Public Service Announcement

I know there are plenty of food blogs out there. Heck, I know two people that write food blogs, and I'm a pretty avid Slashfood reader. So there is a lot of content out there when it comes to recipes and reviews.

But I gotta share this recipe with you. We made it for dinner on Saturday for our friend JR, who had graciously agreed to babysit for free the rest of the evening so Basil and I could go to a cocktail party. We pulled out some stops (appetizers, filet mignon, etc) and wanted a fancy, delicious dessert to cap it off. This did not disappoint.

It dirties some dishes to be sure, but the only vaguely special equipment you need is a pastry brush and a mesh strainer. Other than a vanilla bean, crème fraîche and fleur de sel, all the ingredients are simple, cheap and easy to obtain. I'm sure vanilla extract and sour cream (and possibly kosher salt) could be substituted in a pinch.

Here is the recipe, posted from Bon Appetit/Epicurious (I tore it out of last September's issue) with my notes in italics. Basil and I decided that this is going to become our default dinner party dessert because most of it can be made a day in advance in addition to it being one of the richest, most indulgent desserts we've ever had.

Enjoy.

Butterscotch Budino with Whipped Crème Fraîche

Budino:
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 large egg
3 large egg yolks
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons dark rum (I used a smidge more cause I like my dessert a bit boozy)

Toppings:
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
1 1-inch piece vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons water
3/4 cup crème fraîche or sour cream
Fleur de sel

For budino:
Mix cream and milk in large bowl. Whisk egg, egg yolks, and cornstarch in medium bowl. Stir sugar, 1/2 cup water, and salt in heavy large pot over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium-high and boil without stirring until mixture turns thick, syrupy, and dark amber (don't let it burn!), occasionally swirling pot and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush, about 7 minutes. Immediately whisk in cream mixture (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir to dissolve caramel bits. (I ended up with a big chunk of quasi-hard candy in a sea of vaguely tan milk, but I kept stirring and trying to break up the chunk. It all dissolved in the end. Be patient and don't give up.) Bring mixture to boil, watching closely to prevent mixture from bubbling over, then reduce heat to medium. Gradually whisk half of hot caramel mixture into egg mixture. Return mixture to pot, whisking to blend. Whisk over medium heat until custard boils and is very thick, about 2 minutes (don't worry about it getting it too thick; you need to be able to push it through a strainer. It will set up more in the fridge). Remove from heat. Add butter and rum; stir until melted and smooth. Strain. Divide custard among ten 6-ounce glasses or cups. Chill uncovered until cold, about 4 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep refrigerated.

For toppings:
Place 1/2 cup cream in small saucepan. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add bean. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Add butter (swirl or stir until butter melts) and set aside. Stir sugar, corn syrup, and 2 tablespoons water in heavy large saucepan over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium-high and boil without stirring until mixture turns medium amber color, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush, about 6 minutes (again, not too dark). Immediately whisk in cream mixture (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir to dissolve caramel bits (see above about the possibility of big chunks). Set pan in large bowl of ice water to cool. Discard vanilla bean. DO AHEAD: Caramel sauce can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.

Using electric mixer, beat remaining 1/4 cup cream in medium bowl until peaks form (I added 1-2 teaspoons of sugar to help the peaks). Add crème fraîche and beat until soft peaks form. Place 1 budino on each of 10 plates. Reheat caramel sauce just until warm. Spoon 1 tablespoon caramel sauce over each budino. Spoon dollop of whipped crème fraîche over and sprinkle with fleur de sel.

Southern Charm

Bad weather can sap the joy out of many a vacation. Too cold, too hot, too humid, too wet, too foggy...it can really make you unpack your adjectives when talking about a trip.

Basil and I spent just over two days together in the city of Savannah, Georgia, and the weather was horrible. Well, the first afternoon was kind of nice, but the second day was rainy all day and the last day was cold and a bit windy. Apparently, it's the way that Georgia treats us.

When we were dating, we took an incredibly inauspicious trip to Atlanta - one where just about everything went wrong. I think if we had less fortitude, we could have been coaxed into seeing an ominous sign and bagged the relationship.

The trip to Atlanta started with the prospect of a long weekend (President's Day 1999) that happened to coincide with Valentine's Day and the first anniversary of our first date, a David Spade show with drinks at TGIFriday's beforehand. Again, it's a good thing that we weren't looking for ominous signs early in our relationship.

After hoofing it out to Dulles, which is my least favorite and least convenient of all the DC airports, we were greeted by a massive delay on our flight. After standing in that forlorn Delta terminal for hours on end, I took a few walks to distract myself. Upon returning from one of those walks, I saw Basil talking to a woman that I didn't know. Something about their body language made my heart skip a little, and when I approached, he said, 'Uh, Mer, this is Pam. Pam, this is Mer.' And then there was an uncomfortable silence, and she excused herself. I said, 'Was that Pam HONG, the Kinky* Queen? The last person you were dating before we started dating?' And Basil turned eight shades of uncomfortable pink and said, 'Yes.'

(*There is a specific Kinky here, but I'm trying to keep this blog PG-13 or a light R. Let's just say it's something Pam did frequently, and I wouldn't do. To this day, I still refer to her by her full name and title - Pam Hong the Kinky Queen - when talking about her, which is once in a blue moon, thankfully.)

So after meeting Basil's Kinky Queen ex-flame, we finally got on our flight to Hartsfield Airport at a very late hour. Upon arriving at our hotel, we were told that our room had been given away. The only thing left was a stinky handicapped-accessible room on the lobby level. One thin hallway separated our oddly proportioned room from the lobby and free breakfast area, and we constantly felt like we were sneaking into the staff closet when entering our room.

The weekend that we spent in Atlanta was one of the coldest and windiest on record. Literally, you could hardly walk around without leaning into the wind to keep from getting blown over. Our plans for lounging around Olympic Park and strolling around Buckhead were dashed, though we did end up having dinner and taking slightly awkward swing lessons in Buckhead.

We stayed indoors as much as possible that weekend - touring CNN and the Coke museum - but soon ran out of options. Lucky for us, we followed the signs to the Supershow, the trade show for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, which happened to be taking place at the convention center that weekend. Of course, we weren't allowed onto the trade floor because we hadn't paid to be there (and weren't really, uh, in the sporting goods manufacturing business), but we found an unattended escalator and slipped into a strange new world.

Race cars, fishing gear, mountain climbing walls, clothes, tennis shoes...every conceivable piece of sports equipment lined two giant halls in the convention center - literally miles and miles of a souped-up Sports Authority-meets-REI environment. We snuck into the Skechers tent and scored some free T-shirts in cans and pick up other assorted swag along the way too. We did our best to take surreptitious pictures by the really obnoxious stuff and never got thrown out. In the end, it was the Supershow that saved our weekend in Atlanta from being a total failure.

Last weekend, it didn't take illicit access to pre-market fishing rods and pictures in front of an NBA exhibit booth to make our trip a success. We knew there weren't a lot of tourist attractions in Savannah, but that's not why we were going. We wanted to relax, sleep in, recharge our batteries and reconnect. Petunia (and Lilah!) stayed home with my stepmother, so we spent our precious days doing a whole lot of nothing.

Savannah is truly charming. All its squares make the city feel very relaxed and provide small respites of green, memorials and monuments and elaborate fountains to enjoy while walking around the historic district. I picked up a copy of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (as so many people recommended I do) from the local library before my trip, which gave me some sense of where notorious things have happened in Savannah over the years. We walked past the Mercer Williams House, the focus of the book (and movie), but declined the $12.50 admission price to gawk at the inside.

And despite the wind and rain, we had a great time. We took pictures and stayed out late having drinks and we ate great chocolate and drank quite a bit of Maker's Mark at Churchill's.

I was in Savannah for business during the week, before Basil flew down to join me. During my meetings, one of the locals told me that there's some weird statistic that for people who spend more than three days in Savannah, 75 percent of them end up living in the city at some point. It's not on our radar right now, but I can see a day where our child(ren, God willing) is(are) grown, and we remember fondly Savannah and think about returning, maybe to live on one of those charming squares. Hopefully with good weather.

Addiction

This is the part where I fess up about something ugly. An addiction.

To dark chocolate. My old friend chocolate has turned into smack, pills, meth...whatever. I practically mainline it. I'm not kidding.

I eat mass quantities of chocolate. Not brownies, cookies, cake or cream pie. At work, I take ungodly amounts of dark chocolate Kisses and Miniatures from the candy jar at the front desk. At home, I buy Ghirardelli baking bars and chips (in bittersweet or semisweet) and eat chunks or handfuls of the stuff on and off from the time I get home from work until the time I go to bed. I can polish off a baking bar in two days...or one. I can eat a bag of good chocolate chips in a matter of a couple of days.

The good news is that I'm not pulling a Jenna Maroney after a summer of Mystic Pizza: The Musical, as my weight has stayed the same in the past three months. And really, that's about all the good news.

The bad news is that I eat so much chocolate that I give myself headaches and the shakes. I cut out caffeine two years ago as a part of getting rid of my migraines, and I don't drink coffee, caffeinated soda or regular tea. The only caffeine I consume comes from the trace amounts in decaf coffee and from chocolate, so I am pretty sensitive to caffeine.

The other bad news is that at the end of the day, I start to get itchy about getting home and breaking off a piece of that baking bar. During the day, if the office runs out of candy, I consider going - and sometimes actually go - to a nearby grocery store for a candy fix, either a bar for myself or a refill bag of treats for the office. When Basil and I are making dinner, I sneak pieces of baking bar or handfuls of chocolate chips while Petunia is in the other room playing, sometimes forcing myself to hide the food in my hand or in my mouth when she runs in unexpectedly. Basil has warned me that someday Petunia will catch my in my hypocrisy - we don't let her snack before dinner - and my credibility will be forever ruined.

But still, I just can't stop. I can't have just an ounce or two of dark chocolate to satisfy a craving, like all the magazines and diet experts say. If I start eating dark chocolate, which I usually do at least once a day, I can't stop. It literally takes me getting to the point where I feel like my heart is trying to hug my brain before I say, Hey, maybe I really should quit eating this dark chocolate. And even then, it takes a LOT of willpower to put down the bag of chocolate chips or walk away from the baking bar.

It's a little ridiculous, right? Laying awake until midnight because I've eaten so much chocolate that I'm hopped up for hours? Hiding my chocolate eating from kid? Dreaming and strategizing about when I'm going to get my next fix?

I don't think I've ever been addicted to anything before. Even when I smoked like a chimney in college, it was never about the nicotine. It was about being social, about being bored, about being drunk, about having something to do with my hands. I really think I'm addicted to chocolate.

Last year, I gave up chocolate for Lent. It was so hard, but I've never felt better. I think that probably I should just never eat chocolate again, the way alcoholics can't even have one glass of champagne at a wedding. But I feel like I have so few vices that I'm not sure whether I want to give up this one. I mean, after all, it's not like I have to visit a shady part of town or even sign my name onto the records at the pharmacy for a hit. I just go to any grocery store, and there it is - my drug of choice.

Speaking of...the candy jar in the office is empty, so now I have to figure out how to get through the afternoon.

It's Almost Epiphany, aka Resolution-Making Time

Last year, I resolved to end the year with no credit card debt, do more fun things with Petunia, get some new music and get my stepmother and siblings together. I'd declare victory on two or three of those things.

The biggest success was getting my stepmother and sibs together. We rented a lakeside house near Lake Norman and had a great time. There was some drama with the rental, but that really deserves its own separate post another time.

I did get some new music - songs here and there off iTunes for my Shuffle - but I don't know that we purchased a whole new album. I still feel like I broadened my musical horizons this year, though.

We did get out and about more with Petunia this year, but I also realized that I don't have the temperament for go-go-go anymore. I need downtime at home, with my family, doing a lot of nothing to balance the rest of my life.

The outright failure was the financial goal. Last year, Basil got a really big bonus from work, and I think we were a little drunk on money. Even though I had resolved to end the year with no debt, we were pretty spend-happy in the first quarter of 2007. Like, oh, we'll catch up to it sooner or later. But we didn't.

Finally, in April, Basil and I had a come-to-Jesus meeting (okay, fine, the spending was mostly me) and agreed to hold the line against future increases in our credit card balance. We did pretty well from there on out and paid for our various trips, our Christmas expenses, a new deep freezer, upgrades to the kitchen, wills and trusts and powers of attorney for both of us (yes, we were way behind on getting those done) and much-needed maintenance work on the outside of our house - all with cash. We even chiseled away about $500 of the debt we racked up in the first part of the year. But we still ended the year with $2033 on our credit card. Not great. I'm not happy. The good news is that debt should be paid off in two or three months, so we're not terribly behind.

And now, for this year's goals:

1. Stop biting my nails.

I know, it's so small potatoes, right? But it's gross. And I'm tired of looking like a rat nibbles at my fingers while I sleep. Just before Basil's holiday Christmas party, I treated my somewhat-grown out nails to a $10 manicure at the Korean nail shop by our grocery store. My hands looked so nice for the holidays! I think I'm going to try to spring for one or two cheapo manicures a month to give me motivation to quit chewing.

2. Get in better shape.

I'm actually fairly happy with my weight right now (no weight gain over the holidays and I'm within 2-3 pounds of my pre-Petunia weight!), but I feel like an old womurn sometimes. My lower back bothers me off and on, and I'm fairly sure it's as simple as tight muscles. I am not strong anymore. For most of this year, I was running about 10 miles a week, and that kept me in decent shape. But I stopped running around October/November (combination of laziness and weather), and I haven't done any serious weight- or resistance-training in years. My body is WEAK. Embarrassingly so. The problem is, I don't have the time or money to join a gym or take a yoga class. I need something I can do at home that doesn't take up a lot of space, and then I need - here's the tricky part - the will and resolve to carve out time for exercise that will strengthen my body. It wouldn't hurt to increase my flexibility either.

3. Reach some peace about having - or not having - another biological child.

It's been a long road, people. Basil and I started trying for our second kid in May 2006. We're in month 21 of trying to make good on that dream. It's been more well over a year since my miscarriage. There are some parts of my fertility journey that I haven't written about here, but let me provide this update: My doctor is not worried about where I am, and she does not recommend any testing or my seeing an RE at this point. I agree with her. I am just frustrated and exhausted. The outcome here is very much in limbo. I don't think I can live with the limbo for another whole year. I don't necessarily need control - Lord knows, I gave that up a long time ago - but I need to feel some peace about our direction as a family.

4. Be gentle with myself.

I see my world through to-do list-colored glasses. I see the mess in the house, the things I'm not doing at my job, the books I haven't read piled up on my nightstand...all the things that I should have done or should be doing. This is the year that I embrace some level of mess and dirt. This is the year that I admit I'm not a very motivated reader. This is the year I quit giving myself guilt trips because of all the things that I'm not.

And that's it. I don't have very dramatic goals this year. I like the way I look. Basil and I are happy. We have a great kid. We like our house, and we're in pretty good financial shape. I like my job. My life doesn't need major overhauling. In the words of Ms. Mary J. Blige (hey, new music), 'I just wanna be myself.' With prettier nails, a stronger back and a little more peace in my heart.

January

What is it about being a teenager (or young twentysomething) that draws one to writing poetry? Angst-ridden metaphors, romanticized suicidal thoughts, certain broken hearts...it all flows like water in teen poetry.

Judging by the success of Sarah Brown's Cringe, it seems that many of us went through a stage of keeping journals or writing poetry. I certainly did. Even when Basil and I were dating (I was 21-23), I was still writing poetry. I think some of it was decent, and one night I even read a few poems at a poetry slam that one of Basil's friends organized at the bookstore where she worked.

I remember reading one particular poem, which I cleverly titled 'No Deeper Meaning,' about a single aspirin left behind in a bottle, forever doomed to expire in the medicine cabinet because who needs just one aspirin? Afterwards, some kid with dyed black hair and dark lipstick and told me that the aspirin poem was really symbolic. I just smiled and said thanks.

After college or so, I wrote poetry when I saw something or read something that seemed to cry out for a poem - something beyond the invented drama of my adolescent mind. Sometimes I would catch a turn of phrase that would strike me as a good first line of a poem.

There is one poem that I wrote during my twenties that I am actually proud of. I committed it to memory, and I think of it about this time each year. The first line was one of those inspirations, when I glanced past a book in a bookstore and misread the title, 'I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You.' Enjoy.

I feel a little January about you

A little cold, a little dreary, a little gray

Wind-whipped on a sunless day

Holding my head down, making my way

Through the storm.

Waiting for August, dreaming of June

Making love under a July moon

Blinded by sunlight, wet with the sea

Forever at noon with you.

Even September would do

When the chill is still new

And novel and cause for a fire

A great roaring occasion,

Ended with chocolates and marshmallow goo.

Yes, anything but January

With its cold, wet socks and birdless skies

When everything around me dies

And April seems a year away.

My dear, I cannot tell you lies

I wish that it were May.