Last week I threw a party and no one came.  With my man out for the week and a very clean house all to myself (I fervently clean while alone to make myself feel more “relaxed”) it seemed an obvious choice.  It had been awhile since I set out some small decorations, whipped up something to imbibe and share, laid out some nibbles.  I perused my pinterest page for inspiration and was pleased to find something to riff off of.  It would allow me to use up my abundance of thyme and required nothing but some reasonably priced vodka and lemons and a little ginger for spice.

Determined to make this a perfect summer Friday, I treated myself to yoga after work, took my time at the grocery store as I purchased the lemons and some of my favorite potato chips and turned up the Taylor Swift upon returning home to my very clean apartment.  I gave myself time to get ready.  A long, long hot shower.  Slowly juicing twelve lemons.  Getting dressed up and made up, just for myself.  I turned off all the lights, lit all the candles in the house, and sat down on the couch with a good book to wait for my guests to arrive.

Sometimes evenings do not go as planned.

I don’t know if you’ve thrown a party and had nobody come.  I don’t know if you’ve thrown a party just for yourself.  But what began with disappointment at a lack of guests turned into an appreciation for the fact that I took time for myself.  I spent the evening precisely as I wished.  Taking time for myself at yoga.  Enjoying the meditative state of juicing lemons.  Picking fresh thyme from our porch garden.  Dressing up for myself, with T. Swift.  Sitting on the couch with a good book, a strong drink, and my favorite potato chips.

My hope for this lemonade is that you use it precisely as you wish: for a party, for yourself, to share with a friend.  It’s simple to make, sour as hell, and perfect for a hot summer night.

Spiked and Sparklin’ Thyme Ginger Lemonade

8 thick slices fresh ginger
2 cups lemon juice (about 12 lemons)
2 cups vodka
A very large handful of thyme
4 cups seltzer

Release flavor from ginger by turning your slice face up, laying the edge of a thick kitchen knife against it and whacking it with your fist.

Combine lemon juice, vodka, thyme, and ginger in a large pitcher.  Let sit in the fridge for at least two hours to allow flavors to permeate.

Add seltzer when ready to serve, on ice, with fresh thyme for garnish.

For my birthday this year my parents visited and my mother and father, the gardeners they are, left a most perfect parting gift: potted porch plants.  Today is my mother’s birthday and while she’s far away from me, she left a little of herself after visiting this weekend.  Fresh lilies sit on my bedside bureau.  I was proud to show her a little bit of the garden cleverly stored away for the year from the heat.  After the parsley grew rampant in the spring, it began to burn through the heat of the hundreds.  A little bundle, dried and hung in the kitchen, left me freshly chopped and dried herbs to use until we cool down and I cross my fingers that the roots return new herbs.

While drying works well and is quite simple to do, there are plenty of other options for storing overabundant herbs.  My mother, blessed with a large freezer in the basement, chops basil and fills ice cube trays with the chopped herb and a little olive oil, leaving her with basil cubes to add to sauces and soups.  So too does she put her crock-pot to good work during the day, freezing jars of fresh tomato sauce or vegetable soup, adding a little summer joy to winter.

Without either of these luxuries, and with a kitchen wall that could use a little garden joy, the dried herbs work best for me.  While the parsley did well to dry before the heat, our sage is almost the size of the bush, and would do fine to pick back and dry.  I recommend cutting the fresh herbs from the root, bundling and letting dry hung in your kitchen for decoration.  After a few weeks, when you’re ready to store, see what containers you can find in your recycling.  I used a little test jar of olive oil, perfect in size for herbs, but don’t be afraid to use an old glass container that used to house cumin or paprika.

Dried Parsley

Freshly picked garden parsleyRibbon or string
Small container for storing

Cut fresh garden herbs near the root, leaving enough left in the pot for them to return next season.  Gather herbs in a bundle, chopping stems to even if desired.  String ribbon or string around the end of a bundle and hang against a wall to dry.

After a few weeks, once the herbs are devoid of water, chop herbs to desired coarseness.  Store in empty herb or other small leftover container.  Use for cooking as desired.

I was left with a rather chewy batch of donuts.

Last Saturday I attended BlogHer Food here in Austin where I learned that Americans throw away enough food to fill up a football stadium with our trash.  Since then I have been diligently saving food remnants.  The freezer boasts a tupperware of odds and ends waiting to be made into broth.  The donuts would not go to waste.

Certain that the chewy texture was due to too much xantham gum I eyeballed an addition of oats, Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour mix and some hot water.  My hope?  That the chewy texture would lighten and the dense donuts would make a perfect cobbler topping.

My man whipped out the always reliable Thomas Keller to reference Keller’s crisp and we added a dusting of sugar, lemon zest, and flour to freshly cut Texas peaches.  Plopping the newly redefined dough on top, we shoved the re-vamped donuts into the oven at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes per Keller’s recommendation.  For a little extra crumble, I ground up the donuts in the blender and sprinkled them on top just before the crisp was complete.  Fingers crossed, it would at least be good with ice cream.

The cobbler is not perfect, but at least I am learning.  As I age, I realize that following a recipe perfectly is easy, winging it is never simple.  Winging it means running with the fear, risking a trashed batch of donuts, learning how to improve next time, and finally understanding what xantham gum does to a recipe.  It is a lovely binder.

I can track my life through a series of cookbooks.

All my life my mother has been a fantastic cook. A really, really good cook. Homemade meals every night. So when I moved into my first place, my last year of college, it was not surprising that she had an arsenal of basics to recommend. We picked them up at estate sales: Silver Palate, NY Times. But it wasn’t her cookbooks that grabbed my attention that first year. That first year, I was all about Martha.

Martha’s Cooking School was a precious item in my kitchen. Living with a house full of college students, I kept Cooking School in my bedroom, on my personal bookshelf. Much safer way to keep it clean.

For me, my first year, I needed cooking school. I needed to learn how to chop an onion, the difference between scallions and shallots. I read through the book as if beach lit, page by page, immersed, a gem picked up at the Culinary Institute of America during a quick day trip with the parents. Sadly, the recipes from the book have not nestled into my memory. The memory is honoring cookbooks. Placing them on a clean shelf, enjoying their photos, treating them as introductory, as knowledge to eat up.

Ad Hoc was the same year as Cooking School, but its memory is chock full of recipes. Zesty corn salad. Real croutons. My roommate making his Chicken Pot Pie on Pi Day. Keller was genius. Keller is genius. Keller was a coffee table book that began to get dirty. Three years later in my first real live apartment with a real live boyfriend Keller got moldy from the titled countertops in the kitchen. Little did we know puddles of water built up behind the microwave, where the cookbooks were stored for easy use.

Julia was my first step in learning how to cook. Butter made everything taste better. There was no need to add flour as a roux to a soup if you cooked the soup hot enough and let it boil down on its own. A sweet Christmas gift from my man, Julia could do no wrong and she too occupied my bedside table as I devoured her before sleep.

Julia, unlike Martha, unlike Keller, became my way of life. A month in Paris left me hungry for more butter more wine more flour. Riches beyond belief to their smallest extent. I deprived myself of no sensory joys, all sweats, all heavy cream in the eggs, ah, the eggs.

Two years after graduation, hungry after living in Paris, hungry after abandoning a career in film, I met Pam. Pam, a mentor, a friend, a colleague, How to Cook Without a Book was no such a book for me as a way of life. Suddenly, immersed in cooking school with an expert, as part of my job, cutting an onion was no longer a challenge. Strawberries, my first day, found a new lovely shape as I cut them sideways instead of top to bottom. Soups, roasting, frying, searing, all became second nature at her side and suddenly I was moving beyond the basics, the recipes, and into my own world of food.

Cookbooks became a mere inspiration, a suggestion. If you weren’t Keller or Julia, I began to feel confidant I could guess your tips, critique your ingredients. Rich food stuck around, but vegetables blossomed as well. Beets, brussel sprouts, and more than that, oysters, donuts, nothing was beyond my reach. It was all easy with Pam.

And then, one year later, it crashed. No gluten. No dairy. No sugar. How could I ever cook from Julia? Keller? Anderson? How could I bake? How could I make pot pie? Or soup? Or roast chicken?

McKenna was who brought me back up. After one year of learning to cook again, on my own, without recipes, I finally found my way back to a cookbook. I had figured out recipes from scratch instead of using substitutions, but to bake, I couldn’t wing it. I couldn’t wing potato starch or xantham gum. McKenna brought me around, returned my sweet tooth, and gave me the inspiration, the strength, to learn again.

And so, a couple of days before BlogHer Food, I look forward to returning to the community strong in my abilities, and finally, again, happy for food.

I worked at Espresso NEAT the first year out of college. I expected an experience with good company and fantastic food. What I found was a deep passion for well-made coffee and an even deeper passion for working in a store. A dream that developed in childhood took hold with much more force. Plans of my own shop not only took form, but found deep encouragement from the passion of my coworkers, like Leyla of Lorca, and their ability to open up shop at a young age.

Among the other things in my life that I have been putting back in order (filmmaking, blogging), I have begun brewing coffee at home. My lovely mother bought me some of the necessary tools as a Christmas present, and with my very own scale, coffee grinder, and kettle, my boyfriend and I have been brewing coffee fresh in the mornings. Or evenings. But the more I brew coffee hot, the more I have craved a thick, delicious, cold brew iced coffee.

One of my absolute favorite drinks from NEAT is a well crafted, chocolately, rich number called the Not-so-Neat, a gem of a coldbrew mixed with thick whole milk.

Having left NEAT for a couple of years now, I had completely forgotten the memorized ratios I would need to brew coffee cold. Fortunately, my good friends at Lorca were quick to remind me, and within a couple of days I was brewing fresh cold brew overnight.

Cold coffee is much simpler to brew than hot coffee. All it takes is a large glass container (or plastic if that’s what you prefer) and freshly roasted coffee beans. Cold brew tastes best when the beans are ground coarsely and brewed over a long period of time. If you think about the way espresso, hot coffee, and cold coffee are brewed, this makes perfect sense. Espresso is ground very finely and brewed quickly, over immense pressure. Hot coffee is ground at a medium level and brewed hot over a couple of minutes. Cold coffee, which water does not extract taste from nearly as quickly, is ground coarsely over a long period of time.

If you have your own coffee grinder at home, make sure to brew your beans fresh, as their taste immediately begins to lessen once they are ground, and as coarsely as possible. Unfortunately, this is a science that is difficult to master at home, and it may take some fiddling before you figure out the perfect level to grind your beans. If you do not have your own coffee grinder, visit your local store, purchase a bag, and have them grind the beans for you.

While this method works very well with a Toddy, which makes drainage a snap, you do not need to purchase anything beyond your beans to make this work. You can simply combine your coffee with cold water in a glass or plastic pitcher and drain the water from the beans with a fine meshed strainer.

Perfect Cold Brew Iced Coffee

12 ounces of coffee
7 cups of cold water

Since cold brew is like espresso, it tastes best to most when it is “watered down,” make sure to add water or milk (or almond, or soy, which do best with some agave or sugar since they are not as sweet as whole milk) when serving. If you are a latte drinker, I would recommend a ratio of 1:3 coffee to water. If you prefer a cappuccino or a cortado, I would recommend a 1:2 ratio of coffee to milk. However, these things are best left up to taste and certainly do not need to measured, so play around with it.

1. Grind twelve ounces of coffee very coarsely. You can do this either at home with your own grinder or you can request your local store to grind the coffee coarsely, for cold brew, for you.
2. Add the following to your Toddy or to a large glass or plastic pitcher: 1 cup water, 6 ounces coffee, 3 cups water, and then an additional 6 ounces coffee.
3. Let the mixture stand for 5 minutes and then add an additional 3 cups of water.
4. Place mixture into your fridge and let brew for 12 hours.
5. Remove from fridge and drain water from coffee grinds with a fine meshed strainer.

To serve, combine cold brew with water or milk to taste.

The story today is similar to the one you heard a couple of weeks ago.  Upon graduating college with a film degree I stopped making film.  For three years.

Part of me wanted to take a break and see what would happen.  I’ve been making art since I was a child.  Theatre, visual art, film, music.  Who would I be if I didn’t make art?  A desire to figure out the answer to that question.  I certainly watched more TV, but I also found new projects, this blog, cooking.  A new life here in Austin.

The creative side of me finds these projects close but not enough.  A part of me has felt unfulfilled.

This week I set out to return to art by making a video a day.  I downloaded Vine to help me get started, allowing me to not have to worry about editing or camera settings.  The easier I could make it on myself the more likely I was to commit.  And I have.

This project sets out to capture the essence of a moment.  I seek to film the life around me, training my eye to be more observant of what’s happening, more engaged in the moment of where I am and who I am with.

Below you’ll find the beginning of the catalog of this project.  One video a day from the last week.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Friday, April 26, 2013

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Sunday, April 28, 2013