What Do I Know?

More Bad News for England's Cows

On the very day that the EU lifted the ban on British meat exports, another farm in Surrey has tested positive for foot and mouth. This time it's in Egham, near Windsor. Part of the royal grounds at Windsor Great Park are included in the exclusion zone that's been set up around the farm.

Windsor's only a few miles from here.

The Surrey outbreaks earlier in the summer was traced to a government laboratory near where the outbreaks occurred. Hundreds of cows were killed, and farmers were deprived of income for several weeks.

I'm desperately hoping this disease doesn't spread to Buckinghamshire. I don't think I could stand having my cows* culled—what a nightmare that would be. I'm also worried about the hiking season that's just starting up. Even if they don't close the footpaths, do I want to risk bringing anything back on my shoes? We don't hike in Surrey, but Windsor is awfully close to some of our hikes.

The cows are out there now, grazing contentedly, with no idea what's going on in the next county.

*For those of you just joining us, I don't own cows, but I do live next to a farm, where I have befriended the cows. I bring them apples, and promise not to eat their offspring, and they pose for my camera.

Wednesday Food Blogging: Black Bean and Rice Cakes with Chipotle Remoulade and Roasted Corn Salsa

Improvisation and compromise occasionally produce lovely results.

For a recipe with such a long name, Black Bean and Rice Cakes with Chipotle Remoulade and Roasted Corn Salsa (BBRCCRRCS) takes very little time to prepare, especially if you already have the remoulade made (see last week’s recipe). The inspiration came from a menu* I found online, but of course no recipe was included. So I improvised, and improvised some more.

The black bean and rice cakes were a little confounding. They don't hold together unless at least a portion is ground up in a food processor. Now, mushy black beans are not attractive. (Think Friskies, without the fishy smell.) Fortunately, I'm not afraid to compromise: half mushed, half whole, for a visually appealing cake that sort of comes together. (As most compromises do, with signs of cracks if stressed too much.)

With that sorted, something corny would be good on top, I decided, mainly because I’d been able to score some fresh corn at my local grocer. (Some of you may remember me complaining about how dear corn is here. With corn in season, I only paid a pound for two shucked ears, around $2.05.) (I have no idea why corn is sold shucked and wrapped in plastic on styrofoam trays, when it comes in a perfectly good package called a husk.)

Some cilantro (coriander) would have been nice in the salsa, but I didn’t have any. When you’re improvising, you don’t stop to mourn what you don’t have.

Next time, sadly, that will probably be fresh corn. Ah well. Improvisation never ends.

*Actually, that dish sounds completely different. I improvised the cilantro remoulade and spinach layer right out of it. Guess I'll try that next time!

"A Few Dangerous Nuts": A 9/11 Rant

On a day when I feel the need to hunker down, hide from the bees (wasps, actually) who continue to threaten my way of life (or at least the part that occurs in my closet and bathroom), I found this quote in GQ interesting:

Q: So you think we are getting too hunkered down and scared?
Yes! We are taking too much counsel of our fears.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a terrorist threat. There is a threat. And we should send in military forces when we have a target to deal with. We should also secure our airports, if that makes us safer. But let’s welcome every foreign student we can get our hands on. Let’s make sure that foreigners come to the Mayo Clinic here, and not the Mayo facility in Dubai or somewhere else. Let’s make sure people come to Disney World and not throw them up against the wall in Orlando simply because they have a Muslim name. Let’s also remember that this country was created by immigrants and thrives as a result of immigration, and we need a sound immigration policy.

Let’s show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That’s why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It’s so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we’re worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.

You can drive up the road from here and come to a spot where there is a megachurch over here, a little Episcopal church over there, a Catholic church around the corner that’s almost cathedral-size, and between them is a huge Hindu temple. There are no police needed to guard any of this. There are not many places in the world where you would see that. Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn’t do it to ourselves, and we shouldn’t use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.

I never thought I'd take advice from Colin Powell, but that seems to make sense to me. I'm sending in the military forces (the exterminator) and securing my attic. But no longer will I take too much counsel of my fears. I will continue to brush my teeth, use the toilet, and shower, standing up for what I believe in, namely, hygiene.

The forces of evil will see that we've a friendly mixed-species household. A few dangerous nuts (for instance, that wasp crawling in my hair while I used the toilet) will not deter me from offering freedom to all spiders and such who want to settle here, peacefully.

I will offer not only habeas corpus but also lawyers to those who repent of their evil stinging ways; the rest will be summarily executed. And I will not vote for anyone who tries to scare me, including the beekeeper, with his terror-industrial complex.

Not sure this is what Colin had in mind.

(Note: If you are a lawyer and would like to represent these terrorist bees before I offer them the option of death or forced deportment, please contact me so I can put you in touch with their queen.)

(Another note: The exterminator is known as "Crusader Pest Control". You can't make this stuff up!)

Time Traveling Again

I've spent the day in Lecture Room 2 at Christ Church in Oxford, listening to a bunch of archaeologists go on and on about the archeology of the Thames Valley.

And I loved every minute.

Ask me anything about the navigability of the Upper Thames during the Saxon period. The answer will involve herrings.

While I was taking a lunch break at Oxford Castle I ran into King Stephen:

I think he was the real thing. The piper accompanying him was missing several teeth. Must have been all that herring.

Friday Exotic Cow Blogging

Horns? What horns?

This Ankole cow at Longleat was smiling as we passed in our car. They're very striking looking, but I was a little nervous of those horns.

A few days later, we were watching The Last King of Scotland. I recognized the same breed of cow, in one of the early scenes. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember the noisy cow. One of many disturbing scenes in that film.

Pretty teeth she has, though. Wonder if she uses my dentist?

Proof That There Is Too Much Stuff on the Internet

There's this Google game, where you search for "Your first name looks like" and see what happens. The problem is, everyone's done it, posted it, and now you get results of everyone else's post, especially if you have the world's most popular name, which is Kathy.

But here's what I found anyway, plus my comments on the accuracy of the observation:

Kathy looks like a dowdy, ashen housefrau who could use some color on her cheeks. (True. Most people think it's because I'm a pale, sickly vegan though.)

Kathy looks like a good candidate for the 4th Annual Sonja Award. (No, but I'd be a great candidate for the 4th Annual Kathy Award.)

Kathy looks like an old british nanny. (Have you seen British nannies these days? I wish!)

Kathy looks like the leader of the Chozo from Metroid Prime. (I have not yet named my alternate universe, but that sounds good to me.)

Kathy looks like a drunk and so does her husband. (Was that you at my window last night?!)

Kathy looks like a rich suburban transvestite, happily living out her golden years wearing tacky clothing and riding around on *****-shaped floats. (Transvestites have way more fun than I do. That must have been another Kathy.)

And little Kathy looks like believable Dixie offspring. (Well, yeah, I am. Born and raised in Louisiana.)

Kathy looks like a housewife who has grown tired of taking care of 3 kids and is out partying in this photo! (It was 2 kids, but yes, I did go partying the other day.)

Kathy looks like she was manufactured in a different country than her step-father. (Nope, unless Yoknapatawpha County counts.)

Kathy looks like she's trying to hold back tears. (Yes, that was me at Heathrow the other day.)

Damn, Kathy looks like a pissed off highschool English teacher. (I told you about the proper use of it's!)

Kathy looks like a bowl of saran wrap that has been pulled too tight from all the botox. (Close. Wax paper.)

The Kathy looks like a Burger-built hull-and will probably stand up to the ice if they saw it loose a couple of times over the winter to keep the ice from twisting the hull. (No, but I had a nightmare about this once.)

That last one includes a pretty shot of a boat, stuck in ice.

So I guess that was worth 10 minutes.

Someone needs to close down the internet so I can get some real work done.

(For those of you wondering, this is what I really look like.)

Some Stuff

Some stuff I was reading yesterday before a bee stung my ring finger and made my hand hurt really bad:

Michael Marshall tells us where summer's gone:

As you may have heard, England lost this year's summer in a late-night game of poker. Got over-excited by a pair of kings and lost out to Paraguay, who was holding a straight flush the whole time. Paraguay didn't really need the extra summer and so part-exchanged it for some wrought iron yard furniture, which is admittedly pretty classy but means the denizens of London have spent several months staring out at relentless drizzle.

Russian mayor bans "I don't know" and all forms thereof, including, presumably, What Do I Know?:

The mayor of a Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as "I don't know" and "I can't." Or look for another job.

Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year-old mayor of Megion, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

I would like to ban bees. Especially in the shower.

Wednesday Food Blogging: Quinoa Stuffed Peppers with Chipotle Remoulade

Quinoa Stuffed Pepper, floating in a sea of Chipotle Remoulade

On Sunday afternoon we took a long hike and on the way home my thoughts naturally turned to my next meal. I envisioned the sparse contents of my vegetable bins: a bag of bell peppers, a couple of sweet onions, and a small head of broccoli.

By the time we arrived home, I’d come up with the rude outlines of a recipe for stuffed peppers, somehow involving quinoa and onions.

Lately I’ve been wanting more quinoa in my life. If you haven’t eaten quinoa before, you really should try it. It’s a high-protein grain from South America, with a slightly chewy texture. It has a taste similar to brown rice, but cooks as fast as white rice.

The real star of this show, however, was the Chipotle Remoulade. I first got the idea from an online menu (I like to peruse veggie restaurant menus to get ideas, even if I’ll never visit them.) Instead of mayo, or even vegan mayo, I used silken tofu, a very nice substitute. Beware the canned chipotle pepper, though: it can be very hot! Three were enough for my rather tolerant tastebuds; for most heat-averse people that may be too many.

The end result was delicious, one of those texture-flavour combinations I particularly love. (For a side dish, I served corn, which went well with this theme.) And sometime in the middle of the night my husband, hearing the siren call of stuffed peppers, got up and ate the two remaining peppers. I think he liked it too.

Fortunately, there was remoulade left over for another meal. Check back next week to see what I did with that.

My Own Personal Food News

All summer I'd been wondering, with a sort of morbid curiosity, how my food purchasing and consumption would change when Daughter Number Two left home. I figured it would be almost as expensive and time consuming to make meals for two as it had been for three. I even wondered if it would be worth the effort—are readi-meals and soup packets in our future?

It's been ten days now, and as I've discovered, my food procurement has changed drastically, but for the better.

There's a locally owned grocery store in town, about a fifteen minute walk away. I used to go rarely; they don't carry a lot of the vegan and vegetarian products I use—no tofu, for example, so it was more convenient to drive to the Super Tesco, where I could visit the health food store that's inside the complex at the same time I stocked up on olive oil and cereal.

Now that's changed. I haven't been to a supermarket since DNT left home. Instead, I've walked several times to the local grocery store, or to the even smaller shop nearby for bread and a newspaper. (This one is on my daily walking route; I can tie the dog outside while I pick up a few things.)

But since I can only buy what I can carry home in my canvas shopping bag, I don't make as many impulse purchases. I buy produce I've got a plan for; no buying aubergines on spec. This means I end up tossing fewer veggies in the rubbish bin when I discover there just aren't enough meals in a week to cook everything I've bought. Plus, since there are many retired people in this town, this grocer carries small portions of broccoli, for instance. Just the right amount for my reduced-size family.

This gives a new spin on buying local. I spend zero emissions walking to the store (or, once a month, to the farmers market that comes to town) and more produce ends up being used. I may end up getting one of those shopping bags-on-wheels people around here use, which means I could get one of those little watermelons they sell, or a large jar of olive oil.

Ironically, my town has been embroiled in controversy for years regarding Tesco's plans to build a new store here. Against public opinion, approval for a 20,000 square foot store was granted, but then the tunnel over the train tracks collapsed a couple of years ago. Recently Tesco received approval for a new plan, for a larger store using a different tunnel method. (The same company that built the Chunnel is building this one.) The locals hate the thought of Tesco coming here, but I'm actually in favor of it—it will allow me to buy much more of my purchases locally, including the vegetarian products Fisher's doesn't stock, and Tesco sells much more organic and local produce.

But that's a long way off. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying procuring less food, with less emissions (from my car, silly!) than ever before.

Rhodie Trip

Time traveling, back to May

On Sunday we took a hike around Burnham Beeches, a Corporation of London-owned preserve not far from here. (If you know what the Corporation of London is, you get 10 points!)

Anyway, it felt like a trip back in time, seeing these rhodies blooming. The calendar says September, but the rhododendrons say spring.

On the way back I let the dog drive for a bit:

"Look Ma, no paws!"

Fox News Monday

Zoomed and cropped, but unmistakably a fox.

There's been a fox visiting our back garden on a regular basis these last few weeks. Normally he'd come Sunday morning, prompting me to try to get a shot of him and label the post "Fox News Sunday," but of course the one time I had my camera and got a good shot he came on Monday.

Labor Day is as good as Sunday, if you're a fox, I guess. Today he came twice, nosing around under the peanut feeder, ignoring the football in the grass. He might be a she, of course—I didn't get close enough to find out.

The dog was inside, panting to get out and play with him/her. The fox ignored her, glancing back toward the door occasionally to make sure she was safely inside. With hungry kits to feed, she or he was willing to take a chance.

That's the life of a fox, I guess. Searching for food, posing for photos, riling up the locals. No news here.

Diana and Mass Mourning, Revisited

Yesterday was unofficially Diana Day here in the UK, the tenth anniversary of her death. At the time, I remember being caught up in the pathos of the 24-hour coverage in the States. I can't imagine what it must have been like here, where Diana Watching was a profession and obsession for many.

The day Diana died has become one of those hallmarks of memory.

August, 1997. We lived in Madison Wisconsin. My husband called late at night, telling me she'd died. How tragic, I thought. The next day we bought a new dishwasher, and Radiohead's OK Computer. Now every time I hear it I think of Princess Diana—it doesn't help that the lyrics are car-crash obsessed. When it emerged that she was born one day before my husband, I began to imagine her a contemporary in birth if not social order.

Those next few days, as the television screen filled with images of her smiling face, I found myself mopping tears. There was one clip of her returning home from a trip, on a yacht, wearing a red dress. Her two boys ran into her outstretched arms, overjoyed to see their mum.

That was the one that got me, every time.

As I am wont to do, I examined my feelings. It wasn't that I cared that a woman I never knew, 5000 miles away, had died. But she was close to my age, with two children near the ages of mine. Her death became that of Every Woman, gone in the prime of her life. If such a tragedy could strike her, it could also strike any one of us. The death of someone we don't know affects us like this. We don't mourn our loss; we mourn what could happen to any of us frail humans. By recognizing this, periodically, with the help of the 24 hour media, we put our lives in perspective, examine our own mortality.

And before the media, we had novels: Beth's death in Little Women. Melly's in Gone With The Wind. Ophelia, in Hamlet. We love a good tragedy, don't we?

Death at a distance. So much more entertaining than the close-up version, a cynic would observe.

Now, ten years on, the tragedy of Diana's death seems, thankfully, to be melting in the fond recall of history.

A memorial service was held yesterday, in the not-so majestic Wellington Barracks at Buckingham Palace. Mourners again lined up outside, perhaps to pay respects, perhaps to get a glimpse of the monarchy. In an un-royally heartfelt speech Prince Harry brought his own personal, close-up tragedy into focus for the rest of us: "She was, quite simply, the best mother in the world." Then he smiled. "We would say that, wouldn't we?"

Cheeky kid. But I suspect his mum did all right.