i dream of grilled cheese

i have very fond memories of kicking my feet in my grandmother’s kitchen, happily eating round after round of pumpernickel-breaded, cheez-whiz-ed, jersey-tomato-garnished, squashed-thin-and-burned-to-a-crisp grilled cheese sandwiches. didn’t matter how gross the combination sounds. they were delicious and made with love.

i have only shared this with a few people, and i’m hesitant to share it now. i don’t want anyone to steal my idea. but perhaps one day, when i have some capital and some inspiration, i want to open a diner/luncheonette that is all about grilled cheese. now before you go scoffing “oh, what a limited and unimaginative idea for a restaurant,” hear me out…

there are so many things one can do with bread and cheese and a cast-iron skillet! the key is versatility to suit all tastes/notions!

challa bread! rye & pumpernickel! white bread (gross)! whole grain! focaccia!
muenster! swiss! cheddar! american (gross)! cheez whiz (i know it sounds gross, but it’s grandma’s style)! plus!–tomatoes, pickles, hummus (yes!), onions, bacon, “fake-on,” olives, greens! and then! if we’re going to have a G.C. we need soup (pref. tomato, but you can get creative here too) and salads, and spicy things! (i’m a ketchup fan) and we must have dessert-y things too like GOOD root beer floats and egg creams and chocolate malts.

this place would be open for lunch and then host radical community events in the evenings. maybe a small book store? now i just need a name…

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update: i discovered something truly amazing: the grilled cheese invitational held in california. these are my people! this picture is captioned “grilled cheese wins at life”
and it does. it fucking does.

p.s. i promise i will NEVER be as creepy about grilled cheese as this cold war era freak show advertisement.

unbelieveable!

i’ve been earning some extra money indexing files for this woman and i just came across her water bill…

in 93 days her modest house used 700 cubic feet of water with an average daily consumption of 7 cubic feet. total use in gallons in 93 days is 5,000 with an average usage of 56 gallons per day!!

guess how much the bill was for?

only $12.60!!

can you imagine going into a store and buying 56 gallons of water each day? (and then transporting it to your house, no less) you might be able to find a gallon of water for $2 so we’re talking about $112 a day to buy water from a store. that’s $10,416 in 93 days!

i know we both live near the chesapeake watershed area which is the largest (?) in the U.S. but i was just listening to Peter Singer on the radio today talk about his new book/campaign. here’s a quote from the website:

For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate world poverty and the suffering it brings. Yet around the world, a billion people struggle to live each day on less than many of us pay for bottled water. And though the number of deaths attributable to poverty worldwide has fallen dramatically in the past half-century, nearly ten million children still die unnecessarily each year.

Singer was explaining to Diane Rhem (LOVE her!) how a large part of what all these kids (age 5 and under) are suffering dying from is diarrhea from unsafe drinking water.

america’s water usage (and over-consumption in general) affects everyone in the world. people are dying because they can’t access the water we use to hose out our assholes or whatever. water is NOT FREE. it is NOT CHEAP! maybe if gas & electric bills were made lower (so, you know, people don’t freeze in the winter time) and we made water bills higher (FUCK LAWNS!) then some of these water-consumption issues would be drastically reduced and people would think twice about taking a half-an-hour shower or fixing a leaky toilet.

have you heard what’s going on in california? by the time winter rolls around you might be hard-pressed to find an out-of-season fruit or vegetable. (buy local and can your shit!)

my high school environment science teacher theorized that the next world war will be over water and food. i don’t doubt it.

you down with LBB*?

…yeah you know me!

9:45 pm thursday night i was called downstairs to “help!”

a bat was circling around our dining room! it landed on the breakfast table in the kitchen and emitted the angriest metallic buzzing sound when we poked a broom at it. the cat was totally disinterested when it dropped to the floor. eventually my dad chased it out of the house with a broom.

proof!

i realize this is kind of like a big foot photo cause all you can see of the bat is a little brown blur in the center foreground.

*little brown bat

first green!

came home earlier than usual and felt inspired to go climb a tree. trees are on my mind a lot lately and i can’t wait to see some buds. i got distracted by the dejected-looking compost bin and decided to turn it. we’ve been eating less fresh produce lately and sending it down the sink disposer instead. the compost was getting pretty moldy and gross before then. but it looks so much better now! at least i think so. it soon will be time to fertilize some spots in the yard that need encouraging and then start putting more compost in.

after forking some air into the compost (and letting some funky smells waft up) i noticed a litte–wait–no!–really? green! a full-formed if droopy little green plant with a white flower on the end. i pushed back the insulating leaves and checked around some more. sure enough a handful of little greens poking their ways up out of the ground. turning over more leaves i found a fat worm, some pillbugs and a couple blades of grass.

excitedly, i checked the other beds where i had planted bulbs before the ground froze over. one little blade poking up on the side of the garage. nothing yet by the side of the house.

so cute!

after that, my dad and i raised up the bird feeder so the deer can’t keep stealing the seeds. not 15 minutes later the usual pack of deer came bolting into our backyard. they stayed pretty far back.

then we searched some wildflower books to figure out just what was growing already. my dad’s initial thought was: “snowdrops!” (Galanthus) here’s a picture:

yep i think so too!

i like this official description:

There are 75 different species and varieties of snowdrops. They are all white. Isn’t that boring? This is probably why only two species are commonly cultivated.

another squirrel update; another mystery solved

so there’s a new birdfeeder in town. hanging from the japanese maple tree about 5 or 6 feet off the ground. at first squirrels were all over that thing, two or three at a time, hanging upside down and creating a big mess on the ground beneath it. just in the past few weeks we’ve seen a lot of birds partaking as well.

so i filled up the bird feeder with about 6-7 cups of feed about a week ago. a couple days later it was practically empty. strange! my dad filled it again last night and tonight…we caught our feed thieves [NOT BIRDS!] in the act.

after capturing these bold deer on camera i started toward them. they watched me but felt barely threatened. i chucked a fluffy snowball at them. they barely moved. i got closer and then ran after them in my slippers in the snow. they still clung to the edge of my backyard. i mean, i like deer but, shit…

my job tomorrow is to raise this feeder up higher.

on second thought–it is really freaking cool how one of the deer takes it upon themself (i know, i know, but i really didn’t want to gender the deer) to step up and nudge the seed mix out of the feeder. smart little buggers.

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sidebar: last week my dad and i saw a red-tailed hawk perched on our garage. big bird! we were watching out my bedroom window.  it swooped to the maple tree. it looked at the ground in between some bushes right behind our back door and then swooped down to the ground to tget at that spot. apparently, the cat had caught a mouse the day before and my dad flung it between the bushes.

sidebar #2: the roofers seemed to have fixed our squirrel problem by first installing molding around the underneath of the roof where it had previously been open to the wind and rodents. then they installed a squirrel-sized one-way door out from the attic to the roof. i haven’t heard any midnight scratches since then.