Flutterings

The clock from Mus:



I am stupid tired -- as in, tired enough to do stupid things that end up having to be redone to undo the stupid -- but I also got in a walk before sundown, which in addition to improving my mood included petting a dog, buying a birthday card (and some other fun) at Gift Horse, and figuring out the first line of a fic that's been making like an unhookable trout.

I cooked chili with green tomatoes I canned back in November 2020 and the last of the red cherry tomatoes I canned this past September, and garlic nuggets homegrown and processed by big sister's "outlaw" (ex-sis-in-law). Two conference-organizing colleagues and I had a productive conversation on Slack about striving for inclusive language in Spanish. A friend and I chatted on Discord about Edwardian clothing and Purim costumes.

Mus also sent the sugar plum jam I just spread over half a bagel + 2 bites, for dessert.

The white hellebore looks much better now that I've given it a good trimming. Same with the geranium. I am pleased with myself for keeping the asparagus ferns alive all winter.



I am itemizing things, you realize, to stave off dread and despair maintain perspective.

There were three tiny tomatoes in the library room. I popped the one below into my mouth yesterday, and it was astonishingly sweet.

From 2011, a lovely Will/Bran Christmas season fic by Ash. Veterinarian is a good look on Bran, as is laughing at Will:

In the Bleak Midwinter (7085 words) by Ashura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Characters: Bran Davies aka Pendragon, Will Stanton
Additional Tags: First Time, Post-Canon, Christmas, Romance
Summary:

He set aside the pile of undergraduate essays he'd been marking, leaning against the window to stare out of it for a while, watching Wales unfold welcoming before him. At least, he mused, that was how it felt – like the prodigal son returning to his father's fold. It was different from going home, where he could feel the fields of Buckinghamshire folding around him whenever he went back to see his parents, but it was similar, too. I know you, the land seemed to say. I remember you. You belong here.

Today, copperbadge has started posting short fics to reward donors to his Fountain Fundraiser, and "Jane Foster's Secret Original Recipe" is for meeeeeee, starring gefilte fish in progress (consider that your warning). (The Foodieverse was major comfort reading for me last year.) Sam also posted an adorable glimpse of Leverage/Good Omens on its heels.

Current musical/visual/God-I-miss-dressing-up fascination: Dryden/Purcell's "Fairest Isle," as presented by the Boston Purcell Society . . .

This NYT photo essay on wagashi is cracking me up -- elegant portraits of sweets with cats:

Sweets as Poignant as Poetry

A friend treated me to dim sum at Hei La Moon earlier this week, and amiably agreed to share a plate of black sesame rolls among the other dishes I pointed at (turnip cakes, Chinese broccoli, and har kow).

I didn't really manage to explain how the dessert inspired a fic I wrote seven years ago, but we agreed that it was delicious.

Also in Boston: Friendly Toast with marginaliana, tea with okrablossom, and more radish/turnip cakes at Gourmet Dumpling House and Bubor Cha Cha. Diversions included four hours of paddleboarding on the Charles and an evening with two good-with-children cats named after Jabberwocky terms (plus the children and their parents).

Prior to Boston: a week in Plymouth. Much dancing (and paddling, and a bit of swimming, including some skinny-dipping under the nearly full moon). Much to digest. Much more to learn. But first, unpacking (and getting through more of the 350+ emails that had arrived in my work inbox while I was off the grid).

The subject line is from Carrie Fisher's Twitter bio. I learned of her death when I saw "Remembering Carrie Fisher" on a TV at Liuzza's, and one of the sadder things I saw later in the week was a sheaf of WizardWorld Comic Con flyers curled behind a machine or rack in a French Quarter coffee shop. The con is going on even as I type (January 6 to 8), but without Fisher, who had been listed on the top line of guests:



I also saw two murals -- one on a wall with "RIP" prominent on wall, and the other on the door of the Krewe of Chewbacchus HQ. Friday morning, we spotted kegs being delivered for the second line parade to be led by the Leijorettes ("most ... are roller derby players").



A post I bookmarked while mentally drafting this one: TJ's goals for this year.

Speaking of fighting fascists, here's what Penzeys Spices has to say:

The stories of cooks, at least the way we see them, super-humanize. If it looks like you, or someone you know, are going to be standing in the way of the new administration, we need your story, and a recipe or two, and this time we can't wait until July. No doubt public school teachers will once again be on the front lines of the right's anger echo chamber, but we're thinking this time it won't be just teachers, and this is why we are asking for your help. This year, the list will be long, and we would like to get a leg up on any direction it could head. Clearly this time around the targets are the environment, immigration, gender equality, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, income inequality, and pretty much anyone who is in any way a minority in any shape or form.

If you, or someone you know, is on the front lines of one of these issues and have a good recipe or two to share, please contact us at editor@penzeys.com, and tell us a little about your background and your concerns. And please, don't think your experience needs to be dramatic, or that you need to have some sort of job title to participate. It's the every day decency of cooks that carries the day, not fame or celebrity.

And because you may well be first up on the block, if you are one of those pre-existing condition-havers that have had a brief period of almost normal life because of the Affordable Care Act, please get in touch with us right away. The people need to understand your experience. Once again, please contact us at editor@penzeys.com with a brief description of your story, and one of our gifted and friendly writers will get in touch. Please. We all need your experience.

Speaking of cooking, last night I scooped the Meyer lemon sorbet into smaller containers, and tonight I may proceed with this recipe for grapefruit-lemon marmalade. First, though, there is cleaning to do, but before that, lunch (a bowlful of leftovers, plus coffee dregs perked up with cardamom [from Penzeys], ginger, cinnamon, and coriander, with hot water and almond milk refilling the mug).

What are you cooking or dreaming about this weekend, loves?

Seen at Target today:



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know when you like something so much that it makes you not just nod your head in satisfaction, but shake your head in disbelief? That's what happens when I find that perfectly sweet pea. So many things conspired to make that pea -- the weather, the soil, the farmer -- and there you are on the receiving end. It makes me happy and grateful.

-- April Bloomfield

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

[*** indicates my favorites]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BYM observed that the ingredients I appeared to be using for okra rellenos didn't match those listed on the recipe on my laptop screen, okra and egg aside. So, noting them for future reference:

12 okra (Shreeji's had some today)
12 matchstick-sized slivers of cheese (I used a veggie-speckled cheddar from a Christmas gift box)
1 egg, beaten
1 cup panko
a sploosh or two of peanut oil

Preheat oven to 375 F (350 F convection). Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and coat with the peanut oil.

Wash okra. Cut pods open just enough to stuff in the cheese.

Dip in egg and coat in panko.

Bake until you can smell the okra and the panko's toasty brown. I think it took around 20-30 minutes but I wasn't keeping track.


Salsa optional. I did make a quick one since the BYM (reading the recipe) asked for it. This is a simplification of a Mark Bittman recipe (in How to Cook Everything, 1st ed.). Amounts approximate:

14.5 oz can diced tomatoes in tomato juice
3 T chopped onion
1 jalapeno
a sploosh of red wine
1 T dried tarragon
a sploosh of lime juice