i'll have read at least 60 books by the end of this year! let's ignore the fact that i am a childless freelance writer and pretend that it is a proper feat. this is how i've felt about the last dozen (part 1 of 2).
verge (lidia yuknavitch): i have already forwarded my advance copy of this short-story collection to a friend, which might have been a terrible idea: there's wonderful stuff in there, to be sure, but there is also a (moving) story about a fellow with an artificial eye which might at one point have been called "eye of the beholder" (again, copy already forwarded). i liked it well enough that i took the book of joan (a novel) out of the library and will read it with gusto when i finish philip pullman's the secret commonwealth (lyra still seems a bit like a tween! the hbo adaptation kind of sucks!).
the contender: the story of marlon brando (william j. mann): mann's premise is that brando is a misunderstood dick, and this biography did little to shake that noun; he seems to have been a lackadaisical pet-raccoon custodian, a terrible romantic partner (in the loosest possible sense of the term), and a flaky activist. (disclosure: i have not seen on the waterfront.) i am prepared to revisit my opinion of brando via another biographer, but i expect deirdre-bair-level energy.*
catch and kill (ronan farrow): farrow's indictment of harvey weinstein, matt lauer, and his former employers at nbc is searing; i admit that as a self-centered former research chief, my first reaction to his impeccably-sourced work is predictable. you know the #metoo story, but the background is worth your time; it's also reason number four thousand and eighty-seven to appreciate gives-zero-fucks rachel maddow. passed this one to the same friend who received verge and i appreciate that she still wants to hang on new year's eve.
in the dream house (carmen maria machado): i loved CMM's short-story collection and knew her memoir would be wonderful; i didn't know that she would reframe my understanding of both queer abuse and emotional abuse as a general proposition. i want very much to pass this to one person in particular, as i think it would help her understand her past—as machado says, "if you need this book, this is for you"—but the person i have in mind has some extenuating circumstances. if you can read it now, please do.
the elusive moth (ingrid winterbach): woof. my literary experience with south africa is mostly limited to a couple of j.m. coetzee novels, and i was decidedly unready for this one, which is a painterly (literally, winterbach is also a painter) take on a small free state community in the '90s and a woman who returns there to Find Herself. the sense of place and history is strong, but the characters flit out of your hands like (don't say it, don't say it). (aside: while the novel's english translation is called the elusive moth, it's named for its protagonist, karolina ferreira, in the original afrikaans.) i would like to say that i'm getting better at reading experimental/ish fiction in my dotage, but this confounded me a bit unless i thought of it as a tone poem. i don't think that's what i was meant to think.
the silence of the girls (pat barker): it's hard to talk about this one without talking about madeline miller's circe and the song of achilles (both of which i also read this year, in that order); those novels are both what i would consider high-romantic takes on myth, and i found the former much more successful than the latter (achilles is just a dirtbag, even through the eyes of a devoted narrator as in miller). barker's novel leans into achilles-as-dirtbag, but she does it in an unapologetically contemporary way that's somehow even more off-putting than miller's occasionally-stilted style: i don't expect achilles and agamemnon (and briseis, the trojan woman at the core of barker's novel and homer's epic) to sound homeric, but i don't know that i'm ready for them to sound fully modern (with modern-ish slang!). i thought after reading miller that i wanted to see old villains in newer clothes, but barker made me realize that i actually want to see marginalized characters in properly heroic (and traditional!) weeds. briseis doesn't need a translator: she needs room where she lives.
*deirdre bair is one of the greatest biographers of all time. don't @ me.
Showing posts with label i have a bowl for you. Show all posts
Showing posts with label i have a bowl for you. Show all posts
12.03.13
in our exercise room on friday morning there was a man in loafers, dress pants, and a tucked-in oxford striving mightily on a stationary bike, and i salute him.
VEGETARIAN THANKSGIVING: THE POST-GAME REPORT
candied tangerine peels. the pith beneath the peels was so minimal and easy to remove that i didn't bother to try to trim it; i gave each tangerine a soccer-practice quartering, peeled each quarter and chucked the fruit into the juicer, julienned the peels after trimming their tips, and that was that. these were delicious, and we now have a jar of tangerine simple syrup for making old fashioneds. all's right with the world.
homemade cheez-its. midtown manhattan was uninterested in selling me annatto seeds with which to boehner my dough when i first attempted this recipe a month ago, so i subbed in a few teaspoons of pimentón; i also grabbed the wrong pepper grinder and ended up adding a dash of garlic powder by accident. i've repeated those mistakes in four(?) subsequent batches, and i'll probably repeat them in four more before the year is out. mike bloomberg would pose for a photo with these crackers.
pretzel & nut mix. at some point i should probably write david lebovitz and let him know he's been my kitchen's godfather for years. this mix takes no time to throw together, it's a deeply sexy blend of maple-syrup felicity and a chile kick, and it makes you feel like a roald dahl character who lives in a fabulous pie.
roasted butternut squash salad with warm cider vinaigrette. learning that ina garten was a nuclear policy analyst before she was the barefoot contessa has led me to forgive her for the fact that this recipe only works every other time i follow it (and thursday wasn't one of those times); she doesn't have time to idiot-proof her salads and weigh in on budget legislation (and source her weapons-grade velvet pantsuits; i saw one in person and was altered). i could of course be to blame for thinking i could sub mesclun in for arugula, but we needn't point fingers. in future attempts i'll be conservative with my greens, liberal with my vinegar, and in velvet of my own, hopefully.
green bean casserole. martha stewart takes a hell of a long time to pull together her gourmet version of a cream-of-mushroom-soup casserole base, but i'll concede that it's fancy-tasty; the whole casserole, moreover, can be pulled together and refrigerated a day ahead of time, so the fact that it takes, er, an hour isn't quite so terrible. i neglected to account for its chilled state when i got around to baking it on thursday, so it didn't reach the table in what i would call a piping-hot state. i hear this happens to everyone on thanksgiving? at some point i should develop an oven schedule like rachel's.
nick's nut roast with warm coriander dressing. this dish has been my friend cara's holiday main for years, the scotsman describes it as "a stonking veggie alternative to the christmas roast," and there was no way i wasn't attempting it. i found the lingham's chilli sauce at shi eurasia on orchard street; the owner, thrilled that i'd called her about it, took me through her mother's special recipe for fried crabs. the black nigella seeds turned up at kalustyan's on lexington, and i was straight-up smug by the time i packed the roast into my bundt pan on wednesday night (we didn't have a big enough loaf pan, and we grew so enamored of saying "nut bundt" that we felt we had to go with it). the roast wasn't especially interested in debarking from the bundt when i baked it the next day and looked a bit like a laird's ruined castle when i brought it to the dinner table, but it was crunchy, spicy, and like nothing i've made for a holiday meal before. omnivores went back for second helpings. you are good to me, cara.
savory mushroom gravy. god knows what happened to the gravy. well, hubris happened, as i assumed it was the one part of the meatless meal i definitely wouldn't shank (even tofurky gravy is good, and tofurky is the devil's doorstop), and gullibility happened, since i believed the internet when it claimed this was the BEST RECIPE EVAR, but i worked hard and played by the rules, and i expected to retire in comfort. instead i had to call joe in to what-seems-to-be-the-trouble-little-lady my nasty-ass gravy and spoil my solo-thanksgiving-prep streak, and it ended up tasting marvelous, and fuck capitalism.
butterscotch-pecan ice cream. another david lebovitz joint, and my favorite homemade ice cream of all time; it came out beautifully, as it always does. i was so excited the first time d-lebz tweeted at me that i printed and squirreled away a screengrab of the message. i'm not ashamed.
tangerine sorbet. also also lebovitz, and a solid formula for any citrus sorbet. i used a megajuicer i inherited from my magazine's food editor to juice my tangerines, and in retrospect i probably should have done it the old-fashioned way, for the pith that remained between the segments after i removed the peels gave the juice just a touch of bitterness. what are the domestic arts without a touch of bitterness, though?
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 if martha stewart had worked for the government in the '70s, what would her job have been?
02 do you make schedules and charts when you cook, if you cook?
03 is the internet right about anything?
04 i'm leaving for my first-ever tropical vacation as a grown-ass adult next wednesday. what should i bring? (bathing suit already acquired.)
VEGETARIAN THANKSGIVING: THE POST-GAME REPORT
candied tangerine peels. the pith beneath the peels was so minimal and easy to remove that i didn't bother to try to trim it; i gave each tangerine a soccer-practice quartering, peeled each quarter and chucked the fruit into the juicer, julienned the peels after trimming their tips, and that was that. these were delicious, and we now have a jar of tangerine simple syrup for making old fashioneds. all's right with the world.
homemade cheez-its. midtown manhattan was uninterested in selling me annatto seeds with which to boehner my dough when i first attempted this recipe a month ago, so i subbed in a few teaspoons of pimentón; i also grabbed the wrong pepper grinder and ended up adding a dash of garlic powder by accident. i've repeated those mistakes in four(?) subsequent batches, and i'll probably repeat them in four more before the year is out. mike bloomberg would pose for a photo with these crackers.
pretzel & nut mix. at some point i should probably write david lebovitz and let him know he's been my kitchen's godfather for years. this mix takes no time to throw together, it's a deeply sexy blend of maple-syrup felicity and a chile kick, and it makes you feel like a roald dahl character who lives in a fabulous pie.
roasted butternut squash salad with warm cider vinaigrette. learning that ina garten was a nuclear policy analyst before she was the barefoot contessa has led me to forgive her for the fact that this recipe only works every other time i follow it (and thursday wasn't one of those times); she doesn't have time to idiot-proof her salads and weigh in on budget legislation (and source her weapons-grade velvet pantsuits; i saw one in person and was altered). i could of course be to blame for thinking i could sub mesclun in for arugula, but we needn't point fingers. in future attempts i'll be conservative with my greens, liberal with my vinegar, and in velvet of my own, hopefully.
green bean casserole. martha stewart takes a hell of a long time to pull together her gourmet version of a cream-of-mushroom-soup casserole base, but i'll concede that it's fancy-tasty; the whole casserole, moreover, can be pulled together and refrigerated a day ahead of time, so the fact that it takes, er, an hour isn't quite so terrible. i neglected to account for its chilled state when i got around to baking it on thursday, so it didn't reach the table in what i would call a piping-hot state. i hear this happens to everyone on thanksgiving? at some point i should develop an oven schedule like rachel's.
nick's nut roast with warm coriander dressing. this dish has been my friend cara's holiday main for years, the scotsman describes it as "a stonking veggie alternative to the christmas roast," and there was no way i wasn't attempting it. i found the lingham's chilli sauce at shi eurasia on orchard street; the owner, thrilled that i'd called her about it, took me through her mother's special recipe for fried crabs. the black nigella seeds turned up at kalustyan's on lexington, and i was straight-up smug by the time i packed the roast into my bundt pan on wednesday night (we didn't have a big enough loaf pan, and we grew so enamored of saying "nut bundt" that we felt we had to go with it). the roast wasn't especially interested in debarking from the bundt when i baked it the next day and looked a bit like a laird's ruined castle when i brought it to the dinner table, but it was crunchy, spicy, and like nothing i've made for a holiday meal before. omnivores went back for second helpings. you are good to me, cara.
savory mushroom gravy. god knows what happened to the gravy. well, hubris happened, as i assumed it was the one part of the meatless meal i definitely wouldn't shank (even tofurky gravy is good, and tofurky is the devil's doorstop), and gullibility happened, since i believed the internet when it claimed this was the BEST RECIPE EVAR, but i worked hard and played by the rules, and i expected to retire in comfort. instead i had to call joe in to what-seems-to-be-the-trouble-little-lady my nasty-ass gravy and spoil my solo-thanksgiving-prep streak, and it ended up tasting marvelous, and fuck capitalism.
butterscotch-pecan ice cream. another david lebovitz joint, and my favorite homemade ice cream of all time; it came out beautifully, as it always does. i was so excited the first time d-lebz tweeted at me that i printed and squirreled away a screengrab of the message. i'm not ashamed.
tangerine sorbet. also also lebovitz, and a solid formula for any citrus sorbet. i used a megajuicer i inherited from my magazine's food editor to juice my tangerines, and in retrospect i probably should have done it the old-fashioned way, for the pith that remained between the segments after i removed the peels gave the juice just a touch of bitterness. what are the domestic arts without a touch of bitterness, though?
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 if martha stewart had worked for the government in the '70s, what would her job have been?
02 do you make schedules and charts when you cook, if you cook?
03 is the internet right about anything?
04 i'm leaving for my first-ever tropical vacation as a grown-ass adult next wednesday. what should i bring? (bathing suit already acquired.)
11.22.10: the dirty dozen, part I {conspicuous consumption}
01 say, have you heard of orphan thanksgiving? it's not actually especially orphan-related, though i'm working on that: it's an "i made this" flickr group in which photos of tasty thanksgiving dishes from around the world rub elbows on the internet. it's a tapestry of calorie-dense magic, if you will. college friends and i started it a few years ago, and it remains surprisingly satisfying to stop by and check out each other's potatoes. come on in!
02 speaking of potatoes, emily gould has intrigued me:
03 i'm not in charge of potatoes this year; i'll be defrosting the cheese pumpkin i squirreled away a few months ago to make throwdown pumpkin pie (i'm already excited about making the bourbon-maple whipped cream, which is the sort of topping which could trick one into eating one's own hand) and summoning either dark salty caramels or homemade twix bars (or both?) from the sugary ether. my relationship with caramel remains problematic, but tomorrow is another day - and even inchoate candy is better than no candy at all.
04 takae mizutani's my egg & soldiers. more breakfast-related castles, please.
01 say, have you heard of orphan thanksgiving? it's not actually especially orphan-related, though i'm working on that: it's an "i made this" flickr group in which photos of tasty thanksgiving dishes from around the world rub elbows on the internet. it's a tapestry of calorie-dense magic, if you will. college friends and i started it a few years ago, and it remains surprisingly satisfying to stop by and check out each other's potatoes. come on in!
02 speaking of potatoes, emily gould has intrigued me:
[C]eleriac may look weird, but it is a great addition to mashed potatoes. Make sure you peel off all the hairy parts, then slice it into chunks and boil it with five or six potatoes. When the potatoes and celeriac chunks are all fork-pierceable, mash them with some cream cheese, milk, garlic butter and scallions. People will be amazed by the potatoes and won’t know why.
The farmer’s market shopper seemed skeptical but I think that was because of my evangelical zeal and the fact that she hadn’t initiated an interaction with me. “That was really something to share with the Internet, not a specific human,” I remember thinking as I walked away.
03 i'm not in charge of potatoes this year; i'll be defrosting the cheese pumpkin i squirreled away a few months ago to make throwdown pumpkin pie (i'm already excited about making the bourbon-maple whipped cream, which is the sort of topping which could trick one into eating one's own hand) and summoning either dark salty caramels or homemade twix bars (or both?) from the sugary ether. my relationship with caramel remains problematic, but tomorrow is another day - and even inchoate candy is better than no candy at all.
04 takae mizutani's my egg & soldiers. more breakfast-related castles, please.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 where will you spend this thanksgiving? are you in charge of any of the cooking?
02 have you any experience with this celeriac-in-mashed-potatoes business?
03 do you think national opt-out day will really happen on wednesday? are you concerned about travel?
04 what did you have for breakfast?
03.23.10
101 in 1001 {II}: 038 cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before [ongoing]
08: cream of tartar. though i've been baking bread once every week or two for the past six months, i still graze the sides of the oven all the time (which is super-awkward when the burn forms a line on my arm and i then share a pole with someone on the subway. i need a lapel button: NOT A CUTTER.). though i've chopped veggies almost every night since time began, the dark and primitive chili gods still want bits of my fingers. kitchen safety is complicated, is my point, so candymaking terrifies me: why invite all of that volatile molten sugar into your life when good-looking people in brooklyn will sell you the finished product for $20?* ah, yes: the $20 part.
on friday night we saw half of a good eats episode ("the ballad of salty and sweet") in which alton brown scorches a ruby red grapefruit with a miniature torch (need to try that), makes praline bacon (missed that part, and can't say that i mind), and makes dark salty caramels. the ingredient list for the caramels was both manageable and intriguing (soy sauce, you say?), the process looked simple, and preparing the pan involved some exciting work with parchment paper. i bought a cheap candy thermometer and some cream of tartar on saturday afternoon.
truth be told, i'm not entirely sure what happened. i followed the recipe to the letter, or so i thought, and ended up with a pan of tastiness that has less structural integrity than heidi montag. at the length caramel will out, and it poured past my little parchment paper sleeves before i had a chance to talk it into solidifying. after two days in the refrigerator, this is as calm as it gets; i tried to take a picture of it near the living room window to get that lovely color, but just a few moments of sunlight were lethal.** i'll certainly give the recipe another try, as that flavor profile really is amazing; with a bit of practice, i think i'll be able to make something one could eat in mixed company. (we're eating the first batch gracelessly and furtively, you see. it's really tasty.)
101 in 1001 {II}: 038 cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before [ongoing]
08: cream of tartar. though i've been baking bread once every week or two for the past six months, i still graze the sides of the oven all the time (which is super-awkward when the burn forms a line on my arm and i then share a pole with someone on the subway. i need a lapel button: NOT A CUTTER.). though i've chopped veggies almost every night since time began, the dark and primitive chili gods still want bits of my fingers. kitchen safety is complicated, is my point, so candymaking terrifies me: why invite all of that volatile molten sugar into your life when good-looking people in brooklyn will sell you the finished product for $20?* ah, yes: the $20 part.
on friday night we saw half of a good eats episode ("the ballad of salty and sweet") in which alton brown scorches a ruby red grapefruit with a miniature torch (need to try that), makes praline bacon (missed that part, and can't say that i mind), and makes dark salty caramels. the ingredient list for the caramels was both manageable and intriguing (soy sauce, you say?), the process looked simple, and preparing the pan involved some exciting work with parchment paper. i bought a cheap candy thermometer and some cream of tartar on saturday afternoon.
truth be told, i'm not entirely sure what happened. i followed the recipe to the letter, or so i thought, and ended up with a pan of tastiness that has less structural integrity than heidi montag. at the length caramel will out, and it poured past my little parchment paper sleeves before i had a chance to talk it into solidifying. after two days in the refrigerator, this is as calm as it gets; i tried to take a picture of it near the living room window to get that lovely color, but just a few moments of sunlight were lethal.** i'll certainly give the recipe another try, as that flavor profile really is amazing; with a bit of practice, i think i'll be able to make something one could eat in mixed company. (we're eating the first batch gracelessly and furtively, you see. it's really tasty.)
*which is not to say nunu's hand dipped salt caramels aren't worth every penny. they are, is the problem.
**vampire caramel? non-stephenie-meyer-vampire caramel, i mean. it doesn't sparkle.
03.15.10
i fear we might be nearing the conclusion of steve's imaginary calendar phase. he's still goddamn adorable, mind you, but he's growing so enthusiastically that he no longer fits in many of the things (boots, bookshelves, purses, shopping bags) he'd hop into for the insta-cute. we considered staging a bonsai kitten intervention with joe's monolithic chicken soup jar from the 2nd avenue deli - o steve, i remember when you were but a matzoh ball! - but i think that ship is out of the barn. we knew we were approaching terminal kitten-image velocity when he went after joe's sneaker laces the other night and assumed the official hang in there! pose, which is sort of the baby-animal enactment of godwin's law. the end is nigh!
then steve was like, "i have a bowl for you."
in non-kitten news (i'm still literate, technically), meredith blake's new yorker online look at the harry ransom center's incredible and heartbreaking david foster wallace archive (including ten PDFs) is pretty great, though hard to read.
i fear we might be nearing the conclusion of steve's imaginary calendar phase. he's still goddamn adorable, mind you, but he's growing so enthusiastically that he no longer fits in many of the things (boots, bookshelves, purses, shopping bags) he'd hop into for the insta-cute. we considered staging a bonsai kitten intervention with joe's monolithic chicken soup jar from the 2nd avenue deli - o steve, i remember when you were but a matzoh ball! - but i think that ship is out of the barn. we knew we were approaching terminal kitten-image velocity when he went after joe's sneaker laces the other night and assumed the official hang in there! pose, which is sort of the baby-animal enactment of godwin's law. the end is nigh!
then steve was like, "i have a bowl for you."
in non-kitten news (i'm still literate, technically), meredith blake's new yorker online look at the harry ransom center's incredible and heartbreaking david foster wallace archive (including ten PDFs) is pretty great, though hard to read.
The archive also contains an extensive amount of writing from Wallace’s childhood and youth: a whimsical childhood poem about vikings ["For all these reasons stay away / from a viking every day."], signed “David Foster Wallace”; school essays about “Pride and Prejudice” and “Moby Dick”; four issues of “Sabrina,” the Amherst humor magazine he co-founded with his roommate, Mark Costello. For an author who leapt with astonishing rapidity from youthful promise into adult virtuosity, the juvenilia may prove especially illuminating.oh, DFW.
11.23.09
101 in 1001 {II}: 038 cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before [ongoing]
07: dahlia tuber. joe and i were nosing around a vegetable stall at the union square greenmarket a few weekends ago when one of the younger farmers turned to us. "those are dahlia tubers," he said, gesturing to a bin of homely potato-ish things at my hip. they're totally edible." i quizzed him: best raw or cooked? (raw.) how much would i need? (not much). what did they taste like? (floral, which...i guess i should have seen coming.) were they expensive? (no.) did they keep well? (sure, you can slice pieces from a single tuber all winter.) sold! i plucked a fist-sized fellow from the bin and brought it home, where it languished in the crisper until last friday. then, in one of my Ill-Advised Late-Night Baking Fits, i made this.
dahlia bread (adapted from plantlady2's gardenweb post)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 c vegetable oil
- 1 c sugar
- 1 c grated dahlia tuber
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/2 c flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
preheat oven to 350 degrees. in a medium bowl, beat two eggs until light and foamy, then discard a quarter of egg mixture. add oil, sugar, dahlia, and vanilla, then mix until combined (don't go crazy, but you want a homogeneous mixture). combine and jumble up dry ingredients in a second bowl, then add to first bowl and stir together only until blended. pour batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for approximately one hour, or until surface is golden brown and fairly firm (i started checking at 50 minutes and took my loaf out at around 55, as i recall).
joe had already gone to bed by the time the bread was out of the oven and cool enough to eat, but our friend jacob (in town from iowa and perpetrator, as it happens, of some of my all-time favorite dahlia arrangements at his wedding last october) was brave enough to try a piece - and liked it! i did as well, actually: it was crumbly and fragrant, and the little silvers of dahlia added a mysterious note of spiciness (it was, in fact, quite floral) that paired well with the cinnamon. the original recipe called for baking soda, which we left behind in our hell's kitchen refrigerator and hadn't yet replaced, so i subbed in additional baking powder without cutting down any of the other ingredients; i think the lower pH of the resulting batter was rather nice. pounce on dahlia tubers if you see them, internets! you'll intrigue house guests and feel like a faerie queene at the breakfast table.
101 in 1001 {II}: 038 cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before [ongoing]
07: dahlia tuber. joe and i were nosing around a vegetable stall at the union square greenmarket a few weekends ago when one of the younger farmers turned to us. "those are dahlia tubers," he said, gesturing to a bin of homely potato-ish things at my hip. they're totally edible." i quizzed him: best raw or cooked? (raw.) how much would i need? (not much). what did they taste like? (floral, which...i guess i should have seen coming.) were they expensive? (no.) did they keep well? (sure, you can slice pieces from a single tuber all winter.) sold! i plucked a fist-sized fellow from the bin and brought it home, where it languished in the crisper until last friday. then, in one of my Ill-Advised Late-Night Baking Fits, i made this.
dahlia bread (adapted from plantlady2's gardenweb post)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 c vegetable oil
- 1 c sugar
- 1 c grated dahlia tuber
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/2 c flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
preheat oven to 350 degrees. in a medium bowl, beat two eggs until light and foamy, then discard a quarter of egg mixture. add oil, sugar, dahlia, and vanilla, then mix until combined (don't go crazy, but you want a homogeneous mixture). combine and jumble up dry ingredients in a second bowl, then add to first bowl and stir together only until blended. pour batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for approximately one hour, or until surface is golden brown and fairly firm (i started checking at 50 minutes and took my loaf out at around 55, as i recall).
joe had already gone to bed by the time the bread was out of the oven and cool enough to eat, but our friend jacob (in town from iowa and perpetrator, as it happens, of some of my all-time favorite dahlia arrangements at his wedding last october) was brave enough to try a piece - and liked it! i did as well, actually: it was crumbly and fragrant, and the little silvers of dahlia added a mysterious note of spiciness (it was, in fact, quite floral) that paired well with the cinnamon. the original recipe called for baking soda, which we left behind in our hell's kitchen refrigerator and hadn't yet replaced, so i subbed in additional baking powder without cutting down any of the other ingredients; i think the lower pH of the resulting batter was rather nice. pounce on dahlia tubers if you see them, internets! you'll intrigue house guests and feel like a faerie queene at the breakfast table.
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