Two Days, Four Recipes

Being single, the majority of my cooking is event driven. Think Thanksgiving. If there are a slew of recipes I must try or die, I will plan a get-together. I am like my mother in that I have no problem serving guests a dish I have never before made. This weekend I put together three-bean salad for the ward hoedown last evening. There was a caller and squaredancing and barbequed beef. They handed out recipes for each and I chose the bean dish. I am a bean lover, not being a huge carnivore. The baking began Friday night with hermits. Just this week, I thought of consulting three cookbooks, all of which I have lent out. This is not normal. So, I checked out The Tenth Muse at the library to recreate the steps for Hermits that follow Schrafft's Butterscotch Cookies (previously tried). Jones teaches they are New England cookies and I've read elsewhere they are perhaps the first American cookie. I have been aching to try them. Jones eats them stale, dunked in coffee like biscotti. I admit to not being able to wait for them to dry but did eat two this morning with tea. I dealt out a few gift bags for other bakers to try. I also served them to Rachel, Jeremy, and Robin R yesterday. Along with these cookies I am making for tonight. The crispy cookies were their favorite. I admit to being partial to the hermits. The hoedown featured a cupcake bake-off. I was happy to enter and not surprised to lose to red velvet belles. Plus, the hoedown was outside in the dark and the delicacy of vanilla beans was eclipsed by the prominent dark/white contrast of chocolate/marshallow cakes. In better light, I'm sure the vanilla bean cupcakes with salted caramel frosting would have been judged kindly. I hold no ill will. I do admit the whole grain pastry flour may not have produced a fine boutique crumb, more like country gentleman's cornbread.

Mrs. Cooney's Hermits
Adapted from The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

12 T unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 C granulated sugar
3/4 C dark brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 C flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1 t ground cloves
1/2 t ground ginger
1/4 C molasses mixed with 2 T warm water
1 C raisins
1 C chopped walnuts
Glaze: 1 beaten egg

Cream the butter with the two sugars, then beat in the eggs. Toss together the flour, salt, baking powder, and spices, and add them to the butter-sugar mixture along with the molasses. When well mixed, fold in the raisins and nuts. Divide the batter in fourths, and plop two mounds each, with space between them, onto two greased baking sheets. Shape each mound, using your floured hands to push and pat the dough down into a strip about 10 by 3 inches. You should have two strips on each baking sheet, placed several inches apart. Paint the tops of each with the egg glaze, and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on how crisp you like yours. While still warm, cut each strip into nine bars.
Note: My hermits were about the chewiness of a pumpkin cookie. My oven is a kiln and would not allow for longer baking without charring the hermits. I did trim the edges to rid of burn. They were good the first night but better with time. If you can, box them in your cupboard for at least a day.

Sweet William

When your roommate calls from the other room to say that Steve called and Billy Collins is speaking in half an hour in La Jolla do you want to go? you say yes and is it at warwicks and she says no d.g. wills you say i know it and you wear your black top, white skirt, and gold glitter shoes with the round chandeliers from the tiara room in your ears the better to hear with and you drive into the sunset down to the shores and onto girard where you pass old haunts and find parking in an alley not far away which is surprising considering the crowd spilling out of the bookstore and into the street so you hoof it around the corner past the maserati shop and settle standing on a bench looking over the worn wood pickets from Pannikin to the bookstore where you can't see but do hear the relaxing and unexpected and warming warblings of sweet william who reads from his last book the trouble with poetry which you love and applaud physically and into the new and some haikus from ballistics and the crowd is loving him and the word so you line up to have him sign the only book you own of his that he hasn't signed and he does and gets your name right this time and you are carried away enchanted again, rising and roaming with the Susquehanna.

Feedback

I am taking a creative writing seminar this semester at San Diego State University. All the students (save yours truly) are enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program. Needless to say, the course has been interesting, useful, and full of delicious data. Last week, we reviewed my first short story in class. I need to write a total of three for the semester. My story is nothing to celebrate but it is an accomplishment in that I wrote one. We had to write a brief description of our story:

A young woman, Lia Goff, welcomes friends Rachel and Dustin to her desert hometown. The two are moral support after the death of Lia’s father and some business concerns at The Corral, a street of small artisan shops she manages. Lia also directs the Fall Festival that shows off the stores in a weeklong sale. The friends stay with Lia’s accomplished mother, Georgiana, who co-created The Corral. Georgiana is suffering after the death of her husband. As the two friends help Lia solve the impending problem of sales at Red’s Glass, Georgiana finds personal renewal in a tale of town history and the artistry of residents.

I also cite this piece.

A few years ago, I grew interested in sand. Why is there sand in deserts? Where does it come from? I thought ocean waves made sand on seashores: waves pounded continents’ rock and shattered it to stone, gravel, and finally sand. This, I learned, is only slightly true.
From For the time being by Annie Dillard

We review about 4 stories per week, write reviews, and spend our evening class voicing feedback. It is both hilarious and pathetic. I often wish to laugh out loud and have managed to call some bluff in the most glib among us. A few of the stories have been excellent. Often, students bring part of their novel in progress for review.

I am just now reviewing the written comments from my story and spending a fieldday, or fieldevening as the case is. They have reponded favorably to the more organic scenes and the food writing. Many of them start their review with, "This is a great start . . . " Perhaps they are too programmed for the novel? So far, my favorite comment is from a girl who writes very faintly and very small in pencil. Her comments are thorough and careful. She gets an A for effort. Speaking of one of my characters, she writes in the margin, "She comes off as a little feather headed . . . ." Another reviewer, another female, cites a scene in the story where Nan Red Williams (very pregnant) jumps off a stool in her shop to welcome Lia who responds, "Easy there mom . . . ." The reviewer responds, "At first, I thought she was talking to her mom. Clarify this somehow." Someone suggests I condense Rachel and Dustin into one character. I can't wait to read more.