Bake Me to the Moon

Dad's napping in the sunroom, Mom is in the hospital, waiting for a port in her chest and for dialysis for the day (they'll fix the new graft Wednesday morning, I think, which hopefully means she'll be home that day), and I have a batch of chocolate hazelnut cranberry orange biscotti in the oven. I already made a batch of chocolate hazelnut cookies, and later today I'm going to make a second batch of the lemon anise cranberry pistachio biscotti and probably the pie crusts. Dad's mincemeat is in the fridge, along with an extra apple chopped into it (what my maternal grandmother used to do, apparently, back when she saw to it that my dad got a mince pie; my mom doesn't like them so therefore doesn't make them). Older nephew would like a cherry pie, too, so I'll get some cherries on the next trip to the store and see to it that he gets one; if I'm already making pie crust, doubling it and making a second pie isn't exactly a chore. And I'll use the apples in the fridge for a version of the upside down apple cake I've been making; I found another recipe last week that isn't gingerbread, i.e., doesn't have molasses, i.e., my mom can eat it (molasses is too high in something).

Mom sounds okay; they took her to the hospital this morning, because the dialysis people didn't want to take a chance with her graft looking like it might pop. Not exactly what anyone had in mind for the few days before a holiday, but better this way than her bleeding out all over the turkey. And, really, better that it happen when I'm here to take care of a few chores for her. She kind of fusses about that--she doesn't want me doing everything--but of course I'm happy to do it. What else am I going to do? I can only read for so long, and I'd just as soon be useful, all things considered.

I have to say that I enjoy having the experience and the training for all of the baking; I used a couple of recipes without (m)any changes, but I'm making several things up on the fly. Which, to be honest, I used to do before I went to pastry school, but now I have a slightly better idea what I'm doing. The thing is, not surprisingly, if you use good ingredients, it's hard to end up with a truly inedible product. Something might maybe have needed a little somethin' somethin', but, really, if it has chocolate and hazelnuts and butter and sugar and more chocolate in it, how bad will it be? I would have preferred cherries for the biscotti in the oven now, but hey, mom had cranberries, so I used cranberries; how much is it likely to suck?

Oh, wait; probably not at all.

Mom's definitely slowing down, though; her friend who lives next door took me walking with her this morning (so I could get at least a little exercise), and she said what I've also noticed, that my mom just doesn't have much appetite. There's a lot she can't eat, but she's just not that hungry a lot of the time. The thing that kind of concerns me is that she's also too tired to get any exercise. I try to convince her to walk on her non-dialysis days, even for 15 minutes (on the treadmill), but she has a hard time doing that, even. She does what she can, but the system is definitely under stress--and let's not forget that this is the person who had seven of her vertebrae fused about 8 years ago, because her spine was crumbling such that she couldn't stand or walk for more than 5 minutes at a time.

Ah, well. I'm just glad I decided to visit for this holiday. I can't do all that much except bake and cook, but at least that's something, and my parents like having me around, so there's that. And, really, the baking helps, too, because my mom likes to bring a cake or a bread or cookies or whatever to various little events; this way she'll have some things stashed. I guess it's kind of the stone soup approach to life; I can't offer much, but the baking I can offer will help a little, and someone else will pick up the slack in some other area.

Let the Baking Begin

So I went ahead and started the baking today, with a batch of biscotti (cranberries, pistachios, lemon, aniseseed) and a double batch of pumpkin bread. I wasn't pleased with how the biscotti came out--they needed to bake longer for the first bake--and, of course, I changed the pumpkin bread recipe a bit (used butter instead of oil; used buttermilk instead of yogurt, because mom had gotten strawberry instead of plain). Tomorrow I'll do the chocolate cookies with hazelnuts, if I can remember what I used as a recipe; more likely I'll make up something as I go. I may do another batch of biscotti while I'm at it, given that the oven will be on anyway. I'll also do the preferment for the large pretzels (I got the formula from Bossman on Friday before I left) so I can make pretzels on Tuesday.

I may make some pie crusts, too; I promised my dad a mince pie, and I may be called upon to make some other pies as well. I can always mix up the dough tomorrow and then make the actual pies later in the week. So Wednesday will be pies, cream puffs, pastry cream filling for the cream puffs, and maybe the barley. For Thursday I'm going to make barley with onions and cranberries, and possibly some stuffed mushrooms. (I don't particularly want them, but my mom does; not sure whether she has my grandmother's actual recipe, though.) So, really, I'm getting to do a lot of cooking and baking--unfortunately not with all of the tools that I would prefer, but at least I sent my recipes along. (I don't even have a decent knife to use, despite my mother's assurances that she had good knives--sorry, mom, but paring knives don't really count.)

The challenge in cooking for my mom is that there's so much she can't eat--anything that's high in potassium or phosphorus is a problem, for example. Most vegetables are a problem (which is a drag for me), and a lot of grains, too. She's extremely diligent about watching what she eats, which definitely helps her health, but I know she misses so much. She's also going to need her graft repaired (a spot where the vein and artery are connected directly, so she can get dialysis); it's getting leaky, which could be life-threatening. (If the artery gets an aneurysm and bursts she could bleed out.) Meanwhile, dad has had to do a second round of steroids for his skin rash, which means the beer tasting has had to be delayed. I can list their problems, and they're clearly . . . wearing out, I guess, but they also keep chugging along. My dad exercises every day, including lifting weights a few days a week, and they eat a healthy diet, and my mom exercises when she has the energy (Mondays wear her out). Seeing them look so old makes me feel old, that's for sure.

I got a quick call from Friend this morning; he already got a deer, at 7:15 yesterday morning, i.e., practically minutes after the season opened. So, yay, more venison in the coming year. The conversation wasn't long, as he was in a small town in the middle of nowhere and the connection was spotty (the connection at the place where he hunts is non-existent, so I only got a call because he happened to be going into town) and failed pretty quickly. He still has to finish cutting it up and such, and I think he has a tag for his mom, too, so he'll stay up there; it's also a chance to hang with various relatives, including his brother, who only goes every other year.

I may have to move soon; my parents have a pellet stove in their little sunroom, and it heats things up nicely. (Not the bedrooms so much, but that's okay with me; I prefer sleeping in a cooler room, though admittedly not quite as cool as it was last night). I've been sitting here awhile, and I can feel my sinuses shriveling up from the dryness, but the heat feels nice.

In Training (1)

I'm on my way. The only down side of this particular trip is that I have to switch (in Pittsburgh, at 5:00 am, with a two-hour layover until 7:00 or so) to a coach rather than sleeper car. Given the early hour at which I normally wake, and given that I'm planning on going to sleep early tonight anyway, that shouldn't be an issue. I also have an editing job to do, so once I switch trains tomorrow, I can crank away on that until I get to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, I have a laptop. a half a bottle of wine (poured into a small thermos), and I've already had a snack (a pretzel from the bakery and some cheese). I'm also a fully-laden swallow for this trip; I expect the return to be somewhat lighter, given that I won't be lugging two stollen from the bakery or assorted other odds and ends.

I've been fighting something off the past couple of days. It mostly showed up in my gut, so I"m not entirely sure whether it's food poisoning or some random virus. Mostly I've ignored it, though I've tried to rehydrate and I've ended up taking some ibuprofen for random headaches. It's clearly caused by one or the other, and it's mostly gone now, but I'm tired.

I'm also tired from work. I'm tired from dealing with coworkers and usual office bullshit, which is a completely different kind of tired.

Our medical director noted the other day that s/he thinks we're seeing a lot of secondary trauma among our providers, and that's probably true. The people our providers see--and our front desk staff, and our cliinical support staff--are people for whom there are few safety nets. WE'RE the safety net. They are homeless or living in a shelter (which counts as homeless). They are very likely to have a mental illness, a substance abuse issue, a history of some kind of abuse, or some lovely combination of the three. They do not have resources or tools, other than the ones that have kept them alive on the streets. Realistically speaking, they are never going to hold a job that will enable them to substantially change their situation. They may qualify for disability at some point, they may get to a better place, but they are not going to become employed, healthy members of the working or middle class.

Mind you, I do not deal with our patients directly. I walk past them as they line up for the health center's opening in the morning, or I see them in the hallway, but I am back in the adminsitrative offices. I don't know how our providers do it.

I'm looking forward to baking and cooking for a week. What I'd like to be able to do is fill my parents' freezer with stuff they can eat. My mom has to have her graft redone the week after next, and my dad is still dealing with side effects from his chemo (basically, a full-body rash; if there's an unusual reaction to a medication, my dad is going to be the person who gets it), so I figure anything I can do to help them not have to cook much in the next few weeks will be a good thing.

Normally I stay with my parents part of the time and my brother part of the time, but this time I'm staying with my parents the whole time. Partly it's because I want to do a lot of stuff for my parents--see the cooking and baking above--but partly it's that I just don't feel like dealing with my brother. Don't get me wrong; he's perfectly happy to have me around, perfectly entertaining and such, but I'm just tired of him.

A few months ago, I was talking to my boss about the whole thing, and I realized, in part as a result of what my boss said, that I really don't feel like having a conversation with my brother about him not bringing my nephews to visit me. The reality is, if he wanted them to visit me, he'd find a way to make that happen. He hasn't done that. Why bring it up? To tell him how hurt and pissed off I am? What purpose will that serve? Right: none at all.

I guess the point I've reached is that I only feel like bringing something up, having a conversation--with anyone, not just my brother--when there's a reason to do so. If someone isn't going to change his or her perspective or behavior as a result of a conversation, then why bother? Why waste my time and why go through the drama? It is what it is. I can try to forge a relationship with my nephews as best I can and go from there.

Meanwhile, on Top Chef, they're down to the final four--and, what a surprise, it's Jen, the Volt brothers, and Kevin. This week was interesting because they had the chefs (the four plus Eli, who got sent home) imitate the Bocuse d'Or challenge. Admittedly, this was wildly different from the actual competition: these guys had four hours to cook their meals, and no opportunity to practice, to refine, to choreograph their meals. (I know from Bossman at the bakery that you practice over and over and over, and then some more, for any kind of competition like this.) The results were really quite interesting.

Kevin produced a meal that was well-prepared, lots of flavor, but not nearly enough Fancy-Ass Technique for the BdO (he's also the one who won). Bryan Volt ran out of time--something that would not have happened if he'd had months to practice. Michael presented a platter that simply didn't hold together, flavor-profile-wise, and, again, that's not something that's likely to happen after months of work. (Bossman talked about how the final products were decided for his competition, and it's not a simple process by any means.) Eli had some parts that weren't cooked (ew). Jen had unevenly cut, and, therefore, unevenly cooked salmon, but apparently she wowed them with her sides.

In other words, no one got all of it, which is hardly a surprise.

However, more importantly, two things stood out that had nothing to do with the actual food. First, without Robin and Mike I.,, there was almost no drama. It's true that Eli had contributed to the drama with Robin, but he is also much more capable than many of the other competitors. (Mike I., on the other hand, mouthed off all the fucking time, but he did not impress me with a single dish.) Without the irritation, Eli just focused on his food. He lost, true, but it was not a bad effort; the only other chef that could maybe have competed in that arena was Ashley, and she was dinged (unfairly, I think) early on, in part because of a fuckup of Eli's.

Second, though, we saw a lot more of what I've experienced (in my limited experience). When Kevin asked, Bryan told Kevin how to sous vide the lamb--even though, in the end, that may have contributed to Kevin coming out ahead of Bryan. (And Kevin still gets props for doing it right: remember the end of last season when Carla tried that technique and it failed?) Jen had an extra half hour to cook because she won the Quickfire, and she ended up helping Bryan at one point ("Tell me what you want me to do," she said, and he did, and, presumably, she did it, which is the sign of two professionals who know their shit and can communicate it). In other words, without the drama and irritations of the annoying ones, the chefs were able to focus on their own food but also able to lend a hand at times.

Bossman was always willing to share formulas with other bakers. He is part of a group of a dozen bakers who meet more or less monthly (they skip December and one other month, I think). Generally, they each bring a sample of some kind of product--either a seasonal product (something for St. Pat's day) or a type of product (a bran muffin). Once when I was there they all made the exact same oatmeal cookie formula. And those 12 oatmeal cookies were really quite different, which is why Bossman was so willing to share. Good bakers will be able to make something that's closer, but there will still be variations. And, really, what difference does it make? If the end result is that people eat better food, how is that a bad thing?

Which is one of the reasons he was perfectly happy to give me the recipe he's using for homemade pretzels. I'm hoping to make it w/ my nephews, but I'm going to make it one way or another.

Okay. I can't actually post this until I get a connection somewhere, but it's also time to stare blankly out the window, watching Indiana roll by.

Competition

Last night, I made some rice pudding, mostly to use up the milk I bought a few weeks ago (one of the advantages of the ultrapasturized stuff is that it lasts forfuckingever). I used brown rice instead of white, and I sliced some fresh ginger in it while it cooked. I increased the amount of rice, to make it have more texture and chewiness. I used honey instead of sugar (you saw that coming, I'm sure), and, if I'd have any, I would have thrown in some orange rind. If I take it to work as a breakfast item, I'll throw in some dried fruit; if I were making it as a dessert, I might make a quick peach compote (or how about figs?) and swirl that in. In any case, it came out really well; next time I'll reduce the amount of honey a bit and possibly increase the rice even more. Maple syrup instead of honey would be an option as well. It's quite tasty. It would not win a competition, but it wouldn't end up at the bottom, either.

And speaking of vegetable-based cuisine, a couple of weeks ago I stopped at a local bakery that specializes in organic stuff, and includes vegan offerings as well. The cakes and cupcakes I've had were pretty good; the laminated doughs don't look like much. So I order a cupcake, and take a taste of this sample square sitting there. I asked the counter person what it is, and he says it's "vegan cheesecake." I point out that if it's actually vegan, then, no, it is NOT cheesecake. Oh, yes, he enthuses, it's made with silken tofu! (Which would explain why it tasted like ass, perhaps.) Look, people: if you want to be vegan, go ahead. But you can't call it "cheese" cake. Go ahead and call it tofu-cake, or even silken-tofu cake, but you can only call it cheesecake if there is yummy delicious cheese in it. (Similarly, you shouldn't call Pringles "potato chips." Go ahead and call them dried-potato-with-wheat-starch-and-maltodextrin wafers, or something like that, but they aren't potato chips in any real sense.)

An additional disadvantage I'd have on one of the competition shows is what happens when they put an unusual ingredient in front of me: snails, frogs' legs, cactus, a pork belly. Those are not, in general, the type of ingredient that shows up in your grocery store (cactus does, if you're in a hispanic neighborhood), and I am not sufficiently interested in learning how to cook them that I'd try to hunt them down. I don't know how to butcher anything, and, while I like the concept of using the whole animal, and am even willing to eat a lot of a given animal, if you put a beef tongue in front of me, I'd have no fucking clue what to do with it. I'd probably try to slow cook it in some way, because I can't imagine it's as tender as, say a tenderloin, but I am not going to be able to do anything creative or interesting with it, and there's a good chance I'd completely fuck it up.

One of the more interesting comments, from a couple of weeks ago, was Laurine's comment, on getting sent home, that she'd realized something about herself, i.e., that she really doesn't want to compete with people. I actually rather admired her for that; it's an important realization. I also suspect that she realized that, while she may be quite good at what she does, she doesn't have the skills that the Volts, Jen, or Kevin have. (I think the rest of them, even if they're still in the mix, don't have that skill set, either. Eli occasionally shows flashes, but he's not there, and his ego may prevent him from ever getting there.) Sometimes that can be very freeing, and really enable you to learn: when i was in pastry school, for example, it was clear pretty quickly that I simply did not have the skills or experience of several other people in the class (the Brazen Tart, for one, and her first partner, for another, immediately come to mind). But that didn't matter to me: I was there to learn, and it wasn't a competition. It was an opportunity to learn a whole lot of stuff that, had i actually been able to open a bakery, would have been necessary, and that even stood me in good stead in the job I got. I didn't care that others were a lot better than I was, and I rather liked the opportunity to fuck up, because I learned a great deal from that, without the danger of losing a competition, or failing out, or even screwing up something for my boss.

I've done a lot of stuff in my life, and it's one of the few times I've been able to engage in that kind of risk-free learning. Right now, for example, I'm basically managing all of the budgets for my organization, with no help, and it's making me very nervous. I talk things through with my boss, and he is really getting up to speed in the overall bits, but what I really need is someone with an accounting eye AND a program-oriented eye to review the whole thing and see what I'm missing. Instead, I have to deal with a controller who doesn't provide any assistance at all--who gets in the way, actually, and seems completely disinclined to learn about the program side of it. (And who is also acting like a complete tool, but that's another story.) There have been several occasions where I realized--rather late in the game--that I missed a big expenditure, or didn't take something into account when I was calculating productivity and revenue. This makes me very, very nervous, especially because the pressures put on me from above (including above my boss) simply are not concerned with messy, complex details. Some things cannot be made simple, and no amount of insisting otherwise is going to change that, but some people are completely impervious to that. Which just adds to the pressure.

Which--in my mind, anyway--leads to one of my biggest beefs with Top Chef: I really, really, really hate that they use up precious time with dramatic music and swirly camera shots before someone gets sent packing. I don't mind some of the outside-the-kitchen drama, because it helps illustrate people's personalities (up to a point, anyway), but we KNOW someone is getting sent home; just do it, already. I also don't like about half of the interviews--yes, we know, you're Still In It! And you Know a Few Things! And you're Here To Win! (Quick; someone come up with a Top Chef bingo card . . .) Sometimes it's useful--like showing Mike I. talking about how his mom was vegan and so he knows all about cooking vegetarian, and then he serves up that slop. Dude, you may be able to run a restaurant, but I could come up with a better vegetarian meal using what's in my kitchen right now (as opposed to the kitchens at Craftsteak, where they all were), than that mess.

Point being, the complexity of the show comes not from the attempts to add drama, but from what the chefs actually produce and how they do it (or how they fail). But the editors want to show the simple story lines--Robin is a pain; Mike I. is an asshole; the Brothers V. are competitive and tense, as well as talented; Jen is falling apart (which I wish she would stop; she's so talented, and she's just tying herself in knots; relax, dude!). Yes, fine, those are useful things to know, but give us more of the food, more of the cooking, more of how they think about and produce the food they produce. I don't want to see how Mike I. produces an undercooked leek that's supposed to mimic a scallop (thereby forgetting Fabio's Dictum: it's Top Chef, not Top Scallop), except in passing, I want to see more of the dishes that worked.

Anyway.

Let's see if I can manage to do anything today other than work out and take a shower (which I haven't done yet, so that's not a done deal, either).

Vegetables Ahoy

I've been fibrillating about buying a new desktop computer. On one hand, my current has 15g of hard disk space. On the other hand, it has a Motorola chip, which means I can't merely update it to the latest OS, and, more to the point, things are starting to get wonky with it. I was beginning to suspect that the reason things are slow when I'm online is the browsers--which can't be upgraded, because of the OS--rather than my internet connection, per se. (Side note: a new pet peeve is the number of people who spell that "per say.")

Today I hooked up my laptop to the intertubes, and, yes, it turns out, things are much faster with the laptop, which has a newer OS. So I'm torn. I really hate "wasting" a computer that's perfectly adequate for a chunk of what I do--this typing is in TextEdit, and it works just fine, and much of the editing I do is in Office 2004, which works just fine on this OS. (Office 2008 for Mac has gotten nothing but crappy reviews, so I have absolutely no desire to "upgrade" to it.) But getting online is getting cumbersome; some internet-involved tasks become painfully slow; and, of course, this iMac has a 15-inch screen, but the new ones have 27-inch screens (bigger than my TV!), which would give me a whole lot more screen real estate for anything I do. (Just switching to the laptop isn't a great solution; though hooking up the keyboard and mouse to it helps somewhat, the screen is no bigger than the iMac's). I had decided to hold off--spending $2k isn't exactly a trivial decision, unless there are lottery winnings involved--but now the slowness issue is making me re-re-re-think the whole thing again. Did I mention that I hate to "waste" a computer? Most likely, I'll fibrillate a little longer, try to find a place to donate the current iMac (anyone need one?), and eventually get a new one. But I wish I could avoid it for another year or so.

At breakfast this morning--at the place where kstyle and her husband and I had breakfast a few weeks ago--Friend and I were discussing last week's Top Chef. (This week was some bullshit reunion show that I didn't watch so i could watch My Team go down in defeat.) It was the Vegetarian Challenge, and I was as appalled as the judges were at the lame offerings that most of the chefs provided. The Volt brother who did the banana polenta, and Kevin, who did something with roasted vegetables, managed to put together actual meals, but the rest of it was pretty disappointing. (And was I glad to see Mike I. told to pack his knives--before Robin--even though he made all kinds of claims about Knowing How to Cook Great Vegetarian Meals? Oh yes, yes indeed I was.) No one used a grain (except the polenta), or rice, or pasta, which I just thought was bizarre.

I like meat, as my accounts of various meals makes clear, but I don't eat very much of it (almost never, at my own house), what meat I do eat tends to be fish, game (venison, rabbit, wild turkey), or organic, and I'm not usually the one who's actually cooking the meat (Friend does it at his house, or we go out). I am not religious about this, though I have become much less willing to eat commercial beef and pork. I can easily go several days (or even weeks, if it came to it) without any meat and not miss it. In addition, several of my favorite cookbooks are from Moosewood, i.e., vegetarian. What this means is that I've done a lot of cooking without meat over the years, and I have some idea what you can do.

How is it that the admittedly-WAY-more-talented-than-I-am chefs showed up for this competition without a few vegetarian (or even vegan) dishes in their back pockets? Seriously--what do vegetarians at their restaurants get to eat? The infamous roasted veggies? Some boring pasta dish? Why not some farro? Barley? Brown and wild rice? Quinoa? How about some roasted squash, kale, and farro? How about spinach, garlic, pesto, pasta, with some white beans thrown in for good measure? Or a puree of white beans, roasted garlic, fresh rosemary or sage, and some olive oil, perhaps with some grilled or roasted eggplant or zucchini and some rice? (And why did almost no one use beans? And only Eli used them well.)

I was bitching in this vein to Friend, noting that I am not a professional chef and even I could have done better. He quarreled with my claim, however, and not just because of the pastry school education. (Speaking of which, did you see they might do a Top Chef for pastry chefs? Brazen Tart! Get your ass to whatever audition process they have!!) Friend recognizes that many of the chefs on the show would not recognize a pastry chef as a "real" chef, but, he pointed out, I have been interested in cooking good food for two or three decades, at this point, in addition to having at least some professional experience, even if it isn't hot-line experience or even restaurant line experience.

And I do understand his point, even as I recognize that I have nowhere near the knowledge, experience, or talent to compete on the show. I think I could do better than the bottom third, maybe, but I do not have what it takes to go up against people with even moderately serious fine-dining chops. I can even tell you why, and it mostly has to do with (a) not having experience preparing a lot of the proteins, given my quirky experiences with meat, (b) not having a thorough knowledge of a variety of sauces and techniques, and (c) not having the kind of hot-line experience that would enable me to come up with things quickly for the Quickfires.

All of that aside, my point remains: how did they show up without some vegetarian options in their back pockets? Something's wrong when I can come up with a half a dozen better dishes than what those chefs produced for the show.

Extra Hour

Apparently, the new way to describe suicide, at least among the clergy, is to call it a death that is "chosen." Which seems to be a problematic description to me for all kinds of reasons, but I'm going to let it be and return to the trivia that generally occupies this space.

I opted to go to bed last night before the baseball game finished, once it became less likely that the Phillies were going to be able to rally. As a result, and because we got that extra hour in the day today, I was wildly productive. I did three loads of laundry; worked out (while watching the last F1 race of the season); baked a batch of breakfast muffins (I think I have finally gotten that recipe where I want it); baked a batch of chocolate muffins made with malted barley syrup, in a not-quite-successful attempt to make something that tasted like malted milk balls; stirred up a batch of nougat; and made dinner. In addition, I talked to two friends for a total of about 2.5 hours and cooked up a batch of black beans, which I'll get around to using later this week, most likely with the sweet potatos I have in the fridge from last week's farmers' market. And it's only 8:00, so I feel like I've managed to fit two or three days' worth of chores into one day.

I had kind of wanted to do a lot more nothing today, while lounging on the couch--maybe even digging out the needlepoint that I wanted to start four years ago--but the chores actually seemed more appealing. Go figure.

I'm contemplating sending a box of tools to my parents' house before i go, so I have what I need while I'm there. My mom's kitchen is reasonably well-stocked, but I guarantee there are things she doesn't have that I'll want, and it would certainly be easier to send things back and forth than to shlep it with me. On the other hand, it's not at all clear that there are going to be very many people there for dinner, seeing as how my mother hasn't actually invited anyone yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my mom how many people were going to be there and she said, oh, she didn't know. "So who have you talked to," I asked.

"Oh, I haven't even called anyone yet."

"Okay," I said (knowing my mother), "who are you mad at?"

"Nobody!"

"And, again, who are you mad at?"

"Your brother."

Turns out my brother and SIL and nephews are going to SIL's sister's stepdaughter's kid's baptism, or something, in North Carolina, the day I get into town, and the older nephew has a football banquet the next day (Sunday), and my brother is taking older nephew bear hunting on Monday and Tuesday. Mom thinks time should be spent with me. The nephews don't have off of school that week--older nephew is just going to miss school--so I can't corral younger nephew, most likely, but I'm angling to get him on Sunday, or maybe on Wednesday so he can help on Thursday. We'll see what my mom can arrange.

I try to tread as lightly as possible with my mom, because I don't want her to be caught in the middle between me and my brother. She knows how I feel--i.e., that it is reprehensible that my brother has never managed to bring my nephews out here, though they have been all over the country visiting my SIL's family, both with my brother and, this past summer, by themselves. My mom even agrees with me, but I have told her explicitly that I do not want her to intervene in any way, shape, or form, and I mean that. Between her kidney issues and my dad's cancer, she does not need to be dealing with that kind of crap.

And, really, there's no point in making a big hairy-ass deal out of it. Actions do speak louder than words, at least some of the time, and if my brother wanted to visit or wanted my nephews to visit, he could do that. Clearly it's not a priority for him in any way, and I see no point to bringing up the subject again. (Because, yes, I have brought it up: when I visited two years ago, right after I quit the bakery, I stayed with him part of the time, and I said, hey when are you guys going to come visit? I'd love to take the kids to some museums, etc. He said, oh, they play sports every season, they're so busy, it's just really impossible to find the time. A day later, unprompted, my SIL excitedly said that, because the kids had off for MLK Monday, she'd take them out of school on the previous Friday and go visit her mother for a long weekend in Florida. So, apparently, it is possible to find the time, if one wants to find it. I should also note that I do not hold SIL responsible for getting my nephews out here.)

Anyway. My Team isn't doing as well as I'd hoped they would, though I'm not terribly surprised, either. My only consolation is that my brother--who is a Mets fan--won't be happy either way.

Found Out Today

that one of my friends from pastry school died last week--at the age of 37. The funeral is tomorrow, and perhaps I'll find out more then; no one w/ whom I've been in contact knows the circumstances. She's one of the two who made that fab 50th-birthday dinner for me last year, and she was my first partner in school. Among the weird things is that I was going to call her today to see if she wanted to get together this weekend. I'm gonna miss you, Sara.

Stuffed Cabbage

Whenever I start looking at my stuff, I'm reminded of one of the 2,000-year-old man conversations, the one where he claims he doesn't eat anything, except cool, clear, mountain water, because nothing is good for you, it's all bad, just the water . . . and stuffed cabbage. Because who doesn't like a little stuffed cabbage?

I don't have that much stuff, I tell myself, and then I rummage around in a closet for something and think, um, yeah, actually, I do have a lot of stuff. (And that's not even when I'm boxing things up to move.) There's a disconnect, because, on one hand, I know that things do not bring happiness. Being without necessities, constantly worrying about eating or sleeping or clothing oneself, wondering how the mortgage or rent will get paid, using hope as an insurance policy for one's health or home or vehicle--all of that will bring UNhappiness, particularly for those of us who've had the luxury of not worrying (or not worrying much) about those things for long stretches of our lives. That is, I don't look to things to make me happy, or fill a void, and I don't have to worry about the necessities. But still, stuff seems to accumulate.

Partly, I suppose, it's because I don't throw stuff out as much as I should. Pencils I'll never use; scraps of paper I won't use, even though I've only printed on one side; old clothing that I won't wear, that isn't in decent enough shape to take to the Salvation Army, and that I'll never get around to using for rags (because I don't use the rags and then toss them, no, I wash them and reuse them, so I have more fucking rags than you can imagine); plastic bags that are big enough for trash or mailing, but, well, I just don't have that much trash or mailing; shoes that are worn out--but not completely!, I can still wear them a few more times (unless it's raining, because there's a hole wearing through the sole of one of them). Partly it's also that getting rid of stuff--or, more to the point--recycling stuff that's still useable--is difficult without a vehicle; even I have a limit to what I'm willing to haul on the el.

Some of this is a result of growing up in a house where there wasn't a lot of money for what we regarded as luxuries. We were by no means poor or in want; we were solidly working class, and my parents were good at husbanding the resources we had available, and I was a kid at precisely the juncture in time when solidly working class meant you could actually afford some things. (Buying in bulk and/or stocking up when things are on sale is something I learned at my mother's knee.) But we also were expected to take care of our stuff; mend things and reuse things and squeeze nearly every ounce of usefulness out of something. (And, frankly, I regard this as a good thing.)

But take, for instance, the Fiestaware bowls I have: there's one dark blue serving bowl that Chuck got for me one year, and there's a set of three green ones that a friend gave us as a wedding gift, and there's a red platter and an orange gravy boat from Chuck's mom. I love them all--but how often do I use them? Almost never. I barely cook for myself any more, much less for a dinner party. Yes, I cook at Friend's house, but you'll note that it's at Friend's house, not here, where the bowls are. (I'd like us to spend more time here, but he has a cat and a fireplace and more TV channels and couches than I have, so he is somewhat reluctant to dislodge himself, and even I have to admit that the cat and the fireplace are nice things to have at one's disposal. On the other hand, my apartment is much much (much) warmer than his house is in the winter.)

So I end up with stuff. Despite my best efforts, despite the occasional sort and purge that I do, there are piles of stuff, and I find myself getting MORE stuff. Lately I've been reassuring myself that I am going to, once again, go through all of my stuff before I pack it for the move I'm anticipating in May, and, who knows, maybe I'll actually do that. It would be appropriate, somehow.

Back in 1993, for a tedious set of reasons, I ended up packing all my worldly possessions, such as they were, over Memorial Day weekend, and moving the following week. I'd been living in furnished university housing, so I didn't have a lot of furniture (which was fine with me; it meant I could leave behind stuff that had mostly bad memories for me), but I had clothes and books and kitchen stuff, as well as all the papers and notes and whatever from seven years of grad school. I had no time to sort anything, I just crammed it into boxes and moved on to the next pile, and the apartment into which I moved was sufficiently spacious and had enough closets such that I could avoid dealing with the stuff for years.

When I decided to move in 1998, I started going through my crap two months before the move--every single thing I owned. I got rid of a lot of stuff--at least 80% of my books, and just a lot of papers and things that I hadn't had time to sort through in 1993 and that I had avoided in the intervening years, because it just reminded me too much of that awful time at the end of grad school.

Scroll forward to 2006, when Chuck had more or less moved out and I had to move because i could not afford to stay in that apartment by myself (and probably could not have afforded to stay there with him). When I had to find a new place, I had no clue what was going to happen with us or whether he'd ever move back in with me, but I had to find someplace to live. Then he was diagnosed around the time I signed a lease and prepared to move, so there was still tremendous turmoil. Plus, just to add a delightful note to everything, as I was packing my stuff, a lot of it was stuff we'd gotten as wedding gifts, less than a year before. It was horrible for me, and, I know, for him as well; my gut still wrenches when I think about it. End result, though, is that I still have boxes stuffed into closets that I have not sorted through since I moved here in 2006, and it's time. So many things have ended in that time--my employment at the biotech company, our marriage, my dream of owning a bakery, my job at the bakery--that I have hesitated to rummage through the detritus, but it's time.

It's just stuff, after all, and it's time to reduce the amount of it.

Nothing to See Here

So for this week in food, the c'testants provided more confirmation of their qualities and personalities. The four best chefs are clearly the Brothers Volt, Keith the Pig Man, and Jen. The other four remaining chefs are all pretty mediocre, despite their opinions of themselves. Their failures may have been from execution, but the failures are at least as likely to be failures of ideas, or failures of just not knowing enough to put something good together.

Robin does seem to be annoying, in several dimensions, but Eli and Mike I-for-Idiot are just sexist assholes. Both of the guys seem to think they are great chefs, which they are not; both seem to think they're oh-so-much-better than Robin, evidence of which I haven't seen; and both act as though every week that Robin remains is an affront to them personally, which is getting really quite tiresome. The fourth chef, Laurine, doesn't seem all that super-talented, but she has a pretty low profile on the show, too. She clearly doesn't have the experience that the top four have, or the chops in general, but she's also not running her mouth all the time.

Mike, in particular, is just an ass. He acts and talks as though he is completely the shit, but he doesn't seem to know how to cook in very many cuisines or styles, and he does not seem to have a grasp of many of the basics. Perfect example: he was teamed with Robin last week, and their bag of food was Asian-themed. Mike asked Robin if she knew anything about Asian food and flavor profiles. She said yes, she did; he said that he did not, but that he was going to run the show, he was going to make all the food, he was going to let her make whatever she wanted and then not serve that part. Simple Asian isn't that difficult to do, if you've got the ingredients in front of you (garlic, soy, ginger, and pepper of some kind will get you pretty far), and two of the other dishes failed much more spectacularly, so neither of them was in danger of going home, but it was just so incredibly dismissive. I've run into men like that throughout my life, and they are so very very very tiresome.

I stumbled across Colicchio's blog yesterday--he's one of the hosts/judges of the show, as well as the owner of several NYC restaurants--and it was quite interesting. I don't know if he does his own writing or if someone edits it or takes dictation, but it's quite well-written, and it definitely provides additional insight and commentary on the actual cooking and the judging thereof.

Anyway. Today was another of my exercises in doing everything on public transportation. I woke up "late" (i.e., about 6:30), puttered a bit, worked out for 20 minutes, showered, and left the house at about 8:20. I took a train (where a kid--teenager?--sat down next to me, despite the multitude of completely empty seats, and then proceeded to crowd me, rub against me, and generally try to get a rise out of the White Lady (he was black); when I got up to get off the train, he promptly got up, and sat down next to another white woman sitting alone, and started up with the same shit, which confirmed that it wasn't my imagination; what an asshole), then a bus, then walked about 1/4 mile to the restaurant where I was meeting kstyle (!1!!) and her husband, who were passing through town, for breakfast. We had a fine time until 11:30, then I walked 2 miles to the acupuncture place. Left there about 75 minutes later, took a bus, then another bus, to a shopping corridor. Went to Trader Joe's (butter, nuts, dried fruit, carrots), Bed Bath Beyond (new water purifier thingy, plus two extra filters), the liquor store (four bottles of wine on sale), Peet's Coffee & Tea (four canisters of tea, plus a free cup), then took a bus two blocks to the el, then took the train home (after waiting for 20 minutes because there was some kind of breakdown), then walked about four blocks lugging all the crap listed above. I got home a little before 5. If i'd been driving, I would have left the house at 9:00, and I likely would have been home by, oh, 3:30, and I would have been able to buy a case of wine--and get the case price--instead of 4 bottles.

On most levels, I don't mind this at all; the only time I've had it any other way was when Chuck and I lived together and he could shlep me to the store, but on errand days like today, unless he was coming along for all the errands, I might well have done big chunks of it on public trans anyway. (Of course, I was living downtown then, too, so many trips were shorter.) Some days it does feel like a chore, though. I know that to do anything, but especially to do a full day's worth of running around, I have to allot time in every slot for waiting for and riding on buses and trains, and I know that I have to make sure not to buy more than I can carry, and I have to make sure to plan my route to minimize the distance I'm going to be fully laden. I also bring a book, because there will be waiting and riding; that part is kind of fun, actually, because I end up with plenty of time to read.

Thus, today I started reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and I am absolutely loving it; it's one of those books where I'm torn between wanting to do nothing except read and wanting to slow down and read it only a bit at a time, so the experience lasts longer. (Yes, I know that's weird.) I purposely put Peet's at the end of the list of visits so I could get my free cup of tea and sit and read for awhile, with no agenda and no rush to get home, which is really one of the great pleasures in life.

I also spent a bunch of time tonight on the phone with an old friend from college--someone I met my very first day of school, back in February of 1977--and it was wonderful. We've known each other for nearly 33 years (really? can that possibly be true?), and there's something special about talking to someone who has known you that long but who isn't family (and who knows your family!). I don't have any friends at all from high school or my home town, so it's really my college friends who have been around the longest.

I'm sure I have some Profound Observations somewhere, but they're not appearing tonight, so you've had another lunch post; oh well. I've been fighting off something for about 10 days; I have no clue whether it's a cold, or just side effects from lots of dry air, or just general malaise, but I've managed to avoid all symptoms except an incipient sense of my body doing battle against something.

Rogue

Because nothing says "work" like a full-day meeting; why, yes, I DO have a bad attitude.

Rather than engage in that bitching, I'm going to describe our meal on Sunday, which was one of the best ever. We got some pork loins on sale; Friend has been trying to make one on the grill, but they keep coming out kind of dried out and tasting more poached than grilled. So I rummaged in the cookbooks, and remembered that we had some fresh sage and fresh rosemary in the fridge; I pointed to the recipe, and he modified it a bit--mostly by not letting it sit for several hours. He poked a hole through the center of the loin, poured in a salt/pepper mix, followed by sage and rosemary, then covered it in crushed garlic. He threw it in the oven with some white wine on it, and turned it every 15 minutes or so. He also used his meat thermometer, a relatively recent purchase that has revolutionized his already-prodigious meat-cooking skills. It has been particularly useful with, say, a thick cut of venison, or the elk steaks we had a couple of weeks ago, or this pork, i.e., things that are best if they're cooked to a specific temperature.

Meanwhile, we threw some brown rice on the stove, and I sliced up a couple of eggplants that were getting a little old. I rubbed olive oil on both sides of the slices--just a thin coating--then sprinkled corn meal, salt, and pepper on them. I threw the baking sheet into the oven with the pork, and eventually turned the slices and sprinkled some finely grated parmesan on top. The eggplant wasn't cooking quite quickly enough, so once everything else was done, I pulled it, sprinkled it with this other cheese (a semi-hard cheese that had been soaked in red ale of some kind; I've been going a little nuts at the farmers' market cheese stand, including getting a five-pound hunk of parmesan to get me through the winter), and put it under the broiler for a couple of minutes to finish it. Meanwhile, while the eggplant was in the oven, I sliced an onion very thin, sauteed it in a little butter and olive oil, added a crushed clove of garlic and some parsley, and then added a thinly sliced apple. This mix went on top of the pork, and the pork/apple/onion combination was unfuckingbelievable.

For dessert, I'd made Apple Cake 2.0; last week's version had some old hazelnuts in it, so it had that off, slightly rancid taste to it. This week's version wasn't as baked through as I would like, but I'd added some oats (instead of ground nuts), and the flavor was close to what I want. I have an idea what to do for 3.0; when I've got it right, I'll be happy to share the recipe if y'all want it.

There have been no more discussions of Thanksgiving, but I'm sure they'll arise. I was thinking about Orange's comment below, and I realized that what she said is true--if you have the same holiday every year, with roughly the same people. Given that I've lived alone for most of my life, and have done a wide variety of things for holidays over the years--from making dinner for 15 to hanging out by myself, and a lot of things between--I don't have a Special List. And, with my family (and with many other people), I often feel that my own experience of life is invalid(ated), because it isn't Normal.

Don't get me wrong; I've genuinely enjoyed the things I've done, and I don't regard that range of activities as a bad thing. What it means, though, is that I generally feel like I'm expected to live by other people's expectations for a holiday--my wishes don't count for as much, because I haven't done a whole lot of Normal Marriage and Life. Basically, the unspoken assumption is that, because I have this pathetic non-normal life, I have to accommodate everyone else's (Normal) wants and needs--because, of course, I would have had that Normal Life if I weren't so pathetic. Luckily I can roll my eyes at this and then do what the fuck I want, and I can even challenge the assumptions sometimes, rather than humbly agree that I am pathetic and don't deserve to have what I want because I'm not Normal.

And I'm going to do a beer-tasting with and for my dad, including some Rogue and Flying Dog beers, which will be fun.

Blah.

So I decided to visit my family for Thanksgiving this year--something I haven't done in well more than a decade, possibly two. I told my mom that I would do the cooking, but already I can see that that's not going to work particularly well.

No, she wouldn't even consider roasted sweet potatos because my dad and someone else like the candied sweet potatos she makes. (What that really means is that SHE prefers the candied ones, or my brother does, but she won't say that.) Onions stuffed with wild rice, dried fruit, and sausage doesn't sound good, either. And she has to see what my SIL wants, and whether her sister is coming up, and what SIL wants to make. (SIL isn't really much of a cook, IMHO; she heats, and she grazes, and she has a couple of dishes she makes, but she is not a cook.)

Whatever. I'm going to make things that I like, even if I end up stuffing one onion and roasting one sweet potato. I'll be permitted to bake, I suppose.

I keep writing and then erasing; my family's ability to annoy the everloving shit out of me has diminished significantly over time, but not quite as much as I would hope. And I know it's mostly my brother who pisses me off, but I haven't figured out how to get around that yet. It's true that my mother can push my buttons--she installed them, after all--but she typically doesn't piss me off. And I know she and my dad miss me, which is the main reason I'm making this trip.

I just don't have much to say these days. I work. I cook and bake. I shlep to the farmers' market. Sometimes I go to a concert. I've been working out again, which is good (and I signed up today to take three "boot camp" type classes, because they were on sale and I thought it would be interesting to try them). I've been reading a lot, which is nice. The baseball playoffs are starting, as is hockey season, and the F1 and Indy seasons are nearly over, so sports get thrown into the mix.

But none of that is particularly important, and I know it. That doesn't always stop me from writing, of course, but I can't even seem to get up the energy for that lately.

New Seasoning

So we're several episodes into the new season of Top Chef, and no one who has gone home has not deserved to go, especially in recent weeks, as we've had a chance to see people work over a couple of episodes. It's interesting to see how people's foibles seem to leak out in spite of the editing, and probably a bit because of the editing, but still. For example, it's becoming clear that Michael I. is a twerp who has an incredibly inflated sense of his abilities, in addition to being a sexist asshole--in an early ep, he noted that there was no way a girl should be even with him--hey, asshole, the women aren't cooking with their ladyparts, and you're not cooking WITH your dick, you ARE a dick; there's a difference. The Voltaggio brothers know their shit; they may stumble occasionally, but there isn't a major fail.

They're setting Robin up to get rid of her, or at least I hope they are, but last night was brutal, too. For one thing, they started the episode by having everyone talk about how she's been lucky and she really doesn't belong there. Know what, people? If that's true, then eventually she'll fuck up worse than everyone else. She's been saved so far--her drunken shrimp was hideous, but Mattin's raw fish that made people sick was far, far worse; last night, she managed to win the quickfire, so she had immunity, plus Ron's dish was really bad--but only because someone else has been worse. And one of the cheftestants (sorry, Larry) basically said she won the quickfire by mentioning that she'd had cancer to the judges. Which, seriously, is over the top rude. Does he really think the judges are so stupid that they'd be taken in by that? On the other hand, as the episode unrolls, it becomes clear that she is annoying the shit out of everyone, mostly by narrating everything she's doing, which, yeah, that would make me a bit crazy, too. Also, because she has immunity for the elimination challenge, she claims she's going to just try to do a great job and play with it, but she really doesn't do anything interesting. So, no, I'm not convinced she belongs there; the question is whether they get rid of her or Mike I. first. Or maybe they guy who insisted on bringing his own pressure cooker, and taping it together because the baggage handlers screwed it up, and then it exploded in the kitchen (!!), which, sorry, would also piss me right the fuck off. A chatterer is annoying, but an exploding pressure cooker can maim or kill someone, and that basic disregard for one's fellows is even worse.

Last night's challenge was interesting; each of them had to "deconstruct" a classic dish. On one hand, several of the chefs had no clue what it meant to deconstruct a dish, despite what appeared to be some brief instruction about that. A couple of others--most notably Jen, I think--understood the concept but didn't actually do any of that, because they worked in a place that focused on doing the classics AS classics. Mostly notably, Mike I. had no fucking clue what "florentine" meant. He was supposed to do eggs florentine, and he kept calling it "eggs new-to-me," which is just not very funny. And I think he even had to be told that it included spinach, which kind of blew me away; does he really not know that "florentine" = "has spinach in it"? I suppose I can forgive him for not knowing the back story of that--what with Florence, Italy and the Medicis and all--but to not seem to know that basic fact is more evidence of what an ass he is.

The other thing was how Jen was completely stressing about her deconstructed meat lasagna--as the episode was going on, I was actually coming up with a deconstructed version of that in my head, perhaps because I've made it a million times. I would have had more trouble with some of the others (and, oh, wait, I'm not actually good enough to be a contestant on this show). I was also (probably inordinately) pleased that several of the elements in her final version were in the neighborhood of what I was thinking. Actually, her final dish is also a good example of one of the two reasons I'm not TC material: yes, I would have done homemade pasta; yes, I would have done the meat separately; yes, i would have done a simple tomato sauce, though maybe a different one than she did--but that whole crispy parmesan thing? Not so much, and it sounded as though that really made the dish work. Also, my mom never did a bechamel sauce in her lasagna, but we did do ricotta, so I don't know if that would make a difference.

The other reason that I'm not TC material is that these guys have practically no time to come up with and make this stuff, which, if you're going to work a hot line in a restaurant, you damn well better be able to do. I've gotten much more efficient in the kitchen, but I'm still not a line cook and I'm not well-suited to doing that. Some of the shit that gets thrown on a plate is kinda eh, especially because we're still early in the season, but they have a much wider selection of techniques and recipes (especially sauces) in their heads than I have.

Still, my main criticism of the show remains. I think a dish only comes together after a few iterations, with critiques and notes along the way. The ability of the Volt bros. and Jen to put incredible things out without that is evidence of their skills, for sure; it's a useful technique for separating the hacks from the good cooks. But as the season goes on, I think it would be more instructive to see how they would utilize that iterative process to kick the dish up to the next level.

For the concert report, I have to note that the Bruce concert was one of the two or three best shows I've ever seen; I've seen him 25 or 30 times, and this was incredible. As I'd suspected (and hoped), the people who were most likely to show up were people who were excited at the thought of Bruce playing Born to Run straight through--something he's never done before. (The other night he said they'd done it once, way back in the day, in Red Bank, NJ.) And, in fact, that's who was there: long-time devoted fans, which exponentially increased the energy of the whole thing. Bruce has always fed off of that, too, and this show was hell-bent-for-leather straight out of the box and then all the way through, for three solid hours. So, yay for that.

Summarily We Roll Along

I am getting some acupuncture tomorrow, and I very much hope that it helps. I've had sacroiliac joint issues for . . . nearly two years, now? Lordy. Sometimes it nearly goes away completely, for hours or days at a time; other times I can barely move, and the past two days have featured episodes of that, complete with pain around into my groin and down my leg. Usually if I sit down it improves, but tonight not so much; the two days of baking, plus the stress and lack of sleep and running around during the same two days, probably all have something to do with the severity of the pain tonight. I know--partly from my researches into these things--that the best thing I could do for it is probably regular yoga and regular exercise, and I am doing neither of those. It's been nearly three weeks since I worked out last (though there have been episodes of long and brisk walks), and we're not even going to discuss yoga, because that will make me annoyed with myself.

Today, well, today started with the fire and it didn't improve much over the course of the day; more like "improved not at all, and got worse in several dimensions, particularly the one where the phrase 'summarily terminated' would be applicable." (It wasn't me that was terminated, I hasten to note.) So, yeah. And several meetings, while we're at it, including one in which I was informed, by BB, with about an hour's notice, that I would be providing a majority of the content and s/he would be attending the meeting, primarily to inquire about that content; no pressure there!

The only bright spots are the desserts, which look pretty good, so I'm hoping some actual monies are raised by these efforts. I have to get up tomorrow and make cream cheese frosting for the carrot cakes, but that shouldn't take very long. The mini smores tarts worked pretty well; I ended up using a ganache from school that's actually supposed to be a filling for a dipped chocolate. I'm a little worried that it's not quite sweet enough, and I couldn't torch the meringue on top (because my torch doesn't have any butane and I don't have an acetylene or propane torch), so I dusted with cocoa powder.

Hmmm. I had italian meringue (for the smores) left over, so I piped it onto a silpat, turned the oven down, and threw the pan in. I'm now nibbling on the slightly browned, chewy meringue bit and realizing I should have just piped a bunch of those and plopped them on top of the ganache. Oh well; I'll remember that for next time. Meanwhile, the oven was on because i was going to roast the beets I bought at the market on Saturday; no, that didn't happen, nor did I eat the corn from Saturday, nor have I eaten the lovely raspberries or peaches.

But--this Sunday? Bruce!

Because Nothing Says Excitement Like Fire

So I couldn't sleep this morning, despite my best efforts. I got up and wandered into the living room and thought, hmmm, smells like smoke. I wandered into the kitchen, checked the pilot light, whatever; nothing. Smelled it again. Looked out into the courtyard and realized that there were flames in an apartment on the 5th floor. I watched for a second to make sure it wasn't candles or something, and then I called the fire department, put some clothes on, grabbed my phone and wallet, and got ready to leave. By then I could see someone fiddling with the flames or charred remains or whatever, and tried to call off the FD, but I could hear the sirens, so I went downstairs to greet them, as instructed.

Three trucks, possibly more, showed up, along with some cops and a battalion-chief type vehicle. I ended up bringing them into the courtyard to show them the window, and, oh, two dozen firefighters trudged up the stairs.

Turns out that some guy had a trash fire--and another woman had seen it, too, and had gone down to pound on his door and wake him up (!) and he put it out. The firefighters ended up checking all the stairwells and elevators and such, which impressed me with their thoroughness, even though it appeared to be pretty clear what had happened. And I caught someone say something about a "high-rise fire," which explains the four trucks, i.e., there are nine floors to my building, so something more drastic might well have needed that kind of response.

I felt a little silly, on one hand, for having called it in, but, in retrospect, it was the right thing to do. (Suppose he hadn't been home? Or the woman hadn't been able to wake him? Or the windows hadn't been open so I could smell the smoke?)

Though, admittedly, a bit more adrenaline than I really wanted at 5:15 in the morning.

Five Minutes

I've written here before about how having worked in the bakery has improved my time management, and I continue to be struck by the truth of that. I ended up not being able to take off today, after all, but Friend and I didn't go out tonight, so I came home a little early, took the butter out of the fridge to soften, then called a friend to discuss the latest complete fucking insanity at work (yes, a whole new thing, and I can't discuss this one even more). I finally got down to work by 5:30 or so, and in about four hours I was able to make about 90 peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies, about 100 mini carrot cakes, and 48 graham cracker crusts for the mini smores. At the moment, the dishwasher is running and the rest of the dishes are clean and in the rack. Plus, I had three phone conversations while I was working, with Friend, GirlFriend, and Bossman.

I think what it comes down to is that production work gives one more of a sense of what can be accomplished in 5 minutes, or 12 minutes, or 22 minutes. Brazen Tart has a much (much much) better sense of this than I do, because she has to produce things for people who are sitting at tables waiting for their elaborately plated desserts to appear, but the point remains the same.

The other thing that school and the bakery provided was an introduction to techniques and tools that speed the work in an assortment of ways. Remember those pastry bags I snagged from OldBoss on Friday? I used one to splooge the carrot cake batter into the tins, which turned a 10- or 15-minute job into a 2-minute job. Once the first two tins were in the oven, I refilled the bag and had it ready for the next batch, then washed up some dishes. When I put the cream cheese frosting on? And the chocolate ganache in the smores, and the italian meringue for the topping? Same type of bag. I'd certainly heard of them before, but the ones that you can get in the grocery store, say, are these teeny little things that aren't good for a damned thing. My piping skills are still pretty rudimentary--it's not like it's something I use daily--and I can't decorate for shit, but even the basic skills I have make things go so much more quickly.

The other thing that two years of production did was hone the ability to think a couple of steps ahead: as I'm doing this (relatively mindless) task, I'm planning the next two or three. Of course, I do that in all of the jobs I do, but this kind of production is a different environment, and type of task is different. I think what I'm trying to say is that in a bakery production environment, there are many sequential tasks, but they tend to be short, and not all of them have time requirements attached.

For example, Artie could make a couple of racks of muffins, but Phil didn't have to bake them immediately (Phil mostly ran the ovens on the day shift), i.e., they could sit for a while if something else was in the ovens. Once they were baked, they had to cool a bit, and eventually be taken out of the tins and put on trays, but they didn't have to get into the freezer immediately. Yeast doughs have to proof, but that can be slowed down by refrigeration or speeded up a bit by putting it in the proof box (basically a big steel box that holds two huge oven-size racks--two full sheet pans per shelf--and that can have steam added), at least up to a point. Once you've got fermentation or baking going, or laminated croissant dough in the reach-in freezers, for that matter, you've got a timer involved, and you have to stay on top of it, but part of the dance of the bakery was balancing all those bits, the thinking ahead that I was noting above.

Again, I'm a relative amateur at this (compared to the Tart or OldBoss, the latter of whom has been doing it for, oh, 35 years or more), but even two years made a difference. And it has carried over somewhat into my office job, in that I can hold a lot more in my head than many people seem to be able to do. Seriously--and I'm trying to not be immodest here--I can probably do the work of two people, not because I'm Ms. Superperson, but because of that type of multitasking.

The frustrating thing, though, is that it sets new, and very high, expectations, except they're expectations that pretty much only apply to me. Which means when Bossman comes into my office and wants yet another thing, because his boss is sending snippy emails about it, I end up asking which of the other 15 things on my list he wants me to move aside to do that thing. And he gets pissy when I ask that question, but the question remains, and, more to the current point, it's me that he continues to ask for these things, in part because they've morphed into My Job, but in part because he knows I'm the one who will actually manage to get things done.

I'm about to devolve into whining, and I'm not particularly in a whining mood (despite the drama of this week). I will also note that the U2 concerts were extremely fun and good, though they took a toll on my sleep. So do I go to bed early tonight to help make up for it? Apparently not . . .

Shiny Buttons, Plus Baking Chatter

So I'm slogging along (after a trip to the bakery for pastry bags and a chat with Bossman, and a trip to Whole Paycheck for some more stock for the upcoming bakeathon (more on that in a minute), so I'm fully laden). I reach a patch of sidewalk where someone is, yes, watering the sidewalk (and the grass on the far side, of course, but nevertheless). This is a Big Shiny Button. Worse, s/he has strung yellow caution tape around the grass, presumably to keep people from walking on it. I step over the tape, onto the grass--because I do not feel like dodging the sprinkler while lugging aforementioned groceries--and this guy standing there behind the gate in front of the building, talking on his cellphone, says, excuse me ma'am, can you not walk on the grass?

"Well," I say, "then don't water the sidewalk!"

He responds, "I didn't do it! And there's $2,000 worth of new grass there!!"

And I say, "I really don't give a shit; don't water the sidewalk!" and keep going, much to his foot-stamping annoyance ("Did you hear that??" he says to the phone.)

Dude: if you're standing there, behind the fence, telling people not to walk on your precious expensive grass, then you can't deny all knowledge of or responsibility for the water that is watering said grass, and the sidewalk as well, and you really should NOT WATER THE SIDEWALK. It was an inconvenience for me, but how about for someone who's elderly, or using a mobility device, or blind? Are they supposed to make a mad dash to avoid the sprinkler? Go all the way back down the block to cross to the other side? What? And, hey, if your grass is so damned precious, then shouldn't you be bringing bottles of distilled water and sprinkling it drop by drop on those individual blades?

Anyway, the bakeathon is for a bake sale at work. Yeah, I know, sounds a bit like the PTA, don't it? I'd managed to negotiate a day to work at home to actually do the baking, because I'm going to make several things, but if things go as they usually do, then I'll end up going in for at least part of the day. The plan regarding what I'm going to bake keeps changing (I realize that is hardly a surprise to anyone who knows me even a little), but is likely to include peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, mini s'mores tarts (graham cracker crust, chocolate ganache, italian meringue), and either mini carrot cakes or carrot cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting. I'd originally thought minis for the carrot cakes, but now I'm thinking it might be a better idea to do cupcakes. Two additional possibilities are cookies that utilize the malted barley syrup in the fridge (I'm thinking of replacing the sugar in a basic sugar cookie or a honey cookie with that, and possibly adding either some malted milk or some Ovaltine to enhance the maltiness), possibly with a milk chocolate glaze of some kind, and molasses crumb muffins (my mom has a great shoo-fly pie recipe, and I'm thinking I could just use the filling for that as a start).

My Ambitious plan involved working out tonight (something I have not done for 2+ weeks) AND beginning the baking, perhaps making the cookies, even!, because they will keep until Thursday. Not surprisingly, I went for the Not-Ambitious-At-All plan, which involved opening a bottle of wine, wiping off the counter, and moving all of the dry ingredients to that spot, then drinking some wine and eating some cheese and crackers. I did develop another plan--for tomorrow morning, so no wine will be involved--that is limited to going to the farmers' market, doing a load or two of laundry, and scaling all the dry ingredients for my various recipes. If there's still time, baking could occur, but having everything scaled and organized will already speed things along. After that, though, it's U2: for Saturday AND for Sunday. I did not used to like them much, but they've grown on me over the years, so I'm looking forward to it.

So today, while chatting with CurrentBoss about the latest clusterfuck situation (oh yes, something ELSE has happened, and, again, no details will come forth; at least this doesn't involve me) and snagging some chocolate from his office stash (peanut butter cups, if you must know; the mini Snickers and Baby Ruth and Butterfinger don't do anything for me), I realized something, which I shared with him.

His boss holds this set of meetings each month: first, BB has all of his/her senior managers come meet, and they Discuss Important Things. After an hour, s/he has the next level down join the meeting (with the senior managers remaining for this second meeting); this level includes me. The meeting is tedious and boring and I find it to be a waste of time--and, it turns out, about 80% of the meeting content is a repeat of the first hour. Yes, BB has the senior managers sit through the same stuff twice.

This would blow me away with the waste (let's do the math on the salaries in the room, shall we?) all on its own, I suspect, but, as noted to CurrentBoss--and, later, to Bossman--today, it's particularly jarring for me after coming out of the bakery environment as my most recent previous job. The notion that one would take one's senior staff and take them away from getting things done to tell them the same stuff twice in two hours, for no discernible reason (why not start w/ the big group, and then dismiss us lower people, and finish with the stuff for the senior level only?), is just mind-boggling. As I said to CurrentBoss, around bites of Reese's, in the bakery, a conversation with the boss took place across the work table, as I was cutting croissant dough, or making tarts, or whatthefuckever, and he was scaling dough for something, and Phil was loading the oven, and Artie was doing mixing cookies in the background. (Or, as Bossman put it, when a baker says I'll do it now, s/he does it now; in an office, "now" means "I'll get around to it by Tuesday next week, maybe.")

I might have some Deep Thoughts on that, but they'll have to wait. I won't even manage the Saturday Plan if i don't go to bed.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme; Want, Want, Want

I was able to relax over the weekend, and I even took off on Friday, but I was fooling myself thinking that the Big Pain Crunch was over; alas, September is going to be full of crap, too. It becomes more complicated, and more work, because it turns out that a coworker is a sneaking snake who likes to make shit up and tell these tales at higher levels. it also turns out that someone in this array (I'm being purposefully vague) apparently has difficulty distinguishing between a pile of dogshit and a pile of yummy chocolate truffles, and we are going to have to spend some time educating this person about the goodness of the truffles (and hope that the criteria one might use to distinguish truffles from dogshit might rub off on this person, but that is likely a vain hope).

Larry suggested, in a private comment, that he thought my heart wasn't really in my work, and that turns out to be complicated. Oddly enough, I actually enjoy many of these tasks, and, in some ways, I appreciate the tasks involved with dealing with people who are Difficult, because it challenges me to become better--more patient, more understanding, less quick to snap. These are not easy challenges for me, as you might imagine, but I'm finding that I like them nevertheless. Which is not to say that the challenges are easy-peasy, or that I particularly enjoy realizing that I'm saying something dumb/snappish/wrong, for which I will need to apologize or that I will need to fix, but still can't seem to make my mouth shut up, but still.

And, again, here're two of the things I still miss about teaching, which perhaps gets at the heart of what Larry is observing: first, I cannot actually teach. That is, I do, in fact, have to educate people, but some of it must be done sort of surreptitiously; I can't simply put together a syllabus, and have discussions, and assign papers, and grade them, and so on. And if the people do not want to learn? Well, they are in positions such that I cannot fail them, or stop dealing with them, or whatever; I must continue to slog along. Sometimes, their failure to learn creates an obstacle for me, which sucks. Second, I very much miss the opportunity to do work that interests me deeply. Yes, I'm getting to do some analyses, and I get to apply a kind of intellectual and analytic rigor to subjects that have not heretofore undergone such analyses, and I get to try to explain things in ways that make sense to other people (who have varying abilities and inclinations to understand) . . . but that's not nearly the same as doing research on and writing about topics that are of interest to me.

That last point gets at a crucial difference between my fantasy job(s) and my actual job. I recognize that everyone, or nearly everyone, has to answer to someone, some group, some hierarchy, and that many managers, including those in academia, can be better or worse. It's not as though tenured faculty are freeeee! and can do as they please, or even, at least at all but a handful of schools, teach whatever they please. It may even be the case that one is required to teach courses that aren't particularly interesting or are loathsome in some way.

But, and it's a crucial but, the hierarchy isn't going to tell you what problems you much solve in your research work. If your work is on 19th-century British novels, you will not be instructed to, or ordered to, or need to, write and publish a paper on econometrics. You may conceivably become interested in econometrics and decide to learn about it and, eventually, write on it, but that will be driven by your interests and choices. I, on the other hand, cannot spend my working hours on problems that truly interest me or, on bad days, even engage me all that much. I enjoy the challenge of making a complicated financial and service-provision picture clear; I can sometimes enjoy the writing, if it's not too dull; I even enjoy simplifying and codifying processes in ways that make things run more smoothly or efficiently. The fact that I do get enjoyment is no small thing--but the problems I solve are not the problems that truly interest me.

I feel a bit bad for saying that, because so many people are unemployed, or stuck in jobs that are tedious beyond belief, or doing work that is boring and dull and likely low paying. But feeling grateful that my situation is better than many people's situations does not make mine an interesting job. Overall, I get to solve problems, in more or less interesting ways; I get to apply my talents to help other people who are in much worse shape; and I get (relatively speaking) well-compensated for these tasks, so it could be oh-so-much worse. (I could be lugging 50-pound sacks of flour, for $10/hour, for example.) And some days I feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile, insofar as anything we do has any worth.

So there you have it: yes, better, or even good, in many, many ways. And still not enough. Having a bowl of ice cream, and being extremely grateful one has ice cream, does not eliminate the desire for hot fudge sauce.

Yeah--One of THOSE Weeks

Okay, so, the work crap continues. I have two major major major deadlines next week, including the basic grant that funds our center, and I have been able to do almost no work on it (no, seriously, I didn't even get to read the RFP until a week ago or so, even though I've had it for a month). Why? Because it's whack-a-mole month. Every time I turn around someone or some agency needs something and it absolutely cannot possibly wait. The person who was being a pain at work is being an even bigger pain, and I am so unbelievably tired of the time-and-energy suck that this person is. We have a meeting tomorrow a.m., called by this person--when what I should be doing is writing the fucking proposal, already--and I really want no part of it.

Sunday morning I got an email from Chuck: his 81-year-old mom died Sunday morning (on CK's birthday, no less). Apparently she had walked into the hospital a week ago Sunday, seemed to be getting better, then took a bad turn Wednesday. All the choices involved massive, risky intervention, and the best possible (and not terribly likely) outcome involved dialysis and a nursing home for the rest of her life, along with other undesirable aspects, and she opted out of that. Chuck and his sister called her friends and relatives, and everyone got to come and say goodbye to her over the next two days, and she slipped into death Sunday morning with her kids by her bed.

Chuck called me Monday to tell me about the services--a funeral mass in the city in which she lived, but a smaller one here, too, at the cemetery--and told me I was not obligated but was welcome to come. (He told me the details in the previous paragraph as part of that call, too.) Of course I decided to see if there was any way I could make it to the thing here, and, in fact, I could, so I went--fortuitously with a ride from a coworker who lives near there and who had to be off this morning for a meeting at her son's school. She dropped me off and then came back and picked me up, which was a huge, huge help.

When I got there, one of the first people I saw was Chuck's sister, who gave me a big, long hug--she told me, several times, that she was so glad I'd come. And, really, so was I. I liked their mom a lot, and I got along well with her, and I'm glad her death was relatively painless, relatively quick, and in such a manner that enabled her to say goodbye to the people who loved her (and vice versa). Chuck was a bit more restrained, but I realized, much later, that one of the people there (it was a small crowd, maybe 25 people, and nearly all family) was, I think, his current girlfriend. He and I did have an amusing conversation about the fact that the picture on the casket was taken at our wedding (and, apparently, they buried her in the suit she wore, too)--it was a great picture of her, so I'm glad.

The other entertaining moment was when Sis introduced me to a long-time friend of hers, someone about whom I'd been hearing for 10 years but whom I'd never actually met. Sis said, oh, this is my friend Mary, and then turned to me and said this is Narya who is, um, and I said "Chuck's third ex-wife." Which was kind of amusing, and to the point, but also completely explanatory. (Another side note: later, the friend said, I've heard so much about you, I expected you to be very tall. Which made me laugh, because I've realized that i act as though I am much taller than I really am.) I said to Sis afterwards, well, if you're ever in the city, you should come by, we could have dinner, and she jumped all over that, yes she'd like that, etc. etc., which was nice. And Sis's husband's sister, whom I'd met multiple times over the years, was friendly, too, and said in passing that she'd missed seeing me.

Ex-wife number two--CK's mother--came over and we air-kissed (which was fine), but I kind of stayed away from Chuck's cousins. I didn't quite know what to say or not say, so I just stayed the hell out of the way and tried not to be intrusive. I didn't go to the luncheon afterwards--I hadn't planned on it, and I had to get to work, but once I realized the new girlfriend was going to be there, I wouldn't have gone anyway. No need to make Chuck more uncomfortable on an occasion like this. I was just so glad that he invited me to come (and, simultaneously, didn't put pressure on me to come, because he knows that getting to a cemetery in the burbs isn't exactly an easy feat for someone w/o a vehicle) and that I was able to go. She was a good person, and a kind person, and, personally, I always appreciated it that her devout Catholicism was a way for her to be a force for good in the world rather than a dogma that she used to divide people. She looked for the good in people, and didn't care if it came with a communion wafer in hand.

Meanwhile, today was the 26th anniversary of my sister's death, so I had that going for me, too.

I've just been so stressed out lately. Work is fraying me, because it's all deadline-related and the federal government is not interested in whatever excuses I may have. Simply not interested. And I had an editing job to finish over the weekend, too, so Friend and I ended up bailing on Pearl Jam (much as I wanted to go) AND bailing on Elvis Costello last night--a concert I had looked forward to all summer, actually. We didn't have tickets for either one, so we weren't out the money (and we did manage to see Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal on Friday, which was fabulous), but still, bummer.

Tomorrow I'm going to work as long a day as I can possibly stand, and maybe get some stuff out of the way. I've already decided that I am not going to let the morning meeting get to me. My boss and coworker and I hashed it all out for 2+ hours this afternoon, and I think we reached a place where we're on the same page, and I instructed coworker that we need to let Boss take the lead tomorrow. So, we'll see what happens; I have too much real work to do to allow myself to get sidetracked into pointless bullshit.

Sortofa Recipe

If you embiggen the pics in the last post, you can see the lusciousness of the fruit all the better . . . It was REALLY easy to make, too. The cake, such as it is, is a pavlova, i.e., whipped egg whites and sugar (with a little salt, some brown sugar, and some vanilla and vinegar), baked in a very slow oven for an hour, then the oven turned off and everything's left inside for another hour with the door propped open. The original recipe called for three 8-inch pans (buttered, dusted w/ powdered sugar, and then parchment circles on the bottom), which you were then (after baking) supposed to layer with berries and a mixture of heavy cream and sour cream. Okay, so how did I change it?

First, I only did two cake pans, not three (and they may have been 9-inch; whatever I have), and with the rest of it, I buttered and sugared three rings that I set up on silpats. I thought individual-sized desserts might be a nice option, and the rings would make that possible. Second, a few reviewers (the recipe was from Gourmet, but posted on epicurious) noted that it was difficult to cut the assembled dessert without tearing it apart, so I decided not to layer it--which was also useful given that there were only going to be two of us eating it. Third, I have some mascarpone that I wanted to use, and the heavy cream/sour cream mix didn't do much for me, so I beat the mascarpone with a little milk to thin it and some good maple syrup (no brown-colored HFCS for me, thank you).

So Saturday I mixed raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with a little honey just before we sat down to dinner (grilled vegetables, grilled wild turkey, fresh corn on the cob, and a tomato salad with fresh mozzarella), which enabled everything to macerate without falling apart. I put the fruit on top of one layer, dolloped on the mascarpone/maple mix, and we each took a fork and had at it. Sunday (steak--yes, beef, if you can believe it--grilled sweet potatos (peeled, thick slices, in a buttered foil packet, and sprinkled with some brown sugar), and a morel/wine reduction/onion sauce for the meat, along with more corn and more tomato salad, this time with fresh basil as well) I used raspberries, blackberries, and peaches, and it was even better. I froze the three smaller ones, so we'll see how they do (theoretically freezing them is okay). The only thing I'm not sure about is whether I used the correct amount of egg whites. I scaled out a double recipe of the whites and then the sugar, looked at it, and thought, hmmm, no way is that going to fit in my 5-quart mixer. I distinctly remember removing the sugar, but I don't remember if I took out the extra whites. Guess I'll have to make it again and see!

It's a really incredible summer dessert, while everything is ripe and fresh, but I bet it would work just fine with high-quality frozen fruit as well.

So today I stumbled across Rick Bayless' blog, and the post that was up described the last show (or, rather, the behind-the-scenes part of it); I also found his post about the previous show, and it was kind of amusing how much he echoed some of what I'd said, though with fewer fucks. (Incidentally, until today the site name was root4rick; someone was thinking ahead.) Here's his comment on that show and Spike: "Hubert seemed genuinely excited to work with them, Michael sprouted a side none of us had ever seen in the competition, Anita seemed to hunker down and just want to get through the competition and I was worried about building a team that could do my food (guessing that none of them had experience with traditional Mexican cuisine). There was one thing we all agreed on, though: none of us wanted Spike. He just seemed so cocky, not a team player."

And I've been thinking more about the whole dust-up between Chiarello and the TC cheftestant in the next-to-last ep, and I still think the latter was wrong. Yes, I know the cheftestants are good chefs in their own right, in at least some cases--a few even own restaurants--and I even think that Chiarello was being a dickhead in a number of places in that ep, but that's not the point. Your job is to help your chef win, and you don't accomplish that if you're mouthing off to the chef from another team; no way is that going to work out for you.

We're having a kind of go-round like that at work now. Someone is being a dick, basically, and trying to go after my boss, which is just a very, very bad idea. For one thing, he and another team member and I have each other's backs, and this guy is just plain making a mistake. But I also think he just loses sight of what the ultimate goal really is: i.e., providing services to the people who need them. Everything we do should be with the aim of enabling us to do a better job of that; everything else is a waste of time. Including the endless fucking pointless meetings, but that's unavoidable, I guess.

Weekend Dessert

More Posting About TV and Food

Yes, I know, I should be editing. But I miss writing for my (and, hopefully, your at least occasional) pleasure, rather than writing a grant proposal, or an email, or comment in something I'm editing. This extremely stressful patch has another three weeks to it, but it will be followed by the Month of Concerts (yeah, I know; what else is new). So far, I have tickets for six concerts, and a seventh may be in the works as well. That's not counting last week's Phish concert or the three concerts I'm hoping to see in the next week or so, or the beer festival of last week, or various other activities planned for the next six weeks or so.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for background noise while I edited, and I ended up flipping on Top Chef: Masters. Rick Bayless, of local fame, was among the contestants, so I left it on . . . and got sucked in. Of course. Overall, I'd say that the thing that stands out, from the three or four episodes that I've seen, is that there is WAY less drama, and a lot more emphasis on the food, and it is so much more enjoyable. The "cheftestants" do this for a living, they're playing for a donation to their favorite charity rather than for their Big Break, and they're really not going to get their knickers in a bunch or sabotage each other (as least, if any of that is happening, it's all being edited out); on the contrary, they seem to lend each other a hand pretty reliably.

Another thing: there's not a lot of working together, at least on the shows I saw, so more of the individual chef, rather than the working-with-and-against-each-other-simultaneously thing goes on. One of the things that becomes more obvious, in this format, is how stupid a lot of the challenges are (they're using various challenges from regular seasons of TC). The most interesting challenge was that each chef made his/her favorite/signature dish, and then one of the other chefs ended up having to "reinterpret" it.

So Wednesday night they were down to Rick Bayless, Anita Lo, Michael Chiarello, and Hubert Keller. The chefs do a quickfire challenge (identify, while blindfolded, these 20 substances; Chiarello got one more than Bayless & Keller, so got to choose first), then they bring in 12 people who were cheftestants from previous seasons of TC. Given that I have not watched the show all that much except for last year, I didn't know anyone except Jamie and Fabio from last year, and this guy Spike, who showed up in a couple of episodes last year and who always wears a fucking fedora. (Spike wears on my last goddamned fucking nerve, in case you couldn't tell.) The master chefs have two minutes with each candidate, to interview them all and, presumably, make a ranking.

Now is when it got interesting. Keller is shown asking several people whether they know how to do pastry. (Only one says yes; the other two are like, eh, no, not really.) Bayless is asking questions about what they like, what flavors, yadda yadda. I don't remember what they showed Lo asking, but she picks Jamie from last season, because apparently Jamie used to work for/with her. Chiarello is being Mr. Big Man Chef: go find a knife and carrot and show me how you dice a carrot. (Someone--Spike, maybe?--actually refused to do it) What's my name? (to see who can pronounce the last name correctly). What do you call me in the kitchen? ("Chef" is the only correct answer to that question.) Kinda maybe being a dick, hard to tell; it would have been more interesting if there had been more cheftestants than slots, number one, and, number two, Spike was the last one picked; Keller got stuck with him.

So the chefs get together with their teams to plan the meal (buffet for 200 "Hollywood insiders," whoever the fuck they are), go to Whole Paycheck (whose CEO has pissed me off with his health care bullshit enough so that I am going to boycott his fucking stores) to buy shit, and do some prep. The next day, they're in the middle of cooking, and they're told they need to pack up and move everything to the venue (or a different venue?). Which is kinda bullshit usual TC stuff, but it does fuck with the chefs, some of whom are making things that require a certain kind/amount of cooking to develop flavor profiles. There's also a shot of one of the team members (Dale somebody?) screaming at Chiarello, saying, "What are you going to do about it???" and then Chiarello interviews that he's been doing this for 20 years and he has a Dale for lunch regularly. Looked like a lot of dick-waving on both sides, if you ask me, but still: Chiarello is the chef, AND Dale isn't on his team, so WTF? Dude, get the fuck over yourself, go back to your room, do your tasks.

So they pack up and move, and, when they get there, they discover that (a) it's going to be served outside, in the sun, and (b) they each have to cut a team member. The former condition completely fucks Anita, and not in a good way, because she had been planning a raw bar, which is totally not something you do in the hot sun, but also not something you can change two hours before serving time. It's also interesting that the team member she cuts is Jamie, with some not-completely-coherent interviewing about how Jamie isn't that good after all (too slow, I think was the problem). And when Hubert cuts Spike, Spike's comments--that he thinks it's a compliment to be chosen last, because it means the chefs are afraid of him totally RULING with his mad chef skillz--provide further evidence that he is delusional; it's a good thing I didn't watch that season, or I would have reached through the TV to drag him off the set by his balls. Or stopped watching, more likely.

Blah, blah, blah.

The crowd shows up, eats, whatevs. Everyone lurves Hubert's and Rick's food: Keller serves 18 (yes, 18) different food items. Bayless isn't far behind, and, apparently, it's all quite tasty. Anita is totally hosed: no way that raw fish in the sun is a good idea, but she can't do anything about that two hours before service. That is actually the thing that pissed me off most about the episode. Yes, one must always be able to work on the fly, but that's a changeup that's really out of the question, because any chef would tailor the menu to fit the venue, and Anita interviews that she knows it's a bad idea, and she knows she's hosed, but there's not a lot she can do about it--make fish soup? In short, I don't think she would have lost if they hadn't thrown that particular twist, and it highlights the aspect of the whole show that I think does a poor job of representing the fix-it-on-the-fly aspect of any kind of food service work.

Michael's meal doesn't really seem to come together; the swordfish looks like an unholy mess; hard to say what else is there. The judges don't have anything good to say about it, really--but it's not raw fish in the sun, so, hey, he's safe for another week.

The thing that really stood out, though, is that both Keller and Bayless were portrayed as incredible team leaders, people who were, on one hand, completely in charge, but, on the other hand, were completely open to contributions from other people and who expected their team members to perform, i.e., didn't think they were likely to be useless idiots. Bayless openly credits mr. molecular gastronomy (ew) with the avocado ice cream being created tableside. And both of them were just (portrayed as) very calm; no histrionics, no drama, no ego-for-the-sake-of-ego.

It's hard to say whether there's a relationship between their calm demeanor and team leadership and the excellence of their product. I know one of the big chefs in this city--has cookbooks and such, too--has a rep as a dick, but the product there is excellent, I'm told (I've never been, and his politics annoy me sufficiently that I don't feel compelled to go). OTOH, people like Bossman are pretty calm, pretty supportive of the team, etc., and also produce excellent product. What it comes down to, for me, is whether I would have wanted to work with the person, and, personally, I made an effort to avoid places that had bad reps that way. Some of it is just that I'm old and cranky, and I am seriously not up for some guy, no matter how marvelous a chef he's supposed to be (or actually is), being an asshole. Clearly, as Bayless and Keller show, it is not necessary for someone to be an asshole, so why would someone put up with it? But I also recognize that my calculus on these things is different, in large part because of my personality and in smaller part because of my age. (Seriously: I'm going to seek out some 35-year-old superstar to berate me just because he has a famous restaurant? It's just food, people.)

Anyway. I'd meant to describe the two incredible meals that Friend and I made over the weekend, but that will have to wait for another post. However long it takes me to put that together.