Something completely different today...a little blog meme.  (A "meme" is basically what it sounds like -- a bunch of information about, well, me.  So let's take a moment and focus on...me.

This is the Omnivore's Hundred list of foods the gastronomic Andrew Wheeler thinks everyone should try at least once in their lives.

The rules of the meme: bold those you have tried, strike through those you wouldn't eat on a bet.

My personal comments are in the parenthesis as is an explanation of what the food is if I had to look up.  I hope I don't insult anyone who might say "Well, of course I know what pho is you uncultured cretin."  Which, admittedly, in some respects I am.  I am fairly adventurous with food but I definitely lack exposure to most Asian or African dishes and traditions.

1. Venison (I've had very good venison and very bad venison -- 'cause when it's bad, it's really bad.)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding (OK, I guess,  but I think I might have a problem with the texture.)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp  (Have you seen these in the Erie Canal?  Have you seen the water in the canal?)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup)
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses  (French unpasteurized cheese)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream  (Yum, one of my favorite homemade flavors.)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras  (I may actually have a moral problem with that one -- force feeding geese and all.)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (Again a texture issue, I think).
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (No way....I need to protect my taste buds.)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters  (I didn't really enjoy them though.  They were fried and I bit it in half and there were just way too many colors represented in the other half for me to feel good about it.)
29. Baklava (Anytime, anywhere, thank you.)
30. Bagna cauda (Italian dipping sauce made with garlic, anchovies and olive oil)
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl >

33. Salted lassi (Indian yogurt drink)
34. Sauerkraut  (What else does one else with kielbasa?!)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar  (Ewwwww.)

37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects  (I had some kind of African ant in a peanut brittle at a special event at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls.  Really couldn't taste the ants but there was some rather disturbing picking stuff out of my teeth afterward.)
43. Phaal  (It's an Indian dish described as being hotter than vindaloo so no...keeping the taste buds safe yet again.)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whiskey from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (I think I'll beg off on potentially dangerous food.)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (Had some at a Sushi restaurant -- too squishy)
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi  (Pickled fruit from Japan...sounds like it has potential.)
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal  (Have you seen Supersize Me ? There's just too much goop on the Big Mac.)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine  (Oh, yum.  French fries, squeaky cheese curds and gravy...what's not to like?)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads  (Again, a texture thing)
63. Kaolin  (I couldn't find out for sure what this is....)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (That's the stinky fruit from southeast Asia...I've never even seen one here in the states.  Now if you send me to southeast Asia, I would be happy to try one.)

66. Frogs’ legs (I've heard they look like little ballerina legs on the plate so I guess I don't know.)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis

69. Fried plantain
70.  Chiltterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe  (No dangerous food please.)
74. Gjetost, or brunost  (some kind of Nordic goat cheese)
75. Roadkill (Um, no.)

76. Baijiu  (Chinese wine)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong  (Chinese tea with a smoky flavor)
80. Bellini  (cocktail)
81. Tom yum  (Thai hot and sour soup)
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky (Japanese stick biscuit dipped in chocolate -- they're very satisfying and reasonably common and you can get them at most megamart groceries).
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate  (some kind of Spanish coco)
91. Spam (Tried it in a cheap moment in college, not my greatest culinary moment.)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa (North African hot red sauce made with ground chilies and rose petals.)
94. Catfish (I am a women full of contradictions.  Although I wouldn't eat carp, I like catfish, which I believe, is also a bottom feeder.)
95. Mole poblano (I like me a good mole.)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (Actually, I've never eaten any kind of reptile.  Although everyone says it tastes like chicken.)

>>>

It's your birthday
and I wanted to shower you with gifts
of both sea and sky
But no, all you get is bad poet-try.

Ohio!  Get it?  Can anyone else hear Elmer Fudd saying this in their head or is it just me and way too many hours watching Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings as a kid? (If you want to see the original 1949 Bugs Bunny episode, sit back, click here and enjoy. Hoo fah, you really can find anything on YouTube.) 

We were off to visit my DDS (dear, dear sister) in exotic eastern Ohio last week.  Perhaps combining "exotic" and "eastern Ohio" seems an unlikely union but any place that you are not frequently seems exotic when you visit.  To be sure, there are places that are intrinsically exotic like the Ngorongoro Crater, Tibet, London, Rome, Mumbai etc.  And perhaps eastern Ohio doesn't quite fit into that category but a place can certainly become exotic, even momentarily, just by encountering unexpected beauty, bustle or a unique experience. For example we (DDS, DC (Dear Children?) and myself) were wandering around Target shopping for school supplies and encountered ladies in starched white caps, dresses in shades of a ubiquitous blue-black, dark socks, black sneakers and speaking a dialect of German. That was exotic and prompted quite a few astute questions from Erin regarding the role of religion and dress. Earnest questions from a 6 year old can be challenging and providing non-judgemental answers, filled with potential pitfalls  -- "What if they didn't feel like wearing a dress today?"  "Does wearing a dress make them better at being Amish?"  Yipes.  Eastern Ohio is home to the second largest population of Amish in the US so it's not surprising that they were there but unusual experience for our family.   

We also went to the Trumbull County Summer Sizzler event which, despite its less than descriptive title, was an agriculture fair .  It was all geared towards kids so everyone stayed interested and had fun.  Here was our first exotic encounter.



Really.  Skunks?  As pets?  I didn't even know that was an option.





Aidan loved the antique tractors.  I didn't take a picture of the farmers (all older men and presumably the owners of the tractors) that were sitting and talking by the tractors but any Norman Rockwellesque picture from a faded Saturday Evening Post that you remember would do.




And what farm fair would be complete without the "hunt-for-the-little-rubber-tractors-in-a-kiddie-pool-of-feed-corn" game.  Actually, I dug around in the feed corn too and it was....cool, tactile and very pleasant. 


See... a bit of the exotic in Ohio.

On the fiber front, I took this


did this


and made it into this.



I'm extremely pleased with the outcome.  

Spinning details:
Fiber: 4.3 oz of BFL wool from All Spun Up
Method:  Drop Spindle
Final Product:  About 260 yds of 2-ply DK weight
Knitting Plans:  Maybe a pair of mittens

1.  Am I in a random rut?  Hmmmm.  Is that even possible?   (I love me a good oxymoron.)

2.  Megan (DD) and I were watching PBS together last night, which is something we often do, and we heard a tag line that made us both almost do a spit take with the tea we were drinking.  (Make sure you read this out loud as the ambiguity that drives the humor of the statement happens with the spoken word, not the written word.)  "History detectives will return in just a moment...but first...."  <Um, not a pretty image....at that point Megan and I totally cracked up.>


3.  This is my menu board in the kitchen....Can't imagine why the Steblens were trepidatious about coming to dinner...



4.  Aidan and I were wandering around in the garden this afternoon and came away with another yummy harvest.... 


Thanks Aidan!  


5.  Oh yeah, there has been knitting too.  I started this sock for Erin (also a DD) out of Knit Picks newish Felici sock yarn.  Felici is a 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon yarn and I am pleasantly surprised by its softness and its bounce.  At $5.29 for a ball, that means an adult pair of socks can be knit for $10. 58 which is rather thrifty.  (And, yes, I was a mathematics major in college, thank you. I doubled $5.29 without the use of a calculator. Woohoo.)   And Erin's petite feet only take one ball which is a lot of entertainment for that price.  Knit Picks' other basic sock yarn, Essential, is a bit more stringy but perfectly functional and plenty soft enough for next-to-the-skin wear. 




Knitty details:
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Gelato
Needles:  US size 1
Pattern:  Chevron pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch  

The Chevron pattern isn't particularly stretchy so the cuff has to accommodate the widest part of the foot.  Unfortunately due to the distinct un-stretchiness of the pattern, even on Erin's narrow foot, this sock isn't going to fit her for very long.  I may knit the cuff on US size 2 needles for the second sock so we don't have to wiggle it onto her foot. Of course, then the socks won't match perfectly which may just bother my sense of order.  Decisions. Decisions.


 

I do like this time of year in western NY....warm (but not too warm, highs in the 80s are fine with me), wet (but not too wet....we've been getting one gully washing, worm choking thunderstorm a day which doesn't curtail too many activities but means we don't have to water the garden) and still a lot of daylight.  Nice...definitely a payoff for the long, cold, dark of January.  

Today I've had the first harvest from my garden!

Yummy!

And I finished some socks for DH....

Here are the details:
Pattern: Eesti Trail Hiking Socks by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Cascade 220 (wool) in mallard, white is Elle Rae
Needles:  US size 4

It has been a good day.

Good bye, loyal tube TV.  You have served us well.  (Well, until the people turned green and the menus were blurred to the point of illegibility, and the color of food just made us cringe) This well-used RCA, bought by DH before he was even DF (Dear Fiance) -- this is an amazingly piece of electronics that dates from the late 1980's.  It has been putt and dragged from Rochester to Leesburg VA, two houses in Fairport, one in Lewiston, NY and back to Fairport once more.  So this weekend we made the happy leap to 21st century media. 

So adieu to this...




and say hello to these



and to these



and finally to this



Ahhhh, that's better.

(That's "Moose A. Moose", Noggin's mascot, on the screen there...um...just in case you were interested.)

Just a few random thoughts for a Monday

1. The United States is big....really big.  It amazes me how much space is still out there and as long as you're not traveling though one of the megalopoli, you can drive for hours and hours and see almost nothing.  (Clarifying...when I say "nothing" I just mean not a lot of people, towns, stores, sidewalks, houses...the kind of stuff that I see on a daily basis.  There is, however, beautiful scenery with farms, rolling hills, rivers, green valleys and just lush, lush,lush trees and undergrowth. No wonder people in past centuries preferred navigating by rivers -- by far the clearest path to anywhere.)  When we drove up to Bar Harbor from here, we drove through just hours and hours of rolling green hills and mountains.  Going east from Rochester, there's really nothing until Syracuse, then nothing, then Albany, then nothing in the Berkshires (old, so very old worn green mountains), then quite a lot for a couple of hours around Boston, then nothing, then Portland, then nothing, then Augusta, then really nothing, then Bangor.  Then just a bit of civilization along the narrow corridor along the route to Bar Harbor.

2.  I drove to Washington DC and back this week (again, a lot of not much until you get within 2 hours of DC) and, I still can't quite guess why there is such a profusion of "adult" bookstores in Pennsylvania.  I'll ponder that another time.  But they herald the limits of almost every town on your way in and again on your way back out.  Now, the sight of "adult" bookstore don't usually make me chuckle but one enterprising owner actually had me laughing out loud.  On the marquee out front, that usually has such pithy enticements like "private booths", instead this one proclaimed in bright red letters "Christmas in July sale!!!".    Um...<chuckle> enterprising.

3.  Oh, and there has been knitting too. Here a couple of the latest projects:

This one is for a DS (dear sister) who shall remain nameless... (Hope you don't mind a preview DS)


It's actually really hard to see the detail so here is a close-up of the cable detail:


Here are the other knitting type details:
Pattern: Cable Rib socks by Erica Alexander
Yarn: Knit Picks donegal tweed custom dyed by me with Wilton cake dyes in purple, burgundy and periwinkle
Needle:  US size 1

Also Mike really like his last set of hiking socks so I decided to make him another pair:



First one is done, the other is still in progress.
Knitty details:

Pattern: Eesti Trail Hiking Socks by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Cascade 220 (wool) in mallard, white is Elle Rae
Needles:  US size 4

5.  One more note about the drive between here and Washington DC....you really do see some interesting things when you're in a car by yourself for 16 hours.....

This was in front of a school bus dealership north of Harrisburg....



'cause nothing says "Buy a bus" like a purple and turquoise dragon.  (?????!!!)

 

 

(No pictures or knitting in this post, just some time on my own private soapbox.)

We walked into the village for lunch the other day at Riki's, the local diner.  Erin, my six year old, ordered a cheeseburger and I watched her carefully take her cheeseburger out of its bun, turn to her right, and drop it into my lap.  Needless to say, I was a bit surprised.  So I asked, calmly, lots of control, not screeching like my first inclination, "Why?  Why did you just plop your cheeseburger in my lap?"  Her answer was, "Because I wanted it to cool down." OK, reasonably logical if not a bit misguided.  (This wasn't a complete mess because I did have a napkin in my lap.)  I pointed out that if we moved the bun, her plate would be a much more appropriate place to have a cheeseburger cool down.  My point here is sometimes I don't understand people's motives.  I was lucky enough to be able to ask Erin, but that opportunity doesn't always present itself.

Case in point, when we arrived home from vacation, we found a 3 page single-spaced letter from the parents of one of the children in my oldest daughter's 3rd grade class.  It was basically a "let's burn some books" letter.  The letter had not only been sent to us, but to all the other parents of the children in the class, the teacher, the principal and the superintendent of the district.  All this because their daughter had borrowed a Goosebumps book from the teacher's library and read the "whole" book on the way home on the bus and it ruined her innocence by introducing scary images to her.  By the end of the letter, the parents had offered to buy all the Goosebumps books from the teacher and replace them with books that are more "edifying".  (Have you ever heard the word "edifying" sound so chilling?) The offer was simply a desire to burn books masked by their available wealth.   

Here are my 3 major problems with the letter and its contents:

1.  Innocence is not fostered through ignorance.  Innocence and ignorance are two different words for a reason.  I appreciate these parents wanting to preserve their child's innocence. We all want to preserve the innocence of our children for as long as possible but that isn't accomplished by not establishing a dialog with them.  If there is a genre of books a parent would prefer a child not read, that child should certainly be aware of this by the end of third grade.  Megan (9 year old daughter), Mike (DH) and I have certainly talked about different kinds of books, what we like, what we don't like and why.  We have these discussions regarding television programs and internet web sites as well.  So if you really are that concerned about some genre or author you don't want your child reading, tell her.  She is 9 years old going on 10 by the end of 3rd grade, so she is certainly old enough to understand your instructions.  

2.  A large part of the letter was made up of quotes strung together from the Goosebumps book using ellipses.  I read a significant amount of non-fiction and as part of that I evaluate the author's position on their given subject. I've found that an excess use of ellipses when quoting a source greatly reduces the impact of that source.  In other words, if the author can't find a direct quote to use to support his or her position and has to cobble together a quote using ellipses, that author is presenting a weak argument.  Using many ellipses allows taking quotes out of context or allows the stringing together of potentially unrelated ideas leaving out the intervening literature. Using a series of ellipses, I could certainly string together some pretty horrifying quotes from classic literature like Homer's Odyssey, Beowulf, any of Shakespeare's tragedies or certainly the Old Testament.  It is the literary equivalent of TV sound bites and it isn't a very skilled way to present an argument. 

3.  Lastly, if you insist on sending your letter to such a wide audience, be advised most people stop paying attention after the first page.  We are all busy people and appreciate concise, well thought out arguments.   If it takes you 3 single-spaced pages to present your point, consider another read through and some editing, you're being inconsiderate and verbose. 

 
The ironic part of this is, I don't like the Goosebumps books.  I don't like Stephen King either.  I just don't enjoy reading (or watching)  horror. It's just not my idea of a good time.  However, I'm not arrogant enough to make the jump that because I don't enjoy it, then no one should.   Plenty of people find these books entertaining and that's fine with me.  I just hope the teacher isn't discouraged from having a free lending library in her classroom -- that really was a nice extra offered to the kids by this teacher.

Back to my original thoughts on motivation.... So why did these people plop this cheeseburger in my lap? 

I had a lot of time to knit in the car on vacation -- it's a long, long way from here to Bar Harbor, Maine.  I believe it was about 14 hours so I had time to take a design idea (little pirates I saw on theHello Yarn blog as a free pattern for a hat) and to do the math to make the pattern work on socks for  3-year old little boy feet.  I picked out yarn from my stash before I went -- some now sadly discontinued Knit Pick Sock Garden in Zinnia and some still-available Knit Picks Essential sock yarn in dark blue.  Here is what I came up with...

Pirate socks!


These are the socks on a rock outside our hotel in Kennebunkport.  They are on a rock because I had little success photographing them on 3-year old little boy feet.  Note:  3 year old little boy feet are not know for staying still.

Case in point:  There those socks go!




I pressed old sister Megan into helping hold the little boy feet still.  It goes without saying that this met with little success:




Although it was fun to watch . 

I did finally get the picture I wanted of little boy feet in pirate socks by having Megan block his path around the bed.  "What no where to run?!"

...and, yes thank you, we had a lovely time.  I love our family vacations, lots of places to play and lots of time to just spend as a family.  We hit a few places over the past week and a half... Herkimer, NY (home of the Herkimer "diamond"), Bar Harbor, Maine and Kennebunkport, Maine.  So given the vacation, this post is going to be picture heavy. Here goes...



I don't alway dress my children like they're joining the witness protection program but it was extremely sunny and we were in an open pit mine in Herkimer.  We found some nice 1.5 cm "diamonds" (actually double terminated quartz crystals).




Total boondoggle for me.  Here I am in front of Webs (Hear the angels singing??), the east coast's biggest yarn store located in Northampton, MA. Major kudos to DH for taking all the kids to lunch so I could seriously focus on the acre or so of yarn. I wandered the aisles, jaw agape, for about the first half hour before I could even start to focus on a project.   Ended up with Webs' own Colrain yarn in caramel for the cabled jacket on this page.




On the bar in Bar Harbor.  Yup, finally dawned on me.  Hello? The town is named for the sand bar exposed at low tide that connects the town of Bar Harbor with the Porcupine Islands.  Color me clueless because, though I've been there twice before, I never made the connection.   Kids were total happy campers poking about in a couple of tide pools off the sand bar.    





Sometimes you can take a tourist board theme too far.  This ice cream shop had lobster flavored ice cream.  Um, yuck.  The rest of the homemade flavors were extremely tasty though.




"I am Alexander H. Phillips. I own a mansion und a clock." *




Family at Thunder Hole in Acadia National Park.  One of the few pictures we have of all of us to prove we do travel as a group.  Thank you random passerby.  (Thunder Hole was distinctly un-thundery, more flushy and glubby. But Flushing Hole wouldn't attract the tourists, would it?)





Ahhhh, the Kraken!!!




On top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.  Yes, it was that windy.  Yes, there should be a amazing view of the ocean behind them.  Yes, that is a sock I made.


And a couple of quintessential Maine shots in closing.


On top of Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park.



Bar Harbor, Maine.

*Extra points to readers who know the source of that slightly altered quote.