Too Good for Half the Senate Smoked Bean Soup

I distracted myself from stressing about the Kavenaugh hearings and did some cooking today.  Joe was smoking turkeys in preparation for Friendsgiving, so I decided to smoke some beans for soup.* We've smoked chick peas for hummus before, but had never tried doing it to white beans. I cooked a pound of dry beans in the pressure cooker, then we put them on a cookie sheet with a few cloves of garlic and put them on the smoker for about two hours. They dried out slightly and picked up a nice smoky flavor. Then I cooked them up into bean soup with an onion, some carrots, bacon and kielbasa. Totally coincidentally, it's essentially a smoked version of Senate Bean Soup, which is a basic bean soup made with ham hocks. 
It came out really well - way too good for at least half the Senate.  The smoke flavor really improved it, even though I didn't use a ham hock or pre-made broth.  You could probably use a few drops of Liquid Smoke or some smoked paprika to approximate the flavor.

Too Good for Half the Senate Smoked Bean Soup

1 lb dry white beans, soaked and cooked and drained (or 4 15 oz cans, reserve liquid for soup)
1 qt water, broth or liquid from cooking beans or reserved from canned beans
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4 oz bacon
1 lb kielbasa or smoked sausage, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 tbsp vinegar
salt and pepper 

To smoke the beans, put them on a cookie sheet and put the sheet on a smoker for two hours or so, stirring occasionally, until they pick up a nice smokey flavor.

In a large dutch over, fry the bacon.  Remove the bacon, chop and set aside.  Saute the onions and carrots in the bacon grease until they are slightly browned. Add the sausage, garlic and reserved bacon and saute.  Add the water, broth, or bean liquid and the smoked beans.  Cook until soup has thickened and carrots have softened.  Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.  If desired, add vinegar to brighten the flavor.

Quick version: Use 4 cans white beans and carefully add a little bit of Liquid Smoke or smoked paprika.

* We were originally going to smoke chick peas, but didn't have any so I decided to experiment.

On coming of age as a woman in the 80's

Forward: This post and several others have been written and rewritten many times in my head over the last two weeks.  I will likely continue to formulate it after it is posted.  Many others have written similar articles recounting their experiences, and I have gleaned insight from those essays as well.  I'll add additional posts later, but this one just deals with the 80's party culture and my own personal experience.

Like many Generation X women, and women and girls of all ages, the last few weeks of Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been rough on me, and have brought up a lot of repressed memories and prompted me to reexamine my high school and college years.
I have been very lucky.  I have never been raped or experienced any sexual violence beyond cat calls, butt grabbing, frotteurs and flashers.  As most of you know, I was a geeky kid in high school and did not go to parties.  In college, I was still geeky and mostly went to dorm parties, with the occasional frat party thrown in for good measure.  The dorm parties typically had lots of alcohol but also semi-attentive RAs who made sure there were non-alcoholic drinks and kept an eye on things.  I surrounded myself with my brotherly gang of male buddies, and typically had one or two drinks.  Once I started hanging out with graduate students (senior year) I began to drink more and didn't bring my undergrad buddies with me. In grad school and beyond I partied more.  It turns out I like drinking and hanging out with interesting people.

For years my official interpretation to myself is that I was a geeky late bloomer who didn't find high school/frat parties that appealing.  There are elements of truth to that, but the last few weeks have made me realize that I was hiding from the 80's heavy drinking culture because I suspected it would not be kind or welcoming to people like me. At best I would be excluded and laughed at and at worst I'd be raped or worse. I grew up in the same culture as Kavanaugh and his peers. As a tween, I watched the same movies and I internalized the same messages that they did as teenagers.    Like most of my peers, I grew up watching the Benny Hill Show, and read Mad Magazine and my brother's copies of Playboy and Penthouse.  In junior high I snuck into Porky's with Missy and saw "Revenge of the Nerds" and "The Last American Virgin" with my brother.  I still have a fondness for crude slapstick humor. I laughed at all the gags and was so steeped in the culture that I barely remember the voyeurism and rape scenes.  The only bit of pop culture that actually creeped me out enough that I remember it was watching a Woody Allen movie when I was at a sleepover when I was 9 or 10.  My conscious radar wasn't completely broken, but it was severely dulled from the murky messages that I was getting all day, every day from the dominant, Baby Boomer, male-centric pop culture.* Subconsciously, though, I was reading these messages loud and clear, and I was scared and repulsed.
When I got to high school, I didn't party at all.  In my sophomore and junior years, as my neighborhood friends started to party more, I withdrew into an eating disorder and isolated myself from the party culture.  At the time, I would've said the timing was coincidental and that people weren't inviting me to their parties, but now I'm not so sure.  It was just easier to retreat into myself and not deal with it at all. Once I was no longer starving myself, I remained a homebody until I got to college.  At first I was kind of judgemental about people partying, until I realized it was actually fun.

People ask why women go to parties if they know they might get raped.  Even asking this question, rather than telling men not to rape women or not to go to parties, is a flaming bag of conservative shit, but I am going to answer it anyway.  I know the answer, since I have done the experiment.  Parties are fun, even for geeky introverts like me.  Hanging out with old and new friends is fun.  Drinking is fun for many people, including women.  When you go to a party, no matter how much due diligence you do, you have no way of knowing in advance if things are about to go south.  And even if you never go to parties and don't drink, things can still go south.  This is not a "Just say no" or "Don't give in to peer pressure" thing, despite what my mother thinks.  I'm very good at doing both those things, but it came at a price.   I missed out on a lot of fun and probably delayed my own social development by avoiding parties in high school.  To those of you who knew me in high school or freshman year of college, I'm sorry for the times I was judgemental.

I bellieve Chrisine Blasey Ford.  I believe Debbie Ramirez.  I believe all of my friends and acquaintances and strangers who are now coming forward with their own stories. 

* We didn't have a TV at my mom's house when I was a tween/teen, so my TV watching was limited to when we stayed over at my Dad's place or at friends' house.  Perhaps this made me less subject to pop culture, and I am kind of shocked by how much I did absorb.

RIP Ghost Cat, 2004 (?) - 2018

I was the angel of death for Emma, aka Ghost Cat, today.  I caught her and put her in the cat carrier, and then drove my parents when they took her to the vet to be out to sleep.  I held her as the vet injected her with the medications.  Prior to that, I was the one who gently told my dad that she seemed to be in more pain and in worse shape than Luna or Rugrat ever were, and tried to nudge him towards the decision to put her to sleep. I feel kind of guilty, although I think I did the right thing.
I first met Emma sometime between 2004-2008.  I don't really remember when.  She was a ghostly presence on the fence.  At first I'd just catch glimpses of her, so I started to call her Ghost Cat.  She was off-white with a lot of grey in her coat, and was an odd combination of torbie, siamese, and possibly a trace of ragdoll.  She was somewhere in between a long and short haired cat.  Emma was beautiful and funny looking at the same time, but I didn't get a close look at her for many years.  Once she became slightly less shy, she became Luna's bete noir and Luna kept her out of the yard. 
After I moved to Ithaca and my dad moved into my Sunnyvale house, Emma had the yard to herself.  Free of her nemesis Luna, Emma (short for nemesis) became my dad's outside cat and eventually his inside cat.
Rather than being a ghostly presence, Emma was a strange, quirky, talkative cat who was a complete flea-magnet.  She hated other cats and loved my dad, who spoiled her.  Once she warmed up to us, she also became fond of me and my brother and liked to sleep on my bed and keep me awake with her scratching.
Emma was old and her kidneys were failing.  In the last two months she developed a large growth on her neck which interfered with her breathing and eating, and this week she seemed to be a few days away from complete kidney failure.  I won't go into the details, but even in the few days I was here in CA she went downhill a lot.  I recognized the behaviors and symptoms I had seen in Luna and Rugrat in the last few weeks of their lives.  I did not think she had long to live, but Emma was a tough little honey badger and might've lived another day or week.  It was hard to see her suffer like that.
RIP Ghost Cat, forever haunting my yard.

Me, Too

The #MeToo hastag/post is circulating on the interwebs now to show how common sexual assault and harrassment is.  I haven't posted yet, mostly due to my own baggage, and also because I've been very lucky and have not experienced anything serious or particularly traumatic, and don't want clueless people to ask me about it and say "Oh, that's not so bad" and then use that to minimize others' experiences.
However, the fact remains that many men do not experience the same incidents, however minor, or they think they're harmless.  So, without further ado, here is my list, or at least the parts that were noteworthy enough that I remember them.
#MeToo because of two flashers, one funny (age 13) and one scary (age 24 or so)
#MeToo because of random gropers, frotteurs, and wolfwhistlers
#MeToo  because a random guy in a car grabbed my ass when I was riding my bike in a lot of traffic, age 13 or 14
#MeToo because one of the older neighbor kids used to tickle torture me at age 3 or 4 and his dad laughed about it and never intervened (Serious question - do people tickle torture little boys, or is it mostly little girls because we're socialized not to attack and bite someone if they do something like that?)
#MeToo because in my freshman dorm one of the guys entered the womens' bathroom to borrow soap one time when I was showering and then looked into the shower to see who was in there
#MeToo because I had to share an office with a creeper for a few months until I asked my boss for an office transfer.  (Side note - I did not tell my boss he was a creeper, and instead emphasized that he was impacting my productivity by talking on the phone all the time.  Bonus points for my boss for realizing the guy was a creeper and pulling some strings to let me move ASAP, and negative points for the creeper's boss for knowing he was a creeper and putting him in my office anyway, despite the fact that there were only a few women at the company at the time.)
#MeToo because a few creepy guys tried to get my to get in their cars and go for a ride with them when I was out running in high school.  I was 14 at the time.
#MeToo because the lab asshole during my postdoc kept putting bikini babe screensavers up on the lab's computers and then threw a hissy fit when we finally got fed up and replaced it with some good old fashioned beefcake pictures

See - as I said it's pretty minor compared to what a lot of people have been though.  THIS IS BECAUSE I AM FORTUNATE* and not because of anything else.  Not because of what I was wearing, not because of how I looked*, not because of what I did, not because of my perma resting bitch face and not because of how I was raised. 

As an extra aside, a quadruple kick in the nuts to all the guys who harassed 13-14 year old me, since that was the majority of my "stranger danger" harassment.  Kudos to my mom for telling me that creepers are out there and that many of them target young teens since young teens are less experienced in avoiding them or shutting them down.  Double kudos to her for never saying anything about what I wore or doing any victim blaming.  (Sadly, she has since become judgemental in her old age)

* Seriously, fuck you, Mayim Bialek, for your editorial in the New York Times and for starring in the Big Bang Theory, which trivializes/humorizes a lot of creepy nerd behavior.  You didn't have to deal with the "casting couch" because you were fortunate and also because you took a hiatus from the film industry while you were in your late teens and 20's.  It has nothing to do with how you look.

Cook's Illustrated Boston Baked Beans (and Old Biddy's Maple Syrup Beans)

I was very excited when Cook's Illustrated, the Boston based purveyors of cooking geekery, published a recipe for a faster cooking version of the beans with no hipster ingredients, as well as a recipe for brown bread.  I'm gluten free again since my knee has been bothering me, so I did not make the bread.
As with most Cook's Illustrated recipes, there are a few tricks and secret ingredients.  The trick here is to soak the beans in salt water for at least 8 hrs, and then do a combination of cooking it in the oven and on the stove.  This reduces the cooking time to appx. 3.5 hours instead of all day.  You're still fighting with acidic ingredients (brown sugar and molasses) but the salted soak brings a lot of bean softening firepower.  The secret ingredient is a little bit of soy sauce for umani notes and depth.  Other than that, there are no hard to find ingredients, no wasted beer, minimal active time and no time consuming hacks.  There is even a discussion of bean blowout, which isn't nearly as funny as it should be. When I take over Cook's Illustrated I will be sure to include a lot more fart jokes.

Cook's Illustrated Boston Baked Beans, now with more fart jokes

1 lb navy beans, picked over and rinsed
1 1/2 tbsp salt

6 oz salt pork, sliced into 3 pieces
1 onion, halved
1/2 cup molasses*
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp dried mustard
1/2 tsp pepper
1 bay leaf

*use maple syrup instead of molasses for a different flavor

Combined dried beans with 2 qt water and 1.5 tbsp salt.  Let it sit at least 8 hours or overnight

Preheat oven to 300F.  Rinse and drain beans and transfer to large dutch oven (because of course you need a dutch oven for this...).  Add salt pork, molasses, brown sugar, soy sauce, dried mustard, pepper, and bay leaf.  Add 1 quart water.  It should cover the beans by appx 1/2 inch.  Add more if needed.  Bring mix to a boil.  Cover and put it in the oven for 2 hours.  After 1 hour, stir it around and add enough water to cover beans, if necessary.  After 2 hours, remove cover and cook for another hour.  Scrape down sides and remove onion, bay leaf, and salt pork.  Give them to the person in your household who wants to eat them.

The beans came out pretty well, and I really liked how hands off the recipe is. They reminded me of the baked beans they served at brunch at an Irish pub in Boston, so I even ate some for breakfast. They were sweet and had good flavor.  They retained their shape almost too well - no bean blowout. Due to the lack of bean blowout, the Dutch oven was easy to clean.... All fart jokes aside, I miss the slight thickening effect from some blowout. 

We really liked them, so in the interest of science I made another batch two days later.  This time I substituted dark maple syrup for the molassses.  They were much mellower and less Beano was needed.  I will probably use bacon for the maple syrup ones next time.

Dutch Oven Bean Blowout Report: low in the recipe, high in the Old Biddy household. Get your Beano for these bad boys!

Easy Quinoa Salad

I haven't stopped cooking, but I have been slacking on my blogging for the last couple of years.  Anyway, during that time I've discovered a lot of recipes that have become standbys. Here is one

Quinoa Salad with Feta, Cucumbers and Tomatoes

1 1/2 cups quinoa, washed well
2 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt

1 cucumber, chopped
8 oz cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 cup vinaigrette (make you own or use store-bought)*

6-8 oz feta cheese, cubed or crumbled

Combine vegetables, garlic, and vinaigrette.  Allow mix to sit in fridge overnight.  (If you're pressed for time you can skip this step) 

Cook quinoa until all liquid has been absorbed.  It will be soft but not mushy.  Transfer to large bowl and let it cool to lukewarm.  Add vegetable/vinaigrette mixture and stir gently to combine.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Chill in fridge.  Before serving,  add feta cheese.  It tastes better if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

* When I make my own vinaigrette I use a combination of lemon juice, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and sometimes green onions or chives.  It's a forgiving recipe so it is fine with store bought Italian dressing too.

Adulting and Emotional Labor

This is an old post which sat in my 'drafts' box for a long time, but I'm killing time and blogging now that my writer's block has been beaten in to submission.

If you haven't done so already I highly recommend checking out the Metafilter megadocument on emotional labor.  Once you're done reading it, let me know, and we can start making plans to go live on Crone Island.  Well, not really, but it got me thinking a lot about it, because up until fairly recently I did not know what emotional labor was, and it's actually a huge portion of how I spend my day, if you include what I do at work.

For the TL:DR version of things, emotional labor, as colloquially defined by feminists in terms of people's daily lives, covers a lot of ground but gets lumped into the "second shift" of stuff people do.  The "I want a wife" post summarizes it in a nutshell.  Some examples include buying groceries, cleaning, cooking dinner, making doctor appointments, sending birthday cards to grandma, going to parent teacher conferences, helping the kids with homework, etc, etc.  I'm going to lump all of this boring stuff into what I call "adulting."  The rest is more subjective, but includes offering emotional support for spouses/lovers/friends, subjecting one's own needs for others, remembering everyone else's preferences and schedules, etc.    I'll call this emotional labor.

So the core discussion is that adulting and emotional labor are work, take time, use up mental bandwidth and are tiring.  On average, women have been socialized from birth to do these things more than men have.  This often leads to situations where the person doing more of the adulting and emotional labor is frazzled, stressed, etc, and the person who's not doing it has more free time and doesn't get what all the fuss is about.

I'm really good at adulting.  That doesn't mean I always like it, even though the perks are good.  I was really happy in grad school when I could just work in the lab and hang out with my friends.  I lived in a dorm and never cooked.  I did not have a car.  I did not own any furniture and packed all my stuff into a friend's truck when I moved to NC.  I called myself a minimalist, but in reality I just didn't have to do a lot of adulting.  As I've gotten older, I've spent an increasing amount of time adulting.  Gotta go refinance that mortgage.  Gotta talk to my financial advisor.  Gotta go to the dentist twice a year and the doctor once a year for a checkup.  Gotta clean the house, gotta take my car in for an oil change, gotta take the cat to the vet, gotta send that form in to HR, etc etc.  One of my students graduated and then stayed in town for a few weeks before starting her real job.  During this time, she got her driver's license, dealt with the movers, set up a new bank account, located and rented an apartment from 750 miles away, etc.  She came in and told my boss and I that she didn't know how we dealt with that stuff - it was exhausting!  We laughed and told her it only got worse, but there were some advantages too.  In my current job, I do a lot of what I will call research adulting.  I like fixing instruments and making sure the big fancy robot works well, but hate ordering stuff, so I outsource as much as possible to the senior students and departmental folks, but nonetheless the buck stops here.  This is different from my previous job, where we had lots of technicians/facilities people/IT support and they kept things humming really smoothly.  I'm not going to lie - I really miss that aspect of my old job.

I'm ok at emotional labor.  I consciously try to be a good friend, but know that I have my faults.  I'm introverted and although I love to talk to y'all on the phone, I have this weird introvert phobia of picking up the phone and making a call, and I rely too heavily on text/email/Facebook.  Joe is an extrovert and is much better at emotional labor than I am, although I am better at adulting. 

In my mid-forties, I suddenly was doing a lot more adulting and emotional labor than I'd ever done before, due to the combination of job stuff and Joe 'guesting' at my house 95% of the time but not officially living there.  I was surprised by how scatterbrained it made me feel.  Things got better once I started delegating more at work and Joe officially moved in so I got out of host mode and he got out of guest mode.   We're continuing to get better at playing to our strengths and dividing up the adulting.  He reminds me to call my mother.  I remind him to get his oil changed.  Anyway,  I'm over the hump now, but for about a year it was challenging.  When I discovered the metafilter document it was my own 'Eureka' moment. I realized that it wasn't just my imagination or a failure on my part - this stuff is draining and bandwidth consuming for everyone. 

I had a very busy month at work. I had a student visiting to run experiments on the robot, and we had a jam-packed schedule.  Soon after that ended, it was research proposal time with a big dose of election distraction mixed in.  At the outset, I decided I was going to minimize the amount of adulting I did.  Joe helped a lot with household stuff, and for the rest of it I just gave myself permission to put it on hold unless I wanted to procrastinate.  I'm still fried from the proposal, but it was a huge help to put most of the adulting on hold.