the SIMMER blog

the process of re-vision

It's been a while since I've done a book news update, and partially, that's because there hasn't been much book news to share. I was in a holding pattern for a while. I knew my editor's revisions were coming, so I took time away from the manuscript, hoping that would help me see it more clearly when the time came.

Vision, to see. Re-vision, to see anew.

It's not like I've paid no attention to Ginny and her family in the four months since the manuscript sold. The book has certainly been on my mind. (Oh, pretty much constantly.) And I've been working with my awesome writers' group, which has been critiquing a big chunk of text every few weeks, and providing really helpful insights.

But I felt like once I got started with edits, I wouldn't be able to keep track. The book has already gone through so many revisions, I sometimes forget what's in THIS book as opposed to what was in it at one time. So I let it sit, piled up the critique pages, took a lot of notes, and waited for my edit letter to come in.

It's in. It's time. Here goes the re-vision.

What needs to be changed? Everything, and nothing. It's funny. Whenever I go into a critique session, on some level, I still hope the reader says "There's nothing I'd change about this." That's not what a critique group is for, not at all, but still, that's a little bit of how I feel. But with my editor's changes, there wasn't a shred of that. I wanted edits. I wanted hard questions to be asked. Holes to be poked. Issues to be raised. Because as long as I've been writing, every manuscript has always been a snapshot. A draft could be finished, but the book was never finished.

Obviously, this book is different. Because it's being published. So! I need vision like I've never had before.

Daunting? Sure. Right where I want to be? Absolutely.

preparing for saint patrick

Everyone's got a favorite holiday. I know people who spend two months gearing up for Halloween, for example. Some of us wait all year for a Cadbury creme egg. And there are, of course, the St. Patrick's Day fanatics.

So if you are one of them, and you need something to serve this year that isn't the usual corned beef and cabbage, this menu's for you.

You can pick and choose from the list below and customize, depending on what you're up for. You can do the pork and the cake a couple days ahead, reheat and slice the night of, and have a nice sit-down dinner that doesn't require you to take the day off work for prep. Or you can just serve the cheese fondue and have your friends go potluck on the rest for an easy, cool, casual gathering. Or you can, as I did with this menu, go completely and unrelentingly (and deliciously) overboard. Mmmm, overboard.

The All-Guinness Menu:

• Guinness cheese and crackers
• Guinness cheese fondue
• Pork Braised With Guinness and Sweet Potatoes
• Guinness cake
• Guinness-Chocolate Ice Cream

It's festive, it's unusual, and you'll save yourself the trouble of thinking about what drink to serve alongside.

 

 

OMGarces: Garces Trading Company

Where do I start?

Jose Garces has a gift for coming up with things that I didn't know I wanted until he comes up with them. When we lived in Philadelphia, I went to every single one of his restaurants. I didn't know I wanted to stuff myself on suckling pig with smoky, silky chickpeas and spinach until Amada. I didn't know I wanted to nibble little open-faced sandwiches of duck confit with cherries and bleu cheese until Tinto. I didn't know I wanted to share neo-Mexican tapas like short ribs on flatbread with crowds of friends in a hot pink place with lucha libre masks on the wall and a vintage car in the front window until Distrito. And then there was Village Whiskey (speakeasyish bar food) and Chifa (Peruvian-Chinese fusion), each of which I only went to once, but still recommended happily to visitors and Philadelphians alike, because I liked what I saw... and ate.

And now there's Garces Trading Company, on Locust between 11th and 12th, because I didn't know I needed:

• a combination restaurant/market/wine store (yes! a wine store! in Philly!)
• a pastry case with something beyond cupcakes in it
• to be offered "some walking-around cheese" upon entering a room (to be fair, I suppose I could have guessed I needed cheese, it's the walking-around part that was novel)
• yet more house-made charcuterie
• a marketful of olive oils and balsamic vinegars in small tanks with spigots, so you can taste them before buying, and fill the bottle yourself for purchase
• a hot vichyssoise so rich and buttery it reminded me of chowder, studded with three things I adore: bacon, potatoes, and scallops

The only hiccup on my visit was a jar of "purple condiment" -- you guessed it, something else I had never heard of and had no idea I needed until I saw it -- that was priced at $4.50 on the shelf but rang up at $15. So I made the choice to live without purple condiment, given how much I was already spending on lunch and my market takeaways.

Lunch was the aforementioned vichyssoise chaud, for nine dollars, and the chef's selection of three meats (which happened to be rosette de lyon, chorizo, and finocchiona, three of my favorites). And some pretty incredible bread. More food than I could eat (especially since I had indulged in some other Philly treats that morning, from Capogiro and Flying Monkey) -- it is certainly possible to spend a lot less. Sandwiches, salads, soups, and pizzas are all priced between $9ish and $18ish. 

Market takeaways were a bottle of roasted walnut oil (for a celery/walnut/date salad I will no doubt write about here) and one of cinnamon pear balsamic. Prices aren't cheap, but because you can taste, you know what you're getting.

Of course the only issue now is that I don't live in that neighborhood anymore -- or, indeed, even in that city -- so I can't get there too often. But I suppose that's okay. Too much of a good thing is still too much, right?

(Still... thank goodness for BoltBus.)

wordless wednesday xxxii

wordless wednesday xxxi

 

pop goes the cookie(bar)

While I've technically been living in New York City for six weeks now, the truth is, I really haven't even begun to take advantage of the city's endless food-related opportunities. I did manage to squeeze in a trip to a Tweeting food truck a couple weeks back, and dined at the bar at A Voce Columbus last week, and this week, I finally visited an NYC foodie pop-up store: Dorie Greenspan and Josh Greenspan's CookieBar.

And what a way to start. Dorie's recipe for World Peace Cookies is much beloved across the interwebs, and now it's almost depressing to contemplate making them, since now I'll be chasing the ideal of perfection that is a World Peace Cookie baked by Dorie herself.

(But OMG: such a cookie.)

I would also like to point out that in my family, "I went to a temporary cookie shop located inside a hair salon" is now going to replace "and then they brought pigeon breast to the table on oak branches that had been set on fire and then put out" as Most Bewildering Food-Related Thing Jael Has Said But She Seems To Be Excited About It So I Guess That's OK. 

A few shots of the pop-up shop:

(cookies for sale included molasses, World Peace, chunkers... oh wait, why don't I just show you the list?)

(my fellow taste-tester and I tried six of the eight -- all were delicious, but the molasses, World Peace, and sablés were the best of the best)

Dorie in action:

 

CookieBar is open this week only. Today through Saturday, February 13, from 11am to 7pm... or whenever the cookies run out.

Don't miss your chance, New Yorkers.

(non-New Yorkers: Bake along!)

make vs. buy: ground chicken

So, longtime blog readers may remember that time I made crackers. In the end, the verdict was this: you may be better off, all told, just buying the damn things. The make vs. buy decision can apply to anything -- clothes, quilts, corporate acquisitions -- though of course, here on the blog, it applies most to food.

With this in mind, I did a little experiment. We're trying to be healthy around here. And in general, that means finding new favorites -- like Mark Bittman's recipe for pork in curry-mustard sauce -- and not just trying to de-calorie old standards.

We eat a lot of Indian-spiced chicken burgers. Like, a lot lot.

Ground chicken is a little hard to work with compared to ground turkey, because it's softer. It's also not quite as healthy. But: it's also a lot more moist, which makes it more delicious. Like ground turkey, it is sold in those tiny rectangular packages which seem to have a reasonable price until you realize you're not even getting a pound.

What's a budget-minded chicken-burger-craver to do? Grind your own, of course.

(warning to vegetarian readers: great big meat close-ups after the jump)

the most important word

Today over on Intrepid Media I'm talking about titles! And yes, about the title of my book specifically. Might it stay SIMMER? It might. But if it doesn't, here's what I think the perfect title needs to have. Click below to read:

there's a word for it.

wordless wednesday xxx