So in my new habit of crocheting presents for small people, AKA children, I decided to whip up something for my nephew Julian's second birthday this month. I purchased the clownfish pattern from BVOE on etsy. The body of the pattern was easy enough, but when it came to the fins, I had a bit of trouble. The pattern didn't make any sense to me, and when I crocheted the fins following it directly, they looked like little cups. So I ended up improvising. I was a little disappointed with how it came out. It was messy. I was also lazy and used buttons for the eyes, and I denied the fish a mouth. You could say I forgot to sew it on, but I'll say that I like the more realistic blank fish stare this lack of lips lends the little creature.
At any rate, on the whole this was not a major success; however, it was a gift for a two-year-old, and he'll probably just drool on it a bit and use it to whack people, and the fish should serve him well in both these feats. Here's more pics if you're interested.
Are mangoes weird? I'm not sure, but I'm using my occasion of making mango lassi popsicles as further evidence that vegans are not weird. Is making your own popsicles weird? I could totally be doing something counter-productive here. At any rate, I wanted to make a snack to incorporate into a mostly raw diet that I implemented for a few days after birthday feasting. I also wanted an excuse to use the new popsicle molds Bill gave me for my birthday. Here's what I did:
Step One: Pick out your popsicle slingin' music. Nothing says "detox" and "mangoes" like Johnny Cash and June Carter.
Step Two: Get your copy ofAni's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. Sift through the million pretentious photos of the author mingling at the market and eating like a gerbil outside an old school L.A. TV repair shop and find the recipe for the Mango Lassi smoothie. You will be freezing this smoothie to create your popsicles. Google "lassi" to find out what the heck it means.
Step Three: Assemble your army of ingredients. Even though it is "raw," there are no strange components to this smoothie, because, alas, smoothies are pretty much raw by their nature. This recipe calls for water, mangoes, raw almonds, dates, and a vanilla bean. You will be replacing the dates with maple syrup because a little boy who lives in your apartment thinks dates are icky. You will also be using pure vanilla extract instead of a vanilla bean because buying one vanilla bean for a batch of popsicles seems like a pretty yuppie thing to do.
Step Four: Peel the mangoes. It's tough as hell, but don't be discouraged. It can also be slippery once you get part of the rind off. But you can do it. You will eat this mango. Dammit you can do it! If a little dainty lemur can tame this fruity beast, then so can you. You will.
Step Five: Don't cry when the peeler slips and slices the tip of your finger open. Frickin lemurs. Who do they think they are?
Step Six: Haphazardly wrap a bandage around your finger to prevent blood from dripping into the smoothie.
Step Seven: Pretend you know how to chop a mango. Seriously. What is going on in the center of this thing? Whose idea was it to put a bone china saucer in the center of a piece of fruit? Is this really vegan?
Step Eight: Put everything in the blender.
Step Nine: Realize your blender probably can't handle all of that mango, and take a few cups out of the blender as a safety precaution.
Step Ten: Blend everything together and fill your popsicle molds. Leave some room at the top of the molds, because the smoothie goop will potentially expand while freezing. Then realize you could have halved the recipe because there's still a ton of smoothie left.
Step Eleven: Place the molds into the icebox. They need to freeze for at least four hours. While this magic is taking place, drink the leftover smoothie out of the blender and then do the dishes. Watch some YouTube clips of lemurs being all adorable and junk. Tickle your cat's paws while she's sleeping. Read National Geographic. Dust the furniture. Sleep. And then, after hours of torture enjoy your popsicle!
I grew up in Indiana, where buying and igniting fireworks is more legal than paying your income taxes. Back in the 80s, we'd go to the parking lot of this junkyard on the corner of Route 6 and Lake Park Avenue where some mysterious men set up tents of explosives for sale. My parents spent who knows what sum on sparklers and smoke bombs and fountains and spinners. On the big night everyone in the neighborhood would sit on on their curbs (or hide in the backseat of their station wagons if they were too scared) while their dad's set off the fireworks.
When I was a little older, I think my parents realized they were throwing their money down the toilet through this patriotic process, and we started going to the city fireworks in Hobart and Portage. When I first moved to Chicago I would trek back to Indiana for the festivities. Something about sharing the night under the fireworks with countless other simple folk was magical. Especially in Hobart, where that old-town feel at the downtown parade and the lakefront park ambiance at the fireworks make you feel like you're living in some sort of Pleasantville reenactment.
The past several years, however, Bill and I have attended the Oak Park fireworks. They didn't have quite the charm as Indiana fireworks. Something seemed, I don't know, sterile about the entire experience. Last year we sat on a soggy tennis court next to a family that obviously hated each other and everyone in attendance. But still, it was fun. It reminded me of going to the city fireworks as a lass and being part of a community, and I thought I would miss it when we moved into the city.
Alas, read the title of this post! On Independence Day eve, we were keenly aware that many fireworks were being detonated in the vicinity. I'm talking being detonated by average folk who live in the neighborhood, not by professionals ordained by the city. I was shocked. I didn't think people did this in Illinois. I've lived in several Chicago neighborhoods previously, including Roger's Park, Wrigleyville, and Andersonville, and the skies were silent around the 4th of July.
So on the 4th of July night Bill and I took our camera and sparklers and wondered about the streets of our new neighborhood. It was crazy! I've never heard such random crackling and ubiquitous booms before, not even in my Indiana youthdom. Every time we passed an alley, someone was there lighting a fuse. The sky exploded. The earth rattled. It was a real hoot, and way better than sitting on metal bleachers listening to "Born in the USA." It made Ukrainian Village seem a little more like home.
In middle school we took "Life Skills" instead of "Home Economics." Call it what you want, it still was a class about cooking and crafting. And our crafting involved using a sewing machine to create a drawstring bag. It was the most horrible week of my life.
I made my bag out of this fabulous Bugs Bunny basketball fabric, which, delightfully, someone is currently selling on Etsy. I was excited about the project, but my ambition quickly fizzled when every step turned into the most difficult task I have ever faced. I'm not sure what it was. I had trouble just cutting the fabric properly. And threading the bobbin and needle? Forget it. In school (excluding gym, of course), I had always churned out nothing but exceptional work, and so sewing this god-forsaken bag turned into a nightmare because I was not good at all. I had to put in extra time after class to finish it, and I'm sure tears were involved. When I finally finished the stupid thing I felt no sense of accomplishment. I was relieved to be rid of the sewing machine, and I didn't touch another one for seventeen years.
My husband, on the other hand, can sew. Whenever I mention the failed drawstring bag, he puffs his chest and tells the story of how in his home ec class, he sewed not a lowly drawstring bag, but a fancy duffle bag, and his teacher thought it was the most perfect specimen of sewmanship she had ever seen. A few years ago I bought him a sewing machine for Christmas. He's only had the chance to sew a few things with it, including this stellar tapestry that now hangs above my desk.
I had figured enough time had passed that perhaps I could try to form a new relationship with the sewing machine. So one day I tried to sew the ends of a small strip of fabric together, and the result: disaster. The thread kept getting tangled and turning into a big clumpy mess. I don't know what I was doing wrong. Bill's theory is that I'm being too timid with the machine, that I have to show it who's boss. I don't know. I had great ambitions of using the sewing machine to create things, but now I think I'll just stick to hand sewing.
My husband, on the other hand, decided to make curtains for our new apartment. We usually paint our apartments in bold colors but this time decided to save time and instead create accents of color through curtains. Bill had an easy go of it. I didn't even try to help. Well, I did cut the fabric for some of the tie-backs. And of course I couldn't even do that correctly; I cut the strips of fabric too small. One thing I was successful at in this entire process was nailing the tie-backs into the wall. I'm not bad with a hammer and a nail. Well, actually, that's not true. If the hammer is to big and heavy it frightens me, and 25% of the time I try to hammer a nail I bend it. Oh, well. DIY isn't my greatest forte. That's what Bill is for.
People think that vegans can barely eat anything, and that the things they can eat are incredibly weird. So I'd like to start a series of posts entitled "What Vegans Eat" to dispel these horrific rumors. The other day I made a batch of utterly normal chocolate chip cookies. The only thing abnormal about them was that the yum-factor was out of this world. Below is a pictorial documentation of the event, in which the subject (me) demonstrates how easy being a vegan cookie monster can be.
Step One: Grab your copy of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jarby Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, the goddesses of vegan cookbooketry. Then open it to the first recipe in the book: "Chocolate Chip Cookies." Note that the name of the recipe is not "Carob Chip Gluten-free Oaties" or "Hemp Seed Granola Squares."
Step Two: Gather your ingredients. This recipe calls for brown sugar, white sugar, canola oil, almond milk, tapioca flour, vanilla, flour, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. You can buy everything from the grocery store, except the tapioca flour, which is used as a binding agent in place of egg. Don't freak, you can always just use cornstarch. Also note my excitement to discover that the generic organic chocolate chips from Dominicks are vegan, saving me a the hassle of chopping Bakers chocolate or busing it to Whole Foods. Also, if almond milk frightens you, you can use soymilk, which is becoming less and less terrifying to mainstream eaters every day.
Step Three: Put on your bitchin' apron. Pre-heat the oven, and grease the cookie sheets.
Step Four: Put on your cookie-bakin' music, in this case, Pepi Ginsberg:
Step Five: Mix your sugars and your liquids vigorously until it turns into an amazing caramel-like goo. Do it with a fork so that you can't slurp it all up with a spoon at this point, because you kind of need this mixture for the cookies you are about to bake.
Step Six: Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, a.k.a "The Science." Think about the amazing chemical reactions that are happening, throw back your head and shout "Muahahahahaha!!! I am a god!"
Step Seven: Add those Safeway Organic chocolate chips, which really are probably the best vegan chocolate chips you've ever tasted. Mark one in the Dominicks column in your Jewel v. Dominicks Competition Spreadsheet.
Step Eight: Interrupt your husband so that he, too, can marvel at the amazingness of these chips. Take the bag away before he eats them all.
Step Nine: Drop the cookies onto the cookie sheets and pop those babies into the oven.
Step Ten: This is probably the most important step. Give your husband a spatula and let him scrape every last drop of the cookie dough out of the mixing bowl. This both raises his spirits and makes one less dish you have to wash.
Step 11: Take the cookies out of the oven, and let them cool. Break a few and get melted chocolate all over your face by trying to eat them too soon. Get all smug knowing that they could not have come out any better if you had used eggs and dairy milk.
Step 12: Get confirmation. "These are some damn good cookies."
See, that's really it. Twelve easy steps to vegan chocolate chip cookies. I didn't use seaweed or tofu. I just used basic cookie ingredients and a lot of vegan love. And that's one thing that vegans eat more than anything else. Love.
My nephew wanted a fake mustache, and so I found a free pattern for one on Easy Makes Me Happy. The night before I was going to see him, I whipped one up. It didn’t turn out perfect, because I did this in the evening in not the best lighting, and the yarn I used was dark brown, which made it difficult to see the stitches. Often I was just guessing where a stitch was before inserting my hook. I also didn’t bother stuffing it, and I left long tails at the ends so that the mustache could be tied behind the head. And this is the result:
I think it turned out pretty cute. After making it I was worried it would not work because it came out very large; however, in the end, I suppose the size only added to the comedic effect. I thought it made Adrian look a little like Mario. He really liked it, and kept asking me if he could take it, even after I told him he could keep it forever because I made it for him. What is it in the world that makes the fake mustache so hysterical?
Here's a few other pics of the mustache in action.
"A Deciduous Life" is a story that I wrote quickly one day when I was really depressed. I haven't written a story in this manner since I was in high school. It was peculiarly comforting and fun. My usual method these days is a slow and laborious process in which I ruin whatever good mood I started in by convincing myself that no word I ever write will be perfect, and so there is no point in ever writing a word.
So, perhaps appropriately, this story is about being terrified of nothing in particular, and of everything all at once. It is a story about living in trees and being frightened of growing old. If I am remembering correctly, it was a story about a kangaroo before it was a story about anything else. And now it is a story published on the sneaky and radiant Fiction at Work. (There isn't a direct link--click the link and then search for my name.)
I grew up in Indiana, where buying and igniting fireworks is more legal than paying your income taxes. Back in the 80s, we'd go to the parking lot of this junkyard on the corner of Route 6 and Lake Park Avenue where some mysterious men set up tents of explosives for sale. My parents spent who knows what sum on sparklers and smoke bombs and fountains and spinners. On the big night everyone in the neighborhood would sit on on their curbs (or hide in the backseat of their station wagons if they were too scared) while their dad's set off the fireworks.
The past several years, however, Bill and I have attended the Oak Park fireworks. They didn't have quite the charm as Indiana fireworks. Something seemed, I don't know, sterile about the entire experience. Last year we sat on a soggy tennis court next to a family that obviously hated each other and everyone in attendance. But still, it was fun. It reminded me of going to the city fireworks as a lass and being part of a community, and I thought I would miss it when we moved into the city.
