Laurie Perry's Blog, page 3

Wild Kingdom

Come on, feel the noise

That's my neighborhood: just a collection of ridiculous noises that make you want to stab someone in the foot.

Last night we had high-pitched beeps in a wailing Morse code pattern. Most nights there's a symphony of mystery car alarms and helicopters. With the holiday season comes honking from the boulevard, a nice touch. In the mornings we have the excruciatingly loud garbage trucks and the weird dumpster-retrieving vehicle that makes loud quack-quacks when it's in reverse. Last Sunday afternoon a neighbor's alarm clock started going off at 4 p.m.

Brother, I do not know why you needed an alarm set for 4 p.m. or why it played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida over and over for an hour, but when I find out who you are I will secretly give you the finger when you turn your back.

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I WAS SLEEPING

Meet you at the crossroads

I'm at a hair crossroads: go lighter or go darker. I thought about this dilemma while sitting pensive-faced in a meeting, I made pro/con lists while driving home in knotty traffic, I pondered this hair dilemma while my neighbor told me some important news about his guitar.

And now I am telling you. Thank God someone invented the internet for us to share this way. Makes you feel good to have lived this long.

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Shut up and turn the toy back on.

Southern style cornbread recipe

Southern cornbread is dense, savory, kind of gritty, not sweet at all, and has the most glorious crust on the bottom. To get the crust you put some of the oil from the recipe into the skillet and heat the oiled skillet in the oven as you prepare your cornbread batter. Let the pan and fat get sizzling hot. When you're ready to add your batter you'll hear a satisfying sizzle all around as the wet batter meets the pan.

For those still fighting The War of Northern Aggression, any amount of flour or sugar to cornbread is a direct threat to their way of life. My grandmother's recipe below calls for 3T of flour, and she never apologized one minute.

I've become slutty with my cornbread out here in Los Angeles, where we only fight the war of cellulite. Over the years I have modified this recipe fifteen ways to Sunday and it's always good and almost impossible to ruin. If you want a recipe to mess with, this is the one.

Make it gluten free by skipping the flour or adding any flour of your choosing -- I've made it with rice flour, corn flour, even some weird Whole Foods mystery mix health food flour. Try substituting stuff for the buttermilk, too. You can use kefir instead for a tangy kick. Or use plain, unflavored yogurt. Greek yogurt works and makes it tangy but you have to thin it with water or milk to get the right consistency. Use sour cream if you want (a nonfat sour cream in place of most of the oil makes this recipe light and lower in calories.) Your batter should be kind of wet, just a shade thinner than cake batter. To get that consistency you can add milk or water to your thicker ingredients.

My favorite variation on this recipe is to add very finely chopped red bell pepper, green bell pepper, jalapenos and corn kernels into the batter. Add some shredded sharp cheddar cheese and I can eat the whole thing.

But first you need the basics. This is the traditional recipe handed down from my grandmother to my dad and then to me:

Cornbread

1-1/2 cups yellow cornmeal

1/4 cup of oil, bacon fat, or shortening

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups buttermilk

1 large egg

10-inch cast iron skillet

Cooking Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

If you are using vegetable oil:

1. Add about two tablespoons of the fat to the skillet, enough to coat the pan and swirl around in there. Put it in the oven to get hot.

2. In a bowl, stir together dry ingredients.

3. Pour your buttermilk into a big pyrex measuring cup. Add the egg and remaining oil, whisk a little bit with a fork to combine.

4. Pour wet ingredients into your bowl of dry ingredients, stir together. It will be kind of soupy, thinner than a cake batter. Take your skillet out of the oven (use the best mitts you have, it will be HOT) and then gently pour the batter into the sizzling hot skillet fat. Put it in the oven, bake for 25-30 minutes.

If you are using bacon fat or shortening:

1. Melt the fat in the skillet. Put it in the oven to get hot.

2. In a bowl, stir together dry ingredients.

3. Pour your buttermilk into a big pyrex measuring cup. Add the egg and whisk a little bit with a fork to combine.

4. Take the skillet out of the oven and carefully pour about half the hot fat into the dry ingredients. Leave some fat in the cast iron skillet.

5. Mix the hot oil and dry ingredients with a fork. VERY slowly pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, stir as you go. Do it slowly so you don't cook the egg. Pour into your hot skillet.

Cook on 425 for 25-30 minutes.

You know your cornbread is done when the top is golden, the sides start to pull from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean from the center. or just tap the top, you can feel it.

Now, to my die-hard southern friends, please stop reading.

To everyone else, you can make this cornbread more suited to the typical American taste bud by simply adding in a tiny bit of sugar or honey. You don't need much, just two teaspoons of sugar will do it. More to taste. To lighten up the texture, add more flour and less cornmeal. You can also use yellow cornmeal if you like. If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, use a 10-inch nonstick cake pan. You can still heat the oil in it in the oven for a little crust. Or, spray a nonstick cake pan with oil and go the lowfat route.

The basic idea here is to keep your ratios of wet to dry the same. You need just over 1 1/2 cups of dry ingredients to every 2 1/4 cups wet. Adding an extra egg will make this bread richer, too. This is a recipe that never fails, no matter how much you tinker with it. And if it comes out really hard or bad, just cut it into cubes, freeze it and use it for your Christmas dressing recipe.

Traditional cornbread:

Mixed-up lowfat colorful cornbread:

This variation was made in a non-stick cake pan. I sprayed the pan with canola, heated the pan a bit in the oven. Not as hot as a skillet would get, but still warm. To make it lowfat I changed the wet ingredients and used just two tablespoons of oil and added 1/4 cup yogurt. Added peppers and corn and even after all that it was still delicious!

Friday five

ONE It is raining and it sounds lovely and my Pavlovian response is to need tea and something made of fleece and my body is really mad that I made it get out of the bed.

TWO Tomorrow is December first, the last first day of the month for the whole year and that is so weird because I had some stuff I was going to do in 2012. Yeah, better luck next year?

THREE Post-its in all the colors of the rainbow and new sharpies in every shade make me so so happy, quite wonder if I shouldn't just start strolling the aisles of Office Depot instead of therapy.

FOUR Christmas knitting.

FIVE Such good help with the Christmas knitting.

Look how I am not chewing the needles. Look how I am not biting them, so delicious. Why are you still watching me? Why haven't you looked away yet?

The totally do-able 12-month plan

OK, I've never really done this before. While I love lists and bullet points and I am pretty sure my tombstone will be engraved in powerpoint, I've never actually made a life plan before. A five-year plan is simply too much. This is a post-recession world, people. Who has a five-year plan?

But I've read the financial literature and enough self-help to fill a landfill. What I know for sure is that I hate expensive surprises and I love vacations. Hence, my one-year plan and I am starting it today. Hello, December 2012. I heard you were in town. Rumor has it you're the last month ever. Obviously the Mayans just ran out of bricks or whatever and the world is not really ending in 21 days. Just in case, though, I planned ahead and only paid the minimums on my credit cards. Furthermore, I had half a tamale and a Bloody Mary for breakfast, so consider the source.

The 12-Month Plan

Usually people who talk about planning have certificates of self-helpism, or at the least the don't talk about drinking for breakfast. They expect you to floss and write thank-you notes and do sit-ups and take fish oil and eat vegetables.

Not me. I'm faulty at many things but I love planning. I love lists and post-it notes and even little scribbles on the back of envelopes. I plan because it gives me the illusion that I have control over a world that defies controlling. It may make no difference at all but I FEEL better, and that is quantifiable, my friends. The purpose of this 12-month plan is to make me feel prepared, philosophical, and taller.

Forget the five-year plan

The five-year plan is best embraced by those who don't get drunk on a Tuesday night or buy new underwear instead of doing laundry. And also maybe very nice people who are simply better humans than I am. NONETHELESS. The five-year plan is exhausting and crazymaking. The one-year plan is the new map.

How and why does one make a one-year plan?

I am making this plan to plot out financial necessities and save up instead of going into debt. You can plan for fun, for obligation and for the heck of it. It's just a year -- flexible, realistic and do-able for 12 months.

Take out a pad and paper, draw some boxes, make it twelve. For this plan I assume you have already mapped out your monthly expenses and know your fixed costs. (Check out the low-fi budget sheet if you're new to this.)

Use the 12-month map to plot out basic needs:

1) Looming life must-haves (dentist bill, car fixed, new phone, larger expenses that fall outside the fixed expenses.) Just jot it on the map. Add any details you have -- amount, date of bill, reason, whatever. This is the stuff you can't put off. Include tax time, insurance, doctor, family obligations, birthdays, whatever touchpoints are must-haves in your life. Think about commitments of time, money, or necessity. Where do you need to upgrade in your life? Is it time to start planning for a car? Computer? Lasik?

2) Happy wants. This is different from must-haves. These are nice-to-haves (a prettier coat, join a club, go on a date, hair appointment, vacation, better electronics, botox, volunteering, new kitten.) Sure, you could live without it but this is the stuff that keeps you sane, motivated, delighted. It adds function and excitement to your life road map. Ideally these goals make you happy and help bring your life picture into focus. Everyone has different wants and needs. You'll figure it out.

3) Personal desires (learn a song on the guitar, credit card paid off in X month, classes completed, paint the bedroom, 10 push-ups by June, read X books each month, one new recipe every quarter, big macs every 4th Sunday, learn basic conversational Norwegian.) Everyone has a few personal wish list items, this is your time to plot them out over the next twelve months. Don't overload. Pick just the most important. This is the future version of you, the version you want to be by year's end. The best version of you loves these goals.

That's it.

This is the process flow of 12 months at a time, a way to start planning for financial bumps and understanding which months have a heavier cost than others. You get to cross stuff out, move it to the future pile, forget it. You aren't caught off guard. You also get to see what lies ahead: Are you over scheduled before the year starts? Are you empty on happy wants? Are you a little light on personal desires?

This drawing activity got me going. It got me thinking about the year I want to have ahead and what kind of me I want to shape in 2013, assuming the world doesn't end. Come next December I sure would like to know I flossed and read books and remembered my nephew's birthday. I'd also like to know I lived a little, met my obligations but didn't break myself doing it.

It's not about crossing off list items this time -- it's about projecting a picture of yourself into the future. Pick who you want to be and set about becoming that version of yourself. Distill your path into 12 boxes of movement. Plan for bumps and expenses, build in time for expansions and space to grow. Use drawing to get yourself where you want to be.

That's what I am doing. We'll see if it worked next year.

Cloudy with a chance of indoor scarf

There's no sunshine in Los Angeles today, just thick, grey skies and the megadoppler says it might even mist. That news changes the whole tone of this glam island. Based on what I see from my bedroom window I can already predict today's fashion: extra layers, indoor scarves, Ugg boots with miniskirts and tights, someone will wear an argyle sweater over a plaid shirt.

I love this crazy city, where we all get to dress semi-grunge when it's cloudy.

Think I'll stay in bed today.

Yes I am alive. Thanks for asking.

You woke me for this?

Replatforming this website to a new software and new database is a much bigger chore than I thought. Perhaps I knew somewhere deep inside that it was going to be this big of a job which is why I put it off for so long. Turns out, procrastination doesn't make code write itself. Funny that one.

The whole project should be completed by the end of December and that's just fine -- a brand new year, a fresh new website. In the meantime, there's lots of holiday knitting going on at Chez Fur, scarves and hats and arm warmers are in various states of progress. Mixed in is the world's tiniest, cutest cardigan. One of the other artists I work with is about to become a first-time dad and all I want to do right now is knit baby sweaters.

Clothes for small people are so adorable! So perfect!

The patterns? Not so much perfect:

This is what a pattern looks like when I'm finished with it. (I'm knitting the Chunky Cardigan from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies.)

I'm excited about the new software and server for this site. Maybe it won't take eleventeen minutes to import a photo or publish an entry. Interestingly enough, movable type performs all actions with glacial slowness except for posting spam comments, which it seems to do with no delays at all. The craziest spam -- the stuff where people write entire manifestos of junk that seem like schizophrenic Shakespeare -- freak me out a little bit. I can't tell if the internet is haunted or if that is someone's job. Either way, it's always an ad for some penis drug. Wonder what the ROI is on that?

The Sobakowa can write a much better manifesto in her sleep:

I WAS sleeping and I WAS writing my manifesto and now I can't remember how I got on this pillow in the first place.

It's hot, but that doesn't stop the knitting

Los Angeles used to get cool at night. No matter how hot it got during the day, the nights were always cool and crisp.

This weather forecast tells a lie:

YES, it really is that hot during the day, but I have yet to see anything with a 6 in front of it for a low. Those lows are a cruel lie. The coolest temperature recorded in my neighborhood this month was 74, just before dawn a few days ago.

Where did my Los Angeles go? I want my chilly September evenings back!

Nonetheless, I knit onward and upward. Turn up your A/C, friends, because you're still getting hand-knit gifts from the person who takes pictures of her TV weather forecast. Nothing weird at all about that.

Corey, modeling her summertime arm warmers:

These armwarmers were knit using Rowan All Seasons Cotton yarn in a variegated pink colorway. I used a size 8 needle, tight knitters can I get a what what! I don't remember how many stitches I cast on. Just start with a swatch and it will work out.

Once you have the piece long as you like it, seam up the long sides, leaving a little opening for a thumb. SO EASY.

For a little decoration (and to keep the piece polished at the top) I started with a few rows of seed stitch. I love the look of seed stitch finishing anything, a scarf, a hat or a mitten.

I have several armwarmer orders on my to-knit Christmas list, along with a couple of slouchy hats. My personal Christmas wish is that it gets COLD this winter and I get a chance to wear some of the hand-knit goodness stockpiled in my closet.

What's on your holiday knitting to-do list?

And where are you hiding the weather machine that makes the cool nights?

A year from now you'll wish you had started today

Next September I will look back and think, "I wish I had started a year ago. I would be in a different place if only I had just worked on all this last year..."

That's my theme for September, for right now, for every day. I know myself and so I must remind myself repeatedly that I will look back and wish I had done something, anything to get to where I want to go. I'll wish I had forced myself to stay in shape even when I was too busy. I will wish I had saved more money, shopped less, written more, not taken stuff personally. And then I'll wish I had written a little bit more.

In the movies it's always the grand gestures that make happy endings, but in real life I've found it's incremental change (and the occasional grand gesture) that keeps my storyline happy and percolating along.

Whatever it is I'm hoping will be different in a year, it will only happen if I start right now. I've been tired and undisciplined through the relentless heat of summer and my accomplishments feel small lately, what few there are. I blame my shortcomings on lack of time, too much work, long hours at the studio, but in truth a sort of weary exhaustion has crept in and made me unsure and a little unfocused.

That changes today. My first moves will be little steps. Each day I'll want to build on my small successes, and let the failures go. One year from now I will say, "I'm really glad I started all this a year ago." Let's check back in next September and see if we made something happen in our lives. Let's see what September 2012 did to set in motion a new kind of September 2013.

What do you wish you had started a year ago?

What can you do this week to bring in a change or a newness or a project or a plan or an activity that will change who you are or change how you live one year from now?

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Aha! Finally got comments open! (They will probably be open less time than it took me to rig them to work. Fascinating.)

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When thinking about changing your life, two heads are better than one.