apropos of anything

The cast of Pushing Daisies. Because of them, every Wednesday I want to make pie.

I missed a lot of TV last week — Bones, House, Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy. I didn’t think they would show new episodes on Thanksgiving day, and I had taping malfunctions for the other four.

(Yes, Alicia. I should get a Tivo.)

In the meantime, though, all of these shows are currently being streamed on their respective networks’ Web sites. I’m particularly fond of ABC’s player; it’s slick and user-friendly and the streaming quality is excellent. However, online media streaming (and iTunes purchases) are the two things the writers are striking about, and out of solidarity for them, I’m running my own personal mini-boycott against the networks by avoiding their streaming product.

So now I’m up against my own ethics. Do I stick to my (tiny) guns and avoid the on-demand video product, choosing instead to read the TWoP recaps, or cave in to hours of quirky (and sadly, in the case of Gossip Girl (but I cannot help it, I’m hooked) trashy) entertainment?

I’m going for the hold-out… but I might just have to give in with Grey’s Anatomy.

The second time around, the tarts were much more manageable, and very yummy too.

Here’s hoping your Thanksgivings were awesome… any culinary triumphs (or disasters) to report on your end?

I think I got a little too big for my britches today.

I tentatively put the cranberry, caramel, and almond tarts from Smitten Kitchen on my Thanksgiving menu, but because I’ve never done anything like that before, I figured it might be a good idea to do a test run before I actually attempted them for a full-scale audience.

I was supposed to do them yesterday, but I kind of ran out of time (and also was missing pie weights, but after discussing it with several people today, I decided just to go the dried beans route anyway), so I only made the dough. I figured I could roll out the tarts and do the filling quickly today.

And I could have, if only that tart dough hadn’t kicked my butt all over my kitchen.

Deb mentions having issues with the dough in her post. Since one of her readers says he used Martha Stewart’s tart dough with great success, and I use Martha’s pie crust recipe regularly, I figured I’d substitute the easy dough for the original tough dough and be done with it. After all, I once made a tart dough in my dorm room, so this should be no problem at all, right?

Ha. Hahahahahahahahaha.

I have added water and begged and pleaded and re-refrigerated and scolded and re-floured and threatened, to no avail. The dough stubbornly refuses to roll out. I managed to eke out three semi-reasonable shells in an hour, and then I gave up and stuck the remaining lump of buttered flour back in the fridge to see if a timeout will teach it to behave itself. As of this typing I have lost the will to battle it out again, so I’m moving forward with the three shells that I have and will try the remaining dough again tomorrow.

The caramel filling, though, is lovely. Rich, dark brown, and gorgeously buttery. I want to grab a spoon and dig right in, tart shells be damned. (I did sneak a caramel-drenched almond slice… yum.)

The three semi-presentable shells are baking now, so I should know in about 20 minutes how it’s all going to turn out. If my camera hadn’t imploded, I would take pictures… but as it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

“Thru” is not a word. It will not kill you to type the few extra letters to properly spell “through”. You won’t get carpal tunnel. I promise.

If you want to AIM it up with “thru”, that’s fine… but everywhere else, I’d really appreciate it if you could remember how to spell. Or at least remember how to use your spellchecker.

Yesterday this story about our esteemed governor leading a prayer for rain on the capitol steps was making the rounds in national news, and I sent Dan a note asking whether I was a bad (un-rain-wanting, God-disavowing) person for snickering a little as I read the article. For one, it evoked images of rain dances in old country-western movies, and for another, such a move seems a little… desperate?

(As I type that, I’m reminded of a line from Rilla of Ingleside when Susan is sad about Kitchener dying, and her cousin (or aunt or whoever) says something along the lines of how Susan had always said she had complete faith in God and Kitchener, and now there was only God left, and Susan snaps out of her melancholy to retort, “Sophia Crawford, you may be an idiot, but you needn’t be an irreverent idiot.”)

And it’s not that I haven’t sent up some prayers for rain myself, but I am not a publicly-elected official, nor did I find the need to make a public announcement about it. We are still living in a country that allegedly separates church and state. If Sonny Perdue chooses to ask for some divine help in the midst of our “epic drought”, I’ve no problem with that, provided he does it in the privacy of his own home and in the meantime does everything he can to find a human solution to the problem. After all, God does help those who help themselves.

But anyway, the reason I began this post… this afternoon I was chatting with Dan again as I was checking the weather forecast for the next few days. There may be rain on the horizon, so I typed, “EEEEEEE, we might have thunderstorms tonight!!! Sonny’s praying worked!”

And he responded, “Thank G-d we have religious people in places of power.”

I have to admit it. I laughed. Of course, Dan is a self-avowed Libertarian, which we all know is really just a Republican masquerading as…. something not evil, but I’m sure he meant it as a joke and not as a testament to the awesomeness (TM Mean Girls) of George W. Bush.

[Note regarding the post below this one: Please email me if you would like the password to read it.]

This past weekend I attended an event that had been billed as girls-only, so I took advantage of the opportunity to dress up a little and to actually do my hair.

(For those who don’t wear hijab — to make the scarf sit properly on your head, you pretty much have to pull all your hair back into a braid or a bun or some other similar device that will prevent your head from looking funny-shaped. Most women also wear a tight-fitting cap to help keep the slippery scarf material in place. That cap is the death knell of any hairstyle outside of Demi Moore’s ‘do in G.I. Jane.)

I wasn’t the only one. Several other hijabi girls had put in a little extra effort with hair, and even with clothes; all-girls parties mean sleeves don’t have to go all the way down to your wrists, either. We were looking forward to a rare chance to sparkle.

Divested of hijab, I was talking to a friend when suddenly her expression changed, and she said, “Huda, there’s a video camera.”

I turned around, and yep, there was the honoree’s mother, quietly taping the goings-on in the main party area. I ran for it, slipping past her and turning into the foyer, where another group of hijab-wearing girls had just arrived and were removing their scarves, jackets, and shoes.

We huddled for a few minutes and then turned to the hostess, who had come out to greet the new arrivals.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, “but can you please not record the party while we’re out of our hijabs?”

She smiled at me. “Oh, don’t worry about it. We’re only going to show it to a few of our aunts who couldn’t come.”

Right. That makes me feel so much better.

Once my image is on somebody else’s recording, it’s out of my hands. I cannot guarantee that someone who shouldn’t see me with my hijab off won’t see me with my hijab off. Digital data is never sacred. It’s too easy to reproduce and distribute. Just ask the major television and film studios. As soon as a copy of the media leaves the original source, there is no longer any guarantee that anyone will never know exactly how many copies exist in the world.

But even if I am being irrationally cautious about protecting my image, the point remains that the other girls and I specifically requested something not happen, and we were ignored. Looking back, I wish I’d left the party at that point.

The video recording continued throughout the party, always random and unannounced, so that hijabis couldn’t even duck for cover if they preferred not to be in the shot. I tried to keep an eye on the camera as much as possible, and the girls I was sitting with helped out as well, sometimes serving as a physical block to the lens, but I know I’m in that movie more than one time. Later they started taking pictures — again unannounced — and I finally admitted defeat, took the hijab out of my purse, and put it back on.

My hijab is important to me. It is not something I do lightly. If you think so, you have no idea the amount of effort that goes into hijab. And if you do not think so, you would never for one second have entertained the idea of turning on a video camera in the presence of an uncovered hijabi. You would just as soon have recorded your girlfriends walking around topless.

If I sound upset, it’s because even now, days later, I am.

Indeed, not answering questions because we’re afraid our answers just won’t be popular just won’t do it.

Apparently not only did I break the Featured post, I also broke the presentation in Firefox (but I swear it looked fine earlier in the evening), so I’m reverting back to the original WordPress template until I can get things fixed….