Voting Day!

And now, a message from the Republicans:

 

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdGXD9me8no[/embed]

Please ignore this message and get out there and VOTE. I don't even care if you are a Republican!

Pizza

Today's blog is about pizza. Hot, bubbling, pizza. Pizza is intensely personal, in my view, but it is just as they say: as with sex, even when pizza is bad, it's still pretty good.

However.

Try a gluten free pizza once. The sauce can be amazing, the cheese the best, the toppings local, organic, whatever. The crust on a gluten free pizza is merely a conveyance. Often the crust on a gluten free pizza resembles nothing more than a stale cracker, bearing zero resemblance to the yeasty, thin, crispy-yet-chewy crust that a pizza should have. Gluten free pizza is, generally, not worth the time it takes to order.

So today is about pizza.

I made crust with my gluten free AP flour mix. There is promise here; the dough feels vaguely elastic as I am kneading it, and the yeasty fragrance floats up for a moment. There are, in fact, little bubbles in the dough where the yeast is going to work, eating and farting and eating and farting. The bubbles are small, though, and the crust is still a bit crumbly without the stretchy, satiny feel of a good pizza dough.

Half will go in the freezer; the other half will be dinner.

Awkward update: it was, indeed, like a cracker. Beyond the initial promise of springy dough and gassy bubbles, the dough rose no more and resolved itself into a thin, over-crispy base for sauce and cheese. Not awful, per se, but not pizza.

I still have half of the dough in the freezer, and I may turn them into crisps of some sort, maybe with some fresh parmesan and cracked black pepper. Back to the drawing board.

Still I Rise

 

It's 9:48 in the morning on a weekday, and I am in bed. I got up earlier and took The Kid to school, came home and wrote a little, then just decided to get back into bed.

I can do that, most days, but I choose not to. Today, I am stressed by the bids we have been getting to rehab the house, tired from consistent poor sleeping, and entering hibernation mode as I do this time every year. I just want to sleep, watch TV, and make soup.

This becomes problematic when one is trying to get anything done.

This also becomes problematic when one feels one has to justify one's ability to go back to bed mid-morning on what most people consider a work day.

I, too, consider it a work day. I just work differently, I guess. Everything is different, though. I am not the same person I was a year ago. I am not in the same house, state, job, thought space. Part of this feels like depression, but part of it feels like taking stock, exploring, and getting ready for the next thing. It's grief, in an odd stage that doesn't have as much crying, which is nice for making other people feel comfortable, but this grief has a short fuse. It requires the time and space to process bits of things at a time.

So when I go back to bed I try not to be hard on myself for doing so. I will get back up.

"Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise." 

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NaBloPoMo

It is that time of year...

Thirty days of blogs whether I (or you) like it or not. Some people write  a novel in November; some people grow their beard. I am going to blog.

They won't all be long because...well, just because sometimes I just don't want to.

Like today. The day after Halloween. An hour before The Child and I are supposed to go to a bar mitzvah, and it is a blustery, stay-in-be-all-day-and-watch-movies kind of day. Plus Dia de los Muertos, which in America means 50% all Halloween candy.

So. Here is my favorite time-wasting video from the interwebs to celebrate.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLt5rBfNucc[/embed]

Food Love

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with [her]...the people who give you their food give you their heart." ~Cesar Chavez~

I've said it before, and a section of this blog post prompts me to say it again: food, to me, equals love. If I cook you something delicious (or anywhere close to delicious, like merely okay or just edible) and give it to you, chances are good I like you. I probably even love you.

Not necessarily in that way, unless you are Ryan Gosling, or Viggo Mortensen, or a smoking hot neighbor with a steady job, a sense of humor, and a tool box. And a truck for moving big things. No more dogs, though. If you are aforementioned smoking hot neighbor and you have a dog, keep driving your truck on by. I am full up of dogs and just waiting for one of them to die so it feels more manageable.

But I digress.

Food means comfort and creativity. It is at the base of who we are; it shapes our culture, our day, our life. We move to places based on where we will be able to get food; one of the first things we find when we land in a new place is pizza that doesn't suck and a bar with delicious cocktails (or a coffee shop, or bakery, or whatever floats your culinary/survivalist boat). In Georgia, you identify your neighborhood by which Kroger you live near (with clever nicknames, like Murder Kroger, Disco Kroger, and Done Been Kilt Kroger. Seriously. I can't make this up. Except the last one that Sicily and I made up  based on a murder/suicide that happened in the parking lot but still cannot say without chuckling). In Baltimore, it's a farmer's market or a hipster nose-to-tail butcher. Or the newest ironic dive with innovative food.

We speak of food deserts in inner cities where the landscape is sere and hard with the lack of fresh green places and bustling life. Food swamps with their hot Cheetos and Twinkies aren't much better. It crushes my soul in a very non-hyperbolic way to think of kids who have no idea what fresh food tastes like, kids that haven't seen a non-canned green bean or a roasted beet.

I fully recognize the elitist nature of my even being able to write this blog. Absence of food does not mean absence of love, and all around the world people love each other in ways that have nothing to do with calories.

Still.

For me, a cookie is a caress. Fresh bread is a warm embrace. Food is love.

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Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Mix

This is the basic recipe for a gluten free flour mix that you can sub in cup-for-cup when a recipe calls for AP flour. It is based on this recipe but changed for ease of creation.

Here’s the recipe:

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flour

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill white rice flour

1 16-oz box of mochiko (sweet rice flour; available only at Asian grocery stores or online. We subbed potato starch in our first batch because we couldn’t find an Asian grocery in Marietta, GA)

1 15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)

2 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions: Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Stir again when using.

A word about xanthan gum. Some gluten free people are still sensitive to gums, and they can actually be eliminated from this recipe. I choose to keep it in there because A) it seems it make the flour perform a wee bit better, and B) it’s not an issue for me. Xanthan gum is a bit pricey, but I got it on sale for 25% of the regular price, so it was a no-brainer.

To date, this has worked well in chocolate chip cookies, pancakes, scones, and biscuits. Leave a comment below and tell me how it worked for you!

Update, 11/1/14: Made batch #2 with ingredients all purchased at a local Asian grocery and made over five pounds of mix for $8.77. Still more than regular flour, but way less than other mixes!

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8 Ways To Not Kill Your Teenager When S/He Is Awful

My generally awesome kid has been HORRIFIC for the past several days in a row when I pick her up from school. And then she gets all, "Stop yelling at me!" and I'm like, "Oh, this isn't yelling...THIS IS YELLING," and so on. Super mature.

So back away from the switch and take some advice. It's what I say to myself in both my clearest and drunkest moments. Ready for some tough love?

1. Take a breath. Take another one. If you have not yet hyperventilated and it is five o'clock somewhere, take a drink. I prefer Angel's Envy, Woodford Reserve, and the Killer Bee at Golden West. Only have one, but make it a stiff one. Then drink a big glass of water and go to bed. You're old and you need your rest if you are complaining about kids these days.

2. Remember that one or both of your parents (depending on who is still alive) is TOTALLY gloating right now. So suck it up and try to see it from your teenager's side. You were once that jackass with the eye rolling and the huffy noise making. If you get totally pissed then you are Just. Like. Your. Parents. Think about your kid: what is his/her major damage? Does it really have anything to do with you? If not, let it go.

(you're welcome)

3. If you are a single parent, get a fucking life. I say this as a single, broke-ass parent in a new city with some friends who like me but all have their own lives to deal with and don't want me moping on their couch all the time. If your teenager is pissy-making, go do something. They are old enough to watch themselves. Quit bitching about how awful they are and go out and find something for yourself. If you have littles, too, make the awful teenager babysit. They need to learn some fucking responsibility anyway.

4. Go for a walk. Especially if you are a single parent. A lot of hot people have dogs and can be found after work perambulating, so there's that, but since you are a single parent, chances are your life has revolved around your sweet dumpling thus far and you've put on a few. Get over it. Go out in nature. It's good for you. Gives you some perspective. Plus hot single parents hike so you can multi-task on the trail. So do serial killers and muggers, so take your dog or don't go out after dark.

5. Sit them down when things cool off a bit and tell them why you're bothered by their very existence on the planet. Maybe not that. But at least why you are aggravated. And use short sentences because kids these days have the attention span of a fruit fly with progeria. Use "I" statements, like, "I am very hurt when you take every single thing I do for you for granted and treat me like a servant." Or something better. Make it personal.

6. Realize that your child is very, very dumb right now. LITERALLY. Like, they can't EVEN. See what I did there? Your average teenager can translate that ridiculous sequence of words into something meaningful but can't do the same with a simple sentence like, "Where the hell is your phone?" or "Don't leave your shoes in the middle of the floor." It is physiologically impossible for your teenager to make good decisions, like respecting their elders and not making us say the same thing eleventy million times.

7. Say yes. Huh? Did I just say that? YES. Believe it or not, it is hard as hell to be a teenager in 2014. Teenagers now may not have a draft or technically be dealing with a  world war, but they have school shootings, utterly broken financial and political systems, and no hope for a job should they decide to go to college after their sub-par public education. They will probably not be able to own a home, and they are experiencing a caste system of lower and upper class as the middle gets slowly squeezed ever downward. And yet they are expected to cheerfully and hopefully go about the business of life and never fight back? How's that working out? Take one day, and god help you if you tell your kid which one it is, and say yes to everything they ask.

Then freaking pray they don't ask for something big, but if they do, GO ALL IN. You said you would.

8. On the opposite side of things, give those kids some damn chores. Stop cleaning their room, doing their laundry, and generally coddling those brats. My kid has friends who, at 14, still have no responsibility in their house - no dishes, dog walking, or kitty litter scooping. Not only are making yourself bitter by doing everything for them and then misguidedly expecting the ungrateful wretch to notice (see #6) and then appreciate it (see #5), you are also creating monsters for their future significant other and society in general. On top of that, you are raising their expectations of what real life is like to unreasonable levels. And that hurts everyone.

So there you have it. Feel better? If not, try reading this list out loud to your awful teenager and see what they think. I did, and the expression on my kid's face fixed me right up. In the end, though, she and I both recognize that parenting and teenagering is a delicate dance of back-the-fuck-off and please-don't-leave-me-ever, on both sides. The sooner you accept that reality, the better.

Now go fix yourself a drink while you work the other steps.

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