fallow build-up

Sometimes you just have to loaf around on the weekend until your energies are replenished. But sometimes loafing around just leads to more loafing around. Didn't feel like I got shit done on Friday.

Saturday I went food shopping (truly should get some kind of bonus for facing the grocery store each week) and closed my Chase account. (It was time to put my money where my politics were, so it's the inconvenience of my local credit union for now on. Seriously, I was so glad to get that done.) But I still felt like I was swimming against the current the rest of Saturday.

Then, this morning I got up before 7am, cut my hair and cooked 7 days worth of meals before heading over to a friend's house for dinner.

The best metaphor is either laying fallow or letting the pressure cooker build up steam...I don't know. All I know is that I kicked some middle-aged ass to day and boy am I tired.

to market, to market

I was sorting through the Roma tomatoes today at the farmer's market. Not a big fan of Romas (prefer the globe variety) but they're cheap and great for drying. The place was moderately busy for a Saturday morning but not maddeningly so.

Our farmer's market is not of the hyper-local, chi-chi organic ilk. No. It's in an economically lower-end area of town, run by members of the local Hispanic population. Some of the fruits and vegetables are grown nearby and some are trucked in from parts unknown. I suspect little of it is organic. You're not going to find any fussy heirloom tomatoes, hydroponically grown radicchio, or cunning containers of edamame (delicious foods for which I am constitutionally unable to hand over that much of my income). But you can get stuff that is in season and reasonably priced. They've also got bulk rice and beans on the side and a flotilla of above average taco carts out back. Across the street is a panaderia full of pan dulces that are tasty, artificially colored and probably have never been compromised by ingredients as expensive as butter.

It is, as close to the traditional, enduring marketplace as you can find in a large urban area. A large urban area rife with brightly lit, flagship supermarkets, big as a football fields.

The place has rows and rows of low-walled wooden tables, each piled high with fruits or vegetables. As I picked through the ripe Romas, I looked up and saw an older Hispanic woman doing the same, focused on her task with sure, slightly arthritic hands. While a middle-aged Asian woman at another table sorted through beans next to a young woman eying the peppers, I experienced a rare moment of connectedness to women who have visited marketplaces for millennia. Going through the ordinary, mundane act of sifting and sorting through foodstuffs to find the best items at the best price, in order to make meals for their families.

And I felt honored to be counted among them.

retracting my breakup

Not quite a year ago I wrote a post about my disillusionment with America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated online. I won't go over that material, it only serves to make me look even more spineless.

In the name of partial truth reporting, I must admit that I caved. I folded. I took the jewelry and got back with my sugar daddy. Reunited with residual bitterness. It's all so tawdry but I am a slut for food science.

malaprops and minimalists

A response in my inbox this morning held today's happy accident:

I'll get with them for clearfication.

There are few things that delight me more than a word usage mistake that make sense in its own wacky way.

To be fair, I'm not just a scathing commentator on others mistakes. I recently fell flat on my face in the pop culture tournament when I mixed up Ice-T and Ice Cube. This was like the gimme/$200 Jeopardy choice, I am told.

Today I also discovered, literally on the last day after 13 years, The Minimalist column for the NY Times, written by Mark Bittman. So, I'm watching his top 20 videos and sending myself emails with these subject lines:

• omg make this
• holy shit make this too
• jesus christ this one too
• more
• even more

I'm not often greatly moved by food blogs or columns. There's lots of good stuff out there, to be sure, but a recipe and demonstration that makes me want to leave work and buy the ingredients? That's cause for celebration.

in which i break up with atk

This is personal and filled with drama...I broke up with America's Test Kitchen! In an email, no less (they won't take my calls):

For years, I've been damn-near evangelical in my love for Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen. I receive your publication and I own your cookbooks. While perusing recipes with a friend (who pays for web membership) we hit a recipe that was blurred out and reserved for "Editor's Choice" memberships only.

...I've had it with premium memberships, elite memberships and all the other marketing crap that striates and monetizes every level of information and makes everything into a goddamn tollroad. I am heartbroken to say this, but I'm done. I'll go elsewhere for recipes from now on.

Seriously, I'm bummed. But a girl has to set some boundaries.

*see shameful update

holiday handiwork

I went on a Linzer tarts kick over the holidays. They're one of my favorite cookies (and my inner adolescent giggles every time I say, "Ooo, I love eating tarts"). Here are a few of the piles of tarts we made over Christmas and New Years:

I found this great Linzer tart recipe on epicurious.com. The cookies are basically shortbread (read: butter, egg, brown sugar and just enough flour to hold it all together) but this recipe replaced some of the flour with ground roasted hazelnuts. And there's no way that won't make everything in your life better. Sandwiched between the not-too-sweet cookies I spooned some Trappist jam:

Trappist Preserves are god-damned awesome. The are really made by monks at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Trappist Monks also make incredible beer, I understand. (If the Catholic church wants some PR spin away from the pedophiles, just shine a big ol' spotlight on the Jam & Ale Brothers.) I bought mine at mega-wonderful Specs in downtown Houston. I tried raspberry, apricot and blackberry preserves. The raspberry, to my tastes, was the best. Blackberry a close second. The apricot jam was phenomenal but a little too mild for the cookies. The finishing touch is a fine sprinkling of powdered sugar on top.

While I was trawling for cookie recipes, I stumbled upon these handtool-shaped cookie cutters:

Sold by The Cookie Cutter Shop, I ordered them so fast my mouse got dizzy.

Which led to additional batches and these cunning "tool tarts" which I took to my dear design guys and friends at work:
The pliers (see cookie cutter image above) shape turned out to be too breakable-none of them made it to this stage intact (maybe better with a less shortbread-type recipe) and as you see, the screwdriver needed to be handled carefully. All that aside, these were mighty tasty and fun to present.

Out of the kitchen and into the...um, living room. Many years ago friends (real lesbians with horses) gave me a bunch of leftover washable wool they'd used to make horse blankets (see?). In addition to fashioning a Wuthering-Heights-worthy hooded cape from it for my daughter years ago, I created this tree skirt:

For those of you who don't know my love of all things associated with tools, I made the pattern to match a circular saw blade (Is this a fucking big blade, or what?):

It took me forever to get around to making this simple skirt. Now that it's done, I've decided that every year I want to add some small embellishment. Two years ago, I blanket-stitched the edges for contrast and to help keep the skirt from getting distorted over time.

I used black felt that I had for backing and that was not a great choice as it tends to shed. I figure if I continue to embroider the skirt, it will help contain the backing as well as decorate the top.

This year, I added metal eyelets to each point and satin-stitch-covered them in different colors:

I have always been terrible about documenting my projects–I'm just not comfortable with photography. However, I've been inspired by my friend Kim, who is crazy-creative and a damn good photographer and her husband (my coworker) Gary, who explained that the little flower symbol on my digital camera was as close to a macro lens as I was going to get (thank you, hombre!). So, here. Proof Examples of what I did on my Christmas vacation, with very little Photoshop cleanup needed.

matter is neither created nor destroyed. i know this.

Spent the day cooking. Not because it's the New Year. No, it's just because I want to work on some projects and I find that cooking every other day sucks up more energy than I wish it did. That said, I'm pretty committed to eating healthy so don't want to start throwing fast meals together because that usually means the nutrition part gets haphazard.

Okay, so I cooked like a demon. All told, I think I've got almost three weeks of meals frozen. Chili, Senate bean soup (that's really what the recipe is called--it's just a ham bone, white northern beans, carrots, onions, garlic, etc.), arroz con pollo y frijoles negros, and corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. The corned beef I didn't freeze because the potatoes get all gross mealy.

Now the reason I'm telling you all this is not just to brag like a self-righteous pioneer. No, I want to talk about weird physics. Stay with me, this shouldn't take long. Okay, sometimes I drive to work in the morning and at the end of the day I get in my car and find I need to adjust the seat. I'm relatively sure I haven't shrunk over the day but I can't figure out how my legs felt comfortable reaching the pedals at 7am but suddenly need to be closer at 5pm.

The corned beef recipe called for 2 teaspoons of peppercorns. This went into a large dutch oven. Two teaspoons is not really that much when it's swimming in a gallon of broth. When I took the corned beef out and dumped the cabbage and potatoes into the hot broth to cook, I didn't add any more seasonings. When everything was cooked and cooled I moved the cabbage and potatoes into two casserole dishes and combined them with the corned beef.

I like the flavor of pepper and cloves and bay leaves. I'm just not interested in biting into any of them. So I started removing them from the dish. Bay leaves and cloves accounted for and plucked out. Here's the weird physics: I am pulling out peppercorns and they just keep coming. Like clowns out of a VW. Like rabbits out of cages. I am looking at a pile of peppercorns that is way greater than the amount I measured into the pot. Where did they all come from? Fucking peppercorns.

i confess

I went to see Julie & Julia and like dozens of clichés under which I am loathe to fall, I am yet another blogger who loved it.

• Not just because I happen to love writing and cooking.
• Not just because I believe fresh bread is divine but may have been created for the sole purpose of conducting sacred butter into our pastry holes.
• Not just because Meryl Streep is fucking amazing and enchanting as Julia Child.
• Not just because there were two love stories I could relate to and empathize with.
• But all these things and a Saturday afternoon matinee with my own St. Barbara.

I'm a little embarrassed to say I'm making hamburgers for dinner. Half ground beef and half ground turkey at that. Oh, I'll saute onions, add beautiful ripe tomato slices and place them on a bed of fresh romaine but we're still talking hamburgers here.

I also have another confession. Some of you are aware of this and seem to have forgiven me but...I'm seeing another blog. Yes. It's true but I love you best and this is only a fling. A three-month infidelity that makes me love you more. I understand if you are irritated. Maybe you won't want to have anything to do with the other blog.

But just in case you do...it's all about DIY. Fixing up the place. No. I mean that's what it's called. I talk about tools and fixing my house. See, you aren't even interested! It's a very narrow scope and is no threat to anyone or anything right here. There are some good diagrams, however, I must admit to that.

PS. About that movie. You know, if you filled a life-sized glass cow to the brim with butter and cream and floated it in a olympic pool of wine that's probably close to what Julia Child consumed in her life. And she lived to 91! Fuck all the hater dieters. Julia sneers at your Lean Cuisine.

not related to the previous post

Sometimes when you cook, the simple joy of Nature's bounty is payoff enough:

The only disappointment was that the yolks weren't conjoined. Now that would have been amazing. Still in all my years of baking, I've never run into a single twin (hehe) egg, so three two cheers for mitosis.

back by popular demand: the easter menu

In response to my friend Martie's request and just in time for the holidays, here is the official reprint of my own...

Evolving Easter Menu

(recipes not included because creation is not a science...you just make it up!)

Breakfast
30 Silver-Dollar Pancakes
Holy Ghost Cinnamon Toast
and the ever popular:
Stigmata Frittata

Appetizer
Crucifix Chex Mix

Entrees
Son o' God Steamed Cod
with Apostle Pesto
Crucify Stir Fry
Chewed Rustic Carrots
in Stations of the Cross White Sauce
Crown o' Thorn Creamed Corn

Desserts
Magdalene Cherry Tarts
Resurrection Confection
Doubting Thomas Jelly Donuts
and, of course,
Divinity

Bonus pic! Years ago another wonderful friend, John Paul, invited us over for the resurrection festival. I said I'd bring an appropriate dessert. Yesterday I looked high and low for these photos. They seem to have been carried off by the dust creatures that squat in my closet. The whole exercise led to cleaning out that gulag–a task I never willingly undertake (and must trick myself by looking for something)–and tossing 85% of the shit I'd accumulated. So here is a reenactment of the brilliant Peeps Crucifix. (Unseen are the toothpicks used to impale the peeps to their styrofoam stations. That's right, kids out there in tv land, there were peep stigmatas all over the place. What good is a theme if you can't beat it to a marshmallowy pulp? Please take note of the Calvary-esque Easter grass.)

Bon Appetit to my friends, saved and damned alike.

birthday month continues

Ta-DAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

ThisMy new baby has arrived in Houston. I'm tracking it like an international flight path.

[update: Location: HOUSTON, TX, US
Date: 10/24/2008 Time: 3:21 A.M
Status: OUT FOR DELIVERY]

KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Stand Mixer. I'm hearing a fucking chorus of angels. Uh-huh.

taming the chaos

Sister coming to visit. Very busy. DIY mavens, we are. New ceiling fan installed. Check. New kitchen faucet (and sprayer, ptl) installed. Check. Yardwork. St. Barbara's check. Homemade enchiladas and lasagna in the freezer. Check and check. Lists with check boxes checked. Check.

new ceiling fan. cool.

new faucet. smooth.

We're going to have so much fun. And my domestic duties will include far less domestic duty. Will report back.

post vacation post

We have returned from visiting the parental units and adding the first two notches on our 30 stadium tour belt. A bit travel-weary but happy to be home. Trying to kick-start normal routines back to life but so far, not much luck.

Forced myself to go into the kitchen and whip up some dinner. My mother cooked for us every day and well, she managed to raise me without spoiling me so how could she undo all that hard work in one week? Anyhow, I thawed some flounder fillets and scrounged up a couple of lemons for marinade. Did you ever cut a lemon in half, dig out 8 seeds and begin squeezing the juice out only to have another eight seeds try to skydive onto your meal? You catch those and begin to squeeze with abandon, because surely there aren't any more in there, and watch another half dozen fly out. You fish those out only to have a few more slide by. This was the lemon I faced on my reluctant return to the kitchen. The Darwinian Champion of lemons. The Ron Jeremy of Citrus.*

*I realize lemon seeds are more symbolic of ova fecundity than phallic virility. However, the analogy doesn't work very well. We don't tend to look at a female and think, damn, that's a lot of corpus luteum for one woman!

Btw, Happy 420, all you people with the dopey smiles.

The following entries are odds and ends I wrote up offline while on vacation but didn't have the internet zen space to post. They're in no particular order...

proof of the [pig] pudding and other cooking adventures

I have built computers. Tackled hairy tech problems. Installed some serious shit in both Macs and Windows machines. But it's taken until now for Barbara and I to figure out how to get the wee pictures out of the wee cellphone. Here you go, proof that bacon cups can be made at home:

First, with potatoes......and then some eggs thrown in for good measure.

Playing with food has a particular appeal to me. I'm sure that statement says something dark and damaged about my psyche but, what the fuck, it makes me happy. I have even cooked on my car engine from this brilliant masterpiece:

Actually, I've cooked on a car engine three times. The sausage with onions and peppers was my favorite.

but the humble pie tastes perfect

I pull out all the stops for the holidays. It's a cooking marathon and I'd like to think that I regularly cross the finish line with the upper ten percent of contestants. Perhaps hubris was my undoing.

Or maybe it's just because sometimes things go wrong. And take a bunch of other things with them.

Over the past five days I have planned, shopped and scheduled. I have mise en placed with the best of them. This meal seemed destined for the record book. But no. And I'm not going to give that pansy-assed little whimper, "this has never happened before!" Of course it has. But not with cooking impotence this...potent. And never while sober. Whining is a slappable offense but one's limp culinary ego demands at least a bit of over-analyzing:

• equipment issues - 1. When it calls for a full-sized food processor, the junior size won't do. My first double pie crust batch was processed into cookie dough crammed as it was into that small container. 2. When a stand-alone mixer is the tool specified, you might as well cede the fight. Kneading the dinner roll dough by hand was like coaxing cooked oatmeal into a diorama of Native Americans flipping off a party of Pilgrims.
• ingredient issues - Weak yeast looks remarkably like virile yeast from the package; and no, it didn't need to be "proofed" because it was "instant" yeast, just like Cooks Illustrated requested. And I checked the date–it was fine. Hockey pucks instead of dinner rolls. Crimes against bread are worthy of kitchen exile. And the butter was so ready! What am I going to tell the butter? Tears swimming in its little yellow eyes...
• recipe problems - My first America's Test Kitchen disappointment: you can NOT pre-bake a pie shell without pie weights! Try it like they suggest and you'll end up with crust sliding down the pie pan sides into an unappetizing pancake-y dough puddle. Swimming in melted butter (a quality incredibly appealing in most dishes and random encounters but never in pastry).
• user error - I took my eye off the prize for five minutes and my "Pie Off" entry* got singed! It was the perfect double-crust apple pie. Crust rolled out beautifully (unlike the other one**) Tart and sweet apples coupling in a buttery, spiced, lemon-zested mound. Top crust evenly and ornamentally pierced, adorned with a wee cunning apple appliqué all egg-white-shiny and sugar-sprinkled. Edges charmingly well-fluted. Ten inches in diameter and practically hemorrhaging fruit goodness–it was magnificent. Didn't hear the timer. Didn't hear the fucking timer. Edges scorched. Appley-qué singed. I tripped over my feet with the finish line in sight. I brought my A Game and choked, people. CHOKED.

It's not that there weren't promising moments of ecstasy. The rice pudding is positively fuckable. The bread stuffing is outstanding and the mashed potatoes are so creamy rich it looks like you're wearing lip gloss when you're done eating them. The pumpkin pie holds great promise (I snort haughtily at your pumpkin pie derision, Mr. Damon). But mind-blowing, screaming culinary orgasm it ain't. Okay, so the finish line isn't the only thing, pleasure should be measured along the way...however, a meal like this should leave one's taste buds hankering for a cigarette. A whole pack even. Sigh.

I have high hopes for the second turkey. Yes, we got two. Brined and buttered as the first one was, I completely killed it. Completely. Twenty years of cooking good-to-great turkeys and I decimated my first turkey this year. This time I'll pay closer attention. It's 425°F for the first hour and 375°F for the second. Not the other way around, you dyslexic, flour-dusted moron.

Still, in spite of setbacks, I've managed to have fun. Real laughing fun. A tribute, without question, to Barbara's twenty-one years of influence. She's the real deal. Optimistic in the face of all things burnt and runny. Everything will taste great. The ingredients say so. And we'll be with friends and that's the reason Thanksgiving is a great holiday. There will be eating and drinking and making merry.

*My friend Eric is having a Pie Off. First ever. And I talked all sorts of sports-laced smack about taking down his soy-boy, weak-assed apple pie with my behemoth crusher pie. Stuff this in your pie-hole, and so on and on. Folks, I'll be going down in flames with an entry that looks like it has third-degree burns. Not fatal, mind you. Just disfigured. Stop staring.

**The "cookie dough" pie crust had to be patched together like modeling clay. Then tediously smoothed to lose the craggy look. Of course, the pie that came strutting like top model down the pastry runway was the one that I didn't give a shit about. Leftover ingredients thrown into a small rectangular (pie are rounded) pyrex dish. I brought no love to this pie. Pierced the word FUCK into its overworked top crust. And it is perfect.

Thanksgiving Postscript: So, of course, everything tasted great. The second turkey revived my poultry-maven reputation. Our guests didn't care that half the pecan pie crust had slipped down under the filling like an annoying old stretched-out sock works its way under the arch of your foot. The dinner rolls never rose anywhere near what the recipe indicated but in a what-the-fuck-do-I-have-to-lose kind of way, I threw them in the oven and the cold little lumps blossomed into completely edible rolls. Methinks 'twas a Thanksgiving miracle. Oh, and Mike? the pumpkin pie was ALL that. Company was great, food was quite good (in spite of aforementioned setbacks) and all and all I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

omnivorously yours

My good friend Eric is a vegetarian. He corrects people who brag about being carnivores that they are not carnivores, they are omnivores. Right again, my flesh-shunning friend. (Sometimes I affectionately call him soy-fucker.)

Much to the relief of friends and family, I have just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I can now stop boring you with commentary about the "book I am currently reading" and race right over to waxing philosophical about the "book I just finished reading." It's a win-win for me.

But seriously, my tendency to verbosity aside, this has been one great read. It's a book about food origins, food industry and man's relationship with food. Not what some might call a page-turner but there were times I really couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I love his examination of the food industry. His willingness to face his flesh-eating nature head on--slaughtering chicken on a poultry farm or hunting boar in a forest.

The odd thing about people's reaction to my comments about this book is that they all wanted to know if I was going to become a vegetarian--as if fear of vegetarianism was a good reason to never pick up the book. Funny. I am a passionate fan of the barely cooked rib eye and fairly sure that it would take at least 2 or 3 books to pry the bloody steak knife from my hand if that is, in fact, possible. Yet even I had a moment of hesitation prior to reading lest the horrors of the food industry (and horrors they are) rob me of this and a perfectly grilled chicken breast.

But the book has changed my attitude about food. Perhaps in part because being a meat eater is not the equivalent of agreeing with the inhumane treatment of the creatures we eat. However, right now, the biggest impact for me is the consciousness of removing as many of the steps between food being harvested, caught, slaughtered and my table. The less traveled and processed the food is, the healthier it will be. I have all but eliminated prefab foods (cereal, mixes, frozen meals, etc.) and try to purchase ingredients in their rawest, freshest forms locally.

This does of course, increase my food prep time. But cheap, fast AND healthy is rare. Usually you only get two out of the three. I'm okay with the trade-off.