Noun. Pronunciation: \'haUs-owf-gäb-lən\ Date: 2008. Etymology: German Hausaufgaben (homework); from Middle English gobelin, ultimately from Greek kobalos (rogue)
: Mischievous, often incompetent sprites, ourselves included, who work on our house, generally wreaking havoc although occasionally making progress.
Following up on our catsitter's post-Irene report that while we were sipping margaritas in Mexico, he was mopping water from the wall, I called the roofer yesterday to come look at this little leak. When he arrived this morning, the sky had already fallen. Turns out a tiny hole smaller than a dime was responsible for this massive destruction.
Roofer: You know, it was supposed to rain all day today, but the sun came out just long enough for me to repair that hole. I think maybe god is looking out for you!!
Me: [blink. Blink. Arch eyebrows. Deep inhale. Deep exhale Small smile.] I guess you could say that.
I mean, after all, given the amount of rain we had today, had the sun not come out, i suppose the whole house could have collapsed. Or it could have collapsed while my father was sleeping in the now destroyed bed that had been beneath it this weekend. He doesn't mind the couch - he can sleep standing up.
Since I'm cleaning house, photographically speaking, i figured it's time to put up the last of the West Coast trip pictures. After the lovely week spent visiting Portland and the rugged Washington Coast, we headed off to Whistler, Canada for a week of mountain biking camp. I was too busy trying not to die to take many pictures of Whistler, and none of them are really worth posting here. We ended our trip with a day in Seattle.
4pm - Attend goodbye party for new work colleague (i barely knew ye!) 5:30pm - Send out last (?) emails, collect work i will do at home (just come and arrest me!) 6:30pm - Decline invites to continue goodbye bacchanalia due to lingering flu effects and responsibly head home sober and stone cold, as temps dropped at least 15 degrees from when i left house in tiny skirt - may as well be walking around naked from waist down. Ooo, and now it's raining too - cold and wet, my favorite! 7:30pm - First Friday night alone in years. Ask Scout for suggestions; decide self-administered tongue bath is intriguing from a gymnastic perspective but otherwise holds no real appeal for me. 8-9 pm - Replumb toilet and successfully stop tiny leak behind toilet that had potential to destroy entire floor. Given how many toilets I have fixed, both here, at friends', relatives', restaurants...wonder if i shouldn't take up plumbing. 9:15pm - check news on shutdown. Nada. Think maybe i should eat something. 9:30pm - Hmm...leftover Chinese? Leftover Mexican? Cereal? Salad? Oh look, here's that block of feta cheese i got to try as an experimental butternut squash-feta-hazelnut homemade ravioli recipe. Huh...it's going to expire next week...and there's the squash.... 9:35pm - Cut open butternut squash and roast. Look for something to eat. Maybe the leftover Chinese. 9:45pm - Leftover Chinese terrible. Not really hungry anyway. Still trying to work off the 9 course extravaganza with wine pairing at Per Se, although 3-day influenza and bronchitis did most of the heavy lifting. 9:50 pm - Start making new homemade pasta recipe for ravioli dough. 10:15 pm - No news on shutdown. Hang out with friends...on Facebook. Realize 95% of friends and relatives require advanced planning to visit. Then realize seeing the friends i have here requires as much or more advanced planning to visit. Start to feel very, very old, yet not old enough to live in retirement home where are your friends live down the hall like they did in college and you can count on everyone getting together to watch tv every night in the smoking lounge. So now feel both old and not old enough. 10:45pm - Squash is done and cooled. Start inventing recipe and try to document for blog. Musical selection: Feist, The Reminder. Because I'm feeling feisty. Perpetual problems with taking photos without casting a shadow. Discover standing on counter ameliorates this problem. Realize I need new lens and really, a new camera. And some indirect flash equipment. If only I weren't about to be furloughed... 11:45pm - Squash formula perfected! Time to roll out the pasta dough!! Need happier music - Sufjan Stevens Illinoise! 12am - Don't like new pasta dough recipe at all. Plus, should have kept it in fridge so it didn't dry out. Make best of it. 12:15am - Check the news - have job! Hooray!! Oh wait, they gave away the farm. Or the women's half, anyway. Spend half hour reading analysis of the deal. Democrats doing usual circular firing squad; Republicans win again. Weep for women's rights; write angry FB status update. 12:45am - Back to ravioli. Angry woman music selection/dedication to the Dems: Aimee Mann I'm With Stupid. 1:45am Two dozen ravioli made...filling for ten dozen more. 2:15am - Clean kitchen. 3am - Still not tired. Surf Netflix and find the bad romcom I watched half of on plane to somewhere is available as streaming video. Woo hoo - can now watch other half! 4am - Happy ending!! Time for bed!
11am, Next Morning - Wake up, still upset about budget deal. Disgust with analysis in major newspapers - most of which essentially leave out entirely, minimize, or poo poo the continuing erosion of women's rights. Et tu, Economist?! 12:30pm - Find what I think is tongue-in-cheek political commentary New York Review of Books' Poem of the Day (Remember everyone, it's National Poetry Month, so be sure to read a poem a day!!)
And so, I close, with Frederick Seidel's Evening Man (2008). Learn more about Seidel's awesomeness here and here.
Evening Man
The man in bed with me this morning is myself, is me,
The sort of same-sex marriage New York State allows.
Both men believe in infidelity.
Both wish they could annul their marriage vows.
This afternoon I will become the Evening Man,
Who does the things most people only dream about.
He swims around his women like a swan, and spreads his fan.
You can't drink that much port and not have gout.
In point of fact, it is arthritis.
His drinking elbow aches, and he admits to this.
To be a candidate for higher office,
You have to practice drastic openness.
You have to practice looking like thin air
When you become the way you do not want to be,
An ancient head of ungrayed dark brown hair
That looks like dyed fur on a wrinkled monkey.
Of course, the real vacation we will take is where we're always headed.
Presidents have Air Force One to fly them there.
I run for office just to get my dark brown hair beheaded.
I wake up on a slab, beheaded, in a White House somewhere.
Evening Man sits signing bills in the Oval Office headless—
Every poem I write starts or ends like this.
His hands have been chopped off. He signs bills with the mess.
The country is in good hands. It ends like this.
It's particularly dreary around here today, as it is pouring rain and I am on day 2 of a vicious flu. In between bouts of unconsciousness, I decided to cheer myself up by finally going through the Barcelona pictures from last October's 3-day girls' weekend.
I've always wanted to visit Barcelona's sun-kissed shores, meander the winding streets of the Gothic Quarter, and discover for myself the culinary wonders I had heard everyone talk about. But mostly, I wanted to see Antoni Gaudí's Casa Milà. This is because about 15 years ago, when my mother asked what i would like for my birthday, i asked for a painting. While trained as an architect, she's also a talented watercolorist, and since i couldn't afford to buy any art, i thought it would be great to have her paint something. Inspiration being a funny thing, she was at the garden center shopping for a strawberry pot, when it occurred to her that the pot sort of looked like Gaudí's famous apartment building Casa Milà. So she went to the library, checked out some books on Gaudí, and for my birthday, I received a Gaudiesque strawberry pot.
First of all, I must send the happiest of birthday greetings to my dear friend L. I am terribly envious of her April 1 birthday, as I am quite fond of a good practical joke and am prone to foolish behavior. Aries also seem to think they're the best of the zodiac: all headstrong, passionate, brilliant, and always, ALWAYS right. Given that the majority of my friends are Aries, I must subconsciously agree. But it may just be that we leos are drawn to other fiery dispositions.
As this is a significant birthday year for a bunch of us, we are planning a trip to Paris to fête the occasion as one should: with lots of good food, great wines, and best friends. I think it is also particularly appropriate to return to the City of Lights accompanied by those with whom I first visited it. And to help boost the Now Serving portion of this blog, I'll be spending a few extra days there, walking in Julia Child's footsteps by taking some cooking classes!
It's no secret that Paris is my favorite city, although our first introduction was not auspicious. As L can likely recount better than I, since she watched it all happen, we took an overnight train from Switzerland and arrived very early in the morning, and in my groggy state, I ended up tripping over my bag, tumbled down the train steps, and greeted Paris for the first time on my hands and knees. So I kissed the ground of my ancestors and tried to regain my dignity after the peals of laughter from the entire crowd subsided.
Despite the awkward beginning, a weekend was all it took for Paris to steal my heart. So I returned to spend a schizophrenic junior year of college studying at three different institutions, the bulk of which time was spent at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques trying desperately to keep up with my exceedingly bright cohort and generally failing to do so. It's my own fault, of course: most of my friends took a year abroad and lightened their courseloads so they could jaunt around Europe every weekend. Little overachiever that I am, I was offered the "opportunity" to do a program where I was fully integrated into the notoriously difficult IEP program (vs partial integration, where the small classes were with other foreigners and considerably less demanding on the workload front). As with my first trip to Paris, and most of my life generally speaking, I leapt before I looked, and so spent a year where all my American friends spent the weekends discovering Prague or Barcelona sprawled across piles of books in the library. But sticking close to campus meant I spent a year discovering the complexities of Paris, from my piano lessons in Cité de la Musique to admiring the buildings in La Defense. I think I visited nearly every museum on my free student pass from my one art class at the Sorbonne. I taught English to the lycée students near the Père Lachaise Cemetery and took photography classes in the industrial 11th. I loved Paris more than ever at the end of it, but not in the romantic whirlwind way; more in the ups and downs of any long term relationship kind of way.
So planning a trip back opens up doors of memories. Of course, as they say, it's never the same river twice, and so I'm excited to see it anew and am especially excited about my cooking class! However, i need to finally decide whether to take the easier classes at Ecole Lenôtre's Paris branch prettily situated at Le Pavillon Elysée, whose website makes it sound like cooking classes for Ladies Who Lunch, or brave the 3-day course with Joël Robuchon at their professional school located someplace near Versailles called "Plaisir," which sounds pleasant enough, but which is going to entail an hour commute. I have received special dispensation from the administration to attend M Robuchon's course, but although I am thrilled by the idea of being 1/12th of a student body taught by the world's best chef, I am having flashbacks to my various foolish leaps in Paris, and wondering if perhaps just for once, if for the first time ever, it might be better to choose the easier option. Might I not be happier with some perfectly nice chefs teaching a handful of women how to make pain au chocolat instead of trying to understand how to make the most elaborate entrees from a self-described perfectionist who wanted to be a priest - the man who taught Eric Ripert and Gordon Ramsey - while surrounded by more of France's best and brightest? The thing is, while I hated being the class dunce, I loved -and always have- being pushed harder by my peers. But this is my birthday, and supposedly a vacation, and maybe I'd actually enjoy being head of the class for once.
So I put it to you in my second reader's poll: do I make the potentially foolish leap in a quest for culinary excellence, or take it easy for a change and just enjoy the pleasure of cooking in a pretty space with pretty people?
I have spent so long trying to find another good poem about orange or about squash that I probably could have written my own in less time. But I did finally find a marvelous one for today's All About Orange installment of Now Serving: Bidding Butternut Bonne Nuit.
First, the poem. Which is actually part of an art installment and it goes with the picture below, neither of which is my own:
Conversation - Poem on Edward Weston's "Squash" (commissioned for a centennial project of the Yale Art Gallery)
"Delve for me, delve down, delve past your body, crowned
by its hidden stem, into shadowy alarm;
you will not vanish past our dark-shed charm,
throat over throat, ankle to ankle, bound
in our different arches, summer-nicked and browned
interlocking rings in the chain of wrist and arm."
"Lie for me, lie, and I will feel you turn.
Mark out the summer's bending time. Yes, learn
to cradle the concrete ground to softness. Stay.
Measure me past my stem, though your shadows churn;
Close yourself over; encompass me like clay."
-Annie Finch (2000)
Sigh. I wish i could write like that. But I am not a poet, I am a painter (ha ha). And sometimes, a cook. And sometimes, I paint with food.
The daffodils have popped, the cherry blossoms are starting to unfurl, the redbud branches are breaking out in a rash of pink petals, and the weather alternates between 30 degrees and 70 on the same day, which can only mean that spring has arrived in DC. To celebrate my favorite equinox and the return of Persephone, i will tell you a tale of rebirth on the home front called Stairwell to Heaven.
Once upon a time, during The Hadean Age, and even for some time after the initial kitchen remodel, there was a stairwell from the kitchen that descended into the hellacious basement like a carpeted version of the River Styx. One passed from the relatively pleasant world of the now-remodeled kitchen -
- into a terrifying underworld:
Eventually the basement was also remodeled, but that's another story for another time. Flash forward several years and a new, beautiful stairwell in the back of the new addition rendered this one obsolete. This provided a tremendous opportunity to nearly triple my kitchen storage space, which had been the bane of my culinary existence. I had 7.5 kitchen cabinets total, 5 of which were dedicated for all the dishes, bakeware, pots, pans, glassware, storage containers, linens, and electrical devices. As a result, every item was stored like Russian nesting dolls. Getting any single item a multi-step process, and there was always the risk that in the process of obtaining it, the rest would cave in or come tumbling out.
So moving the stairs opened up a world of storage opportunity that i seized upon the moment the contractor finished screwing down the subflooring, whereupon i immediately started shopping for shelving and flooring options. After several trips to Ikea and The Container Store and every other place specializing in storage, i realized that the most economical and best construction option was to build the shelves myself from wire closet shelving hardware and oak boards (all the better to support a 40lb ice cream maker with, my dear).
So here is a step-by-step guide for converting your former stairwell into a heavenly kitchen pantry:
So those few of you who still read this blog because it occasionally has something to do with home improvement might relate at least a tiny bit to the feeling i have that runs nearly nonstop in the background of my mind as if it were an operating system, namely the continuous processing of visual stimuli through a design filter of this is simply divine vs. holy hell what were they thinking?! Of course, most of the time it's less at the end of the spectrum and more along the lines of that's a cool idea or this would be so much better if they just... I'd like to say i'm not a judgmental person but this is clearly contradicted by the inspirations or imagined improvements i silently make in my head to pretty much everything the hand of man has touched. If i have a belief in god it is due entirely to the fact that about the only place that does not inspire such yearnings to rearrange is nature, which i generally find to be perfect - from the environmental and civil engineering to the architecture and interior design.
Anyway, for those of you constantly envisioning a way to improve every room of your house and everyone else's, the office, or the building down the street, this McSweeney's repost is for you: When Aesthetics Get in the Way of Larceny.
I have decided to update everyone on my progress toward achieving the two resolutions i made for 2011, as well as provide a modicum of content relevant to this blog's Original Intent (which has subsequently been amended by a long Bill of Rights, Wrongs, and Revisions, all of which are to be interpreted liberally and not literally, in case anyone reading this in 200 years might wonder). First on the list of resolutions, as evidenced hereby: i continue to survive. Unless you're a conspiracy theorist and believe i have met an early demise and someone else is the author of these odd ramblings. In which case, you would not only need to suspend your disbelief that there could be two people with such an enormous propensity for tangents, but would also need to believe that someone else stood to gain both from my demise and the continuation of this blog, the financials of the former and logic of the latter would challenge the credulity of even the most dedicated tea partier.
Secondly, i have made progress in increasing my use of the color orange. Although i technically resolved to "wear more orange," and while it looks like i'll have another 3 week reprieve, my financial future is CRAP (Continuing Resolutions Are Pernicious), and so I questioned the wisdom of purchasing the perfect orange Valentino linen blazer on Gilt.com that would have done much to spruce up my Congressionally-challenged wardrobe and increase considerably my ocherous vestment options. I now question that questioning, but it's too late now - the sale is over. So i've expanded the role of orange in my life more generally, and thought i'd make March, normally a month associated with color (albeit green) All About Orange.
I am not a big television viewer anymore, partially because I just do not have the time to watch it, partially because I prefer to read, but mostly because I find the vast majority of shows on network tv to be either utterly inane or gratuitously violent. There is a whole category of shows that are ingeniously both, and are often titled along the lines of When *****s Attack.
But there isn't a lot to do in the hospital, and when your mom, who is being quite the trooper, is tired of Scrabble and wants to watch tv, that's what you do. It was my fault for mocking the sickeningly sweet teen movie "What a Girl Wants," but honestly, what was Colin Firth thinking? Why is every teen movie now the girl who's really a princess gets the guy, the dad, the dress, and a full ride to Oxford while Miley Cyrus sings some barf-inducing closing theme? Being raised on John Hughes films where all the girl wants is her first kiss, the characters were all actually interesting, and the Psychadelic Furs and Otis Redding were on the soundtrack, I just wonder what happened to the writers guild.
Anyway, I should have bitten my tongue, because my "oh, puke" comment at the end of What A Girl Wants caused my mother to turn to what I will refer to as Crime TV, where every show involved the re-enactment of some true-life horror story. This is a channel that isn't entirely inane nor exactly gratuitously violent, but it does make the most of deliberately jarring camera angles and bad visual effects intended to convey Hitchcock, but mostly leaving the viewer in a near epileptic seizure from the flashing lights. The tone of every show is "This Could Happen to YOU," and is probably heavily subsidized by the NRA. Clearly my mother has been watching a fair amount of this programming; while like every mother she can spot the way an activity can or has lead to someone's death, I've noticed an uptick in the number of ways in which she believes one might be harmed or worse, as well as the increased likelihood thereof. Now having watched several episodes of When Pirates/Children/Fugitives/Crazed Relatives Attack, I believe i have found the underlying cause of aforementioned uptick.
Shortly before we left the other night, the show was all about violent criminals and drug cartel members crossing the border and murdering, molesting, and robbing people across the southwest. Despite my best efforts to bury my nose in my book, Congressional procedure was no match for the show. After dinner, my father and I kissed Mom goodnight and headed back to the house. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by some gutteral screams and much thumping around downstairs. Still on East Coast time and generally in an exhaustion-fed trance, I crept into the dark hallway, and all I could think was "oh my god, it's all true!! I'm under attack!!" Strangely, I did not wake up enough to actually investigate further, which is especially odd given that I actually have had people try to break in my domicile before, whereupon I have called the police. Instead, I grabbed the nearest thing I felt could be used as a weapon if necessary and went back to bed.
And that is how I found myself curled up with the fire extinguisher the next morning. I am still not sure what I thought I was going to do with it. Create a massive smoke cloud and make my escape? Bash the attacker in the head with it? Or both? All I can say is that after my father fed the yowling cat who awoke him with her nightime crazies, it is a VERY good thing he didn't decide to check in on me.
So today, I presented my mom with a Valentine's Day stack of all the coolest art, architecture, and food magazines (along with a couple of fashion and gossip rags) that Borders had in stock which, along with the stack of happy-ending DVDs and the deluxe Scrabble board, will hopefully assist all of us with sleeping more peacefully at night.
For those who ask me whether they should take on a construction project, i can sum up my advice with the above cartoon and this clip from In the Loop (which, if you haven't seen it, you should, and fyi a "hod" is used to carry bricks and mortar - see one here):
First, I know I promised to post every day, and was going to put this up yesterday, but our internet was down. And a shame, too, because I have THRILLING NEWS! My prayers for an affordable modern home of my dreams for our land out in West Virginia were answered when this fabulous, fully furnished modern home popped up on Gilt.com. And mein gott, it has all the furniture i would have picked out, too!
It's like God read my mind, flew over the piece of land we own, picked a design that would blend seamlessly with the rocky forest and glassed the walls so we could always feel like we were outside, enjoying the Almost Heaven-ly views, then did a quick search of my drool-worthy design cache (or has been reading my blog), and then put it on sale for a mere $310.
Lo, i failed to specify that i wanted a life-sized modern home. Ever notice how god is really good at exploiting the loopholes? She must be the world's best lawyer.
I've been trying to decide how to justify purchasing this despite the fact that i have no children and we have no space in our house. I think it'd be hilarious to build our little shed out in WV and bring this out there and call it good.
Anyway, this "Emerson Dollhouse" comes from a company called Brinca Dada, which is a couple of architects (of course) who decided to make toys that adults would like to play with, too. I wonder, though, whether children would actually like this. It isn't brightly colored plastic, the dolls look like art mannequins and, worst of all, appear to lack all clothing and accessories (which is really all any little girl playing with Barbie cares about - except for the making out with Ken/Christie part):
I guess, though, looking back, i had more fun playing with my mom's art/architecture supplies than with my own toys, and i never had a Barbie dollhouse, despite requesting one for several Christmases. My mother said we were too poor (and we were, and she did get me the swimming pool one year), but i can say with reasonable certainty that if the Emerson Dollhouse had been available in the 1970s - even if it were $310 - i think she would have found a way to get it. Being part of the feminist movement, however, and a tomboy to boot, my love of Barbie made my mother want to vomit. She'd get them for me upon occasion, but they usually came with a lecture or accompanied by a smile with gritted teeth. I compensated by climbing trees (in dresses and patent leather shoes), playing with snakes and toads, and bringing home stray animals - all of which she heartily endorsed (except the attire). Anyway, i think i would have loved to play with this as a kid. I'd sure love to play with it as an adult!
I can't decide if god is trying to make up for teasing me with the dollhouse or tempt me with this offer from Gilt: Get $1000 Ligne Roset store credit for $500. This means i could get the Stem console for half price! Oh, wait...nope, it's limited to one per customer. God really does have a sick sense of humor.
Originally, I had half a mind to spread out the Bear Claw Trilogy across several months, and maybe even tint the photos in an homage to Kieslowski, but feared that in the end, no one would remember the prior installments, thus losing whatever tiny shred of anticipation or interest you may have in knowing the outcome of my pastry travails. I also discovered that as far as a tool for allegorical narratives on liberty, equality, or fraternity, danish pastry just doesn't provide much to work with (The Addition, on the other hand, is like all your favorite trilogies and Freudian analyses wrapped into one (various contractors playing the Godfather, the bank as Sauron, the architect as The Architect/deus ex machina, the house as symbol for repressed emotions, etc.)
So grab some popcorn and a comfy seat for Bear Claws 3: The Viking Uprising
So, when we last left our heroine, she was wallowing in the mauling she received from the bear claws she had spent two days making from scratch. She nursed her wounds over the next few weeks and, finally, after the pain of epic culinary failure subsided and the pendulum of time swung to her side, the fire of revenge lit within her breast as she stared at the other half of danish dough, which had heretofore been mocking her every time she opened the freezer. Determination swelled as she flung the frozen dough onto the counter and vowed that this time, she would conquer the bear. She envisioned licking almond crumbs and flaky pastry off her fingers as the dough thawed into battle position.
Not to be fooled twice, our heroine prepared for the long campaign ahead of her. Like any good coach after an embarrassing loss, she reviewed the film footage of the prior game, jotting mental notes of weaknesses in her position; she reviewed the texts, poring over the instructions for cues she had missed. In the end it was fairly clear that defeat had come during the proofing process. Berenbaum's recipe for the Bear Claws had said that the claws should be set to rise "in a warm place." So our heroine had slightly heated up the stove, let it cool a bit (as one might for baking bread) and put the pastry inside to rise. Having returned to the master recipe for danish dough, Berenbaum elaborated considerably on the particularities of the proofing process, namely that one should proof the dough at a temperature between 86 and 92 degrees, which the author achieved through ridiculous measures involving ramekins full of hot water to support a second jelly roll pan to cover the first, topped with a heating pad. Having no second jelly roll pan, and no desire to retrieve the somewhat buried heating pad, our heroine decided to heat the convection microwave to 100 degrees, let it cool for 10 minutes, and proof the bear claws in there.
The second weak point in her prior assault had been the filling. The remonce recipe in Beranbaum's book was somewhat runny to begin with. In re-reading the text, she also realized that she was supposed to use half of the amount produced for the bear claw recipe. Overstuffing the bear claws with semi-gelatinous almond filling had clearly contributed to the downfall of the danish. Our heroine determined that this time, she would also refrigerate the remonce so as to prevent the butter from melting during the proofing process.
And so, having charted her course, she returned with great courage to the site of her ignoble defeat, gave the cry of battle and gently attacked the dough with her rolling pin. She rolled, she cut, she filled, she sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, she brushed with eggwash, sealed, folded, sliced, brushed with eggwash again, and sprinkled the nascent claws with sliced almonds. Then she put them in the just slightly warm box of the microwave and let them rise for the allotted time, whereupon, they looked like this:
This was a vast improvement over the prior batch; however, while not as visible from the film footage, our heroine was again facing creeping pools of butter and remonce leaching from the claws. She held her head up defiantly as she cast them into the fire for 15 minutes until golden, whereupon they looked like this:
The claws glistened in the light and she wasn't yet sure what to think, so set the kettle to boil and went about making a pot of chai tea, gathering her hand-me-down New Yorker, and cautiously preparing for the first bite. The fruit of her arduous labors looked promising enough:
She bit into the claw and chewed thoughtfully while gazing upon the falling snow. Outsiders declared success, but she hung her head in shame. Store-bought bear claws would be better than these flaccid, flavorless pastries. The almond filling had evaporated into the dough, which was too chewy, too dense, and tasted primarily of unsalted butter. It wasn't worth finishing. End game: Bears 2; Vikings 0.
Before i begin the tale of The Girl Who Wrestled the Grizzly Bear (and Lost, Twice), i'd like to issue an open invitation for blog post subjects. I am currently enjoying an unknown quantity of time off while i wait for my new fellowship to start (probably a few more days, maybe a week), and so am planning to make up for my future lack of posts once i start fixing the US budget and tax code with more posts now. I had initially thought that i could just write a couple of really long posts - i was going for a sort of New Yorker main article thing, especially in light of how rarely i seem to write - but after having heard several complaints about the length of A Certain Slant of Light, promise to scale back to fit the more hurried mind/enable you to finish reading before the boss comes back and sees you aren't working.
I'm tentatively seeing if i can manage a post a day - the snow is helping - but make no promises. But i'd like to know what you'd like to hear about - i know this started as a Home Disaster blog, but wandered into Home Disasters and Food Successes territory (today brings the union of the two), and then it just became Whatever Random Thought and/or Poem/Song/Book/Piece of Art/Favorite Architecture/Political Issue du Jour Is in My Head blog. Here are some subjects i've been pondering (or have already started drafts of months ago): a history of modern architecture, why is pretty furniture overpriced, the tiling of the fireplace hearth, the new kitchen pantry and all things orange, photos and stories from the San Juan Islands or Barcelona, and recipes (with obligatory historical investigation) for chicken pot pie, meatloaf and baked grits, apple and pumpkin pie, and revenge of the Danish. But i'm happy to take on anything you've been curious about but not obsessed enough to research to death and write a blog post about. So go on, don't be shy - submit a comment (even anonymously)!
Bear Claws, The History
This post actually started when my MIL came to visit last summer bearing a box of freshly-baked bear claws from the fabulous Amish bakers in Lancaster County, PA. I adore bear claws, and these were especially delicious ones with fluffy layers of cinnamony pastry and drizzled with glaze. I normally never ever ever buy them because i know that the caloric content is roughly equivalent to one's weekly allowance. But if one doesn't actually purchase them, they have fewer calories. These were so good that i actually wanted to eat the crumbs:
But eating the crumbs seemed slightly uncouth, and i didn't want anyone to walk in on me with my face in the box, looking like a horse with a feedbag strapped on or the kid brother showing mommy how the piggies eat in A Christmas Story. Then i had sudden inspiration to use them as a mix-in for a batch of ice cream - a far more elevated approach to wasting not. So i made a batch of almond ice cream and mixed in the bear claw crumbs, creating what would be my new signature flavor, Grizzlies on Ice:
Then i decided to add this to Now Serving, but thought it would be an even better post if i made bear claws from scratch first. And then, i got the new iMac and was playing around with iMovie and iThought: "Oooo, iCould make a stop-motion iMovie about the making of the bear claws!" And so, iSet up my camera on a tripod and took hundreds of photos of the mixing of the dough, the rolling of the dough (4x), the cutting of the dough, the filling the dough, the forming into claws, the raising of the claws, which is when iNoticed that things were starting to go awry. But iPersevered and baked the bear claws and made the iMovie, which will be presented shortly.
But first, a quick history on danish pastry:
1) It's not actually Danish. This sweet, laminated pastry was brought to Denmark by Viennese bakers who were brought to Denmark when the native bakers went on strike in 1850, demanding wages in cash instead of in food and lodging. The Viennese didn't know how to make traditional Danish breads, so did their own thing. This is why the Danes (and everyone else in Scandinavia) actually call danishes wienerbrødor "Viennese bread" (also the meaning of "viennoiserie," as the French call them.) The Viennese, for their part, call it "golatschen," which is interesting in that i grew up in Nebraska calling them kolaches, which is what the rather sizable Czech/Bohemian community there calls them. Anyway, it's not a total lie to call them Danish; when the Danish bakers went back to work, they picked up the laminated technique, but added eggs and more fat, as well as almond filling, jams, chocolate, nuts, etc.
2) In Denmark, the bear claw (or cockscomb, as it's called in most of Europe) is the most popular shape of danish.
Just so you know, i could go on, but I'm trying this new Keep It Short Thing.
Bear Claws, The Recipe
I decided to try out the bear claw recipe in my new copy of the Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. In the interest of time, i will not retype it for you here. If you want to follow a set of instructions that makes Martha Stewart look like Rachel Ray, you can print out a copy of the recipe yourself from here. But here's the general gist of things:
1) Proof some yeast and warm milk.
2) Mix the risen yeast with some flour, sugar, salt, cardamom, egg, and a little butter. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes. Deflate and then refrigerate the dough for 2 hours.
3) Make a butter square with a boatload of butter and a little flour. This part's fun.
4) Roll the dough into an 8" square, then add the butter square, encase the butter square with the dough.
5) Roll/fold the dough. Chill.
6) Roll/fold the dough. Divide dough in two. Chill/freeze.
7) Make the filling.
8) Shape the danish by rolling the dough, cutting the dough into squares, filling the squares with filling (i added a cinnamon sugar sprinkle), closing up the squares, slicing the "claws," brushing with egg wash, sprinkling with almonds, and curving into the bear claw shape.
9) Proof the bear claws. The bear claw recipe only makes the vaguest reference to how to proof the danish, which is found in detail at the master recipe, and essentially requires several complicated steps and a constant temperature of 86-92 degrees.
10) Bake the bear claws.
11) Eat the bear claws.
Bear Claws, The iMovie
Here it is, my first ever film:
As forewarned, it's film noir. The bear claws began to ooze butter as they rose; despite my attempts to mop up the butter, they positively hemorrhaged butter once in the stove. The end result was more akin to fried bear claws, and not in a yummy British chip shop or Texas State Fair kinda way. I thought about rewriting my little film with a happy ending and then thought: Everyone's food blog shows their glowing successes, closeups on their beautifully-arranged dishes, the lighting just so. But how many people show you their abject failures, besides me? And isn't tragicomedy really the story of this blog/my life?
Anyway, submit your own guesses as to what happened and why along with your ideas for future posts! And stay tuned for Bear Claws, Part 2: The Wrath of the Grizzly, along with the critic's film review and cooking analysis.
Ahh, New York, New York, City That I Love. I'm just back from a weekend in Gotham City, visiting the besties, the nieces, and checking in with my knee surgeon. Thanks to the lack of job, i was able to squeeze in an extra day to largely meander about, soaking up the streets and the people. I love this City. I love the different neighborhoods - beloved happy hipster Park Slope, the intimidating shadows of Wall Street, the insufferable SoHo with shops full of everything i want and nothing i can afford, quiet Roosevelt Island with its shiny new tram, superb night views, and the lilt of seven languages being spoken at once from the UN residents. I love the East Side solitude, the West Side insanity, the downtown labyrinth of alleys, the uptown smaller-town feel. I love the history, the buildings that lean on each other in the fight for sunlight, i love the subway with its peeling paint and street musicians. I love the brilliant architecture, ever changing, ever reaching. I love the art - the teeming masses at the Met, the hidden gem of the Frick. But i mostly love the people - their hyperactive minds written all over their faces, their emotions shared with you as your eyes meet for a few seconds before passing. Everyone from everywhere is here, getting along (mostly famously), even if it doesn't always look like it. I think perhaps Whitman sums it up best:
Broadway
What hurrying human tides, or day or night!
What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!
What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!
What curious questioning glances — glints of love!
5
Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!
Thou portal — thou arena — thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups!
(Could but thy flagstones, curbs, façades, tell their inimitable tales;
Thy windows rich, and huge hotels — thy side-walks wide;)
Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!
10
Thou, like the parti-colored world itself — like infinite, teeming, mocking life!
Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!
I also love the greenery throughout New York - in Central Park, where hidden corners can be found even on the most beautiful June day, or the alley of cherry blossoms in bloom in Prospect Park. Under the blanket of snow and frigid temperatures, Central Park was nearly deserted:
I've nearly moved here twice and pseudo-lived here for a year and a half, and it's always so hard to leave this place, but maybe someday I'll be back more permanently. This poem seems truly fitting for a midwestern girl like me:
These Ever Just So Six Million New York Hearts and Dorothy
Girl, you have breathed the scent of New York and now, no greens, no
flowers, no daisies . . . not even the wind on greens and flowers
can hold you long.
You will not stay on prairie wastes, girl, for you have listened to
the rivers of Manhattan at nighttime: you have been quite too near
these ever just so six million New York hearts: you have
watched quite too many New York sunsets and dawns.
You'll come back, girl: quite soon these ever just so New York floors
and stones will feel your quick, sharp walk.
You cannot stay with prairie wastes and flowers, girl, for you have
breathed the scent of New York too long.
You have been quite too near these ever just so six million New York
hearts; and they will someday call you back, girl.
Robert Clairmont, From Quintillions (NY: American Sunbeam Publisher, 2005)
Thanks to the oddity of artificially being between jobs, I have finally - four months after the fact - gotten through the West Coast pictures and have winnowed them down and Photoshopped them to a still-bloated 482, which almost ties the Patagonia folder in size. I blame the beauty of the place: it is impossible to cull these images of haunted forests of lush green and mist-bound coasts that provide a study in pure contrast - it's a natural drama we just don't have in the mid-Atlantic. Others might point to my lack of decisiveness and my penchant for spending vacations behind a lens as the true cause for such photographic overload.
Anyway, to pick up from where my earlier post left off, after a few days in Portland, Oregon, last September, we headed up to "the other Washington," to spend ten days in the Olympic National Park and the San Juan Islands.
One of the things that struck me throughout our trip was the ever-present hand of the Civilian Conservation Corps; they built the park lodges, headquarters, observation towers, roads, and even the trails our footsteps traced through the mountains. The history of the CCC and the establishment of the national park system is too fascinating and too long to be even outlined here; Ken Burns took six years and six episodes to do it. However, as i think about the state of our economy, and the stress fractures showing in those structures, i wonder why it is that, as a nation, we now scorn Roosevelt's economic and environmental policies. The CCC created public works and brought back from the brink of permanent destruction our most beautiful lands that not only now belong to each of us (and to the world), but also gave starving men (and some women) jobs working to improve the infrastructure of our country. Their profit was the nation's profit (not that of any particular individual, company, or hedge fund), and these investments seem to have been some of our most valuable; if you look at how well things were built and how long they have lasted, it seems like the work of the CCC is one of the greatest returns on investment our government has ever received.
Well, another roller coaster year has pulled into the station at the end of the ride. While i cannot personally remember a worse December, there were also some lovely highlights of the year, which - as always - centered around friends, family, and food. So to close 2010, i'm going to share with you two of my favorite recipes, the making and sharing of which have become time-honored annual rituals of near-religious proportions and define the term "comfort food" for me. Of course, like all comfort foods, especially French ones, boeuf bourgignon and bûche de noël are labor intensive to make, but for me, a large part of the "comfort" aspect is achieved from the therapeutic effect of losing myself in the culinary process.
Bœuf Bourgignon
Of the two traditions, the newer one (of five or six years) is serving bœuf bourgignon on New Year's Eve. This is hands down my favorite French dish - a popular pick akin, i suppose, to loving apple pie as a favorite American dish. My mother would make it on the rare occasion when i was growing up, but i don't know that it was really a favorite of hers and in any case, i don't remember rhapsodizing about it until i first had it in 1992 at La Crèmerie-Restaurant Polidor in Paris. Le Polidor is a pretty famous spot and was a favorite of James Joyce and Jack Kerouac, as well as me (but this particular fact is not mentioned in the guidebooks); it's tucked away on a tiny side street in the latin quarter, identifiable primarily by the line of people waiting to get in for some of the best (and certainly most reasonably priced) traditional French cuisine in Paris. The tables are pretty much all communal, which is one of the things i actually adore about it, but which has freaked out American friends or family who are used to having acres of space and so-called privacy. What i find interesting about such preconceptions of "privacy" is that i have generally found that when dining in Europe, despite being necessarily packed in like a sardine, one is rarely subjected to the forced eavesdropping that occurs routinely in the States coming from that deafeningly loud group five tables away that just can't help but share with the entire restaurant the hilarity of their incredibly inane antics. I attribute this difference to the loss here in the U.S. of a fine tradition we, too, once had, referred to as "manners," "discretion," and "consideration for others" - or more simply put among some parents I have had occasion to overhear: "indoor voices" (mourning the loss of this tradition is referred to as "being a total curmudgeon").
Anyway, back to le bœuf. The origins of bœuf bourgignon (originally, bœuf à la bourgignonne, aka beef burgundy) aren't that mysterious - it's a peasant dish that came about when some enterprising Burgundian marinated what was likely some pretty tough/nearly inedible beef in a decent local vintage and a bouquet garni, some carrots, and garlic for a day or two, then added a bit of bacon, boiled the whole thing down into a tasty stew, and tossed in some little onions and mushrooms at the end. Interestingly, despite being elevated to haute cuisine, first by Auguste Escoffier (chef of the original Ritz in Paris, and referred to as "the Emperor of Chefs" by Kaiser Wilhelm II), and later internationalized by Julia Child, the ingredients and the process for making beef burgundy haven't really changed all that much. Maybe that's part of the notion of classic comfort foods - the depths and simplicity of the original combine into a culinary essential truth that withstands the harsh tests of time, such that it is no longer just that the dish itself is satisfying, but its essential underlying perfection also provides emotional solace. To go overboard with the analogy, maybe comfort foods are like little stepping stones in the ever-changing river of our daily lives.
