Ireland #4:Crazy Lady Night

I'm not sure what night it's been on the past few trips, but on this one, it was night three. Monday night. Though we've been out of the house all day and for much of the night, we still get a bit stir crazy. This is just what happens here. There is always the initial Crazy Lady Nights, especially when my sister and I are there together.

At about 11:30 pm, after all the visitors have come and gone and I've drank as many cups of tea as my bladder can handle, we start to settle down - we put up our feet and turn on the television. Lo and behold - Working Girl is on. A million props to Working Girl, because on this night, it is officially the best movie ever made.

I cannot explain television in Ireland. One night you'll find yourself trying to get tired, so you turn on the TV and miraculously catch an episode of True Blood at 10 pm, followed by an episode of Blind Date, followed by America's Next Top Model. Brilliant. The next night, you'll come downstairs fighting insomnia and jet lag with the small glimmer of excitement; based on what you watched last night, at least you'll see some awesome entertainment. But no - it's an episode of Becker, followed by a documentary about sailboats, followed by a Bosnian singing competition. It's so random. And this is why catching a movie like Working Girl, from the beginning of the whole movie, is a special treat. One more point about the strangeness of Irish television - they were showing the same movie on a different channel, but it had started fifteen minutes later. There ya go.

Back to Working Girl. Sara and I had a ball. We cackled at Joan Cusack's hair and makeup and Melanie Griffith's lingerie. And Sigourney Weaver - what a nasty bitch! And of course, any and every version of "Let the River Run" is played throughout the whole glorious movie, putting it in our heads for at least the next 48 hours.

After the movie is over, we creep upstairs and settle into our beds, gushing over what a great film it was. Right when I feel like my eyes might be getting tired and sleep could be near, which is a rare and beautiful thing during the first few nights in Ireland, Sara decides she wants to try and sing me her favorite lyric from the theme song. I say "try" because she's never actually able to sing the complete line. Why, you ask? Well, because as she attempts to sing, she's doubled over with laughter. Mostly because this is the lyric:

Come run with me now,
The sky is the color of blue
You've never even seen
In the eyes of your lover.

You see, in this moment, this is the funniest thing to ever happen, ever in life. And maybe nobody will understand that, and maybe it's not even that funny in retrospect, but in that moment, in this tiny room on the 3rd floor of a crazy, skinny house with my parents sleeping a floor beneath us, it is insanely hilarious. And we're both in our 30s and on a family vacation with our parents and sleeping in single twin beds barely a foot apart from each other and have hardly eaten any vegetables for days and we're now completely hysterical. Over nothing. We can barely breathe, tears are streaming down our faces, and we are trying to stay quiet so as to not wake our folks, so what comes out of our mouths sounds like a wheezing, heaving, messy, snorty, guffaw.

This is Crazy Lady night. The night where the most assinine things are the funniest, where our stomachs ache not just from the lack of vegetables, but from the giggling as well, where nobody but us would understand. And I love it.

Day of Recovery

You've probably guessed by now that I take Halloween seriously, as do my Halloween colleagues Layla and Sara. Although we like to put a ton of time, work, and energy into Halloween, some years we just mess it up a little bit. Example: the year the three of us saw a Guns n Roses and Poison cover band show the night before the big Halloween party. Whoops a daisy. To make a long story short (and less detailed, since me mudder will be reading this - sorry Mom), we drank too much at the show and barely made it through the party the next night. My favorite memory is watching Layla and a ridiculously cute guy deep in conversation. Right as he finished asking her a question with great interest, she looked him right in the eye and yawned the biggest, most insane yawn I've ever seen. Halfway through her yawn, she realized what was happening, but it was like the yawn just wouldn't end. It just kept going, Layla's mouth (and eyes) open wide, right in that cute guy's face. Yeah, that party did not see us at our finest. We practically begged guests to leave around midnight. Waa waa!

It has taken us awhile to figure out the perfect system of how to get through Halloween weekend. Not only are the costumes a lot of work, but we usually cook a ton of food, decorate in great detail, and make a zillion runs to Target. After a few years of getting used to this routine, Layla and I finally figured out that it would be worth it to fly home Monday morning instead of Sunday night. Our post-Halloween Sundays at Sara's house, then, became sacred. We'd wake up at our leisure, pick at leftovers and lay on couches recounting the events of the night and judging our favorite costumes, and eventually around 2 pm, start cleaning up the house. Later that night, we'd do sushi at Ru San's and make it back home in time for The Simpsons. It is a perfect and much-needed way to end the weekend - The Day of Recovery.

Now, even though I didn't have to fly anywhere or cook any food or anything this year, I still needed the sacred Day of Recovery. Halloween stretched well over Friday and Saturday nights this year. Because I'm a bit last minute with things, I was working on two different costumes during the week and kind of let my apartment turn into a craphole. Here's how it goes:

My coffee table becomes awesome.
Bras and suspenders and a giant ace bandage everywhere - whoops a daisy.
Just some vampire teeth and cut up pantyhose in the bathroom.
The usual.
I don't take out the trash or recycling for days and days.
Dishes do not get done.
Every pair of tights I own is on the floor.

You get the idea. Thankfully, this hot mess resulted in two good costumes, I think, and a really fun weekend. Friday night I was Mondo Guerra from Project Runway:

And Saturday night I was Lorena with her head on backwards from True Blood. I didn't really get great pictures of this, but it was fun.


So needless to say, after two costumes in two nights, 3 bands, 2 parties, and a few bars here and there, I needed my own Day of Recovery. Although I missed terribly the gossiping and sushi and picking up empty, smelly bottles off the lanai and wonderful Sara and Layla that would have usually filled my day, I was surprisingly productive today! I did a bunch of cooking for the week and tried out a new recipe for banana chocolate chip muffins. Holy crap. Here are some food pictures because that's what I love:
Steel cut oatmeal. This is one of my favorite breakfasts. Add in a touch of maple syrup and some sliced bananas and blueberries and you've got an amazing meal!
Rice and beans concoction my sister made up. It's one of those box mixes (Roundy's - keeping it classy) with corn, spinach, and tomatoes mixed in.
Add some sharp cheddar and plain Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream) - delicious!

The banana muffins recipe was so easy and quick. Check it here.
Eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla, and more plain yogurt.
Flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Mashed up near-rotten banana. Lovely.
I mixed in chocolate chunks which are heartier than chocolate chips and do the job well.





They're really delicious, and I'll probably make this recipe again some day. In the meantime, I'll be eating these muffins and watching Child's Play on television because that's what's on instead of The Simpsons. To that, I say "Booo-urns," but I know deep down in my heart that it's really not all that bad.

P.S. Bonus picture of Mondo eating a burrito! Just now sent by Genia.

Halloweener and High Expectations

From 2002 - 2009, I traveled to Atlanta, GA every Halloween to visit my sister Sara and attend her legendary Halloween parties. My cousin Layla joined me every year, and on a couple of occasions, other cousins and my brother came down as well. One year, my brother Emil, myself, and all four Hodi cousins stayed with Sara at her house for the whole weekend. That's seven, count 'em, seven of us loud, demanding, hungry, and sometimes smelly family members, all staying in one house, along with Sara's two roommates at the time. That weekend was intense.

These aforementioned legendary Halloween parties were, well, legendary. Really. Every year, they grew bigger and bigger. At one party (in Sara's old house), this guy who nobody knew showed up wearing a costume that made him look like a giant Jägermeister bottle. When we complimented his costume, he informed us that he wasn't just dressed as the booze, but was actually a representative from Jägermeister who was assigned to "the biggest parties in Atlanta" on Halloween night, and Sara's house was on the list. He then proceeded to hand out tshirts, pins, and shots of Jäger mixed with honey and served in test tubes. Holy crap!

People don't mess around when it comes to Sara's parties. Although I don't have pictures from the first few years (the non digital-camera years), here's some evidence of the awesomeness that would abound at these parties. The last one I attended was themed The Carnival of the Dead and had a website dedicated to it where you could buy tickets. I'm just sayin'. Thanks to my dear sister, I take Halloween very seriously and have high expectations for costumes (although I'm totally last minute and half-assed this year, so I guess I'm all talk). Nevertheless, here is some inspiration for you all during this festive holiday time:

Just the rain cloud and the rainbow.

The Palin Family.

Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.

Bruce Jenner!

Kim Kardashian and Joan Holloway from Mad Men.

The Kardashian sisters, in all their bumpit-big-butt glory.

Fortune teller at the Carnival of the Dead.

Fire dancer at the Carnival.

Knife thrower and lady on the wheel.

The tiger that jumps through the ring of fire and her trainer.

Dick in a Box.

The girl who stands up on top of the elephant.

The ringmistresses!

The clan - what a motley crew.

IRAQULA!!! It rhymes with Dracula.

Papa Smurf.

I'ma Mario! I'ma gonna ween!

Black widow.

Bret Michaels and Lacy from Rock of Love.

Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth.

Cookie Monster.

This was me celebrating in Madison last year. The whole night was pretty boring, but, if I may brag for a minute, I think my costume was pretty awesome. I was a Sexy Hobo, duh. It was supposed to be a joke, but since then, I've seen a lot of people googling "sexy hobo" and how to make a sexy hobo costume. That's just embarrassing.

So, alls I'm saying is, let's get it together for Halloween this year, babies. Let's get some inspiration that doesn't come from Halloween Express and look totally busted up. I'm talkin' Autumn Witch and Wicked Innocence. Yuck:


Here's your bonus Halloween videos of my sister and I in Target and Walgreens, interacting with things.

One Of Each!

Have you ever been met with a difficult decision regarding food? Like, you're out to breakfast and you want those spinach crepes, but also some corned beef hash, and maybe some flapjacks, and possibly even some cheese-covered hash browns. What's a girl to do? If you're my sister and I, and you have nothing to do all day except go to Target and buy new headbands, then you take your damn time and get all of those items during your leisurely brunch. It's called...

ONE OF EACH!

It's also called Being Awesome, but that's another lecture for another time. One Of Each is a beautiful thing. Alls you need is a friend or partner, in addition to yourself, who is good at sharing, an open mind towards food, and a hearty appetite. On a good day, I have one of those three (the hearty appetite, duh). I'm a picky eater, I know. And honestly, I really hate sharing food. This one time, I even said no to my friend's five-year-old son who asked me for a bite of my sandwich. Well, to be fair, I gave him one bite, but when he asked for a second bite, I said no and that he had to go ask his dad for something to eat. While he went, I hurriedly polished off my sandwich. Sorry, kids. I don't share well. The one main exception is when I'm out to lunch with my mom or sister, and we happen to have the same taste for two (or more, apparently) different things, and we go splitsies. Which brings me back to my original point: One Of Each.

Tonight was one of those nights in which I was hungry but had no idea what I wanted. I started boiling eggs, but I didn't know what I was going to do with them. I ended up making egg salad with dill pickles cut up in it. Delicious, but I didn't really want much of it for dinner. So, I chose to make a One Of Each meal. English muffins or bagels are great for this type of meal since there are two sides to them, and each side can consist of totally different things. You could, hypothetically, use crackers and have One Of Each times a zillion, but you might want to tone it down a bit. Nobody likes a crazy. Unless you're a great kind of crazy. Then I like you.

Anyhow. Here were the ingredients involved in tonight's One Of Each dinner; creamed honey, Laughing Cow cheese (original swiss flavor), fig jam, and peanut butter. Concerned about combinations, eh? Don't worry - I had a vision.

First you have to get yourself a delicious english muffin. This is a honey-wheat kind. It smells so good coming out of the toaster.

This is the Laughing Cow cheese. It spreads easily. That's what she said. There's no time! But that is what she said.

Laughing Cow cheese gets topped with the fig jam, obviously. This was inspired by my mother making an appetizer one Christmas: brie with fig jam. Then, my sister tightened it up on a separate occasion by getting brie with mushrooms in it and topping that with fig jam. Holy delicious. I guess you could say, then, that this is the busted up version of both of those. Busted up, but delicious, mind you.

And for the second side of the english muffin, we start with the creamed honey. I'd never had this before, but picked it up from the farmer's market yesterday from the Marsden's Farm booth. It's lovely!

Actually, the peanut butter goes on first (chunky, in this case), and the honey is spread on top.

For an extra touch of class and flavor, chop up some banana slices. Chop them diagonally so they look beautiful, like this.

Look! One of each! Living in harmony on this simple plate. If only the world could take a hint from this delicious food and the concept of One Of Each...

That's a bite I took. Then I had to stop taking pictures because I was too hungry for awesomeness.

So there you have it! One Of Each! And here's a bonus picture from my beautiful drive back from Columbus, WI this afternoon. It has nothing to do with One Of Each, really, but it is mighty pretty.