apropos of anything

All butter, to be exact.

For Thanksgiving I wanted a to make pecan pie, mostly because I felt like we need to have either a pumpkin pie or a pecan pie at Thanksgiving and pecan would be the desi preference of choice, but given our guest list was upwards of 50 people, I didn’t think a single pie would cut it. Neither did I have time to roll out five pie crusts or any desire to have so much pecan pie on my hands that I wouldn’t be able to stand the smell of it until the next November.

Surely, I thought, there must be a bar version of pecan pie, something I can cut up into squares and put on a plate so that everyone can have a taste of pecan pie since a taste is all they really want anyway, especially with the dessert extravaganza we spread out every year. When I found this recipe in the Gourmet Cookbook that I’d lugged all the way to Augusta I was so thrilled I didn’t consider at first how much butter was involved and whether it was appropriate for the buy-one-get-one heart attackers on our guest list.

Between these and the mashed potatoes (butter! half and half! more butter!), my subconscious was clearly trying to bump some people off.

They are incredibly good, though (as are the mashed potatoes) and perfect to serve with chai or to package up in tins as a hostess gift. If you use the pre-chopped pecans, which I did not because the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is not a time when the grocery stores are bursting with pecans, the prep time on these is minimal, and even the chopping only adds a few extra minutes. These are definitely going into my arsenal of reliable standbys.

Couple notes on this recipe:

• I used orange blossom honey because that’s the one I have on hand for jamming, but I thought the lovely citrusy floral undertones that add so much to jam were a little intrusive here. Next time I’ll probably use straight clover honey.
• Despite the 12 tbsp of butter in the shortbread crust, these did stick to the pan a bit, mostly because of the topping. In the future I’ll be lining the pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Greasing the pan probably wouldn’t help with the sticking and might just make the shortbread too oily.
• I used a hand-held pastry blender instead of a food processor to do the shortbread crust and just a knife and cutting board to chop the pecans.

We put the handful of these that survived Thanksgiving into an airtight container. The leftovers got eaten within a day or two, so I cannot confirm or deny Gourmet’s assertion that these will keep 5 days when properly stored and refrigerated.

Pecan pie bars
The Gourmet Cookbook

For base:
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

For topping:
2 c. (8 oz.) pecans
1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter
1 c. packed light brown sugar
1/3 c. honey
2 tbsp. heavy cream

Make the shortbread base: Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350° F. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until the mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle mixture into an ungreased 13-by-9 inch baking pan and press evenly onto bottom with a metal spatula. Bake shortbread until golden, about 20 minutes.

Make the topping: Coarsely chop pecans in a food processor. Melt butter in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over moderately low heat. Stir in brown sugar, honey, and  cream and bring to a simmer, stirring. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1 minute, and then stir in pecans. Remove from heat. Pour pecan mixture over hot shortbread and spread evenly. Bake until bubbling, about 20 minutes.

Cool completely in pan on a rack, then cut into bars.

On Sunday after Aamir’s birthday lunch wrapped up and all the parents went home, desserts in pockets, we sat around watching movies and playing Words With Friends (sometimes with each other, in the same room, where an actual Scrabble board would have been perfectly functional, but an addiction is an addiction). It was one of those afternoons where we all knew we should probably be doing something else, but nobody wanted to get up off the couch except to get another cupcake or brownie.

I requested a light movie, either a comedy or something where lots of things blew up, so we started with Date Night starring Tina Fey and Steve Carrell because TINA FEY and STEVE CARRELL, how do you go wrong with that combination? She can see Russia from her house! He’s like Mr. Miyagi and Yoda, rolled into one!

Yeah.

It started out okay with some snappy lines and good basic groundwork for a future plot… but then that plot arrived, full of canyon-sized holes and ridiculous contrivances. At one point Sher, sitting next to me, texted me to say, “This movie sucks” and I texted him back to confirm it had indeed lost me at the Police Station of Characters Doing Stupid Things to Move the Plot Along. That’s about when we gave up all pretense and started nitpicking the movie as it progressed. I’m not sure how this one ended up on any top 10 lists for 2010. The cast all around (Fey, Carrell, Wahlberg, Franco, etc.) were good, but the script just didn’t give them much to work with.

We were only supposed to watch the one movie, but we needed a palate cleanser after Date Night. I suggested Despicable Me because IT’S SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE!! but Date Night had soured the room on comedies. After some discussion we settled on The Town, the Ben Affleck-directed thriller I’ve been wanting to see ever since it hit theaters in September.

There’s a scene where Blake Lively goes to see Ben Affleck in a hotel room, and in the course of the conversation his next job comes up, and all I could think about was DID BLAKE LIVELY SHUT THE DOOR ALL THE WAY? They hadn’t shown her doing it, so I couldn’t focus on the scene because why would you have a conversation like that with the door even a little bit open where somebody could walk by and hear you, maybe the FBI who you know is lurking around somewhere? When the camera panned around a few minutes later, sure enough, the door was not closed. I still can’t figure out if that’s because Blake Lively’s character isn’t smart enough to realize that doors should be shut when discussing armed robbery (but I think she is) or because Ben Affleck the director and his production staff do not have my level of OCD where it mattered to them.

But it matters to ME. Sher could not stop laughing at my consternation over something so tiny and (to be perfectly honest) ridiculous, but little things like that completely take me out of the movie so that I realize I’m watching a movie, and I hate it when that happens.

That one moment aside, this movie I understand being on top 10 lists for 2010. It was excellent, well-acted, and completely engrossing. It didn’t get into my head the way Atonement did, but I liked it very much and thought the ending might just have been perfect.

The right cupcake-to-frosting ratio. The frosting should not overpower the cake. Period. I don’t agree that the cake part of a cupcake is simply a vehicle for transporting the frosting to your mouth. I think the cake is the true star of the cupcake, and the frosting is its little black dress.

Sadly I haven’t really found a cupcake shop in Atlanta that understands the ratio (perhaps the now-defunct Chocolate Pink, but I didn’t care much for most of their cupcakes in general), but last week in D.C. Georgetown Cupcakes reminded me just how good a cupcake can be. The ratio is one of the things Georgetown Cupcakes does best — instead of constructing a multi-inch frosting monument on top of a cakey base, they do a simple swirl, just enough to add a little bit of richness and sugar but not so much as to induce an immediate onset of diabetes.

On a related note, Shereen, who absolutely agrees with me about the cupcake-to-frosting ratio, planted an idea in my head last week that won’t go away, even though every time I think it I run away screaming: she wants us to try out for Cupcake Wars, the Food Network reality show where teams bake cupcakes under various constraints (usually time and ingredient/theme). She said she doesn’t have the courage to do it alone… neither do I, but I’m not even sure I have the courage to do it with her! Unlike most of the other contestants on that show, we don’t own a business together, so we’d have to practice for a while to get our recipes and methods in synch. That would be the easy part. The hard part would be not melting down in front of the producers and cameras. I’m not afraid of losing. I’m just afraid of the 100% chance I’d make a total idiot out of myself.

Words With Friends Alicia recommended I install this app on my iPhone earlier this year as an indulgence to my love for Scrabble. I started out playing with only Alicia and Shannon, but that was before I discovered just how many people are addicted to this electronic Scrabble-knock-off. Today I have eight games going with friends and family, some with elaborately tight boards and some with sprawl reminiscent of metro Atlanta (and yet nary a spot to place a word). I love being able to take my time about building a word and also always having at least a game or two going on. Words With Friends lets you play some crazy words — two days ago Mansoor played “usque”, which doesn’t appear on Dictionary.com but Wiktionary.com tells me it’s a Irish and Scots Gaelic version of “whiskey” &#8212 so the more I play, the more I expand my in-person Scrabble arsenal (did you know “coz” is an acceptable word in both WWF and Scrabble?). I love this game that lets me get my Scrabble fix on a daily basis.

Scoutmob Every day this local Atlanta start-up emails me a smart, well-written introduction to an area restaurant or small business. Some, like Murphy’s, Scoutmob’s inaugural “find”, I’m old friends with, but there are others, like Urban Pl8, that I’d never heard of and probably have avoided based on destruction of the English language alone had Scoutmob’s review not convinced me to check out their menu.

Unlike Groupon, though, Scoutmob doesn’t make you buy the coupon in advance. You simply present it at checkout time (if you remember, that is  is like — after Thanksgiving, Heather, Leta, and I went to Varasno’s because of the Scoutmob discount but we totally forgot about the coupon until after we’d already paid the bill) and the bill is reduced accordingly. I love this, and even more I love the iPhone app that lets me carry Scoutmob and its discounts with me wherever I go.

What I love most, though, is finding new local non-chain places to try, like Anis Bistro and Cafe or Boogaloos Boutique, and supporting a new local startup while I’m at it. (Not sure where this new-found affection for Atlanta startups comes from, but I suspect the trail leads back to Shannon eventually.) As whiny as I’ve been about technology lately, it’s lovely to find some tech that really does make my horizons broader and my life a little bit richer.

I so rarely do pictures, but then I so rarely have one of me that I like even a little. Ayesha, of course, always looks amazing. From the snow-bound valima in Raleigh Sunday night:

This was after appetizers but before the reception officially began and before our table frantically came up with rhymes in Urdu for Mansoor’s impromptu poem-slash-speech later that evening. Little did we know that it was going to be a night of poetry, with speaker after speaker taking a few moments to spout some Urdu rhymes.

Ours may have been the clunkiest, but it was also the most boisterous… and as Arif’s dad said, at least Mansoor didn’t sing.

It’s that time of year again. I’ve just spent the last hour reading through my archives and deleting posts I simply found too humiliating, so there’s a considerably trimmer archive to the right.

I’ve also been mulling over Anil Dash’s post “Privacy through identity control“, and I see merit in his argument that there’s no escaping an online identity — only controlling it. I’ll admit it. I Google myself every now and then. The thing is, the me that comes back with the Google results isn’t exactly me, especially since my Facebook profile is extremely restricted and my Twitter username uses no parts of my actual name. If I assume that the rest of the world is currently suffering my level of ADD, I need to start doing some better brand management.

To that end, I’m considering moving back to a domain that has my name in it. I had one years ago, and I moved away from it because I thought it was too Google-able so I’d always censor what I wrote… but I pretty much do that now because The Internet Knows Everything. I’d also worried that my posts were too political or too Muslim for my professional life. Some of the more rabidly political posts fell victim to the yearly purge, and as for the Muslim ones, well, that’s who I am. I wear a hijab on my head, I fast during Ramadan, I pray five times a day. I don’t see how it’s at all “hidden” in my non-virtual life, so I am trying not to succumb to this idea of “too Muslim”  on the Internet.

The only catch is that I never renewed the domain I had years ago, so someone’s been squatting on it for years, and it’s going to be expensive-ish to get back. It’s the one I’d want most, though, so I need to figure out if I want it enough to pay the squatter’s asking price or if I’d be okay going .org or changing up the name slightly. In either case, if I do move, I’ll have this domain redirect until it expires as I don’t think I’ll ever want this one back again.

Woke up earlier than normal for a weekend and was proud of myself, right until the moment I realized last night was the spring daylight savings’ changeover.

There has not been any sun today.

It’s been quiet. I’ve been a little sad, inexplicably so.

I finished Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. At first I’d thought it was going to be a new kind of Harry Potter, and I was right, it was, but Harry Potter is about the magic of childhood, and The Magicians is about the magic of adulthood, and being an adult is so much harder. It ended sadly. That made me sad, more than before.

I have deliberately de-chocolated the house recently in an effort to eat healthier. There are carrots.

My pile of to-be-answered email grows and grows.

I found a pair of thick socks that needed putting away, and instead I put them on my feet. Am suddenly much happier. Maybe the sun will be out tomorrow.

Dear spammers,

My post titled “Searching for the elusive cookie” is actually about the kind of cookies you eat, not the kind of cookies that Web browsers use to record personal information. If you’re trying to sneak a comment by me by making it look “legitimate”, perhaps for that post you should lead with something other than, “Thanks for writing about this. There’s a bunch of great tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your site.”

Obviously you don’t read my site. It’s far more about the kind of cookies you eat than the kind of cookies you code.

Thanks for the laugh, though.

I came home from the office about 45 minutes ago, and in that time I’ve eaten, changed into pajamas, and tried to figure out where I’m going to pick back up again. And also how I’m going to stay awake because despite sleeping approximately 30 hours this weekend, I am so, so tired.

That’s why I didn’t post much last year: Every post would mention somewhere, I am so, so tired. It would get redundant and boring, and not even the occasional I am so, so angry would do much to break up the monotony… so I didn’t post at all. I meant to do better this year, but… I am so, so tired. I’m not sure it’s going to get any better anytime soon, even though I promised myself that this year would be better, that this year I would see my friends and eat lunch and make time to pee.

Perhaps this is where I make myself stick to that promise because here it’s in black and white, and if I don’t post much, well then I have to do better. For me.

“Does anybody READ poetry anymore?”

Last Saturday, as we made dinner at Alicia’s after finally seeing Sherlock Holmes, I asked this question rather cavalierly without stopping to think that her houseguest Becky is getting a graduate degree in something related to literature and creative writing. I don’t remember much of the context of the conversation at the time (I think it had something to do with making a living as a poet), only that I felt rather bad about my comment, especially after Becky replied, “Well, I hope so.”

And really, I hope so too, very much, if only for the sixteen-year-old version of myself who devoured literature and poetry and was, in general, I think, a happier person… but I honestly don’t think I know anybody who reads poetry. I have many friends who read prose, but I can’t really think of the last time somebody’s called me up to discuss a poem they’d just finished. I also can’t think of the last time I came across a poem at all. I never was much for “modern” poetry in high school, so yes, I don’t go out of my way looking for it, but I don’t go out of my way looking for prose either, and yet I find new and interesting prose all the time.

Freshman year of college, Zara sent me a letter about the happenings at BU, and she enclosed a couple of photocopied Maya Angelou poems, including “Phenomenal Woman”. I loved the something extra those poems provided, in that even though I’d finished reading her letter, I still had one more thing of hers, from her, to read and understand. You can’t stick books into a letter. Magazine and newspaper articles would be easier, except for that tiny snag where nobody reads actual physical magazines and newspapers anymore… it’s all on the Web now (thank goodness for the trees at least).

I read books. I read blogs. I read magazine articles, both long (sometimes) and short (far more frequently). If I ever get a Kindle or any other e-reader, it will be exclusively for the purpose of reading periodicals, should they survive the next few years. I do not read poems… but I probably should, if only so that I have something to fold into a letter, or stick on my cube wall.

I’ve missed these.

Reading something that reminds of where you are, and where you should be. Sameera has been using this poem by Hazrat Inayat Khan as her Gchat status for over a week now, and it’s so beautiful I can’t stop reading it every time I sign on:

I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to learn to solve.

I asked for prosperity
and God gave me a brain and brawn to work.

I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome.

I asked for love
and God gave me people to help.

I asked for favors
and God gave me opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted.

I received everything I needed.

There have been so many days lately where I am angry and sad, and perhaps that is because I have been pushing myself so hard and therefore have always been hovering right around exhausted, or perhaps it is because I forgot that things are bigger than me, and while I may not understand why God does things, He does, and I should trust Him.

I am looking for a place that will print and mat this for me, for my office and for my home. This, and the dua that Dave made at Mansoor and Ayesha’s valima… am wondering if Papyrus or Sam Flax would do it for me.

Waking up when it’s cold outside and realizing your toes are toasty warm. There’s a line in Richard Adams’s Watership Down about how people who say they like the cold don’t really like the cold so much as they like the knowledge that they are secure against the cold. At first I took offense — I do like the cold, I do! I have so many more fashion options when it’s cold outside! — but with time I’ve come to acknowledge that he’s at least partly right. There’s such a lovely, drowsy feeling about curling up under blankets and being perfectly warm when it’s below freezing outside, like perhaps I was meant for hibernation and it’s just by accident that I’m a human and not a bear.

Funny little tidbits that pop up unannounced. These are the things that keep me going, especially on the tough days. My Twitter feed is a great reliable source, like when @shawnamama tweeted, “Noah: Mom, you said if I was good at the library, I could watch Dora. Me: I did. Noah: I was very good, except I ate my boogers sometimes” or when @poniewozik posted nothing with a hashtag that said #WorkIFeelLikeDoingToday. And even moreso, the people around me every day are full of hilariousness that make me laugh quietly to myself weeks and months later. I appreciate them, and I very much appreciate the ones who indulge my inclination for the occasional ridiculous and keep up the running jokes. It’s a small thing, but especially on the tough days, it means the difference between pushing through and hiding under my desk in the fetal position.

Photo credit: Tea.