When we had the Codex Writers’ Retreat we had a cookout one night and on another night we went out to barbecue. I had to explain to some of the guests that the two words were not synonymous. The following song will explain better than I could.

Spotted at Matthew Jarpe, who clearly understands barbecue.

I like this recipe for cookies. What I don’t like is that my oven is running 200 degrees hotter than it should.

See those cookies that look like they are completely burned? That’s how much was left on the pan after I chiseled the rest away. I don’t use the word chisel, hyperbolically.

Nice, huh?

This is mostly so I can find the recipe again. A friend of mine gave me a bag of Thai Iced Tea, which is one of my favorite beverages. I can only have one and early in the day, because I have issues with caffeine,¹ I just made it at home for the first time and it is perfect, perfect I tell you, for beating the heat.

6 cups water
1 cup Thai tea
3/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons cream
6 tablespoons condensed milk

In a kettle, bring the water to a boil. Place the tea in a teapot or glass container. Pour the water over the tea and let steep until bright orange in color, 3 to 5 minutes. Strain into a clean container, such as a pitcher (or, if in tea bags, remove the bags). Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Fill 6 tall glasses with crushed ice and add tea to 3/4 full. Add 1 tablespoon cream and 1 tablespoon condensed milk to each glass.

1. More than a half cup of coffemakes me shake, sweat but mmmmm… so good. [↩]

Our friend Daddi is in town for a big expo and he brought us several packs of our favorite Icelandic treat. Flatkökur are flat cakes, that sort of look like burned crepes. Made with rye flour, they are sooooo tasty and I’ve missed them a lot. There’s nothing comparable here.

My flight was further delayed, but that was just fine. I sat down and this charming gentleman settled into the seat next to mine. I noticed that his reading material was Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light, from Small Beer Press. Naturally, this merited comment, as it made it almost certain that he was also coming from WisCon.

Indeed. My seatmate was Ron Serdiuk from Pulp Fiction Press out of Australia. We knew so many people in common that it was almost comic that we hadn’t met before. The flight seemed almost too short, so we shared a cab into the city.

I must say, I was not expecting the flight home to be one of the highlights of the trip, but it was.

The next highlight happened at home. My beloved husband had picked up season three of Battlestar Galactica. And Chinese food. Mmm…

Apparently I made a monster Battenberg. The real ones are about half the size of mine. At least, the commercially available ones are. One of the actresses reassured me that homemade or bakery ones are big like mine. Whew. It’s hard to tell from online photos how large they are, you know? I was estimating based on the recipes and how thick American cakes are. I should have known better, since we tend to supersize things.

This very interesting, but too short article talks about the use of sailing ships to reduce carbon emissions.

An excerpt:

French vineyard owners are returning to a slower pace of life by starting to export their wine by sailing boat - a method last used in the 1800s - to reduce their carbon footprint.

Later this month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc will be shipped to Ireland in a 19th-century barque, saving 18,375lb of carbon. Further voyages to Bristol, Manchester and even Canada are planned soon afterwards.

The three-mast barque Belem, which was launched in 1896, the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, will sail into Dublin following a voyage from Bordeaux that should last about four days. The wines will be delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sète in the east, via Béziers in Languedoc. Each bottle will be labelled: ‘Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.’ Although the whole process will end up taking up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated it will save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle.

Does anyone else feel a story possibility sitting here?

Our friend David Autrey, of Westrey Wine, was in town selling his wares for the past week. I had not realized exactly how much I missed the wine geek conversations that were so much a part of our life in Portland. David is what we call a serious techno-wine geek. He can not only tell you the flavor profile of what you are tasting, but also the chemicals that cause it as well as the conditions during the life of the grape that contribute to the various compounds. Besides all that, he majored in philosophy at Reed, so the conversation is always, always stimulating.

He stayed with us for two nights and took us out to dinner tonight at Jean-Georges. I think we all agreed that the food was well-crafted, but not inspiring. By that I mean that everything was exquisitely cooked, but that the recipes were uneven. We had a tuna tartare that was probably divine, if it weren’t over-sauced with Thai Ginger. Even so, it was a delightful meal. We had two wines that were exquisite — I’ll get the names from Rob tomorrow.

Wired News has an article that totally justifies my chocolate intake.

If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that’s because maybe it is.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people’s digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate’s allure.

Mmm…. our favorite Icelandic treat is at Whole Foods.

Now if I can just convince them to carry the pear flavor.

Last evening Jenny and her fiance, Chris, came for dinner. Well, really, they came to drop off Zoe, their cat, as a trial run for when we take her during their honeymoon. Dinner was just taking advantage of them being here.

I was, to be honest, anticipating some fireworks. When I got Marlowe as a kitten, Maggie hated him so much that if I petted Marlowe and then tried to touch her without washing my hands, she would hiss at me. I’m not making that up. She tolerates him now, more so after the cross-country drive than before.

And Marlowe has never seen another cat, except ones outside the window. His only other experience with other animals have been with dogs that we’ve dogsat. (Boy, that word looks wrong.) Oh, and the mice. Anyway, I had no idea how he would react.

Zoe came right out of her carrier and went up to Marlowe to sniff his nose. He was totally freaked. He had no idea what to do. He only knows this one other cat who beat him up as a kitten–in fact, it’s only in the last year or two that he’s realized that he’s bigger than she is and that she’s old. So, despite the fact that he looks like a giant hulk next to Zoe (also a black cat) he was afraid of her.

Maggie stretched, walked up to Zoe. They sniffed. Then Maggie went to take a nap on the futon. She was so not interested. I think she was just pleased that I hadn’t brought home another dog.

We spent most of dinner watching the cats watch each other. The best moment came after dinner. I wanted to show Jenny and Chris the thing that Marlowe does with the basket. I didn’t think he’d do it, because there was so much strangeness. Man, he saw the basket and beelined across the room to sink his face into it. He immediately sank into his “I’m invisible” posture and seemed so much more at ease.

Zoe. Zoe clearly thought he was insane.

She crept out from under the bookcase where she had been hiding and stretched out to sniff the basket. Marlowe made one “meep” and she levitated backwards, kindof like, “My god! There really is a cat in that thing!”

After that everyone settled into a good routine of ignoring each other. I saw her this morning when I put her food down, but she’s hiding now. I think she’s in my closet, but I’m not going to fish her out. Jenny and Chris come back to pick her up tonight.

I had promised the folks who helped us move in that I would cook them dinner. Last night we had the first of our guests, Jodi and Sam. This is the first time I’ve entertained in the apartment so I wasn’t sure how it would go. I was also a little frazzled from the cart adventure. On top of this, we were getting ready for Rob’s trip out of town, so he had packing to do.

After some thought, I decided to go all out and serve the meal in courses, so I could really test our set-up. The kitchen cart, by the way, is worth all thirty blocks in the rain. It makes the space so much more workable. Up to this point, I’d been frustrated because the prep area is at the other end of the kitchen from the stove with the refrigerator between, so I couldn’t keep an eye on anything cooking. This is much better.

We started with negronis, which I think Rob wanted to make, in part, because he will be around copious amounts of wine at IPNC this weekend. I had some good olives and two local cheeses, blue and cave-aged cheddar. Sam has a list of food allergies which is fairly impressive and totally fuels my desire to have a challenge when cooking. No gluten, tomato, potato, peppers or eggplant. It’s normally fine but I could not find any gluten free bread. It was very aggravating. I found a source today, of course.

The rest of the menu:

The only real failure was the garlic spears. I love these sauteed in olive oil; they remind me of garlic flavored asparagus. Wonderful. However, these were spectacularly woody. I mean. Really. Spectacular. We could not cut them with a knife. Chewing was possible, but only with heroic efforts. The flavor was still good, but only at a great cost.

We still have work do on the apartment. Jodi and Sam were very gracious about the fact that our futon is still on the floor. (The frame comes next week) For all that, the evening felt very comfortable. It also soothes me considerably to be able to entertain. It’s part of my nesting impulse. I enjoy cooking. I like having people over.

I spent so long on tour, that I think I don’t really believe a place is mine unless I can invite people over. For the past several months, while things were in boxes, I stopped feeling like the house in Portland was mine. It became a tour location. Know what I mean? So I now finally feel like I live here.

Of course, in a complete paradox, I now also feel homesick because Rob got on plane to go back to Portland for ten days. le sigh.

Here’s the last of the dining room photos, just because.

What a day. I’ll all in.

We started by having brunch with fab girl, her friend Leslie, Jodi and Jed at Cafe Deville. It’s a nice big open space with good food, but the service was questionable. We kept having to send water glasses away because they had floaters in them. Ugh.

After that, Rob and I spent a couple of hours tromping around to various paper and art supply stores looking for the paperwood I want for my laptop’s space bar. No luck. I finally picked up a piece of thin birch ply for model airplanes. I’ve found paperwood online, but there keep being minimum orders and, you know, I want to test it first. It’s very frustrating. If you know a store that carries it, do let me know.

Giving up on that, we headed to Home Depot to pick up paint for the living room and dining room. While I’m all for shopping locally, I just can’t plunk down $45 on a gallon of paint. Can’t. And that’s what the paint costs in my neighborhood.

In between painting, I wrestled with a couple of different computer programs trying to crank out an ad for Shimmer, because my software is still in the boxes coming from Iceland. All the trial versions of other software have expired, leaving me with nothing very useful. Again. Frustrating. So I went back and forth between that and the walls, which are also frustrating because they are just a wee bit uneven. It’s impossible to get a clean edge, even with tape, at any point. I do it better freehanding, really.

I’m heading off to shower and bed now. I’ve got a job interview for a temp position as a receptionist tomorrow. While I’m here to do puppetry, it usually takes a year or two to establish oneself in a new community. Gotta keep food on the table and paint on the walls while that’s happening, eh?

Last night, Kahlua invited us out to dinner with her and her daughters. We hadn’t seen them since Iceland, so were delighted to go. She suggested Gavroche, a French Bistro. We had forgotten that it was Bastille Day, so it was crowded, even more so than usual for a NYC restaurant. But they have a charming garden in the back, and it was Nicole’s (her oldest daughter) birthday. (The youngest one is the one I worked with in Iceland.) We were also joined by the girls’ father, Miss Emily DeCola, and Nicole’s boyfriend, Davi. I have no idea how Kahlua swung getting a table in the garden for such a large party.

Much to our surprise, Stefan was in town from LA for the night. We had no idea he was coming. I guess he got in around 7:00 pm, has a gig today, and is flying back home tonight. Crazy life of actors. It was so good to see him. We trotted out the Icelandic for about three sentences and then spent the rest of the evening in English. Which is good because I have so not been practicing.

But I think we all really enjoyed reminiscing about Iceland itself and didn’t talk about the show at all. Certainly, Stefan had wonderful, wonderful stories to tell about growing up as the son of a whaler. Fascinating stuff. I miss being there.

The meal itself was good, but not exceptional. Solid, well-conceived food. sigh… I sound like such a food snob. It was a lovely evening. Hopefully the first of many.

(By the way, for those newcomers to my site, I worked on this show, but try to avoid using the name to make it harder for fans to search for it. The producers of the show let me blog while I was working there with the understanding that I would keep my posts generic and specific to the work that I was doing. There’s also the fact that one of my co-workers, the youngest daughter referred to earlier, is a minor and some of her fans can be a little creepy.)

People keep asking me how I like living in NYC. It’s only just feeling like maybe we do live here. I mean, we spent a week driving. A week after we got here, I went off to Readercon for three days feeling very much like I’d driven straight from Portland to Burlington with a brief stopover in NYC.

But, there are some things in the apartment that have come together in ways that really please me. For instance, we had all of these wooden wine crates that we brought the china out in. What to do with them? Or how about the baskets that only really get used when I have company? Behold! They are in the kitchen.

Shelving in process

Yesterday, Rob and I headed out to the Union Square Farmers’ market to pick up produce and bread. Trader Joe’s has opened up a branch just a couple of blocks from the farmers’ market so we picked up some staples. Interestingly, they don’t have the same stock as the one in Portland, so we had to skip some favorites.

In the evening, I went to the closest organic store here and discovered that yes, they do have spices in bulk. Hurrah! I’d also taken my granola jar so I could stock up. I explained what I wanted to do.

“You have to weigh it first,” he said.

Pointing to the weight written on the jar, I said, “I already have the tare, but can double-check.” Why not, I figured, after all I could be trying to pull one over on him. So I put it on the scale, which read 2.00, just like I had written on the jar. So I get a couple of scoops of the granola I want to try, look at the other items and then come back to check out.

He plunked the jar on the scale and it read 2.67. “That’ll be $10.63.”

“Um…” I looked at the half-empty jar. “Really? I think you’ve got the weight of the jar in there too.”

“Huh. How much did the jar weigh?” He scowled at me. “Did you weigh this?”

I was one of two customers in the store. The other was a tall, cadaverous man with a beard who arrived after I weighed it. I smiled and nodded anyway. “Yes. It was two point oh.” Again, I point to the weight written helpfully on the jar.

“Grab a bag and put the granola in that. So I can weigh it.”

“What?”

“A bag. Get a bag. From there. Put the granola in it so I can get the right weight. I don’t know how much the jar weighs.”

“But I don’t want a bag. If I’d wanted a plastic bag, I wouldn’t have lugged a two-pound jar with me to the store. We know the jar weighs two pounds, so that means I have .67 pounds of granola.”

The cadaverous man chimed in. “You can put the tare in the scale to get the right price. I used to do this all the time at a food co-op out west.”

I smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks. That’s what we did back in Portland. I’ve just moved.”

He nodded as if he knew exactly what I was going through. The guy behind the counter punched some buttons and finally said, “$2.67 cents.”

We all agreed that sounded right, so I gave the counter guy the money and said, “So what do I need to do next time I come in? Because I’m going to bring my own containers again.”

As if he was my new best friend he said, “I’ll figure it out. Don’t you worry. Next time, I’ll know how to use the scale.”

Oh good.

Honestly though, if I’d found another place with spices in bulk or if this weren’t the closest organic store…