Life of Wry

I’ll just start by saying, Peter can do anything he wants and be into anything that floats his boat and I’ll always think he’s the bees knees. And whatever he studies, whatever it is, I’ll be interested.

So, Jim and I got this text today:

And it DID look like a fluid (the above is not clickable, sorry), and it was really cool! Clearly he was pleased with the result. So maybe I should say, “If it flows like a fluid…. ” (it is a fluid!)

I think I mentioned in a recent past blog that Peter’s actual, real diploma finally arrived. This seemed like a good excuse for a little celebration..

So… Jim scanned the diploma for me and I goofed around with it.

I made some diploma wrapping paper:

That’s our family’s favorite gift box, recycled often, making an appearance at most Christmases and lots of birthdays. It’s become an ongoing joke because it never contains an Apple product, in spite of the promise of such. But it’s a great size for a t-shirt or two (which is exactly what went in the box this time around).

For this gift, I wrapped just the box top… and added ribbon:

Then made a little card… also with diploma theme (pretty cute, huh?):

Can you tell I’m quite taken with my little diploma idea?????? Yep. Shamelessly so. I’ve decided, apparently, that’s it’s even blog-worthy. (Which prolly explains my blog’s minuscule readership.)

Anyway, Jim and I sent these diploma-themed items off with some other miscellaneous items in a care package that arrived in Ann Arbor a few days ago. We happened to be on a Facetime call with Peter as he was arriving home and finding the package on his stoop. He opened it while we watched from afar… which was kinda fun! Peter commented that the package seemed… soggy… that maybe it’d gotten rained on or something. Turns out, the mini-split of celebration champagne that we’d included in the box broke, soaking some of the contents… but fortunately, since it was at the bottom of the box, all’s that got wet were the packing peanuts and the packing box. The diploma box was spared (and will be available for future gifts!).

How ’bout a couple of funnies:

And something else caught my eye today and made me long to get these grifters out of the White House. It’s not polite, or even okay to judge somebody else’s marriage, and who knows what the hell kind of “marriage” the trumps have. I have some guesses, but not for me to say. What I will say is, they deserve each other. And I’ll also say, I am ready — more than ready — to replace that awful, disturbed, arrogant, damaged couple with people of decency and dignity.

More of this, please:

…. blog about food.

I’m often not sure what I might blog about. It gets to this point in the evening, I’m ready to turn in, realize I haven’t blogged (which is just about every night) and say to myself… hm. I download and look at whatever photos I have (or is that upload… I’ll forever mix those two up), and usually find a subject.

Long way of rationalizing tonight’s subject. I do plan to reflect on something substantive at the end, so skip the food stuff if you want to go right to something that happened tonight that I found important and incredibly thought provoking.

~~

Jim and I have resumed Sunday brunches at Bernardo’s. Did I mention that last week? This was our second time, since mid-March. Jim reverted right back to his usual.. the french toast. I liked the bendy banana, so took this pic.

I could write about many things relative to this breakfast, but most are sub-blogworthy. But there was one thing: we had a longish conversation with Ona, the mom of a girl Peter went through Chavez with (and the rest of school, as well). Ona and I worked together on a significant chunk of Grad Night planning.. all those years ago. Anyway, we learned today that she bought the house I’ve had my eye on for decades. A part of me has believed that when the stars line up, we will buy that house. I had tried to talk mom into buying it at one point, with the idea she’d live in it until .. well .. until the end, and then we’d move in. I’d taken the fantasy so far as to plan on Peter then moving into our current house and raising his family here, while Jim and I lived out our days in the sweet little cottage at 6th and D. But now Ona’s bought that sweet little cottage (for eight something hundred thousand dollars) and has declared it her forever house. Fantasy bubble burst. Damn.

Still, breakfast outside with our usual favorites was excellent.

Okay.. more food. Here’s a pic I took this afternoon as I assumed my position at the island eating my usual assortment of snacky things. A sunbeam caught my grapes and roasted pecans in a nice light.. made for an appealing sight:

Yum.

For dinner, I made another Chris Kimball pork tenderloin, this time with a different assortment of herbs and spices. Also, instead of a tenderloin it was just a loin.

Here are the spices/herbs: ground fennel, dried oregano, fresh rosemary, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, kosher salt and ground pepper:

Which you press into the pork and let sit for 15 minutes or so:

Then you brown it at a fairly high heat in canola oil until the pork’s browned on all sides and put the whole pan into the oven at 450 for 10-15 mins to cook the pork through. You then remove from the oven and remove the pork from the pan and set it aside while you make the sauce. Here’s how it looks after the oven part–crusted and intensely flavored.

That is a crusty ball-o-pork.. really moist, too.

Then you add to that hot, crusty pan some chicken broth and a couple teaspoons of brown sugar. That deglazes the pan and once the broth’s reduced a bit you add cold cubes of butter (only 1/4 cup’s worth) one at a time, emulsifying as you go (Kimball loves this technique). Add a couple T of lemon juice and finally, off heat, stir in another teaspoon of fresh rosemary. Spoon it over the sliced pork, serve with whatever (in our case, some buttery toasted pinenut rice w/ onions and garlic, some unadulterated steamed broc and some need-to-eat avocado. Voila:

Okay, that’s it for food.

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While I was cooking tonight (or trying to cook.. it was hard to do two things at once and I messed up numerous times on the above fairly straight forward dishes), I was listening to a celebration of the end of postcarding for this long campaign season. The postcard team’s work comes to a close a couple weeks before election day simply because postcard campaigns need mailing time and that has run out. So it was time to celebrate the achievements of the 375 local folks who contributed to postcard writing for 40 different campaigns across the country. Hard to arrive at an exact count, but their grand total (actually, I wrote some of those postcards, too!) was something close to 100,000 postcards in the months since March. Give or take (it’s complicated to add it all up for many reasons). The celebration–over Zoom, of course–was well attended with an awesome slide show, clever awards and lots of kudos and speeches.

All of that was great and the substantial effort by the team leaders and postcard writers was duly and genuinely recognized. But it was Audrey’s comments at the end that were so gripping. She spoke as a grateful team leader, but also as a woman, a scientist (doctor) and an immigrant — all three disparaged and dismissed by our stupid president* (*not my president). The gut punch was when she said that if she’d known at 16 what she knows and has experienced now, she wouldn’t choose to come to the US. There was a lot more said to support that, and it was emotional and compelling. It was clear this work is personal, as it feels to all of us, but even more directly personal to her as a naturalized citizen. It’s horrible what he’s done, what he’s said and how he’s mobilized hate. He is destroying everything that was ever good about our immigrant-based population. He does not represent us. He must go. We have to get back to who we are. She expressed, with pain and resoluteness, why we’re all doing this work.

Apropos of nothing, I posted a great series of mountain goat photos on Facebook a couple of days ago. My favorite in the series struck me as familiar, and it finally came to me a little while ago.

First… here’s the goat picture that really amazed me…

And here’s what it reminded me of…

Peter the younger….

And Peter the older….

Hee hee.

Growing up, one of Peter’s favorite pasta dishes was Penne All-arrabbiata. This is because there was an Eddie Izzard comedy sketch featuring Darth Vader at the Death Star Canteen (in Lego form) where the characters try to order Penne All-arrabbiata from the canteen staff. For some reason, and I never (ever) understood why, this sketch left Peter (and Jim and Paul) rolling on the ground. They would laugh until they cried (I am not kidding). And they’d watch it over and over. It was always hilarious to me… not the sketch, but their reaction to it. So it has enduring and fond family significance.

For this reason, Peter always orders Penne All-arrabbiata whenever we go to Italian restaurants.

Shockingly, I never made it (well, I didn’t cook for those couple decades when Peter lived at home… you know, like for his whole life). Yes, I feel terrible about this. It’s one of the things I try not to dwell on — the fact I let Jim be the main chef in the house for the entirety of Peter’s upbringing. I am absolutely CRUSHED that I don’t have an assortment of mom recipes that Peter thinks of when he thinks of mom’s cooking. In fairness.. there may be a few recipes and dishes he associates with me, as I did most of the holiday cooking, and the planning and cooking for some of our bigger events (not all). But the everyday stuff….. I really dropped the mom ball here. Feel terrible about that. There, I said it.

Anyway… I’m cooking NOW. Quite a bit during this pandemic thing. And tonight made Penne All-arrabbiata.

Super yummy. Jim and I both rated it 4-star. (I’ve mentioned our rating system?) (NTS: Blog about recipe rating system.)

It was so easy, I didn’t think to stop and take any pictures of the prep or steps along the way, as I often do (which always feels a bit silly, but I’m usually so darn proud of myself).

Here’s the final, just before serving:

Here’s the plated version (as it were).

See? Pretty simple. Here’s the recipe… Christopher Kimball’s, no less. We were both surprised he uses canned tomatoes, but I did it his way.. and wasn’t at all disappointed.

So… anyway. I’m renaming this now-staple (if late to the party) mom dish: Penne All-Peter!

I don’t really have a lot to add to the withering commentary regarding the the Senate hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Just add this process and its champions to the long list of hypocrisy, injustice and slimeball-i-tude that’s at the heart of all Republican political tactics these days … it all just takes my breath away.

I seriously needed a reminder of what is at the core of my life, where love resides, who and what matters.

Shockingly, it’s not the election.

I needed a trip into the photo archive to jolt me out of a deep funk. So I picked a few three-of-us pics. Me, with my anchor #1 and anchor #2.

All posed.. but I guess anytime the three of us are in a pic, we’re posing. And, zounds, not in chronological order, either. But hey…

I just needed this.

I’m in need of levity.

I follow a wonderful group on Facebook… it’s called Crap Wildlife Photography, and is supposed to be the wildlife “misses” we all experience when photographing animals. And there are some hilarious misses. But just as often, somebody’s miss is a true gem.. like this one. Credit to a person named Ellen Hickey.

I took a few photos this morning down at the arb with Vicki…

There is this cormorant, who we think is drying its wings (look carefully). He/she stands on this floating hunk of wood pretty much all the time.

Then there’s the turkey gauntlet we run these days. This rafter seems to have taken up residence at Lake Spafford. We came upon a few on the lake side, a few more in the tree, and others just strutting around underfoot

And then finally, this one.. which has no feathered creatures–unless you count that feathery native grass–but I thought it was pretty.

It started with the realization that it’s aspen-turning season and I’ve missed going up to Tahoe to see it for years and years in a row. I chatted with a Mishka’s friend the other day who’d been up to Luther Pass/Hope Valley area the day before and said it was its usual spectacular. I came home and pitched the idea to Jim. He said, ok. So we went up today.

We decided to add a hike in because… you know… it’s the Sierra, and we don’t get up there enough, certainly not this year. So Jim picked a hike in the Carson Pass area… two birds, one seed. Win win.

First, the aspen. They did not disappoint:

And yeah, it was an insanely gorgeous day: brilliant sunshine, no clouds, no smoke, 70 degrees.

This was definitely a fall hike…. shrubs were dry, brittle, browning. Leaves were yellowing. Flowers were shriveled. Water was low. Air was dry.

Here are shots:

Started at Carson Pass trailhead (8974′). This is early in the hike, on the way up, just beyond the point at which you emerge from the first mile of shaded forest and start to get into some clearing. Frog Lake and Elephants Back will come into view to the east (left) soon.

Lake Winnemuca (8980′). About 2.5 miles from the trailhead. Lovely.

Still in Lake Winnemucca area, but soon we’ll start to gain elevation. Until Winnemucca, the trail’s very gentle…. 400′ gain to this point.

After a pretty steady climb out of Lake Winnemucca–another 400′ of gain–we reach Round Top Lake (9,364′) which is emerald green. We’re going to turn left and head UP.

In a little over half a mile, we’ll climb 800′. That’s steep. This is climbing just below the saddle between Round Top and The Sisters.

This is looking down on the saddle between the top of the East Sister (10, 153) and Round Top (10,381). Jim and I climbed Round Top about 25 years ago. I stopped for some exposure reason, I believe, just shy of the peak!). Round Top Lake is off to the left in this picture.

Here’s a view of Round Top Lake from the top of the East Sister, with Caples Lake in the distance. This is looking North, and that is Lake Tahoe in the far distance in right of shot. Carson Pass — where we started — is on the far edge of that forested area, on right edge of photo, about 4 miles away.

Here is a view of the West Sister, and a guy on top. He came upon us as we ate lunch on top of East Sister, and we watched him drop down and then ascend. He’s about 150′ in elevation below us.

Here’s Jim at the top, eating lunch,

Here’s me, with Round Top in background.

Here’s the register and what I wrote:

And a few shots of the descent back to the trailhead. We left the top at 4:00.. so got some lovely late afternoon sun and long shadows:

Here’s a map that was at the trailhead….

And that was that. Started at 12:30, got back to car at 5:45. Great day. As we drove south on 88, past Caple’s Lake, I got a view of Round Top and the Sisters.. a bit blurry…