TracyFood

Wednesday whining, or an invitation to laugh at my misfortunes. 10 September 2008 3:10 pm

Posted by Tracy in : baking,kitchen gear,kitchen mishaps,meta,not even vegetarian,nyc,school,tea,whoops , trackback

Dear readers:

I promise not to make this a regular feature. But I hope you’ll be able to laugh at my more ridiculous complaints, and that in time I’ll be able to go back and reread these and see the humor in them, too. So, here’s what I’ve got today:

* * * * *

Whine the First: I failed at making no-knead bread yesterday, for a variety of reasons. The trouble started when I decided to make bread and realized that I was down to less than a cup of all-purpose flour, so I used a way higher proportion of whole-wheat flour than I’m used to. I tried to correct for this problem by using a little more yeast, but it clearly wasn’t enough because the dough rose weirdly. Of course, it probably didn’t help that I let the dough rise for like 22 hours instead of the recommended 12, and used sea salt instead of the kosher salt I usually know and love, and um, maybe sorta didn’t measure anything except the weight of the flours. Yeah. AND THEN! It was my first time using the new oven (which is gas, which I love) unless you count two minutes of broiler time for a fritatta, and it turns out it has neither oven light nor thermometer! Whine, whine, whine! All things considered, I guess I’m glad the bread turned out edible, and also that I was smart enough to make a teeny-tiny loaf, which Peter and I were able to finish for breakfast this morning (it was hard and dense even before getting stale, so there’s no way I was taking my chances on letting it get any older).

Whine the Second: Yesterday I found out that I am no good at cleaning eels, even when somebody has done the harder, messier work of gutting and smoking them for me. Wah, and also ew. On the one hand, I feel like I fail completely at being a cute little Dutch girl, and on the other, my Oma is going to laugh and laugh and laugh when I tell her how gross it was — she won’t eat eel period, on the grounds that they’re disgusting slimy scum-sucking bottom-dwellers. These eels were farmed (perhaps like the ones Peter and I saw in the hold of a restaurant boat in Kampen on our epic bike trip last summer) but they were still plenty slimy. In the end, they were tasty, but so much work that I’m sure I have never paid enough for eel ever in my life. The really sad part is that I used to really like eel, and now I’m sort of turned off it by the whole so-gross-to-clean experience. Dangit!

Whine the Third: My first homework assignment for my food writing class was to write 500 words about an hour or so in a coffeehouse, then cut it down to 350 words, and submit both versions. That wasn’t too bad, although the initial writing was all kinds of pulling teeth, and what I turned in was just sort of “meh.” The whining comes in because I was hoping to find and fall in love with the cute little Greenwich Village café of my dreams, and instead I got Think Coffee at Bowery and Bleecker. It’s not a bad place, and it’s always good to know where to buy (organic, fair-trade, shade-grown) hippie compliant coffee beans, but for now I prefer the Tea Spot on MacDougal for a nice cup of warmth and a sit-down. (Up where we live, the winner is La Pregunta Arts Café.)

Whine the Last (for now): While I’m on the topic of hot drinks and a sit down, I just found out that the Harlem Tea Room is closing. I barely knew the place existed! Wah! So my quest for a comfort café continues. I got a nice warm fuzzy feeling from the Housing Works Bookstore Café (I am a sucker for its library good looks and smell of old books) and have heard good things about Café Grumpy, which is worth a look for the name alone. So those are next on the list after what will probably be my first and last visit to the Harlem Tea Room, and hey, my mood seems to be improving with all that to look forward to.

So that’s all my whining for today, and hopefully for a while. It’s a beautiful day out, and there’s farmers markets to explore. Which is a very good thing, since we’re out of eggs!

Peter L.

So, have you had a long-standing goal of being a cute little Dutch girl? “Cause I would expect living in New York won’t get you closer to that goal. It is a long way from New Amsterdam….
http://www.tracyfood.com Tracy

I was born a cute little Dutch girl, Peter. I’ve said it before and will say it again: god(dess)(e)(s) bless my dual citizenship. It’s just that I’m usually so Dutch it hurts, so it’s deeply disconcerting when I fail. And please tell me that last sentence was a typo.
Peter L.

Ahhhh, I had missed the dual citizenship. Anyway, eels are too tasty to not love, although I have never tried to clean one, so what do I know? I guess “time” would be better than “way,” but that sounded clumsy.
http://runfrom30.blogspot.com Megan

I love to have coffee at Bluestockings (Allen and Stanton) which is not precisely close to where you need to be but the people are so hippie-compliant and it’s such an awesome activist place that it’s worth the trip.