How To React When Nothing Makes Sense

You know, in a way this piece made itself. There were a number of happy accidents that went along with all the hard work I put in. For example two flat tires prevented me from leaving town as I'd planned to do when it was better for me to stay and work on the piece. The stool, already in the gallery, was the perfect pedestal for the plate of treats. Also, I hadn't known that I'd want a backdrop for this until I got to the gallery and set up the stool and empty cake plate. Then I remembered that there's a fabric store in the building next door. 

I think people liked it. It's amazing how difficult it is to give away free home made pastry when it's part of a sculpture. People either think it's a facsimile of food and not edible or they're "afraid to touch the art." Or they're just afraid. Poor things.

One week after my post referring to people not Facebooking anymore I received my invitation to join Ello. Plus ça change...

Super-bakey

South End Open Studios is this weekend. I will be participating. I had planned to go down to our space on Monday and hang some kind of sculpture thing that I was going to make then and there. Instead I decided that the only honest thing to do would be to make meringues and chocolate éclairs and give them to people who come to our gallery.

I was partially inspired to do this by the random stuff being discussed on Facebook right now. I won't spell those things out as no doubt equally random things are being discussed on Facebook as you read this (unless no one Facebooks anymore and everyone's moved on to the next thing by the time you read this.) I was partially inspired by this guy, Tee Major. How did I get from a guy displaying his EXTREME fitness skills to making meringues and chocolate éclairs? Hmmm...

Long story short, nothing makes sense. The wonders of the world. All the bizarre and random things that happen every day, all the time. When nothing makes sense you can only do what makes the most sense to you. For Tee Major it makes TONS of sense to work out for thousands of hours so he can support his body weight on the tips of his fingers and do pushups during which he spins around in midair. I would say the vast majority of humans on this planet would have no need to use those skills but Tee Major WENT FOR IT. Dedication, determination, drive, practice, focus for hours and hours and hours. He can do Superman Push Ups. It's amazing. That makes sense to him and I respect and admire that.

On Monday I saw no difference between his drive to learn to master his body in that way and my desire to master making éclairs and meringues. You have to do what makes sense to YOU. That made sense to me. 

SO...

I couldn't believe it was actually working! The batter was rising!

Would you look at that - they're browning and look like real éclairs!

Naked without their chocolate ganache.

Éclair pastry turns out to be pretty easy to make. You use a saucepan, a mixing bowl, and a wooden spoon. The batter is made of butter, water, sugar, salt, a little flour, and four beaten eggs.  you heat the first four ingredients in the pan until the butter melts. You dump the flour in all at once and stir over the heat until the batter clumps into a dough and begins to leave a film on the bottom of the pan. Then you dump the dough into the mixing bowl and stir it to cool it for a minute or two. Then you add the beaten eggs in four parts, stirring well with your wooden spoon after each part. Bang - you got éclair dough. So simple no wonder I was surprised it worked. You can also make cream puffs and cheese poufs called "gougères" with this same dough. And believe me I will. Easy and like magic therefore fun.

Now the meringues. I used to make meringues all the time when I was a kid. Once our housekeeper, Sarah (who saved my life so many times in so many ways) showed me how to do it I never had a problem. Until this Monday (of course the last time I tried was possibly 38 years ago) Four disastrous batches before I got a passable one. Then these happened:

I might be able to use these failures for something.

These look horrible but they taste good. I used a recipe that suggested heating the sugar in the oven before you mix it into the egg whites to help it dissolve more quickly. I might try that again sometime.

Making my own superfine sugar.

The best way to have the sugar dissolve nicely is to use superfine sugar. I couldn't find any at the three markets I looked in so I tried making my own. It seemed to work. I never used superfine sugar when I was a kit though. Just normal eggs, normal sugar, and a normal handheld mixer.

One problem may have been that I tried using a carton of egg whites. You can buy a carton of just the whites. Don't do that for meringues. It's unreliable. The last batch I made with those whipped up beautifully. Nice and stiff until about two-thirds of the way through adding the sugar when the whole thing suddenly turned into soup. My worst batch yet. Down the sink.

Finally I did everything as super-right as I could. I separated my own whites (which I don't like to do because then you have yolks you have to do something with) let them come to room temperature, wiped down everything that was going to come in contact with the whites with white vinegar to eliminate any possible trace of grease (grease prevents the whites from whipping up) added cream of tartar, used brand new sugar out of a fresh box rather than the sugar I store my vanilla beans in (just in case there's vanilla bean oil?) and it worked perfectly. I don't remember having to be so fussy when I was a kid.

SUCCESS! This batch was a monster! It tried to escape from the bowl! Look at that glorious texture though!

I cannot tell you how exhilarating it was when the super-stiff egg and sugar batter started fighting me back! A delightful, white, fluffy monster! Trying to wrest the beater from my hands and to fling itself out of the bowl and all over the kitchen! So exciting! Maybe one day I'll figure out a way to just bake it all whipped in the bowl. Look how gorgeous that is!

Successful batch number two (out of maybe eight batches total) is pictured below.

Freeform

Piped

I wanted to make odd shapes and sizes. I made some big ones, maybe the size of a croissant, but I think I can do better with those so no photos. I want to make huge ones and ones in different colors. Pristine white was what I went for this time.

Now I'm absolutely exhausted and I'm going to bed late and I have to get up early so I can do more set-up stuff for this show. I still don't know how I'm going to display all this stuff or how I'm going to assemble the éclairs and get them down to the gallery on Saturday. 

I'm not even sure this was a good idea or that I fully understand now what I was thinking when I chose this course of action. Gonna have to cross that bridge when I get to it. That is how I like to make art. It usually works out okay.

I have to say that I have never had this much trouble in the kitchen in my life. Never! 

Drawing Party Plus Cake

I'm making an apple cake. Wanna see? It smells great.

I haven't tried this recipe before. It's from Smitten Kitchen. It makes a doughy batter into which you stir four eggs, one at a time until each is incorporated. Then the batter becomes pourable. I haven't made a cake with batter like that before either. Ah, yes, I should also mention that the large lumps you see are chopped apples. There are two layers of chopped apples macerated in cinnamon and sugar.

When I looked at the volume of all the ingredients separately I didn't believe they'd all fit in the pan. I wedged 'em in there. I hope it doesn't take two hours of oven time because of all the stuff in that pan.

It's for a party I'm going to on Saturday. I met the hosts once then got invited to this party. I'll only really know two people there but I'm going. This is how I'm branching out and expanding my life. I'm bribing strangers to deal with my social awkwardness with home made cake! Brainy!

So here are photos of some of the drawings I did at our drawing party in chronological order:

Warm up

I liked how the warm up went so I did this guy in a similar fashion

Then I thought I'd go more experimental and use a pen with a nib that you dip in ink. There were a couple of different nibs used here. I've never tried this before. I'll try it again soon though.

At this point one of us had been drawing pictures of our friends incorporating anagrams of the friends' names. He was using an anagram app on his phone but we found the anagram for our friend, Jeff, inadequate. I was trying to figure out a better one because I am WAY smarter than an app, particularly after two Guinnesses. Yeah. That was a big success. See how I tried to use some vowels twice with a crossword technique? That didn't help.

Then I drew this kind of terrifying thing. Creepy blonde lady offering you cookies or something. I'm suspicious.

The last drawing I started on at the party was the kind of thing I had intended to draw when I had the idea for the party in the first place. The original idea (if you don't feel like clicking that link) was to have a party loaded with friends and  some beers to entice me to do the kind of drawing I'm bad at. Looking back I think I did accomplish that goal. I did try to draw in ways with which I am unfamiliar and the results show a distinct willingness to fail.

The next day I did this self-portrait to see if I could still draw at least as well as I did in high school The answer is yes. Slightly better in fact. This drawing is pretty small, about 2"x3". A bit wooden and sad but the likeness isn't horrible. A fairly quick drawing. I think my drawing teachers from art school would be disappointed but they'd be nice about it.

When I'm serious about drawing I don't use a pencil or pen so all of these drawings are a break in tradition for me. When I'm serious I use compressed charcoal and really big paper and a chamois (the kind you get for washing cars), a large eraser and maybe some sandpaper. It makes a huge mess - big piles of black charcoal dust and erasing crumbs on the floor. I really get into it. It's pretty physical. I find sketchbooks limiting. Pencils are too small and fine for if I'm really going to DRAW.

However, if I thought about it and really tried I could probably figure out a way to make a pencil or a pen work. People who are not me manage to make true art with those implements. I could do better than I have done.

I think that we all had a good time at the party. I had such a good time that I was really sad when it was over. I stood on the street corner with Pete and I didn't know what to do. The light had gone out of my life. The party was over.

Fortunately it was just about dinner time and Pete suggested we stay out and get a bite. So we had a nice dinner at Central Kitchen. Thanks, Pete!

Wow, restaurant websites tend to really suck. Too much flash! Too many fancy doo-dahs! People do not want things flashing in their faces when they're trying to find a menu or hours of operation.

Back to the topic at hand. I'm going to make this drawing party a regular thing. I want to do it twice a month. I think it's a great idea for me to practice willing public failure. If you're an artist you should be incorporating failure into every day. I feel that I do that. But I do it in private. It's easy, in private, to fail or to shirk failing. I guess I'm saying that I feel I don't fail well enough. These drawing parties are, for me, a fun place to fail publicly. This is a great habit to develop.

If I do this twice a month I can practice failing and exercise my drawing muscles and socialize. Win, win, win.

I know that if people have an option to come twice a month they're less likely to come at all. They'll figure "oh, I can always go next time." I do stuff like that myself. But damn it, I'm going twice a month.  If too few people show up and I get demoralized and feel far too unpopular then I can always cut it back.

Now here's how the cake came out:

Shiny!

Chocostravaganza!

Today I made chocolate cupcakes and brownies. The cupcakes are for a friend. I made the brownies so Pete wouldn't be disappointed. Tomorrow I will ice the cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Cupcakes and icing all sinfully vegan from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, which, as we all know by now, produces the best, most delicious cupcakes I've ever eaten. The brownies are not vegan. I am not vegan.

I loaded the brownies up with Guittard Extra Semi Sweet chocolate chips and walnuts. They came out very soft and chocolate IN THE EXTREME!!!! They would border on obscene in a brownie sundae. I might have had them for dinner by accident. 

Here's a scene from my two-day thank you card making exploit:

The mess I made. You can see some of Fay's beds over to the right in the picture. Also, I got some Christmas ornaments at Lord and Taylor. 30% off! They have great Christmas ornaments there.

I'd never experimented with rubber stamping and embossing powders before. Gotta say I had a lot of fun. These were my successes:

Not bad for a first try. Not especially inspired but I think the heartfelt gratitude comes through. I only really need three so I'll have to choose which I like best.

Those embossing powders are really fun. Here you can see the difference between plain gold ink, gold ink with gold embossing powder and gold ink with brown gitter embossing powder. Much fun to be had if you were to go nuts with this stuff - and you think this kind of thing is fun.

Once you start off with large photos it's really hard to go back to small ones in one post.

I did another ridiculous mini craft experiment yesterday and there's a movie that goes with it. I think I'll save that for tomorrow though. This is good enough for one day. 

Thanksgiving Plans

Oh yeah! Big doings today. I put my laundry away. Kewl!

I also went to Whole Foods today, like a maniac, because I realized that I will, after all, need to make some food for our Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow despite the fact that we are not celebrating at our house. Pete's brother, Marc, has invited us to celebrate at his house. You may remember Marc from other Thanksgivings such as this one, or this one, or this Halloween.

I will be making a side dish of farro, mushrooms, roasted sunchokes, pecans, dried cranberries, parsley and a bunch of other stuff that I figure will taste good (you know, like shallots, salt 'n' pepper, whatevs) While at the Evil Emporium, I mean, Whole Foods (it really is convenient - sorry) I whim-grabbed a frozen brie en croute. I'm pretty psyched about that.

Marc is providing fish he caught himself for dinner. I really appreciate guilt free fish because anxiety about overfishing has been known to keep me up at night. Fish are tasty but I fret about them. He's also making brussels sprouts.

And he mentioned something about football. So I should remember to bring my knitting. In truth, I like watching football from time to time. I love those exciting running plays and interceptions 'n' stuff. As with most sports I don't care much who wins. I just like to see people do things they're really, really good at. I suppose there will be entertaining ads too but if I hear the terms "Black Friday" or "doorbusters" one more time (and we all know I will) I may just have to scream really loud. Or drink. I could make it a drinking game.

And now for the moment of shame: I bought a pumpkin pie. I admit it. I did. And - ugh - whipped cream in a spray can. I didn't want to have to bring my mixer to Marc's house for the whipped cream. We're having a laid back, bacheloresque Thanksgiving. So I bought a pie instead of making one. I may still make a tarte tatin though. I haven't decided how I feel yet about only having one kind of pie on Thanksgiving. We shall see if my inner Martha Stewart kicks in or if I can lull her into passivity with brie en croute.

So! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving then Happy Thursday to you! If I am wise I will remember to post what I am thankful for tomorrow. Best of luck to us all! MWAH! MWAH!

This Is What I Thought I Could Do

Hold on to your hats! "Creative" punctuation ahead - and a lot of gobbledygook. But then this is a blog.

One big thing that happened this year is that Pete and I entertained the idea of selling our place in Vermont and moving to Durham, North Carolina.

This was traumatic for me. It forced me to face the fact that I'd been undervaluing the things that weren't working in the way we'd been living our lives. It showed me that my dreams had turned out to be just that: unrealistic and impractical. I wanted to do too much with too little time and no help. Nuts!

In Vermont I have an artist's dream studio: plenty of square footage, a sink, a deck (! What artist even dreams of having a deck off their studio? For many artists even a sink is a dream) near but not in my house, safely accessible at all hours, very few distractions, surrounded by wildlife and incredible views. It's probably the best studio I'll ever have. How could I think of giving that up?

Because it's frigging lonely up there! We're too far from our friends and family. We keep having to travel so we can fulfill our family duties and charge our social batteries.

Every time I leave it upsets my creative rhythm which takes days to re-establish - a problem I couldn't figure out how to get around. Thanks to list-making I have been able to keep producing work I'm proud of. My dreams were rosier though. I thought that if I had a great studio and dedicated my time to my work that my productivity would take off. Maybe it would have but in all the years we've been there I have rarely been able to devote the unbroken stretches of time to my work that I thought I would.

Ultimately that's life. Nobody can just be an artist. Everybody has family and needs to eat lunch and gets interrupted by the details of life. Everybody knows that life is where art comes from.

But it wasn't just my art-making that got interrupted. I wasn't around enough for my garden either. I had dreams of turning our property into a verdant paradise of multiple garden rooms, fruit trees and a potager.

I also thought I was going to decorate the house beautifully and cook gourmet meals made with vegetables we'd grown ourselves.

What an insane fantasy! Look out - here we go... I'll whip up some pear and ginger scones to have with home made yogurt first thing in the morning for breakfast! After an hour's walk in the woods with Fay, it's off to my studio to paint and sew and sculpt and create installations that are in demand the world over! With Pete's help I'll spend a couple of hours tending to the weeding, pruning dead-heading and other garden maintenance. Then it's back to the sparklingly clean and tidy house with the flowers I've picked for an arrangement to decorate the entry room table (we don't have an entry room table) I'll make us a lovely cucumber and green bean salad with fresh dill from the garden and poached fish for lunch! Then back to the studio for more brilliant creations! Then I'll work out for an hour (gotta keep in shape!) then go to the mailbox to pick up the multi-thousand-dollar checks that arrive there daily and then play with Fay in the yard for another hour. Then it's back to the house to create a delicious gourmet dinner with fresh baked pie for dessert! Satisfied, Pete and I will share a nightcap on the patio by the fire pit, under the stars and I'll knit while we discuss the arts, culture and the latest issue of the "New Yorker." Then we'll retire and spend an hour or so before sleep catching up on reading those "New Yorker"s and about physics, philosophy, history, movements in art and technology etc. Then off  to a peaceful night's sleep full of fascinating, revelatory dreams (G-rated version)

Uhhhh... Smoke much?

In fact, no, that ridiculousness was the product of my own, unaltered mind. I did that all by myself! That's like a month-and-a-half's worth of activity I imagined I could pack into every day, not to mention my plans for Pete's assistance that I didn't consult him about. Not to mention expecting Fay to remain young and healthy. I mean, it took about a week to just read that paragraph, didn't it?

So yeah, that wasn't working out at all and I was FRUSTRATED about it. I was a FAILURE for FAILING to accomplish the IMPOSSIBLE. But I kept trying! It was like I was trying to live in a Thomas Kinkade painting or something - a literal, two-dimensional painting. I clawed into that dream for everything I was worth. It took me traumatic months to begin to release my grip on that baroque tableau.

You know, when I look at it that way I see that I actually accomplished a lot, all things considered. I just was never able to complete even one aspect of that fantasy. We're so backed up on the "New Yorker." I mean I could chip away at things. I did bake and grow things and make art and learn (A LOT) I just don't live in my own wet-dream of aesthetic/intellectual/domestic productivity. I don't have Hermione's time turner. If I did I'd probably use it to nap anyway.

So we may still move down to Durham somewhere down the line. I've been trying to spend more time in one place. I've been in Cambridge for the last couple of weeks trying to catch up with friends and figure out a rational plan for moving forward. That's hard for me. I still don't want to give up any of my activities and I want to get a full time job. Clearly something still has to give. I do think my expectations have changed though.

The number one thing I've come to terms with is that I can't provide myself with enough mental stimulation all on my own. I'll need to be around more people which means I should be based in the city. I'll have to trade the company of the critters for my sanity. I love the critters. And the beauty and the solitude. Something has to give.

So please wish me luck!

Recent Activity

Hi there folks! Here are some photos of stuff from the past several days:

Rhubarb Upside-down cake.

Recipe from marthastewart.com It makes a sweet, dense cake with a salty-ish crumb crust. I reduced the sugar in the cake (not the crumb) part of the recipe or the cake would have been salty too. The results were fine for the effort I put in but I think I'll keep looking for a recipe I like better.

Even dead peonies smell amazing. The three sad examples behind the fresh one made my entire house smell divine despite their crispy appearance. 

A dusty bug I spotted on a windowsill yesterday. It is the nymph of a Masked Hunter bug. They eat bedbugs and earwigs, among other things.

Garlic scapes! So pretty and delicious. I like to douse them with olive oil and salt and grill them. I'm growing much more garlic next year if I can.

My pal, Fay. She's doing great these days. Hope I didn't just jinx it. She'll be fourteen in three months.

I'd like to tell you more but I'm extra stupid from a head cold and I don't trust myself to make sense. 

High Maintenance

I went to my first holiday party of the season on Wednesday: My sister-in-law, Kristen's, biennial cookie exchange. I believe I have mentioned it before (here and here) I don't seem to have mentioned that this is NOT the kind of event to which you can bring Entenmann's (halleluja - I HATE Entenmann's. YUCK!) You can leave your Pillsbury cookies at home too. This show requires a certain amount of sweat. It's also easily the nicest, fanciest holiday party I go to most years. Kristen is a fantastic hostess and gets everything right, from the hors d'ouvres to the cocktails to the decorations. There's a certain amount of pressure to PERFORM at this event.

The cookies I made this year are show-stoppers. I've made them a few other years and was not planning to make them this year but Kristen asked me to.

Honestly, if you have to make four-dozen cookies I would not suggest choosing a shaped sandwich cookie. It's at least three times the work: you have to make double the dough, roll it out and cut twice the number of cookies, you have to make the ganache and then fill the cookies. You could probably get away without decorating them with drizzles of melted white chocolate but there's no way I'm bringing a plain brown cookie to this cookie exchange.

This dough tends to be sticky too so it requires quite a bit of chilling time. It must be chilled at least four hours before you roll it out the first time, you must re-chill the remaining dough before you roll it out again to cut more cookies and the cut cookies must be chilled for ten minutes on the sheet before you bake them.

Once baked, the cookies must rest for two minutes exactly on the cookie sheet before you can scrape them off the parchment paper they have been baked on (I used aluminum foil which ripped with every batch I made. I got the cookies off with no damage but the foil ripped every time) Try to pry them off too soon and they'll distort, too late and they'll stick (Don't f*%k with the instructions, b!#ches!)

Then of course they have to cool completely before you can spread on the ganache (and, yes, the ganache has to chill and thicken before you can spread it on) Later, when all of the cookies have been assembled, the white chocolate drizzles need time to harden before you can pack the cookies up and take them anywhere. Actually, the white chocolate drizzles are a simplification I devised. The recipe suggests you pipe on the melted white chocolate. I might be an intense baker at times but I'm not pathological.

These cookies are impossible to make at the last minute. I took three days to make them. I made the dough and the plain and peppermint chocolate ganaches the first day (I made double batches since the recipes yield two dozen. In fact, I ended up with five dozen. Bonus) I baked the second day and assembled and decorated the day of the cookie exchange. You also don't want to assemble them too far ahead of time because they can get soggy.

The result of all of this labor is a truly amazing cookie. In fact it's more like a confection. While I was making them I was thinking, "This is the last time. I'm retired from making this cookie!"
Afterwards I thought, "Well, it is a great cookie. Maybe I'll make them again. Maybe just not four dozen."

Of course I'm whining about having to make four dozen cookies but most of the women at the party had had to make eleven dozen cookies for a school event the next day. I hope Pillsbury was good enough for that event. Something to think about if you plan on moving to Wellesley Massachusetts and enrolling your kids in the Wellesley public school system.

As for our event, it was so festive and convivial and the cookies exchanged were so delicious (at least the ones I tried were) that I felt like the trouble was worth it. And who knows, maybe in two years I'll have rested up enough to make those again? If anyone wants the recipe let me know.

Five dozen cookies in our sparsely decorated apartment

More Makeage

Toll House Cookies

Tarte Tatin caramelizing on the stove

 Tarte Tatin after baking and inverting on a plate

I've had two pieces so far. I think I could probably eat the whole thing by myself. However, I am sharing it with Pete and my mom.

Not Bad

Despite a not very promising beginning (nightmares all night, then feeling as though I'd been hit by a truck when the morning came) today has gone pretty well.

Some of my fears about the onset of spring involve the overwhelming tasks that need to be tackled in my garden. SO MANY WEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH - SO MUCH MULCHING TO DO!!!! Evil grass to be eradicated, problems to solve, LIVES AT STAKE!!!! Plant lives, and those count to me.

Today I was able to walk around the garden and make a huge, multi-page list of all the things I could see that needed to be done. I know I missed some and that even more tasks will become apparent as time goes on but I just wrote down everything I could see today.  Then I broke the list down into three sections based on importance, urgency and logistics (i.e.: pull weeds then mulch) Finally I listed every task in the order in which they should be done.

Some tasks clearly require more energy than others (like assassinating all the brambles versus moving a vine support) so in the interest of getting everything done I should do one difficult/urgent thing in a day then some less taxing/important things.  I think I'll get to the end of the list more quickly that way without killing myself.

I feel much better now that I have a sensible plan. Now I just need the weather to cooperate. I know that I'm very unlikely to accomplish every task to my satisfaction but that's just part of gardening. Hell - it's part of doing anything. Some things you just have to let go.

Another thing I did today was try out my cupcake maker. I bought it last summer from Think Geek (who doesn't sell them anymore but they do have this really cool customizable pocket knife)  because it was cheap ($20) and I wanted cupcakes but since it was summer and really hot, I didn't want to turn on my oven. Since last summer bit so hard I never had the time to try out the machine. Today was finally the day.

There it is, baking away. You can also see my nifty, beloved new silicone-tipped cooking chopsticks (from jbox.com - or jlist if you're feeling porny) which were excellent for getting the cupcakes out of the machine.  The machine is basically a waffle iron with divots instead of a waffle grid. Fill the divots with batter, close the lid and in eight minutes you have seven mini-cupcakes. 

The cupcake maker is not a time saver. You can cook something like two-dozen mini cupcakes at a time if you use a real oven and a mini cupcake pan. (I could go look at my pan and count exactly how many you can make but then I'd have to get up) Making only seven at a time makes the baking process more like making cookies - you have to do batches. But, as I said before, the cupcake machine doesn't heat up your house. Also, Fay has no interest in attacking counter-top appliances. The same cannot be said for the oven. I got to make these cupcakes in peace and she didn't have to go to jail. The machine works well. The cupcakes didn't stick at all and they're delicious, home made cupcakes. 100% win.

Naturally not all of the cupcakes made it into this photo.  Pete and I had to do a little sampling first. Then I ate all five of the frosted ones you see here. I had to. Well, okay, maybe I didn't have to. 

The Second Loaf

I returned to Vermont four days after having stunk up the house with my seasoned pizza stone. The house still stank. Pete had gotten used to it so he couldn't tell but the stink took the wind out of my sails.  Other times I've stunk up up the house with my cooking the smell has dissipated by the middle of the next day. I wasn't sure I wanted to put us all through the horrible odor again.

Today we ran out of bread. So what the hell - I tried again:

This one's much prettier since I used more flour to shape the dough and I remembered to slice the top before putting it in the oven. We opened most of the windows in the house right away. The stone still stank (this time) but I think a little less, and it never smoked. You can even get a hint of the nice baked bread smell if you're lucky.  So I have hope that one day the stone will stop stinking even though I don't have a self-cleaning oven.

Bread Update

Subtitle: Do Not Season Your Pizza Stone

I had to leave Vermont on Friday so I only tried a tiny piece of the bread before I left.  I thought it was a little bland and gluey but the crust was nice.  Still, it's only the first try and I intend to try many more times and make lots of different recipes from the book.  I just tried the basic, white loaf.

Plenty of stuff could have gone wrong.  For example I might have over-handled the dough because I didn't realize how sticky it was. Also, the directions say to put the loaf in the oven before it has fully preheated as that will be hot enough to start and it will get there eventually. My oven is bottom of the line and also lacks a calibrated knob so I have to guess where to set the temperature* (it never seems to be the same place on the knob twice either so I really rely on my oven thermometer) This time the oven did not get hot enough so I had to crank it part way through. Next time I'm going to wait until the thermometer says what I want it to say. The dough's flavor may also become more complex over time. And, as usual, room temperature in our house is sixty-two degrees so the dough may not have risen properly.

All of that said, Pete says he likes the bread and that it toasts well.

He also says that the house still stinks and that it was really sad when he dried off after his shower because the stench had infused his towel.  That is so wrong. A house in which bread has been baked should only smell delightful

He told me that members of the band that are up there now have also had problems with a stinky pizza stone so I did some googling. It turns out that, contrary to the instructions, pizza stones do not need to be seasoned and if you season them they will smoke and reek. They say that if you open all the windows in your house and put the stone in the oven set to self-clean you can burn the stench out of the stone. Of course my oven doesn't have the self-cleaning feature but I'm hoping that I can still burn the stench out over time.

Yeah man, I'm not giving up! I'm going back for more! It's just my nature! I'm only glad that it's now warm enough that we can reasonably open all the windows in the house.

*It's a miracle any time any of my baked goods come out okay because temperatures fluctuate fantastically in that oven.

Activity

Yay! I got to go out with Michaela last night. It was a very satisfying girls' night which included prosecco and "Death By Chocolate." Such a cliché but what are you going to do?

Yesterday I mixed up my first batch of no-knead bread dough from the book, "Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day." Today I baked a loaf.

This being me, there were a few incidents:

1. The new olive oil in the bottle I just bought (Hannaford brand - I should have known) which says "use by 11/17/12," smells so rancid when you heat it up. I used it to oil my pizza stone when I baked the bread so now the whole house smells like hot, rancid olive oil.
2. Towards the end of the baking time my eyes began tearing and stinging. It turns out the house was filling with smoke. The bread was fine, not burnt.  I have no idea what what caused the smoke. The cornmeal? Some weird drip in the oven that I didn't see? The crappy olive oil?
3. As you can see in the photo above, I forgot to slash the top of the loaf before I put it in to bake.

Three "incidents" isn't so bad.  This was my first attempt at this method so it doesn't bother me that the loaf is misshapen because I didn't put enough flour on my hands when I was shaping it. I have a five-quart tub of dough in my fridge so I'll have plenty of chances to practice over the next two weeks (which is how long the dough keeps)

First I have to track down that smoking substance though!

The loaf is cooling now (and faster because I opened up so many windows to let the smoke out) It smells good - against the odds - so hopefully it will taste good too.

Maybe next time the house will smell like fresh baking bread instead of reek and stench.

In Making News

I did manage to make chocolate chip cookies with bacon in them today.  I cut about two tablespoons of butter and half the salt from the original recipe and added half a cup of cooked bacon in with the nuts and chocolate chips.  They came out good.  Pete approves and he wasn't so sure it would be a good idea.

I wish they were a little more bacon-y.  As you can see I broke the bacon up into chocolate-chip sized pieces.  Some of them broke down even more when they were incorporated into the batter.  I think they should be bigger so I'll use larger pieces next time (whenever that is - I don't usually buy bacon)

Also I'll try to use some solidified bacon fat in place of some butter for more bacon flavor. I'm not positive more bacon pieces is the way to go.  When you eat the cookie the bacon breaks down more slowly than the rest of the cookie and you can be left with, well, meat dregs in your mouth.  Kind of like the coconut when you eat a Mounds bar.  It's not a huge problem but I'm not sure I like that.

Whenever I use the oven Fay has to be banished to jail.

This is because she has a life-long hatred of ovens and will attack them if she knows they're in use.  Don't ask me why - I don't know of anything an oven ever did to her.  Except once she was able to bite an in-use oven and she got burned on her lip.  She was so busy beating up the oven though that she didn't notice until afterwards.  I'm sure she had no idea why her lip hurt.  So you see, it's jail for her.  She protests.

Poor thing - the whole house has smelled like bacon all day.

Homicide

I know you're sick of hearing about it but I think Irregular Choice is trying to kill me.  Yes, they are still adding new styles and colors every couple of days.  Here's the most recent pair to catch my eye.

How am I supposed to resist this onslaught?

The pair below is not for everyone (including me, as much as I love bats)  They have the amazing Shirley Temple heel and leathery bats on the front.  They also come in black.

My beloved friend Michaela (also here) was AWESOME enough to say to me last night that these shoes (any of them - she didn't mean a specific pair) are not that expensive and that it's probably worth it to buy some (plural!) - even if they aren't in my size - just to make art with them.  Spoken like a true friend, artist and understanding shoe fiend.

Of course I completely agree.  So many of these fit in uncannily with the novel I wrote and the comic book/multi-media project I've been working on.  I'd almost be an idiot not to stock up.  By God these things look like my art work.  The only trouble is that there are SO MANY I love so which do I choose?  I can't have them all.

In bacon news, I postponed making the cookies until tomorrow.  I spent today crocheting large flowers for another piece I'm working on instead.

So much to make!  So much to make!!!!