The Attic is Clean. We Found Stuff.

I am Extremly in love with Amanda Palmer.

I Am Extremely Excited About the Season Finale of LOST

So I am making a vegetarian feast for the Port Awesome gang for the last LOSTmas of 2009. Season Five, you are like a candle in the wind or something. A freaky, time-traveling candle.

Feast On Deck:

Minted Pea Wontons (a sort of mashup of this recipe and this recipe, and a total experiment on my part, with pics forthcoming).

Spaghetti Squash Salad Italian

2 Spaghetti Squash (which are roasting as we speak!), cooked and separated
2 pints of cherry/grape tomatoes, halved
2 English cucumbers, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 Large Fennel Bulb, sliced superthin on the mandoline, green feathery tops reserved
1-2 Medium Red Onions, also sliced superthin on the mandoline
1 bag o' fresh Baby Spinach
Fresh herbs: fennel tops, basil and dill
Fresh mozzarella, tiny pearl size or larger, sliced
Lemon vinaigrette (whatever you like, or make your own)
Toasty pine nuts

Toss together in order listed. Pics of this tomorrow!

Red Quinoa with Pan Braised Mushroom and Sunchoke

12 oz. dry Red Quinoa, cooked
4 cups of sliced mushrooms--any mix of button, cremini and porcini
1 lb. Sunchokes (about a dozen), sliced
1 lb. fingerling potatoes (b/c I had some to use up, can be omitted)
1-2 red onions
2-3 garlic cloves
Salt and Pepper
Thyme
Fresh Parsley
Balsamic Vinegar
Toasty walnuts
Crumbled feta or goat's cheese

Cook your quinoa and set aside. Heat some olive oil and cook mushrooms over medium-high flame; add sunchoke and potato, if using, and saute to soften. When nearly done, add onion, garlic and thyme. Cook until onion is soft, stir in parsley and drizzle with balsamic. Salt and Pepper to taste and serve over quinoa. Top with walnuts and cheese.

Note: I just made this recipe up from things that sounded earthy and tasty in my head. I make no guarantees as to its awesomeness until I actually attempt to execute it tomorrow.

Food! LOST! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT!!!

My Body, My Government, My Self

To be filed under: Difficult and Not So Difficult.

Issue One: Health Incentives for Workers (link)

I already quit smoking (six months yesterday! w00t!), but I still contend that smoking is disproportionately demonized because it's highly portable and highly visible, much more so than practically every other vice--you can smoke cigarettes during the work day and not be impaired. It's arguably much more dangerous to, say, solicit hookers for unprotected sex, but you can't do that on a five minute break, so it's not something your employer can easily incentivize against.

Food is a much more difficult issue though, because you can't start hampering your employees with monetary or other penalties if we're not going to take a concurrent top-down approach to agricultural subsidies and a whole host of other business-end food issues that make the least healthy foods the cheapeast. I worry less about whether the cost of an employer-sponsored gym membership is taxable income or not and more about the fact that most workers still don't have paid sick leave, and that no women in our country have paid maternity leave. Money and health are inextricably linked, and until we address the whole picture, sticks and carrots will just be sticks and carrots.

Issue Two: Female Circumcision/FGM (link)

My first impulse here was to check my liberal self and wonder if I was inclined to impose my ugly American values on another culture. Screw that.

My beef lies with this statement, quoted within the article:

"Part of what I do here in the United States is to bring down that sensationalistic perspective -- oh my god, these are barbaric individuals, how horrific, how can parents do this to their daughters," Nour said. "When you truly understand the issues of female circumcision, it's a tradition, it's a rite of passage, it's something that is celebrated in a lot of these places."

You know what used to be a part of American culture? The "confinement" of pregnant women. Child labor. Slavery. You know why we don't do those things anymore? Because they're WRONG. Full stop. "Because it's tradition," is a BS argument, used by conservatives to argue against gay marriage. These kinds of things are just self-evidently wrong. If that makes me some kind of arrogant American imperialist, I'll own that.

The real question then becomes how we encourage these cultures that practice female circumcision to change, and I am at a serious loss for good ideas there.

At Home with the Mayweathers

Mrs. Mayweather: Eats leftover lentils and rice* for dinner, drinks red wine, watches Rachel Maddow, peruses her blogroll.

Mr. Mayweather: Leads a two hour GotoMeeting teleconference while sitting at home in his boxers, earns sweet consulting fee.

Mayweathers FTW!

* Lentils and Rice: Cook some lentils and (separately) cook some rice, equal parts. Fry up some onion and garlic. When it's soft, toss in salt, pepper, coriander, cumin and a little cayenne, all to taste. When your pan starts to go dry, sprinkle on some lemon juice and/or red wine vinegar. Toss in some thawed frozen spinach or kale. Toss with rice, lentils, and dressing of 1/2 cup tahini, 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup water, and 2 to 3 crushed cloves of garlic. Top with chopped cilantro or parsley if you like. Eat until stuffed.

Shining, Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen . . .

this would be a much more interesting

pic if all our rechargable batteries

weren't f***ing dead.

It's finally been consistently warm enough in Chicago for me to part with my winter coat of hippie leg hair, which I haven't tended on a regular basis since late November. It's the first year I've gone wholly without shaving during the pants-only (and sometimes longjohns!) winter months, and I really dug it. Like to the point where I'd kinda prefer to just never shave again, but dress is fairly conservative at the new job and I'd rather not have an awkward conversation with my boss. I think next winter Miss Isabelle and I will have a leg hair growing contest. Why should moustaches have all the fun?

Sidenote: Yes, my feet are Sasquatchian in proportion. I wear a "ladies" 11W shoe. I bought my first ever pair of 11WW shoes this winter. One of my exes used to refer to my legs/ankles and "tree trunks." Me and Peggy Hill are like *this*. But I'm trying to be more body-positive, so there you are. My legs and feet are in the Intertubez now, cloggin' ur drain. : D

Sunday Morning