02.27.09

101 in 1001 {II}: 091 make granola [completed 02.26.09]



internets, i could only stand firm against the california vegetarian stereotypes for so long;* it was time to make granola. i did my usual tap dance across the food sites and took a shine to a recipe of the day from mark bittman's blog: it's simple, easy to modify, and comparatively low in fat (some recipes call for extra oil, whereas this one sneaks it in with coconut flakes). i then poked around for some freestyling inspiration from granola pros - for as i learned at jamba juice back in the day,** great-tasting things do not always taste great together. i settled on a mix of slivered almonds, chopped hazelnuts, golden raisins, and unsweetened bing cherries, and went with about two thirds of a cup of raw honey as my sweetener.

as predicted, the baking granola made the apartment smell fantastic. i wanted it extra-crunchy (since i toss it on top of plain yogurt and bring it to work for breakfast), so i left it in the oven for an extra ten minutes or so. after cooling down, spending a night in the fridge, and trucking up here with me to casa de ladymag, it's...pretty tasty. for future batches, i'll probably kick in some additional honey, cherries, and raisins; the sweetness could be turned up a bit more, and i'm kind of a fruit bat anyway. that said, i declare the granola a success: here's to you, hippie food!

*such a slippery slope: last night i make this stuff, today i've got a yen for an american apparel tie dye tee. i have ten million tee shirts already, man, and i tie dye perfectly well on my own.

**one of my more enjoyable food service jobs, actually. all of the staffers were classmates, and we got hefty bonuses for taking shifts during finals. fun fact: i once made a banana berry for condi rice.

02.25.09: lau rouge



i've developed a few theories about short hair over the decade or so that i've had it (off and on, disastrously, from ages 8 to 12 or so, and off and on again from my early twenties 'til now). most women wouldn't have it themselves, but are very invested in knowing a woman who does: whenever mine goes short again, everyone tells me how happy they are about it, like i've relieved some sort of collective lady-tension. women also like to tell me about how they want short hair but couldn't pull it off or, most commonly, "don't have the face for it" (which is patently false: if i can do it with this crazy german profile, anyone can). it's a lot of responsibility, shouldering girlfriends' and coworkers' and clerks' issues with a mia farrow 'do. it has its perks, though: when my hair is this short, nothing is too girly. i can wear ridiculous little sundresses, doll shoes, a bright purple track jacket - you name it. i wore a glittery silver cardigan to the office today.

red! hair has its own peanut gallery and associated issues, things i'd forgotten about until i accidentally nuked my head saturday afternoon (my color has faded pretty quickly the last few times i've dyed it, and i overcompensated this time by picking an especially vivacious shade at the drugstore). some of the random new york attention is very sweet: as i came home from pho-errands the other night, a doorman called out, "it is a beautiful color, lady, beautiful!" in a thick caribbean accent. all of the reactions have been good, in fact, except for at the office, which is what i feared when i first realized i was going to be en fuego for a while. i don't know that it's officially unprofessional, but it's close enough that i've been a bit tentative about sitting in the ol' power T at meetings this week. i was already the only short-haired woman on staff, and now...i haven't stuck out this much in a while, and it's taking a while to get comfortable. the parts of me that are getting old on schedule will be relieved when i dull back down, and the part of me that's still thirteen is thrilled to look like a cartoon. is that sentence depressing?

at the other end of the spectrum, an unequivocally heartening offering from a short-haired woman: i give you rachel maddow, mixologist (preparing the jack rose, one of her favorite cocktails, at the air america studios). on distractions, rebecca traister on gwyneth paltrow's GOOP (after the valentine's day edition of the newsletter featured especially bank-breaking recipes):

But today, I just had to shake my head in something like admiration. It's almost enough to convince me that La Paltrow is performing some kind of service with GOOP. Whether she's offering champagne-wishes-and-caviar-dreams escapism or just the opportunity to hate a stranger every Thursday, she's distracting us from the worries of not being able to afford our caviar this week. And so I say, perhaps for the only time ever: Gwyneth, you go! Fuck the haters! Shine on, you crazy rich girl!

i concur, r-traist. i concur.

02.23.09: qu'est-ce que c'est?

101 in 1001 {II}: 077 make ramen or pho from scratch [completed 02.22.09]



sexy foreign soupmaking was never going to be an especially logical proposition, and i knew that. great ramen is cheap and two blocks away; great pho is also cheap and a short subway ride away (and open 24 hours). i attempted pho because i wanted the experience of putting it together myself; the cost of admission was worth it for the pleasure and novelty of working with the ingredients. the vegetarian recipes i read followed the same basic formula - anise, ginger, and cinnamon to spike the broth, lots of greens at the end, baked tofu atop the rice noodles - so i grabbed a likely version and went shopping.

our cheapest neighborhood source for spices is whole foods (seriously), so i headed up to columbus circle...and was promptly trampled by four hundred wandering yuppies with gigantic strollers full of angry toddlers. both yuppies and toddlers can be fine on their own (i kind of always dislike strollers, i confess), but combined on a sunday in a foofy grocery store, yeow! one couple decided that they wanted to have a look at the asian noodles but didn't want to communicate with me, so they just snuck up and pinned me against the pasta display with their maclaren. i was so weirded out by being body-checked by a family that i accidentally grabbed a non-vegetarian bottle of sriracha (the huy fong rooster bottles are fine, but whole foods didn't carry them - nor did food emporium, surprisingly). bah.

$45 grocery bag in tow, i headed back home and got cooking. after a lovely hour of chopping and simmering, i ducked into our cupboard to grab a large strainer, which somehow dislodged the heart-shaped stoneware le creuset casserole we got as a wedding present. have you ever picked up a big le creuset piece, admired its heft, and wondered what would happen if you dropped it? answer: if it lands on your bare foot, it pretty much breaks your toe.* the lid broke into three pieces, too, so our covered casserole is now a gratin dish (it's been discontinued, so we can't get another one). i am pretty good with pain, but this was something special: i had to breathe deeply for a few minutes to calm my roiling stomach. this was a bit distracting for joe, so when he took over the large strainer, he poured hot broth down the front of our stove and all over his bare feet. you guys, pho wanted us dead.

and you know what? after all that, it was gross. i followed that recipe with surgical precision, and the resulting broth was bitter, medicinal, and not at all pho-tastic (though it smelled plausible). we poured the leftovers straight down the drain and took the trash out immediately - i wanted the whole thing to be over as soon as possible. never in my life have i met a dish so violently opposed to its own preparation.

all of that said, i'm not sorry i gave it a try: it was a fun process (when we weren't being attacked or injured), and i now know without a shadow of a doubt that i should leave pho to the pros. that, internets, is worth something.

*george: "if you almost broke your toe while making pho, you're clearly doing something right. there's a high degree of technical difficulty on the dismount."

02.21.09: son of sleeveface

02.20.09: aliens of gold

101 in 1001 {II}: 076 follow an amy's bread recipe [completed 02.19.09]



lemon bars are my kind of dessert: fruity, sour, and easy to eat on the run (if, you know, you're attacked right after you tuck in). i knew that i wanted to try something from the sweeter side of amy's bread, the owners' recently published dessert book; their actual bread is amazing as well, but as a newbie baker, i'm far from being a match for that sort of recipe. i was most pleased, then, when this baby popped up as a guest feature on martha stewart's site. i printed it out, took a stroll around the office, and discovered a tall canning jar full of lemons on our free shit table: clearly the universe wanted me to make this recipe. i even avoided my traditional baking bungle when i almost skipped the freezing-the-unbaked-crust-for-half-an-hour stage (but caught myself thirty seconds after i plopped the pan in the oven; disaster avoided, though this is probably why the little buggers are so reluctant to yield to the spatula).

verdict: the amy's bread gals continue to impress me. the dash of coarse salt in both the crust and the filling - especially in the crust - generates wonderful little pockets of savory/sweet snazz (if you're the sort of person who likes salted plums, you'd be all over this), and the emphasis on the lemons' sourness (these are not little kids' lemon bars) is really nice. i had to bake the filling for a bit longer than i thought i would (30 rather than 20 minutes), and i'm having a bit of a time dishing pretty bars (it's really tricky to make clean cuts: note that even martha's stylists had trouble with this) - but they taste so good that i don't care.

any weekend foodieness planned where you are? i wish you all savory/sweet snazz, internets.

:: 101 in 1001: the revenge ::

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past - frequently simple goals such as new year's resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

start date: 18 february 2009
end date: 16 november 2011

items completed: 043
items remaining: 058


items completed have bracketed numbers; i'll alter stats and supply completion details as appropriate. without further ado and in no particular order, once again...

the list

[001] visit iceland [see 04.15.11]
002 write (publish) another mcsweeney’s list
003 donate platelets at least 12 times [05/12 as of 12.27.10]
[004] work out at a gym at least 200 times [completed 04.30.11]
005 take a foreign language class
006 attend shabbat service at a synagogue
007 reach a balance of at least $5000 in original ‘101 in 1001’ savings account
[008] see elvis costello in concert [see 06.11.09]
[009] visit an acupuncturist [see 07.20.11]
[010] buy an apartment [see 10.18.09]
[011] contribute work to a gallery show [see 09.01.10]
[012] watch duck soup [see 07.17.10]
013 attend mass at saint patrick’s cathedral
014 tour an abandoned subway tunnel
015 frame my college diploma
016 go birdwatching
[017] make a blurb-ish photo book [completed 12.20.09]
018 have 3 photos featured on flickr’s explore page
019 print, mat, and frame one of my photos
[020] take another class at the astor center [completed 04.29.09]
[021] visit canada [see 10.26.10, 10.28.10, 11.04.10]
[022] walk across the brooklyn bridge [completed 03.22.09; see photo set]
023 have pizza at grimaldi’s
[024] get another tattoo [see 04.19.11]
025 take a martial arts class
026 complete and frame another needlepoint project
[027] invent a bitchin’ cupcake recipe [see 06.06.09]
028 attempt a gozer costume for halloween
029 visit the new york city tenement museum
[030] buy a bikini (and wear it in public) [completed 04.06.10]
[031] go to an MLS game [see 07.17.09]
032 go to the opera
[033] make pickles from scratch [see 04.27.09]
034 take an etsy labs class
035 write (publish) three ‘letters to the editor’
[036] buy a pair of hot shit designer shoes [see 05.03.09]
037 volunteer at a soup kitchen
[038] cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before [see 07.05.11]
039 run 8 miles in less than an hour [distance/hr to date: 6.99 mi]
040 make a blanket
[041] get a bikini wax [see 11.15.11]
042 read gravity’s rainbow (thomas pynchon)
043 enter a cooking or baking contest
044 get my name printed in the new york times
045 get a shout-out at design*sponge
046 score at least 3 new bylines
047 learn to identify at least 12 constellations
048 donate whole blood at least 12 times [06/12 as of 11.08.10]
049 watch three kubrick films i haven't seen
[050] read the big sleep (raymond chandler)
[051] read neuromancer (william gibson)
052 visit at least 3 cemeteries in the new york area
053 attend tea ceremony or a cooking lesson at cha-an in the east village
[054] have dinner at sripraphai in queens [see 04.13.09]
[055] subscribe to another literary magazine [granta, subscribed 10.22.09]
056 write a fan letter
057 go skydiving
058 dip my toe in the atlantic and pacific oceans on the same day
059 see the northern lights
060 take a class at mud, sweat & tears
[061] make a terrarium [see 10.10.11]
063 watch a video at the paley center for media
[064] visit the russian tea room [see 11.16.09]
[065] have a drink at a sneaky-sneaky hipster bar [completed 11.06.09]
[066] take a photo every day for a year [see 08.06.10; photos here]
067 visit the new york botanical garden
068 go without restaurant meals and takeout for a month
069 drink nothing but water for a fortnight
070 sell something on etsy
071 visit (non-tijuana) mexico
072 throw a round nine
073 take a copyediting class
074 see david bowie in concert
[075] read a john updike novel [rabbit, run]
[076] follow an amy’s bread recipe [see 02.20.09]
[077] make ramen or pho from scratch [see 02.23.09]
078 volunteer at an animal shelter
[079] see david beckham play soccer [see 07.17.09]
[080] see a show at joe’s pub [see 11.06.11]
081 go to coney island
082 join a new CSA
083 spend the night in a lodge
084 go to the bronx zoo
[085] buy and start using vacuum storage bags [completed 03.07.09]
086 read 3 library books
[087] raise my credit score [completed 07.28.09]
[088] meet with a personal trainer [see 05.08.09]
[089] attend a screening at the tribeca film festival [see 04.29.10]
090 buy a laptop
[091] make granola [see 02.27.09]
[092] watch taxi driver [see 12.16.10]
[093] watch raging bull
094 submit at least 3 nonfiction pieces for publication
095 take trapeze lessons
[096] ride the subway on staten island [see 11.18.11]
[097] attend an event at the prospect park bandshell [see 07.28.10]
098 see a summer movie at bryant park
[099] eat at a top chef alum’s restaurant [completed 05.17.10]
[100] make a linoleum block print [completed 03.30.09; see 03.31.09]
101 make a magnetic chalkboard

02.17.09: beep beep

i didn't even try to get through valentine's day without telling joe i was making him a german chocolate cake. this turned out to be a good call for a couple of reasons: first, i remain almost completely unable to keep my own secrets, and second, making german chocolate cake (when you follow david lebovitz's recipe, at least) takes forty thousand years. i started after a final run to the grocery store at ten thirty on saturday morning and finished at something like five in the afternoon.



i still managed to botch a step, too (in measuring out the butter for the toasted coconut and pecan filling, i tossed the amount i needed back in the fridge and add the remainder of the stick to my bowl instead). my invariably crappy baking is like gozer's arrival at the end of ghostbusters: the destructor's form varies, but the destruction itself is certain. luckily, this mess was tasty, and we're still slicing away at it three days later (DL wasn't kidding when he said it served sixteen).

at the other end of the spectrum, i ended the weekend at my very first runway show in the tents at bryant park, where no one has eaten cake in a very long time.



i will not admit that i hummed "fashion" the whole time, but i can't say i didn't.

02.12.09: soon



hey hey, a project wrapped up in due time for once! this is the card i made for rachel, my crafty-giftin' counterpart in amanda's valentine's day swap. she's out in los angeles, so i decided to give her all things new york: the card is a cutout of the hell's kitchen skyline as seen from the hudson (the bat signal heart is coming out of what would be the new york times building). i picked up the japanese newspaper at sapporo, our favorite local ramen place. i sent it with a jar of ginger-grapefruit bath fizzes, made from the aforementioned citric acid from zabar's on the upper west side,* and a wee jar of david graves's nyc rooftop honey from the union square greenmarket (and rooftops all over the five boroughs). in return, she sent me two of her lovely stitched cardstock valentines, a pretty dessert** (which i have hidden from joe the pastry-seeking missile), and a garland made of hacked-up science journals, which, predictably, i adore. as she put it, what says love like the annual data for red tailed deer mating?



an upcycler after my own heart. thanks again, rachel!

*and some seriously peekaboo essential oils. when i was mashing everything together on friday night, our apartment was one big citrus slamdance; when i smelled the leftover crumbles yesterday morning, they'd calmed down to a positively timid salt-with-hints-of-ginger tang. still plenty fizzy, just not as stinky as i'd expected. that's how we roll on valentine's day around here, internets: we expect stink.

**specifically, tasty shortbread from sconehenge in CA - which is the best-titled business i've heard of in months. i kind of want to change my name to sconehenge.

02.11.09: 101 in 1001 II: havana nights

i never did get around to writing about the end of my first '101 in 1001' list ("complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days") last may. most of my notes at the ol' denouement would have been things i'd already said as i chugged through ("hey, accidentally popping up in books is great! so, goals involving gambling are really stupid! hot shit, i really did quit smoking!"), and i was on the fence about bragging about completing only 36 of my list items. then again, managing to accomplish one out of every three things i claim i'm going to do as a general proposition...would be pretty staggering. really, who's that effective all the time?

i am ready, internets, to begin a new list. a handful of items (like 046 buy an apartment) will migrate from the first edition to the second; some are dying the deaths they deserve (053 visit a nudist colony, i'm looking at you); others are meaner versions of goals i liked before (i'll be saving more money and hitting the gym a bit harder). other others don't exist yet; i'm trying to pace myself as i put this one together (and i'd love some suggestions). here's what i've got so far; what would you add? for that matter, what would you drop?

001 visit iceland
002 write (publish) another mcsweeney’s list
003 donate platelets at least 12 times
004 work out at a gym at least 200 times
005 take a foreign language class
006 attend shabbat service at a synagogue
007 reach a balance of at least $5000 in original ‘101 in 1001’ savings account
008 see elvis costello in concert
009 visit an acupuncturist
010 buy an apartment
011 contribute work to a gallery show
012 watch duck soup
013 attend mass at saint patrick’s cathedral
014 tour an abandoned subway tunnel
015 frame my college diploma
016 go birdwatching
017 make a blurb-ish photo book
018 have 3 photos featured on flickr’s explore page
019 print, mat, and frame one of my photos
020 take another class at the astor center
021 visit canada
022 walk across the brooklyn bridge
023 have pizza at grimaldi’s
024 get another tattoo
025 take a martial arts class
026 complete and frame another needlepoint project
027 invent a bitchin’ cupcake recipe
028 attempt a gozer costume for halloween
029 visit the new york city tenement museum
030 buy a bikini (and wear it in public)*
031 go to an MLS game
032 go to the opera
033 make pickles from scratch
034 take an etsy labs class
035 write (publish) three ‘letters to the editor’
036 buy a pair of hot shit designer shoes
037 volunteer at a soup kitchen
038 cook with 12 ingredients I’ve never used before
039 run 8 miles in less than an hour
040 make a blanket
041 get a bikini wax**
042 read gravity’s rainbow (thomas pynchon)
043 enter a cooking or baking contest
044 get my name printed in the new york times
045 get a shout-out at design*sponge
046 score at least 3 new bylines
047 learn to identify at least 12 constellations
048 donate whole blood at least 12 times
049 watch three kubrick films i haven't seen
050 read the big sleep (raymond chandler)
051 read neuromancer (william gibson)
052 visit at least 3 cemeteries in the new york area
053 attend tea ceremony or a cooking lesson at cha-an in the east village
054 have dinner at sripraphai in queens
055 subscribe to another literary magazine
056 write a fan letter
057 go skydiving
058 dip my toe in the atlantic and pacific oceans on the same day
059 see the northern lights
060 take a class at mud, sweat & tears
061 make a terrarium
063 watch a video at the paley center for media
064 visit the russian tea room
065 have a drink at a sneaky-sneaky hipster bar
066 take a photo every day for a year
067 visit the new york botanical garden

*this might be two items for the price of one. both are pretty scary.

**i already know this is a terrible idea, but jen's new list made me do it.

02.09.09: champions



i might be back to believing that breakfast is a capitalist lie: i ate oatmeal every morning for a week just now and gained three and a half pounds. where's the revolution in that? one might note that the scale at our gym appears to be broken (joe had the same gain), but still. what the eff, oatmeal.

i have switched over to eating puffins, which is much more icelandic anyway.

02.05.09: help the aged

so, zabar's carries citric acid.* you will probably never need to know that, but if you, like me, need it to finish a craft project that has to be out the door in a matter of days and don't have the time to hunt down winemaking supply stores (?) and are in manhattan, it's good information to have. more on that project if, god willing, it turns out well and gets out the door in time.

joe called me at work the other day to announce that he'd joined facebook (a coworker nudged him along; does this make him the first person to add things to it due to political pressure?). "you should join too," he said blithely, as if i don't rant about how much it creeps me out on a regular basis. so...i did. once the 'book was introduced to our marriage, i decided it was fruitless to resist; i was already doomed to catch all of the nasty stuff he contracts from it (facebook is the new VD, is what i'm saying). assimilating has been pretty painless so far; i don't know how interested i am in features that overlap with things i already do (like blogging here, posting pictures to my flickr photostream, microblogging via ye olde twitter feed), and i'm too shy and crotchety to go on friending binges and reconnect with long-lost school chums, but internets, i am trying. i'm trusting the separation of church and state to keep my more personal stuff (of which there isn't much) semi-private.*** i will give the 'book a chance - at least until there's a vaccine.

*a lot of clueless gourmet store employees** became scared of me when i asked for citric acid, but it's much more pleasant than it sounds: it's just sour salt, the stuff that makes tart candy so wonderful. having two large jars of it in my kitchen makes me feel a bit like augustus gloop when he first saw willy wonka's river of chocolate.

**aside to that aside: the gal at williams-sonoma, by contrast, both knew what i was talking about (and gave me a mini-presentation about the relative virtues of ascorbic and citric acids) and gave me the tip about zabar's. they're fancy in there, but they know their shit.

***did anyone else feel a little weird seeing the piece on '25 random things' in the new york times today? i know print is trying to keep up with the internets, but damn, guys: that's awfully niche-y for a lifestyle piece, and memes like that have been around for years.

02.02.09: boom boom boom boom, i want a bowl of soup

my second high school food service job - the one for which i had to buy polyester khakis and wear a baseball hat, not the one for which i had to rent a tie covered with tropical fruit - was at a heart-healthy fast food restaurant. i think it closed within a few months of my leaving for college, both because it occupied the strip mall's mysterious Storefront of Death and because it was neither as speedy nor as cheap as honest-to-goodness fast food.* it was around long enough for me to become obsessed with a few standout dishes, though; i haven't cracked the low fat, mega-addictive oatmeal cookie code, but i've figured out how to approximate the weirdly satisfying cup of lentils (to which, in a fit of boredom, i added parmesan and salsa), which goes something like this.

1/2 pound dry lentils
~2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 small-medium potato, peeled and chopped (optional; if you decide to throw this in, wait until the other veggies have already simmered for a while)
1-2 c vegetable broth
bay leaf
salt and pepper
rough-grated parmesan cheese (not huge like a cheddar, but not too finely grated - powdery is too far)
shredded carrot
hot salsa (high acidity and chunky tomatoes are good; extra-spicy pico de gallo is perfect)

prepare the dry lentils according to package instructions (i didn't feel like soaking mine ovenight, so i believe i combined them with three cups of hot water, boiled them for a bit, and then drained them), then set aside. add the olive oil to a small-medium stock pot, then soften the garlic, onion, carrot, and celery over medium heat for a few minutes. add the lentils, enough vegetable broth to cover them, and the bay leaf; bring the mixture to a simmer and leave it uncovered to reduce for about fifteen minutes. you're basically making a brothless lentil stew; at the start of your simmer, add a few wintery, comparatively innocuous herbs and spices if you like (i tossed in some penzeys mural of flavor, a salt substitute - that link includes an ingredient list). once the broth has pretty much left town, remove and discard the bay leaf, season with some salt and pepper, and you're done. ladle into a small bowl, then add a sprinkle of parmesan, a handful of shredded carrot, and a robust spoonful of salsa. i have no idea why earthy stew + shredded parm + raw, snappy carrot + salsa equals BIG MAGIC, but this is one of my favorite dishes of all time. it's cheap, tasty, and crazy-healthy, especially if you go easy on the cheese and leave out the potato (i do neither, and it still makes me feel like hiking). so there you are, internets! if you super bowled yesterday, you can lentil it away now.

how did you sunday, and how are you mondaying? have you soup for me?

*unsurprisingly, the chain is still flourishing in san diego, land of all things posh, expensive, and slow.