My kitchen crime scene

I like red things. I dye my hair, I wear red nail polish, I like red lipstick. And I love beet juice.

I don't like cooked beets. I like the raw, unadulterated stuff sliced, mashed, and squeezed until there is nothing left but the juice pouring out of the spout with the sawdust-like pulp coming out the other end of my juicer. It's even better when mixed with carrot juice and a tiny bit of squeezed lime, though the orange and green does dilute the beautiful red.

No matter what I do and how hard I try, the juice splatters everywhere. It looks like a crime scene - much worse than when I dye my hair. I should take comparison photos.

The white countertops and cutting boards I have don't help, of course.

I'm not complaining, though. I think part of the appeal is that beets leave a bloody mess. Is that morbid? Gross? I could try to buy golden beets, but that might ruin my fun. If I'm going to be healthy (or at least try to be), I see no reason why I shouldn't be a tiny bit juvenile.

I prefer my pistachios to be red, too.

Mosquitos and iced coffee

Somewhere between wicked thunderstorms and 90-degree temperatures, we managed to have a tiny slice of decent weather, so I decided to go for a short stroll. 


There is a small, municipal park near me. It's not the best-kept park on the planet, but it's good enough for some of us locals. And everything in life is better with a decent sound track, so I strapped on my old, trusty third generation iPod Shuffle, and off I went. 


I walked around the 1/4-mile track a few times, and decided to hit the shade for a bit before heading home. I found a relatively clean bench, sat down, and took out my Kindle. I'm about three-quarters of the way through The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch and I thought I might be able to knock the rest of it out before heading home. 


The park mosquitos had other plans for me. 


After about 15 minutes I was bitten up and itchy to the point of pain. Here I am an hour later and I just want to slice the skin off my calves just to make the itching stop. I won't do anything drastic, of course. 


So, while I sit here and ponder the destruction of all blood sucking creatures and the end to my personal, physical agony, I thought I nice, cold glass of iced coffee would make me feel a tiny bit better, at least for a little while. 


There was still roughly 12 ounces of coffee left in my French press from breakfast. I threw the whole carafe in the 'fridge before leaving the house before, so the now extremely strong coffee was also very cold. To a tall, iced tea glass I added enough ice to fill it halfway, a single packet of Truvia sweetener, coffee, and skim milk to make the whole thing nice and pale. One stir, and it was ready to drink. 


Now I want more.

Brioche and the advantages of working home

One of the advantages of working home is that I can get a lot of stuff done around the apartment while I work. I have fewer distractions here than I do in the office, so the time I spend throwing a load of laundry in to wash is still considerably less than the time I spend in the office fielding phone calls or attending meetings.

Today I decided to take advantage of my home work time to make some bread, something I haven't done in a number of months. The weather outside is gorgeous, so turning on the oven wasn't an offensive act today. Since it's just me and I am making a concerted effort to cut out "bad" carbs, a two-pound loaf of anything is just useless. If I make it, I will eat it, and how much bread can one person eat?

Ah, let me rephrase that: How much bread should one person eat?

That being said, quality is more important to me than quantity anyway. So the challenge was to figure out what would satisfy my taste for spongy goodness. What recipe can I easily cut down and what do ingredients do I actually have on hand to make?

Small Brioche Loaf (or enough for four, good size rolls)
2 large egg yolks plus enough lukewarm water to equal 2/3 cup
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 and 1/4 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons gluten
1 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

Bring yolks to room temperature. Add lukewarm water to the yolks. Any hotter and the yolks will scramble and your yeast will die. Add the yeast and let sit for a few minutes.

Mix all other ingredients, including the butter. I did this by hand, but you can use a pastry blender or a hand mixer on low. The aim is to incorporate the butter, so it's really up to you. Then add the yolk/water/yeast mixture. Mix until blended and then begin to knead.

You may have to add some flour as you go. The dough starts out very moist and sticky, but after kneading it will become smooth and drier. If you need to add flour, add no more than a tablespoon at a time. I am also not going to give a time limit on kneading. It depends on you, the day of the week, the moisture in the air, which way the wind is blowing. All I can say, realizing how unhelpful it is, is that you'll know the dough is done.

I cut the dough into four, equal pieces because I decided I wanted rolls. I'm making my version of ICE's chicken burgers later, and found that brioche rolls really work with those burgers.

I rolled the rolled the dough into 8-inch long strips and just knotted them. I brushed them with an egg wash (a teaspoon or two of water beat with one egg), and baked them at 350F for approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

The smell is still lingering right now as the rolls continue to cool. Can't wait to try one later. I am looking forward to the eggy, buttery goodness.

Office Food Haikus

Yellow and so sweet

Banana with brown splotches

I should have brought two

Oh, wasabi peas!

Why do you make my tongue burn

And make my nose run?

Coffee with white cream

You smell like heaven to me

I must limit you

Leftover matzohs

Someone’s Passover discards

Still crunchy, not stale

 

Whenever I try to avoid Times Square...

We started out with the intention of visiting the USS Intrepid on Saturday, but we never made it.

Mr. G. has never been there. Every time we have a spare few hours, we rack our brains for something interesting to do, come up with something half-assed, and then say that we should probably have just gone to the Intrepid. I nipped this one from the get-go and just said straight out that's what we needed to do, not taking into account the time of day (2 p.m.). By the time we were moving and ready to hit the city, we'd have maybe three hours at the museum. Ample time, as far as I'm concerned, but probably not enough time for a gadget guy like Mr. G.

We had to make a quick stop in Tribeca first, eating further into our time. We grabbed the 1 train uptown to 42nd Street, and then had to find an ATM - but not just any ATM. Nope. It had to be Citibank so Mr. G. wouldn't get clipped with a $3+ service charge. It was 3:30 by this time, and I didn't think the walk, wait on line, the $23 entrance fee, and closing time of 6 p.m. was worth the trek.

We were well into Times Square at this point. I hate Times Square with the heat of 1,000 suns. It's too full of people who don't know where they're going or what they're doing. It compounds my dislike of tourists. It's the reason why I never drive anywhere in the city between 33rd and 70th streets.

From across the sea of moving bodies at 44th and Broadway, I spotted the Times Square information kiosk, the perfect place to find out where the nearest Citibank was. We crossed in front of George M. Cohan and made a beeline for the information booth, which turned out to be a cavernous passageway that wove past public restrooms, through a souvenir stand, to a bored-looking guy who knew where absolutely everything was in the Times Square area. He told us where the nearest Citibank was (44nd and 6th) and where to find Pop Tarts World (42nd and 6th).

Once Mr. G. acquired some cash, we decided to check out Pop Tarts World. It was a complete waste of our time. Nothing more than a store front over-filled with odious tourists, it was just a giant, poorly executed attempt at marketing. The T-shirts and other logo-swathed goods were unimaginative and the only way to actually buy Pop Tarts was through a giant vending machine that would mix-and-match flavors or at the snack bar at the back of the store...for a whopping $12.

Nothing on the menu sounded good - everything looked overly sugared and artificially flavored (though it's not like I expected anything else). There was no clear place to sit and people were bumping in to each other and tripping over themselves to catch the attention of the overworked clerks behind the counter.

Don't get me wrong. I love Pop Tarts. I just think this attempt to compete with M&Ms or Hershey wasn't very well thought out.

BUT all was not lost. We were hungry and thirsty at this point and we strolled past 43rd Street, home of the Heartland Brewery, which is soooo much better than the other commercial offerings in that part of town (I refuse to enter most of the Times Square eateries unless it's on someone else's dime). Half a block down from The Town Hall, the Heartland Brewery Chop House offers a typical steakhouse menu, but is very reasonably priced by Manhattan standards, and the food is just plain good. Then there are the beers. The Smiling Pumpkin Ale has just been added back to the menu, and that made me very happy to see.

However, we didn't go there. We went HB Burger next door, the Heartland's burger joint, open a little over a year. I ordered my Smiling Pumpkin Ale, along with the a la carte Bison Burger and a side of Tater Tots. Mr. G. had the Filet Mignon Sandwich, also with a pumpkin ale, and a strawberry shake.

There was no wait, but the foot traffic from Times Square and 6th Avenue was steady. Our waitress was friendly, knowledgeable, and just very sweet. One of the things that HB is known for are its homemade sodas. She was kind enough to bring us samples of the orange cream and the root beer, though in the end I settled for the black cherry float with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I'm glad we didn't make it to the Intrepid. It was a gorgeous day to just walk around, even if we were in Times Square.

Writing because I can

The approach of autumn usually makes me happy. The fact that we have a tropical storm warning over our heads would usually just make me smile more. Not happening right now, though. Type O Negative's Green Man off October Rust is playing, and I think it's only contributing to my foul mood.

I finished the scarf I wrote about in Ribbon! and I'm on to the second skein that I bought on that trip. Same pattern, as you can see here.

What is not clear are the colors - dark blue with a dark, almost olive green almost climbing diagonally up the fabric.

This scarf will be mine, unless someone near and dear to me can make a strong enough case for me to hand it over. That's very unlikely to happen, though. I love these colors entirely too much to give this up.

Now iTunes has progressed to No Home Without Its Sire off Peter Murphy's Dust. That would be "its," minus the apostrophe.

I have been unpacking, again. The construction I've had to deal with is over and done. It feels as if I just moved in, again, though. I'm hoping to make good use of the three-day weekend to knock out most of what's left and perhaps I can even begin hanging pictures. What a difference that will make on my blank walls.

Karmic debt

I moved in May. For some reason, the Universe won't allow me to settle in one place for very long.

Just when I finished unpacking and was looking to find homes for the last of my "stuff," some guy two floors up from me hires a guy who thinks he knows a little something-something about plumbing. But he didn't really. He broke a pipe that managed to flood out four apartments, up to two floors down. This included mine. *le sigh*

I woke up on the morning of July 4th and staggered into my kitchen intent on making a strong pot of coffee. It took me a good 30 seconds to assess that the puddle I was standing in should not actually be there, gathered on my kitchen floor.

Fast forward a month and a half, I'm out of my apartment for the next week, feeling very much like a refugee might...except that I have considerably more bagged stashed in the trunk of my car. And the cats are at the sitter, as traumatized as I am.

It's not like I don't have a place to stay. The point is, it's not my place.

Who can I blame? Who's fault is it? Who's the rat bastard who's inconvenienced me yet again? What did I do that I have this weird karmic debt of never being able to settle in to one place?

I'll feel better if I know that my creatures haven't been so traumatized from being at the sitter that they've gone into cardiac arrest. It would help if the one little guy didn't always run, hide, and play possum.