sing a rhyme, citrus time soon will be here

So, it's citrus season, right? Yesterday I drove to Logan to buy some radicchio from Lee's because their produce section is phenomenal. Okay, that may be a little strong. But it's varied like few others unless you're talking about the snobby ones. Their radicchio was not the best, but at least they had some. I'ma roast it like Tipsy said.

Anyway, citrus. One of the other things they had at Lee's yesterday was a display of navel oranges, half boxes of them for $6.99. We ate them for dessert last night, and while I was busy showing off my knowledge of horticulture to the children (which is sort of prodigious, in an ignoramus sort of way), explaining how all navel orange trees everywhere are grafts (or grand-grafts, or great-grand-grafts; I'm not a scientist, I just work here) of the one sport tree that first grew seedless oranges, I learned something TOTALLY FASCINATING. Did you know that the little mini slices in a navel orange are a conjoined twin orange? It's actually a smaller orange formed inside another orange! Biology is the coolest.

Thus, since selective breeding is impossible with the navel orange, every orange you taste is genetically identical to those oranges that grew on the mutant tree in the Brazilian monastery. It's impressive that it's kept up with our growing appetite for sweets, and worrisome, disease-wise. It makes me start fretting about biodiversity and cloned beef ranches--total downer.

Yay oranges!

the two of us need look no more . . . we both found what we've been searching for

Me while hugging John: Mmm. I really like the smell of your new deodorant. Like, really like it . . . (moments pass) . . . is this weird for you, with my nose buried in your pit?

let's eat this for dinner tonight

Remember the cartoon swan I told you about? This is what it looks like:
But that's not why we're here, is it? Instead, let's talk about the latest issue of United Caprine News, which I'll give you a minute to go get off your coffee table. Everybody got their copy? All right. On the third page there is a recipe for Rigatoni with Roasted Pumpkin and Goat Cheese. Here's what I like about it: it has all the flavors of that quintessential winter ravioli dish, but not so dang much work. Who needs work? Not me. The time I spend on cooking is time not spent blissfully cleaning my house, and that's the real tragedy.

We haven't eaten this yet (the pumpkin is cooking right now so I won't have to worry about it later), but here's my prediction:
Me: Slam dunk.
John: This is nice. Maybe too much sage?
Captain America: It's okay. Can I have dessert?
The Hulk: I'm not eating that. Goodnight.
Superman: How many more bites before I can have dessert?
Pinga: (thought, not spoken) It's good, but not as good as scratching the living crap out of my face.
Rigatoni with Roasted Pumpkin and Goat Cheese (adapted from United Caprine News)
Serves: your family, I imagine
Hippie Control Freak Trying to Get Rid of a Pumpkin Roasted Pumpkin:
medium-sized cooking pumpkin, halved and seeded
4 shallots, peeled and quartered lengthwise OR 1 onion, diced
1/4 C fresh sage
3 T (give or take) extra-virgin olive oil
coarse salt
fresh-ground pepper

Put the pumpkin in a large roasting pan in halves, or peeled and cut into 2-inch chunks. Toss with shallots and sage. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast at 450* until soft. (This will take a long time--at least 30 minutes for pumpkin chunks, an hour or more for pumpkin halves.) When the pumpkin flesh is soft, scrape it out of the rind along with the shallots and sage and mix together in a large bowl.

Spare Me the Sanctimony, I Just Want Something Good to Eat Roasted Pumpkin:
1 large can of pumpkin
4 shallots, peeled and quartered lengthwise OR 1 onion, diced
1 T rubbed sage
3 T (give or take) olive oil
salt
pepper

Heat olive oil in a pan and add shallots/onion. Saute until they are softened. Then mix with other ingredients and bake in a lidded pan at 350* for 30 minutes or so.

Rigatoni
12 ounces rigatoni or large tubey (no, not Tubey) noodle of your choice
2 T butter
5 ounces fresh goat cheese

About twenty minutes before the pumpkin is done bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and add the pasta. Drain the pasta when it is al dente, reserving 1/2 C of cooking water. Return pasta to pot and add butter, cheese and pasta water. Toss until butter is melted.

Gently fold in roasted pumpkin with shallots and sage and season with salt and pepper. Divide among bowls and serve immediately.

if ifs and buts were candy and nuts I wouldn't be buying presents

I was in Smith and Edward's today wasting time while I waited to go pick up Superman from preschool. I keep waiting for those buckaroo boots I want so much to go on sale, but so far no luck. They would look so freaking awesome with my skinny jeans, and if I could just find a pair of spurs and a feather hair clip--you know, the kind that people wear in their braids when they're trying to pretend they're Native Americans--and then a shirt with pearl buttons, I will have recreated the outfit I wore once a week in fifth grade, until the mocking shouts of the chorus of "Rhinestone Cowboy" got too painful. Aside: my fifth grade teacher used the Vulcan death grip on unruly boys and sometimes threw desks.

The Hulk just came into my room and started into this:

Hulk: Mom, it's too bad that I can't have what I want most for Christmas. Isn't it too bad?
Me: Yep. Goodbye.
Hulk: No! Mom! I just want to tell you what I want most for Christmas! Can I tell you?
Me: (sigh) Yeah, go ahead.
Hulk: The thing I want most for Christmas is peace on the whole earth. Wouldn't that be nice to have peace on the whole earth? The second thing I want most is quietness on the playground and on the bus. Because everyone is so noisy on the bus all the time and there's so much yelling on the playground and everyone is talking and . . . (he continued like this for about three minutes until I forced him out).

First of all: BULL. Kacy over at Every Day I Write the Book (read her, she's way funny) was telling about a similar experience she had lately in which her son said that what he wanted for Christmas was for people to remember Thanksgiving. Now, it is very possible that her son was sincere. But I have my doubts that The Hulk was, other than peripherally. Sure, peace would be nice, but he's a pragmatist. He knows that people like fighting too much to be peaceful--heck, I sure do--but if he says kumbaya stuff like that it might get him brownie points with the Buyers. I call shenanigans.

None of my kids believe in Santa anymore, and of course they're the killjoys that tell all the other kids Santa is a sham. I haven't tried very hard to cultivate the belief, since John is also a killjoy, and it always struck me as weak and desperate when parents would threaten their kids with the Santa stick. Who wants a child who only behaves because he thinks it'll get him better presents? I'd far rather have a child who only behaves because he thinks he'll get to watch TV.

babacapra status for december 1, 2009

Cooking class: I signed up for French Bistro Classics A, since that was the most popular, and when has popular ever steered us wrong? Thrill! As I shave my fingers off making Truffle Pommes Dauphine! Gasp! As I drop rosemary stems into the ice cream custard! Drool! As I eat my whole New York steak and don't share!

House: We're taking a break from remodeling for a while, because John made me promise. But once we're into the new year I'm painting our bed. I think I'll try a pale dove grey (am copying Sandi, but hers is really more of a charcoal grey, so no harm). Then the last piece of nasty pale purple office carpet is coming out. I might leave the wallpaper up, because it's a metallic gold damask pattern. So quirky! The woman who lived here before us was artistic and modpodged old-timey magazine pictures on all the doors, and hand-painted a cartoon swan on the outside of the tub.

Animals:
A. Goat: We hear that the chicken is in the pot, by which I mean the buck goat has put his half of the baby-making ingredients into Traci's kid bed (calf bed for cows, kid bed for goats) and made a little zygoat. Get it? Zy-goat? Ha! Reproductive farming humor! I'm excited to have little babies running around in the spring. They're the best part of gentleman farming. Except when they're orphaned, because then they're mainly loud more than anything else.

How do you like his stupid tailypo eyes? Not pictured: the seven other cats who think they live here.

B. Cats: Freaking cats. It's like a cat army up in here. Last night John went out to water the chickens, and there was a cat inside the pen--getting ready to suck their breath, no doubt--and he was so wigged about John that he spent the next five minutes running and ricocheting off the sides of the chicken run. FwoompBAM fwoompBAM fwoompBAM fwoompBAM until John had mercy after he was done laughing and moved to the corner opposite the door so the cat could escape. They make a Cat King every night in our garage and we even bought litter for them, but do they use it? No, and I'll tell you why: they suck. They want us to hate them.

C. Chickens: I like letting them out to graze, but they really, really like pooping on the patio, and only on the patio. A lot, they like it. So there are only a few days a week I can pull that off before John starts getting eye twitches. They are laying eggs like they were born to do it, and I swear we've got a triple-yolker in the fridge. None of them have been eaten by a skunk yet, and I'm giving credit to either the Australorp rooster or the butch Columbian Rock hen. I think I'll name her Miss Boland, after the nurse in the Soup books who asks the kids if their bowels have moved today.

our thanksgiving

My pie carrier next to my rosemary tree that cost only ten dollars at Whole Foods. I didn't even think about the poor little eight-year-old who must have grown it in a sweatshop greenhouse. Shame on me.

We had about 75 people at our Thanksgiving dinner this year, so it's true what you suspected, that we are better than you. Your family totally isn't as close as ours. It was in my uncle's shop, because that's the only place big enough to fit our awesome bulk. He and his lovely wife my aunt (who is on track to run one thousand miles this year, I'm not joking) sell Motorola products and such. We saw the famous captive geyser in Soda Springs from afar after returning from our tree harvesting (we knock out the forest, extract the tree we want, then put the forest in a bathtub of ice and write "CALL FOREST SERVICE" on its chest in lipstick--try this at home*), but we didn't go play in it. It's warm, but not that warm. We'll save it for summer.

I went to the Oriental Market in Riverdale on Wednesday and bought two bamboo steamers, and aside from the big stoneware pie dish that my visiting teachers gave me instead of a lesson one time--which worked out great for both of us--all of my pies fit in it and could be transported without endangering their delicate lardy buttery crusts. Something bad happened after dinner, though. My grandma whipped a bunch of cream for her squash pie, which was amazing as always (and did I mention that the squash was the nice big one I grew in MY OWN GARDEN?), but somehow there had been a container of salt emptied into the sugar bin, so it was like a sugar/salt mixture, and when she put it in the cream it made it taste bad. In case you thought otherwise. Not good on pie at all. But then we whipped some more and everything was fine and our family ate at least ten squash pies over the weekend. By contrast I brought peach blueberry, apple pear cranberry, lemon, and three other pie crusts that my cousin filled with banana cream, coconut cream, and blueberry cream, and my aunt brought a couple of pecan pies. None of these pies got eaten all the way. We love us some squash pie. The other conclusion that can be drawn is that Bethie and Sandi and I brought sucky pies, which I refuse to believe. That would require self-examination and contemplation. No fun!

We accidentally left the cat in the house while we were gone. Overnight. He didn't poop anywhere that we can see, but he did sleep on my bed and get hair all over the down comforter. Hmm. Hair/poop. Hair/poop. I guess we lucked out.

*I stole that joke from John.

must . . . buy . . . single-purpose . . . kitchen tool

For heck's sake. I never even thought of this. Last week for our pre-Thanksgiving dinner we just strung pies behind the back seat and hoped they would survive, which they did. But this! The benefits are twofold: I get to carry my pies in smoosh-free safety, AND I get to go to the Asian Food Market and buy stuff! I have a weakness for Asian dinnerware. Just ask my sushi plates. And my soy sauce dishes. And my chopsticks.