Tag: concerts

What’s for supper? Vol. 380: How does Scooby Doo end his prayers?

Happy Friday! And goodbye, May. You were a good May. 

Yesterday I cleaned out the laundry room, because I got a free dryer on Facebook Marketplace and we’re gonna have to take the back door off to get it in, but we can’t reach the door because there is so much misc in there. Getting something for free made me feel like the universe was out of balance, so I recklessly posted a bunch of stuff to give away myself, so today I get to drive around dropping off pots of butternut squash starts and bags of kid clothes that I suddenly worry are absolute garbage, but I can’t tell because I have nostalgia. 

Meanwhile, the other door to the laundry room decided to take itself off, and now randomly sort of LOOMS at people, when all they tried to do was open it. It’s okay, because the kids avoid using that room anyway (it’s our second bathroom, if you’ll recall), because the dryer makes a horrendous squealing noise, and the overhead light flickers kind of menacingly. It does have a little whiff of Gitmo about it, but how long does it take to pee? Big babies. Anyway, we got a new dryer. Well, an old dryer. It’s fine. All manner of things shall be fine. 

So here’s what we had this week: 

SATURDAY
Chicken nuggets, raw peppers, chips

Shopping day! The plan was chicken burgers, but they didn’t have any, so I got nuggets. I haven’t had a chicken nugget for years. They were really pretty good.

I had a sweet chili sauce with mine and actually really enjoyed this meal. 

SUNDAY
Oven fried chicken, corn on the cob, spinach

Sunday I bullied my family into putting the big bridge pieces into place!

You may recall that one big wooden piece tried very hard to kill me and Lena last time I worked on this project. Well, it took seven people to lift each of the two long pieces, which is why progress has been so slow. We each grabbed a support plank and shuffled forward like pall bearers, and at one point, when I pulled my foot out of the muck, part of my sandal refused to come along. But it was just an Aldi sandal, and already smelled of ducks. A small price to pay. 

Here is what the marsh looked like before, with just the cinderblocks in place:

and here is how it looks now:

Progress! Still needs some work, obviously. I need to stain some parts (the undersides are all done, though), and fill in a few gaps, and get some more cinderblocks to level it off more, and I need to figure out what kind of transitional piece to add in the front, so you don’t have to step up onto it. You can’t tell from this picture, but the ground slopes pretty sharply down from the arch to the first bridge piece. I have a little set of stairs I might half-bury in the dirt, to get to the first piece. 

But it’s SOLID. The cross pieces distribute the weight, and they’re resting on dry ground and/or on cinderblocks, and when you walk on it, there’s no wobble, and it’s all up out of the wet. I’m very pleased. 

I also moved the big arch back a bit, to open up the entrance, and added a second arch (it’s hard to see, but it’s there). I have a couple of baby grape vines I’m gonna plant, and the plan is to eventually make a canopy of vines from one arch to the other. In 5-10 years, it’s gonna be just gorgeous. It’s already gorgeous. My plan is always to enhance what’s good about what’s already there, because it’s a lovely, lovely spot. 

So! It’s usable and I can do the rest without dragging anyone else into it. The other big thing I want to do before summer vacation starts is to build a very simple little deck using the rest of the wooden pieces I got along with the bridge pieces.

I know they sell hardware specifically for attaching legs onto platforms, so I figure if I just think hard about weight distribution and kind of overbuild everything, I should be able to make something functional, and less awkward than the lifeguard station we currently have. 

Sunday I also cleared out my other raised bed, topped it up with lovely compost, made a little support tipi out of last year’s sunflower stalks, and planted my sugar snap peas. 

I think it might be too lightweight, but I can always reinforce it with actual sticks at some point. I’m going to put collard greens in the rest of that space, I think. There are some leftover Brussels sprouts that survived the winter, but they already bolted and I think I’ll just rip them out.

I think it must have been Sunday that I finally got the rest of my vegetable starts in the ground. I’m a little unsure about what’s what, because I didn’t weatherproof the labels (next time I’ll use popsicle sticks and pencil!), but I am pretty sure I have pumpkins, butternut squash, I think two kinds of eggplant, and possibly cucumbers, one of those birdhouse gourds, and also garlic and basil in another spot. 

It’s all a little too close together, because I meant to expand the bed more than I ended up doing. Oh well. They can fight it out. 

No strawberries yet (soon!), and I can’t pick asparagus until next year, and I accidentally let the rhubarb bolt, so I didn’t get much this year. But overall, I am pleased. Gotta finish that wattle fence! 

Oops, I forgot to talk about food. Good thing my yard is INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, so you don’t mind. Well, we had oven fried chicken. I started soaking the drumsticks in milk, eggs, and salt in the morning, and then I dredged it in seasoned flour and started cooking it about an hour before dinner. Melt butter and oil in a pan, lay the chicken down, turn it after a while and let it continue cooking, and voila. 

I love this recipe. The meat is juicy and tender, the skin is crackly and tasty. I think I honestly prefer it to deep fried chicken, and whoever did clean-up that night definitely preferred it. Here’s that recipe:

Jump to Recipe

We also had corn on the cob and just plain raw spinach. 

Fab warm weather meal. I didn’t even add butter to my corn or dressing to my spinach, because everything was so fresh and nice. 

MONDAY
Cookout!

Monday was Memorial Day and we met not one but two boyfriends of daughters. What a to-do! We expected quite a few more people to show up for the cookout than could actually make it, and it did rain like crazy, but we had a nice day anyway, if somewhat lower-key than expected. 

I made an incredibly bland potato salad

and then I went a little crackerdog with the fruit salad and made a watermelon swan boat

and Damien grilled up a ton of burgers, and we just had chips and soda and ice cream.

Damien reconfigured his Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation, and now it has more air circulation and more even heat.

He is talking about making an Interchangeable Cinderblock Smoker Situation, too. You may think we’re complete rednecks, but we actually buy our cinderblocks NEW, so you tell me. 

TUESDAY
Cookout part 2!

Tuesday I cooked the hot dogs we decided not to bother with on Monday, and we basically just had that meal again, with different meat. No complaints. 

Also on Tuesday, I drove the kids to school and every single person who stepped into that car made the same “urk” noise, so I decided it was Time To Find Out What That Smell Was. Got some trash bags, got a pack of baby wipes, set up some music, and prepared myself to launch into a long, arduous search into every nook and cranny to root out the mysterious source of the odor. 

I open the door, and right there on the floor is this.

Maybe we are rednecks after all. 

WEDNESDAY
Pork ramen

Wednesday I went on a bit of a cleaning rampage and cleared out the mountain of scraps and flowerpots and bits of fencing and old rugs and broken tools that I’d been flinging onto the back stairs. I didn’t take a before picture, but this is the after:

Okay, yes, we are definitely rednecks. I see it now. But we’re rednecks who try! Gonna try to get a dryer up those stairs, that’s what we’re gonna try.(Yes I know I need to do something about all that unfinished wood. It’s on my list. It’s on my list!)

Wednesday I put about three hundred sunflower seedlings into the ground, from seeds I gathered from last year’s most successful flowers. I want PHALANXES of sunflowers this year. I have a long row of them in front of the marsh,

a little sprinkle by the pool where some day lilies appeared, a few next to each light post around the patio, and a line of them in front of the trash enclosure. I also moved the last of the cosmos and zinnia seedlings into pots and found spots for them. I think everything I planted over the winter has a home now!

For supper, I had a hunk of boneless pork whatnot, so I sharpened up my knife and cut it really thin, then pan fried it a little bit, then added a bunch of Chinese five spice and a little soy sauce and finished cooking it. Made a giant pot of ramen, soft boiled some eggs, and served it all up with chopped scallions, sugar snap peas, and spinach, and crunchy noodles. 

Delightful. I am steadfastly refusing to find out what good ramen tastes like, because the kind that comes in a case and shrink wrapped in orange plastic is cheap and we like it, and I don’t want to ruin that. 

THURSDAY
Pork gyros

Thursday, I cannot even begin to explain how the universe tried to thwart me. Really unprecedented levels of attempted thwarting! I knew it was gonna be a busy day, even pre-thwarting, but I had already cooked all the easy meals for the week, so I started in and prepped pork gyros first thing in the morning.

Here’s the marinade recipe, which is pretty basic but tasty, and it does make the meat super tender

Jump to Recipe

and I made a big bowl of yogurt sauce

Jump to Recipe

Oh! And I finally got to use my mother’s day present from Clara, which is a handmade juicer. 

Works GREAT. The ceramic pointy thingy takes way more pressure than plastic, and the spout poured very smoothly, which is harder to design than it looks. She’s getting really good.

Then thing started to go a little bit south. But the upshot is that, against all odds, I got Millie’s replacement fall detection sensor set up and tech support APOLOGIZED TO ME AND SAID I WAS RIGHT. So there! And I was only a few minutes late to the school concert, which they were actually calling a “song showcase,” for reasons which are not entirely clear to me, except that I would not have called that a concert, either. I did get there in time to hear one of the kids say into the microphone, “And [kidname], [kidname], and [kidname] will be our socialists” and the music teacher leaped like an antelope over to that microphone and said, “SOLOISTS.”

This happened mere minutes after our golden haired god hero was unjustly and outrageously convicted on 34 bogus felonies in a banana republic-style kangaroo court with an upside down flag!!!! So IT’S ALREADY HAPPENING TO OUR CHILDREN, just like he warned us. But we did not listen.

The good news is, the gyros were great. A complete mess, but still very delicious. 

I made the mistake of trying to open the pita and fill it with meat, rather than rolling the meat up in an intact pita; and I completely forgot to gather fresh mint; and the fries were underdone. But it was extremely late and we were so hungry, and it tasted heavenly. 

FRIDAY
Ravioli

The ravioli I promised but did not deliver last week! But accidentally bought sauce for twice, so now we have so much effing sauce! Maybe I can put it on a buy nothing group. Maybe I’ll put myself on a buy nothing group. 

I do have these chive blossoms

that are clearly at their peak. I’m not a big fan of infused oils – the bacteria threat worries me – but I think I may try frying them. 

Oh! But last night I found a WHOLE OTHER JAR OF MARIGOLD SEEDS.

I may actually offer those on buy nothing, because I don’t know if I have it in me to till anymore ground this year, and every spot that’s open is already sprouting to the max. 

Like I said, a good May. Really good May. 

 

Print

Oven-fried chicken

so much easier than pan frying, and you still get that crisp skin and juicy meat

Ingredients

  • chicken parts (wings, drumsticks, thighs)
  • milk (enough to cover the chicken at least halfway up)
  • eggs (two eggs per cup of milk)
  • flour
  • your choice of seasonings (I usually use salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, and chili powder)
  • oil and butter for cooking

Instructions

  1. At least three hours before you start to cook, make an egg and milk mixture and salt it heavily, using two eggs per cup of milk, so there's enough to soak the chicken at least halfway up. Beat the eggs, add the milk, stir in salt, and let the chicken soak in this. This helps to make the chicken moist and tender.

  2. About 40 minutes before dinner, turn the oven to 425, and put a pan with sides into the oven. I use a 15"x21" sheet pan and I put about a cup of oil and one or two sticks of butter. Let the pan and the butter and oil heat up.

  3. While it is heating up, put a lot of flour in a bowl and add all your seasonings. Use more than you think is reasonable! Take the chicken parts out of the milk mixture and roll them around in the flour until they are coated on all sides.

  4. Lay the floured chicken in the hot pan, skin side down. Let it cook for 25 minutes.

  5. Flip the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes.

  6. Check for doneness and serve immediately. It's also great cold.

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Marinade for pork gyros

Marinate thinly-sliced meat for several hours, then grill over the coals or broil in the oven. Serve wrapped up in pita with cucumbers, tomatoes, french fries, hot sauce, and yogurt sauce. This marinade is enough for about five pounds of meat. 

Ingredients

  • 4 medium tomatoes diced and smashed a bit
  • 2 onions grated
  • 2 Tbsp oregano (or a large handful of fresh oregano, chopped)
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 3/4 cup lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp paprika
  • 12 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
  • kosher salt and pepper
Print

Yogurt sauce

Ingredients

  • 32 oz full fat Greek yogurt
  • 5 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • fresh parsley or dill, chopped (optional)

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc. 

 

I’ve been to eleven thousand school concerts, and I have something to say.

My late father-in-law leaned over and whispered, “This is the hardest part of being a parent.”

We were all in pain, physical and psychological; we were all chilled to the bone and exhausted beyond all reason. We felt as though we were losing our minds, as dismal, unintelligible noises assaulted our senses. We were all trapped, and no one knew when release would come. Worst of all, we had to keep clapping.

Yes, it was a school concert. This was sometime during the third hour of our exile in a school gymnasium. We manually held our eyelids open toward three fourteen-year-old girls making vaguely soprano whispering noises to the accompaniment of a sweating pianist. It was, if I recall, part of a salute to rockabilly in medly form. A medly which should have been called, “When Will Death Come?”

Well, my husband and I have witnessed nine out of ten kids sing their way through an awful lot of schools. Some of them had sensible, humane, even brilliant music directors, some of them . . . did not. We are proud of our kids, and we like them, and all. We support them, basically. Some of them are even kinda musical. But I have a thing or two to say. 

School concerts should not be three hours long. Never ever ever ever. I don’t care if it’s an excellent program bristling with stunning performances of world-class masterworks. IT SHOULD NOT BE THREE HOURS LONG. Anyone who has a school aged kid needs to be buying groceries, drinking gin, or asleep, and three hours away from doing those things is three hours too long. 

Songs should be age-appropriate. Since these are school children performing for their parents, exactly zero of the songs should be about sex or lust. You can get away with some innuendo in high school, but otherwise, basta. Let’s all get together and demand not to be put in a position where we look like a jerk for not wanting to clap after a nine-year-old girl belts out an anthem about her burning desires. 

And “dance teams” should be illegal. Hell damn fart. Where are the adults?

Kids shouldn’t have solos unless they are pretty good for their age. I realize this is crushingly harsh, and when I’m done with this essay I am going to go out and hit some flowers with my cane, but I still insist a solo is something you earn by being a little bit better than the other kids. I will make an exception if maybe a kid has overcome tremendous obstacles and has found a way to shine despite overwhelming adversity etc etc etc, and even though it’s not an objectively good performance, it really moves you. Fine. I just find it really hard to believe that all eleven terrible soloist are this particular type of shining star. I know these kids. They’re just regular mopes. Off the stage, mope. You dun sound so good.

Kids should perform things they are capable of performing, with maybe one or two “reach” numbers. If it’s the day before concert day and the sounds they’re producing make your skin crawl even mildly, go ahead and cut that number. Nobody in the audience is going to stand up and shout, “I say, choir master, I object! This program simply wasn’t long enough!”

If you let anyone beatbox, you should be shot. I don’t make the rules. 

The teacher does not get to perform. I’m sorry, am I your mom? Are we all your mom? No?  Well then! I guess we’ll just have to spend a moment of silence contemplating how sad it is that you ended up teaching the mouthbreathers in East Flupping Middle School chorus instead of dazzling Broadway, and then we’ll leave it at that, rather than enduring another encore of “How High the Moon” by Ms. Coulda Woulda Shoulda and Her Rather Startling Dress. 

If you want to include an emotional ceremony commemorating the special relationship the students have with the teachers, and you somehow didn’t do this during the rest of the entire year that you had together, you get three minutes. THREE MINUTES. When this folding chair has been biting into my thigh for over an hour already, my last remaining bit of patience will be entirely transformed into white-hot loathing if we have to pause the program while forty-three girls in heels they absolutely cannot manage pick their way across the risers and totter over to receive a carnation and a hug and an award for some choir in-joke, and then totter back while everyone giggles and claps and sighs. It’s not that I’m cold-hearted. It’s just that I hate you all so much. 

And what about the audience? Don’t they have any responsibility? 
Yes. They need to not sit there slowly and sensually scratching their husband’s back all throughout the show. Gah. 
 
Oh, and you can do a standing ovation if you want. I’m sitting down. I’m sitting down. 

An awesomely awkward living room show with Samantha Crain

The other day, two goons stepped way out of their comfort zone and went to a Samantha Crain living room concert on a Tuesday evening in Boston. Best idea we’ve had in a long time!

I’ve written a bit about Crain, who has one of the most extraordinary voices I’ve ever heard. She’s a Choctaw-American Okie who sings, plays the guitar, and writes songs that pass right through your chest like a steel girder that loves you very much. Wonderful to discover she’s even better live.

After the show, I told her about the first time I heard her voice on the radio, and I was late picking up my kid from work because I had to pull over a cry for a little bit. She sang that song the other night. Here is “Elk City:”

She’s relaxed, chatty, and self-deprecating in between songs, and her frank face and demeanor put you at ease; but once she gets to singing, she has a trick of bowing her head right in behind her guitar, as if she’s climbing right inside the song. I was very impressed at how she committed to each piece, even though this show was the last in a long series, and the audience was maybe fifteen rather stiff, unresponsive folks. She tuned her guitar incessantly between songs, and absolutely filled the room with her voice, which, as I said, makes me think of a cold brook running in and out of sun and shade.

Her newest album, You Had Me At Goodbye, has less of a folk feel (although “folk” isn’t quite the right word) and more unconventional instrumentation and structure than her previous albums, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Listen to the deeply old-fashioned soulful wail of “When the Roses Bloom Again”

You never heard anything else like it, anyway, right? I wish Johnny Cash had recorded a song or two with her.

She performed the slyly funny “Antiseptic Greeting,” which she described as a song about the experience of having resting bitch face.

Here’s “Red Sky Blue Mountain” in the Chahta language, which she didn’t sing in this concert, but I’m including it to show how she sounds live:

So intense. Her guitar playing is also very deft and sets a complete mood. Some of her songs are . . . shattering. Many of her songs start out with some familiar sentiment, and you think, “Ah, this is going to be such-and-such type of song, for ladies,” and then the lyric veers away a bit, putting you off balance; and then comes the hook, which just flattens you. “When You Come Back” was one of those.

I do wish you could have heard this live in a small room. Her voice was so raw and direct. She also sang something I think was called “Tough For You” which I may never recover from. Damien almost fell out of his chair, too. I think she said she had just recorded it for her next album, so that explains why I can’t find it anywhere. Keep an ear out, but hold onto your butt.

Her lyrics are always well worth listening to, and you get the impression that she’s read a lot of things and listened quietly to a lot of people, and inside her head, it all weaves itself into something a little bit frightening but dreadfully familiar. There was another one, I guess also a fairly new one, where she can’t talk to the guy because she’s just an echo, and after a while even an echo fades away, and he melts like a pat of butter but she evaporates like water in a pan. Well, you’d have to hear it.

She said she rarely sings old songs she wrote a long time ago, because it’s like eating the same food over and over and over again, and it just tastes bad after a while. She called “Sante Fe” the pizza of her songs, because she still always enjoys it, and so do I:

She also did a rare cover song, “Slip Slidin’ Away” by Paul Simon, because I wasn’t already steadily leaking tears, and my nose needed to start leaking, too. Good grief, I just sat there and cried for an hour like a giant weirdo. But it was fine. Afterwards, a woman came up and excitedly told her that the Dolores in the song was actually about her mother Dolores, and Crain said that lots of people have told her the same thing about their mothers, Dolores! Ha.

About living room concerts: This one was actually in a small home furnishings store called A Curated World, but most are in actual living rooms, and the tickets are very cheap.  Crain explained that concert promoters lose interest in you if you don’t put out an album every year, and she wanted to devote more time to her next album; so living room concert series are an increasingly popular way to bridge that gap. There are few to no middle men, so the performer gets most of the profit; and the audience gets the incredible benefit of spending an intimate hour with the artist. They had invited us to bring beer or wine. We brought a nice bottle of red wine, and it turned out we were the only ones who had. Too bad!

Anyway, if Samantha Crain ever comes anywhere near you, it’s well worth a drive to go see her. It was an unforgettable hour with a top notch performer.

 

“IDK How But They Found Me” puts on a great, gracious show

What an exciting week I’m having! We just got back from the seacoast, 2+ hours away, where I was acting as chaperone for the third and fourth grade on a tide pooling expedition. My phone died without warning on the way home, and I had to get myself and four kids back to school JUST BY BEING SMART. This is a MAJOR triumph for someone who has spent most of her life either lost or about to get lost.

Yesterday, we went to the beach with my father and had a cookout; and the day before that, I drove three young parsons to The Palladium in Worcester, MA, to watch a show, which had VERY LOUD music and NO CHAIRS TO SIT ON. My college girls were looking for cheap shows for the summer, and came across this duo, I Don’t Know How, But They Found Me.

Was I expecting to enjoy myself? Nnnnnot really. I listened to a few songs, and they seemed like a fun band, kind of emo but with a sense of humor. I liked this song:

The lead singer and bassist, Dallen Weekes, used to be in Panic! At the Disco, which I have heard of because I have teenagers– specifically, teenagers who have discovered that life is too short to be too cool to listen to pretty okay music. I’m sorry, I can’t stop talking. I’m so tired. Anyway, Worcester more or less shuts down at 5 p.m., so we were tramping around looking for an open restaurant, and came across the other member of IDK How But They Found Me, Ryan Seaman. My daughter got up the nerve to ask for a selfie, which he cheerfully agreed to.

Nice guy, although rather blue around the hair. So then we got some sammiches, the waited in line for an hour while I cursed my shoe choice and worried about this girl ahead of us, who was wearing fishnet stockings under her skin-tight jeans. How itchy! Gosh. Then they patted us down, because it’s Worcester. I thought to myself more than once as we waited for a million years, “We, as a group, may not smell great.”

The opening band was pretty crappy. They could sing, but not well enough to justify their terrible attitude. Some kind of emo punk thing, but even more boring than usual. Then the guy’s shirt fell off almost immediately, and he was just this skinny little thing! My stars. My feet hurt so much and my purse was getting heavier and heavier (also I had brought my jacket because I thought it might be chilly. It was not chilly), but the floor was a little sticky, and the girl next to me was flailing herself around, so I just kept holding it. Hello, my name is Eunice, and I am 83 years old. Papa was a general in the war, and he told me never to put down my purse, and I never did.

So finally the headliner band came out, and instantly, the night was rescued. Really good stuff! The lead singer really worked for the audience’s attention every last minute. Here’s a little scrap one of my kids caught:

He had complete control of that room. It was kind of amazing. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but he was essentially telling emo dad jokes the whole time, and it was so much fun. He had me singing along to songs I’d never heard before. Here’s one of their songs that you’ve probably heard:

Solid song. The singer/bassist and the drummer were clearly having fun, and seemed to enjoy being together. It wasn’t just a concert, it was a whole act. They played a good, long set, and then came out for an encore, which was “Nobody Likes The Opening Band” (see above).

But, he made sure everyone knew he wasn’t talking about the actual opening band; but it was a song about how no one wants to get involved with new, unfamiliar things, but give them a chance, and maybe it’ll turn into something good. Then, halfway through the song, he stopped and called out the lead singer of the actual opening band, and had him sing a special verse, which was “nobody likes the headlining band.”

Wasn’t that nice? The opening band really did suck, but here was a roomful of a few hundred pierced, tattered, silly-haired young parsons who were very eager to be extremely edgy, all watching and adoring this undeniably very cool man going out of his way to be gracious and generous to someone who could be considered his competitor. Maybe it was the pain in my feet, but I was quite moved.

So they don’t have an album out yet, and only have a few original songs, but they are touring around, and boy those were some cheap tickets, so grab some if you can! It was a good performance in every way.

Then we drove home and I got pulled over twice. Humph. Nobody likes the lady with out-of-state plates driving maybe a little bit on the quick side after midnight.