You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July, 2008.
There are certain foods that are such a staple of a person’s childhood that they lose their novelty by the adult years. For me, that food is angel food cake. My grandma made angel food cake for each and every family get-together: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, you name it. It was ubiquitous. In old family photos it can be hard to differentiate one birthday from the next–the cake on my grandma’s dining room table was always the same. If grandma didn’t have time to make it, my mother would. And when we weren’t eating it, the two women were trading secrets on how to successfully get the cake to shake out of the pan. If memory serves, at one point my grandpa may have even jimmied a special cooling area to facilitate ease of cake removal.
Personally, I was over it. I wanted store bought cakes, weighed down by frosting flowers. Fluffy vanilla-chocolate swirl cake. Or maybe even the ever-popular chocolate chip cookie cake. No angel food for me, please. I was moving on to bigger and better methods of rotting my teeth.
Every season, we have an office potluck to celebrate the birthdays of the surrounding months. We sign up for our dish, or, in my case, hold off to the last possible moment and wait to be assigned the salad. Based on a quick perusal of this season’s potluck sheet, I knew that lemon-iced angel food cake was on the menu. And even after all these years, I was disappointed to hear that birthdays would be marked by this dish. The clock on my life had been rewound 15 years in a matter of seconds.
Potluck day arrived. I ate my first slice out of politeness. I ate the second slice out of nostalgia. And by the third slice, I was just really enjoying myself–the texture, the familiar shape, the very whiteness of the cake itself was delighting me. It was a bit more lemony than I remembered. And in the end, it left me yearning for my grandma’s recipe and the slightly imperfect shape of her cakes. The Joy of Cooking is all well and good, but there is something about a family recipe, the feeling of a warm hug preserved in time on an index card, that cannot be beat. Perhaps a decade long hiatus was exactly what I needed. Mine is a palette reborn. I may have to start shopping around an angel food cake pan all of my own. I promise to share as soon as I wriggle the recipe out of my mom. Although, stop me if I start posting pictures of my family blowing out candles on one of these cakes…
And don’t worry. I won’t be hitting you with bundt cake tales next. Those were notably absent from my childhood. Although if you’re jonesin’ for a just such a story or recipe, pick up a copy of Talking With My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories by Bonny Wolf of NPR. Perfect summer reading.
The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. I love it all. When I was 14 years old, I decorated an old tin can with construction paper and markers and called it my Sydney Fund. This collection of loose change was going to be my ticket to the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Australia.
I didn’t make it.
But no matter. My love for the Olympics never waned even if my savings account did. Under my childhood bed you can still find VHS tapes filled with hours of Olympic coverage. I would still rewatch those tapes (if I could find a functional VCR) and find myself once again swept up in the emotions of the Games. It is about patriotism and athleticism and oh so much more. Sensations and feelings that defy trite phrases and go beyond mere words. Personal Truth: The Olympics have the power to unite us all. So much for not sounding trite.
In 2004 my roommate and I had been living together for less that 24 hours. Despite mutual friends, we were virtual strangers in a house with unfinished bedrooms in a very new city for both of us. There wasn’t much for us to do, but huddle on the floor of one of the finished bedrooms (no furniture yet) with a TV getting almost no reception (no cable yet) and spend our evenings rejoicing with the victors and aching for those who came just short. Within hours our friendship was sealed.
This year I was having a hard time getting excited about the Beijing Olympics. Said roommate had moved to a new city, and, to be honest, China seems so far away. So very China. It hardly seems like a real place, much less an Olympic Place. But then the pictures arrived from a friend’s travels: images of this foreign land, stories of a people and a culture that are so ancient and beautiful that it is no wonder the mind can hardly fathom it. And then it hit me. The Olympics are almost here. And they are in China.
And so my China reading list came into existence over night. I went through an Amy Tam phase (do read The Joy Luck Club if you haven’t already) when I was in high school. And I picked up Oracle Bones a few years ago in part because the cover was fantastic, but that’s pretty much where it started and ended for me. And so as a crop of exciting China books hit the market, I’ve compiled my own personal Must Read List:
Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, by Fuchsia Dunlop
Serve the People: A Stir Fried Journey Through China, by Jen Lin-Liu
Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Attempt of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid, by J. Maarten Troost
The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, by Robyn Meredith
Let the games being!
I have always wanted to go to Jerusalem for Good Friday. For all my religious struggles that strikes me as a pilgrimage worth making. Or to Munich for Oktoberfest–a tribute to both my German heritage and fondness for beer.
Mystic, Connecticut, if we’re going to be frank, was low on my Pilgrimage List. But to Mystic I did go this past weekend. More specifically, to Mystic Pizza I did go. And not out of an unfathomable love for Julia Roberts. And not even out of an unfathomable love for my sorority who claims several ties to the movie that bears the same name and is the source of all my fondest college memories. But out of love for a friend, one of those sorority sisters: We are two girls from the middle of America who know what it is like to be a long way from home, to miss out on the little things, to feel pain when our loved ones hurt and we cannot be there. When that friend who used to hold the bathroom door for you in frat houses asks you to drive six hours up the coast for lunch, you ask when she wants to leave.
And when the pizza tastes better than you expected, you know it’s as much because of how you got there as it is how they made it.
There seems to be something in the air this week. And I’m not referring to the humidity. I feel like a teenager in spring, prone to fall in love with everyone and everything I see. At first I thought it was just a bit of retail therapy–a post-relationship pick-me-up courtesy of Visa. But I’m beginning to think it’s more than that. Turns out my response to a bad economy is to spend my money like it’s still the Clinton years.
Allow me to present the midsummer edition of favorite things:
The Market Bag in provincial blue from moop.
Minnetonka Moccasin suede skimmer available at Piperlime.
Ice cream recipe slideshow on the Gourmet Web site.
Practical everyday silver pearl earrings (8 mm) from K.Y.M. Jewelry. An affordable alternative to these.
Six hour road trips for lunch.
Ben Sollee’s album Learning to Bend.
Despite the Valentine of a post that I wrote to my bedroom a few days ago, I will be the first to admit it has flaws: It’s small; the wall is water damaged; it comes complete with a layer of grime that dates back to Roosevelt administration and cannot be scrubbed away by the best of Mrs. Meyer’s line of cleaning goods; and there are holes (the mosquitos may call them doors) in my window screens. But I overlook these minor inconveniences because of my window. My oh so glorious window.
Really. Does it get better than a good window? A third floor window with a wide sill made for plants. And my view. I love my view.
DC rooftops are fantastic. You’ll see the occasional patio and garden or the Victorian spires. Looking out across it all, you see history and beauty and blue sky. You also see my mulberry tree.
I probably shouldn’t call it my mulberry tree as it undoubtedly belongs to the colony of birds that have settled in it. In a city where real estate doesn’t come cheap, these birds have staked their claim in this tree and invited all their closest friends to move in. It is an avarian condominium. And I adore it. They might be the best neighbors I’ve ever had–always a beautiful song to make the morning a little less painful, always a lovely sight to pull me away from a mundane paper.
Looking out over the city or glimpsing my “neighbors” makes the rest of the house and my room fall away. I feel tucked up safely in my own little tree house, away from the rest of the world, away from reality.
I tell A that I never ate tomatoes before I started dating him. And strictly speaking, aside from marinara sauce, this is a true statement. Before him, I would never have popped a tower of tomato, basil, and mozarella coated in olive oil and pepper in my mouth at a BBQ. Before him, I would never have asked for slices of fresh tomato on my pizza (or mushrooms for that matter–but that’s another story). Before him, I would never have considered adding tomato to my already delicious pesto tortellini.
But there was that one time…
I had all but forgotten about it until the craving hit today. To call it random does not even do the complete uniqueness of this craving justice. I want fried green tomatoes. Like really, really want them. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on the film (it both fascinated and disturbed a more youthful me). But I will tell you about the first and only other time I had this tasty treat.
As with most of my taste test adventures, the setting was Brooklyn. How we even got on the topic is a bit fuzzy. I feel a recipe had been found as a parting gift to another friend and now we were in possession of this knowledge and it seemed silly to waste it. My dear friend explained to me that they were easy enough to make and offered to fry me up a batch. I gave her my “I don’t eat tomatoes” look. And she gave me her “They’re fried. Why the hell not?” look. Her look won. Because it is a truth universally acknowledged by picky eaters, that once you fry it, it loses its offensive essence and enters the realm of The Edible.
And so a bit of slicing, dipping, and frying later–ta da! I took a bite. I think I may have said something profound, such as, “Tastes like chicken.” But in the back of my mind, I started thinking, “So this is a tomato. Huh. I can do this.”
Fried green tomatoes were my gateway vegetable. And on this July day I could really go for round #2.
Oh, and A, if you are reading this, you can still take credit for my love of red tomatoes. There’s still that.
From Simply Recipes:
- 3 medium, firm green tomatoes
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 beaten eggs
- 2/3 cup fine dried bread crumbs (the Italian Crumbs in your pantry will work just fine)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
1. Cut unpeeled tomatoes into 1/2 inch slices. Sprinkle slices with salt and pepper. Let tomato slices stand for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour, milk, eggs, and bread crumbs in separate shallow dishes.
2. Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet on medium heat. Dip tomato slices in milk, then flour, then eggs, then bread crumbs. In the skillet, fry half of the coated tomato slices at a time, for 4-6 minutes on each side or until brown. As you cook the rest of the tomato slices, add olive oil as needed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Things have gotten a bit personal around here lately. And so after a bit of deliberation, I decided to just ride the wave and get really personal. Ready? Close your eyes… Follow me… Okay, open them. Welcome to my bedroom.
Say what you will about a good couch or a flat screen TV. And I know that a lovely living room or dining room is all well and good for entertaining guests. But in my humble opinion, you have to love your bedroom above all other rooms (see First Commandment of Renter’s Decorating). Aside from the fact that it’s where you spend most of your hours (sleeping, schmeeping), it’s also the one place that is truly yours–no patriotic decor or cumbersome futons, just whatever suits your fancy however fanciful it may be. Perhaps I cling to this romaticized image because I’ve never had a place of my own and so my bedroom has always served as my one truly personal place, where my tastes, my passions, and my interests could all bubble to the surface and begin filling the ghastly impersonal, whitewashed walls.
I’ve decorated many a bedroom for myself, each a little different from the one before, ever changing and I grow and change. A cozy place to curl up with a book, a big window, and pictures of familiar faces have always served as a good starting point, before taking the blank canvas to new levels–from where I sleep to where I live. But for a while in this most recent move, I was stuck on the starting point. I was having trouble getting too far past Go and instead finding myself stuck on Baltic Avenue with Park Place taunting me from oh so far away.
No longer. Everything started rolling along this weekend. Perhaps the end of the semester was opening up my time. Or the end of a relationship opening up my heart. Or perhaps the Community Chest finally took pity on me. Who knows? All I know is that I finally feel like I’m home. I finally have my sanctuary again.
I have always had a closet love of romantic comedies. There are lazy days when I could subsist solely on a diet of When Harry Met Sally…, The Cutting Edge, Sleepless in Seattle, and While You Were Sleeping. Give my a little Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock and I am happy as a clam. So when I finally got around to watching Dirty Dancing years ago, I had every intention of loving it. And I didn’t. It left me feeling a little “eh.” This sense of apathy could be traced easily enough. My reasoning was simple: Who can relate to a main character named Baby?
Note: I am still not okay with this plot device.
And yet, in relationships I let my name become Baby. Do I like it? Not really. But I do like being different and special to that one person, so I allow it at first. And eventually, I become accustomed to it. So accustomed in fact that when suddenly it stops–when I am no longer Baby but not yet Katie, when I am in that dark limbo fumbling around blindly for my footing–it is like an electric shock. The absence is not a relief, it is gaping void.
And I realize that while I don’t want to be Baby, I didn’t necessarily mind being his baby.
Break-up breakdowns are inevitable. Triggered by a lyric, a look, a meal, a place, a conversation. And they can happen at anytime and anywhere and most often do: the morning commute, the afternoon lull in your cubicle, at a bar, or in that soft time between wakefulness and sleep at night. They are impossible to ignore but feel impossible to face.
Break-ups require skills at untangling that I lack. Lives that were once intertwined must be pulled apart bit by painful part. These days I rarely have the time to untangle my hair (a futile endeavor) much less my life from that of another (perhaps also futile?).
But I have one consolation: When I get caught on a snag or in particularly knotty spot, they are there. With an e-mail, a phone call, an invitation to a BBQ. They are there with a funny anecdote or a wise word or an ice cream. I am not alone. As long as I have each of them, I will be okay. We will all be okay.
My weight fluctuates between the summer and winter months. Summer is filled with lighter foods and longer walks as a rule. It’s the best time for me to jump on a scale. And it’s a lucky coincidence that it also happens to be swimsuit wearing time. So my recent forray into the world of sugar-based recipes is most likely counterproductive, but I can’t seem to help myself.
First, were the cupcakes. And it is a truth universally acknowledged that one cannot have vanilla cupcakes without icing. I adore icing. The number of times in my life that I have called dibs on the flowery corner of a store bought cake with the icing depth measuring a good 2 inches would send most nutritionists into retirement. Only a non-medical opinion telling me that eating icing straight from the can could give me diabetes curbed that bad habit. And it gave me pause. How much sugar goes into those convenient cans of Better Crocker icing? Well, I can now answer that. Or at least I can tell you how much sugar went into Amy Sedaris’ frosting recipe: A lot. An entire box of confectioner’s sugar to be exact, accompanied by a bit of butter and a dash of vanilla. Even my sweet tooth was left speechless. So good but so much. I went easy on frosting the 22 cupcakes I had made (one was consumed before this phase) and had quite a bit left over. Definitely a recipe worth keeping, but use sparingly. Especially before going to the beach. Or jumping on the scale.
The cupcakes were gone in a flash thanks to the anticipated early-July birthday festivities, which left me wandering aimlessly around the kitchen looking for a new fix. Then came divine intervention. And when I say divine intervention in the context of my kitchen, I’m usually talking about Emily. She casually mentioned a cheesecake ice cream recipe she had recently fallen in love with. It’s a David Lebovitz recipe, which is always a good thing. So with an endorsement from Emily and a recipe from David, I figured I couldn’t go wrong. And had it not been for a bit of sloppy sour cream measuring, I wouldn’t have. Just a wee bit too much in the final taste test (perhaps there should have been a prelim taste test? hmmm…). But still the results have proven to be the perfect antidote for combatting the arrival of DC humidity. For tonight: Add graham cracker crumbs and raspberries and taste.
If you’d like to try the recipe yourself, you can find it here thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s also the ideal time of year to give the blueberry sauce a go. Just saying.
