Baking News #145

weeks in review

I ended my 40th year like I started it: by having a party. When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to have friends over or go over people’s houses, because “then they’d expect to come here,” so I dreamed of an adulthood where I would throw dinner parties. I’ll admit, I am less of a dinner party gal than I once imagined, but I enjoy nothing more than having people over and putting out a spread. Ilana bought Lauren and me matching Kathy Hilton sun hats and I was so excited that I, in turn, bought matching hats for Alanna and Jackie. Five gorgeous women across three states wearing ridiculous hats, what a treat! My nephew, normally shy, ran around tapping everyone with a plastic bird skeleton yelling “POISON!” and my niece shushed the party several times because “the zookeeper is sleeping.” I made my teenage cousin Avery take my copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle home with her. All of the Sixers fans were happy for once. I remembered to eat pizza this time – after everyone else left, on the couch with Deb and Soso, watching Reggie Dinkins.

Deb came for the weekend, and we had a beautiful Friday night dinner with and Alanna where we had a perfect view of Philly Elmo on Passyunk and incredible fried cheese. On Saturday, we visited Ro before the party, and Sunday (my actual birthday), we sat outside Triangle and ate sandwiches.

Left to my own devices, I changed into my brand new Sonja Morgan t-shirt (thank you, Alanna), did a mud mask, had a couple of white wine spritzers, and danced around the kitchen to Hall & Oates. I dare you to find a better album than H20 for when you’re hitting the spritz.

Some people speak what they want into the universe, but I’m superstitious. What I want is my business. After the fact, though, I feel comfortable saying that I had a really nice time, not only with the people I love, but just with myself. It has felt lighter to be alive lately (discounting all knowledge of being a person in America, which is an unrelentingly draining experience). Some of it is the sun being out longer and the weather being nicer, as it always is, and some of it is letting myself live. Everything will still get done.

I had a totally manageable amount of leftovers after the party, which meant that I didn’t really cook much last week. It was all cheese plates, baby! I, in fact, told Alanna and Chris on Saturday - over some fine cheeses - that I made a “no cheese plates” rule for this week, which is incredibly easy to follow, as I’ve already eaten all the remaining party cheese, except for the vegan one, which I’ve been using more slowly on sandwiches.

As it’s gotten warmer and I’ve been letting myself off the hook, I’ve been leaning on sandwiches. Things I put on sandwiches include: avocados if they’re on sale, the aforementioned vegan cheese, cucumbers and greens from the farmer’s market, carrots that I quick pickled with dill, garlic, peppercorns, and jalapeno, pickled red onion, tofurkey slices, and a really simple scallion chickpea salad I’ve made a bunch of this week. It’s also good on crackers/chips/pretzels/cucumbers:

It’s a little fussy, because I’m going to tell you to pickle some of the scallions (the white parts and/or any floppy boys), but then it’s really easy. When I make a quick pickle, I usually do 1 part salt to 1 part sugar, and three parts vinegar to two parts water, but I eyeballed. Heat it up enough to melt the salt and sugar, add chopped scallions, and put it in the fridge until later. I’ve used rice vinegar and white vinegar, either is fine.

For the salad itself, you’ll need a can (or more) of chickpeas, fresh and pickled scallions, a clove of garlic (it’s going in raw), tahini, toasted sesame oil, salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast. Mash your chickpeas to a little chunkier than your desired texture, grate in a clove of garlic, then add in pickled scallions and some of the pickling liquid, a spoonful of tahini, a splash of sesame oil, and fresh scallions. Mix it up, add salt and pepper and nutritional yeast to taste, and adjust to your liking. Slap it on some toast (the really seedy “health” bread works great here) or scoop it up with a potato chip.

The one thing I did bake, after Beth fixed my oven again on Monday (thoughts and prayers for my igniter!) was my niece’s third birthday treat, conceptualized by my brother: double chocolate cookies with sprinkles. And lo, Alexandra Stafford’s newsletter delivered me the perfect recipe to futz with over the weekend in her double chocolate espresso cookies. Even though my research suggested that 2 tsp. of espresso powder in a large batch of cookies would not ruin my brother and sister-in-law’s weekend, I decided to swap in 2 tsp. of black cocoa instead. I also added 2 tbl. of milk powder, partially for flavor, and partially because I was a tiny bit light on flour and didn’t want to open the new 10 lb. bag I’ve got on top of the fridge (also courtesy of Beth, an executive Costco member). When I dumped in the chocolate chips, I added a jar of sprinkles, because a third birthday is not the time for subtlety. Obviously, I had to test them, and they’re not too sweet for grownups, and (I hope) whimsical enough for the birthday girl. I’ll find out this weekend, when we celebrate my best girl, who shares her birthday with treasured Baking News reader Marah B. and Real Housewives Kandi Burress and Countess Luann de Lesseps. Happy birthday to glamorous Tauruses everywhere!

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Listening: Meg Stalter’s “The Prettiest Girl in America” is already nominated for a Las Culturistas Culture Award. And she’s the next Mary Todd Lincoln? What can’t she do? I’m also still very into 70’s and 80’s France Gall.

Reading: Finished and loved Afternoon Hours of a Hermit. Patrick Cottrell does such a good job of letting his narrator, Dan Moran, the author of “Sorry to Disrupt the Peace,” tell the story as he understands it while letting everyone else’s understanding seep in through the sides. Moran is a bit of a Christian TeBordo character, for all my TeBordo heads out there, but with an underlying sadness that unique and fine-tuned and wholly Cottrell’s own.

Nancy Lehmann’s Lives of the Saints would have been my entire personality for a while if I read it as a teen or in my early twenties. A book abut New Orleans told from the perspective of a young female narrator with a complicated, but not fully revealed backstory? And she loves a man who is a mess? It would have had me in a chokehold. Not to say that it doesn’t, but I am more a Philadelphian than I ever was a New Orleanian (is that right?). I think her The Ritz of the Bayou might be next up? I’m trying to de-slump.

Watching: I saw Hokum last week and enjoyed it. I like when a character who is a writer is kind of terrible in a way that isn’t ultimately charming, and Adam Scott played it well. Alanna and I had decided to watch “Wuthering Heights” together in a place where we could yell at it, so, anticipating that, I finally saw Promising Young Woman, which I think is a very different movie depending on if you saw Saltburn first, but it still isn’t good! After watching the aforementioned Wuthering Heights, Alanna and I conculuded that the only themes we can really track in Emerald Fennell’s work are: a) goo and b) the poor cannot be trusted. I haven’t read the book since, like, eighth grade, so I was less focused on how weird the plot deviations/framing of the story was (but very!) and more focused on how often people were putting filthy hands in their mouths.