community building // coffee cake

The air in New York today is damp and earthy. It's still cold, but this wind on the skin feels like lake wind, like we're standing at the edge of water. Which we are. I always forget.

This week: I keep getting distracted from the tangle of my own neurosis by the sight of friends, acquaintances and strangers speaking out through their art, singing from their guts, leaving it all somewhere for someone to find. (A man on the subway with these heartbeat bongoes finishes up, does not ask for any money, says "LOVE IS ALL THERE IS. You've got to exercise your love like you work out at the gym!")

I'm also watching many friends in the daylight hours of their money-making lives, parsing, sorting, rearranging the structure to try to accommodate their creative pursuits. Putting forth such valiant effort to understand wellness and work and balance even though it's the work/life balance that might not ever be just exactly right.

here is what is useless: comparison and jealousy. I am an authority on this. They weave metal threads, make for heavy mornings and sour tasting food. I've just been feeling like: free your mind from envy in whatever way you can and you'll see how much good work is going on and how much ROOM there is for more. Easier said than done, I guess, but take a walk read a book do fifteen pushups call your mom kiss your arm make a drawing and send it to your friend who lives five states away.

I've been going to the Bronx to shadow a teaching artist friend, and if there's anything to reinforce a belief that this creative work is important it's 30 sixth graders finally settling for three minutes to do a physical warm up, and feeling the way their energy changes the room.


SO: thank you for the inspiration, and if you want, you could bake this coffee cake* for your friend who is coming to stay with you for grad school auditions. You could share it at your rehearsal, you could make a big breakfast on a Wednesday morning (so your server and barista friends can come,) for advanced crossword work and a reminder that we have a community. (It's a giant cake and so shareable and really nice with coffee.)


...and if you're free on April 2nd you should go see this beautiful web at dixon place; if you're waiting for your water to boil or relaxing after work you should check out this web series; if you're free on an April eve you should get to know edward II for the very first time; if you're on your computer right now you should listen these crazy guys and also these crazy guys. VIVA.

*sour cream coffee cake  by ina "butter" garten

the only changes I made to this recipe were to omit the glaze, (because it "started" to feel a little "excessive") and to omit the nuts from the streusel because 50% my apartment does not like walnuts. OH also, I didn't use cake flour. I used this substitution (all purpose flour and cornstarch,) and it worked just fine.

for the cake:

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

3 extra-large eggs at room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups sour cream

2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the streusel:

1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 4 to 5 minutes, until light. Add the eggs 1 at a time, then add the vanilla and sour cream. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the batter until just combined. Finish stirring with a spatula to be sure the batter is completely mixed.
For the streusel, place the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, and butter in a bowl and pinch together with your fingers until it forms a crumble. Mix in the walnuts, if desired.
Spoon half the batter into the pan and spread it out with a knife. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup streusel. Spoon the rest of the batter in the pan, spread it out, and scatter the remaining streusel on top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean.
Let cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Carefully transfer the cake, streusel side up, onto a serving plate. 

spring prayer

i hope that i will grow to understand, more than I do now, what it means to take care, to be careful, to give care, to be full, all year and especially in the spring, when everything is fragile and sturdy, tentative and determined. I hope that I will be open and ready to watch things reveal themselves for what they might be.

i know that there is a lesson in the push and pull of the tides, in the fall down get up manner of toddlers, in the slow and deliberate movements of someone 60 years older than I am now. maybe the prayer is: may I (may you) quiet the hum enough to be moved by the things we see, may they grow our care, fill us up, help us to better understand all of these natural cycles of loss and gain, of risk and grace.

reframing // cardamom coffee

this week, my girlfriend Maggie and I drove up the coast of California in a red car the size of a large suitcase. we saw the best friends, we saw stands of trees that felt like church, flowers that moved like waves in the grass, hills that felt slow and inevitable, a reflective ocean and the sun setting and setting and setting. it all felt full and loud and quiet and somehow female. mother earth, indeed. I also got poison oak, spent some time with a gigantic skunk at our campsite in pfieffer state park and became irrationally afraid of mountain lions. we couldn't get our water to boil. our google maps never really worked. the week was perfect.

we decided to take the trip largely because I accused Maggie of Never Wanting to Go On Trips and she booked our plane tickets in demonstrative defiance. it is liberating to just DO something, even if it is a little challenging logistically, even if it doesn't quite make perfect sense in that moment, because it proves that things don't have to be perfect to be perfect. which is something I struggle with. in pursuit of perfection, I'm often stuck in a maze of indecision, which I find frequently leads to an excess of waitressing.

standing in the giant outside, under stars that I could actually see, next to an ocean so large and unknowable, I felt like every ice-related complaint and career anxiety I entertain could (potentially) be released (forever?) through deep breath. (it's easier to have perspective when there are one million stars reminding you of your size.) seeing my friends from as far back as middle school in their beautiful, changing lives made me feel unafraid of whatever is coming. I kept talking too loudly because I was so happy.

we came home to a blizzard and some new construction blocking our admittedly outrageous unobstructed view of the empire state building. (we live in bedstuy, it was never going to last.)  this morning I made coffee*, unpacked all of our borrowed camping gear and in so doing, covered our floor in sand from 2,000 miles away. I felt different/I felt the same/I wondered about the duration of a bout with poison oak.


change is inevitable and it is important, and I am not stuck, (I am not stuck! we are not stuck!) and the ocean is still there. it all makes me feel like sometimes, you've just got to get in the car and drive.

* cardamom coffee

beautify your bedstuy morning
spice up your camping coffee

prepare to brew your coffee however you prefer. (that means french press or drip, probably.)

add 1 cracked cardamom** pod per cup that you're preparing. (you can crack the pods with the flat side of a knife, then throw the whole thing in with the grounds.)

you could also add one pinch of salt per cup, or however much cinnamon you want! wowee.

brew the coffee as usual. the cardamom will make the coffee taste slightly nutty and spicy.

\\ This isn't really a recipe so much as it is a suggestion to do something a little differently. The same effect could be easily achieved by doing a long and luxurious stretch. Welcome, March!

**Cardomom is absurdly expensive in many stores, but you can buy it in bulk for a reasonable price at international groceries. Also enticing for things like this, but I have really got to stop baking cakes and eating them in their entirety.

subway music

most subway stops, in Brooklyn especially, are wet this time of year, not freezing, not warm, but damp, and full of people up to their eyeballs in wraps and zippers and hats pulled low, scarves pulled high, echoes and drips, water running with a surprisingly swift current down the tracks. you and everybody mostly stand there and wonder how it's possible for one person to miss so many trains by so few fractions of a second. sometimes there's music from the other end of the station that frees your breath, sometimes you just bend and unbend your knees, make sure your thermos isn't leaking in your bag.

if and when the train comes there will be one person singing loudly while listening to headphones, one toddler looking at his reflection in the window, one man with a bike staring at the ground. there will be one person who lets go of a pole to turn a page of their book and falls into the man next to them. she/he will right themselves, she/he will go back to reading. sometimes you can understand the conductor and sometimes you cannot, so sometimes someone will jump up and run to the doors just as they close, missing their stop. They will stand there for a second as the train begins to move, then turn around and glance into the eyes of someone in the car, walk back to find that someone has taken their seat.

occasionally there will be music. maybe soft thrums of a guitar, maybe, improbably, a violinist keeping their weight low, moving with the motion of the floor. maybe mariachi, perhaps a single person walking down the aisle and singing unaccompanied. sometimes they'll sing well, sometimes not, always bravely or maybe numbly, since you have to be either brave or numb to walk down the aisle, loudly, alone. sometimes there will be dancers who'll swing around the poles and flip and land on their feet. you will think of the man/the woman/yourself falling to the side while reading a book and you'll think now THIS is a body, this kid has a body. that's what they talk about when they talk about the human form. his hat will land back on his head and the music will go quiet and he'll stroll down the aisle and you will give him a dollar.

sometimes there will be people sleeping on the seats. spread across three or two, with a suitcase or with a cart piled with papers. actually, maybe this person won't be sleeping, but talking or yelling, or maybe the man across from him will be talking or yelling or maybe that's the sound of a group of high schoolers who just got on, really on the train everybody is loud and everybody is quiet, we all just take turns.

Ladies and Gentlemen someone will say, I lost my job three years ago. I have a family to feed Ladies and Gentleman. Anything helps. Food to eat, if you have money to spare, God bless you. someone will pull out a Kashi bar, a woman in fur will rummage in her large purse and pull out a soft looking dollar.

sometimes, not often, the train will stop completely and the brakes will exhale loudly and there will be sudden stillness. not for long, or maybe for too long, and someone will have to crouch down and another person will murmur "I'm claustrophobic," and fifteen people will try to get cell service but mostly everyone will know that there's nothing to be done, so if it's not REALLY packed, if another person's hair isn't in their mouth, they'll stay quiet. except for the person who's turn it is to be loud.

things will get moving again and music will start or yelling will start and the doors will open. people pile out and people pile in, the doors close, (someone is a dollar richer,) and sometimes the train will make whistling sounds like the beginning of that song from West Side Story. "Theerrrrre's aaaaa plaaaaace for us..." and then the train will heave or roll or steam out of the station and each time everyone is newly gone, newly transported, on and on and on to the next.

I am as the weather // no knead bread

OKAY, time for some light to cut this interminable ice state we're in. I'm sitting by my bedroom window, next to a verilux solar lamp that I dug out of a box last week. everyone I know is getting had by the cold and I am too. it sits on my shoulders and furrows my face. what good is winter if you're not near the woods??


IMPORTANT:  
to melt ice:
bake bread* and share it with friends in your living room. slather it with jam. toast it and eat it with a fried egg. use it to sop up soup. hold the loaf to your ear and hear it crackle on the inside after you take it out of the oven.


do people in other cities use umbrellas when it snows? people here lean into their tiny-boned umbrellas like shields. Like the umbrellas won't immediately be inverted and broken and shoved into the nearest metal trashcan. (maybe new york is a bird city, with all of the pigeons and the umbrellas and that obsession with the hawks in Washington Square Park, and the tall, tall buildings. lots of wings all around considering we're so often underground or walking with heavy, quick, earthbound steps.)

* jim lahey's no knead bread. 

 bake it and commune with your ancestors.


it's a wonderful recipe, super easy, and this week has provided a hearth equivalency, warming my hands and reminding me of wholeness. the only thing I'd say about the recipe used by the new york times is that you can substitute active yeast for instant, you just have to dissolve it in warm water for a few minutes before you mix it with the flour, sugar and salt. the rest is just a matter of time.    
 
(isn't that how it always goes.)


be warm and be well. draw something instead of doing laundry. massage your jaw. wear the winter hat your grandma gave you!

some options // coconut cake

1) buy tulips. put them in every room.

2) know where most things are, have no idea where a few things are. 

3) drink water (hot?) / write a letter, enjoy satisfaction of sealing an envelope.

4) do something with your hands. clay:shape, paint:brush, paper:cut.  feel important and proud of your craft project. are you an artisan?

5) bake a coconut cake.*

6) express gratitude to someone, somehow and then

7) go on a walk, get cold, warm up, grab a handful of salt, scatter it on your front steps.

8) plan a party.

9) send some 'professional' emails. don't worry about them. instead

10) think about very, very, very tall trees. 

*coconut cake          

from 'barefoot contessa at home' by ina garten
serves 10-12

(( It is really, really very good. Unbelievably, it's not too sweet. It spares nothing, and will make your kitchen smell like almond, and coconut and vanilla. Like a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.))

hunkering // grapefruit olive oil cake

east village, pre-blizzard

I stumbled upon the concept of 'hygge' in a blog post here this week, and it felt like the word and idea I've been searching for my whole wintry life. Growing up in Michigan my hair used to freeze on my walk into school. Ten years and two states later, the wind still howls when I get up for work. I tiptoe down the sidewalk to the subway, trying not to slip on unsalted ice. 

It's a term that defies easy definition in English, but it centers around a feeling of warmth, community and well-being. Like holiday cheer, but all of the time. A winter survival method. How To Be a Winter Conifer. Let the snow pile up, but never lose your leaves.

I'm working on planning a few gatherings to better integrate this concept into our February. But for now...! A few things that brought some coziness and comfort to my week:


-baking this*, and staring into the face (the heart?) (the center) of two halved grapefruits. Buying them at the grocery store and forgetting how to tell if citrus is good or not. Is it heavy? How does it smell? Press the navel? (That's a cantaloupe.) Getting in touch with The Grapefruit and Its Body. Eating it for desert after a dinner with sweet friends. 

-using travel time productively. (staring into the face the heart the center of this book, and this one.) closing them to listen to the musicians on the Metropolitain G platform. Opening them again and almost missing my stop. 

-being a part of a reading and some rehearsals that brought color to my face. I'm just telling you, if you love acting, there is seriously nothing like doing it. It's a part of the discomfort of being an actor, I think. When you can't do it for whatever reason, there's a sadness in the absence. I love acting, and when I do it, a part of me wakes up.





get your blood pumping. then drink some wine! make some soup! more hygge to come!

*Grapefruit and Olive Oil Pound Cake  (exactly as it appears in the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman)

Cake

• butter or oil for the pan
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for the pan
• 2 Tbs freshly grated grapefruit zest (1-2 grapefruits)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup turbadino or raw cane sugar (granulated sugar can be subbed if you can't find this variety)
• 1/2 cup good fruity olive oil
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp table salt
• 2 Tbs freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
• 1/3 cup buttermilk or yogurt

Syrup

• 2 Tbs granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

Glaze

• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 Tbs freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and butter and flour a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, rub the grapefruit zest into the sugars with your fingertips.  This will help it release as much flavor and essence as possible.  

Whisk in the oil, then the eggs one at a time, and scrape down the bowl.

In a second, smaller bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  

Combine the grapefruit juice and buttermilk in a liquid measuring cup.

Alternating, add the flour and buttermilk mixtures to the sugar-oil mixture, beginning and ending with the flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and use a spatula to smooth the top.  Tap the pan on the counter a few times to pop any air bubbles.

Bake 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. (In my oven this took an hour.)

As the cake is baking, make the syrup.  Combine 2 tablespoons of sugar with 1/3 cup of grapefruit juice in a small saucepan.  Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally.  

When the cake is finished, cool it in the pan for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil, and top with a cooling rack.  Carefully invert the cake onto the rack, and use a toothpick or skewer to poke holes all over the top. Pour the syrup over the cake slowly.  Allow the cake to cool to room temperature.

To make the glaze, whisk together the confectioners' sugar and grapefruit juice until smooth.  Once the cake has cooled, pour the glaze over the cake, allowing it to drizzle down the sides decoratively.  Slice and serve.