The Daring Bakers!

I was challenged to make strudel. So I did.

Wisdom

Today M had his wisdom teeth removed. I stayed with him throughout everything and I must say that I panicked a little.

I'm squeamish. I would like it if I wasn't squeamish but I am. I don't deal well with blood and heart monitors and tubing and people wearing scrubs.

I didn't sleep at all last night and so I drank coffee so that I could be on top of things when he got out of surgery. Wow I am an idiot sometimes, really. Instead of being alert and focused I became jittery and freaked out. I couldn't even read the article in National Geographic that interested me. I wanted to pace or strike up a conversation with someone else waiting in the room. The receptionist humored me a bit but she had to answer calls and I was left to my own worries. They had some gorgeous fish in a saltwater tank so I watched them intensely.

When he was in recovery I had to keep him awake. It would be funny for some people due to the eyes continuing to roll back into the head and the groggy incomprehensible responses, but I was so nervous that I ended up talking to him about food. That was brilliant. It was noon, he hadn't eaten a thing and we didn't prepare properly for this and had nothing ready at his place. I was freaked out. I kept saying "Eyes on me!" every time he drifted off and it really scared me because it was what my 6th grade math teacher used to say to control the class. She was awful. I managed to have some brain cells left as I did promise that we will watch basketball and Batman later. A smile.

The nurse explained that I had to change the gauze, pick up the pain prescription, feed him something cold, give him medicine, and make sure he sleeps. Oh and don't forget the icepack. We didn't have ice packs and we didn't make the jello yet. Oh and the gauze can't be removed until it's full and he needs to gargle with salt water tomorrow. Sure!

A cab was called for us and the cab driver was annoyed because supposedly he had been waiting downstairs for a long time. When I told him how short of a ride we were going to have he rolled his eyes and was very annoyed. What an asshole. A man gets pushed towards a cab in a wheelchair and is helped inside and he is angry because we have a short ride. You know what? I'm an asshole too because I over-tipped him just to make him feel bad for being rude to me. Ha ha.

M was angry that we took a cab and felt it was totally unnecessary. He felt that we should have walked and that he was a little wobbly but he could have done it. I explained to him that we had to take a cab because if he fell I wasn't going to be able to pick him up. Men.

He grabbed his keys from me and I watched his inability to walk a straight line just to the door of his apartment with slight amusement.

Still now that he was finally home and on the couch I needed to get drugs and food for him. Wait a second, do I take the gauze out now? No I would wait until I had food for him. I should be back in 20 minutes.

Nope. It was more like an hour. Maybe longer. The pharmacy took forever and then I realized just how many groceries he needed. He might be out of it for a couple days. My heart was beating unusually fast as I scrambled to get all of this done. I picked up ice cream, sorbet, cottage cheese, soup, pasta, yogurt, apple sauce, pudding and a bunch of stuff for me in case I am over here being nurse for a couple days.

I was gone too long. When I got in there was blood on his face and in the sink. He was starting to feel pain and feel nauseous. The gauze should have come out much sooner. I had to take it out and give him pudding right away. It wasn't easy. Blood makes me very very very very nervous.

Gauze and then blood and then clean up and then pudding and apple sauce no wait he needs water and the pills and wait maybe it was too early for pills but he said it was hurting and he was hungry but nauseous does he have any paper towels he couldn't stand up by himself I was having a gmail chat but the typing woke him up i needed to be quiet but I should call my mom because she would calm me down and tell me what a wonderful person I am he was cold and needed a blanket but i thought it was hot in here and eew i can see the bandage where the IV was and he told me not to wig out but I'm good at taking care of people aren't I did I forget to buy fruit wait he doesn't have a blender who doesn't have a blender ok ok ok dishes I need to do the dishes the pain killer wasn't working so I called the dentist surgeon guy and he said that for a guy that size he should have taken 2 pills at a time instead of just one well why didn't he put that on the fucking prescription fucking asshole all of a sudden peace and sleep.

I ate a gigantic bowl of ice cream and managed to take a nap. Enter enormous stomach ache #2.

Fast Food

I can't do it. I can't eat fast food. It's always a horrendous debilitating stomach ache and I just don't understand it.

Most people I know can handle the occasional candy bar or Taco Bell run but I can't. Fried food and grease is always a nightmare and this is really sad for someone who loves onion rings to death. I do allow for them occasionally but I have to split an order with someone or I will be very sorry later.

Sunday I was feeling great. My day started off beautifully. The weather in Seattle was perfect and I made my way to an early yoga class. After yoga I took a nice walk and ended up at a street festival going on near my neighborhood. It seemed like I should eat something at this fair so I went for a seemingly harmless chicken burrito. It was good and filling which was nice after the exercise. I sat down at a cafe for a while after and read.

Then I started to feel.....weird. Dizzy. Nauseous. Sweaty. Almost too full. Was it the caffeine? The grease? Was it heartburn? I needed to lie down. I would have liked to walk more and enjoy the day but instead realized that I had to get myself home as soon as possible. I was walking rather fast when my shoe caught something. I got my balance back for a second but then my knee gave out and I fell rather badly onto my left hip.

Well great! How many people just fall on the sidewalk in a crowded area? It's one thing to fall or trip once in a while but my god. There were a lot of people around me and several inside a restaurant facing the sidewalk. Thanks gods of Seattle! I appreciate it. Besides the fall I was holding a small cup of water which I managed to hold on to, but the water landed all over me. Beautiful day indeed.

I got home and went to sleep for hours. I woke up with the biggest stomach ache I have had in a long time. I took Mylanta for the pain to no avail.

What is it that does this? I've heard that MSG has these types of affects on people. I know that grease can make people sluggish and cause indigestion but what is it? I see people eating the greasiest food on the planet with no problem. Why does it affect me in this way? People say it's because I'm not used to eating fast food, but how does a body get used to it in the first place? How do some people have that so called "stomach of steel," and is that really a good thing anyway?

The stomach ache lasted until last night. I couldn't sleep at all the last two nights.

When I was in high school I was diagnosed with an ulcer. It runs in my family to have problems with the stomach but I found that a lot of them were stress related. I figured that if I stay relatively healthy I shouldn't have days like this anymore.

Sometimes it just comes for you I guess. Like sickness of any sort and days when you embarrass yourself it could just be your own body trying to get you to slow down. Nature has its way of making you stop and reconsider future burritos at street fairs and fruit in third world countries.

By that logic, maybe nature was trying to get me to buy a new pair of shoes too.

Recipe for Sicky

This weekend I was in bed SICK. It seems like the gods are against me as it was a particularly beautiful weekend in Seattle and I spent it in bed and on the couch.

Here are my top Sicky Recipes:

1) Rub raw garlic on toast

2) Chicken soup: I like Mrs. Grass because it tastes amazing for soup in a box and who wants to make anything from scratch when you can't breathe?

3) Hot Toddy: whiskey with hot water lemon and sugar

4) Steam your head: boil a huge pot of water and put your face over the steam with a towel over your head

5) Tea with slices of lemon and cookies in dip in.

6) Eating as many grapefruits, tangerines, and oranges as possible

7) Sleep all day and when awake, watch The Simpsons.

I think I might have to buy a Neti pot to help with the breathing today. If you have suggestions for this sicky I'm all ears.

Lost

Strange things have been happening to me lately. I seem to have lost my mind, although I've been getting splitting headaches so I do know that it's still in there somewhere.

A week ago Monday I made banana cranberry muffins, except I forgot the cranberries. I also forgot the baking powder and baking soda completely. They came out hard on the outside and raw inside. Garbage.

Right after that I had an idea for a lovely (and cheap) frittata like dish with collard greens, potatoes, and grape tomatoes. I stupidly did not put enough eggs in it and with the potatoes on the bottom and too many of the greens on top, it burned. Garbage.

The next day I walked into a wall at work. Hmmm.

I left my dishes in the sink for a week. I never do that.

That Saturday a bird pooped on my jacket and backpack.

I was not a happy woman that whole weekend and spent most of it laying around watching The Food Network. No cooking.

This past weekend I knew that I had a bake sale at work coming up that I promised to make a Napoleon for. Actually I promised two: one chocolate and one vanilla. I only made one vanilla. Last weekend was another weird one.

Sunday I had an interview for a Very Stupid Job. I thought it would be a good idea because it is at a place I like a lot and they were magically hiring. I applied right after the bird poop incident because why the hell not? It's where I go sometimes when I need a little uplifting. They called me right away and scheduled the interview for the following weekend so I took it as a sign. Sunday morning however, I did not feel confident. I felt like it was stupid and it was.

They gave me "homework" to do which was called an online "survey," but it really consisted of statements such as: I believe that taking $2 a month from the company is not stealing. And then your choices are Strongly Agree, Agree, Slightly Agree, Strongly disagree, etc. You get the idea. I think one of my favorites was: If someone goes to work high on marijuana it's ok as long as it doesn't affect their job.

Give me a break. Am I am idiot now? How has adulthood and trying to find a good fit for yourself turned into this nonsense?

The underlying problem is that I have applied to school and I got into one and wait listed at another and denied at the third. The school that is the only real option if I want to make this happen at this point is back in Illinois. Frankly I'm not so keen to move back. I dreamed of living on the west coast for years and years and I am finally here. It took a huge effort and time and money and nearly depressing my mother to death. It wasn't easy. Seattle isn't the dream location but I like my life now. I don't know how to work this out at all and I am in the midst of huge decisions. The decision that sounds best is to pretend this didn't happen and just go on paying my bills. Isn't that weird?

Anyway I thought it would be good to see if I could find another job that has more flexibility. One thing I can tell you that I learned this past weekend is that getting a job where you like to hang out is not really a good idea. Last Friday was my last day at the bar job and working there made the bar turn into something other then what it was for me.

I used to go and sit and read or write and drink wine and just chill. I used to come in every once in a while with friends, but somehow now if I did that I would get drawn into other conversations and we didn't come for that. Unfortunately most of those conversations would be as if I was perpetually stuck in a 17 year old boy's locker room bragging session. Last Friday I couldn't take it anymore. I don't know how often I will go now which makes me really sad. At the same time, I shouldn't feel the need to explain to a grown man that I don't know any woman with such low self esteem that she would naturally assume a man that expresses interest in her is in fact dating and sleeping with three other women. Pathetic.

The point is that as I mentioned in the last blog, I've had a lot of stupid jobs. At what point do I get one that I like and that makes me feel challenged and like I have accomplished something? How much longer will it be and what is it????? Is the answer going into debt for school and then getting another stupid awful job that I have to wear pantyhose for? Negativity is clouding me.

The kitchen is the sanctuary for days like this. Days in which clouds are circling my brain and I just can't focus on anything at all. Sometimes a simple stirring motion can bring me back. Cooking can give me a sense of accomplishment from seeing a project through from start to finish. When it fails then I am lost. If I don't make it to a yoga class on top of this situation then I have lost my mind completely and am a mess.

Sunday I went to the grocery store late because I was wallowing in self pity and also have $50 in my checking account right now. (that's another story) I chose carefully and decided that the chocolate Napoleon will have to wait and I will stick with the recipe as I know it. I worked on it the exact same time as I was making a few other dishes for the week. What a mess.

Dishes were piling everywhere. I dropped onions on the floor and loose tea that I was guzzling. It was getting near 10pm when I was stirring the custard and I felt as though I was channeling Julie Powell at that moment. She is my inspiration for this blog and would probably find my frenzied mess in the kitchen to be amusing. I however went into a panic.

I realized that I could not bake another dish I was planning in the oven because it would take an hour and a half and then the oven would have an onion scent. This was no place for my puff pastry so I had to scrap that idea despite it being nearly ready to go. The pastry had to take priority. The stir fry I managed to put together looked decent but I realized that I completely forgot to make rice for it and it was cooling already. So I put rice on and half way through that I realized that I wanted to use that pot for the custard and had to use a different one. The pot I ended up using didn't seem to be cleaned properly and when I was stirring the custard weird specs of something came to the top. What the hell? How do restaurant people do this?

I thought of the one day I worked at the restaurant when a man said that the tiramisu tasted funny. I told the owner and when he tasted it the look on his face was sheer terror. Salt. The pastry prep that day had made sheets of tiramisu with salt instead of sugar. Garbage. All of it.

So I remade the custard which wasn't too bad but I did suspect that it was lumpy and I didn't like that at all. When it finally started to form nicely I tasted it and I distinctly tasted garlic. WHAT? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW???????????? To quote a line delivered by one of my favorite artists, Miranda July: "Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck all people."

I bothered my poor roommate with my insanity at this point. Can you taste this? Do you taste garlic? This is a disaster.

He said that it tasted fine and that it was probably the other stir fry stuff that I had. He seemed annoyed. I didn't eat any of the stir fry, but the spoons were right next to each other so it must have just touched at that moment. Breathe.

Of course the Napoleon was perfect and delicious and sold at the bake sale in twenty minutes. I wish I made the second tray now. Damn.

The stir fry was also one of my best ever. Here are the ingredients in case you're so inclined:

saute onions on low heat until caramelized

add collard greens and cook through

add chopped garlic, ground ginger, and soy sauce

add diced red bell peppers

add grape tomatoes at the very end

Oh my god this is a beautiful, colorful, simple, cheap and delicious veggie meal. Do it. Trust me.

I'm not sure if this was luck or what but I did feel slightly better due to these successes. They haven't taken away my headaches or confusion but they helped. I think those that bought the Napoleon might have been a little uplifted that day too.

Find Out What It Means To Me

I made a frightening realization a week ago and it is this: I have never been treated with the respect I deserve in any workplace ever in my entire life.

At this point I have had a number of jobs and while I would have liked to be a producer for PBS or part of a film festival staff, let's just say it didn't work out for me. I had some success in that field but when you're 27 and the best full time job you can get pays $12 an hour as a receptionist at a studio and you think it will lead to something better, oh please. Let's give it up already. I took other jobs to afford my life and it lead me to where I am today. Miserable. I have several friends that believe that I should work in a food oriented business, and here is what I have to ask them: Have you ever worked in a restaurant before?

I think there should be a law that requires every American to wait tables for at least one month. The restaurant is where you see it all. You see families argue, people mistreat their children, people who let their children run everywhere while you are carrying bowls of hot soup, bad dates, hot dates, gross eaters, Atkins dieters, etc. The Atkins people were hilarious by the way: "I'll have the cream of broccoli soup to start, a side order of meatballs covered in cheddar cheese with a side of Italian sausage, and a diet coke."

Actually the carb lovers were hilarious too. They always asked for extra bread before they got their enormous plates of pasta and they never ate it. Sometimes people ordered extra bread after they got their enormous plates of pasta just to see it on the table. So all the extra bread goes from the cutting board, out to the table, and then to the garbage. Do people not understand this waste? This is Americanism.

Waiting tables was a great job for a time. I made decent money and was walking away with my earnings everyday. I had total job flexibility to the point where I could get my shifts covered for three weeks while out of the country and then still have them when I got back. I filled my time before my shift with going to the gym and reading and looking for the "real job" that would pay me less. I interned and volunteered and got a few temp gigs as a production assistant but it didn't pay the bills. I kept working at a restaurant for probably too long after I finished my undergraduate degree because I was holding out for the right job but...

Things happened like a man soaking up his bloody nose on a menu and then handing it to me to throw away. An old man that came in often couldn't be easily heard unless I got close and then he would spit all over my face. (We would have to take turns dealing with that one.) Cooks would tell me that I looked pretty when I happened to be leaning over the bread table right in front of their station. People would wait for a table for an hour and then think the the food will magically appear as soon as it is ordered. They would harass me every single time I walked by even though there were 5 other tables in the section. Customers would yell at me for taking too long because they didn't think to give their children food at a decent time and now they were cranky and hungry but it was my fault. The lonely and obviously divorced older men would want to talk my head off about comic books or other literature to impress me. Please. Vegans would come in and decide to make their own menu.

For example, I was waiting on this memorable gigantic pain in the ass party and there were two aging hippies at the end of the table. They came in to the restaurant every once in a while so I knew it was going to take 10 minutes just to get all their stuff right because they were crazy annoying vegans.

The woman: "I'll have wheat bread with the house salad but I don't want any butter or salad dressing or cheese or lettuce. I want spinach instead of lettuce and I want you to add radishes and raw zucchini and raw carrots and whatever other raw vegetable you can find in the kitchen. I will have four or five lemon wedges and I want a side of balsamic vinegar. It better not have any sugar or additives in it."

The man: "I'll have the spaghetti primavera without the pasta, just the vegetables steamed. No cheese, oil, or butter. I want other vegetables steamed also and I want them all on separate plates: mushrooms, broccoli, red peppers, carrots, and eggplant."

"Oh sorry sir all of our eggplant is pre-breaded and fried for the parmesan dish."

"Fine I'll take whatever other vegetable you can provide, but none of them can touch each other and they must be steamed."

The salad came out perfect and beautiful, but the lady picks through to make sure it's to her liking and is unhappy with the minuscule bit of lettuce that ended up near the bottom and demands another salad.

All the steamed veggies come out beautiful and perfect as well and the man is in the middle of a sentence with some normal family member when I put the food in front of him. He sees the mushrooms and yells out in a panic, "OH MY GOD. YOU DIDN'T PUT ANY MEAT GRAVY ON THIS DID YOU?!!!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!"

"Sir, um….. the thing is that you know, mushrooms make their own juice when you cook them you know?"

"No I'm sure that I can smell pork. TAKE IT BACK."

"Sure no problem!!!"

This might have been a funny moment in the restaurant world but when I think of what I put up with from people in general it's astonishing. My family always told me that as soon as I had a decent office job I would be treated with respect. I can tell you from experience that this is simply not true. Whether my manager's fiance hit on me, or my producer didn't expect me to take a lunch or a bathroom break, or my supervisor makes sexual jokes at my expense, or my co-worker talks down to me like I'm an idiot; I have never been treated with the respect I deserve.

I think that it has really struck a nerve recently because I have put up with these scenarios for so long and all of a sudden I can't deal with it anymore. I can't believe that I have to complain and have meetings with 3-4 managers about inappropriate behavior and common decency and respect. At my second job there is no such thing really. My second job is at a bar and the guys I work with are over the top sexual and downright gross for the most part. I have come to expect this in the service industry but when it happens also in "professional" office environments then it really made me think that there is no reason that I should expect this at all. I always thought of myself as the cool girl that is the good sport about gross men and their pathetic stupidity but my goodness. I don't know what to do now where I will be treated well in the workplace. Does it exist? Do I have to cut my hair short? I'm not type to encourage unwanted attention so I just don't get it.

My first job was in a diner called Baker's Square. I worked there when I was 15 years old and two of the cooks asked me out on dates repeatedly. They must have been at least twice my age and both were married with children. I think that because the service industry is where I learned that I should just put up with this nonsense, I just can't go back. I don't know what the answer is to the right career path but I can tell you that I will not work in anyone's kitchen except my own.

Yom Hashoah

Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. While people in Israel had a two minute moment of silence in which everything stopped and people in Poland took part in The Walk of the Living, I had lunch with a friend and discussed going into debt by a hundred thousand to get a degree in law. Oh privileged American me.

In the last post I mentioned that my grandmother is illiterate. It is because of the war that she never went to school. She went into hiding when she was nine years old and stayed with Christian friends of her mother's. My great-grandmother owned a restaurant in what is now Vilnius Lithuania, and so she knew a lot of people in the area and they agreed to take her children into hiding. She had eight children: four boys and four girls. The oldest boy was already married when the war started, but he married an Christian woman. Believe it or not, her family sold him to the Nazis. By some miracle, he was the only one in my grandma's family that didn't survive. She never refers to him by his name, she only calls him "My brother who the Germans kill," anytime she wants to mention him.

The family that my grandma stayed with kicked her out one night because they became too afraid. She was 11 and walking the streets at night alone trying to avoid soldiers. Someone recognized her and brought her to the area where my grandfather was hiding. He decided he couldn't trust the people his children were with so he managed to gather everyone up and hitched a ride on a carriage with farmers going to the area that is now Latvia. There were farmers there that helped the Jews dig underground hiding holes and that is where my grandma lived for a few years until the war was over. They were starving. When the Russians and the Americans came they helped the people living in these situations, but they took my great grandparents and two of my grandma's brothers away into urgent care because of severe malnutrition. My grandma and her siblings went straight into child labor because if they didn't they would still have nothing to eat and no where to go. She said that she remembered going to an office every single day asking if she could help them somehow and they kept telling her to go away and that she was just a child but she still showed up everyday and would beg them to give her a job and eventually they did.

When she was 17 my grandfather to be asked my grandmother's parents if he could take her out for a walk. She didn't want to go with him and her parent's thought that she had somehow flirted with this man so they locked her up in their home and smacked her across the face for nothing. When she saw him the next time she was out she said "Go away!" But, he didn't. He came over to their home several times and brought my great-grandparents food and money and clothes and told them his story of the war.

He felt that he knew what was coming with the Nazis and tried to convince his family to run for it but they thought it would blow over and that everything would be fine. He didn't listen to them and instead fled to Russia where they imprisoned him for trespassing for the duration of the war. When he returned to Poland he found out that his entire family was shot right outside their home and thrown into mass graves. Their homes were looted by the neighbors and he was completely alone. He had no choice but to move again and since he had a marketable skill being a baker, he managed to work and save money and help take care of my grandma's family once he met them. And so he received my great grandparent's blessing and when my grandma was 18 and my grandpa was 30 they were married.

My grandfather felt that they should try and do everything possible to live in Jewish neighborhoods and work for Jewish people. This took them on quite a lot of moving trips. They lived in Russia where my mom and uncle where born, and then to Poland where my mom and uncle started school and then to Israel where they spent years and never wanted to leave. My grandfather felt that America was the next place to be, especially since my mom would finish high school soon and then have to go into the army. My grandma wanted to go to the States for the financial gain, but my mom and uncle were afraid and had finally mastered a language and stayed in one place for a long time. My mom wanted to go to the army because that is just what you do there, but he did not want them to know war and moved the family to the Chicago where they are now. My grandma speaks four languages fluently but can not read or write in any of them because there was never any time. My grandfather spoke seven languages but lost the use of Yiddish and Lithuanian so didn't pass those on to my mom. He never wanted to speak a word in German again so that one was lost as well. He died when my mom was pregnant with me. He had asked her to name me after one of his sisters who was killed, but she thought it was to sad and couldn't do it. She wanted to name me Aviva which means the Spring in Hebrew.

My grandmother's siblings had their own way of fighting/avoiding anti-Semitism. They married Christians and didn't tell their children that they were Jews. My mom even has a second cousin that is in seminary school in Poland. So technically, I am the only Jew left to carry anything on in my family. It's true that my mom married a Catholic; a Roman Catholic no less, but my dad doesn't care about religion and the only thing I learned about his religion is that they eat pork and we don't. (until now) The only thing my mom really cares about in Judaism now is the food and the major holidays anyway, so here we are.

Bringing all this back to food and cooking, the point is that my grandma's recipes and memories are all in her head. She has no journal, no cookbook, and nothing of my grandfather's that I can pass on except what she tells me. I can write it down but it might not work out and so I have to try and try and try to get it right. I can try to tell you her story but it won't ever do it justice. Memory is everything.

When I was a kid I used to see people where I lived that had the concentration camp numbers on their arm. I saw it every week. Skokie, IL had the largest population of Holocaust survivors for a time and it was just something you would see. I learned what it was when I was like six or something. I asked my mom why Grandma didn't have one and her response was, "Because she was lucky."

A few years ago when I was waiting tables in Evanston, IL I saw the numbers on a man's arm. It had been years since I had seen one and I was a little taken aback. I couldn't believe how I had forgotten how prevalent it was in the area and it really made me think that someday you won't see any. If I have children they won't see one. It will be something that is read about in a history book and that will be all.

Because I have been thinking of my grandma and of these events yesterday I made her favorite pastry. Her favorite also happens to be my favorite: Napoleon. It's so simple, so perfect. I honor my Grandma today with this pastry because for a woman who was starving and had only squirrels and potatoes to eat for years, she really loves food and deserves to know that I can make her a Napoleon when I come to visit.

Napoleon:

1) whisk together until smooth:
4-5 egg yolks (room temperature)
1-1 and a half cups sugar
1 cup flour
2 cups room temperature whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

2) transfer to a sauce pot and warm on low heat mixing the whole time until thick, use a wooden spoon

3) cut a stick of butter into 5 or so pieces and slowly mix into the custard one piece at a time

4) bake puff pastry sheets (yes this is the easy way) and let cool

5) layer pastry with the custard.

6) cover and refrigerate overnight

7) sprinkle powdered sugar on top and enjoy