Once upon a time, Lloyd used to be a temp. Between his long-term assignment as a technical writer for Big Pharma and his long-term assignment as an executive assistant at Big Finance (the job into which he was eventually hired), he spent some time working at a nonprofit created to bring businesses to Lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I thought that this was worthy work until he came home in a tear one night. Apparently the executive director had scored a real coup by bringing a big national chain to the neighborhood, and in describing the transaction to a journalist, she had boasted, "We don't waste time with any nickel-and-dime businesses here. I don't have time to talk to locksmiths." Now, of course I don't want to be a wet blanket about bringing dollars into a neighborhood that needed them, but it did make me wonder. At the same time this nonprofit was trying to bring Big Retail to lower Manhattan, residential real estate agents were trying to bring new residents to the neighborhood, or to keep any residents who might leave the neighborhood, by way of reduced rents and/or rent abatements (for example, offering two months' free rent). One of the things that makes New York so neat is that while neighborhoods vary greatly in size, flavor and ambience, they all share common traits that help keep the area livable. You can get on a bus, and ride through four neighborhoods in half an hour, but in each neighborhood you'll see the dry cleaner, the hardware store, the locksmith (often in concert with the hardware store), the corner fruit and vegetable store, either a supermarket or a collection of specialty markets (butcher, fish market, etc.) where you can do your groceries, the restaurant where you get your takeout, the restaurant where you go when you want to go out for breakfast or a cup of coffee, the restaurant where you go when you want to splurge a little, the drugstore, the liquor store, the corner market where you get your beer and your Cadbury Flake bars, the bakery that includes at least one specialty item that you know in your heart is worth traveling from other neighborhoods for. My own neighborhood is a textbook example of this composition, as is the neighborhood I lived in for three years before moving to this one. These businesses are not particularly sexy, but they are key. I can easily live without an Anthropologie or a Pottery Barn in my neighborhood, but if I had to travel out of the nabe on a cold, wet night to pick up my dry cleaning, it would be a very, very long night. If a pipe bursts in our apartment building, and we need a washer to fix it, you'd bloody well better believe we want a hardware store close by. I'm sure the folks in Lower Manhattan would agree with me on that point. Apparently the Times Square Alliance does, and they are trying to make the neighborhood a bit more user-friendly for the people who live there. (Now, if only those people would venture a couple of blocks east and show Coliseum Books a bit of love...) It looks like it will be an uphill battle, though, particularly now that Times Square real estate agents admit that the neighborhood is geared to the folks who think we're just a nice place to visit. Ah, well. Knowing that accidents in the kitchen can happen to anyone, that everyone from Rose Levy Beranbaum to Maida Heatter to Shirley Corriher to John Thorne has written funny little reminiscences of cakes laid low by too much baking powder (yes, too much baking powder will deflate your cake) and overstuffed ducks exploding in ovens, I am still not quite mature enough to be philosophical when bad things in the kitchen happen to me. Such was the case on Sunday when, having put two loaves' worth of bread dough into the fridge for a long cool rise, having made a quicker version of the same bread so that Lloyd and I could eat grilled cheese sandwiches if the mood hit, having broken up the carcass of our capon and turned it into stock, I decided to bake a cake. I don't know why I've been fixated on brown sugar lately, but the phrase floated its way into my consciousness, as if a lover had murmured it into my ear: brown sugar cake. I wanted a cake where you could taste the faint caramelly edge of molasses without actually identifying the flavor as molasses-based. I thought of a cake that would work just as well with a box of Domino light brown sugar from Key Food as it would with a packet of light or dark muscavado sugar from Kalustyan or Myers of Keswick. I knew that most of the spice cakes I like to make are brown sugar-based, but I wasn't looking for spice this time, the way I usually am: I was gunning for sugar and butter, creamed to the color of sand; a tender, soft crumb, a crunchy exterior, maximum crust-to-crumb ratio, the kind one gets from tube pans; maybe a little smoothness from vanilla brandy and a bit of zip from buttermilk. The more I thought of it, the more I knew I could do it, and the more it sang to me. I found myself humming that sweet old paean to gender roles, "Tea for Two:" "Day will break/and I'll awake/and start to bake/a sugar cake/for you to take/for all the boys to see..." I was *this* close to whipping up a batch of brown sugar meringues. I was just in that kind of mood. I'm still in that kind of mood, because this cake tastes like falling onto a soft pillow feels. It's like the first kiss you share with someone who you know you were born to kiss, the first time you look into the eyes of someone you adore and you know they adore you right back. If I do say so myself, it's a wonder of a cake. Too bad I decided to skimp on the pan preparation. I baked this in a Nordicware cathedral pan, which, even though it's a nonstick cast aluminum pan, I still find it worthwhile to butter it liberally and sprinkle it with dried bread crumbs. Too bad I couldn't find my bread crumbs and thought, oh, hell, I'll just butter and flour it. Buttering and flouring it didn't make the cut, as I discovered when I turned the cake out of the pan and half of it -- the crusty, sweetest, carameliest half of it -- stayed behind in the pan. I stood in the kitchen, pan in hands, thinking to myself, This cake looks like one of those rubber doughnut seats they sell at the drugstore. And this pan is going to take freaking forever to clean. I'm going to have to clean it with toothpicks. Luckily, Lloyd had both of our priorities straight. "Can we still eat it?" he asked, as if I were granting him a favor by saying yes. Yes, I said. Yes, we can. Yes. Yes. Yes. In other kitchen news, I cut my hand on Sunday. This in itself would be nothing new. Cooks cut themselves every day. But how many of them can do it with salt? Those Maldon salt crystals, they can really sting. I feel like I've fallen right out of a Joss Whedon script: "I've cut my hand on salt." Dear friends, a quiz: A certain friend of yours has told you that she is contemplating turning some of her photography into notecards and selling them. She is also contemplating selling her preserves and pickles by mail. Furthermore, she is contemplating linking the site from which she'll be selling her stuff to her noncommercial, pretentious, foodier-than-thou site. Your response is: a) No integrity for you, scurvy capitalist dog! b) I believe it was Bill Hicks who said... c) Why, yes! I'll take a dozen, please! d) Will there be boobies? Remember, there is no right or wrong answer, unless I'm in a mood, in which case if you answer incorrectly, I'll cry. Not to put any pressure on you or anything. >
I’ve got it!
We could help Bakerina focus by starting a savekaryn-type fund. We donate and if she’s bored, she sends goodies (or writes us great blog entries). For certain donation levels, she has to meet page-writing goals. Then when the book is published she sends out boobie postcards and/or lemon curd depending on the personal fetish of the donator. (Make mine “tasteful” pictures of lemon curd on the boobies.)
Wow. You will all be pleased to know that all of the above answers are correct (although the jury is still out on the whole “preserves on boobies” issue). Thank you, friends.
‘mouse and Snow both raise a good point, namely that I am good at overextending myself, and between job, book, workouts, charity event (how did I become the team leader for the Revlon walk again? hello?), upcoming trip to Scotland, and occasional conversations with spouse, family and friends, I probably have all I can handle. But I still like the idea of selling my wares, mostly because y’all give me such good feedback, but also because I’m a bit, er, impecunious at the moment, and I thought it would be a good way to make a little pin money. (Note to the lovely ‘mouse: It’s an ingenious thought, but please do not tempt me with the way of savekaryn, particularly considering how meanly I’ve written about Karyn in the past. My karma can’t afford the hit. 
CJ, have no fear: it is actually I who drops the Bill Hicks references at any given moment. You may continue to quote at will.
leigh, to answer your question, Coliseum Books closed in January 2002 after they lost their lease at the old store on 57th & Broadway. George, the owner, found a new space on 42nd Street, across the street from the New York Public Library and Bryant Park, and he reopened the store in 2003. The Times article I linked to mentions that the store had moved, but they just made it sound like it was a mere relocation, not that the store had closed and then reopened. The old store space has been subdivided; the new tenants are Fleet Bank, Daffy’s and, I think, yet another bank, because bog knows we don’t have enough banks in this city.
Originally I was going to reference giveboobs.com (safe for my work but probably not yours) instead of savekaryn for the business model, but I thought that would cause further confusion on the whole boobies issue.
Jen, have we discussed manic-ness before? I’d love to comment but with neighborhoods and cake and injuries and marketing all in on one post, I’m at a loss where to begin.
Quickly, before I must work:
1) if said wannabe mail-order supplier also had a job, a book to write and a husband important to her, I’d tell her to forget it for now and focus.
2) I used to care more for cheap but am learning to appreciate local businesses and not begrudge them their extra overhead.
3) Your description of the quality of that cake, despite its crumbled nature is wonderful.
4) Who is this lover of which you speak? I checked and we have not discussed brown sugar. (To any literal-minded lurkers here, that was a JOKE.)
5) As for those kisses where you kiss the person you were meant to kiss. Package up more of that, in words, food or pictures and the audience will throw money and accolade your direction. Nothing pickled will be necessary.