Winter storms are very pretty. So are ice fogs. They are also a pain in the posterior.
/end announcement
Archive for January, 2010
Announcement
Monday, January 18th, 2010An “Ordinary” Heroine
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Miep Gies, the woman who found Anne Frank’s diary and saved it, has died at age 100. She was in her early thirties when the Nazis first came to Holland. Her employer, Otto Frank, had moved his family to Amsterdam to escape the increasing virulence of the Nazi regime in their native Germany. When the Nazis came to the place the Franks had hoped would be a haven, there was no way to run again. So the four of them, plus another small family and a single man – eight people in all – hid for a bit over two years, helped by Miep and her husband Jan and a few others. Even after their arrest, she risked going to the German police and trying to bribe them into letting the Franks go. Her courage was almost incomprehensible from my living room in the safety of 21st century Indiana.
I’ve been trying for the past several hours to think of something appropriate to say about her, something of what she taught simply by the way she lived her life, but there is too much there. That there is light, even in the deepest darkness. The greatness of spirit that an ordinary person is capable of, when the need arises. That heroism isn’t only in the grand gestures, but in the quiet, day in and day out actions of anyone who tries to do what is right even when it could cost them everything. She insisted that she was not a heroine, because, she said, she did not want children to think that it required someone special to do what was right. “Who is a hero?” she asked. “I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.”
She was indeed a housewife and secretary, and a mother. But it was in her very “ordinariness”, in being the sort of person everyone knows, that she was most extraordinary.
In what you did, in what you said, in a girl’s writings carefully preserved, in the stories you told and by the example you set, you changed the world, Miep Gies. And in so doing, you blessed us all.
Creative Self-expression
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010Like many parents of middle-schoolers, we are working with our son on monitoring the use of, shall we say, forcible language. He hears vulgarity a lot in school, simply because he’s at the age where the boys seem to think it proves how bold, fearless and (im)mature they are. And like many kids his age, he gropes around for acceptable substitutes to express his feelings without offending.
I had much ado not to giggle at the latest one, though. “Fork-lift! Idiot computer!…..”
The Virtue of Winter
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010I really don’t mind winter. I find it pretty, if sometimes severe. I’m not crazy about driving on ice, and snow-shoveling is a thing I avoid if humanly possible, but I can deal with cold a whole lot better than I can heat.
The cold does have one very practical benefit, though. I can use my car as an auxiliary freezer. It doesn’t matter if that gallon of stock is still boiling hot; I’m not going to strain a compressor or thaw something else by virtue of proximity. It might raise the temperature inside a car a degree or two temporarily, but when the current outside ambient is significantly below freezing, that’s sort of irrelevant.
So that’s what I’ve done. I have a gallon of stock from the bones of the turkey we had at my in-laws, cheerfully chilling in the back of my minivan where there’s a nice flat surface. In the meantime, I don’t have to stay up until it’s cooled down enough to refrigerate. I’ll bring it in tomorrow, scrape off the frozen fat, and put the rest in the refrigerator. Over the next little while, it will become soup, or stew, or whatever else my imagination can come up with. I still have a quart of turkey meat picked off the bones before I dumped them in water, which is rejoicing in the freezer. I’d say that’s pretty good, overall.
A Case of Mattresscide
Monday, January 4th, 2010A friend of mine just posted an entry on her blog talking about helping one of her teachers extract a jammed ball from a flint-lock rifle, because she had expertise and tools he lacked. It ends well; she not only got the ball out of the barrel, but was able to tell him why it got stuck in the first place.
What it made me think of, though, was of an adventure in muzzle-loading weaponry that ended…differently.
A friend of ours who lived in our apartment complex was an aficionado of most types of historic weaponry. Swords, muzzle-loading firearms, long bows, you name it, he thought it was cool and wanted to get his hands on it. So at some point, he acquired a muzzle-loading pistol. When he first told us about it, he was intending to take it out to a firing range and try it out.
Patience was not his distinguishing characteristic. He couldn’t wait. Disassembling, assembling, cleaning and oiling was only satisfactory for so long. He knew he couldn’t shoot it in the city, but he thought he’d just try loading it.
The problem was that he really hadn’t thought it through. Unlike a modern weaporn, a muzzle-loader can’t be unloaded without special equipment once its been loaded. So he loaded it without a problem, to then find himself with a dilemma. He couldn’t transport the thing safely while loaded because flintlocks don’t have a safety as we know it. He couldn’t unload it, and he couldn’t fire it in the city. What to do, what to do?
Finally he concluded that the only safe thing to do was discharge it in a way that would not allow the ball to travel any distance, feasible because musket balls do not fire with the same force and modern rifle bullets. So he put the muzzle up against the sidewall at the foot of a king-sized mattress and fired.
He and his wife continued to use that mattress – with the hole with slightly charred edges at the foot – until it wore out. She was fairly philosophical about the damage to the mattress. The thing that really annoyed her, though, was that he didn’t take off the sheets before he committed mattresscide.
Sixth Grade Ritual
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010When I was in sixth grade, I had to do a diorama. I still remember it, because my mom came up with the idea of sprouting grass seed in a shallow pan, so that instead of green-painted cardboard I had real grass for my little people to sit in. I made figures out of clay, and I don’t remember what all else. It didn’t fit in a shoebox, though; it ended up being free-standing on its cardboard base. I don’t remember how I got it to school, but I suspect strongly that I had help.
Now it’s my son’s turn. His does fit in a shoebox. He’s supposed to do a diorama about France, and so chose to do the Eiffel Tower. I had visions of him trying to construct the thing out of clay, popsicle sticks and/or toothpicks, with associated howls of frustration because while he builds amazing things from Legos, things not intrinsically designed to fit together give him fits. I asked him if he wanted to build a model or if he wanted to put a picture as the background in the back of the shoebox. To my relief, he thought that the picture was a fabulous idea, but wanted it painted rather than as a photograph. Hmm. We found a good photo to work from, and I drew a pencil sketch on watercolor paper.
I helped with the painting of that, and then it was time for modeling compound. Crayola makes something that can be modeled like clay, air dries very quickly, feels rather like marshmallow, and is paintable. That’s what we used, and he now has a seated human figure holding a dog on a leash, a cat and another little person sitting cross-legged, two wee chairs and a pedestal table. They’re all drying on the card table, and will be painted tomorrow before being glued into position. The table and chairs aren’t particularly in proportion to the people, but hey, he’s 12. Now he’s painting grass and a sidewalk while I keep him company. I suspect he’ll remember this as long as I have the Indian Village.
He’s also answered some factual questions, done a written report on French history, and prepared an oral report. He’s looking forward to presenting the whole thing to his Social Studies teacher. Me? I’m looking forward to his teacher’s response. It’s his project, but I don’t feel at all bad about helping with it. All I’ve done is mechanical execution. The plans and ideas have been all his, and that’s the important part.
The Amazing Disappearing Cheesecake
Friday, January 1st, 2010I didn’t have a springform available to me to bake a cheesecake last time I wanted to. All I had was a ceramic pie plate, which wasn’t going to hold the whole thing. So okay; the recipe divides, as most recipes do. Only one problem; when it came time to separate eggs, I forgot I was dividing. There I was, with four egg whites in the mixing bowl, if not on my face. I decided to adapt. The resulting cheesecake was very good indeed, and different enough to qualify as an entirely new recipe. It seemed to me that the fact that it disappeared by noon the 26th with only four people eating it was testimony to its general yumminess.
This requires a 9″ glass or ceramic pie pan for heat-holding qualities. Metal doesn’t work as well.
So without further ado….
Vanishing Macademia Nut Cheesecake
4 oz (about 1/2 cup) chopped Macademia nuts
2 tsp butter, softened (if your butter is cold, just cut off a small pat and let it stand in the pie plate while you gather the remaining ingredients.)
2 8 oz packages neufchatel cream cheese, room temperature (yes, it has a pound of cream cheese. Deal.)
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp grtaed lemon or orange peel (optional)
4 egg whites (separate and save the yolks for whatever you use egg yolks for. I made eggnog.)
1/3 – 1/2 cup sugar, depending on your sweet tooth.
Topping:
1 cup sour cream (low fat works. Fat free doesn’t.)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
preheat oven to 325o F.
Use your fingers to smear the butter around the pie plate. Sprinkle Macademia nuts across the bottom of the pie pan. Make sure they’re fairly evenly spread, since this is your crust.
Whip cream cheese in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. I use the whisk attachment on a Kitchenaid mixer. Beat in flavorings. Set aside. Wash the whisk attachment well – adhering fat will keep the egg whites from beating up properly.
In a second bowl, beat egg whites on medium-high speed until it starts to look soft and billowy. Gradually add sugar, continuing to beat until the whites hold a stiff peak or one that only curls over a little, but are still shiny. A little under beaten is better than over beaten, so err on the side of caution.
Pour about a quarter of the meringue mixture into the bowl with the cheese mixture. Fold in as gently as possible. Add half the remaining meringue; fold in. Add the final portion of meringue and fold in, making sure cheese and meringue are thoroughly blended. Pour into the prepared pie pan.
Bake for 30-25 minutes; top should look set, and will very likely split. Don’t worry; that’s what the topping is for.
A few minutes before the cake is ready, blend topping ingredients. When cake is ready, remove from oven. Turn oven up to 4250 F. Spread topping mixture over hot cake; replace in oven. Bake for about 5 more minutes, until the topping looks set.
Cool enough to put in the refrigerator. Serve chilled with sliced strawberries.