The Takeaway Was . . .

My antipathy toward kumbayfuckingyah activities is well-documented and longstanding. Nothing I experienced last week has caused me to change my mind. I won't get into my objections to the day's events that were specific to our organization; those are internal, and a function of the work we're doing now to merge some service bits together. And I won't even object to some of the other training sessions I've had to attend recently; while they didn't do much for me, they clearly seemed to be valuable to many other people, and I don't want to harsh that. Sometimes you just have to sit through shit and do your best not to put a damper on other people's experience. I didn't succeed in that nearly as well as I would have liked, and I admit that it's a challenge for me, and one on which I truly feel I need to work.

However.

Two things in particular highlighted my opposition. The first thing was in relation to the afternoon's "team-building" exercise. Even though the team that I was on actually won (despite have two people, me being one of them, with official Bad Attitudes about the whole thing), I found the whole thing to be completely tedious and, more important, a complete fucking waste of time. I tried very hard not to let my attitude fuck up other people's chances to win, and, in fact, it could be argued that one of my contributions was instrumental in our winning. And I still think it was a complete fucking waste of time. Why?

Because teams don't get "built" by forcing people to work together on some stupid, pointless task. Every last person, except, of course, our would-be Galtian would-be overlords, recognizes that nearly everything we do is a group effort. Even my dissertation, which, of course, I had to actually write, relied on many other people for help, advice, a sounding board, etc., and those pieces were, in fact, crucial to my being able to write a goddamned dissertation. Should their names go on it as co-authors? Well, no, probably not, given the way we think about these things, and given that, without me, that particular piece of scholarship would not have occurred. But I absolutely believe that others' contributions were vital to my being able to do it.

Back to my point: the whole afternoon's exercise was just stupid and pointless. It accomplished nothing. Nothing was gained. No teams were built. We would have spent our time better if we had come together to take a crack at some of the issues the organization is actually trying to address, rather than what we did, and people would have ended up with a greater sense of real accomplishment.

My second serious opposition was to a different activity during the day, one wherein a speaker came in and talked about changes, and how to deal with them, and blahblahfuckingblah. S/he had a particular Model Of Change (of course), which was simplistic and not at all how I think about these things, but whatevs. I could suffer through that part by stressing about all the writing that wasn't getting done on the thing that is due this Friday and not listening much to the speaker. The thing that put me over the edge, though, was that each table was supposed to use this Model to write down some change in the past year that we experienced, and to analyze the change in terms of the Model.

I absolutely refused to do it.

I didn't say anything, but I didn't fill out my notecard, and I didn't say anything when we were all supposed to be Discussing It In Our Groups. I try, as best I can, not to piss too much on what others are doing, and, hey, maybe some people get something out of shit like that; not my place to say, and good on them if they do.

But I am profoundly uncomfortable talking about made-up shit like that, in groups of people at work. I will tell people very intimate things. I have had some very deep discussions with all kinds of coworkers. I share all kinds of shit. Nevertheless, I repeat, I am profoundly uncomfortable doing this kind of pseudo-group-therapy. I hate it. I think it's worse than pointless, and I have no interest in babbling about this shit to the people with whom I work. I think it's demeaning and degrading, and I think it's a distraction from the true issues that we face, from the true elephants in the room that everyone's ignoring.

Meanwhile, I spent substantial parts of Saturday and Sunday in my office, and today was nearly a 12-hour day and tomorrow and Wednesday are likely to be similar. In fact, I'll be lucky if it's just tomorrow and Wednesday, and not an all-nighter on Thursday as well.

Other than that? The kumbaifuckingyah event was wonderful.

Sing With Me

Rest in peace, Big Man . . .

Today is a big kumbaifuckingyah day, and, as you might imagine, I am absolutely breathless with anticipation. The fact that I have a major fucking competing grant due next Friday and have done not nearly enough work on it yet, and the fact that I'm going to be losing Wednesday afternoon to training on some new purchase order system (a four-hour training? is calculus involved? because otherwise four hours seems excessive), aren't bothering me at ALL! You know why? Because I simply love, love, love all-day retreats. It just excites and energizes me So. Much.

Was that convincing? Yeah, I figured not, but it's the best I can do. Welcome to the world of senior management, where you slap on a happy face and do the needful. And get paid for it, mind you. But still; I have so much fucking work to do. I hate these things to begin with, but when I am completely overwhelmed, it just makes them worse.

In non-work-related news, I have managed to find someone to fix my broken paneling, which excites me to no end. He'll do the work after the beginning of July, and he won't be cheap, but he really does seem to know what he's doing. I also ordered the chairs for the sunroom, and they're under construction at the moment--I'm also getting a third chair, plus footstool, for the living room, at half price. Turns out some bozo decided he didn't want what he ordered after all, and returned it and made a huge fuss about it, and my furniture guy was happy to get rid of it. I also seem to have located someone who can move the stuff when it's complete, for cheaper than the shipping costs would have been, so that's exciting news, too.

And rowing classes! Those turned out to be totally cool. It turns out I was, in fact, Doing It Wrong for all those years, and that doing it right is harder. I liked the classes so much I bought a package, too, and am aiming for once or twice a week, plus the workouts at home.

I had intended to go to a class last night, but work got in the way, and, by the time I got home, I simply could not motivate myself, despite the fact that these days I look at pictures of food and my clothes get tighter. I'm trying not to stress out about that, but not doing very well. Some of it is vanity, of course; no denying that. But some of it is practical--I really do not want to have to buy new clothes; and I really like the clothes I have, but I can't wear many of them without looking like an overstuffed sausage and feeling very uncomfortable (physically: they're tight); and I can't help but think that hauling around an extra 20 pounds is just tiring in and of itself--it's like having a load of groceries strapped to me at all times. Actually, it IS groceries strapped to me--in the sense that I've already consumed them and they're now attached. And of course this morning I had all these grand plans of a workout before the kumbaifuckingyah event, but that didn't happen, either. Too bad; so sad.

A full night's sleep would be nice, too. I don't need all that much, but more than four hours would be nice . . .

Letters from Narya, Part II

Dear Blame-It-on-the-Hippies Child-Abuse-Apologists in the Catholic Church:

You are shameless at best, and possibly evil.

I am part of the so-called baby boom. The tail end of it, to be sure, but I was born before 1960 and I remember where I was when both Kennedy brothers were shot. I also remember what has been called the "sexual revolution," and, indeed, I would say that I benefited mightily from it. (And I don't mean in the objectified and pronulated way that young women today supposedly "benefit" from some changes in sexual mores that have the net effect of requiring that said women spend even more time and energy pleasing men.) While patriarchy was by no means overthrown--not even close--there were a couple of whiffs of fresh air before the megatheocraticcapitalist system clamped down again. In this somewhat fresher air, people--ALL people, not just people with a penis--felt more free to experience themselves as sexual beings for their own benefit. At no time was anyone encouraged to molest children.

This was never, and will never be, an acceptable expression of anything. The only institution that seems to regard sex with children to be acceptable is the Catholic church. Please do not protest that you do not find it acceptable, because your actions speak much louder than your words. For decades, you have turned a blind eye to its occurrence in your ranks, and you have protected members of your association who commit these crimes. It looks and sounds like a criminal conspiracy to me.

And it's not the fault of hippies, or of people having sex without a patriarchal institution giving its seal of approval, or of Woodstock. Stop blaming others because you have bred and nurtured a group of child molesters.

Thank you--
Narya

Letters from Narya, Part I

Dear Piano-Playing-with-the-Windows-Open Neighbor:

You suck.

I understand that you may be playing for your own enjoyment, and, on some level, I applaud that. If there are deities, they could could certainly attest to my own amateur status in nearly everything I do. I have played sports--and, for that matter, an instrument, many decades ago--and I never achieved a level of competence that would cause someone to mistake me for a professional. I had fun, though, and, while I was doing those things, I tried not to inflict my fumbling efforts on people who weren't similarly fumbling.

You, however, play--badly!--for hours and hours on end, and you subject unwilling others to your efforts. If I sit in my sunroom--possibly my favorite spot in the whole place--during the months of the year the windows can be open, I am forced to endure your tuneless banging away. Even the Loaner Cat sleeps with her paw over her ears so she doesn't have to listen. Stop it, please. Close the windows when you play, or I may be forced to figure out in which apartment you dwell--across the street, I believe--and come visit you with an implement of destruction in hand.

Thank you--
Narya

Sunday Morning Roundtable

I keep trying to come up with schemes that will get me back to a half dozen things I've let fall by the wayside--this lonely little blog being one of them--but. Yes, but; we can all in fill in the blanks, I imagine.

The biggest issue has been exercise: In early March, I think it was, I had a week or ten days of some kind of outing nearly every night, plus all the stuff at work, and I just stopped working out. Again. For several weeks. I picked it back up again about two weeks ago, and I'm working on not berating myself, because, frankly, that kind of self-talk doesn't get anywhere. Same with the yoga. Am I doing it every day? Nope. I can find time to sit and provide a lap for the cat; I can find time to zone out with a computer game or tv game, but yoga? Not so much, apparently. But, again, I'm trying to get back to it, two sun salutations at a time.

One thing that helps is that I know how much better I feel when I get regular exercise. It's subtle--perhaps because I walk more in my daily life than many people so am not a complete slug all the time?--but I notice it.

Yesterday morning featured an exercise in another type of futility: I bought a DVR from friends, months ago, but I have been completely unable to set it up to record. What with the TV, the HD cable box, and the DVR, there are about 473 wires hanging all over the place, and I still cannot get the fucking thing to work properly--or at all, actually. So I'm going to throw up my hands and spend the extra $10/month and just get the cheap version of Tivo. Fuck it. It's not that I actually want or need to record anything for posterity, in general, I just want to be able to watch, say, the formula 1 races without having to get up at 2 am to do so. And the DVR works just fine as a DVD player, so it's not a total waste. Yes, over the course of the year it's probably more expensive, but it also means I don't have to buy disks, which ain't cheap, and I'm sure it'll be fine.

This morning, however, I've been busily assembling food items. I wanted to make a semolina sesame bread, but one formula didn't use any kind of preferment at all, and another formula used starter, which I don't have, so I settled on a preferment overnight. I used a combination of white whole wheat and semolina flours--about half and half--with about 10% bread flour thrown in. I added some powdered milk, but no fat. I decided to let the dough rise a second time after shaping, which is what it's doing now; we'll see how this all comes out.

I also hacked up onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and a venison roast, and threw in some cloves, fire-roasted tomatos, red wine, and fresh rosemary, along with something from my freezer that I'm pretty sure was oven-roasted tomatos. That's what it looked like, anyway, but I can't tell for sure. That will simmer all day, and I'm going to make some fresh pasta later and ladle some of the stew, along with some quickly sauteed greens (I think I have some beet greens in the freezer) and some grated parmesan or pecorino over top.

Last night, while out for dinner, I had some panna cotta that had cherries that had been macerated in simple syrup and balsamic vinegar, so I threw some of that sauce together, too. If it's too sweet or too sour or something, I also have some citrus simple syrup and some lemon rinds in it, so that will help. And I have some lemon cakes in the freezer that should be used up, so it looks like there will be dessert tonight, too.

Probably won't suck too much, though I suppose it might.

The other nice thing about all of this is that it once again uses up stuff that's been sitting around and needed using; that always makes me feel a little virtuous. Plus? It makes room for more stuff. The CSA share is starting up again in a couple of weeks, so I need to make sure last year's stuff is out of the freezer. (Ideally I'd like to defrost the freezer, but that's probably beyond my capacities at the moment.)

I'll try to post pics, or at least a taste report.

Lady Cooks-a-Lot Strikes Again!

One might surmise that things have been a bit hectic. And, yes, that would be a good guess. The short version is that my new boss is now our new head honcho; the old head honcho is out. I don't really know details, and I sure as fuck wouldn't put them here if I did. The upshot, though, includes a promotion and another raise for me, which, yay, and a very cool new job that actually maximizes the use of many of my best skills (or it will eventually; for the time being, I have to learn a whole bunch of stuff and teach a whole bunch of stuff to other people), while working for one of the best bosses I've ever had and working with a team of people I like and respect. So, yay.

Today's cooking has included, so far: more whole wheat soft pretzels and pretzel rolls (the latter will be used for tonight's venison sandwiches, more on which in a moment), lemon bars (more meyer lemons, and a recipe cobbled together from multiple sources), and wild turkey and white bean cassoulet, which is simmering on the stove at the moment. The soft pretzel/pretzel roll recipe is cobbled together from the KAF whole grain book and from the bakery formula for soft pretzels (and, needless to say, I use baking soda rather than lye in the water bath), and the whole grains in it reallty give the bread a wonderful chewy flavor. The preferment definitely helps, I suspect; I use whole wheat flour for that, which probably helps mellow it out some.

The lemon bars include a crust from the KAF book, sort of--I used a mix of chopped oats, whole wheat flour, and unbleached flour--and the filling was sort of from a David Lebovitz recipe, except I had to double it because the crust formula was for a bigger pan. I also cut back on the sugar--actually I used honey--because I was using Meyer lemons. They're quite tasty, too--lemony without being either too sweet or too sour. I'll probably cut back the sugar in the crust next time I make it, but in general I thought they were a success.

The cassoulet recipe is from "A New Way to Cook," and instead of cooking the meat that she suggests, I rendered some pancetta and then threw in some already-cooked wild turkey meat from Friend. I also used wild turkey broth. It's simmering still, and I have to add the chopped carrots and onions to it in awhile, but I suspect it's going to be pretty fabulous.

I have not exercised in weeks, though. I've either been out carousing (week before last) or coming home and staring at the wall with the Loaner Cat in my lap, stirring only to put on a hockey game or Top Chef. This is not a desireable development, however, not least because it has reversed all the progress I'd made in fitting into my clothes again. And then Friday I managed to finally catch a cold--I say finally because it seems as though everyone around me is sick more often, and more seriously, than I am. I actually had managed to completely avoid all illness this winter, and this cold is pretty mild. (I started sucking on zinc lozenges and drinking extra liquid before I was even sure that it was, indeed, a cold, and that seems to have reduced my "suffering" to "blowing my nose and sneezing a lot.")

One of the things that has occurred to me in the past month or so has to do with change. As you can imagine, there have been a whole boatload of changes in the past six or seven months--bosses and head honchos and organizational structure and even some organizational direction have been changing steadily, with some big dramatic bits every now and then for punctuation. While it is a little unsettling, in many ways, I've realized that it's not really bothering me as much as it's bothering some of my coworkers, and I was wondering why.

Was I hiding from my own stress or something? And then I realized that, for me, the stressful changes in my life have included big questions like "how the fuck do I pay the rent?" and "what about food?" and "oh, fuck, now what am I going to do with my life?" and "how am I going to pay off those loans?" Generally, several of those are in play, and, more often than not, there are multiple explosions in my personal life as well. So, compared to those kinds of stressors, the past six or seven months hasn't felt so bad. Not necessarily all puppies and unicorns and flowers, of course, but compared to being unemployed, it pretty much rocks.

Okay, so the cassoulet is pretty much done; the venison is sliced thin and marinating with garlic and a little wine; in a minute I'll get up and slice an onion, maybe actually caramelize it and take it out of the pan. The shrimp can be cooked quickly, and then the venison can be flash cooked, basically, the the cheese gets melted on top and the whole thing gets scooped up onto a pretzel roll (in Friend's case, one that has been smeared with mustard).

Friend has gotten addicted to these steak sandwiches. I did it on a whim months ago, then we didn't do it for awhile, but we've started again, and added the homemade pretzel bread, and it's just amazingly flavorful. We'll probably switch to the grill when it warms up a little (and the Loaner Cat is back at either Friend's house or his mom's; she doesn't like being abandoned). But in the meanwhile, this rather rocks.

Lemony Goodness

Yogi Berra noted that nobody went to Ruggeri's restaurant any more because it was too crowded. That's how I feel about going out to dinner around Valentine's Day. I don't have much of an opinion about VD either way; I do not participate in the craziness, I do not expect the men in my life to make gestures of any kind, much less big flower-and-jewel-encrusted gestures, and I tend to take the Twisty Faster view of it, that it's a big trade--baubles in exchange for access to vaginas, or, more to the point, access to a particular vagina. What it means, though, is that the restaurants are all clogged up with people engaging in this trade, which means I avoid it like the plague. The only drag of that is that Friend and I like to go out to dinner once a week or so, and lately weekends have been more convenient for that, but it's out of the question this weekend. (Chuck and I took the same approach to this.)

So I headed to Whole Paycheck yesterday, and got some tuna steaks, which I marinated in orange juice & peel, garlic, and fresh rosemary, a handful of shrimp (Friend likes shrimp), and three pounds of butter. And a bunch of other stuff, of course, because what's the point of a shopping trip if you don't haul 50 pounds of stuff on the el? I also braised some chard and collard greens with some pancetta and onions, and they were pretty tasty, too. I had bought a bunch of pancetta and I'd had the person slice it very thick, and then I froze it in approximately-two-ounce portions, and it has been extremely useful. Whenever I want a little of that bacony goodness, I just grab one of the portions and chop it up. It just occurs to me that I should have thrown a splash of balsamic vinegar into the greens, too . . .

And then I made up a recipe! Sort of, anyway, with some help from the chatline person at King Arthur. I was looking for a way to use the meyer lemons and make a cake, but with flour rather than almonds like the last time, and I wanted it to be very lemony, but I didn't want something that had a ton of fat in it. So I found a recipe (from KA, actually) that used buttermilk, and I reduced the butter, eliminated the buttermilk, and subbed lemon juice, water, and powdered milk, and used a lot of peel (about 10 grams--I ended up using the peel and juice of four lemons). I didn't have a mary ann pan (and had to look it up to figure out what it even was), but I suddenly remembered that I had a mini-bundt pan, and that worked beautifully. I topped the cakes with some whipped cream and raspberries and strawberries that Friend hauled over here from his freezer. The cakes were absolutely delightful; I suspect muffin tins would have worked as well (and were actually my first thought). Lemony and cakey and even a little chewy, because I buttered the tins very thoroughly. And, for once, I wrote down what I was doing, so I can actually make them again. I know! Who woulda thought!

Today I think it's going to be some venison steak, because I love me some venison steak. I have a head of cauliflower I need to use, and I'll see what grains I have floating around in the cupboard. And cookie-making needs to ensue, as well, so I can bring some to work tomorrow. I already mixed the dough; it's been chilling (literally) in the fridge since yesterday--I made a double batch. And I also bought a pineapple and two mangos, so I think I'll make a fruit salad, too, to take for breakfasts this week.

I think a lot of my food blogging is because work is still, as noted a steaming pile of stress. It doesn't affect me in some ways, but it does in others; one of the people with whom I work most closely isn't holding up his/her part of the work. Our old boss used to cover for him/her, or rope the person into line when I (privately) bitched enough about it, but the old boss isn't there any more, and Coworker is pulling the same old shit. Newboss is less tolerant--okay, not tolerant at all--and the rest of the team is getting really damn tired of the shit, too. It will come to a head sooner rather than later, I think, because Coworker thinks s/he can skate and it is just not going to fly. Newboss won't allow it or cover for it, and the rest of us are getting mighty tired of doing Coworker's work.

One thing that's been interesting to me is my own . . . complicity, I guess. I realized way back when that Coworker isn't able to do some of the things that would have been associated with his/her position--vital things, that really needed to be done--but also brought other strengths that we didn't necessarily know we needed. So, I took on some of Coworker's stuff--okay, a lot of it--which has worked out okay for me, because I've gotten experience that I would not otherwise have and some of it has been an interesting puzzle for me to solve, and I got my big raise as a result of it.

When Oldboss was around, I realized Oldboss wasn't going to confront Coworker in any meaningful way, and I recognized there wasn't anything I could do, short of quitting, and that I didn't want to do that. It was, after all, working out for me, even if it meant the labor distribution was somewhat unfair. When Coworker was getting too out of hand in some way, I'd bitch to Oldboss and get him/her to deal with it at least a little, and Oldboss also would cover for Coworker, in the sense of being present in the office when Coworker took many of his/her vacations and days off and whatevers. Newboss isn't willing to do that covering, and I'm finding that I'm actually rather relieved. I didn't like it before, but I liked Oldboss and there wasn't any way to really confront openly what was going on, other than my bitching about it, so I realized that and let it be. Now, however, it's coming out in the open, and I much prefer that, uncomfortable though it may be in some ways.

The other three of us on the senior management team are basically fed up with the whole charade, and Newboss is behind us on this, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Me, personally, I'm getting tired of people coming to me with things that are Coworker's responsibility--they do it because (a) Coworker isn't doing the thing, or is out of town or out of the office and/or (b) they know I'll get it done somehow. What Coworker doesn't realize is that it makes him/her look bad--people already questioned what Coworker actually contributes, and this isn't going to make answering that question any more pleasant for Coworker. The other thing Coworker doesn't realize is that I've been his/her biggest advocate, in some ways, pointing out the assets that may not be visible to everyone. Now, however, I'm sufficiently tired of my plate getting more heaped while s/he gallivants off somewhere, I'm less willing to come up with a cover story.

My main goal, through all of this, is to try to be clearheaded and fair-minded. I haven't been doing a great job at that, so far, but I'm working on it. I did realize that the thing that bothers me the most is that I get pissy and annoyed, and that's not a place I like to be. I don't like when I get that way--and my actions are my own responsibility. I don't care if it's "justified," it's not helpful or pleasant, either to experience or to be around. It's all a learning experience, I guess.

I am arguably throwing away $30 tonight, and I am not usually so profilgate, but I simply could not face it. My tile-making class meets tonight--it was cancelled last week but will be made up, which means I haven't been there in two weeks as it is. However, I had to shlep to the other end of the city not just yesterday but today as well, as the temporary filling fell off again yesterday. This means I was up by 4 or so and out the door by a little after 5 am two days in a row. In addition by the time the class is over tonight, it will be bitter cold again, with multiple degrees below zero wind chill, and the trip home takes at least 40 minutes, on a good night with good public transportation karma, which I have not been having lately. (Today's episode: the bus on which I was riding this morning pulled over on Lake Shore Drive. We sat there for 10 minutes, waiting for the next bus, onto which we were all herded. Luckily I had left some wiggle room in terms of the buses I was planning to catch, but the driver never did explain what the problem was.)

And I just didn't feel like it. Work continues to be a steaming pile of stress, and it's been brutally cold this week, and whine, whine, whine. Somehow, coming home and sitting on the couch with a cat in my lap and working on getting on the outside of some wine just sounded like a much better idea. So far, I'm right about that. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out whether I'm just whining and I need to STFU and get on with whatever it is, or whether I really do need to skip whatever it is.

So, yes, I have hauled my sorry ass all the way to the other end of the city three times in the past week, and two of those three episodes have involved the asscrack of dawn. The dentist was a bit abashed today--but it's just the kind of thing that's going to happen with an inlay as big as mine is, so I saw no point in getting pissy about it. It also means that they'll make it a point to get me in as soon as the piece comes back from the lab rather than making me wait a month (which is when my appointment was originally scheduled). Meanwhile, I've also discovered that the culprit in the recent recurrance of the back pain was my winter boots. Last weekend, Friend hauled my new boots--purchased at the end of last winter, on sale, and left at his house--over here, and I've been wearing them all week, and my back pain and heel pain? Nearly non-existent.

What I really want is a couple of days off--to go hang at the tile studio and work on my stuff; to get a massage; to take myself out for a meal; to work out (I haven't been able to get myself to do that this week, either); to sit somewhere with a hot beverage and a good book. And somehow I'm going to figure out how to get that, despite the continuing pile of things on fire on my desk.

Half a Tooth is Better Than

Remember that part where I got a temporary inlay on my tooth? Turns out it was a bit more temporary than planned, seeing as how it came off in my mouth today (while I was eating potatos, so it's not like I was chomping down on taffy or something). About a third of the tooth is completely gone (the inlay is going on top of some composite they put in, so it's not as though there's exposed nerves or anythinglThey're going to squeeze me in tomorrow morning at 7:10 am, which means I have to leave here at 5-something. However! Afterward I'll get to meet a friend who lives at the complete opposite end of the city from me and who also doesn't have a vehicle, so we rarely get to see each other in person. (Yes, I know, where did all this pollyanna shit come from?) I suppose I "should" be heading directly to work, but I do not care, and I know that neither Newboss nor my coworkers will care.

I did make the fougasse, and it came out okay--not great, but okay. The fillings were actually quite good--I put pine nuts in with the rosemary and pear, and I absolutely loved the flavor combination. The texture of the bread was off a bit, but all in all it was pretty good. For dinner I made beer-braised cabbage with venison ring bologna (which was unbelievably easy and unbelievably tasty); wild turkey breast, which was marinated in sliced Meyer lemon, garlic, and fresh sage; and some roasted butternut squash: serious yummage, plus lunch leftovers. Leftovers for lunch is one of my main goals, because I probably save $150 a month by bringing my lunch, and, more to the point, it tastes better (and is probably healthier, for that matter).

I've been trying to write this for a couple of hours now, and I can't seem to focus. The cat is bringing the cute, and I"m tired, and I need to get up at the asscrack of dawn, so perhaps bed is a better thought. After I lay out my clothes for tomorrow, anyway.

This Week in Baking

Friday was an expensive exercise in shlepping. Two different bus delays increased by 50% the amount of time I spent on public transportation--and, given that my dentist is at the other end of the city, I was already looking at three hours on various forms of buses and trains. And the dentist visit cost $1400 (as Friend put it, there goes one of the chairs for my sunroom . . . which isn't quite the case, but close). My dentist is wonderful--I like him personally, and he has kept my teeth in my mouth--but dental care isn't cheap, especially at his level. (He teaches around the country, because he's at the cutting edge for various techniques, and he's one of the dentists for the Blackhawks.) It's worth it to me--the expense and the extended travel time--but I can see why it wouldn't be possible for everyone. And this whole adventure was expensive because he worked on two teeth and because one of them requires an inlay (rather than a crown, which he likes to avoid as long as possible). Oh well; mostly I"m thankful that I can afford it and that he's so good.

This week's baking is going to involve apricots and ginger. I've now started taking requests. My Newboss doesn't like fruit (don't ask; there's a long story there), which obviously eliminates a whole host of desserts, but s/he will be out of town for this week's management team meeting so I can ignore that restriction this week. BTart has provided some wonderful suggestions, and I'll probably end up doing gingerbread with apricots for Tuesday.

Today's experiment, however, is fougasse. I haven't made it it awhile, and of course I ended up combining several formulas (all from King Arthur, though one was from the Whole Grain book and the others were from the website), not least because I only had a little whole wheat flour. So, I used that in the preferment--which came up nice and bubbly and sour--and then threw in mostly all-purpose in the dough. I also threw in a little barley flour, just to finish the bag, and some high-fiber flour, and a handful of bread flour. For the fillings, I'm using dried pears, fresh rosemary, and maybe some chopped walnuts if I have any, and for the other I'm using apricots, candied ginger, and maybe almonds.

When you used dried fruit in something--cranberries, cherries, and blueberries are probably an exception--it's a good idea to soak the fruit in boiling water for 10 minutes or so. This is especially true for large pieces like apricots and, especially, pear halves. After soaking, I cut up the fruit with my kitchen scissors. Anyway, I used the soaking water in the dough as the liquid, figuring it would add a little more flavor. And I had to guess at the amount of yeast to use: the book used the same amount as the website formulas, even though the book's formula was for twice as much flour/fougasse. So I split the difference. It has a preferment, it'll be fine, probably.

I have no idea whether this is going to work, but I've decided my motto is, "It probably won't suck too badly." And, hey, if it does, I start over. I have the freedom and absolute privilege of being able to do that; my family won't starve if I fuck up the bread or the stew.

I'm not entirely sure why I've been doing so much baking for my coworkers lately. Part of it is that I have more time to do so. Part is that I have some new recipe sources and new ingredients sources, and I like trying new stuff. Part is that it's a way to provide some comfort to my coworkers, all of whom have been stressed out by all of the changes we've been dealing with for the past five months (and which continue)--who doesn't like baked goods? Part is that it's something I very much like to do, but I can't eat all of it myself (even with Friend helping). So? More baking.

I was emailing yesterday with one of my oldest friends (*waves toward Boston*) and she said something I hadn't realized about myself, which was that I'm not afraid to have things not work out. Which is probably true, at least with my baking--and I see what she means. It does give me a certain freedom, though admittedly I really do hate to fuck up. I guess it's what comes from learning so many new things over the years--new careers, new skills, new crafts. As I've noted here, when I was in pastry school, and now in my tile class, I don't expect to be very good at new techniques, and of course making mistakes is a great way to learn new stuff, if you have access to a person or information that helps you figure out how to fix something.

But, really, these mistakes don't have consequences except possibly some spoiled ingredients. Where I do get nervous is at work, where there really isn't as much room to fuck up. Not because my bosses are viscious taskmasters or something--and, once again, I'm privileged there, too--but because I'm managing a huge budget practically single-handedly. I don't like that; it means if I do fuck up, there's no one to find my mistakes, and that could be a big problem. Reality is, I DID make a moderately large mistake a couple of years ago (I overestimated third-party payments for one of our contracts), and no one caught it. I eventually did, and I tried to explain it to multiple people, but it kinda went over everyone's head, which just made me more nervous. I'm not saying I should have been disciplined or yelled at or something, and no one lost his or her job because of my mistakes, but it did affect our financial picture. To this day, it bothers me that no one really understood the mistake, but the part that really made me nervous, and still does, is that it means there's no one there who is going to catch my mistakes.

And I'm going to make them--everyone does. So, what I end up trying to do--for me, as well as for anyone else--is to try to establish systems of some kind that make it easier to identify problems. Last year I came up with this elaborate budgeting mechanism/workbook, complete with formulas and links and such, and very few people really get how cool it is. (Okay, yes, I'm bragging a little there.) But it is cool--and, more to the point, it makes the methods I'm using to allocate costs transparent and relatively easy to follow, which means other people can follow along and find my fuckups. Not that anyone actually does, mind you, but they could. It also helps me, so it's a win, but I sure would like it if someone would pick through it and find my mistakes.

Our organization has adopted this new financial management software--two years, actually--and everyone keeps touting how wonderful it is. I remain unconvinced, but I can't tell whether it's because it really doesn't do what I need done or because I'm stubbornly stuck on My Way of Doing Things. The new controller--whom I very much like--and I have been discussing it at some length, because the organization wants people to use it. I, of course, keep pointing out the ways it doesn't work for me, while still allowing him/her to show me how I'm wrong. So far, that hasn't happened. The other advantage to my systems is that they're easier to manipulate--it's easier to change a scenario and see what that does to the budget, which is really crucial when there's a lot going on.

Anyway, one of the things I've figured out about myself is that some of the things I do best--this kind of systems development, and the analytical part of it--are things that, if done well, are basically invisible. It's like facilitating a meeting: if you're doing it well, then the meeting runs well, but the facilitation is invisible and things go smoothly. Which, really, is sort of amusing, given the reputation I have for having a large personality. (I always tell people that I act taller than I really am--and people routinely estimate my height at two to four inches taller than I am--and I never wear heels.) The same is true for my spreadsheets and other tools like that: if you design them well, then they're easy to use, and people aren't fighting the tool to accomplish a task.

Okay, enough blather. Time to check the fougasse dough. I'll take pictures if I remember.

Shovelday

Wow.

I did, in fact, go outside (if I get ambitious, I'll post pics eventually). The thing that was so weird is that there were spots where there is no snow at all--and a couple of spots where the street is completely blocked by 10-foot-high drifts that go from curb to curb. Cars are buried on one street and the street is clear a block south. At one point, I was walking down the middle of a main artery (Sheridan, for those of you out here) and there were no vehicles in either direction. The drifting is in part because I'm so close to the lake; the park space on the lakefront is windswept, but the street that goes along the park is blocked. I did make it to work today, and there is a big buttload of snow out there. In a lot of places, they're going to need front-end loaders rather than plows, because the streets are too narrow and there's just too much snow.

Weather like this--or like heat waves in the summer--amuses me in the ways it brings out responses in people. So many people are so insulated from weather--by heat and by air conditioning--that they whine incessantly. I am, of course, also insulated: I'm sitting on my couch, with a TV and a computer and warm-enough clothes; I am not huddled in a drafty hut watching the snow blow in through the cracks in the logs. I will take a hot shower tomorrow morning, and I do not have to go outside to pee. I can afford warm clothes. So, yes, it's not like I'm living off the land here.

But so many people with whom I work basically go from their houses to their cars to the office building. One of my old bosses didn't even have a warm winter coat because he was never out in the winter weather for more than a couple of minutes. Those of us who actually expect to be walking a few blocks, or standing on a corner waiting for a bus, or standing on a platform waiting for a train, tend to dress for it. It IS winter, after all.

Remember that central office person who's been giving me a pain? As of today, the person is no longer with the organization. I don't know for sure that s/he was pushed rather than jumped, but the suddeness of it suggests a shove rather than a leap. A part of me has a certain amount of compassion, because I believe that person was in over his/her head and was being asked to do things that were beyond his/her competencies, and I like the person personally. At the same time, the fact that I've mentioned it here, multiple times, gives some idea how annoyed I've been. The person really wasn't able to do the job that needed doing, which has been making my job more difficult.

Anyway. My dentist texted me at 4:30 this morning (after calliing me at 9:45 last night) to let me know that he was still snowed in and I shouldn't shlep to the 7 am appointment today, and then his office called to reschedule for tomorrow at 8:30. I was supposed to have a vacation day, but instead I scheduled an acupuncture appointment for the afternoon and just took a sick day instead. I need some vacation though, and soon.

Snowmageddon Rising

Okay, so maybe they were right about this one.

If you can see out my front windows--which is difficult to do, because of the snow clinging to the storm windows and screens--you can see that the cars are nearly buried and that the street has no tire tracks. There are some footprints, but not even a lot of those. Apparently some of the public transportation is running, but everything is really buried. The most recent "special weather statement" notes that lake-effect snow is moving through the area: "INTENSE SNOWFALL WITHIN THIS BAND AND WIND GUSTS TO 40 MPH WILL DROP VISIBILITIES TO ONLY A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET. SNOW FALL RATES OF UP TO 2 INCHES PER HOUR ARE POSSIBLE AS THIS BAND MOVES SLOWLY EASTWARD." Being half a block from the lake has its down side, too. And Lake Shore Drive is closed. So, yes, staying indoors with the cat on my lap sounds like a fine plan, though I admit that part of me wants to at least go outside and trudge around the block, just for the experience. And I sort of wish I'd put together a preferment of some kind last night just to bake something today.

More likely, though, I'll fire up the DVD player or my Netflix instant watching thing and just make the cat happy.

Which would be fine. The ways in which work is stressful keep changing, which makes it interesting, in some ways, but also provides the sensation experienced by randomly shocked rats (or so I suppose). The good news is that the new boss is proving to be excellent. Very different set of strengths than the old boss, and, in some ways, ones that are more suited to my own style and inclinations. I don't want to sound disloyal--I really like my old boss quite a bit, and I'm very excited that s/he just got a new job. But--you saw that coming, didn't you--the new boss is better suited to the particular politics in play at the moment. OldBoss would not have gotten along at all with the new Big Boss, and, more to the point, would have had a hard time doing what the organization as a whole wants done right now. So, really, we're probably all in somewhat better places.

I must add that BigBoss makes me nervous, though. S/He has a style of operating that I don't like any more than I liked the style of the last person in that position, even though the two of them are very different in oh so many ways. On the other hand, as with the previous regime, my current boss does a fine job of protecting me and valuing my contributions and using my skills, so I will find a way to live with it. I also think that Newboss is doing, and is going to do, a better job of utilizing me, so that's actually kind of cool. We'll see.

And we'll see whether my mouth gets me in trouble. I'm getting increasingly impatient with a coworker (two, actually; one is at the central office), so I'm trying to regard it as an exercise in patience and such, but that is really not one of my best things. Actually, that's not quite accurate: I can be extremely patient in many circumstances. Where I get impatient, however, is when someone will neither lead nor follow nor get out of the way--when, in fact, someone gets IN the way, and then bitches about it. That makes me kinda nuts. The other person isn't holding up his/her end of the workload, IMHO, though s/he thinks s/he is; my feeling is that you shouldn't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

When push comes to shove, though, the Top Chef rule is what matters: cook your own food and don't worry about someone else's dish. The problem here is that I'm trying to do that, but we need those to people to do specific things and they're not doing them, which makes my job harder. Which is where my impatience and peevishness come galloping into the fray.

Ah well; lessons in buddhism, I suppose.

Meanwhile, though, it's time to make some more tea and settle in to watch something; I don't know what yet, but it pretty much doesn't matter. Or maybe that walk around the block first?

Snowpocalypse Now

I feel like I'm in the middle of that scene in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (yes, the one with Burl Ives and Clarice the girl reindeer) where the snowman says, "And then it hit." And you see things blowing all over the place. That's what it looks like here. My back window is completely snow-covered, despite the fact that it's on a covered porch (covered by the upstairs neighbor's porch, that is). The wind occasionally reaches 50 mph, apparently, which means some blocks are really difficult to traverse. I'm not particularly a weather weenie--not least because Friend gave me an old pair of his snow pants, which, given the disparity in our sizes, means they fit very comfortably over multiple layers of my clothing--and I even admit to being a little fascinated by things like this weather, but this is pretty brutal.

This weekend's cooking and baking adventures: wheat rolls; yet another attempt at an apple upside down cake (and this one's a winner); a variation on a whole-grain cinnamon roll (back to that one in a minute); and a venison stew, made with carrots, onions, garlic, celery, red wine, balsamic vinegar, some slow-roasted tomatos I had hanging around in the freezer, a can of tomatos, and, let's see, some fresh sage, a few cloves, a splash of regular vinegar, a splash of molasses, some maple syrup (I was experimenting with some sweetening), and I browned the meat in pancetta. It simmered for about five hours, and is extremely tasty and I think I've overcome the inherent dryness/toughness of venison. The cinnamon bread was from a KAF recipe for "cinnamon spiral bread"--a coil of bread put into a round pan. I decided to cut it into individual rolls, and fill it with apples, raisins, and cinnamon. But I think there's a problem with them; I"m not sure whether it's me or the formula, but it seemed to have way too much oats, and it really didn't raise much. They weren't inedible, but they weren't very good, either. Last night I made a cake with still more of the meyer lemons, and it came out pretty well; I'd make it again, though I'd decrease the temperature and increase the (already long) baking time.

Meanwhile, though, we're getting a bunch of snow--so much that the building where we work decided to close down tomorrow, meaning my company is closed, too. In some ways, that's a total pain for me: I have a dentist appointment early Thursday morning, and I had been planning on taking a vacation day on Friday, but, at the very end of the day, one of our funding agencies returned a budget and need some changes by Friday. If I get get it done Thursday afternoon, all will be well, but otherwise I'll have to change the vacation day. There were other things I wanted to get done this week that also won't happen, but this particular item is really necessary for reasons about which you do not care. (Trust me on this.)

But still--snow day!! I realized that most weekends or planned days off I start to fill with activities of one kind or another: chores, or baking, or cooking, or something. Because this came unexpectedly, I have absolutely nothing planned. I'll work out, maybe watch some movies or TV, maybe sit on the sun porch and drink tea and read with a cat on my lap, and that's it. I'm supposed to meet Brazen Tart for dinner, but who knows whether the restaurant will even be open. I presume we'll make the call tomorrow.

I've been putting the food channel on lately, when I have a desire for background stuff, so I have stumbled across "Worst Cooks in America." I find it absolutely fascinating, in a train wreck kind of way. "Chopped" kinda makes me nuts in a different way--mostly because I've yet to see an episode that I liked. "Iron Chef" is okay--I like that the focus is much more on the food. But no matter the show, if it's a competition, there are a few sentences you're sure to hear: "I just have to execute perfectly." "It's anybody's game." "I could go home for this." "I was really worried about the time." "You really got a wonderful smokiness (or some other adjective) out of that (food item)." Personal stories about how much this means. Dramatic pauses and dramatic music as time fillers, rather than a focus on the damn food.

The reality is--so to speak--I don't care about that shit. Of course you have to execute perfectly. Of course anyone could go home at any time; that's the fucking point. Questions about someone's "soul" are completely irrelevant; make good food for me and I don't care about your inner life. Show me the fucking cooking! (Which is what I like about Iron Chef and the later rounds of Top Chef.)

Anyway. I"m fading fast, so you'll have to add your own pet peeves.

Julia, Julie, and Lemons

I finally saw "Julie and Julia" (thanks to my fabulous new Apple TV that I got to go with the fabulous new HDTV), and I am, once again, madly in love with Meryl Streep. Jesus christ on a pogo stick, that woman can act. The "Julie" part of the movie was kinda eh, IMHO. Amy Adams was fine, it's not a criticism of her; it's just that Meryl is so good, and Julia was so wonderful, there isn't enough room for the Julie part. Seriously, I would much rather have had an additional hour of Julia. And Stanley Tucci, for that matter, who was also wonderful.

I'd read the Amanda Hesser article about Julie years ago, and then looked for the blog, and then started at the beginning and read the whole damn thing (meaning I don't have a lot of interest in buying the actual book), and was sufficiently entertained by it. It was an interesting exercise, and, given my love of food and cooking, I am always happy to see someone actually interested in cooking. But, no, it was just way less interesting than the Julia part, and it would have been fun to see more of that part.

Meanwhile, back at Iron Chef: My Place, a bunch of stuff got made, and some of it was pretty good. I made the lemon ginger biscotti for the third time, again adding cranberries and this time adding pistachios instead of almonds, and they're getting better with each attempt. The lemon flavor and scent is really delightful. Not enough ginger this time, though--I couldn't taste it at all. I also attempted some chocolate hazelnut biscotti, and those were a major failure. For one thing, I must not have put in enough flour or something, because they simply didn't hold together: I have big chunks of chocolatey goodness, surrounding hazelnuts, but nothing that maintains its shape or integrity. For another, I really need to chop the hazelnuts; they probably contributed to the problems. However, the chunks taste just fine--very chocolatey. You can only get the barest hint of the barley sugar in them; it was another in my attempts to achieve a malted-milk-ball thing, so there's barley sugar, barley flour, and malted milk powder in them, but it's not all that noticeable, I don't think. I think next time I'm going to grind some hazelnuts into paste, and chop some, too. And add more flour.

For dinner, my task was to use some lemon (because while at the store on Saturday I purchased more Meyer lemons, even though I still had some here) and the kale that was about to become a science project. So I got out the big wok-shaped pan, put some water to boil in another pan (eventually there would be spaghetti in the boiling water), and got started. First, I took a lemon--sliced coarsely, so I could remove the seeds, but otherwise the whole thing--and a few cloves of garlic, and maybe some ginger (I don't remember) and put it in the bowl of my stick blender (I killed my mini-prep awhile ago) and whirred it around. I let it sit for awhile, remembering from Cooks that lemon will mellow out the garlic if I let it sit for a few minutes. I chopped up the practically-still-frozen chicken breasts and threw them into the pan with some butter and olive oil. Sauteed them awhile while I chopped an onion. When the chicken was nearly done, I threw the lemon garlic mixture in. Let it all cook a bit, then took all of that out of the pan. Added a bit more oil and threw in the onion, cooked that down, added the chopped kale (by now the spaghetti is cooking merrily on another burner). Eventually I added a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan.

To finish, after everything was cooked, I dumped the chicken/lemon mixture back in with the kale and onion mixture, added a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream, drained the cooked pasta, threw that in the pan to mix it all around, and served it with some grated cheese. It so totally didn't suck, and it had the advantage of using at least three things that needed using (the chicken, the kale, and a lemon), so yay for that.

Anyway. Lots of meetings this week, too, plus a hockey game tomorrow night and Chuck and CK on Friday, so it's time for sleep.

Random

I only seem capable of food blogging these days . . . let's try something else.

Partly it's because all of the stuff at work goes on, but I've become more wary about going into detail on the 'tubes (not that I've ever had any inkling that any coworker even knows I have a blog, much less has stumbled across it, number one, and, number two, the people about whom I would be most dismayed stumbling across this thing don't have enough internet savvy to find it--most probably don't know what a blog is, much less how to find mine; but you never know). Some things are going quite well--the new middle lord (my direct supervisor) has turned out to be quite good; I like hir personally and professionally, and zie seems intent on finding ways to use my talents to their fullest rather than just letting me continue to do three or four jobs in obscurity. Which, hey, all good. But it's too soon to even try to talk about it here; it remains to be seen what can or will be done.

So I go to work, submit the next thing, come home and provide a lap for the cat (Friend's cat is living with me for a little while, as I think I mentioned), work out, watch the hockey game if there is one, watch Top Chef on Wednesday night, maybe go out for dinner with Friend one night, maybe do some cooking or baking if I'm inspired.

My tile-making class started this past week, and I'm already feeling weird about it. Part of it is that I know that what I need to do is to sit down and do some drawings, start doing something, anything, really, but, instead, I dink around. The one tile I made last year actually came out reasonably well for a first effort, and I'm looking forward to making it even better, but that was a goddamned expensive tile. And now I'm in a class where I'm surrounded by people who are Genuine Artists--or it feels that way to me--and I'm just a schlub with no ideas about what I want to create. And I know that that approach violates the Top Chef Rule--cook your own food and don't worry about what other people are cooking--but my brain keeps going there anyway.

Well, there's only been one class, so maybe I'll get my head out of my own head and actually do the drawings I need to do, and create some fun playful stuff just to amuse myself, and take a couple of afternoons off of work and spend some time in the studios (which doesn't cost anything extra if you're taking a class). I also know that I do my best work when I have the opportunity to just fuck around, play, see what evolves, and I didn't have much of that last spring. I have a ton of vacation time--nearly three weeks, plus five personal days--so we'll see. And did I mention that I want to just have fun with it, fer chrissakes?

This week's other task is to find out what the weird patch on my leg is. I called my dermatologist today and got an appointment for Thursday. I'm perfectly willing to pay my co-pay only to be told that it's just a patch of, I don't know, eczema or something, but it doesn't look like anything I've ever had on my skin before, and it's in a location that isn't a good candidate for plain old dry skin, and I moisturize after my showers, and I've been treating it for 10 days or so with no results, so I figure it won't hurt to have an expert take a look at it. It's probably something stupid and routine--and that would be absolutely fine with me.

As for cultural commentary: Lately I've been reading Eliot Pattison's Inspector Shan series, and absolutely loving it. I've worked my way through the first four, I think, and I alternate with other stuff, of course, but it's way fun. The other thing I've discovered--and, yes, I realize I'm late to this party--is "Big Bang Theory." I've been getting it on Netflix and watching it while I row, and it makes me laugh out loud. I just finished season two (I alternate with the BBC's Inspector Morse series), so I have a few more disks to go. But it cracks me up, and I've always had a crush on both Johnny Galecki and Sarah Gilbert, so it's even more fun. I got a new TV, too--a big-ass sucker--but I'm using the old TV in the back bedroom with the rowing machine, i.e., I only get to watch the little TV while I row, but I have the rowing machine out of my living room. No furniture yet, but the furniture maker was here the week before last, and as soon as I figure out what I'm getting back on my taxes I'm going to order some stuff.

Okay, that's the best I can do without involving food.

Chili with a Chance of Potatoes

As we all know, I lurve me some Top Chef--particularly this season, which has a lot of people who can cook, plus, because they've all done it before (it's an "all-star" season, where all of them were eliminated in their own season but, in most cases, got pretty far, possibly even to the finals, before that), they all know what to expect. We're not seeing as much of the over-the-top stuff as with the Voltaggios and Kevin, but otherwise, there's some talent present.

However.

I've also realized that, in general, other than Top Chef and its spinoffs, I don't like the cooking shows that are competitions. I can tolerate Iron Chef, up to a point, because the chefs are pretty uniformly good. But two of the others--Chopped, and, especially, Worst Cook in America--bug me. Chopped just isn't as interesting as any of the others; rather than eliminate someone for each round, I'd rather see them each do all three rounds and see what the overall scores are. If they knew their scores for each round as they went along, then they'd each know how well they needed to do to win, which would keep it kind of interesting. But the one that bugs me the most (of the ones I've seen--I don't even bother with the cake shows, because they're all a version of fondant plus sculpture, which may be entertaining to watch but sucks to eat) is the Worst Cook show.

Of all the shows of that genre, that's the one that absolutely should not be eliminating someone each week. I do like the idea of having a bunch of terrible cooks, in teams, trying to learn how to cook, but you never really know when someone is going to start to get it. In addition, the whole point of learning to cook, IMHO, is that you have to be able to make a mistake and understand how and why you made it; simply following someone else's directions without truly understanding what you're doing isn't going to provide you with actual cooking skills. So, if I were in charge, I'd keep them all around for at least half of the season, then do a test of some kind and maybe then eliminate some percentage of them--a third, say. Lather, rinse, repeat, then the last third has some more training, and for the final competition, they're each given a selection of ingredients--with some choices they have to make--and they compete that way. THAT would be learning to cook, or a reasonable enough approximation of it, and it even still keeps it a competition of some kind.

But since when has anyone asked my opinion on these things?

I've been working on the biscotti recipe, and it's pretty good. The Meyer lemons really are fun to work with; they have a distinct perfume, and the flavor is very nice. I made a second round this week, using more all-purpose and less whole wheat flour, and adding cranberries and almonds. (I'd intended to use pistachios, because I was sure I had some around, but I couldn't find them yesterday--and then I stumbled across them this morning; too late.) The texture is crumbly but not hard--I think because I've put a bit of butter in them--but that means they can be eaten without dunking them in something, which I actually prefer. The next iteration will have cranberries and pistachios, and I want to do a chocolate hazelnut something, too.

Meanwhile, friend and I tried the chili recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and it was pretty good. We made it with ground venison rather than blade steak; next time I'd probably throw in some wild turkey, too, for different texture. We made a few other chances--black beans rather than pintos; more beans and more tomatos than the recipe called for; added veggies in the form of carrots, celery, and frozen corn--but the basic spicing was the same, and it was pretty tasty. Basically, you toast cut-up anchos, and then puree the anchos and some arbols--all w/ stems and seeds removed--with some chicken broth and . . . something. The spices, I guess, which were cumin, oregano, and cocoa. There's a little molasses in theire, too, as well as an onion and some jalpenos, and garlic. It definitely had a bite to it, but it wasn't overwhelming, and the fact that you puree the chilis means that you don't get a mouthful of one.

We ate it over these potato pancakes I'd made--I grated the last of the farm share potatos, mixed them with salt, pepper, two eggs, and some frozen spinach, and I formed them into patties and baked them on silpats until they were brown and crispy. It was nice to get potato pancakes without all of the grease. They still needed a little somethin-somethin, but the chili ended up being a perfect foil for them. Meanwile, I still have some kale and a head of cabbage to use, so that's the next task; probably not next weekend, though. The current plan has us dashing to Madison for a hockey game on Saturday, then dashing back here on Sunday to attend a hockey game at 11:30 am and then dashing somewhere to watch the Big Football Game between his team and the Bears. It's still not clear whether we're both going to do all of those things, but it's probably safe to say that cooking isn't on that particular agenda.

Anyway. my two remaining tasks today are working out and going out to dinner, and I had better start in on the first one if I'm going to do it before the latter.

Bunches of Lunches

I'm not going to comment on this weekend's events except to say that the right's true colors are shining through. That is, if Sarah Palin really believed all that eliminationist rhetoric she spouts, if the gun nuts really believed all the threatening crap they shout, if the far right really does believe that their rights have been trampled such that armed insurrection is required, well, then, don't you think they should be applauding instead of running away from it all? Oh, wait, it's just posturing, you say? When I was a kid and made a disgruntled or otherwise unpleasant face, my mother would warn me that it was going to freeze like that--and, on some level, she's right. The postures we adopt are not merely posturing; at some level, they're what we really believe. If you do not, in fact, believe that legislators, judges, and innocent bystanders should be shot point blank in the street because they support health care reform and you oppose it, then don't wave signs and put up maps and posts that recommend that. Personally, much as I oppose the right, I do not support gunning them down or threatening to do so.

This weekend's project was twofold--use up some stuff sitting around, and make a bunch of lunches; as you can imagine, these projects dovetailed nicely, though I did have to go to Whole Paycheck and get even more produce. And, I warn you, all three are very similar: a bunch of vegetables, with some spices, thrown into my big wok and cooked. This one has curried cauliflower, sweet potatos, and some peas, along with the usual spices and onions and garlic. (Spices were cinnamon, cumin, coriander, and garam masala, I think.)This one has butternut squash, white potatos (both from the CSA), garbanzos, tomatos, onions, garlic, and, at the last minute, I threw in the swiss chard I'd bought. I think I used the cumin and coriander, cardomom, tamarind paste, and fire-roasted tomatos.
This one has the rest of the sweet potatos, black beans (some frozen and getting frostbit, and one lonely can in the cupboard from January 2007), a can of tomatos, frozen corn, and onions and garlic. I also had a bag of greens from the CSA, which I'd thought was spinach but discovered also included some kale (I think), so I cut it all up and threw it in. It ended up being a lot of greens, but that's fine. I also made a pot of rice, and I portioned everything out into containers or freezer baggies, so I'm good to go; that's nearly 30 lunches, plus last night's dinner. Seriously, I think I could eat for a couple of months from what I have on hand.

I also bought a head of cabbage and some curly kale yesterday, and I have some potatos to use up (including some that have seen better days but I'll probably use anyway), so I think some soup might be the way to go. I also have two more squashes--an acorn and a butternut--from the CSA, but they'll keep for awhile, and half a bag of carrots.

Yesterday's impulse purchase was a bunch of Meyer lemons. I have heard about them but had never seen them in person before, so I bought a bunch. Of course, all of the recipes I can find have a ton of butter in them, which wasn't what I had in mind exactly. Brazen Tart made some suggestions (*waves to Tart*) and I think I'll probably use them for at least two adventures. Because did I mention I bought a bunch? Like 8 or 10 maybe? So there are enough, I think. Anyway, Tart had given me a recipe that calls for macerating the finely sliced lemons overnight, but every time I've made that recipe the results have been bitter more than sour. Once I even peeled the peel, then got rid of the pith (which is often where the bitterness resides), and used it that way, but that started being more trouble and I don't remember it being that much better. But maybe Meyer lemons will work better, and I otherwise really quite like the tart, so we'll see.

The other thing I"m going to try is some biscotti. KAF's Whole Grain book has a maple-something recipe, and a lemon-anise recipe, and there's a Moosewood recipe floating around somewhere in the sunroom, so I'll have to cobble it together, but I'm thinking lemons, maple syrup (or possibly honey), and probably pecans rather than walnuts. I'll let you know what happens.

Happy New Year!

The trick to meeting one's goals is to keep them modest, so I've been doing that; after the frantic hustle of the past four months, sitting on my butt--occasionally with a cat in my lap--seems like a fine idea. I also decided that starting the year with a dirty or cluttered home was probably a bad idea, though, so I've been picking away at the cleaning tasks, and I'm nearly done with everything except the laundry, which I'll do tomorrow or Monday.

Some bread will get baked, as well, seeing as how the yeast does most of the work--actually, there's going to be a sourdough wheat, and pretzels, and some lemon-barley scones, to which I'll add some grains and dried apricots or pears; the first two things require preferments, so I'll give the yeast something to do today and really do the baking tomorrow.

Speaking of baking, I got the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book, and it's like a drug; partly as a result of that purchase, I've also purchased wads of stuff from King Arthur by mail order--barley flour, high-fiber flour, etc.--which is quite convenient. It's no cheaper than the grocery store, but I can get free shipping, so I can get 35 pounds of stuff without having to haul it on the bus or the el.

Which reminds me: I made some baked goods for some of the people at work (mini tarts with chocolate ganache and caramelized almonds--was supposed to be hazelnuts, but it turned out I didn't have any). One person asked if I'd made the tart shells--of course I had; why would I purchase them? And then I said that I had at least a half a dozen types of flour in my kitchen. This prompted cries of disbelief, so someone challenged me to list them, so I did: all-purpose; bread; whole wheat; barley; high-fiber; almond; hazelnut; cake; whole wheat pastry. Turns out I forgot one (I have some gluten-free flour I don't use much), too. To which one person replied, "I thought there was only bleached and unbleached." I didn't tell her that there is no good use for bleached flour.

I know I went to pastry school and all, but I continue to be shocked by how little people seem to know about cooking and baking. So, lately, I've been trying to spread the knowledge as best I can. At Friend's sister's house, I did most of the cooking and some baking for four or five days, which served multiple purposes. For one thing, I was able to incorporate more vegetables into the mix than is common in a land where the only vegetables in sight may be on the relish tray and may consist of a few kinds of pickles. It also kept Friend's mother out of the kitchen; she's not the most organized person in the world, and feeding a lot of people tends to make her even more anxious and fussy. For another thing--and the most important thing--it was something I could contribute to the mix, thereby allowing Friend's sister to hang out with her sons and daughters-in-law and not have to worry about feeding people. It's relatively easy for me to do these things, especially when it's pretty casual, and it feels like a gift, both a gift I can give and a gift I can receive, in the form of being useful, and using my skills to benefit the people around me. Because, yes, doing something useful is a gift to me, too.

There were 14 people for two of the dinners--in addition to Friend's sister and her kids and their wives, there was also Friend's brother, his wife and two kids, and Friend's mom and her friend. I made some baked goods, too--wheat rolls, my grandmother's sticky buns (some with nuts and some without, because we had some allergies), more mini tarts, this time with hazelnuts, and a fruit cobbler with an oat topping that was served warm over vanilla ice cream.

The first night was some venison with caramelized onions, some mushrooms, a little wine to deglaze the pan, mashed potatos, and broccoli and cauliflower in a cheese sauce. The leftover veggies got pureed and turned into soup for lunch the next day. The next night I used up some butternut squash from my farm share that had some bruises, some spinach, some wild turkey, the leftover bacon from breakfast, and some onions; that went over buckwheat. The buckwheat was only so-so, but there were leftovers of the squash mix, so I baked the other squash, mixed it all together, and made some homemade whole wheat ravioli in a rough tomato sauce, with more wild turkey available for those who wanted some meat with their sauce, and someone made a salad. A turkey that Friend's mom had purchased became dinner the next night; there was fruit salad and some other stuff to go with that. Mostly I tried to use up things that were hanging around; the basket of fruit and the honey butter that Sis wanted to get rid of because her not-yet-ex-husband had purchased it in one of his sprees but it wasn't being used both went into the cobbler. Other people contributed various bits as well--the salad and the fruit salad were assembled by others. The last morning I made a fruit compote and sweetened ricotta cheese (maple syrup and some half and half) and made crepes for whoever was around; I also wrote down my recipe and taught Friend's sister how to make them.

All in all, it accomplished multiple goals--feeding people, including people who are allergic to nuts and people who don't eat much meat; allowing the family members present to contribute as they wished, without requiring that they do so; keeping anxious people out of the kitchen; using up food that might otherwise have gone to waste; creating leftovers that people could eat for subsequent lunches; and also providing some . . . education, I guess. I certainly didn't do it as an educational exercise, but I've found that showing, and telling as I show, makes the whole process seem more accessible, even as I point out that it's easier for me because I lived alone for so long, i.e., I've had a whole lot of time to practice, without having to please other people with my experiments. People who are feeding picky kids--or just feeding multiple kids on a short budget and a short schedule--don't have that freedom/privilege.

But this weekend I'm just hanging out. My goals are to do the cleaning (which is nearly done), do some baking to fill the freezer, get in some workouts, and do a whole lot of nothing, including a bunch in front of the television. Friend's cat is staying with me while he's off at the Rose Bowl, and she wanders out to chat or to find a lap every once in awhile. The only other thing I need to do today is make sure I eat some pork: my grandmother always insisted it was necessary for luck in the new year. I don't have anything pork-like except some pancetta, so I guess that will have to do.

So, happy new year to all of you; I hope you're enjoying whatever it is you're doing.

Whinealicious

I'm going to a pity party tonight--would you like to attend? No? Well, that's okay; I'm not going to stay long either. But.

We had a five-hour meeting today, and it was actually useful: we needed to sort through how we're going to spend some pots of money we have, and, in particular, what types of positions we need to expand our service provision. In general, it went pretty well. Everyone stayed on task, and we plowed through it and got to a place where we can move forward, so that was good. But the reason for the pity party is that I've finally identified what kind of help I need (and I'm reaching the point where I really, really need that help). That position was one of the few--in the 10 or so we discussed--that we ended up just not finding a place to put on a budget.

On one hand, I understand why not; for one thing, it's an administrative position, and we have other types of managerial staff we also need, so it kind of took a back seat. And I didn't jump up and down and wave my arms around; in retrospect, I was kind of hoping that someone else would kind of go to bat for me on this position, acknowledge what I need, and that didn't happen. At all.

So that's disappointing.

But then, I have this big proposal due on the 15th, and my new overlord, and others, keep asking how they can help, and I say, oh, I'll have to do it. Their response to that is to act as though I'm somehow at fault for not letting go or asking for help or whatthefuckever, i.e., that it's All My Own Fault that I'm doing it alone. I finally realized today why I'm doing that: if I do hand it off to someone and he or she fucks it up, then it's going to be up to ME to fix it, which will completely fuck my schedule. And today's meeting fed into that feeling: if no one recognizes what I need when I actually say it, out loud, in words, and then tries to facilitate that happening, why should I trust that people will do what they say on these other fronts? I would be a fool to do so, in my opinion. And, realisitically, I know my coworkers: who, exactly, is going to "help"? Most of them do not write very well to begin with--which is not a criticism, mind you, just an accurate statement--and other people whom overlord supervises can write but do not know our programs. So who, exactly, is going to do this "helping"? And, as noted, what if they fuck it up? Or suppose someone writes something and I do a lot of editing? And s/he is the kind of person whose panties bunch up when that happens? I do not fucking have time for drama.

If we had more time, I'd be willing to risk it, and to use others, and be able to provide the guidance and support they'd need to be successful and to maybe actually provide some assistance to me, but I do not have very much time, so, no. I think I'm going to have to share this with Overlord--in a slightly more polite way, of course--so it doesn't look like I'm being a martyr. Trust me, I'd love to share this, but realistically, I know what would be involved, and what would be involved is actually more goddamned work for me.

But!

A new season of Top Chef! It was interesting for me, because I did not see very much of the early seasons and don't remember any episodes that I might have seen. I've gone back and read recaps on Television Without Pity, and I have one of the seasons on my Netflix queue, but I hadn't gone through a whole season with many of them. And? Richard Blais may be talented, but his comment that the thing his season is known for is that he lost when he "should have" won? Fuck off, dude. What a narcissistic remark. Some people may remember that season for the person who ACTUALLY won; just a thought. Marcel, the guy who was physically assaulted in S2, already has me hating him (which is absolutely no justification for the assault, period end of sentence). Stephen seems like a complete ass. And so on. It should be quite interesting, because every one of them has been around this block, and many of them made it to the final three or four, so there are some serious cooking chops in the room.

The best thing about last night's challenge is that it called on one of the things that I've been saying forfuckingever: each chef had to remake the dish for which s/he was eliminated. They could change it a little, but not a lot. First off, anything that gets served in a fine dining restaurant is likely NOT the first version of that dish that someone tried to make; the higher up the price/quality range you go, the more likely that probably is. Point being, if you're trying out a new dish, you get to REmake it, to fix whatever seemed broken--you get to learn from your experience. Second, another thing that made it interesting is that anyone who was eliminated in the finals or the final four probably had a good dish but had one flaw in it--too much salt in Jen's dish, for example--such that the dish wasn't bad, in and of itself, it's just that someone else made something better. But people who were eliminated in earlier rounds had a higher likelihood that the dish that sent them packing just sucked ass from the conception. Making THAT a better dish is going to be a bigger challenge than merely not oversalting something.

So, really, I liked the concept of the elimination challenge quite a bit. And the person who lost--Elia?--served fish that was raw (but was supposed to be cooked), and apparently didn't really change the dish at all. No learning going on there. I also didn't like her personally.

Anyway. Tomorrow I'm going to dump a bunch of text into my outline for this fucking proposal--chunks of stuff that I can steal from elsewhere, coupled with notes on where to get other stuff--and see where that gets me. And then I'm going to another hockey game. I was supposed to make chocolate ganache tonight, but I didn't get to it; maybe tomorrow morning before work, because it won't take long. (Saturday is the condo association holiday gathering, and I'm bringing the mini hazelnut smores--maybe I'll actually get it right this time--and the ganache really has to sit for a day. If Brazen Tart is reading this, I'm using the Palet d'Or formula from school, because it ends up being firm enough.)

Our Friend the Turnip, Part II

This month's big decision is whether to do the CSA farm share next year; I want to decide by the end of the month because there's a discount for signing up and paying them now. And I really don't know whether I want to renew with them. On one hand, the delivery to my doorstep really can't be beat--no hauling bags of vegetables on buses, and no trying to carve out a couple of hours on a Saturday morning to get to the farmers' market, and the vegetables aren't beat up by being hauled on the bus.

The two down sides, though, are non-trivial: for one thing, I don't think the quantity really has been where it could be, and I mean that in two ways. There isn't a whole lot of product on a given delivery--no way could two people eat from one share--and often there is too little of a given item.

The other problem is that the variety has been lacking, in my opinion. I have had more fucking turnips this summer than EVER in my life--all of the turnips I've had in the previous 52 years wouldn't make a dent in the pile I've received. And, oh joy oh rapture, I'm getting more of them this week and next week! Also way too many radishes and way too much lettuce. I've received lettuce at least half of the weeks of the season, it seems--it's more like a salad share than a farm share.

This week I got two acorn squash (one of which has a mold spot on it), another huge bag of spinach (probably some kale in there too), 8 or so turnips, and a bunch of beets (very small beets) with the greens attached. So, not so bad, but fucking turnips. Again.

This week's cooking challenges are to figure out what to do with all the spinach (which won't be that difficult, because it's my second-favorite vegetable) and what to make for the condo association party on Saturday night. (Friend also wants to make some venison tenderloin for me . . . mmmmm, tenderloin.) I'll probably do a dessert; I'd love to make the poached pear tart that convinced me to go to pastry school, but ti takes a lot of fiddling around, so the more likely production is mini smores again. I've almost perfected the recipe, and it's not that difficult, and it's a nice bite-size thing to make, and I have all the ingredients, so, score.

Tomorrow I have to lead another half-day strategic planning and budgeting meeting, and I have to redo several budgets in the next couple of weeks, but after that, I'm going to put a "go away" sign on my office door and just do what I need to do. Should be nothing but fun.