Tangents

I am annoyed about being sick, but also fine with how it simplified my weekend, and relieved that I heeded my gut in refraining from making plans to head east, even though I'd looked with longing at the Old Farmer's Ball program for today (Mount Hills! Good Man of Cambridge! Picking Up Sticks (which contains sheepskin heys, which one teacher regards as proof "that hallucinogenic drugs were available in the 17th Century")!). Instead, I got up early, fried pancakes and eggs, and then went back to bed. Then the rest of the day was split between making phone calls, cleaning, tennis-watching, and catching up on some of the yardwork. Having belatedly read the full tag for the "Sky's the Limit" rosebush, I shaped its water basin and tied the two longest branches to stakes; admired the new yellow buds and the green tomatoes nearby; planted the geranium, tomato, and cactus cuttings; yanked and clipped and dug and hauled...

The subject line is adapted from Dawn Potter's recent post about Keats. "Dirt has its beauties" also would've worked, come to think of it.

My plan for dinner had been to make a tomato tarte tatin, but that was before I realized the box in my freezer contained not puff pastry but regular pie crust. Plus, after I finished dealing with the onions, I was feeling less inclined to follow the rest of the steps. So instead I shifted to Emeril's recipe for an onion and tomato pie, and while I didn't have most of the ingredients on hand, it provided enough guidance to get things good enough for my dinner plate. The final mash-up was along these lines:

* Chop one onion plus a couple of slices salvaged from a chunk in the crisper. Sautee in butter until soft.
* Defrost one frozen pie crust in microwave. Frown at soggy mess, abandon attempt to unroll it, and mash it across bottom of pie pan.
* Dump foil and pie weights on top and bake at 375 F for ten minutes or so.
* Chop half of a tomato. Realize the recipe probably advises slices instead. Sure enough. Slice other half. Season with the dregs of thyme-laced salt a friend had given me for Christmas two years ago, plus some black pepper.
* Startle the bloke reading in his car just outside my driveway (I'm guessing a tourist) as I scamper out in my nightgown to snip some basil and thyme.
* Mix one egg with the dregs (about 4 T) of Duke's mayo from the fridge. (Today was a great day for using things up; I also pitched some ancient spices into the compost bowl and shredded the iffy salted lemons in the sink.)
* Gingerly pour pie weights (aka old beans I've used for more than a decade -- probably nearly two) into mixing bowl and collect the ones hopping onto the floor.
* Scatter some panko over the crust.
* Lay the slices of tomato on the crumbs, in a pattern like a quilted star. Spoon half of the cooked onion bits into the spaces between.
* Scatter herbs and a heap of gorgonzola cheese over the veg. Drizzle with half of the egg-mayo sauce.
* More tomato. More onion. More sauce. More breadcrumbs. Some olives.
* Bake for 30 minutes? I set the timer for an hour, but took it out earlier when it looked and smelled done enough. And then ate half of it.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/411474.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

The subject line is from "The Church in the Wildwood," a hymn Ann Green apparently used to sing whenever she went back to Mississippi. Made a cheese ball with pickled peppers for her service (because, by the time I got around to figuring out what to pull together on a school night, it was too late to get started on benne wafers, and I have in fact lived long enough to recognize that), and brought sweet potato crackers to go with it.

Lawd, this week.

Transplanted the geranium from Desire to my front yard a week ago. Three days later, every leaf but the smallest one looked infected. Can't tell if that corner is fungally cursed -- last year's results were wildly, weirdly mixed -- or if said geranium just doesn't like Tennessee clay, even though I aerated the hole and mixed in some compost and tried not to get its feet too wet. The French hollyhock a few feet away survived the winter and now looks glorious. Perhaps it's yet another chapter in the universe's attempt to school me in not trying so damn hard that I get in my own way. (Which, not incidentally, is what a waltz partner told me at the Orange Peel a couple of months ago.)

Lawd, this week.

Anyway, I binned all the leaves except for that sweet little leaf at the tip of one stalk, and we'll see if what emerges -- if anything -- looks better. My car reeks of pine chips because I've been too busy to unload eight cubic feet of mulch from it. I would probably do best to compost the mallow seedlings in my sunroom because I waited too long to transplant those, but it's nice to know that the dozens more in the pet food tub are likely still viable.

I am sipping Hild Elbling Sekt and snacking on Milano salami at this hour, because a gal's gottta unwind. Some good dancing tonight. I was tempted to road-trip to Blue Moon later today, especially since there is a waltz workshop on the schedule, and because Jed-who-drives-up-from-Huntsville is a favorite partner, but there is too damn much to do right here at my kitchen counter (so much that I'm going to have to skip a choir thing already on my calendar). Maybe next year...

A singing thing that did happen this week: singing backing vocals on a video, at Jeff Coffin's studio, and chatting with him about his upcoming trips to Tuva and Myanmar. And he's the second person I talked to in person in Nashville this week about Tuvan singers. I do like my life.

My Garden & Gun subscription has kicked in (read, frequent flyer miles from an airline I don't fly that frequently on), and Roy Blount Jr.'s column has beautifully paired opening and closing sentences. The opening sentence: "I'm walking up Dauphine Street in New Orlenas when a man turns the corner carrying a tuba and walking an enormous hairy dog, simultaneously."

A message I sent to a friend in Asheville yesterday: "PUT THE PHONE DOWN and go ogle art at Blue Spiral or eat a marshmallow at French Broad Chocolates or pet the crocheted coats on the cats near Laughing Seed Café."



This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/142045.html.

The Christmas Day service at First UU ("It's the Most Jewiful Time of the Year") included a dramatic reading of Lemony Snicket's The Latke that Couldn't Stop Screaming, led by the sabbatical minister with audience participation (congregants waving their arms and going "aaaaah!" on cue); a Dr Who reference (Rabbi Rami: I was hoping to watch the special tonight but my wife is insisting that we go out for Chinese); an extended Star Trek benediction in both Hebrew and English; and substantive theological points to consider, with the rabbi comparing closed systems (salvation-based) and open ones (hope-based). The quote I repeated to several other people later in the day : Johanan ben Zakkai's "If you are planting a tree and you hear that Messiah has come, first finish planting the tree."

Also: The thrill of hearing a professional soprano several pews behind me warbling through "Silver Bells" and other standards. The pleasure of petting my friend Victoria's therapy dog through the first half of the service. The hugging of friends and acquaintances and the talking about plans for dancing, performing, volunteering...

For champagne tea with my honorary mama, I baked potato wafers. The BYM and I heard someone very, very good playing the piano in the assisted living lobby when we arrived, and it was indeed her son, who'd brought along sheet music for several super-silly, wildly virtuosic seasonal pieces.

I was not feeling well enough to join the late-night crowd at Lipstick Lounge, but I did stay up to sort out a few things and to say a few more blessings...



And, speaking of blessings, my thanks to all who responded to my Feast of Stephen appeal. I am full of gratitude. See you in 2017.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/407370.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

Seen at Target today:



Discussed at brunch today: the owner of Penzeys Spices speaking his mind about what happened on November 8. The comments section at Daily Kos is, for a change, one that does not require donning a hazmat suit to peruse.

For those of you who plan to place an order with Penzeys, there are coupon codes you may find useful.

Another way to speak with your dollars: contact your bank if it's one of the 17 funding the DAPL. Or, send supplies (including banners/sheets and spray paint): http://sacredstonecamp.org/supply-list/.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/405832.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

Cathy Erway's The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island has been giving me the feels, as the hipsters might say. Among the dishes I've never heard of, there are dishes I've seen only my parents serve, and names recognizable to me in transliteration. Yet another book to revisit after Big Raft of Deliverables are delivered.

In the meantime, I have cooked up a pan of pitimi, aka millet, and mixed it with some chopped red onion, and ladled the lazy woman's tagine from yesterday over it, along with some leftover yellow bell pepper and butternut squash and roasted orange slices. I will tackle the bowls of hot red peppers after my stomach registers that it has indeed been filled and I can don plastic gloves without said stomach's noises drowning out the kitchen fan.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/404745.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

This morning's bathtub reading was supplied by the first 56 pages of the August issue of GQ, which includes Michael Paterniti's ode to Yotam Ottolenghi. This passage in particular caught my eye:

The immediate impression of the trio [Ottolenghi, NOPI head chef Ramael Scully, and recipe developer Esme Howarth] made was of friendliness -- how well suited to one another they were, and how soft-spoken and solicitous Ottolenghi was.

"Would you like some tea and cookies?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer he went rummaging to retrieve some. I'd been served so much Ottolenghi food by others, and now Ottolenghi himself was serving me cookies. This seemed to be the opposite of Gordon Ramsay. This was the opposite of the matador chefs and their brash opining. In fact, if you could say anything about Yotam Ottolenghi, you might say he contained multitudes: a sweet temperament and fierce intensity, iron discipline and wild creativity.

In checking on whether the piece was online, I found a speech by Paterniti on storytelling, which includes this anecdote:

I have an unofficial contest going with some writer friends, to see who can ask the stupidest question EVER without meaning to, and I think I recently won. I was interviewing the chef Yotam Ottolenghi in London, and at the risk of never being asked to go on assignment again, I'm going to quote my question, verbatim:

So I'm just--butternut! Butternut squash, broccoli polenta, pearled lemon, that idea of, and sometimes this happens at the ridiculous high-end restaurant, the prawn did this, eat the whole flower, or whatever, just get that marrow, or whatever it is, up here, on the plate, all foamy, and this is what you’re doing without having to turn it into some sort of ridiculous cooky thing in these restaurants, like, maybe you could tell me: Why are we doing this!?

Seriously, how can you answer a question like this? And you know you're in trouble when the response is, as it was in Ottolenghi's case, a very long silence, a polite but quizzical expression usually reserved for the platypus tank at the zoo, and then, with pity: I think I know what you're trying to say...

As someone who dines on her foot on a regular basis and actively contemplates vows of silence every third day, I found this awfully reassuring.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/404393.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

[Subject line from Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Jubilee"]

I took the cookies to work, labeling the bin "oatmeal-flax cookies" so as to warn for allergies. The container was empty by the end of the day, and two colleagues told me that the biscuits tasted good for something that looked so healthy. ;)

The lemon tart is really, really good.

The dawg is delighted with the steak drippings and potato salad dregs from tonight's supper.

The rogue rosebush produced three blooms this round. A relief to know my ill-fated attempts to propagate it (by taking cuttings that then didn't take) didn't kill it.



This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/130635.html.

I had my doubts about there being any decent bread at our neighborhood markets this weekend, so I gave Mark Bittman's no-knead recipe a go. The results got a thumbs-up from the BYM, and the slices I cut for myself tasted pretty good with cocoa-hazelnut spread.

At the start of Sunday morning, after sitting overnight:



At the start of Sunday afternoon, before baking:


Baked!


This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/400252.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

I may expand on this entry later; right now I mainly want to record where I went and what I ate before too many of the details escape my memory. (Earlier this week, I was trying to remember a restaurant the BYM had liked, which he likewise had forgotten about, and finally retrieved its name by scrolling through his blog.)

[*** indicates my favorites]

Friday 11/6:
El Toro Taqueria - kimchi/steak taco, beans and rice, horchata

breakfasts at Pointe Plaza Hotel through 11/12: coffee, chocolate donuts, hardboiled eggs. Sometimes some other pastries or a bagel. Wall Street Journals.

Saturday 11/7:
*** Cafe Mogador (Williamsburg): lamb tagine, hot cider, Lagavulin 16, cappuccino
Pacific Standard: a pint (maybe Deep River?) + a banh mi hot dog

Sunday 11/8:
Cafe Mogador: Middle Eastern Eggs breakfast (two over-easy eggs, hummus, tabouli, arabic salad, zahatar pita, harissa), coffee

(***wedding: Finback Double Sess beer [ginger, szechuan peppercorns, and chamomile, and I thought cardamom?], cava, and lots of mostly vegetarian deliciousness [my tablemates seemed especially taken with the polenta with wild mushrooms]. And pecan pie with coffee.)

Monday 11/9:
Tea and banh meatball sliders at Body by Brooklyn
Madiba - Safari platter (biltong, droewors, nuts, dried fruit), chicken livers peri-peri, boerewors roll, roti, seafood bunny chow, pint of beer on tap

Tuesday 11/10:
Pretzel and hot dog from a street cart (he was out of knishes)
Bowl of butternut squash soup and glass of Gremillet champagne, MoMA Terrace 5 Cafe
Le Rivage - prix fixe: seafood bisque, trout amandine, cream puffs

Wednesday 11/11:
Penny House Cafe - cappuccino
Inaka - yellowtail scallion roll, avocado shiitake roll, miso soup, salad (above average), sake
Sugarburg - pint of something on tap, yellow squash po-boy (included feta cheese and pickled onions) with fries

Thursday 11/12:
Kogane Ramen - takoyaki (octopus balls), tonkotsu ramen
*** cheeses (including blue!), olives, and red wine chez friends
*** Speedy Romeo - grilled octopus with romesco sauce, the Saint Louie pizza (Provel, Italian sausage, pickled chiles, pepperoni), and the Kind Brother pizza (wild mushrooms, smoked mozz, farm egg, sage); Single Cut 19-33 Queens lager
*** Jack the Horse Tavern - tarte tatin (apple cake and pear-ginger parfait) and shot of Caol Ila (peaty), plus a taste of Craigellachie (Speyside; smooth)

Friday 11/13:
Almondine Bakery - chocolate mousse with tiny crunchy chocolate balls. Intricate papercuts on the walls.
Shake Shack - burger, fries, Brooklyn Brewery East IPA (which is actually canned in Utica)
*** Cornelia Street Cafe - glass of tempranillo and cone of calamari rings. Fried to perfection.
*** Jack's Wife Freda - in their words, "South African Israeli Jewish Grandmother Cuisine." Our cousin remembered this place when trying to figure out where to go after the show at CSC. Matzoh ball soup, lamb tartare, arugula salad (with pickled onions), and shot of Pig Nose whisky for myself. Tasted the others' entrees (fish; lamb; peri-peri chicken) and shared in the first carafe of côtes du rhone, as well as the desserts (chocolate mouse and malva cake).

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/395696.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

The day, it was mixed. On the less fun side of the ledger, there was the flat tire on my bike, a family member meltdown, feeling out of shape, and having to return to the supermarket because I'd left the yeast and mayo in the bagging area. On the upside, I was treated to a lovely breakfast, the new temp crown is behaving so far, I have a bowl of bao-dough rising, and I adapted the Lee Bros. recipe for shrimp supreme into cod creole for tonight's supper.

Upper Rubber Boot's prompt 23 for 100 Untimed Books is "instructions."

My go-to cookbook is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It's been revised since I received my comp from Borders, which adds to the grungy oh-la-la of my tattered and splattered first edition:



And in spite of this book being older than most of my shoes and nephews, there are plenty of dishes I look forward to attempting someday:



This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/118408.html.