Happy Birthday Cake/The Move

Moving isn't too fun, but it was made better yesterday by cake. While packing and waiting for Elise and Josh to arrive with the truck, I made a cake. I spoke with my sister on the phone, and she picked the cake for the week. She turned twenty-five yesterday, and chose a devil's food cake with mocha buttercream frosting for her birthday cake from afar. We both liked the irony, since she is studying to be a priest.

I wished I could have been with her in New Haven for her birthday--she went bowling with friends. On many of my birthdays she has surprised me with visits. She's a wonderful sister, and I miss her so much. But I had to be here, moving apartments. Here is the state of the kitchen before I started baking:

The picture is a little blurry, and I guess it doesn't look all that different from usual. There is no table, so I used the white bowl you see on the stove to mix all the ingredients together. I sat down on one chair and put the bowl on the other and mixed it with a fork as best I could. The butter was cold and never really blended all the way. Good Housekeeping's devil's food cake calls for chocolate and buttermilk, and is supposed to be light and airy. I imagine it would be if it were better blended. Mine turned out a bit spongy; it was eggy and dense. I'm not sure what makes devil's food different from chocolate cake.

Once the cakes were in the oven, I rinsed out the bowl and made the frosting. Christopher was in and out moving. We didn't speak much. Howard played with Twinkle Toes and kept him from trying to wrestle with Dudley. Moving is tricky with cats. When we loaded the truck, I kept them in my room so they wouldn't run out. Funny thing, our downstairs neighbor's cats are the ones that did the most escaping. Part of last night was spent corralling Marco (who is very hissy and swatty) and Autumn back inside. Our cats are all reacting to the empty space differently. Noreen sits hunched in a corner, Dudley's been spraying all over Christopher's stuff, and Twinkle Toes plays as usual. I've been trying to keep their schedule as normal as possible, and trying to play and give them attention, too. Last night I slept on the floor on two folded over blankets, and so the two cats had to huddle really close to me. Twink settled in to sleep quickly by my feet, while Noreen paced around me until I gave her one of my pillows by my head.

Noreen folded in half, just woken up from a nap

TT and his prey

When the cakes were completely cooled, I set them on the cake platter on the stove and iced them quickly. Howard and I put the harness and leash on Twink and sat on the front porch. The house, stuffed with boxes and wiped pretty much clean of personality, was claustrophobic. Josh and Elise, brightly waving, pulled up in the truck and we immediately started loading. It was a perfect day to move--cool and dry. It didn't take long, and everyone was relaxed and so helpful. When we finished, Elise made everyone coffee and I brought down the cake. 

We lit the candles in the foyer

and then we sang "Happy Birthday" to Jessie's voicemail

After singing, we collectively blew out the candles. I don't know if anyone made a wish. I didn't think to, but retrospectively I wish for an easy transition into the new place. 

"It's okay," says my expression

We ate the cake on the front porch, and our neighbor's daughter Frances joined us. She showed me a story she had written from the perspective of one of my foster kittens. 

It was a sweet sort of goodbye to Carmen

The next thing I bake will be in Pilsen. 

Country Boys Baking

Mitch and Twinkle Toes, the Little Prince

Yesterday, on the gorgeous, 75 degree day, my southern belle cohort, Mitch, came over to bake a cake. He arrived bearing pot roast and mac-n-cheese. One thing I absolutely love about hanging out with Mitch is that there is always a home-cooked meal in enormous proportions. We eat, usually at least two large helpings, and watch TV mysteries solved by tough, sometimes charming lady detectives. We talk okra, cast iron, and Miss Marple.

Measuring out ingredients while quoting Steel Magnolias, we make a mess at the table. The recipe I picked for today, a self-frosting German chocolate cake, is easy, and we laugh at my lack of supplies. This week, I purposefully picked a recipe that didn't call for high-speed beating.

Our cats enter conversation, about as often as Noreen tries to get on the table. She's as imperturbable as Miss Marple, as difficult to say "no" to.

Mitch wants to write, but struggles to put his words on paper. He has such stories about growing up poor in the south. "Poor or dirt-poor?" I asked him. "Depends on what part of the house you were in," he replied. His memories are peppered with the most wonderful details, for example, how his mother held her newest pet (a baby possum) in a red Solo cup.

Belle Brezing as a child

 Mitch recently returned from my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky, which he visited after the Derby. He brought me back two elegant cake platters and the name for my next cat: Madam Belle Brezing. Belle was a colorful local character from Lexington, a shrewd business woman, generous community member, and she ran the best brothel in the state, out of what is now better known as the Mary Todd Lincoln house. My mom, sister, and I visited the historical landmark on a homeschooling trip, and the tour guide told us it was once a brothel. "What's a brothel?" my younger sister asked. Without a pause, I answered: "A whorehouse." Belle Brezing made a success out of a tough situation, and didn't wait for anyone to tell her what to do.

beetles

We poured melted butter and brown sugar into the cake tin, and then Mitch sprinkled the pecan halves, shells like beetles, into the sweet brown mixture. Then, taking coconut flakes between his fingers, he sprinkled them atop the pecans. We halved the amount of coconut, since I'm not usually a fan. I'm glad we did. It's a great taste, but can be a bit much. With a fork, we beat together the rest of the ingredients, first the dry, and then the wet. I poured it into the pan and baked at just 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. When it came out, we cooled for five minutes, then turned it onto the cake platter. It's top is candied and delicious, the interior soft and moist. 

I fussed about the y-shaped crevice down the center, but Mitch waved it off. "Baking for your own consumption is not about perfection, it's about fun. Celebrate the successes! We made the damn thing with just a fork and a spatula!"

California Lemon Pie

Put on Mrs. Miller, because recently you and Elise have become obsessed with her. A housewife with no talent, singing old pop songs in a ridiculous opera voice...it's a perfect background to our pie-baking.

1 9-inch unbaked pie crust, which you have to make from scratch since you forgot to take the pie dough out of the freezer yesterday. Making your own goes surprisingly well. 
3 eggs, separated. "Separated how?" Asks Elise, eyes wide with faux-innocence. "Like, around the house? Like an Easter egg hunt?"
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened in your hand
1 cup milk, also using the measuring cup with sugar residue
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel. Since there's no grater, scrape away as much as you can with a paring knife

EARLY IN DAY--LIKE AROUND TWO:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prick piecrust with fork; bake only 8 minutes; set on top of refrigerator.
2. Turn oven control to 350 degrees. In small bowl, with mixer at high speed, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. However, since for some reason the mixer was left out but the beaters were packed, you will have to do the best you can whisking with a fork by hand. When your hand starts hurting unbearably, pass off to partner. Whisking as hard and fast as you can, sprinkle in a 1/2 cup sugar until dissolved, or close enough.
3. In large bowl, with a small fork, beat 1/2 cup sugar with butter and egg yolks until well mixed; at "low-speed," beat in milk, lemon juice, flour, and lemon peel.
4. With wire whisk (but you don't have one of these either, so use rubber spatula), "gently fold" whites into yolk mixture. Stop Elise from beating the mixture together, because the recipe did say gently, after all. Pour into pie crust. Look at it for a moment, since it doesn't reach up to the top of the crust, it looks a little sad.
5. Bake 35-40 minutes, taking the time to call Amber for her birthday and write this blog. Then stick a knife into the pie and when it comes out clean, it's done. Sprinkle/dump some powdered sugar and do a photoshoot. Refrigerate and start watching Band of Outsiders, or have Elise cut your hair. Makes 8 servings.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Before I write about this week's pie, I want to write about last week's cake. That cake saw more of Chicago than most baked goods, and left a little bit of itself in every neighborhood. It's maiden voyage was a short one, in the walk from Aaron's to mine. Soon after it journeyed up to exotic Rogers Park on a very crowded bus,  finally sitting pretty and untouched on the counter while I cat sat for a friend. It's next trip was the longest, on the red line down to the expensive Gold Coast. This was its highlight of the evening. It sat quietly in the fridge while friends talked and laughed and read their writing to each other, and then came out, bedecked in birthday candles aglow, to be enjoyed even by the lactose-intolerant. After the festivities, a portion was sliced away to be eaten later by the hosts. The next leg of the journey, a third of it missing, the cake traveled on a late night train to Palmer Square. The next morning, another section parceled off for the host, the cake traveled first by bus, where it attracted the attention of a talkative woman who was taking a course in cake-decorating, and then by train again to treeless Uptown. There it was admired by employees of a cat shelter, and small slices shaved off here and there, until it was just a fraction of what it had been the night before. After all its traveling, the cake returned to his home, not its birthplace, but where its platter originated, the one with the black flowers and birds painted in an eternal circle. Finally, the remains of the cake were separated from the plate and wrapped in plastic, to be saved for a lady and her gentleman caller.

The cake was enjoyed by ten people in total, in four neighborhoods of Chicago. Needless to say, it was delicious.

I'm finally settling down to type up this blog at a quarter to eleven, after a long, hot day. I threw on my kimono, poured myself a glass of rose, and turned on my music.

Rhubarb, which is currently in fashion, according to my coworker Robin, who was my baking buddy today, is surprisingly difficult to track down. On my Hunt for Red Fresh Rhubarb, I went to four grocery stores before finding it at Whole Foods. According to my cookbook, the season for rhubarb (an honorary fruit) is January to June, so it's almost over. But this is 2014 in 'merica, so I figured rhubarb could be found all year long.

I biked home with the aforementioned bottle of rose in my water bottle holder and two and a half pounds of rhubarb clutched in my hand. Robin was cat-sitting, so I prepared by slicing rhubarb and strawberries. She's the one who suggested the pie, which made me happy because rhubarb is something I associate with my mom (and mother's day is Sunday!). I have such a good memory of eating rhubarb cake on the screened-in porch with a glass of sweet iced tea and an episcopal bishop.

Today I put on my summer mix from last year while I mixed the fruit with flour, sugar, and salt. It is eighty degrees today. Chicago bypassed spring altogether and flung us, sweaty but mostly non-complaining, into a fitful summer. Tomorrow it will be fifty again.

Robin brandishes a rolling pin

The pie was easy to make,

though it took us awhile because we chatted and drank.

Robin is goofy and full of stories. She's only three years older than me, but she's been married for four years.

Four years. I drank much faster than Robin.

When the pie was in the oven, we walked to the corner market for ice cream. The pie is so delicious--one of my favorites that I've made. The rhubarb has such a great, tart taste--almost like citrus, and the strawberry is clearly present with its sweetness. I wish my mom were in town to enjoy it with us!

Chocolate Cake with Coffee-Cream-Cheese Icing

Aaron the Baker, who helped me make those beautiful pies a few weeks ago, moved into my neighborhood on Monday. After seeing my pathetic chocolate cake attempt, he wanted to help me make a cake that actually looked like a cake. So this week I picked another chocolate cake out of Good Housekeeping, along with a coffee-cream-cheese icing (using a package of cream cheese from what I overbought for my cheesecake).

He was waiting for the gas people to come to his apartment, so I measured out the ingredients, packed them up, and swung by the grocery store to buy cake tins and some additional ingredients, then walked to his place. It was a drizzling, grey morning, but not cold. This was my first time baking at someone else's house for my project.

On my walk I thought about the book I'm reading that Aaron lent me. It's called Flesh and Blood and is by the wonderful Michael Cunningham. I first read him my junior year of college, when we read The Hours in my postmodernism course. The professor, who I had a raging crush on, said that The Hours was the book he wished he'd written himself. I know what he means. Cunningham's writing is gorgeous. He is like a boiled-down Woolf, specifically a Mrs. Dalloway-Woolf. He writes in such detail about the "little" moments in life that make up the entirety, with a sharp focus on the home and family. Flesh and Blood is about three generations of a family from 1935 to 1995. There are only rare moments described from the characters' work days--for the most part it is all set in homes, and revolves around the futility of the American Dream. There are moments that echo The Hours. One of those is the description of a housewife making a birthday cake. It's a beautiful picture, and like Woolf, he elevates a household task into art. There is a huge amount of pressure the wife feels to make a perfect cake, and a conflict between creating this piece of artwork, made up of dedication and love, for your family, but at the same time feeling suffocated by your family and the need to make a cake.

Aaron's place was covered in boxes. Nothing was unpacked, and the kitchen counters were invisible. We shifted things around and I unpacked my bags and my tiny little "recipe:"

The recipe was simple. You mixed the cake ingredients together on high for five minutes, then pour them into the greased pans and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Then you mix the frosting together and coat the cake when cool. Aaron showed me how to make it in a way that was a little more involved, and would make a better result. In his KitchenAid mixer we whipped up the sugar, eggs, and vanilla bean until frothy, and then added a third of the wet ingredients, then a third of the dry, and continued until everything was well-mixed.

We then poured it into the cake tins and put in the oven. Then we made the frosting, mixing the dry ingredients first, and then adding the evaporated milk. He told me this was more of an "icing," which is thinner than a "frosting." It tasted delicious. Aaron laughs at how old-fashioned my recipes are. I reminded him I'm using a cookbook from the seventies.

He played one of his favorite musicals for me and told me sad stories.

While the beautiful cakes cooled, we moved some of the boxes and furniture around in his front room so we could put the rug down. Then we arranged the TV where he and his roommate wanted it ("So you could see it wherever you are in the room"). They have so much furniture! I thought about when Elise and I move. We have our beds, a couple of nightstands, and a hand chair. Plus two cats and loads of books.

We iced the cakes in a rustic way, and sprinkled some coffee struesel in between the layers and on top. The cake looks great, and I can't wait to eat it. I didn't expect this blog to become such an occasion for socializing, but I love that about it. Here it is:

Nesselrode Pie

I had a late start to my baking today, and I forgot to take the pie dough out of the freezer last night, so I had to scramble to see what I could do today. I have no proper cake tins (and I still feel burned by my last attempt), so that narrowed it down to pie, but it had to be one with an unbaked crumb crust. There were only a few of those, and many of them you had to do at least a day ahead of time.

Which is how I ended up making a Nesselrode pie. I think it is an awesome name. It calls to mind Nessarose, the evangelistic witch of the east in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Apparently, it is a pie that is named after a Russian count (pictured above), and has been out of fashion for decades (unlike his hairstyle, unfortunately). But for those who know of it, it is thought of fondly as a delicious, quintessential New York dessert.

Here are just three of the ingredients: unflavored gelatin, four eggs, and dried fruit. Make a pie out of that in your mind. Sounds kinda gross, right? I figured I could buy all of those things at the corner convenience store, but no. You can't get it at the health food store, either, but I guessed that.

I didn't mind walking to the grocery store because it's a beautiful day. There were lots of flowers blooming in the Andersonville yards today. The gheys had their deep vees on, showing off their tacky chest tattoos ("Born this Way!"). Monday it snowed, and the sadistic band at Kopi played Christmas music. "Jingle Bells" in spring is just depressing.

Once at the grocery store, I was lost. I had no idea where to find anything I was looking for. Mixed candied fruit = fruit cocktail??? Thank goodness my mom picked up when I called! Saved the pie from a watery fate. I had to ask an associate to help me find something, and he was gone for almost ten minutes (or maybe five, standing still in a grocery store stretches out time) while I stood in place, peering down aisles, wondering where they kept the unflavored gelatin. When he came back, he told me what I wanted was seasonal. Was Nesselrode pie a holiday dessert? I wondered.

It isn't.

The real pleasure to this pie is that it calls for rum. I splurged and bought two beautiful glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

my pussy tastes his pepsi-cola

I poured myself a cool, tall rum-'n'-Coca-Cola and made my pie.

Songs for the day:

"You Are My Sunshine" - Johnny Cash

"Cola" - Lana Del Rey

"Rum 'n' Coca Cola" - Tim Tim mix

Each song led me onto others of the same, so I ended up listening to a lot of religious Johnny Cash. I was getting into it, thinking of my Grandma Ginny, and then Noreen (Strega Nona) decided she'd had enough and walked across the keyboard, shutting the music off.

One night Elise and I were sitting in the living room. Chris was asleep, or so she said, but then there was music playing. "Shouldn't you turn your music down?" Elise asked. "I don't have music on," I said. When I walked by my room, however, the Puppini Sisters were blaring from behind my door. I walked in to see Strega Nona-Noreen crouched on the keyboard.

She's becoming a real bad-ass cat. Today I saw her chase Twinkle Toes out the room. He is considerably larger and younger than she is. When she gets on the kitchen table, I try to sweep her off like I do with the other cats, but she sits like a gargoyle.

what are you gonna do about it, son?

The pie is now chilling in the fridge (just chillin'). I had to add the rum and lemon after the fact, because I forgot it. I think it will be fine.

The next step, right before serving, is spreading whipped cream and adding candied pineapple. I will take a picture of it and post it later. Now I have to get ready to go to a birthday party.

4/27/2014:
Here is the picture of the pie:

It was lovely, and really not too bad. But I only ate two pieces and ended up throwing most of it away at the end of the week. I just couldn't get my stomach excited about custard dry-fruit pie. 

Open-Face Apple Pie

I had enough apples left over from last week to make another iteration of an apple pie. The next recipe in Good Housekeeping is an open-face apple pie, so that is what I made today. Also, the friend I invited over for pie has a preference for fruit pies. Or at least, it seems like he would. I'm not actually sure.

I put on the Andrews Sisters (don't sit under the apple tree!) and got to work. An open-face pie is very simple. First, you make the crust, then you fill with your apple mixture, and bake!

Rolling out the pie crust is something I still can't do in one go--the butter always sticks to the table and it falls apart the first time I try to roll it out. This recipe calls for a "fluted edge," which I think involves pinching the crust so it looks wavy. See my example below:

jk, this is from the internet

Oh my! Look at that perfect, even-looking crust (no holes! no chunks of butter!) look at those clean white hands, no flour around the nails. And check out that fluting. Damn, gurl. You can just imagine that person's kitchen, full of sunlight and shiny new appliances, like something out of a Crate and Barrel ad.

By the time I finally got the crust into the pie pan without falling into three pieces, I realized the crust didn't reach all the way up, so I patched it up with extra dough. Now, when your crust is made that way, how do you imagine fluting goes? I tried for a quarter of the way around, and my attempts just ripped off the crust. I do not have the patience for fluting. I dumped the apple mixture into the crust and called it a day.

Eventually I would like to make a crust that isn't so charmingly "rustic." I would like to be able to make a passable decorative edge, frost a cake smoothly with minimal crumbs, and make a pie crust without looking at the recipe (I'm almost there on that one!). I'd also like to have a pie recipe I can do by heart, and elaborate on.

I'm getting to know a man from the Gay Men's Chorus (buy tickets for our upcoming show here!!) who is a pastry chef. He was my go-to when I was making this pie. "Do I really need to drizzle corn syrup like Good Housekeeping says?" I text. "Ew, no," was his response. "All you need is apples, spices, maybe vanilla, and..." but I deleted the text to make room for incoming texts so I don't remember what the last part was. So, no corn syrup, but I added vanilla (which wasn't in my recipe!). How naughty.

My pie! (Also, cat) It looks like a pile of apples in a crust.

Elise "Monet" Cowin

She's wearing a gramophone horn

 I met Elise my senior year of college at Goucher. We were in a composition theory course and a Virginia Woolf seminar. She was a thoughtful, intelligent classmate, and I respected her. We slowly became friends. Her figure, grace, and color scheme had me calling her "Elise Monet:" she looked like she had just stepped out of a painting.

Elise walking down Van Meter

Our friendship cemented when she said she'd like to visit me in Cleveland and actually did. Christopher and I returned the visit, staying with her in Chicago, leading to the move here. She's a woman of her word. Reserved with her emotions, but strong in her friendships.

She has given me a lot in terms of fun, creativity, and inspiration. Her ideas for projects are like a cool wind blowing my mind open. Her sense of humor catches me off-guard, and I love the weird things she gets excited about, like Elizabethan collars.

Rocking that post-op style

She works tirelessly, obsessively on her art, with many late nights, aided by glasses of red wine, and early mornings, with the necessary tiny cup of espresso. Her big black notebook is a staple of her days, with its pages full of notes comprehensible only to her: snatches from Woolf, Bauhaus performers, eccentric Italian costume designers, and scribbled drawings of her own perpetual motion machine.

Performing "The Weight of My Right Leg" in 2013 at the Sullivan Galleries

Her work method sometimes takes a circuitous route, as she works from feeling and intuition rather than a methodical plan laid out with measurements and little details. But no matter the route, it arrives, and lands. What I like about her art is that it has an enormous respect for the audience, those people that come to shows to be inspired, or moved, or even "just" entertained. She won't reward your patience and time with repetitive motions that don't develop, or a piece where nothing happens, and there's never some masturbatory confessional element. She creates something out of disparate pieces, choreographs them, and entertains and enlightens her audience. Her work always gives people something to discuss, and it's rarely what I expect to see. Check out her website for more of an idea: www.elisecowin.com

Her parents are so clearly responsible for how their daughter turned out. Her father is passionate, intelligent, and his sense of humor is sometimes opaque and for that reason, a little intimidating. Her mother is equally matched, with the addition of loveliness and grace. She will calmly dish out quips, which can be sharp, but never cutting. Elise and I were walking around Bucktown one day, and she was telling me she had been emailing a certain gentleman she'd liked for awhile. "And he's writing back?" I asked. She laughed and said I was just like her mother, which I took as a very high compliment.

Saturday will be Elise's birthday, and since I will be at a chorus retreat, we are celebrating today. I made her the pie of her choosing, and bought her a little succulent.

Elise Playlist
The Lady is a Tramp - Frank Sinatra
I Could Have Danced All Night - Chet Baker
Here You Come Again - Dolly Parton
You're The Top - Patricia Barber
Tea for Two - Pink Martini
A Fine Romance - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Mack the Knife - Peggy Lee
Blue Velvet - Lana Del Rey
Fur Elise - Beethoven
Sister (Miss Celie's Blues) - Suede
Royals - Lorde
Sweet Home Chicago - Eric Clapton
Bend it! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

Elise's Birthday Pie
Chocolate Mousse with graham cracker crust: reminds you of childhood.

Bittersweet Chocolate Cake

There are many ways to describe what makes a cookbook. For one, statistics--number of pages, number of color photographs, number of recipes. And so on.

But there is still another element involved in this newest Good Housekeeping Cookbook--the same element that has been involved in every edition, beginning with the first one in 1903. That element is the people element.

Yesterday I slept in with the cats and woke up to voices in the living room. Elise's friend is photographing her for a journalism course she's taking. Elise is so photogenic, I bet the pictures will be beautiful. I had a headache and felt groggy. On my days off, I have to come up with reasons to get up in the morning. Clean the bathroom. Grocery shop. Feeding the cats is reason enough, and helps to order my days.

I went to the grocery shop and bought the ingredients for a bittersweet chocolate cake. I wanted a change from pies, and I'd used the first two recipes in the cake section. Bittersweet felt appropriate.

I didn't plan to bake. I thought I'd save it for today. But after scrubbing the shower curtain, cleaning the mirror, playing with the cats, and scooping litter, I was so bored. I read the section on cake-making tips and decided to go ahead and do it.

Here is the Good Housekeeping bittersweet chocolate cake with a marshmallow frosting and chocolate swirls:

love that seventies dishware!

Wow. Well, that is ambitious. Those photos are so optimistic. I wonder if anyone ever looks at them and thinks: Yep, mine'll look just like that. How does that even happen? I feel like you need more than your ex-boyfriend's two square cake tins and vegan butter substitute. I am just setting out to make a chocolate cake that isn't uneven, and maybe, just maybe, there won't be crumbs speckling the frosting.

Letters from readers tell us of their love affair with the Cookbook. With old editions that have been handed down from mother to daughter to daughter. For example, a recent letter speaks of a 1927 edition. "It has been in constant use all these years. The poor thing has finally given up. What can I do to hold it together for a few more years?

The first piece of advice Good Housekeeping offers, nay, demands of their good readers, is: DON'T SUBSTITUTE. But I don't even know what shortening really is (lard?) so I used Earth Balance again. I just don't know what the effect is with the change. The cakes are really flat. Look:

wut?

"Measurements must be exact, fool," says Good Housekeeping. Well, the teaspoon is in the bag with the cat supplement and I don't feel like rinsing it out so...eh, that's about a teaspoon. And about three squares of unsweetened chocolate? About that amount of the semi-sweet chocolate should work. Right? Wait, why is the cake still white and why is it so flat? Must be the oven...

Then there are the younger women, just beginning their lives as wives and homemakers. One of these wrote us to say, "I will be married soon and I need to learn to cook something more complicated than frozen pizza, which is the extent of my present skill. I need a cookbook that tells me why and how--not just a collection of recipes."

On my way to Kopi Cafe to write this entry aaaaand take advantage of their half-priced bottles of wine (btw, the place doesn't have wifi, which is insane), I ran into Stevie. He's a young artist I met through Elise.  It serendipitous, since I had just been thinking of him. My phone doesn't keep phone numbers, so if someone hasn't text recently, I don't have the number. The other day I was wishing I had his number. Like a scene from a sitcom, there he was, just standing on a corner when I crossed the street. We hugged and he said he'd just been to Tulip, hoping to see me there. I invited him to join me for wine, but he couldn't. We kissed goodbye. It was lingering, and I immediately thought: I don't want to be this way. He then told me he had a boyfriend, but "he's in New Orleans, so they're open while he's away."

I'm not interested in that type of thing anymore. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm interested in much of anything anymore.

Baking offers a fantasy of an old-fashioned lifestyle. A home, a family, and routine. I like all those things, and when I'm not with my family I'm good at making family groupings where I am. For over a year Chris, Elise, Dudley, and I were my imagined family in Chicago. Now it's Elise, me, and the cats. It's a cozy little family. Maybe I should have stopped the above sentence at "Baking offers a fantasy."

And so this newest edition of our cookbook contains a great measure of inspiration from our readers. It is for them and for all those women across the country whose busy lives vary in many ways bu who have one great common interest--a dedication to keeping their families well and happily fed and to making food preparation a creative and satisfying experience.

The cake is small, but pretty.

And like my cat, Noreen, who has stared Death down with her big green eyes and said "Not yet," it's really tough. Great qualities in a cat, less so in a cake.

"I'll go when I'm good and ready."

I woke up this morning resolved to throw the cake away. When I came into the kitchen, Elise was there. "I'm going to have a great day," she said, "Because I started my day off with cake and coffee!"

Alright, cake, you win.

We put our new book into your hands with the firm conviction that it is the best cookbook ever.

Willie Mae Rogers
Director, Good Housekeeping Institute 1973

Vegan Blueberry Pie

Food?

Yesterday I woke up two hours earlier than usual to make a pie for that night's Oscar party. Wearing my kimono and listening to my Tea for Two playlist, I first fed my hungry, hungry hippos and then set about baking. The majority of the people I work with are vegan, which I think goes with the territory when you work in animal welfare, so it set up a new challenge for me. But pies are really vegan-friendly, as the only non-vegan ingredient in my recipe is butter. My coworker Sydney told me about the butter substitute Earth Balance, so it was easy. 

In my cookbook, blueberry cobber is listed as a tweak to the blackberry pie recipe, which led me to wonder what the difference between a pie and a cobbler is. Judging by the internetz, the difference between a pie and a cobbler is:
...
no one knows, and everyone makes up his or her own answer. I feel that one day, you know, I'll just stumble across the answer. For right now I'll say I made a vegan blueberry pie with what Good Housekeeping calls a cobbler crust. It was a pie bottom with a square in the center.

As recommended by Patrick, I knocked twenty degrees off the oven temp, and as recommended by my mother and my cookbook, I covered the edge with aluminum foil. Between those two and the butter substitute, my crust turned out a lovely golden-brown instead of crispy-charcoal. And of course this is the one pie I didn't get a picture of, but luckily Kate, my inspiration for this project, did. You can see it on her blog:

http://steadfastandyearning.blogspot.com/

It's part of her entry for today. Looking at it, I think that when I can make a decorative edge I will feel more satisfied about my crusts.

After I decided on making a pie for the party, I overheard two people at work talking about how they don't eat gluten, so I was pretty sure no one would eat my pie. But they did! I loved sharing something I've done with them. We laughed a lot, and I was surprised at how interested in the awards ceremony I was, especially considering I hadn't seen any of the movies. It's a weird sort of thing, when you see all these faces you recognize from movies and magazines and you feel like you know them, like they are a part of your life.

But the people who are in my life made the night truly great. I can't coherently write about the party, but I loved:

Coming into the kitchen and seeing Elise ready to go in her big trench coat, pink scarf, and my beret, finishing her martini.

Kate talking about her dream pie shop.

Looking at the back of Kady's head as she delivered her relentless snarky commentary. She makes me laugh.

Susanna in her primary colors, her "We Sing in Sillyville" outfit, standing in the doorway asking: "Beer?" Yes, please. She joked that she dressed for Pharrell's "Happy" performance.

Ollie stepping out to play the guitar and sing softly, beautifully.

Looking through Sydney's childhood photo albums.

Talking to Jenny about Animal Care and Control. She has so much passion. They all do. It's inspiring.

It was fun to see the faces on the screen, but I'm really enjoying getting to know the faces around me.

The right soundtrack

Music is an integral part to baking and cleaning. Put the right mix on, and you can forgot about the fact you don't have health insurance yet, or the possibility that the next rent check might overdraw your account. Listening to a hopeful, yearning song like "Skylark" makes you almost forget the nauseating pain of your recent break up.

Music takes you to another realm, where you can safely pretend that your life is always this: baking pies, washing up after yourself, taking a break to play with the cats. Rolling the dough. The hot, soapy water. The snow melting down the window. The fragments of conversations, poetry, and dreams that jumble through your mind as you wait for the timer to ring. And then you'll have a friend or two over and talk about whatever, while the music sets the mood. Playing Hildegard Knef, you can pretend your hair is always washed, your bathroom clean, and your dishes matching. You can pretend that you are happy, content with life, and proud of what you've accomplished. But in the midst of this make-believe, you realize this isn't all fake; this is who you are and this is what you wanted. This is your life. These moments. You are connected.

Is this what Virginia Woolf meant when she talked about the party mindset in Mrs. Dalloway? Things aren't real in some ways, much more real in others. Reality and unreality merging over a slice of pie, a cup of tea. Our pretend selves/our actual selves.

All that being said (nice and good and sweet as it is), my actual self drank himself to sleep last night and woke up at noon, despite his cat's best efforts to start the day at nine. I then promptly went down the Lana Del Rey rabbit hole, which led me to discover you can make a pie in the time it takes to listen to one of her albums! I had woken up with two and a half hours to make a pie, get ready, take care of the cats, and get out the door in time for afternoon tea at the Langham, which meant that today's baking was matter-of-fact, unpoetic. I was making a pie because I said I would do one a week.

Looking through my Good Housekeeping cookbook this week, I stopped on blackberry pie. It sounded perfect. The cherry pie was delicious and gone the day after it was made (split between three people), and we were all craving it. I decided to stick with fruit pie, and work on the crust. I'm not sure what happened between choosing the pie and grocery shopping, because I ended up with more than twice the amount of blueberries than blackberries I should have bought. It took me until today on my way downtown to realize my mistake.

I rushed out of the house and to the red line, conscious that I couldn't remember where we were meeting, but fairly confident I'd just figure it out when I got there. I was almost off the train before I looked at the time and realized I was an hour ahead of schedule. It took me another hour to realize there hadn't been a time change, I was just confused.

But the sky! My goodness, the buildings were cloaked in fog, nearly invisible. And then the release of the rain.

When I got home I took a picture of the pie. Every time I set it down bits of charcoal-like crust fell off. I need to remember to knock off fifteen to twenty degrees next time, and cover the pie with foil partway through baking.

It's a mess, but hopefully a delicious, unexpected mess.

Just a bowl of cherries

It's Valentine's Day week, and I decided I wanted to make something red. Initially, I thought I'd bake my childhood favorite: red velvet cake. But when I was telling a gentleman friend about my project, he exclaimed his love for all the traditional pies--apple, peach, and cherry. So, this week I made a cherry pie. It's red, it's classic, and it was suggested by my valentine. Cuuuuute.

Cherry pies seemed dull to me as a kid. I preferred anything with chocolate. But my appreciation for cherry pie has grown as I've gotten older, and makes me nostalgic for an era I experienced only through Twin Peaks.

A cup of joe, a slice of Norma's pie, and a supernatural killer on the loose--ah! the good ol' days.

Cherry pie is just so...American. White bread, white picket fence, white grandma in the kitchen America.

Norman Rockwell. Heaven help me. 

And so it makes sense when that opiate-eyed songstress of dark Americana includes them in her song along with Pepsi-Cola..."my eyes are wide like cherry pies."

With all this, along with a couple cans of cherries, I filled my homemade pie crusts to the soundtrack of Georgia Gibbs, Perry Como, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Martha Stewart cherry pie

My cherry pie

I made a canned cherry pie with a flaky crust, substituting butter for shortening. The filling was delicious! I hope it's as good cooked. I had some trouble with the crust, and I hope it turns out. Last time I made a crust I rolled it out too many times and it was all tough and difficult to cut. This time, there was just one terrific curse yelled out while I was attempting to move the dough onto the pie plate and it tore into pieces. Other than that, it looks ok. Kinda black around the edges, but I'll knock those off when it cools, before my guest arrives.

Creating is a continual lesson in the futility of perfection for me. I want so much to be good at something, to present something perfect and have a perfect little party, but it never happens. Really, it can't happen, and so I just have to laugh about it and move on. "You live and you laugh at it all!"

You work, you slave, you worry so, but you can't take the dough when you go.

And finally, you need to watch Rachel Dratch in the 30 Rock Valentine's Day episode: Happy Valentime's!

Starting the mess

Someone I respect a lot recently started a daily blog about the things she loves. It's a great, life-affirming idea, and I enjoy reading it. It made me miss blogging. I enjoyed my summer project writing about Jane Austen, and I wanted a new goal. But what? What is something I wanted to focus on and develop an understanding for?

And then the answer came, in the form of a sorely belated birthday cake. A dear friend, who gets caught up in his work, finally agreed to make time in his busy schedule to come by and celebrate his birthday (which was in November). He wanted a spice cake with cream cheese frosting. I told him I'd make his cake from scratch (because that's the only way cakes should be made).

We agreed he'd come over Thursday at noon. I decided to bake the cake on Wednesday, since I would be going out that night (Eataly, woot woot!) and knew I wouldn't wake up in time to bake, cool, and ice a cake before noon. I love baking cakes. While I'm mixing the ingredients and preheating the oven I feel like I love my life, I love who I am, and everything's lovely. I have the best "Baking a Cake" playlist, as well.

And then the cake comes out. Small, hard around the edges, and lopsided. There isn't time to do fix it, since I have to dash out the door, but I figure icing it tomorrow will hide any flaws.

If baking a cake makes me feel in love with my life, icing it arouses all the self-loathing and frustration that keeps itself hidden under normal circumstances. I mean, what the f? How does the icing manage to go all the way up the mixers and refuse to blend? And then when I'm spreading it across the cake, it seems to take all the crumbs with it, which then stare at me like, "What you gonna do bout it?" And I don't know! I also didn't fix its lopsided problem, so it just ended up looking dejected and crumby. It was at that moment that the doorbell rang.

Why I Like to Bake Cakes
1. It's a nice thing to do for other people.
2. It always seems surprisingly easy (and then really frustrating, of course)
3. I like having sweet things around!
4. It feels domestic, comforting, and safe.

It wasn't my guest, it was the mailman, but in finding that out I managed to lock myself out of my apartment in a t-shirt, house slippers, and holding a cat. It was a stressful moment. I ran next door to our landlord's, who was thankfully home and able to let me back into my apartment.

While telling my friend about my baking experience, I decided I wanted to bake my way though the pies and cakes in my 1975 Good Housekeeping Cookbook. There's a goal! From fruitcakes to apple pie to orange-juice cake (?), I'm a-gonna do it. And hopefully one of those will be beautiful. Cause look at this one:

Sad, sad, sad.

Then I cleaned the kitchen and ate frosting.

...which is to say this all ended in me dancing around the kitchen to Strauss with an insane sugar high.