this doesn't look like a seminar paper to me

Rolags of mystery brown wool (not v. soft), mystery white wool (rather soft), and pink merino rescued from a former life as intestines (quite soft).

Not pictured: the impressive array of standard yarn weights achieved in each spindleful. It was teach-yourself-long-draw week chez detritus. Results have been, shall we say, mixed.

To do:

• Procure necessary accoutrements for Big Damn Party
• Unearth not!ghillies for same
• Write grant proposal
• Also seminar paper
• Contemplate restraining the jubilant efflorescence of my stuff, which appears to be propagating itself à la slime mold (although hopefully with fewer detrimental effects to my respiration) and organizing itself into ever-more-complex piles on various horizontal surfaces

relief

So my internet just experienced a miraculous recovery after being dead for two! whole! days! and I have to say, those two days (from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon) did not make me feel free, relaxed, untethered, one with Nature, or anything else that people claim disconnecting from technology makes them feel. I was just grumpy and out of sorts, and now that the internet has returned to me, I'm just sitting here stroking it lovingly.

detritus of vacation

This is what I was doing last week:

This is where I was doing it:

This is who I was doing it with:



Not pictured: Miang Lao, grapefruit pound cake, or apple-potato galette.

I know, I know, cruel to mention those delicious things and then go on to rant about a yet-unmentioned single ingredient that is unrelated to all of the above. But I'm going to do it anyway. So: let's talk about white balsamic vinegar.

The Stonehouse Olive Oil company has a store in San Francisco's Ferry Building Marketplace, cleverly located next to Recchiuti Confections (don't get me started talking about their cardamom chocolate) and it was through Stonehouse that I first encountered the lighter sibling of dark balsamic vinegar. Their website informs us that white balsamic is aged for only one year-- decidedly on the young end of balsamic vinegar. Wikipedia tells us that your better class of balsamic is aged for twelve years, and your spiffiest variety is aged for twenty-five. I certainly had no complaints about its youth, however. It tastes a bit sharper and sweeter than dark balsamic, and a bit lighter. And mixed with olive oil as dressing for a salad of spinach, beets, blue cheese, and salt-roasted pecans, it was delicious. (The Italians are probably horrified at the mere thought of white balsamic vinegar.) I curse TSA for preventing me from bringing liquids or gels (mmm, pepper jelly) back on the plane, but I'm happy to have found a third possible salad dressing if I see white balsamic again. (The other two? Dark balsamic + olive oil and lemon juice + olive oil.)

in which I am boring

but not myself. I present to you a few words of the fascinating Thomas Laqueur, on the subject of gender, biology, difference, and equality:

"Liberalism postulates a body that, if not sexless, is nevertheless undifferentiated in its desires, interests, or capacity to reason. In striking contrast to the old teleology of the body as male, liberal theory begins with a neuter body, sexed but without gender, and of no consequence to cultural discourse. The body is regarded simply as the bearer of the rational subject, which itself constitutes the person. The problem for this theory then is how to derive the real world of male dominion of women, of sexual passion and jealousy, of the sexual division of labor and cultural practices generally from an original state of genderless bodies. The dilemma, at least for theorists interested in the subordination of women, is resolved by grounding the social and cultural differentiation of the sexes in a biology of incommensurability that liberal theory itself helped bring into being. A novel construal of nature comes to serve as the foundation of otherwise indefensible social practices.

"For women, of course, the problem is even more pressing. The neuter language of liberalism leaves them, as Jean Elshtain recently argues, without their own voice. But more generally the claim of equality of rights based on an essential identity of the male and female, body and spirit, robs women both of the reality of their social experience and of the ground on which to take political and cultural stands. If women are indeed simply a version of men, as the old model would have had it, then what justifies women writing, or acting in public, or making any other claims for themselves as women? Thus feminism, too-- or at least historical versions of feminisms-- depends upon and generates a biology of incommensurability in place of the teleologically male interpretation of bodies on the basis of which a feminist stance is impossible."

from "Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology," 1986

decadence

This morning the Pocket Linguist came over and made breakfast, but since it was a German pancake and I just told you about those, I didn't feel it necessary to take any pictures. (And not to lord it over you poor souls without pocket linguists of your own, but after breakfast, he proceeded to wash the dishes. I would like the record to note that I totally would have washed them had he waited a minute or two more, but please, like I'm going to object to someone else cleaning up.*) There is one more thing I would like to say on the subject of German pancakes, though, and it is this: powdered sugar is excellent, lemon is classic, and jam and fruit may very well be tasty, but if you or your pocket linguist happens to have, say, raw buckwheat honey just languishing on a shelf somewhere, there are worse things you could do to a German pancake than drizzle some honey over it-- in an attractive crisscross pattern, if you like, or even just in a glob on the side of your plate. Far, far worse. (Probably any decent honey would do, but something good and strong is especially delicious.)

*We'll ignore the fact that I have, in the past, been seen to do so. I know better now.


Last night was really more gustatorily interesting, but I'll save that for another time. I'll just leave you with one parting word to ponder: quinzertorte.

easily distracted

Oh man, do I have something to show you. It's not this:


But actually, this'll do. It's a German pancake, and it is easier than scrambled eggs, no lie. (Which is not to say that it isn't better if someone makes it for you. Breakfast is always better if someone else makes it. And it's even better if someone else cleans up.) In fact, it is better than scrambled eggs, because you don't have to scrub icky egg residue out of the pan afterwards. (Blegh.) Sadly, I had to both bake and clean up this particular breakfast, but that also meant I got to eat it all.

German pancakes are kind of like bigger, floppier popovers. They have the same buttery and eggy taste, the same moist/flaky texture, the same wonderful air pockets, and the same tendency to disappear immediately. I ate mine with powdered sugar and great gusto, but I imagine jam or fresh fruit would also suffice. Some people suggest lemon juice instead of or in addition to the sugar; I have not found that quite to my liking in the past, but perhaps you would like it. I won't judge.

German Pancake (recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

2 eggs
1 tsp sugar (or two, if you want)
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 c flour
1/3 c milk
1 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter one 9" cake pan. In small to medium bowl, whisk eggs until light yellow. Add everything else. Pour into pan and bake for 20 minutes, then turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake for 10 minutes more.

Note about the butter: Since the batter takes about two seconds to get ready, it may end up sitting for a bit while the oven heats up. In my experience, this gives the melted butter an opportunity to begin to separate from the other ingredients somehow, resulting in a puddle of butter somewhere on the finished pancake. Better to give the batter a quick stir just before pouring into the pan, just in case.

ETA: Also, can anybody tell me why this bit is turning out smaller? It looks fine when I'm typing it, but goes wonky in preview and publish.

I don't want to talk about it.

Let's talk about these instead:

Two 6" tartlets, one lemon and one plum, made for my mother's birthday.

I realize that I have been known to say, in tones self-assured and perhaps a little strident, that only young children, small and furry animals, and maybe dollhouse furniture could be termed cute. I'm not redacting that statement, but I would like to add 6" tartlets with golden-brown crusts and glossy fruit fillings to the list. These tarts were pretty darn cute, and tasty, too.

Summer in my little corner of Texas is hot. Really hot. Too hot for frosting, which melts at room temperature, and too hot for any of those rich winter desserts that are heavy with cream and eggs and preserved fruit. No problem, say the West Coast food bloggers, merrily posting pictures of a king's ransom in berries and stone fruits. Problem, say we who wilt and whither in months of drought and eternal sunshine. In a bad year, which this was, the local peach season is over by August, and the supermarket offerings are never quite as good. The blackberry bushes are exhausted even earlier, and that's it for the major local crops. In August it's still possible to find peaches and some berries-- I don't envy September birthdays.

I bought a little bag of plums grown in northern New Mexico at the Santa Fe farmers' market, and manfully resisted eating them before arriving home. The plan for the peach fiasco was to use a fresh peach for aesthetics and previously frozen peaches for flavour, but when I was finally forced to admit my folly I found a lemon kicking around the vegetable drawer and made another tart with it.

I used Dorie Greenspan's paté sablée from Baking from My Home to Yours for the crusts and SmittenKitchen's recipe for the whole lemon tart filling. I found the filling a bit too sweet, and would cut the sugar by a tablespoon or two, but there were no complaints from the peanut gallery. The plum tart is basically Rose Levy Berenbaum's Plum Flame Tart in The Pie and Pastry Bible, with completely invented amounts and proportions. It's just plums barely sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and then glazed with apricot preserves. (General consensus was that I could have used a little more sugar-- the birthday girl found the tart "ascetic.") The disaster peach upside-down cake is David Lebovitz's, but the disaster part is all mine: the pan was too small, which I knew before I put the batter in, but forged ahead anyway, hoping the universe would surprise me by editing physics and chemistry. I may try it again-- brown sugar! peaches! cake!-- but not, I think, until the smart of failure has faded.