Can't Help It.

Rosemary Rhubarb Cake, take 2:
Soooo... this is a potential recipe based on a very good version of this cake that I made today. It's based on the Joy of Cooking applesauce cake recipe. I dunno though... it was good cake but the flavors weren't as potent as I'd like. Anyways:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (or 190 degrees C)

8-10 Stalks of rhubarb (I think, it should cook down to about 1.5 - 2 cups of goo) cut into 3/4 inch chunks
1/3 cup sugar

Put the sugar and the rhubarb into a saucepan. Leave it alone for 10 minutes so that the sugar can pull some of the juice out of the rhubarb, then cook on low low heat until most of the rhubarb breaks down but there are still chunks. Taste and adjust sugar. It should still be a bit tart because the batter has sugar in it too.

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp backing soda
1/2 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.

3/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, softened

Cream together. My sister doesn't have an electric mixer so I let the butter get really really soft and cream it with a fork.
Then beat in:

1 egg
2 tsp (or 1 tbsp, I dunno, this is where I am differeing from what I previously did) fresh rosemary chopped SUPER fine, almost a powder.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter and fold in with a spatula. Then add 1/2 of the rhubarb, followed by another 1/3 of the flour mixture, and then the rest of the rhubabrb mixture and finally the last of the flour.

Scoop into buttered bread pans and cook for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
It's nice with heavy cream that has been agitated (I made that up, it means cream that has been beaten a little with a fork so it has larger, loose bubbles but doesn't hold it's shape so that it's lighter than straight cream but not whipped. There's probably a real name, but I don't care).

Otherwise uninteresting day. S invited me to a party but they are holding it at the P. and I am not sure I want to go back to work for the second time today.

Face Meets Pavement

Sooooo.. I am a cripple. Or, as my brother-in-law and his wife like to point out when I am beating them at cards, a gimp (as in "whatever, gimppedy mc-gimp-gimp!"). The above picture is the result of a nasty bike accident. My co-worker (now friend, you can't do what she did for me and not come out of it my friend) and I hung out monday night. Her boyfriend was out of town and so to keep herself from feeling too lonely she invited me over and cooked me dinner. We had a great time and then went to a pub called "the flying pig" or something like that. Good pub with good beer, but that makes me feel manly because women in England do not drink beer, but I am not a wine person and I refuse to drink shandys (eew) and so I drink beer and feel defensive (on the other side, I like telling macho men that soccer in the USA is predominantly a girl's sport, it makes me snicker). Biking back from the pub we stopped at a red light. Actually, S. (my co-worker) stopped and I hit the recently re-tuned hair-trigger front wheel brake instead of the back wheel brake, had a brief physics lesson (Newtons first and third laws, and transference of momentum) and a cultural experience (in England front brakes are on the right side of the handlebars, unlike the USA where the right side has the back brake) thought "shit! wrong brake!" and hit the pavement.
It's true, all of that, and I would tell you if I was embellishing for the sake of my story.
S. helped me up and the woman in the car at the light ahead of us stopped and was very kind and asked if I was ok. I immediately told her that I was fine and that she was kind for asking and no, I didn't need any help. I am pretty sure that if I had been bleeding to death with all kinds of bones sticking out of my arms I would have still told her not to worry about lil' ol' me. I am sometimes too polite (ie: the time I ate an entire bowl of Crisco mixed with frozen blueberries and sugar, sugar and blueberries do NOT dissolve in Crisco by the way, because my nice Athabaskan hosts had made my group "Eskimo ice cream" and I didn't want them to think that I wasn't appreciative of their dish). S. looked at my chin and said "you're going to need some stitches." We walked the last 2 blocks back to her place and she loaded me into her car and took me to the A&E ("Accidents and Emergencies" = the Emergency Room). A&Es are EXACTLY like ERs. Same linoleum floor, same low ceiling, same flourescent lighting, same wait to see an actual doctor. We got there at 11:30 and it was 3 am before I saw a doctor. We were sitting across from an array of pamphlets called things like "Cervical Cancer" and "Testicular Cancer" and "Keep Warm, Keep Well" (which sounds like it would be funny, DUH you should keep warm! but it's for elderly pensioners who can't afford to heat their houses. Decidedly not funny). The manly cancer pamphlet was decorated with soccer balls and the woman-cancer pamphlet had pictures of flowers. Because, clearly, cancer is fun! Like playing soccer among the daisies.
I had an x-ray (which my doctor let me look at, it was really really clear and I could see my fracture once she had pointed it out) which showed said fracture of my radius at the elbow joint. They wrapped it in gauze ang gave me a sling. Then the nurse glued the cut on my chin closed and sent me home. I don't have a cast or a splint because the fracture will heal on its own and elbows, apparently, need to be constantly moved otherwise they stiffen and become useless.
Besides the fracture and the chin I have some nice roadburn on one hand and 6 bruises more than an inch in width and looking like I decided to color myself in with purple sharpie.
Did I mention that S. not only took me to the hospital, stayed with me until they let me out at 4 am, drove me home, and but she brought me back my bike the next day? If I could write poetry or music or something, I would dedicate an ode to S. As I can do neither of those things, I bought her cakes and invited her to dinner. She is my most favoritest person in the entire goddamn world right now (KT agrees with me wholeheartedly. Especially since she offered to babysit Hannah).
I got to tell my story to all the regulars at work (who all told me their falling-off-the-bike stories), and someone noticed my chin and my new way of gingerly pulling pints and asked me, knowingly, if I had fallen off of my bike recently.
There was also a new guy at work, C. C's been a barman for 3 years and is not very good at it. He makes drinks well and can do the banter with customers but never picked up any plates. He's not very interesting or easy to talk to, I am pretty sure that we are not going to be friends. Too bad.

Dreaming of a white... Easter?

If April showers bring May flowers, what do March blizzards bring?
Man, I am so clever.
It snowed for Easter, and here are the pictures:


Pheasant tracks.

400 year old canal.

Sad daffodils


Approaching the city centre (British city centre, British spelling).

Vandalized bike, in the snow!

Little St. Mary's graveyard.

Trinity College

More Trinity

Punts on the River Cam, in the snow!


There were also hundreds of professional photographers out taking pictures with their huge, fancy cameras to sell to people to use in brochures and postcards and calendars.

Teaser:
Find out next time how a millisecond physics lesson made Emily unable to type with both hands!

Kettle's Yard and Diablo Cody

It snowed on Easter Sunday! I got excited and ran out of the house to take pictures without a house key. Oh well, caught up with KT and Will and Hannah before I got too cold. Pictures coming soon...

Work is going well, and my co-worker, S., and I are going to go see another co-worker of ours in a production of "A chorus line" which is nice because I like her and because I like going out, though I am not a big fan of musicals. Should be fun anyways.

Went and saw Kettle's Yard, which is this guy's house that has been turned into a museum. This dude, Jim Ede, was a curator for the Tate Gallery (a museum in London) and so he has great modern paintings and just a great house and they don't treat it like a museum, you have to ring a bell to be let in and they encourage you to do things like sit in the furniture and read his books. He did have a great house. Not fancy but comfortable and really really well designed and with great paintings. I had never heard of the painter Alfred Wallace before but I am now a definite fan.
There is also a gallery space at Kettle's Yard and they were showing some experimental animation and I saw it. It was nice, good rainy day afternoon (and it was a rainy day).

Then I went and spent too much money on that book that Diablo Cody wrote (she also wrote the screenplay for "Juno"). I thought that it would be cheaper (because I bought it second hand), but then I got to the till and found out that it was twice what I had thought. I bought it anyway because I am a coward.

opinion of the book: eh. Interesting, but ultimately, eh.

Ummmm.... that's really all the news from this week.

A Tale of Two Converse

For Easter my sister bought me a pair of white, Converse low-tops and a box of jelly bellies. Your inner monologue-voice is probably remarking something along the lines of "shoes? for easter? why not." But if you allow me to escort you back a few weeks, you will realize that white Converse low-tops are a brilliant gift.

Two and a half weeks ago I discovered that I was missing a shoe. A white, Converse low-top (keep reading! I promise that this blog will be more interesting than a brief story about replacing a pair of shoes). I wasn't terribly worried, as I lose and then find things all the time. I am not very organized. The Lost Shoe never came to light and I mourned it as a lost friend, because it had come to me via two friends of mine. My junior year I lived with two girls, J. and M. (and C. as well, but only for a quarter and while I like her lots she isn't necessary to this story). M.'s mother had bought the shoes for her because she needed white shoes for Jew Camp (I don't remember why). She then decided that she couldn't pull them off and gave them to J. J. wore them for a while and then decided that she didn't want them anymore and gave them to me. They were already broken in and a perfect shade of dirty white and had some hearts and stars that M. had drawn on them when she was a teenager. Plus, they were free! I didn't wear the shoes that often for the next few years, then I grew to love them and it was a stable, supportive relationship that was based on friendship that grew into love. They comforted and supported my feet (and were free!) and I made them look really cool by wearing high-end fashion. Ok, not really. Most of my jeans are frayed somewhere or have holes, but that's what you wear with beat up Chuck Taylors. Anyways, they were never found. KT and I think that they were thrown into the pile of shoes that lives in between an armchair and a stack of newspapers intended for the recycling, and was accidentaly gathered up and tossed into the bin. Or martians stole it. One or the other.
Which is why a complete pair of white, Converse low-tops were a great gift.

Your inner monologue-voice is probably saying to you right now "that's nice Em, too bad about your shoe, but why should I care?" Because that is the SECOND converse low-top that I have lost in Europe.

I was in France seven years ago for a five week language trip. We stopped at the Gorges du Tarne to regroup after our homestays. We went spelunking (cave exploring) in two groups. I was in the first group and the next group went the day after mine did. The cave was cold and wet and we came out caked in red clay. They had outfitted us with jumpsuits and helmets (with flames at the front, not battery operated flashlights, which was a mistake because someone accidently burned the helper-guide as he helped her up an incline.) So no ones clothes suffered, just our shoes. So, I lent my maroon converse to a girl in the second group because she didn't want to get her white shoes mucky. After they went spelunking we met them and went canoing down a river (that had mild rapids! wheee!). She took the shoes off and was rinsing them in the water when her boat tipped over and she lost hold of one. So, there's a maroon Converse shoe swirling around the waterways of France that once belonged to me.

I just had an image of myself traveling across Europe and liberally sprinkling it with converse low-tops.

Housewifery!

Going to play with Nick in London tomorrow! Hurrah! No babysitting, the only beers I am going to encounter are going to be my own, and I get to hang out in a big city, with Nick! Hurrah for Nick! AND because I haven't been spending any money, I am going to take the train! I love the train! I am going to make myself a train mix to listen to, while riding the train! The train!

Umm, nothing exciting today. Baby-sat, made mediocre soup (cooked it for too long and the beans disintegrated), generally was a housewife all day.

Maybe something liiiiiiiike..

This!:



But actually, most likely more along the hair falling out of a ponytail, rice cereal all over the shirt, rings under the eyes type of housewife. Which is good too.

Man Mumbles Muzzily

Yesterday a regular showed up during the day, instead of in the evening when his friends are there. We will call him Pint of Carling (PoC) because that is what he drinks and he makes a big deal of my knowing his drink, which I know despite his being neither creative nor charming and the fact that he drinks a really run of the mill drink (pint of lager? everyone drinks pints of lager! puh-leeze) (the secret to getting a bartender to remember you/your drink is 1.) to order something simple and memorable, maybe in a different glass or with an exact number of ice cubes, like Simon who orders a double vodka in a coke glass, filled to the top with ice and topped off with soda. easy peasy so the bartender won't mind but different and 2.) going to the bar A LOT and ALWAYS ordering the same unique beverage). As his friends weren't around to talk to him, he talked to me. Actually, he talked at me. I can't understand his thick, regional, British accent and he had drunk quite a few pints by the time he ambled off. Also, from what I COULD extract from his muzzy speeches he wasn't talking about anything interesting (the fact the he's a builder (=construction worker) and that the television is going digital and about tv shows that I had never heard of, because I do not have access to tv here). I said "yeah" a lot and gave him a lot of tight-lipped, un-encouraging (not discouraging, un-encouraging. that spelling was on purpose) smiles. The conversation went something like this:

Our Hero: (perkily) same again?
Pint of Carling: yeah. muzzlemuzzlemuzzledronebuzzz...where do you go, when you go out?
OH: oh, I don't go out that often, but I like the Eagle.
PoC: wizzlewazzlebuzzdronewhumpfwhumpf... what's you're drink?
OH: beer usually, but it depends.
PoC: Oh, whooshhibblehobblespinklydoinkeydoinkhoohahsnapcracklepop
OH: yeah?
PoC: You know Brut bottles, the aftershave, you know Brut? In the army whizzmumblemumbleqwertyrowbibblebabble...
OH: Sure (nods heads sagely, has a faint idea that he is talking about aftershave)
PoC: The label after that one (gestures towards a bottle of Smirnoff over OH's right shoulder, it has a red label) it's black. Over there they call it afterdark (I don't really remember) because it's over 100% and they can't classify it.
OH: Like Everclear?
PoC: Those girls and their cokes out there (note: there was no one else in the pub at this point)... buzzbuzzsoxrockspoxhoobywhatyinthespimspamtincanblarblarblar... with bottles of vodka in their purses, you know what I mean (and leers at OH as if he's said something naughty, which sends the alarm bells clanging in OH's head and she wonders if he's hitting on her and that she'll have to find a way of politely putting him off without irritating him and the other regulars, then realizes that he's talking about people going to a pub and sneaking booze in so they won't have to pay for it, and the emergency subsides)

OH smiles and mumbles something about having to put glasses away and she escapes for a few minutes (but he lingers, and she has to talk again, though she gives up all hope of understanding him at this point because he is about 7 pints under and could be speaking in tongues for all she knows. that's enough third person for a while).

On a better note, I had a nice converstation later that day with another regular (whom I could understand) about immigrants in schools and the language problems and gang problems that come with many people from other cultures converging in one place (do you converge on or do you converge in? amend the previous sentence in your head if you know the correct form/care). It takes all kinds to keep a pub afloat.

I looked at my phone today to check the time (I don't often look at my phone, which is why I can start this story with that sentence) and noticed that I had a text message. I thought to myself: "hurrah! I love getting text messages!" and eagerly opened it up (no pedantry, please. I realize that I did not physically open my phone to get to the message).
It was from a temp agency that I half signed up with (did the internet sign-up and never got around to going in for the rest of my registration because I got a job that I actually wanted). The agency places people temporarily as secretaries and data-entry people and telephone answerers etc. BUT! to me, lucky little me, they sent a message asking me to call them because they need a cleaner on Mondays.
A CLEANER?!?
I decline to call them back.