Say, feel like reheated crap? Think you’d rather scrap it all and move to a grass hut than wash out your coffee cup one more time? It’s time to air out your glad rags and throw a potluck.
My back is kicking my ass. There’s no getting around that. I spent the morning yesterday trying to figure out how to get out of bed. It took practice and it was really bad news, since Pete and I had invited half my sisters, one-third of my nieces and nephews and one-quarter of my brothers-in-laws to dinner with several of my oldest, dearest friends and some delightful new friends, by which I mean we met twenty years ago. Pete and I prepared roast chickens in advance, along with spicy quinoa salad, a blueberry buckle, cornbread and homemade applesauce. Just before guests arrived, I showered, donned the attitude adjuster at left and marched back to the dining room.
We had charming conversation, learned a great deal from our friend spending every day with Occupy Wall Street and laughed until 2. If I played my cards right, maybe no one even noticed my back attacking.
This is a note to all of you who knew and loved Samantha. She died peacefully at home this afternoon. She was 18 years old.
She’d been losing a great deal of weight lately, and the vet said it was most likely cancer. That was a couple of weeks ago, so I spoiled her rotten for two weeks: she lived on wet food, cat treats and people food, and spent most of her time sleeping on my lap. She was eating until yesterday, and purring when I stroked her until yesterday evening, but after tottering to the litter box last night, she curled up on the electric blanket on my bed and didn’t move from there. I stayed with her until she died there, about an hour ago. She’ll be buried in the back yard.
Goodbye, quirky, bossy, loving friend. I’ll miss you.
The more I cast about in the online jarring and preserving communities, the less I understand. Or the more I feel like I skipped rehearsal and the orchestra’s tuning up, you decide. I am deeply insecure! So in a fit of bubble-wrapped homework turning-in anxiety, I sent a box of jarred objets to Ninstrel Boy for sampling, critiquing and recipe-stomping, including a jar I’ve been meaning to mention.
Recent developments in food safety protocols seem to have sent recipe writers over the edge. If you can figure out what’s going on here you’re smarter than me. This includes the mysterious pronouncement:
It is acceptable to leave the seeds in the tomatoes. This is the only thing to do when you are canning the tomatoes whole. You can always remove the seeds later with a food mill when you are cooking with the tomatoes. Or, you can ignore the seeds and leave them in.
Dahhhhhlink, lay off the cooking sherry, I beg of you. No one’s getting any smarter over here. Over here, on the other hand, you can learn a lot if you don’t mind feeling like you’ve wandered into the Twin PeaksTest Kitchen. The most straightforward treatment I’ve seen so far comes from those irresistible homebodies at Well Preserved, including good photographs of their work. Then there’s this post, wherein the Well Preservers describe how some tomato canners are plumb crazy.
Oh look, an interminable musical interlude.
The eighties weren’t kind to a lot of people and hairstyles. That much seems certain. This past summer, I read everything I could find about jarring tomatoes, compared recipes, warnings and processing times and methods. Even I was bored! Then I did the simplest thing you can imagine, unless you thought I’d give up. That might have been pretty simple, you’re right. But about me, I thought the simple thoughts and did the simple things.
Heirloom tomatoes, sliced in half top to bottom. Laid out on a lined baking dish. Use foil or a Silpat or parchment, trust me.
Sprinkled lightly with olive oil and a smidge of salt.
Oven: 350 degrees until tomatoes start to soften.
Boil jars, heat lids.
Remove tomatoes from oven, put into big metal or ceramic bowl, cover for five minutes.
Slide tomatoes out of skins and into jars. Add 1 tbsp lemon juice to pint or 2 tsp to 8 oz jars.
Process for 35 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for 8 oz jars.
They taste like tomatoey sunshine. So I sent a jar of this to Minstrel Boy and, fingers crossed, he likes it and doesn’t grow a second head to argue with, though tomatoes seem to provide us with plenty to argue about.
Emotions ran high Wednesday night as well over 100 protesters packed city council chambers to address some of the concerns surrounding the death of 46-year-old Barry Deloatch who was shot and killed by city police on Sept. 22 on Throop Avenue.
A letter presented to the council by Walter Hudson, of the Community Awareness Alliance, cited requests to the council to hold a public hearing to discuss police misconduct, pass a resolution condemning the actions of the New Brunswick Police Department, and send a letter to the family offering the council’s condolences for the shooting.
“At some point we have to sit down, at the round table, [and] come up [with] a plan of action to change the structure of the New Brunswick Police Department,” he said. “It’s either you’re going to work for us, or we’re going to work against you.”
City Council President Robert Recine agreed to draft a letter of apology to the Deloatch family. While members of the council agreed to the public meeting as per the requests of the protesters, an official vote approving the meeting was not taken.
If the city council does nothing, the protesters will continue to attend the city council meetings, Hudson said.
Many of the protesters felt the police officers involved should be arrested and charged with a crime.
“We have to do something,” said Henry Torres, a longtime city resident now residing in North Brunswick. “I don’t know what proposal we’re going to come up with, but I guarantee you one that we definitely need is some cops that are not going to be harassing us every day.”
The council responded to these claims by noting that state law dictates that all officers undergoing investigation must be placed under administrative leave for the duration of the investigation.
The case is currently under investigation by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
One protester said he believes this poses a conflict of interest, stating that many of the police in the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office may have connections with the officers they are investigating.
So far: the only thing different from what’s happened before is that the council isn’t sneering.
[Protester Henry] Torres suggested that city Mayor James Cahill and those who were a part of his administration at the time of city murders resign and also assist the Deloatch family with the funeral expenses.
Cahill said at a meeting at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Oct. 4 that he would be open to discussing the city becoming involved with the funeral expenses.
The council would not respond on Cahill’s behalf, but Recine offered to contact him immediately.
Whoa.
Two things:
1. Murders? Plural? If that’s not a typo, and I think it is not, which other murder or murders are we talking about?
2. The mayor’s vague agreement that the city might accept responsibility for some funeral expenses is about as clear as it indicators get that Cahill thinks this murder is a murder.
I love this commercial so much it took a few goes to realize what it advertised.
If I could stuff myself into a small space one morning and get out of it at night a better person I would. Instead, I keep going to work with my fingers crossed.
The view from the deck where we sipped ice water, ate steamers and said things like, "Dreadful sorry those nice people are still on the bike path. Simply dreadful! More lemon?"
Poor Impulse Control 