Addison Between 17th and 18th

Notes from me to me (and maybe you): Neighborhoods can be more magical at night. Don't rent an apartment without seeing what it looks like after dark.

Emily and I found this street biking home from Rittenhouse Square the other night. The picture says nothing about what it's really like, but I said "Wow!" and stopped quick and Emily was mesmerized and we had a mini collision. If I were planning to stay in Philadelphia for longer, I would like to live here.

Tying the Knot

Learn to make skinny ties out of regular ties. See the full post on autostraddle.com.

Whack-a-mole/Guacamole

Last week, my computer crashed and I was face with the daunting tasking of filling up my time, prairie style. Luckily, I haven't touched any of my Christmas books since they were given to me due to the lure of the Internet and so I had 3 brand new books batting their eyelashes at me.
Since I'd been spending most of my computer time either being a professional lesbian or a a future professional housewife (this is only sort-of true, I also spend a lot of time researching linguistics programs and making myself panic about grad school so that I don't end up on Wisteria Lane), I pulled out this 844-page baby. So far, I've learned that mead is fermented honey-water (yum), that fruits and vegetables don't have to turn brown when you cut them, and that Henry David Thoreau had nice things to say about popcorn.

"I have been popping corn to-night, which is only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a great than July heat. The popped corn is a perfect winter flower, hinting of anemones and houstonians...By my warm heath sprang these cerealious blossoms, here was the bank where they grew"


But let's go back to keeping green vegetables green. Guacamole is my passion. I had it for the first time last summer (I know. I had sushi for the first time a month ago and tried my first soup--gazpacho--last week.) and never looked back. It's easy to make; cheap (holla 10/$10); and, regardless of how much you want to tell me that avocados are mostly fat, it's a green vegetable. Sometimes when I go home to visit my family, I spend time telling my grandparents new foods that I've eaten. "Red peppers!" I'll tell them, "Broccoli!" "Peaches!" "Crab!" and they're very proud. Despite having traveled all over the world, though, they insist on calling tortillas "tor-til-lee-yahs" and guacamole "guac-a-mol." They also exclusively call each other "dear" and my grandpa introduces my grandma as "my wife" instead of her name so much that once her friend addressed her birthday card "to my wife." This is a completely digression that I'm only including to point out that I used to think that the arcade game whack-a-mole had something to do with chips and dip.


Like any warm-blooded man, I like to come home from work to find dinner ready on the table. Just kidding, my girlfriend lives in Canada and I don't have a table. So I like to come home and have snacks waiting patiently in my fridge. Unfortunately, guacamole has a tendency to turn blackish-brown after a few hours and, while the taste doesn't change so much, the texture isn't quite the same and the color can be hard to get past. But guys, Harold McGee has all the answers and I'm about to break it down for you.

Q: Where did the avocado get its name?
A: "The name comes from the Nahuatl word ahuacatl, which was apparently inspired by the fruit's pear-like shape and irregular surface; it means 'testicle.'" (page 337)

Q: The avocados at the grocery store are never ripe but I want guacamole NOW. What do I do?
A: "Ripening can be accelerated by enclosing the fruit in a paper bag with an ethylene-emitting banana. If these warm-climate fruits are refrigerated while unripe, their cellular machinery is damaged and they will never ripen; once ripe, however, they can be refrigerated for several days and retain their quality" (page 337)

Q: What makes guacamole turn brown?
A: Guacamole is a puree. "We make purees by applying enough physical force to rush the tissue, break apart and open its cells, and mix cell innards with fragments of the cell's walls." "Many fruits and vegetables...quickly develop a brown, red, or gray discoloration wen cut or bruised. This discoloration is caused by three chemical ingredients: 1- and 2-ring phenolic compounds, certain plant enzymes, and oxygen. In the intact fruit or vegetable, the phenolic compounds are kept in the storage vacuole, the enzymes in the surrounding cytoplasm. When the cell structure is damaged and the phenolics are mixed with enzymes and oxygen, the enzymes oxidize the phenolics, forming molecules that eventually react with each other and bond together into light-absorbing clusters. This system is one of the plant's chemical defenses: when insects or microbes damage its cells, the plant releases phenolics that attack the invaders' own enzymes and membranes." (page 269)

Translation: Cells are basically little bags of stuff with bags of other stuff inside them. You know those glow sticks that you crack and they start glowing because the chemicals start mixing together? Cells are tiny versions of that. Only instead of glowing, they just turn a gross color and try to attack your mouth.

Q: How can you prevent it from changing color?
A: Mr. McGee and I don't agree on this one. Here's what he says: "Avocado flesh is well known for browning rapidly once cut or mashed, a problem that can be remedied by adding an acidic ingredient (often lime juice) or by airtight wrapping with a plastic film that blocks oxygen effectively" (page 337)

But you know what else he says? "The enemy of green: acids," (page 279) then goes how to explain how acids remove tails from chlorophyll a and turn it into chlorophyll b which is an olive brownish color. Acids like lemon or lime juice should be added at the last minute and he advises us to "consider protecting them first with a thin layer of oil" (page 280) Avocados are about 30% oil, so I guess that's helpful.

He recommends blanching green vegetables as "boiling temperatures will destroy the enzyme [that reacts and turns vegetables brown], so cooking will eliminate the problem," and quickly submerging them in a bath of icy water to stop cooking since "high temperatures can encourage phonolic oxidation in the absence of enzymes."

This all sounds great and very good stuff for modern jackass so rather than try to figure out what might work, I went ahead and did it. I split my avocado in two, blanched one half, added the same ingredients to both bowls, and came home to see what they looked like, with a couple of taste tests along the way.

On the left is the unblanched avocado. On the right is the blanched one. I lost a few flecks of avocado to the boiling water, but it's looking mighty green. Mr. Food said that vegetables appear to turn a brighter green after a few seconds in boiling water because of a "sudden explansion and escape of gasses trapped in the spaces between cells. Ordinarily, these microscopic air pockets cloud the color of the chloroplasts. When they collapse, we can see the pigments much more directly." (page 279) We're going to be breaking cells open in a minute so it shouldn't matter, but it's nice to look at for the moment, isn't it?

They look pretty much the same at this point. I like to add onions, garlic, salt, lime, tomatoes if I have then, and cilantro to my guacamole but I'm down for new ideas. Even after putting the boiled avocado in an ice bath, it didn't cool down completely so the guacamole was weirdly warm and slightly more bland.

After 7 hours at work, this is what I came home to find in my fridge. I thought the blanched guacamole tasted slightly fresher but that might have just been wishful thinking. The verdict: If you're making a vat of guacamole to serve later and want it to last and stay in the salad days of youth until then, you might want to consider boiling your avocados before mashing them. If you're looking for a quick snack, it's definitely not worth the extra time.

Sometimes I Write Things In Other Places

Mostly at Autostraddle, although occasionally things I say make guest appearances over at Emily's blog (Do you read it? She's cutesmartandfunny. Especially here.) when she wants to talk about my areas of expertise. If you happen to be interested, you can learn about a few of my favorite things: silver white winters that melt into springs, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, and brown paper packages tied up with strings.

this is a post about periods

my mum and i have this fun monthly tradition that goes like this:

[i call her]
my mum: hello?
me: oh hey.
my mum: are you ok? what's wrong?
me: nothing. [sob]
my mum: are you sure?
me: it's just that i'm so lonely/sad/overwhelmed/upset/worried
my mum: oh honey, i'm sorry, i wish i could hug you.
me: me too. [sob sob sob]
[10 minutes of sobbing and unintelligible crytalking on my end]
my mum: laura--now don't get mad, i'm just asking--are you due to get your period?
me: i am NOT pmsing! can't you just let me have my feelings? i am not ruled by my body!
my mum: ok, ok, i'm just checking.
[more crying ensues, she eventually convinces me that my life is not a joke and everything will be alright]

the following day:
[i call her]
my mum: hey, how're you feeling today?
me: i'm fine. i'm sorry, you were right. i woke up and got my period today. my life isn't entirely in shambles, i guess.

this happens every. single. month. if i just knew when my period was coming, i could avoid this entirely but i've never tracked it so it's a fun surprise every time. i used to think this was just a gay thing because i obviously don't have to worry about getting pregnant but based on empirical research the three people people i've asked so far, there is no correlation. Can i get a witness? just take my survey.

anyway, in an effort to be a grown up woman, i decided two periods ago to start keeping track. i have a google doc that is [aptly] named "period," but it just doesn't inspire the same excitement that i know a menstrual lunar calendar would.


periods are so much more fun when they require special accessories. i would like to thank the following for bringing joy to menstruation.

tampax compact for fitting so nicely in my pocket and not even being ugly.

the diva cup for being entirely inappropriately named but saving me $120 per year.

the person who made tampon stuffed animals for creating something that is irrationally cute.

the museum of menstruation for existing, although their web designer should be shot.

death and all his friends

things that threaten to destroy my robots:
+water
+power surges
+black holes

things that threaten to destroy me:
+alligators
+not flossing
+vitamin d deficiency/rickets
+reckless drivers
+heart disease
+heartache
+my robots
+black holes

Flowers are weak. They're naive. They reassure themselves whatever way they can. They believe their thorns make them frightening.

I've been doing interviews for our coulmn on Autostraddle, "I'll Have What She's Wearing," and every time I talk to someone, I've been trying to figure out how much they think about their clothes. Full disclosure: the only reason I wanted to do this feature was so that I'd have a reason to talk to the cute girl who worked in the men's department at Nordstroms, but now my nerdy side has taken over. Hello sociology.

When I get up and go to pick out my clothes [or more realistically, when I pick out my clothes the night before so that I can sleep in longer in the morning], I think, "What am I trying to say today?" I don't mean that I think that my clothes are everything, but I don't even get a chance to talk to most of the people I see every day. When you're in a city, you've only got a few seconds to make an impression on anyone you pass and since we all seem to have this incredible and specifically city loneliness; I'm not that weird for trying to catch someone's eye.

I know I know I know that you can't judge a book by its cover but why can't I communicate what I'm thinking through my body? It's the only thing that I carry around with me everywhere. Like I could never date someone with dirty toes. Maybe you're thinking that I need to get my priorities straight but guess what; I'm neurotic [case-in-point: this entire post is about how I try to control how other people see me] and I like things to be clean and if you don't, we're probs not going to get along and that's fine because everyone's different.

The thing is, I don't even know what I'm trying to tell people.

You could say that I'm trying to say, "I'm gay," but that would be such an oversimplification. That's definitely not the most important things about me or even maybe in the top ten. But I've been figuring out how I fit with the world and a lot of the time, being gay affects that. I get it now when people say they look at things with a queer sensibility; it doesn't mean that it defines me, it's just another pair of 3-D glasses that I can wear. I also think that I'm young and I have raging hormones and I like love and stuff so I spend approximately seventy-five percent of my time thinking about girls [and the other twenty-five percent thinking about me] which means I'm wondering if it means something when you sit with your legs crossed that way or if you walk with a swagger.

When I wear boys' clothes I feel safe. They're big and they hide me and men don't talk to me like that and if a girl likes it then maybe she's fun. Anyone who understands that layers and layers of clothes can be sexy because it's like unwrapping a present is someone I could get down with. I like dresses but them seem to invite too much attention. I mean, there's not really anything wrong with being called "babygirl" by strangers on the street, but sometimes I want to go YOU DON'T KNOW MAH LIFE all over their asses. Or maybe I just wish I could be all smooth hitting on girls like that.

If I wear girls clothes, I don't want to be weak. You know those women in commercials who are really beautiful and have their ish together and everyone watches in awe as they walk down a street? That does not happen in real life. Even women with muscles who look killer in little club things that would look awful on anyone else and who work for the C.I.A. get their faces licked by gross men. Simone and I have been watching a lot of Alias lately.

I JUST WANT TO BE HARD.

I don't want to be unapproachable and scary [which is good because that is something that could never happen], I just want a good balance of don't-fuck-with-me and hello-I'm-nice-let's-be-friends because I'm a Libra and that's how we do. I want balance but like radical balance.

Maybe I'm trying to tell people that I'm here and that I'm moving and I'm thinking. I watch people all the time and look for subtleties, but I know that not everyone reads the world like I do. Maybe it's about how I move and not about how I dress. I hope it's in the way that I walk, with my eyes to the sky instead of looking at the ground because my feet and I have finally grown comfortable with each other. Or in how loud I laugh because when I scream, it's out of joy. I'm going to stop before this turns into a bad version of that poem that they always used to read during morning prayer in high school.