On evacuations

I've gotten some questions on why we didn't evacuate prior to Ike, and I have some sort of random thoughts that I wanted to work out. Blogging is always a good way to do that.

The Houston metropolitan area is huge. As we saw in Rita, there is no way to get all the residents out in advance of a storm. So the city has set up different zones, based on the risk of flooding. The plan for Ike was to get those people who had decent chances of being flooded out. The power of the storm surge is tremendous, and as you can see from the remains of Crystal Beach, you don't want people in area where they can be inundated by storm surge.

As bad as it is, we were actually quite lucky in that Ike took a wobble and passed over Galveston instead of further to the west. A direct hit over Freeport could have been catastrophic for Galveston Bay (and Clear Lake, Pasadena, and all of SE Harris County and Galevston County). Hundreds of thousands of homes could have been flooded and the potential for injury and loss of life was large.

Folks in my area were asked to stay in place so that those who were in danger could get out. In a lot of ways, this plan worked quite well, both for us and for our community. The people in mandatory evacuation zones did get out to safety. And Ike passed over, a powerful storm but not catastrophic. We were able to evaluate the situation at our home post-Ike, prepare our house for an extended absence, do some fence repair work, and then leave. We had supplies at home for more than a week and two cars in good repair with full tanks of gas.

But, of course, being this prepared takes money and time. I had an extra $400 to buy water, nonperishable food items, bug spray, batteries, plywood, etc. We had the time to gas up the cars and board up our home. While the kids were at school, I could go wait in line to buy bread and peanut butter and jelly. We have a camp stove and propane and everything you'd need to rough it. And, we have the financial ability to go stay in a hotel out of town (or with my sister).

I think asking people to stay was right. But, if you are going to do that, you have to be prepared to help them afterwards. Not everyone can afford to buy what we bought; way too many people scrape by from paycheck to paycheck. Not everyone is a salaried employee who gets paid when they miss work. Many people faced the storm unprepared, but they stayed put because their city and county and state asked them to. This was vitally important in that it could have and probably did save lives.

But, what will happen next time? This has been extremely difficult and hard on so many people. I worry that next time, people won't listen to the city and the county and won't stay.

Tavuk Izgara

That's what we had for dinner tonight. Here's the link to the original recipe from Whole Foods. Tavuk Izgara is a Turkish dish, but it's basically another variation of my favorite yogurt-marinated chicken. This sort of marinating really helps produce a juicy dish and keeps the chicken from drying out.

And here's my modified version:

• 8 chicken thighs
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 yellow onion, grated
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• juice of 2 lemons, plus the shredded rinds
  
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
  
• salt and ground black pepper, to taste

Mix together the yogurt, onion, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper. Put chicken thighs in a bowl and add marinade. Toss to coat each piece completely. Cover bowl and refrigerate overnight or at least 8–10 hours.

When ready, preheat your oven and add the chicken to a 13x9 pan. Cook in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or so (the easiest thing to do is to use a meat thermometer - poultry is finished at 165 degrees). At that point, turn the oven up to broil and broil for a few minutes to get some color on the chicken (it's very white otherwise). Serve with pilaf and your choice of vegetable. The Whole Foods Recipe calls for grilling and I am sure that is the best way to cook it. But, I wanted to stay inside.

It's very tangy and delicious. My kids love lemon. The littlest one picked out all the onions, but they both gave this dinner a big thumb's up.

And while I've been writing this, they're playing monopoly as we wait for the pineapple sorbet to chill. Here's that recipe:

• 1 whole pineapple
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup simple syrup

Peel and core one ripe pineapple. Do it inside a bowl so that you can catch the juice. Shred the flesh until it's in small pieces. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and let sit...the sugar will draw out more juice. If you don't have any on hand, make a simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, heated until the sugar dissolves) and let it cool.

When it's time to make the sorbet, add the pineapple pieces and the syrup to the ice cream maker. Follow manufacturer's instructions to freeze (mine takes about 20 minutes).


Honestly, this is a simple and delicious desert. Very pleasing on the palate; very easy to make. This got a big thumbs up from everyone.

From scratch

For some reason, this week I've been showing the kids the real way to make stuff, from scratch. Part of this is financial...after our big trips this summer I'm needing to tighten the belt a bit, but part of it is a desire to refocus ourselves. We're making a conscious effort to reduce the amount of pre-packaged goods we use and reduce our carbon footprint. I know it's a tiny drop in a large sea, and we don't claim to be perfect at it, but everything is babysteps.

I no longer buy individual juice boxes or waters. I have BPA-free water bottles that anyone is free to fill up and carry with them, and I make juice from concentrate or buy juice in larger, recyclable containers. I am trying to avoid single-serving products (which has been easy this summer, but will be harder when school starts) because of all the extra packaging that goes into it.

So, yesterday we made home-made ice cream, something the 7 year old has been wanting to do all summer. Our flavor of choice was vanilla custard ice cream, with chocolate chips. We have an old Krups ice cream maker that pretty much sits idle, so it's good to know it still works. The end result was delicious. I don't think you save any money this way, but it's fun! We're going to make pineapple ice to go with tonight's dinner. Just one tiny note on pineapple: this corer is the best gadget for fresh pineapple.

Then, last night, the kids helped me make pasta sauce from scratch. It's fairly easy, and you can control the sodium better. I had these great organic tomatoes, and the end result was rich and delicious.

And today? We made popcorn! On the stove, just like I used to when I was a kid. It tasted so much better than the microwave version, and took just a bit more time. The secret is that I bought my own anniversary present (yesterday, 18 years), a whirley pop. I now see why people rhapsodize over the whirley pop. It makes some mighty delicious popcorn. Perfect for today, a grey, drippy day that we were going to spend at the pool but are instead watching star wars movies. Aggregating out the cost of the whirley pop, I think in the not-very long run you can come out ahead financially. And I know that buying one bag of popcorn and using oil we have on hand is significantly less packaging than microwave popcorn.

I'm not sure how well I'll do on my anti-packaging crusade. There are some products we may not be able to do without (like single servings of mandarin oranges). But, we'll keep trying.

My boys are tepid kitchen helpers, meaning they have the attention span of gnats. But, I do find that they are more enthusiastic about food they've helped prepare.

Dreaming of....

Indian food today.

So here's another little secret about me. I love to read cookbooks. I read them like novels, although with a bit more flipping around. I get ideas; I look at how people put together recipes. And then, I don't follow them. I am a little-of-this, a little-of-that cook....I taste and I adjust. So, oftentimes I go in the kitchen with a general idea of ingredients, and end up with a totally different dish. That happened last night when I ended up with an orange-and-curried vegetables with pork over noodles that somehow started out as pork chops. Don't ask me how and I couldn't recreate it if asked.

Today, I sat down with a new book I bought myself as a treat for my recent birthday: An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey. She's well-known for making Indian cooking understandable and doable for American cooks. This is sort of her classic book, written in the early 70s that turned a whole generation of Americans onto Indian food. I'm looking forward to learning more about the specific spicing and techniques of Indian cooking. I'm an avid consumer of it at restaurants, but I think food prepared at home is much healthier and more economical. I already make a yogurt-marinated tandoori type baked chicken that the kids love, so I'm hopeful that their palates will stretch even further with some of these recipes as inspiration.

I thought I'd share some of my favorite cookbooks. I'd love to hear what inspires you in your kitchen too.

Greene on Greens. This is just one of my favorite books ever. There is a roasted asparagus recipe in this book, that I make often (like everything it's modified). Trim asparagus, sprinkle with salt and olive oil and add grated parmesan (the good stuff) over the top. Roast in a preheated 450 degree oven until done (depends on the size of the aspargus). It is darn delicious. There is also a corn flan in there that is a decadent only-at-the-holidays treat. I am always trying to expand the vegetable repertoire around here, so this book provides good suggestions.

New Vegetarian Cuisine. This is a collection of colorful vegetarian recipes that I love to browse through. My oldest son went through a period of about a year where he didn't want to eat animal meat. This book was a godsend. He's back eating meat, but I still make a few of these recipes as we try to go meatless at least two nights a week.

Lee Bailey's Country Deserts. The exception to my no-recipe policy is deserts. Baking is a science and I don't mess around with that. I love the crisps, cobblers and ice creams in this book. It was a wedding present 18 years ago and I still use it to this day.

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. By Amy Sedaris. Buy this book. Just buy it. So funny and interesting recipes too.


A few others that I refer to often: Comfortable Entertaining by Natalie Dupree, Cuisine Rapide by Peter Franey, The Great American Seafood Cookbook, and Kids Cook! for when I have helpers.

There's a special place in my heart for Junior League cookbooks, especially those from smaller towns and cities. St. Louis Days/St. Louis Nights is one of my favorites, but I treasure those from Savannah, Baton Rouge, Little Rock, and Monroe, LA among others. I just think fundraising cookbooks, with their contributions from all and sundry, are just an anthropological treasure trove. Unlike a professionally authored cookbook, usually the fundraising cookbooks are desperate for enough recipes. As a result, there are great passed-down-for-generations recipes in those books and there are ones that just make you go....huh? As in, who would eat that? In particular, there's a book from the Houston Jr. League that is permanently stuck in 1960 (hey, but at least I know where to turn for 100 kinds of casseroles). The Houston Jr. League has a new, fancier, cookbook that actually uses fresh herbs, but I'm strangely partial to the time-warp of mushroom soup cuisine. It's a glimpse into an era where people dressed up for dinner and tried to impress each other with a stunning number of variations of stuff-on-crackers.

And finally, I'm giving a shout-out to Seasons of Santa Fe. I enjoyed this cookbook even before I knew that my friend and fellow letterboxer AstroD was a volunteer for Kitchen Angels, the maker of this book. There are even a couple of her recipes inside, but she'll have to tell you which ones. Like the best of the fundraising cookbooks, your purchase of their cookbook (and it's a good one if you like Southwestern Food) goes to support their mission of providing meals to those facing illness and challenges.


I have some other food-related thoughts, especially about my increased efforts to eat local food, but I'll save those for another post.

Things you don't know about me

Honestly, who doesn't love the Olympics? And for those of us who toiled away in "minor" sports, it's fun to see them get a small modicum of attention. And so it is right now, where I am watching a men's field hockey match between Pakistan and Great Britain. Yes, field hockey. On TV. They must be seriously desperate to fill some programming hours. But, I love watching them play at an elite level.

Sure, swimming and track get the spotlight, but here's a salute to those who rarely see fame and fortune for their sport, defining what it means to be an amateur athlete (because I can't imagine at least in the US that there are many field hockey sponsorship deals. Pakistan maybe).

And, FYI, I was a starter on my high school's field hockey team for three years, team captain and MVP for two. My public high school perennially got smashed by the stronger teams fielded by all-girls Catholic schools in our area (and better coached; we had to make do with a coach in name only--a gym teacher who had never seen, much less played, a game. We coached ourselves). Still, I loved playing and being part of a team and a few of my field hockey teammates are my good friends to this day.

The photo above is from Team USA's first match against powerhouse Argentina. They tied 2-2. For the American women, this was a stunning result. I hope the women get some TV time too.

Life at the DMV

Tomorrow is my birthday and in Texas, your driver's license expires on your birthday. This was my year for renewal. There were lots of plans for going earlier in the summer and even earlier in the week, but my busy summer, my admitted laziness and tropical storm Edoard conspired and I had to go today.

And here's the thing. Everyone has to go to the DMV. It's one of those rare places where you get a real, true cross-section of America--rich, poor, white, brown, black, old, young, beauty and the beast--we're all sitting and standing together in one line (or many lines) at the DMV. You can't pay someone else to do it for you; you have to invest the time yourself.

And time it is...all the old cliches are true. The Texas Department of Public Safety has an incredibly inefficient system. I'm just gonna point out some issues I observed.

• The stated open time is 8 am. The posted time on the door is 8 am. So, I arrived at 7:45. They actually open at 7:30, so by the time I got there, there was a quadruple double-backed line. This was the line for the information desk...the person who was the gatekeeper for all things DMV-like. Everyone had to stand in this line. It took 45 minutes to get to the information desk. Several people in front of me didn't have the correct forms or ID, so they waited those 45 minutes for nothing. It seems unbelievably cruel to make someone wait that long only to tell them that you can't help them.

• They understaff early in the morning. One area only had one person working from 7:30 to 8 am, and then two from 8 to 8:30. From 8:30 on, they had four, and things finally started to move. I decided that the point was to set up a backlog from the very beginning. Because otherwise, you would staff with more people to handle the morning rush (especially on a Friday, which is bound to be a busy day...with the extra expiration dates of Saturday & Sunday tripling the number of people who HAVE to go on Friday).

• After you arrived at the information desk and your preliminary paperwork was checked (along with your eyesight), you were given a short form and a number. You could then go sit down and wait for your number to be called. When it was (30 more minutes), you then could go stand in one final line to be called up to the person who could actually process your renewal (15 more minutes). At the information desk, we were handed a "wait time" survey, so that they could see how long everyone was waiting. The idiotic thing about this survey is that it is completely inaccurate, as they are missing the first 45 minutes I stood in line, waiting to even get into the system.

• In business school, we learned about a deliberate business strategy similar to what I think is the accidental system at the DMV. The idea is that if you break someone's wait up into several discrete steps, people will be so excited about some movement they won't realize the length of the whole wait (you see this a lot at amusement parks when they have you move through different sections). I never thought this was effective and I guarantee it didn't work for me.

• On my renewal form, I was asked if I wanted to donate $1 to blindness education (sure) and $1 to organ donor awareness (absolutely), but no where was I asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. This, like many people who have loved ones in their lives who have benefited from organ transplants, is an important issue to me. So, I asked. They had information in Spanish (nothing in English), but all I needed was the sticker off the bottom...they also had a form to fill out to be part of a state-wide database. This I happily filled out, but I wish they'd be more pro-active about the whole thing.

All in all, it was an interesting sociological event that I hope I don't have to repeat all that often. And that my picture turns out halfway decent.

Later on in the day, as I was taking the kids bowling, we drove past and the line was even longer than at 7:45 am. So, I think the decision to go early was a good one.

On long and short marriages

My mom called last night and one of the tidbits she dropped was that my aunt and uncle are separating. Well, they didn't call it that, but she's moving into a condo in downtown Boston and he's staying in the house in the suburbs, so that's what it is.

They've been married 33 years, in a marriage that many thought would last five. They're just such different people--radically different people. He's from a small town; she's from Manhattan. He's southern to the core; she's northeastern. He was raised Christian; she's Jewish. He played college football; she disdains sports. And so on. But somehow, for many years, they seemed to make it work, not only partnering in life but in a successful business they co-owned. But, all along, I think there were cracks in that well-spackled facade.

About 10 years ago, I was having a conversation with my aunt and she said that those fundamental differences do not get any easier over the years, that in fact they get harder and harder. When you are young, you think love can conquer all, but later the pull of your differences becomes harder to bear. The sacrifices each had to make to make that marriage work became too soul-crushing I guess.

It sounds very amicable. My wish for them is that they each find separate happiness but that they can look back on their time together with joy and love. It was a supportive marriage, through cancer and family crises and the raising of an incredible daughter...and that deserves honoring.

This is bookended by a friend of my sister's who recently got married after a whirlwind courtship of a month. She's been married before and proclaimed that she knew she had found her soul-mate. Who knows if this will turn out to be so, but she's giddy and happy now. In many ways I admire her ability to jump, in spite of past bad relationships and the uncertainty of this one. Who's to say where happiness is to be found? I have some friends who have had long marriages built on short courtships and those who had short marriages built on long courtships. What keeps people together is complex. The only marriage I can truly know is my own, and even that is a partially obscured view.