YOUR MOTHER'S ROLLS

Sometimes when I walked into the bakery or now the restaurant where I cook I wonder 'How did I get here?" 

And I think back to Vienna, and your mother's rolls (which I never tasted) that you described to me. They maybe had cream in them. Not sweet. Crusty. And I imagined them and baked for weeks trying to replicate that taste for you.

I am still baking. I am still trying to find your mother's rolls in my cupboard of dry good. 

Re-Wind

I think Roberta's is my 'rewind' button. Every time we go back there it is like the first time, which is like it was the 3rd and 17th and today. 

WELCOME AUTUMN GLORY

So much catching-up to do! I spent the 'summer' working like a flour-dusted, oven roasted tasmanian devil and then it ended and now it appears to be autumn. A simple stew will have to do. Thank you spice angel! 

SLEEP

Time to lie in the bed I made.

TWIST and SHOUT

We are all born with exceptional physical gifts! All bodies are amazing bodies. I could have been born with a great jaw line, a teeny waist, fast runner or high cheek bones but I was born double-jointed. Yeah...it surprised me too! I twist...and others shout. 

VIP OPENING FRIEZE NYC

Nutcracker by Jennifer Rubell at The Breeder Gallery, Athens

All he wanted was a room alone (see above) to enjoy the fair. All she wanted were some nuts to crack (see above). Here I present some oh-so-random shots from the Frieze Fair VIP opening on Randall's Island, NYC. The titles are terribly incomplete and I will try to get to that later in the day! Right now, I got some nuts to crack, (literally!) It is time to go to the bakery.

SPARE TIME

What do I do in my spare time? I donate my creative energies to SCRATCHbread. I Paint giant arrows and I look for signs where there are none.

SKOWHEGAN AWARDS DINNER

 Skowhagan awards dinner and gala where Mary Heilmann was honored. Yeah Mary!

MY FEAR OF SWEET THINGS THAT BRING JOY: ECONOMY CANDY

I remember Halloween growing-up for two distinct dramatic events: one was the year my friends came hours late to pick me up for Trick or Treat and I sat on the front stoop waiting in my little princess costume feeling terribly sad (Ok, maybe I was dressed as a hobo - but I had the heart of a princess damn it! And I was distraught!) And the second Halloween drama would happen each year after Trick or Treat when we would gather up all of our treats and bring them to the hospital to have them x-rayed for fear that pins of razor blades had been surreptitiously placed inside a Snickers or a Mars bar. I am sorry...did ANYONE else do this?!

I think partially because of this I am not a a big fan of sweet things in general but I am a big fan of bright and bountiful nostalgia with cool graphics! Well, and I Do eat sweets sometimes and then I seek the perfect sweet, in the perfect place. Economy Candy on the Lower East Side has been serving the dental community since 1937.

Gum balls in lock-down at Economy Candy on Rivington St.

SNAILS IN WAITING

Zimtschnecken waiting to proof. In English: cinnamon snails. How lovely and true! Call it what it is: we are a sticky semi-sweet cinnamon snail that will sneak up on you. Yeah! There is a hot kick. Welcome small shelled creatures!! 

What did you do this time Micky?

I was struck (no pun intended, but hell, yes!) by the image on the Band-Aid container! Minnie is "Smacking" Micky (or vice versa?) ...obviously these Band-Aids are geared towards children. So who am I to say? But someone is beating someone up!


I need a Band-Aid.

PORK SHOP

Esposito's Pork Shop dishing out delicious pig parts and more since 1933 in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. Truly a beacon in the night after a spirit-sucking sort of day that called for a closing portion of spicy Italian sausage from some of the more than 10,000 pounds of the stuff they produce each weeks. (Don't really want to imagine the mass of that but..maybe the size of a VW van? Or two?)


Thank you pork people at Esposito's.

PERFECTLY PLASTIC

Tupperware held all of his sadness: a middle class and midwestern thump of hurt. The sadness of being raised on iceberg lettuce instead of arugula. It was the damage of the scraped and dinged (slightly melted at the lip) frosty-green iceberg lettuce crisper. The Tupperware that was no longer in use because no one could find the lid. The crisper was expendable, but no one cared enough about the container to even throw it out! It had so little value that it wasn't even worth throwing away. 


The guy hadn't showered in weeks. I couldn't smell him right then, but I knew who he was and he never showered. He was a drunk boy/man with a hurt heart and he stood screaming below our apartment windows that night in Cleveland. He wasn't looking or yelling for me specifically - it was my room mate who had caught his wrath - I was just in hearing distance, and yet he seemed to be yelling at me too. He cursed her, he cursed all of us (women), he was hard to understand at times but the proclamations were building to one last insult - the crescendo - bellowing..."You, you treat me...you treat me worse, you treat me worse than anything! You treat me like...like, I'm Tupperware! TUPPERWAAARE!"

I still recall his name. I remember his sour body smell in our house mixed with turpentine and stale cigarette. I remember the look of his paintings and that he was smart and well read. But today the only thing that truly resonates carried through the windows that night: You treat me like I'm Tupperware. 

DAILY DENSITY MEASURE

SCRATCHbread

Sometimes I define an inner chaotic day by a number of external measures: like how many subway rides I take. A four fare day is doable (0 is great! Two is cool.) while a 7 or a 9 would be exceptional and undesirable in theory...it would also make me wonder what the hell was going on!   

Now with the work in the bakery/kitchen I have a new external daily density measure because yesterday was a 10 sack day.

HAPPY TO SEE YOU (OR NOT)

As Armory Week closed in NYC I felt that I had seen everything and nothing. I had avoided running into most people and had missed no one. Hopeful and hopeless, alas, it was a week of dichotomies. 

FOOK HING

 Ha! I could not resist posting some signs from local Chinese hotspots in the Bushwick and Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn. Are you FOOK HING kidding me?

SUPER SALAD IN ONLY 35 DAYS!

Spring has sprung. I was inspired to recycle some egg cartons to grow rosalita lettuce and arugula in one of the more ambitious gardening moments in recent memory. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I baked to chase your taste memory. Your mother used to make you rolls and you were not certain of the ingredients, but you would know it when you tasted it. You wanted to taste it again.  Could I make those rolls?, you asked. "Maybe it had Schlagobers (heavy cream)", was the only clue you gave me. 

VALENTINE BULL

 Duct Tape! Yes, it does fix everything. Happy Valentine's Day! I am officially in America and these holidays are haunting. So much pink and red and red and pink....

TELL ME, JOHNNY WHAT DO YOU SEE ?

In the song "Mercy Seat" Johnny Cash sees "The face of Jesus in my soup". Well, I didn't eat soup today but I did have 3 epiphanies in the past 24 hours. The third was a message sent via my bacon studded Snickerdoodle.

 

MORGH-E TORSH

 My friend Susan in Vienna is a great Persian cook and introduced me to Morgh-e Torsh, a sour chicken, herb dish that she actually makes with fish sometimes (which is not traditional). Susan also grabs hot pots out of the oven with her bare hands, also, not traditional! I think her fingers are made of asbestos. 

MY PRETTY

And what will you become my pretty?

THE EARNEST BAKER (VEGAN FOR A NIGHT)

Every time I run out of eggs or butter I become a vegan. (Until, of course the next day when I buy more eggs and butter!) I know some great bakers and some great Vegan bakers...I am neither under any circumstance. I am an earnest baker at best and a lazy half-*#ssed baker otherwise. Tonight was an earnest attempt to conjure up some peanut butter cookies for a dear friend who deserves a decent vegan treat!

Recipe follows....

HUNTER: GRADUATE THESIS SHOW

Jonn Alex Gonzalez 

Top 3 (In no particular order): 

John Alex Gonzalez and his radio-style illustrated cartoon drama with excellent soundtrack. This modest and engaging multi-projection film noir had me from the first sax notes, but it was the attempts to light a cigarette a flip zippo lighter and the timing of the images and text that clinched it. That scrolling sound of the finger on the hinge, the calm speaking voice: it was filmic and it was not a film. It was my favorite surprise and I could imagine it bigger or smaller. 

Jay Gaskill presented two major paintings striking and flawlessly executed. One (I did not measure) must have been 16 feet long and 6 feet high and the other with a golden metallic ochre ground was also large in scale. Both works were smooth emblematic abstractions. I imagine the one pictured here as a complicated pictograph in a UFO exit row really small or in a giant gallery with white walls. Here I am!

Amanda Valdez had a whole slew of paintings presented. A bit of editing might have helped, but never mind, because a few of these were so strong one ignored the rest. The sewn together fabric, canvas, embroidery and paint was a real discovery that could have happened in a LES gallery somewhere. It happened to be at a college graduate show but they are ready to be anywhere and shined.

Jay Gaskill

Amanda Valdez

REINHARD BERNSTEINER: 1963-2011

Bernie (Reinhard Bernsteiner) was born in Villach, Austria in 1963 and would prove to have more style and quiet charisma than any man deserves. He was a very distinctive figure in a Vienna art scene which does not lack in distinctive figures. Bernie and the artwork he made always stood out. 

Bernie's art iconography was simultaneously self-depricating and celebratory. He was a brazen self-chronicler - warts and all - as they say. One of the last works I saw he sardonically lassoed his body parts, including the tumor inside him and took them for a stroll or a dance. It would break my heart to see it hanging in my house except that it was so damn alive! 

PANDA BREAD

People only see what they are prepared to see.

                                    - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It seemed so Panda-Like before it was a Panda. As three lumps of dough rising in a round it was the very essence of the reclusive, polygamous, bamboo-munching black and white beast. 

HELLO CASIO!

I am prone to keeping an eye on the ground in case a fateful trinket be left in my path. But recently because of the paw problems I am more pragmatic with my downward gaze, scanning the sidewalk for pitfalls, old tires or a piles of chicken innards which happens on occasion in my neighborhood.

THE AMAZING MARY

STARBANKS

 I had never seen this before: a combo Capital One Bank and a Starbucks in the bank!? A Starbanks. Ha. But really what a crazy hybrid.