Happy Birthday Marilyn

Here's all I want to say about it.

If you need an easy, fancy-looking cake.

Or a dessert to pair with mid-summer strawberries.

Or if you need TWO mixing bowls to wipe clean with a spoon, your fingers, or a fresh strawberry.

David Lebovitz has a damn good chocolate cake recipe for you.

The Simple Life

Haven't been cooking much, since much doesn't need cooking.

Beetzza

I just returned from a brief trip east, undertaken in part to see long-neglected friends, spend time with my little sister, go on much-delayed adventures, and finish up that Master's degree I've been paying for, but primarily to make a beet-goat cheese pie that's been over a year in planning.

And by pie, it turned out we meant pizza pie. Which, of course, called for a pizza party.

My bosom friend Barbara and I made a lot of pizza doughs (Smitten Kitchen's recipe x16), bought way too much cheese and one very large can of tomatoes at Claudio's (which got smushed and mixed with garlic, olive oil, and basil), turned up the oven to 500°F, and invited over a bunch of folks with the instructions to bring either pizza toppings or beer.

And people brought such good things! Peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, prosciutto, homemade pepperoni... there was no overlap and an abundance of everything. And everyone got a chance to do a little baking (that's everyone's favorite part of a party, right? Not just me?) and sharing and eating.

For our contribution, we caramelized an onion, boiled and sliced a bunch of beets, crumbled some goat cheese, artistically (or perhaps the more accurate term would be drunkenly) layered it all on a pizza crust, and baked it for about 15 minutes.

It was so damn good.

Sweet, sweet, (and slightly alcoholic) slavery.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the holiday where Jews forgo leavened foods for a week in memory of our ancestors' flight from slavery and the Pharaoh. Despite the prohibition of bread, it's actually quite a foodie holiday, with several different symbolic foods (and drink - it's a Jewish holiday after all) required at the table for the Seder.

One of these is charoset (pronounced with a guttural "h" sound, not a hard "ch") which symbolizes the brick mortar of slavery, from the Jews' time in Egypt making pyramids. Ironically, although it represents the hard labor the Hews were required to perform, the purpose of the charoset in the Passover meal is to sweeten the bitter taste of slavery, which is usually played by a dose of fresh horseradish. And during the week of matzo-eating, charoset is just about the only thing that makes that dry, brittle cracker taste any good at all. (Don't talk to me about matzo brie or matzo pizza or any of that nonsense. Sure, covering up all taste and texture of the matzo whatsoever makes it taste okay. But is it still the bread of affliction when it's been turned into french toast?)

The ancient, tedious, high-maintenance, carefully guarded family recipe for charoset (now with food processor) is as follows: Grind up a bunch of nuts (any kind, although we tend toward walnuts or hazelnuts or, as shown, a mixture). Then add a lot of chopped apples (same principle applies - whatever floats your boat) and grind some more. Then add wine.

If it seems too dry, more apple. If it seems too wet, more nuts. The key principle, again, is that it ought to resemble brick mortar.

Chag Sameach! (Sounds like "hog sammy ack")

A Thin Veneer of Mayonnaise

One of my favorite recipes of all time.

Crunchy Granola People

This recipe for a savory, crunchy granola went around my little corner of the internet a while back. 

I'm not a big fan of granola's chewy, sweet, stickiness, but I like all of its components, and this recipe was billed for non-granola lovers.

And we've had all this oatmeal lying around ever since my dad passed away. 

And we were about to go to the Anza-Borrego Desert, so I cut some of the sugar, added hazelnuts for my hermanita and dried cranberries for my mum, and off we went. 

We had some interesting breakfast company.

And the granola was crisp, the indigo bushes were blooming, and both went well with the morning air.  

And we had a wonderful, beautiful time.

 But I'm still not a granola fan.

Lard

Thanks to my dear friend Robyn, I finally made a pie with lard.

 Or, partially lard. Also butter. And peaches.

We had company.

 And the pie crust turned out pretty good.

 Flakier. Prettier. But not tastier. So I'm sticking with butter-crust pies for now.

But a lard crust would do well for a meat-filled pie. And in case we haven't got time to run to the butcher, I know just what kind to make...

Life's Baggage

Now that compost, tap water, and cloth diapers have been widely adapted by environmentally-conscious Americans all over this great country, our little extra-liberal hippyesque corner of the world has had to reach a bit further in our quest to be the most conscientious, well-informed, peace-loving, tree-hugging villagers on this great big planet that we all call home.

Wracked with guilt with each trip to the landfill-bound garbage can and following the lead of that city across the bay, my mother decided that the most effective way to cut down on our household footprint would be to reuse plastic bags. And, as we no longer have a dog that required the use of two plastic baggies a day, continued use of these convenient but ever-so wasteful byproducts of our country's oil addiction requires a regular, effective sanitation method.

Namely, a large pot of soapy water and a good rinse. And then some quality time with Mister Sunshine.

True to form, this odd new habit of my mother's is completely effective. We've severely cut down on our landfill-destined waste and still enjoy all the benefits of plastic baggage. And, because my mother is an incredibly capable and creative woman, she not only uses each bag several times, but can get multiple uses out of one plastic bag all at once.

My father and I found this example of my mother's ingenuity in the refrigerator, just two weeks before he passed away. He was so impressed by this beautiful consolidation that he asked me to take a photograph. Quite the compliment, and a testament to his love and admiration of my mother, as he was rather adept at unique packaging himself.

Eat Really A Lot

Eat Real is Oakland's annual food festival, held in Jack London Square, a bipolar part of the town that seems half bourgeoisie wharf area with expensive restaurants and new condos, and half sketchy warehouses and dive bars. Not somewhere I frequent, but one weekend a year I pass the looming local jail, walk under the freeway, and through the blocks of overpriced, empty condo buildings to get to the tightly packed foodie frenzy known as Eat Real.

The Bay Area gets its summers late; June, July, and August are mostly marked by the dense layers of fog that roll in off the Pacific, pulled inland by the heat of the Central Valley. As the rest of the state cools down, the fog withdraws, making September often our warmest month. So wandering around in public with a jar full of beer feels particularly glorious in the lovely, sunny, perfectly temperate climate. 

It was so enjoyable in fact, that I didn't pick up my camera again until the jar was nearly empty and the Green Guys had opened their new Eritrean-Irish food truck, serving out a huge portion of doro wot, injera, and salad.

And even though I split it (with Ben, on a work trip from Philadelphia, who shares an appreciation and capacity for good food) some serious recovery time was needed before the next food truck foray. So we watched Chef John Fink of The Whole Beast carve up a roasted lamb.

An aside: a good, but rarely utilized marketing strategy is to decorate your bad-ass sign with drippings.

The jars were empty, so we headed over to the "Jam Bar," a misleading name designed to trick people into drinking cocktails. Ben got a really excellent grilled watermelon and basil-infused vodka thing from Wood Tavern, and Robyn and I shared something with rye in it, which was also pretty good.

The huge paella booth from last year was gone, but Venga Paella brought it with a rich, wet, seafood paella that was so good it didn't even matter that it was a bit on the salty side. It probably made it taste even more like the sea.

Friday, the first day of the three-day festival, is the day for ice cream vendors. I'm actually very familiar with the ice cream people in the Bay Area, and so I didn't brave the lines for Scream Sorbet or Nieves Cinco de Mayo. There was a brief moment, however, when Ici Ice Cream – an Alice Waters influenced ice cream venture – had just a few people in front of their booth. The line for their College Avenue storefront is usually down the block, so I jumped at the change to buy one of their ginger cookie and meyer lemon ice cream sandwiches in under twenty minutes. It was so phenomenal that i saved the ingredients list, just so I can try to recreate it at home. But I'm not optimistic; Ici goes above and beyond rational expectations for their product.

The only thing that could have possibly surpassed the taste of that ice cream would have to be an astounding, utterly life-changing, and deeply moving event. Like these shoes. And that was Friday.

Saturday evening I went back to the festival for dinner, starting off with a lovely rice and chicken dish from Soliel's and some absolutely amazing beignet de banana, which is French-African for "delicious fried sugary things with bananas in them that you just ruined your appetite for dinner with."

I've eaten beignets, and I've had a lot of fried bananas in my time, but these were so fresh and so good that I'd consider going to Soleil's restaurant just to eat them by the plate. For real. I even ate the one that fell on the nasty-ass ground, because it hurt too much to waste. 

 Then I got a bacon-studded hot dog on a stick from 4505 Meats, just for the novelty of meat-on-a-stick. It was pretty tasty.

And then, as the sun went down, we hung out with the hippies by the bread oven, who were super awesome and helped us figure out how to build one in my boyfriend's backyard.

And then we tried some plum-jalapeño gelato from Gelateria Naia, which was almost as good as my vanilla-habañero ice cream, and I bought a Rickey Henderson t-shirt from 57-33, and we went home.

But not before we saw a piglet humping a cabbage.