Tag Archive for 'Family'

Tofurky Thanksgiving

Published
by
Gary
on November 24, 2007
in Declaration
. 6 Comments

Tofurky and Vegetarian

A naked Tofurky and my cousin, the vegetarian culprit. In its wild state the Tofurky looks rather like an uncooked haggis.

Tofurky Mushroom and Giblet Gravy

“Tofurky Mushroom and ‘Giblet’ Gravy.” It’s like they preemptively made fun of themselves.

Innocent Tofurky

Here’s an oven-roasted Tofurky, moments before its final fate. In its prepared state it’s a visual paradox, like something Marcel Duchamp cooked up. Here you have something that’s carefully designed to look as little like meat as possible, something that barely even looks organic. However, give it the symbolic trappings of a typical roast—round glass casserole dish, chopped potatoes and carrots, rising steam, glowing heat—and it takes on a weird sense of meat-ness.

Slicing the Tofurky

Of course, the real paradox is that a Tofurky tastes shockingly like an actual turkey [made of firm tan Jell-O]. It’s a bizarre thing, a traditional turkey updated for the state of society in 2007, reflecting conflicting desires to preserve the symbols of Thanksgiving without having an actual butchered bird, with all the cultural and moral baggage that bird might bring.

HPIM0514

Naturally we also ate meat made from animals.

Come Into My World

Published
by
Gary
on March 13, 2007
in Declaration
. 5 Comments

Hey all, welcome Kiley Rose Ku into the world, courtesy Anna & my brother Hans!

lilkylie.jpg

Wow, it wasn’t that long ago when my first niece was born.

…

Muwahaha, KUs ARE TAKING OVER!!!

Insomniac Jenna Polka

Published
by
Gary
on August 6, 2006
in Observation
. 3 Comments

I was sleeping over at my brother’s place last night, except I coffee’d up during the day and so couldn’t actually fall asleep. Luckily, my one-and-a-half-year-old niece was nice enough to wake up every two hours to keep me company. It was fun in a “how do parents do this” sort of way.

She sleeps on a little mattress in a bedroom next to the kitchen/living room, where my brother had left the light on. (I was sleeping on an air mattress in the living room.) She’s tall enough to reach the doorknob now, so around 1:30 she toddled out, crying for her mommy. This’ll sound dumb, but I was half-shocked at how small she is—she comes up a little past my knee, but against the yellow kitchen light and big dining chairs she looked helplessly tiny.

So, I was a bit lost for what to actually do. My brother told me to just pick her up and put her back in bed, and it turns out that it’s almost that easy. I think she was probably just afraid of being separated, because when I picked her up she calmed down; when I put her in her bed she curled up with her plush Tigger right away. It’s like she suddenly forgot why she was upset. Of course, she started crying as soon I got up to go back to bed, so I came back and slowly rubbed her back until she seemed to be deeply asleep. (I don’t know if there’s a better technique, but that was pretty comforting when I was a kid.)

She woke up again around 3:30, so I went in and did the same thing. Around this time I noticed that she smelled sort of like a vanilla Powerbar, so I decided to panic because I lack practical diaper-changing experience. I ended up leading her into the master bedroom so my sister-in-law could take over. I decided to stay upright and work on my grad apps, so I heard sporadic cries and then mysterious silence over the next few hours. I think the caffeine wore off, but bizarre anxiety over my niece waking up took over.

I decided to sink into the sofa at 5:30, so of course my niece decided to spice it up by waking up at 5:50. (I guess she likes prime numbers?) Luckily, Hans got up and kept her company, so I got some blissful sleep… after Jenna got up for reals I relocated to the nursery and slept like a rock.

The weird thing is that somehow my niece was extremely energetic, as usual, despite getting about as much sleep as I did. She was banging up the furniture, piling blocks onto the DVD player, and following me into the bathroom, all in the usual form. My hypothesis is that, being tiny, little kids don’t need as much energy to be energetic, kind of like a… Prius or something.