i just want to say that i'm on draft 2.5 of the dissertation chapter i started last time we went to norway. this morning i was on draft 2.3 so somewhere there's progress--even if it means that i actually cut three pages and rearranged sections so that you could read it without wanting to put forks in your eyes. and really i think this happened because i heard owen downstairs asking my mom to read sections from for whom the bell tolls. i confess to not having actually read it yet--which is why it's downstairs on the coffee table as part of my new intrigue with hemingway or rather expat writers and their posthumous memoirs--but i heard nana reading something about snow. owen said "read the next poem!". so maybe that's the real progress, right? or maybe it means my son will finish my dissertation for me when he reaches eight.
the monday post from the friday five
(it's been a crazy week and without my laptop i've been a bit slow in all things computerish but here's our friday five from last friday wtih pics taken from my barely-haning-in-there phone while down at the treepark but it makes me happy nonetheless and we can always use some extra friday joy!)
five things to do with a pair of pretend kitchen tongs:
5. wear them as headphones 4. pick grass 3. use them to keep the sun out of your eyes 2. make a pretty necklace 1.reach the tippy tops of the trees
let's go
so the conversation started something like--so why do you want to go to alaska when you're in norway? if you want to go anywhere, we should go to paris. you know, they have fabulous carousels for kids. and he said--well, if you come to norway i'll take you to paris. and i said, i can come to norway, can you take us to paris?
and that's how i like to think of it--this flirty i-dare-you conversation with the guy i've been madly in love with since i was 18. and my best friend. and really that's how it went. but it wasn't so much about paris as it was about that big happiness quote i posted a couple weeks ago. because this thing we've been doing works as long as it works. and at a certain poitn you have to acknowledge when you just can't do the maddening commute and when it breaks your heart that daddy comes home to visit. and all the practical things have been done and it's time to just go for it. sooo. we're going to norway. all of us and this is my public proclamation. mind you it's no 12 week homestay but we're packing up and driving the dog back up to seattle and spending six weeks together as a crazy live out of three suitcases threesome. we're in the process of figuring out dates and such and this is my prayer of sorts out in the universe that all things conspire to good. so far we're looking at mid may-june so, as they say, stay tuned.
this is my green library chair
this afternoon we returned some videos to the library and chose another round of books--owen has decided that he has his own library chair and has taken to given his own book readings. he grabbed dr. seuss oh say can you say? and really gave the dr. a run for his nonsense rhyme with what can be nothing less than owen-ese. i realized that despite the fact that the faceplate is completely blank and the screen has huge black blobs after getting run over by a golf cart my little verizon phone still takes mini video clips--i missed the seuss but i did get this rendition of a book about shaumu the killer whale. move over miss peggy!
owen top 5
Just arrived here in Norway, and travelled for 28 hours to get here -- gave me some time to think back about the week at home, and come up with my Owen top 5:
1 walks to tree park These was fun just walking and trying to get Owen to follow -- he seemed to go at his own very slow pace and find sticks in letter shapes.
2 puzzle time Crazy for the puzzles -- it doesn't matter how "tricky" they are.
3 garbage truck song Maybe he knows that i'm faking my way through this by changing the words to the wheels on the bus song, but he still smiles.
4 daddy.. where are you! Always catching me sneaking off to check my email, or work on taxes and bills.
5 owen writing his name On the special get well card to grandpa -- owen wrote his name -- scarily good for his age.
dancing with seaweed
if this doesn't make you want to spend dusk with owen at the san clemente pier...
"go round and round!"
thanks to n&p's camera we finally have a video clip of owen in action--here he is singing his favorite song while driving along in toontown:
now we're slow cookin'!
so when i was watching the next installment of jamie's kitchen a couple of weeks ago and saw him make a steak & guinness pie i thought it would be exactly the kind of homecoming slow cooked meal i wanted to make for michael. but alas, the recipe was nowhere to be found. luckily, i obsessively dvr my favorite cooking shows and have a community of eager cooks. that is to say--(following our literary food foray) m. and a.m. and i watched the episode no less than four times and took note of how many "knobs" of butter or "handfulls" of cheese got thrown in the dutch oven (the big winner of the kitchen covet tool, by the way, by the winter cooks!). then in a true stone soup kind of moment there we were chopping up bushels of organic carrots, whizzing crimini mushrooms in the food processor and even doing a quick dash in the alley to pick rosemary.
here it is, then, our recipe as translated and executed:
the ingredient list:
- olive oil, salt & pepper
- 3 red onions
- fresh rosemary
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 ribs of celery
- 2 carrots
- handful of portabello or crimini mushrooms
- 1 1/2-2 lbs. chopped brisket of beef
- 1 can guinness
- beef broth (but perhaps this could have been eliminated? or just very little used)
- flour
- butter (we indulged by using irish butter--avail. at trader joe's)
- frozen puff pastry
- egg for brushing pastry
- 2-3 generous handfuls cheddar cheese (we used a combination of tilamook sharp and irish cheddar--you can get a hearty chunk from costco)
the simmer down:
using our le creuset(s) dutch oven we sautéd the onions with a generous drizzle of olive oil (we also added butter for richness--i have been quoted btw as saying "something magical happens when you combine olive oil and butter"), fresh ground pepper, sea salt (i think kosher would work fine) and with a few cloves of garlic (j. used a zester to grate the garlic in the mixture but this quickly got tiresome and i resorted to a press) until carmelized. this truly is the heart of the recipe--the pungency of the raw red onions take on such an intensely savory sweet flavor and turn a deep, near burgundy-black color. since we were cooking for three pies we spent a good 30-45 minutes slowly cooking the onions down before adding the veggies. but the sweet, rich, savory flavor of the onions was well worth it.
add the good stuff
with the onions ready we added our diced celery, chopped carrots, sliced mushrooms and cubed beef to the pot. then we poured in the guinness, scraping up the savory browned bits from the onions (nb.--you do not brown or sear the beef--it will stew in the oven). then we added 1 T of flour and enough stock to top but not cover the meat. the pot was covered and we baked the stew at 350 for about 2 hours.
roll it up
we reconvened and rolled out our puff pastry. we used a full sheet until it was the right size for our pan with the extra dough hanging over the sides--we had a variety of vessels: an emile henry ceramic pie dish, a white corningware oval baker, and a glazed ceramic rectangular bowl. i'm pretty sure j. would support this ecclecticism here: it's rustic so just go with what you have. since we were actually assembling three pies we divvyed up 4 rolls--splititng the fourth into thirds for the top but one roll would be fine split 2/3; 1/3. the top sheet we scored diagonally and set aside.
the improvised roux
now, we watched j. take the stew out of the oven at least three times and his was coated in a thick gravy and looked mostly meaty. in order to make the pie work, he stressed you needed a dry stew. our stew was pretty soupy--which w
asn't surprising after all the veggies broke down--so we strained the meat and veggie mixture and divided it among our pies along with a handful or so of grated cheese. then we looked at that rich, savory goodness and had an inspired moment of and whipped up a roux by by mixing a couple of T of butter with about equal amounts of flour and then slowly added enough liquid back until we had a gravy which we drizzled in our meat/veggie filled pies. finally, we added another handful of cheese and the top pastry sheet. to seal the sides and ensure a golden top we brushed (like literally with a paint brush) the pastry with a whisked egg.last bake and voilá
the pies then went home to our respective ovens, were baked at 350 for 30-40 minutes at which point the pastry was golden and crisp and the pie was bubbling and the cheese was melting. we served ours in generous spoonfulls over peas. mmmmmmm.
on holding on
. . . people tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming inward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top if it. If you don't you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
-- elizabeth gilbert, eat pray love
last week the ladies from 7 to 33 walbert lane drank limoncello and indulged in antipasto and shared our words from optimism to heart from balance to competition and launched our first book club meeting. liz's journey was a good place to begin--to bring together a group of ecclectic women that seemingly had little in common other than geography and a desire to talk. of course what we found that we could all learn from liz was not that we needed talk/prayer but that we could learn so much from listening/meditation. from this lady at number 17 the above passage resonated most beautifully and insistently--somewhere (see blog archives from april-may) in a little fishing village in norway, this part of fidfam realized happiness snuggled up with her two boys away from the competing rigeurs of academic life and ocmommyism and found balance (my word). somehow, while not exactly indulging in canollis in rome or seeking ascetism in india, literally distincing myself from what seemed like an impossiblity to balance i realized the simplicity of my happiness--and indeed the absolute fervor with which i would fight to keep it. and for me it necessitates a balance and a daily thankfulness--for the love cultivated with neighbors, friends, family and above all my boys and for the self contentment cultivated from writing and reading. the optimist of our group said it most eloquently--you might look at me and think i have everything; i do, and i'm so thankful. and i think the beautiful thing about that statement is that it comes from a gorgeous soulful woman who would be thankful for anything despite the circumstance and has learned to fight for it, insist upon it, and above all else believe in it. there is real strength in identifying happiness--indeed, my beautiful clarissa dalloway pinpoints the exact moment of her happiness in her memories of bourton and uses that to realize that a day in london, simply, life, is what she loved. we talked of keeping a thankfulness journal and how difficult it was to meditate and i realized that this blog has become, for me, a kind of thankfulness meditation-- a space where i pause and celebrate the daily delights and absurdities. it began as a way to share with michael those daily moments, to keep us connected (and hence retain that balance--for if anything michael is truly my balance) and somehow i think it's grown from there and become a larger means of reaching out and stashing our horcruxes, what i take as our essential cherished bits of ourselves in secret, safe, places--with, of course, those who we celebrate with and share love. wow, it's definitely time for someone to shout "digression!" (and to cease this geekiness) and with that i will return to my writing and clarissa (the boys have gone to see mickey so mommy could work--ah, balance! and i'm definitely in a writing mode now!) and continue to meditate on happiness.
but first one last oh--for our next meeting i'm thinking we ladies are ready to go american literary and seek some hemingway--any suggestions out there? i love the sun also rises (and i'm not sure we're ready for garden of eden) but i wonder if for whom the bell tolls might be a good begin? (the boys i think might also enjoy this read). would love some readerly advice!
we just said farewell to the old jetta--ryan drove it away an hour or so ago on his way up to san francisco and as he was pulling away owen shouted: "RYAN! Go get on the FIVE FREEWAY!". ah, my little road warrior.
it was a great, if brief visit-- we went straight from SNA to crystal cove which i keep returning to for the tide pools and spectacular cliffs. owen marched up and down the beach 
playing his seaweed trombone, sat knee deep in tide pools and sang to anenomes, and searched for sea creatures and pretty rocks with uncle ryan. 
we then went back to the ranch where sierradog was nothing short of ecstatic to see his old master and hoped for more squireling adventures. after a busy day in the sunshine we joined the beals for some yummy sushi. today was a lazy sunday and we made sure to send ryan off with some homemade winter minestrone soup--a perfect way to use up the remaining butternut squash from our muffins last week! (i substituted celery for fennel and spinach for swiss chard and the tj's quattro fromagio is always a superb soup-topper)--and now we're just left counting days until michael returns home. it has definitely been a bittersweet weekend--our neighbors thought m. came back early when they saw his twin bro walking the dog and owen kept asking "and daddy is going to be at the airport too?". don't worry sweetie, we're saving up the best sunshine and the most beautiful sea rocks for you!
friday already?
so it must be time for the owen fabulous friday five!
5. i love our juice party! said with the zest that only comes from pomegrante juice.
4. don't worry, i scratched my itchy off. ummm, not really sure what happened here. this was explained to me while taking our morning walk. hope it all worked out.
3. i am a fixer guy! again, it's all about screwdrivers, batteries and scotch tape.
2. let's set the timer for one minute. what happens when the timer goes off owen? it goes DING!
1. i'm cracking yourself up! yes, owen, you are indeed ;)
the joy-s of cooking
so all of this cooking has given me a renewed love for all things in my cupboards. i confess to feeling nothing short of pleasure when i can throw everything into my food processor, or utilize my dualit scale, or put my chopping block to work--so i thought i'd throw a quiz out there to see what the must-haves or cant-do-withouts or even covets are in your kitchen.
oh, and if you're in a chopping mood and haven't pulled that dutch oven out lately we just finished the last of this fragrant, light but hearty chicken noodle soup with vegetables (thanks to mom and dad for sharing this one in their renewed vigour in healthful recipes!)-- it makes me ask: why aren't we putting more parsnips in our food!
"taste and have a think about it"
you've got to love a recipe that instructs you to pause and stick a spoon in whatever you're making. tonight owen and i baked these scrumptous butternut squash muffins we saw jamie whipping up on his new down-home-getting-dirty -in-the-garden -then-plonking-it-all-together -for-some-really-pukka -grub foodtv show. the show's a return to his pared down philosophy from nakedchef and so far so good-- we made the cupcakes for our picnic tomorrow at the irvine railroad and i confess to sneaking a taste after owen went to bed (just to be sure, of course, that it wasn't a horrid concotion of raw squash) and it was delish! the "frosty top" is a surprising must as the zest of fresh citrus (from n&p's little orchard out in riverside) and savory sweetness of the vanilla bean paired with sourcream really brings out the nutty, earthy flavors in the muffin. we'll see what the boys think tomorrow!
i took some fun video that i'm convinced will serve as future "bonus features" on the "in the kitchen with owen" dvd--the only real postitive outcome to dropping the camera in the ocean. i'm not quite sure how to upload clips yet--but imagine owen in the kitchen weighing chunks of "butter and squash" and going "zzzzt zzzzt" on the food proccessor and using measuring spoons to scoop batter into muffin cups all the time singing "we're making muffins! oh oh muffins! we're making muffins!" ( a respite from singing "row row row your boat" all day).
so today was a good day all around--the muffins were a reward for me and owen after a good work day (don't worry n&p i've saved some batter so we'll bake some fresh for thursday!). nana's been so awesome about keeping our tuesday/thursday dates and the consistent momentum has really helped with progress on the big D--i kind of made m. the deal that if he went off to work for a few weeks then i would work for a few weeks and we'd both be rewarded with family time. so i set my deadlines around his schedule and this next trip home i'm sending off what i have to my chair and moving on to the next chapter. anyway, not only does having a couple of days to plan around uninterrupted writing really help me actually write but it makes the time fly by. so when i'm not officially working i feel like my "job" then is to nurture owen and follow his lead in finding a little J-O-Y every day. i know, as m. used to say--it doesn't suck.
but the payoffs are good all around. this morning o. was looking for lego spencer lost in the garage and needed nana's help finding him--so he brought the lego box cutout with a picture of spencer and pointed to him. i guess he's discovered the inherent rewards in the "show me what you need" so after lunch he went and pulled an entire quart of pomegrante juice out of the fridge and brought it to nana in the living room. but the best part is that he's making a connection between sign language and communicating with those he loves--last night we watched signing time together and he was literally dancing on the couch doing the signs along with rachel and then said to me: "mama, i know ALL the signs!"
cut from sicko
Here's an interesting clip that was cut from Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" about Norway's health care system:
"Moore also filmed scenes in Norway, whose health care system is supervised by the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision. Norway was removed from the film because its health care system possess numerous benefits similar to the French system. For example, Norwegian patients treated for an illness like psoriasis or rheumatism are eligible for two weeks paid vacation at a spa in the Canary Islands.[52] Norway hires a government ethicist to determine who they should spend their money on, because they want to do it in an ethical way.[53]
A scene in which Moore visits a Norwegian island prison, in which inmates reside in small group homes and focus on rehabilitation through manual labor and farming, was also cut." - Wikipedia
the magical stick
overheard on our morning walk:
look mommy, i found a stick. here's one for you.
my stick is a violin. dooo dooo dooo lala.
now my stick is a guitar.
babababa my stick is a drum.
look! my stick is pointing down the hill. let's go to the tree park!
radisson
since the Scandic hotel stopped giving Hilton points, I switched hotels to the Radisson. the rooms are smaller, and there are other aspects of the hotel I don't like as much as the Scandic... but it is close to the ferry docks where I catch my 8am to Longva, so that's nice. Here's the view from my room with the Hurtigruten in town:
You can tell that it can get pretty loud outside when the ships pull into town.
squash
my exercise routine when I am in Norway consists of going to the local gym and playing some squash with a few of the guys here. I started out probably the worst player since it is not very popular west coast sport, but during x-mas I bought a racket and some eye protection as long as proper indoor shoes, and I seem to be getting a bit better. Since the week was pretty easy work-wise, I've gone to the gym five times to play... so maybe by the end of this project I'll go pro.