You may notice in the tags of this post that one says “the beer ran down my mustache.” While I do have a bit of a mustache (hell yeah to Ashkenazi heritage combined with my decision to remove body hair as little as possible) and while I am not always the neatest drinker of beer, that’s not what the tag is about. It’s a common closing formula in Russian wonder tales, where the teller, upon finishing some grand love story, will say: I was at their wedding and drank beer. The beer ran along my mustache but did not go into my mouth. The most familiar English-language formula is Once upon a time, but I’m not interested in battling Disney SEO and it’s far less evocative of food, drink, and the role they have in celebrations and in stories.
Read MoreKind of an unwieldy title, eh? I compressed the last three months into a single blog post because, as has been the ongoing pattern this year, my project output has swerved downward. My excuses this time: I decided a couple of months ago that I wanted to revise my novel (My Novel™; is there any way to say this that doesn’t feel obnoxious?) so I’ve been focusing on that; I’ve still been cooking and baking, just Other Things; I had a work trip in the middle of October; the list goes on. The charm of this project has worn off a bit, just in time for it to end! I wasn’t planning on continuing it through 2020, and I’m still not; instead I have something else I’ve been dreaming up, so keep an eye out for that in January.
I’m not quite ready to do any sort of reflecting on this project, although as ever I would like to thank it for helping me try a lot of new things. (Or a handful of new things, if you’re just talking about September-November.)
A quick overview: Apples is the one I most regret not making more from, and it’s the one that fell during the aforementioned work trip that sort of jolted my cooking. I will definitely be revisiting over the winter. I really want to try the tartines. I liked Broccoli, which is my girlfriend’s favorite vegetable, which itself means we’ll be back to this one. I liked Chickpeas too, but learned that I either don’t like chickpea flour or I don’t like the brand we bought. I’ll grab another bag from Kalustyan’s someday and we’ll see.
Onward!
Read MoreAs promised or hinted at, a summary of the baking I did this summer. There’s one more cake, but I’m writing up a separate post for it.
This summer I got really into pies, and it shows. Is summer a weird season to be into pies? Traditional pie dough needs to be kept cold at all times and summer temperatures in New York are not especially conducive to that. I had the AC on all season, and when I’d take out a blind-baked crust I would often set it to cool over the grates of my temperature control box (the name is escaping me; it does heat, AC, and a fan) in hopes that would make things go faster.
Read MoreYou’d be forgiven for wondering if I’ve given up on this Short Stack project; I never wrote the blog post for July and I made one entire recipe in August. These non-events both come with similar reasoning: I started a new job that I genuinely like going to, and it’s taking up more of my energy than my last one in part because I’m more willing to give it. It’s a new area for me, and that’s challenging, but I also seem to be taking well to it, and I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of how I’m doing there. Another piece of reasoning: my girlfriend moved in with me last month, which is thrilling, but August felt like a very flux-y month and I just wasn’t in the mood to cook a lot. (Heat? End-of-summer malaise? I don’t know either.)
I did make one thing, though, so I’m proud of that, in a way. Better to just make one recipe than none, I think.
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