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January 28, 2007

Oversized Babies

I had lunch with coworkers Clay and Lloyd the other day, and somehow this harmless little blog became the subject of general criticism. I'm paraphrasing, but the conversation went something like this:

L: "You're always writing about this soup you made or whatever."
C: "Yeah, go out on a limb -- write something edgy. You could do that."
Me: "Can't do that. You sent the URL to everyone at work, remember? I'm doomed to write about safe topics. Anyone could be reading it."
L: "Why don't you write about oversized babies? That's a big thing."
Me: "Uh, okay. Oh wait -- you should write a guest entry about that!"
Lloyd: "I can do that? Really?"
Me: "Sure. I'll write an intro about how Lloyd says this blog should be more interesting, so here's his post about oversized babies."
Clay (agreeing): "Exactly! The blog isn't edgy, so here's a post from my friend about his cute, healthy baby."

So much help these people are.

Posted by csageday at 01:55 PM | Comments (4)

How To Eat at a Sushi Bar

I came across this spoof of sushi bar etiquette (and foreign interpretations of Japanese culture) a while back. If you regularly eat sushi and hear about how to and how not to do things (e.g., do not soak your sushi in soy sauce), it's pretty funny. D and I now say "ma ma ma ma" and "o toh toh toh" and crack up when pouring beer at Japanese restaurants -- I though I'd post this so people know what we're laughing about. The reference to 3.2 inches and 48 degrees at the beginning should tip you off, even though the whole thing is put together as a pretty convincing instructional video. I'm sure there are a many references that we're not getting, too, but many are pretty obvious ("toro is a junk food for low income earners. The fish is recycled..."). Maybe Clay or someone else with a bit more Japanese know how will read this and explain it to us.

Posted by csageday at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

My Year in Cities, 2006

Might as well build on last year's effort and post a list of cities. 2007 promises to be interesting, with Albuquerque kicking things off. Highlights of last year include finally seeing Boston (the T is so weird!) and finally getting to Spain with D after a long hiatus.

My Year in Cities, 2006

New York, NY
Boston, MA
West Orange, NJ
Somewhere in New England for a wedding
Saratoga Springs, NY
Wilmington, DE
Cape Cod, MA
Mantoloking, NJ
Minerva, NY
Madrid, Spain
Barcelona, Spain
Hondarribia, Spain
Santander, Spain

Oh, right. And there was a wedding up north...somewhere. Isn't that kind of pathetic that I can't even remember which STATE it was in? Vermont or NH, I think. It was a family deal, so I just got in the minivan and went.

Posted by csageday at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)

I'll Be Quirky

We are headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a long weekend (quick, close your eyes and try to spell the name of that city). I need to go there for a conference for work, but since the conference ends Friday, D decided to join me and do something over the weekend. Only there isn't much in Albuquerque. There seems to be a flea market and some museums. Also, I thought New Mexico was warmer than New York. Not so. It'll be in the 40s.

It's kind of like booking a flight to a random American city and hoping for the best. Aside from an interesting landscape and southwestern-themed food and architecture, I have no idea what to expect. I looked up the satellite photo to get a general idea of things.

I started asking around about Albequerque a few weeks ago, hoping to find a bunch of people who would respond with enthusiasm and tell me exactly where to go and what to do. That didn't exactly happen, but with persistence I found someone at the Co-op who had lived there. Go to Jemez Springs, she said. Or Santa Fe or Taos (Santa Fe is only an hour away). She also mentioned UFO sighting areas (Roswell) and nuclear testing sites (why, exactly, would anyone want to visit one of those?).

Since then, we've done research, and a co-worker of D's has sent lots of information about restaurants and such. Plus, D has rented us a car and booked rooms at a lovely B&B outside of Santa Fe. And there's a Georgia O'Keefe museum that I'm excited to see. There should be opportunities for good photography, too. If you have any knowledge of this part of the country you'd like to share, please do.

Posted by csageday at 12:44 AM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2007

Sunday Dinner

We rarely cook meat at home. First, I was a vegetarian for a year or so, primarily for environmental reasons. I wanted to become more conscious of how much meat I regularly ate, and how much of a strain that put on natural resources (an exorbitant amount of energy and water goes into raising an animal, and American practices of raising meat en masse are disturbing). As expected, the experiment was an eye opener, and D and I have been much more conscious of our eating habits since.

When I finally returned to eating meat, we didn't introduce it back into the kitchen right away. Instead, it remained a special-occasion item. Inevitably, though, I became intrigued by the many possibilities of pork on a grill, and then pork in the oven, or bacon in or wrapped around anything, and now meat (of the sustainable, free range variety) is making an appearance in our refrigerator more often.

I still haven't made many classic dishes -- meatloaf, stew, steak, meat lasagna, meatballs, etc. -- and a roasted chicken is one of them. A few months back, a friend said something about how easy it was to roast a chicken -- just put a half a lemon in the cavity, rub salt and pepper and olive oil or butter on the outside, and stick it in the oven. It did sound easy, but if I was going to roast a chicken, I wanted it to be a bit more exciting. When I saw this lovely-looking recipe on Simply Recipes (a web site I love and trust), I decided to give it a try. (My mother also assured me that I really couldn't ruin a roasted chicken).

There's something festive about roasting an entire bird. There are various awkward limbs, innards, and wings to deal with, and you might come across a remnant of a feather. If you don't regularly roast chickens, you'll be reminded of Thanksgiving. You'll also be reminded in the process of handling the beast that an animal has lived its entire life to become a meal. For you.

I enjoyed roasting and eating this chicken so much more than I've enjoyed other recent cooking projects. While cleaning the chicken, I discovered the neck (great for gravy and stock!) and livers inside the cavity. I LOVE chicken livers, so I gleefully threw them in the skillet with some butter and onions and had a damned fine snack. (Despite loving to eat chicken livers, cooking them was also a first for me, though I grew up in a liver-loving household). Derek did NOT enjoy the miniscule, teeny tiny piece of liver I forced him to eat.

True to form, I couldn't follow the recipe exactly as it was written. Instead of stuffing the chicken with lemon and thyme (such a waste!), I made a proper batch of stuffing out of celery, cubed bread, marjoram (& sage & thyme), and onions sauteed in lots of butter. Otherwise, I did what Elise said: rub bird with salt & pepper and olive oil, place in cast iron pan and surround with carrots, garlic cloves, and a cup of chicken broth, bake for 1 1/4 hour. Plus, I remembered toward the end that Mom had (in her infinite wisdom, knowing that I was nearing the chicken-roasting phase of my cooking education) given me a fancy meat thermometer for Christmas. I dug it out, stuck it in, and it promptly announced (it has a voice feature), that my chicken would be done, "in eight minutes." It even counted down from ten toward the end, and reminded me to baste the bird (the recipe calls for regular basting).

The chicken tasted fabulous. The carrots were even better -- really sweet and fortified with the flavor of the chicken broth and not a small amount of chicken fat. I made no-knead bread alongside the chicken and the pair made for a decadent Sunday dinner. Tonight, I embellished the leftovers with gravy and currant jelly.

Posted by csageday at 10:32 PM | Comments (3)

January 21, 2007

Post-Fire Update

I realized that I never really gave an accounting of the post-fire changes in our building. The fire resulted in at least one eviction. The (rather loud) neighbors living next-door to the apartment with the fire were evicted. Why, I don't know, but I'm guessing something our landlord didn't like was discovered when the firemen went in there. One morning not long after the fire, there was a Marshall's notice and a padlock on the door.

The tenant in the apartment with the fire was forced out for having too many people living in there, or for some other reason -- possibly the fire itself, we don't know. Then, finally, our next door neighbor got frustrated with the pace of the fixes to her place, and left. So we have three new couples living here now: all paying more than us instead of way less than us. Six months ago, we didn't think anything would cause the rent stabilized tenants to leave -- now nearly all of them are gone. I'm sure our landlords are thrilled, but the whole thing feels weird. I'm also wondering if our landlords will raise our rent this summer. After a year with a fire, one month of soggy soot, holes in our walls, two months of construction downstairs, and related unpleasantness in the stairwell, I'd be pretty upset if they tried to do that.

Posted by csageday at 03:53 PM | Comments (2)

2007: Year of the Muffin

Santa gave me a muffin tin this Christmas. I asked for it with the idea that I could make cupcakes and maybe make something that could serve as breakfast on the way to work. I've never been a huge fan of muffins, since they can be dry and too heavy in the morning (and perhaps a bit too close to cake to be healthy). But I figured that if I were in charge of the recipe, I might be able to make something acceptable.

Before I continue, though: What is the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? The latter is cake poured into a muffin tin, and is more likely to contain frosting, but if I make little lemon-frosted cakes...are they cupcakes or muffins? I did that with a meyer lemon cake mix from Williams Sonoma first (good, better with icing, but not fabulous), and wasn't sure which category they belonged to.

Regardless, I tried to make carrot apple muffins last week. I started with a Martha Stewart Applesauce Muffin recipe, since we had a good deal of applesauce to get rid of. Various things went wrong. First, creaming butter and brown sugar until it's "light and creamy" is difficult. My new mixer is rather excitable--it sends bits of batter flying upward and outward before it manages to mix things together.

Still, the major problem was my impulsive recipe altering. First, I decided that I wanted carrot-apple muffins, so I pulverized some carrots and added them. That probably didn't do too much damage. Next, I decided that I really wanted an apple cider flavor, since the applesauce wasn't going to add anything really intensely apple-y. So in went a little bit of cider. I got carried away, though, and thought that what I _really_ should do is cook the cider down so the flavor would be more intense. I should have know that I lack patience for that sort of project. By the time the cider started bubbling in a pot, I was getting antsy. And then it dawned on me that not only would that take a while, but I would have to cool down the liquid before adding it to batter. So, in my haste to get the muffins in the oven, the barely-reduced cider went into the freezer, and then into an ice bath....but it still wasn't exactly cool when I poured it into the batter. In a final flourish of culinary brilliance, I threw in a bunch of oats.

I'm never going to learn the basics of cooking if I pay so little heed to recipes: especially when it comes to the chemistry of baking. The muffins came out with a great flavor, but a rather dense, heavy texture. We ate them all anyway (the ground cloves in the recipe worked well). Going forward, I think I need to understand what proportions of sugar, egg, butter, and flour are needed to make a light, fluffy muffin. I probably don't have the patience to actually do that, though. My next muffin project will be blueberry sour cream muffins from the nostalgia-inducing Rectory Recipes cookbook from St. Paul's (more on that later).

Posted by csageday at 03:37 PM | Comments (2)

Making Soup = Not Cooking

D informed me last week, in so many words, that he didn't really enjoy cooking. I think he did this more for shock value than anything else. Yesterday, I came home to a fabulous pea soup D had made. I reminded him that he didn't enjoy cooking, and he said, "It's not cooking. It's making soup." Can someone explain this logic to me?

Posted by csageday at 02:58 PM | Comments (2)

January 20, 2007

Cheese Puffs

While I was growing up, my parents would occasionally host large parties at our house in New Jersey. The parties filled the house with murmuring adults and filled the kitchen with activity, and I was usually tapped to do an awkward gymnastics demonstration in the guest room at some point.

I have one very clear memory of walking through a suit and dress-clad crowd in our living room while trays of hors d'oeuvres were being passed overhead. I must have been small, because my visual memory of the crowd consists mainly of dark pant legs; the adults' heads were towering above me.

A wonderful woman named Betty would always come to help in the kitchen, and she or my mother would always, always make cheese puffs. One clear food memory of mine involves stepping through the kitchen door and seeing her take a tray of them out of the oven. I remember being delighted to see and smell the little squares with mounds of white on top, since they only appeared on special occasions.

These cheese puffs fall squarely into the tradition of easy to make 50s style cocktail party food, along with roll-ups and onion dip. They're about an inch square, with a white mound of cheesy goodness on top. When they're fresh, biting into one is like biting into a cloud. The flavor isn't just of cheese -- it's more complex, and the texture is very light.

Last year, I remembered cheese puffs and felt I had to make them. I had no idea what the ingredients might be, but guessed that cream cheese might be involved. Mom consulted a well worn recipe box and pulled out a card, and I copied it down. The main ingredient turned out to be mayonnaise instead of cream cheese, which explains the complexity of the flavor. It's ridiculously simple, and makes use of regular household items as many 50s recipes do.

Ingredients
Several slices firm white bread (Pepperidge Farm or Arnold's), crusts removed
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese (or cheddar)
1/3 cup mayonnaise

One recipe for cheese puffs in the box called for equal parts of each, and one called for more mayonnaise, so this is a flexible guide to quantities. Combine all three ingredients, top bread squares with the mixture, and pop into the broiler for 5 minutes. Serve immediately.

I just made some this afternoon, since I am leisurely spending my Saturday in my parent's house and have access to their large kitchen. They weren't quite as heavenly as I remember (and my brother made a face upon trying one), but the flavor was familiar and the texture was pretty light (mayonnaise does interesting things when cooked). They also came out a bit charred and oniony due to my less-than-perfect understanding of the recipe. I ate a bunch straight out of the oven. This was not good for my waistline, but good for the cheese puffs, since they didn't taste half as good when they'd cooled down. Can't say I'll make this again unless I decide to host a retro 50s party--with 50s drinks, outfits, and hors d'oeuvres--for kicks.

I just did some research and found some similar recipes online. They seem to include parsley and salt and pepper. One is called Italian Cheese Puffs, and another is Onion Cheese Puffs.

Posted by csageday at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2007

Sleepwalkers at MoMA: Sneak Preview

As D and I were heading up the escalator after a movie at MoMA tonight, we looked out the window and noticed very large images being projected on the exterior walls of MoMA in the sculpture garden. We looked for a while, admiring what we saw. We were curious about what it might be and hadn't seen it when we'd been to a MoMA movie the week before, so we knew it was new. We commented on the clarity of the picture and speculated about projectors.

After a minute or so I heard someone say D's name, and it turned out to be someone he'd worked with, and also someone who was helping to install this projected work (he'd seen D from the garden -- lucky for us, no?). He led us into the garden for a special tour. The picture we'd seen pieces of before stretched out across three surfaces -- there were four different projections going at once, and the building was acting as four giant screens. It's part of a new installation by Doug Aitken called Sleepwalkers that officially kicks off on Tuesday. The concept is great, the execution is really well done, and the film itself looked fascinating. The cinematography and color and tone of the scenes we saw were wonderful. I can't wait to see more, though I'll have to brave the cold to do so.

Scenes will also be projected on the front of the building (from a building across the street). It's a great comment on public and private space, as the images I saw were pretty private -- sleeping bodies in bedrooms, a detail of someone's hand, a close-up of something just seen from far away. The web site has more information on the story line. It seems like something very enjoyable to watch, although a bit complicated to watch (by design) since there are four different scenes playing on four different walls at once in the garden -- you can't possibly see all of them at once, so you have to participate and choose a narrative. I suppose you could watch it several times, focusing on a different screen or screens each time -- the possibilities are endless.

The concept also got us thinking about public art installations using projectors -- there are so, so many possibilities. There was an interesting piece in Union Square over the holidays, for instance. Bright stars were projected on the sidewalk from above -- when you walked through the space, your movement displaced the stars and flung them in all directions -- it was a bit like scattering pigeons. I wasn't in a great mood and was skeptical about the whole thing, but it was too fun to be annoying. It would be great to see an interactive experiment with a more serious theme and images that force you to either reconsider your surroundings or recognize your role in a larger urban landscape.

I'm jealous of the people who live in the building across the street from MoMA (the one with the semi-circular windows) -- they have a three-sided projection right out their window, and circular bay windows to watch it from (and it's WARM in there). Someone should have a party and charge admission.

Update: Somewhat related: there's an interactice LED project going on.

Posted by csageday at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2007

New Year's Beets

I'm ambivalent about New Year's. I think it's my least favorite holiday. I dislike the New Year's Eve part for some reason, so I was a bit mopey and pathetic yesterday. Still, champagne and company cheered me up and we had a good time celebrating. Today, we rang in the new year with a great deal of cooking, which put me in a better mood.

We pickled beets! They look lovely, and the pickling liquid smelled quite potent, so I can't wait to try them. We have to let them do their thing in the jars for three weeks. I have a good emergency backup pickle fix, though. If I put freshly cooked beets in the pickling liquid left over from the Wheelhouse jar and leave it in the fridge for a few hours, the beets pick up enough of the flavor to be good pickle stand-ins.

I also finally managed to make good meringues, now that I have an electric mixer. They came out like Mom's, which is a great improvement over my sad experiments with the whisk. It's amazing what a little power can do to a recipe. What's wonderful about this batch of meringues is that I made them from the egg whites left over from hollandaise we made yesterday (I was trying to improve my mood with extravagant side dishes -- we had it over broccolini). I hate throwing out egg whites.

We took Jeff's cue and made corned beef a few days ago (it was really wonderful with cabbage) and then made it into Red Flannel Hash today. I couldn't resist the addition of a poached egg on top, although I'm not sure poaching it in the purple water left over from boiling many beets was a great idea (it made them a sort of pink, but it was hard to see what was going on in the dark liquid). I'd post a picture, but I know runny eggs are a bit scandalous and I don't want any runny-egg-phobes to get queasy.

Finally, I made two loaves of Anadama bread from the bread book I discovered upstate this summer: Bread in Time: Breadbaking Without Angst. I like the approach used by the author, Stuart Silverstein. He coaches you along, explaining that it's not an exact science, and peppers his advice with stories about bread gone awry. The recipes produce a denser bread than what I was going for, but the flavor is good and it works well for sandwiches.

On a more general note, this blog seems to have morphed into a food blog again. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Any opinions?

I also haven't been too excited about posting lately. It hasn't seemed as fun, and I can't think of funny things to post, so I feel like I'm in a safer, regurgitate-the-day mode, which can't be fun for y'all. Sorry. Hopefully I'll discover some better blogging karma in 2007.

Posted by csageday at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)