Cold Spaghetti

I made turkey this year for Christmas dinner.  Not a full turkey, I know my limits, but a full turkey breast, which I figure is pretty darn good for me, all things considered.  Those ‘all things’ include that I was a vegetarian for 8 years and Paul for 15 — in other words, neither of us are particularly knowledgeable in the preparation of meat.

When I was pregnant with Kate and overseas, I became pretty seriously anemic.  Actually, between you and me, I think I’m still struggling with this whole anemia thing, but that’s another story.  In any case, the iron issue was what brought me back to meat in the first place (it was easier than going out of my way to find soy products in Peru).  But it was at least a year until I got the courage to actually cook meat myself.

Now when I cook meat, I do so almost exclusively with the crockpot.  It’s just hard to screw things up and I feel confident that everything is cooked through without being too dry.  So, naturally, when I considered cooking turkey, I gravitated toward recipes that involve a crock pot.

So we’re talking to my Mom and Paul mentioned my newly found turkey cooking skills.  How DARN GOOD that Christmas turkey from the crock pot was — with the added perks of how great the house smelled all day, that the kids loved it, and how he was just thrilled as can be that we had three more meals of it tucked away in the freezer.  The compliments went right to my head and I threw in how easy it was… cut herbs from the porch, juiced some lemons, marinated everything overnight, and then put it all in the crock pot to cook all day.

My Mother, Goodness Bless Her, picked right up on something.  She quickly called her girlfriends to gain support.  Then with the voices of Two Seasoned Cooks behind her, she reported to me that I committed Serious Culinary Sin.  Apparently, one NEVER cooks poultry in it’s marinade.

?

This is what the recipe* said:

Place turkey, skin side down, in a large leakproof food storage bag or a nonreactive (glass or ceramic) dish. Combine marinade ingredients and pour over turkey, turning to coat all sides. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 8 hours, or overnight. Place turkey and marinade in the crockot; cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours, or until tender.

A similar recipe is here, too.

My Mother has never really recovered from the trauma of realizing that I make far superior chocolate chip cookies**, so I take her critique with a grain of salt.

But she is my Mom*** and has our best interests in mind.  (By ‘best interests’ I mean more than maintaining that my children only eat meals that she prepares.)  So, I appeal to the experts of the internet: is the recipe above one for good turkey, or gastro-intestinal illness?

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* I should note that I deviated from the recipe considerably, as I always do.  (I fear that I do not follow directions well.)  I added broth.  I wouldn’t know a dry wine from a glass of water, so I used the only bottle of wine in the house (it was a chardonnay, which I assume is a white wine because it wasn’t red colored).  I used more wine than the recipe called for, as well as more herbs.  I added salt (a lot, because I know you’re suppose to have a lot of salt in a brine) and peppercorns, also because I hear they are popular when you cook turkey.  I didn’t have Dijon mustard in the house (I think mustard is foul) so I used a dried mustard powder that I have on hand because it works good with several tofu dishes we cook.   I have no idea if any of what I have done matters in whether or not what I served was deadly.

** Yes.  I make one seriously awesome chocolate chip cookie.

*** In all seriousness, my Mother is an excellent, Excellent(!) cook.

… from our house, to yours.

Our beloved monster cat, Scout, is missing.

We think he went out the backdoor while Paul was working in the backyard yesterday afternoon.  Unless the weather isn’t agreeable, Paul always works with the backdoor open.  Scout tends to hang around the door, but has never ventured like this before.  It’s not his style (he’s a bit of a ‘fraidy cat).  There have been dozens of times since last night where either Paul or I thought it strange that Scout wasn’t under foot — but neither of us compared notes and put it all together that he was missing until this morning.  It’s strange, but not uncommon, that he isn’t sleeping with us at night (maybe he’s with Will?)  It’s strange, but not uncommon, that he isn’t begging for food at the crack of dawn (maybe he’s asleep under the Christmas tree?)  But when Paul sat in his chair this morning with the kids and Scout didn’t show up to lay on his lap, we realized something was very very wrong.

He has never been outside for any extended time.  After several days of temperatures in reaching 80 degrees, last night turned cold and rainy.

We are completely distraught.  We’ve canvased the neighborhood a dozen times.  We’ve flyered houses and cars.  We’ve crawled under houses.  We’ve called and whistled.  We’ve got food outside.

The kids don’t really understand what is wrong, just that Scout isn’t here (“hey, Mommy, I miss Scout!”), and the fact that they can simply play is both a testament to their innocence and the most annoying thing in the world.  I’m trying to keep myself in check and not direct my worry and frustration into anger at the kids.  Don’t they realize that Mommy and Daddy’s hearts are breaking??

Please help us wish our first baby back home.

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UPDATE: 1:52pm.  Paul found him!  On his fourth trip under our neighbor’s house, crawling through fiberglass insulation and petrified cat poop, Paul discovered a small tunnel/path leading to the attached shed on the back of her house… the shed where the water heater is located.  Scout was there, freaked out, and ran away from Paul.  Interestingly, when Paul first looked under her house, he swore he saw something dart around and kept coming back to that area to look.  Apparently, fourth time is the charm.  Paul emerged much dirtier than the cat, who was instantly placed in the tub and washed liberally with Will’s shampoo (much to Will’s delight).

We are making him tags and getting a collar right away.  One that he can’t pry off.  The little shit.

QUESTION.  Where can you see….

Aretha Franklin, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Matthews Band, James Taylor, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, Sugarland, Tony Bennett, Earth Wind & Fire, Erykah Badu, Irma Thomas, Etta James, Emmylou Harris, Pete Seeger, Better Than Ezra, Roy Rogers, Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Tab Benoit, Los Lobos, Cowboy Mouth, and a few hundred others….??

ALL IN ONE PLACE????

Why, in New Orleans, of course.  (duh.)

JAZZ FEST 2009 LINE-UP HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED!

Holly and Paul’s Hacienda “where we really do treat you like family” is officially taking reservations!  Early reservations get priority bed bookings; others should bring provisions for the floor.  6am wake-up calls are part of our friendly service.  Whine is always free, but bring your own cheese.

** Mention this add and get one morning of Paul’s legendary fried egg-in-toast breakfast — without being asked to do the dishes afterward! **

Do you know what the room of a 4- and 2- year old looks like after a morning searching for costumes to wear to school? It’s not pretty.

But we pulled it off. Thankfully, I’d picked up some sale items over the past few years… including a cowgirl hat and cowgirl boots. Both of these were purchased on outings when Paul was not around to glare disapprovingly. I am using this as an example of my Good Shopping Skills, which have now proven themselves to be Very Valuable in a pinch.

Along with a horse-y shirt, Kate became a cowgirl! We worked on “Yee-haw!” all morning. At 9:30, we joined her at school for a little Halloween party.

She was quick to find many good uses for her cowgirl hat. “Daddy? What do you mean I can’t have a pony?!”

Then they had a puppet show. Kate walked herself upstairs and sat in the front row, without thinking twice about her parents, stuck in the back with the babies (they were a little freaked out by the intense cheese brought by the puppet man.) Luck for him, Kate LOVES cheese. All kinds. She ate it all up and especially liked the guy’s cat, Dinah. (His ghost was named Blythe. Chuckle, chuckle.)

She just took it all in, wild horsewoman that she is.

And seriously, it took honest effort.

She didn’t even notice us leave after the performance. She is SO OVER us!

Then, at 2, we visited Will’s BATMAN’s school. He was cruisin’ the play-yard in his Batmobile.

Inside, the kids’ artwork decorated the cafeteria. That face in the center is the work of Batman, himself.

Then, the Kindergarten put on a Maori-inspired song and dance, wearing Maori-inspired skirts that they made. (Their study of Australia has branched out to New Zealand.)

We figured Will did pretty well with the words and movements, considering he’d missed three days of school recently for our trip north.

His favorite part was “aou, aou, aou, aou-aou-aou!”

After their performance, guess who was waiting? Yup, same guy from the morning. His shtick went great with the older crowd, though. And when he needed a BAT, guess who got called up?

See that handsome guy in the background? He recorded it all. A prince among men, I tell ya.

Thanks to Paul’s recording prowess, here’s an incredibly reduced-quality video of the Maori-song and dance. My favorite part is when Will hitches up his pants about 50 seconds in. AOU!

Apparently, wombats are popular in more than one New Orleans household. Thanks to a local wombat-fan’s post, we found this wonderful website.

With a wombat giftstore. Paul will never be short of silly t-shirts again.

Challenges abound here in Cold Spaghetti headquarters, but we’re trying to focus on the positive.

Take for example, the other day, when the tire tread on Paul’s truck separated while he was on the Causeway. Now it could have happened when he was in the middle of the longest bridge in the world, but instead it happened close enough that he could see land. Paul and Truck could have very easily been thrown into Lake Ponchatrain, or smacked into the lake by another driver, but instead, he managed to get the car under control at 25 mph and drive it jerking and bouncing off the bridge and to the Goodyear a quarter mile inland.

We are so happy about his living through the situation above that the $600 repair bill isn’t a bother at all.

The computer is great, working, and all is fine here. Photo workflow is still working out kinks. Particularly regarding blogger, which may be a past-tense experience shortly.

Most of the focus has been on the Peru work, which was (mostly) reviewed yesterday by the editor, which is why I haven’t been able to focus much on new photographs of the kids or anything else with learning the new system.

I need to figure out a good photograph workflow. Here are the needs: something where I can quickly scan and weed out photographs (finder seems fine here); something that will let me create an archive file to have around short term for blog-entries and then upload to our archive — AND — will see photos after I’ve done edits from Photoshop (iphoto is breaking down for me on that last part). Also, I made a mistake by not shooting everything RAW and am not sure how to incorporate current shots and future RAW conversion in this workflow…

And I can’t figure out a smooth way to get photos from iphoto to blogger, which is why I haven’t blogged in a few days. This may be the straw that breaks my back and forces me to move out from blogger to one of the URLs I’ve been holding for a year. Time to download wordpress…?

The monitor is massive, the keyboard and mouse are all trendy and slick, and I keep using words like “sexy” to describe the whole experience.  Then Paul noticed boingboing had a post on objectum-sexuals and now I’m officially not using that word anymore in reference to my computer.  As long as it doesn’t cry out in the middle of the night, stick it’s toes up my nose during cuddle time, or whine about wanting hamburgers for dinner, this big hulk of a thing could quickly become the household favorite.  (Sorry, kids.)