John & Belle Have A Blog

Could I Get A Thin Rubber Mayonnaise Insert?

An idea whose time has come. I didn't know I wanted one, but now I see there's a gaping velvet-lined emptiness in my jewellry box. Ladies and gentlemn, just in time for all your holiday shopping needs: The BLT Ring. Hopefully it comes in large sizes, so you could get one for the bacon-lovin' man in your life. A heart-warming symbol of love...of bacon.

Self-Portrait

Zoë did an interesting self-portrait. The window with the curtains and bars is real, as is the flower dress. The crown is imaginary. Now why would a little girl imagine having a crown? At any rate, I feel her style is evolving by leaps and bounds.

Queasy

I think that (below a certain level) pain is preferable to nausea. What say you all?

Police Shooting in NY

It's tragic that this bridegroom was shot to death and his friends wounded. The specific complaint that the police fired too many shots, though seems strange to me:

Again and again, the focus of the day returned to the number of bullets that went flying.

One of the officers fired more than half the rounds, pausing to reload, and then emptying it again, 31 shots in all, according to the police. Another officer fired 11 shots. The others fired four shots, three shots and one shot apiece, the police said.

But it is the total number of shots that shook and angered the families of the men and community leaders. “How many shots?” Mr. Sharpton asked yesterday, over and over, in a chant at a rally in a park near Mary Immaculate Hospital, where the wounded men were being treated. The crowd called back, “Fifty!”

The problem is that the police shot some people whom they would have done better not to shoot; it's not that they fired a lot of bullets once they had made the decision to do so. It's not as though it took them very long, either--the whole thing was apparently over in a minute. It's not clear from the article whether the undercover cop the men hit with the car was still in danger. I would guess not, since if he were the police would surely be stressing that. Hitting the police van, backing up, and hitting it again sounds like drunk driving to me (or the worst judgment call ever), but there's no word on that either.

My Neighbor Totorororo

Zoë and Mei Mei watched My Neighbor Totoro (Totororo, or Totorororo, Mei Mei calls him) after bathtime. Cute.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Why don't you make cornbread--it's really easy, even easier than biscuits.

1 3/4 c cornmeal
1-2 T sugar (depends on how sweet you like it. My dad is screaming 'noooooo' because he considers sugar in cornbread a yankee abomination, but too bad)
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 c buttermilk (or add 2 t white vinegar to a cup of milk and let it clabber up a little)
1 egg
2 heaping T Crisco (you could probably use unsalted butter but I've never tried. Or bacon grease is nice.)

1. Preheat the oven to 375. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Break the egg into the cup measure with the buttermilk and stir it up good with a fork.

2. Put the Crisco in a 8-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat, till it melts all the way, and turn the pan around till it's evenly coated.

3. Mix the milk/eggs into the dry ingredients, then pour on the sizzling grease and stir well. Scrape batter into the hot frying pan and put in the oven. Cook 20 minutes or till nicely browned.

Simple as that.

Never trust a vizier with a moustache that starts above his nose

Zoë drew this today.

That guy is the Grand Vizier. [The one on the left with the waxed moustaches that have the panache to actually be located entirely above his nose.]

I'm sure Belle knows the story, but I'll let you have a little fun by speculating. (Keep it clean now.) What is the story? (Click for larger.)

Couple more pics under the fold.

Won't You Eat My Sleazy Pancakes Just For Saintly Alphonso

Is it bad that this Onion article I Don't Make My Jukebox Selections For The Recognition speaks to me so clearly?

Say I open up with something fast and loud like Motörhead. Anyone could ride that out with Diamond Head or Iron Maiden. But not me: I'll do a complete pivot and play Nancy Sinatra's haunting duet with Lee Hazlewood, the psychedelic-era oddity "Some Velvet Morning," just when everybody's least expecting it. Bam. (Few people know this, but that "obscure track" happens to be on her greatest hits record.) Slam.

And I'll keep you guessing. I'll play a '70s one-hit wonder like Sammy Johns' "Chevy Van" right after some blistering DC hardcore from Minor Threat. I'll lay down some early New Orleans funk from The Meters just after surprising you with Public Enemy's collaboration with Anthrax. I'll go from mid-period Willie Nelson to early Funkadelic, and then plunge right into "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nillson. You won't know what hit you. You'll be thinking, "Who's the badass that programmed this mix? I want to buy that guy a drink!"

I have this tingly 'just got pwned' feeling. I've put almost all these songs on mixes before, and if I were in a bar with a jukebox with 'Chevy Van', The Meters and Public Enemy on it, well... For the sheer surprise factor I think I'll never top the time I was out with my brother at some Alexandria brew-pub full of off duty DC professionals. We were in an unusual frame of mind. His big ol' shiny eyes about fell out of his head when he heard the unmistakeable strains of St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast.

Gingerbread House

We're in the process of making a gingerbread house right now. Potential problem: the decorated sides seem to be getting soft in the humidity. I worry that when I put the thing together it's going to look great for about 45 minutes and then slowly slump to bits. We don't do 'crisp' in Singapore. Since I've always been a crafty person one of the things I looked forward to about having kids was doing fun stuff like this. Now I realize, though, that kids are a massive hindrance rather than a help at many cooking/decorating tasks. (Not all--Zoe is good at peeling garlic, washing root vegetables, and picking herb leaves off of stems and such.) Today I was thinking, 'darn kids! I want my gingerbread house to have a color theme and be decorated in a symmetrical way! And I want to make a gumdrop snowman with individual non-pareils for eyes and a carefully cut sour ribbon scarf!' Then I realized I was crazy. So we will have a nice house with swedish fish glued randomly to the exterior. I'll try to take a picture of it before it collapses.

Christmas In Singapore

I tried to put this in a comment the other day but Typepad has been acting wonky, and we need a new post around here anyway, so.... I know some people are curious about Christmas in Singapore. Singapore is not majority Christian by any means, but there is a substantial Christian minority. Most of those people are Chinese but some are Indian or 'Eurasian'. It is my sense that Christians are overrepresented in the elites of Singapore society, some as a remnant of elite assimilation to colonial mores.

There are Catholics and quite a few evangelical Protestants; I assume there must be some more mild-mannered C of E types around but I don't really know any. (I say there must be some because there are historic Anglican churches in town. One, St. Andrew's Cathedral is covered in a snow-white, glittery, finish called chunam. The Brits brought in convict laborers from South India to build it and they used a special technique in which the exterior was polished with big lumps of raw sugar.) There is a long history of Catholicism in SE Asia, although it has only ever made it big in the Philippines. St. Francis Xavier's grave was in Melaka, Malaysia for a while before being moved (Melaka's just 3 hrs drive north of here).

Singapore has what is actually a rather charming zoning/religious harmony measure which ensures that in a given neighborhood all of the places of worship will be put side by side; there is an Indian temple, two Chinese temples and a Protestant church all next to each other up the road from us. I often walk between another Indian temple and a big Catholic church, and sometimes there are having ceremonies at the same time. I tend to feel the worshippers at the temple are getting the best of it, since the music is louder and more thrilling, shirtless men are blowing on conch shells with silver mouthpieces, and vast clouds of incense are pouring out. On the other hand, transubstantiation.

Christmas is massively celebrated as a commercial holiday in Singapore, and a chance to engage in what some would argue is the true Singaporean religion: shopping (and eating seasonal treats.) Also, Singapore goes for themed decorations in a big way, with a yearly pageant stretching from Chinese New Year to Christmas and round again. (The Great Singapore Sale is ginned up to take care of an otherwise fallow spot in June/July.) On the whole it's quite nice, although if we're going to stay in town I have to switch to buying the Australian food magazines (which I sort of do in their summer anyway) as Australian traditional Christmas foods are meant to stand up to the heat. There is something surreal about watching a team of Bangladeshi workers putting up 30-ft high fake Christmas trees in the equatorial sun, but that can be solved by going to look at the tree in the heavily refrigerated atrium/lobby of Ngee Ann City. Mmm, festive air-conditioning.