clouds in my coffee

Adamo Photography

It's coming up on the end of my weekend, and I am sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of cold coffee, pleasantly drained. As I write, the sky darkens, more clouds blanket the sky, and the cute girl-next-door to the Sears Tower puts on her brilliant party hat for the night.

Yesterday, the inspiring Kate (whose blog Steadfast and Yearning is a daily celebration of life), my friend and supervisor, helped me pick up this beautiful, special cat from Evanston:

Her Tree House name is "Nimbus," which originally I dismissed as too masculine and also, kind of expected for a big white cat. Nimbus is a fluffy cloud about to erupt in rain, hail, snow, or sleet (but still won't deter your friendly United States Postal Service). 

When we were headed north into the gorgeous Evanston, Kate and I were headed right into the enormous gray clouds about to break into a torrent. We were caught in the storm as we ran for cover. How appropriate, we agreed, for it to be raining on the day we pick up a cat called Nimbus. 

Last week, Howard picked Coffee Cloud Cake for us to bake today. He is a coffee fiend, so it's not a big surprise he chose a cake that called for a cup of cold coffee. It didn't hit me until Kate and I were driving down Lake Shore Drive yesterday that I was making a cake with the word "cloud" in it. Elise says coincidences tell you that you are on the right path. Apart from being as fluffy as a big ol cottony cloud, the cat's growl is like the ominous roll of thunder, and her strike is a fast as lightning. 

 Howard, Elise, and I made the cake together this afternoon. Elise said it was nice, because I just told them what to do. It was so fast, with me reading the recipe, Elise whipping the ingredients, and Howard measuring them into the bowls. 

I went to Target to buy a tube pan, and I picked up measuring spoons as well. When Howard came over, they were the first thing he saw, and he deflated a little. He had hunted around until he found measuring spoons that matched our measuring cups. I am so touched! 

I believe the coffee cake is called a cloud cake because of the whipped egg whites which make it very light. It has chopped walnuts in it, which give it a nice raw crunch. It bakes for an hour, and when the top springs back when touched, you turn the pan over on a bottle, like so:

a rice vinegar bottle in full bloom

Howard at all times was sure it was going to fall and break every single thing in the kitchen, so to break the horrible anticipation we all went out for tacos and margaritas. When we got back and slid a knife between the cake and the tin, we shared it at the kitchen table. It came out of the tin a little rough looking, but I wasn't concerned. 

Elise left tonight for Poland, where she is giving a talk at a conference on puppets. They say she pulled some strings to get there, and is going to have a ton of fun, no strings attached (har har har).

The cats were really curious about this cake. Noreen lifted her face and sniffed delicately, while Twinkle Toes just went for it. 

Elise kept an eye on him, but he was seriously interested in her slice. 

naughty twink!

It was good, and I look forward to having it tomorrow with my morning coffee. I think it's a little sweet, and would probably cut down on the sugar if I made it again. 

maybe if i reach for it with my lucky paw she won't notice

It was a beautiful weekend. I spent time with people I really care about, in a city I love the more I spend time in it. 

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.