Another Hamlet!!!

Suffering from great walloping amounts of big spitty excitement today because today at Shakespeare, my friend Dwan (no, not DAWN, it's DWAN) told me that the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet with David Tennant as the tormented prince and Patrick Stewart as Claudius CAME OUT YESTERDAY ON DVD!!!

I am too excited and very, very glad that tomorrow is payday because I AM GOING TO OWN THIS VERSION, oh yes I am. Especially since this fall's Shakespeare Workshop has already been announced as -- you guessed it -- Hamlet.

I don't think I could ever have enough versions of this play: they're all really good, even the Hollywood version starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. A lot of people pan that version because so much script-cutting was done to pare the three-hour script down to a screenplay length suitable for the cinema instead of the stage, but Glenn Close is excellent as the guilty-as-sin Gertrude and Mel Gibson brings his Lethal Weapon twitchiness to his portrayal of Hamlet -- you keep expecting him to re-locate his dislocated shoulder on the dank wall of Elsinore Castle -- and I think the people who don't like it are just a bunch of ol' snobs.

But enough about Mel. David Tennant! David! Tennant! And PATRICK STEWART! I can hardly wait to get my hot little hands on that DVD.

"Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking...."

Ahh, look what I found - a picture of my grandparents, circa 1977, I'm thinking. Grandad's holding his pipe and obviously trying to explain what he was thinking when he bought that jacket -- he's always been a flashy dresser, famous for his go-to-hell golf pants and up until recently, a rainbow-colored wardrobe of neon-bright Lacoste shirts -- with Ma trying to get the better of him but always failing because she was the kindest person in the world and would never come right out and say, "I win because your jacket looks like the upholstery on the interior of a Mercury Grand Marquis."

They were always Coupe de Ville people anyway. Except for Ma's pink and white '57 Chevy that I accidentally back down her hilly driveway when I was three, and her olive green Barracuda. We used to go hill-jumping in that thing out on state road 109 where it wound across the ridges of the Blue River and down into the shallow little valley.

I called her Ma because when I first began addressing her, I was too small to form the word "Grandma" -- I was a child prodigy who walked at nine months and spoke complete, if garbled, sentences at fourteen months (all that smarty-pants-ness came screeching to a halt when I started trying to count.) I'm kind of sorry that name stuck because it didn't do her justice: she would have been better fit with the title "Best Grandmother the World Has Seen or Ever Will See, World Without End, Amen."

Anyway, she was my Julia Child-loving grandma, the one who sat and giggled with helpless delight when Julia said on one of her shows, "First, you take a leek....." It's her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that I used last night to make the beef bourguignon. She died when I was eighteen -- over half my life has been lived without her -- and I have never gotten over it. Probably never will.

Grandad is approaching his ninetieth birthday, so very old and frail. He can't feed himself anymore, having had a stroke the weekend before last -- we thought it would be the end of him, but he's a tough old nut -- and I was feeding him some chocolate pudding and a cold can of strawberry Ensure when I went to visit last Friday. I thought he might like a drink of water, so I held the straw to his lips and he took a slurp, his heavy eyelids widening in surprise.

"Heyyyy," he slurred indignantly, "thasss not Essssurrrre."

"I thought you might like a drink of water," I explained.

"Donnn like waaaaterrrrr," he advised me, giving me a crooked smile. "Esssssurrrrrre or nothinnn'."

Ensure it was!

As it turned out....

See that smiling man? The same man I wrote about with such appreciation yesterday, gushing over how he started out in our marriage of nearly nineteen years by liking steaks cooked until they were really and truly dead beyond any hope of resuscitation (he now likes them so that they're still emitting faint moos when served) and CANNED BISCUITS, but now likes the good food from my beloved Julia cookbooks?

Well. Yesterday evening, the table was set -- with a centerpiece, even! -- and the girls carried in the soup plates piled high with lusciously steaming beef bourguignon served on a bed of fluffy rice. Other than the fact that I had no fresh parsley to garnish each serving with as Julia asked me to do, it looked really nice. So hearty! So home-cooked! So French!

We said the grace before meals and lifted our forks, rapturously chewing the first few tender bites and my husband cheerfully remarked, "This reminds me of the stuff I used to eat for dinner when I was in the army."

The faint cha-chinging sound I heard in the distance may have been the oven timer going off. Or it may have been the sound of my Mother's Day gift being automatically upgraded.

Seeing the labels

Here are the Barefoot wines I mentioned a few posts ago, the delicious Moscato and the Pinot Noir I used in the beef bourguignon, featured with one of my grandmother's pretty little etched wine glasses.

I, no oenophile here in the heart of Hoosierland, usually judge my wines by the attractiveness of the labels. There have been quite a few times when this ridiculous manner of discernment has bitten me on the behind -- or perhaps more accurately, the tongue. So I have to say that I wasn't particularly attracted by either the label or by the name of the vineyard. Barefoot vineyards? I thought. Probably run by a bunch of hairy old hippies. Not nearly as adorable as my other recent find at Easter, Cupcake Vineyards, which produces a chardonnay that is really nice, plus has the cheek-pinchy cutest name and labels, like, ever.

One taste of that Moscato, though, and I stopped caring about hippies, excessive body hair and could only sigh, "Groovy, man. Totally, like, far out" as I sipped, resisting the urge to glug it straight from the bottle. There are explanations on the website about how Barefoot Wines & Bubbly came about its name, so I advise you to go give it a read while you enjoy a glass of whatever kind you choose.

That time of year again

One of our favorite pastimes in warm weather is to take a book and a glass of whatever beverage makes us happy out to the front porch to read. I took this picture of my husband last week when a pleasant little rain was pattering down on the streets and sidewalks of our neighborhood - he was so engrossed in his book, he didn't even know I was standing there with the camera.

He's recently taken to reading the novels of C.S. Harris, who has written a very nice mystery/suspense series set in England's Regency period, featuring a protagonist named Sebastian St. Cyr. There are five books in the series; he's on the third and said to me recently with a note of desperation in his voice, "I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish that last book."

I suggested that he take up quilting, or collecting match book covers, but he scorned both of those activities in favor of having me write to Ms. Harris and demand that she keep on writing mystery novels about Sebastian until her eyes fall out her head and she no longer has the strength to lift her weary hands to the keyboard, so goaded is she by her fan base's constant whining for more Sebastian.

"Agatha Christie grew to hate Hercule Poirot," I said reflectively. "And he came to a bit of a bad end in Curtain. You don't want that to happen to Sebastian, do you?"

He sighed. "You need to find me a new author."

I think I have. I discovered some mystery stories set in ancient Rome by the author Steven Saylor, the Roma Sub Rosa series. There are quite a few novels in the series, but of course our local library is missing the first two books, so it looks like a little jaunt over to Amazon.com is in order. Maybe for Father's Day? He likes getting books.

In the oven

Here's tonight's beef bourguignon, with the pinot noir from Barefoot Wine & Bubbly in Santa Rosa, California. I recently found Barefoot wines in the grocery store and I have fallen in love with their totally delicious Moscato - I am a huge fan of sweet dessert wines, especially when they have a delicious peachy flavor.

But anyway, I couldn't do a dramatic pour right straight from the bottle into the casserole like Amy Archer-as-Julie Powell did in Julie & Julia; I'm a piker and I have to use the trusty old Pyrex measuring cup I got as a wedding shower gift nineteen years ago.

The beef is simmering in the wine and stock combination in the oven right now, and the aroma is so heavenly, I'm nearly transported with happiness. And also my stomach is growling. In another half an hour, I have to go and sauté the mushrooms with a whole lot of butter and a little bit of chopped scallion. At 8:15, the girls will set the table and by 8:30, my husband will walk in the door, sniffing appreciatively, and say "What smells so good?"

Whoever would have thought that the guy who preferred canned biscuits -- CANNED BISCUITS, I ask you! -- to homemade and who felt, when all was said and done, that a sad little New York strip cooked extra well done until it was curled up on the plate was a really good steak would have come to appreciate Julia Child's recipes so much?

I wish I could invite you all here for dinner, my friends. Only I don't have enough cloth napkins and we'd all have to use the paper kind.

Bon appétit!

Petty thievery

There was a time when I used to think the clothes dryer was responsible for stealing odd socks here and there. Not that the socks themselves were odd; what was odd was the fact that while all four of us have two feet each, sometimes we'd have only one sock of a pair to keep our toes warm, or to keep our feet from going all sweaty and slippery inside our shoes.

I now have a new idea of where all those singleton socks go -- they go under the dining room table, courtesy of Zuzu. Here you see a pile of unpaired socks and also the squeaky Kong toy which is supposed to be Hershey's, but which Zuzu adores and carries under the table where she guards it jealously.

You'd think that would teach us all to pick up our socks from our bedroom floors, but no.... No.

A fabulous idea from Julia

I was poring over Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 today, having taken a quick peek at the beef bourguignon recipe to make sure I actually did have all the ingredients for tomorrow's dinner (I do) when I stumbled across something I swear I've never read before, even though there are parts of that book I nearly have committed to memory.

It was a suggestion on page 67 for how to turn canned beef broth into a succulent stock instead of the bland, boring stuff it is. Even though the suggestion was for beef, I figured it could be applied to canned chicken broth as well, so I gave it a whirl in tonight's homemade chicken and noodles and it turned out great.

For transforming canned broth into a more palatable and stock-like concoction, add the following for every two cups of broth (approximately one can):

2 tablespoons chopped carrots
2 tablespoons chopped celery
2 tablespoons chopped onion
1/2 cup dry white wine or dry vermouth/dry sherry

1/8 teaspoon thyme
a few sprigs of parsley
1 bay leaf

Simmer all these ingredients for half an hour and then sieve out, discarding all the added ingredients. Your "stock" is ready to use and very tasty.

Thank you, Julia, as always.

Everything not as it appears

See this dog? The dog in the little green sundress, looking very cute? Well, that cute dog would be the SAME DOG who found a dead baby bird that had blown out of its nest during a high wind and landed on our porch.

Zuzu brought the dead baby bird into the house as a fun toy to play with, tossing it gaily up in the air and then pouncing on it, giving it another toss, pouncing, tossing, pouncing, tossing, back and forth.

Finally, all of us wondered what this new fun toy was that was providing the dog with so much entertainment. Meelyn went to investigate, unwisely picking the toy up to get a closer look and then let out a high-pitched yelp of disgust that alerted not only our family, but also our neighbors down the block.

The fabulous new toy went bye-bye, Zuzu looked rebellious and refused to even play with her favorite toy, a stuffed monkey attached to a tennis ball that Carol bought for her. Meelyn went into the bathroom where she washed her hands twelve thousand times. Aisling insisted that we needed to have the carpets steam cleaned throughout the entire house, even in the rooms where the dead bird hadn't been carried. I worried about Diseases People Can Get from Birds, Especially Dead Ones (lice? dead lice?) because I am both a mother and a hypochondriac both on my own behalf and that of my family.

Then to ease the tension, Zuzu went into my bedroom and yacked up various pieces of dead baby bird. In three different places.

So if you were looking at her picture and thinking what a precious little fluffykins she is, please think of her jumping into your lap and licking your face with bits of dead baby bird clinging to her tongue and understand that things are not always as they appear.

Menu Plan Monday

This weekend was relatively quiet, with no teen festivities to attend, no sacraments being conferred and therefore no unexpected pizzas being ordered or celebratory dinners-out partaken of; to wit: I had a bunch of grocery money and spent it happily on some good stuff, despite the fact that gas prices keep going up and snatching away more of it every week.

Laura from I'm an Organizing Junkie is the originator of the Menu Plan Monday posts and you might want to go over to her blog and have a look around at all the interesting things there she has other than food. Do a little menu planning of your own - I've found it's a sure-fire way to avoid drinking an extra glass of wine as I frantically wonder if I can get away with serving peanut butter sandwiches and a bag of freezer-burned carrot coins for dinner. As it turns out, I can't, and even that second glass of liquid sunlight isn't enough to incoculate me from my family's displeasure.

Menu Plan for the Week of Monday, May 3, 2010

Monday - Homemade Chicken and Noodles with carrots and mashed potatoes

Tuesday - Beef Bourguignon from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I (With summer approaching, it'll be getting too warm outside to cook hearty, stick-to-your-ribs fare like beef bourguignon and chicken and noodles, so I thought I'd better get them out of my system)

Wednesday - Chicken salad sandwiches with grapes and walnuts (I may make my own puff pastry for luscious croissants tomorrow if I get the materials for my Shakespeare class on Wednesday organized in time)

Thursday - Grill night! Smoked sausage with baked potatoes

Friday - Spicy nachos (beef, shredded cheddar and pepper-jack, sliced grape tomatoes and green onions, sour cream and h-o-t salsa)

On Saturday, we ate that yummy traditional taco salad with the Catalina dressing and corn chips (some people use Western dressing or even Thousand Island and tortilla chips) and it was soo delicious. Sunday's fare was grilled chicken, baked sweet potatoes and green beans.

Mea culpa

I was reading back through April's posts and noticed that there was an unusually large amount of hissy-fitting going on. I'd like to blame it on the weather, my husband, the kids or the dogs, but the truth is much closer to what I wrote in my profile over there to the left: I am just an inwardly grumpy kind of person (although generally cheerful on the outside; I think my personality could be described as Attila the Honey) and I seemed to allow her freer reign than usual.

So if reading here in April caused you to flee for the Prilosec or maybe for the tequila, I apologize and will endeavor to be more pleasant in May.

How to: Give me acid indigestion

The girls and I spend a lot of time watching television shows on HGTV and TLC with the result that we can tell you right off the top of our heads what price a three-bed, two-bath, semi-d house in Toronto can fetch in the current market, how to de-clutter a closet to maximize storage space and what kind of jeans to wear if you have cellulite saddlebags.

So the other night we were watching some show we'd never watched before called "My First Home" or something like that? And it turned out to be the most annoying show I'd ever seen in my life and I'm still not over it. I don't know what the other episodes are like -- surely they can't all be that bad -- but I'm cautious about finding out because I like myself without an aneurysm.

This particular episode featured a young couple, newly married, who wanted to buy their first house. He was a teacher and she was a bank teller or something like that, so you get the impression that they weren't rolling in money, right? They were in their mid-twenties. Their realtor was a childhood friend of hers, and like most couples setting out to buy their first house, they had a list of requirements as long as a wet Monday on what kind of house they'd be willing to move into.

Their first desire was to live in a house with several acres of land. Their second? An older home, someplace with three bedrooms and several bathrooms and big gracious rooms. Initially, that didn't seem to be too much to ask, and I expressed mild interest to Meelyn on what type of house their agent would come up with, especially since the mortgage loan amount the couple had been approved for was not exactly a stellar sum.

"Will it be some tumbledown old shack, infested with spiders, featuring linoleum from 1934 and sitting on four acres of unmown weeds?" I wondered.

Much to my surprise, the realtor took the couple to a "historic home" (house agent-speak for the above truthful description) that had been completely renovated inside. The outside retained the historic character, but the interior had been completely gutted and remodeled to reflect a more modern sensibility -- an open concept with modern cabinetry, soothingly neutral colors and new light fixtures, appliances and cable TV and internet hookups. Since the house was sitting on a nice, big lot complete with a barn, I felt a little sad for the two of them because this cute place was at the very top of their budget.

To my surprise, however, they were giving it some serious consideration, already intent on modifying the brand-spankin'-new features of the home.

"Well, we'd really like to have granite countertops in the kichen and baths," she said, disdainfully noting the attractive laminate topping the fresh, clean cabinets.

"And we'd want to have hardwood floors throughout," he said, scuffing a scornful toe on the pristine wall-to-wall carpet.

"And definitely tile floors in the entryway, kitchen and bathrooms instead of this vinyl," she added, wrinkling her nose distastefully.

Yeah? Wouldja like to have those things? Well, newsflash for you here, young'uns: WHO WOULDN'T? Who wouldn't like to have expensive granite countertops in kitchen and baths, who wouldn't like to have gorgeous American hardwood stretching from great room to staircase to hallway to bedrooms? Who wouldn't want to have some nice quarry tile in the foyer?

But you know, you have to start somewhere, and if the house you're looking at is already at the top of your budget and it has none of those things you so deeply would like to have, maybe you should realize that you have Moët & Chandon tastes on a Bud Light budget and set your sights a little lower. Understand that those granite countertops in your parents' kitchen? They worked a long time to get those things and you shouldn't just expect to have them yourselves when you're just starting out, you spoiled, ridiculous brats....whoops! Sorry! Aunt Shelley gets a little irritable between the hours of five and seven-thirty every afternoon, but it's nothing a glass of (on sale) wine from the grocery store can't take care of. Just to take the edge off.

Anyway, these two dipwads, after looking at two other houses that were so far beneath their expectations that they both practically flinched when they walked through the respective front doors, they decided to spring for the top-of-the-budget place, BUT...

BUT!

They decided to take out a bank loan -- using what as collateral, I don't know -- so that their "upgrades" could be installed before they moved in because asking a couple of twenty-five year olds to move into a house without granite, hardwood and quarry tile? Well, that is JUST. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. Even if they're strapped for cash for the next twenty years. At least when they're pacing the floors, worried and wondering how they're going to pay the mortgage, they'll be pacing on that nice hardwood. Geez.