Andre Dubis-isms

While searching my hotmail inbox for a recipe for rosemary-soy chicken wings, I unearthed an email from a grad school professor that contained a list of anecdotes about the esteemed writer Andre Dubus Sr.

Known among writers as "Andre Dubus the father," so as to distinguish the subject from his son, the Andre Dubus who authored The House of Sand and Fog, the elder Andre Dubus is known primarily for his rich and haunting short stories. Dubus is one of those people described frequently as a "writer's writer."

What does this mean? Certainly it ranks up there with the haughty-yet-cliched terms bandied about by teachers and students of writing in MFA classes and advanced-level college workshops. Both curse and blessing, being a writer's writer is like being crowned prom king AND valedictorian. Your writing is layered, rich, resonant (oh, cliche!), your endings are earned, your characters' dialogue is never petty nor trite.

Joking aside, what this means primarily is that you are someone aspiring writers need to have in their toolbox. You have something to teach writers--how to tell a good story--as well as readers. If you are a writer's writer, you might not be well-known by the general reading public.* You might not have a bestseller, or financial success. You are a rocks glass of smoky scotch beside a fireplace while soft snow settles onto the eaves of an old house. You are special.

Another of my professors was an old family friend of Andre D's, and had the pleasure of sitting through many a Red Sox game with the old man. He used to tell us stories of Andre's adoration for the gummy New England accent, and the hardworking-hard-drinking working class baseball fans you can encounter at Fenway.

While his Andre stories were more character-driven, the list of Dubus-ism I found portray not the man himself, but the quirks of a writer and the instructions in a practice.

• Andre Dubus (father) wrote 100 pages to "find" the seven pages of his story "Waiting." It took him fourteen months.

• Andre Dubus always recorded how many words he wrote each day. And everytime he said "thank you." -- "28 words, thank you." OR "1200 words, thank you."

• Andre D was at a party once where there was a fistfight over whether something falls to "earth" or to "the ground." Carver was for "ground."

• Rick Russo said of Andre D's prose style "Once you are a Catholic you will be using that language the rest of your life, even if you don't believe in the dogma anymore."

• Russo said that reading Andre Dubus and Richard Yates when he was in an MFA program at the Univ. of Arizona saved him--because at the time everyone was reading Gass, Coover, Hawkes, Vonnegut, etc.

• Rick Russo quoting a friend: "Just becasue it didn't happen doesn't mean I can't remember it."

*Dubus the father's short story Killings was adapted into the movie "In the Bedroom."

vanilla bread pudding with stone fruit

I used to be a little snot (used to be, you say?). One day during the course of my stage at Oleana, I told the pastry chef, Maura, that I wasn't a fan of bread pudding. I hadn't yet learned that you don't tell this to cooks; that claiming not to like something ends with you being prodded or strong-armed into trying their adaptation of it. Sometimes, when we say "don't like," what we mean is don't understand or aren't impressed by or, as my french chef used to say, "it is not very interesting."

I worked at the time at a bistro in Boston that served chocolate bread pudding with whipped cream (side note: it really irks me when people call it chantilly on menus...it's whipped cream people). We made four hotel pans of the stuff, using leftover house bread (baked by me & my boss) plus the supplementary bread we got on the weekends. The night guys usually cut the bread for us, two large fishtubs, but occasionally we'd have to top it off, then make the custard. I'd be up to my elbows in the stuff, tossing the bread, letting it soak. Then I'd have to portion it into the four hotel pans, bake them in barely-there hot water baths consisting of the 1/2-1 inch of water I could pour on the full sheet pan and, when baked, pull these same suckers out of the oven without spalashing hot water all over myself and burning the mitts. So I was usually pretty clumsy and usually made a mess (big surprise, right?). Suffice to say I'd had it with bread pudding and I felt that I was pretty well informed on the topic.

Well it only took a couple bites of Maura's bread pudding to change my mind. Hers was made with homemade brioche, pretty standard, and I had excellent results baking it with Acme pain de mie as well. Maura soaked her bread in a mixture of custard plus simple syrup; her theory was that the simple syrup prevented the bread from getting too heavy and resulted in a lighter final product. I'm not sure whether that's true but I know the results are certainly delicious.

This version below features stone fruits, with cherries just coming into season! We don't have peaches yet but we do have apricots, which are delicious baked or roasted. As promised a long time ago, here is the bread pudding recipe adapted from Maura's supremely wonderful brown butter bread pudding with mulberries and milk jam at Oleana.

vanilla bread pudding with stone fruit:
{makes 1 lg. deep dish pan (9x13) +/- a few extra ramekins}


custard base:
eggs 9
sugar 2.5c
cream 4c
milk 2.5c
vanilla bean 2, split and seeded

for soaking:
simple syrup: 1c
cubed bread: 8c
custard base above

fruit, to add:
pitted cherries: 2c
peeled, sliced peaches: 2c

Warm dairy with vanilla beans and infuse 30 minutes. Whisk eggs and sugar together. Add cream and milk. Place bread in large bowl, coat with simple syrup and then with custard base. Let soak 1 hr or until most of liquid is absorbed, tossing bread every so often. Add cut fruit to soaked bread and mix. Pour into baking pan, using ramekins for any overflow. Cover with foil and bake at 325 for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake 15 more minutes or until top is lightly browned. Center should be set. If not, keep baking.*

*I worked somewhere where we baked bread pudding FOR THREE HOURS once.

in other notes:
*huge burn blister on my finger with goo bubble the diameter of a caper. it needs to go away.
*valrhona cocoa powder, how i have missed you.
*i should do a post on ways to infuse vanilla beans, maybe i will.
*i ate the second half of my burrito for dinner and now i have nothing to look forward to at work tomorrow.
*claudia fleming is still awesome.
*i've been reading a book a day, about.
*my car is not dead and gone forever. hell yeah! road trip seattle anyone?
*i'm contemplating a series of podcast essays. main problem: i'm not interested in the sound of my own voice, unless i'm pretending to be claudia gonson. second main problem: that just sounds gimmicky and slightly pretentious.
*i need to learn to say no, sometimes, and stop doing everyone a favor all the time.
*i chopped orange peel for a long time today and it was really theraputic and zenlike. i recommend it.

a native's guide to boston

having spent the vast majority of my life in the great state of massachusetts, I am not going to tell you to do the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, or any other such historical-interest thing. I can advise on where to eat, what the locals do, and how to understand them. Above all, it's best to keep in mind that New Englanders tend to keep their business to themselves and expect you to do the same. First rule of New England: Connecticut doesn't count. Neither does anything south of New York.

Should you find yourself in Boston, you can and should do the following:

museums:
*the Museum of Science is a very fun place, as is the New England Aquarium. Singlehandedly either could beat the Cal Academy of Sciences to a bloody pulp, but among the many things to enjoy count an amazing three story tank with tortoises, large sharks, and awesome fish, a retro electricity show, chicks hatching live, snake handlers, tons o' taxidermy, an otter tank, and neat views.

* the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is most famous for having Rembrandts + a Vermeer stolen and never recovered. That said it's got an amazing courtyard, great wallpaper, unique furniture, and this incredibly intimate feeling that most other museums don't.

* the MFA...I've seen and re-seen their permanent collection, which is pretty heavy on Impressionist and early American works (Winslow Homer, etc.). I still love the MFA. Their special exhibits are usually awesome also. I've seen over the years art deco, Monet, John Singer Sargent, Herb Ritts, el Greco-->Velasquez, David Hockney, the quilts of Gee's Bend, and many other exhibits.

places to eat:
*Clio (Hynes Convention Center): ken oringer. boston's foray into molecular gastronomy
*The Butcher Shop + Stir (Back Bay): barbara lynch's charcuterie and cheese shop + cookbook bookstore.
*No. 9 Park (Park St.): Barbara Lynch's original restaurant
*Oleana (Central): Ana Sortun is amazing.
*Sofra: Ana and Maura's bakery. The cookies are just incredible, and I'm not a cookie person.
*Clearflour: one of the three good bakeries, this one specializing in bread and laminates doughs.
*Hi-Rise (Harvard): my favorite of the three good bakeries, with delicious sandwiches. Do get the toast basket for breakfast and use lots of maple butter. The corn bread is excellent. If in Harvard, sit upstairs with coffee and food and feel like you're in an old timey schoolhouse.
*Sibling Rivalry (Back Bay): the brothers Kincaid duel different riffs on a shared item (a protein or veg). Everything I've had there had been quite good, and they used to have a rockstar pastry chef.
*Tealuxe (Copley/Harvard): tea and crumpets.
*Pinocchio's (Harvard): zucchini sicilian pizza, i miss you so terribly much!
*East Coast Grille (Central): now that Green St. Grille has taken a turn for the worse, East Coast reigns supreme for Carribean food, plantain goodness and fish. It gets very crowded and takes no reservations.
*Ten Tables (Stonybrook): it has only ten tables. i've heard nothing but good things.
*Craigie Street (Harvard): snooty waiters, fine French food.
*Darwin's (Harvard): sandwiches + soups for the 02138 intellectual. The Hubbard Park remains my fave sandwich, and do get some cape cod potato chips on the side.
*Redbones (Davis): pulled chicken sandwich with sweet sauce + mild sauce, and corn fritters with the bar regulars, a pint of something from the thirty beer wheel...this place sustained me through grad school!
*Helmand (Lechmere): Afghan pumpkin, eggplant, breads and delicious sauces. Get the meat, if you want, but it really isn't necessary.

places to get ice cream, and coffee:
*Herrell's (Harvard): if they have bourbon vanilla or chocolate peppermint, do indulge. The others flavors are delicious also.
*Toscanini's (Central): more purist than Herrell's (the inspiration to Ben and Jerry), people quite like the hazelnut.
*Christina's (Central): They serve malted vanilla. What more can I say? Christina's supplies plenty of restaurants (including Harvest) with fine quality ice cream.
*Espresso Royale (Copley/Hynes): your best option on Newbury, imho.
*JP Licks (Hynes/Stonybrook/Davis): my favorite for a long time was the oatmeal cookie froyo with caramel sauce. delicious. One day I was lucky enough to sample noodle kugel ice cream.
*Diesel (Davis): grad school writing dates, bright colors, and sceney lesbians.
*Dunkies: an institution that must be honored.

etc:
*The Boston Public Library (Copley) has a beautiful courtyard, John Singer Sargent murals, and now you can eat there, too.
*The Public Gardens/Boston Common (Park/Boylston/Arlington): Make Way For Ducklings + The Trumpeter Swan = YA classics.
*Fenway Park (Fenway/Kenmore): needs no introduction or explanation. Believe.
*Mt. Auburn Cemetery/Forest Hills Cemetery: Frederic Law Olmstead's cities of the dead.
*Arnold Arboretum (Forest Hills): sometimes rambling, sometimes manicured, always lovely.
*the Longfellow House (Harvard): lovely colonial house, nice gardens, vintage poet.

There are entire cities left uncovered. Harvard as an Educational Institution/Necessary Evil, or any other place of education, is unmentioned. JFK library, ditto. I make no mention of Allston, Brighton, Brookline, Southie, Dot, Roxbury, Chinatown, the North End, the suburbs, the beaches, the shopping, or the nightlife, though Somerville, JP and the South End do receive scant mention.

A couple of final tips:
1. the drivers are crazy.
2. the pedestrians are crazy.
3. dunkies is frequently a navigational tool.
4. don't mock the accent.

taza chocolate chip cookies

Once, on a recent trip back east, I biked out through Cambridge, down by Lechmere, to just over the Somerville line. In a big brick warehouse, Taza chocolate was rumored to be some interesting, delicious local chocolate. I locked my bike up, went inside, and wandered around the warehouse unable to find my destination. Either Taza had stopped having an open factory where visitors could drop by, or I was missing something obvious. I could smell the chocolate, but I couldn't get there. With too many other things to do before leaving town, I got back on my bike and rode away.

So when I found a bar of Taza 70% organic stone ground at Zabar's the other week, I took it home. I was entirely surprised by the chocolate when I tried it. The 70% had a smoky, rich flavor. Whereas Valrhona Caraibe or Guanaja usually calls up fruity and smooth, and Scharffenberger an intense red wine note, this one reminded me more of a black tea. The flavor was delicious. The taste?

Grainy. Sugar crystals, I thought at first. Upon reading up on the company I found out they don't conche their chocolate for an intensity of flavor. I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of this decision personally, mostly because it produces a chocolate that I don't really want to eat raw.

In order to get the most out of the Taza, I thought I'd make some basic chocolate chip cookies and melt the stubborn texture away. I made a simple chocolate pecan dough, chilled it, baked it, and was impressed at how the rich chocolate transformed a simple basic.

My main intent in writing this post was to meditate on what happens when you end up with something you don't quite love. Those perfect pears too mushy, too grainy? Did you try to buy out of season berries? Need to use something up before it goes bad? There are a lot, but a lot, of things that a good cook can make from one ingredient. I could have made a silky chocolate pudding, a rich hot cocoa with homemade marshmallows, or seriously special brownies. Pears can be poached or made into cobbler, and old poached pears can be cooked down to pear butter or pureed for a sorbet base. If you aren't quite happy with something take a minute to think what else you can make with it that you might enjoy better, or that might highlight the potential goodness of the thing.

I knew all along that inside of that bar, there was a delicious chocolate that I would enjoy.

Secondly...and take this to heart. Nothing will give you a better product than buying better ingredients in the first place. From salt to butter to chocolate, if you want flavor, you have to start with something that will give it to you.

the paco jet

is it overrated? is it wonderful? I've had a couple conversations recently about this thing and, for me, I kinda have a hard time respecting it...

At Oleana, Maura had a pacojet because chef Ana saw one on her kitchen tour of WD-50, I think it was, and determined they needed to get one. She used it for sorbet, but spun her ice creams upstairs in the office, in this old and crotchety machine they got from Toscanini's when they first opened.

{this, in itself, is commentary enough on the boston scene...everybody knows everybody else, and they are generally sort of helpful in a noncompetitive way....like, say, when you're deciding to open a bakery, too, why not get information from the owner of the (arguably) most successful bakery in town? the sf scene is, shall we say, different.}

Maura was particular about using the pacojet only for sorbets, but was vague as to the reason why. I next encountered the pacojet on a trail back in September, where I had to re-spin all the ice creams for service and was slightly terrified I'd break the thing.

I do hear that by using a pacojet for ice creams, you've got to change the nature of your base and stabilize the fuck out of it. Which feels intrinsically wrong to me. Not to mention that the cannisters are so damn small (and kinda quenelle-unfriendly, I'd say).

But then that just raises another question. What's the best quantity to produce ice cream in, for a restaurant setting. At Sonsie we'd spin about 6 quarts in some tiny ic maker with a continuous freeze chamber. So all day it'd be spin the ice cream, keep checking on it...bust out other stuff....check the ice cream, spin more ice cream...and by the end of the day we'd have gone through the batch of base. Now we spin probably the same amount, 4-6 quarts I'd say, and that goes into 2 or 3 containers and takes not-very-long to spin. and generally gets used up I'd say in about 2 weeks' time, maybe more. Hard to say.

And that just brings up another question. How does the freezer affect taste? The constant tempering and re-tempering, does it affect the quality of the ice cream? After a week or after a month? I taste all our ice creams fairly often (if not daily) because I'll use any excuse to eat ice cream and I notice sometimes the texture is different to work with/quenelle. But not the taste.

It's sort of hard to meditate on ice cream and not be able to eat some right then and there. {I have, literally, NO FOOD, in my house. like, coffee beans and half a lemon.} Perhaps tomorrow after I look at yet another apartment, I shall take myself to Maggie Mudd.

the sordid details...

(because the monkey wrangler asked)

1. the "who am I really?": For a long time when you googled me (which is to say when I googled myself) the first thing you saw was this: Toby Reid is a faggot Jew. It was the first sentence of a story I wrote and had published. It's actually a really good piece and I still love it, but I always wondered if people randomly coming across it would think I was a bigot. Also, in grad school I wrote a story on terrorism that involved me googling things like "how to make bombs" and "how to get away with arson" so the government probably thinks I'm nuts. And now you all can as well.

2. the "those crazy queers": When I was a kid and my first lil brother was born I was really upset he wasn't a girl. So one time I dressed him up in some old dress I had and my first communion veil and paraded him around the house. He was pre-mobile at the time so let's hope he has no vague memory of it to trouble his masculinity, because lil brothers are fun.

3. the "gold star": I've only ever seen one man naked and that was because I was 25 and confessed to him that fact. He's actually my oldest friend out here in California...

4. the "stupid pastry assistant, no. 1": At my first restaurant job, my boss was having me make an anglaise and a creme brulee base (or it may have been a pot de creme and brulee, but you get the pictures. eggs tempered, custard, etc). So halfway through the process, when I'd brought everything upstairs to the stove and was just waiting on the cream to come to boil, I became convinced I'd put all the sugar in one of the pots and none in the other (save whatever amount was whisked with the yolks). Rather than admit my stupidity, I went ahead with both projects. Since we made desserts for three restaurants and one of these projects was for a distant location, I never really did find out if it was all in my head or if I really fucked up a lot of food. Oops.

5. the "violence against literature": Recently I took The Last Course out of the library (back in Boston, because SF just has no love for Claudia Fleming) out of the library and photocopied the whole thing because I can't afford to buy a marked-up ebay copy and it's out of print. So I have the most ghetto version of that cookbook, but it's okay, I still love it. Also, years ago when I worked at a bookstore I was so fed up with things in my life that I would rip pages in the back of the travel guides. Customers would be able to bring them back for a new copy...plus people would just take them and read them on the floor so lots were pretty banged up anyway.

I truly hope my mom doesn't read this. Now, who to tag?

Budi, even though he probably won't comply because he rarely posts. But every now and then he busts out with an interesting tale from his past, which cracks us all up because now he's spiritual advisor and mediator to the cupcakery.

Richie, because I met him for a half second one day...and because reading his blog I just get the feeling he's got some interesting stories.

Fringe, because this is an ideal project for writers, and I have to post this week so let's conserve out stones, eh?

Jamey, again, with the writers.

and lastly, Maryusa, because she is just so much trouble and who knows what wildness she's committing with her one functional hand!

oh, & the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

where i'm going, where i've been

sfo --> bos, night flight.

i didn't want to come back for this trip. not least because it's winter, because i've just spent 5 days with my mother in sf and would rather get the chance to miss her a lil, because i kind of want to be at work right now, because this trip is for a funeral. lots of things.

i will be back at work in january. i miss it, work. i miss my coworkers. my boss kicked me out of the kitchen early yesterday because it was slow, and i dragged my heels not wanting to go home. we've been so tied up with parties and zaniness lately that i want to remember the rhythm of a normal shift. yesterday morning it was nice to set up the station, get a couple projects underway, find ways to putter helpfully at the station. i cleaned and sanitized the station lowboy, put away the dairy order and eggs, chopped pine nuts, plated a few desserts. it felt nice to get back to the elemental things, the daily necessity.

i think i'm turning into a silly californian. i want to bring things back to my coworkers (pink rosewater aside) but then i feel like nothing we've got here is as good as SF's standards. why bring back jam and delicious cornbread from hi rise when we bay area dwellers can just get acme and june taylor?

(ice cream, sadly, cannot make the trip.)

i've been thinking about boston in this weirdly intense way lately...probably trying to get my feelings in order for this trip. all meta-up in my head like "i don't want to go home right now and what does this mean?" and "the food does not compare and what does this mean?" then i get back and the cold shocks my body before my brain can wake up. and we get in the car and drive through the things that are so familiar i cannot even see them anymore.

it's all just so familiar. the dunkies in the airport. coming through downtown on the pike, passing by fenway and the gun control billboard, seeing the charles and the BU bridge and harvard's sprawl. the way the snowbanks are mostly melted but you can tell they're firm and crunchy enough to walk on. we stop at a bakery first and its windows are steamed-up; the interior is warm and lit and alive with kids rolling dough. i love this bakery. it is one of the three good bakeries in boston (but that in itself is why i left boston).

i am cleaning up my mother's house and going through boxes of clothing in her basement (which is drier than my basement). tonight holds the prospect of more intimacy: dining at the charles hotel with family in town for the funeral. jody adams and rialto (where i once saw cornel west with a white chick (who is he? a west coast friend asked and i knew i was in the west) or else henrietta's table.

i get all these feelings about boston and then i get so close i slip under its skin. it is hard to evaluate what we know intimately. i was telling a friend about all the republicans i know and describing my father and stepmom to him. i told him to picture all the stereotypes about new englanders. how my brothers are ski-golf-basketball players, how they've got a big house in the suburbs, talbots clothing and sweaters. but i am a caricature too. the npr loving, wool-sweater clad, thrift store cambridgey kid. tho on the west coast, i could be anybody, that's the thing about the bay.

when i'm back here i feel like i could always come back here. and when i'm away i understand why i am gone.

The streets are slick with rain, the work is almost done. There are things I need to write about the cake and the glaze, the bizarro Flo Braker jam cookies, baking incidents and whatnot. Meaty and interesting stories, not like this. But right now I'm trying to clean my house for my mother's impending xmas visit. Right after which I will return to Boston for a few days. Family dealings that I am not excited about, but I need to support my mom.

It's hard sometimes, being a good daughter. I've inherited a nice catholic guilt complex and so I feel as though I should not be here in SF going to work every day and laughing with my coworkers, teasing my chef.

But the world goes on when bad things happen. I could have stayed in Boston for new years and I thought about it--or more apt I thought about going to new york to see people I haven't seen in over a year--and then I sat, stuff it, I'm here now. I'm not a good holiday person and I don't really have rituals but I am here now and it seems silly to commit to the next year elsewhere.

I'm cooking brussels sprouts and parsnips now because it's all I have food wise. Delicious, eating at midnight.

...

sometimes i feel so happy
sometimes i feel so sad
sometimes i feel so happy
but mostly you just make me mad
baby you just make me mad

It snows in my mind and in the town where my friends live, spread out across the country. This morning I got an email from an old college friend saying she's moved to New York.

This is not about cooking, but it is. When I moved out here somehow slowly I lost touch with most of my friends back east, which is to say all of my friends except for the one who helped me come out here and those that are new. My old friends, I saw them all in September for a day or an hour, and since then we really haven't spoken. It's not the fault of the restaurant. It's three thousand miles of continent and times zones and the fact that when I'm not working they're either working or sleeping, and though everyone would love to get on a plane and come out to sunny California, no one has any money. I dreamed about a married friend last night. In college we lived together. We're both writers and we both blog. But we don't ever talk.

I'm trying to start trying again. Yesterday I called an old friend and we talked for a good hour. I'd seen him in New York and been in touch with him precisely once since then, at his count.

There's snow in my mind, but I'm not sure why. Is it my lifelong conditioning that the holidays be cold?

I get this way under a lot of stress. Stress....my mother asked me the other day why I was so stressed out over work these days. You Weren't When I Visited, she said. It's The HOLIDAYS I told her. I'll Have A Life In JANUARY But Right Now This Is My Life.

I wrote last night and it felt nice. There's so much editing, reading work to do for Fringe, maybe something else coming up too. I'd sort of like to go to a reading again one of these days...The Stephen Elliot piece in the Chronicle yesterday made me homesick for the company of writers.

Can't say for sure but it looks like I might see snow yet. But only because of sad things...

whiteness, the elephant in the room

How do we read culture? How do we read across cultures? I've stepped up to the plate this month in my editorial duties for Fringe, and as we are preparing for an Ethnos themed issue, our inbox is full of submissions concerning the other. That which is not us. And our us-ness, of course, is a presumed whiteness.

I do on occasionally call people racist.

I do sometimes call people out on their assumptions about race, classifications and bias. A couple of years ago I found myself at the trans-forming feminism conference at SUNY New Paltz getting very angry at the things the panel was saying. I knew many of the panel members because they lived with my farmer.

They were a progressive lot of vegans, vegetarians, activists, artists and though most of them were straight or bi they were active in the intersection of feminism and queer culture. When I first visit their house, one street removed from Main Street Poughkeepsie, a ghost town of blacks and West Indian immigrants, I remarked to my friend that I bet her housemates got a kick out of living so close to the black part of town, and about a year later she told me it was true.

(These people, who had offered me such hospitality and who lived with my friend, ethnically Filipino, were angry and upset about the prevalence of white leadership in the queer community and they were saying that they'd tried to get non-white panelists and leadership, but no one came forward, and if the issue arose next year and still went unresolved they might not continue being active in the conference, or some such thing. I grew very angry in turn that they would assume that their white audience lived in the same white world, and called them on it. Do You Hang Out With White People, Mostly? I asked them. Do You Assume The Rest Of Us Do, Too? I told them how offended I was, because some of my best friends and ex lovers were not white, because I had real relationships with people across those demarcations, and because of my white skin color they were assuming otherwise about me, about all of us. It was real fun.)

Ethnos. def: (1)an ethnic group. (2) people of the same race or nationality who share a distinctive culture

The submissions for the Ethnos issue span a range of ethnic and racial identities and situation. Some are better than others, of course. What makes me feel uneasy is a certain intensity I feel in the reading process concerning what "counts" as Ethnos or whose story is telling us "something new." One of the editors remarked how exciting it was to be receiving so many submissions that were different from us.

Tell us something new. Yes, that is a story. But when you solicit what is different from you for entertainment, when you rank it on its newness and its degree of otherness from what you see yourself as, you skirt a dangerous line. Do you like that piece because it's well written and the dialogue is snappy? Or do you like it because it's about people whose skin is a certain color, people who live in poverty you will never know even if you can't pay your student loan bills, people whose life experiences you feel do not mirror your own?

My attitudes and feelings toward race are one of the many things I have to thank Vassar for. I grew up in an all-white suburb of Boston where "inner city" kids were bussed to our public schools from failing, crumbly Boston schools. As a graduate student many years later I worked in one of those schools {in South Boston, where the Irish population met the integration buses with rocks, and whose entrenched population of lower class Irish-Americans are being met by an influx of Vietnamese immigrants and wealthy white gentrification}. I consider myself fortunate to have gone to college in a town that had so many interesting ethnic enclaves, and to have befriended people who are not "like" me in those ways. I think I feel some of the same dis-identification and dis-orientation they feel with mainstream white American culture. That's not my life and my choices and my experience reflected on your television. And it's fine, really, except I disengage from a lot of media and want my stories and writing and reading material to be about More than a lot of stories tend to address.

I don't think we have the power to say what is new or different with such a qualitative voice. What's new to me may not be new to you. I don't want a scale ranking whose authentic experience bests whose, whose imagined conflict between whiteness and nonwhiteness covers more new territory. As an editor it's a rough decision because I have to pick and choose. I could stand up as I did in that conference room and tell them that our whiteness is not a uniform blanket and if they desire more or different cultural experiences, to go out into the world and make more friends. Why should we get to decide whose voice is hot or new or most compelling?

Are we even a "we"?

Who gets to write whose experiences? Who gets to control? When we choose to read or write these kinds of difficult stories what are we saying?

I came to the kitchen from the academy and sometimes I feel like I need to go back, back out of the real world and into the bookishness. I've been feeling that pull a lot lately. I could be reading obscure essays and writing critical studies of current queer and trans fiction, the L word, what have you. I could be teaching a room full of eighteen year olds obtuse theories. But that room and that life became a promise of someday and when-I'm-published-and-esteemed and I came down from that world and fell into kitchens. And you can't stay in kitchens unless you are Doing and Doing and Thinking get all up in each other's way. I'm all up in my head these days and I'm not sure why or how to come back down. Things are best at home when I'm baking, and when the thing is in the oven and I can come back to the computer and work with words. Maybe because those spaces are fluid and there is no need to move awkwardly among roles, I'm doing and then I'm writing, and when I'm stuck over a scene or sentence there is the timer to distract me. How to move in and out of worlds, how to cross boundaries and borders, how to slip past guards and guardedness, how to occupy illicit spaces, do I always have to be so queer?

Bring me back down, Out of the cloudedness. Give me a persimmon, a yuzu, tell me it'll be okay.

exciting moments in the life of a cook

1. new desserts appear seemingly out of nowhere...they're cute and monochromatic and i know i need to eat the whole thing to really understand how the flavors all work but still i nibble at pieces.

2. i've been trailing on garde manger for the last few nights and tonight i finally had a nice, well respected salad mound of beautiful greens and persimmon. it sounds stupid, yes, but, like, it finally *looked* nice.

3. sometimes, le tigre just comes blasting out of the pastry kitchen.

4. {this might be all i want to say}. i finally met some yuzus. i stared at some at the FPFM a couple weeks back but didn't buy any because i'm never home and i figured if it was the start of citrus season they'd only get better. back before persimmons were even a twinkle in my eye, a little over a year ago, i had it in my mind i was going to track down a yuzu and it just wasn't gonna happen from boston. it was something of a status-symbol fruit in that only one place in town was doing anything with yuzu (ken oringer and rick billings, naturally), and you couldn't get it anywhere, but in bigger cities everything was yuzulicious. i may be crazy, *but* i was the only one to identify the marigold colored fruit. i juiced a bunch and tomorrow or sometime we'll candy some rinds. today i also fell in love with citrus a little.

5. i had one of those blinding revelations artists claim to have on my way home tonight. i'm thinking about a new story, letting the character gel in my head (and this morning i just finished a draft of something else so i am free to pursue this new piece). i was kicking over some obvious facts pertaining to the character's habits and i just knew thematically that he'd have to meet someone else very specific and if that happened--if the specific guy took the place of the general person--then the story would receive that gift...the puzzle pieces would be specific and not random. whatever else the story is to be about {delusional line cooks, squandered opportunity, grief, drugs, homoeroticism, lonelinesses} it's got that link, that thing, that component you can't quite name but can taste, intuit, hunger for. how did it come to me? why did it come to me? from what place does it come? as much as i want real answers for everything there's a certain amount of intuition and mucking around in the dark that come with pursuing creative occupations.

6. being so-very-thankful for my coworkers being amazing. because they are. and i'm not just saying this because they might read it {which they might} but because it's true.

bakery list/local chocolates

My list of New York options is growing out of bounds of what one girl can possibly eat, but here it is, as the Chowhouds add and amend. Any comments? Anything I should see or do in the city I love to hate, other that the trip to my favorites the Strand + Dean and Deluca?


Balthazar Bakery
Buttercup
Chelsea Market/Amy's Bread
City Bakery
Doughnut Plant
Il Laboratorio del Gelato
Kee's Chocolates
Kyotofu
Madeleine Patisserie
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery (LES)
Birdbath/Build a Green Bakery (West Village, East Village)
Black Hound (East Village)
Ceci-Cela (Soho)
Levain (UWS)
Bouchon Bakery (UWS)


Dinner hopefully at either p*ong or Momofuku Ssam.

And would I pass up the chance to visit a Somerville chocolatier in his chocolate workshop and stalk the elusive orchid root here?

The Beehive is tonight. I have been waiting at least nine months for this restaurant to open and I'm so very glad I get to go. !!

it's midnight and my. stomach. hurts

Tonight I found out a piece of my food writing is going to be published online in a few weeks. The journal had been really interested back in April or thereabouts and dropped the ball. While there are a lot of things I like within the piece it's sort of a negative piece in a lot of ways--definitely not a favorite with the writing group--if an important piece for me. It's strange to publish something I don't feel like I LOVE...although I do feel it's important, at least personally (though that is not a great reason)...it speaks to a lot of things I feel about this industry, and it's very of a certain time in my life, and it's perhaps challenging to think of it out of that time.

Nervousness and listmaking. My vacation is almost half over and there is so much left to do. It's so wonderful to see each person I get to see, but it's also an obligation:

do not leave anyone out.

So people want to see me again or have coffee or go driving but there's no time.

To go to New York or not. I will want to have gone by the time I'm back in California. It's just a lot to plan. Right now I'm researching bakeries and whatnot I want to hit up and I still don't really have dinner plans {which I should just make, right} and it's like...this is my vacation...like, relax already. The list so far:


il laboratorio del gelato
buttercup cakery
city bakery
doughnut plant
kee's chocolates
amy's bread/chelsea market
balthazar
kyotofu


Boys night out on the town Saturday to check out the new club, but it was all posturing and bored girls, me included. Been spending lots of time lately with people who remind me of myself too much and it's strange to see my reaction mirrored in someone else's face.

You can accuse me of being too intense, and you'd probably be right

I went to Oleana tonight. There are a lot of things I want to say about Oleana...and Aziza as well while we're discussing Turkish-North African cuisine...

{and I've tried to write already about Aziza a couple of times but it doesn't come out in a way that satisfies me as being accurate, and then there's sort of a lil rant I'm not sure if I should get into even though it really bothered me and it still bothers me a week later}

so for now there is only the things we ate at Oleana:

padron peppers with fleur de sel, yogurt
warm buttered humus with basturma, olives
zaatar focaccia
fideos with chickpeas and chard
spinach falafel with greens, beets, tahini
crispy zaatar-lemon chicken with turkish cheese pancake, greens
swordfish with eggplant-macaroni timbale
goat's milk ice cream (made with sahleb!!) with blueberry jellies, blueberry sauce, rose petal jam
umm ali with peaches and peach jam, honey pot de creme


and Aziza:

grilled flatbreads with mediterannean spreads
giant lima beans with roasted tomatoes, feta, fresh zaatar
chicken basteeya


There were so many familiar taste memories in those desserts. Not surprising-many of the components I'd tasted before, or at least variations on a theme.


I'm nervous about everything that happens when I get back to San Francisco, but that is another list to be made. It's easy to be here and it's easy to slip into things.Being back here is so emotional. Every street corner in Somerville is the scene of secrets, fights, attraction, breakups, longing. It's so marked in so many ways that diminish the abstractions I seek in SF. I moved away for food? I start to think...and it all seems so trite.

as of yesterday I am no longer a cupcake-maker

This is by choice, first off.

I have been angsty lately; this much is obvious.

What I hope is and has been less obvious is this: I have been looking for a new job for the last month or so, ever since one really bad day at work.

For much of that time it was just waiting on one job that I desperately wanted. Actually, it wasn't desperate. I felt fairly confident I would get the position, since I had good references who knew the boss, a lot of experience in the position's requirements, and an abnormal amount of interest in taking the position. But I didn't get the job for various reasons.

After this the angst set in. I realized the junction at which I've arrived: find someone good to work under, while I am still new to my own positions of power, and learn as much as possible from one really strong individual, or else continue taking positions where I call the shots but only learn as I go, from my own mistakes and efforts. What to do. What to do when you feel as I do the decision's been made for you by finances. When you work in this field for some time, your experience demands compensation even if you aren't asking for it per se. At that point the fear set in that I was no longer hireable by a really good chef for reasons that had only to do with money.

All the while, of course, I've been working my fifty hour work weeks and spending my free time in trails. I had my first restaurant trail since March (and they ended up not hiring anyone, but giving their current assistant more hours, though they say they may call me to beg for help when holiday madness descends) and started missing in a physical way (and not an intellectual way, as I always have) restaurant kitchens. That kitchen I trailed in, it was stocked with all the best toys.

So now that I have quit I am going home for a week. Frolicking around SF this weekend with my friend who should be touching down in Oakland very soon. Then going back to Boston, getting to NYC for a day, coming back here and, well, we'll see.


Still working at FH, by the way. Thinking about a brown sugar spice cake with diced poached pears, but then I won't be around for a couple of weeks so nothing new happening yet. What to do with the bread pudding when peaches are gone, hmmm. As they will be soon.

In the profusion of something continuously new, like the parade of stone fruits this summer, you forget how there will be an end. I bought peaches today for another crisp because I hear they'll soon be through. I also bought the most amazing Asian pears, because I understand now that when I like something I have to get it. I've missed too many amazing fruits thinking they'd just be there next week. These Asian pears, they're called Hosui and they taste like vanilla and brandy. Like a long conversation with a good friend. Like how I cried today when I got my farmer-friend on the phone and realized I will see her in NYC in two weeks time.

I still have not told you about the prep cookery, but I'll just say this for now: learning to work the large grill on the fly in ninety degree heat without burning mountains of delicate asparagus spears. Being begged to apply for a job there. Being totally respected by the chefs even though I was an impostor in the savory side of things.


It's challenging to say yes to the things you know are right for you when it means saying no to money and you struggle with having so little of it. It's hard to say yes with your whole heart and sometimes it takes a little while to be ready to say it. To do it.

Some of you know how long I've been looking for something more aptly suited to my interests. I'll wash up in a kitchen soon enough and I tell you this one thing:

It will have a range. Not a hot plate that plugs into the wall.

The piece of advice that comes most often to mind is something I read somewhere, and I wish I remember where, and it more or less reads as followed:

When you are overwhelmed {in a kitchen}...in the weeds, as we say...the best thing to do is not rush hastily into some task but take a moment to clean your workspace. When your space is free of clutter and wiped clean, you can really get to work. It's a strategy I used many times at Sonsie when a cluster of desserts-to-be-plated interrupted my mise, and something I try to do in the chaos that is the Saturday market scene in the hot, postage-stamp-sized, my-stove-plugs-into-the-wall kitchen.

{I've recently started missing professional ranges}

I've never had a problem with drive. I've always been after something (much less often someone). I came fairly early to the obvious art of writing and less early to the immediate pleasures and discipline of cooking. I admit to floundering for a while during culinary school (but can it really be called floundering if you're finishing a Masters program, taking 20 hours a week of culinary class and holding down a kitchen job three days a week with someone who either a)didn't want any help anyway or b)didn't want to be there himself anyway?). These last six months I've been acting on the impulse that suddenly made sense, the lens through which everything I'd always pursued was refracted. So what if it meant moving to California? People tend not to believe me when I tell them the things I was looking for in kitchen work were not really going on in Boston and I'm not sure why this is.

{on a super small scale, yes, they were. but on a hey-i-can-afford-a-pastry-assistant scale, nah.}

So here I am and have been and will be and my focus is closing in and it feels great. It feels wonderful. It makes me think that I can still surprise myself. The question now-and there are many questions now-is how to get the rest of the tools I need.

I would like to work with someone who is fast and who doesn't stop working on making things better. I would like to work with someone who appreciates bread and other yeasty things. I would like to work with someone who knows more than I do. I would like to work in a rush of cooks who are digging and digging for something interesting to do. I would like to work with a dough sheeter and a fancy range and industrial sized ice cream makers or maybe tiny and efficient Paco Jets. I would like to play with toys. I would like to work the line. I would like to commit reckless acts of butchery both sweet and savory. I would like to work...

but then I work, already

all
the
time.

or so it feels.

I am trying to be patient and know that they way to the information I desire will manifest itself and it may not (is not, has not been) the way that is easy or first apparent.

It is odd I do think that my position at FH has only closed one door to me, being the door that brought me out here, but it is an entryway into so many more interesting things.

And in the spirit of getting-to-play-with-stone-fruit,

I am trying to recall a cake. We made it early on in culinary school, before the basics had really set in. The cake had apricots and peaches but I'm improving it with nectarines. Cheffy called it a clafoutis cake, but it wasn't a proper clafoutis. Nevertheless it was creamy and moist. Like pound cake or brioche soaked in cream, that tender. {but I am not trying to make pain perdu}. I shared it with an ex-friend. I have the recipe, but I tried to recreate it and ended up with inedible disks. I'm going to try it again tomorrow morning on the off-chance I left something out. It is an almond flour cake {though I of course have to make my own almond flour, nonetheless, that shouldn't matter}. It lacks something significant...eggs? No...butter {or oil}. Almond flour, sugar, eggs + yolks, cornstarch, cream, fruit. I've gone through my cookbook library but there isn't anything comparable. How do you search for the-creamiest-cake-ever? I'll google it and keep you updated. And this is also what I need to learn: how to recreate memories in food.

Food is a damn manipulative medium. I've thought all along the writers were the real hucksters but the food artists are guilty of equally great shams.

I do miss restaurants, I do. So much. What puzzles me is why per se. I tend to be a creature of instinct more so than others, so maybe the why is not important.

Of the things I want, what do I get to get? And are they the right things to want? Will the conversations I think I need to have get me answers? What am I still supposed to do with all the information I have, because it really isn't currency if it's a secret? Why are all bakers so gossipy? Who googles me and misspells my name? Why have I been wanting a FOH job lately even at some cheesy tourist hole to bankroll some of thing knowledge-searching? Who are the fellow bodies of this industry and what do they want? Why do I let my anxieties override what my hands know?

Thing is, everyone's weird in a kitchen. We're pasty and sun-deprived, up too early or up too late. If I were still in Boston I'd be {well, probably working somewhere specific with a pastry chef I remember liking a lot, that is, if nothing better had happened along} faced with a rough job market and a much harder shot at getting any of those questions answered. That is if I'd even figured out as much as I have since last November.

The last year has been a string of hot pursuits. Finding a FT job(August). Realizing I needed to move 3000 miles (November). Handing in a quite good short story manuscript for the master's thesis (December). Finding a way to get out here (January). Giving notice and moving (February-March). Getting a job out here (March) or two (May). Landing a dog-friendly yet affordable SF apartment (June). Understanding what will one day be (July). Is August going to be coming full circle or am I, as always, anxious to overanalyze?

In life as in writing I'm always impatient to evolve and it's a fault I have a difficult time tempering.

Considering making a summer trifle with the leftovers of the sponge cake in the freezer at FH and some yummy verbena-spiked peach-berry compote.

What I meant to say and perhaps have not said is yes, the list, the things that are so many and varied I am in the weeds: it's time to take the first step and clean off the table.

notes on caramel, and rituals

At this moment, I'm in Birmingham, Alabama, using the free wifi that DFW and SFO for some reason lacked. In TX I got myself some Dunkin Donuts for the first time since left Boston in March. I *LOVE* Dunkies. It is in my blood. Defenders of Krispy Kreme, y'all don't know what you're talking about. Dunkies is simply always there, whether it's when you're waiting for the bus to pick you up in Central Square and deposit you outside Clio where you kind of wish you were working instead of opposite the dark scary alley you've got to walk down to get to Sonsie where you actually are {were} working or whether it's to get a caffeine hit for your four hour discussion of postmodern literature or the metaphors of Salman Rushdie. Dunkies isn't about good coffee. It's cheap. Weak roast and with a slightly nutty taste. Scalding hot at least if you drink it black like I do. You can't miss the neon pink and hunting orange signs.

Last night I made use of my expiring dairy products and churned the salted caramel ice cream base I'd made. But first I stood with the salt shaker upturned in my palm shaking out grains of plain iodized salt (because really need to get something other than they grey smoked salt, though that might be interesting in ice cream), salting lightly, stirring and tasting. It finally got to a point where it was deliciously salty sometimes and other times I was tired of tasting it. So I churned.

Both times I've made that ice cream the caramel takes on a bitter, smoky complex taste. The first time my friend and I danced around my Somerville apartment licking the dripping off the ice cream paddle and proclaiming it better than sex.

Caramel-and I always want to say Carmel now that I'm on the west coast, as if 'm talking about that town-is such a complicated thing for pastry people.

There is never precise agreement about when to pull a pot of sugar off the heat, nor is there any one way to cook the sugar. In school my pastry chef insisted we bring the sugar to a boil and then skim off impurities, something I've never done elsewhere. Only when our sugar was clean could we proceed to cook it, and you had best be sure the whole time we were brushing off the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in water the whole time. It made me happy to see Lydia Shire cooked her sugar that way for butterscotch-making. Oh yeah, and we cooked sugar without adding water to the pan. Punks I tell you!

Other people, like my Sonsie boss and the cupcake crew, just add water and mix to sand consistency and then leave damn well enough alone until it starts to turn. Never stir the pot or else you risk recrystallizing the sugar.

One day at Sonsie I left a pot of candying orange segments on too long. They'd been at 213 F for a wicked long time and just got wrapped up in something else, went over with my thermometer to check, and had caramel with orange pieces. In my frustration I threw most of it away before I realized it was probably going to be most delicious. It was heaven.

My cupcake boss has this theory right now that taking caramel too dark causes it to separate out later as it sits on the shelf for a few days. My theory is there's too much butter in it and that settles out to the bottom. Either way she's on us now to pull the sugar at a super light amber stage. But it's in the cooking that you pull out the flavor. It's a balance between burning it (something I have not done, though I've burnt other things, most recently making the mistake of putting a pot 'd made curd in back on a burner that wasn't off and managing to ignore the fact that the kitchen smelled like lemons when it shouldn't. Yeah that was a bad one.) and cooking it.

At Sonsie, my boss would also show me the color he wanted caramelized confections--almond brittle, or candied nuts. Then as the menu rolled on for months I'd stick to the original mark and watch as his batched got lighter and lighter.

I have a strong palate. I like a lot of coffee in my coffee flavored things and have yet to find a natural coffee flavor I prefer to Trablit.

I love the process of caramel, the debates. Get five people around a stove and have them each tell you when they'd stop it. Pull the pan off the heat adding SLOWLY oh you'll learn why your cream or other liquid and your butter. There's something so magical about watching the sugar start to seize, stirring it out, slowly dissolving the mass back into usable product. It's dangerous, this whole cooking sugar thing.

But it tastes so good.

jam-time!

I figured out what I want to do with those pluot-plums in the freezer, and the wad of rose petals I ganked from the Albany shoreline trail and my old Fruitvale house. Plum-rose jam!

I haven't made jam in a long time, not since culinary school when we made buckets of jam, any and all flavors. Some of them are still sitting around my Somerville house. Some were given away as presents. Not sure when I will get around to this jam, but likely I'll try to get a sourdough starter going so that my the time I'm jammed up there will be good toast. I am such a bread-brat these days; I only eat Acme.

My favorite jam excursion is from my days on the farm, when I went across the river to my favorite farmer EVER's house and we had gallons of strawberries from the PFP and we made jam all day long, some with pectin and some without. I'm sure we talked about love, and why we love the wrong people or love too soon, too long, or without giving away all of ourselves. But now I only remember the jam.

I've got three fresh burns from last week as a reminder not to work distracted, and worked distracted all day.


I just got to say to a friend Autumn leaves and apples!

This is why I'm going to Boston in October (and hopefully NYC, the city I love to hate, as well). I make up little lists that go something like apples, apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, apples, ICA, Oleana, East Coast Grill, Lydia Shire stories, Herrell's, Harvard square, crunch of leaves
or
finding the Doughnut Plant for real, McNulty's, Bklyn, Grand Central, the 6 train, my two favorite places on Broadway ever, will I ever eat at Gramercy Tavern, I could go to Babbo, maybe I'll go be a line cook like Bill Buford, still haven't been to Cafe Lalo, or the Cloisters, Spuyten Duyvil, did I really ever live here.

God I love apples and I'm so nervous they won't have my apples here.

Thinking of doing utterly crazy things, specifically two, but they are secrets.


No more cooking with herbs. Get over this lavender, rose geranium, lemon verbena, slight thyme kick. Find something else and it better not be a spice.

Ai, forgot to make Chez Panisse reservations. I'm gong to have to put Chez Panisse in my cell phone and that is kind of sad. Determined also to go to another fine restaurant while Leah's here...Where I have been in this town: A16, Delfina, Frisson, Jardiniere.

local eating/thursday rant, or Pardon My Low Blood Sugar

7 pm now and I just finished dinner, after not eating anything all day except for an unfrosted carrot cupcake and a frosted mini cupcake. Dinner was brown rice, lentils, onions, carrots, kale and those ever-lasting 79 cent mushrooms spiced up with some ras el hannout and toasted cumin seeds. I've got some shortbread in the oven (trying out Tartine's recipe, but with lavender and walnuts mixed in.) If it comes out well (skeptical as it's now been in the oven about double the suggested time, but that might just be what I get for using an 8x8 pyrex and not a 6x10) I'm taking it to the potluck.

I was going to put a big post last night about the scraps n leftovers local meal I had...local egg omelette with avocado and Star Route spinach. And leftovers of the best rice I've ever made...Massa's organic brown rice with sauteed spinach, mushrooms, shallot and zaatar mixed in. But then my old college friend called, so I went out to a bar in the Castro where I got mistaken for a man in the bathroom line, got some perspective on the 9 to 5 (or whenever) lifestyle, and discussed our pathetic singledom in a bar full of cute, look-alike fag couples.

I'm on the verge of getting sick and this not eating thing really isn't helping. I brought food today but the cupcakery was zany and even though I promised myself ten minutes for lunch after finishing the vanilla batters that turned into 'll just eat it while I heat the juice for curd and make american buttercream which then turned into well it's one thirty and I'm here till three I'll just take a bite of carrot.

I should just get a tattoo on my forehead that reads I require clear and effective communication and while that might save me a lot of headaches I probably wouldn't get any dates. As I tell my FH coworkers on market day, just make me a list. Cause I'm very good at getting done what needs to be done.

Chef gossip at the cupcakery but I'm not spilling.

I hung out with my favorite cupcake slingers the other night. Took them blackberry picking on Bernal Heights where they, two native SFers, had never been. They gave me their berries in exchange for a promised pie, and I gave them tips on east coast living since their respective college are in Boston and NYC. We went for burritos in the Mission and I understood for the first time how you could prefer burritos to a slice. Time for a good slice, perhaps, as opposed to a whole yuppified pizza?

I've got tickets to Boston in October! Give me apples, autumn leaves, a chance to go to Beehive, the new ICA...if I weren't so food deprived I'd be jumping up and down.

sunday rant

Oh yum, there are 12 cups of real Maine blueberries waiting for me to get back to Boston and make pies! Xmas duck and blueberry pie anyone? I'll be back home before then...October sometime, for leaves and apples and Burdick's hot chocolate. Dunkin Donuts. Oleana. Herrell's, Toscanini's, Hi Rise toast with maple butter MMMh.

What I really wanna know is HOW we went through an entire batch of vanilla buttercream today, almost. Which is to say three pounds of egg whites twelve pounds of butter just over three pounds of sugar. I don't think there's enough left for much after tomorrow morning, which means we've got to make some fresh off the bat, and tomorrow is our most understated day. It's up to me and one other baker to get out 28 times 24 cupcakes frosted fourteen different ways. Plus the orders decorated. With no help for the first two hours of our shift and after our one lone helper comes, we've got to get into batters for the day. I made vanilla buttercream yesterday, that was part of me running around like a zoo monkey. I made a whole batch. How did we not notice it disappearing so fast? I'm so tired of being fucked before I even begin to pick up a pastry bag two days out of five in my work week. And I'm tired of certain people getting preferential treatment in their scheduling and others getting not enough respect for putting out 1,440 cupcakes on a day that's our third busiest and least staffed and for having to do it again tomorrow. I'm going to crawl into bed with the pizza I'm making when it's finished (green zebras, spinach, mushrooms), watch reruns of the L Word and Sex in the City, and work on my knitting.

my best private moments are in public ...

The FPFM was hopping today as usual! Cardoons, stinging nettles, purslane, lemon basil, heirloom tomatoes in all stripes and colors, figs, peppers sweet and hot. I intended to go shopping for some tomatoes and maybe some greens, lemon basil perhaps.

But then I was seduced on my way to the secret bathroom, where all the chefs and otherwise cool kids trot off to. I found a man sampling grapes, and when I asked to try one he handed me a cluster. I knew they weren't Concords but they looked similar in color. I smiled my thanks and ran off toward the bathroom, absentmindedly plucking a grape off the stem, popped it in my mouth, and came to a stop. The flavor of that grape jolted me, and I didn't move, didn't sway an inch except for the slack-jawed expression on my face of disbelief and thrill, but I felt naked in public. Had I known that grapes could taste like that? Or rather, that grapes could taste so purely and sweetly and not be the thickly fleshy, sexual kind where you work your tongue around the seed, the sort of grapes the Hudson Valley recalls though surely they are everywhere? I promised the man that I'd be back and then I continued my trek to the bathroom, pulling grapes into my mouth and almost laughing, bursting in on strangers in the bathroom, disrobing from my uniform, becoming a person again and not the white uniform.

I bought the grapes (I got them at Alfieri, and I'm planning a trip back Tuesday to see if there are more). And some Green Zebras, some lemongrass for coconut ice cream or sorbet), some spinach from the very expensive Star Route. Two things more on the FPFM: I really love the berries I've been getting from Yerena. They're organic. The blackberries last week were the best I've ever had. The strawberries are prime flavor this week. And best of all they give me heaps of berries (24 baskets between three kinds) for 44 dollars. And second, the Apple Store place in the FPFM had a large bundle of apple sticks tied together and a sign saying Faggot for Hearth or Bonfire. Technically a faggot is indeed a bundle of sticks, but cmon, I think its usage has evolved past that point and I really don't think the farmers market is the place to question your relationship to sexuality.

Cooking tonight for social events. The THINGy ice cream, for the cupcakery. And a grape-rosemary focaccia with my amazing grapes for a potluck in Oakland tomorrow night. Pictures when I can find the digital camera cable.

Body memory tonight while preparing the focaccia. It came time to stretch the dough, and so I oiled a half sheet pan and slowly got ready, not looking forward to this part. I lay my ball of dough on the half sheet pan and then I remembered how I'd done this twice a week for six months (and before that as well in another position). That it was in me, the method to stretch the dough was something my hands knew, even if my brain was nervous and out of practice. So I let them go at it, pulling and stretching and that dough just poured through my fingers out to the edges of the pan like it knew I was the master. It's baking now and I can just begin to smell it. Got to check if the ice cream base is cold. I'm sleepy. Cupcakery was intense today. I hauled my ass for three hours, busting out two 30 quart Hobart batch size buttercreams start to finish in an HOUR while depanning cupcakes, whipping frostings and then on to the decorating frenzy. Left me exhausted. I've been very tired this week. Lots of things on my mind, mostly women and work, and writing.

I want someone to come shopping at the farmers markets with me. And I want someone to share these private moments in public with. Then I get cold when people call me {well, people who haven't had the balls to call me in a year} and say I'm busy like in the middle of five different things gotta run. I want to say that the door closed, and you lost the right to be my friend when you treated me like such a stranger. And you mostly lack the cojones to question that. But is that really the right thing to do? Sometimes I miss these people but they act so much like children. I miss Somerville tonight. Cambridge. I'm on a quest for sahlab and other things appropriate to middle eastern ice creams. Tell me, Bay Area, that someone somewhere is making ice cream with sahlab. Somewhere there is dondurma, somewhere the strange ice cream with noodles that my manager wants. Because, really, are you gonna let Boston have one up on you?