Reactionary

Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it …
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

It’s National Backstabbed By Your Friends Day.

Seriously, 15 March is the infamous Ides of March when 2054 years ago, G. Julius Caesar, the original whose name became a title, was stabbed to death in the Theatre of Pompey in Rome. Here’s to the original Renaissance Man… when the things brought back during the Renaissance were having their original date in the sun. Marc Antony, who William Shakespeare would write a terrific speech for 1600 years later, dressed in slave clothes and ran away but gave a speech on the rostra that afternoon. Some people may wonder what the big deal is all about, but those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Think on the date for a moment how easily democracy can be taken away, how you have to stand for something or you’ll stand for anything, and how precarious power can be. And I’m not talking about Caesar, but the plotters who thought, in their blindness, that if they killed him, the old republic would come back. Little did they know that they killed it when they killed him and democracy wouldn’t be seen again until the Colonies broke with Britain. They had no plan, they only had jealousy and fear for their privileges which they felt his reforms were eroding. Think about that, especially with the big tug of war going on now In Washington.

Or just get educated already.

I wrote this on March 15th, 2010 | Topic: News, Scholar |  Print |  Email | Say something

What I did this weekend:

• Hung art in the bathroom.
• Cleaned the bathroom in its entirety.
• Changed out the makeup and cleaned the cart.
• Cleaned the oven.
• Changed the bed linen to the spring collection and washed and stored the fall linen.
• Vacuumed thoroughly.
• Cleaned beneath the steps and changed the storage situation of the towels and the tools.
• Wiped down the pantry shelves.
• Washed the Aran sweater.
• Scrubbed the floors and the steps of the entryway.

Things yet to be done:

• Store winter clothes and winnow the rest of the clothing closet.
• Paint the closets.
• Change the doors.
• Scrub kitchen floors.

I went out and bought some tealights and they look great in the little IKEA green glass I moved into the bathroom. I also got my stainless steel bowl and a new bottle of linen spray. The relentless rain helped keep me locked inside.

Pictures coming when more is done. Come April, I want to be done with housing updates until the fall.

P.S. Wow, Dirty Pretty Things, while grotesque, is a pretty awesome movie.

I wrote this on March 14th, 2010 | Topic: Domicile, Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

I’d love to come home and stick the iPod somewhere that would recharge it and yet keep the tunes playing. It would be nice to have a James Bondian setup with a little slot in the wall and everything else built in. But I’d settle for a Bose system and the new outlet to house it.

But what do I *really* want for my birthday? Some time with a real designer and an architect to tell me what to really do with this place so I wouldn’t waste any money doing it. When it comes to home design, you either have time or money and it looks like I’m stuck with time, honey.

But what do I really really really want for my birthday? Five seconds of complete freedom with the time and space conundrum. That’s all.

I wrote this on March 10th, 2010 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

The dehumifier that could short out the circuit.

March is said to come in like a lion. What the saying refers to is the changeable weather as winter loosens its grip on the land and green shoots begin to appear in spite of continued frosts, rain, and wind. This year, March has started with some instantly spring weather but it knocked me over in another way. My beautiful paint job scarcely had a chance to dry when I came home late one night and found the floor of the bedroom wet. All wet. At first I thought the 100-year-old windows had leaked since it had been raining.

It wasn’t the windows. One side of the bed, the side farthest from the windows, was soaking wet. I panicked and thought my shower had leaked. It wasn’t that either. While I was putting down towels to soak it up, I overhead my neighbor in the hallway fending off an angry landlord for the apartment on the floor below. Their water heater had leaked. Since my bedroom is sunken, about three feet below their kitchen, the water had gathered in the space and while at the same time dripping into the apartment below, it had found its way beneath the drywall into my bedroom. Are you frickin’ kidding me?

As I write this, there are two huge fans and an industrial-sized dehumidifier that I have taken to calling the Monstrosity in my bedroom. I spent Thursday afternoon having a confrontation with the He-Neighbor and moving books and bookshelves that less than two weeks ago I had moved back into the bedroom and thought that was the end of it. I have spent the nights since sleeping on the sofa with white noise of the two fans and the dehumidifier churning away in the bedroom. They’re generating so much energy that it was 73 degrees in the apartment today. It’s in the 40’s outside and I have drafty windows. Do the math.

Thanks to poor communication by the carpet cleaning company, I missed the guy today to pick the crap up and will have to deal with it until Monday afternoon when hopefully that part of the nightmare will end. And then I can deal with the other part of the nightmare in getting someone to pay for this.

I think I should get an award for continuing to honor my shifts at work around this chaos. I would have been entirely justified in calling out just because of my severe fatigue. If I were 5 inches shorter, it would be easy to sleep on the couch but it just wouldn’t be that easy, would it?

In other news, we’ve bid farewell to our Cute Italian fellow. There goes my model for Marco. Good thing Argentines have a similar word choice and cadence with English.

I wrote this on March 6th, 2010 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

RECIPE SOURCE:

Mascarpone Cheese – Vera’s Recipe (Baking Obsession) for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese.
Savoiardi/ Ladyfinger Biscuits – Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home
Tiramisu – Carminantonio’s Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007

Well, this was so time-consuming that if it hadn’t been for the big snowstorm mid-month, I never would have gotten it done. It also marked the first Daring Bakers challenge that I have had to repeat a part of the process. I don’t love tiramisu and prefer gelato as dessert rather than this rich tourist favorite, but this version has an great cream filling that benefited from some small changes I made to the requirements.

The first part I made were the savoiardi on a night off midweek. I attempted to make them using my pastry bag but it was a disaster and the resulting cookies looked like tortured tree branches. I knew they were fated to be lost in the cream, though, so I wasn’t worried, but their complete ugliness prompted me to attempt to make the recipe again the next week. This time, I used a cut off plastic bag instead of the pastry bag and the results were much more even. Recipe-wise, if I ever make them again, I’ll top them with granulated sugar rather than the confectioner’s called for in the recipe. I doubt I’ll make them again, though. Biscotti are so way funner and taste better.

I have never in my life made cheese. It belongs to that family of foods that defy rhyme or reason why someone would want to make it at home when others do it so much better. But, fathfully, I followed the recipe, I even purchased cheesecloth. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought I had done it right, but the resulting product was just a step away from the original creaminess of the heavy cream itself and a far cry from the mascarpone you buy in the store. Due to the price of whipping cream, I didn’t repeat this recipe, since I was also running out of time to get all the pieces done.

On the day of the forcasted (and as yet unseen Snowicaine), I made the zabaglione and the pastry cream as well as finished the tiramisu. I have made zabaglione before but this time it didn’t turn out quite right. I used coffee instead of marsala since I don’t have marsala in the house and I intended to take this thing to work and not keep it at home. I don’t own a bain marie and usually use a glass bowl over water in a saucepan for melting chocolate. I used the glass bowl setup this time as well and proceeded according to the recipe. After 40 minutes of stirring and no change in the stiffness of the cream, I got desperate and moved it to a smaller saucepan that I set inside the larger one. Glass is a poor heat conductor and less so when you’re counting on it to cook the food in the bowl and not just heat it. A stainless steel bowl has been added to my shopping list for next month.

The pastry cream cooked up like a dream, though and I’ve continued my streak of good luck with custards. I used orange zest both in the pastry cream and the zabaglione instead of lemon zest for a nice twist. Oranges are so in this time of year.

For assembling the final tiramisu, I used a loaf pan for ease of transport to work. The homemade savoiardi just fit a row across end to end at the top to make up for the empty space. I’m glad i remade them so I had cookies that were approximately the same size. Once the three layers were done, the loaf pan was filled all the way to the top. I topped it with chocolate curls rather than powder. I always hate the powder on top of tiramisus and wasn’t going to do the same thing with my own. I have an entire box of chocolate odds and ends and this was as good a time as any to use them.

There is one thing I must vent about. The required 2 cups of espresso is far, far too much. It could be my savoiardi were smaller than average, but given the recipe we were given, I doubt they were that much smaller. Unless I misread or misunderstood the 2 cups to mean 2 demitasse cups of espresso rather than the 500ml I made, it’s a huge, wasteful amount. Not even half a cup of it was used. And i had put Grand Marnier in it instead of rum. What a waste. I feel awful. As I write this, it’s sitting on my stove sadly blinking at me. I hate, hate waste and I hate how I didn’t listen to my common sense on this one.

As far as the finished product is concerned, as of this writing, I have yet to taste it but if the leftovers of the cream were any signal, it’s a good version of the dessert.

Addendum 2.28.2010: I’ve tried the tiramisu. It’s less coffeesque than I’d hoped. Maybe that’s from my using instant espresso powder to make the coffee rather than brewing it. Also, it’s a bit too sweet for me. If I made it again, I’d notch the sugar down. The cream doesn’t keep its form and just sliding down so the layers look like a mudslide in slow motion. I’ll stick with my old recipe if I ever make it again.

I wrote this on February 27th, 2010 | Topic: Food |  Print |  Email | Comments (5)

The bathroom needs to be finished Monday. I can’t believe how happy I am with the paint color.

I wrote this on February 21st, 2010 | Topic: Domicile |  Print |  Email | Comments (1)

Yesterday, the Garces group opened the Garces Trading Company on the outskirts of the gayborhood. Today, I went. It’s smaller than I thought it would be with a cafe with waiter service in the middle and the food purchase areas around the perimeter in a sort of racetrack around the eating area. Cheeses and charcuterie are next to each other with bread over in the corner. The serve-it-yourself oil and vinegar section is facing it in the little alleyway. Croutons and crackers are beneath and sweet spreads and marmelades are at one end and savory canned goods on the other. Pastries and the coffee bar are in the back with a single bar table in which to sit. There’s a refrigerated section for canned and bottled drinks. The other side of the area is a temperature controlled section devoted to the new wine shop. It’s owned and operated by the PCLB but the wines are actually stored right, the employee knows how to help you, and there are a good deal of wines not seen anywhere else in the state of Pennsylvania. It’s all-European with the Italian section being the largest. Beyond, in a corner is the cashier for the wine and alcohol.

The place is lovely with a bit of the rustic feel of Amada. Employees are neatly uniformed and a few were very helpful (I try to be realistic about service, we are in Philadelphia after all). The cheese section has nothing DiBruno’s wouldn’t but it’s well-curated and they’re generous with the samples. The charcuterie is geared towards the Iberians and I bought my beloved sobrasada not found anywhere else in the this city (to my knowledge). There’s a small yet immaculate collection of olives. It is not self-serve, thankfully, something that has always bothered me about the olive bar at DiBruno’s. While it has fewer varieties than the Italian shop across town, the varieties are hand-picked. I got some arbequinas, not always available unlike their French and Italian relations. Since I have bread at home right now, I didn’t take a look at that section but many other people were and I can only imagine it’s as perfect as the bread served at the restaurants in the group.

There are some interesting oils, once again a carefully curated collection with even one California one in there for balance. It’s self-serve, though. Patrons fill their own bottles which are then sealed at the cashier. This could be a disaster in the making, especially with liquid gold like white truffle oil. Hopefully, the cheese and charcuterie section will always be heavily staffed to avoid catastrophes from happening. I wonder if children should be banned at the door.

Among the preserves from France and Italy is a small collection of Garces’ own cheese accompaniments including roasted garlic dulce de leche, truffled lavender honey, sangria honey, and the cherry fig preserve I bought. They’re a steal at $5 a piece. The savory canned section has piquillo peppers and real navajas. I bought a tin of conchas and can hardly wait to eat them when I’m done writing this. Condiments other than vinegars and oils were few.

The pastry section has great deals on the little cookies like financiers, macarons, and madeleines. The chocolate ones were calling my name with a perfect sugar crust, but they will only sell them in dozens. Knowing I’d eat them all if I got the dozen, I didn’t.

Overall, the place has great food but the layout is a bit tight and it’s smaller than I thought it would be. I was there are the end of an ordinary work day on Ash Wednesday so it was steadily busy but not exploding with people. I can’t imagine the chaos that would ensue on a Saturday when larger crowds descend on anything of Garces in this town. It also seemed to be fairly dark in there. I don’t know if it was on purpose mood lighting, but I didn’t know there were signs with the menu above our heads until I had been there about half an hour. There also seemed to be a lot of employees, a lot. And with the space being as limited as it is, it made for a tight squeeze. Though there’s a coffee bar with a full barista, I couldn’t imagine wanting to hang out there. All food purchases must be made at the one cashier by the coffee bar. Forget about relaxing reading your paper whilst being jostled by those waiting to pay and those looking at the dessert case.

The wine boutique has some real gems, though, and given Pennsylvania’s ridiculous liquor laws, it’s the first of its kind. There is knowledgeable, genial help in there and that, my friends, is priceless. Also, there are great deals. You don’t have to pay even $20 to get a good bottle. Plenty has been selected at the more everyday end of the scale. You have to pay separately than the food, but then that’s the world we live in. The cafe looks nice and you might actually have more breathing room sitting in there eating and drinking while people do their grocery shopping on the perimeters.

I can’t help thinking they need more space for all they’re trying to do. I wonder what they could have done with a space like DiBruno’s Chestnut Street location, but it is what it is. The food’s of great quality, there are Iberian specialties not found anywhere else in this city of Italians, and we can buy wine now from people who actually drink it.

Thanks, Jose.

I wrote this on February 17th, 2010 | Topic: Food, Life, News |  Print |  Email | Say something

The tony park the day after the storm.

I thought we as a species had evolved past being crippled by less than catastrophic weather events (this being a normal-for-the-season event). I was wrong. I have seen less juiced up frenzy after an earthquake.

I wrote this on February 11th, 2010 | Topic: Life, News |  Print |  Email | Comments (1)

I just had an aha moment. Actually, I did a few days ago. I figured out where I’d seen this character before. Complete, from the tennis to the sister to the family money. When I was making him up along with the rest of this book, I thought I was starting from the beginning, but I wasn’t. All I did was reach into my mental grab bag and came up with a character I’ve had for years, for decades, nearly. It was like recognizing a face in the crowd. The hot blonde whose tennis prowess and the sheen of wealth hides deep anxieties and raging insecurity. He’s Joey from another very bad story I wrote when I was in high school that I never finished. It was almost humbling when I realized just how many similarities there were and how my so-called new character wasn’t new at all.

But personality-wise he’s different. Whereas the old one was a party boy whose ease with strangers provided a foil for his shy but decent best friend, this one wears such a hard outer shell that if he weren’t famous or wealthy, he wouldn’t have anyone around him at all. I have to be at my crispiest to write him at all, like on a day after a long shift.

It’s funny how things come back, though.

I wrote this on February 7th, 2010 | Topic: Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

Who knew? Crippling snowstorms would fall on the city on Saturdays in the same winter. Shocking. In a near reiteration of the last storm before Christmas, this one dumped 18″ on the city. Most businesses were closed in the neighborhood with the exception of places frequented by locals. The gyms were open, two coffee shops, and the cheese store. Starbucks, the one chain in the neighborhood, was closed.

I made paella and nearly imagined myself in Valencia. I also got a huge amount of work done except for any reading or writing.

I wrote this on February 6th, 2010 | Topic: Food, Life |  Print |  Email | Say something

My new chair whose delivery caused so much worry.

This is a great time of the year to make all kinds of home purchases since things are on sale. unfortunately, last year was punctuated by a death in the family, a stressful real estate deal, and general exhaustion. I felt I couldn’t spend any more money (just the act of buying anything at all costs tens of thousands of dollars, not counting the down payment). Also, I was so mentally exhausted, I couldn’t make any rational decisions about more things, especially things that would be costly. Anything involving work on a home is costly.

This year, though, I’m ready to do something and I can finally make rational decisions. My first move was to get rid of the oversized, out of fashion lounge chair I had. I saw this Delia chair on Room and Board’s end of year sale it was the exact same chair I had loved since the previous spring, in just the fabric I wanted. I bought it. After a lot of rescheduling thanks to my insane work realities, I finally got it delivered and had my other chair picked up by a local charity. It looks amazing with my throw pillow I got years ago at the old Matthew Izzo (that place is a local business but I hate everything they stock these days).

The painter comes tomorrow for an estimate of just the bedroom and bathroom. If I like her work, I’ll have her do the rest of the apartment. Slowly things get done and when a lot of money and big changes are on the hook, slowly is probably best. I’m one of those people who has a clear idea of what I want and I cannot and will not accept anything but that. That’s why it takes me so long to arrive at a decision. Hey, I hate it, too. But I can’t make excuses or apologies for being hard to please.

Next up:

• Get my spices organized
• Fix the files
• Change the bedroom closet doors
• Hang the Montmarte picture in the bedroom

I wrote this on January 31st, 2010 | Topic: Domicile |  Print |  Email | Say something