Technical Challenge

Has 2020 been anything but a technical challenge? It's certainly not been a signature bake, and if it's a showstopper, it's the kind that falls down and uses salt in place of sugar.

Our Christmas was a technical challenge. My husband woke up in the middle of the night and discovered that our power was out, due to a crazy tropical storm. Con Ed promised restoration by 3pm, so we sent the kid to Starbucks for coffee and breakfast snacks, opened our presents 'round the unlit tree, read books and played Gin Rummy, and ate shelf-stable soup for lunch. In mid-afternoon, Con Ed revised the restoration estimate to 11am the next day, so we pulled out the portable generator, started her up (yay!), and began running extension cords. And ... POWER. But by then it was about 4:30, so we ordered Chinese food for dinner.

On Boxing Day, we made popovers for breakfast, and roasted the (insanely large for three people) roast for dinner - all the Christmas day meals, delayed a day.

(Yes, we are still eating leftover pork.)

So, it was somewhat fitting that my birthday present from my daughter - yes, my birthday is four days after Christmas - was a technical challenge.

She measured out most of the ingredients, and gave me an untitled recipe (the full recipe, not a GBBS sketch).

I elected to make it as a "regular" Victoria sandwich, without the layer of buttercream. And it was delicious - even if it meant that I had to make my own birthday cake.

Technical challenge, WON.

The Punch-fueled Post-pandemic Pot-luck Party that I am Planning

When I got married, one of my cousins put together a recipe book, of family recipes from my paternal grandparents side of the family. The recipes had originally been written out by our grandfather's mother, and given to our grandmother Marion back in 1931.

It wasn't a wedding present; my grandparents had already been married for several years. Truth be told, I've never made anything out of that recipe book. It's mostly baked goods and sweets: cakes and cookies and brownies and icings and rice puddings. But I pulled it out because I was casting about for a Christmas gift for my father, and came across an Etsy seller who prints your scanned recipes on tea towels. I chose the New Year punch for him, as it seemed holiday-ish.

It's a perfectly ordinary sounding punch: red wine, white wine, strong tea, oranges & lemons, sugar, and dark rum. If one were in the habit of serving punch, and one weren't in the middle of a pandemic, it's probably a great recipe.

I am, however, oddly intrigued and disgusted by the War Cake.

Boil up some lard, raisins and coffee. Add flour, baking soda, and spices. Bake for an hour. There's no sugar, except what comes from the raisins. There aren't any eggs. There's very little fat. Maybe I'll make it for the next punch-fueled post-pandemic pot-luck party.  

Lewis

I am heartbroken today. My priest died early this morning.

If you know me, you know that I’m a dyed in the wool atheist. But once upon a time, I worked at a non-profit organization that was housed in an Episcopal church. Lewis arrived one day as the assistant rector, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Lewis’s sister asked that we send our “favorite Lewis memories out into the universe to do good and to ease his passage as he becomes one with cosmos”. Lewis, this one’s for you.

Lewis was smart as hell, and foul-mouthed in a way you don’t expect from a priest. He’s the person I called when I needed to figure out if I was a heathen-atheist, or a pagan-atheist. I think we settled on heathen, but I do like the prosody of heathenpaganatheist. Lewis had a huge appetite for life, and was full of stories. Did you know that Saabs once came with two engines? I learned that from Lewis, who had one once.

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we scratched our heads about who was going to perform the ceremony. I had the whimsical idea that we could call in three of the wise men from the neighborhood: the Methodist minister from across the street, the rabbi from next door, and the Joyce scholar from down the hill – but instead I asked Lewis, with a smidgeon of trepidation because of the whole atheist business. He agreed in a heartbeat– and married us, using a secular edit of the ceremony out of the Book of Common Prayer. I had a moment of horror when he wrapped his stole around our hands, but whatever prayer he sent up, he kept to himself.

Years later, after my daughter was born, Lewis came to visit. She was tiny – a month or so old – and he brought her a huge-looking toddler-sized pair of red glitter-encrusted Mary Janes, merrily decreeing that “every little girl needs a pair of ruby slippers from an old queen!”

A few weeks after my mother died, we had a memorial celebration at her house. Lewis came, carrying a shovel because I told him to, and dug up bits of her plants to take to his new garden. I love knowing that my mother’s garden extends to a churchyard on Staten Island

Lewis, my friend, my life is richer for having known you.

Cherry Cherry Cherry

The first time I ever encountered a clafoutis was in 8th grade. My friend Debbie and I made two dishes for an 8th grade French class cooking competition - an apple clafoutis, and an onion soup, both from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We made the onion soup at my house, and the clafoutis at hers - but I had to have my mother supply the rum because her house was a dry house. We also began with a spectacular fail: the pie plate exploded. The recipe called for a portion of the batter to be poured into a glass pie plate and baked in the oven for a few minutes to set it up, so the fruit wouldn't sink to the very bottom of the pan. We thought we'd be clever and set up the batter on the stovetop. Um, yeah - that pie plate got hot, shattered into pieces, and shot across the kitchen. 

 Funnily enough, I have only ever made apple clafoutis - never cherry, though cherry is allegedly the ur-clafoutis. It may be because all the cherry clafoutis recipes I ever see call for sweet cherries - and if you've ever had a cherry pie made from sweet cherries you know that they are curiously insipid baked. 

 This, right now, is sour cherry season - a fleeting moment to seize upon - and yesterday our farmer's market was open and bustling. I brought home a quart of sour cherries, thinking I'd make a pie. But something set me looking in a different direction, and happily a sour cherry clafoutis recipe popped up. Of course, I adapted it; I am pretty incapable of following a recipe to a T. The result was delightful. 

[Rabbit hole: Wander around the house wondering what happened to my copy of The Auberge Of The Flowering Hearth. Light upon the 1984 Larousse gastronomique and look up clafoutis: "a dessert from the Limousin region of France, consisting of black cherries arranged in a buttered dish and covered with fairly thick pancake batter." Dive deeper, into the 1961 first American edition of the Larousse gastronomique: "Clafouti: A homely preparation in Limousin, this is a kind of fruit pastry or thick fruit pancake, made usually with black cherries." Wonder idly why the earlier Larousse doesn't use the final S on clafoutis, but the later one does. Feel both ridiculous and smug for owning two different editions of the Larousse. Google cherry clafoutis. Find excellent discursive piece on the Guardian website: "A particular speciality of the Limousin region, where it's traditionally made with the local griottes, or sour morello cherries..." Pat self on back for thinking that sour cherries would make a good clafoutis.]

Sour Cherry Clafoutis (adapted from Beekman 1802)

Ingredients

1 T.  butter

1 qt. sour cherries, pitted

3 large eggs

1/2 cup spelt flour (or use regular AP flour)

1 cup milk

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup Swerve (or use granulated sugar)

pinch of salt

2 T. demerara sugar

1 T. kirsch or mirabelle (cherry or plum brandy) or 1 T. vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9 or 10" pie plate.

Place the cherries in the pie plate. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add flour, milk, cream, Swerve (or sugar) and salt, and whisk together until well combined. Pour the batter over the cherries. Sprinkle the top with the demerara asugar and bake for 45 minutes, or until set. Let cool slightly on a rack and serve warm. (The clafoutis will fall as it cools.)

In Which We Join The Army

The other day, my kid said to me "can you help me change my bed? There's a hole in my sheet." So I duly climbed the stairs to help her find the clean sheets and take apart the bed - whereupon I discovered that the hole was, um, big enough for a large grown-up to climb through. This was not some tiny little tear.

But, because I am my mother's daughter, and because there's been this surge of folks sewing up face masks for themselves and local hospitals, I took that dead bottom sheet and threw it in the wash. When it was out, I cut off the elastic edge, harvested the elastic, repurposed the edge into (un)bias tape, and cut up the good parts of the sheet into 6"x9" rectangles.

I then scrounged through the box of t-shirts for projects (remember, I am my mother's daughter), and cut a few of them up into more 6"x9" rectangles.

And I pulled out my sewing machine, which, providentially, I had had overhauled in January because the bobbin winder wasn't winding bobbins.

Some hours and some experimentation later, I'd produced 16 masks - using a simple pattern that's been all over the internet.

I am keeping a couple, sending two to my father and his girlfriend, and sending another two to my sister and her wife. And the rest are going to a local hospital.

Random observations:

• My sewing machine is a weird prima donna wannabe: it demands fancy thread in the bobbin, but it doesn't care about the top thread. Happily, I have a stash of silk thread from who knows where - it's old but perfect.
• [Old cotton thread rots; if you can break it easily, throw it out.]
• No one cares that the lime green polyester top thread doesn't match the pale celadon silk bobbin thread. We're talking life safety here.
• Making the pleats is a pain in the ass if the t-shirt fabric is too butch.
• The cut off neck of a turtleneck makes an admirable and oddly comfortable mask - with NO sewing.
• Proper bias tape is cut on the bias.

I'll make more masks soon.

Teensters and Circles of Unloveliness

The girl and I have been working our way through The Office - we are up to season 9 / episode 11, which means that it's coming to an end.

Last night, we watched "Suit Warehouse", in which some of the folks are out of the office and the remaining Dunder Mifflinites drink ALL THE COFFEE. And start sweating.

Of course, my reaction was "oh, circles of unloveliness!"

The kid was all "huh?"

So I had to explain that this is what you call visibly damp armpits, and that it was a phrase used frequently in my family - like while watching ice skating championships: "OMG she's got circles of unloveliness!"

The kid didn't believe me. So I googled it, as one does.

There was precisely ONE hit for the phrase "circles of unloveliness," ONE.

All hail Archive.org.

In 1948, someone published a pamphlet for teenagers called "The Stork Didn't Bring You [The facts of life for teenagers]".

A chapter called "Oh, Woe Is You" contains this rich paragraph:

Excessive perspiration is another distressing teenster
problem. It ruins clothing and good times with equal fa-
tality. And it crops out in all the worst places the palms
of your hands, making them exempt from holding; the
soles of your feet, making sox smelly; around your hair-
line, undoing curls; and mostly underarms, leaving deep
dark circles of unloveliness.

In 1948, my mother turned 13. Clearly, my mother read said pamphlet, retained said phrase, and passed it along to her children.

Could we PLEASE get "circles of unloveliness" into common parlance?

This Is Not A Knitting Blog

This is not a knitting blog. I am not much of a knitter.

I can, however, make a hat - and I made two as Christmas presents and just finished one for my husband, using random yarn I had in the cellar. The Christmas present hats were very scrappy - mostly navy blue worsted, with dribs and drabs of other yarn striped in (hello needlepoint wool from 1972). The hat I just finished is more refined - only two yarns, in alternating stripes of navy worsted and black cotton.

Every time I decide to make a hat, though, I agonize about the pattern - and especially about how to do the decreasing to shape the top. I have finally settled on a pattern that works, so - even though I am not much of a knitter and this is not a knitting blog - here goes:

Worsted Weight Adult Sized Rolled Brim Hat - Knit in the Round

You'll need to know how to cast on, how to knit, and how to knit two stitches together (to decrease). You don't need to know how to purl or increase. As far as the porcupine business with the double pointed needles, do it when no one will interrupt you, in a good spot with great light, and have patience.

Materials
120 yards of worsted weight yarn (or, you know, a good sized ball or two)
Circular needle - size 9 US, 16" long
Set of double pointed needles - size 9 US
Gauge? We don't need no stinkin' gauge - just go ahead and make the hat.

Instructions
Cast 80 stitches onto the circular needle. Place a marker and join, being careful not to spiral the whole thing around the circular needle. Knit for about 6”, ending at the marker.

Begin decreasing on the next round, as follows:

1. (Knit 6, k2tog) repeat to end. You'll now have 70 stitches left.
2. Knit.
3. (Knit 5, k2tog) repeat to end. 60 stitches remain.
4. Knit.
5. (Knit 4, k2tog) repeat to end. 50 stitches remain.
6. Knit.
7. (Knit 3, k2tog) repeat to end. 40 stitches remain.
8. Knit.

Switch to double pointed needles.

9. (Knit 2, k2tog) repeat to end. 30 stitches remain.
10. Knit.
11. (Knit 1, k2tog) repeat to end. 20 stitches remain.
12. Knit.
13. (k2tog) repeat to end.

Cut the yarn leaving a 12" tail. Thread it through the remaining 10 stitches, draw up tightly and secure. Weave in ends.

If your intended recipient has a bigger head than usual, make the hat bigger by 1) casting on 90 stitches, and 2) beginning the decrease with a row of knit 7, k2tog followed by a row of straight knitting - and then continue as above.

The Reluctant Envoy

I turned the page in the paper today, and learned that Peter Serkin had died. He was a good one, and straddled a line between new and old - playing the old stuff, and championing the new. According to his obituary, in 1973 he got Grammy Award nominations for two records - one of several of Mozart’s Piano Concertos, and another of the 20 piano solos that comprise Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus”. He was also described as “the counterculture’s reluctant envoy to the straight concert world” - per Donal Henahan.

Once upon a time, I worked at a small arts organization. And once, before my time, Serkin had played there, as a benefit for the organization. Lou Reed had also played there, and the organization convinced Serkin and Reed to sign a fundraising letter. Hey you, we're cool musicians, we both played at this cool place, send money - that kind of fundraising letter. Well, one of the letters came back, stuffed into the postage paid return envelope. On top, someone had scrawled "Peter Serkin is a bum". I mean, what? (No, there was no money enclosed.)

I'm sorry someone thought you were a bum, Peter. And I hope Mozart and Messiaen have embraced you. R.I.P.

What Were They Thinking?

It's time for another round of charitable crankiness. You may recall that in 2012 I kept every charitable solicitation that arrived by postal mail. At the beginning January, I thought I might do that again, but instead of waiting to do a round up at year end, I think I'll do it monthly.

There were ten solicitations that arrived in January - however, two of them were from the same organization so nine places tried to get me to donate.

Of the ten envelopes, four came with plain return envelopes, to which I would have to supply my own stamp:



Five came with business reply envelopes - where the sender gets to mail something and the recipient pays the postage. (I've heard this compared to making a collect call.):



With business reply mail, the post office charges the recipient for each envelope that comes back - plus a premium for handling, and an annual permit fee.

Note that two of those envelopes ask you to put your own stamp on anyway: "your stamp on this envelope is an additional contribution" and "your first-class stamp on this envelope adds to your gift". It's a little disingenuous to call it an additional contribution - but it would arguably reduce the expenses to the organization because they wouldn't have to pay the postage on that particular envelope and would therefore save a dollar or so. However, in my experience as a career non-profit person, who has worked at organizations that have tested using business reply mail, if someone puts a stamp on a BRE, the post office charges ANYWAY. So both the donor and the recipient have now paid postage, and that's ridiculous.

What really chapped my hide, though, was a return envelope from Human Rights Watch - which was a BRE with stamps. Five cents worth of stamps:



I just don't know what they were thinking - so I looked it up. Apparently it's a thing:

Here’s a relatively inexpensive trick that can increase the prominence of the BRE (and make it look like an SRE). Try adding a few low-denomination stamps, such as one-cent, two-cent, or even a five-cent stamp, ideally aligned with an element of your mission. (For nature accounts, we’ve had success using Bobcat or other animal stamps.)

Not only does Human Rights Watch have to pay for postage plus the handling charge for any envelopes that come back, they have also spent money on postage for EVERY ENVELOPE THAT THEY SENT. That seems like a crazy waste of money.

The USPS probably likes it though, all those stamps bought and never used.

Hot Diggity

Today's New York Times had an article about Amy Klobuchar ... in the food section. It was titled: A Classic Midwestern Dish Becomes a Talking Point in Iowa, and I read it with great interest (even though I think I never want to eat or make said classic dish).

For one thing, is it hot dish, hotdish, or hot-dish? Does it take an article - like, is it a hotdish, or is it just hotdish? The Times article is all over the map - I guess there's no style guide to hotdish?

I was also decidedly unimpressed with the campaign's printed recipe:



Any sane person knows that when you write a recipe, you list the ingredients in order of deployment.

That said, Amy's Twitter feed got the ingredients in the right order:

But one version calls it Hotdish, and the other calls it Hot Dish.

And I just don't know what to think.

Does Elizabeth Warren have a signature recipe?

The Magic Gunslinger

Sometime in December, my sister asked me if I wanted to go to a show. She would get the tickets; it was to be my birthday present. Because the tickets turned out to be for 9:30 on a Friday night, we decided to make an event of it. We checked into a hotel in the late afternoon, had wine and cheese and crackers and pâté in the room, availed ourselves of the rather inadequate sauna and steam room, and took the subway downtown to see The Enigmatist.

It turned out to be spectacular - the kind of "wow" that I can't stop thinking about. It's basically a magic show by one David Kwong - but there are no disappearing women or appearing doves, just card tricks, puzzles, word games and math, all deeply woven together. First things first: when you arrive, there are four puzzles arrayed in the foyer. You are supposed to solve them to gain entrance, and they play a part later in the show. It sets a mood, and primes you for what's next. What's next includes a dollar bill, a kiwi, audience participation, a Scrabble demonstration, and a crossword puzzle constructed on the fly. Wholly delightful, and completely in our sweet spot. Scrabble and crosswords? We're there.

On the way out, they were selling copies of a Kwong's book, Spellbound. I didn't buy one, but I did take it out of the library - hoping for great reveals. There aren't really any reveals, because magic, but the book is not uninteresting. It's published by the business books arm of his publisher - and it has a certain "here's how to get ahead in business" vibe to it, which I wasn't expecting. In essence, control your narrative and stay ahead of your audience - and your magic show will succeed.

I have been ruminating about the one bit part I got roped into: Kwong handed me a book, and asked me to look for a longish word, and write it in a notebook and tuck the notebook under my chair and hand him back the book. Later, of course, he revealed the word - the right word. I think I know how he knew the word...but I don't think I can buy a copy of that paperback book so I can't check.

Easter eggs and other unexpected pleasures

I read. A lot. Maybe not as much as some, but I logged 81 books in GoodReads last year. If I were more organized, I'd be able to tell you the ratio between fiction and non-fiction. But 36 were library books. A bunch were little obsessions:

• 6 of the Mrs. Polifax books by Dorothy Gilman
• the whole of Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy
• 3 Tana French books (two of which I read while watching Dublin Murders and that was probably a bad idea because I was so confused)
• 8 in the British Library's series of reprints of vintage mysteries

Some were books I feel like I should have read a long time ago: I loved Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark and I think of it often. I cracked through nine books in a two week beach vacation - starting, aptly, with Pamela Paul's My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues.

Other notable books read include these that I'd read again:

• The Library Book (Susan Orlean)
• Someone At A Distance (Dorothy Whipple)
• The Nutmeg Tree (Margery Sharp)
• Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (Craig Brown)
• Uncommon Type (Tom Hanks)

The last book I read in 2019 was The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. It's the first in a series wherein Mary Russell befriends Sherlock Holmes and becomes his collaborator. My friend Teresa had sent me the first three just before Christmas. Teresa's sent me books before - she sent me all 12 of the Robin Paige mysteries a few years ago.

And what I love about reading the books from Teresa is that she is a die-hard editor: every book that she has passed along to me has at least a few edits (in pencil - only in pencil). She fixes typos. She edits out unnecessary words.

She replaces infelicitous words.

And in A Monstrous Regiment of Women, the 2nd Mary Russell book, which I have just finished, she added page numbers.

It's like finding Easter eggs.

---

Recently, someone created a Facebook group of OG bloggers - people who'd attended one or more BlogHer conferences back in the day. Reading those posts is an exercise in a lovely sort of nostalgia, even though I was so tangentially attached - there, but not "in". Teresa never went to BlogHer, but I'd never have met Teresa but for the blogging community. There are so many people - mostly women - that are good friends to this day, who have made my life immeasurably richer, who I'd never have met otherwise. I am so grateful for that, even though the platform is not what it was and there's far less reading and writing of blogs going on. Nevertheless, I persist.

Myriad Poetry

I have been housecleaning (desk cleaning?) in my office, following a complete (and long overdue) rewrite of the employee handbook. I've been tossing notes and samples and articles and whatnot, and today I went through an enormous bound Powerpoint handout from some seminar I once went to, checking for notes in case there was anything I *needed* to keep.

Well. There's a slide titled "The Myriad of Leaves".

I mean, who talks like that?

If it's not obvious, the leaves in this case are not the kind that grow on trees, but rather the different kinds of times off from work.

I was clearly bored and my mind wandered to the other kind of leaves ... resulting in a haiku in the margin.

Myriad of leaves
Falling from the autumn sky
A Powerpoint dream

You write poetry during boring workshops, yes?

---

PS Apparently "the myriad of leaves" is not incorrect, at least according to Dictionary.com and Grammarist. But it certainly sent me off on a tangent.

R E S I S T

There was an article in the Times the other day about a new law in California, that mandates "that every public company in the state should have a woman on the board by the end of" 2019. I read it with great interest. It's not that I'm a candidate for a board seat, but I am concerned with gender equity and I've long been aware that many public companies and mutual funds have few to no women on their boards.

I have shares in a couple of mutual funds that entitle me to vote by proxy on various things - including the election of people to the funds' boards. For years, I have consciously voted FOR all of the women, and AGAINST all of the men. I know that 1) it won't change anything because my one vote isn't enough to make a difference, and 2) some of the men are probably great and some of the women are likely awful, but I don't have time to research each and every one of the candidates and (back to #1) it's not going to change anything. It is, however, my little act of resistance and it pleases me enormously.

Fashion

Do I begin with the book or the bag?

Let's start with Bill. Bill Cunningham's death in 2016 left a hole in the heart of the New York Times. He was something else, a charming eccentric with a great eye. Happily Clarkson Potter has come out with a delicious coffee table book, collecting decades of his street photographs and, incidentally, acting as a history of fashion from about 1970 to 2015.

I'm not a fashionista. I'm happy to wear jeans and a cardigan every day, I don't go in for designer labels, and I haven't worn heels since I was 19 and foolish. But those photographs by Cunningham, and the way he assembled them into essays - 4 pictures of people in black & white stripes, or 7 pictures of people jumping over or stepping in puddles, or all the leather jackets, all the skin tight dresses, all the palazzo pants - pure joy. I can love it without wanting to dress up.

Relatedly, and in the department of "I never learned how to be a real girl," is I don't go in for fancy leather bags. I pretty much only use a handbag on the weekend or on vacation (I use a tote bag to get back and forth to work), and usually I tend towards a useful smallish nylon bag with a cross body shoulder strap. I find, though, that when I'm running errands and climbing in and out of the car, I tend to grab the bag by the top - where there isn't a handle - and that kind of defeats the whole shoulder strap thing. So I've had my eye out for a small bag with no shoulder strap, and I haven't found one. Well, that's not totally true - I found a lovely one on line one day, but it's rather out of my price range. But! Not so long ago, I remembered that I had once upon a time bought a small black cotton tool bag, and I rummaged around in the house and I found it! And it was exactly what I was thinking I needed.

Imagine, then, my surprise and delight to find, in the Cunningham book, a 1987 picture of super model Naomi Campbell, in 1987, in which she's CARRYING THE VERY SAME SMALL BLACK TOOL BAG.

I just about plotzed.

Was it a thing? Did I somehow know that little black toolbags were all the rage? Or was it just happenstance? I cannot remember where or why I bought that bag, but I am distinctly amused to own it.

And if you too want to be like me and Naomi Campbell, you can find them online: Military Surplus GI Style Canvas Mechanics Tool Bag - Small

Here's to inadvertent fashion in 2020!