The difference.

Today was my writing group, at my house. It's the last day of May. I haven't been teaching, and more importantly, grading, or going to (many) meetings, or writing reports, for weeks. Which meant that last night, when I thought about what I might make for my writing group's lunch, I felt like this:

whee!

instead of like this:

guh!

Oh what a difference the end of May makes! (also: the poem-a-day project for April, the cruelest month, is a good one, because you always have a poem to bring to writing group. Just fyi.)

Well, anyway, I also had this thought, expressly shared with me by Jamie Oliver, and also his ten kajillion Instagram followers:

this is a personal message to me from Jamie O. He knows how I feel
about cake.

It is, and I quote, a 'proper classic school dinner dessert,' whatever that means, and also 'one of those loyal and humble cake recipes that is pure nostalgia through and through.' In other words, 'Jammy Coconut Sponge.' So good. It's a sponge cake made with butter and eggs, with freshly made blackberry jam, and coconut pressed on and all around it. It was fantastic--I highly recommend this loyal and humble cake. (We also happen to have leftovers.)

Also: Nicoise salad, and pineapple with mint sugar. And bread and cheese.

I got up early-ish and went to the store, bought all the ingredients, and in an unhurried fashion made the cake, the jam, and assembled the thing. I roasted the asparagus, beets, and potatoes for the Nicoise, and washed the lettuce and sliced the scallions and the radishes. I whipped some cream for serving the cake.

And printed my poem, of course.

We had a lovely time. And then I took some naps. Because that's how Sunday, at least today, the last day of May, rolls.

Cake.

Tonight, because I happened to have taken forethought over the weekend, and it happened, therefore, that there were vegetables in our refrigerator, we had roasted asparagus with slivered garlic, olive oil, and salt, and linguine with zested Meyer lemon, pecorino, and sliced cherry tomatoes. Oh, was it ever good. It tasted fresh and lively and not tired.

The procurement of the Meyer lemons, whence the zest came, happened awhile ago. Weeks, I'm quite certain. I kept them refrigerated and miraculously they were still good. The zest on our linguine got me thinking about Meyer lemons, and that thought got me thinking about things you can make with Meyer lemons, things like lemon curd, or lemon bars, or Meyer lemon cake.

I'm not sure if the Meyer lemon cake of 2006 was the last Meyer lemon cake I made, but it might have been the last time I made that Meyer lemon cake. That recipe was delicious but also super involved. It made me tired to think about it. I knew where it was--in what cookbook, it was a Chez Panisse cookbook--and it made me tired to think about standing up and going to the cupboard to retrieve the book. It made me tired to think about looking up the page number and actually reading the recipe.

Let me pause to say this: it has been quite some time since I baked a cake. Or cookies, for that matter. It has probably been since Christmas. It would be one thing if I had taken a stand, or had issued a manifesto: "I shall bake no more forever!" Or if I had taken vows against flour and sugar and whatnot. None of which I have done. I am just busy and ergo tired. Things have arrived at the point wherein I can barely remember what it's like to feel moved by, you know, ingredients to make something delicious for dinner.

[further note: tonight I had this chat with my son, the one who lives in Tempe:

Well, anyway, it feels like something is out of balance because of this non-baking phenomenon. Like the universe or something.]

Not tonight, though. No. Despite the specter of an overly precious recipe for Meyer lemon cake casting a brief but temporary pall over the entire affair, I roused myself from my torpor--literally, I was laying on the bed when I roused myself from said torpor--and sought a new and unprecious recipe, on the internet.

The recipe did require grating the peel off of a load of lemons, some of which I might not technically have "had," so technically, there was "less" zest than the recipe "called for." But you know, that's not a deal breaker, when we're talking about Meyer lemons, because their zest is so much more beautiful and floral and special and, you know, lemony, that you probably can get away with less of it. As, in fact, I did.

Fast forward to two beautiful loaves of lemon cake tumbling practically tear-free from their pans, getting a light soaking of lemon syrup (made with Meyer lemon juice, obvs), cooling on a rack while we took Bruiser for a walk.

"I can't wait to get home so I can eat cake," I said. And just like that, order was restored.

Cake.

At or about 11:00 p.m. I'm in the kitchen. My son has just come home from the gym.

Son: What're you making?

Me: Cupcakes. (feeling suddenly sheepish.) For my class.

Son: That's nice of you.

Me: But I bet they don't do stuff like that at the university, do they?

Son: My Chinese teacher brought egg rolls. Twice. Once on Chinese New Year and once on the last day of class. Egg rolls and oranges.

Me: (brightening!) That makes me feel better!

Son: And I have her twice on the same day. So I got to eat it twice.

Tomorrow is the final exam period for my Introduction to Imaginative Writing course, which I taught face to face for the first time in blah blah blah, I know, I told you this already. Anyway, it's been a great class. We are binding our copies of the class chapbook tomorrow, then having a little reading and celebration. Hence: cupcakes.

Here's a tip: if you happen to be in the area tomorrow at about 11:30 a.m., and you happen to be a creative writer (here's another tip: I think all writing is creative), and also you happen to have read this blog post (obviously), then you, too, can have a celebratory cupcake, which, since they give out egg rolls at the U, is perfectly okay.

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.

Scenes from the Reading Terminal Market.

Across from our hotel is the Reading Terminal Market. Said to have been established in 1892, it is also said to be America's oldest continuous farmer's market. I walked around in a sleep-deprived haze, and plotted the many breakfasts and lunches I might happily have there, and also bought a piece of rose geranium pound cake at the Metropolitan Bakery, which on the one hand did not seem remotely redolent of rose geranium, a disappointment that was almost entirely softened by the fact that it was, on the other hand, a darn good pound cake, full stop.

down a concourse in the Reading Terminal Market.

This is candy. Pretty, pretty candy.

At the risk of being obvious,
these are emu eggs. $10.00 each.

one of about a zillion food purveyors in the Market.

At dinner.
Our server: Can I bring you anything? More bread?
(there is still bread in the basket. but we are hungry.)
Me: Sure. It'll be our back-up bread.

Key facts.

• My favorite kind of reading glasses

routinely break like brittle china.

• Ergo, I order a pile of them. So I have more when they break. Perhaps I should consider a new style/brand/Lasik? I don't know. They are my favorite.
• It is the historian's birthday today. He has a cold. Is that fair? I ask you.
• We are watching the Australian Open. Rod Laver and Roger Federer are talking. It's kind of great.
• My classes were awesome today. Sometimes it feels like, if you set things up right, your courses turn into little centers of industry, with all kinds of good things happening, humming along. Or, y'know, things could fall apart tomorrow. But I don't think so.
• Today this book arrived at my house: 

Vatnasafn/Library of Water
Roni Horn

it is awesome.

• Even though it was a birthday, it was a work day. Where is the birthday cake? I ask you. I guess that's why birthdays last a week. They do, don't they?
• Okay. Time to get you a little more DayQuil, honey.

(happy birthday to the historian, the best of the best of the best, sir! he is above the system, and he makes it--everything--look good.)

Long day in high heels.

. . . but a good day. We celebrated the new issue of Folio, our student literary and arts publication. I am on a predictable high after a predictable era of mounting anxiety. We had tons and tons of students submit, published more work than we've been able to before (at least since I've been the faculty advisor), and have a new website with web-exclusive stuff. Overwhelming, the good stuff. This is why being a teacher is a great job--because you get to see these students make something amazing happen.

oh gush gush gush gush gush GOSH. But I dressed up for the event, including wearing high heeled boots, which were just fine till around 4 p.m. when I realized that, predictably, my feet were tired of being high heeled. Anyway, the event, which started at 6 but really started at 6:20, ended at about 8, with us getting home around 8:45. Whoa. That is a lot of high heeling.

Why high heels, you ask? Because, I answer. Because: Folio. Folio is worth dressing up for. And having hurty feet for.

In other news: I have now tried to order Watermark, a book of prose poems about Venice by Joseph Brodsky, for the third time. The first two times I ordered a used but in good condition copy from two different Amazon Marketplace booksellers. Each time, I got an e-mail a day later saying, Whoops, so sorry, we're out of that book. And I was all, well why'd you say you had one, then? Just because the New York Times travel section mentioned it on Sunday in an article about going to Venice in the wintertime which I totally want to do and so, apparently, does everyone else in the bookbuying universe. Anyway, it's a dirty plot to make me buy a new copy from Amazon. Which I did. Today. Hopefully this order will stick.

In other other news: For those of you watching the mole poblano situation closely, there is a mole update, if not much of one. This morning before work, I went to the Mexican grocery store. They had ancho, pasilla, and mulato chiles. So I bought them. Also, regarding the family dinner that the mole poblano is a part of: I lied to myself today, saying, "When I get home I will make the tres leches cake and also the pumpkin flan! It won't matter that it will be after the Folio reading and I will have hurty feet and also won't feel like making two desserts anyway, not to mention tearing up chiles, frying them, and soaking them. No! I will be making cake and flan!" So now I'm telling myself another lie about how I will get up early early to make a tres leches cake and pumpkin flan and fry the chiles etc., even though probably I will get up at 8, as usual. And yawn around for a minute or an hour. Why? Because: Folio. Folio is worth sleeping in and yawning around for.

This week in baked goods.

All week long it has been bagels aplenty around here. First, I bought a bunch--cinnamon raisin for the historian, plain for running/former missionary/college son. Then, when I took said son to the store for other food, he thought we might need some more. This bagel-buying orgy started because of my bagel-in-the-morning habit, which started after my sabbatical when I foolishly agreed to be a faculty l*****. I had to be at school in the m*******, so freaking early so many days, that stopping for a bagel started to seem like my earthly reward.

I know, I know. Going to work doesn't mean earning an extra earthly reward. Your paycheck is your reward for going to work. But I am just telling you: this is how the bagel habit got started. Stop judging me.

So, my bagel place had this promotion--every time you bought something, you got a punch in your little card (shaped like a bagel--cute, but you had to fold it in half to put it in your wallet. A folded bagel, with punches in it. This I faithfully kept for twelve full punches). Once you got the full twelve punches, you got a free baker's dozen of bagels! Calloo callay, oh frabjous day. All of a sudden, having piles of bagels around seemed like the thing to do.

Anyway, now we are down to less than six plain bagels, which might be worrisome if I hadn't just recently baked

• a chocolate cake last Sunday;
• a pumpkin pie on Thursday; and
• bread today.

I already told you about the cake. There's still a little left, and it is still more than edible, that's how good the cake is.

The pie is maybe the best pumpkin pie I have ever made. Let's see if we can figure out why, shall we?

• I baked it in a tart pan, ergo more elegant and possibly also--and paradoxically--cuter.
• I roasted the pumpkin the perfect amount of time, so there was no faint redolence of scorch.
• there was cream.
• there were perfect eggs.
• there was a delightfully buttery crust.
• I baked the pie the perfect amount of time--the custard did not crack and it was perfectly creamy.
• the pie had the exact right amount of crystallized ginger. I think this factor was aided and abetted by the extra amount of flat space made possible because of the tart pan. The ginger was more evenly distributed per bite. I could draw you a diagram, but I don't have time for shenanigans like that.

Anyway: that pie was grand. It was the kind of goodness that makes you want to make another pie tout de suite. But now that pie is gone.

First of all, some of it was eaten on Thanksgiving. I kind of like the fact that my family, overall, loves the pecan pie more than the pumpkin. For myself, the pecan pie is a tad too sweet. Anyway, this demographic data means that there is usually some leftover pumpkin pie to bring home from the feast, and that means pie for breakfast, yay! Pie for breakfast leads inexorably to no more pie, however, and that's exactly where we are.

But today was another snowy day (not to say "snow day," alas.), so I decided to make bread. Whole wheat bread. I took the slow rise method (not a scientific slow rise like those very serious bread bakers advocate. I aspire to their scientificness, but I really wanted to eat bread today, so I just used a little less yeast.), which meant that there was a wheat-y smell in the kitchen for several hours. I used two different kinds of Montana wheat flour and a little (very little) rye. This bread tasted delicious. We had it with our dinner.

All this baking is preparatory to the orgy of baking I hope to undertake for the fun of it over the next few weeks. If there happened to be enough snow falling at the exact right times, I could even start it right now.

Birthday activities.

Happy birthday to the historian. He is the best.

You say it's your birthday.

Fact:  every birthday of every one of my children occurs in December or January.  

Fact:  my mother's birthday is in January.

Fact:  the historian's birthday is . . . in January.

Fact:  my son-in-law's birthday is also in January.

Fact:  my son the soccer coach, who joined our family kind of midstream--his birthday is in February.

There was a time in my life when I didn't go for more than a few days without baking a cake. Today I bought a bunch of birthday candles, just in case.  One time, I asked my doctor about what might explain so many births clustered so tightly.  "I guess you all liked to have sex in April," she said.  Oh: that.

[via PinkCakeBox]

Anyway:  happy birthdays to running son (20), college daughter (22), my daughter the makeup artist (26), and singing son (28), whose birthdays have already taken place.  Happy birthday to my mom (ageless!), whose birthday is right around the corner.  Happy birthday to my daughter in Scotland, who will be 30 very soon.  Each of them is so splendid a person, there should be fireworks, parades, confetti, and all sorts of delights to round out the celebration. (Also, the fact that I will soon have a thirty-year old daughter--I'm not quite sure what this signifies, but I fear it may mean I am old.)  

I have baked nary a birthday cake this year.  Everyone's grown up, plans are more malleable, people live out of town, etc.  And I'm sure I don't technically need birthday cake, but it does seem kind of a shame.  The historian's birthday, upcoming, may call for an extravagant cake.  I do have the candles.  

Maybe kind of sort of.

I wrote a poem yesterday, for my writing group, and started another poem today. What this may mean, and I'm saying this with some humility, as a person who can jinx her own mojo by overthinking it, not to mention over-talking it--and let me now refresh your memory as to the initial clause of this sentence: what this may mean is that I may be on my way to a little routine. A groove, if you will.

I'd like to further report that I also had a nice nap today and finished a very good book, which my daughter the make-up artist passed on to me, The Glass Castle. Also, while my work has been rejected by three of the journals I sent it to, my Johnny Cash poem got taken by Tar River Poetry. So I'm feeling cautiously victorious. For now.

Ergo, I shall now bake a cake.

Messages from a different world.

From Running Son, in Malaysia:

for all of those who thought i would starve in a place like malaysia, you haven't heard of Elder Bickmore's Hot Dog Routi Surprise...it's a delicious meal that i have created...routi is pretty much the best thing i have ever tasted, truly a malaysian delight...i think it is indian food though...it's like a tortilla but a million times better and probably a million times less healthy but anyways i cook some macaroni and cheese, hot dog, fries, wrap it in the routi and put some ketchup on, it's delicious, my comp wouldn't believe me at first, but now he eats it all the time, it's glorious

Apparently, you can take the boy out of the U.S., but you can't take the U.S. out of the boy.

In other news, I am reading prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, who just wrote American Wife, based on an imagined life of Laura Bush; we had an awesome dinner; we took Bruiser for a walk at noon because it was so cool, and now he wants another one; I made cake. Cake! Hello, September!

Surprise.

Good surprises:

• finding a copy of the Betty Crocker Cook Book c. 1975 at a flea market in eastern Washington.
• finding a copy of the I Hate to Cook Book, c. 1960, which my mom had and which I read with great amusement when I was a kid. (It's ironic, of course, that my mother had this book--she doesn't hate to cook and is in fact a wonderful cook--but the book had its day, and as a piece of humorous writing, it is great--and the recipes are quite hilarious in their own right. But that's another post for another day.)
• finding three dollars in the pocket of my just-washed white jeans.
• finding the shoes that I passed up at DSW three weeks ago (because I had imposed upon myself an absurd two-pair limit), a pair of slate-gray Clarks flats, at the Nordstrom Rack a few days ago.
  
• coming home from a trip to find that the roses I pruned in March are taller than my head and blooming their heads off.
• discovering that chamomile and lavender together make a lovely and refreshing iced tea.

Bad surprises:

• I have more books than I have shelves (technically, this isn't a surprise).
• cat vomit on the floor of my study.
• can't sleep, too hot.

That second bad surprise was a bit grim, certainly, but as of right now, 11:18 p.m. on an evening mid-June, the good surprises outweigh the bad. And a bonus: because I found the Betty Crocker Cook Book, which was the cook book of my youth and young wifehood, and which at some point drifted out of my possession, and which for a very long time ruined me for cook books that didn't have glossy photos, I can finally fulfill my dream, if I still want to, of making the Black Forest Cake, oh cake of my dreams, cake I aspired to as a young wife and never had the wherewithal, such as the ingredients or the correct pans, to make. Also, it is the source of my most reliable yellow cake recipe, the Yellow Whipped Cream Cake, which, in its title, speaks for itself, I believe.

Things to do to improve your outlook.

By "things to do," I mean "parties," and by "do," I mean "eat."

Saturday morning, I arose bright and early to make foccacia, Famous Pasta Salad, and sugar cookies cut in shapes appropriate to a baby shower. That's right: my daughter, the make-up artist and splendid all-around human being, is having a baby in May, a boy, and my mother and I were the caterers for this affair. We made all the arrangements via e-mail, thus avoiding having to address my increasing phone phobia (note to self: must investigate phone phobia).

I thought, somehow, that in any store where they sell cooking implements (Target), there would surely be a cookie cutter in the shape of something baby-ish (bootie? teething ring? breast pump?). What cookie cutters they had were in the shapes of an Easter egg, two kinds of bunnies, a carrot, a lamb, a duck, a tulip, and another generic flower. I know, appropriate to a baby shower! Especially some of them. I was, I admit, cursing my folly as I was icing the cookies at twenty minutes to shower time, but managed to arrive with a minimum of cursing, enough cookies for everyone, a mountain of Famous Pasta Salad, and two loaves of foccaccia. My daughter got baby booty, a baby shower game was played, we all had a grand time. Because I was taking pictures for my daughter with her camera, I managed to get home with only a small handful of pictures of the shower, none of her, and none of the cookies either. Oh well. The ducks were especially cute, you'll have to take my word for it.

Then, later that same day, we went to a surprise party for the birthday of a poet friend, Jennifer. It was great, super surprising, and delicious, too, as the hosts had knocked themselves out making shrimp-and-scallops pot-stickers, amazing eggplant, sesame noodles, steamed soup dumplings, scallion pancakes, and barbecued pork buns. Another poet brought a gorgeous bombshell of a cake, all whipped cream and strawberries. And we all had a very, very grand time. Here is the surprise:

Here are the dumplings:

and here is the cake: