It happened.
We had tickets to go home to PA for our annual Christmas party. The week before we left, my Aunt Joyce got an obstructed bowel and had to have emergency surgery. That surgery was do or die, no choice in the matter but what happened after wasn't good either.
When she woke up she started pulling the tubes out and they had to sedate her so she wouldn't do that. They kept her in a medical coma for a few days and then let her wake up. There seemed to be a glimmer of hope for a little while, but it wasn't to be.
Michael and I arrived in PA on Wednesday night around 9pm until we arrived at my mothers house. We were going to head for the hospital in the morning. At 9am Thursday we got the call from my uncle Richard. She was gone.
The last day or two she was in hospice care. Hospice seems to help the family, the living, just as much as the dying.
Friday night it started snowing and didn't stop until Saturday night. Thank goodness it didn't blow. No one would have gone anywhere. Leola got a good 10 inches I think. I didn't measure ;)
rest in peace Aunt Joyce, I am going to miss you
With a name like that, how can you resist one of these?
There are so many things I love about sugarplums.
1. They are made of dried fruit and nuts.
2. They are healthy, and more so if you skip the sugar. The serving size is perfect.
3. They require no cooking or baking. All you need is a food processor, a weighing scale, and two cooling racks. A small cookie scoop will be very useful, but you don't really need it.
4. Alton Brown made them for the Good Eats Christmas Special. How could they possibly not be good? ;)
The recipe is very flexible, so I used whatever I had in the fridge. My final recipe:
- 12 ounces almonds, toasted
- 10 ounces dried plums
- 6 ounces dried apricots
- 4 ounces dried figs
- 4 oz dates
- 1/2 teaspoon anise seeds, toasted
- 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, toasted
- 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/2 cup sorghum (or honey)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup coarse sugar (optional)
Whiz everything together in the food processor, except the sorghum/honey. Stop just before it starts to turn into a big lump. Remove to a bowl and add in the honey. Mix well. Using a tbsp or a small cookie scoop, scoop out 1/4 oz servings and roll into little balls. Roll the balls in coarse sugar and set on cooling racks. Let them rest for a few hours until completely cool and dry. Store in an airtight container.
The recipe above yielded a hundred sugarplums. Each serving (without sugar) has 35 Calories. I'll be taking these to the hospital for Christmas day call. Merry Christmas!
The other day, I hopped into a B or D (can't remember which) at 7av/53rd Street and seated myself. A guy plonked himself next to me at Rockefeller Center and immediately reached out into his backpack and pulled out his Dell notebook. Nothing unusual, except that he fired up Ubuntu, brought up some IDE and started coding away. He certainly wasn't tinkering with his machine or manipulating a spreadsheet - this was serious Java code. Now, if he was a consultant working on code in the subway, he would surely bill for it? Many other such people could want (and be ready to pay) to access the internet or at least get their cell phones working. Now, I know our cash-strapped MTA is piloting cellphone access in a few stations (14st?). So maybe here is a chance to get a few bucks while silencing a few critics as well. Instead of the "Holland Tunnel" model of cellphone access where carriers have been allowed to make their phones work (presumably for free - i.e. Port Authority isn't getting paid), they could use the airline model - where net and phone access are a paid service. That could earn revenue and keep the number of users down to a tolerable number. I should think this is technically feasible. Commercially viable?
The Palisades Parkway runs for about 100 miles or along or close to the Hudson river. When heading North, you can stop at a couple of lookouts which can give you impressive views of the city and the river. On a cold, early December morning, just after the first snow, everything seemed to stand still. The GWB looked majestic and serene - not adjectives that frequent users of the bridge would normally attach to it.
..are surprisingly easy to make!
Which is not necessarily a good thing, because now every time I reach for Panera's Everything bagel, a little voice will say, 'You could have made it yourself.'
Darned voices.
Ingredients for 12 bagels:
1 tbsp sugar
1.5 cups lukewarm water
2.5 tsp dry active yeast (1 packet)
4 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp vital wheat gluten
2 tsp salt
poppy and sesame seeds, or toppings of your choice
a tbsp of vegetable oil, for coating the bowl
- Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the water and let it foam.
- Mix together the flour, gluten and salt. Add the yeasty water and knead for ten minutes.
- Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise for an hour or so.
Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to boil. (Optional: I added a tsp of molasses and a pinch of baking soda to the water- it is supposed to give the bagels a bagel-y sheen.)
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope, then wrap the rope around your open palm to form a bagel. Seal together the edges of the dough rope, and roll the ring a few times to smooth it out. For a quick technique video, go here.
Roll out all the bagels and cover them with a damp towel. Now starting with the ones you rolled first, add them to the boiling water in batches of three. The bagels will float to the top. Cook them on one side for a minute, then flip over and cook on the other side for a minute. (The longer you boil them, the chewier they will be.) Remove and place on a towel.
Sprinkle seeds in a dish. Carefully grab the moist bagel and place it in the toppings, pretty side down. Then place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, pretty seed covered side up.
Bake for fifteen minutes, or until nicely browned. Cool on a rack for 20 minutes, slice, top with your favorite cream cheese, and devour.
I won't be getting a chance to perfect the technique until February, since we just started the 6-week Eat to Live detox diet. The science of Joel Fuhrman's book is arguable, but the idea of living on fruits, vegetables and nuts for six weeks suits me just fine. Besides, this will give me the chance to go Vegan for six weeks and see what its like. The no-caffeine part is going to be much harder. I've already talked myself into a cup of tea a day. :)
I actually had a book seller trying to tell me the other week that Twilight was a modern interpretation of Wuthering Heights. This was in the context of a conversation about why I didn't think these books were really ideal reading for my 11 year old niece (although I wouldn't try and discourage her from reading them - just wanted some ideas for other books that might appeal but have a bit more literary merit, eg, something like Margaret Mahy's The Changover which I have blogged about previously and which Madame Smartypants Bookseller had never even heard of). Anyway, I am sure we will see plenty more Masters theses (is this the plural of thesis?) on this phenomenum before the Next Big Thing comes along.
Count the taxis
If you said 4, you flunked. There is a 5th one hidden on the far side. I happened to wait outside the big Macy's for 15 min - and must have seen a hundred taxis.
And then there were the cyclists and buses
Factor in the foot traffic and you have true diversity of human transportation
Dina spent the first 2 and a half years in an orphanage waiting for the red tape to clear so her mommy and daddy could bring her home. She is loved and pampered and 18 years in the making :)
I love the way the sun turned Juliana's hair to gold. This was cookie day at the B's.
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