I cannot think of a single thing to blog about.
Mostly because the really exciting things are too personal, and I know my audience. The other problem is that Daylight Savings Time ended, the remnants of Ida are passing through, and it's November.
My plan to get through this bumpy patch? More movies and Sookie Stackhouse novels.
Oh yes, and cocoa and toast.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Best Gluten-Free Brownie Recipe Ever!
(For those of you who just want the brownies NOW, click here for the recipe. For those of you who enjoy thrilling tales filled with chocolate adventure, read on!)
Yesterday I had one of those “Why the hell is there no chocolate in this house?” moments.
I was in the middle of looking up the nearest Godiva boutique/store locations when I noticed a promo for their Chocolate Chunk Brownies and I was SAVED because I remembered had brownies in the freezer!
Whew!
Years ago I was perfectly happy with boxed brownies. I was a Duncan-Hines kind of girl. But somewhere in there I wondered if maybe I could do it better. I found a from-scratch recipe that was divine — particularly because I could choose my own cocoa powder and control the sweetness. Life was Good.
Until 2003. The year I went gluten-free.
Those were the Dark Days, my fudgy friends. Dark days, indeed. Yes, there were some GF brownie mixes, but they cost six bucks and tasted like the bag they came in. I resolved to do better. I took my divine brownie recipe and I CONVERTED IT to a GF recipe.
ZOMG you can’t do that! The chemistry! It won’t work! Think of the children!
Um, yes, you can do this, so let’s talk about chemistry and how I created the Frankenbrownie.
The easiest recipes to convert from wheat flour to gluten-free flours are those that don’t contain much flour in the first place. With only ½ cup of flour, this recipe fit nicely. Because GF flours have a lower protein content than all-purpose wheat flour, I knew I needed to add xanthan gum or guar gum as a thickener — but not much. Because of the lower protein content, I also knew I should treat the GF flour like cake flour. That means for every 1 cup of all-purpose wheat flour, I would use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of GF flour.
Some people get nervous about GF baking when they see that so many GF recipes call for blending your own flours or contain small amounts of different flours. “You mean I gotta buy three different flours?” Well, no, you don’t gotta, but it can really make a difference in the final product. HOWEVER, because there’s not that much flour in this recipe, there’s a lot of flexibility in which GF flour you use. Eggs and butter provide most of the structure. (Oh yeah, say it with me now: “Eggs and butter provide most of the structure.” Mmm...)
I have had success with the following flours in this recipe:
Oh come on — don’t you miss licking a truly delicious brownie batter off the spoon?
These brownies might just save your life. Well no, probably not, but they are really tasty.
This recipe was originally published in the Oct/Nov 1996 issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Alas, I cannot find the author’s name. This is a fudgy brownie recipe, as opposed to the cakey, frostable type. My notes are in italics.
Yields 16 brownies More like 9. We are not here for the nutritional value, people.
Yesterday I had one of those “Why the hell is there no chocolate in this house?” moments.
I was in the middle of looking up the nearest Godiva boutique/store locations when I noticed a promo for their Chocolate Chunk Brownies and I was SAVED because I remembered had brownies in the freezer!
Whew!
Years ago I was perfectly happy with boxed brownies. I was a Duncan-Hines kind of girl. But somewhere in there I wondered if maybe I could do it better. I found a from-scratch recipe that was divine — particularly because I could choose my own cocoa powder and control the sweetness. Life was Good.
Until 2003. The year I went gluten-free.
ZOMG you can’t do that! The chemistry! It won’t work! Think of the children!
Um, yes, you can do this, so let’s talk about chemistry and how I created the Frankenbrownie.
The easiest recipes to convert from wheat flour to gluten-free flours are those that don’t contain much flour in the first place. With only ½ cup of flour, this recipe fit nicely. Because GF flours have a lower protein content than all-purpose wheat flour, I knew I needed to add xanthan gum or guar gum as a thickener — but not much. Because of the lower protein content, I also knew I should treat the GF flour like cake flour. That means for every 1 cup of all-purpose wheat flour, I would use 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of GF flour.
Some people get nervous about GF baking when they see that so many GF recipes call for blending your own flours or contain small amounts of different flours. “You mean I gotta buy three different flours?” Well, no, you don’t gotta, but it can really make a difference in the final product. HOWEVER, because there’s not that much flour in this recipe, there’s a lot of flexibility in which GF flour you use. Eggs and butter provide most of the structure. (Oh yeah, say it with me now: “Eggs and butter provide most of the structure.” Mmm...)
I have had success with the following flours in this recipe:
- A blend of white rice, potato, and tapioca starches (my preferred)
- Brown rice flour
- Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose GF baking flour (which is not my favorite, because it contains garbanzo bean flour which makes the brownie taste slightly beany, but it is very easily found in stores)
Oh come on — don’t you miss licking a truly delicious brownie batter off the spoon?
These brownies might just save your life. Well no, probably not, but they are really tasty.
***
Rich Cocoa BrowniesThis recipe was originally published in the Oct/Nov 1996 issue of Fine Cooking magazine. Alas, I cannot find the author’s name. This is a fudgy brownie recipe, as opposed to the cakey, frostable type. My notes are in italics.
Yields 16 brownies More like 9. We are not here for the nutritional value, people.
- 6 oz. (12 Tbs.) unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup natural or Dutch-process cocoa (I like Ghirardelli. Now is not a good time to be cheap.)
- 1 1/4 cups sugar ( I cut this down to ¾ cups because I like chocolate, not sugar.)
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1tsp. vanilla extract (Gluten-free! Check the label!)
- 3 eggs
- 2 2/3 oz. (2/3 cup) cake or gluten-free flour, or 2 1/2 oz. (1/2 cup) of all-purpose wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp. xanthan gum or guar gum (or if you don’t have any, leave it out and see if you like the texture.)
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
| Heat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9 x 9-inch pan. In a 2-qt saucepan, melt the butter, allowing it to get quite hot . Take the pan from the heat and whisk in the cocoa. Let the mixture cool completely. | Look for steam or the first bubbles on the bottom. Cooling always baffled me, because... |
| Whisk the sugar, salt, and vanilla into the cooled cocoa mixture. Add all the eggs at once (NOW it needs to be cool or you'll scramble the eggs!) and whisk again to combine. | ...there’s no reason why a little heat should bother any of these ingredients. BTW, before you add the eggs is a really good time to taste the batter and see if everything is going well. |
| With a rubber spatula, fold in flour until incorporated. Fold in the nuts. Spread the batter in the pan and bake until a toothpick comes out moist and gooey, but not wet, 18 to 20 min. Be careful not to over-bake the brownies or they’ll toughen. Allow them to cool completely before cutting. | I sift my flour and xanthan gum into the batter, then I fold. GF flour can have some funky particulates in it. The time is dependent on your oven and your own preferences. Yes, it really needs to be a piece of wood and not a metal cake tester because the crumbs won’t stick right on metal. In my oven, I need to go for 22 minutes. Remember heat carryover! |
Friday, October 9, 2009
Inertia: Just Do It
So sometimes the hardest part is the beginning, the just doing it, because inertia is in fact a contagious disease.
The anticipatory thinking of a thing, the "I don't wanna" and the "I'll do it tomorrow" often takes longer than (and is worse than) the doing of the thing you're so studiously avoiding. To wit: this post. It will take me 20 minutes to write it, but I've spent two and a half months avoiding it.
It's been so long that even my pen has succumbed to inertia (yes, I'm old-fashioned. I can edit at the computer, but I can't write), and I had to rinse the dried ink out of the nib. We get like that, too. We think we're dried up, but we're not; it's just that our creative nibs are clogged with day-to-day crap.
Okay, that was a tortured metaphor. Cut me some slack, it's been a while.
August was a lost month. We went out of town and the garden dried up, succumbing to squash vine borers (much to the relief of MP) and the weather. August always makes me think of strange things, and this August was no exception. However, to protect both the guilty and the innocent, I won't go into detail. No, it's no good. Don't ask.
Okay, here's a hint: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night is a terrible beach read. Remember that.
The thing about Just Doing is to bear in mind that it is not the result that matters, but the endeavor itself. At long last you're doing something. Doesn't matter what, or how much; it's more than you did before.
Fear can be a compelling reason why we don't do something. I hate calling contractors to do home improvement work. Hate it. What do I know about someone's skills at carpentry? Get cold sweats. But I can not deal with crappy dirt and diseased tomatoes next year, and I will not hump 4 cubic yards of compost one wheelbarrow at a time along one side of the house, out around the back deck, and across the back yard because some cheap nitwit didn't put a gate in the fence on that side of the house. No.
I have learned to divide things into smaller and smaller chunks, distilling tasks down to their essence. When faced with fear, the question is this: what is the smallest step I can take in this project without succumbing to mind-numbing fear? Look up names. Choose three. Call one for an appointment. Call another. Get estimates and compare.
It is excruciatingly slow. But it is moving forward. Sometimes when things are scary, you have to go that slow. Like Zeno's arrow, you have to fool the frightened part of yourself into thinking you are not moving at all, that everything is fine. You have to reward yourself for tiny acts of bravery. In this way you create a body of accomplishment from which to draw confidence.
There are many people in this world who are doing things I would love to be doing. It isn't that they are fundamentally more talented than I am, but they are braver. It is pointless to entertain thoughts of cowardice -- you work with what you get. So what's the smallest thing I can do right now, TODAY, that put's me closer to my goal?
Don't dwell. Don't let it become a Big Thing. Just do it -- and then eat a chocolate afterward. Chocolate makes everything less scary.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Peaches: A Pictorial Essay
(What? Every story has a Scary Part. This is mine...)
Boiling for one minute then plunging them in ice water makes stone fruits very easy to peel.
Forty-Five minutes later...
After enacting the "No Peach Left Behind" program, the official Peach Total was 11.56 pounds, or about 50 peaches. While this was significantly less than last year's total of about 30 pounds, it was still enough for 6.5 jars of jam and the cobbler above.
Yes, it was as good as it looks.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Urban Garden Tour
A cashier at Meijers once told me that the Fourth of July is the “Wednesday of Summer.” I hold onto that thought, first because it is true, and second to remind myself that sages exist in undreamed of places. — Naked Latte: Conversations Overheard
Is it tacky to quote from your own novel? Hope not. But what’s really unforgivable is that it’s the 4th of July weekend and I haven’t said anything about my garden this year! So let’s get down to it:
Tomatoes – Let’s get this out of the way, okay? I thought I would be clever this year and scatter the spent grass clippings through the garden to keep the weeds down. Instead, I think I gave the tomatoes cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). They look horrible. MP’s roma tomato (for salsa) isn’t too bad — it’s got fruit that should be ready in the next two weeks — and the sungold is chugging along okay, but the Paul Robesons will be lucky to get any fruit at all. CMV is carried by about 800 different plants, so undoubtedly I brought it in with the spent grass clippings. MP pointed out, “If it’s carried in 800 plants, it’s not really a cucumber virus, is it?” He’s right, too — the cucumbers don’t have it at all. The tomato that looks best? A feral sungold that sprouted from last year’s seed in the compost pile.
Kale – I think I may have hit my kale stride. It looks pretty good and tastes great. Needs to be spread out more, though. That’s my fault for crowding them. Believe it or not, this weekend it’s time to replant the kale for the winter season. This stuff has been growing since February. Cabbage loopers provide an extra protein boost!
Lettuce – I’m so proud of my lettuce. It looks like lettuce! Pretty green bibb lettuce for nice salads. I’d love to tell you how fascinating it tastes but… It’s lettuce. Green. Leafy. And that’s about it. I’m actually growing some stuff in a container, but this horrible little hornworm devoured it, so it’s recuperating (the hornworm, however, will not recuperate.
Cucumber – a strange cucumber malaise made me think that I would have no cucumbers at all this year. They just wouldn’t grow. Only one out of six lived, so I planted two in pots and watched them carefully… and then one died. So I have a largish one and a smaller one, and this may actually be enough. Moderation is important when dealing with curcubits, as we shall see… The reason this image looks so green is that the light is green under all those leaves.
Plumgranny(Queen Anne’s Pocket-Melon) – I grow these for amusement, as they have no culinary value. They smell good. They remind my grandmother of her childhood in Appalachia, so I send her a few. On the plus side, with the tomatoes being so puny, the plumgrannies have room to spread out and they look great. Lots of flowers, but I’m not seeing any little green melons yet.
Butternut Squash – These would probably be doing better if they weren’t overrun by the other squashes. I have pruned back the zucchini and they are doing a little better, but ultimately, I don’t think I’d buy the Burpee’s Butterbush again; if it’s going to survive in the garden, it needs a lot of chutzpah. Still, we’ll probably get a few tiny ones for late-summer risotto. Their flavor is really good.
Pipan(Patty-Pan) Squash – Last year we really got into grilling these, so I planted some, and now they are fighting with the zucchini to see which will rule the garden. They look like alien artifacts, vegetal gifts from extra-terrestrial visitors. Actually, all the squashes are so fascinating I think they’re worthy of their own post. We had so many this past week I gave some away to a friend to who promised to take them to a party with him as a conversation piece to pick up women. Good Luck, kid!
Zucchini – We like zucchini. We like to grill it. This is good, because now we are up to our eyebrows in it. “Don’t plant too many!” MP warned me. “They say one is enough!” I planted three hills… with three plants each, but some died early… so I replanted them… They’re fine now. What’s your address? Do you like zucchini? Because MP shot down the “Let’s brew zucchini beer!” suggestion real quick and now I’m stuck for ideas.
Beans – Alas, the beans have disease issues, too, as evidenced by their quilted-looking leaves. It has not seemed to inhibit their will to produce, however; this year I’ve grown some of the longest beans ever. These are pole beans (as opposed to bush beans), which I like for their flavor and the fact that they take up less horizontal space.
Zinnias – I grew these from seed saved from last year. Need I say more?
Peaches – Yes, I know. You have been waiting for this information breathlessly. The good news: No signs of oriental fruit moths this year! I got on the spray schedule early and have stuck to it. At this point we are about 20 days from harvest. Some peaches have begun to blush, and I won’t be spraying them with bentonite clay again. The bad news: some peaches have also begun to split, probably due to uneven watering, though I don’t know. Alas, bacterial spot is a problem of Elberta peaches, and the leaf-drop can look quite alarming. Water conditions aren’t helping. All told I’ve lost ½ to ¾ of the crop from the freeze and the initial drop of peaches. The soil around here is terrible; I need to fertilize next year earlier and more heavily.
That said, I still will have some delicious peaches and enough to make a few cobblers and cakes with. Don’t know if I’ll be canning any PeachStuff this year. I have this completely unfounded fear that the neighborhood kids will come and steal my peaches, but MP pointed out that most kids don’t even know what a peach looks like. That and… well, my peaches are ugly and covered with weird white crap. Steal them? Probably not.
MP’s Pet Pepper (The Drama Queen) – Yes! This plant is dying! Right before our eyes! Every day! Why don’t we feed it? Why don’t we water it? Don’t we love it? And so on. Dramatic Vegetables can be highly entertaining. It doesn’t help that it’s up on the porch in the 100 degree heat, but really, peppers are sooo excitable. Lack of water is making these jalapenos hot as hell.
This is the season I like best, every morning going out with my knife (to fend off the zucchini) and my trug (to haul everything back to the house) and seeing what is new. The bees are extremely happy. I never worry that they will sting me, only that one might run me over. Sure enough, this morning I bent down at the wrong moment and got thwacked upside the head.
Summer is alive. 'Tis the season to get messy in it.
Is it tacky to quote from your own novel? Hope not. But what’s really unforgivable is that it’s the 4th of July weekend and I haven’t said anything about my garden this year! So let’s get down to it:
Tomatoes – Let’s get this out of the way, okay? I thought I would be clever this year and scatter the spent grass clippings through the garden to keep the weeds down. Instead, I think I gave the tomatoes cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). They look horrible. MP’s roma tomato (for salsa) isn’t too bad — it’s got fruit that should be ready in the next two weeks — and the sungold is chugging along okay, but the Paul Robesons will be lucky to get any fruit at all. CMV is carried by about 800 different plants, so undoubtedly I brought it in with the spent grass clippings. MP pointed out, “If it’s carried in 800 plants, it’s not really a cucumber virus, is it?” He’s right, too — the cucumbers don’t have it at all. The tomato that looks best? A feral sungold that sprouted from last year’s seed in the compost pile.
Kale – I think I may have hit my kale stride. It looks pretty good and tastes great. Needs to be spread out more, though. That’s my fault for crowding them. Believe it or not, this weekend it’s time to replant the kale for the winter season. This stuff has been growing since February. Cabbage loopers provide an extra protein boost!
Lettuce – I’m so proud of my lettuce. It looks like lettuce! Pretty green bibb lettuce for nice salads. I’d love to tell you how fascinating it tastes but… It’s lettuce. Green. Leafy. And that’s about it. I’m actually growing some stuff in a container, but this horrible little hornworm devoured it, so it’s recuperating (the hornworm, however, will not recuperate.
Cucumber – a strange cucumber malaise made me think that I would have no cucumbers at all this year. They just wouldn’t grow. Only one out of six lived, so I planted two in pots and watched them carefully… and then one died. So I have a largish one and a smaller one, and this may actually be enough. Moderation is important when dealing with curcubits, as we shall see… The reason this image looks so green is that the light is green under all those leaves.
Plumgranny(Queen Anne’s Pocket-Melon) – I grow these for amusement, as they have no culinary value. They smell good. They remind my grandmother of her childhood in Appalachia, so I send her a few. On the plus side, with the tomatoes being so puny, the plumgrannies have room to spread out and they look great. Lots of flowers, but I’m not seeing any little green melons yet.
Butternut Squash – These would probably be doing better if they weren’t overrun by the other squashes. I have pruned back the zucchini and they are doing a little better, but ultimately, I don’t think I’d buy the Burpee’s Butterbush again; if it’s going to survive in the garden, it needs a lot of chutzpah. Still, we’ll probably get a few tiny ones for late-summer risotto. Their flavor is really good.
Pipan(Patty-Pan) Squash – Last year we really got into grilling these, so I planted some, and now they are fighting with the zucchini to see which will rule the garden. They look like alien artifacts, vegetal gifts from extra-terrestrial visitors. Actually, all the squashes are so fascinating I think they’re worthy of their own post. We had so many this past week I gave some away to a friend to who promised to take them to a party with him as a conversation piece to pick up women. Good Luck, kid!
Zucchini – We like zucchini. We like to grill it. This is good, because now we are up to our eyebrows in it. “Don’t plant too many!” MP warned me. “They say one is enough!” I planted three hills… with three plants each, but some died early… so I replanted them… They’re fine now. What’s your address? Do you like zucchini? Because MP shot down the “Let’s brew zucchini beer!” suggestion real quick and now I’m stuck for ideas.
Beans – Alas, the beans have disease issues, too, as evidenced by their quilted-looking leaves. It has not seemed to inhibit their will to produce, however; this year I’ve grown some of the longest beans ever. These are pole beans (as opposed to bush beans), which I like for their flavor and the fact that they take up less horizontal space.
Zinnias – I grew these from seed saved from last year. Need I say more?
Peaches – Yes, I know. You have been waiting for this information breathlessly. The good news: No signs of oriental fruit moths this year! I got on the spray schedule early and have stuck to it. At this point we are about 20 days from harvest. Some peaches have begun to blush, and I won’t be spraying them with bentonite clay again. The bad news: some peaches have also begun to split, probably due to uneven watering, though I don’t know. Alas, bacterial spot is a problem of Elberta peaches, and the leaf-drop can look quite alarming. Water conditions aren’t helping. All told I’ve lost ½ to ¾ of the crop from the freeze and the initial drop of peaches. The soil around here is terrible; I need to fertilize next year earlier and more heavily.
That said, I still will have some delicious peaches and enough to make a few cobblers and cakes with. Don’t know if I’ll be canning any PeachStuff this year. I have this completely unfounded fear that the neighborhood kids will come and steal my peaches, but MP pointed out that most kids don’t even know what a peach looks like. That and… well, my peaches are ugly and covered with weird white crap. Steal them? Probably not.
MP’s Pet Pepper (The Drama Queen) – Yes! This plant is dying! Right before our eyes! Every day! Why don’t we feed it? Why don’t we water it? Don’t we love it? And so on. Dramatic Vegetables can be highly entertaining. It doesn’t help that it’s up on the porch in the 100 degree heat, but really, peppers are sooo excitable. Lack of water is making these jalapenos hot as hell.
This is the season I like best, every morning going out with my knife (to fend off the zucchini) and my trug (to haul everything back to the house) and seeing what is new. The bees are extremely happy. I never worry that they will sting me, only that one might run me over. Sure enough, this morning I bent down at the wrong moment and got thwacked upside the head.
Summer is alive. 'Tis the season to get messy in it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Anti-Hero by Villainess
Some women spend their 401K plans on designer handbags. Some want jewelry. Others have a particular weakness for shoes.
I go mad for soap.
But don’t think I’m easy. Clearly one can find soap anywhere; what I seek is much more subtle and difficult to define. Part of it is scent — I like perfume, too — but there is something about a bar of good-smelling soap lathering up like whipped cream that I seek out. Is it the sensuality? A psychological need to cleanse myself? The fact that I grew up in a house with water so hard all our towels were stained rust-red with iron?
One thing is certain — this is not the kind of obsession you can discuss freely. Still, there are those who have known me long enough to know which passions make me tick, and when they see interesting crossovers, they send word. The phrase “I saw this soap named ‘anti-hero’ and it made me think of you” dropped into a friend’s casual e-mail sounded too good to be true.
With my first glimpse of the Villainess home page I knew I was not in some pink girly candy-land of sickly scented personal products. For starters, the look and feel of the web page can only be described as 19th Century smoky boudoir — aged parchment and skulls over a burgundy tooled-leather background. In addition to selling soap, some of their products are Whipped! (body butter) and Smooch! (body scrub), and also perfume oils in ampoules. (“Historically, the ampoule has held the blood of martyrs, anointing oils, and medicinal solutions. We have misappropriated the delicate vials to hold our equally precious Extrait, and carefully accented each stoppered bottle with our hand-stamped monogram and a weathered copper skull.”)
Describing their scent catalog, the founders state “…we aim for that ultimately unique Villainess touch. A bizarre juxtaposition of scent that will create (or trigger) a vivid olfactory memory.” The scents have names like “Asphyxiate,” “Crushed,” and “Silk & Cyanide.”
Sometimes I wonder what my friends think of when they think of me…
The main page listing their soaps states: “Sometimes a girl needs a change of pace. Or maybe she's had a trying day at the office, juggling evil schemes. That's when you pull out the big guns and spoil yourself.” It seems the people at Villainess understood me.
This is how they describe their soap:
Full Name: Antihero
Weight / Height: 3.5oz (99g) / 3 in
Colour: Soft grey suede.
Distinguishing Features: Absolutely smooth, sheer, silken lather swirled with pitch black Australian clay.
Characteristic Scent: Well-worn sweaty leather, the acrid smoke of cigarettes, and a soft side of honey and vanilla.
Cigarette smoke and leather? In a soap? As an M.A. in English Lit with an emphasis on the portrayal of the hero throughout history, how could I say no?
“Anti-hero” is a sledgehammer to my limbic system. It smells like a woman, the kind of woman wears what she wants and smokes where she wants and doesn’t give a damn anymore what people think. And yet… there is also a softer note, something that reminds me of being utterly depressed and enveloped in a really good hug, smelling the smoke in her clothes with another perfume — a yin-yang animal, organically floral sweet scent like… Hope? Every time I smell it I have a vision of the café where I drank coffee and spent endless hours talking about my M.A. thesis while this woman smoked, nodded, and quietly listened to—
Oh my God. I just now realized I’m talking about Em. Somehow they captured how my best friend Em smelled in 1992.
Wow. Crap. Em… Now I’m totally thrown. Well then! “A vivid olfactory memory.” They weren’t lying. Be careful what you wish for.
In addition to the soap I also ordered some Whipped! in Paradise Misplaced (“Sweetly creamed coconut with touches of mango offset by crisp green tea”) and Smooch! in Krakatoa (“Flashes of exotic foliage… amidst slightly more domestic fruits…and an explosive burst of citrus). I’m pleased to say that all three items were really lush-feeling and wonderful, probably owing in large part to their use of high-end ingredients like palm oil, shea butter and cherry kernel oil.
The next scent I’d like to try? “Villainess” — “Sheer pearly grey shot with crimson…. Our signature scent — all ball gowns and combat boots. Raw, smokey [sic] leather and sweet vanilla musk engulfed in a sheer haze of exotic florals — ylang, neroli, jasmine, lilac and tuberose.”
And if you like that, check out the description for "Bathory.”
I go mad for soap.
But don’t think I’m easy. Clearly one can find soap anywhere; what I seek is much more subtle and difficult to define. Part of it is scent — I like perfume, too — but there is something about a bar of good-smelling soap lathering up like whipped cream that I seek out. Is it the sensuality? A psychological need to cleanse myself? The fact that I grew up in a house with water so hard all our towels were stained rust-red with iron?
One thing is certain — this is not the kind of obsession you can discuss freely. Still, there are those who have known me long enough to know which passions make me tick, and when they see interesting crossovers, they send word. The phrase “I saw this soap named ‘anti-hero’ and it made me think of you” dropped into a friend’s casual e-mail sounded too good to be true.
With my first glimpse of the Villainess home page I knew I was not in some pink girly candy-land of sickly scented personal products. For starters, the look and feel of the web page can only be described as 19th Century smoky boudoir — aged parchment and skulls over a burgundy tooled-leather background. In addition to selling soap, some of their products are Whipped! (body butter) and Smooch! (body scrub), and also perfume oils in ampoules. (“Historically, the ampoule has held the blood of martyrs, anointing oils, and medicinal solutions. We have misappropriated the delicate vials to hold our equally precious Extrait, and carefully accented each stoppered bottle with our hand-stamped monogram and a weathered copper skull.”)
Describing their scent catalog, the founders state “…we aim for that ultimately unique Villainess touch. A bizarre juxtaposition of scent that will create (or trigger) a vivid olfactory memory.” The scents have names like “Asphyxiate,” “Crushed,” and “Silk & Cyanide.”
Sometimes I wonder what my friends think of when they think of me…
The main page listing their soaps states: “Sometimes a girl needs a change of pace. Or maybe she's had a trying day at the office, juggling evil schemes. That's when you pull out the big guns and spoil yourself.” It seems the people at Villainess understood me.
This is how they describe their soap:
Full Name: AntiheroWeight / Height: 3.5oz (99g) / 3 in
Colour: Soft grey suede.
Distinguishing Features: Absolutely smooth, sheer, silken lather swirled with pitch black Australian clay.
Characteristic Scent: Well-worn sweaty leather, the acrid smoke of cigarettes, and a soft side of honey and vanilla.
Cigarette smoke and leather? In a soap? As an M.A. in English Lit with an emphasis on the portrayal of the hero throughout history, how could I say no?
“Anti-hero” is a sledgehammer to my limbic system. It smells like a woman, the kind of woman wears what she wants and smokes where she wants and doesn’t give a damn anymore what people think. And yet… there is also a softer note, something that reminds me of being utterly depressed and enveloped in a really good hug, smelling the smoke in her clothes with another perfume — a yin-yang animal, organically floral sweet scent like… Hope? Every time I smell it I have a vision of the café where I drank coffee and spent endless hours talking about my M.A. thesis while this woman smoked, nodded, and quietly listened to—
Oh my God. I just now realized I’m talking about Em. Somehow they captured how my best friend Em smelled in 1992.
Wow. Crap. Em… Now I’m totally thrown. Well then! “A vivid olfactory memory.” They weren’t lying. Be careful what you wish for.
In addition to the soap I also ordered some Whipped! in Paradise Misplaced (“Sweetly creamed coconut with touches of mango offset by crisp green tea”) and Smooch! in Krakatoa (“Flashes of exotic foliage… amidst slightly more domestic fruits…and an explosive burst of citrus). I’m pleased to say that all three items were really lush-feeling and wonderful, probably owing in large part to their use of high-end ingredients like palm oil, shea butter and cherry kernel oil.
The next scent I’d like to try? “Villainess” — “Sheer pearly grey shot with crimson…. Our signature scent — all ball gowns and combat boots. Raw, smokey [sic] leather and sweet vanilla musk engulfed in a sheer haze of exotic florals — ylang, neroli, jasmine, lilac and tuberose.”
And if you like that, check out the description for "Bathory.”
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Having Cake and Not Eating it, Either
Can you believe that this is not a real cake? It is a miniature in polymer clay stolen from PetitPlat by sk's Flickr photostream.
The other night someone brought some really lovely sandwiches and cake to class — beautifully packaged and artfully arranged, clearly handmade and very thoughtful. The sandwiches were wraps and small croissants, and the layer cake was chocolate with sliced strawberries pressed into the sides of the real buttercream icing. (none of that sugar-Crisco crap. I can tell.) I appreciate good food even when I can’t eat it.
My friend stood there, handing out sandwiches. “Why aren’t you eating any?”
“The wheat thing.”
“Well you can eat the insides. Just take the bread off.”
There are a few things wrong with this approach:
1) And do what with the insides? Eat chicken salad out of my hands?
2) You can take the meat out of the sandwich but you cannot get the bread off the meat. I tried that when I first when gluten-free and realized the next day just how badly that doesn’t work. (And for the record, if there’s pasta in a soup, you can’t “eat around it.”)
3) What an incredibly flippant, ignorant thing to say to someone when you KNOW she’s allergic to wheat. Nothing like being zinged by a friend.
“No, I can’t just take the insides out,” I replied, “Ask your son’s girlfriend, the one who’s so allergic to nuts, how she feels about eating something that’s touched peanuts.”
“Oh, yeah…” my friend said. Maybe it made her think about what she said, I don’t know. I left it at that.
This exchange is at the forefront of my mind because I have written a really pertinent article about this VERY SAME TOPIC, and I can’t find a publisher.
It seems our local newspaper (and I live in a metro area of 1.2 million people) no longer has the staff to accept reader submissions, even after I told the editor I would do the piece for free. And then three days after I called the paper laid off 75 people, so I know she wasn’t just trying to get rid of me.
So here you are — my article, for free! — and I hope that whether you’re the hostess or the guest, you find something useful.
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