apropos of anything

Over the last six months, I’ve done a lot of typing, and a lot of talking. An average of seventeen hours a day of typing and talking, for the most part. I haven’t done a lot of sleeping, or seeing my friends, and definitely I haven’t touched a pot or a pan… I’ve pretty much become a takeout girl, the Lois Lane of digital advertising, except that when I take the time to bother, I actually can boil pasta without burning it.

But this week, I’m on vacation. And this week, I’ve been trying to cram six months’ worth of socializing and entertaining into a few short days, which means I’ve been cooking up a storm. My refrigerator is crammed full of half-eaten meals, but I keep making more because I can’t serve half of yesterday’s strata to tomorrow’s guest. At this rate, I won’t have to cook again until after the MLK holiday, but I’m so happy to be chopping and simmering again, and also for the opportunity to try out some new recipes and to revisit some old favorites.

Buttermilk waffles From poor defunct Gourmet magazine, these waffles are my go-to standby when I want to serve something other than cereal for breakfast, especially if the “when” happens to be a weekday and I’m rushing to prep breakfast and still make it to work on time. These take all of ten minutes to put together, start to finish, and people are usually pretty happy to make their own as they want them so I don’t have to spend breakfast as the Waffle Monitor.

I couldn’t find the recipe on Epicurious or any of the other recipe collection sites, so here it is if any of y’all are looking for good, quick, easy buttermilk waffles:

3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 1/4 c. well-shaken buttermilk
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
vegetable oil for brushing waffle iron, if necessary (I use butter)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add buttermilk, butter, and eggs and stirl until smooth (batter will be thick).  Spoon batter into waffle iron, spreading batter evenly. Cook according to manufacturer’s instructions. Makes twelve 4-inch Belgian waffles or twenty-four 4-inch standard waffles.

This recipe, with its proportions in multiples of threes, scales up or down beautifully. I like to serve mine with fruit and maple syrup.

Spinach and cheese strata I read Deb’s post about hosting brunch AND sleeping in and thought, she has a point. I shouldn’t be slogging my way through brunch in desperate anticipation of when I can crawl back into bed because I’m just so tired if my guests don’t leave soon I’m going to fall asleep in the last of the omelet fixings. Plus, if I’m honest with myself, I can’t really flip omelets to save my life… they always end up looking deformed, like a five year old made them.

Brunches require something eggy and substantial, though, and this strata (also from poor defunct Gourmet magazine) seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I put it together the night before and baked it in the morning. It made my house smell lovely, but it really does have a bread-pudding texture, and I’m not sure I’m in love with bread pudding. I did like the leftovers cold the next day, though.

Latkes I made zucchini fritters for a Mediterranean-themed iftaar two years ago, and they went over like gangbusters… but they kicked my ass in the making. When I got home from the iftaar that night and saw the mess still left to clean up, I resolved never again to make anything remotely resembling a fritter because they were so obnoxious to fry, but I was desperate for one additional substantial something for brunch. Alicia convinced me that latkes reheat splendidly, so I grated some potatoes, added some sliced onion, and started with the frying.

Fresh out of the pan, these are AMAZING. I cannot believe I waited this long to try or make a latke, which basically tastes like a large homemade tater tot. I LOVE tater tots. However, I think I did a mediocre job of reheating them because the next day they were a little doughy and not nearly so delicious as they’d been the night before. I’m going to need to play around with the reheating process because the cooking process left my house smelling like Fried, and a couple hours plus a healthy dosage of Oust was pretty much necessary to make things livable again.

Breakfast apple granola crisp This granola was my attempt to healthy up brunch a little, and also to provide something sweet in case I didn’t get around to making individual lemon tarts (which I did not). I learned from Deb’s notes and added the lemon juice, sugar, and cornstarch to the apples after I’d cut my way through a pound, so my apples didn’t brown. I simply stirred to coat after every additional apple. The coconut in my crisp burned well before the 45 minutes were up (or the apples fully cooked), which I initially suspected was due to my using sweetened coconut and Deb using unsweetened. Reading through the comments the next day, I realized the coconut burned for several people, so I think I’m going to drop the temperature to 375 and cover the pan about 30 minutes into the bake next time. I served with full-fat Greek yogurt and will probably be putting this together for just myself, no guests, once I start back at work. It’s that good.

Easiest baked mac and cheese I’ve never made mac and cheese before, largely because the calorie count of the dish plus my lack of enthusiasm for making bechamel sauces inevitably steered me towards lighter, red saucier pastas. This one tastes just like classic, unfussy mac and cheese, and is the perfect recipe if you’ve got a four-year-old showing up in a few hours and you haven’t begun to make his lunch, much less his mother’s. It’s so simple it doesn’t even require pre-boiling the macaroni — just puree, stir, and bake.

Chocolate-chocolate chunk muffins I wanted to take something when I went to visit brand new baby Maya, but I’d promised Maya’s mother that I’d be over by three, and as it was just after one, I didn’t think I had time to do cookies or cake, but muffins… muffins whip together quickly and don’t require frosting, and these even had chocolate in them in case anyone wanted to have them for dessert anyway. They came together in twenty minutes and smelled just like cupcakes, but they have a distinctly non-cakey texture.  I wouldn’t want to serve them for dessert (but ate the extra one for dessert anway because they are yummy and chocolate is chocolate).

Tuna nicoise sandwich Uzmaa bought me a subscription to Everyday Food last year. The magazine shows up in my mailbox every other month, but I’ve never actually made anything out of it… until now. I’d bookmarked this sandwich as something to take to Braves games, but who had time to go to Braves games this summer? Or, at least, to plan ahead the food? Wish I had, though, because this sandwich is a hundred times better than anything I could buy at Turner Field, and much healthier too.

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar (I used regular, as that’s what I had)
1 tbsp Dijon mustard (I used spicy brown, as that’s what I had)
8-inch country-style loaf of bread
12 oz. oil-packed tuna, drained
1/4 English cucumber, thinly sliced
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 tbsp olive tapenade
1 c. packed fresh basil
2 large hard-boiled eggs, sliced
coarse salt
ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, and mustard; season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer 2 tbsp dressing to another bowl. Toss with tuna. To remaining dressing, add cucumber onion; toss to combine.

Cut bread in half horizontally. Remove most of soft interior bread. Spread tapenade on bottom half. Top with basil, then sliced eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Top with tuna, then cucumber mixture, and close sandwich.

Wrap sandwich tightly in plastic and place between two baking sheets. Weight with a heavy skillet. Let stand 1 hour (or refrigerate, up to overnight).

The dressing soaked through to the bottom half of the loaf, so I’m glad I accidentally cut the loaf unevenly so the bottom was thicker than the top. Also I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with the remaining 3/4 of the English cucumber (last-ditch options: raita or salad), but this one’s a keeper.

Photo credits: Waffles and cheese.

It didn’t take nearly so long as I thought it would… and at least the links are all fixed now. Still not sure what I think about the design, or where I’m going to go from here, but… fixed.

Happy birthday, Bhaijan.

I thought of him in taraweeh tonight, of how totally different things would have been if he had lived, and what he would be like today, and how next year we’d be planning his 4oth birthday party, and how the pictures of him at 3 or 4 look EXACTLY like the pictures of me when I was 3 or 4, which is something I can’t say for any of the other boys, and how life doesn’t end up the way we plan.

Hmm, so in a nutshell: I suck.

See the post below, about how I ignored my blog and didn’t do the suggested WordPress upgrade and contributed to a DOS attack on my hosting provider. The other part of this story, the part I just recognized, is that I got hacked. I haven’t checked to see how deep yet, but it’s pretty bad, I think. None of my links are working.

It’ll probably end up with me exporting my posts, wiping out my database, and starting all over with an import of the posts I want to keep. And since I don’t have time to do this now, or until December, I’m not sure what the state of blog will be in the meantime.

The main page works. Hope you weren’t looking for anything deeper, though (like advice on where to buy Nabisco Chocolate Wafers… don’t laugh, it’s quite a popular post).

This, I suppose, is what I get for going AWOL from my blog, for not paying attention to it, and for not updating WordPress when they asked me to: a DOS attack on my hosting provider courtesy of a security hole in WordPress, which led to my hosting provider chmod’ing out my main WordPress php file so that it didn’t work anymore, which led to Dan asking why my Web site was down, which led to me noticing the WordPress-related trending topic on Twitter, which led to me upgrading, or trying to, which led to me discovering I no longer knew my database password, which led to me creating a new database user, which led to me upgrading, finally, which led to here, where my old theme doesn’t work and I am late for prayer so I don’t have time to look up a new theme.

So, ugly but back.

For now.

Sometimes I think there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to read through and digest all the news I want, in the way I want, which is to be able to step away from the computer and be able to speak knowledgeably for 3-5 minutes on the subject in question. There’s just too much news. Too many positions on each new story, too many new stories in each new section.

And sometimes it just gets to be too hard to handle, like this eyewitness account of violence in Tehran, which just makes me shudder, and feel a little vomity, and be grateful that I live in a country where the most outrage over an election (see Bush victory 2004) mounts to is scathing blog posts and late-night television satire. But, I suppose the Iranians had more to lose, or… more to gain had their guy won.

The problem with the Iranian election coverage is that I can’t suss out the correct story since there’s nothing even resembling unbiased media in the country right now. Foreign journalists have been asked to leave, at least partly for their own safety, so those of us not in Iran are relying on reports from their state-run media and then from various Twitter accounts, some of which have started accusing each other of being Basijis or secret Israeli spies.

The pictures, though… they seem real enough, and as I look at them, I can only pray that things work out for the best in Iran in the end, insha’Allah.

Do not have enough fingers and toes to count how many things I have to do, but… in the process of doing them, I think maybe, maybe, I found a picture for one of my blank 8×10 frames:

It’s from right before Aamir’s valima. This is what happens when I finally look at the pictures on my camera — I find one I love.

Last year, my heart just wasn’t in it, and I never made it to Screen on the Green. I kept seeing the words “Big Momma’s House”, followed by the words “Presenting Sponsor: Pepsi” and I just couldn’t taint my memories of sitting under the stars at Piedmont Park, singing along to “My Favorite Things”, with a cross-dressing Martin Lawrence flanked by posters of Atlanta’s arch-nemesis.

I mean, Pepsi. Seriously?

The schedule’s out this year, and it’s being hosted by Peachtree TV again. Not entirely surprising considering P’Tree TV is trying to gain a foothold in Atlanta, and while I’d still prefer the classics TCM would have chosen to air instead, I think I might just have to accept that for now, I’m going to have to catch my classics at home.

There’s one movie on the list that does make me go oooh! though: Field of Dreams. My love of baseball movies predates my love of baseball (no, I can’t explain it either), and FoD is really the one that got me hooked in the first place.

So I suppose this year’s got one up on the last year, even if the festival is still at Centennial and not at gorgeous Piedmont. And I’m glad to have it to look forward to again, all things considered.

Heather pulls into a gas station to restock on basic supplies (e.g. sugar and caffeine). Leta and I have been napping in the back seat, but she wakes up as the car stops moving and decides to join Heather and Jason on their run. I wake up to the slamming of the car door and hear them discussing whether it would be okay to leave me alone and asleep in the car, so I wave cheerily at them to convey that I was awake, yes, but I’d be staying in the car. They wave back, and Heather uses the remote control to lock the car.

A few minutes later, Leta meanders back outside. I hold up one of three chocolate bars that I’d fished out of a bag in the back seat and gesture emphatically to indicate that I’d be taking this one, please. She gestures back that I am not making any sense. I reach over and slowly unhook my seat belt, and then, equally slowly, unlock the door. Leta watches me dispassionately from the outside as though she’s curious what my next move will be. I open the car door.

The car alarm blares.

Leta doubles over with laughter. I am cracking up myself, and also trying to figure out how to turn the alarm off from inside the car (as obviously outside the car makes the car angry). It takes me only a few seconds to realize there is no way to do this without the keys.

Meanwhile, inside the convenience store, way in the back, Jason looks at Heather and asks, “Is that our car?” And because she is a wise, wise woman, she sighs, rolls her eyes, and says, “YES.”