Why I Gave Up on New Year's Resolutions

We've all made them:
"I will lose weight."
"I will be organized."
"I will be a better, kinder, gentler person."
"I will be more thrifty."
And on and on and on it goes, ad infinitum, of things we will do, should do, and have the best intentions of doing and never do. I'm breaking up with you NYE resolution. It's not you, it's me. The minute I promise myself I'm going to do something to improve my life, the self-destruct sequence starts counting down in my head. I self-sabotage, avoid, procrastinate, and ignore the promises I made to myself.

Not this year! Because I refuse to fall prey to the resolutions ploys of "it will be different this time," and "I'm a changed person."  Lies, all of them.  This year, I have projects.  They have deadlines, but they are relatively relaxed, and if I don't complete something within the timeline, it's ok. I can't use them as excuses to beat upon myself because they have absolutely nothing to do with my health, my finances, or my attitude (well, sort of).  They're fun. They're satisfying. And I have chosen my projects because they will feed me in ways that I know I am lacking.  I am not feeding my little feathered thing that perches in my soul very well, and it has turned evil and is plotting revolutions and mutinies on my well-being. It also has a potty-mouth when it comes to my self-confidence. I am rising up and cramming art and writing and creating down it's crabby little beak.

My first project involves all of them and it is a project in itself. And it's this. My blog. I have another blog, Eatie Gourmet that I was faithful to for a while and then it fell by the wayside. Then, I created one specifically for a particular NYE resolution and it had one post on it. ONE. So, obviously, you can see how that went. This project is to just commit to one blog, and write about everything in this one blog. So, your going to see the progression of some of my other projects within this blog (how meta).  It's also designed to keep me honest, and keep me going on the rest of my endeavors.  There will be a little bit of everything here: art, food, writing, personal journey, and libraryland stuff. So, if one of those things doesn't interest you, just skip it. Note that I presume that there will be people that will want to read this blog. How vain of me. It matters not. What matters is I have a place to put down my thoughts and feelings, my frustrations, my triumphs and failures, and hope that somewhere, somehow along the way I learn something. And if you want to follow along in my journey, because face it, humans are naturally voyeuristic, then do so. I promise you will at least find a couple worthwhile recipes in the flotsam and jetsam.

So, my other two major projects are:
1. Each month, I choose an artist, and by the end of the month I have to have at least created one piece that is inspired by that artist. Be it technique, medium, subject matter, or outright emulation, it will correspond to the artist in some way.  I will probably do research about the artist, because it's what I do, and for my own guidelines I'm insisting that the final piece be larger than 8x12. I am notorious for working small, and need to expand my size and get out of my habit of tight, precise art that I end up overworking or hating. My friend Pamela is doing a similar project, in fact, it was her idea, so credit where credit is due.  It's a brilliant idea.

2. I have an unnatural addiction to amateur cookbooks. You know the ones I'm talking about - the St. James Lutheran Church, the Ladies Garden Society, the Lutheran Women's Aid Society, the First Baptist Koffee Klatch.  So, I want to start cooking my way through some of the cookbooks I own and collect the best of the best.  I also would love to try and find some of the ladies that might have contributed to these cookbooks. When I read their recipes, I can't help but think about their lives. Were they Depression babies? Were they children of Depression babies? Did they survive multiple wars? The Dust Bowl?  The Farm Crisis?  Why did they choose this recipe above all the others?  Did they think it was the best tasting? The easiest? Or were there fond memories attached to this recipe?  In the process, I want to collect recipes from my Facebook friends and make a FB Friend cookbook that everyone can receive digitally.  But I'm going to ask for the stories behind them. Food is a powerful memory trigger for many of us, and I want to dig deep in that phenomenon, and have a cookbook that I can treasure and pass down to nephews and nieces someday.

So here's to keeping me honest.  And my projects.  And burning all those love letters that Resolution sent me.

Foodie Friday: Allspice Culinarium

Photo by Holly McQueen - Des Moines Register

If you're ever in the Des Moines area, I urge you to make Allspice Culinarium one of your stops.  But don't expect to just spend a few minutes in this spice emporium.  I'd slot at least an hour.  Because you'll get lost in the massive array of spices, rubs, and kits.  And then you'll discover the olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting bar, and lose another hour.


Allspice Culinarium offers over 350 spices that you can smell, sample and buy in multiple sizes.  They also do a very brisk business over the internet (thank goodness!) in case you can't get to their shop. But believe me, it is absolutely worth the trip.  In fact, Des Moines is worth a trip for the food alone.  It is a little known culinary gem of the Midwest.  I'm sure you'll see more blog posts about DSM restaurants, bars, and shops in the future. 

But let's return to the warm cayenne-colored interior of Allspice.  It is a cook's dream come true. Stacks and bags and boxes of spices arranged in aisles alphabetically in each aisle.  Cinnamon? Korintje, or Saigon?  Peppercorns? Pink, Black, Multi, Green, Smoked, Tellicherry?  Salt? Black Truffle, Fleur de Sel, or Lime Fresco (I highly recommend this one)? The list goes on and on, until it is a nearly overwhelming wall of tastes and smells. 

And then you round the corner, and see great silver urns, lined in ranks upon high white counters.  Filled with nothing but oils and vinegars.  You fall to your knees as if you were Columbus and had found the spice route to Asia after all.  You are overcome as you dip crusty sourdough bread into small cups filled with brilliant green Frantoio olive oil, or black and pungent 18-year balsamic vinegar.  Then you try the basil olive oil, or the red apple balsamic vinegar, or the Persian Lime olive oil and the Blackberry Ginger balsamic. On and on, until your head whirls in a Mediterranean muddle of the foodie high.  And then you proceed to fill a basket with harissa and Moroccan rub and oils and vinegars and Schezuan pepper and are prepared to take out a second mortgage to pay for your excesses whilst drunk on olive oil. But you don't have to.

Because that's the best thing about Allspice Culinarium.  It is affordable, it is accessible, it allows anyone who enjoys spices and flavors and delicious living, to do so without breaking the bank. And if you don't know what to do with all the spices you've just indulged in, there are delicious recipes on their website. And if you don't live near Des Moines, order from their online store. There is no excuse not to try some new spices or oils.   It's one of the best food discoveries I have had in Iowa...so far.

I'm having a love affair with Allspice. Don't tell.

Book Review: The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

"'But - ' crossing back to the table to sit again '- if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think, ' oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art.  It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.'" - from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

If you love art, art history, antiques, or New York, this book is for you.  This book is a piece of art that hisses at you from an alley, who tempts you to drag a finger over the artfully arranged sentences, and then, helplessly, drag a finger over it again.  It begs to have sentences re-read, to bask in a moment, to savor words as you silently roll them in your mouth, inhaling as if to draw out the experience. This is a book that makes you tighten the tourniquet, and shoot up for an all night bender.

Theo Decker is a 13-year old New Yorker, who suddenly loses his mother, the one thing that he loves, the only person that enlivens him, in a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  And at the urging of an old man who will change his destiny forever, he steals a painting that is the last memory of his mother - The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius.  I think Tartt couldn't have picked a better painting as the centerpiece of this book.  It is a tiny painting, measuring only approximately 9"x13", barely bigger than the book in which it appears.  A goldfinch, drab in its winter plumage, stares stoically at the viewer, chained to his small perch. Looking closely at the painting, you can detect the quick and easy slashes of paint laid on a canvas by a master painter who died too young.  Step back, and the finch ruffles his feathers, and comes to life, pinning you with one beady black eye.  Lonely and enduring, the finch could be an apt representative of Theo - a pallid, waif-ish boy who wanders the streets of a city that doesn't seem to notice him.

Taken in at first by the antiseptic and arctic Barbour family, Theo gives us a glimpse at life as an affluent (but not too affluent) New York family. Then, when his father returns to claim him, after a long abandonment, he whisks Theo away, and we peer into life in wrecked and raucous Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the illicit painting wraps its delicate, but unbreakable chain tighter and tighter around Theo.

This is a story of desolation and redemption, of snobbery and low living, of art, love and heartbreak.  The places it occurs in seem as if they are a dream version of real places, but then a Dutch Masters painting of the Delft Disaster or a Chippendale highboy snaps it suddenly into chiaroscuro focus. Tartt takes you by the hand and leads you through a novel that doesn't always make sense, with characters that talk exactly like characters sometimes, and not real people, but you don't care because it's all so damn beautiful.  And I'm irritated a little, because this is the first book I read in 2014, and I'm not so sure that there will be another that can stand up to the silky rich prose of this novel.

Rumaki

                                          Evening Luau - Trevor Carlton

In 1934, a restaurant called Don the Beachcomber opened in Hollywood, California. The proprietor was a young man from Louisiana who had sailed through the South Pacific and was captured by the culture and exotic beauty of the region. His restaurant featured Cantonese food, but the decor was really what captured people's imaginations.  Rattan furniture, hibiscus prints, and torches and leis.  Then, in 1937, Victor Bergeron opened Trader Vic's and Tiki Culture was born. 

Tiki culture surged into popularity after World War II, and remained popular well into the 1970s, but truly the height of the tiki culture was the 1950's and became part of the defining iconic imagery of mid-century America.  Les Baxter, Arthur Lyman, and Martin Denny popularized tiki culture through jazz flavored with Polynesian, Asian, and Latin rhythms, and tiki art began to appear.  

Asian and Polynesian foods became popular at cocktail parties, but many of them were altered because of the lack of ingredients, or they were simply created. Rumaki is one of these dishes. There are some that attribute the invention of this appetizer to the Beachcomber, and some who claim that Trader Vic's is where the dish originated.  Either way, there is nothing Polynesian, Asian, Latin, Thai, or any other nationality in this dish.  It is 100% American.

Marinated chestnuts, chicken or duck liver and bacon comprise the whole of this simple, but delicious appetizer.  However, in the Midwest, strangely the chicken liver disappeared from the list of ingredients and it became solely bacon and water chestnuts. Nevertheless, when set before a group of friends on New Year's Eve, they didn't last long enough for me to snap pictures.  It is a simple, and surprisingly elegant appetizer, and it is no wonder that it had remained popular for so many years.  It is often included in the appetizer section of many of my local collected cookbooks, and I am disappointed in myself that I didn't try them sooner, because they truly would have been in my regular repertoire, as tasty and easy as they are. 

The recipe that I used is from a cookbook called Specialties of the House, of an unknown date, though it is most likely from the mid-60s. And, ironically enough, it is a cookbook not from the Midwest, but from Manhassett, Long Island.  It was a fundraising cookbook for Our Lady of Grace Montessori School.  I went to St. Bernard's Montessori, so I feel a little bit of a connection to this cookbook on a variety of levels.  

Rumaki 

1 C. soy sauce
1/2 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
1/8 ginger 
2 8 oz. cans water chestnuts, drained 
1/2 lb. bacon 

Mix soy sauce with sugar and ginger. Cut bacon slices in half. Wrap bacon around water chestnuts, secure each with a toothpick. Marinate 4 hours or longer, can be marinated overnight, in soy sauce mixture. Then broil at 425 degrees F.  If you like, serve with teriyaki sauce for dipping. Watch them disappear. 

Honestly, there is enough marinade that you could probably double the amount of water chestnuts and bacon. And believe me, you wouldn't go wrong having extras, because these probably won't last more than 10 minutes. You could also make these more high end and add the chicken or duck liver in these.  I'd be interested in trying prosciutto instead of bacon, but the high salt factor might be too overpowering for the sweet.  I also debated marinating the chicken or duck livers separate in Worcestershire and honey then assembling the rumaki.  

Enjoy!