One and Done Sunday #19

Hey, Happy Fathers Day!

Welcome to One and Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

First, your picture, from the what-the-hell-happened-to-me category:

How many things can you find wrong here?

1) mini van

2) with paving stones

3) and flowers; flowers that are still alive in spite of me owning them for an entire hour already.

The only two things in this picture I ever could have predicted are the zombie stickers in the window and the packing blanket underneath everything.

You know, minivans get a bad rap. Lots of people are all like, “Oh, I’ll never own a minivan. NEVER!” Whatever. I get it, stigma schmigma, your life is over when you get a minivan, you get stupider when you buy one, they’re so unsexy for God’s sake.

You know what else they are? They’re really goddamn convenient. We whipped that puppy from an 8-passengers-can-sit-comfortably-and-smack-each-other-while-listening-to-their-iPods vehicle to one ready to receive stone, cement and dirt in like 45 seconds. Bam, bam, bam.

But I don’t have a whole lot of my identity wrapped up in the car I drive every day like it seems most of America does.

Because no matter who curses my minivan for either going the speed limit in my neighborhood or cutting them off on the Turnpike, or what names they think as they judge me with a van full of kids making the school rounds, or if people automatically (and hilariously, knowing both my kids’ soccer skills and my own cupcake making track record) categorize me as a cupcake-making-soccer-mom, there are two things they can’t change:

– I dig the minivan

-I also have a ’66 Mustang convertible.

Here are your links.

A hilarious article from down under about mums: Mother Bashing- It’s All the Rage! (thanks Team Oyenyi for the link!)

You can’t hate a baby elephant playing in the ocean. I dare you to look at these pictures and try not to smile. Karyn at Kloppenmum Because Play is the Work of Childhood.

One very specific use for a dead cat.

I don’t drink, so this guy could actually be full of crap, but he has been great to me and writes this wine blog and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Since there are a lot of moms here, and since a lot of moms drink wine, you should check out JVB Uncorked. If you’re a mom who prefers to drink bourbon, you should crack open another bottle of Baker’s and click his link.

Elizabeth Reep is a kickass stepmom who created Camp C.O.P.E. for children of deployed, injured, or fallen US service members. I started reading this article in my doctor’s office and had to stop and get tissues because I was openly weeping, and I had to finish reading it at home. I wish I was half the stepmom she is.

Oh, and one extra, because this is really frickin’ cool. 32,000-Year-Old Plant Reborn From Ancient Fruit Found In Siberian Ice.

Happy Sunday, and do something awesome for your dad today.

Black Thumb.

In an entirely unwarranted fit of optimism, I planted some stuff this year.

You must know that I have killed every plant I’ve ever tried to own. My mom is a master gardner.

I’m not.

But hey, some of my best friends have green thumbs, I can respect that.

We don’t have much flat ground at our house to begin with, and even less that gets any sunlight. I had my eye on a space behind the shed, thinking that since we lost so many trees there would be enough sunlight to plant pumpkins there– because how cool would that be? Having our own pumpkins to carve at Halloween and all. Then all the leaves on the remaining trees came in, blocked out the sun, and it was not to be.

So I picked another spot, and I planted, from seed: peas, arugula, spinach, and mesclun lettuce. I transplanted hostas in order to make this happen. The hostas survived, surprising me, CC and themselves. I believed that in our terraced “back yard” the particular terrace that I had cleared and planted in was inaccessible to the ~~few~~ millions of deer in our neighborhood.

Turns out this was an erroneous belief.

The deer loved my peas, spinach, and mesclun lettuce. They had no love for the arugula. They also refuse to eat dandelions, which are currently the only thing truly thriving in my garden. I wish I ate dandelions, or at least could find someone to sell them to, cause you pay like twenty bucks in New York for a frickin’ dandelion salad. Because, you know, they’re like, microgreens.

I don’t eat dandelion anything because my sister made me suck the milk out of a dandelion stem one time while our mother was picking strawberries and not properly supervising us. I can’t remember if this was before or after I tried to kill her by slipping the paperclip into her milk (My sister’s milk, not my mother’s. My mother doesn’t drink milk. And I would never attempt physical harm against the Bringer of Strawberries.)

From the dietary preferences of the deer, I draw the conclusion that deer are nothing but sugar-sucking whores who won’t touch anything that is bitter (it was baby spinach).

I watched a deer the other night while I was walking Casey. Casey was doing her I-really-have-to-go-but-I-can’t-until-I-find-the-exact-right-place-because-I-am-a-girl-dog-and-also-neurotic dance and did not notice the deer standing ten feet from her. Hell, I could smell the deer from there. She’d been eating my roses, then went across the street to have some of their roses, and then continued on with her moveable feast to each house in order, sampling all the flowers.

Then she tired of that and crossed back into my yard. The steep rake and the rocky incline didn’t bother her at all. It was at this moment that I discovered the extent to which my property is the main drag that the deer take between the cemetery and the neighborhood behind us. It is both their freeway and their promenade. And, apparently, their personal snack basket.

Sometimes they also drop a baby back there.

I wish we’d gotten more pictures of this guy before it stumbled back off to its hiding place. This little one was maybe two days old, probably less. Very shaky. It was about Casey’s size, just with longer legs. Pretty damn adorable. . . for a sugar-sucking whore.

Thanks for eating my peas, Bambi.

Sushi Making Class

Finally, here’s my last post of milking my 40th birthday.

I gave it away in the title, but my gift from Michelle at the end of the secret girls’ weekend birthday outing was a sushi making class.

Monday night, after all that walking we’d already done, we trekked over near Columbia University to the apartment of Misako “Misa” Sassa, a Japanese cooking instructor who does individual and group classes for both adults and children. Check out her website here.

Her apartment was a super-cool pre-war, with high ceilings, big windows, hardwood floors and this strange connecting hallway between the main hall and the kitchen that she turned into the most excellent pantry I’ve ever seen and which I covet greatly.

Misa was down-to-earth, funny, and a really good cook, in addition to being a great teacher. She also has a son who struck me as being a somewhat quieter version of my #5.

This is his artwork:

If there is a unifying theme to making sushi, it is to always begin with exactly the right ingredients.

The first thing Misa taught us is that sushi is all about the rice. People think it’s about the fish, but really it’s the rice– rice and presentation.

You have to start with the right kind of rice, and then there’s a lot of work involved– not in the actual cooking part, but the before and after part.

I already knew that this was going to be way beyond me to recreate at home.

Misa demonstrated how she doesn’t need to go to the gym because she works out with the rice. She polished it first, which is basically scrubbing the crap out of it in a giant pan with all your might, rinsing, and repeating, over and over.

My sister (the nurse) asked, “Don’t you lose a lot of the nutritional value of the rice by doing that?”

Misa looked her in the eye, said, “Yes,” and kept on polishing.

When the rice is prepped, it goes in the rice cooker. It doesn’t take up a burner and it never screws up the rice. Once it’s in, you don’t have to think about it.

While the rice was cooking, she prepped some fish. In line with our theme, she told us the most important thing about the fish is to get the freshest possible sushi grade fish you can. The guys at her fish market know her now and are a little bit afraid of her.

“This is good,” she said. “Now they see me coming and just run to the back to get the freshest piece of salmon they have. I don’t have to threaten them anymore. Saves time.”

She pointed out something that I’d heard but never really integrated: truly fresh fish has no odor. It doesn’t smell fishy. I practically buried my nose in the salmon she had and didn’t smell a thing.

When we made Ebi (shrimp) I learned two things: stick it on a skewer before cooking to keep it straight, and remove the mud vein after cooking, not before.

Isn’t she beautiful?

We made Unagi (eel), one of my favorites.

Misa buys it pre-prepped and heats it in her eel oven:

I love that her toaster oven is the eel oven. It’s the only thing she uses it for.

Prepped eel is super, super sticky from the sauce that comes on it.

The last dish Misa demonstrated in the kitchen was Tamago (egg). I used to order it when I went out for sushi but it’s cold, often oversweet and rubbery. I never order it anymore. Misa said in Japan, Tamago is truly the measure of a sushi restaurant. If you order it here in the US, pretty much always the restaurant is buying it from a distributer and not making it themselves which is why the quality is so low.

This Tamago is something else entirely.

There’s a special Tamago pan. The mixture is egg with a bit of sugar and salt and whatever subtle secrets the chef wants to include, and it is cooked in layers. One thin layer of egg goes in, bubbles, cooks and then is rolled to one side. Another layer goes in and cooks the same way. Then the layers are rolled together. Another layer goes in. It takes a while.

We ate this Tamago right away and it was like nothing I’ve ever had. Maybe a combination of crepes, omelettes, popovers, and unicorns.

If I could get Tamago like that, I would order it every time I went for sushi.

The rice came out of the cooker and was seasoned with a blend of sake, sugar and vinegar. Then the fanning began– the other reason Misa doesn’t need to go to the gym.

Even though I do go to the gym, I did not fan well. I was relieved of my responsibilities in short order.

We went to the table to assemble our creations.

Here’s another one of the coolest things ever that we did.

We made a roll that Misa said in Japan is the palate cleansing roll. I’ve never seen it on the menu here, although it is possible that I’ve missed it.

Rice, a flat Japanese basil, radish sprouts, and a pickled plum in bits.

I had never had any of those things before. Well, except the rice.

Misa helped us make spicy tuna hand rolls and instructed us on how to assemble our sushi. Then she disappeared into the kitchen and whipped up a few other dishes for us while we were making this:

There was dessert:

When Misa learned it was my birthday, she gave me a gift:

It was most definitely a multi-win night.

Michelle has taught me that the greatest gifts are experiences. I highly recommend Misa’s cooking class. Too often we think, “Oh, I’d love to do that,” and then never make it a priority. Time passes and we carry on, not trying that thing we’d love to do. Is there something you’ve always wanted to try? I just read an article about a woman who took a trapeze class. That sounds awesome, and terrifying. I wonder what Michelle would do if I got her that for her birthday.