Yay for a good concert! That sounds like it was a whole load of fun, and with company like that--icing on the cake.

Thanks, Hec. You made my day.

Timelies!

Yay, for concert fun!

Dinner went well last night. The food was done when it was supposed to be, and everyone had a good time. It's like I am being organized or an adult or something. Weird.

Sounds like a fun concert.

I just glanced out the window, and wow, it's snowing. My plan for today had been to go to the grocery store to pick up some mushrooms for the seitan I was planning to make tonight. I think I'm going to be making mushroomless seitan.

Did I kill the thread? Sorry.

I'm looking at the Gali Girls website. They're kind of a Jewish version of the American Girls dolls. (I'm helping someone try to find a present for a 10-year-old.) Anyway, they just introduced a new doll character from China, which I thought was kind of cool. Then I realized that they're making that doll with a special "slim" body, as opposed to the "regular" bodies on the Ashkenazi girl dolls. I'm still looking a bit askance at that. (First askance-looking reason was body image, second was that the clothes aren't interchangable -- if one girl has the Chinese doll, and another girl has one of the European dolls, they won't be able to play with trying one doll's outfits on the other doll.) Just, odd.

edit: OK, I'm not recommending these dolls anyway, just because I'm not about to bestow the horridness of this writing on any kid:

The majority of Jews in the shtetl were quite poor when it came to money. But when it came to kindness, they were very rich. For example, each Jew felt an obligation to take care of the other, and Miriam was no exception to that rule. She tried to be a “good Jew” by treating others as she would like to be treated, just as the Torah teaches.

This follows several paragraphs worth of irrelevant history, thrown into the middle of a story.

People in our section were having fun, but not much standing. Bastards. The people on the floor stood the entire time & danced, why couldn't we???? Also, I was possibly the youngest person there who wasn't with her parents. Didn't care. Bob Seger is made of awesome, and Chuck Norris bows down to him.

My first attempt at homemade seitan is on the stove. Smells pretty good, and the sauce tastes pretty good, too.

Making seitan is kind of fun. Mix together the vital wheat gluten and some flavorings (flavorings of choice in this recipe were nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, and ground walnuts), mix together some water with some flavorings ("beef"-flavor bouillon, olive oil, tomato paste, and marmite), then mix the liquids and the dry ingredients together, stir a tiny bit, and you can actually see it rise and turn into this sort of blob -- way more flexible than regular bread dough, but also way more set in a shape -- after I picked it up once, it took a while to figure out how to get my finger marks to go away.

It's now bubbling away on the stove. Which it has to do for an hour and a half before it'll be ready to eat.

I hate waiting.

That sounds good, Hil. I hope it comes out yummy.

I've been tasting the sauce (more of the "beef" bouillon, onions, celery, carrots, tomato paste, red wine, garlic) and it tastes pretty good, though maybe a bit too tomatoey. I've also got some sweet potatoes baking, and leftover rice. Not quite enough non-starchy vegetables, but still a fairly balanced dinner, I think.

I think this is the first time I've ever used Marmite. It's interesting. Same basic flavor as nutritional yeast, I think. (Which would make sense, since they're both yeast.)

what he likes are the little "didos" as my mother calls them

Ok, I first read that as dildos.

you and me both.

My sister was a DZ in Denton Texas. Oddly enough that was where she met a girl who didn't understand why the N word was offensive. In her defense she said, "that's just what everyone calls them."

you said Texas, right. No surprise. People are sheltered. I had this huge conversation with my mother yesterday about the Isaiah Washington incident, and the f word. My mind boggled at her complete cluelessness. How am I this woman’s kid?

Seitan is done. Very yummy. Also very filling -- I think I'm going to have enough leftovers for about five more meals.

My sister was a DZ in Denton Texas.

This may be a dumb question, but what's a DZ?