I cook?!
I have learned three things today:
1) I suck at basketball now.
2) The reception of a puncture wound really does feel more like a blunt impact than anything.
3) I can make yummy food
I had a really good day, overall. I drove the boys to their day camps and home for lunch and out again, had a chance to shoot hoops with Noah for a little while - I was decent at basketball once, but honestly don't remember the last time I played - and walked to the library and farmer's market before picking the boys up at the end of the day.
I was all ready to ride around 4 pm... but it was in the 90s (F), so I decided to just hop on bareback, do some bendy stuff, and work on not clenching my back (I have realized I do this, badly, and it is throwing my equitation all to hell). I cavorted from my car towards the barn, since the horses in sight were all in pasture, and felt a stone on my flipflop as I landed from a nice, exuberant leap. See point 2 now.
I looked at my shoe, and something was sparkling in the center of it. A clear, triangular, blade-like piece of glass (so it proved on later examination) had punched straight through a solid rubber sole and about three quarters of an inch of good foam. My foot was dripping blood. I believe I entertained some thought about how it was a good thing the glass didn't stick in a horse's frog, since my foot really only felt bruised, and I was pretty coherant. I saw NO other glass whatsoever, and proceded to hop on my good foot through the barn until I reached the sink (normal height for a sink, let me add). I ran cold water over my foot for a while, and then put pressure on it. Yay for really basic first aid, good balance, and flexibility. Also, it's probably a good thing I hadn't put my boots on yet - the soles are only somewhat tougher, but MUCH thinner.
The cold water was pretty numbing, but this is when it actually started to feel like a cut, more than a bruise. I waited for a while, hoping it would stop bleeding, and being in pain. Then I hopped back to my car. I had to stop once on the way, which I hadn't before - I am really good at hopping on one foot, let it be known. I called Kim, who was in the indoor arena (I did not fancy hopping another twenty feet, and back). She was a bit puzzled by my call, since I'd seen her about three minutes before - but she hung up and came running as soon as I put "glass" and "foot" in the same sentence.
One thing about being at a barn owned by a veterinarian (besides getting to be present/helpful at a minor equine surgery, forgot to post about that, didn't I?) - they can deal with human injury pretty darn well, too. Kim poured Betadine on my foot, added a dollop of antibiotic cream and a bandaid, padded it with gauze (for more comfort walking), and topped it off with hot pink vet wrap (awesome). I have some Epsom salt to soak it in, too. Twice a day, vet's orders. :-) I feel like I have laminitis, or something. Actually, I feel like there's a bloody[,] painful hole in the bottom of my foot.
I waited until I was alone in my car driving home to swear loudly and pathetically.
I made myself comfort food - actually, I made what I had planned to make since the farmer's market, but it was excellent. I sautéed sweet onion, mushroom, and tomato in olive oil, and ate them with salty sheep's milk cheese on seven-grain bread from the market.
The most basic principles of cooking, as I absorbed them from my father, are:
1) Buy good ingredients.
2) Do as little as possible to make them taste even better.
To me, this means "sauté the vegetables." To him, it's more on the level of "slow cook the stuffed duck in the oven until it's not greasy anymore, but perfectly delectable." I love watching him cook - this post would have been all about cooking, if not for the damn glass incident. Dad's so relaxed about it, while my mom is a very... I have to say, resentful cooker. She doesn't seem to enjoy every step like Dad does. She also seems to follow recipes much more closely - or there's a quality of attention to the cookbook that he doesn't have. Dad is perfectly willing to shortcut to get rid of steps he doesn't enjoy - pizza crusts are spread in the pan, not tossed, and butter and sugar are microwaved to make them mix more easily - but he never shortcuts with his ingredients, and he pays careful attention to steps that have a disproportionate impact on the product (I know how to fold whipped egg whites into the batter for madeleines, and I want to learn how to cut fish properly for sushi).
As an aside, I find it interesting that I see a cultural disconnect in the idea of a life-long lab scientist with a Ph. D buying organic eggs and olive oil. Where did this idea of the techie/hippy dichotomy come from? Darn mass media. Darn dichotomies. I hates them, I does (though I seem to live in the wrong country for this). To further the aside - as a half-Japanese daughter of divorced parents, who loves history and Latin and writing, and biology and objectivity and scientific methodology, I would probably have to have some sort of multiple-personality disorder if I really believed in dichotomies. They're interesting to play with... but I'm finally starting to drop them from my writing, since the idea has mostly ceased to concern me. I am one person. I don't need to walk any damn line. This bit of ground I'm standing on? Is not a house divided. Ahem. (Aside^3 - post-stepmom, I've developed a new interest in triplicate variations on ideas and circumstances - bits of my brain like watching other bits of my brain work, they're all fascinating).
To go back to cooking - I've never been overly enamoured of processessed food - less so than the average teen, anyway. The discovery that I can kinda sorta cook an approximation of the really fresh, simple, delicious stuff Dad throws together is quite absorbing. I want to get better at this cooking stuff. I want to be the kind of person who only takes dietary advice from peer-reviewed scientific literature, and checks all kinds of little grocery stores for good produce. An empirical hippy, that's me. With vet wrap on my foot.
1) I suck at basketball now.
2) The reception of a puncture wound really does feel more like a blunt impact than anything.
3) I can make yummy food
I had a really good day, overall. I drove the boys to their day camps and home for lunch and out again, had a chance to shoot hoops with Noah for a little while - I was decent at basketball once, but honestly don't remember the last time I played - and walked to the library and farmer's market before picking the boys up at the end of the day.
I was all ready to ride around 4 pm... but it was in the 90s (F), so I decided to just hop on bareback, do some bendy stuff, and work on not clenching my back (I have realized I do this, badly, and it is throwing my equitation all to hell). I cavorted from my car towards the barn, since the horses in sight were all in pasture, and felt a stone on my flipflop as I landed from a nice, exuberant leap. See point 2 now.
I looked at my shoe, and something was sparkling in the center of it. A clear, triangular, blade-like piece of glass (so it proved on later examination) had punched straight through a solid rubber sole and about three quarters of an inch of good foam. My foot was dripping blood. I believe I entertained some thought about how it was a good thing the glass didn't stick in a horse's frog, since my foot really only felt bruised, and I was pretty coherant. I saw NO other glass whatsoever, and proceded to hop on my good foot through the barn until I reached the sink (normal height for a sink, let me add). I ran cold water over my foot for a while, and then put pressure on it. Yay for really basic first aid, good balance, and flexibility. Also, it's probably a good thing I hadn't put my boots on yet - the soles are only somewhat tougher, but MUCH thinner.
The cold water was pretty numbing, but this is when it actually started to feel like a cut, more than a bruise. I waited for a while, hoping it would stop bleeding, and being in pain. Then I hopped back to my car. I had to stop once on the way, which I hadn't before - I am really good at hopping on one foot, let it be known. I called Kim, who was in the indoor arena (I did not fancy hopping another twenty feet, and back). She was a bit puzzled by my call, since I'd seen her about three minutes before - but she hung up and came running as soon as I put "glass" and "foot" in the same sentence.
One thing about being at a barn owned by a veterinarian (besides getting to be present/helpful at a minor equine surgery, forgot to post about that, didn't I?) - they can deal with human injury pretty darn well, too. Kim poured Betadine on my foot, added a dollop of antibiotic cream and a bandaid, padded it with gauze (for more comfort walking), and topped it off with hot pink vet wrap (awesome). I have some Epsom salt to soak it in, too. Twice a day, vet's orders. :-) I feel like I have laminitis, or something. Actually, I feel like there's a bloody[,] painful hole in the bottom of my foot.
I waited until I was alone in my car driving home to swear loudly and pathetically.
I made myself comfort food - actually, I made what I had planned to make since the farmer's market, but it was excellent. I sautéed sweet onion, mushroom, and tomato in olive oil, and ate them with salty sheep's milk cheese on seven-grain bread from the market.
The most basic principles of cooking, as I absorbed them from my father, are:
1) Buy good ingredients.
2) Do as little as possible to make them taste even better.
To me, this means "sauté the vegetables." To him, it's more on the level of "slow cook the stuffed duck in the oven until it's not greasy anymore, but perfectly delectable." I love watching him cook - this post would have been all about cooking, if not for the damn glass incident. Dad's so relaxed about it, while my mom is a very... I have to say, resentful cooker. She doesn't seem to enjoy every step like Dad does. She also seems to follow recipes much more closely - or there's a quality of attention to the cookbook that he doesn't have. Dad is perfectly willing to shortcut to get rid of steps he doesn't enjoy - pizza crusts are spread in the pan, not tossed, and butter and sugar are microwaved to make them mix more easily - but he never shortcuts with his ingredients, and he pays careful attention to steps that have a disproportionate impact on the product (I know how to fold whipped egg whites into the batter for madeleines, and I want to learn how to cut fish properly for sushi).
As an aside, I find it interesting that I see a cultural disconnect in the idea of a life-long lab scientist with a Ph. D buying organic eggs and olive oil. Where did this idea of the techie/hippy dichotomy come from? Darn mass media. Darn dichotomies. I hates them, I does (though I seem to live in the wrong country for this). To further the aside - as a half-Japanese daughter of divorced parents, who loves history and Latin and writing, and biology and objectivity and scientific methodology, I would probably have to have some sort of multiple-personality disorder if I really believed in dichotomies. They're interesting to play with... but I'm finally starting to drop them from my writing, since the idea has mostly ceased to concern me. I am one person. I don't need to walk any damn line. This bit of ground I'm standing on? Is not a house divided. Ahem. (Aside^3 - post-stepmom, I've developed a new interest in triplicate variations on ideas and circumstances - bits of my brain like watching other bits of my brain work, they're all fascinating).
To go back to cooking - I've never been overly enamoured of processessed food - less so than the average teen, anyway. The discovery that I can kinda sorta cook an approximation of the really fresh, simple, delicious stuff Dad throws together is quite absorbing. I want to get better at this cooking stuff. I want to be the kind of person who only takes dietary advice from peer-reviewed scientific literature, and checks all kinds of little grocery stores for good produce. An empirical hippy, that's me. With vet wrap on my foot.