Ha! we would have gotten away with it, except for those meddling kids!

Damn you April, and your lack of 31 days!

(April in all its not 31 day glory)

We really do have like literally a bajillion posts started and not completed, but dammit if I was going to let April get away without a post.

so here it is.

Did you know that they have changed the definition of "literally"? and when I say they, I mean THEM.

"to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling"

f-ers. I literally hate them.

I'm not bitter

If left to her own devices
The Fairy Queen would live
In an apartment of books and spices
(With a kind and patient landlord down the hall).

It's been written here before: the FQ is not a fixer, really. (Phrodaux: not entirely true, FQ on an early date showed potential mate her pipe wrench and told the tale of the evil P-trap, she has done plumbing, but as all wise and knowing people do, deny the fact when others are willing to deal with that oh so evil task, f-plumbing) Though she did put the coffee press back together recently, and was very pleased with herself. And Phrodaux is not just a fixer, he's a maker. In fact, in PPL (Pre-Phrodaux Life), it would never have occurred to the FQ that regular people who live in regular houses and have actual jobs would make a whole number of things. Such as, you ask? Well...

* Furniture

*  Giant rebar flowers

* Gates

* Prosthetic finger tips

And it certainly would not have occurred to her to make bitters from scratch, because really, who would do that? And what are they, anyway? It's just a little bottle that gets lost in the door compartment of the fridge, right? And they're all the same anyway so what is the big old deal?

Wrong and wrong and wrong again. I officially apologize to Camera Guy S, who once asked if we had Peychaud's bitters for the drink he was going to make and I said, "We have some kind of bitters, how can it possibly matter?"

Apparently there is a whole world of bitters, maybe a universe or at least a galaxy or two.  Now that we have taken one tiny step in that direction, it seems that we are hooked. This is a journey, pumpkin heads, so get a drink (maybe a cocktail...which must have BITTERS) and relax.

It all started with the Professors, who gifted us with this at Christmas:

So of course we had to make them. Turns out, there are a lot of ingredients. Seriously. And not stuff you just have sitting around, either. I mean, we had the coriander seeds and peppercorns and cardamom pods. But cassia? QUASSIA??? (yes, those are two different things) So, picture a cold but sunny Saturday in January. We are on a mission: bitters ingredients. First stop is the nice spice store. There we knock off 2/3 of the list. No luck with the gentian root, though. The nice spice lady assured us we could find it at a spot just down the street.

We headed off with our fragrant purchases, looking for the next store. No, not a store, a house. An old, creepy house with nasty aging hippie patchouli stink wafting out of it. So much worse inside: crystals and dream catchers and posters for drum circles and covens and all manner of stupid quasi pagan sh#t (Phrodaux here: don't forget the magic knives). The FQ knows, she ran with those people for a time. Camped with them, actually, out in the rainy woods, where there was nothing to eat except oatmeal for breakfast and millet all other times except at the erotic feast where there were strawberries and chocolate but you had to have someone feed them to you and they were too stoned and I was starving and cold and really, really hungry. But that is another story.

ANYWAY. Dippy black velvet-clad girl on a sagging fainting couch sees us and says, "Did you need me?" To which FQ gets to reply, sternly, "No, we need gentian root." Which you buy in a tiny ziploc for something like $1.25.

But we still need quassia and dried black walnut leaf. Phrodaux finds, while we Portland-out at the food cart/wine store combo, another herb store. We go with much trepidation: please, no more patchouli, no runes, no divination. We are happily surprised, though. This place is bright and clean and not stinky. My only complaint is that the black walnut leaf is filed under B for black, not W for walnut, black. Quassia, by the way, is tree bark. (Phrodaux: not even tree bark, but just ground up wood, granted, really really bitter wood chips, yes I tasted them, why do you ask?)

Good gravy, this is a long post. Are you even reading anymore? Let's fast forward to bitters assembly:

What is all that stuff? Oh, I forget. High proof vodka for one recipe, high proof rye for the other. Piles of dry citrus rind Phrodaux had been hoarding for weeks. That tree bark thing. It's a lot of stuff. But once you have all the stuff, it's easy - you pour it all into a jar, leave it on the counter, and shake it once/day for two weeks. Voila! All ready to take to your lovely friends on your annual beach weekend exactly 2 weeks from now! Right?

Hmm. This, lovelies, is when we remind you to read the entire recipe first.

While we were enjoying beach weekend, the bitters were in phase 2.

There was straining through coffee filters and adding of uber-syrup+water, and more sitting around, and eventually more straining. Altogether, this is a 4+week process (keep that in mind). But look! Look what we did!

OK, granted, it doesn't look like much, given the hunting and gathering and pagan-suffering and shaking and straining. But, oh, bunnies, if only we could convey the scent of this stuff. The orange bitters smells like every kind of citrus, back when you could only get oranges in winter and MAYBE one kind of super seedy tangerine and when the FQ's dad brought home a box of Texas ruby red grapefruits from a kind trucker customer, there was much rejoicing.

And the aromatic bitters, which is something like (but of course much better than) the Angostora bitters we saw for $15.95 per tiny bottle, smells like every lovely thing. Like Christmas, and a kindly great grandma's spice cupboard, and nice things baking in the coffee shop/bookstore you always meant to open.

Seriously, this stuff is EVOCATIVE. They are bitters, but the process of making them has been pretty sweet. (Sorry, didn't that joke have to be made?) At any rate, we are now stocked up with two kinds of bitters, but plotting the next batch. Rhubarb, maybe, or wild carrot. Who knows? Our cocktails and our spice cabinet will never be the same. (Phrodaux: they have been giving us blood oranges at work lately, that he has been squirreling away, like a squirrel does with nuts, but with blood oranges. Kinda feel like a vampire without the scurvy.)

I heart rebar...

Rebar.

Most don't give it a second thought. That mysterious material that keeps your porch from falling apart, or the nice stuff that keeps you from a watery death when driving over bridges that are much too old to support your stupid SUV that never is either S or U.

I, your not so humble but always purveyor of truth and wisdom (and apparently from a wordcloud analysis, opinions about pizza) have warm and fuzzy feelings about said rebar.

(I like that "Hitler" and "Airlines" are the same size, but kinda sad that "ricotta" is also.)

rebar is pretty cheap, easy to find either from a local big box store (but not Lowes, we don't like them, but that is another story) or from your really nice and lovely neighbor who occasionally leaves a pile of scrap rebar in front of your shop (we LOVE our farm neighbors) when the bridge/dam/evil volcano lair project his company was working on has extra.

Rebar.

easy to find, pretty cheap, not always containing near lethal amounts of Co-60 waste, but I digress. (funny story, I just happened to have later worked at said the "wrong turn" where they found it, coincidence?)

(science)

Despite the incidence of likely permanent sterility (we like sleeping in and not lactating, so not a real deterrent) I still feel jittery when we don't have at least a few hundred feet of rebar nearby for random projects.

{FQ Sidebar: I feel the same way about flour. And coffee. Not hundreds of feet, but an adequate supply. Otherwise, I'm twitchy.}

Rebar (not radioactive flour and coffee) that's what this post is "about", or kinda.

It is not the best for many things, like making knives... or bread, as it is a) whatever scrap happens to be lying about when "those that do" get the hankerin' for makin' rebar (see above link to Co-60) or b) not food.

What it is good for is me making stuff out of it, see reasons above (not the Co-60 paragraph, the one before it, sheesh).

(cicada wing. Cicadas are bugs that come out every few years to make grown men yell "SHUT THE F@<K UP!!!!" out the window at 3am. I think it has something to do with mating, the bugs, not the insane men)

I also like the fact that unlike when I used to bend neon tubes (that was a long time ago in a place far, far away) I can hit it with a big hammer and it falls under the overall general category of "constructive" vs. "quit braking sh!t" see previous post.

(yep, same maul - fancy word for hammer. We be gettin' technical, yo)

When asked about if I make stuff, I like to say "artificial flowers, and stuff", what I usually leave out (so they don't look at me like I yell at bugs at 3am while not mating) is 7ft tall daffodils out of rusty scrap construction material that may or may not make you sterile, but that still is not really an issue considering my almost Dr. Doolittle like rapport with the insect kingdom.

 (this would be tigridia, FQ's favorite flower, I may have yelled at it at one point)

{FQ Sidebar: Not rebar. Tattoo. FQ is so badass, she got a tattoo before Phrodaux.}

(rebar daffodils in their natural environment. About 7ft tall, actually a bit taller as the parking structure said that 7ft was the height limit, and there may have been an "incident")

So in summation.

a) Rebar (mostly) good.
2) Yelling at things-rarely effective.

and most important. we like pizza, but not Hitler.

is that a pepperoni in the sheets or are you just happy to see me?

The history of pizza...

...from the late '90's to bottom 15% completed part of the 21st century in the general geographic location of my 2 to 4 kitchens of that time frame (there may have been dark periods where I didn't make pizza, but we don't speak of those times/kitchens).

This is a tale of woe, elation, tears, laughter, fire, scars, pirates, gun play, and flour (except the pirates and gun play part, those were added to make me feel more exciting... and taller)

I am among the group of people who like pizza, shocking I know. But I'm willing to go to meetings and admit that fact. Speaking of facts, it is common knowledge that everyone, everywhere likes pizza, except Hitler. He didn't like pizza*, but he did have more glaring faults, so we forgive you if you didn't know that.

We are all about the educationalizing here at the blog-o-phrodauxandthefairyqueen.


Pizza. Like pizza, like making pizza, like eating pizza, don't really like pizza shirts or bedding.

(this was available on Amazon for a while, but for some reason it is no longer available... for...some... reason...)

so...

Phrodaux makes pizza. Yes, there were long (very long) periods of Boboli, don't judge. It was a great short cut. Yes, unnecessary, but that was then.

Then (now, or most recently now) home made crust, FQ makes it, Phrodaux tries to keep it frozen despite turning off the freezer whenever we leave the farm (another story). Home roasted tomatoes for sauce. Some home grown, some purchased either from the nice old couple who grow ~200 plants on the small suburban lot and sell them on the porch for $1 a pound except for the 3 1/2 lb one that was too ugly to sell so they just gave it to us or from the oh-so-cute-they-must-be-grown-in-lab teen boys and girls at the farm stand on the way to the farm. (Roasted tomatoes must also be able to stand freezer being turned off whenever we leave the farm, but that is another story, I keep telling you that, pay attention.)

(nope.)

We are on the more simple track. At one point it was sauce that had peanut butter, tomato sauce, an egg, all the usual spices, walnuts, anchovy paste, garlic, basil....

so, Boboli, the sauce, then toppings. Those would be along other things and permutations and combinations of broccoli, potatoes, olives, occasionally whatever leftovers seemed to make sense (salmon hash was particularly good), dried tomatoes (fresh were too wet). Then cheese, mostly just mozzarella, but once in a while whether because of not having enough mozzarella or just 'cause, cheddar and/or some hard cheese like pecorino. Then fresh mushrooms, drizzle with olive oil and fresh ground pepper.

 (really? really? this may be the closest she has come to "food" in days)

cooked 20mins at 400f (convection).

But now I'm working on more simple. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but simple is also pretty good, and nice to work on "perfecting". Also... PIZZA PEEL! The fabulous gift that just showed up on our doorstep one day from the even more fabulous TFtNWKToFaDahYTLUKTCNs (they really need a better code name), changed my fricken life! I loaf mys pizza peel! There is this whole cloth conveyor belt thingy so you don't have to scootch the pizza off onto the stone, and scootch cheese and toppings off the pizza onto the back/bottom of the hot oven. BRILLIANT! If the Nobel committee ever adds at category (it won't be math, as there is some story about Nobel's wife leaving him for a mathematician, but I was told this by a mathematician, and they have imaginary numbers and everything, so take it with a grain of "i") it should be for pizza and whomever made the conveyor belt pizza peel should win a MILLION DOLLARS! or at least an island with a secret evil lair in a false volcano. Just sayin'.

(we may have peaked as a species shortly 

before the invention of "pizza socks")

Now it is mostly home made crust, fairly simple sauce (overnite roasted tomatoes, usual spices, some anchovy paste for umami, cheese and usually some olives on top of the cheese). Drizzle of olive oil and some fresh ground pepper into an oven at least 500f that has been preheating for ~1hr (it does make a difference, we tried less, half an hour is not as good, really) and a pizza stone. Usually 6-10mins is all it takes. End up with nice crispy, chewy crust.

(ok, now I am just confused, Seems like she should be on 

some serious antibiotics at this point, I agree with FQ, not really sure 

where we are 'spose to look.)

{FQ sidebar: ACK I CAN'T STAND THOSE TIGHTS...I holler that every time I get to this part of the post.}

Then we have food. Dinner on Sundays. Pizza and some fabulous salad that FQ whips up at the last minute, after coming into the kitchen saying "am I too late? we need salad!!!"

Someday there will be pictures and maybe more recipe type guidance to the pizza DA-jour, but today there is just odd tights that we don't really approve of.








*-Hitler may have actually enjoyed pizza, but I like to think that he didn't, so you shut up now.

This is why you should never leave home

Travel. Pffft. Whatever. Expensive, annoying, and overrated. Stay home and live your life already.

As mentioned in the last post, Phrodaux and I recently returned from our annual pilgrimage to the sun.Vitamin D therapy aside, maybe we just should have stayed home. Why? We are so glad you asked.

* Travel is no fun. First, we're up BEFORE 4 AM to get to the airport on time, after a night of checking the clock to make sure we didn't oversleep (as in, we really didn't sleep at all). The departing plane leaves late, after many less than helpful updates from the captain ("Well, folks, the second engine just won't turn over." "OK folks, looks like they found a kink in the line..." and so on). Arriving late for a tight connection leads to one of the Fairy Queen's least favorite activities in the world, sprinting through a terminal to be one of the last five people on the only plane that goes to Zihuatanejo every day, arriving at her seat out of breath and anxious, to be greeted by the stink eye of the entitled breeder army who thought they could take over her precious aisle seat for the toddler they did not bother to buy a ticket for.

* And while we're ranting: Alaska Airlines, you knew that connection was too tight. You did. And yet you set it up that way anyhow. Because you, less than lovely Alaska Airlines scheduling people, were not going to be the ones with no worldly goods for the first 48 hours of your vacation. Because of course the suitcase did not make the plane we ran for. Suffice it to say that one t-shirt is not enough in a hot climate. But also that Queen Tina of Casa Kitty will always find you a toothbrush and a bottle of shampoo.

* Even when travel IS lovely (see previous post), you're not HOME. And Phrodaux and I are poster children for homebodiness (look at me, I invented a word). Quoting Phrodaux: We bought property so we could avoid getting on airplanes.  Honestly, if we could be here, why do we go away???

The problem is, the farm does not look like this right now. It looks gray and damp and in some places a little floody (another story). In the middle of winter, the FQ wants to feel like this:

But that doesn't happen at the farm until August. Or maybe even Labor Day. That drinking straight from the bottle of Cava might have been induced by the thought of going back to work. Though she loves her job. Honest. But this might be a digression.

ANYWAY

* At home you can MAKE things. Or at least, we do. All the time these days. This week started with pizza,

Vietnamese rice salad and pan bagnat, included a mid-week stop for homemade ricotta and granola (two separate dishes, promise), and culminated with a big dumpling adventure, courtesy of our friend the cutest chef ever, Jenn Louis. If you live in PDX, go to Lincoln already. Or at the very least, go eat a friend chicken sandwich at Sunshine Tavern. I know it's bad for you. Eat it once a year and you'll be fine. Somewhere in the ether of the tubes is a picture of our fancy ricotta and kale dumplings. But the name is pretty too:

And speaking of making things, you all made stuff for xmas presents, right? I mean, honestly, do any of us need any more stuff? We do not. You have 11 months. Get cracking. Here's what we did this year. Steal if you need to:

Pear ginger preserves. There was also raspberry jam, sour cherry jam, pickled cauliflower, pickled beets, pickled apples & onions, pickled cherries, pickled asparagus, 5 gallons of dill pickles (!!! That was Phrodaux!!!), ketchup, hot sauce, hmm, something else...I forget.

Chile powder, ground from the chiles we grew and dried. Test tube stands made by Phrodaux. Tear gas incident during chile grinding survived by all.

  * On travel vacations (as opposed to hunker down at home vacations), there are NO DOGS. Or, rather, there are tons of dogs - random beach dogs and I-checked-my- papers-at-immigration traveling dogs and street dogs who stretch across the road and play chicken (and win!) with the cars and trucks and taxis. But none of these are OUR dogs. They go to grandma camp when we travel, where they play with Westie cousins and get baths and trims. It is hard for us to be without them. They would love our Mexico beach vacation, but it would be a terrible idea to take them there. Mo in particular would bark at every dog, cat, person, lizard, bird and possibly wave. We would never actually relax.

Bird? Wave? LIZARD?

Nubie in MOTION!

It's really good to be home with them.

Home. That's the point, really. We like to go away, for a little while. Then we get itchy - after about 2 days - and we want to be home. Now we are. All is well.

This is why you should travel

Phrodaux and I are just back from our annual winter Vitamin D therapy trip, a week of sun, ocean swimming, fish tacos, and tequila. It's going on 10 years now that we've headed across the border (way across) for a rejuvenating week. We highly recommend it, for a number of reasons:

* Relaxation: If you stay home, you'll do stuff. Really. You'll say that you are just going to take it easy and relax and before you know it, all contents of the linen closet are on the floor and you are organizing. Or something breaks and there is no concierge to call. And the phone rings and the cupboard is bare and you have to do stuff. That is not relaxing.

 

Don't forget to wash your feet!

Instead, imagine this blissful routine:

1. Roll out of bed and go get coffee, barefoot. On the way, admire the tropical garden (and many cats - but that's a different story).
   
2. Enjoy coffee in hammock while listening to waves.
3. Eventually eat a little breakfast in a palapa-roofed dining room without walls.
4. Head to the beach chair you've staked out. Read, nap, watch waves.
5. When you have the energy for it, walk on the beach, swim in the warm ocean, and poke around the tidepools.
6. Return to beach chair. Rest up after all that exertion.
7. At some point, rinse the sand off and go have lunch. Aguachile and a margarita. Or shrimp tacos and a bottle of Victoria, lime and salt on the side.
8. Nap.
9. Repeat steps 4, 5, 6, rinse again, meet your sweetie for sunset margaritas.
10. Have dinner in a restaurant without walls but very possibly with children, dogs, lizards, and hammocks. Oh, and amazing food (chile rellenos, chicken mole, coconut shrimp, you get the picture).
    
11. As you stagger home, consider stopping for gelato. FQ always orders lemon, Phrodaux knows better and gets coconut. FQ samples his and says, "Oh, that's better." Every time.
12. Sprawl out on the bed, watch some old TV show, fall asleep full and calm and warm and peaceful.

That, my friends, is why you travel. You will never do so little at home.

 But wait, there's more!

* Wildlife encounters: This trip alone, we saw whales and dolphins swimming by, a big iguana in the iguana tree and little ones munching on leaves next to our lunch table, a baby crocodile, a puffer fish, all sizes & shapes of crabs, urchins and anemones, pelicans, butterflies, an assortment of beach dogs, and an army of cats.

Some years the wildlife is even more exotic: an armadillo in our garden!

Baby turtles are hatching! Good thing there are a lot of them...what with the gulls, the dogs, the waves, and the clueless people, it's hard to get on out to the ocean blue if you're a baby tortuga!

* We never thought we'd say this (being misanthropists and all), but vacation friends are a factor. Here's to you, crazy multi-time zone girls and house of Canadians. In hideous Eugene, OR for a garden thing we met one half of the NYC Fab Twins, our beloved MV. A couple of years later in upstate NY for Fab Twin MV's major birthday shindig, we met our LA pals, the mogul & his mate (pseudonym someday), folks who have become major parts of our lives. Weird but true.

So, tiny little sweet peas, the moral of this story is: Leave home once in a while. Pick a nice place. Go there and chill. Get some color in your cheeks (everyone will remark on it when you get back to normal life). Enjoy more than 7 hours of daylight at the turning of the year. Take a nap. Walk right out into the ocean. Eat one more taco than you think you should because the restaurant owner's abuela made those tortillas right there, over the fire.  Send us a postcard.

December, not October.

Damn the Gregorian calendar.

October is the tenth month of the year, octopus (octopi, octopuses, Octopussy starring Roger Moore, my second least favorite Bond, but Octopussy...nope, not that digression, not that sorta blog, see the entire rest of the intertubes) have 8 legs, squids have 10 (well, really 8 arms and 2 more tentacles , but not that sorta a quibbly blog) but the month is not Squidtober (that would be soooo cool) it is October. December (which really should have been called Squidtober, Xmas decorations would have a much cooler bent), not the 10th month, the twelfth.

(none of the other squid would let him play there squiddly games, ba-rump-pa-pu-pum)

so... (yep, did it). There once was a calendar, let's call it Romulus (or Roman, but I like trek better than wars...and really a Remus calendar?... I'll never make that internet search mistake again...), there were 10 pictures of cute cats, 10 pictures of sloths getting baths, maybe one or two with pretty much nekid girls using their oh-so-augmented secondary sex traits to make men who fix things buy tires and tools (I've been to many places that sell tires and tools and have seen nary a thong, THANK ALL THE POWERS THAT BE THAT I HAVE NOT SEEN NARY A THONG AT/ON THOSE, ew). Did I digress? thoughts of thongs and Bond girls...hmm Moneypenny...) Romulus. Romulus pretty much started in March. March the time when a young man's thoughts turn to green chicks selling monster truck tires and spud wrenches.

(...or no.)

...so basically, f-you January and February (except the one day that Fairy Queen was birthded, feel free to send prezzies now, there is time).

(yah, I know, we both thought it was June and July, but that is another post, stay tuned for another exciting adventure of "Calendar wars: Julian vs. Gregorian, a rumble in the early modern ages until 1929!" ok, not that catchy, but think of it coming from a wrestling AAAaaa-NOUnnnn-CERRrrrr surrounded by scantily clad car mechanics holding up signs with "Ianuarius" and "Sextilis" among others...

(now we are a talkin'...)

Has this happened to you? part deux...and duck genitalia.

 apparently this is a "thing" {FQ: It is! See Sledgehammer & Waffles}

We do something, then we thinks, does this happen to us this often and not happen to others?

(usually the sane answer is "yes, just you and the voices in your head")


FQ: We're not nitwits, honest. We start down a path and it seems like a good idea and it turns out to be a good idea but somewhere in the middle we think: WTF??? We are tear gassing ourselves here.

Exhibit A: Homegrown Horseradish Sauce (picture Phrodaux in snorkeling mask & goggles, FQ hiding upstairs) (Phrodaux: I was watching "Star wars: ep 1 the racist diaries" at the same time, so not all the fault of horseradish)

Exhibit B: 2 pounds of chilies (grown on the farm), frizzled in the food dryer, then ground into magic powder AT THE SAME TIME and IN THE SAME KITCHEN AS the FQ cooking dinner. Dogs hiding, humans crying and sneezing and gasping for air.

... but on the plus side ENDORPHINS!!! Did you know the same chemicals that are responsible for "runner's high" you can get from hot chilies? Capsaicin is an amazing thing. It is an irritant to mammals (or yummy depending on who you are) but birds don't get the whole pain receptor misfire thing. One might think "weird" but one would be wrong (stupid and foolish one, all the other numbers, real, imaginary [i] and even the irrational numbers are laughing at you). Birds eat chilies, then poop out the seeds.

while on the other hand artificial grape flavor is used as a bird repellent, as it has much the same effect on fowl as chili does on us...

beware my purple Popsicle...

...speaking of which... duck penises (penii?) twist counterclockwise and can be as long as the duck's body vs. duck vaginas (vagii?) that twist clockwise and have multiple dead ends for misdirection... go look it up, it's true, and there is more (beware that particular rabbit hole of exploration, which can twist both counterclockwise or clockwise much like the topic)  weirder than the artifical grape thing. Birds are f-ing weird.

 (trust me this is the picture that should be here... there are worse)

...and as a grammatical side note (as you know your oh so humble Phrodaux is all about the grammaticaling) the plural of "chili" can be "chilis", "chiles", "chillies" or "chilies". Now you know, and knowing is half to five eighths of the battle, yo.