If I Knew Then

While at Casa Mom last week I got the chance to go through a bunch of old pictures. Some were my own blurry/finger-over-shutter photos which hinted at my current digital camera philosophy of “if it’s worth taking one picture of it’s worth taking a dozen more from slightly different but no more interesting angles.” Some were inherited and thus slightly higher quality photos that friends had given me. But the bulk of them were pictures my parents, usually my dad, took. I think Daddy had the same disregard for film price as I did because for every money shot that made it into the album there were a dozen more test shots of trees or deer or the curtains. I’ve inherited a lot of his habits, I think. Like my dad I’m not especially visually gifted, but I like to play around. I know what I want to capture, I’m just not exactly sure how to go about doing it, which may explain why I took twelve shots and two videos of (in my defense, impressively large) waves at Fort Point last week. What’s fascinating to me is the point of view, the glimpse into the mind of the photographer. When I look at my dad’s photos I see the world as he saw it. I see his endless landscape photos as an attempt to capture the enormity of nature. I see his sneaky long-lens candid photos as trying to preserve a happy family moment, even if it’s just me and Yean sitting at a picnic table eating chips.

My dad did manage to stumble upon quite a few gems, which got pasted into the photo album along with his dorky puns and commentary. One of my favorites is the one above, which is possibly the only evidence that I had any interest in cooking as a child. I love the look of pure concentration on my face, not to mention my gigantor forehead. In my more wistful moments I wonder if my dad had any idea I’d grow up into a professional baker. I see this picture and I think maybe he was trying to capture my independence, my tactile skills. But of course, he probably didn’t. When that photo was taken I think I wanted to become a botanist (because my grandma let me help her weed the garden) and when he died in 2000 I think I was still set on “comic book writer/artist/professional anime watcher phD.” And peanut butter toast is hardly advanced cooking.

So I think a lot about my dad, and my relationship to food, and how the one is shaped by the other. And it’s easy now to look back and make the connections, because they’re there and because it feels good to ground myself in my past. But for the life of me I can’t remember exactly why I decided to go to cooking school. It’s like the idea was just there all along and when the time came to make plans I just added it to the queue. And really, it’s worked out pretty well. But considering the other things I wanted to be in high school (filmmaker, artist, accountant, environmental world-saver, and of course paperback writer) it’s hard to reconcile the person I am now with the person I thought I’d become. The other layer of weird is that most people in my graduating class had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do with their lives and are just now really starting to figure it out.

But I really, really want to see the little baker in childhood me, in part because I’ve always been a person who defines herself by what she does and in part because I want the father I remember from when I was 14 to absolutely know the woman I am at 24. There’s this phantom Dad that hovers over my life nodding approvingly at my decisions and then there’s the reality, which is that I was very young when he died. And that’s rough.

But there’s another reality that I’m coming to accept, which is that I could have become any one of those things (accountant? really? And didn’t I fail biology?) and I would have been happy. And that, at least, is something I know he knew. And the knowing he knew is enough, nowadays.

Left My Heart

Sorry for the radio silence, homies, but it’s been a busy time here over at Your Crappy Apartment. First there were the holidays, in all their stressful overworked glory. Is it possible to hate Christmas while only marginally celebrating it? I believe it is, yes. The downside of working in the food industry is that the month of December becomes a death march of productivity. And cinnamon. At the end of the holidays is a period of heavy drinking that one will almost surely regret come January 1st.

I spent the last week recovering from Christmaspocalypse ‘09 in sunny foggy but mild-ish California, lounging around in my Mom’s house trying to figure out when and how I could next stuff my face with something delicious. A few meal highlights:

1) Lunch at Hog Island Oyster Bar, SF Ferry Building- Everything is expensive down at the FB, so you might as well do it up and eat the thing you really want to eat, price be damned. You don’t go to Hog Island to stuff your face on the cheap, you go there to sit back, drink a glass of wine, and enjoy the view of the bay while sampling some incredibly fresh and reverently prepared shellfish. We were there on an overcast Monday, so the crowd was negligible and the views were unobstructed. And yet my Mother, who hasn’t set foot on Market street for anything other than a dentist appointment since 1991, still ran into someone from her church choir. Veeeerrrry interesting.

2) Making this roasted lemon garlic crab dish with my Mommy- I would eat it every day if I could.

3) Grilled BBQ chicken and pork skewers from the Filipino place- Fil-Am cuisine in Daly City, please marry me. Your certainly-not-up-to-fire-code grill produces the most delicious, charred and juicy meat that I have ever put in my mouth, and it is dirt cheap to boot. Also the lumpia makes me cry with joy.

4) In-n-Out Burger- ‘Nuff said.

5) Dim Sum from Hong Kong Seafood, SF- OHHHHH MY GODDDDDD GO HERE. I have fond memories of getting takeout from their to-go window and eating it in Golden Gate Park, but because we were jonesin’ for the fresh stuff (and because my Mommy texted me a week before my vacation to tell me she was craving dim sum) we went there on a weekday and ate our weight in steamed and fried things. They don’t do carts during the week so a little knowledge is necessary to order the good stuff, but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the fried taro dumplings, the egg tarts, and the eggplant stuffed with shrimp. My personal guilty pleasure is the fried shrimp balls, which look like little testicles but are crispy and flavorful and not tough like they can be when they’ve been sitting out. A happy surprise was this little desserty thing that the waitress with the egg tarts pushed on us, which had barbequed pork wrapped in super flaky pastry that was undoubtedly lard-based, brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds and baked. It as like flaky heaven in my mouth Oh, and the sticky rice…good lord, the sticky rice. I want to have babies in that rice so that the first thing they experience in this world is the smell of dehydrated shrimp. That’s pretty gross, I guess. Forget I said that.

6) The many delicious flavors of the Mission District, SF- This is a bit of a cop-out to lump everything I ate into one experience, but I’m beginning to believe the best way to experience the Mission is to wander around with someone who knows it really well, like my dear lady friend Rhiannon. There are just so many things! To eat! How can a girl pick a favorite? Let’s start with the destination-worthy Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream: the flavors are ridiculous, but ultimately delicious. You will think of ice cream in a completely different way, and you will damn well like it. After that we had dinner and  killer margaritas at Velvet Cantina, then settled in at Cha Cha Cha for my one true Mission District craving: sangria. There was also an attempt to stalk find the creme brulee cart that was derailed by a location/date mix-up. Next time, creme brulee man. Next time.

Driving home for ten hours in the rain, I asked Yean if it was weird that I spent my whole vacation either eating or planning to eat something delicious.

“That sounds like an AWESOME vacation.” she said, looking at me like I was a crazy person. Of course I’m exaggerating. I did do other things, or at least I think I did. But the food. Oh lord, the food. I miss it already.

GUESS WHAT?

Merry Christmas, bitches! Hope you all enjoy SANTA OHHHH MY GOOOODDDD!!!

Today in Confusing Graffiti: Portland’s Cathedral Park

Because the sun set at approximately

4:16 p.m. yesterday, I thought we could all use a little break to remember what fall looks like. Trees, apparently from time to time they get these “leaves” that “fall” every year after “turning” to a red/golden shade. I know, right? Crazy!

So last month, before the really cold snap, Yean and I took a little jaunt to Cathedral Park in St. Johns, which is in the waaaaaay North part of Portland in the little armpit of land where the Willamette starts curving West. I used to commute there from my rented room in Beaverton at like five in the morning when I first moved to Portland, and by the time I got off work I had no energy to enjoy the splendors of Lombard St., let alone to drive home without running five red lights. So it was a bit of a revelation to go back there and experience the neighborhood as a consumer rather than an employee.

The St. Johns Bridge is probably my favorite Portland bridge, and I still lament not getting this one apartment in an old Victorian with absolutely stunning views of the bridge and the hills, flaky shiny-shirt-wearing landlord notwithstanding.

Now, its important to point out that the St. Johns was not, in fact, designed by the same guy who did the Golden Gate. They’re both suspension bridges, they were both depression-era projects, and they’re both, um, fanciful colors, but the dudes who built them were actually rivals, or at least that’s what Wikipedia and the Portland Neighborhood Association tell me. I think they both rock. Asking me to pick one is like asking me to pick a favorite child, or possibly a favorite stressful traffic situation. Ol’ St. Johns may not have the Gate’s steep toll, but I did have to drive across it once in a snowstorm and the memory gives me stress cramps to this day.

Obviously the park gets its name for the Gothic-ish towers that support the bridge, which make a picturesque place to picnic, canoodle with your teenage lover or, as we found out(MOTHER DO NOT READ THIS IT IS GROSS), write confusing graffiti:

To this day we still debate whether this was two people, one who wrote “pussy” and another who added “fart,” or one person who simply meant “pussy fart.” I also could have sworn there was an “e” on the end of “fart” but looking at the pictures maybe I imagined that exciting tidbit.

Right after I took this I asked Yean if there was poo on the ground next to her:

We think it was just dirt though.

I mean, we’re pretty sure.

Oh, Portland.

Treat Yourself

So, as a follow up to my SAD post

I feel it’s appropriate to clarify that the best thing to do when you want to eat a lot of carbs is to just eat a lot of carbs. The past few weeks have seen me whipping up heavy comfort food like there’s no tomorrow. The result of all this is that last night I had a spinach salad and it was possibly the best thing I have ever put in my mouth, ever. I guess my body finally reached a critical mass of buttered foods.

Since it’s been a while since I did a recipe, here’s one that’s a good balance of carbs, protein and fat, but only in the sense that it has a lot of all those things. Especially the last one. You’ve got your eggs (protein), your dairy (fat) and of course, toast (carbs). Also some parsley. That’s good, right? Right?

I got these ramekins ages ago from Cost Plus, which is my mother’s favorite store. I think I originally intended to use them to bake creme caramel and other custardy things, but so far I’ve only used them as prep bowls and to make these baked eggs. I learned this technique from an old coworker, who made breakfast for everyone a couple years ago during a three-day bakery potluck event that I may still be recovering from. Heavy as it is I should point out that I’ve only ever made this dish on work days, never on the weekend. Why I put myself and my loved ones through such gastrointestinal hurdles is beyond me, but it does make for an enjoyable start to the day.

Also notable is the use of garlic in a breakfast dish. IMO it’s the only thing keeping this from being overly rich, but if you’re not up to garlic mouth at 9 am you can leave it out. Other fresh herbs that would be nice are chives, maybe dill, but parsley is what I usually have, so hey. The bake time depends on how done you want your eggs. If you leave it so there’s a little jiggle in the center you get a nice sort of egg/fat soup that you can dip your toast in, but more often than not I forget to check the oven until the whole dang thing’s baked through. Which is still nice! It’s like a really well seasoned soft boiled egg. Basically there’s no way you can fuck it up because even if you overbake it it comes out tasty.

Baked Eggs

(serves 2)

4 whole eggs

1 small clove garlic, minced

1 T. fresh parsley, minced

4 T. sour cream or creme fraiche

salt and pepper

Equipment: 2 buttered ramekins, a shallow pan to bake in

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Butter the ramekins and put about half the garlic in the bottom of each, along with a tablespoon of sour cream and half the parsley. Crack 2 eggs into each ramekin, season with salt and pepper. Top with remaining garlic, sour cream and parsley, and place in the baking pan. Fill the pan with warm water until it comes about halfway up the sides of the ramekin and place in the middle rack of the oven. Bake until set, about 20 minutes. Serve with toast.