Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in Esch's LiveJournal:

Monday, January 26th, 2004
10:34 am	Changing my mind again Right, so I'm fickle. www.stresch.blogspot.com Find me there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 21st, 2004
12:06 pm	leaving you.... I've decided to journal elsewhere. However, I've changed my mind about wanting to put up the link. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 11th, 2003
6:07 pm	I'm thinking I might get a different format blog somewhere else. We'll see. Enough housekeeping. I nanny off and on for a German family. We refer to them as The Family since they have three last names between the five of them and all the names are multisyllabic and, needless to say, German. I used to just refer to the kids as Fritz and Marzipan because they have unusual (and again, German) names. However, there is now a third child, so I just call them The Family. Yesterday I nannied the whole day, mostly for the toddler,M. I try to bring my own food because they seldom have anything good to eat, and often there is next to nothing, good or no. So, during M's lunch I was snacking on a piece of homemade bread I'd brought. He asked for a bite, so I tore off a chunk and popped it into his mouth. He smiled and chewed, and then suddenly scrunched up his face and said "It's bad!" through a mouthful of crumbs. I frantically grabbed for some paper towels, but too late. He pushed the soggy mass out with his tongue. He looked both surprised and offended and informed me the bread had seeds. My fault. I forgot he won't eat seeds. He even makes me pick out the cucumber seeds. The bread had sunflower seeds. I should have know. Especially since the cleaning women had already made their weekly visit, so the kitchen floor was spotless. Oh well. Such is life with a toddler. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003
4:55 pm	I suck so bad at updating this, and I managed to get two paper cuts while taking the recycling out today. I seem to be getting over this brutally cold, so maybe I can actually get back to the job of applying for jobs. I fear I am getting materialistic in my unemployment. I want meaningful work, yes. But I also want money, a lot of money, right now. We need to hire an exterminator. The house needs to be painted, the garage needs a new roof, we should probably get the basement waterproofed, and there is the ever present needs for a new electrical system. That and I want to buy good wine, and I've been conveting truffles. And a black sapote. I've never had one either, but they have them at the co-op. I just can't afford $6.49 for a fruit. We got a dishwasher! I cannot express the joy of having one. Suffice it to say, if you hate doing dishes more than any other chore, more even the scooping two seriously neglected cat boxes, yet you love to cook, thereby making many dishes, and you have been without said blessed appliance for over a year, you will understand my giddiness. I've been nesting like crazy lately. Cleaning, organizing, DOING DISHES, doing laundry. And I had such weird PMS last month, I'd be convinced I was pregnant. Except that is patently impossible. Of course, going back to the money thing,if we had some, we would be attempting to procure a child. Or at least sperm. On the food front: I made a ton of food for Thanksgiving. I also made parsnip soup for dinner tonight, but it is so sweet. I'm not sure how to make it seem less cloying. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2003
11:03 am	back again Okay, so I haven't been online much lately. Didn't get much at the farmer's market last weekend. I did get some roman broccoli, but I haven't used it yet. I need to go this week and get a bunch of stuff for Thanksgiving. Mostly apples for the pies. I convinced my MIL to let me be in charge of the pies. I've become such a snobby food person. No, that isn't true. I was raised on homemade stuff, and for Thanksgiving it's really important to me. I hope I've been polite enough about getting my way. Em and I are in charge of the pies (2 apple, 2 pumpkin, the stuffing, the veggie main course, and the veggie gravy. We aren't leaving until Weds night. I'm doing most of the stuff at home which will be really nice. I'm going to cube the bread for the stuffing, make the pie crust, make the gravy, and have all the fillings for the main course done. So Thrusday all I'll have to do is chop onions and celery for the stuffing, saute and mix with the bread, mix up the pie fillings and bake them, and assemble and bake the main course. It sounds do-able to me. For the main course, I think I'm going to do a variation on last year's "Harvest Vegetable Torte." I'm going to buy frozen puff pastry (easier than filo) and fill it with winter squash, kale mixed with parmesan and egg, sauteed mushrooms with tomato paste and garlic, and sauteed onions. And I'm going to try really hard to keep sane. We're driving separately there, so I think I'll just go back if the extended fam and there bitter divorces and Republicanism gets to be too much. I keep telling Em I need drugs to get through. But Friday is all mine. We might go wine tasting or just hang out. I don't even need to get up early to hunt because BIL has to work. I'm so afraid he's going to get a deer before I get up there. Don't know why since he hasn't even SEEN one when I've been with him. Maybe I'll "hunt" on my own. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 13th, 2003
10:05 am	food rules my life Last night I had a dream that I met Deborah Madison. I wanted to cook to impress her, but all my recipes where hers, so I felt dumb. I've been thinking that I might change this journal into a "what I made with my farmer's market finds" and an "after the fact rebuttals" blog. So here goes: I got a garlic braid at the market on Saturday. I even got it on credit because I was out of cash. I sent the check to the farmer, but I was terrified I'd forget. Thereby ruining his belief in the honesty of his customers. Anyway, it's really pretty-creamy with tinges of purple on the cloves. I will probably end up using them later in the year, but for now I'm just admiring it. I've been thinking about subtle sexism in the sciences. In my ethics class, a speaker came in to talk about the David Baltimore scandal. In a nutshell, Baltimore was a PI. He had a postdoc in his lab who kept really shitty journals. A researcher in the same building couldn't reproduce the results of the postdoc and turned her in for fraud. A huge ordeal ensued. Essentially the postdoc didn't make up the results, but didn't keep good notes, so it was hard to tell. So the whistleblower got into tons of trouble. Personally, I think she really believed the data was falsified, but was wrong. Anyway, the speaker in my class said something about her trying to get back at the postdoc because she wasn't pay enough attention to her. ??Excuse me?! If the whistleblower had been male, no one would ever have thought to say that. She had reason to believe the results were falsified. She wasn't just upset because she'd been snubbed. The system of looking into allegations screwed everyone over in this case. The whistleblower made an honest accusation, was mistaken, but it was such a huge scandal that now she can't get a job. The postdoc had her career put on hold for a long time while these things were investigated, but never really knew how to fight them. And of course I only remember the man's name in this case. And he always ends up looking unfairly accused. Even though it seems clear that his lab was run poorly. But science is all the good ole boys network. So that's my unclear, two years after the fact rant about a sexist comment made about a huge scientific mess which probably has sexist underpinings. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 12th, 2003
1:35 pm	I suck at this blogging thing. Obviously. A brief update on my life: Still job hunting. I'm thinking I might start temping. Hopefully get a research assistant job. Then on to law school. But first I need me some money. Produce subscription is over for the season. That makes me kind of sad, but it's also a relief. We are not eating nearly as well as we should be now. Without all the veggies crammed into the fridge, it's not longer imperative that are meals be all vegetables all the time. I'm kid-sitting tonight, so I'll either not have time to have dinner or I'll be forced to scrounge over there. They never have any decent food in the house, so I'll probably be snacking on bread and Nutella. What can I say? They're German. Friday, T. is coming over for dinner. I think I'll make a winter squash tart and maybe a green salad. I have this quince compote I made in a rush of madness that we haven't even touched. The recipe recommends serving it with fall foods with rich, deep flavors. I guess I'll just put it out on the table. Who knows, maybe it'll be good. I was going to do the spinach-cream pasta, but I can't find spinach. So now I have 1.5 cups of cream and no idea what to do with it. Come to think of it, I have some stewed quinces too. I went a little quince crazy at the farmer's market last month. Maybe a quince tart with pastry cream. Or something like that. I did promise T. a dessert souffle because I was bragging about how my [i]very first soufflee ever [/i] pouffed. Maybe I'll do the quince thing for tuesday dinner. I have been so hungry lately. I go between craving bar food, or pub grub as ABC likes to call it, and Indian food. I need to find a job to afford my food habit. And so I can have a kid because I'd like that too. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, July 25th, 2003
2:35 pm	Figuring this out So Em convinced me to try having a live journal. We'll see how this goes. One of the cats threw up on the stairs. I hope neither of them are getting sick. I hate how often they have to go to the vet. I have a ton of produce to deal with today. I don't think I can freeze the squash, but everything else is going in the freezer. We can't eat it all now, but I know we'll appreciate it in the winter. We are going to go look at chest freezers today after Em is done with work. Okay, I'm going to play around with the formating and see how this goes. I'll post something interesting later. (2 Comments |Comment on this)