Discovery

Central Florida may want for charm most days, but there are some things that make living here pretty cool.  

Like a space shuttle launch at sunset.  

And when its landing path is right over your house.

Boom!

Blueberry Cakes

Knowing a friend likes sour-cream-blueberry donuts from the local donut purveyor, I decided to do a variation on them for his birthday.  I modified a pound cake recipe into cupcakes, topped them with my usual buttercream, and arranged some white chocolate ribbons on top.

1 c. butter, softened

2 1/2 c. sugar

6 eggs, separated

1 c. sour cream (I use the light stuff, to maintain some pretense of healthfulness)

1/4 t. baking soda

3 c. flour

1 t. vanilla

1 t. almond extract (I omitted to make these nut-allergy-friendly, but would really like to try it next time)

2 c. blueberries (I use frozen)

Stir baking soda into sour cream in a small bowl.  In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar, add egg yolks, one at a time.  Beat until fluffy.  Add flour alternately with sour cream mixture, mix well.  Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold into batter.  Add blueberries (if using frozen, keep them in the freezer until you add them or else you'll have blue batter - I mean, unless that's your thing.  In that case, blue it up!)

Heat oven to 350 degF.  Fill cupcake papers 75-80% full, and bake 35-40 minutes (yes, it's a long time).   Makes 24 full cupcakes and 2 4-inch round cakes, a huge yield.

As far as blueberry cakes go, I have another recipe I like a little better, but I wanted the effect of the sour cream in these cupcakes.  Here's that one, from a Junior League cookbook from my hometown:

1 1/2 c. butter, softened

1 1/2 c. sugar

4 eggs

1 t. vanilla

1 1/2 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

1 pint blueberries

powdered sugar

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, add vanilla.  Sift together baking powder and flour, add gradually to butter mixture.  Beat for a moment at high speed to make it fluffy.  Fold in blueberries.  Pour into greased and floured 9-inch springform pan, and bake 70 minutes.  Serve on a pool of blueberry sauce, with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Kitchen Konfessions

I've yet to find a pancake recipe that surpasses Bisquick.

There!  I said it.

I've munched pancakes all around the globe, and yet, I haven't found any that I like better than what I make at home with Bisquick.  Okay, truth be told, I do fancy it up a bit - I use the extra-fluffy recipe, with its triple-action acid-base chemistry1, to produce a magically voluminous cake.  And I fry them in a little more oil than most so they get a ring of crunchity goodness around the edge, a trick I picked up on an elementary-school-era sleepover with a friend.  And maybe a handful of pecans or some banana slices here and there.  But other pancakes are just anemic and blah.

Now those are pancakes!

1  3 NaHCO3 (s) + C6H8O7 (aq)  -->  3 CO2 (g) + 3 H2O (l) +  Na3C6H5O7 (aq)

and

NaHCO3 (s) + 2 Na2H2P2O7 (aq)  -->  2 CO2 (g) + H2O (l) + 2 Na2HPO4 (aq)

and probably a little

2 NaHCO3 (s)  -->  CO2 (g) + H2O (l) + Na2CO3 (aq)

Ah, Spring

We're on spring break, and we've had shockingly beautiful weather, real chamber-of-commerce kinds of days. And perhaps it's a bit ungrateful for me to say that I am not quite ready for summer. I'm reluctant to give up my wool and my turtlenecks, even though we have had a decent run of winter. But I'm not quite ready for the summer pattern just yet. That said, we've had a string of days lately that start out pleasantly cool but quickly climb into the 80s under clear skies.

A friend and I spent a lovely day out in town yesterday, at Leu Gardens for a portion of it. The garden admission is waived on Mondays before noon, so it was crowded with retirees, mothers with strollers, and an army of SLR-bearing photographers. Not that we weren't part of it...

Saturday Morning Report

I'm sitting outside on a glorious Saturday morning.  I'm sitting on an airy patio at Whole Foods, waiting for members of my book club.  It's shockingly beautiful outside - just some cirrus in the sky, temperate now but will reach the 80s this afternoon.  There's a farmer's market 50 feet from me.  I have a coffee and a pretzel roll, and I'm listening to a guy-with-a-guitar.  When I saw him drop off his equipment, I immediately figured he was going to drive me inside quickly.  But then he starts playing U2's All I Want Is You, which is one of my favorite songs.  I tell him this, so he aims to go 2 for 2.  Next on his list is The Beatles' In My Life.  Check.

At this point, I don't care if anyone shows up for book club, this is such a delightful way to spend a morning!  Some fresh fruit and chocolate-hazelnut gelato from the market might gild the lily.

On Aviation Incidents

Rest in peace, all souls from CJC3407.

Commuter aircraft get a bad rap for a wide variety of reasons.  I've long disliked prop planes, and I'm sure I can trace this back to the Roselawn ATR accident.  I know they're as inherently safe as any other tube of metal hurtling through the air, but they sure are noisy and cramped, and to be honest, I generally prefer to divorce myself from the operation of my aircraft as much as possible.  Contrast a shaky takeoff in winter in a turboprop with an impossibly smooth climb out of a tropical airport in a 767.  (It's nice to have a home airport at which I have more choices than commuter planes.)

Still, I know that air travel is really safe.  Really safe.  I have lived and used to work for years right next to airports where hundreds of planes operate without incident each day.  I can rationally examine the statistics - and my brain acknowledges it readily, as I sit here on the sofa.  Surprisingly, despite all my frequent-flier miles, I can be a bit of a panicky flier if I'm not otherwise distracted.  Even a clear-sky approach into Orlando with rising thermals and wake turbulence from other inbound aircraft makes me hold on to my seatbelt a little tighter and start praying.  Again, even though I KNOW (far more than the average flier) the reasons for the turbulence we encounter at the top of the boundary layer, I often have to consciously unclench.  It's irrational fear and I know it.  It smacks of a larger issue I've been wrestling with lately - that of trust between me and God.  I guess it's easier to trust when your feet are on solid earth, but we have no more control here on the ground than in the air.   I ROUTINELY put myself in exponentially greater danger during my 1.5-h daily commute by car.  And yet, some days, it takes a boarding pass to get me to pray?  

I was on a commuter plane a couple summers ago from EWR-DCA.  It was a smooth summer-evening flight; midway through the final turn to line up with the runway, the gear came down and it felt like all hell broke loose on this plane.  Okay, maybe not all - we felt under control after what was likely just a few seconds and most likely always under control.  The NTSB today released FDR information from 3407's final moments, which made me think of that flight.  The gear dropped and the flaps lowered and, apparently, all hell broke loose.  Popular speculation is that a combination of icing and interrupted airflow from the lowered flaps caused a tail stall.  What's interesting is that procedures for recovering from a wing stall are exactly opposite to those for recovering from a tail stall.  So in an instant, a pilot has to determine what's gone wrong and correct it, with the wrong choice ending in disaster.  I make a ton of mistakes in the course of my career, so I have a lot of respect for pilots (consummate problem-solvers), who, bearing out the statistics, get it right almost all the time.

In reference to a passenger whose flight from MSY-EWR was delayed, keeping him off the crashed plane, a contributor on an aviation forum said an experience like that would change your life forever.

I missed a flight from London this summer, with 27 students on a tour.  Surrounded by a lot of panic and upset, I was relatively calm.  Part of it was my comfort with commercial aviation procedures.  Maybe it's because I'm on the ground, but I don't usually sweat delays or missed flights, though, and I attach a lot of baggage (pun intended.  would "gravity" have been any more acceptable?) to the deliberation when opting to switch flights or stand by for another.   To know why, rewind to 25 May 1979.  

Right before my third birthday, my parents and I flew to Los Angeles for my aunt's wedding.  We were going to take United ORD-DEN-LAX, but United pilots were talking about going on strike, so my parents booked American ORD-LAX instead.  We were originally ticketed on AA191 on the day before it became the deadliest crash on US soil (prior to 2001), but then my parents decided we would fly the next day.  They figured that if we were going a day later, we should take an earlier flight.  That was to put us in the air on the flight right before 191 crashed on takeoff.  That morning, we all overslept, had a 90-minute drive to Chicago, and had to return a rental car.  By the time we got to O'Hare, we had to run through the terminal in a flat-out sprint (my parents carrying me) the whole length of the concourse to make the flight.  Otherwise, we'd have been on 191, which was our back-up reservation.  Our tickets had 191 printed on it, but crossed out and our flight number written under it - I think my parents still have it.  

He's right.  It does change your life forever.

Believe what you will about your gods.  Mine kept me off that plane.

Look, I know I'm just one in a sea of people whose planes don't crash on any given day.  But I can trust a God who orchestrates infinite events, of which I'm not even aware, to put me where I need to be.  And I don't.  I've been bought at a price and have purpose.  And I let a little fluid dynamics freak me out?

I have a wrestling match to get back to...

Valentines Cake

Here's a cake I made for a Valentine's Day dinner at church.  I didn't actually get to go because we had relatives in town!  Anyhow, it was red velvet on the inside with almond buttercream.  I know the purists in the audience will recoil - no cream cheese frosting with red velvet? sacrilege! - but I really like the flavor of the almond better.  There are few cakes that truly benefit from cream cheese, and I just don't think an artificially-red chocolate cake is one of them.  Sorry.

That said, here's a picture!

Complete Nerdvana

I just got back from the BEST weekend EVER!

Mr. Jenspin and I attended an event for Continental most frequent fliers.  It was totally free, put on by employee volunteers who seem to have as much fun as we do.  We just had to buy plane tickets to Houston.  We went to one a couple years ago, and had the best geeky fun time.  We had face time with the President and CEO and a lot of the top brass - VPs from every department.  They did Q&A sessions, and a lot of the suggestions we made were put in place later.  I mean, an airline that listens to what its most frequent, loyal customers have to say?  And indulge us in nerdy fun like behind-the-sc

enes tours of all sorts of things - baggage claim, the corporate headquarters, flight simulators, the executive tasting kitchen for catering.  So when I learned there was another one this year, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity.

And what an opportunity it was!  I haven't stopped smiling.  We arrived on Friday night and went to the airport hotel, where they had a dinner buffet for us and a Deal-or-No-Deal game called Miles or No Miles where we competed for frequent flier miles.  We didn't get picked, but it was fun to watch, nonetheless.  We all got a gift as we left - sets of four surplus cups-and-saucers from an older first-class service.  I mean, an airline that does an event like this and then gives me dishes?  What's not to love?? 

Anyhow, when we registered and got our name tags, we also got our tickets for the next morning's tour.  We ended up on the Mystery Tour, and I was so happy.  I don't know why, but I was hoping we would get put on the Mystery Tour.  We'd already toured headquarters.  The simulators don't really thrill me, and catering certainly would have been fun - so would inflight training (they got to slide down evacuation slides) - but I really wanted the surprise.  And I can't believe they kept it a secret until we got on the bus that morning.  Especially with everything that was involved in this tour!  So we board the bus, and not even the employee guiding us knew anything until he opened the envelope.  We'd all been speculating about what it was, and we were making all kinds of airplane jokes about the bus.  So when the announcement was made that the Mystery Tour was going to be known as Continental Flight 9920, my initial reaction was, oh, that's cute.  But then he kept reading.  We were going to the airport to board a 757, which would give us a tour of downtown Houston, a buzz of the tower at Houston Hobby airport, a loop over Galveston, then over towards Austin and back to the airport.  It slowly dawned on me that we were going on a joyride around Texas.  In a commercial 757.  Who DOES this?  Well, we do, apparently.  Ha ha ha!

We finally got through the fence of the airport and drive over to our plane, outside one of the hangars.  We went through a security screening and milled about the plane, took pictures of the landing gear, peered into the engines.  Then the VP of Inflight came down the air stairs and talked to us (~100 of us) about some of the things we'll see on the aircraft, like the on-demand entertainment system in every seat.  We'll have champagne and a snack, and our crew are the flight attendants from the safety video!  Okay, that might not mean much to the average reader, but it's just... perfect.  We fly a LOT.  We have seen this video hundreds of times.  So we "know" the flight attendants featured in it like you'd "know" a character on a tv show.  There couldn't have been a BETTER choice of crew for this group.  That's how well this thing was put together.  So we boarded and took seats in row 9, on the A-C side, which turned out to be a most fortuitous choice for sightseeing.  The execs made a few announcements, refreshingly dispensing with the usual airlinese.  Then they announced that after we make our pass over the other airport, once we get back up to a cruising altitude, the flight deck will be open for us to come up and meet the pilot and sit in the cockpit.

WHAT.

In the cockpit.  Of a commercial aircraft.  Post-9/11. 

Words cannot convey how cool this was.  We took off, 

staying pretty low.  We sure lucked out with weather.  Perfectly clear air.  We flew past downtown at 3000ft, then descended to 1000ft with full flaps and flew over the terminals.  What Houstonians must have thought!  

(presuming any noticed)  The pilot pulled back on the throttle, taking us back on up, where we did a 270-degree loop-de-do around Galveston, conveniently dipping the wings on my side of the plane.   The line for the flight deck was pretty long, so we just stayed in the cabin and chatted with the flight attendants 

and by the time we got up to the cockpit, we didn't have much more time than to put the pilot's cap on, take a couple pictures, gawk out the windscreen, and let someone else have their turn.  We landed, gathered up our swag (new business

 class amenity kits, pillows, blankets, and headsets - with this and our china, I'm surprised staff on Sunday didn't think we were stealing the entire cabin of our last flight), took some more pictures milling around

the bottom of the plane, then boarded the bus to return to the hotel.

So.  We took a commercial airliner on a joyride for an hour with celebrity flight attendants and an open cockpit door.  I'm going to need a grin-ectomy.

The afternoon was Q&A sessions with executives, including one by the CEO and President.  Then the evening's hangar party, where there were more fun and games (a Continental trivia match, hosted by the CEO; a Price-is-Right style competition; and a Let's Make A Deal game in which someone picked the gold curtain and won a galley bar cart, and someone else opted for the box, under which was a pot of cheese soup), a 737 to climb all around, a band, and a buffet.  

They really outdid themselves with this.  I thought the last one we attended was pretty great, even if I took a fair amount of ribbing by my colleagues for spending a weekend at an airport.  But I don't know how they'd ever top this weekend.

Oranges

Citrus aren't my favorite fruits, but since I live in Florida and like to eat seasonally, citrus is about the only thing available right now.  Well, that's not entirely true - Plant City strawberries are beginning to make their debut.  Anyhow, there is a roadside stand, just a table and a tent, on the road to school.  A year ago, I stopped and bought a bag of tangeloes.  I brought them home and planned to eat them out of hand, but when I cut into one, they were so juicy they just begged me to make juice.  And so I did.   And proceeded to make the most fantastic juice I've ever tasted.  Like, sublime.  I'd never been satisfied with freshly-squeezed juice before, because it was always thin and weak and uninspiring.  Suddenly, I knew why advertising copy waxes poetic about freshly-squeezed juice.  The stuff had body and flavor for days.  

Before Christmas this year, the stand offered up some grapefruit and some red navels.  I gave the red navels a go, but they just didn't compare to those tangeloes.  What delight, then, when I discovered the stand has tangeloes out!  A couple weeks ago, I stopped for a bag of them (and a sack of grapefruit).  The juice was just as wonderful as I remembered.  In a very garde-manger moment, I used more of the fruit (than I otherwise would have) and made candied orange peels, even saving the syrup for cocktails later (orange mojitos, orange cosmopolitans, there might have been some orange in the margaritas).  The peels taste just like the jelly orange slices sold next to gumdrops.

Yesterday, I came home with what will likely be the last tangeloes of the season.  They're a bit more acidic than the last collection.  Maybe a result of recent freezes and frosts and the pickers' desire to get them off the trees before our chilly temperatures this morning.   They also had ponderosa lemons, so since all I had was a big bill for the honesty box, I took one of those with my tangeloes.  Haven't decided what to do with it just yet.  It feels like there's a lot of rind, which makes sense, given its citron heritage.

A Day in the Life

I need to do some work - grading, lesson plans, a set of journal annotations - so it's probably best that I can't find any LED flashlights anywhere in the house.

I enjoyed quite the gourmet afternoon, that began with a long-overdue trip to Whole Foods.  The tally:

- Devon clotted cream (for scones, with apricot jam)

- Pretzel bread

- Potatoes

- Papadums

- Yogurt (to inoculate a batch of homemade yogurt)

- Tomato paste (in a toothpaste tube, the best way for storing - and subsequently using)

- Frozen samosas

- Ground lamb (planning on making lamb burgers, a la Fergburger, tomorrow night)

- Emmentaler (for fondue)

- Gruyere (also for fondue)

- Fontina (because I haven't had any in a long time)

and a cup of gelato eaten in-store - an underwhelming cookies-and-cream and a life-changing chocolate hazelnut.

It surprises me that WF usually has the best prices on cheeses.  I also got some flour, whole milk (for yogurt), and some of the season's first local strawberries at Publix.

I then came home and set off on an ambitious culinary afternoon.

Indian food was an early dinner.  Papadums and samosas from my shoppings.  Papadums may be the most entertaining things I have ever cooked.  3-inch pasta-like disks that, when plunged into oil for about 3 seconds, get all... well... it's like a reverse shrinky-dink.  So cool!  Anyhow, I made my usual potato-cauliflower szabzi, but forgot the salt, and had to return my plate to the stove to splash it with brine and reheat.  The samosas were serviceable, and the mint chutney supplied a nice green heat.  

Before that Indian feast, though, I made some scones, started some brioche for burger buns (rising in the refrigerator overnight), and started my yogurt (incubating overnight).

But now it's 800p, and I really should get to work.  And then into bed - early morning tomorrow in the coffee bar.

Fa ra ra ra ra

Been listening to my winter playlists, but I need some new songs.  Here are the favorites so far this year:

It's Christmas Time, The Lovemongers

Veni Veni Emannuel, The Gregg Smith Singers

Go Tell it on the Mountain, NeedtoBreathe

O Come O Come Emmanuel, Chasing Furies

Same Old Lang Syne, Dan Fogelberg

Song for a Winter's Night, Sarah McLachlan

Last Christmas, Savage Garden

The Last Noel, The Lovemongers

2000 Decembers Ago, Joy Williams

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Caedmon's Call

The Light of the Stable, Selah

Noel Nouvelet, Apollo's Fire

Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella, Yolanda Kondonassis

I have very distinct tastes in Christmas music.  I tend towards minor keys and solemn chords, more light-in-the-darkness stillness-of-winter than sparkly-glee-club-mistletoe.

I've been meaning to write for years (okay, so I've only had my blog for 1.5.  1.5 is plural...) on just why I love Christmas.  It's not about the presents, I swear.  But I've been swamped.  But I'll get around to it this weekend, perhaps.

Played in our annual Christmas service last weekend.  I have lost whatever musicality I ever possessed.  I play with unexpressive, plodding notes.  Granted, it was easy stuff - quarter notes, simple key signatures.  But 18 years of dust on my technique is hard to shake off in one afternoon.  It's a lovely service, of course, and the theatre was stunning in all its holiday finery, but the real reason I volunteer for this is the same as why I volunteer for the drama productions.  It's fascinating to watch others who are good at what they do.  We get to work with the choir director and theatre director in their element.  To watch them put together a performance from a ragtag group of students.  To see them in the course of their job, which is similar to mine in that it falls under the name "teacher" but yet is so very different in nature to mine.  To see that their travails with students are the same as mine, just a different flavor.  And all the unintended hilarity.  The line of the day doesn't translate to print very well, but another notebook-worthy line was, "Somebody has unplugged my piano to plug in the baby Jesus.  My piano is more important to this production than baby Jesus!"  Which is about as funny as the Pirate in the Pit or the Phantom of the Opera in high heels from productions past.

Stuff Jen Likes III

College bookstores.  College towns, in general.  I spent 24 years of my life in college towns, and I just dig them.

Orion.  Okay, it's probably everybody's favorite constellation.  But I like it.  He says winter is on the way.

Being greeted by a kiss on the cheek.  I've noticed an uptick in the number of friends who do this, and I love it.  It's very continental, which is immediately appealing, plus it's just a nice variation on the usual hug.

Maple.  I love maple-flavored everything, I don't know why I've never been to Vermont.

Green bananas.  Well,yellow, but with a definite green tone.  Once they are all yellow, I've no use for them.  At least not until they're blackened for banana bread.

Large spoons for cereal.

Fried green peas.

Picasa.

Cupcakes.  I know they're riding a crest of popularity, but I liked them before they were hip.  See also: swing dancing

Chips and dips.  Pita and hummus.  Potato and French onion.  Tortilla and refried beans.

Classical guitar.

The shimmering of long grass on a sunny breezy day.  See also: the silvery undersides of maple leaves against a stormy grey sky.

Gewurztraminer.

Bowls.  I'm technically on a dishware purchasing moratorium, because I can't help myself.  Plus, bowls are more useful than coffee mugs or plates, if you ask me.

Heart prints.  Cute valentine hearts, not anatomical drawings.

Chili Cheese Burritos.

Christmas music.  Christmas, in general, but definitely the music.

Cranberries.

The scent of tomato vines.

This poem.

Winter Park Farmers Market

What an enjoyable morning!  Beautiful weather and excellent treats.  The Winter Park market is the closest central-Florida  approximation to the Monterey Market - if not in size and produce offerings, then at least in people-watching opportunities and dog-friendliness.

What my ten dollars bought:

A gigantic bag of kettle corn1 - still hot from the kettle

A carton of yellow tomatoes - you'll see them in the corner of one picture

A tomato plant - only a dollar, so worth the risk

A swanky Robert Talbott tie - from the benefit shop down the road

1 Where can I find "mushroom popcorn" - the kernels that explode into the round puff-balls, instead of the typical butterfly shape?  I can find wholesalers, but I just want a couple pounds for home use...

All I Want for Christmas

Once again, in the spirit of the crass commercialism that is Black Friday, it's all I want for Christmas!

Prayer of St. Francis bracelet

Baker's Edge pan - it's all corner pieces!

Wall poster Chart of the Nuclides.

"I'm So Adjective, I Verb Nouns" t-shirt.  Mens L.

Jemma Kidd I-Tech Eyeliner in Abstract

Nars Eyeshadow Duos in Caravaggio and Rated R

Lush Snow Fairy Shower Gel

Cake Turntable

Fat Daddio's 3"-Depth Square Cake Pans - 3", 6", 9", 12", 15", 18"

Cake Wrecks refrigerator magnet

Nikon 18-55mm lens

Nikon lens cap (since the Sydney Harbour Bridge ate mine)

Kenko extension tubes (a cheaper alternative to a macro lens)

Personalized 3x5 cards

A ticket (MCO-EWR) for Spring Break.

A fellowship to get a Chemistry Education PhD.  :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was tempted to

liveblog Thanksgiving preparations again this year, but the preparations are just not terrifically interesting.  

I'm in the midst of mincing vegetables for stuffing, and the roll dough is rising, but there are no grandiose preparations this year - or, at least, they are somewhat routine.  

Our turkey is already cooked - we let the local Kiwanis club smoke it - so it has been fragrancing the kitchen with every opening of the refrigerator door since yesterday afternoon.  But all that needs to be done is carving and reheating.  I still haven't had the mythical fried turkey, but I really want to try it.  Next year, perhaps.  Seems like a big outlay of cash for a fryer and oil, though.

Cranberries will come from a can - as they should - but I decided to forego the fresh cranberry pie this year, because I suspect I'd be the only one eating it.  I might mix some fresh ber

ries in to a few of the rolls.  Pecans too.  The pumpkin and pecan pies are done and resting peacefully (for now - their time will come!) on the counter next to me.  The pumpkin is very pretty - but it looks like my mother forgot to sprinkle nutmeg on top before baking.  That's my favorite part.  Drat.  It's just not the same if you sprinkle after baking.

I am going to try baking potatoes before mashing them, to see if less water in the potatoes makes for fluffier mash.  But it's at least a half hour before I need to even think about turning the oven on.  (Aiming for wheels-up on this dinner at 400p)

I don't want to chop the apples for the stuffing because they'll brown.   Green bean ca

sserole is going to be dump-and-stir-and-bake.  I'd like to roast some broccoli, but that doesn't need preparation just yet, either.  So, we're in a bit of a holding pattern right this second.

Meanwhile, I suppose I can take time to give thanks.  I'm thankful mostly for people.  So if you're in my life, you're on the list.  For (or maybe because I am) an introverted only child, I value my relationships beyond words.

Okay, I'm off to scrub potatoes and trim broccoli.  And maybe post a picture of the pies. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I love you all.

Restaurant Review

I picked my parents up from the Sanford airport last night - a strange little airport, with lots of British low-cost carriers and signs that warn visitors to look left before crossing - and found a cute little restaurant in an area of town I've never before visited.  

I'm going to start a new tag of posts - reviews.  I'm always quick to give an opinion, and it's good to keep a collection of local places worth visiting.

Two Blondes and a Shrimp

112 E. First St.  Sanford, FL

I found reviews for it in Chowhound.com, and it looked reasonably-priced and had a wide enough menu to please anyone.  Eclectic little restaurant with bar and patio for music.  Quirky waitstaff, exceptionally friendly.

We started with Candied Bacon and Texas Nachos.  The candied bacon was, well, meat candy: brown-sugar glazed crispy bacon strips with a touch of black pepper.  The nachos were usual fare, if not a little over-sour-creamed (even if you like the stuff, which I don't) on cheapy tortilla chips, but with barbecue instead of mexi-beef.  A nice, sweet touch.  Fresh, fluffy biscuits for the table.  The appetizer special last nightwas Oysters Rockefeller, but I couldn't convince anyone else into them.  But I was happy with the bacon!

I had Pecan Chicken, with molasses and pecan crust (skin-on, unfortunately); grilled asparagus; and the Grits-of-the-Day, tomato-basil flavor.  The grits were good for a few bites, but the flavor was just overpowering after that -  it's the same phenomenon as pumpkin ice cream.  I just dig that they have grits du jour, I couldn't pass it up.  Wish I'd had more asparagus instead - it had great flavor, and just the right tenderness.

My dining companions had the same Pecan Chicken, but with garlic mashed potatoes and applesauce (over-cinnamoned for my taste); Bourbon Pork Medallions with corn-on-the-cob (tasted almost... brined, and looked like it had been left in the field for a while - unless it's some kind of heirloom corn) and the same asparagus; and Cola-Glazed Baby Back Ribs with the corn and hoppin' john (white rice topped with black-eyed peas).  We couldn't bear the thought of dessert after all that, though the server did tempt with key lime pie.  Next time!

In all, a good value and a friendly little restaurant with good live-music potential.  

4 flamingoes of 5, particularly if you're picking someone up at the airport.

Standardizations

With our 'merican sensitivity to "difficult" math, you might think we'd be less reluctant to adopt some standards that would make our lives a little easier.  I'm talking about a conversion to the metric system.   Measuring in mL, cm, and g would take a little bit of work at first - some rewriting of recipes, some new traffic signs, and a couple generations who would internally translate mL back to cups.   Fine.   But the mark of fluency is the ability of think in a new language without internally translating.  We could get there.  Besides, there is a lot of appeal in powers of ten.  I love conversion factors more than most, but even I dig the quick conversion from grams to kilograms or millimeters to centimeters.  1 mi = 5280 ft. 1 gal = 128 oz. or is it 96? 16 c.?  And is a cup 8 oz?  See what I mean?  I know the answers to these, but go ahead - ask ten people on the street, and good luck.

Why the stubborn adherence to the arbitrary?  I mean, every other country in the world uses paper with a fixed aspect ratio; it just makes sense for enlarging/reducing.  Why do we have to make it difficult for ourselves with legal and letter?

I teach in metric because it's the standard of international science.  But I can only do so much to prompt the revolution.  Can I get some help here, please?

Originally drafted 7 July 2008

Playbill

Jennifer (Witch 1).  Jennifer is happy to be appearing on stage again, this time in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged.  Previously cast in motherly roles, she plays one of Macbeth's witches - a role for which she says teaching has prepared her.  Favorite roles include Debbie in American Beauty, Messenger in The Wiz, and orchestral credits in Lessons and Carols.  Love and kisses to her adoring public!

Tree Frog

I took a picture of this frog on our bathroom window two months ago. It seems a nice accompaniment to Jess's post. I didn't name it. Maybe I should.

On the Nature of Incremental Change

I've recently seen photographs of several friends and acquaintances I haven't seen, in person, in at least ten years.  (mostly a result of certain social-networking sites)  Clicking through their photos, I'm struck by how much they look like grownups.  I'm not saying they haven't aged well - it's just that they don't look like they're in high school or college anymore.  My mental image of them hasn't changed since I last saw them, but obviously, we've all gotten a decade older.   Same thing happens with my cousins - and they're young, which amplifies the phenomenon - my mental images of them are as toddlers, but they're in upper elementary school now. Anyhow, when I look at pictures of myself, I don't marvel at how different I appear from ten, fifteen years ago. I mean, I know I've changed, but I've been present for the changes.  It isn't until I see a photo from 1997 and I can't help but notice how much younger I appear.  And that's not entirely true either.  When I look at that photo from 1997, what catches my eye is how much younger the other people appear.  Only then do I think, "oh, yeah, me too".

I don't mean for this post to come across as a lament of the aging process - I don't have a problem with growing older.  What's interesting is my tendency to not age-progress individuals, and how surprised I am when I see that they're adults now.  It's clearly a function of how often I see someone.  Incremental change on the order of days or months is significantly smaller (and less noticeable) than that on the scale of years, even decades.

The shift of plates goes unnoticed until a dramatic event.

There's another strange time phenomenon going on in my head. I occasionally manage to neglect a four-year chunk of my life, the California Years.  From time to time, I simply forget we lived there.  I remember the people and the places, but sometimes, when I'm going through my mental timeline, I find I just close the gap between college and Florida.  This happened most noticeably the year I spent advising college-bound high-school seniors.  The more I talked about college and thought about what it was like to go off to college, the time gap between now and then started to shrink; when I caught myself, it was with marvel that there was a chunk of four years (and even a couple years here) that I just glazed right over as though they were insignificant.  Which they weren't.

Time is a transparent film, stretching and shrinking.

I was asked recently, on the occasion of my ninth wedding anniversary, how my marriage had changed over time.   It was a more difficult question than I expected it to be.   I know there has been change, but I can't articulate it, and I certainly can't divorce it from our own individual changes.  It's a kind of relative-motion frame-of-reference problem, because our relationships evolve as we are changing, too.

A person walks at a speed of 2 m/s relative to a moving sidewalk. If the sidewalk is moving at 3 m/s relative to the ground, what is the person's velocity relative to an outside observer?

I couldn't answer her - there seem to be too many variables to come up with a meaningful answer, relative to an outside observer.

[Originally drafted 25 July 2008]