably malleable.

difficult tasks make me cranky. even though it was completed with limited effort on my part, i'm still cranky about it. i cleaned my apartment as little as necessary for the realty crew coming through today. i'm not all that much less lazy for having more free time. this weekend is apple picking and pie weekend. traditionally my mom would make a ham or a turkey for apple sunday. also, by tradition, there would be four or five families there. since it will be just matt and myself, maybe a cornish game hen or two. although that might cause domestic overload.
we had a discussion about thanksgiving recently, whether or not i'm going home. i really should go home, but i have to work the friday after. meaning, i'd have to drive down the night before and up the night of. lo be the unpleasantness. it would not be unpleasant to give thanks with his family, just weird. last year's thanksgiving was spent by myself and it wasn't all that bad. i think i made a pizza but i can't really remember. i'm kind of excited to do my own cooking this year, which is why i want to have thanksgiving sunday. sort of a test run. maybe i'll get all this fall cooking mania out of my system.

as bank employees, we are encouraged to take classes in banking. law and banking, principles of banking, today's teller. very exciting. if you take enough classes, eventually you get a raise. we study the same things in every class, but they're free and not really all that difficult.
mare, you might like them. pick one up at the library, they're in number order. i think they're hilarious. they're not like, great american literatire or anything, definitely a guilty pleasure.

mare, here is the evanovich fan site. i can't remember why i took it down, i must have been feeling like redecorating.
i could sit and write them in word, and spell check them maybe. perhaps i'll get more businesslike in the winter. when every extra step brings you a minute closer to home and hot cocoa.
right now i'm supposed to be cramming for a stupid bank mid-term. law and banking applications. i'm trembling with excitement. and fear.

every time i blog the computer eats it. it's getting rather frustrating and i'm starting to worry that the main office is getting my transmissions when they come to fix the computers.
i've been doing a lot of shopping online. but all in the interest of saving money. i picked up some sale jeans at the gap, and some wholesale spices i can't wait to get, and some things at the honeysuckle shop for sarah's wedding since there's a bit of a sale on. since i have to buy sarah a coffeemaker or some such for the actual wedding, some on sale fun stuff is the perfect addition to her wedding present. and i can give it to her without her whole family watching, so that's good too. it's all very exciting.
as tonight might be our last night grilling, it's getting really cold not to mention dark, we're having a very traditional barbecued chicken with Kraft(r) original sauce. this is in homage to holly's mom who makes the best chicken ever, with kraft sauce. there's just something about it. like cooking voodoo. matt was given a choice between grilled chicken and chicken tacos* and he chose grilled. i think i'm going to add mashed potatoes and skewered squash and i have to do something with some tomatoes. if we were having tacos i could've made fresh salsa. i don't know what i'll do with them now, they might well end up skewered.
this week i have read almost all of the #1 ladies detective agency books, i'm working on the last one now. they are adorable and charming, no matter what thay lady customer last night said. who subsequently chose the incident of the dog in the night for her laid back beach read. if you tell me all of my suggestions are awful WHY DO YOU STILL WANT MY SUGGESTION? i just don't get it.
another customer asked if i went to harvard. and then if i worked at harvard. and then if i lived in cambridge. apparently i look just like a young woman in the harvard square area. another very sweet woman asked me what a puffin was. she'd never heard of them before. i had wanted to ask her where she was from but i thought it might have been rude. now i wish i had. many students from COA came in looking for the great gatsby, which we have been trying to get for them. they are all severely bummed that we don't have it. but i say, didn't these kids go to highschool? doesn't everyone have to read the great gatsby? like ethan frome?


*in retrospect i don't think matt knows what chicken tacos are. i imagine he was choosing between ground chicken with taco sauce and filets on the grill. the better idea would have been not to ask him and just make the tacos. he doesn't need all that free will, it just confuses him.

i just bought popcorn from the boyscouts. because the boy is very nice. i couldn't help myself. damn boy scouts.

COA is taking in a bunch of Loyola students. dear god i hope they find them housing. and give them coats.

i just finished devil in the white city and it is fabulously disgusting. i knew how ooogie it would be and i wasn't disapointed. i suggest it to all avid readers. except marianne. i don't think you'd like it sweetie, it's very graphic.

trite things first. the baklava came out well, it's very easy and the glaze smells like the best honey tea when it's simmering. it seems that no amount of cream cheese frosting can really help those banana bread things. it's just not meant to be. in the cooking realm today i have to find a way to use pattipan squash, the extra phyllo, and a few cups of cream cheese frosting. squash tartlets...uhm...with frosting? hmmm. i also have an unreasonable amount of sliced provolone cheese to dispose of. the problem with breaking the no buying food rule is that you totally forget you have food and so it never gets eaten. probably i should keep an inventory on the front of the fridge, with dates. like a syllabus of meals.

cooking drama out of the way, history lesson onward.

we start today early in the war. the union army is getting trampled in virginia and is very, very slowly moving out from their capital into hostile territory. we know that as a rule, early in the war, the Confederate Army had more "talent" in their ranks that did the U.S. Army. the Navy was a completely different story.
the U.S. Navy did not lose a whole lot of sailors to the confederate cause. one, they were on US Naval vessels and didn't have much hope of staging individual insurgencies, and two the navy was more of a northern tradition anyway. Shipping and boatbuilding were simply more prominent in the north. where the army was short of successes early on in the war, the navy had a much better record.
the us navy instituted a blockade on southern ports that was almost immediately effective. the effect being to prevent the inflow of imported goods and the export of cotton* and putting a stranglehold on the confederate economy. there were ofcourse blockade runners to cuba and other nearby ports, but prices for runner's goods were generally so inflated that only the very wealthy could afford them. what the fuck does this have to do with new orleans, well very little really. we're getting there.
NO was a port city, obviously, but since the blockade did not immediately effect the mississippi river trade still floursihed up and down the river. being a patriotic city, most of the city's available fighting age men were away at war. however, the city was by no means defenseless. canon shown down on the mississippi protecting the city and the only open trade route from the threat of the US Navy. as both sides are equally guilty of underestimating eachother, it won't break any hearts if i say that the defenders of NO weren't all that vigilant since those northerners aren't all that bright. it came as quite a surprise to them to find that one morning a union warship had disquised itself as a cotton barge and came up river under cover of darkness. the battle of NO was very short and turned the tide of the war in the favor of the north earlier than they are ever given credit for.
the best part of this whole story is not that NO was taken easily, but what happens after. as we've discussed, the inhabitants of the city are about %90 female maybe %80 if there were alot of old men and slaves still there.
the union officers who patrolled NO were under the impression that it was still one country and we're all "americans" and put in a great deal of effort to treat the city not like it was captured but that it was uhm...being watched just until the war was all over. the women of NO had differing opinions. they crossed to the other side of the street if a union officer was walking their way. if there was a chance encounter they spat at the officers. respectable ladies did not spit in the 1860's. in short, the women of NO made it abundantly clear that the US was not welcome, fighting the war the only way they knew how.
'course the occupying forces instituted a law that any woman who behaved as such to a union officer would be arrested as a prostitute. but that's not really the point. NO is a proud city and i totally understand why some folks refuse to abandon it.


*no selling cotton, no money. also no cotton for england and all their haughty shirtwaists so they started planting in india. when american cotton was again available, they'd already found cheaper prices and so begins one of many southern recessions.

with the cut in my hours, my life is starting to feel like mine again. since i've had no time to cook i've been drooling at my desk at all the recipes i'd like to try. but i don't have to work tonight, do i'm going to make a vegetable stir fry with a whole bunch of the zuchini that matt's mom gave me. i'm going to frost my banana bars* with neufchatel frosting and i'm going to make baklava. it's going to be a big night in my oven. i've never made baklava before but it looks pretty easy. butter, philo, butter. i'll let you know what it's like tomorrow. the recipe says it's freezable. i can defrost it and send it home with matt this weekend.
in other cooking news: i made a very good macaroni and cheese this weekend, and some very hard core lemon pepper chicken. very hard core. adding truth to the fact that dried spices are more effective than fresh ones. by a lot.
i've been all about my kitchen lately, cooking and refining recipes. i'm supposed to send my cousin a recipe for her bridal shower and i've been trying to pick one that will hold up the family honor. i'm also thinking that i'm going to be cooking the thanksgiving dinner this year. my sister will be very pregnant by that time. i'm thinking lemon pepper turkey?

i was debating the merits of the cooking post, because that's what i've been doing most this weekend, versus a post about new orleans in the civil war. clearly i started with the food stuff. maybe i'll work on my history lesson for tomorrow.



*these were supposed to be two breads, in two 8 inch pans of one 9 inch pan. the pans were right, the recipe was very wrong. i should have realized it from the beginning, how can the contents of one 9 inch pan make two 8 inch breads? so, banana bars. with cream cheese frosting. and chopped walnuts. because secretly martha stuart makes me hot.

martha's out on the carriage roads today. and apparently she was nice. prison can't be so bad.

i've been trying to write something all day and everything i get down eventually gets trashed. what is there to write about so much devastation? personal things all seem so trivial. you should see the pile of saved as drafts, really it's amazing how much drivel you can write when your thoughts are compromised by news reports from the south and your dad is weeping on the phone because that poor man's wife was swept away. i've earmarked the money i would've spent on coffee to go to the red cross because my mom will kick my ass on the other side if i can't see fit to show the generous compassion she would. i'd rather go without the caffeine.