New Thing #6: Bonsai!

Early Wednesday morning … I sprouted my first bonsai tree! Let not my dorkish plant obsession dilute the piss and vinegar in your day unless you have succeeded in germinating anything from seed. It’s a big deal.

For Valentine’s Day, Said Guy gave me a Miniature Morning Dawn Redwood Forest he bought at Trifecta, an awesome gift and flower shop in SLC. No kidding, coworkers actually hung around my desk to admire the flower arrangements he’s sent to me from Trifecta, and the response, rather than “Awww!” was “WOW.” I’m sooo not picky about flowers (in an attempt to be cool, I bought a bunch of carnations at a junior high dance and ate them), and even I could tell that their flowers were awesome. If you want to seem like a discerning dude, buy your flowers and presents here (and tell Lindsay and Pam that Erin said hi).

Anyway, the bonzai kit came from their gift shop, and it’s made by Potting Shed Creations, of Troy, Idaho. According to the description, the Morning Dawn Redwood was only known as a fossil until a Chinese botanist rediscovered it in the 1940s.

I’m so excited for it to grow up! I’ve got more than 40 plants (I know, I know), but no bonsais and nothing that was previously thought to be extinct.

Yay for green sprouts and Chinese botanists!

New Thing #2: But Donna Reed was so hot.

Despite voluminous evidence that I have no place in a kitchen, I periodically go Donna Reed crazy and try to cook food.

This usually means Indian cuisine. Admittedly, not very Donna Reed. But somehow a 26-item ingredient list manages to scream “Delicious!” while muffling “You’ll be washing dishes for the next 30 hours.” Kind of like a 1950s sitcom.

So on Friday, my free day, I attempted a banquet of samosas with cilantro chutney, paneer with peas and a Kashmiri pistachio chicken stew. I wrote out a schedule to have it all done by the time Said Guy walked through the door. My 2010 version of Donna Reed.

It took about two hours to figure out how to puree cilantro. Another two hours dry-roasting and grinding spices. Another three hours peeling, chopping, dicing and mincing stuff. Another hour shelling pistachios with my now-finely-minced thumb.

At that point, I decided to just get the chicken done in time for dinner. It was surprising to me that a recipe for four people called for 3.5 lbs of chicken. But there it was: “3.5 lb. chicken or chicken pieces.”

I dirtied every pan in our cupboard trying to find one big enough to cook that much chicken. It was still a pink pile of blobbies when Said Guy got home from work to find the kitchen completely trashed, his little lady drenched in tears and salmonella, and nothing for supper.

He told me the 3.5-pound measurement includes bones, so I had basically doubled the recipe. He added ingredients to bring everything to proportion while I washed dishes.

About two hours later, he had rescued the chicken. A little bland, he conceded, but edible.

That’s when I decided to add some cumin.

I didn’t know the sprinkle cap was removable when I opened the canister and gave it a shake.

About 15 tablespoons of cumin dumped onto the salvaged Kashmir chicken.

Said Guy didn’t have much to say for the rest of the night.

But I awoke Saturday with the will to redeem myself. I finished the samosa filling the day before and just had to make the pastry dough for the wrappers. It looked simple enough: flour, salt, oil, water. Roll flat, cut into circles.

And here’s how Friday’s folly turned into Saturday’s success: I used my rolling pin for the first time.

The samosas are fine and ready to be cooked. The kitchen remains in one piece. Said Guy got home in time to actually see me use a rolling pin.

So I’ll never be Donna Reed.  I can still learn to roll out some pastry dough at an angle strategic to viewer enjoyment.

That has to be worth something.

Lookie!

Awhile ago, Andrew Sullivan invited his Daily Dish readers to submit pictures taken through their windows. For fun, Said Guy sent one from our front window.

Then Sullivan and some other people picked 190 windows to feature in a photo book that goes chronologically through the day.

Click to Page 196 here to see Said Guy’s view!

The Christmas spirit and its chilly, industrial glow

All year long I’ve known this was coming.

I made an effort to brace myself. I tried positive association exercises and other little mind tricks.

But there’s really no way to ready oneself for the glaring, icy, soulless, industrial frigidity of Said Guy’s guilt-easing, energy-efficient, fluorescent-grey LED Christmas lights.

I first saw them last year, about three months into our relationship. Back when it was his Christmas tree, not mine.

Since then, we’ve moved in together. Dog and cat had to coexist. Messy and tidy. Candy machine and farmer’s market. Heart and mind. Swirly and straight.

We are very different. I am warm, feely, loud, bubbly. Said Guy is cool, collected, quiet, thoughtful. We shift out of profile sometimes, but we’re still pretty different. In a year of sharing space, we’ve each brought to this relationship things that will always take effort to reconcile. Important things. Things that make us who we are.

Those Christmas lights were not about to make the cut.

We decorated the tree this weekend. Said Guy provided a cup of spiked coffee to help me cope with his enthusiasm for matching blue and orange ornaments, and I rushed my Christmas box upstairs. I fished out my three strands of regular gold lights, hoping to pre-empt the LED heinousness.

Only one worked.

I tested bulbs for an hour before I woefully gave up and plugged in the LEDs. The living room filled with a steely glow. I could practically hear the mosquito zappers buzzing.

I wrapped the lights up the tree until Said Guy stopped me.

“I usually begin at the top,” he said, unwinding my work and restarting up high. He passed a handful of the strand to my side. I pulled it around and tossed it back to his side of the tree. It hung in a tangled pile from his fingers.

“And I had wrapped it to make it easier to pass around,” he said.

I could see there was no use fighting it.

From here on out, the Christmas lights in my life would be … correct. Organized. Environmentally friendly. They would probably function for more than one holiday season.

Said Guy left me with the ornaments and went out to sweep the snow. His boxes of blue and orange baubles went mostly unopened. Prominently displayed instead are school-craft-fair purchases and souvenir ornaments, etched with dates and “To Erin. Love, [relative].”  I topped the tree with a rusty star I bought from a roadside Christmas tree lot in Michigan. Said Guy’s commercial, shiny wire thing stayed in the storage tub.

He popped his head in.

“I see you replaced my postmodern, metallic star.”

Admittedly, mine looks a little incongruous with the neon lights.

But somewhere between heartfelt rust and the sheen of design, Christmas intrudes. I think we can get used to it.

Related posts:

• How to become someone you hate in 6 frames
• Saying you hate Christmas music doesn’t make you sound as smart as you think it does
• Mrs. Claus works at the Wells Fargo parking ramp
• The high cost of snooping through the boyfriend’s stuff
  
• Meeting Lamppost Lady

Picture Pages Friday: My front yard

Just futzing around one night in the light of Said Guy’s work lamp.

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• Whoosh!