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Go to first message Go back 20 messages Messages 2595 - 2614 out of 5155 Go forward 20 messages Go to most recent message
2595. marjoribanks - 1/28/2005 6:44:38 AM

You have to serve that with mozarella sticks, the cheapest frozen kind, heated up in the microwave.

2596. marjoribanks - 1/28/2005 6:45:13 AM

Followed by a side-serving of TUMS.

--

Good luck.

2597. resonance - 1/28/2005 6:47:15 AM

Isis... is my co-pilot.

2598. Ronski - 1/28/2005 1:31:40 PM

Increase the oregano.

2599. alistairconnor - 1/28/2005 2:16:56 PM

What Woden Wants.

Suggestions for plot elements, and casting for the film version?

2600. thoughtful - 1/28/2005 3:30:06 PM

I'd skip the bay and add back the basil and onion.

I've co. coming for dinner on monday night after work, so I'm planning on cooking up some baked cod which i do with shallots and garlic and bread crumbs and thyme and white wine and butter and fresh parsley and a squeeze of lemon at the end. Then I think I'll do a side of curried rice...stir in curry powder of course and sauted onions. Maybe green breans with thyme butter to tie in the flavor from the fish. Simple dessert of ice cream and berries with some fancy cookies. Cheese and crackers and grapes before hand, coffee after. Should be able to get it done in short order. Always the issue on a week night...want it to be nice but have little time to get the job done.

2601. resonance - 1/28/2005 3:53:07 PM

I'm not sure it could be done justice in any medium, to be honest. Have you ever heard the expression 'force of nature'? That is Woden when she wants something. It can't be conveyed properly.

There are a few rules that I can give you, though. These are the ones I've figured out.


1) When she gets to the stage of wanting something there's no dissuading her.

1a) Attempts at dissuading her will just make her cranky.
1b) If she absolutely can't have it, she is quite sensible and moves on straightaway. If, OTOH, there is merely some surmountable obstacle in the way, it will be bulldozed and tarmaced, or if possible completely ignored.

1b1)Surmountable obstacles include; snowstorms, boyfriends, bosses, laws, doctor's advice, common sense, top shelves.

1b2) Insurmountable obstacles include; spiders, taking out the trash, turning on the receiver, Hwoarang

2) Telling her she can't have something she wants simply convinces her more strongly that she should have it

2a) The aforementioned act of telling her 'no' will cause her to question how smart you are and will cast aspersions and doubts on your judgment in other areas.

2b) If this act is attempted when Woden wants chocolate, ice cream, or candy, there will be fighting.

3) Although Woden knows almost nothing about cooking, she will want you to include certain ingredients and exclude others when you cook things for her.

3a) She will inspect the kitchen occasionally to see if you are complying

3b) Lying is ok as she can't tell, but you need to be good at it.

4) Woden wants order. There will be order.

4a) Order extends to occasionally seizing any pieces of paper which don't look like they belong where they are, and throwing them away.

4b) Order sometimes also extends to taking all men's socks in the house and hiding them.

5) The sight of a sleeping male fills Woden with an uncontrollable urge to wake them up. Once they are awake she will not have any specific goal in mind for them to perform, beyond 'stuff'.

5a) Woden doesn't want you to bother her about this practice.

5b) Sometimes, right after that, Woden wants to sleep.

6) Although want is a complex thing, Woden can convey various complexities about what she wants via simple modulations of her yowling.

6a) Sometimes she does a much better job of conveying these precise qualities than the stupid men in her life do in deciphering her straightforward and completely-out-in-the-open yowl modulation.

6b) Woden doesn't want you to bother her with queries about this either.

7) Tonight, I believe, Woden wants the following: roasted chicken in sauce, couscous, cheese and crackers, soda with ice, snuggling.

7a) Woden usually wants snuggling

7a1) This often occurs when the stupid men in her life are trying to do some other stupid thing
7a2) I'm going to hear it about the 'knows nothing about cooking' line and the next time I make tomato sauce she will insist I use several cans of tomato paste.
7a3) Woden doesn't want Chinese food, Marj bhai. Alas.

More will come to me later, I am sure.

2602. thoughtful - 1/28/2005 4:19:17 PM

very cute res...i can relate to too many of those things, though i reserve my waking the sleeping male to my cat!

Years of study of my in-laws led me to the following 3 rules of life they lived by:

1) if you don't say it, it won't happen
2) if you say it often enough, it becomes true
3) anything I don't know isn't worth knowing

2603. wonkers2 - 1/28/2005 10:24:32 PM

I could write a very funny play or short story about my relationship with my late mother-in-law.

2604. Jenerator - 1/28/2005 11:21:50 PM

I've never had spaghetti sauce with bacon!

2605. Wombat - 1/28/2005 11:26:03 PM

Amatriciana sauce has pancetta (Eyetalian bacon) in it. Res.: If she doesn't like your ongoing attempts at sauce, tell her to make the @#$$%%^ herself, and that you'll be delighted to eat it. Sheesh!

2606. Wombat - 1/28/2005 11:41:10 PM

Mrs. Wombat is 1/2 Italian, and I have lived in Italy. Dark secret: When we make pasta sauce, we use Barilla bottled sauces as a base. For a meat sauce, saute chopped beef in oil with some garlic, add wine, cook down, add Barilla Marinara and water, cook for an hour or so. Red clam or seafood sauce, heat marinara sauce, add frozen chopped clams a few minutes before serving.

I do a nice sausage and mushroom sauce by braising Italian sausages in a mix of Barilla garlic and mushroom sauce and roast garlic and onion sauce (both tomato-based).

2607. ronski - 1/29/2005 12:12:30 AM

I use a can of peeled plum tomatoes in puree, or if not in puree, add some tomato paste. And they have this nice sundried tomato paste in tubes now in any big grocery store or Italian deli, if you don't need a lot of paste.

2608. resonance - 1/29/2005 6:08:19 AM

Most canned tomato puree is either reconstituted paste or has paste in it. The little toothpaste tubes of paste are, IMO, the way to go -- you use exactly what you need, not a whole can.

2609. arkymalarky - 1/30/2005 7:07:16 PM

I've hardly cooked in over two years, but anticipate things getting back to "normal" by mid-April, which means I'll cook a handful of times in the next two years. But Bob and I bought a hickory-smoked ham on a huge sale (it had a lot of fat that had to be cut off, but it was still dirt cheap per pound) and I took the bone and made ham and bean soup with tomatoes--diced, canned, and pre-spiced that Bob used to eat straight from the can before he started watching his sugar. We had a couple of cans I'd bought by mistake. I made Jiffy cornbread to go with it and sent a bunch home with a thrilled Mose (Jiffy is her favorite, over homemade). Good and easy to make, for rainy wintry weather.

2610. PelleNilsson - 1/31/2005 9:02:10 PM

From the archives - Report No. 1

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the records of the Seamen's Society in Söderhamn had been digitized and made searchable. No Per Sundgren was registered, however, but there is a Lars Petter Sundgren from Ljusne listed as a captain 1840-1850. This may be our man because Per is the short form of Petter (and Pelle is the affectionate for Per). But the records did not provide details of date of birth which was a disappointment. There is no Sundgren listed as decased 1852-57. On the other hand I don't know what the regulations were at the time. At present it takes 10 years from the disappearance of a person until he or she can be declared dead. I'll extend that line of enquiry but at the time I switched my attention to John Malm.

The photo wonkers posted shows John c. 1930 with his son and grown-up grandson. This would put him at an age of about sixty as a minimum. His wife Johanna, daughter of Per Sundgren cannot have been born later than 1853. The normal marriage pattern, then (as now) is that the husband is a couple of years older than the wife. There are exceptions but these usually involve propertied widows. So John would normally have been at least 80 when the picture was taken. But is this man really 80 years old? I don't think so. An anomaly has presented itself.



So far then, mostly negatives but the quest continues, hopefully on Friday.

Other things I have learnt is that the US 1880 census is searchable through the Mormons, the records of the 1890 census were almost totally destroyed by fire, and the 1900 census and onwards have been appropriated by Ancestry.com which charges a ridiculous fee for access.

2611. wonkers2 - 1/31/2005 9:49:07 PM

I'll try to find some more precise information on the Malms and Sundgrens. This will give me an excuse to contact some distant cousins I've never met.

2612. PelleNilsson - 1/31/2005 10:22:44 PM

Excellent.

2613. Jenerator - 1/31/2005 10:49:10 PM

This will give me an excuse to contact some distant cousins I've never met.

Wonkers,

Did you ever see National Lampoon's European Vacation with Chevy Chase? If so, do you remember when the Griswalds stayed a night with their long lost Austrian cousins?

2614. wonkers2 - 2/1/2005 12:32:10 AM

No, but I'll watch for it. I can see how it would have possibilities.

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