Category Archives: compote something

When I Could Wear A Sunset

Posted by Tata on

Last night, I developed a sudden fever so high I couldn’t control my legs. Fortunately, I was working at the family store, where a former housemate took one look at me, handed me a bag of menthol drops and stuck around to play a half-hour game of Point & Laugh. I’ve been in bed since Pete and I got home from work last night. So though I still can’t count how many fingers I’m holding up, I’ve got some time to blog, eh? Well, except that I keep falling asleep. It’s taken hours to write this inspiring paragraph.

One of my best friends from high school recently told me a story about us I didn’t remember. When we were teenagers, she told me she was allergic to eggs and had never eaten cake. I told her to come to my house and we’d fix that. Have I told you this story? If so, I’m sorry. Hey, maybe it’ll end differently, thanks to the NyQuil! Anyhow, she did come to my house and I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, leaving out the eggs. We got spoons and marched upstairs to my room. She sputtered, “Aren’t we going to bake this?” I said no, this was the good stuff. She was thrilled. Later, when she saw chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the grocery store she thought I was years ahead of ice cream makers. That’s great. I’ll take that: I’m a dessert prophet.

A few months ago, I preserved Apple Pie In A Jar and over the weekend, made a pie with it. With the addition of some preserved peaches and extra cinnamon, it’s pretty good. I predict you can make a few batches and have apple pie all winter long.

Your Heart Is Full Of Unwashed Socks

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Tata: I would like to spend some part of our day in bed, discussing economics through finger puppets like normal people do.
Pete: Would you like some more coffee?
Tata: I would. What?
Pete: Normal people do not discuss economics with finger puppets.
Tata: You’re probably right. The puppets might’ve studied the humanities.
Pete: We could take a nap after we come back from the grocery store.
Tata: That’s a pleasant theory but we’re always too tired to sleep after all the label-reading and line-moshing.
Pete: What made you think of what normal people might do?
Tata: I don’t know. The finger puppets looked bored.

Recently, my friend’s ex-wife asked me to knit a baby blanket. The scenario: we had a falling out years ago that involved chocolate body paint and all the booze half a town could drink, but though we’re terrible human beings we’re both interested in do-goodery. She joined a group of knitters who turn out blankets for babies born in the hospitals in town and asked me to join her or donate baby blankets. I balked. Sure, a lot of babies born in the city’s hospitals have very little, but I disliked being unable to determine actual need; plus: I am a terrible knitter. I decided not to do it, but the request stayed with me. I wondered if women’s shelters would welcome this sort of gesture or if it would be counterproductive. Sometimes you can’t tell from the outside of a situation what would be helpful and what would be a disaster. As I was wondering this, a project at work asked us to create a holiday food drive, including presents for two families having a very tough year. Between these two families, there are three babies. With the friend’s ex-wife’s request still rankling my nerves, I had to admit to myself these were babies in need and I had no excuses. I bought yarn a few days ago and started knitting. The food drive ends on 1 December, so there will be time to knit exactly one blanket, but that’s also enough time to get over myself. I’m a terrible knitter and I’m freaking over it!

And We Pause For A Jet

Posted by Tata on

After the blog moved to this location, 900-1000 unique visitors per day disappeared. I don’t mind as much as you’d think. It was like attending a party every day in a ballroom full of H.G. Wells characters and wondering if there was spinach between my teeth, but things change, you know? It was a total blast to fictionalize myself and everyone around me while I was single, miserable and uninspired. Once I lived with an actual human being who kept trying to talk to me while I was writing, blogging became a fight one word at a time. But you know what? I love a good fight – especially a food fight.

If you peek at the food sections of New York Times or the Huffington Post, you find them packed with the thoughts of foodies of above-average income and often odd concerns. Scan for yourself, you’ll get a certain funny feeling like you simply must and add this to your list and top ten wines beneath notice. You don’t need to be a trendmeister to see which way the aroma’s wafting. That kind of food writing may be socially useful – or not.

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Sales of Cheese

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.

Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.

But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.

Tom Monaghan, Domino’s founder, financially supports Operation Rescue and built his own fundamentalist Catholic town in Florida. For me to spend money in a Domino’s Pizza, I would have to be on the verge of starvation in a town without a single culinarily capable entrepeneur and absolutely nothing else separating me, my flimsy morals and sauteing someone else’s house pets. I absolutely do not care if Domino’s sells its customers a hunk of watery casein and a Ritz and calls it “pizza” for all the sustenance their products offer. Let me offer some excellent advice: DON’T EAT THAT. Problem: solved!

Lately, I want homemade, substantial, really real food. Last week, I noticed 100% of the oatmeal cookies in the whole world were at other people’s houses; today, I decided to fix their wagons by making some kickass whole wheat oatmeal cookies.

What? Pete's grandmother bought china!

Tooling around the net, I found this promising recipe for Easy Best Oatmeal – Raisin Cookies. I replaced the AP flour with whole wheat, added a teaspoon of ground ginger and an extra squirt of vanilla extract. Change the two sugars for one, and make that brown sugar. If you grind the nutmeg yourself, grind enough that you think you might hallucinate. Add a cup of dried cranberries to the raisins. If you’re feeling really capricious, toss in 3/4 cup pignoli nuts. Roll into balls slightly – just slightly – smaller than golf balls, unless you want larger cookies, in which case you should go crazy and roll them whatever insane size you wish. But don’t blame me if your Silpat cowers when you cross the kitchen threshold. Because you are crazy, Crazy Person!

Humble oatmeal cookies get the Lenox treatment.

Look, eat a cookie or don’t eat a cookie, but why not make it fantastically tasty and actually good for you? Let’s look again at the ingredients:

  • oatmeal
    egg
    raisins
    whole wheat flour
    cranberries
    nuts

    • What’s not to love? These cookies are so good you’d eat them off a hair brush and so good for you you wouldn’t mind the extra floss. Okay, don’t eat that, but make these cookies for yourself and write me a letter that doesn’t include pretentious wine pairings.

    A Pool Hall Where They All Hang

    Posted by Tata on

    I don’t know what you’re scared of, but I’m a-scared of pie crust. Pie crust is my Achilles Heel, my bete noir, the monster under my bed. Who knows how these things get started? When I was a teenager, I baked apples in glittering, sugary crusts and skipped on my merry way, but somewhere along the line, I tripped over my own feet and fell face first into a twenty-year pie crust phobia. Let me tell you two somethings about that:

    1. That is a real shame: just about any half-assed breakfast, lunch or dinner becomes 100% less half-assed when baked into a decent tender, flaky crust and that includes sushi;
    2. Oh. My. God. What could be more uncool than a PIE CRUST PHOBIA?

    Buy in bulk. Bake bigger pies.

    I don’t eat much in the way of white flour. Pete doesn’t use it when he bakes bread. I looked around for whole wheat pie crust recipes before stumbling in the health food store on organic whole wheat pastry flour. Oh yes. I went there. Pie crust is frightening, but bags are not. Turns out if you hand the right person a small but silly amount of money you too can take home a monster.

    Yesterday, I measured out some pastry flour, cut in butter and hydrated the whole mess with cold water, but because I can’t follow a recipe to save my life I also added lemon peel and ground ginger. The dough rested in my fridge for half an hour, then I made a tart out of fruit we’d jarred. After baking, I glazed the tart with lemon squash jam. Pete and I sampled slices of the tart dressed with homemade yogurt mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar. It was okay, but I don’t like tarts.

    Sweet potato pies disguised as pie-shaped things.

    Tonight, I rolled the second ball of dough, cut it into six pieces, rolled and cut circles. I stuffed them with leftover sweet potatoes mixed with egg, cinnamon, ginger and fresh nutmeg, buttered the outside and sprinkled chunky sugar crystals over top. While I have at least temporarily conquered my fear of pie crust and banished nightmares of broken pie crusts past, I have – alas – not become a better photographer. This picture sucks. The little pie things are both humble and pretty, but in this image they appear to be having their own personal earthquakes – or I am.

    Many actions have unintended consequences. I want to make things in pie crusts, even things I don’t actually want to eat. But I could and then what? And after that?

    To Face the Sun I Want To Hide

    Posted by Tata on

    Pears in port wine, trimmed with lemon slices.

    The weather change is kicking my fabulous ass. Sure, you’re thrilled with the cooler temperatures because everything above 80 makes your jersey knit feel like a neoprene nightmare, but I can’t share your arid joy. My joints stiffen. My mood sours as I trudge to work in the dark. Frankly, I’m a fucking prize from 1 October to 1 May when I take my own personal paddle ride in the swan boat of seasonal misery, waiting for the sun’s return. I wish it came with kettle corn. I hate kettle corn.

    Hibernation sounds like great fun. I would like to make dinner reservations and dentist appointments based on when the salmon are running. Being warm and cozy for months on end might be divine, but I worry about the dreams. Would I need a winter-long attention span?