The pear fritters are slightly disappointing. I didn't want to make latkes (I haven't ruled them out -  I do have 7 more nights), and the pear fritter recipe on epicurious just looked yummy. Having never deep-fried anything in my life, I was slightly underprepared for the quantity of smoke, and just how fast things burn in the pot. Still, an interesting attempt. I didn't set off the smoke alarm, but like I said, I have 7 more nights. Last year, I managed to set it off 4 times with just the oil bulbs in the chanukiah. This year, thanks to the snow storm (not a storm by east coast/midwest standards, but they don't clean the roads here), UPS won't drive up my hill, and so I have no bulbs. Thankfully, I scrounged up candles, but I really hope UPS finally delivers my bulbs and wicks - I only have enough for 2 days with candles. 

I'm going to visit my aunt and uncle outside Seattle for Thanksgiving - I've been doing that every  year since moving the the west coast. Every year, I bring baked goods. Every year, I curse my oven. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking on a gas stove, but for baking, electrical works much better. Especially electrical, accurate, and convection. Knowing that the oven is inconsistent at best, I ran through two recipes tonight, to make sure that they're going to work for Thursday. I made a cranberry almond tart and a pear frangipane tart. The house is full of smoke, and both tarts are underdone. The smoke is not the oven's fault; I simply forgot that the reason I have 2 sets of springform pans is because one set leaks. And leak it did, while the cranberry tart was finishing its stint in the oven. The cooking time on it was ok, or would have been, had I been able to keep it in there another 5 minutes. On the pear tart, I'm guessing that it needed oh, another 15. I made cranberry tea bread the other day, and the cook time on that was ok; it was from the same source as the cranberry tart. I think that  source uses standard ovens, while the pear tart recipe source used convection. I had hoped to be able to give my neighbors more baked goods; alas, these are not fit for public consumption. In any case, I'm not sure I like the pear recipe. It was way too sweet, so perhaps I'll make something else. I really wanted to make something with pears; I seem to be on a pear kick, or, more specifically, poached pear kick. The recipe called for poaching the pears before arranging them on the tart, which is why I went for it, and I'm burning cardamom-poached pear candles.

I spent Rosh Hashanah with the lovely, lovely family of a local rabbi. Not only are he and his wife immensely knowledgeable in Jewish law, but they also have 4 wonderful kids, and the rebbetzin is a phenomenal cook. I live too far from shul to walk, and they frequently invite me to stay overnight for Shabbos and holidays. At this point, I should probably start paying rent. Anyway, after being fed there, and at the home of another couple I know in the neighborhood, I'm still stuffed. This is a day and a minor (sunrise to nightfall) fast later! I made a chanterelle/shallot/barley soup, and roasted a couple of my Asian pears with balsamic vinegar and butter and was full after a bowl of soup. The pears are coming in, and must be picked/knocked off the tree before they fall and become dessert to the deer's dinner of my roses, raspberry and kiwi leaves, sweet peas, and so forth. I made pear cake over the weekend, and there will probably be more strange uses of pears soon. Morgan claims that I can't complain about the deer, since I a. live in the woods, and b. set out a smorgasbord for them by planting a garden. I suppose he's right, but I refuse to accept utter decimation. I purchased a bottle of something called Plantskydd to spray on the plants, which is supposed to smell so disgusting that the deer stay away. The stuff is made of pigsblood blended with vegetable oils to make it stick to plants, so I emailed the abovementioned rabbi to make sure it's ok for me to use, to which he said yes. After the first spritz, I realized that there was no way I could possibly put something that foul on my food. The stench is truly unbelievable. Thus far, I'm only spraying it on flowers, but since the deer have discovered my cucumbers while I was away, I may have to start spraying the veggies as well. On the other hand, since I have so many cucumbers that I've started pickling them, I probably won't miss a few.

Well, I'm in Arizona. After getting up at 4 on Tuesday to take the 6am shuttle flight, and spending the day in meetings, I got to go to Phoenix for my first real pizza in over a year (the last time I was in AZ). This was all followed by more meetings today, followed by the news that the shuttle flight is delayed from 3:45 to 7pm, so I won't be in Oregon until midnight. Ugh. The nice thing is that we didn't fly commercial, so there was no security, and I am getting on the return flight with a cooler full of pizza, calzones, cheese sticks, and an order of something called volcanic chicken from the kosher meat restaurant next door to the kosher pizzeria. The temperature is under 100, which apparently is a big deal. To me, it's still too damned hot.

I seriously lack consistency (in both topic and frequency) on this thing. Today's topic - the yard. Since I've moved into the Treehouse two years ago, I've been making loony attempts at gardening. This being Oregon, 90% of what I'm doing is trying to prevent weeds from taking over. Since I live in the biggest urban wilderness in the US, in one of the wetter regions of the US, that's a pretty tall order. I got a late start this year on flowers because of some work stuff that was going on, so other than roses and nasturtiums, the flowers aren't blooming yet, but I have more salad greens and raspberries than I know what to do with. I also have Japanese Knotweed. Japanese Knotweed is a vile, horrid, evil plant that's trying to take over the world. It grows to 13 feet and can reach that height in weeks. In my yard, it was partially eradicated by my landlord before I moved in, but since the tinies bit of leftover root can sprout again, I've been battling it since I moved in. Digging it up is hopeless unless you're willing to get a backhoe and remove, say, the top 10 feet of dirt from your yard. It takes over wetlands, streams, forests, everything. The stems and roots can't be composted; it's actually against the law to do so in the UK, since it will sprout in even the hottest compost pile. So I yank up the sprouts in hopes of weakening it, and Morgan is painting the leaves of the ones in the lawn with RoundUp. I'm not a big fan of heavy-duty chemicals, but knotweed is a plant that makes the most eco-conscious, organics-loving Oregonians reach for the Costco-sized spray jugs. I'm not kidding - I've talked to people who advocate injecting RoundUp into knotweed stalks to destroy it, in order to prevent further degradation of the ecosystem. I'm definitely fighting a losing battle with the stuff, and yet I persevere.

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The kosher meat delivery for Portland was supposed to take place yesterday. Kosher meat (and various other items) are not easily available in Portland, and so a very nice person in the community organizes a twice-monthly shipment of cases (yes, cases, which frequently run well over $100) of meat, blocks of cheese, etc. Anyone care for 9 pounds of chicken livers? We order in advance, and then pick up in front of the Chabad synagogue. Anyway. Morgan and I showed up at the drop-off site, only to find out that what I had ordered didn't come in. Neither did the orders of 25 other people, since the Rubashkin plant in Iowa got raided last month, thereby cutting supply. Now, I am not a big fan of Rubashkin anyway - they've been cited by state and federal agencies for labor and animal cruelty violations. Also, PETA has been on their case. Since kosher slaughter methods are always under more scrutiny than non-kosher ones, the PETA allegations must be taken with a grain (or an entire package) of kosher salt, and the FDA isn't exactly a paragon of reliability. However, it would be nice to know that the spirit of the laws of kashrus were being obeyed along with the letter of the law. In New York, I could find happy organic kosher free-range chickens. In Portland, it's Rubashkin or nothing. Ideally, I'd buy my kosher meat from a friendly local kosher butcher, who buys his meat from a local farm, and which is slaughtered by a knowledgeable local rabbi. Maybe in a few years, the Portland community will be sufficiently organized to do this - we did just get our own supply of local milk. In the meantime, do I finally decide that it's unacceptable, and stop buying meat? I eat meat at home 2-3 times a month, and I do have a double kitchen, but I'm just as happy eating fish. Granted, grilling is nice in the summer, and Morgan would be utterly horrified, but is it worth it for my own peace of mind? Among the reasons I keep kosher is my belief that the laws of kashrus (or, more precisely) kosher slaughter are more humane than others methods. Can I close my eyes to the fact that in a place as large as the Agriprocessors facility, things can go wrong? Can I continue to believe that a "reliable" hechsher signifies happy animals whose life is ended instantly by a razor-sharp blade across the proper blood vessel, but who are unaware, prior to that moment, of what's about to happen to them? I'm not so sure. Of course, the standard response is "consult your Local Orthodox Rabbi," which I will do, again, but I doubt that the answer I get will be more satisfactory that the one I got last time. It'll be farmed rainbow trout for dinner on Sunday. The implications of farmed trout will be discussed at a later date. The salmon fishery off the Oregon coast has been suspended this year, so unless I get Alaskan sockeye (which I don't like very much) or spend $40 a pound on Copper River salmon, salmon has been removed from my table. 

Whatever was in the chimney is gone now, thankfully. Still no clue what it was, but at least I won't have to set up traps. I'm home sick from work today. It's the first time since I started work at MSMF that I'm actually home sick, as opposed to home sick and working my butt off from bed. It's kinda nice. Still, I'm spending Shabbos and the first two days of Passover at the rabbi's house, so I have to finish off pre-Passover cleaning and get over to SW Portland by 7:30-ish. My kitchen counters are so clean now it's frightening, and I do wish they'd stay that way all year...

It's been scrabbling and flopping about, and I don't know what it is. It woke me up this morning - I actually thought it was an animal of some sort in my loft, before realizing that the cat would've probably let me know if that were the case. I've narrowed down the location to a chimney that leads to where the old stove was; at present, it has no outlet in the house, it just ends with a capped 10-inch pipe on the first floor. I have no way of dealing with this - I've emailed the landlord, who's usually excellent about sorting out odd situations, but in the meantime, there's a poor critter suffering in there. The cat, is, of course, very interested, and has explored the phenomenon. On a happier note, things seem to be growing quite well in my garden, but unfortunately, growing well refers to not only flowers, but also to weeds of many shapes and sizes, and to a magnificent tunnel system by the local mole council. The cat has been supervising the construction, and seems pleased with its progress. Morgan is thinking about getting me something called the "solar moler," but I think it's because the name sounds funny.

I want to scream every time I see a Subaru ad. Don’t get me wrong, I love Subarus; my little blue Impreza was a great car. What bothers me is the extra comma in the slogan “It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.” It’s like hearing nails on a chalkboard whenever I open a magazine. The comma is not needed, and its presence drives me absolutely insane. A company that has so many college professors and librarians among its customers must pay more attention to grammar! Yesterday, I broke down and sent an email to an address indicated on the Subaru website. The response I received follows.

 

Dear Ms. M….

Thank you for visiting the Subaru Web site and for your message.  We appreciate that you took the time to bring this concern to our attention.  It seems as if it is gramatically correct to make this statement with or without the comma.  At Subaru of America, we have two former English Professors.  When developing this motta, we consulted with these two professors.  When I first received a message like yours, I checked with both of these professors, who I am friendly with.  They both confirmed that it is gramatically correct either way.

Thank you for your time and feedback.  I hope that you have a wonderful week!

Sincerely,

John J. Mergen
Subaru of America, Inc.
Customer/Dealer Services Department

             

 

I gave up on counting all the issues in Mr. Mergen’s email. What exactly is a “motta?” What does “gramatically” mean? Was a new version of American English grammar, “gramar 2.0,” introduced, one that has the word “motta” and allows for random commas to be sprinkled about? Have I lost my mind? I know my own usage of the English language is far from perfect, but at least I have an excuse - I learned English from ESL teachers in Brooklyn and from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

So tomorrow is my employer's (hereafter referred to as some acronym I haven't thought of...MTC for Major Tech Firm? LSM, for large semiconductor manufacturer?) day-o-fun for finance employees that started work in the past year. We're going skiing. Downhill skiing. I've done it once, for about 7 minutes, when I was 11. I'm bringing my cross-country skis, along with my book of xc trails in Oregon, in case I need to make a quick escape. An entire day of social interaction with people I work with...a sport I know nothing about...why did I sign up for this again? Oh yes. Because apparently it's important to interact ("network") with one's co-workers. And because I've been skiing at Mount Hood every Sunday since the road was re-opened, and have been sorely disappointed - the cross-country trails that are marked black here would barely rank blue in Vermont. I'm having flashes of all the possible outcomes from this trip, and few of them are good. I think it's time for bed.

Well, everyone knows it's coming, there's mass hysteria the day before, and you have to go to the store and stock up on food ahead of time. Generally, a Jewish Christmas involves Chinese food and a movie. There's no kosher Chinese in Portland, and my guess is that the theaters are closed. Actually, everything is closed around here, except for the ski areas; I was pretty surprised at that one, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. At about 4 in the afternoon, I was one of a few dozen beThuled SUVs rolling down from Mt. Hood towards Portland. I even made it back in time to hit the New Seasons (locally owned version of Whole Foods - take that, crunchiness test, for saying that I'm 32% crunchy!) to pick up some garlic, milk, and a teaball. My teapot was one of the items that didn't survive the move to Oregon, and I've been teabagging it for the past 5 months. Yesterday, I went to the Stash Tea store to buy presents, and couldn't resist a bag of organic Ceylon. When I got home, I realized that I had no way of actually brewing it, hence the last-minute teaball purchase.

The drive across was fantastic, and we took a few hundred pictures. I'll have to post them somewhere, but I'm not sure where yet. Plus, I haven't gotten rid of the blurry "what the hell is THAT?" ones. A brief description follows:

New York to Pennsylvania via 84/81 to 80 to avoid New Jersey: hills.
Pennsylvania: hills and road work, as usual
Ohio: the GM plant, with a far emptier parking lot that I'm used to seeing, corn, Oberlin, more corn
Indiana: corn
Illiois: corn, a detour to Chicago (really bad traffic and really, really good Israeli food. I think it was the best beef shish kebab I've ever had, and I've eaten plenty in New York), more corn
Iowa: corn and friendly cows, and my camera ran out of batteries right before we saw one cow poop on another's nose
Nebraska: yet more corn and cows. I can see why people are so excited about ethanol.
Wyoming: cows, the beginning of hills and desert, and antelopes
Utah: serious mountains, finally, and, you guessed it, more cows
Idaho: more mountains, and green stuff in fields. The folks at a gas station said that they grew beans, beets, corn, and potatoes.
Oregon: mountains, desert, the Columbia river and mountains, and, finally, forested mountains and waterfalls. and then Portland.

The weirdest thing that happened to us was towards the end of the trip, when we stopped at a gas station. We already knew that in Oregon, like in New Jersey, it's illegal to pump your own gas, and we patiently waited as a young kid filled up the tank. He then proceeded to squeegee the windshield!!! We sat there with our jaws a foot below their usual location, trying to figure out how to react to this. The windshied (and the thule, and the grille) had been accumulating insects since at least Ohio, if not earlier, and had gotten seriously disgusting. In New York, though, the only people that clean your windshied, or used to, are crazy homeless people with filthy water buckets who yell and scream if they're not rewarded for their unwanted efforts. Generally, to keep them away, drivers turn on their windshield wipers. The gas station station kid didn't seem crazy, and the windshied turned out really nice. We weren't sure if we should tip him, but he finished up, said thanks, and walked away to deal with the next customers. As we've since found out, this isn't the norm, but it was definitely a nice welcome to the state.

After posting a highly depressing entry, I've failed to update this thing about the absolutely lovely past week and a half. No, we're not dead. Basically, we've been at the beach. I got sunburned on the first day out, and am now in the peeling phase of the process. My dad arrived on Monday, and I haven't seen anyone that looks dangerous since last Friday or so. We even went to the Jewish cemetery this morning, and everything looked in order there - no desecrations, and the graves are well taken care of by the largely non-Jewish people who are paid to do so, since there are very few Jews left in the city. The beach has been fantastic. I'm never, ever going to one of those places near the equator with the blue water and ridicuouls, roasting sand. Give me Jurmala any day! It's warm, but not hot, and the water is perfect. The last three days or so we've made camp near our old house, since it's not as crowded as the beaches near hotels. We also spent two days with my parents' friends farther out from the city, who have a wonderful year-round house a hundred yards from the beach. The local produce is beyond description, and at some point, I'll post pictures (not of produce.)

Since we've been in Latvia, my mom's been on my case about my Star of David. Now, paranoia runs in her family - during the blackout of 2003, my grandmother told us to not let the cats in at night if they meowed, because at some point when she was growing up, people would hide under windows, meow, and rob/kill/do whatever when the residents opened the doors for their animals. The Magen Dovid business in Latvia, however, might be rooted in fact, rather than stories of people pretending to be cats. Large white men with shaven heads make me nervous in Europe, and there are way, way too many of them here. In the US, I know that chances are, folks with shaven heads, boots, etc. are most likely harmless, and probably even share my taste in music to some degree. Here, we saw "Heil Hitler" written on the back of a park bench, and a swastika spray-painted on a wall. Yes, the swastika was x-ed out by someone with different-colored paint, but clumps of skinheads on corners in a country that the nazis considered aryan are frightening. Or maybe it's just the family paranoia being passed from generation to generation...At this point, the MD is in my mother's bag - she asked me to take it off at the beach, since it was making her very, very nervous. She thought the neo-nazis (she thinks she's been seeing them too) would drown me or something when I went swimming. I'll retrieve it in the morning. While at the beach, though, in my search of someone else wearing a symbol of Judaism, I noticed that a large portion of the population, young and old, was wearing crosses, which was most certainly not the case when I was growing up. No religion under communism and all that. Or perhaps I just didn't pay attention back then.

Except for 3 days in 1997, I haven't been to Riga since we left in 1988, so I was looking forward to spending almost two weeks there before heading west. The trip over on Monday was a pain, and took 24 hours (late planes, rescheduled takeoffs, missed connections, etc.) The Helsinki Vantaa airport is quite nice, though - definitely a good one to get stuck in, as opposed to, say, JFK. I'm completely jet-lagged, which didn't prevent my mother from making me get up twice - once to put money in the meter, at what felt like 2 am after I hadn't slept for two days, and then again to go wander the city, which is even more gorgeous than it was the last time I saw it. Restoration is going full-swing, and some streets are completely finished, with the buildings looking like multicolored wedding cakes. In addition to the stunning architecture (medieval and Art Nouveau, I'll post some pictures), great fruits and veggies, and parks everywhere, we saw some Mormons girls with nametags carrying the book of Mormon in Russian (I guess they haven't translated it into Latvian yet) and four Hasidic girls. I'm not sure which surprized me more, but I think it just might have been the Russian-speaking Hasidim.
PS After we got back to the apartment, we watched "Law and Order," in Russian. The voiceovers were terrible! There were only two voice actors, one male and one female, and both completely monotonous, so if I hadn't seen the episode before, I would have had no clue who was saying what. I've noticed that about Russian voiceovers before, and I wonder why they don't just do subtitles.

I got a GPS unit earlier this week for the upcoming trips to Latvia and Portland. The thingie (it's unnamed as of yet) has a feature that lets you upload a database of "points of interest," such as national parks, traffic cameras, Starbucks, etc. To me, the most natural thing was to see if there was a database of kosher restaurants - no more driving around unfamiliar places in search of a kosher Chinese place that I know is there but don't know the name of, no more having to use other people's wireless connections to check Shamash from the car, etc. Alas, I could find no such thing. I did find a website that creates custom databases, and being a rather persistent Jewish girl, I emailed them last night and asked if it would be possible to use Shamash.org's lists to make a downloadable database of known kosher restaurants in the US. As of tonight, it's up on their website! It's $35, and the link is
http://www.gps-poi-us.com/poifiles.html
I've tested it, and it seems to work!!!

Most of the clothes and all the breakable dishes are packed, leaving, well, everything else. Shoes, pots and pans, t-shirts, linens, fleishig toaster and microwave, computers, books, etc. And I still have no clue what I'm going to do with the couch. And I need to order a u-haul to bring the few furniture items to my parents' house. I'm so busy I shouldn't have time to get depressed about leaving, but I'm still managing that somehow.

Poor Mr. Target Pharmacist...Ghana lost to Italy, 0-2 in the World Cup, and, being Ghanaian, he was rooting for them. Rooting to the extent that when I came in to pick up my scripts the other day, he was on the phone trying to figure out which days he would need to take off to watch the games. He still did a better job than the CVS idiots, though - he knows me by name, and hasn't screwed up my meds or insurance once. Another bit of goofy athletic news - my cousin will be playing for Latvia in the World Lacrosse Championship. My cousin doesn't speak Russian that well, much less Latvian, since he left when he was 5, but apparently, being born there and having played serious lacrosse (he played for U. of Washington)is enough to qualify him for the team. I suppose I should figure out the rules or something so that I can understand what's going on.
On an entirely different note, my parents' neighbors' little white ankle-biting mop-dog is having a nervous breakdown. It's been barking non-stop all morning, and I'm afraid it's going to lose its voice. The owner is just as bad in yelling at it to shut up.