Thought it was just me, but ....

I guess the whole state of Wisconsin is currently indulging in Johnny Depp sightings, since it's just been officially announced that the rumors are true; Depp will be playing John Dillinger in a movie that will be filmed partially here in Wisconsin.

Evidently we're offering film companies a plummy enough tax break that it's worth it to film here - you go Gov. Doyle. I don't know if our state will produce the movie support expertise that they have in California, or even Canada; even George Romero is filming his zombies in CA (Canada) instead of Pittsburgh PA now - but the producer, Michael Mann, is a UW-Madison alum, and you'd think we'd have a big enough arts brain trust - plus they'll do the post-production wherever, after they've used our nice scenery.

I hear there was a casting call for extras dressed in 1930s vintage here in Madison earlier this month, and as I walked in to work today I was thinking about what I could've worn - but it was the day I was at the Willy St Board retreat all day, shucks.

Maybe I can find out who's catering the shoot - cook lunch for Johnny Depp, how fun would that be, although I'm pretty sure he subsists on black coffee and cigarettes.

Home alone 3

This is my third night with the house to myself, all the menfolks are gone - Mark's in Ohio, John & Al are off at school, and Ethan's not here because Mark's not.

As I told John on the phone today, if it was longer, I'd get probably lonely, but for 3 nights, I'm kind of enjoying myself. I've been cooking and watching TV with both cats curled up on top of the comforter on top of me. And TV has been providing plenty of random glimpses of Johnny Depp - Sunday I watched the Oscars, so there was Depp as himself, some shots of him getting transformed into Capt. Jack Sparrow, when Pirates got nominated for makeup, and Depp as Sweeney Todd for best actor. Last night I watched parts of two movies - the last half hour or so of Chocolat, where Juliet Binoche finally figures out that it's hot chocolate that is Roux's (Depp's gypsy character) favorite type of chocolate; and all of Benny & Joon, where Johnny at 25 or 26 is young enough to look exactly like my son John. Tonight I watched The Queen, so entirely different type of enjoyment, admiring the good manners of the British - and it did seem apropos of Daniel Day-Lewis bowing to Helen Mirrin when she handed him the best actor Oscar.

Sunday I made sweet sour tofu. Last night it was some pasta with caramelized onions, roasted butternut squash, and goat cheese, and rice pudding. Tonight I made really good coconut rice to go with the leftover tofu - the cats lapped up the few grains I dropped on the floor so energetically, I threw a few more down.

And I tried out a cookie recipe I discovered on the bag of heath bar chips leftover at the back of the closet from Christmas - Peanut Butter Cookies with Heath Bits. They came out nice and chewy, and I'm sure would be good with chocolate chips instead of heath, too.

Sweet-Sour Tofu & Vegetables

This is from a recipe in Mollie Katzen's UN-revised Enchanted Broccoli Forest from 1982 - in the newer version (2000), she redid this recipe to have a sweet sour sauce with more traditional orange juice & pineapple, instead of the soy sauce, honey, ginger, lemon juice and tomato paste combo of the original. She also now recommends par-boiling the tofu, to help it keep its shape without adding fat & calories - this technique works nicely, but a little bit of browning in oil adds an undeniable level of flavor to the 'fu! (along with the fat & calories)

I was too lazy to do either last night, and I also made this to use up the veggies I had, which turned into an exercise in creative compost bucket stuffing.

Sweet-sour tofu with spinach, green pepper, and cashews

Put a cup rice in a pot with 2 cups of cold water and bring to a boil over high heat, uncovered. When the rice boils, salt it, cover, and turn the heat as low as possible - you'll have rice in about 15 minutes.

For sauce, combine:
1/4 cup lemon or lime juice
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 TBLS finely grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup tomato paste
3 - 4 cloves of garlic, crushed or put through a press
5 TBLS water

Cut the tofu into 1-inch cubes. Dump it directly into the sauce if you are feeling lazy; saute it in a little oil, or, alternatively, put it in a saucepan with water to cover, bring to a boil, and boil for about 10 minutes, before draining well, and dumping into the sauce. (This Mollie Katzen technique gets the water out of the tofu and makes it at once firmer and more absorbent)

Add about 1 TBLS oil to a large skillet or wok. Add 1/2 an onion and half a green pepper, both cut into thin strips, salt & pepper, and start stir-frying. Add 3 - 4 cups more cut vegetables; I used 3 peeled and slice broccoli stems and the few florets that were not yellow, 2 leafs of kale, and about half of a bunch of cleaned, stemmed spinach, and continue to stirfry, until the vegetables are starting to brown. Add the sauce and continue to cook for about 10 more minutes, adding several large handfuls of toasted salted cashews at the last minute.

Serve ladled over the rice - I did not marinate the tofu, or fry nor par-boil it, and the mix tasted much better lukewarm when I was putting it away, after all the ingredients had had some time to make friends with the sauce - probably it'll be good for microwaved lunches, too.

Kids who eat

As sometimes happens - wish it happened more often, used to happen more often before Al graduated high school, and I became a true empty nester - I took the "if you build it they will come" approach to food preparation last night, and sure enough, Al and two of his friends showed up to eat chicken tacos and mac & cheese. They even made a dent in the chocolate cake, itself made to use up leftover creamy white icing.


Chicken taco meat
Lay skinless boneless chicken thighs in a baking pan (preferably metal; so that it can go on a stove burner later, and squeeze lime juice over them - not much; about 1 small lime per 8 thighs - then rub in some sugar, Ancho chile powder, and salt & pepper. Broil until they get a little color, then cover the pan with foil, switch the oven to bake at about 375 degrees, and cook for about 15 minutes, until no longer pink in the middle. Cool until you can handle them, and slice crosswise into 1-inch strips. Place the baking pan on a burner (or two) and reduce the juices until slightly thickened, and then pour over the meat. Serve with flour tortillas, hot sauce, and grated cheddar. Pico de gallo would be nice, too.

Ice and snow

I'm sitting at the computer listening to gobs of ice fall off the roof. It's nice and sunny out, 25 degrees and fair, and I have been thinking about going for a walk, but I am still feeling not quite up to par. I want to plan spring menus, shake off the winter doldrums, and cook lots of food for my kids, but in reality, Al's in Madison, but off at a movie, Mark & Ethan are running errands, and John is in Milwaukee, not scheduled to be back here until next weekend - in other words, even if I want to cook, not many eaters around. And I think John's not-girlfriend, who had gone home to Iowa, has finally got back to Milwaukee, because he hasn't been calling me so much since Wednesday.

I'd like to make a stirfry, with a sweet sour sauce from Mollie Katzen, and cashews; and mac & cheese, but Mark seems to want to go to a movie, and I'd sort of like to go the Steven Sondheim's Follies, at the Union Theater tonight.

So mostly I'm trying to make the most of my Saturday, and trying to figure out how.

After the flat last Friday, this Friday (yesterday) Al got the car stuck in the snow - about 3 blocks away, in front of my walking friend, Pat's, house - on a bad turn where people get stuck all the time. When Al called to tell me he was stuck, he only had to describe his position for about 10 seconds, and I knew exactly where he was. Brad, Pat's husband, and a passing runner helped, but even with 2 people digging and 3 people pushing, the front wheels of the front wheel drive car were stuck going down hill, so I had to call the auto club again for a tow. The big truck with the flashing lights turned out to be great dinner theater for Pat's and their visiting friends' kids - the only downside was that my stomach was still way too iffy for the cocktail or wine they offered while I waited. And I really didn't feel up to the salmon and green salad with beets and goat cheese either - not to mention the fact that I still have a gigantic bag of salad greens leftover from Monday's dinner, the majority of which is probably going to end up in the compost.

Here's snow pictures from last week's Saturday a.m. walk to the Willy St. Board retreat.

Too much to write about

I woke up half-sick on Sunday, and I'm only just starting to feel almost better - nasty symptoms, headache, vaguely queasy and not wanting food, but at the same getting that rumbly stomach that feels like it's going to eat itself if I don't, tired - the last two nights at about 10:15, I just had to immediately go to bed; do not pass go, do not read a book, just hit the pillow. I must be recovering - tonight after class, while I was waiting for the bus, a girl next to me opened her to-go cup of student union chili and it smelled good; a few hours earlier when I walked into the over the noon hour faculty meeting where someone was finishing off a salad with parmesan cheese, all I could do was remember how mom used to say it smelled like vomit, and try hard not to.

It was a bad sick, though, because I never really stopped doing anything - I had a dinner at the house on Monday, so I cooked all day Sunday, during the ice storm that deposited 3 inches of slush with 4? 5? 6? inches of snow on top - shoveled some of it, too, after a walk to the corner store for more flour.

During the day Monday, after shoveling that additional who knows how many inches of snow on top of the now-frozen slush, I worked at home, until the dinner. 10 people canceled and one got added, so all the food I had prepared for 23 was shared among only 14 ... It was nice to stay in, but I just did not feel that good - the high point was probably taking the two loaves of the Cook's Illustrated almost no knead bread out of the oven - they were perfect even though one of them was destined for the freezer. The low point was John calling saying he and the car'd just been in a little fender bender.

Tuesday I went out and voted for Obama. I guess I am still a little put off by the criticism that he's empty words, but I decided that I have been in way too many situations where someone in charge has carefully laid out all the cogent reasons why we can't do some very good idea - or at least why it will be so difficult - hell, I've been that person myself often enough. What's wrong with saying things that just make people feel good? Isn't that what a leader is supposed to do? He (or she) can hire others to get the hard things done. Worked for Regan didn't it?

I heard an NPR commentator, visiting British business scholar (I think, but I can't find it), talk about how you Americans are simply being unrealistic to expect to find a leader and a manager in a president, and that made sense -

Even the remnants of the Grateful Dead united for Obama (it was kind of like Phil Lesh & friends plus Bobby & Mickey) - on February 4th, they played a show at the Warfield in San Francisco, introduced by Barack himself [although I now understand that Obama was actually participating via videoconference, which explains how he could look out at a sea of Deadheads and say "young people like you" - he really wasn't looking out at all]. I have the show in my iPod now, thanks to the Internet Archive.

Gracie's cupcakes

I had a little job to make 2 dozen cupcakes for a three-year old's birthday. I used one of Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipes, but I didn't follow it precisely to the letter (and Rose is the queen of preciseness in her recipes). My theory was that if I used unbleached flour instead of the cake flour called for, the batter would be stiffer and result in perfectly domed cupcakes, instead of flat-top ones ... wrong. Rose has a special method for her cakes. Rather than creaming the butter and sugar - because it's difficult for the average cook to tell when the mixture is properly creamed - you mix the dry ingredients, then beat in softened butter and a small portion of the liquids, beat this to develop structure in the cake (gluten) and then add the rest of the liquids. I think what happened is that because my batter was thicker due to the unbleached flour, I did not beat it long enough to develop the gluten, so it didn't rise as high as it could have. Tasted good, though, and I am sure the kids were happy.

It was a busy week, compressed after our skiing mini-break, and I left work on the early side to be here at 4:30 because Gracie's mom was picking up the cupcakes. We were going out for dinner, pre-symphony, at Harvest, and had a 5:30 reservation, to make the symphony at 7:30.

Meanwhile, Al was driving to a retreat at the camp where he works, and got a flat tire - when Gracie's mom showed up, I had the cell phone in one hand and the land line in the other, talking to the auto club to get the tow truck to Al.

But all's well that ends well, I guess - at the restaurant, after we ordered our food, I went to the ladies, and called Al, the tire was all repaired and he was back on the road to Milwaukee.

I started with the Harvest signature martini - pear vodka, cardamom syrup & Cointreau, followed by a beet salad, made of beet cubes, hazelnuts and blue cheese. For my main meal, I had what they called Parisian gnocchi, the little dumplings were softer than the Italian kind, with butternut squash and mushrooms, cooked in ton of butter - the flavors were nice and distinct. The wines mostly came in half bottles; there were only a few kinds by the glass, and I was thinking about getting a glass of champagne, one of the whites by the glass - and I should have stuck with that thought. But the waitress brought the wine list back, and one of the half bottles was a Merryvale Merlot, which I have always liked - so I got it, even though it was just a little bit too much for me to drink at one sitting - I feel it today.

Skiing mini-break

We went up to da U.P. to ski - man, they have a lot of snow there.

We skied at a place called ABR, that is reputed to be some of the best XC skiing in the Midwest, and the rumour surely must be true - it was beautiful, the only problem was not enough time to ski a fraction of it.

We also got to check out two coffee bars, one apres ski, and the other avant de drive home - the before driving one was obviously the Christian coffee bar. Contemporary Christian music burbling along in the background, slogans everywhere, and 3 kids being home-schooled. It was nice and big, with plenty of tables to use your computer on the free WiFi. Oh, and they had this pale pink toilet paper that looked reddish when it got wet - unnerving ... We preferred the cluttered-with-magazines, wicker chairs and faux fiesta ware at the other place, without the big tables and the Christian overtones.

I tried to take pictures of the sunlight at the end of our ski day, with mixed success.



Today was one of those "aw, shit, why did I ever take 2 days off, I have too much to do" type back to work days, and tomorrow I am supposed to drive to Brookfield for a librarians' meeting, with 1 - 3 inches of snow in the forecast.

It's really cold here again

And we're heading off to ski, Up North, in Michigan, where it's even colder. But today is our travel day, so we'll only be sitting in the car for below zero, and dangerous windchills; tomorrow, our real day to ski, it's supposed to be 8 or 9 degrees above zero, balmy for XC skiing.

My brother's at a hand-made bike conference in Portland, lucky duck - it's 50 degrees and a little rainy there, perfect weather for the city biking with ample beer stops that he likes.

To fuel us for the drive, we just ate banana pancakes and bacon. I used a simple Marion Cunningham recipe: 1 cup butermilk, 1 egg, 1 TBLS sugar, 3/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. baking soda, 3 TBLS melted butter - they always tell you to have the buttermilk and egg room temp, but if they are a little cold, they make the melted butter get hard again (the technical term here is seizing), so there are little lumps of butter throughout the pancake, a good effect, I think - I usually put the liquids in the bowl first, then add the flour, and fianlly add the butter on top, to minimize the seizing.

And there's a Starbucks in Wausau now; just about half way there.

Yoga tea party

Rach and I did a gig at the supper club today - Yoga & tea party - an hour of yoga taught by Rach, followed by food prepared by me.

We had a small group, 3 students plus the two of us, but we both broke even for the food & instruction, and as we agreed, I got a free yoga class, and she got a free lunch.

I made real tea party food - sandwiches & scones. Curried egg salad on whole wheat, olive-pecan on rye rounds, and cucumber with watercress & parsley butter on little cocktail breads. In honor of the healthy theme of the event, I did not slather all the breads with butter as usual for tea sandwiches, and they still tasted good. Pumpkin scones, with dates. I also tried a recipe from Heidi of 101 Cookbooks, a filled scone that she calls a mega-scone, where, instead of making wedges, you just roll the scone dough into a rectangle, fill it, and flop the edges over, like folding a business letter. Then you can cut off as large or small a piece as you'd like to eat, which also seemed appropriate for the occasion (and there are less places for the filling to ooze out.) I followed Heidi's recipe pretty exactly, but could not bear to use 3 TBLS of baking powder - I only used 2 - and I used 2 cups unbleached white and 2 cups whole wheat flour, rather than all whole wheat. Oh, and I just remembered after looking at the picture - I used some canned almond filling from King Arthur Flour, Almond Schmear, as well as the raspberry jam.

Snow Day Vegan Ginger Cupcakes

We're having a snow day in Madison - the snow started last night, and some things canceled, but the really heaviest snow started this morning, and it's still coming down. We shoveled about 4 inches before work, and just did about another 8, or who knows, 'cuz it drifted, after dinner.

The Madison Schools are closed; they even closed the University, at 3:30 - and Mark just told me that there were places where the snow was up to his knees on his walk home.

I came home about 2:00, and shoulda done some paperwork-type stuff I have hanging around - I'm supposed to write up a meeting I attended, close to 3 weeks ago, and I also should finish my forms for foster parenting. But I talked to John and he & Megan were enjoying their snow day, watching the Office on DVD, lying in bed drinking coffee and eating Milk Duds, so that inspired me - I ate some chocolate, drank coffee and watched a movie on DVD, Zach Braff's Last Kiss. It was a little too much of a combo of silly and intense - lots of scenes of people having earnest relationship conversations, and the music's not as good as Garden State. It was filmed partly in Madison, there was a big wedding at a fancy house out in Maple Bluff (might've even been the Governor's Mansion) but once the fun of looking for Madison scenes wore off, and I couldn't recognize any of the extras, I bailed.

I tried out a recipe for vegan ginger cupcakes, as an experiment for the next one-dish dinner. I used my favorite Mollie Katzen gingerbread, left out the egg, and used soy yogurt instead of dairy yogurt called for in the original. Rach and I talked about doing a drizzled frosting on these, but they sank a bit in the middle, so I made a fluffy frosting with vegan margarine & shortening and lemon juice. As many times as I have made this gingerbread, it still surprises me - I think there are too many acidic variables with yogurt, molasses, and the baking soda - sometimes it is the most easy to work with batter, sometimes it explodes (or sticks, or sinks).

I think I'm glad the Giants won

I'm glad the Giants won the Super Bowl yesterday, and that the pundits called it such a stunning upset - it makes the Packers loss to them in the playoff hurt a little less.

I was really disappointed with the commercials - I only watched it for the ads (and Tom Petty) - and I guess I somehow thought they'd be a lot more compelling, instead of, just well, commercials. The careerbuilder.com were the best ones; the etrade eerily coherent baby buying stock and then puking was just creepy - but in looking at the MySpace collection, I guess there's a lot I missed - so perhaps I should reserve judgment until I go look at more of them.*

Petty was good - didn't know Mike Campbell has dreads now, and he must dye his beard, to eliminate the grey ... Good thing my bro didn't bet that Petty would play Refugee, amongst his other offbeat Super Bowl bets.

My brother didn't, but I did make special sandwiches, kind of combining 2 recipes, and editing another:

BBQ tofu po' boys with creamy coleslaw:

• 2 15 - 16 ounce packages of firm tofu (I like Bountiful Bean, made in WI)
• 6 TBLS oil (about)
  
• flour
  
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• 6 TBLS soy sauce (I like Kikkoman, also made here in WI)
• 1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
• 1 large chipotle chile in adobo (or more if you like heat; these also come in cans)
• 4 TBLS maple syrup
• 2 TBLS molasses
  
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 large onion, sliced (about 2 cups)
• 2 green peppers, sliced
  
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• soft french rolls
• mustard & cole slaw for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Squeeze some of the water out of the tofu, halve the block, and cut the halves into slices - you should get about 12 per block. Dredge the tofu in flour, and heat about 1 -2 TBLS of the oil in a large skillet, and fry the tofu in batches turning once until it is browned on both sides, adding more oil as necessary. Meanwhile, combine 2 TBLS of the oil, the rice vinegar, soy sauce, half the can of tomato sauce, chipotle chile, maple syrup, molasses and cumin in a blender jar, and whir until smooth. Pour enough of this sauce to cover the bottom of a 13 x 9 x 2 baking dish, and transfer the tofu into the dish as it's fried. When you get all the tofu into the dish, pour in the rest of the sauce from the blender.

After the tofu is fried, wipe out the skillet and add a little more oil, and then fry the onion and peppers until they are softened a bit. Add the thyme, oregano, red pepper flakes, chili powder, paprika and salt & pepper to taste. Continue to cook until well blended and a little caramelized, then add the rest of the can of tomato sauce, and mix well, scraping up any good stuff on the bottom of the pan. Pour the contents the skillet over the tofu in the baking dish, cover the baking dish with foil, and bake for about 1 hour, until all the sauce is absorbed and the peppers and onions are well-done.

Toast the buns lightly, spread with mustard if desired, make sandwiches with the tofu and vegetables, and serve with coleslaw.

For the coleslaw, I started with a Cooks Illustrated oil & vinegar coleslaw recipe, where you wilt 6 cups of shredded cabbage & grated carrot in a colander with 1/2 cup sugar and 2 teaspoons salt, with the recipe from the Helman's jar - after draining the cabbage, instead of adding oil & vinegar, I added 1/4 cup mayo, and juice of one lemon (and a few dashes of rice vinegar, to cut the sweetness - next time I make this I will reduce the sugar).

The sandwiches had that great gooey greasey BBQ feel, even with no meat.

I just looked at the classic coke one, with James McCarville and Bill Frist - I think that's my new fave, although the screaming squirrel & screaming Richard Simmons for Brigestone are pretty good too - Mark was trying too tell me about one of the careerbuilder.com ones that I did not see during Bridgestone, so all I saw was Alice Cooper & Richard by the side of a dark country road, and I didn't get it all.

GrillN4Peace

Well, that was goofy, and fun -

A couple of years ago, a guy named Tom Barry (with help from a lot of people including my good friend Chris Quandt) made a peace sign out of leftover Christmas trees, on frozen Lake Mendota, the bigger of the two lakes in Madison WI. ('course, typical for Madison, there was a contingent of folks who regarded all those trees on the lake as nitrogen pollution, and others more right-minded, who regarded all of it as whiney lefties ...)

This year, the same guy decided to get people together to make a peace sign out of (lighted) Weber grills. A grill-in for Peace. So there were about 100 people and 40 some odd grills out on the ice on another smaller lake (Lake Wingra) for about 3 hours this morning. We got all the grills out there, got them all lit, then got all the people and excess claptrap off the ice, so that the photographer up in a cherry-picker could take a shot. Then we all went back on the ice and grilled - I made flat bread with cardamon and salt. The thing was also a benefit for the homeless, so there were kids going around with foil pans for any extra donated food - there is a meal for the hungry every Sunday; Savory Sunday.

Then there was supposed to be another shot, the money shot, with all of us manning our grills, with food on them, giving the peace sign. I slipped the photographer some warm bread so surely that improved his chances of taking a good picture. But, after all my bread was gone, I decided to start walking home - it was snowing pretty hard - so I think I missed the money shot - I heard everyone whooping it up when I was climbing up the one giant hill, one of the only hills in Madison, on the way home.

Click this picture for the link to a bunch more.

Swingers

A long time ago (like 25 years) I used to go out a lot, see lots of music, spend a lot of time in bars. Last spring, I was talking to John on the phone and he was appalled because, he, at 20, was home doing nothing on a Friday evening. I guess I was like that.

Savarin, 1977. Lithograph, 45 x 35 inches. Co-copyright Jasper Johns and Universal Limited Art Editions, 1977. Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Last night, a Friday evening, we went to an opening at the local art museum - a really nice show, Jasper John's Prints, organized here, with no travel plans at the moment, unfortunately.

We saw a lot of people we knew, mostly other nice middle-aged couples. we talked about our kids in college. One family has a son in Egypt, with no Internet; a cable is broken under the Mediterranean - I heard on the NPR news this morning that repair is underway.

I know some people who work at the museum; an exhibits preparer who was wandering through the opening, camera in hand, supposed to take pictures of the crowd, a job he hates; and the Director of Public Information, who arrived as we were leaving, with her husband, an artist and art teacher that I know quite well - we were both members of a silkscreening collective for awhile. We had a nice conversation, but awkwardly situated in the doorway.

We came home and watched the Painted Veil on DVD, it was beautiful but sad - in it an elderly nun describes her love of God as an old couple, their ardor long gone, sitting on the sofa - I felt like that.

Or maybe I just mostly felt like an ass - I didn't even have anything to drink, but I still tried to introduce the exhibits preparer to Mark, using the wrong first name ...