pumpkin bourbon tart (Updated recipe!) November 18, 2009

Hello sweet beets,

A Facebook pal friend asked for my pumpkin pie recipe and I thought I’d toss it on here even though I don’t have a picture of it and it’s not exactly my recipe, but rather an adaptation of an old recipe from Fine Cooking. It’s so great though. Make it, take a picture, and send it to me along with your kudos, will ya?

Fun fact! I started making this tart my regular Thanksgiving pumpkiny dessert after Khaela Maricich (yes, Khaela of The Blow!) tasted it alongside my standard non bourbony pie and declared that it “had more going on.” My god, I love that Khaela. We’re actual friends, but every time I see her I still can’t stop from basically screaming about how much I love her and making dorky references to all her songs. This is of course slightly awkward and I commend her for being so awesome about it (full disclosure: she’s more of a Jacob friend than a Lagusta friend, but how great to be in a couple where you get to be friends with all your sweetheart’s friends, non? Actually…read this paragraph quick, because when Jacob sees it he will sigh in that “you don’t have to share everything with the internet” way and I will feel weird and take it down. He is in Sweden today though, so I can blab on and on about my deep and wild love for Khaela to the entire world without any sighing disrupting my oversharing.).

I LOVE THE BLOW!!!

Pumpkin Bourbon Tart with Walnut Streusel

1 11” tart

• This recipe looks long, but it is really just three easy components. It calls for a stand mixer and a food processor, but it can be made without these by combining the tart and filling ingredients (separately) in a bowl and by hand-chopping the streusel ingredients and combining them with a fork or pastry blender.
• The coconut oil should be at room temperature, which means that it shouldn’t be completely liquefied or completely solid – it should be soft enough to scoop out easily but still white. Since it can be tricky to get it to this consistency, especially in very hot or cold kitchens, remember that is always better to err on the side of it being more liquid, because otherwise the dough or streusel could end up with holes that were once solid coconut oil. However, a colder oil makes a more flaky pastry, so finding a balance between workable and too warm (liquid) is worth it. If you’re scared of coco oil or don’t know what kind to buy, read my coco oil manifesto here!

tart crust

2 c all-purpose flour

1/3 c sugar

1 ts. orange or tangerine zest (tangerine adds a special quality)

½ ts. sea salt

10 Tb. coconut oil, at room temperature, see note above

2 Tb. flax seed “eggs” (you know, just boil 1c of water and 3 Tb. flax seeds for a few minutes, then strain it. If it’s too thick to strain, add more hot water and whisk whisk whisk. Voilà! Egg whites!)

¼ c coconut milk, more if needed

1. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the flour, sugar, zest, and salt. Add the coconut oil and combine on low speed until the mixture looks crumbly and like dried peas – about 2 minutes.
2. Add the flax seed “eggs” and coconut milk and mix on low speed until the dough is just combined. If the dough is too dry to come together, add more coconut milk a spoonful at a time.
3. Evenly press dough into a 11” ungreased tart pan with a removable bottom. Refrigerate. (Yep, a pressed crust! EASY!)

pumpkin filling

15 oz. pumpkin or squash (I like Blue Hubbard squash the best), steamed (use canned pumpkin and I will kill you. Just STEAM SOME SQUASH, you can do that, Jesus!) [If anyone has both a scale and measuring cups and can tell me how many cups 15 oz. is, let me know and I will update this for the benefit of non-scale-owners. But if you're serious about baking, you should buy a scale!)

scant 1 Tb. agar powder (I talk about it here)

½ c evaporated cane juice sugar

¼ c packed minimally processed dark brown sugar

2 Tb. all-purpose flour

1 ts. ground ginger

1 ts. freshly ground cinnamon

¼ ts. freshly ground cloves

½ ts. sea salt

½ c coconut milk

¼ c bourbon (once I accidentally used Southern Comfort and it was delicious as well, which is weird because I usually find SoCal vomitious.)

1. In blender, combine all filling ingredients over low speed until combined. Set aside.

streusel topping

¾ c walnut halves, toasted, cooled

¼ c crystallized ginger, coarsely chopped

¾ c all-purpose flour

1/3 c evaporated cane juice sugar

¼ c packed minimally processed dark brown sugar

½ ts. freshly ground cinnamon (I always use canela Mexican cinnamon from my local Mexican market [Casa Latina in Poughkeepsie---I call it a Mexican market even though it's a Latina market because I am a big giant racist.] and grind it in a spice grinder, but you can use your sad little tin of cassia cinnamon, sure, go right ahead, even though it’s probably like 10 years old and doesn’t taste cinnamony at all…)

½ ts. sea salt

1/3 c coconut oil, at room temperature

1. In a food processor, combine walnuts and ginger. Pulse to chop into medium pieces. Remove. Add remaining ingredients except coconut oil and pulse briefly to mix. Add coconut oil and pulse until just barely combined. Remove blade and stir in walnuts and crystallized ginger.

assembling the tart

1. Heat the oven to 350F.
2. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the unbaked tart crust. Do not overfill tart pans because the filling puffs a little. It might overflow a little in the oven. I personally like the look of it when it does, and it sinks back down after it comes out of the oven, but if you want a tidy tidy tart, take out 1/3 cup or so of the filling and just eat it. Scatter the streusel topping evenly over the pumpkin mixture, covering it completely. Put the tart on a cookie sheet.
3. Bake until the topping is evenly cooked and no longer looks wet in the center, 50 to 65 to 75 minutes, depending on your oven.
4. Let the tart cool on a rack for at least 2 hours before serving. The tart can be wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated overnight; before serving, let it sit at room temperature 1 to 2 hours.
5. The flavor of this tart is best after one day, and it will keep up to 6 days.

The world is mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or how hard the struggle. November 18, 2009

…Or so I’ve been telling myself since I was fifteen and first read The Fountainhead and committed those lines to memory.

Well, here’s a shameful secret: I’ve really been enjoying the audio book of this new Ayn Rand bio. I’ll have lots of thoughts to share about it…soon.

Sorta soon.

In the meantime, it’s my busiest work week of the year (making hay while the sun is shining sounds good on paper, but it sure sucks when you collapse from sunstroke…) and after that my sweetheart will be home for a few days and we’ll be raking leaves and petting lonely cats and catching up on Mad Men and generally acting like we share our lives even though our lives seem to be conspiring to make us liars lately.

Until then, here are some peeled chioggia beets and raspberry orange tarts. Enjoy!

While I’m gone please feel free to debate and discuss the philosophy of Objectivism; Ayn Rand’s insanely weird life; the virtues of altruism versus the virtues of egotism; various thoughts on the sexiness or lack thereof of Ayn Rand’s characters (I have soft spots for Howard Roark and Dagny Taggart, myself), whether or not the grassroots left truly is being torn apart by lazyass dreamers who can’t shake themselves out of their idiotic mystical visions long enough to get anything done; and, the topic I really want to bring up: can collectives ever accomplish anything? I’ve been a part of a few, and I think I can make a strong case that Rand-style individual actions get a shit load more done with a shit load less drama. Is there something inherently virtuous in working together, or are we deluding ourselves? No collective I’ve  ever seen is a true collective, all have had a certain sort of hierarchy in order to survive. What’s wrong with that? As long as it’s not a fascist hierarchy that is killing its underlings, what’s wrong with admitting the truth: we are all good at different things, and shouldn’t pretend to be equals at everything.

Also: should an avowed anarchist who describes her political leanings as somewhere to the left of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky be getting as much pleasure as I am getting out of the ideas of a woman who so loved capitalism? Or could it be said that in a certain sense Rand was an anarchist? Her love for capitalism was, it seems to me, really a love of the meritocracy. Money doesn’t have to be involved in a meritocracy, and I’ve always thought that in any worthy anarchist society cream would still rise to the top (which by the way is a totally vegan metaphor if you’ve ever opened a can of coconut milk in the wintertime)—it’s just that everyone, creamy or not, would have a say and a stake in how they live their lives.

Here’s another thought: as much as Rand was an avowed capitalist, I’m an avowed barterer (I GOT THE COAT! IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND! PIX TO COME!!), and it seems to me that bartering is the purest, most anarchic form of capitalism—bartering is capitalism minus governmental and societal bullshit, it is capitalism stripped of anything but the perfect question: “what is it worth to you?”

So basically what I want to say is that lefties shouldn’t ashamed to like Ayn Rand. She made a lot of mistakes and was sort of a giant bitch with an addiction to amphetamines and some serious emotional issues, but! Her sometimes overly simplistic, sometimes shrill ideas have real value. Inherent value, even.

xoxoxo

John Galt

PS: Um. Maybe I just shot my wad on that Rand post TK. Oops.

They Want Us To Make A Symphony Out Of The Sound Of Women Swallowing Their Own Tongues November 15, 2009

You know? Totally.

Why, hello there, internet!

Lots to say, as usual, not much time to say it, as usual. But right now I’ve got a Noodle-cat on my lap and some nice honeybush tea on my desk and old, old, old M. Ward on the record player—everything feels just right. Let’s chat a little.

First of all, as someone who watches a fair amount of TV on the computer while working, I was excited about this new Wanda Sykes show. As Jon Stewart put it: “…Wanda Sykes is going to be starting up her own late night talk show—wait, that’s got to be a misprint, she’s not a white man. Well, I guess now we’ve seen everything.”

I had high hopes (my crush on Wanda is long and deep), but it seems to be sort of a Real Time with Bill Maher minus the Bill Maher creep factor plus more cheesiness and with, let’s just admit it, crappier guests. And her rah rah Obamaism was tiring after just one episode, though why I expected anything more from a mainstream talk show I’m not sure.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when a truly interesting figure gets a bit of a handhold in the “real world” and all her quirkiness is completely tamped down…but come on Wanda, I think you can do better. (And if you can’t, I’ll keep watching just because you’re so freaking cute.)

In other feministy zeitgeistey culturey news, I was fascinated to read this Feministing post all about where The Wire gets it wrong when it comes to gender. I don’t completely agree—Kima!—but it is food for thought, for sure.

Speaking of Feministing, a site I’m partial to (and have advertised the Bonbons on), it is currently being boycotted by those who believe that the Feministing crew are horrible transphobic ableist racists.

I dunno. I don’t really buy it.

Some random thoughts on the whole mess which will probably get me in a lot of trouble with very few people and not make much sense to people not intimately familiar with the site (to learn what the hell I’m talking about, click the links mentioned here. Thanks to Facebook friend JC for the heads up, and I hope we can still be pals though we disagree!):

• To be honest, it truly seems like a whole lot of the left punching itself in the eye, which is, of course, our favorite activity. Oh infighting, where would we be without you?
• That said:
• Jessica Valenti, the face of the site (though I know much has been done to change this by bringing in a much more diverse editorial staff) has never, in my eyes, been that interesting or deep. She’s just….fine. She’s the Ms. Magazine of my generation—nice, slightly boring, slightly simplistic, but a good cheerleader to bring intimidated stupid people to the big bad F word. But there is a LOT to Feministing besides her, so if her, like, white middle class privilege worries you, you don’t actually have to read her posts or her books.
• Claims of extreme transphobia and hostility toward trans women on the site: I can’t claim to have read all of the long long long threads that the pages I’ve seen link to (and if you have specific examples of the perceived horrible treatment of trans women on the site, I’d like to see them), but man oh man! Trans issues are complex for a lot of cisgender people, myself included, and I appreciate Feministing’s attempt to work through the more nuanced and complicated aspects in an inclusive way. Also, it seems that most of the problems people are having take place in the comments, and it seems ridiculous to blame the site for that.
• 
• Also, why boycott? Why not hop on the comments thread and make your views known? I know people feel like they have and that the staff isn’t listening, but walking away is a silly way to respond. Isn’t feminism about dialogue? You don’t like the way one of the biggest feminist websites is run? Keep talking about it until it changes, people. My god–what do you do in the real life when you don’t like something, just walk way to a “safe space” where no one disagrees with you? (Yes, that’s what I do, but I’m not the one complaining.)
• And people boycotting because of “their classist “boycott Walmart” post”: HA! Ha! HA! HA!!!!! Wait, let me rephrase: So, let me get this straight. There are people who, as feminists, see nothing wrong with Walmart? There are people who, as feminists, think that it’s CLASSIST to point out problems with WALMART? Could someone please explain this hilarious logic? It’s CLASSIST to say that people should be paid more than minimum wage with no benefits and not locked inside their jobs at night when they are stocking shelves? And is a feminist utopia one in which we all own cheap shit made by largely female sweatshop workers? And…um…who’s calling who a racist? I mean, yes, there are places where literally the only store is Walmart. And there are people who are underpaid and thus must shop there to buy vital things like food. But to say that pointing out the giant problems with Walmart is to deny these facts and somehow hate on people who have no choice but to shop there is, well, just mindblowingly idiotic.
• In short: I don’t get it. Feministing could be more diverse and inclusive, of course, but I truly get the sense that they are trying pretty damn hard. Maybe they fuck up now and then, but don’t we all? I guess I’ve bought into the great Feministing swindle, but I truly think their hearts are in the right place, which is why I’m a loyal reader and occasional advertiser even when I don’t agree 100% with every single post.

OK, time to turn the record over, see ya!

Monday Miscellany November 2, 2009

I’m already mourning the passing of the Season of Wearing Cute Dresses in a pretty hardcore way. Yuck. Forgive that I already posted a picture of this outfit (which I have christened “You’d Never Guess She’s a Man-Hating Anarcho-Feminist,”), but I did a lot of tailoring to it to make it fit (there was a LOT more lace) and I’m pretty much in love with it. Those tights have little twee hearts on them!

Lots happening out there in the world, plus I am over my horrid mood of last week! Let us celebrate with links:

My BFFF (extra F for how Fucking much I love him) Than Luu is doing some ridiculous food blogging on his travels around the world with his band Black Gold (Oh look! Another opportunity to mention the music video I was in, how handy!). Check it out!

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Speaking of bands, while I was engaged in a horrible Halloween depression spiral, my sweetheart was in Louisville mixing THIS. Wow.
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Profanity-laced hilarity courtesy of McSweeney’s.

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The new Bloodroot calendar is out! In the two years since Bloodroot published the gorgeous cookbook set that I was honored to have had a hand in creating, they have been publishing a calendar with new recipes. The calendar is super gorgeous and filled with 99% vegan recipes straight out of my mentor Selma’s head–snap it up!

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I’m happy one of the Brooklyn Jonathans (Safran Foer, Ames, and Letham) wrote a book about why you should be vegan or whatevs, and I’m happy that famous blonde actresses are writing vegan cookbooks, all of that is well and good. But these books are written for non-vegans—why people have to keep pointing them out to me I have no idea.

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Speaking of another of the Bklyn Jonathans, Ames wrote that new show Bored to Death and though I haven’t seen it I completely loved & agreed with Nancy Franklin’s recent New Yorker review (I basically agree with everything Nancy Franklin has ever said though.). Particularly this part:

Chick lit—the range of fiction by women about contemporary city life, friendships, sex, jobs, climbing out of the wreckage of youthful dreams—gets a lot less respect than the male equivalent, which people tend to approach as if it were automatically more artful, more written. Women write “thinly veiled accounts”; men write “romans à clef.” Women writers may have a room of their own, but men who thrash around in front of the mirror and record their every failure, humiliation, moue, and excretion for an audience’s consumption still own the house, even if all they do in it is lie on the couch—and then write about it.
The work of Jonathan Ames, who created the new HBO series “Bored to Death,” lies in this vein of self-fascination and self-conscious inertia.

My god, YES. I suffered through a Jonathan Ames audiobook (which I refuse to Google to figure out the title, as I am unwilling to spend one more second of my life on Jonathan Ames) once, and every second was pure torture.

On the other hand, everyone says this new series is good. Oh, the pain.

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And a few work-related miscellanies:

Heya Baltimorites (?)! Check out Brunie’s Bakery, a cute small-batch vegan bakery in your fair city. Recently their head baker emailed me to say that she was making the wedding cake for the woman who ordered the aforementioned wedding truffles from last week and she just sampled and adored a few truffles. How nice is that? I love it when things like that happen. Vegans can be a crazy bunch, but overall we are such decent, sweet, friendly people, no?

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(All that follows is NSFW!)

So, this erotic chocolate shop in Belgium wants to sell ye olde vulvaz, and I hope we can make it happen. How hilarious does it look? My favorite product so far is the “Candy Gay String.” And while I find these deeply, deeply horrifying….I must say they are pretty well done! And they remind me all over again to be annoyed that no one (Beloved TCHO! Are you listening?) makes high-quality vegan (coco milk!!!) milk chocolate and white chocolate. Oh, and I have this mold! I once made it for my sweetheart filled with peppermint patty filling and presented it to him right before he left on a tour. It was too much sugar (a solid inch or so of peppermint patty filling, I’m not sure quite what I was thinking) and he couldn’t eat it in front of anyone and I fear a lot of it went to waste. But it was adorable!

Monday Miscellany: beaucoup de mishegoss edition October 19, 2009

Strataspore: “A platform for collective knowledge about mushrooms.”

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Spend an adorable and seriously heartwarming 20 minutes with this Brooklyny hipstery awesomey shortie, all about abortion!

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FUCK YEAH: Barbara Ehrenreich on how “positive thinking has undermined America.” Yep. Totes!! My god, I loves me some Barbara Ehrenreich.

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This entire blog will terrify and fascinate you, I promise. Veronica turned me onto it because in this post this seriously mentally insane person explains how many of the little globule-y things I had at Alinea were made. Wowzers.

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This Calvin Trillin gem that so perfectly sums up the Roman Polanski mishegoss has been passed around a bit, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a peek and an “EXACTLY.”

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An anarchist’s take on Michael Moore’s new anti-capitalist movie.

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Little bit o’ Bonbons press (the blog is also my personal scrapbook, OK?)….

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Oh, and here is the cutest, (and also most bizarrely inaccurate) piece o’ Bonbons press ever.(I wouldn’t exactly say that I “made the chocolates in part as a response to friends who voiced their opinion that no one else but Obama could have won the Nobel Peace Prize” though yep, I did have a conversation with someone who said that and yep, I did point out that Vandana should have received it instead, but man, that would have been quick to whip up an entire choco line! But whatevs, that’s a minor quibble in a sweet article.)

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Brittany pointed me to these cute vintagey threads. Oh Etsy, je t’adore.

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Our local distillery, Tuthilltown Spirits, is now incredibly famous, and deservedly so. Their Baby Bourbon and Manhattan Rye Whiskey are RIDIC. Hooray for local hooch!

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I found out about this sweet teeny jam company from Edible Brooklyn–how adorable: Anarchy in a Jar jams. How amazing to be alive when anarchists are practicing their politics by making jam.

It warms my heart, yo.

why are artisans so often assholes? October 14, 2009

Have you noticed this? That people who are really deeply good at what they do and are doing it to the Nth degree are so often serious assholes?

If you’ve been to, oh, I don’t know, let’s just say….Brooklyn, then you know of what I here speak. Awesomeness overshadowed by self-awareness of awesomeness, which then tips said awesomeness into the realm of insufferability. We’ve come to accept it with writers, painters, movie directors, but in my life I see it a lot with small business owners. The ones who are doing the most awesome shit are so often also the most stuck-up and annoying.

My work is to be at once awesome and not assholey, and it’s harder than you can possibly imagine.

Seriously. The struggle not to be an asshole takes up roughly half of my mindspace on any given day. I come from a family comprised almost solely of giant assholes, and I live in today’s giantly assholely world. I am both made of and swim around in assholely molecules every minute of every day.*

Despite that, I think it’s fair to say that I am not, on balance, an asshole. I think about this all the time, and here’s what I’ve figured out: I think (I hope) I have struck this weirdly awesome balance in my life: I am at once the most intense and angry person I know as well as one of the most sweet. Can this be? Can I continue like this? I really want to, I really like this balance. Not letting the anger overtake the sweetness, not letting the sweetness trickle into treacle.

I am deeply hard, I have harsh political views, I am sometimes overly brash in my resistance to compromise, and being forced to bear witness to most people’s lives, beliefs, and activities engenders in me feelings ranging from disinterest to literal revulsion to screaming rage.

On the other hand: I work hard at cultivating loving relationships with those I love; at deeply enjoying the pleasure of being alive; and at opening my heart to the many breathtaking wonderfulnesses my life provides.

I like talking about it, and trusting good friends who will tell me when the balance is a little off. I like that I can sometimes sort of put my sanity into other people’s hands, letting them feel the heavy weight of it and asking them plainly: “OK? Sane?” And they can nod and smile and reassure me that my anger is healthy,** or take my hand and ignore me when I blow up and take a walk and tell me I’m being, quite literally, insane.

A lot of this is related to work. Let me tell you a story.

There is a bakery in the town in which my commercial kitchen is located. I have heard many, many stories about the baker who owns this bakery. For example, a few months ago I linked to a police report about him wandering around a street festival without trousers, with his junk all on display. (That really doesn’t bother me, I’m just painting a picture for you. I like people’s junk being on display, actually. It sort of adds value to my day to know that weirdo bakers are getting drunk at small-town street festivals and possibly scarring children for life with their wrinkly junk.***)

In every story I’ve ever heard about this baker, the phrase “what an asshole!” is invariably used. The story about the time my sweetheart tried to get a vegan hot chocolate. The many many stories from my sous chef, who continues going there seemingly only to collect bizarre stories (I should state that she is too sweet to actually call him an asshole, but that’s her sentiment, I can tell). The friends of mine who ordered a wedding cake from him and somehow things got so angry that they asked another friend to pick up the cake because they knew they would get into a fist fight if they saw him. Etc. Ad infinitum.

I had never been to this bakery. I bake my own bread and work around the corner, where there is always good, free food waiting for me. But on a recent weekend I was poking around town with a friend and he wanted to get a coffee**** and a sandwich on good bread, so we ventured in.

Within two minutes I was so incredibly angry that my friend and I spent the next few hours analyzing the interaction second-by-second, with me tracing each strain of anger back to a specific ill-placed word, dark look, snobbish turn of phrase, infuriating sentence.

My friend wasn’t particularly bothered. He was happy that some sort of eggy sandwich he got was appropriately-sized (“Only one egg!” and I should state that he charged him .25 more for an egg that wasn’t born in hell, which is, I suppose, good on balance.)  and he also ate the second half of my sandwich, which was incredibly tasty (I’m a half-sandwich eater, OK?*****).

That’s the thing: everything was good. The food was just lovely. Made with care, if not exactly love. When ordering my sandwich, I misunderstood the vegan options on the menu and apparently ordered wrong. I was sternly told that my off-the-menu sandwich creation was “not recommended” and looked upon like a speck of dust who couldn’t put together a good sandwich if my life depended on it. The baker went on and on about why that sandwich wouldn’t be good and why I should order the sandwich on the menu—which is what I was trying to do.

In the end I got all icy and sternly said: “Just give me the best. vegan. sandwich. you. can. make.” and he respected that, both the iciness and the request for quality, as I had a feeling he would.

I won’t go into the many more details of insultingness and irksomeness. It was a feeling that permeated the place.

“He’s a good baker, he’s just not good with customers,” said my friend. He didn’t get why I was annoyed.

“Well he shouldn’t FUCKING DEAL WITH CUSTOMERS if he’s going to insult them all day long.” I replied.

This is, of course, why I do not have a shop that is open to the public: I am not good at dealing with customers. I would critique people’s orders, talk down to them, get visibly annoyed by their food stupidity. I know this about myself, and I sequester myself appropriately. I am largely cloistered. I rarely answer the telephone. This is good for me. I have found a way to navigate through my annoying snobbishness and holier-than-thouity to a decent career doing what I love. (The internet is my medium, I bow to its barriers.)

The thing is: the baker was toeing a line I very much like: he runs his business with principles other than money making at its heart. Clearly he cares more for quality than kindness, and I completely respect that. The place reminds me a lot of my beloved Bloodroot: resolutely individual. Going to Bloodroot for the first time can be frustrating because there are no waitresses and the ordering system is quirky, but the owners are aware of this and walk everyone through the process. Unlike almost every restaurant in the world, they treat you like a person, not a “customer.” I love this. It is the world I want to live in.

You’re not treated like a customer at the bakery, either. You’re treated like a potential enemy who must be conquered. This I do not love.

The baker is an artisan: I’m sure he works with razor-thin margins, I know he bakes everything from scratch, I’m sure he puts in the effort to make everything he does worth doing. People do not like this. They like and want cheap shit, and when you give them something other than cheap shit they are confused and quickly become annoyed, as do you after you explain for the six hundredth time why you cook the way you do, why things take a little longer because you make them from scratch, why your bread won’t last for weeks and weeks.

This work of quality artisanship is very, very annoying. You’re taking one little string and trying to pull the entire world over to you with it. Sometimes it breaks, and that makes you angry.

We make our choices. I understand mine, I understood Bloodroot’s, and I understand the baker’s. I don’t understand McDonalds, I don’t understand Starbucks. I like mine, I like Bloodroot’s, and the baker’s make me angry.

Balance is the thing, I suppose. Balancing our love of artisanship and all that it entails with a love of life that prevents us from succumbing to assholery. I guess I’ll keep on keepin’ on, trying to balance my beloved anger with sweetness, keeping my head down, working hard, trying to have compassion for those also on my path.

Meh.******

*I just had a long conversation with myself (in my head, thankfully) about whether or not calling people assholes is sort of anti-gay, just as I try not to call people pussies unless they are, you know, doing something awesome (I went through a phase of calling people “fucking cunts” when they did awesome things, but somehow it didn’t take, I have no idea why.). For some reason I have absolutely no compunction about calling people dicks since I very much enjoy insulting men, but calling people assholes seems a teeny bit insulting specifically to my beloved fags. After I went around and around this in my head, I finally came to the conclusion that it’s OK to call people assholes because let’s face it: shit comes out of an asshole, that fact cannot change.

(And here my partner is reading my blog in his bunk on his bus on his phone right before bed, and is dying a little bit inside because of my bathroom humor. I can hear his sigh these many states away. Alas! We can’t all be Mr. Integrity!)

**Which brings me to my Best Facebook Status Update of the Week. Are you ready to be blown away? Here goes: “My anger is a guava kombucha: sometimes healthy, sometimes explosive, always pink, always on the verge.” yesssssssssss.

***I think we can all agree that calling people’s bits “junk” is sort of rad for reasons no one can really explain, no?

****I’ve started saying “a coffee” instead of “a cup of coffee” or “some coffee.” I like it and feel it somehow sounds more European. Don’t you think? (I don’t actually drink coffee myself, but jump in on people’s conversations about which of the 40 coffeehouses in my town has the best coffee all the time. You didn’t need to know any of this.)

*****This is the post full of things no one cares about or needs to know!

******If you are wont to compare my writing style to that of the dearly departed David Foster Wallace because of all my parenthetical asides and footnotes, PLEASE DO.

“Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman October 10, 2009

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dining room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.

Monday Misc: inadequate eyelashes [Friday] edition October 9, 2009

Some rapidly aging links I’ve been hoarding for a while:

In the ideas-change-over-time category, I’d like to publicly state that this article from Feministing has officially changed my mind about Zero Population Growth and the idea that trying to get people (i.e., women) to have less babies (which I still think is a splendid idea) is the very best way to accomplish environmental goals.

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Sweet seed librarian Ken has a good article all about—what else?—seed saving here at Civil Eats, which is a pretty rad site overall, actually.

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I didn’t mention this on the blog because it was pretty upsetting, but now things have calmed down a bit, so here we go: my best friends Noel and Selma’s restaurant, Bloodroot, was robbed a few weeks ago. Selma was slightly injured when she confronted the robber because he was stealing her precious knitting bag (which he most likely thought was a purse). Selma and I had a good chat about the whole thing last week, and she seems to be back to her serene, bizarrely-energetic, beloved self. Here’s a piece of our exchange:

“So, anyway, the day after the whole thing we were scheduled to go to our Weavers Guild [which is exactly what it sounds like]…”

[at this point, after Sel has told me the story of how she basically attacked this robber and a serious melee resulted, all I can think is: "Wouldn't you want to just stay in bed the next day?"]

“…and, you know, I figured, what am I going to do, just stay in bed all day? So we went.”

That’s my Selma.

You have to register to read the articles, but you can pretty much get the gist of what happened here and here’s a nice blog post about it (in the end she recovered the knitting bag, can you believe that? A kid apparently found it in the water while fishing!).

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Ready to be completely blown away by a product that is the absolute epitome, the perfect zenith, the utter apex of that age-old dynamic duo of capitalism + misogyny? I bring you: latisse. Warning: “there is potential for increased brown iris pigmentation which is likely to be permanent.” Um, this shit is gonna stain your eye?

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And sorry to end on a downer, but have you heard about Condé Nasty ruthlessly murdering Gourmet? I know it’s not vegan (though their “Vegetarian Tonight” column pretty much rocked it), but it’s by far the best food magazine out there…argh, it was. I’m really broken up about it. Now Gourmet subscribers are doing to get stupid idiotic stultifying Bon Appetit—LORD HELP US ALL.

The Last Supper October 3, 2009

Here are a few snaps from The Last Supper, the art show I was in last weekend in Brooklyn! There were so many amazing works on display—I took pictures of a few, but you can check them all out in more depth online here.

Artist statement card thingie

workin’ it…

awww…

Housing projects made out of graham crackers, complete with boarded-up windows, chimneys, and fences—how great are these??

utterly gorgeous sugar cookies

unbelievable sugar sculpture of a vase and swiss chard leaves

rice and beans!

in which I officially admit to liking something a dude did September 24, 2009

Happy fall, darlings!

I happen to hate fall, but I take it that apart from me (and blogreader Brittany—to me she is BFF Brittany, but you probably know her as blogreader Brittany) fall is universally beloved, so have at it. It’s pretty, I’ll give you that. And it seems that some people actually like dead things littering every inch of the earth that you have to painstakingly capture and discard, so I hope those weirdos are really living it up (and when you’re done living it up at your place, please feel free to come over to mine and do some raking, for I am already behind).

I’ve been busy cooking and chocolatizing and preparing to have a few friends over this weekend for fried green tomatoes (East Coast peeps: go to any farmer tomorrow and I guarantee they will give you all the green tomatoes you can haul away—go!)  then the Last Supper art show thingie on Saturday–busy week! If you’re in the Brooklyn area be sure to come check it out. I am totally tickled that I am officially an “artist” (because everyone knows that what makes you an artist is being called one online).

I had a bunch of tryouts for the poem I’d be writing in chocolate for the Last Supper event, and finally settled on a Susan Griffin number called “Bread.” It’s pretty, and it fits on a large sheet pan that will fit in the back of my car, which is apparently what I look for in poetry these days. You might remember Susan Griffin as the author of the seminal ecofeminist text Woman and Nature—I had no idea she was a poet until I stumbled across a book of her collected poetry at my friendly local bookshop (discounted to $6 because of a stain on the spine I am resolutely telling myself has to be coffee).

One of the runners-up for the choco poem was pretty much anything by Matthew Dickman, my current poet crush. In the end I had to rule anything of his out because I couldn’t find a suitable poem that was the requisite sheet-tray length, but I’ve been mightily enjoying his one and only book, All-American Poem.

My god, what a giantly sweet mass of cotton candy of a treat this little collection is. You can read it like a novel and it’s just as tasty as if you read each poem slow like an English major, coaxing out all the allusions and flourishes. And it’s magnificently, generously sexy too—as sexy as the author photo on the back, which is saying a lot.

I’ve been walking around for about a week now whispering Matthew Dickman wonderfulness, feeling the special deep-down happiness that only taut lines strung together in surprising and ultra-clever ways can create. My sweetheart, a dude who bore witness to me spending the last two years of college only reading women poets and who didn’t bat an eye when I literally segregated our books by gender and put all the feminist books and poetry in a separate room so they could “breathe,” has been amused by the whole thing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say you liked a poem by a guy before,” he said, all bemusedly and shit, the other day. He’s probably right. No one says they like Shakespeare (verily though, I do, and I have the iPhone app that proves it) or T.S. Eliot (do I dare disturb the universe? In truth, though I very much like Eliot, my thoughts about him are mostly in the “I wonder what Virgina Woolf really thought of him?” vein. In truth, I very much wonder what Virginia would think or did think about a great many things in a week…is this weird? To wonder what Woolf would make of Facebook? I would so like to know.) When Jacob’s not home and I can’t sleep I read Rimbaud in French out loud to my cats…and that’s about it. A little Donald Hall here, a dash of Mark Strand there (you know: ‘Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.’)  that one W. S. Merwin book about Hawai’i—done with dudes.

Dudes are usually such fantastically boring poets, you know? But the ladies: my Adrienne Rich first and foremost, then that sad old Plath who will never get out of my head because she does not do you do not do any more black shoe & I’ll probably be mumbling about eating men like air on my deathbed, and Denise Levertov and Joy Harjo, Haunani-Kay Trask and of course the doomed Sexton, my BFFFF Dorothy Parker and her polar opposite,  Emily Dickinson. Audre Lorde Audre Lorde Audre Lorde. Marge Piercy and Grace Paley and yeah, now and then, maybe just a little Katha Pollitt too. Katherine Mansfield and Anais Nin. Be still my heart, Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, Christina Rosetti and Nikki Giovanni and Phyllis Wheatley and even good old Sappho, sure. Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton and Carolyn Forche and Louise Gluck–even Erica Jong, in high school, under the covers, secretly.

Once you start only reading novels and poetry by women, it’s so easy never to stop, to just forget that whole fucked-up boy world exists. I heard this fucking doucher James Ellroy on NPR the other day, and it reminded me all over again why dudes like him have ruined novels by men for me–seriously!

But, as my 73-year-old BFF Selma is fond of pointing out: men these days are different. Softer. Matthew Dickman is one of them, and, rightfully, his poetry reminds me of that great lesson we’ve been letting poetry teach us forever: how amazing it is to be alive, right now, here.

This book in my hands, these words in my head.