Let’s listen in to one happy household, where young wifey is hosting the big event at her home for the first time and her mother-in-law remarks, her voice rapidly rising to an incredulous shriek: “You put nutmeg…in your sweet potatoes?” Everyone knows it was infallibly established during the Ecumenical Council of Our Family and Your Family that if more than three micrograms of nutmeg are found to be present in the entire meal, including appetizers you snuck into the garage but we saw you, the whole holiday shall be declared invalid and we will have to have it at Arby’s next time. That is what this family has come to! Nutmeg, indeed. Anathema!
Congrats to Laura Markiewicz, who’s the winner of the rosary giveaway!
Laura entered by “liking” Iron Lace Design on Etsy, and her name was chosen randomly by Rafflecopter.
Laura, I’ve sent you an email so we can get your prize to you. Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks so much to Kyra Matsui for donating this lovely rosary.
This week, I managed to use leftovers from a previous meal in every single new meal. Some of this was planned, some was felicitous. Some was just scallions.
Here’s what we had:
SATURDAY Fancy hot dogs, chips, salad
It’s amazing how a few toppings can transform a hot dog meal from shameful to splendid. I got cheapo hot dogs for the kids and Nathan’s for them as appreciate Nathan’s, and I set out ketchup and mustard, of course, and also diced cucumbers, thin-sliced pickles, diced tomatoes, pickled peppers, diced onions, and celery salt for Chicago-style hot dogs, and crumbled blue cheese, hot sauce, and chopped scallions (left over from last week) for Buffalo dogs. Yum yum.
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SUNDAY Chicken enchiladas, beans and rice
#1 son has been asking for this dish for a while, and not just so we can quote Dr. Marvin Rubdown.
I use Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I cooked six giant, recklessly seasoned chicken breasts in olive oil
and, after shredding them, set aside the meat from two of them for later. I had thirty-two large tortillas, and, because the gods are cruel, enough fillings for thirty-one enchiladas.
In my neverending but alwaysfutile quest to have more than enough onions for the enchiladas, I diced and sautéed seven onions. I rushed them a bit, so they didn’t really caramelize, but they were still luscious. You cook them up in the chickeny oil, using the same pan.
I shredded up about two pounds of cheddar cheese, which wasn’t quite enough. The enchiladas were a little skinny, to be honest; but also to be honest, I actually like eating up the slightly soggy folded ends of tortillas.
We went through two large cans of green enchilada sauce and two large cans of red. Some tomatoes, sour cream, and cilantro on the top. Or maybe it was scallions, I forget.
Lackluster photo, completely delicious food. I had other plans for Sunday, but the all-devouring enchiladas ended up taking all day to make. Next time, I may try stacked enchiladas, where you use the same ingredients, but just layer them in a pan, rather than rolling them. I want enchiladas, but I want my life back, too.
We had leftover rice from last week, so I mixed it up with a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles and some of the juice, a can of drained black beans, some jarred, sliced jalapeños, and bunch of cumin, chili powder, and salt. I feel like there must have been other ingredients, but I sure can’t remember them now. It was tasty, and I was proud of not just throwing down a bag of chips.
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MONDAY Ham, baked potatoes, peas
Monday is our crazy-go-nuts day, and so we had a meal than involved taking things out of the bag and making them hot. No complaints.
Oh, and we had some yogurt sauce left over from last week’s turmerific chickepea chicken. It smelled okay, so I daringly slathered it on my baked potato with some scallions, and holy cow, it was so good. It was Greek yogurt with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
Feeling like a genius, I took the leftover chicken out of the fridge and vaulted straight through to the quick and easy part of this recipe from Pioneer Woman. I didn’t have any masa or cornmeal, so I just decreased how much water I added, and it was plenty thick. Only one child refused to eat it because it turned out the tortilla strips weren’t noodles. Avocado on soup is a revelation.
There were, as I expected, still some enchiladas left, so we had those instead of the rice or corn bread I’d usually make as a side dish. It was a lot of the same flavors as the soup. Not a problem.
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WEDNESDAY Grilled pizza sandwiches with olives and pepperoni
Sometimes these turn out delicious, and sometimes they’re kind of bleh. This time the gods ordained that we should have bleh. I used sourdough bread, but I think a softer bread, like potato, would have worked better.
You brush the outside of the sandwich with butter mixed with garlic powder and oregano or basil, and then the inside of the sandwich is sauce on both slices of bread, with cheese and toppings (well, fillings) in the middle. I think I was just yelling so much on Wednesday that nothing was going to taste good. Anyway, I made supper.
For very thick grilled sandwiches, I like to grill them until they look right on the outside, then slide them into the oven for a while so the cheese melts all the way and everything’s hot enough.
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THURSDAY Fancy ramen
Yep, I planned a weekly menu that included both “fancy hot dogs” and “fancy ramen.” We’re just that fancy!
I’m always amazed at how popular this dinner is, how cheap, and how fast. It took less than half an hour from stepping into the kitchen to saying grace.
I had a few pounds of boneless pork ribs, and I just browned them in olive oil, then sliced them in thin squares. Then I soft-boiled a dozen eggs and heated up some frozen stir fry vegetables. Then I cooked up a bunch of chicken ramen, just using the little flavor packets, and set the ramen out with all the other stuff in separate bowls, plus some leftover chopped scallions. Tasty and satisfying.
This is a photo from previous ramen. I forgot to get the pics of current ramen off my son’s phone.
Sometimes we add soy sauce, hot sauce, sriracha sauce, sesame seeds, red pepper flakes, or crunchy chow mein noodles, or stir in some spinach. You can make all kinds of fancy sauces and add extra seasonings for the pork, but simple is also great.
This kind of choose-your-own-adventure meal is a great way of compromising with kids. You prepare all kinds of wonderful foods, but set them out separately, and let the kids choose what they like. That way, you don’t have to cook a separate meal for picky people, but you don’t have any horrible battles over “just try one bite.” I generally offer what I consider food every single time, and the picky kids gradually, casually decide on their own to start trying it, even if only because they don’t like feeling left out.
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FRIDAY French toast?
I’m sort of pre-resting on the laurels I’ll win next week for Thanksgiving, so I don’t care what’s for supper today.
I will probably skip What’s For Supper? next Friday, because everyone is eating more or less the same thing, right? Here’s the planned menu so far:
Remember when Al Gore, environmentalist extraordinaire, lived in a ridiculous mansion that gobbled up twenty times the national average of electricity?
Turns out that number is a bit off. There are some mitigating factors. BUT STILL. Make all the subtle excuses you want, BUT STILL. How can such a man call himself an environmentalist, and then act that way? It’s bad optics, at the very least, to shine giant spotlights on your evergreens all night, and then hop on a jet plane to lecture people about Africans messing up the ozone with their cooking fires. At worst, it’s sheer, arrogant hypocrisy. He is the problem, but there he goes, telling us he’s going to save us from the problem. How dare he tell us he’s here to fix the very thing he’s bringing about?
But his liberal groupies just ate it up! They listened to him, and treated him like some kind of prophet or savior, even though he was doing the opposite of what he preached. They totally ignored his flagrant hypocrisy, because he said what they wanted to hear.
I know you remember this, conservatives. I remember being outraged myself, and for good cause.
So now hold onto that sense of righteous outrage, and say to yourself, “Roy Moore is a pro-life champion.”
Roy Moore, who, as of this morning, is credibly accused by eight women of unwanted sexual aggression when they were teenagers and he was a powerful man twice their age. Tell yourself this is the man you must make your senator, because he is so pro-life.
How dare he tell us he’s here to fix the very thing he’s bringing about?
Maybe you are asking yourself, “Okay, maybe he’s a little sleazy, but what does that have to do with being pro-life? Even a horn dog can care about babies. We’re not looking for a saint, here; we’re just looking for someone who isn’t actively in favor of infanticide.”
Well, if you’re familiar at all with the birds and the bees, you’ll recall that women cannot conceive babies all by themselves. They do need a male participant. Babies don’t come out of nowhere.
And neither does abortion.
Women seek out abortions for many reasons, and looming large among those reasons are: No one would help me take care of this baby. No one would believe me when I told them I was raped. No one would help me pay for the hospital bills. No one treated me like a person. He wouldn’t even admit he knew me. He saw me as an object for his pleasure. He told me no one would believe me. I was alone. I had no other choice. I was young and felt completely powerless. I didn’t even tell anyone. I knew they’d never believe me. I knew they would say it was my fault, so what other choice do I have?
How dare Roy Moore tell us he’s here to fix the very thing he’s bringing about?
No one, as far as I know, is accusing Moore of raping and impregnating them. But neither are any of his supporters acknowledging the basic fact that women seek abortion because they have been let down by men who act exactly as Moore is accused of acting.
Listen. I believe it’s important to work for pro-life laws. I believe the phenomenon of abortion is a hydra with countless heads, and it’s perfectly legitimate to pursue legal avenues against it. But that cannot be our only strategy. Abortion will never decrease until we understand why it exists in the first place.
Or at very least, stop calling ourselves pro-life while ardently tending the gardens where abortion takes root. At very least, stop making excuses for predators. At very least, stop reminding women and girls in crisis that no one cares about the trivial little misdemeanors they were born to endure at the hands of men.
How dare he tell us he’s here to fix the very thing he’s bringing about? How dare we let him?
So, that’s new. We can no longer pretend that it’s only the deviant left or the hypocritical right who harbor sex predators. It’s everywhere. It’s everyone. And that makes it harder to cling to the old binary political fairytales of good us vs. evil them.
One thing hasn’t changed, though. When a woman comes forward and says she’s been assaulted, we can still come together as a country and tell her it’s all her fault. I wrote this essay back in 2014, at the height of the Bill Cosby scandal, and was discouraged, if not surprised, to see how few edits were necessary to make it relevant today.
Here is what I have learned about sexual assault:
If you tell the police you’ve been sexually assaulted, it’s because you’re looking for attention. You should file a civil suit, instead.
If you file a civil suit, it’s because you’re looking for money, and are not telling the truth.
If you don’t file a civil suit, that shows you don’t have a case, and are not telling the truth.
If you tell someone right away, that shows suspicious presence of mind, and proves that you engineered the whole thing to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
If you don’t tell anyone right away, that shows a suspicious lack of urgency, and proves that you are making up the story for no reason other than to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
If you don’t file a civil suit, it shows that you don’t need the money and are just doing it for attention, because people love the kind of fabulous attention they get when they accuse someone of sexual assault, especially if that person is popular or powerful.
If you do file a civil suit, it shows that you’re such a gold digger, you don’t mind getting all the horrible attention that no victim in her right mind would want to get, especially if the alleged perpetrator is popular or powerful.
If you’re the only one who accuses someone of sexual assault, it shows that your story is unbelievable.
If lots of other people make similar accusations, that is suspiciously orchestrated, and shows that your story is unbelievable.
If you were in the same room with the person who sexually assaulted you, that shows that you are just as guilty as he is, because you’re in the same room with a sexual predator, and who would do that?
If the person you’re accusing of sexual assault is rich, famous, or powerful, then that shows that you’re just looking for attention, and it never happened.
If the person you’re accusing of sexual assault is rich, famous, and powerful, that shows that you should have known he is a sexual predator, and you wanted it to happen.
If you tell someone right away, they will assume you’re lying.
If you don’t tell anyone right away, they will assume you’re lying, because you didn’t tell anyone right away.
If you tell, that’s a count against you. If you don’t tell, that’s a count against you. If you speak alone, that’s a count against you. If you speak as one of a crowd, that’s a count against you. If you sue, that’s a count against you. If you don’t sue, that’s a count against you.
If you tell someone that you’ve been sexually assaulted, it probably didn’t actually happen the way you said, and even if it did, it was your fault in some way, and you should have realized that it would happen, and there is no particular reason anyone should believe you, and if you think the rape itself was painful and humiliating, just wait till you see what you’ve got coming next, when you try to tell someone.
And he’s answered his own question. If she was really sexually assaulted, why didn’t she come forward sooner?
This is why. What he said. When a victim does come forward, she is assaulted all over again.
This is what I’ve learned. If you’ve been sexually assaulted, your only real recourse is not to have been sexually assaulted. Anything and everything you do from that moment forward is evidence against you. The deck is stacked against you as a victim because you are a victim. They very moment you even breathe the phrase “sexual assault,” that’s evidence in the minds of many that no such thing happened, and anyway it was your fault.
So tell me. What is a victim of sexual assault supposed to do, in order to be believed? What? You tell me.
Last night, I dreamt we had lice. I was dismayed, and awfully grateful to wake up and realize it was just a dream. But even in my dream, I was grateful that it was just lice, and not fleas.
Head lice are awfully upsetting, but as vermin go, they’re eminently conquerable. They have to have a blood meal at least every 24 hours, or they die, and most die sooner than that without a meal (unlike fleas, which can enter some kind of vermin stasis for months and months, and then spring back to life long after you thought it was safe). They only live on heads (so you don’t have to wash every freaking thing in your house; just pillowcases and hats, if you’re being thorough). They are killed by heat. And with the Cetaphil method, you don’t have to worry about letting harsh chemicals seep into your child’s brain, which is already sufficiently scrambled.
I was skeptical about the Cetaphil method, so I also did nit picking with the kids who had the most hair. I don’t know if it was necessary, but it certainly didn’t hurt. I took the advice in a book about lice (which, boy, if you think I’m milking a simple idea to get a blog post out if it, here is a woman who wrote an entire book, when she could have just said: “OLIVE OIL”) and took the nit picking as an opportunity to spend some time with the kids. I know it sounds nutty, but how often to do you sit there for an hour with your child’s head on your lap? I bet it’s been a while. You just surrender to the idea that you’re gonna be picking nits for a while, and you relax into it. It really is kind of soothing. Tell stories or listen to music. Or, be all upset and just get it over with, your choice.
Either way, you can manage this. Lice are beatable.
Oh, and fleas? I know what to do about them, too! You use Precor IGR, which is a flea contraceptive. It doesn’t just kill live fleas, it makes them sterile, so they can’t lay more eggs before they die. It’s the eggs that get you, when you use pesticide. Precor is safe to use around pets and kids, too, and you can treat your house preventatively. It’s basically magic.
One last word of advice: Don’t look at too many photos of the insect you’re trying to kill. That’s how they get in your dreams. And I don’t know what to do about that.
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Image by Harry Rose via Flickr (Creative Commons) It’s not a picture of a louse. It’s a picture of a flower who believes in you! You can do it!
A handsome and tough single decade rosary, made of large, 8mm lapis lazuli beads on steel eyepins, joined with heavy stainless steel chain. The Our Fathers are steel chainmail in Japanese 4-in-1. Finished with an Italian silver plated crucifix. Perfect for keeping in your pocket or on your dashboard!
To enter, use the Rafflecopter form at the bottom of the page. If you can’t see the form, which no one ever can, use this link:
“I watch my kids cover themselves in duct tape and use whole rolls of wire to wire their siblings together,” says Kyra Matsui, proprietor of Iron Lace Design, “and I can see who I was from the beginning.”
“I was an isolated child, hiding in my room, making stuff. I remember when I was six, there was this plastic dollhouse stool. I figured out if I wove Kleenex around it and wet it, then when it dried, I could slip it off, and I would end up with a little basket. I started painting Kleenex with food coloring and hanging it all over the ceiling. My parents were so patient!”
Kyra, 39, who is separated, has boys ages seven and nine, and five-year-old twin girls. She recently got a diagnosis of autism for her oldest son, who also has diabetes. Kyra uses a combination of homeschooling and public school.
“My own public school experience was pretty bad,” says Kyra. “I didn’t really learn any kind of work ethic, or how to concentrate, but I did learn how to be quiet so I could get away with anything.
“What I wanted to do [with my own kids] was give them a space to socialize with people not just in their own grade level, but who were interested in the same thing. To give them the space to figure out what they were interested in.
“For me, that was making stuff. I remember reading Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Warrior Scarlet when I was nine or so, and teaching myself to weave on a little loom I made out of a cardboard box. I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. Instead, I pulled stuffing out of a pillow and figured out how to make a spindle.”
Here’s the rest of the conversation I had with Kyra about her current work:
How did you get started making jewelry? What is it about chainmail that appeals to you?
It’s because of my Japanese cultural heritage, plus historical interest, plus fantasy. When I was fourteen and hiding in the school library, they had a couple of really good costume history books, and I devoured those.
I was briefly in the Society for Creative Anachronism doing costuming, and some friends were doing chainmail. The kind I do, Japanese, is the simplest. Usually what you see in movies is European. It runs in one direction, almost like snake scales.
What I like about Japanese chain mail is you can hang it any way, like fabric.
You can attach dangly stuff to it and incorporate it into the construction.
It all belongs to my father, whose parents emigrated from Japan in the 20’s. He was eight or nine when the Japanese Canadians were interned. His family ended up in Toronto after they were relocated. He trained as a watchmaker and repairman and jeweler, and he had a workshop in the house I’m sitting in now, the house I inherited.
When digital watches came, he became a tool and die maker, but did watch repair privately. He had a workshop that was floor-to-ceiling tiny drawers full of watch movements, gears, springs, some of them almost microscopic. You need tweezers to pick them up.
After he died, I was clearing out all his stuff, and thinking, ‘This is beautiful stuff. ” I’m not going to learn to do watch repair. I tried to sell it, but I didn’t get any takers.
What would he think of the jewelry you make with his watch parts?
Well, he would be happy it was being used, but perturbed. He wanted me to go into fine arts and into jewelry-specific programs, metalworking, gemology. But I’ve always come at things more from a costuming and textile end.
Chainmail is a lot more like working with fabric then metalwork. I’d like to learn to solder, but that requires a lot of precision. Chainmail is more like knitting.
How long does it take you to make one of those necklaces or rosaries?
A rosary takes about four or five hours of intensive labor. Because I make them out of stainless steel, it’s really hard on my hands, so I split it up over two or three days.
I’ve ended up with carpal tunnel from doing too much! I made a Mexican wedding double rosary over a weekend, and that was a bad idea.
It’s very intricate work.
And I’m extremely myopic. I was told by an ophthalmology student that my close-up vision is excellent. I can see much finer detail than most people, as long as I hold it an inch and a half from my eye. I also have a jeweler’s visor loupe.
You have four kids, you’re completely renovating your house, you exclusively homeschooled up until recently, and you’re a single mom. So in your abundant free time, what do you do?
When I was in my early 20’s, I did about ten years of belly dance classes. Then I had four kids in four years. But I love to dance. I found that goth clubs are the only place you can go and belly dance for the entire night without being hassled. My friend Cynthia and I found this lovely place that has industrial goth night once a month.
It’s the same people from twenty years ago. We’re all older and tireder. We have a few drinks, thrash around on the dance floor, and then go back to our lives as attorneys or whatever. There are some really terrified-looking twenty-year-olds who turn up, too. Half of them embrace it, and half of them sidle quietly out the door away from the scary, old people.
[Below: Kyra in her Halloween costume as Jadis, Queen of Charn:]
If you had unlimited time, energy, and resources, what would you make?
I was looking around Etsy and found this chandelier thing you hang between your nipples. This . . . is not what I’m going to be doing.
If time and money weren’t a factor, I’d love to be working in precious metals and gems. I’m learning how to solder and make my own findings. I’d love to do some sort of elaborate fantasy set, with headpiece, necklace, hand flowers, and neck piece, and make a dress that goes under it. I’m not watching Game of Thrones, but the costuming is fantastic. I’ve been looking up jewelry for the Southern Kingdom. Very East Indian-Ottoman Empire-Persian stuff.
If people want to order from Iron Lace Design for Christmas, when should they order?
If they want a special order shipped before Christmas and they’re in the states, get the order in by early December. Regular mail tends to be a week. Priority mail is faster, but pretty expensive. But if I have to source material, I may have to order it online.
[Two special order stainless steel rosaries, one in lapis, one in garnet:]
Kyra also makes single-decade pocket rosaries like this one in jade:
