I had planned to get a jump on the inevitable New Year’s resolution yawping by contrasting last week’s bacchanal with this week’s austerity: the beef dripping-soaked Yorkshire pud replaced by chai soba and seaweed; no more cream in the coffee my mom brought back as a Christmas present for Lloyd; the metric ton of Christmas cookies I ate over the weekend replaced by three, count ‘em, three simultaneous cups of tea which are not doing the trick because I want some goddamn cookies already. (I decided to have a little fun with my tea, and made myself a cup of green tea, a cup of chamomile and a cup of Red Zinger. “Look,” I said to my friend E. “It’s like a stoplight.” She gave me a brilliant, frozen smile and backed away from my desk, muttering that old standby about she needs to get a new job because Jen has finally gone freakin’ insane.) I will probably yawp about these very things over the next few days - and no, I will not take offense if you decide to consider this as fair warning, and go somewhere else for a few days until I’m done talking about seaweed - but tonight, thanks to the lovely bunni, I am going to switch gears.
Bunni and I both received David Sedaris’s Live at Carnegie Hall for Christmas. The first reading is his story “Repeat After Me,” in which he mentions that his sister Lisa is convinced that anything can kill you. Because she retains the alarmist headlines from the local news, but none of the information in the actual broadcast, Lisa believes that applesauce can kill you, but she forgets that in order to do this, it must be injected intravenously. Bunni’s grandmother is cut from much the same cloth. So is mine. Or, at least, she was.
Neddie is my mother’s mother, the wife of my late and much-missed grandfather. Because she was young when my mom was born, and because Mom was young when I was born, we have had a lot of time together, and that time has been a lot of fun. When I came to visit her, we never had to ask each other twice if we wanted to go to the mall. She was not exactly a cook or a baker, but she had her dishes (pot roast, lasagne, a really fine dark chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream), and the dishes she had, she did well. She used to bicker with my grandpop, good-naturedly but bickering nonetheless, that was the best entertainment in town. (Once when I was about 7 or 8, they were having words because she was trying to get him to take his blood pressure medication while he was trying to play computer chess. “I don’t want you making mistakes with your medicine,” she said. “Mistakes? Let’s talk about mistakes,” said Daddy Joe. “I made the biggest mistake of my life on September 19, 1941.” There was silence from the kitchen. I recognized September 19 as their wedding anniversary, and I thought, oh god, she’s going to kill him. After a beat, she yelled back, “1942!”, which was, of course, their actual anniversary. I nearly laughed my iced tea out my nose.)
Neddie was fun. She was also a worrier. As my mom said, “Anything that was the least bit fun, she knew someone who had died from it.” Walking to the corner store. Hayrides at the apple orchard in Bucks County. Learning to ride a bike. Moving to New York. It was all fraught with peril for her.
In her defense, she had received an early, harsh lesson in the perils of life: when she was a child, one of her brothers had died at the age of 3. He had been ill, was hospitalized and apparently made a full recovery. Her parents were told, essentially, you can pick up your son at the hospital on Friday afternoon, and when they went to pick him up, he was dead, having suffered a sudden, violent relapse. I can’t imagine the kind of grief and shock that Neddie and her parents and other brother suffered, but because my great-grandparents were stoics, and didn’t believe in any form of psychiatric help or grief counseling at all, my grandmother was left believing that life was chaos, the world was chaos, and you fought chaos by controlling anything you could, and getting overwhelmingly frustrated by what you could not. This had repercussions, for my grandfather, for my mom and her brothers, and, eventually, for me, my brother and our cousins.
Knowing what I know about Grandmom’s little brother, I can feel sympathy for her, but her fretting still drove us nuts for years. “Make sure you don’t carry your bag on one shoulder like that,” she used to admonish me. “Cross it over to your other shoulder, so that robbers can’t steal your bag.” She told the same thing to my brother when he started carrying a briefcase with a shoulder strap. He told her that that just meant that a potential robber could still still his briefcase, with the added benefit of breaking his neck, and then she really worried. When I moved to New York, she told my mom, without a trace of irony, “I really think it would be safest if Jenny just didn’t leave her apartment after dark.” Mom nearly swallowed her own tongue, trying to contemplate telling a 21-year-old living in Manhattan, “your grandmom doesn’t want you out after dark.” I thought it was a great idea because it meant that in winter, I would have to leave my office at 3:30 in the afternoon.
When I moved to Philadelphia and acquired a live-in fiance, my mom (who was thrilled with this arrangement because she was nuts about Lloyd) phoned my grandmom. “How’s Jenny?” said Grandmom.
“Fine,” said my mother with trepidation. “Still in the same apartment. Uh, Lloyd has moved in with her.” She winced and waited for the outrage.
“Oh, thank God,” said Neddie. “I’ve been so worried about her, living alone in that city. Thank God she’s not living alone in that apartment.”
“WAIT A MINUTE!,” said Mom, who knew that if it had been her, shacking up outside of the bonds of matrimony, Neddie’s response would not have been “oh, thank God.”
“It’s Neddie logic,” said Aunt Nan, my mom’s best friend, who knew it well.
Neddie logic failed her at least once, though; of course, since it’s Neddie logic and only she can understand it, maybe it worked in some mysterious way that only she can see, the way my believer friends tell me that God works. I am speaking specifically of September 11, 2001. I will not rehash the specific horrors of that day, or of the days that followed. I will just say that once the phone lines started to free up, I was on the phone for two solid days, with parents, friends in England, friends in New Zealand, friends all over the U.S., co-workers, corporate weasels from LuthorCorp who were surprised, and a little put out, to discover that I was not at my desk on September 12 (one of them had the nerve to tell me, “now, Jen, you know that a work-at-home day means just that"). After the 203rd phone call in two days to my mom, it hit me that I’d never called Grandmom to let her know that Lloyd and I were okay. Oh, lord, I thought to myself, Neddie has to be going absolutely batshit. I called Mom back immediately.
“I knew there was something I forgot to tell you,” Mom said. “You’re going to love this.” It turns out that Neddie, who lived in front of CNN 24/7 at the time, saw everything, basically thought, “oh, how terrible,” as if she were watching footage of a distant plane wreck in the Russian steppes, and then drove to her local Genuardi’s to do groceries for the week. Mom reached her on the phone when she got back. It was obvious that Mom had been crying. Neddie’s response was a surprised, “why, what are you so upset about?”
“Uh, Mom,” said my mom, “did you see the news? Did you know there was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center? And on the Pentagon?”
“Oh, yes,” said Neddie. “I saw that, and I thought, ‘oh, that’s terrible’ [which in Philadelphia-speak is pronounced ‘turble’], and then I went to Genuardi’s and did my shopping.”
“Mom,” said Mom patiently, “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, because they both work miles away, but I haven’t heard from Jenny or Lloyd yet.”
“Oh, well, when you do hear from them, just let me know.”
I am still trying to figure out the logic whereby living alone is a virtual death warrant, but being in Manhattan during a terrorist attack is no big shakes. I really don’t care, though, because I laughed my first laugh in days when I heard that story. I am laughing now at the thought of it.
Neddie now has mid-stage Alzheimer’s and lives in a locked Alzheimer’s ward in the retirement community she and Grandpop moved to after selling their house 10 years ago. She still worries, but because she has lost a lot of memory about who we all are, where we live and what we do, she worries less about us, and more about running out of money (she will not, thanks to my grandfather’s savvy investing), paying her bills (my mom takes care of the bills), and wondering why all of her mail has been forwarded to Mom’s house (so Mom can get the bills on time). Mom told her that she needs to stop making herself sick with worry, and Neddie replied, “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t worry about something.” This makes me heartsick, and it fills me with a seasonally-appropriate resolve: All of the worrying that I do, it is not an amusing personality quirk, it is a drain on my energy, and I have to cut it off at the knees. Since Neddie could not, and still cannot, I will.
This is not so much an Xmess photo, but I’m posting it anyway so that you may know the heights (depths?) of my baking disorder.
I spent the last week of October and first week of November 2002 at a pair of professional breadbaking classes at the Baking Education Center at King Arthur Flour in Vermont. On the weekend between classes, Ciril Hitz visited the school and taught a decorative bread sculpture class. Chef Hitz teaches at Johnson & Wales, and was on the U.S. team at the last Coupe de Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris. Studying deco bread with him is like studying figure sculpture with Rodin. He is that good, and he is one of only a dozen people in the U.S. who specializes in this technique.
Under his tutelage we completed two projects: a hanging platter made from a yeasted rye dough ("live dough") and a sculpture made from unyeasted rye dough ("dead dough"). The dead dough was lots of fun. We dyed it different colors with coffee and chili powder and turmeric. We ran it through the dough sheeter and made marbleized sheets. We made braids and baskets and cornucopias. For our sculpture, Chef Hitz passed out stencils of a rooster. We were told that our sculpture had to include the rooster, but the rest of the sculpture was up to us. I decided to mount the rooster onto a sunflower platform, glue the platform onto a tube made out of dough, then glue the tube to another platform. For the platforms I made miniature representations of various breads: pain au levain, pumpernickel loaves, baguettes, rye rolls, brioches, marble ryes. I glued them to the platforms, then used coffee syrup to paint a cheesy ad slogan for my dream bakery, which has/had a working name of Baked Goods: “Baked Goods. They’re baked. They’re good.” (My dad said, “ah, a bakery that the President can understand.” I said, “Dad, if the President understands this bakery, then I’ve done my job.") The finished sculpture was 20 inches high and a thing of beauty.
Miraculously, the sculpture survived the vagaries of FedEx—I’ve never used so much bubble wrap in my life—and arrived at my office intact, where it sat proudly on my desk for two months. Then one day I decided to move it so that I could dust, and I discovered the effect of bone-dry office air on a bread sculpture. Rooster broke in three places, and I could not glue it back together. The tube split down the middle. I bit my lip and threw the pieces in the trash. But I could not bear to throw away the bread miniatures, so here they still sit, cheering me up as I toil for LuthorCorp.
New new addendum: Thanks to careful and patient coaching from nakedjen and Snowball, I just may have cracked the code on this uploading of pictures thang. Thank you, my darlings. I will not have to play Jessica to Lloyd’s Nick after all!
Dear friends,
Since I have once again turned a nice little idea into a bloated behemoth of an essay, I thought I’d lighten the load a little with some visuals, also known as When Dangerous Women Receive Digital Cameras for Christmas.
This fierce beastie would be my parents’ cat Jerry, Master of the House, Keeper of the Tree. When I took this picture, I had to use the flash because it was too dark under the tree to take the picture without it, hence Jerry’s eerie glowing eyes. At first I was grumpy about ruining the picture, but upon reflection I realized that it was perfect for the mood that Jerry was trying to convey. Look deep into my shiny eyes, says Jerry, and then back away from the tree! Jerry takes the tree very seriously.
Before I forget, a thousand thousand thanks to the beautiful and righteous nakedjen, who said just the kindest things in the world about the ginger fingers recipe I shared with her. Jen, thank you. I would have a seriously swollen head if I didn’t have so many existing self-esteem issues. *grin*
Incidentally, anyone who would like the recipe, please feel free to e me. I won’t post it to the blog, as it is a copyrighted recipe with some small variations on my part, but I will be glad to share it one-on-one. And, of course, if you’d just like me to bake a batch and send them to you, you don’t have to ask me twice. Find that link that says “Email me” and then hit me, baby! (This offer is also good for lemon curd, which, coincidentally, goes nicely with ginger fingers.)
Hello, good people,
My word, what a party you all have been having here on the superhighway this weekend. Since I have one of those accounts that allows for moblogging, I should really just go the extra mile and get myself one of those newfangled phones that lets you post to your blog, take naked pictures of your sweetie and order a takeaway curry, all by pushing a single button. (The phone I have is five years old and is reminiscent of that enormous box that Mulder used on season 1 of The X-Files. Small children point and laugh at me when I use it.)
After all of my mewling and puking—“We have to go to Penn Station! There are too many people! I hate it when there are too many people! There’s an Orange Plus Alert! I hate Orange Plus Alerts!” —I am both embarrassed and pleased to admit that the trip to Philadelphia, the train trip down, the train trip back, the feasting and playing and wine-drinking and couch-potatoing, was everything a Christmas holiday should be. We did not have to fight any crowds at Penn Station on Wednesday, or at 30th Street Station in Phila. this morning. (I did, however, find myself greeted by a giant De Beers fabric banner at 30th Street Station as we emerged from the platform up into the station: “GOD CREATED WOMAN. THEN, AFTER A FEW MILLION YEARS OF PRACTICE, HE CREATED YOURS.” Sigh. It made me wonder if there really is a God, and if there is, if He does not have anything better to do with His time than read my blog and decide to stick it to me personally.) We made all of our connections. Our fellow travellers were more forbearing and capable, less clueless and bellicose, than in previous years. My stepdad was waiting at the train station for us, so we did not have to wait outside in the rain and wind. Much of the weekend was spent in the kitchen with Mom, helping with Xmas Eve dinner, making dinner on Friday and Saturday, puttering about, reminding myself once again how well we work together in the kitchen, what a well-oiled machine we are.
Christmas Eve dinner was at the parents’ house, the four of us plus my brother and sister-in-law, after which we exchanged gifts. We have always opened our presents on Christmas morning, but after this year, I’m switching to the 24 December party. I know that if/when we have a child we won’t have the luxury of sleeping in on Xmess, but for now, I love sleeping in on the 25th and waking up knowing that I have some shiny new presents to play with. This year’s haul included a David Sedaris cd and the mighty nifty Rollpat. When I opened it up I felt a happy little buzz of anticipation: time to go home and bake bread. I have been told that I actually cracked my knuckles as I read the care-and-maintenance card, but I’m sure that that was just an exaggeration on Mom’s part, for comic effect. Xmess dinner was spent in the beautiful village of Kintnersville, PA, at the house of my Auntie Nan, who is not actually my aunt, but my mom’s best friend. Mom was born the year before Nan, and the going story in our families is that when Mom was born, she spent a year in her playpen, waiting patiently for Nan to join her. Nan has always been in my life, always calls me her favorite child (even though she has a favorite child of her own, her son Blair, who she adores, as do we all), always makes me laugh, always loves me no matter how badly I screw up, always treats me with the purest, unqualified, unconditional love, the kind that I never quite feel like I deserve but am always grateful and glad to have.
Because my brother and sister-in-law gave my parents a combination DVD/VCR, Friday and Saturday were spent indulging in retail therapy, getting the ‘rents’ DVD collection off to a rollicking start. After the second hour of watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, my mom announced that she was never leaving the house again.
Although I know it is unseemly to brag, I must indulge in a bit of bragging. For years I have been convinced that I could not do puzzles. Every once in a while I would get lucky with a long word in the New York Times crossword puzzle, but in general I thought that puzzles were for other, better, smarter people. (Last winter I read In Code, the autobiography of the Irish teenage math whiz Sarah Flannery, and I was pleased with myself for figuring out one of her puzzles, in which you use a 7-liter jug and a 9-liter jug to measure out water in measurements from 1 liter to 9 liters. Then I read that Sarah Flannery’s father had given her this puzzle to solve when she was five.) Then I found this puzzle on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times on Christmas Day. I read through them all and blanched. Then I thought, oh, well, I can’t do any of these but maybe I can do this easy little one here. And this one, this one doesn’t look too hard. Shock and amazement, I cracked the code on all six puzzles, and was thus able to solve the seventh “master” puzzle at the center. I am so surprised by this sudden act of violent competence that I want to carry the puzzle around in my wallet and show it to disinterested strangers on the subway. Much in the way that David Sedaris wanted to carry around his first completed NY Times Monday crossword, show it to people and hear them say “You mean you’re only 41 years old and you did that all by yourself? Unthinkable!”, I want to hear people say, “You mean you solved the whole thing and it only took you three days? What a clever girl!”
