The house on sandwich-spread street ...

I seem to have forgotten everything that happened this past week. Thank God I sometimes write this shit down.

How I spent my week, plus bonus photos.



FOOD DIGGITY
jerk seitan: I got this recipe from Georgia, a blogger in LA who has invented two great things: 1) Scenes from her lunch break, which includes the cover of the book she's reading and her shoes; 2) Domestic Tuesdays, where she posts a meal she made the previous week. Although she got this recipe from a vegan roller derby librarian.

Anyway, I've been jerk-sauce-curious since my last trip to the Whistling Bird where I failed to find a way to sneak a keg filled their super-secret jerk sauce out of the restaurant. And I've been seitan curious since some sort of weird encounter at the Whole Foods deli.

This was pretty decent, a mix of jalapeno, garlic, green onion, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, safflower oil, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, although it felt a little over the top dumping that much soy sauce into anything. But it was a nice blend of spice but not ridiculous [well, until I poked myself in the eyeball with a jalapeno finger. Like I always do.] I think I used too much apple cider vinegar, because the whole house smelled like sandwich spread. I'd make this again. And Chuck liked it.

Now even more jerk curious and seitan curious.

I made this with sweet potatoes, too, because I'd never just had sweet potatoes. That needs to change, stat.

READING THE INTERNET
I liked this post by Sandra from Everything and Nothing. It was kind of a kick in the pants to get back to blogging the way I used to enjoy blogging. [Although that would mean, at its worst, with a plastic bottle of peppermint schnapps a few few inches from my mouse.]

She says:
... I've noticed that most of us are pretty "tapped out" on the blog topics lately. Not that any of our lives are boring, but we've hit ruts. ... Remember when you started your blog? We all started because we enjoyed writing, and we liked finding the humor/angst/meaning in our daily minutia. ...


Totally something to think about. It was like trying to get in the mood to work out by watching "Bend it Like Beckham," or watching that Prefontaine biopic. Then, she followed it up with a great story about a haunted apartment.

Also, I love it when Chuck write-writes, which he did this past week, about the song "Dancing in the Dark." [Which firmly planted that song on a loop in my brain for about four days].

BOOKS
Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman: I have a creepy literary couple crush on Waldman Chabon Inc., that started when I found Ayelet Waldman’s old blog, a controversial piece of online real estate where she confessed to all sorts of things that riled up Oprah’s audience. Namely, that she loved Chabon more than she loved her children. We have that in common. I, too, love Chabon more than I love her children. . . granted as soon as Zeke or Rosie or Abe or Sophie craps out a few novels, this is subject to change.

I have no concrete reason for loving this couple. I liked Wonder Boys, Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Kavalier and Clay. And I have liked Waldman’s novels. . . although not as much as I’ve liked the essays on her blog and at Salon.com. She is a sassafras, that one. Smart, loud, oversharing, opinionated, funny, quirky, and contradictory. Together, I have only the image of them that exists in my head. Rooms filled with books, and a Thesaurus tossed like a football between the writers-at-work. Laptops, wine, Sunday newspapers, dinners with gay memoir writers who are so interesting, that they end up vacationing with Waldman Chabon Inc., in Europe.

Full review here.

Jenny and the Jaws of Life: Short Stories by Jincy Willett: I have an unrequited beef with Jincy Willett that dates back to weeks ago when she wrote in the NYT's Book Review that Sarah Dunn's flaming piece of chick lit "Secrets to Happiness" was not, in fact, chick lit. This, of course, led to me researching the reviewer to find ways to extract from her the $23.99 she owes me for lying. Unfortunately, when I can across her own list of novels and short stories, I was surprised to find that Willett's stuff looked like stuff I might want to read.

With her most recent novel "The Writing Class" in that awkward pubescent phase where it is about to morph from hardcover to soft cover, I wasn't able to find it at any of my local bookstores. I did find "Jenny and the Jaws of Life," a short story compilation from the 1980s, re-released in modern times to include a testimonial from David Sedaris on the cover. I was all "Game on, Jincy." [What a great name, by the way.:]

She redeemed herself. Tenfold.

Full review here.

CLEANING OUT MY CELL PHONE PHOTOS

Here I am on the DTA.


Here Chuck sings "Dirty Love" at the Gopher in West Duluth. I never knew his voice could get that low without him being possessed by the devil.


Here I have my first hot dog of the season from Crabby Bill's, home of the hottest hot hot horseradish. The woman in the Captain's hat has 101 jokes about how hot it is, including, but not limited to: "THAT MUCH HORSERADISH!? I'll be watching for the red flames!" Too cute.


This is my friend RichNam taking a self-portrait in front of the old Red Lion sign, which was hanging ceremonially on Chuck's Fannie's fence at the Memorial Day BBQ.


And then here is Chuck, getting his photo taken next to the same sign.