My 40th Year on Earth: So what did I actually do?

Welcome to the last Island post of 2019 and the first post written from my new home! As I write this, Keely is sitting behind the curtain of the sliding glass door (his favorite spot), looking out into the dark morning. He may never come out of his hiding place. Maybe Keely understood 2019 better than all of us.

I always go into a new year trying my best to be optimistic and hopeful. Last year, around this time, I decided that I was going to spend 2019 doing things that I've always wanted to do but hadn't gotten around to doing. I wanted to live my 40th year on Earth (I turned 40 in June) in a way that included fun, challenge, and whimsy. I devised an impressive list of what I would try to accomplish:

• January: Participate in a Polar Bear Plunge to benefit Special Olympics VA. (ON)
• February: Ride in my first Mardi Gras parade. Hail Nyx! (FF)
• March: Actually sing at a karaoke night.  (T)
• April: Mastering the Art of French Cooking - I'll make a four course meal from this iconic cookbook. (ON)
• May:  Take a welding/jewelry class. (ON)
• June: Experience my 40th Birthday Extravaganza. I don't know what this means yet, but I'll figure it out. (FF)
• July: Launch my podcast, Don't Be a Jerk at Work. (T)
• August: Enter the Arlington County Fair baking contest, probably in the holiday cookie category.
• September: Take drum lessons. (FF)
• October: Go to Hershey Spa because why wouldn't I want to go to a chocolate spa? (PS - I don't like strangers touching me, so this is both a fun goal and a little uncomfortable for me.) (FF)
• November: Put The Craftery plan on paper. (T)
• December: Send Transient Suburbia proposal to at least two publishers. (T)

I classified these activities into three categories: For Fun (FF), Terrifying (T), and Outside the Norm but Still Different (ON). 

So what did I end up doing in 2019? Of the twelve activities, I completed six (links to the posts about each one are in the above list). I jumped into cold water for charity, I rode in a freaking parade, and I sang in public. I didn't make a four course meal from MTAOFC, but I did make the Queen of Sheba cake, one of Julia Child's most famous cake recipes. We threw a huge party at a winery to celebrate my birthday, my dad's birthday, and his retirement. I also embraced my inner old person during the month of June by getting irrationally mad because someone parked in my parking spot. 

I also listened to all four solo KISS albums so you never have to. I'm giving in that way. 

There were things I didn't do, and most of the things I didn't do were big things. These are projects I really care about, but am still not 100% in the right mindset to work on them. That's been something I've really focused on in 2019: mindset. No, this is not a post about Carol Dweck. I tend to focus on the things that could go wrong very quickly or what won't work, and I've made a concerted effort in 2019 to do the opposite. So I didn't send my novel to a publisher or start a podcast or figure out how to one day open my craft store. That's okay. Those things aren't supposed to happen right now. They'll happen when they're supposed to happen. Maybe this sounds like a cop out, but I don't think it is. I want to be able to focus on these projects to make the most of them. I wouldn't have been able to give them the attention they deserve this year. For me, that would be worse than failing. 

Instead of those things, I bought a house, admitted to being a perfectionist and how I need to let that go, presented at my first professional conference, celebrated one year with Keely, and went to Game 4 of the NLCS to see the Nationals advance to the World Series (I also went to the World Series parade because the Nats won). I got a button maker for my birthday and I went axe throwing. 

2019 was a year of introspection for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about what would make me happy, not my parents or my friends, but me. I bought a house (condo, but you know what I mean), something I really never saw myself doing. I got promoted, and have been focusing on being a better manager, which means failing spectacularly but doing it anyway. I asked for help, probably more than I have before. I also had a freaking blast this year, even when things were stressful. I got to spend time with people I love dearly. I rode in a freaking parade (I know I said this already)! I made glitter purses, probably the most frivolous thing I can do. Fun, challenge, whimsy - that's what I did in 2019.

Happy New Year from the Island! 

See you in 2020 for more glitter, Keely, and whatever else I decide to share.

My 40th Year on Earth: The Queen of Sheba

Whenever I make a loaf of banana bread or a batch of sugar cookies from my grandmother's recipe, I always think about the convenience of modern baking equipment. The first stand mixers were sold mostly to professional bakers starting in 1914. Home versions came a few years later, but were expensive, around $200(which would be around $3K today, calculating for inflation). Later models were smaller, more efficient, and more affordable. The more more affordable versions were still expensive, so electric hand mixers were often a more cost friendly choice, but man would it suck to use a hand mixer for certain types of recipes. One of the most famous stand mixers, Julia Child's blue KitchenAid, is on display at the Smithsonian's American History Museum. It's part of a permanent display of her kitchen. If you haven't seen it in person, I highly recommend a visit.

I love my stand mixer, Stanny. My parents gave him to me as a 30th birthday present after my previous stand mixer (my mom's 25+ year old one) decided it had mixed enough things in its life. Stanny makes marshmallows possible. He's moved cross country with me, living in his own box because he's so heavy. The convenience of Stanny cannot be understated. 

However, Stanny doesn't always have a place in a recipe, and that includes the subject of today's entry into my 40th year on Earth. When I made my original list of things I would do during this momentous year, I planned to make a four-course meal featuring recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. April has been surprisingly busy, so I had to re-plan a bit, and settled on making one recipe instead...the Reine de Saba, or Queen of Sheba, cake.

Let's be 100% honest: this is really the only recipe I want to make in this cookbook. I bough my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking not long after reading My Life in France, a wonderful book written by Julia Child and her great nephew, Alex Prud'homme, focusing on Julia and Paul's arrival in France and her immersion into the world of French cooking. I love this book and I love Julia Child. She wanted to make French cooking, veiled in so much history and snobbery, accessible to home cooks. Both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking contain more than recipes; Julia and her co-authors are teaching the reader how to cook. Techniques are broken down, equipment is explained, and ingredients are discussed at length. One recipe leads you to at least three other sections of the cookbook. Julia has a technique for everything. It's best if you follow her suggestions; she knows things.

Quick aside: My Life in France is also featured in the movie version of Julie & Julia; it's the basis of the Julia Child portions. If you haven't watched the movie or read Julie Powell's memoir, I give you permission to skip both. Or to only watch the Julia Child parts of the movie; they're the best parts. Originally, I was going to focus more on this, but why bother writing about my negative reaction to both? If you ask me nicely, I'll share my full opinion with you, preferably while drinking a really good glass of wine at 1 pm on a Tuesday. It'll be oh so very French.

Back to the Queen of Sheba cake. It's one of the last recipes in MTAOFC and is a surprisingly short cake recipe. There are ten ingredients in the cake, and five references to other sections of the cookbook for instructions on a particular technique. These include:

• How to butter and flour a cake pan
• How to cream butter and sugar
• How to beat egg whites
• How to scoop and level flour for measuring
• How to pulverize almonds (new one for me)

I read all five of these helpful tutorials. I've been baking since my pre-teens, and have, miraculously, been doing four of the five of these correctly the whole time. Pulverizing almonds was new for me; add sugar before pulsing in a food processor so the oil from the almonds doesn't become lumpy. Who knew? 

The Reine de Saba cake was supposedly the first French cake Julia Child enjoyed upon her arrival in France. I have no idea if this is true, but what an experience it must have been! This isn't the chocolate cake we're all so used to. It's meant to be slightly underdone, making it creamier in the center. It's not the type of cake that requires filling. It's often left naked, without frosting or glaze, or with a simple dusting of powered sugar. Frosted versions are decorated with almonds. It was named for the Queen of Sheba, a ruler from the 11th century BCE (probably), who ruled what is today Ethiopia and Yemen. She was a visitor to King Solomon's court, and may have had a son with him. To paraphrase something I read about her, her parts of the Bible are pretty boring so they probably actually happened. She also appears in Islamic stories and figures prominently in the folklore of Ethiopia. If you're an American Gods fan, Bilquis is another incarnation of the Queen of Sheba. This concludes your history lesson for today.

The French often named confections after famous or infamous figures from history. The Queen of Sheba cake falls into this category. It's a rich chocolate cake with almonds in the batter and as decoration. It's almost flourless, and based on the tastes I had as I was baking it, super decadent. It seems fitting to name it after a queen who "sped" to Solomon's court in three years time (it was a seven year trip), bringing gold and riches with her. 

What's most interesting about making this cake isn't the history, but getting used to the way the recipe is written. I guess I've become accustom to the way recipes appear online or in modern cookbooks; everything is detailed in one place. I always read a recipe multiple times before baking, and this was no exception. I also read my five how-tos several times, just to make sure I was doing everything to Julia's specifications. I browsed through a few versions of the recipe online too, mostly for tips since that's really what internet recipes are for. This was a poor decision. You see, I got so comfortable with how I do things, that I neglected one of the most important things about making a recipe from MTAOFC:

Julia Child knows things. And she is always right when it comes to technique.

Julie Powell discovered this during her year spent cooking and baking her way through MTAOFC. You have to do things the way Julia tells you. This includes, but is not limited to, drying the pieces of beef for beef bourguignon, the temperature of eggs, the way in which you whisk anything, and how to kill a lobster. Even when she makes a mistake, Julia makes it a learning moment. As I was making the cake last night, I followed the instructions from one of the online versions of the recipes for melting the chocolate. I wasn't sure my pans would work the way Julia wanted them to work. I don't temper chocolate ever, so I don't have a double boiler or metal or glass bowls for melting over simmering water. Julia's method is just a small saucepan resting in a larger saucepan. I should have listened to Julia. I melted the chocolate as I do for similar recipes and it was an absolute failure. It didn't melt, but clumped. This would not do.

So I threw it out and started again, following Julia's instructions. Of course, it worked perfectly the second time. MTAOFC was a multi-year writing project because Julia, Simone, and Louise tested every recipe and technique multiple times. They didn't put anything in the book that didn't work. I should know better, but I'm set in my ways and know things too. Just not as many things. And apparently not how to properly melt baking chocolate.

Once I got the chocolate situation under control, the recipe was a breeze. There's very little flour, only 1/2 cup of cake flour, and minimal sugar. The pulverized almonds take the place of more flour and give the cake a nice flavor. It bakes in 25 minutes (20 minutes in my oven), so a quick bake. I let the cake sit over night before adding the icing. The icing is even easier: just chocolate, coffee, and butter. I used the pan within a pan method for melting the chocolate then hand mixed butter to give it a creamy consistency. The last step was moving the pan into an ice bath, stirring until the icing got to the right consistency for spreading. I've never done this before, and it's an amazing technique. It takes almost no time and is easy to control from a mixing standpoint. Icing and frosting can quickly go south if you beat it too much. This method makes that less of a concern. It was easy to work with once it was ready and I finished the cake with almond decorations.

A few of my friends came over today for wine and crafts, and we enjoyed the cake. It's definitely denser than most chocolate cakes I've made. It's like a cross between a torte and a brownie, creamier in the center, but not hard to eat. It's not overly sweet, but not bitter because of the semi-sweet chocolate. The coffee and almonds make a difference; you can definitely taste both.

I will definitely make this cake again, but follow Julia's directions from start to finish. There's no reason to not follow her recipe. She knows how to make an elevated, fancy recipe approachable. Julia Child knows things. Trust Julia Child.

Pen Pals

Earlier this week I re-watched the film version of Julie Powell's book Julie & Julia. In both the book and the film, Julie spends a year cooking her way through all of the recipes in Julia Child's iconic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Child and her co-authors, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, wrote a cookbook with the home cook in mind; they wanted French cooking to be accessible and delicious. I own a copy of this cookbook; I have never made anything from it. Powell blogged about her experience which led to articles in The New York Times and the eventual book. Throughout the year, she struggles with self-doubt, arguments with her supportive yet frustrated husband, and balancing her project with her actual work. I liked the book mostly because I could understand Julie's need to do something other than her desk job but I never really liked Julie and found her difficult to root for at points throughout. At one point her husband calls her a narcissist because of the focus on her blog; I sometimes wonder if I'm as bad as she is about this blog. I hope not.

I enjoyed the film but mostly because of the sections about Julia Child. These were adapted from a second book, My Life in France. I've read this book twice and love. love, love it. In it, Child recounts her move to Paris with her amazing husband Paul and her experiences learning the art of French cuisine. It doesn't hurt that Meryl Streep plays Julia in the film (and Stanley Tucci is Paul which makes their turns in The Devil Wears Prada even more amusing). She's wonderful, from the accent to the clothes to the precision in the cooking scenes. Amy Adams plays Julie in the film; she definitely captured a lot of what I didn't love about Julie from the book. I have an even harder time with the character of Julie after I read Powell's second book, Cleaving. But that's a tale for another day.

One of my favorite parts of the film is the scene in which Julia Child and Simone Beck come to Boston from Paris  to try to get the cookbook published. Julia's friend, Avis DeVoto, helped to connect them with a publishing house interested in taking on the book. As Julia and Simone make their way through the train station to meet Avis, Julia says something that makes you realize that she and Avis have never met. Simone questions her further and it's revealed that Julia and Avis are pen pals and this will be the first time they'll meet face to face. When they do, it's a lovely cinematic moment. I can only imagine what it was like in real life.

The two women struck up their friendship because of a letter Julia wrote to Avis's husband, Bernard DeVoto. He was an historian and Julia wrote to him about an article he wrote on kitchen knives. Avis responded; her first letter led to over one hundred letters between the women over the course of two years. I'm currently working through As Always, Julia, which details those letters. I love Julia Child despite my not having ever made anything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. After reading My Life in France for the first time I was impressed with her drive and humor. She did something truly revolutionary in the world of food at a time with boxed food and tv dinners were on the rise. She elevated home cooking in a very accessible way.

I decided to come back to As Always, Julia now after having started it a few years ago and not finishing. I'm fascinated by people who write letters; I wish I was better at being a letter writer. Maybe I'll try harder this year. Some argue that letter writing is a dead art, a terrible way to communicate. I disagree. I like the idea of taking time to sit down and write to someone, to ask questions, to describe the events of your day or week, to share a bit of you on paper. You can overshare. You can be angry. You can be passionate. You can be funny. I guess letter writing's only fault is that it's not quick or convenient. Sigh.

I think that's part of the reason I decided my 2014 NaNoWriMo novel would include characters writing to one another. My characters, Harper and Ben, are assigned as pen pals in the fourth grade. Over the course of six years, they write to each other regularly about all manner of things from music to books to the kinds of toys girls in the fourth grade like to how to ask someone out on a date. They never exchange photos and never meet. Well, they don't meet as children. Over Thanksgiving, I started my first major revisions to the novel since last May. I have decided 2016 will be the year I truly finish this novel. During NaNoWriMo, editing is not a possibility and I've found that intentions of writing certain things don't always happen. I ended up with a workable first draft and now it's time to finish.

Which brings me back to letters. One of the things I want to spend more time on are the letters between Harper and Ben. There are letters in the first draft: several in the fourth grade (when they "meet") and several in the ninth grade (mostly from Harper as this is a pivotal year in their relationship). However, I really only scratched the surface with the ones in the novel now. I'm starting back in fourth grade, building on the first two letters they send one another. Does Ben tell her about the tree house? Does Harper get mad about his assumption that she plays with Barbies? How do these letters morph into the ones that become very important later on when Ben is no longer really Ben and Harper is the subject of his art?  R-ewatching the Julia/Avis meeting and diving into their letters is further inspiration. Letter writing is challenging when you're doing it for real; it's even more so when you're writing for people who only exist on paper. I worry that they sound too much alike or too adult. I have to take myself back to the early 1990s yet again; what horrifying fashion trend should I inflict on one of my characters? Should Harper harbor a secret love of NKOTB even though she's so much cooler than boy bands?

I don't know any of these answers yet and that's what I love about coming back to this novel. When I first started it I had it mapped out and on a clear timeline because that's what you have to do to finish 50K words in thirty days or less. Now I have time to go back and add in details I wrote down but forgot. I have time to make these characters even more real. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved the story when I reread it. There are some romcom-y bits here and there but that's okay; they balance things out nicely.

Here's my request: over the next few months, I hope that you'll indulge me as I post some new parts of Transient Suburbia on the Island to test them out and get some reactions from you. I promise there will still be Lazy Movie Weekends, Your Resident Single Friend will stilll help you out, and occasionally we'll do everything wrong together. By the end of 2016, I hope to have the full novel ready to be sent out into the world.

If you want to get caught up on Transient Suburbia, you can check out my posts from last year (and one from a few months ago).