I Heart You, Laurie Notaro!

Let me preface this post by saying that I have read every Laurie Notaro book published up to this point and have found each one able to be related to and delightful. The publishers who initially turned her down thus forcing her to publish her first book herself should be ashamed as she is a fantastic writer who puts the awkwardness of being a woman out there for all to enjoy. Her latest book, It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy was probably my favorite out of all of them. I found myself laughing out loud to the point of scaring my cats (and probably my boyfriend, come to think of it).

For those of you not familiar with this glorious gem of a writer, Notaro is mostly known for her collections of humorous essays on the everyday events of her life that tend to take not so everyday twists, typically ending in some sort of self-deprecation or embarrassment. She does have a couple of fiction novels that are also funny, but it is her autobiographical collections that keep me coming back for more. Perhaps I take sick pleasure in the misery of others and their misfortune. Most likely though, it is because I believe we all have a bit of Laurie lurking inside us. All those insecurities, moments of realizing clothing doesn't fit the way we planned, interactions with crazy neighbors, being the crazy neighbor. . . The only difference is so many of us women try to hide our idiosyncrasies and eccentricities while Notaro shares hers repeatedly and reminds us that we needn't take life so seriously.

I not only applaud you for your awesomeness, Laurie, but I look forward to continuing to read your creations for years to come.

Barbara O'Neal's "The Lost Recipe for Happiness" Equates the Lost Recipe for a Good One Day Read

Recently I stumbled upon The Lost Recipe for Happiness by Barbara O'Neal by randomly roaming the shelves at the library looking for something with an interesting cover/title to read. I didn't realize at the time that I had already read one of the author's other books, How to Bake a Perfect Life, which I would also recommend. The title alone drew me in and someone who loves to cook and who perpetually searches for happiness. I enjoyed this book enough to read the entire thing in one sitting, and while I don't recommend doing that necessarily, I do recommend adding this to your womanly reading repertoire.

The story revolves around chef Elena Alvarez, who got fired from her sous chef position at a restaurant by her former mate and executive chef after she was the primary focus of an article that was supposed to be about the restaurant. As she is leaving, she is approached by the owner of the restaurant who also happens to be a Hollywood director. He remembers her from when she started out at one of his other restaurants and wants her to come be the executive chef at a new place he is opening in Aspen. This is her dream of course, so Elena packs up her dog and heads off to embark on the challenges of moving to a new place, starting a restaurant, and fighting the ghosts of her past so that she can open her mind, heart, and soul to what lies ahead.

The story is engaging with its mysterious references to the main character's teenage tragedy, allusions to possible romance, and realistic depiction of the process of opening a restaurant. Since I am a foodie whose family has worked in that industry, I can appreciate how demanding the career is depicted because I have witnessed it first hand. Between trying to prove she can be a success in the kitchen and ensuring she remains physically able to do so as she contends with pain from the life-changing accident, the reader is left to wonder if Elena will in fact be able to find the happiness she seeks. Something I also thought cool about the story was the incorporation of how growing up half-Mexican in New Mexico impacted the main character. There is an emergence of Latino presence in modern literature, but sometimes the emphasis on what sets the characters apart culturally ends up detracting from the story line. In this case, the cultural influences are balanced and tied into the plot very well.

I look forward to reading this author's other two books soon!

Shocker: I Still Suck at Blogging

New year, new opportunity to suck less perhaps? We shall see. For now though, I am going to give this another start and share what I've been up to lately. After only a year and a half in the blazes of hell level heat in Arizona, I managed to rererelocate back to the Pacific Northwest. Before you think I write out how I stutter or didn't notice my spelling error, the 3 "re"s are intentional as this is my THIRD time moving back to the Seattle area. Um, third time is a charm I guess? At any rate, I am super fantastically happy to be back to my beloved grunge originating area and am thoroughly enjoying the experience with my domestic partner, Jacob. So far, I have enjoyed numerous walks, lots of great restaurants, and some of the most beautiful scenery in the United States. I have also been getting well acquainted with the library down the street, which you will be seeing the fruits of that labor shortly as I embark on reviewing my 2012 reads thus far in an attempt to get back into the blogging swing of things. On a crazy note, I have also taken up hot yoga since moving here which is ridiculous since I hate heat (I thought I was going to perish this past summer in Phoenix but somehow survived by the grace of God and the invention of coconut water with electrolytes). All in all, life is damn good right now and I just want to share that with whoever may be reading this. Namaste!

Oopsie in the Kitchen Turns Into Yummy!

Earlier this past week I tackled a dish similar to a veal piccata I once partook of in a restaurant here (I swear I will eventually get caught up on my restaurant reviews) only it's made with chicken and sadly involves no wine. I made the unfortunate mistake of misreading the recipe since it talked about the fresh lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of zest up front. Apparently that was supposed to be set aside to use later for the sauce but blonde me misunderstood and cooked the chicken in it instead. That being said, the chicken was moist and action-packed with flavor. Also the "sauce" with capers turned out tasty. It even maintained its flavor the next day when reheated as leftovers. Phew, because that would have been sad if I had completely messed up a fairly simple dish like that just because of something silly. My kitchen Tourette's definitely kicked in when i discovered the mistake.

Later in the week though I found an actual mistake in the recipe I was using and was able to thankfully adjust accordingly in time since it was Blondies I was trying to bake to take as dessert to dinner at a friend's homestead across the valley. What sold me on this particular recipe is the integration of butterscotch chips. So delicious! Needless to say they didn't last long.

This coming week I have a couple of things pending, one simple and one more complex, neither of which are desserts surprisingly. Knowing me though, I may just throw in a dessert for good measure.

Italian Theme Night. . .

In this week's culinary adventure, I decided to go back to my trusty Williams-Sonoma international cookbook to give the Italian section a whirl. The whole idea is to challenge myself during this quest to become a stellar cook so I made a rule for myself that I wouldn't try anything typical or with red/marinara sauce. I needed to step it up a bit for this section because I have already altered my mom's spaghetti sauce "recipe" to the point that it's going to be hard to duplicate and/or top since it's progressively gotten better each time I make it and try something a little different to add flavor. I knew I definitely wanted a dessert, but I couldn't just do dessert and not a main dish because really anything with sugar is good. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I have a sweet tooth so doing just a dessert seemed like kind of a cop out.

I found a dish to try that was similar to something my boyfriend had ordered at a well-renowned restaurant in the area a few weeks back. The dish of choice: Orecchiette with Sausage. Didn't look too hard at first, but then again i have never cooked using sweet Italian sausage or broccoli rabe. I actually had to ask the produce guy which vegetable the broccoli rabe was because I forgot to look up a picture of it online prior to going and making an ass of myself by asking such a question at a store known specifically for their produce. Luckily produce guy was very helpful and even offered tips for sautéing that perhaps I can try another time. The dish involved a lot of multitasking, but realistically you cannot go wrong with something that has melted cheese and olive oil toasted bread crumbs so it was well worth it. So well worth it in fact that the significant other declared it better than the similar dish he had at renowned restaurant, which is why I intentionally left out the name of the place because it has an actual chef on staff that puts a lot of thought into designing seasonal menus using local produce when possible. I liked it okay. It grew on me throughout the meal because it had my favorite spice, red pepper in flake form. I definitely plan to make this dish again, or at least incorporate more dishes with the not-so-mysterious-as-I-initially-thought broccoli rabe.

Even better in my book was my first attempt at making Panna Cotta, garnished with blackberries. This dessert is so easy I wonder why more people don't opt for this over making cheesecake or pies. Seriously, the hardest part was scraping out the vanilla bean pod (resulting in suspicious cut on finger tip that not only did I not feel, but also did not notice until well after the fact). Heavy cream, sugar, milk, vanilla. . . So tasty I opted not to share the extra with the neighbor, giving him some cookies to top off the orecchiette leftovers instead. If i could sustain life off of the panna cotta (and coffee!) I totally would. Deliciousness!

Yeah, so this week I was not as humble about the level of goodness my kitchen experimentations resulted in but sometimes you've got to know when to own your awesomeness and this is one of those times. Alrighty, it's late and I am borderline cocky now, so till next week. . .

On Today's Menu. . .

In an effort to be more healthy overall, I have decided that I am going to attempt making my own bread because then I at least know the ingredients in the carbs I consume. Today I tackled (quite literally, story to follow) Honey Oat Bread and Blueberry Muffins.

Okay, I know muffins aren't hard to make. Go ahead and roll your eyes at that one and then tune back in because I didn't cheat and use a mix (sticking tongue out at the naysayers right now). Instead I made them from scratch using whole wheat flour and fresh blueberries. Oh, and this fantastic oil I found at the Queen Creek Olive Mill (http://queencreekolivemill.com/). It's a Vanilla Extra Virgin Olive Oil and it is fabulous for baking. The fresh blueberries and vanilla combination made the fact that the muffins were whole wheat less obvious. Definitely one of the easier things I have baked and now I cannot foresee myself going back to using a mix.

It's a shame the same could not be said for the Honey Oat Bread. The dough was perfect. It rose just as it should. It looked lovely. Unfortunately the loaf pans were the problem as they were not large enough once the dough rose even more while baking. The cookbook should have noted that the dough would double its size at least three times in the process from start to finish, but it tastes good even if it isn't all that pretty to look at. And if anything, it was good practice since I am still determined to master bread.

Now the story of the literal tackling and how I put my blood, sweat, and tears into my baking efforts today. The sweat part is obvious. Anyone living in a small apartment with an oven in the middle of a desert even in winter understands this one. The tears came in while checking my email between projects. There was a very touching forward in there about some awesome historical post-Holocaust love story blah blah blah (tears) that turned out to be fake (astonishment at the nerve of some people to make stuff like this up). The blood part comes in because by the time I got around to "punching the dough" I was quite frustrated about the fan I had tried to take apart to clean and the fact it made a mess in the process. I punched the dough rather hard back into the bowl it was rising in (one could classify it as possibly showing that dough who's boss) when lo and behold my thumb nicked the edge of the bowl on the way down and the skin of the knuckle split. Ew, I know. The good news is blood, like alcohol, cooks out of the food when you bake it. Totally kidding. I made it to the sink prior to ruining the bread. The ruining the appearance came later when I tried to remove the finished product from the loaf pans. Based on my experience today, I am considering adopting the phrase "loaf top" as opposed to "muffin top" when referencing the fold of skin hanging over the waistline of pants that are too tight on the wearer. Seems more appropriate.

Anyway, that sums of this week's culinary adventures. Hopefully my next round is met with less mishaps. Then again, this is me in the kitchen we're talking about. . .

Not Quite "Julie and Julia", But It Will Have to Suffice

I am not a huge fan of the "New Year's Resolution" per se because of the chain reaction of events it creates. Set resolution, party it up like a rock star, suffer for it New Year's Day, get back on the wagon in time to participate in the activities contributing to aforementioned resolution (i.e. exercising), stick to it for at least a week or two, lapse, beat self up mentally for said lapse, try again to be "good", decide it's too much effort anyway and there's always next year. . . In lieu of resolutions, I prefer goals or slogans or both. I recall my 2009 slogan fondly as being "#$%* that @$#%". Profane yes, but effective. It helped me speak my mind more and not let things bother me quite so much. This year, my slogan is "Calm the #$%* Down" as it pertains to my inability to relax. I apparently only prefer slogans with swear words, so evidently I am not as educated as I like to think I am considering my inability to use more creative words than #$%*.

At any rate, this year's slogan caused me to evaluate just what I could do in my life to in fact calm the #$%* down and I came up with the following: get back into a regular yoga practice, further develop a skill, write to the point of which I could actually classify myself as a "writer", figure out which areas of my life are leading to such a slogan being necessary and either change or eliminate it, etc. So you are now reading this as a direct result of needing to fulfill further developing a skill and writing to the point of being a legit writer. Which reminds me. . . I still need to catch up on my "New in Town" reviews before I hit my year mark in Arizona and can no longer classify myself as new (nor can I claim ignorance on directions at that point considering the city is fairly easy to maneuver). My skill I want to further develop is my cooking. I currently work for a culinary school and am surrounded by food and people inspired by food to the point that my competitive nature kicks in and I want to be classified as an equally good cook when compared to the students. I lack desire to compete with the chefs and don't really care about doing a side by side comparison of myself on the skill level. I just want to create food that tastes good. And then I want to write about my experience doing so. My goal is to try doing one new recipe per week. This allows me to feed my creativity so to speak on multiple levels, pun intended.

My first week's attempt was Mexican Sweet Potatoes and a Mexican Coconut Custard Tart. I have never cooked sweet potatoes nor have I ever made a tart, so this was an undertaking in and of itself. Luckily the international cookbook I was using includes easily accessible ingredients. I had already made a dinner/dessert combo from the French section back in December so I figured what I had chosen couldn't be all that hard in comparison. Not hard, but definitely time consuming.

The sweet potato dish made me skeptical at first. The recipe calls for sweet potatoes, brown sugar, fresh cilantro, chipotle peppers, and some other stuff. The potatoes get roasted in the oven, another technique I typically don't do. It smelled delicious while cooking so that helped ease my anxiety a bit. The reaction of my boyfriend when he tasted the dish though is what made it worth the effort. I am not going to even pretend to be humble here, the dish was fantastic. So, thank you, Williams-Sonoma, for making an international cookbook I can actually use. The recommendation for sour cream as an optional topping was right on par as well. I will definitely make that dish again, although I won't be able to write about it next time since I am supposed to be writing about the new recipes I try.

Next up was the coconut tart. The custard itself was delicious but what really made it outstanding was roasting the coconut in the oven for the topping. So yummy! My tart edge stuck to the sides though because I tried to remove it from the tart pan before it had fully cooled. Lesson learned. Also, the recipe recommended trying fresh papaya or pineapple with whipped topping on it. Tried the papaya. No bueno. Did not try the whipped topping as the tart is already plenty sweet enough without it. Would definitely also make this again.

The moral of the story: Mexican Night at Casa de Erica was a success. Now on to the next challenge. . .