Alizarine

Chicken Tetrazzini

This recipe for chicken tetrazzini has been a favorite of mine for years, and I'm surprised I haven't written about it yet. I've entertained gentlemen callers with it (tip: make this together for a moderately fun activity that will make your date appreciate the amount of labor that goes into all of those great dishes that you just magically have ready for him whenever he pops by). I've made it in other people's kitchens, including my sister's, who loves it and says it's her favorite. One time I gave it, unbaked, to a friend whose husband was in Iraq, and she told me that when she had it in the oven, her little kids skipped around the room saying, "It smells like The Olive Garden in here!" Jeff and I even served it at our rehearsal dinner nearly three years ago, and we ate the leftovers during our first week as a married couple.

It's that kind of dish, and I love how this recipe turns a homey, microwave entree staple into something luxurious and celebratory, and it feeds an army.

It's also a whole lot of work. You will be in perpetual motion for at least an hour and probably more as you juggle the tetrazzini's various components. The dirty dishes it generates will fill up your dishwasher. Do not make it at the end of a work day. Instead, start making it on a low-key weekend morning at around 10:00 and plan on a noon-ish meal, and then you can pick at it throughout the afternoon as it cools. I've successfully made it ahead, frozen/thawed it, and baked it with no difference in deliciousness. Once cooked, the tetrazzini can be cut up into squares, frozen, and microwaved as needed.

The recipe is from Giada de Laurentiis, from her book Giada's Family Dinners, the one where she's on the cover looking very happy about the thing she is eating. I'm not sure what the thing is, but it may be fried dough.

My notes are in italics.

INGREDIENTS

6 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 1/4 teaspoons salt, plus more for pasta
1 1/4 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 pound white mushrooms, sliced
1 large onion, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk, room temperature
1 cup heavy whipping cream, room temperature
1 cup chicken broth
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
12 ounces linguine <-- i.e. 3/4 of a pound box
3/4 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 cup dried Italian-style breadcrumbs

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Giada's recipe actually says to heat it to 450, but that seems too harsh in my opinion. Do that if you want the parm/crumb topping to get really brown. I also think you could wait until you add the onions to the mushrooms before you turn on the oven. It's summertime, and who needs all that extra heat in the kitchen?

Spread 1 tablespoon of butter over a 13 by 9 by 2-inch baking dish. Melt 1 tablespoon each of butter and oil in a deep large nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the chicken with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Add the chicken to the hot pan and cook until pale golden and just cooked through, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate to cool slightly. Coarsely shred the chicken into bite-size pieces and put into a large bowl. Your biggest bowl.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Since this will take a long time, I'm having you do this early in the recipe. Add the linguine and cook until it is tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 9 minutes. Drain. Add the linguine to the big bowl with the chicken and mushroom mixture (below).

Sometime during this paragraph, turn on the oven and heat to 400. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the same pan. Add the mushrooms and saute over medium-high heat until the liquid from the mushrooms evaporates and the mushrooms become pale golden, about 12 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, and thyme, and saute until the onion is translucent, about 8 minutes. Add the wine and simmer until it evaporates, about 2 minutes. Transfer the mushroom mixture to the bowl with the shredded chicken.

Melt 3 more tablespoons of butter in the same pan over medium-low heat. Add the flour and whisk for 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk, cream, broth, nutmeg, remaining 1 3/4 teaspoons salt, and remaining 3/4 teaspoon pepper. Increase the heat to high. Cover and bring to a boil. Simmer, uncovered, until the sauce thickens slightly, whisking often, about 10 minutes.

OK, I've tried to do it that way a few times, and the milk always boils over and/or burns on the bottom of the pan. What I do now is increase the heat to more like medium-high and stir/whisk constantly until it boils. It takes about 25 years for this to happen, but it will boil at some point. Then you'll need to keep that sauce moving for one or two more minutes. It should start to seem like a creamy soup rather than some kind of gloppy pudding. Do not wait for it to become gloppy pudding because that's too thick and it probably won't happen anyway.

Add the sauce, peas, and parsley to the chicken mixture. Toss until the sauce coats the pasta and the mixture is well blended.

Transfer the pasta mixture to the prepared baking dish. Stir the cheese and breadcrumbs in a small bowl to blend. Sprinkle the cheese mixture over the pasta. Bake, uncovered, until golden brown on top and the sauce bubbles, about 25 minutes. For some reason, I always have more tetrazzini (a cup?) than I can fit in my baking dish. I load it as full as I feel is sane. I've never had this bubble over, but as you can see from the photo above, it's getting there. You might want to place the baking dish on a cookie sheet before you bake it.

Let it cool for about 10-15 minutes before serving if you don't want a lot of sloppiness when you cut it up. Or go ahead and dig in like I did! (Sorry the photo at the top isn't very rectangular-looking. I was just really hungry.)

General Tso's Chicken

Earlier this week, Jeff emailed me a recipe for homemade General Tso's chicken, and I responded immediately with, "WANT. YES."

If you've never had General Tso's chicken, which Jeff pronounces "Cho's" and I keep my mouth shut, it's breaded, deep-fried pieces of chicken dunked in a bright red, highly craveable, sweet/spicy/sticky sauce. The first time you taste it, the sauce bypasses your stomach and heads directly into your brain, where it creates a file folder marked I MUST HAVE GENERAL TSO'S AT ALL TIMES. What, you don't picture your brain as a messy office with a bunch of filing cabinets like I do?

Anyway, the moment you taste this particular brand of breaded, sauced chicken, you become a slave to the General...whose last name is pronounced tSO (like so but with a little bit of a T sound at the beginning; I'm kind of sure about this).

 

No vegetables will get in the way of your enjoyment of this, the most American Chinese food of all.

Jeff found the recipe on The Bitten Word, whose authors decided to do a head-to-head taste comparison between their local Chinese restaurant's version and their own. While the restaurant's version was faster and altogether more Tso-ish, The Bitten Word's version was more complex, less expensive and, well, a little classier. After making their version, Jeff and I agree with this assessment. It's not going to replace that MUST HAVE TSO'S folder in my brain, but I'm not going to hate myself and have to lie down for a while after eating it either.

We made it five hours ago and I'm still thinking about the leftovers, which I know are becoming wonderfully gummy in the refrigerator..

GAH. I've got it. Here's what this recipe has done: it's put a Post-it note on the General Tso's folder, and that note says, "Um, you can make this right now with stuff you probably have on hand."

My notes are in italics.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1 large egg white
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 pound skinless boneless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth <-- we used some homemade turkey stock
• 1 teaspoon Chinese chile-garlic sauce <-- didn't have; used a combination of 1/2 teaspoon of sriracha sauce, a small clove of garlic, and a 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
• 3 tablespoons sugar <-- I'm going to lobby for an extra T of it next time for a sweeter sauce
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus (lots) more for frying
• 2 tablespoons very finely chopped fresh ginger
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced

DIRECTIONS

In a medium bowl, combine the toasted sesame oil with the egg white, 1 tablespoon of the soy sauce and 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of the cornstarch. Add the chicken, stirring to coat. Let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the chicken broth with the chile-garlic sauce, sugar and the remaining 1/4 cup of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.

In a large saucepan, heat the 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the ginger and garlic and cook over high heat until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir the broth mixture, add it to the pan and cook until thickened and glossy, about 3 minutes. Keep the sauce warm over low heat.

In a large, deep skillet, heat 1/2 inch of oil until shimmering. Carefully add the chicken, one piece at a time, and fry over high heat, turning once or twice, until very browned and crisp, about 4 minutes. Do not fry one piece at a time from start to finish, as this instruction might imply. They all fry together.

Drain the chicken on paper towels and immediately add to the sauce along with the scallions. Cook just until coated, about 30 seconds. Serve right away.

It's every bit as good as it looks, people!

Spring in Illinois

It's Memorial Day weekend, and if you're like me, all of your favorite websites are on vacation. With the exceptions of The Gaythiest Gospel Hour, whose author and my friend Melinda really outdid herself this morning, and Twitter, where it's a constant struggle to keep up while following only 105 people (it's like all you guys ever do is tweet!), the Internet has become a ghost town this weekend. So I thought I'd toss a few blog entries into this abyss, starting with this little newsletter.

Like most of the Midwest, east-central Illinois has been besieged by severe weather at least once or twice a week this spring, and Jeff and I have heard tornado sirens in our town so often that we now have our cat wrangling system down to a science and a safe spot in which to hunker down (our bathroom's tiny closet). Bun has been surprisingly well-behaved during our scrambles to the bathroom, and I took this poignant shot of her wondering what was going on Thursday night.

Our house is unusual: it's a boxy modern structure built around and over an older Craftsman home. It's a house inside a house, which makes us feel safer somehow, and we love it very much (photo from a few years ago).

Our yard is currently exploding with plants. One of my friends from Hong Kong was shocked by how black and fertile the topsoil is in this area, and the number of new trees in our yard each spring is amazing. This year we have at least a dozen new redbud trees alone, and we're trying to decide what to do with them.

A rambling, viney pile of wisteria, some of which you can see below, sprawls near our east deck. It gets bigger and more monstrous each year, taking down trellises and engulfing benches in its quest for total yard domination. It's only a matter of time before it reaches the house and strangles us in our sleep. But until then, it provides a wonderful habitat for small animals and birds.

We have a few bird feeders near the wisteria, one on the ground and two on a post. We go through six cups of birdseed each day, and since providing it was my idea, I am responsible for keeping those feeders filled as I battle our burgeoning mosquito population.

Squirrels and chipmunks help themselves to the seed buffet, and as a result we boast some of the chubbiest rodentia in the state. The squirrels are truly shameless in their gorging, and the chipmunks stuff their cheeks with seeds before scampering away like tiny Dizzy Gillespies.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of our discovery of the chuckies. Our woodchuck has disappeared over the past few weeks, just like she did last year. Last spring we thought she was gone for good until these five little creatures peeked their faces out from under our deck. As much as I hate the way they eat my pansies and moss roses, I hope we'll see some new chuckies this week.

Now go read that blog Melinda posted today, and meet me back here in a little while for a post about General Tso's chicken. Oh yeah, Jeff and I know how to make that now.

Corncakes

Every week or so I make a huge batch of pancakes, one of which I will eat (quality control) and the rest of which I will stack, place in a Ziploc bag, and freeze. Jeff and I like to microwave two or three pancakes for about a minute whenever the need arises. Instant pancake gratification.

My standby recipe often includes chocolate chips, but other times I'll sprinkle a streusel topping on the pancakes while they're cooking. Yesterday I was in the mood for corncakes and found a quick, easy recipe online. A bit eggier than normal pancakes, these corncakes are a lot like cornbread: they're equally happy in sweet or savory environments. The recipe mentioned that you could toss some corn into the batter if you want a savory pancake, but I certainly didn't mind a few corn-loaded corncakes covered with maple syrup this morning.

Here's my cat Bun overseeing the corncake operation. She is also our household Laundry Commissioner. Stay tuned for a kind of gross story about Bun's digestive system after the following recipe, slightly adapted from the one I found on Superspark.

(this double batch recipe makes around 20-24 pancakes)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp sugar <-- I might add an extra T of sugar next time
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• a couple of handfuls of drained, canned corn (or thawed frozen corn), optional
• vegetable oil (for the pan)

DIRECTIONS

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Measure the buttermilk into a medium bowl. Add the eggs and beat gently with a fork or a small whisk until thoroughly combined. Beat in the vanilla and melted butter, and corn if using.

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients. Using a spoon or a rubber spatula, stir from the bottom of the bowl until the dry ingredients are all moistened. Don’t overmix; a few small lumps are okay.

Place a griddle or a skillet over medium heat (note to self: that's 4 on our stove; drop heat down to 3.5 halfway through cooking). After a minute or two, wipe surface of the skillet with a little vegetable oil on a folded-up paper towel. I repeat this step every time new pancakes are produced.

Using a 1/4-cup measure with a handle, scoop up batter and pour it onto the hot griddle.

Cook the pancakes for 3-4 minutes on the first side, or until really golden on the bottom. (Don’t turn them too soon. The trick is to flip them only once, which keeps them light and tender.) The second side will go a little faster, 2-3 minutes, depending on the heat. Note: I like mine a little less brown, and if you're the same way, check the pancakes for doneness at 2 minutes on side one.

And now, my little tale of woe about my little cat with no tail. I love Bun with all my heart, but the fact that she has no tail has made her (and my, and now Jeff's) life challenging. She's cute without the tail--just the sweetest, roly-poliest teddy bear of a cat--but cats have tails for a reason...many reasons as a matter of fact. Two of those reasons have to do with the litter box.

Reason number 1: thanks to the nerve damage related to Bun's severed tail, she dribbles sometimes. We are constantly putting old towels under her when she sits. I have to add medicine to her wet food, which I dole out in small quantities throughout the day, to keep her from leaking. And this works most of the time, but not all of the time, sooo we clean the floors. A lot. And we live in constant fear of our house smelling like cat pee, although we have been assured multiple times that this is not the case.

Reason number 2 (and I do mean number 2): sometimes Bun's little train doesn't want to move, if you know what I mean, and this creates a painful backlog. She strains fruitlessly at her litter box making--ISYN--Marge Simpson disapproval sounds. We took her to the vet a couple of months ago, where she was put on a prescription diet of high fiber wet food in large-for-Bun cans. She liked the food for a while, and it did indeed yield some exciting results, but a couple of weeks ago she mysteriously began refusing the food. She'd eat the first bit right out of the can, but any hint of staleness later on made her give me a look of extreme disappointment, nay, heartbreak.

I had wet food that I knew Bun loved, and I could hide her medicine in it without her noticing, so I went back to that. All Bun really needed was fiber. After some internet research, Jeff had found the (easy! cheap!) answer: a teaspoon or two of canned pumpkin puree, shockingly available in our town's one-room-country-shack grocery store. I bought a can for a mere dollar, stuffed the contents into a piping bag, and squirted out little stars of pumpkin onto parchment paper. Because I'm fancy. I froze these and stored them in a plastic bag in the freezer.

Now, once or twice a day, I zap one of these in the microwave for 16 seconds. Then I stir in a few teaspoons of cream of chicken soup and present it to Bun, who loves it. LOVES.

As far as Bun is concerned, this pumpkin chicken soup is her reward for being awesome, and she laps it all up in about a minute.

And it's been producing exciting results. Yes, it's a veritable litterbox jamboree around here.

Apple Blossoms 1

Apple trees were an important part of my childhood. My aunt and uncle, who lived in the house next door, had a small orchard of two cherry trees that I loved to climb and three big apple trees. Their branches were too tangled and dense to climb easily, but in the summer I found praying mantises, moths, caterpillars, and walking sticks on them, and I loved to play in their shade. A circular, limestone gravel driveway looped through the orchard, and one of my nuttier childhood activities included the collection of limestone dust, which I would mix with puddle water and mud to create "cement," and I would use this substance to create little stone houses for my bug friends. When I wanted a snack, a steady supply of red or yellow delicious apples was always at my fingertips. And Mom reports that when she was pregnant with me, she used to gorge on those apples, too.

So I was overjoyed three years ago when Jeff informed me that his (soon to be our) yard contained over a dozen apple trees. When they're in bloom, they remind me of Akira Kurosawa's peach orchard at 1:50 here, except their blossoms are pink and white, and nobody chops the trees down.

 

I took several hundred photos of the trees on a sunny weekend last month, including the one below, which was just one of my "average-to-above-average" shots. So this probably will not be my last apple blossom painting!

For years I have been a peony loyalist, but these apple blossoms on those peak days, when some were opening, some were closed, and some were in full bloom, stole my heart this spring. I mean, I found myself talking to them as I photographed them, gasping and telling them how beautiful they were as they bobbed around in the breeze. It was...well, this kind of thing is par for the course for me. I could not wait to paint them.

This 16"x20" watercolor took seven days to paint, and what you see above is the painting on day five. The cluster on the right was mostly completed by then, but the rest of it was still loose. I spent the next two days refining edges and adding drybrush textures over these wet-into-wet surfaces, so everything in the finished painting below has been painted twice and sometimes three or four times.

I think my favorite part of the painting is the big leaf in the lower half. Apple leaves, especially very young ones, tend to have a wrinkly texture, and the undersides are slightly more yellow than the tops. Branching off from the big veins are tiny, squiggly ones that are hard to mimic with watercolor.

I purposely blurred the leaves and blooms that were in the distance to keep the focus on shapes in the foreground. Some of the blurring was achieved the normal way, i.e. applying paint to a wet surface and letting it spread out and do its thing. More intricate areas such as the lower-right corner required me to paint everthing with sharp edges first, which I later blurred with a wrecked, fuzzed-out little brush that I use for only this purpose.

Above is the view from my messy (sorry) little studio. As you can see, my beloved northern light has become almost completely blocked by, yes, apple trees, who seem to be demanding that I paint more of them. So I'm calling this painting Apple Blossoms 1, in anticipation of 2, 3, and maybe even 4.

I Wish I Knew How To Quit U2

Q: Where are U2 today? (U2 = plural noun in my opinion.)

A: If you have no idea that U2 are in Mexico City today, you probably do not visit @U2, the award-winning website that employs me as a cartoonist (for free; don't get too excited).

@U2 is pretty much the last word in U2 news and information, and I created its monthly...I guess you could call them cartoons. This feature is called "Achtoon Baby," a name I kind of hate, but I really had no say in the matter as I was taking over for its creator when I got the job.

Nearly every A.B. image was a hand-painted, realistic watercolor like the ones you see above.  So they're not little doodles I can slap together in five minutes and get on with my day. My U2 cartoons are clearly the work of a crazy woman, and being crazy, I even got my cat involved. I painted the cartoons for seven years until life got too complicated, i.e. I actually did things with other people during my free time. Overwhelmed, I had to stop in 2009, and that was the right decision for me at the time. Now that my schedule's a lot looser than before, I recently decided to start painting and mocking these lovable geezer rock stars again...only this time I'm doing it four times a year instead of twelve. Because, come on, twelve is insanity.

Before I get going with this, I want to thank my friend Matt McGee, @U2 head honcho with whom I am laughing my ass off in the blurry photo above. Matt was kind enough to link my art website with his U2 fan juggernaut, so hopefully I'll be seeing an increase in traffic and my Google page ranking (and sales? please? I hope?).

You can view the newest cartoon in its entirety, with normal-sized illustrations, here.

As you can see, the watercolor portrait illustrations dominate each panel. I cropped them so they seem to burst from the frame. Each little painting is 5"x7" (or so), based on my constantly evolving library of U2 images. Two of these were painted from concert shots where I removed the colored lighting and dark backgrounds (including Larry Mullen, above), one is a from a grainy, postage stamp-sized paparazzi photo, and one is from Q magazine. Can you tell which is which?

When given the choice between painting an older face and a younger one, I'll pick the older one every time. I love wrinkles, and the wrinklier someone is, the easier he or she is to paint. It's hard to explain why if you haven't painted with watercolors before, but wrinkles give my brush something to grab onto and a place to pause while I'm painting. Children's faces offer no such luxury. So as U2 have aged, like good ol' Adam Clayton (above), I've had an easier time painting them. This might also have something to do with the fact that I know their features on a near-molecular basis.

Especially this guy.

• Fact: Bono has more freckles on the left side of his face than his right side.
• Fact: Bono's sunglasses make painting his eyes at least five times harder than they ought to be.
• Fact: Bono's mouth has become thinner over the years, and if you make his lips too fat, he stops looking like present-day Bono, and this is hard to get right.
• Fact: Bono has two major neck wrinkles.
• Fact: Bono's eyes are the color of cornflowers.
• Fact: I can paint two Edges in the time it takes me to paint one Bono.
• Fact: I could throw about 75 more similar facts at you.

Yes, Edge is easy like Sunday morning. Dependable hat means no hair shenanigans. Big face means lots of room to play with. He looks like no other human being. There is something deer-like about him. Today somebody asked me how I manage to paint his eyes exactly right. My secret is that they're kind of triangular. The only hardship when it comes to painting Edge is the fact that guitars will often be involved. Watercolors and guitars don't exactly mix, but I can tolerate painting them because he has some really cool guitars.

Sometimes a cartoon idea will demand that I draw U2 in a more cartoony way, and I call those guys Li'l U2 (the original here is about 2 inches tall, hence some sloppiness):

Random example (they were making handturkeys in May to celebrate an upcoming album's November release date):

Sometimes I'll have Bun draw them (she put them on my couch):

Sometimes I will sculpt them out of clay:

And sometimes, when I'm desperate, I will sculpt them out of food:

So...yeah. Four times a year, I'll be doing this stuff again.

It's going to be awesome.

Oh yeah, Jeff, who for years has pouted that I have never drawn him for Achtoon Baby, made a cameo in today's cartoon.

PS: If you'd like to flip through some of my old U2 paintings, you can find them here. And if you have a lot of time on your hands, my Achtoon Baby archive is here. Please note that my imaging programs have improved vastly since then. And my updated staff bio is here.

Roger & Me

"We're off to Ebertfest so Kelly can meet this pen pal of hers," Jeff announced on his Facebook page early Thursday morning.

We had been invited to a breakfast reception at the Illini Union honoring Roger Ebert. This was part of the kick-off festivities for Ebertfest, his annual film festival held over five days in Champaign, Illinois, Roger's old stomping grounds, coincidentally six miles from our house. Not the kind of people who typically do well in "meet and greet" situations, and definitely not the kind of people who are used to wearing tags around our necks that say "VIP," we were a little intimidated by the whole scene. Attendees included a number of Ebert's film critic proteges from all over the world, such as Ebert Presents wunderkind Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, festival donors, and a smattering of Ebert Club members (you should join the club!).

In our usual tragically punctual way, we were the first people to arrive at the reception, and after some awkward "are we even in the right place?" confusion, we hung up our coats and shyly wandered into the ballroom. Soon we were met by a few other attendees, many of whom were staying in the Union for the duration of the festival, and we helped ourselves to the muffin-and fruit-laden buffet.

(Gah! My least-flattering angle. "Your forehead is glowing nicely!" --Jeff, upon seeing this shot.)

About an hour passed during which we became acquainted with some of Roger's Far-Flung Correspondents and young film critic pals, including Kevin B. Lee,  Ali Arikan, Kenji Fujishima, and the guy from The House Next Door who calls himself "The Odienator." These obvious festival "cool kids" already knew each other but were nice enough to include the two oddballs whose connection to Ebertfest was tenuous at best. I gave them postcards of my painting of Mabel as I explained the random yet awesome way that Roger Ebert had changed my life this year. And then...

Enter Roger Ebert.

After the applause died down, a representative from Ebertfest whose name I sadly can't recall made a few remarks about the film festival as Roger looked on, studying the crowd. We made eye contact a few times, and I'm sure I was grinning ear to ear.

When I was a teacher, I could always identify The Smart Kids at the beginning of the school year. It's in their eyes--a constant processing of visual information along with a spark of appraisal. Even across a large room, Roger Ebert had the most intense gaze that I have ever encountered. "His eyes were like lasers," I told Jeff's daughter Melissa the next day. This man has made his fortune thanks to his extraordinary ability to see, understand, edit, and evaluate--how could his gaze not be intense? And the fact that he is unable to speak has to have made his eyes even more expressive. I should have been prepared for that, but I wasn't. It was slightly unnerving but altogether wonderful to be caught in his line of vision.

Roger moved to a leather couch beneath two paintings of pheasants several feet away from our table. Rather sweetly, he had each of his forty or so guests stand and introduce themselves. I babbled something about being a local painter whose work Roger was quietly promoting on his blog and Twitter before turning to him and dissolving into "thank you thank you thank you" as he clapped for me. Later, whenever new people entered the room, Roger was the first to notice, and he made sure that they too had a chance to introduce themselves.

After the introductions, Roger sat back and watched the people whose lives he had touched and woven together. One by one, "like kids visiting Santa" as Jeff said, guests approached him, offering gifts and starstruck praise. He wrote brief messages using a black G2 pen on a small spiral notepad and posed for photos.

Monica Valero, artist and wife of Far-Flung Correspondent Gerardo, was featured along with me a couple of months ago in this blog by Roger. She was at the breakfast and presented Roger with a small, detailed watercolor of him with Gene Siskel. He beckoned me to come over and see it. It was a beautiful piece. "Both are artists," Roger wrote on his notepad, pointing back and forth between the two of us. I shook his hand and sincerely thanked him once more--again with the lasers, although these were extremely kind lasers--and he underlined the word "artists." Meanwhile Jeff was locked in a discussion with The Odinator, facing away from Roger's couch, so he didn't get a chance to take a photo of me with The Great Man, but that was okay. I'd had my moment! Not wanting to monopolize Roger's time, I moved on and talked with Monica a bit before returning to Jeff.

Eventually all of the Cool Kids were stopping by Roger's couch, saying things like, "My mom would kill me if I didn't get a photo with you," and Jeff volunteered to do the honors, juggling multiple cell phones, because that's the kind of person he is. I stood beside him and managed to tell Roger between photo-ops, "This is my husband Jeff." He wrote on his pad, "A fine unit." Heh!

Many of the attendees had to participate in Ebertfest panel discussions elsewhere in the Union that morning, so the breakfast ended about an hour after Roger arrived. We put on our coats and exited the room. Roger was standing in the hallway with his nurse. Jeff managed to officially greet Roger and get a handshake, and soon we were on our way back to our car.

The festival itself was incredible, and thanks to the passes that Roger was generous enough to give us, Jeff and I were able to see whatever films we liked and sit in a plummy reserved section of the Virginia. But that's for another post. Today I just wanted to tell you about the time I met that pen pal of mine.

And now, a postscript from Jeff, the other half of this here fine unit.

So many thoughts were flowing through my brain when I shook Roger's hand. It's difficult to summarize a lifetime of admiration for a person into "hello." In my previous job, I had opportunities to meet a few celebrities, but this was different because I don't think of Roger Ebert first as a celebrity, but as an intellectual, and those meetings are rare.

Roger certainly speaks truth to power, and, as Tilda Swinton so eloquently stated during the festival, he does so from a foundation of hope. He has been challenged in these last few years, but what has emerged is a growing breadth of writing that increases the web-o-sphere's awareness of beauty and politics and science and, of course, mortality.

I told him that I admired him. What I also wanted to say is that I understand him. Even if he knows it, I wanted to tell him that so many of us do. He is a voice, a truly lasting voice for those of us who want to world to be as he imagines, but who do not have the ability to say so in such eloquent ways.

PS I also wanted to pitch The Troll Hunter for Ebertfest 2012. :) [I do not concur.--K]