I make the best pork chops in the world

Not to boast, but it's true. And I'm quite the critic when it comes to this cut of meat. Let's face it, most pork chops suck. Dry, tough, bad. Husband, on the other hand, loves a pork chop and considers it a go-to meat. I gave up calling him in the middle of the day to ask what he would like for dinner because he always answered "Well, how about pork chops?" But I finally gave in and set to mastering the chop.

In my mind, a pork chop is not worth eating unless it is brined. Thankfully brining a chop is much easier than brining, say, an entire turkey.

The mixture here goes into a zip-lock bag and into the fridge. I usually start this before I go out the door in the morning, and the chops are ready to rinse and grill when I get home from work.

For seasoning, I use a combination of fresh rosemary (one of the best deer-resistant flowering plants there is, so I have a large bush in my front yard), garlic, and capers.

I served this the other night with quinoa steamed in chicken broth and tossed with romanito tomatoes (you wouldn't think this was a good tomato in summer, but it's the best available this time of year) a little diced fontina and some sauteed spinach.

THE WORLD'S BEST PORK CHOPS

Brine the pork chops by dissolving 1/2 cup each Kosher salt and sugar in hot water in a large bowl. Add pork chops, a bay leaf, and a few allspice berries. Fill bowl the rest of the way with cold water. Pour mixture into a zip-lock bag and refrigerate for as long as eight hours.

When finished brining, rinse chops at least twice under cold water and pat dry. Discard the brining solution.

Next, mince fresh rosemary, garlic, and capers. Combine with olive oil to form a paste. Smear on the paste and let sit at room temperature for one hour.

Grill over high heat, turning to avoid flare ups. Time for grilling will vary with thickness of chops, but brined meats do cook quicker.

Skiing? Us? Why, yes.

So as promised to my fellow ski whore Jen, here is the report of the recent Fig family ski adventures.

My dad provides a useful synopsis at his blog. (How many 73-year-olds have their own blog? Probably about as many 70-year-olds decide it's time to learn to ski.) If you like looking at x-rays, you can't miss this. Give him a shout while you're there, ok?

One thing he fails to mention is that this tower of luggage took the first (but not last) biff of the trip. As Husband (in the rear) took it through the door of baggage claim, the entire thing went over in spectacular slow-mo. Thank goodness no small children were standing nearby. We laughed until we nearly peed.

In a nutshell, we LOVED Alta. What an amazing mountain. Some things we particularly liked:

• Insane snow. After a January in the Sierras that looked more like April (light cover, melting in the day and freezing at night to give a not lovely combination of ice and slush), we were stoked (haven't had reason to use that word in several decades) to find a healthy dump of fresh powder. The real stuff that you can actually ski through. What was really amazing is that it had not snowed in the Wasatch range in over two weeks before we arrived. It snowed the night we came in and the next two days. Both Husband and I had out the fat skis, and Husband got to officially launch his new Mother Ships.
  

I didn't ski down this (High Rustler), but Sophie and Husband did many times. Husband liked that Alta does not have lifts to all runs: You have to hike to some stuff. Whatever.

• No snowboarders. Alta is one of the nation's last holdouts on this, and God bless them for that (when an atheist makes that statement, it really means something). No cringing in fear when you hear that scrap in your blind spot. No stupid teenagers blocking the lift line while they text on their phones. No boarders who can't carve a turn shoving the snow down the mountain as they slide, leaving a scrubbed icy surface.

• A great lodge. Husband and I have been dreaming of staying at a ski in/ski out lodge for years. It was as wonderful as I always thought it would be. At the end of every day, I paused for a moment to gaze out over the parking lot and thought "How awesome is it that I am not getting in a car?" Very awesome. Goldminer's Daughter is not a fancy place. I knew we had found our place when I found a tripadvisor.com review that read "Many regular customers show up to breakfast and dinner in their pajamas. We found this quite offensive." Yeah! If I was running an on-mountain lodge I would require all guest to attend breakfast in their ski long undies and dinner in their jammies. Things were a little less casual at Goldminer's, but we were happy to be in a lodge where skiing was the focus. We didn't even mind that when our waiter listed "ice cream" as among the desserts he replied to our query of "what kind?" with "I dunno."

• Sandwich makings. We were shocked and amazed by the amount of money we saved by making sammies in our lodge room.
  

What more does one need?

A good medical clinic, it turns out. Thank goodness there was one located in the same building as our lodge. Our third day was a very cold (below zero) sunny day with a perfect layer of fluff on the groomers. My dad was riping one right on my tail when he thinks his binding released on a turn and his leg slammed into the snow. He fractured his tibia, with damage into the knee socket. His orthopedist say regardless of how hideous it looks, it is fixable. He's scheduled for surgery Wednesday if the swelling has gone down enough. We expect him back on the slopes next year. On some new powder skis.

Amazingly enough, we all flew home on Wednesday as planned—although my parents and I from the hospital in Salt Lake and the rest from the mountain, with my parents flying home to southern California and Husband, Sophie, some friends, and I flying back to the bay area. After a quick few loads of laundry and a Trader Joe's shop, it was back up to Tahoe for Sophie's NASTC kids' ski camp.

She had a great three days with her instructor, Kemp Dowdy, an amazing young man with astounding kid knowledge, an irrepressible enthusiasm, and hair that stands up three inches on his head.
Sophie was the only kid in the class of six without a season pass or family ski house and with (as she noted) a homemade lunch, but it was a nice group of kids and she kept right up. They ripped up the entire mountain, forwards and backwards.

She's clearly lost me, and now even Husband is worried. At least they'll both come back to me for lunch.

BTW, several people have told me that bloglines has deleted me and is no longer sending notifications of my earth shattering blog posts. Any idea what to do about this? Is someone trying to tell me something??

Our ski trip: The good and the not so

No time to post pictures as I do 900 loads of ski laundry, throw together three days' of food, and pack the car to run up to Tahoe for some more of the stuff, but when I return I'll post pictures explaining why my Alta trip started out here and ended here.

Spoiler: My dad took a huge cartoon-like (but not funny) biff and broke his leg (really badly) on the third day (thank goodness not the first). He'll have surgery to get things pinned back together and plates added in about a week after the swelling goes down, and we expect to see him back on the slopes (I recommend at a slower speed, but he never listens to me about this) next year.

The silver lining? (I'm always looking for it.) I had anticipated this being a stressful and complicated day, but it pales in comparison to the complications of the past day and a half where I had to coordinate people and luggage—some on the mountain, some down at the hospital—to get the right people and their luggage going to the right place once we decided where that was. Many thanks to a great group of friends who were there to help at every turn, a fleet of radios that kept us all in contact throughout it all, wonderful ski patrol and mountain clinic staff, a rockin hospital, Southwest Airlines for flexibility, my sister for receiving my parents on the other end, and my brother-in-law for replacing my parents' blown hot water heater by the time they got home. Teamwork, you know.

I'll be back in the mix on Monday. In the meantime, have a good weekend!

We're packing up the sticks!

And all sorts of other gear to head to Alta, Utah tomorrow in search of snow. Not hard scratchy stuff that melts in the day and freezes again at night. We've got that in the Sierras. We want the real stuff.


This is our first destination ski trip as a family. Amazing the amount of stuff needed (this isn't all of it).

For the three of us, we have five sets of skis, ski boots, snow boots, apre ski boots, helmets, radios, ski clothes, dinner clothes, and sandwich makings. Yes, the lodge where we will be staying serves breakfast and dinner but not lunch, which I've been convinced to supply. It won't be the first time I've slapped together sandwiches in a hotel bathroom.

We're a little concerned that we have too much stuff.

Could we save by shipping the kid and her skis? Blogger pal Katie offered to receive gear we might want to ship. Do you think she would mind this package?

We fly home Wednesday night, do a quick turnaround on Thursday (wash the ski clothes, pack more food) and drive up to Tahoe that evening so Sophie can be on the slopes first thing Friday morning for her NASTC Kids Ski Camp. Did I mention I have a moms' (no dudes or kids allowed) ski trip the next weekend? I know. 

But what did they have to eat??

At the inauguration luncheon, that is. That is my question about almost every event or occasion, especially a luncheon, which we all know is vastly more important than just a lunch.

In case you're wondering, here's what they had, with wine pairings:

First Course

Seafood Stew in puff pastry
Duckhorn Vineyards, 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley

Second Course

A Brace of American Birds (pheasant and duck), served with Sour Cherry Chutney Molasses Sweet Potatoes
Winter Vegetables
Goldeneye, 2005 Pinot Noir, Anderson Valley 

Third Course (some people call this Dessert)

Apple Cinnamon Sponge Cake and Sweet Cream Glacé
Korbel Natural “Special Inaugural Cuvée,” California Champagne

Well, then. That sounds like a lot of food and beverage for a midday meal. Was it followed by an inaugural nap?

And I have a few other questions:

Since when is asparagus a winter vegetable? According to the recipes Di Fi has thoughtfully made available, the vegetables included carrots, Brussel sprouts, wax beans, and asparagus. Asparagus in January? That's just unpatriotic. No way that was grown in the U.S. At least Di Fi used her clout to insist all wines be from California.

What is a brace of birds? I looked it up. Merriam-Webster's 11th lists a panoply of definitions, many of which are clearly not what is meant here. But there is 6: a position of rigid attention. Could be. Maybe they had those birds sort of propped up. Or 7: something that arouses energy or strengthens morale. Yes—that's got to be it.

Why didn't they let George Bush stay for lunch? According to the schedule, they put him on his helicopter and waved him away just before lunch. Maybe he got a boxed lunch. Could that be what Michelle had in that box?

What I thought of it all

I know everyone's just dying to know, so here's my wrap up, illustrated by photographs shamelessly borrowed without permission. We'll go in chronological order.

THE GLOVES

I am crazy about most things green, so you can imagine what I thought of Michelle Obama's green gloves. Which matched her green shoes. So happy about that.

THE MUSIC
While I didn't think Aretha Franklin sounded on the top of her game (I can imagine Jennifer Hudson having sung this better), there is absolutely no doubt that she was working that hat. To wear a hat like that rather than having the hat wear you is something only she could have pulled off. She looked fabulous.

I absolutely loved the adaptation of Copeland's "Simple Gifts" performed by Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriele Montero. My MIL appreciates Ma's playing but is consistently disturbed by his facial expressions and movement, feeling that it distracts from the music. To me he looks like a man who takes joy in the music and the connection with other musicians, and I love seeing it. Too bad they look like they're playing in front of a baseball backstop.

THE BIBLE

Hmmm. As a nonbeliever (did you hear the shout out to us in the address?), I'm uncomfortable with invocations, benedictions, references to god, participation of clergy (especially one of these), and bibles in public ceremonies. Separation of church and state anyone? But the history of the bible used today was undeniably interesting. Not only was this bible used for Lincoln's swearing in, but Lincoln's oath was administered by Robert Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, which extended slavery into the territories. And today a black hand rested on it to take the oath of president.

THE SPEECH

Sasha and I agree—a job well done. I think he hit the right notes in a message of both hope and caution. To me, this seemed like an address that reached out to and celebrated all Americans. I wonder though how it played to conservatives. If we can resist from a slugfest, I'd love to hear what people outside my liberal bubble thought. Are you hopeful? Do you feel we stand together or still apart?

I particularly liked what he said concerning one of our greatest challenges:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

My question is which comes first: the unclenched fist or the hand? A diplomatic game of rock, scissor, paper. Are we big enough to reach out a hand to a fist? Today I feel hopeful that we might be.

THE GOODBYE

As angry and disappointed as I have been over the past eight years, I am grateful for the goodbye being civil and dignified on both sides. Just one thing, Mr. Bush. Keep going. Don't look back. The place to look now is forward. Have a safe trip.

Organizational meltdown

Warning: It's not pretty. You may be offended and never read my blog again.

But let's agree on one thing: Most of the time I am a pretty organized person. I think it's important that everything have a place where it at least should go. In theory, you know.

Remember the cocktail napkins?

And check out my our craft supplies:

But the wheels came off the cart this afternoon while I was putting away the Christmas decorations. (We like to enjoy them. A lot. Which usually takes us well through January. OK, the truth: As long as we're getting in some skiing, we don't give a rip what our house looks like.)

The problem is that these items escaped my net:

Sophie calls this her "Jesus set," a gift from my mom. (We're devoted atheists but are down with most of the teachings of Jesus and don't mind exposing Sophie to the Christmas story in the historical sense.)

And remember these little devils, which graced my Thanksgiving table?

After an entire day of house cleaning (thank you, Dr. King), lacked the energy to open one of the boxes I had strategically fit back into the closet. This is going to have to do until next year.

Do you think Jesus would mind? I mean, he was born in a stable with animals. Or so they say.