The Windkey and the Lamplighter

So, between Cake Wrecks and Photoshop Disasters, my mornings are well supplied with schadenfreude, but this doughnut really takes the cake (so to speak). The ad would be a Photoshop Anti-Disaster if the real thing weren’t so sad.
Go art director! Beautiful soft focus, appetizing-looking frosting, nice coloring and good background color.

Maybe we need to talk with the bakery staff.

Oddly, this video was on John McCain’s blog with the title “Obama’s Pie Problem”. I’m not sure I understand why—so the man likes pie? I like pie too. I nearly bought pie at lunchtime, because I am a sucker for pumpkin pie. (I did not, because I’m trying to be good and lose weight.) Other than a guaranteed job opening for a pastry cook at the White House, I’m not sure what Mr. Goldfarb was after with this one. It’s fun, though, so here it is:

My favorite farmstand, Verril Farm (in Concord, MA just off Rt 2) lost their building to a fire last Saturday:

However, the really nice people were still working hard selling pumpkins, corn, and lots of other produce with surprising cheerfulness from a temporary stand:

They still have veggies and scones and other baked goods, and are grateful for people who come by.
I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get one of their awesome sandwiches or some coffee, but my chocolate-chip-cherry scone was very good, and I was glad I stopped.

Despondent at the news that not only did Hershey buy Jolly Rancher, but they closed the Wheat Ridge factory and got rid of Lemon Jolly Ranchers, I decided to create my own candy.

I got some Lime Oil from my local confectioner (who happened to have some that needed using soon) and combined a tablespoon of it with four cups of sugar, half a cup of water, and an eighth teaspoon of cream of tartar.

The resulting candy was hard-crack when I took it off the heat—both the thermometer and the cold water test indicated so—but when I poured it into the paper “moulds” (greased baking cups and some paper plates when those ran out) it crystallized a bit. It *was* hard-crack, though, since the drops on the stove and the table were perfect little clear drops. Next time I will go buy some parchment paper and grease it more, and then drop the candy by small spoonfuls onto the paper, so I get proper lozenges. At least now I know that it’s not sour enough, and I want some citric acid to add. We stuck some small cookie cutters in the soft candy as it cooled—I will probably try that again. I think it also needs either more lime or more citric acid—or both!

In most of the Denver area, there are no diners. There are Einstein’s Bagels, Village Inns, Dennys’, IHOPs, and so on. There are no chains smaller than large regional. There are few independent restaurants. As we drove last week from Denver to Kremmling, we saw many Starbucks and few local coffee shops. Boston is similar: lots of chains, though a few local businesses thrive. In New York, independent shops and restaurants are very common. There are certainly chains too, but enough independent restaurants that most people do business with them regularly. Why?

Most readers know that I’ve been looking for good diners in Boston for a long time. The Deluxe Town is nice, but its menu is thirty pages too short to really count. Now I think I’ve figured it out: big chains have figured out marketing and memetics enough to capture lots of market. But they can only be so dense before they overload people. A Starbucks every few blocks is one thing; heavier concentrations draw complaints. If there’s a McDonald’s on this block and a Burger King next block, people will be turned off to see a McDonald’s on the next block further. As a result, there’s a maximum concentration of each big chain.

Further, there’s only enough national population to support a certain number of national chains. When each of those are at their maximum sustainable density, but there’s still enough population to support more business, then something like the thriving diner culture I’m looking for comes into being. In New York, under the further influence of particular immigrant communities, that became diner culture itself. New York City is the densest population center in North America. The diner culture grew there and has spilled over into the surrounding suburbs.

As the number of supportable big chains increases, and as big chains diversify (each with a burger place, coffee/milkshake place, burrito place, etc.), they’ll find ways to pack more densely and attack the remaining diner space. They’ll also find ways to support more national chains. I don’t hold out much hope that the diners I love will come to Boston. But at the other end of the spectrum, Kremmling had no visible chain businesses. With only a thousand people, franchising doesn’t make sense: people do their own thing. The local coffee shop looked pretty good.

I’ve been experimenting with variations off my grandmother-in-law’s lemon bar recipe lately. It started relatively innocently! Although I’d never seen her do it, her recipe had an option to replace most of the lemon juice with lime, so I tried it. Meanwhile, in the lemon recipe (since I needed lots of bars to bring to a pot luck) I tripled the juice and then reduced it to the right volume of liquid. These both turned out great, though the crusts were a little bit too crumbly for my taste and I used too much lime zest in the first batch. The second batch of lime got less zest and less juice, so they were weak but okay.

So, this week I decided to experiment with grape bars. I bought some grape juice, and decided to try a peanut-butter cookie crust. I used the Joy of Cooking recipe for classic peanut-butter cookies, and started with 1/2c of grape juice. That wasn’t very grape, so I added more—eventually, 2 cups. (It was too late to reduce it, by this time, so I just hoped it would boil off.) 25 minutes later, I had something that looked a lot like brownies—from the top. It was very dark, so though it was purple it could’ve easily been mistaken for brown. The underlayers, though, are very clearly brown, and full of bubbles like a bread pudding. Here is a UFO-spotting quality picture:

It is, alas, almost entirely peanut-butter flavor. The grape is only detectable if you have a very subtle palate, or if you eat some of the top purple layer alone. Otherwise, it’s mostly peanut-butter.
Where did I go wrong? My guesses:

• I didn’t bake the crust enough: If the peanut butter cookie was still quite soft, the liquid would have soaked in rather than staying on top.
• Too much liquid: There are supposed to be four eggs per 1/2c of liquid. Maybe if I use 2c of liquid, I need 12 eggs?
• Pasteurized juice: I used fresh lemons for the lemon bars, and fresh limes for the lime bars. Maybe pasteurized grape juice is missing important enzymes?
• Acidity: Grape juice is way less acid than lemons, and the lime bars have one part lemon to six parts lime. Maybe that matters? I can try half grape and half lemon…
• Sugar: The lemon and lime bars call for 2c of granulated sugar. I left that out because the grape juice is so much sweeter than lemon or lime. Maybe I needed those crystals?

My test audience (gamers will eat anything) seemed to quite like it. One even asked for seconds!
So I will probably try this one again, especially since it lands me with half a batch of peanut butter cookies even if the recipe itself is an epic failure. (I also bought 100% cranberry juice, which I will certainly use the sugar with, and probably cut with fresh lemon juice. I will also not put that over peanut butter. Ew.)

I went shopping last night at 10:30. I was thrilled that my local supermarket was still open, because I really wanted a nice cup of black tea with milk before bedtime. (I had tea, but we’d been out of milk for a couple days and been too busy to go shopping.)

I got the milk, and a few other things that I walked past which looked good: spaghetti, apples, a frozen pot-pie for lunch today (Amy’s Kitchen is the best!) and some black tea to take to work, because my stash there had run out. They didn’t have my favorite tea, but they had a nice looking Twinings English Breakfast, and an Irish Breakfast. I took the English, and was pretty happy.

This afternoon, I pulled the tea out of my bag in the office and discovered, to my horror, that I actually bought DECAFFINATED English Breakfast tea. Woe! Misery! Weak tea!
It’s not actually terrible—it just tastes more like a second infusion than a first.

I already knew not to shop when hungry, or when craving sweets. Now I also know not to shop when sleepy…

My migraine (and other headache-suffering) friends and I have long noticed a correlation between eating spicy foods and a cessation or reduction in pain symptoms, especially headache pain. Now, Science (specifically, scienceblog) says that not only are we right about that, but those same pain receptors may be involved in learning and memory.

“activation of TPRV1 receptors can trigger long-term depression, a phenomenon that creates lasting changes in the connections between neurons…believed to be the cellular basis for memory making.”

So (maybe) eating spicy foods will cure your headaches and improve your grades? I think I will have to watch the Brown University Research Team to see where their research leads, but it sounds good so far. Pass the pepper, please.