L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Bah! Humboob!

The official holiday shopping season is upon us, such as it is this year.

This story in the Seattle PI amused me:

In hard times, nostalgic toys strike a chord

NEW YORK — Counting dollars this holiday season, Tom De Santes wants to avoid buying high-priced techno gadgets as gifts for his two sons.

Instead, he is going to buy the boys, ages 6 and 7, a classic from his own childhood: Lincoln Logs.

Read more…

Let’s be clear about this: The kids are not begging for Lincoln Logs. It’s the stressed-out, thumb-sucking grownups reaching for the comfort food. Then they try to pretend it’s morally superior. We’ll sit and build log cabins with our kids… as soon as we’re done programming the new Tivo.

There’s nothing about Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots or Cabbage Patch dolls that’s inherently superior to Transformers or Dora the Explorer. But at last - at long last - we can have all the toys we ever wanted. The Easy Bake Oven that everyone else had and we never got? It’s in the bag, baby.

Still, it could be worse.

This is the kind of misogynist crap that just makes me want to go on a crockery-smashing rampage: A boob job money jar sold as decor for a girl’s room. What fun!

“Here honey, save your money and maybe someday you can fix your poor, inadequate body.”

If you check out the site, you’ll see it’s clearly aimed at young teen and preteen girls. I hesitate to encourage you to go there since it might lead to a purchase of some other item. Don’t do it. Even if you’ve wanted a pom-pom bead curtain your whole life. Just don’t do it.

Grrrr.

A confession: My kids are grown and (mostly) out of the house. Most of their childhood toys are long gone. But I still have the bucket of Legos squirreled away.

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Cream in my coffee

I know I’ve been writing about food a lot lately. I am a woman of strong appetites and the urge is especially potent this time of year. After all, why stop with just one when multiples are on the table? Let me squeeze out one more for you:

Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

What could be more festive for the holidays? Some sample recipes from the book: “Almost White Russian” (2 oz vodka, 1 oz coffee liqueur, 1/2 oz semen, cream or milk, ice cubes), “Tuna Sashimi with Dipping Sauce” (Seafood n’ spunk. Now there’s a natural pairing!), and for dessert, “Creamy Cum Crepes.”

And so on. Well, you get the jizz. I can’t wait to see this episode of Iron Chef.

It’s hard to think of many human-based substances one would want to cook with (perhaps including the above), but here’s a true confession: Back when I was nursing my kids, I found a fresh and convenient substitute for cream in my coffee… Oh c’mon. Like you never thought of it.

Happy Thanksgiving and do have some more of the cream pie.

Thanks to Mr. Squid.

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Poetry in Bacon

Too much bacon? Is it even possible? Apparently, it is.

Behold the Turbaconducken!

The Turbaconducken is a whole cut up chicken, each piece individually wrapped in bacon, stuffed inside a whole duck, also completely swathed in bacon and then crammed into a turkey which is… plastered in bacon.

I wonder why they didn’t deep fry it?

OK, the outside looks tolerable, but I don’t even want to think about the gelatinous swamp of fat that poured out of the murky interior.

My 22-year-old-bacon-loving son’s response:

7:17:13 PM Alan: okay
7:17:16 PM Alan: speaking as a bacon enthusiast
7:17:18 PM Alan: that is just
7:17:20 PM Alan: too much bacon
7:17:29 PM me: who knew there was such a thing?
7:17:33 PM Alan: I was aware
7:17:49 PM me: I mean, such a thing as too much bacon
7:18:02 PM Alan: yes
7:18:04 PM Alan: it is rare
7:18:05 PM Alan: but achievable

Reformatted as poetry:

A Poem for the Morning

okay
speaking as a bacon enthusiast
that is just
too much bacon
who knew there was such a thing?
I was aware
I mean, such a thing as too much bacon
yes

it is rare
but achievable

(Thanks to Lisa Whipple, Nina Forsyth, Alan Gordon and Bacon Today)

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Ashes to Ashes, Lunch to…

True story, though details have been changed at the request of the parties involved.

A friend of mine loves sailing. He has a part-time share in a lovely sailboat and takes it out on the least provocation. No occasion is so trivial or insignificant that it’s not worth heading out to the marina. So it was no surprise that he volunteered to ferry a couple of acquaintances out to scatter their father’s ashes across the blue waters of Puget Sound this week. Dad had passed years ago and they were only just now getting around to it.

It was a beautiful, blue-sky day. When the breeze dropped to zero and the boat was becalmed, the moment seemed right. My friend watched respectfully from a few paces away as brother and sister stood on the deck.

The brother, S, never got along well with dad. The turbulent teens left a slightly bitter residue that never completely washed away. But so much time had passed now that his sister urged him to do the honors. Perhaps as a way to finally make peace. S held the urn in his hands and said a few words while the boat bobbed gently up and down. When he was done, he opened it and poured the ashes into the water.

The three stood there watching. It was so still that neither the boat nor the ashes drifted apart. The pause lengthened. Then S, without warning, was overcome by seasickness. He leaned over the side of the boat and puked.

Directly into the ashes of his father.

(Permission to share this story was texted from the deck of the boat)

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Quantum of Evil

Spoiler alert. If you have not seen the new James Bond movie, you may want to wait on this.

Quantum: The smallest discrete amount of any quantity.

I have nothing against Daniel Craig. Sadly. (I’ve made my husband a deal: For Christmas this year he can have Olga Kurylenko, provided I get equal time with Mr. Craig.) I have nothing against Daniel Craig as the new Bond, either. I went to Casino Royale prepared to be annoyed. A blond Bond? No more Pierce Brosnan? Are they serious?

But there was Daniel Craig and he was so… mmmmm

Pierce who?

Despite the tasty new Bond and the exhausting, nonstop action (Quantum of Solace crams about six hours of explosions into a scant 106 minutes), I have to harumph a bit over the sad state of evil.

What’s gotten into Bond bad guys lately? They used to be truly megalomeniacal bastards with plans to detonate atomic bombs in Fort Knox, incite global nuclear war, incinerate whole cities with death-rays from outer space, destroy all human life on Earth… These guys were seriously and unforgettably evil.

What does our new, steely Mr. Bond face? In Casino Royale, it was a couple of thugs playing cards to get out of debt (hmmm, a plan for the auto industry? Nah, all the auto industry needs is about a million Bonds. At the rate he goes through vehicles, sales would be skyrocketing in no time) And now, in Quantum of Solace, the best they can muster up is an effete bad-dresser with a hankering to be utilities commissioner in Bolivia?

Come on.

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Full Beaver Moon

This isn’t what you’re thinking. Sorry.

This time of year is heavy with celebrations. They make the passage of time significant and connect one person’s experience to another’s. Easy-peasy for the religious. A little harder for atheists. What marks life’s transitions? What makes one day different from the next? Most importantly, where are the excuses for breaking out the champagne?

One could reasonably argue that there are no transitions and one day is not inherently different from the next. These are artificial constructs. But humans survived and thrive because we adhere in communities and traditions are a kind of glue.

So what is the atheist to do? One option is to celebrate traditional religious holidays but in a secular manner. This is largely what we do in our family. We wrote our own Haggadah for Passover, carefully excising all the religious bits and turning our seder into a sort of Amnesty International Day. Next month we’ll light the menorah by the Christmas tree (see Light the F*cking Candles). Not to celebrate a miracle or a messiah, but because it’s fun and we want our kids to have fond memories of their lives at home.

When my sons were in their early teens, I felt a strong need to mark a transition from boyhood to adulthood for them. For girls, there’s the obvious onset of menses. But what is there for boys? They needed a rite of passage too. I couldn’t see a way to take the religion out of bar mitzvah prep.

We settled on a men-only wilderness trip. For each boy’s fourteenth birthday, their father and uncles took him off for a five-day camping trip. I was not allowed to go, nor was I allowed to be involved in the prep or hear any details of what transpired. I suspect nothing more outrageous than fire, alcohol, massive consumption of red meat and unrestrained peeing but I’ll never know.

It worked. Each boy came home a little changed. There was a new, palpable solidarity with the men. A bit of swagger. My full moon influence had waned just a bit, but it felt right. I am grateful to my brothers-in-law, who took time out of their normal lives in California to fly up to Washington for it. And I really don’t want to know what they did. Really.

My oldest friend, Dreah, has taken a different route to creating non-religious celebration. She follows astronomical events. These are no less arbitrary than religious ones. There is nothing inherently significant about a solstice or equinox, but at least the events are not encumbered by heavy religious trappings (or at least not unavoidably). Even as teenagers, Dreah and I put on Midsummer’s Eve parties and invented our own rites. And today, decades later, I still get greetings from her on cross-quarter days and full moons.

Today is the Full Beaver Moon. I don’t usually feel compelled to celebrate the full moons, but this is one I can get behind.

Should I celebrate the waxing moon as well?

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I’m feeling better already

I am so pleased that the Brits have devised a way to end disease. Bear with me.

In the news: Some local councils say using Latin is elitist and discriminatory, because some people might not understand it. This includes “etc.”, “via”, “versus”… etc. I mean, and so on. (BTW, “discriminatory” is of Latin origin and “elitist” is French.)

The French are great ones for pursuing language purity - a hopeless endeavor (oops, sorry, France, for stealing “endeavor”). But English?  If you tried ethnic cleansing on English, there’d be nothing left. I’ve always loved this quote:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
–James D. Nicoll

How does this policy eliminate disease? If you also count Greek as elitist and discriminatory (and how could they deny it?), between the two it would put an end to nearly all medical conditions. No more cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, trauma, asthma, hypertension…

But how do you tell the doc you’re feeling poorly? Pantomime? (Oops. Latin, via… I mean, by way of Greek.)

Interestingly, according to this study the top ten medical conditions (all Latin and Greek) cost the U.S.$500 billion per year. Hey, wait a minute. That means that in less than two years…

Somebody get me Wall Street!

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Top Ten Reasons to Vote… for my cat

It’s Tuesday, November 4th: The day we’ve been waiting to be over with for the past year. Maybe the last eight years. This new entry to the race is coming in a bit late, but that’s how cats are. They do what they want when they want. And isn’t that what we’re all about as a nation?

Here they are: The Top Ten Reasons to write in my cat, Kes on your ballot:

1. Free drugs. Okay, catnip. But still…
2. Mandatory national napping program
3. Foreign policy: Lick or scratch? Keep them guessing
4. Nine lives eases pressure on Secret Service
5. More comfy chairs in the Oval Office
6. Two words: President Palin
7. Economic Policy: Is hoarding pieces of crumpled paper under the fridge in case of a future shortfall of cat toys.
8. Shortest State of the Union speeches ever. And no sound bites for political pundits.
9. Taxes payable in kibble
10. Entire Homeland Security most wanted list can be brought in by a guy with a net.

Now you know what to do: Go out and vote.

Soup Weather III

I will run out of soup recipes before long but this one is a family classic and I promise I’ll be just as vague about quantities as ever.

Eva’s Borscht

Fill a big pot (I don’t know, 8 qt?) about half full of water and toss in some meat.

Beef is traditional, but I don’t eat beef for reasons I would go into, but I’m afraid someone would write back explaining how the same objections apply to pork or chicken or lamb and I’d have to put my fingers in my ears and go “lalalala.” I’ve found that a pork wad works just fine (that would be a pork tri-tip roast. I like them because they have no fat. Something with a bone in it would add more flavor, but this is a pretty flavorful soup anyway. A wad is approximately two pounds). I think it would be good with turkey too, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Add some salt, pepper, a few cloves of garlic and a bay leaf or two and cook until the meat is tender, skimming if necessary.

Then add: a sliced onion, 1 can diced tomatoes, 2 cans sliced beets and a shredded head of cabbage. Add some water if it’s boiled away too much. You can add a couple diced potatoes if you like. I didn’t this time.

When the veggies are soft, taste and season with salt, pepper and about a cup of cider vinegar and a cup of sugar. But don’t add the vinegar and sugar all at once. Add about half and taste. It should have a nice tang to it and be evenly balanced between sweet and sour without being overpowering.

Serve with sour cream or plain yogurt. I like yogurt personally.

As a bonus, here’s how I made the pirozhki in the picture:

Cook a couple of potatoes and set aside. Dice a large onion or two medium. It’s really hard to have too much onion. Cook it in a dry heavy pot until much of the liquid is gone and they are limp. Add chopped garlic, scallions and some olive oil and stir until the onions are dark and caramelized. Do this on a daily basis. Caramelizing onions and garlic is one of life’s wonderful aromas. I plan to do up a vat to get me through election returns without going mad. Dice the potatoes and stir them into the onions. They’ll mash up a bit, but do leave it mostly lumps please.

Then, pop open a tube of large buttermilk biscuits. (I’m for easy. So sue me, grandma.) Plop one on a floured board and roll out to thin. Put a spoonful of the potatoes in the middle, wet half the edge of the dough with a bit of water, fold over and press the edges together. Repeat. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. Try to get them out of the kitchen before they’re eaten up. Three medium potatoes and one huge onion made almost enough filling for three tubes of biscuits.

Go thou and soupify.

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