Alizarine

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]

Carrot cake

Sometimes I'm in a real hurry to eat the food I'm photographing: I'm home from work, totally hungry, dinner is getting colder by the nanosecond, and usually I just want to know what it tastes like.  These factors create the perfect storm for photo suckage, and that's when Jeff will diplomatically suggest that I check out cooking sites by actual cooks/photographers to see how it's done.  And I'll say, "Yeah, I'll look into that."

But if I have some time on my hands, I like to overachieve.  I knew that my sorry frosting skills needed to be camouflaged today, so I'm going to share my thought process (as my principal Phil likes to say):

Ooh, I could go outside and pick some daffodils, but it's still raining and [quick internet search] they're pretty much poisonous!  Maybe I could cut some flowers out of magazines and make a collage--no, too hard!  Well, what if I just looked around the house and found some random stuff like trilobites [which didn't make the cut but you've got to admit that idea's a winner] and placed them around the cake?  LET'S DO IT.

So what we have here is a complimentary scenic calendar from an auto repair place, a beloved plastic pheasant, a stone egg, some silk flowers you might remember from past decorative experiments, and a Peep.  You're welcome.

This morning I felt a primal need to bake a carrot cake, the same kind I made Mom for Birthmas.  This need was so severe that I had absolutely no problem driving to our local store at 7:00 in a downpour for ingredients.  I love baking on a dark, gloomy morning, don't you?  You're listening to Morning Edition, grating carrots, preheating your oven while other people--suckers, all!--are frittering the weekend away by sleeping in, while you are achieving things.  People, if you want the weekend to last, you've got to get up early.  

And I don't think I need to tell you that a carrot cake is the obvious dessert choice for any Easter party you might be throwing next weekend.  (Unless you decide to make an Easter Log.)  I cut Martha Stewart's huge, HUGE recipe in half and was able to make four cakes in my deluxe three-tiered cake pan, but this will make 14 cupcakes or, I would guess, two 8-inch round cakes.  Double it if you need 28 cupcakes or if your last name is Duggar.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 C peeled and finely grated carrots  <-- This was 6 carrots for me.
• 1 1/2 large eggs, room temperature  <-- Sorry.  Beat the second egg and discard half.
• 1 C sugar
• 3/4 C vegetable oil
• 1/6 C buttermilk
• 3/4 t vanilla
• 1/4 C crushed pineapple, well drained
• 1/2 C walnuts or pecans, toasted and finely chopped, if desired
• 1/4 C sweetened shredded coconut
• 1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 1/2 t ground ginger
• tiny pinch ground cloves <-- literally 1/16 of a teaspoon!

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 325.

Line a standard muffin tin with paper liners. (Or grease and flour your cake pans.  I like to put rounds of parchment paper in the bottoms of mine, too.) 

In a bowl, whisk together carrots, eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, vanilla seeds, and coconut, pineapple and nuts if desired. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Stir flour mixture into carrot mixture until well combined.

Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full.  Bake until testers inserted into centers come out clean, 23 to 28 minutes.c (My weird pan took 35 minutes.)  Let cool in tins on wire racks, 10 minutes. Turn out cupcakes onto wire racks, and let cool completely.  Unfrosted cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen for up to 2 months in airtight containers.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (8 ounce) block 'neufchatel" (1/3 less fat) cream cheese, softened
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 C powdered sugar (or so)

DIRECTIONS

With an electric mixer, fluff up the cream cheese for a few seconds.  Then add the vanilla and powdered sugar and tint with food coloring, if desired.  Frost the cake in that lame way of yours.

Chipotle tamale pie

 

Yesterday was May 4 (or cinco de cuatro as our president might say), so I fixed an old semi-Mexican standby called tamale pie.  It's neither tamale nor pie, but it's comforting, easy, Monday-ish, and borderline trashy, and I wanted it. 

 

I got the recipe from Simply Delicioso, a rather unbearable Food Network offering starring Ingrid Hoffman, who is kind of like a culinary Charo.  This was an early episode, so maybe she's improved since then, but at the time she seemed to have real trouble with the English language, sputtering out directions, telling people to smell their televisions, and calling everything "baby," e.g. It's time to put this baby in the oven!  Not that I could do any better; when I was in high school art qualified as a foreign language, and as a result the only languages I know are English and "art."  But it's not like I'm trying to teach Mexican citizens how to cook chicken and dumplings, either. 

 

Anyway, when I saw this recipe I knew it was wrong, in the same way that just about everything Sandra Lee does is wrong, but...I kind of wanted to try it.  It seemed so easy, plus it was topped with cornbread, and I think you know how I feel about cornbread. 

 

Italics = me.

 

INGREDIENTS

1 T unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 T olive oil
1 pound lean ground turkey <-- I used turkey breast for less fat
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes
2 chipotle chiles, plus 1 teaspoon adobo sauce, from canned chipotle in adobo
1 C grated Cheddar
1/2 C chopped fresh cilantro leaves  <-- Unless you are like us and you think cilantro tastes like soap; if so, use Italian parsley
1 (8.5-ounce) package cornbread mix <-- There's something great about how Jiffy's packaging never, ever changes, am I right?
1 egg
1/3 C milk

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease an 8-inch baking dish with the butter and set it aside.

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the ground turkey, the onions, green peppers, and garlic AND PLENTY OF SALT and cook until the turkey is no longer pink and is cooked through, about 8 minutes. Drain off any excess fat and sprinkle the meat mixture with the cumin. If you use breast meat, you'll have no fat to drain.  And seriously, I can't believe that Ingrid doesn't have you add salt.  You really need to do it, and I like to add some pepper too, mainly because I love the look of medium-grind pepper on things.

Add the beans, tomatoes, chiles and adobo sauce to the skillet and bring to a boil over high heat. Test for heat; you may want to add more chiles.  If it's too hot, add some more tomatoes, I guess, or feel free to pile on that sour cream later, because that's what I do.  Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until heated through and slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from the heat and stir in the cheese and soap/cilantro.

Spread the turkey mixture in the prepared baking dish, pressing down on it with the back of a spoon to make an even, compact layer.

Combine the cornbread mix with milk and egg.  Spread the cornbread batter over the turkey mixture and bake until the cornbread is golden-brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Let the tamale pie stand for 5 minutes before cutting into squares and serving.  I like mine with light sour cream.  Jeff likes his without, and it is one of the joys of my life that I now know minutiae like this without having to ask him first.

 

This will feed four extremely hungry people who haven't eaten one substantial thing all day.  Otherwise, I dunno, it'll feed maybe six?  Eight?  I have never eaten this when I was anything less than going-out-of-my-mind starving.  This pie, which is about as much of a pie as shepherd's pie is, i.e. NO PIE AT ALL, benefits from its eaters being famished and exhausted.  It's even better when they come in the door and it's still not ready, and they have to wait something like a half hour for it..  Nothing tastes better than food when you're hungry.  That's like The First Law of Food.



In other news, Quixote scratched the heck out of my leg the other day.  He was sitting on my outstretched legs.  For no apparent reason, he exploded, kangaroo-like, into the air.  One of his back claws dug into my leg and left a long, bloody gash that will most likely stay there for at least six months.  At first I was appalled at the sight of it.  I'm still kind of appalled, but that cut is also kind of badass.

Pheasant update: five spotted near the prairie restoration area.  A man had parked his car nearby and was standing around in the PRA.  The obviously put-off pheasants were nosing around in a neighboring field.

Meadowbrook park

After a five day absence, during which time east-central Illinois endured an onslaught of flooding rain, the sun decided to come skulking back to us like some student whose parents whisked him away for a week at Disneyland right in the middle of the school year.  So Jeff and I went to the park to play with our cameras.  Jeff has a new camera with a 18x zoom that puts mine to shame when it comes to spying on animals, for example.

Some of the tulips and nearly all of the flowering trees were wiped out by the rain, but we found a few hardy customers.

Beautiful red tulips.

Lilacs!  My parents have a lilac bush, and the flowers' sweet fragrance has always reminded me of my childhood.

Urbana's Meadowbrook Park features a 2-mile loop and a variety of sculptures.  Also pheasants!  I didn't see any, but I heard three.

I spotted some deer way off in the distance (I tell you, my new stay-in-your-eyes-for-a-whole-month contact lenses give me the eyesight of an EAGLE).  Photo courtesy of Jeff's zoom lens.

Another example of Jeff pushing his zoom to the limit.  This red-winged blackbird was way out in the middle of a field.

Near the end of the walk, I noticed a turtle minding its own business.  Jeff captured its decidedly nonplussed expression.

In praise of chocolate chips

 

I think it's pretty obvious that I love to cook, but what do I eat while I'm at work?  Answer: not much.  I've lived by this Gordon Gekko chestnut since my first year of teaching: lunch is for wimps.  And it is, you know it's true!  I wrote this during my lunch hour (length of hour: 20 minutes).  Here's what you need, at best, around noon: A SNACK.  I always try to have the following items in my desk:

 

SWEET: hard candy such as Creme Savers--all flavors are good, and they can approximate apple pie with an accuracy you would not believe

SALTY: almonds

MINTY: Altoids

SUBSTANCE: microwave oatmeal

CHOCOLATE: Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips

TRES EXOTIQUE: a banana or something

FREE: whatever is on the table of bonus food in the lounge, e.g. donuts

 

I've found that the chocolate chips (CC) are a universal additive that can work with pretty much anything I have in my desk.  Preferred formulations:

• 2CC + Altoid = mint chocolate explosion!
• CC + almond = Hershey's with almonds, sorta
• 12CC + nuked oatmeal with minimal water = warm oatmeal chocolate chip cookie
• CC + bite of banana = tropicalia of the mouth
• CC + Creme Saver in toffee or even strawberry = a taste so good the kids will wonder why you're smiling like a goofball
• CC + bonus lounge food = delicious morning guilt trip
• CC + CC = double chocolate chip

[Above: self-portrait drawn with a few pencil lines and one chocolate chip.  Oh yeah, in a pinch they can become art supplies.]

 

Unrelated: I saw three pheasants yesterday in the prairie restoration area.  Two females, one male, all pecking around in the rain.  I yelled "PHEASANTS!!" as is my custom.

Bunny rabbit

Oh Bun.  How adorable can you possibly be, lying there by Jeff in croissant formation, dreamy of eye and fluffy of tummy, paws up in order to obtain maximum cuteness as you lounge on your preferred blanket? 

Below: Bun's namesake, whom we spied on for ten solid minutes this afternoon.  He was pretty darn robust and nervy too, refusing to leave his tender green shoots even when harassed by two cardinals and clucked at by Bun from her window seat.

In other animal news, an adult skunk was found dead in an apparent hit-and-run homicide on highway 150 just a couple of miles from my house on Tuesday.  I smelled and then saw the skunk on my way to work.  I didn't think much of it at the time, other than the idea that baby skunks are just darling except for the smell and I've always loved the way the cat in Pepe Le Pew cartoons was drawn.  Fine.  But now it's three and a half days later and the skunk is still there.  "Where my vultures at?" I said to myself this afternoon, referring to the family of vultures that regularly roosts in our trees.  Then I wondered: Are dead skunks too stinky for vultures? 

Also: I saw two male pheasants in the Prairie Restoration Area today.  I so rarely see the elusive female pheasant.

And that's about it for Small Animal Roundup tonight. 

Oven fear

As much as I love to bake, I've always harbored a healthy-bordering-on-unhealthy fear of the oven and really anything hot such as furnaces, fireplaces, irons, hair dryers, matches, torches, and kilns.  It goes back to my childhood; we had a big floor furnace that I was forbidden to touch.  Jeff and I bought a new oven in February.  It's absolutely perfect and I love using it, only very carefully and with the utmost respect. 

Last week the oven got a lot of use, including yesterday when Jeff made a gorgeous focaccia that we wolfed down with my leftover puttanesca sauce.

So this evening we decided to be lazy and popped a frozen pizza into the oven for supper.  Except here's one thing I just cannot feel good about: putting the pizza directly on the oven rack, sans baking sheet.  Just plopping it right there on the rack--it seems wrong!  Since Jeff has no problem with this, I let him do it, and then with the oven light on I watched, horrified, as two little bits of sauce and cheese bubbled down onto the floor of the oven where they smoldered and burned.  A tiny amount of putrid smoke similar to but worse than burning toast seeped out into the kitchen.  I could taste traces of this smokiness on the pizza later, and then I promptly forgot about it because I am easily sidetracked by hilarious shows.

Later, I looked at Jeff and realized that he wanted me to bake some of that frozen triple chocolate cookie dough from last week.  I asked him and this was indeed the case.  Oven: heated.  Cookies: inserted.  Smoke: reborn.  Oh yeah, remember the smoke?  I worried that my perfect cookies would absorb the smokiness and become less than transcendent, and this would be tragic because these cookies cannot be anything but perfection. 

Happily, the cookies remained fantastic and were not smoky at all.  Above, Jeff is eating one, Padma Lakshmi style.

Unrelated: after an uneventful month, I saw three male pheasants today in the usual places (prairie restoration area and the grassy field).

6th grade watercolor birds

My sixth graders have been learning how to draw animals by using basic shapes as building blocks.  When I was their age, I loved to check out step-by-step drawing books from the library, and those books helped me become a better artist.  Breaking down complex subjects into simple components that anyone can draw is my favorite way to teach drawing.  Birds are easy to reduce to shapes like ovals, triangles, and circles, so we drew Illinois birds, many of whom we miss during the winter.  Then we used watercolor pencils and Sharpie markers to add colors and details.  Most of the kids are not finished with this project, but I couldn’t resist photographing a few of the early ones.  I am particularly enchanted with the (nearly finished) pheasant, but then again I am enchanted with all pheasants.