Letting go

I'm really good at mad. But I'm not going to do mad right now.

I'm referring to this infuriating information: that until 12 months ago SIGG, which promoted itself as a safe alternative to Nalgene (and other plastic) bottles that contained the endocrine disruptor BPA, was actually lining their bottles with an epoxy that contained, you guessed it, BPA! They have changed the liner on new SIGGs (and were very quiet not to mention the BPA problem until the stock of the old BPA containing bottles were sold) and will give people who return their old SIGGs coupons for replacement bottles. But the whole shebang reeks of corporate coverup. The blogger Sarah Gilbert did a very nice job of detailing the sliminess--if you have the stomach to read it. (There's also a well-explained post from a store that pulled SIGGs.)

A parent on the wonderfully informative yahoo group list arborparents posted about this and another told me she received a postage paid return label. So I wrote to SIGG and asked for one because I don't want to spend a nickel more and they refused. Then I wrote to the CEO and mentioned that I knew they had issued postage paid return labels and would he authorize one.

He refused.

The CEO told me that he and his kids still drink out of the bottles with the BPA-containing liner (though he neglected to mention that his family also has gills...joking!). He offered me cleaning tablets (because I don't know how to wash out a water bottle? Huh? Or maybe it's something specially formulated to block the BPAs....) which probably would cost more than the return shipping I was requesting.

Clearly I have lived too long in a town where customer service and happiness is taken seriously. So ZingTrain, if you have anyone free to give a seminar, I know of a company that could really use your services! Or maybe the CEO, Steve Wasik, should read this book:
Yes, the title is Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000. You, dear reader, are one of my 3000.

All this crummy corporate bullshit is upsetting enough but here's the worst part: I was so pissed when I was receiving and responding to their e-mails that, when my girl critter wandered into my office requesting a cup of grape juice (which, she knows, is not hiding under mom's desk but located in the fridge; however, since I keep it in a heavy non-BPA leaching Frigoverre glass pitcher, she still needs me to pour it), I snapped at her. Actually I yelled. I was so pissed at SIGG that my shoulders were up around my ears and I looked like Nixon and I dare say I behaved like him too (treating those around me like crap, not the break-in part). And the little critter jumped. And that's just not right. (I went and apologized to her and told her that I wasn't mad at her, I was mad at the crummy company that made her dinosaur water bottle. She doesn't appear to be too traumatized by her mother's inability to compartmentalize her anger though I probably should add a few extra dollars to her college/therapy fund).

And that's when I realized that Steve and his crummy company were not worth it. Not worth the anger. Not worth pursuing a free shipping label on principle even though it means that someone sleazy is getting away with something.

So you know what? I'm going to try and breathe my way through this.

In one of my yoga classes, the teacher got us to assume a pose like a pretzel--I had trouble figuring out how my left arm was twisted around my right leg and how exactly I was able to see the sole of my left foot which normally isn't so close to my eyes but finally got into the pose. And once there she said: "Keep breathing. Remember if you can breathe through this pose you can breathe through pretty much anything that life throws at you." So. This isn't so bad. I can breathe through this.

So now I am turning to you folks for advice. To say that the water I drink from any SIGG will taste bitter now is an understatement. I refuse to have these bottles in my family's life any more. It just makes me too flipping mad when I see them and I don't think I want quite that much practice breathing.

I'll eat the postage to get these things out of the house and to make the company pay out for new ones because that's the only way to reach these people--through their wallets. But what should I do with the replacements since I can't stand the sight of them? (Hello Klean Kanteen! You'll be getting our business soon!) It'll be a set of 4 different sized bottles ranging from .4 L to .75 L.

I was thinking maybe I could donate the new ones somewhere. My kids' former preschool has an annual fundraising auction. Do you think anyone would buy a set of 4 new water bottles at an auction? That way at least the money I originally spent (over $50 agggggh!) would actually work its way to a good cause.

Any other ideas? Help me make this letting go as painless as it can be. Send me your suggestions. Send me your peaceful thoughts to help me forgive icky people for their ickyness.
And breathe with me.
In--
And out.
In--
And out.

Revenge of the spurned appliance

I guess I swore at it one too many times.

I thought that with the banishment of the-fridge-that-I-hate to the basement--

This is what banishment looks like.

--I would be done bitching about this particular appliance. But no. The damn thing took revenge upon me.

I stashed some of this week's farm share in its dinky, rickety produce drawers until I was ready to use it. But when I went down yesterday to get it I found that the-fridge-that-I-hate took out its wrath on my beet greens and some of my rainbow chard by FREEZING THEM. And this is when it is on its warmest setting! Sigh.

It seems to be doing ok at its main job which is keeping one particular batch of Brian's home brew from exploding all over the basement. He made a dark beer that somehow over fermented so that it has a tendency to blast its way out of the bottle; we dubbed it "Dark Angry Father." It's really tasty, but dangerous stuff. We gave a bottle to my dad and did not emphasize strongly enough that he should immediately refrigerate it with the result that--Whoops!--he had to clean beer off the kitchen ceiling...Even the properly refrigerated stuff has to be opened over the sink and into a wide pitcher because of the exuberance of the foam.

So, you might be wondering what is upstairs now that the appliance banishment has occurred. Allow me to introduce you to:

The Fridge That I Love

Yes, the Elephant Shrews have made their home in the top left corner and the boy critter wrote a poem about himself on the right side.

I've already noticed at least 4 times in the last week that when I looked for a particular condiment in the-fridge-that-I-love, what do you know, I found it! All without kneeling on the floor, knocking other condiments off shelves, or swearing!

I bet the-fridge-that-I-hate heard me making kissy noises at the new fridge. As I will still be availing myself of the extra freezer space in the banished fridge and the occasional use of the refrigerator compartment, I will tread warily around the thing. Who know what it has planned next...

Slowly...

...we're making progress on the kitchen:
I proudly present my stretch of ceiling. I've said it before and will say it again, I'm not a perfectionist, but this stretch of mudding and taping would satisfy a pickier person than I am.

Then the ceiling was primed and painted, the walls got 3 coats of red, and you can see the wood trim has all been stripped. As I'm typing this, Brian is finishing up staining it. We still have crown moulding, oak trim around the counter tops, and the subway tile backsplashes to install, but those three are far less messy and won't require crazy tarping, just moving stuff around as the work is done. The stove may be out of commission for a day or so when I'm tiling right behind it, but hopefully we won't have to eat as much take-out as we did this week. I'm itching to get back to cooking with the great produce that is available right now.

Bang for the buck

I received some lovely gifts for Christmas this year: cookbooks by David Lebovitz and Patricia Wells, a great little pan for making Ian's daily cheese omelet, a terrific down jacket to keep me warm and (hopefully) more cheerful this winter, but the gift that makes me smile every time I see it?This $9 human soap dispenser that Brian (ahem, I mean "Santa") picked up at the Museum of Contemporary Art gift shop. I don't know if it is the chubby body, the spherical head, or the little pursed lips that paah-too out a blob of soap, but this little guy pleases me every time I wash my hands.

Any surprises in your stockings that you want to share?

Obsessor's gift guide

Ok it is December, I am no longer in denial about the speed with which major holidays are approaching. For those of you in search of a gift for an obsessor in your life, or putting together your wish list to noodge those giving you gifts in the right direction, here are some ideas. This is stuff I'd like to receive if I didn't already have it--I don't think there is anything here over $20 and many are appropriately sized for stocking stuffing:

Kitchen:

• Good tongs--I can't tell you how many times I've been at the house of a good cook and found that they somehow survive without a pair of tongs.
• Roasted walnut oil (or hazelnut oil if you have a hazelnut freak on your hands. Me, I'm a walnut girl.) Makes the best vinaigrette dressing ever. I like the stuff from La Tourangelle and recently saw some of it hiding on a shelf at TJ Maxx of all places.
  
• Pastry cloth and rolling pin cover--for making pie crust. I love this thing. Cook's Illustrated recently disparaged it--they prefer parchment paper--but with a thorough flouring of the cloth and cover, I have never had pastry stick to it. Of course Cook's Illustrated also mentioned that they wash the covers every time they use them to which I say--Ha! You don't have to worry about rancid bits of pie dough festering away on the thing between uses if you flour it thoroughly enough that the dough never gets a chance to stick. I sometimes do give mine a shake out the back door to get rid of excess flour before I fold it back up and store it in its ziplock baggie. But wash it? Too OCD for me.
  
• Microplane zester--I've been contemplating getting a second one since I use my current one so much and sometimes have to wash it three times in an evening when lemon zest, Parmesan, and nutmeg all need to be produced. And for God's sake, get the one with the handle so your favorite cook doesn't grate off their palm.
  

Reading:

• The Hummingbird's Daughter (in paperback!)--I raved about this book here.
• The Welsh Girl--I raved about this book here.
• The Goose Girl--And this one I think I forgot to rave about, but it is for those of you who are nurturing a young reading freak. I've always liked retellings of the classics and this one takes a Grimm tale and turns it into a compelling story about a young woman who learns to define who she is, rather than let others define her.
• If your recipient can handle potentially tragic/depressing, yet really beautiful, literature as a holiday gift--some people are not so grateful to get a book that will make them cry--there is Half of a Yellow Sun and Flight.
  

Knitting/Crafting:

• A skein of Crack-silk haze is a luxury that can be used in many ways. There are 33 colors and enough yardage in one skein to make a wispy scarf, or use it to make an ethereal trim on a chunkier sweater.
  
• A subscription to Craft magazine or Interweave Knits--if you have a crafter who isn't addicted to the web then these paper magazines are pretty great. Not really so necessary for we blog addicted types...
  
• Bias tape maker--this little thingy is fun! You cut strips of fabric on the bias and feed it through this gadget and it comes out ready to iron into perfect bias tape. Now I'm trying to think of what exactly I plan to do with 10 yards of bias tape....

Writing:
For chrissake just give any writer in your life a little time. That's the only gift that I'm asking for from my Mother in Law. She has been kid-tending while I take my Friday pastry class this autumn; as I'm not taking any cooking classes next semester, I'm hoping she'll keep kid-tending while I use my Friday to write. God knows, other than this blog, this year has not been a productive one on the writing front for me.

Summer tea and toxins

I crave iced tea in the summer far more often than I actually consume it.

Iced tea requires a little forethought--time to brew the tea and then let it cool and an appropriate container in which to store the cooled tea. I'm not so good at that planning ahead stuff but I could probably get my act together if I had the appropriate container available. My big teapot is a gorgeous Wedgewood Blue Willow wedding gift that would get smashed to pieces by the small people if I left it in the fridge.

After much searching for a sturdy yet not hideous container, I found this:

The Frigoverre 1 L glass pitcher containing concentrated iced jasmine tea.

I love this thing. And I love that it was made in Italy and yet only costs $7.50. I'm making the tea super strong so it lasts a while. When I want some, I pour about half a glass, add some ice cubes and then fill the rest of the glass up with water.

What with all the recalls of Chinese products out there, I'm a little paranoid about what I'm buying these days, especially if it will store food. I also bought the 2 L pitcher which I use for the kids orange or grape juice so I won't have to worry about crazy chemicals or lead leaching into their beverages. My kids are weird enough (charming! charmingly weird!); god only knows what a little industrial poisoning would do to them.

We also got rid of all our Nalgene bottles after discovering that they are made with a plastic that leaches Bisphenol A into the water. Don't you love it? Containers that are specifically made as water bottles with nice endocrine disruptors! My kids have been drinking from these for the past few years which probably explains a lot...but now we have replaced all the Nalgene with a combination of stainless steel Klean Kanteen and coated aluminum Sigg water bottles (which, if you aren't picky about the design on the outside of the bottle, you can often get on sale at the REI Outlet.)

I know this is just one step and we'll still be getting Bispheol A from other sources, but at least this is one relatively easy way to reduce our intake.

Gifts that feed my obsessions

When I was a kid, on Christmas afternoon, my sister and I would call up our respective best friends and start the conversation with "whatdidyaget?"

In the spirit of good natured greed, here are a few things I received that will feed my obsessions.
This book:
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill

My dad, a Greek-ophile if there ever was one, loved it and wants me to love it too (nothing like reading under the pressure of parental expectation...) But seriously, I think if I have a goblet of dark wine on hand, the Wine-Dark Sea and I will get along well.



This book:
Antipasti: Fabulous Appetizers and Small Plates, by Joyce Goldstein

I'm thinking that an Antipasti party might be the perfect antidote to the post-holiday slump. Wouldn't a warm Gorgonzola custard served with pears and arugula cheer you up?



These fun tools:

a stainless steel pasta scooper to replace the crappy plastic one I had. This scooper seems to have it in for the wee kitties on the window sill.



a blow torch from my mother-in-law:

How many Mother-in-Laws give their Daughters-in-law tools that could be weapons? Hello Creme Brulee fest!







I finally finished this and count it as my gift to myself:

Red red red, the antidote to winter gloom! It still needs to be blocked, but I'll get to that later...







And finally:
This item of exercise paraphernalia designed to keep the aforementioned Gorgonzola and creme brulee from settling too firmly on my person:


Unfortunately, there is no snow.








To leave you with a smile, I present the cutest/weirdest present that my kids received:



A tiny froggie pot with grass growing out of his head.




So, whatdidyaget?

Technique

I had a birthday recently and my dear family gratified my gluttony with these gifts:
That's an Easysprout, new Braun blender, and a mozzarella cheese making kit! Yes, these were all gifts I requested. The blender I already knew how to use, but damn this one works better than my old Osterizer that would choke on just about anything more firm than a banana. I've been making the kids mango pineapple popsicles that are a breeze to whip up with this thing (take frozen mango, frozen pineapple, add a little juice of your choice and then blend 'till slushy. Pour in popsicle molds and freeze.)

When it came to the Easysprout, the name really says it all. Take 1.5 T of which ever seed mix you want (the sprouter came with these packets of seeds bought from the Sproutpeople) and put them in the container.

Rinse and drain the seeds every day and Ta da! on day 5 you have a container that looks like this.

Which means that you can have my favorite breakfast which looks like this:

That's a bagel, cream cheese, cayenne pepper, black pepper and spicy sprouts. Best washed down with strong black coffee.

I know, you can use a mason jar and damp paper towels to sprout seeds, but this system is so much less messy and has better air circulation. For ease of use, it is worth it.

Not everyone is as fond of sprouts as I am. I figure it is the residue of being raised in Ann Arbor back when the hippie culture was still pretty prominent (anyone else out there have fond memories of the Sun Bakery? Sigh.) Sort of like gefilte fish, you may need to be weaned on it to truly enjoy it. I love sprouts and it is really hard to find decent, fresh sprouts even at the natural food stores. And if you find them before they are slimy or dried out, they usually cost somewhere in the realm of $3.50 per container.

So my sprouting technique is just fine.

I can't say the same for my cheese making skills.

I attempted my first batch of fresh mozzarella on Sunday and the result was eeeeeeh. I read the instructions, but didn't watch the video that is available on the web site (next time, I'll follow those instructions rather than the pretty lousy written ones that came with the kit). Mine didn't take 30 minutes, more like 120 minutes.

I started with the milk, citric acid and rennet:
drained off some of the whey (which was a pain in the ass and which I'm pretty sure I did wrong since draining it took the bulk of my time)
and then heated and drained it until it came together in a ball
then added some salt and kneaded the ball (which hurt--the curds have to get to at least 135 degrees in order to stretch and that temperature is not comfortable for hand immersion.)

Finally, after much sweat (literally), I had this small ball of cheese floating in water:
It looked the way fresh mozzarella is supposed to look, but when we cut into it to taste, it did not taste like the lovely creamy stuff I've bought on Saturdays at Morgan and York. Instead, it tasted a lot like raw bread dough... It was ok for putting on grilled pizza, but really nothing to write home about (or to justify the effort).
After two hours of kneading hot cheese curds, I needed a gin and tonic in a pint glass...

I need to work on my mozzarella technique. Luckily the kit makes up to thirty batches of the stuff, so hopefully sometime before batch 30 I will get the hang of it.

Kitchen gadgety gift suggestions

My old high-school friend Scott asked for a little advice about purchasing a kitchen gadget for his wife (well, for his kids to give his wife for Mother's Day--three kids, three gadgets, lucky woman) and since I lost his e-mail address somehow (I thought my e-mail program automatically copied addressees into my contacts list but apparently not...Oops) and figure there may be some other folks looking to please a kitchen-gadget obsessed woman on Sunday May 16th, here are a few recommendations.

These are pretty simple things, folks. I have plenty of stuff that takes up a lot of room in the kitchen and gets used once or twice a year.

Here are some of my favorites:
A Microplane zester. These are the best citrus zesters/nutmeg graters/Parmesan cheese shredders bar none. The Parmesan in particular ends up so fine and light it is like eating Parmesan clouds.

Make sure you get the one with the handle. As the blade easily removes the top most layer of skin of a lemon, so it will remove the top most layer of skin of a human. And if you plan to have your toddler present this to the fortunate woman (seeing a lethal object in the hands of a baby is always a fine way to get mom's attention) wrap the blade part for God's sake and make sure she knows to unwrap it carefully! Mother's Day + Emergency Room = No Fun


An Oxo Mixing bowl. I know, you already have mixing bowls. I have two stainless steel, and a set of those fun glass ones that fit inside each other and range in volume from about a tablespoon to big enough to bathe a reasonable sized infant. And I use them all. But last year I went out and bought myself one of these bowls for two reasons: 1) It has a spout and as I was (and still am) obsessed with making ice cream I was having a hell of a time transferring custard from the bowl into the small freezer canister of the ice cream maker. Much of the custard would end up on the counter or trickling down the sides of the canister and much swearing would ensue. This bowl's diminutive spout makes it a piece of cake. 2) It has a rubber bottom (sounds kind of kinky--yes?) and a handle which makes this the bowl I reach for when I cook with the kids. Three year olds are very good at stirring. They stir so well that sometimes the bowl flies off the counter. We have a much better chance of having the ingredients stay in the vicinity of the countertop if I use this bowl.


Tongs. You can never have too many pairs of tongs. I am a particular fan of these Robinson self-locking tongs since they only take one hand to release the lock (some tongs require the hand not holding the tongs to reach over and press or pull something to unlock them--usually when I use tongs, my other hand is occupied holding a platter, or on good days, a glass of wine). I only have one pair and since Brian doesn't read this blog (probably to protect his sanity since he may already suspect he married a nut-case and doesn't want further proof) I'm going to have to hint heavily that I need another pair of tongs for Mother's Day. My method will probably involve the use of tongs as a pinching tool to get his attention. I use my tongs pretty much every day and often have to wash them three or four times just to make one meal (after you have used them to, say, put raw chicken on the grill DON'T FOR GOD'S SAKE use them to stack the corn on the cob on a platter without washing them in between! Or buy two or more pairs and save yourself the hassle.)


Silicon spatulas. Do you remember the white rubber spatulas of your youth? Man, did they taste nasty. As a child devoted to licking out the bowl after my mom had made cake or cookie batter I have a real hatred of those damn spatulas. You'd get a lovely lick of say, lemon cake batter, and then the taste of nasty rubber would come through and ruin it. I am happy to say that my children need not suffer the hardships that I endured (cue violins). Silicon spatulas are terrific. The examples pictured at left are by Le Creuset and are reasonably priced and so cheerful in kiwi-green, but it seems everyone makes them these days. In addition to no nasty taste, these spatulas can be used to stir stuff on the stove since they can take heat up to something like 600 degrees. That makes them very useful for getting into the corners of pans (where a wood spoon can't reach) and keeping sauces or custard from sticking.

Here's to hoping that these 4 suggestions are useful--if you happen to already own all of the above, allow me to complement you on your good taste! Or drop me a line and I can always come up with a second tier of fun and/or useful gadgets to recommend (does mom like beer? Get her a Homer Simpson talking beer bottle opener!)

My new buddy

I've got a new buddy in the kitchen:
I've been a little slow on the uptake here but cast iron is fantastic! About a month ago I bought an already seasoned Lodge cast iron frying pan from Amazon (you can get them locally at Kitchenport, but Kitchenport is far too dangerous a place for me to enter with a three year old). There has been a buzz about the dangers of Teflon among the avian-owning community (of which I am not a member). Enough food freaks have heard about how Teflon fumes can kill a budgie and started thinking twice about frying their eggs in the self-same bird-killer pan. The NY Times magazine had a funny article by Chef Daniel Patterson whose environmentalist girlfriend made him get rid of all his Teflon pans; his quest to make light scrambled eggs finally arrived at a fairly involved process of poaching scrambled eggs and straining them.

I'm too lazy for all that rigmarole before I'm fully caffeinated, so I thought I'd try the old fashioned non-stick pan: seasoned cast iron. It may not be the greatest pan for scrambled eggs (I still risk the Teflon for my slow cooked creamy scrambled eggs), but for pretty much every other cooking task for which I used to reach for a non-stick pan, I now use the cast iron. Fried eggs, pancakes, chicken paillards, grilled cheese sandwiches, so far nothing has stuck to it. I was concerned that the garlic loaded chicken would lead to garlic flavored pancakes the next morning, but a soak in hot water and a soap-less scrub with a brush got out any offending odor or flavor.

The only downside is the weight. The pan lives on my cooktop even when not in use because it is so damn heavy I fear I will brain myself if I keep it up on the high shelf where I store my other pots. I also bought a silicon tube-like thingy to slip over the handle so I don't inadvertently fry my palm when the pan is hot.

Last night my new buddy helped me to make dinner:
I finally got around to making the kafta recipe from January's Gourmet magazine. It was good, though I advise anyone who thinks about making the kafta to abandon the grill and cook the kebabs under the broiler. I started these on the grill and after losing about a third of the quantity of each meat stick to gravity and flames, I very carefully eased them off of the grill (one big spatula and a pair of tongs) and onto my broiler pan. I think if I had stuck with the grill we each would have had one mere morsel of meat and the rest would have fallen to its ruin. How the hell you are supposed to get a ground meat mixture to stick to skewers I do not know. Maybe bamboo skewers would help, but I only have metal ones.

The kafta flavor was really good--the right amount of spice, herbs and pine nuts to highlight the lamb without overwhelming it. I was underwhelmed by the zucchini chunks that the recipe included. They were marinated in a lemon-olive oil mixture and were supposed to be grilled too, but as I had run out of skewers I popped them in my new buddy and cooked them on the stove top. The skillet cooked them up perfectly with nicely browned sides, but the flavor was just too bland next to the assertively spiced kafta.
I altered the yogurt sauce that goes with the kafta and made it more like a tatziki sauce with grated cucumber instead of chopped mint. Mint would be nice when I have a big tuft of it growing in a pot on my deck, but the effort of tracking down mint in March in Michigan I deemed not worth the effort. I also put only a teeny bit of garlic in the yogurt sauce so that a small girl would eat it and eat it she did--she tried pulling the whole bowl over to her place and digging in with her spoon. It took a bit of convincing that the yogurt sauce was to be shared by everyone at the table.

Next time I make the kafta I'll probably skip the zucchini, rice and yogurt sauce and serve it with hummus, good pita bread and a romaine/tomato/cucumber salad tossed with lemon, olive oil, salt and sumac. And hell, maybe I'll try and pan fry the meat tubes in my new buddy and skip both grill and broiler.

For the love of an appliance

Avert your eyes if you can't stand witnessing an excesses of love and joy because I'm about to get all gushy here.

I love my stove. I love love love love love my stove.

No, I don't have a $3000+ professional beast. I have a competent, yet relatively modest, Jenn-air Model JGS8850ADW. It has a gas cooktop and a gas-convection oven.

I am sure that my perception of my stove is influenced by its predecessor, an electric, evil piece of crap I used to call "The Inferno" since it had two settings: Off and Burn. When we finally decided to replace it, we didn't even consider donating such a malicious machine to a place like the Re-Use Center. Instead we got a little therapeutic relief by ripping the damn thing apart and throwing the pieces into the driveway. Seeing an appliance that has tormented you reduced to a pile of debris is really very satisfying.

My latest reason for loving my current stove beyond all reason is this:
See that button at the bottom of the (grubby) control panel in the first full column on the left? The one that says "Bread Proofing"? I used it last night to make this:

perfect, thick creme fraiche.

We keep our house pretty damn cool in the wintertime (daytime setting 61 F, nighttime setting 59 F) and without this nice warm place for the bowl of cream with a tablespoon of buttermilk to sit and fester I would have had watery glop that was decidedly not "fraiched".

Tempting as it is while solo parenting to sit down with a spoon, a bottle of potent alcohol (more Poire William anyone?) and a video of a Jane Austin movie and eat the whole bowl after the kids go to bed, I am actually going to share this glorious stuff with my bookgroup tonight. We read Three Junes by Julia Glass (which, I confess I didn't re-read though I did enjoy it the first time I read it about a year and a half ago) and in honor of the portion of the book set in Scotland, I am making an appetizer/canape sort thingy with smoked salmon, salmon caviar and some of that glorious creme fraiche. I haven't exactly decided what form the completed dish will take, but with three such ingredients, how can it be bad?

Organization

The other day I opened my spice cabinet and was beaned on the head by a falling jar of allspice. It fell not because it was a malevolent spice, but because there were so many crammed in jars of various herbs and spices that the poor thing had no recourse but to hit me to get my attention and try to convince me to improve its living standards. Clearly, I am really not the person to turn to when it comes to organization, but I did learn and implement something at the cooking class on Sunday.

Bhanu brought out this container of neatly labeled spices for us to use that day.
I asked her if she had set it up this way because she was traveling (she lives in San Francisco and was visiting her son) and she said that she has a bin just like this one at home (but with a few more spices).

It was so incredibly easy to use these spices--the little gladware containers were much easier to use than screwing and unscrewing endless jars and a tablespoon fit in easily. But best of all, once the lid is on the spice bin, you can shove it someplace out of the way, like on a bookshelf or under the sofa or maybe even in your kitchen if you don't clog up all your cabinet space with appliances like I do...I rarely need regular access to fenugreek seeds except when cooking Indian food so when I got myself organized I excavated many jars from the spice cabinet (giving that desperate allspice a little room to stretch itself out), decanted them into little gladware containers, labeled them and popped them in the bin. Pretty much everything dried that I need to cook Indian recipes is now collected all together and also out of the way of the daily use stuff.

The kids will be sooooo happy tomorrow when I can actually find the cinnamon for their oatmeal without cursing up a storm.

So maybe I should take a lesson from this and try to organize all the hostile piles of paper that cover pretty much every horizontal surface in my house. But unfortunately there isn't any big reward to organizing paper--oh great I found 122 paid bills that should have been filed somewhere! Maybe I could synthesize some sort of reward for doing it, even if it was an unrelated reward. If I clean off one of the crapoires (a term lifted from Lynne for their armoire where they dump crap, though she only has one crapoire and in my house there are numerous crapoires to the point of almost calling the place a crapoireteria) then maybe I can try my hand at making vanilla gelato because I have a hankering for an affogato al caffe which is simply vanilla ice cream or gelato "drowned" in a couple of shots of espresso. (I looked for a photo on Flickr and amazingly there is no affogato tag! If I make one, I must photograph it and post it there...)

Or if I'm tired after organizing all that dreary dusty paper, maybe I'll just buy some vanilla ice cream and give my donkey brain its carrot without making the donkey grow the carrot from a damn seed.

my new toy

I still have about half an hour before Nicola's Books opens and I can go get my copy of Harry Potter #6 so I thought I'd introduce you to my new toy:

(Sorry about that fuzzy picture quality)

I was inspired by Chubby Hubby's blog entry about gelato and yesterday decided that since no one got me any of the four things I asked for for my birthday last month (the latest Harry Potter, a burr grinder for my espresso, Bruce Springsteen's Devils and Dust, and an ice cream maker) I would have a little retail therapy and get one myself. I had one of those 20% off one item coupons from Linen's and Things so it came out at $40 and since I just made $100 writing fun little vignettes for the Ann Arbor Observer City Guide, I thought I'd blow a little of it on a late present. So tonight I'm making recipe # 2 chocolate gelato to take to Ami and John's house. I'm just a little concerned that 1.5 quarts (which is all it'll make at one time) will not be enough for all the adults to get some and also satisfy the greedy little mouths of the Entropy kids and their buddy Iris.

Ian is proving himself mightily adept at reading these days--he came up to me with a big smile yesterday and said "you bought an ice cream maker!" I said, "Did daddy tell you that?" Then he looked at me like I was a moron and said "No, I read it on the box." It was a proud mama moment, and god knows those don't happen very often around here. It kind of makes up for Fiona's current troubles with potty training. We can't keep a diaper on the kid but she sure as hell isn't consistent enough to let her wear underwear yet. In the past two days she has peed copiously on one rug and pooped on another.

And with that lovely image, I'll leave you to go get my Harry Potter fix.