Selaginella kraussiana

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I was charging around Eastside Marketplace recently, buying chips and sardines and onions and other necessary things, when I made a detour through the garden section.

 

 

And I found the most adorable little display of potted plants.

 

 

They were frothy little yellow-green fellows, with fern-like fronds, tipped with silver.  They were labeled “FROSTY FERN.”

 

 

But I recognized them right away.   They were Selaginella (sp. kraussiana).  

 

 

I purchased one immediately.

 

 

Maybe you’ve seen them.  They are cousins of the “resurrection plant” found in souvenir shops and joke-shops: those dried brown masses that you immerse in water until they unfold into (unattractive) masses of living foliage. 

 

 

Selaginella are club-mosses, actually, although they’re part of a group called the “fern allies,” because they resemble ferns.  I used to find their relatives when I was a kid, up in the Cascades, kicking around when my family was picking huckleberries; they’re stiff, low-growing, intricate little plants. 

 

 

I find, when I look them up online, that Selaginella is an invasive species in New Zealand, a pest, a nuisance.  I don’t think they’ve reached the nuisance level here in the USA: I don’t think the climate allows them to grow so freely.

 

 

I brought my little Selaginella home, and repotted it right away.  It is bright and charming.  My south-facing window might be a little bright for it (club mosses prefer dim light), but we’ll see.

 

 

I looked online to find out how to care for my new Selaginella, and kept finding comments like this: “I am very taken by these small plants.  I am charmed by them.  I don’t know why.”

 

 

I think I know why. They are modest and attractive, compact and neat.They brrr nicely against your hand when you touch them (unlike my cacti, which snag my clothes and wound me constantly).  They are green and fresh. 

 

 

And they need constant care: they need moisture and shade. 

 

 

I just don’t hope I don’t kill it.

 

 

Pray for it, kids.

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Northwest winter

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You are sick of listening to me moan and groan about the unseasonal weather, and climate change, and all such hippie tree-hugger liberal talk, I know.  So I will zip my lip and say no more.

 

 

(Rhode Island has hardly had any snow this winter so far, by the way.  Our winter has been positively balmy.  I walked downtown with no coat - just a sweater - the other day.  The grass is still pretty springy and fresh in most places around Providence, and I’ve seen things blooming.  In January.)

 

 

(Oops.  Zip the lip.  Sorry.)

 

 

This winter reminds me of the typical Northwest winter: cool, cloudy, dark, often foggy and rainy.  It’s the kind of winter that engenders “cabin fever”: you stay inside with your loved ones, waiting for spring, until you just can’t stand them any longer, and then you get out the shotgun.

 

 

Dark foggy weather doesn’t frighten me.  I grew up in the Northwest.  It’s nothin’.  By April, we’ll be tearing off our winter underwear and dancing among the daffodils.  For now –

 

 

Well, but still.  You have to make it through the darkness.

 

 

A few years ago, Partner and I were driving through rural Oregon.  It was midsummer, and the hills were covered with beautiful firs and pines, and the sky was wonderfully blue.  “I could live here,” Partner said.

 

 

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m picturing this in mid-December.  You wouldn’t even be able to see those hills, the fog would be so thick.  It’d get light around ten in the morning, and dark again by four in the afternoon.  From November through mid-February.”

 

 

Partner regarded me mildly.  He has only ever seen the Northwest in summertime, and I think he has only ever seen it rain there once, one day in Portland.  He doesn’t really believe me.

 

 

But oh yes it’s true.

 

 

(Oh, did I mention that it’s snowing in Egypt this winter?  Yeah.  Oh, and they’re having a huge and extremely unseasonal windstorm – with hundred-mile-an-hour winds – on the central Oregon coast.)

 

 

(Huh!)

 

 

(Enjoy the future, kids.  It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.)

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Movie review: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

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We saw “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” on Monday. (Yes, two movies in one weekend.  Partner and I are decadent capitalists, I know.  We also had Chinese food at an excellent little neighborhood place near the theater both times.  So sue us.)

 

 

The movie is a dark little exercise in Cold War espionage.  If you need cheering up, do not see this movie.  Gary Oldman, as spy supreme George Smiley, seldom changes his facial expression through the whole two hours: he does a sort of neutral thing with his eyes and lips, and that’s the keynote of the whole production.

 

 

Simply stated, the plot is: “There’s a double agent, George.  Go find him.”

 

 

Who is it?  The arrogant Toby Jones? The smooth Colin Firth? The bullyish Ciaran Hinds?  The timid David Dencik?  Oldman himself?  (You can’t make any assumptions in a movie like this.)   Maybe one of the lower-level agents: the lean and sympathetic Mark Strong, or the intense Benedict Cumberbatch, or the 1970s-handsome Tom Hardy?

 

 

I won’t tell you.

 

 

You cannot miss a moment of this movie.  If you do, you’ll miss a bit of overheard dialogue, or a little piece of character exposition, or someone’s name that you didn’t catch before.  We didn't even go to the bathroom for the whole two hours, and let me tell you, that is a near-miracle for the two of us oldsters.   I was straining to catch every word, and I still missed a few things (Partner and I caught each other up over egg rolls and pork fried rice after the movie).  

 

 

I can only tell you that I suspected the right person.

 

 

(Of course, I suspected all of them.)

 

 

If you want a time-travel ride back to 1973, with gray moody landscapes of London and Budapest and Paris, and lots of top-notch acting, you should see this.

 

 

Bring your brain along, and your ear trumpet.  You’ll need both.

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Jersey shore, season five

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 The new season of “Jersey Shore” blew in unexpectedly; I thought our DVR was mistakenly recording old episodes from previous seasons.  Then we saw Pauly D. on a talk show, and saw clips from the new season, and thought: oh my god, we’re missing it!

 

 

As with the (rancid) cream of the reality shows – “Bridezillas,” “A List: New York,” “A List: Dallas” – you can’t look away.  It’s like that scene in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie’s little brother plunges his face onto his plate and begins to eat like a pig at his mother’s urging, and both of them are screaming with laughter.  It’s disgusting, but you have to watch it.

 

 

We are (as of this writing) only two episodes into the new season.  I know from Internet scuttlebutt that this season did not go well; apparently there was serious dissention among the Seaside Heights Eight, and word went out that a few guidos / guidettes went home for good. 

 

 

They are, I think, mostly sick of each other.  The show took them directly from Florence (where, according to Vinnie, they did “everything you can possibly do,” ha ha, yes they certainly took advantage of the opportunity to broaden their minds) to Seaside Heights, giving them no time to spend with their families and friends in between.  This (I’m sure) was meant to ramp up the tension level on the show, and it worked like a charm.  Mike and Nicole (aka Sitch and Snooki) are at one another’s throats.  Vinnie, who used to seem a tiny bit smarter and calmer than the others, is now completely worn out, and contemplating leaving the house.  Jenny (aka JWOWW) is an exhausted den mother, trying to sort out arguments and calm everyone down while serving snacks.  (Who knew she’d be the mature one?)  The others – Ron, Sammi, Deena, Paulie – are watching quietly from the sidelines, waiting for the whole thing to implode, so they can go off and do their spinoff MTV shows and QVC jewelry hours and Xenadrine ads.

 

 

But still we cannot look away.  We look, and we see:

 

-        Snooki drinking the juice out of the pickle jar;

-        Snooki wearing panties with JIONNI (her boyfriend’s name) written on the butt;

-        Situation and his friend Unit (!) spraying one another with – what? – bronzer? cologne? – in a bizarre dance-like ritual;

-        Paulie getting too much exposure at the tanning salon, and ending up looking like a burnt weenie (he puts Popsicles on his face to ease the pain);

-        Paulie hooking up with a girl who steals his gold-and-diamond chain, then brings it back to the house, no harm done, tee hee.  (I wonder if the show’s producers prompted her to do it?  They had the felony on tape, after all.)

 

 

Who knows what lies ahead? 

 

 

Thank goodness the world ends in December 2012.  There can’t be more than two or three more Jersey Shore series before then!

 

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Movie review: "The Iron Lady"

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We went to see “The Iron Lady” on Saturday.  Correction: we went to see Meryl Streep on Saturday.  If it had been anyone else in the role (with the possible exception of Helen Mirren), I don’t think we would have rushed out to see it.  How much, after all, does anyone really care about the Falklands war?

 

 

Streep does not disappoint.  She becomes Margaret Thacher, beady-eyed and intense, tender and distracted with her husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), impatient and dismissive with her ministers and staff.  She has excellent help from Alexandra Roach, who plays Margaret as a young woman.  She has Margaret Thatcher’s look, and her manner.  As the present-day Margaret, tottery and vague, she is truly wonderful.

 

 

But the movie is a near-disaster.

 

 

First off: it’s not one movie, it’s two.  It’s a simple little tear-jerker about an elderly person slowly saying goodbye to all the things she cares about; it’s also a soupy potboiler about British politics in the 1970s and 1980s, with lots of stock footage of strikes and riots and policemen clubbing people in the streets, and at least two (maybe three!) Rocky-style montages of Important Things Happening.  

 

 

And then there is the editing.

 

 

It whirls and swoops.  The camera darts all over the place.  There are cuts within cuts.  The timeline jumps back and forth more than your average episode of "Doctor Who." Worst of all, the editing doesn’t let you watch Meryl act.  The movie keeps cutting away from her face, chopping her scenes up into surreal bits and pieces. 

 

 

I ask you: pretend you’re Phyllida Lloyd, director of “The Iron Lady.”  You are lucky enough to get Meryl Streep to play the lead.  Here’s what you do:

 

-        You organize the sets.

-        You make everyone shush.

-        You point the camera at Meryl, and you keep it there.

-        You sit back in your director’s chair and rub your hands greedily, thinking about your impending Academy Award.

 

Evidently Phyllida Lloyd decided to make something else: a hybrid of “The Whales of August,” “The Buddy Holly Story,” and a perfume commercial.

 

 

It doesn’t work.

 

 

But go see it anyway.  See it for Meryl. 

 

 

It wasn’t her fault.  She did the best she could.

 

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For Sunday: "Here I Go Again," by Whitesnake

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As a young person, I loved popular music; then I got away from it for a long time.  Now I am relearning it (I’m getting a crash course in 1980s music from the videos they show at my health club), and I like a lot of stuff I never thought I would.

 

 

My work acquaintance Apollonia is on her own musical vision quest.  Her favorites are:

 

 

- Anything on the soundtrack of any of the eighty-five “Twilight” movies;

- Any song that mentions the names “Edward” or “Bella” (see above);

- Emo (whatever that is);

- Power ballads.

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Well, we agree on that one. How can you not love power ballads?  The hair!  The guitars!  And they always (or almost always) begin quietly, almost classically, with keyboards and muted strings.  

 

 

Then we cue the crashing guitar chords.

 

 

This video is for Apollonia. I saw it on the treadmill television the other night and found it very stimulating.

 

 

I hope you like it too.

 

 

 

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Happy families and unhappy families

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Tolstoy wrote, famously, that all happy families are alike, and that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

 

 

I have two comments on this:

 

 

a)     I think we say “dysfunctional” nowadays, though I’d hate to read a translation of “Anna Karenina” with the word “dysfunctional” in it;

b)     I do not believe there is any such thing as a happy family.

 

 

I know I sound terribly cynical, but hear me out.

 

 

First of all: yes, I know, mass-murder families, sex-crime families.  Yes, those are really awful, and “dysfunctional” is not a strong enough word to describe them.  But here I have to invoke Woody Allen’s Law, also known as the Horrible/Miserable Divide.  In Woody’s own words, in “Annie Hall”: “I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.”

 

 

Yes, indeed, we are all lucky to be miserable.

 

 

My family was – what can I tell you? – normal.  We fought.  We did not necessarily like each other very much.  There was strife, and sometimes bad feeling that went on for years.  To use one example, my older sister Darlene and I had no real love for each other after about 1970.  We argued, fought, were terribly snide to one another.  My mother was very close to both of us, and used the traditional method of dealing with these situations: when she was with me, she agreed with me, and when she was with Darlene, she agreed with her. 

 

 

And who can blame her?

 

 

I used to think we were a nightmare family.  Now, with the calm (tranquilized?) perspective of late middle age, I look back and compare us to other families of my acquaintance, and realize that we were pretty much normal.

 

 

But here’s the other thing: I have learned to mistrust people who claim that their family life is/was perfectly happy. 

 

 

I learned this primarily through a school friend who insisted that her family was something between a Currier & Ives etching and “Leave It To Beaver.”  Then I met said family.  Father: abusive.  Mother: passive alcoholic.  Brother: growing up to be a mean-minded tyrant like his father. 

 

 

Lovely!

 

 

I was talking about this with a student acquaintance, and she was astonished. Her family, she said, was very close.  They actually like each other.

 

 

Well, I suppose miracles happen.

 

 

But I have my doubts.

 

 

Learn to love the misery, kids.  Remember: you should be thankful that you're miserable.  

 

 

Because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

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Recipe: Ricotta cookies

 

 

 

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It’s nice to add a new recipe to the repertory.  This is a nice pleasant cookie – soft, sweet but not too sweet, with gentle overtones of vanilla and lemon – and a nice sugary (but not overbearing) glaze on top.  (You can decorate them with colored sugar if you are so moved.  I thought about it, but didn’t bother.  They’re very good as is.)

 

 

I found this recipe in one of those local magazines that you pick up for free – something like “Rhode Island Local,” I forget.  It was in an ad for Supreme Ricotta, a local brand.  It looked interesting and simple, and like nothing I’d ever made before.  I made a batch for Partner and myself as a test – and, believe me, Partner pulls no punches where baked goods are concerned – and these passed the test.  I will bake more of these in future.

 

 

(Postscript: I described this recipe to Apollonia and she cried, “Egg biscuits!  You moron, you’ve rediscovered the recipe for egg biscuits!”  Yes, of course they are, I knew I recognized them from somewhere.  They’re a traditional Rhode Island recipe.  It’s nice to be able to make them at home, though.)

 

 

Herewith the recipe:

 

 

-        ½ cup (one stick) butter, softened

-        1 cup sugar

-        1 egg

-        1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

-        1 cup ricotta (I used Stop & Shop, but use what you like, or what you can find)

-        The zest of one lemon (the original recipe called for lemon extract, but the zest is nicer, and gives you a chance to scrape the skin off several of your knuckles)

-        2 cups flour

-        ½ teaspoon baking powder

-        ½ teaspoon baking soda

-        Powdered sugar

-        Milk

 

 

1)     Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2)     In a large bowl, cream butter with sugar.

3)     Add egg and vanilla, and mix thoroughly.

4)     Add ricotta and lemon zest.  Mix for one minute.

5)     In a separate bowl, combine flour with baking powder and baking soda.

6)     Add flour mixture to ricotta mixture, and mix well.

7)     Drop in teaspoonsful on a cookie sheet.  (Do yourself a favor, invest $2.49 in a roll of parchment paper.  Line your cookie sheet with parchment paper.  You’ll never regret it.  Nothing will ever stick again.) 

8)     Bake for 9-11 minutes, or until cookies are brown on the bottom (they took almost exactly nine minutes in my (very fast) oven). 

9)     Allow to cool for at least 15 minutes.  Ice them with a mixture of powdered sugar and milk (only a few drops of milk for maybe two or three tablespoons of powdered sugar, mixed in a small bowl).  A few drops of icing are enough for each cookie; it’ll spread around.

 

 

 

Makes 3-4 dozen cookies, depending on how generous you were with the cookie dough.  I like them a little smaller; they’re easier to deal with later, and you can get more of them on a cookie sheet.  (By the way, I’ve reduced the original recipe by half.  What were those people thinking of?  We don’t have ten kids each anymore!  However: Partner and I polished off a plate of 30+ cookies in about two days . . . . )

 

 

Also – hippie alert! – I used soy milk in the icing.  It was very nice.

 

 

Don’t say I never done you no favors.  This recipe is one.

 

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Dog collar

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I was walking home the other evening when I met a neighbor – a cute neighbor, sort of a younger Dan Hedaya – with his cute black-and-white dog.  The dog was wearing one of those awful lampshades around its neck.  “What happened?” I said, gesturing to the dog.

 

 

“He had a procedure,” the owner said.  “He's nine years old.  Look how he keeps bumping his cone!”

 

 

The dog came toward me, looking sad and winsome.  His collar was scuffed from previous encounters.  His eyes said: I had a Procedure.  Don't you feel sorry for me?

 

 

How could I not?  I patted the poor dog on the head.  “In nine years,” the owner said, “he's never gotten this much attention.”

 

 

So keep that in mind, all you young things out there.

 

 

Illness has its uses.

 

 

But you have to be at least a little cute to make it work. 

 

 

A recipe a week

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Partner and I watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” almost every night.  “Jeopardy!” is one of our retirement plans: I’m supposed to go on the show and do a Ken Jennings and win a million dollars.  As the years pass and my mind turns to coleslaw, however, this is becoming less and less of a possibility.  Then there’s “Wheel,” with the genteel Pat Sajak and the lovely Vanna White.  One of my favorite moments of the show is the very ending, where Pat tries to make conversation with Vanna; she is amazingly obtuse in a Gracie Allen way (without seeming to realize it), and says the most charmingly silly things.

 

 

But I respect her for this: just before the New Year, Pat asked Vanna for her New Year’s resolutions, and she said that she was going to try a new recipe once a week, every week.

 

 

What an excellent idea!

 

 

I collect cookbooks. I rip recipes out of magazines and newspapers.  Sometimes I go online just to see how one prepares stewed dog or roasts a gazelle hump.  But do I make these recipes?  I do not.  I just allow them to accumulate.  For a while I was pasting them in a big notebook (yes, I know, I’m an elderly housewife, I do things like that), but that got tiresome too.  Now I just keep piling them up in a big heap.

 

 

But if Vanna can do it, so can I!

 

 

I made ricotta cookies (AKA egg biscuits) at Christmastime, and they were very nice.  I will make them again.  They have definitely joined the regular rotation.  (I will post the recipe soon.  I recommend them.)

 

 

In search of the next interesting new recipe, I pulled out the Ladies’ Society cookbook distributed by the Methodist Church in Overton, Nebraska circa 1950.  (I think I got it on eBay; I bought one cookbook, and the person I bought it from asked if I wanted a whole bunch more, and I said “Why not?”, and she sent me about twenty bizarre and wonderful cookbooks from all over the USA.)  The Nebraska cookbook was well-loved by its previous owner; it has little notes like “Good!” and “Needs sugar” and “Try with black walnuts” written over some of the recipes.

 

 

One – a recipe for lemon refrigerator cookies – was marked “TRY.”

 

 

Who am I to argue?  I tried.

 

 

Mmph.  A little too lemony, if anything, and the second batch burned to a crisp.  Apparently “ten minutes at 400 degrees” meant something different in 1950 than it does now.  But they had a nice light texture (they reminded me of my mother’s refrigerator cookies, but they were better, if anything), and I brightened them up with a little powdered-sugar-and-milk glaze.  I will refine them further and let you know when the recipe is a complete success.

 

 

Next week: who knows?  Sachertorte?  Tarte tatin?  Sand tarts?  Fairy cake?

 

 

Ideas are welcome.  So are recipes. 

 

 

Write me, kids.  And make it interesting.

 

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