Here and there is born a Saint Theresa...

"Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed."

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Short Ribs in Red Wine and Port

For this week's FFwD we made Short Ribs in Red Wine and Port. This is the third time I've made braised short ribs in the past three months, which means I must like them. I was disappointed with this rendition, though, but it was mostly my fault and a series of unfortunate events, not a problem with the recipe. The problem started when I decided to buy the short ribs from the grocery store instead of the butcher where I'd gotten them previously. The ribs were sliced surprisingly thin, but I decided to gamble with them. That was a half mistake. The preparation was not unlike the ways I'd done it previously, save the cut of the meat, so I felt very confident with the recipe. The previous times I'd made them, I hadn't refrigerated it overnight and had just used a fat separator for the sauce, but I found scraping the chilled fat off much easier this time. I had pancetta left over from last week and thought I'd make pancetta green beans again. I waited to check the quality of the pancetta until I was about to put it in the pan, only to discover it was pretty moldy. Definite mistake, but luckily green beans taste just fine plain. Then, as I was pulling the pan of ribs out from under the broiler just as we were about to eat, the potholder slipped, I caught the handle with my bare hand and instinctively threw the pan down onto the oven door. Big mistake. It was quite painful and I ended up with a sizable blister on the heel of my hand, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Luckily Andrew was standing next to me when this happened and managed to scrape the meat back into the pan, so dinner was at least salvaged.

So, there we go. It plated up pretty nicely. I had seen a lot of recipes for short ribs that used polenta rather than potatoes, and I thought it'd be a nice change of place. The weird thing was the polenta didn't have much flavor, but still manged to be unpleasant, so I didn't eat more than two forkfuls of mine. the meat was delicious, but I wish there had been a little more to it. I was not very crazy about the gremolata at all. I hate cilantro, so I used parsley instead but I think it was the orange zest that threw it off. It just overpowered the flavor of the meat. Oh well. So, I still think this is an excellent recipe, but I'd use a better cut and potatoes next time while skipping the gremolata. I did actually appreciate that it took two days to make since I usually have mornings off but don't get home from school until the evening, so I like to be able to make something in the morning and finish it quickly later. 

I also used this wine for the sauce and for drinking. I came across it in the store and immediately had to have it since "The Thinker" appealed to me as a philosophy grad student and Alexander Calder is one of my all-time favorite artists. Plus the wine was half off. I've had better, but it was still nice.

Spring is already here in Atlanta. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Huzzah!

Oh, this too

A Few of My Favorite Things

One of my bad habits (is it actually bad? I'm not sure) is having an excessive number of browser tabs open. Since I now have a 24in monitor, the problem has only increased. Right now I have 24 tabs open, for example. The thing is is that most of these are links I've found on other blogs that I want to show people and always forget. So, I'm going to share them with you so that I can clean up my clutter and only feel moderately guilty about passing it on.

One of the best things I've seen lately is this series of photographs from Irina Werning. She takes old photographs and has the subjects reenact the scene. They're just too good. Here're some favorites:

Swiss photographer Corrine Vionnet realized that most tourists take photographs of famous sites from the same spot, so she layered hundreds of photos on top of each other to demonstrate this. The results are uncanny. Why the consistency? Do we take photos from angles based on photographs we have seen before such that we are already conditioned to see things in a certain way? Do we intuitively know which angles are optimal? I'm less inclined to agree with the latter. What you might notice in these photos is that they are all good shots, but none especially interesting (Actually, almost all place the image precisely in the center, which is one thing a photography class teaches you not to do at the beginning). They capture the landmarks, but in a sort of matter of fact sort of way. I don't mean this an an elitist way as if tourists ought to be better photographers, but I'm mesmerized by fundamental sameness. I think, too, there's a fundamental sameness in how people travel. Why do we photograph the landmarks anyway? I have my own photos of the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, too, but I think I'm ambivalent about those.

More later, I guess.

Pancetta Green Beans and Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, Andrew and I decided to make dinner together, in part to save some money, in part so I could make the French Fridays with Dorie recipe, and in part so I would could watch the first episode of Watson playing on Jeopardy (which was pretty hilarious). We did, though, decide to splurge a little bit and got some huge and subsequently delicious porterhouse steaks.

The pancetta green beans were really quite delicious. I must admit that I was a little lazy with this recipe and didn't bother to blanch the beans and probably overcooked them a little bit. What can I say? I was already a few glasses of champagne in! The pancetta was also surprisingly salty. I've used it several times before, although I usually used Volpi instead of Boar's Head, and I'm not sure if that made a difference. It wasn't terrible at all, but I am glad I didn't add any more salt to the dish. The flavor was complex and a little smoky. While I love green beans plain or sometimes with almonds, this added a welcome punch up of flavor.

For dessert I'd made a red velvet cake using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Despite lots of red gel food coloring, the color was not quite there, but rich and moist nonetheless. I also used the Southern Comfort Buttercream recipe from The Boozy Baker, except I used Jack Daniels instead. It was a lot of flavor and I probably should've used a little less frosting, but it was really easy to work with, so I just kept working with it. We finally finished off the last piece yesterday.

It was probably one of the very best Valentine's Days ever.  

Orange-Almond Tart and Home

This week's dish for French Friday's with Dorie was just perfect. Not just because it was superbly delicious, and it was, but because I made it on a visit home. As much as I like being on my own and I haven't been in the same city as my family for eight years now, I am really a homebody. It's harder now since I can't go home as often and that my family no longer lives in St. Louis. I still hate saying I'm going home when I mean back to Atlanta because it really isn't my home. It's not terrible, but it's not the same.

I got to Lawrence/Kansas City just after they'd had a big snow storm. It was unbelievably beautiful. Because the temperatures had been so frigid, the snow was incredibly soft and powdery. I don't think I've ever experienced snow that soft. It was like sand! Betsy and I walked to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and probably spent as much time outside in the snow as inside in the galleries. Just perfect.

They, whoever they are, that you can't go home again. But I've discovered time and time again that it's not the case. Yes, it's not the same, but it is. It's sitting around the kitchen table, baking, and running errands. It's practicing piano and stirring up fights. 

My mom is the most hospitable person I know. Her style isn’t like Michael’s mom’s with the guest bedroom always prepared with the nightstand stocked like a hotel minibar and it isn’t like the 50s housewife perpetually armed with a batch of sweets. Instead, it’s her ability to make people feel like she really wants to spend time with them and visit with them. It’s the way she drops her work to watch Arthur with me or hides brownies under people’s ice cream or had my great-great aunt and great-grandma help her in the kitchen or organizes games of badminton in the yard.

One of the greatest things she and my dad instilled in us growing up is that we must always try to create the conditions for people to be good. The variation of that is, I think, that we must always try to create the conditions for people to feel welcome and at home. When I first started having my NYE parties, I stressed big time over the decorations and food and dresses and wound up exhausted and didn’t enjoy myself. Things gradually scaled back over the years and I think much for the better. A great to-do is fun, but I’d much rather be able to enjoy myself and my friends and just all sit around the kitchen table over coffee and wine. Even though I don't feel totally myself in Atlanta, I find the closest I get is in cooking with and for other people. Having dinner parties or delivering pies. 

I sent my dad to the store to pick up the oranges for this. I was so surprised when I sliced them open and discovered they were blood oranges. He had picked them out especially because he knew I'd appreciate them. My mom helped with each step of the process and made her own little berry tartlet to go along with this while Mary and Betsy were at the table making cards. We missed Ken an awful, awful lot. The tart, though, was just delicious. 

Maybe it's childish to refuse to accept my new locations as home. I've been here for almost three years now, but I think I felt more at home in Germany than Atlanta. There's nothing I can quite put my finger on, which I think is the hardest part. I think if I could really identify it, I would be able to deal with it. In general, though, I do like Decatur a great deal and the local coffeeshop has become my home away from home. I don't want to move back home, either. At least not yet. What I most want then is not just to reside somewhere, but to live, flourish, and grow somewhere and create the conditions for other people to do the same and spend time with people, to be home and be at home. 

I miss the Super Sassy Lady Squad especially around Valentine's Day. In "Building Dwelling Thinking" Heidegger writes, "The real dwelling plight lies i this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell. What if man's homelessness consisted in this, that man still does not even thinking of the real plight of dwelling as the plight? Yet as soon as man gives thought to his homelessness, it is a misery no longer. Rightly considered and kept well in mind, it is the sole summons that calls mortals into their dwelling. But how else can mortals answer this summons than by trying on their part, on their own, to bring dwelling to the fullness of nature? They accomplish when they build out of dwelling, and think for he sake of dwelling." Dwelling is fundamentally preserving and staying with and I think of hospitality and generosity as precisely that. So, perhaps, even in the unheimlich I'm ever learning to dwell, trying on my part. 

My mom just called me and at first the only thing I could hear was polka music. She had found a polka cd and called me because she wanted to dance with me and demanded that I get up and polka with her on the phone. So I did.

Basque Tortilla

Yikes, a tad bit late with this one. I was even super early with making it, too! I made it last Monday since I knew that I would have a packed week schoolwise and then I'd be leaving Thursday to go home for the weekend. So, I managed to make it and post the pictures to Flickr in time, but am just now writing the blog post on Sunday afternoon as I'm already working ahead on this week's recipe.
Aaaanyway. This Basque tortilla was a fine recipe. Don't let the name confuse you, though. It's an egg dish, akin to a frittata or quiche, that has potatoes and things in it. It's pretty easy. I chose to do the basic recipe since I already had potatoes and onions on hand. I did choose to add some pancetta, though, which added some savoriness to some otherwise muted flavors. Cook some potatoes and onions in a pan, add some eggs and pancetta, finish under the broiler. Easy peasy.

Except. Except if you've turned your broiler on and forgotten that your roommate had made bread over the weekend (for our dinner party, which was delicious, and awesome, as expected), so there was cornmeal remaining in the baking stone which began smoking fiercely as the oven heated up. I had just made brownies, but I guess the oven hadn't gotten that hot, so I didn't know. Anyway, as I'm trying keep the eggs from overcooking, all the smoke detectors in the house are going off, my eyes are burning, my concetration is completely broken. Luckily it's a pretty easy recipe, so it didn't actually require that much concentration.

There you can see the aftermath. We managed to remove the very hot baking stone, clean it off, and kick the broiler back on. The top browned nicely, but I think it ended up a little overcooked. Andrew didn't seem to mind too much.



I admit that it wasn't a terribly exciting dish, but it was still satisfying. I hardly ever pass up an opportunity to have eggs, bacon, and potatoes, and this basically had it all rolled into one. So, good, but nothing exceptional.

Being at home, though, has been exceptional. Nothing vibrates with my heartstrings more than the Midwest in winter. We were driving to Lawrence from Kansas City on Friday afternoon, after a delicious late lunch at Aixois, and the sunset was unbelievably beautiful and reflecting off the snow. I can't even explain what is that I love so much, since most of it is actually not that attractive, like train tracks cutting through the snow, or old barns on the horizon, or the monotone grey of the city in February. Mostly, though, it's the light. The Midwest resonates with me a whole lot more than the South does. It's not even that the South is terrible or that entirely different from Missouri, but it isn't me. I'm thankful that I do have wonderful friends in Atlanta. I'm very thankful to  be able to return home so often. Now, if only some day I could get a job here...