crooked house

World Landmarks Reflected in Bubbles

I love these images of world landmarks reflected in bubbles by photographer Tom Storm. Above is Neptune's Fountain in Gdansk, Poland. You can see nine other landmarks and read an interview with Tom here.

Kale Chips

I have borrowed that image from Honest Fare, whose recipe for this snack will work as well as any. I kept seeing kale chips touted all over the internet as some kind of miraculously delicious and healthy replacement for potato chips. So today we tried them. They are easy to make and not half bad. The trick is to bake them long enough -- I prefer mine a little browner around the edges than the ones in the photo. You don't want any plain old leafy texture left. But you don't want to burn them either because then they just taste... burnt. You might want to experiment. I just used olive oil, salt, and pepper -- next time I might try paprika and cayenne. Or maybe garlic or onion salt. Sylvie seemed to like them. Luke made up his mind to dislike them as soon as he saw them -- he took one bite and spat it out. But I shall persist. And I myself have eaten several full leaves of kale, which has to be a good thing, right?

Babies In Literature: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

What's that? There are no babies in Breakfast at Tiffany's, you say? There is at least one, actually, if you count metaphorical ones. Check out this description of one of Holly Golightly's suitors, Rutherfurd "Rusty" Trawler:

He was a middle-aged child that had never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom. There wasn't a suspicion of bone in his body; his face, a zero filled in with pretty miniature features, had an unused, a virginal quality: it was as if he'd been born, then expanded, his skin remaining unlined as a blown-up balloon, and his mouth, though ready for squalls and tantrums, a spoiled sweet puckering.

 

Allrecipes Reviews

Yesterday, in an effort to begin cooking more meals from scratch, I took out my crockpot and googled for slow-cooker chicken recipes. Allrecipes.com came up in the first couple of links for me, so I chose something easy from there. The ratings and reviews never fail to crack me up. Assume this was the recipe I chose (which it was and yes, I realize it's not very from scratch-y, what with that jar of salsa and all):

Ingredients

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
• 1 (16 ounce) jar salsa
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• salt to taste
• ground black pepper to taste
• 1 (11 ounce) can Mexican-style corn
• 1 (15 ounce) can pinto beans

Directions

1. Place chicken and salsa in the slow cooker the night before you want to eat this chili. Season with garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, salt, and pepper. Cook 6 to 8 hours on Low setting.
2. About 3 to 4 hours before you want to eat, shred the chicken with 2 forks. Return the meat to the pot, and continue cooking.
3. Stir the corn and the pinto beans into the slow cooker. Simmer until ready to serve.

The reviews tend to go something like this (the first one is copied verbatim):

Reviewed on Jan. 10, 2004 by Paula

The first person to taste this chili asked for the recipe! I did make the following changes and additions...3 chicken breasts instead of 4, 1 can of diced green chilis, 2 teaspoons fresh garlic instead of the garlic powder, 16 ounce can of diced tomatoes, and 2 teaspoons sugar to cut the acidity of the tomatoes. OTHERWISE, this was a great recipe and will be added to my winter repertoire! Thanks.

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Reviewed on Nov. 13, 2007 by Lorraine

This recipe has become a staple in my household! Love it! Instead of chicken, I use pork, instead of salsa I use sauerkraut, instead of cumin and chili powder I use paprika! I do use garlic powder! And I omit the corn and the pinto beans. Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful recipe!!

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Reviewed on Feb. 13, 2008 by shewhoeats

what a tasty soup, perfect for this wintry weather.  instead of making this in my crockpot, i loaded everybody into the minivan and went to taco bell, where we poured a large diet pepsi over three grilled chicken burritos. i was very pleased with how it came out, but may add a couple of packs of ketchup in the future.

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Reviewed on January 11, 2011 by sogoodithurts

Made this last night and am NOT happy. Replaced the chicken and the rest of the ingredients with a large bag of Doritos, a box of Oreos, and a sixpack of beer. Did not slow cook, of course. Tasted great at the time but I was up with diarrhea in the night and still feel quite sick to my stomach today. I do not recommend this recipe.

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I'll let you know how my version turns out. Update: There was too much chicken and not enough beans. It was more like a meat sauce than a chili. Also, it was a bit bland. We ate it on tortillas, with sour cream, grated cheese, tomatoes and lettuce. David added a few drops of Dave's Insanity Sauce and quite liked it. 

Babies in Literature: Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

This is  a painting of Kakuarshuk, an Inuit woman who is digging for babies -- that's where they come from, didn't you know? It's by the artist Rima Staines who talks about the folktale that inspired her, which was collected in Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, over here at her blog, The Hermitage. The painting is for sale.

Elmo's World... Domination

Elmo surveys the work of his minion.

Thanks, Elmo. Note: I found him standing there -- I swear I did not place him there for photographic purposes -- when I discovered that all the walls of the downstairs hall had been marked as his territory. Yet again.

Elmo attempts to gaze  hypnotically into his disciple's eyes.

First he was "Mo," then he was "Momo," and then "Melmo." Clearly his name is Legion. If I have to hear his song one more time I may shoot myself. And if that happens, someone else will have to scrub those walls.

Babies in Literature: Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography

According to Alexandra Popoff, author of Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography, Leo Tolstoy's wife has been maligned by history. Popoff, who had access to a great deal of previously inaccessible archival materials, explains that it all stems from Tolstoy's final years, when he experienced a religious conversion that led him to renounce his marriage, his family, and his property (or try to). However much Tolstoy may have believed in his principles of poverty and chastity, this renunciation put his wife in a completely untenable position. Sophia was left to look after the couple's eight surviving children pretty much on her own. Clearly Tolstoy felt some responsibility to his family, because he kept waffling on property and money matters. Admittedly, Sophia kept fighting him on these -- who wouldn't, when she had eight children to feed, clothe, and educate? He also kept waffling on the matter of sex -- he kept sleeping with Sophia and then blaming the matronly woman for being a seductress. Tolstoy's most famous follower, Vladimir Chertkoff, managed to insinuate himself between the couple in Tolstoy's final years and ended up controlling his literary works after his death. Popoff argues that it is he who is most responsible for discrediting Sophia Tolstoy's character. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in Tolstoy, and really, anyone who is interested in the concept of marriage and women's historical role within it.

Tolstoy was a literary genius, to be sure, but he also must have been infuriating to be married to. Sophia was not only Tolstoy's muse, she was a  tireless worker who devoted all her efforts to creating the proper environment for her husband to write in. She was Tolstoy's copyist and later his publisher. She managed his home and often his estate and related business matters. She made most of the childrearing and educational decisions on her own. (At one point, when she asked about appropriate education for one of their teenage sons, her husband brushed her off with a comment that he should become a street sweeper or the like because of his own religious beliefs against taking part in a money-based economy.) Sophia gave birth to thirteen children, although she wanted to stop after seven or so -- but Tolstoy wouldn't allow birth control. She breastfed all these babies herself at Tolstoy's insistence even though it never became easy for her (she often developed mastitis) and most women of her position employed wet nurses. And she watched six of her children die. Exhausted and completely emotionally and physically spent, at times Sophia wanted to end these pregnancies:

By now, she was certain of her [twelfth] pregnancy. As she wrote her sister, she felt like "screaming of despair and rage."

Told the news, Tolstoy wrote he was glad they would have a child; Sophia's unhappiness came from her revolté. It would be easier for her and people around her if she assumed a more accepting attitude: "Why can't you surrender?" Sophia thought his position was morally superior and felt crushed. "If I were bad before, now I am loathsome! And if you were good, you have become so much better!" Her pregnancy explained her abnormal state, Tolstoy replied: "I know, I've heard, that it's terribly oppressive for the soul."

Meanwhile, Sophia attempted to induce a miscarriage: she took scalding baths and jumped from a dresser. To a nanny who tried to talk her out of it, she said that Tolstoy considered leaving her and their children. When her attempts failed, she approached a midwife in Tula, asking for an abortion. The midwife, afraid of exposure, refused: she would perform an abortion for someone else, but not for Countess Tolstoy.

At times, Sophia Tolstoy wanted to end her own life.

You can read a brief excerpt from the biography here.

Luke's Nightmare

Luke had a terrible dream the other night. He dreamt that I pushing Sylvie in a shopping cart across a parking lot and that he and David were also in the parking lot, but some distance away. Suddenly, the shopping cart exploded and Sylvie and I were flung into the air. He came running to where we landed on the ground, still alive but somehow... different.

He asked me, "Are you going to be the same, Mommy?"

Apparently I replied ominously, "I'm afraid not."

The next thing he knew, his 19-month-old sister Sylvie stood up, now clad in a sort of black metal "fighting suit" and began to attack him. He was unable to fend her off, as her suit made her practically invincible. One of her eyes was her normal blue but the other was... red.

When Luke recounted this dream to me, I was so amused by the image of Sylvie as a lethal fighting toddler machine that I suggested we should remember it and make it Sylvie's Halloween costume next year. Unfortunately, Luke was freaked out by the idea, and is very much against our implementing it.

 

Television Series: BBC's Survivors

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I've been reading a bunch of post-apocalyptic fiction for a project, picking and choosing from the fiction section of this list. Just this week I switched to the film and television section, downloading both seasons of BBC's Survivors from iTunes and devouring them. I managed to watch it late at night, after the children were asleep, and therefore I've been a bit of a zombie during the days. Happily, though, there are no zombies in Survivors, something that, obviously, can not be said about a lot of post-apocalyptic stories. Although I am a big fan of fantasy, magical realism, and the like, for some reason I prefer my post-apocalyptic fiction as realistic as possible -- straight up, as it were -- maybe because the circumstances of these stories are surreal enough already. Survivors is this kind of story, about how a small, diverse group of ordinary people manage to keep it together after 95% of the world's population is decimated by a flu pandemic. The leader of the group is a middle-aged woman, Abby Grant, who is looking for her twelve-year-old son who was away at camp when the virus struck. She meets up with a survival-minded systems analyst, the recently divorced Greg; Tom, a career criminal who'd been serving a life sentence in prison; Anya, an altruistic young doctor; Al, a wealthy playboy, and Naj, a twelve-year-old boy and a devout Muslim. Beyond the group's survival efforts and Abby's search for her son, a great deal of the show is devoted to an exploration of morality in a completely broken society.

Survivors is a remake of a BBC television series of the same name produced in the early 70s, based on a book by Terry Nation. I've reserved the book at the library and would love to watch the early 70s version. Now, because when I think "BBC television series" I think "The Prisoner," that odd yet oddly appealing late-60s show featuring a guy trapped in a village by an enormous white beach ball that moved in slo-mo, I suppose I was unconsciously expecting the current series to  have low production values or something. Boy, was I wrong. I was especially impressed with the casting and the quality of the acting.

While looking for a link to The Prisoner, I've discovered they'd made a remake of that, too. Excuse me while I disappear for another week. And by the way, Survivors, which I highly recommend, is available through netflix, too.

How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack

I've been reading a bunch of post-apocalyptic science fiction and non-fiction survival guides lately, for a project that I am (slowly, very slowly) working on. The children were quite taken with the most recent survival guide I brought home from the library, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack: Defend Yourself When the Lawn Warriors Strike (And They Will).

Sylvie took one look at the book and went and captured the little gnome that was in my Christmas stocking this year.

Luke soon joined her in interrogating him.

And then he led him away for a stern man-to-ma... I mean, boy-to-gnome talk.

While the idea for this book is an amusing one, I must admit it is not as funny as it might be, even though it has a very good first line. "Keep reading if you want to live." If you're looking for a good guide to gnomes -- although not a particularly helpful one should they try to kill you -- I highly recommend the reference my family had when I was young called, sensibly enough, Gnomes.