Planning for Christmas Presents

The Secretary and Carpenter like to make presents for Christmas. Ok, me, the Secretary, I really like to make presents. Besides being less expensive than shopping, making stuff means that I end up giving people presents that are actually meaningful (at least to me), and bypassing all that that crappy shopping pressure. Normally, I love shopping. I like to look at stuff, sort through stuff, pick out cool stuff, and find the secret awesome deals. But when it comes to shopping for presents I get completely stressed out. I end up spending hours walking from store to store trying to decide if this is more special than that, and "Will they actually like it, or do I just like it?", "Is this not expensive enough?", "Too expensive?", "Will they think I don't love them enough if I just get them socks?", "But what if they are really awesome socks?", "Is it dumb that I get them a blank journal every year?", "But they like journals," "What does it say about me?", "If I give them this, does it make me look cool and interesting?", "Does it seem like I didn't think about them enough?", "Where is the money for all this crap coming from anyway?", "And yes, this is all just crap anyway."

So yes, I've given some disastrous presents. Most of the disasters were purchased. I almost always feel great about the ones I've made, and I think the people who get them feel great about them too. (Except for the one time I made a scarf for my friend that ended up being about 15 feet long. I was aiming to make it sort of long, because he likes Dr. Who, but after he wore it a couple of times, it stretched out so ridiculously long that he couldn't wear it. I don't even feel that bad about it though, because it sure was cute on him while it lasted.)

The Carpenter I have have gotten together and made some nice Christmas presents. Past hits include homemade mustard and a hat we invented that can turn into a neck warmer. My dad particularly like his hat/neckwarmer because he says when he wears a hat, his head gets too hot, so he opens up the top like a vent.


We've been talking about making a friends & family cookbook for a long time, and this year we're going for it. We've got a plan, we've sent out an email, and we're waiting for the recipes to come rolling in. The first recipe we got is my aunt's coffee cake. Just to test it out, I made it for breakfast on Thanksgiving and it was delicious. The batter was so moist and creamy that I almost wish I hadn't even baked it. It was also very good when baked.

We're hoping to include pictures and anecdotes from people in addition to the recipes. I'm going to submit butterscotch chocolate chip cookies. I can't wait to see what the Carpenter is going to put in. We've been promised a recipe for "Daddy Joe's Egg Nog" (which I'm hoping is mostly bourbon and cream) and a bunch of other amazing sounding stuff. I think this is an extra good present idea, because we've tricked everyone into helping make their own present. We're going to put it all together, bind it in some cute way that we haven't quite decided yet, and send it out in time for Christmas (we hope!).

Here are the instructions we sent out to our loved ones:

Dearest Friends and Family,
For the Holidays this year Secretary and Carpenter will be making the first edition of a Friends and Family Cookbook. We are going to include recipes, pictures, and stories for the recipes. But to put it together, we need your help in getting us your recipes. You will, of course, receive a copy of the entire Cookbook this year.

We want a recipe that is somehow signature to you, and one that you feel strongly about. If that's some sort of awesome PB and J with walnuts and fluff or whatever, bring it on. There are no rules about where the recipe comes from (could be from your favorite cookbook- just let us know that) nor does it have to be some sort of food perfection- simple is totally fine.
So, assuming you want to submit a recipe, here is what we need...

Name of Your Recipe:
Your Name or Names (family name, or team name acceptable- just give us your real names as well):
Explain how you know Secretary and Carpenter:
Address:
Email:
Contact Phone Number:
(will be printed in the cookbook, so a person could contact you about any questions on your recipe)
Ingredients:
(do not be afraid to use un-scientific measurements, like handfuls or pinches- no need to buy a beaker and a scale- tell us how you make it)
Directions:
(explain in your own words, either cookbook style, or narrative. Whatever is best for you)
Story about the recipe:
(or you can include a story as a part of the directions)
Send us a Picture of you- and if you have it, a picture of your dish:

That's it! (might seem like a lot of work, but just think about getting the secret recipe to our Landlady's famous pasta Gravy- and it is totally worth it) And if you wan to submit more than one recipe- by all means, do it! But we may edit based on length.
Yeah!!!

Looks like it's going to be a pretty good cook book so far. Have I spoiled it now that you know what you're going to get? Eh, you knew already, didn't you?

Warmest regards,
Secretary

Eating Fish in Flanders

The day after Thanksgiving, carpenter returned to his High School hometown for a High School Reunion. My family doesnt even live there anymore so it has been years since I have really set foot in the city limits of Flanders/East Lyme Connecticut.

When in High School, I worked at the local famous Flanders Fish Market as a waiter and fishmonger. My girlfriend at the time and I got jobs on the same day, which meant that the next 2 years before we graduated were full of fish and romance. She drove a purple thunderbird, and I drove a Dodge Colt with a sunroof.

I would spend all day at the beach, and then when 4pm rolled around, I'd shower off, throw on my waiter digs, and sell fried clams to broken gamblers making their way back from Foxwoods. I remember one night a customer was bitching about having to pay for a refill of lemonade, "What kind of a truck-stop is this?". Well its not a truck stop, so that guy had to just pony up the $1.50 and shut his snapper.

The grossest thing to sell is the sea scallops. Don't get me wrong, Flander's Fish has the best, but even the freshest scallops have a truly weird and disgusting odor. But they are great on the grill.

So, secretary and I were on our way back from my high school reunion, and without much time to dally, I had to stop and get me some fried whole-belly clams. For those of you who think of fried clams as the strips of rubber you get at Arthur's Fried Chicken or at the school cafeteria, I am sorry for you. The whole belly takes a little getting used to, because even when it is perfectly fired, like at Flander's Fish, it is still a little goopy. But crazy delicious, especially with tartar sacue and some real spicy cocktail sauce- which I will post about all on its own some day.

back to the point, I gots me some fried clams, and ate them fast in the parking lot at the Clinton Crossing Factory Outlet Mall. I am not afraid to say it- I like a bargain, and carpenter needed some new pants.

-carpenter

Carpenter Hearts Alton Brown

This isn't easy for a tough-as-nails carpenter to talk about. But I had a realization watching the Food Network All-Star Thanksgiving special last night that rocked me a little. carpenter has a Straight-Up man-crush on Alton Brown.

I have been watching Brown's awesome show, "Good Eats" for years, and have made many of his recipes myself - Oh how I remember the Firecracker Pickled Carrots, or the Homemade Yogurt Cheeses, or the Butternut Squash Gnocchi. I can't get enough of it all.

Don't get me wrong, if I had to go naked in the kitchen, I'd have to sideline Alton for Gianna de Laurentis, or even the tall Semi-Homemade host (what's her name?) cancel that show already. But for all other endeavors, including lifelong friends forever- its all Alton-town for me.

Thanksgiving this year is Alton's Brined Turkey. Maybe he will stop by for a Bite. One can only hope!!! (sigh, flutters lashes)

Crocheted a hat (or is that crochetted?)

Does it look too much like a purple afro?


It's made from softy-soft angora that I got at a stoop sale. Something about the way the balls of yarn were put together made them incredibly inefficient. It took about five balls of yarn to make this one hat. That seems like a lot, no?

The hat was inspired by the kind of soft, round hat that my mom would wear. We always had a few of them sitting around in our hall tree. As we didn't really need winter hats, we never had hats of our own, so whenever we were going out on an extra cold adventure, my mom would bundle us up in whaterver we had in the hall tree, i.e. her soft round hats. Maybe we also had some kind of manlier-looking hats that my brother got to wear, but I don't remember them.

I remember one specific cold adventure we had to bundle up for: the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. The hat I wore was grey, blue, beige & white, and knit in a sort of starburst pattern. Of course, it was soft and round. We had on hats, scarves, borrowed sweaters, ski windbreakers, and at least two pairs of pants each. It may never get that cold in San Francisco, but it sure felt like it if you stood outside long enough in the fog and wind. Although I can say now, having lived through some actually cold winters: we were totally babies about the cold.

For the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, everyone was going to walk across the bridge to celebrate it. (Which is why we needed to bundle up.) They expected enough people that they shut down the bridge to all car traffic. People in San Franciso started walking over the bridge, and across the bay, people in Marin started walking over the bridge. So many people were celebrating the bridge that when they met in the middle, there was nowhere else to go. And so many people were celebrating the bridge behind them that there was no turning around. People just pushed and pushed onto the bridge until it was completely full of people. I forget how many people they counted, (maybe like a million, or a hundred and eighty thousand) but it was astonishing, and under the weight all those people, the bridge's load-bearing arc flattened out. The bridge was swaying like crazy. In retrospect, engineers said it was probably a pretty bad idea. I mostly remember a lot of standing around. There was a marching band from Connecticut. Also, I wanted one of the commemorative t-shirts soooo bad. We were on the bridge for a long time that day so it's a good thing my mom always remembered to pack snacks.

Another thing I remember about that day is that on the way home from the bus stop, after we finally got off the bridge (at least I'm pretty sure this happened on the same day) a homeless man stopped us and talked to my mom for a while. Then he said that I was, "going to be a heart-breaker one day," and gave me a pair of slippers that he had crocheted.

Speaking of crochet. . .
So I was trying to make a hat that reminded me of the kind my mom used to have. Obviously, I wasn't using a pattern. I made a big, flat circle and the decreased it until it got to about the size of my head. I think I might have made the circle too big, because it looks a lot more like a beret that I remember any of my mom's hats looking. And if I hadn't made it out of soft, fuzzy angora, it might look a whole lot like a rasta hat.

It's loose enough to not make my hair all smashed up and funny looking. And if I wear it with my ponytail shoved up inside (as I have done in this picture) it seems like pretty much the shape I was going for.

But it totally looks like a purple afro, right?

Stuffed Acorn Squash

Made my signature dish for secretary last night. Hot Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash. yeah, you heard it. And for the first time ever, the recipe here on the interweb.

Carpenter's Stuffed Acorn Squash

Ingredients

• 2 medium acorn squash
• 2 lbs hot italian sausage (remove casing)
• 1/2 onion (yellow, spanish, or even better- shallots!)
• 1/2 stick butter
• hot water
• 1 bag stuffing, or make your own out of stale bread and spices
• dried cranberries (handful)
• small block of blue cheese - the stronger the better
• small amount of fresh Habanero (you make the call, I used like 3 tiny slices of one I gre myself, and it was great)
• real maple syrup

All right, for the record, if you are looking for exact measurements and whatnot, you are not going to find them in my recipes (unless I am baking or doing some really scientific shit). I make the dish a little different every time, and I expect you to feel it out as well.

Halve the acorn squash lengthwise, seed them, and bake them at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cover them in some sort of fat (butter or bacon - not olive oil which seems to taste odd in this recipe). You are just precooking them. Bake them open side down.

While those are pre-cooking, saute the onion and maybe some garlic in a little butter, and when sauteed, add the italian sausage and cook until brown. Add the chopped habanero (really chop it fine) to the mix. At the end of the browning, add a 1/2 stick of butter and melt over the sausage.

Mix the sausage with the bag of stuffing and a big handful of cranberries. Mix with some hot water (just as much as you need) until the shole shebang is wet enough to hold together. Add salt and pepper as needed (eveything is cooked at this point, give it a taste!!!)

Sidenote: Last night Secretary suggested putting some blue cheese into the stuffing itself, which I have yet to try. You might want to. Tell me how it turns out.

Ok, so, pull the par-cooked acorn squash out of the oven. Cut a small flat piece off of the bottom round end so that they will sit in a flat pan. Put a big hunk'o blue cheese in the bottom of each squash cavity, and then loosely fill with stuffing. Put a little water in the bottom of your baking pan, and cover the stuffed squash. Return to the oven for 20 minutes. Then uncover the squash, add a big ol hunk of blue cheese to the top, and return to the over for 5 more minutes.

Pull those bad-boys out, and drizzle with maple syrup. Serve with something green. Secretary made stringbeans.

Apple Pie

Made an apple pie this weekend. It was delicious, even if the apple texture was kind of weird. One taster asked, "What kind of apples did you use?" Well, I used the-only-kind-of-apples-they-had-at-the-deli apples. Not the apples from the first deli, though. The apples from the first deli were almost shriveled enough to make those old-people dolls they sell at living history museums. I used I used the-only-kind-of-apples-they-had-at-the-deli apples from the second deli. They were just labeled "apples," so that's really all I know about them. Oh, and they were red. They ended up having a weird texture. But the pie was delicious nonetheless. And on the second day, the texture seemed much better.

Here's a helpful hint I learned from my mom: Always use twice as much spices as they tell you to in the recipie books because the people who write the recipe books are scared of spices.

Here's the recipe for a perfect pie crust, also learned from my mom: Pilsbury makes a really good refrigerated pie crust. If you use it in a nice pie pan, and do a "rustic" job of cripming the edges, no one will know you didn't make it yourself. Hide the box at the bottom of your paper recycling. Makes 1 pie.

I forgot to mention that I topped the pie with clove & bourbon flavored whipped cream. Delicious! I whipped the cream all by myself, with a whisk. Kind of makes up for not making my own pie-crust, right?

Coney Island, That's my WORD!

Secretary's got it right. I thought, last year, that I might someday take a bike trip to Coney Island. Like maybe once. I remember imagining the trip we might take, so tired from the day's ride that we would have an early dinner at a Russian restaurant - the kind that has entire bottles of label-less vodka on the table. I imagined getting drunk and full, and taking the subway home because one could ever ride their bike all the way to Coney Island and back in the same day.

Well, we went to CI this year like 4 times. As secretary said, the hardest part is getting to Prospect park, and not dying at the Ocean Parkway rotary, or from running into the crazy amounts of Hasidic people on the greenway. Saturday is a bad day to ride to CI, only because there is a lot of Orthodox foot traffic.

Don't make a big deal about biking to Coney Island. It is so damn easy.

Secretary and I have a new ride in mind for next year- a Century Ride to Montauk. For those of you that don't know, a "Century Ride" is 100 miles. We read about it in a magazine. You take the LIRR to some starting point, and then it is all biking. Secretary seems a lettle nervous/excited about it. I have been to Long Island, and as I remember, that shit is flat. I really can't wait, but I am sure that we will have to spend the night out there when we get there.

And we'll have to get drunk on something when we get out there. What do they drink in Montauk? Whiskey Sours. that's what's we'll drink, Whiskey Sours.

Secretary, see you in Montauk!

Coney Island Bike Ride

At the beginning of the summer, The Carpenter and I said, "One day, we're gonna ride our bikes all the way out to Coney Island," like it was some crazy, distant dream. I mean, seriously, how long must it take to ride your bike to Coney Island from Red Hook, when it takes at least an hour to get there one the train? Especially when your bikes are the heaviest pair of rusty schwinns you can get.
One day, we packed up our bags, a hearty lunch, a bike map, and a ton of water; and decided to make the trip. We were fortified with supplies and ready for whatever kind of ridiculous trek it might be.
First leg: Home to Prospect Park. This seems like it would be the easiest part. All the streets are familiar, we know where to get coffee if we need it, and there are two bike shops on the way (in case anything happens). But dang, that is a long hill through Park Slope. And it is hard. The Carpenter is pretty tough about the hill, but by the end of it, I'm desperate for a donut. Fact: There aren't that many donuts at Grand Army Plaza. Another fact: On weekends, there is a winery there at the farmers market that will let you taste their peach/candy flavored wine for free.
Second leg: Prospect Park. It is a beautiful ride through the park. Beautiful. I always get nervous and want to exit before our exit comes. The right place to exit the park is "Ocean Parkway". The exit before Ocean Parkway is just going to get you lost.
Third leg: Getting lost while trying to find Ocean Parkway. So, even if you take the right exit, you're probably going to get lost, but only a little.
The Ocean Parkway Exit put us out on a huge round-about (is that what it's called? a rotary?). There's a sign that points to Ocean Parkway, but it's pretty impossible to figure out which way it is pointing. Take you're best guess, you'll still probably end up going the wrong way. Now that we know that, we know to ask for directions sooner rather than later.
Fourth leg: Ocean Parkway to Coney Island. Ocean Parkway may be one of Brooklyn's best secret places. It's a wide, tree-lined street with a separated bike path. It's completely flat (except for the major cracks and bumps in the road that start around Avenue J) and goes straight from Prospect Park to Coney Island. Next to the bike path is a people path, one might call it a promenade. On a summer weekend it's like taking a world tour, with all the local residents out enjoying the path and the park benches in native costume.
Ocean Parkway finishes up right on the boardwalk at Coney Island. The Carpenter and I were smart enough not to go in the water at Coney island, but we did enjoy some hot dogs; fresh clams (shucked by the toughest hands this secretary has ever seen); sweet, sweet, strawberry shortcake; and a nice walk on the pier.

We ended up riding our bikes to Coney Island at least four more times over the course of the summer. And really, the hardest part of the bike ride is getting to Prospect Park. The easiest part is eating all the Coney Island food when you get there.



So, how long must it take to ride your bike to Coney Island from Red Hook, when it takes at least an hour to get there one the train?
About an hour.

And how long was the bike ride home?
We took the subway.

Here I am.

Here I am.

Warmest regards,
Your Secretary

Secretary and Carpenter Beginneth.

And so it begins.