Yesterday I posted about my little day trip up to Lawrence Farms. Munny came with. Voici:
According to my boss, everyone and their mother went apple picking this weekend. The weather was perfect, and a good amount of the leaves were turning. I couldn’t believe that a whopping half of the people who said they’d come with me actually had pants on by 10am on a Saturday. Shortly after, we got in the Saturn and headed upstate.
It was sure nice seein’ you and your ma.
Does this look like at stock photo? I swear I actually took it.
Goat!
Check back all week for more documentation of Munny and his upstate NY frolic.
I had a lovely Saturday afternoon at The Cloisters where I took many pretty photos. Yes, it’s Tuesday, and I’m just now posting pictures. They’re still pretty, though.
Oh right, there was also increadibly old, very significant, very dramatic art.
And people I know, looking dignified:
Some people thing risotto is a fussy dish. But after you make it 20 or 30 times, you realize that risotto isn’t an arduous production. If you’ve got some cans of stock and a container of rice in your pantry, risotto will always be an excellent one-pot dinner that’ll use up your leftover odds and ends in the fridge. In the fall and winter, when my landlord decides that the NYC law requiring heat under 55 degrees is purely subjective and there’s nothing good on TV till 9pm, risotto is my go-to dish.
Tonight, I had a few inches of Eight Days ‘o Wheat left in a growler from Whole Foods and half a can of pumpkin puree, stock, rice, and a humongous sage bush growing out back. It’s oddly warm in Queens tonight, but it was risotto night none the less. Here’s how to take the taste of Amy into your own kitchen:
2 medium shallots, diced
1 cup risotto rice
several bunches of sage
two cans College Inn stock (Kitchen Basics is better, but my f’in Key Foods never has it)
leftover beer
half a can of pumpkin puree (like, half or 3/4 cup?)
fresh sage
nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice to taste
grated Parm, or a blog of Parm and a microplane (better)
BUTTAH
In a sautee pan, sautee shallots in butter until translucent. Add a handful or two of julienned sage. There is nothing in the world like sage and butter, nothing. Once the butter gets a little bubbly with the sage, dump in pumpkin and a cup of stock. Stir for a few minutes to get warmed up, then turn off heat. If you leave the heat on, the pumpkin is so think it will trap the steam bubbles, and then BLOW UP.
In a wok or dutch oven, heat up a little butter (or oil) and then toast the rice for a few minutes, then start adding stock. Here’s the major lesson I’ve learned about risotto- keep the heat consistent! My mistake is always to turn up, turn down, whatever. Keep the liquid at the strong simmer, and just never add too much liquid that it cools down the pan. If you want to get another pot going and keep the stock at a constant simmer, go ahead, but my method is to put the cans on top of the stove so they warm up a little. Just take the paper labels off so you don’t catch anything on fire.
Add, stir, add, stir, add, stir. Taste, and then start adding the beer. If I did this again, I’d use a solid stout, Guiness is my old stand by for cooking. I had a light but flavorful beer on hand, and it did an ok job. Keep going until the rice is cooked through and plump but not squshy. Turn off the heat, dump in your pumpkin mixture, and as much damn cheese as you want. Finish with spices to taste, stir one more time, and serve.
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Well…yeah! It’s been a bizarre week in Amyland, with the major themes being Art and Death. I’m going to try to keep going with the Art as much as I can.
I saw these on CuteOverload.com this afternoon and immediately thought of my best friend, Meredith. Mer and her roommate Leslie, as a junior and senior in college, decided they had to go to the KB Toys in Yonkers and risk their lives for My Little Ponies. I get nostalgia but…I dunno. The call for MLP was probably related to why she’s currently at the University of Bowling Green getting a degree in Popular Culture, and she and I can still tag-team a 4 minute version of Rocky Horror.
I have a difficult relationship with fan art, generally. While I can (and will!) offer a paean to the art of the cover song, and I believe that adaptation is an important component of cultural discourse, there’s something about the minor reinterpretations of huge pop culture figures that almost always appears more like worship than interaction. While it’s still not original art, mashups can make something entirely new out of crap we’ve seen before.
And mean… this is awesome, but WTF?!
There was a lot of yap among my friends today about this article, on ways to look for a job in tough times. The debate was largely along the lines of, “Interesting, this is stuff I didn’t know before,” and “this is totally pointless because all it says is that internet job searches don’t work. How the fuck are you supposed to go out and meet people?”
There are a zillion ways to meet people. Check out MeetUp. Get on Facebook and LinkedIn and join every freaking group that’s even marginally related to your personal and interests. Go to every show, party, opening, release, cocktail hour, and discussion group you ever get invited to, ever. There are people looking for help. Even if the guy you talk to for 20 minutes doesn’t have a job opening that screams perfection for you, hook that guy up with one of your friends or colleagues who can help him out. Unless the connection is a smoldering failure, you’ve just established a relationship with someone who will probably come back to you the next time he needs something, and the friend you hooked up is now on the lookout for someone who needs you. Go out, meet, connect, repeat. I sometimes think this is all my friend Jeff does, which explains why he’s so successful.
But really, the fact that a lot of people ask this question indicates there’s a lot of ingenuity involved in going out and meeting the right people, which is why the people who know how to get themselves in front of other people are more likely to succeed for a few reasons. It’s the difference in a person’s perspective, between “I just learned something I might use later” and “No one’s telling me how, so I can’t.” I work for a non-profit that helps women entrepreneurs build their businesses, and if there is one single lesson I’ve learned, it’s that no one can actually tell you how to do anything. And I will tell you, even though we want to be the best resource for women who want to know how to be successful, and the people I know and work with have seen it happen and made it happen, they can’t tell you how to do it. Every success we see is a woman who asked a lot of questions of lots of people, went balls (boobs?) to the wall with executing her own plan, and then made a lot of shit up on the fly.
There is, if you’ll forgive me, the audacity of success. From everything I’ve seen in my short little life, my conclusion for the moment is that success does not belong to those who know how to do something. It’s for those who are in the constant, aggressive pursuit of figuring it out and are extremely brave in the actions they take. I heard from a woman a few weeks ago who flew hours to go to the office of a distributor who wouldn’t return her calls, and when she got there she found herself in front of a locked glass security door, with no appointment, and a receptionist on the other side. So what did she do? She tapped on the glass, and when the receptionist looked over, she did little potty dance and mouthed “I need to pee!” The receptionist let her in, and Amilya ambushed the distributor in front of the Men’s Room. She got the deal she wanted, and was on her way to building a company she later sold for $100 million. This woman is now my personal hero.
I had my own quarter life mini-crisis a little before hearing this story from Amilya. I love my job, but I was freaking out that if I wasn’t able to somehow cram all of my personal and professional aspirations into what I did at work, I would never fulfill my destiny. (Do not ask me what I thought this was, I just knew I wasn’t going to make it.) I was overwhelmed with very narrow visions of my future and pissed at everyone for not supporting my development as a unique little butterfly out to conquer the world. In the following weeks I worked one of my company’s events full of entrepreneurs, and I talked to a lot of interesting people at some kick ass parties. I got a kick to the head about making it happen myself. I took out my camera last weekend, created a Flickr account, and finally built myself a blog that I’ve committed to developing because I want to turn my personal pursuits into something real. There are millions of people who have done it before, and none of them can tell me what choices to make. But that doesn’t mean I can’t figure out how to make it work.
The thing is, there isn’t a book that will tell you how to get a job, have an emotionally mature relationship, or arrange your living room furniture correctly. There are MILLIONS. And its the same with people, everyone’s got their own story and advice. Instead of being terrified or resentful that there is no difinitive guide, this is an excellent thing. The absence of a guide book means that no one can tell you no, and no one has to grant you permission for anything. I believe that being able to handle that, or really love it, is the key.
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First, I have to point out that it’s very hard to write at the moment because the people across the street have a motion-activated cackling witch. There is comic irony in how motion sensors are probably primarily used in home security systems, and this one will be the most likely cause of considerable property damage. By me.
Earlier, I was thinking out loud about Joss Weidon’s Dr. Horrible. It continues to tickle all of my marketing ticklie bits because, well, they’re selling something that’s free. Can a product be so good that you can sell it to people who can get it for nothing with equal ease and quality? Apparently!
Today, Radiohead released its numbers for its “pay what you want” experiment, In Rainbows. With many caveats- they’re a huge band, Radiohead’s listeners are likely more conscious of the debate around recording labels, buying the album was a way to take part in the experiment, etc. – it worked. They made more on the album during it’s online-only period (where one could download it for free OR one could pay), than they have earned to date for all sales their previous album, Hail to the Thief. And there were more BitTorrent downloads than purchases. The business model is facinating, but I’m not yet an expert on business models. It’s just a rare, remarkable thing that someone created a product that was so good, people actually wanted it.
While I ponder upon this a little more, you can read all the details on Mashable.