Happy Australia Day!

 Kindly play this song whilst enjoying this post. Or whilst not enjoying. Either way, play this song:

With the Australian Open and Australia Day and the anniversaries of when I both left for and came back from the southern hemisphere all falling in the winter, it's clear that the forces of the universe have conspired to make this my season of longing. I could get very annoying very quickly right about now, but I'll spare you and leave you with this simple sentiment:

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!

View from Marriners Lookout, Apollo Bay

Meaghin at the Melbourne Botanical Gardens

Grampians National Park

The Grampians

Kate, Cari, and Laura(keet) in Port Arthur, Tasmania

Julia and Saradee on Brunswick Street, Melbourne

Royal Park, Melbourne

Brighton Beach, Melbourne

My wonderful shoebox on Flemington Road. Oh, how I miss that balcony and my parrot tree.

Well, I've Done Nothing with My Life

One of my favorite shows on TV is Food Network's Chopped, in which four competing chefs must cook professional dishes for a panel of judges using the items in their mystery baskets. Tonight I watched an episode featuring teen chefs--young culinary masters eager to prove that kids can make more than pizza and care just as much as adults about cooking with fresh, healthy ingredients.

To which I say, of course, damn you. Damn you, teen chefs, for being in high school and knowing how to sear a salmon fillet to perfection. Damn you for having a better vocabulary than me, a 25-year-old aspiring writer with a college degree in English. And lastly, damn you for accomplishing more in your 13 and 16 and 17 years than I will accomplish in another 13 and 16 and 17.

Why so much venom? Why am I so angry at these staggeringly impressive young people and their contributions to the culinary world? Please consider the following:

1. The youngest competitor, a 13-year-old girl, got into cooking because while "growing up" (really? You're 13 effing years old), all her family ate was microwaveable meals and takeout food. So you wanted to make your own food, kid. I respect that. What I have a harder time letting slide is the fact that you are half my age and you've already studied in France at Le Cordon Bleu. You want to know my proudest accomplishment in a foreign country? Scrounging up enough Italian to ask a store owner directions to the ferry ticket booth, only to realize moments later, to my utter disconsolation, that my laughable vocabulary did not include any of the words in his response.

2. My favorite teen chef, and the one who went on to win the competition, had suffered the loss of her older brother to leukemia and was appearing on Chopped to honor to his memory. She was calm, composed,  extremely intelligent, and spoke beautifully about how she and her brother had cooked and watched Chopped together and that she hoped she could do enough to make him proud. If you don't hate yourself yet, readers, you're about to. During the entree round the chefs had to incorporate cotton candy into some component of their dish. Immediately this girl thought to make a vinaigrette using cotton candy and merlot. "Merlot is a very tart red wine," she explained as she emptied the contents of an entire bottle into her saucepan. "And the acidity will work nicely to counter the cloying sweetness of the cotton candy." First of all, you can't even legally drink yet--how do you know how to pair wine with food? I don't even know that about merlot and my brother makes wine. And did you seriously just use the word "cloying"? You are the youngest 45-year-old I have ever seen. Oh, and, if that weren't enough, for the dessert round she made a crepe using chocolate cake mix (a basket ingredient) and one of the judges said it was the best crepe she'd ever had on the show. Oh yeah, teen chef? I made crepes the other morning for breakfast that my cat sniffed not once, but twice, before recoiling in disgust and--I kid you not--sprinting out of the kitchen.

3. As an appetizer, one of the chefs served blackened salmon topped with a wedge of goat cheese. The judges agreed that it was one of the most expertly prepared cuts of salmon they'd ever had on Chopped, and one remarked that the goat cheese on top "added a touch of whimsy." Really? Whimsy? Culinary whimsy to me is sculpting a face out of a pile of mashed potatoes. And what 16-year-old has developed their palate to the point of loving goat cheese and, as we later learn, Brussels sprouts? I still find goat cheese icky and think that Brussels sprouts, while cooking, release a putrid aroma not unlike that of a decomposing rodent.

For these reasons I am bitter. Me, I can hardly bake anything without a recipe. The cuisine de Olivia is essentially a pile of sauteed veggies drenched in soy sauce and topped with a veritable down comforter of ground chipotle. I call my salads "transcendent" in attempts to make myself feel better about the fact that the crowning jewel of my culinary skills--my piece de resistance, if you will--is a perfectly dry-fried slice of tofu.

How dare you, teen chefs, make my own life endeavors appear so very insignificant by comparison? How. Dare. You.

And please, for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, go back to the distant planet of baby culinary geniuses from whence you came and leave us fallible mortals to eat our mac and cheese in peace.

Um...Whoops

This here's a new segment I'm calling, "How I saved my mom from federal lockup...and how I almost landed her there in the first place." Barring a profound coincidence, I doubt it'll make a repeat performance.

My mom has been trying to catch up on Downton Abbey so she can watch this season on TV. She asked for my help finding a website on which to stream the episodes. Everything was going swimmingly until she got to the Christmas Special last night. The site she had been using up to that point wasn't working anymore so I found her another and, after letting it buffer for several minutes, left her to watch it.
     Not five minutes later she was at the stairs. "Livvy!" she hollered. "I'm in trouble with the FBI!"
     "What?!" I jumped up and raced to the stairwell. "What are you talking about?"
     "The FBI locked my computer. Come see." She spoke as if this were a daily occurrence in our house and I half expected her to shrug.
     I had been watching Matilda, because what else does one do with one's free time but watch baby Mara Wilson super glue Danny DeVito's hat onto his head? Hoping that this issue would simply be a matter of force quitting or, at worst, turning the computer off and turning it back on again (the only two things I know how to do on a computer), I left Mara Wilson to spy on the speedboat salesmen and begrudgingly went downstairs.
     What I found when I got there was something I was utterly unprepared to handle. My brilliant mother thought to take a picture:

     Now, you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to seriously screw with me and my mom. Together we're quite a fearsome thing. We immediately noticed a handful of things about the message that betrayed its authenticity: 1) the inclusion of three small black-and-white pornographic images in a notice that supposedly came from the federal government; 2) the word "involvement" was spelled "invlovement"; 3) it offered no contact information; 4) it flaunted the fact that the FBI had taken control of files on the desktop to use as evidence against my mom, but the files of which they claimed to have taken control were photos of mugs and the artist's biography that my mom uses for pottery shows; and 5) the only way of sending in the $200 was to purchase a MoneyPak card at Kmart.
     I'm pretty sure a fetus would know this was spam.

(More after the jump)
    

It Be Cold

Because I am not currently living in Siberia or Saranac Lake I don't really feel entitled to comment on the cold, but I'm going to anyway.

It's freezing. And not freezing like a 60-degree breeze on an 80-degree August day. I mean it was 16 when I woke up this morning. This was my bedroom window. The inside of my bedroom window:

But boy do I love it. There's not a more gorgeous place on this planet than the Pacific Northwest.

Happy winter, everyone!

I'm Calling Shenanigans on This

It's time to break out a new segment that I'm calling "So That's a Thing."

I just finished The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey. The characters are well developed, the plot is interesting, and the sense of place (it's set in Trinidad and Tobago) is incredibly vivid. I loved it.

There's just one thing. Please read the following selection:

     Sparrow leant forward. 'Do you know how many women claim dey have a chile from me?'
     George shook his head.
     'Plenty.'
     'One in every village?'
     'At least.'
     'See, you're a Father of the Nation. You and Eric Williams.'
     Sparrow steupsed. 'Ohhh, gorsh. Pressure, man....'

I'm sorry, steupsed? Steupsed? That's so not a thing.

After some research on what my mom calls "Professor Google," I have learned that "to steupse" is a  Trinidadian verb used to describe the sound of someone sucking their teeth. So apparently that is a thing. Now, I'm not one to go in pursuit of facts to disprove, but when I did an image search of "steupse" I got, among other results, a dead wallaby-looking thing and a plate of Moroccan couscous. Just sayin'.

People Who Made My 2012

Now that we've just powered through 2012, I find it an appropriate time to look back on all the people who made it a memorable year--from those who helped me fall asleep at night a happier person to those whose mere existence put a hitch in my giddy-up.

We begin with my favorite person of all time:

Chef Amanda Freitag

 This woman is perfection. Can I say that? Is that weird? I just love her so much. I love her laugh, I love her kindness and humility, I love that she uttered the phrase "My crepes bring all the boys to the yard" in the middle of a Next Iron Chef challenge. I love that she's the only judge on Chopped who treats the competing chefs like real people. I love her so much, in fact, that in my resolve to be more intentional in my cooking endeavors I have deemed 2013 "The Year of the Freitag." Again, is that weird?

Kai Ryssdal 
During the first half of the year I was working until 6:30 every evening. Because it airs on my local NPR affiliate station at that time, the program Marketplace became my soundtrack on my drives home. Kai Ryssdal is the host, and though I know literally nothing about the S&P 500 even after listening for months on end, I would wear a jock strap on my forehead if Kai told me to. Well, maybe not my forehead. But definitely my arm. (I have not included Mr. Ryssdal's photo here because it's his voice, not his physical appearance, with which I am familiar--though I'm told he does in fact have a face.)

Brandi Carlile
On three separate occasions in the past week alone I have woken up with one of her songs in my head, only to go downstairs and find my mom singing a different one. The house is never quiet. Brandi has consumed us. She's playing in the living room as I write this. My poor dad.

David Muir

I have long maintained that it must be impossible to get a job at ABC World News if you're not among the most gorgeous humans to ever exist on this earth. Clearly David Muir--field correspondent and weekend anchor--is no exception. Who wouldn't watch the evening news if this is the face talking at you? (Honorable mention: Matt Gutman.)

Mitt Romney

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer seven consecutive root canals to this man's company and I would have moved permanently to Australia if he'd won the election. But "binders full of women"? Happy birthday, Olivia.

Michael Gspurning

Badass Sounders goalie. Lowest goals-against average of any 'keeper in the league, third-lowest in Major League Soccer history. Plus he's Austrian and adorable and, like, nine feet tall. And this was his first season with an American team. The man's a beast.

Abby Wambach
And speaking of beasts, this girl has been full-on punched in the face and had a gash on her head stapled closed while still on the field and went on to finish both games. She's the second all-time leading scorer for the US Women's National Team and she is incredible to watch. I measure all things hardcore on a scale of 1 to Abby, with myself falling somewhere around -3.

So That Happened...Quite a While Ago

I could also file this post under a new segment I'm calling either "Let's Examine My Life Ten Years Ago" or "I Don't Bring it Up Until it's No Longer Relevant." (Both are a bit cumbersome, I know.) I found this floating around in my unpublished drafts and figured that since the humor herein has all but formed that abject milk skin along the top, it's high time for me to pass it off as something I'm vaguely aware that I wrote. Though in my defense, the last one happened just last night. So there.

My cat believes herself to be a dog, so every morning when my mom is cutting fruit for her yogurt Taffy insists on a portion of the produce. I was cutting black olives for my salad the other evening and she scurried to my feet to wait for her cut. Thinking I'd teach her a lesson by showing her that she doesn't really want what human grown-ups eat, I chopped some olives into adorably tiny pieces and put them in her bowl. Within seconds she'd devoured it all. This morning she was waiting at my mom's feet for what would have been her second dose of fruit for the day. "Have you forgotten that I already gave you some, Taff?" my mom asked. "You need to do some brain exercises to strengthen your mental acuity. Try a Sudoku."

During the Olympics my mom and I were watching the American men compete in gymnastics. One of them finished an incredible floor routine, sticking every single one of his landings, then sat down to wait for his scores. He pulled a towel over his shoulders and the commentators reflected on his performance. What did my mother choose to compliment after his amazing display of strength and athleticism? "Nice towel!" Only my mother.

"I don't understand the whole Twitter thing and those, what do you call them...twits." -Mom

I went downstairs the other morning wearing a navy blue pajama shirt and blue and green checkered boxers. "My," my mom said, "aren't you wearing quite the autumnal sleeping outfit!" I pointed out that my "autumnal sleeping outfit" (or my "slumber kit" for all you sports fans who know what a kit is) was long flannel pajama bottoms. What I was wearing was actually my "vernal equinoxian sleeping uniform."

"Here's another Q-tip. Oh...it's used." -Dad

There's an Eastern Conference MLS clash this evening between DC United and the Chicago Fire. One of the DC players is out with "toe soreness." How much does that suck? What do you want to bet he wishes he had a more compelling, badass injury like facial fractures or a torn MCL?

I was looking up tofu recipes on Pinterest as I was lying in bed last night and I found a mouth-watering one for a tofu scramble breakfast burrito. I was instantly starving and had a hard time falling asleep for the excitement that in seven hours I would make myself some tofu. I woke up this morning, bounded down the stairs, yanked the fridge open...and nearly cried. We were out of tofu--something that has literally never happened since I became a vegetarian thirteen years ago. I can't convey the depths of my despair when I was forced to settle for a bowl of granola.

Top 10 Reads of 2012

I am more than a teensy bit in love with Seattle-based librarian Nancy Pearl. Actually, since I'm being completely honest, I worship her. I don't think there's a book on this planet she hasn't read. The sheer magnitude of her literary knowledge astounds me, though I must admit it makes my own attempt at being well-read look woefully inadequate. No mind. I am determined to be like her in every single way, starting with sharing my must-read list of 2012. These are not necessarily books that were published last year, though some of them were. It's just a carefully selected smattering of ten books I found most enjoyable (in no particular order).

1. The Orchardist - Amanda Coplin
2. The Lost Wife - Alyson Richman
3. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
4. The Barbarian Nurseries - Hector Tobar
5. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
6. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
7. Some Things That Stay - Sarah Willis
8. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
9. Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
10. Late Nights on Air - Elizabeth Hay

Happy New Year!