Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Wetday

Man, another rainy morning. Storms and such. No big deal, but it's wicked humid and rainy. I had the boys all dressed for it and ready, and wore my slicker, so it was all handled.

I got a library card again yesterday, after work. I picked up Joshua Ferris's "And Then We Came To the End," a much-ballyhooed first novel circa 2007. It was third on my list of to-get books from the library (the other two weren't there, were at other branches). Anyway, for a book that was roundly hailed as a masterwork, I dunno. I'm reading it, but it's not sending me into the stratosphere. Some of the narrative choices he made in the book are like itching powder to me. But I'll soldier through it.

Speaking of soldiering, I stumbled onto "The Ruins" on FX last night. I had read that book years ago (hadn't liked it overmuch, and had issues with some of the ways the writer had set things up). But anyway, it was damned gruesome -- the movie kept pretty close to the story, and the gore was particularly skin-crawlingly icky. The crowning irony of our censorious society -- violence is fine, but no sex -- so you can show somebody carving themselves up with a knife, but don't show tits and ass. Anyway, I'm pretty jaded where horror movies are concerned, but some of the stuff they showed was still damned icky.

I cooked a terduchen last night! Ha! I saw it at the grocery store, and had to snag it -- turkey stuffed with chicken and duck (and pork sausage -- so does that make it a terduchenpor?) Anyway, it was good, a lot milder than I thought it would be. It was a total meat bomb, however. I had some and thought "Wow, that was almost a deadly amount of meat." And practically had meat-overload-induced aphasia. Exene was amused, said "You've lost the power to speak?" Before going into a mild food coma, I managed to stammer out that it was an ideal dish for her family, that I could see them tackling a 15 lb. terduchen and digging it mightily. I'd not make terduchen a regular part of my diet, but it was pretty damned good. I had to try it. Has that same over-the-topness of something like Beef or Lamb Wellington.