Y'ALL, I AM REALLY GREAT AT THIS

Baking, that is.

View my BEAUTIFUL MACARONS, please:

 (1st - cacao nib macaron shells; 2nd - buttery almond macaron shells; 3rd - buttery almond macaron with salted mint buttercream; 4th - cacao nib macaron with bittersweet espresso ganache)

(also, they are SO DELICIOUS. the cacao nib ones particularly. the butter ones are no bittersweet espresso, but they are pretty freaking good when sandwiched with their creamy white buttercream - with a hint of sweetness giving way to faint mint, and finally leaving a lovely salted butter aftertaste. mmmmm.)

Macarons, Austen Day, and Work!

Hey, y'all!

Baking right now, for Austen day tomorrow - two kinds of macarons. Sweet vanilla almond macarons with bittersweet espresso ganache and cacao nibs, and buttery almond macarons with salted mint buttercream.

The first one I found online (and here's a secret - "sweet vanilla almond" just means "regular," actually); the second I made up. Not sure how it's going to taste yet - I added a 16th teaspoon of butter flavor and an extra pinch of salt to the meringue, and added another 16th teaspoon each of butter flavor and peppermint extract, with another pinch of salt, to the buttercream. The meringue batter and the buttercream individually tasted lovely when I stuck my finger in them, so here's hoping! The cacao ones are out of the oven, pictures to come; the delicate yellow buttery ones are still in the oven. And can I just say how much I love my new insulated cookie sheets? My cookies in general are coming out so much more even - and so far the whole macaron batch has only one, count 'em, ONE cracked shell! Booyah!

Austen day, by the way, is to be approximately 12 hours of Jane Austen movie adaptation marathoning (Keira Knightly P&P, the 2007 Persuasion with that blonde guy, the 1999 Mansfield Park with the brunette holding a key, the Emma miniseries, and one or another of the Northanger Abbeys. No Sense and Sensability because I haven't read it yet and ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN IT, so no spoilers, please [yes, I'm aware it's been out for two hundred years, thank you very much], and not the for-real 5 hour P&P because it's too long, and no Clueless/Lost in Austen etc. because we don't have time - we'll just have to have Austen day part 2 at some point!), accompanied by appropriate-feeling snacks (tea sandwiches, maybe scones) (yes, I know macarons are French) and tea.

In other news, I saw Pentatonix a couple weeks ago and it was very cool - big theatre, lots of lights and pop/rock concert style effects. Not gonna say I don't prefer them in a more intimate venue where I can hear the less-amplified vocal blend and see their faces a little better, but they handled the bigger show very well, managing during most of it to continue to provide a pretty friendly, intimate feel. Plus now that they've earned doing whatever they want from their last tour, we got to see some beat-boxing/cello playing from Kevin, some (AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING) dwarf singing from Avi, and some very cute goofing off, plus of course a double handful of new arrangements and a new audience sing-a-long. It's been great watching them grow as a group!

Further news - I'm music directing Xanadu at Little Radical Theatrics in White Plains in March and April, and I'm working for Edlyn's company, StarVest, as clerical support, starting now. (No more unemployment - yay! Although of course I still have to make sure they give me the $ for the 7 weeks during which I filed... haven't seen that yet, eh....) I have also accepted summer work at Thin Air Theatre Company in Cripple Creek, Colorado, for which I am totally excited quite a lot.

Gotta run and check the macarons! Plus sandwiching them, and taking photos... ttyl!

Back in New York

It's raining and it has been raining all night and there is STILL a ton of snow on the ground! I'm listening to this -

which is perfect for how this morning feels.

I have a job interview tomorrow and another one next week, plus I'm supposed to have another one scheduled soon. Yay! In the meantime, totally enjoying - or at least filling up - my free time with society and self-improvement (a la recording new songs). I've been to two birthday parties already since I got back, and a knockoff Lunar New Year party, and a concert (Kishi Bashi) with another one to come (Pentatonix), I've visited my 101 year old cousin, I have a Skype date on Friday with Cheryl in Singapore, a girls' night at Jamie's coming up next week, a lunch date with my feminist friend, and two book clubs!

I am positively a butterfly.

Got nothin' else, but I'll leave you with some Kishi Bashi! I really recommend looking up some of his live stuff - the way he puts the songs together piece by piece with the looping pedal is SO COOL.

And for a bonus, the best song by the opening band, Plume Giant! I would say their overall show isn't that developed yet - a lot of their songs are too short, cutting off right before the build - but their harmonies are HOT, and they have some great ideas. And they live in Brooklyn, so I can track them as they grow!

P.S. I messed around with the little tools at the bottom of each blog post, and it might be easier to follow by email now. If you've been having trouble with that, take a poke around - I forget what I did already, but it should be possible to get updates for new posts now.

California is great

and I like it a lot.

I've hung out with Alexia and my grandmother and Ruthy, I've had Mexican food four times with a fifth time on the way, treated myself to a double-double, explored San Diego and the zoo (pics to come on facebook!), attended Shawn and Sara's lovely lovely lovely wedding and danced a lot at the reception! Watched the 49ers head to the Super Bowl, and am watching Baltimore and New England in the AFC championship!

I'm not going into lots of details because there will be pictures and because everyone has been hanging out with me while I do all these things!

Oh, also I saw Les Mis and have lots of thoughts about it. Some of them are, poor Russell Crowe, how did no one realize that he was utterly out of his depth and embarrassing himself and bringing down the movie and how did they not replace him?!?!? Hugh Jackman is a stellar actor and has a great belting voice and strong musical theatre technique, but lacked the chops for the offhand and quiet stuff, most crucially "Bring Him Home." (I just caught a glimpse of the 25th Anniversary Concert version on TV in between football games. That guy knows how to do "Bring Him Home.")

(that guy being Colm Wilkinson)

I think the music director was a little too hands-off. Anne Hathaway was delightful. Amanda Seyfried threw her songs away with a weird short of breath wavery vibrato thing, which is a shame because I hear she's classically trained, and her voice underneath is beautiful. Aaron Tveit is brilliant, as are all the students, probably because they're actual Broadway performers/classically trained. Also, he is super hot. I kind of liked the new placement of "Do You Hear the People Sing" - straight out of the book, really - and I loved the build of it... and then they threw it away. Another four bars of repeat in harmony would have made it so satisfying and stirring. Although it was a little slow for my tastes; I happen to think it oughta be a march! Speaking of placement of songs, though, some of it really derailed the build of the show, especially with the orchestral tweaks it made necessary. I particularly thought it problematic that the recitative section wherein Valjean is in the convent and panicking mistakenly that Javert has found them didn't lead straight into "One Day More." The actor who played Eponine was the best female singer of the bunch, and she acted the crap out of it too. That said, I wanted more direction, and fewer big face shots of people crying. "One Day More" I think was shot nearly as well as it could have been, but it's just not as strong without seeing everyone standing all together, which you can do on stage with some locational suspension of disbelief but which you can't really get away with in a movie. But did they need that many close-ups, in "One Day More" or in the Finale? Ack. Also I missed the Fantine-Eponine harmony in the Finale. The kid playing Gavroche was great, and also totally looked related to the kid playing little Cosette.

Short version, I don't love the show but it has grown on me. I liked the movie a lot but with many critical caveats.

Unrelatedly, I have "Love Take Me Down to the Streets" (Not Wings) stuck in my head, and now I want to watch Role Models. Also, I Love You, Man.

I Probably Don't Want to Read This Book

but I LOVE the cover!

If only, possibly, because I'm so sick of photo covers.

Anyway, here I am in LA, hanging out with Ethel and Ruthy and Alexia, soon to see Meredith and the good ol' OC, San Diego for a wedding... oh, you know all this!

Also I'm reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. Science fiction, but not up my usual alley. Very long. I'm almost 200 pages in and I'm finally starting to get into it. We'll see how it goes! Also I'm memorizing 1492 (I think I posted it in my Chanuka post!), publicizing CSJO and J-West, I wrote two songs (except they're sort of the same song) on the plane and can't wait to sit down at a piano and get the stuff behind the lyrics and rough melody, scribbling a bit more flesh-out into the opening third of the book I started writing 8 years ago (I know I can finish a novel, I've done it before... but, you know, can I? and will it be good? It isn't, yet), seeing Zero Dark Thirty tonight (ack. But I know it will be good for me), MEXICAN FOOD.

I love California!

Happy Chanuka!

Actually, it's not Chanuka-related, but here's the Emma Lazarus poem that's been in my head recently, especially since the news about Spain inviting back exiled Jews:

1492

Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,
Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred,
No anchorage the known world could afford,
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.
Then smiling, thou unveil'dst, O two-faced year,
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, "Ho, all who weary, enter here!
There falls each ancient barrier that the art
Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear
Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!"

Obviously problematic, of course, to refer to America as a "virgin world" and celebrate without criticism the European advent upon these shores. But I love the concept of a year as two-faced, and I love the reminder of what the US has represented sometimes, for some people, when it is its best self. Or, at least, of what the US should aspire to be. This sonnet also pairs really nicely with The New Colossus.

I also like to claim Emma Lazarus as a secularist, and she was definitely a Socialist. She herself is always paired - possibly due to name primarily - in my head with Emma Goldman, another Jewish woman I really admire and a community-spirited anarchist whose name seems never to have been exactly cleared.

Back to Chanuka, though, I've been thinking all year about more progressive ways of understanding a holiday that glorifies a small group of radically conservative religious zealots who murdered their secular brethren as readily as their sort-of-oppressive governors. Tonight I've thought of lighting each candle for a different aspect of the admittedly complex story - one for the secular Jews murdered by the Maccabees, one for the Jews killed fighting for what they saw as the right to practice their own heritage, one for the Greeks (many of them friendly with and welcoming of Jews) killed by the Maccabees, and then one for people nowadays not permitted to practice their own culture, and one for people nowadays not permitted by be secular, modern, free of religious oppression.

Of course, I don't know what I would do on night 8. I'm out of candle ideas. And it's all a little Pesakh-y. But I kind of like it!

I wish there were a song that tackled historical Chanuka, and what hope we can draw from it. (Does that mean I have to write one now?) Laoz Tzur/Rock of Ages is so beautiful musically (I've been telling Alex that if his caroling company needs more Chanuka songs - since all they have is Dreidl, Oh Chanuka, and some stupid carol about Chanuka lights, and so they run out of songs really fast whenever they sing around Jews - that would be a great one, right up the carol-arrangement alley), but the words are SO warmongering, martyr-y, dependent on divine aid (and retribution), ahistorical, etc. etc., it's hard to listen to. Maybe that one's due for a rewrite?

In the meantime, I'm listening to the Wailin' Jennys instead.

And Pentatonix's new arrangements of a few Christmas carols, because I love tight harmonies more than I hate Christmas carols! On that subject, I saw Pentatonix's free show at the Verizon Store in Grand Central yesterday, which was awesome, and got to meet/hug/take a picture with them and get a signed poster! Cool. So today, re-excited about them, I went and picked up tickets for Alex and me for their spring tour show in February. $25 I probably should have hung on to, but they will bring me enough joy that it's worth it!

I know I always say this, but I really do mean to post more often... we'll see how long before the next one! In the meantime, happy Chanuka!

Emancipation and Pasta

So last night was great. Katie and Faye and I grabbed soul food at Manna's on 134th and Malcolm X, which I'd been craving for some time. Mac and cheese, collard greens, truly amazing candied yams (and I do not like my yams candied), mashed potatoes, bread pudding, plantains. Yum!

Then we went and saw the Emancipation Proclamation Exhibition at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture. It was really good. The exhibition was pretty simple, in a small room, and it pretty much consisted of the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, a later draft on vellum, on the other side of the room a typewritten first draft of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 100-year anniversary Emancipation Proclamation speech (with his edits on it in turquoise ink!), and some explanatory panels. But the panels were thorough and detailed, a good brief refresher on the events surrounding emancipation and then a quick journey through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and post-Civil Rights challenges for blacks and others who still face systemic oppression (p.s. I love that museums will come right out and say things that are true, without equivocating or doing that thing the media does where they include viewpoints that are wrong in order to be balanced). And seeing the Emancipation Proclamation, written in Lincoln's hand, with bits copy-pasted in from a previous speech published in the newspaper, with caret-ed in edits, was just amazing, as was seeing the bits of MLK's draft and editing process. It only took half an hour to view the whole exhibit, but it was moving, educational, and totally rewarding.

In other news, round challah drizzled with honey, for a sweet and round new year!

Can anybody tell me what exactly would make a year round,

and why that is desirable?

I made it into French toast today, and that was great, although I think I actually still prefer my French toast from sourdough; it makes the flavor more interesting and vibrant.

Also I made salted caramel ice cream with salted caramel praline, and threw in leftover frozen bits of homemade cinnamon pecan roll, and it's delicious although too salty because when I halved the recipe I forgot to halve the salt. But I would make it again, with the correct amount of salt, and I can already tell it's an amazing recipe! (Recipe can be found here, btw. David Lebovitz is so great.)

Leftover giant upside-down cinnamon pecan roll.

These are a big pain,

even if you're in the habit of making bread,

but SO DELICIOUS.

Also, about a month ago I made pasta for the first time! I had like 18 egg yolks leftover from all the macarons for my tea party, and the pasta dough alone used up 7 of them. What a hilarious, pain-in-the-ass, kind of fun, ultimately delicious process!

You really do make a well of flour 

and throw the eggs and other ingredients in it,

and then...

Stir it up with your fingers! 

For a really long time. 

Until it turns into... 

This! And you incorporate the rest of the flour with a pastry cutter!

Eventually you get a ball of pasta dough! 

It is very important to pose prettily

as you grate parmesan for the alfredo sauce. 

It is also very important to wear your

original French chef hat

from New Orleans. 

After the dough chills in the fridge,

you roll it out AS THIN AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN,

which is difficult and not really that thin,

and then pizza cut it into

fettucine heaven! 

Success! 

Lots of cheese and more egg yolks for the sauce! 

Scrumptious homemade pasta,

and I am ten egg yolks down!

I also made tapioca pudding (which I thought I liked, but blech, I need to toss it), green tea shortbread cookies, and ice cream with the remaining yolks. A good food month!