Credit for the return of cake must be given to Ragnvaeig, who triumphed over jet lag and a bad cold to meet me in the city on the stickiest, swampiest Saturday in years.  Once upon a time, I promised her a cardamom-lime cake to call her own, and on Saturday she finally got one.  Long-time PTMYB readers may remember that cardamom-lime cake was going to be the signature cake of my bakery, the one I spent years trying to open, but didn’t due to insufficient financing.  I’ve written about it for years in this space, but I didn’t realize until now that I never, ever posted the recipe for it.  Until I made Ragnvaeig’s cake, I hadn’t baked one for a long time, and I wondered whether my memory was burnishing this cake, imbuing it with virtues it didn’t necessarily have, making it better than it really was.  You could have heard me exhale for miles when Ragnvaeig deemed it good.  (Thank you, dearest.) In short order, two friends requested the recipe.  The cake, dear friends, is back.

For all that I like to pat myself on the back for this cake, it’s not like I slaved over three hundred variations, testing crumb variables with different amounts of eggs or baking powder; nope, for this cake, I stood on the shoulders of giants.  The “base” cake is a basic buttermilk pound cake, flavored with citrus juice and peel, baked in a tube pan and soaked, post-bake, with a citrus juice/sugar syrup.  Maida Heatter uses this basic formula for her Lemon Buttermilk Cake, as does Gale Gand’s tangerine cake in Butter Sugar Flour Eggs.  My version of this cake, as the name might indicate, involves subbing lime zest and juice for those of the other fruit; I also add cardamom, and lots of it, about a tablespoon and a half of cardamom pods.  (I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve never measured the cardamom post-grind.  If you prefer to use pre-ground cardamom, I’d go with a scant tablespoon, but I promise that if you have something interesting to watch on tv while you shell the cardamom pods, the work goes quickly, and the resulting cake tastes amazing.) Whenever I confess to abundant use of spices, I receive counsel that sometimes there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.  Sometimes, the advisor is right, but in this case, I don’t want to hear it.  When it comes to cardamom, particularly in this cake, less is not more.

Cardamom-lime cake
serves 12-16

For the cake:

After the cake has rested in the pan for five minutes, turn the cake out onto a cooling rack.  Place the rack over a large piece of foil, large enough for you to fold up the edges around the rack.  While the cake is still hot, brush the syrup all over the top, sides and center hole of cake.  Pay special attention to the sides near the cake bottom, which will be dryer than the sides near the top.  Let cool completely before eating.  No, really.  You’ll want to cut into it while it’s still hot, but doing so will leave you with a gummy, fragile crumb.  Wait until it’s cool.  You’ll be glad you did.

Now that we have cake, more can be told.  And it will, too.

In defense of both my lackluster performance and my never-ending dog-eyed apology, I blame both on the Sudafed, on which I’ve been living all week thanks to the fourth headcold I have caught in six months.  You would think that since all of my subway riding happens mostly during off-peak riding hours, I would not be so susceptible to the lurgies and virii that float about the city, but it would seem that this is not the case.  I choose to blame it on the flu shot I did not get back in November.  I know that colds and influenzae do not originate from the same bugs, and one shouldn’t have anything to do with the other, but I’ve noticed that in the years I do get flu shots, I catch cold maybe once a year, twice, tops.  There’s a mistake I won’t be making again.  That said, if you’re going to catch your death of cold, you might as well have your death of fun in catching it, and that I did.  On what might have been the last really nice day for walking around until autumn (the heat and humidity are on their way to NYC, and they’re going to kick us hard, say the weatherweasels), I went to one of my favorite walking-around spots in the city, Flushing Meadows and Corona Park, where I walked over Robert Moses’s face with great relish (and I don’t mean the stuff on my hot dog [rimshot]) and took about eleven zillion pictures of the Unisphere and the Rocket Thrower before heading into Corona proper for the best ice in the city.  I’d say it was worth sneezing for a week.

But I do not come here to discuss the hideous workings of my sinuses.  I come here because many of you have not yet thrown your hands up in disgust at my slacktacular posting regimen, but rather have asked what our summer looks like.  It’s not boring, I’ll grant you that. 

Our original plan for summer—and beyond—was that I would pack only what I needed to sustain myself for ten months of student living in a 330-square-foot apartment, while Lloyd would stay in New York through April, when he would be fully vested in his pension.  We had planned to rent a Matrix and drive it across the country, staying in cheapish hotels and taking regular driving breaks, documenting neat stuff along the way.  It would be our long-awaited Grand Vacation, the kind of road trip we’ve talked about since before we were married, something to give me memories that would bring warmth and solace when I’m ready to drop out of law school and my sweetheart and helpmeet is over 3,000 miles away.  Once Lloyd was vested and I was finished with my first year of school, I would start looking for bigger apartments, sign a lease, fly back to New York and spend the summer of 2009 helping Lloyd close up the apartment and move for good.

Three days later, Lloyd announced that there were several job openings at his level at the company’s office in San Jose.  He might be able to come with me after all.  I spent about a day whooping out of pure euphoria, followed by a day of creeping realization that, should a job come through, we would have less than three months to close up the apartment.  Lloyd suggested that we plan as if he would be moving with me, so that we’d be prepared for any eventuality.  If it turned out that he wouldn’t be able to transfer, he could still keep our stuff in storage and move to a cheaper apartment share for the duration of his time in New York.  He started interviewing, we started packing, and then we waited.  And waited.  And waited.

It’s been a month since Lloyd’s last interview, and while all signs look good for a transfer, we probably won’t know for sure until the middle of July.  Lloyd has decided that regardless of whether or not the transfer comes through, he wants to move with me this summer.  No matter how carefully we plan and how frugally we live, there’s just no getting around the fact that the cost of separate housing in two expensive cities will hurt us economically at a time when I’ll already be socked with student loan debt.  There’s also the small matter of our wanting to be together.  So the die is cast.  The moving company picks up our stuff on July 31; it should take them about 10 days to deliver it to us.  Lloyd and I fly to San Jose August 4.  Until then, I pack, I blow my nose, I try not to worry too much, I tell Lloyd, in soothing tones, not to worry so much.

Say, Jen, you know what might take your mind off everything?  Baking, that’s what! It very well might, dear friends, but so far it hasn’t.  One of the unhappiest side effects of the whole packing/moving/contemplating the move process is that our kitchen, which was never the easiest space to navigate in the world, has become a cramped, unwieldy carnival of stress in which to work.  I never, ever, ever thought that these words would ever cross my lips, but I now find the time spent in the kitchen to be almost unbearable.  Baking, once my favorite way to spend a weekend, has now become something to get done as quickly as possible.  The thought of roasting a chicken and some potatoes to eat over salad, normally one of my favorite thoughts on a Friday afternoon, now fills me with vague dread.  A clever student of the psyche might say that I’m separating from the space where I have been cooking and baking for 14 years, pushing away from it the same way that teenagers push away from their parents as they forge new identities.  Or s/he might just say that I’m sick of bumping into things and not having a clear surface on which to put hot pans or cooling racks.  There’s truth in both answers.  I *am* sick of bumping into shit.  I’m also sick of fighting with an oven that won’t maintain a steady temperature to save its life, leaving all of my cakes half overbaked and half underbaked, no matter how carefully I rotate them.  On the other hand, that same unwieldy oven sits underneath a four-burner gas stovetop that works like a dream, and has since the day we moved in.  The odds are high that the new apartment in which we’ll live when we move west will have an electric stove, which is great for baking but not so much for stovetop cookery.  Every time I turn on the stove now, even just to boil water for a cup of tea, I think about how much I’ll miss our homely little stovetop, and the sound of the Amtrak trains bound for Boston roaring over our apartment on their way to the Hell Gate Bridge.  Then I ruin another cake, and I ask Lloyd if it’s time to move yet.

Nevertheless, I have managed to do a little baking that didn’t make me want to gnash my teeth in frustration.  Behold, the cookiepr0n!

Just when I thought I could finally stop bragging about the greatness of the cashew cookies from King Arthur Flour Whole-Grain Baking, along came these little beauties, chocolate chip cookies made from equal weights of whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat) and barley flour, which I bought from the Union Mills Homestead in Union Mills, Maryland, the weekend that Momerina and I went to Maryland Sheep & Wool.  I have made both chocolate chip cookies and a soft, cakey sugar cookie, both from King Arthur Flour Whole-Grain Baking, using this barley flour, and I am not exaggerating when I say that the scent of barley flour-based goodies as they bake is one of the most gorgeous fragrances I’ve ever been privileged to experience.  If you’ve ever gone into a bakery, inhaled that sweet heady scent, thought “mmmmm,” and then instantly thought, “gee, I hope that isn’t the smell of Creme Bouquet or one of those other nasty artificial flavor compounds,” I’m happy to tell you that barley flour and sugar, baking together, smell just like Bakery, only without the chemical overtones that would make you suspicious.  There’s no other way to describe it:  it is simply gorgeous.  It makes you feel glad for the day you ever learned to bake cookies.

Maybe I do need to bake another batch.  After all, if there is one thing Lloyd and I have been relearning these past few weeks, it’s the lesson that good things rarely come easily, or with peace of mind.  We’re not feeling easy, or peaceful, but we are feeling good.  I sort through a stack of books.  He packs them without an inch of wasted space, the way he did when he was a shipping/receiving manager and I was a buyer at the bookstore where we met.  We eat dinner.  On bad nights we talk about what we’re going to do if he doesn’t have a job, or if my loans don’t come through, or if they do come through but the bursar’s office takes time getting money to us, or the bank sits on the funds for a month before letting us touch them.  On good nights we remember that we are not alone in this venture, that we have friends and family who will not let us fall.  One way or another, we’re on our way to something really, really good.  “We have afters,” I say to Lloyd, thinking of the cookies in the kitchen.  His face lights up.

It was pure coincidence, a choice among a plethora of Memorial Day weekend movie choices, 100% political-agenda-free, that led Lloyd and me to see Heavy Metal in Baghdad on Memorial Day.  In hindsight, though—and I know I will probably make more than a few people unhappy when I say this—I find it a perfectly appropriate, if heartbreaking, way to honor our fallen troops in Iraq, as well as to acknowledge the terrible, terrible price Iraqi civilians have paid over the past five years.  At first glance, it might seem frivolous to think about the war in the context of a documentary about Iraq’s only heavy metal band, Acrassicauda, but Heavy Metal in Baghdad is far from frivolous.  This is not to say that it isn’t fun, because at times, it is.  The music is terrific, the concert scenes are a hoot to watch, and the band members (Firas Al Lateef on vocals and rhythm guitar, Faisal Talal on bass, Marwan Reyad on drums and the lightning-fast Tony Aziz on lead guitar) are all affable, funny, smart and Very, Very Metal.  It is also, by turns, painful, sad, infuriating, suspenseful and just plain nervewracking.  Directed and shot by the creative team behind VICE magazine, Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti, Heavy Metal in Baghdad is both an exuberant fan letter and a street-level view of the most dangerous place in the world.  I am worlds beyond impressed at the movie Alvi and Moretti have made, but I’m even gladder that they made it home alive.  When you see this movie, you will understand just how remarkable a feat this is.

I do beg your forbearance, dear friends, if I belabor the point more strongly than necessity might dictate, but I do want you to see this movie, as many of you as possible.  At the noon screening that Lloyd and I attended, there was one other person in the theatre with us.  I hope that the turnout was better at the later showings, but I’m not holding my breath, especially considering that just up the street Iron Man is playing on an IMAX screen.  (This is not a poke at Iron Man; we plan to see that, too, but we’re betting that that one will be around for a while, whereas Heavy Metal in Baghdad probably will not be.) If you are a metalhead—I know there are at least two of you out there who read PTMYB—you should see this movie.  If you are not a metalhead but you appreciate a well-made documentary produced by smart filmmakers, you should see it.  If you are a VICE reader, you should see it (and depending on where you live, you probably already have).  If you oppose the war, if you support the war, or if you’re exhausted by the very thought of the war—particularly if you’re the latter—you should see it.  If you plan to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, it is absolutely imperative that you see it.

By the argument for invading Iraq as presented to us by the Bush administration, the four members of Acrassicauda were exactly the Iraqi-on-the-street whose hearts and minds we would win by removing Saddam Hussein from power.  Interviewed in 2003, the band recalls how, when they applied for performance permits from the Ministry of Culture, they were asked “so what do you have for Saddam?” At the time, not having at least one song proclaiming Saddam’s greatness could land your band in jail, so they dutifully included a song with “yay, Saddam!” lyrics, which Marwan acknowledges were “fucking lies,” to keep themselves out of jail.  Even with pro-regime lyrics, it was still a dangerous thing to be a metalhead in Saddam’s Iraq.  Long hair was forbidden, beards even more so.  (Faisal acknowledges, bluntly, that he is playing a dangerous game with the goatee he sports.) Wearing T-shirts silkscreened with the legends of American bands—or with any English on them—was dangerous.  Headbanging was outlawed outright, supposedly for its resemblance to the motions of Jewish prayer.  In early concert footage, you can see enthusiastic but subdued crowds, longing to cut loose and bang their heads, almost none daring to do so.  By 2005, in the midst of spiraling post-invasion chaos, Acrassicauda staged a concert at the Al Fanar Hotel.  (VICE had worked to organize this concert, but the day before the show, Eddy and Suroosh were stranded in Beirut, 500 miles from Baghdad.) Despite the power cuts, despite the logistical nightmares, the show went on.  60 Baghdad metalheads showed up, and their sheer frenzied exuberance, caught on video by their segment producer Johan, is a blast to watch.  When the band launches into their incendiary song “Massacre,” the crowd goes nuts.  The driving beat and opening power cords are thrilling, even as the lyrics, depicting civilian casualties of the war, are devastating.  I could have listened for days.

If pre-invasion Iraq was dangerous for metalheads and critics of the regime, post-invasion Iraq is lethal for everyone who lives and works there—or tries to.  VICE’s next attempt to enter Iraq, in 2006, is successful, but fraught with danger that almost defies belief:  Having hired a security detail that includes a translator, two drivers and two gunsmen (as well as flak jackets and a truck full of guns), by the end of their stay, the security company has added 13 gunsmen to their detail.  Tony and Marwan have left Iraq, crossing the border into Syria; Faisal and Firas are still in Baghdad, living 15 minutes apart from each other, but unable to see each other due to the danger inherent in just walking down the street.  To speak English on the street, or to be seen with anyone speaking English on the street, is to invite gunfire.  When Suroosh calls Faisal to arrange a meeting, Faisal’s only response is a whispered “okay;” to say any more, any louder, is unthinkable.  At night Eddy and Suroosh stand on the balcony of their room at the Al Mansour Hotel, smoking, looking out over the city as bombs explode, gunfire peppers the air and Apache helicopters fly overhead.  By day they ride down the streets of Baghdad, taking increasingly risky field trips as their translator grows visibly agitated.  One such trip is to Acrassicauda’s old rehearsal space, tiny and dimly-lit, where the band used to write and play for 12 hours a day.  A missile has destroyed the building, the rehearsal space and the band’s instruments, which are buried in the rubble.  The exuberant young men who packed their jubilant show at the Al Fanar are either dead or have fled the country.  Midway through one interview, Firas looks visibly pained.  What I took for depression, or deep sadness, was actually anxiety.  Curfew is four hours away, and the two hours before curfew are the most dangerous in Baghdad.  “Can we go now?” he asks.  This simple question is loaded with dread.

Acrassicauda’s tale is one that defies happy endings.  This may seem a facile understatement, and in fact it is, but I think it’s worth noting because the desire for happy endings, or at least a measure of satisfaction, is strong, particularly among Americans.  I’ve mentioned this story before—apologies to those of you who are tired of hearing me tell it—but about 10 years ago I read an interview with Daniel and Susan Cohen, who wrote children’s nonfiction readers until 1988, when their only child, Theodora, was killed on Pan Am 103 over Scotland.  Daniel Cohen observed that one difficulty he and his wife found in their fight for justice was that people (not exclusively but mostly Americans) need, if not a happy ending, at least some purpose to their suffering.  We want to know that someday our lost loved ones will be waiting for us over the horizon, but if we can’t know that, at least we should have something to show for our pain.  Let us be better, stronger, more resourceful, more appreciative of small pleasures.  It is enormously difficult for us to hear that sometimes there is no measure of satisfaction, that the only thing that can be found in loss and ruin is more loss and ruin.

This brings me back to Acrassicauda.  In 2007, all four members of the band have reunited in Damascus, where the only work they can find is menial, under-the-table, illegal work, as Iraqi citizens are enjoined from working in Syria.  (In an attempt to stop the flow of Iraqi refugees into the country, the Syrian government has imposed new entry requirements on new refugees, and regularly attempts to repatriate existing refugees.) There is a flash of the old Acrassicauda glory when they play a concert in a Damascus internet cafe—no mean feat when Faisal points out that there are no metalheads in Damascus—but the reality is harsh:  They are poor expatriates, unable to work legally, forced to pawn their instruments to pay bills, missing their homeland desperately but knowing that returning is lethal.  When, with VICE’s assistance, they are able to record a three-track demo, it is a psychologically rousing boost, but it is not enough of a leap forward to give their lives any stability.

Thanks to charitable donations that bought their plane tickets and covered some living expenses, Acrassicauda are now living in Istanbul.  The cost of living in Istanbul is high, however, and the band is in much the same position as they were in Damascus.  Entry visas into Europe or North America have not been forthcoming.  The band was unable to attend the screenings of Heavy Metal in Baghdad at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival or the 2008 Berlin Film Festival.  When the official film website calls Acrassicauda “literally a band on the run,” it does not exaggerate.  The possibility of an entry visa to the U.S. appears beyond remote.  (Among the appalling statistics offered in the film is that of the four million Iraqi citizens displaced by the war [two million displaced internally within Iraq, two million refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon], less than 500 have been granted legal entry into the U.S.  Unfortunately, given the current rancorous debate over immigration in the U.S., I know that to mount an argument that more Iraqi emigres should be allowed in is an extremely difficult task, but I do hope that someone will pursue it.)

Yesterday morning, as I drank my coffee and perused the news, I found, via the Associated Press, a challenge issued by John McCain to Barack Obama, inviting him to join McCain on a trip to Iraq, so that he could see what has been accomplished on the ground in Iraq.  If Sen. McCain’s offer is sincere, and if Sen. Obama accepts the offer, I would recommend that they watch Heavy Metal in Baghdad before they go.  (Since I do not have a hotline to either the McCain or Obama campaigns, I suspect that my recommendation will go unheeded.) I’d be keen to know what they think of what they will see.  I’d be particularly keen to ask Sen. McCain if turning Baghdad into a surreal and ultraviolent no-man’s land is considered an accomplishment on the ground, if the liberation of Baghdad was worth the lives of over 4,000 young Americans and over 600,000 Iraqi civilians, worth the homes and health and livelihood of millions of others, worth the safety and creativity and freedom of four young men whose dearest wish is to play fast, loud music together.

Going to see Heavy Metal in Baghdad on Memorial Day was not a political statement, but this is:  If you live in New York or Los Angeles, please see this film.  If you cannot travel to New York or Los Angeles, please consider buying the DVD when it goes on sale on June 10.  If you don’t want to buy the DVD outright, please rent it from Netflix or Blockbuster or the rental outlet of your choice.  Please watch this movie, please look at what one of the oldest places in the world has become, and then ask yourself, your family and friends and neighbors, your elected officials, and your presidential candidates:  Is this why we fight?

(If you would like to make a donation to the band, or if you would like to learn more about the Iraqi refugee crisis, which the U.N. has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, the Take Action link on the Heavy Metal in Baghdad website has links to various organizations, along with a PayPal button for donations to the band.  You can also access the band’s blog and MySpace pages via the HMiB website.)

Of course you know that couldn’t last. 

Credit is due to Pam the Beancounter, who, if you are not acquainted with her, is witty and wry and thoughtful and a consistent source of amusing conversation. (If you are acquainted with her, of course, then you already know this.) Last week Pam was at a supermarket in Modesto, California, where she found—oh, heaven help me for using this phrase, even in a tongue-in-cheek way—a display of value-added russet potatoes.  I am thankful that Pam has a blog, a camera and a well-honed sense of the absurd, because honestly, if she had tried to explain this to me, I would have refused to believe it.  It would have been beyond my ken to believe it.

Apparently a venerable West Coast produce concern has discovered that if you take a crop of russet potatoes, sort them by size, wash them twice, shrinkwrap them individually and slap both a heat-sensitive tear strip and a double-sided label on the shrinkwrap, you can sell the resulting potatoes at 99 cents each.  For 99 cents, you can buy one single, modestly-sized russet potato, the same modestly-sized russets that my neighborhood fruit-and-vegetable market, several thousand miles away from Idaho potato country, sells in five-pound bags for $2.50.  (If I want bigger russets, I can buy them loose for 59 cents a pound.  The big ones usually weigh around 9 or 10 ounces).  This new generation of potatoes, branded as Micro Baker, are essentially twice the price of bagged potatoes.

So what exactly is the added value in these value-added potatoes?  If you’re going to pay double the price for your spuds, particularly in an era of $4.00/gallon gasoline, certainly you should get something for your money—something, that is, besides more plastic in the supply chain/water table/landfill.  A little research revealed that the produce company in question is Melissa’s/World Variety Produce, a frequent fixture in my food magazines, well known for sourcing exotic fruits and vegetables worldwide.  Okay, Melissa’s/World Variety Produce, Inc., I thought, sell me.

Hmmm.

Apparently the main selling points of these potatoes are a) they are foolproof to cook in the microwave, b) you leave the shrinkwrap on during the microwaving process, so that your hands never have to touch the potato and c) thanks to the heatproofing on the tearstrip, you can open the shrinkwrap without burning your fingers.  They also have “consistent sizing,” “a label filled with valuable information,” and “a neat, clean appearance,” which, granted, is something the big loose dusty russets don’t have, although, really, it’s pretty quick work to scrub a potato clean.  If these selling points were underwhelming, though, the last ones were mindboggling:  In seven minutes you can have a “‘tastes just liked baked’ potato flavor!” You can have a potato just like the ones served in gourmet restaurants!

This, dear friends, is where they lost me, and where I got my lunatic, muttering food crank idiom back. 

Those last two selling points are just plain wrong.  When you microwave a potato, you are essentially steaming it, cooking it via wet heat.  When you bake, or roast, a potato, you are cooking it via dry heat.  Both are worthy cooking methods, but they are not interchangeable, and to claim that you can create a baked flavor via steaming, or a steamed texture via baking, is a pernicious fiction that does neither the produce merchant nor the cook any favors.  Baking a russet does more than cook it through:  it contributes to the fluffy, floury, mealy texture that makes it unparalleled for absorbing butter, sour cream or olive oil.  It also encourages gentle browning and caramelization of the sugars in the skin, giving it a deep, roasted flavor that contrasts so nicely with the fleshy interior of the potato.  To show off a russet at its best, it’s not enough to cook it; you need to dry it out as well.  There is something inimitable and fine about taking a nice big russet, scrubbing it clean, rubbing its skin with a little bit of salt and tossing it into a hot oven (preferably on the rack above or below the roast you’re roasting or the bread you’re baking), pulling it out of the oven an hour later and feeling how light it has become.  Wrap it in a towel so that you don’t burn your fingers, thump it once, hard, against your work surface, and unroll your steamy potato into a bowl, where it will happily soak up whatever you want to put on it, be it a quantity of butter or a little tub of cottage cheese.  It is soulful, restorative food. 

When you microwave a russet, you are not drying it out.  You are steaming it in its own juice.  This is a terrific thing if you are steaming a fish, particularly a lean fish, or vegetables:  you are keeping the food nice and moist, with pure, clear flavor, unmuddied by caramelization.  It is not terrific for a potato that derives its best flavor and texture from dry heat.  Yes, the potato will cook through evenly; you can cut it open and dress it with butter or cheese; you can even eat the skin, although it won’t taste like anything and the texture will remind you of a wet paper towel.  At best, you’ll have something nice enough to eat.  But it won’t have a “tastes just liked baked” flavor, and no amount of exclamation points will give it one.

Most likely it will, however, taste like a gourmet restaurant baked potato.  This is because, with few exceptions, gourmet restaurant baked potatoes are steamed, too.  I don’t know who first lit on the idea of wrapping russets in foil before baking them, but it was a terrible idea.  All of the moisture that would dissipate in the oven remains contained within the foil.  The result is the same as that of microwaved potatoes:  flavorless, paper-towellish skin, waterlogged flesh.  But hey, it certainly looks snappy in its little foil bunting when it sits on the plate next to your steak, and if the kitchen is lucky, you consider that potato to be an afterthought, little more than a vehicle for that little plastic tub of sour cream they give you.

Admittedly, I might be taking this whole potato methodology rant a bit too far.  I am not a martinet.  I realize that sometimes it’s a pain in the ass to run the oven for an hour, particularly on a swampy day in August.  I have also spent years working in offices where baking a potato wasn’t an option, but microwaving a potato was, and if the resulting potato wasn’t perfect, it was still tasty, filling, cheap and probably healthier than most of the takeout hot lunch options available to me.  I have done it before, and one day I might have to do it again.  I will not, however, be fooling myself into thinking that I’m getting something that tastes like the perfect potato of my dreams—and I’m sure as hell not going to pay twice the price for it.

Dear Others, As my boyfriend Bruce Campbell once said so famously:  All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up.  I do not care how well-intentioned you might be, or how good you are at pretending you read this page:  If you come here by way of a Google search on a word, any word, plus the phrases “Remember my personal information” and “Notify me of follow-up comments,” I will delete your comment the instant I find it.  If you post it while I’m asleep, I will delete it the instant I wake up.  If you post it while I happen to be online, well, just watch my smoke.  This includes you, Mr. or Ms. University of Connecticut, Storrs-Mansfield campus. I have your IP address, I have your server name, I have a whopping great brace of nerve, and I have plenty of time on my hands.  Your efforts are for naught here.

Cheez Whiz.  In the time I spent writing that, I could have been making barley sugar cookies.  I hate it when I have to use cookie time to clean the house. 

Truth be told, I’m in something of an overstimulated state right now.  Most of it is due to happiness, excitement and the promise of change, but I’d be lying if I said that no tears had been shed.  There were tears, and plenty of ‘em, this weekend, and I’m not entirely sure that they’re behind me yet.  There’s also, to be frank, some laziness in the mix.  The next three months are going to be busy, busier than the past five months have been, and as a result my engines seem to have ground to a complete halt, as if I were a hibernating bear.  If I weren’t going to Maryland Sheep and Wool with Momerina this weekend, I could easily see myself sitting around my living room, watching the fourth season of Alias on dvd with Lloyd all weekend long, with only occasional breaks for food prepared for us by other people.  ("How morally opposed are you to pizza again?") It’s a weird sensation, this combination of racing brain and torpid work ethic, and I’ll be glad when these extremes stop feeling so, erm, extreme, when they move toward a convergence point that will enable me to get some damn work done.

Until I get to that point, though, I’m going to be a scoundrel, and resort to cheap, easy methods of entertainment.

Yes, it’s cookie porn, but it’s really excellent cookie porn.  (I am fully aware that by adopting this terminology, I’m inviting the attention of degenerate googlers, but considering that on any given day I get hits from searches on “ballerina shoes spanking” and “do the hairs on the back of your neck stand up during orgasm” [is that the editorial “your,” or me specifically?], to say nothing of the infamous “humiliating games with duct tape,” I figure that things can’t get much more degenerative around here.)

Ahem.  Sorry.

Ever since the magnificent Bee sent me a copy of the hilarious and inspiring A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (from the blog of the same name!), I’ve never been without at least one type of cookie/biscuit (waves to the Commonwealth readers) on hand to dunk in my tea.  From time to time I’ll buy a box of Petit Ecolier or Choco Leibniz biscuits from the Italian deli where I shop almost every day, but for the most part I’m still baking my own.  My cookie of choice has been the French honey wafers from Maida Heatter’s Brand New Book of Great Cookies, which are terrific made with orange blossom honey and even better made with tupelo honey, but I bet will be outstanding when made with the Tasmanian leatherwood honey that is once again available in my neighborhood.  I’ve also had a constant supply of Maida’s Cornmeal Shortbread Fingers from the same book, partly because they’re so good when dunked into tea, but also because you get to pipe them through a pastry bag, which, in my opinion, is about as much fun as you can have while still standing up. 

I could probably live happily on both of these all spring, or would have, if I’d hadn’t spent a weekend at Momerina’s reading her copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, which filled me with a blinding desire to buy my own copy immediately, and then make every single recipe in the book.  Eventually I *will* make everything, but I keep finding myself getting stuck on the Salted Cashew Crunch cookies, which might be as close to my own perfect cookie as anything I’ve found.  I love them so much that I have not even succumbed to the temptation to bake a batch, temper some chocolate and then coat the bottoms, to see if the chocolate enhances the sweet/salt idiom of these particular cookies.  A little chocolate might make a good thing even better, or it might be overkill, or worse yet, acceptable but unnecessary.  My natural tendency to fiddle is not tweaked by these cookies.  They really are close to perfect on their own.

The recipe is not at all complicated, but you do need some equipment.  The cookies are made from rolled oats that have been ground in a food processor for 30 seconds.  If you don’t have a food processor, or a blender, you can use oat flour, but in that case I would definitely recommend that you weigh, not measure, the oat flour, so that you can be sure you’re getting exactly 7 ounces of oats.  (I have not tried leaving the oats whole; my sense is that it would produce a lacier cookie, one more prone to spreading and burning, but that’s just a guess on my part.  Maybe one of these days I’ll try it.) If you have two cookie sheets and can fit 15 cookies on a sheet without cramming them too closely together (about 2” between cookies should be fine), you can bake the whole batch in one pass through the oven; no waiting for cookie sheets to cool down, no trying to find space for additional cookie sheets *and* cooling racks.  It takes less than 10 minutes, including the grinding of oats and chopping of cashews, to put the dough together, which means that you really can go from no dessert to “ooo!  cookies!” in half an hour.  The recipe yields about 30 cookies, which sounds a bit small for a batch of cookies, but these little gems are rich, so a little goes a long way. 

We will not talk about the day I missed lunch, and ate half a dozen in one sitting.  No, we will not.  I do not make a habit of this, and certainly don’t encourage it in others. 

Salted Cashew Crunch Cookies (from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking:  Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains [Countryman Press, 2006])
makes 30 cookies
(As always, the recipe is that of the good folks at King Arthur, paraphrased and annotated by me.)

Note: The original recipe specifies baking them until they’re “light golden brown.” The first time I did this, I got nervous, and ended up with cookies that were delicious, but slightly underbaked.  On the next batch, I baked them for 15 minutes, until the bottoms were slightly darker (not burnt, though).  By pushing the baking time a bit, I was able to get a deeper, more caramel flavor from them, reminiscent of salt caramels, which just might be my favorite sweetie of 2008. A cookie full of the things I love—oats, cashews, butter, sugar, vanilla and salt—baked to a salt caramel flavor palate:  what more could a nice cup of tea ask for?

Additional note: This is *not* the official travelogue I keep promising.  That one is on the way. Really.

Where does one begin?  If that one is me, one begins with fits, starts and hiccups.  Three times have I drafted an opening sentence; three times have I deleted it, muttering “no, no, no.” I returned home from California yesterday morning, bringing with me some brilliant things, all of which will be described in the lavish and overwritten style you have come to expect from PTMYB.  (I also brought home a little sunburn on my chest and a mild head cold, which are somewhat less brilliant, but I have applied Lush Dream Cream to the former and Theraflu to the latter, and am now just fine for going out and playing in the fresh air with Lloyd, who is off from work this week.) So I’ll start with a teaser and a confession.  Here’s the teaser:

This would be my adored and splendid hostess, Grace Davis, sliding down one of the neatest hidden gems of a city ever to be found, the Seward Street slides, a concrete slide situated in a lot between two buildings in the Diamond Heights/Castro area of San Francisco.  There is a story to tell about this slide, and about the other wonders my dear friends shared with me so generously, but it will take me some time to tell, particularly since I also came home with 207 photos to sort and catalogue and dream over.  So for now I will limit my observation to say that it was a clear joy and an unadulterated hoot to watch and listen to Grace as she rode down the slide on a piece of corrugate.  On her first trip down, she cried out “ohmygodohmygodit’sfastIT’SFAST!,” and we’ve found a hundred reasons to say it ever since that moment. 

Did I ride down the slide myself?  Nope, I didn’t.  Even as I know how berserk this sounds, I’ll confess:  I thought the contours of the slide were a bit narrow.  I am not narrow.  I was afraid that I would get stuck.  Grace thinks I need to get over it and just ride the slide already.  She’s right, of course.  I do need to get over it, and I will.

Now for the confession:  Whatever virtues I might have, patience is not one of them.  (That clicking sound you might be hearing now is the sound of a thousand foreheads being smote by a thousand friends and readers.  “Tonight’s contestant is Bakerina.  Her chosen subject:  That Which is Manifestly Obvious.") Every time I sit down, take a deep breath and get into the quiet writerly space, a noisy little gremlin pops into my head:  “Come on, come on, get to the good stuff!  Why are you writing about the taxi ride to the airport?  When do we get to the news?  You have news!  Say it!  Say it!  Sayitisayitsayitsayit SAY IT.” It’s obnoxious, that gremlin, but it’s right:  I do have news, and I don’t want to barrel breathlessly through a narrative that deserves full attention and care in an attempt to get to the good stuff.  If I’d wanted to do that, I would be a scriptwriter for the adult film industry.  (Cheez Whiz, that sounds like a setup for a joke.)

Dear friends, I am happy to announce that after a lot of discussion, trepidation, tears, laughter, questions, answers, travel and a liberal dose of crossed fingers, the geographic smackdown is over.  Bay Area wins.  Come August, I will officially matriculate at Santa Clara University School of Law.

Although I am thrilled with the decision, particularly since Lloyd and Momerina are thrilled right along with me, I hasten to add that this was not an easy decision to make.  It was not a battle among unequal opponents.  Northeastern is a terrific school in a terrific city with a singular law curriculum.  If you are contemplating a law education in an East Coast city, I can, and will, recommend Northeastern with enthusiasm.  I met some truly smart and funny and impressive people there, and yes, I regret that we will not be playing together in the fall.  Likewise, the decision not to attend Pitt Law doesn’t come easily, either.  If anything, that was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in this whole process.  I received my undergraduate degree from Chatham College (now Chatham College for Women, the undergraduate school of Chatham University) in Pittsburgh.  I adored the city then, I adore it still, and I know that I will feel more than a little pang when I visit my dear friend Sharon (who was my roommate at Chatham) when I visit Pittsburgh later this spring.

By now you’ve probably guessed that I am well-embedded in the concentrated urban milieu, and you would be right.  You might also have guessed that the Bay Area and Silicon Valley are a far, far piece, both geographically and emotionally, from everything I have ever known.  You’d be right there, too.  You might think, further, that for me to pursue a strenuous education in a new place, I’d have to find the school in question to be pretty damn special—and there, dear friends, is your hat trick.  I’m not only East-Coast-born-and-bred, I’m citified to the core.  My family is from Philadelphia, a place embedded in my blood, bone and marrow.  Even when I was growing up in the Poconos, a good three hours’ drive from Philadelphia, I still felt that Philadelphia was my true place, and that all this small-town nonsense was getting in the way of finding my authentic self.  Neither Boston nor Pittsburgh are Philadelphia—I will assert until my dying day that East Coast cities are *not* interchangeable, and that they’re not all wishing they were New York City or Washington—but they do share enough of a common taproot that, with a little time and patience, one can find one’s feet and comfort zone pretty easily.  Santa Clara (and San Jose and Santa Cruz and Redwood City and the other towns I visited last weekend) are a far, far piece from my own visceral landscape.  (San Francisco, by virtue of its citified nature, comes closer, but the geography of the city is so unlike that of any city I have ever lived in or visited that it still counts for me as a completely new milieu.) The quality of light is unlike anything I have ever seen.  The geographical markers, the vegetation, the very air itself is different, and I went into instant sensory overload, disoriented and enchanted all at once.  It is spectacular, but it is not yet comfortable.  It will be, though.  I know it will.

Of course, brilliant weather and splendid food and lush vegetation and sunsets that break your heart open, while lovely, are not the stuff for which law firms look when you come to them with your spiffy new J.D. degree and your bar certification in hand.  You still need a decent education, and based on what I saw on Law Preview Day, Santa Clara provides much, much more than a decent education:  if the 3L students I met on Saturday are any indication, the education it provides is not decent, but magnificent.  If my fellow 1Ls are anything like the crowd that was in the moot Ethics Law class in which I participated, I’m going to have to work hard to keep up with my peers.  These people are *smart*.  Why, no, I’m not intimidated.  I’m challenged in a healthy manner.  Really.  (breathes into paper bag) Seriously, though, I was impressed, deeply, with the moot classes, the faculty lectures, the current students and the incoming students.  And yes, I did have a moment of worry ("These people are too smart for me!  I don’t belong here!"), but it turned almost instantly into something more exciting and, ultimately, powerful ("That was *cool*.  I want to learn how to think like that").  I haven’t had that “I want to do that, too” moment since my restaurant externship after culinary school, when I saw pastry cooks bake cakes, freeze semifreddos and do complex chocolate work simultaneously, exhibiting the coolheaded grace of dancers, or air traffic controllers.  As soon as I had that moment, felt that desire, I knew what my answer would be.

This is not to say that I felt any kind of finality, or certainty, at that moment.  There was still plenty of wheel-spinning.  ("What about not seeing Lloyd every weekend?  What about the distance from my family?  God, I miss Lloyd so much right now—what will this be like when we can’t see each other for six weeks at a time?  What about all the flying?  My god, I’m going to have to make peace with flying once and for all! [Those of you who’ve known me for a long time know that I’m not the most phlegmatic of flyers, and that “peace” and “flying” are often mutually exclusive where I’m concerned.  That shit stops right now, though.] What if I want to quit?  What if Lloyd wants me to quit?  What if I end up alienating everybody I know and love?  My god, my god.  Maybe a beer would help.") Poor Grace was a witness to a lot of this wheel-spinning; for this, if for no other reason, she deserves a Purple Heart for letting me live in her house for four days.  She held my hand, literally and metaphorically, she walked me through a lot of this anxiety, she hugged me tightly and put me on the plane and assured me that, whatever I decided, good things will follow.  I spent the next six hours reading and dozing and watching tv and turning over my thoughts as the plane zipped over our motley landscape, riding home from JFK in Tuesday morning rush hour traffic, navigating the cabdriver who took a wrong turn on Astoria Boulevard and damn near took us onto the Triborough and into the Bronx, and finally hurtling myself, missile-like, into Lloyd’s waiting embrace.  I held on like I would never let go.  He held on with me.  And then we sat down and made a plan.

There was once a time when we had thought that regardless of where I went to school, we could keep our home base in New York.  I would go away, I would come back, we would always have a home here.  We’re not blind, though.  We can see what’s happening in New York.  The economy is in the tank, the job opportunities available for us are largely terrible cubicle-farm jobs where the retention prospects are tenuous at best.  You can’t walk two blocks in this city anymore without running smack into construction on new buildings full of apartments we can’t afford.  The neighborhood in which we live has officially been discovered by real estate watchers.  Our neighborhood message board, and the coffee bar from which much of the discussion generates, is full of commentary from young New Yorkers who have tried for months, years even, to find an affordable apartment in Astoria from a landlord willing to rent to them.  All around us, we see signs of tightening, the best of New York being parsed for those who can pay extravagantly for it, the rest of us being squeezed out.  Eventually we will be forced to leave.  We’d just as soon go of our own free will, thanks.

So this is our immediate future.  I will scramble for loans and scholarships and any other means to pay for school.  (Thankfully, I will not have to scramble for work.  I have a part-time job waiting for me in San Jose.  A nifty prize awaits the first reader who can ascertain where I’ll be working.) I will cross my fingers and hope that on-campus housing comes through.  School starts August 11.  To get there, Lloyd and I will go on our long-discussed, long-desired cross-country road trip at last.  We will share the driving and eat road food and look for real homemade pie, much as I wanted to do after reading Pascale Le Draoulec’s American Pie four years ago.  He’ll get me settled in, he’ll fly back to New York, we’ll talk every day, we’ll fly to each other as often as time and money will allow...and then, once he is fully vested in his pension next spring, we will pursue transfer and/or new job opportunities, anything it takes to bring him to me.  It may be later rather than sooner, but Lloyd is coming to California, too.  Once I’m finished with school...well, there’s the bright shining question mark.  In general, where one goes to school determines where one will stay to practice, so the odds of living permanently in California are good...but they’re not a given.  We could end up in Seattle.  We could go back to Philadelphia, where Lloyd and I met as bookstore clerks on a day that feels like yesterday.  We could see the world.  We could go anywhere.

Where does one begin?

Dear friends,

I am working on the Complete and Utter Tale of Bakerina’s Really Big Adventure Out West, but it’s going to take me a while.  Hopefully I’ll get it finished before I fly home tomorrow night, but in the event that it has to wait until I’m back in New York, I can at least offer the following teasers:

1.  Everything I said on Friday morning about Grace’s being the hostess with the mostest?  To quote the late and much-missed Madeline Kahn, it’s twue, it’s twue!  She has been spoiling me utterly with magnificent food, she has driven me all over San Francisco twice in three days, and she has been a kickass conversationalist through it all.  If you have a problem and you need someone with a clear head and a wise heart to listen to you, Grace is so absolutely, positively your girl.  And she’s an awesome driver.

2.  If you have ever been to San Francisco, then you understand why it’s so important to have an awesome driver showing you around—or to be an awesome driver yourself.  I have lived in hilly places (hi, Pittsburgh!) and I have visited mountain towns at staggering elevations (hello, Estes Park!), but I have never, ever, ever in my life seen anything like the hills in San Francisco.  I will confess that the first time Grace drove us down a hill in Pacific Heights, I instinctively put out my hands in a way that caused her to say “honey, are you all right with this?” Even though I knew that there was more road on the other side of the tipping point, I just couldn’t see it, and half expected us to shoot off the road into empty air.  I got over that quickly, though, and can now ride down steep winding roads with the best of them—but I’m still glad Grace is doing the driving. 

3.  I have been reading Jo Spanglemonkey‘s blog for such a long time that even though she and I have exchanged email and commented on each other’s blogs as well as on our beloved Scrine, I still view her with the openmouthed, wide-eyed awe that even the most hard-bitten New Yorkers use when they see David Bowie at the art supply store.  I really, really hope that I didn’t have that expression fixed on my face when Jo and Grace and I all went out for fish tacos at lunch.  Luckily for me, Jo is every bit as warm and whipsmart and funny in person as she is en blog.  And her hair is fantastic.

4.  As I’ve mentioned here before, ‘mouse is one of my oldest friends on the internet (in a years-of-acquaintanceship sense, not in a chronological-age sense).  He has been a font of wisdom, a champion, a cheerleader and the kind of friend that makes me think that I must have done something good in my past life to deserve having him in this one—like, say, saving a busload full of nuns and orphans from careening off a cliff.  Dear friends, I got to meet this kind and excellent man on Saturday.  The only reason I am not bubbling over with fulsome, enthusiastic praise for his overall excellent self is that I hardly know where to begin.

5.  Enough suspense.  I know what the $64 question is:  Now that you’ve been to both Northeastern and Santa Clara, have you made a decision? I would dearly love to say that I have, but the fact is that I was blown away by both of them in equal measure.  They both have a terrific curriculum, an awe-inspiring faculty and an impressive, engaging student body.  I have a scholarship waiting for me at Northeastern and a job waiting for me at Santa Clara.  I’m going to have to pick one of them—or say no to both and either go to Pitt or hope that Cardozo gives me an admission offer soon.  Lloyd and I are going to have to make some decisions.  I will be home on Tuesday morning, and as soon as I’m done embracing Lloyd hard enough to crack a rib, we’re going to do just that.

Proper travelogue will follow, hopefully sooner rather than later. 

With any luck, this will pass, and I will settle down enough to write something pleasant to read.  Until then, dear ones.

Lloyd has suggested that all of this sleepy bad attitude is a natural result of pondering the uncertain future.  He has also suggested that feeling lazy and sheepish is not doing me any favors.  When I told him “I have no idea what I’m going to do with my week,” he answered simply, “why not just live peacefully for a few days?” He did not drive a fork into my head, baked-potato-like, the way I richly deserved.  He really is a keeper.

That said, even though I am currently as chatty, thoughtful and interesting as an aspidistra these days, I realize that it’s bad form to have news to share and not actually share it.  In other words, yes, dear friends, the school saga continues.  In addition to Santa Clara (a/k/a Bay Area) and Northeastern (a/k/a Beantown), I have also been accepted to Pitt Law, adding Pittsburgh to the geographic smackdown.  New York City is in there, too, because Cardozo (the law school of Yeshiva University) has waitlisted me, and will keep me on the waitlist until August 25 or until I tell them to take me off of it.  I have not yet heard from Brooklyn Law, but I knew from the beginning that it would be a long shot.  Colorado said no.

Holy moly, now I’m really tired.  But hell, there are worse things in life than being tired.  I may be worn out and overwhelmed, but I’m definitely not bored or depressed or feeling assaulted by a terrible job situation.  I’m headed to the land of sun-kissed, thirsty lotus-eaters.  I’ll be staying with Grace—woohoooooo!  I’m staying with Grace!  I’ll have at least a day, maybe two, in San Francisco.  I have a day of meeting more Future Lawyers of America, and, if all goes well there, I might just have a job interview, too.  I’m on the verge of a Grand Weekend Out, and until then, I still have my share of neat stuff to appreciate at home, like, say, this little piece of public art, which Bunni and I found while walking down York Avenue on a particularly horrid, sleety, freezing February day.  I went back yesterday, wondering if it would still be there, and odds my bodkins, it was.  It’s a mock cemetery made from tongue depressors, located on the corner of York Avenue and 67th Street, in the heart of the neighborhood where you can find Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital.  It’s good to see that the Future Doctors of America have maintained their sense of mordant dark humor—and have managed to keep up with current events on top of it.  Hmmmm.  Maybe what I need is to feel more exhausted, not less.

Thankfully, I am not alone.  I am lucky enough to have Bunni and Julie in my life.  Not only do they understand my rantiness on this issue—Bunni’s neighborhood has no fewer than four new luxury buildings going up within two blocks of her apartment, while Julie’s neighborhood has been rechristened SpaHa by builders and brokers hot to gentrify—but they also know that the best tonic for this sort of existential dread is to be in each other’s company.  If we happen to be having a really nice meal while in each other’s company, so much the better.  And if we can have that nice meal in a small sweet neighborhood space, the kind where the owners are more concerned with providing really good food than with establishing a see-and-be-seen vibe, and where we can feel, even temporarily, the sense of place and belonging that brought us to New York in the first place, then existential dread doesn’t stand a chance.

“Allright, my little turtledoves,” Bunni wrote to me and Julie one night.  Of course we listened, closely.  Of course she knew we would say yes.

Bunni’s proposal was that we go to dinner at Panorama, just opened in her neighborhood—or, rather, reopened.  I had been to Panorama before when it was Panorama Cafe, located in a swell two-floor, iron-terraced corner building on Second Avenue and East 85th Street.  I had eaten some decent salads, some truly good omelettes and some regrettable bread.  I’d never ordered wine on any of these visits; as far as I was concerned, Panorama was a brunch restaurant, or the place you went when you wanted a big salad and an iced tea.  You might not eat fancily, but odds were good you would eat decently.  When I learned that Panorama had lost its lease, I felt that old familiar sinking in my heart:  another low-key neighborhood fixture bites the dust.  When Bunni told me that Panorama was not closing, but rather moving to the space that M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas and Coffees vacated when they moved to their new space on East 86th Street, I was glad to hear that Panorama had a home, but baffled by the thought of it moving into Rohrs’ old space.  I knew the old Rohrs’ well.  The space was tiny, cramped and a fraction of the space in Panorama’s old location.  How in the world were they going to do it?

I am pleased to say that they did it, and they did it well.  Admittedly, a meal at the new Panorama is more expensive than at the old Panorama, but not extortionately so; depending on whether you want a full three-course meal with wine or a small plate or two, you can eat for $50 per person, or for $20, or more or less or points between.  The bread is much better now, and served with olive oil pressed from olives grown on the owners’ farm.  The new wine list is small but impressive:  I had a Rodney Strong pinot noir with my appetizer and a malbec with my entree, as well as a taste of the viognier Julie had with her meal, and was so delighted with everything I tried that I’m all set to come back and try the wine flights once Panorama rolls them out.  The space is beautiful, with exposed brick walls and warm lighting, surprisingly airy and wide-open.  It is not the tiny, packed-to-the-rafters space that Rohrs’ occupied.

Of course, all of this would be a moot point if I didn’t love the food. 

Bunni’s scampi in garlic sauce. Much passing around of plate at table.  Yummy noises ensued.

Julie’s calamari.  More passing around of plate, more yummy noises.

My salad, a lovely thing made from mixed greens, orange and grapefruit sections, toasted almonds and strawberry vinaigrette.  I am only a little ashamed to admit that I ate a sizable portion of this salad without utensils, although I stopped short of licking the plate clean.  Mmmm, vinaigrette.

For entrees, we opted for pasta, and plenty of it.  Julie was intrigued by the lobster ravioli on the menu, but was also intrigued by the cardinale sauce (white wine, tomatoes, garlic, shrimp and cherry tomatoes) that was featured on one of the other pasta dishes.  She asked the waitress if the kitchen would be willing to dress the ravioli with the cardinale sauce, and happiness!, they did:

Bunni, no fool she, ordered the paglia y fieno (green and white pasta, peas and prosciutto), which I’m definitely ordering on the next visit:

I meanwhile, did something I haven’t done since I was a little kid.  Although I’ve made meat sauces for pasta at home, I almost never order them in restaurants, but for some reason, something about a big bowl of spaghetti dressed with meat and mushrooms and tomatoes called out to me that night.

Not surprisingly, by the end of all this, even without cleaning our plates, even with having enough to take home, we had to forgo dessert, which was a shame because I do like to leave room for tirami su.  I’m not complaining, though.  The three of us came to dinner with minds full of trouble and hearts full of worry, and there will be plenty more of that to come.  For three hours, anyway, we were in a warm, well-lit room, enjoying each other’s company, eating and drinking wonderful things made for us by people more concerned with their food and their atmosphere than with courting celebrities, feeling the sense of place and belonging that is all too elusive for us in our own city these days.  That’s my kind of Friday night.

Panorama
303 East 85th Street (between 2nd and 1st Aves.)
New York, NY 10028

Edit: Bunni has informed me that Panorama is now serving weekend brunch and a sandwich menu.  Woohoo!

Dear friends, it is not only Deep Thoughts of the Future keeping me away from this space.  There is still plenty of that, of course, but there is also a new spring ritual in my life, the phenomenon known as Deadline Knitting.  Last March found me cranking out cotton dishcloths against the clock so that I might present them to Julie at her bridal shower.  This March finds me still cranking out cottony goodness, brought to me by the swell gals at Mason-Dixon Knitting, for another richly-deserving recipient.  Although the party in question is not until next week (and that’s all I’ll say here, lest she be reading), I have only a two-day window to finish everything.  To say that I’m getting a little obsessive about all the knitting is to understate the case, truly.

In addition to knitting and deep thinking, there will be traveling, too.  On Saturday I will be taking a day trip to Boston to attend Northeastern’s open house for admitted students, leaving New York at 3 in the morning - really—and arriving in Boston around 7:30, which should give me time for a nice breakfast and the tallest coffee known to man before I go meet some Future Lawyers of America, tour the campus, hobnob with the faculty at the Museum of Fine Arts, and then catch a late-afternoon train back to New York.  At about the moment I finally recover from traveling to Penn Station in the middle of the night, specifically, on April 17, I will be flying to San Jose so that I can attend Law Preview Day at Santa Clara on the 19th.  For that trip, though, I’ll be sticking around for the weekend and taking the redeye back to New York on Monday.  Just writing that makes me tired.  But happy.  But still tired.  I’ve never been able to sleep on airplanes, but this trip might be the one that teaches me to do it.

I will be back, though, as soon as I can.  After all, Owen wants to talk about eggs and Juno wants to talk about fruit crisps.  Who could stay away in the face of such promising conversation? 

Before I share the recipe for this little cupcake here—because I know I’ll be poked with pointy sticks if I attempt to post a picture and then skedaddle without including a recipe—I do want to thank everyone who either commented here, sent email or called in response to the “Bay Area v. Beantown geographic smackdown” post.  I heard from a lot of you, and I am touched to know that so many of you care, and wish both me and Lloyd well in the coming months and years, when we’ll need as much luck and intelligence on our side as we can muster.  I am refraining from commenting further right now—although Bog knows that won’t last long —simply because for all that this is an exhilarating process, it is a stressful and exhausting one, too.  I won’t enumerate on all of the factors we need to consider for our future; the most important one, of course, is to stick by each other as long as we live*, but there are other factors, too, factors that both require Lloyd to stay in New York for at least another year, and also require us to contemplate our post-New York future—because, as I predicted on this very page nearly 4 1/2 years ago, our time in New York is running out, and we’d like to get a head start before the rug is pulled from under us.  In short, Lloyd and I are not going into anything with blinders on.  We’re trying to make the smartest decision that can be made, even if that decision does not look smart in the short term.  For that reason, I am holding off on any more discussion until I’m ready for it.  Thank you all, in advance, for your patience and understanding.

Yes, yes, so noted, blahdeblahdeblah.  Cupcakes, please?

Absolutely.  Today’s bit of Sunday Thursday afternoon cake love was inspired by bunni, who made beautiful little cakes using the Magnolia Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe and her bunny cakelet tins.  From the minute she called to tell me about them, I’ve had cupcakes on the brain—but not the cupcakes that are ubiquitous in New York (and, to hear my dear friend Sharon tell it, are making an inroad into the same nifty neighborhood in Pittsburgh where, once upon a time, I wanted to open my bread bakery).  I recognize that from an aesthetic viewpoint, a steep tower of icing atop a cupcake might look sexy, but the result is always the same:  after two bites, my head rings, my teeth hurt and my stomach feels like a canvas bag with a medicine ball in it.  As much as I hate to admit any fealty toward packaged food, I’m afraid that my idea of the ur-cupcake stems from the Tastykake chocolate cupcakes I loved as a kid:  a small, intensely-flavored cake, a thin ribbon of icing across the top.  If you are familiar with fairy cakes, those are pretty much where my cupcake tastes lie.

Once I knew that cupcakes were in my future, it was a short skip to determining the flavor.  Ever since I acquired my copy of one of my favorite cookbooks, English Food by the late Jane Grigson, I have been enchanted with her recipe for Parsnip Cake, which she describes in her recipe headnote thusly:

In recent years, American carrot cake—sometimes, and I am not sure why, called passion cake—has become popular in Britain.  A friend from San Diego sent me her recipe, and I thought it might be good made with parsnips instead of carrots.  And it was, in fact it was even better.  That is my excuse for including it in a book of English food.

I am of the opinion that, as Robert Heinlein said of little girls and butterflies, Jane Grigson needs no excuses.  About the cake, she is bang-on.  I made two changes to her recipe.  One was to bake the cake in muffin cups, rather than layers; the other was to substitute half the plain flour with whole-wheat pastry flour, inspired by my new copy of King Arthur Flour Whole-Grain Baking, which I bought on Monday after spending Easter weekend reading Momerina’s copy.  There are other changes I’ve thought of making:  adding raisins, adding pineapple, replacing the traditional cream-cheese icing with with seven-minute coconut icing—but really, I would just be gilding the lily here, and I know it.  I tried one of these with a cup of tea at 11 a.m., and it was just right as is, the perfect thing to bake—and to eat—while contemplating one’s stressful and uncertain future. 

Parsnip Cupcakes
inspired by Jane Grigson’s parsnip cake in English Food (Ebury Press, 1992)
makes 18 medium-sized cupcakes

Note:  Because Jane Grigson gives both metric and imperial weight measurements, that’s what I’m using here.  Normally I try to include volume as well, but this morning I just weighed everything right into the mixing bowl.  If you’d like volume measurements, let me know, and I’ll edit accordingly.

For the cupcakes:
375g (12 oz.) peeled, grated parsnip (peel and grate first, then weigh)
125g (4 oz.) chopped hazelnuts or walnuts (again, chop first, then weigh—I used hazelnuts)
400g (13 oz.) caster or golden granulated sugar (if you have regular granulated white sugar, that’s fine)
125g (4 oz.) all-purpose or plain flour
125g (4 oz.) whole wheat pastry flour (or use 250g all-purpose flour if you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (Because this is an English recipe, I used Ceylon cinnamon, which is the predominant cinnamon used in British baking.  After I added it, I remembered that the original recipe source was American, and what we Americans consider cinnamon is the stronger, more pungent cassia.  Really, though, you can’t go wrong here, no matter what you use.)
1 teaspoon salt
250ml (8 fl. oz.) oil (Jane Grigson recommends either sunflower or a 50-50 sunflower/walnut or hazelnut oil mix.  I used peanut oil, which is my default oil of choice, but if you can’t have peanuts, canola, safflower or even plain vegetable oil will work just fine)
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (Jane Grigson suggests either the vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod; I think that the pod vanilla flavor might be lost in this cake, but in all fairness, I haven’t tried it yet.)

Preheat oven to 400F/185C/Gas Mark 6.  Set a rack in the center of the oven.  Line a 12-cup muffin mold with paper liners or spray with nonstick spray.

Mix parsnips and nuts together by hand and set aside.

In a stand mixer or food processor, combine the sugar, flours, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.  Add the oil and beat just until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until just combined.  (You can also do this in a regular bowl with a hand mixer.  If you beat this by hand, make sure that the oil and eggs are very well combined.) Add the parsnips and nuts, stir to blend.  Add the vanilla.  Be sure that the parsnips and batter are all evenly distributed.

Divide the batter between the cups.  (I used a 1/4-cup Zeroll cookie scoop, which gave me 18 total.) Bake on the center rack for 28-30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the bake.  When they are done, the surface will look moist, but they will be firm to the touch, and a toothpick plunged into the center of the cake will emerge clean.) Let rest for a few minutes before decanting the cakes to a cooling rack.  If you have batter left over (there should be enough for six more cakes), let the pan cool down, then line and bake off the rest of the batter.  Let cool completely.

For the icing:

250g (8 oz.) cream cheese (Jane Grigson specifies full-fat, but I used reduced fat [Neufchatel], which worked nicely.  Fat-free, though, I wouldn’t do.)
125g-175g (4-6 oz.) softened unsalted butter (I used the smaller amount)
4 tablespoons confectioners sugar, sifted (This makes a not-too-sweet icing, which I love; if you like a sweeter icing, add more)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or lemon juice

This is a doddle.  Cream the cheese and butter together, add sugar, add vanilla or lemon juice, stir until smooth, well-blended and fluffy.  Ice your cupcakes all at once, or just put them in an airtight container and ice as needed.  Keep the icing in the fridge.  Let it come to room temperature and stir before you spread it.

*Astute readers among you might recognize this line from ”Song of the Open Road” (stanza 17) by Walt Whitman, which my dear friend Sharon—the same dear friend Sharon who told me about the arrival of hepster cupcakes in Pittsburgh—read at our wedding.  It still resonates with us.

In the great “Bay Area v. Boston” geographic smackdown, I do not intend to fight fair.—‘mouse

So noted, sir…

1.  Tuition, room/board, expenses.

Bay Area and Beantown charge approximately the same tuition and on-campus room/board.  Living expenses are also approximately the same.  Draw.

2.  Financial aid.

Beantown has awarded me a scholarship that will cover approximately 22% of my tuition costs over three years.  Bay Area has sent me paperwork to apply for a scholarship that will cover about 15% of my tuition costs over three years—assuming that I am one of the lucky scholarship recipients in the first place. Advantage:  Beantown.

3.  Job opportunities.

Bay Area does not allow first-year students to work.  [Edit: ‘mouse, who is a Bay Area alum, has questioned this.  I am reinvestigating.  It’s possible that first-year students are merely discouraged from working, in accordance with the American Bar Association recommendations.] However, Bay Area’s campus is close to the office of an attorney who has suggested that there might be work available for me in the area.  Beantown has a co-op program embedded in its curriculum:  students attend classes for 11 weeks, then work for the co-op for 11 weeks.  Depending on where the co-op places the student, pay ranges from fairly low (for public service work such as with the public defender’s or district attorney’s offices) to almost livable (for big corporate Satan-on-a-retainer firms).  Draw.

4.  Accessibility to off-campus amenities.

Bay Area has a public transit system, but so far it is an unknown quantity; the school literature says only that it’s *possible* to attend school for three years without requiring a car.  Beantown has the T.  Draw, with possible advantage to Beantown.

5.  Weather.

Okay, on this there’s no contest.  Advantage:  Bay Area.

6.  Food.

Both Bay Area and Beantown have abundance of swell places to eat.  Grocery situation uncertain without further study.  Rumors abound of swell roadside produce stands in Bay Area.  Draw, with possible advantage to Bay Area.

7.  Exercise.

Bay Area and Beantown both have huge, sexalicious fitness centers and swimming pools, all free for enrolled students.  Draw.

8.  Curricula, clinics, special programs.

This is where the choice can really make a body’s head hurt.  Bay Area has a community law center, an institute for redress and recovery for the victims of torture and other human rights abuses, the Northern California Innocence Project and several clinics and programs on sustainability.  Beantown has clinical courses on criminal advocacy, domestic violence and public health; a program on civil rights and restorative justice, and a project that sends students into Beantown-area public schools to teach constitutional literacy to high school students.  I am only scratching the surface of what both schools offer.  Draw, dammit, a complete and utter draw.

9.  Going home.

Going to Beantown will allow me to come home and see Lloyd at least once or twice a month.  Coming home from Bay Area will be considerably more expensive and difficult.  On the other hand, one could argue that being 3,300 miles away from home will force me to focus on my coursework, with no distraction.  Advantage:  Beantown, but since I have no idea whether I’ll be too embedded in first-year boot camp to enjoy any time at home, this might be a draw, too.

10.  Future practice, a/k/a Where do you want to be when you grow up?

I have been advised that the place where you pursue your education generally determines where you build your career (or did I get that backwards?) If I go to Beantown, the odds are good that I will work in Beantown or points nearby—or possibly as far south as Washington.  If I go to Bay Area, it would not be a stretch to consider one day living and working in San Francisco.  Draw, draw, draw.

But wait, there’s a wild card! I have yet to hear from two schools in New York City, one in Pittsburgh and one in Boulder.  If any one of those schools offers me a superior financial aid package, all of the previous considerations are hereby rendered null and void.

Edit: Yes, there are open-house days for admitted students at both schools.  Yes, I plan on attending both, which should either cement a decision or just make the whole damn decision that much more difficult to make.

It was about this time last year that I was a woman of few words.  Once again I am a woman of few words, albeit for much different, much better reasons.

I had thought that the adventure started once I finished my applications and sent off my fees.  That only goes to show what I know.  Now the adventure starts, namely, how in the world am I going to pay for this?  (There are options, of course, but I dare not disclose them for fear of hexing them.  There are also four other schools from which to hear; out of the same fear of hexing, I am being cagey about them.)

Of course, I have the rest of the spring and summer to figure out how I’m going to pay for this.  Today I can read and reread these letters, and be thankful that the word “regret” does not occur in either of them.  I can’t think of a better way to spend the day than that.