Tea for Three

Muse of the Day: Banana Bread

2012-01-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we were feeling rather industrious. Theo was busy giving our bathroom a facelift while I spent my time opinionating about paint colors and generally trying to stay out of the way. But that’s not so easy when there’s only one bathroom in the entire house. The shower over the claw-foot tub has been “temporarily” removed and, simultaneously, we’ve managed to lose the plug for the tub drain. Therefore, we can’t take a bath, nor can we take a shower. We have been enjoying what we call shaths, or bowers, which is basically trying to fold as much of the body as possible under the running bath nozzle. I’m small and flexible, but I’m telling you, it’s like circus tricks in there.

Now that we are practiced at shaths, Theo has also decided to “temporarily” remove the sink. Something about waiting for a floor tile repair. Which means our single bathroom is now equipped with a bathtub, a bath faucet and a toilet. If he tries to “temporarily” disengage the toilet, I might have to say something.

While he was working hard at removing all of our amenities, I figured the least I could do was cook dinner. A glance into our refrigerator told me that we had exactly one option: I spied half of a raw chicken breast, some random vegetables in a drawer, two eggs and a bowl of sticky rice leftover from the night before. Yay! Fried rice! I went to work chopping and frying, remarkably pleased with myself for making a complete dinner without having to go to the store, and for also using up all of our edible bits and pieces in one dish. I was feeling quite smug, practically drowning in my own clever efficiencies.

Encouraged by this success, I began a quest to see what else I could creatively dispose of. There were those three bananas on the counter that were begging for retirement, so I moved my attention towards banana bread. The hitch here was that the sugar jar was empty. But wait! We’ve had a random box of sugar cubes in our pantry since, well, a really long time. As an aside, I don’t know a single person that uses sugar cubes. If you’re one to take sugar in your tea or coffee, do you actually use cubes? They’re a holdover from a different era, and I’m pretty sure that the days for this pre-measured lump of goodness are numbered. But you know what? I am disposing of edibles in a creative and efficient manner! Sugar is sugar! So I approximated a cup’s worth of cubes and dumped them into the bowl with the other dry ingredients.

Admittedly, I did have second thoughts after my cubes were comingling with the flour. How, I wondered, is that sugar going to break apart? Simply chasing them around the bowl with a wooden spoon was having little effect. My solution to this hiccup would be the addition of liquids. In theory, the liquid would dissolve the sugar and that would be that. But lurking behind this theory was the knowledge that I was not adding a liquidy liquid, I was adding a goopy liquid – some soft and messy mass of mashed bananas, creamed butter and eggs. A liquid it was not.

So now I had a bowlful of batter with my unyielding sugar cubes sitting at the bottom, much like a collection of rocks lining a murky pond. I decided to let the bowl sit there for a while and see if the cubes would eventually dissolve, and when they did not, I found myself spearing them to death with a fork, hunting each cube down one by one. And with every jab and twist of the fork, I watched my efficiency ribbon fly right out the window.

But I got rid of those sugar cubes, damnit! AND the bananas! When Theo finally emerged from the bathroom covered in paint, he gave the final product a hearty thumbs up. And maybe when he provides me with a place to brush my teeth again, I will bake him something that is not inspired by cleaning out the pantry.

Profile of the Week: Jessica Franco

2012-01-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Name: Jessica Franco
Profession: Student

T43: What are you eating these days?
J: I've actually been, well, since the New Year, exploring clean foods. Not necessarily organic or local, but it’s kind of like a cleanse but without the strict cleanse. Way more greens and beans. Way less wheat and gluten. It’s not like I don’t eat particular foods, I'm just eating more fiber, beans, and by default, less sugar.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?
J: Macaroni and cheese! I've actually been playing around with making my own because I've always liked it baked. I've been trying different cheeses in different ways. But my default is popping a frozen Amy’s into the microwave.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
J: I think my favorites are often determined by Jared’s reaction. The more he likes them, the prouder I am of making them. They're not necessarily my favorite, but they become my favorite because he’s so psyched.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
J: Milk and spaghetti.
T43: Together?
J: Yes, because my mom was traveling so much – she was a flight attendant – and I knew how to make spaghetti and I'd pour a glass of milk and that was my adult version of a meal.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
J: Well, yes. Probably the worst one was when I attempted to make your beans and rice recipe and I totally mis-measured the bean to water ratio and left it unattended for a few hours. I came back to the house and it WREAKED of smoke. It was charred - thank God it didn’t catch on fire – but it was just smoldering. Black. And it wasn't even my house.

T43: Beer, cocktail or wine?
J: Wine. Definitely not beer.

T43: What’s your guilty indulgence?
J: Probably cheese. I prevent myself from learning about it; I just want to eat it. I don’t want to know what I’m eating, I just want it to taste good. If I had to think about it too much, it wouldn’t be as good.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?
J: Probably shallots.

T43: What was dinner like as a kid?
J: It was not a big deal in my house. When mom was home, she would want us to sit down and eat together, but they were pretty simple meals. She had her set repertoire. She was randomly predictable. The rule in our house was three bites. I didn’t have to clean my plate, I just had to take three legit bites of whatever she made. I used to hate asparagus – this was in the mid 80’s when rolling your jeans was popular. I thought I could make it look like I ate three bites by tucking the asparagus into the rolls of my jeans. But I forgot that she did the laundry and so she busted me.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.
J: Rice, yogurt and eggs.

T43: What dish best describes you? Or put another way, if you were a food, what food would you be?
J: This might be a stretch, but I might say I'd be an egg. The outside is a protective layer, it’s still pretty fragile. There are distinct parts of me. I can compartmentalize my life, which isn’t always good. I also feel like I can blend into a lot of different environments and be ok.

T43: That was a great answer... Favorite pie?
J: Your Thanksgiving pumpkin pie is the only pie I’ll eat!

T43: Another great answer! Do you have a food philosophy?
J: The level of performance you get out is what you put in.

T43: Thank you!
J: You're welcome!

Muse of the Day: The Making of Champagne

2012-01-16T18:29:00.001-07:00

Domaine Chandon

Just last night, Theo and I were kicking it in Le ClubShed, having a conversation about occupations that might make you a stronger climber. A friend was lamenting his sit-at-a-keyboard lifestyle and we were brainstorming a new future for him that might include getting paid for doing forearm exercises. Theo suggested finish carpentry, I added that I used to have wicked strong fingers when I worked in physical therapy and spent my hours doing deep tissue massage. We also urged our friend to consider bricklaying, bread-baking, or hair-braiding. He is a highly skilled mechanical engineer - it seems unlikely he even knows what a braid is, but like I said, we were brainstorming. It wasn't until much later in the evening that I remembered he could also be a remueur. It's a profession that has mostly succumbed to the industrial revolution, but it remains an essential job to the making of my favorite beverage: Champagne.

Sparking wine goes through two fermentation processes, the first of which takes place in a large tank. After this is complete, the wine is distributed into individual bottles for phase II. Here a bit of yeast and sugar are added in and a bottle cap is clamped on. The yeast gobbles up the sugar, and in doing so produces millions of tiny air bubbles - the charm behind this cheerful beverage. Once the sugar has been devoured and the bubbles are established, the yeast cells die off and leave a sediment ("lees") in the bottle. Champagne is supposed to be clear, so now the trick is to extricate the lees but leave the bubbles in the bottle. How can this possibly be done? You hire a remueur.

The necks of the champagne bottles are inverted into a large, wooden A-framed rack at a 45 degree angle. The remueur spends his day turning each bottle a fraction of a rotation, inverting the bottle by a few additional degrees, and giving it a hardy tap back into place on the rack. Rotate-invert-tap, rotate-invert-tap, rotate-invert-tap. If it is a large winery, he will do this to thousands and thousands of bottles, spending every day in the deep of a cellar twisting, turning and tapping bottles until two months later when the bottles are totally inverted, the bubbles haven't been disturbed, and the lees has collected into the neck of the bottle. Just before the caps come off, the necks are flash-frozen which keeps the champagne trapped in the bottle but pushes the lees out. A cork is quickly stuffed in and Voila! You have champagne! Happiest drink known to (wo)man.

Nowadays in this age of mass production, the whole process is mechanized via a gyropalette that does everything on a timer. But I suspect that if our friend could get a job at a very high end champagne maker in France, the traditional method is still in place for their special batches. He's bound to have bulging forearms in no time, in addition to some pretty appealing work perks. I, for one, would be tempted to bring a straw with me on my shifts in the cellar. But I can't say that this would help my climbing at all.

Friday Food Haiku, by Pippi

2012-01-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

Friday food haiku, because dogs love to eat, too!

"Wintertime", by Pippi

I'm starving to death...
kibble only twice a day?!
Must hunt poopsicles.

Muse of the Day: Scream Sorbet

2012-01-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

I got to go ice-skating last weekend. Not the pre-fabricated, available-at-a-rink-in-July kind of ice-skating, but the for reals, out-on-a-lake-in-January kind of ice-skating. I was surrounded by tall, swaying pines, sweet mountain air and the vague sensation that I may have slipped back in time by about 50 years.

It was an unusual experience on all fronts. I grew up in the desert - I've never skated on a frozen lake before. On top of that, it's extremely rare to skate on this particular lake at all. It's high in the Sierras, tucked into the side of Tioga Pass, and hasn't ever been accessible this late in January. On top of that, the reason we were there to begin with was to celebrate Randy and Beth's pseudo-spontaneous wedding. And on top of that, by chance we had one pair of skates with us and guess who they fit? Moi. So I got to be the elected skating delegate for our group and let me tell you... Zamboni be damned, skating on a lake is brilliant.

I'm a pretty bad skater. I don't think I've been in 15 years and I had few skills to call upon, mostly in the form of decrepit muscle memory left over from my middle school roller rink days. I was kind of chopping my way across the ice, stiff arms out on either side, leaning forwards-backwards-forwards, tripping my way over the tundra with the occasional large arc thrown in for fun. I looked like a graceful robot or a robotic ice skater, take your pick. And it was a blast up until I got to the far side of the lake. There, the ice was so clear that you could see straight through to the rocks and darkness below. The visual cue that I was actually walking on a large body of water began to toy with my head and I decided that when you stop and think about it, skating on frozen lakes is creepy.

I could hear the ice creaking and groaning beneath me, and sometimes I'd take a step and fissures would spread out in all directions - microstrands of a cobweb that stretched over the entire lake. Right there, before my very eyes, ice splitting in some very evident and palpable way. This might be normal. Maybe all lakes share this effect of continual hairline fractures. Regardless, I began to panic. And that expanse of steely, crackling blue between myself and the sandy beach seemed to stretch out before me, the shore moving farther and farther away despite my attempts to move closer, sort of like those nightmares when you're running down a hallway and can never reach the door at the end of the hall. I maintained featherweight thoughts, speedy thoughts. But there was a moment halfway across the lake when I was alone in my own surreal trappings. The ice fissures were appearing with each and every glide of my skate and I was certain that the cracks were getting louder and louder. The sun was low, casting a silver back-light across the entire lake and it seemed, in that exact moment, that the ice was thinning below my own two feet. A plunge into the inky abyss seemed inevitable. "How is it possible," I wondered, heart thumping soundly against my chest wall, "that this lake is unfreezing right from under me? And how is no one else freaking out about this?" Sometimes, surviving my own imagination is my greatest burden in life.

Anyway. Enough of the ice-skating. We all got off the ice and moved the party indoors where we could have frozen treats for our frozen feets. Thus, my introduction to Scream Sorbet. Now, I know when I say 'sorbet' that half of you will have stopped reading. But wait!! Come back!! It's not what you think!! Oakland based Scream Sorbet is dairy-free, yes, but it is, hands down, the creamiest non-cream ice cream that I've ever had. In fact it's creamier than many full-cream ice creams I've had. How is that even possible? Many of the flavors are nut based, and the fat in the nuts replaces the fat in the cream so it maintains a dense, smooth mouth feel, similar to gelato, and then kicks in a powerful burst of flavor. The Peanut Brittle (far right in photo) has a whopping four ingredients: water, peanuts, sugar and sea salt. The whole thing is impossibly fascinating to me, especially as an admitted peanut butter addict. Ice cream. From peanuts. Can this world get any better?

There's some culinary wizardry going on behind closed doors over there, and I tip my hat to this wildly creative success. It's one of the first things I've eaten in a long time that made me stop and say, "Holy crap. Those people are smart!" We need more strokes of brilliance in the food industry, so if you're in the Bay Area, get your hands on a pint. You'll be joyfully perplexed when you think about what you're eating.

Friday Food Haiku, by Finn

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Friday Food Haiku, because dogs gotta eat, too!

"Christmastime" by Finn

Christmas at Grandma's!
She's blissfully unaware:
I licked the rib roast.

Profile of the Week: Gary

2012-01-04T08:52:00.003-07:00

Name: Gary Puro
Profession: Retired Ophthalmologist

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
G: It's an early sentence that I spoke to my mother. Reportedly I said, "I want some meat and cookies."

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
G: It's a venison sausage roll.

T43: What is it about that meal that you like?
G: The inexpensiveness of the meat. I hunt it myself. The meal used to be made with pork sausage, but now I make it with 85% venison, 15% pork.

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
G: Salmon, venison, prunes.

T43: What was a typical dinner when you were a child?
G: Mashed potatoes, peas or green beans. It was what was readily available from the garden. Onions on the side. A plate of sliced tomatoes was put on the table and some sort of meat like pork chops. Scallions we pulled out of the garden, rhubarb from the side of the house.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
G: I like chili quite a lot. I also like roast beef and potatoes.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
G: Of course! Usually things become pretty smokey around the kitchen when there's a disaster going on. I eat it anyway.

T43: What dish best describes you?
G: Shoot. I don't know. A Venison sausage roll?

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?
G: Onion. And garlic. And butter.

T43: Favorite pie?
G: I like pecan-cranberry a lot. And I like pumpkin pie. A lot.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
G: Prepare what's available.

T43: Thank you, Gary!

Monday Muse: Deer Dance Corn

2012-01-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

And so another holiday season come and gone and I am in a terrible, terrible mood. Too much sugar? Not enough productivity? Regardless, not the best way to start the New Year.

Christmas was an anomaly. We spent Christmas Eve driving, which meant my Christmas Eve dinner was a small order of french fries and a coffee from the Golden Arches. And then for reasons that must have seemed logical at one point, we postponed our entire Christmas by a day so that the whole family could be together, having somehow forgotten that the family we were waiting for does not actually care whether it spends major holidays together or not. I don't know why anyone bothered. Therefore, Christmas dinner was Chinese food, but I like to think that we get a few points for sitting down at the restaurant and not succumbing to take out.

Christmas morning, usually peppered with eggnog French toast and sausages, was spent getting frostbite in the bitter New Mexican pre-dawn hour. We attended the annual Deer Dance at the Jemez Pueblo and I stomped my frozen toes around on the hard earth, waiting for the dancers to come down the hill just as the sun peeked over the mountains and turned the smoke from their fires into amber colored clouds. I, in my sub-Arctic down jacket and long underwear, they with their bare chests and headdresses. Did I miss the passing of the peyote pipe? Because I haven't been that cold in years. Painfully cold, actually. But the half-naked dancers seemed to be just fine. It has me thinking that there was something else going on up at those fires that I was not privy to. And I don't think it was hot cocoa with marshmallows.

They walked down the hills dressed as deer, antelope, buffalo and rams, hunched forward onto the leather bound sticks they held in each hand acting as extensions of their own arms and turning their human figures into graceful, four legged creatures. The buffalo maiden waived their feathers about and once everyone was assembled on the road that bordered the reservation, each of their headdresses were sprinkled with kernels of dried corn, most of which tumbled off as the group proceeded en masse down towards the plaza.

As a complete outsider, I have no idea what this corn is meant to represent. I took it to be an offering to the deer gods so that the tribe might kill a deer and feed their family through a harsh winter, or perhaps it's a symbol of fertility and abundance. We were encouraged to pick it up off the road and plant it in next year's crop, so we collected a small handful of these pale, pearlescent seeds and tucked them away. I've never grown corn before and doubt that my yard is sunny enough to pull it off, but this thought is now reminding me that Pippi once stole about five ears of corn off the kitchen counter, shucked each ear, nibbled all of the corn off, and then shoved the husks and peels under the living room armchair. A dog! Shucking corn! I should loan her to the Jemez Pueblo - it would save them a lot of effort come harvest time.

After the dance, in a moment that was very Native-American-meets-Christianity, we wandered over to the house that was hosting that year's nativity scene and sprinkled pale pinches of corn meal on the Baby Jesus before sitting down to the biggest feast I've ever seen. A table that seemed quarter of a mile long, piled high with an endless assortment of pies and cookies. We were witness to a parade of posole, chili, turkey, ham, yams and stuffing - a smorgasbord of a New Mexican style Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, combined together and served for breakfast. Who knows how many people they feed over the course of the 10 day feast, but the deer dance seems to be working and for those few days at least, that reservation is nothing if not abundant.

I've left my corn kernels at my mother's house, and given my mood now, I should have strung a few together and hung them up in my office so that they might bring me an abundance of cheerful attitude - something I'm sorely lacking right now. But it is a New Year and with it comes new beginnings, a new starting block to launch my annual hopes and dreams from. May 2012 be a year filled with marvelous things, for each and every one of you. Stay hydrated, hug often, eat corn.

Friday Food Haiku, by Finn

2011-12-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

"Unsupervised" by Finn

Mom, Dad in Napa.
Need to convince the sitter
we only eat steak.

Profile of the Week: Ingar Shu

2011-12-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Name: Ingar Shu

Profession: I don’t even know. I guess I’m a softwareengineer. Wait. Does that sound bad?

T43: What are you eating rightnow?

I: Pasture raised scrambled eggswith roasted pepper salsa and corn salsa, black beans, bacon. It’s like yuppieMexican breakfast.

T43: Why’d you choose that?

I: Because I love this breakfast and it’s easy to make for agroup of people. You can’t go wrong with eggs and salsa.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.

I: I’ve puked twice in my life: the first time was when Ihad a scrambled egg-eating contest with my sister.

T43: Who won?

I: I don’t remember. But it was a speed-eating contest.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?

I: That would be a Gordo’s Taqueria Super Burrito. But nocheese, because they have weird gooey cheese. Grilled chicken. I’ve changed myprotein selection twice over 20 years.

T43: What were the first two?

I: Iteration two was veggie. Iteration one was boiledchicken. It sounds gross, but it’s really good.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.

I: Burritos. Pie. Probably coffee. Actually, I could live onthose three things. I’d be happy.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?

I: Do I? Oh yeah!

Ingar’s Wife: Can I rephrase that question? Do you cook dinneranymore since you’ve been married?

I: Penne! Penne arrabiata. That’s what I make when Nora’snot around.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?

I: Yes! It was the cookie making competition. A weeks worthof bad macaroons. Batch after batch after… I just had the idea of a perfect macaroonin my head. And they were not that.

T43: That’s hardly a disaster.

I: I threw them all away.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?

I: Probably olive oil. You can’t have enough olive oil onstuff.

T43: I think of you as being quite the cocktail man. What’syour favorite?

I: Right now? Probably a Manhattan.

T43: What was dinner like as a kid?

I: Very simple. We always had rice. Always had a vegetabledish and a meat dish. When I was younger my grandmothers cooked. That was a littlegnarlier. If it was my grandmother from Taiwan, it was richer and fattier. My grandmotherfrom Hong Kong cooked more like standard Chinese food.

T43: What dish best describes you? Or put another way, ifyou were a food, what food would you be?

I: Probably some soft of cake. Like a cake that maybe is liketechnically hard to make but layered, you know?

T43: Maybe you’re a lemon chiffon cake?

I: That’s they way I like to think of myself as being.

T43: Favorite pie?

I: Probably apple.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?

I: Yes. I don’t believe in actually improvising until youreally understand recipes. Everyone else in my family improvises.

T43: That was so awesome. Thanks, Ingar!

Monday Muse: The French Laundry

2011-12-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Amuse Bouche

Oysters & Pearls

Salmon Tartare

Salsify "En Feuille de Brick"

Butter Poached Maine Lobster

Nantucket Bay Scallops

Ris de Veau

Comte Reserve

Lamb Rib-Eye

Mousse au Chocolat

Donuts, Coffee, Candied nuts

Mignardises

Sour Cherry Sorbet

House-made Shortbread

The primary reason I got reservations at The French Laundry was because I was told that I would not be able to do so. In fact, eating at The French Laundry had not even crossed my mind. I had heard of it, certainly, but I had no idea it was in Napa, I had no idea that it was considered to be the best restaurant in the country, and I only knew of Thomas Keller because I am an on-again, off-again fan of Top Chef.

The reservation challenge came to me via text from my older brother, Randy, in regards to an upcoming trip that Theo and I had planned for Napa, California: “Have you looked into the French Laundry? Reservations are nearly impossible, though.” An innocent comment, really, but a segment of my DNA dictates that every time he tells me I can’t do something, I want nothing more than to do it. It is an automatic response, one that spurs me into action before I even realize what I’m doing. Impossible? I wondered. Really? Like, how impossible? I picked up the phone to test his theory. Within three minutes, I had a reservation for five. “Ha!” I mumbled under my breath. “Impossible for you, piece of cake for me. I win!”

The French Laundry has a standard system. They serve lunch and dinner, same selection either meal. It is a prix fixe menu, and after choosing the carnivore version or the vegetable version, you receive approximately 14 courses with options on a handful of the items. They are booked solid every night, serving a steady 74 people per service, day in, day out. They have a 3-acre garden across the street that produces much of the food that winds up on your plate. And depending on the size of your party, the size of your house and your appetite for wine, it would be safe to approximate the bill to your monthly mortgage.

So, is it worth it? I, by no means, have dined at every single extraordinary restaurant in the world. But my guess is that even if I had, The French Laundry would still be considered exceptional. The restaurant’s dedication to the dining experience as a whole proved to be magical. It was like eating strands of music that had been composed by Beethoven, played by a string quartet and served by butterflies. So how can that not be special?

The meal comprised a parade of champions that ranged from caviar to lobster to sweetbreads to cheese to mousse to truffles. Tucked next to these edible heroes were quail eggs and oysters and fluffs of fennel and candied peanuts. We watched honey-glazed cranberries and chai pudding and black walnut puree dance by, everything served on its own dish and with its own set of cutlery. And just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, they brought out their piece de resistance: the peanut butter and jelly truffle. Laugh if you must, but if someone serves me twelve different courses of exquisiteness, the likelihood of me being sick of eating is inevitable, regardless of food or chef. And if you can then rock out a truffle that makes me weak in the knees after I’ve already been eating for 4½ solid hours? Well then. It’s an experience that eclipses all logic.

All was not glitter and garlands – someone in the kitchen made the grievous error of sprinkling cheese on one of Beth’s courses despite a very serious no-dairy requirement on her part. They felt terrible about the mistake and comped us generously for their misstep, but it flattened the mood while we all wondered whether she would be spending the night wrapped around the toilet. That glitch aside, it was a meal like none other. They serve you the highest quality ingredients with a smile on their face and then gently see you to the door five hours later with a packet of house-made, sugar-dusted shortbread cookies to go. And if you’re into that sort of thing, I’d put it on the bucket list. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Post gluttonous fairy-tale, I resumed my normal life for the rest of the weekend which meant running around the forests of Yosemite eating hard-boiled eggs and slices of apple. Sometimes I ate peanut butter straight out of the jar with a stick. But when no one was looking I’d dip into my climbing bag, untie the bright blue ribbon from the cellophane wrapper, and steal a bite of a shortbread cookie… tangible proof that there is another way, and my stomach has lived the difference.

Friday Food Haiku, by Pippi

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

A new Tea for Three feature to end your week on! Friday Food Haikus from the dogs' perspective... because dogs have to eat, too. First installment by Pippi-Lou.

"Cookie Party" by Pippi

Cookies on Counters,
Easy snacks for the taking.
Will they never learn?

Profile of the Week: Tim Doyle

2011-12-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of James Lucas

Name: Tim Doyle
Profession: I don’t really have one. I take what comes.

T43: What are you eating right now?
T: Fingernails, I guess.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
T: When I think about food from when I was kid, I think about cereal. I remember a dream where my mother bought sugared cereal. I was so excited when I woke up! But it wasn’t true.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?
T: That’s such a weird question, eh? Wait, you’re writing that?! Can it be a drink? I think it’s black tea – that’s what I look forward to in the morning. With milk and sugar. I don’t have one particular kind of black tea – it’s usually earl grey, but if I have that too much, I crave something else.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.
T: That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? Like, if you couldn’t go on anymore, you know.
T43: This is hard for you, isn’t it?
T: Yes. It’s really hard. Bananas, for one. Cheese and sausage.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
T: Pizza. But I hardly ever make it because I don’t have an oven in my van. But I like making dough.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
T: Yeah – I made a tea. And it was in my van, and I was pouring the hot tea into a mason jar, and right when it got to the top, the bottom of the jar broke. It spilled all over my foot. I had to go to the hospital and I rolled my sock off and my skin rolled off with it. I had to climb with one climbing shoe and one flip flop for five weeks.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?
T: Red onion.

T43: What was dinner like as a kid?
T: My mum used to always cook. We’d all eat together after my dad got home from work. I can’t remember what we’d eat. I can only remember what I wouldn’t eat. Like soft cooked carrots. And I remember for lunches there was this spreadable ham - it was in a tin container. She’d spread it with butter onto a sandwich.

T43: What dish best describes you?
T: Meat! Just kidding. Don’t put that. Um. I don’t know – I’m such not a foodie.
T43: Ok then, same question another way: If you were a food, what food would you be?
T: A really good one.

T43: Favorite pie?
T: Pumpkin.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
T: Keep it simple.

T43: You're a rock star, Tim... Thank you!

The Monday Muse: Cookie Party

2011-12-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Another cookie party has come and gone. This year was remarkably mild on all fronts, a symptom of maturity or fatigue, I'm not sure which. Jen has hosted this party for ten of the last dozen years. Two of those years got skipped since she was uber-preggers, one of those years the party shifted to my house for reasons I can't even remember, and the remaining nine parties were at one of the four houses that Jen has lived in over the past decade. I've never met someone who loves to move so often or host so much. She is the hostest with mostest, and were it not for her, the female climbing community in Boulder would not have shared this annual bacchanalia of sugar and titillation.

But it's the end of an era! Last night marked the grand finale, and Jen is retiring from the Cookie Party hosting business. Therefore, much of the evening was spent reminiscing about parties of the previous decade. We fondly recalled the limbo year, the naked hot tub year, the herbal-cookie year, the Santa year (incidentally, we all thought Santa was a stripper. So we, in our drunken chaos, kept waiting for him to rip the suit off. But he wasn't - he was just a shell shocked Santa-for-hire. The poor man. He remains, to this day, the only male that has ever stepped foot into the throes of the cookie party). There was the outdoor-ice-luge year, the tarot-reader year, the jello-shot year, and of course, the annual skit-in-a-bag event which always devolves into some sort of Christmas-themed pornography. We've had tears and dancing and puking and laughing - my god - so much laughing. We've also had some wicked hangovers. And in the end, we've had a decade's worth of "What happens at the Cookie Party, stays at the Cookie Party" moments.

The cookies themselves sit center stage much like the eye of a storm. The revelry swirls around them and their pretty bows and festive wrappings. Then we all stumble home and make ourselves sick from eating too many cookies and give the rest away. It's like clockwork. I've done the math and I think it would be fair to estimate that we've exchanged approximately 25,000 cookies over the course of a decade. Twenty-five THOUSAND cookies. We should be sponsored by the Butter Federation. So well done, team! We survived! And hats off to Jen for all of her work. The climbing community wouldn't have been the same without her, her games and her x-rated version of Christmas cheer.

Profile of the Week: Justin Alarcon

2011-12-07T09:35:00.000-07:00

Name: Justin Alarcon
Profession: That’s depressing. Gym staff currently.

T43: What are you eating right now?
J: I’m waiting for food. We’re having black beans, eggs, corn salsa and avocado on a tortilla.
T43: But last night was Thanksgiving… you’re not having any leftovers?
J: I was gonna have pecan pie, but the gang rallied and I joined in.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
J: Actually, just because we talked about it a bit last night… I remember Thanksgiving meal and watching my mom cook all day for 14 people or whatever. I remember being really intrigued by it all. The first thing I learned to cook was pumpkin pie. Funny that I can’t stand it now, but I got to spend like an hour working on a crust decoration.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?
J: Lately I’d say it’s been chicken tikka masala. Usually from Flavors of India in Oakland. There’s one in Berkeley too, but it’s not near as good.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.
J: So, there’s three foods I could never give up: cheeseburgers, curry and probably pad thai.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
J: I do a lot of stir-fry. It’s simple and pretty healthy. We always do it with tofu. Usually over noodles.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
J: Nothing that I would qualify as a disaster. I’ve screwed up. There is one time when I was making a stir-fry and I mistook fish sauce for soy sauce. It was awful.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?
J: Cayenne. I love heat in food.

T43: What was dinner like as a kid?
J: Mom was always good about putting nutritious plates out. Protein, salad, mashed potatoes. Always a sit down meal. And I’d always get shit for coming to dinner without a shirt on.

T43: What dish best describes you?
J: We should ask Becky that.
T43: Said another way, if you were a food, what food would you be?
J: A jalapeno popper!

T43: Favorite pie?
J: Pecan. For sure.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
J: Yeah, I mean, I try to eat healthy, I don’t want to eat a lot of processed foods and I want it to taste good. I'm not into high end products if it’s not going to taste good and I do avoid certain foods for environmental reason.

T43: Thanks, Justin! Sorry this was a little early for you!

Muse of the Day: Espresso

2011-12-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

I am not a coffee junkie. I happen to start my day with a cup of tea, and it's probably because coffee rocks my world. Just as soon as I hit the bottom of the cup, it feels like each one of my neurons start shooting off in all the wrong directions. Some people crave that feeling, but it makes me think I'm slipping off the edge into a pool of insanity.

I love the taste of coffee, but after an initial phase of manic behavior followed by a blistering case of the grumpies and then a mandatory collapse into a coma, I've convinced myself that it's best for mankind if I limit my consumption. The upside to this arrangement is that I save myself a lot of money. The downside is that I think I could really, really geek out on coffee if given the chance. It's one of those subjects that seems right up my alley: that special blend of art meets science. Similar to climbing and baking and photography, there's opportunity in the coffee fiefdom to tap into both sides of the brain. But then I'd want to get just the right machine, and I'd want to sample all the beans, and I'd want to visit all the plantations and learn about all the nuances of oil and acid and creme and grind. It sounds like absolute heaven to me, but neither my pocketbook nor my nervous system are up to the task. And because I can't have the best, I don't really bother at all. If I do happen into a cafe now, I wind up being that girl in the corner who's sipping on some decaf atrocity with a slice of gluten-free tea bread and it makes me feel like a total fraud.

But! I've been hearing tales of ardor about a machine that resides at Randy's new place of employment. Besides working in what I consider to be a dream environment about a subject that I am passionate about, he and his fellow Good Eggs peeps have open access to a Ferrari of an espresso machine. All of this makes him rather smug and myself rather jealous. But I put my pride aside during Thanksgiving week to get a tour of the new digs and see this bad boy in action. He walked me through the steps of tamping and frothing, and I daresay that I see a bright future for myself as a barista. I learned that it's extraordinarily difficult to gauge what 30lbs of pressure should feel like and that I seriously love frothing milk.

Randy and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to preferred beans. He goes for a blinding version of bright; I prefer a higher oil to disguise the pucker. I say that I love coffee in Paris; he says the French can't make coffee worth a shit; I roll my eyes. And so it goes. But he's got the machine, so he's one-upped me this time around. My teapot and I will slink off to the sidelines and mind our own business until I win the lottery and get my own machine. Then look out world! Because catching me will be like trying to corral a shooting star. I will be buzzing bigger than a bumble-bee, flying farther than a fighter jet. And until it gives me a nervous breakdown, it will be pure caffeinated bliss.

Muse of the Day: Curried Pumpkin Soup

2011-11-13T21:13:00.001-07:00

Theo and I ate an entire pie last week. There's really no delicate way to say that; it's just a fact. It was an apple-pecan pie (I know, I'd never had one, either), and it totally wowed me. I had plucked the apples off our trees the morning before our first snow of the season. I don't really love apple pie, and last year I was big into this apple cinnamon bread thing, but I wasn't particularly inspired this time around. I briefly considered my hand at apple turnovers, but then I stumbled upon a recipe for apple-pecan pie and thought "Why the hell not?". Pecan pie is one of my favorites, and I needed to do something with the apples... it was a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone moment.

Well, let me tell you. It was seriously fabulous. But it wasn't exactly photogenic. Apple-Pecan pie is pretty much brown and lumpy. The lumpiness was interesting, but the brown was perfectly monochromatic. And every time I pulled out a slice to take a photo, I ate it. So there was that. And then it was gone. Poof! It was sweet and salty and crunchy and smooth. The tart baked apples cut the richness of the pecan pie and then we'd pour cream over the top and wow - autumn brilliance.

But that's not a photo of a pie up there, that's pumpkin soup. Readers will know that I am a giant fan of kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), and I was able to harvest about six from our garden this year. I also had one rogue American pumpkin plant that decided to grow on its own and produced one 7" pumpkin. Inspired this week by a dinner at Caroline's (at which she was roasting a pumpkin), and a blog post by my sister-in-law-to-be (in which she requested a good pumpkin soup recipe), I decided to put a dent in my harvest and get cooking.

My first victims were one of the larger kabocha and the sole American. I roasted them together, but it's remarkable to me how bland the American pumpkin is. Yes, I'm biased, but it tasted watery and like not much of anything. The kabocha, on the other hand, is like a nutty sweet potato. It's perfectly interchangeable in pies, muffins, and soups, and I think the end result is a product with a more complex flavor and a brighter color. I went ahead and roasted the seeds while I was at it, sprinkling them with salt and paprika before tossing them on a cookie sheet... Waste not, want not, right?

The curried pumpkin soup I like to make is a festival of flavors. It tastes like something you might eat on a magic carpet ride, and it only ever gets "Wow's" when people take their first bite. It has ample cardamom, ginger, cumin and coconut milk, and you can add as many red pepper flakes as your heart desires. The result is something spicy, sweet and a little bit exotic.

The recipe is from Gourmet magazine and resides here. Beth can't do dairy, so the only item she'll have to substitute is the 2T of butter which is an easy fix. I substituted the canned pumpkin with my own roasted kabocha/pumpkin blend, and I also left out the curry leaves and used 1tsp of red curry paste instead. Getting creative with leftovers tonight, I threw in a few cooked shrimp and topped it with the roasted seeds which I daresay was even better than before. So if you're looking for an easy pumpkin soup recipe, give this one a whirl. I'd suggest rice pudding sprinkled with cinnamon for dessert, but that's only if you're out of apple-pecan pie.

Profile of the Week: Lyn

2011-11-02T08:30:00.000-06:00

Name: Lyn

Profession: Rock Climbing Gym Manager

T43: What are you eating rightnow?

Lyn: Oh my god, I have no ideawhat they are. Bizarre Indian sweets.

T43: Why’d you choose that?

Lyn: Because I’d never tried them before and they look verystrange. They’re really colorful – I got all the ones that don’t have flour ordairy.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.

Lyn: It was when I was in the orphanage in Korea. I remembergetting oranges in my Christmas stocking and that was a really big deal. Foodwas important because there probably wasn’t a lot of food. It was a Christianorphanage. I was there for a month by the time it was Christmas. My first Christmas!I don’t think I’d had an orange before.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?

Lyn: That really changes depending on the season. Most recentlyit was plain yogurt, almond butter and honey. Most almond butters seem really processed,but the kind I really like was like barely ground up almonds.

T43: A local thing?

Lyn: Yup. You can get it on the way to Yosemite. But I don’teat that right now because I had to stop. I was eating it twice a day. I wasgoing through jars of honey.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.

Lyn: Chocolate & baked goods, tea, ice cream. I love icecream.

T43: What’s your ice cream flavor?

Lyn: It varies. Usually chocolate. I used to be into thisgelato place. Then this sorbet place. Now it’s cold.

T43: I hear you used to hide food under your bed. What wasthat all about?

Lyn: Who told you about that?? I did that when I first cameto the US after I was adopted. I was seeing more food than I was used to. Ithink I was trying to store some away. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gottenbetter. But if I don’t know what my next meal is, or have a plan, I get a lotof anxiety about that. But I think I’ve gotten better. I was four. Sheesh.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?

Lyn: Eggs. OK, no, I’m just kidding. But we do eat eggs alot after climbing. It’s easy and high in protein. But it’s not my favorite thingI make.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?

Lyn: Oh my god. Oh my god! All the time! One of my favoritecooking disasters, and this is only because my mom documented it, we were in highschool and making fudge. Three batches of bad fudge. We kept forgetting stuffin the recipe. It took us an hour.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?

Lyn: Rice or pasta.

T43: What dish best describes you?

Lyn: Pad kee mao – it’s a Thai noodle dish. My currentfavorite item – it’s spicy and in one dish you get everything: healthy stuff,comfort, all the vegetables. Yum.

T43: Favorite pie?

Lyn: Chocolate cream pie. There’s a really good one from abakery near my house.

T43: What was your first restaurant experience?

Lyn: It was the first week that I came to America, and Iwent with my family. When the food came I got really excited. I’d never been toa place with all that food and everyone got something different! I literallyjumped on the table because I was so excited. I had to look at everyone’splates.

T43: So not much has changed?

Lyn: Except I don’t jump on the table!

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?

Lyn: Life is short, eat it while you can.

T43:That was an amazing interview – Thanks, Lyn!

Muse of the Day: Halloween Candy

2011-10-31T20:36:00.002-06:00

Dear Goblins and Zombies: BOO! Please raise your hand if you can't read this because you've already slipped into diabetic shock. My long decent into sugar hell started two weeks ago when I had to give a short talk at a work conference and realized I was the only person in three days worth of presenters who didn't prepare any slides. My strategy for avoiding the use of Power Point included shelling out Halloween candy to the people who bothered to listen to what I was saying. It was a remarkably effective tool, and it goes to show that even adults are easy victims for the sugar fairy.

Anyhow, I had purchased that bag of candy several days prior to the conference. I had already started pilfering in the car on my way home from the store, and then for reasons that I can't quite explain, I hid the bag when I got home. Why? I have no idea. There's some food-shame thing going on there. Or maybe I have hoarding tendencies. Regardless, I stashed it inside one of our canvas shopping bags, and then stuffed that bag into the armoire by the front door. Theo would never find it.

He would, however, find my wrappers. Everywhere. Doh! And as he was emptying my trash one day, he asked where on earth all those Snickers wrappers kept coming from. I feigned ignorance, which he didn't believe, and then because I felt so sheepish, I started leaving him pieces here and there. A Reeses on his notebook. A Snickers on top of his printer. Sort of like the Halloween Easter Bunny. My philosophy was that if I was sharing, there was no harm in the fact that I was hogging the rest of the bag. It was actually super weird of me.

That bag came and went, and we still had over a week before Halloween. It's a miracle my pants still fit. I loaded up on Round 2 because we have an insane amount of kids in our neighborhood. It's a frenzy out there and if you don't have candy, you'd better leave town because they'll hunt you down and kill you. So, I've been dishing out candy all night long. I'm wearing a pair of googly-eyes that stick out from a head-band that is way, way too tight, threatening to squeeze my brains out from my ears. I'm drinking wine to make this task bearable, and if the bowl is just sitting there, what's the harm in eating a few more pieces? I will not feel well tomorrow, but then again, neither will anyone else.

We're at about the time when I shut down for the evening. 8:30pm and beyond seems to be mostly teenagers, and I find them to be far more annoying than the little dragons and princesses and peacocks that precede them. I just had two of the chaperoning fathers also ask for candy - they actually had their own treat or treat bags. That was an awkward first. I couldn't help but laugh, but I'm thinking it's about time to turn out the lights and hide in the back part of the house.

Profile of the Week: Emily

2011-10-27T08:47:00.000-06:00

Name: Emily Greenwood
Profession: Landscape Architect

T43: What are you eating right now?
E: I was eating delicious Mexican pizza and mojitos. With good friends.
T43: That was Mexican pizza?
E: That’s what I call it. I know it’s not true Mexican pizza.
T43: So is a Mexican pizza a pizza without pizza sauce?
E: I just call it that. I think of it as Mexican pizza because of the lime and jalapenos.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
E: I remember sitting on the counter when my mom cooked bread. The thought of fresh bread with honey on it makes me very happy.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?
E: I’m going to have to say dark chocolate dipped in peanut butter.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.
E: Milk, strawberries, and toast.
T43: Do you grow your own strawberries?
E: No, but I wish I did.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
E: I want to say pizza, but that seems so boring because that’s already on here.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
E: Oh yeah. I created a new stovetop when my ginger and simple syrup boiled over. It became, like, ginger concrete. I had to hire someone to chisel it off.
T43: Seriously? What were you making?
E: I was making chai.

T43: What’s your go-to ingredient?
E: Tortillas.

T43: What dish best describes you?
E: That’s a tricky question. Very introspective. Green enchiladas. That kind of encapsulates me.

T43: Favorite pie?
E: What if I don’t really like pie?
T43: Favorite cake?
E: Strawberry shortcake.
T43: You should really grow your own strawberries.
E: Yes, this is what I’m learning from this interview.

T43: Describe a childhood meal.
E: I grew up in back-woods Texas. Like the 1920’s version. We were super hungry. I’d put oil on chips. We had homemade soymilk. So awful… I swear it has no nutritional value. I didn’t have chocolate until I was 15! I clearly remember the Easter when we had our first chocolate - we were in total disbelief. We also shopped at the first Whole Foods. For real. It was out of his house. But basically, we were vegans who grew our own food. I remember things like lentil loaf and nut burgers. Ironically, my parents have since turned into pretty hardcore carnivores.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
E: I believe fully in eating what you feel like eating. And lucky for me that never feels like McDonalds hamburger. I think you should honor what you feel.
T43: Thank you, Emily!

Muse of the Day: Donuts

2011-10-24T07:42:00.000-06:00

This past Friday was gearing up to be nothing less than the most phenomenal day in the entire universe. And this is worth noting only because I had four seriously miserable days leading up to it. The chaos at work had reached a crescendo by Tuesday, and I spent the rest of the week doing all I could to keep myself together and not spiral completely out of control.

In an effort to gain a handle on my life again, I had, for the first time in weeks, claimed 8 hours of sleep on Thursday night. There's a reason they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture. And when you finally catch up, it's like BAM! I can do this! Bring it on! So I woke up early on Friday, all pistons firing. I had an uber-productive writing session. I did my ab workout while I got ready. I fed the dogs, I fed myself, and in a moment of Oprah-like clarity, I even shelled out some sage relationship advice to a dear friend who is currently squatting in our spare bedroom. All this while happily swinging my legs from the perch of my kitchen counter! Everything was so clear! So simple! I skipped out the door by 8:30am, birds singing, ponytail bobbing, lip gloss shining in the cheerful, morning sun.

To celebrate my amazing morning of productivity, I had this brilliant idea to bring donuts into work. Donuts! Yay, donuts! Who doesn't love donuts?!? In the 4.5 years I have worked at this office, no one has ever brought in donuts. We bring in black bean soup, or goat cheese and vegetables, or some ridiculous vegan protein shake. We all drink tea. Sometimes I go out on a limb and make myself hot cocoa. But donuts? Not even once. I was about to change that with my bright-eyed, bushy tailed optimism. It became my personal mission to see that we had 'Friday donuts' that day, just like millions of other offices all across the country.

As a side-note to this story, it turns out that Boulder does not have a single donut shop. In a town of nearly 100,000 people, a town that was just named Foodiest town in the entire US of A by Bon Appetit, a town that is home to about 25,000 drunk university students and has medical marijuana dispensaries on every street corner, you'd think someone would notice this under-served market. But I was not deterred. I popped into a grocery store and filled up a box with a colorful, chocolatey, mapley array of goodness. And here's another side-note to this story: there are a lot of frickin' people buying donuts on a Friday morning. I never knew. There's a girl standing there filling up the display case just as fast as shoppers are clearing it out. I was surrounded by like-minded, donut-buying individuals. It was fun! I was part of this new gluttonous culinary world.

I bounced into work, proudly displaying my donut bounty. I was very, very popular for like five minutes. I did an informal sociological study, seeing if people chose the type of donut that I had predicted they might choose. I was correct on all accounts except for one when I had pegged our Russian immigrant office manager as a chocolate kind of gal. She opted for the cinnamon sugar number instead which caught me off guard but did not ruin my average.

I dove into my custard-filled, chocolate covered slice of heaven with gusto. It was all creamy awesomeness and suddenly I was unleashed. Setting up meetings! No, wait! Let's postpone that meeting! Emailing clients! Emailing more clients! Calculating shit! Spreadsheet nirvana! Massive stacks of paper moving to the left side of my desk! The right side! The left side! All the while my foot is tap-tap-tapping!! I am making phone calls so fast that I don't even know who I'm calling!! Holy cow, this morning is A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!

Until, suddenly, it wasn't. The crash and burn that happens when you come down from a donut high, especially if you don't eat more than three donuts a year, especially if you hardly even eat wheat, is wicked. I screeched to such a grinding halt that there were skid marks on my ass. It was like diving head first into a brick wall. I was juggling seven balls in the air simultaneously, all of which came tumbling to the ground in a split second.

Things became really ugly, really fast. In my panic, I couldn't stop working at a frenetic pace, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, I barely knew my name. I became incoherent. I wanted to crawl under my desk and go to sleep. I had to think about everything out loud, only because that was the only way I could figure out what the hell I was doing. And when 6:30pm rolled around, and I was literally the only person left in the entire office, and I was still talking to myself, and I was seeing quadruple, well, I wanted to cry. What happened to my amazing, blissful day? How did it all go so wrong?

So this is what I've learned: donuts are meant to be eaten when you are already in a dark, dismal place and need a little lift. They are not a celebratory food that you eat when you are already riding high. May this experience be a lessen to you all.

Muse of the Day: Addi's Birthday Cake Cow

2011-10-09T23:25:00.000-06:00

Where does the time go? Where?! Time goes to Arkansas, apparently. I recently endured a three month stint of commuting to Arkansas. Each and every week, for 12 weeks straight, I was packing my bag, hauling my annoyed self to the airport, and hopping on a terribly small airplane that would deposit me into the far northwest corner of Arkansas where I would schlep myself to a terribly large corporation and lose a few days of my life punching numbers into a spreadsheet in the bowels of a windowless brick building. I don't mean to sound bitter, but it was not a good environment for me. I don't do well in cubicle mazes, nor do I do well having to eat out three meals a day. In Arkansas. It is not my personal recipe for success.

But alas! It was a temporary assignment and I was freed from the shackles of corporate martyrdom in mid June. Towards the end of my tenure when I could smell victory but it was still just out of reach, I decided to treat myself to something distracting. Something to slingshot me back into my normal, real life, something to remind myself that I am not the person who's life I was living, but that that girl still existed and was just around the corner, trying to save me from "Office Space" just as fast as she could. I treated myself to a writing class - an eight week online immersion novel writing extravaganza. The hitch was that it was a revision class, so, in theory, you're rewriting work that already exists.

I had just recently started writing a new novel, but did not have nearly enough material to make it through the class. So I whipped out my 'backup novel', the one that had been shoved into a drawer (c'mon - we all have one...), dusted it off and went to work. And by golly, it was terrible. Simply terrible. I spent each week frantically rewriting the next 10 pages that I had to submit. And when I say rewriting, I mean changing the entire manuscript from first person to third person, moving the setting from Seattle to San Francisco, and weaving in an entirely new subplot that doesn't even exist in the first version. We're not talking grammatical errors, we're talking sweeping overhaul.

I was miserable those first few weeks. I would look at my pages and think, "This is really stupid. Why am I doing this?" And then I would remember that I was doing it to distract myself from an even stupider story, which was my real life. So I continued on. And a funny thing happened about a month into the class, which is that I started to get really attached to my novel again. I saw that it was possible to breathe new life into it, it was developing legs of its own, and I was really rather fond of my main character. And so this, my friends, is a really long answer to where the bleep have I been? I've been rewriting my novel. And it's actually been fun.

But I have all these photos from things I've eaten along the way that I intended to blog about. A food photo backlog, so to speak, and decided to get back at it. I wanted to start with my favorite - the birthday cake cow. I am Auntie Robin to a certain precious Adeline. She turned one year old at the end of May, and come hell or highwater, I was determined to bake her her first birthday cake even if it meant fedexing it from the nether regions of Arkansas. The request was for a cow cake, and after trolling the internet, I decided that it was worth a shot. I didn't bank on having to re-bake the cake the morning of the party since our oven sucks and one of the cake rounds collapsed overnight; but once the panic subsided, I think it turned out really stinkin' cute.

The cow has tiny white eyebrows and chocolate chips for nostrils. For a while, I thought it looked a little like a sheep, but the snout coloring sort of takes care of that. I even made a little personal cake for her that was shaped like a thought bubble and said, "Holy Cow! Addi's One!" I know, super cute, right?

Most importantly, Addi seemed to love it. I have no idea if she recognized it as a cow, but it was a real crowd-pleaser none the less. Maybe next year I'll get to make a duck?

Muse of the Day: Jo's Sushi

2011-05-30T22:37:00.000-06:00

I have two parents who are remarkably different in countless ways. Among other things, one parent spends as much time as possible hanging out in Memory Lane while the other one doesn’t even know that such a lane exists. Though the stories that my father procures can seem repetitive, I realize that they’ve helped me assemble a vivid image of his childhood over the years. I know who his three best friends were, that they once “borrowed” a car for a joyride, that one of the four died in Vietnam, that my father was crowned Posture King in his typing class in the 8^th grade, and that his mother kept a jar of homemade rhubarb sauce on the table.

My mother, on the other hand, is a whole different story. The images I have of her childhood are sparse. In fact, when pressed, I can only think of two stories at all. One involves the joy of splitting a banana with her two sisters and their mother in post-war Japan, and the other involves losing a treasured earring in the locker room at her new high school just after she immigrated to the United States. It’s not that she doesn’t value her past, it’s just that it doesn’t occur to her to remember it.

My mother’s mother, Grandmother May, passed away this February just a few months shy of her 96^th birthday. She was the matriarch of her clan of three daughters, and we traditionally gathered in the Bay Area in mid-April to celebrate her birthday. This year, we held her memorial in lieu of a birthday party on Easter weekend and it honored the same celebration of life that our past gatherings have focused on. Though it marks the first year that she was not in attendance at her own party, I realized that I learned more about my grandmother’s life that day, and subsequently my mother’s and aunts’ childhoods, than I have ever known before. The memorial speeches illuminated an otherwise dormant history, the stories akin to adding color to a black and white painting. And what fascinating tales! Wealth, poverty, war, peace, international clashes, samurais and monks. Like many lives, they are stories of opposites and extremes coming together, drifting apart, and settling into a space somewhere in the middle.

The one indisputable theme that came up in everyone’s shared recollections was May’s fondness for good food. It’s a trait that has wedged itself firmly into each subsequent generation, and had she been at all Internet savvy, she may have been interested to know that one of her granddaughters had a blog devoted to food. Unlikely though. She would not want to waste her time reading about food when she could spend that time actually eating it. Her birthday celebrations hopped around to a few different venues throughout the years, but we frequently gathered at the Carnelian Room in San Francisco (for stellar ambiance) or Jo’s Sushi in Walnut Creek (for stellar food).

The Carnelian Room was always a grand affair. Though they closed a year and a half ago, they are still famous for having unrivaled views of the Bay and a whiff of entitled abundance. The food, endless stations of it, was neither here nor there, but we went for the general experience. Jo’s, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. The restaurant is tucked into a rather nondescript strip mall in Walnut Creek and shuttles out some of the best traditional Japanese food that I’ve had. The employees there remember Grandmother fondly for her healthy appreciation for their food, and so it was Jo’s that provided a vast spread of seriously exquisite sushi for May’s memorial feast.

When I say vast, I’m talking about four trays worth. Each tray was maybe one and a half feet by three feet, thereby giving us an 18 square foot display of Japanese delicacies. The presentation and attention to detail provided high ‘Wow-Factor’, and we all whipped out our cameras, snapping dozens of photos paparazzi style, falling victim to that age-old stereotype that involves the Japanese and their fondness for clicking shutters. I’ve seen boats of sushi, I’ve seen platters of sushi, but I have never seen a spread so large for so few people. There were probably around 18 of us. Which means that after the photo spectacle came to an end and we dove in for a proper pig-out, each person devoured one square foot of sushi, give or take.

It seems like a lot, but I’m sure that May would have been proud of us. I, for one, was stuffed. And totally taken with the carrots that were carved into little cherry blossoms. So if you were watching, Grandma, we had a wonderful feast in your honor. The wasabi was hot, the fish heads were intact and the stories went round and round. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us – you lived a wildly successful 95+ years.

Muse of the Day: Easter Cupcakes

2011-04-25T19:45:00.000-06:00

Oh, Easter. A holiday dedicated to pastels and turd-shaped chocolates. I am often in the Bay Area for Easter, mostly because Grandmother May’s birthday was April 16th and it’s come to be the expected time for the Kikuchi clan to get together for some serious feasting. Therefore I’m often flying on Easter afternoon, and I can't remember if it was last year or perhaps the year before, but I remember sitting at the gate in Oakland Airport watching a young man and woman who took some seats near me.

I couldn’t help but stare, partly because of our seating configuration and the direction I was facing, but mostly because of the fact that they were both morbidly obese and I was riveted by the fact that they never stopped eating. They had arrived at the gate area with pizza, giant soft pretzels, cheese sauce and sodas in tow. When those were finished, she produced from her bag a gallon sized zip lock that was filled with pasta salad, and he took out a gallon sized zip lock that was filled with Easter candy. They chatted and ate and chatted and ate, and since they were on my airplane sitting across the aisle from me, I could see that this feeding frenzy continued on for the duration of the flight. It was at least three hours of solid eating.

This was the first time that I can remember really being able to see how difficult it would be to weigh that much – I’m guessing around 400 lbs each – and still travel. Airplane seats are not known for their girth. But what was more concerning to me was that they were both quite young – I would guess early 20’s – and the physical toll that their weight was taking on them was already so evident. Talking literally made this woman out of breath. I could hear her gasping for air in between sentences, I’m guessing because the load on her organs was simply too much. How on earth could you expect your lungs to have to expand against so much flesh? And her poor heart!! I was both transfixed and stressed out for them, wondering for the past year now at what age they’d be doomed to have their first heart attacks. I was reminded of them again today when I was sitting at my gate at SFO airport and pulled some Easter colored Jordan Almonds out of my bag. I felt a bizarre sense of guilt for sitting at the gate nibbling on Easter candy, but then I remembered that I wasn’t 400 pounds and I wasn’t eating a gallon’s worth. Still. I shouldn’t judge.

I’m getting side tracked though. Easter lunch was at Hisako’s this year. Honey baked ham and Asian sweet potatoes. Salads, pickled vegetables and fluffy Japanese rice, of course, sprinkled with purple umeboshi flakes. So stinkin’ good! My contribution was Easter cupcakes – white cakes with butter cream frosting and toasted coconut on top. I stuck a pastel colored almond Jordan into the shredded coconut and they looked like little Easter eggs sitting in nests. Very Martha of me. I had to make the cake part out of a mix, which I decided was an acceptable cheat since I wasn’t cooking in my own kitchen, but I did add some coconut milk into the recipe as my own little touch. I made the frosting from scratch, which was buttery awesomeness, and Theo manned the toasting of the coconut and application of almond bling. Randy taste tested and gave everything a thumbs-up, so it was truly a family affair. The charming cupcake presentation may have taken the edge off the scolding we received at our late arrival for lunch, but only just. Happy Easter, everyone!!

Muse of the Day: Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream Sundae

2011-03-13T19:24:00.004-06:00

I am terrifically claustrophobic. The only true panic attack I've ever had occurred in an elevator at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in 1998. By complete coincidence, I happened to go on what was National Holocaust Rememberance Day. I didn't even know such a day existed, but when I showed up and saw umpteen billion school children pouring out of buses with their matching t-shirts on, I knew something was up. Needless to say, the place was packed.

The main exhibit starts on the fourth floor, requiring an initial elevator ride up from the lobby. I was one of the first to step in and noticed immediately that the elevator was very stark. Slate steel, remarkably sterile, and, dare I say, awfully reminiscent of a gas chamber. I don't know if this was their intent or an idea I came up with on my own or something I overheard from someone else in the elevator with me, but the idea stuck. People kept piling in behind me, so I moved to the back of the elevator, then more people piled in and I secured the back left corner, then more people piled in and I lowered my head and stared at everyone's shoes. I've honestly never seen so many people in one elevator. Ill tidings were already welling up inside my head. There was no room to even lift an arm and we were all standing there, my back and left shoulder trapped up against the flat steel walls of this box, my right shoulder and nose pressed against two strangers. Then the doors slid closed.

Gas chamber likeness aside, the other striking feature about this elevator is that it is a painfully slow elevator. As in SLOOOOW. As in so goddamn slow, the riders actually have no sense that the thing is moving. That museum elevator is deafeningly silent. For all you know, you are just standing in a large metal trap, unable to move, and you have no sensory feedback telling you that you're actually going anywhere. Four floors have never felt so far away. And so there I was staring at all of these shoes, trying to keep my thoughts intact, trying to regulate my breathing, but recognizing the thoughts that are building to a crescendo inside my head:
"Why aren't we moving?"
"Wait, are we moving?"
"Holy shit, is this thing ever going to get going?"
"Is this elevator broken?"
"How broken?"
"Why is this taking so long?!?"
"WHY AREN'T WE MOVING?"
"Oh my God... this elevator needs to MOVE."
"Jesus! What the hell is going on? I need to get out of here!!!"
"OUT! I need to get the fuck OUT. OH MY GOD MOVE PEOPLE! EVERYONE STOP BREATHING! JUST STOP IT!! I NEED MOTHERFUCKING OUT!!!"

At about this point I finally lift my head because I know I am on the verge of becoming That Person - the crazy girl in the back who begins screaming in total hysteria. I instinctively know that my face has gone pale. My eyes are simultaneously welling up with tears and darting all across the ceiling, looking over everyone's heads for an out, but it is all solid, flat, brushed steel and my heart is thumping so loudly in my chest that the person I am wedged against must have been deaf to not notice and there is a whooshing in my ears that tells me I'm going to black out and I try to close my eyes but the whooshing gets louder and I don't know if it's my head or heart that's about to explode but I am having a total systems meltdown. In public. And I don't care because I just want the hell out of that elevator.

And then, just like that, the doors open. We had been moving that entire time. I literally claw my way out in front of all four billion people that are stuffed in there. I don't care that I am elbowing children in the head and strong arming strangers' shoulders to get out of my way, but I explode out from that elevator in a cold sweat, a quivering wreck, not a fraction of a second too soon.

So when I called to schedule an appointment for my first ever MRI this week and the nice lady on the other end of the phone asked me if I was claustrophobic, I did not hesitate to say yes. She recommended I get a prescription sedative from my doctor, a suggestion that I considered briefly, but decided to not act upon. I don't know why I didn't, nor do I know why I make such stupid decisions sometimes. False sense of bravado? Stupidity? Laziness?

I walked to my appointment from my house, and on the way over, I began second guessing my decision. I was starting to have anxiety about the whole thing. The MRI was going to be done on my brain, which is reason for anxiety anyways. My head needed to be in the middle of the tube - it's not like I could just stick my head in the end as one in my situation would hope. So when I arrived for my appointment, I was already a little keyed up, and this is when I found out that they were going to strap me to an IV (another first) that pumped some rare earth element through my body while this machine scanned my brain.

The lady working on my IV was pleasant enough, but things continued their downhill trend when she could not get the IV in. She poked and prodded at my arm, muttering to herself the whole time. I tried to ignore her, but I sensed the process wasn't proceeding as planned which was confirmed when she finally pulled the thing out and I looked down to blood squirting out of my arm. Then I was overcome by this strange sense of needing her to feel ok about the whole thing, mostly because I thought if she got stressed out then her skill set was going to diminish even further. So I cheerfully offered, "No problem! I have another arm!". But she became nervous. And I could tell because her level of idle, dissociated chit chat went through the roof as she worked on my other arm. We chatted briefly about the weather ("Quite windy today!") and hair ("Do you use an allergen-free shampoo?") before she asked if I was an athlete.
Me: "Yes! I'm a rock climber!"
IV Lady: "Ohhhh. Really? Do you climb El Cap?"
Me: "No, no. I'm mostly a boulderer. I'd love to climb El Cap though. I have a dear friend who's really great at that stuff. I'm hoping I can get her to take me up there someday."
IV Lady: "My neighbor fell off of El Cap."
Me: Face falling... "What?"
IV Lady: "Yeah. She and another gal were climbing up there. They don't know what happened. One fell and pulled the other down with her."
Me: Speechless, wide-eyed, jaw dropped to ground, trying to conceive of her neighbor and partner plummeting some 2,000 feet to their deaths. My heart palpitations begin in earnest.
IV Lady: "Ok! You're ready! In you go..."

And with that, she shuffled me off into the tube. I wanted to kill her. Just pop her one in the nose and scream, "You are horrible at your job! I hate you!"

On a side note, MRI tubes are much smaller than they appear in the movies. When you have an MRI done on your brain, they stick your head under a caged helmet-type thing that comes down over most of your face. I don't know if it's attached to the bed itself, but I was under the impression that I would not be able to sit up without scooting myself out from under the cage. Pillows are wedged around your helmet so that you can't move your head side to side, either. They drape a thick shield over your body, give you ear plugs, and provide a panic button for you to hold in one hand. I also begged for a washcloth to cover my eyes with which the kind lady draped over my face, under the masked helmet. Then they push a button and you slowly get pulled into the machine, into a place of great medical mystery and suspense. You have thoughts about panicking, knowing that you are currently trapped under a helmet cage, under a heavy organ protecting blanket, stuffed inside of a tiny tube, with IV's and panic wires all strapped around your arm. I won't lie. It is an incredibly distressing place to find yourself. I knew that if I lost my marbles, I was going to have things ripping out and flying off all over the place. And so I went into meditation mode. One breath in. One breath out. Another breath in. Another breath out. Rinse and repeat for 40 minutes. Forty #%*# minutes! Every time my brain started wandering off into hell again, I would steer it back to my diaphragm. What else can you do? The bottom line here is that if someone offers you drugs, for God's sake, take them.

So what does any of this have to do with anything? This is a food blog, for crying out loud! Well, when I finally got pulled out of that machine, I had held it together, but only just.
"You OK?" she asked. "Your eyes look teary..."
"Heh heh," I say. "I was just concentrating. Hard work... are we done?" I say wiping tears from my face. I get dressed and leave the building, walking home in a complete traumatized stupor. When Theo gets home, he asks what would make me feel better. And all I can think of is an ice cream sundae.

I haven't had an ice cream sundae in years. Nay, decades. Ice cream sundaes have changed a lot in that time, mostly because they have so many wild flavors now. And that's just fine for a single scoop or two, but when you're talking about a sundae, simple is best because it's about the summation of parts. You can't have kitchen sink ice cream flavor #1 and candy bar collision ice cream flavor #2 and mix them together with syrups and wild, colorful toppings and wind up with anything edible. This is one of those cases where too much is, well, too much. So I picked vanilla and strawberry for my ice cream flavors, fudge and caramel for my syrups, and garnished with some simple chopped nuts. Throw some whipped cream and a cherry on top? It was awesome. Totally amazing, actually. I loved every single bite. So, thank you, Haagen-Dazs. You saved the day. I don't have a photo because it didn't last very long, but trust me, it was perfect.

MRI results? I do, in fact, have a teeny little tumor that has attached itself to my pituitary. But it is certainly benign, quite treatable with medication, and nothing that I am actually very concerned about, so you shouldn't be, either. Remember all that gelatin I was eating because my hair was falling out? I can thank my tumor for that (the hair falling out, not the gelatin). I am also blaming it for every single stupid thing I've ever done ("I couldn't help it!! That was my brain tumor acting up!"). It has become the butt of every single joke in my house.
Theo: "Do you think you'll be able to find the car in a parking lot now?"
Me: "Probably!"
Theo: "Do you think you'll stop getting lost while driving now? Will you know which way North is?"
Me: "Probably!"
Theo: "Do you think you'll become a better whistler now? Because you really suck at that."
Me: "Watch it."

Profile of the Week: Betty

2011-03-02T09:35:00.001-07:00

Name: Betty
Profession: Home Economist

T43: Tell me about your earliest food memory.
B: It probably involved a roast and stews at Grandmother's.

T43: Describe a typical dinner when you were a child.
B: My mom's food. She’s a sloppy cook. Noodles Romanoff, spaghetti, chicken and wild rice. There was always a vegetable, and it was always nutritious. No gourmet cuisine, though.

T43: I know you’re a vegetarian - how long and for what reasons?
B: Twelve years. I just don’t like the texture of meat. I don’t like cooking it. I tried going back to eating meat, but it didn’t work.
T43: What was it that you tried?
B: Just roasting a chicken, but it grossed me out.

T43: Favorite Pie?
B: My grandmother's pecan pie.

T43: Do you eat differently now that you have three children?
B: Yes! Meals need to be convenient, kid friendly, and there's more focus on the nutritional value of a meal. They don't even eat the same as me when I was a kid. They ate half a tray of sashimi yesterday. I didn’t even have that until I was an adult.

T43: Name your comfort food of choice.
B: Creamed eggs and spinach. It's just hard boiled eggs with cream sauce and spinach - yum!

T43: Your go-to ingredient in the kitchen?
B: Calrose rice! You can’t go wrong with Calrose rice, a piece of fish, and greens.

T43: What's your favorite meal to cook?
B: I don’t really like to cook. I do it because I have to. My favorite thing to do is bake. Bread or cakes.
T43: What's your favorite cake?
B: I just made a sour cream spice cake for a friend’s birthday. That’s pretty high up there.

T43: Favorite splurge food?
B: I let myself have dark chocolate. There’s a health benefit.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
B: I have a New Year's resolution: I want to take my family more towards the whole foods approach... less processed. Yesterday, lunch was rice, tomago, sashimi and edamame. Also, being married to someone half Japanese has really opened my eyes to the food!

T43: Thanks, Betty!

Profile of the Week: Rudy

2011-02-23T09:08:00.001-07:00

Name: Rudy
Profession: System Administrator

T43: What was your earliest food memory?
R: Some kind of sushi. Or maybe it was sashimi.

T43: Describe a typical dinner when you were a kid.
R: Spaghetti and meatballs. My mom didn’t work too hard at cooking.
T43: Really? She's super into food now.
R: She’s more into eating food now than when I was a kid. I don’t know about cooking though.

T43: What's your favorite pie?
R: I don't eat pie. Pot pie.

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
R: Sashimi

T43: What's your go-to ingredient in the kitchen?
R: Olive oil

T43: When did you become a vegetarian? Or pescatarian?
R: I eat fish now, so I was a vegetarian until four years ago. I haven’t eaten red meat since I was 18. I was living in the dorms in UC Berkeley and the hamburgers came in a box marked "Grade D Beef: For Prisons and Dormitories only".
T43: Are your girls vegetarians also?
R: Yup - we tried to feed them meat, but they wont eat it. We got them Happy Meals once from McDonald's, but they each took one bite and threw it down.
R: Wow! You have the only children in America that won’t eat a Happy Meal!!

T43: Favorite meal to cook?
R: I cook a lot of different foods. I guess grilled vegetarian ham and cheese sandwiches.

T43: What's your favorite food splurge?
R: Either pizza or anchovies. Or kimchi. Betty hates the kimchi; she can smell it for a day after I eat it.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
R: Sure. Don’t eat too much. Which means you better make what you eat taste really good.

T43: Thanks, Rudy!

Muse of the Day: Red Velvet Cupcakes

2011-02-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day is many things to many people, most of which are red and heart shaped (the things, not the people). The night before Valentine's I was wandering around the store and happened upon a collection of heart-shaped steaks in the meat department. The item was vaguely disturbing to me for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on... Was it because red meat is notoriously bad for your heart and the steaks seemed a mockery of all things cardiology related? Was it because I could picture the boys in the butcher shop in back saying, "I have a great idea - I'm going to cut today's steaks into hearts" and then going to town with a cleaver? Maybe it was because 99.9% of the time, Valentine themed goods reside in the dessert section and I was thrown off by the category. Regardless, I bought a heart steak for the sheer novelty of it and the check-out clerk and I had a good laugh about how random they were. Then I took it home, chopped it up into little pieces and ate it. Sort of weird in both theory and practice, but still delicious.

For the big V-Day itself, I decided to make red velvet cupcakes. I have heart shaped cake pans, cupcake molds and cookie cutters and there's really only one holiday that they work for. They aren't quite as useless as, say, a Christmas tree cake mold or Jack o'lantern cookie presses, but they're close. They are one of the few holiday-themed things I own, and I actually look forward to baking something whimsical and thematic every year. If it has pink sprinkles, all the better.

The recipe for the red velvet cake was actually for whoopie pies (an Oreo type concoction made up of two cake-type cookies and a smathering of frosting in between) and came from the iPad Gourmet app. I've made a number of Gourmet recipes in my day, and would usually say that they lean on the tasty yet tedious side. The red velvet cakes were quite simple and they certainly looked the part, but they totally missed the mark in taste. Both the frosting and the cake were too sour for one another - the cake required vinegar and buttermilk, the frosting called for cream cheese and lemon juice, and the pairing of the two together qualified as a Cake Fail. I thought of adding more powdered sugar to the frosting to make the two more compatible, but in the end I decided that I didn't like the cakes enough to be bothered.

They did, however, look fabulous. As red as red can be, which goes to show what a bottle of food coloring can do. The batter was something else - the spitting image of tomato paste in both color and texture. The cakes were just as intense in color, and I was fascinated with having produced such a bizarre food. And the funny thing is that when I showed them to a friend, his immediate response was, "Those look just like filet mignon steaks!" Which was totally true when I thought about it.

So I had a steak that looked like a heart and a heart cake that looked like a steak. It was a carnivorous holiday.

Muse of the Day: Toffee

2011-01-19T23:08:00.002-07:00

Right now it's snowing in the sleepy little hamlet of Boulder. It seemed to come out of nowhere, tip toeing over the mountains, ninja-style, and then unleashing it's fluffy whiteness over our previously sunny kingdom. It's a good thing I was cruising the trails with the fur-beasts this morning when all was still beautiful because as I've mentioned before, they are African Hounds and are ill-equipped to cope with spontaneous blizzards.

Theo returned from a literature class this evening, spraying snow across the entryway and retelling his tales of the traffic rodeo that was taking place on his drive over. Boulder isn't a big city, still under 100K people, and the thought of pin-balling through a traffic jam on 9th street is laughable only because walking from our house to campus would have been faster.

On a side note, when I asked how class was, he reports,"It was great except for the beginning. We all had to discuss this poem and people say the most ridiculous crap. Everyone just sitting around blabbing utter nonsense... you totally would've killed it in there! You're so good at that stuff - halfway through I was thinking 'I wish I were Robin right now...'"

I laughed and laughed, but couldn't quite figure out whether I was insulted or flattered.

Anyway, the snow was reminding me of Christmas, not least of all because my neighbors across the street haven't figured out that it's nearing February and they can probably take their Christmas lights down. Just before the holidays, Jodi had the bright idea of making toffee and peanut brittle to give away as her Christmas gifts. I haven't made candy since I was in the single digits, but I have a distinct memory of making cinnamon suckers in our little apartment in Albuquerque. I remembered that a candy thermometer was a crucial component to the process, as is the case for most candies.

Jodi's was broken (turns out you can't ask a meat thermometer to stand in for a candy thermometer), so we did it the old fashioned way of dipping the bubbling strings of corn syrup into bowls of cold water to measure reactions. I might have hesitated if alone, but Jodi is a chemist so this process seemed just up her alley. Baking, more than cooking, is all about kitchen chemistry. A precise amount of this followed by a measurement of that, molecules colliding with the addition of finite quantities of heat that start chain reactions and produce, hopefully, something resembling a cake. But candy making is even more strict, the different phases being demarcated by precise temperatures that you need to check obsessively. "Are we at the soft ball stage or the hard ball stage? Do you consider this stringy or crackly?"

It was a fascinting process for me - sort of like science lab but way more fun. And delicious. She sent a bucketful home with me, and we munched on that for the better part of my two weeks in California. Which does nothing for me now, since it is long gone and I'm craving chocolate covered toffee at this exact moment, on this sweet snowy night, with this nice cuppa tea. Good thing Jodi gave me a candy thermometer for Christmas; too bad I not be braving the elements to get the rest of the ingredients.

Profile of the Week: Mieko

2011-01-12T19:18:00.002-07:00

How does food fit into other people's lives? In the profile series, Tea for Three will showcase short interviews with a wide variety of random folk to get a glimpse of their mind, their stomach, and what the two have to say to one another.

Name: Mieko
Profession: Realtor

T43: What are you drinking right now?
M: Fess Parker Riesling
T43: And why did you choose that?
M: Simply because it's available on the table.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
M: Cookies! They were my cookies - I was the only one that could get rationed cookies. It was the end of the war, all food was rationed. Only the youngest person [in the family] could get cookies. They were on the shelf so I couldn't reach, but I knew they were mine. I was two... they were my cookies and I knew they were my cookies!

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
M: Udon soup noodles.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
M: Yes - many times! I always burn food because I start cooking and then my attention goes elsewhere and then I leave and come back because of the smell of something burning. It's quite often. And now my family knows. But, the coconut never falls far from the tree.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
M: Always slightly under-cook everything. Then you cannot go wrong. Don't burn it.

T43: What are you likely to cook for a celebration?
M: Sushi, cracked crab, roast beef, roast suckling pig. I haven't cooked yet, but I'm going to be cooking it for our anniversary.
T43: Don't burn it.
M: I'm going to slightly under-cook.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
M: Shabu shabu

T43: Is there any particular food from Japan that you miss?
M: Maybe sweet rice cake. Just a sweet bean thing inside.

T43: List three things you couldn't live without.
M: Sticky rice, meat, fish.

T43: What was a typical breakfast for you as a kid?
M: Ok. Miso soup, bowl of rice, a small piece of fish and pickles. But I also have American breakfast, too: toast, margarine, jam. Margarine tasted like a stick of soap. It was really bad. I think it was made out of whale fat - it was very chemical.
T43: I don't think much has changed in the way of margarine.
M: Lard! That's what it is.

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?
M: Extra virgin olive oil.

T43: You have a garden - what's the best thing you grow?
M: Cucumbers and tomatoes. My cucumbers are the best. Better than store bought. And zucchini!
T43: What do you do with all your leftover zucchini?
M: Let it rot and turn it into compost. Once, we put it out on the sidewalk with a sign that said to 'Please take two'.

T43: Favorite pie?
M: Upper Crust peach pie. Upper Crust - it's a brand name. Their crust is really good, very flaky. It's from Whole Foods. You pay upper crust prices, but it's worth it.

T43: Thank you, Mieko!

Profile of the Week: George

2010-12-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

Name: George
Profession: Retired Architect

T43: What are you drinking right now?
G: Fess Parker Riesling
T43: And why did you choose that?
G: Because #1 it was cheap, and #2 we had a picnic at Fess Parker's ranch 3-4 years ago in Santa Barbara. We went on a wine tasting tour after seeing Sideways.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
G: Lentil soup. The only dish my father made was lentil soup. The ingredients call for 1 lb of lentils, chopped up sausage, a bay leaf, chopped cloves, onion and pimento for color. I grew up outside of Chevy Chase, DC. I'm of German heritage, which is where lentil soup came from. Also, the oleo back then was white oleo, or margarine. Inside was a packet of orange dye. You mixed it in to get orange margarine. That was my job, mixing in the dye.

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
G: Lentil soup and scalloped potatoes.

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
G: Lentil soup, scalloped potatoes and raw hamburger: beef tartar. Maybe some capers. And a fresh egg. And an onion, then mush it all up.
T43: Served on toast?
G: Toast points around the outside.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook... besides lentil soup?
G: I'm in a slider phase right now. I'm not very good at it, but I'm learning.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
G: (pause)
Interjection by Wife: Yes! Be honest!
G: I've never had a cooking disaster! I don't cook that much. I must have let something burn, but I forget.

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?
G: Capers

T43: Describe a typical dinner when you were a kid.
G: I grew up during WWII, so it was potatoes, some grungy sort of meat, brussel sprouts. Food was not a memorable part of my growing up. I wouldn't recommend growing up during a war to anyone.

T43: What was your favorite dish from tonight's menu?
G: It was all pretty good... the salad.
T43: Your wife made the salad. Good answer. Is there anything you're hoping will appear on tomorrow's Christmas menu?
G: Dungeness crab with Japanese mayonnaise. Japanese mayonnaise is better and comes in a much more interesting jar.

T43: Favorite pie?
G: Lemon meringue.

T43: What is your most fond food memory of your time in Guam?
G: Well, not the fruit gnats. The lumpia - Philippine food like deep fried vegetable rolls. Some had pork and cabbage.

T43: What dish best describes you?
G: Scrambled eggs. I have no idea. What kind of question is that? Hangtown fry! That's the food that best describes me: Hangtown Fry.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
G: Eat well and die young.

T43: Thanks for the interview, George!

Profile of the Week: Jodi

2010-12-22T11:56:00.001-07:00

Name: Jodi
Profession: Chemistry teacher, Mom [and BFF of 28 years]

T43: What are you drinking right now?
J: Tempranillo by Volteo
T43: Why'd you choose that?
J: Because Kraig likes it and the liquor store down the street sells it. They allow dogs.

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
J: Beans and rice.
T43: Good answer. Your leftover beans and rice once saved me from the worst hangover ever...

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
J: There are so many different things! Right now beans, rice, and tacos. Maybe bagels.
T43: What's your bagel flavor?
J: I like onion, but we just get regular. Sometimes I want them to be sweet.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
J: I was in Texas when we used to live on the ranch. We had visitors and were eating ribs. I was gnawing on a rib, trying to get the gristle off, and I lost control and knocked my dad's iced tea all over him. I started bawling - I thought he was going to get so mad at me! I was probably two. I thought for sure he was going to yell at me.
T43: But he didn't?
J: No, but he gave me that look. And then everyone started laughing.

T43: What dish best describes you?
J: I have no idea. A pasta? Spicy. Can we come back to that question?

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
J: Breakfast. I love cooking breakfast! I love making crepes. I think there's something about the morning when you get up, have all this energy and can be creative. You just make a meal with whatever you have around.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
J: Uh, Yes. What? Who hasn't?

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?
J: Tomatoes.

T43: Describe a typical dinner when you were a kid.
J: There were always three foods: a meat, vegetable and a starch.
T43: That sounds pretty balanced.
J: Yeah, but it was home cooking. Fried chicken. Hamburger gravy. There was always a vegetable - we had a lot from our garden. In the winter it was canned veggies. Every once in a while we had rice. But it was always Minute Rice. Which is horrible. Which is why I never liked rice growing up. Unless I ate at your house.
T43: We always had Japanese rice. I wanted Minute Rice! Do you remember once when you spent the night and for breakfast I served you Rice Krispies with sugar, a side of pickles, and lemonade served from a sake carafe?
J: How fun! Pickles are good.

T43: Favorite pie?
J: Chocolate creme pie

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
J: It's not what I live by, but I would say that you don't need a microwave. Anything you cook in a microwave can be done on a stove in the same amount of time and is one hundred times better. Besides, microwaves can take up a lot of space.

T43: So now we're back to that question: What dish best describes you?
J: Can you give me an example?
T43: Do you hate this question?
J: I don't hate it. But I think it's a good question for someone else.

T43: Thanks for the interview, Jodi!

Muse of the Day: Gelatin

2010-12-10T09:15:00.057-07:00

I had a really rough go of things this past September and October. I wrote about part of it here, but had no idea at the time that I wasn't even half way through. The galaxy tossed me into a choke hold and simply wouldn't let go. Every time I thought things couldn't get any worse, some new unfathomable train wreck would come barreling down on top of me. Represented by numbers, the chaos broke down like this:

1 substantial work upheaval
2 massive wildfires
2 packings of all of life's important belongings
1 evacuation
1 Parkinson's diagnosis
1 wedding
2 shocking deaths
1 funeral
1 wedding anniversary
2 birthdays
1 car totaled
all spread over 65 nights, 14 of which I slept in 8 different beds in 5 different states, and another 19 of which I hosted 5 different house guests.

Basically, it felt like I never unpacked, I never stopped crying, and I'm fairly certain I aged a decade. Even just listing that summary right now makes me all weepy eyed again from some deep and shell-shocked part of my heart. While a few of the events listed were actually celebratory, I think I used those moments more as gasps of air. Otherwise I may have just tossed myself off a bridge.

My adrenal glands may be squashed, but the good news is that *I hope* I have made it through to a more routine and stable phase. And what I'm now learning is that when one goes through an episode as described above, one's hair falls out. In massive quantities. Sweet! I've been studying my noggin closely through a wide variety of hotel bathrooms equipped with ghastly fluorescent lights until the evidence became irrefutable: I'm going bald.

Truth be told, losing my hair by the fistful seems like a minor annoyance compared to everything else I had just witnessed. It is, after all, just hair. And it's hat season! And buying wigs was not entirely out of the question. In fact, part of the idea appealed to me. I could be a sassy blond with bangs one day and a raven-haired vixen the next. Fun! Also, I had hair to spare. I have been very fortunate in my life to always have a head of thick, healthy hair. It could be worse. But still. I decided that losing one's hair might also be indicative of other nutritional issues, and so amongst other things, I am learning about the virtues of gelatin.

Gelatin is a pretty weird food when you really think about it. My first thought is of Jell-O, all orange and wobbly, or maybe nuclear green topped with marshmallows, and probably one of the first things I learned to make on my own. I used to pour the powder into a baggie and spend the afternoon dipping my finger into the mix, licking it up one sugary fingerful at a time. At the end of the day I'd have a neon red hand and stains stretching from tongue to ear.

Gelatin is actually a protein that's been extracted from bones, tissue and organs of a variety of animals. Gross. I eat meat (with gusto), so I don't know why this is so disturbing to me. But I've realized that I have a harder time eating gelatin now as an adult than I did as a kid. I keep picturing melted hooves and it's like, ewww. Gelatin is used in a whole host of foods such as marshmallows, gummi bears and even yoghurt. And because it's a collagen, it is reported to be good boost for both nail and hair growth. As a rock climber, I could care less about my nails. But as a vain woman, I'm willing to give it a shot in the hair department. So I've been buying little packets of plain gelatin and mixing them with organic, no sugar-added fruit juice. Better than the Jello-O of my youth and in more reasonable colors, too.

If you do make your own, I recommend diluting the juice with a bit of water, and make sure that you stir the mixture well before popping into the fridge or else you wind up with a really hard layer at the bottom of your dish. I don't know that it'll work, but no harm in trying. It's not like it'll make my scalp even more noticeable than it already is. Ironically, when I was out last weekend I had two separate people tell me how great my hair looked.(?!) So maybe it works, and maybe they were both blind, and maybe it was really dark. Regardless, I'll take it. And I'll take a few hats, too.

Profile of the Week: Jen

2010-12-08T17:57:00.001-07:00

Name: Jen
Profession: Designer

T43: What are you drinking right now?
J: Guiness
T43: Why'd you choose that?
J: Because I wanted something with some substance to it, that was also enjoyable.
T43: Is that usually your beer of choice?
J: Depends on the season. This is my winter beer. My summer beer is Stella.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
J: I've never really thought about food very much. In high school we always had mashed potatoes out of a box. I visited a friend once and they were eating real mashed potatoes. I looked at them as was like, "What's that?"
T43: What clued you in?
J: First it was visual. It wasn't mush. It was a real food, exactly like it was supposed to taste. Before that, I hated mashed potatoes. They were so bland. Actually, my mom wasn't a very good cook.

T43: Are there any dishes that your mother cooked that you've taken with you?
J: No.
T43: Does she think she's a good cook?
J: No. She doesn't like to cook.

T43: What did you like to eat as a kid?
J: I had this thing about Fruit Roll-ups. Any flavor. I'd send in the bar codes for the free gifts. I loved the process and the sweetness. For me, I guess it's about the process of eating.

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
J: If I don't feel good, grilled cheese and tomato soup. Or lasagna.

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
J: Meat, cheese, coffee.
T43: How much coffee do you drink each day?
J: One cup of espresso.
T43: You mean one shot?
J: No. I mean one cup.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
J: Orzo pasta, lasagna and enchiladas. Roast beef. Pot roast.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
J: Oh, yeah. They just come and go. Usually it's when I try to wing it.

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?
J: Salt and pepper.

T43: What food best describes you?
J: Maybe rice because it's a staple, but can go with a lot of things.

T43: Favorite pie?
J: Pumpkin.

T43: You went to Korea recently. What was the most memorable food you had there?
J: I loved how they ate little bits of everything. They had all these dishes: root vegetables, kimchi. My most favorite was sesame leaves pickled in kimchi sauce. You eat it in a single bite. It was kind of like BBQ and you just use the leaves as a vehicle.

T43: It's Thanksgiving today... what's the one thing you hope is on the menu tonight?
J: Something pickled!
T43: That's a midwestern thing, isn't it?
J: Yep!

T43: Thanks for the interview, Jen!

Muse of the Day: Thanksgiving

2010-12-06T23:38:00.001-07:00

Can we talk about Thanksgiving for just a minute? I realize it's all been said and done... people have finished lamenting that fourth piece of pie, have adjusted their waist bands and done their extra 15 minutes on the treadmill. Now we're focusing on the Christmas binge and are suddenly optimistic about having gorged ourselves stupid because our stomachs are stretched, enabling us to plow through that much more food come the next round. Thanksgiving is great training for the holiday season.

So while everyone else has moved on, I'm going to reminisce for just a moment. Thanksgiving just so happens to be my favorite holiday - trumping both my birthday and Christmas. It's a day filled with friends, family and food; there are no gifts, there are rarely any obligations - religious or otherwise. It is a day to stuff yourself silly with some of your favorite people. I love that someone always has an open door policy and hosts all the orphans, and I love the collaborative effort in regards to the dishes. Come one, come all, bring a dish, bring a bottle, bring an appetite! That's my kind of holiday.

Five of us rallied for a jaunt to Moab, Utah this year. A rental house opened up and we shot across I-70, pies in tow. The house was fabulous and spacious - Theo and I lucked out and got the master bedroom, I spent my time marveling at the walk-in closet. I found myself hanging out in there on occasion over the next four days, just because I could. It was the size of all of our closets at home combined. Which isn't saying much, but I was still fascinated. The spaciousness of the house allowed us to host Thanksgiving dinner by default, and we were joined by another 10 or so new and old friends from both Moab and Salt Lake City.

One of the many reasons that Thanksgiving is so fab is because you already know what you're going to eat. There's a turkey. There's mashed potatoes. Gravy, cranberries, pies, yams, rolls and green beans almost always make an appearance. A large group of people can collectively make a killer Thanksgiving dinner only because we all get it. Everyone knows exactly what Thanksgiving dinner is supposed to look like. The venue and company may change, but the menu does not.

We had an enthusiastic group this year, bouldering ourselves silly during the cold, cloudless desert day and then rewarding ourselves with enough bounty to feed an extra dozen. Our bruised fingertips picking away at pumpkins, pecans, potatoes. It turns out that climbers in Utah can cook. Incidentally, I happen to know that climbers in California can cook as well. Climbers in Boulder can not cook, but climbers in Boulder don't actually eat, so I guess that makes sense.

Profile of the Week: Theo

2010-11-18T08:41:00.001-07:00

Name: Theo

Profession: Student/Carpenter

T43: What are you eating right now?

T: Beans and rice.

T43: Why’d you choose that?

T: It’s a complete protein, and I’m too lazy to go to the store and get some kind of meat. Besides, I had a protein shake.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.

T: I remember my mom used to bake bread all the time. It was so embarrassing going to school and having homemade bread for sandwiches. Everyone else had Wonder Bread.

T43: Did you ever trade sandwiches at school?

T: No! No one would accept homemade bread! I never got to drink soda, either.

T43: You were basically deprived.

T: Yup.

T43: What’s your comfort food of choice?

T: Lasagna.

T43: List three foods you couldn’t live without.

T: Broccoli, chicken and water

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?

T: I guess a traditional ragout with penne pasta.

T43: Describe a typical dinner as a kid.

T: We always had a salad. Pretty much every single dinner. And it always came after the meal.

T43: Was it from the garden?

T: Usually. We had to sit down for lunch and dinner. It was always a home cooked meal.

T43: What did you eat for dinner last night?

T: I don't remember. We didn't eat dinner last night, did we? I had a late lunch - salad from Whole Foods then a protein shake and two pieces of fruit.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?

T: I was trying to make pancakes from memory as a kid for my dad and I switched the sugar with salt. I used 3 tablespoons of salt instead of sugar. They were really salty pancakes.

T43: What's your go-to ingredient?

T: Olive oil.

T43: What dish best describes you?

T: Can I pass on that question?

T43: You're way into exercise physiology. Has studying the science of the body changed what you eat?
T: Yes. I think that with studying cell physiology right now, I'm more aware of what pesticides and food preservatives do to you and how they cause mutations and problems later in life.

T43: Favorite pie?

T: Pumpkin.

T43: Thanksgiving is next week. What's one thing you hope will be on the menu?

T: Definitely turkey.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?

T: I do, but I don't always follow it: Everything in moderation.

T43: Thank you, Theo!

Muse of the Day: Charbonnel et Walker Champagne Truffles

2010-11-15T23:19:00.005-07:00

I love champagne. When I sidle up to a bar and order a drink, more often than not I order the bubbly. It's a cheerful and festive beverage, basically making whatever I'm doing a celebration in itself. No one broods over a tall glass of champagne. I used to be a Gin and Tonic sort of girl, especially if it came accompanied with a nice wedge of lime. But I have suspicions that gin gives me brain-shattering headaches the following day. It doesn't seem to matter whether I drink one or one dozen, I wind up feeling like I'm being stabbed behind the eyeballs with an ice pick. So the Number Two drink of choice got promoted to the Number One drink of choice, and now I'm a party-in-a-glass sort of girl.

If you know me at all, you're probably aware that I'm also a wicked chocolate fiend. Chocoholism isn't a unique trait, especially amongst us female types. I happen to work in a company made up of a lot of women, and one sure-fire way to grab our attention is to send over a box of chocolates. We aren't complicated creatures. If that fine box of chocolates is infused with champagne? Then not only do I sit up and take notice, but you'll find me singing from rooftops.

A friendly coworker who is based in England brought me these precise chocolates from across the pond. My boss and I had fooled him into thinking that his job was on the line if he did not bribe us with delicate European goods, a fine trick if I may say so myself. So I became the proud owner of some Charbonnel et Walker Champagne Truffles tucked into the most lovely pink box with gold embellishments.

Apparently, they still care about packaging over there, and the art of presentation is not lost on this particular box. It reminds me of something that might sit on your dresser, something the Queen would reach for when she needed to powder her nose. And I suppose you could powder your nose with it, because the truffles are covered in buttercream and dusted with a layer of powdered sugar - they look like confectionery cotton balls. The chocolate is smooth and buttery, with a subtle hint of champagne, and you thank your lucky stars with each stolen nibble. Honestly, you've never tasted anything better. I certainly hadn't. It was a rare moment when my work world cross pollinated with my food world, and it got me thinking that we should be hiring more people from more countries, because I could get used to this.

When I got the box home and was extolling its merits to Theo, he sampled one and made that face that tells me he would not be scarfing them down any time soon. He doesn't care for the taste of alcohol-infused goodies; I know this about him and expect as much. This is fine by me. I am prone to protecting my little treasures from his greedy fingers, but I felt safe leaving them on the counter knowing that they would not suit his finicky palate. So you can imagine my horror when I went to take some photos of them the other day and there were three left. THREE! That's less than four! Out of eight! I'd only eaten one. All I could scream was, "WTF?!?!". I could hear him snickering from across the house and that sent me stomping in his direction, waving my precious pink box.

Me: "I thought you didn't like these!"
Him: "I think the first one was just strong. They got much better after that."
Me: "Grrrrrr...."

And so there I was, shooting pictures of my anemic box of chocolates, grumbling to myself the whole while about all the greedy people in this world, when halfway through my shoot I inadvertently captured this image:

The nerve!!

Profile of the Week: Deb

2010-10-27T22:07:00.001-06:00

Name: Deb
Profession: Therapist

T43: What are you drinking right now?
D: Rooibos Tea
T43: Why'd you choose that?
D: I love the flavor. Lemon chiffon rooibos. It's a kick ass flavor... don't print that.

T43: What was a typical meal for you as a kid?
D: Lemon chicken with rice and broccoli. And of course I eat the exact same thing now.

T43: What did you eat for dinner last night?
D: Chicken curry soup over rice noodles.

T43: What did you always want to eat as a child, but weren't allowed to have?
D: I don't think there was anything I wasn't allowed to eat.
T43: Really? You had full reign?
D: We didn't have sugared cereal, but I don't remember wanting it.

T43: When you have a craving, what is it?
D: Bread and cheese. Brie and bread... but I also crave ice cream. Mint chocolate chip! But my healthy craving is sushi.

T43: What's your go-to ingredient in the kitchen?
D: Coconut oil.

T43: What's your go-to snack?
D: Almonds. But that's just because they're easy and always there. I don't really enjoy them anymore.

T43: You had a baby recently. Did you have any weird pregnancy cravings?
D: Meatball subs! It's not even something I would normally eat. And plain celery.
T43: Plain celery?
D: Yes - it's the only thing that made me not nauseous.

T43: How do you feel about being a food source?
D: I love it! It's an amazing thing.

T43: As a new mom, what do you find easiest to cook?
D: Beans and rice is a go-to in our household. And the lemon chicken. And buffalo tacos.

T43: What was your first food memory?
D: I had a cookbook and learned how to cook. I made a souffle at age eight. No one in my family could believe it rose! But I didn't know the difference. I have a picture of it.
T43: Was it any good?
D: I don't remember eating it!

T43: Have you ever been kosher in your life?
D: Not even close.

T43: Thanks for the interview, Deb!

Profile of the Week: Judy

2010-10-17T11:28:00.001-06:00

Name: Judy
Profession: Cyclist for Team Kenda/Felt

T43: What are you drinking right now?
J: Yorkshire black tea
T43: Why that out of all the teas here?
J: Drinks with milk seem the comfiest.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
J: My mom was making a cake for Easter in the shape of a rabbit. The frosting was made with shredded coconut...
T43: I can totally see your mom doing that.
J: Pink bow, ears, everything.

T43: What's your comfort food of choice?
J: Tea and toast.

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
J: Salads, eggs, sushi.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
J: At the very least, food is a wonderful thing. Food is fuel. That is to say you really can't expect that when you put bad foods in your body that your body isn't affected by it.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
J: I start with a bed of spinach, then put pasta mixed with red sauce on top, and then a dollop of cottage cheese on top of that.
T43: Cottage cheese?
J: It cools the pasta down.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
J: Most recently it was cooking dinner for Tom. I totally underestimated how long it took to cook chicken. That about showcases my domestic prowess.

T43: What dish best describes you?
J: There are so many ways to go with this! Probably penne arriabbata. The penne is a practical noodle to eat. On a date, you're less likely to get it all over your face. The spice speaks for itself.

T43: Favorite pie?
J: The Thanksgiving classics: pumpkin, pecan, or apple.

T43: What's a typical meal that you would eat as a kid?
J: I loved manacotti night!

T43: What did you eat for dinner last night?
J: Turkey and spinach rolls. That is to say, spinach rolled up in a slice of turkey that I ate while I was doing other things.

T43: What do you usually eat before a race?
J: My teammate just taught me the joys of baby food. She learned it from her coach. 100 calories of protein powder mixed into 300-400 calories of baby food. I eat it three hours before a race. Not particularly enjoyable, but I know how much I'm getting in terms of fuel and it's super easy to digest. Plus, baby food doesn't take effort to cook.
T43: So what's your flavor of choice?
J: Roasted brown rice and bananas. Looking at the flavors out there, I think it's a crime what we feed children!
T43: Do you ever feel funny buying baby food?
J: I do wonder what people think sometimes. I'm dressed like a punk buying jars of baby food, 10 for $10, at Safeway.

T43: Thanks, Judy!

Profile of the Week: Caroline

2010-10-13T14:06:00.000-06:00

Name: Caroline
Profession: Journalist

T43: What are you drinking right now?
C: Gyokuro green tea
T43: Why'd you choose that?
C: It's super good and super expensive. But if you just get a pot, it's super affordable.

T43: Tell me about your earliest memory that involves food.
C: Mom! I was lucky enough to have a mom who was really healthy. My earliest memory was when I was actually allowed to have something bad for me like bread and butter sandwiches.
T43: What kind of bread?
C: We only had whole wheat.
T43: You didn't get Rainbow Bread?
C: No way! Sometimes we had pumpernickel. We'd get cinnamon toast for snacks. Or raw vegetables with salt. Celery, cucumbers. Rabbit food.

T43: List three foods you couldn't live without.
C: Green tea, salt, red licorice.
T43: Red licorice? Really? You don't think it tastes like wax?
C: I like the Panda brand. It's sort of healthy.

T43: Do you have a favorite meal that you cook?
C: I love making chicken soup from scratch. It only has four ingredients: celery, carrots, onion (I think they call that the Western Trinity) and chicken.

T43: Have you ever had a cooking disaster?
C: Oh my God. Which one? I had a disaster making a Dutch Baby... it turned into a half inch thick hard pancake. It's so easy to make actually. Unless they collapse. There was also the split pea soup I made when we were kayaking in Alaska. We were so hungry and it took like an hour and a half and it was burnt and disgusting, but we couldn't have any waste so we had to stuff it all down anyways.

T43: What's your 'go-to' ingredient?
C: Salt. Or raw cookie dough.

T43: What dish best describes you?
C: Macaroni and cheese because it's the perfect comfort food. I try to create that sense of nourishment and comfort and childhood memories in other dishes.

T43: I know you just made 300 ice cream sandwiches for your sister's wedding. How was that?
C: Very tedious. But they turned out to be so delicious! The tedious part was that I only had one cookie sheet. That was a drag. But we got an assembly line going. Ice cream sandwiches are so fun - you can use cookie cutters to make all sorts of different shapes.
T43: What flavor were yours?
C: Just chocolate chip with vanilla. They were a huge hit!

T43: What's your ultimate comfort food?
C: Macaroni and cheese

T43: Favorite pie?
C: Pumpkin. So good.

T43: Do you have a food philosophy?
C: It's different than how I eat! Food should be healthy and enjoyed with friends in a positive environment. I just wish that happened more. It's about enjoyment of life. We're just rushing around eating - I hate that. It shouldn't be a negative experience. I'm trying to change that. I think I have a dysfunctional relationship with food. But doesn't everyone? So many people telling you what you should and shouldn't eat. Cooking is all about transformation.

T43: Thanks, Caroline!!

Muse of the Day: Maple-Apple Pie with Walnut Streusel

2010-10-12T23:38:00.002-06:00

As American as...

It's funny that apple pie thrives in its role as Grand Icon for this country. Surely there were a lot of cooks in other countries (before the U.S. even existed) that would bake up the autumn harvest with some spices and flour. The recipe dates back to the early 1600's for the Dutch - they're the ones the put the lattice on top - but they're trumped by England (of course) who have evidence going back to 1381. The Swedish version doesn't get points for being the early bird, but they had the foresight to pour a spiced dough on top so everything sort of gets baked together. None of this, however, tells me what makes Apple Pie so American.

When I was a kid, we had a piece of property in rural northern New Mexico. Anyone's who been there can appreciate the stunning landscape. It's dotted with a low-key, thriving artists' community, funky adobe houses and a number of apple orchards. Our property had the skeleton of an old adobe structure that someone had started but never finished. Tall grass and weeds had taken over and I spent afternoons there walking around the decaying house footprint, trying to figure out which room would have been which. A relative's two horses were kept on the property, and this was all tucked in between a stream on one side and rows and rows of apple trees on the other.

We never built anything on that land, but I do remember going up there in the Autumn to pick apples, chop wood for our stove and throw a football around. How frickin' American is that? I was as light as a bird, so I didn't really take to the wood chopping bit, but I loved to throw the football around in a big triangle we'd set up between tree stumps. My father once stationed himself a distance away, though now I have no idea how far that was. 10 yards? 15 yards? He said he'd give me $100 if I could throw the football to him from where I was standing. It was questionable, maybe just beyond the point that I was confidant I could reach. But my brother had taught me how to throw the Nerf in the back yard. I actually had a decent arm and a solid spiral for a 7 year old girl.

I settled in to my stance and eyeballed the length between us. It seemed possible. Far, but possible. I wound up and gave it everything I had. There was a second where we all thought I might actually do it - it arced across the sky, closer by the second... But when it bounced on the ground five feet shy of target, we had to call it close but no cigar. My dad was actually sweating it there for a second; I don't think he knew I had been in training. Maybe he would have paid me in apples? The apples on the land were stellar: they were small - a perfect size for my little hands - and I could eat an endless amount of them. Sort of red, sort of green and all sweet-tart crunch.

I think that because of that land, I'm awfully fond of the apple tree in our back yard. It once survived a crushing from a wayward wall during construction of The Shed, and had been on the rebound ever since. It was a great fruit year for a lot of trees in this area, and our crippled apple is no exception. I harvested my crop and was able to wrangle up 8 lbs worth from the little guy. Some got baked for apple toasties, some got tossed into the freezer and the rest volunteered to become a pie. As American as.

Bon Appetit's original recipe for this pie calls for maple sugar. I have sugar, and I have maple syrup, but I do not have maple sugar. My hunch is that if I were baking this pie in Vermont or Canada, I would have no problem finding this key ingredient. But as this whole apple business was supposed to be therapeutic for me, I couldn't be bothered with figuring out where the hell I was going to get my hands on maple sugar. So I did a one-for-one substitution with maple syrup. It retains the maple flavor, but adds a lot more moisture. Hence, the streusel on top is not crispy. It was a little more biscuity. I guess you could call it an American Pie with a touch of the Swedish version thrown in. Next time, I'd hold out for maple sugar, but this recipe still does the trick.

On a side note, have you ever realized how much men love apple pie? Women, not so much, but if I asked twenty men what their favorite kind of pie was, half of them would vote for apple. Why is that?

Maple-Apple Pie with Walnut Streusel

Bon Appetit: October 2010

Ingredients

Crust
1 1/4 cups spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
3 tablespoons ice water

Streusel
1 cup spelt flour
1/2 cups oats
1 cup maple syrup
7 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Pinch of coarse salt
3/4 cup walnuts, toasted, coarsely chopped

Filling
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
2 pinches of coarse kosher salt
3 pounds Jonathan apples, peeled, quartered, cored, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch slices
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Whipped cream

Preparation

Crust

Whisk flour, sugar, and salt in large bowl to blend. Add butter. Using fingers, rub in butter until very coarse meal forms. Add 3 tablespoons ice water. Toss until dough comes together in moist clumps, adding more water by teaspoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.

Streusel

Combine flour, oats, maple syrup, butter, and salt in medium bowl. Using back of fork or fingertips, rub in butter until moist clumps form. Transfer 1/4 cup streusel to small bowl and reserve for filling. Mix walnuts into remaining streusel. Chill streusel while preparing pie.

Filling

Stir maple syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, spices, and salt in large bowl to blend. Add apples and 1/4 cup reserved streusel mixture; toss to combine. Let stand 15 minutes, tossing occasionally.

Position rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 400°F. Roll out dough on floured surface to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter pie dish. Fold overhang under. Crimp edge decoratively.

Spoon filling into prepared crust, mounding in center. Dot with 1 tablespoon butter. Sprinkle streusel over filling; press lightly to adhere.

Bake pie until apples are tender and streusel is crisp and golden brown, covering edge of crust with foil if browning too quickly, about 1 hour 5 minutes. Let pie stand 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream.

Muse of the Day: September Hell

2010-10-09T02:57:00.000-06:00

Oh, September. She can be a fickle thing. This year she not only spent four weeks kicking me while I was down, but she sat on top of me at the end of it all just to make sure I would not rise anytime in the near future. It was a barreling freight train of dramatic events and I, for one, really dislike drama of any sort. But every time I turned around to ask if this was all really happening, I'd get broadsided anew.

The initial episode was an unexpected conversation that left me feeling disemboweled, forcing me to drag myself through some rather unappealing reevaluations. In an attempt to placate my nerves and squash the state of rage I now found myself in, I baked four loaves of chocolate zucchini bread one afternoon. Four! Did I feel any better afterward? No. I felt miserable. But I made it through a shit-ton of zucchini. And at least now I could offer something to our house-guests who were practically tip-toeing around me with nervous, wayward glances.

That particular tantrum shifted to the back burner 48 hours later. A raging inferno had broken out in the hills just West of Boulder, a fire that would eventually destroy nearly 170 homes and 7,000 acres. Theo's parents were evacuated, and the tragedy here is that they had already lost their house once to the Black Tiger Fire in 1989. I could see old emotional scars ripping wide open. That fire was a pivotal point for Theo's mother who already defined most major events as either "pre-fire" or "post-fire". To have to suffer through that again would have flattened her. Theo snuck back into the evacuation zone to grab a few additional belongings, and one of his mother's requests was a box of peaches she had just purchased from the farmer's market. She wanted nothing to do with the peaches, but she didn't want them sitting up at house either, so the box moved into my kitchen and got turned into jam. By some grace of the universe, the house did not burn down. And incidentally, those peaches produced some of the finest preserves I have ever tasted. I labeled the jars "Fireside Jam" and am trying to stop Theo from eating it all before Christmas.

Naturally, we had a house guest through the fire episode as well. Besides copious amounts of smoke, Kate did get to enjoy the bounty that is Boulder summer produce. My kitchen counter looked like vegetable stand, and she put great effort into joining me for a mass production of pickled carrots, fresh peach ice cream, nectarine crisp and the peach jam. The take-away from that day was that having a farm would be a seriously ridiculous amount of work. Who on earth has time to process all that food? Every day? Do you know a farmer? You owe them big time.

The day after Kate left, T & I zipped off to NYC for our one year anniversary weekend. It's a fabulous city for dissolving yourself into a very different type of chaos, and proved to be a great reprieve. We stumbled into a Turkish restaurant for dinner one evening, arguably the best meal we had the entire time. Lamb that was seasoned exactly as it should be, and tender beyond all reasonable expectations. We finished off the meal with rice pudding and some sweet Turkish coffee.

Turkish coffee is great stuff - a shot of black richness sitting on a half inch bed of the finest coffee grounds imaginable. They form an impenetrable layer of mud on the bottom of the cup. In some masochistic way, it's tempting to slurp that muck right up, probably because it looks like a pool of thick, dark chocolate. But it isn't. So don't do it.

Our actual anniversary dinner was at a Japanese restaurant that we had painstakingly picked out after reading what seemed like hundreds of reviews. NYC is stuffed to the gills with restaurants. If you have four days, how do you possibly choose? While the sushi was good, it was not melt-in-your-mouth-just-like-butter good. It was pretty much like any sushi I'd get around here. And I live in land-locked state.

So it was delicious, but I think with the advent of jets, getting stellar fish in the Rocky Mountains is an issue of the past. Unless it's actually flopping around in the bottom of a boat and I get to pick out my piece, I've decided I can pretty much get similar quality seafood anywhere these days, sea or not.

What I cannot get just anywhere though is fresh, wheat-free baked goods. While supplies are ample in Boulder, I have a hard time finding the same quality and variety anywhere else I travel. Enter Babycakes, a vegan bakery who's cook book I love. I wanted to see the real thing in person, so I went on my own recon mission. The bakery is tiny, but it did not disappoint in any way. I chose a lemon cupcake and a piece of chocolate crumb cake, rationalizing my purchase of two goodies by the 3.5 mile walk I knew I was about to embark on to get back to the apartment. Those New Yorkers certainly know how to hoof it.

We arrived back in Boulder to our third house guest of the month, and then I promptly turned around and drove to NM. I was beat. As luck would have it, I happened to be joining two other friends who were also beat. And three beat people do not make for a particularly cohesive reunion, so I spent most of the weekend sequestering myself to my step-mother's house, hiding in an overstuffed leather chair. The notable bit about NM though was that I had the finest meal there that I have had in months. Finally, a dinner that caught my attention and made me sit up straight. If you happen to be in Santa Fe, do yourself a favor and stop by Max's. The food is fresh and the flavors are fabulous. It was the first meal in far too long that was unique, lovely, and actually surprised me. The final amuse-bouche was a white chocolate ball filled with granita. How refreshing is that? The chef came to our table at which point my mother and her boyfriend gushed profusely - somewhat embarrassing for everyone involved, but he took the slathering of praise with grace.

And then back home. I spent the last few days of the month unwinding from the action, trying to collect myself to go back and deal with the first problem of the month that had sent me into the chocolate zucchini cake frenzy. Unfortunately, this was when I received news that one of my nearest and dearest has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. My limited experience working with Parkinson's in a nursing home was gnarly and traumatic. Envisioning this person in my life with that kind of outcome was too much to wrap my head around. And so I crumpled. This would explain the lack of photo to go with this portion. I have not cooked anything even remotely memorable in ten days, and we have four take-out places on speed dial.

So, I exit September in an entirely different place in life than when I entered September. Some months are like that. While that idea rattles around in my brain, I'll start to peruse the food magazines again. Apple turnovers provide tempting distractions, and I think that's about all I can ask for right now.

Muse of the Day: Polenta

2010-08-30T01:01:00.000-06:00

Polenta is a funny thing to write about in this post mostly because there isn't a speck of it in the photo above. The pot holding said grain was hiding just off screen, lurking behind the very busy pan of mushrooms, squash, onion and garlic that demanded more attention. Actually, the cornmeal porridge wasn't behaving properly, and I blame that squarely on my habit of always doubling or halving recipes, and always forgetting partway through the cooking process that I've done so. This time around corrections were made and disasters were averted, but you really have to stir the shit out of polenta. It was wickedly hot in my kitchen, and I felt like a witch hovering laboriously over her cauldron of bubbling goop. My shoulder actually got pumped.

It was the veggies that made me want to cook the polenta with to begin with. I'm surrounded by so much amazing produce right now, but can really only eat so much salad or sauteed zucchini. I wanted something colorful and rustic - thick cornmeal mixed with whatever was ripe seemed right up my alley. Wreaking havoc on the kitchen is that much better with a partner in crime, so Caroline and I rolled up our sleeves and went to town. We embarked on a journey that was part knowledge, part research, part experiment, part art. We bought this and that, added fistfuls and sprinkles, did some guesstimating and collaborating, and would up with a hearty dish of baked polenta with garden plucked veggies and fresh mozzarella. All this while Caroline entertained her side project of mochi balls for dessert. I know, the dishes don't go together, but who cares? Food cooked well is so fun, regardless of who it's dancing partner is.

The disaster in the kitchen ebbed and flowed, the crescendo of chaos coming early on before we really figured out what, exactly, we were trying to do. But the end result was delicious as well as being the perfect accompaniment to the first glass of red wine I've had in months. It's been very much a white wine summer - blazing skies and parched grass. But I sense that Fall may be just around the corner. I was running with the dogs on a recent morning and the scent in the breeze was just enough to tell me that a season switch was in the making. It smelled like a postcard from Autumn that said, "Hi, Summer! I'll be in the neighborhood soon, thought I'd stop in while I'm there. See you soon!"

And so it's time to think about dishes that go with red wine. Tonight, success.

Muse of the Day: Tomatoes

2010-08-15T18:28:00.001-06:00

The humble garden tomato has everything, really, worth not being humble about. The first season that I grew my own was an eye opener, when I learned what tomatoes are really supposed to taste like. Everyone says it. It's its own cliche at this point, but it bears repeating. I had purchased local and organic, and still that experience pales in comparison to plucked off the vine. In June, prior to tomato proliferation, I was starting to convince myself that all this hubbub about garden tomatoes was a figment of my imagination. I had been eating store bought for about 9 months at that point. A tomato is a tomato is a tomato. But now that the garden tomatoes are beginning their run on center stage, I am reminded of what a treat they can be.

The Roma are standard fire engine red. They cook well and add a cheerful bite to practically any pasta dish. But the heirlooms are the trophy winners this year. Substantial and meaty, they threaten to burst wide open with just a nick of your knife. The color is not nearly as vibrant as their fiery Italian cousins. They look like they've rolled right out of a Polaroid photograph from the 1970's, hues subdued and muted with just a touch of pink. But it is just them being coy, because one bite sprinkled with sea salt will send you straight over the edge.

So what to do with all these ruby treasures? I've made gazpacho and pasta sauce, but the winner so far was a tart with spicy sausage, fennel, basil, a little cheese and an egg base. Thick slices of heirloom stood in as the upper crust. I made the mistake of calling it a quiche while it was still cooking after Theo had inquired into the lovely smells coming from the kitchen. And I knew it was a mistake as soon as the word came out of my mouth because Theo does not like quiche. So he thinks. And so I quickly filled in other words "... really a tart! Yes, a tart! A cross between a tart and lasagna. That's what I've made." But the damage was done. He had heard the word quiche and his lips started to make that shape that let me know he was suspicious of both me and my purported tart/pizza/lasagna/non-quiche concoction.

He did try a bite, and wound up loving it. We ate half of the entire tart that night, and he raved about it the next day (though there is an unspoken agreement to not refer to it as a quiche). Marketing is a very powerful tool, even at the dinner table. And it is for this reason that I do not grow squash in my little garden. I do, however, grow a variety of pumpkins.

Muse of the Day: Zucchini Cake

2010-08-11T20:08:00.001-06:00

Summertime is fabulous for any number of reasons, the most obvious to me at this very second being the bounty of fresh produce. I keep baking these wonderful concoctions - peach scones, blueberry scones, cherry crumble pies, french apricot tarts - but I can't ever seem to get a photo snapped before the goods are gone. And that's a pathetic thing to admit, especially because I have baked four of those cherry pies. Four. And yet, I couldn't manage a single photo? And I was so excited to write about the pie because it's the most amazing thing this side of the Mississippi. But it didn't happen - I've had a lot of family time recently, and it's safe to say that for a lot of little people, we don't shy from eating.

But I did squeeze in a photo of this cheerful zucchini cake. We were celebrating a coworker's birthday with a pot luck, and I volunteered to make the cake because A) we had all just had this cake from a local Denver bakery and thought it divine, B) someone found the purported recipe on the internet and C) I had am armload of zucchini to kill. I even formed her first initial, "D", on the top. Clever, eh? Zucchini cake is essentially zucchini bread bedazzled with fresh fruit and cream cheese frosting. The fruit was stellar and the frosting was decadent. It's a combination of three varying forms of cream with two cups of sugar - how couldn't that be perfect? But the cake? Meh.

In fact, it was far worse than 'meh'. It was a disaster. So the first thing I take a photo of in the last three weeks is by far the worst thing I've made in the last six months. But hey, failures happen. This one just happened to be the only thing I was sharing with people who weren't related to me. I used a 9" pan instead of 10", so it was deeper than should have been, which probably played some role in the fact that the cake was raw in the middle. A gummy, lead weighted mass of batter, akin to a soft brick. It was a cake that, left on the counter for three or four days, would kill someone if dropped onto their head from a balcony. It was cinder-block in edible form. But it looked pretty! Kind of like a bimbo - attractive on the outside and a dense mass on the inside.

The people who I work with are far too kind to say much of anything, but I feel compelled to bring in chocolate cupcakes or something just to redeem myself. I look at them all and want to say, "Funny, the girl in the company with a food blog is, like, the worst cook of all of us!" but I refrain. The rest of the lunch was delicious, so at least we didn't starve.

Muse of the Day: 1982 Lafite-Rothschild Bordeaux

2010-07-23T23:45:00.009-06:00

Several years ago, I worked as a manager for a company that manufactured fake rocks. Climbing walls, architectural facades, sculptures - we basically turned concrete into various forms of art. The President of our small company was an amicable fellow - a former attorney that came to Colorado to seek out a new life that didn't include the heat of Texas summers. Or so we thought.

I arrived at the office one day, a typical bustling Monday morning. When I sat down at my desk though, I inadvertently kicked several bottles of wine that were hiding by my chair. When I inquired about the bottles' origins, Mr. President said that they were a gift from him, and he figured that I was the only person in the office that would truly enjoy them. He mentioned that Theo and I could drink the Lafite when we got engaged. Recognizing the name Lafite-Rothschild, but not fully comprehending what it meant, I took a quick look at the six pack of wine: four newer bottles and two quite old ones. I thanked him for the random, generous gift and went on about my day.

A short while later, Mr. President called me into the conference room. He had to go away for a bit, he said, and would I mind if he granted me Power of Attorney? What the hell is a Power of Attorney?
"Going where? Texas? No wonder you've spent so much time there! You're getting back together with your ex-wife, you sly dog, you!"
"No, no (chuckle, chuckle), nothing like that. I'll be back."
"When?"
"Not long."

Now the day was shaping up to be a weird one. And I had a sense that something was just short of normal. So when I passed his desk another hour later, I was struck by how ... empty it seemed. The computer was turned off. The framed family photos were gone. And no Mr. President in sight. I began scouting the building and the parking lot. I asked every employee down in the shop if they'd seen him leave, but no one had noticed. I walked into the owner's office and saw keys and the title to the President's car which had been signed over to the owner. And then I started Googling.

It turns out that our dear Mr. President was checking himself into Club Fed that afternoon. He had been caught embezzling money from a former client, was disbarred and sentenced to roughly 2.5 years in a federal penitentiary. And we had wondered why he was spending so much time in Texas... the poor fellow had been on trial. We were stunned. And confused. We were only a company of maybe a dozen people and he had managed to literally vanish, slinking off to prison, without another word to anyone. Feeling like quite the successful detective at this point, I Googled the wine he left for me. The four newer bottles were nice wines that I was unfamiliar with, maybe $15 to $30 each. But also tucked into the collection were two bottles of 1982 Lafite-Rothschild, and it wasn't long before I realized that I was the proud new owner of one of the most highly regarded wines available today.

The 1982 Lafite-Rothschild has long been hailed as a stunning achievement in wine making. It is often given a 'perfect' score by those who care to rate such things, an extraordinary nose of smoke and berries, balanced in a way that only the French in Bordeaux can master. It routinely sells for $3,000 - $5,000 a bottle. And herein lies the problem. I was faced with choices that I found totally overwhelming. At the heart of the matter was whether my palate - amateur at BEST - would be worthy of such an important creation. Would I know the difference? Or would the subtlety be lost on me, and would I be better off auctioning them off and leaving with $8,000 in my pocket? God knows I could use the money. $8,000 was equal to four 6-week climbing vacations in Fontainebleau, France. That's not insignificant. Not by any stretch.

Then again, would I ever get this chance again? Because regardless of how much money I'm making in the future, I do not foresee myself spending several thousand dollars on one bottle of wine. $100? Maybe. $4,000? Hell, no. So I suddenly have an opportunity to do something I would never get to do otherwise, and that holds strong appeal to me. However, now I'm stuck with defining every single significant occasion in my life... What event is worthy of an '82 bottle? How about my 30th birthday? 40th? 50th? How about my engagement? My wedding? An anniversary? The birth of a child? The sale of a book? The purchase of a house? I don't know!!! I can't decide!! And this burden, this paralyzed state of indecision, sat with me for years. I never knew when an appropriate time would unfold. And was it even any good? I had no knowledge regarding the history of these particular bottles. I had the bottles wrapped in bubble wrap, placed on their sides, sitting in my cellar with it's cool and even temperature. I could be storing vinegar, for all I knew, and I thought of that every time I considered opening them. What if I wait for the most important moment of my life, and the wine turns out to be sour and undrinkable?

So I couldn't sell them. The money was tempting, but the chance to taste something so unique was, ultimately, more powerful. But I couldn't open them, because I was completely incapable of choosing the occasion. So I made the only choice left to me: I gave them away. It lifted the burden of decision off of my shoulders, and I gave them to people who I prayed would invite me over should they decide to open the damn thing. Fortunately for me, both of my parents retired in 2008. I gifted each of them with a bottle for their retirements, to celebrate their long careers and to thank them for everything they had done for me by having such careers. And I relieved myself of wine baby-sitting duty, which I really just couldn't handle anymore.

The funny thing is that I watched my mother go through the exact same phases that I had: bliss at receiving such a gift, dizzy with possibilities, confused by the choices, perplexed by the unknown condition, then traumatized by having to choose. And I felt so relieved. It wasn't me. I could snicker at her suffering. She would bring it up periodically - the bottle had temporarily moved to a friend's cellar, then back to her house again. She thought she had brought it up to my house for my wedding, but then there was never really a right time and we couldn't find it amidst the chaos anyways. Finally, she had a significant birthday coming up. She probably won't be impressed if I divulge her age on the internet, but it is safe to say that she looks a good 15 years younger than her years allow. And I'm not just saying that.

We all converged at her house last weekend for the big birthday dinner: mom, myself, my brother, and each of our significant others. She was unpacking boxes into her new kitchen, a stunning remodel courtesy of her son-in-law. Given the big birthday and the dream kitchen to celebrate in, she decided to open up the Lafite-Rothschild. Bravo!! "Let's just drink the thing," she said. "What the hell are we waiting for?" I spent most of the day prepping and cooking portions of the meal: cantaloupe wrapped in smoked prosciutto, steamed artichokes, garden radish sprinkled with salt, grilled swordfish, quinoa and beet salad, mashed potatoes and a cherry crumble pie. Once we all had dinner under control and appetizers had been washed down with champagne, we established a back up bottle of wine in case the '82 was bunk. The top foil was carefully removed, and when the cork was pulled, it looked like the wine had soaked all the way through. My heart sank. That was a sign that air had gotten in, we likely had vinegar on our hands. There was a collective moan. But I had prepared for this moment with a just-picked garden salad. When life gives you vinegar, add olive oil and dress a salad. We poured a small amount into a glass for mom and had her take an inaugural taste. She paused for a moment, then smacked her lips together. "It's not vinegar," she said. Smack, smack, smack. "In fact, it's good?!"

We cheered in unison. It's good! Let's drink! And so we did. We ate and drank, and ate and drank. I will be the first to admit that yes, the caliber of wine was lost on my uneducated palate, but I can say with great confidence that this wine was the smoothest wine I had ever tasted. Earthy, deep, and utterly uninterrupted in it's silkiness, like a river-polished stone. Smooth. As mundane as the word is, there isn't a better one to describe the wine. It embodied calm and collected. It was a delicious wine. Would I know the difference or ever be able to pick it out of a blind tasting? Who knows. But it doesn't matter. I got to drink it once. And it was the perfect occasion.

Recipe of the Week: Chilled Watercress-Spinach Soup

2010-07-04T12:47:00.001-06:00

Suh-mah tiiiiiime, and the livin's easyyyyyy! This year, I am embracing summer with open arms, open heart, open windows. After what seemed like an eternity of winter, this balmy string of 90+ degree days seems straight out of a fairy tale. Nevermind that I just spent nearly $1800 (yes, $1800) to fix the air conditioning in my car... I am still in love with summer and pray to God that it has no intentions of being a short one.

Though often associated with winter, soup can also act as a fabulous summertime staple. As a food type in general, I'm a big fan. It can be made in batches and frozen for later, it makes the perfect light meal, and it is often something that can be created with relatively few and simple ingredients. There is a soup for every season which I find to be particularly useful because Colorado often experiences all four in one day. Hell - we experience all four in one hour. And, soup is the perfect way to plow through a truck load of one type of ingredient. Anyone who gardens will know that you always, always wind up with one crop of something that just won't go away. If that something happens to be spinach or watercress, then have I got the soup for you.

I don't use watercress that often - it just isn't a green that sits in the forefront of my brain. But I do love spinach in nearly any form, and we had a big bag of it in the fridge courtesy of my mother-in-law who could grow a jungle in the Sahara if she so desired. I, on the other hand, have not been able to produce a crop of spinach in three years now, so I am fortunate to benefit from her evergreen thumb. The watercress came in a big bunch from the market, all roots still intact as if it had just been popped out of a seedling container. I ate one sprig and was pleasantly surprised at how spicy it was. Watercress tastes like radish but in paper form. And despite the great quantity of it in this soup, the end result isn't spicy at all. It is a simply delightful bowl of fresh summertime bounty.

Chilled Watercress-Spinach Soup
Adapted from Bon Appetit, July 2010

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups thinly sliced leeks (white and pale green parts only; about 3 medium)
1 8-ounce white-skinned potato, peeled, diced
3 cups vegetable broth
2 cups (packed) coarsely chopped watercress with some of stems plus small sprigs (for garnish)
1 cup (packed) baby spinach leaves
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled, chopped (for garnish)

Preparation:
Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add leeks and potato; sauté until leeks are slightly softened but not brown, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add 3 cups broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until vegetables are very tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Add watercress and spinach; stir until wilted, about 1 minute. Cool slightly.
Working in batches, puree soup in blender until smooth. Transfer soup to large bowl. Stir in lemon juice; season with salt and pepper. Chill until cold, about 2 hours. Thin with more broth, if desired. Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish center of each with hard-boiled eggs and small watercress sprigs.

Recipe of the Week: Bakewell Tart with Blackberry Preserves

2010-07-03T17:34:00.000-06:00

Our pantry is a jerry-rigged nook that occupies the odd, useless triangle of space tucked under the stairwell. Adjacent to the bathroom and guarded by an unassuming door that leads down to the unfinished cellar, it is neither convenient to the kitchen nor an inviting place to be rooting around for food. It is also not very well insulated. But it is what we have in this Edwardian-era home, and so my narrow, crooked shelves are lined with peach preserves, canned goods, and random picnic supplies.

In an unusual fit of motivation, we decided to have icynene insulation sprayed in the cellar, sealing off all of the drafty crannies that come with a house that sits on a rubble foundation. This task required that my feeble pantry be dismantled, its contents now taking up residence on the dining room table. Cluttered appearances aside, moving my pantry into full view allowed me to take stock of every single item that had been squirreled away, and it was through this process that I discovered about eight or nine jars of preserves from Maine.

The jars are a bit of a mystery, considering the last time I was in Maine was when I was in middle school and not likely to be stocking up on preserves. Regardless of origin, I realized that I suddenly had a lot of jam to get rid of. Conveniently enough, the May Bon Appetit had a section on British desserts. And if there's one thing I know about the Brits, they love preserves and jam. Preserves go well with bread products, bread products go well with tea, tea goes well with Brits. Therefore, I was bound to find a recipe that involved jam, and that recipe turned out to be something called a Bakewell Tart.

A Bakewell tart is a pie/cake/thumbprint cookie hybrid, somehow squeezing three desserts into one. A typical pie crust gets spread with jam, then both layers are topped with a dense almond cake batter and the concoction gets tossed into the oven. The result is a deep golden tart that packs some spring as well as a hidden punch of flavor - much thanks to the preserves. I made mine with blackberry and modified the recipe to accommodate my wheatless-ness and another friend's dairyless-ness. The tart was pleasantly fresh, not too sweet, and paired perfectly with vanilla ice cream. I was generous with the jam, spreading thick an entire jar which didn't seem to hurt the dessert. Only seven more jars to go...

Bakewell Tart with Blackberry Preserves
Adapted from Bon Appetit, May 2010

Ingredients

Crust:
1 1/4 cups spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons coconut shortening
3 tablespoons (or more) ice water

Filling:
3/4 cup blackberry preserves
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
4 large egg yolks
3 large egg whites
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Pinch of salt
1 cup toasted almonds

Preparation:
Blend flour, sugar, and salt in processor 5 seconds. Add shortening. Using on/off turns, cut in until very coarse meal forms. Add 3 tablespoons ice water. Blend until moist clumps form, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic wrap; chill 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Roll out dough on floured surface to 12- to 13-inch round. Transfer dough to 9-inch tart pan with removable bottom. Cut off all but 1/2 inch of overhang and fold in, pressing dough to come 1/4 to 1/3 inch higher than pan sides. Freeze crust until firm, about 10 minutes.

Line crust with foil and dried beans or pie weights. Bake crust until sides are set, about 25 minutes. Remove foil and beans. Continue to bake until crust is pale golden, piercing with fork if crust bubbles, 12 to 15 minutes longer. Cool on rack 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F.

Spread blackberry preserves evenly over bottom of crust. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean halves into medium bowl. Add sugar and blend with back of fork to distribute vanilla seeds evenly. Add oil, egg yolks, egg whites, almond extract, and salt; whisk to blend. Finely grind almonds in processor; stir into filling. Pour filling into crust.
Bake tart until browned on top and set in center, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool on rack until just slightly warm, about 45 minutes.
Push up tart pan bottom to release tart. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Muse of the Day: Starbucks Iced Mocha

2010-06-19T01:43:00.002-06:00

Imagine the Sahara: a vast blanket of desert with no water in sight. Now plant some patches of grass in your imaginary Sahara - lots of them. No, even more than that. Good. Now, because there's no water, you'll need some open water reservoirs. Pools, if you will. A few hundred thousand or so ought to do the trick. Just sprinkle them around the landscape - I know it seems impractical, but you can't squeeze water from a rock, so go ahead. Toss in some saguaro cacti and Voila! You've just built Phoenix.

I don't fully recognize why someone would choose this location to build a thriving metropolitan city. I mean, I get it in the sense that it's a beautiful location, but not for 1.5 million people. And not year round. It screams of impracticalities that go far beyond what I can really wrap my brain around, and the energy usage required for comfortable life here is extraordinary. Regardless, I'm here. And frankly, I'm loving it because I am a desert rat by nature.

But my friend Kate is ready to not be a desert rat any longer. She has spent her entire life here in this anomaly of American cities, and has been feeling the urge to rid herself of summers that include 120 degree afternoons. She feels mired in stagnation and paralyzed by the prospect of both staying or going. I'll be the first to admit - change is scary. Letting go of the familiar scent of routine, the comfortable view from your windshield, the taste of life as you know it - that's all scary. But I have a knack for shoving people off the diving board when they have been wavering too long, and so I flew to Phoenix to shove. Shannon also flew in from the Bay Area - we reasoned that two shovers are better than one, and got to work. Step numero uno is a garage sale.

We spent the day rummaging through Kate's life. We hung up signs all over the neighborhood, moved furniture, collected clothing, matched cd's to cases. We glued drawer fronts back on, threw away broken bits and unraveled necklace chains from one another. And somewhere early in this process, when things were looking as though they may derail before we even got into the swing of action, I made a Starbucks run. I'm not a fan, and I do NOT advocate a Starbucks habit of any sort. It's a waste of money on bad coffee. But it has a place in life, and today that place was providing three iced beverages to three women who were going to be hauling multiple loads of crap to a garage in 106 degree weather.

Recognizing this task to call for both sugar and caffeine, I selected an iced mocha. Would you like whipped cream? Yes, please! It was crazy, this billion calorie drink. It should be called 'cake in a cup'. I actually looked up the caloric content online. It said it was only around 250 calories, but I'm pretty sure they're lying. But there it was, in all of its sugary, icy glory. It did the trick - we collectively cleared out a decade of Kate's life and will be putting it up for sale tomorrow. Come hell or high water, she will move. We will all move. And then we can stop drinking Starbucks.

Muse of the Day: Menudo

2010-06-14T10:22:00.002-06:00

When I hear the word 'Menudo', the first thing that springs to mind is the Puerto Rican boy band of 80's fame. All that feathered hair, neon spandex and Latino sexiness - who could forget? But the word has had a longer life (not to mention a brighter future) as a traditional Mexican soup made of hominy and tripe.

I'm sure I've had it while growing up in NM, but I have no distinct memory of the soup which makes me think that I only had a bite here and there and that the tripe was well disguised in smaller bits. It only resurfaced in my life last week when we were eating at a Mexican joint called Efrain's. I could see Gomez wavering to and fro about whether to order it or not - he is one of the few fellow food adventurers that I know, and for that, he will always earn a gold star in my book. But he couldn't quite commit, so he sent the waitress around the table the other direction to buy himself more time. In the end, he chose two meals so that he could both try the menudo and also have a back up dish waiting, just in case.

The menudo sparked a lively conversation about what, exactly, tripe was. We were putting it into the intestine category, but it wasn't making much sense given the shape of the organ. Intestines are smooth, opaque tubes, which is why they're used as sausage casings (I guess the same thing could be said for panty hose...). The tripe was smooth on one side with a honey comb texture on the other, and was cut into chunks about one by two inches. It turns out the organ is actually the lining of one of the cow's first three stomach chambers. Three stomachs! If only we were all so lucky...

I didn't mind the idea so much as I did the texture - I think I would have preferred something more chewy and solid, something that I might have taken for meat or squid. But tripe is typically cooked for very long periods of time, making it quite soft and pasta-like. Almost spongy. I just wasn't a fan. The soup itself was tasty, and I'm psyched that he took the plunge and ordered it so we could all sample, but I think Gomez was probably wise to order two dishes.

Muse of the Day: Boston Cream Pie

2010-06-12T17:50:00.000-06:00

If I'm given free reign in a donut shop, I'd have to say that my first choice would be Bavarian Cream. This national treasure also goes by the name of custard-filled-long-john, the latter being an oblong version of the former. These days I eat maybe one a year. But I used to have a job for a company that made enormous fake rocks out of concrete and was conveniently located near a grocery store. One of my office mates and I would occasionally take turns running across the street to pick up some donuts, and if it was his turn to go, I would always send him off with the same set of instructions: Chocolate covered Bavarian Cream, make sure it has the custard filling and not the whipped cream. Because there are two different kinds, you know, and one should not be confused with the other.

The only reason I worried each time he left was because his favorite flavor was Plain Glazed, and anyone who voluntarily chooses a Plain Glazed donut out of all those flavors might not get the importance of custard vs. cream. I can't understand it, but I think it's a guy thing. It's like choosing vanilla when you go into an ice cream shop. Who does that?

Time went on and I left my custard donuts along with that job. So when Theo's birthday rolled around this week and he said I got to choose his cake, I thought of Boston Cream Pie, the cake version of the Bavarian Cream donut. He actually wasn't that polite about it though. The conversation went more like this:
me: "What kind of cake would you like for your birthday this year?"
him: "Hmmmm, something hard."
me: "Something hard? What does that mean?"
him: "I want something that's hard to make."
me: "Do you mean you don't care about flavor, you just want me to suffer?"
him: "Well, yes. Something like that. I just don't want it to be easy for you. You need a challenge."

Excuse me, but since when is 'challenge' a birthday cake flavor? I made my own wedding cake - now that was a challenge. And if he thinks I was going to pick something like that, he's got another thing coming. But it is his birthday. And birthday boys are Kings. So I settled on Boston Cream Pie, mostly because it has three very separate components that need to be made, and also because that's what I was craving. I informed him of my choice, "You're going to have Boston Cream Pie for your cake. Is that ok?"
Theo: "I don't know, is it hard to make?"
Me: (eyes rolling)

While Boston Cream Pie is indeed from Boston, it is not cream and is not a pie. Personally, I think a more accurate name would be Boston Custard Cake. But whatever, not my invention. It is a white cake split into double layers which are separated by a lovely vanilla cream custard. A healthy pour of dark chocolate ganache gets drizzled over the top. It's sort of like a chocolate covered pudding cake, and it is a fabulous combination of creamy and chocolaty. I've always wanted to make one, and while my initial attempt was leaning on the ugly side (something I'll attribute to the whole wheat spelt flour), it did still taste like heaven. The ganache becomes a smooth, shiny layer and pairs so perfectly with the custard. And the birthday king seemed pleased as punch, so thumbs up all around.

Muse of the Day: Beef Tacos

2010-06-06T23:10:00.000-06:00

There is an annual rummage sale that takes place in my neighborhood every summer. This year saw 64 houses participating, a new record, and I, reluctantly, was one of them. I hate the yard sale. But I hate having excess junk lying around my house more than I hate the sale itself, so like honey to flies, I just can't resist.

The entire event is the brain child of a woman who lives four houses up the street from me. She is perfect for the job, and has tirelessly orchestrated the maps, ads, fees, good-will trucks and signs for the past seven years. She has a perfect house, two perfect kids, a perfect car and perfect husband. I imagine her as both a cheerleader and sorority sister earlier in her life, and I am grateful that people like her exist so that I only have to plunk my stuff out on to my lawn and watch the mayhem unfold.

I learned early on that there are people that do the yard sale circuit as a profession. These are the people that scare me the most, and I think it's because there's a far more invasive quality about them. I like my personal space, and am loathe to strangers invading it. So when you're signing up for a yard sale, not only are you begging for strangers to come into your own little bubble, but you're also giving them permission to fondle all of your belongings and rate them as something they either deem worthy of taking into their life or not. I recognize that I'm totally asking for it, but I'm really not cut out for this business.

And yet, somehow, every year or two, I find myself back in the same place again, hawking my miscellaneous crap off to strangers on my front yard. I had a good time sassing the group of guys who looked bored out of their minds. I sold clothing to women who I recognized would never fit in to the things they were buying, but who am I to judge? I watched a dozen different parties exclaim about how tiny my kids' climbing shoes were, and each time, I would politely say that there were actually mine. But they are small. They look like something you could hang in a rear view mirror. Whatever, I sold two pairs. If I had known there was such a market for used climbing shoes, I wouldn't have thrown away the other five pairs that I had lying around. I sold a random pot lid to a sweet old lady for 25 cents. And I sold an old bathroom scale for $2.00 to some dude who wanted it for his work. Earlier in the day, there was a woman who tested it out and was so disturbed by what it told her that she promptly put it back and walked away. At that point, I knew the scale would sell to a man. In the end, the day provided a nice base tan, a few hundred bucks in my pocket, and an empty basement. I really can't complain.

But I was exhausted afterward. I collapsed on my couch and woke up two hours later feeling this insatiable need for tacos and margaritas for dinner. It seemed like the perfect summer meal, appropriate for having been outside in the sun all day. I think it's because of all the crisp, fresh flavors - tacos are a colorful, cheerful dish that evoke thoughts of Mexican beach vacations. Cilantro always brightens things up, as do fresh tomatoes that have been chopped into a homemade salsa. The meal is both crunchy and soft, and can be made to order. They make a killer sidekick to a Corona with lime, and are the perfect way to celebrate having been greatly unencumbered of unnecessary shit. It's a wonderfully free feeling, like loosening the tethers that keep us all tied down. And I'm sure I'll have it all replaced inside of six months. Life is funny like that.

Muse of the Day: Cotton Candy

2010-05-31T22:54:00.001-06:00

Getting through Memorial Weekend is like traveling through a tunnel. You leave memories of down jackets and frosted fingertips on one side of the tunnel, along with all that snow (for God's sake, the snow... mountains of it every month for 8 months straight. I almost threw myself out the window...), and come out the other side into a world dripping with sunshine and lazy bike rides to the bar(s). The transformation seems just that quick, and it wasn't a moment too soon because I was about to get tossed into the loony bin. I am pre-programmed to relax in the sunshine - I simply can't help it. I grew up in the deserts of New Mexico and have never quite shaken the need to solar charge myself.

So after 8 months of feeling a little bit of my soul dying every day, I came out of the tunnel into a week of perfect Boulder. A week that wasn't too hot or too cold. A week that almost made me feel guilty for all of the bad-mouthing I've been doing about this place. I can launch from my front door into the hills, miles of trails so green right now that you could mistake it for the East Coast. Or I can cruise downtown on my bike in three minutes flat, the breeze being just enough to sweep my hair out of my face. I could be sitting on a restaurant patio with a margarita in my hand 30 seconds later. This was, if anything, a weekend where I remembered everything I love about this town.

I wasn't the only one celebrating - Boulder has an annual Creek Festival that comes accompanied by a small fair. Nothing fancy, but it does the trick. I loitered around the top level of a parking structure across the street from the fair while my good friend Caroline, a photographer, took pictures of the scenes unfolding below. I could hear kids screaming at the tops of their lungs as they rode the loop-de-loop, along with the whoosh of the thing spinning round and round and the rattle of the wheels as they worked to cover the same terrain a thousand times over. There was a band playing in the distance and I could practically smell the hot dogs from our perch. I have this sweeping generalization about traveling fairs in that I think the rides are always run by meth-heads. I have no idea if this is true, but I think about it every time I see two dozen people hanging upside-down from a rumbling heap of metal.

I was marveling at this perfect embodiment of summer when I spied the cotton candy stand smack in the middle of the fair grounds. I can't remember the last time I had cotton candy - I think it was probably about a decade ago at the Eiffel Tower. My recollection at the time was that it hadn't changed at all - dry wool that had been blasted with sugar. The melt-in-your-mouth part was always fascinating to me, as was the pink or blue tongue you'd get afterward. And the tacky fingertips were icing on the cake - you'd spend the rest of the afternoon walking around like a salamander.

So we pedaled off towards the lights (incidentally, parking garages are a great place to ride bikes), so I could grab a quick photo of my cotton candy muse in all of its sugary glory. I didn't eat any - the odor alone was enough to satiate any need I had for fluffy saccharin. But it made the evening all the more authentic. Welcome back, summertime. You have no idea how much I've missed you.

Muse of the Day: Bubble Tea

2010-05-29T00:48:00.003-06:00

When I first heard about bubble tea, my imagination made it out to be a completely different concoction than it really is. I envisioned something fruity, carbonated, and probably pink. Bubbles make me think of bubble gum or fizzies, so a bubbalicious-flavored seltzer didn't seem out of the question.

My introduction occured via one magazine or another, and I have this vague idea that it also mentioned being an enormous fad amongst Japanese teenagers. Which is good for bubble tea, because as far as I can tell, if you're so lucky as to be a fad in Japan, your retirement fund is set. I picture hordes of fifteen year olds in school uniforms, lining up sixty deep at a nearby bubble tea vendor. They work well en masse over there, and what's good for one seems to be good for one hundred thousand. The fad swam across the pond and landed in Canada, then snaked it's way down the coast, jumping from one Asian community to the next. It's now been around for a decade or so, yet I've only recently become privy to its existence.

I have a friend from the Bay Area here for a few months, and he keeps talking about searching for bubble tea in Boulder (Ha! Bubble tea in the Bubble. How appropriate!). Anyway, he seems to be a fan, so when I came across it at a new Pho restaurant in town last night, curiosity took hold and I ordered a glass. Turns out bubble tea is neither pink nor carbonated. The cold beverage is the color of milky tea (mine was chai flavored), with marble sized black tapioca pearls swirling 'round the bottom of the glass.

I love tapioca. I've had a serious craving recently, and even purchased a box of tapioca a few weeks ago. But I've never had black tapioca, and I've never had marble sized tapioca, and I've never had tapioca in a tea. And I don't know how, but it totally works. It's a fabulous play on texture, like gnawing away on flavorless gummy bears that look like fish eyeballs in between sips. Except better. Way better.

It's served with a wide straw so that the tapioca pearls will actually get sucked right through. Which seemed all fun and games until the very last pearl shot into the back of my throat, thereby nearly killing me. I caused a bit of choking commotion, but it was all good in the end, and I'm thinking it may be my new summer treat.

Recipe of the Week: Rhubarb and Ginger Brioche Bread Pudding

2010-05-25T00:06:00.002-06:00

I'm sure I've told you about the rhubarb conundrum around here. I have a thriving patch in the back yard that shoots up each year like Old Faithful. Theo purports to not be able to stand the stuff, and I suffer through our annual dance of sour faces and close encounters with the lawn mower. To make matters worse, this year I am taking over the garden next door as well which quadruples my rhubarb reserves. It is daunting, even for someone who actually likes the stuff.

But I have found an ally this year. My lifelong best friend, Jodi, happened to marry a man from the Great North. A man, much like my father, who looooooves rhubarb, thereby convincing me that people born in the Minnesota/Wisconsin region are genetically predisposed to be rhubarb fans. Jodi and Kraig just had a baby last Thursday (I'm an auntie!!), so I'm taking this opportunity to bring them a giant pan of rhubarb bread pudding. My thoughts are that the baby should be exposed to rhubarb at an early age, even if it comes via breast milk, and this recipe requires a sh*t load of rhubarb, something I have in spades. So I made two batches, and it has still only put a dent in my supply.

I have to offer a small disclaimer here and say that while I do love rhubarb, I don't LOVE rhubarb. If I stumbled upon a piece of chocolate cake next to a piece of rhubarb pie, I'd choose the cake. But I love that it forever reminds me of my grandmother Helen who first introduced me to the plant, and I love that my father loves it. Therefore, my love of rhubarb is measured by sentimental standards. So I'm happy to report that of all the dozens of recipes I've made with rhubarb over the past 8 years, this bread pudding is my clear winner. It's got the eggy, creamy base that nips the tartness in the bud, and I love the dense texture provided by the bread. In fact, I was oodling on and on about how fabulous it was and actually coerced Theo into taking a bite. "You'll really like it," I claimed. "It's super creamy, like pudding. Just one taste." He did take a taste, but I'm quite sure I heard gagging noises as I left the room.

He then followed me into the kitchen, to over look the masses of bread pudding now taking over the counters. "Look at all that," he exclaimed. "Now, if that were, say, a cherry bread pudding, or anything other than rhubarb, it would be amazing! Why can't you do THAT? Why can't you make something just for me? ME! Something I would love!"

"Oh, like those banana muffins with chocolate chips? The ones with the cinnamon streusal on top? Those weren't good enough for you?"
He seemed momentarily bewildered, like a lost child coming out of the forest. "Well, yes," he said, "but that was yesterday."

Right.

Rhubarb and Ginger Brioche Bread Pudding

adapted from Bon Appetit, May 2010

Rhubarb:
3/4 cup strawberry/rhubarb preserves
1/4 cup blueberry preserves
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger
2 1/2 pounds rhubarb, ends trimmed, stalks cut into ½ inch-wide pieces (8 to 9 cups)

Pudding:
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
Butter (for dish)
8 (or more) 1/2-inch-thick slices spelt bread (each about 5x4 inches), cut lengthwise in half
Lightly sweetened whipped cream

Preparation:

Rhubarb

Whisk preserves and 1/2 cup water in heavy large skillet over medium heat until preserves dissolve. Sprinkle ginger over. Scatter rhubarb evenly in skillet. Bring mixture to simmer over medium heat, occasionally stirring very gently, until rhubarb is slightly tender but still intact, about 10 minutes. Pour mixture into large sieve set over large saucepan. Let drain 15 minutes.

Pudding

Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk sugar and eggs in medium bowl. Place milk and cream in heavy medium saucepan. Add vanilla. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Gradually add hot cream mixture to egg mixture, whisking custard to blend.
Butter 13x9x2-inch baking dish. Arrange enough bread slices in dish to cover bottom (some spaces will remain between slices). Spoon half of rhubarb evenly over. Repeat with bread and rhubarb. Pour custard over. Place baking dish in roasting pan. Add enough hot water to pan to come halfway up sides of dish.
Bake pudding until just set in center, about 50 minutes. Remove from oven. Let stand in water bath 30 minutes; remove. Boil reserved syrup until reduced to 1 cup, about 10 minutes. Keep warm.
Brush top of pudding with some rhubarb syrup. Spoon warm pudding into bowls; top with syrup and whipped cream.

Muse of the Day: Wedding Cupcakes

2010-05-01T00:38:00.002-06:00

I went to a non-wedding in Yosemite last weekend. Technically, it was wedding celebration, but we skipped the ceremonial part by having the happy couple scamper off to a justice of the peace before the big day. This saved us all the embarrassment of weeping at the gooey 'til death do us part' bits, and it also saved the couple from having to deal with all the pesky details that come along with getting hitched in a national park. Besides, we all know that the wedding fun really begins once we've dried our eyes and moved on to the feast.

It was the perfect setting for a gathering of friends and family - white clothed tables adorned with bright gerber daisies, tucked into a forest dense with giant pine trees and 2,000 foot granite cliffs looming over all sides. Sort of as if a band of gnomes had dashed into the woods and set up a picnic scene fit for a fairytale. The coals were blazing and we were treated to a fabulous meal of grilled meats, salads, cheese and wine. Paul and Lyn skipped the cake and opted for dozens of perfectly coiffed cupcakes instead, no less than ten different flavors, and all perched cheerfully at the edge of our clearing.

Guests were divided into two camps: the civilized, cheerful bunch being the family; the dirtier, hungrier bunch being the climbers. And it was during dessert when I noticed the biggest difference amongst guests. The family members were discreet in that they would select one cupcake and be on their way. The climbers, on the other hand, routinely escaped with two, three, even four of the treats, snickering all the way. Fortunately, our hosts are not naive and foresaw this happening; they ordered 100 cupcakes to satisfy 70 people.

The really grand part is that besides oversupplying us with sugar, Paul and Lyn went to the moon and back to accommodate everyone's dietary restrictions. There were trays of vegan cakes, gluten free cakes, and then the fully leaded version for everyone else. They even put place cards near the restricted cupcakes to let everyone know who among their guests had first dibs. Who does that at their own wedding? The vegans were psyched - there were a dozen cakes for four designated people. A guaranteed three per person. But the gluten-free folks? We totally scored - there were only two of us. I was allotted my very own half dozen cupcakes. How amazing is that? For the record, I didn't eat all six. But I must confess that I ate more than one.

Recipe of the Week: Peanut Butter Frosting

2010-04-27T23:48:00.001-06:00

It's no secret that I love peanut butter. I'll eat it off of pretty much anything, a fact made clear when I found myself gnawing it off of a stick when I was bouldering a few days ago. Forgetting to bring a spoon to the crag was not about to prevent me from eating my lunch, and the dogs seemed amused with my choice of utensil.

My love of the food runs deep, all the way down to genetics. My brother shares the same affliction, so when we had a dinner party for his birthday last week, I had my sights set on a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Randy has always preferred crunchy pb, I have always thought that the little bits of peanut hurt the roof of my mouth and get stuck in my teeth. But because this was his day and not mine, I obliged to his whims and stuck a few extra fistfuls of chopped peanuts on top. I'll admit that it added a nice texture contrast and some extra peanut flavor; in fact I'd probably do the exact same thing again whether I was trying to be nice to him or not.

The hitch in my plan is that his girlfriend cannot eat peanuts, so I needed to devise a cake that could do double duty. The result was one chocolate cake dressed with both chocolate and peanut butter frosting. Two halves to make a whole. Can life get any better?

Peanut Butter Frosting
Adapted from Bon Appetit, April 2010

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup smooth peanut butter
Chopped lightly salted roasted peanuts

Measure powdered sugar into large bowl, add cream cheese, butter, and peanut butter. Beat mixture until smooth. Spread frosting over cake. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts.

Muse of the Day: Japanese Feast in Walnut Creek

2010-04-24T15:23:00.003-06:00

I have been frolicking around the Bay Area and beyond for the past two weeks, thoroughly enjoying the change of scenery and visits with friends and family. The trip was launched with the celebration of my Grandmother May's 95th (!) birthday, celebrated at Miraku in Walnut Creek. We worked our way through various fried fish, tofu delicacies, soups and a literal parade of sushi platters. My stomach couldn't have been happier, and I would certainly hope that if I have the honor of celebrating a 95th birthday, I might do so surrounded by multiple generations of family, plus good food and drink.

It would be safe to say that I ate my fair share, but I live in a land-locked state and take advantage of seafood, sushi in particular, when given the opportunity. I welcome roe and tamago with the same enthusiasm as salmon or tuna, and I'll happily poke my ohashi around behind the eyeballs of a fried fish head. Basically, I'm an equal opportunity eater. Grandmother seemed to enjoy the fracas, and I look forward to doing it all over again next year. Happy Birthday, May!

Recipe of the Week: Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

2010-04-18T23:34:00.005-06:00

I'm not naturally predisposed to loving theme parties. If the theme happens to be "Jeans and T-shirts", then I'm in luck. Otherwise, I find costumes to be uncomfortable and cumbersome, and I'd really rather just wear something that makes me happy and doesn't make me look like an idiot. But I will make the extra effort when required, especially if it's for a close girlfriend. So when Jen's birthday party was themed as a "Head Gear Party", I knew I'd partake despite it being the most poorly named party I've ever heard of.

The words 'head gear' make me think of medieval orthodontic devices that are bestowed upon unfortunate thirteen year olds. And why that would be a party theme was not immediately apparent to me. So I broadened my head gear horizons: was this a hat theme? Head scarves? African Baskets? But each of those seemed like they warranted their own theme: "You're Invited to Jen's Birthday Party! Wear your Woven African Head Basket!" I guessed that head gear meant just that: gear for the head that didn't fall under a more obvious category.

So, having no orthodontia lying about, I looked for something that would be worn on the head, but was not a hat. In the end, I opted for a red furry headband that had fuzzy bloodshot eyeballs sproinging upwards. It was something I picked up for one of my dogs to wear on Halloween so he could frighten all of the children. Finn didn't really care for it, but he is a 100 lb powerhouse of a pooch, and goofy head gear seemed to take the edge off of what could otherwise be an intimidating beast.

It turns out that Head Gear is code name for a 1920's style feathered flower ornament that gets attached to your hair. Something delicate and lady-like, almost like a decoration that might be pinned to an old fashioned hat with a lace veil. I mean, who knew? Since I didn't get the memo, I wore my googly eyes with pride, mostly because the theme still allowed me to don jeans and a t-shirt. I was comfortable, and frankly, the eyes were a hit.

Besides head gear, the other task bestowed to me was the birthday cake. Flavor was chef's choice, so I went with the perennial favorite of chocolate and opted to try one made with mayonnaise because I wanted to test drive a dairy free cake for future use. Mayonnaise isn't a typical cake ingredient, but it basically performs the job of the oil and adds a little tang in the process. I don't love mayo, and I pretty much avoid it unless I'm making an egg salad sandwich. But I was having fond memories of making a boxed cake when I was about eight years old that required mayo and I remember the glee with which I told my brother's friend what the secret ingredient was after he took his first bite. He gagged, as any child would, and I continued on with peals of laughter.

It's a mean trick, but sort of fun when you're dealing with a roomful of really skinny climber girls who wouldn't be caught dead eating mayonnaise on any other occasion, especially when combined with chocolate cake. But their plates were emptied, and no one could deny that the cake was delicious. It had a tender, moist crumble and a rich chocolate flavor. The sweet was tempered with the tang of the mayo, but only just enough. Besides, they made me wear my head gear. I think it's a fair trade.

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake
adapted from Bon Appetit, April 2010

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 3/4 cups + 2T boiling water
3 cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
scant 1 cup sugar
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups safflower mayonnaise (do not use reduced-fat or fat-free)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans. Combine chopped chocolate and cocoa powder in medium metal bowl. Add the boiling water and whisk until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Sift flour, baking soda, and baking powder into another medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat both sugars and mayonnaise in large bowl until well blended, 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture in 4 additions alternately with chocolate mixture in 3 additions, beating until blended after each addition and occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Divide batter among prepared cake pans.

Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, approximately 35-40 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on racks 20 minutes. Remove from pans onto racks and cool completely. Frost as desired.

Recipe of the Week: Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake

2010-04-15T23:12:00.005-06:00

I have long been a fan of British-isms: A UK biscuit is a US cookie. A UK scone is a US biscuit. A UK crumpet is a US English Muffin. A UK dinner is a US lunch. And a UK tea can be a US dinner or an afternoon snack. And it is this last Britishism that made me nervous when Theo's cousin and his wife (British) were in town for a visit and said they'd come over for tea. What, exactly, did they mean?

When a person of British origin says they're coming over tea, don't lull yourself into thinking that they mean a cuppa the milky stuff. Tea, in Brit speak, seems to imply a small meal which is washed down by the cuppa, but not actually the cuppa itself. It's a gray area. So to cover my bases, I picked up my recently arrived Bon Appetit issue and flipped through for something that might pair well with tea, but also might not seem like something which I had suffered through to prepare. In other words, it had to look like a concoction I might just have lying around my kitchen, and happened to serve with tea should persons of British origin arrive. The Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake seemed just the thing.

I went to work late morning, much later than I should have actually, and decided that if it was still baking while they were here, that that would be acceptable. But it turns out that to these Brits, coming over for tea literally means drinking some tea and then leaving the house to go out for lunch. I abandoned my project mid-way through, returning to finish the cake in the afternoon. And it's a good thing they didn't stay, because the cake was short of disaster. The contents of my pan mushroomed over the edges, partially cooked batter pooling into a fire hazard at the bottom of my oven. Smoke billowed forth just as the cake collapsed upon itself, an oily, flattened brick pulled from the oven just before the flames took over.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but my primary suspicions are a too-small pan and some poorly executed measuring. I geared up for Round Two a week later when I had some girlfriends over, and came to the kitchen armed with a proper bundt cake pan and the patience to use measuring spoons instead of the eyeball method. The result was a vastly improved cake, buttery but not greasy, sweet but not saccharin. I'm not sure about the rise - my cake looked like an extra large donut that would make Homer Simpson proud, but I'll have to work on that part next time. And for the record, it was delicious with a cuppa tea. Mission accomplished.

Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake
adapted from Bon Appetit, April 2010

Ingredients:

Cake:
1tsp Brandy
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1/2 c + 1T milk
1 tsp lemon juice
1.5 c + 1.5T spelt flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c butter
scant 3/4 c sugar
1/4 c (packed) brown sugar
3 eggs
1 egg yolk

Glaze:
2/3 c powdered sugar
4 tsp whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
sliced strawberries

Cake: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour standard bundt pan. Pour brandy into small bowl; scrape seeds from vanilla bean into brandy and stir well to combine. Set aside. Add lemon juice to milk and stir well. Set aside. Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Beat butter and both sugars in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and yolk one at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Beat in brandy/vanilla mixture. Add half flour mixture, beat until just blended. Add milk and lemon juice mixture, beat until just blended. Add remaining flour mixture, beat until just blended. Transfer batter to prepared pan, smooth top, bake until tester comes out clean - approx 50 minutes. Cool in pan 15 minutes, remove cake and place on wire rack until completely cool.

Glaze: Whisk powdered sugar, milk and vanilla in small bowl until thick, pourable consistency. Place cake on cake plate, drizzle glaze over cake in zigzag pattern. Serve cake slices with fresh sliced strawberries.

Muse of the Day: Jelly Bellies

2010-04-04T12:43:00.007-06:00

Easter already? Season of chocolate rabbits, fake grass and jelly beans. There is an annual Easter egg hunt in the alley behind my house. It's grown quite a bit in the years I've been here, and this morning I watched a large mass of children rush by my kitchen window at 10am sharp in search of neon colored orbs filled with sugary goodies.

My initial reaction upon watching the mass of baskets whizzing by was one of excitement - Yay! Easter Eggs!! But my nearly simultaneous secondary reaction was one of annoyance. Who on Earth is letting their gangly teenaged boys take part in the frenzy? If they weren't teens, they were at least in the double digits, certainly old enough to be retired. They charged down the alley, mowing down the innocent, wobbly two-year-olds with a take-no-prisoners attitude. It's over in like two minutes and I'm always surprised that no one has a bloody nose. I mean, really.

I am far more discreet in my egg hunting. I always wait a few hours after the fracas has ended and the kiddos have gone home. Then I take my dogs for a run, conveniently ending in the alley behind my house. We take our time once we get there under the guise of 'cooling down', and I let the dogs sniff all the garbage cans they want while I scan the horizon for overlooked plastic eggs. I used to find a lot more in the earlier years, but the party has grown so much that my chances shrink as each Easter rolls by. Once, about five years ago, the Easter bunny laid out their eggs the night before and then it happened to snow, laying a blanket of white over the entire landscape. I had totally forgotten about the eggs, but when I was out cruising the alley several days later after the snow had melted, I realized that I had hit the jackpot - I laid claim to over a dozen eggs. Happy Easter to me!

These jelly bellies in the photo above actually have nothing to do with Easter - I got them as a freebie with my Office Depot order last month. But they're perfect for today. My favorite flavor is watermelon, and I have a fond memory of my father bringing home an entire jar of watermelon jelly bellies for me when I was about seven years old. It's funny how you don't think parents would ever notice anything as trivial as a kid's favorite jelly belly flavor. Especially my father of all fathers. But I've never forgotten that perfect gift. It was random act of kindness, and he really hit the nail on the head in a way that most people never do.

The dogs and I did find an egg today. I was secretly thrilled. It was bright pink and held a chocolate egg and a miniature Mr. Goodbar. It just doesn't get any better.

Muse of the Day: Peanut Butter

2010-03-28T23:31:00.001-06:00

I have had a life-long affair with peanut butter. Creamy Jif held a special place in my heart for which there was no substitute for thirty years. It was consumed in the form of all the usual suspects: pb&j sandwiches, on apples, with chocolate, etc. But I also grew up slathering my french toast, pancakes, and waffles with the stuff, a habit which I have no intention of shaking. My brother, an addict himself, shares my affliction, but it rarely caused strife in the house. He has always fallen on the crunchy side of the fence, me on the creamy, and we do not deviate. We had two separate jars in the cupboard as kids - his with the blue lid and mine with the red - and the only time all hell would break loose was when he was out of crunchy and would start pilfering from my jar.

If I added up my peanut butter consumption for the last few decades, I'm sure that it would be a startling amount. I assume hundreds of pounds of the stuff have trekked down my gullet, if not more. I kept a 5 lb tub of it in my desk drawer at one job, hoisting it out during lunchtime so I could just spoon it into my mouth. My coworkers marveled. Europeans have never taken a shine to the spread the way we Americans do, so I would have to pack a 3 pound jar into my luggage every time I went to France. Sure, I could buy some there. But a) the jars are tiny and b) it's always Skippy. Why is it always Skippy? I have been around the world, buying peanut butter in no less than 20 countries on five different continents. It's always Skippy. I don't get it.

Things shifted a few years ago when I was fed a guilt trip about eating peanut butter with sugar. I switched to the natural kind, reluctantly, and the primary result was that I ate a fraction of what I had eaten before. Natural peanut butter just doesn't compare - it was like losing a childhood friend. Until I discovered Trader Joe's. Turns out that I like Trader Joe's Creamy Salted just as much as I liked Jif. In fact, while I suffered through my diet restrictions last month, I was blessed with the fact that I could eat as many peanuts as I wanted. I calculated that I ate four pounds of the stuff in as many weeks. I would open a new jar on Wednesday, and one Wednesday later I was licking out the insides and opening up another. It was like clockwork. I even lost two pounds on this diet - go figure.

We don't have Trader Joe's in Colorado. I think it has something to do with the costs of distribution as well as an alcohol issue. So every time I go home to New Mexico or drive out to California, my return suitcase is packed with the goods (as photographed above) to get me through to the next visit. If anything, it ensures that I see my family at least every other month. The people at the check out counter always make comments to me about wiping out their stock, but what can I say? We all have our vices. Mine is just a little gooier than others.

Muse of the Day: Banana Pancakes

2010-03-24T22:38:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday was a snowy morning. And I don't mean to complain, but c'mon, now. I think we've had enough at this point. While March often brings heavy snows, I think that the collective tolerance for this type of mess has been depleted since we've been under siege since October. Six months is a long winter for Boulder; we are fair-weather winterers. The branches outside, arched to the ground by the weight of the world on their shoulders, have also had enough. So given the disturbing circumstances, pancakes seemed in order.

I am not the pancake chef. That is Theo's job. I'm not sure how that happened, but he seems to have taken charge of all weekend breakfasts in our house. Which is sort of funny, because they seem like the type of thing that I would be excited about cooking. But I am not excited about much of anything in the morning. It doesn't matter if it's pre or post-coffee, pre or post-tea. I'd really rather just sit and watch someone else take care of whatever needs to be done. Like breakfast. Life doesn't shake out for me until around noon, and by that time I am running smoothly for the next 12 hours. And so when you throw twelve inches of sloppy snow into the mix on a Saturday morning, it's a miracle that I'm breathing at all.

But! I must have been inspired on this particular day because I decided to hijack some of Theo's pancakes while they were sizzling away on the griddle and toss in a few banana slices. Call it my contribution to the morning's efforts. It turns out that banana slices add a pleasant sharpness to a pancake, and since I always put peanut butter on my pancakes (and waffles and french toast), it's like having a glorified peanut butter and banana sandwich with the added bonus of being dipped in maple syrup. It's the proper way to start a day.

Muse of the Day: Chinese Herbs

2010-03-22T23:35:00.000-06:00

Periodically, I see an acupuncturist. I love the idea of East meets West in terms of health care, which I figure must have something to do with my heritage. Gotta represent all sides. I went a ton last summer, but prior to that I probably hadn't been for the better part of a decade. I've started going again, and this time around I walked away with a baggie full of herbs (not that kind) to brew into a tea.

Now, I've done this before. It was a long time ago, but the stench of it was forever etched into my memory. The tea of yore tasted like something a forest ogre had rummaged around for. Earthy to the extreme, it tasted of fistfuls of dirt, treebark, and a bitter root. I would choke it down in one gulp, and I'd have to air out my apartment each time I brewed it. This time around has similarities, but it tastes like a forest fairy may have had her hand in it all. Somehow more pleasant and light, I actually find it fairly palatable. It doesn't taste like I'm licking mud anymore, so that's a good thing.

I haven't the slightest what's in my concoction - I imagine it to be eye of newt, tongue of dragon, and maybe some warts from a yellow-bellied badger, but I throw it all into a pot of water and let it simmer away for a few hours. It makes my house smell like a Chinese apothecary, or at the least, a mysterious forest where unicorns might be found hanging around. Chinese medicine. Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Muse of the Day: Lemon Meringue Pie

2010-03-21T23:33:00.008-06:00

It's funny what we do to kill time. Theo was arriving on a flight at midnight, so after dinner in Denver with some friends, I still had two hours to kill. I know of one 24-hour diner in Denver, and it stays true to pretty much every thing you'd expect from a 24-hour diner: greasy food, coffee served in brown ceramic cups, and a glass case full of pies on display when you walk in the front door.

I'm not a big pie person. In the Pie vs. Cake battle, I'd certainly side with cake. Pies, especially fruit pies, often have a gelatin quality that I don't really care for. It's like glorified jelly, and I don't love jelly. Far worse than fruit pie is anything with meringue. I know that I've talked about my aversions to meringue on this blog before, and it seems they still hold true. So why on earth I'd go to a diner and order a lemon meringue pie of all things baffles even me. It was like the words had mistakenly tumbled out of my mouth and then the waitress was gone. She was the fastest waitress in the West. To my credit, I'm pretty sure she was on speed. She would appear and then disappear in super-hero-like flashes. But still.

Before the pie arrived I began second guessing my choice. Then I started scolding myself. And then after it arrived I tried to think of ways in which I could politely send it back. But I didn't want to be high maintenance and decided I was stuck with it, so I took a bite, careful to avoid the wheat crust that it was attached to. Wobbly bits of lemon filling topped with slick, puffy meringue. It jiggled on the plate every time I turned it around, trying to find a more appealing side to eat from. I'm sorry to say that it was every bit as unappetizing as I had thought it would be. In fact, I haven't had a single worse bite of food in like a year. And don't forget that I ate Kraft Singles last month, so that should tell you something.

After a bite of the filling, I tried nibbling on just the lemon part, scooping my fork in under the slimy cloud of egg white. It was marginally better, but nothing worth torturing myself over. Still, I had another hour left to kill. I sent the pie away, ordered a plate of eggs and hashbrowns just so that I could feel justified in sitting there, and made a mental note to myself to please engage my brain before I start placing orders at restaurants.

Muse of the Day: D Bar Desserts

2010-03-19T20:47:00.002-06:00

Finally, a lovely spring week. The flowers dared to poke their heads out, little bits of color tentatively stretching up out of their hiding places. It has been a long winter here in Colorado. But we were doing our best to shake off the duldrums this week. I sensed windows being flung open all across town; I actually drove home with my sunroof opened and couldn't have been happier. Until I was sitting behind the FedEx truck at a light and fumigated my car with diesel backwash. It seemed a small price to pay for what was otherwise a good dose of fresh air.

Having suffered some cabin fever, my coworkers and I took advantage of the shining sun at lunch and walked to D Bar Desserts. It is a contemporary little restaurant that provides a charming spot for lunch and dinner, but their shining star is a full plated dessert menu. The entire array of sugar is not available until 6pm. However! They have a few desserts in addition to a well stocked pastry case that you can drool over all day long. The coziness is maintained within a small area of perhaps a dozen bar stools plus four indoor tables, and is made up of robin's egg blue glass and brown textured accents. It is the place that you would go to with a girlfriend to gossip over some single brew coffee and an elegant dessert. In fact, halfway through our seating, I took a good look around and realized that 100% of the clientele were women. The owners have pegged their market quite well.

I treated myself to this chocolate and raspberry dome which was filled with a more creamy, less annoying version of chocolate mousse. There was a dollop of raspberry filling in the heart of the pastry, and the entire concoction oozed of elegance and conscious thought. It is not something I would have typically chosen, but it was wheat free and so I branched out and dug in. And who could be disappointed in something so beautiful? The owner even sent us on our way with a package of chocolate confections that looked more like art decor marbles than something you could actually eat. I am smitten. And I will certainly be back.

Muse of the Day: Melissa's "Recipe #1"

2010-03-17T22:36:00.005-06:00

I was mindlessly wasting time on the internet one day when an alert popped up to tell me that I had a new email. This wasn't just any old email offering me a great deal on Viagra or my share of an inheritance from a long lost Nigerian relative. This was an email offering cookie recipes - four of them, to be exact. They had been titled Recipe #1, Recipe #2, Recipe #3, and Recipe #4.

I can't say that my friend Melissa came up with the most creative recipe names that I've ever seen, but I'm happy to overlook that small detail due to the fact that she shared her secrets at all. A far more skilled cook than I, Melissa has been formerly trained in the culinary arts and put quite a bit of effort into developing her cookies. That she would then gift those recipes to me, unsolicited and unprompted, is the mark of a very generous soul. "Here," she simply said, "I thought you might like these..."

Well. I'm certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I read each one carefully, and debated about who would be first. I gravitated to the recipe that had a banana base, mostly because I had three ripe volunteers begging to be transformed into something more appealing than a black mass in my fruit bowl. The bananas were to mingle with chocolate chips, cranberries and peanuts - four of my favorite foods in one fell swoop. What could be better?

Each of the four recipes had been formulated for baking at altitude, which actually made me a little nervous only because I'm so accustomed to modifying every baked good recipe I use. But Melissa was spot on. My very fist batch of Recipe #1 turned out to be perfectly puffed and a sweet golden brown. They were soft on the inside with little bits of texture to keep things interesting, and just sweet enough to suit my taste. Baking them was like a prolonged version of opening a gift: "What are these going to taste like? How are these going to turn out?" It was a lovely gift. Want to brighten a fellow foodie's day? Send them a recipe.

Muse of the Day: Homemade Pizza

2010-03-15T23:18:00.000-06:00

I like to think of myself as a pretty level headed person. I did my best to embrace a gluten-free life with a (somewhat strained) smile on my face. I coped with cakes and sandwiches, pancakes and pasta. But there was one item that actually reduced me to tears, and that was homemade pizza crust.

The salt on the wound was that a few months prior to my gluten-free phase, I had finally discovered the perfect wheat-based recipe. It was crisp and savory and all the delightful things that a pizza crust is supposed to be. So when I tried to make a gluten-free version of the same thing and found myself with a pile of unwieldy, sopping mush, I literally broke down in tears. Big, fat, salty drips of water cascading down my cheeks. Tears that I couldn't even wipe off because my hands were encased in something akin to paper mache liquid. I don't know that I've ever felt more sorry for myself.

Over the next 10 months, I tried one or two other recipes to see if I could fare any better, but the results remained bleak and I eventually gave up. So last month when I was given the go-ahead for spelt, one of the first things I did was try my hand at pizza. I was happily absorbed in the drama of the winter Olympics (so fabulous but such a time vacuum!), and figured homemade pizza was the perfect thing to curl up on the couch with while watching Shaun White kick the shit out of every single competitor on the mountain.

I was tentative about my dough, but a one-for-one spelt replacement in a wheat based recipe works pretty well. The dough was more difficult to handle than that of regular flour, but it yielded a chewy, puffy dough that did a passable job as transporter of cheese and sauce. There's certainly room for improvement, but it was leagues better than anything I've had in the last year. And most importantly, it didn't make me cry.

Muse of the Day: Creme Brulee

2010-02-16T17:15:00.002-07:00

Happy Valentine's Day, part II! As if the shrimp that night wasn't enough... I have been thinking about a Valentine dessert for two weeks. I am often on the look out for excuses for decadence, so holidays dedicated primarily to chocolate stretch right up my alley.

I had finally settled on a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I could practically taste it already - moist and dense, with the perfect frosting to cake ratio. I can have spelt flour now as I've learned my sensitivities lie with wheat, not gluten, and that discovery helped the bakery door burst wide open again. I haven't explored much, mostly because I am smack dab in the middle of my elimination diet. But somehow, through the graces of god, all ingredients in this chocolate cake were already stamped with approval. Bliss!

I had purchased all necessary items and was actually considering baking it a day early when the thought came to me: shouldn't I be baking something for Theo? This is, after all, under the pretense of Valentines Day. Which (I hear) is when you are supposed to do special things for your significant other. You are not supposed to do special things to satisfy your own gastronomic deliriums. I mulled this revelation around for a bit before going downstairs and clearing my conscience. I offered him a choice: tantalizingly gooey, melt-in-your mouth chocolate cake (Mmmm!), or your standard creme brulee (ho hum)?

My sales skills have never been strong. I am not one of those people that could sell ice to an Eskimo or a bridge to Nowhere. I am of the fundamental understanding that people basically know what they want and then go out and get it. At least, that's how I shop. And I don't want to be bothered by someone trying to convince me otherwise. This is how I knew that Theo would choose creme brulee. It is his dessert of all desserts, his crowned Prince amongst a group of thieves. To fight it was futile.

Creme brulee is deceptively tricky. So few ingredients, yet they each want to be handled just so. I have learned two things in particular about this eloquent dessert. The first is that the cream mixture must be added to the egg yolks very slowly - temperature differences here can play a leading role. The second thing is that the custard cooks at the low temperature of 300 degrees for a reason. If your oven runs hot, you run the risk of creating lumpy creme brulee. Still delicious, but less aesthetic. I've missed on all of these points before, and I've also nailed it perfectly. You never really know what you're getting until that first bite.

The creme brulee did not disappoint. The recipe is a generous one, I expected four servings but wound up with six, which made Theo an extra 50% happier. And one bite reminds me of how special this treat really is. It's barely sweet mixed with unrivaled creaminess, topped with a crispy sheet of amber, caramelized goodness. The dish is gone within a matter of minutes. We agreed that a proper creme brulee is so good that it's almost wrong. And when I looked over and saw Theo (literally) holding the dish to his mouth and licking out the last little bits, I knew I had made the better choice. When he went back for seconds an hour later, I felt properly rewarded for my selfless act. My chocolate cake will just have to wait.

Muse of the Day: Fried Shrimp

2010-02-15T16:05:00.003-07:00

Happy Valentines Day! I've been anticipating this holiday, mostly because it is Day 1 of Phase III, which means I'm up to about 45 allowed foods. My spirits have risen exponentially, mostly because I don't feel like I'm being prosecuted for eating anymore. In theory, I'm supposed to be inviting one new food into my life per day so that I can gauge my body's response. I'm doing well in the sense that I've been remarkably obedient about bringing in foods only from my approved list. But I'm cheating the system by adding 2-5 foods per day. If something goes wrong, I select and eliminate the most likely culprit and retry the remaining foods. I give myself props for following the plan, I'm just fast-tracking the schedule. I prefer to think of myself as being the accelerated student.

Valentine's dinner was shrimp breaded in (non-wheat) bread crumbs with coconut and lime, then fried in peanut oil. And compared to all of the bird food I've been eating for the last 12 days, this was a textural, flavorful, fried explosion in my mouth. I could have eaten four dozen. Or ten dozen. Sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy - had shrimp ever tasted so good? I've spent six weeks on a beach in Thailand before, and I still don't remember the shrimp tasting as good. I was pretty much besides myself, shoveling golden nuggets into my mouth as fast as I could swallow them. Hardly the demur Valentine's date that Theo might have wanted, so good thing we're married. I wouldn't have made for an eloquent first date.

I vaguely remember quinoa and broccoli sharing the plate as well, but their primary purpose seemed to be acting as deceleration agents - they are the items that reminded me to take a breath and spit out the shrimp tails. So I managed a memorable Valentine's meal after all. Food elimination is not fun, but adding foods back in has been like winning the lottery.

Recipe of the Week: Oatcakes

2010-02-13T17:38:00.009-07:00

I've never had an oatcake before. But in desperate want of something bready that could be slathered with peanut butter or honey or jam or butter, and that also did not contain wheat, rice, or soy, I was left to some crafty improvisation. Telling of my oatcake ignorance, I don't actually know what a proper oatcake is supposed to taste like. Or look like. And without any Scottish people around to guide my way, I'm left to make things up as I go and declare them successes or failures without any of the proper credentials.

Having said that, I'd push these into the success category. They turned out to be a hybrid between a bread and a cracker: dense and chewy with a rougher texture than bread, and without the crispness of a cracker. I suppose one could call them a savory cookie. Admittedly, the other reason I'm doing my oatcake research is because I need to replace all Clif Bars in my diet. Not as big a deal for day to day living, but Clif Bars did make frequent appearances on climbing days. I'm heading to Utah with the girls for a long climbing weekend at the end of the month, and need to have my replacement crag food sorted out before hitting the desert. I'm not seeing any restaurant-eating opportunities until my 28 day food plan is up, so thank goodness there's still one airline that doesn't charge for checking baggage. I think half my luggage will be Tupperware and food.

You could omit all sugar from the recipe and serve with salami and cheese, or leave the sugar and toss in a handful of chocolate chips while you were at it. I can envision these with walnuts and cranberries mixed in as a pleasant afternoon snack. The plain-jane version have made a hearty substitute for toast.

Oatcakes
Yields one dozen

1.5 cups rolled oats
1 cup spelt flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp brown sugar or agave
3 oz butter, softened
1/4 c milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix oats, flour, soda, salt in medium mixing bowl. Add sugar, mix well. Cut in butter, rubbing together with fingertips until moist clumps form. Add milk, stir well. Drop flattened spoonfuls of dough onto greased cookie sheet, or spread dough out into half-inch layer on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool completely before cutting sheet into squares and removing from pan.

Muse of the Day: Lamb

2010-02-11T22:42:00.003-07:00

A few years ago I spent six weeks climbing in New Zealand. I think it was around 2004, and Lord of the Rings happened to be filming there at the same time. Not really having any idea what sort of epic the movie would turn out to be, we were simultaneously amused and annoyed when we were usurped by the film crews and kicked out of one particular climbing area. It was a fascinating process to watch this formerly quiet, empty field of boulders get transformed into a small village of tents. As they ramped up the production process, we eventually stopped going to that area all together because it was too much of a nuisance to try and sneak into the climbing. I still have no idea what scenes were shot there. We could have cared less about the filming portion, but I suppose it would have been a pain in the arse for them to have chalky-handed climbers grunting and groaning all whilst throwing ourselves at the boulders in the background of their Orc scenes. Then again, we may have been indistinguishable from the Orcs themselves. Climbers are not known for their hygiene habits.

The other New Zealand quirk I have fond memories of are the endless numbers of sheep. Approaching a crag was like walking into a sea of wooly cream. The sheep didn't particularly like us and might bleat about before skirmishing away, but we routinely tromped though fields of several hundred of them on the way to the boulders. New Zealand is renowned for their wool for a reason. They are also renowned for their lamb.

I remember eating quite a bit of lamb as a child. My favorite method was a chop with a generous dollop of mint jelly on the side. Lamb is fatty and flavorful and when cooked properly, can be as moist as the finest beef tenderloin. I stopped eating lamb about eight years ago - Theo won't have anything to do with it and so it's been an abandoned source of protein. But because it's an allowed food in Phase II of my eating plan, I'm not about to pass up my opportunity at variety.

Theo picked out a lamb chop tenderloin for me - I didn't even know such creatures existed. It was quite small in diameter, but nearly two inches thick. For lack of any better idea, I pan seared the outside and then stuck the chop into the oven for about 12-15 minutes. After letting it rest for a few minutes, I peeped into the middle and wasn't disappointed. Juicy, soft, and not an ounce of gaminess - it nearly melted in my mouth. I had offered Theo a bite before I cooked it, but retracted my offer once I dug in under the pretense that he didn't like lamb anyhow. Really though, (shhhh) I just wasn't about to share.

Muse of the Day: Quinoa

2010-02-10T22:58:00.004-07:00

So I've made it through Phase I of the food plan and have moved on to Phase II. Incidentally, I didn't love it, and I have to be honest and say that there may have been a little cheating along the way. Just a little though. A year into these food issues, I'm feeling far less patient than I was initially. So I mostly found myself adding approved foods earlier than I should have, such as rice, which turns out to be not such a wise choice for me anyhow. But see? Now I know. Ready to move on. My largest sneak to date was adding regular cow milk back into my diet for my tea and breakfast. Milk isn't on my approved list at all, but I took the plunge because I didn't think my first cheat (rice milk) was doing me any favors.

What it's come down to is that I hate being told what to eat and what not to eat. Even if I'm the one, technically speaking, doing the dictating. I love food. Obviously. Food to me is exciting and playful and sensual and exploratory. I'm indifferent as to whether it's canned tuna or a five star meal from a celebrity chef. I wouldn't maintain a blog dedicated to food and food alone if I didn't find it to be a riveting subject matter. Depriving me of all this makes me feel resentful and pouty and annoyed at everyone around me who, against all odds, are eating all of my favorite banned foods simultaneously. Not to mention the fact that a highly restrictive diet makes me far less eager to post here everyday. Theo pointed out that it's only for 28 days, but I find myself utterly fascinated by what everyone else is eating. I'm obsessing about the three pound bag of M&Ms that someone brought to the office, along with the chocolate cake "from the best bakery in Denver!!" that was brought in for a coworkers birthday. I can smell all of it from my desk. I can, quite literally, hear it calling my name. The food world goes on without me, and I'm the child left behind. It makes me think that this has got to be the slowest month. Ever.

But, I get to eat quinoa with fresh berries and sunflower seeds everyday if I like. Quinoa is a truly pleasant grain - light as air and yet it sort of pops when you bite into it, as if you were nibbling into a tiny gelatinous air-filled bubble. I suppose I'd describe it as on the verge of squeaking. It happily accepts invitations to both breakfast or dinner and seems just as confident being paired with blueberries as it does with steak and green beans. I like that in a grain - versatility. It's the easiest thing in the world to cook, so I make a pot to keep in the fridge and scoop out as needed. It's a good staple for me, mostly because I haven't figured out how to turn it into a dessert yet. But there's time. I still have about 19 days left.

Muse of the Day: American Cheese

2010-02-08T21:03:00.002-07:00

I can see your face. I know what you're thinking. Because I was thinking the exact same thing, too. American cheese? Eww.

But here's the thing. Believe it or not, it's one of my 15 foods this week. I have no idea why. I didn't even know it was considered a proper food. In fact, American cheese (at least the one I bought) has a total of 11 separate ingredients in it. Ten of which are NOT on my 'ok to eat' list. The one approved ingredient is salt, and I'm pretty sure I can get that elsewhere.

So how can a "food" item that is comprised of ten banned ingredients be ok to eat when they are combined into one item? I have absolutely no idea - that's been the million dollar question this week. But it's on my list, so I bought a package and had my first slice of American cheese since elementary school.

To be fair, Kraft singles were a childhood favorite of mine. I have distinct memories of sitting in my parents bedroom under the round, dark oak table. From my little cave I would watch Sesame Street on TV, all the while folding my square of cheese in half, then each half into half, then each half of a half into half, stacking each piece on top of one another until I had a tower of miniature squares that were all about a half-inch wide. Then I would peel the top square off of the tower and pop it into my mouth, continuing on down the line until the entire row was gone. With Dracula muppets on the boob tube teaching me to count to twelve or whatever, this is how I ate American cheese.

I don't remember consciously banishing them from the kitchen, but at some point they disappeared and I have never had the occasion to buy them as an adult. Until now. In all honesty, I felt pretty sheepish about my purchase. There I was, being that person in the grocery store who had Kraft singles in their cart. Everything I'd ever learned in France, down the drain in one fell swoop. But I persevered, and cooked a slice in with my two scrambled eggs. The fascinating part was the cheese totally disappeared. As in vaporized. There wasn't a single trace left of it. My eggs were maybe a shade more orange, but American cheese has this phenomenal melting property to it that standard cheddar does not. I can see now how people recommend Velveeta for macaroni and cheese.

And so I continue to eat my slice of processed, salty, creamy chemicals. I don't see how it's right, but it is what it is. It's been a funny week.

Muse of the Day: Clams

2010-02-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today's headline reads "Land Loving Desert Girl Meets Creature from Ocean. Remains Fascinated." The creature, of course, being clams. I know nothing about clams. I rarely eat them, I've never cooked them, but they've just catapulted to the top of my Most Fascinating list.

I am restricted to approximately 15 foods this week. That's not a long list, especially considering we can easily eat that many different foods in the span of one meal. One dish of one meal, actually. Just think about what goes into a simple salad with vinaigrette dressing - you've got lettuce, a variety of vegetables, salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar. That's maybe 8-10 items right there. Add garlic and Parmesan to the dressing, you're up to a dozen foods. My point is that you can whip through 15 different foods rather quickly, and despite the fact that they're all good, it gets boring.

So the last item from my list that I had yet to eat was clams. I had scoffed at them initially - clams?! We don't eat clams here. This is a landlocked state. But by the time four days have rolled by with the same stupid 14 ingredients arranged into every configuration I could think of, the clams started to gain appeal. In fact, I made a special trip to the Whole so that I could wrestle up a few of these critters and get them home. I had no plan of attack, but I knew that I would not be eating the upteenth banana with peanut butter for dinner. Nor would I eat another fillet of salmon, or anymore millet with sunflower seeds. So clams it was.

The fishmonger handed me a purple, netted bag filled with ice shavings and a pound of large clams. I hadn't the foggiest what the next step would be, but a quick internet review said to just dump them into half an inch of boiling water and wait for them to open up. Any rogue clam that doesn't open is dead and should be tossed. Simple enough. And so I stood with baited breath, watching my pan of clams and searching for any signs of life as the water simmered away. I don't know why, but I envisioned clam shells opening very slowly, in increments, something like a secret passageway in a great stone wall that creeps open when you whisper the correct magical words. The minutes ticked by, and nothing happened. I was starting to think about returning my clams, "Here, crazy fishmonger. You sold me broken clams! You took me for a desert fool and gave me all the duds!"

But then a funny thing happened. The amount of bubbles increased exponentially. They were little bubbles, like champagne, not the roiling bubbles of boiling water. I was watching with utter fascination when Pop! The shells of my first-born clam popped apart, a short burst of steam billowing out. I was transfixed. And overjoyed! I had not been a Rocky Mountain clam-ignorant fool after all. I called Theo over to the stove to watch the rest of them explode open, one by one, and I laughed gleefully each time it happened. Theo, for whatever reason, did not share my same enthusiasm. But then again, he has been able to eat anything he desired over the previous four days so the novelty was lost on him.

I sprinkled them with salt and placed them on a bed of quinoa. And I have to say that I was pretty impressed with my meal. The clams were just chewy enough, while still soft and tasting of the sea. And I've learned about a new food. Who knew that being so restricted could be so expanding?

Muse of the Day: Asparagus

2010-02-05T23:13:00.002-07:00

You don't need to fuss much when it comes to asparagus. I've had some that I enjoyed in pasta, which is a rarity as I don't care for vegetables of any sort getting in the way of the noodles. I was never keen on pasta primavera for that very reason, but there was an asparagus dish, once upon a time, that proved to be the exception to that rule. These guys, however, were simply drizzled with a bit of peanut oil and salt, then tossed onto the grill. They were truly splendid, probably the best part of the entire meal. Al dente with the flavor of fresh earth.

I've heard that they take several seasons to become established plants in a garden. I think about it every year, and then I always conveniently forget when it comes to planting time, mostly because I can't plan ahead like that when it comes to my garden. Of course, if I had planted them when I first had the thought, maybe I'd have a thriving patch by now. Or maybe not. My gardening skills seem to be diminishing each season, so I might actually be sparing myself the emotional havoc of wrecking another crop.

One of the intriguing things about asparagus is that they make perfect miniature trees. If I imagined myself to be a mouse, and found myself in a forest, I suspect they would be asparagus trees - much like pine poles that have been stripped of all their needles. We've had a lot of beetle kill here in Colorado, so maybe that's where I'm getting this idea from, but when I look at asparagus, I think of bundles of skinny pines. They're like edible stacks of lumber. Only better.

Muse of the Day: Peas

2010-02-04T23:17:00.001-07:00

I've always liked the bumper sticker that reads: "Visualize Whirled Peas". Sort of silly, but I thought it was awfully clever the first time I saw it. I ate peas as a child far more often than I do as an adult - why are peas the 'kiddie vegetable'? It's like you grow out of kid-dom and then don't get to eat peas anymore. But that's changing for the next 6 days, as peas are one of the 15 foods I can eat this week (along with millet, as you can see in the photo above).

The nice thing about peas, besides that bright green hue, is the fact that you can count them. And that alone may have something to do with why they're popular with kids. "Eat twelve more peas, Bobby." It's a measurable goal of sorts, better than saying, "take two more bites" which invariably means licking the spoon and trying to count that as a bite.

I recall the whole family being at someone else's house for dinner one evening. We were eating peas at the kids' table, and my father stopped in to encourage me to eat more of those little green friends. I was a bit of a bargainer in my youth, so I said I'd eat my peas in exchange for him having to do something as well. I tried to think of a particularly mortifying act for him to perform, and we eventually struck a deal that I would eat my peas if he would jump up and try to touch the ceiling three times in a row.

I have no idea why I thought that would be so embarrassing to him. It seemed unthinkable to me, and I was pretty sure he would back out of his end of the deal. But he didn't. Dad, to my horror, squatted down on the floor right then and there, and then sprang upwards like a frog, hands splayed up over his head. He smiled the whole time, counting out in a goofy voice as he jumped once, twice, thrice. Then he said, "Now eat your peas," and with the smug grin of satisfaction on his face, he walked away, back to the adults' table. I don't think the other kids ever even noticed. Foiled, again.

Muse of the Day: Soy

2010-02-03T23:52:00.001-07:00

I can't help but marvel at the curve balls that life throws at you every once in a while. There you are, hobbling about your own business and kabaam! You get one right in the kisser. And so this goes down in the history books as one of those times.

I have spent much of the last 9 months avoiding all gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. It wasn't easy, and it reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. However, I still had a hunch that something wasn't quite right. I'll spare you the details... no need to air dirty laundry here. But I had suffered enough, and didn't really have the drive to do an elimination diet where you remove all possible allergens from your diet, cleanse your system, and then add foods in one at a time to see what you react to. I was done with trial and error. Frankly, I just wanted quick answers.

It turns out that these answers can be found in the form of a blood test and a pretty penny. The end result is that you get a list that breaks food down into three categories: those that you have no reaction to, are moderately reactive to, or are highly reactive to. Admittedly, there was a part of me that was wishing, begging, for my test to come back negative for wheat. Maybe this was all a fluke and I can really eat all the pasta that I want! In a way, it was like buying a lottery ticket. When you buy a ticket, the odds are so obviously against you. But you hope that maybe, just maybe, the planets have aligned and you win that ten million dollars. But you don't win, and really, you didn't expect to.

So it was with the blood test. I knew wheat would raise a red flag. In fact, I have a total of five red flags. And gluten is not one of them - surprise! But wheat is, as is buckwheat which, frankly, I don't care for anyways. The two that surprised me are avocados and watermelon. I mean, really? What's even in watermelon? And the fifth food, the one I am the most intolerant of? The big winner is soy.

Soybeans. That charming little pea looking thing that you eat by the bucketful when you get sushi. Aka tofu, aka soysauce, aka soy lecithin which acts as an emulsifier in 98% of all chocolate and protein bars. Soy. I have to be honest in that it never crossed my mind during the last 9 months. I've been moaning and groaning about not eating wheat, and that was only half the problem. No wonder I wasn't feeling well.

And now? What does a half Japanese girl do when she can't eat soysauce? Are chocolate chips forever banned from my kitchen? Fine questions. I'll have to get back to you on those. Until then, I'm reduced to a total of 15 foods and 4 spices plus salt. These are all foods that I was totally nonreactive to and will make up everything I eat for the next seven days. The silver lining - there always is one - is that peanuts are included on my "allowed" list. Which means I get to eat peanut butter. As much as I want. Which means there is a god.

Muse of the Day: Japanese Pear

2010-02-01T21:42:00.001-07:00

I have a vivid memory of my first taste of the Asian pear. I'm somewhat foggy on how this pear came to be in our stewardship - I think my mother and I spotted it when we were out and about one day, mostly because I remember her being both surprised and delighted that we had managed to find such a thing. She displayed the carefully cut wedges proudly, "This," she stated, "is an Japanese pear. It's like an apple, but it's a pear!"

First of all, that made no sense to me. I felt like the differences between apples and pears were pretty clear cut, and was not likely to confuse the two. She passed the slice to me, and I tentatively took a bite. And then I understood. A perfect hybrid between two lovely fruits. I was, in fact, bowled over. It was juicy and flavorful, just like a pear. But it was crispy and light, just like an apple. I immediately loved it, feeling as though I had just been let in on some small secret that the universe had to offer.

These days, the Japanese Pear Apple is a bit more common. We brought a number of them home recently, and have been enjoying them as dessert. Pears and apples, all rolled into one. A Papple! Or, as Theo has dubbed them, a Japple. I totally wish I had thought of that.

Muse of the Day: Coconut Chicken Soup

2010-01-31T22:58:00.001-07:00

It is soup season. We have had so many winter days that seem, to the casual observer, to be quite pleasant. Fairly sunny skies, not much precipitation. And they are pleasant - don't get me wrong. It's just that they're only pleasant if you're running. Because if you're running, after the first mile or so, you're finally getting into the swing of things, the blood flow has picked up, and you think, "Hey. This is pretty pleasant." Pleasant, despite the fact that you're having to run to feel that way.

But if you're walking, or standing, or sitting, or basically doing anything besides running, they feel less pleasant. They feel colder than they appear to be, and that's quite sneaky of Mother Nature. This, combined with Theo's snuffling, sneezy nose, and what I now suspect to be Pippi's broken toe, had me in the mood for soup.

I wanted soup that was hot - temperature hot and spicy hot - because that seems like heavier armor against head colds and winter woes. So I worked up a pot of coconut chicken soup: jazzed up with green chili paste, made homey with basmati rice. It was creamy and cozy, but I daresay there was room to crank up the heat. Theo's head cold seems to be on the mend, so it may have done the trick as far as he's concerned. A few polka dots of chili oil would look lovely against the milky liquid - something I'll have to keep in mind for tomorrow's leftovers when I'm marveling at the cold that creeps in between the rays of sunshine.

Recipe of the Week: Gluten Free, Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

2010-01-30T18:39:00.090-07:00

I have been craving chocolate cake recently. Nothing fancy, just the standard chocolate cake, chocolate frosting number that you can drum up at pretty much any restaurant in America. It was always my go-to dessert as a child, and the thing I miss most whenever I'm traveling around Asian countries which don't share my love of cakes or chocolate, let alone chocolate cakes.

But since I've come to suspect a refined sugar and gluten intolerance about 9 months ago, chocolate cake has pretty much been on the kibosh. And it hurts. Not just in a pity-party sort of way, but it hurts down to the very fiber of my being. Anyone who develops an acute fondness for baking and is then told to not eat anything made with wheat flour, well, you can imagine the sense of injustice. Eliminating refined sugar was easy, I just substitute agave nectar in everything. Baking at high altitude requires additional liquids anyway. But flour is a tricky thing. We live in a food society where white flour perches in the epicenter, and everything else just sort of rotates around it. Think bread, pasta, any baked good you can lay your hands on. I watched all comfort food zoom out the window, and I wept for my lost friends.

It didn't change what I wanted to eat, though. It just changed what those things were comprised of. As more and more of our population becomes gluten intolerant or has celiac disease, gluten-free foods and recipes are popping up all over the place. This is due first and foremost to the fact that there is no pill you can take to remedy the situation. That leaves 100% of treatment up to the food industry.

Both food manufacturers and restaurants are taking note, and the number of gluten-free items available to consumers today is ten fold what it was a decade ago. You pay a pretty price - manufacturers charge around 25% more for a gluten-free version of any regular item; but as the demand continues to increase, they're raking in the bucks while they still have control over the situation. Someday, I'm sure, the pharmaceutical industry will find their cure, and at that point the power and money will shift to them. We'd all rather pop a pill than not eat chocolate cake. But until then...

I could hear your little chortles when you read the name of this post. Gluten free and vegan? Is there anything left that could possibly allow it to qualify as a cupcake? But! Despite the lack of usual suspects, these critters held their moisture well and did the job of satiating my baked chocolate craving while steering me clear of the guilt department. They were delicious. A little more dense and crumbly than their standard counterparts, but rich, chocolaty and just sweet enough to do the trick. Most of all they made me happy. Happy in a soft, chocolate cake sort of way.

Gluten Free, Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes*
yields one dozen
* This recipe is formulated for baking at altitude - 5430 feet to be precise

1c garbazno-fava bean flour
1/4c +1tsp potato starch
2T arrowroot
1/2c cocoa powder
1 3/4tsp baking powder
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp xanthan gum
1tsp salt
1/2c coconut oil, melted
3/4c agave
1/2c applesauce
1/4c mashed banana
1/2c + 2tsp hot coffee
1 1/2T vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In small bowl, mix together flour, potato starch, arrowroot, cocoa, baking powder and soda, xanthan gum, and salt. In large bowl, mix together oil, agave, applesauce, banana, coffee and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in two parts, mixing well. Divide batter evenly between 12 paper-lined muffin cups (approx 1/3c per muffin), bake for 15 minutes. Cupcakes are finished when toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from tin. Place on wire rack to cool completely. Store at room temperature.

Muse of the Day: Peet's Coffee

2010-01-29T18:13:00.006-07:00

Thanks, Verizon! A while back, Theo was stuck in the Verizon store because he needed something for his phone. It was a bear of a wait, but he participated in a survey while there in exchange for a $5 gift card to Peet's Coffee. Which he promptly handed over to me when I picked him up, because coffee makes Theo very grumpy. Which makes me grumpy.

I've had the card sitting in my wallet for over two months now, but happened to be in the neighborhood of a Peet's today and thought, "What the hell? Free coffee!" Even though we all know what coffee does to me. Today, though, I was quite clever and ordered a half-caf. Supposedly half caffeinated, half decaffeinated, it's pretty much all I can stand and still be functional.

Many moons ago, Theo and I were loitering in a bookstore reading magazines for free. He sauntered over to the in-house Starbucks and got us each a little treat, "little" being code word for "gigantic". It was no less than a swimming pool worth of espresso with half a gallon of chocolate and whipped cream. Probably 3,500 calories in a cup. I don't know what he was thinking. I would never, in a million years, have ordered that drink; but because it was placed in my hand, I found it impossible to stop drinking it.

I've never used crystal meth, but I can only imagine that this is what it feels like. It was amazing that I didn't suffer a heart attack on the spot, and if I could have crawled out of my skin, I would have. I was flying, a wingless bird wondering what on Earth I was doing in the sky. I spent the next two hours trapped in some other dimension where life is stuck in panic mode just for the fun of it. I wanted to run away screaming, maybe hurdle myself into a brick wall to render myself unconscious. But I didn't. Needless to say, we had to leave the bookstore.

But today's latte was an entirely different experience. Very pleasant, in fact, and I have to say that I enjoy Peet's coffee. And then I got to be one of those people that walks around doing this and that, holding a little paper cup wrapped in a cozy that says, "I am very chic and Hollywood-esque now that I run my errands while sipping frothy beverages." I never get to be that person, so it was fun to pretend.

Muse of the Day: Chocolate Sauce

2010-01-27T15:18:00.002-07:00

Mmmm, chocolate, the elixir of life. I made some chocolate sauce the other day that was so easy and so fabulous that I honestly wondered why I hadn't bothered to do so before. The creation was inspired by a jar of homemade canned pears that caught my eye in the pantry. I've seen this jar a thousand times and never thought twice about it. But for whatever reason, this time inspiration smacked me right in the middle of my forehead with a wooden spoon: ice cream! pears! chocolate sauce! The vision was so instantaneous that I completely forgot what I was rummaging around in the pantry for to begin with.

The dessert was an enormous success, despite Theo's initial reservation, "Pears? That's weird." Turns out it wasn't so weird that it prevented him from having the same dessert three nights in a row. We finished off the pears, but my sauce craving wasn't satisfied just yet. So I made another batch, this time using fancy Callebaut chocolate. And, you know, it just wasn't as good.

The first time around I used Trader Joe's bittersweet, $4/lb. We don't have Trader Joe's in Colorado, so I have to stock up every time I go home to New Mexico. This means I usually have a freezer full of pound-plus bars of varying chocolatiness that I can whip out at a moment's notice when whimsy strikes. But Chocolate Sauce #1 was the last of it, which is why I had to venture out to get the semisweet Callebaut at a much less demure $11/lb.

The verdict was that the same sauce was now thinned out and lumpy. The Trader Joe's was thick, syrupy, and smooth as a baby's butt. It sat well and even became a glossy, semi-solid shell as it was cooled by the ice cream. The Callebaut? Not so much. Or at all, actually. I've been puzzling over the difference. You can even see the lumpy texture in the photo above. Chocolate sauce has a total of four ingredients in it - what could I possibly screw up? Maybe it has something to do with bitter vs. semisweet. Anyhoo, it's a conundrum.

The sauce did the trick, but I've probably had my fill at this point. I think I'll wait until I can stock up again next round down South.

Muse of the Day: Salmon

2010-01-26T22:42:00.000-07:00

Today wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday, and so we went back to the salmon that got usurped last night. It was Coho salmon: bright, lean, cheerful and cleverly wrapped in "The Seafood Times" paper from Whole Foods. I sort of felt like reading it when I was prepping the fish, what do they actually put on there? But it was all gooed up by the time I was done with it, and not something I really wanted to be sticking my face into.

The word salmon bears striking similarities to the word salmonella, to which it has no association. Bad luck of the draw, though, in the naming department. I did get an automated call from Costco yesterday regarding some salami that might have salmonella in it, and the last time I was at Costco was this past September which means anything we've purchased there, salmonella tainted or not, is long gone. It always happens like this, and I begin to fret about things I've eaten ages ago that obviously had no effect on my health one way or the other. I don't even remember buying that salami, but I must have because it's not like they're calling all one hundred billion Costco customers just for the sheer fun of it.

The salmon(non-ella) was delicious. Light, flaky and perfect with some Cajun spice and a quick steam bath of white wine. And the yam got brought back from last night as well, so it was a rather orange meal. I should have made carrots, to really hammer the theme home, but I was a renegade and made broccoli instead.

Muse of the Day: Breakfast for Dinner

2010-01-25T21:07:00.001-07:00

Dear Monday, you wouldn't have such a rotten reputation if you didn't work so hard to fit the stereotype. I've certainly had worse days, but today required a few deep breaths.

I had to re-do blood samples because my original got botched by FedEx. Which meant picking up another kit, going to another medical clinic, going back to FedEx. Not a big deal, except that poor Pippi ripped a nail backwards while on the hunt for elk, resulting in a really fat toe accompanied by infection. Today, she's our tri-pod dog. I want to laugh at her until I remember how much pain she's in. Hop hop hop! She's like a really cute three-legged rabbit. Still, a $150 trip to the vet, nail removal and drugs are decidedly less cute. Theo's Monday morning meeting involved the announcement of pay cuts across the board. Hello, Bad Economy! Welcome to my home. Please, come on in and stay awhile. No, really, make yourself comfortable.

And so between work emails and yelping and needles and fedex and banks and blood work, I stopped to pick up salmon for dinner. However, on a day like today, salmon wasn't going to cut it. Theo needed stronger medicine to ward off the evils of Moody Monday and requested breakfast for dinner. It seemed too unkind to not oblige, despite the yam that was 75% cooked. Bring on the pancakes, eggs and bacon!

I don't know why breakfast for dinner is such a treat. You sort of feel like you're doing something naughty, beating the system. I think it's a form of denial. We only have this meal when it's a weekend morning and we have the whole day stretching out before us like a lazy stroll on a beach. But the real reason it cheers up these 'Must be Monday' days is because pancakes at night are a do-over, a chance to hit the restart button and try all over again. I hope we get it right tomorrow.

Muse of the Day: Risotto

2010-01-24T23:20:00.002-07:00

When I worked in a restaurant, very briefly, about a dozen years ago, a customer once stopped me on my way through the dining room and asked if risotto was actually a rice or a pasta. I don't think I hesitated for more than a second before I said, "Pasta!", smiled courteously, and walked away. A fellow waitress who had overheard the exchange pulled me aside in the kitchen and said, "Actually, risotto is a rice." Oops. I honestly had no idea what the answer was, but a 50/50 chance wasn't bad so I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Dear long ago customer, wherever you are, I apologize for making shit up.

The good thing is that since then, I've never forgotten that risotto is a rice. And as anyone who has had risotto will know, it is a rice that acts like a pasta. Risotto is creamy and chewy with just a hint of crunch, carries sauce well and makes you feel like you're eating something much more special than either rice or pasta. Like pice. Or rasta. And in a way you are, because while the old adage about having to stir risotto non-stop for thirty minutes is a bit of an exaggeration, it isn't exactly that far off, either. You can do other things while you cook this satisfying dish, so long as those things require no more than 45 seconds of your attention at a time.

This weekend I made some with dried mushrooms, topping it off with Parmesan and parsley. And I have to say that if you're staying away from gluten, as I am, risotto is the dish that will make you feel like you aren't missing a thing in the pasta world. At least, that's what I like to tell myself.