Things I Have Cooked Recently! also HR3

Well, a few days ago Alex and I made Cheddar and Parsnip Soup from the British Isles chapter of Sundays at moosewood. It was, um, bland. We still have a lot of it left, although we have been faithfully eating it for lunch with homemade rye (next on this blogular list), which improves it somewhat. I guess if we had thought about it much, we would have realized it would be bland - very few onions, no garlic, no relevant spices (aside from caraway seeds, which provide it with its only flavor, and ground fennel, which we left out because A. I hate the licorice-y aftertaste of fennel and B. we don't have anything with which to grind, anyway), a bunch of parsnips and potatoes, neither of which has much taste, and cheddar, which is delicious but relatively mild even when sharp. The cheddar is basically completely invisible in this soup. It contributes to the creaminess and the fullness, I think, but not to the color or the taste in any respect. I would make the soup again, but I would throw in a bunch of garlic and maybe some rosemary and probably use a stronger cheese - bleu, or Stilton, or something. And a bunch of salt and pepper. (Salt is of no use to it currently, because there is no taste for it to enhance, so it justs makes it taste like salt!)

Anyway, I mentioned that homemade rye complements and improves it significantly. This is true! I used this recipe (after the shopping-for-rye-flour-and-caraway-seeds ordeal detailed in the last post), and it makes a small loaf but delicious. It requires barely any kneading, and only a couple hours of rise time. The dough, if you use exactly the amount of flour they call for (I reserved the last half cup of white flour and used it during the kneading), may seem too stiff, but the finished texture of the baked bread was perfect; it is good for toast, good for scooping soup, and good for grilled cheese sandwiches! It has almost a commercial feel, except of course better. Heads up, though: At least double the caraway seeds it calls for! I used a heeeeeaping tablespoon on my first loaf, and it was not enough to get a real rye flavor (given that the flavor we associate with rye bread - we Jews, anyway, and probably most Americans - is actually the taste of caraway and not the taste of rye flour). I used two heaping tablespoons in the loaf I made today, and haven't tasted it yet but will keep you updated!

I actually found several goodlooking rye bread recipes on the internet with just a cursory search. I would love to try making sourdough rye sometime, but that requires making a rye starter - easy enough, but would be a big consumer of rye flour, which even at farmers' market price is a little expensive to feed to a finicky, glorified pet every day! I'd also like to make pumpernickel rye sometime, but I think I would have to buy pumpernickel flour. In the meantime, I'll try experimenting with light/marbled/dark rye and other recipes I can manage with basic ingredients - when I'm not still experimenting with sourdough, of course! And the occasional loaf of regular white, whole wheat, or sweet French bread. I love baking!

You will also know that I love baking, because I baked TWO desserts yesterday! I made chocolate nut cake, which I had forgotten how delicious it is, and substituted Tasmanian leatherwood honey for espresso in the glaze, which gives it some really interesting undertones without too much of the particular strength of this honey coming through. It complements the cake really well! And I also made pecan bars - I forget what they're actually called, but there's a shortbread-style crust that you bake for ten minutes, and then a layer of chopped pecans, and then a layer of butter and sugar boiled together, then it's baked for another ten, then chocolate chips on top, then another fifteen. Except I had some leftover maple sugar candy that I hadn't been able to finish before it got too hard to eat - the consequences of restraining myself! - which I thought I'd grind into sugar in the food processor and use to make shortbread. Except it was too hard for the food processor to grind, but I found that it melted into syrup with a little water in the microwave, so I thought it would probably melt in a pan with butter. So I substituted the maple candy for the brown sugar the recipe called for, and boiled it with the butter! It didn't all melt in time, but a lot of it did melt into the butter and boil properly, and it baked into the bars perfectly. The maple taste is very faint, but I think is really adding to the sweet pecan effect. Yay turning lemons into lemonade! (Not that I like lemons or lemonade...)

Anyway, since then, it's been a lot of popcorn for dinner. We were going to make stuffed cabbage today, but there's no regular bread and also no cheesecloth and also we ran out of time, so instead we ate popcorn and boiled beets and cake (hahahahaha who am I? where am I from? what is this meal?) and put off the cabbage for Friday (tomorrow the roomies and I are going out to a fancy restaurant - here - for Restaurant Week! so exciting!). I will let you know how it goes!

On an unrelated and more depressing note, HR3 is horrible. If you haven't yet, check out the posts on Tiger Beatdown, and sign the petition! Or call your representatives, or write to the paper, or tweet, or whatever it is that you do for activism. Because it is bad shit.

Routine, mainly Shopping

Hello!

California was lovely, as it always is.

New York is not as cold as I was afraid it would be. It snowed a foot and a half a few days ago, which was lovely!

I bought dark chocolate peanut butter cups at TJ's yesterday, and they are delicious!

I brought a cat's cradle back from home, and have been looking up how to do things with it: I remembered Jacob's Ladder still from eons past, but now I can also do Cup and Saucer, Eiffel Tower, Witch's Hat, Broom, Star, moth, Person Climbing Tree, Parachute, mouse, and Handcuffs!

Alex and I have been shopping together, deliberately, consciously, joyously, with a plan. This is lovely! We've been picking two or three recipes out of Sundays at moosewood (thank you, Debby!) each week and buying ingredients accordingly, plus occasionally with additional cooking plans in mind. Last week we made West African Peanut Soup - mmmmmmmmm! - and Imam Bayildi - pretty good too! - and yesterday we used the leftover ingredients from those (mushrooms and basil) to saute and throw into white sauce from a jar to make it delicious. This week we're making Parsnip and Cheddar Soup, Stuffed Cabbage, and also one other thing, which I have forgotten. Also I will make rye bread. We went shopping yesterday - Union Square is great, because we can start at the farmers' market (parsnips, onions, cabbage, beets [not because they're in anything we're making but because I just discovered a few weeks ago that beets are scrumptious]), head to TJ's (cream [for ice cream], walnuts, maple syrup, cheddar, parmesan [sometimes the farmers' market has really good cheese and we shell out the extra $ for it, but of course the farmers' market is much smaller in the winter and there was only one not-very-good cheese booth on Friday], the dark chocolate peanut butter cups), stroll over to Whole Foods for anything we couldn't find anywhere else, although usually I don't shop at Whole Foods because I think I'm not supposed to because the owner is bad or something, anyway (caraway seeds for the soup [which it turns out I already had at home - the caraway seeds, not the soup]), and then go on back to the farmers' market because TJ's had no rye flour (I want to make rye bread, since I have caraway seeds) and the Whole Foods rye flour was $4.66/lb, so we thought we'd glance at the flour guy's stand even though usually his flours are prohibitively expensive, and then it turned out to be $5 for 2 lbs or - get this - $10 for 5 lbs! I love the flour guy! We bought rye flour.

End of shopping trip and associated run-ons.

Grocery shopping is fun.

Today: Queens library! Laundry :(. Cooking? No telling!

P.S.

I didn't mention what I ate at Sarabeth's!: a pumpkin waffle with pumpkin seeds, sour cream, honey, and raisins. Delicious! Also, Edlyn and I shared some really really good tomato soup - and I don't even like tomatoes! Yum.

Many Happy Returns

I try to treasure air travel. To place my hand on the outside of the plane as I board and realize that I'm touching something that will touch the air a thousand feet high - to feel the lift just as the wheels leave the ground - to see the slant earth recede - to look through and past clouds, down and over, up and out and forever - to fly into the sunrise early in the morning, when I rarely see mornings these days - all these things continue to amaze me. I'm naturally inclined to read or nap or crossword or watch a movie or play freecell or journal during my time in the air, but I try each time I fly to stop myself frequently and look out the window for as long as I can bear it, because although the view may seem unchanging or old, it is always striking and often memorable. Goodness knows I still remember the way the clouds looked when I flew into Alaska thirteen years ago, and I hope to remember how the sunrise looked - like a proper rainbow - when I flew home from Bangor two weeks ago. I try to treasure flying.

It's been good to be back in Queens. It's good to see Alex, and it's good to see Jamie and also Jillian and Andrew, good to get brunch with Edlyn (at Sarabeth's on the Upper East Side, although I may have originally told her the Upper West Side and therefore have found myself on the opposite side of the park and therefore caused her to have to take a cab over to meet me...), good to go to the movies when we don't get picked for the Broadway lotteries (I recommend How Do You Know and I highly recommend Tangled), good to have all my own books, good to have my piano and my sheet music, good to be able to get around, good to complain about the slow snow plowing, good to see crowds. Good good good.

Good to be going to California on Thursday! So many people to see I already booked up, even though I haven't made any proper dates, I already feel like I won't be there long enough, even though I have two full weeks! I get to flyyyyyy to California and I get to have a companion while flying: Hooray for flying with your boyfriend!

We made Christmas in our apartment, which, you know, was weird for me, but fun. I braved not only FAO Schwartz but the Times Square Toys R Us on Christmas Eve in order to buy Alex his present (Boggle, and also Taboo), which I am pretty sure qualifies me automatically as the Best (Or Anyway Most Dedicated) Girfriend Ever. But Alex gave me a food processor, which was pretty much the Best Present Ever, so we are even, I guess. Also, Jamie and Alex and I have been playing Boggle basically nonstop since Christmas, so that is fun. We have not made full use of Taboo yet, unfortunately, but I count on it happening soon! We went to Bryant Park to ice skate in the evening, but, predictably, there was an hour long wait, so instead we watched the ice skaters and ate crepes and vowed to come back and ice skate sometime before the winter is over (which vow we have not yet made good on, despite best intentions. Maybe tomorrow?).

We haven't quite had the exciting whirlwind tour of excitement we were planning - no hanging out with friends from school, no successful attempts to see shows, no dinner party, no ice skating - but we have had a good time - movies, hanging out with each other, having Christmas, making latkes, playing Boggle, drinking a little, going to a little New Year's party and eating cheese and crackers, making mac and cheese and bread and ice cream and cookies and chili and generally being delicious. So it has been pretty exciting for me anyway, and it leaves things for us to do when we get back from California!

Ok, now I'm going to bed.

:)

So yesterday was fun! I got breakfast with my drummer and a rockin' 2-year old, and then the three of us went to the Discovery museum, which is right on main St. The museum is certainly aimed young, but exploring it with a toddler makes it fun.

The day before yesterday, actually, I got to read to Scott's daughter in the library, which was also great! Hanging out with kids is good for me.

Yesterday evening consisted of good company and good music at the pub across the street; this morning I burned off some of my restless energy on the treadmill at the gym, which felt great - I could have kept running all day, it felt like! Also, in the middle of my treadmilling activity, many WASPs in sweater sets filed in, followed by a kindergarten class, and there was a ribbon cutting ceremony! This was surprising. It's because it is actually a new gym location for the Bangor Y - I got super turned around on my way there and was surprised to arrive there at all, actually - and although it has been open for a couple weeks, I guess today was ribbon day!

Today I'll head to the theatre early and write some chords; then we have a show; also I will probably read a bunch of sonnets. If I can keep myself motivated, I will go to the gym again tomorrow and keep feeling great!

The end.

P.S. Pictures!

Bangor even has cute chocolate.

Dominick gave me a lobster pin!

Sometimes snow is fluffy

my favorite excerpt*

from the maine Edge's review of Forever Plaid:

"....And work it does. This is a show about the songs. Four-part harmony is a beautiful thing, when it's done right, and these guys can make it happen. The music is toe-tappingly mesmerizing. Each number is pure and engaging. Sure, the bits between songs - the comedy and earnestness - they're important (and very well done), but all in all, the music is the thing.

"This quartet has brought Forever Plaid to life. They are as real a musical group as you'll ever see - aided in no small part by the exceptional band, with Caleb Sweet on bass, Chris Viner on drums and led by piano player Shoshana Seid-Green. The band is tight, the vocals are spot-on - it's one of the better concerts you're likely to see."

Hell, yeah!

*Here is the rest.

Candles