Why I Am Not A Baker

I am not a baker, I am a cook.
Why? I think I would rather be
a baker, but I'm not. Well,


for instance, Max wanted
to make a blueberry pie. I said yes.


This is what happened:

I thought it would be adorable to make little pocket pies, and I just happen to have a heart-shaped sandwich cutter. Sounded easy and foolproof. But for me, no baking is fool-proof--because baking is Not. For. Fools. You have to be able to measure, for godssake. And that requires numbers. So right away I'm doomed.

I didn't know I was doomed until Max had cut out all those cute little hearts and painstakingly piled tablespoon-fulls of blueberries on top of each one. (NB: Do you know how many fresh blueberries fit in a tablespoon? Three. So, as I say: doomed.) (NB2: Do you know how hard it is to get a 5-year-old to painstakingly do anything? Much less pile three blueberries into the center of irregularly-shaped pie crusts? DOOMED.) The full force of the doom hit me when I went to place the top crust on each pie and realized--a tad belatedly--that the top crust couldn't possibly be the same size as the bottom crust, or it wouldn't fit over the berries. But I had just the one cutter. So I stretched and cajoled the unwilling dough, eventually just saying "fuck it" and patching up the edges with dough scraps.

When I pulled them out of the oven, they were so browned and crunchy with sugar crystals and beautiful and fragrant...and completely empty. Every single drop of filling had leaked out of every single pie and coated my expensive cookie sheet and my baking stone.

Good thing I thought to pour the leftover berries into some ramekins and stretch a little extra dough over the top. One even made a smiley face. See?

He seems to be saying, "Clearly, I was the better idea, dumbass." Yeah? Thanks a lot, pie.

** My sincerest apologies to you for both the blurry photographs and my egregious (and awful) appropriation of one of the loveliest poems I know: Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter."

#CookTeaseThanksgiving

Normally, I am crap at cooking big fancy dinners. In theory, I love to do it, but really what I like is the impressing-the-hell-out-of-people part and not so much the actual execution of it. This year, however, I made the same Thanksgiving meal for the third year in a row and, I must admit, it went swimmingly. I actually planned ahead, cooked things in advance, and stuck to a schedule. Yes, I forgot to make the cornbread until the last possible second, but otherwise I count this year's Thanksgiving a tremendous success.

I tweeted the steps as I completed them, which was fun for me, if not necessarily for everyone who had to read my incessant, smug tweets. It kept me focused and entertained. I had every intention of writing a for-reals blog post about the meal, but the tweets were pretty sufficient, I thought. Hence, I'm going to plead lazy and overworked, and I'm just going to post them below with pictorial accompaniment. Naysayers, this is all I can muster up right now, so tell yourself it's better than nothing.

Oh, and by the way, my entire menu comes from the greatest Gourmet menu of all time. You can get all the recipes (and see the shit I was too lazy to make) at Epicurious.com.

1/50: Groceries purchased, sorted, and minimally prepped.

2/50: 10 poblanos have been roasted, peeled, seeded, and made into rajas.

3/50: rum and nutmeg custard base for ice cream.

4/50: Chiles guajillo, ancho, New Mexico, chipotle, and de arbol toasted and soaking in boiling water.

5/50: Adobo red chile rub for turkey pureed and in the fridge.

6/50: Onions caramelized and joining yesterday's poblano strips in the rajas bin.



7-10/50: Dishes washed, dried, put away; plastic containers for leftovers washed, dried, and stacked.

11-12/50: roasted pineapple and onion for cranberry salsa; made salsa.

13-14/50: Roasted squash; mixed with coconut milk and brown sugar; pureed.

15-16/50: Rum ice cream frozen; cornbread for stuffing baked.

17/50: Turkey rubbed with red chile adobo; marinates for 24 hrs.

18-21/50: Potatoes peeled, sliced, and fashioned into gratin strewn w/ poblano and onion rajas; gratin baked.

22-24/50: Cooked veggies, chorizo for stuffing; browned giblets, neck; simmering w/ veg and broth for turkey stock.

25-29/50: Toasted cornbread; baked stuffing; made piloncillo syrup; prepared apples/syrup, poured into pie shell.

30/50: Took break to make pumpkin-butter filled pancakes for my family. Haven't fed them properly in three days.

31-33/50: Apple-pilocillo pie baked; pomegranate, mango ready for guac; scraped caramel from pie off bottom of oven.

34/50: Made emergency pumpkin pie. Well, actually, my 5-year-old made it. Read the recipe and everything. LOVE him.

35/50: Pomegranate-mango guacamole done.

36-40/50: Dishes.

41/50: Round of Pomegranate Kir Royales made, toasted, and working its way into our bellies. Ahhhh.

42/50: Green beans blanched and sauteed w/ lemon, garlic, thyme.

43-47/50: Red-chile roux made; gravy simmering; sides reheated; turkey resting.

48/50: Emergency #2--gratin is still cold, but everything else is ready. Fail. Jack up oven temp to 450.

49/50: Turkey sliced. Possibly by beavers, from the looks of it. 

50/50: And...done. Everything superb. Standouts: poblano gratin, cran-pineapple salsa, mango-pom guac, caramel apple pie.