Spotlight On: Fine Lines

Those of you who are roughly between the ages of 20-30 and female and were the type of lonely child who dreamed about life on the frontier or tundra or shipwrecked beach more than whatever inane boy band on the cover of Bop!, those of you out there would be glad to learn about the healthy mix of nostalgia and faux-paintings of sad/exasperated/lovestruck teenagers that is "Fine Lines," Jezebel's back-from-hiatus column devoted to all things Young Adult.*

Written by Jezebel contributor Lizzie Skurnick (also, "Lizzie Skurnick"? Most adorable name ever. Whenever I read the column I imagine a smiley 80's style 12-year-old with big crimped hair, crushed neon socks in high tops, and a thousand bracelets), the column focuses on a different YA book a week (past selections include: The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, Jacob Have I Loved, and Homecoming). Lizzie breaks it down for the readers, usually in the kind of breathless excitement reserved for such things that you are unabashedly passionate about. And, between plot summaries and thoughtful character musings, Lizzie helpfully points out the details that make a book leap off the page and stick in your mind (stomach?).

Some might argue books like the Little House series and Julie of the Wolves would have been insti-classics regardless of the lavish descriptions of mud-packing and igloo-making, to which I say it is precisely this level of detail that, for me, tattoos these books on my heart. If you don't get hungry reading how Miyax, aka Julie, a 13-year-old who has run away on the Alaskan tundra, makes owlet stew, as "she sliced her birds into delicate strips and simmered them slowly and not too long. ... Then she drank the rich juices and popped the tender meat in her mouth," well, I just don't even want to know what kind of person that makes you.

These are the kind of books that make me imagine, seriously, where I can get a pig's tail and how to get it on a stick and roast it slowly while fighting over it with my (older, prettier--oh jealousy!) sister, a la Little House in the Big Woods. While in school we focused on plot development (the rise, the climax, the falling action), truly these were the things that made the books seem real to me (and is it any surprise that there is a whole collection of Little House-inspired cookbooks? I would do anything for one of Ma's homecooked Johnny Cakes on a cold winter morning).

Without getting too B.A. in Literature on you (finally found a use for it!), the food scenes often comprised pivotal moments in the characters' lives:
--Miyax uses the traditional Eskimo skills her father taught her to find and prepare food on the tundra, skills that, she later finds out, he has come to reject by the end of the book
--Sarah (of A Little Princess), reduced to poverty and hunger, uses the money she finds on the street to buy beautiful, sugary hot-cross buns and chooses instead to give them to a starving girl, thus learning an important lesson in charity, selflessness, and survival
--And Mary's (The Secret Garden) development as a person is handily charted by the growth of an appetite and her ability to appreciate healthy hunger and good, rich British porridge

I've listed the most foodie Fine Lines columns below, but they're all worth a read. And! If you do like them, Lizzie is currently penning a book based on the column, and you can sign up on a list to be alerted when the book is available. Until then, check out the column, set your tastebuds to "salivate" and lose yourself in the gluttonous magic of literature.

A Little Princess: Reversal of Four Buns
Julie of the Wolves: The Call of the Wild
The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What A Missel Thrush Is
Little House in the Big Woods: "I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon"


*At the risk of fueling gender stereotypes, I presume my male readers' knowledge of such golden stuff is woefully inadequate. It's not too late! I encourage you to raid your sisters' reading shelves, as the lessons gleamed from such strong women as Harriet the Spy and Dicey Tillerman would make anyone a better person.
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Spotlight On: Served

Once upon a time, before I became what some people would call "gainfully employed," I worked as a waitress. I wasn't sure what to think about it, because I'm not exaaactly a people person, I'm not toootally graceful, and I'd been cautioned against it by friends who complained loudly and often about sore feet, abusive customers, and irate managers. But, despite my initial misgivings, surprisingly, delightfully, I loved it. I'm not sure what was so fun about it. Partly, I think, it had to do with working in a college pub right around its much-anticipated debut, but I was also pleasantly pleased to discover that I really enjoyed talking with customers, giving great service, and forming bonds with my other servers, the kitchen staff, and the bartenders (I eventually got some experience with all three). While I love my job and realize that my parents would moider me if I went back to waitressing (an occupation in which I could repay my college bill in, likely, 15 years), I often rhapsodize about my time in the restaurant biz and miss it with astonishing ferocity (some day I will have to devote a whole post to the lessons I learned there).

Perhaps for this reason I am completely hooked on "Served," a weekly column by food writer and waitress Hannah Howard. When most waiters write--especially if they live in New York--they tend to focus on the juicy gossip: the celebrity sitings, the incompetent rookies, the drunks and bad tippers. While there's a time and a place for the juicy stuff (I had flashes of empathy while reading Steve Dublanica's Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip), part of what's so appealing about Hannah's column is her earnest and straightforward assessment of her waiting life.

She deals with all the normal things, the weird customers (like the the guy who asked to take her picture and mentioned he had an apartment above her restaurant and she should check it out), the awkward tip moment (I too have experienced the heartbreaking wonder of whether my customers had purposely tipped me 2%), and the requirement to be friendly and chipper despite throbbing feet and general abuse. But she also muses on her future in the business, whether she should take the financial risks of running her own place and how the industry is weathering the current economic crisis. In a world where most people rarely think about their servers, except in terms of how fast they refill water glasses, she offers a refreshing point of view on the complex life of a waiter.

In her most recent post, one of the commenters said "I like your stories. I like that things just happen without a neat little resolution. Kinda like life," and it's true! While other bloggers try to punch up their lives with gratuitous Sex and the City-style confessions (see: 95% of women's "lifestyle" blogs), Served takes a more thoughtful, diary-like perspective. I think it works. The content is so interesting--to me, a former waitress, anyway--that she doesn't really need to lay on the intrigue.

Now that New York restaurants are reeling from the financial collapse, which effectively emptied the pockets of some of their best and most lucrative customers, it's interesting to see how a young waitress with aspirations of staying in the industry navigates this new landscape. Hannah, a brand-new college graduate, is, like many college graduates, still looking for a job, hopefully as a waitress. Even if she's forced to find something else, I've got to think, as I reminisce about fantastic tips and my hilarious fellow servers, that she'll come to find once a waitress, always a waitress.

Some posts to check out:
New York Is Not the Only Place for a Restaurant -- Hannah travels to her parents' house in the country, sees pretty restaurants
The Ballsy Waitress -- what to do when a table leaves a suspiciously low tip
Recession Waitressing -- how the recession is affecting waitressing
The Perfect Waiter -- tips learned from waiting tables
Front of the House vs. Back of the House -- the positives and negatives of working the tables or the kitchen
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Spotlight On: Cake Wrecks

Ok, so. I've had my mishaps when it comes to cake-making. There was the molten cake episode, of course. The thoracic-cavity-themed cake for the Halloween party (fondant melted, white chocolate ribs fell apart, forgot the corn syrup for edible blood...). And the time a few years ago I tried to bake a cake for my mom and accidentally misspelled birthday (wow. I actually just spelled it "brithday" right there. Way to go, spellcheck). The one thing I can take comfort in, however, is that at least I don't inflict my cake mistakes on poor, innocent civilians.

Enter "Cake Wrecks," a blog by Jen devoted to professional cakes that are accidentally rife with misspellings, sexual innuendos, missed directions, and bizarre interpretations to hilarious, frightening, and confusing result.





My favorite are the ones where the directions for the cake and the end result somehow got lost in translation. Like the person who brought in a USB drive with a photo of her boss and said she wanted the photo on her cake...and instead got a giant USB drive.

And of course the accidentally sexual ones, like the fireman holding a flesh-colored fire hose.

Although the ones that actually make me incredibly sad are the wedding cakes, where the beautiful and elegant cakes couples picked out are contrasted with the misshapen, shrunken, and absurdly-decorated results (that last bride actually sued. right on.).

Perhaps foreseeing the burnout and depression that would come from seeing too many cakes gone awry, Jen started including entries under "Sunday Sweets," which highlight some of the best cakes and cupcakes out there. They are amazing, and hunger/jealousy-inducing.

Cakes are broken up into categories like Creepy Cakes, Just LOLs, and Mithspellings, and the best thing to do is troll around the site. Also, learn how to bake your own cake before you get married...

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Spotlight On: Foodie at Fifteen (Now 16)

Part of the fun of the Great Food-Blog Experiment (as I've come to refer it) is searching online for other foodie blogs for inspiration and down n dirrty stealing of ideas (just kidding!). It's nice seeing what the other blahgers have come up with, and while I'm intimidated most of the time by what these people come up with on a regular basis (like the Cupcake Project lady--what does she do with all her extras? Also who are these people who have time for 3-course meals every night? I'm lucky when I can heat up cold pizza), it's still comforting to know they are oldies who have been doing this for years and can afford all the trappings of a nice kitchen.

And then! I came across Nick N.'s blog: "Foodie at 15 (Now 16)." At first glance, it seems like a typical recipe/lifestyle blog. But, you start to notice some peculiarities: comfort food after a midterm exam, musings on whether his cooking will get the attention of a girl he likes, copious references to "parents," and that's when you realize (or you realize when you read the title of the blog), this kid is sixteen! Sixteen! When I was 16, my cooking skills started with spaghetti and ended with plain ham and cheese sandwiches. My big, showy meal was fried chicken, the only thing I made better than my mom and only because I used half a stick of butter.

That a 16 year old can make a blog not entirely focused on Gossip Girl or Twilight would be accomplishment enough (zing!),* but his recipes are actually very good! Well thought out, well described, adapted when needed, patient experimentation--he is like your nerdy best friend who says about their science project, "Well, I guess I've been working on this for about a year now, and then the people at NASA got involved and, long story short, I'm going to be on the cover of TIME."

He tends to skew more towards the gourmet--fine-cooked meals with a blend of high-quality ingredients the likes of which I can only briefly glimpse as I pass through the giant Whole Foods in Columbus Circle. And he draws on a surprising breadth of knowledge about food, preparation, substance, and all the knit-picky little things about which I know nothing and which ultimately separate the good chefs from the bad (guess where that puts me...). He has that kind of earnest excitement about food (duck eggs! pancakes! sweetbreads with caramelized endive!) that would be pretentious if it wasn't so charming (like when he buys himself a fancy dinner at Per Se, describes in eloquent detail each and every part of his 20-course--no joke--meal, meets the chef and kitchen staff, and freaks out when he's presented with a book of recipes that is a "50 DOLLAR COOKBOOK!" You just want to give the kid a noogie).

What's also nice about the blog is getting to reimagine the polished top chefs of TV and fancy restaurants as tall and gawky teenagers experimenting in their mom and dad's kitchens, mad-scientist style. Nick seems already well on his way to becoming a successful chef. He's nabbed an apprenticeship at Lacroix in Philly while most teenagers are earning money working as camp counselors.** My guess is he's headed to the CIA (the other CIA) and/or stardom, just like that little mouse in Ratatouille, but I like the idea of imagining him poised over a dorm room hot plate in a paper hat and crisp chef's coat, his roommates crawling out of bed to wolf down stale PB&Js as he gently simmers and stirs.

Image of his food, not him, mostly because I feel weird putting a picture of a 16-year-old boy on my blog. The caption says "Failed duck prosciutto and more" but it looks pretty awesome to me. Also like pancakes.

*Full disclosure: At one point in my life (read: several years), I owned and operated a Newsies fan site. This blog a step up?

** Like me. "Character building."

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Spotlight On: The Amish Cook

I don't really understand how people "invent" recipes. Recipes are something you get from cooks, books, or grandmas. When I want to cook something, I go online until I've found a recipe that doesn't look too complicated or too expensive to throw together. Mostly a good Google search will do the job or I'll visit that bastion of the liberal elite, The New York Times. Sometimes, though, I am looking for something more specific or simpler or I'm bored at work (like, um....), and that's when I turn to my secret weapon. My job (as a journalizer) gives me access to almost every newspaper in the country, and by running a simple code into my computer, I get every recipe in every newspaper in the country. If I let the code run in the background, it amounts to something like a new recipe every 4ish minutes. It's a lot.

Curious about the best place in San Jose to get "ducketta?" Wondering when the Hammonton blueberry festival begins? Let me tell you, via my virtual rolodex of recipes.

The other nice thing about this is it helps me discover things I otherwise would be charmingly oblivious to. Take, for example, my newest obsession, The Amish Cook.

The Amish Cook (note no "Chef" for this humble scribe) is aka Lovina Eicher, a simple wife and mom of (at least) 8 kids who lives in an Old Order Amish community in Michigan. She writes (by hand, natch) about what's going on with her family and adds little recipes relevant to what they're doing. Someone types them up and sends them off to newspapers, where they are read by any number of devoted followers, including me.

What first caught my eye about the column, aside from the thought of how an Amish person could manage a blog, were the image-provoking, homey titles: like "Horse-Drawn Sledding a Christmas Delight" and "Children Happy with Gifts." On days when I am cursing myself that I didn't defrost my chicken, leaving me to eat partially-microwaved, partially-frozen chunks of death, it's nice to know that somewhere in Michigan there's a family that wakes up together at 5a.m. to cook pancakes from scratch.

The Amish Cook has become something of a minor celebrity, as celebrity-like as the Amish get. Her column gets published in over 200 newspapers and the best recipes have been collected in a book, known as (no kidding!) The Amish Cook.

Here's one of my favorite recipes from the Amish Cook:

SOUR CREAM CUT-OUT CHRISTMAS COOKIES

iNGREDIENTS:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
3 ½ to 4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

For Frosting:
1/3 cup shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
½ cup milk
Food coloring (optional)
Colored sprinkles, for decorating (optional)
Chocolate chips, for decorating (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Lightly grease a baking sheet.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
Stir in the eggs, sour cream and vanilla.
Combine the flour, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl and stir with a whisk to blend.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until a soft, firm dough is formed.
Roll the dough out to a ½-inch thickness on a floured surface.
Use your favorite shaped cookie cutters to cut out the dough.
Place the shapes on the prepared pan.
Bake until golden brown around the edges, about 10 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
To make the frosting:
Cream the shortening with the vanilla and 1 cup of the powdered sugar.
Gradually add the milk and the rest of the powdered sugar, beating constantly.
More powdered sugar can be added to give you your desired thickness.
Food coloring can also be added if you like.
Spread the frosting on the cookies and decorate with colored sprinkles or chocolate chips.
Let the frosting set before storing. Read more!