Slow Food for the Baker’s Soul
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sophistechate/3335477703/
For most, kindergarten is a time of adventure and fun, of field trips and naptime, of making things out of construction paper and crayon, chunky paste and marking pens. Kindergarten marks a time of firsts: first words you could read, first time you successfully tied your own shoes, first friends that you made outside of your neighborhood.
But my happiest memories of kindergarten involve none of these firsts, nor do they involve the making of seasonal crafts—paper chains that count down to Christmas or colorful turkeys made by tracing my hand. My favorite days in kindergarten were those in which my classmates and I, in fidgety groups of five and six, would take a special trip to the kitchen at our school, where we would (under the guidance of a few knowledgeable room mothers) learn to prepare simple snacks that we could make all by ourselves. These were special days when we would get to use the ovens in the school’s kitchen, learning about temperature, timing, and the importance of potholders.
I still remember the first thing we ever learned how to make in that kitchen: little “pizzas” assembled from an English muffin split in half and topped with tomato sauce and grated cheese. And I can still clearly recall each of the steps involved and how pleasing they were to my five-year-old self: brushing the muffin halves with olive oil, then sprinkling them with oregano before moving on to smother the crusts in tomato sauce from a jar and finish things off with some grated mozzarella. When the snacks came out of the oven—soft, warm, and melty with cheese—I couldn’t believe we had made these ourselves; they were delicious!
But it wasn’t just that I had made something “all by myself” that excited me so; it was that I had made something with actual ingredients (such as they were to my five year old mind), something that had to be cooked in the oven—something that tasted good. It was a joy and a victory I haven’t forgotten, and that I have pursued with enthusiasm ever since.
I come from a family of food lovers and food makers. My mom has long been a great cook and excellent baker who would make crepes for dinner during a time when things like sloppy joes and Hamburger Helper were at the height of their popularity. Meanwhile, my father—like many other dads—knew his way around a grill, but he also annually turned out wonderful Thanksgiving meals, with perfect giblet gravy and savory stuffing seasoned with sage and thyme. At home my parents experimented with different cuisines, making complicated Chinese dumplings for a dinner party or frying tortillas for tacos and making fresh guacamole from scratch. This was the ‘80s, when most people I knew got their guacamole from a plastic tub at the supermarket and their taco shells from a box because doing something like frying tortillas seemed like, “too much trouble.”
So I grew up with a healthy respect for food you prepare yourself, and I saw how enjoyable the preparing could be. I was obsessed with cooking shows as a kid, watching them the way most of my other friends watched Mighty Mouse or Inspector Gadget. From my parents and from the cooks whom I loved to watch on TV, I learned that no dish was impossible to realize: if you paid attention to ingredients and method, you could prepare any kind of food you wished, a prospect that sounded both daunting and exhilarating; the opportunities seemed limitless.
***
I have a KitchenAide mixer; it is one of the first major purchases I made when I moved out into my first apartment without roommates. The mixer is blue like a pastel Easter egg, and everything about it—from its color to its soft, rounded edges—is friendly to me. Often just the sight of it makes me want to don my frilly half apron and whip up a batch of cookies.
Lately, though—spurred by the book, Baking Unplugged, by Nicole Rees—I have come to appreciate the special pleasures that come from mixing by hand rather than by machine. Mixing by hand is a method that employs all of the senses: Not only am I watching for what the mixture should look like, but I’m also paying attention to how it feels when I’m stirring it. When I’m mixing up Coffee Cocoa Snack Cake, for instance, I whisk the eggs and sugar for a solid minute, keeping myself tuned to how the mixture feels: thick and gloppy at first, then smoother and less gritty as the sugar begins to dissolve, the whisk moving through with greater ease. I add the sifted dry ingredients, folding them into the wet in a gentle scooping and turning movement that I know is finished not only when the batter looks moist, but also when I can no longer feel the skid of the rubber spatula hitting large pockets of flour at the bottom of the bowl.
Meanwhile, other recipes involve even more of the senses in the baking process, increasing the satisfaction. The recipe for Brown Butter Banana Cake requires browning two sticks of butter slowly over a medium-low heat. A baker like me who is prone to multi-task, to try to prep some ingredients while others bake or bubble or reduce in volume, will find that the process of making browned butter demands full attention because the butter can go from melted to burnt in a matter of a few seconds. The proverbial “watched pot” may be reluctant to boil, but the process of gently cooking butter will yield immense pleasures while one looks on intently as the yellow sticks melt, then froth, then slowly turn a nutty brown. Once the butter is browned, the bananas must be mashed fine. The bananas are sweet and fragrant like vanilla; their scent fills the air, mingling with the brown-sugar-sweetness of the cooling browned butter. All senses activated, increasing the anticipation: This will be one amazing cake.
As one might imagine, sweets mixed by hand take a little longer than recipes in which the ingredients are combined with a mixer. They require an extra bit of care and attention, an extra few steps to complete. But the steps are not complicated, and in fact are part of what makes the recipes so rewarding. Every moment of the process brings with it the opportunity to savor each ingredient—what it looks like, how it smells, what it feels like in the hand.
***
Anyone who cooks with children learns very quickly that kids like to touch everything—pie crust, cookie dough, a fluffy mound of sifted flour; the child’s first question is always, “Can I touch it?” Followed by that question are the ones that address the other senses: What does the batter look like? Can I smell it? Can I have a taste? What makes the crackling sound when something is sizzling in a pan? Children delight in the experience of discovery, of seeing what it looks like when bread dough has risen or marveling at how slimy egg whites fluff into silky, shiny meringue.
Mixing by hand brings this sense of discovery back into baking, slowing things down and requiring the baker to be present and involved in each of the recipe’s steps. And it is this precise involvement that reminds me of what I loved about making that first ridiculous little English muffin “pizza”: the doughy-soft texture of the muffin “crust,” the woodsy fragrance of the sprinkled oregano, the salty bite of the mozzarella sprinkled on the top. Each element had its own unique appeal, and in smelling, touching, and tasting the ingredients along the way, I got to appreciate how each contributed to the finished product. It is the same with hand-mixing: my senses have a part in each of the steps, making them all the more gratifying to complete. I whisk the sugar and eggs, melt the butter, brew the coffee that will be added to an already intensely fragrant chocolate cake batter, each step heightening the anticipation that comes with waiting for the ring of the oven timer. Soon—but not too soon—it will be time to eat.
Faux Your Health: Is this advice?
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/buzzbishop/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
I don’t know very many people who make New Year’s resolutions. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that my friends (like, I would imagine, most people) tend to make changes in their lives as needed, rather than arbitrarily waiting for the ceremony tied to the ushering in of another year. Other friends and family feel that resolutions are rather hollow, made–as they often are–by folks who by February (if not by late in the day on January 2) have forgotten all about what they resolved to do this year, finding themselves swept up instead in the swirling current of life as it always has been.
But for those who do make New Year’s resolutions, particularly those who make the resolution to lose some weight and make healthier choices, January is a boundless cornucopia of tips, tricks, and how-tos from a variety of experts who parade across our media landscape like so much flora-laden floats at the New Year’s Day Rose Parade.
One of the experts who wants to help America “eat this, not that” is Joy Bauer, the resident nutritionist on the set of NBC’s Today show. Rail-thin and a bit high-strung (early last week she actually recommended that viewers “learn to become fidgety” in order to burn extra calories throughout the day), Bauer performs various functions, including answering viewer questions and, on two Monday mornings a month, inducting people with weight loss success stories into the Joy Fit Club.
Despite the exuberance that Bauer’s first name might seem to connote, “Joy” instead seems rather joyless when it comes to the subject of food and eating. As a nutritionist, she offers meal suggestions to the audience that take into account calorie counts and nutritional value, but rarely does the potential pleasure of a dish–of making it and eating it–figure into her advice on how to live healthfully and happily. And that’s a real shame, because in disregarding the pleasure principle, Bauer–however unwittingly–perpetuates the common misconception that the practice of maintaining a healthy diet is a particularly stoic, bland, dissatisfying endeavor. Indeed, whenever Bauer is on the screen, it’s hard not to think of George Costanza yelling at Jerry, “Have a yolk! It won’t kill you!”
Of course, one might expect a nutritionist to think first of health and not of flavor when it comes to doling out advice to those seeking to lose weight. But to think in these terms is to reinforce the myth that those two things (flavor and nutritional value) are necessarily mutually exclusive when in actuality, the opposite is true: In fact, lots of things that are incredibly enjoyable to eat happen also to contain quite a bit of nutrients. Think of in-season tomatoes, which need little more than a sprinkle of salt to be enjoyed. And what vegetable isn’t fantastic when tossed with just a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a hot oven until the edges have begun to brown? Then there are sweet potatoes to consider, grilled marinated flank steak, tenderloin of pork, a bowl of glistening, jewel-toned strawberries, slices of sticky, spicy mango.
All of these are foods Ms. Bauer could have mentioned one day last week when responding to an email from a viewer who worried that she might never be able to lose weight because she “hate[s] ‘healthy’ foods.” The question itself requires some follow-up queries: What does the viewer mean by “healthy foods,” and what has she not liked about those foods in the past? If this is someone whose idea of “healthy food” involves little more than rice cakes, cottage cheese, and over-cooked broccoli, then some education is in order. What I’m getting at here is that there are a million good-for-you foods this viewer could make that would also taste fantastic. Her question, though, seemed to indicate that she prefers processed foods to whole foods, and that she assumes if something tastes good it must not be good for you.
Joy advised the woman “try a new food every day,” with the idea that she would then “hopefully learn to like” healthier foods. But such “advice” is really useless, since it is unlikely a.) that the viewer even knows what kinds of “new foods” would be good to start with, and b.) what to do with those “new foods” in order to maximize–and thus fully enjoy–their flavors. After all, if this is someone who usually eats frozen entrees and canned soups, it’s unlikely that she will suddenly wander into the produce section and decide on a whim to see what she can do with a leafy bunch of kale. Diet advice fail!
In Bauer’s defense, the Today show allots her a rather small chunk of time in which to share her expertise with the viewing public, so it’s possible she’s simply providing the best information she can given the time constraints. It is interesting, then, to turn one’s attention to NBC’s hugely popular show, The Biggest Loser, which, with a running time of two full hours every Tuesday, could (in theory) offer plenty of good advice to those watching at home. And while the shows stars, trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, do offer instruction about how to prepare healthy meals, more and more of the “education” on the show has been ceded to product placement, often in the interest of endorsing some processed food at the expense of a healthier (and, I would argue, tastier) whole food alternative.
Of course, all reality shows at this point are bedeviled by the problem of product placement, with the producers unable to resist such an obvious cash cow, thereby forcing viewers to listen to cringe-worthy dialogue as the show’s participants try to make a blatant whoring of products seem like just a casual conversation about, say, Extra Sugar-free gum. But the product-placement in The Biggest Loser is particularly problematic because it involves a kind of tacit endorsement from Bob and Jillian, who–in playing both coach and parent figures to the contestants (a group whose collective starting weight seems to increase with every season of the show)–are seen by many viewers as the arbiters of all things healthy.
And so, it is deeply troubling, then, to see Bob suggest (as he did in a recent season of the show) that the contestants enjoy a cup of fat free Jell-o with a dollop of Cool-Whip on top as a sweet treat during the day. First, it probably goes without saying that Jell-o topped with Cool Whip hardly counts as a serving of food, being as both of these items are merely additives and flavorings held together by stabilizers and preservatives. Possibly even more disturbing, though, is the idea that someone might think that she would actually prefer Jell-o and Cool Whip to a bowl of ripe berries topped with a small scoop of real whipped cream. (Never mind that if the berries are in season and fully ripe, you might want to simply enjoy them sliced in a bowl, with nothing else on top.) Anyone who does choose jello over berries is not only missing out on key nutrients (in the berries and, yes, even the cream), but is also depriving herself of the sensuous, wonderful pleasure that comes from the flavors and textures of these real foods.
In other words, eat this:
not this:
??? Bob, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Michael Pollan believes that our country suffers from what he calls a “national eating disorder,” one in which we cede more and more of the control over what and how we eat to other people–to the industries that provide the food we eat, to the nutritionists and scientists who urge us to incorporate this or that particular nutrient into our eating repertoire, and to the manufacturers of processed foods who go to great lengths to sell us their products. In watching how food is treated by our national media, one gains a keen understanding of what troubles Pollan: “Experts” appear on our morning news programs to lecture us on what to eat right now (I say “right now” because the advice seems to be constantly in flux, changing almost daily based on the findings of the “latest study”). Meanwhile, we learn that we can have our Jell-o and eat it too (and this information is presented to us as though it is a great boon for our taste buds). It’s hard not to accept Pollan’s point-of-view that we have been goaded into listening to others rather than…well…going with our gut feeling about how, when, and how much to feed ourselves. Meanwhile, those bringing us this “information” continue to profit–from the advertising that pays for the morning show’s production, to the product placement that has been weaved into our entertainment programs in an effort to ensure that even those with DVRs get their minimum daily value of commercials.
And in the meantime, Americans get heavier and heavier, increasingly hooked on processed foods and less aware of how to avoid them. Many of these Americans will resolve to get healthier this year. One hopes they’ll begin that journey with a bowl of fresh fruit and thereby proclaim there really isn’t always room for Jell-o.
From Scratch: Sea Salt Caramels
Handmade, hand-wrapped caramels
It’s December, and that means right now people everywhere are hunting through kitchen cupboards and drawers in search of the holiday cookie cutters, eagerly anticipating an afternoon spent baking and decorating sweetened butter cookies. Others are pulling out the treasured family recipe for fudge, excited that the time has come once again to savor that special treat.
Indeed, one of the best things about this time of year is the way that it connects us to our food traditions, reigniting memories through the scents and tastes of our childhood. Amidst all this tradition, though, there is also space for trying something new, for making sweets today that will themselves become tradition in the years to come.
For me, that new ritual may very well come in the form of sea salt caramels, a treat I made this past Friday for a holiday gathering of friends that happened on Saturday. When I saw Ina Garten make them on her show a few weeks ago, I thought sacks of the little treats would make great party favors; plus, in a season in which people are receiving plates full of cookies, fudge and fruitcakes from friends and neighbors, this little bag of caramels would be an unexpected treat. What’s more, they last a good long time, much longer than cookies or fudge, and therefore could be put away and enjoyed next month, even, when one is not being offered sugar-laced snacks several times a day.
I was indeed glad I made these. First, they were fun to make, and the kitchen smelled intensely of butter and vanilla long after the caramel mixture was setting in the fridge. In addition–and perhaps more importantly–they taste great: creamy and rich, with buttery, nutty, salty notes; you can tell they were made from scratch.
Caramels, naked as the day they were formed
The recipe is below. As you’ll see, it calls for fleur de sel, but the $18 that the tin I found cost was a bit out of my food budget this month, so I went for Trader Joe’s sea salt. It worked fine. The idea is to have the salt boost the caramel flavor, and to me, the TJ’s sea salt did just that. Don’t worry about the candies being too salty; they aren’t. But of course, if you are worried about dusting each with a sprinkling of sea salt, you can always test it out on just one caramel and see what you think. That’s what I did, and I noticed a definite difference between the salted and the unsalted caramels.
My other suggestions follow throughout the recipe in brackets. I usually offer suggestions after the entire recipe, but since my suggestions are related to various steps in the preparation, I thought it would be more helpful to people to read them as they go. I just wanted to add here that the recipe for Fleur De Sel Caramels at the Food Network site is wrong. Fortunately, recipe reviewers who had copied the recipe while watching the episode of Barefoot Contessa in which Ina makes these pointed out the errors and offered the corrected measurements of each ingredient, so I went off that advice. It’s worth noting here that the recipe has been wrong for over a year, and reviewers have, apparently, notified Food Network, but the webmasters there have failed to fix the recipe. I have long thought that Food Network has one of the worst websites out there, and this experience just further underscored that for me. I’m thankful to the reviewers who corrected the problems with the recipe as it is printed on the Food Network site.
Fleur De Sel Caramels
Recipe from the amazing Ina Garten
1 ½ C. sugar
¼ C. corn syrup
½ C. water
1 C. heavy cream
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tsp. fleur de sel, plus extra for sprinkling
½ tsp. pure vanilla extract
Line the bottom of an 8-inch square baking pan (or loaf pan) with parchment paper, then brush the paper lightly with oil, allowing the paper to drape over 2 sides. [I used a 9 X 13" pan, and it worked fine for the job. In fact, I will probably use it again next time, because it causes the caramel mixture to form a thinner layer and therefore cool rather quickly in the fridge.]
In a deep saucepan (6 inches diameter by 4 1/2 inches deep) combine the sugar, corn syrup, and 1/2 cup water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Continue to boil until the caramel is a warm golden brown color. Don’t stir – just swirl the pan to mix. Watch carefully, as it will burn quickly at the end! [The mixture was about the color of peanut butter--or browned butter--when I added the milk and cream, which is what you need to do as soon as the sugar mixture becomes this "warm golden brown color."]
In the meantime [meaning, while you are waiting for the sugar to turn a warm brown color], bring the cream, butter, and 1 teaspoon fleur de sel to a simmer in a small pan over medium heat. Remove from the heat, set aside and keep warm.
When the caramelized sugar is the right color, slowly add the cream mixture to the caramel – it will boil up violently. Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon and cook over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until the mixture reaches 248 degrees F (firm ball) on a candy thermometer. [This only took four minutes on my stove top, so go by the temperature, not by time. If you don't have a candy thermometer, invest in one before you make these. They are cheap and easy to come by; I think I even got mine at the grocery store many years ago.] Very carefully (it’s hot!) pour the caramel into the prepared pan and refrigerate until firm.
When the caramels are cool, use the parchment paper to pry the sheet from the pan onto a cutting board. Starting at 1 end, roll the caramel up tightly until you’ve rolled up half of the sheet. Cut the sheet across and then roll the second half tightly. You will have 2 (1 by 8-inch) logs. Sprinkle both logs lightly with fleur de sel, cut each log in 8 pieces. Cut parchment papers in 6 by 4 1/2-inch squares and wrap each caramel in a paper, twisting the ends. Store in the refrigerator or at room temperature.
[I did things a little differently here. I took the long edge of my caramel sheet and folded it over about an inch. I then pressed down slightly to fuse the two layers of caramel and then cut this "log" free from the sheet and sliced it into chunks that were about ¾" long and about ½" high. I repeated this process until my sheet of caramel was no longer a sheet but rather several two-layer "logs." Since Ina rolls her sheet of caramel to make a very big piece of candy, she only got 16 very large caramels from her batch; mine yielded nearly 70 smaller ones, making them not only a fun and sweet holiday gift, but a budget-wise one as well. One last thing: I salted my caramels individually, and found that doing so ensured that the salt stayed on the caramels better, and coated each more evenly. But you should do whatever is easiest for you.]
Cutie Clafouti
As I mentioned in my most recent post, I’ve been working my way through Nicole Rees’s amazing cookbook, “Baking Unplugged.” The text celebrates the joys of making things completely by hand–no machines or fancy gadgets required.
So far, every recipe I have tried (five, so far) has been fantastic, from stick-to-your fingers moist chocolate snack cake to breakfast rolls flavored with orange zest and cardamom and dotted with rum-plumped golden raisins. Among these five recipes, the simplest has been the Cranberry Clafouti; it’s also been one of the most enjoyable, with a depth of flavor that I would have never expected from a dessert that is like a custardy puff pancake.
Because its cranberry season, one of my favorite seasons of the year, I’m including the recipe here. And because it is also the gift-giving season for many people, I am recommending Baking Unplugged as a great gift idea, equally perfect for someone who is just learning to bake as it would be for someone who already knows the pleasures of a mixing bowl and whisk. This book just makes me really, really happy.
So here is the clafouti recipe. I have no advice to offer because, in the three times I’ve made the clafouti, I’ve followed the instructions and ingredient list as printed in the book, and everything worked out beautifully every time. I should mention that I cut the recipe in half (and yes, use one and a half eggs!) and cook it in my small skillet, and I cut the cooking time down to seven minutes for this smaller version. I have made the clafouti both with and without the almond extract, and my personal preference is to leave it out. For the liquor I use amaretto, and I love the depth of flavor it adds to the sautéed fruit.
Cranberry Clafouti: To make me is to love me.
Cranberry Clafouti
Makes 3 to 4 servings
½ C. all-purpose flour
½ C. sugar (Rees says: If you would like to use a fruit other than cranberries, use ¼ C. sugar)
¼ tsp. salt
3 large eggs
1 C. (scant) whole milk or 2% milk
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. almond extract (optional)
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 ½ C. cranberries (or other fresh fruit)
3 Tbsp. brandy, amaretto, Grand Marnier, or Cointreau—whatever you have on hand
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Position a rack in the upper third of the oven, and preheat the oven to 425°F. Place an ovenproof 9″ or 10″ skillet over medium heat for a minute or two to get hot. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, 2 tablespoons of the sugar, and the salt. Gradually whisk in the eggs until the mixture is smooth and lump free. Whisk in the milk and extracts.
Melt the butter in the hot skillet, swirling to coat evenly. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the butter and then add the fruit to the pan. Increase the heat to medium-high and sauté, shaking the pan frequently, until the fruit softens and the juices and sugar form thick syrup, about five minutes (about three minutes for most other fruits).
Turn off the heat and add the brandy to the pan, shaking the pan to coat the fruit evenly. Pour the egg batter into the pan. Bake in the upper third of the oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until puffed on the sides and fully cooked in the center (check with the tip of a knife). Serve warm with a dusting of powdered sugar.
Grateful for Family, Friends, and a Fabulous Biscuit Recipe
Those of us who traveled out of town for Thanksgiving are likely back in our own kitchens with the holiday leftovers now several cities or even several states away. What that means is that those of us who’ve returned home but have yet to do the weekly shopping are either ordering takeout or bravely cobbling together a dinner made from whatever happens to be in the refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen pantry. For me, this meant resisting the urge to have Cranberry Clafouti for dinner even though I had all of the ingredients—flour, milk, eggs, cranberries, sugar, butter, vanilla—required to make this lovely sweet something that is not really a pancake but also not quite a custard. Lest you think I staved off temptation because of some stalwart commitment to always eating “right,” I feel I should admit that I resisted making the clafouti only because I had made it for dinner twice in the week before I left town for Thanksgiving (and, truth be told, I also made it once for breakfast during that week, and if memory serves, this was on a morning after I had had clafouti for dinner. Damn you, clafouti, for being so tasty and so easy to make!). Such decadence preceding what is arguably the most decadent meal of the year is not something anyone should make into a habit, so clearly, something needed to be done to break this vicious clafouti cycle.
Fortunately, because I went shopping at the farmer’s market just two days before I left town, I came home to a pantry that had rather a lot more to offer than a random assortment of canned goods and a few jars of condiments. I had eggs, a few good-sized leeks, an assortment of wild mushrooms that had not only survived a week in my refrigerator but actually still looked great, and my usual stock of baking necessities: flour, butter, sugar, salt, and leavenings. I decided on scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms and leeks over homemade biscuits, despite the fact that I had never made a biscuit that I truly enjoyed. I’ve had several great biscuits in my day, but none of them had ever come out of my kitchen. The ones that I had tried to make were always disappointing, failing as they did to compare with the biscuits I had meant to make: that is to say, biscuits that would be fluffy and not dense, moist and not crumbly.
Still, just because I hadn’t ever made a good biscuit, that does not mean I regarded good biscuits as being totally out of my league, forever unattainable, always to be supplied by some other, masterful biscuit maker. My students at the university where I teach often say at the beginning of the semester, “I’m just not a good writer,” a statement which always leads me to respond, “You’re not a good writer yet.” And so, on this Saturday after Thanksgiving, with the promise of savory scrambled eggs humbly scattered across feathery, light, moist homemade biscuits, I told myself, “You haven’t made good biscuits yet,” and set about trying once again to do so.
For help, I turned to Nicole Rees, whose book, Baking Unplugged is quickly becoming one of my favorite baking books ever. (Mind you, the clafouti recipe is also in this tome, so you can imagine the temptation I had to overcome to skip past that and move on to the recipe for biscuits.) So far, I’ve liked everything I’ve made from this book (and, obviously, really liked that clafouti), including her Coffee Cocoa Snack Cake, cakey cranberry muffins, and Morning Rolls made with cardamom and orange zest and studded with rum-soaked raisins. I trust this author—her knowledge, her advice, and especially her palate. And so, armed with her recipe for Southern-Style Pull-Apart Biscuits, I gave this biscuit-making thing another try.
Don't worry, clafouti; we'll be together again someday.
The biscuits were, in a word, amazing. In several words, they were also unbelievably easy to make. I imagine that the hand-forming (rather than rolled out and then cut) method of shaping the dough helps to keep the biscuits fluffy and prevent them from getting tough or dried out. Also, grating the butter in the manner indicated in the recipe cut down on the time required to blend the butter with the dry ingredients, and as many a baker knows, the less time you spend mixing a non-yeast dough, the less likely it is to resemble a hockey puck once baked.
Besides being fluffy and moist, the biscuits also had great flavor. Rees wittily comments on her obsession with butter throughout her book (her recipe for chocolate chip cookies calls for melting half of the butter in order to yield a cookie with even more butter flavor), and with this recipe, it’s easy to see why she’s developed such an obsession. The biscuits themselves were so buttery and moist that they could be enjoyed with very little butter once out of the oven. Of course, that shouldn’t stop anyone who is so inclined from slathering each biscuit with a nice dollop of buttery goodness.
The recipe follows below. As for the eggs that went atop my biscuits: I sautéed roughly a third of a cup of leeks and three-quarters of a cup of chopped mushrooms in two teaspoons of olive oil. I like my scrambled eggs to be a mixture of one whole egg combined with the whites of two other eggs, so that’s how I did these. Seasoned everything with salt and pepper.
Biscuits. Notice halo effect, to communicate degree of heavenliness.
No picture of the eggs, just the biscuits. The picture doesn’t do them justice, failing as it does to communicate how buttery-rich, feathery and moist these babies are. This:
See how fluffy?
was my best attempt at capturing their fluffy interior on film. (I am no food photographer, which is probably plainly evident by now.)
Usually when I post a recipe on my blog, I offer advice about what I will do differently or have done differently when making the recipe, based on previous results. With this, as with the other recipes in Rees’s book, however, I find no alteration necessary (though I would imagine these biscuits would be great with chopped fresh herbs added to the dry ingredients along with the buttermilk). I loved these with my eggs, but I’m also planning to have them with the vegetarian chili I’ll be making tomorrow. I also think they’d be wonderful with fruit as a shortcake base (which is one of the ways Rees uses them in the book), and delightful with some ham for lunch or with breakfast. Enjoy!
Southern-Style Pull-Apart Biscuits
Recipe by Nicole Rees, author of Baking Unplugged
1 ½ C. cake flour
2 C. all-purpose flour (divided)
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
¾ C. cold unsalted butter
1 ½ C. cold buttermilk
1 to 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted, for brushing the biscuits
Preheat the oven to 375°. Butter a 13 x 9” baking pan. In a large bowl, stir together the cake flour, 1 ½ cups of the all-purpose flour, the sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda until well combined. Using the medium shredding holes on a box grater, grate the butter into the flour, tossing often to coat the butter with the flour. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, work the butter into the flour until it forms ¼” pieces. Gently fold in the buttermilk until the flour is mostly incorporated. Don’t overmix—the batter will be thick, sticky, and lumpy.
Place the remaining ½ cup flour in a small bowl. Scoop about 1/3 cup of dough into the dusting flour, rolling the dough to coat it evenly. Gently roll or pat the dough into a round ball and drop into the pan. Repeat this procedure with the remaining dough, 5 biscuits the long way in the pan and 3 the short way, leaving small gaps between the dough balls. Press the tops to flatten slightly and brush them with the melted butter. Bake in the upper third of the oven for 18 to 22 minutes, or until no longer doughy in the center and browned on the tops.
Food Network Challenge: A Very Special Olympics
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunchofpants/2964263685/
Lately I’ve become obsessed with Food Network Challenge, a televised weekly food battle that features bravado, trash-talking and excessive compensation–it’s like professional sports, only without the fan face-painting and cheesy halftime shenanigans.
The challenges run the gamut, from best burgers to top tailgate fare, but I’ve found that I’m particularly enamored by the cake-related ones, partly because of the unabashed absurdity that forms the underpinnings of these “contests,” and partly because sexy cake decorator Jason Ellis doesn’t appear on Food Network Challenge: Chili Cookoff or Food Network Challenge: Extreme BBQ. Ellis is as hilarious and charming as he is cute; it’s an irresistible combination. Here’s proof of his good looks:
How you doin'?
Of course, he’s also gay (as far as I know) which means it could never happen between us. The 2,000 mile geographical separation as well as the fact that we don’t even know each other might also be factors that would keep us apart, but as you’ll see, Food Network doesn’t bother to consider reality when it creates these competitions, so I don’t see why I should be bound by such constraints when I’m tuning in to ogle the competitors.
Depending on how you feel about totally feigned competition scenarios, Food Network Challenge is either God’s gift to competitive cooking or an absolute abomination. As I mention above, Food Network does not traffic in reality, which is why–after three plus years of coming up with these challenges–the network’s creative directors, having found the well of new ideas to be running dry, have begun to sip instead from the well of “What the…?”
Take, for example, Food Network Challenge: Triplets Birthday Cake. In this particular episode, the decorators were told to create a cake for three fraternal triplets who were turning sixteen, the challenge being that, to create such a cake, the decorators would have to create something that appealed flavor-wise to each triplet, and design the decor in such a way as to reflect the hopes, dreams, passions and fave color schemes of the birthday boys and girl.
That alone seems–to the uninitiated–a significant enough challenge (Ooh–one triplet loves yellow, while another hates it–how will the bakers pull this off?), but those of us more familiar with “Challenge” (as the host and contestants refer to it) know that a task that simple would be…well…a piece of cake in Food Network land. “Oh, c’mon now,” we scoff, “Where’s the ‘challenge’ in that?”
Fortunately, there was a fly in the buttercream, and it came late in the game, as the decorators were putting what they thought were the finishing touches on their cakes. The three teen judges dropped in with some unfortunate news. Turns out the cakes were all so spectacular that the teens could never choose one over the other. And so together they decided the way to solve this confectionery conundrum was to tell the competitors that a four-foot tall cake reflecting the interests and tastes of each teen alone just wouldn’t cut it in this competition.
[Triplets to cake decorators]: Since we can’t choose between your cakes, each of you will need to come up with a name for our film company [that is, the triplets non-existent film company] and design a logo for it. Then you will need to somehow, like, incorporate the name and logo into the cake, and then we’ll make our decision based on which name and logo we like best, and how well you work it into the cake.
[Jay to triplets]: You’ve got to be kidding me.
[Jay to triplets, translation]: Are you effing kidding me?
In the end, the prize went to Norman, another familiar face at Challenge, who tearfully admitted he won it for his father, who had passed away before Norman started competing on the FNC circuit. Norman’s a sweetie, and good for him and all. But let’s look at Jason again.
How yooooooooouuuuu doin'?
OK, so, the whole, “Design a logo and come up with our film company name” thing was contrived enough, and yet it’s nowhere near as ridiculous as Food Network Challenge: Blind Date Cakes. Remember the show, “The Dating Game”? Conjure up your memories of that and cross them with the Pillsbury Bake-off, and you’ve got the basic idea. The show began with three very anxious bachelors seated behind a screen. They asked questions of a bachelorette, and after the q & a, the bachelors were paired with pastry chefs who created and decorated cakes for the woman based on the information the men had gleaned during their brief conversation with her at the beginning of the show. Once the cakes were completed, the woman chose her favorite; the suitor who helped create the winning cake then came out from offstage, and off the two went on a “fantasy” date.
As you might imagine, cakes proved an unreliable method for matching a potential couple. While the winning cake seemed to incorporate everything the bachelorette liked (and I mean everything–the effect was that of one’s life passing before her eyes…on a rotating cake pedestal), the bachelor on the other hand…not so much. It was a little like watching Martha Stewart being sent on a date with Jesse Ventura. Somehow, you just don’t see it working out.
It’s odd enough to watch cake decorators craft a multi-tiered homage to a woman they’ve never met using ideas from a man who has also never met the woman in question, but what might be even more ridiculous is to go on an all-expense-paid Carnival cruise to the Bahamas, return from the cruise, make a cake to commemorate the experience, and take home $10,000 for doing an especially good job. But that’s just what happened recently on Food Network Challenge: Fantasy Vacation Cakes. While people continue to lose their homes, jobs, and life savings, Food Network is evidently financially viable enough to send four cake decorators on a cruise to the Bahamas–and on top of that award $10,000 to one of them just for baking the best cruise-themed cake. True, the trip likely didn’t cost Food Network very much; the episode was an obvious shill for Carnival Cruises that even the thick sheets of fondant and the giant, gold, edible seahorses that donned the winning cake could not conceal–but it was still a bit shocking to see so much money being thrown around for a televised cake decorating competition in which the winning cake would not even be featured at a specific event.
Jason Ellis was competing though, so of course I watched. Unfortunately, his cake–and cake stand, actually–fell apart, and thus he lost this challenge. But the episode still yielded some fascinating bits of insight, not the least of which was that the Challenge newbie in this episode–a bubbly blond who specializes in the kinds of sleek, elegant cakes favored by people who think that $20,000 is “just what a wedding costs these days”–revealed that one of her favorite parts of the cruise was that each day, the stewards would replace the guest towels with clean towels folded into the shape of a dog’s face. She liked this detail so much that she had one of the stewards teach her how to fold the towels this way, and then incorporated that element into her cake.
An all-expense-paid cruise to the Bahamas, with snorkeling, swimming, and drinks with umbrellas, and yet the highlight for this woman essentially involved folding laundry.
The winning cake–a tacky, overly-decorated mish-mash of sparkly decorations (including sugar beads designed to emulate the Carnival chandeliers and a set of huge edible seahorses finished in culinary-grade gold leafing)–was all the more undeserving of $10,000 because, in addition to its gaudy showiness, the cake’s decorator insisted on referring to her decorations as “bling,” a transgression that should have not only prevented her from winning, but disqualified her from even competing.
But alas, fairness or logic don’t always have a place at the judges’ table in Challenge, and why should they, being they are also optional ingredients in each contest’s premise–ingredients that the Food Network believes should be used sparingly, if at all. As long as Jason Ellis remains on the show’s menu of competitors, however, I’ll keep watching, no matter how ridiculous the challenge. If it were up to me, that next competition would be Food Network Challenge: Bathing Suit Sweets, in which the competitors would construct their cakes while wearing only their swimsuits and a smile. And any contestant whose body or cake was adorned with “bling” would be immediately removed from the premises and forced to go on a blind date with an aunt or uncle of the birthday triplets. That sounds contrived and illogical, which is why I think there’s real hope I’ll see it on Food Network soon.
Budget-conscious Bliss: The Sweet-tooths take San Francisco
A couple of weekends ago, three friends and I spent our Saturday afternoon on a “Dessert Crawl,” an event that was part tea party, part walking tour of San Francisco’s Mission District.
The idea for the crawl was born on Facebook, when various people were offering a friend recommendations for good places to go for dessert. As different folks chimed in with suggestions for my friend Katie, another friend, Frances, remarked, “Dessert crawl!”, and because we all recognized what a lovely thing such an event would be, we immediately commenced planning Dessert Crawl #1.
Because the agreed-upon date for the crawl was a good few weeks away, we had plenty of time to plan where we would go and how we would go about the crawling. We all agreed that we should share desserts and walk to all locations in order to avoid feeling disgustingly full before we had even finished dessert number two. We also had places in mind that we definitely wanted to hit–Bi-Rite Creamery, Tartine, and the Creme Brûlée Cart being among them.
When the day arrived, Creme Brûlée Cart had decided he would be in Hayes Valley instead of the Mission, and he would be there far earlier in the day than we had planned to meet. Though initially disappointed, we forged ahead without him and had a delightful Saturday afternoon.
We first hit up Bi-Rite Creamery. It was my first time going there, and when it was time to place my order, I was delighted to find that my small, “single”-sized cup could accommodate two small scoops of ice cream, so I got to try two flavors; I chose toasted coconut and ginger. Both were good, particularly the ginger, which had a creamier texture and far less ice crystals than the coconut. Other flavors consumed by our party: salted caramel (the “it flavor” at Bi-Rite, it seems) and toffee. Raves all around.
From there we walked down the block to Tartine. They are known (and rightfully so) for their bread pudding, but it was a rare warm day in San Francisco–not really bread pudding weather–so we chose a small lemon tart and shared it amongst the four of us. The tart was beautiful to look at and incredibly satisfying to eat, with a filling that was less lemon curd and more lemon cream; still, it somehow managed to taste light, airy, and pucker-perfect tangy. We also liked the fact that the tart had a crunchy-cookie-type crust that added a perfect balance of texture to the silky citrus filling.
Lemon Tart for four at Tartine
When we left Tartine, we had a good several block walk to our next destination, Mission Pie. It was a lovely walk, during which we admired the architecture
A beautiful home with a beautiful view.
and even chatted with a friendly, curious cockatoo who greeted us with many hearty squawks and an eventual throaty, “Hello!”
"Hello!"
At Mission Pie, we shared a slice of the mixed-berry pie. The filling was spectacular: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries–all nestled tightly together on a flaky bottom crust. The filling was full of berry flavor and had not a bit of the bland gooeyness that seems to plague so many other fruit pies of lesser quality.
Berry pie with whipped cream on the side.
Pie consumed, it was time to head to our last destination, Anthony’s Cookies, where we each bought our own cookie (they’re small), with which we toasted our very delightful Saturday afternoon. They were cookies we would all be pining for later, long after we had gobbled them up. I had the peanut butter cookie, and it was truly one of the best I’ve ever had. Anthony does not flatten his peanut butter cookie, and because of that, it bakes up with a crisp outer texture and a warm, soft-chewy center. It’s like a hug for your tongue, and who doesn’t need a good hug these days?
As we said our goodbyes, we all remarked how great the day had been: The Dessert Crawl is economical! We all tasted four desserts and spent around eight dollars to do so. And, because we shared items and had small portions of the things we didn’t share, we didn’t experience “sugar crash” afterward. Plus, it was wonderful to be outside, walking and appreciating our surroundings as we moved through the city on foot (one of the best ways to see and appreciate San Francisco). And as my friend Frances noted, probably the best thing about a Dessert Crawl is that it doesn’t require nearly the recovery that a Pub Crawl often does. Amen to that.
We are already looking forward to DC #2.
College Fail? (Who is to blame for low college graduation rates?)
In a recent article in The New York Times, David Leonhardt explores the premises of a new book called, Crossing the Finish Line, a text in which the authors, economists William Bowen and Michael McPherson (both of whom are former university presidents), focus on what they see as U.S. colleges’ dismal graduation rates.
The percentage of Americans with a college degree continues to hover around thirty percent–close to one third of the population; it’s a percentage that, according to Bowen and Mcpherson, could and should be much higher. Leonhardt readily accepts this premise and makes it clear that it is high time that colleges be “held to account for their failures,” failures that are a product of an environment that, according to Leonhardt “[focuses] on enrollment rather than completion.” In other words, our colleges and universities spend more time wooing prospective students than they do ensuring the success of the ones they’ve already coaxed onto their campuses.
It’s a tantalizing argument: focus on increasing student retention, especially at our four-year universities, and more people will finish school and thereby contribute more to the society in which we all live. As Leonhardt contends, “Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started.” If we improve our college graduation rates, he further implies, we will enjoy greater equality and greater productivity as a nation. So if these are the benefits that await us, why wouldn’t we want to fix our institutions of higher learning by demanding that they increase student success?
But, of course, the students entering our colleges had to come from somewhere; they were not born on our doorstep, and Leonhardt acknowledges that “inadequate precollege education is a problem” when it comes to ensuring that those who enter college leave with a degree. But, he goes on to say that, “high schools still produce many students who have the skills to complete college and yet fail to do so,” which leads Leonhardt to conclude that “Turning [these students] into college graduates should be a lot less difficult than fixing all of American education.”
Unfortunately, though, if we want to improve our colleges, we must also commit ourselves to “fixing all of American education,” and because our “precollege education” system does not exist in a vacuum, then we must also look at the societal structures that influence what our students learn and how much of it they retain in their K-12 years. Leonhardt uses the analogy of health care reform, noting that when we pay doctors per procedure, we get more care, but not necessarily better care. He feels the same problem exists in our colleges: instead of paying per student enrolled, we should be paying for the percentage of students the college graduates. But if we applied similar logic to his assertion that we could fix our colleges without “fixing the whole of American education,” doing so would be akin to telling someone that preventative care–including eating right, exercising, and annual checkups–is not necessary; we can just medicate you later in your old age–that is, if you should actually even make it to old age after years of neglecting your health.
If we acknowledge that our country’s “precollege education” system is increasingly graduating students who are not yet academically ready for their college freshmen year, then we need to take that fact into account when we wonder, as Mr. Leonhardt does, “What if a college announced that it was going to redirect its resources toward students who remained on track to graduate in four or, at most, five years? It would offer intensive remedial education for those who needed it.”
First, Mr. Leonhardt should know that many schools already do this, including the school where I teach, a public university in California. We do offer “intensive remedial education” to those students who test below freshman level in English and math. In California, close to 60% of incoming college freshmen require remediation in one or both of these subjects, but what the numbers don’t reveal, what people don’t understand unless they’ve taught these courses, is that this education, particularly in the lowest level of remediation, is being provided to students who, in many cases, are reading at a seventh grade level, and sometimes even below that. In the remedial courses, the students are given a lot of support: regular on-campus tutoring, frequent meeting time with instructors, extra class time to complete the work. In my department (English), our lowest level remedial course is two semesters in length, so these resources are provided to the students in the class for their entire freshman year.
But guess what? It turns out, it’s hard for someone who comes into college reading at a seventh grade level to be ready for sophomore college classes (which he or she will be taking after completing the year-long remedial course) in just one academic year. A few will make great strides, for sure. But many will get side-tracked–by pregnancy, by family obligations, by a continued inability to understand the material, or even by a sheer lack of interest in collegiate study. Hence, even with all of the extra support, many of our students cannot ignore the circumstances that landed them in remedial classes in the first place: poor education in the K-12 years, or an inability to make use of a good education in the K-12 years because of race or class discrimination, family constraints, or even an undiagnosed learning disability.
Meanwhile, as Leonhardt explains, the more selective colleges have a far higher graduation rate than less elite schools. This information should come as no surprise–not only are students who did the work to get into a more selective college usually more committed to finishing their degree, but often they are also more prepared than those who get into less selective schools. I would hope that the question many people are asking themselves if they are reading this is, “How is someone who reads at a seventh grade level getting into college in the first place?” It’s a valid question; and we shouldn’t be surprised that colleges that are allowing students in who are not prepared for the work or the independence or the maturity that college demands are the same colleges who graduate fewer students than those schools that have incredibly demanding admission standards. At the same time, we should ask how someone is able to graduate from high school if he or she is only reading at a seventh grade level.
Meanwhile, even if Mr. Leonhardt were right, that we could somehow improve our colleges without “fixing the whole of American education,” institutions still need money in order to implement the changes (greater access to tutoring and other such support) that Mr. Leonhardt feels many of our institutions of higher education currently lack. My campus is a public university; we depend on funding from the state, a state that came very close to filing for bankruptcy this year. Many other states–if not as much of a financial train wreck as California–are also suffering in the recession. So, like the university where I teach, many of these colleges that Mr. Leonhardt thinks need to step up their game are floundering as they try to remain solvent in the face of major cuts in funding. In my university system, faculty and staff are on furlough, something we agreed to in hopes of avoiding layoffs and thereby continuing to provide classes to as many students who want an education as possible.
But there’s the rub…many students don’t want it. Or they don’t know if they do. Or they think they do, but that’s because someone else (parents, friends, or teachers) have told them they want it–or that they should want it. Many students may still want an education, but even after a year of intensive remediation, many will not have acquired the reading and writing skills necessary to be successful in college, and even these students who do acquire the skills may still have trouble silencing the voices that tell them they aren’t “college material.” You might think these voices are those of gatekeeper-type teachers and administrators, but often these voices are from family members, particularly those who feel threatened by a separation they imagine a college education will wedge between them and their daughter, son, sister, brother, cousin.
And so, the numbers of how many people we graduate from college are not a comment only on the universities themselves and how good a “job” they are or aren’t doing. Instead, as with most things, what the numbers represent is something far more complicated: underneath those percentages are our attitudes toward race, class, school, work, the “purpose” of an education, and the meaning of social status and how one attains it–in short, all of the ideas and attitudes students encounter before they even set foot on a college campus.
Our leaders are often fond of treating problems as though they are ailments in a body: if someone has a sick liver, a doctor treats the liver. We often try to do the same thing when we see problems in our social institutions, but those problems are more analogous to a patient who has a diseased liver as a result of alcoholism: there is no point in providing a liver transplant if the recipient has not been able to stop drinking. By the same token, unless we look at–and really try to change–the social problems that so often determine who is successful in the K-12 years and who isn’t, we won’t do much to improve college graduation rates in the long term. Of course, it’s easier to get a book published if the premise reduces complicated problems to seemingly simple solutions, particularly if there’s a clear “villain” to blame (in this case, colleges with lower graduation rates). It might feel good for readers to think, “Yeah–when will our colleges get serious about helping students graduate?” but that will do nothing toward actually ensuring that even twice as many people–let alone “everyone”–in our society reach their full potential, whether that potential includes a college degree or something else.
For only in the rarest cases can four years of college undo and ameliorate thirteen years of intellectual neglect. We can point fingers at high school teachers, who can in turn call out the middle school teachers, who can then place blame on those in elementary ed., but the truth is that every one of us who has young people in our lives–a student, a son, a niece or a nephew–is a point of contact for those children during their formative years; we should be noticing their troubles and addressing them before they become the circumstances that will hold them back in college and in life–because, while we might all want for more of our students to be “Crossing the Finish Line,” they must first be in shape to enter the race.
Buddy, can you spare my peace of mind?
I’ve begun to dread the words, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention,” phrasing that has a rather ominous ring to it to begin with since it seems easily followed by the words, “We need you to evacuate the premises,” or “The tiger has somehow gotten out of her enclosure.”
As I have regrettably come to realize, though, these words can also announce an equally frightening event: the in-car subway performance.
Subway station performers are pretty standard, of course, and anyone who has ever lived in a place that has subway trains has seen these urban entertainers playing guitar or trumpet, their instrument cases by their sides open for donations. But in New York, the performers do not limit themselves to an audience of hurried commuters rushing past in pursuit of the next train. Rather, they have decided in favor of a truly captive audience: the commuters already on the train.
The first time I experienced in-car “entertainment” was at the end of my third full day in New York. Heading home for the evening from my internship, I had just fallen into the drowsy passivity that the swaying subway cars often induce, when I was suddenly jolted out of my trance by a boy of about nine years old who entered the train carrying a portable stereo and shouting, “Attention, ladies and gentlemen….” He was loud and bold, like a military sergeant barking at the new recruits. But right after he asked for our attention he seemed to get nervous, and the rest of his speech was a loud mumble of words spoken too fast to be discerned. Still, it was apparent what his announcement was all about once the three other boys who were with him dropped to the ground and started break-dancing in the subway car while the first boy blared music on the stereo he was carrying.
The group performed for the length of time between the station where they boarded the car and the next station en route. As the train approached the next stop, the boys went around the car collecting money from those who offered it.
I found the whole thing rather cute and charming, especially because it was so unique at the time. “How cute!” I thought, “And how brave of them!” They were cute to watch in the way that McCauly Caulkin was cute to watch, way back before his agents and his family members forced him to act in thirty sequels to Home Alone.
In the weeks since this first performance, however, I have seen these boys on my train quite regularly, and–just like McCauly Caulkin–they are no longer as cute or as interesting. They are as over-exposed as Caulkin came to be, when people everywhere said to themselves, “Oh my God! I’m so sick of this kid and the entire Caulkin family. Enough with the sequels to Home Alone!”
The same goes for the other people who’ve performed on my trains in the six weeks I’ve been here; they all have begun to grate on my nerves. In addition to the break-dancing, I’ve been treated to the following way, way off Broadway productions:
- a guy sort-of playing guitar and singing “Hard Day’s Night” in a very thick Mexican accent. He got many of the words wrong, didn’t even sing the whole song, and still roamed the car with his hat out, as though his half-hearted and half-assed rendition deserved our hard-earned money.
- Three different mariachi bands, two of which actually wove themselves in and out of the standing commuters on the train as though it were a restaurant and they were coming by to serenade us at our table.
- A woman “singing” opera. Of all of the performers so far, I found her to be the most offensive. She had the worst voice I’ve heard in a long time; plus, there is something truly excruciating about being held hostage in a crowded subway car with a woman singing opera at the top of her lungs (and doing a bad job of it).
- So many “spoken-word” performances that I’ve lost count. These come from people who apparently have no talent for which they feel they could solicit donations, so they opt for the, “Let me tell you my down on my luck story so you can take pity on me and offer up some change.”
In the “spoken word” milieu, the speeches run the gamut. Some are short and to the point: “Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I’m homeless and hungry. I’ll take anything you offer. Thank you.” Others are longer and more specific. One woman got on the train looking, to my mind, like she was on her way to a club. She had a large bust, and the top she was wearing was strapless and not really…containing her. She wore lots of big jewelry, trendy jeans and sandals, and she said she was a widow raising three kids alone. I noticed that more people put money into her cup than what I typically observe when someone gets on the train to ask for donations. This woman certainly made out better than the guy who was on my train the day before in ripped pants and shoes full of holes. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he had scars all over his back. He said he had AIDS, and the minute he offered up this information, a guy near him jumped up out of his seat and ran toward the doors that connect the cars. The skimpy-topped widow also fared better than the man on my train the other day who did a spoken-word/poetry/music combination. He boarded the train with a portable organ, sat on the floor in front of it, called for our attention, and then began his rhyming:
“I do not steal and I do not rob, but I’d sure love to steal your job.” He pressed a few keys on the organ to underscore his point, and then repeated the line, but this time, he extended it into his dance mix version, saying, “I’d sure love to steal your job–and your job, and your job, and your job, and your job,” pointing at specific people in the car each time he said “your.” I wanted to ask him if that included my unpaid internship. I believe he netted about thirty-five cents.
I hate to be all down on these people, but I’ve really begun to resent being held captive to what are often simply awful performances, especially because they so often occur at the end of my day, when I just want to relax and decompress as I ride the train home. I’m not interested in listening to mariachis or hearing a sob story or watching some poppin’ and lockin’. I’m not seeking out this entertainment, and I therefore get annoyed that I’m being subjected to it. To put it another way: I would not like it in a plane; I do not want it on my train. And judging by the looks of my fellow commuters–many of whom continue texting on their phone or listening to their iPods or reading their books while someone is break-dancing two feet away–I’m not alone. Is it too much to ask, in this crowded city with so much heat and so many people rushing everywhere all the time, that we just get a half hour’s peace and quiet on our train ride home?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you agree with me, may I please have your attention, and a little of your spare change?
Dated: What Self-help Dating Books Really Tell Us about Ourselves
Gawker recently featured a post from Latoya Peterson on “self-help” dating books for women. Peterson’s article, “Dating Guides Are Hell: When Women Are the Problem”, is an amusing critique of the dating advice industry–an array of books whose messages seem more inclined toward self-destruction than self-help. Still, what’s particularly interesting about the genre is how predominantly hetero the selections still are. One would think that if anyone needed dating advice, it would be the non-hetero crowd; after all, those of us who are heterosexual have had relationship models all around us–on television, in school, in our families and our friends’ families; we should be able to navigate dating without a legion of literature to explain to us how it’s. Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, have often grown up in surroundings lacking in couples whom they could model themselves after. I remember David Sedaris writing that, as he struggled through his confusing adolescence, his mother liked to say, “Oh, you kids think you invented sex,” a remark that made Sedaris think, “But hadn’t we?” In his world, where everyone around him seemed to be hetero, what would it mean if he wanted to be with another man?
As Peterson points out in her piece, the dating books for women offer advice that is outdated and largely infuriating–and infuriatingly predictable: Lose weight, don’t cut your hair short, love yourself, don’t be too confident, and my personal favorite, “She who touches money gives off masculine energy, so you can’t physically touch cash before his eyes or whip out the plastic to pay the check.” (This last bit of “advice” comes from Patti Stanger, Bravo’s own Millionaire Matchmaker. I almost want to forgive Patti for this instruction; after all, she spends her days fixing up the rich and shallow with the merely shallow, so it’s understandable that her advice might be, as she likes to say, a bit wackadoo.)
In other words, what so much of this “advice” plays into are incredibly outdated stereotypes about men and women. Men like to feel in control, so you shouldn’t be confident and you shouldn’t ever pay for anything (or, apparently, even handle money, ever, in his presence). Men like “feminine” women, so your hair should be long and you might want to wear dresses more often. It seems to me, though, that all these “tips” go out the window if you are a woman hoping to date another woman, or a man looking for another man. This made me curious: what would these books have to say when it comes to same-sex relationships? If you’re a lesbian who has been without a partner for awhile, would you be advised to grow your hair out or learn to cook? Or maybe the problem has been that neither of you feels you can pay for the date, being that women shouldn’t handle money and all? If you’re a man without a boyfriend, is it because you own a home, and other men find that threatening to their masculinity?
I decided to find out, so I first did a cursory Google search for “gay dating tips.” One of the very first sites that came up is devoted to providing dating advice to all manner of folks. Notice, if you will, their sidebar:
Yes, that’s right: you need separate tips if you are Asian, Black, Christian or Jewish. All other ethnicities and religions, apparently, can just follow the general “Dating Advice” link for help. While I’m curious as to how the tips for Asians differ from the tips for Black people, it’s best that we stick with the topic at hand: dating advice for gays, and how that advice may or may not differ from the many tricks offered up in the “how to land a man” genre.
Insofar as this first website is concerned, the “advice” is heavily focused on keeping your dating activity a secret. In fact, the message of the site seems to be, “If no one knows you’re gay now, they never have to know because you can now date people in secret over the internet.” The writer begins by saying, “Whether a person is gay, lesbian or even a ‘hetero’ – for some people simply asking someone else for a date can be excruciatingly embarrassing; whilst for others the thought of rejection is too much and can even affect a gay or lesbian’s health, bringing on depression and possibly thoughts of suicide. Whilst both of these issues are to do with your self-confidence you’re probably the sort of person that needs to get to know other folk quite well until you feel you can trust them.”
First, you have to love the diction. Whoever wrote this uses “whilst” twice in the first two sentences. We can’t begin to know, of course, if the author thought such a word would add more authority to the prose than the simple “while,” or if he or she was simply rehearsing for a part in a Shakespearean tragedy whilst also composing these tips; what we can understand, though, is that the internet is the place to go if you have trouble approaching people to ask for a date. This might seem like fairly benign advice; plenty of shy people have used online dating sites for precisely that reason. But as the paragraph continues, the author notes that, “Being able to use the website in the privacy of your home also means, if you don’t want to, you don’t need to share with anyone else what you’re doing.” In other words, no one needs to know you’re trying to date another guy or another girl.
And there’s a limit to how forthcoming you need to be with that person you might want to date. Hence, the author says this: “First a tip for gay and lesbian singles using an online dating website. Although you’ll have to register certain details with the website in order to use it – make sure you use an alias (nickname or tag) instead of your real name for your user id when chatting to other gays or lesbians.” The phrasing, “when chatting to other gays and lesbians,” is just hilarious. I guess if you’re just chatting with some hetero folks, you could use your real name. But if you’re chatting with “other gays and lesbians,” then you want to make sure you’re using that alias.
My favorite part of the advice is that the author suggests meeting in a public place for the first date. His suggestions for a locale? ”A station, or the town square.” The town square? First off, how small is this town that it has a town square? And after all of this talk of being private and discreet, it seems meeting up in the town square is public in the extreme. Maybe just meet at a cafe?
This website seems to have been written (albeit poorly) in good faith, and while it lacks some social finesse, it echoes ideas put forth in other texts aimed at offering dating advice to gays. Other sites I searched, and the book titles I saw on Amazon, all seemed to focus not on how to “land a man,” but on how to foster a healthy gay relationship in a hetero-centric (and often homophobic) world. Many of the books seemed more “therapy-based” rather than adopting a “do this and men will flock to you” approach. In other words, the “self-help” books aimed at heterosexual women seem to focus heavily on how we can fix ourselves in order to land that husband. The message is a two-fold downer: you are incomplete because you don’t have a man, and you don’t have a man because something is wrong with you. Meanwhile, people seeking a same-sex relationship either are still facing fears of “outting” themselves or, once coupled, in need of a manual to make the relationship work.
People are still buying these books, and–frighteningly–buying the messages inside them. We can laugh sardonically at the seeming ridiculousness of all of this “advice,” but there’s no denying it tells us a lot about where we really are in terms of understanding each other and trusting ourselves. Legions of women scoffed at The Rules, only to turn out in droves years later to read He’s Just Not That into You. Meanwhile, same-sex couples openly fight for the right to marry, while authors urge them to go about Finding the Boyfriend Within. What we learn from a trip down the self-help dating aisle is that we still have a long way to go before straight single women don’t seem to need “help” after all, and same-sex couples can live freely, happily, and openly without fear of rejection. Unfortunately, the “help” we really need is on a cultural rather than personal scale–we need “help” with accepting people for who they are and just letting them be. We’re further along than we used to be, but further back than we should be. And sadly, there’s no quick-fix book for that.
