Blog

Pats 31, Giants 27.

Don’t argue with the spirits.

Patriots beware:

While real fans were freezing their asses off at Gillette last Sunday, I was running back and forth between my 42″ reason for living and the kitchen, where I was busy making this:

Butternut Squash and Pear Soup
(adapted from a Dave Lieberman recipe)

Ingredients
* 1/2 stick butter
* 2 large onions, diced
* 1 medium butternut squash — peeled, seeded, cut into 1″ pieces
* 4 medium, ripe pears (Bosc, Anjou or Comice) peeled. (Cut 3 into 1″ pieces, dice the other for garnish)
* 4 cups chicken stock
* A coupla good shakes of rosemary
* 1/2 cup heavy cream
* Crumbled blue cheese
* Salt, fresh-ground pepper, sugar (for taste)

Directions
1. Heat the butter in a large pot over medium heat until melted/bubbling. Add onions and cook until softened and a little transluscent.

2. Add the sliced squash and your three 1″ sliced pears, then cook for 5 minutes.

3. Add the stock — just enough so that the veggies are almost covered. (Leiberman likes to use more.. I like less — it ends up giving you a heartier, less-liquidy soup. But you can make that decision for yourself.)

4. Add rosemary, bring to a simmer, and cook until everything’s super-tender — maybe 45 minutes.

5. Puree everything in a blender/Cuisinart (in batches), then return to your pot.

6. On low heat, stir in your heavy cream, then add salt, pepper & sugar to taste.

7. Place a heap of diced pear and some crumbled blue cheese in the middle of your serving bowls, then surround with soup.

I don’t know about you, but I love a good squash soup in fall/winter — and this one has terrific taste. I’m thinking the recipe might work with apples in place of pears, but I haven’t tried it that way yet.

Anyhow. Go Pats!

* Stupid co-workers who expect other people to do their work for them… and don’t think anyone notices.

* Stupid potential employers who won’t tell my wife if she’s hired or not, despite three+ months of interviews and presentations.

* Stupid fights with my wife.

* Stupid things that set my kids off on irrational screaming benders. Almost. Every. Night. Tonight’s winner: the wrong pair of dinosaur pajamas.

* Stupid Sears, who accepted my online order for a new snowblower auger nearly four weeks ago, and then neglected to tell me that their manufacturer was no longer making the part and that they, subsequently, had cancelled the order. When I finally (after three+ weeks of waiting like a patient, nice-guy consumer) called them on Saturday (two days before our latest winter storm) where my auger was, they responded: “Oh, it’s been cancelled.” Huh? “The OEM doesn’t make it any more.” And you didn’t tell me? “No, we wait for the customer to call us.” And WTF, exactly, am I supposed to do now? “I guess I would have to suggest that you buy another snowblower.”

* Stupid “backsaver” shovels. Backsaver, my ass.

* Stupid NBA players like Luol Deng, Shaq, Andrei Kirilenko and Stephon Marbury (yeah, I know) whose proclivity toward injury is killing my fantasy hoops team. Steve Nash and Dwight Howard can’t do it alone, guys. (Yes, I know this is petty. But you know what? This is who I am.)

* Stupid insurance hassles that will probably cost me big bucks to get my car fixed, despite the fact that I was the innocent victim. I have witnesses! Seriously! Insurance guys: “We don’t care. Also, fuck you.”

* Stupid guilt over the fact that my life has been so boring that I’ve had nothing interesting to say for two weeks. (And, apparently, that trend is continuing today.) Sorry. Would you like to hear about the salad I had for lunch?

Neither would I.

A conversation from this past weekend:

Butterfly (walking downstairs after a nap and suddenly discovering that the Christmas tree is gone): Ah! Ah! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Daddy! Where’s the tree? Where’s the tree? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! (incoherent screaming)

Me: Uh… (thinking fast)

Butterfly: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (gargling with snot, tears, heartbreak)

Me: (still thinking fast)

Butterfly: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH (starting to turn Hulk on me)

Me: (flash of brilliance) The Grinch! The Grinch came and took the tree!

Butterfly: (instantly dropping from 120mph-0) Oh. Okay. (walking away) Can I have a snack?

My 2.5 year old daughter Rabbit just discovered the Batman action figure that my brother-in-law gave to TheHurricane for his birthday last spring. However, her word enunciation/comprehension is still a work in progress — which is why she’s now sprinting from one end of my house to the other, holding the figure in question as if he’s flying through the air… and shouting out every minute or so (in her best deep superhero voice), “I’m Blackman!”

a. 10 days away from work doesn’t feel like 10 days of vacation if only 4 of them (nonconsecutive) coincide with daycare being open.

b. If you’re carving an 18lb. turkey in front of a dozen in-laws and your large, shiny knife suddenly slips from your hand, don’t try to grab it out of the air the way you would if you’d just dropped a pen.

c. My carving knives are a lot sharper than I realized.

d. When you go to the Portsmouth Brewery and order their sampler, they bring you a flight of 10 beers — including their phenomenal Russian Imperial Stout. It’s kind of wonderful.

e. Contrary to what I’d come to believe over the past 4.5 years, movies don’t just appear on DVD — they actually come out in theaters first. I took advantage of this wondrous insight to see I Am Legend – which was pretty damned intense and enjoyable, in a 28 Days Later kind of way – and No Country for Old Men, which had wonderful acting but ultimately left me feeling confused and frustrated.

f. Few things will bring 2-year old twin girls more joy than waking up to a new toy kitchen on Christmas morning — especially one that takes daddy five fucking hours on Christmas Eve to put together.

g. Trying to put 2007 in proper perspective – like some of my imaginary friends – I’m coming to realize that I’ve accomplished very little of lasting import this past year, above and beyond work stuff. Did I make any significant changes in my life? Did I make a new friend for life? Did I become a better person?

The answer to all of these questions: Nope. I still suck.

h. 16-0, baby.

i. I had something fascinating to list here, but then my kids jumped on my lap and somehow erased it — and given that my short-term memory is now comparable to that of a goldfish, I’ve forgotten whatever life-transforming bit of wisdom I’d meant to impart. Sorry. We’ll all just have to learn to live with it.

j. I’ve lived waaaay too long without a GPS. Thank you, Santa. (And by Santa, I mean me.)

k. It’s hard to catch up on your sleep during a vacation when you still have multiple 30-40lb. alarm clocks that awaken screaming, “Daddy!” between 5:00am-6:00am every. Freaking. Day.

l. The Sears online parts department is at a different website than the normal Sears.com. A valuable piece of information if you have a 9 HP snowblower with a bent auger.

m. I’m kind of excited and clearly beyond terrified by what this coming year may hold. Lord help us all.

Have yourself a merry little whatever it is you feel like having.

From my recent two-day jaunt to the happiest place on earth — southern Connecticut:

The Good: Post-meeting beers with TheCEO, including the consumption of mysterious and intriguing sausage rolls (sausages in flaky pastry dough with melted cheese… originally served with some kind of BBQ sauce, which was great, and then with maple syrup, per the bartender’s suggestion — which was phenomenal). Nothing takes the edge off a looooooong day of driving and meetings like a coupla Sam Winters afterward. (That’s TheCEO’s thumb in the pic, btw.)

The Bad: My joyful anticipation of a night away from the kids – in a nice hotel – completely subverted by the reality of my own stupidity… in other words, I got so caught up in the book I was reading that I ended up only getting four hours of sleep between meetings. (Why yes, I am a moron. Why do you ask?)

The Ugly: Sitting in a public lobby on morning number two, yawning ferociously, trying to psyche myself up for another day of rather intense meetings, when a wild-eyed homeless guy walks up to me, takes a look at my dark suit/black shirt/no tie ensemble and asks, “Are you a priest?”

(TheCEO enjoyed that one a lot.)

Snowblower + Sunday newspaper buried under 8″ of snow = very bad things.

(heavy sigh)