My husband is having dinner elsewhere this evening, which can only mean one thing: I am in complete control of the temperature. As a couple, I'm sure we fit neatly into many Married People Cliches, but none so perfectly as the classic battle over the thermostat. In classic gendered fashion, he likes it so cold that you start to panic when you're changing clothes or fresh out of the shower, the threat of death from exposure taking hold as your skin turns pallid and clammy; whereas I like it a reasonable temperature, one at which you don't really feel the air around you one way or the other -- you're just pleasantly there, and no ice particles are forming in your nostrils.
If he were to come home right now, he would stand in the doorway, aghast, and shout, "WHY ISN'T THE AIR ON? MY GOD, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?" That's right. It's, oh, about 85 outside, down from a high in the sultry 90s at midday, and I am sitting here with the window open and the ceiling fan on. And I'm loving every minute of it. Granted, I had the A/C on for a bit when I first walked in the door, because I was sweating like a farm animal in my tropical-weight wool suit, but once I got the temperature to a comfortable level, I turned it off, cracked the window and put on the overhead fan. Ahhhhh. No jet engine compressor sounds, no snap in the air, just a gentle breeze wafting the temperate air around me.
I think gazpacho helps -- it's like air conditioning from the inside out, and I had a heaping bowl for dinner, accompanied by a refreshing ginger ale/white cranberry juice mocktail. I think you all need to make this gazpacho. This recipe yields enough for two people to have a bowl's worth for about 3-4 nights straight (and it gets better by the day as the flavors...I don't know, coalesce in the fridge). I like to serve it as a side dish to whatever we're having, or make it the main course with a salad or a small panini for a light summery dinner. It's super easy:
Chop up 1 lb of ripe tomatoes.
Tear up about half to 3/4 of a loaf of French bread (the amount of bread you use dictates how thick/hearty the soup is -- I like to use maybe 2/3-ish of about a football-sized loaf; you can use sourdough, baguette, or a plain soft loaf).
Peel and chop a cucumber.
Chop 1/2 of a red pepper and 1/2 of a yellow or orange pepper.
Throw everything in a large mixing bowl.
Sprinkle in some cumin (maybe 1/2 teaspoon or more) and minced garlic (don't be shy; I probably use 1 1/2 tablespoons), plus salt and pepper.
Pour 4 cups of water, 1 cup of olive oil and about 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar over everything, then give it a stir.
Cover the bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes.
Throw as much as you can in your blender (it takes two batches for me to blend it all) and put it on the "chop" setting; let it run until it looks soupy and the veggies are well-blended.
Refrigerate for several hours before serving. You can toss some ice cubes in before you serve it to add to the chill.
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Make it now! I command you. It is delicious. I wanted to bathe in it when I got home tonight.
Finally, apropos of nothing, today as I was waiting for the subway I thought of that Little House episode when that crazy neighbor woman hides Laura in her basement because she thinks Laura is her dead daughter. And every time she looks at Laura, she sees this hazy vision of her daughter, and she unbraids Laura's hair to make it more like the dead girl's. Remember that? That episode FREAKED me OUT. It gave me nightmares. LITTLE HOUSE. It was extremely disturbing. So was the one where Laura steals the music box from Nellie Olsen's house, and she dreams that she gets sent to jail and it goes all nightmarish with the distorted judge's voice and Laura crawling across the floor in rags with a tin cup. That one messed me up, too. I couldn't watch it or I would be unable to sleep for days.
Seriously, what was going ON with that show? I mean, they basically disregarded the books entirely aside from the characters' names (hello, Pa did not even have a BEARD, which was an OUTRAGE of epic proportions), and then they went into these dark, frightening psychological plots sometimes and it was just ALL WRONG. Wrong I say! I feel like there should be some redress for this. Some network should be required to make a series that is 100% loyal to the Little House books. Can you imagine what Laura's progenitors thought of the show? If *I* find it horrifying, I would think they would have been beyond incensed.
But maybe that's me. And maybe they didn't take these things quite so seriously. They probably did not have hand-sewn calico dresses and bonnets for re-enactment purposes, nor did they attend historically accurate living history camps.
I...don't really know where I was going with that. I do know that at least one scene in the books still haunts me -- not in a nightmare sort of way, but in a heartbreak kind of way. It's when some people come to visit the Ingalls -- neighbors or something or other; I think it was in On the Banks of Plum Creek, but it might have been By the Shores of Silver Lake -- and they have this bratty little girl, and Laura lets the little girl play with her rag doll, and when the family is getting ready to leave the girl won't let Laura have the doll back, and everyone tells Laura to be a big girl and let her have the doll, and Laura is sad but she puts on a brave face and lets it go and then -- THEN! -- later that night she and Pa go out in the driving wind and rain/snow to collect wood or something, and there, in a deep puddle, is Laura's doll, discarded like so much trash, the dye from its red mouth bleeding onto its fabric face and one of its button eyes missing.
I think that's one of the most tragic things I've ever read; just thinking about it makes my chest hurt. But then, I did always become a little too attached to my dolls and stuffed animals.
Carry on!
That is tragic and all, so I'll warm your heart with the story of the "lion who remembered".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiGKWoJi5qM
Posted by: CraigNY | July 22, 2008 at 08:01 PM
Long time lurker delurking to say WORD on the Little House commentary! I had totally forgotten the one about Laura in the basement - that was beyond weird for a primetime "family hour" show in the 70's. The one that always freaked me out was the one where Albert falls in love with Sylvia, the neighbor girl, who's raped by some stranger after she and Albert have their first kiss, father's predictably ashamed, feels like she's ruined, etc., and by the end, somehow, she's dead, but not before Albert's at her death bed, promising through choked sobs that he'll still marry her and they'll live happily ever after. OMG - it was RIVETING AND YET MUCHO DISTURBING. Just the thing when you're 10!
Posted by: Laura | July 22, 2008 at 08:52 PM
See, now I was going to say temperature control is just one more reason I should be glad I'm single, but then you got me all distracted with Little House! WORD on the creepy neighbor lady with the dead daughter one. That one haunted me for weeks, too. Glad I wasn't the only sensitive child out there. (Fantasy Island was the cause of many sleepless scary nights as well.)
As for the TV show not being true to the books, how about the mere fact that the whole series took place in Walnut Grove, when the Ingalls family didn't even have a house in Walnut Grove! Walnut Grove is a quick little day trip from Minneapolis, so I went there once, and it's shocking how much the town capitalizes on its tourist appeal, given that the only actual evidence of the real Ingallses there is a dent in the ground near the creek where their sod house used to be. (Walnut Grove is the setting for "On the Banks of Plum Creek," but I think that's it.)
And this concludes your Little House trivia for today. Carry on. :-)
Posted by: Stefanie | July 22, 2008 at 09:38 PM
Luckily, Ma fixed the poor doll for Laura. I read those books over and over and over when I was little. For a while I skipped the one about Almanzo, because he was a boy, but that's actually one of the best ones!
Posted by: Ms. Boombastic | July 22, 2008 at 10:13 PM
Huh, I didn't know traditional gender stereotypes had men liking it colder! My husband likes it much warmer than I do, and goes so far as to accuse me of being incapable of cooling myself like a normal mammal. :) I always blamed this on our different ancestry, though -- he's Persian, and I'm Dutch/British/French.
Posted by: Gwen | July 22, 2008 at 11:45 PM
I have never had gazpacho. The idea of cold soup is weird to me, but maybe I'll try it soon. You have tempted me.
Posted by: -R- | July 23, 2008 at 10:32 AM
That episode bothered me, too. What, we have to give somebody something we love JUST because they want it? Plus it reminded me of the time when I was a kid and we went swimming at the river with some friends of my parents from out of town, and they had an annoying little boy about my age. I had found a tiny little frog (toad?) among the rocks, and was holding it gently and admiring its wondrousness, when the little boy DEMANDED it. I refused to give it to him, but my parents made me, because he was "our guest," and he took the beautiful, delicate little thing and CRUSHED IT IN HIS FIST. I cried.
Posted by: lizgwiz | July 23, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Oh, how I loved those books. My mom read them to me before bed. I think you're idea is great. Maybe PBS will do a series.
As for the temperature wars, you sound like me. I, however, wait for my husband to take the dog on a walk and then I sneakily turn the A/C from the bone-chilling 72 degrees to the more comfortable 76 degrees. My biggest pet peeve is how cold my office gets. Why do they run the A/C so cold during the summer? I actually have a little heater under my desk, which I use only in the summer. Isn't that crazy? It's 90 degrees outside and here I am turning on a heater b/c they've got the A/C on so high that my lips are turning blue (and yes, my lips really do turn blue).
Posted by: KDA | July 23, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Like commenter Laura, the rape episode freaks me out to this day. I still know how that episode starts and will never watch it again (I rewatched it as an adult and was still completely freaked out). I would like to point out that the rapist wore a CLOWN MASK. How fucked up is that for a children's show?
I was also fascinated to learn that Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't die until 1957. She went from covered wagons to the Cold War! She practically saw the moon landing. Blows my mind.
Posted by: Lauren | July 23, 2008 at 11:46 AM
You crack me up...I watched and read most of the books but could not tell you much about them right now, this very day. Except the fact that I remember thinking how sad and mean Nellie was.
Posted by: Jakki | July 23, 2008 at 01:06 PM
Yikes, thanks for the warning! M. got the first season from Santa and has already requested future seasons--glad to know I will have to preview them--somehow I missed out on being scarred by the rape episode as a kid. That is just crazy.
I could be wrong and am too lazy to look it up--I *think* Laura's daughter Rose (or maybe her granddaughter?) in Vietnam in the 60s. Pretty cool, huh?
Posted by: Shannon | July 23, 2008 at 01:20 PM
One book that totally freaked me out at a child was "Remember Me" by Christopher Pike. Of course, it was intended to be scary, as the plotline was about a girl's death, but I really think it was TOO scary for the teenage age bracket!
:) Becky
http://www.stinkylemsky.typepad.com/
Posted by: Becky | July 23, 2008 at 01:42 PM
1. I am making that soup.
2. I blame the Little House tv plots on the seventies as a whole. That was one messed-up decade.
Posted by: Leah | July 23, 2008 at 02:59 PM
I totally remember that episode when Laura got locked in the root cellar by the crazy mom!! I don't remember the jail one though. I think I told you about the one that upset me out the most - when the blind school burned down and Hester Sue is holding Mary and Adam's baby and you can see her at the window engulfed in flames with no escape. Talk about damaging a young girl's psyche. Also, do you remember the one when Albert was addicted to heroin and Pa had to stay with him through withdrawal. I can still see Albert puking up white stuff. That definitely stayed with me.
I'm guessing if Laura's descendants got any money off the rights, then they weren't too upset about how the series strayed from the books!
Posted by: fatsella | July 23, 2008 at 09:03 PM
Ok, I have NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER of the rape episode. WTH? A RAPE on Little House. What was going ON in the 70s?
I also do not recall Albert being addicted to heroin. I actually think I may have stopped watching the show when Albert came along. Who WAS he, anyway?
Lizgwiz, I am going to be haunted by that story for a long time. OMG.
Stefanie -- they have a Laura Ingalls Wilder PAGEANT in Walnut Grove! And yes, using that as the location bothered me, too.
It ALL bothers me. THERE WERE NO CLOWN-MASKED RAPISTS IN THE LITTLE HOUSE BOOKS.
Posted by: Lawyerish | July 24, 2008 at 09:47 AM
Creepiest thing from my childhood was a movie called "Mr Sardonicus". I was about 10 when I saw it. After relating the tale of fear at a family reunion my best niece ever thoughtfully sent me the video for xmas. Took about 6 months for me to get up the courage to watch it. I did tho - daylight hours - and it only served to remind me that as a child it took a whole heck of a lot to scare me. Sat through the original Physco when noone else in my family could! Still proud of that particular accomplishment. BTW I don't think I will ever watch Mr Sardonicus again and will have to hide the DVD when the grandchildren visit. It still was able to freak me out!
Posted by: Sharon Jorgenson | July 24, 2008 at 12:24 PM
I read all the little house books but never watched the show until recently... and it is so wrong! How disgraceful to Mrs. Ingalls Wilder.
Posted by: rhea | July 25, 2008 at 01:07 AM
Love Little House on the Prarie! I would watch it every day after school. I remember thinking that I was very glad I didn't grow up in the "wilderness" "way back then"! Everything just seemed to be so hard. I would just cringe when a wagon wheel would come flying off! I liked the scenes in the barn the best, when a baby horse was born, etc. Not much bad seemed to happen in the barn :)
The soup sounds wonderful! Too bad I don't cook from scratch too often! Heather M.
Posted by: HeatherM | July 25, 2008 at 02:09 PM
My hubby loves it 40 below in our house as well, especially at night. I swear, I see penguins walking around the house in the dark.
I was wondering where you were going with the whole LHOTP stuff, but I DO remember that episode where she steals and flips out. That was such an odd show. The one I always remember is when the son was addicted to some drug. WTF?
Posted by: Danielle-lee | August 01, 2008 at 11:55 PM