Second Breakfast

As of 5:38PM yesterday I celebrated 36th birthday. This is an auspicious birthday, being the product of the squares of two primes. The next one I get is 100, so I tried to make the most out of this one just in case.

As befitting such an occasion, we celebrated with the traditional three days of festivities: Friday night at Cafe Felix with the combined Ann Arbor and Jackson contingents of friends (some of whom had never met, which I find a little shocking) and dinner at Palio; Saturday with a fabulous meal at Eve (the Restaurant); and Sunday with many of the same friends at Portage Lake (which unlike the rest of my birthday events doesn’t have its own web site, thank heaven).

The meal at Eve was particularly memorable - I had the lamb in brik, which features nicely spiced ground lamb with pinenuts in a phyllo-like pastry, topped with a generous salad of baby spinach and mint. The spicing on the lamb was excellent, and the overall dish was balanced, enjoyable to eat, and very satisfying. Alan had the tenderloin chimichurri - I tasted the chimichurri which was also very nice. We started the meal with a “Spa Martini” (which I’ll provide a recipe for tomorrow), and ended with their fabulous pots de crème.

All in all an excellent meal, and combined with the time with many great friends, the flowers from my mother, and the dozen cards wishing me well, a perfect birthday weekend.

I’m now finally contemplating the replacement of my aging ThinkPad laptop with a MacBook Pro. Dare I take the plunge back into Apple’s beautiful if closed garden?

P.S. - My husband and I apparently do actually share a brain. He penned this entry on our weekend celebrations pretty much at the same time as I did this one.

One thing that I love about living in Chelsea, MI is that we have a great little community of folks who grow and sell organic produce, meat, flowers, and other good stuff. So most every Saturday I get up a little early and head down to the Bushel Basket Market on Park Street right outside Jeff Daniels’ Purple Rose Theater.

My favorite producer there is Tantre Farm, and Alan and I feast on their bounty from May through November. I considered buying a share in their harvest, but our ability to process and store food is somewhat limited (no big freezer in the basement), so I’ve held off on that commitment. They grow fabulous heirloom varieties of tomatoes (stuff you’ll never find in the grocery store as they’re way too fragile to survive the rigors of industrial agriculture and long travel). Spring is asparagus season, and as much as we love asparagus, it is possible to overdo it (my husband asked me for a respite this week).

One thing I’ve seen at the market several times but haven’t used until now is garlic scapes, which are the green, curly tops of the garlic plant. I bought a bunch for a buck, and took them home and made a simple pesto out of them. The color is beautiful, and the flavor is savory and garlicky, but without the intense metallic bite that one associates with raw garlic. This works beautifully on pasta, or as a spread for bread or crackers. There are lots of recipes out there, but this one is mine.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Items

• One bunch of garlic scapes (about 8 stems), washed and cut into thirds
• Handful of pine nuts (1/4 cup, maybe 2oz)
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (or Peocorino Romano, or your favorite hard, dry grating cheese)
• About 4oz extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp lemon zest, or a few drops of lemon oil

Method

1. Add the scapes to the food processor and pulse a few times until chopped. Add the pine nuts and process for a few more pulses.
2. Remove the lid and add the cheese, salt, pepper, and lemon zest or oil.
3. Put the lid back on and turn on low and process.
4. Drizzle the oil in slowly with the motor running. You’ll see the pesto tighten up as the first of the oil goes in, then loosen up into a smooth paste as you continue to add oil. Add enough oil to get to the texture you’d like.
5. Test for seasoning and adjust to taste.

Makes about a cup of pesto, which is enough for a pound of pasta (thinned with a little of the pasta water) and a bit leftover for some bread the next day. This would double or triple easily, but you may want to pay attention to the salt and oil and adjust as needed.

The past few months have been rather consumed with many work projects, church commitments, projects for More Light Presbyterians, travel, training, and just plain busy-ness.  So I’ve had little time or energy to engage here, and my several (one, two?) readers have gone without.  Alas.

I think I’m on the other side of things now.  Unfortunately my laptop’s fan decided it was “time to die” finally (it has been spinning more or less happily for four years now, so I forgive its new reluctance to keep it up), so I am sans computer.  Well, not entirely true given the Dell laptop at work (which never leaves the dock), and the Compaq Evo at home which is mostly a terminal to access the Internets and e-mail.

Here are the guts of my ThinkPad T42, which has been a very fine laptop despite its current challenges.  The heatsink fan (the copper-colored component) is quite a piece of engineering.  A bit of egg-carton-style packing foam makes a great screw holder.  Thanks to this site for notes on how to remove the palm rest.

I’ve been contemplating a new computer for a year or so, and thinking of taking the plunge back to Apple.  My first computer was a Mac IIsi, which my wonderful great-aunts funded despite its hefty price tag.  I loved that computer, and I wouldn’t be the big professional geek keeping my husband in the lifestyle he’d like to become accustomed to without that gift.  Apple is unlikely to rev the MacBook Pros anytime real soon, so now is probably as good of a time as ever.  And with Parallels I can have my MacOS goodness and my Windows XP work stuff all in one easy shiny package.  W00t!

Alan and I are big fans of Iron Chef America, and Steingarten is one of the regular judges on the show. Steingarten is often paired with Queer Eye’s Ted Allen, and their mutual annoyance with one another adds spice to an already entertaining affair.

Steingarten himself is a Harvard-trained lawyer turned food writer for Vogue, and the book is a collection of his erudite and witty essays, mostly from the late 80s and mid 90s. He’s a very fine essayist, and his ironic humor pervades these little essays on topics such as how to make the perfect pie crust, finding the best barbeque in America, fruitcakes, and my favorite, the essay on the artificial oil Olestra, titled “A Fat of No Consequence”.

A taste (not for the faint of heart):

The [...] current version of Olestra has been manufactured to stay quite thick at room temperature — it looks something like Vaseline until it is headted– which is why [Proctor & Gamble] always demonstrates Olestra melted.

Why did they formulate Olestra this way? Because the early, more liquid versions caused gastrointestinal problems. One of these–”anal seepage”, or, in my preference, “passive oil loss”–occurs when fully liquid Olestra separates from the food with which it was cooked and slips along the inner walls of people’s intestines, bypassing everything in its way. Drops of Olestra show up on their underwear or floating in their toilets. (The FDA actually abbreviates this as OIT, or “oil in toilet”).

There are some wonderfully laugh-out-loud moments throughout, and some useful tips and recipes and I’d definitely like to try.

Today we observe an important fictional event, and an ancient feast in the Christian church.

In Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, March 25th, 3019 T.A. (Third Age, also 1419 in Shire Reckoning) is the date of the destruction of the One Ring, and the defeat of Sauron and the downfall of Barad-dûr. I know this because I’m a total geek (albeit one with an imprecise memory). One year later Frodo and his friends returned home to the Shire, and year after that Sam and Rosie celebrated the birth of their daughter, Eleanor.  You’ll find these and other useful and entertaining facts at theonering.net.

March 25th is also the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation, in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, is informed by the Archangel Gabriel that she is to bear the Messiah.  Mary’s response of obedience and praise to God is known as the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary:

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. [Luke 1:46-55]

The timing of this feast conveniently aligns with nine calendar months before December 25th, when the Church celebrates the nativity of Jesus.

We will celebrate tonight with a feast of our own, and raise our glasses both to Frodo and Mary, whose obedience and faithfulness helped to liberate their people.