Wine and Cheesy Poofs

-Cheesy poofy goodness.-

"I'm bringing champagne," might well be the most uplifting sentence in the history of mankind.

I have a few friends who work in wine, and Chris - who brings me champagne and the occasional rose of interest - is one such person. He's a former opera singer turned semi-professional sommelier who both adores and despises his line of work. When it comes to enological knowledge he's a man that - by the young age of late-twenty-something - has earned his stripes.

Even better is the fact that he's rather blasé about his line of work - which is a good thing, I think. There's been actual conversations of what wine pairs well with what Star Trek series. I firmly believe that is information that should be put on a poster somewhere because when is that not going to come up at some point? Furthermore, while I trust his expert opinions on what wines to buy at my very nonprofit-slash-freelancer budget, I've seen him hold up a bottle and, upon my inquiry, his response was, "I don't know. It was $8."

One must appreciate a wine aficionado who chucks pretense for Two Buck Chuck.

Yet, the last thing he'll want to do is cook something up to pair with wine. Or, talk about it when he's not at work. God forbid you recommend taking a trip to a winery on your vacation as it will induce a cringe so fierce it will reverberate out from his body and shake the very walls of the room you're in.

So as he texted that, indeed, there would be champs I proposed to make cheesy poofs - or as I suppose some like to call them gougeres. (Grammarians and linguists, please use the grave accent in your head as I cannot for the love of god recall how to type it.) Bits of egg and flour mixed with a practically inappropriate amount of cheddar and Parmesan baked into airy, crispy puffs.

Terribly addicting and the perfect pairing for champagne. If you desire you can cut them open and stack  them with aioli, arugula, and pancetta for simple sliders. What I love most is how stupidly easy they are: Boil. Mix. Spoon. Bake. Yet the payoff is huge and upon eating them hot out of the oven you're considered a pastry wizard and that's a pretty darn awesome title to have.

Indeed, if there is a most complimentary sentence in the English language, then it must be, "I'm baking gougeres!"

I've been using this recipe as of late. It's a few more dishes, but there's no pastry bag involved (which I love) and I find the consistency is far more reliable than others I have tried. Give it a whirl and let me know how it pairs with your bubbles.

Garrett out.

P.S. If you haven't yet, I would highly encourage you to please follow my Instagram account. Instagram is what I've been using for images for this blog for sometime now, but I realized I never really promoted it. Ever. So, please be sure to subscribe. You'll find a lot of food porn that never makes it to the blog! User name is protogarrett, because some dumb hooker has been sitting on vanillagarlic for three years and not using it.  

 -For all your drinking needs.-

Culinary Ennui: Garlic and Parmesan Bread

-It's strange how little I actually write about garlic on here.-

I'd like to take some time and talk about forgotten foods.

Right now, we need to be able to step aside and re-evaluate the foods we once loved, foods each of us once personally thrived upon once out of necessity, and re-embrace them.

For those of you who went to college or moved out on your own for the first time I want you to remember ramen. Remember? Those fifty cent packets of Styrofoam noodles and flavor pouches that you once subsisted on when you were penny poor and your couch was a hand-me-down? Lunch, dinner, and even a few breakfasts consisted of five-minute noodles and powders filled with MSG, sodium, and many other delicious and unpronounceable chemical compounds. If you learned how to really make it work and turn it into a healthy meal you started tossing the packets and began to use chicken broth. You sauteed garlic and onions, and added them to the soup. You plonked in slivers of radishes and the radish greens because a bunch of radishes were only a dollar.

You didn't bemoan these meals (well, not often). This was because they were your first foray into self-reliability. The ramen was a means of living and eating. It was a codex that brought your social circle together and gave you a common, affordable food to bond over. It was what got you through the slag of finals, the heartache of another electric bill you somehow had to pay, and what you made to celebrate the passing of both.

Now that you're years out of college, have found success, and sit at a desk for a grownup job how often are you eating ramen? When was the last time you even thought about it?

2013 Thus Far: Hardy Winter Wheat Bread

-This is going to be one of those rather uninspired posts where I moan and make lists. Fair warning.-

2013 To-Do List

1. Buy a house. See this post. 

2. Find a new job. Right at the end of December I was let go from my job, which means I'm sustaining myself off of savings that I have been hoarding for a home down payment, some income from writing, and my husband's wages. You can bet I champagne'd myself into oblivion on New Years. I'll write another post on this whole staying at home all day thing later, but as of right now I see this as an opportunity to find the right job that'll make me happy.

I've just never been let go before and this whole thing is sorta scaring the crap out of me. I've also learned that one of the government requirements to sign up for unemployment is, apparently, shame. Oh, and judgment. It's in the fine print, I believe.

How am I filling time now? Lots of volunteering at other amazing nonprofits, writing, cooking, and catching up on a few books I have meant to read. Oh, and job hunting. (Probably should put that at the top of the list, right?) We're still looking for a house as owning is actually the cheaper option right now and we're still in a darn good place to do so.

Yay being money smart.

Careers: Orange and Poppy Seed Pancakes

-Is pancake maker a legitimate career choice? It should be if it isn't.-

When I was a child I knew that I was going to grow up to be a world famous brain surgeon. Or Cyclops from the X-Men. I considered both to be exceptional career paths. Regardless, it was plain to say that my aspirations were loftier than the attic in my mother’s house.

With time my ambitions changed. I had the grades, handgun accuracy (thank you afternoons at the range with dad), and language skills to become an FBI officer and so for a while I dallied with that idea with a small nod of inspiration from the morose and comely David Duchovny. However, a realization that putting me in a place where I could legally start knocking mothef***ers out probably wouldn’t benefit anyone, least of all myself.

The brain surgeon idea persisted through all of middle school and the early years of high school. I enjoyed human anatomy and the concept of medicine, but my heart didn’t seem in it. This stemmed in whole from the fact that while I was fine looking at the pulsing meats of a human being, the fact that a broken nail or wiggling baby tooth icked me out seemed a portend eventual problems in the surgical field.

In the end that dream, like my dream of shooting concussive blasts of energy from my eyes in order to protect humanity, was put aside.

-With my penchant for clumsiness it was probably for the best. (Both in regards to medicine and concussive eye beams.)-

Instead, I found myself rather engrossed in marine biology. I took a special class in high school on the subject that culminated in week long trip aboard a research ship off the coast of Catalina. I was fascinated by the inner working of starfish and read up on how book gills functioned. I was engrossed by the biolumiscent organisms that sparked in the toilet when you flushed it on the ship (it flushed with local saltwater) and perused the ship’s library for more information on the chemical processes that made it happen.

Eventually, I dragged my mom with me to a scuba class where we were both, after some tribulation due to some asshole having a panic attack 40 feet underwater during my scuba final and ripping off both breathing regulators from my air tank (and this only an hour after someone stole my wetsuit and left me wearing one three sizes too small), certified. My mom used new talents of ours both as a means of adventure for herself and as a way to encourage me to pursue a possible career. Of course, entrenching yourself in the center of a 60-foot tall funnel of swirling purple fish off the coast of Nevis certainly possess a rather memorable aesthetic of its own.

I began to apply to colleges under a double major of Marine Biology and Genetics. While U.C. Santa Barbara, my first choice due to it’s Marine program, turned me down. U.C. Davis with it’s rather world renowned genetics laboratory, did. With time I began to lean more towards genetics.

I blame an instance where I was meeting with a professor who let me use an electron microscope to look at a strand of recombinant salmon DNA in its raw form. Let me tell you, actually looking at the raw structure of life, the very various chemical bonds and the elements that make them strung together by such primordial but world-making forces that can’t be seen by the unaided eye, well, it has an impact on you.

Total Clarity. Then You Fall on Your Ass: Cheese Bikkies

-The remedy for both bruised butt and ego.-

I am not Michele Kwan. Let’s just be clear about that. Hell, I’m not even one of the Peanuts Gang, who all seem to be able to glide across the ice with ever fluid, though somewhat repetitive motions. (I am, however, a far better dancer than any of their lot.)

No, rather my ice skating is as awkward and clumsy as a first date. My knees shake and swivel like a teetering toy top at the end of its run while my arms flail about in unstable gyres. There will be stops made only by the fact that there is a dependable wall - one of Gods of the ice rink that all beginners prostrate themselves on time and again - in front of me.

Yet, I never fall.

Or, well, rarely. I rarely ever fall.

-I'm not clumsy. I just have an endearing lack of self preservation.-

Thing is for all that tottering around the ice and almost taking out a few small children who have no concept of one-way rink traffic I actually have good enough balance to keep my rubber-boned ankles vertical. I blame it on years of gymnastics in college carefully running balancing beams and flying through the air where having a firm understanding of my center of gravity meant the difference between a solid landing and dreadful tumble like a quail shot out of the sky. I can stay up and, given a few minutes to recall my younger years in the 90’s on roller blades, can eventually move with enough grace (for lack of a better word) to look like I know what I’m doing.

Frontwards and backwards, none of it becomes a problem after a good twenty minutes of finding the steels on my feet. You won’t see a lutz or spin, but you won’t see me falling face first.

So, like every year, I had arranged some time to go ice skating. Fiance’ stayed behind on account of, “I don’t want to spend an hour falling on my ass,” which meant I would go alone with my friend Mike who was better on the ice than me and eager to bundle up for a bit of weekend winter sport.

We walked many blocks from Mike's place to the rink allowing the stroll to warm us up. The air was crisper than a wafer cookie and each puff of hot breath hung long in the air like small persistent ghosts following us down the street.

Forgetfulness: Blue Cheese-Scallion Biscuits

-My mind is slipping with age. I forgot just how good these are.-

Somehow, between trying to find new writing jobs that’ll validate that whole school business and taking on a few big projects (that must remain mum), this blog turned five years old.

Is that old for a blog? It feels like it. I wonder if blog years are like dog years, or worse, gay years? (The latter in which 1 normal year is 10 gay years, and then, at age 50, you are required to retire yourself socially forever. These are simply The Pink Rules that we, as a community, have established.) Either way it feels like more. It makes me feel old. I suppose a sure sign of age is the age of your blog, in respect.

Regardless, I just plumb forgot. It happens.

I’m pretty forgetful when it comes to deeply personal information. I forget birthdays all the time. Not just other people’s but my own. It isn’t unlike me to receive a call somewhere in June and hear my mother’s voice, chipper as if she were hawking air freshener’s on TV, wishing me a happy birthday and for me to answer, “What? Is that today?” She assures me of the year, day, hour, and minute I was born and how I was a willful and distempered thirteen hours of labor. Oh, she remembers. Let there be no question. She says now that I’ve been a good son and that my previous obstinacy is forgiven, though sometimes I still wonder.

-I will never, however, forget motherly guilt. (Love you, mom!)-

I also forget how old I am. Constantly. I actually had to fix my driver’s license once because I put the wrong year on some update paperwork. By four years. To this day the DMV still thinks I’m 32 which is quite off (come June 2nd I’m 28, according to the calendar and calculator). BF has to correct me, often, about my age which I misquote with Letheian accuracy both high and low.

It’s not just dates either. I forget all kinds of personal information, e.g., My older brother’s middle name, my license plate number, where I put the key to my lock box, the kennel I picked up Eat Beast at, BF’s middle name, both of my bothers' middle names, it’s all not there.

Lord, I’m too young for Alzheimer’s.

What bothers me is that those memories and facts should be there. I can still trill off the woodwind solo I learned in marching band during my freshmen year of high school. I recall most of the questions on my driver’s test. I can recite whole scenes from Beowulf and my locker combination from the nearby gym I used to be a member of six years ago. Want my mother’s flank steak recipe? It’s up there rattling around my noggin’, pushing out whatever my anniversary date with BF is. For some reason these inconsequential things take hold. They aren’t particularly relevant and memorable things either; just stuff. Antiques in a dusty attic that I never dust off but never throw away. They remain in dark corners staring at me and me back at them with overwhelming indifference that will never lead to action of any kind.

So, yes, I missed my blogiversary. I don’t have an excuse.

I’m sorry, my blog.

-My bad.-

I made you some simple biscuits to apologize. Yes, you and I both like cake. We love it, in fact. Hell, we'd pimp slap the president if it meant a piece of finely-crumbed, ganache enribboned piece of cake.

But, blog, trust me, birthday biscuits are just as cool. Hell, sometimes, even preferred. There’s no drama or history in these biscuits. They're just damn good biscuits. Heck, these are great biscuits. They're biscuits filled with large blocks of butter and a heart-killing pour of buttermilk. The butter melts and steams when it cooks, resulting in a texture that's almost phyllo-flaky as we both know great homemade biscuits should be.

A few roughly hewed scallions add some bitter-sour-sweetness to cut through all that rather joyfully daunting amount of butter. Did I mention the blue cheese? There's blue cheese. Enough blue cheese to make you shiver with glee.

I might even call these biscuits, Amazing Biscuits.

Actually, blog, I'll do just that.

Blog, these biscuits are Amazing. I think you will enjoy them immensely. I think your readers will as well.

There. Happy Birthday, Vanilla Garlic. Sorry that I forgot. I’ll try better next year. Enjoy your biscuits.


Blue Cheese-Scallion Biscuits
Makes about 16 small biscuits. The baking powder is optional. Without it the biscuits are cheesier, but with it they are fluffier.

2 cups + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 ground mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder (optional)
7 tablespoons butter
2 scallions, finely chopped
2 ounces blue cheese
3/4 cup buttermilk
Red, Kosher, Maldon, or Black salt for topping (optional, but suggested.)

1. Preheat the oven to 425F. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, and baking powder if using. Set aside.

2. Dice the butter and toss with the flour mixture until finely coated. Add the scallions and blue cheese and toss until finely coated. Add the buttermilk and mix with your hands until it just comes together. (You will get messy. Just accept it.) Do not over-knead.

3. Form into an 8x8 square on a lightly floured service. Cut into squares and top with a bit of high-quality salt. Bake for 12-16 minutes or until golden.

Tradition: Sourdough with Butter, Watermelon Radish, and Salt

-As tasty as they are pretty to look at.-

"Your mom will eat slightly spicy food right?" I probably should have asked before I ground up the Tien Tsin chili pepper, a Chinese pepper known for its incindiary flavor. One is enough to add piquancy to any dish along with a slap of cheek-blushing fire. "I'm just using one of the Chinese peppers for the whole pot so it shouldn't be too bad." Assuming, of course, that no one counted the teaspoon of crushed Sichuan peppercorns I added, which, really, aren't even spicy-hot as they are tingly-hot.

"Yeah," BF called out, "she should be fine."

BF's mother is a somewhat picky eater discretionary consumer in alimentary situations, so I was doing my best to address her likes and dislikes accordingly. Cooking for in-laws can be somewhat stressful as any of you who have can understand.

Of course, it wasn't really an issue as I didn't mind cooking around peoples preferences. When cooking for my own mother I've learned to avoid certain dishes. Last Christmas when I cooked for the whole family for Christmas Eve, giving my mom her first Christmas Eve dinner off in thirty-five years, I learned of her total disinclination and disgust towards butternut squash.

-These radishes are in season in Winter and on through early Spring.-

"What do you mean you don't like butternut squash?" I said incredulously. In my entire memory I couldn't recall ever hearing my mother say she disliked any particular food.

"I mean, I don't like it," she turned her head towards me as she sat on the couch and made a face.

"Since when?"

"Since ever. Why don't you think I ever made it for you guys when you were kids? I hate squash," she made a little shudder at the thought of it.

I thought back to my childhood and realized it was true. Not once could I recall a single instance she served us any sort of Winter squash. Summer squash and spaghetti squash steamed to a grey, immoral, nearly unconscionable mess, sure, plenty of times. It was why still to this day I never eat them. Never Winter squash though, and as an adult I ate those all the time. Apparently, my love of them was proof enough to the fact that she never did cook it, otherwise I would be just as terrified of pumpkin and butternut as I am of zucchini today.

"Well, I've bought it and already cut it up. I'm making it and your trying it." Good lord, I thought to myself, I'm turning into my parents with my parents. I decided to ignore the meta-psychological implications and continued to chop up the butternut. "You just have to try a bite."

"I won't like it," mom said and she turned back to her magazine.

"You haven't had it the way I make it. It's roasted in brown sugar and butter. You just have to try one bite. If you don't like it you don't have to eat it." I rolled my eyes and continued to work.

"Fiiiinnneee." she moaned. I could hear her sigh.

I brought my mind back to the present and added some chopped scallions to the slow cooker before popping the top on and setting it for 10 hours. "I'm sure your mom will like it," I said to BF, but also to myself.

-Even the pickiest eaters will love this recipe and these radishes.-

I looked at the rump sitting in the crock pot. It wasn't the family flank steak recipe, but, then again, this wasn't a usual holiday. This would actually be my first Christmas without any of my family. Due to work at the bakery, a profession that doesn't really take holidays into consideration except that you might get more hours than normal, I wasn't going to be able to make the trip to Southern California. The whole situation was a bit depressing. Sure, I had had Christmases away from most of my family where just my mother or brother came up to visit, but never had I actually been without a single person from my side of the family. It was a break in tradition for me.

Instead, I would be spending it with BF's family; absolutely lovely people whom I adore and who would be arriving in just a few hours. BF and I had insisted that we prepare Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas Eve dinner was the biggest holiday event for my family, but for BF's family it wasn't so. So this season would be a mix of old and new for everyone. For me, a big family get-together without my side of the family, and for them a big get-together on a night usually spent inconsequentially.

Normally, Christmas Eve dinner is defined by my Grandmother's recipe for flank steak. When she passed it became my mother's job to prepare it, and the last few years the task was passed down to me. Unfortunately, the recipe really requires a barbecue, something that neither BF nor I have. Hence, the slow-cooked, Sichuan-spiced rump roast.

At this point, I figured, one might as well throw out tradition all together and go crazy. For some, the idea of doing away for tradition, even for just one season, is simply inconceivable. Traditions, especially holidays ones, can only be experienced one time a year. They're something we look forward to. They embody memories and family history, and we cherish the significance they posses. Traditions are part of what define who we are.

-It's not so much about breaking traditions as it is about starting new ones.-

But let's be real for a minute. Really, will one year without dad's famous mashed potatoes really kill us all? One Thanksgiving without a turkey? "But Garrett," you may cry, "Thanksgiving is the only time of year we have turkey!"

Well, why is that? Turkey is delicious any time of year. Dad can always make mashed potatoes tomorrow. Why not make those special dishes a different night or different season of the year? Why relegate them to just one meal? It might seem odd, even radical to consider the act of breaking with tradition, but it offers that chance to create new traditions. New foods and activities may become family canon or they may become canon fodder, but who knows until you try?

This Christmas Eve dinner there was no flank steak. No Marian's green bean casserole. No salads made at the last minute or pumpkin pie picked up from the store. No family from Southern California coming up to visit.

Instead, Christmas Eve dinner was rump roast slow-cooked in Sichuan spices, Brussels sprouts sauteed in duck fat, cranberry sauce with vanilla and tangerine, and potatoes au gratin. The meal would be finished with an upside-down cranberry walnut cake flavored with orange bitters and a chocolate-toffee cheesecake. Not just a break in culinary tradition for everyone at the table, but a total shattering of it. Yet once everyone started eating there wasn't a single complaint to be heard.

The meal began, however, with something incredibly simple and flavorful: slices of freshly baked sourdough bread, buttered and adorned with wafer-thin slivers of appropriately named watermelon radishes, topped with a small flurry of Fleur de Sel.

-These are also great in salads, sandwiches, and on a cheese plate with a creamy Brie.-

It's a simple preparation that has a huge following in France and parts of Canada, but exists in near total obscurity in the United States. The salt and butter sooth the raking flavors of the radish and make for an outstandingly flavorful snack. Watermelon radishes, an heirloom variety that can be found at nearly any Farmer's Market in the U.S. and some specialty grocery stores, has a sweeter snap to it than most other varieties of radish and can be eaten raw without any hesitation. When sliced open its colors are simply breathtaking. The obvious name, watermelon radish, is well-deserved for both appearance and flavor.

There is no real recipe to this dish; more of just a method. You can use any bread, but I find sourdough to best match the bitter flavor of the radish. Any variety of radish is fine (except, perhaps, black radish) as the harsh, sulfuric flavors will be mellowed by the salt and butter.

I encourage you to use this recipes the next time tradition calls. Try something new. Try anything new.


Sourdough with Butter and Watermelon Radish

Spread some unsalted butter at room temperature over slices of sourdough bread. Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife, thinly slice a watermelon radish and lay on top of the bread. Sprinkle with a good quality salt like Fleur de Sel or Sel Gris and serve.

Good Dates and Bad Dates: Date-Nut Bread Recipe

-A good cure for a bad date. Though giving the date a swift kick to the shin is equally good.-

There had been a few warning signs, sure, and normally I would have ended the date by now. However, when your friends chastise you for being too damn picky you have to try your best to be a bit more tolerant. Then again, when you first meet someone its hard to tell what parts of a person are simply quirks and what might be the characteristics of a wacked-out, Xenu worshiping, has a skin suit sewed from his victims psychopath.

I had only ended a four year relationship about ten months before and had recently decided that it was time to put myself out there and see who the world had to offer. Of course, it had taken a while to get to a point where dating felt right again. Well, as right as dating ever can feel. I had learned a few months earlier that I wasn't ready when I had gone out to meet a friend for lunch and catching up. It was a semi-date of sorts. We had been friends for seven years and always had a mutual attraction towards each other. Considering that we were both now single we decided to give it a shot. The semi-date ended when in the middle of getting to second base on my couch I broke out into a bout of uncontrollable sobbing. Hardly a turn on, but definetly a sign that at the time I wasn't ready to move on.

A few months later, sobbing and emotions now in complete control, I was ready to broach the dating scene. I was all spiffy and raring to meet the men this time. I was slick in some new clothes, had begun to style my hair a bit differently, and began to embrace some aspects of my old social life that had been yearning to breathe in my claustrophobic relationship the past few years. I was ready to conquer the world, or so I said in my online dating profile.

Of course, I learned quickly that most online meet-up sites simply aren't gay relationship oriented. In fact, probably about 99% of them are geared towards finding a guy in the closest proximity who is looking to get off. I found that using these sites weren't conducive to finding someone who likes long walks and isn't tied down, as much they were to finding guys who like long shlongs and being tied down with rope. Not that that wasn't useful some nights.

-Deglet Noor dates have a delicious root beer flavor and are perfect for baking. Brown sugar-y Medjool dates are more widely available though.-

Still, the dating scene wasn't exactly filled with hopeful prospects, like cracking open eggs and finding each and every one rotten inside to the point where you dread the foul possibilities contained in the next. Sure, there would be the occassional date where there was simply no connection. A fine situation I simply accepted, though I was fortunate enough that a few of those people are now good friends.

Then there would be the ones where after a few dates I realized it wasn't going to work. I admit I was an ass in those situations as my usual tactic was simply to completely cut off all lines of communication. This meant never returning calls, e-mails, or text messages. The person simply stopped existing to me.

It was only after a guy I was interested in did the same to me that I realized how much it hurt. Not like a sharp sting when someone simply ends it or turns you down at a bar, but a dull pain like a day-old bruise, purple and mottled. I vowed from then on to always end things in person.

Every so often there would be a truly bad date. At a food conference in Napa my friend Ashley had planned to set me up with a friend of hers at an exclusive after party. It would be my first blind date and while I was eager and nervous, and though all my gut instincts told me to tell her no, I went along with it. After all, shouldn't everyone experience the social phenomenon of the blind date at least once in their life?

The answer is no. No, everyone shouldn't. The guy was nice enough but after three minutes we realized that we had absolutely nothing in common and nothing to speak about, nor were we physically attracted to one another. As it was, we both spent the next three hours doing our best to socialize at the complete opposite corners of the very tiny room.

Of course, there were other bad dates. Many bad dates. So many that at one point I had decided to never go out again. I would raise my standards so high that they would put Japanese high school entrance exams to shame. This was both good and bad. It was good in that the number of bad dates I went on reduced dramatically. However, it was bad in the fact that I now became almost impossible to please.

My friends pointed out that I was being a bit impractical. It was unfair to not call a guy back because he had a bad haircut. Possibly, it could have been cruel to dump someone over the fact that they didn't know what the capital of South Korea was, a factor I interpreted as not being geopolitically aware. Maybe it was mean to end a date early with a lie that my dad was in the hospital because my date insisted that the Spice Girls were overrated during the nineties. (I'm still not willing to bend on that one. A boy has his standards.)

-Perfect in the morning with some English Breakfast tea.-

To quell the insistent lecturing of my friends I decided to be a bit more lax. I would lower the bar a bit and maybe pass some people that I might otherwise reject. Plus, I realized I really was being a bit too finicky and cooking for one was beginning to get a bit tiresome as leftovers truly do lose their charm after you start eating the same curry for the fifth day in a row.

His name was James, the date in question that started this post. We had met through a mutual acquaintance at a party and after some time chatting he asked me out. James was an event planner and he wrote the astrological forecasts for the local paper. To me both of these were red flags. At the time I considered event planner as simply a job that one developed after graduating college in Communications. (A wedding planner friend of mine has proven me quite wrong in this regard.) As for his firm belief in astrology, well, I have trouble believing that giant balls of gas billions of light years away that sort of make a shape if you squint and use your imagination have any feasible bearing on the condition of your life, and that basing your decisions on them is silly at the least and irresponsible at best.

Putting my first impressions aside however, I decided to go out on the date. James seemed nice enough and he was handsome in an outgrown hipster sort of way with his over-bleached hair and jeans so skinny they looked like they were his natural skin.

He arrived to pick me up from my apartment and surprised me with a few gifts. A bundle of incense sticks and a hexagonal mirror covered in Chinese symbols. Again, red flags to me, as anything that remotely resembles what my dad would call "out there ideas" like healing crystals or UFO trackers seemed a bit too crazy hippie to me. However, I realized that both were just kind gestures. These were a personal and new age bouquet of flowers. I was touched, if not a bit confused, and thanked him for the gifts. I put the mirror, apparently one specially designed in a feng shui manner, above the door in order to block negative chi. I secretly gave the incense to my roommate as incense smoke often made me sneeze uncontrollably.

-Thankfully, I no longer have to date anymore. Nowadays, I just have to try and get BF to stop playing video games long enough to help me clean the apartment.-

As we were about to leave he asked to excuse himself for a moment. Wondering if I had done something to scare him off he insisted that he just had to have a quick smoke and I told him he could use the patio outside. He thanked me, went outside, and, rather than open a pack of cigarettes, he proceeded to whip out a pipe and a bag of hash and quickly huffed down a bit of Hawaiian Skunk. A strain, he told me later, that could run $120 an ounce.

This would normally have ended the date right then and there. Honestly, I don't care if a person smokes tobacco or marijuana. However, I consider smoking a bowl right in front of your date to be just plain rude. I doubt such a situation is covered in any guide on etiquette, but I was sure that Emily Post wouldn't have approved his actions.

We went out to dinner, a nice place for Moroccan food in downtown Sacramento that I had always wanted to go to. As we talked we began to chat about our jobs and hobbies and all the stuff you go on about when you first get to know someone. All seemed to be going well and I had put the minor reefing incident aside and decided that maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

That was until he excused himself again. "Bathroom?" I asked.

"Just going to smoke another bowl real quick in my car," he replied.

"Oh! Uh, okay."

What else could I say? So I waited by myself at the table. I sat down and began to nibble furiously at the plate of dates that we had ordered. It was, I think, the first time I had ever really eaten them, as an adult. My dad chopped them up into oatmeal when we were kids but I never really focused on their flavor before. I marveled at the silliness of eating dates on a date, but was more intrigued with their butterscotch aroma and root-beer flavor. These particular dates had been filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon, then quickly grilled so that their sugar caramelized to compliment all the salt. I doubted if this was authentic Berber cuisine, but I was happy none the less and the dates took my mind off my date's absence.

He came back, a little more pungent than before and we continued eating and talking. Twenty minutes later he excused himself again. Just for a quick joint he told me.

-I had another bad date once where the guy's boyfriend called him in the middle of our dinner. I just got up and left after that.-

All and all he ditched me eight times to go smoke out in his car. This wasn't simply someone who smoked every now and again; this was full-on, hardcore addiction. Most smokers can go an entire meal without having to break for a cigarette. This guy was huffing down pot like there was a pot of gold at the end of each roach.

When I asked him about it he got defensive. I let it go and tolerated the rest of the awkward meal. Once the check was paid I requested that he take me home and that I drive since I simply didn't feel safe with him behind the wheel. After a small argument that ended with him walking into a glass door, he handed me his keys and I drove his ancient Ford Pinto back to my place. At home I thanked James for a lovely dinner but explained that I didn't think this would work out. He called me stuck up and left. I assume to buy more pot.

My roommate creeped out from his room after hearing the commotion and asked how the night went. "Not a total loss," I replied. "That date may have sucked, but I found plenty more that I can't wait to have again."

The following morning I went to the store and picked up some dates and began to cook and bake with them with vigor. They seemed to cure my dating woes and spice up my meals, giving them a richness I never knew they lacked before. Chicken cooked with lemon and dates, date and buttermilk pie, and good old fashioned date-nut bread. A simple comfort that helped adjust me to what seemed might be a longer single life than I had imagined, and that was okay.

However, it seemed the mirror was helping out a bit, too, as the number of bad dates I had dropped dramatically. I guess there is something to reflecting all that bad chi. Well, and the bad dates.


Date-Nut Bread

This recipe is from the ever effervescent Dorie Greenspan, who is as sweet as the dates used in this bread. I have yet to find a better recipe for date-nut bread. This came from her epic tome, Baking: From My Home to Yours.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
3 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 325F. Grease and flour a 9X5 loaf pan and place the pan on an insulated baking sheet.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. Beat together the butter and cream cheese for 2 minutes on medium-high until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for another 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating for a minute each. Add the extracts and beat another 30 seconds. The mixture will look curdled but don't fret. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture. Mix together until just combined. Fold in the dates and nuts and turn into the pan.

4. Bake for 40 minutes. Then cover the top loosely with a foil sheet and bake for another 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before taking the loaf out of the pan and cooling completely. Best the next day once the flavors have melded.

*knead the bread*

-Smeared with butter this bread will help cure whatever is pissing you the hell off.-

Sometimes, I need to just pause from the everything I'm doing. At the moment my schedule is work from 7-3:30, class from 4:30-6:30 (or 10 on Wednesdays), get home and do homework. During the time after homework I try to also eat, blog, run errands, do chores, and try to balance in a social and love life so people don't think I died by finally hanging myself outside the CSUS library where I spend most of my weekends doing research.

Still, and by sweet zombie Jesus there is a still, I find a moment to actually get some work done in the kitchen. Work isn't necessarily the right word. I don't see cooking as work. It's play. A chance to be creative. To blow off steam.

I find bread to be one of the more productive ways to let off steam and frustration. Few other tasks encourage you to smack the snot out of something with your ring hand and work out your frustration because those damn kids across the alley have no concept of noise pollution. (Oh shit, I think I'm old now!) Yes, kneading bread is a fabulous way to just get it all out.

The whole act of aggressive pulling, pushing, and shaping acts like an edible stressing stone. The warm ball of whole wheat and buckwheat has magic in it. Wet dough sticking to your fingers sucking out all the frustrations. Yeast has therapeutic properties, not only does it convert sugar into gas, it converts negative energy into sweet smelling goodness. As every muscle in your fingers contract and release, pushing energy in and out of the dough, it absorbs the frustration and imbues you with a kind of serenity only good bread can bestow.

This last Saturday, a day that had been plagued by reading on cognitive linguistic patterns, or something like that, I was filled with angst. It swirled inside me colliding, the friction of frustration and anger generating storms and dark clouds could be seen in my eyes. It was during this that I needed to knead bread, the same way a Buddhist will meditate for inner stillness. For me, it was noms rather than ohms.

"Ugh, God, you must be vengeful if I'm still fucking alive after this week."

*knead the bread*

"I'm tired! God damn assignment making me read over 280 pages in one weekend!"

*knead the bread*

"I just want to stop. Why the hell did I take this on!? Why did I want to go back to school!? I'm burnt out already. My personal graduation deadline is coming up fast!"

*knead the bread*

"Work is driving me crazy! Why won't people leave me alone so I can get shit done for once?"

*knead the bread*

"At least I can start teaching college writing soon. Assuming there are actually jobs out there when I graduate."

*knead the bread*

"Oh crap, I have an article due for Edible Sacramento soon. I need to budget time for that somehow. Crud. Okay, deep breath."

*knead the bread*

"I think I can squeeze it in in early November? Ah well, I'm sure I'll find something great to work on."

*knead the bread*

*looks out the window*

*knead the bread*

"God, it's nice outside. I think I'll open the window."

*knead the bread*

"Mace, damn it, go away. I'm not letting you eat another yeast packet. You fart up a storm when you steal those."

*knead the bread*

"Oh hells yes, this smells good. Hmm, I wonder if I should contact that person I met at BlogHer, I bet she would be a great wealth of information for my thesis."

*knead the bread*

"I think I'll add some more dried cranberries to this. Damn, this'll be good. If baking bread was a sin, Dante would have dedicated a chapter to me."

And then I set the bread in a warm place so the little bits of yeast who have escaped Eat Beast can nourish themselves. As the bread rises, so do my spirits. All is once again good with world.

-When life gives you cranberries you make cranberry studded bread sweetened by molasses. Then thank life for giving you cranberries because that was really awesome of it to do.-

Whole Wheat Molasses Bread with Cranberries
Adapted from Gourmet

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional for kneading
2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 tablespoons of buckwheat flour (optional)
2 teaspoons salt
1 (1/4-oz) package fast-acting yeast such as Fleischmann's Rapid Rise yeast
1 cup warm water
1/2 cup warm milk
1/4 cup molasses (not robust or blackstrap)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries

1. Whisk together flours, salt, and yeast in a bowl. Whisk together water, milk, molasses, and butter in another bowl until combined well, then stir into flour mixture until a wet dough forms. Stir in cranberries. You may need to add a sprinkle or two of water if the dough is initially crumbly.

2. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to prevent dough from sticking, until smooth and elastic, 7 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled bowl, turning to coat, then let rest in bowl, uncovered, in a draft-free place at warm room temperature 10 minutes.

3. Divide dough in half and form into 2 balls. Arrange about 4 inches apart on a large baking sheet. Loosely cover with oiled plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, about 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in lowest position. Lightly sprinkle dough with some flour and bake until golden brown and bottoms sound hollow when tapped, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.

-Ruby nuggets of tarty goodness.-

Vanilla Scented Cornbread

An alteration to a recipe a friend said I should try. It's a sweet twist on your everyday cornbread, and is wonderful in the morning with some fresh jam spread over a warmed square of it. You'll love the smell this makes in your kitchen.

Vanilla Scented Cornbread
What You'll Need...
1 cup of yellow cornmeal
1 cup of flour
1 cup of sugar or vanilla sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup of buttermilk (or milk with a good squeeze of lemon juice, and let sit for 5 minutes)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
contents of one vanilla bean scraped (optional; I used a Tahitensis / Planifolia Blend bean)
6 tablespoons of butter, melted

What You'll Do...
1) Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Combine buttermilk, eggs, vanilla extract and vanilla bean scrapings if using.

2) Combine the wet ingredients to the dry and give it a quick few whisks. Pour over the mixture and stir.

3) Pour into an 8x8 or 9x9 inch pan that has been lightly greased and floured. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. I find ovens really vary for this recipes, so keep an eye on it.