The Buttermilk Called My Name

About a week ago, I was standing in a long line at Trader Joe's, passing the dairy case veeeery slowly, and I was overcome with an impulse to buy the pint of lowfat buttermilk next to me. I just KNEW I needed it for something. Then it took three days to figure out what I needed it for: hypothetical cider donuts, which I had considered making before my roommate went on vacation 3 weeks ago, leaving behind a bit of cider (it turned out for the best, I heated and drank it and enjoyed it very much), just as real fall and Smitten Kitchen made me want to invest in the day-long project and more donuts than I could ever hope to enjoy on my own - even with the homemade ones, I have trouble really enjoying them after the first. With the exception of a canoe trip when I was probably 14 - where we boiled dough from a can over an open flame in a pot of boiling Crisco, (awesome fire safety lesson, ps) - then somehow managed to cover it in sugar, pretty much can't move after the 3nd (I know I made it into the canoe and was able to use a paddle afterward that time - things might have been different had I been asked to walk).

However, I lacked both the buttermilk and a donut-cutter, at the moment I was willing to throw caution and good sense to the wind. So I didn't do it then. But the spirit of the donuts was clearly at work last week. After figuring out what it was for, realizing I lacked the time, patience and audience to pull it off, I started looking for another use. Not so easy.

But then.

Artichoke/onion/spinache quiche. It had to be done.

And I may never go back.

Really - probably the best quiche I've ever made. At least in terms of egg/milk/crust proportion (it needed more spinach), and texture. And I will do it again. And it will be even better.

Now, though, I have rapidly aging buttermilk, and no idea what to do with it. Another quiche is probably not in the offing, pancakes seem a bit bold, and I'm so used to cooking without regular milk, that I may have adapted to go without it. Hm.

If Only I Liked The Yankees. . .

I turned 27 on the 4th. The Yankees won their 27th World Series on the same day. As a Cleveland fan, I cannot see this as a good omen for the year to come, but I'd sure like to.

Then again, I guess, after last year, it was bound to be anti-climactic. Even though there was whiskey this year (last year, it was champagne and, I won't lie, a whole pizza - coincidentally, I don't remember the last time I had cake - maybe in college?)

Also - I volunteered on a campaign on election day - which, even when they don't go together, I might like a little more than my birthday - and, while the council-member elect gave a pretty good speech, and we had a conversation about beets - something I have never spoken to the President about (though I hear he doesn't like them I don't know why not); and, in the two hours I stood outside a polling place, trying to get grouchy people to take flyers, I noticed the mildly intriguing fact that a LOT of people move their mouths to while their walking - either singing along to the music in their ears or replying to the voices in their heads - it lacked some of the suspense of last year . . or the same campaign 6 weeks ago (he's the Democrat, it's a Democratic district). So that celebration was fairly low-key too - which, I suppose, was fitting, given my advancing years.

Creature Fear

This morning, a squirrel tried to get into my room. My startled yelping did nothing to dissuade it from pawing at the windowsill, the glass, then the other window. It paced back and forth for a solid 30 seconds - glowering, sauntering, even. And I must say - I was genuinely afraid. This squirrel did NOT want to be friends. It did, for some reason, want to have a wander around my squirrel-unfriendly apartment - maybe it wanted to steal my cashews? Maybe reassert ownership of property? Maybe it sensed how shoddily constructed/designed/generally imagined my windows are, and knew that it was going for an easy target. There's really not telling. But it seemed pretty adamant. If it's back tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'll do, but I'm really glad this encounter never took place on one of the days when I left the window open a few inches without the half-screen that I use to keep the bugs out - I only hope the squirrel finds better things to do before next spring -or considers the screen perplexing in a way that intimidates it from testing its resilience, because I'm pretty sure I'll end up with a new roommate.

Williamsburg, I Have Some Questions

Why is it darker where you are than in South Brooklyn? I know, the BK in general is nowhere near Manhattan when it comes to lighting, but I swear, it's dimmer by a mile up North. Also - the Chabad House on Bedford is right above a used record store, while, a few blocks away, there is a fancy-looking gym above a big vintage clothing store. These details seem so appropriate that they almost seem made up. How did this come to pass? I can imagine, but I'm a little curious nonetheless. Also - why don't any of your bourgie bodegas sell the seltzer I like? 15 flavors of kombucha, but I might be less prone to go all judgy on your drunk, legginged citizens making out between sips of $6 coconut water at 8pm if you would affirm this element of my newly mature tastebuds (I don't claim that any mature reaction to the lack of seltzer was in the offing, however).

No Small Caterpiller

My plan for the rest of the week got a bit shuffled around this afternoon by some unexpectedly urgent work stuff - which coincided with a lot of wind. I was wearing a skirt, which only added to the chaos. I handled it not fantastically, and very much in public - after deciding that 2 pm is awfully late in the day to have not uttered a single word - and then proceeded to make a lot of animated scowly faces at my computer. I'm pretty sure the waiter, who calls me "darling," and who I like very much, may have been a little alarmed. I called my parents , ate some banana bread, and tried to figure out a good way to get to the end of the project without losing my job or throwing a tantrum, and then I really missed having coworkers. Oh, the coffee breaks I once took so for granted. . .

Anyway.

I went to see Sufjan Stevens last night with my friend Beth - I'm not sure if it's a sign of my age or just the fact that it had been a while (for me - she had been to two big arena shows in the past couple of weeks - but that's a whole different ballgame. . . so to speak), but I had no idea how to plan for the show - sure, the doors open at 7:30, but when does the show start? Once upon a time, I would have been able to guess, but not anymore. So we met at 8:45 because that seemed reasonable - Sufjan wasn't going on until 10, so we went to a bar for an hour. Partly so that we could sit down. Because standing through an opener seemed like, well, a lot of standing, and we needed to do some jabbering first. So everything worked out in the end, and the show itself was really good. I saw him maybe 4 years ago -when the Illinois album came out and it was really peppy - I think there were even cheerleaders. Last night was a bit more subdued - in a good way - though it had plenty of the kind of momentary excitement that makes the listening to live music in a big crowd where you have to move around a little to see the stage worthwhile. And really - it was Tuesday and none of us are getting any younger, so that was juuuuust about right.

Crossing A Seasonal Border

On Sunday, there was a big street fair in the neighborhood that The New York Times has given me license to call my own (on their map, my street is a border, but a decidedly inclusive one, unlike the "historic district" ones in the neighborhood itself, which put the borders narrower and, I exclusive of the housing projects that take up most of my corner of it), and, after two weeks of official fall and a whole lot of season-less unpleasant rain, I'm pretty sure it was also the last day of summer - warm enough for a summer dress and the sandals that I fear I must replace before the next time summer comes around, since they are both completely worn out underfoot and may be responsible for the mysterious bruise that made pointing my toes a touch unpleasant since Sunday. Anyway - I digress - Sunday was summer - frozen, chocolate-covered key lime pie on a stick . . . free whiskey/ginger (and horrible raspberry/vodka stuff, but we won't talk about that) . . . and the requisite international variations on fried food. And then, yesterday, it wasn't anymore. The temperature dropped a solid 10 degrees, the humidity of the days before lifted and the light changed - or changed just that much more that I finally noticed it - clearer, deeper, maybe yellower? And the trees in Ft. Greene Park were edging toward changing colors - more splotchy reds and sickly oranges than fancy northeastern foliage - but definitely changing. Had the change in pressure or the ghosts in the apartment above me or whatever it was that kept me up the night before not been quite so relentless, I might have been a little better-rested and, I like to think, more focused, less grouchy, etc., but maybe the realization that this is a short season will help me take better advantage of the crisp air to form crisp thoughts, and crisp work habits soon. That could happen, right?

The Paradox of Purple Food

In many scenerios, it adds a bit of color - a splash of adventure, even, to the usual greens and beiges that make up so much of the food world. But sometimes, when, say, you want to make broth to use up your old carrots and mushrooms, and you have extra purple potatoes because you thought they were beets when you bought them - or you really want to make tortilla and you COULD use those purple potatoes - along with the red onions you always buy because they're prettier in everything but omelets - they can give you pause. Purple soup can work, but purple-ish soup - hmm. Purple eggs? Even if there's a perfectly good reason, it can be tough to pull off. So the purple foods may run you more than you run them. Or they might just languish in the fridge, taunting you and your suddenly very prudish color palatte.

Ah, Democracy

I've spent a fair amount of the past couple of weeks as a late-comer to a volunteer party, and, though I realize I may have been a bit more than fashionably late, I'm glad I showed up. The volunteering was for a candidate for City Council in Brooklyn - the candidate of choice for young urban planners, in fact, and, though I had a few run-ins with people who resent canvassers or didn't like my guy or were just plain grouchy, it was a pretty good experience on the whole, and unquestionably a worthwhile one for the city. On election day, I faced off against a campaigner for another campaign for one woman's vote - on the spot debating isn't really my favorite thing, but I feel like I did pretty well- and his arguments are all slime-ing my guy and making his guy seem pure as the driven snow. I don't know which of us won. I also canvassed in a neighborhood that was mostly Bengali and orthodox Jewish. All of the neighborhood's children were around, zipping around on bikes and scooters, and, many many kinds of wheels - a couple of little boys helped me find houses on my list, and sort of trailed me for a bit.

Still, other than the other campaigns, there weren't that many people out, though, later, I think I helped persuade someone who was going to sit out the election to go to the polls. Which was pretty exciting. And, even though it turned out to be the lowest turnout in something like 20 years, it still seemed like a little bit of a holiday.

Real Time and Kid Time

I went to the US Open a couple of days ago. Some of it was exciting (see above), some of it was soothing, some of it was scrambling from my seat out of the stadium in the 90 seconds between games to wait in line for 20 minutes to use the loo, then, because your seat isn't guranteed to be there when you get back, giving up on the 45 minute food line before the Williamses were set to start. The enforcement of audience discipline is pretty amazing - sure, there are still a ton of delays when people amble to and from their seats, but they don't tend to last SO long, and when they do, it's clear that it's the fans who are at fault, not the ridiculous stadium setup that makes for the endless waits and adds safety concerns to the scrambling vs. ambling choice. In general, the matches that are held in the smaller stadium seem to be the opposite of a professional basketball game, which has so much else going on that it can be hard to follow the game (in Cleveland, flames shoot out of the scoreboard at tipoff) - although there are also a lot of timeouts in other sports - not so much in tennis. Anyway - I found this truly remarkable, and was almost disappointed to discover the much more relaxed nature of spectating in the big stadium (close-by concessions and bathrooms, no restrictions on the movement of those in the cheap seats) - although that was still pretty subdued in terms of non-match distractions.

After having been away from all things tennis for a looong time, I was pretty much going on memories of a) trying to become a tennis prodigy despite my weak wrists and poor depth perception, b) waiting in the sun for my parents and/or brother to finish playing a set. I don't think they ever played more than 2 at a time. But it always seemed endless. Also, finally, c) waiting for my matches on tv to finish so that we could have some form of dinner on the grill. Again: always. Endless. And deeply repetitive.

Now, having sat through 6 hours of play, I can safely say that my kid perception wasn't so off base. Tennis is endless. Short matches are at least an hour and a half. Long ones (for men, of course), must be what, 4 hours? However, in person, and especially with doubles, it's way less repetitive than I thought - volleys are rare - which is something of a relief to a childhood failure at sustaining anything past, say, 7 hits in a row. These realizations make me feel ever so slightly more vindicated for my 7 year old self's whining about being hungry/hot/thirsty/ready to go home/ready to go swimming/ready to give up on tennis forever. Though I can imagine that I didn't earn any points for style. But I might not be giving up on tennis forever anymore. Not that I'm rushing out to pick up a racket, but I might not mind watching the pros in person - in much the same way that I've acquired a taste for tomato juice - not all the time, but occasionally, I get why other people go for it, and will partake myself if it's in a professionally mixed bloody maria - extra spicy, and with extra olives.

The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

I'm pretty sure that the dog-eye-level part is, in fact, also meant for humans, but I like to think that there was some thought about how if it turns out that dogs CAN read after all, they're way more likely to follow a sign that asks them nicely and is in they don't have to crane their heads up to see.

Incidentally, I didn't know what "curb your dog" meant until putting 2 and 2 together with this sign. Live and learn, I suppose.