My friend S. is visiting for the weekend! Yay! She had a 10 hour train trip from Montreal, poor lady. Right now she's sitting on our couch knitting socks. Soon, we will do some baking.
New cds in the gaspode household, so that's a bit exciting. Yay, Christmas! We got: The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers, Wolfmother - Wolfmother, Mission of Burma - The Obliterati, and Boris - Pink. We also have a couple of itunes and amazon.com gift certificates so more new music will be coming.
I really like Boris. Although their latest album sounds a lot like Jakob, a New Zealand band. This is not, however, a bad thing. Here are a couple of their songs, for comparison purposes.
And I'm reading some more good books.
My mind went to wondering, as it often does, just how many gallons of
dog urine get pissed upon the streets of New York City on a daily
basis.
I made a mix cd for my friend J. I've been friends with him for about a year (sidebar: it's so cool when you actually manage to make a new friend after the age of 30 - thank dog for the internets where I can "meet" people and pretend they are my friends) and I realised a few weeks ago that I had no idea what sort of music he liked. The fact that I didn't know this gave me a perverse sort of pleasure, because I remember the days when I found out someone's taste in music before their last name. And yeah, I totally judged them. Heh. So anyways, there I was feeling all mature about not caring, but still interested. He said that he didn't really listen to new music (favorite artist: Lou Reed) but he did like Belle and Sebastian. And I was all like "I love Belle and Sebastian! Hey, we have similar tastes in music - I'll make you a mix cd!" (sidebar 2: I know this isn't an original thought, but weren't mix tapes so much better? You forced the person to listen to the music in the order you dictated. And it's the order that turns an average mix tape masterful).
The cd took on a bit of a life of its own, as they tend to, and it turned out a little poppier than I anticipated. This is what I put on it.
1. The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show
2. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Over and over
3. Of Montreal - The Actor's Opprobrium
4. Slowdive - Alison
5. The Arcade Fire - Wake Up
6. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
7. The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle
8. Sons and Daughters - Blood
9. Low - Transmission
10. Straitjacket Fits - If I were You
11. My Bloody Valentine - Loomer
12. Stars - soft revolution
13. Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space
14. Bike - Slide on By
15. The New Pornographers - Sing me Spanish Techno
I realised that this list probably looks like jonmc's worst nightmare. I can live with that :) And yeah, I really like the New Pornographers. Here's a couple of songs from the mix.
Straitjacket Fits, as I have mentioned before, are from my hometown. Their first couple of albums had a nicely balanced dynamic between the raw guitary songs written by Shayne Carter and the dreamy pop sensibilities of Andrew Brough. Their final album, after Brough left the band just wasn't as good. You can see what Brough produces without Carter in Slide on By, the final single of the album Take in the Sun, by Bike, his post-Fits band that only put out one album.
(also, the next mix is up at outof5)
gaspode's improvised fish soup
So I took the afternoon off today, but to relax, not to go shopping! Even so, I felt a little guilty around 6pm when mr. gaspode said he'd be home by 8, and I'd spent the whole afternoon mooching around the city and the apartment. Not guilty enough to actually go out to the grocery store though (we had been out of town all weekend hence the lack of provisions.) Anyways, this is what I came up with. It was yumptious! I'm totally gonna make it again.
So everything was based around the catfish I found in the freezer. I was pretty sure it wasn't too old, so thought that was a good start. There wasn't enough to actually make it the meal though, which is where soup comes in. What goes with fish? Wine of course! And then garlic, and maybe some tomato for a different main flavour. We always have wine, so that was fine. And I found a can of diced "garlic and olive oil" style tomatoes in the cupboard so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best with that. And we always have stock and garlic cloves.
First I got some butter and olive oil and heated it up. I chopped up, oh, 10? big cloves of garlic (You can never have too much garlic - BAM! -) and lightly sauteed it. Then I found some rice, and thought that would be good to bulk it up, but there was only a couple of handfuls (I dunno? 1/3 of a cup?). I chucked that in the saucepan too and stirred stirred stirred. I was hoping to find some arborio rice in the cupboard because that's really good and absorptive (it's the one for making risotto) but I just used regular white long grain. I'll use more next time. I also added 3 or 4 chopped sundried tomatoes. After a few minutes I splashed in some white wine (Oyster Bay Chardonnay from NZ, because that's the first one I got out of our bar) and kept stirring until the rice had absorbed it all. Then I splashed in some more and did the same. Probably used about 1/2 a cup of wine or so. After all the wine had absorbed (that's why the rice is good - takes up the wine flavor so you don't lose it) I chucked in the can of tomatoes and a cup or so of chicken stock. I knew I should have made stock from all the shrimp bodies I have in the freezer before now but I hadn't gotten around to it. I bet it would have tasted good. Anyways, chicken stock it was. Then I chopped up the catfish into little squares, maybe an inch by an inch and threw them in. Finally, I added red pepper flakes, enough to make mr. gaspode notice but not me (he is less heat tolerant) so that would have been about 2 tablespoons worth. Brought it to the boil then reduced heat and simmered for half an hour or so, until all the rice was cooked.
I called mr. g on his way home from work and he picked up some ciabatta and we had that with the soup. So good! It was definitely an experiment I'm repeating, and really good considering I raided the pantry for all of the ingredients!
Ingredients:
butter
olive oil
garlic
rice
sundried tomatoes
white wine
chicken stock
canned tomatoes (diced, 16oz)
catfish (around 1/3 to 1/2 lb)
red pepper flakes
What were your top 5 TV shows of 2006?
I think there aren't even 5 TV shows I watch. Hrmmm. Well, all the TV I watch is escapist and trashy so...
1. Scrubs
2. Gilmore Girls
3. Project Runway
4. The O.C. (SO much better this season!)
5. um... that's it. For live TV anyway. We watch The Wire on dvd and it's fanfuckingtastic. We're also getting through the old Sopranos episodes.
Finally I win a round in our group's NFL game picks. 12/16 correct! Yeah! I'm now sitting second overall. Dano's still going to win, though.
I often want to post about science, particularly evolution, but I would come across as Richard Dawkins's more strident twin, so I don't. So I'm just gonna post this. It's not new, but it's good.
How long ago did you arrive here 'pode?
5 years ago in January.
How did you come to the US of A?
I came over to Baltimore (U Maryland Medical School) to start a post-doc in neuroendocrinology. I defended my PhD thesis the day before I flew out! I lived in Baltimore for 3 years and then moved to New York City at the start of 2005.
Do you like it here, are you happy here?
I like it fine. I get homesick on occasion and I was ready to move if the political climate didn't look like changing. I have met some wonderful people, and definitely grown a lot as a person since I moved here. There are aspects about living in the USA (well, the north-east, because I can't really generalise to the whole country) that I like a lot better than New Zealand (and vice versa of course!) I like the generosity and inclusiveness of Americans. But I miss the laid-back attitude and the "work to live" ethos of New Zealanders.
Have you been back to NZ since your arrival?
Twice. Once after only a year, and once again last February. Both times with mr gaspode. .
Is your husband from NZ too?
He is not. He is a Marylander, and grew up in the same area as Hugh
Janus. They went to rival high schools! I met him when he was finishing
up his MD/PhD at U Maryland. We are talking about moving to New Zealand
in about 18 months, so that will be very different for him.
There are little moments in my day when I realise I'm not fully integrated into the USA just yet. Like when I call them "inverted commas" instead of "air-quotes" in speech. (I have no idea what you call them when you're writing). That got me laughed at during lab meeting a while back.
And then yesterday I had to go for a C-T scan and I wander back with the technician and he shows me to a changing room and says "you're just going to have to remove your pants and put on this gown over top of your t-shirt". There's a beat and I say "you mean my jeans, right?" Because my brain interpreted that as "take off your underwear" which... I don't think you really need to do for an x-ray.
Oh yeah, and then there was the leave-in conditioner. I'm reading the instructions on the back, because it always amuses me to read instructions for completely obvious things, and it says something like "put a quarter-sized amount of conditioner into the palm of your hand and then work into your hair". And I'm all like "quarter-sized of what, motherfuckers? Way to explain!" And then I realised they mean a quarter. As in 25 cents. Duh.
But at least I say toMAYto now.
