Peaches.

No, not that kind of Peaches. The kind that you eat. There is a store - Brennan's - here in Madison that posts a sign every summer advertising "Chin Drippin Peaches." Despite their failure to use the appropriate folksy apostrophe after the second "n" in this phrase, I usually buy a case every year. A case = lots and lots of peaches. I like to make them into pies, which I then freeze for baking later in the fall and winter, when it's a pretty neat trick to produce for one's dinner guests a delicious peach pie that tastes like it's August. The project started auspiciously, with the case of peaches being on sale for $5 less than usual. Then I got myself a Corporate Iced Latte, which gave me enough hyper energy to make lattice-top pies while listening to one of the best compilation albums in my collection - "Rockabilly Riot!". Do not - I repeat, DO NOT, omit that exclamation point. Punctuation, then, is the theme for this post. When my husband came home from work, I am sure he thought I was having some sort of psychotic break, listening to Fifties music ("Baby, Let's Play House" is on the disc) and baking! Baking! Baking! In my cheery red apron. It was a "Mad Men" moment, if you will. Three pies later, only half of the case of peaches has been scalded, skinned and chopped up. Wait, isn't that how they used to punish treason in the original thirteen colonies? The one peach pie I baked fresh came out perfectly, due to nothing but dumb luck. How can you know in advance how much thickener-of-choice (I use potato starch) to add in order to avoid soupy pie? And how to fend off the rapacious family that wants to eat the pie before it has had time to cool and set? It's really just a blind guess for me, but this time the cards fell in my favor and the pie consistency was spot on. I've come down from the caffeine high and am wondering what to do with the rest of the freakin' peaches.

Book blogging. Re: Doctor Books

Stuff is very much going on in my kitchen nowadays, but without photos, it seems a bit pointless. So here's my subject: I am obsessed with books about medicine. Clearly, I'm not alone, since I see a seemingly endless parade of them come through my hands working at the library. The appeal is not hard to figure out. We all have bodies, we all (might) get sick, and few of us have the brain power or persistence to actually become M.D.s. In addition, we're inundated with pop-cultural doctors on television (E.R., House, etc.). I'd also like to pitch in what I consider the "freakshow" factor. I love reading about weird, rare diseases. Well, who doesn't? I have a total lit-crush on Atul Gawande (New Yorker medical writer). My kids and I routinely watch Nova videos about strange medical cases. Boy in the Bubble? Check. Family That Walks On All Fours? Yes, please!

So recently I read two books in a row that were, in different ways, about medicine and the human body. "Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Bookers and Other Useless Information About Your Body" was something I picked up thinking it might have kid-interest (didn't) and it turned out to be a collection of ho-hum, read-it-before factoids (why men have nipples, etc.). It didn't even take a strong stand on the bookers issue, coming down, it seemed, more on the pro-booger-eating side more than anything else, based on keeping your nasal passages clear and boosting your immune system by ingesting bacteria. So dull, and also misleadingly-titled. Simultaneously, I read "Intern: A Doctor's Intitiation", Sandeep Jauhar's account of his completely miserable year of internship. Dude was depressed. I realized what it is that Atul Gawande does so well, which is to focus on patients and illness rather than his personal struggle, and to take fascinating individual case studies and weave them into a larger narrative about some big medical issue that would never occur to a layperson to ponder. Jauhar occasionally does this, but larded with too much Eeyore for me.

BUT the big realization here is that I read doctor-books for much the same reasons that I gravitate towards yet another micro-niche: books by restaurant waitstaff (like Phoebe Damrosch's "Service Included." Because I am a hard-core people-pleaser, it's like research on how to be the BEST. CUSTOMER. EVER. Whether eating a meal or putting my legs into a set of stirrups (not the horsey kind), I just want to be liked. Is that so wrong?

...Still waiting for pictures

If I were a more independent and self-actualized woman, I would learn how to upload my own digital photos onto the laptop my own damn self. If I had actually been listening to the lyrics of Destiny's Child's "Independent Woman Pt. 1" or Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" or any of the Ani DiFranco CDs I bought in college, I would take the initiative to master what is most assuredly a fairly uncomplicated piece of technology that would save me from becoming one of those grannies who relies on the teenage grandkids to program whatever the 2040 analog to the TiVo might end up being. But no. This isn't a technophobe thing. It's more one of those marital-bailiwick things. The digital camera is my husband's turf in much the same way that, say, home plumbing is mine. See, I'm not a total dunce, Gloria Steinem! But what this means for my two faithful blog readers (hi, mom) is that the breathtaking shots of my cherry clafoutis are not yet available for public consumption even though the dessert itself was made available for private consumption some weeks ago. Option the first is to abandon the notion that this is a cooking blog and just use it as a forum to grouse about library patrons. Option the second is to move on. Thoughts? Opinions?

Stay Tuned . ..

Cherry clafoutis has actually been made. This involved the purchase of ramekins and vanilla beans, and the subsequent assembly of what looked like an effortlessly thrown-together Frenchy bistro type meal but was in fact the coldly calculated result of weeks (two, but still weeks PLURAL) of planning and scheming so that I could be all nonchalant with my whisk like, "I don't know why I don't make my own vinaigrette all the time. It's so easy!!!" There is actual photographic documentation of the clafoutis that has yet to be uploaded to my computer, HAL 9001. So stay tuned for awe-inspiring clafoutis snaps and enjoy this vintage test pattern while you long nostalgically for a time when the television broadcast day had a beginning and an end and was capable of approximating something resembling a narrative arc rather than serving as a metaphor for the neverending Sisyphean struggle of humanity in its relentless barrage of meaninglessness. That is all.

How Compulsive Moms Have a Lemonade Stand

This morning, my boys decided to have a lemonade stand. The impetus for the idea was a plan they found in a library book that provided schematics for a lemonade cart. It used, among other things, a bicycle wheel and a great deal of lumber and hardware, for the price of which I could have taken my kids down to the chi-chi Sundance Cinema Cafe and treated them to an entire meal capped off with glasses of frosty fresh-squeezed lemonade while Robert Redford himself fanned us with palm fronds. I had a very hard time letting go of my paradigm of the lemonade stand as a profit-making venture. If we had used generic concentrate we might have broken even, but I would be embarrassed to serve it to my neighbors (some of whom I am related to). I am surely delusional in thinking that I have a rep to protect. But we made a simple syrup on the stovetop and went to buy some lemons to juice. They cost 79 cents per (why don't computer keyboards provide you with the "cents" symbol? so wrong) and we had to buy ten. Round up the price to account for sugar and ice, and conservatively this was an eight dollar pitcher of lemonade. The kids wanted to charge a dollar a glass, which would have actually been reasonable, but one always assumes one is surrounded by culinary philistines who DON"T UNDERSTAND what goes into a fine product such as ours. Deciding to take a loss, the price was set at two bits a glass (notice my end-run around the lack of "cents" symbol by retreating even further into antiquity) and our inventory snapped up by neighbors, our stand hastily dissassembled before we were shut down for health code violations.

One Pie To Rule Them All

I'm cooking again. Yesterday this blueberry pie was produced from our kitchen. I had been discussing the topic of blueberry pie earlier in the week with the husband, because I had never made one. My apprehension about blueberry came from both my perception of it as sickeningly sweet, even unctuous, and as a sort of Pu-235 of pies, radiating a deep blue tincture, staining everything that comes within its orbit a permanent, regal purple, including but not limited to teeth. Caleb's principle objection was the cost of blueberries, overcome when his uncle presented us gratis with a large box of said berries. So - pie.

Two of my nieces came over for the pie-making, and while Eileen and Helen cheerfully participated in the rolling of the crust and the gentle folding of the lemon zest into the berries, my own kids industriously watched a Power Rangers video (Ike) and replaced the batteries in the toy light saber (Oscar). The girls were splendid. They embodied all of my early-motherhood fantasies in which my kids would calmly but enthusiastically help with every cooking project, adding an ingredient here and there and listening with rapt attention while I pedantically share my knowledge of cooking factoids both obscure (use vodka to moisten your pie crust!) and painfully obvious (the more you handle the dough, the dirtier it will get!). We even rolled out the extra crust dough and made cinnamon-sugar cookies. And then I smacked them all around a bit and lit up a Vantage Light.

Photo credit: fabulous husband Caleb.

The Hold Steady!

Last night, I got to see The Hold Steady live. There was a ten-year-lull in my once-active concertgoing after getting married and having kids, but recently I've started going to live shows again (thanks, JLK!). I had forgotten how invigorating it is to see live music, and how the chemistry in the air can change in an instant when a group of musicians all of a sudden meshes together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. The communal experience of a live show fills me with what can only be described as joy. My ears are still ringing, though. The venue had an upper balcony with comfy seating and tables, perfect for an oldster like me for whom the mosh pit is no longer a viable or dignified option, but as it turned out the acoustics were radically different upstairs - muddy sound, vocals much lower in the mix. I dragged my recalcitrant husband down to the floor for the encore and discovered that the sound downstairs was MUCH better. Good to know for future shows at this particular venue. I don't have a whole lot of profundity on the subject of the show except that the unlikely frontman gave an EXTREMELY animated performance dressed in what looked like Dockers and a polo shirt. He looked less like the lead singer of a hipster band than the IT guy who has arrived to stop your computer from freezing up.