tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-278491182024-03-18T05:59:19.101-07:00The Tipsy BakerOne woman cooks her way through a collection of 1,123 cookbooks and feeds the results to her family.tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.comBlogger1144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-43577192487302452142019-02-25T11:02:00.001-08:002020-08-13T06:39:42.929-07:00The Trip to Santa Clarita: A Photo Essay with Q & A<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">geometric forms, dappled light</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">What follows is a conversation with Jennifer Reese about her photo essay inspired by a trip to Santa Clarita, California. We spoke to her at her home in Brooklyn.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Jennifer, tell us about your recent trip to Southern California to visit your son, Owen, at college. That’s an extraordinarily evocative photograph of the front of his school (see above), but I’ve heard you found the surrounding scenery gorgeous and inspiring.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Yes indeed. It was both familiar and exotic. I’m a native Californian and after six months in Brooklyn I was bowled over by the grandeur of the rugged green mountains, the palms, the orange trees. I saw it all anew. Just staggeringly beautiful, the American West.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: How did you find your son?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I found him, as I did the landscape, both familiar and exotic. I was sitting in the lobby of the La Quinta waiting for him one evening and I looked up and thought, who is that tall, handsome, self-assured young man with platinum blond hair walking swiftly towards me?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: What a sweet moment. I hope you told Owen you thought he looked handsome.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Of course. I told him he looked very handsome despite the absolutely ridiculous, embarrassing blond hair.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: I’m not sure . . .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: It’s an abomination.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: As long as he’s happy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I’ve never seen him happier.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Is it true that the swimming pool at CalArts is clothing optional? That even classes are clothing optional?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Why does everyone keep asking me about that? Yes. It’s true. CalArts is not a stuffy place. I was just walking around one day and almost tripped over a girl who was rolling across a vast, empty atrium for no apparent reason.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Q: Clothed?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">A: Yes. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Tell us about this next photo. It’s very subtle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">A: I’m so glad you like it! I was idly drinking my coffee at the La Quinta one morning when I decided to try to capture the atmosphere of the American chain-hotel breakfast room. It’s always the same, whether you’re in Anchorage or Austin. Awful food served in a space with the ambiance of a Jiffy Lube waiting room. No one seems to think this is as bizarre as I do. I feel this is a rich untapped subject for the American artist.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Intriguing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: The first picture of the La Quinta breakfast didn’t include the TV tuned to political news, so I took another. I find this one more powerful.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: It is a stronger shot.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Right? I was going to post it on Instagram but I couldn’t think of a clever caption. I guess I’m really just a visual thinker.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Indeed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I recently read a quote, attributed to John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.” I spent a lot of time each morning drinking coffee and studying the breakfast room which was, I admit, visually boring -- at first.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But Cage was so right! It’s not boring when you really look. The last day of the trip a very old, scowling woman was pushing her walker — on which she’d balanced a styrofoam bowl of Froot Loops and milk — around and around the room. She was heading somewhere with great purpose and yet she never seemed to get there. At one point a middle-aged woman barked: “Sit down, Mom!” But Mom continued to circle. I could not look at the old woman’s ancient, demented face without experiencing a deluge of thoughts and feelings. How could anyone find that scene boring?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Not boring, just depressing as hell. Jesus. Let’s move on. This is a masterpiece.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Wait, I can’t read you. Are you being sarcastic?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Why would you think that?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Good. Whew. I’m so insecure. Where were we? Oh yes. I’ve found that Santa Clarita has become less boring <i>and</i> less depressing the longer I’ve looked at it. On my first visit, I thought that there was nothing here but bland adobe-colored malls, bland adobe-colored housing developments, a lot of chain restaurants, and Magic Mountain. This is my fourth trip and I find more to interest me every time.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: How does this photograph illustrate that? What am I missing?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Glance at that picture quickly and you see only the Payless. Look longer and you see a marvelous used bookstore called the Open Book.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: I see the Payless, but. . . let me find my glasses.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I spent ninety minutes at the Open Book and bought a copy of <i>Inside of a Dog </i>by Alexandra Horowitz for $2.95. It’s an incredible shop. Huge selection of books and low prices. I can’t wait to return.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: <i>Inside of a Dog </i>is superb. I love dogs.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Me too.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: I have a pit mix named Gracie.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: How funny, I do too.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: So what’s the next picture you want to talk about?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Next picture?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: Yes. We’re going through your photo essay from the trip to California.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: These are the only photographs I took.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: WTF, Jennifer?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Excuse me?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: You call this a photo essay?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I call it a short photo essay.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not a single picture of blond Owen or his lovely friends drinking Shirley Temples at the Italian restaurant? No shots of an orange tree or a palm tree or the fried bananas and coconut ice cream at <a href="https://www.laweekly.com/location/jitlada-thai-restaurant-2187488">Jitlada Thai</a>? No pictures of the girl rolling across the art school atrium? Of the homemade Ring Ding at Olive & Thyme? The clothing-optional pool?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: No picture of your cute father who joined you on this trip? No shots of the towering eucalyptus on the CalArts campus? Of the found-object art in the gallery?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: Why is everyone so hung up on the beautiful and interesting? Beauty is trite. Interesting is obvious. I prefer to focus on the utterly drab.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Q: That must be the secret to your success as an artist.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A: I’ve often thought it must be.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com601tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-3307013294711714462019-02-09T16:08:00.004-08:002019-02-09T16:08:49.128-08:00My weird visit to Dr. X <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Thank you for the sweet comments. In this post, I describe a strange evening that ends with some food but isn't really about food. I still cook, but not as much as I used to, and if I wait to write about cooking adventures, there will be big gaps. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>As I mentioned in the last post, I have a boring but debilitating ankle injury. Thursday I decided to see a doctor and I chose Dr. X because his office is a quick drive from our house and he’s in our insurance network. How bad could a random doctor be? He wasn’t going to perform major surgery, he was just going to look at my ankle and perhaps refer me to a specialist, so I saw no reason to bother with a lot of fussy research. Or any at all. Off I went to Dr. X.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>First thing, the nurse called me in and had me step on the scale fully dressed <i>without even taking off my boots.</i> Good God. That was a blow. The nurse left and eventually Dr. X came in. He was a tiny, bright-eyed, bespectacled man of about my age with an accent from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. When I say he was tiny, I mean he was considerably shorter than I am and I am not tall. I felt like a volleyball player next to Dr. X.<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Dr. X shook my hand and before he had even dropped it said sharply, “Why are your hands so warm?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I was about to reply that it was probably because the room was hot, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “And why are your fingertips bluish?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I looked at my fingertips anxiously. “Are they bluish?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Purple. You see?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I said, “Maybe because I ate a pomegranate a few hours ago?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>He looked up. “Do you eat a lot of fruit?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Not really. I do like pomegranates.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“What is your diet?”<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“What do you mean by that?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“What do you think I mean?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span> I said, “Are you asking, like, what do I have for breakfast?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>He didn’t answer. He said: “Do you drink?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Yes.” What did any of this have to do with my ankle? I told him I was here because I’d been walking a lot and hurt myself and . . .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>He cut me off. “Give me your phone. I want to look at your phone.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Ah, I know what you’re going to do,” I said. “You’re going to look at my pedometer.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Dr. X seemed disappointed. He said, “A lot of people with iPhones do not even know about the pedometer.” He took my phone, went into the pedometer, studied it for about 20 seconds. He then informed me that I had a repetitive stress injury because I’d been walking too much and hadn’t been resting between days of walking, he could see it right there on the pedometer. Bodies need rest, something about mitochondria, stretching, cross-training, etc etc, walk 10 minutes a day, no more, and you’ll be fine in two weeks.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I was annoyed. This domineering little man had demanded my phone and hadn’t even glanced at my leg. I said, wait a second, I’ve been resting and elevating my leg and icing it for a few weeks already and it isn’t getting better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Oh, you’re worried about a stress fracture,” he said cheerfully. “Stand up. Now jump up and down like this.” He jumped up and down. I jumped up and down.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Does it hurt?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“No.”<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“That means you do not have a stress fracture. You have, like I said, a repetitive stress injury. Do you get a lot of sunlight?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Huh? “Probably not. I take vitamin D.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“How much?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I don’t know. A capsule.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“Very strange that someone who walks that much would say she doesn’t get a lot of sunlight.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He began typing the diagnosis into the computer. “How do you spell repetitive?”<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I told him how to spell repetitive.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“That’s what I typed but it’s not coming up. How many words a minute do you type?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I type pretty fast,” I replied.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I know you type fast because you are a writer, but how many words per minute?”<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I have no idea. I’m still wondering, why did you ask me about my diet? Why did you ask me if I eat fruit?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>“I forget,” he said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The appointment was over. As I walked out, he said, “Are you limping?”<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Why yes, doctor.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>It was the weirdest appointment. It was about 7 p.m. by now<i> </i>and I limped across the street to a roti shop and ordered a vegetarian roti for dinner. I had been planning to go to a pizza restaurant, but cheesy pizza seemed much less attractive after that visit. A roti is like a Caribbean burrito, but instead of a tortilla, the wrapper is a sheet of whole wheat Indian flatbread, and instead of carne asada and pinto beans, the filling is likely to be chicken and potatoes, or, in my case, curried greens and squash. <a href="http://www.bkmag.com/2015/06/02/a-roti-tour-of-crown-heights-and-flatbush/">Roti are everywhere in this part of Brooklyn</a> but this was my first. It was delicious. <i>What is your diet?</i> Healthy.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I sat there eating the roti in the empty roti shop, thinking about Dr. X. I would never go back to Dr. X, but I realized that while he was eccentric and obnoxious, I had rather enjoyed him. I had found him amusing, even somewhat cute. I had found him amusing and cute because he seemed harmless and he seemed harmless entirely because he was so much smaller than I was. If a tall doctor had barked questions at me and demanded my phone, I would have been nervous. Instead, I had played along, unfazed. I thought, Is this how men feel all the time when they (literally) look down at women? Is it just size that explains the difference between “you’re beautiful when you’re angry” and “you’re terrifying when you’re angry?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Obviously size confers advantage. I knew this in an abstract way, but I’d never really <i>felt</i> it before. I enjoyed that feeling. I imagine Dr. X would too.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com161tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-78892337398760411792019-02-06T11:24:00.003-08:002019-02-06T11:24:41.699-08:00Waiter! There are raisins in the soup, my son is a blond, and I live in a strange city!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAt79MX7vYjFSCQSi46Trc8CEvq5GqXJcaixiEFJwz6QKE6f55aHuPlYUYSEDLusGi4X9qO_-oR0TcHE1Y6BEDP7TDM7eTnKy1-1dde-wYYJKi6Wk-gH0BT-xfFEjGxwPSePx/s1600/new+dining+room.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAt79MX7vYjFSCQSi46Trc8CEvq5GqXJcaixiEFJwz6QKE6f55aHuPlYUYSEDLusGi4X9qO_-oR0TcHE1Y6BEDP7TDM7eTnKy1-1dde-wYYJKi6Wk-gH0BT-xfFEjGxwPSePx/s400/new+dining+room.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new house is handsome and brown and my old stuff looks really good here.</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> The last time I wrote on this sadly neglected blog, I described the night our dog almost died from eating chocolate. The other day, Gracie ate a large pellet of rat poison in the park and I took it as a mystical sign that I should re-start my dormant cooking blog.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Kidding. I recently took a leave of absence from grad school, which has freed up a lot of mental energy. I also cooked a really strange, delicious soup that I wanted to recommend. So I am typing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Not that I don’t have a good excuse for the hiatus. It’s been a hell of a year. Both of our kids are now in college and Mark and I now live in Brooklyn. Last spring, Mark’s employer asked him to move to NYC and given that we were about to be empty nesters we said, sure, why not? Why not leave behind family, friends, temperate climate, elderly cats, the house where we raised children and chickens and goats and had happy memories and fig trees and a hand-built pizza oven to embrace, in middle age, a new life in a vast metropolis where we know hardly anyone?</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHU02hyphenhyphenMKkGrWZlcBYU6W_kRmRke5lr7bLG-UQPrMnVyYaRu3zsYmb5zuf_zGJg-EXqUOir8BrK_6IBqvoiDxB9UDrq-OL0RqJy371_mKbh2ANkummzvYDeSK3KlJhUBgrbx1C/s1600/gracie+empty+house.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHU02hyphenhyphenMKkGrWZlcBYU6W_kRmRke5lr7bLG-UQPrMnVyYaRu3zsYmb5zuf_zGJg-EXqUOir8BrK_6IBqvoiDxB9UDrq-OL0RqJy371_mKbh2ANkummzvYDeSK3KlJhUBgrbx1C/s400/gracie+empty+house.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a sad day</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Well, I can now tell you why not. Oh boy, can I tell you why not. But I can also tentatively tell you <i>why to</i>. While I can’t think about my old life without wanting to cry, the change of scenery has been exciting and interesting enough that I am able to avoid thinking about the old life for days at a time. My grandfather used to talk about people needing to “repot” themselves lest they stop growing. We repotted. We’ll see how much growing ensues. There have been moments when I have worried that shrinkage and regression will be the result of the move, but today I am feeling optimistic and am betting on growth. Watch this space.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Anyway, last week on a sunny, cold morning, Gracie and I went out for our usual hobble. She walks and tries to run, I hobble. The best thing about New York has been the walking and it was so unbelievably great that I walked and walked and walked — sometimes 8 or 10 miles at a go — until I injured myself (boring old person injury) and now the worst thing about New York is the walking because even a short trip to corner store gives me insight into what it must be like to be 90. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">scene of the crime</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">We were hobbling around in the park when I saw Gracie eating something that wasn’t the usual denuded chicken bone, but a rectangular green pellet the size of a lipstick. I yelled and she dropped the thing but snatched it up again before I could jerk her away. She swallowed it whole. We hobbled straight to the vet. After a delightful procedure that I was permitted to observe, the startled vet said, oh wow, yes, that’s rat poison. The good news: the rat poison was still almost completely intact and Gracie is fine. The bad news: there is rat poison lying around in Prospect Park.</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>We hobbled home from the vet to await the extreme weather of the polar vortex and I decided to make a strange, wintry cabbage soup I’d read about in <i>The Dean & Deluca Cookbook. </i>The soup contains kielbasa, cabbage, and <i>golden raisins</i>. Although I have since learned that it is <a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013432-bess-feigenbaums-cabbage-soup">fairly</a> <a href="https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/sweet-and-sour-cabbage-soup">common</a> to put raisins in cabbage soup, this was a first for me. Satisfying my curiosity about the raisins was the whole reason I wanted to make the soup; I think I may be </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">more tempted by recipes that sound weird than recipes that sound good.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">To be fair, the cookbook tried to make the recipe sound good. Here’s the headnote: </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>“There's a wonderful paradox in this soup (Waiter! There's a paradox in my soup!): it's filled with hearty ingredients and hearty flavors -- and yet, the overall feel of the soup is light and delicate. A guaranteed crowd-pleaser in winter.”</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Guaranteed crowd-pleaser? Not exactly. The first night, I was tempted to throw away both <i>Dean & Deluca </i>and the soup. It was watery and cabbagey and the raisins were just bizarre. Two days later, Mark reheated the soup and brought me a bowl for lunch (my injury means I get served more often) and it was a completely different soup. A soup we both wanted to eat. They always say this about soup and stew, that the flavors need time to meld, but rarely has it been so true as it was with this soup. By day three, the raisins had given up all their fruity sugar to the broth, which was floral and sweet, and yet there was also spicy, meaty kielbasa in there, so it filled you up. For five days in a row I ate the cabbage soup for lunch and marveled at how good it was until finally today I realized the soup was on the downswing. Like the raisins, the kielbasa had finally given all its flavor to the broth and tasted like nothing. When the kielbasa tastes like nothing, the soup’s over.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>You should try <a href="https://www.deandeluca.com/cabbage-soup-with-paprika-kielbasa-and-raisins">this recipe</a>, though let it sit overnight before you serve it. This is a tasty, unusual, once-a-winter soup. I hope I can remember to make it again next winter. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">The other recipe I made recently that went over big was Deb Perelman's </span><a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/story/kid-friendly-beans-on-toast?verso=true" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">beans on toast</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> from <i>Bon Appetit. </i>It felt wrong to serve a dish like this, geared for picky children, to two unpicky adults, but I will probably do so again because it is so easy and tasty. This is exactly the kind of meal Owen would have loved when he was a kid. No more. When I dropped him off at college in August he was a dark-haired meat eater.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">He returned to us in December a vegetarian blond. He could not be persuaded to touch meat, even when we went to the most tempting Chinese dumpling restaurant. I respect that. I’m not nuts about the hair, but he could not care less, which is as it should be. Our children have their own lives now and Mark and I are trying (!) to do the same.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-83525427853514223302017-12-14T10:41:00.001-08:002017-12-14T10:41:18.930-08:00My beloved chocoholic <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deb Perelman: "The landscape of butter-free cookies is usually filled with stories of compromise." </td></tr>
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</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> Roughly a decade ago, I dined at <a href="http://prunerestaurant.com/">Prune</a> restaurant in New York City and what I remember most vividly was the craggy chunk of dark chocolate that arrived with the check. It looked like it had been hacked from a chocolate mine with a pick and it was absolutely delicious. I believe the waitress said it was Callebaut 60%, though now I can’t remember exactly. In any case, I went home and ordered an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Callebaut-Dark-Block-60-11/dp/B001IDLKZC">11-pound slab of Callebaut 60%</a>. That’s a gigantic piece of chocolate but I wanted to be able to hack off craggy chunks of my own. I’ve kept a gigantic slab of dark chocolate in my pantry ever since. I pulled it out last Saturday to make the </span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">olive oil shortbread with rosemary and chocolate chunks </b><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">from<a href="https://www.chowhound.com/post/recipes-smitten-kitchen-day-triumphant-unfussy-favorites-1064481?page=3"> </a></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.chowhound.com/post/recipes-smitten-kitchen-day-triumphant-unfussy-favorites-1064481?page=3">Smitten Kitchen Every Day</a>.</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> What a great little cookie. You chop some dark chocolate and stir it into an easy shortbread dough made with olive oil rather than butter, along with some minced fresh rosemary. The shortbread is gritty, slightly salty, and wonderful. I know. Rosemary in dessert. Yuck. And olive oil too? It’s a hard sell. But it works.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>That was Saturday. Around 1 a.m. on Sunday I was awakened by noise from upstairs. Thumping sounds, then tearing sounds, then dragging sounds. Then some more tearing sounds, then some crashing sounds. I went upstairs. The dog was racing around the living room and kitchen in the dark looking for stuff to chew and destroy. She was all amped up like I’d never seen her before. I figured I hadn’t exercised her enough the previous day. I talked to her for a few minutes, tried to settle her down, and went back to bed. More rampaging. Odd. I went up again and only then did I notice that the pantry door was open and when I looked inside I saw that the block of Callebaut chocolate had been dragged off its shelf and was lying on the floor, scored with toothmarks. I would estimate Gracie ate a hunk of dark chocolate about the size of a pork chop, one of those big, thick loin chops.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>It’s hard to kill a dog with chocolate — some milk chocolate chips or a piece of chocolate cake won’t do it. But free access to an 11-pound slab of dark Belgian chocolate? Chocolate is toxic to dogs and Gracie was very, very sick. According to the vet, the typical pulse of a dog her size is 100 BPM and Gracie’s was 250 BPM when we got to the pet hospital in the middle of the night. To protect her privacy and dignity, I will refrain from sharing the indelicate details of her detox, but I assure you, it was dramatic. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> <span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Alone in the waiting room of the pet hospital at 3 a.m., slouched on the vinyl couch beside the Christmas tree, I found myself gazing back, as if through a very long tunnel, at a younger, peppier me sitting at the counter at Prune, all dressed up and enjoying an experience that would lead me here, to a pet hospital almost a decade later. I find those strange threads of connection between events mysterious and fascinating. I don’t know why, I guess because they give a glimpse of the chaotic way life actually unfolds.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Lessons learned: Life is uncanny. Put your chocolate on the top shelf when you get a dog.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Gracie made a full recovery, thank heavens. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>On another subject, I went to my last-ever holiday concert for the high school band in which Owen has played trombone these last four years. It was poignant and beautiful in that high school band concert way. The gym repurposed as concert hall. All those kids in their formal wear, earnestly performing Handel’s “Messiah” pretty darn well. The jovial music director who somehow taught a bunch of teenagers to perform Handel’s “Messiah” pretty darn well. The middle-aged parents smiling peacefully, enjoying the rare moment when it would be truly shaming to look at their phones. The one small annoyance of the evening was that no one bought the cookies I brought to the bake sale. Fools!</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com172tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-89374440375506108592017-12-08T11:03:00.000-08:002017-12-08T11:03:46.343-08:00Papers and Pit Bulls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">dog ownership</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"><br /> </span>School is over for 2017. When I turned in my final paper and walked out the door of Room 6 the other day I felt like I’d taken off a heavy coat and a tight girdle, both at once. I love the learning part of school, but academic writing is a whole new sport and I’m extraordinarily bad at it. None of the writing muscles I’ve developed over thirty years are useful in the academic genre and it’s maddening not to be able to use them. It’s like I’m a pole vaulter trying to do the hammer throw.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> I wrote my paper about Sarah Orne Jewett’s </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2347137.The_Country_of_the_Pointed_Firs">The Country of the Pointed Firs</a></i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">,</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> a cozy 1896 novel about life in a coastal New England town. If you haven’t read it, brew yourself a mug of chamomile tea, curl up by the fire, and give it a try. Prepare to be charmed and perhaps a bit bored. I initially loved this book, but there was something about it, something small, that rubbed me the wrong way, and I decided it would be fun to try to identify and explore that small, annoying thing in my final paper.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> It was not fun. I started researching and brooding and rereading </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Country of the Pointed Firs</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> and I ended up writing a 22-page paper about why I absolutely hate </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Country of the Pointed Firs </i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">which is like writing a paper about why you hate bunny rabbits.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>And yet I somehow convinced myself, if not the professor, that <i>Country of the Pointed Firs </i>is a “dangerous” book. Do I really think so? I have no idea, but once I start arguing a case I can’t stop, like a pit bull whose jaw locks when she sinks her teeth into the tender neck of a toy poodle.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>That’s <a href="https://americanpitbullfoundation.com/pit-bull-myths-debunked/">a myth, of course, that pit bulls have locking jaws</a>. They have perfectly ordinary jaws. I actually don’t have more to say about school or academic writing, I want to talk about pit bulls.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> <span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>When I started idly looking at dogs last summer, the pit bull was the one breed I would not consider. First of all, vicious. Second, ugly.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>My feelings about pit bulls were shaped by<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/mad-dogs-lawyers-20020228"> a notorious 2001 case </a>in which two pit bulls attacked and killed a San Francisco woman in the hallway of her apartment building. Except here’s the thing: the dogs that attacked her weren’t pit bulls. They were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perro_de_Presa_Canario">Presa Canarios</a>. But in my memory for the last 16 years they were pit bulls. Weird how that happens, but it happens a lot with the poor pit bull. The parallels with racial prejudice seem obvious to me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Anyway, I didn’t adopt a pit bull. I adopted an adorable, scrawny boxer-whippet mix. So it was a little irritating when a kid on the street one day patted Gracie and said he loved pit bulls. I gently corrected him. Someone else pointed out that the tip of her tail was white, typical of the pit bull. I explained Gracie was a boxer-whippet mix. Then, a month or so ago, a woman I talk to all the time at the park said, “You know, Gracie looks a little pitty to me.” My heart sank. She looked a little pitty to me too in some lights and I didn’t like those lights.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">To settle this issue, I took a swab of her saliva and sent it to a </span><a href="https://www.wisdompanel.com/" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">doggie DNA lab</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">. It turns out the shelter hadn</span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">t been lying, Gracie has boxer and hound ancestry. But they had declined to mention, or perhaps did not know, that she is half pit bull. Or, I should say, American Staffordshire Terrier.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> <span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span> I’m ashamed to admit that I was unsettled and instantly my beloved Gracie became less cute to me and for a few days I wondered if her boisterousness wasn</span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font-size: small;">t actually worrisome aggression. Then I read<i> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/science/review-pit-bull-by-bronwen-dickey.html?_r=0">Pit Bull</a></i> by Bronwen Dickey, a book I highly recommend if you accidentally adopt a pit bull. The pit bull hasn’t always been America’s most reviled dog. Helen Keller owned a pit bull and so did Teddy Roosevelt and Laura Ingalls Wilder. The pit was once considered a delightful and trustworthy family pet. But since the 1970s, it’s been the dog we enjoy villainizing, the dangerous Other of the canine world. I wouldn’t suggest anyone rush up to a strange pit bull with a spiked collar and start hugging him, but I’ve gotten to know a whole bunch of pit bulls and pit mixes since I started paying attention to dogs, and they’re pretty much all sweet, a few of them ridiculously so. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>After finishing <i>Pit Bull</i>, now completely woke about dog prejudice, I decided to do what I could to promote pit bull tolerance, like, I don’t know, actually<i> telling</i> people my cheery, petite, ebullient puppy was a pit bull mix?<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Shortly thereafter Gracie and I were walking on our favorite trail when we encountered a woman with a gorgeous Australian shepherd puppy on a leash. The woman and I exchanged info about the breeds of our puppies and watched them romp for a minute or two. It was very chummy. We said good-bye and after we’d walked on for thirty seconds, Gracie couldn’t resist and ran back to play some more with her new pal. In the course of playing she “bit” the dog on the neck. I put “bit” in quotes because there is “biting” and there is biting<b>.</b> When puppies play they will “bite” their partner with a soft mouth, in other words, they don’t clamp down, they don’t exert pressure, they don’t truly bite. Gracie has joyfully “bitten” and been “bitten” by probably 100 dogs and never once has she hurt another animal. She doesn’t bite. Ever. I was approaching to grab Gracie’s collar when the woman started saying with an edge of hysteria in her voice: “Stop the biting, I don’t like that biting!” and then she shouted: “GET YOUR DOG!!!”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>It was ludicrous. I understood she was anxious, but it was ludicrous. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Did she overreact because I’d told her Gracie was a pit bull mix? I pulled Gracie away and apologized, adding, “This is actually very normal puppy play.” The woman glared at me and walked away. I walked the other direction and thought, I bet she’s going to tell people about how she met this horrible pit bull on the trail who bit her puppy.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Typing this anecdote I really wanted to include certain details that would make the woman look precious and icky, portray her as the <i>type </i>of woman who would overreact to learning a puppy was a pit bull mix. You know, sort of like . . .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>me a few months ago? </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"> Typecasting is typecasting. It’s all pernicious.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"> Dog ownership has been fascinating. I learned a lot this fall in the classroom, and even more from owning a dog.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>On another subject, if you want to read a wonderful “unabashed appreciation” of Deb Perelman of <i>Smitten Kitchen</i>, check <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/an-unabashed-appreciation-of-smitten-kitchen-the-ur-food-blog">this</a> out. I bought <a href="https://www.eater.com/cookbooks/2017/10/23/16519724/smitten-kitchen-every-day-preview"><i>Smitten Kitchen</i> </a><i><a href="https://www.eater.com/cookbooks/2017/10/23/16519724/smitten-kitchen-every-day-preview">Every Day</a> </i>and I’ve made the <b>broccoli melts</b> twice (<a href="https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/02/broccoli-melts/">recipe is also on her blog</a>) and foresee making them a hundred more times. Easy, delicious. Her <a href="http://www.fox4news.com/good-day/recipes/quick-sausage-kale-and-crouton-saute"><b>sausage, kale and crouton saute</b></a> is also easy and great. Now that I’ve shucked the heavy coat and tight girdle of school, at least for a while, I hope to do more cooking and pole vaulting.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com72tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-57562605356380381542017-10-28T09:50:00.000-07:002017-10-28T09:50:01.642-07:00The hermeneutics of batshit dog crazy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">My life is very happy right now, albeit at the expense of this blog.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">First, school. I’m a lot busier with this than I’d anticipated. Which is great. It keeps my mind occupied and out of trouble and that was critical this fall, given my toxic fixation on Donald Trump and the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, where, as I’ve mentioned, my firstborn currently resides. I don’t have time to dwell on any of that, thanks to school. I’ve decided where I want to teach and what I want to teach when I finally get my degree in 2019, and it will have nothing to do with close-reading<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2347137.The_Country_of_the_Pointed_Firs"> <i>Country of the Pointed Firs</i></a> and learning to casually drop “hermeneutics” into a sentence but meanwhile I’m enjoying close-reading <i>Country of the Pointed Firs </i>and learning to casually drop “hermeneutics” into a sentence. I’m not quite there yet — I can use “hermeneutics” in a sentence, but not casually and perhaps not even correctly. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Second, Gracie. Our perfect dog. We kept her. Of course. I adore her. Of course. Because she is perfect. She is sitting next to me right now chewing on her beloved furry, filthy squeak toy (thank you Gardner Trimble) and it sounds like a clown car is driving through the living room. But like everything she does, including destroy books, steal shoes, and bark at dogs on TV, I find it utterly delightful. Like I said, Gracie is perfect. I spend every evening at the dog park now watching her play and swim in the bay with her pals Zoe and Atlas and Marigold while I talk to their owners about — what else? — <i>dogs.</i> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I used to think the library was the best thing about living in Mill Valley. Now I think it’s <a href="https://www.yelp.com/biz/mill-valley-dog-run-mill-valley-2">the beautiful, bayside dog park</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Obviously, when you’re at the dog park at 6 p.m. beaming at your adorable, frolicking puppy you’re not simultaneously cooking an ambitious dinner and when you’re sitting in a classroom the next morning discussing Edith Wharton with people in their teens and twenties you’re not blogging about that ambitious dinner you didn’t cook.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve been cooking, but not Korean. It turns out that Korean cooking requires a little too much planning ahead for my current dog/commuting/hermeneutics lifestyle. I went to the supermarket on Monday without a list, bought a bunch of random food, came home, and cooked dinner every night this week<i> without looking at any recipes</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I felt like a rockstar.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The dish I want to quickly mention because I love it so much is a beef salad I used to make all the time, pre-blog. It started with a recipe from <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Marcella-Cucina-Hazan/dp/0060171030">Marcella Cucina</a></i>, but once you’ve made it, you’ll never need to look at the recipe again. You thinly slice leftover pot roast, drizzle a layer of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>meat with olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkle with salt, repeat with as many layers a you choose. Refrigerate. It’s hard to imagine how fatty, gray pot roast could ever be delicious served cold, but it is. Trust me. I served the beef salad with some fresh tomatoes the day after I served the pot roast and it was so good I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made this for at least a decade.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I just had some of this for breakfast and if Mark weren’t in the room I would let Gracie lick the plate.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But he is, so I will just wait until he steps away.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com105tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-41964492458510500612017-09-07T15:18:00.001-07:002017-09-09T15:06:17.865-07:00Never wake a sleeping baby<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Korean cooking is still ON, but there were two developments in my life that required some adjustment over the last ten days and here they are:</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">First, I started a master’s program in English. Back in February when I took Owen to look at colleges it dawned on me that my future might also need attending to. In addition to writing, I thought I might want to be able to teach high school or <i>maybe</i> community college in my golden years. I applied to some programs. I got in. I started. I might actually get to write about cookbooks as part of this program, which is exciting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">I thought because I’m old and settled that it would be easier to do school than when I was young, but I got it backwards. It’s going to be harder. I'm still trying to figure out how I can make it all work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The second development was so poorly timed it's funny. I mean, textbook idiocy. The geniuses among my readership will have guessed what that second development is, but for the rest of you: </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">A few days after I started school, we fostered a puppy.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Fostered</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">If we had adopted, I would be crying too hard to type.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">She is the sweetest, squirmiest, most adorable little dog you would ever want to meet and, as puppies go, ridiculously easy. She was one of the animals evacuated from a shelter in Houston during the hurricane and I guess they don't like to keep puppies in the same facility with big dogs, hence the call for foster homes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">She follows me everywhere. She can be sleeping peacefully on the sofa next to me, as she is right now, but should I get up to refill my coffee cup in the kitchen, she will immediately spring to life and trot after me. When we return to the sofa forty-seven seconds later, she feels it’s necessary for us to have a joyful reunion that she initiates by climbing on my lap, squirming, wagging her tail, and licking my face until I acknowledge our deep bond and love for one another, at which point she will settle down at her end of the sofa to chew on Mark’s slipper (she is a slipper/shoe dog, not a ball dog) or go back to sleep. This routine makes me think really hard before going to get another cup of coffee or even walking across the room to retrieve my pen.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">She’s wonderful. This was the wrong moment to foster a puppy.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com121tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-81397941846303096562017-08-29T06:23:00.002-07:002017-08-29T06:23:46.224-07:00The 2017 quince harvest and a few old baking books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My quince stays yellow -- was it ripe? It looked ripe.</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Watching the news from Houston has been so sad. It’s inspiring and heartening to see ordinary people being decent, even heroic, in a crisis, but also, as I said, sad. Every citizen in a boat rescuing dogs and old women in Texas has been demonstrating more concern for fellow countrymen than that petty, divisive gargoyle in the White House. Every middle-class American who picked up a phone and donated $25 to the Red Cross is more generous. Our leaders are beneath us.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">And then Kim Jong-un has to go and fire a missile over Japan. Isabel texted me that it was a beautiful day in Seoul and no one was “freaking out” and I told her I’m not freaking out either, which is true. Not thrilled, though.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">In lighter news: Our quince tree bears more fruit every year and we got about ten pounds of knobby, fuzzy yellow quinces this summer. If you’re not interested in the culinary uses of Cydonia oblonga, with some asides about old baking books, you might want to sit this one out and spend a few minutes <a href="https://www.pushtrumpoffacliffagain.com/">here</a> instead.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I made three dishes with this year’s quinces and can recommend them all:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-<b>Quince ginger cake</b> from Jim Dodge’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Baker-Exquisite-Desserts-Stanford/dp/0671611585">American Baker</a></i>. Dodge was the pastry chef at the Stanford Court Hotel in San Francisco for many years, and I’ve baked the hell out of his books, which I guess you could now call <i>vintage</i>. They’ve seldom disappointed me. <i>American Baker</i> is great, but I’m also going to plug <i>Baking with Jim Dodge</i>, which you can buy <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Baking-Jim-Dodge/dp/0671681001">for peanuts on amazon</a>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Worth every peanut and then some. The first recipe I ever made from <i>Baking with Jim Dodge</i> was a <b>rhubarb-cherry meringue pie</b> that I carried across New York City to a party in the summer of 1992. I was so excited — I’d tasted the filling and everyone was going to be in awe. I vividly recall sitting on the subway, peeking into whatever inadequate contraption I’d devised to transport a pie across Manhattan on a hot day, and watching the meringue leak, collapse, melt. The pie was soup by the time I got to the party. I was shocked that it hadn’t survived. I am now shocked that I was shocked. Meringue pie? On the subway? In summer? Bonehead.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Anyway, the recipe for the <b>quince ginger cake</b> comes from <i>The</i> <i>American Baker</i>. You shouldn’t go out and buy quinces just to make it, but if you’ve got a tree, you’ll enjoy this simple, brown, gingery cake. The recipe is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1989/12/13/no-quarrel-with-quince/b6cc36dd-228f-4912-a810-3b47e4287617/?utm_term=.c979fd685a07">here</a>. I substituted Lyle’s golden syrup for the molasses, used fresh ginger rather than powdered, replaced buttermilk with yogurt. Not saying you should do any of those things, I just personally dislike molasses, prefer fresh ginger, and didn’t have buttermilk.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-<b><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fxKwLkFYz4cC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75&dq=honey-stewed+quince+sax&source=bl&ots=azy70YvdP1&sig=x4sPOHFukWPdG9xPNNs1yfWfgfY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG_vbFwvzVAhXGxVQKHSeDDCUQ6AEIUTAI#v=onepage&q=honey-stewed%20quince%20sax&f=false">Honey-stewed quinces</a> </b>from Richard Sax’s <i>Classic Home Desserts, </i>which is another treasure of a book, fat and friendly, packed with enticing vintage recipes. In fact I’d put this title just a notch above the Jim Dodge books. I flipped through my ravaged copy of <i><a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9781881527527/Classic-Home-Desserts-Treasury-Heirloom-1881527522/plp">Classic Home Desserts</a></i> this morning and discovered I’ve made 72 recipes from its pages since the mid-1990s. What’s even more impressive is that there are at least 72 more that I would like to try. Omaha caramel bread pudding. Iowa custard pie. Jam roly poly. English brown bread ice cream. My favorite recipe from the book, an easy apple cake that I’ve made a half dozen times, is <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2012/02/17/recipe-ligitas-quick-apple-cake/">here</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Back to quinces: To stew them, you peel and core them, cut them up, saute in butter and some sugar, add white wine, honey and lemon juice.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Simmer until tender. My quinces required quite a lot less cooking time and a bit more sugar than called for, but once I got the sweetness right they were great. Like cooked apples, but with a tangy bite. I ate some of the stewed quinces on yogurt and the rest I used to make. . .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-<b>The Coach House quince tart</b>. This <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fxKwLkFYz4cC&pg=PA546&lpg=PA546&dq=coach+house+quince+tart+sax&source=bl&ots=azy70YvcR3&sig=z0ioweee5ZyW4FRagl49bBY_w8o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIorygwvzVAhXDyFQKHeYOCW8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=coach%20house%20quince%20tart%20sax&f=false">recipe</a>, also from<i> Classic Home Desserts,</i> originated at the legendary Coach House restaurant in New York City, supposedly a favorite haunt of James Beard. (It closed in 1993 and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/28/dining/a-new-restaurant-replaces-a-village-landmark.html">was replaced by Mario Batali’s Babbo</a>.) The Coach House was famous for its corn sticks, black bean soup, and mocha <a href="http://www.saveur.com/louisville-dacquoise-bucks">dacquoise</a>, in addition to this quince tart. To make the tart, you spread some honey-stewed quinces over a rich, buttery crust, top with lattice strips, and bake. Serve with whipped cream or honey ice cream. I took this pretty dessert to my sister’s house on Sunday for family dinner and unless they were just being polite, everyone loved it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">Mystery: James Beard also published a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JiFwCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT124&lpg=PT124&dq=coach+house+quince+tart&source=bl&ots=BM5hUZ0wtO&sig=1B5MLMuqP_k">recipe</a> for the Coach House quince tart, but it is completely different. </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">Bonus: I hope it tastes good because <a href="http://www.galaxyguides.com/food_recipes/desserts/cakes/quince-riberry-passionfruit.php">this is one ugly quince dessert</a>.</span></span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-63363747621915715012017-08-25T18:05:00.000-07:002017-08-25T18:05:05.060-07:00Every Day with Rachel Maddow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOERZqQ3FUuzRKhrkAonMWu8IVS_Uy01TOIcylmQVQvCt9QHlXvr8jXoMkBxM2E4Jh-T01k_oNv0jP7tR6JE6imzq6elm1XGRvUU_xAIuiQk4h3a1jHBYZLTnbaiDyNUMSt4nS/s1600/galbi.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOERZqQ3FUuzRKhrkAonMWu8IVS_Uy01TOIcylmQVQvCt9QHlXvr8jXoMkBxM2E4Jh-T01k_oNv0jP7tR6JE6imzq6elm1XGRvUU_xAIuiQk4h3a1jHBYZLTnbaiDyNUMSt4nS/s400/galbi.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Next time you see short ribs cut like this, buy them.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">When it was reported a few years ago that anchorman Brian Williams had disgraced himself, I didn’t even know who Brian Williams was. Brian Williams. Peter Jennings. Tom Brokaw. I couldn’t tell them apart. A blur. I never used to watch TV news.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">That’s changed in recent months. I try (and often fail) to avoid Twitter for most of the day because Trump makes me insane, but as a reward I now let myself turn on the TV at six p.m. for one big bolus of news. Sometimes if I’m tired I turn on the TV at five, but usually I stay off the sofa until Rachel Maddow. I love Rachel Maddow. I know she’s not impartial and I can see how her mannerisms and discursive wind-ups could drive a person nuts, but that person isn’t me. She’s brilliant and incredibly energetic but at the same time she appears to be friendly and nice. If it is an act, it’s a great act.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">So I sit there and watch the first chunk of Rachel Maddow which goes on and on and on before any commercial break. That’s the best part of the show, the first 20 minutes. Eventually she cuts to an ad for a hepatitis 3 or psoriasis drug and I run into the kitchen and chop some onions and get the kimchi out of the fridge. When I hear her voice again, I run back to the sofa and watch until the next commercial break, then back to the kitchen to start the rice cooker, back to the sofa, and so on. It gets tiring towards the end because MSNBC seems to run commercials every 90 seconds in the latter half hour of their shows. Did TV news always backload the ads?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">By the time Mark walks in the door at seven, dinner is on the table and I have <i>lots</i> to to talk about.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">True to my word, I’ve cooked only Korean dishes since Isabel left for Seoul and it turns out that you can prepare an outstanding, simple Korean meal, start to finish, during Rachel Maddow’s commercial breaks. I’ve done it more than once. It helps if you have a rice cooker.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">So here’s what I’ve made:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-a fiery red <b>pork stir fry</b> (<i>dwaejigogi-bokkeum</i>) from <i>Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking</i> that I think I’ve recommended before. I will recommend it again. Maangchi’s<a href="https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/dwaejigogi-bokkeum"> online recipe </a>isn’t identical to the one in her book, but it’s close. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-the <b><i>galbi</i></b> (short ribs) from Robin Ha’s<a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/02/484040776/learn-to-make-korean-food-with-a-charming-graphic-cookbook"> <i>Cook Korean!</i></a> (a.k.a. the adorable Korean comic cookbook) were a big hit and I’m trying another <i>galbi</i> recipe tonight. The gist of <i>galbi</i>: marinate short ribs, cook on a hot skillet or grill, serve with a dipping sauce. More on <i>galb</i>i in a future post. Unless you’re a vegetarian, they belong in your repertoire.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-another dish that belongs in your repertoire: <b>Korean sloppy joes</b> from <i>Koreatown</i>. Just the meat part, though, so I need another name for this dish. Instead of serving the meat on buns, I served it on rice and topped it with chopped peanuts. When you want to lose 15 pounds you should always find ways to incorporate peanuts into your pork entrees. Recipe for this irresistible dish at the bottom of the post.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-for mysterious reasons, leftover rice has been accumulating in our refrigerator and <b><a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018097-kimchi-fried-rice">kimchi fried rice</a></b> (<i>kimchi bokum bap)</i> is one delicious way to dispense with it. You could improvise your fried rice obviously, but I used a recipe from <i>Eating Korean</i> by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee that calls for just a little fresh pork to bulk it up. I’ve made this before and thought it was my favorite, but I just spotted the the kimchi fried rice recipe in <i>Koreatown</i> that uses slab bacon. I’m going to like that better.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">-Unless you absolutely hate kimchi, you must try making <b>kimchi stew</b> (<i>kimchi jjigae</i>). IT IS SO EASY. The classic version<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I made last night<b> </b>from <i>Cook Korean!</i> consists of little more than storebought kimchi, pork and tofu, simmered together briefly in a pot. Big, satisfying flavor. (This <a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017145-kimchi-soup">recipe</a> is slightly more elaborate, but it looks perfect.) You can put whatever you want in your kimchi stew if</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> pork and tofu do not appeal. Maangchi has a version that uses canned tuna. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">There have been a couple of duds during this second Korean phase, but I’m not going to waste your time with those.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Here’s the thing: I’ve been making the same handful of straightforward beef and pork dishes again and again and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>avoiding everything that intimidates me in Korean cuisine. Which is a lot. Next week that’s going to stop. Here’s what intimidates me in Korean cuisine: Beltfish, bellflower root, fernbrake, dried pollock, octopus, dried sweet potato stems, burdock, jellyfish, water dropwort, fermented sardines, raw crabs, fermented skate, pine needles, ox hooves, mung bean jelly, beef heart, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aralia_cordata">aralia roots</a>, <a href="http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20100602000325">fatsia shoots</a>. I’ve also steered clear of the soups served with ice cubes and the cold noodles in soy milk. I’ve mostly avoided the porridges.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Beef heart is a nonstarter, but I don’t see why I couldn’t learn to love, I don’t know, sweet potato stems?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Isabel hasn’t reported on what she’s been eating in Seoul, though today on Snapchat she posted a video of her visit to <a href="https://theinfluencermedia.com/2014/11/04/5-cat-cafes-to-check-out-in-seoul/">a cat cafe</a>. A cat cafe tops my list for our Thanksgiving trip to Seoul, right after <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju0Ce2s_UB0">the raccoon cafe</a> and the DMZ.</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Korean Ground Meat </b>(please help with that name)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This is fantastic. It’s very similar to a Korean ground turkey dish in <i>Nigella Kitchen </i>so I’m 150% confident that ground turkey would make a tasty and healthy substitute for the pig. I’ve made Nigella’s dish a bunch of times and added peas (as she calls for) and spinach (which I prefer) with great success, so you could get some vegetable in there. This recipe comes from Jiyeon Lee and Cody Taylor of the Heirloom Market BBQ in Atlanta by way of <i>Koreatown </i>by Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard. Slightly adapted by me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 pound ground pork</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">6 garlic cloves, minced or pressed</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">5 tablespoons gochujang (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gochujang"><span class="s2">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gochujang</span></a>)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 tablespoon sugar or honey</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 tablespoon soy sauce</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">big pinch black pepper</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 onion, chopped</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1 tablespoon vegetable or olive oil for cooking</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">rice for serving</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">chopped peanuts for garnish (optional)</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">1. In a large bowl, mix pork, ginger, garlic, gochujang, sesame oil, sugar, soy sauce, and black pepper. Let marinate in the refrigerator for as little as an hour or as long as overnight.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">2. Cook the rice however you cook rice.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">3. Heat the oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion until soft. Add the pork and cook, stirring occasionally with a spatula, for 5-10 minutes until the meat is done. Serve over rice with chopped peanut garnish. Enough for 4.</span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-60710519880161825342017-08-16T13:07:00.000-07:002017-08-16T13:07:06.833-07:00Isabel's autumn adventure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_VA9J8iu5scOVAjIHqsINFxNgls7awKN1wSmrCwp8EuSR3GlMo2Z_rRuHduB_NZeROiOgMANXc4soiZhmnwkoBwMrOXdLNBFhJSjSpGP_A-bkJg1CP9WIKYKwx8kWM0Mbd9EN/s1600/3b19880r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="517" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_VA9J8iu5scOVAjIHqsINFxNgls7awKN1wSmrCwp8EuSR3GlMo2Z_rRuHduB_NZeROiOgMANXc4soiZhmnwkoBwMrOXdLNBFhJSjSpGP_A-bkJg1CP9WIKYKwx8kWM0Mbd9EN/s400/3b19880r.jpg" width="322" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Isabel flew off to Seoul, South Korea this morning to spend the semester studying at Yonsei University. I drove home to Marin County to spend the semester popping horse tranquilizers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ll just spit it out: I didn’t want her to go. I thought Seoul was a great choice back when she applied in the winter, but recent events and our idiot president’s rhetoric changed my mind. While I know the likelihood of war on the Korean Peninsula remains low, it wasn’t low enough for me. What was wrong with Shanghai? Taipei? Thailand?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Isabel and Mark were unconcerned. I litigated this. I lost.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> I am gracious in defeat.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s gonna be fine. She’s going to have a wonderful time, learn to love kimchi, speak a little Korean, drink soju. We’ll visit her at Thanksgiving. In the highly, highly, highly unlikely event the president starts a war with North Korea and something happens to my daughter, not to mention the 26 million other people living in the Seoul metropolitan area, I will make it my life’s mission to personally poison his chocolate ice cream.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Joke. Duh. Like when he jokes about how cops should manhandle prisoners. Sidesplitting.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">In the car going to the airport, I told Mark and Isabel that I was going to start cooking Korean food again so I’d feel close to Isabel while she was away. I said I was thinking of making a beef and daikon radish soup for dinner tonight.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Isabel said, “Sorry I’m not going to Rome, Dad.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">That</span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font-size: small;">s my girl.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com145tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-70752574405725344882017-07-28T09:36:00.001-07:002017-07-28T09:36:16.492-07:00What you reading?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQBFowDo0l11MGBwqCshTeJ5KUw8CY1aXk4dnJdyVGWUzrkj4NpxTbJaXSRgMGryYe0fJlPRHhtBHY0zoru8tLn5i4h6d6YkxAwiZkfe2QKx1OgW_Cyiy5Mak5JOFRYztjuCO/s1600/IMG_4417.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQBFowDo0l11MGBwqCshTeJ5KUw8CY1aXk4dnJdyVGWUzrkj4NpxTbJaXSRgMGryYe0fJlPRHhtBHY0zoru8tLn5i4h6d6YkxAwiZkfe2QKx1OgW_Cyiy5Mak5JOFRYztjuCO/s400/IMG_4417.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">your summer reading</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Hello, he said. What are you reading?</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Elisabeth showed him her empty hands.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Does it look like I’m reading anything? she said.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A constant what? Elisabeth said.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A constant constancy, Daniel said.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">They went for a walk along the canal bank.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Every time they passed someone, Daniel said hello. Sometimes the people said hello back. Sometimes they didn’t.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">It’s really not allright to talk to strangers, Elisabeth said.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">It is when you’re as old as I am, Daniel said. It’s not all right for a personage of your age.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">I’m tired of being a personage of my age and of having no choices, Elisabeth said.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Never mind that, Daniel said. That’ll pass in the blink of an eye. Now. Tell me. What you reading?</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Ali Smith’s latest novel, Autumn, is incredibly good. (If you want to read a more thorough analysis than I have to offer, try <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/ali-smiths-autumn-is-a-post-brexit-masterpiece/516660/">this</a>.) </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">I finished it in a day and every page or so stopped to reread some astounding passage so I could really let it sink in. I love the way she juxtaposes profundity with lightness, even absurdity. This book is full of big, serious ideas (about Brexit, age, time, love) but is also quick and witty and you never feel weighted down.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I can’t stop thinking about Daniel’s remarks about reading. Throughout the novel, instead of the usual and often meaningless “How are you?” Daniel asks people: “What you reading?” As he explains in that passage, he isn’t necessarily inquiring about a book (though characters in this novel read a lot of books), he’s asking: What is on your mind, what are you picking up from the world that is preoccupying you at this particular moment — what project, what political disaster, what cultural argument, what movie, what food trend — and what is the related narrative that’s unfolding in your head?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Or at least that’s what I think he means. At least that’s what I want him to mean. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">And isn’t that a better question than “How are you?” Obviously, “How are you?” is important — I always want to know how my friends are, whether they’re in any kind of physical or emotional distress, but when they’re not, and they’re usually not, thank God, the next thing I want to know is what they’re reading, either in terms of books or in that broader sense.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> A couple of my friends and I cut straight to </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">“What you reading?” by mutual understanding, but I have never been able to put a name to that dynamic like I can now.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My baby girl polishes that glass!</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">It seems that this blog has become about what I’m reading, both in terms of books but also in that broader sense. I mean, it always has been, but I used to “read” about food and cookbooks and backyard chickens more than I do now. Hey, what do you expect? When I started this blog my kids were cute, naughty little chipmunks. Life is different now. Owen will be a senior in high school and Isabel appears to be all grown up. We went to visit her last weekend in Walla Walla, Washington where she’s working at a<a href="http://www.fwwm.org/"> history museum </a>and living in a bungalow with some friends. She has potted snapdragons on the front steps and goes to the farmers’ market on Saturdays to buy kale and potatoes, cooks herself dinner every night. It’s the young, pretty millennial who should be writing the food blog, not the chubby old lady with the reading glasses and the empty nest!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Except I’m the one who likes to write, so there.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saturday morning when you are twenty and your enthusiastic parents texted you at 7 a.m. from Starbucks</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Autumn</i>. It’s brilliant. You should read it. It’s not a plotty book so if a propulsive plot is critical to your reading enjoyment, perhaps this novel isn’t for you. But why not give it a try? One of the characters, preoccupied by world events and sitting at a dying friend’s bedside, reads the opening passage of a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tale-Cities-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486406512">classic novel</a>* and thinks:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The words had acted like a charm. They’d released it all in seconds. They made everything happening stand just far enough away.</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">It was nothing less than magic.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Who needs a passport?</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Who am I? Where am I? What am I?</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">I’m reading.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">John McCain’s vote notwithstanding, everything happening right now is pretty gross. <i>Autumn </i>will make it stand just far enough away.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*I used to feel bad linking to amazon rather than an indie bookshop, but since Trump started hate tweeting at them, I feel not quite good, but definitely less bad. </span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-85301074306362721622017-07-15T10:39:00.000-07:002017-07-15T10:39:05.416-07:00Winter Wheat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">new treasure</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Back to my sweet California home, where the heat is dry, the pot legal, and all the young men have beards.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Quick report on <i>Winter Wheat</i> by Mildred Walker, which I finished just now.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This 1944 novel is narrated by a young woman named Ellen who lives with her parents on a Montana wheat farm. She goes off to college in Minnesota, falls in love with a city boy, and has to drop out of college after a bad harvest. She milks the cows. She runs the combine. She goes to teach at an isolated rural school. It hails. It snows. It gets hot. The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Throughout, Ellen attempts to understand her parents’ mysterious marriage and make sense of her own passionate attachment to the land.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I haven’t read a novel this straightforward in a long time. It’s not a children’s book — and it’s not flat or simplistic — but there’s nothing fancy going on with the writing here. I didn’t copy out any dazzling passages because there weren’t any. By contrast, 10 pages of my notebook are filled with passages from Rachel Cusk’s (amazing) <i>Transit</i>, which is the last novel I finished before this one.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Yet I suspect I’ll remember Ellen’s story long after I’ve forgotten what happened in <i>Transit</i>. This novel is what I think critics mean when they use the words “deeply felt.” I ordinarily dislike the term “deeply felt,” but it captures the emotional purity and intensity of <i>Winter Wheat</i>. It was a very clean and vivid reading experience.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> I loved it.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This isn’t a blanket recommendation. Not everyone will enjoy <i>Winter Wheat. </i>I read somewhere once that there are two types of readers, those who liked the Narnia books when they were children and those who liked the <i>Little House</i> series. I was a <i>Little House</i> kid. <i>Winter Wheat</i> is for us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">There’s a lot of food in </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Winter Wheat</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">, as there always is in novels set on farms, which may be one reason why I like them so much.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">You’re treated to images like: “The bulb in its green paper shade shone down on chicken pie and candied sweet potatoes and Mom’s rolls.” A plot twist turns on a glass of homemade dandelion wine.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I thought as I always do when reminded of the existence of dandelion wine that I would like to taste it one day.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I looked up a recipe. To get started, you collect three quarts of dandelion blossoms — and not the whole flower, just the fluffy, weightless yellow petals you’ve stripped off the green head. Three quarts!</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Nope. Not today. Sadly, probably never.</span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-69121963687914059772017-07-11T08:17:00.000-07:002017-07-11T08:23:09.866-07:00Gone is gone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: Library of Congress</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">A few years ago, I helped a woman in her 80s write her memoir. I did this under the auspices of a nonprofit that was trying to keep house bound elderly people engaged with life by telling their stories. When I saw the ad on Craigslist seeking volunteers, I wrote back immediately. This was right up my alley. I couldn’t wait to get started. </span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The work was even more fascinating and rewarding than I’d expected. I loved my “learning partner” and I loved trying to get her story on paper. Once a week for a year I drove to P’s house, sat down at her dining table, and took notes as she told me about her life. Then I’d go home and type everything up, trying to make it flow as a story. Where the narrative seemed thin or behaviors went unexplained, I’d make a note and the next week I’d see P again and we’d talk some more. We circled back over her life scores of times and in every rendition something new came out, the story got richer. There was probably more food in this memoir than any in the history of the program, but there was a lot of everything. I hope she and her family were happy with the memoir. I was.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Early on P told me that she had not seen her father’s face since the early 1940s. He’d had a stroke at the salt mine where he worked and left behind a widow and 15 children. P had adored her father. There had been photos, but they’d been lost. It haunted her that she didn’t have a picture of this beloved man.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Well, telling me this was like waving a meaty shank bone in front of a hungry hound. A quest! I was going to find a picture of P’s father if it killed me. I wrote it down on my multi-page to-do list. For weeks I scoured the internet looking for pictures of black men who had lived in a certain region of Louisiana in the 1930s. I inquired about archives at the salt mine. I spent hours on the Library of Congress photo site. I googled every possible combination of keywords and then a few days later I’d think of some more and try those.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Every week or so I printed out a new series of photographs of unidentified men — men in overalls sitting on the steps of general stores, men sitting on carts, everything available —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and brought them to P. The first time, she looked at them with a strange expression on her face. She said, “I don’t know why they never show blacks who are doing well, they always have to make us look poor.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Indeed, all the photographs I could find of black men in rural, Depression-era Louisiana told a picturesque story of Southern poverty. This was not the way P remembered things. The disparity between her memories and the pictures the photographers chose to take — and our institutions to preserve — would be interesting to explore.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But that’s another story. What matters is that P never saw a picture of her father among those that I brought to her.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> It was always a long shot.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">When I had exhausted what the internet had to offer, I actually looked at my calendar and thought maybe I could travel to Louisiana and search in person for P’s father’s photograph. But even I am not compulsive enough to travel to Louisiana looking for a picture of a man I’d never recognize, a picture that<i> probably didn’t even exist.</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A certain personality type has a hard time accepting defeat on a quest like this. My personality type. Even after we’d finished her memoir, “P’s father’s photo” sat there in bold type on my to-do list. Occasionally I’d go back online and poke around. Time passed. Pearl had a debilitating stroke. One day earlier this year, with a pang, I crossed </span><span style="font-size: small;">“P’s father’s photo” </span><span style="font-size: small;"> off my list. P’s father’s picture <i>doesn’t exist.</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Sunday, I decided I was done with my family history research. I was never going to know why Abner and Cora and Orlan behaved as they did. Never. It was over. Yesterday, I was going to go to Mount Vernon and enjoy the end of my trip to Washington D.C. There was one last archive I hadn’t looked at, but it was a long shot. Some ladies who might have known something about the people I’m curious about had left behind diaries now held at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. But, really, such a long shot and such a long drive.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Big surprise, at the last minute I changed plans. No Mount Vernon. Instead, I drove almost three hours down a monotonous highway listening to agitating right-wing talk radio to William and Mary College. I bought a parking permit, found the library, found special collections, requested the diaries from a meticulous librarian, locked all my belongs in a locker. The librarian brought out diaries and put them on a shelf. She had me sit at a big table in view of her desk. Then, one by one, she brought me the diaries. She’d set each small, leather diary up on a foam platform and I had to use a little piece of string to weight down the yellowed pages as I read so the oils on my fingers would spend as little time as possible on the precious paper. When I was done, she’d take back the diary and bring me another.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">My ladies had been admirably dutiful diarists. They had also been shockingly boring diarists. Every single day for years and years they noted that it was “terribly hot” or “cold and raw” and then listed who they had lunched with and whether they had embroidered or read in the evening. No emotion, no gossip, no commentary. Occasionally some major world event like an earthquake in Jamaica or the death of Grover Cleveland made it into these pages, reported as flatly as the latest garden party at Mrs. Lambert’s.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Thank God my people had also made it into the diaries! I hadn’t been completely delusional! They were right there in brown ink and the first time I saw that one of the diarists had gone to Mrs. S’s for tea (May 17, 1906), I gasped. But of course there was no record of what they talked about, let alone what kind of cookies they ate, what Mrs. S wore, whether she had put on weight, seemed happy or blue or worried. And so it went. Dinner with Mr. S. Travels with young S. Terribly hot. Rained all day. Father went on trip. Father returned from trip. Embroidered.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve been surprised by just how much you can learn about the past, how many incredible secrets you can crack if you’re willing to spend the time. Strange chunks of the past really can be recaptured.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But most of it is lost forever, really lost, like P’s father’s face. I had always known that the motivations and characters of the people I was researching were probably lost forever. I spent several hours hunched over those unilluminating diaries yesterday. I am glad I did. I shut the last diary, thanked the librarian, retrieved my belongings, drove three hours back to my airbnb, collapsed on the saggy little sofa, started <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/608823.Winter_Wheat">a good book</a>, slept well. The piece of the past that has preoccupied me for the last two months is not probably lost forever, it is lost forever.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">On to new quests.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-70152313450571966782017-07-09T07:07:00.000-07:002017-07-09T07:07:12.179-07:00A comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;">Time to get that dated rant off the top of this page.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I’ve been consumed by a project for the last eight weeks that has nothing to do with food or Trump or anything remotely relevant to this blog, hence the dearth of posts. I decided to solve a seemingly small family mystery that ballooned into a bigger, stranger story and I got obsessed. All the energy that went into despairing over politics was suddenly diverted towards figuring out what happened with my family between 1900 and 1912. I think I figured it out. What I can’t figure out is <i>why</i> it happened and that part is tormenting me. I keep hoping I’m going to stumble across a cache of letters, some gossipy diary, or a juicy scrapbook that will shed light on the personalities involved and why these people did what they did, but having worked my way through archives from Broken Bow, Nebraska to Washington, D.C., I’m beginning to accept that if I really want to know what happened, I’m going to have to make it up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Anyway, that’s why I haven’t posted in forever. Be happy for me. It’s kept me from dwelling on North Korea.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Other than eating it, I haven’t been thinking about food as much as usual, though that’s probably still more than most people. I made some cornmeal mush earlier this summer because I’d been reading so much about Nebraska circa 1900. They lived on corn. They burned it as fuel, boiled it, fried it, roasted it, dried it, ground it, and turned it into mush. Mush. I had never eaten mush. You may ask how mush differs from polenta and that’s a very good question. It doesn't. But it does. When you call your cornmeal porridge “mush” and put butter and sorghum on it you are in a very different imaginative place than when you open </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Essentials of Italian Cooking.</i></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span> I could have eaten the whole pot of delicious, hot, humble mush, but exercised my famous iron self-discipline. The next day I made patties of the leftover mush and fried the patties in butter because I’d read that’s what people did in the old days. Fried mush was even better than regular mush, crusty on the outside, warm and creamy on the inside. There are abundant reasons to pity the Nebraska pioneers — sod houses, child mortality, winter — but cornmeal mush is not one of them.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>After that I tried to find other old Nebraska dishes to try, but fried heart, chokecherry pie, and dried carrot coffee did not make my mouth water.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Now I’m in Washington, D.C. finishing up my research. After this, no mas. I am cutting myself off. Enough is enough. I’ve been staying in a kind of desolate apartment complex in Rosslyn, Virginia and eating microwave popcorn and blueberries for dinner, but last night decided to boldly venture out. According to Google Maps there was a crab restaurant just a 4 minute walk away in this bland neighborhood. Really? Yes, indeed there was. Right there, tucked amid all the boring apartments, was a boisterous, crowded restaurant with a line out the door. Since I was alone, I waltzed right in, got a seat at the bar, and ordered a half-dozen crabs which were served to me on a sheet of thick brown paper. The woman on my right was drinking bourbon and Diet Coke, a drink I hope never to taste in this lifetime or the next. The couple on my left were drinking Bud Lites and they showed me how to eat Maryland blue crabs. By the time I was done with that massive pile of crustaceans, we were good friends and my hands were filthy. It was a pretty perfect evening.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-5872153249750689712017-05-26T11:24:00.000-07:002017-05-26T11:24:05.309-07:00A furious rant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Really. This is a ferocious rant. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New Roman";">Probably not what you came here for, but if I’m going to blog at all, this is what I’ve got today. </span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I woke up yesterday morning to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/a-transcript-of-the-greg-gianforte-body-slam-audio/528102/">the audiotape</a> of Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte assaulting reporter Ben Jacobs in Montana. It was horrifying. If you haven’t listened, you need to. Perhaps even more chilling than the attack, though, was the parade of moral midgets, including members of Congress, who justified Gianforte’s brutality, even reveled in it. We all know there are thugs out there, but who </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">wants to see them defended by fellow citizens, let alone lawmakers? Who wants to find out that the sickness is systemic?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">It appears to be systemic. Thanks, Trump. While I don’t think he’s the source of this ugliness, he unleashed and legitimized it. I am more disgusted with my country than I have ever been in my life.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Also trending on my Twitter feed yesterday morning was a <a href="https://pdx.eater.com/2017/5/22/15677760/portland-kooks-burrito-cultural-appropriation">sad, tawdry little story</a> out of Oregon. Two young women went down to Mexico, learned how to make tortillas, started a food cart in Portland selling burritos made with their fresh tortillas, and gave a <a href="http://www.wweek.com/uncategorized/2017/05/16/kooks-serves-pop-up-breakfast-burritos-with-handmade-tortillas-out-of-a-food-cart-on-cesar-chavez/">kind of dippy interview<span id="goog_1761421516"></span><span id="goog_1761421517"></span> </a>to a newspaper. This utterly banal story led to venomous charges of cultural appropriation and, apparently, death threats. In the comments thread and <a href="http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/05/22/19028161/this-week-in-appropriation-kooks-burritos-and-willamette-week">follow-up articles</a><span id="goog_1761421522"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1761421523"></span>, so-called progressives alternately vilified and belittled the tortilla-makers for “appropriating” Mexican culture. (There were a lot of comments in support of the women as well, which is heartening.) One minute the women were attacked as “horrid” colonialist predators who viciously robbed secret tortilla recipes from impoverished Latina grandmothers, the next they were mocked as frivolous <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-slang-term-Becky-mean">“Beckys”</a> who thought it would be “cute” to filch someone else’s cuisine for their darling little cart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">The women shuttered their business a few days later and vanished from social media. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A lot of reasonable people disagree with me, but I don’t believe cultural appropriation is a problem. I think the crusades against cultural appropriation are illiberal, mean-spirited, divisive, stifling, unAmerican, riddled with contradictions, ahistorical, and often just a flimsy excuse for self-righteous leftist scolding — and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDlQ4H0Kdg8">worse</a>. I am pretty sure the critics in Portland who went after the tortilla makers were less interested in helping Mexican <i>abuelas</i> they’ve never met (and never will) than in scolding and shaming white girls. They were getting off on putting white girls in their place. There’s a lot of that going around these days among leftists of all races, including whites. Young white women seem to piss people off just by existing. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But that’s not my concern right now. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t think there was a more serious problem with this saga than the loss to Portland of a white-owned food cart</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">These scoldings — these intemperate tirades from the left — exact a price. All liberals end up paying that price, even those of us who despise the culture of scolding. We’re paying the price right now and it’s miserable. Meanwhile, cultural appropriation foes like those in Portland continue to blithely, arrogantly run up the tab. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve always been a liberal. I want liberal candidates to win elections, liberal laws to be enacted, liberal values to prevail. I would argue that going after people for cultural appropriation is not just illiberal in itself, but it impedes liberal political progress, by which I mean <i>winning elections.</i> Pillorying white female entrepreneurs is not how we, on the left, persuade white people in places like Montana to embrace the Democratic platform. It is not how we get people to stop voting for turds like Greg Gianforte. Indeed, these petty cultural tirades are one reason <i>why</i> white people in Montana vote for turds like Gianforte. Anyone who thinks voters in Red States don’t hear about tortilla nonsense in Portland doesn’t watch enough Fox News or check in at the <i>National Review</i>. Right-wing media outlets make damn sure their audiences know about it every time a yoga class is canceled because of “cultural genocide.” Oh, those hilarious, asinine libtards! You can see the journalists licking their chops when they get to report that a Latina student at some elite college has decreed white girls can’t wear hoop earrings because it’s offensive to the “black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings” and asks: “why should white girls be able to take part in this culture.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Why indeed. And a good follow-up question would be: Why should ordinary white voters embrace this bullshit? Honestly, why? If the face of liberalism is a supercilious, censorious, self-righteous snot who rails against young white women because they sell tortillas, we have an electoral problem. Also, I need a new party.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Look, I don’t think the left is the primary driver of recent repulsive behavior on the right. Far from it. But some of us seem to be doing everything we can to make things even worse. I’m a white, lifelong liberal with a <a href="http://www.tipsybaker.com/2009/08/justines-excellent-guatemalan-party.html">Latina grandmother who actually showed me how to pat out tortillas</a> — and if I find this stuff obnoxious and alienating, it sure isn’t winning over harder hearts and minds. I hope the cultural left enjoyed its little “triumph” in Portland, that the “victory” of putting two naive young women out of business was sweet. Because the electoral victory of the despicable Greg Gianforte — a real, substantive victory that unfortunately requires no scare quotes — is anything but. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Back to more palatable fare soon.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com76tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-45854607781965281262017-05-16T13:06:00.001-07:002017-05-16T13:06:41.068-07:00 Morning in America, May 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Jennifer, looking at her phone while still in bed: There’s no way Trump is going to serve out his term.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Mark: Well, you know what I think.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: Right, you think he’s going to serve his term and get re-elected.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark: I think he’s going to serve all four years. Of course he is. He loves this stuff and what’s going to take him down?</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: Nope. Something is going to happen and he is going to resign. It will be</span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> sudden and swift. Let’s make a bet! You agree to go with me to the orangutan sanctuary in Borneo someday if he leaves office before his term is up. If he makes it to the end, I agree to go on the driving trip around the Great Lakes.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark: I’m not going to bet something that would make one of us unhappy.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: I wouldn’t mind going to the Great Lake</span></span><span class="s1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: small;">s</span></span><span class="s1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark: </span><span style="font-size: small;">Really?</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: You’d truly mind going to the orangutan sanctuary?</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark: You know I would.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: How about this: We get a dog if he leaves office, we don’t get a dog if makes it to the end.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark: I’m not going to bet something that would ruin our lives.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer: How about this: If he stays in office the full four years, we move to a townhouse without a yard or any animals.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The conversation petered out at this point because I get bummed thinking about the townhouse. Our imminent move to a sterile townhouse when Owen leaves is an ongoing joke that I increasingly worry is not a joke.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I went upstairs and pulled out the jar of Alton Brown’s <b>overnight coconut oats</b> that I mixed yesterday. I’ve been wanting to try this recipe since I first opened <b><i>EveryDayCook </i></b>back in December, but kept postponing because it looked incredibly fattening. I finally got tired of wondering what it tasted like.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">What did it taste like? Ambrosia. </span></span><span class="s1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: small;">The internet is packed with recipes for oats-in-a-jar that look like this one, but I have never tried any of them so I can’t say if Brown’s version is better or worse, only that it’s delicious, a creamy melange of oats, chia seeds, flaxseed meal, and nut milk topped with with crunchy coconut flakes. I ate my oats slowly, as I would a pudding, savoring every exquisite bite. I will be making this again, probably within hours.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve made some adjustments to the recipe. Brown calls for 75 grams coconut milk and 75 grams almond milk — but he doesn’t specify the type of coconut milk. Does he mean the thick, rich coconut milk in a can? Or the thinner, lighter coconut milk you find in jugs in the refrigerator section of the supermarket? I went with the latter and used Califia Farms unsweetened, blended coconut and almond milk. But really, you could use any milk you want — soy, cashew, dairy. I also felt you could use less syrup and go easy on the dried fruit. I omitted cinnamon. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">You need a scale for this. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Alton Brown’s Coconut Oats</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">150 grams mixed nut milk (see headnote)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">12 grams maple syrup (or less)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">1/4 teaspoon vanilla</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">40 grams rolled oats</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">30 grams dried fruit (or less, or add fresh berries when you eat the oats)</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">2 grams chia seeds</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">3 grams flaxseed meal</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">pinch of salt</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">toasted coconut flakes for topping</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Shake the milk, maple syrup and vanilla in a pint jar until well blended. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Add everything but the coconut flakes and shake the jar again, very vigorously. Screw on the lid. Refrigerate overnight. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Top with the coconut flakes. Serves one.</span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-76083439398888214182017-05-15T13:56:00.000-07:002017-05-15T13:56:16.854-07:00Cultivating my garden<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnatAfwAX6qE2Yey-Yu6MW9gwSP1S2ylwnTA8QR32lsrOP4L39n2TMM_2y5F6LEdfTt41eUX5Gf5K-JXoGFfcO3e5Em8N0SqRSXYpm-tUzmC6i-tnxYXgHmMlwE38-eod31vh/s1600/IMG_3952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnatAfwAX6qE2Yey-Yu6MW9gwSP1S2ylwnTA8QR32lsrOP4L39n2TMM_2y5F6LEdfTt41eUX5Gf5K-JXoGFfcO3e5Em8N0SqRSXYpm-tUzmC6i-tnxYXgHmMlwE38-eod31vh/s400/IMG_3952.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Overgrowth of poppies has made it hard to walk up the stairs, but I can't bring myself to tear them out. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’d kicked my Twitter addiction and was back to appreciating the tangible world around me, but then came last week. There I was puttering around the yard one afternoon, happily planting lavender, nice middle-aged lady having a nice middle-aged lady day, when I glanced at my phone, shrieked, sat down in the dirt, and that was all she wrote for gardening. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Trump is so much worse than I thought he’d be — and I thought he’d be terrible.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But since I have nothing original or interesting to add to the national conversation, I’ll tell you how to make injera. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsuk_J7uSx0KXyB9oYMz9LiqGM8PDR4M9NFVMcD3f30h97eu4S21l457tpV-a6cSxikzF8r3K2OBFdeAWvuyhyphenhyphenxXau_aXK5PU_kkB6ncfpP6D1Fsd04DZwqguBU0tYDSCwFvgC/s1600/IMG_3927.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsuk_J7uSx0KXyB9oYMz9LiqGM8PDR4M9NFVMcD3f30h97eu4S21l457tpV-a6cSxikzF8r3K2OBFdeAWvuyhyphenhyphenxXau_aXK5PU_kkB6ncfpP6D1Fsd04DZwqguBU0tYDSCwFvgC/s400/IMG_3927.jpg" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They aren't supposed to look quite like that, but they tasted great.</td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Injera is the soft, super-sour Ethiopian flatbread that resembles a giant pancake and is used to scoop up whatever meats and stews are served at an Ethiopian meal. It’s delicious. Something about the sourness piques your appetite, makes you want to eat more and more and more which is the last thing I need, but that’s beside the point. It was a longstanding goal of mine to make injera at home and my various attempts had all ended in tears. Most injera recipes in books and on the internet simply do not work. Period.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Which is why a few Saturdays ago I found myself in an Ethiopian cooking class trying to fry onions in a pot without any oil. One of the odd features of Ethiopian cuisine, at least Ethiopian cuisine as taught in this class, is that you add oil<i> after</i> you’ve cooked the onions. I’m not sure why. The teacher certainly didn’t enlighten us. It was a strange class. To start with, it was held in a vast hangar-like warehouse in the dark reaches of which people seemed to be soldering metal and repairing cars. The teacher was a petite Ethiopian woman with minimal English who had no printed recipes to distribute and seemed curiously grudging about sharing information. She assigned each of us a work station stocked with rudimentary foodstuffs and we proceeded to prepare unnamed legume-based stews according to haphazard verbal instructions. You had to guess what the ingredients were — was that red powder paprika? Cayenne? Berbere? I still don’t know. She’d wander by periodically to tell you that now it was time to chop the onion or add the salt or turn off the hotplate, and then a few minutes later she’d wander back and reproach you because whatever you’d done was wrong. I have no idea what we made and couldn’t begin to replicate any of it. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Except the injera. I was there to learn to make injera and I learned to make injera.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">If you’ve never wanted to make injera, you should stop reading because you will fall asleep. If you’ve always wanted to make injera, the following formula worked perfectly at the warehouse and adequately — though not perfectly — a week later in my own kitchen. You will need to track down two special flours — <a href="https://www.brundo.com/products/dagussa"><i>dagussa </i></a>and<i> <a href="https://www.brundo.com/products/zengada">zengada</a></i> — and you will need some sourdough starter. I had thought injera was always made from teff flour, but our teacher used <i>dagussa</i> and <i>zengada</i>, which she told us were varieties of “finger millet” flour, but that may not be correct. I can’t confirm. (I find something very creepy about the term “finger millet.”)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Once you have your flours and starter this is what you do: </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">In a bowl, combine 1 part <i>dagussa</i>, 1 part <i>zengada</i>, and 2 parts all-purpose flour. Add some starter. We didn’t measure in the class, but at home, to four cups mixed flour I added about 1/2 cup starter. Now add enough warm water to make a thin, creamy batter. Mix well. Cover the bowl and let it sit for three or four days on your counter. It will bubble and begin to smell intensely sour.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">When you’re ready to cook, heat up the closest thing you have to a non-stick skillet. In class, the teacher used a dedicated round electric skillet to cook the injera, but a cast-iron pan worked well for me. When your skillet is really hot, pour some batter into it, swirl it around to completely coat the pan as you would a crepe. Pop on a lid. After a few minutes, lift the lid and if the injera is cooked (not wet on top, but not desiccated — you’re aiming for tender, pliable, spongy), remove the bread from the pan and make another injera. Proceed until all the injera are cooked and serve with Ethiopian entrees like <a href="http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Ethiopian-Lentil-Stew">this</a>, which worked well.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG2T7PGsSwBvhIR_iZpbvJkfbBJX5jBw9lX-d01-CdoT3OQv326QagO48t6aJGHMhO1TlZyD7C60RAr8XiJjv8VvQpkWBwB4eRrLBREzM4tNvu2MSglkQQfu7jDINvRTkOG7pz/s1600/IMG_3931.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG2T7PGsSwBvhIR_iZpbvJkfbBJX5jBw9lX-d01-CdoT3OQv326QagO48t6aJGHMhO1TlZyD7C60RAr8XiJjv8VvQpkWBwB4eRrLBREzM4tNvu2MSglkQQfu7jDINvRTkOG7pz/s400/IMG_3931.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They were not enthusiastic. </td></tr>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The flavor of my injera was lovely. The texture, not. It was somewhat rough and leathery, and it never rose, never achieved that little “lift” of proper injera. I briefly considered trying to go for perfect, fluffy, spongy injera like you get in restaurants, but decided that there were other things I’d rather do with my free time. I was satisfied with my imperfect, tasty injera and crossed Project Injera off my list.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A few things I’ve done rather than perfecting injera that you might enjoy as well:</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Watched <i>Srugim</i>. Sweet, droll Israeli TV series about the romantic travails of young, religious Jews whose courtship rituals are no less rigid than those of Elizabeth and Darcy. Window into a world I know nothing about. Charming and fascinating. (Amazon Prime.)</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Watched <i>Obit</i>. Documentary about obituary writers at the <i>New York Times.</i> It’s funny! Also informative and actually rather uplifting. Trust me, you’ll be glad you saw it.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Worked a lot in the garden, which is good for the head, hell on the hands. Wear gloves. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQwx38cmtQY_irI6hkILH2j3dlJzJdAODr6URXb5s4GPRw0njrw1dth3HD8D-aBqcc116qJZVAihiOOi6sand3YGry0MqIeIffp5ljIfaIjE3b4lqsnPXDDhvG6tPouGL19xX/s1600/IMG_3954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTQwx38cmtQY_irI6hkILH2j3dlJzJdAODr6URXb5s4GPRw0njrw1dth3HD8D-aBqcc116qJZVAihiOOi6sand3YGry0MqIeIffp5ljIfaIjE3b4lqsnPXDDhvG6tPouGL19xX/s400/IMG_3954.jpg" width="313" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I love these little guys.</td></tr>
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</div>
tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-74793064426049862182017-04-27T13:07:00.000-07:002017-04-27T13:07:05.942-07:00The world really has been shaved by a drunken barber<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1LYcNmBG29E2hyVAfxpV1ug4pQVjlOHpIIAJdptHgKK5EJLMtWzTl4ubA78rtq2tuGzslEpZ85OLxO5r4RfkythyphenhyphendBgWIZV-Y_FMn2L8Cw88hlVHj6s-pmG4G9Fp3RZuChHlW/s1600/Poster_-_Meet_John_Doe_08+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1LYcNmBG29E2hyVAfxpV1ug4pQVjlOHpIIAJdptHgKK5EJLMtWzTl4ubA78rtq2tuGzslEpZ85OLxO5r4RfkythyphenhyphendBgWIZV-Y_FMn2L8Cw88hlVHj6s-pmG4G9Fp3RZuChHlW/s400/Poster_-_Meet_John_Doe_08+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Saturday afternoon, Owen said, “What are you making for dinner?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I said, “Nothing. I’m not cooking anymore.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen: “I haven’t had a healthy meal since the last time you cooked.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Maybe you should have thought about that when you made gagging noises every time you walked through the kitchen and saw me cooking.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen “I didn’t make gagging noises when you were making meatloaf. I always like when you make pasta.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Are you saying you want me to start cooking again?”</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen: “You’re just trying to get me to say that.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Well, if you asked me to start cooking again, I’d be really happy.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen: “I’ll see how long I can hold out. I don’t want to give in.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “Oh, come on.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen: “Does this mean you’re not going to write down all your good recipes for me when I leave home so I won’t starve?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “I’ll still do that.”<br />
</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen: “What about the ground beef with fish sauce? I love that. I never complain about that. You could make that tonight. What ingredients do you need?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: “We don’t have the ingredients and I’m not cooking tonight.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Every now and then, I stop cooking for a while because the family narrative around my cooking — “Mom and the crazy stuff she makes that no one likes” — becomes too tiresome. Also, I can be lazy. Conveniently, I can justify the laziness by reminding everyone (and myself) about the lack of appreciation.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This has been one of the longer strikes.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But I couldn’t keep it up. I never can. I started to feel like I was betraying something important to my identity, not to mention my body, when I found myself making a meal of some black olives, a spoonful of peanut butter, and a mini Mr. Goodbar.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">And Owen’s daily queries as to what I was cooking for dinner began to seem plaintive. I do actually sort of like that boy.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Strike over.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Monday, I made the<b> fish fingers</b> from Alton Brown’s excellent <i>EveryDayCook</i>. You chop up some white fish (I used cod) and mix it with breadcrumbs, egg, mustard, mayo, and seasonings, form it into fingers, fry these in just a little oil, and serve with homemade tartar sauce. Solid recipe <a href="http://altonbrown.com/a-meal-fit-for-a-doctor/">here</a>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Owen had to leave for a school play before I officially served dinner and he hovered over the pan, trying to get me to cook his fish fingers faster so he wouldn’t be late. He wolfed them down in about 90 seconds, no gagging sounds or complaints, and when he left half a fish finger on the plate he said, “The only reason I’m not finishing that, Mom, is that I really have to go.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The kid was trying. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Last night, I picked Owen up at his ceramics class and on the way home we stopped at Safeway so I could buy ingredients for Alton Brown’s <b>breakfast sausage carbonara</b>. Brown calls for whole wheat pasta in this recipe and I told Owen that while whole wheat spaghetti was healthier, he might not like it and maybe we should get regular pasta. He voted for whole wheat. Not sure why.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I made the carbonara, which is very similar to other carbonaras, but a bit eggier and subs breakfast sausage for pancetta. Mark took one bite and pushed the bowl away on account of the whole wheat pasta. Owen had seconds. He didn’t say the carbonara was “great” because it wasn’t, but neither did he treat it as something I’d cruelly inflicted on him. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Whole wheat spaghetti really is pretty bad. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The recipe is <a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018326-breakfast-carbonara">here</a>, though I don’t recommend it. I prefer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/prune-spaghetti-alla-carbonara/14326/?utm_term=.fc60fefb2792">this carbonara</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">If I keep playing my cards right, I think the cooking narrative in this family is going to change for the better.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">****</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">And now a weird little story that has nothing to do with food</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The other day I went to a matinee screening of Frank Capra’s 1941 <i>Meet John Doe</i>, which I’d been wanting to see for years. The film is about cynical plutocrats and the pure-hearted John Doe, played by Gary Cooper, who inspires downtrodden, divided Americans to start talking to each other and unite around their shared suffering. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">My fellow moviegoers were very elderly, which is always the case when you go to a matinee in the suburbs midweek. I was probably the youngest person there by twenty or thirty years — and I’m not young.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">About five minutes before the end of the film, two old women came in, not realizing that there was another half hour before the showing of the next film. One of the women was talking very loudly in a growly old lady voice and she did not lower that voice even when it should have been obvious that there was a film in progress. She had reached the age of obliviousness. She was leaning on her companion’s arm as they walked slowly down the aisle and she kept saying, “I can’t see anything. Where are the chairs?” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This inspired a barrage of fierce “Be quiets!” from the audience. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The women paused at the row behind me and the loud one began fumbling around trying to find the flip-down seat, issuing full-throated instructions to her ancient companion. She was flustered. I got up and helped her into her seat because I am, as everyone knows, an angel.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The woman kept talking during this painstaking process. Just as I sat back down, another old woman from elsewhere in the theater stood up, walked over, glared at the woman behind me, and said furiously: “You need to be quiet!” She returned to her seat.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I could have sworn I heard the woman behind me say “cunt” but I simply can not believe she really did and prefer not to. Plus, an instant later she remarked with innocent delight, “Look, it’s Gary Cooper!” She pronounced “Gary” like “Harry.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">This last, happy outburst inspired an old man now to get up and walk over. “Stop talking!” he hissed. It was as if he’d missed his first opportunity to issue an in-person rebuke, goddamnit, and he wasn’t going to let this one go by.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I really can not convey how bizarre this was. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Two minutes later, the film ended. I ran out of the theater.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">If you haven’t seen <i>Meet John Doe</i>, you should. Gary Cooper was impossibly handsome and the film is sweet and uplifting and made me cry. It is particularly poignant given how everyone seems to hate each other in our country right now. The film delivers a lovely message about showing charity and generosity to our frail fellow humans, a message that at least two people in the audience with me seemed to have missed completely.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">It really does seem like people are suddenly meaner. Whether this was an anomaly or a sign of the times I have no idea, but in my many thousands of misspent hours in movie theaters, I’ve never before seen anyone — let alone two people — actually get out of their seats and march over to scold someone.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-38017011405730448212017-03-21T10:45:00.000-07:002017-03-21T10:45:13.924-07:00Swimming sadly under a small pond of ketchup<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxuZavaDze1kBiplOttFt3lM1sEaty8wga0CgWzNOWxzMgJcK_aI334ynRBMXxprWU71RnfWFEdzF5vBj5FMMbHpiwhJe8QSQy9zlWx6cf2mKGaL1gvW3jP1gxHPvOknpFGBdz/s1600/IMG_3848+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxuZavaDze1kBiplOttFt3lM1sEaty8wga0CgWzNOWxzMgJcK_aI334ynRBMXxprWU71RnfWFEdzF5vBj5FMMbHpiwhJe8QSQy9zlWx6cf2mKGaL1gvW3jP1gxHPvOknpFGBdz/s400/IMG_3848+%25281%2529.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I caved and bought <i>A Meatloaf in Every Oven</i> by Frank Bruni and Jennifer Steinhauer, not because I wanted a meatloaf cookbook (I so didn’t) but because I’ve always loved Steinhauer’s writing and consider Bruni’s <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-where-you-go-is-not-who-youll-be-frank-bruni-college-20150319-story.html">book about colleges</a> essential, sedative reading if you’ve got a kid slogging through second half of high school. The two <i>New York Times </i>writers bonded over meat loaf (“In a given series of emails we’ll toggle from Senate filibusters to sauteed shiitakes, from Obamacare to oregano.”) and I expected their collaboration to be funny and clever. It doesn’t disappoint.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Tasty sample passage: “Perhaps this is your personal memory of meatloaf: someone’s mother’s overcooked, underseasoned, sort of needlessly, unpleasantly crunchy slab of meat, swimming sadly under a small pond of ketchup. Not that we hate ketchup. In fact, we embrace it. We date it. We want to marry it. But we also want it to see other people.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">There are chapters here devoted to lamb meatloaves, classic meatloaves, meatless loaves (tuna melt loaf, kasha loaf), and meatloaf side dishes. In their day jobs, Steinhauer and Bruni report on politics and the penultimate chapter collects meatloaf recipes contributed by members of Congress. Chuck Schumer cooks barbecued chicken in the same pan with his very plain meatloaf, which does not appeal to me at all. Nancy Pelosi makes a bison-and-veal loaf — “and things get mysterious with the appearance of cumin.” Paul Ryan shoots deer, grinds them up in his own power grinder, then desecrates the poor venison with Lipton onion soup mix and Progresso breadcrumbs. I’m sure it’s lousy. Paul Ryan is dead to me. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, if Adam Schiff had a meatloaf recipe. . . </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Last night, I tried out the <b>Swedish meatball loaf</b>, an homage to Ikea’s Swedish meatballs which I have never tasted, though apparently the company sells a billion of these “bouncy” textured meatballs per year. You flavor a beef-pork-onion-bread-egg-cream melange with nutmeg and allspice, bake, top with a creamy gravy and some raspberry jam. The meatloaf required significantly more time in the oven than indicated to reach the suggested internal temperature, but otherwise the recipe worked perfectly. Isabel (home for spring break) brought a friend to dinner and he complimented the meatloaf. It may have just been good manners, but he seemed sincere and I glowed with matronly pride. In any case, he didn’t get someone’s mother’s overcooked, underseasoned, sort of needlessly, unpleasantly crunchy, slab of meat. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Although I didn’t really want a meatloaf compendium, I suspect I’ll use this one a lot. Meatloaf is easy, cheap, and satisfying, and flipping through the book this morning I wondered if I could get away with making meatloaf again tonight. (Conclusion: No one would mind but me and I would mind.) </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">On another subject, I have mixed feelings about the writer Walter Kirn who can be a sour, contrarian cuss, but he’s never boring and he wrote <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2017/04/you-can-run/">a big-hearted, sad, inspiring essay in this month’s <i>Harper’s</i>.</a> I urge you to seek it out in print if you can’t get past the paywall. Without listening to the radio or checking the internet, Kirn drives from Montana to Las Vegas through Idaho and the “big and biblical” landscape of Utah, observing and pondering what he encounters in the physical, visible world, from bumper stickers and elderly McDonald’s cashiers, to mules, truckers, and Mexican restaurants. There’s a lot of wonderful stuff in this essay. I would like to have the haunting final sentenced tattooed — or maybe branded — on my forearm so I have to look at it every time my twitching hand reaches for the phone for a quick, agitating, empty Twitter fix:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">“In a supposedly post-factual time, deep attention to the passing scene is a radical act, reviving one’s sense that the world is real, worth fighting for, and that politics is a material phenomenon, its consequences embedded in things seen.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Really, you should read the whole story. </span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-47642951735201768022017-03-12T18:43:00.000-07:002017-03-12T18:43:00.116-07:00Ruining a Russian Count's Castle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4F9DbSIE6xX1DMH8etBUKXISvuF3oE6_KqFBoB2MXTURAxcVXKAr1CdZckQnI3y3CAa4HpO5X1Ao0WaBWZoWjhE0RBVmRniyVXzCXipJFdrf_nlHnARYQVvZpGCHk-TDORJa/s1600/IMG_3818.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="391" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4F9DbSIE6xX1DMH8etBUKXISvuF3oE6_KqFBoB2MXTURAxcVXKAr1CdZckQnI3y3CAa4HpO5X1Ao0WaBWZoWjhE0RBVmRniyVXzCXipJFdrf_nlHnARYQVvZpGCHk-TDORJa/s400/IMG_3818.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">David Plotz, CEO of <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/">Atlas Obscura</a><i> </i>and longtime host of the Slate Political Gabfest, wrote a cracking review of </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-cookbook-samarkand-20160808-snap-story.html">Samarkand</a></i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-cookbook-samarkand-20160808-snap-story.html"> </a>and </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Taste of Persia</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> the other day in the Piglet, but one line stopped me cold:</span></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: small;">“I ended up cooking a full meal from each book: A soup, a vegetable, a starch, and a meat.”</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Pardon? What kind of “full meal” has a <i>soup </i>course, but no dessert?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I wondered if perhaps <i>Taste of Persia</i> and <i>Samarkand</i> didn’t contain any appealing sweets, but feast your eyes, my friends</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmk1hyZGO12Rp6XlokQvDrMYKlW7l7LTweKXxvjpIXrvOxJ8qRndwh2HzTfIqlIq0p5hYHjq4WHzWPodsQR08I7UwcAsSwJKA7QcUjW2zSXxS5RCAGfOcRIFNS-eEkgyDfIPm/s1600/IMG_3816.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmk1hyZGO12Rp6XlokQvDrMYKlW7l7LTweKXxvjpIXrvOxJ8qRndwh2HzTfIqlIq0p5hYHjq4WHzWPodsQR08I7UwcAsSwJKA7QcUjW2zSXxS5RCAGfOcRIFNS-eEkgyDfIPm/s400/IMG_3816.jpg" width="292" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">That is a photo from the pages of </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: medium;">Samarkand </i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">of an Uzbek cake called<b> Ruining a Russian Count’s Castle</b>. The very existence of cake called Ruining a Russian Count’s Castle makes me glad to be alive.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I decided to make one.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I haven’t learned the origins of the Ruining a Russian Count’s Castle cake, nor the source of its name, as research materials on Uzbek cakes are scant, even online. But then I only spent about seven minutes looking. What I do know about Ruining a Russian Count’s Castle: You can use a base of profiteroles, meringue, torte, or sponge cake. Atop whatever base you opt for, heap a mound of cream, stud with meringues (cocoa-flavored or plain), and drizzle chocolate over all. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Graffskiye+razvalini&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVnM3bj9LSAhUJxlQKHS35De8Q_AUIBygC&biw=1125&bih=639">Here’s the range of ways a Ruining a Russian Count’s Castle might look</a>. What a world. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5eRW0gE-8zaxTETp5imVt-4Etm7Pa2L4qTMyfYrHn59KG8zG9frNNodDRXQxGDn4H5ibIbNC_9D2Pu9UdbOjDwog-mOr6tZJT_nARTOX2zDmElPoGP5aPY_i7o0mJuNaTYX_D/s1600/IMG_3820.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5eRW0gE-8zaxTETp5imVt-4Etm7Pa2L4qTMyfYrHn59KG8zG9frNNodDRXQxGDn4H5ibIbNC_9D2Pu9UdbOjDwog-mOr6tZJT_nARTOX2zDmElPoGP5aPY_i7o0mJuNaTYX_D/s400/IMG_3820.jpg" width="352" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">flat as a pancake, loaded with prunes</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I had my doubts about the <i>Samarkand </i>recipe<i>.</i> The base cake was dense and flat, barely an inch tall, and full of prunes and walnuts. The whipped cream topping called for heavy cream and sour cream but no sugar. This felt wrong, so I added sugar (and would do so again.) The instructions have you slather some of this cream on the cake, then crush a few of the cocoa meringues into the remainder of the cream so you can create a stiff mound that will hold the rest of your little meringues. You end up with a wonderful monstrosity of a cake. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">This seemed like a novelty cake, a stunt cake, and I didn’t expect it to taste good. But we loved it. There’s so much going on. You’ve got your little crispy meringues to nibble on, then a layer of cream with delectable bits of sugary crushed meringue. Beneath this you get to the layer of pure, tangy cream and then the dense, nutty torte. As soon as you get tired of any one element, you can move on to another, and they're all delicious. Mark asked if the fruit in the torte was cherry. It’s a good sign when someone thinks a prune is a cherry. I was sorry to have to tell him otherwise.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Total delight this cake, both the idea of it and the thing itself.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I also made an easy sesame-ginger brittle from<i> Samarkand </i>and have spent the last few days trying not to eat it all up at once. You boil honey, sugar, and water together, add sesame seeds and whole almonds, cook for a bit, add butter, candied ginger and baking soda, pour over a cookie sheet, cool, break into shards, eat a caramelly, crunchy piece, try to resist eating a second piece, eat a second, try to resist. . . and so on. Ten minutes to produce this tasty treat. Fifteen max.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Plotz made a good call on <i>Samarkand.</i></span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-72689165700696724582017-03-02T13:00:00.002-08:002017-03-02T13:00:45.333-08:00Spring Cleaning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">rose-flavored cronuts, more beautiful than delicious </td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Inconsiderate <a href="https://food52.com/">Food52</a> once again scheduled the <a href="https://food52.com/the-piglet/2017">Piglet</a> to begin during so-called “Ski Week” when </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">there’s no school and a lot of people go skiing. We don</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">t ski, but I took Owen to see some</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">colleges and wasn’t able to bird dog the competition the way I would have liked. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Or would I have liked? While I’ve been reading the Piglet judgments loyally, I just haven’t gotten excited yet and have no strong feelings about any of the books. Is it because there have been no rude, controversial, totally lame judgments? Because I’m obsessed with politics, not cookbooks?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A little spring cleaning before moving on to new cooking adventures:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Alton Brown’s <b><a href="http://altonbrown.com/greek-chicken-salad-recipe/">Big Fat Greek Chicken Salad</a></b> is a great, healthy chicken salad, full of protein, vegetables, Greek yogurt, feta, olives, and flavor. It’s a dream dish if you’re on a low-carb diet which I was for a couple of weeks. I put some of this in a Mason jar to take on the airplane when Owen and I went to look at colleges and it wasn’t half as embarrassing to eat while sitting in the middle seat as I thought it would be. I used rotisserie chicken. Worked great. You should try it. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Low-carb diet ended abruptly the first night in Savannah, Georgia at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Wallsbbq/">a barbecue restaurant.</a> I made it through the savory portion of the meal without succumbing to starchy sides, but then pear cobbler and sweet potato pie happened. Southern dessert are so generous and sweet and fat and forgiving. I love them bigly. No regrets. The sad thing is (or maybe it’s the happy thing), I didn’t feel any worse after eating all that sugar than I had during my abstinence. I slept fine, plenty of energy, good mood, didn’t balloon overnight, wasn’t suddenly overcome with cravings. The next day: fresh shrimp, boiled peanuts, peach cobbler. Heaven. Continued to feel great. Owen determined that he loved the Savannah College of Art and Design and so we moved on to the next leg of our journey where there were no tempting carbohydrates.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Rural western Pennsylvania. Terrible food and we saw more Confederate flags than we had in Savannah, where I don’t think we saw any at all. I don’t have much nice to say about our experience of rural western Pennsylvania, so I will be brief. We toured one sweet college and we were supposed to tour another but there were addicts in the hotel parking lot and bed bugs in the bed. I told Owen he could not go to school in a town where this was the highest rated hotel on TripAdvisor. Feel free to call me a snob, but you did not see those bed bugs. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguNSBhEJS-LW2YDi1pnsHqfHfGlEtg7U9ogo6gC0ubO7X_6X4UXEIqstMnLtjBXM8i0LD76WBd9xSif7vNlu9Hbht2iIjM_ADgWqHCMP1kmm94cQaaTIcTnwn3TTA3IMfwAoEj/s1600/IMG_3793+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguNSBhEJS-LW2YDi1pnsHqfHfGlEtg7U9ogo6gC0ubO7X_6X4UXEIqstMnLtjBXM8i0LD76WBd9xSif7vNlu9Hbht2iIjM_ADgWqHCMP1kmm94cQaaTIcTnwn3TTA3IMfwAoEj/s400/IMG_3793+%25281%2529.jpg" width="261" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a "fully-loaded" halo halo.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*So we skipped the second school and drove to New York City instead. Brilliant decision. Cronuts at Dominique Ansel, halo halo at <a href="http://www.lumpia-shack.com/">Lumpia Shack</a>, a Monte Cristo sandwich at <a href="http://shopsins.com/">Shopsin’s</a>, steak at Peter Luger, a grilled cheese sandwich at Marlow & Son. . . . plus some sightseeing, theater, and Pratt. One of my favorite trips ever.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now we’re home in California and I should probably go back on my low-carb diet before the good fruit starts coming in. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the year of the<i> Big Lebowski</i> sweater.</td></tr>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-69833026290624664512017-02-18T06:53:00.001-08:002017-02-18T07:04:24.910-08:00Shudder Shot or Screamshot?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I saw the jug of unsweetened almond-coconut milk in the fridge the other morning and got this idea that it would be tasty mixed with vanilla protein powder and the cold coffee left at the bottom of the pot. High protein! Low carb! Caffeine! <i>Like </i>a treat, if not a treat. So I made myself a big dishwater-colored “shake” and sucked it all down in about 20 minutes. What happened next helped me understand how all how those mysterious liquid diets work. My appetite was obliterated. Nuked. Razed. I didn’t feel satisfied so much as blunted and dull, but I did not think about food for the rest of the day.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Ten hours after the shake, I made dinner, and even then I had little interest in eating. I made the lamb chops from Naomi Pomeroy’s <i>Taste & Technique</i>, which I had hoped would be as extraordinary as the salmon from the night before. The method was almost identical: You sear your meat in oil in hot pan, add butter, finish in the oven, basting with the butter. Results: fine. Nothing special.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Last night, I tried Pomeroy’s method for cooking chicken breasts which is — guess what? — almost exactly the same as her method for cooking salmon and lamb chops. Sear in pan on stove, add butter, finish in oven. A few fussy steps in there, easily eliminated. I think the key to this recipe is that she has you brine the chicken for an hour, which transformed the drabbest meat on the planet into something pleasantly salty and alluring. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I like this book and its plain, satisfying dishes. As always, once I get started with a book, I want to try everything.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">***</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">On another subject, you know that hideous moment when you go to take a picture with your phone and it reverses and suddenly you’re treated to the image of your own face from a severely unflattering angle that accentuates double chins and wrinkles? I’ve always thought there should be a name for that moment and when this horrible thing happened to me the other day as I was preparing to photograph lamb chops it came to me: Screamshot. Genius. I told Owen, who was the only other person in the house, about my new word, and he looked at me with utter disdain. He said everyone in the world was already familiar with the phenomenon and “screamshot” was an incredibly dumb name. Why would anyone want to scream? </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">There’s a word for someone who asks that idiotic question: sixteen.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark prefers “Shudder Shot.” </span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-20722647252348752562017-02-15T17:59:00.001-08:002017-02-15T18:20:50.770-08:00Crazy and complicated, plain and simple<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">bright and crunchy</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Just when you think you</span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font-size: small;">ve licked your addiction, a day like yesterday comes along and Twitter gives gives gives and then gives some more, like a broken slot machine. Mark and I were recovering from a rich dinner and slightly queasy new episode of <i>Girls</i> when I checked my phone one last time and whoa. If you know what I</span><span style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font-size: small;">m talking about, great. If not, go read a newspaper! Today I met someone who had no idea what was going on in the world and while this is often sane and refreshing, sometimes I want to say: Dude, you are missing out. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Anyway, I didn’t sleep well after several hours of Don Lemon and Twitter, but in fact the insomnia had more to do with the rich dinner I served than the news. Pivoting now to cooking.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">As cookbook lovers know, Food52 announced its 2017 Piglet finalists yesterday. I own several of the titles (<i>Koreatown, Deep Run Roots, Dorie’s Cookies</i>), know something about a few others (<i>Simple</i>, <i>Sirocco</i>), and hadn’t heard of most the rest. At the library, Naomi Pomeroy’s <i>Taste & Technique</i> was on the new arrivals shelf so I grabbed it. This handsome book will teach you to make aioli, braise short ribs, and saute kale, presumably, hopefully with better results than ever before. After flipping through the book a couple times, I was respectful, if not bubbling over with enthusiasm. After cooking a meal from its pages, I am respectful and more enthusiastic, if not bubbling over. It takes a lot to get me bubbling these days. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">big and strong</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The meal I cooked: <b>pan-roasted salmon</b> and <b>long-cooked green beans</b>. Here’s what went on my grocery list: salmon and green beans. It’s that kind of cookbook. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">To make the vegetable, you immerse trimmed green beans in a pint (!) of warm olive oil and let them simmer very gently for an hour or so until they’re drab and almost falling apart. I thought I didn’t like overcooked green beans, but it turns out I do. They required a lot more salt than the recipe indicated and a slightly longer cooking time, but otherwise the recipe was flawless and the beans very, very good. I may re-use some of the oil to try the long-cooked broccoli variation.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">drab and soft</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The salmon was even better. The salmon was sensational. Probably the best technique I’ve tried for cooking salmon, and I’ve tried plenty. You season your salmon filet then sear, skin-side down, in a hot, oiled skillet for three minutes. Melt a hunk of butter in the pan, baste the top of your fish, pop in the oven for a few minutes, baste some more, and serve. You could add lemon and capers to the butter, I suppose, but it was delicious as was. My one qualm: It was superrich, particularly when served with green beans poached in a pint of olive oil. But we loved this salmon, loved this meal, and I have already decided what dishes to try on Thursday and Friday nights. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Today I put the leftover salmon into a green salad dressed with the <b><a href="http://www.oprah.com/food/cocoa-nib-salad-dressing-recipe-alton-brown">cacao nib vinaigrette</a></b> from Alton Brown’s <i>EveryDayCook.</i> Salmon and chocolate vinaigrette? I know. But it was fine. I made the dressing a few days ago and have used it on several salads with lovely results. You grind some cacao nibs, infuse into olive oil over low heat, mix with shallots and balsamic, and end up with a unique and tasty vinaigrette that would work especially well, I think, on a salad of spring greens, fresh cherries, and cheese. But it worked great on salmon salad, too. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Other stuff:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*The <b>fudgy mocha brownies</b> from <i>Dorie’s Cookies</i> overwhelmed me. Too tall, too bulky, too nutty, too much chocolate, too much coffee. I served these bruisers to my in-laws, who are chocolate fiends, unlike me, and even they approached them cautiously. Not a fail, but I wouldn’t make them again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*The narrative of villainy and greed that unfolds in Jane Mayer’s <i>Dark Money</i> beggars belief. I had taken it on faith that the Koch brothers were evil because that’s what the people I respect and the news media I follow always said. But I couldn’t have told you why the Kochs were awful; I would have muttered something vague and tried to change the subject. I’m only on disc 7 of this audiobook, but I can now tell you why the Koch brothers are terrible in gruesome detail. The narrator mispronounces a word every ten minutes or so, but otherwise does a great job with this informative and enraging book. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">*Finally, I enjoyed <a href="https://pw.org/content/reviewers_critics_laura_miller_of_slate">this interview </a>with Slate book critic Laura Miller. You should read it for yourself, but here is my favorite passage: “It’s such an act of grace to give someone else ten or fifteen hours out of your own irreplaceable life, and allow their voice, thoughts, and imaginings into your head. I can’t respect any writer who isn’t abjectly grateful for the faith, generosity, and trust in that. I think there’s an unspoken, maybe even unconscious contempt for reading as merely “passive” in many people who obsess about writers and writing.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I am abjectly grateful to anyone who has given the last seven minutes of their own irreplaceable life to allowing my voice, thoughts, and imaginings into their head. </span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-12357833506940212652017-02-07T11:41:00.002-08:002017-02-07T11:41:43.525-08:00Dorie's Cookies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">mediocre picture of a great picture in <i>Dorie's Cookies</i></td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">All cookbooks and cooking this morning. Dad, you don’t need to keep reading.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I want to make every recipe in <i>Dorie’s Cookies</i> and if I were skinny I would do so in an orderly and compulsive fashion starting today. I love this cookbook.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">First of all, it’s gorgeous — bright and brash and almost abstract. It really pops in the sea of muted, matte-page books with their scenes of staged rusticity. The close-up shots of cookies depict them not as trivial consumables, but as strange, magnificent objects in and of themselves. It’s a big departure for Dorie whose previous books were somewhat stodgy in their design, as Gabrielle Hamilton pointed out in her <a href="https://food52.com/the-piglet/judgments/33-plenty-vs-around-my-french-table">unfriendly review</a> of <i>Around My French Table</i>. I wonder if Hamilton’s sharp remarks stuck in the back of Dorie’s head. (I am calling Dorie “Dorie” because she seems to be inviting that with the name of her book and her friendly persona. Calling Gabrielle Hamilton “Gabrielle” would be unthinkable.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">In addition to being lovely to look at, <i>Dorie’s Cookies</i> is a big, heavy book. You can get lost in its 482 pages. Hundreds of recipes, countless variations. Amplitude. Bounty. Generosity. Wonderful qualities in a cookbook.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKJli4RbrIIeTJqhBq9qHPRL8i1YCdTD1XstjMpCwDscExu0iqfGzcK5NlinASoErbcUY6DkpSeVB0Dv6xQrQTsxXW0XwSv0a-dkKkyBN0tRymMk-Q0Cp0yZrHvH0O1eLgX2Oo/s1600/IMG_3722.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKJli4RbrIIeTJqhBq9qHPRL8i1YCdTD1XstjMpCwDscExu0iqfGzcK5NlinASoErbcUY6DkpSeVB0Dv6xQrQTsxXW0XwSv0a-dkKkyBN0tRymMk-Q0Cp0yZrHvH0O1eLgX2Oo/s400/IMG_3722.jpg" width="330" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But is there really anything new left to say about cookies? </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">To quote an <i>amazon</i> reviewer:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"> <i>“For some reason, I had assumed that it would be more like a "cookie bible"... a source of standard, well loved cookies from all over the world. Not at all! Dorie's Cookies is more like a Senior Thesis on cookies- like Dorie sat around in her kitchen trying out recipes that turn traditional cookie making on it's head.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Exactly. There are classics here, but there’s a lot of invention too. I usually approach inventive recipes with caution, but I’ve made scores of Dorie’s recipes over the years and can only remember a few duds. She anticipates your questions. She warns you of pitfalls. She tells you that the dough might crack and what to do if it does. She offers alternative ingredients in case you don’t have espresso beans on hand. I would guess that in elementary school, Dorie Greenspan sat in the front row and always did the extra credit. Even though she was the teacher’s pet, everyone loved her because she was truly nice.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">She’s not a schoolgirl, though. She’s a total pro. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I overbaked my coffee malteds (see upper left corner) but they were nonetheless delicious.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />That’s a long preamble to a paragraph about a simple recipe, the first I’ve made from the book. The <b>coffee malted</b> is a basic butter cookie flavored with malt powder and coffee. Easy. Unusual. Delicious. I “whipped these up” just before my in-laws arrived for dinner last night. My father-in-law ate about a half dozen, my mother-in-law probably ate three, Mark made an ice cream sandwich with his, I ate two and 2/3 cookies, and Owen, the only underweight member of our party, ate 1/3 of a cookie.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Coffee malteds: A</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">The other dish I served my in laws last night wasn’t so awesome. If you’re tempted to try the <a href="http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/pork-shoulder-with-pineapple-and-sesame-broccoli"><b>pork shoulder with pineapple, sesame, and broccoli</b> </a>in this month’s <i>Bon Appetit</i>, I would suggest you don’t. It’s just too tricky. The recipe says to cut a pork shoulder into 1-inch steaks, but doesn’t account for how fatty and ungainly a pork shoulder is. I ended up with these disjointed, floppy, uneven steaks, something Dorie never would have countenanced. I could have really used some advice. The meat required twice as long on the stove as indicated and was still rare in random places. One bite was fatty and tough, the next dismayingly soft and pink. The broccoli and pineapple added little. I was bummed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">Pork with pineapple and broccoli: C-</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">But then I brought out the cookies. </span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27849118.post-53115865786423851792017-01-26T12:16:00.000-08:002017-01-26T18:26:51.223-08:00Grant me the serenity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Thomas Friedman, <i>The</i> <i>New York Times, </i>January 25, 2017:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i><span style="font-size: small;">“He can make you so nuts — he can so vacuum your brains out — that you find yourself slumped on the sofa all day refreshing Twitter, eating a big bowl of your son’s Honey Nut Cheerios, Cheerio by Cheerio, dry, for lunch, with a piece of prosciutto, for dessert as your whole personality drains out through your left heel and you find yourself in an agitated trance 24-7, not to mention fat.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I took some liberties with the second half of Friedman’s quote.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve written about my addiction before, but I think I finally hit bottom. At least I hope that was bottom. My only goal for January 25, 2017 was to stay off the internet. Because my laptop has been used primarily for monitoring Twitter in recent weeks, yesterday I did not touch my laptop. When I had thoughts that required expression, I wrote them on pieces of paper with a pen. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">I read stuff on paper. I finished Ian McGuire</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">s <i>The North Water</i>, a novel full of pus, blood, sodomy, and frostbite in which the protagonist shelters in the hollowed-out carcass of a freshly-killed polar bear. It’s gross. It’s great. Leonardo DiCaprio should star. Then I started and almost finished Shirley Jackson’s <i>The Haunting of Hill House </i>which is one weird, excellent book. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBNSD2I1NtnYe7U0VDE_JAtxkYZkHxnHJ6LA4GZQYn51rkE3MJuVKuGOCpYp6cXQfXSpZ7Sro1DYuwMcCoZWumWnRAxvx8SMP-9VGpr65wMC6gSczuQ0OeBNs-apwyavWqG08/s1600/IMG_3678+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBNSD2I1NtnYe7U0VDE_JAtxkYZkHxnHJ6LA4GZQYn51rkE3MJuVKuGOCpYp6cXQfXSpZ7Sro1DYuwMcCoZWumWnRAxvx8SMP-9VGpr65wMC6gSczuQ0OeBNs-apwyavWqG08/s320/IMG_3678+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">When I came across words I didn’t know, I walked over to the dictionary and looked them up. Dimity, in case you’ve ever wondered, is a kind of thin fabric with checks traced by thicker thread. The curtains in Hill House are dimity. I wrote down passages I admired in my notebook, like I did in the olden days.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcRPXBtjFcWxTR5eZMFFG7CvdsLQNy4yc41WQHnCfHwTwGQuA_zySJxzYyp8qlldK1PULPYWC8L7cBToxm6w0hran1WJbl12GKmQJEfIKkiCgUX9R4keCaoswZTQ4iea4UjPv5/s1600/IMG_3680+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcRPXBtjFcWxTR5eZMFFG7CvdsLQNy4yc41WQHnCfHwTwGQuA_zySJxzYyp8qlldK1PULPYWC8L7cBToxm6w0hran1WJbl12GKmQJEfIKkiCgUX9R4keCaoswZTQ4iea4UjPv5/s400/IMG_3680+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If your handwriting reflects your character, does that mean that by improving your handwriting you improve your character? Asking for a friend.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">I read the newspaper, on paper and cut out bits that I liked and taped them into my notebook like I did in the olden days. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii-Z67-OIjhvsLk8FpvfkGm9au_Tqd9sbiy8GcCse48GbCQvIH0rUfWbQeU-oZ3zR1JL-NTYRjvVZpVh__4gHHLbrIUK6ghUayYZtEqOS5C2yBidylHRmz9KlEKP93vGmBZEBB/s1600/IMG_3679+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii-Z67-OIjhvsLk8FpvfkGm9au_Tqd9sbiy8GcCse48GbCQvIH0rUfWbQeU-oZ3zR1JL-NTYRjvVZpVh__4gHHLbrIUK6ghUayYZtEqOS5C2yBidylHRmz9KlEKP93vGmBZEBB/s400/IMG_3679+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There was a really cool story in the food section of the NYT yesterday about the beauty of burned foods. It included a recipe for burned toast soup, but I am most curious about that kazandibi.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;">When I felt bad about accomplishing absolutely nothing and started spiraling into a self-loathing existential crisis, I reminded myself that my only goal for January 25, 2017 was to stay off the internet and congratulated myself on how well I was doing. I looked at some cookbooks and remember how delightful that can be. I decided I wanted to make and eat Gabrielle Hamilton’s lamb shoulder with a celeriac remoulade and some juniper sorbet for dessert.That meal is happening tonight. I felt more and more and more like myself. My powers of concentration returned. Everything slowed down. It was wonderful. It was such a relief.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">At the end of the day I allowed myself 20 minutes on Twitter, just enough time to catch up with my boyfriend Keith Olbermann and watch clips of an ABC interview with this sad, bloated old man who was lying about stuff that no one cares about but him. I discovered I had already lost my taste for it. On a food diet, you get hungrier and hungrier. On a Donald Trump diet, you feel better and better. Today, I am positively jubilant.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">To quote the protagonist of <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i>, “The warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the cold little thought, I have let more time go by. . .</span></span><i><span style="font-size: small;">”</span></i></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Time goes by no matter what, I just don’t want it to go by as I slump on the sofa in an agitated trance, eating Honey Nut Cheerios and reading about our pathetic president.</span></span></div>
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tipsybakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13796856700365644779noreply@blogger.com75