Crackers!

I made graham crackers. 

What a pain in the ass.  Mixing the dough is no different from making a sugar cookie, but this dough is soft and sticky, and maddening to roll out.  You chill it for several hours prior to firm it up, but once you begin the rolling  it once again becomes soft and sticky.

It makes cutting them into neat squares and transferring to baking sheets a real trial in patience.  I made one batch of two different recipes and have rolled and cut one of them.  I am hoping the other recipe yields a dough easier to work with.

Marshmallows, on the other hand, are fairly easy to make.  Assuming you have a mixer and a thermometer, you can do this.  I would suggest you place a bath towel on an otherwise empty counter when you dust the pan and marshmallow mixture with powdered sugar, and again when you cut then out—makes cleanup a lot simpler.

I am, of course, making S’mores, but before I talk about that I want to pass on something you might not know.  Graham crackers are made (at least in part) with a form of whole wheat flour known as graham flour.  In graham flour, the germ, bran and endosperm are separated, ground, then recombined.

Each part is ground to a slightly different texture so the end result is different than standard whole wheat flour where all parts are ground at once.  The flour was created by Dr. Sylvester Graham, who promoted a diet rich in vegetables and grains.

Did you ever see the movie “The Road to Wellsville”?  It was the (more or less) fact-based story of the man who founded Kellogg’s.  I mention this since he and Sylvester Graham had a similar outlook on diet, and behavior.   The crackers made from Dr. Graham’s flour were intended to reduce the desire to have sex. 

I guess this is why you rarely hear about orgies breaking out at Girl Scouts’ gatherings.

The interesting thing about this period in time when Graham, Kellogg, and others were trying to discourage sex is that it was the same general time when vibrators (administered by trained professionals) were used on women to cure depression, anxiety and various other ailments.  I’ll bet that was far more successful than the crackers of abstinance.

Maybe if you eat graham crackers straight-up it does cut down on sexual desire, but I don’t think combining them with melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow is going to.  Anytime you have to lick yourself clean someone is bound to get excited. 

I suppose a lot of people would  insist a s’more must be made from store-bought marshmallows and graham crackers, and a plain Hershey bar not some high-faltutin’ dark chocolate on homemade crackers.  And they must be made over a camp fire, not under a broiler or with a blowtorch.

I am not one of those people. I had s’mores maybe once or twice when I was kid;  they may be a summertime tradition for many people but I am not among them, so I have no problem breaking with that tradition. 

I am taking my s’mores to a party Saturday, you can expect a recipe post shortly thereafter.  Even if you opt to use store-bought crackers you should make the marshmallows.  They have a very different texture, and being generous with the vanilla makes them so very tasty, too.  Oh, and you can use other extracts and flavorings, too!

One of Those Blogs Where I Talk About Spending Money I Don’t Have and Eating Things I Shouldn’t

I saw Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo Wednesday.  I don’t review plays because I tired that once and it sounded like a book report I wrote in grammar school.  Something along the lines of “Edward Albee is very good playwrite and Mano Felciano (Jerry) is a very good actor.  The Geary Theater has pretty plasterwork.  The light fixtures are alabaster.  The end.”

In a nutshell, the second act (which was originally a one act called The Zoo Story) shocked the hell out of people when it was written fifty years ago.  We’re harder to shock today, but it’s still an incredibly funny play that turns dark at the end.  The first act, which was added fairly recently, is a riot (and dark, too) and Anthony Fusco and Rene Augusen as Peter and Ann are a real treat. 

If you like to laugh your ass off and be saddened within minutes of one another, you might want to see it if it shows up in your neighborhood.

Before the show I flipped through racks at a thrift store finding a few things I liked, but none of them my size—I am at that awkward weight where I am too fat to be thin, but too thin to be fat. 

Having had no success in buying my summer wardrobe, after the play I went to an Irish shop up the street and bought tea, bangers, white pudding, and Cadbury Flake—a milk chocolate bar that is meant to crumble over something else, like ice cream.  It’s much sweeter than I like my chocolate, but reminds me of summer parties with Irish friends so it’s nice to have a bar on hand just for the sake of it.   

Then I went to ‘Wichcraft to get sandwiches to bring home for dinner.  Roast pork with tuna- and anchovy-spiked mayonnaise sounds a bit unusual but it was seriously good, and their goat cheese, avocado, celery, cress and parsley with walnuts was an inventive take on the vegetable and cheese sandwich that was all the rage in the Bay Area in the 1970s.  

The recipe for the latter sandwich is in the book ‘Wichcraft, which I own, and recommend if I have yet to do so here.  It bears mentioning,  this is not one of those sandwich books in which recipes amount to a list of ingredients that you shove between bread, grill,  and eat five minutes later.

Aside from the bread itself, most of the components in the sandwiches are recipes themselves.  If the sandwich uses mayonnaise, pickled onion slices,  salsa verde, roasted tomatoes, etc., you will be making those yourself.  That’s why the sandwiches start at $8.50 in the restaurant.  (The idiots on Yelp who say the place is overpriced and suggest they could make a sandwich just as good might take that into account.)

So that was Wednesday.  Yesterday I didn’t do anything worth writing about.

Today I cooked.  I have a party of three tomorrow.  Everyone cancelled on me.

One group decided to take a cruise to Mexico instead (I hope it’s one of those cheesy cruises where the staff makes origami animals out of your towels),  Mom decided to go to Utah and see my nephew who just got back from playing baseball in Cooperstown (which is pretty cool), and someone else gave a rather vague excuse (which means I will spit in their food next time they show up here).

No, I won’t. 

Dinner will just be me, Dad, and my sister, but when my neighbors (who do The Fourth and Halloween very, very big) set off fireworks, I’ll walk down to their unit and bring along chocolate chip cookies and ice cream (I made plum ice cream, but I think that’s too specific so I’m going to do a batch of vanilla as well).

I wish you a happy day tomorrow.  Be sure to go out of your way to do something that celebrates your independence. 

PS. I’m sure someone wants to know . . . Pimiento cheese with raw veges and crackers to start, Kasper’s hot dogs with my very own kraut, pickles and relish, (I did not make the buns and never will) potato salad, carrot salad (not that potluck kind with Miracle Whip, the French kind with oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard), and something else that I cannot seem to remember. 

Iced tea, some beer called Shock Top Belgian White, and if there are lemons on my parents’ tree,  maybe lemonaid with a splash of ginger syrup. And possibly gin.  And the previously mentioned cookies and ice cream.

Whores! Whores!

It’s worth watching “The Witches of Eastwick” just for that scene alone.  That woman is a real treasure.

But the whore I’m talking about today is me. 

I go to my favorite stand at the market and act as a ringer.  I take a bite of one of the samples sitting on the piles of stone fruit, make a face just short of  “I just had an orgasm,” and then say something like “I need to make a pie” or “These taste like the plums on Grandma’s tree.”

Half a dozen people walking by stop,  grab a bag and buy some fruit; I walk away with a nice discount. 

This is never acknowledged—I don’t look to see that anyone working there is watching me wax poetic and they never say a word about my having done so, but they always round the price way down, and sometimes toss a couple extra peaches in my already full bag.

I wouldn’t do it if the fruit wasn’t excellent to begin with; I’m a whore with standards. 

It pleases me.  The discount is nice, but more than that is knowing when those people get home and take a bite, they are going to make that face for real.

Icon

I’m thinking about when Elvis died.  Some kid I knew (okay, fine, I had low standards—he was my best friend) told me about it and then added his commentary all about it having to do with Elvis still not being over his mother’s death . . . I just shook my head and tried not to roll my eyes.

I guess I should thank him, because when someone iconic dies you are required to have a story about where you were and what you were doing when you heard, and because of him I do.  When John Lennon was shot, my mother caught the tail-end of the news report and thought it was Jack Lemmon.   “Who’d want to kill Jack Lemmon?”

That is not a joke despite the fact that there was a comic who did a joke in her routine along those lines.  I guess my mom is not the only one who heard the report wrong.

Well, since I need a story, here it is.  I was on the phone with my cousin as I was walking to the store and she was looking something up online while we talked.  She saw the first report saying he was taken to the hospital because he wasn’t breathing.  She said “Who could breathe through that nose?”

I shopped, came home, logged on to check my e-mail and saw he was dead. 

On her blog, flurrious said this:

“I don’t have much to say about the passing of Michael Jackson, but I wanted to make some note of it. I grew up with his music, and even after it became apparent that his mind was doing terrible things to him, no one could deny his enormous talent. Scandal and strangeness aside, he’s always been a presence.”

I think that says it fairly well.  I don’t know who the person he became was, or what he did, but the kid he once was—he was really something. 

 

Coming to a Bookstore Near You

I’m going to write a book.

No, really. 

This is not like the time I said I was going square dancing with Jude Law and Piper Laurie; this is for real.  (I’m not sure I ever said I was going square dancing with Jude Law and Piper Laurie, but now that I have said it, I think I should have.  Said it, not done it.)

Digression #1: My aunt and uncle square danced in the seventies.  I wish I could accurately describe what square dancing + the 1970s = in terms of the get-ups they wore.  If you can remember “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” just multiply that by my aunt who mercifully was born long-before the advent of the Bedazzler. 

I once got laughed at for asking her what a salamander had to do with dancing.  Apparently, everyone but me knew the term was alamander.  Sure, you’re dressed like Holly Hobby after she drained a jug of Carlo Rossi and I’m the idiot.  

Returning to the book, I want to write a book about American food.  I’m sure it’s been done, but it hasn’t been done by me so it’s bound to be different.  After the much-talked about food fest, it occurred to me there are millions of people who will never experience some of the best of what this country has to offer from a culinary standpoint.

Why not a book that will tell you how to make some of these foods in your own home.  The internet has opened us up to a world of food we have never tasted, but the information out here is sketchy at best.  People reporting to have the original recipe for the famous Potatoes Delmonico which their grandmother got from the head waiter . . . sweetie, nanna was lying her ass off because I’m pretty sure the original recipe did not call for Cheez Whiz. 

And many other famous, semi-famous, and long-forgotten recipe searches yield similar results.  The Food Network produces shows where they showcase regional American food, but they are mostly following people who refuse to give up their recipes and secrets. 

Digression #2: Why restaurants refuse to share their recipes is beyond me.  If people like eating in a given restaurant, having access to their recipes is not going to keep them from going there.  I think the popularity of fondue restaurants demonstrates this point well since their recipe consists of: melt cheese, add wine or beer, serve with stuff on sticks.  People love those joints.

As far as family recipes go, well,  honestly I don’t have a clue.  Are they afraid someone will sneak into their house and cook Thanksgiving dinner for them?  Are they kidding themselves that somewhere there isn’t already somebody making a dish that’s very similar anyway? 

The only valid reason I can find for not sharing a recipe would be the fear that someone would think it overly complicated, dumb it down, then complain about the results.  This has happened to me a few times, but I no longer take it personally.

I follow Christopher Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen on Twitter; he related the story of a reader complaining about a chicken recipe not turning out right despite their having only made one alteration—substituting shrimp for the chicken. 

Digression #3: Not sure why I’m keeping track of digressions.  I never have before.

I don’t remember what I was talking about.  Oh yes, the cookbook!  In a nutshell, I see the book as having five sections:

◊     Recipes that have fallen out of favor, in fact may be all but forgotten, but still deserve a place on the table, e.g. Green Goddess salad dressing.

◊     Recipes that are well-known within their region of the country, but rarely heard of elsewhere, e.g. Dutch Crunch bread and rolls (I’ll post a recipe for this soon).

◊     Recipes that are known (if not actually eaten) all over the country, e.g. Gumbo.

◊     Recipes that are both known and eaten nationwide, but have regional differences, e.g. Macaroni and Cheese.

◊     Recipes that my co-writer Martha and I think belong in the book even if they don’t fit in any of the above categories.  We’ll get away with it by calling that section “Our cherished family recipes” or something like that, and make everyone think we’re doing them a big favor by sharing.

There is a tremendous amount of research needed to make this work, and a lot of cajoling people to share secrets (I’m going to need a liquor budget), but I’m in no rush.  And, I’m not going to worry about inconsequential things like publication.  My goal at this point is to write it. 

Fine, I’m An Elitist

I published my previous blog in two places online in addition to this one, and I submitted it to a couple of people for an opinion.  Overall consensus seems to be I failed to make my point.  It received very few comments (I am taking the silence to mean “You’re full of shit but I’m too polite to say so”), and the comments that were made suggested the same reaction with the caveat “I’m not so polite as not to say anything, but I’m not saying a lot.”

Only one comment really helped me in determining whether or not I made my point.  The writer agreed that many people spend a lot of money on things important to them, then claim poverty when someone suggests they spend money on something they do not regard as important. 

She added that when she says she cannot afford to buy local produce or cage-free eggs, she means it, and she refuses to feel guilty about.  I should have consulted her before I wrote my blog as she basically made the point I was trying to:

We all spend money on what is important to us.  As someone who chooses to continue to use a three-year-old MP3 player that only cost $70 to begin with, does not have a DVR, and buys sunglasses that cost roughly the same as a Venti soy milk latte, I refuse to feel guilty about eating a nectarine that cost me fifty cents because it was grown within a hundred miles of my house and without pesticides.

I guess I should have said that to begin with.  Live and learn. 

PS. As an aside, when I shop at the farmers market the majority of the sellers I buy from are not Certified Organic; they grow their produce without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, but cannot call themselves an organic grower since doing so legally is expensive.

Frankly that kind of bothers me.  Big companies can label products as organic even if that is not quite true because the penalty for doing so is small potatoes to them, but a small grower who is earnest cannot call their product organic unless they pay for the privilege. 

PPS. I paid $18 for razor blades today—I’m beginning to think the yeti look isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Bite Me!

I while ago (I refuse to look it up and confirm my own suspicion that it’s been months), when Alice Waters was being raked over organically-grown chimney-lighter-started coals for being an elitist who lives in a dreamland where everyone in America has enough time to shop daily and enough money to spend six dollars on a basket of strawberries, I said I wanted to address the issue as I see it. 

I made several attempts.  Some were long rambling affairs with plenty of digressions; had they been hand-written and sent to a local paper, they would surely have been forwarded to the FBI.  Another was tighter, but just didn’t seem to make my point; yet another had too many qualifiers in it in an attempt to not offend.  In a nutshell, they were all pretty much crap.

I have decided instead to write something off the cuff, limiting myself to no more than ten paragraphs, and just hoping for the best.

◊

The argument is that people such as Alice Waters who extol the virtues of buying organic produce, locally- and humanely-raised meats and dairy, and cooking the majority of your own food, are out of touch elitists who have no idea what day to day life is like for the average person: they overestimate how much time and how much money these people have. 

And, invariably those critic always point to some hypothetical single, working mother living in a suburb with no green market, dairy, or ranch within hundreds of miles.   It should be obvious to anyone that no one is talking about people living in dire circumstances when they suggest these kind of lifestyle changes; they are speaking of the middle class because the middle class has always been where change has begun.

That having been worked out, let’s examine the middle class.  Per household, we have an average of 1.9 cars,  2.7 televisions, computers come in at about 2, approximately 50% of those household contain at least one video game console, and the homes themselves average 2400 square feet.

We spend on average $30,000 on our weddings, $1600 on summer vacations,  and $1200 per year on electronics—approxomately half of which is to replace items still functioning.

No one who does this is considered elitist in this country.  But someone who suggests that you feed your family food that is free of pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, foods that do not make us reliant upon other countries, foods that bring people to the family table where a lifetime of memories are created—these people are called elitists.

Well, fuck you.

When Pigs Fly

I hung my pig in the garden.  If that sentence doesn’t make any sense, you need to go the archive (I am not doing it for you) and look for pictures from the San Francisco Garden show I attended in March.  I moved my potted fig from the corner by the fence because a demented pregnant raccoon (yes, another knocked-up animal) keeps using it to enter the yard after climbing over the fence.  She’ll still come in but she won’t be killing my fig.

That raccoon is irritating me to no end.  She scared the hell out of the kittens late one night (I put this all together from clues left behind) and they disappeared for two days, finally showing up when their mother convinced them she can no longer be their sole provider of meals.  Once they did show up, they were as nervous about me being around as when she first started bringing them.

I think that raccoon has undone any progress I made with them.  The skunks are creepy and not at all scared of me, the possums make a mess since they get so nervous they are always tripping over water bowls and potted plants, but right now, raccoons are those who bug me the most.

Anyway.  I put the fig in the corner by the kitchen window and attached a section of an old ladder I have to serve as a trellis.  Then I wired my pig to the ladder so he looks like he is airborne (more or less).  Don’t ask me how I did it (if I knew, I wouldn’t have), but this morning I reached behind the pot to turn off the hose and when I straightened back up I caught one of the pig’s metal ears right across the bridge of my nose.

I have a one-inch slice across my face and a flying pig did it.

Interestingly, when  I signed on a minute ago, there was a picture of Perez Hilton staring at me on the “news-feed” of my browser, and I find that far more distasteful than my scarred nose.

More Cat Pictures

I don’t think I have posted any of these.

A success story- she was caught, spayed and re-released. She likes a pink bowl.

Tigger likes a selection.

Best shots of the gray cats so far.

The two Bricks

The striped one is a girl, not sure about the all gray

Another action shot

Now, go read the brilliant meme I posted earlier.

Lucky You!

A meme thing.

It has some good questions and I can’t think of anything else to write, so there you have it.

What is your current obsession?

Regional hotdogs and Quiche Lorraine.  I want to throw a party and serve hotdogs as they are all over the country: Georgia-style with coleslaw; Cincinnati-style with cinnamon-and-chocolate-spiced chili; Chicago-style with celery salt, radioactive relish, and so on; New York-style with brown mustard, kraut, and tomato-based onion relish (never saw that in New York and I ate enough  hotdogs to make me fat which I wasn’t then, but I guess I am now).

The Internets are working against me on the quiche deal; while most people writing the recipes agree that the original never had cheese in it, the bastards go ahead and put it in anyway.  Even Thomas Keller does it.  When Lorraine finds out she is going to go ballistic.

What is your weirdest obsession?

Having a clean kitchen sink.  The floor can look like someone mud-wrestled on it (it often does, and no one ever has), there can be spider webs trailing from the light fixture above the dining table all the way to the corner of the room, but somehow if the sink is clean, I can stand it.  (I have given up on never having any crumbs in the drawers, which was my previous obsession.)

What are you wearing today?

Currently, I am wearing a pair of hounds-tooth pajama bottoms in grey and black, a grey t-shirt with “Coney Island” printed on it, black socks, olive green knit boxers (which is not at all the same thing as boxer briefs so don’t go thinking it is), and a pair of reading glasses with a .75 magnification.

I do not yet know what I will be wearing once I change out of this ensemble.

What’s for dinner?

I haven’t the vaguest idea.  In the refrigerator are a couple ears of corn, red peppers, and a head of leafy lettuce; maybe they will all jump in a pot and save me having to figure something out.

What would you eat for your last meal?

Who can answer that?  I could eat leftover cold spaghetti for breakfast, get run over by a car with a blown-out tire, and while bleeding to death in the street, think “I should have had chocolate.”  Although, I guess I know what you mean: if I could choose my last meal, and assuming I were not on a feeding tube and therefore able to actually eat it, what would I eat.

It would depend entirely on my mood; it could be a pot of tea and a pile of buttered toast with jam or it could be a multi-course affair with cocktails, three desserts, and acrobats serving it to me.

What’s the last thing you bought?

I went to Target and bought a bar of chocolate (Lindt 85%), Iams dry kitten food, Fancy Feast canned cat food, and this little bracket thingy that is not made for what I am trying to use it for but will totally work because I said it will.

What are you listening to right now?

The sound of a sanitation worker emptying the dumpster—spring mornings in California are magical.

What do you think of the person who tagged you?

No one tagged me.  I found this on flurrious’ site.  What do I think of her?  Well, if I wrote her a fan letter it would read:

Dear Ms. Flurrious,

How are you?  I am fine. 

I read your blog.  I think your blog is really good.  I think you are a really good writer.  Keep writing your really good blog because I like wasting time reading blogs, especially the really good ones. 

Perez Hilton is weird, so is that one guy with the weird hair who talks like he’s dumb but has a lot a money, I forgot his name.  I don’t read their blogs,  I only read the ones by smart people, like you.  I knew someone in school who won a perfect attendance award.

You should write something about cotton candy or earwax sometime, it would be really good if you did it.

Your friend, Cat Boy.

PS.  I saw a picture of a gopher or woodchuck or something on your blog—have you ever met Bullwinkle?

PPS. The girl who won the award, picked her nose and ate it.

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?

I don’t know.  I like New York, but San Francisco is closer.  More important is that the architecture and furniture be to my liking.  I don’t want any 16-foot peaked ceilings, over-stuffed sofas, or fake floral arrangements—you got that?  I like 10-foot ceilings and bathrooms that look like Cary Grant or William Powell might have peed there.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?

What can I do in a hour?  Do I get to shower and dress first, do I have to go right this minute, is travel time included?    I don’t know, something involving a really good piece of toast.  What time is it in England?  Maybe tea at the Savoy.

Which language do you want to learn?

I can’t decide between Spanish (or as my parents call it—Mexican), Arabic, Persian, and Canadian.

What is your favorite colour?

Red, but really green.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?

I have a shirt I bought at Macy’s in New York that I am very fond of, but the cargo shorts that I wear to the farmers market are close second (those pockets can hold a lot of recycled produce bags).  By the way, if you go to Macy’s in New York and show them your out of state ID, they will give you an 11% tourist discount; do not tell New Yorkers, it will piss them off.

What is your dream job?

I did a whole blog about this. I want to be an archaeologist but the kind who does not have to know anything and can take naps.

What’s your favourite magazine?

I enjoy being seen holding The New Yorker.  But I only ever read Sunset and Cook’s Illustrated when they send me a free copy.

If you had £100 now, what would you spend it on?

Ear-buds.  My left one keeps cutting in and out and it sounds like Bruce Springsteen is playing Marco Polo with me.

Describe your personal style.

I try to wear at least one thing that makes no sense. 

What are you going to do after this?

I have to pee.

What are your favourite films?

I like stuff that other people do, but a lot of what they do, I don’t.  There’s a list in the section called Let Me Entertain You.

What’s your favourite fruit?

Year-round I eat citrus because I can and because I like it.  In season, stone fruits make me as happy as I ever expect to be.

What inspires you?

Everything or nothing, or both.

Do you collect anything?

Pictures of all sorts, colored pottery, and vintage Christmas ornaments. 

Your favourite animal?

If you have to ask . . .

What are you currently reading?

Just really good blogs.

Go to your book shelf, take down the first book with a red spine you see, turn to page 26 and type out the first line:

“His straight eyes thereupon aslant inclined,
Awhile he scanned me; they did headlong fall
Down to the level with the other blind.”

It’s from Dante’s Divine Comedy and it just keeps going on and on like that. I will never read it.

 By what criteria do you judge a person?

Criteria?  Fancy word for someone who writes memes. The use of that word makes it sounds as if we plan in advance how we are going to judge people, like we write out a list or something.  I think when we meet someone we judge them by what strikes us about that specific person. 

Mostly, I judge people by what kind of gifts they buy me. 

What skill would you like to acquire immediately?

Is exercising and liking it a skill?