Tea and Oatmeal

The weather has been hot and humid around here lately. I love cooking, but coming home from work and making, say, a lasagna just doesn't appeal to me right now the way it did in January. So instead I've been working on variations of my lemonade recipe to get that culinary creativity fix. Last week, I tried making an iced tea-lemonade hybrid. Not quite as good as Half-and-Half, but it's quick and pretty tasty. If you want to try:

. . .

Boil about a cup and a half of water. Pour the water into a large mug and steep 2 or 3 tea bags in it for five minutes. I used plain old Red Rose tea, but it would probably be good with any kind of black or herbal tea.

Add sugar to the tea--lots of sugar. I think I put in about five heaping spoonfuls--you'll need it to counteract the sourness of the citrus and the bitterness of the tea. (I add the sugar at this point because it seems easier to dissolve in hot tea than in cold.)

Juice one lemon and one lime. Put the lemon and lime juice and a lot of ice--maybe a tray full--in a pitcher. I do this in a Mason jar, which makes measuring and mixing very easy.

Add the tea to the jar. Mix it all around until the tea has cooled off, then add some water. Not sure how much--maybe start with a cup and see how it tastes? I ususally just fill it up to the top line on the Mason jar and then mix it.

Taste the lemonade-tea and make adjustments as necessary. I also throw in a couple of the lemon / lime halves for interest. Just remember to wash them before doing so.

This makes enough for two or three regular people or one very thirsty one.

. . .

Luckily, it's been pretty cool in the morning for the last couple of weeks, so I'm able to do a little cooking then. I've been hearing a lot about how great Irish/steel-cut oats are lately, so last time I was at the grocery store I decided to splurge and try them. They cost about $8 a can, but you can get them in--presumably cheaper--boxes, too. (They're up on a top shelf at our local store, though, so I had to rely on a kind passerby to reach them for me, and I didn't want to test her patience by comparing prices for the various containers.)

I've tried them two different ways--toasted with butter then simmered for half an hour (fun, but time-consuming), and soaked overnight, then simmered for ten minutes in the morning (much more practical on workdays). Once they're done--when all the water is absorbed--I just throw in whatever is close at hand: milk, maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, etc. It's really...wholesome. I don't even know if I like the taste of it so much as the texture (it's crunchy, very different from regular rolled oats) and the energy boost it gives you. You can run on that stuff for hours before you're hungry again. They say a serving is a quarter-cup of dry oats and I agree. It's easy to multiply the recipe (just keep the oats:water ratio at 1:4), but a little of this goes a long way. Especially first thing in the morning.

Movie Night

We went to an outdoor screening of To Kill a Mockingbird last night. Such a good film. (Not technically a film, I know--it was a DVD.) As people biked or walked past the park, they almost invariably stopped to watch when they figured out what movie it was. There was such a nice small-town atmosphere about, parents and kids and students and dogs all sitting on blankets enjoying the warm evening air. I love that feeling, and it was the first time I'd experienced it here in the city.

I read To Kill A Mockingbird in a high school English class, and I remember our teacher telling us that she cried the first time she finished the book because she didn't want it to be over. She also said she had a crush on Atticus. I mean, who wouldn't? Especially when he's played by Gregory Peck.

I had forgotten what a good movie that was. I liked Dill better this time around than I did when I saw it in high school. And I'm relieved to finally know where that line comes from--"ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum"--because it's been running through my head all summer and I just couldn't place it.

I often think of that line in the summer because one of my strategies for getting through humid eighty-degree days is to douse myself with baby powder in the morning. It used to drive my mom crazy because I'd leave a fine layer of dust wherever I went. Now it drives Stephen mad, too. But at least it smells nice.

The night before, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I'm really going to miss the HP phenomenon when it's over. When was the last time that there was so much collective excitement about a single book-and-movie series? And will it ever happen again? My favorite HPmania story is from two summers ago, right after the sixth book came out. Everyone knew that a major character dies at the end of the book, but most people hadn't found out who yet. Some pranksters in England hung a banner over a bridge that many commuters cross on their way to work that said "[So-and-so] dies." A highway crew came to take it down, but the crew members didn't want the surprise spoiled for them, either, so they had to shield their eyes to avoid reading it. Newspaper reports about the incident respectfully refrained from revealing the character's name.

There was a ton of excitement in the theater on Wednesday night. People applauded when the movie started. The women behind us had lightning bolt scars drawn on their foreheads. When Harry and Cho kissed, people giggled nervously and yelled "Woohoo!" at the screen. I think that's a testament to how close the audience feels to the story. People reacted like they were watching their brother or a friend get their first kiss than rather than a fictional character have a scripted moment that we'd all read about months or years in advance.

By the way, did you know that Harry Potter was born (uh, "born") in 1980? That's what Wikipedia says. (And wow, people have done a lot of research on this stuff.) That seems really weird to me, 'cause it puts Harry is in his mid-to-late twenties right now. That is, if he survived the seventh book. He's not really gonna die, is he? (Is he? I think not, but I also had myself convinced for a while that Dumbledore was going to come back. Like the phoenix, yeah? But...maybe not so much. Boo.)

The Have to Write a Book Challenge

More from Stephen:

I think that it would be really fun and interesting to write a book, especially a children’s book. The problem is, what do you write it about? There are already so many books out in the world. But if I ever came up with a really good idea and knew where I wanted to go with it, I would do it. All the illustrations could be linoleum cuts. It would be a blast.

This came out of a conversation we recently had about the Have to Write a Book Challenge. You may have noticed that I like to pose little mental challenges for myself: work from home or work in an office, live in the city or live in the country, choose one color for the rest of my life, etc. One that I've been ruminating on lately (who knows where I thought it up) goes like this:

Imagine you wake up one morning to find that you have sleep-signed a contract with a publisher. You have no way to get out of the contract, which requires you to write a book within one year. What do you write about?

I think my book would be non-fiction. I really don't know how people write novels. They seem so complex, like juggling a hundred things at once, trying to make the whole thing engrossing, original, easy to follow and relatable, and remembering to tie up your loose ends. Mine might be more of a coffee table book, which may not sound very high-brow, but it's the kind of thing I'd like working on: large format, with lots of images. Maybe it would be an art book. Like Stephen, I envision something along the lines of a collection of linoleum prints. Like this.

I went to visit my parents over the weekend, and ended up going through a lot of stuff from college that's been collecting dust up in my room. I came across some old prints I'd made in my senior year, a couple of ancient letterpress blocks I found in Bouckville (the Antiques Capital of Central New York), some linoleum stamps of shopping carts and aprons and brooms I carved for a series on domesticity. It made me miss college and all the time I used to devote to things like that. I'm going to try to make more time for those things.

From Stephen, P. 1

As promised, a post from Stephen:

Heather says that I am on summer vacation. It is true that I don’t have a job, but I am taking three classes, so I’m not sure if this officially counts as vacation or not.

Here is my list of top three things to do during the summer:

1. Tell Heather not to go to work. On days that I don’t have classes (like Fridays) I tell her she shouldn’t go, so that we can go to the beach together. Which leads me to
   
   
2. Go to the beach. I have this vision of waking up early on some weekday morning, going to a nice breakfast store like Verna’s, and then driving on the Vespa to a quiet, empty beach.
   
   
3. Eat outside.

Tomorrow: What if you had to write a book?

Lowlight

Oh yeah, so, the wasps. On Wednesday afternoon, I was standing next to Stephen as he rooted around in the trunk of his car, looking for his toolkit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large bug buzzing by, then felt a sharp pain in my arm. I started shouting that a horsefly had bitten me (I don't know why I thought it was a horsefly, I guess because it looked so big and black in my peripheral vision?) and tried to both crouch and run away. Stephen started to correct me-- "Actually, it's a wasp" --then he got stung, too. Wow, killer wasp--two stings in less than five seconds.

On further (cautious) inspection, we discovered a nest in one of the vents on his car. In the few weeks that the car has sat idly in his parents' driveway (grounded until it passes state inspection), the little buggers have made a nice home for themselves there.

I've long been known as a Friend of the Stinging Insect in my family. When my mom or sister would find a bee in the house, I'd calmly scoop the thing up in a paper cup and let it go outside. I never let them smoosh it. But something about the double-stinging on Wednesday really teed me off, so I was perfectly satisfied to see Stephen take the garden hose to that nest. From a safe distance, of course.

I think it's always been easy for me to feel kindly toward bees and wasps because I've so rarely been stung--only twice that I can remember. The last time it happened was the week before I started second grade. I was playing outside with some friends, and I accidentally got too close to a nest of bees. When they started to swarm, I tried to shield my face with my hands. Somehow, in so doing, I caught a bee and trapped it between my hands and face, and it stung me on the eyelid. Seriously, ow.

I remember the babysitter putting some kind of paste on my face--I think it was baking soda and water?--that was meant to draw the stinger out. And I remember starting the school year a few days later, wondering what the other kids would think of me with my big swollen eyelid. I recall looking in the mirror and thinking, "They'll probably call me Pumpkinface."

But no one made fun of me; I don't think there was much reaction at all, in fact. I guess bee stings and grass stains and sunburns were just all mundane facts of the post-summer second grade world.

Fireworks

Funny things, fireworks. Exciting at first, but they can get pretty boring if they go on too long. Like pancakes.*

We saw two fireworks displays this week--the first a small show over a lake out in the woods over the weekend, the second a massive display between Boston and Cambridge on the holiday itself.

I really didn't expect to go see the Boston fireworks. If there's one thing I shy away from, it's large groups of shouting people congregating in the dark. I really don't like crowds, especially loud ones. Add to that the headaches of finding a parking space or room on the train and the rush to claim a place to sit on the lawn, plus the steady drizzle and cold temps of last night, and I see no reason to venture beyond my cozy apartment door. I know, what a party pooper.

But when the time came for the show to start last night, we just couldn't resist. We drove out of town to a hill overlooking the city in time to catch the second half of the show. It was bigger and gaudier than any fireworks display I've ever seen, including one I saw on Bastille Day in Paris a couple of years ago. By the time they got to the finale, there was so much smoke in the air that we couldn't even see the fireworks themselves, just flashes of light shooting through the clouds.

The weekend display was much more humble, but I really liked the feeling of being out on a lake, surrounded by other boats full of people. For all of my talk about not liking crowds, one thing I really do like is being in a silent crowd, especially when it's dark. Not like in a movie theater, when there's something else taking the place of the crowd-noise, but when everything is quiet and still, when people are gathered and waiting. It was like that while we were waiting for the fireworks to start on Saturday night--a little hushed conversation between neighbors, but mostly a stillness, a sense of calm, collective anticipation.

That's such a beautiful and eerie experience to me. It's one of the reasons I love to go to Easter Vigil Mass with my family every spring. On the night before Easter, everyone gathers in the darkened church holding unlit candles. The windows are open, and the contrast between the warmth inside and the cool breeze from outside makes the air feel deliciously alive. Everyone is standing, silently, watching and waiting, for several long minutes. Then the priest comes in from the back, carrying a lit candle, and we pass the flame until the whole place is full of little burning candles, and we sing. Then they do the reading from Genesis and turn the lights back on, which makes thematic sense, but I wish we could do the whole thing in the semi-dark. So different from the everyday.

So anyway, the waiting for those lake fireworks to start was, in my opinion, the highlight of the Independence Day festivities.

There was lowlight, too, involving a nest of wasps, but I'll save that story for another day.

*I know, I totally stole that from Mitch Hedberg.

A Look Ahead

They clean the streets here one day every month in the spring, summer, and fall. If you forget and leave your car parked on the wrong side of the road that morning, it's ticketed and towed away. So it's the sort of thing you try not to forget.

I was marking down the street-cleaning days on our calendar just now, filling them in for the rest of the year. By the time I got up to October, I found myself almost scoffing--the possibility that it will ever be October again seems so remote. Summer is just kicking into high gear, and I've only been to the beach once this season. There are so many sunny days and warm evenings and lightning bugs and late-night flip-flopped trips to the ice-creamery ahead that it seems impossible that autumn lies ahead, even distantly.

I find myself thinking this way often. I'll go to buy something, a sweater or a dress, from a catalog, find out it's on back-order for four weeks, and cancel the order. Because I just know that August is never going to happen.

It's similar, I think, to the way many of us react to warnings about global warming or species extinction or other things that we can't see happening right before our eyes. We feel on some level that they are never going to happen. Especially because the wait-time is not weeks or months, but decades or generations.