Adventures in Fall: Quince

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
  - taken from The Owl and the the Pussycat by Edward Lear

Right now I’m reveling in the many delights of Fall. The smell of spiced cider & eucalyptus leaves has been floating around my office, and today I had my first pomegranate of the season! I find harvest season to be subtly seductive, and I’m constantly finding new aspects of the season to appreciate. My most recent discovery is the Quince.

Let me just say that there is no fruit that smells better than the quince. It has this wonderful ambrosia-florally- luxurious scent to it that simply beckons you to pick it off the tree. There have been several moments at work this week when I’ve found myself wandering aimlessly towards the quince trees, or in the kitchen with my nose next to the fruit bowl enjoying the aromas rather than working. If it were a perfume, I’d bathe in it, and when I close my eyes and go to a happy place, it smells like quince. It’s a cruel cruel joke then, that something this delightful smelling cannot simply be picked off the tree and eaten immediately.  The quince has often been thought to be the “forbidden” fruit from the Garden of Eden, due to its alluring scent, but bitter taste.

For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to figure out what the heck I can do with a quince. It is such a perplexing little nugget of a fruit. This vibrant yellow, squatty, and oddly shaped fruit, somewhat resembles a cross between a pear and an apple, but is much more sassy. Personally, I like my food to be on the playful side, and I find unusual fruits to be much more enjoyable to eat. Quince is the epitome of a playful fruit, and kumquats, pomegranate, and persimmons are a few of my other favorites. Typically quince is too bitter and acidic to eat raw, though I’ve snuck a few bites here and there. Thankfully the tannins that fill the fruit with its bitterness tend to calm down a bit when the fruit is cooked, and this week I’ve been trying a few recipes to see if I can coax out something delightful.

 Quince, little nuggets of fruit

And so began my quest to find something delicious to make with quince. Apparently it makes a wonderful addition to apple pies, and produces a rather heavenly jelly… but as I am still getting settled into my new place, I don’t feel like undertaking a large baking experiment just yet (give me time), so I decided to do something a bit more simple, and promptly decided to poach the fruit.

 The skins in simple syrup

I read through a few recipes and then began to improvise. First I blended water and some brown sugar and began to simmer. I then skinned the quince, and put the peelings in my simple syrup mixture, since I wanted as much of the quince flavor as possible. I added a cinnamon stick and a few cloves, and let the chunks of quince simmer for about 45 minutes. The end result was like applesauce to the nth degree. The complex flavors of the quince added the perfect amount of tartness. It’s tangy yet sweet flavor kept me coming back for more.  I’ve tried a few different variations, one with red wine (so good), one with less sugar, which I then blended into a quince “butter” and paired with manchego cheese.

                                  Poached Quince

                                   Quince "Butter"

Mere moments ago, I stumbled across a recipe that I know will be on my table in the near future.  Quince with rosemary pine nut topping, and Rum Lime glaze….  Yes please.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Moving is sucking the very life out of my soul… Ok, so maybe that is a little melodramatic, but some days that is how I feel. In my mind, moving next door was the best possible moving scenario… no maneuvering furniture up & down the stairs, no renting of u-hauls, no coercing relatives to let your borrow their truck & muscle for the afternoon. I simply had to move from point A to Point B, easy peesy.  This was of course slightly unrealistic.

My first mistake was not getting a wagon or a wheelbarrow to haul countless boxes, food and knickknacks between the two apartments. Typically a move is judged by car or truckloads “oh we only have about two loads left” however, when you are walking things from residence to residence, the outcome is not as optimistic. “Oh only about 307 armloads left”

On the bright side, my goal was to be 100% completely out of Apartment A last Thursday, and I was! On the not-so-bright side, I’ve been living in the chaos of Apartment B for almost a week. Yes, progress is being made daily, my bathroom is settled, books are on the shelves, the kitchen is mostly done, I have a place to sleep, and the internet finally works! But I’m finding that I am far too easily distracted. I start to put away one thing, then see something else & move to that, I shuffle boxes from one room to another, move pictures from leaning against the wall, to leaning against the couch.  It’s like my living room is a giant puzzle, and rather than just working on one section I’m bouncing all over the place.  I have nesting ADD. 

I’m also making lots of interesting little discoveries about my new abode. Firstly, my new bedroom is roughly 6 inches smaller than my previous bedroom. Though six inches isn’t a lot, it is just enough to completely throw off the arrangement, and now I’m forced to put my full length mirror in my living room.  I’ve also discovered that showering with my bathroom door open, results in setting off the smoke alarm in my bedroom, unless the ceiling fan is on high blast, and mere moments ago I discovered a small hole in one of the windows. It’s a very small precise whole, most likely from a rock, but I’ve already started to refer to it as the bullet hole.

Alright, break time is over… who has time to blog when there are pictures to be hung & boxes to break down? Looking forward to the next week or two when things get put away, and I can focus on other things like grad-school applications….

Special Delivery

I opened up my mailbox yesterday and was thrilled to find my latest on-line purchase happily awaiting me.  Though I certainly don’t have an aversion to real-life shopping, there is something quite wonderful about having access to millions of stores without leaving the comforts of your own bedroom. No need to put on clothes or shoes, or even get out of bed when almost anything you could ever need could be delivered to your doorstep.

Though typically I enjoy the experience of trying something on (unless of course it is jeans… no one likes to try on jeans) there are so many moments when clicking a button and waiting 5-7 business days is just so much more enjoyable. I don’t get a lot of catalogs, and I’m not on many mailing lists, so I love days when I open up my mail box to find something other than bills and junk mail.

Shipping and Handling can be kind of a bitch, and if I lived in the city I probably wouldn’t indulge in on-line retail therapy quite as much. But as it is, I don’t always have the time to make a trip to Portland, and even when I do there is always the off chance that the stores don’t have quite what I’m looking for.  Currently I’m in the market for a shower curtain. I’ve shopped around, compared prices, and when I finally made an executive decision on which design and color I liked the store I went to didn’t have it in stock. I should have saved the time, put my gas money towards shipping, and called it a day.

 Though I’m all about shopping locally, and do so whenever possible, even the best small communities have their limits.

The other great thing about on-line shopping is the anonymity.  I’m much more inclined to impulse buy things online than in an actual store because there is no one to pass judgment on your purchases.  Sure, sometimes we need that extra filter, and I do have a few regrets about on-line purchases I’ve made in the past (so maybe I didn’t really need the Red Sox M&M’s…) but impulse purchases aside, we all have a few items that we would rather not parade through a check out. An item from a previous blog post comes to mind…

My most recent on-line purchases, (the ones that arrived yesterday)  were two pair of leggings, and a Red Sox pumpkin carving kit. Yes, I’m a nerd, but I think it is well justified. I’m constantly telling my brother he is all dead on the inside (I mean it in the best way possible) since he is never one to participate in any sort of holiday tradition. It is impossible to get him to play in the snow, dye Easter eggs, decorate the Christmas tree, or partake in any sort activity that lends itself to the nostalgia of our childhood.  Thankfully, my sister-in-law is the exact opposite so we try to guilt him into various activities. It seldom ever works and he tends to sits around like a scrooge, so this Halloween I am enticing him with baseball pumpkins… I am admittedly more excited about it than he is, but who wouldn’t want a Red Sox themed jack-o-lantern?

A few of my online- faves.

www.Etsy.com   Bliss in a website. I could spend hours browsing through its endless boutiques. It encompasses everything that is good and wonderful about on-line shopping, limitless selections and it can be local!

The Sundance Outlet - Thought I don't purchase from here often its my favorite for accessories. 

http://www.basbleu.com/ a fabulous independent book seller.

http://www.chowdaheadz.com/My source for bosox gear.

www.victoriassecret.com –There are always way better selections on line. Trust me, after my skirt incident this was the first order placed.

www.sephora.com  Make up mecca.

Hooping

This summer I’ve been hula-hooping. It’s such an odd thing to take up, especially in my mid-twenties, but like so many other good things in life, it started on a whim. I was at work one day, and a co-worker looks and me and asks “have you ever hula-hooped?” My mind instantly flashed to my first (and up to that point only) hula-hoop at the age of five. It was purple and white stripped, purchased at a Toys-R-Us in southern California. We were helping out with and attending my Cousin’s wedding, so I’m sure the hula-hoop kept me pre-occupied and out of the way. I don’t remember playing with it much as a child, and I’m sure it went by the way side at some garage sale.

“Yeah, a little bit” I replied. It seemed like a random thing to ask and I had no idea where she was going with it. Apparently she had some random hula-hoops in a closet and arbitrarily enough, one her participating WWOOFer’s (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms… check out the website for more details http://www.wwoofusa.org/) was actually a “professional hooper.” I don’t know entirely what that entails, but apparently she could do some pretty amazing stuff with a hoop, and now my co-worker was hooked. She showed me battle wounds, bruises, even talked about how she made her own hoop the correct size and weight. It was blowing my mind. I had never once considered hula-hooping outside of a playground or back yard setting, and I was mildly intrigued. Who makes their own hula-hoop? It struck me as something above & beyond, and not for me, but the idea of hula-hooping in general had peaked my interest.

Like most passing conversations, I tucked it away in the back of my mind for a while, until one day I was at Target, and saw hula-hoops for sale in the summer fun section. It was a $1.50, so I figured why not? I felt slightly dorky as I rolled my hula-hoop through the store… no one else in the lipstick aisle had a hula-hoop, but I figured for an impulse buy, it was at least a unique one.

I got my hoop home, and quickly discovered the probable reason that my childhood hoop had met its demise. I sucked. Like, really, really sucked. How could something that seemed so elementary be so hard? I twisted, I turned, I flailed my arms and my hips in every conceivable way, and still could only manage to make the hoop stay up a matter of seconds. I felt slightly better, after making my entire family try, and discovered that we were all as equally un-coordinated. That is, until I passed the hoop over to my sister-in-law, who in ten seconds flat, put the rest of us to shame. She could walk & hoop, start it on her neck and get it all the way down her body, one leg, one arm, you name it she could do it with a hula-hoop. I was crushed. I mean I know she’s athletic, but I took fourteen years of ballet, one would think that would be somewhat of an advantage, no? I resorted to my fall back “well we were homeschooled so we never had recess” excuse, and started practicing.

It was a little pathetic… a twenty-four-year-old thrusting & flailing, (and not in a good way) but eventually, I kinda-sorta started to get the hang of it. What I really would like to know is who’s bright idea it was to put the little noisy beads in hula-hoops? Fun for a child, yes, but an adult, the most irritating thing in the world. Especially for the people around you who are not quite as enthralled with learning how to hoop.

Irritating noise, irritating noise, crash

Irritating noise, irritating noise, crash.

Any change in this clatter pattern, and people would look up from whatever they were doing, because this meant that I had managed to keep the hoop in motion a little longer. Progress! It was a slow and noisy battle, but slowly I improved.

After a few days of utterly sucking I began to develop my “technique.” I spin to the left, and found that I have the best luck keeping the hoop aloft if my feet are in “Fourth position.” This is a ballet stance that involves your feet being about a foot apart, your front heel roughly aligned with your back toe, but for hooping I prefer parallel foot position, with both toes pointed to the front. It’s an open, stable stance, and I’m not sure what makes it work, but I’m pretty sure it’s the secret to my hooping “success.”

I took a slight hiatus from hooping (and so many other things) at the end of July when I came down with a freak staph infection in both of my legs. It was hard enough to get out of bed & stand, let alone flail about willingly in the name of fun and exercise. Surprisingly enough, once I was back on my feet, my hooping skill level remained the same. I was by no means “good” I wasn’t even average, but I was encouraged by the idea that maybe I was getting some muscle memory. If I wasn’t getting worse, maybe I was getting better? My friend Elizabeth confirmed my musings when I was visiting her in Montana. She had a hoop tucked away in her living room, and we quickly whipped it into action. I certainly wasn’t good, but I was so much better than I had been, and we laughed our asses off as we spazzed out about the dining room hooping it up. Let’s just say, I was cautiously optimistic that the practicing was starting to pay off.

photo by Elizabeth Prather

When I started to write this, I got curious about “hooping” so I started to do a little research and stumbled upon www.hooping.org .Though I am not surprised there is a world-renowned website dedicated to “spread the joy of hooping to all and build a world wide hooping community” I found myself once again blown away… this is not the passing fad of the 1950’s or your play ground hula-hooping. Or is it hoola-hooping? I’ve seen it both ways…

So I was inspired. I looked up instructions, and headed down to Lowe’s, bound and determined to have my own custom-made hoop by the end of the night. Yes, the GRE is a week away, my apartment is in pre-moving shambles, and there are a million other things I should be doing… but that is beside the point. I purchased one-hundred feet of irrigation tubing, (which is slightly excessive, but it only comes in large coils… and now I am prepared to outfit all my friends, should my love for hooping spread) one insert connector, and headed home to assemble my hoop.

I’m not sure why I thought it would be hard to make a hula-hoop. Tubing and a connector, and voila! There you have it, my first hand-made hoop. Cutting the tubing was a bit challenging, and of course I didn’t invest in any sort of PVC cutters (which were recommended) but I was able to improvise… Sure using a Cutco bread knife was a little unconventional, but it got the job done. Heat the ends of the tubing with a hairdryer, and insert the connector, and there you have it.

I immediately took the newly constructed hoop next door to the empty apartment—which will officially be mine on Friday—and tried it out… The difference is unbelievable! I had no idea that using a hoop that was the “correct” size and weight could really make such a difference! I’m no longer flailing and spazzing! Though I haven’t had a ton of time to play with my newly created hoop, I can say that the movement is much more graceful, and much less awkward, and the best part is that it is noiseless! No more irritating beady noises and hopefully far less crashing to the floor. Though I haven’t had the time or the motivation to decorate the hoop yet, it definitely has some creative potential…and I’m now more than cautiously optimistic that this new hoop is going to be a really fun distraction… at least it’s also burning calories.

For complete instructions and visual aids on how to make your own hula-hoop visit http://www.jasonunbound.com/hoops.html

The “Mother”Lode

A continuation of my “Murphy’s Law” Summer experiences…

I got strep throat on my birthday… Though this should not come as a surprise… This is in fact the 6th tonsil infection I’ve had in the past 12 months. It’s predictable. I don’t get enough sleep, I have a little too much fun, and 2-3 days later POW, I have tonsils the size of golf balls. For reasons unbeknownst to me, my tonsils are constantly trying to ruin my fun. I’m not sure why they care so much how late I stay up, how many beers I drink etc, but my tonsils are bound and determined to serve as my conscience on crack. Hind sight is so much more poignant when your glands are swelling shut…

I know, I know, I should learn from my mistakes… but that is not the theme of this post…. I’m mostly bringing up the strep to set the tone… I was, as you can imagine, thrilled about my tonsil’s little outburst. It’s rough when you are constantly disgruntled at your tonsils… I suppose the feeling is mutual, which is why my resistance is so low, but come on, to get strep on your birthday? Ok, Ok, I might have stayed out late the night before… I may have had a bit to drink… did I mention it was my brother’s wedding? I was feeling no guilt about kicking up my heels and celebrating the nuptials and my birthday in one fell swoop, but my tonsils of course had other plans. To sum up, I was peeved, I was ill, and overall not in the highest spirits.

I found myself, two days after the wedding, the day after my birthday, once again doing laundry at my parent’s house (why do all these stories start with the laundry?) I was also making myself some chicken noodle soup in attempts to appease my raging tonsils. My mother, out of the kindness of her heart was sorting my laundry while I was in the kitchen chopping celery. No, I didn’t ask her to sort it, but I think she was feeling some sort of empty nest syndrome after my brother’s wedding & she wanted to feel needed. As I was in the throes of my illness I didn’t complain. Sometimes you just want your mom to take care of you. As I diced the vegetables and browned the chicken, I heard a startled noise in the next room, but didn’t think much of it. I figured she had discovered some of lacy underwear that I purchased after my wardrobe malfunction…. If only.

Moments later my mother steps into the kitchen holding my “personal massager.”

If you could will yourself to stop living, I would have died in that moment. Pass me the cyanide capsule, beam me up Scotty, let me be at any moment in time besides this one. My face was ashen, and mentally all I could think was “no,no,no,no,no, this is not happening” clearly my brain waves were not as strong as I needed them to be.

“I’m not even sure I want to ask what this is!” she exclaimed, wielding the vibrator around the kitchen… “Well then don’t ask!” I screamed! Of course I couldn’t think of one logical explanation… I could have said anything from gag gift, to bachelorette party favor, but instead all I could do was yell at her not to ask.

Up to this point, I had been living under the code “don’t ask don’t tell” when it came to any matters relating to sex and, thus far, it had been working out pretty well. They didn’t ask, I didn’t tell, and I thought we had an understanding of how the system worked. But as they say, all good things must come to an end, and this ended with a bang. There was my mother in full on confrontation mode waving a sex toy around the kitchen. Did I mention that my dad was sitting at the counter working on a Sudoku puzzle? Insert “F my life” here.

There is a list of things you hope one or both of your parents never discover in your laundry basket. On a scale of one to ten I would say a vibrator ranks somewhere around a 6. Yes, there are hundreds, probably millions of things I would rather be discovered in my clothes hamper: tubes of chap stick, loose change, business cards, push-up bras, the list is endless. Certainly if given the choice, a vibrator wouldn’t make the top nine-billion, but out of the top ten worse things to be discovered, I think it ranks about midway. I can think far worse things to discover than a vibrator, and in retrospect, I guess I can be thankful the situation wasn’t a more incriminating one.

“Where did it even come from?!?” she asked a few minutes later. Clearly the dread, embarrassment and note of finality in my voice had not come across as clearly as I had hoped. “MOM!” was all I could muster. Again, another opportunity to explain it away, and my creativity had been shut down, so much for thinking on my feet. All I could do was chop the celery and wish I was dead.

Fact: There are not many things in this world that are more of a turn off than the mental image of your mother wielding your vibrator around the kitchen.

What I’m still trying to figure out is what possessed her to bring it out into the kitchen? Did the shock value of the discovery completely trump her sense of tact? Whatever happened to discretion? Granted, it wouldn’t have been as mentally scarring, but it still would have been just a poignant had she left it on top of my laundry. I would have much preferred a silent gesture of “look what I found” rather than the “I just want to curl up in a dark cave in the fetal position for the rest of eternity” situation. And what possessed her to brandish it around in front of my father? And why, would a confrontation be beneficial for anyone? Maybe if I was a 13 year old, living at home a discussion would have been justified, but as it is, I’m an independent, self sufficient, single, twenty-four-year-old woman! Why do we need to discuss what it is or where it came from? If the situations were reversed (and I hope to god they never will be) I certainly would not feel compelled to confront my mother (or anyone for that matter).

Needless to say, I am now extremely diligent in sorting my own laundry… I still haven’t figured out how, or why it was in my hamper in the first place… probably the result of a mad cleaning of my apartment…

Thankfully, the situation hasn’t been brought up since, but the potential is lingering. Though I like to pretend it was a figment of my imagination, I know I’m not that lucky. I’m waiting for that perfect awkward moment, driving to coffee, or on our way to the mall, when she thinks enough time has passed to broach the subject. I hope it doesn’t happen until I’m 45…