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Family, how many holidays have we been gathered in the kitchen, puzzling over what to do with the crab meat?  You don’t want to overpower it with cheese and heavy stewing spices.  You want to flatter the subtle sweetness, but not obliterate that fresh seafood essence.  Lemon juice and salt are delicious, but lack a certain dimensionality.

Nori komi furikake to the rescue!

The principal ingredients are four: nori seaweed flakes, sesame seeds, salt, and sugar.  The effect is sublime.  A little rice wine vinegar or minced red pepper wouldn’t be amiss with this, but it really hits about the perfect balance for bringing your crab to life when you’re not looking for an absurdly rich, gratin-y preparation.

Taking the Arkansas Bar this week (or at least the essays).  With any luck, this will be my last bar.  Two keep me busy, three might make me crazy, four would be unfathomable at this point.

I’ve ordered my roses for spring planting.  Coming soon to the southeastern corner of my house:

A trio of Tess of the d’Urbervilles bushes, on the corner facing the street, which I’m going to try and train up to balance a tall shrub I’ve got on the opposite corner. These are a dark crimson, and should be a good match for the lone Mr. Lincoln tea rose I inherited in the front bed.

Then wrapping around the south, driveway side of the house, I’m going to put in an Alnwick rose and an Abraham Darby, along with a Claire Austin. The Alnwick is a pure pink, and the Abraham Darby has more of a salmon hue with yellow accents. The Claire Austin is white, which is about the last thing I need up against my plain white stucco, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s indispensable for cutting and arrangement purposes.

Photos are up at the grower’s website, although in no way, shape or form do I guarantee results like those in year 1.

So I’m years late to the party on this one, but I just discovered Indexed by Jessica Hagy. Imagine if Randall Munroe of XKCD fame was female, and content to stick to pre-algebra. Or alternatively, imagine if PostSecret weeded out all the emo entries about eating disorders, molestation, and cries for help, and converted the remaining submissions into graph form. The end result would look something like this:

Or at Christmas time, more like this:

And on that note, may all your deer encounters this season be confined to cards, tree stands, and petting zoos.

I’m putting the kittens (and their mother) up for adoption this week.

Quite a change from last month, isn’t it.  They’ve all got very cat-like personalities now, and are no longer just fuzzy stomachs.  The white one on the left is the pick of the litter, both the most playful and the most affectionate.  The mackerel tabby at the back is the shyest. And the ginger one on the right has the strongest purr.  I think that one is female, which is rare for an orange cat.

I don’t think these guys will be hard to place. Christmas kittens, ahoy.

When I first moved into my new digs, there was a stray cat living in the crawlspace. A neighbor was putting out food for her, so I was pretty content to leave well enough alone. But she was never spayed, and there are plenty of toms around. Sure enough, she turned up pregnant. Now I’m fostering her and her three kittens.

I haven’t named them.  That privilege is reserved for whomsoever takes them in, and I have neither the funds nor the inclination to add even one more pet to my household - one cat is plenty. But it’s been fun, even though it means that I presently have every color of cat hair but gray-blue now represented in my wardrobe.

I went to Cincinnati over Labor Day to visit people from the Incomparable Concepción VAC and and attend the Despedida of Darling Danita.  Gents, you know Peace Corps Paraguay didn’t shut the VAC down over security concerns re: those no-account, half-assed narco-communists in the EPP. The real reason is that The Office knew the C-VAC of the G20’s would never be equalled, and gave us the Peace Corps equivalent of a retired jersey. It’s a conspiracy. I’m blowing the whistle. Wikileaks has been alerted.

Meanwhile, we of the resistance will continue making chipa and mangling Guaraní.

I went and argued my first appellate case this week before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Jackson.

Funny building, isn’t it? Kind of reverse federal style. That’s oddly appropriate - most of my conversation with the justices seemed to revolve around how far off from standard federal procedure this case had gone.  Our client is in a rare sort of bind - she was arrested in Jackson, Tennessee, in 2001 and put on probation.  Then she was arrested again in Missouri in 2004, and sentenced on federal crimes.  The Tennessee justice system made a half-hearted stab at revoking her probation, but then never went anywhere with it.

Five years later, when she tried to get her paperwork ready for federal rehab, her Tennessee trial judge up and decided to yank her probation after all.  This is not a speedy trial by any stretch of the imagination, and the Constitution makes kind of a big deal about these things.  Whether it’s a big enough mistake to get her conviction thrown out is another thing all together.

I certainly argued that it does. Now we wait and see if I convinced at least two out of three appellate justices that we’ve got the law on our side.

I want to plant a hedge by the sidewalk that runs in front of my house.  It’s a very small front yard with full sun morning through early afternoon and good soil. I’m right on the borderline between USDA zones 6b and 7a.

My ideal hedge shrub would be around 4-5 feet tall, evergreen, and fragrant.  I don’t want to crowd the sidewalk or get too messy (visually or literally). I don’t want to overkill on color just yet (that’s what annuals are for).  I just want a nice frame for the yard that’s robust and pleasant to walk past without being overpowering. I like everything about the tea olive except the size, and everything about the boxwood but the lack of scent.

Suggestions?

I’m finally getting into long-term housing.  For a limited time only, I’m posting my new address online

Offer’s expired.  Call me or gmail me as marykennon if you need my address.