gelato answers!

Behold! The New York Times has solved my gelato conundrum!

In their November 6, 2005 special magazine Living section (which is primarily about food--a definition of "living" with which I heartily approve) in a one page article titled Molto Pistachio, the writer Jill Santopietro explains the variations of what is called gelato in Italy by demonstrating how the recipe for pistachio gelato varies by region:

"In Italy, gelato varies as much from maker to maker as it does from region to region. Sicilians have long been renowned for lighter gelato made with milk and no eggs. In 16th-century Tuscany, Bernardo Buontalenti, the Medicis' architect, is said to have popularized gelato made with a sweetened milk-and-egg custard. And in northern Italy, where dairy products are more plentiful, gelato tends to be thicker and richer, with more egg yolks and cream."

So there you have it--milk in the South and increasing quantities of cream and eggs appear as you move further North. Why couldn't all the books about frozen desserts that I've combed for an explanation provide such a concise explanation? Thank you, Jill.

I'm going to make the kind that is all milk (no eggs or cream) to see how it compares with all the other frozen desserts I've made which have all had an egg (or egg yolk) custard base. The milk only recipe has two tablespoons of cornstarch in it, which is what many people use to make pudding without eggs or cream (which, if we are on a defining kick, is probably what differentiates "pudding" from "custard"). My friend Deb (Saul, the future chef's mama) has a fine version of chocolate pudding that I've been lucky enough to sample that is made this way and I'm hoping that the gelato equivalent will be intensely flavorful without being nauseatingly rich.

If any other (local) person would like to make the central Italian version (7 egg yolks) and/or the northern Italian version (9 egg yolks and 1/3 C cream), I'd love to do a side by side comparison. Drop me a line if you are interested and I'll e-mail you the recipes for the other versions.

Here's the recipe for the kind I plan to make:

Sicilian (Milk, no eggs, no cream) Pistachio Gelato

Makes 1 quart

4 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup sugar

2 cups shelled, toasted, unsalted pistachios, finely ground.

1. In a small bowl, pour 3 tablespoons of the milk over the cornstarch and whisk until smooth.

2. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat, bring the remaining milk to just before the boil. Whisk in the salt, sugar and cornstarch mixture until the sugar has dissolved, about 8 minutes.

3. Transfer the pan to an ice bath. When cool, stir in the pistachios. Refrigerate overnight.

4. Strain, pressing on the nuts to release all the liquid. Churn in an ice cream maker until thick. Freeze or serve immediately.

Restaurant Review: MisSaigon

I haven't had the opportunity to do a review of someone else's cooking in a while. Hmmmm--why would that be? I suppose I could post my feelings about the various pizzas in town since that has been the only restaurant scene to which I've been exposed of late.

But last night, on a whim (had food in the house to cook, had a good day with the kids so cooking didn't seem like a nail in my coffin, etc.) we trucked across town and went to the new Vietnamese restaurant MisSiagon. (I committed the blogging crime of leaving home without my camera. So sorry.)

I'm a big fan of Vietnamese food--brighter, sharper flavors than the Thai food that can be found around here (the Thai offerings in the area, which have improved of late, rely heavily on coconut milk but ignore the sour end of the Thai food spectrum). Thus far the only place to get Vietnamese food has been the frustratingly inconsistent and distant (from my house) restaurant Dalat, located on Michigan Ave right in downtown Ypsilanti. I've had good bowls of Pho (sorry, can't get the accents to work in Blogger) and Bun there (soup and composed vermicelli rice bowls respectively) but I've also had really sad ones that were not worth the drive.

MisSaigon is located out on Stone School Road just past Ellsworth in the new little strip mall that is (I assume) filling the take-out needs of the South East part of town (there is also a branch of Tio's for Mexican and a branch of Ahmo's and a Mediterranean market for Middle Eastern.) MisSaigon's Vietnamese menu is not as extensive as Dalat's--about half of MisSaigon's menu is standard Chinese fare. But the Vietnamese food that is on the menu and that we tried last night was a step up from Dalat's.

We sampled three Vietnamese classics: a big bowl of Pho, a bowl of Bun (we chose the one with marinated char-grilled pork) and a Vietnamese Crepe with shrimp.

The Pho (noodle soup with thin slices of beef) had an intensely flavorful broth with very prominent star anise flavor. It came with the standard plate of bean sprouts and lime wedge, and a bottle of hoisin sauce to add as you like (I've never had it with the hoisin sauce and didn't think it brought much to the soup). I wish that, like some of the Vietnamese places that I've frequented out on the West coast, it had also come with sliced chilies, fresh cilantro and fresh basil to add, but the flavor of the broth was so good that I didn't miss the additions as much as usual. I foresee sending Brian across town this winter to bring me some of this Pho when I've got a horrible cold.

The Bun was good, but not stellar; on a good day at Dalat I'd say the Bun at each place is equal. Bun should be a deep bowl of goodness--layered cold vermicelli noodles, shredded lettuce, carrot, bean sprouts, cucumber and peanuts with some sort of grilled meat on top. It comes with the standard and addictive Vietnamese dipping sauce, nuoc cham which is lime juice, sugar, garlic, chilies and fish sauce. At MisSaigon the grilled pork was nicely charred yet still juicy and the vegetables were crisp and fresh. The size of the bowl was moderate--I'm used to more gluttonous servings and while I appreciate that the obesity problem in America (and particularly in my state) should make me pleased that there is a place that doesn't cater to our outsized appetites, I thought this was on the skimpy side. The other big critique is that the nuoc cham was really, how shall I say, Midwestern. I couldn't taste any garlic or chilies in it so it lacked the punch that a good nuoc cham should have. They served it with a bottle of hot sauce so you could boost up the heat, but it didn't have the same effect as fresh chilies.

The Vietnamese Crepe was well executed. If you haven't had one of these, allow me to describe it: the crepe is BIG--not a weenie little appetizer but a plate full of food. A very eggy batter (almost a cross between an omelet and a crepe) is stuffed with sauteed bean sprouts and onions and your choice of protein, then served with leaves of lettuce, fresh herbs and that same lime-fish sauce for dipping. To eat it, you tear off a piece of crepe, fill it with the fresh herbs and wrap it in a lettuce leaf before dipping it in the sauce.

The crepe batter at MisSaigon was nicely spiked with curry powder and the shrimp in the crepe were big, plump and juicy. I had expected tiny (cheaper) salad shrimp and was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of their bigger brethren. The charcoal grilling did not dry out the flesh, something that has happened on occasion at Dalat. (The cook at MisSaigon has a deft touch at the charcoal grill). MisSaigon provided cilantro with the lettuce, though I wish there had also been fresh mint and/or basil and, again, I thought the dipping sauce needed garlic and chilies to brighten up the flavor.

The restaurant is very clean (Dalat is on the dingy side) and the owner/waiter was really friendly and helpful. There was no stress about eating with kids and the waiter brought extra bowls and spoons to dish up food for the kids without our having to ask. Getting the bill took a while but my guess is they didn't expect so many people on a Wednesday evening--I was pleased that there were a decent number of other diners.
I wish the place had a bigger Vietnamese menu--there are a few other Vietnamese dishes on the menu (a few rice plates, chef specials and appetizers) that we didn't try, but clearly they are sticking with conservative fare and relying more heavily on the back-up of Chinese food to pay the rent. I'm hoping that if they stay in business and the Vietnamese food proves popular, maybe they'll diversify the menu a bit more. Until then, I will definitely be back when the urge hits for a big bowl of noodle soup with that heavenly star anise broth.

The gelato conundrum

Sigh. Sometimes the internet provides me with too much information. Thus I find myself with a gelato conundrum: when can I say "I made gelato" with confidence and not worry that what I made was really "ice cream"? (I know, clearly, things must be going pretty well in life if this is what I'm worrying about.)

There are many different definitions of what makes a frozen concoction into gelato rather than ice cream which include:

1. no cream
2. just enough cream to make American milk have the fat content of Italian milk (which apparently is a little bit fattier)
3. no egg whites
4. no eggs at all
5. or just special equipment that freezes the stuff with less air mixed in

I can't do anything about #5 since I'm not about to invest in yet another piece of specialized (and no doubt imported and expensive) equipment.

Thus far I've made "gelato" with no cream (whole milk and evaporated milk) and no egg whites (the chocolate orange gelato) and with the just enough cream and no egg whites (pine nut honey gelato--recipe below) combinations. Both were very good and rich and intense. But so was the stuff that I've made that I've thought of as "ice cream"-- the lemon, the cinnamon.

What do you think? Is the term "gelato" merely being used to impress and sound sophisticated while "ice cream" sounds more homey and comforting? Does it imply an intensity of flavor that one does not usually get with stuff called "ice cream"? Is is really about the inclusion of egg whites? Or has the two words become synonymous?

While you are thinking about your response to the above questions, might I suggest you have a scoop of Pine nut honey gelato?

Pine Nut Honey Gelato
adapted from The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book

1.5 cups 1% milk (that's what I had in the house so I adjusted the cream quantity accordingly to try and mimic Italian milk fat content)
1 C cream
4 egg yolks
1 C toasted pine nuts (you can get these pre-toasted at Trader Joes if, like me, you have a short attention span and a tendency to burn nuts when you try to toast them)
2/3 C honey
1/4-1/2 t salt
1/2 t vanilla extract

1. In a food processor chop the nuts, salt and vanilla extract until it forms a paste. Add the egg yolks and process some more.
2. In a pan, heat up the milk and cream and honey until hot but not boiling.
3. With the food processor running slowly pour 1.5 cups of the hot milk/honey combination down the feed tube. Then add the egg/milk/honey mixture back to the pan and cook gently, whisking continually, until the custard coats the back of a spoon.
   
4. Strain the custard through a sieve into a bowl, cover the surface with plastic wrap and chill until cold.
5. Freeze in your machine. Then put in a container and freeze until firm.
   
6. Serve with a drizzle of honey and a few whole pine nuts sprinkled over the top.
   

Southern Food by a Yankee

My garden is in its final stages and when your garden gives you this:

A whole lot of green (unripe) tomatoes

and this:

a whole lot of kale (Red Russian and Lacinato varieties)

even a Northerner like me feels the urge to cook Southern. Since the most Southern my roots go is the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, I called in the advice of two of my favorite southerners--Sarah (Atlanta) and Meg (Memphis).

Of course, fried green tomatoes could start off a Southern meal, and the kale could be treated like collards and stewed up with a ham hock, hot peppers and a little vinegar. But what else should one add to make it a meal? After a number of considerations (biscuits with ham? ham and red-eye gravy? hoppin'-john?) Sarah proposed that magic word: grits.

This past summer, Lynne headed South with her family and got hooked on grits. She traveled with a Southerner who had the pleasure of introducing Lynne to the addictive combination of Shrimp and Grits. As Lynne was generous enough to share the recipe on her blog and I'd been itching to try it, this seemed like a good excuse.

Unfortunately, Meg came down with a cold (as did Sarah's Brian) so I invited a few more Yanks to join us: MJ and Lou and Iris.

I've never made Fried Green Tomatoes and they turned out pretty well. My big concern was getting the batter to stick on something as wet as a tomato and an initial dip in flour did the trick. They were a little bit tart, a little bit salty and quite crunchy:
Here's how I made them and what I learned (in bold):

Fried Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:
Green (unripe) tomatoes--any non-cherry variety, at least 4 big ones or many smaller ones
salt
flour
1 egg mixed with a little milk
corn meal
pepper
oil for frying (I used Canola because it was what I had in the house though I bet peanut would be better) with the addition of 3 T bacon fat (for flavor!)
hot sauce

1. Prepare your tomatoes. Cut out the stem and then trim off the tops and bottoms so you have flat surfaces for the batter to stick to. Cut the tomatoes into 1-1.5 cm thick slices and salt generously (the first few I made were not pre-salted and were bland. A green tomato doesn't have much flavor on its own so you have to help it along.)
2. Set up batter assembly line: in one bowl put about 1/2 C flour to which you have added some salt and black pepper (seasoned salt or a little cayenne would be good here too), in the next bowl beat the egg with a little milk till it isn't too gloopy, and finally, on a plate put about 1/2 C of yellow cornmeal (with a little more salt and pepper if you like.)
3. Heat up about 1/4 inch of oil with the bacon drippings in a deep frying pan until hot (I don't use a thermometer but you can drop a little corn meal in and see if it foams up when it hits the oil). Then take a tomato slice and dredge it in flour, dip it in the egg and then drop and flip it in the corn meal before popping it in the hot oil.
4. Cook on one side 'till nicely brown (beyond golden to really brown--again, my first few weren't cooked long enough.) Then flip the tomatoes (tongs work well) and cook on the other side until equally deep brown; the tomato inside should have lost its bright green color and have turned a light olive--that means it is cooked.
5. Remove from the oil and place on a paper towel or paper bag lined plate. If you have a lot to fry mine did pretty well waiting in a warm oven for their brethren to emerge from the oil bath--they didn't sog much at all.
6. Serve with hot pepper sauce (tobasco or the like).

We managed to eat all the tomatoes while reading stories to the kids and getting them tanked up with kid-food (Mac and cheese, crunchy peas, raisins, banana bread, yogurt, etc.). Then, thanks to a DVD of Harold and the Purple Crayon, the grown ups actually got to sit down and eat this:

Mmmm. Shrimpy sausage-y goodness. Get the recipe here.

with this:

White grits cooked with chicken broth and dolloped with butter.

and this:

Kale masquerading as collards.

which made us feel like this:

This would be the state that Meg's son refers to as "Happy Tummy."

We polished off the evening with peach/raspberry cobbler (yeah for frozen fruit!) served with vanilla ice cream.

While there was only one Southerner to truly assess the cooking (and we softened her up with a good supply of wheat beer), it seemed like a successful foray into food that I didn't grow up eating. And I still have lots more green tomatoes left.

Pope Groan

My book group met last night to discuss Pope Groan, sorry Pope Joan. (Mary Jean came up with the pun after tolerating one of my rants. She's good with puns that way.)

I was relieved that I wasn't the only person who disliked the book, though perhaps I did express my disparagement more vociferously than other, more controlled, members (blame the copious quantity of wine consumed...).

Rather than spend any more time rehashing this unworthy book, I'll move on to what was, yet again, a splendid meal. Much of the book was set in Rome, so we (loosely) prepared dishes of an Italian-ish theme.

Halla brought yummy cheese and bread for us to eat (and to soak up the red wine that some of us were putting away at an alarming rate) before dinner. The group favorite was the drunken goat--a semi-soft goat cheese that is soaked in red wine.

Cheese--decimated by the barbarians

Sarah hosted and treated us to Artichokes stuffed with Sausage and Feta with a lemon-egg sauce:

Sarah demonstrates proper artichoke technique.

The artichokes were served with Marilyn's wonderful Cesar salad and Meg's roast vegetables:

Another groaning plate of bliss.

And then for dessert we had pine nut honey gelato (which I made) and Lea's homemade pizzelle:

See the beautiful bowl? Sarah made a set of these. I have such talented friends.

I'm going to blog more at length about the gelato in the near future after I have leisure to ponder (and research) the nature of gelato-ness.

Honest Pretzels

Last week in the midst of some pre-retreat excitement, I had the privilege of cooking with one of my favorite food-enthusiasts. He may only reach to my sternum, but in sheer excitement for the kitchen, he is a giant. I speak of Saul Vielmetti, the boy who gives me hope for the palate of the next generation.

While pesto is among Saul's favorite foods (and mine) we were cooking with my far less-adventurous-eater son, Ian, and so together we made Honest Pretzels.

Ian and Saul man-handling (aka kneading) the dough while Fiona (paw to the left) experiments with the gravity properties of flour...

How do you tell an "Honest" pretzel from a "Dishonest" pretzel? Beats the hell out of me. But that was the title of the recipe from the terrific kid's cooking book of the same name authored by Molly Katzan (yes, that Molly Katzan. Now that she isn't churning out Moosewood cookbooks, she is cooking with the height-challenged set).

We already own Pretend Soup, her first and most simple kid's cookbook (a gift for Ian from Saul--see how he is spreading the gospel of good eating among his friends?) and we obtained Honest Pretzels from the library. Pretend Soup is to credit for (re) introducing Ian to beans (bean and cheese quesadillas), getting him to try a banana for the first time in 3 years (the title recipe, pretend soup) and encouraging Ian to sound excited about vegetables (his actual consumption of vegetables lags behind his enthusiasm for reading recipes about them, but hopefully the gap will close over time).

Honest Pretzels is intended for ages 8 and up and is a bit more challenging, both in how the recipes are written (more words, fewer pictures) and in the techniques and coordination required. But with adult help handling the dangerous stuff (knives, ovens, boiling water, etc.) the recipes are quite do-able. And Ian and Saul are (allow me to brag a bit here) both incredible readers who can read the whole book cover to cover. (Ok, now that I've exhibited some of that insufferable parent pride I'll try to keep it under wraps for the rest of this entry.)

First we mixed up a simple bread dough in the food processor, turned it out on the counter top and, (after yet another hand-washing necessitated by my children's fondness for nose picking) allowed the kids to finish the kneading process.
While the dough proofed, there was a break for wrestling/train playing/general mayhem among the short folks, and a flour containment project for me.

An hour later we reconvened in the freshly swept kitchen and started the shaping process. We started with the conventional pretzel shape and then got creative. There was a snail (Saul's mom, Deb), a little person (Debbie Sobeloff, another adult friend attending the dough festivities), some misshapen blobs (Fiona), and two "A"s from Ian and Saul since it is a letter that is in both of their names.

After shaping, the pretzels get boiled for about a minute in a big pot of water, the same preparation as a bagel undergoes. We discovered that pretzels made of one piece of dough (a circle, the snail) survived the immersion bath far better than those pieced together out of little pieces of dough. My teddy bear pretzel lost a few appendages in his bath.

Then the boiled dough was placed on a baking sheet, sprayed with water (to make them crusty rather than squishy) and baked for 20 minutes. Half way through I pulled them out and spritzed them with water again (the kids got to do the initial spraying which, much to my surprise, mostly landed on the dough). We decided not to sprinkle them with salt. Despite my love of most foods saline, I don't quite trust my kids with moderating the salt flow to an edible quantity--if the salt was approached even remotely how they approached the flour, we'd be stuck dumping the finished product out for the birds to consume.

There were a wide array of shapes from which to choose.

The finished warm pretzels made a fine (vegetable free) lunch. Ian and Saul decided to dip theirs in peanut butter, the grown ups enjoyed them smeared with the goat cheese Deb brought with her, and Fiona discovered that cream cheese is a fine interactive art medium:
We'll definitely be making these again, though next time I'll try to sneak in a little whole wheat flour. The unfortunate facet of cooking with two excellent readers is they can tell when you "cheat" the recipe a bit.

The Things They Did (and Ate) with Photos

(My apologies to Tim O'Brien and his wonderful story "The Things They Carried" for the shamless rip-off of the title of this entry...)

What I wrote:
The first evening and day, I worked on the Valeska material—wrote a new opening scene, did lots of editing of existing material, tried to do some global chapter organization and mapping. No great epiphanies, but solid work.

Second day, I wasn’t in the mood to spend more time with The Gert—she’s pretty intense and kind of exhausting to be with all the time (which does not bode well for my ever being able to finish the book nor for my expectation that a reader would want to spend a chunk of their time with her story…). I beat myself up about this for a little while, then looked out the window at the exquisitely blue sky and yellow leaves and decided to forgive myself for being weak and lazy and instead turned to ideas for some articles that I want to write for a local rag that are about food and yarn. I had a lovely time sketching out these ideas and realized that I'm much better at it than fiction...

Ami worked on a story I can't wait to read, set in Rome. And Sarah worked on both a short story and started three new poems; one in particular is about a dog, and smoke and sleep that I'm hoping she'll share.

Sarah, looking appropriately poetical.

What I read:
I re-read most of Rosina Lippi’s Homestead and just loved it to death again for its subtlety, its grace and forgiveness, its inner turmoil and outer peace. I didn’t bring any books with me that I hadn’t read yet because I know how easily I can get sucked into a new story and not be able to pull myself away from it. But I did read some new stuff thanks to the books that Ami brought with her. I read some poems from Carl Dennis’ Ranking the Wishes. Really wonderful poems and the perfect finite way to remind my brain about the concentrated power of language. Also I read a few stories from the short story anthology You’ve Got to Read This, a lovely book in which 35 contemporary writers introduce stories that they love. My favorite was Alice Munroe’s story “Labor Day Dinner” (which can be found in her collection The Moons of Jupiter.) The introducer was David Leavitt (whose novel The Lost Language of Cranes and short story collection Family Dancing I have read and enjoyed) and he drew my attention to Munroe’s effortless shifts in point of view. I love Munroe’s stories anyway, the characters are complex, everyday life is made significant without resorting to the contrast of catastrophe, and the endings of the stories are graceful. But it was great to be encouraged to look at the craft of her writing too. I also read a Lars Gustafsson story (introduced by Charles Baxter) “Greatness Strikes Where it Pleases” that I loved and I’m going to have to track down the collection it came from called Stories of Happy People.

What I ate:
This is the point at which people are going to hate me—that is, if you have a jealous streak you might start feeling a little green right now. And if you don’t feel envious, well, you are a bigger person than I am.

I’ll go chronologically. The first evening we opened a bottle of Azagador red wine ($9 at Morgan & York, my favorite affordable bottle from their wine sale last year) and laid out the following to eat in front of the fire in the wood stove:

Sliced sourdough bread, shards of amazing parmesan (Morgan & York again), a round of aged ash-coated goat cheese which we combined with orange-fig preserves, and green olives marinated in citrus and fennel.

Saturday breakfast was leek quiche (leeks from the garden, eggs from the chickens on the farm), orange date muffins, baked apples with maple syrup and pecans and fresh oj.

A benevolent chicken.

Saturday lunch was some lovely salami studded with fennel seeds, bread, cornichons, more olives, and some fresh fruit (kiwi, strawberries, blackberries and pineapple).

For Saturday dinner, we roasted a boneless leg of lamb (obtained at Trader Joe’s frozen and marinated and pretty damn good especially for the price), roast red-skin potatoes, salad made with the last of my homegrown lettuce and the last of Sarah’s home grown tomatoes, a bottle of appropriately titled Ars Poetica red wine and then, after a significant pause and some time outside rocking on the bench swing and taking in the night air, a desert composed of outrageously rich Mexican Chocolate brownies with hot fudge sauce and ice cream.

Oh my. I'd like to dive in and roll around in this...

Sunday breakfast was fresh cooked eggs from the aforementioned chickens (over easy) and a still-warm brioche loaf (mmm—more eggs and butter), with a fresh fruit salad and more oj.

Just look at that yolk! No color enhancement has been done to this photo.

Sunday lunch was another salami/cheese/olive/cornichon/tomato grazing combo.

A plate of pleasure.

And then we had to return to the real world, albeit with very full and happy tummies, and quite a few leftovers.

What I knitted:
Nothing. I resisted the urge to bring any knitting along so that when I wasn’t writing or cooking or reading, I was still. I need to practice being still though my fingers got a little itchy at times, especially when I was watching Sarah knit a-sweater-that-I-covet with beautiful leaf-green silk alpaca blend.

Sarah, looking poetical even when she isn't writing poetry.

Bad Coffee Machine Karma

Ahhhhh. That would be the sound of a well-rested, revived mind.

Stress makes my brain feel like a hot air balloon that has sprung a leak—there’s a hiss in the background of the air escaping and my thoughts are in panic mode trying to prevent a catastrophic crash If I can just get the damn balloon down to land, I’ll be ok. But unfortunately we’re flying high (yes we, you didn’t think I went up in a hot air balloon by myself did you? Oh no, one must compound the stress by bringing along your nearest and dearest all of whom are under the mistaken impression that you are a capable balloon pilot, or flyer, or floater, or whatever) and while I’m trying to figure out how to control a vehicle that has no steering mechanism, I’m simultaneously having that urge I get whenever I’m in a high vulnerable place to throw myself over the edge like a lemming.

Sounds like fun, eh?

It is high praise for all the elements of this weekend (company, place, task at hand, food) that rather than leaking hot air, my mind feels like it is doing the kind of deep yoga breathing where you inhale through your nose (noisily, as I remember, Mr. Snuffaluffagus-style) and fill up your lungs, poofing your belly out, and then slowly, completely without a panic-y leaky feeling, let the air out.

It is quite telling when the only thing that started the hot-air-hiss in my head was a small kitchen appliance.

The "I-hate-Kate-coffee-machine"

It looked like an innocent coffee maker. New-ish, impeccably clean (the entire kitchen here is so clean it looks like no one has ever used it—no burnt grease spots or mysterious crud around the burners, a bright white fridge and microwave, etc), holding the promise of early morning coffee and a few hours of productive writing before breakfast (which was an amazing leek quiche, orange date muffins, baked apples with maple syrup and pecans and fresh o.j. all delivered by the gracious proprietor to our kitchen. Burp.)

Morning is without a doubt my best time to write. Sometimes I can get a post-tea afternoon buzz going but at dawn I am much less self-critical and rigid (take one guess when I’m writing this?). But I am not a pure enough soul to be able to write without one cup of morning coffee, preferably half a cup of strong brew (or two espresso shots) with half a cup of hot milk. If no hot milk is available then I’ll take it black, thank you.

My first attempt at making the required beverage wasn’t dramatic, it was just weak as dirty dishwater, a substance Sarah’s husband calls “burnt water”. I have some difficulty adapting to new coffee makers and different grinds and types of coffee—I know how to make what I like with my own equipment but don’t know how to get what I want when faced with anything even slightly different. This one was a basket rather than a cone and the coffee was from a bag of Starbucks pre-ground house blend that the B and B owner left for us (bless her again for not leaving Folgers—one of the dangers of venturing into rural Michigan is the coffee that passes for acceptable—Starbucks was far better than what I had expected) so I wasn’t that surprised when my first attempt was undrinkable. First I dumped a ton of coffee into the filter, and then figured I was overreacting so I scooped half of it out again, started the machine and left it to go start a fire in the wood burning stove in living room. (Side note: loved the stove. Want one.)

The "I-love-Kate-and-Kate-loves-me" wood stove

The resulting coffee was weak and disgusting so down the drain it went. I refilled the water reservoir, emptied and re-filled the basket and tried again with a hell of a lot more coffee. Started it up and went back to the stove to admire my excellent fire-karma.

I was so pleased with the crackling wood that I didn’t hear the sputtering machine, but when I went back I saw that something was seriously wrong—a black puddle oozed over the countertop, there were eruptions over the side of the basket dripping down the (formerly) pristine white exterior of the machine, and there was the sour smell of coffee boiling and burning on the hot plate. I hadn’t jammed the pot under the basket quite hard enough so while a bit of the oily brew made it into the pot; the rest had backed up in the filter basket and overflowed.

In my own house this would not have been such a big deal, but then in my own house the contrast would not have been as stark due to the fact that nothing in my kitchen ever looked so clean before I came along and ruined it.

I managed to salvage a half a cup of barely drinkable coffee (it was chewy coffee since a quantity of the grounds had found their way into the pot) and made myself drink it before attempting to clean the evil machine. It was pretty clear that this machine hated my guts by then because what should have been a relatively basic clean-up kept getting worse and worse as I tried harder and harder. I managed to get coffee grounds into the damn water reservoir which, unless I could get them out, would mean that I had plugged up and effectively broken the machine.

Thankfully Ami and Sarah were still asleep and I didn’t have witnesses to the absurd wrestling match that ensued. Half a roll of paper towels and a good deal of anxious sweat and quiet swearing later, I was able to leave the coffee maker in approximately the state I found it.

The next morning I didn’t dare tamper with the damn thing. I removed its basket, boiled water on the stove and used it like a cone drip to make one half cup of strong, non-chewy, and acceptable coffee, and only poured boiling water on my hand once...

Next time I’m bringing my little one-cup cone filter (which has never misbehaved).

But hey, if that is the only stress one has experienced in two whole days it has been a pretty damn good weekend.

More to come soon on the 4 Obsessions details (what I wrote, we read, ate and knit).

Robots Forever!

Yea! Jess Hutch has her knitted robot pattern booklet (and other knitted toys) ready for purchase! Yes, I've already purchased mine.

And in other knitting news, I'm patiently mattress stitching the sleeves onto the body of my Ribby cardigan. Steam blocking was not a great success--it smoothed out the seams enough for me to do the stitching, but I'm going to have to wet block the sweater in order to release the sleeves from their corset-like tightness. Steam just wasn't up to the challenge of my tight stitches. I was hoping to avoid that wet-sheep smell in my bathroom while it dries, but ah well.

Excitement in the air

This coming weekend is my writing retreat--I may be more excited about this weekend than about my recent trip to Europe. It is one thing to spend time alone with your dear man, it is another thing entirely to have some time alone with your own mind.

All week I've been thinking about writing--what I want to accomplish, what writing techniques and principles I want to keep in mind, digging up my "voice" from where it has been buried since last Memorial Day weekend (when Brian took the rugrats away so I could have a weekend of fiction writing at home).

Of course, I'm also thinking about the food.

I'm lucky enough to be spending this retreat weekend with two other food-loving writers, Ami and Sarah. Breakfast will be provided by the B and B at which we are staying, but that leaves two lunches, a dinner and lots of good, sustaining writing snacks to plan. The food has to be nice enough to please three food-loving people without taking lots of time to prepare since we don't want to cut into writing time. I'm assuming a trip to Big 10 will cover the snack/lunch requirement of good cheese, cured meats, olives, and other small luxuries. But I'm still contemplating dinner and would love any suggestions. Boneless leg of lamb keeps coming to mind since it can be chucked in the oven and left alone for a while without lots of fiddling.

Other good news: I finished Pope Joan yesterday (ugh ugh ugh--excruciating to the bitter end) so it is out of my house now. My sympathies to Lea who is now in possession of the copy and has to read it before our book group meets next week. Last night in a fit of insomnia, I read a third of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, which I am loving. She has such a sharp voice and dark humor that even when writing about tragedies (the book concerns three different tragedies/mysteries that one private investigator has to try and solve) the book never veers into melodrama. I loved Atkinson's first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum. It also had a vague mystery about it in that the main character, Ruby, suspects that something has been hidden from her, in this case a buried family secret. Case Histories is a bit more straight forward without the footnotes and asides that revealed information very gradually. But then she's taking on a rather different task twisting together three disparate storylines.