Cue evil cackling

I got my kids to eat eggplant last night! Hahahahahahaha!

Of course, I didn't call it eggplant. I called it "cutlets". And no, it was not the healthiest preparation possible--it was breaded eggplant slices that were then baked in the oven. And no, I didn't actually make them, I took them out of the Trader Joe's box and heated them up. But still, EGGPLANT!

I cut each circle into quarters so they looked a little less vegetal and Ian ate at least a slice and a half. He also ate cheese ravioli with tomato sauce, and turkey meatballs and dried peas. My god, that is almost a normal meal! (The dried peas are still a little weird.)

I'm going to get more of these "cutlets" and see if I can use them like lasagna noodles to layer with ricotta and sauce and mozzarella.

Brazil, but for kids

I recently finished reading a YA novel that is like the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil, but for kids. The Wall and the Wing is set in an alternate reality New York City where most people can fly, where toy monkeys can keep your secrets (and wipe your memory clean) and where cats are rare creatures who pick their owners.

In this surreal landscape are two orphans, Gurl and Bug, and they search for their identities and for a life a little less miserable than the one they inhabit at the orphanage, the wonderfully named Hope House for the Homeless and Helpless. The matron of the orphanage is Mrs. Terwiliger who reminds me of the Katherine Helmond character in Brazil--too much plastic surgery and warped ideas of what is important in life. Of course the plot isn't about a bureaucracy gone mad but about two lost children, one of whom discovers that she can turn invisible and the other who can fly really high, but only when holding onto a cat called Noodle. There are other wonderful characters in the book--a professor with grass growing out of his head who has a seemly endless supply of kittens in the pockets of his house dress, a man who can unzip his face, and a gangster who was a diaper model when he was a baby. Possibly my favorite creatures in the novel are the giant sewer rat men with filed pointy teeth who love kitties. They are creepy as hell but, like Gurl, they just want to cuddle a cat and feel it purr.

The plot moves along at a fast clip and after a whirlwind of experiences and adventures, the two orphans are no longer lost and are adjusting to their new identities. I was willing to say goodbye to them for now because this wonderfully imagined world and the eccentric characters in it will get more page-time--there is a sequel titled The Chaos King to look forward to.

In case you are the slightest bit stuffy...

...this stuff will blast your sinuses open.

I was at the gym listening to my favorite food podcast, Good Food, while sweating away on the orbital machine when the woman Evan was interviewing (who apparently is some famous host of Bravo's Top Chef but as we only have what the cable company refers to as "lifeline cable" I don't have much perspective on her) gave the recipe for what sounded like a terrific hot sauce--chipotles with dates and honey to balance out the heat.

I made some this afternoon and after tasting it, realized that maybe my sinuses don't need to be opened quite that far--it was a bit beyond my comfort level for hot sauce. So I chucked another couple of tomatoes and some more dates in the blender jar, added some lime juice for a little more sour contrast, gave it a whir and now have a hot sauce that conforms to my level of desired pain.

I'm going to serve it tonight alongside pork tenderloin. The pork will be cooked very simply in the hopes that the two small timid eaters will allow it onto their plates, but I'll be able to kick up the flavor factor of my dinner with this sauce.

For Padma Lakshmi's original recipe, go here. I've listed my version below:

Chipotle & date hot sauce
Adapted from Padma Lakshmi's Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet
Makes about 2 cups

10 dates, pitted, cut into chunks
4 plum tomatoes, seeded. If they are very juicy, squeeze out some juice so your sauce isn't too runny.
7.5 oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 clove garlic
1/3 cup honey
juice of one lime
1 tsp coarse sea salt

In a blender or processor, combine all the ingredients and blend until they make a thick paste. Pour into a deep saucepan, and cook over medium-low heat for about 5 to 6 minutes. Cool and then store in an airtight glass jar.

Yum!

I don't often lose track of a chocolate bar, but this little beauty appeared in my Christmas stocking and I must have shoved it in the cabinet before the small people could sniff it out and devour it.

Today I was rummaging around, looking for an afternoon pick-me-up and discovered it--what a wonderful surprise! This stuff is fantastic! I can't think of a better combination than dark chocolate and slivers of almonds and dried pears. The pears highlight the fruity notes in the chocolate and the nuts make it rich and mellow.

Now I just have to track down Santa's supplier...

The best gift

Today was the first day I got to enjoy the best gift in the world--writing time. Yes, my mother-in-law stepped up to the plate and is taking the little girl off of my hands each and every Friday. After dropping her at her morning preschool at 9:30 I have about 5 hours of time in which to write before I have to go get my bigger boy from his school at 2:45.

Guess what I had forgotten?
Fiction writing is fun!

Guess what else I discovered?
I am very rusty. It has been a long time since I let my imagination be free. My brain is so used to multitasking with the small people and trying to keep five thoughts active at the same time that sitting down and focusing on one thing, one story, with no other demands felt really weird. But weird in a good way. Hopefully this regular Friday time will make me more able to turn on the writing mind when I have less time during the week.

So today I started working what I've laid out as my goal: by year's end, I'd like to have written a fairly complete draft of a YA (or children's) novel.

I'm proud of myself in that I didn't let myself get distracted by my surroundings--the house is still a sty, there isn't anything in the house for dinner tonight, my legs have not received the exercise that they really want (and they are getting a little twitchy now), and I haven't been reading all the wonderful blogs I follow.

What I did do was have a grand time naming characters, describing locations, outlining the movement of the plot and planning significant scenes, and doing some character studies.

But perhaps the biggest thing I did today was I gave myself permission to fuck up and make a royal mess of it. There is nothing more stifling than overvaluing your own labor. God knows that I'm not a perfectionist in other areas of my life, but perhaps because I read so much and am so used to cohesive, finished stories, it has been difficult for me to picture a novel as starting out messily. As soon as I told myself that what I write down can be flawed because it is a draft and there will be plenty of time for changes later, the words, ideas, and images started to flow. For all I know, next week I'll think up an even better idea for a novel and I'll chuck everything I wrote today. And that'll be ok because I've decided I am going to enjoy the process, and value all of it, not just the parts that end up in the final product.

10 best books?

Of the New York Times Book Review's list of the the 10 Best Books of 2007, I have read exactly none of them. Five of them, I don't expect to have read since they are non-fiction, but I'm amazed that not only have I not read any of the five fiction titles they chose, I haven't even heard of them. Granted, I have a pile of book reviews in the corner of my office that I haven't read yet because I've been pretty swamped with reading material which is a disincentive to prepare to obtain more reading material. Last year NYTBook Review chose a book I hated (The Emperor's Children) as one of its best so I'm not exactly holding my breath in the "fantastic-book-I-will-love-forever" department.

Anyone read any of them? Are they any good?

MAN GONE DOWN
By Michael Thomas. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.

OUT STEALING HORSES
By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END
By Joshua Ferris. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.

TREE OF SMOKE
By Denis Johnson. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.

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?

Funky town

Sometimes, for no good reason, a headache will just take me down to funky town. My funky town looks like this: I can't stand odors, can't take light, don't like food, and worst of all, can't read without it hurting. The strange thing about this headache was that it wasn't triggered by anything--no stress from yelling at kids, no excess of alcohol, no insomnia to blame, just a wicked headache that resisted 1. ibuprofen 2. caffeine 3. Tylenol 4. a blissfully quiet house with kids over Granny's 5. fresh air obtained via hour long walk.

Finally I just had to lie down and give in to the damn thing. And after about two hours of that (go ahead and hate me for having the opportunity to lie down for two solid hours) headache receded enough to let me read. I have to say, the worst thing about these headaches is how damn boring they are so once I could read again, I felt a little more normal (though food and noise still don't seem like a good idea).

The hardest thing about this trip to funky town was I was in the middle of a really good book, so the borning-ness of lying there for two hours was intensified.
But once tracking words across the page didn't make me feel like a firecracker was going off behind my eyes, I was able to finish the book, An Abundance of Katherines. This is a charming YA novel with really terrific dialog between the two main characters, Colin, a former child prodigy, and his best (only) friend, Hassan. At times their banter reminded me of the scenes in the movie Knocked Up which so perfectly captured the grossness and affection of immature males--lots of references to their balls, weird nick names (including one of my favorites--sitzpinkler--a German insult for a man who sits to pee), but underneath it all, genuine caring and friendship.

I was amused by Colin's obsession with creating a mathematical formula to describe all of his past (and, he thinks, future) romantic fiascoes. And I like a good road-trip buddy story. But what really got me was the way Colin and Hassan's friendship was expressed and how they blunder around in the undefined post high school period trying to figure out who they are and what they should, could and would do with their lives. There's a little bit of preachyness at the end of the book about personal responsibility and taking care of your fellow man, but when I consider the intended audience (i.e. not me) I think it is a mighty fine idea to plant in the heads of young readers.

Brown blobules

Along with all the granola I've been churning out (I think I've made 8 batches in the past week), the puppy biscuits and the biscotti, I've also made some delicious misshapen brown blobs:
I used this cardamom truffle recipe and substituted lavender for the cardamom. Then today I made a batch with orange zest and a little triple sec. They taste great, especially the lavender ones, though I don't quite have the hang of getting them into a round shape--I tried a regular spoon, I tried a melon baller, I tried a very half-spherical tea spoon but only got a few with a reasonable curve to them. So mine are "rustic" if you are feeling nice, and "lumpy" if you aren't feeling so nice.

I also made some inedible brown blobs to accompany some inedible noodles:
My Flying Spaghetti Monster Tree Topper was calling for an offspring. It's lonely being the only deity on a tree so here you see the yarny momma (poppa?) reaching its noodles down towards its new clay ornament buddy.
The Fimo meatballs turned out much more spherical than my truffles, but then polymer clay doesn't melt in your hands when in the process of being rolled. After making truffles though, you have a fine excuse to lick your palms, which I don't recommend doing after rolling polymer clay. Keep your brown blobules straight so you don't eat the wrong ones!

Biscuits for canine and human

We've revved up the Granola Factory for our gratitude gifts to those adults who have a positive impact on my intense (code word for pain-in-the-butt) kids. The granola we gave last year was so warmly received that I decided it'll be our holiday tradition and that also means that I don't have to fret about what to give people. With the rest of the stresses in my life, going on automatic granola pilot is a welcome relief. This year we are making an apricot almond variation.

In addition to the granola, we are also making homemade dog treats. One of Ian's teachers who has been really incredible with him and made this school year a good one also trains dogs for the sport of flyball. When I mentioned to my psychologist sister that a person who can train a dog to run an obstacle course can also train my son to conform to expected standards of behavior for 7 year olds, she said that a major book of (human) behavioralism is titled Don't Shoot the Dog! I checked it out of the library and it is a testament that a positive experience in pet ownership is a good sign that you can take being a teacher or parent. Often I think maybe I should have had one more dog to practice on before being allowed to train these small humans...
We made some peanut butter biscuits this weekend and tried them out on various friends' dogs (you know, to make sure we don't kill the teacher's dogs...) and they were consumed by both picky-eater dogs and dogs who would happily eat cardboard.

There's something about making a tooth shattering biscuit for dogs that got me craving biscotti. I don't plan to shatter any of my teeth since I dunk them in my latte, but I forgot to tell Brian that dunking was a necessity so he endangered his dental health when he first tried them.

I made two batches of Almond Orange Biscotti. The first batch was based on a recipe from a friend which was a bit like this recipe and the second batch was based on this recipe (both from Joy of Baking.com). The main differences in the two recipes are how the eggs are handled and where the sugar goes. In the first recipe, the sugar goes into the dry ingredients and in the second it gets beaten for 5 minutes with the eggs. I found the second dough much easier to work with--the sugar had been dissolved into the eggs and thus the dough stuck together more easily. The first recipe tasted fine, but was a pain to form into a log and didn't cut so neatly.

Batch #2 after its first baking

and after slicing and its second baking.

Biscotti are also a welcome culinary break from all the richness of Christmas baking--there's no butter, they aren't very sweet and the copious quantity of almonds makes them a a good blood sugar stabilizer in the early afternoon when I usually start to droop.

Almond Orange Biscotti
adapted from Joy of Baking’s recipe for Pistachio Cranberry Biscotti

2/3 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup, raw almonds (skins on—-not blanched) toasted and chopped coarsly
Zest of 2 oranges, about 1 1/2 T

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

In the bowl of your electric mixer beat the sugar and eggs on high speed until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. The mixture will form slow ribbons when you lift the beater. Beat in the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and orange zest. Add to the egg mixture and beat until combined. Fold in the chopped almonds.

Transfer the dough to your parchment lined baking sheet and form into a log, about 12 inches long and 3 1/2 inches wide. Use a dampened silicone or rubber spatula to nudge the dough into the log shape—-the dough is very sticky.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Transfer the log to a cutting board and cut into 3/4 inch slices. Place the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes, turn slices over, and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container.

Makes about 16 - 20 biscotti.


Peanut Butter Puppy Biscuits
adapted from this recipe

1/2 C Safflower oil -- no substitutes
2 Eggs
3 T Natural Peanut butter
2 C Whole wheat flour
3/4 C Unbleached white flour
1/2 C Cornmeal
1/2 C Rolled oats
Additional flour

Mix water, oil, eggs, peanut butter, and vanilla with a wire whisk. Add flours, cornmeal, and oats.
Combine with a mixer. Take one-third of the dough and place on a floured surface. Flour top of dough and gently knead, adding more flour as necessary to form a pliable dough (This will require a substantial amount of flour).

Roll out to 1/2 - 3/4 inch thickness and cut shapes using cookie cutters.

Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 400 F, 20-25 minutes, depending on thickness of biscuits . Leave in oven 20 minutes after turning oven off to crisp.