dj_ango

 

Thank you frecklefaerie !

Look vigilant he looks in the photo above: practically human like regarding his signal.

And here's another picture where he's so incredibly vigilant that you he must eat Anti-Modafinil for breakfast.  See: 



Don't worry, Vienna. Batman is watching over you.

I'm partial to "Batman" but am taking suggestions.



 

Chris and I went to a wedding in County Clare last weekend.   We had a remarkable time.  The wedding itself was amazing. It was in Dromoland Castle, an actual freakin' castle.  King Brien lived in it and his descendants lived there for 500 years and just moved out in the 1960's.  After it was renovated, it is now the only five-star hotel in Ireland.  And there was a falconer! He was not actually part of the wedding ceremony, he was at the castle giving demonstrations.  But it did make me rue that Chris and I didn't have a falconer at our wedding because  A FALCON WOULD BE THE PERFECT RING BEARER.

It was Andrea Roche's wedding.  The Roches are a family that my family grew up with.  There are seven kids. They had a pool and a pool table growing up; the birthday parties were legendary in elementary school.  I hadn't seen them in 18 years.  So it was very good and fascinating to catch up.  Culley, who I use to tease like a little brother, now works for a hedge fund company in San Diego.  John and Sean have kids. Monica and Theresa starting law school and Patrick just graduated high school and kept bumming cigarettes from guests.  He was a babe in arms the last I saw him. (Gulp!)

I felt very lucky to be invited.  It was also so very good to be in a country that speaks English and to party with Americans who are not in the dip circle.  Bonus: I got to dance with my dad.  The trip offered me some touchstones of home.  It was recharging.   

This was my second trip to Ireland.  I went there 12 years ago and Holy Moses! the Euro has changed things there.  Now all the roads are wider and paved--including the road around the Burren.  And now, there are Chinese and Thai restaurants and the bar food is much better.  The cupcake fad has hit Ireland HARD.  There were no less than six bakeries specializing in cupcakes in Ennis alone.  Ennis only has about 32,000 people.  On TV, there's an Irish station now too.  We watched a bit of a documentary in Irish about Cajan music, awesome stuff.  They also do the news in Irish.  There is no Irish word for "oil rig."  Also, there are now trains!  For real, no more hitching to get to Donegal. Amazing.

And yet, there is serious tension about the European recession.  There's speculation that the rising tempers in the North are really caused by economic fears.  And there is a new rash of "miracle men" around the country who claim to see visions of Mary or Jesus and then give out terrible money advice after these visions, for a small fee of course.  

We went to the Cliffs of Moher and Chris found a four-leaf clover, naturally:




 I put up more pictures here.

 Hi.

I just added a bunch of folks to my LJ list.  If I added you and you hate that, no problem.  Just let me know and I'll continue to ignore you.  I'm going down my st. john's list and, essentially adding anyone who's posted something in the past two months.  This is my attempt to resuscitate lj and get the fuck off FB.

I'm Shannon, I graduated from SF in 2002.  I live in Vienna, Austria.  I think, write, eat, study and teach.  I also take pictures and send ridiculous postcards. Let's be friends, shall we? 

Hi!

Last weekend was Chris and I's first anniversary, paper.  He got us plane tickets to Nice.  It was a great trip and he liked France. (phew.)

I have actually spent a bit of time in Nice.  I lived in a tiny town in France that had a tiny train station. It's only train wen to Nice. So I would go there on long weekends to see some sun and get out of Digne for a spell.  I remember it as a construction pit that got a lot of sun and had a huge daily market.  Since I was always skimping, I never ate out, but still had a good time while dodging sketchy alleys and drinking cheap, delicious wine.

Coming back was a real treat.  All the construction is finished.  There's now a new tram line and pedestrian zones all over the town.  And they've made the city museums free: The Naif, the Beaux Arts, the Matisse, Modern Art, Archeology, Natural History, Botanical Garden.  All free!  

The beach is still rocky and crowded. But stunning all the same.  We saw lots of boobies.   The food was fantastic and once we got out of the tourist zones, quite reasonable.  I raided a super market and came home with dried sausages, herbes de Provence, cheeses, tapinade and jams.  We also got a fancy Provençal tablecloth. (Buying a tablecloth is the most adult thing I've ever done, I think.)

We took a walk up to the castle and saw this very interesting tree.  Actually, it might be a flower to a yucca.  Very Suessian. 




I was so happy to hear French again.  It took about a day for me to start speaking again, but so much came back.  Our taxi driver from the airport gave us maps and a guide book and refused a tip.  He told us about the weather and how the town is cleaner and filled with "Fliks" now. (Police).  Thefts are down and tourism is up.

We also went to the Chagall museum, my favorite.  It was really special.  Chris and I started writing to each other just before I left to live in France.  The letters slowly evolved into something romantic.  Every time I went to Nice, I visited the Chagall museum.  I was inspired to find alI of Chagall's stained glass in France. I wrote Chris while doing this: from Montpellier, Lyon, Metz, Nantes and Paris.  On our first date, I brought a picture book from the Chagall museum. We looked at the book while sitting on a bench in College Park and started holding hands (awwwwwww.)

France heard that it was our anniversary and hosted an air show at the beach for us.  Thank you, France.




We've posted the rest of our pictures on SmugMug.  You can find them here, if you like. 
 

So, hello.  I've been making elaborate meals.  Eating in Vienna is kinda odd.  They deep fry everything. (OMG, they have this apricot dessert where they take an apricot, cover it in gelato, then cover it in sweet dumpling breading, then deep fry it.  Wow.)  But I've taken to cooking a lot at home.  Kinda to eat better, kinda to keep busy, kinda because I love it.

 Vienna's really funny when it comes to produce.  There's Kurbiszeit (pumpkintime) in the fall and right now it is Sparglezeit! (asparagus time!)  So I made some Spargle.  I bought it from the back of a van in the parking lot by Ikea.  Ja, really.

I made some hazelnut chicken with it . All this stuff serves about four:

Hazelnut Chicken

4 Chicken breast, banged down to 2 cm thick
1/2 Cup Hazelnut flour (I found this in the health section, it's a gluten substitute and it was pretty cheap here.)
1/4 Bread crumbs (can easily be omitted)
1/2 t Salt
Pinch of Tarragon 
Some Garlic, if you're into it.
2 T Olive oil

Mix the hazelnut flour, bread crumbs, salt, tarragon. Hammer down the chicken.  Dredge the chicken in the mix, then stick the chicken in the fridge for an hour or so.  It magically makes the stuff stick on the chicken without egg wash.  

Heat up a pan (or castironskillet, shout out!) medium heat.  Heat up the oil and cook the chicken through 4-6 minutes each side.  Or if the hammering didn't really take, sometimes it doesn't,  brown the chicken on each side and finish in the oven (350ª F 175ª C, 20 minutes).

Asparagus with Easy Balsamic Reduction

Cook the asparagus however you love it: steam it, grill it, broil it, stick it in a stew.  I like blanching it (thrown in boiling water for ONE minute, then thrown it in ice water until cool) then I bake it.  400ª F (200ª C) for TWELVE minutes.  Don't overcook. 

Balsamic reduction, quick and easy:
1 T Butter
1 T Soy Sauce
1 T Balsamic Vinegar

Heat the butter in a pan, medium heat.  Here's the secret: slightly burn the butter, you want it to brown slightly, but not smoke.  Think of toasting the butter.  Throw in the soy sauce and the vinegar and stir until it gets kinda sticky.  Three minutes is plenty--takes the sour out of the vinegar and the sauce is nice and sweet.  I put the sauce on the side and spoon it over the asparagus.  This is also very good on steak.

Yay! fresh yummy food.  I'm going to bake bread for the first time ever tomorrow.  Perhaps I'll start taking pictures.  I'm still hammering out the zucchini fritters recipe.  More soon.

 I had another strange dream last night.  All these new laws were being passed that prevented certain sexual acts.  One of the laws said that lovers can no longer use hands to touch genitals.  It made me very sad.  I woke up and told the hubs about it.  Then he said without blinking an eye: "Welcome to Obama's America."

I'm making Orange Beef with Broccoli and want to share the recipe.  It's yummy.

Ingredients (4 servings):

1 pound of skirt steak, flank or minute steak cut into bite-size pieces  (In Austria they have schnitzel sliced beef which is perfect, it's a centimeter thick and often kinda marbleized.  I have no idea which part of the cow it's from, but it's lovely.)
1 cup OJ (divided)
1/2 cup of beer
Dashes and dashes of cayenne pepper (divided)
4 T soy sauce (divided)
4 cloves of garlic (2 crushed; 2 sliced thinly--like with a razor blade ala Goodfellas)
2 "thumb sized" pieces of ginger (one thumb grated, one super diced)
8 T of sugar (divided)
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 T orange zest
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
4 T oil
Cooked rice
Head of broccoli


Marinade:
1/2 cup OJ
1/2 cup of beer
2 T soy sauce
Dashes cayenne pepper
Crushed garlic
Grated ginger
4 T sugar
1 T orange zest
Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Mix well.  You want to use the crushed garlic and grated ginger since enzymes are released when prepared that way.  They assist in tenderizing the beef as does the beer. A mellow rice wine can work also. The worcestershire sauce is option, but it rounds out the spicy, Unami, sweet and sour flavors.  Make sure you can still taste the OJ before adding the beef.  Add more if you can't.  Mix in beef pieces and marinate for as long as humanly possible.

Now the secret.  About an hour before cooking take the beef out of the marinade and rest it on paper towels on a plate.  Let the beef dry.  Any of the marinade in the beef will flavor it from the inside out.  Let it rest in the fridge while you prepare the broccoli or drink a beer, what ever.

Cook the rice: I like to steam the broccoli on top of the cooking rice.  I just throw it on top of the rice in the last 10 minutes of cooking.  It never overcooks that way.

Dredge the dried beef in cornstarch.  Heat just enough oil in the pan for each batch.  Make sure the pan is hot--sizzling.  No need to deep fry, the beef is flavorful enough.
Once the beef's cook, set aside in the oven to keep warm.

Mix remaining OJ, sugar, soy sauce, cayenne pepper in cup or bowl or monkey head, whatever.

In the hot pan toast the garlic and ginger with a touch of oil, don't let this burn!.  Then add the OJ mixture.  Deglaze the pan and simmer until the sauce is thick and sticky.  Just before serving, add beef to sauce.  Serve with rice and broccoli. 

This is tasty and good.  This also works with tofu--take extra time to let it dry after marinating. 

 Chris and I did some dog sitting this week.  It was fun.  Dog search 2010 just got kicked into high gear.

Despite my internet regret and deletion of most of last blog post.  I still intend on bringing this blog back to life-ish.  I put the ish on the end so I wouldn't feel like a failure if I don''t do it regularly, which is likely because I'm forgetting a lot of things and stress over writing whenever I have to write.  Or even when I just like to write.  Still somehow, it's stressful for me.  What if what I write shows how stupid I am or what if I overuse commas.  These things have been known to happen.  And it's stressful for some reason.  
Maybe that's why the facebook platform is nice in a way--short attention span theater friends.  For instance, I just "posted my status" as: Unicycles are even more dangerous in the rain.
Who the fuck can argue with that? No one. That's right no one.  Except maybe an experienced clown.  But who's gonna believe a clown.  I wrote something true on the internet and I love when my opinion is right. Yay.