8:11 am: Having fortified myself with 3 glasses of strong coffee with milk and an hour of HGTV, I determine I am adequately prepared to finish painting the living room by 7 pm tonight.
8:14 am: I suddenly remember that I’m making Seco de carne con tamarindo. I rush to the kitchen to begin cooking.
8:47 am: The achiote substitution from Food Geeks is a complete disaster. Rather than a subtly spiced achiote kind of thing, it yields a ghastly substance that resembles Italian Seasonings packaged salad dressing. Panic erupts.
8:49 am: Working from the philosophy of nothing ventured nothing gained, I add more garlic and a chipotle in adobe to the achiote substitution. It is brilliant, if I do say so myself. I add coriander, another chipotle and garlic clove to the blend, and start warming the pan to cook the onions and Hatch chiles.
8:53 am: Upon glancing into the living room, I realize the birds are gossiping about us. They have that guilty look about them. At least they have the courtesy to stop when they realize they’ve been caught in the act.
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9:10 am: I blend the tamarind pulp with onion, garlic, coriander and chili powder. I go to the refrigerator to get the Hatch chiles and discover they’ve gone bad. Shit shit shit!!!
9:11 am: I substitute chipotle in adobe for Hatch chiles and, because the Hatch chiles were a substitute for green bells, I add a handful of dehydrated red bells.
9:12 am: omg, the tamarind with onion, chili, chipotle, garlic, red bell and coriander is sheer heaven! omg, had I known, all the tamarind pulp I made during the last ice storm, if I recall correctly, would have been gone months ago!
9:15 am: I start cooking the buffalo and manage to resist drinking another Coronita. I prepare to begin painting.
9:30 am: I suddenly remember how much reading I’m supposed to have done by tomorrow. Panic!
9:32 am: Oh shit shit shit, I was supposed to write a letter of reference for a friend last Thursday. Quadruple shit!!!
9:34 am: Not only that, I forgot to get passion fruit seed pods from my other place to pop them here so I can get passion fruit growing everywhere here, too. Then there’s my beautiful mortar and pestle sitting lonely and unused on the kitchen counter there.
9:35 am: Despite it all, I determine doing my reading for tomorrow is the best course of action. The dogs detect the presence of a squirrel out back and race out the door. I settle in to read.
10:30 am: While Callipe hangs sideways from the millet, Ernest offers homage to the peanut butter and fruit bar which has become the new God of the bird cage.
10:32 am: After racing through the house grabbing all my laundry and throwing it into the wash, I return to my reading, which is about reading, noting that all the subtle neurological changes resulting from internet use and affecting our literacy rates describe me to a t.
10:35 am: Shit. I still haven’t turned off the water valve to the outside spigots. But the house smells too heavenly from the Seco de carne con tamarindo to do it now.
10:36 am: I return to my reading about reading.
10:43 am: The buffalo is finally nicely browned, so it’s time to add the beer and tamarind mixture. I pour one Coronita into the tamarind mix, stir and taste. omg, sheer heaven! The most wonderful substance on earth! I turn the heat down on the meat, add the tamarind mix, and stir.
10:44 am: I resist the urge to pop open a Coronita and settle back into reading about reading and all the subtle neurological changes occurring at this very moment as a result of the internet and other technological innovations of recent years.
10:47 am: Shit! The power washer is in a shed out back and it’s going to get colder this week! I run out to rescue it from certain doom and destruction.
Are you reading or painting or both today? I wish I could smell that seco de carne con tamarindo – I love tamarind!
My day today will be decorated by going out to lunch with Dr. Dave, the man I was in private practice with for years…we had to close up shop back in ’07 (goD, that seems like a century ago, before I knew I was sick!) and that was awful, having to close down the office.
Dave and I get together about once a month to trade tales of woe. He is currently working in an Emergency Room in Oak Cliff, and regales me with stories about the Parkland Hospital disaster-overflow patients they get and the Category V crack whores who come in seeking Vicodin and stealing 4-5 hospital gowns…ah, the black humor of medical practice.
It helps us get the job done sometimes.
:dots: :puff: :dots: :puff:
The seco de carne con tamarindo is the most wonderful stuff I’ve cooked since my Indian cooking spree of the Ice Storm of 2007. And, like the food from my Indian cooking spree of 2007, it is definitely going to become a regular feature here. omg, the smell alone is fantastic!
Dave’s stories about Parkland sound like my sister’s from her hospital in Tulsa, the difference being hers isn’t emergency room, but instead children’s and adolescent psychiatric AND, until just a month or so ago, public? or whatever you call it when DHS and the state dumps as many patients as they possibly can into a hospital with inadequate staff. I’m amazed she’s still alive. She’s had to handle 12 out of control kids with the help of only one inadequately trained tech before. She was not unhappy when the state and DHS decided to move their operations to another hospital.
Have fun on your lunch. I’m doing both reading and painting today. I have to finish the reading before tomorrow because it’s then I assign it to my students (partly as a test to see if they can actually read print text and figure out they’re reading about reading) :troll
What an exciting life you lead! We set our clocks back this am so it is turning out to be a long hung over day in these parts. No beach today. I fired my latest cleaning lady this morning and will look for a new one later. I could have live blogged her cleaning, but it would just be a short sentence. I am too nice and I pay well, hence that means I get taken advantage of. No more Ms. nice guy.
I am dying to know what that one short sentence about your cleaning lady would be.
I guess it would be. She did the floors. How can someone come in and clean a three bedroom house inside and outside in an hour? She did sweep and mop but she never touched the kitchen or the downstairs bath. She never even dusted most of the time. She brought her six year old along and I let him watch cartoons. I had to be here because she would not come in if I was not here. She had a key too. Go figure! I think that she had no idea how to clean a big house. She worked for two weeks only. She came twice a week and I paid her what she asked for. I will never understand the people here.
There is my short sentence. I just had to rant!
omg, had I known you have a three bedroom house, I would have been there already! I was imagining a casita or whatever you call those tiny little places but you have a castle.
Unknown time: biscuit begins planning to move in with mango, should the election not go the way she wants.
I live in the biggest house on my block. It was a family home they built 20 years ago. Very very Mexican with cut out windows in the rooms upstairs that look down on the first floor. A large balcony at the top of the stairs. It is very nice and very roomy. I pay 5000 pesos a month which is some where between 400 and 450 USD. The door is open and the hens are laying eggs. My piece of paradise awaits..
Getting ready to climb onto the roof and put trash bags over the attic ventilators for the winter. Then unload and reload the dishwasher (ran out of forks, so it is time, LOL!).
Otherwise, going to take the day off and sort some coins.
Warmest regards,
Doc
Oh god, the attic ventilator.
11:08 am: I suddenly remember I need to cover the attic ventilators. More panic.
11:16 am: I add Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain to my Amazon.com shopping cart. If I add only $6.84 more, I can get free shipping, too.
11:17 am: I ponder the incongruity of having Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Day After Tomorrow in my shopping cart at the same time. I return to reading about reading.
11:21 am: I add Orality and Literacy to my Amazon.com shopping cart. I contemplate how much I hated my one grad school advisor who forced me to read this, even though it had nothing to do with my graduate degree. I am struck by the thought that perhaps she was psychic. I dismiss such nonsense from my mind and return to reading about reading.
11:28 am: I acknowledge that I am a total geek and get on with my life, but not before serving myself just a taste of the wonderful substance cooking in my kitchen. I once again manage to not pop open a Coronita.
11:39 am: I finish my reading about reading, burdened by the realization that my students’ print reading skills are so poor that I will have to provide them a reading guide to their second reading about reading.
11:40 am: I make a cup of coffee and prepare to begin painting. But first I have to put the laundry in the dryer and check the weather forecast.
Dear biscuit,
In addition to everything else, it looks as though you have set your clocks back one week early. Daylight Savings Time ended for mango today, but ours goes until the first Sunday in November (next week).
11:59 am: I begin worrying that I don’t know what time it is.
12:00 noon: I realize that, if it isn’t really noon, I can spend another hour goofing off before that OMG IT’S NOON I HAVE TO START PAINTING!!! moment.
We change our clocks early here. I do not know why.
I think we do in Oklahoma, too.
At least, that’s my theory at the moment.
I am completely confused about what time it is now. I think I need to go watch a little HGTV and get my head screwed back on (such that it is).
I lived in Anadarko many years ago.
omg, you lived in the Indian Capital of the Nation! Rough town, but great Indian art.
What in the world were you doing in Anadarko? You’re not secretly Kiowa or Apache, are you?
Yes I did and I was a bartender. I was always afraid that some Indian woman was going to kick my ass after work. They would accuse me of flirting with their men.
I was married to a guy from Anadarko and I moved there with him. I lived there when JFK was killed. I am Irish and was raised in the Seattle area.
11:03 am: Given the powers that be have granted me an extra hour, at least according to Kate Petersen and the United States Government, I feel much better about still being in a jammies.
1:11 pm: I discover it’s actually after 1 pm. My life is ruined, but at least I can pop open a Coronita, given it means I won’t be drinking before noon. I retire to my bedroom to sulk. :dots:
Unknown time: But if the government says it’s only a little after 11, why do CNN and my alarm clock say it’s after 1? My confusions about the time reach epic proportions, and my panic elevates to such a level that I must, simply must have a Coronita.
Time hasn’t changed yet, so it’s still the same time as it was this time last week.
As of…. (ding) it is 1:18 pm and your clock thinks it is 12:18 pm. You lost an hour, not gained one. (But you get it back next weekend.)
Oh, thank you, forest sprites and deities of the clouds! Only one more week until I get that precious hour back!!!
1:42 pm: Having popped open a Coronita to have with my lovely Seco de carne con tamarindo (omg, so good!), I contemplate mango’s admission that she worked as a bartender in Anadarko and her correct instinct about being beaten to a pulp by women of a certain ethnic persuasion who have had too much to drink.
1:44 pm: Panic. I have gotten no painting done today, and I’m drinking beer!
1:44 and 1/2 pm: Screw painting! I’m going to drink the rest of the beer and loaf around!
Salud! I am joining you with a beer. I just popped a cold Pacifico. I put some makeup on and Jean and I are off to find a cleaning lady and pick up some pizza. Hangovers are hell. I sure had fun making this one though. I think.
2:02 pm: Having enjoyed a healthy serving of the seco de carne con tamarindo, I decide to make recommendations:
1. Cut buffalo into smaller pieces next time;
2. Use more allspice and chipotle in sauces, and puree the sauces more thoroughly or cook, then strain before serving;
3. Buy better beer next time.
2:33 pm: I simply must paint! But My Favorite Martian is on, and I need to bleach my moustache.
LOL! Ok, here is the deal. I will shave my legs and other places if you bleach your moustache. Loreal number nine is very nice.
3:10 pm: With the 7 pm deadline for finishing painting looming, more panic erupts. I race into the bathroom to bleach my moustache, and I discover a red hair dye I purchased some months ago, determined that I should at least see what life as a red head is really like.
3:11 pm: Finish painting? Or dye my hair red and finish watching My Favorite Martian? No easier decision has ever been handed to me. I race back to the bathroom to bleach my moustache and dye my hair red, after which I will pop open another Coronita and watch the end of My Favorite Martian.
3:12 pm: I avert my eyes as I pass the cans of paint and pitiful brushes on my way to the bathroom.
I can highly recommend life as a redhead…L’Oreal and I have been friends a long, long time.
Painting? Redheads don’t DO painting, unless they really, really want to! Instead, they lounge around on Sundays and read stuff and make things smell wonderful in the kitchen.
¡Arriba redheads!
ooooo, I think I’m going to like being a redhead!
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