Cafe Tor -- Gluten-Free Verbal Beverages for the Thirsty Mind

Too Much Too Fast: Muffins

2011-08-08T10:42:00.000-04:00

Somewhere around January Shauna James, blogger over at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef and author of several cookbooks with her husband, Danny, wrote about giving up both xanthan and guar gum because it was giving her "digestive issues." (That's code, people. As she puts it, "Nothing says love like explosive diarrhea.")

She relaized that, despite being GF, she wasn't feeling very well. Through trial and error, she discovered her body didn't deal well with gums. Although all her cookbooks and previous blog recipes include xanthan and guar gum, she said, "You know what? These recipes don't need gums. Use them if you want to, but me, I'm leaving them out."

She listened to her body and changed her mind.

I am not a celiac. Twice I've had the genetic testing, and both genes test negative. Still, I feel better without gluten. And yet... I don't feel as physically well as I think I ought. I have some recent bloodwork that says, "Well, no wonder," but nothing conclusive.

Long story short: I've decided to try the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which means eating no disaccarides -- no grains, no processed sugar, and a few other interesting caveats you can read more about if you like. And I have felt a lot better for doing it. I have had to change my mind about things... and now I'm not sure what I think.

It makes it kinda hard to do a GF baking blog, you know?

I never set out to be a nutritionist, but I've had to become one. Still, there is so much I do not know. I don't know why the incidence of food allergies and intolerances are on the rise. I don't know why people who are not celiacs still can't handle gluten. I don't know what the appropriate strains or balance of gut flora is, nor what genetic markers gut bacteria can trigger. But I do know this: it doesn't matter what diet you're trying to follow -- you need a good muffin recipe.

I developed this recipe when I was on an extremely strict yeast-free diet. I later tweaked it to work as a GF muffin, and I've recently tweaked it to be SCD compliant. This recipe can be made egg, dairy, sugar, gluten, and wheat free, plus vegan. I confess, I haven't tried all of these at once, but I suppose you could. I can think of at least five flavor variations, but three -- vanilla, fruit, and spice -- will give you the blueprint for anything else you can think of.

The flexibility and deliciousness of this recipe delivers the message best: listen to your body, do what you need for health, and don't be afraid to change your mind.

3 cups of (choose 1):	almond flour (SCD) GF flour blend	To make these SCD compliant, use almond flour alone or a combination of other SCD legal nut flours. For GF, use your favorite flour blend. For flavor I like a blend of half nut half GF flours, but I'm being SCD, so it's all nut for me.
1/4 to 1/2 tsp	salt	Or leave it out
2 tsp of (choose 1)	baking soda (SCD) baking powder	With SCD, soda is the only choice. Almond flour is not inclined to rise high anyway. If you're using a GF or wheat flour and yogurt/buttermilk, a combination of baking soda and baking powder is appropriate; otherwise, just baking powder is fine.
3/4 tsp	xanthan gum	not SCD compliant; by all means, leave if out if you like.
a total of 1 to 1 1/2 tsp (choose as many as you like)	cinnamon nutmeg starch-free baking spice blend	Or leave them out.
1 tsp	vanilla	Or leave it out.
1/4 cup (choose 1)	sugar honey (SCD) maple syrup 3-4 packets sugar substitute	SCD is honey. There's also nothing wrong with leaving out sweeteneer entirely and doubling down on the flavoring components. Honey can scorch, so the temperature and timing can vary in your oven.
1/4 cup (choose 1)	coconut oil butter vegetable oil	Whatever you prefer, but do melt the coconut oil and butter first.
choose 1	1 whole egg 2egg whites soaked flax/chia seeds for egg equivalent	The flax or chia seeds are vegan, but not SCD compliant.
a total of 1 cup (choose as many as you like)	mashed fruit SCD yogurt appleseauce fruit juice coconut milk milk water	SCD yogurt plus a banana or mango is very tasty. Coconut milk alone can also replace the fat, but check to see if it contains gums. Fruit juice and applesauce can replace sugar. Check to be sure your liquids are SCD compliant.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake papers.

Combine dry ingredients and stir; combine wet ingredients and stir. Add wet to dry. You're looking for a consistency that glops off a spatula; if it sticks, add a bit more liquid.

Divide among the muffin cups and place in preheated oven for 14-18 minutes. Time varies on your oven and ingredients. Many ingredients will affect the finished color, so be sure to press the tops of the muffins, which should spring back. A toothpick should come out clean.

Let cool completely before freezing.

Maximizing Failure.

2011-01-11T14:56:00.000-05:00

I just made some truly awful pancakes.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at them. The pictures are crummy because the pancakes are crummy. One side is like pale, crispy elephant skin, the other a wet blueberry, blubbery mass.

That blueberry there in the middle? It’s looking at you.

Okay, so what happened? I’ve made pancakes before, and I’ve made pancakes from this recipe before, and I’ve never had them turn out like this. What’s the deal?

Because I only changed one variable, I can only surmise that almond milk has heretofore undreamed of properties. Thinking about it (while crunching on my crappy pancakes), it makes sense---almond milk is essentially fine particulates of ground nut suspended in water, whereas cow’s milk is an emulsion of fat and water. I suppose that the almond milk contains fats as well, and nuts are high in vitamin E, but I don’t think they’re emulsified in almond milk. The point being is that the almond milk behaved like a nut---it toasted up real crisp.

When you attempt to convert recipes over to gluten free components, you will fail. The muffins will fall, the bread will be wet and shrink into a star shape, the cookies will crumble like sand. You will want to throw things and cry. You will fail spectacularly, because when you aim big, you can fall far.

Once upon a time I failed quite nicely making a pound cake recipe from Martha Stewart. I failed three times---and the ingredients for pound cake (copious amounts of butter, sugar, and eggs) are not cheap. After the third failure (a wet, sad cake that would not bake on the inside) I exploded with a lengthy invective that included only two words that weren’t curses: “mother” and “Yankee.” In retrospect, I’d like to apologize to my Northern friends; I was rude. But in addition to hair-curling epithets, this is what I learned: mixing techniques create the final texture of baked goods, pan size matters, baking powder was invented for a reason, and some recipes just plain suck.

The point is not to avoid failure. If you want to avoid failure, stay home. The point is to maximize your failures so that each successive attempt yields predictable and better results so that you are finally able to achieve your goal. I would like to provide you with a few key ways to maximize your failures at gluten free baking:

Timing is everything. If you have never tried to convert Aunt Edna’s German Chocolate Cake recipe, do not attempt it for Grandma’s 80th birthday celebration. You may get lucky and it turns out beautifully. You may end up with a sodden mess. Important celebrations with lots of witnesses are not a good time to experiment.

Research and compare. You want to convert a chocolate cake recipe. Is there a GF version already out there? What changes were made to the GF versions versus the one you have? Should you use xanthan gum or guar gum, how much, and what’s the difference? You may decide to forge ahead with your own recipe, but taking the time to see what other bakers have already done can give you some ideas for how to change your cherished recipes.

Write out what you intend to do before you do it. Pull out the original recipe and study it. Put sticky notes next to it. Then copy the recipe over on the sticky notes. Write out how much of which flours and how much xanthan and/or guar gum you intend to use. Experimenting by halving your recipe? Do not attempt fractional division on the fly! No one will care that you know the difference between the numerator and the denominator if the bread has the texture of a sofa cushion.

Take notes. Because there’s nothing like doing it perfectly and then forgetting what the hell you did.

Change only one variable at a time. If the first time you try to change a recipe you use GF flours, reduce the amount of sugar, use half butter half vegetable oil, and forget to add the xanthan gum, good luck in trying to figure out why the chocolate chip cookies could double as paving stones. Changing too many variables at once leads to unpredictable results, and you can’t be sure what lead to failure.

Vanilla ice cream covers a multitude of sins. If you ignore the first bit of advice and decide to treat your dinner guests to a brand-new rustic plum tart recipe because you want to impress them and the whole thing leaks, burning a sticky sugar mess on the edges of the crust, serve it with ice cream. Always keep vanilla ice cream on hand for dinner parties. Ice cream blanks out the brain receptors responsible for criticism. I have found that even lactose intolerant people are happy as a clam to eat ice cream so long as they can take Lactaid first. But it has to be good ice cream, not whipped air, skim-milk stuff. Save the guar gum for the piecrust.

Anyone who says that we should be happy about failure should be slapped—hard. Failure stinks. But failure can teach us a lot once we get over the stabbity feelings that accompany it. I can giggle about my pancakes because I know what I did wrong, and I know I can do better next time. But that pound cake thing? Grrr…

Peach Panic

2010-10-14T14:58:00.000-04:00

In late July/early August I got buried under 70 pounds of peaches. You read that right. I got nailed with 3-5 pounds of peaches daily. I have made frozen peaches, peach stuff, peach jam, peaches over ice cream, canned peaches, peach hooch (vodka and brandy), peach crisps and peach smoothies. Next year I'm trying peach leather and Jamaican jerked peaches.

I became a peach pusher.

I took peaches to classes. I left unmarked bags of ugly peaches on porches. I became embarrassed explaining to everyone why my peaches are so ugly--Coryneum blight, people. Also called shot hole disease, California blight, peach blight or pustular spot, all caused by the fungus Coryneum carpophilum. 'Elberta' peaches are really bad to get it, and the humidity of the Eastern seaboard never lets up.

Other than the zinnias, the rest of the garden died in this year's heat. Broke my heart. I bled peach puree everywhere.

I stopped pushing peaches and just scrambled to use the damn things. My garage is now an advertisement for Ball canning supplies. I went to the Amish country of Ohio and scanned the Internet, looking for peach tips. MP couldn't find anything in the freezer because it was packed with peaches. I ate peach smoothies for two weeks.

MP dislikes peaches. I began to resent his tastes.

I learned that click bugs really click and that it takes ants 2 days to bury a whole peach.

The canned peaches were terrible--too soft. MP suggested granitas. With a generous shot of dark rum it was awesome. Peach daiquiris were not far behind. The peach hooch was a disaster; it tasted like cough syrup and I could not tell which was the vodka and which was the brandy.

Any post I made from July through August would have read like Dr. Miles Bennell screaming, "Look, you fools, you're in danger! Can't you see?! They're after you! They're after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! THEY'RE HERE, ALREADY! YOU'RE NEXT!"

After that, there was really nothing to post about, because when you're surrounded by peaches and it's 95 degrees and you've already spent 4 hours next to the stove, experimenting baking with hamburger buns just sounds like a bad idea.

But I'm excited now. Because it's cooler, because the peaches are all gone. Because I'd like to tell you about my recipes for bread and thin mints and hamburger buns.

Still there are peach mysteries out there. One last peach hung and hung on the tree for days, hard as a Styrofoam ball... and then it was gone. Did one of my young neighbors pilfer it? Doing some work in the flowers up next to the house, I found a pile of 20 peach pits. What stacked them there?

For the moment, the peach tree is still. I eat my toast with peach jam and plan for the holidays.

Hey Aunt Marsha, guess what you're getting for Christmas!

Is That... A Ripe Peach? A Gluten-Free Bun?

2010-06-23T12:30:00.001-04:00

For somebody who really hates to travel, I do an awful lot of it.

This latest round wasn't too bad (MP cooked), but there was one really dismal restaurant meal. I ordered from their "gluten-free menu" and got, exactly, a piece grilled salmon, grilled asparagus, and a lemon-half. There was no salt or pepper on the fish or asparagus. No butter or oil. No herbs. Nothing. What I listed is what I got on the plate.

It wasn't about good food; it was about not getting sued. I thought, "Dude, are you even trying in there?"
____________________________________________________________________________

All these little peaches out there look like this:

Except for these three. And I have no idea what's up with this.

They're very close to the ground (I totally should have cut that branch this spring but I didn't because I am a wimp)and maybe... Nope. I got nothin', just three mutant peaches. I check out the big one and, alas, it has some end-rot or something. It would never last in this heat. I squoze it a little and... huh?

Ladies and Gentlemen, is this not a ripe peach?

I ate it and it was divine. Ripe peaches in June? Whoever heard of such a thing? Elberta is supposed to be a late-season, August-September peach, and I get mine at the end of July -- except for this, and I don't know what this is.

Gardening is very engaging. Little mysteries everywhere.
____________________________________________________________________________

Look at this.

Yes, go ahead. I'll wait.

Do you see that? Do you see that bun? I made that bun! An honest-to-goodness hamburger bun, the likes of which I have not had in seven years! (BTW -- the beer in the back is a Kölsch, which was a great choice with the burger.)

There are still some issue to be worked out, but I am seriously on to something. When I get this ironed out, you can bet I'll post it here!

And there's a restaurant I know of that needs some recipes, too.

Love and Lemon Squares

2010-06-03T12:09:00.007-04:00

There is a mockingbird perched in the peach tree, panting. No one believes me when I tell them birds pant when they're hot, but it's true.

Welcome summer. I want lemon squares.

Not that I know anything about lemon squares. I've never made lemon squares before, my mother never made lemon squares, and I have no childhood memories of tire swings (ours was made out of a plank), swimming pools (it was a creek), or nibbling tart lemony confections on a screened-in porch at twilight (okay, that I totally made up). At some point in my life I must have eaten them -- except I can't say when -- and at some point in my life I knew I would someday want to make them because I have no less than five different recipes clipped from magazines and saved in my baking binder.

Nevertheless, it's hot and I feel the lemon square call of shortbread and tart citrus and a fine dusting of powdered sugar.

I confessed all this to MP one afternoon. As there are only two of us in the house, I can't really see any point in whipping up a batch of something only to find out upon completion that MP has always hated what I just whipped up. Seeing as I had five different recipes, each claiming to be the One True lemon-square, I asked MP if he liked lemon squares and if he had any opinions about them.

Confronted with the possibility of lemon squares, MP leapt into action. He studied the recipes with much frowning and tongue clicking. On the subject of zest-usage he could see both pros and cons; on the matter of powdered sugar he was absolute -- there can be no lemon square without powdered sugar. Not only did MP have an opinion about lemon squares, but he provided me with the exact mathematical ratio of lemon curd to shortbread that would optimize for lemon square perfection.

Suddenly this became much more intimidating. I wasn’t sure I could whip up what is essentially a two part dessert (shortbread plus lemon custard) with such precision.

“Don’t worry if they don’t come out perfect,” replied MP, “I’ll eat the evidence.”

Love takes many forms.

I went with Joanne Chang’s lemon bar recipe from a 2002 issue of Fine Cooking. Because her ingredients were also listed by weight, it made the conversion to gluten-free easier for me. I did 4 oz of my white rice/tapioca starch/potato starch blend and 2 oz of brown rice flour, which gave me a bit over a cup of flours. With an added ¼ teaspoon of xanthan gum, I had my GF shortbread base.

A word on curd: once again, here’s a recipe that uses eggs in ways the casual baker may not have tried before. Try it anyway -- yes, making your own curd is some trouble, but it is worth it.

And strain your curd! I have no idea what this cruft is. I didn't scramble my eggs when tempering them, I swear! I'm gonna claim that the cream curdled because of the acidity of the lemon juice.

A strained curd is a smooth curd. This is what is meant by "coating the spoon."

Ms. Chang and MP disagree on both the ratio of curd to shortbread and the powdered sugar issue. In her experience customers love the thicker layer of lemon curd, and she doesn’t feel that the bars really need the layer of powdered sugar. MP is a shortbread hound and likes many of his baked goods to be topped with a sugar crust. I would say that these are philosophical differences in the lemon square vision, and each baker must follow their heart.

I did not pour all of the lemon curd over the shortbread, but only enough so that shortbread and curd existed in MPs 1:1 ratio. Having leftover lemon curd did not bother me at all, because I also had leftover macarons in the freezer. Believe me, the curd found a home. In addition, I did feel that the lemon squares required a faint dusting of powdered sugar –- but only upon serving (left on the bars it melts right into the curd), passing the sugar so that each could arrive at his own level of sweet perfection. (Note: one of those hinged tea-balls makes a great powdered sugar shaker.) They need to be stored in the refrigerator; the shortbread is pretty buttery and it helps the cut bars keep their shape.

For someone who had no previous lemon square experience, I was pretty pleased with myself. And true to his word, MP ate the evidence.

Around the Yard -- Peaches

2010-05-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

Stepped out with my coffee one morning to survey the yard and I saw this little guy:

He was so cute, I stalked him.

I have no idea how he got in. I just had a new gate and fence installed for the very purpose of keeping bunnies out. This little guy was not ten feet from my tomato seedlings. This did not amuse me. Taking pictures, I knew at some point he would run, and then I'd find out how he got in.

I got pretty close.

I finally dropped the camera and thought, 'Well you dumb bunny, just how close are you going to let me get?'

Not closer than that. He took off toward the gate. But I guess when you are very young and small you panic easily. He went and donked his wee head on the gate. But on the next try, to my surprise, that little guy squoze between the gate and the gatepost! A two inch gap, maybe? I dashed to the gate behind him to see where he went.

Nowhere, I guess. No bunny in sight.

That a bunny broke into my back yard reminded me that a) it's time to get the tomatoes in the ground, and b) I'd better make sure all the little green peaches are up off the ground. Rabbits will eat little green peaches, and if they know there are green ones, they will hang out looking for ripe ones (says my inner Farmer MacGregor, anyway).

When we got back from Paradise, I thinned the peaches (left). Today, I thinned them some more (right). All told I think I thinned five pounds of green peaches. It was a great fruit set this year, and I'm very excited.

I'm really bad to thin peaches. I'm too tender-hearted. All those beautiful clusters of three and four and five peaches look like a turn of the century postcard! But I must be firm. Two reasons: thinning the peaches in the long run gives you bigger peaches and helps keep the tree producing year after year without skipping.

And here's the second reason:

Do you see that, that crescent-shaped mark on the peach? That's from a plum curculio. These little bugs look for the surface where two peaches touch and enter one of the peaches at that site. It's protected there; predators can't see the mark. Thinning peaches so they're 6-8 inches apart puts a crimp in plum curculio style -- no cozy, inside surfaces.

I have a feeling that part of the reason a few peaches have been dropping is not just that the tree is unloading. I think the curculios have been busy. Well, I can get busy, too.

It's not like we're suffering here. Plenty of peaches. Still, you know, there's the oriental fruit moths. And then the mockingbirds -- first year I covered the tree with netting, but this year it's so big I'm not sure I can.

Harper Lee tells us it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, but I sure would thwack one with a peach-pit if it ever went after my peaches. It's the way they do it; they use their beaks like a knife and spoil the peach and move on to the next one.

Now if mockingbirds ate plum curculios, that would be different...

True Adventure – Tomato Basil Risotto

2010-05-13T10:00:00.004-04:00

When you are Very Young, Adventure sounds like a Wonderful Thing. Unknown lands! Exploring new places! Experiencing new foods! But when you become Older, “Adventure” seems more like “Bother.” Fingers get pinched, feet get sore, bowels are unsound, and figuring out where to eat night after night is a chore.

It isn’t easy to travel gluten-free. Sometimes you end up eating plain, crappy food—or none at all. Airports are a carbohydrate wasteland. In public spaces, we want to be sure we are never more than 200 yards from a soda. "Shelf-life" is a problem for food chemists, not chefs.

Of course I pack my own food—what the TSA will allow. But one cannot feel satiated on fruit and nut bars. Salad doesn’t quite cut it, either. Besides, after eight hours in an airport, who wants to eat iceberg lettuce out of a cup? Forget the dressing; “modified food starch” could mean anything. (Note to self: learn to make beef jerky.)

Arriving at a restaurant isn’t always better. The best people: bartenders who know nothing about food allergies, say so, and are willing to go into the kitchen and read the labels on the boxes for you. The worst people: servers who assume they know about food allergies and, as a result ask neither you nor the kitchen staff any further questions. It is very common for servers to confuse “gluten-free” and “low-carb.” If only you knew how many times waiters have refused to serve me French fries...

My vacation was fun, we had a wonderful time, and there is no doubt in my mind that I ate wheat and got sick from it. We were ready to come home for some comfort food.

Risotto fits the bill nicely. It’s hot, creamy, and eaten with a spoon (okay, a fork if you want, but spoons work better in bowls). It can be made in endless varieties of flavors, vegetarian or not, as a main course or a side accompaniment. It knows no season. Risotto rocks. It’s no accident that one of New York City’s premiere gluten-free restaurants is named Rissoteria.

So, ah... Why am I not showing you a picture of this fabulous Tomato Basil Risotto of which I speak? Well, um... It’s MP’s fault. He made it, and it was so fabulous, I thought, “This is absolutely my next post!” but we’d eaten it all so I was going to photograph the leftovers when I had them for my lunch but MP who almost never eats leftovers snuck into the kitchen and ate it for his lunch and there wasn’t any to photograph. The fiend.

Here. This picture is from Last Night’s Dinner, which is where we got the recipe from. Yes, it really looks that fabulous.

Many instructions for risotto are very hyper-vigilante, “You Must Keep Stirring!” but really, risotto isn’t that much of a diva. The texture will still be lovely even if you only stir it every few minutes. If you’ve never done a risotto, this tomato-basil version is a lovely place to start.

When you are Young, Adventure is Grand; when you are Old, it is a Bother. When you can embrace all that Adventure can be, knowing that the best part of Leaving is Returning to your own Home Cooking, then you have reached just the Right Age.

Looking over our photos, MP and I think we’re pretty darn close.

Why yes, I was stranded on a tropical island...

2010-05-10T14:00:00.003-04:00

Seriously, I was. I have pics to prove it!

Wow. Even I think it looks Photoshopped. It wasn't but... Wow. Blue water.

Alas, lovely as it was, tropical islands are not known as hotbeds of gluten-free eating. This one sure wasn't. Boy howdy, was I ready to come home to bake and cook.

I'm working on some ideas right now, really wonderful things. Ideas like this:

That's a hot dog bun, folks. A bit craggy, but decidedly gluten-free. But who knew that attempting to create a GF bun would lead to such a philosophical discussion of just what is a hot dog bun and what is its purpose? Trust MP to get straight to the heart of the matter: It's a bun. It holds the hot dog. That's it. It's not complicated.

And this:

You see those? Those are the peaches I had to pick off because there were too many on the tree! And I could still stand to go over the peach tree again! I am very excited.

So sorry for the delay. I'll spare you the GF woecake and get cooking!

Sleepless Nights -- Macarons

2010-04-22T16:43:00.004-04:00

My first experience with macarons was a cell-phone charm.

This one, actually, from Q-Pot, Japanese purveyor of exquisitely crafted food as jewelry (the top image). I think all their cell-phone charms are gorgeous, but I found something particularly captivating about macarons with jewels stuck in buttercream. At 3,780 Yen, this is a $40 cell-phone charm.

I saw it, wanted it, and immediately went to Strapya World and bought the $10 knock-off (the image beneath) Not as beautifully crafted, perhaps, but something I could afford.

I’d been seeing macarons (not the coconut-meringue cookies called “macaroons,” but these brightly colored confections) pop up here and there in chicey-poo-poo magazines dedicated to travel and cooking. The articles inevitably waxed poetic about fanciful flavor combinations (wasabi-grapefruit! White truffle-hazelnut!) and a divinely chewy/crunchy texture, but I didn’t really pay them much attention other to think that macarons were another very pretty example of Pastries I Can’t Eat.

Then I found out that they are gluten-free.

Macarons are appealing on several levels. They are beautiful. They come in bright colors and tantalizing, exotic flavors. They are small, delighting the beholder in the same way that doll furniture, sushi rolls, and petit fours delight. They cannot be bought at Wal-Mart or your local grocery; there is a certain amount of exclusivity (dare I say snob appeal?) to finding a baker that actually makes them. You can’t have them everyday because it’s difficult to find them, so who would begrudge you a few calories when you can get them? They are like a tiny wrapped gift, small and lightweight. Macarons make the perfect Treat.

So... Why aren’t we all out there making them?

Because according to the authors of the chicey-poo-poo articles, that these little cookies are the Divas of the Pastry World. They are fiendishly finicky, easily upset by humidity and the temperature of the kitchen. They can be ruined if you overbeat them by one stroke. Only the truly experienced pastry chef should even dare attempt them, and even then they fail sometimes, and—

Oh, hooey. I mean, seriously? It’s a sandwich cookie. It has four ingredients. What’s with all the drama?

I have done a lot of searching. I have baked a lot of macarons. I can tell you definitively that macarons are not a Big Deal... And they are a Big Deal. It depends on the kind of person you are.

When I see an ingredient list this simple, I know that the process used to combine them has got to be important. This is the case with macarons. You need to understand how each of the ingredients is working in the recipe in order to make the best of the recipe. (I’m sure I just lost some of you right there. That’s okay; not everyone gets excited about this stuff. But you should definitely keep looking at the pictures!)

For some, this kind of recipe presents an interesting challenge, and they just want to dive in and see what happens — like Bakerella at SugarComa this past January. Then there are some people who create macarons with a kind of Buddha-like simplicity. That would describe Tartlette. She has several recipes on her blog for macarons, and none of them involve dire warnings, tears, or drama. Look:

Not only does she make fabulous macarons, but she takes beautiful pictures of them: on the left, Powdered Strawberry and Vanilla-Bean Macarons; on the right, Black Tie Macarons

I studied the macarons on her site and the PDF copy of her article Demystifying Macarons from Dessert Magazine. I cross referenced it against other web sources. I gathered my materials, wrote up my instructions, and made my first batch of macarons.

I get it now. From the first shattering bite, I was hooked.

You want to try your hand at macarons? Start here. Her directions are what you need to know. I cannot improve upon these instructions, but I would like to add a few notes from someone who has not had pastry training and who can see where the home baker might get a little nervous:

As I said, macarons are a process. Whatever recipe you choose, you will want to read carefully beforehand, several times, to understand what you’re going to do and when. Measure everything carefully, preferably with a scale, but failing that, use the right measuring techniques for dry ingredients. Get your stuff in order on the countertop – parchment lined pans, spatulas, pastry bags. You do not want to be rooting around in the cupboards in the middle of this.

Believe it or not, baking powder was an invention. Before that, people used baking soda, and before that they either used yeast or whipped egg whites to leaven baked goods. In this day of boxed mixes, we don’t mess much with whipping egg whites, so when a recipe says “soft foam” or “medium stiff meringue,” confusion or uncertainty is understandable. If you’ve never whipped egg whites in your life, you may want to practice with a few just too see what “foamy,” “soft peaks,” “glossy peaks,” and “broken” look like. It isn’t hard, but if you’ve never seen it before it can be rather daunting.

Egg whites smell funny. Not exactly bad, just... not good. And leaving them out in your kitchen for a day or two doesn’t improve them any. This step kind of bothered me, and I couldn’t tell if I smelled an egg smell or the beginning of something sinister. Assuming your kitchen temperature isn’t ninety degrees, just go with it. Egg whites smell funny.

The number of strokes is important. Lock up the cat and send the kids outside, because you need to concentrate and count. If you have never folded egg whites into something before, you will definitely want to practice on a pancake or muffin batter. When I began my “macaronage,” my internal dialogue went something like:

5 strokes: “She’s nuts. This will never work.”
10 strokes: “What have I gotten myself into?”
15 strokes: “Well, at least it will make a good story.”
20 strokes: “You know... This might actually work.”

I found 20 strokes a good place to stop and add any add-ins (cocoa powder, food coloring, etc.). This is also where I began to be much more careful and thorough, turning and scraping the bowl.

But if you should use 51 strokes, the macarons will not be ruined! The point is, pay attention. Watch the batter, not the television.

Tartelette specifically states that powdered food coloring is better than the liquid food coloring we all have in our pantries, because the powdered coloring does not add moisture to the meringue. This makes sense; if the egg whites are left lingering on the countertop for 24 hours, why would you want to add liquid back in?

Naturally, I had to try the liquid food coloring. I'm like that.

I divided the batter at 20 strokes and adding 5 drops liquid food coloring with 1 teaspoon powdered egg whites to each half of the batter. I also tried another divided batch with 3 drops liquid food coloring and no egg white.

Yes, it made a difference. Instead of the impressive shatter/chewy combination, the texture was much more subdued. Actually, I never felt like I got any of the batches baked all the way through; I baked them for the full 12 minutes and then a bit longer until they started to brown. They stuck to the parchment. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t that magical transcendent texture that all the articles raved about. They went from, “This is amazing!” to “Well, these are pretty tasty.”

Can you use liquid food coloring? Yes. But you will never achieve the intense colors you can achieve with powdered coloring and the texture will suffer. I personally will not be using the liquid drops again, and I think for your first batch, you shouldn’t either. If you take the time to make macarons, then you should have them as they should be and experiment later! (That is to say, I haven’t tried gel food coloring yet, and I certainly will...)

I am a terrible judge of size, so I drew 1 1/4 inch circles on the undersides of the parchment paper and used them as a template. It wasn’t until I had actually loaded a plastic bag full of batter and cut off 1/4 inch at the corner that I realized I had no clue how to use a pastry bag. None. But with the pre-drawn circles as a guideline and a few macarons as practice, I did just fine.

After the first batch, I got the Ateco tips Tartelette mentioned in her article; unfortunately, having no clue about pastry bags, I ordered the wrong size coupler. That was okay – the guys at ultimatebaker.com set me straight. As a matter of fact, he said “Just promise to order from us again!” and dropped the right sized coupler in the mail, for free. (Unfortunately, I’m not really sure what size he dropped in the mail... If you’re as pastry-bag-challenged as I am, call and ask. They’re nice.)

Using real pastry tips was quite exciting. I spent more time trying to keep macaron batter in the bag than trying to pipe it out. But like whipping and folding egg whites, it takes practice and patience. As you can see, I didn’t manage too badly.

Three of the four macaron ingredients—confectioner’s sugar, egg whites, and plain sugar—are also the same ingredients in royal icing. Royal icing is the mortar of the pastry world, used to make a particularly hard, shiny icing for cookies or to glue the pieces of a gingerbread house together. You should not leave the mixing bowl in the sink and wait to do cleanup, or you will have to chisel dried macaron batter off your utensils. If the batter should dry, running hot water in the bowl and letting everything soak will get everything unglued... eventually.

My favorite combination so far is chocolate mint. Using the recipe outlined in Demystifying Macarons, I came up with:

3 egg whites
30 g sugar
200 g powdered sugar
110 g almond flour
and after 20 strokes, 2 TB of natural cocoa powder

And for the filling, a basic ganache:
1/4 c heavy cream
3.5 oz dark chocolate (70% cacao), chopped
3-5 drops peppermint oil (which is not the same as extract)

I used 5 drops of peppermint oil. MP informed me that the peppermint level of the macarons about blew the top of his head off. I like things minty, but you need to know your audience.

You can never make too many macarons; they freeze great. I layer them, unfilled, with parchment paper and put in a few of those “DO NOT EAT” desiccant pillow-paks I save from vitamin jars, and let them thaw on the counter for 15 minutes to a half hour before eating. They’re good plain, with jam, with ganache, with ice cream... Sometimes, I just lie awake at night thinking of what to put in macarons...

There are worse ways to spend sleepless nights.

Snacks: The Drama Llama Strikes

2010-04-09T13:14:00.003-04:00

My taxes are being held hostage by an accountant who tells me her son is sick with H1N1 and refuses to answer my email and calls. The local grocery is closed for remodeling and I have to drive to a different store, which is always irritating because the shelves are arranged differently. Contractors with pneumatic nails guns are crawling over the back of my house putting up a new deck. And there's one or two other things I could mention, but nobody needs those images -- trust me.

The drama llama has struck and I'm starving and I don't have time to be fixing special snowflake food.

Having appropriate snacks in a crisis is important. Stress can make us hungry as well as give us the urge to gnaw on a fencepost out of frustration. Without having provisions, you're liable to end up eating crap that doesn't fill you up and only makes the stress that much worse. The psychological aspect of an appropriate snack is also key. In the history of the world, no woman has ever had her heart broken and said, "I just want to sit on the couch and eat carrot sticks!"

Healthful, filling, psychologically satisfying. You can do this.

Avocados: They contain fiber, potassium, Vitamin E, B-vitamins and folic acid. Their healthy fats make them deliciously creamy. More importantly, if you mash them up with cocoa powder, soaked dates, and a few other ingredients, you get chocolate mousse.

But if that seems like too much trouble, then go light: slice the avocado in half, remove the pit, squeeze a bit of lemon or lime on each half, and sprinkle lightly with sea salt.

Turkey roll-ups: Forget about the tortilla wraps and wrap your fillings in a slice of turkey -- a teaspoon of salad dressing and lettuce leaves, a bit of hummus and a green onion, or just plain spicy brown mustard and a bit of cheese. Turkey is is low in fat and high in protein, a great source of iron, zinc, phosphorus, potassium and B vitamins. Just make sure your source is gluten-free (YES they put wheat in deli meat. Usually as part of a cheap spice blend) and doesn't have a lot of weird chemicals and sweeteners.

Boiled eggs: The Incredible Edible Egg -- The ultimate in portable snacks! A good source of riboflavin, Vitamin B12 and phosphorus, and a very good source of protein and selenium, if you're worried about saturated fat and cholesterol, don't eat the yolk. Dip them in salt-free herb blends.

Have you seen the cute bento egg shapers? Smacking an egg and peeling it is a great tension reliever!

Nuts: Plain, raw nuts. Almonds, specifically, but also pecans, walnuts, and Brazil nuts from the shell (the ones you buy in bulk are old and rancid. If you think you hate Brazil nuts, that's probably why)Nuts are a higher-fat food,but it's mostly heart-healthy unsaturated fat, and they have protein. Two tablespoons of almond butter with a drizzle of honey and cinnamon feels like a very decadent treat.

There is a difference between stress eating (OMG CHEEZY POUFS!) and having a snack because the activity of your day has worn you down and you need fuel.Some might say that these are (*gasp*) high-fat foods and you will gain weight! But when you are really stressy and hungry, you need more than a carrot stick. I keep my portion sizes small on all these snacks -- one avocado, one slice of turkey, one egg, or 1/4 cup of nuts.

Food doesn't solve anything except hunger, and more is not necessarily better. When things are stressy, you need to stop and take breaks. Sometimes creative visualization can calm your nerves... like imagining how you'll shave the drama llama and knit a sweater.

More of Spring (and some Peachy Drama)

2010-04-01T11:07:00.005-04:00

Because Spring happens fast, and you don't want to miss it!

This is Persian speedwell, sometimes called Bird's Eye. They're weeds. Each one is no bigger than your pinky nail, but a whole carpet of them is truly spectacular.

Hyacinths, in an in-your-face pink!

Bradford pears. A whole street full of them looks like snowfall. The "pears" are more like crabapples; they taste terrible, but the birds love them.

Star magnolias don't get nearly as big as the great magnolia trees of the South. They make me think of water lilies.

This is also a kind of magnolia called a tulip tree.

A flowering plum. In Japan these flower so early that they're often flowering in the snow. If you see a painted scroll with a gnarled, flowering tree covered in snow, it's either an almond or a plum -- not a cherry tree.

And speaking of flowering fruit trees...

Of course it wouldn't be Spring without a little Peach Drama. The tree was looking really good -- really good -- and then the temperature dropped. MP and I managed to get the plastic over it for a night, much as I did during last year's cold snap, but this time I am so glad MP was around. The tree has grown significantly, and there's no way I could have done it along. As it was, we had to attach another piece of plastic just to get the thing covered to the ground.

But... I can't tell how well it worked. The weather got so rainy and nasty, the tree stopped blooming. The flowers out now look kind of ratty and spent, but there are still buds waiting to pop. Did I lose many flowers? Did I hurt the tree? No clue until it sets peaches. I cannot imagine doing this for my livelihood -- the suspense would kill me.

I keep thinking of a quote or a line from something: "There's a madman in the garden murmuring bits of truth, but if you would hear him you must first get down on your knees." An allusion to the Agony in the Garden? I don't recall. But I do think Spring is like that -- little quiet bits of glory everywhere, but if you want to see them, you must get down on your knees on the wet earth and look.

It's worth it.

Happy Spring! Some Colorful Daffodils

2010-03-25T14:54:00.003-04:00

My last few posts, while culinarily worthy, have been photographically bland. I mean, chicken stock? Clam chowder? There's not a lot of zing in that.

I thought maybe you'd like some zing.

Despite the fact that you can't eat them, I love daffodils. This is my yard.

There's no way I can capture the exuberance, the scent, the joy of daffodils, but I tried.

These clumps of flowers, all facing the sunshine, remind me of young girls at a party. I think if you listen closely, you can hear them giggle.

This little guy is no bigger than a quarter. He's called 'Minnow."

Get out and enjoy the spring you have!

I’ve Been Poisoned! Wheat in Chicken Stock?!?

2010-03-18T14:03:00.005-04:00

I screwed up. That’s how I found out I screwed up big-time.

I whip through the grocery store like a whirlwind. I plan my menus weekly and arrange shopping lists by grocery aisle. There are times when I grab something off the shelf and don’t even stop the cart. And I’m a real hoot to go to the store with on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (I like to watch people in the baking aisle stare at flour and sugar like deer in headlights). I am an Experienced Shopper.

I’m gonna blame it on the old guy that was standing there minding his business. He stood in the stocks and soup section, about two feet in front of the shelves. I suspect he was just trying to read the labels. I feel for him, because as far as I’m concerned, they all look the same, and I can’t read the tiny print with my glasses, either. I said, “excuse me,” and snuck my hand in front of him for a quart of chicken stock. Except I screwed up and grabbed vegetable stock. Which I did not discover until I got home.

It was no big deal, really. I knew I could use it for something else, it’s just that I don’t usually buy vegetable stock; when I want it I make my own. Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to, if Swanson’s brand was any good. Except that buried in a huge list of ingredients as part of a sub-list under “yeast-extract” was wheat. Only it wasn’t called out under the list of ingredients as required by the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004. (Like under the ingredients label on peanut butter you see “Allergen Information: Contains Peanuts” and everybody thinks, “Um, duh?”) Vegetable stock? Wheat? I can’t eat that. I took it back to the grocery store for a refund and went to get me some chicken stock.

But a Funny Feeling came over me.

I poured over ingredient lists. All the boxed Swanson’s chicken broths I saw contained wheat. I’ve been eating that chicken broth at least once a week for, dear God, years. I mean, I eat soup for breakfast...

Well then. This explains a few things (like PMS and fatigue and “digestive upset,” to name the tactful symptoms).

I went online and found out that Swanson’s is owned by Campbell Soup. If I had known that, then I would have known better than to buy Swanson’s; to the best of my knowledge there is no Campbell Soup that is wheat free. I used their customer feedback option to leave what I fully confess was a rather ranty little email, basically wailing that I’d been poisoning myself and WHY didn’t they use the allergen labeling system according to law and WHY was there wheat in chicken stock in the first place?

They sent back this very level-headed reply:

Ms. Marianne Richardson, we received your message and appreciate your taking the time to contact Campbell Soup Company.

The Campbell Soup Company follows all government regulations regarding the labeling of our products. In the case of the top 8 allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, eggs, fish, wheat, soy and shellfish) we list those ingredients in the product ingredient statement, no matter how small the amount might be. We do not include any of those items under the broader listings of "spices" or "natural flavors". We recommend that consumers always check the ingredient statement and evaluate the product based on the statement.

In regards to possible cross contact between products, we use an extensive and effective sanitation procedure in between different processing operations, and efforts are made to prevent any possible cross contact to the greatest practical extent.

Thank you for visiting the Campbell Soup Company website.

Campbell Soup Company Web Team

Which is basically true. My understanding of the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act was faulty and I had no one but myself to blame. (But they still didn’t answer why there’s wheat in chicken stock, which is a dumb thing to have in there. So says me. ::Flounce::)

I guess I’m not the only once wondering what’s up with wheat in chicken stock. Ms. Alison St. Sure, blogging over at Sure Foods Living (Practical advice for living with celiac disease, gluten intolerance and food allergies) has a wonderful post titled, Does chicken broth contain gluten, milk, soy? Yes. If only I’d seen her site! She did all the legwork and has listed some major brands of chicken stocks and what allergens they contain. It’s a nice site; by all means, poke around it a while.

According to Ms. St. Sure's research, there are Swanson’s brands that are gluten-free, but they weren’t available at the grocery store I was at. And by then, it didn’t matter. Let’s just say I was feeling “off” about pre-packaged food. I dumped some tainted frozen lentil soup and kung pao chicken leftovers and asked MP to make some homemade chicken stock, which he did.

Unfortunately, stock is about as photogenic as clam chowder.

The moral of the story is: Don’t assume. Wheat gets put in everything, from herbal tea to ice cream. Manufacturing processes change. Even people who have been on a gluten-free diet for a long time can get nailed by hidden wheat.

Wheat sucks. I’ve got the T-shirt to prove it.

New England Clam Chowder

2010-03-11T11:30:00.004-05:00

I am totally excited about spring. However, March doesn't fool me one bit. It's brisk out there. It's best to be prepared. There will be days that require something warming for both the body and soul.

New England clam chowder should do the job nicely.

As a soup, it flows into the cold nooks and crannies of your body and warms it. As a chowder, it provides something substantial. I'm big on soup for breakfast; it's porrigey and warming, and it contains a lot of nutrition in a small amount of food. You can't beat throwing a pre-portioned block of soup into the microwave for speed and ease. Clam chowder is what I want on those blustery mornings where I'm not really sure I wanted to get out of bed in the first place.

The recipe I use is from Cooks Illustrated and can be found here... sort of. You need to have a subscription to access the recipe, but the discussion of their chowder vision is interesting. I'm not about to mess with the Cooks Illustrated business model or break copyright rules, so I can't exactly print it out for your perusal, but you can also find it in The Best Recipe. Really, with what I'm about to tell you, you can take any clam chowder recipe and make it your own.

Fat
Typically that means salt pork or bacon. I'm fond of bacon—salt pork can be difficult to find. Bacon can be purchased then frozen in 3-4 ounce bricks and thawed when you want it. (Do be sure the bacon is gluten-free, if that's a concern.) If you want to avoid meat/pork products, use half olive oil half butter. You'll be missing out on some flavor, but I understand how these things go.

Vegetables
This depends on where you hail from. I suspect the purist wants only onions. I myself like a few stalks of celery. I suppose if you were to go that far, you may as well add a carrot and have a mirepoix, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I've had clam chowders that did, and they were lovely—I've even added half a red pepper into mine—but it's just not part of my chowder vision. Any time you sauté vegetables for a soup like this, you want to do it long and slow. Onions need time to get golden and develop their sugars. If stuff starts to brown on the bottom of the pan, good! You’ll scrape that up later when you add your liquid (but if it bothers you too much, cut back on the heat and add a few tablespoons of liquid to the onions. But let them brown!)

Thickener
I like using brown rice flour to make a roux, but be careful—brown rice flour browns much faster than wheat flour. Two tablespoons ought to do it, but it depends on how thick you chowder vision is. I’ve seen recipes call for a half a cup of flour or more. This leads me to two subsets of the thickener, potatoes and dairy.

Potatoes
The traditional potato would be a red potato with the skin left on, but I have been experimenting with baking potatoes and gotten some stellar results. I like to use and immersion blender and puree the mixture halfway, before I add any clams. This allows the starch in the potatoes to break down and make the chowder quite a bit thicker. The CI recipe is specifically looking for a potato that doesn’t do this, but... It all depends on what you want. Using a starchy potato and blending part of the soup is a great way to thicken the soup and give it mouth feel without using heavy cream or a lot of flour.

Dairy
The CI recipe uses heavy cream. I take issue with that. While I have no problem with heavy cream, too much fat in the mouth tends to deaden the flavors, and in this instance, I really feel you'd be better off with heal-and-half or whole milk. Clearly if you're trying to make a lower-fat version, you’ll be better off skipping the cram and thickening with starchy potatoes, blending, and perhaps using a bit more flour in the roux or less liquid for the stock. Still, entire regional variations are based on what version of dairy is used—don’t be afraid to experiment!

Clams
This is the part that freaks people out. "I don't know anything about clams!" "I can't get fresh clams!" Nope, won't wash. You can make lovely chowder with canned clams. But there are a few things you do want to look for:

The fewer ingredients on the can, the better. Try to avoid canned clams with a lot of phosphates as preservatives. I've found canned clams with citric acid as the preservative work wonderously well. Same with clam juice—the fewer ingredients, the better.

Clams are mollusks. They have all their bits thrown together under the shell, and when they're processed, all those bits end up in the can. You might not want to think too hard, is what I'm saying. Although do keep an eye out for shell fragments.

I actually do have access to fresh clams. When I asked how much, in round about figures, seven pounds of littleneck clams might cost, my fishmonger told me he didn't sell clams by the pound, but by the dozen—and it worked out to $50. If you have access to fresh clams cheaper than this, marvelous! If you're not quite ready to blow $50 on a soup, then canned clams will set you back about six bucks.

Spicing
Canned clams and clam juice both contain salt, so consider that before you follow any recipe's recommendations for salting. That said, I feel like if you don't salt the potatoes while they're boiling, the soup won't ever taste right. A little during and then, when the soup is finished, do the final adjustment. There's nothing wrong with keeping the salt content on the low side and letting others salt as they will.

Pepper, however, is a must. If you've never ground your own peppercorns, now is the time. I think chowder should be peppery, but this means different things to different people. Again, pepper to the not-quite-there and then pass the grinder.

Chowder is a lot more exciting to eat than to photograph. It's um... white and lumpy. Don't be fooled. Beneath this bland exterior is a rich and satisfying flavor experience. Crackers are an absolute must. Glutino has a decent cracker for soups, but just to eat it out of hand it has a strange aftertaste, plus they're a bit pricey. I like the Ener-G brand myself. Or heck, make your own crackers! This chowder certainly deserves it.

The link below goes to a page of several different regional recipes that vary in complexity from crock pot to fresh clams. If you are of a more analytical bent, Cooking for Engineers has a great walk-through for clam chowder as well. The important thing is to try one. March can be cruel with those blustery winds, so fortify yourself. You’ll be happy as a clam.

Take me to New England clam chowder nirvana!

Signs of Spring!

2010-03-04T11:25:00.001-05:00

On March 1 I spotted my first flower! It's a crocus. Nothing fancy, just some bulbs I got a the hardware store. I confess, my first thought was not, "Oh Joy! A Flower!" but more along the lines of, "What the hell is THAT?"

It's been a long winter, friends.

The peach tree is still closed tightly -- and this is good, because the temperatures will be cold enough these next few nights to potentially damage any flower/leaf buds that are too exposed. This is how I lost 2/3 of last year's crop. But I'm not bitter... Somewhere I had read about how in northern states farmers will occasionally pile snow up around the trunks of orchard trees when they know the temperatures are going to drop again, and this is what I did. I don't think I can do 2 AM tarp covering/snow-poking anymore.

But when I downloaded the pictures, I found on the camera a picture which I did not take:

MP was poking about in the garage and got around to assembling his new BBQ smoker. Apparently he was proud of his new baby and wanted to record the moment. It looks very... pod-like. And shiny.

Crocus and smokers -- I ask you, can spring be far behind?

Wild Strawberries

2010-02-26T17:36:00.001-05:00

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

When I first heard this Zen tale, I was quite young. Nevertheless, I remember thinking, “This is a man with screwed-up priorities. He’s got a tiger on his butt, he’s about to fall off a cliff, and even the mice won’t give him a break. Who CARES about the damn strawberries? Clearly Zen monks have problems with ADD.”

And there the matter rested for twenty years.

There’s a phrase from James Clavell’s novel, Shōgun that has stayed with me: if you want to keep something private you have to “whisper it down a well at noon.” There are many people who blog as if they were whispering down a well, but the Internet is no well, as countless surprised Facebook users can testify. Anonymity is also no guarantee of privacy; the lights always come on.

There are no grand lead-ins, there are no excuses. Life is Life—it is Messy and Ungainly, and when it’s not Boring it’s Exciting in ways that make you yearn for Boring. Things happening in my life of late are deeply personal and bring to mind disturbing situations and questions. I’m hardly the first to face these events or questions, and while it would give me great comfort to write about them, it would give me no comfort at all to imagine anyone even remotely connected with these events finding out my thoughts by reading them in this forum. It is both self-centered and foolish to post certain topics on the Internet and pretend that no one will know it was you. Besides, I have never particularly enjoyed art as an excuse for public psychotherapy. That’s why I gave up listening to the radio in the late 90s (Quit whining, suck it up, move on).

One thing I will say: even as Life is mess and dirty and sometimes makes you angry or sad, it also offers up many other things, some of them quite wonderful—i.e., chocolate-mint macarons.

All around me different people have sung the praises of these confectionary gems. Distinct from the humble American macaroon, these meringue-based treats are decidedly European and undeniably chic. They come in flavors like lavender lemon, raspberry mascarpone, even red bean and green tea.

They are also reputed to be temperamental, fiendishly tricky, and almost impossible for the home baker to master.

They’re also gluten-free.

I made these. They were awesome. I want to tell you all about them. Because although they may not look it from the picture, these macarons tasted of wild strawberries.

We will always face the twin tigers of the Past and the Future. The yin-yang of Good and Evil will always threaten to gnaw away our hold on an intellectualized Reality. The only thing we have, the only thing that is certain, is Right Now. Taste it.

It doesn’t matter is that moment is a hug or a drawn out, tiresome complaint; walking into a hospital room or biting into a macaron—be present to the moment you are in, because it is the only thing that is real.

Hey Look! It's a Visual!

2010-02-21T16:59:00.002-05:00

I'm doing a little experimentation with video embedding. It could add a whole new dimension to my blog -- Live PeachCam!

It's Raining

2009-11-11T16:01:00.000-05:00

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.

Best Gluten-Free Brownie Recipe Ever!

2009-10-15T11:35:00.008-04:00

(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:

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)

You can do this. You should do this. Yes, the mixes are better now, but they still cost six bucks. Wouldn’t you rather use your own recipe and control the quality of your ingredients? Aren’t you tired of always refusing baked goods because you don’t want to be poisoned? Doesn’t your allergy-challenged kid deserve a decent tasting treat?

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 Brownies
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.

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!

Inertia: Just Do It

2009-10-09T13:45:00.004-04:00

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.

Peaches: A Pictorial Essay

2009-07-28T15:32:00.007-04:00

(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.

Urban Garden Tour

2009-07-04T14:05:00.010-04:00

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.

Anti-Hero by Villainess

2009-06-25T11:42:00.006-04:00

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.”

Having Cake and Not Eating it, Either

2009-06-03T12:03:00.007-04:00

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.

Wheat is everywhere. I deal with it. It’s the people I want to backhand.

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.

Entertaining with Food Allergies

2009-06-03T11:57:00.005-04:00

(All photos are from PetitPlat by sk's photostream on Flickr. Check out her wonderful blog and more of her stunning polymer clay creations.)

It seems like everyone has a food allergy these days, and that makes entertaining difficult. A good hostess instinctively knows that poisoning one’s guests is a no-no, but with so many different allergies to navigate, how can one plan an inclusive menu? And on the other side of the equation, if you’re a guest with a food allergy, how do you inform a hostess about your allergy without coming across as bossy?

It doesn’t help that the word “allergy” is thrown around a lot. The American Academy of Allergy Asthma &Immunology defines a “food allergy” as specifically involving immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies. Symptoms such as hives, swelling of the lips and tongue or vomiting often occur shortly after ingesting the offending food. Anaphylactic shock is when an immune response is so severe that blood pressure drops suddenly and airways narrow, blocking normal breathing. If someone in anaphylactic shock doesn’t immediately use an EpiPen (a one-shot dose of epinephrine) or go to an emergency room, they could die. The World Allergy Organization estimates that each year 150 Americans die from food-related anaphylaxis. Peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish are the most likely to trigger such a severe reaction.

If eating a certain food causes an immune response that does not involve IgE antibodies, it is not considered an “allergy,” but an “intolerance” — although when someone is experiencing several hours of “digestive distress” (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea), medical definitions of “allergy” seem rather quaint. Some food intolerances cause chronic health issues, such as the inability of the body to absorb certain nutrients (which is often the case when someone is allergic to wheat).

If the biology behind food allergies and intolerances hasn’t convinced you to hang up your apron, then take heart — the best advice for dealing with a food allergy is the simplest. Your Momma was right: everything comes down to good manners. Whether you’re a hostess or a guest, put yourself in the other’s shoes for a moment and consider how both your assumptions and requests might sound.

For a hostess, knowing what to do means understanding why you’re entertaining in the first place. It sounds strange and anthropological, but think about it — the purpose of having people over for a meal is about creating a group experience centered around sharing food. If someone can’t share the food, they can’t share the experience. The smaller the group, the more obvious it is that someone is not eating the same thing as everyone else. It changes to chemistry of the gathering by making the guest with the allergy feel left out and the hostess feel inadequate, and that’s not good.

So by all means, if you are hosting less than twelve people ask your guests if they have food allergies. If someone does, ask for menu suggestions or if there’s a dish they would like to bring. By getting input before the event you can be sure there are foods all your guests can share. And unless you have an allergy to something a guest brought, make a point to try it — it’s an inclusive gesture your guest will appreciate, and you might learn a new recipe.

If you are hosting a larger meal or a party with a buffet, assume you will have one or two guests who have food allergies and plan accordingly. The most common allergies are eggs, milk, nuts, peanuts, soy, tree nuts and wheat/gluten, but this is hardly a complete list! When planning the menu, remember that less-processed food is better than pre-packaged and simple is better. If the food is catered, talk to the provider and explain the need for options. If at all possible label the foods or be sure that the servers are aware of which dishes contain what and are prepared to answer questions.

You may not learn about a guest’s allergy until the event itself. Take a guest around and discreetly point out safe foods for their particular concern. Save containers and packaging for ingredient lists so if a guest asks a question you can read labels and be certain.

No matter what size the gathering is, do not telegraph to the entirety of the party that the reason Jane isn’t eating the green goddess salad dressing is because it will put her in the powder room for the next three hours if she has so much as a forkful. That’s Jane’s business, so let her tell if she chooses to. If other guests want to know why Jane is only eating vinegar and oil dressing, breezy, evasive answers are all you need give — and then offer to pass the vinegar and oil.

If a guest asks you to provide detailed explanations of ingredients, do not take it personally. Eating away from home with food allergies is difficult. If you’ve never dealt with a food allergy yourself, you may not realize the consequences of eating certain foods or the level of care required to ensure that a food is “safe.” When a guest asks you questions, remember that undoubtedly this is someone who has suffered “digestive distress” (or something worse) in the past and wants to avoid it in the future. If a guest’s behavior seems particularly dictatorial or unreasonable, remember: you have the option of not inviting them to the next function, but ignoring food allergies is not an option for them.

If you have a food allergy and are invited to dine at someone’s home, you need to say something. Your friends probably already know, but co-workers and casual acquaintances may not. Telling a host you have a food allergy isn’t being pushy; you’re helping him avoid potential embarrassment and giving yourself the opportunity to dine safely. It doesn’t matter how many times you say, “No really, I’m fine” — no host will feel good watching you consume only a glass of chardonnay and a lettuce leaf.

As soon as you receive an invitation, give the host a call or drop an email and explain the situation — simply. Unless anaphylactic shock is a serious possibility there’s no need to go into deep biological detail; just say that an allergy to a particular food is a concern and you wanted him to be aware of it. Some allergies are easier to work around than others; by speaking up you may assist in his decision to serve shrimp or chicken.

However, do consider that your host may already have very definite ideas about the menu and your food allergy may put an unexpected kink in those plans. So instead of just saying what you can’t have, offer to bring a dish you can have that fits in with what’s being served. You might even make the offer to arrive early and help prepare dishes with alternative ingredients so you can eat them, too.

If the gathering is at a restaurant, call ahead or check the Internet to find out what options you have and make arrangements with the kitchen staff ahead of time. More restaurants are becoming aware of allergy challenges and work hard to come up with suitable menu items that eliminate offending foods. If an event is catered find a member of the staff and ask questions, and although it may seem forward, be one of the first in line to avoid cross-contamination from misplaced serving utensils.

As a guest with a food allergy someone will certainly offer you something you cannot eat. Some people are comfortable being the ambassadors of their particular allergy and enjoy educating others, while some people wish they didn’t have to deal with food allergies and don’t want to talk about it. Decide beforehand how you want to respond, and learn to say a simple “No, Thank-You” gracefully. Even if you are asked specifically “So what happens when you do eat eggs?” keep in mind that while everyone is eating is probably not the time to discuss the biological details of your particular allergic reaction.

Accept that your host may not really understand the level of attention required to insure that foods are safe for you and do not push the issue is he seems reluctant to change plans or accept help. Some people don’t understand how limiting a food allergy can be and they just don’t want to. Unfortunately, there may be times when you have to bring your own snacks or eat before or after a function.

Sharing food with friends is a basic human pleasure that gives us a common experience; allergies make sharing that common experience challenging, but not impossible. By being willing to communicate thoughtfully and accommodate some changes, everyone can feel welcome and relaxed — which is why we share meals together in the first place.

And send your Momma a Thank-You note.

For more information about food allergies, check out http://www.foodallergy.org The site contains resources and recipes for all ages.
The statistics for this article came from the following sources:
The American Academy of Allergy Asthma &Immunology web site
The World Allergy Organization web site

Halibut with Cucumber Salad and Soy-Mustard Dressing

2009-05-28T10:38:00.006-04:00

I know that MP is the chef here, but this is what I ate for lunch yesterday:

Seriously. I made this. You may be suitably impressed now.

This recipe comes from Food and Wine magazine and can be found online here. Provided the soy sauce is gluten-free (Bragg Liquid Amino Acids, revolting as it sounds, is a good choice) it's a nice dish for the dietarily challenged.

The key is taking what you have and making the dish your own. The original recipe is for grouper, but I used halibut. I do not have a mandoline and there was no way I was "folding" cucumber slices. (Although you do need to prop the fish up out of the dressing; a short stack of cucumber works, too.) There's a lot of latitude for personal tastes in Dale Gartland's dish, and that's what makes it a good recipe.

Prep time may be the only thing that stops people from making this. The dressing comes together in a snap. Do not fear the specialized ingredients — mirin is a sweetened cooking wine and used in teriyaki sauces (make your own gluten-free version), rice vinegar is a lovely low-acid vinegar for summer dressings, and white vermouth can be substituted for sake. The fish prep was easy. It's the vegetables that are tough.

A food processor with the right blade can crank out the carrot and radish easily. But the shallots, the garlic, the chile... That's some knife work. And cucumbers are essential, but don't do so well in the food processor. Cucumbers are water trapped by sunshine, so you MUST remove the seeds if you do not use a seedless cucumber or you will end up with a soggy wad of pulp. Nope, the veggies will take up most of the prep time. It's worth it.

You may be tempted to skip the sesame seeds and frizzled shallots/garlic. Don't. Pace yourself. Besides, frizzling is fun. In one pan, you can toast the seeds, then frizzle the shallots and garlic, and then use the flavored oil to cook the fish (pat the fish off so it's dry; makes for a better crust).

What is rewarding about Gartland's dish is the contrast of flavors and textures: soft and cool, sweet and crunchy, salty and green. If you skip any of the ingredients, you will undoubtedly make a tasty entrée, but you will miss out on the fun of discovering new combinations with each bite.

There are so many wonderful things in this world to eat. Don't limit yourself.

Star of Bethlehem

2009-05-18T13:19:00.002-04:00

According to the USDA I grew up in Zone 5. Not that they track me personally; I’ve just always been fascinated by their brightly banded map, and wherever I go I ultimately want to know if lemon trees are possible (not hardy below Zone 9-10) and daffodils work (doesn’t get cold enough above Zone 8).

In practical terms this means because I didn’t grow up here, there’s stuff out in my yard I’ve never seen before.

A few years back I was mowing and found flowers where I had never planted any. The leaves looked like garlic chives, but longer and fallen over, with small white flowers, a few to each cluster. It was quite pretty, actually, and I wondered who would randomly plant stuff in the middle of a yard out by the curb.

I mowed around it, went back, and dug it up. This was harder than I thought, because the bulbs it grew from (again, like garlic chives or spring onions) were easily 6-8 inches down, and I mangled several before I got enough to transplant into my flower bed. I had no idea what it was. I assumed it was some sort of wild allium (garlic/onion type plant) or bulb. It’s grown up very nicely, and this year I took some pictures.

Gardeners probably seem rather solid and boring (old people with stone figurines growing way too many zucchini), but the truth is, we’re risk-takers. Who do you think invented zucchini bread? Crazy stuff. Seeing only pictures in a catalog, we decode a few bits of information (like zone hardiness, shade tolerance, and mature height), calculate whether or not we have room (and if it’s something we want, we always do), and send away for little bare-rooted sticks or knobby tubers or packets of seeds that look like alien gallstones. We stick these things in the dirt. We wait. A risky business.

Sometimes it pays off. When MP first saw the peach tree, he looked at me and asked, “Which end is up?” Six years and 30 pounds of peaches later, I apparently guessed right. Then sometimes things don’t go well, and one must rectify the mistakes. This happens to both my mother and her mother — a lot.

Currently my mother is ripping up sweet woodruff (“They said it was a groundcover. No lie!”) while my grandmother has spent 20+ years going at the lily of the valley (“It grows up places I never put it!”). Neither one has made much headway. Interestingly enough, my mother cannot get lily of the valley to grow — and she lives in the woods. What both my mother and grandmother agree upon is that STAR OF BETHLEHEM MUST DIE.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it grows everywhere! All the time!” my mother answered.

Grandma was more specific. “Because it gets yecchy.”

Okay… Over time they revealed that star of bethlehem, while pretty, is invasive, crowding out everything growing around it. After blooming, the grassy leaves get rather slimy and can’t be pulled out. It’s pretty for 2 weeks and annoying for 4 months.

I year or so ago I was at a plant sale hosted by a gardener friend of mine, and in her flower bed I saw the unknown little thing I’d rescued from my yard. “How cute!” I exclaimed, “Would you sell me some?”

“Oh God, that. No. You don’t want it.”

“But I already have some and I like it. What–?”

“Kill it.”

“But I like it! What is it?”

“Star of bethlehem.”

I had nursed a viper in my bosom! (Is that not one of the most wacked out sayings imaginable? No wonder it fell out of favor somewhere about 1910…) However, the truth is… I’ve never had a problem with it. It’s at the edge of the flowerbed, and though I occasionally mow over it in the summer, it always comes back in the spring. Look at it — isn’t it cheerful? Don’t the little while flowers look so happy to greet the springtime? Doesn’t its green center look like a Jell-O mold? I still don’t know how it got out in my yard. Maybe some disgusted person flung it there. Maybe a bird carried it off a compost pile. Nature’s mysteries abound.

“You watch it,” my mother warned me, “You’ll be sorry.” But she’s been saying that to me for decades now about this or that, and I’m still here. A lot depends on soil type and micro-climate, so maybe where I have it now it will remain in control. It marks a point in the springtime when the daffodils are gone but the azaleas aren’t quite ready to show. I’d hate to lose it.

Sometimes you have to take risks.

Searching for the Elusive Purple Easter Egg

2009-04-16T14:10:00.007-04:00

Have you ever done something that went so terribly wrong you passed beyond dismay into the realm of “My God, I have to keep going to see how truly bad this can get”?

That happened to me this past weekend over a purple Easter egg. Well, I wanted it to be purple. For the better part of my life I have wondered why there were no purple Easter eggs — and yes, I was a strange kid. We would get the PAAS egg-coloring kit (sometimes the fancy ones, sometimes the basic 5-color) and go to town, but Purple never worked. Red worked… Okay, Pink worked, and Blue worked, but Purple was more like Pink strangled Blue and left Evidence of the Crime. Purple was never truly, you know, “purple,” like a grape or an amethyst. It was Pink vs. Blue on a boiled egg.

My sister tells me that PAAS has really branched out since we were tots and that they do in fact have Purple. I’m not so sure, and I submit as evidence a close up of her children dyeing eggs (I’d show you the kids but they’re so revoltingly cute you’d never notice the eggs).

I see many lovely shades of Blue. I do not see Purple.

This bothers me on a deep, philosophical level. Scientifically, it should work; In both additive and subtractive color spaces, Purple is the combination of Red and Blue. Surely a Red dye with a few drops of Blue, or a Blue dye with a few drops of Red, should be somewhere in the ball-park?

All right, look — here are two lovely eggs. Believe it or not, they’re brown eggs. I used your basic grocery store food dye and made a nice coral color and a spring green.

And look at this. I’m being honest here, no Photoshop tricks. Is this not a purple dye? Dare I say, violaceous, even purplescent?

So what is this? Two Easter eggs and an eight ball?

Here’s a lovely shot; you can really see the striping effect. Makes it look like a slightly ominous melon, lurking, while two sweet Easter eggs unsuspectingly frolic about. (Dare I say it also looks like a more colorful re-enactment of the “before” stage in a Zoloft commercial?)

I think the second the egg hit the water I knew it wasn’t going to work, and yet, I couldn’t stop the process. I think I hoped by sheer saturation of color that something might happen. Being a brown egg certainly didn’t help matters, but it doesn’t explain the disaster completely. Why doesn’t mixing red and blue dye work? What causes the inevitable streaking seen even in my PAAS days? The result looked like the black jellybean that nobody wants to eat.

Back in college I had some Greek friends who celebrated Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. In Greece they dye all their eggs red, to represent the drops of blood Christ shed on the Cross (it’s also the color that represents Life and Renewal, I think). When they got hold of the red dye from a PAAS kit, they were horrified, truly upset. “They’re pink!” they wailed, “We can’t use pink eggs!” I’m not sure what they eventually did, but I feel for them now.

I set the Fugly Egg it out on the coffee table to contemplate. The other two were eventually eaten, but this one remained, so maybe there is an up-side to being dyed an awful color. In better light it actually looked navy blue. Sort of. I have since found out that if you want blood-red eggs, you make a dye from yellow onion skins. I am contemplating possibilities for next year, and I am seeing purple onions and cabbages in my future.

I will succeed, or I will take Bad to a whole new level.

Hanami, Cherry-blossom Viewing

2009-04-01T12:37:00.032-04:00

In the previous post I mentioned the Japanese concept of hanami, or cherry-blossom viewing. If you've never seen a flowering cherry tree then you must surely wonder what the big deal is.

Yesterday I went out and had my own blossom-viewing party. This is the result (click on any of the images to see it in a larger view).

These are lovely photos, but I'm not sure photos can really capture the experience of a sunny crisp day, Spring awakening, tiny petals falling in the wind...

If you'd like to see some images from Japan, try Tokyo Times or Kirai.

It is a very short moment in Spring -- a few days at most -- and this is why it is so beautiful. Like Life, the flowers of the cherry tree are precious because they are fleeting.

Okay, that's enough introspection. Go outside and play in the dirt.

Spring, Interrupted

2009-03-21T11:23:00.008-04:00

This winter has been particularly tough all across the country. I don’t remember seeing this much snow in fifteen or twenty years. Needless to say seeing the daffodils bloom was welcome, and I looked forward to my peach tree blooming, which it did.

Sort of.

Somewhere between the March 1st snow dump and the nearly 80 degree day, the night-time temperature plummeted. All the flowers on the lower three-quarters of the peach tree died in the bud. The only flowers that bloomed are on the very top branches, and they are all that I will have this year.

I discovered this while spraying kaolinite clay/pyrethrin on the tree. I felt like Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon when he realizes he has the wrong falcon but he can’t stop scraping at it with the pen-knife. I stood there, touching what looked like perfect buds, every one of them dropping off in my hand. I wanted to be wrong. I wasn’t.

Nothing to be done about it. Made short work of spraying, that’s for sure. With plenty left over, I began to spray the flowering cherry.

It’s probably a “yoshino” variety, common in this part of the country and very pretty come springtime and “hanami.” It never did grow much above 10 ft, and I don’t know if that because of the variety (yoshino cherry trees can grow 25 ft, but maybe this was a dwarf? Or something else?) or where it was planted. Most likely it never grew very tall because in the first five years of its life it acquired a huge split which exposed the heartwood.

This photo shows the clearly exposed heartwood. Looking at the other trees in the yard and how they died, I can read what happened: the area was hit with drought, the original homeowner was clueless, and the drought-tolerant trees (bradford pear, leyland cypress) lived, while the others (water maple, river birch) died. The cherry didn’t die right off, but it split, as is common with thin-barked trees. A new split can be doctored and the tree will try to mend itself. This split was left unattended, the area was dry year after year, and it just got bigger. This tree has been going to die ever since we moved in 10 years ago. It just… didn’t. And because it was so pretty and so brave, I never cut it down.

If I could read insects like I read trees, I probably would have.

The lead branch was already dead, but again, I couldn’t stand to break it off and ruin the shape of the tree. I did, however, pull off a dead lower branch… And maggots boiled out where I broke it off. I thought, “Why are there maggots in a tree?”

No. Not maggots. Termites.

I ran for an empty jelly jar and knocked the stragglers off the broken limb into the jar (always ALWAYS grab samples). By then the others had disappeared back into the tree. I left the branch and didn’t spray anything else. Let the termites stay and be happy so long as I knew where they were.

The next day a tree specialist came out — a real old-timer. He said, “Yep, termites. Gotta get ‘em when it’s cool out before they swarm. The boys got the chipper shredder about five minutes from here. You want I call and take the tree?”

The cherry hadn’t even bloomed yet. It was beautiful when it bloomed. I missed it last year because I went on a trip. The poor tree. Take it? I mean, I knew it would have to go, but my God, give me some time to get used to it… Termites? Are they in the house? Would taking the tree now make them swarm? No, it was only 50 degrees, they’d probably stay put. The poor tree, it hadn’t even had a chance to bloom…

And then I remembered there was somebody standing there. He had a look on his face like, “C’mon lady, make up your mind.”

“Yeah. Call them.” I replied.

I went inside and told MP. “We knew it had to go, right? I mean, poor tree. I wonder if I should cut a few branches and force them? No, that’s kind of morbid.”
Then somebody rang the doorbell and I burst into tears.

I was suddenly torn between grief and total embarrassment. “I can’t do this. I can’t write the check. Please, take care of this.” But I wasn’t too out of my mind with grief to holler out “And make sure they get the right tree!” (MP said later he told the guys, “You touch that peach tree, we all die.”)

The chipper-shredder was surprisingly quiet.

Later that afternoon I went to kung-fu. “Don’t look,” MP told me, “Just keep your head down and don’t look.”

I didn’t. I wouldn’t have looked the next day, either, only MP said something about how they “ground down the stump. Looks like they mulched, too.”

Oh. God. They didn’t spread the remains of a termitey tree all over the daffodils, did they? I ran outside and there was… Nothing. No mulch, just a ground stump, and no tree. Just a hole in my heart that I am honestly truly surprised is there.
I didn’t have much of a chance to dwell on it. Last Thursday the Weather Channel called for rain, ice, and snow.

Oh no, no... Not on my peach tree.

There are two ways to fail: You do the wrong thing, or you do nothing and events unfold accordingly. Doing something, even if it’s the wrong thing, at least provides the possibility of endless variety.

It was the only time I’ve ever worn the Bluetooth into a store and confused people by having an apparent one-sided conversation.

“What do you think, Dad? Is 100 watt enough? I’ve got this ten gallon cooler MP uses for beer-making… Huh? For hot water, Dad. No, spraying only works for radiant frost. Radiational? Oh hell, I don’t know, but this is a cold-air mass. Now, how do I do this without getting electrocuted?”

I mean, the paint department at the Home Depot didn’t quite know what I was on about.

Let me get my keywords straight for the search engines of posterity:

If you have a very few trees, then you can protect the buds and blossoms of fruit trees from freezing temperatures by using a plastic drop cloth and a 100 watt bulb

You will need:
• Drop cloths to cover (probably 2 of the 10’ x 25’)
• Clip on flood lamp
• 100 watt bulb
• 100ft indoor-outdoor extension cord (or whatever it takes to get to the nearest outlet)
• Thermometer (must be accurate)
• Zip-top bag
• Binder clips or clothes pins
• Rope, clothes-line, yarn from your stash, etc., about 2-3’
• A 6’ or longer pole/stick
• Duct tape (naturally)

• Duct-tape two drop cloths together (3 mils or less each. Any thicker is too heavy) using short pieces of duct tape every 12-18” apart. The goal is to keep the plastic together, not to make it air-tight.

• Use the pole (I used a kung-fu staff) to get the plastic up over the crown of the tree with the duct-taped seam off-center. Close the bottom off with loosely tied clothes-line around the trunk.

• Put the clip-on flood light with a 100 watt bulb (bulb facing DOWN) on an inside branch under the plastic, securing and waterproofing the plug of the flood light to the indoor outdoor 100 ft extension cord using duct tape. Tuck the cord/plug under the plastic.

• Put the thermometer inside the zip-top bag and using a binder clip hang it higher than the light by about 3 ft.

• Using the binder clips close any holes/leaks in the plastic; roll or fold up the loose ends of the plastic and secure to tree branches. Make sure to leave a large opening for you and the pole to duck under the plastic, and secure that, too.

The theory is that the heat of the bulb will keep the air mass under the plastic warmer than the air mass outside. The temperature needs to stay at or about 32 degrees Fahrenheit. At 26-28 degrees Fahrenheit flowers will die. Buds can tolerate about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. CHECK WITH YOUR COUNTY EXTENSION OFFICE FOR FREEZING TEMPERATURES FOR YOUR TYPE OF FRUIT TREE. The thinner the plastic and the more holes, the less heat will be trapped. However, if the plastic is too thick it may crush the top branches, and the tree does need some air exchange.

Oh, and try to set all this up in the daylight. I wasn’t so lucky; my first attempt blew off and I didn’t realize it until I got home at 8:30 PM. Alone in the dark, trying to get plastic up over an 8-10 ft tree, one sees the world in rather stark terms.

At night, the setup looks like this. More Halloween than Springtime.

Could you burn the tree down? Oh yeah, count on it. But what are you going to do, lose your peaches? Because Plan B was a 10 gallon open-topped cooler filled with near boiling water and kept under the plastic with the tree. In order to make that work you’d have to boil massive quantities of water and haul them out to the tree, replacing the cooled water every 1-2 hours. As it was I still didn’t get much sleep.

At 11 PM I went out to check the final set up — 38 F

At 2 AM I ducked under the plastic with the pole, and using it like a pool cue, popped about a gallon of rain out of the gathers in the plastic — 34 F

At 6 AM I was popping snow off the plastic — 33F

At 8 AM I popped more snow off the plastic and realized that farming sucks.

The temp under the plastic was 34 F. There was an inch of snow on the ground that didn’t melt until the afternoon. Did I save the peaches? I don’t know — ask me in July. I still have flowers, but what’s going to pollinate them with this wonky weather?

Last night I dragged everything out and wrapped the peach tree up again. I’m glad I did, even though there were 23 mph gusts of wind that left me clinging to 500 square feet of drop cloth with fleeting visions of becoming Mary Poppins of the gardening circle. It shouldn’t have gone below 32 F, but when I woke up this morning there was frost on the ground.

My neighbors think that I am bat-sh-t crazy.

Is Sami’s Bakery Millet and Flax Seed Bread Really Gluten-Free?

2009-02-19T11:43:00.003-05:00

The short answer: I’m still not sure.

The short summary: This past holiday season I tried Sami’s Millet and Flax Seed bread. It is not labeled, “gluten-free,” but it has no gluten-containing ingredients. I tried it as both bread stuffing and bread pudding (not in the same meal).

It brought a tear to my eye.

It was so good, so unlike other poofy/spongy/sawdust-like GF breads. It handled like bread. It was amazing. I wanted to recreate it myself and went online to find out more about it.

I found controversy instead. Is it or isn’t it gluten-free? How did they get that texture without yeast or gluten? What about this test posted on celiac discussion boards claiming it had 5000ppm of gluten?

In short: is Sami’s Bakery Millet and Flax Seed bread really gluten-free, and who is telling the truth?

What began as investigative research instead became a study in how information is disseminated over the Internet and touches on anonymity, trust, and how to evaluate primary and secondary information sources. So come with me, Detective Jane Friday, and let’s see what we can reasonably determine.

Just the facts, Ma’am.

What is “gluten-free” and who cares?
Very briefly, gluten is a protein found in certain cereal grains such as (but not limited to) wheat barley, rye and spelt. Some people are not able to digest / have a really bad reaction to this protein. They have what is called celiac disease. There is no pill, there is no cure; if you’re a celiac, you don’t eat wheat. Ever again. Period. Well, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but if you’d like to avoid the diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, anemia, headaches, mood swings, generalized weakening of the immune system, etc. associated with being a celiac who is still ingesting wheat, then you need to stop eating all gluten-containing grains.

This is not easy.

Gluten can show up in the weirdest places – soy sauce, artificial crab meat (kiss those yummy California rolls goodbye!) and cheap vitamins. What? “Modified food starch” is often made from wheat and is used in salad dressings, mayonnaise, and drugs. Beer is made from barley. Of course gluten is in all baked goods, but it can also be in your spiced French fries and the glue in envelopes.

We’ve heard a lot about allergies and parents’ reactions to allergies in the news. You do have to wonder about the necessity of handling a peanut found on the floor of a bus as a hazmat situation(although as a general rule, you don’t die from ingesting gluten when you’re a celiac. You can die from the chronic diseases associated with undiagnosed celiac disease, but that’s different from a peanut allergy.) However, in defense of parents of children with food allergies, I will say this: Most people have no idea what they eat (I once explained the whole “gluten-free” thing to someone, who then said, “Bummer! No whole-wheat bagels. But you can eat plain ones, right?”). Unless your 8 year old is precocious enough to ask if the caramel coloring in a cough drop was sourced from a US or non-US food supplier, then it’s the parent who has to check everything out. Sit with someone who inexplicably vomits five times in three hours and see if you can keep hyper-vigilance at bay. The reason parents are so paranoid is because they have to be.

I am not a celiac
But I do play one in my everyday life. After three laparoscopies for stage-3 endometriosis, I began to wonder if there might be something else I could do, something doctors maybe weren’t telling me? When I gave up wheat six years ago, I also gave up rabid PMS, menstrual cramps that could drop a horse, anemia, brain fog, and hay fever (that last one was an unexpected and delightful bonus for someone who had allergy shots for fifteen years). I can’t help it if my HLA DQ test says I’m not a celiac; I know what I know. Wheat don’t work for me.

Why Sami’s Millet and Flax bread is different
It’s gluten that gives bread structural integrity. Manufacturers of gluten-free products try to compensate for the lack of gluten by increasing the protein content with eggs and gums. These gluten-free breads can be dry as dust or have the consistency of a sofa cushion. You can’t eat a sandwich off them because they crumble and fall apart.

The Sami’s bread lists only the following ingredients: Organic Millet Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Water, Aluminum Free Baking Powder, Sea Salt, Organic Grounded Flax Seed [sic]. With no eggs or yeast, somehow this bread has both flexibility and strength. There’s no weird beany flavor from soy or chickpea flour, and it behaves like wheat bread, so it can be rolled, toasted, dried as breadcrumbs, or used as a sandwich.

The label on Sami’s bread does not say that it is gluten-free, but I found it in the GF section of my health food store.

The web controversy
A loaf of this bread at my health food store cost me six bucks. As a baker, I naturally wanted to reverse engineer the product and save money. I went online and found that I was not the only one who tried using only these ingredients and failed. More disturbing, however, was a post that circulated on many boards, basically saying that Sami’s bread was independently tested and not only wasn’t it GF, but it was loaded with gluten. However, there were also people like me who had tried Sami’s products and loved them.

Was the warning a sort of GF urban myth? Was somebody lying about the true ingredients in the product? This link to Ellen’s Kitchen and this link to the celiac.com message board demonstrates the kind of discussion surrounding GF breads and the what’s safe/what’s not conundrum.

Tracking backwards
The post says the testing originated with the Tri-County Celiac Support Group (TCCSG) of Michigan. The information has been posted in multiple discussion groups (here it is again on glutenfree.com) by the same user, “cruelshoes.”

I wrote email. Cruelshoes did not respond (I can think of several reasons for that, all of them reasonable; however, we are sticking to facts and not my personal conjecture).

However the president of the TCCSG did respond to my email, and was most helpful. The original page describing the test still exists on the TCCSG server, though I’m not sure you can actually navigate to it from the site’s homepage.

To be absolutely thorough, the next step would have been to write to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources Food Allergy Research & Research Program and find out what their lab protocol is, how this test is done, what the margin of error is on the test, etc. I did not do this owing to time, but their web site contains some good information.

I also wrote to Sami’s Bakery in Florida. They did not respond. So much for me as an investigative reporter.

So I called the bakery. I do not know who answered the phone, but judging by the noise in the background, it was the guy standing closest to it. Here is a summary of the conversation:

Q: Is Sami’s Millet and Flax bread gluten-free?
A: There’s nothing in it that contains gluten, but this is not a gluten-free facility. We make the Millet and Flax products in the morning when everything is clean, and then make the other products afterward.
Q: Does it contain wheat as an ingredient?
A: No. But it’s not a gluten-free bakery, so… But we don’t put wheat in it, no.
Q: Have you ever done testing on the bread to find out what the contamination level is?
A: Actually, yeah. A year or so ago we sent it in and it tested at 33 ppm. That’s pretty close, pretty good (note: as yet there is no standard in the United States for what the term “gluten-free” actually means. The European Union’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) set their standard at 20 ppm).

And that was all I felt I could ask this guy without sounding like a lawyer and scaring him.

Conclusions
Who can you trust as an authoritative source?

A dedicated forum on gluten intolerance?

A user posting in a forum?

The president of the TCCSG?

An anonymous guy in a bakery?

There needs to be a source we can trust, and in my own investigation, I’m not satisfied that source was revealed. Are the various celiac forums moderated for scientific and nutritional accuracy? Unless cruelshoes had eaten the bread herself and had a reaction, what were her reasons for posting the information on the message boards after it was already a year old? Sami’s Bakery never responded; are they aware of the problem? Whoever answered the phone at the bakery never hesitated to answer my question (most people say, “WHAT free?”) and seemed to be comfortable discussing the product. These answers matter for two reasons: first because of the legal ramifications, secondly because people’s health will be compromised by inaccuracies.

Out of all my leads I trust the president of the TCCSG most of all, and yet I still have questions. Why was the decision made to remove the link to this post after a year? What additional information did Carolyn Sullivan have access to to create the post quoted by cruelshoes? The post on the TCCSG does not provide all the information listed in the re-post by cruelshoes. Mary Guerriero was very helpful, and I suspect all I need to do is ask and my questions will be answered.

The bottom line
I tried the Sami’s Millet and Flax Bread and I loved it.

I had no reaction to eating it.

I also did not, and I would not eat it every day because I don’t think my body does well with refined carbohydrates, period. I’ve been living six years trying to be basically gluten-free and I know how I react to both small (was that a crumb of toast in the jam?) and large (you mean there was soy sauce in that?) amounts of contamination.

The advice of the President of the TCCSG is sound: “I think we, as gluten free, have many many choices out there now and I, for one, would not risk a product that wasn’t gluten free.” If I were newly diagnosed and trying to get gluten free, if I knew I reacted violently to the presence of gluten or if I knew I was particularly sensitive to gluten, I wouldn’t try Sami’s Millet and Flax Bread.

Email to Sami's Bakery Regarding Their Millet and Flax Seed Bread

2009-02-19T11:40:00.002-05:00

from Marianne
to info@samisbakery.com
date Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 2:22 PM
subject A happy yet concerned customer

Dear People of Sami's Pita Bakery,

I want to thank you for making Millet and Flax Bread! As a baker who found herself needing to go wheat-free, for six years I despaired of finding a gluten-free / wheat-free bread that even remotely resembled the "real thing." When I tried yours, I was very impressed. I wanted to find out more about your products and your bakery, so I looked up "Sami's bakery" and "gluten free millet flax bread" online.

Are you aware of the debate and sometimes heated emotional controversy surrounding the Millet and Flax products? All of it seems to boil down to a R-Biophar Ridascreen Fast Gliadin test (in English: a test to find the presence of a protein found in gluten) done at the request of the Tri-County Celiac Support Group of Michigan ( http://www.tccsg.com/ ) by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2007. (http://forums.glutenfree.com/topic6532.html and http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/index.php?showtopic=41233 ). Less that 20 ppm is considered "gluten-free." The greater than 5000 ppm listed as a test result indicates more than accidental contamination.

Sami's Millet and Millet and Flax breads do not list any gluten-containing ingredients, but the label on the packaging clearly states that these products are made in a facility that processes wheat and may contain traces of wheat. Part of the issue may be that health food stores are labeling these items as "gluten free" and customers are accepting that at face value. I myself am torn; while I did not have a problem eating these products once a month, would daily ingestion make me ill? When your body is the test tube, "experimenting" with products that "might" be okay is not only uncomfortable, for some it's possibly dangerous. I have several questions which I think will address these concerns:

- How does the Millet and Millet and Flax bread products get that texture without wheat or yeast?
- Are there additional ingredients not listed on the packaging because they're not used in large enough quantities to require it?
- Does Sami's try to limit gluten / wheat contamination, and if so, how? Do they bake these products first thing in the morning, or have a different set of pans?
- Has Sami's ever tested the Millet or Millet and Flax products for wheat / gluten? Would Sami's be willing to have them tested and post the results on their web site?
- Would Sami's be willing to put an FAQ on their web site addressing consumers concerns? Would Sami's allow me to post their response on my blog, Café Tor? ( http://www.cafetor.blogspot.com )

I think it's important to clear up these rumors and uncertainty so that people who have concerns about their diets get the information that they need. While I understand that Sami's bakery may not wish to answer all of these questions (people would love to have the exact recipe!), answering any of them would be most helpful in clearing up whether or not those who need to eat gluten free diets can safely eat Sami's Millet and Millet and Flax bread products.

Thank you so much for your time,
Marianne Richardson

Sami's Bakery did not respond.

Back to the original post.

Email Written to User "Cruelshoes" Regarding Sami's Bakery Products

2009-02-19T11:35:00.004-05:00

from Marianne
to cruelshoes
date Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 9:24 AM
subject Sami's Bread and the TCCSG

Hello,

I am a blogger over at blog over at http://www.cafetor.blogspot.com/,
and I am looking for the user "cruelshoes" from the celiac.com and
glutenfree.com forums. Is this perhaps you, or can you put me in
contact with this user?

The reason I am looking for this user is that, while doing some online
research about Sami's Bakery products (http://www.samisbakery.com ), I
came across a quote attributed to the President of the Tri-County
Celiac Support Group of Michigan which indicates that Sami's Bakery
products are NOT a good choice for someone trying to be gluten-free.
The quote can be found here (
http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/index.php?showtopic=41233 ) and here
( http://forums.glutenfree.com/topic6532.html ), both posted by
cruelshoes. I've searched the TCCSG site and I cannot find the test
results posted there. Where did the original quote about a test being
done come from?

I'd like to try to untangle the heated online thread about Sami's
products. I have no affiliation with Sami's Bakery. Although my HLA
tests are negative, I am a person who is 6 years gluten free and
healthier for it. I tried the Millet and Flax bread and liked it, but
I can't ignore the greater than 5000ppm gluten test results. Please
let me know if you have any information regarding this topic, and if
you are willing to allow me to post any response you might have.

Thank you,
Marianne Richardson

The user did not respond

Back to the original post.

Email Written to the Tri-County Celiac Support Group and Their Response

2009-02-19T11:25:00.008-05:00

This is the email I wrote to the current president of the Tri-County Celiac Support Group, Susie Cattin:

from Marianne
to Susie Cattin
date Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 9:28 AM
subject TCCSG ELISA test on Sami's Bakery products?

Dear Ms. Cattin,

Although my HLA tests are negative, I am a person who is 6 years gluten free and healthier for it. Still, a sandwich would be nice once in a while. While doing some online research about Sami’s Bakery products (http://www.samisbakery.com ) I came across a quote attributed to the President of the Tri-County Celiac Support Group of Michigan which indicates that Sami’s Bakery products are NOT a good choice for someone trying to remain gluten-free. The quote can be found here ( http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/index.php?showtopic=41233 ) and here ( http://forums.glutenfree.com/topic6532.html ), apparently posted by the same user.

Did the TCCSG ever do this test on Sami’s products? Are the results posted on the TCCSG site? I could not find them. In February 2008 you were not yet president, but do you know anything about this ELISA test? Would the TCCSG be willing to post it on their site?

I blog over at http://www.cafetor.blogspot.com/ and I’d like to try to untangle the heated online thread about Sami’s products. I have no affiliation with Sami’s Bakery. I tried the Millet and Flax bread and liked it, but I can’t ignore the greater than 5000ppm gluten test results. Please let me know if you have any information regarding this topic, and if you are willing to allow me to post any response you might have on the Cafe Tor blog.

Thank You,
Marianne Richardson

However, Susie Cattin was not the president at the time the original post was written (2007), so she forwarded my email to Mary Guerriero:

from Mary Guerriero
to cafetor@gmail.com,
Susie Cattan
date Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 11:54 AM
subject Sami's bakery

Hi Marianne. My name is Mary Guerriero, past president of TCCSG in SE MI. I am the one who quoted the Un of Nebraska Lincoln, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Food Allergy Research & Research Program lab. We had a company that was, at that time, having their products tested also for gluten content, send these products to this lab. This was Feb 19, 2007. It was their results we went by, not ELISA. They are a research lab and have an extremely good reputation. At that time, there were 2 other companies that also had the products tested at different labs with the same results. I think we had the results on the website for over a yr and then chose to take it off. Didnt know this had come up as a topic again. I do not belong to the listserve and was asked by Carolyn Sullivan if she could post the results and told her absolutely. I think we, as gluten free, have many many choices out there now and I, for one, would not risk a product that wasnt gluten free. If you want a good sandwich, there are now many many gf products that are wonderful. I hope this answers your questions. Thanks so much. Mary

Back to the original post

Worst pickup line ever?

2009-02-12T14:05:00.009-05:00

A few weeks ago MP and I were in New York City, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with some friends. You could actually spend an entire week there and still not see everything (we tried it), so if you only have two hours, you need to be very, very targeted in what you want to see. We went to the Arms and Armor section,whereupon our little group went its separate ways. I think that's because when a group of more than 3 people tries to stay together, it starts to feel like a field trip, and once you've graduated from middle school, that's just weird.

I went to the Japanese section. Seeing the daishō (both large and small swords, the the katana and the wakizashi, respectively) is interesting, but I like to look at the tsuba and menuki (the sword guards, which are removable, and the small decorative objects generally woven into the silk binding on the hilt). Generally speaking a separate set of craftsmen created these items, as opposed to the craftsmen who created the actual blades, and I could go on at great length about the artistry, etc. involved in all these pieces, but that's not what this post is about. But if you're interested, absolutely go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

These items are separate from the main collection for two reasons: because they're Asian (as opposed to European) and because, being Asian, they often have textile elements (the silk wrappings) which need to be under special low lighting conditions. Wandering the Asian collection is very private and quiet and... well, gloomy.

I was absolutely absorbed by a priceless set of swords, complete with a helmet, bearing a rabbit motif, when a voice next to me asked, "Have you ever thought about how many people they've killed?"

I turned to regard the questioner. No American man can tie his tie that perfectly unless he's military, and the dark blue (green? It's dark in that display) sweater and slacks with the stripe confirmed that.

My first thought was, "Dude, they've got bunnies all over them." But the Japanese don't see design elements in quite the same way, and after all, a razor-sharp blade with cherry-blossoms on it is still razor sharp.

My next thought was just exactly how to interpret the question. Because the truth is, I have thought about it. You can't look at those beautifully crafted blades gleaming in the dim light and not think about it. It's an object of art which has the sole purpose of dealing out death. Does such an object become imbued with some part of the lives it has taken, or the personality of all who have wielded it? What is it like to hold such a blade in your hand? Does it whisper words, a history, that only another swordsman could understand?

This man was military. But for time and culture, the swords behind the glass might have been his. He had trained for combat; had he trained for the sword? I don't see how you can serve in the Armed Forces and not think about mortality. Was he back from somewhere? Going somewhere?

More importantly, when a man and a woman are strangers alone in a darkened room and he asks her such a question, is it a vaguely creepy moment or the worst pickup line ever?

Saying something pithy about weapons as beautiful objects, I sidestepped the question and I sidestepped him. I didn't sense any particular harm to him, but I didn't want to find out. As a rule I don't strike up conversations, and especially not when the opening line is so fraught with creepy ambiguities. I give him credit, though, for saying what was on his mind. Some day I'd like to be able to ask random strangers for the answers to all those things I've always wanted to know — but that wasn't one of them.

Mao Zedong is a Bust?

2009-01-28T09:18:00.004-05:00

I'm having one of those weeks filled with physical problems, family crisis and deadlines. With all that, you'd think I could come up with something really juicy to write about, but it just isn't there.

To cap it all off, I'm wondering if you're, you know... Out there? Is anyone reading this or does my search engine yoga need work? Leave a comment and just say hi.

However, I can't leave you with nothing to look at, so here -- this is something I picked up with my camera in Chinatown. I really liked it. It's fuzzy. But it begs the philosophical question: If somebody makes a red flocked bust of you, does that mean they like you, or they don't like you?

Being Sick

2009-01-19T15:39:00.005-05:00

MP is sick this week. He was sick last week, too. Actually, he’s been sick ever since we went to NYC – too much drinking and shouting and dry air in airplanes. Then he had to go to Minnesota, which finished him off.

He has a cough. Sort of.

“What kind of cough do you have?” I ask.

“I dunno. I only cough in the morning.”

“Is it productive?”

“No.”

“Do you want anything for it? An expectorant or something?”

“I guess. I don’t want anything liquid. That stuff tastes like crap.”

And armed only with this cryptic knowledge (morning cough) and specific instructions (nothing that tastes like crap), I go out to find him some medicine. I make a mental note to ask the pharmacist for some laudanum. That way we’ll both be happy.

Different people are sick differently, and you have to understand and respect that in a relationship or some bad moments will ensue. For example, when MP first feels sick, he takes two Advil and passes out on the couch for four hours. This cures him of most everything – which is how I know that he’s really sick this time and needs drugs. But I didn’t understand this when we first met. At the first sign of him feeling a bit phlegmmy, I treated him like I wanted to be treated.

“Do you need a blankie?” I softly asked.

“No, thank you, I’m fine.”

“You look cold.”

“I’m fine.”

“Would you like some chamomile tea?”

“Yuck.”

“Have you gargled with salt water?”

“No. My throat isn’t sore. It’s my nose.”

“How about a decongestant? Maybe an antihistamine? Here, have a Kleenex.”

“I’m fine, Sweetie.”

“I can get some Puffs. Do you like Puffs?”

“I’m fine, Sweetie.”

“Your nose looks really sore. Rub this on it.”

“Go away, Sweetie.”

And all my ministrations rejected, I slunk away to play computer solitaire. When MP is sick, he wants to die alone on his couch with dignity. He does not want to be coddled and irritated.

Of course, when I got sick early on in our relationship, things didn’t go any better. MP treated me like he wanted to be treated:

“I feel terrible MP… (sniff) My throat hurts. My nose is sore from blowing it. I want to die… (sniff, sniff)”

“That’s too bad, Sweetie. Go lie down.”

“Thanks… (sniff) I think I will.”

And then he left me in the bedroom. Alone. In the dark with my Puffs. Four hours later I stagger out, purblind, and he’s on the couch playing videogames.

“Whoa. You look terrible. What’s wrong, Sweetie?”

“You left me in there!”

“I thought you needed rest.”

“I didn’t need four hours of it! You didn’t come check on me to see if I needed anything!”

“I thought you were sleeping?”

“I could have died in there! Don’t you love me?” (It’s very difficult to love a pale and whining woman who has Carmex slathered all over her upper-lip in what I call “cow-nose,” but somehow MP managed.) When I am sick, I want to die with my loved ones bending over me offering fragrant teas and soft tissues. I do not want to be left alone on the ice floe like a wounded dog.

Now when MP passes out on the couch, I poke him at about 6 PM and ask if I’m responsible for my own dinner. When I am too quiet for too long, MP creeps around looking for me, and if he finds me staring at him with one bleary eye, he asks if he can do anything. And thus we learned: Do unto others what they want done to themselves.

Identity

2009-01-13T08:09:00.002-05:00

Café Tor almost never got started because of the well-intentioned advice of a friend and my own neurotic tendencies.

Over coffee one afternoon, my friend went on at great length about how I should totally have a blog, and how I could write about our group of college chums and our various made-up adventures and how she would totally read it and tell all her friends about it so they would read it, too.

I sat and thought, “I’ll be damned if I sit here and let you tell me what I should write. Get your own blog. You have no idea who I am.”

Clearly this response was out of line. She was, after all, only being nice and saying that in the past she enjoyed reading email I sent. Thank heavens I kept my big mouth shut. Yet I could not deny that her suggestion made me angry. Where was my stridency coming from?

I decided to think about that with a year of blogging, a meditation in motion, but I would do it quietly, unglamorously, under an unassuming assumed name. No instant readership in the form of family and friends, just a quiet corner to… well, breathe, imagine myself with my favorite libation, and hopefully, write some bits that would make people see things a little differently, perhaps even laugh. If I wanted to write about my friends and family, I would. My choice for anonymity gave them their privacy, too.

My inspiration was “Ms. Schnozz” and her blog, Schnozzfest. Another friend sent a link to her blog with the note, “This reminds me of your writing.” The only reason I didn’t create a script to block this friend’s email from EVER SHOWING UP IN MY INBOX AGAIN (God Bless all my friends who withstand my knee-jerk tendencies to be a… um, “jerk”) was because Schnozzfest cracked me up. Schnozz challenged herself to become a more adventurous person by joining the roller derby, and I loved reading about her experiences. Her triumphs, her frustrations, her dissention into total roller derby geekdom – this girl had some serious moxie and a really great turn of phrase. She could poke fun at others without being snarky and never ever hesitated to poke fun at herself. She blogged about Mr. S., her bunnies, the things that she liked and the things that annoyed her. I write in my underwear as a salute to her and all she believed in. (If you’d read the blog, that wouldn’t sound so odd. Honest.)

Then her voice changed. She wasn’t… having fun? Her scope narrowed. And then she just said, “That’s it; I’m not doing this anymore.”

I wish I had saved that last post, because she talked about some of the very same things I’m dealing with now: privacy, to use or not use your real identity, and the expectation of others. When she stopped using an assumed name and everyone in the audience knew who she was, she had to ask herself, “Is it really appropriate for me to write X, knowing my parents / boss / former best friend from high school / coworkers are reading this?” The need to edit herself lead to flattening her writing into a mono-dimensional, one size fits all online persona. But she understood that’s not how we live our real lives; we have one face we show our family, one for our friends, another for our co-workers… It’s not that we’re lying, we’re just painfully aware that what’s appropriate for one group may not be appropriate for another. Ms. Schnozz decided she wasn’t going to edit herself anymore, and between that and time constraints, she bowed out of blogging.

This made me sad, but I understood. Family and friends assume that they know you – but they what they really know is only the voice they hear in their relationship with you – the one that they’re comfortable with. They’ve never seen that creative voice before. How could they? You’re only just trying to figure it out yourself. Believe me, your deeply Catholic mother may say she would be thrilled to read your first book, but she most emphatically does not want to read that passionate love scene you wrote. She still has your first communion pictures up on the wall and she is very happy with that image, thank you. She does not want to know where you got the idea for the bullwhip / bundt cake / salad shooter scenario. Trust me on this.

I haven’t had much luck trying to discuss my writing with others (salad shooter ideas aside). People who have never looked at the publishing industry are quick to tell me what I should do to get published – find an agent, forget about agents and go straight to a publisher, go to a writer’s conference, join a writer’s group, write for a newspaper, write for a magazine, write children’s books, illustrate children’s books or my personal favorite from my father, “write like Erma Bombeck” – rather than listen to the fact that I’m desperately afraid I’m not as talented as I hope I am. Explaining that I have a file folder full of 30 + rejections from agents who have never read my manuscript, just a cover letter, or that I have no interest whatsoever in illustration makes me feel slightly pathetic. I don’t need to learn how to deal with the publishing industry; I need to learn how to deal with creative fear and frustration. (The once piece of practical advice I think I do need to consider is to accept that the first manuscript isn’t going anywhere right now and move on to the next thing, but strangely enough, no one has suggested that yet.)

Gently refusing their suggestions with a “thanks, but no thanks” makes people wonder why I’m so “touchy.” After all, they’re only “showing interest in my hobby” or “trying to be helpful.” Then their feelings get hurt, which is the last thing I wanted, so I spend the rest of the time trying to make them feel better when I’m the one who’s so frustrated I could bite straight through my damn manuscript.

My decision to blog under a pseudonym and not reveal my online activities to anyone I know in the Real World, as paranoidly private as it sounds, is absolutely the best decision I could have made. Artists need to protect themselves. They need room to experiment with ideas, deciding for themselves what works and what doesn’t work. Nothing kills creativity faster than the expectations of those closest to you and your own fear of somehow “disappointing” them. Depending on your personality type, you may be able to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without ever noticing, or you may find yourself neurotically reading hidden meanings into every comment your friends and family make. Without apology or explanation I honestly say that I am the latter. But once you acknowledge your neurotic tendencies, you can deal with them in a sane fashion.

I can have the freedom to explore ideas and voices, privately, on my own terms, or I can seek the admiration of people I know, but be ultimately aware of and shackled by their opinions. I choose privacy. Privacy does not mean lack of responsibility – I guard the integrity of this name as much as I guard my own – but it does mean that everyone I know can sleep a little easier at night, secure in the knowledge that nothing I blog about will be traced back to them.

Not immediately, anyway…

Dreaming

2009-01-03T11:50:00.002-05:00

The peach tree has been stripped by winter down to its essence. It is plain now how it grew last season and where the oriental fruit moths stunted its tips. Those two branches weighed down by fruit are curved now only by memory. Do peach trees dream of Julys? No, only I do that.

I wake up every morning and peer out at it, searching for… what? The way I write you’d think I was living on a 100 acre farm. I’m not. I live in suburbia, bathed in the glow of strip-mall fluorescence. The peach tree is a stick among Bradford pears, holly and water maples – all the cheapest trees planted at volume discount. A garden, however, can happen anywhere, even in January, because beyond these poetically peachy ponderings there are some important things to consider.

January is when all the gardening catalogs come out. Glossy photos of succulent tomatoes, impossibly hued peppers, warped pumpkins cultivated two centuries ago – you know, Seed Porn.

I am here with stacks of magazines, graph paper and ruler in hand, trying to chart out how much I can stuff into 300 square feet of growing space. Packing algorithms are my forte. I figure if I utilize the surface areas of the fences I can train pole beans, zucchini and cucumbers up instead of out, and thereby get in a row of beets or salad greens or something. I’m just worried about the shade factor of the 6 foot fence. Will it be too shady for the beans? On the other hand, they may not mind some shade in the sweltering afternoons. And the kale – where am I going to put the kale in July? The garlic will be out by then, so maybe I can put it around the border… but then where do I put the garlic come November when the kale is still in there? One thing I know for sure – THERE WILL BE ONLY ONE SUNGOLD TOMATO PLANT.

But these are concerns for the beginning of March, when I turn the kitchen floor into a nursery. Believe it or not, the peach tree is the more pressing. Based on last year’s records pruning and an application of dormant oil should happen during the first or second week of February (“green tip stage,” although I may have to prune sooner than that. I need to look it up.) I’ll bring the pruned branches inside and force them for some winter color.

Golly I wish I had a camellia. A nice double pink one that would bloom in February or March. Maybe if I ripped out the holly bushes next to the front porch…

Life is too short for discount shrubbery.

Well Hello There!

2008-12-27T11:28:00.006-05:00

I like the pine tree background. It's very Minty Fresh, you know?

Sorry I have not posted in... well, a long time. Things got interesting in the fall -- I did an original post for Matinee at the Bijou (Brother Can you Spare a Dime? Going to the Movies During the Great Depression) and then I launched into learning / re-learning l33t web skillz with some software that would explode after 30 days. Next thing I knew, it was now.

And you may be thinking, "Those two facts are related how?"

We at Café Tor don't particularly like to mention The World Out There because the whole point of Café Tor is to leave The World Out There, you know, Out There. I mention it now only as point of reference, to wit: as I wrote about the experiences of my family during the Depression I noted that the economic clime was quite similar to what we are experiencing now, and I wondered just how far history would repeat itself. Then the stock market tanked in November, and I thought, "Oh isn't this interesting?" Now I'm trying to get a new job in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and I can't help but think, "Oh isn't this interesting?"

Actually, I could think a lot of other things at this point, and I have, but they don't really do much good, do they? During the Great Depression very little popular culture and entertainment dwelt on hardship. Roosevelt's campaign song was "Happy Days are Here Again," Little Orphan Annie was a smash hit on the radio, and Ginger Rogers sang "We're in the Money!" in pig-latin (I just had to work that in because that scene cracks me up). Trust me, I am no Pollyanna, but I do understand Depressions, both personal and economic. Dwelling doesn't help.

So put on your glad rags and join us at Café Tor! I promise to try to be a little more balanced in the new year and update more regularly. Who knows? I might even develop Peach Cam for all you fruit tree lovers out there. Hey, don't laugh -- January is when all the gardening catalogs come out.

Be assured that despite the economy, we will not raise our prices at Café Tor! Coffee is only a dime here. Do join us.

Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

2008-12-22T12:47:00.007-05:00

When my father talks about the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), he calls it “Moon River,” after the theme song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. Mancini’s score cinched the film for him – “I knew as soon as the titles came up and that song started playing it was a good movie.”

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, 1961, Paramount, **I.V. - Image courtesy MPTV.net

It was one of the movies I particularly remember he let me stay up late to watch, although “let” is not the right word. It was more like, “Sit down, Mar, you’ll like this.” Like a tour guide he made little comments along the way: “I love the way [Audrey Hepburn] wears her hair, almost like a crown.” Watching Cat survey the people at Holly Golightly’s cocktail party he remarked, “Cat’s not really a cat; he’s a person.” Up until seeing that movie my only experience of George Peppard was from The A Team, and I never would have recognized him so young (and with red hair) if my father had not pointed him out. There was no part of the film that my father did not enjoy without a chortle or admire -- until the scene when Holly suggests to Paul that they steal something from the five and dime store. “This is the only part of this movie of which I do not approve,” he said emphatically.

When I watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s now, it surprises me that my father liked the film so much at eighteen (Consider that this is a man who taught his kids to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool because that’s how John Wayne did it in Hondo (1953)). Breakfast at Tiffany’s seems like a chick flick, a pre-Sex and the City paean to the single girl in New York City, complete with Givenchy dresses, cocktails and marrying the richest man. When I asked my father recently what he liked so much about the film he told me, “I enjoyed every minute of that movie. I loved the music. I liked the actors, Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard with hair. I liked Patricia Neal in her role, too. The only thing I didn’t like about that movie was that when it was over, I was still failing all my classes.”

Failing? I vaguely remember him telling me once that he almost failed out of college after his first semester. When I think of the film in this light, it makes sense: my father liked the movie because here at last was someone who put a name to that vague feeling of fear and malaise he had. He identified with Holly and what she called the “Mean Reds.” Yet when I asked about this, I did not get the answer I expected.

“Huh? Mean Reds? No… I didn’t go to the movies to think about them, Mar. I went to be entertained.”

My family is used to me asking seemingly random questions. As a writer and a naturally curious person, it’s what I do. Most of the time they answer without much fuss, but I recognize that sometimes I stray into memories undisturbed for a long time. While my father answered my question, that was as far as it would go. I could tell he didn’t want to talk more about it.

My father went to school on an academic scholarship. He definitely wasn’t stupid. Failing classes? How? What happened? I ask other questions, different questions. I piece together things I remember hearing, different conversations from long ago. Here is what I know:

By the time my father went to college he was very definite about what kind of movies he liked, and his tastes have not varied since: “I am not impressed by any overriding theory or philosophy in a movie, which is why more than anything I hate a movie with a message.” He did not care for The Apartment (1960) (“Everybody was a rat.”) or Spartacus (1960) (“The guy died.”) He loved Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (“The scenes in the desert were amazing. At the intermission, everybody wanted a Coke.”) for the music as much as the story. He saw films from the 1930s and 40s on television, watching late night movies at 11 P.M. and weekend movies at 1 P.M. However, he still went out to theaters to see the latest films. He lived at home and walked to classes, but he also had a car – a green and white Olds Rocket ’88 that went 100 mph, and he drove it along the same back roads he worked construction on in the summer to get to the theaters in Rittman or Orrville. He often drove without point or purpose and went to the theater of whatever town he drove into. This was how he saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stumbling into the Orr Theater.

The film opens with an orchestral arrangement of Mancini’s song. Audrey Hepburn gets out of a cab on a deserted New York street. She pulls a Danish and a cup of coffee out of a bag and walks north on 5th Avenue, studying the jewelry in the windows at Tiffany’s. Fade to a row of unremarkable-looking brownstone apartments. Holly tries to sneak past a man in a car, but he sees her and follows her, shouting about how giving her fifty-dollars for the powder room gives him certain “rights.” Mr. Yunioshi (an almost pathetic role played by Mickey Rooney) objects to the noise, and the angry man leaves. Cut: Paul Varjak gets out of a cab in front of Holly’s apartment and looks around. Cut: the doorbell rings and Cat jumps onto the sleeping Holly. Holly opens the door to find an apologetic Paul – he just moved in, he doesn’t have keys, blah blah – but Holly can’t hear him through her earplugs. Paul asks to use the phone and Holly invites him in.

And there it is. The scene which occurs fifteen minutes into the film, an almost tossed-off exchange:

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long – you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul: Sure.
Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name! (Courtesy IMDB)

Holly’s struggle to “find Tiffany’s” is what drives her. It’s what makes the romance between Holly and Paul sweet and funny and a little bit sad. It’s the whole point of the movie. And my father says he never thought about it?

Random bits of advice and observations from my father fill in more details. He always stressed academic achievement, but he also told us there comes a point when you can study too much. Cramming the night before an exam isn’t going to help and you might be better off playing shooting baskets until one in the morning. He also prescribed contemplative solitude. Years later when I was deep in my own funk, he drove me along the same back roads he drove to various small-town movie houses. We eventually ended up out to the OARDC Experimental station. “I used to come up here at night and watch the lights twinkling,” he told me. Another favorite spot was a large rock on campus. When I went to the same college, I saw the rock of which he spoke.

“That rock isn’t private. It’s right next to the main path.”

“You’d be surprised how private it is at two in the morning.”

If all this does not sound like a man who wrestled with the Mean Reds, then I don’t know what the Mean Reds are.

I cannot believe that he missed the idea of the Mean Reds entirely. At some internal level, he must have felt that here at last was someone who knew what it meant to be scared without knowing why. Perhaps he didn’t recognize it because Holly’s society-girl aspirations were so different from his own. I do not know how he came so close to failing that semester, nor do I know how he pulled his GPA up. Perhaps he views that almost-failure as a weakness he can’t admit to, and recognizing Holly’s Mean Reds means recognizing his own failings from that time. Or perhaps I, being of a more imaginary temperament, insist on seeing a pattern where there is none. Line the facts up however you like; the stories that we tell ourselves about our past selves mean everything.

I see now that, in a sense, he gave that movie to me. He gave it to me in the same way he tried to teach me how to use a volt-ohm meter, change the oil filter on my car, and make bread – because having the same temperament as he does, it was information I might someday need to know. Whatever the reasons he liked it, whatever he did or did not see in the film, he recognized that Breakfast at Tiffany's was a wonderful movie that could banish, if only for a time, those feelings of being afraid and not knowing what you’re afraid of. In a darkened theater, my father found Tiffany’s.

Junior Mints (1956)

2008-10-28T14:55:00.024-04:00

The Wooster Schine Theater was a classic example of an art deco movie palace. The ticket booth was a smooth chrome curve extending from the wall, and a ramp lined with movie posters of features and attractions led up to the two sets of bronzed double doors. They opened into a lobby of sky-blue walls, burgundy velvet curtains, and gold starburst chandeliers. There was a long glass candy counter and a brass machine for popcorn. Off to the left, stairs led up to the balcony, while on the main level two aisles led down to a real stage, where occasionally there was live entertainment (my father remembers for his senior prom night that they had entertainment and movies until 2 or 3 am. I thought group fun on prom night to keep kids out of trouble was a modern thing).

When the curtains opened, the movie began. On Saturdays, for a quarter they ran trailers of what would be showing a few weeks out, a cartoon, a lesser picture (a B film or something shorter) and then the feature. My father remembers, “When you went to the movies, you spent your Saturday there. It would start at one and you wouldn’t get out until four or five in the afternoon.” Most of the time the movie was a quarter, but for some of the big releases the price was a dollar. Ben-Hur was one such film. He thought that was nothing short of robbery. I asked him if he paid the dollar. He says he doesn’t remember, but he knows he saw Ben-Hur.

The interior of the Wooster Theater in the 1930s. Note the organ next to the stage. More images here.

I wondered if he ever really thought about or noticed the theater itself. While he knew that it was “nice,” it never struck him as anything particularly special. “Really Mar, I was there for the movies.” The Wooster Theater had ushers – always men, never women – that wore burgundy jackets and carried little flashlights to help you find a seat. “Why no ladies?” I asked. “Don’t really know, but they were definitely always men, college age or a little older. How else are you gonna get a bunch of high school kids to quiet down?” To me, growing up as I did in an age of twelve screen megaplexes, the concept of sitting in a balcony to watch a movie sounded romantic and sophisticated. “They only opened the balcony when they had a guy [usher] to watch it. You couldn’t have twenty kids running around up there with nobody to watch them.” So much for sophistication.

My father was like his mother in that if it was a movie, he liked it. Some of the earliest films he can remember seeing at the Wooster Theater are The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Man from the Alamo (1953). His most vivid memories are of movies like White Christmas (1954), Bambi (1942, probably the ‘57 re-release) and Singing in the Rain (1952) -- big, colorful films with music and wide screen cinematography.

He remembers a lot of hype leading up to the premiere of Forbidden Planet (1956). Quaker Oats Puffed Wheat sponsored a national contest for kids to name the robot. But in searching for this contest, for the kid who won or runner-up robot names, I can only find a Quaker Oats promo to give away free tickets to see Forever, Darling and Forbidden Planet. What could my father be remembering? Or misremembering? I’m not sure I want to tell him that this memory he has is false; if memory is better than reality, what difference does it make after fifty years? What is absolutely true is that Robbie the Robot inspired Spielberg, Lucas, and my father with a lifetime love of sci-fi thrillers, and I am pleased to see that Robbie, like Trigger has his own IMDB page.

Talking to my father made me remember something from my own childhood. “Hey Dad – you know that story you told us, about that thing you did with the washers and the rubber band on the seats of the theater?” “Oh… That.” Yeah Dad, that. I couldn’t get him to confess how old he was when he did it (which means he was old enough to know better) but at some point he and his friends, utilizing the same principles as the motor of a rubber-band airplane, created a gizmo to make a sound like “stinkies” (his word). Apparently against the corduroy seats it sounded amazingly realistic. I’m not sure if they did this to embarrass unsuspecting others (probably) or purely for their own amusement (undoubtedly), but it has always reminded me that my father is not all that he seems.

Once my father started high school he began seeing movies with large groups of friends (for all I know this is when the “stinkies" gizmo was at its most humorous). “It was nothing for just my brother and I to start out and end up with a group of ten or twenty kids. We’d fill up an entire row of seats.” He watched Psycho (1960) with one such group. According to my father they were deathly silent during the film, right up until Vera Mills found Mrs. Bates. Apparently he was not the only one who let out a yelp.

It occurred to me that maybe he and his friends were the reason that they needed male ushers. Did he ever get into trouble? “Oh, we’d get a ‘If I hear one more thing, this row is out of here!’ Other kids got thrown out, but I never did. Besides, we were only noisy during the previews. We wanted to see the movie.” I suspect that my father was probably as rowdy as anybody else, but he’s probably telling the truth. Getting thrown out would have embarrassed him profoundly, so I’m sure he never crossed the line -- or more to the point, never got caught.

My father may not have been particular about the movies he saw, but he was very discriminating regarding his refreshment choices. Grandma usually gave my father and his younger brother 30 or 35 cents apiece, which left them with a nickel or dime for candy. My father didn’t buy candy in the theater, though – too expensive. Just next to the theater there was a candy store. “It was tiny, maybe the size of a small room. One wall was all glass jars filled with penny candy, but I didn’t care about that. The counter with the cash register was a glass case that had pre-packaged candy – Snickers bars and stuff like that.” My father bought a box of junior mints for a nickel.

Junior mints, introduced in 1949 by the Welch Company, makers of Milk Duds and Sugar Babies.

For as long as I can remember, chocolate mint is a flavor I associate with my father. In the summertime there was a stash of small peppermint patties in the freezer. Junior mints, however, were something I had only at Halloween.

“How come I only remember peppermint patties growing up? Did you ever get peppermint patties at the movies?”

“No, not usually. I preferred junior mints. They melt in your mouth better. They also came in a cardboard box, so you didn’t have to eat them all at once. Peppermint patties do not survive well in pockets.” Ever the chemist, he then explained that junior mints, depending on how they’re shipped and stored, will develop a grainy texture in hot weather. The hydrophilic nature of sugar and its properties of re-crystallization aside, peppermint patties just travel better. Once again we are reminded by our elders that candy was a whole lot better in their day.

Or maybe not. My first memory of junior mints comes from when I was five years old. I was in the hospital and had to stay overnight, alone for the first time. Just before my parents left, my father put a box of junior mints in the top drawer. He made sure I saw him do it. “There are junior mints right in there, Mar, so if you want a snack, go right ahead and have some.” I’m sure he did not know that each night they tied a net (they called it a “canopy,” but I was not fooled) over every crib so we couldn’t wander around in the middle of the night. Needless to say I couldn’t get to the junior mints, but I remembered that I had them – a talisman against loneliness, a gift from my father to me.

Details matter. It’s just not always the details that you’d expect.

King of the Bullwhip

2008-10-09T11:00:00.011-04:00

Back in March the folks at The Bijou Blog posted “Literary Depictions of the Movie Matinee Experience,” wherein Rich Mendoza pondered the lack of literary descriptions of the early twentieth century bijou experience. There was a contest for readers to send in whatever passages they could find describing the simple act of going to the movies. My mind went immediately to Rebecca Wells’ Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and the chapter where Vivi and her friends enter the Shirley Temple look-alike contest. (You can read my entry here) And whaddya know? Little ol’ me won, and Bijou Bob sent along one of the original Matinee at the Bijou press kits circa 1982, filled with nifty goodies. (My detractors will be quick to point out that I was also the only person who actually sent anything in, but leave us not dwell upon mere technicalities.)

However, even as I wrote up my entry it occurred to me that my father was an untapped source of afternoon theater experiences. So I called my father one Saturday afternoon, and I tapped him. We talked for well over an hour, and I asked about all of it -- how old he was, what he saw, if he remembered the décor of the buildings or what he thought about the movies.

Oh what I found out.

As a matter of fact, I learned so many interesting things about his experiences that I have to divide what he told me into chapters. This is the first of three.

*****

Glamorous art-deco theaters have been well documented and photographed, but I don’t think people realize the importance of the little second run theaters in introducing classic films to a new generation. After World War II, the movies had to compete with a new form of entertainment – television. It took a long time for Hollywood to take the challenge of TV seriously and embrace the medium as a new venue for their films. In fact, Metro Goldwyn Mayer was one studio that refused to allow its stable of actors to even appear on television. Eventually there were local, then national programs which showed old movies, but when my father began seeing films in the late ‘40s, the only way to see The Wizard of Oz or Mutiny on the Bounty was through second-run releases.

The Wayne Theater was narrow, with only one aisle down the middle and no balcony. It was so small that it didn’t even have the means to pop popcorn. “They had imported popcorn,” my father recalled, “In big bags behind a counter.” The Wayne Theater did not show first run movies, only B films, second run films, and serials. My father recalls seeing a lot of film noir there as well. (“When you were eight years old?” “Yeah.” “Did you understand any of it?” “No, but who cares? It was the movies.”) However, what really attracted my father to the Wayne Theater was The Cowboys.

Just listing their names conjures fabulous images: actors like Wild Bill Elliot and Rocky Lane, Whip Wilson and Big Boy Williams, and characters named Red Ryder, the Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid and Chico Rafferty. (“Excuse me?” I said to that last one. “You heard right. His mother was Mexican and his Father was Irish.” In a genre fraught with nasty racial stereotyping, there’s a bit of early diversity for you.) But the name that stood out most in my father’s mind, one I could tell from his voice held special memories, was Lash LaRue.

I had never heard of Lash La Rue.

“Sure! Guy with a whip, always wore black. Looked a lot like Humphrey Bogart. You know, Song of Old Wyoming? Eddie Dean and Jennifer Holt were in it. You remember Jennifer Holt; she was Tim Holt’s sister.” (Discussing the actors in Cowboys with my father is like an eerie family reunion where I have a feeling I should know these people and I don’t.) I don’t know how my father can rattle off all these facts, but he’s been watching Cowboys for sixty years and I take him at his word. Lash La Rue? I needed to investigate this.

LaRue as the 'Cheyenne Kid' in SONG OF OLD WYOMING (PRC, 1945)(From Minard Coons)

As the photo shows, La Rue did indeed look a lot like Bogart. For his role in Song of Old Wyoming (1945) La Rue chose a black outfit with white piping, which became the look he had throughout his career. No one could mistake La Rue for a singing cowboy, and that was his intention. He made many B films at PRC Studios in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and as his name suggests, his trademark was his use of a bullwhip to bring down his foes. There is an unsubstantiated Internet rumor that Lash La Rue coached Harrison Ford to use the bullwhip for his role as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (I don’t believe it, but I like the continuity of the image). What is absolutely certain is that Steven Spielberg had Lash La Rue in mind while he created the Indiana Jones character, and Anthony De Longis, the man who coached Ford for his role in the 2008 movie, was inspired by La Rue and the whip-wielding characters who came after him.

(If you want to learn more about Lash La Rue, go where I went: The Old Corral at www.b-westerns.com. I could summarize more, but this site is the best. Chuck Anderson has rounded up information on scores of the cowboys, villains, stuntmen, and those little-known players essential to the B-Western genre. And if you need live action thrills, go to YouTube and look up “Lash La Rue.” If you haven’t seen Lash fight El Azote in King of the Bullwhip (1950), then you ain’t seen a cowboy film.)

After careful research and viewing of archival footage (i.e. – YouTube) I can only say that… those films were bad. Low budget. Thin plots. Footage constantly reused, both from earlier in the movie and other films from the studio.

And yet…

Those aren’t the things you care about when you’re eight years old. You only care that you’re out of the house and off on your own, you’ve got a whole afternoon of movies with cowboys and bad guys, horses and chases and action. Even at that age you can feel that being in a darkened theater is a place apart. Cliff-hanging serials and Lash’s whip action weren’t about reality; they were about possibility. For whole afternoons, those possibilities were my father’s only reality, and he, like so many others of his generation, never forgot how that felt.

I think the reason my father was such a fan of Matinee at the Bijou was because their format was how he grew up seeing movies. In the early ‘80s home video was only just beginning. There was the late movie or the Sunday movie, and the local UHF stations might have a movie host or two, so you could see High Noon or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon on occasion. But nobody showed serials. The first time he saw that MATB was showing serials, he was gone.

“All right fans!” he shouted. “They’ve got Crash Corrigan!”

“They’ve got what?”

“Not ‘what,’ ‘who.’” My father gripped the arms of his Lazy-Boy, eyes widened with disbelief that a child of his should have lived so long without knowing Mr. Corrigan’s fine body of work. “Sit down, Mar. Pay attention. This is educational.” And it was. (You’ve got to have a cool name like “Crash” in order to carry off what amounts to argyle socks and scaly BVDs. Trust me.)

From my father I learned that some really great cinema comes in small segments, and that sometimes something can be so bad that it can actually be kind of good. I learned that the improbability of a cliff-hanging ending makes it that much more fun to watch, that much more engrossing. The more impossible the premise, the more you are transported to a different world. More importantly, I learned it doesn’t matter if the film is a classic or B list, if the theater is an architectural landmark so small they have “imported popcorn” or your own darkened living room – what matters most about viewing films is your own willingness to suspend disbelief.

Details matter. It’s just not always the details that you’d expect.

Update: Science

2008-10-08T11:11:00.002-04:00

Well, MP's hair seems to trump feline urinary practices -- SO FAR. Clearly MP can only refresh the deterrent on a limited, 3 week basis.

And yes, the cats have changed their location, but at least it's not the front walkway anymore.

Experiment: MP vs. Stray Cat

2008-09-29T11:17:00.003-04:00

There is a black and white feral cat that's been digging in the front flowerbed. Oh who are we kidding here -- he's using it as a litterbox. I've decided to try deterring him from this habit by scattering MP's hair clippings around the bushes (MP has a very distinctive hairstyle, and I cut it. This is worthy of its own post.) Cats are supposedly picky about where they do business, so the introduction of something new and weird (i.e. - MP's hair) will make him go elsewhere (probably the next flowerbed over, but let's take it one bed at a time).

If this experiment is successful, I don't know what we can draw conclusions about -- cats' urinary habits or the smell of MP's head.

I love science.

Gardened Out

2008-09-24T14:54:00.016-04:00

The growing things are winding down, and this is just as well. I am feeling a bit gardened out. But like all gardeners (well, all obsessive-compulsive gardeners) I am taking stock in what I’ve done and what I would change next year. Let me share my successes and failures, beginning with...

Squashes
Undoubtedly the biggest disappointment, my curcubits (cucumbers, melons, zucchinis, and, well… “squashes”) were slow to start, forcing me to replant, and then were very quickly set upon by both spotted and striped cucumber beetles. I got sucked in thinking they looked kind of cute before I realized what kind of havoc they could wreak, which they promptly did. I got fewer than ten cucumbers before the vine succumbed to cucumber wilt, so I pulled the rest of the plants to avoid further soil contamination. (At this point I have to say how impressed I am by the simplicity of garden nomenclature. My cucumber vines wilted, and the disease that caused it is called “cucumber wilt.” The bugs that carry the bacterium in their evil little guts are stripy or spotty beetley-looking things, and they are called “striped cucumber beetles” and “spotted cucumber beetles,” respectively. I’m all for transparency in gardening.)

The butternut squash succumbed to a slightly different problem. Not knowing that the Sungold tomatoes would grow into a sprawling jungle of nightshade fecundity, and I planted them too close to the squash. I couldn’t find the squash plants again until they bloomed, but by then they weren’t getting enough sunlight. On the plus side, the striped and spotted cucumber beetles were so busy in the cucumbers that they pretty much left the butternut squashes alone. On the down side, in some kind of pre-arranged turf-agreement, the squash bugs took over the butternut squashes, and they, too, left wilt in their wake (How dumb is it to kill your primary food source? No, wait… Humans do that. Never mind.).

Bottom line on squashes: controlling pest problems begins at the seedling stage either by physical means (row covers and screens) or chemical means (spraying). Weeds trap moisture and provide cover for insects; if they are allowed to gain foothold it’s harder to control the insects, and bacterial vine wilt is inevitable. Spacing is also important; good airflow, especially in humid climates, discourages fungus. Everything needs room to spread out properly without competing for nutrients, not to mention that it’s nice to be able to find stuff, unless you’re like me and enjoy that Eastery feeling of discovering hidden butternut squashes.

But having made all these mistakes, I still managed to eke out 3 tiny squashes (one at 1 lb. and two at 0.5 lbs.), which made the most delicious roasted butternut squash risotto. It was enough to encourage me to try again next year. As soon as I see seedlings, I’ll throw down mulch or newsprint with mulch to keep the weeds down, and I’ll skip the neem oil and go right to pyrethrin.

Beans
The concept of creating a “bean fence” with anchor poles and cross poles and twine wound around is a load of compost. The Blue Lake pole beans had those cross pieces and twine ripped down by the end of July and were cruising towards the neighbor’s fence. The quality of the beans was great; I only wish there had been more. But once again, I didn’t mulch soon enough to keep down weeds, and I planted too many beans in too tight a space, resulting in mineral deficiencies and fungal blight. That was easily controlled when lack of water caused the diseased leaves to fall off (I’m a “hands off” gardener, sort of “organic through lack of doing anything else”).

So! Mulch. Weed. Water. More importantly, there’s a reason they’re called “pole beans.” I’m putting up a line of seven foot poles and planting three seeds at the base. I might wrap a little twine around the pole to give the vines something to hang on to, but I’m not sure that’s necessary.

Tomatoes

This is the first time I’d ever grown tomatoes from seeds (they’re fuzzy). My first Paul R. tomato weighed one and a quarter pounds and I ate it like a steak, but every one after that has been considerably smaller. I was really bad about letting them get too dry before watering, which lead to cracks in the fruit, making each tomato a potential insect hotel. I also let the spray schedule slip a few days, with disastrous results. I can track tomato hornworms by the damage they do, and I do not let them live (which leads to a whole other topic about karmic debit accrued by snipping large caterpillars in half with garden pruners).

As for the Sungold tomatoes, well… It didn’t matter what I did. Unwatered, unweeded, crowded, and attacked by an occasional hornworm, the three Sungolds produced pound after pound of tiny orange tomatoes. By late August I realized that if I ate another Sungold tomato, I would puke. And there they sit to this day, producing tiny orange tomatoes without a care in the world. Of course, those tiny orange tomatoes are full of tiny fuzzy seeds, dropping off the vines as I write. Next year I don’t think I’ll have to “plant” Sungolds anywhere; I think they’re just gonna come up. As a matter of fact, I think they’ll be the new weed problem in that section of the garden. I will plant three Paul Robesons, but only TWO Sungolds next year. Fertilizer and consistent watering will help yield more consistent fruit.

Peaches
I’ve been blogging peaches all season, so I’ll spare you most of those details. My two big lessons: thin more aggressively and keep spraying with the pyrethrin. I think I’ll also seek out some oriental fruit moth traps and see if I can’t make a difference in that problem. Pruning this winter will be essential to try to reverse the damage done by the OFMs. Based on the flowering schedule of this year, I’ll wait until mid-February before I prune. This will give me a few branches I can force indoors for an early spring treat. I’m still trying to get MP to smoke ribs using last year’s prunings, but not having any luck. After this season, I am proud to say I can field-strip a peach in 10 seconds.

Zinnias
The zinnias are the sleeper story of my garden year. I had a tiny patch of dirt left over, and I thought I’d just put in some happy flowers for the heck of it, something I could use as cut flowers and give the place some color. I ordered Burpee’s Cut and Come Again Oklahoma Mix and paid $5 for a packet of seeds that produced… fourteen seedlings. I was livid. “Rip off” and “robbed” were words oft bandied about, as MP will attest. And yet those zinnias exploded. Look at them. I love how this photo makes them look like acres of flowers, but really, we’re talking a 3x4 ft. space, tops.

When the zinnias really started going and a few flowers had begun to fade, I noticed petals strewn over the ground. It was like the leftovers from a colorful wedding. I didn’t think much of it until one morning I caught a goldfinch absolutely ripping the flowers apart to go after the seeds. That was the end of spraying the zinnias with pyrethrin (yes it kills bugs, but it also kills fish and is not so hot for frogs and birds, either. I try to go with the least damaging pest control, but this year, the beetles were bad).

I’m glad I stopped, because not long after I was in the garden, crouched down and studying the beans, when I heard a deep buzzing sound over my shoulder. Certain I was facing down the biggest bee in the Mid-Atlantic States, I turned very slowly and saw not three feet from my head a hummingbird, wanting to have a go at the zinnias. As we regarded one another, my first thought was “My, what a sharp and pointy little beak you have.” Did you know they cheep? Kind of a funny, squeaky sort of cheeping. I did not know that, nor would I have if not for planting the zinnias.

There are still a few things left growing – the zinnias will go until frost, as will the tomatoes. MP has a tiny little jalapeno pepper that survived some kind of fungus and is thriving, in a tiny sort of way. And just the other day I harvested some greens for a salad. MP found me at the sink, gasping and raking at my tongue. “Mustard greens!” I sputtered, hoping the burning in my sinuses wasn’t permanent damage. “Here, try some.”

Gardens. Amazing entertainment, I tell you what…

This Little Piggy Hurts Like Crap

2008-09-19T14:32:00.006-04:00

MP hates it when I say, "Eww! This smells terrible! Here, sniff it." I'm not sure what irritates him more: that I'm inviting him to sniff something nasty, or that, for a brief half-second, he leans in to sniff before giving me a withering look and stalking away.

Like the telling of a nightmare in the hope it will fade, sharing bad experiences (i.e. -- the scent of cheap candles, the flavor of uni sushi, or that time you ate half the cream cheese bagel before you noticed that, while the cream cheese was fine, the lid to the cream cheese was covered in mold) is necessary to balance the horror of it. Some things are too big for the individual to handle alone.

Which is why I want to tell you about my big toe.

All summer I keep my toenails painted. Where I live, well-groomed feet are a must. I am known for my bright and eccentric choice of colors -- "tidal wave" (turquoise blue) and "parrot" (lime green) are my particular favorites. Unfortunately, even if you remove the toluene and the formaldehyde, nail polish is some wicked nasty chemistry. For that matter, so is nail polish remover.

So here it is mid-September and I've had nearly six solid months of painted toenails. I removed the polish to give my toes a chance to breathe. The nails are not pretty; they are yellowed (dark colors stain) and dry like you would not believe.

Therefore, it was no great surprise that while I was putting on my kung fu pants, my big toenail snagged on a seam and split. The horrifying part, and whole reason why I'm sharing this, is that is wasn't your typical, horizontal split. No, this was a vertical split, 2 mm wide and 4 mm of side nail all the way into the quick.

After the initial swearing, I stared at it and reviewed my options. I couldn't put my foot in my kung fu shoes with this hanging off. I had no clippers, no file. I could have asked Sifu for a knife, but he probably would have handed me some KA-BAR drop point knife and I couldn't do anything but cut off my toe with that. Nope, only one thing for it -- I pulled.

The whole experience left me surprisingly queasy.

I think I read somewhere that you cannot walk without your big toe. I believe it. Just having that bit of nail gone from the side of my big toe has completely messed me up. Stepping down on my foot feels wrong wrong wrong. It doesn't exactly feel painful, but God knows it doesn't feel right, either.

I think I'm done with painted toenails for the season.

(And thanks for letting me share; I feel better. Really.)

Adaptability Revisited

2008-09-03T16:36:00.008-04:00

Our house was built by crack-smoking monkeys. The upstairs ground fault switch is in the hall bathroom, but when it goes out, it doesn't shut off the lights in that bathroom, but the lights in the master bathroom. But only on one side, because the end of the circuit is at the ground floor outdoor receptacle on the back deck.

Crack. Monkeys. Believe it.

I know all of this because for a long time, when it rained I would end up taking showers in the dark, and after I tried to deal with the problem myself, tasting 120 volts in the process (In the last words of every dead electrician, "but I turned it off at the junction box!"), I had a long conversation with an electrician, who informed me that the wiring in my house had monkey-prints all over it.

Well, it rained and the lights went out in the bathroom – on the Friday night beginning Labor Day weekend. No matter what we did, the ground fault switch would not stay set. You never ever want to call a union contractor during a holiday weekend if you can help it, so I tried to think of the bathroom's new look as "mood lighting."

All of this, by the way, is prologue, which is why this post is called "Adaptability Revisited" and not "Crack Smoking Monkeys," which is a good title that I will probably use someday. I wanted to call this post "Adaptability," but I see I already have a post by that name. Strange how events involving MP lead to musing upon this elastic quality of mind...

MP decided he wanted to smoke a pork shoulder for Labor Day, the first one this year. He's been working on ribs, with fabulous results, but he misses doing shoulder. More to the point, he misses smoked pork shoulder leftovers. Doing a pork shoulder is something of a commitment. A 7-8 lb shoulder takes about 12 hours to smoke, which means MP has to *gasp*... get up early! Like, say, 8 AM.

Let me be fair. There are Morning People and there are... What are they, Zombies? You never hear "Night People," what...? Oh yes, "Night Owls." I am a Lark, and MP is Night Owl. He never willingly goes to bed before 12:30 AM, so 8 AM does not find him... fully refreshed. Actually, MP is seldom fully refreshed before 8 oz of coffee, and 20 oz is safer.

So. Pork shoulder. MP decides to get up “early.” I'm up toodling around by 7 AM, fluffing the garden, watering the yard... And it occurs to me to wonder if MP actually set an alarm clock or if I'm supposed to be the alarm clock. What if I was supposed to wake him and I don't? What if I wake him at 8 AM, and he doesn't want to get up until 8:30 AM?

At 8 AM I remove the shoulder from the refrigerator and make a pot of coffee. At 8:15 AM I flitter softly into the bedroom.

I am a terrible flitterer. MP grunts and raises his head immediately.

“Um yes, uh... Hi Sweetie. Was I the alarm clock?”

“No,” MP moans, “I'm waking myself up.” (Translation: fifteen more minutes and get the hell out of the room.)

At 8:30 AM he comes down fully dressed with shoes on, but I am not fooled. He still has pillow lines on his face.

As he transfers his equipment out to the back deck, I have a horrible thought – the lights are tripped in the bathroom, and since the end of the circuit is on the back deck, there's no way the electric smoker will work. Why neither one of us thought of this earlier, I don't know. I mean, you can intuitively grasp the logical connection between the upstairs bathroom lights and the back deck, right?

“What?” said MP.

“Don't worry about it. There's another outlet down in the yard.”

MP stares at the cord of the electric smoker. It's 3 feet long. He stares at me.

“Have some coffee!” I sing out as I trot out to the garage for the 100 ft extension cord. Problem solved.

Or not. Fifteen minutes later MP is still staring foggily at the coils of the smoker. “Isn't it hot yet?” I ask.

He reaches out and wraps his hand around the coil, ““No,” he replies, “I don't think so.”

And wouldn't you know, the receptacle on the front porch is out, too. Son of a Gun. Curse those monkeys. “Well, you can use the outlet in the garage and smoke it out on the cement pad in front of the driveway,” I suggest.

“No, I can't,” MP says as he props himself against the countertop. “I don't want to do it out in front. I don't want anyone to see me. I don't know why, but I don't.”

Barbecue Performance Anxiety? I ponder this. I mean, is he worried about uninvited neighbors looking for handouts, asking questions? It's not like you can hide what you're doing. Big puffs of smoke, cooking meat. It smells. And it's not like MP wears anything stupid when he cooks; no “Kiss the Cook” aprons. He does drink beer, but it's nice beer. And it's stupid to get drunk and play with burning hot metal, he knows that. No, clearly this was a “thing” he just had. There was no talking abut it or convincing him otherwise; it was just one of those “things.”

I popped out of my reverie. MP was staring at me, awaiting Truth. He had not blinked.

“Out one of the windows?”

“Smoke in the house.”

“Good point. Well, if the wind blows south, we can use the north window. Of course, if the wind bows north, then we should use the south window. I wonder what the weather is supposed to be like. Have you seen a weather report? Because I thought maybe it might rain later in the afternoon, but that might hold off till tomorrow –”

MP stood against the countertop with eyes like those of a shot and bleeding deer. Despite being out of bed for 45 minutes, he had not had coffee.

There are times to Think and times to simply Do. “Stand here,” I said, and put him in front of an east facing window. I went outside and knocked on the window with the plug. “Hello? Take this.” MP plugged the cord into an inside socket and the smoker at last had charge. An hour late, maybe, but he was off and... crawling. He still desperately needed coffee.

Adaptability. You wake up thinking you're gonna do one thing and end up doing another. It's too easy to get scope lock and not see the other possibilities, to to end up focused on what you don't have rather than utilizing what you do have. I am a terrible one for getting scope lock. But even when you're trying to avoid fixed-mindedness, you still have limitations. That's why you've got to be honest, and hopefully surround yourself with people who can shore you up when you need it.

MP had his coffee and the pork smoked. Unfortunately, starting an hour later meant everything came in an hour later, which meant we were standing in the kitchen at 11 PM pulling pork. MP was fully awake and singing the praises of his spice rub, and I was trying not to snore in the pork. The only reason I kept eating what I was supposed to be pulling apart was to stay awake. Seriously. After we were through, MP pried the two forks from my hands and gently pushed me off to bed.

You gotta love a man who will smoke pork and clean the kitchen.

Say "No" to Beach Bums

2008-08-12T09:33:00.004-04:00

I'm watching the Olympics, with all it's pomp and glory, and getting into it more than I have in years. What's different for me this time around is that China is the host, and I'm interested in the cultural/political background and how it will all play out before the world. And too, of course, there's the sport.

Ah yes, the sport. Hard work, determination. The training, the physical demands, the excitement, tension, drama, all leading to the one moment of decision -- Can she do it? Will he make it?

So why, then, are the Women in the Beach Volleyball competition practically naked?

You don't need to be in any way hormonal to immediately zero in on the fact that the women are wearing itty-bitty bikini bottoms. And I have no problem with women in bikinis. But as a world-class athlete competing in the Olympics, wouldn't you want -- nay, demand -- sports apparel that is practical and does not distract your attention from the game?

I wish to be tasteful and I wish to be clear, so let me present some facts: These women are fit. These women have worked hard to be in this competition. These women have glutes of steel and they look good.

But those bikinis, they keep riding up. On a normal woman, those little bottoms would be a thong. If those bikinis ride up on world class athletes, then the only thing to conclude is that the bikinis are poorly sized and they don't fit. Whoever chose these uniforms made a poor decision.

However, I could be wrong. Perhaps bikini bottoms are, in fact, the most reasonable apparel for this sport. That being true, one question: why aren't the men also wearing them?

I saw one of the women dive for a volley and go face first into the sand. She got up and examined her stomach, which was scraped up, and had to re-arrange her bikini, which obviously contained sand -- not part of any woman's Olympic dream. If she had been dressed like the men -- in T-shirts and shorts -- she would have been fine.

Ultimately, it's up to the athletes to decide what is the appropriate uniform for their sport. As an observer, I cannot help but note the obvious disparity between the men and women and wonder who really chose the costumes for the women -- because they sure didn't. The sports bra top? Infinitely practical. The bottoms? I can't think of any other event that requires the competitors to obtain a Brazilian wax.

Here at Café Tor we ask only for logic and fairness: put the women in boy shorts that offer some coverage, or require the men to wear Speedos. Let the athletes choose. One-sided sexist exhibitionism has no place at this level of sporting competition.

Besides, no one wants to pick a wedgie on the world stage.

Peach Panic

2008-08-05T08:52:00.004-04:00

The peaches don't look so ugly now, huh?

I have been inundated with peaches. I have a surfeit of peaches. I have 18 jars of Pure Peach, Spicy Peach, and Very Berry Peach jam. I have given away over 5 pounds of peaches.

I have Peach Fatigue.

And you know, MP doesn't even like peaches -- not to just sit and eat. He enjoys the Very Berry Peach jam, but he digs the raspberries, and the peach just sort of tags along. He did approve this cake from the latest Martha Stewart Living Magazine, but only on the first day. I have to agree; sugar, fruit, high humidity, sitting on the counter... My advice is eat the whole thing at once with ice cream.

It isn't just the peaches, though. Summer's fecundity is thorough, and I have two pints of Sungold tomatoes. Daily. Every day. If the body can store lycopene, we've got it made. My sifu is more than happy to eat all the peaches, but down here, giving away tomatoes in August is like giving away kittens -- really sweet, but no thank you.

As for the Paul Robesons, MP is keen on perfecting his raw salsa. Unfortunately, the tomatoes grew so big that net doesn't quite cover the plants anymore, and there's this raccoon wandering around. Does he eat the Sungold tomatoes? Of course not! (Well, I wouldn't know, there are so many, he just may and I can't tell) But he finds a PR tomato that's maybe 2 days from ripeness, gnaws on it, then leaves it. So I have to cut out the parts with raccoon spit. I brought 6 in to let them ripen indoors, but with the peaches and tomatoes, I now have a fruit fly problem.

And to cap it all off, MP had to leave suddenly on assignment. Although now that I think of it, that may have been intentional...

Peach tomato ketchup, anyone?

To Kill a Mockingbird

2008-07-15T15:25:00.008-04:00

Somewhere during the Fourth of July weekend everything exploded -- which is what the Fourth of July is for, actually.

Since then I've been picking about a pint of sungold tomatoes daily and peering anxiously at the beans. I have seen the future and it is coming up cucumbers. When I am not squashing spotted cucumber beetles or striped cucumber beetles between my bare thumb and index finger, I am fretting over the peach tree.

Be honest. Are these not the ugliest peaches you have ever seen?

That doesn't bother me. And although I'm not happy about it, I'm not particularly bothered they're only the size of large apricots (gee, that "thinning" concept really was important!). What really set me off and running was that a mockingbird slashed into (and ruined) one of the peaches.

Harper Lee wrote something to the effect that shooting a mockingbird would be a sin because a mockingbird doesn't hurt anybody, it just sits and sings. Respectfully I submit that Ms. Lee didn't own any peach trees.

I picked and set the spoiled peach aside ("spoiled"? Like the buckshot disease and the oriental fruit moths and the curlicoes left anything "unspoiled"?) and got out the bird netting. And then I wondered how I was going to get the net up and over the tree. I unfurled the 14' x 14' squeare in the driveway and stared at it a while. Then I got the ladder and clipped my cellphone to my belt. MP would not be pleased about my getting on the ladder by myself , but if I fell and broke both legs, I could at least dial 911 while gazing at my beloved peaches. (MP hates it when I get on ladders, and I'm not sure why. Although it may have something to do with how I crash through doorways because I misjudge the clearance, and he just doesn't want to see that talent taken into three dimensions.)

There's a reason fishing nets are weighted.

After I ate the net, wore the net, and picked the net off every screw and splinter on the ladder, I got the net over the tree using my martial arts staff. The net didn't completely cover the tree, however, so I secured what I could with bread ties and then hung a wind chime over the large uncovered part. Now the peaches are ugly, the tree looks weird, and the birds are confused (or laughing). I hope I entertain my neighbors as much as I entertain myself.

I did in fact sample the green peach that got slashed. It was unripe, of course, but I can tell that they're going to be lovely. Perhaps within a week?

We Be Jammin'

2008-06-18T10:38:00.003-04:00

In preparation for being crushed by a mound of peaches, I've been studying the science of making jam.

Women old enough to remember having to preserve food discuss canning and preserves-making with only slightly less eye-rolling than childbirth. “All those tomatoes/strawberries/beans!” “It was so hot!” “It never set up!” I wondered -- was it true? Was canning really that mysterious, precise, and difficult? I wanted to see what the big deal was.

Bon Appetit had a nice little bit in their June issue by Molly Wizenberg entitled Jam Session: The Simple Secret to Making Homemade Jam. She made canning sound downright cozy, sort of the fruity version of Proust's madelines -- infinitely doable. I went to the kitchen with two pounds of strawberries, her recipe, and three of those super-cute, eight ounce Ball jam jars that look like quilted glass.

And I promptly hit a wall. Two cups of sugar would be way too sweet for me and I knew it. However, in old-fashioned recipes for jam-making (the kind that don't require the addition of pectin), sugar is more than just a sweetener; it's hydrophilic properties are necessary for making the stuff jell. Without enough sugar, you get fruit soup. So never having done this before, I did what I usually do: threw away the recipe and went with my gut (This explains why MP does almost all the cooking).

Macerating the berries in one cup of sugar for two hours brought out more juice than I ever imagined strawberries possessed. Ms. Wizenberg's recipe notes that the jam mixture should jell after boiling for about 18-20 minutes. After an hour of boiling, I was feeling decidedly like Meg in Little Women (Part 2, Chapter 28 “Domestic Experiences”). The fact that the stuff wasn't jelling didn't particularly bother me, as clearly I'd deviated from the recipe, but being a literary heroine was wearing thin. I relied on my candy making skills (now those are some recipes you never, ever deviate from), watching the mixture sheet off a spoon to tell me where I was in the jelling process. It was a dicey wait, but after a full hour and twenty minutes of boiling, I had jam.

Ms. Wizenberg's directions for canning were fabulous and I had no trouble with the actual canning process. I finally got to use my antique kitchen utensils for their original purposes. The most nerve-wracking part was dipping the jars of jam into the pot of water and wondering how this was going to vacuum seal anything. But after the appointed boiling times the jar lids did indeed pop with a little vacuum sealing sound, and I felt very clever (Following directions can do that).

That was as good a time as any to sit down, lick out the jam pot, and survey my trashed kitchen while contemplating what I learned about making jam.

It wasn't that big a deal.

However... Our grandmothers were right to dread it. We have a few advantages that they never had. I only had two pounds of fruit, but what if you had ten or even twenty pounds of stuff? It's possible if you were harvesting from your garden and everything came in at once. Not like you can store it in the refrigerator. You'd need at least one other person to help you wash and prepare it. Moreover, fruit typically ripens in June or July, when it's hot. They didn't have air-conditioning or huge kitchens, and for a fact, where my one grandma grew up, they only had a wood stove. The jars have to be sterilized and kept hot. There's the pot containing the jam, which could easily boil for an hour, the pot with the jar lids, which needs to be simmered, and the canning pot, which contains 4-6 quarts of water and must be brought to a boil. And before self-sealing lids, the surface of the jam would have to be sealed with liquid paraffin, which also had to be melted on the stove. That's four burners going. By the way, paraffin is flammable. Keep those elbows in!

No AC, tiny kitchen, stuck in there with another person, up to your elbows in fruit? No way. Let them eat dry toast.

But oh, licking hot jam from the pot? Wow.

Now in TWO Locations!

2008-06-16T09:45:00.003-04:00

This is great! We're a chain!

It turns out there really is a Café Tor now open for business at Park Mill, Helmshore in the UK. I have to say, it looks like my kind of place -- lots of space and light. They're also serving local foods, which makes for a tastier menu.

So if you're ever hanging out in Helmshore, you know where to get a cuppa tea or have a nosh!

Peachy Keen

2008-06-12T14:51:00.005-04:00

I don't see how you can make something as fundamentally fascinating as a peach tree so boring. Listen to this: “For many years the use of 'flush cuts' has been recommended for pruning fruit trees to promote rapid wound closure. Recent research results with peach and other tree species indicate that flush pruning cuts are more susceptible to disease infection than cuts in which a portion of the lateral branch remains.”

Four years back I had an opportunity to plant a new tree in the front yard. I wanted a tree that would do something – flower, or provide fruit, or attract flamingos, whatever – and be different from the endless Bradford pears and water maples dotting this planned urban landscape. My parents suggested a peach tree, which right there should have stopped me cold. Accept parental advice? To this day I'm not sure why I planted a peach and not a nectarine, because I infinitely prefer nectarines. Biting into a peach is like eating a kitten. But like a sap, I thought having a peach tree would be “fun,” so in the spring of 2004 the nursery sent me a five foot “Elberta” peach stick. I flipped a coin to determine which end was up.

The first year it put out leaves. In October all the leaves turned yellow and dropped off. I freaked until I remembered the concept of “Fall.”

The second year it bloomed but had no peaches. I wondered if maybe I had a male peach (don't laugh – some fruit trees are male and female).

The third year it bloomed and produced a gazilliion tiny peaches, which proceeded to drop off one by one, leaving only one peach remaining. I petted that peach from spring halfway through July, until a mockingbird savaged it and knocked it off the tree. I cut out the beak slashes, peeled off the black spotted skin, and cautiously had a slice.

It was the best peach I've ever had in my life.

So here we are on the fourth year. It occurred to me that, in order to set more than one peach, I might actually have to do a few things, like prune and spray and study what actually makes a peach tree peach. Spraying proves to be key. For example, last year I noticed a running sore in the trunk two inches above the ground. I took pictures and went to a local nursery.

“Waaal... It's either canker or a borer,” the gentleman stated calmly. “If hits canker, hits gonna die and there's nothin' you can do. If hits a borer, waaal... you spray. But you'll have to call the county extension.”

Die? Where's the phone?

“It sounds like the Greater Peach Tree Borer,” the Master Gardner said in a slow round accent. “I'll send you the spray schedule for stone fruits developed at Tech.” The chemical recommended was so toxic it required a license to purchase in Australia. It also came in a one gallon container, which was enough to cover 1,000 acres. Hello? I am not a farmer, I just have a pet peach. In the end I unfolded a paper clip and stuck it into the wound, hopefully ramming the borer's backside into his brain. Farming can be cruel.

Last fall I found Gardens Alive, a catalog specializing in natural/organic pest control for the home grower, so I bought the Perfect Fruit Spray Kit for fruit trees for this year. I also pruned as best I could, but despite having multiple degrees, I still could not understand the notes from the Cooperative Extension (“Moderately vigorous shoots have a high proportion of nodes with 2 flower buds. The leaf buds at most nodes develop into lateral shoots that may be fruitful in subsequent years.”) The wound is closed now and the tree seems fine. As a matter of fact, this spring, the tree set tens of hundreds of thousands of little green peaches. So I thinned them. Four times.

In doing this, I noticed other things. The tips of the new growth were slowly dying back. I split open a few and found a tiny white worm with a black brown head. Digging around on the Internet I was able to identify it as an oriental fruit moth -- probably. “Use a hand lens to detect the presence of an anal comb under the last abdominal sclerite, which helps distinguish oriental fruit moth from other white or pink worms, such as codling moth, that may be found in stone fruits.”

You see what I mean? Fascinating.

I delivered some samples to the County Extension Office. I gave them a copy of my organic spray schedule, but they didn't care. They sent the samples off to Tech. Tech sent back pages printed from the Internet about oriental fruit moths -- the same as the ones I used to make my analysis. However, according to Tech, I not only have oriental fruit moths, but also plum curculios! So Tech sent me... A spray schedule. Same as before. For grins, I looked up the sprays. One was a nerve toxin and the other was an endocrine disrupter (Peaches, by the way, absorb the most pesticides of any fruit).

So I'm thinking that when you get down to it, these curculio guys, they're kind of cute, what with their funny noses. A lot of character.

We shall see what happens. I have plenty of fruit. I now see how pruning and thinning are crucial not only for the development of fruit, but also for natural deterrence of insects -- curculios burrow into fruit where two fruits touch. Let's face it, nobody in their right mind would go to all this trouble just to grow the same traditionally farmed peaches you can get at the store for $1.99 a pound. I'd rather eat a tasty ugly peach than a beautiful one that will slowly poison me. But I also understand the farmer's need to spray. If I had known what I was getting into I would never have planted a peach tree. It really is a lot of work and worry.

Endlessly fascinating. I'm having the time of my life.

Like a Pizza Bagel

2008-06-06T11:57:00.002-04:00

It was inevitable.

Wandering the aisles of the grocery store I suddenly realized that the background “elevator music” playing to inspire me to buy frozen fish sticks was actually a song from my high school days, and it hit me: I had officially entered that shady period known as “middle age.”

But it wasn’t just any song. It was Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” For me, hearing this song wasn’t just about getting older. It was about something far more sinister: pizza bagels.

Like Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate, I snapped.

I made it through the wilderness/Somehow I made it through
It is 1985, my sophomore year of high school, two days after Christmas. There is a huge ice storm and we are awakened in the dead of night by my father, who fears the heavy ice will cause tree branches to crash through the roof while we sleep. He herds us like bleary-eyed sheep, my mother, sister and I, into the living room. My father’s logic dictates that as long as his frantic pacing keeps us awake we cannot possibly be killed in our sleep.

We are at the end of the power grid in the middle of nowhere, so the electricity is gone and we know we will not see it again for some time. We have a small generator, but it can only run a few lights or the refrigerator or the water pump. My father does not even consider running the furnace; we will build a fire instead. Except for a twice daily toilet flushing, the generator runs the refrigerator, despite the fact that there is ice everywhere. Two gallons of milk and five pounds of frozen chuck must be preserved.

Didn’t know how lost I was/Until I found you
The days that follow are pared down to a surprising simplicity: we gather wood, we tend the fire, and we make pizza bagels.

The pizza bagels are my mother’s inspiration and I blame her for them entirely. She was able to get the ingredients into a cooler before my father put the refrigerator on lockdown. The stove and oven are gas, so by candlelight we make tomato sauce and toast bagel halves covered in a tablespoon of cheese and four slices of pepperoni. Well, warm them up, anyway – the broiler doesn’t quite work. But the bagels get hot enough to bring the grease up to the surface of the pepperoni quite nicely. This will be our only food for the next six days.

My sister and I are glad to get out of the house to haul split wood in our sleds even though each trip outside means we have to endure a lecture from my father. His warnings touch on points like, “Don’t walk under trees because the weight of the ice will send heavy limbs crashing down on your head” (which is good advice, but we live in a forest. Where does he think all this wood we’re hauling comes from?) and “You two have to stop fighting so that you can gather wood to heat the house” (my sister and I both instinctively know that nothing warms the blood like a good spat, and we are happy to keep one another from freezing to death).

But it’s worth this lecture to get away from his more paranoid ruminations, which all seem to begin, “People die in situations like this!” My father’s greatest fear, just edging out the “Tree Branch to the Head” scenario, is that we will have to defend our 2200 watt generator against the neighbors or a mob from Detroit (which is an hour away on a clear day). However, unless the Horde drives a Zamboni machine, nobody will make it down our winding gravel road coated in three inches of solid ice anytime soon.

I was beat/Incomplete/I’d been had/I was sad and blue
At first I pretend that I am Laura Ingalls trying to make it through the Hard Winter, but the pizza bagels are anachronistic. I try reading, but this requires light. This also seems to annoy my father, who feels I am not taking the situation seriously enough. I try to take my father seriously without succumbing to his sense of doom, but as the days pass I realize that all I can do is lay low and keep warm. Paranoia, like pizza bagels, becomes monotonous.

The real question is, can I survive listening to Madonna? Because while we desperately scan the radio dial for weather reports (if another storm comes and we don’t take it seriously we could all die!) and news about when Consumers Power will restore electricity, every station between Detroit and Flint plays “Like a Virgin,” at least four times an hour.

But you made me feel/Yeah, you made me feel/Shiny and new
The contrast between Madonna wearing a fishnet tank-top and me wearing the same five pound yellow-orange sweater for six days straight does not escape me. But after hearing “Like a Virgin” over and over, I at last achieve the kind of mental clarity only a diet of pizza bagels can bring. I see beyond the vulgar lyrics, beyond the images of the Material Girl acting slutty on a gondola to the true meaning of the song: you’ve already lived through Hell, so hold out for the one that keeps your dream alive. In the meantime, get on the boat and start dancing!

Like a Virgin/Touched for the very first time/Like a Virgin/When your heart beats/Next to mine
I came to in my shopping cart, surrounded by more than a dozen 8-packs of D-cell batteries, countless boxes of frozen pizza bagels, and a carton of Ohio blue tip matches clutched against my chest. My head was pounding in time to the chorus, a sort of mnemonic hangover from a week lost twenty years ago.

Yes, the power lines were put back on the grid and the ice melted. I went on to have my senior picture taken wearing the five pound yellow-orange sweater and a pair of enormous gold earrings. And in the highs and lows of the years that followed, no matter how bad things got, there was always one question I could ask myself that put everything into perspective: Have you had any pizza bagels lately?

As long as the answer is “no,” I know I will be okay. You can’t stop aging, but you don’t have to give in to it. Get on the boat and start dancing.

Becoming One with The Suck

2008-04-08T15:30:00.003-04:00

My current banner, cracks me up -- "Something Fresh." What, you mean it's April already?

Their rejection is your luck. Here -- have a story.

*****

The morning they introduced the new routines I knew it was time to find a new workout. With the music thumping and our lycra-encased behinds gyrating in rhythmic circles, I felt like I was cross-training to be a cheerleader or a stripper. At 9:30 A.M. I wasn’t ready to be either.

For the past year I had received acupuncture treatments to alleviate the symptoms associated with endometriosis (i.e. – menstrual cramps that could drop a horse). A daily workout that gave me the benefits of circulating qi (energy) through my body would be ideal. Tai chi, with its long, slow movements combining the qi circulating effects of acupuncture with aerobic strength training, seemed perfect. Finding an instructor was easy – there was only one listed in the phone book.

But when I called and asked about classes, the instructor laughed sheepishly and apologized for the outdated listing. The school hadn’t taught tai chi in years, he said, but they did offer something called “qigong.”

He explained that qigong is similar to tai chi as far as moving energy, but unlike much of what is taught in the U.S., the qigong taught at this school is not separated from its martial roots. His school taught bagua zhang, which consists of two parts – the external, martial art, which is bagua, and the internal, health-building art, which is qigong. Both share the same fundamental concepts and many of the movements.
Me? Martial arts? I’d never done anything like that before. No way.
Except… I didn’t like how I automatically cringed when people tossed things at me. And when it came to expressing a contrary opinion or telling people what I really thought, I folded. Maybe martial arts could teach me something about the art of confrontation.

Sifu (“sifu” is the Chinese word for “teacher”) seemed more jovial than I expected a guy with 40 years of martial arts experience to be. With his gray beard and sparkling blue eyes, he seemed more like… well, Santa Claus. He began my training with warm up exercises (some of which required me to hang on to a chair because my ankles were so weak) and floor stretches.

One in particular, the “sideline stretch,” increases the twist of the spine while opening the pectoral muscles. The arm goes back and the shoulders rest on the floor. Except that mine wouldn’t. Actually, my arm didn’t even go all the way back. “Well, sometimes the intercostals and shoulders get tense and they take time to stretch out,” Sifu explained. “Just relax into the position.”

In the months that followed I learned that the more beautiful the Chinese name for something, the more tortuous it is. Contemplating poetic phrases like “Small Mountain-Climbing Step” or “Wild Goose Skims the Water” directed my focus away from my screaming quadriceps. “Relaxing in these stances will strengthen the tendons of the legs,” Sifu explained. “Eventually you’ll hold all seven stances, forward and backward, for one minute.” Forward and backward, left and right sides meant… 26 solid minutes.

This did not help my shoulders to relax.

The slow motions of qigong move energy through the body, but the same motions used at a different speed make for devastating self-defense. In the lyrically titled “Flower under Leaf,” the “flower” is actually a “snake,” coiled for a sweeping blow across the ribs. Only every time I moved the top arm (the leaf) over the bottom one (the flower), my shoulders popped up next to my ears. When Sifu did it with toes and knees turned in, he looked dangerous and ready to strike. When I did it, I looked like I was hugging myself and trying hard not to pee. “You’re carrying too much tension in your upper body,” Sifu explained. “Just drop your shoulders and relax.”

And then it hit me: I sucked at this.

Of course I was tense. This was something completely outside my experience. After six months of turning my knees in, twisting my spine, and trying to feel qi move, I was still really terrible at it. And I didn’t care if he did look like Santa Claus; if Sifu told me to relax one more time, I would have to train that much harder just so I could beat the crap out of him.

But if I was so bad at it, why was I still there? I could always go back to the old workout.

No I couldn’t. It was finally time to confront what made me so tense: my expectations to succeed fabulously at everything. The reason that qigong was outside my experience was because I had never let myself continue anything in which I couldn’t be perfect. And for me, qigong was unquestionably The Suck.

Physical coordination is not one of my particular talents. At my age, I could not compare myself or physically compete with 23 year old men. We were fundamentally different, and I could not change that. But if I could allow myself to become One with The Suck and make the mistakes… I might learn from them.

And I learned that in martial arts, your first confrontation is not with an “opponent,” but yourself – your own expectations and ego. I learned that I do not have to hold on to an identity that longer works for me.

Slowly, with each palm strike, I saw that proficiency isn’t always about skill (although believe me, it helps), but about quitting or not quitting. Some people can accept their mistakes and try again, and some people can’t. Their egos won’t let them. They have to quit, or risk losing an identity based on unrealistic expectations. But once you embrace The Suck – that your skill level is what it is right now, and whatever that is is okay – you can get rid of your insistence on perfection and relax.

And your shoulders will drop, just like that, because you are no longer trying to squeeze yourself into an identity that does not fit.

Recently I was practicing an exercise called “dragon back,” which moves qi in slow undulations up the spine. Sifu stopped to watch, and after a minute of silence, he nodded and said, “It’s looking very nice.” I thanked him for the compliment, but I finally understood. As Sifu has explained before: “Dragon back is not something we ever perfect; it is only something we practice.”

We Are Here!

2008-03-16T11:14:00.005-04:00

They say that it's important to attract viewers to your blog with photos, so here are some that are cheerful and springy:

The coffee one one isn't springy, but it is cheerful. It's the background image, courtesy of Backgrounds Archive.

Checking In

2008-02-28T10:45:00.002-05:00

I have nothing of note to say other than "Hi," and please bus your own table because I am too busy to do it. Seriously.

I have been on a deadline for another project that has completely baffled me. How can I take something as fundamentally humorous as being attacked by a street clown on the Champs-Elysees and write something so horribly flat? I don't know. I am either a much better or much worse write than I first supposed. And pardon the lack of acute accents, but I really don't feel like looking up a bunch of ASCII characters right now.

Well, back to it.

An Analysis of the Literary Merit of Reviews of the Panasonic ER421KC Nose and Ear Hair Trimmer

2008-02-22T09:00:00.004-05:00

MP’s nose hair trimmer died last month in a spectacular death of crystallized battery guts. I suppose he could have scraped the contacts with dental tools and tried to salvage it, but MP just isn’t that kind of guy. He requested I put an order in for a new nose hair trimmer, because MP isn’t that kind of a guy, either. “I don’t need one with a giant LED,” he told me. “RPMs. I want RPMs.” (That’s the kind of guy MP is.)

Now, what did I say in the neti pot post? Nobody is interested in me talking about pouring saline solution in one nostril and out the other. So it doesn’t take a great mental leap to conclude that nobody is particularly interested in talking about nose hairs or how to trim them, either.

Except that I have definitive proof that people are interested in talking about nose hairs and how to trim them, and I absolutely must share this fascinating topic with you, because this is why I opened Café Tor in the first place.

I stumbled across the proof in this way: Having received MP's mandate to “go for RPMs,” I realized I needed information to make an informed consumer decision. For a fact, some of these gizmos have LEDs like Christmas tree lights, and vacuums so that your delicate fingers never touch the nose hair clippings. Are they really worth $30 or $40? I went to some sites and read the reviews, and that is how I discovered this untapped source of literary wealth.

Here’s a review of the Panasonic ER421KC Nose and Ear Hair Trimmer, Wet/Dry, Lighted nose-hair trimmer from Leonard in Arizona: “Whatcan I say... it trimmed my nose hair. Inly challenge is that you need a battery. Works well though.” (Direct quote, his typing).

I love this. No shilly-shallying. Brief. Manly.

Here’s one on Amazon from Richard in Oakland, CA: “Had this about 4 weeks and no problems so far. I haven't dropped it/run over it with a car/fished it out of the toilet, so I can't vouch for its durability. The light is completely useless, unless you need an emergency trim during a blackout. The cheaper Panasonic is probably just as good. Final word to potential purchasers - nose hair stubble is a completely new experience.”

My friends, I am not being sarcastic when I say that I am in awe of these men’s writings. They have taken a customer review form, a tiny RTF block typically associated with dry clipped sentences, and turned it into a literary genre filled with humor and sparkling prose. On Amazon.com there were 164 reviews for the Panasonic ER421KC Nose and Ear Hair Trimmer alone – that’s 17 pages! What is even more fascinating/terrifying is that Amazon allows the user to post a review video, although no one has done this for this particular trimmer (so far).

And there was controversy! The little light, described by one use as having a corona “the size of a freckle” was the make or break feature of the product’s overall review:

“First, the light actually is useful...just not when you've got it stuck in your nose cutting hair. Its use is when you periodically need to examine inside to see how you're doing. So spend the big bucks for the lighted model, otherwise you'll have to keep a flashlight around.”

“Perhaps my nostrils are abnormal, but I found the light useless.”

Most of these reviews are signed with screen names or first names, but my absolute favorite was signed with a real name that I was able to track down to an email address. I sent him (well actually, I had to send it to his wife, because that was the contact info from his blog profile) an email requesting permission to post his review on this blog. (Fred the Editor is looking at me, as he often does, like I have lost my mind. Well Fred, I was acting in the spirit of journalistic integrity, and sometimes you just gotta put yourself on the line.)

Mr. Gene Twilley’s 350 word review was not only hysterically funny, but was also actually useful in describing and rating the product. For example, his usage tips:

“I've found that this trimmer works best when you cut as if you’re trimming bushes, not as if you were cutting grass. What I mean is that it would be best if you refrain from just cramming it up your nose. Granted, if you're purchasing this device, you're probably used to just yanking hairs anyways (hence, you're also used to the associated pain). Trust me, if you take it a little at a time, the pain is greatly diminished and the effectiveness of the trimmer is enhanced.”

His review, in its entirety, can be found here on Amazon. I would point out that Mr. Twilley is in the “Use the Light” camp. (I also recommend searching his other product/literary/movie reviews. While perhaps not as amusing his nose hair trimmer review [what could be?], they are all useful and insightful. For even more of the Mind of Mr. Twilley, http://twilleythoughts.blogspot.com)

This is the link to the Amazon page for the Panasonic ER421KC Nose and Ear Hair Trimmer, with the reviews at the bottom. I urge you to flip all the way back, as some of the best ones are buried, and decide for yourselves whether or not the product review is the up and coming literary genre of the new millennium. As for me, the reviews were too much to resist – this is what I purchased for MP.

Now I’m inspired to go write my own review of the product. Of course, that would mean using MP’s nose hair trimmer…

Huh. This could take our relationship to a whole new level.

Putting Pants on Your Truck

2008-02-20T09:30:00.004-05:00

While running some errand this weekend with MP, we pulled up at a stoplight behind a large Ford truck. Something appeared to be swinging from somewhere behind the trailer hitch.

A scrotum. With testicles.

I said, “MP, am I really seeing this?”

“Classy…” he confirmed.

“Where do you buy something like that?”

“Trust me, you don’t want that catalog.”

But I did. Because I am curious. Because someone needs to explore these weird cultural topics without prejudice or vulgarity. But mostly because I cannot fathom why you would put testes on your truck.

It didn’t take me long to find a website that sold – nay, was proud to bring me “America’s favorite novelty testicles.” (My God – what was the ranking system?) Apparently, I need to get out more, because these have been popular for some time. They come in a variety of colors (blue is a favorite) and materials, including chrome, steel, and brass (how, um… “Clever”). Some of the models could even be lit up, because everything is way cooler with an LED in it. This site – which I am not going to link to because I want in no way to be karmically entwined with it – has quite a number of videos on it featuring David, who is happy to demonstrate all the colors available as well as how to affix your purchase to the vehicle of your choice - because yes, you can put these on your motorcycle, too.

I will spare you the reviews and customer “teste-monials.” One involved an unfortunate incident with an armadillo late at night that I am still trying to scrub from my brain. I find it sufficient to say that people who wish to exercise their freedom of speech by hanging novelty testicles from the back of their motor vehicles probably need to get out more.

But here’s the thing – There’s at least one Virginia lawmaker who also needs to get out more. He’s introduced a bill in the state legislature to get automotive novelty testicles banned, or declared a misdemeanor with fines up to $250. His reasoning is that he would not know how to explain them to his 5 year old granddaughter, and he would not want her to be embarrassed.

Why do adults fall apart when children ask questions about reproductive biology? It’s really easy people. Watch:

Child: What’s hanging on that truck?
Possible replies (choose one, depending on age of child: It’s somebody’s idea of a joke that really isn’t that funny.
It’s a grown up being silly.
It’s somebody making their truck look like a boy cow (yes I know, but let’s not give them too much to handle at once, okay?)
Child: Why would somebody do that?
Parent: Because they’re silly.

Watching David crow ecstatically that he is able to offer novelty testicles in such a bright array of colors, I think he would be the first one to agree: My God, yes – we are silly! And any kid old enough to know that they’re seeing injection-molded male private parts is going to be more embarrassed for the truck’s owner than for themselves.

Once upon a long ago, far away time, I worked in corporate America on the web team of a Fortune 500 company. One day an employee called, furious. Who did we think we were publishing such vulgar pictures on our website, and with children in them? We were supposed to stand for family values (which was news to me), so how could we put these picture up in front of the world?

I got him calmed down enough to send me a link so I could see what he looking at. He wasn’t even on the web. He was looking at a page on our intranet (which was not my department, but at that time nobody could talk or spell or knew the difference between the Internet and a company’s private intranet) from the recent family day at a farm. A group of maybe ten kids were standing in front of a huge draft horse while a woman talked about the horse and held his head. Other pictures showed the kids reaching out to pat the horse’s nose or shoulder.

It took me a while to realize he objected to the horse’s penis.

“I’m sorry, are you objecting to the horse’s penis?” I asked. (When dealing with customer service and complaints, one needs a clear understanding of the problem before a solution can be found.)

But I guess that was the wrong thing to say, because I never did get him calmed down after that, even when I promised to remove the pictures. I hung up on him while he was still muttering about “moral turpitude.”

Horses don’t wear pants. Neither do trucks – though I guess whether or not they should is up for debate in Virginia – but these facts aside, the truth is that one of these days, at a farm, a zoo, an art museum, you or your child will see a naked testicle. It is assured.

So take a deep breath, relax, and remember: everybody knows that naked women are beautiful, while naked men are hysterically funny.

Reality Check -- Down the Rabbit-Hole

2008-02-18T09:07:00.001-05:00

Before we move ahead, I’d like to get a few things perfectly straight:

Marianne Richardson is a pen name.

Most of the people and things I write about here are true. Some of the things I write here that are not true are actually true, but for reasons of privacy and good manners, I change just enough. Some of the true and not true things – entries as well as comments – are all tangled up together because they make a more interesting story that way. This is what happens when you become a novelist – people pay you to lie truthfully. I suspect the number of links in any entry may be directly proportional to the “truthiness” of that entry, but don’t quote me on that…

So… If this isn’t reality blogging, why bother?

Because my best days involve falling down the rabbit hole and eating tiny cookies with cryptic instructions on them. Because chronic boredom is a horrible disease and needs its own telethon. Because my therapist threw me out. Because there is more Truth in a well-crafted fiction than there is in most people’s Reality. Because if I can create the mindset of a small café where Strange and Wonderful Things Happen, if you come here and read something that makes you laugh or think a thought you never had before, I will consider my cosmic purpose fulfilled.

And I am telling you these things now because when I am at last published and Oprah has me on her show to do the Book Club Thing, I don’t want anyone getting upset or feeling Lied To when they find out that my editor friend, Fred, is not actually a human being, but a cleverly articulated sock-puppet.

You have been warned.

Back to... Normal?

2008-02-15T10:31:00.006-05:00

I have taken pity on everyone and removed the Valentine's decorations. I thought they were lovely, but Fred kept putting his finger down his throat and making noises, so...

I had a lovely Valentine's Day, but I'm not going to tell about it. It would be cruel. So to those of you who also had a lovely holiday, I say, "Wasn't it fun?" And to those who didn't have a lovely holiday, I say, "I am sorry. At least you have 364 days before you have to deal with it again."

So now we return to regular café decor. Sort of.

This background image is sponsored by BackgroundCity.com

Worst Valentine

2008-02-13T09:48:00.003-05:00

To be fair, I can’t be all Sap and no Substance. Grim Valentiners, I feel your pain. Dad sending a card every year was sweet, but there were one ore two holidays where chocolate could not mitigate the sheer… “ass-holeyness” (is that too far a stretch to create a noun?) of my then-current boyfriend.

Blissfully, most of those memories have dimmed, but Allen… ah, Allen was Special. Out of some sense of ethics I am changing his name, but I do believe that, if I had written about him at the time, revealing his identity would have been a public service. This was man who needed a warning label.

“Valentine’s Day is just a Hallmark holiday to sell us crap” was Allen’s attitude. I didn’t share the sentiment, but I was grateful for his honesty - it allowed me to set my expectations appropriately low. So knowing his views made it particularly thrilling to find him in his room a few days before Valentine’s wrapping foil-covered chocolate hearts, a small white teddy bear, and other tokens of love into a box.

Overjoyed by his change of heart, I told him I felt bad about spoiling the surprise.

“Huh? Oh. This isn’t for you. It’s for Becky, overseas. Yeah, if she were here right now, we’d probably be dating.”

It’s difficult to say which particular thing should have made me kill him: his Grinchly attitude toward the holiday, the care package to another girl while giving me not so much as a sticky-note, or the statement that I was merely second-string filler, a place holder. I’d like to write about how I said something cuttingly witty and left, never to see the rat again – except that’s not what happened. I stayed with him, to “work things out,” and while I was doing that, Allen slept with another girl, dumped her, took back up with her and added a third. And I stuck around. For another year (which proved to be the nadir of my romantic possibilities).

And right now you seriously need to be thinking, “Uh, Marianne? How could you be so dumb?”

Actually, I was an absolute idiot until I was 23 – the dead end relationship to end them all – but hey! I can’t complain; I got a 475 page novel out of that summer. Therapy, self-analysis, childhood experiences, trauma recovery, blah blah blah. I get it now. At the time, I didn’t.

So if you really hate Valentine’s Day… Maybe you should use the day as an opportunity to “get it.” Give yourself a Valentine before you waste time waiting for someone else; you’re worth the chocolate - and the self-respect.

First Valentine

2008-02-11T09:06:00.000-05:00

This week the café is verily festooned with the symbols of Love. It’s a trifle garish, but I like Valentine’s Day. However, recognizing that the festivities this week might present both pleasure and peril in equal measure, I have provided a few links that might help get you over some of the rough spots:

For the geek in you, learn the basics at How to Love. If you have a someone in mind, then The Love Notes Workshop teaches you how to write to that special someone – and possibly a few other things, judging by some of the pictures. I guess I’d believe their romantic intentions a whole lot more if that woman weren’t at the top of the page clutching her bosoms and looking… eager. I concur with the advice, but I’d call the site NSFW. The Love Calculator is the most romantic use of Perl I’ve ever seen – find out the odds of success with your Snugglebunny based on your names.

However… If Love is not in the cards this week, do not despair. How to Get Over a Broken Heart and The 6 Stages of a Broken Heart offer some down to earth advice on acknowledging your feelings and moving on. And then re-read last week’s post and remember the Power of Cacao.

Of course, if you’re not in the Valentine’s Mood, then you probably don’t want to be here. If the roses and cute crap on the letterhead didn’t convince you to leave, then let me give you one last warning – this post will be sappy. It’s my blog and I’ll ooze if I want to.

DESPITE having some really bad Valentine’s Days and some really moronic boyfriends, I actually like Valentine’s Day. Anything focused on chocolate, or increasing the volume of chocolate available, or advocating the consumption of chocolate, is not a bad thing. But the reason I like Valentine’s Day is not so much because of the chocolate, but my Dad – my first Valentine.

I don’t remember when he started doing this (since he’s done it as long as I can remember, he must have started at the right time), but every year on Valentine’s Day my Dad left on the dining room table a card and a little something for my sisters and I to discover when we woke up. It wasn’t much – a box of cinnamon red hots, a little necklace or t-shirt with something cute on it – but it was just the coolest thing to me as a little girl that my Daddy did this.

It was the only time he said or wrote the words “I love you.”

When I got older and my Man du Jour was on his soapbox ranting that he “did not believe in Valentine’s Day” because it was an attempt of corporations to dictate his emotions (I wish they could have just admitted that they were either cheap or not really into me, but trying to justify themselves with intellectual twaddle just made the whole thing that much crappier), but at the same time swearing that he loved me, it was my father who actually wrote little poems and bad puns to let me know he was thinking of me.

My father is not a saint. I couldn’t have racked up that many therapy hours without some help (on the other hand, our relationship is some of my best material). Psychologists like to call my father’s reluctance to express his feelings “emotional detachment,” but I kind of prefer “emotionally unavailable.” Makes it sound like a 404 server error of the heart – and believe me, depression puts you Off Line.

As I get older and have become the ages my father was when I was young, I realize that he didn’t have any more of a clue about things then than I do now. None of us do. And as I step back in that writerly fashion and try to observe what shaped all the characters that are my family, I see that, if my father was emotionally detached, then his father was emotionally constipated. And I understand now just why my father was so emotionally detached, and how much of a gift of himself his Valentines really were.

But one Valentine’s Day, as my father handed me a card and a small box of Godiva chocolates, he turned to MP and said, “This is the last time I’m going to do this. It’s your responsibility now.” It was followed by a pause that clearly stated, “And I better not hear you screwed this up.”

MP replied, “Yes sir.”

I, however, freaked.

“You mean you’re not even gonna send me a card anyone? Ever?!?”

“No,” said my father, staring at me levelly over his glasses, “I meant the chocolates.”

As I reread this, it occurs to me how psychologists of a particular feminist slant could fault me for depending on men to fulfill my happiness. Perhaps I used to, but I can buy my own chocolates these days, thank you, and I've done it. It’s just nice to know that there’s someone out there who wants chocolates for you, too.

Café at the Bijou

2008-02-08T16:03:00.000-05:00

If you were ever a Matinee at the Bijou fan or just love old movies, check out The Bijou Blog today. They’ve done a repost of my Before There Was Prozac musing, complete with wonderful photos. I heartily concur with the medical advice in the first photo!

Watching Matinee at the Bijou with my dad was indeed one of those neat childhood memories I have, but it also began my love of old movies and fascination with popular culture. What sets MATB apart from current Classic Hollywood cable stations (Turner Classic Movies, AMC) is the format of the show. MATB presented the movies in a context – the cartoon with the newsreel and a short subject or serial and the feature film – that recreated the moviegoing experience from the first part of the 20th century.

Experiencing films within their context demonstrates as no history book can the importance of movies to Americans during the Great Depression. In 1933, the cost of a movie was ten to fifteen cents for a matinee, but perhaps as much as a quarter for the evening show. Consider that a loaf of white bread was a nickel, and eggs went for twenty-one cents a dozen, and you see how going to the movies represented a serious choice for some people. And they chose movies over bread whenever they could.

MATB gave viewers a glimpse of a time when America’s dreams and reality were far apart. There was both history and truth packed into that catchy theme song – “But at the bijou bitter gall/became as sweet as brandy”. People didn’t go to these movies looking for a reflection of their daily experiences, but rather, something to transcend them. All movie lovers – my father, Bijou Bob, and those who saved their nickels and dimes – understood that movies were a medicine to alleviate the Depression – the Great ones of a nation, and the smaller ones of its citizens, both then and now.

For this reason, and because any blog celebrating a giant Gila monster is just too cool to miss, we at the café heartily support The Bijou Blog, and we look forward to the return of the Matinee at the Bijou series on PBS.

Food Snobs

2008-02-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I tried a flax bread recipe that was truly awful. At 2 cups flax meal to 5 eggs, it was a toss-up between an overpoweringly flax challah or a really gritty omelet.

The sad part is, it didn’t have to be that bad. It could easily be done with only two eggs (enough to bind and replace the gluten) 2 teaspoons of baking powder (stop trying to thicken it using the first action of the baking powder and just use fewer eggs!) and some added herbs (Italian blend, herbes de Provence, or even an apple pie spice blend for something sweeter).

The whole experience was enough to make me think, “Did this woman even taste this before she published it?” Or maybe she did, and thought it was “good enough.”

But I don’t want “good enough” food. I want good food. And it’s all MP’s fault.

(What a strange pairing of words. It just occurred to me that it should be pronounced either “güd füd” or “gōōd fōōd,” but not the strange combination we have.)

MP cooks. I bake. I can read a recipe and know if it will work. MP can read a recipe and know when it needs to be changed. But MP has one up on me in that the spices in the cabinet talk to him. Yes, people think he’s nuts. And then they eat his food, and they shut up about it.

(For the record, I knew the flax recipe was not right when I started, but I wanted to know what the author’s original vision was. Apparently, she was hallucinating.)

Last year MP read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life and is now focused on fresh and local. (This is the only thing that could possibly have gotten him interested in my gardening, because there are spiders out there, dammit.) It really does make a flavor difference to go down to the farmer’s market and eat what was grown in your county or state. But I think more than that, MP wants to meet these people. He wants to see the face behind the squash and meet the people who feed the chicken he’s making into soup. He’s the only guy I ever heard of who goes to the butcher to “hang out.”

Some people, particularly family members, say that MP is a “food snob.” And though he wouldn’t say it outright, I think it hurts and offends him that people don’t understand.

Last week the New York Times published an article describing the necessity of guanciale -- cured, unsmoked pig jowl -- for creating a true pasta all'amatriciana. The butcher told MP that this article resulted in a spike of customers coming in to find this rare in the US product (she was proud to say that she not only carried it, but made her own).

MP asked me, “How can somebody read something in the Times and then decide they have to have this?”

“Because it’s fashionable," I replied, “It’s one-upmanship. In some circles it’s like your jewelry or car – just another way to show your status.”

MP snorted. I will not be getting a Prada handbag anytime soon. (But if I ask nicely I might get a duck confit…)

And this is what I think irritates MP about being called a food snob: to him, a food snob eats what someone else says is fashionable or worthy, then asserts his superiority over others who don’t eat the same. In short, a food snob expresses bad manners through culinary subjects. (Worst case scenario: buying expensive appliances/knives/pans to decorate the kitchen and then not knowing how to use or care for them.)

To MP, it’s very simple: Does it taste good? And “good” is many things – fresh, simply prepared, or well-composed play between flavors and textures. But it can also mean “fitting” – because miles from home there is nothing better than a beer and a cheeseburger in a dive bar for comfort, and a barbecue joint off a two-lane read that smokes pork-butt in the parking lot using hickory logs and their own Carolina sauce, but only has a “B” license, is worth a look-see.

I have sat on the floor in Grand Central Station eating street gyros with the man – he’s no snob (though I confess, the reason we were there was because the night before we’d eaten at Le Cirque, and after Berkshire pork in three cuts (cheek, belly, and tenderloin) with apple-rhubarb ravioli and a port wine reduction, plus a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, we needed something soothing to ground us in reality). Oh, he’s definitely exacting, demanding of himself when he’s trying to express one of his food visions, but he does recognize that the key ingredient of any good food is passion – the love that went into the creation of it.

Shoot. Now I’m hungry.

(And just as I set out to publish this, MP sent me an email titled “OMG it’s a Spice Weasel.” Not a Snob, but such a Geek…)

Chocolate Love

2008-02-04T08:14:00.000-05:00

I think this pretty much says it all.

It’s February. Around here, some people refer to the month as “Suckuary.” Actually, I’m rather fond of the month. For starters, I like snow, and I also like Valentine’s Day -- despite having some really, truly crappy Valentine’s Days.

But when you get right down to it, I like seeing pictures of chocolate plastered on everything, because there’s not a whole lot that chocolate can’t make a little better.

A few days ago I had my spinal guru crack my neck. I hate having that done. It scares the crap out of me, that explosion just under my brain, and it’s never nice putting your head in someone’s hands to have your neck potentially broken. But the real reason I think I hate having my neck cracked is the emotional release. I sob uncontrollably every single time, and I have no idea why. I’m not the only one who does this when having her neck cracked, but I nevertheless feel a profound sense of embarrassment.

The therapist and his assistant, however, have seen it all before. When I came out, snorting into a tissue, Toni (the assistant) just sort of looked up at me under her eyebrows.

“I guess he got it, huh? Are you crying from physical pain, or emotional pain?”

“Oh, emotional (sniff). Definitely.”

“Well, that’s good then,” she said matter of factly. “Would you like some chocolate?”

And it suddenly occurred to me that yes, I most definitely wanted some chocolate. Very much. It was an odd, Harry Potter sort of moment, receiving dark chocolate to alleviate my emotional trauma, but it was the perfect thing. Chocolate is like that.

Sometimes just looking at chocolate is soothing. In the midst of diagnosing some food allergies (yeah, I know; some days I’m surprised I can even walk) one of MP’s cooking magazines arrived in the mail. I opened it to a piece entitled “Chocolate Desserts on Demand,” and then… Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened or disturbed my universe until realized I’d been staring at a photo of flourless chocolate cake with chocolate glaze for ten minutes without blinking. I found that magazine again, and, even now, staring at that fudgy wedge of confection on a smooth white plate…

… Huh? So, um, yeah… It may be Suckuary and darn cold where you are, but there’s no reason to be miserable. Close your eyes. Have a small square of dark chocolate. If that’s not possible for one reason or another, then indulge in some chocolate “porn” and drool over these treats: a beautifully frosted cake, delectable bon-bons, or incredibly cute chocolate shoes. Check out the confectioners’ links under Café Tor’s “You might also like…” selection for some amazing chocolate possibilities.

February is only 28 days -- enjoy it while it's here.

Hamtaro pwned by The Man; Ham-Hams fight back!

2008-02-01T09:46:00.001-05:00

After I threw the creepy people out of the café, but before I tinkered with the il Pavoni to find out if it was still alive, I needed something soothing and safe to occupy my time. So I replayed Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! on the GBA.

Or tried to.

My game wouldn’t save. I’d be playing along, find Bijou at Acorn shrine, learn some hamchat and score a few acorns, and then I’d have to get back to my real life (curse MP and his dirty socks!). A few hours later, I’d flip the GBA on and… Nothing. Have to start of from scratch.

It was then that MP informed me of something so shocking that I rate it on par with finding out that pro-wrestling is fake: game cartridges contain small watch batteries that allow you to save your game. When those batteries die, usually in 5-7 years, you can no longer save your game.

I said, "Excuse me?”

“Your battery is dead. Change it.”

I flipped the cartridge over and saw a six-sided screw that looked like a flower. I didn’t have the tools for this.

“How am I supposed to open this?”

“You’re not. They don’t want you to.”

“But you said the battery was dead!”

“They don’t want you to open it. You’re supposed to buy a new game.”

“Let me get this straight: I bought this game for thirty bucks, but it turns out I was really only renting it for five years?”

MP thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, actually, that’s a good way of putting it.”

At which point I used a few “hamchat” words not found in an E rated game and went online to Google some search terms.

I have to admire these guys’ skillz and ingenuity even as I cringe at their grammar and non-politically correct similes (“risky like a cheap-a** hooker” is vulgar, but vivid). Racketboy was clear, detailed, and correct (although I did have a different battery type, as he was looking at SNES cartridges, while I had a GBA). I purchased a 3.8mm security bit, soldering iron, X-Acto knife, and duct tape, and in an hour was playing tack-Q bowling, trying to get the shogun wig for Cappy. Never underestimate the power of duct tape.

Somewhere in the middle of sliding a molten-hot X-Acto knife between the circuit board and tabs in an attempt to break the soldering joints on the battery, MP stopped by to see what I was up to. He stared at me for a minute or two, then said without a hint of sarcasm, “You are really sexy.”

So ladies, be proud of your soldering skills, because you just never know what makes a geek schmubby-wubby.

Of course by the time I bought all the stuff I needed, I'd spent as much as if I’d bought another copy of the game -- but that it entirely beside the point. I am posting Racketboy’s directions for how to change a cartridge battery because I think we must show the Man that we are blash-T about being taken advantage of, and we nopookie being treated like mindless idiots. We see through their scams and we will not chukchuk our rights as consumers, but will cramcram until we find ways to subvert their pooie design flaws. We can hamteam or hamspar – the choice is up to them.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go collect enough seeds to buy the bunny costume. Bye-Q!

Pleasant Surprises

2008-01-30T10:13:00.001-05:00

While mopping up the floor of the café, I found an unexpected note in the Comments from Mr. Bob Campbell, co-creator and producer of Matinee at the Bijou. It seems that Matinee at the Bijou is coming back, with Debbie Reynolds as host.

If you are a fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood, you really must visit the Matinee at the Bijou site at http://matineeatthebijou.blogspot.com. It has interesting backstories on some lesser-known but great features, images of the original movie posters, and “Mini-Matinees” hosted over at You Tube where you can actually see the original introduction as sung by Rudy Vallee! (As a kid I never realized that was Rudy Vallee singing. There’s an interesting recollection by Rich Mendoza, who wrote the original theme.)

I am happy to report that, thanks to Mr. Campbell sending the lyrics to me and You Tube, I am now able to sing the complete intro a la Rudy Vallee crooning, and it is driving MP nuts.

Why are you still reading this? Go watch a movie already!

La Pavoni Meltdown

2008-01-29T10:39:00.000-05:00

Please excuse the café being closed this past week – For the moment, let us say that some unpleasant guests had arrived, began messing with the equipment, and nearly blew up the espresso machine. They, like all unpleasant guest who arrive here, were unceremoniously booted out, but what a mess… I imagine that I’ll go into more detail later, but let us not get bogged down by bad karma and sticky floors.

Fred, slot the Sarah Vaughan disc? Thanks so much. Back to our program.

Before there was Prozac...

2008-01-16T08:52:00.002-05:00

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was no Prozac. There were no SSRIs, period. The only "lifestyle drug" available was cocaine. Understand that I was very small at the time, so my memory is not so good, but in those times, there were about 3 ways people dealt with depression: they committed suicide, they drank a lot, or they slogged through it.

Right now I want to say, unequivocally, God Bless SSRIs. For many people they are a lifeline, a ray of hope, that thing they need to get out of a paralyzing situation. I've used them. I know. But are we, as Americans all so deeply depressed that we need a daily lifeline -- for a lifetime? Do the Blues and the Mean Reds need to be cured? Is PMS -- oh, excuse me -- "PMDD" really a mental disease? "To Use, or not To Use..." It's a personal choice, and I will judge no one. But I am speaking about a Long Ago when there was no choice.

I think I was about twelve when my father took me aside and said, "These periods of moodiness you get, when nothing seems good and you don't want to do anything? It's called 'depression,' and you probably got it from me and my side of the family. It's just a thing you have to deal with. But you need to learn to recognize when it's coming on, and learn the things that will help you through it."

And this is how I learned about classic Hollywood movies.

Saturday night began with a bath, and then the TV lineup was the following:
7pm - The Muppet Show
7:30pm - The Pink Panther
8pm - I have racked my brains and I can't remember...
9pm - the Love Boat

After 10pm came the tricky part. 10pm was Fantasy Island, which I really didn't care anything about, but if I was very quiet (that is, I didn't stand on anyone's last nerve getting in a fight with my sister), I could stay up until 11pm, and that was when Matinee at the Bijou came on PBS.

I still remember Rudy Vallee crooning snippets of the theme song: "Andy Hardy never had to go hungry/There was no bank panic/at Tarzan's branch/Mussolini and der Fuhrer/couldn't have been obscurer/on the planet Mongo or the Melody Ranch." (My Search Fu has failed me and I cannot find the complete lyrics on the Internet - yet.) If I made it as far as the song, my Dad would turn to me and say something like, "Hey Mar, you ever seen the original Flash Gordon?" or "You should see this, Mar; this is a good one." ("Mar" is pronounced like "mare," and there's like four people on the planet allowed to call me that, and you are not one of them.)

Together we would watch this show, lights off bijou-style in flickering darkness. And I learned that the same guy who did Popeye cartoons also did Betty Boop, that the Bowery Boys were the Dead End Kids long before they were Junior G-Men, and that Gene Autry was a much better singer than an actor.

It's taken me a long time to unravel the secrets of my family, my parents. I thought my Dad stayed up late because he liked to watch old movies, but the truth is depression wouldn't let him sleep, and Errol Flynn kept him company. He wouldn't give in, and he wouldn't drink; like so many of his generation, he Slogged On. I am certain he learned toughness from Cagney, but he admired him just as much for his dancing. Not many people know about Jimmy Cagney's song and dance movies -- but my Dad does. Thanks to him, so do I.

And this is what he gave to me before there was Prozac: A love of old movies, and the knowledge of how to rest inside them, for an hour or two, while trying to build up the energy to face and move through depression. He had no control over giving me the genes, but he made sure I had the tools I would need not to go under.

Strange gifts from Father to Daughter. Thanks Dad.

"This childhood sponsored by..."

2008-01-14T09:02:00.000-05:00

It's kind of hard to type when your editor is staring at you. He has rather unblinking eyes... And I think that's because he is seriously lacking in coffee. Let me see... Yep, I'm typing, his eyes are wide open, and he can't see a thing beyond the next cup of coffee. Let us take a moment and send a cosmic gift of psychic love to editors everywhere, who desperately need both love and coffee... Okay, that's it; don't overdo it.

MP is gone this week. He's 3 time zones away doing something desperately important for the government, leaving me to cook for myself, oh God... Now Fred the Editor is laughing at me. Thanks, Fred.

Well... I was thinking about my childhood and all those happy little Saturday morning cartoons, that warm friendly feeling in the morning before you needed coffee to get you up, and I wondered, where are those cartoons now? Because believe it or not, some have made a resurgence, and some have never been away. I decided to do a bit of digging.

And in my detective work, I made one of those discoveries that I suppose I've always known, but didn't need thrust in my face at 11:30 pm when I'm alone and have only had pepperoni with tater-tots and cocktail sauce for dinner: All these characters, save one, were created by greeting card or toy companies with the sole purpose of marketing products.

Then, as now, I am naive.

Rainbow Brite was a product of Hallmark in 1984. I think the last cartoon was '85 or so, but you can still find some Rainbow Brite stuff marketed. She also survives as a Halloween costume. (You follow this link at your own risk, because this is the stuff that kinky fantasies are made of.)

The Care Bears were an American Greetings creation from 1981. There are definitely still around, having undergone radical procedures to shave 10-15 years of their ages, plus tummy-tucks. You can find the new ones here. However, it's not the same if they can't do the "Care Bear Stare."

Jem and the Holograms is probably the most buried of the cartoons, but I did find some Jem and the Holograms stuff at Hot Topic recently. That ran from 1985-1988 and tied into almost as many girl fetishes as My Pretty Pony (rock star/fashion/ makeup vs. ponies/hair) The original songs that came with the dolls can be downloaded from here, in case you've had "Universal Appeal" running through your head for 20 years.

Strawberry Shortcake has had a resurgence after a major makeover, but the original was from American Greeting in 1977. As far as I know, they were the first scented dolls. She's just a hop skip and a jump away from the Care Bears now, along with Holly Hobbie. (Let's face it -- AG totally dominated kids programming in the early '80s)

Here's the one I didn't expect: The Smurfs are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Created by a Belgian cartoonist, they are lauded in countries across the globe. They too, are experiencing a resurgence in the US (I saw Smurfs at Ben Franklin and freaked) but when you read the history, you realize that they've never actually left.

Children are conveniently able to overlook really crappy animation (watch Speed Racer Lately?) and be drawn wholly into another world. I admire them for that, as well as their ability to ignore corporate marketing policies. So let's hear it for Saturday cartoons -- where a kid can be a kid!_TM

Alchemy

2008-01-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

Receiving messages from the Universe regarding what you're supposed to do with your life and things you should pay attention to are fraught with confusion. I would much prefer it if large golden rays of light would break through the clouds and the Heavenly Host would sing a chord in a major key. In this way, there would be no confusion, and I could look up and say, "Ah yes. I should be getting a Clue along about now."

For the record: this is not how it happens.

My Sifu said that we should all of us relax, give it up, and focus on wholly being in the Now of things (Daoists are like that). I took this away with me, thought about it for a week, then went back and asked, "What if the Now really sucks?" Meaning, "What if you're, say, being tortured by an emotionally abusive family member and you can't get away?"

"Then be with that pain. You have to be with that pain and understand that pain until you can transform it into something else. That's very much part of the spiritual alchemy the Daoists studied."

Which may be true, but I was still left with the feeling that the Daoists could bite my butt. (For the record, I spend a lot of time wanting to smack my Sifu when he starts talking about Daoists. You could be bleeding and need a band-aid, but a Daoist will just smile and hand you a box of chocolates.)

A few days later I was talking to my acupuncturist, and I mentioned having strange dreams about the past and bizarre emotional reactions to cleaning out my closets. (Acupuncturists want to know this stuff. Seriously. It ties into bocked meridians and elemental excesses.) He replied that yes, out of balance meridians can keep us from performing the kind of alchemy that can transform a difficult past into something that can propel us into our future.

Alchemy is one of those "read only" words -- we all know what it means, but it doesn't come up in conversation a lot (Hey Bob, how you been? Haven't seen you in a while -- done any alchemy lately?). It wasn't the heavens opening up, but for two people to say that to me in the same week regarding difficult emotions... I don't think it's going to get much clearer than that.

So I've thought about this alchemy thing and what it may mean, and it comes down to this: we are so making this up as we go along.

And that's the point: we are making this up, not somebody else. If you want to accept chocolates from a Daoist or work on your stagnant liver chi, that's your business. Both the placebo effect and passive aggression are totally underrated. And if your past sucked and people hurt you, accept it. Assimilate it into your being by recognizing its existence and then use that alchemy to transform it into a better story.

Which, I suspect, is the root of much (though not all) art. "Use it," they tell you in theater, meaning, "Use this emotion and put it into your character when you act." As I writer I can never whine "There's nothing to write about!" (Though I will have to wait until everyone dies, or I'll be sued.) And as a visual artist, well... Open your eyes. Be in the Now.

Alchemy. I'm surprised we don't talk about it more.

Neti Pots

2008-01-07T09:29:00.002-05:00

It's Monday. I'm doing a "coffee facial," which is essentially hanging your head over a large mug of coffee and absorbing caffeine through your pores while you try to wake up. It's a specialty here at Café Tor.

I was awakened today by a chuckling robin out in the yard. It's January, friends, and there are robins everywhere. While I admit that I dwell in a place not known for its skiing potential, it is nevertheless too early for any songbird to sit on my porch railing and announce its sexual intentions (the romantic exploits of birds on my porch railing is actually fodder for a whole other post, but nobody has had enough coffee for that yet, so let us move on). Rumor has it that it will actually reach seventy-three degrees in the next few days -- but only to plummet cruelly back into the forties by next week.

Which is to say, this mercurial weather really plays havoc with your sinuses.

I always viewed my neti pot as a sort of personal thing. I don't know why, it just never occurred to me that, standing around at a cocktail party, anyone would want to hear how I pour salt water in one nostril and out the other. But it appears that I'm wrong and everyone wants to talk about neti pots and how fab they are. Oprah has been talking about it. The New York Times had an article last week about the whole concept of the thing as well as all the pretty colors they come in (hey, it was the Fashion & Style section).

I mention this now for two reasons: One, I really thing that with the changing weather and humidity, I'll want to start using the neti pot again so my poor sinuses don't go nuts, and Two, I'm wondering if caffeine can be absorbed through the nasal membranes, because I really need the inspiration.

(No, seriously, don't try that. I mean, it sounds good and probably works, but seriously, don't try that. Just read the Times article and drink the coffee.)

Well. I'm off to run fifty million errands. I'll be back later, so brew a fresh pot -- I'll need it.

[FOLLOW UP: In case you were awake all weekend wondering what happened to him, MP is fine and got to and from his gig. $500 later my car is also fine, with shiny new wires and a distributor cap. I'm not happy about that part, because $500 is a really nice pair of shoes, and I'm not exactly going to open my hood for all my girlfriends and show off shiny new wires.

If it had been my sister's car, it would have cost $1000 dollars and she would have contemplated holding a bake sale to raise the funds, because it would be either have a car or pay the rent, but of course, you can't go to the job that pays the rent if you don't have a car...]

Adaptability

2008-01-04T10:07:00.001-05:00

Philosophers, physicists, and intellectual pundits throughout history have long pondered a Unified Theory of Everything. If they would put down the particle accelerator and show up at Café Tor I would tell them what they wanted to know:

The cosmic love-honey that holds everything together is adaptability!

I mention this now because I had this one idea for a post all mapped out, and then Things Happened yesterday, and now I'm not in the mood. So the Muse will have to wait and sip her chai latte, because I will not be a slave to a List of Things to Write About ( I don't think she cares; she's found an old copy of People Magazine and is tapping her foot to Dizzy Gillespie).

This is an example of Adaptability in Action:

MP left for another gig yesterday. He does that all the time; it's nothing new, but this time he wanted to take my car because he had other people and things to take with him. So I clean out my CDs, fluff my car, and he takes off with it (leaving me with his car, a quarter of a tank of gas and a tire pressure of 15 psi. MP is going to have a real swell homecoming, I promise)

Five minutes later, I get a call on my cell. In the seconds it takes to actually answer the call, I have a terrifying vision of MP stranded by the side of the road in the bitter cold. "Tut-tut, Marianne!" I say to myself, "You worry too much."

It's MP. "I'm stranded by the side of the road in the bitter cold. Your car won't start."

Before I answered the phone, I was worried about him. After I answered the phone and it was confirmed that he was in fact stranded by the side of the road in the bitter cold, I was not worried at all. It was more like, "It's been five minutes -- How did you screw up my car in five minutes?"

MP managed to leave the car in a decent spot where it wouldn't cause trouble and got a ride with someone else. I stopped by later and, sure enough, the car wouldn't start. It's being towed somewhere by someone who can hopefully do something to fix it. Meanwhile, I have MP's crappy car, so I'm not stranded. It could have been a lot worse -- no one was greatly inconvenienced, the tow truck only has to go a mile to get to the garage, and no body parts were frozen.

Adaptability.

(If this had been my sister, she would have been stranded in Fairbanks with the baby crying, no cell, and not a dime in her pocket. She would have last eaten four grapes seven hours previously and a pack of tundra wolves would be closing in. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between my sister and me.)

This entire gig of MP's has been one long exercise in adaptability, so I imagine he's rolling with it and is doing fine. As for myself, I can't wait to find out what happened to the car. I'm also mildly interested to know when I'll get back into the mood to complete the post I had originally planned... But the Muse appears to have begun a chess game with her sometimes-lover, Procrastination, so it may be a while.