Recently I had a rather nice experience: somebody came to my house and cooked for me. Wow! I have had people prepare me meals before (although not many, because I'm something of a kitchen hog), and I do cooking with groups, but it was so nice to relax on my own couch while somebody else did all the work.
She prepared indian food, which was also exciting. I have to admit, I don't branch out into different genres of food anywhere near often enough, and I've never made anything more complicated than the most basic of curries before. But E brought out a recipe she found on a website that I can no longer remember the name of and made me chana masala, which was freaking delicious. And fast! Enough so that I made it for myself again this week, and now I'm sharing it with you, adapted slightly from the original to coincide with what I actually did.
Chana Masala
Ingredients:
1 15-oz can of chickpeas
olive oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbs gram (chickpea) flour (most cheaply available from middle eastern markets)
1 large tomato or 1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes
1 tbs grated fresh ginger
1 small serrano chili, seeded and diced (more or less to fit your spiciness tolerance, E used half of a chili and I later used 3/4 of one)
1 tsp garlic powder or two cloves fresh garlic (the original recipe called for a stinky potent spice called asafetida that you actually have to store apart from your other spices because it will infect them, but garlic proved to be a decent substitute. If you use asafetida, add it with the cumin seeds.)
2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garam masala (a spice mix available from stores or I suppose you could make your own, although from what I read the mix varies wildly depending on who you talk to. I used storebought.)
1 tsp fresh chopped cilantro (optional)
thinly sliced tomato for garnish if you roll that way
Drain the chickpeas and tomatoes. Into the open can of tomatoes (or in a bowl with the fresh one) add the ginger and diced chili. Heat up the olive oil until a single cumin seed pops when it's dropped in. Add the rest of the cumin seeds, let them pop for a minute, then add the gram flour and fry for a minute. Add the tomato mixture, coriander, turmeric, chili powder and garlic; mash everything up a bit with a potato masher or etc. and cook for about four minutes on medium heat. The mixture should start reducing. Add the chickpeas and half a cup of water, cover, and let cook for seven to eight minutes. Mash a little more with the kitchen utensil of your choice. Let the mixture cook until you like the consistency (you can always add more water). Add the garam masala and cilantro. Serve with rice or naan bread.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
a political statement against the lack of joy on the planet
I really don't know what this is about, but it's fun to watch and I like the song a lot. And the lipsynching young-looking background singers. And Amanda Palmer.
Also, here's a note i found on a street corner last night, which I picked up just for the weirdness factor:
"It's so nice to be a dove chocolate melt a-way. Missing you like the diamond out of my ring. The Bible is the most eloquent writing, most impower sofa need pile."
I might be misreading that last part, but that's my best guess. I like how a bunch of seemingly random thoughts (chocolate? the bible?) are just strung together.
Monday, April 27, 2009
gravity works slowly if you notice it at all
"'Love is like butter,' Mom used to tell me, 'it goes well with bread.' What she meant, basically, was that love wouldn't pay the bills. True, I had been in love a lot, and the power was always getting cut off, but I sort of liked it that way. 'Happiness is being sad and broke and in love' is what I liked to say."
-Aaron Cometbus, from Marta--A Library Love Story
When I woke up this morning and glanced in the mirror, after laughing at my fuzzy strange sleepy hair the first thing I noticed was that the lines running from my nose to the corners of my mouth were far more pronounced than normal. I bore a remarkable resemblance to a ventriloquist's dummy, or perhaps a monkey. It was a little alarming, frankly. It's calmed down a bit now (and yes, I did just pop into the bathroom to check), but my reaction is what was the most interesting to me.
In general, I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of getting old. It will happen, so why would I worry much about it? Besides, I'm only twenty-seven, and it seems a little excessive even to me to spend a lot of time worrying about something inevitable. But there are moments, mostly related to physical signs of ageing, that make me re-evaluate my stance. My god, when I started getting silver hair in grad school (hello stress) it was a massive weight on my mind for a while. I think there were several reasons for it--a relationship that wasn't going as well as I'd hoped, the extreme stress and pressure I was under at school and work--but I became, for a while, convinced that I was going to get old and unattractive and die alone, watching all the young dykes hook up at the bar while I downed a double pint of Blue Moon in solitary misery. That's an exaggeration, of course. But the first thing I thought this morning was "Wow, my face just got older." Does this matter? Am I still afraid of dying alone and unhappy because of some wrinkles or silver hairs?
Short answer: No. I know that really, it doesn't matter. Change is what happens, and to consider something like this good or bad seems... illogical to me. That doesn't mean I don't think about it sometimes, but it does mean I think I'm a little more objective than I was at twenty-four. To put it another way: I'd rather not look like a monkey for the rest of my life, but I'm not afraid of dying alone so those things aren't so tied together anymore. My ideas of what "happiness" consists of are changing.
As I do, in fact, get older, it is becoming increasingly evident to me that relationships between people can take so many different forms that I could never document them all. It's easy to whittle them down to a few categories (single, relationship, open relationship, slut) but those words each have so many different meanings that they become pointless placeholders that stand in for real descriptions of connection. It's also evident to me that, although I have experienced a few of those placeholder connections ('single' briefly and 'relationship' at great length), I haven't found the balance, the unlabeled form of connection that will make me the most happy. It's all butter, or all bread, or something completely different, a cracker or a mango. I don't give a shit about finances really, but if I change that homily to mean that bread is a solid base, a sense of self to be occasionally combined with someone else's butter (or jam, or cream cheese, or olive tapenade, or...), it makes sense to me. For now, I'm concentrating on baking bread, on making sure I am the strongest and best and happiest version of myself that I can be, while I explore what my connections to other people actually consist of. I think I'm making headway. If I someday find a person or persons who will butter my bread without overwhelming it that would be great, but if not I think I could be happy with who I am without the label of "relationship." Being single doesn't mean a lack of connection, it just means a different sort of connection. For now, I'm at peace with it.
-Aaron Cometbus, from Marta--A Library Love Story
When I woke up this morning and glanced in the mirror, after laughing at my fuzzy strange sleepy hair the first thing I noticed was that the lines running from my nose to the corners of my mouth were far more pronounced than normal. I bore a remarkable resemblance to a ventriloquist's dummy, or perhaps a monkey. It was a little alarming, frankly. It's calmed down a bit now (and yes, I did just pop into the bathroom to check), but my reaction is what was the most interesting to me.
In general, I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of getting old. It will happen, so why would I worry much about it? Besides, I'm only twenty-seven, and it seems a little excessive even to me to spend a lot of time worrying about something inevitable. But there are moments, mostly related to physical signs of ageing, that make me re-evaluate my stance. My god, when I started getting silver hair in grad school (hello stress) it was a massive weight on my mind for a while. I think there were several reasons for it--a relationship that wasn't going as well as I'd hoped, the extreme stress and pressure I was under at school and work--but I became, for a while, convinced that I was going to get old and unattractive and die alone, watching all the young dykes hook up at the bar while I downed a double pint of Blue Moon in solitary misery. That's an exaggeration, of course. But the first thing I thought this morning was "Wow, my face just got older." Does this matter? Am I still afraid of dying alone and unhappy because of some wrinkles or silver hairs?
Short answer: No. I know that really, it doesn't matter. Change is what happens, and to consider something like this good or bad seems... illogical to me. That doesn't mean I don't think about it sometimes, but it does mean I think I'm a little more objective than I was at twenty-four. To put it another way: I'd rather not look like a monkey for the rest of my life, but I'm not afraid of dying alone so those things aren't so tied together anymore. My ideas of what "happiness" consists of are changing.
As I do, in fact, get older, it is becoming increasingly evident to me that relationships between people can take so many different forms that I could never document them all. It's easy to whittle them down to a few categories (single, relationship, open relationship, slut) but those words each have so many different meanings that they become pointless placeholders that stand in for real descriptions of connection. It's also evident to me that, although I have experienced a few of those placeholder connections ('single' briefly and 'relationship' at great length), I haven't found the balance, the unlabeled form of connection that will make me the most happy. It's all butter, or all bread, or something completely different, a cracker or a mango. I don't give a shit about finances really, but if I change that homily to mean that bread is a solid base, a sense of self to be occasionally combined with someone else's butter (or jam, or cream cheese, or olive tapenade, or...), it makes sense to me. For now, I'm concentrating on baking bread, on making sure I am the strongest and best and happiest version of myself that I can be, while I explore what my connections to other people actually consist of. I think I'm making headway. If I someday find a person or persons who will butter my bread without overwhelming it that would be great, but if not I think I could be happy with who I am without the label of "relationship." Being single doesn't mean a lack of connection, it just means a different sort of connection. For now, I'm at peace with it.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
why is everything so hazy?
I'm super fuzzed out this morning from not sleeping well for several consecutive nights (perfect timing for the first rehearsal of that piece in the post below, sigh... and tonight is likely to be no different), but here's something I learned last night: following directions makes a difference. I learned it a few weeks ago when, with my second go-round with chocolate sugar cookies, they didn't spread during baking as planned, presumably because we melted the butter instead of having it at room temperature. And this week? It's crispy salted chocolate chip oatmeal cookies that schooled me.
I made these with Rose-Anne a few weeks ago, and I mis-read the recipe: instead of creaming the sugars and butter together until "fluffy and light" I just creamed them together. The resulting cookies were good (pretty awesome the next day, actually) but not in the way they were described in the recipe. We were going for "thick and shattery" because that sounds like an awesome thing for a cookie to be, and instead we got "very thin and crunchy." So it goes. But last night (with my brand new electric hand mixer, OMG) I made them again (using bittersweet chocolate chips because I didn't have white chocolate) and thick and shattery they are! They look very substantial but they are feather-light and explode in your mouth. And beautiful? The prettiest damn cookies I've ever made.
Live and learn. Time for more coffee before I head to rehearsal and get my mind blown.
I made these with Rose-Anne a few weeks ago, and I mis-read the recipe: instead of creaming the sugars and butter together until "fluffy and light" I just creamed them together. The resulting cookies were good (pretty awesome the next day, actually) but not in the way they were described in the recipe. We were going for "thick and shattery" because that sounds like an awesome thing for a cookie to be, and instead we got "very thin and crunchy." So it goes. But last night (with my brand new electric hand mixer, OMG) I made them again (using bittersweet chocolate chips because I didn't have white chocolate) and thick and shattery they are! They look very substantial but they are feather-light and explode in your mouth. And beautiful? The prettiest damn cookies I've ever made.
Live and learn. Time for more coffee before I head to rehearsal and get my mind blown.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
i was thinking last night about elvis
I've actually had a lot of downtime this week, due to both my efforts to not overbook myself and a number of cancellations (I'm up to three now, I think). But I'm not complaining. It's giving me the time I need to practice this new music piece I'm playing, one that is so full of details and unusual notations and sound effects that I'm having a hard time working my way through it. The most frustrating part? No matter how thoroughly I prepare (which is a matter that is still up for debate, most definitely), the first rehearsal will suck. Playing something by myself is so completely different than playing it with other people that it's not even comparable, and (for me, at least) there's no real way to be ready for that. I just have to prepare as much as I can and hope I can keep it together when other people are involved.
Actually, scratch that. With this piece, the most frustrating part is how it's printed. Each page is 11x17 and sits on the stand horizontally; ordinarily we'd have pages that were somewhat larger than normal but still sitting vertically. I'm supposed to have three of these pages out at one time. That's going to involve two stands per person and a lot of squinting. Why? At home, because I only have one stand, I have to practice it on the table. If I hadn't bought that rolling cart last week I suppose I'd be on the floor. Grr.
And here's an example of the many things I'm reading at once. The top stave indicates where my bow is in relation to my bridge (the piece of wood that holds up my strings) and the squiggle indicates how I should be vibrating with my left hand.
I mentioned I write a lot in parts, right? There's a whole section where I'm alternately plucking, plucking and using my left hand to damped the sound, tapping with my left hand fingers, and tapping one finger while dampening again with the remaining fingers. Oh, and sometimes I bow, and sometimes that's with the hair and sometimes it's with the stick. Hot damn.
Actually, scratch that. With this piece, the most frustrating part is how it's printed. Each page is 11x17 and sits on the stand horizontally; ordinarily we'd have pages that were somewhat larger than normal but still sitting vertically. I'm supposed to have three of these pages out at one time. That's going to involve two stands per person and a lot of squinting. Why? At home, because I only have one stand, I have to practice it on the table. If I hadn't bought that rolling cart last week I suppose I'd be on the floor. Grr.
And then there's the actual part. Check this out: staves! I normally look at one line, and here I have three. I am no pianist, sir.
And here's an example of the many things I'm reading at once. The top stave indicates where my bow is in relation to my bridge (the piece of wood that holds up my strings) and the squiggle indicates how I should be vibrating with my left hand.
I mentioned I write a lot in parts, right? There's a whole section where I'm alternately plucking, plucking and using my left hand to damped the sound, tapping with my left hand fingers, and tapping one finger while dampening again with the remaining fingers. Oh, and sometimes I bow, and sometimes that's with the hair and sometimes it's with the stick. Hot damn.
Did I mention that I also have to tune all of my strings down a half step? Oy.
But actually, this wasn't what I meant to talk about at all. I meant to write about dal niente's last concert, which was wittily entitled Hard Music, Hard Liquor and was supposed to take place at a local bar. Except the bar double-booked us with a band, and so we ended up in a viewing gallery of a tattoo parlour next door. Imagine: a large group of contemporary classical music fans have turned out to hear some of the hardest music we've ever seen performed live. (The saxophone solo was called Asphyxia, just to give you an idea.) We sit in a large room, surrounded by paintings of mostly-naked bikini-clad woman (the one behind the performers actually appears to be fondling her own breasts in an orgy of male imagination) and--wait for it--the second-largest painting of Elvis in existence. (Or maybe in North America or something. I don't know.) It was at least 12x12, very possibly larger: Elvis, in profile, had visible sweat on his hairline and a big, blue, cheesy tear running down his cheek. Priceless.
Oh, and the concert was pretty awesome too. And then we all lived up to our self-prescribed title of "a drinking group with a music problem." Good times.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
fail
I feel like I've been writing a lot lately, so here's my very first ever video posting! I didn't know of the existence of fail blog until recently; I just thought people I knew said "fail!" after silly things happened and that it was really funny. I'm so behind the times. (It also took me quite a while to figure out how to embed this video, another way in which I'm behind on things everybody else seems to know how to do.)
Anyway, this is a pretty famous viola soloist, Yuri Bashmet. I'd cry if this happened to me. Or maybe I'd do just what he does.
Anyway, this is a pretty famous viola soloist, Yuri Bashmet. I'd cry if this happened to me. Or maybe I'd do just what he does.
Monday, April 20, 2009
so i turned myself to face me
In my more egotistical moments, I think that I am sometimes able to witness and even help people close to me begin to realize aspects of their potential that they would maybe not access otherwise. People I date or befriend start playing their instruments again or more seriously, they change their eating habits and stick with it, they read more and different books, they begin using new words. It's not so much that I do anything as that I just try to fully support what seems to be happening anyway; this can sometimes become an enabling behavior (since my full support seems to know no boundaries sometimes, and that's bad), but sometimes it's positive and I love feeling like I was there for somebody doing what they wanted to do. (But it's not about me! I swear.)
With my ex Tabitha it's been a little more complicated. The enabling was a major issue between us, and a large part of why we eventually had to break up, but there have also been positive changes from our interactions. Here's the approximate story (from my side of things) of my very small participation in recent events: a few months ago, I got a text from Tabitha saying that she had been reading Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg's highly recommended novel about a transgendered narrator's experiences coming into hir own identity. The text didn't contain any explanation, but I knew that that can be a very upsetting book to read (a lot of sexual abuse and assault, and a lot of ideas and experiences surrounding gender that can be very intense to read about, and it sure upset the hell out of me when I read it) so I followed up on it. We talked, and I told her to read Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw, one of my absolute favorite books and one that changed the way I think about gender forever. That's all, really.
Tabitha is going by Peter these days, and using masculine pronouns. It seems, in the grand scheme of things, like a small change and in a lot of ways it is, but on other ways it's been absolutely awesome to see. I've never watched someone I was so close to go through a personal transformation like this, and what amazes me over and over again is how different it seems to have made everything. It's not like the pronouns have switched and that's the end of the story; his whole life seems to be coming together in new and good ways. He's getting his shit together, reading and writing and creating more, talking in a whole different way, and positively on fire with ideas and passion. I feel like I'm watching somebody become who they are really, truly supposed to be, and it is incredibly gratifying to me as an observer. (Of course, I only know my side of things and he might think completely differently, but from here that's what it looks like.) I'm truly proud of him, for taking on his own life and making it what it needs to be.
One of the offshoots of all of this is that he's started a genderqueer activism group along with a bunch of the people who he works with at one of Chicago's feminist sex toy stores. (We have two! Both within walking distance of my apartment. Score.) They have a blog (and a facebook group, and a twitter), and although right now it's basically just a mission statement people in the group are hopefully going to start posting things soon. I went to my first meeting last night. It made me realize that I've been so busy dealing with life that I've become complacent in my views on gender, and also made me think extra hard about my own gender thoughts and what those mean. That's been pretty fun too. It feels good to get excited again, to remember that there's more to life than the day-to-day shit that I waste so much of my brain dealing with. Change and growth is in the air for everybody, I guess.
With my ex Tabitha it's been a little more complicated. The enabling was a major issue between us, and a large part of why we eventually had to break up, but there have also been positive changes from our interactions. Here's the approximate story (from my side of things) of my very small participation in recent events: a few months ago, I got a text from Tabitha saying that she had been reading Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg's highly recommended novel about a transgendered narrator's experiences coming into hir own identity. The text didn't contain any explanation, but I knew that that can be a very upsetting book to read (a lot of sexual abuse and assault, and a lot of ideas and experiences surrounding gender that can be very intense to read about, and it sure upset the hell out of me when I read it) so I followed up on it. We talked, and I told her to read Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw, one of my absolute favorite books and one that changed the way I think about gender forever. That's all, really.
Tabitha is going by Peter these days, and using masculine pronouns. It seems, in the grand scheme of things, like a small change and in a lot of ways it is, but on other ways it's been absolutely awesome to see. I've never watched someone I was so close to go through a personal transformation like this, and what amazes me over and over again is how different it seems to have made everything. It's not like the pronouns have switched and that's the end of the story; his whole life seems to be coming together in new and good ways. He's getting his shit together, reading and writing and creating more, talking in a whole different way, and positively on fire with ideas and passion. I feel like I'm watching somebody become who they are really, truly supposed to be, and it is incredibly gratifying to me as an observer. (Of course, I only know my side of things and he might think completely differently, but from here that's what it looks like.) I'm truly proud of him, for taking on his own life and making it what it needs to be.
One of the offshoots of all of this is that he's started a genderqueer activism group along with a bunch of the people who he works with at one of Chicago's feminist sex toy stores. (We have two! Both within walking distance of my apartment. Score.) They have a blog (and a facebook group, and a twitter), and although right now it's basically just a mission statement people in the group are hopefully going to start posting things soon. I went to my first meeting last night. It made me realize that I've been so busy dealing with life that I've become complacent in my views on gender, and also made me think extra hard about my own gender thoughts and what those mean. That's been pretty fun too. It feels good to get excited again, to remember that there's more to life than the day-to-day shit that I waste so much of my brain dealing with. Change and growth is in the air for everybody, I guess.
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