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Posts tagged ‘dorie greenspan’

Apr 15

Muffin Monday: Out and Ab-oatmeal Bread

Every once in a while I remember that I’m a 24 year old single, attractive female and that I should try to enjoy that while I can because it’s not going to last forever.  It can be hard to break out of my cranky old British man persona but last Saturday night I did and oh it felt so nice to be young and dancing again.  I actually had a drink or two, went out, met new boys, met new girls, spent a little cash and most importantly I went dancing.  Oh how I’ve missed dancing.  I haven’t really been properly out dancing since Comic Con last year and I wasn’t even properly single then.  There’s something very wrong with that.  So since I wasn’t going to make another engagement on time and was looking at a night in doing nothing, once again, I hesitated for a beat when a friend from yoga let me know she was going out that evening.  Then I said “What the hell is wrong with you.  Act your age already!” and asked if there was room for one more.  So so glad.

What makes dancing so cathartic, so therapeutic and just so damn much fun?  It’s the release I think.  It’s physical, if not always sexual, and requires that you trust in your body rather than letting your mind do all the work.  Overthinking means you lose the beat.  If you have a partner you need to be able to really let your body win out and react to theirs.  If you let your brain worry about where his or her foot is going next, by the time you figure it out they are already two more steps ahead.  That’s not to say it involves totally turning off your mind because I certainly feel like mine is still racing but it’s in a reactive mode rather than predictive.  That’s a rare thing for me to be able to do and enjoy.  As such a Type-A(sshole) I find myself craving the ability to plan and control the majority of the time so finding a situation where I can be comfortable not doing that is rare and worth relishing.  In retrospect I wish I had taken ballet lessons when they had been offered as a child.

Now I don’t know as much about it as I do food but I do know that the concept of “Dance Therapy” is something that’s been around since the 60’s.  It’s distinguishable from just general physical activity but I will admit that even just getting your body moving whether it’s dancing or chopping wood is going to cause an endorphin release and improve mood.  How effective is it?  Well it can depend on what you’re treating.  I’m not sure that there’s as much of a verifiable success record that dance therapy can cure severe mental disorders like schizophrenia but it has shown significant impacts in the lives of the elderly, those recovering from brain injuries and in autistic children.  There aren’t any recorded negative effects (except maybe a sprained ankle or two) from what I’ve read on the topic.

Going on Saturday didn’t cure all my problems.  It didn’t end my celibate streak.  The fact that I haven’t even so much as kissed someone since July rather horrified one of my friends.  But it did reconnect me a little with the girl I’m supposed to be acting the age of.  Plus the nice part about being on the dance floor is that no one is talking.  No one is asking me what I do for a living and being impressed, or intimidated or suffering inferiority complex.  Instead it’s pretty simple: can you keep up?  For some reason people seem to be more up to that challenge on the dance floor than anywhere else with me.  Of course that might just be because I’m not a very good dancer….  White girl dancing isn’t exactly that poetic or challenging is it?  But I do it with gleeful abandon regardless of how good I am.

I remember being little at a dance party at my karate studio.  I chose the karate over the ballet lessons.  I don’t really regret that as much but I do wish I’d found a way to do ballet too.  Anyway I just remember that I was there with my first grade “boyfriend” who got tired and went home after only a short time.  I spent the entire party hopping around, throwing punches and dancing.  I remember hearing my Mom say to someone “Men are always going to struggle to keep up with her on the dance floor.”  Little did I know at that age that what she wasn’t just talking about the dancing.  Either way I need to get out a little more and act my age.  Even if I’m just dancing on my own—no wild oats need to be sown for me to enjoy myself.

For the mornings after this is a fantastic quick bread that comes together using the time trusted muffin method.  This means it’s simple and can be done even if that night before involved enough liquid courage for the dancefloor to leave you suffering some of the afterness of badness.  You can use the recipe to make muffins or a loaf for easy slicing.  It’s filling and delicious—yes even to someone like me who doesn’t really like oatmeal.

Dorie’s Oatmeal Loaf

From Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking from my home to yours”

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Apr 4

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Have I fractured my funny scone?

More and more I feel like the wet blanket.  I seem to find certain jokes far less amusing than others—especially jokes that I feel marginalize any group of people or legitimate problem the world is facing.  Rape jokes, sexist jokes…general teasing that has to do with someone’s sexual orientation?  All of it just puts me in a sour mood and I wind up just wanting to leave wherever I’m currently at.  I don’t think I always used to be this way so what is it?  Is it something in the water trickling down from Berkeley that’s making me far too serious or am I just finally experiencing the social issues that were largely only textbook in their reality during adolescence?  Is it that I’ve just become too self-centered to be able to look at myself with an objective eye and laugh?

On one hand I’ve always been “so serious” about perceived injustice.  Even as a child I wanted to save the world.  I guess mom shoulda named me Ka-ka-ka-Katie.  **TRIVIA TIME: Name that movie and win a cookie!  PS: my last trivia winner still needs to email me his info so I can mail out a treat!  Hey you, yeah I’m talking to you, send me your info and any allergens to my blog’s email addy: rollingsreliableblog at g mai l dot com** I do think part of it is that I’m experiencing more of life rather than reading about it.  There are issues that seem far less important than they did and others that seem to be so ignored by people around me that I want to scream.  Sometimes I just want to get out a drum and hold it in someone’s face and yell “WAKE UP!”  The apathy and willful ignorance that serve as a constant state of existence for some…I don’t understand it.  I never have.  Some stupid little voice inside me just won’t shut up and I can’t sit by the sidelines and watch and do nothing.  I have to do something—even if it’s just letting the people I want to defend know I’m here.  I have to do something.

I noticed that there are people in this world just hellbent upon making it a miserable place for the rest of us and I have no desire to be around them.  Thankfully this is a minority of folks and I find that most people are generally decent and well intentioned.  Even so these decent people have a tendency to “kid around” to such an extent that I always feel very distant from them.  The joking, the kidding, the teasing…I don’t know it just gets old after a while.  I’ve always been one to provide a good ribbing and I like to think that I take as well as I give—but I’m more apt to get annoyed when the target is someone other than myself.  I’ll go up in arms twice as quickly when the butt of the joke isn’t my own.  I’d like to think with all the squats I’ve been doing my own ass is pretty springy and most stuff bounces off of it.  Provided I’ve had enough sleep and coffee that day anyway.  No coffee = no sense of humor.  Word to the wise and future significant others.  Take for example this joke which I’ve heard far too many times and which seems particularly relevant after the flurry of rape culture commentary in the past few weeks:

“Hey what do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”

“Nothing.  You’ve already told her twice.”

There may have been a time and a place, with the right people, where I’d have laughed at that.  Not anymore.  I have no circumstance in mind where I can find a joke like that funny.  Or many many others.  I’m too angry about those people who are trying to make this world a nasty exclusive place to find humor in injustice anymore.  I guess there are just some things that are…difficult for me to laugh about Hubbell.

Part of this too I think comes from my continuing goal to eliminate negativity in my life.  I’ve had so much of it and I’ve had enough.  I’ve had twice, maybe three times, my fair share to contend with—and I’m well aware that it still pales in comparison to what some other people in this world deal with.  I’m just so tired of it.  I can’t control or stop the general trend of the universe toward entropy.  Shit happens – act tough and get over it.  That’s a motto I’m pretty well versed in.  While I can’t control what chaotic elements life invites to the dinner party, I can make sure that my table is set.  I think if I were to be my own super hero it would be “Type A-girl” It’s so much who I am it’s even my blood type.  Badumsh!

I don’t really want to be known as the girl with the giant stick…in the mud but at the same time I can’t just forget about the world either.  I can only promise this: I can’t stop trying to change or control things but I can do my best to not take myself too seriously.  Just know that while I will do my best to accept teasing of my own faults and flaws, I won’t respond as kindly if it involves anyone else I care about.

And on the subject of anal personalities and table settings, how about some SCONES?  Those trademark tea-time pastry of oh-so-proper British ladies.  Since I’m trying to find a way to stay true to myself (the British proper side) but still flex my funny scone (what the Brits might consider the “Cowboy American” side) I offer up to you this melding of American/British sensibilities.  It’s a scone with a classic American twist: apple-cheddar.  Kind of like the southern Apple Cheddar Pie that is so damn good and so damn…colonial.

Dorie Greenspan’s Apple Cheddar Scones

From “Baking from my home to yours” Dorie Greenspan  **I do not own** Read more

Mar 6

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Fly Monkey Fly – far away from Oz (It’s Bananas)

And not in a good way.  WARNING WARNING here be spoilers, or at least spoilery reflections on my advanced screening of “Oz the Great and Powerful.”  There also may be an opportunity to win some cookies.

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Last weekend I was treated to an advanced viewing of the new Oz film.  A rather wonderful treat for a sick girl.  I was quite excited to see this movie which had thus far looked quite promising.  A lot of buzz had built up about the visuals in this movie and from what I’d heard, this seemed like the sort of film where 3D had a real purpose.  I settled into my chair with my 3D glasses and waited for the flick to start.

The opening credit scene was breathtaking.  It evokes the older film feeling of the original, back in the days when you used to have open credit sequences, and it was completely immersive.  The artwork, the effects…the opening scene tells an entire story all on its own.  I was hooked and couldn’t wait for the movie to start.  Then it all went downhill from there.  It’s bad when the opening scenes, sepia toned and in boring old Kansas, are the most enjoyable of the film.

Now don’t get me wrong, the visuals hold up through the entire movie.  There are some of the more “gotcha” 3d moments that I stopped enjoying once I turned 10.  You know, the things spears that fly out at you through the screen, the rug flare out in your face…I don’t need those kinds of gimmicks.  To balance these out though are just moments where you really feel like you are exploring this magical land of Oz—and one particular waterfall scene that made me go “oh this is so going to be a ride at Disneyland” and then “I feel like I’m already on the ride.”  Sadly the visual effects are the only part of the film with any depth.doriebananacake (6)

The story itself is very weak and takes too long to tell itself.  It’s not particularly surprising—you’re going to have the whole story figured out pretty much as soon as the witches take the screen.  Still I wasn’t going to judge for that alone.  Since it’s a prequel we already know what the end result is going to be anyway.  The real reason the story just couldn’t hold up was that the character of Oz, and the casting, were both very, very bad.  Fratboy bad.  Oz is not a likeable person—he reminds me of every frat boy I ever warned my sorority sisters about and James Franco just exacerbates this because he really, really reminds me of those same boys.  Mila Kunis who plays Theodora **SPOILER aka the wicked witch of the west** is by contrast that stereotypical “crazy” sorority girl.  She gets her heart set on the first boy who ever looks her way and starts singing her way to the chapel after the first date.  The sort of girl who makes you want to say “oh, honey”  TRIVIA TIME: what show is that a reference from?  Win a prize!

doriebananacake (7)Mila Kunis playing such a desperate, naïve character had another unintended consequence: the entire time I was hearing Meg Griffin.  Way to pull me out of the story.  This hasn’t happened with her in other roles.  It’s because this character is so, so…pathetic.  She reminded me a great deal of a girl I knew in college.  The refrain of “I slept with him, now he won’t call me back so I’m going to act out crazy like to make him see how much he hurt me and maybe then he’ll learn” is not new to my ears.  It is painful to see blown up on screen.  Much to my annoyance I don’t ever get the feeling that the Franco character does acknowledge his role in the transformation that takes place in Kunis.  Instead it seems like the blame gets shifted entirely to Evanora—Rachel Weisz’s character.

Weisz is underutilized in this film.  It’s depressing.  She’s incredibly talented and beautiful, and quite early establish as eeeeevil but unlike Theodora, whose motivation for wickedness we understand, we never get a reason behind Evanora’s hatred of Glinda.  The magic is 3D but the character development is pretty damn shallow.  Michelle Williams was also not used effectively to my mind.  She wasn’t the best on cast, but she did a damn good job at emulating the speech of the original Glinda.  The most interesting scenes in the film after reaching the land of Oz were when these two interacted.

Lastly the film manages to make a number of nice references to elements of the original and yet it ignores the most glaringly obvious piece of Oz lore.  I couldn’t believe it when the end credits ran and there was no mention of **WARNING HERE BE SPOILERS** the ruby slippers.  Not a whisper.  The film manages to introduce Dorothy’s parents, provide a potential backstory for Ms. Gulch’s hatred of the girl, scarecrows, cowardly lions and flying monkeys oh my!  Yet no mention of the damn slippers.  There was even a perfect way to incorporate them that I thought I had figured out while viewing the film.  See the witches have power sources—Glinda has her wand, Evanora an emerald jewel and Theodora a ruby ring.  Destroy the power source and destroy (or at least cripple) the witch.  Evanora manipulates Theodora in the film, it’s true.  I kept thinking aha!  Theodra will figure out how her sister manipulated her into becoming the wicked witch we know and love and turn on her.  In order to protect herself from Theodora, Evanora transforms the ring into the slippers and so long as she wears them Theodora can’t hurt her without destroying her own powersource.  That would explain why she’s so eager to get them back when someone else finally disposes of her sister and why she can’t harm Dorothy either.  But no.  No mention of it at all.  What a wasted opportunity.

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The flying monkeys were kind of cool though.  Though the “cute” flying monkey failed to evoke the awww out of me.  The most endearing character of all was that of “China Doll” and we don’t really get much of her.

2 out of 5 bananas for terrifying winged primates.  Rotten Tomato Meter rating: 67%  Yikes!  Not great for a film that cost a tiny island to produce.  Thankfully in life when real bananas go kinda brown and over-ripe they can be transformed into something tasty.  I can’t do anything to save Oz, but I can at least offer up a melt in your mouth oh my god this is amazing Banana Cake to the dissatisfied aerial apes.  My mom said it was like some sort of heavenly banana twinkie.

Banana Cake

From Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking from my home to yours”

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Feb 21

I’m hot, sticky sweet…

from my head to my BUNS..er, feet

A lot of my friends, and social media acquaintances, are presumably quite sick of hearing me go on and on about my love for Bikram yoga.  I am sure I mention it in at least a third of my blog posts here but if you’ll forgive me this time I have an “I’m kind of a big deal” announcement to make.  I just completed my first 30 day Bikram yoga challenge.  Actually when I say “just” I really mean I completed it over the weekend and as of this posting I will have gone 33 days in a row.  It’s a huge accomplishment.  But even more awesome was that day 30 I was joined by two lovely ladies who I’m friends with and may have infected them with the Bikram yoga bug.  And they aren’t the only ones.  It seems I’m a walking advertisement for the yoga and since I posted a photo from a recent photo shoot I did (more on that another day) I’ve had quite a few people come to me to say they were inspired to try Bikram for the first time and/or go back to it.

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I lost a lot of weight and toned a ton of muscle doing this yoga.  No joke, no gimmicks, no weight lifting required.  I very rarely go to the gym and when I do it’s to use a treadmill.  I will not say I **never** touch weights but I do it usually on a whim—usually because I just feel too good to want to stop working out.  The last time I touched a dumbbell was two weeks ago.  Just to provide a source of reference.  The reason no one ever believes that yoga can build muscle is because most Americans are more familiar with a fairly passive, meditative yoga.  Bikram is nothing like that.  It is 90 minutes of stretching and compression postures utilizing isometrics in a room heated to 105 degrees with 40% humidity.  You ever try doing squats, holding your arms out in front of you, and holding it for 3 minutes?  Now do that in a HOT room.  It will kick your yoga mocking butt.  There’s no staring into crystals and sighing “Ommmmm” in that room.

Why is it so hot?  The heat relaxes your muscles and lets you get a deeper stretch than you could in the cold.  It also decreases the risk of pulling a muscle that is not properly warmed up like you more often would in a gym.  The heat also creates more of a cardiovascular strain on your system as your body works harder to cool itself down while doing the poses.  This obviously means you sweat a ton.  Now I’m not sure how much of the concept of “sweating out toxins” is valid but the increased cardiovascular energy is certainly a good thing.  Interspersed with the stretching poses there are compression postures designed to cut off blood flow to different points of your body for short periods of time.  After releasing your heart works fast to deliver blood to these areas—the theory being that the rush of blood flow helps clean out arterial walls.  It also gets your heart rate up so that adds the cardio/weight loss element of the class.  I’ve always been a fan of coiling up in small spaces.  As a little girl I used to curl up into my cubby hole in kindergarten whenever I felt sad or upset.  The compression postures are very psychologically comforting for me as a result.

In short you can get some nice tight, hot little buns with Bikram yoga.  And speaking of hot, sticky buns….  Since today is National Sticky Bun Day and the process to make these involves heat, stretching and compression, it only seems appropriate to bake and blog about them as part of my 30-day challenge celebration!

Personally I always see these and immediately think of Princess Leia.  I think I probably saw Star Wars before I ever ate my first honey bun so that image is thoroughly burned into my brain.  Unfortunately the history of the sticky bun didn’t start on the planet of Alderaan but rather with the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Well okay actually just the Germans in general who brought the pastry over with them to the new world where it took off like (ha) hot cakes. The germans called these yeast raised dough treats “schnecken” which translates into snail.  Obviously a reference to their coiled shape.  Not nearly as cool as if it meant “kick ass space princess” but I guess we can’t win it all.  Traditional schnecken dough is made with sour cream and they often get mixed up with a similar Jewish treat called Rugelach which is made with cream cheese.  You’ll find both treats in some of the older, east coast Jewish communities.  It’s also a sweet served at every Sunday breakfast at the Walden Summer Camp for Girl’s in Maine—why is this at all an interesting piece of information?  Well back when Lindsey Lohan actually had a career this was the camp setting for a certain Parent Trap remake….  Just your random bursts of pop-culture knowledge to make up for a few days of non-posting.

Pecan Honey Buns

From Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my home to yours

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Feb 14

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My Bloody Valentine

Alright it’s Valentine ’s Day and the inevitable talk about relationships, being single etc etc has come round.  Sure enough I have a number of people who have asked me about my “dating life” as the holiday approached and to all of them I say “nope, not dating and I’m good with that.”  As usual some people don’t believe me.  Some people try to convince me I’m wrong.  Some people warn me that time is a ticking away.  Some people tell me I’m being silly when I say I don’t have the time for a relationship.  Some people think I’m in some lonely girl denial when I say I’m happy on my own.

But the truth of it is: I AM sincerely happy on my own.  I AM too busy for dating.  I AM too involved in my own plans, thoughts, needs, dreams, desires to be able to expend energy on someone else’s plans, thoughts, needs, dreams and desires.   There is no case of “doth protest too much” when I say these things.  I am however getting really damn sick and tired of saying them.  I am getting really annoyed by the shocked “you aren’t dating someone?” when my response to the inquiry about my Valentine ’s Day plans is that I’m spending them with my mom.  Especially since even if I were dating I’d be spending the day with my mom.  Valentine’s Day has always kind of been more about mommy/daughter time over the years and when I think of the holiday that is what I associate with it.

I’m not going to rant about it being a Hallmark card holiday like some bitter old cat lady.  True it’s kind of frivolous and silly but a day about celebrating love—no I’m not going to object to that like some sour cherry on the fruit stand.  I think it’s a perfectly wonderful excuse to celebrate if you happen to be with a special someone and regardless of the origins of the holiday, the point is that it’s a day set aside each year to make you slow down and reconnect with your lover.  The restaurants might have crazy markups and the expectation that you shower the object of your affection with gifts—those aren’t things I’m crazy about.  However that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have one day a year that serves as a placeholder where you push aside work, stress, trivialities and try to remember to spend time with a cherished loved one.

Okay so has that demonstrated that I’m not just a bag of mostly-water with a dusty vagina?  Can I rant now about how ANNOYING it is to be confronted by people who think it’s absurd that I’m happy in a single state?  It ain’t that strange folks.  I was in a relationship at this time a year ago and looking back on it, I’m in a much happier and balanced place now than I was then.  Coupledom does not automatically confer upon its participants a golden ticket to the chocolate factory.

Admittedly part of this is that I burnt out on my last relationship.  I gave a lot of myself and got very little in return.  I was trying to remember what I did for Valentine’s Day last year and to be honest…I can’t remember.  I remember what I baked and I remember that because of the distance and my job I wasn’t able to spend the actual day with the ex-boyfriend anyway.  I remember secretly hoping he’d have the kind of initiative to send me something at work or at home, because like all women what I really wanted was some sign that he went out of his way to let me know I mattered even if it was something as simple as a postcard in the mail with the words “I love you.”  I let it go since we were going to celebrate the following weekend but if I’m remembering correctly, and I may have blocked some of this out or be mis-remembering because to be honest I still don’t want to think about the unbalanced energy I spent on my last relationship, but if I’m remembering correctly I got mostly misplaced for a Magic the Gathering tournament that weekend.  But I don’t blame my ex for any sort of burn out I have experienced.  The truth is that I knew almost the entire time I was in that relationship that I gave more than I got, and I kept doing it the whole time knowing better.  “I give myself such very good advice…but I very seldom follow it.”

It’s kind of a relief for me right now to be able to be completely selfish and focus on what I want.  Like completing a 30 day yoga challenge (which I’ve almost made it through!!) or to work late and not have to worry that I’m short-changing a boyfriend when I do so.  I’m going to be taking some classes again soon, training for my first 10k as well, and so to be honest, the idea of having someone to care about is just exhausting.  The mere thought of it makes me tired.  When I do, or rather if I do, because I’m still not sure I’ll ever get sick of this bachelorette lifestyle, start dating again I have decided I will settle for nothing less than perfect.  Now if cupid wants to plop Joseph Gordon Levitt on my doorstep today, I’ll eat my words here today, but since I don’t see that happening anytime soon I’ll eat this tangy blood orange tart instead.

 

Blood Orange Tart

Modified from Dorie Greenspan’s Orange Tart recipe in “Baking from my home to yours” Read more

Feb 13

All is fair in love and brownies…

Looking for something to do with your honey on Valentine ’s Day, but not to go out and spend exorbitant amounts of money on holiday markups?  How about this for an idea: host a brownie tasting party.   It’s perfect!  What’s more February 14th than chocolate—decadent chocolate?  Plus by positing this whole exercise as an experiment in brownie recipes (there are numerous ways to make varieties of brownie!) you can justify eating your weight in luscious, lip-smacking, love-churning….*drooling* sorry what?  Where was I?  Oh right.

Dorie’s Classic Brownie

So as I’ve talked about in the past I’ve been on the quest for both the perfect sugar cookie and the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  Another staple of the American baking book is the brownie.  Truly American in fact as the brownie was invented in Chicago at the Palmer House Hotel in 1893 as a smaller chocolate cake that could be packaged nicely in boxed lunches for ladies attending a fair.  Crazy right?  It’s hard to believe that the brownie is a new world invention and hasn’t been around since the beginning of time.  It seems like precisely the kind of magical pastry that French chefs should have been baking for centuries.  Heck you could convince me that it was a good brownie that brought Europe out of the dark ages but no, it’s only about 120 years old.

In my quest to discover the perfect recipe I decided I needed to test out a few classics from Dorie Greenspan’s book.  I pitted three culinary giants in the brownie recipe world against each other—Julia Child, Katharine Hepburn and Dorie herself.  Well actually the Julia brownies were made for Julia Child and not by her but she loved them enough to eat them often so I consider that close enough.  I chose these because of the obvious names associate but because they also tested some of the more classic choices you make when baking brownies from scratch.  Chocolate or Cocoa Powder?   Unsweetened or Sweetened Chocolate?  Nuts or no nuts?  The only thing that didn’t really get put to the test was the question of cakey brownies versus fudgy brownies.  I think all three of these recipes fell on the fudgy side—which has its own range based on flour used.  I rarely see cakey brownies sold anywhere and have yet to be told that someone prefers that texture.  I do however hear people debate more whether they prefer the ganache-like flourless variety versus a chewier, dense version.

Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies

Let’s start with the easiest question: nuts.  Do you like nuts in your brownies?  Upon researching I’ve decided that while many people prefer nut-less brownies I think they are more “classic” with walnuts.  If you set your standard by the original recipe by the Palmer house then the answer to the nut question is YES.  Of course this original recipe featured not only walnuts but an apricot glaze and I’ve never seen apricots used with brownies in any store bakery.  Personally I think it’s a fantastic idea and intend to try this recipe next.  I love me some apricot.  Anyway two of the three recipes I chose had walnuts and I have to admit that I hated walnuts in brownies as a kid but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the flavor and textural contrast they provide so I’m going to say YES to nuts.

Another question is what source to use for chocolate—cocoa powder or melted chocolate?  Melted chocolate is used in two of the recipes I tested and it seems to provide a more rich and chewy brownie.  The version that used cocoa powder (Katharine Hepburn’s recipe) was springier and had a tighter crumb.  The melted chocolate based brownies were more crumbly.  I would say that moving forward if I want to make a brownie with lots of additives, or top the brownie with a layer of say, I don’t know, chocolate chip cookie dough, I’d utilize a cocoa powder base.  It should also be noted that there are two kinds of cocoa powder you can use: natural and dutch processed.  I only tested dutch processed, also known as alkalized, cocoa powder.  Natural cocoa powder is actually very acidic, with a more assertive flavor and lighter color.  Cocoa powder that has been modified to a neutral pH (dutch processed/alkalized) will be darker in color and have a milder, but more even flavor.  Thus my cocoa powder brownies had a very dark color to them that just screams CHOCOLATE.  The recipe didn’t specify whether to use natural or dutch but I went with the latter because the big advantage to acidic cocoa powder is that it interacts with baking soda (a base) to create rise in a recipe.  Since the recipe didn’t have baking soda as a leavener, I thought the less acidic chocolate would be best for the flavor.

Brownies for Julia Child

Of the two recipes that used melted chocolate, Dorie’s used a more bittersweet chocolate whereas Julia Child’s brownie recipe used more unsweetened chocolate.  Interestingly enough it was the recipe that used more unsweetened chocolate that tasted, well, sweeter, because it used an average 30% more sugar when comparing (by ratios of sugar, flour, butter and eggs) against Dorie’s recipe.

Ultimately both my last trivia winner, and most of my co-workers, preferred brownie number 3 – the Julia Child recipe.  Go figure.  As for me?  I have to say I side with the majority though if you go by how much I ate (half of each batch) you’d think I prefer the hippie answer: EVERYONE IS A WINNER.  All the brownies get a free trip…straight to my stomach.

I should also note that Dorie had modified the Hepburn recipe by adding cinnamon and chocolate chips.  In order to be as true to the original as possible, I omitted these additions.

From bottom to top: Dorie, Katharine, Julia

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Jan 29

Twofer Tuesday: Duck, Duck…Soup

Introducing Twofer Tuesdays – Two recipes for the price of one!  This week is also a Think Thin post but I’m retiring that title for more general use so you might get think thin thursdays or random healthy recipes as I kickstart back up my own diet.

Something my friends have learned from my instagram and photo streams:  I share photos that will either whet your appetite or turn your stomach.  Case in point—I’ll switch between taking snapshots of doughnuts and cookies to images of post-surgery body parts oozing and gushing.  Yum yum!  I recently had to have another ingrown toenail removed (why am I posting about this on my food blog?) and put up a picture that got an array of disgusted responses.  Don’t worry I won’t be sharing that here now.  Suffice to say it hurt, it still hurts and is in fact in such a bad way that I’m on antibiotics – read between the lines ewwww she’s infected.  Who said pretty girls can’t be gross?  We fart and burp too.  Yup yup yup!  Some hot girls even do it on microphones—I’m looking at you Adrienne Curry.  That woman is insanely hot, insanely geeky and insanely disgusting and I love her for all three.

But on the topic of grossness, I feel awful.  Not sure if it’s because I was in so much pain from my wee toe that I could sleep last night or these antibiotics I’m on—4 times a day!  What?!  I’ve never had antibiotics I had to remember to take so often and I was even on Bactrim years ago which is a huge honkin’ horse pill of a triple-acting antibiotic regimen.  Yuck.  I’m not usually sensitive to medications though I can’t stomach Tamiflu.  Literally can’t stomach it which kind of sucks since it’s the only real anti-viral that exists on the market.  Thankfully I seem to avoid getting the flu year after year in favor of my standing appointment with bronchial infections that have plagued me since childhood.  Or at least I used to.  January has almost come to a close and I have officially made it over a year—a year—without a sinus infection.  Is it a bird, a plane, a miracle?  Nope.  It’s Bikram yoga but I’ll wax and wane poetical about that another day because while I’m grateful to be healthy in a way I’ve never before experienced, I’m in a piss poor mood right now about this stupid toe thing.

I think I’ve been indulging too much as well.  I feel bloated and disgusting and know I’ve gained back a pound or two in the last few weeks.  It’s hard to balance the desire to hunker down in the winter with warm fatty comfort food and efforts to lose or maintain weight loss plans, isn’t it?  We instinctively want to eat more in order to put on that heat insulating blubber that our bodies needed before the modern first world marvel that is the indoor heater.  Part of the problem is that I’ve been on a mad woman quest to develop the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie and as such I have made and eaten way too much cookie dough and finished products.  I’m giving em away as much as I can but really how is a girl to resist warm, gooey cookies fresh from the oven?  I’m happy to say that I’ve finally gotten the recipe tweaked to my liking, as my hips clearly show, and as of today I am officially back on a rigid diet until my weight is back to where I want to maintain it.  But how do you balance that still with cold, overcast weather?

Soup.

Soup is a great meal for dieting in the winter so long as you are making the right choices i.e. avoiding those bacon, cheese, cream and potato laden bowls of deliciousness.  I know baked potato soup is amazing but it’s also NOT a diet friendly option.  Good news though: you don’t have to sacrifice rich, decadent flavorful soups for skinny jeans.  I’ve got a recipe for a Duck broth vegetable soup that will warm you up from the inside out.  The flavors always summon up for me the feeling that I’m in a French countryside cottage with a fire roaring, keeping my toes toasty despite snow on the ground outside.  It’s got all the indulgence of French cuisine without the guilt.  I’ve paired it with a great recipe for some sweet potato biscuits and while the carb load isn’t exactly on diet, if you can constrain yourself to JUST ONE, then you can still have a delicious rustic dinner for under 500 calories—and you never knew that a bit of soup and crust of bread could taste so good.

 Duck Duck Soup

an Olivia Original Read more

Jan 24

4 Comments

What me germy?

Ah late January.  The peak of flu and cold season.  My office is a cesspool of snifflers, coughers and tummy-achers and I can only suppose that many of you are experiencing the same thing.  Some of you might be sick yourselves and not even know it yet.  DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.  Did you get your flu shot yet?  I know that the buzz is that this season is the worst in years…but doesn’t it kind of seem like they say that every year?  I stopped keeping track.  It used to be unimportant because I knew I would get sick regardless of anything I did—chronic bronchitis was a fact of my life—but now that I’m actually entering the first full year of my life lung-infection free, I find myself wanting to know these things again.  I’m tempted to get the flu shot but at the same time I’m afraid to disrupt the delicate balance my immune system seems to have achieved.  Like the clock said “If it isn’t Baroque, don’t fix it—ahahahaha” **TRIVIA TIME: name the movie that line is from and the name of the character who said it to win a prize.**

With that in mind it occurs to me that folks still might not know the difference between bacterial and viral infections.  I forget that not everyone was awake during biology in high school, and since my field of work is in the medical field, I also forget that few people are exposed to this kind of information past those adolescent years.  For those of you who do know this distinction, well this post will be something of a DUH for you.  For those of you who would say HUH about this topic, please try to keep your eyes open.  I really think it’s useful knowledge—I mean everyone gets sick eventually and don’t you want to know about the things that are going on inside your own body?  Of course you do!  If you don’t then you should because knowledge is power and staying healthy requires at least a basic rudimentary course in all things micro-organic.

What is the difference between bacteria and a virus?

Bacteria are living organisms capable, typically, of functioning entirely independent of the human host.  They are single celled organisms with their own DNA and reproductive cycles.  They live in all sorts of environments, including some extreme locations like the inside of volcanos, radioactive waste, frozen glaciers and inside of YOU.  Thankfully not all of these microscopic buggers are bad and in fact many of them are essential to keeping the delicate digestive balance in an array of animal life on the planet.  The bad bacteria however can really mess you up.  A bacterial infection occurs when one of these bad boys gets comfy somewhere in or on your body and begins to reproduce at a rapid rate.  These suckers make you sick with the byproducts of their growth, the breakdown of your body to feed them, and generally overwhelming your body with their numbers.  Since these organisms exist independent of your own bodily organs and cells, the way to eliminate the infection is to eradicate the invaders.  Antibiotics serve this purpose.  There are a number of types of antibiotics that are essentially little weaponized pills that target and destroy some aspect of the bacteria’s biology.  Penicillin, as an example, acts by disrupting the cell wall structure in bacterial cells.  Breaking down the cell walls causes the bacteria to die.  Antibiotic resistance is something that occurs when bacteria evolve and lose or modify the specific trait our antibiotics target.  For example if the bacteria strain previously susceptible to penicillin evolve to exist without cell walls will then be resistant to the drug and it would no longer work to kill them.  When you stop taking antibiotics before all the bacteria are killed you increase the likelihood of this kind of resistance happening.  Evolution is not a magical response to the drug—for example the bacteria being targeted won’t suddenly lose its cell wall.  Instead it is one of the subsequent generations, maybe the original bacterial’s great great great great grand-cell, which will have its DNA copied over incorrectly resulting in a mutation that causes it to lose the cell wall.  This is why it is so essential to finish your antibiotics.  Even if you are feeling better, there may be a few lonely bacterial cells wandering in your system.  They will continue to reproduce and over time may produce a freak of nature that is resistant to your drugs.  So finish that bottle and kill every last sucker!

A virus is an entirely different creature and in fact is still debated as to whether or not it can be considered “alive” or not.  A virus does not exist without a host.  A virus is essentially just a protein, a line of DNA, which hijacks your cells and causes them to stop producing your DNA and start producing the viral DNA.  Once your cell is hijacked it starts producing more cells that also code the viral DNA and continue to multiply and divide.  Since it’s your own cell that is now working against your body designing a medication to target and eradicate is a problem.  You’d need some way to distinguish between the viral cell and your healthy cell.  This can be extremely hard to do, especially when viruses multiply so quickly and evolve at a rapid rate.  Since the virus actually interacts with the host DNA it can incorporate and change more quickly.  Our immune systems are still the best at targeting and destroying the invaders provided they can act quickly enough and learn what the virus looks like.  So you might be wondering then: what is a flu shot?  It’s actually a shot of the virus.  Typically a dead version of the virus, though weakened live versions called “attenuated” vaccines, are becoming more common.  The whole point is to introduce your body to the virus so it can learn to recognize it and eradicate it should you ever come into contact again in the future.  This is why occasionally someone who gets a flu shot actually winds up getting sick.  Their body didn’t get the memo for some reason that it should be killing this weakened virus which then manages to just infect the person and get them sick.

Now bear in mind, those of you who are biopeople, that this is a very high level, low detail and generalized explanation.  I’m already broaching the two page mark and I don’t want to overload my readers and scare them off with big words or boring textbook rants.  Especially since I know most of you come here for the yummies and not the germies.

Well what about GERMY YUMMIES?  A different kind of germ: wheat germ!

These were the prize for my last trivia question which was won by Chelsea in LA – she was the first to note that my “Joey for Jam” was a reference to Joey from the show Friends who goes totally bonkers for the homemade jam brewed up by Monica.  I’ve always felt that of the characters on that show, I’m the most like Monica.  Jewish.  Battle of the binge and bulge.  Type A.  Cleans to distress.  Loves to cook and bake.  Always griping about people using coasters.  Oh yeah.  Definitely the Monica.

I really like these cookies.  They have a nice lemon-honey flavor and a wholesome look/texture thanks to the incorporation of wheat germ.  You might even feel like you’re eating something good for you since wheat germ is the part of wheat that is high in vitamins and fiber.  Typically it gets removed from white breads in the milling process because it produces a slightly grittier texture when left intact.  These cookies get a healthy load of the wheat germ both in the batter and sprinkled on top before baking.  So you can eat them and feel satisfied that on top of the bad for you sugar/fats, you’re also getting folic acid, vitamin e, zinc and some magnesium.  Who knows, they might even help you fight off a cold this season!  They definitely remind me a little of cup of hot lemon tea which I always associate with this time of year and sniffles.

Honey Wheat Germ Cookies

From Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking from my home to yours” Read more

Jan 21

2 Comments

The meaning of expensive taste

IMG_3001Forget the Marmalade, lady, it’s all about the Cardamom.  Gucci Gucci ya ya!

I am inexorably drawn to the most expensive item in a department store.  It seems to be my sad fate that I have both incredible and expensive taste.  I don’t look for the designer handbag, and I certainly have no interest in the ostentatious labels that seems so perplexingly popular.  I’ve never found the Louis Vuitton pattern to be very attractive, as example, because I don’t like the idea of my expensive leather being branded more than cattle.  What I do always seem to gravitate toward is the even more expensive, sleek and classic beauty of say some clean Prada lines.  I don’t even know it’s designer usually until I see the price tag.  My natural inclination toward expensive tastes seems to apply to food as well—or more specifically spices.

Most people are familiar at least by name with Saffron, the most expensive spice by weight in the world and I’m sure everyone knows what Vanilla is.  Betcha didn’t know that “basic” flavor is actually the second most expensive thing you can buy though did you?  Not unless you ever looked at the cost of that vanilla bean in the spice aisle.  The third most expensive spice in the world is also one that I’m completely obsessed with.  Cardamom.  Delicious.  Exotic.  Ancient.  As in biblical (Revelations 18:13 apparently) It’s one of my favorite things to use in foods lately.  I always go through my own kitchen fads where I become obsessed with one ingredient for a short period of time but I don’t think my cardamom love is going anywhere anytime soon.

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Not familiar with this spice?  I don’t blame you.  80% of the world production goes to the Indian-Arab world, primarily to add flavor to their coffee called Gahwa.  It also is said to have medicinal properties that aid in digestion, throat soreness and inflammation—hardly surprising for a plant in the ginger family.

IMG_3016The next 10% goes to, of all places, Scandinavia.  You might remember from my recipe for Swedish Meatballs that Scandinavians seem to be particularly fond of some of the more Middle Eastern spices.  While the seeds of this ginger related plant are mentioned in the New Testament, there doesn’t seem to be much recorded history of cardamom in use in Europe until the middle ages.  The spice growth erupted in the early 20th century when German immigrants brought it to the new world—making Guatemala the largest producer of the plant today.  India, the natural source of cardamom, is second.

It has a very distinctive flavor and anyone who has eaten Indian food will most likely attribute this spice to that unique taste.  It manages to be both woodsy and citrusy so it works exceedingly well in savory and sweet dishes.  The green variety has a “cleaner” flavor, more citrusy, and is light and aromatic.  The black cardamom is the “bull in a china shop” version and less intense/complex.  This makes the green better suited for delicate dessert recipes but in very small quantities.  It doesn’t take much, thankfully, considering that this is the third most expensive spice you can buy.  Don’t let that spook you away from my recipe today though.  It is well worth it and it’s not nearly as bad as a single vanilla bean at $10-$16 dollars a bean.  If you can locate a store with bulk spices you can get just enough for this recipe and spend less than a dollar.    Ground cardamom is also much cheaper than the pods themselves.

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This recipe works as a muffin mix but it also makes a fantastic coffee cake.  As I said earlier, cardamom is a natural pairing for coffee in the Middle East, and if you are a fan of the bitter caffeinated beverage, you’ll really enjoy this duo for breakfast.  I think you’ll love the cake even if you hate coffee.

 Cardamom Crumb Cake
 from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my home to yours Read more

Jan 17

A berry frightening cake-walk

CranberryUpsideDowner (9)I’m pretty sure I almost just got mugged.  My hands are still shaking from the adrenaline that got pumping as I walked away hoping desperately that I wasn’t going to be followed.  Never more have I wished for Slayer strength.

I was walking home from the BART station later than usual because I have a few doctors’ visits I need to catch up on.  I’ll spare you some of the gory details of dental exams or toe surgeries but suffice to say I was coming home in the dark.  It’s only a few paltry blocks to my apartment, cake walk even late, and I’m not in a particularly dangerous part of town.  Regardless I remain aware that Oakland is a city and cities mean higher rates of crime.  Pretty much every city dweller I know, regardless of what part of town they live in, has been mugged eventually.  I know it’s very likely going to happen to me at some point.  Last night I really thought it was the time.CranberryUpsideDowner (17)

As I approached my building, literally just across the street, I came to a stop at the corner of a bar full of happy hour patrons to wait for the light to change.  I noticed that coming up to my left was a somewhat imposing looking man, walking quite slow and staring at me rather hard.  A quick scan down and I saw that in his hand was a switchblade which he was toying with.  As I made eye contact, for only a moment, I became aware of movement and saw that he was slowly opening and closing the knife.  I pulled my bag closer and began to pull away from the light.  It was still green in the opposing direction and I figured I’d be safer moving toward the bar.  If the light wasn’t going to change soon I was ready to jump into the bar and order myself a cuppa.

CranberryUpsideDowner (14)The would-be-mugger slowed down even more and the blade flicked open again, and then closed.  Funny how something that probably took only a second could seem to drag on so long.

The light turned yellow and I took a chance.  I jumped into the street, left turning cars be damned, and keeping my eye over my shoulder, hurried across the street.  In my mind I kept the mantras of Arya playing “quick as a deer, calm as still water, fear cuts deeper” Halfway across the light turned and my little walking man appeared.  I glanced back again and the criminal in question was simply standing at the walk, staring across but not moving to walk.  His knife was still in his hand and he was simply standing, not looking to cross in either direction.  Once I made it across the street I felt my heart beating faster as I hurried to the end of the building to get inside.  All I could think was that in my puffy marshmallow coat, my Russian flap hat and fingerless gloves, I appeared to be little worth the time or effort.  Not when a more well put together bar patron may approach that corner with cash in hand. Never have I been so glad I didn’t wash my hair or put on makeup that day.  Once inside, behind my locked and card entry only door, I let myself feel the fear that I was suppressing.

I may well be over-reacting.  I know many men who play with their knives as an idle exercise.  I have even done it with mine when I’m walking home alone at night.  I can only tell you that he didn’t **look** quite right and I am far more Klingon than Vulcan when it comes to trusting my gut in situations like these.   He also may have just been crazy.  The sad thing about city life is that you see those individuals who have truly managed to slip through the cracks.  I have no sympathy for 20somethings with dreadlocks, guitars and hands held open on nights that aren’t cold but I do feel so sadly when I see the genuinely mentally ill wandering about in the evening.  They generally aren’t asking for handouts either—rather they are likely to smack you in the stomach (which happened to me my first week in town) or rave at the sky.  THOSE are the people who need help.  I’m actually going to look into some sort of volunteer or outreach program to get involved with in the next month.  I’ve been wanting to do some sort of volunteer/community work lately.  Grief replace with pity for a city barely copin’….

CranberryUpsideDowner (13)

Having survived my possible robbery, I went up to my top floor apartment and did the two things those who know me well might expect: I called my stepdad and got to baking.  I guess I am just a girl at the end of the day.  All I wanted after a scare like that was the calming influence of a father’s voice and the comforting smell of something in the oven.  Baking always gives me a sense of peace…at least it does when it goes correctly.  Which is why on nights like this I’m happy to have recipes I can turn to that always go right.  Cheesecake is one thing I can do in my sleep so I threw one together for a coworker’s birthday.  Then I turned to this recipe from Dorie for a Cranberry Upside Down Cake.  It always comes together beautifully and it always tastes like home.  Probably because of the holiday association with cranberries but this really is a great cake to make year round.  I always have cranberries in the freezer.  It also works really well with other fruits.  I made it a few summers ago with some spice tweaks and peaches instead.  Delicious!

Upside Down Cranberry Cake

from Dorie Greenspan’s “Baking from my home to yours” Read more

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