What I Just Finished Reading

Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Not the most uplifting thing I've ever read, but very, very interesting.

Daniel was only about six weeks old when the Columbine massacre happened, and I avoided any and all news stories about it. I just didn't think I could take it. After about ten days, I sat down and read Time magazine article about all that had happened. Since then, I've had what I guess you have to call a morbid curiosity about the events, intensified by reading Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes.

After reading Cullen's book, I now know that most of what I thought I knew about what happened was incorrect. There were a lot of details that I had not heard, and many things that I had heard were in error. And he talks a lot about where those misconceptions came from. The media ran with things that were not backed up, just to get some news out there. Kids then repeated what they heard on the news, and the news in turn reported what the kids said (which actually they had not seen first hand, but heard on the news, and so believed that must have been what happened.) Bit of a vicious media cycle going on.

He provides much more info on the killers than I had heard before (Harris was a psychopath; Klebold was suicidal.) There was also a lot of detail on the legal aftermath. It was a classic case of who gets punished when the guilty parties are already dead? But there were a lot of little details that I didn't know - for example, victims' families were able to get 1.6 million dollars from the Harris and Klebold's homeowners insurance - it included coverage in the event one of their children commits murder (I found that bizarre.)

The book begins with a play-by-play of the massacre. It then breaks into two plot lines - the year in the life of the killers, leading up to the massacre, and the year(s) after the massacre in the lives of the victims and their families. Cullen alternates these two time lines chapter by chapter, which was a little choppy, but it worked.

All in all, worth reading. I took my time with it, as I found it really upsetting and didn't want to get inundated with it. But I'm glad I read it.

Happy Birthday Ben!

"And nobody

In all of Oz,

No wizard that there is or was

Is ever gonna bring you down."

- Wicked

The Fabulous Farmer's Market

I went to the farmer's market bright and early this morning, and found something I'd never seen before - A Lilac Pepper:

I was told it was a sweet pepper, but I was mostly just amazed at how cool it looked. Isn't that an AWESOME color? I have no idea what to do with it, and so far I've just set it in different spots in the kitchen and looked at it. Have any of you actually been so privileged as to eat a lilac pepper? If so, please tell me what I can expect...

Also at the farmer's market, I found some lovely tomatoes, red bell peppers, and garlic (and thirty bucks worth of other stuff, but that's for another day.) Back to the tomatoes, red bell peppers, and garlic:


Ever since I got my food mill, I have wanted to try my hand at my own tomato/marinara sauce. And today was the day!! Since I got such lovely peppers as well as lovely tomatoes, I decided to make a roasted red pepper marinara.

I roasted the peppers per instructions from Giada: put them under the broiler for twenty minutes, rotating so that each side burns and blisters. (And don't do this while any one is sleeping - your smoke alarm will go off for the entire twenty minutes.) Then put the hot peppers into a ziplock bag and let them come to room temp.

Meanwhile, I sauteed six cloves of garlic in one tablespoon of olive oil for one minute over a medium/low heat. I added two pounds of quartered tomatoes and let them cook and break down for about 15 minutes. Then I ran the results through the finest setting on the food mill. It kept all the seeds and peels! I love my food mill!!

I set that aside and peeled and de-seeded my now cooled peppers (the zip-lock bag thing worked like a charm - they were really easy to peel.) I chopped them, and added them into a pot with my pureed tomatoes. I added a half a teaspoon of salt, one tablespoon each of dried basil and oregano, and few grinds of black pepper. I let that simmer for about thirty minutes, adding a tablespoon of tomato paste about halfway through as it wasn't getting thick enough for me. Then I lightly pureed the whole thing with my stick blender (some chunks of pepper were still in there.)

And let me just say.....it is AWESOME. I can't wait to eat it on something. I'm putting it on a pizza tonight, and will try to have it over pasta some time soon.


What a way to celebrate the Fouth of July -making a classic Italian Sauce!!

Shopping

So, Dick's Sporting Goods is having a big sidewalk sale. We stopped by this week to pick up some golf shirts. Thought I would share with you what it's like to shop in a sporting goods store with Daniel:

The Mixer Is Back

Yes, as you may have surmised from my sidebar, the mixer is back. I made cookies last night. It's not what it was - the speeds are a little off, and it makes a horrible grinding sound on "stir". And then there's the trust factor: gone are the days of leaving the room while it whips away on its own. Let me down once, shame on you; let me down twice, shame on KitchenAid.

But it mixes. I haven't tried kneading pizza dough yet. I thought we'd take it slow, let the awkwardness wear off a little before trying to get back to a place that feels normal. I fear that we might never know "normal" again, but I'm willing to try. I'm willing to try.