The Imaginary Heroine’s Fictional Boyfriends March 25, 2010

As promised, here’s a list of my fictional boyfriends.

Harry Potter, the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
I know a bunch of people are going to skeeved out when they read this. Let me just say, I started reading Harry Potter in junior high, when we were about the same age in book time. As the gaps between books widened, I aged faster than Mr. Potter did. All of this is moot though, because Harry’s birthday is July 30, 1980. So, he’s seven years and about a month older than me anyway. So there.

I didn’t really feel romantically attached to Harry until the much-maligned fifth book came out (I was still two months shy of sixteen when it came out in 2003, so I was still in non-creepy territory. Thbt!). A lot of people have complained that they couldn’t stand Harry in book five. He was a whiney pain-in-the-butt, always on about how unfair life was and losing his marbles to the Dark Lord.

Here’s the thing…that was just how I felt too. High school pretty much sucked for me. Like Harry, I spent a lot of time at odds with not only a large number of my closest friends, but also several teachers and my high school. Throw in some metallic maroon combat boots and the inevitable teenage cry of “no one understands meeeee!” and you’ve got the wretched disaster that was sixteen year-old me.

When Harry was shouting down Professor Umbridge in class and forming secret resistance societies, my bolshy (and, yes, whiney, pain-in-the-butt) sixteen year-old self just swooned. When he wasn’t defeating evil, Harry was just trying to get by and do right by people. He also had a mischief streak a mile wide without being an obnoxious “bad boy.” Something that really appealed to this goody-two-shoes. Harry also has great taste in women, as evidenced by his proximity to smart gals like Hermione and Ginny. Add in dark hair and some glasses…I’m sold.

Just like Harry, I ended up dropping out before my senior year and heading off into the world. Sure he went to look for Horcruxes and I went to college, but we can’t all be “the Chosen One.” I will always think of Harry Potter as my partner in crime, my brother in arms, and my only high school boyfriend.

Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, portrayed by David Boreanaz
This one gives me pause now. I used to think Angel was, like, the be all end all of hotness. I definitely blame him for giving me a type: dark eyes, dark hair, straight brow, tan skin, buff shoulders…. Which is basically 7abibi all over, now that I think of it…

Now I realize that it’s pretty creepy for a 240 year-old guy to be sleeping with a seventeen year-old. Even if the 17 year-old in question is a vampire slayer. Plus, all these vampire romances sound good in theory, but the lack of body heat just…ew. Ew. I have a feeling a physical relationship with a vampire would be kind of icky, actually. Who knows what kind of nasty diseases a vampire might have lurking all over their body – they’re basically invincible!

That aside, Angel won my heart and stomped all over it again and again in college. And I loved him for it. It gave me an escape from a crazy class load, 3/4 time job, and roommate angst. Buffy and Angel on DVD definitely helped me survive some grueling semesters.

Yes, he spent some time saving Buffy, but he didn’t mind when Buffy saved him. And she did. Quite a lot, actually. That is what made Angel awesome. He loved a girl who could kick his ass. He even loved her after she killed him, for goodness sake. That is one man who knows the value of a good woman.

I ended up following Angel to his spin-off show and liking him the better for being a bit darker and a bit funnier than he was in BtVS. I have to give the writers and Boreanaz credit, because the Angel/Angelus duality helped me hash out a lot of feelings about good and evil inside myself and finding a moral compass after you realize you aren’t and never will be all good all the time.

Seeley Booth, Bones, portrayed by David Boreanaz
I followed David Boreanez on to his next project, a TV show called Bones. I had never been into a crime drama before, but I was willing to give it chance if it meant I could see his pretty face again. I was prepared to be bored or grossed out, but guess what? Bones kicks all kinds of ass.

Yet again, we see David Boreanaz sharing face time with a kick-ass woman and doing it well. Sometimes he plays the blue-collar, Catholic straight man to her intellectual, atheist jibes. Other times he plays the wise guy and urges her to listen to her heart to find the answers she’s searching for. The show achieves a delicate balance by giving the female lead traits often considered masculine and giving traditionally feminine traits to the male lead. The inversion leads to both humor and illumination as they work together to solve the crime du jour.

I would argue that Boreanaz must be a vampire in real life, because I swear he’s gotten better looking with age. He’s able to carry off both the manly man shell of FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth while staying true to an inner core of intuition, love, and harmony. He’s the thinking woman’s heart-throb.

Ramses Emerson, The Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters
I’ve talked about him before on this blog. Walter Peabody Emerson, a.k.a. the Brother of Demons, a.k.a. Ramses is totally hot.

Ramses is the scholar of the bunch, with several degrees and near perfect fluency in myriad languages, dead and alive. Don’t let that fool you though, because he’s also a master of disguise with a wicked sense of humor and enough mischief to match Fred and George Weasley. Plus he “doesn’t fight like a gentleman” whether he’s faced with drunken British Officers or Turkish spies or his dastardly cousin Percy. He’s not afraid of personal injury if he thinks it’s in the service of good, as evidence by his damaging pacifist cover for an extremely active career as a secret agent. He’s also an unabashedly adoring husband and loving dad. Swoon.

Ramses is another guy who is attracted to smart and determined women. How can he not be with a mom like Amelia Peabody? It’s an aphrodisiac, I swear. Show me a man who loves smart women and I’ll show you a milliondy-twelve women of worth willing to love him back.

Honorable Mention:
Mr. Knightly, Emma by Jane Austen
I sort of surprise myself on this one, since my favorite Austen is definitely Sense and Sensibility. But Edward Ferrars just can’t stand up to Mr. Knightly (or really anyone, come to think of it). Mr. Knightly was always trying to boss Emma around, but still loved her and sought her opinion even when she stood up to him or refused to take his advice. Sure his constant nagging could be interpreted as paternalistic and icky, but I choose to read it otherwise. Emma was written as such a stubborn and self-assured character that she needed a powerful counterpart. Someone who was willing to tell her when she was full of crap or being a bitch to Miss Bates. Someone who urged her to be better, because she could and should. That’s why I would say Mr. Knightly has the edge over everyone’s favorite haughty-to-hottie hero, Mr. Darcy.

I find most of Austen’s heros fairly tame. The guys with real spark end up being huge jerks, like Wickham and Willoughby. What is Austen saying here? Is she pulling a Gottleib and telling us to settle for Mr. Dependable-but-dull? Is she telling us that a happy marriage means turning your back on fun, exciting partners? Although Austen gives her heroines a traditional happy ending, the fact that she herself never married and her quotes on the subject of marriage, spinsterhood, and female worth are indicative of a deep skepticism of marriage and men.

Fred/George Weasley, the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
They’re a ton of fun, that’s for sure, and plenty brave. They also seem to be appreciative of powerful women. Fred took the Angelina Johnson to the Yule Ball for cripes sake! Don’t remember her? She was a quidditch chaser who was good enough to make captain and a witch talented enough to try for TriWizard Champion. I hear she married George after the Second Wizarding War! My admiration for the twins is somewhat limited by their secondary (tertiary?) character status. There’s not much to go on here since the Harry Potter series is mostly limited to Harry’s POV. What did they get up to when Harry wasn’t looking? I’m betting they were “up to no good,” of course.

Eric Northman, the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris and True Blood, portrayed by Alexander Skarsgård

This is a fairly recent one for me. I just started reading the Sookie Stackhouse books this year. If I talk about why, I’ll be giving up a crapload of spoilers about the book series and possibly the TV show, so I’ll just zip it. He’s definitely got the high mischief factor going on. I can’t like Eric all the way since he’s definitely a selfish jerk. On the other hand, he’ll tell you so up front. Points for honesty? Being a former viking, he definitely goes against my normal physical type. I’ll stay tuned on this one. The jury is still out.

Who are your fictional boyfriends? Have they changed over time? Want to fight to the death over Angel? I’m dying to know!

East Meets West Soup with a dash of Amelia Peabody February 1, 2010

(SPOILERS: Includes an overview of the Amelia Peabody Series by Elizabeth Peters. Ruins elements of the first book, but doesn’t deal with plot lines or mystery arcs)

Just to prove that I actually do eat and cook foods that aren’t chocolate desserts, I decided I had to make something worth posting for Sunday dinner. I was flipping through some cookbooks and online sites and couldn’t find anything that both sounded good and included ingredients in my kitchen.

I finally settled on making some plain old English potato soup, but when I started prepping the kitchen my eyes fell upon my bookshelf.
After a recent home improvement kick, there are now five bookshelves in the apartment. One in the living room holds classics and our DVD collection. Three in the bedroom house my Middle East books, 7abibi’s sci-fi and Chinese books, and our poli-sci/economics books respectively. The one in the kitchen has two shelves. The bottom shelf holds my cookbooks and food magazines. The top shelf holds my favorite novels: Harry Potter, Bridget Jones, Sookie Stackhouse, Amelia Peabody…
Amelia Peabody, known to many as the female Indiana Jones, was probably one of the biggest influences in the selection of my college degree. Actually, it was her linguist-cum-spy son, Walter Peabody Emerson AKA Ramses, that got me on the Linguistics/Middle Eastern studies track. Huh. No wonder I can’t get an interview… Though the Amelia Peabody series is usually enjoyed by a more mature audience, I was sucked in by the original novel The Crocodile on the Sandbank in eighth grade. The series now boasts eighteen titles with the nineteenth, A River in the Sky, due to be released April 6 of this year.

The stories are a suspenseful mix of murder, black markets, romance, history, and hilarious family drama. Elizabeth Peters is actually a nom de plume of Barbara Mertz, who received her PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago at the age of 23. Which means that a lot of the egyptological methods, theory, and history in these books are real. Many of the characters featured in the novels are also either real people (like Howard Carter, the Pankhurst sisters of women’s suffrage fame, and many more) or based on real egyptologists and travelers in Egypt and Britain during the early 1900’s.

The books usually involve the academic excavations of Amelia and Radcliffe Emerson being interrupted by a murder or theft which our intrepid egyptologists must solve before they can get back to work. The mysteries come to revolve around the character of the Master Criminal, who runs the black market antiquities trade between Egypt and Europe (one can almost hear Indiana Jones saying “that belongs in a museum!”). In the later books, a new generation joins the fray and the action becomes tied up in the unsettled political atmosphere that plagued Egypt during the final years of British occupation and the run up to WWI.

The series is a happy combination of several opposing elements. It skillfully weaves together factual events and people with fictional plots and characters. Though the main character is a female heroine who can kickass and take names, the books still manage to have interesting and worthy male characters. The flavor of the stories combine British, Ancient Egyptian, and more modern Colonial Egyptian elements to create deliciously complex story settings, characters, and structure.

Which brings me to East Meets West Soup.

Looking at my spice rack, I decided plain old potato soup simply wouldn’t do. I started pulling Central Asian spices like coriander, ginger, and turmeric. My general theory being that if Indian spiced potatoes taste good and English potato soup tastes good, then Indian potato soup would taste awesome. This is of course based upon the “good + good = awesome” maxim, as related to me on several occasions by 7abibi.

East Meets West Soup

This is a kind of “throw it in” type of recipe. Not finicky in the least. So if you haven’t got it, substitute your butt off. It’ll be just fine.

Ingredients:

1 large onion (I used yellow, but you can use anything but sweet – Wallawalla/Vidalia/etc)

1 cup baby carrots

6 stalks celery

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 large sweet potato

2 large russet potatoes

3 teaspoons broth/stock bouillon base (I used Better than Boullion chicken, but you can make this vegan

with vegetable stock)

3 teaspoons dry ginger (slightly less if you’re working with fresh or minced)

3 teaspoons minced garlic (3 cloves, if starting with whole)

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons dry cilantro (a handful of fresh is better, but dry was all I had in the kitchen)

4 cups of water

Equipment:

chef’s knife or utility knife

cutting board

vegetable peeler

large 2 – 4 quart pot

wooden spoon

ladle

Directions:

Dice onions and cut celery and carrots finely and combine in large pot. [Hey look! You just made a mirepoix. Don’t you feel all knowledgeable and chefy now?].

Sprinkle salt over vegetables. Place pot over medium/low heat, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon for 10 minutes until mirepoix is fragrant and vegetables begin to soften. This is a sweat, so you shouldn’t hear loud sizzling or see any browning. If you have that, turn the heat down until it stops. You should simply have steam and fragrance.

While the aromatics are sweating, take this opportunity to peel and chop your potatoes. I like pieces that are fairly large, because they tend to disintegrate as they get softer and bigger chunks means more chunks are left in the final soup. Chop the russet potatoes last, because they will start to brown after the flesh is exposed to the air and that does not look tasty at all.

Place the potato chunks in the pot with the aromatics and add spices (NOTE: if you’re using fresh chopped cilantro, wait and add it to the finished soup after you turn off the burner), bouillon base, lemon juice, and garlic. Stir until all pieces of vegetables are coated and then add water. Cover and let simmer over medium heat for 30 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Usually celery is the last to go, so be sure to check a big chunk of that to be sure about doneness.

Ladle into bowls and enjoy.