My Christmas with Superboy and Coq au Vin

I know I shouldn't be annoyed that people are concerned about me spending so much time by myself. It's nice that people care, and that they worry. Lots of people have no one who cares or gets worried, and it bothers them, so I should be grateful for what I have.

I still get annoyed.

I have explained, more than once, that I like being alone. I find it restful. Being alone helps me to decompress from work, personal stress, or whatever else is bothering me, but everyone I know seems to see it as some horrible fate to be avoided at all costs, and it's all I've heard for the past week and a half.

"You're not going anywhere for Christmas?"

"There's no one you can be with at Christmas?"

"You're going to spend Christmas... all alone?"

Eventually I got tired of just saying, "Yes, that's right," while giving people the blank uncomprehending stare of a social outcast, and I decided to find someone special to spend Christmas Day with:



Superboy, the man who's never let me down.

We did all the usual Christmas things. I poured myself a tall glass of eggnog, and then we spent some time trimming the tree:



The Superman ornament ended up near the top, of course, while Spider Man ended up on the bottom, in the back. Once the tree was trimmed, we spent some time opening my Christmas presents:



Thanks for the Starbucks card, Mom and Dad!

Once that was over, I made some snacks (cocktail weenies in BBQ mustard sauce and leftover deviled eggs from Christmas Eve dinner at Jeannie's house), and then Superboy and I settled in for a day of heartwarming family movies:



After the movies, I decided that I was going to cook a large, complicated Christmas dinner. I've been saving my friend Scott's Coq au Vin recipe for this for several months now, and after going shopping yesterday I was all ready to work on it today. Before anyone says anything, I (and, I assume, Scott) realize that this is not a traditional French coq au vin. It's a simplified American take on it using chicken breasts and only an hour or so of actual cooking time, so please don't lecture me like Tom Colicchio did to Casey on the third season of "Top Chef" when she said she was making coq au vin but really only made chicken in wine sauce for three hours.

Other than the hour of cooking time, this took me a little over a half hour of prep time, because there is a lot of slicing:



I repeat, a lot of slicing:



I did the bacon with kitchen scissors, because it was fast, and this marks the first time that I've ever used mushrooms in anything I cooked. I don't like them, particularly, but the recipe implied that they would cook down, so I went for it after I wiped them down with a damp cloth as I have been instructed by the Food Network. Rachel Ray says that if you wash them they absorb too much water, and you should wipe them down with a damp paper towel instead. I was also worried that if I left them out it would remove too much liquid from the recipe.

As you can see from the picture above, I had everything set out in bowls based on when it had to go into the pot, so that I could move from step to step. Not doing this used to trip me up horribly when I was trying to follow complicated recipes, but several seasons of "Top Chef" have finally drilled the importance of a properly prepared mise en place before I start into my head. Using the term "mise en place" also lets me imply that I know a lot more about cooking than I actually do, and really, who doesn't like to look smarter?

Once everything was ready, I rinsed my chicken breasts, almost lost one down the garbage disposal while performing the gross-ectomy ("gross-ectomy" is my own term for the process where I hold the chicken over the sink with tongs while carefully trimming off any pieces that look gross to me; this includes weird fat globules, big red veins, pieces that look a little gristley, etc.), and then dredged them in flour and arranged them in the bottom of the pan in some melted butter and olive oil:



After the chicken was browned on both sides (I gave it four minutes a side), I removed it from the pot, set it on a plate, and dumped in the bacon and minced shallots:



After that browned for about five minutes, I added the mushrooms, which steamed a lot, making the picture a little hazy:



After five more minutes and a couple of stirs, I returned the chicken to the pan and added the herbs:



I'm used to rosemary and thyme, but this also called for herbs de Provence, and you would not believe the smell. As soon as it hit the chicken and the heat opened the herbs up it was indescribably appetizing, and I decided that I want to add herbs de Provence to everything, forever. I pretty much gave myself a facial leaning over the steaming pot to repeatedly inhale.

After the chicken and herbs were in the pot for a minute or two I added the carrots and the cabernet sauvignon:



and then stirred it repeatedly, making sure to scrape my wooden spoon all over the bottom of the pan to deglaze it. They always say to do that on the Food Network, because all of those little bits in the bottom of the pan are where the flavor is.

After that, it just had to simmer with the lid on for a while:



As a side note, I highly recommend watching Dead Ringer, with Bette Davis, while preparing this. The movie starts out a little slow, so you can work on your mis en place and then go through the setups and cooking steps, and by the time you set the pot to simmer alone for a while the movie has picked up to the parts where you want to give it your full attention. It's a win/win for everybody.

When the timer went off I forked out a chicken breast, and decided to taste it immediately. It was so good that I was three or four bites in before I remember that there were also carrots I could be eating and that I should take a picture:



It's really good. I want to thank Scott for the recipe, even if I did wait three or four months to actually cook it.

I also want to thank Superboy, for making sure that I didn't spend Christmas... alone.

Christmas Eve with Victorian Pirate Mardi Gras Drum Major Santa

I've seen a few weird Santas over the years. Growing up, we most often saw Santa Claus at company Christmas parties on post, which meant that Santa was most often portrayed by whichever private lost the coin toss and had to put on the costume. This also meant that some years we had a black Santa, a Latino Santa, and at least once I remember seeing an Asian Santa. It also explains why this Santa, from Christmas 1975, has on a big black pair of standard issue Army "birth control" glasses:



He's not a Buddy Holly fan.

I've seen a few weird Santas since moving to Tennessee, like Halloween Santa:



or the horror of the mouthless Santa creature:



but I have no explanation for this:



Santa is going to Mardi Gras? That's why he's wearing gold, green, and purple? But Santa is also a pirate? That's why he has an eyepatch? And he has a holiday festive Victorian top hat, for some reason? Oh, and he has that baton, so he's a drum major, right?

Merry Christmas, Happy Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day, Happy Mardi Gras, and enjoy the parade, everybody!

Elizabeth says it's really easy

A few weeks ago my friend Elizabeth posted on facebook that she had made some fudge, and that it came out really well. She mentioned that the fudge came from a kit, and that it was "really easy", but I've heard that story about kits before. I've tried "really easy" knitting kits from Target and still managed not to make a scarf, really easy paint-by-number kits that invariably don't come with enough paint or require the painter to have the steady hand skills of a neurosureon to fill in a numbered space three atoms wide with the brush provided, and I'm not even going to get into the kinds of disasters that men with hairy arms can have should they accidentally spill part of the "really easy" home candlemaking kit.

You name the "really easy" kit, and I can tell you that it's not only possible but also likely that I will manage to screw it up.

I kept thinking about that fudge kit, though, and the more I did the more I thought I should give it a try. After all, I like fudge, and buying fudge comes out to about the same price as buying the "really easy" fudge kit.



Not only that, but as much as I love Elizabeth and have eaten at her and Ben's house a number of times, I've never seen Elizabeth prepare actual food. I've seen her put things in the microwave, but I've never seen her prepare something from a list of ingredients. She may cook all the time when she doesn't have friends over, but in my head I have this impression that she doesn't cook, so when she said the kit was "really easy", it seemed like it probably really was really easy. I like things that are easy and, like I said, I like things that are fudge, so I bought my kit and this afternoon I popped it open and got to work.

You have to add your own butter, but everything else comes in the box:



Following the directions, the first thing I did was pour the evaporated milk, butter, and sugar into a sturdy saucepan:



Then I stirred it until the sugar dissolved. It didn't say to do that in the instructions, just to stir once it was boiling, but I thought it might boil faster if the ingredients were evenly distributed through the pot. I don't know if that actually helped or not, but it boiled anyway:



After it boiled for four minutes, I removed it from the heat and added the marshmallows and chocolate and stirred vigorously, as instructed:



and lo and behold, my fudge suddenly looked like the fudge on the front of the box:



It was shiny and swirly and smooth and glossy, and all I had to do was spread it in the shallow pan that came in the box and smooth the top, and my fudge would be perfect, just like the fudge on the box.

And that's when something happened.

I have no idea what, but somewhere between the pot and the pan my fudge's texture changed from smooth and glossy to dull and clumpy. The fudge on the box looks like liquid satiny chocolate sliced into tiny perfect squares, and my fudge?



My fudge looks like an old pioneer woman's face.

It tastes fine. I just wish it was pretty.

A limited view of Thursday's ice storm

Wednesday night, as Jeannie and I were leaving a spontaneous dinner at the Olive Garden with Jeremy (who is now three and will repeat any word he hears; hearing him blurt "sloppy freakshow babies", which he learned from watching "Glee", in the middle of the Olive Garden made me laugh so hard I almost choked), we felt a tiny drizzle of rain on our faces.

By Thursday morning, the city was shut down. The University was on a delay until 10 AM, something that's only happened twice since 2006 (and one of the those times was this past Monday; we're having a pretty bad winter by Tennessee standards), and then was delayed again until noon. At 9 AM, I thought I might leave my apartment and go take some pictures around my apartment complex before I had to leave for work.

Before anyone says anything, yes, I know you're not supposed to do that and it's one of the very things that the police warn you against. I've been in ice storms before, more than once. Cars slide all over the place, tree limbs crash without warning from the weight of the ice, and power lines fall down and electrocute you like Elijah Wood in "The Ice Storm", although that leaves open the possibility that your death will be a hauntingly beautifully filmed scene courtesy of Ang Lee. Fully aware of the danger, I reasoned that I could stay inside my apartment complex walkways and still see railings, trees, bushes, and other things coated with ice without going anywhere near power lines.

Unfortunately, I could not get off of my porch. There are eight or ten (I've never counted, and I'm already comfortable so I'm not going to count now) steps leading from my porch down to the ground, and they are solid concrete. Like the rest of the porch, the steps were completely covered with about a half inch of ice:



and the only way to get down them would have been to sit down and slide down them on my butt. I thought about this for a moment, as I could deal with a bit of a wet butt if I might end up with some nice pictures to show for it, but then I realized that if I got down the steps I might not be able to get back up them. I'm a large person, and gravity is not usually my friend, which means I try not to mix gravity with concrete. As such, my photos of the ice storm are limited to the things I could see from my porch:





After that I went back inside and called in to work for the day.

Ginormous Grow Frog

Since I was in New York for my birthday, I missed the traditional birthday dinner that Jeannie has thrown for me since she moved off campus, and Kristin, Jeannie, Elizabeth, and Ben decided that they would fix that by taking me out the week that I was back. Kristin and I got to the Downtown Grill and Brewery a little early, though, so we walked down to the Mast General Store to kill time until everyone else got there. Usually I only go to Mast General for nostalgic candy, but this time Kristin and I both spotted something else, something mind boggling and amazing:



The Ginormous Grow Frog.

As you can see from the picture, the frog is not yet ginormously grown there, but according to the package all you have to do is put it in water and a week to ten days later, it will grow up to three times its size! It will be ginormous! And it was only two dollars! Kristin and I immediately each bought one, and took them home.

Before I go on, I have to point out right now that I cannot explain the attraction of the Ginormous Grow Frog. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't move. It gets bigger, and as it dries out, it gets smaller. As toys go, that makes it about as interesting as a balloon, but somehow, seeing it in the package and that picture of the little girl holding it out like it was the best thing ever, I wanted a Ginormous Grow Frog. I wanted to take it home, put it in water, and watching it become ginormous.

So I did.

First, I documented the starting size of the Ginormous Grow Frog. From years of reading books about archeology, I know that it's important to put a familiar, standard sized object in a frame so that viewers can understand the size of the other, less familiar object. I chose to use a dollar:



Then I filled the bathtub in my second bathroom and threw the Ginormous Grow Frog in:



I never use that tub. I think it actually had dust in it when I pulled back the curtain to fill it with water. I was thinking, though, of the stories about how goldfish will get as big as the container that you put them in. My frog could not become ginormous in a tiny little bowl of water. He needed a tub, a veritable Olympic sized swimming pool in comparison to his tiny, not yet ginormous body.

Halfway through the week, I checked on him:



His limbs were definitely growing, but his body still seemed tiny. He was not three times his original size, and he was definitely not ginormous. Just to be sure, I pulled him out of the tub and checked him against the dollar:



Bigger, but not ginormous.

When I put the Ginormous Grow Frog back in the tub, I realized that part of the reason why he wasn't growing as fast as I thought he should be was that his legs were in the water but his body was only half submerged. Turning him over, I noticed a small air hole, so I held the Ginormous Grow Frog under the water and squeezed out all the air inside of him. Then I decided that I was being impatient, and needed to go do other things while I waited.

First, Kristin and I went downtown to go to the Christmas Parade. As we got close to the parade site, though, we decided that there were too many people and too many children, and that we should just go out to eat while we were already downtown. We went to the CoCo Moon, where I got orange peel chicken:



but we should have just skipped dinner, gone to the parade, and eaten nothing. It was that disappointing. The music was weird, the seating was weird, the art on the walls had nothing to do with the style of food, the breading on that chicken was so thick and overcooked that biting through it required real effort, and the waiter with the short sleeves and the really good biceps was assigned to some other table. The whole thing was one big letdown.

I also braved a horrible blizzard to come to work:



while pretty much everybody else in the office called in for the day because the snow was just so terrible, too terrible to drive in. The four of us there just kind of stared at each other all day and wondered why we weren't smart enough to call in, too.

Even though it was snowing, I agreed to participate in the Jingle Bell Run to support our department's team, so the night before I did some hardcore training:



and then Kristin and I got dressed up in holiday hats, went to the race, and did the "fun walk":



It actually was fun, although it was very, very cold. It might have been a little warmer if we'd actually been running and, you know, worked up a sweat, but both of us decided to just be cold instead.

As delicious as my racing eggnog was, though, I ended the week by eating something even better. Elizabeth and Ben bought me a candy bar with bacon nuggets for my birthday:



Unlike my experiment with chocolate bacon, the candy bar had a much better ratio of bacon to chocolate, with lots of tiny nuggets studded through it rather than the thick slabs that I tried:



it was so good that I managed to stretch out eating it over four days. Eventually, though, it came to an end as all good things must, just like the growth period for my Ginormous Grow Frog:



It truly was ginormous now. When I took it out of the tub and laid it on top of the dollar for a comparison, it blotted out the dollar entirely:



and I had to put the dollar on top to keep the experiment valid:



He's at least three times his size, and even though he's drying out now, someday, he will again be ginormous.

Return of the Super Dictionary!

You know what the cure for a really, really long week and a half at work is? A quick flip through the Super-Disturbing Super Dictionary, the only book I own that is 100% guaranteed to make me smile every single time I open it.

Let's take a quick spin through the pages, and see what the most disturbing thing we can spot at random is.

Could it be Ted and Teri Trapper's rampant drug use?



Teri, next time open a window.

Back to the question at hand, could the most disturbing thing be that in addition to making Robin sweep the Batcave:



(Can you imagine how much Batman must freak out if you forget to move the giant penny when you're doing the floors?

"I'm not mad at you, Robin. I'm mad at the dirt.")

Batman also thinks it's totally appropriate for Robin to shovel snow in a vest, a cape, and a tiny pair of green panties?



No, there's something worse than drugs, worse than child labor, and worse than hypothermia. It's even worse than the fact that Robin can't remember the safe word again:



and again:



and again:



and again:



and Jesus Christ, how the hell many words can have a definition best illustrated by tying up a teenaged boy?

That's still not the most disturbing thing, though. There's something even more horrifying than the fact that Superman and his teenaged cousin are so busy having slumber parties:



that they can't even stop with the pillowtalk long enough to feed their dog:



It's that the Super Disturbing Super Dictionary outright lied to children.



Lois Lane, happy? Unmarried, shrill harridan Lois Lane, unable to break into television like her rival Lana or to prove that Clark Kent is really Superman or to stop falling off of buildings and having to be rescued is not just happy but really happy?

There's a reason why they didn't put a picture with that entry.