A Chock-Full Summer's End

I have done so many fun things since I last posted in July!

Here are some of them:

Faye, Katie, Alex, and I went (at Katie's instigation) to a Jazz Age party on Governor's Island! Actually, first we accidentally went to the Jazz Age party on Governor's Island the weekend before it happened, and were confused but ended up having a lovely day in the sun, picnicking on a bench looking out at boats between Staten Island and Brooklyn, swinging in the grassy area at the end of the island, and eating chocolate cake under the trees. But then the next weekend we went to the Jazz Age party, and it was very fun also! None of us but Faye had appropriate Jazz Age attire (not having been doing promotional parties for The Diviners), but it we felt festive anyway. Alex and I ate leftover homemade mac and cheese and also macarons; Faye and Katie bought some Jazz Age food! There was live music interspersed with some amateur but very cute acts, and I made Alex dance with me on the dance floor!

I did not take this picture; 

I found it by Googling "Jazz Age party Governors Island 2012"

Also I recently had a late birthday tea party, for which I made (with lots of help!) crustless white bread chicken salad sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches, scones, and five kinds of macarons with mixed fillings!

 I made macarons in all the colors!

 Green macarons = a sink full of green

 Pre-macaronage, 

it looks like the meringue and the almond flour 

will never combine!

 Alex arranged them so beautifully.

The green ones are pecan.

The blue ones are peanut.

The pink ones are plain.

The brown ones, some are chocolate and some are espresso!

Petit fours!

Edlyn came with creme brulee doughnuts, and Katie brought a beautiful and delicious chocolate cake from the bakery around the corner!

A bunch of friends got together to give me a great, great gift - a basket of ingredients! And it's good for them, too, because now I can make them more dessert :)

So many amazing ingredients!

We all were dressed up and ate delicately while trading thinly veiled insults, and then we watched The Secret Garden, which no one else had seen. I love that movie a lot.

Also, Alex and I have been subway stopping a couple times! We're still on the 6, but we're finally up in the Bronx, which is great because now I've actually been to all five boroughs. On our last stop in Manhattan (125th St.), we wandered out as close to the water as we could get, eventually stopping at a playground next to the freeway (it might have been the intersection of FDR Drive and the Triborough Bridge), where we admired a mural about the perils of dope. Between our first and second stops in the Bronx (we got out at 3rd Ave./138th St. and then wandered a little but mostly just walked to Brook Ave.) we grabbed food at a Caribbean place (I don't remember which island), which was acceptably tasty but nothing to write home about (not like that awesome sandwich I got around 116th or 120th, the time before!), and then we boarded the subway at Brook and went home. Then about two weeks ago we continued the exploration, managing six stops in one trip. We got off at Cypress and walked as far out toward the water as we could go, through a pretty ugly industrial area, and then north along Bruckner to go back underground at E. 143rd St. Off the train again one stop later at 149th, then cut diagonally along Prospect Ave. to see a little more of the neighborhood (it mostly looked poor/working class but well cared for, although there was one block on which on one side of the street the houses were fenced off and very well cared for, and on the other side they were falling apart, totally dilapidated. That was weird, especially as they appeared to have started out similarly constructed) before heading east again to go underground at Longwood. Again one stop, to Hunts Point Ave., where we were not able to look at the neighborhood map due to a domestic dispute (and police officer) right in front of it, so it was actually somewhat fortunate that we were able to figure out our crooked way to the next stop at Whitlock (finally above ground!). That one was an especially cool walk, though, through a pretty hoppin' downtown area and a few cute residential blocks. Next up we'll cross the Bronx River, and we only have 10 stops (two trips, I would think) to finish out the 6 line and make it to Pelham Bay Park, which I have always wanted to explore! Ah, progress!

Yesterday a bunch of us grabbed conveyor belt sushi (I had never had conveyor belt sushi! It is so fun!) and then karaoke'd for two hours (ack!) before returning home to watch the 49ers crush the Lions, which was awesome. In other news from the last couple months, I had a great time at J-West in early August; I'm finally reading Melina Marchetta; I'm about to start work on Bye Bye Birdie, Footloose, and a Seussical revue; Jamie is finally back and threw a really great barbeque followed by an awesome girls' night at her new place with Alf; I already miss summer weather even though in New York it's pretty terrible; Skye is staying with us during her break from tour, which is delightful; we have a new long-term subletter beginning in November but still need someone for the month of October; I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new mattress (well, new as of Memorial Day, but I was gone for a month and didn't get to fully appreciate it), and I am having a lovely and reflective Rosh Hashanah. Also, Alex and I have been cooking up a storm, and I have been having adventures with house plants - more on that next time! Now to go post that subletter ad and get ready for work! (And the looooooooong commute....)

In Which I Am Now a Voice Actor, and So Is Alex!

Yesterday, I recorded a radio spot! Amazing!

Basically, Libba Bray is publishing this awesome-sounding new book, The Diviners, and they're creating these radio spots that are basically scripts abridged from early scenes in the book (if you "like" the facebook page, you can read the first few chapters), so Faye was helping look for actors to record the voices. Fortunately, the actors she knows are us!

So Alex and I got gigged on to do these spots, and yesterday we showed up at the studio to record. I did the voice of Evie in the first scene when she gets to her uncle's place; Alex did a magnificent job voicing first the douchey, rich, young man who gets freaked out by a Ouija board at a party, and then the staid Jericho, assistant museum curator. It was so much fun! Evie was kind of hard for me, because she's a flippant, flirtatious flapper (OH YEAH I JUST DID!), outgoing and a party girl - basically the opposite of me. If I knew how to do a flirtatious tone, I would have been employing it for years, eh? But it worked out - it only took two takes plus one more for extra, and then in like five minutes Libba and the producer were able to patch together the best of Alex's and my line readings into one smooth spot.

So how cool is all that?!? (They paid us, too.) I don't know when/where they'll be - aired? published? I don't know what you call it - but I'll be sure to let y'all know! Anyway, now I want to do voice work all the time, because it was so freaking great! The end.

When I Am Rich

I will buy all of the jars of honey that look intriguing to me, no matter how expensive! I will probably have ten kinds of honey at a time, which is not minimalist at all, but which I will really enjoy!

In Which I Get Hit by a Banana

I have done some fun things since I got back from California on Sunday!

I was totally wiped when I got in, especially as the plane landed an hour late and then it took another 45 minutes to get my baggage due to a carousel mix-up. I took a cab home, took a shower and a nap, ate dinner and chatted with Faye and Katie, and then went straight to bed, as I reported to camp in New Jersey first thing Monday morning! It was an intimidating week of lots of commute and early every day work coming after a week of dress rehearsals and Winnie the Pooh performances and travel, but I made it and had a good time! Mainly by forcing myself to go to bed by 9 every night (well, 9:30-10, more realistically).

So on Tuesday I went to a book event at Books of Wonder; Kristin Cashore, Melina Marchetta, and Gayle Forman were on a panel asking each other questions, which was very fun. Of all the books by all those authors, I had only read Fire by Cashore (which I liked but didn't love), though of course Faye has been telling me to read Marchetta since the day I met her. Well, I'll tell you: The panel inspired me, apparently! The next morning I picked up Graceling, which had been sitting in my house since November and which even Alex had read before me and really liked. I had picked it up once before, read ten pages, and thought it was stupid - and now I can't even tell why! Because I read it in one day, because it was magnificent. And then I made Faye lend me Bitterblue ASAP, and read that in a day and a half. If you're interested, my reviews on Goodreads are here and here, but the summary is, they're basically my favorite thing since Tamora Pierce. Which is what every review I've ever read of them has said, so no points for originality Shoshana - and they're not even that similar to anything in the Pierce canon, and they're maybe targeted a little older, but they just give me some similar feelings.

Anyway, I lay fairly low until Friday, as I was still trying to get enough rest in to make it through the week. But on Friday afternoon, I went straight from work to karaoke with Katie and Faye and other people in publishing (mainly Katie's coworkers at Soho, it looked like), which was fun. Karaoke is still fairly new to me, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but it is growing on me some! Emily came by too, and I haven't seen her in ages, and then we all trekked back to Renselaus/Pemberley (the name of that apartment across the street from me appears to be in transition), played a little Mao (I made some very good rules! I like this game and no one ever wants to play, so it was very fun for me!), and then went to an Irish bar (is there any other kind in Sunnyside?) up on 46th to hang out and listen to some Irish music, which was totally great.

And then yesterday, after FYA book club, which is always way more fun than I even remember, and after browsing the farmers' market, which was magnificent and bigger than I've ever seen it and I can't wait to actually do some grocery shopping, I met up with Edlyn for a show called You Art What You Eat at Slap Dash. This was a hilarious experience. Also a cool one, but primarily hilarious.

This bit of Crown Heights appears to be at that early stage of gentrification that's actually really cool, with a dramatic variety of businesses from cheap unisex haircut places and cheap but potentially delicious restaurants that have been there forever to a brand new (and utterly delicious) gelateria. You know, the stage before long-time residents can no longer afford to live there (and neither can the artists who were the forefront) and their communities get broken up and big box stores start moving in and kicking out the interesting little businesses both old and new. Anyway, the point is, I was enjoying it for now at least!

And then there was the actual show. First I had some free refreshment, aka a vegan low salt low fat cholesterol free whole grain mini doughnut, which was better than I expected but not, you know, something I would ever actually eat again. Maybe that gives you an idea of what this crowd was like. Throughout the first act, a piece of art played on a projection screen behind the presenters: an 11-second loop made on a scanner of a person playing with cotton candy. During this act we had a shy and sing-songy reading of a personal essay about Montana and eating cherries, which was actually well-written, I think, but it needed a better reader or I needed to have it on paper in front of me. Then we got a reading of a story - which (this was too good) has now become part of the novel this guy is working on, called City of Princes - which again was actually pretty good. So some of these pieces were surpassing the expectations I had developed upon arrival, which was cool.

The first intermission was then followed by a very strange piece during which a guy threw bananas at us, ate bananas very quickly, and shouted a bit, all underscored by songs that mention bananas. I myself got hit by a banana, which I quickly slid into my purse, since bananas were on my shopping list and now I guess they're not (in fact, I already had a banana in my purse, which I had purchased at a coffee shop only an hour before!). Still, though this banana piece was bizarre, it was actually quite entertaining. It was followed by a neat video called Grub by none other than Jeff Stark - a montage of freegans prepping and eating food and washing their dishes. And actually, I am kind of interested in freeganism and I might go to the Grub community dinner sometime and help cook! At any rate, the freegan video was followed by a video called Taco Monday, which seemed to be primarily hand drawings of tacos coming out of other things, with supporting roles filled by hot dogs, remote controls, middle fingers, and chicken legs. I have to admit, that one seemed kind of stupid to me, but I was probably just not the right audience.

After the second intermission was an audio presentation of a recording of a guy's very intense sleeptalking, which made me uncomfortable. Also, there was a PowerPoint about beekeeping, which was great, because I freaking love all the kinds of honey ever! I think there are probably 8 different kinds of honey in my apartment right now, and while I can't take credit for it all (I'm gonna guess that there are four of mine and four of Jamie's), I definitely appreciate it!

And then I went home and the train was very slow and then I went to bed. And now it is today and I will hang around here and get shit done and maybe help them paint over at Renselaus-will-soon-be-Pemberley. See ya!

Three Songs

So one great thing about being in California is driving, because the great thing about driving is that I listen to the radio, and learn new songs! Here are the three new songs that I learned listening to the radio while driving in California for the last month - well, the ones that stuck.




Well, technically Ya'el introduced me to "Little Talks," but then I promptly heard it about 50 times on the radio! I haven't listened to any other Of Monsters and Men yet, but I want to.




I haven't watched this music video yet (although I have read a description of it!), but the song caught my attention immediately when I first heard it on KFOG. It's the rare sad ballad that doesn't strike me as boring, overwrought, and/or sentimental, which makes it class A in my book! (not in a drug sense) (and unlike his other hit, "Lego House," which I had to turn off in the middle)




I liked this song a LOT and IMMEDIATELY, but it took me three listens to figure out most of the chorus lyrics... which completely shocked me when the words finally registered! I had been thinking, "what a nice fun song about running!" Obviously, this required some reevaluating. But disturbing as it is, I still really really like it. Too bad I don't love any of Foster the People's other stuff (of the 7 or so songs I've listened to), although "Don't Stop" is ok. Somehow all the rootless elements going on in their other songs really click here.

So that was my California summer in music! (Plus the song I wrote on the way back from SLO, but I don't know yet if it's any good.) Now I'm back in New York, starting up camps in New Jersey at Porch Light, beating the heat, scrubbing the bathroom, borrowing Melting Stones from Katie, memorizing some poetry, thinking about hosting a tea party for my birthday (fancy tea! fancy tea party dresses! watercress sandwiches! macarons sandwiched with ice cream in honor of the hot summer! scones! maybe I'll finally get my act together and make some clotted cream!), gearing up for J-West... blahdidy blah, life as usual :)

Hopefully I'll be better about blogging this month! Fingers crossed, eh?

In Which I Am Better at Baking Than the Whole Internet

Because I made macarons today and got them right on the first try!

Every single baking blog I read claimed to have taken 3-10 tries to get them right. So I am better at baking than the internet! Or at least better at following directions.

Anyway, here is how it went down!

On Sunday I went to the apartment sale of a friend of Faye's, with Faye and Katie, to help them acquire stuff for their new apartment (of course, it is currently in my apartment, because Faye currently has no apartment and Katie is subletting a loft bed in Manhattan). Also at this apartment sale were things that F&K didn't need but I DID! These include two pastry bags and accompanying tips (actually, I can't figure out how to get the tips to go on and stay on and do their job, but fortunately for macarons you only need a basic round exit so I didn't have to attach anything successfully) and also a kitchen scale! The kitchen scale is very small and won't reset to zero with anything heavier than a pound on it, so it's not efficient and it's hard to read the display and I'd like to replace it with a better one when I can afford it, but it's good enough to measure ingredients for macarons for now! Also I spent $9 on an oven thermometer and $5.50 on a pound of blanched almonds at the Mediterranean grocery in Astoria (also I picked up a big container of black sesame seeds for $2, for macarons and ice cream and anything else delicious I can think of!). It turns out one recipe of macarons only uses a quarter pound of almonds, so it will be semi-sort of-affordable too keep myself in almonds. I also splurged on two colors of powdered food coloring at the cake supply store at Queens and 45th: emerald green and cherry pink. These will be good for when I make mint macarons and rose macarons. I also want black food coloring for black sesame macarons and blue food coloring for I don't know what kind yet of macarons and red and brown food colorings for chocolate macarons and gold food coloring for champagne macarons and ginger macarons and all the other macarons because gold is exciting.

So after I returned from those errands today, I got down to work! I was prepared to try two or three times today before giving up. So as not to waste ingredients on potential disaster macarons, I made only a half recipe - one cookie sheet of macaron halves - what should have been 18 macaron halves but was actually 17 because I spaced them poorly.

Anyway, I did everything that the recipe I picked and Stella at BraveTart said to do. I weighed my ingredients. I whipped the egg whites with sugar for almost ten full minutes (actually, I only did about 2 and a half minutes instead of 3 for each speed, because I had read that another baker found that it helped her macarons not to have hollow shells, but it still came to almost 9 minutes total). I did the macaronage without tentativeness, deflating my whites but counting my strokes and paying close attention so I didn't overmix and turn it runny. At this point I was not positive I had done it right - at one point I piped out a test macaron and it didn't spread quite the way I thought it should, so I piped the excess batter back into the bowl and continued folding for about 10 or 12 more strokes. In the end, both the one slightly undermixed and the 16 (I guess) correctly mixed macarons came out fine. I piped the rest of the macarons onto the parchment paper. I don't do circles beautifully, but they came out ok. I let the macarons sit for an hour in case I had overmixed (it's not strictly necessary but it doesn't hurt). I checked the temperature of my oven (5-10 degrees hot, as I suspected from the first). I put the baking sheet on another baking sheet to even out heat along the bottom. And then I put them in the oven and proceeded to sit and watch them bake for the full 19 (and then another 4) minutes, because I am nerdy and was both curious about the process and also wanted to see exactly what would go wrong and when if something did go wrong.

Here is what they looked like right at the beginning:

Here they are about three or four minutes later totally growing frilly feet just like they are supposed to!:

I cannot tell you how exciting it was when I saw that first foot.

Here is the first crack (not supposed to happen, in a perfect macaron):

I cannot tell you how concerned I was about the whole batch when I saw that first crack.

Fortunately, only four of the seventeen cracked, and only one little crack apiece (I have seen pictures of macaron disasters where every macaron has collapsed with 6 cracks!). I think some of it had to do with the poor job I did tearing and straightening out the parchment paper and then putting the pan in the oven, so a few of the cookies weren't sitting flat on the pan.

Here is the picture that just revealed to me what I didn't notice after 23 minutes of staring at eye level at my oven, which is that the oven door is totally disgusting:

Ew.

Anyway, I checked them at 19 minutes, when they're supposed to be done, and ruined a macaron (two macarons, I thought at the time, but one fixed itself when returned to the oven!) in the process - basically you're supposed to try to take a macaron off of the parchment paper, and if the top comes off in your hand they're not done yet. I did this with two, and one I totally destroyed but the other I put the top right back on and it fused back with its bottom! Anyway, then I stuck them in the oven for what was going to be two minutes but I got nervous and confused and they weren't browning or anything so I figured I had a few more minutes before I overcooked them (they are not supposed to brown at all) so that turned into four minutes (with me still sitting there staring at them the whole time, haha) and then I checked another one and it was done and I took them out! Here they are out of the oven, with beautiful smooth domes and magnificent feet!:

Success!

While they were cooling, I mixed up some Italian meringue buttercream, because I am fancy. This involves cooking egg whites and sugar over a double boiler until they are about 150 degrees (good thing I have a CANDY THERMOMETER now, eh?!? :D), then beating them in a bowl until they are cool (ugh, this takes forever, and also glass bowls, like I have, retain heat, so the buttercream never got as cool as it was supposed to so after I beat in the butter it still wasn't thick so I had to pop it in the fridge for a bit) and beating in room temperature chunks of butter and a little vanilla and salt. Basically, it tastes like straight up butter with some sweetness. Hilarious but also delicious. And then I flavored one section with Tasmanian leatherwood honey, which Tom (Jamie's ex) gave me like two years ago and which I like but which has a very strong and distinctive taste so I go through it very slowly, and food colored it "sunset orange" with a mix of plain ol' cheap liquid food colorings; and then I flavored one section with rosewater and colored it "dusty rose," and set aside some plain vanilla for later.

Here are the rockin' results!:

You can't really see the pink of the buttercream in the other one I took a photo of, so here instead is a picture of just the buttercream:

Anyway, they are delicious too - crispy on entry, full of chewy cookie, bright Earl Gray taste (actually a little too much bergamot in this variety of Earl Gray for me, so I won't make this flavor again for myself, but Beauty Queen Amanda loved it and I think everyone else will too), creamy sweet buttercream with just a gentle flavor.

Basically, I am the rock star of the kitchen! Next up: mint chocolate macarons. I think. My mind could change between now and Thursday (tomorrow I go teach in Jersey. Although I have time to bake before I go, so I might do that too). Maybe I'll make some for Faye's birthday tea party too! Although I think I am already booked to make green tea cake and ginger ice cream and maybe scones. So we'll see ;)

Oh, and btdubs, here is a quick pic of those cinnamon rolls I mentioned in the last post:

The Macaron Investment

The question is, of course, whether to buy the kitchen scale, piping bags and tip, buckets of blanched almonds, and powdered food coloring (because bright colors improve all food!) necessary for learning to make macarons.

And I do mean "learning to make" as opposed to just making, because based on all reports - even the down-to-earth non-magical-thinking one I've decided to subscribe to - macarons are complicated and finicky.

But, you know, now that Grease is done, I have the time and the inclination. I've gotten better and better in the kitchen over the last couple years, and I'm careful and good at following a recipe.

And then there's the part where I'm completely obsessed with the idea of making them.

I mean, come on! They are so pretty! And delicious, which I didn't expect out of them before I tried them. I'm so picky about dessert, and they really look like they would taste like sweet cardboard, despite how pretty they are. But it turns out they are delicious! (Based on the two I've ever eaten - a rose flavored one and, I think, chocolate chestnut, or something like that.) And they are filled with buttercream, after all. And I've never done French or Swiss or German buttercream before, so that would be totally exciting! I love the crispness and then the chewiness and then the softness, and all the flavor without too much sweetness.

And all the flavors I could try! I have rosewater - I made rose ice cream the other day - and I could make caramel ones, and chocolate, and chocolate mint, and bourbon pecan... as with ice cream, the possibilities are endless! Plus it would actually complement my ice cream habit really well, as many ice cream recipes use 5 or 6 egg yolks, and I have trouble figuring out to do with all the whites. The answer, of course, is make macarons, which call for lots of egg whites!

But a good kitchen scale - I read good things about the OXO brand - that holds up to ten pounds, which I would probably want because my bowls are glass rather than stainless steel, so a couple pounds already is $30-50; powdered food coloring is about $2 per 1/2 oz of color; piping bags are about $4 apiece; and almonds (which would be my biggest ongoing cost rather than single startup investment) are like $6 for 8 oz! Yikes! None of that is egregious, of course, but it's more than I want to spend, especially since my entire discretionary budget has been going to train tickets to get to work, and also I really want to see Once and Newsies on Broadway (which at least is tax-deductible for me!).

I wish it were my birthday already! Oh well. I will either decide to do it or not. And I will be sure to let you know if I do, and blog about all of my macaron triumphs and travails!

In the meantime, yesterday I made giant upside-down cinnamon pecan rolls, and they are sweet and delicious. Not an everyday treat - they need a double rise, which I'm used to now from regular bread making, and also you have to roll the dough out into an 18"x24" rectangle (the size of my entire counter!) and brush it with butter and sugar and cinnamon and roll it up and cut it into pieces, which is not terribly difficult but kind of a pain - and they're gigantic (so you need a lot of people around to eat them) and too sweet for me to eat all the time - I prefer richness to sweetness - but they are pretty darn good. Faye and Alyssa and Katie and Alex and I wolfed them down after a dinner of spinach salad, vegetables with hummus, and roasted asparagus last night, while watching season 2 of Sherlock. Great night!