Entertaining Rambutans

-The whimsical and slightly ridiculous rambutan.-

Aside from pictures and drawings I had never seen one before so I couldn't be sure. The plastic bag distorted the image but I could still seem to make out what they were. I leaned over the stack of baby bok choi to see if I could get a better look.

"Excuse me?" I asked the small, Asian girl behind the counter. She turned towards me as she finished her exchange. This girl's family ran one of the best Asian stalls at the Farmers' Market and often had strange varieties of basil and spinaches that one might be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

"Yes?" she asked, pushing her glasses up and moving one of the suspicious bags aside to give herself some counter space.

"What are those?" I pointed to the bag.

"Oh, these? Rambutans." She pulled out an ovaloid fruit covered in fleshy, pliable spikes. Neon red with canary yellow highlights it looked like one of Jim Henson's muppets had laid an egg.

Rambutans, popular fruits of the drupe family, weren't exactly common fair at the Farmers' Market under the freeway. I had never seen one in person and so to come across one here was surprising.

"Oh, wow, where did you find these?" I asked.

"At the other Farmers' Market. The one down the street." She referred to the what's commonly considered in Sacramento as the Asian Farmers' Market (unless you primarily shop there where it's just the regular Farmers' Market) where ingredients most may consider somewhat foreign can be found; fresh tofu, culantro, Hmong basil, purple snap peas, and melons the size of a 4 year old child could be procured easily. I would visit it every so often to pick up water spinach and herbs but had never come across rambutans there.

"I never see these when I go," I exclaimed.

"You have to get there early. Even then you have to stock up. We have six more bags of these in our car," she motioned her head behind her and in the corner of the truck sat six bags pregnant with uncountable litters of rambutan.

"Damn." Apparently, they were hard to find even if you know where and when to get them.

"Hold on," she said and quickly reached over for a bag. She untied it and plucked out five of the plumpest ovals she could find, their spines bending to massage her hands like eager servants. They rolled off her hand into a new bag in a spriteful manner which reminded me of the little puppets running around in opening credits of Fraggle Rock. "Here, try a few," she smiled and handed them towards me.

-The eventual evolution of rambutans.-

"Oh, I couldn't," I reluctantly waved my hand to protest her kindness. Sometimes I regret those good manners my parents raised me with.

"No, I insist. We have tons. We won't miss a few," she pushed the bag forward.

I happily accepted. "Wow, thank you! How much?" I asked.

"None, you're here every week. Think of it as thanks for your business," she began to prepare a bag of baby bok choi, cilantro, and lemongrass for me: my usual.

I handed her $1.20, "Thanks a ton! Can't wait to try them!"

"Let me know how you like them!" she waved, turned, and went back to work.

When I got home I quickly grabbed one of the rambutans out of the bag. It was soft and the spines felt like rubbery hairs. I quickly produced a pairing knife and cut the entire circumference lengthwise. I knew that anatomically they were like lychees so I let the stone in the center of the fruit guide the knife.

I popped the rambutan open to find an oblong, white piece of fruit; its flesh was translucent and fragrant. I bit in and was surprised how juicy it was but the flesh had a death grip both to its fluids and the stone in the middle. It tasted like a mellow lychee, not nearly as sweet and overpowering which was pleasant as I found lychees to be far to sweet for my taste. It was interesting, funky, a bit acidic and different. A taste that I wasn't going to sing praises of but not speak ill of it either. I think its a flavor you have to grow up with to really appreciate it.

I cracked open the rest and plopped them into a bowl. I brought them and a cup of chamomile tea out to the table, the steam from the tea billowing into divining swirls and producing a floral scent. I cracked open a copy of The House on Mango Street and began to enjoy my afternoon, the sweet tea and fruit perfectly complimenting each other and my reading.

I decided to just enjoy an hour or two this way. After all, how often do you have a chance to entertain rambutans in your home?

-I'm pretty sure you can hatch a fraggle from this thing.-

Persimmon Bread for Your Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad Day

-Fuyu and Cinnamon persimmons, when hard, are the best for this recipe.-

"Chapter 4?" I thought.

And then the panic set it.

"Please don't tell me I..." I reached into my bag and grabbed out my notebook. I funbeled through the unorganized mess of handouts and papers creating a snow storm of white paper on my desk and eventually pulled out my syllabus. I read the day's assignments:

10/26 Teaching Strategies
"Remedial Writing Courses" Rose (SacCT)
"Writing and Reading as Collaborative Social Acts" Bruffee (SacCT)
Teaching Developmental Writing - Chapter 4

"Chapter 4? No. No, no, no... I read chapter 14!" My inner voice was now shrieking with such terror you'd think Norman Bates was plunging a knife into it. The class had read chapter 13 last week and in my exhaustion I misread the syllabus.

Then, like a bomb went off in my head, I realized what this meant. "I wrote my paper on the wrong chapter."

My body shuddered. The first domino in a long line had been flicked over and now my emotional and mental barrier began to reel apart. Tears welled and my I felt myself hyperventilating. I immediately crammed it all back down into the pit of my stomach making it feel dull and shocked like it had been sucker punched with a brass knuckled fist. I was going to have to try and hold back a total breakdown right then in the middle of class in front of nineteen of my peers for the next 75 minutes while simultaneously acting like a coherent human being making salient observations about the two correct readings I did finish.

I felt hollow, like a porcelain doll containing an maelstrom whose turbulent winds would at any second crack and shatter me. I noticed through my blurry vision that everyone began to move into small groups. I lifted my desk and did the same, my physical body and mind in some ambulatory fugue state. Moving without awareness, my body was powered by a sense of utter defeat.

"Are you okay?" asked my classmate, Manpreet. She was one of the people in my class who I admired; charming and intelligent, one of those naturally effervescent people who always seems to have the right words. Yet at the moment these were not the words I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear the words "chapter 14". "Are you okay?" simply pointed out a hole in the emotional brick wall I was trying to lay.

"No." I breathed. At that instant my porcelain shield cracked. "No. I'm not. I wrote on the wrong chapter. I wrote on chapter 14, and not chapter 4. I've already cut way back on all my side jobs and other sources of income and from that have willingly taken a pay cut just to try and keep up with class this semester and after that I still make a giant mess of things?! I don't do that kind of thing. I never make mistakes like these. I can't." My breathing became erratic and my voice pitched high with panic.

"It's okay. Don't freak. Someone else did the same thing last week," her eyes caught me like a snake charmer's pipe.

"Wha... what? Really?" I stuttered.

"Yes. Just talk to the professor. It'll be okay," she said in a tone so clam that it I could only assume it was a universal and unquestionable truth.

I paused, then asked, "Is anyone else feeling seriously against the wall this semester? I'm barely keeping up."

"Yes," Manpreet and the other people in our small group pronounced in unison.

After class I went up to the professor and explained my situation. After an hour and some joking the storm had abated. Now calm I was able to articulately explain my innocent mishap.

-Unlike my homework, this bread is foolproof.-

"Don't worry," said my professor, "you can turn in the right one on Wednesday. But you know your paper was supposed to be on last week's discussions right?"

...What?

"So wait, you mean had I done chapter 4 I would have done the wrong one anyways?"

It's a little known fact that on October 26th at roughly 5:50 PM time stopped for one second. I know. I felt it. Because when time stops, even for one second, it feels like years.

One no-second later time resumed, "Oh God, I did all of the responses wrong then? I did them all on the current week's reading and not the previous!" The maelstrom returned.

"No, just the last one or two. But don't worry. I only took about half a point and I noted it on the one I'll return to you next. The point is you were still thinking about the texts and engaging them and that was what was most important." She smiled at me and then turned to gather her things and was on her way out.

I went home defeated. When I walked in the door I dropped my messenger bag to the floor and made my way to the kitchen. I pulled out the persimmon bread I made the day before. Apparently, the only thing I did do right that day. As I pulled back the cling wrap I breathed in deep, the air now made heavy and sweet.

I began to cut off a piece and smear it with butter. The bread was amazing though it wasn't going to fix any of the mistakes I made or ones I was still going to make. Food can't always do that. It did however fill my empty stomach a bit and calmed some of those clouds. I no longer felt like I would shatter. I took another bite of bread letting my tongue feel out the textures of the dense bread, nibby pumpkin seeds, and chewy cranberries. I let it taste the spike of ginger, the coy cardamom, and the creamy waft of vanilla. I slumped on the couch and exhaled.

"Damn good bread," I sighed to myself.

-An in depth look at the cure for a shitty day.-

Persimmon Bread for Your Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad Day
Makes one loaf, can be doubled for two - adapted from zucchini bread recipe at Simply Recipes

1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups grated fresh fuyu or cinnamon persimmon
1/3 cup melted unsalted butter
1 teaspoons baking soda
Pinch salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans, walnuts, or pumpkin seeds (optional)
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Mix in the grated persimmon and then the melted butter.

2. Sprinkle baking soda, salt, and spices over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour and fold in. Fold in the nuts and dried cranberries or raisins if using.

3. Divide the batter equally between 2 buttered 5 by 9 inch loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour (check for doneness at 50 minutes) or until a wooden pick inserted in to the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks to cool thoroughly.

-It may not fix mistakes, but it'll make you feel a lot less crappy about them.-

Mystery of the Maleficent Smell

I looked at the ground for a moment, my attention wavering from my phone conversation. My line of sight gazed over the downed foliage that scattered the moss covered soil and cracked cement. Suddenly, it hit me. An electric current pulsed through the entirety of my brain and my eyes shot open with the speed that only comes when the patterns of the universe suddenly become transparent and understood.

It was so clear. So obvious.

I understood the cause.

I knew what it was.
______________________________

"God damn, it still smells all yeasty out here. Seriously, what the hell is causing it?" I complained.

"I dunno," replied BF, "but it's still pretty strong. Lucky for me the smoke kinda covers it up." He laughed at me and took a long drag from his cigarette. I used to be on BF about his smoking but now I was innocuous to it and didn't really care one way or the other. At this point the whole smoking topic was kind of a running joke to us. He inhaled, "Mmm, tobacco. Sure you don't want one? It makes you look cool."

"When do I ever want one?" I said walking around outside and sniffing my nose in an attempt to follow the smell. The somewhat fermenting odor had been prevalent for about two weeks. It was everywhere and my roommate and I had exhausted almost every single possibility we could think of as the odious cause. Something in our yard was evil and didn't want us to leave the duplex under threat of nasty, stinky torment.

"It wasn't the fish," I mused to myself. A few days ago I walked out my front door and made my way to the beaten redwood gate. It had rained the night before and as usual the water had made the wood swell to the point that the only way to open it was with a to give it a good bash with my shoulder. As I began to brace my weight I noticed a perfectly good salmon fillet sitting in the mud (as relatively good as a salmon fillet in the mud can, of course, be). Pink, fishy, and rank it sat there under a pulsing blanket of flies.

"Who throws away a piece of salmon like that?" BF puffed.

"Maybe it was funky?" I guessed. "Still, we tossed that and it still smells here." I used the "we" liberally. BF had been the one brave enough to scoop it into the trash after the roommate and I had and our upstairs neighbors had all chosen to ignore it. Personally, I had hoped a neighborhood stray would devour it but to no such luck.

I looked at the old storage shed and wondered if something died in it. Sniffing the air again I confirmed that this wasn't the case. The stench of decay wasn't so fermented or humid. Rather, it would be pungent, heavy and lingering with that distinct death-scent. No, no... this was too rotten-sweet like old tomatoes left in the sun on a humid, Missouri day.

Days of this passed. We began to close the windows. The roommate was unable to identify the yeasty smell which persisted and search as I might, the odor was all encompassing. It came from everywhere and hung like misery stretching its foul sinewy tendrils over the yard and duplex, its grip tightening.

We were trapped.
_____________________________

Flash forward a week later. I picked up the phone to call my best friend Janelle. I had taken the call outside as BF was playing video games and I didn't want to be distracted. Per the usual I had forgotten Janelle's birthday again; a ritual I performed with all my family and friends and twice with myself. As I made my pleas with the utmost contrition I tried to ignore the smell.

Slip and goo suddenly threw me off balance. Friction left me. My back arched and I flailed one arm to find balance, the other arm focused on keeping my phone safe. Somewhere I found level footing preventing me from tumbling to the ground.

As I righted myself I fumed. Lifting up my foot I inspected the smashed, black, rotted flesh. There was still some pink in the middle and the seeds all had taken a sickly adobe hue. "Fucking figs..."

...Holy crap.

-Not pictured: The smell of funkified, yeasty oppression.-

I looked at the ground around me. Corpses of figs littered it. I shot my eyes up and squinted to see plenty more hanging on to the branches wet with natural booze. The figs were fermenting. They were fermenting hard.

The yeasty smell!

My answer had been all around me. I hadn't given any thought to the fig tree this year. Rising three stories high the figs were out of reach this year. A lack of pruning had left the tree to produce hundred of immature figs which never had a chance to really become ripe before they took a sleigh-ride to converting their sugar to alcohol. Alcohol which now made the yard smell like the nastiest home brew outhouse you ever did catch a whiff of.

"Oh God, that's it!" I yelled.

"What?" said the voice over the receiver.

"Nothing, nothing, I just figured something out." I went back to the conversation. There was nothing else to do. The figs on the ground were smashed in. The gardeners would take care of them Tuesday. The ones in the tree were too high for me to take care of.

We would just have to live with the maleficent smell a bit longer.

Pasta Sfoglia Cookbook Winner

Thanks everyone for entering! I loved hearing about how everyone enjoys their pasta. I have to admit, I'm kinda jonseing for some fettuccine alfredo with chicken or meatballs. I may have to give a few of your ideas a shot! Ah, but you all want to know who scored the cookbook, yes? Well, the winner of the contest is Largehearted Boy, David Gutowski, who noted his love of tagliatelle, especially homemade with a cream sauce.

David, be sure to e-mail me so I can be sure the cookbook gets to you. My sincere thanks to everyone who entered!

*expletive* cranberries *expletive*

-This cake harnesses the power of cranberries in order to kick ass.-

I didn't mean to swear that loudly in the store. It had just sort of slipped out in all the excitement. One guy turned away from me assuming me to be some crazy youngin' who didn't know better. The stock boy paused his task of corn stacking and raised his eyebrow at me in curious stupor. Down the aisle next to the celery a mother glared at me as her children, little girls now poisoned by my filthy mouth, were doomed to grow up into delinquents with pink hair and dog collars that matched their boyfriends' eyebrow jewelry.

Whatever. I can't help it if the first thing that comes out of my mouth when I see bags of crimson cranberries is, "Oh sweet mighty God, FUCK YES! CRANBERRIES!" Seriously, these things are only available for what, 60 days of the year? Damn right I get excited.

As Mrs. Prudy McPrude shuffled her kids away from my negative influence and devil speak I began to build up my cranberry cache. Most of these would be thrown into what would in the next few weeks can only be described as a nervous horde. A stockpile of cranberries in my freezer and fridge that might rival the larder of an apocalypse-theory obsessed nutjob's bomb shelter.

Cranberry sorbet, cranberry bread, cranberry scones, cranberry granola... Cranberries had become part of my fall and winter ritual just like busting out the good blankets from storage come the cold rains and cursing out the squirrels who dug up my potted plants. Every year I try to do something a bit new and inventive, I try my best to break out of the ruby colored mold.

This year was no different. I went and broke the mold by breaking out the springform pan: cranberry cake - a super simple one. A quick rendezvous in the kitchen resulting in a cake that everyone would fawn over in a cranberry colored haze. This cake is simple as can be: sugar, eggs, butter, flour, some salt and milk, and an entire bag of cranberries.

It's definitely something that'll make you swear out loud for cranberries too.

-Look upon this cake in all its neon red-streaked cranberry glory and weep for joy.-

Cranberry Cake
makes 1 9x13 or 1 10" springform cake

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened and cut into chunks
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon kirsch (optional)
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of milk
2 cups flour
2 1/2 cups cranberries (1 bag)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan or a 10" springform pan.

2. Beat eggs and sugar together for 5-7 minutes; the eggs will increase in volume quite a bit, streaming into ribbons when you lift the beaters. They will also turn pale yellow.

3. Add butter and extracts and beat for 2 minutes. Add the milk and salt and mix for another 30 seconds.

4. Stir in flour and fold in cranberries. Pour into greased pan.

5. Bake 45-50 minutes for a 9x13, or a little over an hour for the springform. You may need to tent the cake with foil in the last 15 minutes or so to keep the top from browning. Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.