Living Small

Family Tree

I think one of the reasons I enjoy studying demography is because mathematical models of population simplify what is inevitably complex in the real world. But when you look closely at the data, the simplifying assumptions can't help but unravel. For example, how do you interpret answers to the question "how many siblings do you have?" depending on the definition of sibling, I might have none or any number between two and seven (but definitely not one). Today I read an article addressing precisely this topic. The author asks, "should a stepfather's nonresident minor children be regarded as stepsiblings? How about the adult children of a mother's new husband?" For me, it gets even more complicated. Do I count the adult son of my ex-stepfather? Or the ex-stepdaughter of my mom's co-resident boyfriend? How anyone believes survey results is way beyond me!

Weekend Belly Report

Over the weekend, I put quite a few awesome things into my belly.  It all began on Friday night, with a Kobe burger, grilled octopus, and a drambuie-spiked affogato at Cafe Zola.  The weekend continued with carrot cake for breakfast on Saturday, a juicy-ripe Minneola for dessert that night, tons of homemade bread, and Savoy Cabbage Gratin from Orangette last night. The height of it all, though, was a carrot halwa I made last night.  My first attempt at this dish occurred a week ago.  David had brought home an Indian cookbook from work and asked me to make something from it when we had some friends over for dinner.  I had already planned out the main part of the meal, so I flipped to the dessert section of the cookbook and picked out the carrot halwa, something I had never had before, but that sounded quite good.  And it was.  Then last week, for one of his department's evening activities, David ordered some food, including carrot halwa, from a local Indian restaurant.  After tasting that one, I got some ideas for altering the recipe I had, and tried it out last night.  It was so fabulous that I've just got to share my new recipe with you:

Carrot Halwa
3 to 4 tablespoons butter (I never measure butter, but just eyeball knowing that 4 tablespoons is half a stick)
5 cups shredded carrot (about 2.5 lb -- do this in a food processor or with a cheese grater)
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder

Melt butter in a medium-sized heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Add carrots and raisins and stir for a couple of minutes until coated in butter.  Pour in heavy cream, bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low.  Simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the cream has been reduced by half.  Uncover, add honey and cardamom, return to a boil, then reduce heat again.  Cook on low, uncovered this time, for another hour or so, until the liquid has evaporated and the carrot and (now-plump) raisins are sliding around in the butter.  Serve warm like a pudding (though it should be much drier and more solid than pudding consistency), or cool and shape into balls or squares.  This is great on its own, but extra good with a dollop of Greek yogurt.  Refrigerate leftovers.

It is a bit time-consuming, but if your pot is heavy enough and you keep the heat low, you can walk away from it for a half hour or so at a time without hurting anything.  Enjoy!

Valentine's Day

David and I don't get much into Valentine's Day.  The first few years we dated there were the obligatory cards, and David always had a dozen roses delivered to me at work.  But something always felt rather forced about the holiday, and we resented the pressure to be romantic just because it was February 14.  So when a friend of ours invited us to her neighbor's anti-Valentine's Day party back in 2005, we went and had a great time.  We have since become friends with that neighbor and some of his friends, and attended several other parties, including another anti-V-Day party last night.  I somehow missed the "don't wear pink" memo, and was the only woman there in the forbidden color:

but David assured me that it appeared ironic under the black lace shirt.  I also had the best socks in the whole place:

The party was a lot of fun and we met several people celebrating the day in style, including a man who had just had a marriage proposal turned down and a funeral director in a tight black dress.  I got to catch up with a former coworker and meet a lot of interesting people with fascinating jobs like diesel engineers, Mercedes mechanics, archaeologists, and cognitive psychologists.  The one who really knocked my socks off, though, was the woman who studies the Martian atmosphere and her classmate who studies the solar atmosphere.  In the History Department, we were all expected to actually do research in the places we studied, but when you seriously study Mars, how do you go and do research there? 

Our Song

I haven't blogged much about my ongoing computer troubles, but let's just say that when my computer and I fell ill at the same time, I recovered much more quickly.  It turned out that in addition to having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad virus (in contrast to the just sorta not nice kind), the hard drive was totally shot.  Whatever that means.  So $93 later, I had a new hard drive with absolutely nothing on it.  Fortunately, David remembered where I had stashed the operating system and software reinstallation disks all those years ago, and an hour after getting it home, I had Windows XP again.  But no internet -- the computer just couldn't seem to recognize the wi-fi modem.  After verifying that the wi-fi hardware had not been removed in the repair process, I found the disk with the driver software and reinstalled it and was once again an internet pirate.  All I really wanted to do was download iTunes so that I could back up my iPhone and subscribe to some podcasts, but I had just installed the 2002 version of Windows XP and the iPhone wasn't invented until 2007, so I had some updating to do first.  For some reason, Microsoft seems to think that the average user is not quite bright enough to install their own updates, and AutoUpdate just wasn't getting the job done -- I think it was overwhelmed.  So I downloaded Service Pack 2 "for IT professionals" and, after a nigh sleepless night, got it installed.  Anyway, to keep an already much too long story from getting really out of control, I'll skip to the part where I was finally able to install iTunes last night around midnight, just before falling into bed.

When I woke up this morning, I found a Valentine's Day present from David -- he had ripped three CDs to my iTunes: two of my Massive Attack albums and one of his John Mellencamp albums.  Why he had included that one totally escaped me, but when I asked he replied that he wanted me to have the Small Town song.  Now David and I have never had a "song" -- the night we got engaged, the dj at the bar played Ring of Fire because we didn't know what else to ask for.  Not that it isn't a great song, just maybe not the most appropriate one for the situation.  But after I listened to Small Town, I realized that if we did have a song, that would probably be it:

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity

Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic thats me

But I've seen it all in a small town
Had myself a ball in a small town
Married an LA doll and brought her to this small town
Now she's small town just like me

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be

Got nothing against a big town
Still hayseed enough to say
Look who's in the big town
But my bed is in a small town
Oh, and thats good enough for me

Well I was born in a small town
And I can breathe in a small town
Gonna die in this small town
And that's probably where they'll bury me

Breakfast for Dinner

On Wednesday nights, David's dad drives into town after work and takes us out to a fancy local wine bar that has an awesome happy hour ($2 mussels) and some pretty good fluffy soft white bread.  This isn't the best bread in the world -- it clearly lacks the most important ingredient in bread-making, which is time, but makes up for the lack of time with yeast and fat, and as a result is dense yet soft and not very crusty.  Nonetheless, it's good for what it is.  We usually eat the bread along with our mussels, slathering it with butter, and dipping it in the mussel broth.  Occasionally, though, there are a few slices left when we get ready to leave, and a few weeks ago I swallowed my shyness and asked the bartender if we could take them home.  Now I'll take it home anytime there are at least two slices left over because I have found that, much like challah, it makes excellent French toast.  French toast is a bit much for breakfast or lunch, though, especially on weekends, when David doesn't eat breakfast or lunch at all, so I have begun making it for dinner when we are able to snag some bread, usually alongside an egg dish (last night I made piperade, which was awesome).  On these occasions, I tell David we are having breakfast for dinner.  Having never before heard the term, David was a bit skeptical the first time, but my French toast quickly won him over.  So the other night, when I asked the bartender to bag up the bread for us, I mentioned that we would be having breakfast for dinner the next evening.  Both the bartender and David's brother responded, "I love breakfast for dinner!"  David was flabbergasted -- who would have thought that not only do so many people enjoy eating breakfast foods at night, but we all refer to it in the same way!

New Photo

For a while now, I've been thinking that I needed to change the photo on my blog because it just doesn't look like me anymore.  That picture was taken nearly two years ago and, in the meanwhile, I have gained about fifteen pounds, grown my hair, and started wearing contacts a lot more often.  Problem was, though, that I just didn't have a new picture that I liked very well.  I rarely get the camera out, and when I take pictures with my new iPhone, well, I'm the one taking them.  So I reverted back to this photo from the summer of 2002.  It is also my Facebook and Twitter photo, so at least I'm keeping it all consistent.  Also, even though this photo is much older than the other one, it resembles me a lot more now.  The "new" picture was taken the first time that David and I visited my dad, stepmother, and little sisters in Pittsburgh together.  David and I had been dating less than a year at that point and had just decided to move in together.  Unfortunately, when we arrived, my stepmother greeted him with, "You must be Mark!"  My dad nervously (and perhaps a bit too defensively) reassured David that there was no Mark and had never been a Mark, and we all laughed with embarrassment. 

Recycling News

It appears that last week my office building ranked near the top in the University's recycling competition.  This week, however, we seem to have fallen several places.  I can't take much credit for either, unfortunately, as I rarely find myself with recyclable objects at work.  My only real contributions to recycling efforts around here occur when I accidentally print out the wrong articles and stuff the entire stack of paper into the paper-recycling canister before anyone notices how long I've been standing at the printer!

Facebook Will Be My Undoing

I have pretty much gotten into the habit of sending a friend request to everyone I come across on Facebook whom I either known or have known in real life.  So when I got an email saying that one of my Facebook friends recommended a friend for me, and it turned out to be someone with whom I did, in fact, remember having attended high school, I sent her a friend request.  The next day I received a message from her asking, "do we know each other?"  Um, yeah, we were in the same class in high school.  Well, I happen to have gone to a rather large high school and this person and her husband (who also went to our high school but was a few years ahead) have now become rather famous (as I learned from googling her AFTER this exchange), so she probably gets all kinds of friend requests from people she doesn't know in the slightest.  I am now totally embarrassed, but I guess that's what I get for having grown up in Santa Monica!

Recalling

Readers who know me in real life have probably seen me eating my favorite brand of candy bars, Lärabar (http://www.larabar.com/). What I love about Lärabars is that they are made only from dried fruits, nuts, and spices. They are raw, unprocessed, and unsweetened. And they taste like candy. I eat them pretty frequently and have turned a lot of people on to them. When I first heard about the peanut-related salmonella outbreak, I thought I was fine. I do eat peanut butter nearly every day, but only the all-natural kind from the co-op. And given the way that Lärabars are marketed as being pure and wholesome, it never occurred to me that anything sinister might be lurking in my candy. The other day, however, a friend told me that she has been eating Medjool dates dipped in peanut butter because she hasn't been able to get her peanut-butter-cookie Lärabar fix. Sure enough, when I checked on the website, I found that this flavor (arguably one of Lärabar's best), was indeed made with tainted peanuts. My friend is keeping abreast of the situation and will inform me when the PB cookie flavor returns to stores. In the meantime, although I do very much enjoy a plump Medjool date dipped in creamy peanut butter, they aren't nearly as portable as a candy bar, so I suppose I will just have to satisfy myself with the cashew cookie and pecan pie flavors. After all, tree nuts were never recalled.

Yeastie Boy

The summer that I was nineteen, I baked bread nearly every day.  The obsession began during Passover that year.  As you know, when you aren't supposed to eat something, it is very hard to stop thinking about it.  I spent the entire week dreaming of fluffy loaves of bread and, when the holiday ended, the bread in the dining hall just couldn't satisfy the craving.  So when I got home for the summer, I checked Bernard Clayton out of the library, purchased pounds of flour and packets of yeast, and got to work.  Nearly every morning, I would wake up, mix and knead some dough, set it to rise, punch it down, let it rise again, shape it, proof it, stick it in the oven, and get it out just in time to drive off to my job at Starbucks, where I would fantasize about baking as I pulled espresso shots (actually, they usually had me on register rather than pulling shots, but the former image seems more romantic).  I made all kinds of breads, from sandwich loaves, to challahs, to gooey cheese breads, crusty French breads, and puffy sourdoughs.  The one thing I never made, though, was a good whole wheat bread.  I tried but, for the life of me, just couldn't get it to rise properly.  I remember once stuffing two pounds of dough down the garbage disposal because two hours after kneading, it hadn't risen at all.

Fast forward nearly ten years, through my dark no-bread phase, to this past month, when I have been eating more and more bread.  Enough bread, in fact, that between David and myself, we are easily going through a loaf in less than a week.  And at $6 a loaf at Zingerman's, well, you get the idea.  So I decided to revisit my old avocation and see if I could put together a good bread.  All I had in my cupboard was whole-wheat pastry flour, which wouldn't do at all.  Pastry flour is low in gluten (wheat protein), which is the element that allows bread to rise.  So I went to the co-op, picked up a lovely bag of organic whole wheat flour (which for some reason was less than $1 a pound), and threw in a box of vital wheat gluten for a bit of insurance.  Then I got it home and had to figure out what to do with it.

Obviously, I know how to bake bread.  But I also knew that I wasn't about to do it the way I had always done.  To begin with, I just don't have it in me anymore to clean up the flour that inevitably flies to the floor during the kneading process.  Also, I now work during the day (rather than from 5pm to 1am), so I can't sit around waiting for it to rise so I can punch it down at just the right moment.  I needed a new technique, and I managed to get my hands on a brand-new copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  The basic principles are that if you make a wetter than usual dough, it will rise without having to be kneaded, and that it will stay fresh in the fridge so that you can make the dough once every two weeks (this part takes about 15 minutes, and then it rises for however long you feel like leaving it) and then you can have a fresh loaf of bread in about an hour with only five minutes of active time to shape the loaf. The catch, though, is that the recipes are mainly written for white flour and I had only whole wheat.  Yes, I could have gone back to the co-op to buy white flour (they do, in fact, sell it there), but I prefer whole-wheat and was ready for a challenge.

Using whole-wheat flour, I knew I was going to have to use less flour and add some gluten, and I also threw in some extra yeast for good measure.  I also doubted that the no-knead technique would work with 100% whole wheat, so I mixed it in the food processor just to get a bit of extra agitation.  Here it is right after mixing:

 

After hanging out near the heating vent for about three hours, it looked like this:

At this point, I introduced David to our new pet, Yeastie Boy, and put him to bed in the fridge (Yeastie Boy, not David!).  In the morning, I cut off a quarter of his bulk, and shaped him into a boule:

 

An hour later, he was slashed and ready to bake:

 

After twenty-five minutes in the oven:

 

This was a very small loaf, but it made a good breakfast:

(that would be Greek yogurt and stewed prunes alongside my bread).  The rest of the dough made a nice dinner:

 

and a couple of loaves of ciabatta: