A Big Transition

Because.

On Tuesday morning, I was an unemployed writer just trying my best to not let the days slip away.  I kept making sure I was doing some writing, going to the gym, searching for paid work, fighting a malaise that had been growing larger every day over a full year.

On Wednesday morning, I was a production accountant for a blossoming company, waking up at 5:30am, navigating a 12-hour work day, getting home to eat only two hours before I had to go back to sleep.

No longer could I cook dinner.  I had to wake up even earlier to water the plants.  I had to rearrange my workout schedule.  And, OOPS!, what about the blog???

The shift in energy has been very jarring.  During the week I missed my MacBook Pro, my writing desk, my Taste Offs, and my wife (not necessarily in that order).  I didn't miss all of the political 'news' and sports 'news'.  I didn't miss our crazy old neighbor who shouts at the top of her lungs when she talks, with her door open, her television roaring at full volume, all day.

I knew the work environment was going to be challenging, but I underestimated the degree.  I'd spent most of the past year by myself.  Now I'm surrounded by dozens of people non-stop.  And some of those people, apparently, have no interest in treating me like a human being.  Welcome back to The Industry!

I am uncomfortable with a lot of this.  But I am aware that most of my gripes are due to this abrupt lifestyle change.  Am I a little over my head in the job?  Yes, but I can do the work and I can do it well with a minimum of external obstruction.  Am I excited about the largest paycheck I've ever gotten?  Yes, but I know what I'm selling of myself is very valuable.  Could things have continued the way they were?  No.

For financial and emotional reasons, there needed to be a change.  Honestly, it's important for me to know my services are needed by employers.  And I have gotten what I'd asked for:  A very needy job.  Now it's time to provide.

How does the change effect this blog?  Well, in theory, I'll feel less guilty about buying whisky.  :D  I'm working out a blogging schedule for myself so that I can post with frequency and consistency.  Diving for Pearls gives me joy.  Meeting people through this site continues to be wonderful!  Many thanks to everyone who stops by to read some of my musings.  They are continuing.

I did promise a whisky report this weekend.  Well......I did a Taste Off last night that turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  I'm spending some time today writing it up.  You'll see more about it soon...

Testing booze recipes...

Happy Memorial Day Evening!

Testing a Whisky-based Barbecue Sauce tonight.  After that, a new Gin cocktail of our design.  I'm documenting these.  Any successes will be reported.  Any failures will also be reported.

Wish me luck?

(Source)

Cupcakes for Kristen

Since K's birthday was in the middle of Passover, I had to delay the birthday cake baking.  Thus the caking commenced today.

I may cook successfully from time to time, but baking?  Well, the meme said it best......

(source)

A day later, I'm happy to say that the condo remains intact.  And...

BOOM. Cupcakes.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.

When Kristen came home, they looked all cute and neat sitting there on the stove in the clean kitchen.

She has no idea what a g*ddamn Buster Keaton movie it was during their three-hour assembly.  You know, the Keaton film in which he calls a spatula a "******* ****!" seven times.

This is the recipe I used, though I added more (non-alkalized) cocoa and used a 1/3 of the coloring (because it's an industrial chemical additive).  It's actually a very easy recipe, I'm just a saphead.

The cake is good, the frosting is ridiculous.  I'm still riding my sugar high, 20 hours later.

The things I collect

Yesterday I had 60 T-Shirts.  60.  We have our own washer & dryer.  There are 7 days in a week.  60 T-Shirts.  I threw away 10 and that was a chore.  I won't even tell you what the sock drawer looked like.

To be fair (to who? myself?) a third of those Ts were for the gym.  For those folks who don't know, after I exercise I look like I've just jumped in the pool with my clothes on.  So I set aside specific Ts for that abuse.  About 16.

Clearly, I like T-shirts, but there's more to it than that.  I collect things, often without knowing it.  There's a genuine Hoarder gene in my family so I have to be on the lookout for signs of its prevalence in me.

The act of accumulating non-perishable consumer goods outside of wartime is connected to other existing human psychological complexities.  Don DeLillo might say that it's part of our desire to postpone death.  Freud would probably agree then loop in issues with libido.  Jung might reference a disconnection with a spiritual center.  Psych 101 would likely suggest depression or repression; holding onto physical things provides the illusion of control.  A good communist scholar could say that it's one of the end results of capitalism, the unnecessary and imbalanced accumulation of goods.

So here are some things that I may or may not have collected:

Yes - T-Shirts.  I'm now down to 50.  In my defense, 16 are for workouts only (as mentioned above).  I can't wear those out into public because after a couple of hours The Ghost of Sweat Past haunts them.  8 more are white undershirts for winter or work wear.  Another 6 are long sleeve Ts.  That leaves 20 normal-wear short sleeve Ts.  In my defense, I live in Southern California so it is T-shirt weather for seven (or more) months of the year.  Thus one T a day for about three weeks.  Not in my defense, we do have that washer and dryer inside our condo...

No - Canned food goods.  We eat them within two weeks after buying them.

No - Boxed food goods.  I don't even buy 'em.

Yes - Baseball cards.  I had 22,000.  Now I have 5,000.  See here for my considerable efforts to rid myself of the 17,000.  I started collecting cards in 1985.  I stopped in 1993.  Then a haze of depression reignited this flame from 2001-2003 as I sought something that I could control.  That was an illusion, I never had control <-- to paraphrase Jurassic Park.  I stopped collecting permanently because I wanted to be more mobile, not wanting to haul countless boxes of cardboard behind me wherever I went.

No - Toilet paper.  We may buy big packs of it, but it is used and flushed with regularity.

Yes - Books.  Every few years I go through my shelves packing a box of books to go to a donation center.  I don't buy too many books anymore, but the shelves keep filling up past the bursting point.  Maybe the books are breeding.  The thing is, I'm not reading all of them right now.  I couldn't possibly read all of them again in this lifetime.  So why are they there?  To make me look cultured?

Yes - Movies.  First it was VHS tapes.  Then it was DVDs.  I have a 7-foot shelf packed solidly with the thin rectangle cases.  It used to be something I could be proud of.  My collection is of nothing but the best.  But with digital video on the rise, and constantly getting better quality-wise, the collection is beginning to look like an anchor rather than a creative skiff.

No - Wives.

No - Cats.  But to be honest, I understand The Cat Lady.  Go ahead, walk into a pound.  See the dozens of caged little domesticated animals who are there through no fault of their own.  Dozens of clean, self-reliant little buddhas who will die if I don't adopt them all.  Go ahead, pick just one.  Or two.  Or three.

Yes, sorta - Coins.  I wasn't responsible for their collection.  They're from family and old family friends.  It's a very impressive lot.  It's swell to have stuff from the 19th century.  Money that's been in America longer than my family has.  I don't add to the collection, but I do keep it.  It weighs about 50 pounds.  It's odd and hideous to move.

Yes - CDs.  Dear G-d, I've been trying to move these things out of my home.  Every CD that has intact liner notes and cover has been shuttled out to Amoeba in exchange for store credit.  But I still have 200-300 of 'em.  They've all been digitized, but I don't have any of the stuff that came with them.  So they sit, lined up like cells in a silent organism.  I will seriously sell them all for $200 (or best offer).

Yes - Items in my Amazon "Saved for Later" cart.  Yep.  Guilty as charged.  That's more an act of sloth than any sign of neurosis.  Right?

"No."

No - Stamps.  Never understood the need to collect these things.  Probably healthy.

No - Video games.  Probably healthy.

Yes - All of my hand-written writing.  And...

Yes - Printouts of every draft of every script.  I'm sure this stuff can really be disposed of, but part of me can't let go.  I created it, now I'm going to throw it away?  What kind of parent would I be?  A parent of paper, I guess.

No - Shoes.  Can't afford to keep buying new ones.  The old ones look and smell bad.

Yes - Photos.  I think I can defend this as a human thing.

Yes - Receipts.  I can't defend this as a human thing.  More of a financial thing.  Luckily, I part with a pile every year.

No - Scalps.

No - Recipes.  Though I probably should.  They don't take up much room.

Yes - Internet Bookmarks.  Holy Sh*t!  I have hundreds of them!  What are these sites?  When did I go there?  Why did I go there?  Why did I think that I would need to go back there again?

Maybe - Whiskies.  I can't afford to collect whisky.  But if I could, THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. And...And...And in defense: Whisky can be consumed.  Whisky can be shared.  And then bottles can be replaced by new ones!  Sweet!  Oh wait, that's just my fantasy.  In reality, yes, I have twelve bottles.  Soon to be eleven.  As mentioned in my year in whisky post, I'm not trying to make money from them.  And I'm not saving them until eternity.  But I spent some good money on them.  And I don't drink to excess.  So they'll last a little while.  And occasionally gain neighbors.

I guess that's it, though I'm sure Kristen could enumerate those I've missed.  Moving from home to home puts one's collection habits in check......depending on the size of the home.  We've been living in apartments and condos, and we pay professional movers to haul our stuff, and I'm married to a woman who dislikes clutter.  Thus I have the motivation to reduce.  So, I feel like the collection gene is in control.  For now.

Grilling pizza

It gives me great pleasure to be the pizza maker in this marriage.  I make the dough from scratch, then divide it up and freeze the extra dough in individual balls.  Then I roll it out, put it on a pre-heated cornmeal-sprinkled pizza stone, bake it, top it, bake it, slice it, serve it, eat it.

I created my own recipe for a honey whole wheat dough via trial and error in 2003-2004.  I made it for myself until Kristen moved in.  Once she expressed enthusiastic approval, the recipe went into our regular cycle of bi-monthly dinners.  Very little change in the recipe, but lots of changes in the toppings.  And that's the way it went for about seven years.

Then during one fortuitous week, a couple months ago, we visited with two sets of friends with whom we made pizza.

The first one, Kristen's friend Jessica, GRILLED her pizza dough.  The idea startled me.  For the first few weeks of owning my grill, almost everything that I put on it had fused to the grates.  Now she was putting floppy pizza dough on her grill.  And, to my amazement, it worked!  And it was delicious.

Then we visited our (newly-married) pals, James and Jess, who had made a scratch dough recipe for the first time.  It was a very simple recipe, but I loved the texture of the dough.  As I watched it bake in the oven, I thought, "If it tastes good, this is the recipe that I would try to grill."  It tasted good.  Very very good.

Who dat?! What a shlub.

A couple of weeks later we tried the recipe.  Somehow we had run low on white all-purpose flour, so I had to throw in a bunch of whole wheat flour.  Nonetheless the texture was great.  Then came time for the grilling.  I'll admit, I held my breath as I eased the dough onto the grates.  But sure enough, it never stuck.  And the result was fantastic, like a Mediterranean flatbread pizza.

(At a later date, I'll post my Honey Whole Wheat dough recipe, which is for baking rather than grilling and results in a thinner crispy crust.)

RECIPE:

So let's get it to it.  Here's the recipe from the great chef Mark Bittman -- it can also be found in his book How to Cook Everything and also in this exact format on his blog --

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more as needed

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1. Combine the flour, yeast, and salt in a food processor. Turn the machine on and add 1 cup water and the oil through the feed tube.

2. Process for about 30 seconds, adding more water, a little at a time, until the mixture forms a ball and is slightly sticky to the touch. If it is still dry, add another tablespoon or two of water and process for another 10 seconds. (In the unlikely event that the mixture is too sticky, add flour a tablespoon at a time.)

3. Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and knead by hand for a few seconds to form a smooth, round dough ball. Put the dough in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap; let rise until the dough doubles in size, 1 to 2 hours. (You can cut this rising time short if you’re in a hurry, or you can let the dough rise more slowly, in the refrigerator, for up to 6 or 8 hours.) Proceed to Step 4 or wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap or a zipper bag and freeze for up to a month. (Defrost in the bag or a covered bowl in the refrigerator or at room temperature; bring to room temperature before shaping.)

4. When the dough is ready, form it into a ball and divide it into 2 or more pieces if you like; roll each piece into a round ball. Put each ball on a lightly floured surface, sprinkle with flour, and cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Let rest until they puff slightly, about 20 minutes.

Now, this procedure specifies using a food processor, which I really recommend.  I've been mixing my own honey whole wheat dough recipe by hand for years, but the next time I'll use the processor for it. For Bittman's recipe you can use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, then a dough hook when it gets tough.

My notes:  You can use one packet of Active Dry Yeast instead of two teaspoons of instant yeast.  I use two cups of white flour to one cup of whole wheat flour, then white is used for all additional flour; resulting somewhere between a 2:1 to 3:1 ratio.  The more whole wheat flour, the more water will be required.  Add the water slowly or else you'll end up with a dough puddle.  Once pulled out of the processor, it needs very little kneading.  If you tend to make pizza for two folks, then this recipe is good for three separate six-slice pizzas.  You can freeze the extra dough for three to four weeks.  When you defrost it later, make sure you leave it out until it has that nice extra-soft texture.

Source

GRILLING:

Before attempting this, you should google "grilling pizza" and take a look at how other folks do it.  I've combined a bunch of different people's procedures into this one.

(Please note: I do this on a gas grill.  You may need to do some additional googling if you're using charcoal.)

-- Preheat the grill at a medium-low flame.

-- Don't roll your dough out too thinly.  You will need to pick it up without it falling apart.  So leave it with a little bit of sponginess.  In fact, I don't roll it out much, flattening it mostly with my hands.

-- Important:  Make sure that the top and bottom are floured.

-- Place the round-ish result on a pizza peel or big cutting board and bring it out to the grill.

-- Bring your toppings out where they can be easily accessed.

-- Place the dough on the grill.  Easier said than done, right?  The thicker the dough the easier it is to do.  I lift the dough with both hands, fingers spread wide, then ease it down that way.  If you're hip enough to have a pizza peel, then slide that dough onto the grill grates.

-- There's no exact minute-count here.  But at a medium-low heat give it two minutes, then take a peek at the underside.  After that, I like to rotate the dough every 15 seconds for another minute or two, just to make sure everything is cooked evenly.

-- When you like the look of the underside -- lightly-browned, brown, or charred -- flip it over.  It should flip very evenly.

-- Now throw your toppings on!  Quickly!  Okay, not so quickly that you're losing stuff into the flame.  A lower-stress approach would be to turn the heat down low.

-- When you're done with the toppings, rotate the pizza around halfway then bring the grill cover down.  If your heat is still medium-low then this might take only a minute.  If the heat is low, then a little more than a minute.  Again, I like to keep rotating the pizza a little bit every 15-30 seconds to make sure that it's evenly grilled.  (I have a cheap grill.)

-- When it's ready, scoop it back up onto your peel or cutting board.  Slice.  Eat.

Your pizza will look exactly like this.  (Source)

If you do give this a try, I hope you enjoy the process and the results.  Let me know if you have any questions, notes, or alternatives.  Thanks!

When St. Bernardus and I assembled a grill

Happy Labor Day!

In honor of this last good weekend of grilling for many Americans, I’m posting this live diary that I wrote on the evening of June 10^th.  Please note, the following contains language that is NSFW (not safe for work). Though this violates Principle #2, I've chosen to present this unedited.

6/10/2011

Okay, here’s the situation.  Kristen is away on an extended business trip.  Kristen wants a grill.  It’s Friday night.  I need to combine all of these elements.  So this is what I’m doing:

A bottle of St Bernardus Abt 12 (delicious!) Belgian Ale and I are going to assemble a Char-Broil 2-Burner Grill…unbeknownst to my travelling bride.  (I can still call her my bride as we haven’t been married for a year as of this typing.)

I’m not the handiest of men and my 750mL bottle of Patience is always half-empty.  It’s not that I’m trying to prove my virility to my woman, but I seem to turn into a childish dingbat every time I’m left to myself.  So this time, I going to prove myself useful and get drunk while doing it.

Here’s the bottle:

The bottle on the right

Here’s the box:

(Terrible pictures courtesy of my terrible BlackBerry Bold)

One thing to note, the majority of online reviews for this grill state that the assembly is unnecessarily complicated by poorly labeled parts, bad directions, and missing pieces.

So this should turn out well.

8:45pm – Going to the bottle.  Going to the box.  Charging my phone in case I lose a finger.

St. Bernardus 12 is 10% alcohol by volume (3x the strength of Amstel Light).  The bottle is 25.4 fluid ounces.  So this will be like doing five shots.  Good for coordination and dexterity.

How genteel it looks in a wine glass.

There are a lot of parts.

There are A LOT of parts.

Already found a piece that’s not part of the parts diagram.

9:30pm – So, I finished my first drink before starting step 1.

And it took 45 mins to complete 1 & 2.  The parts take up the entire living room.  I have found the pieces I’ve needed, but really after 45 minutes I’ve only partially assemble the two legs.

Already bent the metal on a support beam, out of brute fucking strength or maybe just on accident.  Time for another round.

9:45pm – So, yeah, step 3.  First cognitive issue...

Ever stare at a three-dimensional illustration and not see the exact three dimensions that the artist(?) had intended? Apparently the M.C. Esher-motherfucker who drew diagram 3 had me seeing the legs inverted.  I got concerned that the hole were misdrilled in the main front piece, but once a gained a moment of ocular clarity, I realized that I was screwing in the wrong holes…

10:10pm – The girl’s got wheels! And by girl, I mean grill.  And by grill, I mean this thing that looks nothing like a grill.

Had my first stubbing-of-the-baby-toe.  I think I wept blood.

And by the way, what’s up with Step 4?  Step 3 required two actions.  Step 4 requires TEN actions.  What’s up with that?  Fuck you, Step 4.

10:25pm – Step 5 & 6 had fewer actions combined than Step 4.  Fuck you, Step 4.  

The grill now has the hose attached as well as the ignitor!

Had a moment of panic because I didn’t think they’d included the Stamped Nut (GAH!).  I searched the floor, the packing, the bags, the counters, my pants, and my empty glass.  And then at the most desperate hour, I found the Stamped Nut (GAH!) already screwed onto the piece that it needed to be screwed onto.  Good sentence structure, there.  Comma.  Drink break.

10:35pm – You ever find yourself in a situation where you’re assembling something, then you discover a whole bunch of parts are missing, so then you freak out thinking that the manufacturer forgot to include those parts, and you panic for ten minutes, only to realize that you fucked up an earlier part of the process?  Yeah, I used the wrong screws in Step 6.

Did I mention that I had a generous glass of Guinness an hour before starting this drinking?

10:40pm – Step 7 complete.  You may be wondering how many steps there are.  The answer:

More than 7.

I haven’t looked.  I just want to be done by midnight so that I won’t be an asshole neighbor to my Asshole Neighbor.

11:00pm – So yeah, I screwed up something royally somewhere around STEP ONE.  Spent the better part of the last 20 minutes attempting to fix it.

Step 9 is like Finnegan’s Wake.  There are like 50 actions that are diagrammed non-linearly.  Just like Finnegan’s Wake.

11:40pm – It’s been 40 minutes.  Step 9 was as epic as it had seemed.  I assembled the firebox (not a venereal disease).  The whole contraption is beginning to look like something that could be used for something useful.

Poured an extra large final glass.  Dexterity failing slowly.  Neighbor just came home.  I’ll bet he’s gay.  Pride Weekend started tonight, locally, and he just came home late.  Do the math.  In Bewitched the nosy, pushy neighbors were the Kravitzes.  Bunch of anti-Semites wrote that show.  Or Jews, I don’t really know.

12:05am – Fuck the neighbors I’m going to complete this damn thing right now.

At 12:32am Pacific Daylight Time I id it.  I really can’t believe I finished it.  The bottle of ale, i mean.

Sincerely, though, I really dint foresee actually finishing the grill.  But instead, here it is:

I don’t recommend what I did, though I do recommend St. Bernardus if you like your Belgian Ales like you like your men, pale and emotional, I mean, dark and strong.

I needed to accomplish something this week.  And I’m glad that this was it.  I’m reminded by a quote...... that I can’t fucking remember.   Sweet dreams.

Postscript:  Though the legs were assembled backwards, the grill works very well.

Food & Sports

I have the crib to myself this week. Cooking for one is not much fun, though cooking for two is the thing to do.


I whipped up some really swell Mahi Mahi (the dolphin fish so nice, they had to name it twice) Tacos. They're so swell that if I can find someone else (Kristen) who will like them then I'll share the procedure.


Strange week in sports. Golf was exciting and basketball was bo-ring. I like to watch golf on TV, but I've noticed that if Tiger Woods isn't playing, my golf attention span drops from two hours to five minutes. As for the b-ball finals, our LA radio stations overhyped the matchup so much that I didn't even listen to it on the radio. If that doesn't sound extreme consider that I listened to parts of 40+ regular season Laker games and most of the playoff games. And I don't even like the Lakers. Traffic is Hell.

To me, though Tiger and Kobe are the best at their respective sports, I have different viewing relationships with them. Kobe is SportsCenter good. His skills are best viewed as a 30-60 second highlight reel on ESPN. But Tiger is a thrill to watch live. There's always the sense that something miraculous is going to happen at any moment. Example: Woods beating every single professional golfer at the US Open...while he had only one functioning leg. His playoff against Rocco was better than any sports movie, ever. Thank you USOpen.com for streaming that. Yet when Kobe dropped 81 points on Toronto, it made for a perfect SportsCenter segment. I could watch the highlights for a couple minutes and didn't feel like I missed a thing.

The Yankees won last night, but The Farns did his darnedest to prevent that from happening. I am rooting for Joba Chamberlain to make a successful transition to starter, but here's the problem......there's no Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen to save his arse once he throws too many pitches.


My favorite Yankee right now is The 'Stache. Not the guy wearing The 'Stache, but The 'Stache itself. It seems to have magic powers. With it, a seemingly washed up player suddenly plays like he's 10 years younger and on the juice. But 'Roids ain't got nothing on The 'Stache. Go The 'Stache Go! Put the team on your hairy shoulders and carry them through October! My second favorite Yankee remains Jorge Posada's Batting Without Batting Gloves. That's right. That is so manly that I will refrain from going into further description.


On a side note: Moises Alou versus David Ortiz.

For those who don't know, a couple years ago Moises Alou told an interviewer that he urinates on his hands (in the shower) to toughen them up for hitting barehanded during games. There was a large "Ewww Gross" backlash that followed against him and it's still a running joke. I think that's silly. Pee is largely bacteria-free and 90-95% water. What a guy does in his shower is his business, plus it's not like he was pissing on his hands in the on deck circle. Though that would be awesome if he did that once. Plus he's a great hitter when he isn't screwing up his legs. Maybe he should wee on his knee once in a while too.

Then there's David Ortiz. Largely regarded as an absolute saint, the man spits a loog on his batting gloves and rubs them together before every at bat. THAT is disgusting. He might as well just spit right on the dugout boy 5 times a game. And no high-fives. D.O. is that to help grip the bat better? Why don't you just blow a snot rocket into your spikes to help grip the dirt on your home run trots?