Melonhead

Seriously Guys

melonhead.wordpress.com

Note

I've had this thing for coming up on 3 years now, and I'm pretty sick of paying for it--there is a hosting fee for typepad, unlike other blog companies, and while I've been really happy with the service 5 dollars a month is starting to make me want to take the whole thing down.  (Plus, the "improvements" recently are driving me crazy.  Why can't I publish my changes?  Why is the "Save" button blanked out?  I'm only complaining about typepad publicly because you are giving me extra time to do so!)

Since I know some people like to read the archives, I moved them all to melonhead.wordpress.com, which is free. Creative naming, right?  I'm not going to stop using this site right away, because I have a lot of stuff to take down.  But once i do it will disappear, so if you normally find this by searching google, you're gonna have to write this down. 

I've gotten increasingly ambivalent about having the blog over the past year or so--I've never been totally comfortable with it, which may be clear from the way I call it "this thing."  I really like having it and I love writing, but it's gotten to be a more and more self-editing process and I've reached a point where it's not actually very fun anymore, for various reasons. 

I started this at a time when I had something to say to a specific group of people (Hi Mom!) about a specific thing (Look! I'm in Cambodia!)  Even when I got back, I had this built-in group of people who I could write stupid inside jokes about, and who would read it, and when I sat down to write I would think about those 15 or so people.  I don't have that audience in the same way anymore--I don't live in a close circle and I can't write about the people I do live around now.  They don't even know this exists. And I've never wanted to try and find a larger audience, because I'm talking about real people and my real life, and because deep down I'm a pretty introverted person.

Related to that, a lot of the entries here make me feel very exposed in retrospect.  When I read through them I'm not sure a stranger would realize that, but I know it.  The last few years have been lovely in many ways, but they've also been really difficult and a lot of what led me to write all of this was a need to get out of my own head.  Sometimes it's direct and sometimes it's just something I remember when i re-read, but it feels much more open than I'm generally comfortable with. 

Related to THAT is this feeling that the past tone of the blog--sort of giddy and silly and maybe even whimsical at times--keeps me from wanting to write now, when I'm not feeling the hyper energy that led me to sound like that in the past.  A lot of what I've written here came on the emotional upswing from pretty crappy moods, and without those ups and downs the things I write feel kind of half-hearted.  The archives have become sort of a tail that wags me--everything I write has to be weighed against past stuff to see if it's funny enough or cheerful enough or something, and in my head it doesn't ever measure up.

And then there's laziness on my part and slowness on the part of my computer.  I don't put as much time into entries anymore.  I used to take lots of pictures and make my entries kind of pretty, and I've drifted away from that, in part because I stopped taking as many but also because my computer is really old and takes forever to load things. 

All this is to say that I'm hoping that by moving things around and changing them a little bit, i'll get more excited about doing this and want to do it more.  And if I don't, I can leave what I've already written up at the wordpress site and not pay for it but it won't disappear, and everyone will be happy.

Proyecto Week 2

I've lapped myself on this dumb project that no one but me cares about. AND my pictures from last week are blurry.  Last week's food being lamb with pickling spices, spicy potatoes, and eggplant with yogurt sauce. 

The lamb was very tart and the pickling spices made it really pungent, and almost too intense for me. But the lamb was amazing--really tender and fancy.  The eggplant was fried, with a spice paste on top, then yogurt with garlic and chili on top of that, and then crunchy fried onions.  I didn't really like the fried eggplant--for me it soaks up too much oil if you fry it, but I would make it again if I could grill the eggplant and get a really good char on it.  The smokiness of the onions and the eggplant together was great.  The potatoes were my favorite, and something I could eat all the time--sweet and sort of like samosa filling.  I've rationed them very carefully all week because I didn't want them to be over. That very rarely happens to me.

This week I needed a bunch of new spices that weren't available at Fairway--black cardamom (way smokier than green cardamom), black cumin (also deeper and smokier), black mustard seed, nigella seeds, fenugreek, so I went to Kalustyans on Lexington, which is the most amazing spice store I've ever visited.  There was a woman there who'd been all over the city looking for almond flour and in her joy at actually finding it demanded that I try razz-cherries.  "Did you KNOW there was such a thing as razz-cherries???"
 

The lamb also involved stuffing chili peppers with spices, which was kind of awesome but also ridiculously fussy and the kind of thing my mom would never, ever, ever do.  But I love rules, so I did it.  They were so cute!

new theory

I have had a lot of conversations over the past few years about inclusive versus exclusive people--when choosing who to invite to things, some people say "the more the merrier" and others say "who are the perfect people?"  My new theory is that there's a third category of people who are afraid to make anyone UNhappy and are not easily made happy themselves. 

So: you're an inclusive person.  You just invite everyone, but once everyone is there you talk to everyone but eventually find yourself with the people you REALLY want to talk to or be around, and you count on the people around you to make themselves happy.  This is not to say that you won't talk to other people, but your happy-go-luckiness will shine through as a sort of obliviousness to major discomfort (even though you could be totally sensitive to it).

So, you're an exclusive person.  You have an idea before the party even starts of which people will make you happy and how things will go, and you know how to make a party great.  You might be taking care of your self, but you are probably also very sensitive to those around you and feel obligated to talk to those who aren't fitting.  You want things to feel right from the get-go, so you try to arrange things to be right.

But what if you are a person who rarely has a great time at parties, often feels awkward, and notices everyone's discomfort without being able to shield yourself from it.  You are probably in some ways less sensitive than people in the either of the other two groups, but very aware of your insensitivity and your own inability to make a bad situation better.  Your self-absorption comes in the form of not knowing what you want, what's wrong with you, or how to fix it.   You want to invite everyone to everything not because the more the merrier, but because you know the misery of exclusion.  At the same time, you want to make the people you like the best have the best experience, so you have an urge to exclude.  You don't feel you have the power to choose the perfect group, or make the perfect group show up, if you exclude.  But if you include and not everyone is happy, you don't think you have the power to make them feel happier (like an excluder) and you can't block out their discomfort and focus on your own fun (like an includer).  So you are stuck in the middle.

Weirdly, nothing like this has happened to me lately.  I just had a long subway ride home tonight.

Proyecto

Oh, hello!   My big project this year is learning to understand spices a little more intuitively--I can add them when a recipe tells me to as well as the next pretty lady, but I want more than that out of life.  I've got big ambitions.  I'm starting by cooking a bunch of Indian food every weekend, with a vague plan to switch to other, spice heavy cuisines in the future--my original idea was to do Mexican (which relies more on dried peppers than anything else, but whatevs), Vietnam and maybe some other Southeast Asian things in summer, and to round it off with a pan-Middle Eastern thing.  As I've thought about it more, and gotten through just 2 weeks of Indian, I've realized that quarterly changes are probably unrealistic.  So I'm going to stick with Indian until I get bored, but maybe have some weekends where I take a break and do something totally different.  I'll continue to read about other cuisines and look to other sources for spice insight while I cook my merry way through my Indian book, Madhur Jaffrey's A Taste of India, which has some of the most amazing photography (of India, not food) I've ever seen in a cookbook.  Find it used and you will be happy.  I'm also using Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, but for now I'm not taking recipes from that one--it seems to focus more on more American-palate-friendly versions, with a bunch of half and half poured in at the end.  The reference section is pretty much invaluable.  I'm also reading a book about the spice trade so I can understand the history of how I'm a giant nerd.  And something something about spices also.  

So my first week's cooking: Mughlai Chicken Braised with Almonds and Raisins, Mughlai Spinach  (chard, actually), and Basmati rice cooked in an aromatic broth.  It was delicious and involved ten spices:  cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, coriander, cumin seed, fennel seed, cloves, black peppercorns, cayenne pepper, and turmeric.  I ended up walking 4 miles across Brooklyn to purchase at Fairway.  This is because I am a total cheapskate and Fairway spices tend to be a pretty good deal. I ground them, I fried them and steeped them whole, I stained my favorite t-shirt with them, and I smelled them all week because I never quite finished cleaning up.  If my intuition hasn't been infected yet, my olfactory system certainly hasn't.

This isn't the kind of thing where I think I'm going to come away with a Very Special Lesson every week, but I'll try to manufacture a few to get the ball rolling.  Sahni says that spices should be cooked and treated like vegetables, and claims that when people have difficulty digesting spicy food it's because the spices themselves haven't been cooked properly.  I am not sure that explains what happened to my intestines the day after the hot sauce eating contest, but practically speaking I can believe.

Other discoveries: I still hate breaking down a chicken, but I will continue to attempt it until I cut off a finger taking off a wing tip.  And maybe still after--this project should be good for forcing me to do some basic things I'm not good at, such as butchering things and learning to cook meat well.  Brooklyn is long and chilly and filled with inflatable snowmen.  And finally, chard comes from where Sin Verguenza and El Bigoe live, so that gave me a nice homey feeling (even though I've never been there).

And that is it.  Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday, Buddy.

DCo: I saw a really good movie, Slumdog Millionaire, with BFerry.  Have you heard of it?

Me: Yeah, I've heard it's great but sad.  [Considering for a moment BF's Netflix queue of suicidal musician documentaries...]  Brian sees a lot of depressing movies, huh? 

DCo: Yup.  And then he goes home and listens to the National for hours.

Me: How does he stay so freaking NICE all the time?

DCo: I don't know.  That's the mystery behind the man.*

*Probably not what he actually said.

Dear World, Merry Christmas! This is Mr. Perfect, now yours to keep!

This is a picture of my youngest brother trying to spot, and then shoot, his future.  Today--yesterday really--he graduated from college.  I didn't think about this too much before this morning.  I mean, I knew it was coming and everything, but when I actually think about the fact that it happened, my mind is a little bit blown. 

It's hard for me to describe my relationship with my brothers and sister.  We really love each other, but our relationship as a group of four is mostly built on ripping on each other, ripping on our parents, and quoting The Simpsons.  We can be kind of fierce about our loyalty to one another, and we don't usually take the teasing too far outside the family circle.  So trying to describe my brother in a semi-public forum, and without just telling weird, random anecdotes or referring to "five bees for a quarter," is kind of hard.

A couple of things about him:  He is a Leo who enjoys nature shows and stain-resistant pants.  He can get along with pretty much anyone, unless they back up their car in a traffic circle.  He's generally good-natured, but when he doesn't like something he will let you know--when we were little he hated Wednesdays (his class would go to the library), Sundays (church) and meat loaf ("meat love?  I HATE meat love!") to the point where my mom grew to hate them as well.  She would actively lie about days of the week just to get him to get dressed in the morning.  She still loves him the best. 

He moved from a huge Northern city to a tiny, reasonably Southern town when he was eleven and even though I'm sure it was really hard sometimes, he adapted to it and learned to love muddin' (still do not know what that is).  He manages to be friends with self-proclaimed rednecks without compromising his own political or moral beliefs--he's always had a good sense of how to deal with others, and that's one of the things that I respect most about him.  His greatest wish is to have tusks.

His sense of humor is low key but incredible.  He is a fantastic story teller.  I do not enjoy ranking my siblings, but my brothers do and he has been voted the funniest more than once.  He is a great lacrosse player, 4 AM hamburger maker, and sketcher of dog portraits.  He is a lover of fine cheeses and striped bass fishing.  He's very smart, but sometimes pretends he isn't--occasionally I worry that he's pretended for such a long time that he forgets how smart he actually is. But I care too much about being smart, so he's probably fine. 

He's my youngest brother--we're nine years apart--and he's also my godson, which in some ways leads to a weird relationship.  My grandma used to call me his "second mother" so often that I took it pretty seriously.  I used to pick him up from kindergarten--even though I complained sometimes that I had to do it, it was the best feeling to have this little kid in a huge t-shirt scream and an enormous, bouncing backpack yell to me from across the school yard, running over and jumping to give me a hug.  (This was not all about me--he was just relieved one of us showed up I think.)  It's hard to shift from a relationship like that to recognizing that someone is an adult whose choices you should respect.  Especially when those choices include the camouflage outfit.  Or the following hat: 

I mean, are you kidding me? But I'll try harder from now on, I promise.

Happy Graduation, Pete.  I don't know how to put into words how proud I am to be your sister or how much I love you.  Which is why we should never speak of this again.

Why? Because this is the only town in the WORLD where you can live among your own, pop-culture illiterate, kind.

At Cafe Habana, Ann Arbor, MI listening to three be-ponytailed men behind me chat. 

Guy 1: There is a new show on public television, I think on Saturday afternoons. There's a guy on it who wears a ponytail and a vest and orange crocs.  Have you seen this?
Guy 2:  I saw it once, with the big guy?
Guy 1: Yeah and there's another one on there.  Gwen...Patrick?  Petrie?  Something?
Guy 2: I think I saw one episode.  I'm not sure it was on a Saturday though!  Could it be on more than one day?
Guy 1: Well, they go to all these European restaurants and they try all this food and one place had just a wall of pastries!
Guy 3: Why do we live here anyway? 

I think the deep intellectual discussions are the thing I miss the most about law school.

Melonhead: [E-mail title: parrot and cat make out]  [Link to parrot and cat making out.]  I sent this to your wife, billed as cute, but on second viewing...little bit pervy.

Big P: That was strange

Melonhead:  If one more person in this office corrects me on something, I'm going to f--ing smack them.

Big P: If you make one more mistake, I'm going to kick your a--

Melonhead:  I did not request a consultant.

Big P:  By capturing the low hanging fruit, you open bandwith to optimize workflow

Melonhead: Of all the things you have ever said to me, that is the sexiest....Actually...that's a pretty dirty sentence right there.  Stop grossing me out, Big P.  I'm certified in Diversity by a well respected New York firm.

Big P:  Mr. Brown: Now this is a simple acronym: H.E.R.O. At Diversity, we believe it's very easy to be a hero. All you need are: Honesty, Empathy, Respect, and Open-mindedness.

Dwight Schrute: Excuse me, I'm sorry, but that's not all it takes to be a hero.

Melonhead:  The race I'm second-most attracted to is Indian.

My Officemate (upon having the title and last statement red out loud to him): Yup.  That just about sums you up.

Me and Golem, JD

So I was thinking about Christmas.  And then I was thinking about what I would ask for from people from work if they were to ask me and I thought, a good funny thing to say would be "just a lock of hair from each of you, so I can keep it in a locket close to my heart."  And then I started thinking about how gross it is to have nasty hairs from people on you.  But the major bonus would be that I like the people from work and if something catastrophic were to happen to them, I could always make myself a golem that had all their finest qualities.  Which seemed like kind of a questionable upside, but I did like the idea of making myself a person who would be a perfect storm of amiable dorkiness and mud.  And Asian, but not like TOO Asian--but excellent at making hand chops in the air while dancing. 

But THEN I thought that if I made a golem using all these people's hair, the one trait it would have in spades would be legal knowledge, and clearly we would have to go into private practice together.  And of course the Golem would be the legal star and I would always be giving him advice about how people do things and he would ignore it and teach me a very important lesson about kindness and the law.  It would be such a great show!  I mean a great life.  But inevitably it would BECOME a show.  Just like how BONES is about real people.  I would be played by Busy Phillips.  My two favorite scenes from the credits are (1) when the Golem comes triumphantly down the courthouse steps into the press's blinding flashbulbs and the doors slam into me, carrying all his papers and I look up at him and roll my eyes and shake my head but can't help but grin; and (2) as the credits end there would be a scene of us toasting with scotch, but when we throw it back his lower jaw would fall off in a clump.  Because he can't drink scotch, he's made of mud!

Sha na na naaa!