baked.

baked explorations.
the most talked about cookbook in the interwebs.
well, maybe. i see it A LOT. so i bought it; it arrived today.

i told my friend, renato, one of the baked masterminds, that i wanted to bake my way through the new cookbook. like julie and julia but better and cutier. and then, he posted a link on facebook to a group that is doing that very thing.

i am joining up. i love the idea of a nationwide (worldwide?) baking club. shira is probably best going to benefit from this adventure. she does not even know it yet.

ready? set.

with bows.

and then shira and i decided that when eggs are gifted, they should have little bows. the cutest!

inter-library.

this ode of sorts is sort of for lindsey, the bestest librarian.

i love the library. like big fat nasty love. miles and aisles of books and journals and magazines and films and even records and photographs if you dig deep enough. it's probably apparent that i spent lots of time in the local library when i was small (smaller).

and, i am one of those people who continue to use the library; i love borrowing books. i enjoy the entire system of it all; it makes sense i am back in school, committed to the library for many more years (well, 4).

one of the coolest things about being a member of a library is the inter-library loan feature. if you want a book that your library does not hold, you can request it and they will have it sent from another library. any library! it could come from anywhere!

so, i wanted (needed) good meat for a paper i am writing. i put in a request, unsure if it would be possible; i mean, it's a cookbook. but then, it arrived! in 4 days. and it's awesome; i actually recommend it to you meat-eaters and cookers out there. it's almost 400 pages of intelligent writing and seemingly easy recipes: a meat bible.

and now? i plan to order all kinds of cookbooks via ILL and test them out before i buy! how smart. i can't believe it took so long for me to come up with this plan; i did borrow ina garten's parties! book once, but i thought nypl only had it because it's like a party guide.

how wrong i was.

so exciting.

my friend, casey, has hens. at his house. which means that sometimes he brings me eggs. (photographs to come.)

for now, last weekend's breakfast: fried egg, salad of tomato, cucumber, & basil, various greens with onions, and sourdough toast. and carrots. one of those eggs came from one of casey's hens. you can't tell right now but the yolks are much orangier than the ones from the grocery store (yes, even the organic, free-range blah blah).

secretly.

once a year, usually in the darkness of winter, i eat a box of velveeta shells and cheese. i love it. it's got a weird packet of cheese that i know would survive nuclear fallout and pasta that cooks way too fast. is it because it is enriched? i have no idea. and truthfully, i don't really want to know.

but i always preferred velveeta to kraft mac n'cheese (which the canadians just call "kraft dinner"). i thought the powdery cheese, as a child, was even more bizarre than the processed velveeta. you can't use the whole packet; it's just too damn cheesey, but that means you can eat it again the next day. and then i am satiated for another year. i go back to over-thinking everything i put in my mouth.

oh! upon further research, i learned that velveeta is a kraft product. they just dominate the mac market. don't talk to me about annie's or any of the versions they probably sell at the cooperative. potentially tasty, also with a powdered cheese, but not the taste of my childhood. the taste of zoe's, maybe.

to say.

three nytimes articles that are practically permanent tabs:

• recipe for preserved lemons. shira asks what i will do with them once i make them. no idea. but i want to make them.
  
• an article on food stamps, now know as SNAP. thank you, lyndon johnson, for making this program happen, and damn you, michael bloomberg, for suggesting that low-income earners should not get to choose what they eat.
  
• more on punch, and my old hood in brooklyn. it's the punchiest.
  

oh. my. god.

the barefoot contessa is on hulu. my life is complete.