Growing things

About ten days ago, I took a workshop on how to make challah.  Ever since, I have been trying to make one successfully.

When I was in kindergarten, my little sister went to a Jewish nursery school, and every Friday they made challah.  She would come home with a hard twist of carbs, and, even though my parents laughed at it as not real challah, I thought it tasted good.

I have been living my sister's legacy this past week.

I get everything about the form right.  I braid a gorgeous round challah.  I roll the raisins inside so they don't burn.  I use a glaze of egg, cinnamon, and sugar. If it could be a sculpture, it would be perfect.

My realization yesterday (I am on my fifth and sixth loaves) is that I need to not think that I am making bread but that I am raising yeast.  Like my plants, which I examine carefully, making sure they are getting the right combination of light and, well, no water, I have to think of this as an exercise in growing something.

To grow, yeast apparently requires:

• Proofing.  I wince as I say that.  What a weird use of that word, but apparently it is something people say.  My recipe didn't have instructions about it, but yesterday I combined yeast, sugar, and water warmed with meat-thermometer accuracy and watched the slurry bubble.
• No drafts.  There is also something about covering it with plastic wrap.  My immediate thought is that there was no plastic wrap in the shtetl, followed by a thought that if you cover it tightly the yeast will ferment anaerobically, and that can't be good.  Apparently in the shtetl they used a damp cloth ... its purpose, as I'm trying to respect this time around, is to reduce drafts.  Drafts?
• Patience.  My recipe says to let it rise for an hour or so.  So I set the chicken(-shaped) timer for an hour and take a break.  It's supposed to double in size ... I look at it and think, well, maybe I forgot how small it was beforehand.
• Warmth.  Everyone I've talked to about my challenges tells me that their grandmothers put the dough in the oven with the oven light on, that that is the perfect temperature for rising.  

Last night: I proofed the yeast, put the dough in a cooling oven, put the light on, was patient, and left it there all night (which apparently also happened in the shtetl, although somehow I think perhaps they didn't have oven lights).

I woke up this morning and finally understood what rising means!  This is an entirely different dough than what I've experienced so far.  I've now grown some great yeast.

However, and perhaps this is the deeper source of my problem and my impatience, the part I really care about is not the growing, not even the eating, but the kneading.

The only time I ever saw a family member knead was when I was very, very little, and I watched my grandmother make kreplach.  When I had my first wonton, it sent me right back to my grandmother's kreplach.  Interestingly, my family laughed at my grandmother's kreplach, too, so that's probably why I only had it that once.

I love kneading.  Delightfully, challah involves two risings and therefore two kneadings.  When I started this process of learning how to make challah, kneading for just a few minutes was hard.  Now I can easily go 10 minutes (and I'm not supposed to go longer, sadly), standing on solid shoes; sometimes literally pounding the dough with my fists after the second rise, breathing rhythmically, kneading with my palms and my fingers.  Turn, fold, breathe, punch.  It's meditative.

The two that rose

There are still dragons

My friend, A., is a Targaryen.

Tonight, she and I were part of a challah baking class.  We pounded the dough, broke it into three pieces, made them into strands, and braided them.  A. had a little tiny bit of dough left over, so she made a ball and put it in the middle of the baking tray.  "That's the challah!" someone said.

During Temple times (2000 years ago), the Jews were required to break off a piece of bread and give it to the temple priests (whose meals were gleaned from the various sacrifices, since they had no resources of their own).  Apparently, after the destruction of the Temple the tradition became to tear off a piece of dough and burn it in the oven in memory of the gift to the priests.  This is still a practice for some people.  "Challah" means portion, so technically it describes that piece, not the whole loaf.

When the challah loaves came out of the oven, A. reached over to the tray and picked up the little ball.  She tore it off a piece to taste and then handed the ball to me.

I tried to tear off a piece, but the ball was just too hot for me to hold.  As she took it back from me, she joked about having asbestos hands.  "I take things out of the oven with my bare hands," she said.

She'd only seen a few episodes of Game of Thrones, so she wasn't aware of Daenarys Targaryen's imperviousness to heat and fire.  I explained that fire cannot hurt the dragon, and she said, "Oh, then I'm totally a dragon."

A. has pale blonde hair, blue eyes, and skin so fair you can practically see through it.  Apparently, there are still dragons.

And in the shadows there was a cow.

I spent a lovely afternoon with my cousins, hanging around the pool, floating and socializing in multigenerational combinations, drinking gin and tonics (I don't drink gin, so I had a bourbon and ginger), reading, and soaking up the sun and each other's company.

And in the shadows there was a cow.

As I was leaving my house to head over there, I grabbed a bottle of wine to bring with me.  Since I hadn't had lunch, I grabbed some cheese and crackers.

This part of my family has had an infestation of veganism.  I believe it started with my cousin, Ruby, who is a published author of children's books on veganism.  With the various health issues of the older cousins, they seem to have become convinced that eating vegan would help them live longer.

I knew that bringing cheese into the house was treasonous.  (Let's not even go into the issue of rennet!) At the same time, I was hungry.  And I had a feeling that a couple of people there might secretly not be vegan and/or just be dying for something more substantial than salad and grains and nuts.  When I arrived, I proactively apologized profusely and reassured the group that I would not be leaving cheese in the house but would take "any leftovers" (i.e., all of it) with me.

My cousin, Daniel, was enormously grateful.  He actually took some of it to hide and eat later.  My cousin-in-law, Jeff, was not there: he is an opportunitarian, meaning he will eat what is provided.  I know he would have secretly taken the opportunity.  These vegans are harsh.

Daniel and I agreed that my bringing cheese to the house was as if I'd brought a freshly-slaughtered pig.    We were the real rebels today.

P.S.: As I began to select labels for this post from my label list, I am delighted to find that I already have a label for "cheese."

P.P.S.: The cheeses I brought were both indeed cow's milk cheeses.  Because I wouldn't have titled this post this way if it had been sheep cheese.  (See also below: the creature that makes all the noise when you visit this page.)

Turning over a new leaf

I seem to be dealing with my breakup by eating a lot of pizza, toast, peanut butter, and ice cream.  So today I went to Berkeley Bowl determined to turn my eating habits around.  Here is the inventory:

• Zucchini
• Crookneck squash
• Tofu
• Tomatoes
• Corn on the cob (midwestern comfort food -- just husking it makes me happy)

• Bananas
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Mango

• Orange juice (for the screwdrivers)

I'm promising myself greens, salad fixings, and peaches in the future.

Not that I'm going to stop with the ice cream; I'll just have some healthy stuff in me first.

Eating like a grown-up

Being single, with no kids, I don't have to think about meals that please anyone but myself.  The other night I had quite the feast.  Out with a friend for a drink, we snacked on herbed fries and some sort of aioli, and I had a half pint of Red Tail Ale.  That was really filling.

When I got home, I wasn't motivated to make dinner, and I didn't have much to work with that could have offset the carbo-grease of the first part of my meal, so I ate two Pop Tarts.  In fact, my friend, A., called  while I was working my way through the first one, and when I told her what I was doing she asked if I was OK.  A. knows that Pop Tarts are my comfort food: a few weeks ago I sat on her couch, miserable, unable to eat anything but a box of Pop Tarts.  Her favorite flavor is strawberry, so that's what I'd picked up then, and that's what I was eating the other night, albeit a fresh box.

Those Pop Tarts were really sweet.  So I finished my meal with Annie's Cheddar Bunnies.

To recap, dinner was:

• Beer and fries
• Pop Tarts
• Cheddar Bunnies.

I was so proud of myself.  If kids only knew that when you grow up you can eat whatever you want.

[Pause to digest....]

The next day, I stopped at Whole Foods on the way home and picked up an apple-butternut squash soup, and I assembled a huge salad.  I know we are supposed to eat a certain number of fruits and vegetables per day.  Do we have to do it on a per day basis?  That salad was probably a several days' worth of vegetables.  Huge.  Awesome.

Tonight, after having two servings of salad for lunch, I stopped to get another one.  I call them super-protein salads.  In addition to the lettuce (I love lettuce), tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, I add egg, tuna, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, edamame, and cheese.

Seriously, in the past two days I probably have eaten the recommended daily amount of vegetables for a whole week.  Does that count?

That's why I call it eating like a grown-up.  We can eat whatever we want.  We can follow our cravings. And it's awesome when our cravings lead us to these massive salads.

Mmmm ... cured meat.....

I'm on another cured meat kick. A while ago, it was prosciutto: I ate it with my fingers, I cooked with it, I couldn't get enough of it. Kind of an expensive habit. Now I'm on to salumi, which I think sounds pretentious, so I say, "salami-like things."

For lunch today, I had my Fra' Mani sopressata and Vermont cheddar sandwich. I eat this almost every day. I don't like sandwiches, generally, so when I find one I like that I can make at home and save myself some lunchtime angst and bucks, I do. This is an awesome sandwich. I don't know what sopressata is (I don't know if I want to know), but it's good. The Market Hall people sure know how to recommend salami-like things.

This evening I went to a friend's surprise birthday party at Adesso on Piedmont Avenue. Delightful to be returning to my old neighborhood, particularly to visit an eatery that I hadn't been to before. Adesso is new, in the new Il Piemonte building, a building I longed to live in because of its Piedmont location and palazzo exterior, but I didn't like it enough.

I did not know this until I got there: Adesso is a salumi bar. I opened the menu and saw more salumi-like things listed than I could count (the reviews say that there are more than 30). And I was there with a great group of people who like salumi as much as I do. We were pleasantly overwhelmed at the selection. So we ordered a chef's salumi platter, some cheeses -- and the cheeses were superb and a superb mix (and I am a cheesie) -- and then some panini, which also involved cured meats. The sausage panino was to die for. We were in heaven. And then they brought out the Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip birthday cake, and we all got quiet as we ate it, focusing intently on the exquisiteness of our individual nostalgia trips.

As Joey would say, here come the meat sweats.

The banana pancake mystery

Brunch is pretty much my favorite meal. Carbs, sugar, salt (e.g., waffle, syrup, bacon). Like eating dessert with a little bit of dinner thrown in.

I'm not a great cook, but I'm pretty good at brunch basics. The first meal I hosted here was a brunch: two families, with kids. Chocolate chip pancakes and whipped cream, and plain pancakes and syrup for the more conservative. It was a hit. Everyone loved these pancakes.

My next meal was just with a few friends. Banana pancakes, blueberries, strawberries, two kinds of chocolate chips, whipped cream, and syrup. (I always serve bacon, too, to please the remaining taste buds.) Another hit. They said they were the best pancakes they'd had and encouraged me to invite them over next time I was using up an overripe banana.

One day I had a very ripe banana, and no one was coming over, so I made pancakes for myself. I like to make a full batch of pancakes and then save the leftovers to pop in the toaster oven later. I used the same recipe I've used my whole life, the "Griddlecakes" recipe from the Fanny Farmer cookbook. My cookbook opens to this page. (If I flip the pages, it also opens to the page for blueberry pie.) It was the same recipe I used for my hugely successful chocolate chip and banana pancake brunches.

The pancakes were awful. They tasted salty, bitter. I threw the entire batch out.

I double checked the recipe and decided I must have left out the salt, so the baking powder didn't rise or process or whatever baking powder does, so I figured I must have been tasting baking powder.

Next overripe banana: same recipe. I focused on adding the salt. And ... the pancakes were terrible. I was hungry, and they were perhaps somehow less bitter than the last time, so I doused them in syrup and ate them anyway.

This was a total mystery. How had the Fanny Farmer recipe stopped working? What was I missing? Do bananas mess with pancake batter, somehow, chemically? I had taken the short cut of not mixing the dry ingredients before adding them to the wet ingredients, figuring they all get mixed together in the end. Is that what broke it? I've made these pancakes a gazillion times, and I'm pretty sure I don't always (rarely, in fact) mix the dry ingredients first.

Next overripe banana: I carefully assembled the dry ingredients. And ... mystery solved.

The recipe calls for baking powder. Baking powder, as we all know, comes in a canister. Baking soda, on the other hand, comes in a box. Well, when I had gone to Trader Joe's to buy baking powder, I had grabbed the canister, had used the canister, had used the canister in all the pancakes I've made since I moved in ... and it turns out that Trader Joe's puts its baking soda in canisters. I'd been using backing soda all along. Pfffttthhh.

I made banana pancakes again this morning, this time with a new canister of baking powder. They were terrific, and, not surprisingly, were very different, with a lighter texture than all those other pancakes. The new mystery is: did the chocolate chips and whipped creams and berries and chocolate and syrup really mask the terrible flavor of those early pancakes? Did all of those people really not notice the bitter, salty, baking soda-flavored pancakes?

The butter holiday

Most people think of Passover as the time of year when we eat matzah. And I love matzah: matzah brei, matzah ball soup, charoset on matzah. But, really, it's the butter holiday.

Growing up, it was the one time of year I was allowed to have butter, and my mother served Land O' Lakes sweet unsalted whipped butter in a tub. The rest of the year, we had margarine. But the corn oil in margarine isn't kosher for an Ashkenazic Jew. So we had that special treat of sweet butter.

On matzah. I became expert at perfectly evenly glazing a matzah with this butter. Amazingly thinly, too, because if I was caught eating too much of the butter I'd get in trouble. And then: the salt. My second favorite food, after butter. I'd coat the thin matzah with the thin layer of butter, then with a thin layer of salt. It was art. And I ate as much of it as I could.

In a perfect Hallmark moment, my oldest friend K. and I had a long phone conversation this weekend. While we spoke, she was cooking for her family in Philadelphia, and I was painting a wall of my condo here in Emeryville. (Boy, have we come a long way since second grade in Cleveland!) We took turns putting each other on speakerphone. She told me about her own memory of my mother providing sweet unsalted whipped butter.

(I will be making K.'s recipe for matzah kugel tomorrow. At her recommendation, I won't use the full 1/4 pound of butter it calls for.)

Several years ago I finally broke from sentiment and bought sweet salted whipped butter. I don't really know why my mother bought us the unsalted version. I got tired of the art involved, and now I just slather it on.

Water that makes you forget?

I bought some Trader Joe's "brand" "vitamin" "water," "Dragonfruit" "flavor" (is there anything about this that is authentic?) because I was in TJs and I was thirsty and they don't sell anything normal to drink. It's the first time I've tasted any kind of "vitamin" "water." How on earth did this stuff become popular?

The evolution on its "flavor" on your tongue goes from worse to bad. My first reaction was to spit it out, and then it developed a horrible aftertaste, like the taste of metal and sweat. It's kind of like Gatorade with a metallic additive and without personality. I wanted desperately to get the "flavor" off of my tongue. Then, a few seconds later, I conveniently forgot how awful it tasted and felt so thirsty that I craved and took another swig. Phthhh, pththhh. After four rounds of this, I wondered what kind of odd control this drink had over me. Is there something in it that makes me so thirsty and amnesiac that it makes me want more?

Strawberry season

Today's snacks:

• Strawberry Special K bar for breakfast
• Strawberry yogurt-covered pretzels
• Fresh strawberries (on their own)
• Strawberry yogurt
• Fresh strawberries (in a fruit salad)

I do love strawberries.

Why does everything taste better with yogurt?

Lentils. Chris has the greatest recipe, although it’s not really a recipe because he just made it up. Craving Chris' lentils, I bought the core ingredient: microwavable lentils from Trader Joe’s. Started with my automatic base of garlic and red pepper flakes. I didn’t have ham, which I know Chris used, so I used roasted turkey (with Italian spices), and I don’t like sundried tomatoes, which Chris used, so I used a fresh tomato.

It did not come out tasting like Chris’ lentils.

And then I thought of yogurt. I’m always looking for opportunities to use yogurt as a condiment. So I threw some on top. And it was great! Why is that? I could put yogurt on everything.

Then I realized I had tortilla chips. So I scooped the concoction up with that. How did I start with a ham and lentil recipe and end up with nachos?

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Day two: I fully transformed the leftover lentils into Mexican food by putting them in a quesadilla.  The idea was great, and the flavor was great, but lentils don't stick to tortillas.  So when I went to flip the quesadilla it was like a lentil celebration: lentil confetti everywhere.

Couscous injury

I have had a band-aid on the ball of my right thumb for several days. You can kind of see the blood seeping through the gauze. I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me what I did. Then I can tell them that I injured it on couscous.

To my credit, it was Israeli couscous, which is bigger and more substantial than regular couscous.

I was trying to pop some dried couscous out of a bowl, and that last piece stuck. I raked my thumb across it, drawing blood. The world's first couscous injury.

Fatty bananas?

Now that there is a Trader Joe's on College, I stop in spontaneously just because I can.

Found myself staring at the non-dairy frozen desserts wondering if they were any good. I once had a colleague who, no matter what I complained of, said, "Eat a banana." It's a great place to start. So, rather than picking a soysicle, I was considering the chocolate-covered bananas on a stick. A woman pushed past me to grab a box, so I stopped her to ask if they really were good or just weird. She said she loved them.

And they are really good. You feel healthy because you're eating a banana -- and they use ripe bananas, so they have flavor -- plus you have the treat of a little bit of chocolate.

Yum. How bad for you could this be? Can I have another? Two bananas are better than one, right?

Then the shock of reading the nutrition information. One hundred sixty calories and 3.5 grams of saturated fat -- 18% of the %DV. What's in that chocolate? As I slowly work my way through the box (I can't throw them out, right?), I wonder if I can just find some good chocolate and make them myself.

Hah! Not with chocolate! A bar of Scharffenberger 70% has 7g of saturated fat.

Or am I being unreasonable here? It's not like I look at other food labels -- maybe this is the healthiest thing I eat?

Monday is the new Sunday

Veterans Day observed: it's a holiday, at least for me, today.

Discussion at the Rockridge Cafe this morning. They handed me the specials menu, with daily specials on one side and weekend specials (including pumpkin waffle) on the other.

Waitress delivers coffee.
Me, holding the menu up and gesturing at the weekend specials side: "Is it the weekend?"
Waitress: "No, it's Monday."
Me: "I understand. But does it count as the weekend?"
Waitress: "No, the weekend ends on Sunday."

It took several rounds of who's-on-first to get her to understand that I wasn't just asking because I didn't know it was Monday or that Monday is not part of the weekend. Expectations of consciousness seem very low in our part of the world at times. And indeed we were able to order a pumpkin waffle from the weekend menu on a Monday.