Sidebar: Hot Toddy

I've been finding that when I am creative with a recipe and make alterations, it comes first from a financial perspective, and then usually from forgetfulness. I went to the store to buy ingredients for Howard's birthday cake for Saturday and ingredients for mince pie for the 29th. Because it has to be vegan, and most mincemeat contains beef suet, I'm making the mince from scratch. Exciting, right? However, there is a lot in mincemeat. And it's expensive. After walking around the store asking myself: "Can I afford this?" I looked at the list of ingredients again and started asking instead: "Can I go without this?" After paring down the recipe, I selected a few things I figured should probably go in a mince pie: two apples, dried currants, cranberries, prunes, and golden raisins. I eliminated the dark raisins, because it seems redundant, and I'll just double the amount of currants. Additionally, I skipped the mixed candied peel and candied cherries. What I decided was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to the recipe was the rum and brandy.

The first thing I did when I got back home was to make myself a hot toddy. I haven't had one of these in years, and they are delicious. Into one small mason jar I poured:

1/2 t sugar
2 whole cloves
1 small cinnamon stick (one of the ones used in the mulled wine, in fact)
a tiny, butchered slice of lime (because we don't have a lemon and a citrus is a citrus is a citrus, as far as I'm concerned), wrangled from a quarter of a lime found in the back of the fridge
1 shot of rum

Diligently following my Good Housekeeping recipe, I placed a spoon in the glass because it told me that would prevent glass from breaking when I added the boiling water. And ta-da! A hot toddy.

I wanted to be cheeky and add a photo of a hot man named Todd to this post, and when searching for one came across Todd Sanfield, who is about as unique as a Ken doll, nevertheless can lead one to some pretty racy thoughts. Have fun.

Sidebar: Mulled Wine

A moment ago I was lying under a pile of pillows, book in hand, starting to doze. I wanted to do something with my Saturday night, but had this feeling I had "done enough" this week: Lauren's going away party (with a beautiful sweet potato chiffon pie, cream whipped in the bathroom away from the guests), Sidetrack on Monday, SAIC grad lecture Wednesday, an all day extravaganza from the Bucktown Tree House to the Art Institute with my work friend Chelsea on Thursday, and Howard and I, in a sugar-craving frenzy, making a frozen lemon cream pie yesterday. But tonight I wanted to do something! Or have a drink.

I asked Howard: "Do you want to go to the Glenwood for a drink?"

"Sure," he said.

I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep. I wondered what it would be like to go to bed at nine and wake up at six. Would I wake up at six, or would I sleep until ten, like normal? Would I be a much more productive person? Maybe I would go to bed and lie awake thinking of all the things I should do, like work out. Like start working out. Or maybe just stretch.

Howard gasped and his eyes got big. I jolted awake.

"You've got an idea?"

"I've got an idea. Let's make mulled wine!"

He looked up a couple recipes and after a little back and forth, during which I resigned myself to a quiet night reading, we finally decided to get dressed and go around the corner for ingredients.

It's a perfect night for mulled wine. Fat soft snowflakes floating down, and they have started sticking to the grass. It's a glinting, shimmering night. A good night to stay in and sip hot spiced wine.

We poured a giant bottle of cheap wine into our big saucepan and added four cinnamon sticks, four anise stars (which are beautiful!), sixteen cloves, honey, sugar, and a whole sliced orange. Once it was hot, we poured it into a glass (for a picture), and then mugs (to drink).

Now we are going to watch Harry Potter, which Howard is SO EXCITED about. I might sort of read my book while we're watching.

The wine is really good.

The End is Nigh

Image from 28 Days Later

I met with Elise today, which is always inspiring. We talked about our writing projects and ideas for the future. I am currently meandering my way through Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and it's coming up on a perfect season for the slow savoring of a novel. Prompted by my pleasure in this reading experience, I want to tackle one of the largest novels on my shelf, of which I know nothing about: Middlemarch. I have thoughts of a future blog project for that.

But first: working my way through the pies and cakes of Good Housekeeping. I'm feeling antsy now about finishing this project, and so when I got home I made a list of the remaining cakes and pies, not counting the cakes that start with a mix. Then I eliminated the custard pies, because they are disgusting. After that I cut out the ones that were pretty much pouring a can of fruit onto ice cream and calling it a pie, and lastly I scratched out "jelly roll" because it sounds revolting. That leaves me with twenty-six pies/cakes.

The forecast:
Pumpkin chiffon pie for Lauren's going-away party this Saturday
Butternut squash pie next Thursday
? for Howard's birthday on the 22nd
Sour cream pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving at Stephanie and Amanda's
Vegan mince pie at Sydney's on the 28th
Spicy gingerbread cake Dec 4th
Peppermint pie Dec 11th
Grasshopper pie for my birthday Dec 18th
Christmas pie on Christmas
3 layer party cake for the first day of 2015.

HOLY SHIT!

The end is nigh.

Remaining pies:
Butterscotch cream
Concord grape
Deep-dish cherry-berry
Deep-dish plum
Double peanut
Freezer pineapple-orange
Fudge-Nut (makes me smirk every time, which is disgusting)
Gooseberry
Raspberry Ribbon
Rich Bavarian

Remaining cakes:
Angel food
Big orange chiffon
Chocolate chip chiffon
Deluxe marble
German gold poundcake
Merryfield apple
Sugar bush walnut (another one that earns a chuckle)

If anyone is interested in a particular pie or cake, please let me know and we can arrange a date to get together and enjoy it and/or bake it together.

To thwart thee, foul fruit fly

I bought a bunch of bananas earlier in the week (last week?) with the optimistic thought that I'd eat more fruit, instead of just stuffing myself with cream cheese, burritos, and booze. I did have a few, but they quickly turned an unappetizing brown, so I put them in the fridge hoping that might preserve them (and thwart any potential fruit flies!), but instead they rapidly (shrunk?) turned completely brown.

"You gonna make banana bread?" Howard asked me the day before yesterday as we were getting into bed.

"What? Why?"

"I just thought...because of those ripe bananas in the fridge."

"Oh, yeah. Right, yeah, I'm going to make banana bread," I decided.

Tonight after dinner Howard looked up and asked again: "You gonna make banana bread?"

"Yes," I said, carrying our bowls to the kitchen and pulling down Good Housekeeping. Since we don't have loaf pans, I greased and floured a medium casserole dish. In a large glass bowl, I mixed the flour, brown sugar, shortening, and baking powder and soda. I added cinnamon and nutmeg because my recipe didn't call for any spices (or walnuts or raisins).

The bananas were surprising ok-looking under their grotesque skin. I've learned over cursory online "research" that there is an enzyme (?) that breaks down (?) when the bananas are stored in cold temperatures because they are tropical fruits, but though the skin will darken it won't affect the quality of the insides.

The dough was irritatingly sticky, and took a few utensils and fingers to get it spread across the pan, leaving spoons and globs of dough sprawled across the dusting of spilled flour on the counter top. That Crisco, man, it never gets off your hands.

I can't use the stuff without thinking of working at Tulip. We had a lube that was basically Crisco, just more expensive. Which makes me want to add that I wonder when I'll have a job where I'm not wiping up people's spit and leftovers, spurted lube samples, or cat piss. If that sentence doesn't make me want to go to grad school, I don't know what it will require to push me.

Back to the banana bread. It's delicious. Its taste is warm and rich, and the outside is satisfyingly crusty while the inside remains bouncy and soft.

The Life of a Cookie

Image from meals.com

Contrary to liberal propaganda, the life of a cookie begins when all ingredients are first mixed together. If we are to measure by kitchen scales, it begins precisely at the moment when the chocolate chips first rain down from heaven, giving the cookie its raison d'etre.

Chocolate consciousness ekes in, giving life to what was a rather dull mass of Crisco, sugars, baking soda, flour, salt, and almond extract. The spirit of the cookie is at this time one and varied, a collective consciousness, if you will, a Lacanian hum that varies between the I and the We.

They/It is aware of the red smooth sides of its roofless womb, the carrier that holds its unformed mass. Above them is the bleary face of Our Father, Who Art in the Kitchen. Their Father is hungover, a credit to all creators who continue to make and bake in the face of unspeakable obstacles, namely, the desire to still be in bed.

"Bakers gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake," says Prophet T. Swift.

Their Father lifts them from their cool red womb/bowl, giving them a glimpse of a Kitchen littered with torn-open goodie bags from something called "The Black Cat Ball," in order to wrap them in a plastic shroud, to rest for hours in an enclosed tomb, one that is cool and sparse. If this time were represented by the tarot, it would be the time of the Four of Swords. On one side of them is a shriveled half of a tangerine, crying for its lost youth, and on the other a circular container of Gorgonzola, proud in its rapid and frequent use.

Time passes. Hours for humans is a lifetime for cookie dough, which awaits the sweet culmination of their life in the hot mouth of a Superior Being.

And then their tomb opens, and a different Father lifts them from their shelf. Unwrapping their plastic shroud, he refers to a script scrawled on the back of an envelope, left for him by the Original Father. Second Father separates the I/We mass, giving individual life to the cookies, and places them in the Oven of Formation, where they will grow into the shape meant for them by Almighty and Longer-Living Father.

It is whence they emerge from the Oven of Formation that their individual lives begin, the ones that set them aside from all cookies before them. They are placed in a wicker basket and covered with a towel.

"I wish you had told me earlier you weren't coming," booms the voice of their Original Father to their Second Father, who sits at the table.

"I'm sorry, baby. Have a good time," thunders the second voice. And then, with a terrific clatter, the door is opened and the cookies feel a blast of cool air from the World Beyond.

It has started! What a joy, to be feeling the air and on their way to their Final Culmulation!

They swing in their basket down the stairs, down to the basement, and balance in the air in what can only be described as a stunning feat of balance and skill as Their Father pedals down the dark city streets, singing to himself.

Their journey is punctuated by the puh-dunk, puh-dunk of first one, then the other wheel as it jostles over raised portions of the road. The cookies know this by intuition, and because they are more intelligent than the haughtier cakes and pies believe. The cookies and their creator are lulled into a feeling of safety, and perhaps that is why they didn't sufficiently prepare for the rough speed-bump that surprised them when they were ever-so-close to the party.

"Whee!" some of the cookies--a third? half?--cried as they were thrown (leapt?) from under the towel and over the lip of the basket. The plunge was thrilling--scary but titillating to their chocolate nibs. And then there was the pavement, rushing up to them, and for just a second--one long, terrible second, they realized that it was not their fate to meet their end crumbled in the hot mouth of a Superior.

Meanwhile, their creator and fellow cookies had skidded to a stop by the curb. The towel was quickly thrown back and stock taken of the remaining troops. Shaken and some of them broken, they huddled together to make themselves appear larger, like a frightened animal.

"Damnit," growled their creator, as he looked back at the fallen ranks, considering. But he shook his head and continued forward, bravely, and considerably more carefully this time.

The cookies and their creator arrived at the party, where they were promptly separated. The cookies tingled with excitement. With the loss of many of their comrades, they felt all the more special for having made it, and looked forward eagerly to their fate. Unfortunately, many of them were set aside in the kitchen, while only a chosen few settled on a gorgeous spread to join perfectly formed store-bought Swedish cookies on a platter.

"They'll be waiting here a little longer than we, don't cha know," said one Rosenmunnar to another (it turned out they were more Minnesotan than Swedish).

However, there's something eternally attractive about a chocolate chip cookie, though. If they took the Enneagram, they'd be a two: a people-pleaser. And so one by one, they reached their sweet end in the hot mouth of an intoxicated gay man.

Southern Decadence

Image courtesy of allposters.com

Thursday my day was blocked off by the hour, as written on the back of an envelope, which I referred to periodically to ensure I was on the correct task and timeframe. When I used forty minutes where I would have stood "idly" around and cleaned to instead do my grocery shopping (allotted for two pm), I was very proud of myself for my good use of time.

As I've noticed before, when given a shorter amount of time, my baking is quick and "matter-of-fact." I wanted to make a pecan pie this week, as I had been craving it for awhile. The Good Housekeeping version is very similar to my grandmother's recipe, though hers involves more pecans and less sugar, but right before I went grocery shopping my good friend Mitch gave me an enormous bag full Southern Living (which I continue to mistakenly call "Southern Comfort") magazines. The cover of one of those was a salted caramel chocolate pecan pie.

Heaven! Just what I wanted! So I branched off from my Good Housekeeping and made something from a different source. It was quick, easy, and is delicious! Though it is so rich I can only eat very little at a time (not a bad thing).

In the process of arranging the pecans

Drowning in caramel sauce!

When I described it to my (vegan) coworker Sydney, she said: “It sounds like diabetes.” And yeah, I totally see that. It is decadent. So southern and decadent it makes me feel like I live in an old plantation house, where I spend my days and nights alone, drifting down the dusty halls and grand staircase in my torn kimono, sipping my mint julep (minus the mint, sugar, and water) and talking to my fluffy white cat, Antebellum.

"Why, Antebellum, what a mighty fine day we're havin'," I'll murmur in Blanche Devereaux's voice, trying to focus my bleary eyes out at the setting sun dappling the magnolia trees, which are choked by Spanish moss. "I feel like a short-legg'd pony in a tall field'a grass."

The magnificent grandfather clock will chime five o'clock, signalling the hour for pie. I'll float over to a long table, where my gorgeous salted caramel chocolate pecan pie sits on a tiny china plate with a silver fork set beside it. A rusty lounge singer in a ratty boa will emerge from the gloom of the dining room, accompanied by a band in faded tuxedos, to sing "My Old Kentucky Home" in a wavering contralto. From then she'll move on to Patsy Cline's "If I Could Only Stay Asleep" (or Patsy Cline ANYTHING!), and I'll be singing through a mouth full of pie, and pretty soon you can't tell who's the lounge singer and who's the pie-eater.

So yeah, y'all, it's good.

Guilty Pleasures

photo from wbez.org

This week, Elise took me to Links Hall to see their residency shows. Links Hall is a performance venue (with a full bar!) that also offers four residencies a year, giving rehearsal space, a modest stipend, and a mentor who is a working artist in Chicago to the participating artists. It seems like a great program, and Elise should be a part of it. I can just imagine what six months of rehearsal time would yield for her work!

The two performances last night were in very different stages of development: The first felt very much like we were inside the mind of the artist and seeing the ideas about Third Culture she was bouncing around, but a piece had yet to emerge. The residency gave her time to delve into it, to get some stories out and some articulation to an Idea she wanted to work with.

The second piece felt much more like a finished product, though there was a disclaimer that it was a work-in-progress and may continue to grow and break off into separate entities. It was titled Amok, and was written and directed by the artist Karen Yates. It began with a gamelan ensemble, which made me think of my mom, who introduced me to gamelan music when she played in an ensemble in Lexington. Then nutmeg was passed around to be held and sniffed, and the performers began reciting recipes for spiced wine, or a melange to ward off the plague or impotence. From there the piece delved into the spice trade, the voracious and relentless Jan Coen of the VOC, and the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa.

I take spices for granted. Sure, their trade isn't as brutal as it once was, but I rarely think about where they come from when I buy them at the grocery store. For a moment I wonder "Where did this come from?" as I reach for paprika or cumin, but the question doesn't linger for long or develop. Amok was a satisfying bite into the disturbing reality of where popular spices like pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg came from.

From the beginning of the performance, I thought of the spice cake I made months ago, the one that prompted me to begin this blog, so when at one point a performer came high-stepping onto the stage in a red apron chanting: "This is how you make a cake! A cake. A CAKE," I felt like giving a little hoot. Her exaggerated stirring pantomime gave way to a brutal punching motion, and her face and voice took on a Hulk-like quality. Oh yes, I remembered, this isn't a Good Housekeeping recipe.

It was an involving, intelligent performance, and I'd encourage you to keep an eye on Yates's website to see how it develops.

All this said, this week I made a pie with a noticeable absence of spice. I am ever so slowly working my way through The Office, and this week I watched an episode where the Everyman hero, Jim Halpert, tries to make the best out of a day in a cramped "work bus" and more importantly, to give his paramour a sweet surprise, by convincing his nemesis/friend to drive the office to a little pie stand.

"What do we want?"
"Pies!"
"When do we want it?"
"Pies!"

They talk about the glory of banana cream pie, and how it is always the first to sell out, and that made me want to make one.

The magnificent Banana Cream Pie by Gardner Pie Co. (Akron, OH)

I had a big fantasy of what a banana cream pie would like like and involve, but in reality, the Good Housekeeping version is vanilla pudding, banana slices, and whipped cream in a vanilla wafer crumb crust.

But you know, that's ok, too. Good Housekeeping offers little (no) guidance on how to garnish the pie, so I took inspiration from the internet:

culinary.net

and decided not to go with the diner variety:

WHIPPED CREAM AND WAFERS 4 LIFE

My finished product:

I tried to be fancy with the whipped cream and added salt and vanilla. Too much salt. So I tried to compensate with honey. The result is not so bad, when it combines with the sweet filling. The cake is maybe still not fully set, since when I cut a piece the filling and whipped cream sort of seeped in to fill the empty space. But I had to try it RIGHT NOW! 

It's pretty good. Guilty-pleasure good, like listening to a playlist of Katy Perry and ABBA.