Light and Momentary

My very favorite January salad

In this month of beautiful citrus I have a suggestion for you. 

Halve a ripe avocado and a pink grapefruit. Section the grapefruit and pit the avocado. Run your knife to but not through the skin of the avocado half, cutting lengthwise and then across to make approximately bite-sized pieces.

With a swoop of your spoon, separate the avocado bites from the avocado skin and tip them into a bowl. Dump the grapefruit half into the bowl, using your spoon to coax out any uncooperative sections. Squeeze the empty grapefruit half over the bowl so you get the juice too. Consider a sprinkle of salt or Tajin, or enjoy it naked. 

I cannot even tell you how much I love these contrasts: the colors (fierce pink against pale green), the flavors (astringent against mild), the textures (the tiny pops of the grapefruit vesicles against the creaminess of the avocado). I can eat it every day; I often think happily about my next bowlful as I'm spooning up the last bite. 

Cold Temps, Hot Bananas

Brrr.

We had sunshine on Sunday, and the temperature rose above freezing for the first time in a while. Snow was melting all over the place. But when it got dark on Sunday evening and the temperatures fell below freezing, the snowmelt froze. I took the dog out for a walk and was unpleasantly surprised by the icy patches lurking on sloping driveways.

More snow fell overnight, just enough to make the ice invisible. But it's still there, and still treacherous. 

I am committed to commuting on foot but this is not the easiest time of year for it. It may or may not be above zero (Fahrenheit) when I walk to work tomorrow. I may or may not think about moving to New Zealand.

The dog thinks this is a ridiculous state of affairs. Purely preposterous, she says. She does this frenetic Snoopy dance when I try to take her outside in the coldest temperatures, leaping up on her hind legs in an attempt to yank us back inside where it is warm. She will walk with Elwood, but Elwood does not especially want to be the person in charge of dog-walking every time the temperatures dip below 20.

ANYWAY, it is perhaps a little sad that I have turned into a person who writes hundreds of words about the fact that it is cold in winter, but also: brrr.

The temperatures are cold but the bananas are hot this week, very hot indeed. I am back on a three-days-a-week teaching schedule, which is probably my preference. But I am thinking anew about teaching and energy outlay. 

I am a high-energy instructor; my students generally describe me as enthusiastic and funny. My watch records most of my time in the classroom as exercise minutes. Yesterday I returned to my office after class and thought, "Huh, I am physically tired." Some of it might be that I just had a deliciously quiet winter break, in which I read a whole slew of books while curled up on the couch with the dog. Some of it might also be that I could reasonably approach the classroom with less intensity. Would it make a difference, either for my students or for me? Hard to say. 

For years now I have said that I need some kind of structured transition out of teaching mode and into office mode, because it's [first world problem alert] difficult for me to shift my focus that way. I think I need some kind of signal to myself that says "all done teaching; let it all go" and some kind of task planning strategy that lets me tackle something easy and pleasant as a way back into sitting at my desk and being productive.

This semester I'm doing something I've thought about for a while: I'm trying a free service from the university's wellness office. I'm meeting with a coach on Thursday to talk about my life and my habits and things I might like to change. I had initially thought it would be focused on physical well-being -- food and exercise -- but the intake questionnaires make it seem like she's going to be perfectly happy to talk about workplace habits too. We shall see, I guess.

January 1

Hi, friends, happy new year! I hope your 2025 is off to an excellent start.

We had a very pleasant Christmas, just the seven of us. It took me longer than expected to finish the Fat Books by Men project, but I finally reached the end of Shantaram on the thirtieth of December. I am kicking off 2025 with more fat books by men, but they are fat books by dead men, which feels a little different. I'm joining Simon Haisell's War & Peace read-along, and I'll continue to end my days with a Trollope chapter. First up: The Vicar of Bullhampton. 

There are lots of things I would like to tell you about -- this year's Christmas contests, and the books I have enjoyed lately (this list does not include Shantaram), and the things I am planning for 2025 -- but I think for tonight I'll keep it brief. See you soon!

Tra-la-laaa!

I finished the letters of recommendation today. I had agreed to write more of them than usual, and it's a judgment-heavy task on the heels of the judgment-heavy end of the semester. But it's done! Huzzah!

This is the point at which I usually sag like a SAD-dened 4-day-old helium balloon, but this year, thankfully, I am feeling more like a helium balloon purchased the day before yesterday. That's progress, right?

I have more work to do before I wrap things up for the year. There are 40 messages in my work inbox, most of which require me to complete some small task, and I would prefer to have zero messages in my work inbox and zero lingering tasks. I agreed to peer-review two papers before the end of the year, because (a) I enjoy peer review, especially when I am not trying to shoehorn it in around teaching responsibilities, and (b) both outlets that requested my peer-reviewing services are fancypants journals. This year I have to complete a 5-year post-tenure review on top of the usual annual review, so hey-- I might as well tell the powers that be that I'm a peer reviewer for Nature these days. (There's a whole family of journals published by Nature, by the way. I'm not peer-reviewing for the mothership.)

It would be smart to draft both of those review documents now so I just have to do the final tweaks before their early January due dates, but we will have to see whether there's enough coal in the tender to propel my personal steam engine that far. We might have to ease this steam engine into a siding and wait for a future coal delivery; see above re: drooping helium balloons (and pardon the mixed metaphor).

There is a fair amount of Christmas stuff that needs to happen around here as well. I'm a little stressed out about writing down the actual list, which is a counterproductive flavor of stressed out. Pete will be home tomorrow; maybe he'll make a list with me. He will also give me a little sanity check on how much knitting I can really get done before Christmas. I have been cruising through a pair of plain worsted-weight mittens and they are filling me with a sense of potential that is probably a little delusional. But! Hope springs eternal!

How's by you? How are your December tasks coming? 

Freeeee the succulents!

I went to the garden store this evening. I was just going to buzz in quickly and pick up three cute little succulents for RA/TA gifts, but I zipped back to the succulent section and...there were no succulents.

There were Santas instead. Rafts of them, legions of them, piles and piles of Santas. They had tinsel, they had ornaments, they had enough Christmas crap to clog a Christmas sewer. But no succulents.

Surely, I thought to myself, surely a GARDEN STORE has not eliminated all its plants? Surely they must be here somewhere? I kept circling through the aisles until I found them.

They looked terrible.

I've been to our neighborhood garden store more times than I can count. When Pete thought he wanted to be a botanist he was perpetually angling to stop by the garden store and get just one more succulent. I have petted a lot of cute little succulents in this store over the years, you guys. And tonight? There was no cuteness on display.

They were leggy, they were awkward, they were pallid, they looked sickly. I had thought I'd pick up three little haworthias, because I always find them irresistibly adorable with the most pleasing texture, but even the haworthias were so sad and ugly that I didn't feel any desire to run a finger over them. 

I texted Pete to say "Bad things are happening at the garden store!" And then! AND THEN--

--worse things happened at the garden store.

An auditory assault came pouring forth from the speakers. The haworthia sadness was compounded, multiplied, EXPONENTIATED by Christmas music sadness-- to wit, Little Drummer Boy sadness.

(I'm feeling like I've done a good job staying out of retail establishments in recent Decembers, so you might not know how much I loathe cheesy Christmas music. Little Drummer Boy in particular makes me want to pa-rum-pum-pum-pummel the person who created the playlist.)

CODE RED AND GREEN, Pete texted me. FINGERS IN THE EARS, he texted me. FLEEING, I texted back.

It's only a mile to our house but I pulled over when I was halfway home, because I had a sudden insight.

PETE PETE PETE, I texted him. MOM MOM MOM, he texted back.

I know what's happening to the succulents, I told him. It's the music! It's killing them. It must be! How could any living thing survive that much Christmas music, let alone a delicate little succulent? 

I am trying to persuade him that we should liberate the succulents before they die sad preventable deaths, but he is telling me that he has finals.

30 x 15

Happy last day of November, my friends! Thirty days of daily posts, for the fifteenth time. Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon!

Thanksgiving food, ranked

Julie said we should rank Thanksgiving food from most to least important, so here we go:

1. Gravy is the most important Thanksgiving food. This is, I know, a controversial choice, but hear me out. It is the very essence of the festive roasted turkey, combined with stock I made earlier in the week. It tastes like celebration and preparation. I serve it piping hot and it binds together the holiday flavors so that they are harmonious and still distinct. It's also a pain to make, so its presence on the table proclaims THIS IS A SPECIAL DAY.
2. Pie is the other thing that says HI IT'S THANKSGIVING. Pumpkin and pecan, forever and ever, with piles of whipped cream.
3. Mashed potatoes are the most important non-dessert solid food (or, okay, semi-solid). Hot, fluffy, buttery, perfect -- I missed them keenly yesterday. NEVER AGAIN, my friends. Last-minute mashed potatoes or bust.
4. Stuffing is next. I make cornbread stuffing because I am a child of the South, and because my youngest son loves it. "Will there be enough stuffing?" he always asks plaintively. "There's not usually enough stuffing." Don't tell my grandmother, but I have started making my cornbread for stuffing with a leetle bit of white flour. It holds together better when I am combining it with the veggies and herbs.
5. Okay, I guess we have to put turkey somewhere in the top five. If the turkey somehow fell over on the kitchen floor during its resting time, and the dog licked it all over before I noticed, I wouldn't be too very sad. It's fine. It's pretty. I'm no longer intimidated by cooking a turkey (note to Future Jamie: big turkeys are juicier with convection and the faster cooking is useful on a busy day), but the drippings are the bit I'm most attached to. Can't have truly excellent gravy without drippings.
6. Cranberry sauce is next. You need that color on a plate that is mostly ecru/beige/gold/orange, and the tartness is pleasantly bracing. (If you ever have Thanksgiving dinner at our house, be sure you take small bites of the cranberry sauce. It's pretty assertive.)
7. Sweet potatoes have somehow twinned themselves at our house, and now we have a sweet version (pineapple, pecans, warm spices, a little orange juice, and an astonishing amount of butter) and a spicy version (chipotles in adobo, lime juice, whipping cream). 
8. Second-string Thanksgiving desserts: always cranberry cake, usually key lime pie.
9. Everything else can be tied for ninth place. We usually have a couple of green things (often roasted Brussels sprouts, maybe some kind of creamed spinachy thing, maybe some kind of salad), maybe some beets, maybe some kind of bread. This year Pete made the most gorgeous loaves of sourdough AND sourdough rolls. They were beautiful, and at the same time they are not a sine qua non for me at the Thanksgiving table.

Huh, I am still tired from making that much food for that many people yesterday. Maybe tomorrow I'll come back and add some links. Please share your own rankings in comments, or post a link to your own site if you decide to blog about it. Just one more day of NaBloPoMo! 

Lesson Learned

For many years I have done my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes in exactly the same way. But I started to wonder if perhaps I was being a little rigid about it. I saw all these social media posts about people making their mashed potatoes early and leaving them in a crockpot all day and i thought to myself, "Hmm, am I making avoidable trouble for myself?" 

Also Pete told me that Adam Ragusea disagreed with every single thing I said about making mashed potatoes, and Adam Ragusea is the king of pointing out unnecessary rigidity. 

"Guess what, kids," I said, "I'm branching out. We're trying an Instant Pot version this year. I'm going to do them early and keep them warm"

This was a mistake. They weren't, like, dismal. But they were very far from celestial -- kind of funny-colored, kind of dense. When I was fretting beforehand about whether it was a bad idea to branch out, the kids said, "Mom, it will be fine. Potatoes plus butter -- people will eat that." 

I was sitting next to Pete at dinner and we agreed on the inferiority of the Instant Pot version. I asked him about the Adam Ragusea video and his conviction that I had been needlessly emphatic about my approach to mashed potatoes; we had talked about it before he tried the recipe but not afterward. He said, "Adam Ragusea's conclusion that his mashed potatoes were the same as your mashed potatoes was wrong. All of his points were valid. But your mashed potatoes are better."

We might have to make the One True Mashed Potato Recipe later this weekend.

Still reading fat books by men

You might remember that I decided to read a string of hefty books by men, kicking it off with Trollope novel #25. The Claverings tells the story of a woman who marries for money and immediately regrets it. There are lots of people in Trollope novels who are busy weighing up the financial assets of prospective spouses, but Trollope goes all in on the heartlessness of Julia Brabazon's choice to marry Lord Ongar. The book is mostly about the subsequent choices of her spurned lover, Harry Clavering, in an era when breaking an engagement was a much bigger deal than it is these days.

We spend part of our time with Harry's family; his father is a Barsetshire clergyman whose elder nephew is the current Lord Clavering. This elder nephew is distressingly boorish, and his younger brother is comically inept. I've read a lot of Victorian proposals in which a fellow tells his sweetheart that she will make him the happiest man alive if she says yes, or at least the happiest man in all England. Cousin Archie says he'll be the happiest man in London, which seems to say, "I mean, yeah, I like you, but let's be real." (His would-be fiancee declines.)

This book seemed a little unpolished. There are some veiled allusions to the circumstances of Lord Ongar's death and his relationship with a Polish count, and perhaps I was supposed to know more about how to read between the lines. Instead it just felt murky, as if maybe Trollope hadn't wanted to bother with fleshing out that facet of the plot. There's a deus ex machina episode that felt a leetle too tidy. The Kindle edition is full of typos, with a bunch of weird differences in chapter divisions vs. the Project Gutenberg version. But Julia Brabazon is a memorable character, as is her Polish-French friend, and overall the book is a satisfying blend of funny and serious.

***

Now I'm reading Wellness, and I like it. I haven't been completely sucked in, like I was with this author's first novel, The Nix. I was surprised to find that Gladlyville makes a brief and unflattering appearance. So far it's the story of a couple who fell in love as young adults and hit a rough patch twenty years later. Hill's writing voice is engaging and the story is the same kind of mix of funny and sad that I enjoyed in The Nix. I'll keep plugging and tell you more as I get further in.

3/5

Joe and Pete are both home tonight, and planning to stay through the weekend. The two oldest kids will be home on Thursday. The three oldest kids are all bringing their girlfriends to Thanksgiving dinner, and we will have assorted in-laws and friends as well. It will be a busy few days here, but it's so nice to have everybody together.