Fresh Herbs and Wee Chief

I think I'll blog early today, as I'm going out late tonight.  The Event I thought was this afternoon is next Thursday, turns out -- good thing I checked.

Today I went to the grocery store, and there bought a box of basil, so I spent some time with my food processor when I got home.  As Friend @javelinwarrior has lamented with me lately, basil never keeps, so I thought it best to use it at once.  First I made some green curry paste.  In the past, I've used lemon peel instead of lemongrass in my homemade curries, because lemongrass isn't very conveniently obtained.  But lately the Whole Foods has been keeping it regularly in stock, so I thought I'd give it a crack this time.  I made a paste out of a small white onion, several square inches of ginger, several garlic cloves, a lemongrass stalk, about a third of the box of basil, a good handful of cilantro, and the rind and juice of a lime -- kaffir lime leaves are still hard to come by.  It's in the fridge, awaiting use.  Nota bene: I kept the top of the lemongrass stick, as it can be used to flavor the curry additionally as it cooks, like a bay leaf.

Green Curry Making

After that I rinsed out the food processor and turned the rest of the basil into pesto, with garlic cloves, parmesan, olive oil, and walnuts instead of pine nuts because pine nuts cost a fortune.  That's chilling in the fridge now too.  Both pastes I pressed down and covered with plastic wrap before I put the lid on the little Pyrex container, to keep the air off them so they won't turn brown.

Pesto

Warm weather and fresh herbs just seem to go together.

After this project and lunch, I watched The Hulk, which I hadn't seen before.  I liked it, I think more than I liked any of the other Avengers movies, except for Iron Man, which is just ridiculously kickass. I think I mostly liked the hulk because of Edward Norton, who is The Dreamiest.  Seriously.  If Ted ever leaves me, I will accept no replacement but Edward Norton. The whole thing made me want to watch Fight Club again soon.

After that it was book readin' -- Crime and Punishment is still happening to me.

I think I'll take this opportunity to tell you about wee Chief, since he's going to the doctor early tomorrow morning.  Chief is one of my kitty cats; we have five cats, because although I hate kids and never want to have them, I do like having a big happy family.  Chief came to us five years ago, when we moved into an apartment in Wilkinsburg.  My friend Carrie was moving out the of the apartment, and we were taking her place with roommate Friend Roger.  A girl Carrie knew had dumped a cat named Lucca on her, but Carrie didn't want it, so we agreed to take up his care.  (At this point we had two other cats, George and Skyler, a brother and sister born in my mom's backyard a couple of years previous to this.)

A nervous-looking Chief, back in the Wilkinsburg days.

Lucca was cool with Roger, but he was mortally terrified of us -- and everyone and everything else.  I don't think he'd been well-cared for before he got dumped on Carrie; he was constantly panicked, and when you fed him, he ate like he'd never eaten before, sucking down the food so fast you could literally hear him choking on it.  He barely slept -- that's saying something, for a cat.  The slightest thing woke him, and he'd dart away in fear.

It was a long process of him first being comfortable in the same room with us (but on the far side of the room), then a little nearer to us ... he was as shocked as we were when, after a few months, he jumped on to our bed.  Along the way he got a new name when we were watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest one night, and we started calling him Chief because he needed a new name, anyway -- who names a cat Lucca?

Chief cuddling Matilda when she was a wee kitten.  They're good friends.

Point is it took a long time with Chief.  But I can tell you that he is now the cuddliest thing on Earth, at least as far as Ted and I are concerned.  He sleeps with us at night -- he likes for me to spoon him.  His favorite thing is to be between us, so he can put his back against me and his paws on Ted, while I hold his tummy.  If we won't make room between us for him, he pulls our hair until we do.

He's a weird little guy in a lot of ways.  He's very undersized for a male cat, but he's got the biggest meow, and it makes him sound like a complaining old man.  He likes to talk to his toys, little mice that he lies in bed next to and talks to for ten or twenty minutes at a time -- he's gentle with them, like they're little pets instead of toys.  He's definitely the smartest of our cats: he's taught himself to play fetch, he understands the most words and commands.  He might be a little in love with me.

I don't think anything's ever loved me the way Chief does.  Human love is complicated and hard, and often animal companion love isn't always entirely fulfilling because it's not clear the animal has the capacity to love completely.  But I know wee Chief loves me.  I love him.  He's a very good kitty.

"What? I'm shedding on Dad's dry clean-onlys.  WHAT IS YOUR POINT?"

In February, we woke up one morning and Chief could barely stand; he was weaving like a drunkard and I was practically hysterical because I was sure he had had a stroke or something similarly awful, and was dying.  We hurried him in to the vet.  She diagnosed him with an inner ear infection.  The pills made his symptoms go away, and for a few days after the pills ran out, he was fine.  We left one morning to visit Ted's parents in Cleveland, and when we got home, he was again barely able to stand he was so dizzy, his little eyes darting back and forth as he miserably clung to the bed.  More pills -- perhaps a very recalcitrant infection?  But this time it was clear that there was something more wrong.  The pills made him OK, but his head tilt and his wobbliness didn't quite clear up.

So now tomorrow morning he's going to a kitty neurologist.  Our regular vet says she suspects that he might have an inner ear polyp that's affecting his balance and causing his neurological-looking symptoms.  Hopefully this is so.  It will be expensive to remove, but once removed he'll be perfectly fine and back to normal.  But of course, one can't help but imagine the worst.  (Never mind how we're going to pay for this -- seriously, I have no idea.  Well, I do have an idea, the idea is credit.  Let me tell you sometime how much debt Ted and I are already in.)

So, anyway, that's the situation going in to tomorrow morning.  God willing, everything will turn out for the best.  Think on wee Chief fondly tonight and tomorrow for me.

Chief cuddling Matilda now that she has much outgrown him. Cuddling is a theme with Chief.

Today I Ate Curry and Watched Super Hero Movies

So remember how I talked about all of those summer projects I intend to undertake?  I didn't start any of them today.  And I might as well tell you that I'm not going to start any of them by the end of the week, either.  I've got so much on my plate, you see.  Ahem.

Today my mother came to visit.  I like seeing my mom, but whatever my usual routine is, her visits tend to disrupt them, since they're all-afternoon affairs.  Still, the day was "productive" in its own way.  For one thing, we tried a new Thai place.  I live a few blocks away from Pusadee's Garden, which has the best Thai in the city, and so despite my love of Thai food (I've even worked on cooking it myself, inspired by Sarah), it's hard as hell to get me to try new Thai.  Frankly, it's more than that -- I'm a creature of habit. What can I say, I take comfort in knowing what to expect.

Anyway, we went to The Smiling Banana Leaf in Highland Park.  The fresh spring roll was good, but not as good as the ones at Tram's; the green curry was OK, but not as good as Pusadee's.  The Shrimp Red Chili, though, was very good.  I'm not sure it's fair to review a restaurant based on one visit, so consider this just first impressions -- I wanna go back to try their massaman curry, which I'll likely end up doing, since Pusadee's has decided it's only open for lunch on the weekends now.

Look, it's what I had for lunch today. Most of the photos on my phone are of food and cats.

After that Mom and I watched Captain America and Thor.  Neither of us had seen the captain, and Mom hadn't seen Thor; tomorrow I'm going to watch The Hulk, which I haven't seen, and maybe revisit the Iron Mans, and all of this is in preparation to go see The Avengers.  I liked Captain America; man, we Americans never get tired of killing Nazis, do we?  Even seventy years later!  Probably because all of our wars since have been tragicomic misadventures in Red Scare hysteria or neocon overcompensation.  But I digress.

Seeing Thor again, I was struck by the same thing that struck me the first time watching it, which was (Spoiler Alert!) the way Loki gets short shrift.  Or actually, what I really want to ask is, why do we hate Clever?  From the beginning of the movie, the character of Loki is set up to be a diplomat and a smooth talker -- "What's the matter, that silver tongue of yours turn to lead?" another character taunts him -- a soft-spoken and clever man.  His godly power involves making false copies of himself.  Of course, by the end, he turns out to be a schemer, a betrayer, a manipulator.  (And the movie does everything it can to make you forget that his father has lied to him his entire life, concealed the truth of his identity, all the while favoring Thor in little soul-destroying ways because for reasons that Loki wasn't made privilege to and are not his fault, the benighted dark-haired brother of Thor can't be allowed to sit on the throne of Asgard.  Because mulling on that might make you, the viewer, feel bad for Loki.)

Now, Thor's got character faults: he's arrogant, short sighted, and a bully.  Of course, by the end of the film lessons are learned and he becomes a noble, thoughtful leader.  But let's look at how this is set up: we've got a big, brash, handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, muscular, super-white guy who's Got Lessons to Learn but turns out to be the hero who makes his father proud in the end.  We've also got a slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed, quiet young man who's thoughtful, cunning, and clever, who's willing to deceive to win.  Put aside the plot -- we already know who we're supposed to root for.

But why?  Why isn't being clever, thoughtful, and cunning a virtue?  Why aren't we on the side of the guy who can talk his way out of trouble instead of having to hit everyone with a giant hammer?  Well, there's a lot of reasons why.  My point is to invite you to think of what it says about us that this is the case.

I'd also invite you to think about what it says about us that the hero is a big ol' Aryan and the secret villain is a little dark guy.

Anyway.

After all that it was burritos for dinner.  Tomorrow I'm going to watch The Hulk -- and then I have An Event.  More on that later.  Then Friday is a big traumatic day for me and my kitty Chief.  Chief is going to the kitty neurologist.  More on that later, too.

Wee little Chief. Last time I saw a neurologist it cost $50,000. Let's see what Chief's charges.