kitchen gadgets for secret agents

A Christmas List for George Smiley: 5 Food Gadgets for Secret Agents is a post about secret agents and the neighbors who suspect them and want to give them kitchen gadgets for Christmas. I'm considering adapting it into a full-length how-to on shopping for secret agents.

                                via createityourway, etsy

you know what sucks about a tower of gifts?

that it's not a cheeseburger.

Dear Reader,

MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

via Gift Couture:

Gift Couture is a start-up creative and innovative wrapping paper company that offers high-quality wrapping paper sets. We will produce unique papers that coordinate together into conceptualized themes and sets. This is exemplified in the Cheeseburger set that we chose to use as the initial project. This includes 5 different wrapping paper designs; a bun, hamburger, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes, all of the components of a Cheeseburger! Right now we are working to get pre-order funding to get the project off the ground. This will also encourage and enable us to release additional coordinated sets, which will be available online and through retail partners.

salted caramel frozen custard

This recipe from an old issue of Gourmet, courtesy Epicurious.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
2 1/4 cups heavy cream, divided
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
3 large eggs

Heat 1 cup sugar in a dry 10-inch heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring with a fork to heat sugar evenly, until it starts to melt, then stop stirring and cook, swirling skillet occasionally so sugar melts evenly, until it is dark amber. 

Add 1 1/4 cups cream and cook, stirring, until all of caramel has dissolved. (Ed note: If this step is not scary, and your mixture doesn't bubble up into something monstrous and horrible, you've done it wrong. Go back and try again.) Transfer to a bowl and stir in sea salt and vanilla. Cool to room temperature. 

Meanwhile, bring milk, remaining cup cream, and remaining 1/4 cup sugar just to a boil in a small heavy saucepan, stirring occasionally. 

Lightly whisk eggs in a medium bowl, then add half of hot milk mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly. Pour back into saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until custard coats back of spoon. DO NOT LET BOIL!

Pour custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl, then stir in cooled caramel. 

Chill custard, stirring occasionally, until very cold, 3 to 6 hours. 

Freeze custard in ice cream maker (it will still be quite soft), then transfer to an airtight container and put in freezer to firm up.

NOTES: The recipe really captures the caramel flavor, the texture too -- velvety -- the salt not so much. Next time try a different kind of salt maybe? Or more of it? And maybe add some on top, right at the end. Lots of salt options.

The other problem is... I don't quite know how to put it. Temperature? It didn't feel cold to the taste. Again, maybe it was the salt maybe the number of eggs, but it was cool, not cold.

Amanda the baker, now in blog form!

Amanda, the wise and lovely, has started her own blog. The aptly titled amanda the baker has a charming voice like the lady herself. An occasional depository for her thoughts on eating and buying locally, the baker's greatest strengths lie in saucy musings on niche topics like making your own wedding cake, and what's a girl to do with leftover croissant dough. Her apple tasting notes are sweet too. 

I hope the stream of traffic this post is sure to direct to her blog convinces her that the people want what she's got. Amanda the baker, America wants more posts!

mint chip ice cream

I've been doing this thing where I eat food when it's hot instead of taking pictures of it. It's incredible. But selfish. So I apologize that there aren't pictures of my first ever POT ROAST(!), nor the sandwiches we made with it, topped with just enough horseradish sauce to ignite a flash fire at the top of your sinus--spectacularly delicious. I'll post the recipe soon.

I do, however, have photos of this mint chip ice cream I made for our housewarming party last week, which is why it looks a bit icy. It's still super delicious though, and if you want to avoid that iciness you can add a couple egg yolks to the mix. Eggs add richness, but also egginess. And even though the Salmonella in uncooked eggs is relatively small, it's life-threatening to infants and pregos and I don't want that on my conscience. I generally try to go it without the eggs.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
a handful of fresh mint leaves
3/4 cups sugar
dash of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 oz dark chocolate bar

RECIPE:
Combine milk, cream and mint leaves in a heavy medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Heat until little bubbles form around the edges. DO NOT BOIL!

Remove from heat, cover and let steep for ten minutes.

Uncover and pour through a colander into a medium bowl to strain the mint leaves from the milk. Toss the leaves.

Combine sugar and salt in a new bowl. Whisk milk mixture into the sugar, just a bit at a time.

Pour back into the pan and cook over medium-low heat for two minutes, stirring constantly.

Pour mixture into a bowl. Stir in vanilla extract.

Transfer bowl into the refrigerator to allow mixture to cool completely.

While mixture is cooling, shave your chocolate with a vegetable peeler. It should give you pretty little chocolate ribbons. If your vegetable peeler sucks, as they so often do, just use a sharp knife to chop tiny uneven pieces. If the pieces are too large they'll feel like weird sharp plastic.  
Pour mixture into ice cream maker.

Stir chocolate shavings into ice cream before transferring into the freezer to firm.

Otherwise known by the title, "Feminism's pretty sweet," here is Oreo Cameos by Judith Klausner: Cookie Art with a Message

I couldn't really find the right category for Back to the Roots so tagged it under culinary ephemera, but that doesn't give the company the credit it deserves. You can read the post if you want to know more, or watch the time lapse. In either case, you can count on receiving a kit for your next birthday/gift-giving holiday. You can count on that.

kosher ink

I originally titled the post Chozen Kosher Ice Cream Takes the Babka. But Chozen Kosher Ice Cream: Babka, Rugelach Flavors + No Conversion Required is good too.

WE FOUND A PLACE!

Lease signed, deposit paid. We move October 1st.

Here's one from before I started living out of boxes. Spread on Melrose: Is it a Sex Food Shop? is an attempt, of sorts, at hard core investigative journalism.

Photos of new digs and new projects coming soon.

Sorry pretties. We're still looking for a place to live.

There's so much to show and tell, but it'll have to wait. I'm happy you stopped by though. And I look forward to catching up.

Love,
Emma

P.S. Please tell your friends with good credit not to move to Los Angeles. They're making it very difficult for me to find an apartment.

canned food

I just saw Contagion and now it seems nothing is certain. Except my love for Matt Damon. Also John Hawkes and Kate Winslet. And that I need to stockpile canned food.

corkbar: wine bar for neophytes

It's been hard to type with my fingers triple-crossed, but I think I've finally found a new home. I don't want to jinx it, so I won't say more than that. Only now I feel comfortable taking some time away from house hunting and money making to sit down and put in some table time. So here we go.

I got a hold of a beer once when I was very little. I don't remember drinking more than a couple sips of it--nor do I remember trying to eat part of a raw steak afterward, though I've been told that I did that--but I do remember slamming my hand in the door of our red Subaru station wagon, and I remember it was horrible.

I like to think of this story as a fun explanation for why I never felt possessed to drink. I didn't start drinking until after I turned 21. And I still don't really drink-drink. But the truth is that I was probably scared straight by a video I watched in the D.A.R.E. program in 5th grade. (You may have seen it too: it's the one with the anthropomorphic bee and rabbit. It's terrifying.) As a result, wine is one particularly cavernous gap in my food culture knowledge.

Now to last week: Aaron and I were invited to sample the summer menu at a wine bar downtown. These things are a bit funny for us because we're always slightly convinced that there's been some kind of mistake. Any minute someone will announce that we were accidentally invited to sit at the grown ups table, and that we should go back to our rooms where we'll be served shells with ragu.

Of course, that didn't happen. And as we sat at the table at Corkbar, looking over the menu with two of the sweetest PR girls, I realized that it is the perfect wine bar for a horticultural neophyte like me. Corkbar's wine menu is meticulous and comprehensible. The list includes notes about flavor and pairing for each wine on the menu, all of which are made in California.

The food menu offered wine notes as well. And everything we ate was delicious. There isn't much to say because the bar seems to specialize in comfortable simplicity. They have taken the impenetrably high culture concept of a wine bar, stripped it of pretense, and given it air and light.

I will say, however, that it does not get better than their bahn mi sliders. Ground pork, ginger, cilantro, garlic, and carrot, with cool daikon that tempers the hot bursts of sriracha for the most pleasant kind of heat I've had served between two mini challah buns.

Corkbar: 403 W. 12th Street, Los Angeles. (213)746-0050

it's a bicycle wine rack, you hipster

Whaaat? More Squid Ink? Yes. Eat it up.

Food Gadgets for Hipsters: The Bicycle Wine Rack

wild goodness + food party + little trees

Updates! I'm looking for a new apartment in an exciting neighborhood. Rededicating myself to Squid Ink and taking on new responsibilities at the Academy. Is it too early to say the bounce is back?

Food Party Hostess Thu Tran at Everything Is Festival Tomorrow

Wild Goodness Food X Film Series: Chicken Screen Tests + Scorsese Meatballs

And this one. To which I contributed a sweet little nugget of my origins story:

Squid Ink Food Writers' Most Reviled Childhood Dinners

Western Spaghetti

I'm embarrassed. This video made the internet rounds two years ago and yet I saw it for the first time this weekend. I'm sharing it here because it's wonderful and because I'm sure that somewhere there exists another person who has not seen it. I refuse to believe I'm the only person who doesn't troll the youtubes.

Cakes for my Betty Draper New England fantasy life

In my younger years I often wished that I had grown up on the east coast.  Somewhere in New England, my hair would be longer and thicker and my bangs more blunt.  I'd take tennis lessons of course, and crew.   Competitors would fear my level head and quiet power; my coach would have been an alternate for the '84 Olympic team in both sports.  My friends, Madison (Maddie), Bernice (Bertie), and Caroline would always dress in whites or pastels, which would never get dirty, even when picking berries.  On weekends, we'd head for the cape. 

At 25, I'm super proud to be a Californian.  I love soccer and brown skin and garlic.  If I were to get a tattoo, I'd get a California silhouette somewhere on my inner arm so that when I shook someone's hand he'd know what's up.  I still love the fantasy of New England mothers ironing white linen tablecloths, planning theme parties and icing cakes.  And this is why I'm thankful for the internet, and JCrew.

Both cakes via Poppytalk.  Top, inspired by Stella McCartney's spring collection, Apollina created Stella Cake (a Citrus Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Orange Lemon Icing).  Bottom, a DIY tutorial from Strawberry Chic shows how to make frosting roses.

petite douche avec ton pilsner

I once had a boyfriend who told me that bar soap was unsanitary. But he was an extremist. We disagreed about a lot of things.

Read Lather with Lager: Give Him Beer Soap for Father's Day, my new post about soap made from beer on Squid Ink.

The one where Aaron gets a title and is quoted

Followers of Live and Active Cultures have gotten pretty accustomed to Emma's colossal presence on the LA blogosphere as one of Squid Ink's finest, but this time, it's yours truly who's making his own tiny-but-mighty foray into internet stardom. Yup, I just got one of my photos featured in LA Times' food and culture mag, Brand X, in an article about non-alcoholic summer drinks. The cafe where I work, Espresso Cielo, was featured because we serve some of the best iced coffee around and happen to use one of the coolest-looking ways to make it, Kyoto-style cold brew drip tower. Anyway, Brand X emailed the shop and asked us for pictures of it, which is, naturally, where I came in. And to boot, the piece also included a little something I said about what coffees make good cold brew coffee.

If there's one thing I've learned working in coffee, it's that coffee people are obsessed with two things: great tasting coffee (duh) and gadgets they use to make it. For me, the Kyoto process is both of these things, the perfect marriage of amazing taste and crazy-awesome-doohickeydom. Room temperature water drips through coarse coffee grounds over about ten hours. Every coffee, of course, tastes different, but the process tends to yield a really smooth, sweet, and bright cup. The best ones taste almost like fruit teas or pure cocoa. Plus, since there's no heat or pressure to break down caffeine molecules, it's a real kick in the pants. Really, it's the perfect drink for those long summer days of grab-ass at the beach. 

Also: weird to be referred to as "Barista Aaron Stein-Chester." Like, who is that guy?

cookieboy

Some hope to see their name in lights. I'd be happy with my face on a cookie.

These by Japanese textile designer turned baker, cookieboy.  Are they Conan O'Brian and Jay Leno? His work is usually less mysterious--birds and cameras and feathers and things--but his blog is in Japanese so we may never know.

photographic dinner at Akasha

Quinoa with asparagus, snap peas, corn, and tamari grilled tofu $12.  Don't judge me.


THE AKASHA crop organic cucumber vodka, pineapple & cucumber juice, martini style $11

I'm a grownup

I drink coffee now. Like, twice a month maybe. It's no big deal, I'm a grownup.

This is my drink: the Cubano at Coffee Commissary on Fairfax--cinnamon, raw sugar, espresso and milk. Sometimes I add a Splenda.

I get coffee at 7 pm before the longer double features and four hour foreigns. Then I haul ass down the street to our favorite revival cinematheque and I talk very fast about my ailments and which girls at work I don't like and literature and I feel that I am just like Woody Allen. The unmarked paper cup looks very sophisticated in my hand. (A haiku!) I wonder if people think I'm European.

the one where i compare the flaming lips to a boob job

"The Flaming Lips Releases New Music in Life-Size Gummy Skulls, Teases Gummy Wayne Coyne Statue," is blowin up. Posted Wednesday morning and already it has 94 facebook "likes"!! Whatever that actually signifies, and I doubt it signifies very much, at least there's a lot of reposting, which boosts our Google score and keeps the editors happy. I wonder though if it's my post they're liking, or just The Flaming Lips. Like a girl who got a boob job and suddenly became interesting to talk to, but with the form and content swapped. Should I be worried that people aren't interested in my posts for their ideas, but for their magnificently enormous chichis? That is to say, their flaming lips?

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm killin it.

jk I really don't know.

Matzoh Brei

Topped with bananas, yogurt, a few drops of maple syrup, and cardamom. French Toast a la juif, let's say.

business card, draft 1

Remember these? I never had them printed. Turns out I suck at Illustrator. Instead, I made it into a stamp. I carved the design into a linoleum block using a Speedball Linoleum Cutter and printed with Speedball ink.


The screenprinting ink left a nice texture on the card stock, but was ultimately too unpredictable to be time or cost effective. There was always too much or too little ink on the stamp to give the utensils a clear edge. The uneven surface of the card stock didn't help either. They were just a bad match. For every five cards I made I ended up with only one usable for professional purposes. I like them looking crafty, but you still need to be able to make our the shapes.

I'll use high end stamp pads for my next trial. I imagine they'll give a cleaner, more even and consistent silhouette. Fingers crossed!

alice waters on fishsticks paltrow

photographic lunch at little doms

grilled chicken paillard, with arugula, grilled mushrooms, balsamic vinegar and olive oil


wood grilled hamburger with burratta, roasted tomato mostarda and speck, and fried potatoes

We've had a great day.

the best laid plans

Hey, I write about food for the LA Weekly and I'm interested in doing a short piece on The Sandwitches before their show at The Echo.

Nothing that would require a formal sit down, just a quick phone interview about Mrs. Jones' Cookies, Ambient Sad Cake, who can eat the most sandwiches, who can eat a sandwich the fastest, and where in town they like to eat sandwiches. That sort of thing. I think the story has the potential to break boundaries. Welles' The War of the Worlds for food/music journalism. If not, it's still a bit of extra press for the show.

In any case, call or email me to work something out.
Emma Courtland

That was the pitch. One of the first Joe and I talked about when I started contributing to Squid Ink actually. To my surprise and delight they accepted, and I outlined questions for my first SI post in over a month. During the interview, however, things took a turn. It might have been as early as the second question, and I couldn't help but think about my cousin Margy's interview with The Slits.

I had recently listened to the story on Bob Carlson's new show UnFictional on NPR. She describes being a young journalist interviewing the British punk group, who are less than eager to participate. Listening to the tape of the interview, she told me, was excruciating. (You can listen to it here.) She asks them about their influences and they mumble something about the earth and the stars. Something like that. Makes me think I got off easy. Mine was a phone interview after all, I could hang up whenever I wanted. The Sandwitches didn't pelt me with a wad of paper, but they didn't play ball in any other respect either.

We went to see them at the echo last night anyway and I introduced myself and Grace apologized for the awkward conversation. I told her not to worry about it, that it made a good story. You can read it below and let me know what you think.

Q & A with The Sandwitches: Clearing Their Name of Food Pun Confusion, Cafe Tropical + a Menu Pairing for Their New Album Mrs. Jones' Cookies

dispatches from sweeden, via poppytalk

Scandinavia must be the most inspirational region on the planet. It seems like everything that comes out of there has the same charming minimalism that makes me swoon with admiration and envy. Every so often Popytalk contributor Elisabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day posts something spectacularly charming she found in her home of Gothenberg, Sweeden. Last week she posted these, boxes of dry cereal and museli.

Breakfast in Sweden. Maybe some organic yoghurt or curdled from Milko, and some energetic cereals or museli from Ica? Or we could make some oatmeal porridge and eat some wholemeal bread with it. Or we could just sit there and look at this great packaging, and eat later.

I love the mountain climbers. And I don't know what fullkornsbrod is, and it doesn't really matter, but it looks an awful lot like rocks. Maybe it's mushrooms...

appreciative palate

My mom forwarded this to me yesterday. It's an article from the Tucson Citizen I think, about my gradmother, Mrs. Elmer Courtland.

She talks about cooking, learning to cook, and cooking for my grandpa: "'His palate is an appreciative one,'" she says. It's a perfect phrase. Far more precise, and less elitist than the popular terms for someone who cares deeply about food. "'And cooking for people who appreciate good food'" she continues, "'is a real incentive.'"

That said, these recipes seem strangely simple for publishing. My grandmother was a truly great cook, and although I agree that if you can read a recipe, you can cook, there's also a special touch to cooking you can't learn from a book. And she knows that more than most.

My grandmother, no longer Mrs. Elmer but Fanny, made matzo balls with this special skill. Dozens of small globes, perfectly light, and perfectly schmaltzy, that required her hands. I'll grant that most people think their grandmother's matzo balls are the best because that's what they grew up with. But my grandmother's actually were superior, as were her chocolate chip cookies. I mean, nobody else made cookies that tasted/crunched like hers, and she used the recipe on the Nestle Tollhouse bag!!

My grandma hasn't cooked in at least three years now. She fell and broke her hip a month before my graduation from UCLA, then again shortly after recovering the first injury. The second spill left her with some brain damage and enough cumulative muscle atrophy to keep her from standing on her own. My grandma believed that food was her gift to us, so none of us learned the secret to her special touch and I worry that it's lost to us now.

I wonder if my grandma was holding back in the article. She was of course politely understated about her skill, but she didn't believe in microwaves and her spaghetti sauce took hours to simmer, so the idea that she'd offer Easy Peach Compote and Fish Mold as her summer dishes somehow feels overtly withholding. I understand why people would want to have secret recipes, but I disagree with it.

For this reason I'd like to submit an addendum to "Everybody Cooks: Cool Summer Dishes": Good food should be for everyone. It isn't enough to cook well for your family, you have to teach them to cook well too. I'd much rather live in a world where you didn't have to eat before certain dinner parties, than one where a few very special people made a few very special dishes. Also, no one should ever make fish mold.

tea with amanda

My friend Amanda the baker had me over for tea. She's currently nesting in her parent's guest house with her fiancee, Adam the actor/playwright. We've been friends for six years and I've never seen her yard. It's like The Secret Garden fell to disrepair in suburban Los Angeles, by which I mean it's the most romantic little yellow house I've ever had the privilege to visit. She has an industrial stainless steel sink and a dozen fruit trees growing outside. I adore it.

She asked me if I wanted a scone and I said yes, of course, assuming that she had some lying around. Instead, she took out a mixing bowl and set to making me a fresh batch of Meyer Lemon Strawberry Scones. Charmingly amorphous and lightly fragrant, they were perfect with blood orange marmalade and our loose leaf Earl Grey/rose tea mixture on a Wednesday afternoon in her new home.

MEYER LEMON STRAWBERRY SCONES

Preheat your oven to 350.

In a bowl, combine:
1/2 cup sugar
zest of 3 Meyer lemons
and rub together with your fingertips until the sugar is fragrant with the oils of the zest.

Add:
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tblsp baking powder
3 cups all purpose flour
and toss together with your hands.

Add 8 ounces of cold butter, cut into cubes and use the pad of your thumb to push the cubes of butter against the base of your forefinger into long flakes that look like giant fish scales. The motion is like a slow, deliberate, forceful version of the hand gesture that normally means "cash" when done quickly and repetitively. Do this fairly quickly and don't worry about making all of them perfect. The goal is to have long flaky bits of cool butter in your dough that will melt and steam in the oven, creating long flaky pockets of buttery goodness in your dough.

When all of the butter has had this done to it, add

1 cup of buttermilk

and

2 cups of diced strawberries
and fold together gently with your hands. Scoop out half-cup portions of dough onto a prepared baking sheet, a couple inches apart, and push down into roundish blobs. Brush with a little bit of beaten egg, garnish with slices of lemon or strawberry, and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake until they lift easily off the tray and are deeply golden brown and fragrant and lovely.

Depending on your oven, this could be anywhere from twenty five minutes to a bit more than half an hour.

breakfast still life arrangements

In elementary school I knew a kid whose mother would dye his sandwiches with food coloring. I envied him. His lunches were mesmerizing and distinct, and in a small unconscious way they expressed the love that his mother had for him--a love so great it couldn't help but pour over on to his meals, warming him from his tummy out through his limbs--a love surely greater than all the mothers who made normal sandwiches had for their children. Albeit to a lesser degree I also felt this way about my friends who had cans of soda and fruit roll ups in their lunches: their mothers must love them so much, I thought, to bestow on them such treats. I believed Lunchables were the ultimate delicacy.

Then came March, and the Saint Patrickfication of our school. We colored leprechauns with red beards to hang in the windows and cut four leaf clovers from construction paper. My friend's mother made green egg salad sandwiches. They were vivid green, like the moss on the teeth of children who ate sugar cereal (my mother's name for Fruit Loops), with darker patches suggesting something more rotten, more sinister. Putrid.

The sight of them was stirring, to my stomach and my soul. In my life I've gleaned more than a little insight from sandwiches, moments of perfect clarity about culture and Truth in bites of corned beef on rye, but never before has such a revelation come from sheer sight. In a glimpse I realized that my friend's mother did not love him more than my mother loved me, she just had less to do during her days. I imagined that dropping him off at school was the hardest part of her day, and picking him up was the happiest. Around this time I stopped asking to have the crusts cut from my peanut butter and jelly and realized the meat in Lunchables was slimy and disgusting.

I unconsciously developed disdain for people who play with their food. I don't think I've seen Close Encounters all the way through because of the mashed potato mountain, or maybe I thought it was boring. The feeling has subsided as I've gotten older, but it still peaks out every so often, catching me and the poor soul with whom I'm sharing a table off guard. I'm not sure what triggers it exactly, but often wonder if it has something to do with those green sandwiches and that sad lady who made them.

Naturally, my feelings about these photos by Museum Studio are a bit mixed. They are, in all honesty, extremely charming and sweet. Very happy pictures. I just hope that someone ate these breakfasts after the photo was snapped. Because I like them, I have to imagine they did.




photos via BOOOOOOOM!

doughnuts of late

Portland is quite probably the best vacation city in the United States. You can literally spend hours just browsing bookstores, drinking coffee, sampling food trucks--all of the things you enjoy doing in your own city, without the guilt of doing stuff you do in your own city. Portland culture is that of cultural aesthetes, a collective of our type of people doing stuff we like to do. Zinester/animal portrait artist Nicole Georges, whose Portland zine anthology Invincible Summer I am currently enjoying very much, describes it as "a city of seasonal affected disorders and kids who never grow up," and every time I visit it gets harder to leave.

On that note I've been eating a lot of doughnuts at work lately. And I don't like doughnuts. To me they're like arcades, alluring and charming, only insofar as I understand they're supposed to be. Things for which other people's abundant excitement has often swept me up, though I have no particular interest in them myself. Jonathan Taylor Thomas was another such popular fixation. [In third grade I bought a Tiger Beat magazine because I assumed it was another part of being a girl my age I didn't yet understand. Like bras.]

Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland meets every criteria for a necessary vacation visit--small, local, weird. These are qualities I seek out tirelessly in other cities. And yet, during our last trip, I started walking over to shop, after a perfect vanilla latte from Stumptown, located conveniently down the street, and at the last minute I decided to keep walking because I didn't want a doughnut. This probably seems insignificant, I know, only it wasn't. In my own city I do and eat things that I don't even like. And why? Maybe it's easier and less exhausting than a life of amazing things all the time, less emotional. Is that why Portland is such a special place to visit, because it encourages you to behave like a local and live exactly as you would if you didn't worry about money and failing and the future. That's what it does for me.

josie's dresses

I realize the posts this month have been more peripherally food themed than usual. Never one to break a trend, here's another.

My new favorite cousin, Josie Rose is going to turn one next month. I made her a pair of pinafores from a pattern I bought on etsy. Each is reversible and fairly easy even for a novice seamstress, such as I am. I wouldn't do it if it were too hard. The most pleasurable parts of sewing for me involve handling textiles and combining patterns, the moment they begin to resemble something. This teapot fabric is one of the sweetest I've found. Meant for quilting I assume, but the print is just large enough for a child's garment.

sookie, i'm too timid to order food from that Chinese restaurant--last time I only tipped them ten percent.

Recently renewed friends of mine made this video, True Blood - Confessions From Bill Compton. The title of this post is one of said confessions.

I came up with a few, more food-centric, of my own:

• Sookie! If you already know that one litre equals 4.2 cups, then why is this demi-glace so runny?

• Sookie! Where's the 12th page of my Skinny Bitch Cookbook?! Ahm trying to maintain mah figure, without sacrificing taste.
  
• Sookie! You know ah get farty and bloated with a foamy latte!!
  

That last one's from Zoolander :)

the butter to my bread

As promised, here is the fruit of my Valentine's Day crafting. Paul Child is quoted as saying this to his wife Julia. "You are the butter to my bread and the breath to my life." But my Valentine is more of the visual sort. Literal too. And "breath to my life" has an almost macabre undertone, so this suits us best.

I have a deep love for the folk aesthetics of paper cutout, or scherenschnitte, to the Germans, and to other people who can pronounce scherenschnitte. I've been playing around with paper cutting for about half a year, mostly holiday cards and monogrammed gift tags from black card stock. Clearly, I need a new Xacto knife. It's too dull for precision lettering but I'm still pleased with the general look of this one. It's my zero dollar Valentine.

tea, love

This morning, Design Sponge posted a tutorial for DIY tea bags, heart-shaped for Valentine's Day. I've been working on my own Valentine's crafts, which I'll post in a few days. But I'm going to keep this one tucked under my hat. I imagine I'll one day be the woman in the office who gives everyone small homemade gifts on holidays. Though I can't imagine myself actually working in an office. Weird.

the problem with whoopie pies, a plea for help

Something amazing happened.

For my darling Joe's birthday I gave him a beautiful French film poster. An enormous red one sheet, 63 " x 47", from a film by his favorite director. But that's not the amazing thing. I discovered that framing would cost at least twice what the poster did (and it wasn't cheap either), so I would have to save up for the framing; hanging the poster would be a gift for another occasion. That was last April.

Along comes our two year anniversary and I decide the occasion has arrived, but I still can't afford the price quoted me by the framers. I bring the poster to work and my boss suggests we ask the installers for advice. (I should mention that I work for an organization that houses one of the largest archives of film print materials in the world, if not THE largest--I assume the Library of Congress has a sizable stock--and the task of framing and hanging of said collection falls to this group of guys.) I show them my poster and ask for their advice. They confirm that the job costs about $600, and that I'll want it mounted on an archival-quality board. And then the amazing thing: they said they'd frame it for me, FOR FREE! They don't normally do this, it just so happened that they had a frame, a board, and plexiglass the size of my poster, all of which they planned to throw away because of a few scuffs.

I am so incredibly grateful, and so inexcusably clueless as to how to thank them that I baked them whoopie pies, which seemed like a good start, but proved problematic for storage and transportation. See, the top of a cake is the smoothest and most delicate. Most people have experienced what happens when icing a cake that hasn't adequately cooled: the fragile crust peels a bit, getting crumbs mixed in with the icing. Well imagine that the fragile upper crust, the delicate cake top serves as both the top and bottom of the dessert. Even when cooled to past the point of most normal cakes, the bottom of the pie (the lower upper crust) would stick to the plate, creating a big old hole, ruining the aesthetic.

I'll consider that perhaps this is a sign that whoopie pies are not the best way to thank my framer friends, nevertheless, this is a problem with whoopie pies that needs solving. Does anyone know how to prevent it? Do I need to wait longer? Freeze the cakes? Use a cooling rack? A little help would be greatly appreciated.