http://bakerina.com/index.php Better living through philosophy, hygiene and publicity. en bakerina@gmail.com Copyright 2008 2008-05-08T22:32:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/hey_you_kids_get_off_my_lawn/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/hey_you_kids_get_off_my_lawn/#When:22:32:00Z Dear friends, I’m working on two separate posts.  This post is neither of them.  This is a housecleaning post, the kind of post I hate to post, the kind where you’re having a good time, mingling with your guests, listening to party jokes and eating excellent hors d’oeuvres, only to notice that somebody from the kegger next door has wandered onto your lawn and started puking in your birdbath.  I do not like writing these any more than you like reading them, but alas, sometimes the jackassery of others makes them necessary. Dear Others, As my boyfriend Bruce Campbell once said so famously:  All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up.  I do not care how well-intentioned you might be, or how good you are at pretending you read this page:  If you come here by way of a Google search on a word, any word, plus the phrases “Remember my personal information” and “Notify me of follow-up comments,” I will delete your comment the instant I find it.  If you post it while I’m asleep, I will delete it the instant I wake up.  If you post it while I happen to be online, well, just watch my smoke.  This includes you, Mr. or Ms. University of Connecticut, Storrs-Mansfield campus. I have your IP address, I have your server name, I have a whopping great brace of nerve, and I have plenty of time on my hands.  Your efforts are for naught here. Cheez Whiz.  In the time I spent writing that, I could have been making barley sugar cookies.  I hate it when I have to use cookie time to clean the house.  2008-05-08T22:32:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/sugar_and_salt_and_all_things_nice_returning_to_earth_with_cookies/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/sugar_and_salt_and_all_things_nice_returning_to_earth_with_cookies/#When:17:35:00Z There is no way I can do justice to the past week without resorting to hyperbole, or, conversely, understating the case.  The response from friends, family and well-wishers to our news has been illuminating, and, for the most part, deeply gratifying.  It might sound disingenuous, particularly coming from someone who checks her stats as many times in a day as I do, but I honestly had no idea that so many people had been following our story and wishing us so well.  I want to thank you all, properly, and I will, at a time when I am not quite so addled by the speed at which things are progressing—and yes, now that we have made this decision, things are progressing very, very rapidly.  “I guarantee that even though it feels like a long wait, you will be shocked by how fast the time will go,” said Lloyd as we went to bed last night.  He’s not kidding.  Things are still happening, but because they’re up in the air, I have to be kind of cagey about disclosing them.  (Since there’s such a thing as being *too* cagey, though, I will say this:  it’s not pregnancy.  I’m not pregnant.  It’s nothing like that.  Whew.) Truth be told, I’m in something of an overstimulated state right now.  Most of it is due to happiness, excitement and the promise of change, but I’d be lying if I said that no tears had been shed.  There were tears, and plenty of ‘em, this weekend, and I’m not entirely sure that they’re behind me yet.  There’s also, to be frank, some laziness in the mix.  The next three months are going to be busy, busier than the past five months have been, and as a result my engines seem to have ground to a complete halt, as if I were a hibernating bear.  If I weren’t going to Maryland Sheep and Wool with Momerina this weekend, I could easily see myself sitting around my living room, watching the fourth season of Alias on dvd with Lloyd all weekend long, with only occasional breaks for food prepared for us by other people.  ("How morally opposed are you to pizza again?") It’s a weird sensation, this combination of racing brain and torpid work ethic, and I’ll be glad when these extremes stop feeling so, erm, extreme, when they move toward a convergence point that will enable me to get some damn work done. Until I get to that point, though, I’m going to be a scoundrel, and resort to cheap, easy methods of entertainment. Yes, it’s cookie porn, but it’s really excellent cookie porn.  (I am fully aware that by adopting this terminology, I’m inviting the attention of degenerate googlers, but considering that on any given day I get hits from searches on “ballerina shoes spanking” and “do the hairs on the back of your neck stand up during orgasm” [is that the editorial “your,” or me specifically?], to say nothing of the infamous “humiliating games with duct tape,” I figure that things can’t get much more degenerative around here.) Ahem.  Sorry. Ever since the magnificent Bee sent me a copy of the hilarious and inspiring A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down (from the blog of the same name!), I’ve never been without at least one type of cookie/biscuit (waves to the Commonwealth readers) on hand to dunk in my tea.  From time to time I’ll buy a box of Petit Ecolier or Choco Leibniz biscuits from the Italian deli where I shop almost every day, but for the most part I’m still baking my own.  My cookie of choice has been the French honey wafers from Maida Heatter’s Brand New Book of Great Cookies, which are terrific made with orange blossom honey and even better made with tupelo honey, but I bet will be outstanding when made with the Tasmanian leatherwood honey that is once again available in my neighborhood.  I’ve also had a constant supply of Maida’s Cornmeal Shortbread Fingers from the same book, partly because they’re so good when dunked into tea, but also because you get to pipe them through a pastry bag, which, in my opinion, is about as much fun as you can have while still standing up.  I could probably live happily on both of these all spring, or would have, if I’d hadn’t spent a weekend at Momerina’s reading her copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, which filled me with a blinding desire to buy my own copy immediately, and then make every single recipe in the book.  Eventually I *will* make everything, but I keep finding myself getting stuck on the Salted Cashew Crunch cookies, which might be as close to my own perfect cookie as anything I’ve found.  I love them so much that I have not even succumbed to the temptation to bake a batch, temper some chocolate and then coat the bottoms, to see if the chocolate enhances the sweet/salt idiom of these particular cookies.  A little chocolate might make a good thing even better, or it might be overkill, or worse yet, acceptable but unnecessary.  My natural tendency to fiddle is not tweaked by these cookies.  They really are close to perfect on their own. The recipe is not at all complicated, but you do need some equipment.  The cookies are made from rolled oats that have been ground in a food processor for 30 seconds.  If you don’t have a food processor, or a blender, you can use oat flour, but in that case I would definitely recommend that you weigh, not measure, the oat flour, so that you can be sure you’re getting exactly 7 ounces of oats.  (I have not tried leaving the oats whole; my sense is that it would produce a lacier cookie, one more prone to spreading and burning, but that’s just a guess on my part.  Maybe one of these days I’ll try it.) If you have two cookie sheets and can fit 15 cookies on a sheet without cramming them too closely together (about 2” between cookies should be fine), you can bake the whole batch in one pass through the oven; no waiting for cookie sheets to cool down, no trying to find space for additional cookie sheets *and* cooling racks.  It takes less than 10 minutes, including the grinding of oats and chopping of cashews, to put the dough together, which means that you really can go from no dessert to “ooo!  cookies!” in half an hour.  The recipe yields about 30 cookies, which sounds a bit small for a batch of cookies, but these little gems are rich, so a little goes a long way.  We will not talk about the day I missed lunch, and ate half a dozen in one sitting.  No, we will not.  I do not make a habit of this, and certainly don’t encourage it in others.  Salted Cashew Crunch Cookies (from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking:  Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains [Countryman Press, 2006]) makes 30 cookies (As always, the recipe is that of the good folks at King Arthur, paraphrased and annotated by me.) 7 ounces (2 cups) old-fashioned rolled oats 8 ounces (2 cups) salted cashew pieces or whole cashews (if you use whole cashews, you may need more than 2 cups to make 8 ounces, although I wouldn’t sweat this too much) 4 ounces (1/2 cup, 1 stick) unsalted butter 5 1/4 ounces (3/4 cup) granulated sugar (unbleached sugar is nice here, but not necessary) 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used double-strength vanilla from Penzeys, which gives an unbeatable vanilla flavor) 1 large egg salt for topping (The King Arthur folks recommend extra-fine salt.  Because I’m a big showboater, I decided to use pinches of fleur de sel, which is an appellation-controllée sea salt from Brittany.  It is considered a “finishing” salt, something you put on your food before you eat it, but not really for cooking or baking.  I think it’s the perfect salt for sprinkling on these cookies, but by all means, use what you like best.  If the thought of baking an expensive salt gives you the vapors, then a nice basic fine sea salt from the supermarket will still work beautifully.) Preheat the oven to 350F/160C/Gas Mark 4. Place oven racks on the upper and lower third racks.  Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Grind the oats in a food processor for 30 seconds.  If you are using whole cashews, chop them roughly in the food processor—four or five pushes of the pulse button should do it. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter, sugar, salt, baking powder and egg together.  If your butter is soft enough, you can do this by hand, if you’d like.  Stir in the ground oats (I usually do this with a cake whisk) and the cashews (I always do this with my hands; it pretty much ensures that everything is evenly blended.) Drop the dough by tablespoons onto the cookie sheets.  Flatten the cookies into rounds, either using the bottom of a glass or your fingers, to a thickness of about 3/8”.  Sprinkle the cookies with a light, light dusting of salt.  (The original instructions call for salting the cookies before flattening them; if you use a fine salt, this will work well.  If your salt is a little more coarse, like mine, you might find it easier to flatten, then salt.) Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes, reversing the sheets top-to-bottom and front-to-back after about 6 minutes.  Once you pull them from the oven, leave them to cool completely on the baking sheets.  Decant into an airtight container. Note: The original recipe specifies baking them until they’re “light golden brown.” The first time I did this, I got nervous, and ended up with cookies that were delicious, but slightly underbaked.  On the next batch, I baked them for 15 minutes, until the bottoms were slightly darker (not burnt, though).  By pushing the baking time a bit, I was able to get a deeper, more caramel flavor from them, reminiscent of salt caramels, which just might be my favorite sweetie of 2008. A cookie full of the things I love—oats, cashews, butter, sugar, vanilla and salt—baked to a salt caramel flavor palate:  what more could a nice cup of tea ask for? 2008-05-01T17:35:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/ringing_the_bell_on_the_geographic_smackdown_here_we_come/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/ringing_the_bell_on_the_geographic_smackdown_here_we_come/#When:14:33:00Z Note: Dearest friends, the following post comes on the heels of a tremendous amount of deep thought and emotional blood/sweat/tears.  Since I announced that this year would be the year for law school, and that I’d have to make some tough decisions about what to do and where to go, I have received a staggering amount of comments, emails and phone calls offering advice.  Some of you have known me for a long time; some of you are new friends.  To say that I am gratified and moved by your concern and your care is to grossly understate the case.  I thank everyone for caring enough to share their experiences and advice with me.  Having said that, please know that Lloyd and I came to this decision after hours and days and months of talking and weighing and planning.  We’ve made up our minds.  We’re happy with, and excited by, our conclusion.  It is entirely possible that, were you in our place, you would come to an entirely different conclusion, and think that ours is dangerous and ruinous.  By all means, you are certainly entitled, nay, encouraged, to come to your own conclusion.  But if I receive any incendiary commentary about how our conclusion is stupid and wrong and marriage-ruining—seriously, I am not exaggerating when I say that I have received email telling me just that—I’m going to cut it off at the knees.  We have made our decision.  If we change our minds, it will only be due to factors that affect us, and no one else.  Thank you all, dear ones, for respecting our decision. Additional note: This is *not* the official travelogue I keep promising.  That one is on the way. Really. Where does one begin?  If that one is me, one begins with fits, starts and hiccups.  Three times have I drafted an opening sentence; three times have I deleted it, muttering “no, no, no.” I returned home from California yesterday morning, bringing with me some brilliant things, all of which will be described in the lavish and overwritten style you have come to expect from PTMYB.  (I also brought home a little sunburn on my chest and a mild head cold, which are somewhat less brilliant, but I have applied Lush Dream Cream to the former and Theraflu to the latter, and am now just fine for going out and playing in the fresh air with Lloyd, who is off from work this week.) So I’ll start with a teaser and a confession.  Here’s the teaser: This would be my adored and splendid hostess, Grace Davis, sliding down one of the neatest hidden gems of a city ever to be found, the Seward Street slides, a concrete slide situated in a lot between two buildings in the Diamond Heights/Castro area of San Francisco.  There is a story to tell about this slide, and about the other wonders my dear friends shared with me so generously, but it will take me some time to tell, particularly since I also came home with 207 photos to sort and catalogue and dream over.  So for now I will limit my observation to say that it was a clear joy and an unadulterated hoot to watch and listen to Grace as she rode down the slide on a piece of corrugate.  On her first trip down, she cried out “ohmygodohmygodit’sfastIT’SFAST!,” and we’ve found a hundred reasons to say it ever since that moment.  Did I ride down the slide myself?  Nope, I didn’t.  Even as I know how berserk this sounds, I’ll confess:  I thought the contours of the slide were a bit narrow.  I am not narrow.  I was afraid that I would get stuck.  Grace thinks I need to get over it and just ride the slide already.  She’s right, of course.  I do need to get over it, and I will. Now for the confession:  Whatever virtues I might have, patience is not one of them.  (That clicking sound you might be hearing now is the sound of a thousand foreheads being smote by a thousand friends and readers.  “Tonight’s contestant is Bakerina.  Her chosen subject:  That Which is Manifestly Obvious.") Every time I sit down, take a deep breath and get into the quiet writerly space, a noisy little gremlin pops into my head:  “Come on, come on, get to the good stuff!  Why are you writing about the taxi ride to the airport?  When do we get to the news?  You have news!  Say it!  Say it!  Sayitisayitsayitsayit SAY IT.” It’s obnoxious, that gremlin, but it’s right:  I do have news, and I don’t want to barrel breathlessly through a narrative that deserves full attention and care in an attempt to get to the good stuff.  If I’d wanted to do that, I would be a scriptwriter for the adult film industry.  (Cheez Whiz, that sounds like a setup for a joke.) Dear friends, I am happy to announce that after a lot of discussion, trepidation, tears, laughter, questions, answers, travel and a liberal dose of crossed fingers, the geographic smackdown is over.  Bay Area wins.  Come August, I will officially matriculate at Santa Clara University School of Law. Although I am thrilled with the decision, particularly since Lloyd and Momerina are thrilled right along with me, I hasten to add that this was not an easy decision to make.  It was not a battle among unequal opponents.  Northeastern is a terrific school in a terrific city with a singular law curriculum.  If you are contemplating a law education in an East Coast city, I can, and will, recommend Northeastern with enthusiasm.  I met some truly smart and funny and impressive people there, and yes, I regret that we will not be playing together in the fall.  Likewise, the decision not to attend Pitt Law doesn’t come easily, either.  If anything, that was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in this whole process.  I received my undergraduate degree from Chatham College (now Chatham College for Women, the undergraduate school of Chatham University) in Pittsburgh.  I adored the city then, I adore it still, and I know that I will feel more than a little pang when I visit my dear friend Sharon (who was my roommate at Chatham) when I visit Pittsburgh later this spring. By now you’ve probably guessed that I am well-embedded in the concentrated urban milieu, and you would be right.  You might also have guessed that the Bay Area and Silicon Valley are a far, far piece, both geographically and emotionally, from everything I have ever known.  You’d be right there, too.  You might think, further, that for me to pursue a strenuous education in a new place, I’d have to find the school in question to be pretty damn special—and there, dear friends, is your hat trick.  I’m not only East-Coast-born-and-bred, I’m citified to the core.  My family is from Philadelphia, a place embedded in my blood, bone and marrow.  Even when I was growing up in the Poconos, a good three hours’ drive from Philadelphia, I still felt that Philadelphia was my true place, and that all this small-town nonsense was getting in the way of finding my authentic self.  Neither Boston nor Pittsburgh are Philadelphia—I will assert until my dying day that East Coast cities are *not* interchangeable, and that they’re not all wishing they were New York City or Washington—but they do share enough of a common taproot that, with a little time and patience, one can find one’s feet and comfort zone pretty easily.  Santa Clara (and San Jose and Santa Cruz and Redwood City and the other towns I visited last weekend) are a far, far piece from my own visceral landscape.  (San Francisco, by virtue of its citified nature, comes closer, but the geography of the city is so unlike that of any city I have ever lived in or visited that it still counts for me as a completely new milieu.) The quality of light is unlike anything I have ever seen.  The geographical markers, the vegetation, the very air itself is different, and I went into instant sensory overload, disoriented and enchanted all at once.  It is spectacular, but it is not yet comfortable.  It will be, though.  I know it will. Of course, brilliant weather and splendid food and lush vegetation and sunsets that break your heart open, while lovely, are not the stuff for which law firms look when you come to them with your spiffy new J.D. degree and your bar certification in hand.  You still need a decent education, and based on what I saw on Law Preview Day, Santa Clara provides much, much more than a decent education:  if the 3L students I met on Saturday are any indication, the education it provides is not decent, but magnificent.  If my fellow 1Ls are anything like the crowd that was in the moot Ethics Law class in which I participated, I’m going to have to work hard to keep up with my peers.  These people are *smart*.  Why, no, I’m not intimidated.  I’m challenged in a healthy manner.  Really.  (breathes into paper bag) Seriously, though, I was impressed, deeply, with the moot classes, the faculty lectures, the current students and the incoming students.  And yes, I did have a moment of worry ("These people are too smart for me!  I don’t belong here!"), but it turned almost instantly into something more exciting and, ultimately, powerful ("That was *cool*.  I want to learn how to think like that").  I haven’t had that “I want to do that, too” moment since my restaurant externship after culinary school, when I saw pastry cooks bake cakes, freeze semifreddos and do complex chocolate work simultaneously, exhibiting the coolheaded grace of dancers, or air traffic controllers.  As soon as I had that moment, felt that desire, I knew what my answer would be. This is not to say that I felt any kind of finality, or certainty, at that moment.  There was still plenty of wheel-spinning.  ("What about not seeing Lloyd every weekend?  What about the distance from my family?  God, I miss Lloyd so much right now—what will this be like when we can’t see each other for six weeks at a time?  What about all the flying?  My god, I’m going to have to make peace with flying once and for all! [Those of you who’ve known me for a long time know that I’m not the most phlegmatic of flyers, and that “peace” and “flying” are often mutually exclusive where I’m concerned.  That shit stops right now, though.] What if I want to quit?  What if Lloyd wants me to quit?  What if I end up alienating everybody I know and love?  My god, my god.  Maybe a beer would help.") Poor Grace was a witness to a lot of this wheel-spinning; for this, if for no other reason, she deserves a Purple Heart for letting me live in her house for four days.  She held my hand, literally and metaphorically, she walked me through a lot of this anxiety, she hugged me tightly and put me on the plane and assured me that, whatever I decided, good things will follow.  I spent the next six hours reading and dozing and watching tv and turning over my thoughts as the plane zipped over our motley landscape, riding home from JFK in Tuesday morning rush hour traffic, navigating the cabdriver who took a wrong turn on Astoria Boulevard and damn near took us onto the Triborough and into the Bronx, and finally hurtling myself, missile-like, into Lloyd’s waiting embrace.  I held on like I would never let go.  He held on with me.  And then we sat down and made a plan. There was once a time when we had thought that regardless of where I went to school, we could keep our home base in New York.  I would go away, I would come back, we would always have a home here.  We’re not blind, though.  We can see what’s happening in New York.  The economy is in the tank, the job opportunities available for us are largely terrible cubicle-farm jobs where the retention prospects are tenuous at best.  You can’t walk two blocks in this city anymore without running smack into construction on new buildings full of apartments we can’t afford.  The neighborhood in which we live has officially been discovered by real estate watchers.  Our neighborhood message board, and the coffee bar from which much of the discussion generates, is full of commentary from young New Yorkers who have tried for months, years even, to find an affordable apartment in Astoria from a landlord willing to rent to them.  All around us, we see signs of tightening, the best of New York being parsed for those who can pay extravagantly for it, the rest of us being squeezed out.  Eventually we will be forced to leave.  We’d just as soon go of our own free will, thanks. So this is our immediate future.  I will scramble for loans and scholarships and any other means to pay for school.  (Thankfully, I will not have to scramble for work.  I have a part-time job waiting for me in San Jose.  A nifty prize awaits the first reader who can ascertain where I’ll be working.) I will cross my fingers and hope that on-campus housing comes through.  School starts August 11.  To get there, Lloyd and I will go on our long-discussed, long-desired cross-country road trip at last.  We will share the driving and eat road food and look for real homemade pie, much as I wanted to do after reading Pascale Le Draoulec’s American Pie four years ago.  He’ll get me settled in, he’ll fly back to New York, we’ll talk every day, we’ll fly to each other as often as time and money will allow...and then, once he is fully vested in his pension next spring, we will pursue transfer and/or new job opportunities, anything it takes to bring him to me.  It may be later rather than sooner, but Lloyd is coming to California, too.  Once I’m finished with school...well, there’s the bright shining question mark.  In general, where one goes to school determines where one will stay to practice, so the odds of living permanently in California are good...but they’re not a given.  We could end up in Seattle.  We could go back to Philadelphia, where Lloyd and I met as bookstore clerks on a day that feels like yesterday.  We could see the world.  We could go anywhere. Where does one begin? 2008-04-23T14:33:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/well/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/well/#When:03:27:00Z (Thanks to Snow for the title.) Dear friends, I am working on the Complete and Utter Tale of Bakerina’s Really Big Adventure Out West, but it’s going to take me a while.  Hopefully I’ll get it finished before I fly home tomorrow night, but in the event that it has to wait until I’m back in New York, I can at least offer the following teasers: 1.  Everything I said on Friday morning about Grace’s being the hostess with the mostest?  To quote the late and much-missed Madeline Kahn, it’s twue, it’s twue!  She has been spoiling me utterly with magnificent food, she has driven me all over San Francisco twice in three days, and she has been a kickass conversationalist through it all.  If you have a problem and you need someone with a clear head and a wise heart to listen to you, Grace is so absolutely, positively your girl.  And she’s an awesome driver. 2.  If you have ever been to San Francisco, then you understand why it’s so important to have an awesome driver showing you around—or to be an awesome driver yourself.  I have lived in hilly places (hi, Pittsburgh!) and I have visited mountain towns at staggering elevations (hello, Estes Park!), but I have never, ever, ever in my life seen anything like the hills in San Francisco.  I will confess that the first time Grace drove us down a hill in Pacific Heights, I instinctively put out my hands in a way that caused her to say “honey, are you all right with this?” Even though I knew that there was more road on the other side of the tipping point, I just couldn’t see it, and half expected us to shoot off the road into empty air.  I got over that quickly, though, and can now ride down steep winding roads with the best of them—but I’m still glad Grace is doing the driving.  3.  I have been reading Jo Spanglemonkey‘s blog for such a long time that even though she and I have exchanged email and commented on each other’s blogs as well as on our beloved Scrine, I still view her with the openmouthed, wide-eyed awe that even the most hard-bitten New Yorkers use when they see David Bowie at the art supply store.  I really, really hope that I didn’t have that expression fixed on my face when Jo and Grace and I all went out for fish tacos at lunch.  Luckily for me, Jo is every bit as warm and whipsmart and funny in person as she is en blog.  And her hair is fantastic. 4.  As I’ve mentioned here before, ‘mouse is one of my oldest friends on the internet (in a years-of-acquaintanceship sense, not in a chronological-age sense).  He has been a font of wisdom, a champion, a cheerleader and the kind of friend that makes me think that I must have done something good in my past life to deserve having him in this one—like, say, saving a busload full of nuns and orphans from careening off a cliff.  Dear friends, I got to meet this kind and excellent man on Saturday.  The only reason I am not bubbling over with fulsome, enthusiastic praise for his overall excellent self is that I hardly know where to begin. 5.  Enough suspense.  I know what the $64 question is:  Now that you’ve been to both Northeastern and Santa Clara, have you made a decision? I would dearly love to say that I have, but the fact is that I was blown away by both of them in equal measure.  They both have a terrific curriculum, an awe-inspiring faculty and an impressive, engaging student body.  I have a scholarship waiting for me at Northeastern and a job waiting for me at Santa Clara.  I’m going to have to pick one of them—or say no to both and either go to Pitt or hope that Cardozo gives me an admission offer soon.  Lloyd and I are going to have to make some decisions.  I will be home on Tuesday morning, and as soon as I’m done embracing Lloyd hard enough to crack a rib, we’re going to do just that. Proper travelogue will follow, hopefully sooner rather than later.  2008-04-21T03:27:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/a_milk_and_honey_fed_interstitial/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/a_milk_and_honey_fed_interstitial/#When:17:39:01Z Dear friends, there is more and better text to come, and once I return home, there will even be pictures to go with it (curse this desire to travel light and to leave the laptop with the photoediting software at home!).  I’m just sending up a flare here to confirm that despite the best efforts of pre-rush-hour traffic and terminal construction at JFK to thwart me, I made my flight by the skin of my teeth, flew across the country without incident (save a little bumping around in the midwest, which is, apparently, something I’ll need to get used to if I fly this flight path on a regular basis), and am now being spoiled, utterly, by the amazing and wondrous Grace.  I would natter on about what a joy she is to talk to, how sweetly she’s been taking care of me ever since she picked me up at the airport, how beautiful is her house and how lush is the view from the patio, but to do so would cut seriously into our sourdough-pancake-eating time.  Grace is taking me out for sourdough pancakes, and then we’re driving to San Francisco together.  I’m having such a blast that for the first time in my life, I don’t care if I sound gloaty and obnoxious.  Oh, yeah, you wish you were me right now. With any luck, this will pass, and I will settle down enough to write something pleasant to read.  Until then, dear ones. 2008-04-18T17:39:01-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/updates_oh_we_get_updates_an_interstitial/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/updates_oh_we_get_updates_an_interstitial/#When:16:48:00Z I don’t know if it was my lunatic one-day train trip to Boston (leave at 3 a.m., return at 7 p.m., do a staggering amount of walking in the meantime), or if it’s my upcoming trip to Santa Clara (fly to San Jose on Thursday night, return on the red-eye on Tuesday morning, do a staggering amount of walking in the meantime), but I have been absolutely, positively, embarrassingly exhausted for the past nine days.  I still go to bed and wake up at my normal hours, but whereas I’m usually out of the house within half an hour of having my breakfast and a shower, I am now...sitting.  I’m not just staring into space, of course; I read, I write, I knit, I write some more, but I do it all from the comfort of my own living room, which makes me feel lazy and sheepish.  I do still go to the pool, but I suspect I’m not working hard enough to do my energy levels any good.  If I added some weightlifting and another form of cardio, that might help, but the thought of doing that is even more tiring (which is not to say that I won’t do it).  Eventually I do leave my house, camera and notebook in hand.  If I’m lucky, I get a few decent shots, but I’m still nagged by the sense that this might be the last free time I ever have in my life, and I am not putting it to good use.  Lloyd has suggested that all of this sleepy bad attitude is a natural result of pondering the uncertain future.  He has also suggested that feeling lazy and sheepish is not doing me any favors.  When I told him “I have no idea what I’m going to do with my week,” he answered simply, “why not just live peacefully for a few days?” He did not drive a fork into my head, baked-potato-like, the way I richly deserved.  He really is a keeper. That said, even though I am currently as chatty, thoughtful and interesting as an aspidistra these days, I realize that it’s bad form to have news to share and not actually share it.  In other words, yes, dear friends, the school saga continues.  In addition to Santa Clara (a/k/a Bay Area) and Northeastern (a/k/a Beantown), I have also been accepted to Pitt Law, adding Pittsburgh to the geographic smackdown.  New York City is in there, too, because Cardozo (the law school of Yeshiva University) has waitlisted me, and will keep me on the waitlist until August 25 or until I tell them to take me off of it.  I have not yet heard from Brooklyn Law, but I knew from the beginning that it would be a long shot.  Colorado said no. Holy moly, now I’m really tired.  But hell, there are worse things in life than being tired.  I may be worn out and overwhelmed, but I’m definitely not bored or depressed or feeling assaulted by a terrible job situation.  I’m headed to the land of sun-kissed, thirsty lotus-eaters.  I’ll be staying with Grace—woohoooooo!  I’m staying with Grace!  I’ll have at least a day, maybe two, in San Francisco.  I have a day of meeting more Future Lawyers of America, and, if all goes well there, I might just have a job interview, too.  I’m on the verge of a Grand Weekend Out, and until then, I still have my share of neat stuff to appreciate at home, like, say, this little piece of public art, which Bunni and I found while walking down York Avenue on a particularly horrid, sleety, freezing February day.  I went back yesterday, wondering if it would still be there, and odds my bodkins, it was.  It’s a mock cemetery made from tongue depressors, located on the corner of York Avenue and 67th Street, in the heart of the neighborhood where you can find Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital.  It’s good to see that the Future Doctors of America have maintained their sense of mordant dark humor—and have managed to keep up with current events on top of it.  Hmmmm.  Maybe what I need is to feel more exhausted, not less. 2008-04-15T16:48:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/kicking_the_teeth_out_of_what_ails_you_or_dinner_at_panorama/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/kicking_the_teeth_out_of_what_ails_you_or_dinner_at_panorama/#When:21:54:00Z Those of you who have been visiting this silly yellow page for the past few years know that I get a little touchy on subjects like gentrification and the explosion of luxury housing construction in New York City.  I have been accused of romanticizing the past, of vilifying the people and businesses who would make the city better, of wishing we could go back to the good old days of skyrocketing murder rates and gauntlets of junkies in city parks.  While I can understand these opinions, I can’t agree with them.  I do remember when New York City was an easier place to live if you weren’t making hedge-fund money, when you could work a crummy low-level publishing job and still luck into a sublet you didn’t have to share with six other people.  I remember hearing live music every night, going to no-cover gigs and dancing without worrying about whether I was violating arcane cabaret laws by doing so.  I miss that, terribly.  I remember being able to buy fabulous pastries at Lafayette Bakery in the West Village without having to sell blood to pay for it.  I miss that, too.  I also remember being followed to work by filthy-talking perverts taking advantage of my Girl Walking Alone status, and witnessing an escalating argument over cocaine between two dealers in front of my apartment building.  I don’t miss that at all.  What I do miss, most of all, is a sense of place, of knowing that there was room for you in New York even if you weren’t making, and spending, piles of money.  I have no objection to fancy restaurants, or wine bars, or luxe coffeehouses, or even giant expensive ugly apartments, just as long as they aren’t the only game in town.  When there is plenty of housing to be had for the moneyed, but not for their administrative assistants, or the guys who park their cars, or the cooks and waiters who make their dinners, or the bookstore clerks who sell their entertainments, I get a little tetchy.  When a 30-year-old French bakery loses its lease so that an Ann Taylor store can turn into an even-bigger Ann Taylor store, my heart breaks.  And when a beautiful old building, originally built as a clinic for the poor, recently serving as a branch of the New York Public Library, starts sporting signs reading “Buy This Mansion,” I want to start breaking stuff.  I know I’m not alone in my despair, but it is easy to feel alone, particularly when I walk around the city on a nice day and find myself surrounded by adverts inviting the reader to “make Manhattan your own” or “possess your own Soho”.  Somehow I do not think these folks are speaking to me. Thankfully, I am not alone.  I am lucky enough to have Bunni and Julie in my life.  Not only do they understand my rantiness on this issue—Bunni’s neighborhood has no fewer than four new luxury buildings going up within two blocks of her apartment, while Julie’s neighborhood has been rechristened SpaHa by builders and brokers hot to gentrify—but they also know that the best tonic for this sort of existential dread is to be in each other’s company.  If we happen to be having a really nice meal while in each other’s company, so much the better.  And if we can have that nice meal in a small sweet neighborhood space, the kind where the owners are more concerned with providing really good food than with establishing a see-and-be-seen vibe, and where we can feel, even temporarily, the sense of place and belonging that brought us to New York in the first place, then existential dread doesn’t stand a chance. “Allright, my little turtledoves,” Bunni wrote to me and Julie one night.  Of course we listened, closely.  Of course she knew we would say yes. Bunni’s proposal was that we go to dinner at Panorama, just opened in her neighborhood—or, rather, reopened.  I had been to Panorama before when it was Panorama Cafe, located in a swell two-floor, iron-terraced corner building on Second Avenue and East 85th Street.  I had eaten some decent salads, some truly good omelettes and some regrettable bread.  I’d never ordered wine on any of these visits; as far as I was concerned, Panorama was a brunch restaurant, or the place you went when you wanted a big salad and an iced tea.  You might not eat fancily, but odds were good you would eat decently.  When I learned that Panorama had lost its lease, I felt that old familiar sinking in my heart:  another low-key neighborhood fixture bites the dust.  When Bunni told me that Panorama was not closing, but rather moving to the space that M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas and Coffees vacated when they moved to their new space on East 86th Street, I was glad to hear that Panorama had a home, but baffled by the thought of it moving into Rohrs’ old space.  I knew the old Rohrs’ well.  The space was tiny, cramped and a fraction of the space in Panorama’s old location.  How in the world were they going to do it? I am pleased to say that they did it, and they did it well.  Admittedly, a meal at the new Panorama is more expensive than at the old Panorama, but not extortionately so; depending on whether you want a full three-course meal with wine or a small plate or two, you can eat for $50 per person, or for $20, or more or less or points between.  The bread is much better now, and served with olive oil pressed from olives grown on the owners’ farm.  The new wine list is small but impressive:  I had a Rodney Strong pinot noir with my appetizer and a malbec with my entree, as well as a taste of the viognier Julie had with her meal, and was so delighted with everything I tried that I’m all set to come back and try the wine flights once Panorama rolls them out.  The space is beautiful, with exposed brick walls and warm lighting, surprisingly airy and wide-open.  It is not the tiny, packed-to-the-rafters space that Rohrs’ occupied. Of course, all of this would be a moot point if I didn’t love the food.  Bunni’s scampi in garlic sauce. Much passing around of plate at table.  Yummy noises ensued. Julie’s calamari.  More passing around of plate, more yummy noises. My salad, a lovely thing made from mixed greens, orange and grapefruit sections, toasted almonds and strawberry vinaigrette.  I am only a little ashamed to admit that I ate a sizable portion of this salad without utensils, although I stopped short of licking the plate clean.  Mmmm, vinaigrette. For entrees, we opted for pasta, and plenty of it.  Julie was intrigued by the lobster ravioli on the menu, but was also intrigued by the cardinale sauce (white wine, tomatoes, garlic, shrimp and cherry tomatoes) that was featured on one of the other pasta dishes.  She asked the waitress if the kitchen would be willing to dress the ravioli with the cardinale sauce, and happiness!, they did: Bunni, no fool she, ordered the paglia y fieno (green and white pasta, peas and prosciutto), which I’m definitely ordering on the next visit: I meanwhile, did something I haven’t done since I was a little kid.  Although I’ve made meat sauces for pasta at home, I almost never order them in restaurants, but for some reason, something about a big bowl of spaghetti dressed with meat and mushrooms and tomatoes called out to me that night. Not surprisingly, by the end of all this, even without cleaning our plates, even with having enough to take home, we had to forgo dessert, which was a shame because I do like to leave room for tirami su.  I’m not complaining, though.  The three of us came to dinner with minds full of trouble and hearts full of worry, and there will be plenty more of that to come.  For three hours, anyway, we were in a warm, well-lit room, enjoying each other’s company, eating and drinking wonderful things made for us by people more concerned with their food and their atmosphere than with courting celebrities, feeling the sense of place and belonging that is all too elusive for us in our own city these days.  That’s my kind of Friday night. Panorama 303 East 85th Street (between 2nd and 1st Aves.) New York, NY 10028 Edit: Bunni has informed me that Panorama is now serving weekend brunch and a sandwich menu.  Woohoo! 2008-04-12T21:54:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/unwashed_and_somewhat_slightly_dazed_an_interstitial/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/unwashed_and_somewhat_slightly_dazed_an_interstitial/#When:15:38:00Z Well, okay, I did at least bother to wash.  I just can’t resist a nice David Bowie reference.  The dazed bit is accurate, though. Dear friends, it is not only Deep Thoughts of the Future keeping me away from this space.  There is still plenty of that, of course, but there is also a new spring ritual in my life, the phenomenon known as Deadline Knitting.  Last March found me cranking out cotton dishcloths against the clock so that I might present them to Julie at her bridal shower.  This March finds me still cranking out cottony goodness, brought to me by the swell gals at Mason-Dixon Knitting, for another richly-deserving recipient.  Although the party in question is not until next week (and that’s all I’ll say here, lest she be reading), I have only a two-day window to finish everything.  To say that I’m getting a little obsessive about all the knitting is to understate the case, truly. In addition to knitting and deep thinking, there will be traveling, too.  On Saturday I will be taking a day trip to Boston to attend Northeastern’s open house for admitted students, leaving New York at 3 in the morning - really—and arriving in Boston around 7:30, which should give me time for a nice breakfast and the tallest coffee known to man before I go meet some Future Lawyers of America, tour the campus, hobnob with the faculty at the Museum of Fine Arts, and then catch a late-afternoon train back to New York.  At about the moment I finally recover from traveling to Penn Station in the middle of the night, specifically, on April 17, I will be flying to San Jose so that I can attend Law Preview Day at Santa Clara on the 19th.  For that trip, though, I’ll be sticking around for the weekend and taking the redeye back to New York on Monday.  Just writing that makes me tired.  But happy.  But still tired.  I’ve never been able to sleep on airplanes, but this trip might be the one that teaches me to do it. I will be back, though, as soon as I can.  After all, Owen wants to talk about eggs and Juno wants to talk about fruit crisps.  Who could stay away in the face of such promising conversation?  2008-04-02T15:38:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/sunday_afternoon_cake_love_hello_cupcake/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/sunday_afternoon_cake_love_hello_cupcake/#When:16:50:00Z Before I share the recipe for this little cupcake here—because I know I’ll be poked with pointy sticks if I attempt to post a picture and then skedaddle without including a recipe—I do want to thank everyone who either commented here, sent email or called in response to the “Bay Area v. Beantown geographic smackdown” post.  I heard from a lot of you, and I am touched to know that so many of you care, and wish both me and Lloyd well in the coming months and years, when we’ll need as much luck and intelligence on our side as we can muster.  I am refraining from commenting further right now—although Bog knows that won’t last long —simply because for all that this is an exhilarating process, it is a stressful and exhausting one, too.  I won’t enumerate on all of the factors we need to consider for our future; the most important one, of course, is to stick by each other as long as we live*, but there are other factors, too, factors that both require Lloyd to stay in New York for at least another year, and also require us to contemplate our post-New York future—because, as I predicted on this very page nearly 4 1/2 years ago, our time in New York is running out, and we’d like to get a head start before the rug is pulled from under us.  In short, Lloyd and I are not going into anything with blinders on.  We’re trying to make the smartest decision that can be made, even if that decision does not look smart in the short term.  For that reason, I am holding off on any more discussion until I’m ready for it.  Thank you all, in advance, for your patience and understanding. Yes, yes, so noted, blahdeblahdeblah.  Cupcakes, please? Absolutely.  Today’s bit of Sunday Thursday afternoon cake love was inspired by bunni, who made beautiful little cakes using the Magnolia Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe and her bunny cakelet tins.  From the minute she called to tell me about them, I’ve had cupcakes on the brain—but not the cupcakes that are ubiquitous in New York (and, to hear my dear friend Sharon tell it, are making an inroad into the same nifty neighborhood in Pittsburgh where, once upon a time, I wanted to open my bread bakery).  I recognize that from an aesthetic viewpoint, a steep tower of icing atop a cupcake might look sexy, but the result is always the same:  after two bites, my head rings, my teeth hurt and my stomach feels like a canvas bag with a medicine ball in it.  As much as I hate to admit any fealty toward packaged food, I’m afraid that my idea of the ur-cupcake stems from the Tastykake chocolate cupcakes I loved as a kid:  a small, intensely-flavored cake, a thin ribbon of icing across the top.  If you are familiar with fairy cakes, those are pretty much where my cupcake tastes lie. Once I knew that cupcakes were in my future, it was a short skip to determining the flavor.  Ever since I acquired my copy of one of my favorite cookbooks, English Food by the late Jane Grigson, I have been enchanted with her recipe for Parsnip Cake, which she describes in her recipe headnote thusly: In recent years, American carrot cake—sometimes, and I am not sure why, called passion cake—has become popular in Britain.  A friend from San Diego sent me her recipe, and I thought it might be good made with parsnips instead of carrots.  And it was, in fact it was even better.  That is my excuse for including it in a book of English food. I am of the opinion that, as Robert Heinlein said of little girls and butterflies, Jane Grigson needs no excuses.  About the cake, she is bang-on.  I made two changes to her recipe.  One was to bake the cake in muffin cups, rather than layers; the other was to substitute half the plain flour with whole-wheat pastry flour, inspired by my new copy of King Arthur Flour Whole-Grain Baking, which I bought on Monday after spending Easter weekend reading Momerina’s copy.  There are other changes I’ve thought of making:  adding raisins, adding pineapple, replacing the traditional cream-cheese icing with with seven-minute coconut icing—but really, I would just be gilding the lily here, and I know it.  I tried one of these with a cup of tea at 11 a.m., and it was just right as is, the perfect thing to bake—and to eat—while contemplating one’s stressful and uncertain future.  Parsnip Cupcakes inspired by Jane Grigson’s parsnip cake in English Food (Ebury Press, 1992) makes 18 medium-sized cupcakes Note:  Because Jane Grigson gives both metric and imperial weight measurements, that’s what I’m using here.  Normally I try to include volume as well, but this morning I just weighed everything right into the mixing bowl.  If you’d like volume measurements, let me know, and I’ll edit accordingly. For the cupcakes: 375g (12 oz.) peeled, grated parsnip (peel and grate first, then weigh) 125g (4 oz.) chopped hazelnuts or walnuts (again, chop first, then weigh—I used hazelnuts) 400g (13 oz.) caster or golden granulated sugar (if you have regular granulated white sugar, that’s fine) 125g (4 oz.) all-purpose or plain flour 125g (4 oz.) whole wheat pastry flour (or use 250g all-purpose flour if you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour) 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (Because this is an English recipe, I used Ceylon cinnamon, which is the predominant cinnamon used in British baking.  After I added it, I remembered that the original recipe source was American, and what we Americans consider cinnamon is the stronger, more pungent cassia.  Really, though, you can’t go wrong here, no matter what you use.) 1 teaspoon salt 250ml (8 fl. oz.) oil (Jane Grigson recommends either sunflower or a 50-50 sunflower/walnut or hazelnut oil mix.  I used peanut oil, which is my default oil of choice, but if you can’t have peanuts, canola, safflower or even plain vegetable oil will work just fine) 4 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (Jane Grigson suggests either the vanilla extract or the seeds from a vanilla pod; I think that the pod vanilla flavor might be lost in this cake, but in all fairness, I haven’t tried it yet.) Preheat oven to 400F/185C/Gas Mark 6.  Set a rack in the center of the oven.  Line a 12-cup muffin mold with paper liners or spray with nonstick spray. Mix parsnips and nuts together by hand and set aside. In a stand mixer or food processor, combine the sugar, flours, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.  Add the oil and beat just until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until just combined.  (You can also do this in a regular bowl with a hand mixer.  If you beat this by hand, make sure that the oil and eggs are very well combined.) Add the parsnips and nuts, stir to blend.  Add the vanilla.  Be sure that the parsnips and batter are all evenly distributed. Divide the batter between the cups.  (I used a 1/4-cup Zeroll cookie scoop, which gave me 18 total.) Bake on the center rack for 28-30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the bake.  When they are done, the surface will look moist, but they will be firm to the touch, and a toothpick plunged into the center of the cake will emerge clean.) Let rest for a few minutes before decanting the cakes to a cooling rack.  If you have batter left over (there should be enough for six more cakes), let the pan cool down, then line and bake off the rest of the batter.  Let cool completely. For the icing: 250g (8 oz.) cream cheese (Jane Grigson specifies full-fat, but I used reduced fat [Neufchatel], which worked nicely.  Fat-free, though, I wouldn’t do.) 125g-175g (4-6 oz.) softened unsalted butter (I used the smaller amount) 4 tablespoons confectioners sugar, sifted (This makes a not-too-sweet icing, which I love; if you like a sweeter icing, add more) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or lemon juice This is a doddle.  Cream the cheese and butter together, add sugar, add vanilla or lemon juice, stir until smooth, well-blended and fluffy.  Ice your cupcakes all at once, or just put them in an airtight container and ice as needed.  Keep the icing in the fridge.  Let it come to room temperature and stir before you spread it. *Astute readers among you might recognize this line from ”Song of the Open Road” (stanza 17) by Walt Whitman, which my dear friend Sharon—the same dear friend Sharon who told me about the arrival of hepster cupcakes in Pittsburgh—read at our wedding.  It still resonates with us. 2008-03-27T16:50:00-06:00 http://bakerina.com/bakerina/deconstructing_the_geographic_smackdown/ http://bakerina.com/bakerina/deconstructing_the_geographic_smackdown/#When:15:44:00Z (Originally published on Scrineblog.  Reprinted by kind permission of Keith, the architect of the PTMYB template and all-around swell guy.) In the great “Bay Area v. Boston” geographic smackdown, I do not intend to fight fair.—‘mouse So noted, sir… 1.  Tuition, room/board, expenses. Bay Area and Beantown charge approximately the same tuition and on-campus room/board.  Living expenses are also approximately the same.  Draw. 2.  Financial aid. Beantown has awarded me a scholarship that will cover approximately 22% of my tuition costs over three years.  Bay Area has sent me paperwork to apply for a scholarship that will cover about 15% of my tuition costs over three years—assuming that I am one of the lucky scholarship recipients in the first place. Advantage:  Beantown. 3.  Job opportunities. Bay Area does not allow first-year students to work.  [Edit: ‘mouse, who is a Bay Area alum, has questioned this.  I am reinvestigating.  It’s possible that first-year students are merely discouraged from working, in accordance with the American Bar Association recommendations.] However, Bay Area’s campus is close to the office of an attorney who has suggested that there might be work available for me in the area.  Beantown has a co-op program embedded in its curriculum:  students attend classes for 11 weeks, then work for the co-op for 11 weeks.  Depending on where the co-op places the student, pay ranges from fairly low (for public service work such as with the public defender’s or district attorney’s offices) to almost livable (for big corporate Satan-on-a-retainer firms).  Draw. 4.  Accessibility to off-campus amenities. Bay Area has a public transit system, but so far it is an unknown quantity; the school literature says only that it’s *possible* to attend school for three years without requiring a car.  Beantown has the T.  Draw, with possible advantage to Beantown. 5.  Weather. Okay, on this there’s no contest.  Advantage:  Bay Area. 6.  Food. Both Bay Area and Beantown have abundance of swell places to eat.  Grocery situation uncertain without further study.  Rumors abound of swell roadside produce stands in Bay Area.  Draw, with possible advantage to Bay Area. 7.  Exercise. Bay Area and Beantown both have huge, sexalicious fitness centers and swimming pools, all free for enrolled students.  Draw. 8.  Curricula, clinics, special programs. This is where the choice can really make a body’s head hurt.  Bay Area has a community law center, an institute for redress and recovery for the victims of torture and other human rights abuses, the Northern California Innocence Project and several clinics and programs on sustainability.  Beantown has clinical courses on criminal advocacy, domestic violence and public health; a program on civil rights and restorative justice, and a project that sends students into Beantown-area public schools to teach constitutional literacy to high school students.  I am only scratching the surface of what both schools offer.  Draw, dammit, a complete and utter draw. 9.  Going home. Going to Beantown will allow me to come home and see Lloyd at least once or twice a month.  Coming home from Bay Area will be considerably more expensive and difficult.  On the other hand, one could argue that being 3,300 miles away from home will force me to focus on my coursework, with no distraction.  Advantage:  Beantown, but since I have no idea whether I’ll be too embedded in first-year boot camp to enjoy any time at home, this might be a draw, too. 10.  Future practice, a/k/a Where do you want to be when you grow up? I have been advised that the place where you pursue your education generally determines where you build your career (or did I get that backwards?) If I go to Beantown, the odds are good that I will work in Beantown or points nearby—or possibly as far south as Washington.  If I go to Bay Area, it would not be a stretch to consider one day living and working in San Francisco.  Draw, draw, draw. But wait, there’s a wild card! I have yet to hear from two schools in New York City, one in Pittsburgh and one in Boulder.  If any one of those schools offers me a superior financial aid package, all of the previous considerations are hereby rendered null and void. Edit: Yes, there are open-house days for admitted students at both schools.  Yes, I plan on attending both, which should either cement a decision or just make the whole damn decision that much more difficult to make. 2008-03-24T15:44:00-06:00