5/25/09  When I go to Alaska next month I'll have time to post the 50 or so back-logged entries I'm holding.  While the economy had not been good, it has been great for my line of consulting - which is always feast or famine, but has been more feast since the stimulus plan went into effect.  Don't think of me as taking advantage of the misery of others, think of me as doing my part toward alternative energy sources.  'Nuff said.  I'm glad I'm bringing in money, because Steven picked up a tube of almond paste for me at Lucky and it was NINE dollars!  I'm surprised he even bought it because he's on the frugal side.  I told him that I normally buy it elsewhere, and to call me if he is confronted by this kind of price for 7 ounces of ANYTHING.  Plus, who the hell needs 7 ounces of something?  I am so sick of this downsizing, which makes it difficult to bake, especially, since you need to be precise with ingredients.  Even a "quart" of mayo is down to 30 ounces.  Anyway, I made pignoli cookies using my friend Tonina's recipe, which requires a half-pound of almond paste.  I love these Italian cookies, which are a bit crisp on the outside but dense, soft and chewy inside.  I used to buy them at Franks Bakery on 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens, when I lived there and they were a real treat, given the price.  Tonina still lives in Astoria, and she's Italian, so she knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the cookie I missed.  I am now down to needing one cookie recipe.  When I was a grade-schooler, I used to have these flat, leaf-shaped, butter cookies that were coated with chocolate, with the chocolate being thicker in the middle and then thinning as the leaf fanned out.  These were to die for, and I have never had them since those days visiting Stork's Pastry Shop in Whitestone.

4/26/09  Work has kept me from posting (funny, that) but I feel the need to put up a few photos I found when doing some digital camera cleanup, namely moving files off the various cameras Matt and I use.  One is actually a shot I took on my cell phone of a squirrel and crow hanging around on my block.  These two are often together foraging, but I never have my good camera around to catch them.  Another is Matthew swimming in a lake in Maine from 2008, which makes me nostalgic for the East Coast, with all those lakes to swim in, which I miss here in Cali.  Next is an interesting photo of Matt's light fixture found on one of his cameras, and the coffee set-up at the Dignity retreat he went to in October of 2008.  This was somewhere up in Napa, I think.  Last, a pencil and marker drawing I did in dim light, to see what would happen.  A friend of mine, who is an artist, told me this is a good exercise because you don't have to worry about being precise.  Since I am taking a few art classes I'll take all the help I can get.

3/29/09  A retro dinner the other night (my Mother made Swiss steak, remember that?) made me want to have something I have not had in a good 20 years:  date nut bread.  I have no idea if this was popular all over the country, but it was in New York City when I was a kid in the 1960's.  Chock full o'Nuts coffeeI shops sold date nut bread and cream cheese sandwiches.  By the very early 1980's, when most of the shops had already closed, there were still a few hanging on, and there was one at 116th & Broadway - across from Columbia University - that kept me alive for all those late-night classes with coffee and date nut bread, which, if you dropped it, would have broken your foot.  If you check their site (they still hawk their brand of coffee, though I have no idea how many times the company changed hands) you can hear Mrs. Black singing the jingle about Chock full o'Nuts being "the heavenly coffee" (click on the old commercial links), but they don't have the story there of the Blacks' nasty divorce.  Since this is not the kind of thing you'll find in a new cookbook, I checked out one my old ones and, sure enough.  I love old cookbooks because you're likely to find names and notes written in them -- and stains -- and it gives me a feeling of continuity when I think that perhaps a woman back in 1952 was making the same recipe and had dropped her 1/4 pound of butter on page 869, only for me to find it in 2009.  The chosen book was Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking (Chicago:  J. G. Fergusen and Associates, 1952), whose recipe turned out a winner of a loaf, if a bit less dense than I'm used to.  Now for the cream cheese....

3/12/09  Steve, Matt and I ate lunch at Pear Street Bistro (2395 San Pablo Avenue, Pinole) today to celebrate Steven having taken off this week -- which is an occasion, believe me.  I was psyched because I wanted him to have the fried chicken, crab martini, and a couple of other things that are good there.  It's also a really comfy space.  When we were given the menu, however, I noticed that they no longer had the fixed price lunch, the crab martini, nor the fried chicken.  In fact, they had eliminated all but sandwiches, salads and the like.  What to do?  I told the server about how we were all set for the things we had become accustomed to, and she said it would no problem for them to hook us up with a crab martini, and that the chicken was on the dinner menu only because it comes with mashed potatoes, which they make after lunch.  As long as we didn't mind having fries, she said, they would do the chicken - or anything else they had the ingredients for, for that matter.  Excellent.  Steve had the chicken, Matt the fish and chips, and I the Cobb salad.  We started with said crab cocktail and their fried calamari/shrimp appetizer.  The chicken was to Steve's liking, and it came with a side of gravy that he used for his fries that was something like Welsh rarebit.  My Cobb salad was made with romaine, which was good because nowadays you are likely to find Cobbs made with spring mix, which I don't like because I need a strong lettuce to stand up to all those chunks of bleu cheese and chicken.  The appetizers were good as always, and we like that the crab cocktail comes with nacho chips and guacamole and the seafood with a wasabi sauce that you can use for fries, which the two guys had a boatload of between them.

3/11/09  Matthew will be very pleased to see hamachi collars marinating in the fridge when he comes home.  We love them, and now that they are readily available at Joyco Foods (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond), we are able to have them often.  I have also purchased them at Tokyo Fish Market (1220 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley), one of my main sources of sashimi grade fish and such things.  Joyco is in Pacific East Mall, and they sell lots of good frozen things - but know your prices before you buy.  When I was there the other day there was a guy unloading a large box of fresh hamachi collars, so that's what I got, paying about $15 for two, huge, full collars, each yielding two servings.  The collar is that part of the fish between the head and body, and you get bones and all.  A whole collar equals 360 degrees around the fish.  I threw them in a bowl with some Soy Vey teriyaki sauce (else just mix soy sauce, chopped garlic, sugar and a dash of pepper to make your own) and allowed them to marinate in the fridge until I was ready to convect-blast them, which you need to do right before service.    You can also just salt and pepper them and serve with lemon wedges -- it's up to you.  When you are ready, spread out on a rack over a sheet pan lined with foil.  Use the foil if you use the teriyaki sauce because this will drip down and the sugar will caramelize into hard candy that you'll need to blast out with sand.  You have been warned.  Preheat the oven to 375 F. convection (400 F. if you lack convection) and roast for 10 minutes.  Turn down 50 degrees and cook until done, depending upon the size, but don't overcook.  For my humongous collars I added an additional 15 minutes.