Hyperbole and Cliche on the Eve Eve Eve of Thanksgiving

Yes, that's white flour you see in the basket, and it's bleached white flour and it's self-rising white flour. I'm fixing (like my Tennessee friends say) to make about ten dozen southern biscuits. Angel Biscuits. Our beloved Mary Moon provided me with a recipe. I'm also baking about ten thousand apple pies and about five thousand pumpkin cheesecakes. Hyperbole is the rule today. The apple pie is a pretty standard recipe that I've made a bazillion times, and the pumpkin cheesecake, the same. I've found that slicing the apples very thin -- like about 1/4 inch -- is the trick to ensure that the pie doesn't become a mushy mess, although mushy messes have their charms. You let the slices macerate in some lemon juice, brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon and salt first, and then you drain them and boil down the juices into a thick syrup that you then add cornstarch to and toss with the apples before adding them to the pie. You know the rest. The pumpkin cheesecake is a tad time-consuming and after being cooked must chill overnight in its springform pan before being un-molded, and the only trick I have for it is to use really good cream cheese because the cheap kind of cream cheese sometimes has a lot of water in it (kind of like cheap butter) so it's better to use the good stuff, if and when you can. Despite making ten thousand things, I remain a bit of a snob when it comes to baking and pastry. If you're a new reader, in another life I worked in fancy-schmancy kitchens in New York City under asshole chefs and learned all the finer things in pastry, before being thrust into the cruel world of childhood epilepsy when my infant daughter was diagnosed with it and so began The Seizure World which might be sort of like The Matrix (I have a limited understanding of the movie as I am decidedly not a fan of sci-fi) in that it's kind of a simulacrum of the world as most know it where tiny little mother minds™ are trapped and enslaved. Wait. That's the real world, too, isn't it?

Anyway.

Hyperbole aside, I have a hell of a lot of biscuits, apple pies and pumpkin cheesecakes to make over the next few days for my cottage business, Everyone Needs Cake.™ Because of that I have decided not to make Thanksgiving dinner this year, and both my sons (Henry comes home tomorrow night!), The Bird Photographer and I will be feeding the homeless on Skid Row Thanksgiving morning. Then we'll return home and eat pizza and pie.  It's just as well (it's also cliche day, apparently). We have much to be thankful for, and it isn't the origins of the country, to tell you the truth. Or the Pilgrims that set the tone for the rest of history, either.

A Moveable Feast Chez Moi

Last night nine beautiful people came over to my house to discuss Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, drink an aperitif and good wine and eat a meal that I prepared.

If ya'll haven't read A Moveable Feast, you should -- particularly if you're a writer or a lover of wine or food or Paris. I practically ate the book itself, and I've never been a Hemingway-lovah.

Here's my menu:

Chambery Cassis

(vermouth, creme de cassis and soda water)

Pissaladiere

Puff Pastry with Caramelized Onions, Anchovies and Black Olives

Camembert with Crackers

Soupe au Pistou

(Hearty vegetable soup with pesto)

Coq au Vin

Endive Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

French Apple Tart with Creme Fraiche

Sorry about the lack of appropriate French accents on my menu -- I can't figure out how to do those things on my Mac.

Here are some pictures:

I have to say that my French Apple Tart was the piece de resistance (without accents that looks really, really bad). I don't bake as much as I used to, and while I trained under some amazing pastry chefs in New York City, it's been some time. I've forgotten how much I love to make pastry dough and assemble something beautiful. Like other good things happening in my life,  classic pastry is at my fingertips. I apparently haven't lost my touch and I'm grateful for that. A moveable feast --

Oh la la.

Dispatch from the Revolution: Homeschooling Field Trip to Judson Glass and Memories of Pastry Making in NYC

Today, because we have all the time in the world (one day before we have to drive up to Silicon Valley, and I'm taking Sophie which means her first trip in years and thus a lot of packing and organizing), Oliver and I went on a homeschool field trip to a very cool place in Pasadena/Highland Park called Judson Studios. Judson Studios has been making stained and other decorative glass for well over a century, and the whole thing was fascinating.

We walked through each part of the studio and quietly observed the artists and glaziers and designers and craftsmen at work. Our tour guide was among the sixth generation of Judson's to work in the studio, and he explained the process of turning glass into windows, both colored and clear. At present, they were working on one of the biggest windows they'd ever gotten contracted to do -- a basketball court-sized stained window depicting Jesus, arms outstretched. It's destined for a mega-church somewhere in the heartland.

Yikes, is all I'll say about that.

Fascinating, right?

When the tour was finished, Oliver and I had lunch and then joined the others for a glass-blowing workshop in Highland Park.

 That, too, was fascinating, and despite being a pretty decent pastry chef in my day, including a steady piping hand and the ability to blow and shape sugar, it's damn hard to heat and blow glass. Oliver, of course, had a steady hand and those saxophone windpipes, so his piece was far superior to mine.

I'm not a woman who wants the public -- even ya'll -- to see what I look like blowing glass, so I'm not going to include a photo. Oliver didn't have the decency to refrain from taking a video, either, and I'll leave that horror flick up to your imagination.

It's important to maintain delusions and illusions.

It's for your own good.

I will show you what today reminded me of, though.

That's me and Mr. Kwak, my genius fellow-worker at a big New York City food show in the early 90s. I was probably wearing my glasses because we'd been up, working all night long. That white piece behind me is sculpted WHITE CHOCOLATE. I'm serious, ya'll. That's the kind of stuff we did. The pastry chef, Michael Hu (I wonder what happened to him?) was, essentially, an artist and food his medium. I think my job for that panel was to keep rubbing the pecs of the Greek gods until they shone. Mr. Kwak and Chef Hu were real artists, though. I appreciated their artistry, but I was never one for turning food into art. For my entry in the food show, I made a stained glass window with poured sugar, inspired by a Jean Cocteau. I'm going out on a limb to show it to you because it was the definition of pathetic:

I hadn't thought of that person, that me, in a very long time.

I'm still not showing you a picture of me blowing glass, though.

Thoughts and Actions After Leaving Your Heart at LAX

1. Thought: Does my life have a purpose outside of the beautiful boys and girl that I've brought into the world, the children who order my days and nights?
2. Thought: What will I do if a missile hits their plane, and it goes down? Will I become a vengeful, crazy woman intent on destruction? Will I be a domestic jihadist, maybe even a conservative? I know this sounds insane, but I'm nothing if not honest. Notice that the above photo is a selfie when the boys landed in Atlanta, so you can disregard any thought of your yellow dog becoming a member of the armed forces. You can tell they were thrilled when I placed my order via text.
3. Action: Try the new bakery on the way home and around the corner from the empty house. Order an incredible croissant with roasted tomato, bacon and Gruyere and some coffee for there and a Paris-Brest to take home. Sit down at a long table and pour coffee into beautiful mug from a silver carafe. Drink coffee, eat croissant, page through an actual copy of The New York Times, which feels good in the hands but is so filled with horror that you must push it aside. Gaze at the to-go box with Paris-Brest inside. 
   
4. Action: Decide that it can't wait and eat Paris-Brest -- all of it.
5. Thought: Know that some friends would call this taking care of yourself and others' emotional eating. As you lick the insides of the box, where the hazelnut cream is smeared, think I don't give a damn about anything in this moment.
6. Action: Get home and wander aimlessly about the quiet house, waiting for Sophie to get home from a bike ride with her father. Straighten up boys' room, make beds lovingly, still mournful of their inhabitants' absence. Notice, suddenly, that elder son's clear retainer is lying in the folds of the navy bean-bag chair. 
7. Thought: I wonder if he's been wearing this thing at all over the last month or so? What the hell? Where is the case? Those $5,000 teeth are probably getting crooked as we speak. Decide to have a few words with the kid as soon as he lands.
8. Action: Work for a couple of hours on the project that my friend M gave me. I am so grateful for this work, and it's something so worthy that the work is a pleasure.
9. Action: Make barbecue chicken for a friend in the hospital using the broiler in my 1928 oven for the first time. 
10. Thought: Who knew the broiler worked and was so great? I've raised three children and never made barbecue chicken with the broiler. What the hey?
11. Thought: Are we as a culture evolving into persons who will all have breast cancer and autism? It seems that way as five people I know have recently been diagnosed, and I know countless children with autism.
12. Thought: I don't make a big deal about the womanly cycles, menstruation, or The Change, but really -- I'm nearly 51, and there don't seem to be signs of it, and I definitely don't need to have any more children, and -- let's face it -- buying feminine hygiene products for 38 years is a drag.
13. Action: Take Sophie for a long walk to fend off the blues which are associated, I guess, with the two boys being gone and #12 above.
14. Action: Send the elder son a text about the left-behind retainers that were found in the folds of the bean-bag chair.

Reader, tell me what sort of thoughts and actions you're having and doing today.

Caketastic

For those of you new to the old blog, I make cakes. I make cakes for money. And pleasure, sometimes. Yesterday was one of those days. Pleasure and money, a cake for a sweet young lady and her equally sweet mama.

The aftermath: