See a theme? The theme is: All of these books are hilarious and funny. Serious and intense, too, but mostly? Funny.

xo,

wm

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(Anything in ital is notes from me. And yes, it was all Trisha Yearwood, all the time, this weekend. I came across an old issue of Redbook mag, and every recipe in it sounded good. wm)

Stuffed Peppers (from Trisha Yearwood’s uncle)

6 large red or green bell peppers (I used half red, half yellow)

2½ cups long-grain white rice (or rice of your choice) (I used brown rice that I cooked with vegetable broth and some butter)

2 lbs lean ground beef (left this out, of course. sometimes I sub crumbled up garden burgers or meatballs, though.)

½ medium-size sweet onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes, with their juices

1 10-oz can Rotel diced tomatoes and green chiles

16 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated (about 4 cups) (I subbed Parmesan cuz I was too lazy to grate cheese, and for some reason we have several containers of open Parm in the fridge)

½ tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2. Cut the bell peppers in half, top to bottom. Remove the seeds and the ribs. Set aside. In a medium saucepan, cook the rice according to package directions. In a medium skillet, brown the ground beef, onion, and garlic. Drain the meat. In a medium saucepan, bring the tomatoes to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, rice, tomatoes, pepper, and salt and mix until blended.

3. In a 9×13×2-inch pan, place the bell peppers skin side down. Evenly divide the beef mixture among the pepper halves. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and sprinkle the cheese on the top. Return the pan to the oven, uncovered, for about 5 minutes, until the cheese melts.

Note from Gwen: Before using, wilt the pepper halves in boiling water for about 5 minutes. This will reduce the cooking time from 40 minutes to 15. Serves 6.

Crunchy Slaw (from Trisha Yearwood’s sister)

1 head green cabbage, finely chopped

8 green onions, finely chopped

½ cup sliced almonds

½ cup sesame seeds

¼ cup (½ stick) butter

2 3-oz packages ramen noodles, flavor packets discarded

Dressing

2 Tbsp sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

3 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1. Mix the cabbage and green onions in a large bowl. In a small saucepan over medium heat, brown the almonds and sesame seeds in the butter.

2. Combine the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and stir well. Just before serving, add the sesame seeds, almonds, and crushed raw ramen noodles to the cabbage and green onions. Pour the dressing, a little at a time, over the salad mix, then toss. Serves 10 to 12.

(For this one, I couldn’t find the almond bark, so I had to sub white chocolate buttons. It turned out great. In fact, it turned out so well, we had enough to share with the neighbors, and the rest we gobbled up. Steve calls this a “will u plz never make this again” recipe.)

Crockpot Candy (from Trisha Yearwood’s auntie)

2 lbs (36 oz) salted dry-roasted peanuts

4 oz (4 squares) German’s sweet chocolate

1 12-oz package semisweet chocolate chips (about 2 cups)

2½ lbs white almond bark

1. Put the peanuts in the bottom of a 4-quart slow-cooker. Layer the chocolate over the peanuts, beginning with the sweet chocolate, followed by the chocolate chips, and then the almond bark. Set the temperature on low and cook for 3 hours. Do not stir the mixture.

2. After 3 hours, stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until smooth. Drop the candy into cupcake pan liners, using about 2 tablespoons per liner. Allow the candy to cool completely before removing the cupcake liners. Makes 30 to 40 pieces.

Dear All of My Friends Who are Campaigning for Jefferson Smith,

Please stop. Because I didn’t appreciate having to have a talk — again — with my teenage daughter about how it’s still a man’s man’s man’s world and our daughters (sisters, mothers, friends and lovers) deserve so much more. As my late, great friend Frank would say, Men like that hate women. “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed!”

Jefferson Smith, you need to get the hell out of the race. Now. Here’s a song, dedicated just to you, sir.

“You add insult to injury/what do you get?/you get a bus stop full of honkeys that don’t ever forget”

Love,

Nancy

PS — This, this and this. For starters.

PSS — No, Charlie Hales didn’t pay me to say this. We don’t even live in Portland anymore. It’s that I am still, deep inside, a 12-year-old girl whose mama’s best friend was murdered by her abusive husband. What did the cops say, when she called them and said, “He’s threatening to kill me” ? They said, He hasn’t killed you yet.

Yeah there’s this, too.

PPSS — How is this my business? Oh, you know. I heard someone say “stupid bitch” and I assumed he was talking to me.

Edited 10/11/12 to say — Fox 12 Oregon just tweeted: Portland police and firefighters unions have withdrawn their endorsements of Portland mayoral candidate Jefferson Smith. And thank you, Mother PAC. Good.

Yeah, and along comes the 1:32 a.m. e-mail.

Edited on 10/22/12 to add: Next, we have One Ron Buel trying to smooth things over. “Character assassination” my ass. Jefferson Smith keeps shooting himself in the foot repeatedly, like Yosemite Sam gone completely berserk, and somehow the rest of us are to blame?

Look, Smith blames his victims all the time — the woman he punched, the people he assaulted and freaked out on during sports league, probably that mean ol’ traffic court for his driving record. So it’s really no surprise he is reeling, lashing out and looking for someone to blame since it doesn’t look like he’s going to be Mayor. Of anywhere. Ever. He can go be Mayor in his own head, that should work.

Yes, Ron Buel was Neil Goldschmidt’s go-to guy, for those of you who are keeping track of this crap. (Past posts we’ve written: one, two and three. And there’s this one, too.)

You know, the sociopaths, sex abusers, murderers and all the rest of the freaks in the world don’t bother me so much. There truly are more of us than there are of them. What bothers me are all the other people — the grandmas who cry, Not my boy! Not him! He’d never!; the girlfriends, wives and hangers-on who say, You don’t know him like I do, etc.; the co-workers who say, Well, that never happened to me, therefore it never happened to you…

Because those people? They just might outnumber the rest of us.

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(Recipes!)

Man, what a good weekend. We saw Bag & Baggage’s production of “Of Mice and Men” in Hillsboro on Saturday. Went canoing on the Tualatin River Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Heard Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey play at the Aladdin Theater in Portland on Friday. Every time I go hear some live music I ask myself, Why do we never go hear live music anymore? Then I balance the checkbook and it’s zeroed out again and I think, Oh yeah. That.

We caught a Bag & Baggage show last season… Dangerous Liaisons… so good. And I’m not just saying that cuz our friend was in it. We can’t afford season tickets to the Blazers (or the Winter Hawks), the opera (or the symphony), but occasionally we can pull off buying a ticket or four. Usually it’s one or two. But the season tickets were really reasonable for Bag & Baggage, so we went for it. Saw this crazy version of Titus Andronicus that they did this summer… Kabuki Titus. One of the most inspired and craziest shows I’ve ever seen.

It kind of freaked me out.

That’s not a bad thing.

The upcoming season is going to be good, so I’m looking forward to it. There’s a new exhibit up of Greek and Roman art, at the Portland Art Museum. It’s on loan from the British museum and is supposed to be quite good. The kids get in for free, so I’m psyched to go to that one, too. I love taking them to stuff that I never really took part in as a kid (other than the occasional school field trip).

What’s new in your world, artwise or otherwise?

Have a great week!

xo

wm

We went to hear Bo Ramsey and Greg Brown at the Aladdin last night. The guys were great; the audience was not. Steve: “Portland audiences may be obnoxious, but at least they’re enthusiastic.” How diplomatic of him. Here’s a song for you, and it kinda sums it all up for me:

http://youtu.be/yDyKa4EcsLg

“Where’s your wife?” one heckler yelled. Greg Brown’s wife being the beautiful and talented singer, Iris DeMent. “She’s at home cooking!” Brown yelled back.

http://youtu.be/fpQNLZRcNA4

“Get her out here to sing with you!” the same guy yells.

“She won’t sing with me. She’ll only sing with… John Prine.”

It’s true. Or maybe if you’re Josh Turner, she’ll sing with you.

http://youtu.be/elKre8qBLpc

Can’t blame her there.

Also, i’m in love with Pieta Brown, Greg’s daughter:

Now, since this is basically a love letter to Iowa and all the good musicians I’d never heard of ’til I married Steve:

And I don’t want to overlook Bo, so here he is, too.

Love you all, thanks for the music.

— nancy

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(It’s a watermelon, not a gourd, but whatever.)

This one’s for Steve Rawley.

It’s a Child, Not a Choice

Keep Portland Beered!

Yeah, Gramps. I’ll go ahead and stay preggers, barefoot and in the kitchen, and you go on to the bar. Jeez, no wonder white men are having issues in this country right now.

“But we liked it the way it was!”

lol.

Best spam I’ve ever received:

“You Sir/Madam are the enemy of conufison everywhere!”

You know who’s confused? This tomato:

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

One of the beauties from our garden.

Spaghetti Pie

Ingredients:
leftover cooked spaghetti
butter
flour
milk
cheese
marinara (recipe)
more cheese
parmesan

The recipes I found online all call for eggs, meat and cottage cheese, and we didn’t have any of that in the house. Also we don’t eat meat, fish or chicken, so we never have that in the house, anyway. The recipes sound good, like some kind of spaghetti lasagna?, but weren’t really what I had in mind.

I took a deep casserole dish and put the noodles in it. First, I turned the oven on 350, cuz it takes forever to preheat. Next, I made a white sauce with butter, flour and milk, and added grated mozzarella. I stirred that into the noodles, then ladled on a layer of the marinara Steve made over the weekend. (So many fantastic tomatoes this year. The plants are loaded and everything is ripening nicely.) Next, I sprinkled more grated cheese and some parmesan on top. Baked it for a long time (45 minutes, I think) until the cheese was oozy and bubbly on top.

We let it set for 15 minutes and then ate it up. Bon appetit, babies!

And… here’s Steve’s recipe for Pico de Gallo. I (heart) tomato season.

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” — James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)