The airing of grievances.

Today, at the gym, I ran across this, whilst resting between chest press sets:

via @betches (on Instagram), via @instaseinfeld

I thought: hey, FESTIVUS! Because I'm a Christmas celebrator, I rarely think of Festivus (for the rest of us). But I did think this: hey, I do have a few grievances. To wit:

1) I am not getting enough sleep, even though school is out. Oh, Bruiser, you magnificent aging beast, the very epitome of an old dog who cannot, will not learn new tricks, such as sleeping until seven.

2) Hey, after baking some babka before seven (the loaves had been rising slowly all night), I fell asleep until 10, what the hell. All the flex just flew out of my day.

(--chocolate babka, fyi:

this is one of the more attractive baked goods I have ever made,
if I do say so myself. Also, I believe that the first place I ever even
heard about babka was on Seinfeld. Also fyi: I wrote about the Seinfeld/
babka connection here.

3) I drove in such a dreamy (/sleep-deprived? you be the judge) state that I missed my freeway exit once and had to drive through hella traffic, and almost missed a different exit, on my way to the gym. Yes, I gave myself a talking to, but that dreamy (/sleep-deprived?) state persisted.

4) Straight up Christmas melancholy. I basically doubled down on it by listening to Carrie & Lowell on my way to an appointment. Just straight up said, shoot the melancholy right into my ears to the universe.

5) Rider to Item #4: Children live so far away. If that is not a legitimate grievance, I don't know what is!

Still, I baked that babka. I ate a piece warm, and it was sublime. I restored myself a little with that morning nap. I had lunch with a friend, drove through the hella traffic to buy the very last groceries (tempting fate, right there) I'll need for Christmas. I worked out.

I finished my chest presses. I looked up at one of the giant TVs.  Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer are all together, Kramer yet again proving to be a guinea pig in excess, this time drinking several shots of Hennigan's scotch, so Elaine and Jerry can see if they can smell it on him. Jerry buzzes George up. Kramer lunges at him.

"HEY." he says, pulling George in close by the crook of the elbow. "I'm going to tell you what I think. I know you don't care what I think, but I'm going to tell you. I think you..." there's some dramatic pausing--"...are terrific."

I was never much of a Seinfeld fan, even though I watched it plenty, and laughed at it plenty. The fact is, this episode, with the scotch and the drinking and the declaration of feelings--I don't even know where it occurs in the overall Seinfeldian arc. I did find myself stitching it into my version of the Festivus celebratory practices--the airing of grievances, the feats of strength, the Festivus miracles. Fellow-feeling? Possibly a Festivus miracle.

Hey, you there: I'm going to tell you what I think. You might not even care what I think. But I'm going to tell you. I think you...are terrific. I hope you have some babka, or failing that, some other delicious baked good, and sweet dreams, and a nap, should one be necessary if a beloved dog wakes you before there's light.

Bake-a-thon.

For brunch, Saturday morning:

• decide, finally, that I'm going to make orange rolls. So,
• at 11 p.m., I get up and make the dough.
• I soften the yeast in a small bowl and set aside. Meanwhile
• I melt some butter and heat some milk and whip some eggs, then
• add the required flour, beat, and add flour a little at a time.
• Wonder if the dough doesn't seem a little stiff.
• I notice the yeast sitting in its little bowl to the side, just as you're adding the last cup of flour.

ACK.

• So I pour that softened yeast over the dough that will never rise unless I can make the yeast, somehow, incorporate.
• Work that yeast in like it's my job. With my hands. Gently, so I don't make the dough too gluten-y.
• Success! I hope. Put the dough in the refrigerator and say a small prayer to the gods of yeast.
• Make the orange filling.

Get up the next morning and roll out/shape the rolls. Perhaps the dough is a little...funny. But with great faith, slice the rolls and put them in muffin tins and go to the store for other stuff.

Did you think this story wouldn't have a happy ending? Well, it did. I made precisely twice as many rolls as I actually needed, which meant I could send some home with both families who came to breakfast. Brunch, I mean.

For writing group, Sunday noon:

• I decide to make an olive oil cake with grapefruit juice/zest. This recipe appealed...I'm not sure why. Olive oil cake? grapefruit? seemed a little unlikely, and therefore perhaps--piquant? 
• It turns out this cake is easy, because you don't have to beat the butter to make it fluffy. You just 
• zest two grapefruits, and rub the zest into the sugar,
• then add eggs and olive oil and grapefruit juice (squeezed from the zested grapefruits) and buttermilk,
• whip it with a whisk,
• and add flour--white wheat flour and regular unbleached, along with leavenings.

Seriously, that's it.

• You can bake it in a bundt pan,
• but I thought it might be a tricky unmolding,
• since the batter was a little thin. So:
• loaf cake.
• Its glaze is grapefruit juice and brown sugar and confectioners' sugar,
• and I decided I'd also serve it with a dollop of creme fraiche, sweetened with a little brown sugar.

It was delicious, and we ate it with tea.

The bakery.

Baking, at Christmas time, is what keeps me going: it's the star, shining from a long way off, that calls me to the birthplace of a little thing we call winter break. When I'm grading, it's baking that awaits me at the end of my labors. It is my reward.

Today--the 23rd of December--is when the baking commenced this year, which meant that I had a lot of time to think fleeting thoughts about what I would bake, once I could bake. One scheme I cooked up included using a pan I have that holds nine tiny loaves to bake teeny tiny chocolate babkas. Remember babka? Wouldn't that have been clever?

Then I looked at the chunk of Caillebaut chocolate I had in my pantry and thought, (a) I am not grinding that up with sugar and cinnamon, and (b) if I were to grind it up, and all that that implies, I would not give it to random strangers, aka neighbors, because . . .

. . . what? you say that's kind of un-Christmas-y? You're probably right. But in defense of my Grinchy, it's possible I haven't had a very good run at Christmas yet. Anyway, back to baking:

Will there be sugar cookies? I don't know. Just like grinding up the chocolate for the theoretical babka, chilling the dough and rolling it out and cutting it and decorating it--the basic Nine Labors of Sugar Cookies--sounds hella arduous in the darkest hours of the year. So as of now, there is no sugar cookie on deck, though this decision could be revisited at the least provocation.

I have likewise deleted the Date Nut Pinwheel, venerable among the cookies of my people, from the roster. Two words: Pin Wheel. This is a cookie with a filling, the people. A cooked filling, which must be cooked and cooled and then spread on the delectable yet somehow always very soft and thus tear-able dough. Nix.

So today I made the Oat Shortbread of my friend Lis, which is delicious but turned out very fragile. Not a good giving away cookie, therefore. Also, I made Maple Sugar Shortbread. Not yet baked, so we'll see how it fares.

In cookie innovation--or, if you like, on the cookie frontier--I have made Ciambelle, which I believe must be an Italian cookie, or else a European fake of an Italian cookie. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, who put out another special cookie issue; this magazine consoled me in the dark hours before I could actually start baking. I recommend these cookies. They are lemony, as they have finely grated lemon zest in them and lemon juice in the glaze. I happened to have some Meyer lemons lying around, which made them all the better. They are shaped like wreaths and thus look festive and clever.

The picture in the magazine had them decorated with white non pareils, which looks very suave, but in my book, if you're putting on sprinkles, why shouldn't they be in color? Answer: they should be.

Stats: pre-solstice, post-teaching.

Teaching: done.

Baked goods: one cake baked; eaten. None remaining.

Illness: inevitable possible cold.

Grading: all still awaits.

Movies: two.

Mood: rainy but optimistic.

Crossword: yesterday's.

Housekeeping: que porquería.

Young men in their twenties in the house: two.

Online status: powering down.

Semester: almost, almost over.

Lessons for daily living.

1. Never give anything away.

Selfish? Maybe. But what about the shirt that hung in my closet for years--years!--unworn, because it was beautiful and I loved it. But still: years, and unworn, so I gave it away, and just now I had the perfect idea of how I could wear it. Is it still in my closet? or my other closet? No. And now, my perfect idea will go unexecuted. And I will not allow myself to turn the lack of this perfect shirt into a quest for another one. But that will be hard, because not allowing myself stuff? Not my particular talent.

2. Scones for breakfast.

Lesson? Maybe not. But you can't tell me that a day that begins with scones is not a good day.

3. Half a snow day is better than none.

Way, way better.

In medias babka.

Don't you find babka a wonderful word? Winsome. Adorable. And, paradoxically, Slavic, so perhaps a little brooding, melancholic, and dark?



 Like many shiksas across America, I first heard of babka on Seinfeld. Recently the idea of babka bubbled up to my consciousness, who knows why? but upon said word surfacing into full cognitive view so that all I could think about was babka, I did what all enterprising cooks do: Googled it, and came up with this recipe. It has so much butter and chocolate in it, I had to buy the butter and chocolate in two shifts. Not that I couldn't have purchased it in one. I just couldn't admit to myself that I was going to bake something with that much butter and chocolate in it. I smuggled my intentions past myself. As it were.

At the moment, the silken, buttery, eggy dough is rising. The chocolate has been finely chopped, all two and half pounds of it, and mixed with the cinnamon and sugar and extra butter. I am optimistic.

Listen, if anyone wants a piece, you just let me know. This recipe makes a lot of babka.

Babka babka babka. Chocolate babka.

Notes from a separate universe.

Also known as the "Missionary Training Center":

"People were right--learning the tones in Chinese is hard, but not nearly as hard as their crazy grammar rules. You have to change your mind to think like a Chinese person. . . it is out of control, but I get better at it daily."

Also:

"I have gained 13 lbs. since being at the MTC, no big deal. Even with that gain I am still underweight. I just need to evenly spread my weight around magically. Those brownies were incredible! I only wish I didn't have to share, but I did because without charity I am nothing."