EY's Rants and Raves

Fresh asparagus....wash, break where the stalk wants to snap. Maybe olive oil, salt, pepper. Put on a broiler or sheet pan and broil until you smell something nutty. Take the pan from the oven and sprinkle on a little parmesan cheese. Even the green can will do. Put back in the oven for just a bit. Parmesan cheese doesn't melt like mozzarella or even cheddar, so don't expect oooey.

The tips of asparagus will be brown and crispy and the rest of the stalk will have crispy bits too.

As simple as that. And exquisitely good.

When you're really into something, you often try to convert people to it. Maybe it's religion, sports, fashion, a TV show, a movie, who knows. For me, well, I'm not much of a "converter". Except when it comes to food and wine. As much as I still make fun of a friend who once told me "EY, I *want* you to like red wine", I'm guilty of the same thought, even if I never say it. I really like wine...now, I even like red wine. With warm weather approaching, I do tend to drink more whites, but I never fully let go of the reds.

I've taken on a challenge of sorts lately. I have one friend who is moving to AR who wants to learn how to cook. I have another friend rather far away who I've decided to help learn how. Not quite fair of me in the second instance, but he has access to a lot of fresh ingredients that I don't. If he can learn how to pick out good specimens and treat them well, "cooking" will be easy. My other friend is gung ho to learn and will have a lot of fun with it.

I have no wish to coerce, harangue or otherwise offend my second non-cooking friend. He's a soccer player, so good fuel is important. He's also trying to stay very much in shape. Again, I think there's a good fit with cooking. Admittedly most of what I cook is geared much more toward tasting good than anything else. Hopefully I won't overdo things.

Which is a relief: I'm about at the limit of my technical knowledge. Uninstalled Firefox 1.5.0.x and installed 2.0.x instead. No luck, although my bookmarks did seem to migrate with me. Which is good, because like an idiot, I forgot to save them off. Most saved passwords seem to have come along for the ride as well.

Then, suddenly, my blogger dashboard is happy to let me in. Now, that I've completely forgotten all the burning, urgent, pro-FOUND things I've been dying to type. So I suppose the cyber-universe will have to make do with the random debris floating my "heat opressed brain" (shiny new quarter for the first email telling me who wrote that phrase....yes, S I will hold it until next month if it's you...and no, it's not really that hot, yet.)

I had a meeting of book club tonight. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Not just in the "well of course you are...you read like a fiend, why wouldn't you enjoy reading more?" way. The folks in the book club are diverse, thoughtful, some are killer smart and some just enjoy listening. I suspect the wine doesn't hurt much either. Wine and books. I'm not too sure what more I could want.

I'm a rather simple blogger. Mostly text, simple layout and not too many pictures. I *could* do a lot more, I suppose, but since I'm still battling my home PC, it's not likely. A relatively simple (I suppose) thing I could do is gather statistics on who's visiting. Statistics. Twain didn't think much of stats and while my opinion isn't that dire, I don't know that I care that much either. If people around the world find my musings interesting, that's fine.

I've been reading a book about mothers and daughters lately. I'll be seeing Mom this weekend and I'm taking her a copy. Less than 5 pages in, I found several situations that exactly fit the issues I run into often in our relationship. I also think about the mother/daughter dynamic quite a bit at work. A lady who sits near me doesn't seem able to cut the cord with her kids. At times, she spends hours a day on the phone with them. Her daughters seem completely dependent on her guidance and advice. Yesterday, she had a hard time getting off the phone with one.....the reason? She was working on one things she needed to do in order to leave to go see said daughter. If you're driving over to see me, I think I could let you go so that you could leave soon. But then, my mom raised me to be quite independent. More independent than she'd like at times, but there you go. I've called to thank her for that and I'm sure we'll discuss it again.

Conf call is about over, so I guess I've got to run!

Not exactly the noise I've been making for the past hour, but it's close. Tonight I engaged in my only close approximation of competitive eating: the sausage and spaghetti dinner at a local Catholic church. Best I can tell, everything at the dinner--spaghetti, sauce, hot sauce, sauerkraut, corn, coleslaw, sausage, bread, pickles and dessert--is homemade. The margarine, parmesan cheese, sweetener/sugar and tea aren't technically homemade. Everyone is served family style out of big bowls that volunteers keep filled. This is definitely a time to wear your "fat pants".
Our typical plan is to get there at 4 pm. Doors open at 4:30. It's absolutely best to get out before mass lets out or you'll be behind the parishoners. When it's an election year, local politicians pass out cards, shake hands and meet the people. I was glad this year wasn't one. We got there a little later than normal, but the line wasn't too bad. It was a smaller group than normal, but we were just as hungry.
We got our seats at a long table in the parish hall and started in. I'm not much of a sauerkraut fan, but what they serve here actually tastes like it was cabbage at one point and is not overly vinegary. The Italian-style sausage is so good that the first year I went, I told a friend "it's so good, I don't care what's in it". It could have been any combo of game and I'd still eat it. The Boy asked about it one year (after I got him hooked) and it turns out it's all beef and pork. The spaghetti and sauce are all mixed in and the sauce is very light.
Since the community that hosts this is predominantly of Italian descent, the sausage and spaghetti are not surprising. The hot sauce, which is to be poured on the pasta, doesn't quite "fit" with what you think of as Italian, but it's really good. I'm not sure where the kraut and coleslaw come from either, but they're both very good.
You sit and eat until you're ready to leave. Portion control is not the order of the day for anyone. As good as it is, I'm glad I only have the opportunity to do this twice a year. Dessert is an assortment of cakes, pies and brownies all made by the church members. The Boy usually gets pecan pie--sometimes two pieces. On the way out, there is usually an opportunity to buy pickles, sausage (by the bucket), spaghetti sauce, hot sauce, bread, jams and my favorite, cinnamon rolls. We made our usual purchase of cinnamon rolls and a quart jar of sauce.
So the competitive eating is over for now. There will be another opportunity to indulge in June.

I've wanted to write several times this week, but I've been stymied by my home PC's Firefox installation. I think that in an effort to improve the security of FF, I've done something that the new Blogger doesn't like. Which is funny since security is what I do for a living. I was so frustrated with it last night, that I almost turned off every security control FF has. Of course, I thought through that one. I'm ready to switch to the new FF version, but can't figure out how to export a particular thing: saved passwords. For most things, I can recover the password or write them down. For the most important things, I don't save them.
Although I am a security professional (and am studying to be even more so), I'm also a user. And that means I want convenience, convenience, convenience. I asked The Boy for help dumping the password file and got a withering look "I can't help you because I don't STORE passwords". He's a security person too....apparently, a better one than I am. Although if you really want to read the local paper, check the sales at my fav shoe website, post to this blog, check my frequent flyer status, fine. That's about all my stored passwords will get you. My bank and MasterCard sites don't allow password storage of any kind, so I feel pretty OK there.

My most urgent news (for those of you who made it this far) is that I got a haircut....a pretty serious one. I have bangs for the first time since 2000. My hair is light (read: short) enough that it actually has some waves to it. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I'm 60/40 on the "like" side. Spending 3 minutes drying it as opposed to 20 is probably going to keep me squarely on the OK side until it's cold, which won't be for a long time.

Over the river and through the woods lies one of my favorite spring things: the Wye Mountain Daffodil Festival. Daffodils (I've also heard them called jonquils) are my favorite flower. They are simple, beautiful and smell incredible, some more so than others. I believe there are 5 acres (the website is frustratingly sparing of detail) of rows and rows of daffodils of all kinds. Big yellow trumpets and leaves, yellow leaves with deep orange-tipped trumpets, tiny baby daffodils that smell like jasmine. For me, it's great to just go smell (although I wish I were a little shorter at times...bending to the ground at 30-something and 5'7" isn't as fun as you'd think) and look. Even more fun is taking pictures. Several local photographers will set up there and take professional pictures, but it's just as fun to grab your camera and go if you're an amateur....I did!

I don't have a lot of guilt and hence, you'd think no guilty pleasures. But I do have a few faves that are probably not great for me. Food is #1 on that list. Totino's Pizza (yes the $.99 at Target kind) is just one of those things I know I should never eat, but love. It's ultra-processed, not enough vitamins, protein or calcium to be even "pretend healthy". I did eat it with spinach...so it wasn't all bad. Unfortunately, I also had pizza for lunch. And no greens then. Just delish pizza from a new place that has opened up in town. I agree with my boss that what's good for the local restaurant scene is going to be bad for the diet.
Speaking of diets, South Beach is starting to look good again. I need to be putting better fuel in my body so I can get better things OUT of it (especially if I ever make it to the gym again). My friend M and I are talking about going walking after Daylight Savings Time gives us more daylight late in the afternoon.

Chocolate, while a less than super healthy food is something I love, but I think I do a decent job with. I have good chocolates at work, but I'm reasonable about rationing them out. A package is never eaten in one sitting. Good chocolate and only one piece at a time.

So some pleasure, not much guilt.

I've gotten the A.Word.A.Day email for some years now. Being an avid reader, I'm delighted to find new words that better express nuances of meaning, new words that I just didn't know, etc. It's like finding a new friend every day. Today's Word A Day and accompanying quote have struck me as particularly meaningful. So I quote, in its entirety (and can't wait to use)......

This week's theme: There is a word for it.

omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun

Contemplation of one's navel.

[From Greek omphalos (navel) + skepsis (act of looking, examination).
Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), despise, espionage, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=omphaloskepsis

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

"Readers whose main interest is literary how-to or criticism can look
elsewhere, in places specifically dedicated to those matters. Doing
too much of it here would smack of omphaloskepsis."
Stanley Schmidt; About Science Fiction; Analog Science Fiction & Fact
(New York); Jun 2001.

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Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. -Stephen King, novelist (1947- )