Lair of the Ice Demoness

If you have a chance, please visit shadowwolf13's entry here and share a positive thought or two about your LJ friends.

Since I last posted, I have been in the ensemble of the Pittsburgh Savoyard's production of the Yeoman of the Guard which was a blast. I helped my daughter sew a bustle skirt in black satin and white crepe and we had fun doing that, too but it took a couple of weeks of sewing. In there I had a birthday and there was this storm called Sandy that decided to rain on it. But where I live didn't get much more than some wind and rain. It seemed like every day last week it rained. In fact I think the sun poked through once yesterday that I saw and a little bit today.

People who I know and care about and live closer to the East Coast did not fare as well and my heart goes out to them. Especially my brother-in-law and sister-in-law who had over a foot of water in their house (they had evacuated and so did not lose their cars). They lost a lot of stuff that they had only put up a foot and are racing against the clock to get things cleared out before mold sets in. First I am glad they are all okay. I know this is very hard for them. I know that they will recover from this and that there are people out there who won't be able to recover from this.

Today would have been my mother's 77th birthday. She died 18 years ago.

In every Pittsburgh Savoyard's production that I've been in, there has been some kind of dance party that goes on in the wings among the actors who are waiting to come on stage for the next scene. In the Mikado, we just danced randomly. In the Pirates of Penzance, I made sure to be up in the wings for the "Cat-like Tread" dance where myself and a couple other female chorus members and one of the double cast leads (who is still in high school) would imitate the pirates dance while they did it on stage. This is a lot of fun, a way to pass the time while waiting for the scene and builds energy for the performance.

Every day during performances there was some sort of snacks/food brought in. I always brought in homemade trail mixes --chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% cacao), cranberries (craisins) and almonds in one bag and yogurt peanuts and raisins in another (because one of our cast members was allergic to all chocolate). Over the course of the run several cast members had birthdays so cupcakes appeared for those and we sang Happy Birthday to each one. The last birthday occurred on the day of the last performance and it was for the person playing the Major General so after we finished singing Happy Birthday to him, one of our cast improvised "For he is the birthday boy," and we all sang along.

The first Sunday of the run, the person set to play Mabel was in a multi-car accident but wasn't hurt. She came in about ten minutes before the show started (she wasn't on until later) and had two or three other cast members help her get ready and performed the role. This was most impressive as she is a high school student and was driving the car, her dad and a friend were with her and the friend went to the hospital to be checked out. I think it helped her take her mind off of what happened to have to concentrate on performing but it was still impressive and I'm not sure I would have been able to do that.

Teaser made from a Pirates of Penzance rehearsal a couple of weeks ago:

( Tech week videos behind the cut )

Me: I'm hand scrubbing my kitchen floor because it's so bad.
Friend: You know I'm not impressed, I don't scrub the floor until the cats stick to it.
Me: You wake up one morning to discover the cats have surrounded a mouse that is stuck to the glue trap that is your kitchen floor!
Friend: Bwahahaha!

I have a couple of posts that I've been meaning to write but since the first week of January, I've been going to rehearsals for the Pittsburgh Savoyard's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". Which is surprisingly hard to learn and sing. The pace of the music is quite daunting. It's where the song, "I am the very Model of a Modern Major General" comes from. Couple that with having to coordinate movement (aka dance) to the songs and you've got some serious memorization demands and rehearsals. Judging from the early vocal rehearsals it's going to be a great show music wise and judging from the staging early rehearsals it will be a very fun show! So I may not get to posting much before March.

Also, things are gearing up for the musical that we perform at Confluence every year so that is taking bits of my free time as well.

Today, I cooked some kale loosely following to a recipe on the 16 oz. package of fresh, ready to use (pre-washed and chopped) Glory foods brand kale. The recipe called for the entire bag of kale, 1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes and 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning.
The recipe called for covering the kale with water. Instead, I put about 4 cups of water in the pan with the kale and brought it to a boil and stirred so the kale was wilted down. Then I turned down the heat and simmered the kale for the 10 minutes called for on the package. Instead of draining off half the water as called for in the recipe, I drained off most of it. I added the Italian seasoning and the can of tomatoes, in this case it was Muir Glen brand fire roasted diced tomatoes. In addition, I added about a teaspoon of dried rosemary, dried minced garlic and some garlic powder. Then continued to cook the greens on simmer for about 20 more minutes until tender.

This recipe turned out really well, so well in fact, that I wanted to add some cannellini beans. It turned out that I had about a cup and a half of dried cannellini beans. I found this page which had a recipe for cooking the beans in a pressure cooker without pre-soaking and the flavors used would be very compatible with my kale. So I rinsed the dried cannellini beans and put them in my pressure cooker pot with two inches of water, two tablespoons canola oil, 4 cloves of garlic, two bay leaves and some fresh ground pepper. I did not add the salt as somewhere I had read that it impeded cooking. I brought the mixture to a boil, put on the pressure cooker lid and brought the pressure up to about 15 psi (per my cooker's instructions). I cooked the beans for the 30 minutes and then turned off the heat and let the pressure come down naturally. When I opened the pot and tasted the beans they weren't cooked enough, as I suspected, they had been in the cabinet awhile. I brought the mixture to a boil again and once again put the lid on and brought up the pressure and cooked for 30 minutes more. This time they were more than done and very tasty. I plan to mix them together and take to work as lunches. Yum!