Martha in Seattle!

2010! With Tres Leches.

2010-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

2010! It has been a very long hiatus -- the summer, the wedding, Rocky's homecoming, the post-wedding hibernation and dissertation writing .... we even performed a wedding at our home, for our friends Ben and Shannon.Too much to try and fill in the blanks, so it's better to just dive back in. The short story is that we are now married and the wedding was great. I can't believe how incredibly lucky I am to have such amazing friends and family who migrated to the middle of nowhere and then pitched in and made it all work while shielding me from craziness. My friend Carmen and her husband officiated (awesomely) and Amy was a trooper. A hot trooper. We have literally 800 photos from the photographer Derek from Duluth, our sports photographer turned wedding guy. I still haven't looked through them all. He made us all jump up and down a lot, so maybe that's his sports background showing through. If you happen to be getting married in the WI/MN area, Derek is a great find.

The pug is now back in Seattle (here's my dad putting him back in the return flight), Jake finished his last law school class and is studying for the bar and I can see the end for the dissertation. This is nice but oddly not very motivating. It sort of makes me feel like I can just call it a success and quit while I'm ahead and just focus on all the side projects that have popped up. But I'll write the thing.

As for the holidays -- we stayed put in Seattle and spent Christmas with Jake's family, which was nice. I made a cake and some chocolate ganache truffle ball thingies that were a big hit. Jake said that the cake -- a Tres Leches -- should be the post to get me back on the blog thing. He rarely comments on cakes and is more of a cheese guy. So here it is: Tres Leches, Emeril Lagasse's version. I stuck to the recipe, except I added extra vanilla and I used part cake flour. It ended up needing to cook much longer than 25-30 minutes.

Between thanksgiving, Ben and Shannon's wedding and Christmas I baked up a storm -- so plenty of those recipes to post in the coming weeks (hopefully). Along with some dissertation updates (double hopefully).

Much love and happy 2010!

pay pal!

2009-09-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Many thanks!
Martha and Jake

Made it.

2009-06-01T20:32:00.001-07:00

So we made it to Staten Island relatively unscathed. And have spent the last 24 hours moving furniture and dealing with all the regular moving stuff. Rocky also made it -- although possibly a bit more traumatized. Here he is in his crate, just before they carted him away on a forklift.

They taped a bag of food and a bone to the top of the crate, but wouldn't let me send him with his stuffed bear, which I'm sure he missed like crazy. I really tried to work the stuffed bear in there, but no dice. I felt very guilty, but they people who worked there let me walk him and then stay with him until they forklifted him onto the truck that took him to the plane. Once back in NYC, there were apparently a couple of fights between Rock and my parents' pugs once--at least one resulting in a bloody tail. And I have seen one seemingly nasty one since we arrived. But the three pugs (Eddie and Champ are my parents' pugs) seem to be getting the hang of things now. And Rock seems to have forgiven us for putting him through it.

I am always really happy to arrive in New York and feel back in my element. But it is also always bit jarring for the first few days. There is constant stimulation and interaction with people here, including in my parents' house. There are many more people on the streets and stores, and everyone needs to interact with other people a little bit all the time. Much gets done within a short period of time with very little conversation, or conversations are quick and funny and productive. Sometimes infuriating, of course, but generally productive. In contrast, Seattle interactions are slow, pleasant, and often completely useless. Generally very polite and I enjoy them most of the time. But they tend to be more about passing time while something is getting done than actually getting something done. I end up feeling impatient and bitchy there, and perfectly normal here.

But when I really knew I was back home was at Shoprite, where I went to get fish food for my mom's office's fish tank. The bakery section has canolli shells they fill will fresh filling, in two sizes. I'm sure they aren't the best, but I cannot tell you how exotic (and expensive) this would be in Seattle. I then went to Moretti's Bakery on Forest Ave to find anisette and sesame cookies. The girl behind the counter only had a giant cake box so she threw in a few apricot and raspberry cookies so it wouldn't look too empty. She didn't want my cookie box to look too empty! I tipped her, which was good, because I then forgot my wallet and had to send my father in for it 30 minutes later. After waiting in line at the post office for a while before noticing I didn't have it, of course. She had already called my office in Seattle and left a voicemail.

The icing, however, was getting home and reading the Staten Island Advance front page story subtitled "Dueling banners in Dongan Hills claim 'World's Best Pizza." There are many Worlds Best signs in the world. But turns out one of these two guys (Goodfella's) won the last World Pizza Championship in Las Vegas. The other was a runner up for the East Coast region or something.

In sum, it is nice to be back in foodland. There is of course good food in Seattle, and there is no way that my local Seattle supermarket would have run out of ground flax seed the way Shoprite did. But the goodness is just seeping out of every scruffy corner here, whereas Seattle feels bland in comparison. There is only so much Pacific Northwest style seafood that one person can eat. That said, I haven't worked out in four or five days (not counting many, many trips from the basement to the third floor of my parents' house carrying awkwardly shaped heavy objects) and will probably gain 50 pounds over the summer. I have not even hit my favorite bagel place yet, and those things are at least 400 calories a pop. Plain. I guess that would further complicate the wedding dress issues.

Whatever. I hear at least two pugs snoring right now, have a box full of aniette cookies to attack for breakfast, and am very happy to be back.

Dress diatribe

2009-05-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

Today should have been the day to post the Daring Bakers May recipe: an apple strudel. But I'm too swamped with work and prepping to leave for NYC on Saturday to deal with it. The recipe calls for stretching the dough out until it is paper thin on a table large enough that you can walk around it and work from all four sides. I do not have a table. There are some really impressive strudels on the Daring Bakers website and I do hope to make the thing sooner or later. With a spinach feta filling, maybe, instead of apples.

This week has been a flurry of activity and anxiety, and Jake and I are both stretched really thin. And yesterday I went to go pick up my wedding dress. I was not 100% pleased, although Martha N and Jake both tell me it looks good, even if it maybe needs a little more tweaking. The seamstress, who comes very well recommended and to her credit is constantly saying she will keep working at it until I am happy, installed these two thick, wide elastic bands inside the waistline to help hold it up. And also replaced a ribbon around the waistline that needed an upgrade. The ribbon is nice but seems a bit worn. Martha N says it looks appropriately vintage and she likes it a lot. I am inclined to believe her. But the elastic bands feel sort of like some sort of S&M device, but they don't really do the Holding It Up job. I think they need to be fastened at exactly the right spot on my ribcage, but I didn't have them on the sweet spot when I tried the dress on at the seamstress's place. So instead it felt like it would stay put through many hugs and drunken dances, but would stay put in a really awkward and uncomfortable place. It looked and felt like it needed to be yanked up, hard.

So I acted aloof and paid the lady and got the hell out of there as fast as I could, with the seamstress's assurances that I could come back when I get back to Seattle and she'd do whatever else I feel needs doing. I feel slightly bad about that. She gave me a free veil I have no intention of using, no doubt sensing my dissatisfaction. Back at home, after some unexpected tears, some assurances from Jake and some technical assistance from Martha N, I think I can be happy about it. Not in love yet, but if I can make it a bit more comfortable I think it'll grow on me .

I think the tears were disappointment that I really wanted to be able to say I have gotten this one wedding thing done and walked away happy. Frustratingly enough, I'm not really sure what I would like better than the dress I have. Just in case, I bought another one on sale from JCrew that is not scheduled to ship until June 30 as a fall back plan. Amy gave me the thumbs up on that one. But maybe I should wear the one I have for the ceremony and do a costume change into something comfortable for the reception. Something in a color I never wear. I do think that it's a lovely dress; my main issues right now are that it is pretty uncomfortable.

There is this incredible pressure associated with all things wedding-related that I wish I could say I am avoiding. There is sort of an expectation that as The Bride you will 1) know what you want and 2) enjoy it. Yet I have no idea what I want, not much energy for figuring it out, lots of baggage about marriage and weddings in general, and am not really able to have a good time with the process yet. Figuring out what you want or like takes time and energy I don't feel I have to give. I would like to say that I am not interested in traditional things, but I don't really feel interested or equipped to come up with my own particular brand of non-traditional. I just tried to grill Martha N about her sister Sarah who is ridiculously crafty and talented to see if there was ANYTHING I could maybe outsource to her. Martha N seems to think there is not. Friends offer to help (thanks Amy! poor Amy ...) but I haven't taken them up on it. I'm not good at asking for help. But I do think I might ask someone to do the invitations for us. Meaning, find a cute, simple cheap one, design it for us and just tell us how much it costs. Any takers?

I think what has been the most jarring for me about all of this is just how much I have been affected by it. I have been kind of an unexpected emotional rollercoaster ride, as they say. It is most definitely jarring for Jake. I'm not sure what to make of it. Intellectually I know that the stress and changes we are facing inevitably kind of grates every feeling to sharp point. It is hard to manage anyway.

But Rocky IV is on as I write this (the one where he takes on the cyborgish Russian who killed Apollo Creed by training exclusively with snow and lumber and rocks, and Adrian follows him to Siberia), so I am feeling encouraged. I am happy that the spurts of enthusiasm and clarity that I have had about wedding stuff do seem to be getting longer and closer together. Sort of like contractions are portrayed when women go into labor on TV. Maybe soon they will come together in a single painful crescendo--in a cab or a plane or stuck on the subway--and I will emerge flushed and smiling, with a color scheme and some new self-awareness.

In the meantime, I am doing a lot of hot Bikram yoga (Bikram is this guy, shown with his wife) and longish runs with Jake. He mapped them out on google maps so we know how long they are, and we'll miss when we leave for the summer. 4.8 is so far our farthest -- keeping in mind that about 2 miles of it is uphill. We're going to work up the distance, hopefully.

Funny aside on Bikram: a friend who moved to Seattle from LA tells me that she saw him once in an Indian video store there. He drove up in a Bentley, was wearing white snakeskin pointy shoes, and asked for the the most recent movie by the Bollywood equivalent of Chuck Norris. In the photo he is in a pose I can get nowhere close to.

Ok -- I'm off to bring Rocky the pug to his red eye flight to NYC. I feel guilty, but then again nothing that costs that much can be all that bad. I think. Thanks for reading.

Moving, wedding, cooking apple crisps and carrots

2009-05-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

These past few days have been oddly productive on several fronts. I did my taxes. I used a lot of CSA veggies. But more importantly, I suddenly had a burst of enthusiasm about wedding planning. I am not 100% sure, but I think I might be circling in on what "owning it" might mean--aside from the undertones of consumption and debt.

Whereas a few weeks ago I was infuriated by anything having to do with weddings or wedding planning (including really pissed off at Jake for having proposed, to be honest), last night I managed to flip through almost the entire issue of Martha Stewart Weddings without getting angry. I did get annoyed by article about which cosmetic procedures you can squeeze in before your wedding at 12, 9, 6, 3 months, etc. (I am in the botox range; possibly microdermabrasion if I got on it right now). But I appreciated the pretty pictures of ridiculously expensive earrings and bracelets and very labor intensive cakes. This is a Major Milestone.

And today I talked to a coworker whose wedding is also in September and who is an admirably practical, crafty and hard wedding worker. She just finished making her own invitations, and is taking a break before starting in on thank you cards. She has done flower arrangements for other people's weddings, and knows how to decorate. She is doing all of the decorating herself. She gave me good tips: get color on the tables with linens so you don't have to bother with it elsewhere; there is such a thing as long-burning votive candles you can get cheap; and yeah, little lights and lanterns look good. It turns out she was thinking about some of the same stuff I was -- like the twiggy stuff in the photo above (I'm not wild about that one specifically, but you get the idea). She upped my website with nice earthy materials with one of her own that had similar stuff, and cheaper. Go Katie go. Jake's sister-in-law Amanda, here with the very cute Izzy, has graciously offered to help with this stuff and is also very crafty and has a great sense of style. And she is conveniently located about 1500 miles closer to Dairymen's than I am. I hope she doesn't regret the offer.

The dress thing -- two fittings down this week -- is just so-so. I am more nervous about it now than when I started. It seemed like the alterations needed were minor, but now I am starting to think they might be a bit more major. Whatever. The thing basically fits, and I might have to chemically affix it to my body to keep it up. Whatever. Th eseamstress thinks only two more fittings--it seems her assistant errs on the side of caution fittings-wise.

In the meantime, a battle rages against the CSA veggies in my fridge. Last night as Jake and I were drifting off to sleep I woke both of us up when I heard myself announce "I can steam it." I was having a sort of half-dream about a head of cauliflower I have been moving around the fridge for a week. So I am apparently battling some low-level anxiety about the vegetables. So far this week I have made an rhubarb/blueberry/apple crisp, kale salad and my brother's caramelized carrots, and I have a soup on the stove with a mound of the cauliflower waiting to go in it.

The carrots are easy and have been a staple at family dinners forever, but I can never do them like my brother can. Now I think they are a staple at his firehouse. Chop up the carrots, cook them in a heavy skillet in enough olive oil to coat them--stirring occasionally until they are soft and browned or even look a bit burnt (we call them Arnie's Burnt Carrots). If your carrots are kind of on the old side, as if they have been sitting around since the cute hippie CSA delivery guy dropped them off a week or so ago, you can add some honey or brown sugar or season them however you like. Some lemon is nice. They are nice on their own, but I tossed them in a green salad.

The crisp was marginally more involved, if only because there is more chopping, some melting, and multiple bowls.

I tossed together:
Two apples, peeled and sliced
Two cups rhubarb, roughly chopped
One cup frozen strawberries
Two tablespoons orange juice
Juice from 1/2 lemon
About 1/2 cup raisins
About 1/2 cup sugar or more to taste (I don't like it that sweet)
Cinnamon to taste (I like a lot)

For the topping:
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup oatmeal (I used the non-instant kind)
1 tsp cinnamon
A good pinch of salt
6 tablespoons melted butter

The fruit goes into a shallow baking dish, dotted with some butter. And the topping goes on top. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes and then check it. The fruit should be bubbling and the topping starting to brown.

I forgot to melt the butter until I had already mushed half of it into the dry topping ingredients, so I melted what I had left and mixed it up, threw it on top and it was fine. It is really hard to go wrong with a crisp.

The soup is not really worth talking about. I had an onion, potatoes, a red pepper and cauliflower in the fridge, and about 2 cups of split peas. Now that's what is in the pot -- along with some cumin and allspice and vegetable stock. And soon to be joined by a couple of parmesan rinds. Actually, I have a can of white beans I am debating tossing in. Seems like a lot of beans. But anything immersion blended is good in my book, and gets me one step closer to a clean fridge and cabinets for Jake's cousin Court (our subletter this summer).

What a long post! Thanks for hanging in there with it. XO

work work work

2009-05-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

I am a blog and baking slacker these days--as evidenced by this photo-less entry.

This is in keeping with my general slacking off on just about everything. A more accurate assessment is that I am trying to cram too much into a small period of time, stressing out about it, and then making only incremental progress on any one thing as a result. And things keep popping up and sucking my time. Like Rocky's (still kind of sickly looking) eye. He has another vet appt. on Tuesday. And I called a seamstress to make alterations on the wedding dress I bought at a local consignment store (it's a bit more formal than I'd like, but I like it, and think no one will hold it against me). She--her assistant, actually--wanted to book TEN appointments. Ten! We made three for the next two weeks and I told her we'll have to regroup after that. I really don't think it's that involved. I am noticing that as soon as you say the word "wedding," people's voices drop an octave as if to sooth what they assume is a hysterical bride, they jack up the price and they start saying things like "foundational undergarments." Tomorrow morning is the first appointment. She told me to bring the Foundational Undergarments and the shoes and then seemed genuinely concerned that I have neither. And then genuinely surprised to her me say I wasn't worried about it. I'll bring some heels and we'll be fine. I am trying to strike a balance between getting done what needs to be done without getting sucked into the things that other people think you should care about. Choosing what color the napkins should be or finding favors/matchbooks/m&ms that say Jake & Martha is not a priority at this point. I have no idea if the ceremony will be indoors or out, and want my nieces and Amy to be happy and look great but have no idea or preference about what they should wear. Something they like. We'll figure it out, and the deed will get done.

But I am getting really enthusiastic feedback about my research. I was at a day-long mini-conference for all the folks who who won grants from the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and people were into it. I also recently had some meetings with people in my field who think my sample size (just hit 208 responses on Friday!) is plenty big, and that the data will be really unique. This was a much-needed confidence booster. I for one was just pleased with myself that I managed to come up with a semi-decent paper title: "Using Section 8 in Seattle: Thriving, surviving, or falling though the cracks?" Now I just have to do the research. One thing that my committee member brought up (she's mentioned it before, but I failed to absorb it) was that I need to keep a journal or field log of notes and ideas as I continue through the data collection phase. She's right. There are things that I am thinking about and research ideas that come up that will be incredibly helpful when it finally comes time to write.

So baking and cooking has dropped off considerably, and I am instead slowly trying to make it through the contents of the freezer and keep up with CSA vegetables. This basically means giant vegetable stir-frys once a week, a lot of defrosted baked goods, and smoothies because fruit is coming back in season. I do have some rhubarb in the fridge from the CSA, and a Daring Bakers thing to deal with--along with some more freezer contents (lots of pecans and walnuts, chocolate, a pie crust, frozen berries)--so there is likely something quick and nutty and rhubarby in my future. This coffee cake recipe from the woman who provided last month's Daring Bakers cheescake recipe looks like a contender.

I did try to make my own yogurt in a crockpot the other day, inspired by both the New York Times and 101 cookbooks (she also has a great recipe for frozen yogurt), but it was a complete failure. At first I thought it was something about the temperature--you are supposed to heat the milk, then let it cool, and then add some starter yogurt and keep it warm for several hours. But I let it get too cool and then tried to reheat. Now I think it the starter yogurt may not have has many live cultures. I am determined to get it right, and possibly have a machine shipped to NYC to have fresh yogurt all summer. I vaguely remember that my parents had a yogurt machine crammed in the kitchen pantry until I finally bullied them into getting rid of it because it had been used exactly once in about 10 years. They have issues parting with broken or unused items. Now I wish it was still around. I remember it was green and yellow shades that only existed in the 70s.

Hopefully more frequent posts in the coming weeks!

Pictures!

2009-05-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of writing or editing about seven documents and have no energy for writing anything else. But I do have some pictures to share. Olivia sent me a batch from her visit a few weeks ago, and I just did a practice session with the new camera while Jake was brushing Rocky out on the balcony. Here's a picture of the new camera, taken with the old camera and vice versa. They are taken in my dark office space, sitting on top of interview notes I need to transcribe and last week's to do list. As you can see, I'm going from idiot-proof beginner level to advanced intermediate in one step.

For whatever reason, I just can't focus well with the new camera and can't figure out why. The settings are not well programmed and I need to use the viewfinder instead of the screen, so I think I need to bring it to a camera shop to see if they can set it up for me and start from there. Compared to Olivia's pictures--here's her shot of butter dipped dinner rolls we baked for Easter dinner--I definitely have a ways to go. Hers are sharp even though they are taken in really low light and, I think, without flash. I have no idea how that works.

The rolls are straight from the Bread Bible. They freeze really well but don't keep long on the counter, so I have started making double batches and keeping some on hand in the freezer. We're trying to make our way through the contents of the freezer this month before heading to NYC for the summer, so there are a lot of dinner rolls in my future over the next few weeks. They're all white flour, and my attempts at whole wheat versions have been only so-so. With about 20% wheat flour is passable, but the all white version is definitely better both taste and texture-wise.

And here's we are at UW.

It was of course overcast the whole time she was here, but the cherry blossoms were blooming and all the undergrads were out doing their thing, so she got a pretty good impression of the place.

But as a hint of what may be possible with the new camera, here's a pretty decent Rocky action shot taken with the new camera. I have no idea how it happened.

A pug update: Rock's eye is much better. Still a red and buggier than usual, but definitely getting better. There is enough improvement that he is no longer in the lampshade collar and we don't feel guilty putting him through the drama of a big brushing.

I think Jake enjoys it as much as Rocky hates it.

April cheesecake challenge

2009-04-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

It's time for the monthly Daring Bakers challenge. It's a cheesecake, and the "challenge" is to change it up and customize a basic recipe (below).

It also gave me an opportunity to use the new camera that Jake got me for my birthday! I have a complicated relationship with it: I've been complaining incessantly about my crappy camera, and Jake got me a really nice one--which is great. But it is big, and has all these lenses and is more complicated than I know how to deal with. I hate having a new thing to learn, but have to admit it takes pictures mine never could. Like this one of the cake cooking in a water bath in the oven. And here's the finished cake. As you will note, I have some work to do with the camera.

I like that it looks sort of like a fried egg, which is fitting, because it has a hell of a lot of eggs in it. There is chocolate and caramel drizzled on top, which is overkill but delicious. I have taken many, many pictures of cheesecake tonight in an effort to figure out how to use the f-ing camera without picking up the giant manual.

My stab at customizing was a banana sour cream cheesecake with a Nilla Wafer crust. I was kind of thinking about the banana pudding recipe on the Nilla Wafers box. I had bananas and a bunch of home-raised eggs in the fridge from Jake's cousin's best friend. Renee was Rocky's first vet when we moved out here and she has 30 chickens, an emu and a horse. And a dog. Her eggs have blue shells and very yellow yolks.

So I consulted with the Cake Bible and went from there. I swapped out the heavy cream for the banana, and added 8 oz sour cream for as much cream cheese. I used six egg yolks instead of three whole eggs. And the crust is just crushed Nilla Wafers and melted butter, without any added sugar, pressed in the pan and pre-baked for 10 minutes before adding the cake batter. The water bath is a pain in the ass in a springform because you have to use all this tinfoil and water seeps in anyway. But I also made some mini-muffins and loaf pan sized cakes using silicone pans which turned out great without sticking at all. Here's a mini, as I was eating it and experimenting with and without the flash, and trying this manual focus business. Turns out flash can be bad and focusing is hard.

I did the crust on Sunday, baked the cakes on Monday, and then decorated the big one tonight while watching The Biggest Loser. So while the announcer was talking about how these folks lost 600 pounds this season, I was melting chocolate with heavy cream and drizzling it on a ridiculously rich custard cheesecake. But it's good! Really creamy and actually kind of light (tasting, at least). Unfortunately, Jake is in DC until tomorrow and I'm not going to work tomorrow and I have no socializing planned for the next couple of days--so I have cheesecake for 10 in my fridge and no takers at the moment.

I needed a baking project, though. I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff that needs to get done in the next month before we go to NYC for the summer. My job wants me to do some pretty involved projects while I am gone and to take on more work and hours when I get back. I am resisting. But I'm finding myself back in that uncomfortable, if familiar, territory of being overextended and placing the dissertation work on the back burner. I am thisclose to really getting the thing done -- one paper just needs to be written, and the data is rolling in for the second. Not that there isn't lots of work to be done, of course there is (and I was just reminded by my advisor that I never handed in the final revisions on my proposal) but I'm starting to be able to see the end. And am actually close to where I should be based on when I started.

The up side is that all the work on my plate is good stuff and on point with my research. The Housing Authority wants recommendations for how to change some fundamental aspects of the program. But it's a big ask and I feel like I'd be starting from scratch, with little support. So first things first, and this summer needs to be all about the dissertation and the wedding. And I need to figure out how to turn that into a short mantra so that I can repeat it to myself on the treadmill or in yoga or whenever I start to entertain ideas of taking on more projects.

Recipe below:
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:
crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil "casserole" shaped pans from the grocery store. They're 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.

Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!

Broken phone!

2009-04-26T14:19:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention: my phone, which has been on it's last legs for about three or four months now, has also taken a turn for the worse ... I can receive calls but the screen is now blank, so I can't read or send text messages, see saved phone numbers, or tell when I have missed a call. I do know when I receive a text message, though, I just can't tell who it's from or what they want to be telling me. Functioning phone this week, hopefully. So the home phone and email are a better bet that the cell for now.

Poor Rocky!

2009-04-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

Poor Rocky is having pretty nasty eye problems this week and weekend -- maybe an ulcer in his right eye that isn't clearing up yet. I took him to the Vet on Wed., who gave me eye drops and told me to take him in ASAP if it got worse. It did, so I took him to the vet ER last night. This picture is us leaving. They gave him a second set of eye drops, saying the first set could be making it worse (great.) but this morning he looks pretty miserable. He hates the lampshade thing, and is completely confused by it. He basically just sits and whines, or bumps into things with it if he tries to move around. But if I take it off he starts pawing at the bum eye. Walking him was pretty comical, if also sad -- he can't sniff stuff to then pee on it, so he sort of bumps it with the lampshade and then looks at me quizzically. I finally took it off so he could take care of business.

So about $400 down so far, and no closer to his eye looking better or knowing what's up with it. And no luck getting work done this weekend. I'm trying distract myself from the pug for a couple of hours until I can decide if it is getting worse and if I should drag him to the vet again. I'm not sure what else they can do until it gets so bad that they'd have to do something involving incisions (poor pug!). Jake's cousin is coming over for a bit, and I have some articles to read to revise one of my dissertation committee member's papers. And I have something I'm supposed to bake for the Daring Bakers monthly challenge thing ... so plenty to do between bouts of staring into Rocky's yucky right eye.

Hello!

2009-04-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been nearly three weeks since I've posted anything. This have been busy: there was a wedding in Houston; Jake's sister Bree came to visit, and then my niece Olivia visited (which was great). It was my birthday. Then there was work -- I found out I got a grant I applied for, which I am excited about. More on that soon. Playing catch-up at work took over this past week.

Olivia and Bree will hopefully send some pictures from their visit soon -- including some that they snuck while I was trying on wedding dresses at a fancy-pants place. Bree really got the ball rolling on the dress thing -- she researched wedding dress places and made me a few appointments, and then the two of them played peanut gallery as I tried a few on. New words: ruching; organza; French bustle. I tried on dresses that were worth more than my car.

The wedding in Houston was lovely, and if possible I will shamelessly steal ideas from it--including if at all possible the photo booth idea that these pictures came from. We had a lot of fun with that photo booth. We also found a Kettle Korn machine in the Sky Mall catalogue that will probably be making the wedding trip. It'll be my contribution to Dairymen's.

But my real obsession since the Leila and TJ wedding are these amazing rosewater pastries that Lelia said were Persian baklava, along with some shortbready-type cookies that were much lighter (albeit definitely heavy on butter and sugar) and may be made with rice or chickpea flour. I have spent several minutes that I will never get back google image-ing "Persian rosewater cookies" with no luck finding an exact match. Here's a really bad picture of some that Leila and her mom sent me home with.

But I did find a Persian bakery in Seattle that I'll check it out as soon as I am over the work catch-up hump, and have recovered from the sugar high I have from Olivia's visit. We made bread and brownies, Jake got me birthday cupcakes, his cousins gave easter/b-day candy and my boss gave me really good chocolate .... i need a break. And I have to get some wedding crap off my list. People are being very generous with offers to help -- Amy, my cousin Gaby in Guayaquil, Jake's sister. I will enlist them.

But the dress thing is apparently time-sensitive. I have tried on dresses ranging from $300 to $5000, at a consignment store, a wedding dress outlet store, the fancy-pants boutique and a tailor/designer who custom makes a dress from a sketch he draws for you. The message from all--the former ballerina-turned high-end gown seller, the mom with the masters in public administration who wanted her own business and hours, the business that helps brides have more eco-friendly weddings -- was "get on it ASAP." Okay okay okay. I'm on it. This cake lady named Joyce in Wisconsin is making similar noises about ordering a cake. Ok.

XO

Spinach pasta!

2009-03-30T20:27:00.001-07:00

This month's Daring Baker challenge, my second, was pretty intense: homemade spinach lasagna, with bechamel and meat sauces. Lots more work than I was prepared for, but in the end it was really very good. Because it is just the bechamel and some parmesan in place of heavy ricotta or mozzarella, it was a lot lighter than your typical lasagna. I added an extra egg to the pasta recipe--two eggs was just not enough moisture to absorb all the flour, even with the blanched spinach.

I made the same sauce I always do as opposed to the one DB provided (grind three or four meats together yourself?), and I added an extra egg to the pasta dough. Two eggs was just not enough to hold it together. A fourth probably wouldn't have been a bad idea. It's a nice project if you have a couple of people to help out, but I doubt I'll take this one on again. It's labor intensive even for me. I'm beat. I'm glad to have done it, though--this Daring Bakers business is definitely teaching me about cooking. And is a nice escape from work, which is getting out of hand at the moment.

(Very long) recipes for the pasta and bechamel, and directions for cooking the lasagna, are below. I used the red sauce I always make, so left out the DB's (very long, grind four types of meat yourself) version. The directions are for hand-rolling, which seems insane, but I used a pasta maker. Oddly, the only kitchen appliance Jake owns is a pasta machine.

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

All recipes below from The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food by Lynne Rossetto Kasper (published by William Morrow and Company Inc., 1992).

Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna (Lasagne Verdi al Forno)

(Serves 8 to 10 as a first course, 6 to 8 as a main dish)
Preparation Time: 15 minutes to assemble and 40 minutes cooking time

Assembling the Ingredients:
Have all the sauces, rewarmed gently over a medium heat, and the pasta at hand. Have a large perforated skimmer and a large bowl of cold water next to the stove. Spread a double thickness of paper towels over a large counter space. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius). Oil or butter a 3 quart (approx 3 litre) shallow baking dish.

Cooking the Pasta:
Bring the salted water to a boil. Drop about four pieces of pasta in the water at a time. Cook about 2 minutes. If you are using dried pasta, cook about 4 minutes, taste, and cook longer if necessary. The pasta will continue cooking during baking, so make sure it is only barely tender. Lift the lasagne from the water with a skimmer, drain, and then slip into the bowl of cold water to stop cooking. When cool, lift out and dry on the paper towels. Repeat until all the pasta is cooked.

Assembling the Lasagne:
Spread a thin layer of béchamel over the bottom of the baking dish. Arrange a layer of about four overlapping sheets of pasta over the béchamel. Spread a thin layer of béchamel (about 3 or 4 spoonfuls) over the pasta, and then an equally thin layer of the ragu. Sprinkle with about 1&1/2 tablespoons of the béchamel and about 1/3 cup of the cheese. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with béchamel sauce and topping with a generous dusting of cheese.

Baking and Serving the Lasagne:
Cover the baking dish lightly with foil, taking care not to let it touch the top of the lasagne. Bake 40 minutes, or until almost heated through. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes, or until hot in the center (test by inserting a knife – if it comes out very warm, the dish is ready). Take care not to brown the cheese topping. It should be melted, creamy looking and barely tinged with a little gold. Turn off the oven, leave the door ajar and let the lasagne rest for about 10 minutes. Then serve. This is not a solid lasagne, but a moist one that slips a bit when it is cut and served.

#1 Spinach Egg Pasta (Pasta Verde)

Preparation: 45 minutes

Makes enough for 6 to 8 first course servings or 4 to 6 main course servings, equivalent to 1 pound (450g) dried boxed pasta.

2 jumbo eggs (2 ounces/60g or more)
10 ounces (300g) fresh spinach, rinsed dry, and finely chopped; or 6 ounces (170g) frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
3&1/2 cups (14 ounces/400g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour (organic stone ground preferred)
Working by Hand:

Equipment

A roomy work surface, 24 to 30 inches deep by 30 to 36 inches (60cm to 77cm deep by 60cm to 92cm). Any smooth surface will do, but marble cools dough slightly, making it less flexible than desired.

A pastry scraper and a small wooden spoon for blending the dough.

A wooden dowel-style rolling pin. In Italy, pasta makers use one about 35 inches long and 2 inches thick (89cm long and 5cm thick). The shorter American-style pin with handles at either end can be used, but the longer it is, the easier it is to roll the pasta.
Note: although it is not traditional, Enza has successfully made pasta with a marble rolling pin, and this can be substituted for the wooden pin, if you have one.

Plastic wrap to wrap the resting dough and to cover rolled-out pasta waiting to be filled. It protects the pasta from drying out too quickly.

A sharp chef’s knife for cutting pasta sheets.

Cloth-covered chair backs, broom handles, or specially designed pasta racks found in cookware shops for draping the pasta.

Mixing the dough:
Mound the flour in the center of your work surface and make a well in the middle. Add the eggs and spinach. Use a wooden spoon to beat together the eggs and spinach. Then gradually start incorporating shallow scrapings of flour from the sides of the well into the liquid. As you work more and more flour into the liquid, the well’s sides may collapse. Use a pastry scraper to keep the liquids from running off and to incorporate the last bits of flour into the dough. Don’t worry if it looks like a hopelessly rough and messy lump.

Kneading:
With the aid of the scraper to scoop up unruly pieces, start kneading the dough. Once it becomes a cohesive mass, use the scraper to remove any bits of hard flour on the work surface – these will make the dough lumpy. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes. Its consistency should be elastic and a little sticky. If it is too sticky to move easily, knead in a few more tablespoons of flour. Continue kneading about 10 minutes, or until the dough has become satiny, smooth, and very elastic. It will feel alive under your hands. Do not shortcut this step. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let it relax at room temperature 30 minutes to 3 hours.

Stretching and Thinning:
If using an extra-long rolling pin work with half the dough at a time. With a regular-length rolling pin, roll out a quarter of the dough at a time and keep the rest of the dough wrapped. Lightly sprinkle a large work surface with flour. The idea is to stretch the dough rather than press down and push it. Shape it into a ball and begin rolling out to form a circle, frequently turning the disc of dough a quarter turn. As it thins outs, start rolling the disc back on the pin a quarter of the way toward the center and stretching it gently sideways by running the palms of your hands over the rolled-up dough from the center of the pin outward. Unroll, turn the disc a quarter turn, and repeat. Do twice more.

Stretch and even out the center of the disc by rolling the dough a quarter of the way back on the pin. Then gently push the rolling pin away from you with one hand while holding the sheet in place on the work surface with the other hand. Repeat three more times, turning the dough a quarter turn each time.

Repeat the two processes as the disc becomes larger and thinner. The goal is a sheet of even thickness. For lasagne, the sheet should be so thin that you can clearly see your hand through it and see colours. Cut into rectangles about 4 by 8 inches (10 x 20 cm). Note: Enza says that transparency is a crucial element of lasagne pasta and the dough should be rolled as thinly as possible. She says this is why her housekeeper has such strong arms!

Dry the pasta at room temperature and store in a sealed container or bag.

#2 Bechamel

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) unsalted butter
4 tablespoons (2 ounces/60g) all purpose unbleached (plain) flour, organic stone ground preferred
2&2/3 cups (approx 570ml) milk
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

Using a medium-sized saucepan, melt the butter over low to medium heat. Sift over the flour, whisk until smooth, and then stir (without stopping) for about 3 minutes. Whisk in the milk a little at a time and keep the mixture smooth. Bring to a slow simmer, and stir 3 to 4 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper, and a hint of nutmeg.

Friends at work

2009-03-24T16:28:00.001-07:00

Turns out that while I am here snacking compulsively and worrying about stuff, my friends are doing some pretty impressive things.

Jake took off for Alaska yesterday (where an exploding volcano was canceling flights) to visit his friend Chad Lindner who just finished the Iditarod and won rookie of the year--his dad Sonny dog sled race. He came in 30thLindner, who is a well-known in the "musher" world, came in 11th. It is a pretty impressive feat. Here's Chad with his team, and the dogs who led him in. I think they're called Mulder and Eli. Chad finished in 12 days, 4 hours, 21 minutes, and 50 seconds, with 13 dogs.

I kind of imagined the sled as a Santa's sled type thing: plush seat covered with animal pelts and a place to stash your thermos. In fact, you stand on runners that are narrow like skis, and have to sort of run alongside when you get knocked off and jump back on. This site has some Iditarod 101-type information if you're interested.

Also in the news is my friend Aimee Molloy, whose book Jantsen's Gift (with Pam Cope) is coming out in April and has gotten some great early press. The book is about the Cope family's work helping children in Vietnam, Cambodia and Ghana--which they found themselves drawn into after the sudden death of Pam's teenage son.

You can learn more about it here -- it's a Reader's Digest "must read"--and pre-order on Amazon. It's a pretty amazing story worth checking out, for sure.

Big Climb(ed)!

2009-03-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Done!

Race and post-race brunch are officially over. We all finished strong, and while I didn't break the 11 minute mark that I was hoping to hit -- I shaved about a minute and a half off my time and finished in 11:16.70! I'm 15th among the women so far (people are racing through the day, so results can change)!

This made me really happy until I just saw that I missed the top ten women finishers by like TWO SECONDS. TWO SECONDS! The stairway is narrow and had I been more aggressive passing folks (damn kids!), things could have been different. Here are the results if you're interested. It's all fun and games until you miss top ten by two seconds.

The famous Henry Wigglesworth, who is always top five and runs it multiple times, was running it seven times this year. Barefoot. With rubber gloves for improved railing grip. We saw him after his third and fifth, and he was fine--and his times were between 8 and ten minutes or so.

In all honestly, I am pretty psyched. We all did great -- Madelyn and Brenda in the 13 range, and Court at 19. All really impressive. It looks like our team is at about 50th place--but they don't differentiate between women and men's teams, and very few teams are all women. So it isn't really a great measure.

They--plus Brenda's husband John, who was our pit crew--just left after a nice brunch, so I'm on a sugar/coffee/mimosa high and my narrow brush with top 10-ness can't bring me down. I am having another mimosa just to make sure.

Brunch was the vegetable casserole last made at Laura's baby shower that is always a hit, and my first stab at sticky cinnamon buns care of Alton Brown.

When I was in DC, my Aunt Sally reminded me that she sent me the Congressional Club Cookbook from 1961, which included recipes from legislator's wives ... my grandfather on my mom's side was a congressman from Cook County, Illinois, and my grandmother Katherine (or "Mrs. Edward R. Finnegan, Wife of Representative" according to the book) submitted some recipes -- including a "dessert pancake" that I was hoping to try out today. It will have to wait for next time, but looks great. She was into sweets, if the cookbook is any indication: S'mores and an ice cream sundae and the dessert pancake were her contributions to the book.

Anyway -- good times. I'm going to go have another mimosa and strategize stairwell passing techniques for '10. XO

Hello!

2009-03-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

It has been forever since I posted anything. Excuses are: First, I caught some nasty bug that knocked the wind out of me; second, I have now officially collected over 100 survey responses (!); third, if I didn't pay attention to some wedding planning Jake was going to revoke the offer; fourth, I managed to get a grant application out for a follow-up study to the dissertation survey; and fifth, I was in DC for a few days for a conference (that Amy tagged along for and turned into a great time). Here we are looking skeptical of the stimulus plan with the capitol building in the background but hidden behind my large head.

I did get some baking done these past few weeks -- I was on a whole wheat and bread kick (or continuing), and made two versions of whole wheat Irish soda bread in honor of March (here's the better of the two, from 101 Cookbooks), along with a doctored (sesame honey whole wheat) version of Beranbaum's Bread Bible flaxseed bread for my friend Nancie that was really *&^#@ing good. I also made some butter dinner rolls that turned out good despite having been dropped on the floor (in the sealed pyrex bowl--no three second rule needed) so that the dough deflated pretty dramatically. They turned out fine, but not in time for the dinner I was trying to pull them together for.

Here's the bread recipe, adapted from The BB:

13 oz (2 2/3 cups) All Purpose Flour
5 oz (1 cup) Whole Wheat Flour
2.5 oz (1/2 cup+1 tablespoon) dark rye flour
2 oz (.5 cup) ground flax seed
1.25 teaspoons instant yeast (about 1.5 teaspoons non-instant kind)
2 tablespoons honey
14.6 oz (1 3/4 cups) warm water
1/2 cup sesame seeds (a bit more would have been fine)
2 teaspoons salt
One 9X5 inch loaf pan.

Whisk together the flours, flaxseed and yeast, and then (making a "well" in the middle of the flour for the honey) use the dough hook to add the honey on low speed. Gradually add the warm water until it forms a dough, scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover for 20 minutes.

Sprinkle the salt on top and ad the sesame seeds, and mix on medium speed for 7 minutes, until the dough is a bit sticky but firm. Scrape the dough into a slightly oiled container, cover and let rise for about an hour, until doubled in size.

Scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured counter, flattening it to deflate it somewhat, and shape into a loaf. Place it in a slightly oiled loaf pan and let it rise, covered loosely, for about an hour. Preheat the oven to 375 at this point, with a baking sheet in it.

Slash the bread--make a long slit down the top of the dough bread with a razor blade or knife. Place the loaf on top of the hot baking sheet and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until it is golden brown. Turn it after about 25 minutes so it bakes evenly.

Let cool on a rack. While still warm, brush the loaf with melted butter.

Here's a video about shaping a loaf of bread by a guy who has a very involved bread baking blog, in case you're interested. And a couple of shots of completely unrelated loaf of white sandwich loaf I made a few weeks ago, slashed and then baked.

There were some other things mixed in as well -- Jake's 30th birthday (big carrot cake that was sort of funny looking but tasted fine ... I made a three tiered white cake, thinking one decade for each tier and realizing later that it looked like it needed a bride and groom on top. Wedding on the brain?).

But mostly it has been all surveys, all the time -- I'm happily over the hundred respondents mark, and there are only a few that seem to be unusable. The big problem is that I am out of stipend cash and now dipping into other expense reserves for printing and data entry and whatnot, so I cut the stipend from $10 to $5. People seem equally as happy. Some of these folks show up with no idea how they might eat lunch that day (after three or four hours spent at the office), or really struggle to buy diapers day to day. Every session someone tells me how grateful they are to be able to go get a sandwich (and of course someone else reeks of booze, but still). I wish I could keep giving $10.

Tomorrow is the Big Climb (!), so I refrained from going to my favorite class at the gym. I always end up with a sore ass, and I figure I should spare myself that tomorrow morning. I am already a bit weak in the knees from an overly ambitious run yesterday. I'll post my time, whatever it is, and come home to host brunch with the folks on my team. Many thanks to those of you who generously contributed to the Leukemia/Lymphoma society on my behalf! I appreciate the support.

Enjoy the weekend -- and wish us luck!

2009-03-01T15:42:00.001-08:00

It's T-minus three or so weeks and counting until this years Big Climb! Which is a race to the top of the Columbia Tower, Seattle's tallest building. That's 69 stories and 1,311 steps for a total of 788 vertical feet, which apparently means something to people who climb things.

Last year I finished in a respectable 12 minutes 41 seconds. Times can be found here, if you're interested. Technically, the my team won. But that's only because one guy -- the very fit Henry -- ran it three times in a row. They calculate team times based on the three fastest finishers, and his three times were not only our team's fastest but but faster than everyone else's top three. That's pretty humbling as far as stair-climbing goes.

This year I'm not on Henry's team, but have a great group: there's Madelyn, who is a trainer when she's not dealing with journalism school; Colin, who lives in San Fran now and used to run stairs with Madelyn and I before he moved; Courtenay, who is new to the whole thing and has gone from horrified by the idea to wanting to practice at 7AM; and Brenda, who has climbed Rainier twice and will definitely be a contender. Not like we're trying to win or anything, but it'll be fun and hopefully there will be celebratory drinks afterwards.

Last year I didn't try and raise money for the event's charity-- leukemia and lymphoma research. I do several races of some sort or another every year, and never feel comfortable about asking people to donate. But this year I'd like to try and raise something. A friend from work is about to take on a bone marrow transplant in March. A friend I grew up with's younger brother recently went through a transplant. And my mom recently told me of someone she knows who needs a bone marrow transplant. All are in their 30s or 40s. WTF?

So, if you have the means to do so, please donate a couple of bucks. I don't think there is a minimum for the website. Our team fund raising page is here. It's sparse, but functional.

Many thanks!

Flourless chocolate cake and coconut ginger ice cream

2009-03-01T00:54:00.001-08:00

I am sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I joined this on-line baking group called "Daring Bakers," which I found because I noticed that some of the blogs I ended up on when I googled things like "pumpernickel flour substitute" had references to it. It's basically a group of people with blogs involving baking or food who all bake the same thing once each month. A couple of members choose a recipe for the entire group, and you are supposed to make it at some point during the month and then post it on a designated day (yesterday! I hope I'm not on the outs already). There are some pretty lengthy rules about posting that I am still not entirely clear on. For example, we are required to post the following statement with this month's flourless chocolate cake and ice cream recipes:

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

There is also a website for members with forums with people fielding questions about baking and cooking.

I was feeing a bit skeptical until I started in on it and looked at this month's host Dharm's blog for guidance on how the cake should look when it came out of the oven (answer: sort of still wet and wobbly in the center). I found out that Dharm is a dad of two cute kids in Kuala Lumpur who recently posted a chocolate layer cake he made from a recipe he found in a 1978 edition of Australian Women's Weekly. How can you not love that? So I am sold again. Plus, I brought the cake and ice cream over to our new friends' house for a (pretty fantastic) pot luck dinner, and it was a hit. I respond very well to positive feedback, and they gave me a lot of it. Hostess Priyanka took this picture for me. I made the cake, plus a coconut ice cream with candied ginger (they gave you leeway on the ice cream part). I had extra heavy cream so we made whipped cream, too--which was unnecessary but always good.

The cake has just three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs. The tricky part is beating the egg whites and folding them into the chocolate/egg mixture -- on the first try I let the eggs sit too long and they separated, so I had to beat a new batch and added some cream of tartar that time. It worked. Second tip is to use the best chocolate you can afford -- it will (as the Daring Bakers instructions told me) taste exactly like whatever you use. I went part expensive chocolate, part cheap.

The ice cream is easy enough, but making a custard base always means hovering over the stove for a while. Good study break. I used the opportunity to test out the confection thermometer I've had for years without using (not sure where it came from), and turns out that yes, the custard does seem to thicken considerably somewhere between 150 and 170 degrees. Very cool.

Here are the recipes, the cake from DB and the ice cream adapted from Peggy Fallon's Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts:

Flourless Chocolate Valentino Cake

Printable Recipe

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped. [I used 1/2 Valrhona from Trader Joe's, and 1/2 nestle chocolate chips; 3/4 semisweet and 1/4 bittersweet]
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter [I accidentally skimped on the butter by those extra 2 tablespoons and didn't notice until just now]
5 large eggs separated

Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.

Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.

Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.

Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Coconut Ginger Ice cream

1 cup heavy cream
1 14oz can unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons candied ginger (for a garnish or to mix in, or more if you want)

Heat the cream, coconut milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan until the sugar melts and the mixture is smooth. Remove from heat.

Beat the egg yolks, and very slowly whisk in a cup of the warm cream to heat the eggs without cooking them.

Add the egg/cream mixture slowly into the remaining warm cream and coconut milk and return to the heat, stirring regularly until the custard thickens and coats a spoon.

Remove from heat and strain into a bowl. Cover and let come to room temperature, and then chill in the fridge for a few hours or up to a couple of days.

When ready to freeze in an ice cream machine, add a teaspoon of vanilla and the diced ginger (if mixing in), combine well and freeze according to your machine's directions. Return to teh bowl and leave in teh freezer for a while if you have the time.

So that's my first Daring Bakers challenge. Happy Sunday!

Rocky Shots!

2009-02-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot! Beth has requested Rocky shots twice now -- here are enough for a year. He is fine and snoring as I write this, even though yesterday I only have him one of the two scoops of food he is entitled to for breakfast before I left for work. I'm a bit distracted these days. He forgave me.

Rocky on a road trip:
Rocky in a hat:

Rocky asleep on a chair.

Artistic fuzzy cell phone Rocky shot in Brooklyn:
Rocky too lazy to right himself during a nap after sliding off a pillow and into the space between Jake and the pillow:
Rocky and The Baby:
Rocky at Thanksgiving on Staten Island:

Rocky looking alert and sporty:

Jake and Rocky watching TV:
Rocky showing he loves me more than Jake, and me and Rocky looking similar somehow, I think:

Granola and surveys

2009-02-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here eating (a lot) of granola and trying to figure out what to do with the morning -- go to the gym, work on dissertation stuff, or just stare at the walls and watch Battlestar Galactica online. It has a hectic week, even with Monday's holiday (was that this week?)

I did manage to achieve my granola goal of last week and made a decent batch that I've been plowing through scary fast. Granola is the new Kettle Korn. I can't stop eating it, and it's not even that good. I mean, it's definitely good for what it is -- but at the end of the day it's just granola and I should be able to walk away.

Here's the recipe: I started with Martha's sister Sarah's version of the Eating Well Magazine recipe, but had to use what I had on hand and don't have coconut or maple syrup. So I used honey and molasses instead. This makes me realize that to get the clumpy, carmel-y texture that the store bought stuff probably involves lots and lots of sugar, butter and/or oil. You can definitely add more of that (or anything you like) to this and get away with it. But add anything soft like raisins after everything has cooled.

Granola

Dry ingredients:

5+ cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1 cup chopped raw almonds
2/3 cup roasted and salted pepitas
1 tablespoon cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar
big pinch of kosher salt

Wet ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup honey
2-3 tablespoons molasses
teaspoon vanilla

Post-cooking add-ins:

1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped dried apple
1/2 cup banana chips

Preheat the oven to 275. Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix the wet in a bowl or a big measuring cup, and combine with the dry so that everything is coated. Spread the mixture into a baking sheet, and bake at 275 for about 45 minutes. Remove and stir the granola, and then bake for another 30 to 45 minutes. It will be nice and brown.

On the work front, I started surveying people in earnest yesterday. I'm not 100% sold on the survey, but don't really have any more time to waste fiddling with it and being done is more important than being perfect.

It went ok. People were willing to fill it out (and very happy about the $10 gift card -- I'm not sure I would get too many takers without it), but it is time consuming to have to hunt down folks in groups of 3 or four at a time. Folks come in for a big hour-long group meeting, and then at some point afterwards -- maybe immediately, maybe a few hours later, or maybe another day -- they have another small or one-on-one meeting where they clean up their application information, are given the voucher, and hear more specifics about the program. I need to catch them somewhere in between these appointments. The result being that I have to do a fair bit of leg work for ten surveys or something like that. I am trying to secure a bit of time after the big group presentation to try and grab everyone at once. I really have no idea how I could pull this off if I were not already at the office. Doing this at two other housing authorities will be a big challenge. Then again, if the other housing authorities don't issue any vouchers over the next few months, it's a moot point.

So I have no idea if I'll be able to get a decent sample size over the next few months. It looks like Jake and I will be in NYC for the summer as of sometime in June, and then the wedding is in late September ... I should ideally have the surveying done by the summer. Fat chance. Ideally, it should have been done already. But I am already trying to find funding for a follow-up study in the fall. I think I'll at least have enough of a sample for that, even if I don't hit a number to be representative for the city or county. The goal for the follow-up study would be to find out where folks ended up living, how they found or looked for housing, and their experience looking for housing. Now that I'm talking to people a little bit, I can see the things that a survey just isn't going to pick up. For example, the person who reeked of alcohol and was drunk enough that he forgot what the gift card was when I finally handed it to him. And the woman who says she is moving to Brooklyn but has never been there and has no friends or family there. Both are probably in for an uphill climb.

Ok -- granola and first of many coffees for the day are done. I think I will attempt the gym and running some stairs, since the Big Climb race is next month and I'd like to beat my time from last year. 69 flights of stairs up to the top of the Columbia Tower! More on that later.

Pre-test, beet juice and carrot ginger soup.

2009-02-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

My neighbor Sarah passed along this damn cute picture of Noah, who just turned three a couple of weeks ago--along with some of the homemade beet juice he's is pictured with (and under). I think Jake would have an anxiety attack if I brought yet another appliance home, but the juice is good enough to make the idea of owning a juicer really appealing. But I suspect Sarah has a talent for it. Noah apparently won't touch a vegetable but loves the juice. He seems to be a healthy eater to me, though. A few weeks ago we made raisin bran muffins (nice recipe from 101 cookbooks -- but they're sticky and meant to be eaten fast--so grease the pans well and eat up) and he told me raisin muffins were his favorite. Mine too.

On a separate note, I finally did a pre-test of the dissertation survey yesterday, officially kicking off the data-collection phase once and for all! whew.

It was uneventful, which is good... none of my big concerns seem to be problems. I was worried it would be 1) too long (50 questions), too 2) confusing and/or 3) poorly worded so that questions and response options meant different things to different people. But all seemed well, aside from a couple of surprise points. For example, when I say "do you have transportation to visit housing" I mean to ask Do you have a way to get to apartments you are interested in possibly renting? But three of five people thought I wanted to know if they had transportation to get the the Housing Authority office we were sitting in and were confused because, well, there we were sitting in it. Good to know. I also found that in my effort not to bait people into responses, I was beating around the bush and not getting to the point. Hmmm. Rings true for my personal life, not surprisingly.

Between work, the consulting project and the pre-test, the week was pretty draining. So when Martha N came over for dinner last night she found me still in the sweaty clothes I biked home from work in (big hill between home and work) and half-assing dinner prep. I accidentally added a cup less flour that I needed for rosemary feta focaccia, and overcooked the chard and veggies I was adding to pasta. It was fine, but all a bit off. And soft. Not that she's holding it against me. At some point I remembered that there was leftover carrot ginger soup in the fridge, so at least that made up for the mediocre showing. I used pureed leftover rice in it, which made it creamy and thick without having to resort to actual cream. I don't really like the taste (aftertaste?) of cream in soups and savory things. And I f-ing love to use that immersion blender.

It turned out a bit sweet but with a bit of a kick to it from the ginger. Nothing too much for MN, who can't deal with spicy at all. Not even strong mints. Here's a picture of the last of the soup--today's lunch--with the weird under-floured feta rosemary focaccia.

And here's the soup recipe, more or less. I'm guessing at measurements:

Carrot soup
2 lbs carrots (two weeks from the CSA -- more or less woudl be fine)
1 bunch of small white turnips
2 tablespoons olive oil
About 1 inch or so of ginger
1 chopped onion
1-2 tablespoons cumin
1-2 teaspoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
salt & pepper
About 3/4 cup cooked rice (I had jasmine from trader joe's)
6-8 cups chicken and/or vegetable stock

Slice the turnips and carrots and set aside. Sautee the onion until soft, add the diced ginger, and then the tomato paste, cumin and paprika, and salt. Add the stock. Let it come to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the carrots and turnips are really soft. Add some more salt and pepper if you want it. keep about a cup of the broth to add to the rice, and then use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Mix the rice and broth, and do the same. Add the rice mixture to the soup.

It was definitely better the next day, and with some feta cheese and parsley on top.

Happy president's weekend! My goal for the weekend, aside from getting work done, is to try making granola, which I hear is easy. Until then, I'm off to the coffee shop to re-word some survey questions.

The stimulus bill.

2009-02-12T23:40:00.001-08:00

I've spent a lot of time over the past day or two reading about the stimulus bill compromise and trying to dig up details. And I'm kind of burnt out on it, and just about everything else, for the moment.

But for those of you who may be interested in a belated update to the Man the Phones post, the stimulus bill, according to the information that has been trickling in, has a very decent amount of money in it for affordable housing. Folks are quibbling about how it will be distributed, who will benefit most, and how fast it will (or can) be spent -- but at the end of the day there is a lot in there. Here's a link to the senate finance committee's summary of the general provisions, and a link from the National Low Income Housing Coalition that focuses on housing.

Also going on is a great conference on housing and community development issues hosted by NYU's Furman Center in collaboration with the MacArthur and Rockefeller foundations. There is live blogging at the Next American City website.

Contact your senators!

2009-02-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

Or your congresspeople.

I bet you know that congress and the president are hot and heavy over the new stimulus package and the Senate will be voting on it this week -- maybe as soon as Monday or Tuesday. And that the "moderates" are attacking the big price tag attached to the House's plan. At risk are some programs that serve low-income people and would be a critical boost to cities and housing service providers who have been running on fumes through the Bush administration. With pretty dire budget situations on the state and local sides, they really need the federal help to keep up with growing demand for services.

The foreclosure bailouts and homeownership packages get the most press, but there are other programs in the mix: public housing, emergency shelter assistance, programs to facilitate affordable housing production.

Here's a link to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's info on the stimulus bill and the housing funds that are on the table -- with a handy zip code search function to get you your representatives' contact info. Here's another link to find and reach your senators, and one for your congresspeople.

Tell them to invest in the national housing trust fund to support affordable housing production (here's a NY Times editorial on that), as well as long-needed and terribly under-funded upgrades and repairs to public housing and other subsidized housing for low-income people. Tell them to protect the funding included in the House bill for public housing, low income renters, and homelessness prevention. The calls and emails and letters do matter, don't take much time, and don't require much detail. Might as well do what you can.

Ok, I'm done with the pitch -- Go team!

Work work work. And pretzels for poker.

2009-02-07T12:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a full week since I was last able to post, so I have a bit of a backlog happening. I started writing a couple of times, but my day job is in busy season--which is the legislative session--and my consulting gig is finally getting some traction. And I'm perpetually cleaning up the survey to get ready for a pre-test next week (assuming there are people to survey). I have been trying to figure out how to post a copy of it, but it looks like I need to upload to a separate website and then link to it here ... too much work for the moment. Baby steps.

Last night we hosted a poker party with some new friends we connected with through my friend Russell, who has been sending his friends in Seattle on blind dates with each other. Thus far very successfully, I think. I am very excited about them, but skeptical of complicated card games. I have trouble simultaneously remembering both the rules and the whole betting thing, and then lose patience for paying attention. So my expectations for the game were low and I figured I'd concentrate on the snacks and general hanging out. Turns out the game was fun. I didn't win a single hand (I split one pot with Jay, but I don't think that counts), but we weren't playing for real money.

Specifcially, I wanted to try making soft pretzels after seeing them on the Food Network's Good Eats. The cutesy tone on that show can be really annoying, but the actual content tends to be good and the cooking steps are de-mystified and simple. I knew you boil bagels and pretzels, for example, but didn't know why and it seemed hard. Now I do (sort of), and know it isn't hard.

I tried them out for the poker folks, and was very excited that they came out well. The poker folks gave some pretty positive feedback. I made a bunch of smaller pretzels instead of 8 large ones the recipe calls for, and used sea salt ($4.99 at Trader Joe's) instead of pretzel salt (who knows where you can get that, anyway). They were particularly good warm, but held up well and would freeze well, I think. I used a slotted spatula to fish them out of the boiling water and it was way less awkward than I thought it would be.

The pretzels were be labor-intensive so the other stuff was not: a chocolate peanut butter bar cookie thing, and then some tamari almonds.

The almonds are quick and easy but might be ruining my cast iron pan:

Heat a dray pan and add raw almonds, stirring them for a minute or so.
Add a generous pour of tamari or soy sauce, and stir while the liquid evaporates and the almonds are dark and coated with the soy sauce.
Taste one to see if they are strong enough for you, and either add more tamari and repeat, or spread them on a cookie sheet or parchment paper to dry and cool a bit.
Add some coarse salt to taste.

The whole thing takes about 10 minutes. The only down side is that the are a bit sticky. Spreading them out before putting them in a bowl helps them from sticking together a bit, but I haven't figured out how to avoid it completely. I've made these a couple of times now and no one seems to care. I tried once with blanched almonds and they came out chewy, so I'd stick to raw. I'd like to try it with wasabi sometime soon but am not sure how to pull that off yet.

The chocolate peanut butter bars were from a Cookography recipe. They were delicious, particularly after they sat for a couple of hours, but I don't even want to think about how many calories might be in there (I'm afraid to take a picture because I might be tempted to eat more). Peanut butter, butter, chocolate and condensed milk, with more peanuts on top? The recipe says you can get away with a cup of crushed peanuts -- I think you can cut that down to half or even skip them entirely. I have leftovers to distribute ASAP before I get too attached to them, and will definitely bust these out for the next work function (there are a lot of food-related activities at work--I have to do a brown bag lunch presentation in a couple of weeks, and will bring these along, i think).

I ate almost exclusively bread, fat, sugar and booze yesterday, with a red bell pepper and an apple thrown in to make myself feel better. I have some detox gym and stair-running planned in a couple of hours, with a friend who is a trainer and kicks ass. So she will probably kick my ass. Which reminds me: next post will be about the Big Climb: the race to the top of the Columbia Tower. 69 stories and about 1,300 stairs. I did it last year and am hoping to beat my time -- but can't quite remember what it was so need to figure that out, i guess.

Ok -- I'm off to make yet more edits and have more coffee before heading to the gym. Enjoy the day!

Lard bread.

2009-02-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

Jake is in Brooklyn this weekend, and I hope he leaves some clothes behind so he can fit baked goods in his carry-on bag. Fat chance. But it reminds me I never posted the lard bread recipe.

I had to hunt for it, and found out I'm not the only one pining for Caputos in Carroll Gardens. Multiple people posted on baking websites looking for the Caputo's lard bread recipe, or one from a place on the Lower East Side that apparently no longer exists. Caputos also has an amazing olive bread with whole calamata olives that makes me miss my friend Amy. I'm going to try making olive bread as a reward for getting through the next dissertation milestone, which will be completing the pre-test of the survey (maybe as soon as next week).

Anyway, at first I could only find a recipe from the Italian Trade Commission (seriously) that was for a traditional Easter bread with six whole eggs baked onto the top. Overkill. The recipe I finally found is from the Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, who also wrote the Cake Bible--which is massive and in its like 764th re-printing. I have the Cake Bible, and was initially bummed that Beranbaum's recipe seemed to be my only shot at lard bread. I bought the Cake book years ago in a flurry of enthusiasm about something or other, but was in over my head and found it impossible to make any of the recipes in my mini-kitchen that was equipped with two bowls and a ladel.

I figured I'd have to buy the bread book and then need to find some tool or special mail-order only ingredient to pull it off. So I picked the book up at Borders with every intention of returning it immediately after jotting down the recipe (yeah, I know -- but both money and shelf space are scarce and I didn't even open it all the way). Turns out I was only half right. I did end up unsuccessfully searching for malt powder, whatever that is, and bought a silicone baking mat. But I'd been eyeing the mat for a while and it was only $12. If I bought all the stuff Beranbaum mentions, I'd be out thousands. Otherwise, I'm really happy with the Bread Bible. She is seriously in love with bread and a bit over the top (here's a line from the intro to her "Heart of Wheat" recipe: "The thought of making this bread inspires me to sing 'America the Beautiful' while picturing vast prairies of golden waves of wheat. But eating it inspires absolute reverence and silence!"), and she really, really wants you to love bread too. There tends to be a lot of stuff involved for even simple recipes, but if you sift through the prose you can find a scenario that matches your tools and time and interest.

I did return the book to Borders, however. Amazon had it for 15 bucks cheaper (subsidizing the mat) and Jake gets free shipping, so I returned and re-bought.

In the end, the lard bread was a hit. Not Caputo's caliber, but Jake's Grandma Irma et el. gave the thumbs up and I'll play with the recipe it a bit. It needed more meat and a bit more pepper, I think, and maybe some cheese. I may try it with a bit more lard. This is not an everyday meal kind of a thing.

A warning: The recipe (and several others in the book) calls for a tray placed on the bottom of the stove as it pre-heats that you throw ice in to produce steam for a better crust. Here's a picture of a really funny-looking gadget that injects steam into your oven for you (not mentioned in the Bread Bible).

My steam was lame. Whatever. I tried, but my electric oven sucks. The crust was fine, though, and next time I'll give it an egg wash or brush it with butter. Ice throwing notwithstanding, this is easy. It is not hard, so don't be put off. Her recipe called for shaping the dough into a ring. I kept it a loaf because that's how I'm used to it.

Ok, sorry for all the narrative -- Beranbaum is getting to me.

Here's what I did, adapted from the Bread Bible and using a standing mixer:

Bread Bible Lard Bread

Bread flour: 2 cups+2 tablespoons/12oz/340 grams (Or 2.25 + 2 tablespoons all purpose flour)
Sugar: 1 tablespoon/.3 oz/9.3 grams (she called for malt powder, sugar or honey)
Instant yeast: ¾ tablespoon
Coarse pepper: ½ teaspoon
Salt : 1 teasp
Lard : 2 tablespoons
Water: 1 cup / 8.3 oz./ 236 grams
Meat: ¾ cup meat in ¼ to ½ inch pieces (mix of prosciutto and spicy soppresata)

Whisk flour, sugar, yeast, and pepper. Then whisk in salt.

Add the water and lard for about 1 minute at #2 speed, until flour is moistened.

Mix at #4 speed for 7 minutes.

Add meat on #2 for 1 minute or so until evenly incorporated

It will be very elastic dough that is somewhat sticky but won’t cling to fingers. Dust lightly with flour and cover for 20 minutes.

On a lightly floured surface, turn the dough out and roll it into a log about 12 inches long. Put the loaf on parchment paper or the silicon baking mat and let it rise for 1 hour, covered with lightly oiled plastic wrap or a big bowl.

Preheat the oven to 450 for one hour, with the rack and a baking sheet at lowest level and a pan or skillet below on the bottom of the oven. When the bread is ready to bake, put it (still on parchment paper or a mat) on the hot baking sheet.

Put 1/2 cup ice cubes in the skillet or pan to make steam. Quickly close the door to trap the steam and cook 20 minutes at 450. Then turn the oven down to 400 for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Beranbaum says to turn the loaf halfway through the baking, pulling it off the parchment or liner and directly on the baking sheet. I'm not sure why this step exists, but I did it. When it's done, the bread should be golden brown. Turn off the oven and prop the door open slightly for for 5 minutes before taking the bread out and putting it on a cooling rack.

There you go. I hope someone tries it.

Laura's baby shower and Sunday dinner

2009-01-30T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Martha N and I co-hosted a baby shower brunch for the lovely mom-of twin boys-to-be Laura, followed by dinner for six at my place later that night. It actually worked out quite well, even if I was feeling goofy by the time dessert rolled around that night. I drank kind of a lot of leftover champagne between brunch and dinner, which no doubt had something to do with that. But the day (and food) went over well, Laura seemed happy and it was great to meet her friends and family. And socializing was a nice break from a long, overextended work week.

I've been waiting on this post because I didn't take any pictures and was hoping to get my hands on someone else's. I seriously need to invest in a new camera. Martha N made great looking (and tasting) sticky buns and a pumpkin cake, and some friends of Laura's brought all the stuff for tamales -- yet this is the only picture I have of Laura and its not even from the shower. She's taking part in an MLK day celebration at the school where she teaches, I think. Or possibly a pro-compassion rally (which has probably happened in Seattle at some point or another)? Please let me know if you have any good camera suggestions, because I am ready to invest (modestly).

Brunch needed to be easy to make and to eat. The tamale-makers needed to spread out in the kitchen (we used every kitchen item of mine and some they brought with them) and Martha N needed the oven. So something that could be put together in advance and/or in one pan. And I was really just providing space and logistical support -- Martha N took care of most of the details, including helping re-arrange the furniture so we could all sit and taking me to Pike Market early Sunday for tulips and coffee. Martha N is pretty great.

The tamales (half with chicken and kale, half just refried beans and cheese) were also great. Laura took home a few freezer bags full for when then babies come (twins! boys! holy crap), and--57-step process notwithstanding--they're pretty straightforward if you have strong leader ship (enter Laura's friend Hilary, who is originally from Texas and was elbow deep in masa at one point). Definitely a nice twist for something like a shower and 110x better than other things I've heard of (melting candy bars to look like baby poop? Tasting baby food and guessing which is the chicken and peas?). At least once you get past the amount of lard in them (giant tub of it), which I may never be able do.

For my end I found a couple of recipes on 101 Cookbooks, which is a great and good-looking blog full of healthy, simple recipes. They tend to call for a ton of ingredients, but many are staples you may already have. You can search by ingredient, which is perfect for when I have some CSA box item I want to use -- in this case, bananas. I ended up with Roasted Banana Bread with rum-soaked raisins (I've been into rum raisin things lately--like in leftover bread and pasta puddings, following Mark Bittman's suggestions). I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that I added an extra banana, skipped the pumpkin seeds and put some salted pepitas on top instead. The bread is pretty, really light (cake flour does that trick), not overly sweet, and has a richer banana flavor than most. I had mine with strawberry preserves and was pleased with myself.

I also made a vegetable and rice casserole/gratin thing that was a hybrid of a few recipes I've tried from the NY Times and 101 Cookbooks. Another good option for leftover rice or veggies. I used arborio rice because I think holds up better than other types of rice, but I bet any rice or grains would work. I'm thinking spelt might be worth trying. I used chard, mushrooms and onions--but here too I bet pretty much any vegetables would work. I meant to throw in the chopped chard stems but forgot. Some baby shower-ers asked for the recipe, so here it is:

Mushroom, chard and onion risotto casserole

2 tbs olive oil
12 oz mixed mushrooms, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 bunch chard, blanched and chopped
3-4 cups cooked risotto (arborio) rice (cooked in vegetable stock)
2 large eggs
1 cup lowfat cottage cheese
3/4 cup sour cream
2 oz grated gruyere
2 oz grated parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste
tarragon and parsley for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook the mushrooms in olive oil until they start to soften. Add the onion, cooking until they start to turn translucent. Add the garlic and a bit of salt and pepper and stir for a minute or so longer, and then add the cooked rice and the chard. Set it aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs a bit and then add the sour cream, cottage cheese and grated cheeses -- hold on to some of the parmesan for the top, or add more if you want to. I think I added a bit more salt and pepper at this point, but the sour cream has a lot of flavor so I don't think you need much.

Combine the rice/veggie and the egg/cottage cheese mixes, and pour it into a decent-sized baking or casserole dish. I used a silicone brownie dish sprayed with a little olive oil. You want the mixture to be thick and thoroughly wet but not soupy. I used a square (8x8?) silicone brownie pan.

Bake at 350 for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until it looks bubbly and set. I put it under the broiler briefly to brown the top. Let it cool for a few minutes before cutting into it. I turned it out onto a cookie sheet and then pretty-side up onto a wooden cutting board with some chopped tarragon and parsley on top.

By the time we cleaned up from the shower, it was time to think about dinner. Everything was from recipes I found on-line, and I didn't fuss with them:

A big pot of French onion soup (onions came from the CSA last week), a green salad, and the easy focaccia toasted with cheese to top the soup with. And lemon bars with whipped cream from an Ina Garten recipe. I like her. Jake made a couple of steaks because he felt we were protein-deprived and we had some in the freezer. I'm eating almost no meat these days (but use stock or bullion all the time...not sure what that pans out to geo-agro-politically).

The soup is hearty and satisfying, and I pretty much followed the recipe except with more beef stock than chicken, leftover shower champagne instead of sherry, and dried herbs instead of fresh. But be warned: the first hour of cooking the onions in the oven is pretty intense fumes-wise. Jake and I felt a little queasy and went for a walk to get some air (I may have just been tired).

The lemon bars are great because you don't have to cook the custard. I was skeptical, but it turned out creamy, kind of spongy, and really rich. I thought it was almost too rich, but the whipped cream helped cut the sweet-tartness. I used a small round cake pan and a (silicone--it's sticky stuff!) cupcake pan for individual servings that folks took home. The only down side was that the crust didn't hold up in the fridge overnight (yes, I had some for breakfast). That might have been from me overworking the dough because I suck at shortbready things. But I think I would use a graham cracker crust next time, which is harder to botch and still pretty tasty.

Ok -- that's all for that. Thanks for the potato ideas, but I solved the potato problem: it suddenly occurred to me that I could give them away instead of trying to force myself to consume them. Duh. Have a great weekend!

IRB, a fetching cat and a call for potato recipes!

2009-01-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

The IRB approved my project! This is good! Or at least feels like progress.

IRB down; pre-tests and finalizing steps with housing authorities and legal departments and whatnot still to go. The grant application that sucked up my time is behind me, and Jake is packed off to NYC for the weekend so I can theoretically get a ton of work done. And I have about 12 lists of things to do all ready to go. Feels promising.

I'm off to a coffee shop to hopefully plow through some list items for a couple of hours, and to avoid procrastinating by attempting to do something with the 5 pounds of potatoes--two or three weeks worth--I have taunting me from their perch in the kitchen. I already wasted time by taking a picture of the stupid potatoes. I really need help with potato ideas. Anything you like to do with them?! Please send them my way.

In the meantime, here is my friend Shannon's cat Pumpkin. Pumpkin fetches hair ties. Seriously. I've been bugging her to put the fetching cat on You Tube, and she finally did. I am also impressed with her video editing skills.

Send potato ideas!

Sweet thing(s) giveaway

2009-01-26T23:40:00.000-08:00

My friend Martha N's crafty sister Sarah, of the crafty sweet thing(s) blog is celebrating her 200th blog post by giving away a sample of her felted art. She's even been on Martha Stewart (yes, lots of Marthas going on) and never fails to impress.

Long ice cream post for Lisa's birthday!

2009-01-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

Today is Lisa's birthday! Or maybe it was yesterday? I'm bad with birthdays. And she's in the UK, so it is tomorrow there already even if her birthday is today over here. In any case, she is special and this is her special day!

Here's me and Lisa in Des Moines, Iowa two and a half years ago -- this is the last time I saw Lisa, I think. Which is shocking considering the amount of time we used to spend/waste together. She has created an entire new person since then (see Gillian!), and I can't wait to meet her.

Lisa has specifically requested ice cream recipes to use with her new ice cream machine. We have had several conversations about the glories of ice cream makers. I love mine, even if it is in the cabinet now because I have no room for the bowl in the freezer. But as an incentive to make vs. buy, we were just informed by QFC that some peanut butter cup ice cream we bought was recalled for the salmonella scare. Yuck.

So I'm no expert, but here are some ice cream recipes for Lisa. The ones I've tried and liked so far are:

Berry and vodka sorbet
Pumpkin rum-raisin ice cream

I also direct you to the chocolate cashew ice cream I posted a few weeks ago.

And then by request, Plain Vanilla. I have not actually made them but I'll pass them to you and you can tell me how they go.

First, here are some rambling things I picked up by trial and error:

There are a couple of approaches to ice cream. First, the slightly challenging custard base with tons of eggs and time on the stove, then time chilling, before it can go in the freezer. So delayed gratification but richer and fattier and creamier and probably a crowd-pleaser. Second, the completely idiot-proof all milk and cream no-cooking involved kind (unless you steep something in the cream, which is always a good idea). It's quicker and easier, but doesn't keep well and can be kind of icy. There's apparently an additive (pectin? gelatin? Rennet?) that you can use to cut the icy/crystalline quality, but I haven't tried yet. Too lazy. And then there is the skimp-on-fat frozen yogurt or low fat kind. The texture changes with frozen yogurt--particularly if you use no milk at all, or no fat at all. Nonfat frozen yogurt sticks to the ice cream maker bowl, but ice cream does not. And the frozen yogurt doesn't freeze as smoothly. If I'm making it for me, I use plain non- or lowfat yogurt. If it's for anyone else, I use the full fat kind or add cream or whole milk.

For all recipes, it's a good idea to chill the mix in the fridge before you freeze it, so that the flavors come together. They can sit for a couple of hours to a couple of days and be fine. A tiny bit of booze is also really nice in ice cream (like, a tablespoon or two) -- particularly in sorbet. It keeps it from getting too hard, and helps it be creamy. But not too much or it won't freeze right. Finally, all machine instructions and recipes seem to say that you should churn it in the maker and then transfer it to a bowl and let it sit in the freezer for a while to firm up. I sometimes do this and sometimes I can't wait. Seems like the custard ones need it while the yogurt really doesn't. Lower fat kinds are better fresher and softer, I think.

So here goes:

1. Pumpkin Rum Raisin (adapted from Peggy Fallon's Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts)

I made this one for my neighbors and they liked it. But it got kind of grainy from the pumpkin after a day or two in the freezer, so is best eaten pretty fast.

1/2 cup dark rum
1 cup dark raisins
2 cups sugar
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 can pumpkin (unsweetened -- not pie filling)
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
pinch of salt

Bring the rum and raisins to a boil, remove from the heat, and let soak for an hour.

Whisk the sugar and the creams and salt together to dissolve the sugar, then whisk in the pumpkin and spices. Taste it to see if you like it sweeter, but I can't imagine you do. Chill it for a couple of hours. Follow your machines instructions -- adding the raisins and the rum when you are in the final few minutes.

2. Berry Vodka Sorbet

I used frozen mixed berries (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries) for this, and it was great. Straining the stuff to get rid of the seeds and skins is a pain, though. I bet you could do this with other fruit -- I've been meaning to try pureed canned peaches (without adding sugar if they are packed in syrup), and fresh ripe mango might be nice. The zest makes a big difference, and I bet other citrus juice or zest swapped in would work well. If you don't have juice or cider of any kind (maybe a berry juice might be good) you probably want to add some sugar.

1 to 1.5 pounds mixed berries, fresh or frozen.
3/4 cup apple cider or juice
3/4 cup maple syrup or sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
pinch of salt
grated lemon zest (about one lemon)
1-2 tablespoons vodka

Blend the berries with the apple juice in a blender or use an immersion blender in a big bowl. Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds and skins. Stir in the maple syrup, lemon juice, salt, lemon zest, and vodka. Freeze according to the machine's instructions.

Long post! Here's a picture to break it up: This (really scary) monkey stole a cookie from me in Gilbraltar, on a trip that Amy and I took a couple of years ago. She tried to get me to pose with the monkey but I would not. Lisa REALLY LIKES monkeys, and also likes the Pixies quite a bit. She once made me promise to do an interpretive dance to the Pixies song This Monkey's Gone to Heaven at her funeral -- wearing a flesh-colored body suit. Clearly both the request and promise were made after a few too many drinks. I have never understood what made her come up with the body suit.

3. Vanilla, two ways (cooked and no cooking, both from the Ice Cream book noted above)

A. Cooked Fancy vanilla

1 vanilla bean
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon good vanilla extract

Split the vanilla bean in half and scrape the seeds out into a saucepan with the milk, cream and the vanilla bean itself. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Add the sugar and salt, and return the pan to medium heat for about 5 minutes, until it is hot.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks. Gradually and slowly whisk in about a cup of the hot milk mixture -- slowly enough to heat the eggs without cooking them. Add the egg and milk mixture to the pan with the rest of the cream and cook slowly, on low heat, until it starts to thicken into a custard. It should coat the back of a spoon. Don't let it boil.

Strain the custard through a sieve and remove the vanilla bean. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for at least 6 hours. When you are ready to make it, stir in the vanilla, and freeze according to the machine's directions. Transfer to a freezer container and let it firm up for another couple of hours.

B. No Cook Plain Vanilla

1.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cups heavy cream
pinch of salt
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix all, dissolving the sugar. Let sit and chill for as long as you can, and then freeze according to the machine's directions. The recipe says freeze for three hours after you have churned it.

But in a pinch this past summer, I'd take whatever yogurt I had in the fridge -- generally vanilla or plain -- and add some milk or cream (1/2 cup? a cup?), a touch of vanilla, and some maple syrup or sugar to taste. You can add some berries at the end if you want -- or cook down some frozen or fresh berries with some sugar and/or a touch of lemon juice and put it in or on top. Easy and quick and good when Gilly is too cranky to let you deal with custard.

Finally, I have a cup of coconut milk in the fridge, some full fat yogurt, and a couple of almost over-ripe bananas. I think I will put them together with some sugar and vanilla and see what happens and then let you know next year.

I hope this helps! Happy birthday Lisa! And congrats on the new job. I hope you had a great day, and have many more great ones this year. I hope we even get to have a couple together. Much love.

Obama countdown completed!

2009-01-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in the UW bookstore coffee shop, after a packed day that kicked off--like many people on the West Coast's day did--with the inauguration.

Against all of my natural instincts to avoid crowds and early morning activities I made my way to a public screening (7:45 AM!) nursing a really bad cup of coffee with soy milk to meet Jake's cousins and aunt. We ended up in pew-like seating with two giant screens and an excited, earnest, flag-waving, teary-eyed, standing up and sitting down whenever the moderator in DC said to, really happy bunch of Seattleites.

I remained pretty groggy and blase about the whole thing until I 1) saw Sasha and Malia's purple and pink coats and then 2) heard the announcer say that Aretha Franklin would be singing and saw her now world-famous and really spectacular hat. In all seriousness, I think that hat sparked an internal slide show of the whole story of the past and the future and everything in between. Did you know she sang at MLK's funeral? What a great moment and the perfect hat. And look at her here in 1960.

In an odd turn of events, both Jake and I ended up interviewed on tv! Jake about the budget cuts and tuition increases on local TV. And his aunt Maggie, cousins Courtenay and Kristen and I were interviewed by a Canadian TV station about how Americans feel about the inauguration and future of the country ("Do you all really feel hope?"). Apparently TV Global Canada BC figured we were a good representation of America. They snagged us because Jake's aunt Maggie was taking a picture of his cousins pointing to today's Seattle Times while standing in front of a Pike Market sign. I am trying to dig up the footage on line. Although it should probably stay buried.

I did manage to meet with a professor to talk about dissertation stuff today. I won't bore you with the details, but the biggest take away for me was the general assurance that Yes, at a certain point you need to just go ahead and dive in and collect data and see what you get. And No, you never quite feel ready to do that. This particular professor is young and a freshly-minted PhD, so is very close to the process. I'm finding out that, as with nearly everything, there's a confidence game involved. At a certain point I have to be secure and trust (convince?) yourself that you have thought through things enough, done enough leg work and vetted things enough to pull the trigger and get what you need out of it. I have work to do, as always, but I am getting to that point.

Anyway -- happy inauguration day! Things are a little better today than they were yesterday. Which is exactly what I told TV Global Canada BC.

Sarah's Kale Salad

2009-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

My neighbor Sarah got back to me with her kale salad dressing/marinade recipe:

2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs Bragg's
1 Tbs lemon juice

Hers was less sweet than the other, which makes sense, and was really delicious.

The vegan detox-y limps along. Last night we went to a big potluck, which turned out to be less of a challenge than I thought but had some pitfalls. I stuck to the more raw-looking things and think that went fine, but the wheat avoidance was harder. Jake handled our contribution and made a pasta salad that he is literally in love with, so I had to try some lest I deeply offend. It was pretty great. Farfalle bowties with green and calamata olives, artichoke hearts, diced carrots, mushrooms that were marinated in the liquid that the artichokes came in, some green onions and parsley. He's great at dressing salads and just throws in olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper and some garlic salt, but it seems slightly different each time. Good work Jake! So-so work for me on the no processed and/or wheat-less front, but I'm ok with it.

Victory kale and froyo self-sabotage

2009-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

I accidentally ate an enormous frozen yogurt at Costco yesterday -- shown in this picture I found on line. Note the two spoons, barely visible, but suggesting it is enormous enough for two. I ate it myself, thoroughly sabotaging my detox-ish vegan/no processed foods thing. Amy was not impressed, and is kicking ass on her own detox-ish diet (she's going all raw!). Granted, I have no clear rationale for pursuing it other than wanting to know that I can walk away from cake if I choose to, but so it goes.

Now I'm back on the horse in a big way, and doing better with it today. So far, a kiwi, an apple with almond butter (natural, nothing added and all that), kale salad, and some pumpkin seeds. Plus coffee and soy milk, of course. I plan on keeping it up until I feel sufficiently cleansed and/or satisfied with myself and/or bored.

Victory on the kale salad front is giving me confidence: I found a recipe on line that somewhat mimicked what my neighbor Sarah came up with and shared with me. I would have used her recipe exactly, except that she told it to me and I then forgot it. She gave me a way to remember the proportions of the ingredients ("just remember two-two-one"), but I then forgot which ingredient got what and couldn't remember the third ingredient. I think she said she uses tamari, lemon, and Bragg's vinegar. So I googled and found the cutely-named I Heart Kale blog, with a good-looking marinade (a couple of them, if you poke around on the blog a bit), albeit with a lot more stuff in it than Sarah's. I didn't have all of the ingredients so I winged it--here's what I did, adapted from theirs and Sarah's:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon tamari
1 teaspoon sesame oil
4 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon maple syrup
Lemon
Salt and pepper

Remove the stems and thinly chop a bunch of kale (the more raggedy looking kind--Lacinato?) ,and toss it in the dressing. Let it sit for at least an hour -- my neighbor says overnight sometimes, depending on the temperature and the type of kale ... just let it sit until it gets soft. I had it with cherry tomatoes and tofu last night and it was great--some grated carrots would be great too. Any add-ons would be great, really. Amy gave me a promising recipe for collard greens which I'll try tonight, just to make sure I have greens at the ready for the next few days.

As I was looking for an image of the frozen yogurt, I noticed a headline on my Seattle news feed about the University of Washington in Seattle not accepting new students for the Spring semester, in an effort to save money. Not a huge surprise--it's been floated as a likely step. About 300 kids affected. Jesus. It's in part, apparently, because they are over-enrolled by about 1000 students.

As background, Washington State, which has no income tax, is facing something like a $5 to $6 billion budget deficit. The Governor put together a budget that cuts vital services for the poor (think housing, health care, and the cash subsidy for people with no income and no ability to generate income), and just about everything else. UW Seattle is facing something like a 15% budget cut -- and already receives less than its due from the state. It's really pathetic. UW is the state's premier institution, and in bad economies it should be easier, not harder, for people to go to school--particularly their state school. My mom has spent her career in the public university system, so the buckets of Kool Aid I have been fed on the importance of public education to both individuals and the public good inevitably taints my views on this stuff. But come on, they can't figure out a way to let 300 more kids start this spring? The nine or so months before they can start in the fall can be an eternity to someone who is struggling to make the school thing work. Yes, UW and everyone else is looking a big, ugly, cuts -- but even on a shoestring budget they should prioritize keeping kids in classes.

Ok, rant over -- I'm off to have coffee with a friend of a friend. I'll bring a snack so I don't get tempted by the baked goods, and hope for the best. Happy Saturday!

I guess Friday is the new Tuesday.

2009-01-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

Turns out taking on two extra side jobs the week that busy season starts at work makes for hectic days. I'm beat.

I'm looking at these next two hectic weeks as an opportunity to schedule things that need to be done for the dissertation once the IRB re-surfaces. Like the pre-test for the survey, and the details for possibly adding a third housing authority, and the outline of tables and descriptive work I need to do for the first paper. Adding a third housing authority has pros and cons: hitting a respectable sample size seem more doable, but I'm not sure that program differences would make the populations too dissimilar (and the logistics too complicated). But in general, more tends to be better with these things.

On an up note, I confirmed with the IRB that they did in fact receive and process my application, and I should be hearing from them soon. I cold-called the first name on the staff directory list, and happened to hit a really helpful person. "You'll hear back soon" probably just means they'll request additional materials, but at least it's in the works.

What I am really psyched about is this kale salad that my neighbor brought by! Raw kale salad! Chopped Kale (stems removed), basically marinated in tamari, oil and lemon juice. Who knew? I am in love, and heading out to get some kale and try it myself as soon as I post this.

It's great timing, because my friend Amy and I are trying out sort of a makeshift detox or cleanse diet for a few days, just to try and rid ourselves of the holiday overload. This is her very cute nephew Easy in his very cute Cleveland Indians outfit. I like that he looks a little bit gangsta here, for some reason.

I say makeshift because the official "detox" diets all seem pretty extreme or silly. Cayenne and lemon? But the idea of sticking to fresh stuff and avoiding processed foods, even just for a couple of days, is really appealing. Amy is already vegan (albeit slowly introducing fish and dairy this past year), and is dropping wheat, alcohol, sugar and caffeine -- but I'm trying to avoid dairy and meat. Really I just want to eat only what I make myself, or fresh foods. But I'm not even thinking about dropping coffee. No way, man. I'll stick soy milk in the stuff if need be, but I'm still unconvinced about soy at the moment and trying to figure out what I think about it. When I read the box, there always seems to be ingredients that have nothing to do with soy. I am hoping Amy can give me some wisdom on that.

Back to work! Next post is lard bread (seriously this time) and kale salad.

2009-01-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

How cute is this? I couldn't resist posting it (and I learned how to post video!). I snagged it from my friend Martha's sister Sarah's crafty cute blog.

Belated Christmas recipes

2009-01-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

My neighbor and her very adorable son Noah just stopped by and gave my a glass of excellent carrot juice she made, which I think gave me a burst of energy that I am hoping will help me churn out this recipe post. Otherwise I'll probably lose track of where I put them and have to hunt for them next time I want to make them.

So this is what I remember from baking at this point:

Torres' chocolate mudslide cookies
Chocolate cashew ice cream
Anisette toast
Cranberry orange bread
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
Lard bread
Caramel pecan pie

And then there was potato leek soup and chicken stew with CSA veggies, but I think I just threw stuff in a pot for those. I think I'll post the ones I found on-line today, and then the ones I dug out of books or adapted from somewhere next time. The lard bread in particular took some effort to find.

Some of the baked goods went to pre-holiday dinners, some to the pug-sitter's family, some to Christmas eve dinner at Jake's cousin's house, and a bit to a friend who had a baby recently.

The anisette cookies, however, are mine alone. They are rock hard and perfect for dipping in coffee, and no one likes them but me. It took a while to find a recipe I liked, which oddly enough is apparently from a Sopranos cookbook, of all places. Who knew? There are multiple Sopranos cookbooks, it seems. Most of the other recipes I found for biscotti used butter or oil to make them more tender, and had lots of nuts -- not the hard, dry cookies I was looking for. This one has a lot of eggs but nothing that would make them fall apart in your coffee or somewhere between your mug and mouth (landing on your laptop). I added about a teaspoon more of anisette extract than the recipe called for, plus about a half a teaspoon of vanilla.

The chocolate cookies were a last minute find, because Jake's cousin requested something chocolate. But I've been hoping to make the ice cream for quite a while and never got around to it.

The cookies have a very official name, Jacques Torres' Chocolate Mudslide Cookies, and are all over the internet. That Torres has marketed the hell out of them, with good reason. You can apparently even buy a mix on Amazon, and they come with their very own video demonstration that I just watched now but wasn't too interesting. I thought the ice cream and cookies went really well together, even though both were really rich. But I had some mishaps with both. I ended up burning a batch of cookies because I was toying with the time (his recipe is for large cookies, and I made small, so if you try that cook them for like 10 minutes, tops), so I kept the slightly burnt ones shown in the photo--I froze them before we left and we've been picking at them since we got back. The ice cream didn't have enough time to freeze well, and we threw in some marshmallows that were on hand but turned out to be really stale. Not that the stale marshmallows stopped us from eating it. FYI: stale mini marshmallows in ice cream sort of pop when you bite them.

The real winner from the cookies is Torres' tip of spreading cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and chilling it, and then scoring or cutting the dough so that all the cookies are the same size. What a good idea. You could just cut them and then freeze them--which is so much easier than scooping out dozens of cookies. I've been freezing cookie dough already in balls, so that you can just put a couple on a tray frozen.

The cranberry orange bread was inspired by the pound of cranberries I got from the CSA and the really nice looking photo on the blog I found it on when I googled for cranberry recipes. Everything looks really beautiful on her blog, but this is the first thing I've tried. It tasted great and was a nice change from all the rich food going around, but I think it was a bit soggy and didn't hold up all that well. I'll leave out some of the juice, buttermilk and/or butter next time. The glaze was great, though. A keeper.

The other stuff will come next time. I'm off to walk the pug (who snuck into the neighbor's apartment and ate their cat's food, the little shit), and to hopefully get some work done. Happy weekend!

Tuesday's post on Friday

2009-01-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

What a busy week. I took on two side consulting jobs (both very short-term, and I feel kind of guilty about taking them on -- but this is a recession/depression, right? Time to start saving for when I join the ranks of the unemployed?) So now I'm two posts in the hole -- the dissertation post that should have happened Tuesday, and today's recipe-related post. Thankfully, I have things for both--dissertation first.

I would like to note that I write this instead of watching All My Children, which is my usual procrastination tool -- so this is a victory of grand proportions! I would also like to add a photo, since posts without photos are lame. This is a grainy cell phone shot of Rocky, in his fantastic new sweater (Go Huskies!) knit by his foster mom while we were out of town. You can't see his face in this because he was intensely trying to pull us back to Elizabeth's house when it became clear to him that we were taking him home and she was not coming.

Anyway, I'm narrowing in on the research questions for the survey-related paper (and feeling the specter of all the data work I need to do creeping up behind me). A couple of things are pretty obvious: looking into what people are thinking when they apply for the voucher program and when they actually get the voucher in hand, and to how they perceive their options.

But a couple of things are less obvious -- like, how to look at outcomes themselves. For the cross-MSA paper (my dissertation consists of two papers -- here's a summary) I'm comparing where voucher people end up with where non-voucher people end up: other poor people who don't have a voucher, the average renter, and the locations of subsidized housing units. MSA's are the census data term for metropolitan areas. They are pretty big and include a whole commuting area as opposed to just city boundaries.

But for the survey paper I'm looking at the possible outcomes for voucher people themselves. There are a few possible outcomes that they can have. They can use it to stay in their current apartment ("leasing in place," and cutting their housing expenses), they can move someplace really close, like the same neighborhood (I'm calling this a "status quo move"), and they can move to a new neighborhood ... or city, or state. I'm calling this a "potential mobility move." And then, of course, people can fail to find housing at all with their voucher--called "failure leasing up," generally.

These are the things that can be measured and potentially modeled. First, what is the success rate for participants, and does it vary by group (race, income, family size)? Second, what does mobility look like -- leasing in place vs. status quo moves vs. mobility moves? Again by groups. And finally, for potential mobility moves, how many result in significant changes in neighborhood quality? I'll have both the full population of a few thousand households to look at, as well as the smaller sample of people who fill out surveys and tell me about their plans. Yikes.

This is getting long --so here's another photo: Jake an my feet with snowshoes on them. Snowshoes are intense.

So let's say some do move somewhere "new," i.e., in a different census tract from where they started (my back of the envelope numbers look like about two thirds of people move somewhere, about two thirds of those moves are to new neighborhoods). The question becomes whether there are changes in neighborhood quality--does the potential for mobility actually result in mobility? How do you characterize quality so that you can know?

I am very far from the first person to think about how to quantify neighborhood quality. But it is never easy. Poverty rates are the fall-back choice for most research -- but in Seattle, the poverty rates really don't vary so dramatically from census tract to census tract that you can pick up differences that seem particularly meaningful. I could be wrong on that, and I'll find out soon enough, but other "quality of life" indicators are probably more insightful. So maybe looking at crime rates? School quality (test scores?)? Access to transportation? Park space per capita? I need to get up to speed on local data that could be useful.

Then comes the question of modeling outcomes as opposed to measuring them. What that means is taking, for example, whether or not a household moved to a new neighborhood or not as the outcome of interest (literally a yes/no, 1/0 outcome) and estimating the impact of differences in things like the household's race, income, pre-voucher location, PHA that issued the voucher on the probability that a household moved or not. A household's likelihood of moving or not moving is examined as a function of household characteristics, the housing authority that issued the voucher, and any other things that people theorize as important to people's options and outcomes. You have the outcomes for each household, and you have a range of information about each household, and then you plug them in (with a whole lot of crap in between) to a formula, basically.

I am pretty daunted by this -- all of the econometrics freaks me out and is part of why this all takes me so long. But I think desparation to be done will win out over intimidation by statistics.

Next steps, then, are to keep at it. Start test-running the survey to see if it works. And go back to playing with the data for the first paper. I reached out to a third housing authority to see if they are interested in letting me survey their folks -- I'm afraid that one of my current two won't be issuing many vouchers this year, and it could be interesting to see what a different area might bring. I'm also hoping that conversations with my committee members and a very sharp and nice professor at UW who has offered to give feedback will help stuff gel. This all feels like wading through sand half the time.

Ok! Too long first 2009 dissertation post! Seems fitting, since dissertations are generally too long, I guess. Back to work.

Back from the North Woods

2009-01-01T08:22:00.001-08:00

2009!

It's been a long lapse since my last post. We've been to Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a brief snowy day-trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to see Lake Superior. We've seen my family and Jake's family, had many big meals, and learned just how cold the Midwest can get.

My parents, brother, and nieces Olivia and Julia holed up in a cabin for a week (the picture is dust on the frozen lake outside our cabin), where we spent most of our time putting on layers and then peeling them off again. The cabin is on 8,000 acres of property owned by Dairymen's--a private club that was started by dairy farmers from Illinois about a hundred years ago. My mom's grandfather was one of those dairy people (he shod horses for the delivery trucks), and she spent her summers there as a kid. It's definitely more rustic than resort (much of the land is nature preserve), but there are staff who keep the cabins stocked with wood and the cabins themselves are big, modern and warm. Even at capacity -- 120 people in 40 or so cabins lining two big lakes -- you could go a full day without crossing paths with anyone else. We fell into a pattern quickly: each morning and afternoon involved a couple of hours of some snow-related activity, and each evening some cooking and card-playing or movie-watching.

The seven of us went through an amazing amount of food. Off the top of my head, in seven days we went through:

6 lbs ground beef
5 lbs stew beef
1 5lb chicken
1 lb beans
4 lbs pasta
98 oz canned tomatoes
4 lbs carrots
3 lbs onions
2 gallons of milk
3 dozen eggs

That's just the start of it. We had some leftovers and unused stuff that I think made its way to the local firehouse. I did a bunch of cooking but not much baking aside from pecan pies by request from my niece Olivia, who really did most of the work. We tried making a maple syrup pecan pie (we had about a liter of syrup), but it was only mediocre. The caramel version was the crowd favorite, for sure.

But now I'm back in Seattle, and not particularly looking forward to returning to real life and avoiding thinking about all the work I neglected for the last three weeks (a month?). I made one half-hearted attempt at work the other day, but then we needed to make dinner and then my laptop was needed to watch Seabuscuit. It was out of my hands.

Jake and I also decided to investigate doing a commitment ceremony up at Dairymen's, maybe in the fall. I have no idea if it is possible, but put out some feelers with the staff up there. My mom would be thrilled, it's convenient for Jake's family in Minneapolis, it is self-contained and comfortable, and I think it would be a really relaxing time for anyone who made it out. But all that will have to be dealt with later. Here is the same lake in the late summer.

I hope you've all had a great and safe holiday, and that you have a happy and healthy and fun-filled 2009. I really miss being close to friends and family, and I hope that 2009 brings lots of togetherness opportunities. Maybe even a wedding. Or a graduation party!

Going forward I also hope to do shorter, more regular, posts, with some sort of structure. I'm thinking recipes on Fridays and dissertation updates on Tuesdays. A holiday recipes pdf will be the first Friday recipes post, since a few people have asked my for those.

Happy new year! Much love.

Snow! A ring! More snow! And lots of cookies and baking and soup and bread

2008-12-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

Many of you fellow citizens of the Facebook Nation already saw the "status change" on Jake or my profile, but just to complete the new media announcement loop: Jake proposed the other day, I said yes, and then there was a ring (on my finger), and we are now officially engaged. Double exclamation points!! Here's Rock checking out my newly engaged hand (both of my parents individually asked if we had "told Rocky yet"-- I suppose we have). He is unimpressed because it is not edible.

For some reason I like the word in Spanish better -- I am comprometida. Which also means "in a difficult situation," according to my dictionary. And he is my fiance, I guess, and vice versa. Odd that the word in English is, for some reason, French. Are we "betrothed" in English? Anyone have a good vocabulary suggestion? I am still getting up to speed on all of this.

No idea on when, where or what we will do (not a religious thing, but some sort of ceremony, which we'll have to figure out). We have briefly discussed names. Galvez-Faleschini and Faleschini-Galvez (with and without hyphens), Galvezschini (I am particularly fond of the confusion and ethnic ambiguity that the z-s-c-h combo might create) ... but I am a fan of just keeping our respective names, respectively.

Jake was incredibly thoughtful and sweet and--uncharacteristically--devious. He had a plan that I was completely clueless about. Which resulted in him proposing with me carrying a large bag of kettle corn, which then accompanied me to the very nice jewelry store where his friend was waiting for me to come and pick out the ring. Which I did, albeit sort of in a daze, and wore home on the 49 bus through a snow storm. I swore everyone was looking at my hand, which of course they were not. Just we were. It is now my lucky bag of kettle korn, so I am finishing it off uncharacteristically slowly. I should figure out how to make kettle Korn, because I seriously love that stuff. But more on all of that later, probably.

In the meantime, we are completely snowed in here in Seattle. Buses aren't running, airport closed last night, the streets covered with packed snow and ice and no tire chains for sale within a few miles of here. We live on a big hill, where this happened just a couple of blocks away. So I have been cooking and baking up a storm -- two types of biscotti, potato leek soup with celeriac, bread, chocolate chip cookies, dark-chocolate covered nuts ... I finally made a chicken stew. Thank God we had dinner guests the other night to help with some of it.

I am probably moving on today to cranberry nut bread and pumpkin chocolate chip. Maybe pecan pie and lemon meringue tart tomorrow and Wednesday. And I think I did it: found a recipe for lard bread!!! That I am hoping to try on Wed. More on the baking later. I think I'll put all the recipes together in a link or a doc.

All this is in between dissertation work, of course. Um, yeah. I say as I head off to the gym (wear the ring?). But it has been a crazy few days and I so have a draft of some stuff that needs to go to my advisor. I may post if I can figure out how to do a pdf.

A pug's tail, Faleschinis and focaccia!

2008-12-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

Jake's family is in town -- parents, aunt, and cousin with his son, in addition to the two cousins and grandma that already live here--and we all met up at our place and had some snacks before heading out to dinner. I had to work today, so figured it was a good opportunity to try making a quick basic focaccia. I found a recipe on the King Arthur website that seemed pretty idiot-proof, skipped some odd-sounding ingredients ("pizza dough spice?" "powdered Vermont cheese?") and stuck to olive oil, kosher salt, and a mix of herbs. My camera doesn't do it justice (although I have finally figured out how to turn off the flash, which helps), but there it is.

It was a hit, at least with Grandma Irma. The veggie box delivery people came by as we were slicing it up and also gave it a thumbs up, so I gave them the recipe.

I wish I could claim that it was complicated, but it wasn't. About 10 minutes to mix, an hour to rise, and 40 minutes to cook. It's pretty light and probably nowhere near authentic (it was a pretty sticky dough and I couldn't press proper dents in the top the way you're supposed to). So I think next time I'll try a double-rise recipe and take a bit more time with it. But it was salty and crispy and soft in all the right places, and definitely did the job. I think this is a good start to my week of holiday baking, which will involve many eggs and many sticks of butter. And one crock pot full of veggies I still need to deal with. The holidays are bad for vegetables.

On an unrelated note, a friend commented that Rocky's tail in the picture a couple of posts ago was straight, as opposed to its natural curled position. Her concern was that a straight tail is a sign of an unhappy pug (since curly tails are the sign of pug in its natural, happy state). What a good eye.

Oddly enough, Rock's tail goes straight only when he is asleep or really pissed off -- i.e., chasing a truck or plane, or trying to attack a pit bull or some nice pedestrian.

I don't want to concern anyone -- so here is Rocky looking undeniably happy.

This was post- play a while back, basking in the afterglow of a really intense lap around the sofa. I recently sent this to Elizabeth and her mom, who will be taking care of Rocky over the Christmas holiday. I am going to send them a picture a day until we drop him off next Wednesday, and I figured this smiley one was a good one to start off with.

veggie bags, goals for the week, and carrot zucchini bread (by request!)

2008-12-14T21:51:00.000-08:00

I didn't do any baking or cooking this weekend, and barely even made coffee (drank a lot, just didn't make my own). Jake's parents are in town, so we went out to dinner and haven't been home much. This week looks to be pretty busy, with several dinner outings.

Weeks like this make me remember how much I love these (As Seen On TV) Debbie Meyer GreenBags. They work. Seriously, they do. I have already preached to some of you about this, and I hope you tried them. I've been meaning to send them to my mom, who watched tomatoes from her garden rot this summer. A nutritionist in NYC gave me some bags three years ago but I shoved them in a drawer (then drove them cross-country) and forgot them until this fall. Now I use them constantly, rinsing them out and reusing them over and over again. I replenished my stash a few weeks ago, at $10 for 20 at Fred Meyer here in Seattle. Come to think of it, the nutritionist was originally from Seattle--but I think that's a coincidence and does not suggest that the bags only exist in Seattle. Check the supermarket, pay the $10, and you will thank me. Without them, my fridge would be a hot mess most of the time. They keep greens fresh forever (over a week, easy) if you put them in the bags relatively dry. I haven't tried them for tomatoes because I eat them so fast, but if greens and the stock photo are any indication, they work magic.

That said, my goal for the week is to use the vegetables in my fridge before they go bad and/or new ones descend on me on Wednesday. Looks like a maybe a some kind of stew will be in my future, because the slow cooker hasn't made an appearance yet this winter and those potatoes and kale and onions and carrots (still!) aren't going to cook themselves. Can you put bok choy in stew?!

Also, I need to:

1) figure out what to bake for our pug-sitter and christmas eve (I bought some anise extract and am thinking almond anise biscotti, and I just had a f-ing amazing lemon tart at Etta's in Pike Market that had a marshmallow meringue that left me sort of sugar-ill but also really inspired);

2) shop!; and

3) clean up some dissertation thinking I managed to pull off over the past few days.

I think I got a better handle on what my committee has been pushing me on, although I really only have stream of consciousness notes on paper about it. I think there are four main questions I'll be answering.

The very basic: what do people say they want or intend to do with the voucher once they have it? I.e., I want to stay put, versus move to a new place in my current neighborhood, or move somewhere far away.
Second, why? Here's where questions about whether they like their current neighborhood, or feel they are part of a community they don't want to leave, or feel that moving is just too damn hard/expensive/confusing/not a real option come in to play.
Where do people actually end up? So, how many can't find a place and lose the voucher (called "success rate" in the lit)? How many "lease in place" (use the voucher to stay in their original housing)? And how many experience a change in neighborhood quality as a result of moving with the voucher? The latter involves measuring neighborhood quality, which will be a bitch and a half because it means EVEN MORE DATA.
Here's still fuzzy -- but examining which factors influence outcomes. To what extent do preferences predict a person's likelihood of moving vs. staying in place or losing the voucher? To what extend does family size, or race, or some other thing seem to be more important?

That's a mouthful, so thanks for bearing with me (if you did). The fourth is where some modeling is going to have to happen and I need to make sure I'm asking the right survey questions. I'm anxious about it at the moment and concerned I'll need to go back to some drawing board with the survey. Maybe it's just the sugar in that tart.

But lets hope for a productive week and a happy jake family visit (thanks for Dinner Rick and Bonnie!).

Oh -- by request from Anonymous #2: a carrot zucchini bread recipe! Which is basically the pumpkin carrot, but swapping out the pumpkin for the zucchini.

3 cups flour (I split white and whole wheat)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2.5 cups sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp clove
.5 tsp nutmeg
.5 tsp ginger
1 packed cup grated carrots
1 packed cup grated zucchini
1 cup plump raisins or nuts (if you want)

Whisk the dry together (flour, powder, spices and salt). Mix the sugar, beaten eggs, oil, applesauce, carrots, zucchini and raisins, and then add to the dry ingredients just enough to combine it all. I tend to just eyeball the spices.

Bake at 350 for about an hour in a pam-ed pan (makes two 8 or 9 inch loaves) and you're done. Or about two dozen small muffins.

The measurements on the carrots and zucchini are approximations -- use what you got. I have used pre-shredded carrots and it went fine.

You can do a whole cup of oil instead of half and skip the applesauce, or up the applesauce and skip the oil. I like to drop calories and fat where I can, but some oil helps.

I often substitute one or more eggs with banana and/or ground flax mixed with a bit of water -- which I think is great but definitely gives a denser texture. I've never tried it with this bread, but with others I love it. I'll post something about substitutions some time or another.

Really, it seems like you can take this basic flour, sugar, oil, eggs and spices combo and pair it with combinations of apples, banana, carrot, zucchini, pumpkin ... and crushed pineapple, coconut, nuts and raisins all work well with different combinations, too. Seems sort of like juicing. Whatever works in juice you can probably find a loaf recipe use for.

Speak of the Devil

2008-12-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

I spoke too soon! Ben Smith confirms that Carrion was named head of urban policy. Things are looking good for NYC this administration. I wonder what they have in mind when they say urban policy, and how it will interact with all teh agencies that touch on urban issues?

Ok, time for me to get back to work.

Donovan and HUD

2008-12-13T11:40:00.000-08:00

Two people have asked me to post some rocky shots and/or news, which I promise to do very soon. Here's a teaser for the moment though -- Rock in his favorite position, destroying my sofa cushion. God I love that dog. A friend was kind enough to volunteer to take him for nearly two weeks while Jake and I head to Minneapolis and then Wisconsin for the holiday. This means baking for her and her parents! I haven't decided what to do yet. So more on that in the next week or so.

I woke up this morning with a mild hangover from a birthday party with just enough time to make it to a class at the gym. I made it through bootcamp -- I think Madelyn took it easy on us. Or maybe it was all the carbs from the beer and the leftover cheesecake I had when we got home. That stuff really does get better after a few days. There was leftover carrot pumpkin bread for breakfast, which also held up really well.

I came home and saw that Shaun Donovan, the very smart head of NYC's Housing Development Commission, was named to head up HUD. It's not a surprise and definitely a relief. There seemed to be some politic-ing going on, with a short list of Latino names floated in the press. Not than any were bad, exactly, but Donovan is an obvious choice.

The thing that baffles me is that it was announced at 6AM eastern time, on a Saturday, on the radio. Huh? Politico writes it up as a "use of new media to make news," but it seems like a use of old media for boring news. Or maybe trying to minimize the appointment, in light of the fact that Latinos are not feeling the love from Obama right now?

I shouldn't be surprised that people care less about HUD than about the economy or defense -- but come on, now, let us see the guy shaking Obama's hand in front of a flag, at least. The NY Times home page, by the time I got to it, has the appointment story as a link underneath an unrelated story. We're also still waiting to hear what the deal will be for an urban affairs czar-type person or agency. I know that very good, very committed people are thinking about housing and urban issues on the transition team, which is really exciting. Nevertheless, it would be great to know a bit more about what direction it is taking. The Donovan appointment is pretty great news for housing policy wonks, though, particularly NYC housing policy wonks. He clearly knows what it takes to get housing built and to run programs, is innovative, and values research as a tool. From what I've seen working for a housing authority this past year, what the HUD-funded program world needs even more than innovation is some serious relationship-building with HUD itself. The current tone is one of mutual mistrust and perceived incompetence. The perception is probably real in some instances and places, but there has to be a better way.

As an aside, the Times mentions Donovan championing inclusionary zoning. My ex-boss Frank Braconi, now the chief economist for the NYC Comptroller, had a nice profile in the Times this week, was among the first to really push for inclusionary zoning -- arguing basically that it was a good political tool to gain consensus for rezoning (then just starting to roll out for Atlantic Yards, Far West Side, Greenpoint, etc.), and a nice way to add affordable units to already-dense development. He was at odds with City Planning over it, but it eventually caught on. I wrote the policy brief on it for him many moons ago, and then I think it cost me a job I interviewed for at City Planning that year (truth be told I was definitely on the under-qualified side at that point). Seattle is going through inclusionary zoning debates now, and i haven't been tracking at all, but it seems like some of the same issues (on-site vs. off site inclusionary units?; buy-outs into a fund as opposed to hard unit production?). Good stuff.

Ok, I've gone on too long, and need to get in the shower to go to coffee with a friend from grad school who has moved to back to Seattle, her home town. I had some mini-epiphanies yesterday on dissertation stuff that I think moved the logjam on the research questions issues. More on that than you probably care to hear some other time.

Oops

2008-12-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

I was too busy yesterday to appreciate this:

In my effort to send forward the Vermont-based King Aurthur Flour Company's (great) website to my friend who is from Vermont, I accidentally sent the following to the head of NYU's Internal Review Board. I have not heard back.

I love these peopel! You shoudl move to Vermont and marry this website.

- Show quoted text -

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: King Arthur Flour <kingarthurflour@enews.kingarthurflour.net>

Root veggies down. Ugly celeriac to go.

2008-12-11T21:31:00.001-08:00

This is a celery root. I am not familiar with it. It arrived in my box of vegetables last week (the week before?), and I have been ignoring it. Jake sliced some of it up and threw it in something that had celery and onions and it worked -- sort of like water chestnuts or sunchokes. But I have no idea what to do with the rest of the thing. And am too uninspired to look into it. Too many root vegetables and not enough time.

Speaking of roots, yesterday's Nature's Last Stand box came with carrots and potatoes and beets. I still have carrots and potatoes and parsnips from last week. So, determined to 1) use carrots and 2) not buy anything else in order to use the carrots, last night I made a carrot pumpkin raisin loaf to bring to this book club I just joined (crashed, really,a nd they very nicely let me). Today I made a beet, carrot and parsnip salad--which had the added benefit of letting me use a big bunch of parsley that was starting to wilt. Both went over well. I adapted the bread from some recipes I found on line (recipe below), and the salad was the first thing that came up when I googled all three words. I only just now noticed that it's from a Canadian supermarket's website. Go Canada. I used honey, some water and lemon instead of apple juice, but basically stuck to it.

Both were quick, which was good, because I blew a lot of time at the gym and at book club. I'm trying out a new gym called Cross Fit, which involves things like kettlebells, pullups, fast jerky motions with your hips, jumping repeatedly onto a tall box, and doing workouts that have names -- Kathy, Fran, Helen. I'm not sure I'm a fan. It was hard, but some of the motions feel awkward and uncomfortable: swinging a heavy iron ball by a ring from between your legs and up over your head. I have bruises, but I'm sure I'm doing it wrong. The instructor did not have bruises. Or body fat.

Coincidentally, the couple that brought me into the bookclub--who are both in great shape and pretty normal people--also use kettlebells, albeit with a different style of workout. There are apparently competing camps and philosophies of kettlebellers. The Cross FIt folks doing things to exhaustion, and incorporate swinging and jerky-seeming movements to use momentum to their advantage (see Kips and Swings). It feels odd, but the instructor runs 50-mile races so the man knows how to work out. I can't decide if it is more challenging than weird or more weird than challenging. I'll try to stick it out for a few months and see if I can get into it. I lost some weight this summer -- 12 lbs, which is kind of pushing it. So I am trying to do more strength training and less cardio (without taking a Madonna turn for the sinewy muscular weirdness). As luck would have it, my friend and favorite gym instructor ever is taking off for a few months to do an internship in Olympia, so it works well to have a fill-in workout to try while she's gone. There are a lot of depressed people at Gold's Gym at the moment, trying to guess how big their asses are going to get while Madelyn is gone. We should start a pool.

Kettlebells yesterday+1 hour of Madelyn's class tonight+15 hours at the office+carrot bread and carrot salad-making=no gym tomorrow and no (involved) baking. All day. Tomorrow is about task-mastering my way through this writing rut. (Thank you Dave for the pep post about just focusing on steps ... I am going to try to do that, and to let the bigger issues rise to the top along the way).

Carrot pumpkin raisin bread
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups white flour
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp salt
1 can pure pumpkin
2.5 cups sugar
.5 cup oil
.5 cup applesauce
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp cloves
.25 nutmeg
.25 tsp ginger
1 packed cup grated carrots
1 cup golden raisins

Mix the flour, spices, baking soda and salt in a large bowl
Beat the sugar and wet ingredients together until just blended, then fold into dry
Fold in the carrots and raisins

Bake at 350 for about an hour.

It will make two large loaves, or several mini-loaves. I made one large loaf and four mini loaves to freeze or bring to work. I added pepitas and oats to the top of some, which look nice.

Bread is good. Camera sucks.

2008-12-09T21:57:00.001-08:00

Much lighter and airier than when it was all whole wheat and rye flour. No idea if that's the extra white flour or the extra yeast, but it works.

1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white bread flour
.5 cups oat flour
1.5 tsp salt
1 packet yeast (7 grams)
1.25 cups water

I could have used less water. Mix and let sit for 4 - 5 hours, then put it in an oiled bread pan (with oiled hands) and cover for an hour more. I brushed the top with olive oil, but could have used more or maybe even a little egg wash. Cook in a pre-heated 350 oven for about 45 to 50 minutes.

The one thing that is not so hot is that this bread tends to release a lot of moisture, so doesn't keep long. I am going to try not to make any bread for a while.

Long post about writer's block

2008-12-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

This is adorable baby Gilly. Lisa, Gilly's mom and one of my favorite people, tells me that she doesn't have enough room in her apartment for a Dutch oven and therefore can't make Bittman's easy bread recipe. I wonder if the pot can't be substituted for something else? A quick google found people who use ceramic or pyrex dishes. Why not a pasta pot with a bunch of tinfoil? This kid is pretty damn special and will need some bread to gnaw sooner or later.

Getting this picture of Gilly up is about the only thing that has gone right today. I have been roaming around the apartment for the past few hours, trying in fits and starts to get some work done and not go to the gym, make cookies, or read the paper. I did read about that idiot governor of Illinois (what is up with these idiot savant governors in states with awesome senators?), and I did accidentally start some bread to rise. The bread really takes only minutes to do, but still. I tried for a combo of whole wheat, white, and out flour today. I was distracted and feeling angsty about work, so i threw in much more yeast that I needed -- like, twice as much. We'll see what happens.

I have an immense amount of dissertation work to do, and am still having trouble moving on it. This happens periodically, and usually ends in a spurt of productivity, but is always stressful and unpleasant. And this time it is lasting a long time. One advisor tells me that days like this you should expect to do one solid hour of work. That's fine, except that I have just two days a week that I can devote entirely to the dissertation -- so losing them stresses me out.

I have to clean and start working with five different and enormous administrative datasets. But I am balking at it because it will be really involved once I get going, and I still haven’t nailed down the final research questions for the survey section of the dissertation. I’ve figured out what I am going to focus on for the survey itself: the basics of where people say they want to live at the point they are issued a housing voucher, and why. This includes things like whether they like the quality of where they already live; if they feel attached to their neighborhoods because of ties to family or friends, services they rely on, their church—whatever; or if they feel they don’t have the wherewithal to face the process of moving, regardless of how much they like or dislike their current living situation. That part is direct enough, and really very little (if any) research focuses on that nuts and bolts type stuff, if you can believe it. Which seems odd for a program that relies on people to move themselves out of poverty and into “opportunity” neighborhoods.

Anyway, where I get overwhelmed is with the next part: I will know where people actually end up, details about the households themselves, and folks’ stated preferences for moving (to the extent that I ask the right questions!). So what do I want to test for at that point, or look at with all that data? And this begs the question of what should be driving what -- the survey driving the outcomes questions, or the outcomes questions driving the survey design?

I can look at descriptive stuff, like variations in move outcomes by group (for example by race, household size, people with wage income vs. people on welfare). Then I can look at variations in move outcomes by preferences and resources (do people who say they want to move actually do it? Do people who say they don’t know how to look for an apartment end up not moving, losing their voucher, or moving somewhere really similar to where they started?). I can test some hypotheses about the relationship between preferences and resources and outcomes. It gets hairy and has 15 sub-bullets to each question once I start to write it down, and becomes as rambling as this post. It is good to have a lot to work with, but I'm stalled.

I am tempted to dive into the data work and just plow ahead and deal later (even though at my defense I vowed to clean it all up now). I have to present at one agency in a week or so, and need to start reeling in the second agency asap. Then I can try and deal with the inevitable as it becomes more inevitable. I do think that I have the survey content where I can deal with it. Much more in there will just get burdensome (and maybe there should be less). This may be a recipe for disaster, or it may be par for the course – I don’t know. My growing and incredibly boring library of qualitative and survey methods books suggests that either could be the case. My advisor would like to see me narrow questions down and articulate them better, but also suggests issue after issue that would expand the scope (what about differences in information networks or access to information by language group? What about survey materials in different languages?). I’m not sure she sees the contradictions in that, but I definitely feel them. Expand and contract, expand and contract. So here I stand.

As a prize for myself for getting something – anything—done this week, I decided that I would make the anisette cookies that I miss so much from NYC. I can’t find a recipe yet, and I need to buy some anise extract or powder or seeds or booze or something, I guess—but I’ll figure it out after I manage to get something done with this dissertation standoff. I should make something to bring to my new book club meeting tomorrow night. I have carrots in the fridge, so maybe carrot cake or carrot zucchini bread.

Wish me luck.

Cracked cheesecake!

2008-12-06T19:50:00.001-08:00

The cardinal sin of cheesecakes came to pass: it cracked, long and deep.

According to the cheese cake fanatics it could be any number of things. I think I just forgot to grease the sides of the pan. It likely would have let the sides of the cake pull away from the pan, and prevented the cake crack. But the thing tastes pretty good, so I'll call it a success.

Challah, cheesecake and IRB, which does not start with CH.

2008-12-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

The productivity highlight of a relatively unproductive couple of days (dissertation-wise) is that I FINALLY got my IRB human subjects application in. IRB is the internal university group that reviews research proposals to make sure they aren't harmful or unethical or shady or all three. Think Tuskeegee, and that guy who made people believe they were electrocuting people. My application (an "expedited exempt review") involved 6 attachments. Several of which involved checklists and requirements for specific language and other annoying stuff. Technically, I could have been required to submit three separate applications -- one for the data I will collect myself, one for the data that is publicly available, and one for the data that I acquired through an agreement with HUD. They let me consolidate it to the single ridiculous application.

I was a bit intimidated by the process (which has an air of mystery for policy students) so took too long to get it done. Which is a theme for me and this dissertation. Then on Wed night I had drinks with a couple of clinical psych students who set me straight--basically saying that everything they do requires IRB review and they submit pretty half-assed applications. Which inspired me to get off my ass. So (with the exception of a signature on one document that I am waiting on) I did! Let's see what happens.

But what I really did today was bake. Challah, and then cheesecake. A lady named Ruth's challah recipe, and Chantal's NY Cheesecake recipe (another Ch word!), to be exact. I was inspired for the Challah by the $7 price tag for a smallish loaf at a local bakery. Yeah, right. Seattle acts like fresh bread is some sort of mysterious luxury item, possibly because so much of it seems sort of ethnic (so folks think it should either be really cheap but only found in grungy out of the way places, or really expensive if found close to home?). There are a couple of places that wholesale to local supermarkets (and are ok), and then a handful of neighborhood bakeries that tend to be on the fussy side. Winter makes me crave bread, and I have been complaining about the lack of it for so long that I finally started to make my own. Which reminds me I also need to learn how to make Italian anisette cookies, which I used to buy by the (cheap) pound in Brooklyn and eat for breakfast with coffee. Here I have found them only at the overpriced gourmet Italian grocery in Pike market, expensive and imported from New Jersey.

So Challah. It really isn't hard and doesn't take much work. I think I might like it a sweeter next time (always looking for a place to put raisins) and maybe should have let it rise longer. My apartment is chilly and it takes longer to rise the colder your space is. But it's definitely good. Jake melted butter and sopped it up (which I find shocking, but whatever). We'll finish off the sesame loaf by the end of the night and I might freeze the other loaf to see how that goes.

The cheesecake was a Jake request--prompted by me saying something like Please God Tell Me What I Can Bake That You Will Help Me Eat. He loves cheesecake, and is otherwise indifferent to sweet stuff.

Turns out cheesecake, which I'm not all that wild about, has a cult following and involves lots and lots of very intricate almost superstitious steps. Chantal's recipe seemed the most straightforward, had about 3,000 positive reviews, and didn't require a water bath (I'm out of tinfoil to wrap the pan in). I learned a lot about cheesecake, much of which can be found on links from Chantal's recipe page.

It's in the oven now, cooling. It browned a bit on the sides, probably because I put it in a too-hot over after baking bread. And it will definitely have tiny lumps, and is also a bit sunken in the middle. All things the on-line world of cheesecake warned me about, and gives about 2385623845 tips on how to avoid--all of which I skipped. Because in reality Jake will eat it anyway (he polished off a quarter pound of cream cheese this morning, right from a knife, and then ate about a half-cup of the extra cake batter), and because running the batter through a sieve seemed excessive. If it's good, I'll post a picture. I'm getting the hang of that.

Survey booklets and Popeye pancakes.

2008-12-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

So I spent a few hours today formatting, editing and re-formatting the survey. Turns out that you can format a document in word as a booklet, and then print it double-sided, which does in fact turn it into a true booklet. 8 bucks later at Kinkos (our printer is ancient and can't do double-sided), I have five draft copies to give to folks for comment.

That said, I still haven't really narrowed down the research questions for the survey section of the dissertation, and am not sure that I will be able to any time soon. I keep going in circles with them. Some of it is ridiculously basic: asking people what they want to do now that they have a voucher. I.e., do you plan on moving somewhere? If so, where? Then it gets tricky -- why do people want to stay put even though they can supposedly move elsewhere? Is it because they really like where they already live (these are really poor people, usually in really poor neighborhoods), because they don't have the means to move, or because they see the moving/mobility process as too difficult to even try? Once I ask them about all of these things, how do I test the realtionship between their answers, their own characteristics, and their outcomes? Lost? Me too. I think a big part of the problem is that I have lost patience with the process of fleshing it out, and just want to move on and figure it out as I go -- but clearly can't yet.

After a few hours of trying to rewrite research questions and feeling really annoyed with the whole thing, Jake came home, I went to the gym, and then assessed the food situation.

We had salad greens, cheese and a butternut squash. So I made salad and roasted the squash -- and then made "Popeye pancakes." A few weeks ago, Jake remembered that his grandmother used to make them -- basically a puffy, eggy, pancake that you bake in butter. Called German pancakes if you google it. It puffs up weirdly and browns so that it kind of looks like a lunar landscape.

It's really easy, and the stuff you need is almost always on hand: flour, eggs, milk and butter.

This makes enough for the two of us, although more would get eaten, for sure:

.5 cup flour
3 eggs
.5 cup milk
pinch of salt

Whisk it all together, then melt some butter in an pan with a 2 or three inch rim, making sure the butter coats the bottom and sides. The smaller the pan, the thicker the pancake. I say "some" because I am still figuring out how little I can get away with -- tonight I used 3 tablespoons, and probably could go a bit less.

Pour the batter in the pan and bake it at 425 for about 15 minutes then 375 for another 10 or 15 minutes. Until it is nice and brown and lunar-looking. The picture is from someone else's blog, and really doesn't look all that great -- but it is. Next post, I'll use my own pictures.

The recipe calculator tells me that 1/4 of the finished pancake has about 300 calories, which isn't great but I guess could be worse.

Ok, time to walk the dog and get to bed. Tomorrow I have to go to Olympia at the crack of dawn to go to a hearing on the results of a study comparing housing voucher and capital project costs. Vouchers are cheaper than bricks and mortar development -- but the goals are different, too. Hopefully the study is worth the trip out there.

Tomorrow is a big day all around. I have a free intro session at a new gym that uses kettlebells and gymnastic equipment and general silliness, as far as I can tell. And then a new (f0r me) book club. We're reading On Being Certain, a book about how people manage to "feel" right about things, even when they have clear evidence that proves them wrong. Basically how the brain can allow people to accept really irrational inconsistencies and contradictions. Likr convincing yourself that you are writing a dissertation, when signs point to the opposite?! Hmmmm .....

Butternut squash sweet potato soup

2008-11-30T21:46:00.001-08:00

Here are the recipes for the greenbean salad and squash soup -- both of which turned out really good.

Green bean salad:
2 cups blanched green beans
1 cup of fennel, sliced thin
approx 1/2 cup calamata olives
1 shallot, diced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
salt & pepper
4 oz feta cheese
some lemon juice
2 slices of decent bread, toasted and cut into chunks

Toss all but the bread together and let it sit for a while, then add the bread. It was really good.

The soup was from the NY Times' fitness and nutrition section

The only thing I did differently was add some garlic and allspice, and some grated parmesan at the end. Really good. We had leftover soup tonight, with a spinach and grated carrot salad with a warm shallot/olive/cherry tomato dressing. And some feta thrown in. I had a ton of spinach from the CSA in the fridge, and was happy to use it.

I also spent the majority of teh day reading about survey design, and pre-coding survey instruments to allow for easier analysis and data entry after the fact. No small feat, that. It really is amazing how many details there are to figure out with this survey business. Aside from the conceptual issues of what to ask people and why -- and planning what to do with the data once you've got it -- there are a million details having to do with things like sampling, of course, but also formating, wording, placement of words on a page .... I'm having trouble getting through the conceptual things because I am a bit overwhelmed with the practical. But I have an actual draft survey (in brochure form, pre-coded) to work from, so maybe that's a start. I really, really, need to get to the data collection part, and fast. The survey methods book i am currently reading tells me that I am at stage 8 or so of a 12 step process. I had felt pretty much at step 2, so at least that's encouraging news.

Oh -- I have all of these pomegranates I need to figure out what to do with. i just don't really see the point of them. It's all seedy and sour, and hard to get at. Maybe puree it and make syrup or sorbet or something?

2008-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

So I got less done at the coffee shop (Vivace in Capitol Hill's new location, which is pretty nice and has this separate glass-windowed marble countered room that is a self-policed quiet zone filled with stressed out people working on their laptops) than I hoped, and decided to just stop fooling myself and get the cooking that I want to do over with.

But first a bit on the work I am failing to get done. At the moment, I'm trying to write a survey for my dissertation, and finding it really hard. My research is on the federal "Section 8" housing voucher program. In a nutshell, very poor people--basically at the poverty line or below--get a voucher that they can use to find rental housing on the private market, and the government pays a portion of the rent directly to the landlord on their behalf (the household pays 30 to 40% of their monthly income in rent, whatever that turns out to be).

My dissertation is about where these folks end up (i.e., good neighborhoods? "Bad" neighborhoods? All in the same neighborhood?), and why. A goal of the program is to give people the opportunity to move to better neighborhoods, but a lot of people -- about 1 in 5 -- end up in pretty high-poverty neighborhoods. The point of the survey is to ask people what they want to do with the voucher: where they want to go and why, and ho wthey approach the process of moving. I'm having trouble sorting through the issues to just get something written and done. In part because there are WAY more issues involved with putting a survey together than I ever anticipated, and many have nothing to do with the issues I am interested in researching, and more to do with the process of surveying people in a big, diverse, city. More on that some other time, or multiple times, most likely.

Before I left for the coffee shop, I started some bread rising -- from Mark Bittman's easy no knead bread recipe, which deserves all the word of mouth it has gotten. The bread was started because: 1) it is cold and gray outside; 2) I have bread flour and yeast; and 3) I have green beans from the CSA box and saw a recipe in some magazine for a green bean panzanella salad. You have to have bread for a bread salad.

Keep in mind that I already made a caramel pecan pie yesterday (2384756234765 calories per slice) that I am eating single handedly. But whatever. Why not have a giant loaf of bread, to boot. I am back on the stair-running food-diary kick, so I feel like I can get away with it.

Anyway -- I also have sweet potato, butternut squash and regular Russet potatoes (the damn CSA send me potatoes EVERY week and it is killing me). So a ginger squash soup recipe, also on the NY Times site seems like a good idea, too. No cream in it, and I can use my immersion blender, which is on my top 5 list of favorite things these days. But that will have to wait until tomorrow, I think, because Jake just got a call and it looks like we'll go get a drink with his friend Tristan and his very cool girlfriend Kate.

Recipes for all to follow soon.

Martha in Seattle!

2008-11-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

This marks my first effort at creating a way to keep up with friends and family, and hopefully organize some of the random crap that clutters my head and desk. And to keep track of some recipes.

Being that I have not actually told anyone that I am starting a blog, and I have no idea how to edit the blog yet -- this is pretty much for my eyes only.

I anticipate several themes coming up quite frequently, and I hope to keep them somewhat orderly once I figure out how to work all of the tabs and buttons on the blogspot editing pages.

In no particular order:

1. Dissertation progress and housing issues.

This will most likely be for myself and of little or no interest to anyone but me, but I think it might help if I write it down.

2. Cooking, baking and thinking about food.

So recipes and food facts. I spend an inordinate amount of mental energy on food. You'll see. And I just joined a community supported agriculture delivery service, so am constantly battling the box of vegetables that arrives at my door every week.

3. Working out. I am a bit obsessive about this, too. It keeps me sane and lets me to pretty much do whatever I want in terms of Item 2.

4. The dog.

This will probably be many pictures of Rocky lounging, but possibly also snuggling with Jake.

4. Talking about Seattle

"Talking" was originally "Complaining," but I am trying to start off on a positive note. In all likelihood, this also involves missing New York, random great finds in Seattle, and trying to find things that I can get in New York.

So here it goes. At the moment I need to do some actual dissertation work so that I can justify spending more time doing things like thinking about blogs, but I will check back in soon.

Much love,
Martha