Friday, August 15, 2003

I am sorry that I did not mention Julia’s birthday earlier today.  I will plead not guilty because I was misled by my husband into believing that Julia’s birthday was August 1 and I had already missed it.  But as it turns out, August first is only Julia’s Birthday (Observed.)  My bad. Also, I was a little woozy this morning from drinking the vodka gimlets I forgot to mention.  Hey.  It was a blackout. But Eric and I did celebrate Julia’s big day, with an improvised alfredo pasta containing her Solution for Canned Onions.  I love that she gives this recipe because canned onions “are so useful in an emergency.”  That emergency where you can’t buy onions?!  I think if I’m in a situation where I can’t buy an onion, I’m going to have other things to worry about besides whether my canned onions taste “unpleasantly sweetish and overacidulated.”  And then she gives a recipe that entails boiling the onions once, draining them, then simmering them for fifteen minutes in mushroom stock and butter with parsley, bay leaf and thyme.  So she’s not talking about that emergency when you need onions instantly and just don’t have the time for that peeling and slicing nonsense.  Anyway, I did it, and then proceeded to coat them with so much cream and cheese that you couldn’t taste them at all anyway. And for dessert, Gateau Fourre a la Crème d’Orange.  For this I made a filling of butter, sugar, eggs and egg yolks, zested orange rind, orange juice, and orange liqueur, all of which I beat together in a double boiler until it was hot and thick.  I beat it until cool again in a bowl of cold water.  Then I sliced the Gateau a l’Orange that has been sitting in my fridge for the past three days in half horizontally, which sounds like something I could really easily fuck up royally, but which turned out fine.  I spread the filling in between the two layers and put the cake together again, then painted the whole thing with apricot glaze, which I made by boiling together apricot jam I’d run through a sieve and some sugar, until it was thin and clear and sticky.  Once the glaze set a little, I stuck pulverized almonds on the edge, which was very pretty.  This we ate for Julia’s birthday.  We even sang happy birthday, because that’s the kind of dork I am. Julia, I can only hope that in this past year I have soaked up, in some osmosistic manner, something of your will, your confidence, and most of all your unashamed relish for life.  You are teaching me to master the art of French cooking, sure.  You’re also teaching me to master the more delicate art of pleasure and joy.  Thank you.  May you always have plenty of butter.   10:10:45 PM    comment []

Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a Blackout, or: How I Decided it was Time to Move to Weehawken. Every time I put on a too-tight dress and a pair of ridiculous high heels, disaster strikes.  After we evacuated our building – we New Yorkers are turning into evacuation troopers, tell you what – a gentle sort of chaos reigned.  I got home via ferry.  A ten minute ride, really quite pleasant.  It was only the three-hour wait in an unrelenting press of angry outer-borough denizens that made me wonder about the five dollars they charged me.  The usual charge for the ferry is, I think, three fifty, but the woman at the entrance to the boat stuffing bills into a plastic I Heart NY bag said five.  A good day for the ferry business, or maybe just for one woman with a really good idea.  Before they took our money, they (“They”) spent a good deal of time amusing themselves by sending us randomly back and forth from one slip to another, just because watching exhausted working class people lumbering around like confused cattle is fun.  Seriously, I find it very disturbing that in two years it seems never to have occurred to these people that Manhattan might need to be evacuated by ferry, and maybe they ought to install oh, I don’t know, buy a couple of bullhorns?  Those battery-charged babies can’t cost more than, what?  Fifty dollars?  Shit, I’ll buy ‘em one.   The Weehawken ferry arrived, I kid you not, every five minutes. Oh, and I got recognized on the pier by a fellow L.I.C.er.  Hellooooo, fellow L.I.C.er!  Thanks for making my very bad day a little brighter!  I fear I sort of acted like a moron about it, forgive me – I’ve never been recognized before. So I got across the East River and caught a ride home – thanks Mr. Man With the Car Driving People to Astoria! – so my experience with the Blackout of ’03 commute was not as bad as it might have been.  The normally empty streets of Long Island City were crowded with folks who clearly had a lot farther to walk than me.  At home Eric’s editor Peter was preparing to bunk down with us.  I got ready to cook dinner – after getting out of my dress, I was most frightened when Eric couldn’t get the zipper down – but I was feeling a little lackadaisical, I must say.  And then I hear “Julie!!!” from the street, and there are Jessica and Ben, who had just walked across the fucking Queensborough bridge.  Jesus.  So this was rapidly becoming a party! With a flashlight wedged under my chin and candles everywhere, I sautéed rice in butter – would have used some onions there but I had none, or if I did they were lost in the dark refrigerator -- and braised it in chicken broth, then put it into my savarin pan for Riz en Couronne, a rice ring.  I sautéed chicken livers in butter, and cooked down a sauce with vermouth and broth.  Eric helped with frying up some eggplant.  This was all relatively easy, actually, considering I was doing it in the dark.  But I was distracted by the festival mood.  We ate dinner in our lovely dining nook surrounded with candles, and bitched about work and it was great fun, actually, and then Eric went out and bought some cones from the Good Humour man – a good night for Good Humour men.  It was eleven at night and the streets were still full of people walking, but we were home.  Or I was anyway.  Everyone bunked down on couches and flokhati rugs, and we slept.  Ben slept so well that he didn’t even wake up when the light bulb directly over his head in the dining nook came blazing on at 4:30 in the morning. I love being a nonessential employee.  The guy on the radio is telling me to “stay in, relax, don’t over exert yourself.”  Check.  Maybe I’ll ice a cake. I wonder how Julia passed the time during the blackout of ’77?   8:34:03 AM    comment []