Pesto

2 cups fresh basil
2 large cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/4–1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

Note: if you won’t be eating it straightaway, you can blanch the basil to preserve its color for storage in the refrigerator or freezer. Plunge it in 30 seconds in boiling water, then shock in ice cold water. Drain and continue with recipe.

Toast the pine nuts over medium heat until just starting to brown. Immediately remove from heat (so they don’t burn) and let cool.

Combine the basil, garlic, pine nuts, and cheese in a blender or food processor. Pulse to combine. Turn the machine on low and drizzle in the olive oil. After a quarter cup, pause and turn the speed up to medium. If you need to, add more oil (our blender will just whizz air around uselessly if the contents are too thick and not liquidy enough). Process until it’s a consistency you like. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Further note: this recipe seems on the more concentrated side, so I only have to use a tablespoon or so to coat 3 ounces of pasta. Reserve a little cooking water and toss with the pasta and pesto to combine and finish over low heat. (I also like to add a bit of red pepper flakes. And an extra finishing sprinkle of salt.)

Crosswords

I’ve been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle for a few years now, but now that the Wall Street Journal has started putting out a daily crossword as well, it feels like I have a full-time job just getting through the ones I can do (Sunday–Thursday for the NYT, Saturday and Monday–Thursday for the WSJ). If I’m working on them at home, I have a clipboard I attach them to, and lately the clip’s tension has been getting overstrained by the amount of puzzles under it. Even though I’ve started printing them out double-sided, it’s too much paper. My purse is full of papers folded into quarters and secured by the pocket clip of a mechanical pencil (also under strain). I hate to give up on a puzzle that I know I can finish given enough time, but occasionally I just have to say “screw this” and put a whole bunch in recycling.

Sometimes I’ll come across an unsorted pile of papers and find a Wednesday or something from ages ago that I never finished, and then they’re like a cakewalk for me. It’s nice when you can get an actual notion of “yes, I am getting better at these!” When I first started, just finishing a Monday was an accomplishment. I still haven’t tackled a NYT Saturday, but recently I did finish a Friday. That was a feeling of great satisfaction.

Escher in Het Palais

[image: escher's staircase inspiration]
[image: escher’s staircase inspiration]

During my vacation in the Netherlands, we took a day trip to the Hague to go see (among other things) Escher in Het Palais. I loved seeing the art and the actual woodcut blocks he used and learning more about the artist. Usually I go for the older stuff (gosh I love Renaissance artwork of Catholic saints), but Escher’s use of impossibility, you can’t not love it. One of the things that I found really cool (and I guess was a fairly new fact, given that the article I’m about to link only came out last year) was that the staircases he drew in Relativity were inspired by the staircases in a school he attended in Arnhem as a teen. He hated the school, but was obsessed by its very, very weird staircase.

[image: escher's staircase inspiration]
[image: escher’s staircase inspiration]

Even if it didn’t hold a bunch of great art, Het Palais is a gorgeous building. Every room had a different bizarre chandelier. They were amazing! These were my favorites:

[image: skull & crossbones chandelier]
[image: skull & crossbones chandelier]

Easy Sausage Meatballs

1 lb. Italian sausage (spicy or mild)
1 cup Italian-style breadcrumbs
1 egg
1/4 cup grated onion
1/4 cup grated parmesan
olive oil (if frying)
1 24-oz. jar spaghetti sauce (if you’re lazy like me) (otherwise make your own sauce)

Squeeze the sausages out of their casings. With your hands, mix together the sausage, breadcrumbs, egg, onion, and parmesan. Form the mixture into 1 to 1.5–inch diameter balls. Sort of toss or throw them between your hands to ensure they’ll stay together while cooking.

Either fry the meatballs up in olive oil over medium heat (2-3 minutes, then roll around and fry the other side) or bake them on a rack over a rimmed pan in the oven for 15–20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Heat the sauce and add the cooked meatballs. Stir gently to combine and let simmer for 15 minutes. Serve with pasta.

Sox Trot

[image: eleven pairs of Sox Trot socks]
[image: eleven pairs of Sox Trot socks]

It’s not news that I love socks. One of my favorite brands is Sox Trot. They specialize in equestrian socks. Now, I am no horsewoman, but wow these make the best trouser socks. They stay up amazingly well, and their prints are so bright and fun!

(oof, that’s a bit pink-heavy)

When I first started getting into fun socks (apparently in 2007, according to my email history), one of the first pairs I bought was from Sox Trot. I think that of that first shopping trip, they are the only ones that still exist in my collection—where I’ve put my heels are a bit stretched but they haven’t developed holes yet or lost their elasticity. (I was going to say the heels are stretched out a bit, but they’re not a formed heel like knit socks, they’re tube style.)

I dig their stripey styles a lot. Because the designs are printed on and not woven in, sometimes you get a discrepancy on the sides where the patterns meet. With the stripes (vertical and horizontal), you don’t run into that as an issue. But like the polka dot pair in the top pic? The pattern matches on one side of the leg, but not on the other. Kind of frustrating.

They don’t sell to buyers directly, so you have to find a retailer. These days I tend to buy them from Sox Plus whenever they have a sale. Sox Plus generally has a great selection of their patterns. (One of the nifty things about the Sox Trot brand is that they put out a couple catalogs a year with new prints. It’s great, because they’re always changing it up, but it does mean that you might miss out on some designs if you do decide to wait for a sale.) The Joy of Socks also carries them, at better prices but less selection. I wish Sock Dreams sold them, as they are a fabulous sock site, but I emailed and they said they had no plans to carry them. Drat.

Braisin’ Failure: Lasagna Muffins

[image: a muffin tin filled with good intentions]
[image: a muffin tin filled with good intentions]

Sometimes things don’t go as planned.

The backstory: when I was 7 or 8, my parents asked what we should have for for Christmas dinner. The young Hussy was a fan of Garfield at the time, so she answered “LASAGNA!” and a tradition was born. However, as the years have passed, and the family has grown, my brother has taken over Christmas dinner, and his choice is a rib roast. No more lasagna. 🙁

Another tradition is held on Christmas Eve, which we call “(Family-Last-Name) Eve.” It consists of massive amounts of hors-d’oeuvres. One year, in an attempt to blend the old with the new, I thought I would turn the 9×13 lasagna into bite-sized appetizers. I lined a muffin tin with lasagna noodles and filled them with meat sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. I baked them up and proudly served them.

Big ol’ NOPE. The lasagna noodles were too thick, contact with the muffin tin made the outsides become tough and chewy, and on the whole they were just too big and messy to deal with as a finger food. Everyone gamely tried to struggle through, but yeah…

A Braisin’ Failure.

Kabochas

[image: a male kabocha squash blossom]
[image: a male kabocha squash blossom, leaning against my sewing machine]

I realized I haven’t talked much about my kabocha squash plants here yet. Back at the beginning of August, Lydia gave me four seedlings. I planted them in the ground, not in baskets like the rest of my vegetable experiment. Here are some photos I tweeted soon after I planted them.

After I got back from Amsterdam, I immediately killed one, thinking that it had severed its stem when it went from vertical to flopping down and growing along the ground. However, I took a cutting from the DeathPlant, in the hope that I could maybe somehow regenerate some roots? (I’m not really sure how plants work.) Anyway, that cutting has been on my desk for three weeks, and it’s grown a blossom! So nice. The outdoor plants have also been generating blossoms, but those generally aren’t quite as photogenic (there are some exceptions, of course—that was the morning I left on my trip).

However, the problem is that squashes are monoecious, meaning they have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. In order to get fruit, you have to get a male flower to pollinate a female flower. And, sadly, I have been lacking in female flowers. It’s been a complete kabocha sausage party up in here.

[image: an unopened female kabocha squash bud]
[image: an unopened female kabocha squash bud]

Until now! I have one, yes ONE, female bud on the vine. I hope dearly that it will grow and eventually blossom. Unfortunately our bee population around here is sort of lacking, so I’ll be pollinating by hand. (Before I had done research into how male and female flowers differed, I definitely made my plants have gay sex.) I keep checking, but this is the only one so far. I was hoping she’d have a gal pal to grow together with.

It was my original hope to have squashes (well, A Squash) by Thanksgiving… now the estimate seems to be New Year’s, once you take into account the fact that the kabocha, like other winter squashes, needs to “cure” for several weeks after it is picked. I’m getting way far ahead of myself here, though. The bud hasn’t even opened yet. There is still a long time where it can be attacked by squirrels or deer or turkeys or whatever other wildlife we have in the neighborhood. Ah, the perils of non-basket gardening!

Hummus

This is a fairly simple recipe—you could jazz it up with paprika, sriracha, roasted red bell peppers, etc. But it’s pretty good on its own with a bunch of veggies or pretzel sticks to dip!

1 15 oz. can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup tahini (or make your own, see below)
2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp kosher salt
1/8-1/4 tsp ground cumin
2-4 Tbsp olive oil

Optional step for ultra smooth hummus: remove skins from garbanzo beans.

In a blender (or food processor, but I find a blender makes for a smoother product), combine the garbanzo beans, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and cumin. Pulse to combine roughly. Turn machine on low speed and slowly drizzle in the oil. Increase speed and run until the hummus is smooth in consistency. Check seasoning, then refrigerate for an hour to let the flavors meld.

Tahini
rounded 1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Toast sesame seeds in a small frying pan over medium heat. Let cool, then empty into a coffee grinder. Pulse 10 or so times to reduce the seeds to a paste. Empty into a bowl and add the oils and salt. Mix to combine.

Note: clean the coffee grinder by grinding some uncooked rice to a powder, discarding said powder, and then wiping it out with a damp paper towel.

Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp

Yes, I’m still talking about the Rijksmuseum.

The Rijksmuseum has good information. They’ve got a free audioguide app for your phone (and free wifi in the museum for downloading it), or you can get a physical guide there if you’ve forgotten your headphones or whatever. There are also placards hanging alongside the artwork with information (not just the name or the work and artist). And then, as a third option, in case you didn’t have enough, they have large laminated sheets (like 11x17s, except whatever size is equivalent in Europe) with details about the most famous works in the room—pointing out the minutia you might otherwise miss.

So, the Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp. What did the Rijksmuseum think was one of the most important aspects of this work to focus on?

Poop.

More from “New for Now”

Yes! I found a photo I took from the “New for Now” exhibition of which I couldn’t find the original in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. This is the painted version of the Arlequine print seen here. This was on display not on the wall, but laying horizontally in a display case under glass. That is why you can see my outline as I tried to shade the image to get as little glare as possible. If only my head were wider!

I have spent many an hour “curating” my collection of fabulous, and I think I’m finished for the time being. 158 images, many of them fashion plates, but also a lot of actual physical fashion—dresses and accessories from the Rijksmuseum. Here is the link to the collection!

And here are a few highlights.

This image+caption made me laugh, because it reminded me of a cosplay group from about ten years ago. The gals from HCC had done these massively impressive Rose of Versailles costumes, and yeah. Going through doors was definitely a sideways proposition! (My friend Lydia and I had been lucky enough to share photoshoot time with them at the Palace of Fine Arts while we were shooting costumes from a different series.)

I especially liked this caption because “Wedding dress with extremely wide, puffed sleeves” is basically saying “Eat your heart out, Anne Shirley!” (I cropped this image because the original weirdly wrapped mannequin head was kind of off-putting.)

“Good heavens, it’s that awful velocipedestrienne.”

I adore Hark! A Vagrant, and the moment I saw these I thought to myself, “You know, I haven’t bought a copy of Step Aside, Pops yet. I should rectify that.”

And finally, boatwigs.

BOATS. WIGS. BOATS IN WIGS. BOATWIGS.

(The placard attached to the first image included the following information: “Ladies’ hairstyles were ingenious works of art, built around a core of cushions and horsehair. Hair was piled high in curls and twists (chignons) and adorned with feathers, ribbons, artificial flowers, tulle and jewels to create various fancifully named poufs. Because the hair was dressed using animal fat and powdered with wheat flour, these poufs attracted all manner of insects. Far from hygienic, they moreover did not last long.”)

Fashion is weird.