Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Potato-Ham Casserole
No, really, that's what this is about. How to make my delicious potato-ham casserole. And I'm going to have lovely, potato-ham dreams tonight, with no nightmarish elements whatsoever.
I referenced several online recipes to get the proportions right, and came up with equal parts diced ham and sliced, cooked potatoes - which means more raw, because they'll shrink - and half that amount of shredded cheese. It binds together with cream-of-whatever soup. I used cream of celery, but I only had one can, which didn't seem like enough, so I supplemented it with a big glob (maybe 2/3c) of sour cream. Season as you like; onion soup mix did well for me, and a healthy pass of black pepper. I also had nothing crunchy for the topping, like corn flakes or Funyuns. Here it is in proper recipe form, to serve about 8.
4 c cooked, diced ham
8 small to medium potatoes, sliced thin (about 8 c before boiling). Peeling optional.
1 can of cream-of-whatever soup
about 2/3 c sour cream
8-oz. block of cheddar, grated
one envelope of onion soup mix
pepper to taste (salt if you want, but ham is already salty)
something crunchy for the top if you'd like
Preheat the oven to 350, and grease a 9x13 casserole dish (I like glass).
Boil the potato slices to almost-soft.
Optional: rinse ham. It removes some of the saltiness.
After dicing, slicing and boiling, mix in a large bowl everything except the crunchy topping and about 1/2 c of the grated cheese. Mix it well. Don't worry if the potatoes smush a little.
Spread the mixture in the casserole dish. Sprinkle the crunchies and the rest of the cheese over the top. Cover with aluminum foil.
At 35 minutes, remove the foil so you get the nice brown crust, and pull it after another 10 minutes. Give it 10-15 minutes to set before serving. Aahhh. Total comfort food.
I referenced several online recipes to get the proportions right, and came up with equal parts diced ham and sliced, cooked potatoes - which means more raw, because they'll shrink - and half that amount of shredded cheese. It binds together with cream-of-whatever soup. I used cream of celery, but I only had one can, which didn't seem like enough, so I supplemented it with a big glob (maybe 2/3c) of sour cream. Season as you like; onion soup mix did well for me, and a healthy pass of black pepper. I also had nothing crunchy for the topping, like corn flakes or Funyuns. Here it is in proper recipe form, to serve about 8.
4 c cooked, diced ham
8 small to medium potatoes, sliced thin (about 8 c before boiling). Peeling optional.
1 can of cream-of-whatever soup
about 2/3 c sour cream
8-oz. block of cheddar, grated
one envelope of onion soup mix
pepper to taste (salt if you want, but ham is already salty)
something crunchy for the top if you'd like
Preheat the oven to 350, and grease a 9x13 casserole dish (I like glass).
Boil the potato slices to almost-soft.
Optional: rinse ham. It removes some of the saltiness.
After dicing, slicing and boiling, mix in a large bowl everything except the crunchy topping and about 1/2 c of the grated cheese. Mix it well. Don't worry if the potatoes smush a little.
Spread the mixture in the casserole dish. Sprinkle the crunchies and the rest of the cheese over the top. Cover with aluminum foil.
At 35 minutes, remove the foil so you get the nice brown crust, and pull it after another 10 minutes. Give it 10-15 minutes to set before serving. Aahhh. Total comfort food.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Nightmares II
Just a short note: do not mix a zombie movie, a book about Colonial American demonic possession, a rumor that the town to which you're thinking of moving has a sect of Satanists who abduct pets, and Photoshop at any time before attempting to sleep.The result is disturbing, and occasionally it edits itself in layers.
Good night.
Good night.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Nightmares
What does it mean when you dream that your block is going up in flames, and 911 doesn't work? I think this one may have had more to do with bureaucracy than fear of burning to death. The first time I called, I reached a restaurant. Then I got dispatch, but they were really focused on hospitals, and since nobody needed to go to the hospital, they were no help. As I called Information for the fire department's direct line, a sheriff's car drove by without stopping. I don't think I ever got the call through: the numbers on my phone kept moving around. Finally I spotted three beat cops (in this day and age?!?) at the north end of the block, and I ran to catch them. Two of the cops kept walking, and one stopped to talk to me. He kept asking which direction the fire was, oblivious to the five-story flames, and we'd start walking toward my house, then the scene would reset like a little loop of incompetence. In the meantime, our storage shed and a really tall tree burned to lumps of charcoal.
At least nobody was hurt. I was babysitting my favorite four-month-old, carrying her the whole time, and she didn't notice a thing. By the time Kara (her mom) picked her up, all the fires had died out. I told Kara about 911 and the cops, and how annoyed I was that now I'd have to go to City Council and tell them that in any properly-managed city, this wouldn't have happened, and would they please get their 911 functioning.
I woke up when my senile kitty Pandora yowled from downstairs. She sometimes does that when everyone has gone upstairs without her, because she's sleeping somewhere and ignoring us, then she wakes up all alone in the dark. I'm not usually even asleep at that hour (3:26 am), but this weekend was a little off thanks to our "Heroes" marathon on Netflix Instant - Hans connected my laptop to the TV, and we watched the whole first season pretty much straight through. Anyway, Pandora gave this long terrified shriek, the worst I've ever heard, like she'd seen the kitty boogeyman, and I ran downstairs without my glasses. She's okay now, but I'm still recovering from the adrenaline burst.
At least nobody was hurt. I was babysitting my favorite four-month-old, carrying her the whole time, and she didn't notice a thing. By the time Kara (her mom) picked her up, all the fires had died out. I told Kara about 911 and the cops, and how annoyed I was that now I'd have to go to City Council and tell them that in any properly-managed city, this wouldn't have happened, and would they please get their 911 functioning.
I woke up when my senile kitty Pandora yowled from downstairs. She sometimes does that when everyone has gone upstairs without her, because she's sleeping somewhere and ignoring us, then she wakes up all alone in the dark. I'm not usually even asleep at that hour (3:26 am), but this weekend was a little off thanks to our "Heroes" marathon on Netflix Instant - Hans connected my laptop to the TV, and we watched the whole first season pretty much straight through. Anyway, Pandora gave this long terrified shriek, the worst I've ever heard, like she'd seen the kitty boogeyman, and I ran downstairs without my glasses. She's okay now, but I'm still recovering from the adrenaline burst.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Minutiae I
I'm learning two new songs on the guitar: Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire," and Green Day's "Good Riddance." I have Jess to thank for the second - her blog last week or so put the song in my head. It turns out it's fairly easy to play, mostly with chords I already knew. I have stubby, weak little fingers, so a lot of chords are difficult for me, and they don't sound pretty when I play them, even on the three-quarter-sized guitar I got last fall.
At one of the places where I didn't get the guitar, I went in and asked about a student-sized guitar. The guitar store guy asked me how old the student was. I don't think he expected "thirty-five" for an answer. But I'm five-foot-one, large-busted (they get in the way; I can see why warriors would remove them) and slightly arthritic, and it's painful to get my arms around a grownup acoustic guitar. Electric might be a little easier to manage, with the much shallower body. Maybe I'll try it sometime.
The Guitar Hero controller, that's really small. It feels like a toy.
Today I sang "Bird on a Wire" to the four-month-old I babysit. It put her right to sleep. Excellent lullaby material:
So, I'm just rambling, awake in the middle of the night as usual. Nothing too profound.
I watched Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" again. It's unlike any horror movie I've ever seen, and I recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach and a warped sense of humor. In my head, the Hype7 ghost story video could have been that cool. With that kind of budget and equipment. Yeah.
At one of the places where I didn't get the guitar, I went in and asked about a student-sized guitar. The guitar store guy asked me how old the student was. I don't think he expected "thirty-five" for an answer. But I'm five-foot-one, large-busted (they get in the way; I can see why warriors would remove them) and slightly arthritic, and it's painful to get my arms around a grownup acoustic guitar. Electric might be a little easier to manage, with the much shallower body. Maybe I'll try it sometime.
The Guitar Hero controller, that's really small. It feels like a toy.
Today I sang "Bird on a Wire" to the four-month-old I babysit. It put her right to sleep. Excellent lullaby material:
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir,Four months is an exciting age, by the way. She's trying really hard to get mobile, and her communication in sound and facial expression is becoming more defined. It's easy to tell the difference between "Feed me" and "Get these damn socks off me" and "Please push the button on the Pooh Bear song box again." I tried to get her to push the button herself, and I think she understands the cause-and-effect, but she can't quite apply the pressure. Oh, this kid loves voices that come out of little plastic boxes. Speaker phone on the cell is the greatest!
I have tried in my way to be free.
...
Like a babe stillborn, like a beast with his horn,
I have torn everyone who reached out to me.
So, I'm just rambling, awake in the middle of the night as usual. Nothing too profound.
I watched Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" again. It's unlike any horror movie I've ever seen, and I recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach and a warped sense of humor. In my head, the Hype7 ghost story video could have been that cool. With that kind of budget and equipment. Yeah.
Friday, January 11, 2008
The Tattoo Diaries
My tummy hurts, and when I stand up, it feels worse. So I'm not doing the dishes right now. Instead, I'll tell you about all my tattoos, in the order of newest to oldest. After all, they're part of the reason for choosing the name "Inky Neverwhere." I don't have pictures of all of them. I don't have pictures of most of them.
The one that's currently serving as my profile picture is the most recent, just a few weeks old. It's on my left bicep. The design is from the tarot card Strength, specifically from the Rider-Waite deck, which is the bestselling deck of the past century - and will, in fact, reach its centennial in 2009. Strength is my favorite card to draw in a tarot reading. Rather than copy straight from the card, JP (my friend and tattooist) gave it shading and depth, and used more vibrant colors. I also requested that the woman be a brunette like me rather than blonde like the card. We chose not to frame the design with the card elements, but kept the infinity symbol that floats above the woman's head. Leaving the edges open allows for a sleeve or half-sleeve to be developed around it in the future.
A few weeks before that - specifically, on November 4 - JP added color to a line piece on my right shoulder blade that I'd gotten ten years prior, to the date. Almost to the hour. The design itself is a combination of floral and sculptural elements, from a late 19th century illustration of a French Archbishop's crozier (kind of like a Pope Stick, but lower in the hierarchy) dated to the Romanesque period of the AD 800's. I was into some idea of Absolute Beauty, with as few symbolic associations as possible, at the time I got it. That was the year I ended a bad, bad significant relationship (of the legally bound variety), and the date I got it also marked the tenth anniversary of a particularly dangerous brush with teen angst. This year, on the twentieth anniversary (and a full decade after that relationship mistake), I was going to get the Strength tattoo, but I didn't realize until that afternoon that it was the design I wanted. JP needed more time to work with the art, because of its tiny details, but he was geared up to do some ink, and it was important to me to mark the date, but not with just any random thing. So we evolved the crozier, in the way emotions can evolve over twenty years.
JP's first tattoo on me was a black feather, about two inches high, just below my left clavicle. I had to wear a strapless bra for a week - and I only have one, so I had to wash it every day. It was last year, in the summer. There are so many directions the meaning of a feather can take. A quill pen for writing, a remnant of an angelic visitation, the freedom of a bird...
Prior to the feather, there were nearly ten years in which I didn't get any ink. I never had the time, money and a good idea in conjunction. I have to admit that JP and I have worked out a pretty sweet deal. I babysit his daughter, he tattoos me. There's sort of an equivalence ratio of babysitting hours to tattoo hours, but we don't nickel-and-dime. He's been BFF with my husband for years, and we both trust him (trust being essential when needles and permanency are involved). He's also just a damn good artist!
So, back ten years to the crozier design, which most people think is just an orchid. I had the night off from assistant-stage-managing some pretty intense opera rehearsals, and I was a little agitated, it being the date it was. I went alone to Grimm's, which I believe is no longer there. It was around 40th and Main, in KCMO. An artist named Whispering Danny was working that night. I had imagined the tattoo would be as small as the drawing I brought, not even a couple inches high, but to get all the detail in it, Danny said it would have to be about the size of my hand. This would be a jump in tattooed-ness from the cute little pieces I already had. I sat backwards on a chair, keeping most of my shirt on, and for the first two hours I was surprised by how little it hurt. Somehow, though, the last half-hour was excruciating. Danny wasn't doing anything differently - he explained that your brain helps you ignore the pain for a certain amount of time, but then starts thinking you should be about finished.
The tattoo before that was a green butterfly above my left knee, just an inch or so, squared. I drew the design myself, to look like stylized Asian calligraphy strokes. There wasn't really a special occasion or meaning connected to it, but I had been craving a tattoo for a few months, and I've always liked butterflies. Who doesn't? A new tattoo shop had opened in Lawrence, called In the Skin. I got my navel pierced there, too, but neither the shop nor the piercing lasted.
I have a confession to make: I ditched early from my cousin's Bat Mitzvah reception to get my second tattoo. I had just switched my major (um, again) to theatre, and I thought that the Comedy and Tragedy masks would make a wonderful tattoo. I think I was right: even though my career path has gone other ways, life has certainly seemed a balance of the two. That's another one I designed: there's plenty of flash art of the masks, but most of what I'd seen was larger than I wanted, and in varying degrees of grotesque. My design was simple and angular, with Comedy in rose tones and Tragedy in blue and green. It's on my right ankle, and I honestly don't notice it that often anymore. In fact, I just noticed that the lighter pink has more or less faded away. I don't know if I'll have it touched up. The ankle has very little flesh over the bone, and lots of nerve endings. I nearly passed out from the pain.
And my very first tattoo... a rosebud picked from flash art on the wall. I was eighteen, a freshman in college, and I'd just ended my first serious relationship. I wanted something on my body that my ex didn't know. It's very small, and just below my left hipbone: the most "hide-able" spot I could do it without removing my pants. This was December of 1990, and a tattoo at the time still set a girl apart. I think Cher had just started displaying hers. The sorority girls weren't into it yet. Neither were the good, decent small-town Kansas girls in my scholarship hall. Other girls came back from winter break showing off promise rings... I came back with my skin permanently altered.
Now you know. One of these days, I'll take pictures of them all. For now, my tummyache is gone, and I have a sinkful of dishes waiting.
The one that's currently serving as my profile picture is the most recent, just a few weeks old. It's on my left bicep. The design is from the tarot card Strength, specifically from the Rider-Waite deck, which is the bestselling deck of the past century - and will, in fact, reach its centennial in 2009. Strength is my favorite card to draw in a tarot reading. Rather than copy straight from the card, JP (my friend and tattooist) gave it shading and depth, and used more vibrant colors. I also requested that the woman be a brunette like me rather than blonde like the card. We chose not to frame the design with the card elements, but kept the infinity symbol that floats above the woman's head. Leaving the edges open allows for a sleeve or half-sleeve to be developed around it in the future.
A few weeks before that - specifically, on November 4 - JP added color to a line piece on my right shoulder blade that I'd gotten ten years prior, to the date. Almost to the hour. The design itself is a combination of floral and sculptural elements, from a late 19th century illustration of a French Archbishop's crozier (kind of like a Pope Stick, but lower in the hierarchy) dated to the Romanesque period of the AD 800's. I was into some idea of Absolute Beauty, with as few symbolic associations as possible, at the time I got it. That was the year I ended a bad, bad significant relationship (of the legally bound variety), and the date I got it also marked the tenth anniversary of a particularly dangerous brush with teen angst. This year, on the twentieth anniversary (and a full decade after that relationship mistake), I was going to get the Strength tattoo, but I didn't realize until that afternoon that it was the design I wanted. JP needed more time to work with the art, because of its tiny details, but he was geared up to do some ink, and it was important to me to mark the date, but not with just any random thing. So we evolved the crozier, in the way emotions can evolve over twenty years.
JP's first tattoo on me was a black feather, about two inches high, just below my left clavicle. I had to wear a strapless bra for a week - and I only have one, so I had to wash it every day. It was last year, in the summer. There are so many directions the meaning of a feather can take. A quill pen for writing, a remnant of an angelic visitation, the freedom of a bird...
Prior to the feather, there were nearly ten years in which I didn't get any ink. I never had the time, money and a good idea in conjunction. I have to admit that JP and I have worked out a pretty sweet deal. I babysit his daughter, he tattoos me. There's sort of an equivalence ratio of babysitting hours to tattoo hours, but we don't nickel-and-dime. He's been BFF with my husband for years, and we both trust him (trust being essential when needles and permanency are involved). He's also just a damn good artist!
So, back ten years to the crozier design, which most people think is just an orchid. I had the night off from assistant-stage-managing some pretty intense opera rehearsals, and I was a little agitated, it being the date it was. I went alone to Grimm's, which I believe is no longer there. It was around 40th and Main, in KCMO. An artist named Whispering Danny was working that night. I had imagined the tattoo would be as small as the drawing I brought, not even a couple inches high, but to get all the detail in it, Danny said it would have to be about the size of my hand. This would be a jump in tattooed-ness from the cute little pieces I already had. I sat backwards on a chair, keeping most of my shirt on, and for the first two hours I was surprised by how little it hurt. Somehow, though, the last half-hour was excruciating. Danny wasn't doing anything differently - he explained that your brain helps you ignore the pain for a certain amount of time, but then starts thinking you should be about finished.
The tattoo before that was a green butterfly above my left knee, just an inch or so, squared. I drew the design myself, to look like stylized Asian calligraphy strokes. There wasn't really a special occasion or meaning connected to it, but I had been craving a tattoo for a few months, and I've always liked butterflies. Who doesn't? A new tattoo shop had opened in Lawrence, called In the Skin. I got my navel pierced there, too, but neither the shop nor the piercing lasted.
I have a confession to make: I ditched early from my cousin's Bat Mitzvah reception to get my second tattoo. I had just switched my major (um, again) to theatre, and I thought that the Comedy and Tragedy masks would make a wonderful tattoo. I think I was right: even though my career path has gone other ways, life has certainly seemed a balance of the two. That's another one I designed: there's plenty of flash art of the masks, but most of what I'd seen was larger than I wanted, and in varying degrees of grotesque. My design was simple and angular, with Comedy in rose tones and Tragedy in blue and green. It's on my right ankle, and I honestly don't notice it that often anymore. In fact, I just noticed that the lighter pink has more or less faded away. I don't know if I'll have it touched up. The ankle has very little flesh over the bone, and lots of nerve endings. I nearly passed out from the pain.
And my very first tattoo... a rosebud picked from flash art on the wall. I was eighteen, a freshman in college, and I'd just ended my first serious relationship. I wanted something on my body that my ex didn't know. It's very small, and just below my left hipbone: the most "hide-able" spot I could do it without removing my pants. This was December of 1990, and a tattoo at the time still set a girl apart. I think Cher had just started displaying hers. The sorority girls weren't into it yet. Neither were the good, decent small-town Kansas girls in my scholarship hall. Other girls came back from winter break showing off promise rings... I came back with my skin permanently altered.
Now you know. One of these days, I'll take pictures of them all. For now, my tummyache is gone, and I have a sinkful of dishes waiting.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
I Heart Vinyl
No, this isn't a blog about sexual perversity in Kansas. Not today, at least.
I just got an Ion USB turntable from Thinkgeek.com, and I LOVE it! I haven't had a record player in years, but that's the form of music I grew up with, and whether it's a matter of audio quality or mere nostalgia, vinyl moves me emotionally in a way that CDs and mp3s don't. They're kind of alive. You have to take care of them, and not let them get scratched or warped. You have to babysit the turntable (stay nearby, at least), not bump it, and flip the record over when it reaches the end of the side, or you'll wear down the needle faster.
The record I was playing when I realized how much more connected I felt was a Beatles compilation from 1975, Rock 'n' Roll Music. It's heavy on their early pop songs and the American music they recorded, like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, and only includes a few high points of the later years - like "Helter Skelter," which I'd forgotten was one of the best songs ever, and now I must learn to play so I, too, can shout "I've got blisters on me fingers!" I'm not usually Beatles-obsessed, but I might hunt down more of their albums, because I only have a few of their songs in digital form. I have my parents' copy of the White Album, in terrible shape. The corners of the jacket are pretty much destroyed, and the first disc is unplayable. It has dog tooth marks.
So what the Ion does is connect to my computer, and using the program Audacity, records the disc as it plays. There's a sound delay, just a fraction of a second, but noticeable if you're sitting close enough to the turntable to hear the very quiet, hissy playback at the source: that is to say, where needle meets vinyl. Yeah, it's audible. I had to keep one of my cats from pouncing on the lid. I guess it sounds like mice. I also need to get it hooked into the receiver: it doesn't have its own speakers. Maybe if it doesn't have to send the sound through a computer, the gap will go away.
Audacity seems to work pretty well for what it needs to do, but since I installed it, another program I use has been crashing. Not good. I'll have to try reinstalling. Finding the right balance of sound cleanup is a little tricky to me. The listening experience of the 70's isn't exactly duplicated: yes, the sound was always a little scratchy on the old equipment, but the new toys are so sensitive that they amplify the flaws. The project files also take up a lot of room on the hard drive, a couple G per album. I don't have space to record a lot of albums before I have to break them into tracks and convert to mp3, but once that's done, I can delete the huge project file.
At the moment, I'm listening to (and digitizing) The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, from 1987. I had it as a cassette, replaced it with a CD when it wore out, eventually traded in the CD, and finally got the LP a couple years ago, with no idea whether I'd ever own a turntable again. Actually, for someone with no turntable, I've gathered quite a few LPs in the last few years... now I get to play them!
I just got an Ion USB turntable from Thinkgeek.com, and I LOVE it! I haven't had a record player in years, but that's the form of music I grew up with, and whether it's a matter of audio quality or mere nostalgia, vinyl moves me emotionally in a way that CDs and mp3s don't. They're kind of alive. You have to take care of them, and not let them get scratched or warped. You have to babysit the turntable (stay nearby, at least), not bump it, and flip the record over when it reaches the end of the side, or you'll wear down the needle faster.
The record I was playing when I realized how much more connected I felt was a Beatles compilation from 1975, Rock 'n' Roll Music. It's heavy on their early pop songs and the American music they recorded, like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, and only includes a few high points of the later years - like "Helter Skelter," which I'd forgotten was one of the best songs ever, and now I must learn to play so I, too, can shout "I've got blisters on me fingers!" I'm not usually Beatles-obsessed, but I might hunt down more of their albums, because I only have a few of their songs in digital form. I have my parents' copy of the White Album, in terrible shape. The corners of the jacket are pretty much destroyed, and the first disc is unplayable. It has dog tooth marks.
So what the Ion does is connect to my computer, and using the program Audacity, records the disc as it plays. There's a sound delay, just a fraction of a second, but noticeable if you're sitting close enough to the turntable to hear the very quiet, hissy playback at the source: that is to say, where needle meets vinyl. Yeah, it's audible. I had to keep one of my cats from pouncing on the lid. I guess it sounds like mice. I also need to get it hooked into the receiver: it doesn't have its own speakers. Maybe if it doesn't have to send the sound through a computer, the gap will go away.
Audacity seems to work pretty well for what it needs to do, but since I installed it, another program I use has been crashing. Not good. I'll have to try reinstalling. Finding the right balance of sound cleanup is a little tricky to me. The listening experience of the 70's isn't exactly duplicated: yes, the sound was always a little scratchy on the old equipment, but the new toys are so sensitive that they amplify the flaws. The project files also take up a lot of room on the hard drive, a couple G per album. I don't have space to record a lot of albums before I have to break them into tracks and convert to mp3, but once that's done, I can delete the huge project file.
At the moment, I'm listening to (and digitizing) The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, from 1987. I had it as a cassette, replaced it with a CD when it wore out, eventually traded in the CD, and finally got the LP a couple years ago, with no idea whether I'd ever own a turntable again. Actually, for someone with no turntable, I've gathered quite a few LPs in the last few years... now I get to play them!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
