Celebrity Hump Island

My friends and I have a bunch of dirty games we play when we're sitting around drinking. One of them, which is not so much a game but a running conversation, is Celebrity Hump Island. Many people I know have a Celebrity Husband or Celebrity Wife - they've struck deals with their real husbands/wives that if Celebrity X ever shows up on the doorstep for them, then they'll say, 'Honey, it's been a good run. Take care of the kids. See you later.'



But leave it to Prurient Interest to raise the bar a bit. Her creation - Celebrity Hump Island - is a little more fun. And a lot more bawdy. It's your running list of five celebrities with whom you'd like to be stranded indefinitely on a desert island. And you, uh, don't choose the celebrities for your island because you think they'd be great cooks or sparkling conversationalists.



There can be only five people on your Celebrity Hump Island at any time, so if you want to add someone new, then you've got to kick someone else off. There are three men that have been on my Island for awhile:

• Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movies - I love scruffy. I love it. The stubbly beard, blue eyes, longish hair...I'm done. Cooked. I love it. There's that scene in The Two Towers where Aragorn comes charging into King Theoden's court. When Aragorn throws open those doors and staggers in, it makes my heart skip.


• Johnny Depp - Okay, so maybe Willy Wonka and Edward Scissorhands weren't the most attractive roles he's ever had, but in just about everything else - especially in the Pirates of Caribbean movies as Capt. Jack Sparrow - Depp is smokin' hot. And in real life? He is one of the hottest dads and family men around.


• Brad Pitt - Has there ever been a more perfect looking male specimen who lived? The blue eyes, the jaw, the smile, the hair, the style. And again, he possesses copious amounts of the hotness that comes from being a down-to-earth, super-involved, great dad. I hope he and Angelina keep having kids so I can keep watching him play with them and take them to school.

A few months ago, I decided that I needed to boot someone off (sorry, Lenny Kravitz) to make room for

• Justin Timberlake - He brought sexy back for sure. I love the fact that he's clearly very talented but doesn't take himself too seriously. That, in and of itself, is pretty attractive. The fact that he's hot doesn't hurt either. The fact that he makes pop music that reminds me of the best stuff Michael Jackson ever cranked out just ices the cake. I love that he's so happy all the time and loves his mom. It's cute.

And in the past couple of days, I've had to shake my list up again. While it gives me some level of pain to dump Jon Stewart, this week was the right time, as two very important things happened this week.

• Daniel Radcliffe turned 18 on Monday, and I saw the new Harry Potter movie on Wednesday. The first makes him legal, and the second made me notice that the actor playing Harry has become a man. On screen, he's got a jaw. And arm muscles. And those pictures promoting Equus? Molly might have been freaked out, but I had to fan myself a bit. (Maybe it was the scruffy beard.) There's no denying that Dan has lost his boyishness. Also, he's apparently got a great sense of humor, which is always attractive.

So there you have it. Yes, I'm robbing the cradle a bit with Daniel Radcliffe, but I don't care.

Who's on your Celebrity Hump Island?

Revisiting the CSA/Summer Eating

A couple of months ago, I wrote about our experience so far with belonging to a community supported agriculture (CSA). Basil and I were a little iffy on the amount of produce we were getting for the cost, though everything was tasty.

Well, the tide has turned. It is summer bounty time for farmers everywhere, and we patient CSA members are reaping the rewards of some hard-working folks on the Northern Neck.

For the past few weeks, we've gotten berries, zucchini and yellow squash. In early summer, we got cucumbers and whole heads of bok choy, as well as swiss chard, peas and garlic scapes. For two weeks straight, we got whole heads of cabbage. Lately, we've been getting generous amounts of corn, tomatoes and garlic, as well as a whole watermelon for each of the past two weeks. This week, we got green peppers and eggplant for the first time.

And I'm not talking one of each item. We've gotten either four or six ears of corn and two big beefsteak tomatoes each week, plus little bags of the sweetest cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten. Zucchini and squash always come in pairs, like little vegetables boarding Noah's Ark in a Saxton Freymann/Joost Elffers book, as did the cucumbers when they were in season. Petunia and I have been filling our arms each week, struggling under the weight of a small watermelon, a bag of heavy vegetables and a pint of berries.

It's amazing. I marvel that we're getting this food for about $35 a week - a bargain, given that it's all local and fresh and most of it's organic. Our misgivings about the CSA have been wiped away, and we've signed up for a fall share, salivating at the thought of apples, pears, squash, potatoes, pumpkins and arugula.

I have a feeling that we'll stick with this even through the winter and for the long haul, knowing the bounty that can come.

And speaking of bounty, it's everywhere right now. We haven't had to supplement our CSA much, but it's hard to pass up things like fresh cherries. I've been baking with cherries lately, and I owe a debt to the OXO cherry pitter, which makes unbelievably quick, neat work of pitting cherries.

A couple of weekends ago, I tried my hand at Bon Appetit's Lattice-Topped Triple-Cherry Pie, and ooooohhhmygod was it good. It's true that you can only get the preserved Morello cherries at Trader Joe's (Whole Foods didn't even have them), but they were worth the special trip. I always use the basic pie crust recipe from the Joy of Cooking, using half butter and half shortening, and that works great.

Last night, in anticipation of some friends coming for dinner tonight, I took advantage of the bag of cherries sitting in the fridge and made a Fresh Cherry Tart from Everyday Food, my absolute favorite, never-fail cooking magazine. We haven't eaten that yet, but my mother-in-law (who is staying with us for the week) and I tried the leftovers on the spoon and in the bowl and both agreed that um, YEAH, that'll do.

I also made Chocolate-Mint Puddings from Cooking Light, because hey, if one dessert is good, then two is great, right? The mint was from the grocery store, but we have gotten plenty from the CSA this year, so I know it's in season. Again, my MIL and I only licked leftovers, but WOW. Highly recommend that one. I poured the pudding into individual ramekin dishes because I thought it would be prettier than scooping it out of a big bowl. It's got just a hint of mint without being overpowering. Even Basil liked what he tasted, and he doesn't often go for chocolate-mint, even when I make these awesome cookies at Christmas time.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is...Get thee to a farmers market or a grocery store with a good produce section. This is the time of year to buy the good stuff!

I leave you with an Epicurious recipe for Bok Choy Gratin that has become a favorite in our household and will be on my buffet at Thanksgiving this year. If you've got anything good and seasonal for summer, please hit me back with some recipe love.

Exit Extro, Enter Intro

Growing up, I always had a reputation for being an extrovert, a joiner. I always had these big slumber parties for my birthday (shared with my sister, whose birthday was a week before mine), where I'd invite 5 or 6 of my closest friends. I rode bikes and roller skated around the neighborhood, and I became a bit of a tomboy because I lived in a neighborhood with all boys. I figured out that if I had a set of Constructicons and knew the rules of touch football, I'd be allowed to play.

In junior high, I made it as an extra in the school musical and made the J.V. volleyball team. By high school, I was adding extracurriculars left and right. I was junior class president and yearbook co-editor. I was president of the speech and drama team. I was a member of nine different clubs or teams during my senior year.

In college, I was a party girl. I went out three or four nights a week. I went to bars and parties all the time. I stayed up late. I hung out at the campus coffee house and on College Green all the time. I worked for the student newspaper and served on Student Senate. I took a non-credit bartending class, and my friend Greg and I gave each other piano lessons and put on a concert for our friends. I was not home very much.

When Basil and I started dating, there was some tension. The weekend would roll around and he'd be figuring out what movie we'd watch and what we'd cook for dinner, and I'd be plotting and planning with friends about what bar we'd go to. We had, uh, different ideas about how to spend our free time, to say the least.

I'll never forget the New Year's Eve that we agreed to spend in Columbus at one of Basil's friends' house. She was having a party, and so I agreed. Well...there were about ten people there. All of Basil's usual crew of friends. No one else. My visions of squeezing through a crowd of people to get to the keg were dashed. This would be a night of milkshakes and movies.

I got really, really, really drunk that night.

Eventually, though, Basil and I reached a happy medium of staying in-time and going out-time. I grew to appreciate quiet nights at home, and he came to see that going out to a bar with friends would be fun, too.

Now that we have Petunia, in-time and out-time mean different things. There's sitting around the house - reading, coloring, playing on the computer, watching TV, cooking together, playing dress up or dollhouse, gardening, playing the piano, etc. And there's going out - to a museum, to a restaurant, to a party, to a festival, etc.

And I've realized that I'm more of an introvert than I ever thought. I think that I was always on the go when I was younger because I was unhappy. I had a shitty home life, and I was running. In college, I was rebelling against my upbringing and acting on my low self-esteem.

But now, I have a happy home life. I love my family desperately. I like to sit around the house and do nothing on the weekends and week nights. I could spend a whole weekend playing the piano, cooking, doing a jigsaw puzzle and reading and be perfectly happy. If Basil and I had one complaint about our beach trip, it's that we didn't plan enough time for us to sit around and do nothing.

I still like people, and I (almost) always have fun at parties, festival, dinners and cookouts. But I no longer feel the need to always fill my life up with things to do or places to go. Now there are times when I'm the one who wants to stay home, and Basil wants to go out. Ah, the irony.

And the appreciation for solitude and stillness is something that we're teaching Petunia, too. She is very good at playing by herself. When we all come home at the end of a work/school day, she will go in the family room or up to her room to hang out by herself until dinner is ready. She falls into her world of imagination and paper, or else she plays with her dolls. Or builds a nest out of her blankets. Or 'reads' books. Or dresses herself up as a princess.

Sure, there are times when she wants someone to play with her. She's a kid. She loves her parents, and she likes attention. But Petunia has a need for alone time to keep her batteries charged, and I never thought she'd get that from me.

This weekend promises to be a quiet one - mostly. We're having some friends for a happy dinner tonight (congrats, Nathan!) and dinner with family on Sunday. But I'm looking forward to some serious sitting-around-the-house time where I can try to finish a book or work on the fingering for those pesky runs in Clair de Lune.

Last night, Basil and I made cookies together, and there is nothing I love more than just hanging out in the kitchen with my man. Unless, of course, Petunia is in there baking with us. And then it's pretty much perfection.

On the Water

Hooray, hooray, hooray for the beach. Boy, did we need that.

We had a great time with FS and Yum and their offspring, as well as our friend J.Pro and her daughter (even sans their patriarch, who had to hang around DC and work). We ate a lot and drank a lot and watched some fireworks. We took the kids to see Ratatouille (very cute, recommend it) and saw a lifesaving competition. We made sand castles, and Basil and I swam in the ocean. We hiked sand dunes and flew a kite.

But I think the most fun for us Valentines was kayaking on the Currituck Sound.

We left the vaguely trashy, commercial stretches of the central beaches to head up to Corolla (pronounced cah-RAHL-uh) one morning, which turned into a mini-day trip, much to the consternation of FS's Son1, who missed Petunia dearly. Basil and I had decided on the way up that we'd try kayaking as a family.

Basil is an Eagle Scout and former Boy Scout camp counselor who taught rowing and did lifeguarding. He has spent plenty of time on the water. Me? Not so much. Well, I take that back. I spent a lot of time on the water as a kid - on houseboats, cabin cruisers, Seadoos, etc. My dad had a boat for awhile, and he had friends with boats. So we would drive down to Lake Cumberland a couple of times each summer and hang out on the water. But until five years ago, I had never been in a kayak, canoe or rowboat.

During our beach trip in 2002, when all of us were childless and had disposable income, we decided to fill our days with things other than body shots and blender drinks. Some of us went kayaking. I can't remember the company we used or at what milepost we shoved in. But it wasn't a very scenic trip.

First of all, Basil and I were in a double kayak, aka the 'divorce kayak.' I'm a control freak, but Basil actually has experience on the water. Both of us were trying to power and steer our craft at the same time, which was...uh...frustrating.

Second, we kayaked through some yucky swamp of a place. I know it was on the soundside of the Banks, and they called it 'marsh,' but it was definitely shallow water with lots of tall grasses and lizards and stuff. No stretch of open water in sight.

The good news is that our kayaking tour guide was one of the creators of the Myachi. He and his stoner friend came over to 'party' with us one night, though it really ended up being a bunch of us just sitting around drinking. As usual. Except we had two guys who had created and marketed a 'hand sack' drinking with us. (We saw Myachis for sale this year at Kitty Hawk Kites, so apparently, the last laugh is on us for making fun of them.)

For our kayaking adventure this year, we didn't make any reservations in advance. We just grabbed some free advertising rags before we left, and I read ads while Basil drove north on Highway 12. We thought we'd start with the Corolla Kayak Company. The guy in the shop/tour guide was super nice, no pressure and seemed genuinely interested in helping us find a way to get out on the water to enjoy ourselves. We settled on a single for me and double for Basil and Petunia, and we declined a 2- or 3-hour tour so we could just 'self-guide' for an hour. Not knowing how Petunia would react, we didn't want to commit to anything for very long.

It was awesome. The Currituck Sound is beautiful. Wide and peaceful, it was nothing like the swampy marsh we had paddled in Nags Head five years earlier.

We took a leisurely paddle up to the Whalehead Club, and then paddled out in the open water a bit. We saw giant grasses swaying in the water, rooted in the bottom of the sound that was deeper than the length of a kayak paddle. The sun was shining, the temperature was incredibly mild and the sound was not crowded at all.

Petunia loved it. She never freaked out. She never wanted to get out. She never wanted to take her PFD off. She never wanted to move around. She just sat quietly, watching the world go by. I loved watching her be so still and soak in the world.

Next year, we'll definitely go out for a longer tour and maybe even combine a kayak tour with a trip to the four-wheel drive area. One year, probably when Petunia gets older, we'll definitely do some sea kayaking.

In the meantime, I think we want to find somewhere to kayak locally. Heck, maybe we just need to buy a kayak or two and get out on the water ourselves. It's so nice to find something that all three of us genuinely love doing that we've got to find a way to do it more.

Surprisingly...Amazing Accurate

Ummm....yeah. Pretty much what Buzz said.

More blogging after I sober up from our beach vacation.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody.