Snowtorious slideshow

From this morning's photo safari:

Snowtorious BIG, the aftermath

Digging out but enjoying the view.

Snowpocalypse II, the Sequel

So far, it's definitely exceeding Snowpocalypse I in December. Pretty
sure we won't be getting mail or a paper this time ...

Encore le niege

Karate kid

Julia started tae kwon do on Sunday. Tomorrow's her second class.

It was kinda inevitable that she was going to start at some point. I mean, when you're part Korean and your parents are black belts, how can you not?

Even so, I thought about soccer or ballet or something but never got around to it. And then I came across this program through the PTA list and it was just too easy. No contracts, weekly classes in 9-week sessions, held on Sunday afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club in our neighborhood. Junior Dragon pre-beginner class for the 6-and-under set. Like, could you come up with anything more tailor made for us?

I was a little worried that she might not actually like it. As much as she likes pink and princesses, Julia's pretty good at mixing it up with the boys on the playground. But that doesn't necessarily translate into a contact sport.

There were 11 kids in her first class. Seven of them were repeat students, and she was one of 4 brand new students. Of those, one kid just sat in the corner of the mat and watched. Don't think he's coming back. That left Julia and two boys.

New boys: squirming, wiggling, talking, repeatedly asked to pay attention and sit up right. Julia: deadly serious, following every instruction, not one peep, got a couple of outstanding's from the teacher.

That's my girl!

She's already planning to get her black belt. I'm thinking we make it through the other 8 lessons and get the white belt first, shall we?

(That's my girl.)

Home made

Ken is the best husband ever. There are many reasons for this, but truth be told, part of what puts him at the top of the list is this: he does the grocery shopping and the vast majority of the cooking. (Can I get an "amen," ladies?)

The reason he does the grocery shopping has to do with several factors involving coupons, household budgeting and long-range economic forecasting that I can't even begin to describe here. He's one of those people who actually get out the store sale inserts from Wednesday's Food section and plans what to buy for the week. There's a proprietary shopping list that gets filled out, based on type of food and section of the store. No, seriously.

And he does most of the cooking because the secondary part of his food planning is menu planning, the result of which is Sunday evenings cooking up one or two feasts for the week's dinners, thus allowing us to dine happily on leftovers for many days to come.

Beyond convenience though, he has developed a love of cooking over the past several years. It started by accident. We were both haphazard meal-makers, forever cobbling something together at the last minute, forgetting to plan ahead.

Then he started reading the Sharpe's book series; listening to the books on tape, actually. Sharpe's Army, Sharpe's Rifles, etc. British soldier during the Napoleonic and 19th century colonial wars. Anyway, the credits in one of them, for some reason, gave credit to a '50s cookbook by a British author, Elizabeth David. (Who, as it turned out, was one of the pre-eminent cookbook authors of her time, if not still. The British Julia Child, if you will.) It was called South Wind Through the Kitchen, an anthology of her best French, Italian and Mediterranean recipes.

He found it at the library and began making dishes from it. He discovered that it wasn't that difficult. The food tasted really good. He was good at it. He liked it.

One cookbook begat another. He'd check them out from the library, try a few recipes, photocopy the ones he liked. Repeat. Eventually, he assembled them all into a recipe library, housed in the slots of one of those photo albums with pockets.

Then he really ramped it up with the purchase of some serious cooking appliances: first a Kitchenaid stand mixer (thank you eBay!), then a Breadmaster 2000 bread-maker.

Meanwhile, upon moving into our first house in 2002, I discovered a love of yardwork and gardening, mostly the flowering kind. We moved two years later, to this house with an even bigger yard and greater possibilities. I tried vegetables a couple of summers, with mixed success due to a lack of a planting location with proper soil and sun.

Then Ken chopped down the woefully misplaced tree in our side yard, dug out the stump, and built two raised beds in the now-sunny strip of land. He found planters that grow tomatoes like nobody's business. And last summer we had our own little farm: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, squash, peppers, beans.

Some of it we liked better than others. I made some mistakes, I learned some things. I gave a lot of tomatoes and squash away. I found recipes to use fresh vegetables: salsa and Turkish ezme salad for the tomatoes; fritatta of squash, fried squash, baked squash; and oh-so-delicious refrigerator pickles. And I canned 8 jars of dill pickles, in spears and slices.

We both learned that a lot of food is easier to make than it seems, it tastes much better, and it's way cheaper, too. We've eliminated a number of prepared foods from the shopping list over the past months: bread (we make ours in the bread-maker); whipped cream (buy whipping cream, put in stand mixer, turn on for 5 minutes); egg nog at Christmas time (the homemade kind is *so* much better); meatballs; pizza sauce.

And another? Tortillas. I made a dozen and a half yesterday (there they are in the photo above). From start to finish, it took about an hour. Cost? Pennies--whatever it costs for a couple of cups of flour, a third of a cup of shortening, plus a little salt and baking powder. And oh man, do freshly griddled tortillas taste good.

We're not the only ones who've re-discovered the pleasures of getting back to basics, of course. But we're glad to be part of the movement, or whatever it is.

Now if I could just figure out how to make my own Double Stuf Oreos ...

Atop Sugarloaf Mountain

Today's adventure: a hike.

I love this cheesy show

Hi, my name is Heidi, and I watch "American Idol."

Yes, yes, I know it's a slightly embarrassing admission for a 39-year-old professional, wife and mother. I mean, the 26 million who watch are all high school kids, right?

I don't care. As MJ of the Big Blog says, "I love this cheesy show."

Here's the thing: every part of the show is its own entertainment series.

Auditions, happening now, are like the behind-the-scenes glimpse of the casting of a musical, a la "A Chorus Line." It's a bunch of crazy kids with stars in their eyes, working their hardest to Make It Big.

Hollywood Week is part "Real World," part "Survivor," as the personalities meet and clash, and contestants have to work together to succeed in the group performances, even while they're competing against each other to make it through to the competition rounds for the Top 16.

And those weeks, even with their creaking theme nights (disco, anyone?) and baffling mentors (Neil Sedaka? Quentin Tarantino?) and drawn-out results shows, are what the show is really about.

Because at least once in every season, there is a magical moment when some kid from an audition of thousands months before turns into a star before your eyes.

Clay Aiken singing "Unchained Melody." Carrie Underwood singing "Alone." Fantasia Barrino singing "Summertime." Kris Allen covering Kanye West's (!) "Heartless."

Kris Allen - Heartless (American Idol 8) [HQ] @ Yahoo! Video

But I tell you what: when Simon leaves next year, I'm done.