Martha, Martha

So this morning in the bathroom, I idly leafed thru the November 2009 Martha Stewart Living. I enjoy the mag, I love the pictures, but sometimes, Martha is just too much. The first thing that struck me was realizing how tightly she controls her own image - there was a picture of the 68-year-old Martha, looking about 30, with her milk mustache, in a "Got Milk?" ad - and I realized she must be wearing some type of Spanx, to make her form in white blouse and black trousers echo the curvy wasp-waisted shape of her milk glass. And the milk ad was adjacent to an article about Martha's picks in natural cosmetics. Next I came across the little blurb they include, on who's recently been on TV with Ms. Stewart and the featured guest was Snoop Dogg, learning to make mashed potatoes. At least he looked like his 38 years. Finally, I got to a big spread on family farms in Vermont, and the picture of the farmer-couple relaxing seated on a hay bale in their own barn, wearing shorts & sandals - bare thighs up against that hay - was bad enough but then there was the full page of photos of cheesemakers over their vats without hairnets or hats. I could just imagine Martha's photographers - following Martha's instructions - telling them to take the nets off, because they just didn't look cute enough. Hope they didn't have to throw the whole batch away - but maybe they just did a mock-up for Martha.

Taking on the harder stuff

I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff

To make up for the overflowing quiches last night - and because I had just enough ingredients leftover - I made a quiche tonight, in a real ceramic pan, not foil, and it didn't overflow.

Here's before
In the oven
And after We ate it with a nice salad - reduced apple cider and shallots in the dressing, greens from the farmers market.

Pie Palooza was a hit - we fed at least 500 people on those 1200 slices of pie; very little pie left over - only enough to send home with the volunteers. Somehow, I managed to do my part to stage it all - I was pretty much the one deciding what to serve when, and getting it all out. I went over yesterday afternoon to grok the pie, and got back today at 7:00 a.m. - and I think I did OK. Two pies got forgotten in the cooler, and one cheesecake got sold at the whole pie price of $15, total score for whoever bought it, but overall, all the generous donations went to happy eaters.

But somehow, I feel like my brother's still taking on the harder stuff, while I keep looking for enlightenment in writing about food. Today he wrote about the disappointment of looking in the mirror and not seeing what you expect. I always expect to see the me that's in this picture he has of me on the fridge - taken 11 years ago, when I wasn't 50 yet, and probably 20 pounds thinner, both our parents were alive (though it was our dad's last summer, we just didn't know it yet). And come to think of it, in the summer of 1998, I was not yet the parent of teenagers either, the point in life when all us parents get their true comeuppance - when your kids are teenagers, you are suddenly a bad parent, because all that stupid teenage stuff they do, it must be your fault.

Yesterday I was thinking about aging, and not able to write about it - how none of my parts are in the right places anymore; when I was undressing to get in the shower after the leaking pie fiasco, I felt for my flat belly - it shoulda been there, but it was not, and don't even ask about the girl parts. But hey, I almost have cleavage sometimes now - I guess that is the upside of weight gain.

The county wants me to take in another foster kid, and I don't want to, and I feel guilty about that, too. I kinda like the empty house, just me and the old man, kids only passing through only on occasion. I should have had 5, I guess, instead of the two, maybe I'd feel less like I have to help more now. But they take up so much more space as they get older.

And maybe folks' souls are soggy and grey in Seattle - here, it's unseasonable 63 degrees at 10 p.m. - and that's almost creepier, even if it's only for our buried memories of Indian attacks, on top of newer fears of global warming. PS - Plus, as I noticed while biking to work on Monday morning, when it's so mild like this, the whole west side of Madison smells like cow manure - like cow ass, as John would say - from the University barns.

My Julia Moment

So tonight is the eve of REAP's Pie Palooza, a benefit at which we are going to serve 1200 slices of pie. Or so. We got the pie through generous donations from local restaurants and chefs. For the last three weeks or so, I have been scrounging for some of the additional foodstuffs needed - coffee, salad greens, ice cream, cider. I did pretty well by dint of persistent phone calling; I spent a bunch of time today picking up - stops at the farmers' market and the co-op for greens and 30 gallons of cider.

Then I came home to bake my own pies - roasted squash with goat cheese [and I used my "new" crust] - and had my Julia moment. "You're alone in the kitchen", and damn good thing, too, because damn is about the mildest word I uttered. I filled the 6 pies with cheese, squash, and onions, and then poured in the custard. Started loading them into the oven and realized I meant to sprinkle Parmesan on the tops. And that was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back - they all started overflowing and had to be cooked on trays. At one point I had trails of custard from the oven to the counter, and from the counter to the sink, puddles on a chair, splatters on the cabinets, and sponges and towels on the floor. I even got some custard in my hair, by banging my head on the "cat-proof" shelf above the oven, that had a drooling pie on it. And one cat shut in the bathroom, frantically pawing the door, and the other one piteously mewing from my bedroom - they do love eggs and cream. Oh, well. everything's baked now and cooling, and I've showered. Even most of the dishes are washed - just 3 of the cooked on egg-y trays soaking in the sink.

But the labels worked on the first try - go figure.

New tricks

Back last summer I made a pie to take to friends in Minnesota, when I went up to help Al move. It was apple-plum, a combination I had never tried before, but that turned out really nicely, the plums added a rosy tinge, and the flavors were great together. I had a piece for breakfast my last morning there, before going to unload Al's stuff from the rented van, use it to move three of his friends, return it, and head back to Madison.
Somehow, in the course of making that pie, I inadvertently altered my mother's time-honored ratio for pie crust - 2 sticks (1 cup) of butter to 3 cups of flour. I upped the shortening a little - I was trying to eyeball measures, cutting up an unmarked portion of a 1-pound block of unsalted butter & a partially used stick of vegan shortening I had left over from something else. The dough was more difficult to handle than my usual, but it was flakier and delicate and really tasty.

So my new ratio for pie dough is 2 sticks of unsalted butter + 2 TBLS vegan shortening to 3 cups of flour. For sweet pies add 3 TBLS sugar, and for sweet or savory pies add a few pinches of salt, or use salted butter. This recipe is not only radical for changing the ratio, it also uses vegan shortening - Earth Balance is a good brand - instead of Crisco. But, come to think of it, even though her father and brother both worked for Procter & Gamble - my grandfather was a chemist who specialized in hydrogenated fats, so he almost invented Crisco, or at least, his research went into the product - my mother generally just bought the very smallest can of the stuff that she could find, and kept it around for greasing pans. I don't think she thought it was really intended for eating.

I used my new ratio pie dough to make Molly Wizenberg's leek tart for Sunday brunch. Yum. I didn't take any pictures, but Molly did.

Halloween's a Saturday this year

And there were both Badger football and hockey games. I carved my pumpkin on Friday night. Saturday I parked cars. We live about 4 blocks from the stadium. Got 5 cars, at $10 each, and sold 4 or 5 bags of iced gingerbread cookies in Halloween shapes - severed hands, bats, witches and pumpkins - 3 cookies per bag, for 50¢ each.

We went to the hockey game, and there were a lot of students in costume, ready to go over to the big downtown celebration, Freak Fest. It used to be sort of a guerilla holiday, people would simultaneously congregate in costume on State Street in Madison on halloween night, or the closest weekend night. But there were lost of fights ad even worse in the eyes of city government property damage, so the city turned it into a gated and ticketed affair.

Some people say it's ruined Halloween in Madison.

Even scarier, even though Bucky won both football & hockey on Saturday, the Packers lost today, to Bret's new team, the dread Vikings.

Time shifting

I am not at all sure where I am at the moment, chronologically. Last night I went to see Emmylou Harris - she was great - her oeuvre spans from something like 1973 when I was 18, to now. I probably listened to her the most in the mid-seventies, Pieces of the Sky, but really I've always loved her. And to see her still rockin' at 62 was quite encouraging, but made me wish to be tall, so I could wear cowgirl boots and a short skirt and look so good, too.

This evening after work I went to a show of art from the 1970s on Williamson Street here in Madison. I was a member of an artists' collective on Williamson Street, mostly in the 1980s, though - I did not arrive in Madison until 1977.

Anyways, the show was mostly posters, and was set up in a lower hallway of the art center here in Madison. At the same time, there was a disco band playing in the main lobby, VO5. They were utterly amazing. I thought I hated all that stuff - I remember getting to Madison and going to a Saturday Night fever thing at a community center, and wondering what the hell happened - one minute I was listening to EmmyLou and the Dead, and the next thing it was BeeGees everywhere.

So anyways, I went to the art center, went to see the '70s art, and there were a bunch of people I knew through various contexts, Willy St., art, music - I used to do a show on community radio - milling around at the show, and I talked to a few.

And then I went upstairs to listen to the disco - and not only did I know all the songs, I knew a lot of the musicians and a lot of the dancers and fans, too.

Then I came home and made a grilled cheese with cole slaw & dressing made from ketchup & mayo mixed, for dinner, sort of like a vegetarian Primanti Bros. sandwich, without the fries. I have been listening to R.E.M. - recorded in 2007, but always '80s to me.

Guilty of not raking leaves

So, I guess I'm a bad person - today, approximately the one sunny day we've had in the whole month of October here in Madison, when all my neighbors were diligently raking, I did not. I went for a nice long walk in the morning, and for dinner I made cabbage soup, and in between we moved futons around in the house, and broke a lamp (more on that in a minute) and I even did lots of laundry. But I didn't fold the laundry, and I didn't rake the leaves.

I took pictures of the leaves.



I like the above one, here - nice depth of the leaves.

On Friday when I got home, my whole kitchen was pink.

The lamp we knocked down was one of a pair my mother bought, pole lamps where you tap the stem, and the lights come on. We broke the glass shades. Today I went to a lamp repair place and bought three new shades - they don't quite fit, but they sit in the lamp rather than hanging so they can be less exact, and the bulb kind of holds them in. The 40-watt tube-shaped bulb that was in the lamp was too tall for the new shades, so I tried a blue party bulb that had been in drawer for years. It was so pretty that I went and bought 3 more in assorted colors. The tapping to turn on doesn't work anymore either so I plugged it into a switched power strip. $15 for the shades, $12 for the bulbs (but I have an extra) + $4.79 for the power strip. But it's pretty. This is the blue, blue red arrangement, but I could also do green in there somewhere. Almost looks like it could be in my brother's house.