For Love of Chips

If I have one life goal, it is to make every vegetable into a chip of some kind.  I love salt.  I love crunch.  I love eating with my fingers.

I've tried my hand at baking kale chips (like every domestic diva on the planet) as well as collard chips, beet chips, and sweet potato chips.  Because I'm lazy, I've tried eating the pre-made kale chips sold in stores.  I find them revolting.  These homemade kale chips, however, are so popular at parties, they have garnered several marriage proposals (which were met with a conflicted blend of pride and jealousy by my husband).

You will find about ten million sets of instructions on the web about how to make these.  Mine are the best.  (These instructions work as well for collard chips.)  (Level:  chip novice)

• Buy some kale.
• Wash it.  Dry it.
• Tear it into chip-sized pieces (not too big--they will shrink as you bake them)
• Dump them in a big bowl and pour a bunch of olive oil over them.  
• Take the pieces out one by one and gently massage the oil on both sides of the leaf.  Do not be shy with the oil.  It's what makes the kale crispy and it is good for your skin, anyway.
• Lay the kale flat on a cookie sheet, no two pieces touching (kale Tetris!)  
• Sprinkle with salt.
• Bake at 325 for about 10 minutes.  This is the 'hard' part.  Check them obsessively.  There is about 10 seconds between 'done' and 'burned'.  If they are starting to turn brown, get them out right away.  They should be crispy and green, in a perfect world.  

I went through about a billion (okay, like, four) burned, limp, broken, over-salted and under-oiled batches before I 'perfected' the technique.  Don't get discouraged.  Practice makes perfect.  Once you get it right, you'll have your chance at polygamy, too.

As for other spices and flavors to 'enhance' the kale/collard chips, I have tried a few.  I always come back to plain old olive oil and salt.  It's just the best.

Root vegetable chips are a little trickier, but they are awesome.  I did sweet potato chips with my kindergarten class, and they told me they were "better than candy" (I almost cried with joy).

This is a beet chip:

For these and sweet potato chips, I use the following system:  (level: chip Jedi)

• Buy some beets (or sweet potatoes).
• Wash them and slice them with a mandoline slicer, at its thinnest setting (leave the skin on--that's how you get the ruffled edge)
• Bathe and massage the slices with olive oil.
• Lay the chips on a baking sheet (not touching) and sprinkle with salt.
• Bake at 325 for somewhere between 30 and 90 minutes.

See why it's tricky?  The baking time varies enormously depending on the whims of the gods or whatever.  You're not so much baking them as dehydrating them, and it needs to be a low temperature or the olive oil scorches and the chips burn.  You will probably want to flip them halfway through, and they will cook at varying speeds depending on the chip.  Remove them when they are mostly dry but still somewhat gummy.  Give them a few hours to dry out the rest of the way.  I lay them out on paper overnight, and in the morning, they are usually hard and crispy.  If not, I pop them in the oven again for a few minutes.  

Anyway, if you're an overachiever or want to hear a five-year old refer to a vitamin-rich vegetable as 'better than candy', it's worth it.  

All hail chips, and go make something.

On Making Human Life

I've been pretty open and public about my desire to, one day soon, be a mother, and I feel like it's time to be equally open and public about my noticeable lack of motherhood or anticipated impending motherhood at this time. 

I'll start with the backstory.

I have been married to my very wonderful, very handsome, very loving husband for over 12 years now.  Before the wedding, we were together for 4 years (give or take a few months).  We met when we were really, really, really young.  And we got married when we were merely really, really young.  Against all statistical odds, we are still together and we still like each other.

We did things sort of out of the typical order of most younglings.  We sowed our wild oats AFTER wedded bliss, traveling the country in truck-and-van theatre tours, skinny dipping in southern swimming holes, drinking corn whiskey out of ball jars and dancing in our underpinnings around bonfires.  We each went to grad school about a decade after earning our Bachelor's Degrees, and are just now, in our mid-thirties, settling down into being grown-ups.

But we've been, you know, married.  The whole time.  To each other.  And we're still cool with it.  That alone is pretty miraculous.

So it was natural that after all these years (about a year and a half ago), we decided that we were ready to grow our family.  After years of being very, very careful NOT to get pregnant, we got very, very serious about getting pregnant.  I did my research; I had been off oral contraceptives for years, and I started doing all the things I read about on every fertility website and every fertility book I could get my hands on.  I had spreadsheets of basal body temperature and varying ovulation indicators.  I had a kitchen filled with all kinds of  'ovulation-promoting' foods:  pomegranate, pineapple core, yams, whatever any website told me would get me pregnant, I was trying it.

I did not make a baby.  You know what I made?  I made myself miserable.  I was planning and avoiding plans based on the possibility that I might be carrying a zygote at any moment.  I refused to eat bacon or drink coffee.  I hung on every tenth of every degree of heat that my body emitted as proof that I was or wasn't going to be achieving THE ONE AND ONLY THING THAT WOULD EVER MAKE MY LIFE FULL.

That, my friends, is a recipe for a really unhappy lifestyle.

It was about a year ago that I stopped all that.  We stopped "trying to conceive", because the operative word in that phrase is "trying".  To quote, well, Yoda: "Do or do not.  There is no try."  You know why he said that?  Because 'trying' STINKS.  Think about it.  It's a word we use to describe things that drive us crazy.

I even Googled it:  

"try·ing ˈtrī-iNG/ adjective adjective: trying"-- difficult or annoying; hard to endure.

"it had been a very trying day"

stressful, taxing, demanding, difficult, tough, hard, pressured, frustrating, fraught; 

arduous, grueling, tiring, exhausting; informal—hellish

You hear that?  Hellish.  In the midst of all this trying, I was convinced that, after years of bliss, my life was suddenly meaningless. 

So my lovely, wonderful husband pointed out to me that life without a baby was already pretty freaking amazing. We have all the trappings of happiness:  love, friends, health, plants, a cat, food, home, heat, meaningful work, and family.  He was right.  Feeling sorry for myself for NOT having a thing that I didn't already have seemed absurd, really.  I also don't have a 60-gallon saltwater tank with sharks, and I don't feel sad about that.  Maybe one day I'll have one.  And if I really, really want to get one, I'll find a way.  But if I don't have one now because of some reason or no reason at all, that's no reason to be miserable.  I've got quite a lot. (As it happens, I have a 10-gallon freshwater tank with tetras.)

So there you have it.  Sometimes I do find myself feeling a little melancholy that it hasn't happened yet (and maybe it won't), particularly when facebook keeps putting pregnant lady ads in my feed (yes, fb, I realize I'm 'that age' and female.  Thanks for the reminder.).  But then I remember that, for the time being, I don't have to buy diapers or worry about immunizations; I can watch hours and hours of television, eat takeout on the couch, and sleep as much as I darn well please.  So it's not all bad.  Maybe one day (maybe sooner, maybe later) I'll have the blessed good fortune to be broke, exhausted, and covered in spit up.  That would be fantastic.  Seriously.  For now, I can take comfort in the fact that if/when it happens, I am grateful for the blessings I have and have had all along, because I really do have many.  Blessings, that is.

My blessings are many, and I hope yours are, too.  Take a moment to appreciate those that you've got.  It's a good feeling.  It's even as good as making stuff (and other stuff). 

On the Importance of Making

This is a piece of paper....

I made it last year with the kindergarten class.  The classroom had procured a basic papermaking mould and deckle and the students learned how old paper is recycled into new paper...by actually doing it.  It was messy (There is a lot of water involved.  And a blender.  You do the math.) and the kids were less than thrilled about the tedious task of meticulously tearing up our old, discarded paper into tiny shreds.  They let me know, vocally and dramatically, how much they did not enjoy this part of the making.

It took a very long time to make a piece of paper.  Between the tearing, the blending, the sifting, the lifting, and the drying, a piece of paper took about 24 hours to make.  Every 15 minutes or so as the school day went on, each child would come ask me in rotation whether or not the paper was dry.  The agony of waiting was even more torturous than the agony of making. 

But 24 hours later, when the papers were dry, something amazing happened.  Each child took their paper and painted on it.  They did this of their own accord; the paper was theirs to use as they wished.  They painted for days on a single piece of paper.  If you've never worked with young children before, this might not seem so amazing, but for a young child to voluntarily toil away at a single project for more than a 20 minutes, much less more than a day, implies a level of maturity and focus which is very rarely found in a 5-year old.

After that papermaking day, I noticed that they took more care with all of their drawings, that they took more care with their paper, that they took more care with their work and their crafts in general.  A piece of paper was no longer a disposable resource; every piece of paper represented hours of work and patience, and it deserved to be treated with due respect.

I could have saved myself a lot of mess and trouble.  I could have made a piece of paper and described the process, shown them videos, and let them touch my homemade paper.  I doubt the effect would be even fractionally as profound;  something transformative happens to a maker when they make a thing.  When you make your own food, your own clothes, your own art, your own furniture--you cherish it.  You grow better because of the making.  It is a part of you and you are a part of it.  In a world where we outsource so much--there is nothing you can't find that isn't already made--why bother?  Why spend 24 hours to make a single piece of paper when I can buy a ream at the local office supply store for five bucks?

Because.  Because that piece of paper is a miracle.  Just as you and I, with our opposable thumbs and our imaginations and our ability to make and grow and become greater than what we were yesterday, are miracles.  And when we make, we take part in something greater than ourselves.

So go make something.  Make a drawing.  Make a hamburger.  Make music.  Make a friend.  Make a garden.  Make a cocktail. Make a fool of yourself on the dance floor.  Make a poem.  Make someone laugh.  Make money.  Make a sweater.  Make a smoothie.  It really doesn't matter what you make, just make.  Because, when you make something, you partake in the magic.  You are part of a sacred, elite, and inclusive group of people who perform miracles.  You become one of the Makers, one of the Creators, and that is the closest a human being can come to the divine.

I, uh, Started a Web Comic...

As if I don't have enough hobbies....

I started a little web comic based on an old universe I dreamed up for some children's musicals.

It's about the faerie folk who live in Amsteryork:  underfoot, out of sight, but very much an active part of the world they inhabit.  Some of you may encounter familiar friends, and some of you may experience Amsteryork for the first time.

I don't know how often I'll post new comics or how long I'll keep this up, but in the mean time I am having just a grand time drawing faeries and dreaming up their adventures.  Meet Stateen, Quinn, Brooke, Broncko, and Hattie.  They are the Faeries of Amsteryork.

http://faeriesofamsteryork.blogspot.com/

My Play's a Thing

Last spring, a friend of ours let slip the secret that Adam and I were at one time writers of children's musicals (also, that we might again be writers of children's musicals were the inspiration to be re-ignited).

He told someone who works for a company that was seeking to expand its children's repertoire.

She called us.

And the rest is history (or future).

Thanks to Evan, Katy, and all the amazing folks at Ritual Theatre Company for being our catalyst to return to the blank page.  

Accidental Songs

No, not songs with accidentals in them (well, maybe...).  Sorry.  Music joke.

What I mean is, sometimes you set out to write a song and really work and work at it and take a year to finish it.

And then sometimes the songs, they seem to write themselves.

This one came to me at about 3 AM a week ago, and I have had to put pedal to the metal to get it recorded and make a video in time for the end of summer vacation.  Talk about down to the wire; the teachers go back for prep tomorrow, which means I have less than 12 hours left, several of which I darn well plan to spend eating tacos on the beach (seriously, this was a requisite for my deadline).

Again, thanks to Adam for his participation--especially the idea to use a cheese grater as a percussion instrument.

Enjoy, and Happy Back to School!

A "Song" About the Five Senses

So, this started out as a funny idea and turned into a really elaborate music video project.

Anyhow, it was meant to simply be a(n honorific!) Daft Punk parody about the five senses, but realizing that I didn't know how to make any kind of synthesized music, I took a page out of my middle school music teacher's book.  Mr. Moody, as those of you who were lucky enough to attend Cutler Middle School in the early 90's know, was the class music and choir teacher there, and I just thought he was the coolest guy ever.  At any rate, he told us the story of how he had to use a synthesizer in college for a music composition class, and at a loss to make the confounded thing work, he instead recorded acoustic sounds (a rubber band stretching, dragging a quarter across the steel string of a bass guitar, etc.) to create kind of synth-y sounds.  He played us the composition, and it was amazing the kind of electric sound that was achieved using entirely acoustic recordings.

So the memory of that story gave me the idea to do a similar creation.  With the exception of the digital metronome (which I left in because it sounded like an old Atari game) everything you hear is either vocals which have been affected with pitch changes and vocoder, or me banging against a coffee cup with an eggbeater (also affected with pitch changes and  vocoder).  At any rate, I don't know if what I made is exactly music, or even pleasant to listen to, but it sure is interesting and it sure was time-consuming to make (as was the video, which is essentially a slide show of heavily edited photos, with the exception of the short video toward the end where I pay homage to 'daft hands').

I hope you enjoy watching it.  I sure had fun making it.

--P.S. --  Props to my longtime colleague, Stephane, for the idea to use an apple.