The 85%-ers

In general, I think chocolate is a fairly mundane ingredient for a dessert. On the rare occasion that I order a dessert from a restaurant, it's hardly ever whatever chocolate thing they have on the menu. I've had chocolate before. I know what it tastes like. If I'm gonna pay $8 for a rammikin of pudding or a slab of cake, I want it to be something I've never tasted before. And chocolate's such a bully! It overpowers pretty much anything else you can put with it. So why bother?

This is not to say, of course, that I don't like chocolate. I keep bars of Valrhona 85% on my desk at work and my homemade chocolate ganache ice cream is famous (if only in familial circles). So, I figure, if you're gonna do chocolate, you should do it simply, cleanly... but intensely.

Hold onto your hair, folks. These little guys don't fuck around.

I give you the 85% Cupcakes:

cupcake test #1

Here are the results of my first recipe test. These are the White Chocolate Wasabi Cupcakes with Plum Sake Filling. The filling is DEE-lish! The icing, however, is tres sweet to my palate and you can't taste the wasabi in the cake-- not even a little bit. That's rather annoying as that stuff had my eyes watering profusely while I was mixing it into a paste. Still, the sesame seed garnish adds something unusual that I like quite a lot. And they're pretty, eh?

Baking is soul-soothing. Certainly, I needed this morning's kitchen activities to calm my nerves after last night. If I could give Damon Packard a cupcake, maybe he'd be a happier guy and less prone to spewing rancor far and wide. What do you think? Good idea?




UPDATE: When I tried these the first time, I made them with Valrhona white chocolate and I've decided I don't much like the flavor of that particular white chocolate. The second batch didn't come out as pretty because I don't have as good a set of frosting tips as my mom does, but I used El Rey white chocolate. El Rey has a nice, nuttier, more natural vanilla flavor and so they came out much tasting better. Plus, I added lemon juice to both the filling and the icing, hoping to take the edge off all that rich sweetness. That helps, too.

Vacation Goals

Under cover of night, I've scuttled back into Nash Vegas. Upon exiting Concourse C, I found my father, fast asleep in the kiss-n-cry area on the main floor of BNA. I plopped down next to him, jarring him awake, proclaiming, "Well, hello, old man! What gives? Asleep in public?" At first he protested: "I'm not an old man." But then, I think, as he regained wakefulness, he reconsidered and agreed that he is, indeed, an old man who falls asleep in public.

Anyway, I think it's high time I set forth the scope of this vacation. Here is a list of some stuff I hope to accomplish:

1) Watch at least 12 films at the Nashville Film Festival. I've already bought tickets for 10 and the other two are contingent only on whether or not my friend Jen gets called into work. With luck, I might even find time to see a couple of non-festival films, too.

2) Write blog posts about at least 6 of the films I see before heading home a week from Saturday. This is a daunting task. Finding time to both process the films and write about them was a great challenge last year. But it's also the lion's share of the point of why I try to attend this festival every year.

3)Test this recipe. I'm having some friends from that old job (the one I quit yesterday) over when I get home and I think this recipe is fancy enough to satisfy my desire to show off, but conservative enough for those wary of my own more experimental dessert-related palate.

4) Test this recipe. This one is definitely far more my style. And I know at least a few of my friends will get a kick out of its weirdness. One of these friends, upon perusing the link I sent her, said, "Good god, that blog is total porn!" And given the cupcake/sex metaphor that seems to be gaining ground within the collective unconscious, I think she's probably right. These are not just cupcakes. They are lusty cupcakes.

5) Read the entirety of my mom's copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I've been meaning to read that damn book pretty much since it came out, but have yet, despite owing my firstborn to Amazon, to purchase my own copy. So, even though she's currently in New Orleans doing foodie things, I've stolen her copy without permission and hope to surreptitiously replace it before she even notices it's missing (or, uh, reads this post).

6) Relish Nashville in all its end-of-April glory. If ever anyone gets a yen to visit my li'l hometown here, I highly recommend doing it at this time of year. It's pretty consistently sunny and temperatures range from mid-60s to mid-80s. It's lush with yellowish fringe on everything that will be green within days. The redbuds are petering out and the dogwoods are riotous. All I really need is a cucumber-chili pepper paleta from Las Paletas and a park bench and I'm a happy chiquita.

7) Avoid sexual congress with a person with whom I have had an extended gray-area entanglement. I love you, punkin, but I think it unwise. Maybe saying it in a public forum will help me hold to my resolve? (Please don't kick my ass for saying it in a public forum!)

8) Compensate for #7 by making out with my dog (who lives with my parents as my DC lifestyle does not support his free-loading ways (or his need to pee more than twice a day)) a lot. Upon my arrival last night, he just about shivered himself out of his skin, he was so happy to see me. When he's really blissed out, he gets this totally retarded expression on his face-- his eyes get all squinty and he draws up his considerable jowls into this funny grin and he'll press the side of his face into mine: "Kiss me, Mom! Kiss me!" This is the look that keeps me in love with him, despite our extended separations. Ugh. God. I miss having a dog. And my dad's making him fat, dammit!

9) Squeeze in at least 5 full-out yoga practices and 6 Pilates floorwork sessions. All those cupcake tastings and paletas are gonna make me fat (not to mention the visits to DaVinci's, The Family Wash, Nola, and whereever else I might go so as to partake in Nashville's finest comestibles). And we all know how neurotic I am about getting fat. That's simply NOT an option.

So, I've only got 8 days here. It's quite a lot through which I need to bluster. Anon, anon...

This just about sums it up.

(photo by Paul Sarkis)


For my friends in the GBC. I'll try not to bleed in the batter.

Is it strange that this woman reminds me of my sister-in-law?

I dub thee...

The official name of my new car is now (fanfare, please!) "Cupcake." This is the best name for my car for an assortment of reasons,all of which will remain inside jokes.

The winner is clearly the most brilliant of my friends: none other than Ms. C. R. And the next time I see her, I will doubtlessly grant her a hug.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, C. I can't imagine a more fitting name. For about a millions reasons.

Hey, there, Robin! Is that the Bat--uh... Bunny... Signal?

In my anniversary post, I stated that I hoped to make my blog into something of a beacon. I've decided to write this current post, in lieu of posting profiles on every cotton-pickin' online dating service the internet has to offer. Quite frankly, I have no interest in wading through tiresome emails from people who *think* they like women with pretentious vocabularies and a particularly quirky variety of brassiness.

This is not to say that I'm starved for romantic attention-- quite the opposite --but I do not seem to be drawing folks who are on the same page that I am... nor do they seem to be showing an interest in reading to see what that page might have to say. I would like for this to change. And for the ones who DO seem to be on a page within the vicinity of my own, well, I'm thinking we both my benefit from your finding yourself within this funnel of light, too.

And so, I'm erecting a metaphysical lighthouse of sorts in this post. Let's see what happens. Welcome to my experiment.

A Proscribed Reading List for Potential Suitors of Me:

1. Killing the Buddha, Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau, eds.-- I've posted on this book before and I've linked its website and Jeff Sharlet's (one of its editors) blog ten ways to Tuesday. I don't find any religion in particular to be terribly helpful in my own life, but I find the ways in which this book gauges the temperature of American religiosity to be perfectly fascinating. I think it should be required reading for everyone, not just for Fans of Marjorie. If you doubt that real religious diversity and real thoughtful engagement with all and assorted gods still exists in this country, then doubt no more. Beyond that, Sharlet and Manseau are dynamite and engaging writers, the both of them. And, they've amassed contributions from some of this country's best and brightest novelists, essayists, language-experimenters and word-junkies, such that there's something for everyone. Even if you only get as far as Darcy Steinke's uber-hot Song of Songs contribution. And though I do have my own anarchic, slap-dash variety of perpetual spiritual questing, this book did not, in any way, make me feel alienated from all the folks who are opting for slightly more traditional paths towards The Sacred. That's saying something.

2. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Isa Chandra Moskowitz-- A traditional cupcake contains wheat, dairy and sugar... three things that I'm working very hard to minimally include in my diet. But god knows I love me some cupcakes! Now some of my readers-- the ones with whom I exchange frequent gossipy emails-- may think that I'm referring to our code word "cupcake." I am not. That code remains top secret (wink, wink). I really am talking about delicious, frosted, spongy cupcakes. However, if there is a brave one among you who can present me with a homemade vegan Red Velvet cupcake that doesn't taste like health food, you just might be entitled to a larger chunk of my heart that I might be inclined to give you otherwise.

3. The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies, Vasant Lad-- It's not that I have an active phobia about doctors trained in the methods of contemporary Western medicine. It's just that every time I go to a conventional doctor, they try to ply me with drugs (for some negligibly minor condition, or some natural state, such as being a woman in the prime my child-bearing years)-- to which I'll generally have a reaction, or suffer from some side effect or other... and it's just not worth it to me, when, in general, I'm blessedly healthy and can rely on my body's natural functions to right themselves in due course. And so, I have found the little tricks in this book to be altogether more helpful than any doctor yet. No, I do not understand why rubbing sesame oil on my feet makes my headache go aways. But it does. And no, I don't fully grasp why touching my forehead to my knees makes my tummy feel better. But it does. And so, I think this is a book that should be in everyone's personal library, not just mine and my mother's.

4. Elements of Style, Illustrated (also known as The Strunk &White)-- There are only so many more emails I can receive in which question marks have been dropped from sentences in which they would have been appropriate before I start taking you to task. I've always assured you that I wouldn't put you in my blog, but you know who you are. I fully respect that you are a lot smarter than me in most ways that count and I like that about you. But if you don't start friggin' putting question marks at the end of your friggin' questions, I'm likely to haul off and spank you. Crap, that's not much of a deterrent, is it? That said, I REALLY do get off on grammar. My favorite part is ensuring all the little prepositions find their way to their rightful homes within any given sentence. I love some goddamn prepositions! And this book is the gold standard... and when they published the version with pictures? And cute little grammar joke captions? It just gives me that special feeling deep down in my...brain.

5. The Synonym Finder, J. I. Rodale-- At work, I carry this book around like Linus with his blanket. It makes me feel powerful and banishes all insecurities. And I spent many happy, procrastinatory afternoons with my copy sitting in my lap during grad school. If you think more associatively than literally when you play with language, this is the thesaurus for you. So many beautiful, beautiful words!

6. Anything bell hooks every wrote-- I don't suppose I ever really thought that much about race, other than in an abstract of-course-I'm-not-a-racist sort of way, before my undergrad sociology professor assigned a bunch of bell hooks' essays that discuss the concepts of "white standard" and "male standard" and all the other arbitrary ways in which some folks have the privilege of not thinking about their respective social standing, while others are forced to deal with such issues every day. She's able to articulate so many ideas that I found so meaningful and resonant that discovering her felt like a homecoming. I want you, dear potential suitor, to understand that I question my racial identity every day, not because I'm part of a stigmatized, marginalized group, but because I DIDN'T EARN my social privilege that allows me NOT to think about it every day. It's not guilt-- it's just that being born a white American is like being given a monstrous trust fund. I didn't do anything to earn that capital myself and so, I feel kinda funny spending it willy-nilly. And bell hooks was able to suckle that idea into my amorphous 19-year-old social conscience in a way that I felt my foundations veritably shaken.

7. I Have Not Been Able to Get Though to Everyone, Anna Moskovakis-- Really, this book is just a place holder. It's a recent favorite and it's a brilliant poetry monograph by an American woman who is both alive and under the age of 60. I do know that pretty much the only folks who read contemporary poetry are other poets. It is not a prerequisite for wooing me that you be a poet. And so, I know it's a tall order to expect anyone to actually, you know, read some damn poems. But it's good stuff and I find value in it. A lot of value. I'll consider this one to be extra credit. How's that?

8. Jelly Roll, Kevin Young-- This is another place holder. Any poetry monograph by a non-white, living American under the age of 60 will do. But I love this one quite a lot. Actually, of the poetry I've read in the last five years or so, I've found that some of the most downright sexy work is being written by African American men. Maybe it's because they seem so joyful and celebratory in their use of dirty words for female anatomy, but these guys-- Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Kevin Young and so one-- know their way around some flattering pillow talk, I'll tell you what! But, again, it's extra credit.

9. My blog-- If you want to get to know me, here's where I am. I'll tell you all you need to know, if you're reading closely enough.


10. The Ethical Slut: A guide to infinite sexual possibilities, Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt-- This layperson's guide to polyamory was recommended to me by more than one friend over the course of several years. I recently decided it was time to finally read it. The style is kinda goofy and lingo-ridden, but it clearly and simply articulates all the qualms I have with traditional expectations for relationships and gender roles within those relationships and then offers an alternative. I don't buy all of the arguments in this book... and I think it's rather (sl)utopian in many ways... but it describes an alternative to social constructs that I find to be restrictive beyond the scope of your average human animal. I'm not looking for a wild life of free-wheeling and swinging, but the idea of engaging with other human animals in whatever way feels most unaffected and innate without fear of damaging, manipulating or deceiving other people, well... it's very appealing. And this book describes some tools that might help make it work. And maybe it can. Wanna try?



Happy reading, my loves. Keep me posted on what you learn.

I mention Uma Thurman's breasts way way way at the end of this post.

I've gotten totally lax in my discipline regarding keeping up with my film-viewing-and-then-blogging project. I know I really only write about movies because they're a readily accessible art form that tends to reflect other issues going on out there in the world. In effect, I only ever wanted to write about the world-- but movies are a good spot from which I can begin my descent. However, when life-related activities of a non-aesthetic nature begin to occlude my engagement with films, I tend to write round-up posts. But I've been seeing such juicy pictures lately that I think I'm gonna opt for a quick succession of short-ish posts instead... because a couple of lazy-ass readers (you know who you are) have mentioned to me that they don't want to read to the end when I write really long stuff (hence my alluring title above). Sound Bite Nation, I'll tell you what!

But anyway, here we go:

The Namesake

I actually saw this movie with Jon when I was home in Nashville for the Film Festival. It seems that neither of us could get quite enough movies, even though that's just about the only thing either of us did for the entire 9 days I was there! But a couple weeks before I saw the movie, I got into a blog-debate with my illustrious friend Jai over on his blog, in which I was primarily talking out of my ass... because I have neither read Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, nor had I seen the film at that point. I had, however, read Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, and deemed it highly overrated--I was both bored and felt a little too keenly that I, liberal white reader of multi-culti writers that I am, was more the target audience of the book than I should have been. I mean, I had a creepy sensation, as I plugged through those stores, that I was being fed a prettily-packaged idea of the "Indian-American Experience" so that I might find a "deeper understanding" of a minority group of which I was not a member. In the end, I don't particularly enjoy being pandered to when I'm in audience of something of which I am, by default, not a part. I WANT to feel alienated by a depiction of a life I could never fully understand, but Lahiri's work makes me feel coddled and congratulated for my supposedly enlightened, bleeding-heart seeking-out of culturally diverse writings. Spare me. She'd have done better by me to flagellate me for my ethnic blind spots-- of which I still have many. At least that way, I'd have been made more keenly aware of those blind spots so that I could DO something about them, right?

Also, one of the girls with whom I work is in the process of writing her dissertation on writers of Southeast Asian descent and I'll admit, she'd colored my feelings about the novel, The Namesake and, by extension, the film. This particular colleague HATES this book... but feels slightly warmer towards the movie. So, I went to the theatre a little skeptical. My colleague's reasoning for liking the movie better than the book is that the book spends too much time on the life of Gogol, our faithful protagonist, while the real heart of the story resides in the romance of his parents.

And to the movie's credit, the movie is much more a sweet and sumptuous love story than it is the story of an Indian-American misfit trying to negotiate his "other-ness." Which isn't to say that it doesn't dive into its fair share of bemoaning the ways in which poor Gogol perceives himself as "among the downtrodden" because his primary concern in life is deciding when to be Indian and when to be American. I did not feel as though I was watching a film about an interesting person. I was watching a film about an ethnic person... about whom there was very little interesting BESIDES his ethnicity. In other words, it's difficult to engage with a narrative about a person who lacks character traits beyond what makes him part of some marginalized group.

For another example, I once met a girl who introduced herself to me and then immediately informed me that she was bisexual, Japanese-American and her father had abused her when she was a kid. Clearly, these three things were the things that she thought made her interesting. The only thing that really made me engage with her, at that point, was that I started wondering about what motivates a person announce the ways in which she labels herself so early in an acquaintance in lieu of presenting a more free-formed, albeit messier, public persona-- one in which someone might discover deeper layers than that she was 1. a Bisexual, 2. a Japanese-American and 3. an Abuse Victim. I never really got to know this girl well enough to uncover her nuances... partly because I think she'd already told me all I wanted to know (or at least all she wanted me to know about her)... but also because I found her labelling system rather impenetrable. And that's kinda how I feel about Lahiri's Gogol. He behaves in ways that I understand only because all his motivations stem from his cultural heritage--either to sync up with it or to rebel against it-- and he really doesn't exceed those expectations so as to become a real person. And there's another character-- his white girlfriend-- who sort of mirrors his behavior in this way. She is hopelessly oblivious to his need to participate in his family's traditions in a way that belies her white privilege... and thusly, she becomes the very paragon of white privilege and therefore, must be dumped! She has no personality beyond her whiteness in the same way he has none beyond his brownness. Tell me again why I'm supposed to care about these folks?

I should mention that the actor who plays Gogol is Kal Penn, of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle fame. The same aforementioned colleague and I have had a discussion about why we both like this silly stoner flick (for me, this is somewhat momentous because I so rarely find comedies to be actually funny)-- and my colleague claims it's because it's a dumb mainstream-movie type of plot, in which the two main characters are a Korean-American and an Indian-American, but their racial identities bear virtually no relevance to the plot whatsoever. They're simply a couple of polluted kids who get their car stolen by Doogie Howser and make love to giant bags of weed. This isn't to say that they don't make a few jokes about racial stereotypes along the way, but overall, racial identity isn't the SUBJECT of this movie about a some non-white people. Yes, Jon, I'm finally owning up to the fact that I am quite the Harold-and-Kumar fan. The spoils of war resulting from your subtle-yet-perpetual attack on my film-snobbery go to you, my friend-- this round, anyway.

Now, the overall presentation of the film was a little disappointing, considering what I've come to expect from Mira Nair, the director. Mississippi Masala is a totally gorgeous film--Sarita Choudhury has never been sexier... and Nair really knows how to make a girl look hot in a mundane setting. And speaking of hot, Kama Sutra, anyone? OK, so, this film is a little short on plot... but you really can't do better in terms of arty soft-porn unless you go watch Dangerous Liaisons for the billionth time (Need I remind anyone of Uma Thurman's 18-year-old breasts (there!)?). But The Namesake is just the most straightforward of narratives that I've seen in a while. It's still pretty and we do have several distinctly sensory scenes full of sari silks but that, for me, wasn't enough to keep maintain engagement throughout. I suppose there are certain trademark styles I come to expect from certain directors and I feel kinda let-down when they underplay those trademarks. I mean, Julie Taymor's Frida totally sucked because it was all Salma Hayek and very little Taymor and even less Frida Kahlo. I like Kahlo and LOVE Taymor for their respective freakishnesses-- and that movie had very little of either. And I discussed a similar situation in my post about Fur, Steven Shainberg's movie about Diane Arbus. This guy freakin' directed Secretary and then you give him a total weirdo like Arbus for subject matter and all you get is a Nicole Kidman vehicle? Come. On! So, basically, I wanted something luscious and confectionary from Nair in The Namesake and I got something more understated and sincere. That's not bad, I guess, but I left the theatre with a still-achy sweet-tooth.

They should really put cupcake kiosks in movie theatres. I'd rather eat those than that disgusting butter-esque oil they put on the super-salty popcorn any day. GodDAMNit, why am I so obsessed with cupcakes???