​Nov. 8
Breakfast: leftover corn with sesame, leftover rice, leftover palak paneer.

Lunch: bulgogi fried rice from the restaurant.  Shared some of it with my daughter, who was hungry when she came home from tennis class.

As an aside, I must mention: last year, perhaps at Christmas, somebody appears to have purchased me a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine.  However, everyone I can think of denies having done so.  I have no idea why Bon Appetit just started showing up one day in my mailbox.  It's glitzy, contains recipes that often don't appeal to me, and seems to assume that I throw a lot of parties and barbecue regularly in the summer.  However, in each issue there are usually a couple of recipes that I do want to try.  I've made some fabulous salads, for instance, and a lovely frozen dessert with black sesame seeds.  

This late afternoon, I made the Blueberry/Pecan Galette from the July issue (I'm behind on more things than blogging).  However, something was way off about this recipe.  If I'd toasted the pecans as long as instructed, they would have been black; the ratios of flour, butter and water in the dough were completely wrong.  Even adding only 2/3 of the water that the recipe called for resulted in a dough that was almost dripping wet, like clay for a potter's wheel.  I added some extra flour to make it work.  While the galette baked up edible, the proportion of butter to actual solids in the crust resulted in massive blueberry leakage all over the baking tray and hence a significant loss in dessert volume.  This was, incidentally, the recipe featured on the cover of the magazine.  Where are your recipe testers, Bon Appetit??

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's "Red-Cooked" Daikon,  white rice, stirfried tofu along the approximate lines of her Ginger-Garlic Bean Curd, kale cooked with onions.  I forgot to add the sesame oil to the daikon (this has suddenly become an issue with me, as with some otherwise delicious muffins to which I forgot to add the salt and spices, resulting in the need to sprinkle salt on each muffin before consuming)-- but the daikon ended up tasting so greasy anyway that I can't imagine wanting to add more oil.  There was something about this recipe I found cloying.  Galette for dessert.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half. 2 dried figs. 1 Red Hook beer.

An original recipe mash-up, with inspirations from Marie Carter, Driscoll's, and Keri Russell.

My husband and I recently watched the movie Waitress, a charming Adrienne Shelly film featuring a lot of mouthwatering pies, plus Keri Russell looking adorable in a diner waitress uniform.  Every man's fantasy: hot waitress bakes you pie regularly.  Also, it's a shame what happened to Adrienne Shelly.  But I digress.

​As I mentioned previously, I am baking my husband a pie-of-the-month this year (though my waitressing uniform is not nearly as hot as Keri Russell's).  Watching pies unfold onscreen, smooth chocolate and fillings poured lusciously into crusts, often over perfect fruit, made me desperate to reproduce some of them (and John desperate to eat them).  In particular, the Lonely Chicago Pie attracted me.  I wasn't really satisfied, though, with the recipes that other people, similarly inspired, had invented and posted on the internet, so I went looking for something that combined a blend of mixed berries with really dark chocolate (not a pudding or a mousse).  Actually, to be honest, the recipe I just linked is much closer to what I was looking for than anything I was able to find that day, and if I'd found it then I might have tried it.

I ended up torn between a fairly dense chocolate-and-berry pie from Marie Carter, and this more pudding-y pie from Driscoll's that had the advantage of a whipped cream topping.  I love whipped cream and it seemed desirable for balancing the rich chocolate.  Ultimately I decided to combine the two, and this dessert was born.

Now, the chocolate layer of this dessert is really very solid, more like something I would call a torte than a pie.  However, there are a lot of berries, both inside and on top, and a thick layer of cream that fairly shouts "French Silk Pie," and of course it is pie-shaped, because it is baked in a pie pan.  My daughter announced that it was neither cake nor pie, but shared aspects of both; she, continually alert for connections to gender and sexuality politics, delightedly declared it a "non-binary dessert."

The apple pie I posted before: totally heteronormative.

Feeling "non-binary dessert" was a bit clunky, I suggested "non-pienary," and she, being fourteen, thought that was brilliant.  This recipe is so named henceforth.

**
Non-pienary

1 1/2 c. chocolate graham crackers
1/2 c. + 1/3 c. butter
1 c. dark (preferably bittersweet) chocolate chips
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar, plus a spoon or two more
2 T. powdered sugar
2. eggs
1/2 c. flour
1 1/2-2 t. vanilla
about 2 small packages raspberries
about 1 small package blueberries
2 c. heavy cream
 
Crust: Crush 1 1/2 c. chocolate graham crackers or cookies (I used teddy grahams) and mix with 1/3 c. melted butter.  Bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes.

Filling: Melt together the other stick of butter and 1 c.  good-quality dark chocolate chips.  Remove from heat, cool slightly,  and gradually stir in 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. white sugar, and 2 beaten eggs, a little at a time.  Add 1/2 c. flour, 1 t. vanilla, and about 3/4 c. of raspberries and 1/2 c. blueberries, give or take.  Mash the berries a little before using.  Pour it all in the crust and bake 45 minutes.  Chill until entirely cooled, if possible, before topping.

Topping: Puree one small package of raspberries in the blender, then strain through a sieve to remove seedy parts.  Add a spoonful or two of sugar.  Whip 2 c., of heavy cream with 2 T. of powdered sugar and a little bit of vanilla (1/2-1 t.).  Mound the pie with the cream.  Spoon little dollops of raspberry puree onto the cream and use toothpick to swirl.  Top pie with plenty of extra berries.  Serve with dashes of extra raspberry puree on the plate.

​
No Nonsense Apple Pie

• 2 cups + 1 1/2 T. all-purpose flour
• 1 t. + 1/4 t. salt
• 2/3 c. shortening
• 6 medium apples
• 1/2 c. turbinado sugar (or any kind of sugar), + 3 T. turbinado sugar for topping (optional)
• 1/4 t. cinnamon and 1/4 t. pumpkin pie spice, or any combination of apple-y spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves) to taste
• 1 egg for brushing (optional)

 

Finally, I have a day off to get back to writing and work on the site.  There is still a certain chance that I will be called in to work, as my manager is sick with the flu and may end up having to go home.  But, as things stand now, this is the first day to myself that I've had in about 3 weeks.

Breakfast: Last leftover pear/hazelnut/chocolate chip muffin from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen recipe, piece of toast with pizza sauce and provolone cheese.  Except for a single pear last night, I have hardly had any fruits or vegetables in the past couple of days.  This is probably not good for me.  I already feel a bit digestively upset.  As always, when I stop restricting food choices according to some "diet" (Clean diet, Perfect Health Diet, etc.), I return to eating excessive carbs and particularly wheat flour.  I don't think this is about my personal choices so much as the ubiquity of these foods in our national cuisine (though I shudder to use the word "cuisine" about the American diet).  If you are not actively avoiding wheat flour and sugar, you are almost certainly overindulging instead.

Lunch: White cheddar cranberry cheese (it wasn't as good as it sounded), Whole Foods house-made flour tortilla chips (also not so great) with Whole Foods house-made artichoke-spinach dip (why are so many Whole Foods products not as amazing as they sound or look?), spoonful of leftover pistachio paste (yum).

Shopping at the coop:  Talenti vanilla ice cream, organic lactose-free milk, cage-free eggs, organic black mission figs, organic ground cinnamon, organic pepper, $22.
 
Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's corn with sesame seeds and tomatoes, Palak Paneer, basmati rice and chapathi from our local Indian restaurant, salad of lettuce and CSA arugula and dried figs.  Apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

The corn recipe was really very delicious.  It has a lot of ingredients (most of which are seasonings), but it is not difficult.  I wasn't sure the sesame seeds added much, besides nutritional value.  

For my husband's and my wedding anniversary this year (our fourth), I gave him a gift: a fruit pie every month, of his choice, made by me and made only for him.  He only has to share as much as he wants to; it is fully his.  (He always shares a bit.)  The apple pie was actually a belated pie for October, which got overwhelmingly busy near the end.  That means he'll have to come up with a second pie request, for November.  I am willing to interpret "fruit" very loosely.  Pecans can be a fruit.  Pumpkins are a fruit.
​
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with heavy cream or half and half, 2 regular, 2 decaf. 1/2 a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (the other half sat on the table undrank.  Undrunk.  Undrunken.)

I have not worked on the blog in a week.  This afternoon I spent a full two hours working up a post about the difference between fun-size and regular-sized commercial candies, and why our Halloween candy selection tasted so awful and inferior.  Take-home message: yes, there are some actual differences in the ingredient lists-- subtle, but they're there.  Then I hit the wrong combination of keys on my laptop, my browser abruptly closed, and I lost the whole thing.

For a funny and edifying take on the subject of fun-sized candies (but only brushing on the topic of ingredient lists), I refer you to Gawker.com.  I can't do it again.

Incidentally, I am writing directly in the editor at this very moment.  Lesson not learned.

I read this not-very-cutting-edge article in the Huffington Post.  It said bread tastes better when you don't refrigerate it.  I knew that.  I decided to stop refrigerating my bread.

​But what about mold?  Well, maybe I will buy less bread, and try to eat it faster.  And, of course, if it is really getting old, I will put it in the refrigerator.  But not prematurely.

Oct 25
Breakfast: one fried egg, Drunken Goat cheese, banana yogurt (as it turned out, a sickly sweet glop-- brand name La Yogurt), and green pepper slices from the CSA.  A strange combination.

Lunch: I got off work very early, so my husband and I walked a little ways down the street to Capital City Cheesecake, which makes great sandwiches as well as baked goods.  I had a bagel with house-made veggie cream cheese, tomato, and onion, as well as a side of bacon and a horrendous cup of coffee than tasted vaguely smoked, like Lapsang Souchang.  I got used to it eventually and drank most of it.

Dinner: Deb Perelman's Chicken Pho, which was Jesus-Christ good.  Recommend, on the basis of some of the most amazing broth I have ever had. And frying the shallots was fun.
​

Snacks: 5 cups of coffee with half and half (3 regular, 2 decaf).  Several spoonfuls of peanut butter milkshake, leftover after making one for a customer.  Couple of pieces sweetened dried potato.  Glass of Riesling.
 
Oct 26
Breakfast-- leftover Pho, a few pieces fresh pineapple.

Lunch-- apple slices, dried potato, dates (I accidentally spilled  half of my huge, beautiful container of dates on the floor, down behind the recycling bins where it is too dirty to salvage them), boiled egg.

Dinner-- Madhur Jaffrey's Corn Cooked in Yogurt, plus naan and roti and lamb biryani purchased from our local Indian restaurant.  The Corn Cooked in Yogurt was kind of a lengthy recipe resulting in a messy combination of  sauce and tiny chunks of corn-on-the-cob that you had to pick up and eat with your fingers.  The flavor was not my favorite, either.  However, the culprit here may have been the not-very-fresh "fresh" corn-on-the-cob that I bought at the New Grand Mart.  In October.  Wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray.  What else might I expect?

Snacks-- 4 cups coffee (2 reg 2 decaf), 3 dates, couple of raw peanuts, glass of Riesling.
 
Oct. 27
Breakfast: eaten late, at about 10 am while a) waiting for a call back from the vet about the fact that my cat hasn't pooped in five days, b) trying to figure out whether I have time to go in to the restaurant and work this afternoon on "my day off" because somebody else called in, and c) fielding a call from my mother about details of the bamboo steamer and picnic blanket I requested for my birthday.  My daughter stayed home from school because she was overwhelmed and behind on homework and sleep, and I am still emotionally overwrought from 8 am couples therapy with my husband.  I ate leftover pho.  I had wanted to spend today writing.  Actually, I had wanted to spend yesterday writing, but my husband stayed home sick from work, so I chose to take care of some domestic tasks instead.

Lunch: at work unexpectedly.  A sausage, egg, cheddar and tomato sandwich on English muffin.

Dinner: red lentils and rice, baked yams.  Dessert: these pistachio cookies from Bon Appetit.  I discovered that, yes, there is such a thing as too-buttery cookies.  These cookies contain an entire pound of butter, and yielded 13 large sandwich cookies.  I brought several of them in to work to give away.  Also, I had to order the pistachio paste on the internet.  Warning: it is delicious all by itself.

Snacks: 4 cups coffee (2 reg, 2 decaf), chunk of coffeecake made as an experiment by the kitchen manager at work, piece of Drunken Goat cheese (first thing in the morning), lots of licks of cookie batter.
 
Oct. 28
Breakfast: leftover pho (the end of it), leftover corn with yogurt sauce.  

I don't know if it's clear what happened over the past several days of shorter and shorter entries, but I had desperately wanted by this point to have some time to myself to write and work on the blog.  It was just not working out.  My family kept deciding they needed to stay home from school or work.  My job kept calling me in at unexpected hours.  I needed to focus on getting ready for a houseguest. I refer you back here.  Eventually I just gave up even trying, for a while.  

Breakfast: piece of toast with butter and jam, apple slices, salt-and-vinegar lentils (they're finally gone!), dried potato (upon purchasing I referred to this as "dried sweet potato."  However, I soon realized it was dried regular potato, with added sugar.  It is not unpleasant, but has the taste and texture of a sort of generic dried fruit- sweet, chewy, but nothing aromatic.  A kind of poor-man's dried papaya.  Interestingly, when I try to look this up on the Internet, I find everyone else referring to it as "dried sweet potato" also.  A Chinese import).

Lunch: Stuff I brought home from the restaurant.  Grilled cheddar cheese on Tuscan sourdough bread, potato pancakes.  The potato pancakes were undercooked and soggy today, and tasted a bit sour too.  I hope I don't get sick, as I agreed to work again tomorrow morning.  I'm wondering if it may be time for me to move on soon.  But what to do instead?  I am getting nowhere fast with my personal projects, mainly because I am so indecisive that I never finish anything I start.   

Made salt pork in preparation for baked beans a week from tomorrow.  This was easy-- cut up a few pounds of pork belly, toss with a very large amount of kosher salt and some sugar, pack in a container and put it in the fridge.  I left out the "pink salt," or curing salt (not to be confused with the fancy Himalayan pink salt, this pink salt contains sodium nitrite, and I wasn't sure where to get some fast, nor do I particularly want to load my pork with nitrites).  I figure I'll freeze the salt pork when it's ready and won't need to worry about spoilage.  

Dinner: Walked down to the local middle eastern restaurant with my husband, and ate delicious fava beans with pita, along with a spinach salad that made no sense (spinach, dried apricots, pickled onion, cucumber and tomato...?).  It looked pretty but it didn't taste very good.  I also ate a few of my husband's fries, which were amazing.
​
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with half and half (2 regular, 2 decaf).  2 chunks of apple provided by nearby cook at work.

Breakfast: A few pieces of fresh pineapple, salt-and-vinegar lentils, mixed unsalted nuts, dried apricots.

My cat's breakfast:  Lots of crunchy treats which I ran out this morning and bought at the coop as soon as it opened.  A couple of licks of fresh cold water, in an actual glass which I filled up with filtered water from the fridge and placed on the floor.  Now that is service.

Other coop purchases: 4 rolls Seventh Generation toilet paper, Earth Friendly lavender dish soap, Drunken Goat cheese, maple syrup, 3 local honeycrisp apples (god, those things cost an arm and a leg).  Total: $38.  I will be going later today to the New Grand Mart international grocery for the rest of my list, because I am not that rich.  And also because they have everything, from every country. (Unless you want to buy something simple and American like baking chocolate, in which case you are out of luck, I have learned.  I guess the rest of the world is not that into fancy baking.)

Lunch: 2 fried eggs, piece of toast with melted Drunken Goat cheese (note to self: not a format that does justice to this cheese!), fresh pineapple.  My stomach does not feel so great; I forgot that dried apricots don't agree with me.
PIcked up the weekly CSA bag.  Inside were several beets, several sweet potatoes (yay!), spinach, a little bit of broccoli, two green peppers, and some beautiful baby bok choy.  I am excited about the bok choy and am strongly considering eating it tonight.

Also, as mentioned, hit the New Grand Mart.  It always takes me forever to shop there, because I can't figure out the logic of the store.  Purchased: frozen corn, a large container of dried dates, 3 persimmons, two big packages of pork belly, two packages of chicken wings, a whole chicken, medium-width rice noodles, canola oil, fish sauce, kosher salt, dried white beans, dark brown sugar, unsalted butter, a quart of plain yogurt, a quart of banana yogurt, dried sweet potatoes that appeared to be for snacking, fresh thai basil leaves, mung bean sprouts, shallots, a bag of yellow onions, two bunches of cilantro, a giant cauliflower, 2 limes, a small quantity of raw peanuts (bulk), 4 ears of white corn, and 5 jalapeno peppers.  Total: $81.  Not bad at all.  Of course, the quality is... not bad exactly, just unknown.  I have no idea of the provenance of most of this stuff.  But I love the variety.

Dinner: scrambled eggs, stir-fried bok choy, sliced apples, "gallinas" from the Salvadorean bakery (I wanted to explain what these are, but the only place on the Internet I can find them is in this post about some bakery in Minnesota.  I don't know why they are called "hens"; they are mildly sweet rolls).
​
Snacks: 4 dried apricots, bittersweet chocolate chips mixed with nuts, 4 cups of coffee with half-and-half (2 regular, 2 decaf).

Breakfast: Leftover oatmeal, leftover rice with soy sauce, apple slices, salt-and-vinegar lentils.  Off to work.

Lunch: Sun-dried tomato penne with bulgogi (korean marinated beef) on top, from the restaurant after my shift ended at 2:30.  I took it home in a box.  It was swimming in oil today, for some reason.  I ate it anyway.

Dinner: 4 slices of Domino's pizza, ordered by my husband at 7:00, and eaten at 10:00 at night-- when everyone else was asleep-- after returning from a long trip to the emergency veterinary hospital.  While I have been eating plenty the past few days, my cat has not.  No food, little water, no poop, little pee.  The regular vet, feeling something in my cat's lower intestine, sent me to the emergency vet for X-rays.  $500 and an enema later, Elsie and I returned home somewhat relieved.  At least they did not follow through on their threats of exploratory surgery.  You mean you want to cut my cat open to find out whether or not there's anything wrong? 
​
Snacks: 4 cups of coffee with half and half, 2 regular, 2 decaf.  1 slice of apple offered by one of our Korean cooks, for whom sharing fruit seems to be an important social nicety.  I feel badly that I forget to bring treats to share.  I also forget to buy people souvenirs when I go on vacation.  I am a bad person.