 Lady_Grey
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Alyssa
Country: United States
State: Kansas
Metro: Buieville
Birthday: 1/9/1987
Gender: Female
Interests: Cooking, horticulture, classic languages, Church History and architecture, Roman History, astronomy, theology, philosophy, needlework, baseball, hunting, fishing, phonographs, mechanical typewriters, tube radios, old books, old hymns and psalms, tea, and all things English.
Expertise: Well, my MAJOR is Classics. My expertise is negligible.
Occupation: Student, Latin tutor
Industry: Education
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
7/26/2005
|
|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| IN WHICH
The Author is Free, Free, Free!
No more papers!
No more books!
No more teachers' dirty looks!
(actually, I kinda' miss the last two there)
My last ever finals are over. I've been graduated for a week, and am getting used to the idea, and finding it rather pleasant. And, now that that's ALL OVER, I can tell you about the more important things in life without feeling guilty about not doing my homework.
I'm getting married in THREE WEEKS. Golly, mister. I have this little hard core of pure ecstasy growing rapidly somewhere behind my breastbone, surrounded by a thin layer of nervousness and having to work its way past a few pounds of denial (from the outside, it looks like fat). It's like having an out-of-body experience: I know it's going to happen, but I can't really make myself believe it.
Believe it, sister. In three weeks, I'll be Mrs. Kent D. Will. Woo! Can I get an Amen?
All the wedding planning is falling into place, and Kent and I have been spending the weekends moving stuff into the apartment. It's in an old faded-yellow Victorian house, which, unlike Gaul, has been divided into four parts. Our sector is on the bottom floor. Going from the outside in, it has an enclosed porch which will be Kent's study, a living room with a multi-coloured striped carpet, a kitchen with FULL range (I am one happy camper), bedroom, and bathroom. There are windows in all the rooms, and the ones in the living room and bedroom are HUGE and lined with stained glass at the top. The kitchen looks like it was built for Robert Pershing Wadlow, as the ceiling is ten feet tall and there are cabinets all the way up. Incidentally, I am 5'2" - and therefore the only one who can use the shower, which was evidently designed for Nelson de la Rosa, as the shower head is only inches above my own. Kent and I have agreed that, due to the disparity in height (he's about a foot taller than I), he'll have to do all the cooking and I'll have to take all the showers.
The house itself is sandwiched between two other unrelated constructions. On the left as you are looking at it is a house of more recent creation, painted a bright turquoise with white rails in the front and purple rails on the side. The sign in the front says "The Healing Center", with another sign hanging on the porch that says, "Miracles Happen Here!". As one might expect, Miracle Max, as we have dubbed the collective entity of the house and all within, has mad landscaping skills, a mulch bin, and too many wind chimes. They must have seen us coming, because as we were moving in, they were packing up and moving out to a location far, far away. Evidently they were in charge of landscaping behind our building, including caring for a garden plot out back, so since they're leaving, the garden is ALL MINE. I have plans for that little patch of dirt. Oh yes.
On the other side is a house that my mother remembers being there when she and Dad were going to the U of I. The original building is made of stone and in the general shape of a Spanish mission - hence its enduring nickname of The Alamo (written on a little sign above their fence facing Jefferson St). The Alamo has since endured the erection of multicoloured corrugated steel additions, plus half of a chair nailed to the entry, which is lit with neon lights in green, pink, and purple at night. In their back yard stands a fifteen-foot metal flamingo, complete with sunglasses, and an accompanying rusty palm tree.
Down the street is a guy who owns a white hot-rod with an evil-looking unicorn painted on the hood and the name "Betta" underneath.
You know those nutty stories your grandparents tell you about their adventures as newlyweds? I can see some of my own brewing right now. 
| | |
| IN WHICH
The Author Has a Bit of a Culinary Update
*slurp* H'm. Keemun is a good tea. It has a smokey flavour and aroma, but not quite as strong as a Lapsang Souchong. I originally thought the tin had been mislabelled, but on further investigation it appears that the Chinese have extended their tea-smoking abilities beyond Lapsang. Good show.
Anyway, it appears my food science class has come in handy after all. It turns out that the flavour molecules in asparagus are water-soluble but not lipid-soluble, and green beans are the other way 'round. Which is why if you saute' green beans, all you can taste is the herbs you put on 'em, and if you boil asparagus, it tastes a bit grassy (all that green water you dumped out? yeah, there went most of the flavour along with the vitamins and minerals). So, I decided to try saute-ing some asparagus to see what happened. While I was at it, I played with a few extra ingredients, because I can't help myself.
Ingredients:
Asparagus
Olive oil
Thyme
Minced garlic
Pour a bit of olive oil in a frying pan. Wash the asparagus, snap off the woody ends, pat it dry (important! unless you enjoy having tiny bits of flaming hot olive oil spatter all over you), and pitch it in the pan. Add some garlic and a couple pinches of thyme. Saute' until as tender as you like them, and serve hot.
My family loves it. I didn't know asparagus could taste so... asparagussy. VERY good.
I also had an interesting experience with chocolate-dipped strawberries. The recipe said to melt 3.5 oz bittersweet chocolate with 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tsp of extract of vanilla. We (Mum, my friend Jenny, and I) decided to try it in the microwave instead of a double boiler, for the sake of expediency, because my bridesmaids were coming for a tea party in less than half an hour. I put all the ingredients in the bowl, microwaved it, stirring occasionally, and after melting it promptly re-solidified. All right, we said, I guess we overcooked it. So Mum got some more baking choc from the store and we tried again. This time I added the butter and vanilla halfway through. The choc seized up again. We had one more shot at it, and this time I added the ingredients after the chocolate was all melted. It was gorgeous and smooth and I stirred the butter in and it was beautiful, but the instant I added the vanilla it clumped. Ah HA, we said, it's the alcohol!
My food science professor said (amongst comments on the importance of the quality of chocolate and the alcohol content of the vanilla) that since chocolate and butter are both emulsions of fat in liquid, and alcohol is water-based, and fats and water don't like each other, the addition of the water messed up the emulsion and caused the chocolate to curdle. He suggested a constant application of heat and constant stirring. In other words: follow the instructions, you twit, and use a double boiler.
Meantime, we had chocolate-frosted strawberries. It wasn't as pretty, but it was still delish. The shortbread was excellent (if I do say so myself), and the cucumber sangwidges were mahvellous - cuc slices marinated in lemon juice and layered between slices of buttered bread - and the company was the best of all. I like tea parties. I should do another one sometime.
Mmm... tea. Where's that Keemun?
| | |
| IN WHICH
The Author is Intrigued
"This Irving Berlin fellow seems to have come up a bit of a cropper here, Jeeves."
Flipping through radio stations on my way home, I happened to catch a song with which we are all most likely familiar. First written in 1929 by Irving Berlin, "Puttin' on the Ritz" was performed a year later in a film of the same name starring Harry Richman. CLIP If you look on Wikipedia, you'll note that after the film came out, Berlin changed the lyrics to make the song apply to the well-dressed cream of society. If you listen to Harry Richman sing it in the clip above, and then listen to Fred Astaire in this CLIP, you'll hear the difference. In both cases, the reference is to well-dressed folk, be it on Lennox Avenue (the poor Harlemites) or Park Avenue (the rich folk); but in the former version, if you think about it, the phrase "putting on the Ritz" takes on an almost sarcastic sense - that is, it gives the impression of the poor affecting a rich lifestyle, as opposed to the wealthy flaunting a real one. I doubt there's some serious social comment trying to be made in the two versions of this song (except of course to note in the present day that back then being rich was still the hot thing, and being poor put you in a very low class, hence the sarcasm), but that's how the lyrics evolved anyway.
Original version
Revised version
If you watched the Jeeves and Wooster clip on the top, you'll notice
that Bertie Wooster mixes the versions when he sings "where fashion
sits", but the bit about spangled gowns and misfits is from the older
version.
Ever since its publishing, the song has been covered and recovered by such artists as Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Clark Gable (where he uses the old lyrics - political correctness didn't appear until forty years later), as well as the aforementioned Fred Astaire; it has also appeared in other films, such as the somewhat less reputable Gene Wilder film Young Frankenstein; and has been sung by less well-known artists in modern times - including the version I heard on the radio this afternoon, by a one-hit wonder who called himself Taco. You can watch the VIDEO if you like, but if you have impressionable children, I recommend parental discretion: the video was made in 1983; and like most 1980s-era music videos, it's very weird and somewhat creepy. The cool thing about the video, though, is that despite the words, which are the new ones referring to the upper-class, the video takes place in a back alley, as if giving credit to the original version. I still like the classic versions better, needless to say. Nevertheless, it's a tribute to Irving Berlin that his song has remained so popular for eighty years - enough so that people won't stop singing it.
Well. So much for the media trivia. I hope I didn't ruin a good song for you. If I did (or if I didn't), you can pretend I didn't say it, and turn your attention to THIS instead, while we're on the topic of the golden age of media - and also of baseball, because baseball ties into everything, and needs no segue. Opening season was yesterday, despite its insistence on opening in Japan (of all the nerve), and thus it is time once again to tune in on the old red Packard Bell, and cheer along for the Seattle-ite underdog. Happy New Year, everyone!
| | |
| IN WHICH
The Author Has Fun in Greek
I have a Greek class on Euripides' Medea that goes from 6:30-8:30 pm, usually meeting in one of the numerous independent coffee shops around town, where the caffeine, sugar, and alcohol flow freely. With that kind of combination, naturally so does the wit:
"I need to go home and write a lab report."
"Beg pardon? You need to ride a labrador?"
- Exchange between Josephine and Dr. Perraud
"The Chorus people speak all Spartan-like."
- Kellen, referring to the random Doric dialect that appears in the Chorus
"One a.m. - when the Eastern Classicists are rising from their coffins to go to their computers."
"The athanatoi!"
- Exchange between Dr. Perraud and Mitch. Athanatoi means "the undead".
"I have to go ride another labrador."
- Josephine
"I do wish people would stop writing 'ablative of desperation' on their tests."
- Dr. Perraud
"If somehow she might let go her sullen temper and the pride of her heart... then... I won't make a pesto sauce with my keen friends."
- Mitch, in a confused attempt to translate 'mhtoi to g' emon prothumon philoisin apestw'
"I rode my labrador here. That's going to be a joke forever, isn't it?"
- Josephine
| | |
| IN WHICH
The Author Continues the Countdown
Four months and counting until I marry my best friend!
I can hardly wait. 
| | |
|
