“chocolate cake”

“coconut cakes”

“sesame cookies”

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for apartmenttherapy.com – The contests are totally voyeuristic — I love looking inside people’s apartments
  
• B is for boston.craigslist.org – Freaks and weirdos. And ugly couches
  
• C is for crateandbarrel.com – Typically visited right after apartment therapy
  
• D is for dailykos.com – Second place: defective yeti
  
• E is for eonline.com – Fashion Police!
  
• F is for forums.televisionwithoutpity.com – Spoilers
  
• G is for google.com – Duh
  
• H is for harpers.org – For Harper’s Index.
  
• I is for iamtonyang.com – Lovely pictures and commentary fromTony’s trip to Southeast Asia
  
• J is for jasminesola.com – J sucks. I swear, I only visited this site once!
  
• K is for knitty.com – The internet was invented for knitters
  
• L is for livejournal.com/users/missmp – Ooh, Miss Moneypenny, you’re lucky you came in under L and not M
  
• M is for my.ebay.com – eBay and television — technology’s greatest gifts
  
• N is for nytimes.com – Non-frivolous, but still a time-waster
  
• O is for orangette.blogspot.com – Taught me how to make dutch babies. Mmm… babies
  
• P is for https://www.paypal.com – See letter E
  
• Q is for query.nytimes.com – NYT search
  
• R is for rottentomatoes.com – XXX: State of the Union is 17% fresh? Doesn’t that seem a little high?
  
• S is for shoeblogs.com – Swans, she loves the shoes
  
• T is for televisionwithoutpity.com – Zillions of other people who love/hate television as much as I do
  
• U is for universalhub.com – What’s happening in the neighborhood
  
• V is for vnh.org/FSManual/01/07RapidDecompress.html – Can you really get sucked out of a small hole in an airplane?
  
• W is for weather.com – Rarely accurate and horribly organized.
  
• nothing
  
• no Ys either
  
• Z is for zappos.com – See letter S

1. Torrential rain

2. Flip-flopped fratty kids’ toes pink, not blue

3. Me tripping over the Falafel Palace’s outdoor table and chairs

To commemorate Martha Stewart’s release from minimum security prison, this weekend I will don an electronic anklet and remain confined to the perimeter of my estate, um, apartment. During my self-imposed house arrest I will pass the time arranging flowers artfully around the main house (apartment), crafting fresh pasta sauce from the shipment of plum tomatoes just delivered from Florida, baking individual fruit crisps, and not lying to federal investigators.

Dumb laundry.

Look! Snow! And the obligatory weblog photos of the Blizzard of 2005!

Here’s peeler bravely marching into battle against the snowdrifts:

I hope there’s nothing important, like a car, under this pile. Only spring will tell:

The best thing about working for a university: snow days. I tackled our half of the sidewalk Monday morning:

The neighbors, inspired by my awesome snow removal skills (or by the realization the snow can’t be that bad if a girl can clear the sidewalk in 10 minutes), shoveled the other half of the sidewalk later in the afternoon.

*Cooking from scratch update*

I made mayonnaise.

This weekend I also made an apple cake, deviled eggs, cream of broccoli soup (avec homemade stock), and cheese puffs. Sweet cabin fever.

“Whew, cold enough for ya?” Yes, it is cold enough for me, please stop asking.

I finally finished Mini Swans’ X-mas presents. The mittens and hat she got to take on the plane with her, but the scarf had to be mailed from frigid Cambridge to  ”freezing”* Santa Cruz.

*low 40s at night

The yarn is called tagliatelle, a merino wool tape. Tough to wind, but good tension and pretty easy to work with.  

Enlarged to show texture:

The cold weather compells me to put something on the stove or in the oven. Not only that, but I become fanatic about making food “from scratch.” For example, I’ve never bothered to make my own vegetable stock, but I happened to have all the ingredients hanging around, so I did.

I took the advice of Mark Bittman and roasted the vegetables first. Here they are waiting for their turn in the oven:

I tossed the roasted vegetables in a big pot with water, sherry, parsley stems, and the leftover carrot and celery greens (the veggies in the box arrive with all their parts), and let the pot simmer on the stove for about a half hour. After straining the stock, I filled two empty pomegranate juice bottles (saved because of their neat shape), and two ice cube trays.

By this time I was really hungry so I made some puttenesca sauce with some fresh stock, a can of italian tuna (in olive oil – I will never eat water-packed tuna again – hooray! another thing to be snobby about), capers, olives, canned tomatoes, parsley, and garlic.

Up next: mayonnaise, from scratch

One of my many New Year’s resolutions is to post pictures within a reasonable time of taking them. I have nice picture sets of the corn maze trip in early October, and of pre-Thanksgiving, um, before Thanksgiving, that I just didn’t post. Because I am lazy. If 2004 was the year of the sloth then 2005 will be the year of… what’s a step up from sloth?… the house cat.

Turns out, I didn’t take very many pictures in the past few weeks.

But I can give you The Three Bs of Xmas:

Beets

“beet salad”

Baklava*

“clove warning”

Bush, ahem, tree

“Xmas tree”

*ok, this picture was taken at pre-Thanksgiving, but it looks so Xmas-y.