Beauties of Stage and Cinema

Today our Symbolism and Decadence lecture was postponed, and the professor arranged for us to watch The Dying Swan (Umirayushcii Lebed), a silent Russian film from 1917, directed by Yevgeni Bauer. Most of my classmates scoffed and chewed gum throughout, and indeed there are moments of the film that, to our modern sensibilities, seem mawkish or silly, and who knows, perhaps they did in 1917, too. Despite this, however, it is a haunting film, a gem of silent cinema. One caveat, however, and that is the rendition of The Dying Swan displayed in the film. Ah, no one could do it like Maya Plisetskaya. Behold: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWYYQN-6tJg).


Trying to describe anything she has done is like trying to describe In Search of Lost Time. Whatever I may say will be inaccurate, inarticulate, inadequate.

While on the subject of dance, here is a wonderful rendition of what must have been an even more magical performance by the imitable Loie Fuller. Shot by the Lumiere brothers! Is she a moth? A flower? A chimera?

***

It was an interesting experience watching a silent movie amidst a room of people. Old films are a good litmus test for concentration and attention span, and the devil knows that such things grow in scarcity as the years pass. Thank goodness for newer films raising awareness of older ones, such as Cinema Paradiso, The Dreamers, and others, not to mention Turner Classic Movies, aka One of My Only Friends in High School. A great documentary came out in 2005 about Henri Langlois, the true Hero of Cinema. He ought to be sainted. Hopefully preservation work continues at a diligent pace, as reels are mouldering away at this very moment...

Come Unto These Yellow Leaves

He wha tills the fairies' green

Nae luck again shall hae :

And he wha spills the fairies' ring

Betide him want and wae.

For weirdless days and weary nights

Are his till his deein' day.

But he wha gaes by the fairy ring,

Nae dule nor pine shall see,

And he wha cleans the fairy ring

An easy death shall dee.

***

***

Cats and Cookies

Meet Lapushka, the wee Persian we adopted a few weeks ago from the Greenhill Humane Society. She's an absolute doll, despite her tendency to walk over our faces at night. A kitty-friend, at last...

Les Chats

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.

Amis de la science et de la volupté
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;
L'Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.

— Charles Baudelaire

***

After nearly half a year, I finally felt confident enough to purchase some flour, as the moth scourge has subsided and the weather has turned crummy. My first tentative venture back into the land of baking began last night with a batch of Scotchies, oatmeal cookies with butterscotch morsels. They didn't come out quite like my mom's but were decadent and wonderful nonetheless. Here's the recipe I used:

Scotchies

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups old fashioned oatmeal

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbs cinnamon

Dash of dessicated ginger

1/2 cup oil

2 egg whites

2 tsp vanilla

2 tbs honey


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Mix wet ingredients in a medium bowl, beating the egg mixture until slightly fluffy.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Gradually stir in 1/2 to 1 package butterscotch morsels.

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a nonstick or greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

The Vaselines

Last Sunday R. and I ventured on a rain-drenched and nearly ill-fated trip to Portland to see one of our favorite bands, the Vaselines. Ill-fated? Indeed. As we were leaving our humble abode (read: total dump), the doorknob broke, and an hour-long debacle of discombobulating the mechanism ensued, peppered with many an obscenity and the frustrated tossing of lock components. By some miracle, R. managed to fix the thing while beating it mercilessly with a hammer while I was out in a blinding rainstorm, cursing the weather, on my way to buy a new doorknob.

Fazed and irritated, we left later than planned but with enough time to perhaps find a nice restaurant and wander about fair Portland. Fate, however, was not on our side, and we ended up lost for about 45 minutes. We eventually found our way to the Wonder Ballroom, wandered, set out in search of food, found none suitable, settled on some rather unfortunate and not entirely agreeable fare, not after being stared-down small-town style in a locals bar, and finally made our way back to the venue, fully drenched from a rather insidious downpour.

Despite all this, however, seeing Frances and Eugene more than made up for our plights, and soon enough we were dry and dancing to Oliver Twisted and I Hate the 80's. Seeing the Vaselines was particularly sweet not only by virtue of their stage banter (Frances is salty and adorable; Eugene wry and witty....), and magical performance, but because R. and I courted and fell in love to their music. We even played Molly's Lips on guitar and mandolin/autoharp together, troubadour-style down neighborhoods and thoroughfares.

Sadly, and somewhat confusingly, the crowd last Sunday was rather small, but this lent an intimate air to the show, and R. and I left satisfied, the madness of the day behind us and forgotten.

***

I highly recommend the Vaselines' new album, Sex With an X. Their sound has become a little more refined, Frances' voice has increased in heavenliness, and the album holds up, if not even surpasses in some ways, their older material. I particularly enjoy their views on younger generations' proclivity towards yearning for decades of yore in which they did not exist. Although I have a predilection for anachronism, and very much admire that of Baudelaire and Plutarch, I must admit that in some aspects nostalgia can take on attributes most irritating, in particular, and in following with the song, this odd worship of all things 1980's is foul and awful. I already loathe the day when the 90's will resurface in some ghastly incarnation.

A lovely quote from Boswell's Life of Johnson:

"...for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore there are no common principles upon which one can persuade another concerning it. Every man feels for himself, and knows how he is affected by particular qualities in the person he admires, the impressions of which are too minute and delicate to be substantiated in language."

***

A friend posted this, and I thought I'd share it. I do wish this would happen at my work--Eugene isn't too far from Portland, after all:



For those of you who have never seen The Music Man (tisk):

The Goncourt Brothers

A while back, in March, most likely, I was browsing at a local used book shop and came across Pages From the Goncourt Journals and bought it, not necessarily because I had ever heard of the work or was too particularly interested, but because it was published by NYRB. Yes, dear reader(s), I am a publisher snob. Oh, I do own a Reader's Digest Book Club edition of Moby Dick, but the damn thing is something of a thorn in my side, and I am putting the Penguin version on my birthday list this year. But I degress! Ahem:

While pondering Bourget for a class the name Goncourt appeared, and I immediately rushed over to the library to see what tomes about or by them were available. Until this moment I had kind of written the Journals off and came close to selling the book on a number of occasions, but a light had gone off, and now it seemed necessary to find out more about them.


I found two different English translations of the Journals, the complete French text (why, WHY did I give up on French???), and the brothers' novels and plays, and checked out the English translations. One is quite inferior, translated by Lewis Galantiere, and the other appears to be the standard (as well as the one published by NYRB), by Robert Baldick.

The lives of the brothers Goncourt, or dare I say life, is on the one hand absolutely compelling and quite touching, indeed: two inseparable siblings penning a journal of their mutual exploits, thoughts, and acquaintances. At once they were men of the society and reviled by it. I love how mercurial they were, as well as their rotten constitutions. On the other hand, the two were disagreeable on so many levels, but the genius of the work and their overall talent overshadows their less savory qualities. I'd highly recommend it if you have even a modicum of interest in 19th century lit, French lit, precursors to fin de siecle, belle epoque, or dabble in literature steeped in debauchery.

***

This quarter has me flustered already, but never fear, recipes and more are on the way!

Update

I've fallen behind in entries as school and my new job at the library draw neigh. However, I shall soon post vintage finds and more recipes! Until next week, enjoy this prose version of my favorite Baudelaire poem, The Fountain of Blood. Au revoir!

Sometimes methinks my blood gushes in torrent, as a fountain with rhythm ceaselessly sobbing. Its slow weltering murmur beats in vain for a spurting wound. As in the lists of tourneys of old, my life's blood streams forth o'er the city and in hurrying stream speeds down her ways, until in the flood each stone stands out a lonely islet and everything that walks or creeps with the red liquid is glutted. Vampire all Nature shows and livid. Of guileful wines oft have I asked respite of a day from the terror that preys, but in treachery they sharpen mine eyes and keen mine ears. In Love have I sought a slumber Lethean, but Love is to me but a bed of quick, pitiless needles that pierce my flesh and drain my veins white.

"But a dandy can never be a vulgar man" --Baudelaire

Seattle Light of Love

A few weeks ago Ryan and I took a trip to Tacoma to visit some family. Since I had never gone to Seattle (after living in the Pacific NW for 5 years!) we decided to take the ultimate tourist-y day trip to the city. No tiny shops. No independent art galleries. That's right, I'm talking about Pike Place Market, the SAM, and the Space Needle!

I want to live in this room.

I do love reliquaries.

Medieval viewers were so outraged at the two men scourging Jesus that they scratched the eyes from the figures' heads.

After conducting lengthy research about Medieval retables and devotional altarpieces, I found the above triptych of particular interest.

A most glorious day, indeed.

Fryolated Goodness

Up until this spring, I had never tried my hand at frying foods. The notion brought to mind greasy conflagrations and bodily injury, but the pull of lumpia (aka: absolute ambrosia) was too seductive to ignore, and thus, for Ryan's birthday weekend, I ventured into the unctuous canola latitudes.


Traditionally my mom has filled her lumpia with a mix of carrot, green onion, mung bean, ground beef, and loads of garlic and ginger. This combination is absolutely fantastic, but I veered from the beaten path and made two different variations. The first followed my mom's recipe, only I omitted the meat, as cooking beef didn't sound agreeable, and I wanted a PKU-friendly lumpia. The second filling was an innovation: a kind of extrapolation from the descriptions of samosas Ryan had given me. Here are two lists of ingredients for each filling:

Filling the First

2+ carrots, shredded in a food processor or with a hand grater

1 bunch green onions, chopped

1 bag mung beans

Fresh ginger and garlic, shredded*

Soy sauce*

Dessicated ginger and garlic*


Filling the Second

2+ Russet potatoes, cubed quite small

1 large yam, cubed as above

1 1/2 cups frozen peas

Dessicated: curry, masala, turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic*

2 tbs light soy sauce*

1 tbs chutney

*To taste

These lists are not exact, as handed down and made up on the spot recipes are wont to be. Simply use your best judgment and play with the taste as you go along.

Other Ingredients Used with Both Fillings:

Egg roll wrappers (2 packages)

Corn starch

Water

Oil for frying

Dipping sauce (sweet and sour is my favorite, but wasabi, Mae Ploy, and others are also tasty)

Method

For filling one, shred carrots, ginger and garlic together in a food processor, and place in a wok or large pan. Stir fry along with mung beans and chopped onions, seasoning to taste, until all the vegetables are soft. Remove mixture and drain excess moisture in a colander.

For filling two, cube the potatoes and yam and stir fry in a wok with spices, soy sauce, and chutney until slightly mushy. Add the peas a few minutes before removing mix from wok.

To assemble the lumpia, begin by dissolving a little cornstarch in water, achieving a slightly watery consistency. With your fingers, spread cornstarch water around the edges of an egg roll wrapper. This will help hold the lumpia together during frying. Filling the wrapper is a trial and error process. You may arrange the wrapper in a diamond configuration or keep it square; I prefer the former. Too much filling will break the wrapper or cause it to explode in the oil, and too little will make the lumpia chewy. Place the filling in the middle of the wrapper.

Fold the top side down over the filling first, tuck the edges in, and roll tightly. If the wrapper won't seal, add a little more of the cornstarch glue.

In a large, deep, flat-bottomed pan, heat enough oil to cover or nearly cover the lumpia. Deep fry until the wrappers are golden brown and bubbly. Drain on a paper towel and serve with dipping sauce.

Yes, they are a lot of work (we didn't eat until around 10 pm) but it's worth it!

***

A few months ago, I made my second major fore into all things fried and made some corn fritters. They came out a little chewy, but they were simple to prepare and damned tasty.


Here's the recipe:

Corn Fritters

2 cups thawed frozen corn

3 egg whites

3 tbs corn starch

2 tbs chopped green onions

2 tsp dessicated garlic

A dash of pepper and salt

Oil for frying

Beat the eggs a little and whisk in the corn starch, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Mix in the corn and green onions.

Add 1/2 inch of oil to a deep frying pan, and when oil is hot, drop 1/4 cup portions of the mix into the oil. Fry for about 2 minutes on each side. Remove from oil and drain thoroughly. Serve hot with soy sauce or hoisin sauce.

The Queen of Hearts Meets King Cake

Today's installment is yet another retrospective, as my proclivity towards lassitude prevented me from posting these in a more timely manner (7 months ago). Let us begin with a trip to Eugene's Rose Garden:


When I moved here, many spoke of the rose gardens this, and the rose gardens that, but I never had a clue what they meant, and figured it was some canard told only to frustrate me. Finally, this past June, Ryan and I embarked on a bike tour of the grounds--we don't live far away from them, it turns out--and what a florid garden it is. Behold:


Millefiori! My photographs do the place no justice, and one would really require the mythical smell-o-vision to fully appreciate this horticultural wonder. I'd highly recommend you visit, but watch out, as heart-shaped trellises attract brides like bees to honey.


Now let's go back...way back...to Fat Tuesday 2010. I try to bake something different each Mardi Gras, although usually I end up making crepes with strawberries and blood oranges. However, after a year of anticipation and talking it up, this past February I made a king cake. Oh, the interweb overfloweth with recipes, and after much thought and pantry assessment, I decided to follow this one, omitting the pecan filling and plastic baby (seriously, they come in packs, what the hell am I going to do with all those? I certainly don't have enough friends, let alone king cake-making friends, to justify a pack of babies). Now if you decide to make this next Mardi Gras, you may find yourself stuck in a number of quandaries, one being "This brioche is damn pretty--I've got to frost it?"


The answer is yes, unless you want to use sprinkles, which would be silly, because frosting is delicious and you know it.


Next you may fret "This king cake is orgasmic, but wait, my good for nothing roommates and I have eaten the whole thing. Do I really have to wait a nearly a whole year to make another?" Again, yes, for tradition's sake, damn it (!), but don't worry, friend, for you see, this recipe serves as an ideal base for making superior caramel rolls and the like. Sure, these won't be the Technicolor wonder that is king cake, but Twelfth Night draws neigh.....

Friday Sundries

In anticipation of the monthly old time jam, I've been infrequently brushing up on playing the autoharp, and attempting to learn some new songs. Prior to moving to Eugene, I had only Mother Maybelle and Karen Mueller to look up to as autoharp heroines, but over the past year I've been introduced to Mike Seeger, Kilby Snow, Ernest Stoneman, Neriah Benfield, among others through Ryan, the library, and the glorious fruits of the interwebs. While watching the BBC's documentary Folk America, I was surprised to learn that Janis Joplin played the 'harp--how 'bout that?


This week's lesson plan consisted of Freight Train and Cindy. Alas, progress has been slow, but not disagreeable; I love strumming the beautiful and bright 'harp that Ryan thrifted in Bakersfield (for an enviable $40)--it's a pleasant change from my own dusty instrument.

If any Eugene readers with a penchant for antiquated music happen to come across this blog, the old time jam is held at Cozmic Pizza at 7 this eve. Hopefully someone will incite a square dance...

***

Synthetic materials are much too diaphanous to withstand the bitter and damp Willamette winter, and thus I was pleased to find wool skirts and a heavy wool coat at the local second hand shops these past few weeks. This state has hideously long, blighted winters, compared to California, at least, and I essentially live in my coats during the cold weather, emerging to expose my bare skin for the absolute minimum amount of time possible. Ryan had no idea what I looked like underneath my black pea coat until April rolled around. I would highly recommend investing in a $3 wool skirt and a pair of opaque tights as an alternative to jeans this winter. One would be amazed at how warm these items are.

***

Yesterday I held a bag of flour in my hands, sighed, and put it back on the shelf. It still doesn't feel like full-on baking weather yet, although I am chomping at the bit! Here is a little retrospective on one of my last cookie batches: some delightfully puffy ginger snaps I made for my dad's birthday:


Ginger Snaps

2 cups sifted flour

1 tbs ground ginger

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg white

1/4 cup molasses

1/3 cup cinnamon sugar

Sift flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into a mixing bowl. Stir the mixture to blend evenly, and sift again into another bowl.

Beat butter until creamy. Gradually beat in sugar, then the egg white and molasses. Gradually sift in the flour mixture, in thirds, and mix together until a soft dough forms. Pinch off small amounts of dough and roll into one inch diameter balls. Roll each ball into cinnamon sugar and place 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven until the tops are rounded and slightly cracked, about 10 minutes.

*I can't recall for the life of me where I found this recipe--let me know if you find the author!

**Also, when I made these for my dad, I cut the sugar in half, substituted the butter with margarine and used less than called for, and added two tablespoons of flax meal to the dry mixture, to very tasty results!

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Stuffed Bell Peppers and Cheap Books

The local Saint Vincent de Paul locations held a sale this weekend, wherein books and other wares were 50% off. I found a few worthy tomes, and combined with last week's Goodwill finds, my reading list has increased considerably:



Coming across Chronicles was particularly fortuitous, since it's required for an upcoming history course.

Ryan found The Ghost Map on Sunday and forgot to tell me about it until the next day, necessitating another trip across town in order to pick it up. I had already read it last summer, but being particularly enamored with books on disease, and parsimonious as hell (it was 33 cents!), how could I let it go?

I also bought Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. His recipes are agreeably healthy and considerably simple to make PKU-friendly. I'm currently in the process of replacing my cookbook library with more applicable works. Most of my cookbooks were given to me by my grandmother, and due to the fact that they are primarily mid-century, they all, let's put it frankly, suck. Bread books from that era are wonderful, and the period produced a number of absolutely wonderfully weird cookbooks that I collect mainly to scoff at. The bulk of my grandmother's, however, seem to contain about 50 recipes each that are a simulacrum of this:

3 pounds potatoes (dissevered however ye please)
1 cup butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Bake at 350 degrees

This yields, as one may surmise, a bland, buttery, and invariably undercooked dish. I could weigh further invective, but I've more pressing matters, such as last night's dinner:




Rice Stuffed Bell Pepper(s)*
Loosely based on a recipe by Dr. Ornish

2 bell peppers

2 cups stock

1 celery stick, diced

1 cup brown rice

1/2 can Italian style stewed tomatoes

1/3 cup frozen peas

Spices: I used a heaping amount of dessicated garlic and basil, some ground pepper, and cumin


Slice the upper 1/3 off the bell peppers to make lids and set aside. Remove the seeds and ribs from the interior of the peppers. Boil the peppers until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Drain and immerse in cold water, and when cool, pat dry.

In a medium saucepan, combine stock, celery, rice, and tomatoes and bring to a boil over high heat. Add spices to taste. Cover and simmer on low for 40 to 50 minutes, adding the peas during the last 10 minutes or so.

Scoop rice into bell peppers and cover with lids. Place peppers in a dish and bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

We garnished ours with some Tapatio.



*Ryan and I are little people, so I only made one.

Oatcakes!

While reading Reay Tannahill's book Food in History, I was inspired by this passage:

"The plain flour-and-water flatbread still survves in many parts of the world, sometimes improved by the addition of a little fat, usually seasoned with salt. The Mexican tortilla and the Scots oatcake, the Indian chapati and the Chinese pao ping, the American Indian johnnycake and the Ethiopian injera are all direct descendants of neolithic bread, utilizing virtually the same balance of materials. It is mainly the difference in the basic grain--maize, oats, wheat, or millet--which makes the end products seem so dissimilar."

I researched oatcake and came up with a pleasing-sounding recipe. Alas, I didn't write down the author...

Oatcakes

2 cups oats, ground to a flour-like consistency in a food processor or blender

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/4 cups oats

2 tbs. oil

6-8 tbs. hot water (I used much, much more)

Combine the oat "flour," baking powder, salt, and 1 cup of the oats and stir. At this point you may add any combination of spices to the dry mix as you wish. I added a heaping pile of cinnamon and some ginger.

Stir in the oil and enough hot water to make a ball of dough. Be warned, add too much water and your dough will be sticky and unmanageable!

Divide dough in half. Spread remaining 1/4 cup of oats on a work surface and roll each ball around in the oats to coat. With a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a circle with a diameter of about 9 inches. Edges will be ragged. Cut each circle into four wedges.

To cook, place wedges on an oiled, floured baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, or at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, until firm and lightly colored.


These will be dry and a little bland, despite the spices. I put honey on mine, and many recipes recommend butter and jam as toppings.

Ryan described this as "poverty food," and indeed, any staple grain mixed with water and cooked in whatever manner has served as fare for the less than privileged for ages. My parents lived in Puerto Rico for a time in the worst of conditions, and survived on fried flour and water until they learned how to make "soup" in a popcorn popper.

I discovered Tannahill's book while researching Roman food a few years back. It is utterly fascinating, and a great companion to more in-depth studies of period food. I have a particular interest in Medieval cookery (which makes sense, me being a Medieval studies major), and if you, too, have even the slightest inclination to such antiquated and nerdy pursuits, do look into the following:

Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks--Hieatt

The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy--Redon

The Medieval Cookbook--Black

The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages--Scully

*This has been the Reading Rainbow portion of today's entry*

The Glorious Return of Thee Lass

After very nearly a year of neglect, I have returned with many recipes, photos, and documentation of sundry adventures. Where to begin? I would be remiss to omit a mention of this summer's tastiest alcoholic offering, behold: strawberry wine!


This concoction was something of a revelation. Lo! Carlo Rossi and the last of the season's strawberries. My version of Ms. Kibler's wine was kind of inferior, though, since California fruit is exponentially better than what I find up here in Eugene. Even so, Blush or white Zin made sweeter and syrupy is the ideal drink to sip during the waning days of the short Oregon summer.
Ryan's* mom also gave me a few boxes worth of absolutely lovely vintage kitchen wear, including milk glass mixing bowls and some amazing Fiesta Wear cups:


I love, love that color. These are the perfect-sized coffee mugs, too; nice and petite!

**************************************************************************

Last year I went on something of a baking frenzy, which lasted until this June. I usually lay off on oven usage during the warm weather (no easy task!), and a recent moth infestation decimated nearly all of my pantry goods. It brought a little tear to my eye to toss out bags of sushi rice, pouches of flour, and my beloved Jiffy mix. The wee bastards even infiltrated my Belgian pearl sugar, but I couldn't part with it and placed the box in the freezer. Luckily an overpriced bag of gram flour survived, as well as most of the noodles**, so I suppose my hopes for pakora and Kung Pao spaghetti have not been compromised. This sudden dearth of ingredients definitely sucks, but it will allow me to catch up on all the posts of lovely things I've made this past year. (Meanwhile Ryan and I will probably survive on peanut butter sandwiches and Top Ramen.)
Here's a peek of what's to come:

King Cake
Lumpia Two Ways
Cookies!
Pot Stickers
Samosas
Corn Fritters
More!

In addition, I'll post pictures of this year's exploits, book reviews, as well as vintage finds from around the Pacific Northwest and California.

*My extra-lovely boyfriend
**Alas, but not my bunny-shaped pasta. Sad times.