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Grilled Tuna Rolls
(photo and recipe found here) I was watching Barefoot Contessa the other day, and she made some amazing looking sandwiches, with rare seared Ahi Tuna, avocados, and an Asian dressing. I was intrigued, and decided to make it for dinner one night. Grilled Tuna Rolls Ingredients Good olive oil 1 pound very fresh tuna steak, 1-inch thick Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper zest of 1 lime 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice (2 limes) 1/2 teaspoon wasabi powder 1 teaspoon soy sauce 5 dashes hot sauce (recommended: Tabasco) 1 firm, ripe Hass avocado, medium-diced 1/4 red onion, chopped 1 tablespoon minced scallion, white and green parts 1 tablespoon…
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Dear Mom
I miss you all the time, every day, but somehow Sunday evenings are the hardest for me. Sunday was our time, when we would talk for hours, sometimes about politics, sometimes about ideas – books, meals, Maya, family memories. All of it. I feel like the late teen years, I was so busy figuring out who I was, busy with work and school and friends, and I took you for granted. But still, we lived in the same house and I saw you every day, even if it was just passing in the hall on our way out the door in the morning. Then I moved out, went to San…
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Her Fearful Symmetry
image found here Robert took off his round wire-rimmed glasses and his shoes. He climbed into the bed, careful not to disturb Elspeth, and folded himself around her. For weeks she had burned with fever, but now her temperature was almost normal. He felt his skin warm slightly where it touched hers. She had passed into the realm of inanimate objects and was losing her own heat. Robert pressed his face into the back of Elspeth’s neck and breathed deeply. Elspeth watched him from the ceiling. How familiar he was to her, and how strange he seemed. She saw, but could not feel, his long hands pressed into her waist…
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Spaghetti Sauce Sandwich
I was alerted by my blog/Facebook friend, Simon, that this weekend was Sandwich Party #5, which is pretty self-evident. Make a sandwich. Share on your blog. Well, I went to Stockton and took Grandma and Aunt Flo to Sizzler on Saturday, and dined on cheese and crackers on Sunday, so I didn’t get around to making a sandwich for the party until Monday. I thought about trying to do something fancy with arugula and brie or something, but decided to go retro instead. When serving spaghetti, some people mix the noodles together with the sauce in one big serving bowl, while others serve the noodles plain, and top them individually…
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Grammar Question…
(photo found here) What’s with the quotes? Really, don’t we mean, DO NOT EAT, as in the imperative, not as in a quote from a play or something? Ted brought me home some Secretariat movie swag (knowing my horsie love), and the binoculars came with some desiccant that included this message. I was confused. Should I eat it, or was the quote really a warning? Like, “Beware the ides of March” No. Probably more than that.
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Rotisserie Chicken at Home!
A few months ago, our trusty toaster oven gave up the ghost, leaving us toastless. I am not the kind of person who is willing to live that way. I need toast. Years ago, we used to have a regular toaster, but when that died, we decided to go the toaster oven route, because it’s better for so many other things, and because you can broil or roast in it as well. So when that toaster oven blew out, we wanted to find another that was roomy enough to roast a small chicken, should we be so inclined. I started out at the local shops, Best Buy, Target, and Bed…
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What’s Wrong with this Picture?
(found here)
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My Hollywood
Mona Simpson’s newest novel, My Hollywood, explores the relationship between upper-middle class and wealthy women in Santa Monica, and the women they hire to care for their children. Claire is a composer from New York, who moves to Santa Monica with her husband and baby so that her husband, Paul, can pursue his dream of writing TV sit-coms. She is successful enough, in that she is offered commissions, and receives a Guggenheim fellowship, and travels to New York to see a piece she has written performed. However, they are not wealthy by Santa Monica standards, they rent their home, and she doesn’t quite understand the money of the people around…
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Walking with the ghosts of my ancestors…
Last week I went to Massachusetts on a business trip. It was my first time there. While I was there, attending meetings, listening to the CEO talk, working to plan the future of my company, there was a part of my brain that was wandering around outside, looking for old houses and gravestones. See, my great-grandmother’s side of the family comes from that part of the country. She was born in New Hampshire, near the Massachusetts border, and she and her family left for California in 1902. Several years ago, I dug into the world of genealogy, which is more obsessed and time consuming than blogging was 4 years ago…
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Remarkable Creatures
Perhaps it was because of what had just happened to me, of the lightning that comes from inside, which made me open up to larger, stranger thoughts. Looking up at the stars so far away, I begun to feel there was a thread running between the earth and them. Another thread was strung out too, connecting the past to the future, with the ichie at one end, dying all that long time ago and waiting for me to find it. I didn’t know what was at the other end of the thread. These two threads were so long I couldn’t even begin to measure them, and where one met the…
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What’s Wrong with this Picture?
I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It’s a Porsche. A Porsche Cayenne. Since when did Porsche get into the dorky car market? I thought Porsche was supposed to be sexy and fast and a fantasy car. This is SO not sexy or fantasy. Not sure if it’s fast. I saw one while I was out on my walk the other day, and I confess, I died a little bit inside. Porsche is driving fast at night under the full moon, top down. It’s tight corners and Risky Business and sex and loud music and fun. It’s hanging out at the ocean and smelling the salt air and hearing the waves. It’s…
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Tracey Thorn ~ Love and Its Opposite
I’ve been listening to Tracey Thorn’s newest album, Love and Its Opposite, and the more I hear it, the more I like it. First off, Thorn has a gorgeous, lush voice. I don’t know if you were ever a fan of her joint venture with her (now) husband Ben Watt, Everything But the Girl, but I really loved their stuff back in the late 80s, especially Idlewild. Past her voice, though, are her lyrics. Together with the melodies, her music can really speak to me. Apron Strings so perfectly captured my baby lust in those years before we were emotionally and financially ready for a baby, but god, my hormones…
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I’m good at…
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a meme. That part of blogging seems to have fallen away, like so much. Blogging has changed SO much. Anyway, I liked this idea, so I’m copying it from Issa at Issa’s Crazy World. I’m good at… ~ Cooking dinner ~ Loving my family ~ Being true to myself ~ Going to the store for paper towels and lunch meat, then coming home with $100 worth of groceries, and still, nothing for dinner ~ Being a friend…most of the time ~ Being a wife…most of the time ~ Being a mom…most of the time ~ Overreacting when someone upsets me ~ Getting…
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Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alice Steinbach took a year off from her job writing for the Baltimore Sun to travel around Europe in search of the self she remembers, not defined by a husband, her kids, or her career. She is hoping that by taking an entire year to travel, she can learn to slow down, to take one day at a time, without schedules or defined goals. There is something about taking your time in each city, perhaps focusing on your neighborhood and its rhythms, that is completely different than the type of rush in, see it all, rush out type of travel that most of us can afford. I’ve…
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September 11 ~ Remembering Mr. Abad
Here we are again, and it’s September 11. Clearly this date will never be the same for any of us, just a simple day, perhaps a birthday or a wedding anniversary. Instead, we will all be brought back to that horrible morning in 2001, the day our lives changed. Back in 2006, I pledged to take part in the 2996 project, in honor of the 5th anniversary of that tragic day. Everyone who signed up was given a name of someone who died, and we promised to find something out about them, and write a bit about their lives, so that people will never forget them or what happened that…